As they walked down the street, Nny assessed the best way to handle the awkward situation.

"So…where did that come from?"

Maya really didn't feel like talking right then, but there was no way out of it. "The lady made a mistake, and she won't make it again in a hurry. Why do you care?"

Nny stopped suddenly, and his mind was whizzing. An idea seemed to have sparked in his mind, no more than a small wormy thought, so he brushed it aside for the moment.

"Where ya from?" Nny decided to talk about less sensitive areas, or so he thought. Might as well get to know his new boarder.

Maya sighed. "How is it that everyone who talks to me wants to know the goddamn place I'm from?! Why does it matter? But seeing as I HAVE to tell you, you might as well know." She took a breath. "I'm from the streets. Less recently, the Mental Hospital's Psyche Ward. You wanna know how freaking bad the food is, too?!" She grinned.

Nny was bowled over. A mental case? Sleeping in his house?! In the next room?!!

"So that's why you got all pissed off when I said the word 'commit', right?"

If possible, she grinned wider. "Yup!"

"Just how dangerous are you? I mean, I just wanna know, so, like, I don't piss you off again…like what makes you tick?" Nny tried to be careful.

"Just don't make any reference to mental hospitals or their patients or say anything like that concerning me." Maya's face fell. "Because it's all their goddamn fault I'm like this…" she whispered to herself. But Nny heard her.

"Whose fault?" Nny just kept on pushing.

Maya looked up, tears in her eyes. "The Geraldsons. It was just one trip, one day, one car ride…" She started sobbing.

Nny was afraid to, but he let her lean on his shoulder as she broke down, crying. This was something he'd hadn't done since Devi, letting someone get close to him that wasn't about to die. But he couldn't just throw her off, poor thing.

"What happened?"

She looked up, done crying, but her eyes were still red and misty. "They left us home, my brother and me. Our parents had never done that before, there had always been one with us. But they wanted to try out their new car, so they went for a spin around the block, and we heard…we…heard…" She cut off, starting to cry again.

Nny felt as if he should do something. So, wonder of wonders, he patted her back gently.

She wiped her eyes. "They had just barely backed down the driveway when we heard the crash. A car had come barreling through, testing the speed of their new car, and slammed into the front of my parents' car. Our mother and father were killed instantly. The Geraldsons all survived without a scratch."

"Did you see it happen?" Nny felt he had to say something to keep the story going and to keep it from the killer of conversations, the silence.

"That's just the thing. We did. My brother and I were at the window, waving goodbye. Our parents died waving to us. Waving to us! After the funeral, my brother couldn't handle it. He went up to their coffins, their beautiful, mahogany coffins inlaid with blue silk and velvet. He saw our father, in a black suit with his favorite red handkerchief in the breast pocket. He took one look at our beautiful mother in her favorite purple dress, and broke down. A few days later, we found out he had gone insane. He was committed, and put in the Psyche Ward of the mental hospital. A few years later, he died there, all alone in his sleep. And do you want to know the creepiest part of it all?" Maya looked up at Nny's face, into his eyes.

"When I went down the drain, they put me in HIS CELL!!! The very cell he lived and died in. Sometimes, late at night, I thought I could hear his screams and sobs for our mother again."

Nny just stood there, almost with tears in his own eyes, imagining what it had been like for her, as she sobbed on his shoulder, her tears spilling onto his Z? shirt and the blade of his eight-inch knife…