what they're saying for a couple of seconds afterwards. The camera did that. It had turned off its voice. And I thought, I didn't know it could do that; and I thought, why did it do it?
'Look. I have to call you something. My sister is called Alice. You don't mind if I call you Alice? Like in Wonderland?' Royce stepped forward. The camera did not have to bristle; its warm-up light went on.
'You see, Alice. I — uh — have a personal question. '
The camera spoke. 'What is it?' the voice was sharp and wary. I had the feeling that he had actually found her real name.
'Alice — uh — I don't want to embarrass anyone, but, um, you see, I got this little emergency, and everywhere I look there are cameras, so, um, where can I go?'
A pause from the camera. 'I'm sorry,' it said. 'there are toilet facilities, but I'm afraid we have to keep you under observation. '
'Really, I don't do anything that much different from anyone else. '
'I'm sure you don't. '
'I mean sometimes I try it standing on the seat or in a yoga position. '
'Fine, but I'm afraid you'll still have to put up with the cameras. '
'Well I hope you're recording it for posterity, 'cause if you get rid of all the men, it'll have real historical interest. '
There was a click from the camera again. I stepped out of the line of fire. Royce presented himself at the turnstiles, and they buzzed to let him through. He made his way toward the john singing 'that's Entertainment. '
All the cameras turned to watch him.
Just before he went into the shed, he pulled out his pecker and waggled it at them. 'Wave bye-bye,' he said.
He'll get us all killed, I thought. The john was a trench with a plywood shed around it, open all along one side. I went to the wire mesh behind it, to listen.
'Alice?' I heard him ask through the plywood.
'I'm not Alice,' said another voice from another camera. She meant in more ways than one, she was not Alice. 'Uh — Hortensia? Uh. There's no toilet paper, Hortensia. '
'I know. '
'Gee, I wish you'd told me first. '
'There are some old clothes on the floor. Use some of them and throw them over the side. '
Dead men's shirts. I heard a kind of rustle and saw a line of shadow under the boards, waddling forward, crouched.
'I must look like a duck, huh?'
'A roast one in a minute. '
Royce was quiet for a while after that. Finally he said, grumbling, 'Trust me to pick tweed. '
He kept it up, all morning long, talking to the Grils. During breakfast, he talked about home cooking and how to make tostadas and enchiladas. He talked about a summer job he'd had in Los Angeles, working in a diner that specialized in Kosher Mexican Food. Except for Royce, everyone who worked there including the owners was Japanese. That, said Royce, shaking his head, was LA. He and his mother had to move back east, to get away from the gang wars.
As the bodies were being unloaded, Royce talked about his grandmother. He'd lived with her when he was a child, and his father was dying. His grandmother made ice cream in the bathtub. She filled it full of ice and spun tubs of cream in it. Then she put one of the tubs in a basket with an umbrella over it on the front of her bicycle. She cycled through the neighborhood, selling ice cream and singing 'Rock of Ages. ' She kept chickens, which was against the zoning regulations, and threw them at people who annoyed her, especially policemen. Royce had a cat, and it and a chicken fell in love. They would mew and cluck for each other, and sit for contented hours at a time, the chicken's neck snugly and safely inside the cat's mouth.
It was embarrassing, hearing someone talk. Usually we worked in silence. And the talk was confusing; we didn't think about things like summer jobs or household pets anymore. As the bodies were dumped and stripped, Royce's face was hard and shiny with sweat, like polished wood.
That afternoon, we had our talk. Since we'd gotten the food, it was our turn to cook lunch. So I got him away from the Boys.
We took our soup and crackers up to the top of the mound. The mound is dug out of a small hill behind the Station. James makes it in his bulldozer, listening to Mozart. He pulls the trolleys up a long dirt ramp, and empties them, and smooths the sandstone soil over each day's addition of Stiffs. I get the feeling he thinks he works like Mozart. The mound rises up in terraces, each terrace perfectly level, its slope at the same angle as the one below it. The dirt is brick red and there are seven levels. It looks like Babylon.
There are cameras on top, but you can see over the fence. You can see the New England forest. It looks tired and small, maybe even dusty, as if it needed someone to clean the leaves. There's another small hill. You can hear birds. Royce and I climbed up to the top, and I gathered up my nerve and said, 'I really like you. '
'Uh-huh,' he said, balancing his soup, and I knew it wasn't going to work.
Leave it, I thought, don't push, it's hard for him, he doesn't know you.
'You come here a lot,' he said. It was a statement.
'I come here to get away. '
Royce blew out through his nostrils: a kind of a laugh. 'Get away? You know what's under your feet?'
'Yes,' I said, looking at the forest. Neither one of us wanted to sit on that red soil, even to eat the soup. I passed him his crackers, from my coat pocket.
'So why did you pick me? Out of all the other Stiffs?'
'I guess I just liked what I saw. '
'Why?'
I smiled with embarrassment at being forced to say it; it was as if there were no words for it that were not slightly wrong. 'Because I guess you're kind of good-looking and I. just thought I would like you a lot. '
'Because I'm black?'
'You are black, yes. '
'Are most of your boyfriends black?'
Bull's-eye. That was scary. 'I, uh, did go through a phase where I guess I was kind of fixated on black people. But I stopped that, I mean, I realized that what I was actually doing was depersonalizing the people I was with, which wasn't very flattering to them. But that is all over. It really isn't important to me now. '
'So you went out and made yourself sleep with white people. ' He does not, I thought, even remotely like me.
'I found white people I liked. It didn't take much. '
'You toe the line all the way down the line, don't you?' he said.
I thought I didn't understand.
'Is that why you're here?' A blank from me. 'You toe the line, the right line, so you're here. '
'Yes,' I said. 'In a way. Big Lou saw me on the platform, and knew me from politics. I guess you don't take much interest in politics. ' I was beginning to feel like hitting back.
'Depends on the politics,' he said, briskly.
'Well you're OK, I guess. You made it out. '
'Out of where?'
I just looked back at him. 'Los Angeles. '
He gave a long and very bitter sigh, mixed with a kind of chortle. 'Whenever I am in this. situation, there is the conversation. I always end up having the same conversation. I reckon you're going to tell me I'm not black enough. '
'You do kind of shriek I am middle class. '
'Uh-huh. You use that word class, so that means it's not racist, right?'
'I mean, you're being loyal to your class, to which most black people do not belong. '
'Hey, bro', you can't fool me, we're from the same neighborhood. That sort of thing?' It was imitation ghetto. 'You want somebody with beads in his hair and a beret and a semi who hates white people, but likes you because
