No one answered the door when I knocked, so I knocked again.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot, then I shifted from toe to toe, then I sat down on the Dark Hickory high-performance porch decking. I knocked again while sitting down. I got up and lounged in the rattan hanging chair, watching carpenter bees in the sky and a couple of thin wasps on the aged railing of an unknown wood species and a jumping spider peeking out at me through one of the gaps in the Dark Hickory high-performance porch decking.

I stopped lounging, brushed the aluminum wind chimes, and knocked again, more like rapped at it, firmly, with a purpose, like I’d been practicing knocking diligently in the ten minutes that I’d been lounging.

The door opened and a young man stood in the entryway.

“You have my snake,” I told him.

A young man stood there, in the entryway, between me and my snake.