"Maybe I mind."
"Dad. Don't." And Harry reads his son's taut face to mean, She can hear. She's all alone. We must be nice to her, we must be nice to the poor, the weak, the black. Love is here to stay.
Monday, Rabbit is setting the Vat front page. WIDOW, SIXTY-SEVEN, RAPED AND ROBBED. Three Black Youths Held.
Police authorities revealed Saturday that they are holding for questioning two black minors and Wendell Phillips, 19, of 42B Plum Street, in connection with the brutal assault of an unidentified sywsfyz kmlhs the brutal assault of an unidentified elderly white woman late Thursday night.
The conscienceless crime, the latest in a series of similar incidents in the Third Ward, aroused residents of the neighborhood to organize a committee of protest which appeared before Friday's City Council session.
Nobody Safe
"Nobody's safe on the st
"Nobody's safe on the streets any more," said committee spokesman Bernard Vogel to VAT reporters.
"Nobody's safe not even in our own homes."
Through the clatter Harry feels a tap on his shoulder and looks around. Pajasek, looking worried. "Angstrom, telephone."
"Who the hell?" He feels obliged to say this, as apology for being called at work, on Verity time.
"A woman," Pajasek says, not placated.
Who? Jill (last night her hair still damp from the boat ride tickled his belly as she managed to make him come) was in trouble. They had kidnapped her -the police, the blacks. Or Peggy Fosnacht was calling up to offer supper again. Or his mother had taken a turn for the worse and with her last heartbeats had dialled this number. He is not surprised she would want to speak to him instead of his father, he has never doubted she loves him most. The phone is in Pajasek's little office, three walls of frosted glass, on the desk with the parts catalogues (these old Mergenthalers are always breaking down) and the spindled dead copy. "Hello?"
"Hi, sweetie. Guess who."
` Janice. How was the Shore?"
"Crowded and muggy. How was it here?"
"Pretty good."
"So I hear. I hear you went out in a boat."
"Yeah, it was the kid's idea, he got me invited by Ollie. We went up the river as far as Eifert's Island. We didn't catch much, the state put some trout in but I guess the river's still too full of coal silt. My nose is so sunburned I can't touch it."
"I hear you had a lot of people in the boat."
"Nine or so. Ollie runs around with this musical crowd. We had a picnic up at the old camp meeting ground, near Stogey's Quarry, you know, where that witch lived so many years. Ollie's friends all got out guitars and played. It was nice."
"I hear you brought a guest too."
"Who'd you hear that from?"
"Peggy told me. Billy told her. He was all turned-on about it, he said Nelson brought a girlfriend."
"Beats a mini-bike, huh?"
"Harry, I don't find this amusing. Where did you find this girl?"
"Uh, she's a go-go dancer in here at the shop. For the lunch hour. The union demands it."
"Mere, Harry?"
Her weary dismissive insistence pleases him. She is growing in confidence, like a child at school. He confesses, "I sort of picked her up in a bar."
"Well. That's being honest. How long is she going to stay?"
"I haven't asked. These kids don't make plans the way we used to, they aren't so scared of starving. Hey, I got to get back to the machine. Pajasek doesn't like our being called here, by the way."
"I don't intend to make a practice of it. I called you at work because I didn't want Nelson to overhear. Harry, now are you listening to me?"
"Sure, to who else?"
"I want that girl out of my home. I don't want Nelson exposed to this sort of thing."
"What sort of thing? You mean the you and Stavros sort of thing?"
"Charlie is a mature man. He has lots of nieces and nephews so he's very understanding with Nelson. This girl sounds like a little animal out of her head with dope."
"That's how Billy described her?"
"After she talked to Billy Peggy called up Ollie for a better description."
"And that was his description. Gee. They got along famously at the time. She was better-looking than those two old crows Ollie had along, I tell ya."
"Harry, you're horrible. I consider this a very negative development. I suppose I have no right to say anything about how you dispose ofyour sexual needs, but I will not have my son corrupted."
"He's not corrupted, she's got him to help with the dishes, that's more than we could ever do. She's like a sister to him."
"And what is she to you, Harry?" When he is slow to answer, she repeats, her voice taunting, aching, like her mother's, "Harry, what is she to you? A little wifey?"
He thinks and tells her, "Come on back to the house, I'm sure she'll go."
Now Janice thinks. Finally she states: "If I come back to the house, it'll be to take Nelson away."
"Try it," he says, and hangs up.
He sits a minute in Pajasek's chair to give the phone a chance to ring. It does. He picks it up. "Yeah?"
Janice says, near tears, "Harry, I don't like to tell you this, but if you'd been adequate I would never have left. You drove me to it. I didn't know what I was missing but now that I have it I know. I refuse to accept all the blame, I really do."
"O.K. No blame assigned. Let's keep in touch."
"I want that girl away from my son."
"They're getting along fine, relax."
"I'll sue you. I'll take you to court."
"Fine. After the stunts you've been pulling, it'll at least give the judge a laugh."
"That's my house legally. At least half of it is."
"Tell me which my half is, and l'll try to keep Jill in it."
Janice hangs up. Maybe using Jill's name had hurt. He doesn't wait for another ring this time, and leaves the cubicle of frosted glass. The trembling in his hands, which feel frightened and inflated, merges with the clatter of the machines; his body sweat is lost in the smell of oil and ink. He resettles himself at his Mergenthaler and garbles three lines before he can put her phone call in the back of his mind. He supposes Stavros can get her legal advice. But, far from feeling Stavros as one of the enemy camp, he counts on him to keep this madwoman, his wife, under control. Through her body, they have become brothers.
Jill through the succession of nights adjusts Rabbit's body to hers. He cannot overcome his fear of using her body as a woman's her cunt stings, is part of it; he never forces his way into her without remembering those razor blades -but she, beginning the damp-haired night after the boat ride, perfects ways with her fingers and mouth to bring him off. Small curdled puddles of his semen then appear on her skin, and though easily wiped away leave in his imagination a mark like an acid-bum on her shoulders, her throat, the small of her back; he has the vision of her entire slender fair flexible body being eventually covered with these invisible burns, like a napalmed child in the newspapers. And he, on his side, attempting with hands or mouth to reciprocate, is politely dissuaded, pushed away, reassured she has already come, serving him, or merely asked for the mute pressure of a thigh between hers and, after some few minutes during which he can detect no spasm of relief, thanked. The August nights are sticky and close; when they lie on their backs the ceiling of heavy air seems a foot above their faces. A car, loud on the soft tar and loose gravel, slides by. A mile away across the river a police siren bleats, a new sound, more frantic than the old rising and falling cry. Nelson turns on a light, makes water, flushes the toilet, turns out the light with a snap close to their ears. Had he been listening? Could he even be watching? Jill's breath saws in her throat. She is asleep.