village--he comes home, I might not even know him.'
'Maybe he's a saint,' Debbie said.
Fran smiled at the idea. 'I wouldn't go that far. But who knows?'
Ten women, seven of them black, occupied the wooden benches that faced the TV set in C dorm, waiting for their favorite sitcom to come on. Debbie came down from the second-floor tier above their heads and stepped in front of the TV set.
'What she doing?'
'Gonna try her act on us.'
'I'm still working on it,' Debbie said. 'How I got conned out of fifty thousand and ended up in the joint.'
'Is it funny?'
'That's what I want you to tell me.'
'Fifty thousand? Where you rob that kind of money from?'
'I worked for it.'
'Hookin'?'
'Shame on you. Debbie's a lawyer, fucks people in court 'stead of the bed.'
'I'm not a lawyer. I took pre-law, but that was it.'
'Then why you go to school?'
'I thought I wanted to practice law.' Debbie paused, changed her mind about trying out the bit and said, 'Let me ask you something.
What's the best way to make a lot of money without working for it?'
'Hit on the five-number lottery.'
'Find a man has some.'
'Yeah, and have to put up with his shit.'
Debbie said, 'What about armed robbery?'
'You want to get high, you rob.'
'Have any of you ladies ever robbed a bank?'
They looked around at each other saying, 'Yeah, I know people have.' Saying, 'Rosella in B has. You know who I mean?' Saying,
'Yeah, Rosella.' Saying, 'Rosella owed five hundred to a shy. She went in the bank with her boyfriend's gun and said, 'Gimme five hundred dollars, girl,' to the teller? Took it and paid the shy.'
Another one saying to Debbie, 'What you think is the best way to make it?'
'I want to do stand-up,' Debbie said, 'but I also want to con the son of a bitch who conned me.'
The mother of this group, twenty-four years inside for killing her husband with a cast-iron frying pan, said, 'Save the comic shit, baby, and do the con. You haven't said nothing funny since you been standing there.'
Driving back to Mary Pat and his two little girls, Fran turned on his current favorite daydream:
Debbie comes out and he has a furnished apartment waiting for her in Somerset, where she used to live, not four miles from his home in Bloomfield Hills. He helps her get settled, maybe paint a room, rearrange the furniture, get in some groceries, booze. They have a drink, kick back. 'Boy, it's good to sit down, huh?' Debbie gets high.
Naturally she's a little horny, not having been with a man in almost three years. She gives him the look.., one Fran has been waiting for ever since he and Debbie met and she started doing investigations for him: the look that says it would be okay to become intimate, not seriously intimate but for fun. Fall into it and say, after, 'Wow, how did that happen?'
He had told Terry one time, years ago, he had never picked up a girl in a bar, even when he was single. Terry said, 'You never tried or you never made it?' Fran told him he'd never tried. Why didn't he have the same confidence in a bar he had in a courtroom? Terry said that time, 'You're too buttoned up. Lose some weight and quit getting your hair cut for a while.'
Terry's answer to any problem was based on the serenity prayer. If you can handle it, do it. If you can't, fuck it.
5
AT NIGHT CHANTELLE KEPT HER pistol close by, a Russian Tokarev semiautomatic she bought in the market with money Terry had given her. There were hand grenades i:or sale, too, but they Јrightened her.
This evening she brought the pistol outside with her and laid it on the table where he was twisting a joint he called a yobie. She had told him that here mariiuana was sometimes called erniyobya bwenje, 'the stuЈЈ that makes your head hot.' From that he had made up the word yoie. They had smoked one before supper-goat stew left over from last night, Terry complaining always about the fine bones-and now they would smoke another one with their brandy and coЈЈee, the mugs, the decanter, and a citronella candle on the table.
Always before when they smoked he would tell her Јunny things he heard in Confession, or about his brother the lawyer, what he did to get money for people who were iniured. Or he'd tell iokes she never understood but would laugh because he always laughed at his jokes.
This evening, though, he wasn't saying funny things.
He was serious this evening in a strange way.
He said he had never seen so fucking many bugs in his life. He used that word when he was drinking too much. The fucking bugs, the fucking rain. He said sometimes he would turn on a light in the house and it would look like the fucking walls were moving, wallpaper changing its pattern. She said, 'There is no wallpaper in the house.'
He said he knew there wasn't any wallpaper, he was talking about the bugs. There were so many they looked like a wallpaper design. Then with the light on they'd start moving.
She was patient with him. This evening there were lulls, Chantelle waiting through minutes of silence.
Now he surprised her, coming out of nowhere with 'Some were mutilated before they were killed, weren't they? Purposely mutilated.'
Lately he had begun to talk about the genocide again.
She said, 'Yes, they would do it on purpose.'
He said, 'They chopped off the feet at the ankles.'
'And took the shoes,' Chantelle said, 'if the person was wearing shoes.' She believed he was talking about the time they came in the church, an experience of the genocide he had not spoken of in a long time.
He said, 'I don't recall them hacking the feet off with one whack.'
It sounded to her so cold. 'Sometime they did.'
He said, 'This was your observation?'
She didn't like it when he spoke in this formal manner. It didn't sound like him and was another sign, along with that word, he had been drinking too much. She said, 'Some they did with one blow. But I think the blades became dull, or were not honed to begin with. The one who iniured me-I raised my arm to protect myself as he struck.
He then took hold of my hand as I tried to pull away and he struck again, this time severing the arm. I saw him holding it by the hand, looking at it. I remember he seemed surprised. Then his face changed to a look--I want to say horror, or disgust. But was he sickened only by what he saw or what he did to me?'
'What if you run into him again?'
'I hope I never see him.'
'You could have him arrested and tried.'
'Yes? Would I get my arm back?'
Terry smoked in the light of the candle. After a moment he said,
'The ones they murdered in the church stood waiting, crowded together, holding each other. The Hums would drag them into the aisle and some of them called to me. I never told you that, how they called to me, 'Fatha,
