“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. “‘Diffraction,’” he said. “I like it.”
“Mmmm.” She leaned her head back and shook it. Hair brushed his hand and wrist.
“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 God?—really!”
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 Brown get the enameled coffee pot.
She said: “That should be quite something.”
“He said bring about twenty or thirty friends. I’m going to bring the whole nest up.”
“Marvelous!” Lanya clapped her hands. “I’m sure that’s what he wants.”
“Yeah? You think so?”
Madame Brown, dubious, set out glasses and picked the gallon jug up from the floor. “Well, it will be interesting.” She twisted at the cap, her face lining with effort. “It’s in three Sundays, isn’t it?” The cap seemed stuck. “Mary will never forgive me if I go. She’s invited me for dinner. But I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Here. I’ll do it.” Kid opened the bottle and poured out yellow wine. “You got lots of patients here?”
Madame Brown, seated in what looked like a lawn chair, observed her glass. “A few. Would you like to come and have a session with me some afternoon?”
Kid looked up. And thought: I’m embarrassed. Why?
“Lanya’s told me about some of the things you were feeling, and how upset you’d been. And about your memory problems. If you’d like to talk about them with someone, I’d be very happy to.”
“Now?”
Lanya rocked in her chair.
Denny, sitting at the table now, looked back and forth between his wine glass and coffee cup.
“Goodness, no. Perhaps some afternoon next week. That would be best for me. I’m terminating sessions with two patients, and if we want to work out something further, it would be a little easier to make arrangements.”
“Oh,” Kid said. “Yeah. You give therapy to people now?”
“Yes, I have been for quite a while now.”
Lanya said, “I told Madame Brown you’d been in therapy before.”
“You told her I’d been in a mental hospital?”
“You mentioned that to me once yourself,” Madame Brown said.
Kid drank some wine. “Yeah. I’d like to come and talk to you. Thanks. That’s nice of you.”
“You think he’s crazy?” Denny asked. He’d only drunk from the coffee. “He acts pretty funny sometimes. But I don’t think he’s crazy. Not like Dollar.” He looked over his cup at Madame Brown and explained: “Dollar’s killed somebody already. Beat his head in with a pipe. Now Dollar’s a real nut. You wanna talk to him?”
“You shut up, huh?” Kid said.
Madame Brown said: “I’m afraid I don’t have facilities for handling…real nuts. ‘Crazy’ and ‘nuts’ are terms doctors don’t use—or shouldn’t. But, no, I don’t think Kid’s crazy at all.”
Denny’s head had gone to the side and his tongue into his cheek, listening for patronization. His mouth changed shape over the cup. He’d apparently found it.
“I don’t want to start any long-term thing,” Kid said, “where I come back and back—yeah, I know that’s how it works. But I just don’t want to get into that.”
“Whether or not you needed something long term would more or less depend on what we found out in the first sessions, wouldn’t it? So we’ll do first things first.”
“Okay…” Kid felt wary.
“You know—” Lanya’s chair legs came down—“that whole thing about Dollar killing Wally has really got me upset.”
“What is this,” Madame Brown asked, “about someone killing somebody?”
So they told her.
“Now he sounds nuts.” Madame Brown nodded.
“Oh, he ain’t that nuts,” Denny answered.
Madame Brown sighed: “Well, I suppose that afternoon did provide some extenuating circumstances.” But she sounded more worried than convinced.
The bell rang.
“Well, my break is over.” Madame Brown left the room.
As soon as she’d gone, Denny said: “Did you know that while you were asleep last night, the guys had two girls in the back they were shagging? Man, them niggers really went to town! I used to watch a lot, but I never took no turn before. One of them, the little white one, she was freaky, man! Really. Freaky. Glass said I could take a turn, if I wanted.” He revolved the cup to align the handle with a crack between the table boards. “So I did. To come, though, I had to pretend—” Denny glanced at Kid—“stuff with you.”
“You been busy, huh?” Kid hadn’t known; he was surprised.
Denny looked at Lanya. “I pretended about you too.”
“I don’t know whether I should be flattered or not.” She rocked her chair again. “I’ve always pictured myself as a pretty worldly young lady, but you guys have a way of making me feel like I just got out of a convent. Not—” she let the chair legs down—“that I’m trying to keep up…well, maybe I am, just a little.” She stood, stepped around the table corner, and put a hand on either side of Denny’s face, which rotated between her palms, mouth opened. She dropped her mouth on his. He held the edge of the table and strained his neck to kiss her. Finally, he let go with one hand and put it around her waist. “Hey—” he pulled his face away from hers—“that’s nice,” giggled, and kissed her again.
Kid’s laughter made them look.