"That"s where I ate tonight."

"How was the food?"

"Awful. Maybe I taste everything too much, I should start smoking again. My kid loves the place."

"How old did you say he was?"

"Twelve. Thirteen this October. He"s small for his age."

"You shouldn"t tell him that."

"Yeah. I try not to ride him."

"What would you ride him about?"

"Oh. He"s bored by things I used to love. I don"t think he"s having much fun. He never goes outdoors."

"Hey. What"s your name?"

"Harry."

"Hey, big Hang. Would you mind feeding me?"

"Sure, I mean No. At home? I don"t know what we have in the icebox. Refrigerator."

"I mean over there, at the burger place."

"Oh, sure. Terrific. I"m sorry. I a.s.sumed you ate."

"Maybe I did, I tend to forget material details like that. But I don"t think so. All I feel inside is lemonade."

She selects a Cashewburger for 85 and a strawberry milkshake. In the withering light she devours the burger, and he orders her another. She smiles apologetically. She has small inturned teeth, roundish and with tiny gaps between them like a printer"s hairline s.p.a.ces. Nice. "Usually I try to rise above eating."

"Why?"

"It"s so ugly. Don"t you think, it"s one of the uglier things we do?"

"It has to be done."

"That"s your philosophy, isn"t it?" Even in this garishly lit place her face has about it something shadowy and elusive, something that"s skipped a stage. Finished, she wipes her fingers one by one on a paper napkin and says decisively, "Thank you very much." He pays. She clutches the purse, but what is in it? Credit cards? Diagrams for the revolution?

He has had coffee, to keep himself awake. Be up all night f.u.c.king this poor kid. Upholding the honor of middle-aged squares. Different races. In China, they used to tell you in the Army, the women put razor blades in their c.u.n.ts in case the j.a.panese tried rape. Rabbit"s s.c.r.o.t.u.m shrivels at the thought. Enjoy the walk. They march down Weiser, the store windows dark but for burglar lights, the Acme parking lot empty but for scattered neckers, the movie marquee changed from 2001 to TRUE GRIT. Short enough to get it all on. They cross the street at a blinking yellow to Emberly Avenue, which then becomes Emberly Drive, which becomes Vista Crescent. The development is dark. "Talk about spooky," she says.

"I think it"s the flatness," he says. "The town I grew up in, no two houses were on the same level."

"There"s such a smell of plumbing somehow."

"Actually, the plumbing is none too good."

This smoky creature at his side has halved his weight. He floats up the steps to the porchlet, knees vibrating. Her profile by his shoulder is fine and cool as the face on the old dime. The key to the door of three stepped windows nearly flies out of his hand, it feels so magical. Whatever he expects when he flicks on the inside hall light, it is not the same old furniture, the fake cobbler"s bench, the sofa and the silverthread chair facing each other like two bulky drunks too tired to go upstairs. The blank TV screen in its box of metal painted with wood grain, the see-through shelves with nothing on them.

"Wow," Jill says. "This is really tacky."

Rabbit apologizes, "We never really picked out the furniture, it just kind of happened. Janice was always going to do different curtains."

Jill asks, "Was she a good wife?"

His answer is nervous; the question plants Janice back in the house, quiet in the kitchen, crouching at the head of the stairs, listening. "Not too bad. Not much on organizational ability, but until she got mixed up with this other guy at least she kept plugging away. She used to drink too much but got that under control. We had a tragedy about ten years ago that sobered her up I guess. Sobered me up too. A baby died."

"How?"

"An accident we caused."

"That"s sad. Where do we sleep?"

"Why don"t you take the kid"s room, I guess he won"t be back. The kid he"s staying with, he"s a real spoiled jerk, I told Nelson if it got too painful he should just come home. I probably should have been here to answer the phone. What time is it? How about a beer?"

Penniless, she is wearing a little wrist.w.a.tch that must have cost two hundred at least. "Twelve-ten," she says. "Don"t you want to sleep with me?"

"Huh? That"s not your idea of bliss, is it? Sleeping with a creep?"

"You are a creep, but you just fed me."

