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Everyone shoots the shit at dinner. They ask me about my life back home, so I tell them the truth. I ran a video store. That gets some laughs. Then we move on to the inevitable What did you do to get here?

“I’m like all of you,” I say. “It was all a big mistake. I’m supposed to be playing Candy Land in Heaven with the baby Jesus.”

The dog pack finds that funny enough. All except Sweat Pig.

He says, “Fuck the baby Jesus. Fuck him like I fucked the preacher before I burned him and his church.”

I spit out a piece of gristle.

“Wow. You beat up a preacher. That’s like beating up, what, a math teacher?”

People look from me back to him.

“You never killed anybody, I bet.”

“Look at his face, you drongo,” says Johnny. “You don’t get a face like that just running a shop.”

I rub my chin.

“My mom says I’m the handsomest boy in the world.”

“Your mother needs glasses,” says the twin with brown and blue eyes.

“It’s true. She used to chase my dad around with a rolled-up newspaper thinking he was the dog. ’Course it was his fault for shitting on the carpet.”

The Mohawked Hellion hands me a beer for that one. Sweat Pig is the only one not smiling.

He throws down his plate.

“No more bullshit. We all told our stories, but this fuck gets to sit there cracking jokes. And you let him get away with it. I say he tells his story or he gets out. Or he fights me right now.”

“Calm down, Billy,” says Daja. “No one wants to hear that shit now.”

I push my food around with a fork, singing quietly.

“‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so . . .’”

Billy jumps to his feet. I let him take one step toward me before I snap my wr

ist with the fork in it. It slices across the circle of seats and buries itself in the bastard’s right cheek. He howls like a brontosaurus and comes at me with the fork still stuck in him. At the last minute, I get up and toss my chair at his feet. Billy stumbles over it and falls, driving the fork deeper into his stupid face. As he hauls himself up, I pull the knife PTA Mom gave me, but I don’t make a move in his direction. I need to gauge the room. If everyone is going to jump me, I want to know.

“Billy!” shouts Daja.

She points at me.

“And you. Get your chair and sit the fuck down.”

I pick up my chair from where Billy kicked it, and sit.

“And put the damned knife away,” Daja says.

I slip it back into my coat.

Billy is on his knees pulling on the fork and moaning.

The toothless old man with heil on his fingers brings Billy a bottle of whiskey.

“Drink this. All of it,” he says.