'There's a big old nigger bitch in here, and, man, she's about to shit!'
'Denny!' Lanya exclaimed, and ran through the edge of his light, which turned, laughing, after her.
Kid pushed away the blackboard, looked down.
The board-stand's wheels stopped creaking.
The woman wore a black hat and a black coat, the hem rumpled on the floor around her. She blinked up at them, feeling for the string handles of the shopping bag beside her. Catching the bag up, she breathed a word all wind.
'What do you want?' Lanya asked. 'Are you… all right?'
The woman's eyes narrowed at the light that was Denny, came to Kid's and widened. She blinked again. 'You got juice and cookies…'
'What?'
'This is the school?' Her voice was still breathy. 'You got the juice and the cookies for the children? Oh, I'm sorry!' Her knuckle rose to dent her double chin, a gesture recalling June. 'I thought I could get some from here, you know? I live in Cumberland Park? And the store where I go all the time ain't got none no more. I go in there every day and I get some every day, but I go in there yesterday and there just ain't nothing. Nothing at all. Oh, God… from the children! I'm so sorry!'
'Then,' Lanya said, 'why don't you go to another store?'
'Oh, I'm sorry! I really am…'
'You got juice and cookies?' Denny asked. 'Whyn't you give her some?'
'Because this is…' Lanya's lips worried the teeth behind them. 'You wait here.' She walked from the circle of Denny's illumination; Kid heard a door.
The woman transferred her bag to the other hand. 'Taking from the children. That's just so awful!' Her voice was weak and low as some man's.
Lanya stepped back into the light. In one arm were two number ten cans of grapefruit juice. In the other were two boxes of Tollhouse cookies, glistening in cellophane. 'You take these. But don't come back here. Don't break in here and try and take stuff out. Find another store. There's one four blocks up from here that still has things in it. And there's another one a block and a half down, right by the burned-out dry cleaners.'
The woman, her tongue tip pink between her lips, blinking, opened her bag.
The can and the boxes went chattering in.
Lanya walked to the front door and held it open.
The woman glanced at Kid, at Denny's light, quite distressed, and stepped unsteadily forward. At the door she hesitated, suddenly turned to Lanya: 'You teach little children dressed like that, half naked with your breasts all hanging out like that? Why, that's
'Get that!' Denny (lights doused) ran forward. 'You want us to take back our God-damn juice and—!'
'Denny!' Lanya blocked him at the door,
'I mean will you get that shit!' He turned in her restraining arms, shaking his head. 'Why'd you give her the damn stuff?'
'Oh, come on. Let's go!'
'I mean, God damn, she didn't even say whether or not she liked your music!'
Lanya held on to Denny's shoulder. 'Well, maybe if she was hungry she didn't really care about the music. Hiding back there for a couple of hours—'
'Then what's she care that much about your tits for?' Denny shrugged her hand away. 'She could've come out. We wouldn't've done nothing. Shit!'
'Well, I'm not going to let it bother me,' she said. 'So don't let it bother you.'
Kid thought: How did she get in here in the first place? Then thought: What was I just thinking… it was something I wanted to ask. 'Yeah, let's go, huh?' He laughed, and thought: What was the thought that just slid off the tables of my mind?
Kid followed them outside. And thought: She is bothered.
'Close the door, will you?' Lanya said.
'By the way,' Kid began, 'how did she…?'
Denny glanced back at him.
Lanya didn't.
'You know?' Kid caught up to her. 'I wonder if there're really any children ever in there? I mean I'm having a harder and harder time believing in anything I don't—'
'Huh?' Lanya looked up.
Deep in thought, she hadn't heard.
He grinned at her and rubbed the back of her neck.
'What are you going to do with it?' he asked.
She shrugged: 'I don't know. What are you going to do with your poems?'
He shrugged. 'Maybe write… some more.'
She slipped her shoulder under his arm. 'Maybe I'll compose some more… maybe.' Suddenly she said: 'A disgrace to
Denny, who walked along the curb, picking at his chest, glanced back. And grinned.
What she's thinking, Kid thought, is seldom what it looks like she's thinking. Sometimes (as he walked, he catalogued incidents) he'd found her thoughts far simpler than her complicated expression of them. Other times (this catalogue was longer) more complex.
Denny, holding his chains with both hands and walking with his head down, to examine what was beside his feet, was easier, nastier, duller and (the attraction beyond the body) predictable.
Lanya lifted her harmonica (when, Kid tried to remember, had she snatched it up from the table inside? But that was lost too, with the others) toward her mouth. Her hair pulled from his forearm as she stepped ahead of him; his arm slid down the vest, fell.
She bent over the silver organ. Then she lowered it. Then turned it in her hands. Then she raised it. Then she lowered it again.
2
At the head of the stairs, Kid bent to scratch Muriel, who licked furiously at the ham of his thumb.
Madame Brown came into the hall and said, 'Now I didn't even know you'd gone outside! I could have sworn I'd heard you back in Lanya's room just now. Would you like wine, or coffee?'
'Could I have both?' Denny asked.
'Certainly.'
'Just wine for me,' Lanya said. 'That's probably what you want, too, right?'
'Yeah,' Kid said. 'Thanks.'
They followed Madame Brown into the kitchen.
'You want to come to my party?' Kid asked. 'Up at Mr Calkins'.'
'The one he's giving for your book, that everybody's been talking about?' Madame Brown smiled. Her necklace glittered.
'Huh? Yeah. I guess that's it.'
'I'd be delighted.'
Lanya, legs crossed, raised the front feet of her chair. 'He hasn't invited me, yet.' Above her, in the grey window, an asparagus fern turned on a string.
'Oh, you know you two are invited.' Kid sat on the kitchen stool.
'You got a party? Up at Calkins'?' Denny, hands in his pockets, leaned on the stove. He moved to let Madame