"Forget it. On the white community. Ha."

"And you have this sweet funny family side. Always worrying about who needs you."

"Yeah, well it"s hard to know sometimes. Probably n.o.body if I could face up to it. In answer to your question, sure I"d like to sleep with you, if I won"t get hauled in for statutory rape."

"You"re really scared of the law, aren"t you?"

"I try to keep out of its way is all."

"I promise you on a Bible - do you have a Bible?"

"There used to be one somewhere, that Nelson got for going to Sunday school, when he did. We"ve kind of let all that go. Just promise me."

"I promise you I"m eighteen. I"m legally a woman. I am not bait for a black gang. You will not be mugged or blackmailed. You may f.u.c.k me."

"Somehow you"re making me almost cry."

"You"re awfully scared of me. Let"s take a bath together and then see how we feel about it."

He laughs. "By then I guess I"ll feel pretty gung-ho about it."

She is serious, a serious small-faced animal sniffing out her new lair. "Where"s the bathroom?"

"Take off your clothes here."

The command startles her; her chin dents and her eyes go wide with fright. No reason he should be the only scared person here. Rich b.i.t.c.h calling his living room tacky. Standing on the rug where he and Janice last made love, Jill skins out of her clothes. She kicks off her sandals and strips her dress upward. She is wearing no bra. Her t.i.ts tug upward, drop back, give him a headless stare. She is wearing bikini underpants, black lace, in a pattern too fine to read. Not pausing a moment for him to drink her in, she pulls the elastic down with two thumbs, wriggles, and steps out. Where Janice had a springy triangle encroaching on the insides ofher thighs when she didn"t shave, Jill has scarcely a shadow, amber fuzz dust darkened toward the center to an upright dainty mane. The horns of her pelvis like starved cheekbones. Her belly a child"s, childless. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in some lights as she turns scarcely exist. Being naked elongates her neck: a true ripeness there, in the unhurried curve from base of skull to small of back, and in the legs, which link to the hips with knots of fat and keep a plumpness all the way down. Her ankles are less slim than Janice"s. But, hey, she is naked in this room, his room. This really strange creature, too trusting. She bends to pick up her clothes. She treads lightly on his carpet, as if watchful for tacks. She stands an arm"s-length from him, her mouth pouting prim, a fleck of dry skin on the lower lip. "And you?"

"Upstairs." He undresses in his bedroom, where he always does; in the bathroom on the other side of the part.i.tion, water begins to cry, to sing, to splash. He looks down and has nothing of a hard-on. In the bathroom he finds her bending over to test the temperature mix at the faucet. A tuft between her b.u.t.tocks. From behind she seems a boy"s slim back wedged into the upsidedown valentine of a woman"s satin rear. He yearns to touch her, to touch the satin symmetry, and does. It stings his figertips like gla.s.s we don"t expect is there. Jill doesn"t deign to flinch or turn at his touch, testing the water to her satisfaction. His c.o.c.k stays small but has stopped worrying.

Their bath is all too gentle, silent, liquid, and pure. They are each attentive: he soaps and rinses her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if their utter cleanness challenges him to make them even cleaner; she kneels and kneads his back as if a year of working weariness were in it. She blinds him in drenched cloth; she counts the gray hairs (six) in the hair of his chest. Still even as they stand to dry each other and he looms above her like a Viking he cannot shake the contented impotence ofhis sensation that they are the ends ofspotlight beams thrown on the clouds, that their role is to haunt this house like two bleached creatures on a television set entertaining an empty room.

She glances at his groin. "I don"t turn you on exactly, do I?"

"You do, you do. Too much. It"s still too strange. I don"t even know your last name."

"Pendleton." She drops to her knees on the bathroom rug and takes his p.e.n.i.s into her mouth. He backs away as if bitten.

"Wait."

Jill looks up at him crossly, looks up the slope of his slack gut, a cranky puzzled child with none of the answers in the last cla.s.s of the day, her mouth slick with forbidden candy. He lifts her as he would a child, but she is longer than a child, and her armpits are scratchy and deep; he kisses her on the mouth. No gumdrops, her lips harden and she twists her thin face away, saying into his shoulder, "I don"t turn anybody on, much. No t.i.ts. My mother has nifty t.i.ts, maybe that"s my trouble."

