"Ka-boom, right?" Skeeter grins, flinging wide his sticklike arms.
"But it is," Rabbit says. "Everybody knows black pussy is beautiful. It's on posters even, now."
Skeeter asks, "How you think all this mammy shit got started? Who you think put all those hog-fat churchified old women at the age of thirty in Harlem?"
"Not me."
"It was you. Man, you is just who it was. From those breeding cabins on you made the black girl feel sex was shit, so she hid from it as quick as she could in the mammy bit, right?"
"Well, tell 'em it's not shit."
"They don't believe me, Chuck. They see I don't count. I have nó muscle, right? I can't protect my black women, right? 'Cause you don't let me be a man."
"Go ahead. Be one."
Skeeter gets up from the armchair with the silver threads and circles the imitation cobbler's bench with a wary hunchbacked quickness and kisses Jill where she sits on the sofa. Her hands, after a startled jerk, knit together and stay in her lap. Her head does not pull back nor strain forward. Rabbit cannot see, around the eclipsing orb of Skeeter's Afro, Jill's eyes. He can see Nelson's eyes. They are warm watery holes so dark, so stricken that Rabbit would like to stick pins into them, to teach the child there is worse. Skeeter straightens from kissing, wipes the Jill-spit from his mouth. "A pleasant spoil. Chuck, how do you like it?"
"I don't mind. If she doesn't."
Jill has closed her eyes, her mouth open on a small bubble. "She does mind it," Nelson protests. "Dad, don't let him!" Rabbit says to Nelson, "Bedtime, isn't it?"
Physically, Skeeter fascinates Rabbit. The lustrous pallor of the tongue and palms and the soles of the feet, left out of the sun. Or a different kind of skin? White palms never tan either. The peculiar glinting luster of his skin. The something so very finely turned and finished in the face, reflecting light at a dozen polished points: in comparison white faces are blobs: putty still drying. The curious greased grace of his gestures, rapid and watchful as a lizard's motions, free of mammalian fat. Skeeter in his house feels like a finely made electric toy; Harry wants to touch him but is afraid he will get a shock.
"O.K.? "
"Not especially." Jill's voice seems to come from further away than beside him in the bed.
"Why not?"
"I'm scared."
"Of what? Of me?"
"Of you and him together."
"We're not together. We hate each other's guts."
She asks, "When are you kicking him out?"
"They'll put him in jail."
"Good."
The rain is heavy above them, beating everywhere, inserting itself in that chimney flashing that always leaked. He pictures a wide brown stain on the bedroom ceiling. He asks, "What's with you and him?"
She doesn't answer. Her lean cameo profile is lit by a flash. Seconds pass before the thunder arrives.
He asks shyly, "He getting at you?"
"Not that way anymore. He says that's not interesting. He -wants me another way now."
"What way can that be?" Poor girl, crazy suspicious.
"He wants me to tell him about God. He says he's going to bring some mesc for me."
The thunder follows the next flash more closely.
"That's crazy." But exciting: maybe she can do it. Maybe he can get music out of her like Babe out of the piano.
"He is crazy," Jill says. "I'll never be hooked again."
"What can I do?" Rabbit feels paralyzed, by the rain, the thunder, by his curiosity, by his hope for a break in the combination, for catastrophe and deliverance.
The girl cries out but thunder comes just then and he has to ask her to repeat it. "All you care about is your wife," she shouts upward into the confusion in heaven.
Pajasek comes up behind him and mumbles about the phone. Rabbit drags himself up. Worse than a liquor hangover, must stop, every night. Must get a grip on himself. Get a grip. Get angry. "Janice, for Chrissake -"
"It isn't Janice, Harry. It's me. Peggy."
"Oh. Hi. How's tricks? How's Ollie?"
"Forget Ollie, don't ever mention his name to me. He hasn't been to see Billy in weeks or contributed anything to his keep, and when he finally does show up, you know what he brings? He's a genius, you'll never guess."
"Another mini-bike."
"A puppy. He brought us a Golden Retriever puppy. Now what the hell can we do with a puppy with Billy off in school and me gone from eight to five every day?"
"You got a job. Congratulations. What do you do?"
"I type tape for Brewer Fealty over at Youngquist, they're putting all their records on computer tape and not only is the work so boring you could scream, you don't even know when you've made a mistake, it comes out just holes in this tape, all these premium numbers."
"It sounds nifty. Peggy, speaking of work, they don't appreciate my being called here."
Her voice retreats, puts on dignity. "Pardon me. I wanted to talk to you when Nelson wasn't around. Ollie has promised Billy to take him fishing next Sunday, not this Sunday, and I wondered, since it doesn't look as if you'll ever ask me, if you'd like to have dinner Saturday when you bring him over."
Her open bathrobe, that pubic patch, the silver stretchmarks, don't count your chickens. Meaning do count your chickens. "That might be great," he says.
"Might be."
"I'll have to see, I'm kind of tied up these days -"
"Hasn't that man gone yet? Kick him out, Harry. He's taking incredible advantage ofyou. Call the police if he won't go. Really, Harry, you're much too passive."
"Yeah. Or something." Only after shutting the office door behind him and starting to walk through the solid brightness toward his machine does he feel last night's marijuana clutch at him, drag at his knees like a tide. Never again. Let Jesus find him another way.
"Tell us about Vietnam, Skeeter." The grass is mixing with his veins and he feels very close, very close to them alclass="underline" the driftwood lamp, Nelson's thatch of hair an anxious tangle, Jill's bare legs a touch unshaped at the ankles. He loves them. All. His voice moves in and out behind their eyes. Skeeter's eyes roll red toward the ceiling. Things are pouring for him through the ceiling.
"Why you want to be told?" he asks.
"Because I wasn't there."
"Think you should have been there, right?"
` Yes."
"Why would that be?"
"I don't know. Duty. Guilt."
"No sir. You want to have been there because that is where it was at, right?"
"O.K.
"It was the best place," Skeeter says, not quite as a question.
"Something like that."
Skeeter goes on, gently urging, "It was where you would have felt not so de-balled, right?"
"I don't know. If you don't want to talk about it, don't. Let's turn on television."
"Mod Squad will be on," Nelson says.