There is somebody else in Knoxville, beside Poison Pie and myself, who likes stairs that go nowhere. We know this from the festive red ribbon with which they decorated the staircase just down Highland Terrace. Who they are though, remains a mystery. Perhaps we will meet them on our excursion today. Then again, perhaps not.

Poison Pie says that he likes the complimentary crooked angles of these five steps. He says that they remind him of my teeth.

We chuckle for a long time over that one. Then I push Poison Pie, from the be-ribboned nowhere at the top of the steps, down to the sidewalk, where he skins his knee on the concrete.

For the rest of the day, he will make me feel guilty with an exaggerated limp.