"Tell me about your trouble," he says, and leads her by the hand toward the bedroom.

"Oh, Jesus, one of those. Trouble-shooters. From the look of it you"re in worse shape than me, you can"t even respond when somebody takes off their clothes."

"First times are hard; you need to absorb somebody a little first." He darkens the room and they lie on the bed. She offers to embrace him again, hard mouth and sharp knees anxious to have it done, but he smooths her onto her back and ma.s.sages her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, plumping them up, circling. "These aren"t your trouble," he croons. "These are lovely." Down below he feels himself easily stiffening, clotting: cream in the freezer. CLINIC FOR RUNAWAYS OPENED. Fathers Do Duty On Nights Off.

Relaxing, Jill grows stringy; tendons and resentments come to the surface. "You should be f.u.c.king my mother, she really is good with men, she thinks they"re the be-all and end-all. I know she was playing around, even before Daddy died."

"Is that why you ran away?"

"You wouldn"t believe if I really told you."

"Tell me."

"A guy I went with tried to get me into heavy drugs."

"That"s not so unbelievable."

"Yeah, but his reason was crazy. Look, you don"t want to hear this c.r.a.p. You"re up now, why don"t you just give it to me?"

"Tell me his reason."

"You see, when I"d trip, I"d see, like, you know - G.o.d. He never would. He just saw pieces of like old movies, that didn"t add up."

"What kind of stuff did he give you? Pot?"

"Oh, no, listen, pot is just like having a c.o.ke or something. Acid, when he could get it. Strange pills. He"d rob doctors" cars to get their samples and then mix them to see what happened. They have names for all these pills, purple hearts, dollies, I don"t know what all. Then after he stole this syringe he"d inject stuff, he wouldn"t even know what it was half the time, it was wild. I would never let him break my skin. I figured, anything went in by the mouth, I could throw it up, but anything went in my veins, I had no way to get rid of it, it could kill me. He said that was part of the kick. He was really freaked, but he had this, you know, power over me. I ran."

"Has he tried to follow you?" A freak coming up the stairs. Green teeth, poisonous needles. Rabbit"s p.e.n.i.s has wilted, listening.

"No, he"s not the type. Toward the end I don"t think he knew me from Adam really, all he was thinking about was his next fix. Junkies are like that. They get to be bores. You think they"re talking to you or making love or whatever, and then you realize they"re looking over your shoulder for the next fix. You realize you"re nothing. He didn"t need me to find G.o.d for him, if he met G.o.d right on the street he"d"ve tried to hustle Him for money enough for a couple bags."

"What did he look like?"

"Oh, about five-ten, brown hair down to his shoulders, slightly wavy when he brushed it, a neat build. Even after smack had pulled all the color from him he had a wonderful frame. His back was really marvellous, with long sloping shoulders and all these ripply little ribby b.u.mps behind, you know, here." She touches him but is seeing the other. "He had been a runner in junior high."

"I meant G.o.d."

"Oh, G.o.d. He changed. He was different every time. But you always knew it was Him. Once I remember something like the inside of a big lily, only magnified a thousand times, a sort of glossy shining funnel that went down and down. I can"t talk about it. " She rolls over and kisses him on the mouth feverishly. His slowness to respond seems to excite her; she gets up in a crouch and like a racc.o.o.n drinking water kisses his chin, his chest, his navel, goes down and stays. Her mouth nibbling is so surprising he fights the urge to laugh; her fingers on the hair of his thighs tickle like the threat of ice on his skin. The hair of her head makes a tent on his belly. He pushes at her but she sticks at it: he might as well relax. The ceiling. The garage light shining upwards shows a stained patch where chimney flashing let the rain in. Must turn the garage light off. Though maybe a good burglar preventive. These junkies around steal anything. He wonders how Nelson made out. Asleep, boy sleeps on his back, mouth open, frightening; skin seems to tighten on the bone like in pictures of Buchenwald. Always tempted to wake him, prove he"s O.K. Missed the eleveno"clock news tonight. Vietnam death count, race riots probably somewhere. Funny man, Buchanan. No plan, exactly, just feeling his way, began by wanting to sell him Babe, maybe that"s the way to live. Janice in bed got hot like something cooking but this kid stays cool, a prep-school kid applying what she knows. It works.

