Edging the thoughts behind my eyes a little more toward madness, running a hand against the grain of my hair, and letting my mouth drop slightly open, I call out “Just a minute” and walk to the front door. There, on the other side, is the man who once charmed me with his sly and gentle wit, the accuracy of his shit detector and, yes, the rich genius of his storytelling. No wonder I fell for him. He had no address at all, that man, but he had charm to spare.

And so it came to pass that I was the King of Persia and he the supple Scheherazade, coming up each day with yet another story to stay alive, yet another night, in the warmth and safety of my house. There were tales of growing up in Keystone, West Virginia, a little town of black coal miners, employees of the Keystone Coal & Coke Company, who lived in a state of armed and comic truce with the Sizemore clan, whites who made moonshine and trouble on a mountain nearby. There were tales of elaborate tricks in the military. And, more recently, tales of perils and triumphs associated with “camping”—that name chosen by the homeless to describe what they do instead of live in houses.

Camping. It was frightening to fall asleep out there, he said, exposed to all the human elements; you could never really be sure of waking up. Yet, he told me later, that lifestyle had a self-protecting function for him. Money went for drugs, and money beyond what he could earn by casual panhandling would go for more drugs—enough to kill himself, and more.

Three months after moving into my spare room in exchange for doing handiwork around the house, the man had reactivated his carpenter’s license and union membership card; 12 months later, he was working full-time and making good money. But by 15 months, he was seeing tiny bugs on all the walls and ceilings of the house.

As the imaginary bugs proliferated, the man grew more insistent, pestering me first to agree that they were there, and then to bomb the house to get rid of them. To my shame, I did it—bombed the house. Of course, the bugs and the complaints continued to multiply.

Until at last, the man lay curled up on the sofa in my living room all day, his unwashed body both a silent taunt and a reproach. “Keep talking about women who poison men,” a co-worker had advised when we’d talked about the problems in getting the man out of my house. But I hadn’t been able to do it. I am not blameless in this story, you know. Twice, my friend and I asked him to buy us marijuana. The first time, he did it, but the second time, he responded with gently scathing parody. Smiling, then looking down at his shuffling feet, he mimicked us: “Buy this for us, please—you know we couldn’t stand prison life.”

The smell in the living room grew stronger. Scheherazade was silent. I couldn’t find my sword. Then one day, a friend told me about a lover who’d seen the same bugs when he’d become addicted to crack cocaine. Comparing bugs and symptoms the two men shared, the cold truth jumped me—this man was a stone junkie. I needed him gone. When I confronted him about his drug use and told him to leave, the man swore it wasn’t so—and made himself scarce for a few days.

But today, he’d come back like the bad penny whose return I’d been taught as a child to expect. Why hadn’t my words worked? I must have never meant them. Why not? Was it because he was black and I had grown up white—and Southern? Or because my old house kept breaking and he could always fix it? Or was it that I still craved what in him had once charmed me, and was hoping to find it again? Yes, but all these reasons were as nothing compared to what I felt I owed him, a debt I couldn’t clear because I didn’t know how much I owed or for what. Confused, despairing, and crafty, I opened the door.

I’ve forgotten the words the man said there at the doorway, and forgotten also my replies. But I do remember some things clearly: our voices; the expressions I could read on his face; those I could feel on my own. For him, think jaunty shuffling, a grinning self-confidence that changes to discomfort as he notices the subtly, if half-subliminally, wrought adjustments I had made to my appearance and demeanor. For me, the French word distrait applies, for I truly was distracted by anxiety. Think Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Yes, Blanche DuBois, to a T. Picture that dazed, ethereal butterfly hanging from the arm of the courtly, white-suited doctor taking her away to the loony bin. Now, picture the man’s frightened face as he backs away from the door. My half-involuntary, half-intentional performance has done its job. As I feel my power through his fear, I begin to learn his lesson: It is both my right and my responsibility to determine what happens in my own house. A chain that has bound us together, perhaps lifetime after lifetime, breaks.

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Berkeley resident Nicole Heare was away from her own writing for decades while she started and directed a school in west Berkeley for students with developmental disabilities. She is currently at work on a murder mystery set in Jamaica, her second home.

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