A pale light flickers in the next room — Stanley sees its reflection in the windowglass, and on the glazed curve of a lamp’s base — and he realizes that the quiet voices are coming not from a radio but a television set. He steps across the threshold for a closer look. It’s around the corner to the left: a Philco model, with a twentyone-inch tube in a mahogany console. Stanley’s been around TVs before, plenty of times, but it’s mostly been in shops, not people’s houses. This one’s playing newsreels — old ones, he’s guessing, unless the Nazis are back in power somewhere and Roosevelt’s risen from the grave. Just like always, Stanley has a hard time focusing on the picture: he keeps getting distracted by the texture of the screen, staring until the image disintegrates into a mosaic of tiny pulsing lights. He blinks hard, shakes his head, turns away in sudden revulsion.
When his vision settles again, it finds another pair of eyes staring back at him from near the floor. He jumps, makes a startled sound.
It’s the dirty-blond girl from the coffeehouse: the one he saw kissing Welles’s cheek. She’s seated on the thick patterned rug — her back pressed against a footstool, a multi-colored afghan draped over her shoulders — and she blends smoothly into the furnishings. Stanley can’t remember the last time he walked into a room and didn’t notice somebody. He thinks maybe he never has. The girl’s eyes track him; her body doesn’t move at all. Her expression is relaxed, alert, leonine. It says you’re still alive because I’m not hungry.
Synnøve comes up behind him, hands him a cup and saucer. Oh! she says. Cynthia! I thought you’d gone out.
Something in Synnøve’s voice is uneasy, like she’s as startled as Stanley to find the girl here, and not quite happy about it. The girl’s eyes shift from Stanley to Synnøve, then back to Stanley again. She blinks once, slowly, and says nothing.
Cynthia, Synnøve says, meet Stanley and Claudio. They’re friends of—
She breaks off abruptly, like she’s forgotten what she was saying, or thought better of it. They are our friends, she finishes. Would you like tea?
Yes please, the girl says.
Her voice is plummy: a fat girl’s voice, Stanley thinks, though she’s hardly fat. He makes her for seventeen, eighteen tops. She’s got nice curves for her age, but it’s a figure with a sell-by date: in ten years she’ll be fighting the weight off. Most guys won’t see that now, of course, or won’t care. If her outfit’s not the same one she wore two days ago — bulky black scoop-neck sweater over a black leotard, gossamer crimson kerchief knotted at her neck — then it’s identical. I saw you at the coffee joint, Stanley says.
Cwoffee, huh? she says, copping his accent with a raised eyebrow. Solid, pops. I hear you cats knocked us some fish.
You heard right.
Groovy, the girl says. A slow smile creeps across her face like a dropped egg.
Synnøve reappears, bearing another teacup and saucer; Cynthia stands up slowly, stretches — twisting her arms above her head till her spine pops — and takes them. Stanley can’t decide if this girl is movie-star gorgeous or slightly grotesque, which he guesses must mean she’s gorgeous. Stacked sugarcubes ring her cup; she spoons a few into the liquid, then eats the rest, crunching as she stirs. The milky tea is exactly the color of her eyes, and a whole lot warmer. Stanley can already tell that he and this skirt are not going to be pals.
Claudio shoulders past him into the room. Cynthia! he says.
Hey, gatemouth, the girl says. Slip me some skin.
I have some skin for you, mija, Claudio laughs, and gives her a warm careful hug. Their teacups rattle on their saucers. I did not expect to see you, he says. What are you doing here?
This is my lilypad, froggy. This is where I catch my cups.
Stanley looks rapidly between the two of them. You know this chick? he says.
This is Cynthia, Claudio says, looking at Stanley like he’s gone simple. My friend from the café. I told you.
Stanley furrows his brow. Maybe Claudio did tell him; he doesn’t listen to half of what the kid says. He watches the two of them chat — naming people he’s never heard of, who he never cares to meet — until he notices the large canvas hung on the wall behind them. Amid rough splashes of flung color and glued-on dried flowers and lumps of paint-soaked fabric, Stanley gradually discerns the shape of a tree. Sigils cut from silver foil scatter in its gnarled bare branches. Two shadowy human shapes huddle by its trunk.
From the kitchen comes Synnøve’s voice, calling over the sound of the running faucet. I just remembered, she says. The bakery closes early today, and I want a loaf of challah bread for dinner. Cynthia, will you entertain our guests while I’m out? I’m afraid I can’t guess when Adrian will emerge from his lair. Boys, if I give you my good knife, would you clean the fish you brought?
I’ll clean the fish, Cynthia says.
As Synnøve pulls the front door shut behind her, Stanley and Claudio carry the buckets to a sunny spot on the covered side porch. Cynthia gathers equipment — brown paper bag, vegetable scraper, eyelash-thin fillet knife, beachtowels to sit on, old copies of the Mirror-News—and follows them outside. The porch is bordered by plank benches, and she spreads newspaper over these, then pours water from one of the buckets onto the lawn, crowding the fish down, making them easier to grab. The salt will probably kill the grass, but Stanley doesn’t say anything.
Cynthia hands the scraper to Claudio. You’re doing the scales, she says.
Then she dips her hand into the bucket, comes out with a squirming fish, slaps it on the paper, and opens its belly from its anus to its throat. Her small thumb slips inside to push out the little lump of guts. Then she chops off its head just behind its pectoral fins, and she hands the body to Claudio. The tiny downturned mouth is still gasping as she tosses it, trailing intestines, into the paper bag.
Claudio sets to work on the headless fish without asking Cynthia any questions, without even seeming to think, and soon the newspaper is showered with silver flecks. Cynthia has the head off another fish and is starting on a third. The one she just finished twitches a little on the paper. Her knife reminds Stanley of one he had for a while back home: he taped the handle of his, wore it on his calf. Then he used it and had to get rid of it. He begins to feel lightheaded from watching her work. He stands up, crosses the backyard to where a rambling rose pushes through the fence, and breathes deeply over its waxy white blossoms.
Soon a ragged calico cat is walking toward him across the toprail, sniffing the air; a second cat meows from somewhere below. Back on the porch, Claudio has fired up his customary jag, talking about movies, movie stars. The chick has no problem keeping up: she chimes in with her own material — foreign-sounding names that Stanley’s never heard in his life, strung together with obscure hepcat jive that he can’t make heads or tails of — as she slaughters her way through the twin buckets. Looking past them to the house, Stanley sees Synnøve in the kitchen, home from the bakery. He figures he probably ought to go in and talk to her about art or something, but he doesn’t. Instead he just moves back and forth along the fence, stopping sometimes to scratch the stray cats on their matted necks, sometimes to catch them as they make beelines for the bag of heads and plop them back over the fence. Just once, he thinks, just one goddamn time, he’d like something to work out like he expects it to. That might be nice for a switch.
After a while the girl takes the cleaned fish into the kitchen, and Claudio crosses the yard. Stanley? he says. Are you okay?
Stanley keeps his eyes on the cats. Don’t come near me with that shit on your hands, he says.