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beer, put a bowl of
    chips on the patio table, and leaned back in his deck chair so they could both face the sun baking the hills beyond.
    There was a cover over the porch, and the sun was at their backs, and with a breeze coming off the pool, the
    temperature was not too bad. As the shadows grew longer
    and the contrast between bleached grass and green oak trees grew more marked, Sebastian began to see a certain charm to this part of the country, which surprised him. His parents had lived in upstate New York when he’d been a child; he used to think that if the grass wasn’t green, the landscape was obscene.
    “So,” he said into what might have been an awkward
    silence, “did Bella ever tell you about our roommate,
    Sammy?”
    Asa managed a small smile. “No,” he said, obviously
    seeing the game of “making things lighter” and agreeing to play. “Why don’t you?”
    Fortunately for them both (and for Sebastian and Bella’s cachet at parties for the past five years), Sammy was good for hours of fun.
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    “So the thing was,” Sebastian was saying a half an hour
    later, “that Sammy never saw an animal he could resist. So this one finals week….”
    “Oh God!” Bella laughed, her voice carefully pitched.
    “No—not the monkey story!”
    Sebastian turned to her and caught her eyes, then
    darted his own to Jordan. “Absolutely the monkey story.
    C’mere, Jordan—you want to hear a story about why
    monkeys should never ever ever ever absolutely under any circumstances leave the zoo?”
    Jordan’s face had been a study in pinched misery, but
    at the mention of monkeys outside the zoo, he brightened, and within minutes, Sebastian and Bella had them both
    laughing about the time Sammy’s boyfriend had smuggled a half-grown chimpanzee into their tiny, two bedroom
    apartment. Unfortunately, Sammy’s last rescue had been a box of four flea-infested kittens who had left their obnoxious little passengers behind when they’d been given away.
    “So Mr. Pickles takes two steps inside the apartment,”
    Sebastian said, chortling, “and it was like one of those cartoons, where a giant pepper shaker just dumps fleas on this poor monkey, and Mr. Pickles lets out a scream….”
    “Omigod, it almost broke the windows!” Bella chimed in.
    “I thought my ears would bleed!” Sebastian agreed. “And
    then he climbs—literally climbs Sammy like a tree and grabs hold of the ceiling fan….”
    “Which was falling out—the whole thing just dropped six
    inches out of the ceiling as soon as the chimp put his weight on it….”
    “And then he fills his diaper.” Sebastian shuddered for
    effect.
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    “He wore a diaper?” Jordan asked, wide-eyed, and
    Sebastian and Bella nodded, playing up to him with all their considerable practice and skill.
    “But it didn’t matter!” Bella interjected. “Because you
    know what monkeys do when they poop and they’re all
    excited, right?”
    “I’ve seen Madagascar !” Jordan told them, nodding.
    “They fling poo!”
    Sebastian closed his eyes and giggled, and then opened
    them and grinned at the little boy, who smiled back.
    “Damned straight. The monkeys fling poo—and that’s what
    Mr. Pickles did, except he was going around in circles from the ceiling fan, which was hanging from the ceiling by,
    literally, a thread!”
    “So what did you do?” Jordan asked, hanging on to their
    every word.
    Bella picked up the thread. “Well, we were going
    camping with your cousins that weekend, so we had these
    ponchos—the plastic kind that keep the rain off, right? And they were lying on the table waiting to be packed, and
    Sebastian puts one on and throws the other one at me; you should have seen it, it was like an action hero throwing a big old gun, right?”
    “And Bella caught it like a pro!”
    “But he throws his on and takes mine out of my hands,
    and then Sammy and I