"That"s nice," she says, stroking the extent of his extended c.o.c.k, glistening with her spittle.

"You"re nice," he tells her, "not to lose faith."

"I like it," she tells him, "making you get big and strong."

"Why bother?" he asks. "I"m a creep."

"Want to come into me?" the girl asks. But when she lies on her back and spreads her legs, her lack of self-consciousness again strikes him as sad, and puts him off, as does the way she winces when he seeks to enter; so that he grows small. Her blurred face widens its holes and says with a rising inflection, "You don"t like me."

While he fumbles for an answer, she falls asleep. It is the answer to a question he hadn"t thought to ask: was she tired? Of course, just as she was hungry. A guilty grief expands his chest muscles and presses on the backs of his eyes. He gets up, covers her with a sheet. The nights are growing cool, August covers the sun"s retreat. The cold moon. Sc.r.a.ped wallpaper. Pumice stone under a flash bulb. Footprints stay for a billion years, not a fleck of dust blows. The kitchen linoleum is cold on his feet. He switches off the garage light and spreads peanut b.u.t.ter on six Saltines, making three sandwiches. Since Janice left, he and Nelson shop for what they like, keep themselves stocked in salt and starch. He eats the crackers sitting in the living room, not in the silverthread chair but the old brown mossy one, that they"ve had since their marriage. He chews and stares at the uninhabited aquarium of the television screen. Ought to smash it, poison, he read somewhere the reason kids today are so crazy they were brought up on television, two minutes of this, two minutes of that. Cracker crumbs adhere to the hair of his chest. Six gray. Must be more than that. What did Janice do for Stavros she didn"t do for him? Only so much you can do. Three holes, two hands. Is she happy? He hopes so. Poor mutt, he somehow squelched her potential. Let things bloom. The inside of a great lily. He wonders if Jesus will be waiting for Mom, a man in a nightgown at the end of a glossy chute. He hopes so. He remembers he must work tomorrow, then remembers he mustn"t, it is Sunday. Sunday, that dog of a day. Ruth used to mock him and church, in those days he could get himself up for anything. Ruth and her chicken farm, wonders if she can stand it. Hopes so. He pushes himself up from the fat chair, brushes crumbs from his chest hair. Some fall and catch further down. Wonder why it was made so curly there, springy, they could stuff mattresses with it, if people would shave, like nuns and wigs. Upstairs, the body in his bed sinks his heart like a bar of silver. He had forgotten she was on his hands. Bad knuckles. The poor kid, she stirs and tries to make love to him again, gives him a furry-mouthed French kiss and falls asleep at it again. A day"s work for a day"s lodging. Puritan ethic. He m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.es, picturing Peggy Fosnacht. What will Nelson think?

Jill sleeps late. At quarter of ten Rabbit is rinsing his cereal bowl and coffee cup and Nelson is at the kitchen screen door, redfaced from pumping his bicycle. "Hey, Dad!"

"Shh."

"Why?"

"Your noise hurts my head."

"Did you get drunk last night?"

"What sort of talk is that? I never get drunk."

"Mrs. Fosnacht cried after you left."

"Probably because you and Billy are such brats."

"She said you were going to meet somebody in Brewer."

She shouldn"t be telling kids things like that. These divorced women, turn their sons into little husbands: cry, s.h.i.t, and change Tampax right in front of them. "Some guy I work with at Verity. We listened to some colored woman play the piano and then I came home."

"We stayed up past twelve o"clock watching a wicked neat movie about guys landing somewhere in boats that open up in front, some place like Norway -"

"Normandy."

"That"s right. Were you there?"

"No, I was your age when it happened."

"You could see the machine gun bullets making the water splash up all in a row, it was a blast."

"Hey, try to keep your voice down."