Free Sweet Talk Me by Kieran Kramer

God knows what was lurking underneath. A familiar dent above the kitchen window reminded him that he’d had once thrown a football wildly off target after he’d consumed too many beers with a friend in high school.
    He knocked. Just to be safe. Wouldn’t want to offend Gage, who was particular about having everything in its place. There was the whine and scrabble of dogs charging toward the door. Everyone around here kept dogs, and that was one thing Harrison really missed. His old mutts Private and Sergeant were buried out back.
    The door finally opened, and two hairy canine faces about a foot off the floor pushed out and snorted and snuffed around his legs, getting particularly enthusiastic when they picked up the scent of Weezie’s dogs. They looked like some sort of combination of boxer and Jack Russell with a little bit of Pikachu, a Japanese anime character, thrown in.
    Gage stood frowning above the dogs with a pair of reading glasses on the tip of his nose. He looked like Keanu Reeves might if he were a college professor. They’d had a beautiful blond mother, but their father had in him a trace of Sewee, a Native American tribe that had lived in these parts long before the white man came. Gage was a throwback—short ebony hair swept off his forehead, dark brows and coal-brown eyes, wide cheekbones. He was in his usual white buttondown, Levi’s, brown leather belt, and Sperrys.
    “ Entrez .” A Lowcountry accent and French didn’t mix too well, but Gage was always dropping short foreign words and phrases. He probably dreamed them all the time, those and the names of rivers, countries, rare breeds of animals, ancient leaders, and whatever other words a crossword constructor couldn’t escape in his profession.
    “Hey.” Harrison reached out and slapped his shoulder. Hard as a rock. The military training had stuck with him. “Glad to see me? You wouldn’t know it from that zombie stare. Your ear gonna drop off next?”
    “ Ergo? ” Gage’s tone was dry as he lifted a hand to touch his left ear.
    Ear go . Harrison grinned. “Damn, you’re clever.” If a bit odd , he didn’t add. But that was Gage for you.
    Gage’s mouth tilted up on one side, as if he had a stomachache, his version of a welcoming smile. He turned and went back inside, the marble-pattern vinyl floor protesting loudly beneath his feet.
    Harrison followed after him, uninvited, into the main living space, and was instantly depressed. The trailer was neat as a pin. But almost everything inside was from another era.
    To his left was a sitting area with an ancient TV with a channel dial, a banged-up black metal desk, a file cabinet, a vinyl couch—puke green—a nubby red-and-orange plaid armchair, and cheap canned track lighting above an Ikea bookshelf with sagging shelves. On his right was the kitchen—vintage ’80s with faux wood cabinets, faded red-flowered curtains with ruffles up top, and a laminate counter of indeterminate color with the edges worn away.
    The walls were a dreary beige. Gray-black water stains loomed on the ceiling like threatening storm clouds. And in the corner by the TV, a piece of plywood stuck out from under Mama’s oval rag rug.
    “What’s that?” Harrison asked, his heart beating a fast tattoo against his rib cage.
    “A piece of plywood.”
    “No shit.” Harrison glared at his brother. “What’s it for?”
    “A hole in the floor.”
    “You gotta be kidding me.” You trusted him. You stupid, dadgum fool. He scratched his ear to buy himself some temper-cool-down time. “I believed you when you told me you got a new trailer.”
    Dammit, he should have put the concerts and studio time aside and come back to check on Gage in his own space. He shouldn’t have made up all those excuses, that Gage was a grown man, that he pulled in seventy-five thousand dollars a year with his puzzles. He’d seen the world with the navy, and he could cook and clean and didn’t have any dangerous vices that Harrison