.././.\\.

The back of the house lets much more light in—and out—than the front. Rows of windows flank a sliding glass door. Muted lights bleed through the shades, not offering Zandra much of a look inside. The sliding glass door, however, is a sparkling gold mine.

The sliding door is open, with the bug screen closed, leading to a concrete slab. Patio furniture sits on the slab. It's a typical Midwest setup, right down to the fold-out lounger, about 25 yards away.

And who's that someone sitting in the lounger?

That someone sits with the back of the lounger to Zandra. The glow from the sliding glass door forms a bubble of light around the lounger.

The tree trunks aren't as wide in this part of the woods, so Zandra plops down in place to keep her profile low against the foliage. The lounger covers most of the person sitting, but an occasional elbow or hand will slip into view.

That's a woman, and that's as much as I can tell from here. Is anyone else home?

Zandra focuses on the rest of the patio. A few tall chairs, a table with retractable umbrella, a charcoal grill, and a cooler round of the ensemble.

No one. She's alone. How about the rest of the backyard?

Zandra watches the yard. It's a 40-foot-wide strip of grass between the patio and the woods. Unlike the patio, it's soaked in night.

It's easier to see something in the dark if you don't look directly at it. The rods in the eye, which are better for seeing at night than the cones, are off to the side of the retina. So step one is to look for movement, which is also easier to spot in the night, and step two is to look just to the side of it.

Don't ask me how I know this. There's a lot in my head that I couldn't tell you how it got there. It's just there.

No. Wait. I remember now. I once gave a reading to an optometrist. He wanted to know whether he was a match with a patient he was quite fond of. Actually, obsessed would be a better way to describe it. I had a bad feeling from the start. I pulled up his star chart and her birthday—which he willingly handed over to me courtesy of her patient file—and told him he's actually meant to be a long-haul truck driver, not an optometrist, and therefore the match couldn't possibly have worked out given the origin of their introduction.

I took that creep for all he was worth to get him to that spot, too. Made sure to put a dent in his bank account before the big reveal about the mismatch. That creep even gave me the patient's home address. Can you believe that? I dropped an anonymous note off in her mailbox to warn her. You're welcome.

The optometrist wasn't around much longer after that. I have no idea if he took my advice to switch careers, or if he lost his license, or if he got hit with a restraining order, or if someone did the world a favor and hit him with a bus, but who cares. Fuck him.

Anyway, he's the one who told me about the rods and cones thing.

Despite the trivia, Zandra doesn't spot anyone else in the yard. She does, however, catch a glimpse of a white box sticking out from either side of the lounger from time to time. It's almost like whoever is sitting in the lounger has a pizza box on their lap.

Who puts a hot, greasy piece of cardboard on themselves when there are chairs and a table right there? And are there no plates in the house?

Zandra leans a little too far forward as she watches the lounger. Her seated position in the dirt starts to turn into a roll. She catches herself, but it comes at the cost of a few snapping twigs.

This fucking ankle, ruining everything again.

Zandra gets as flat to the ground as possible. Now the patio is out of view, and now Zandra can hear the sliding glass door shut.

Shit.

The light above the patio switches off. The woods grow a shade darker around Zandra. She stays flat until holding the position feels like needles in her joints.

Must be clear now, right? I'm the only one out here.

Zandra hobbles to her feet. She brushes the dirt and bronze pine needles off her purple gown, and then takes a last look at the back of the house. She sees the dim lights in the windows grow fainter as someone walks by them.

Only one person home. Not two. I can't hear any talking, either.

A clumsy jaunt through the woods later, Zandra meets up with Chad and Bexley once again. She fills them in with what she saw.

"So it's a bust," Bexley says. "We wasted a whole night for nothing."

"I got close enough to her to see her aura," Zandra says, saving face. "Yellow. It lit the woods up like a lamp. Not a complete waste."

"Yellow? Oh, that makes total sense," Chad says and strokes his chin as they walk back to "grandma's house."

"Yellow means she's happy," Bexley says.

"She did have pizza."

"Auras are bigger than just what you're eating," Bexley says. "Hey, Zandra, are you sure her aura wasn't orange? Orange is like when you take the lead in a relationship. It fits better if there's cheating."

Who cares. It's all bullshit.

"Maybe it was more of a yellow-orange," Zandra says.

"Wait a minute. Was it a super bright yellow-orange? And was it more yellow than orange? Or more orange than yellow?" Bexley says.

Thank fuck we're almost back to the house.

"Hard to tell the mix exactly. It was a beigy yellow-orange," Zandra says.

"I knew it," Bexley says. "Yeah, that's got to be her. I don't know how you do it, Zandra. You're the best."

I know how I do it, but yes, I am the best. Thanks. Can we all stop talking now? I need some sleep.

Chad is no mind reader. He keeps the conversation going back at the house.

"You know, Zandra, I was thinking," Chad says.

No, you weren't.

Chad passes his pipe to Bexley and says, "Maybe this thing doesn't work out. Maybe we leave that boat down at the bottom of the river. There's got to be better ways to make money."

Zandra, seated on the couch, keeps her hands out of her pockets by shuffling the deck of poker cards over and over. "You have some ideas?"

Chad proceeds to recite a list of business ideas that include crab-flavored glue ("kids are going to eat glue, so teach them to be fancy and shit"), ham smoothies ("for people on meat diets who like smoothies but not carbs"), pre-bottled hot dog water ("duh"), condoms with motion-sensing LEDs in them ("so you can tap out Morse code while you tap that ass"), two-person socks ("a suppressed technology that uses the buddy system to keep you from losing socks and having to buy more"), mac-and-cheese-and-fish-stick-flavored vodka ("trust me, bro"), underwear with side pockets ("it's time to kill pants once and for all") and musical floss ("pull the string between your teeth to vibrate and make music and shit").

Well, that was fucking exhausting to listen to.

"No, Chad, this is still our best chance," Zandra says. She finds relief in both the end of the brainstorming and the revelation of a half-smoked cigarette stuffed between the couch cushions. "We go back to the cul-de-sac tomorrow night."

"What if she's not there?" Bexley says.

"She will be," Zandra says. She lights the old cigarette, exhales, and stares at the ceiling.

We keep coming back to this house. "Grandma's house."

A curl of smoke twists its way toward the white, orange-peel texture. Zandra thinks back to the stock charts from the Curd Queen, and the endless cycle of contraction-expansion-trend that peered out from the chaos of the numbers and symbols.

Trend got me off the boat and to this house, the point of contraction. Expansion introduces new information, pushing and pulling events to and from the house, but always returning to that point of contraction. Trend will come again, and then I'll never set foot in this house again.

Contraction. Expansion. Trend. Over and over. The underlying pattern of chaotic events. Of all events.

"Check out Zandra," Chad says in a giggle and nudges Bexley. "Contact high."

Bexley laughs.

Zandra smokes the cigarette down to its last drag and extinguishes the cherry into a cereal bowl. She clears her throat. "Do you ever think there's a higher order to what we perceive as chaos? And that that order, when it's noticed, gets mistaken for a god?"

"Damn, Zandra. What were you smoking?" Chad says.

Zandra continues. "And that if you could figure out that pattern, that it's basically the same thing as being psychic? It wouldn't even need to be supernatural, but you could present it that way to people who don't see the pattern?"

Bexley laughs again. "There's the Zandra we love."

Zandra shuffles the poker cards one last time. She stuffs the cards back in the pack.

Feels so close.

"Hey, Chad," Zandra says and reaches into her pocket.

"Yeah?"

"Give me your lighter."