Stripping? Porn? Back when the book came out, with its section of Baby Day Grows Up photos, the most notable was me at seventeen, my wobbly, woman-breasts barely held in by a white-trash halter top. I’d received several propositions from fringe nudie mags as a result, none of them offering enough money to make me think hard. Even now five hundred wouldn’t quite do it, if these guys did want me to get naked. But maybe—think positive, Baby Day!—maybe it really was a legit offer, another of those mourners’ groups, needing me to show up so they had a reason to talk about themselves. Five hundred for a few hours of sympathy was a doable exchange.

The letter was typed, except for a phone number that had been inked at the bottom in assertive script. I dialed the number, hoping for voicemail. Instead, a cavernous pause came on the line, a phone picked up, but not spoken into. I felt awkward, as if I’d called someone in the middle of a party I wasn’t supposed to know about.

Three seconds, then a male voice: “Hello?”

“Hi. Is this Lyle Wirth?” Buck was nosing around my legs, anxious for more food.

“Who’s this?” Still in the background: a big loud nothing. Like he was at the bottom of a pit.

“This is Libby Day. You wrote me.”

“Ohhhhh holy cow. Really? Libby Day. Uh, where are you? Are you in town?”

“Which town?”

The man—or boy, he sounded young—yelled something at someone back behind him that included the phrase, “I already did them,” and then groaned into my ear.

“You in Kansas City? You live in Kansas City, right? Libby?”

I was about to hang up, but the guy started yelling hel-ooo-o? hel-ooo-o? into the line, like I was some dazed kid not paying attention in class, so I told him I did live in Kansas City and what did he want. He gave one of those heheheh laughs, those you-won’t-believe-this-but laughs.