"You planning to kill me?"
"This isn't Hansel and Gretel, Mack. I don't eat children."
"Didn't ask if you planning to eat me."
"Believe me, Mack, I don't want you dead." He laughed.
"What's so funny?"
"Humans."
"As if you wasn't one yourself." Mack walked out of the living room and into the kitchen. It was right where it was supposed to be. He went to the fridge and opened it. There was plenty of food inside. Everything he liked to snack on. Milk. Juice. Grapes. Lunchables. Salami. Bologna. Even a leftover mess of beans that looked just like Mrs. Tucker's recipe for burn-your-head-off chili.
Mack took the chili out of the fridge and opened a drawer and took out a spoon.
"Where's the microwave?" he asked.
"Do I have one?" Mr. Christmas asked in return.
Mack looked around. The microwave was on the counter right beside the fridge, exactly where it was in Mrs. Tucker's kitchen. He put in the chili, set it for two minutes, and started it going.
"Well, who knew," said Mr. Christmas.
"Who knew what?"
"That I had a microwave."
"You telling me this is a rental and you just moved in?"
"I guess my house just bound to give you whatever you want."
"I want answers."
"Ask the house," said Mr. Christmas.
Mack was sick of this. He rocked his head back and shouted at the ceiling, "Who this brother! I want his name!"
There was a clattering only a couple of feet away. Mack whirled and looked. In the middle of the kitchen floor there was a thick disk of plastic, bright orange. "What's that supposed to be?"
"A pile of flop from a plastic cow?" said Mr. Christmas. "A traffic cone had a baby?"
Mack leaned his head back again and shouted, "What's this thing supposed to be?"
Another clatter. Now, lying beside the plastic thing on the floor was a crooked stick.
"What is this," said Mack. "ESPN in Middle-earth? I don't want to play hockey."
"This is getting funny," said Mr. Christmas.
The microwave dinged. Mack opened it, took out the chili. It wasn't burning hot, but it was warm enough to eat. He dug in with the spoon.
It didn't just look like Mrs. Tucker's chili, it was her chili. Mack jumped up and whooped just like he did when he ate at Tuckers' house. The first bite of chili always made him dance, it was so spicy.
"You eat that on purpose?" asked Mr. Christmas. "Even though it burns?"
"It doesn't really burn," said Mack. "It stimulates the nerves in your mouth."
"I guess I accidently asked Mr. Science."
"It also stimulates the nerves in your butt on the way out. I mean, that's chili."
"You telling me more than I want to know, boy."
"You telling me nothing, so I guess on average we having a conversation."
"Eat your chili," said Mr. Christmas.
"Did you buy this house? Or build it? Or just steal it and then hide it from everybody?"
Skinny House on the Cheap End of Cloverdale."
"The Skinny House Out of the Corner of Your Eye."
"The Skinny House Where Strange Boys Come and Ransack the Fridge."
"The Skinny House of Lies and Secrets," said Mack.
"The Skinny House of the Fairy," said Mr. Christmas.
"Now who's telling more than the other person wants to know?"
"I finally tell you the truth, and you won't believe me," said Mr. Christmas.
"You think I believe a single thing that's happened here this afternoon?"
"You eating that chili."
"I'm pretending you polite enough to offer me food."
"You sure take magic in stride, boy."
"I already seen too much magic in my life," said Mack. "And it's all ugly."
"I'm not the architect, Mack. This house just like the others in this neighborhood. I don't know why people so thrilled to live in Baldwin Hills. I don't think this house is so much."
"The houses up the hill are just fine," said Mack. "But even houses down here in the flat better than what everybody used to have, in Watts."
"Your mama tell you that?"
"Miz Smitcher did," said Mack. "I don't know my mama."
"I do," said Mr. Christmas.
Mack took the last bite of chili. "She living or dead?"
"Living," said Mr. Christmas.
"She live around here?"
"Right up Cloverdale."
"That's such a lie," said Mack. "You think a girl could get pregnant and have a baby around here and the whole neighborhood don't know it?"
Mack ignored him. He got up and washed the dish and the spoon and put them to dry. Mr.
Christmas said nothing till Mack was done. "You downright tidy," he said. "Convenient to have around the house."
"I just felt like washing it," said Mack.
"And you do whatever you feel like," said Mr. Christmas.
"Mostly."
"But ain't it convenient that what you feel like doing is just exactly what other people want you to do."
"I try not to be a bother."
"You do your homework, get good grades, you don't steal anything but you don't tell on your friends that do, you go everywhere and see everything but you don't gossip and you don't take anything or damage anything and you don't even drop a candy wrapper on the ground, you take it home and put it in the garbage."
"You been spying on me?"
"I guess you just a civilized boy, that's all," said Mr. Christmas.
Mack wasn't interested in this man's opinion of him. "So what's your back yard like? Does it just disappear again, like in front?"
"Look and see," said Mr. Christmas. "I don't go back there much."
Mack went to the back door and opened it and looked out onto the patio. There was a rusted barbecue off to one side, and an old-fashioned umbrella-style clothesline with a few clothespins hanging on it like birds perched along a wire. Behind the patio a couple of scraggly-looking orange trees were covered in fruit that had been pecked at by birds or gnawed by squirrels. And the scruffy, patchy, weedy lawn was dotted with rotting fruit.
"All the cheap Mexican labor in LA," said Mack, "and you can't even hire a gardener?"
"You call this a garden?" asked Mr. Christmas.
"Don't you even want to eat these oranges before they rot or the birds and squirrels get them?"
"I've had oranges before. They ain't so much."
"What do you eat?"
"Got a taste for See's Candies," said Mr. Christmas.
"I'm surprised you don't have them growing on trees, the way this house goes."
"I got me a box a few years back. It hasn't run out yet."
"Either that was a big box, or you don't eat much."
"Thirteen years," said Mr. Christmas. "As a matter of fact, I got that box as a birthday present."
"When's your birthday?"
"It wasn't for my birthday," said Mr. Christmas. "You jump to a lot of conclusions."
Mack was tired of riddles. He walked out onto the patio.
Did the trees grow taller?
He stepped back. The orange trees were definitely smaller again.
"I see," he said. "Your front yard gets smaller and smaller till your house just disappears. But the back yard gets bigger and bigger."
"It does what it does," said Mr. Christmas.
Mack walked back toward the trees. Right to the edge of the patio. Curiously, the patio had shrunk down now to a brick path, and when he turned around, the house was farther away than it should have been, and was half hidden among trees and vines that hadn't been there when he crossed the patio. Mr. Christmas stood in the doorway, but he was no longer dressed the way he had been.
Nor was he quite the same man. He was thinner, and his clothes fit snugly, and he looked younger, and his hair was a halo around his head, not filthy dreads at all.
"Who are you?" called Mack.
Mr. Christmas just waved cheerfully. "Don't let anything eat you back there!" he called.
Mack turned back toward the forest—for that's what it was now, not a lawn with trees, but a track through a dense forest and not an orange in sight, though berries grew in profusion beside the path, and butterflies and bees and dragonflies fluttered and hovered and darted over the blossoms of a dozen different kinds of wildflower.