"It's not all war I love," he protests, "it's this war. Because nobody else does. Nobody else understands it."
"Explain it to me, Harry."
"It's a, it's a kind of head fake. To keep the other guy off balance. The world the way it is, you got to do something like that once in a while, to keep your options, to keep a little space around you." He is using his arms to show her his crucial concept of space. "Otherwise, he gets so he can read your every move and you're dead."
Mim asks, "You're sure there is this other guy?"
"Sure I'm sure." The other guy is the doctor who shakes your hand so hard it hurts. I know best. Madness begins in that pinch.
"You don't think there might just be a lot of little guys trying to get a little more space than the system they're under lets them have?"
"Sure there are these little guys, billions of 'em" – billions, millions, too much of everything – "but then also there's this big guy trying to put them all into a big black bag. He's crazy, so so must we be. A little."
She nods like a type of doctor herself. "That fits," she says. "Be crazy to keep free. The life you been leading lately sounds crazy enough to last you a while."
"What did I do wrong? I was a fucking Good Samaritan. I took in these orphans. Black, white, I said Hop aboard. Irregardless of color or creed, Hop aboard. Free eats. I was the fucking Statue of Liberty."
"And it got you a burned-down house."
"O.K. That's other people. That's their problem, not mine. I did what felt right." He wants to tell her everything, he wants his tongue to keep pace with this love he feels for this his sister; he wants to like her, though he feels a forbidding denseness in her, of too many conclusions reached when he wasn't there. He tells her, "I learned some things."
"Anything worth knowing?"
"I learned I'd rather fuck than be blown."
Mim removes a crumb, as of tobacco but the cigarette is filtered, from her lower lip. "Sounds healthy," she says. "Rather unAmerican, though."
"And we used to read books. Aloud to each other."
"Books about what?"
"I don't know. Slaves. History, sort of."
Mim in her stripey clown costume laughs. "You went back to school," she says. "That's sweet." She used to get better marks than he did, even after she began with boys: A's and B's against his B's and C's. Mom at the time told him girls had to be smarter, just to pull even. Mim asks, "So what'd you learn from these books?"
"I learned" – he gazes at a corner of a room, wanting to get this right: he sees a cobweb above the sideboard, gesturing in some ceiling wind he cannot feel -"this country isn't perfect." Even as he says this he realizes he doesn't believe it, any more than he believes at heart that he will die. He is tired of explaining himself. "Speaking of sweet," he says, "how is your life?"
"Ca va. That's French for, It goes. Va bene."
"Somebody keeping you, or is it a new one every night?"
She looks at him and considers. A glitter of reflexive anger snipes at her mask of eye makeup. Then she exhales and relaxes, seeming to conclude, Well he's my brother. "Neither. I'm a career girl, Harry. I perform a service. I can't describe it to you, the way it is out there. They're not bad people. They have rules. They're not very interesting rules, nothing like Stick your hand in the fire and make it up to Heaven. They're more like, Ride the exercise bicycle the morning after. The men believe in flat stomach muscles and sweating things out. They don't want to carry too much fluid. You could say they're puritans. Gangsters are puritans. They're narrow and hard because off the straight path you don't live. Another rule they have is, Pay for what you get because anything free has a rattlesnake under it. They're survival rules, rules for living in the desert. That's what it is, a desert. Look out for it, Harry. It's coming East."
"It's here. You ought to see the middle of Brewer; it's all parking lots."
"But the things that grow here you can eat, and the sun is still some kind of friend. Out there, we hate it. We live underground. All the hotels are underground with a couple of the windows painted blue. We like it best at night, about three in the morning, when the big money comes to the crap table. Beautiful faces, Harry. Hard and blank as chips. Thousands flow back and forth without any expression. You know what I'm struck by back here, looking at the faces? How soft they are. God they're soft. You look so soft to me, Harry. You're soft still standing and Pop's soft curling under. If we don't get Janice propped back under you you're going to curl under too. Come to think of it, Janice is not soft. She's hard as a nut. That's what I never liked about her. I bet I'd like her now. I should go see her."
"Sure. Do. You can swap stories. Maybe you could get her a job on the West Coast. She's pretty old but does great things with her tongue."
"That's quite a hang-up you have there."
"I just said, nobody's perfect. How about you? You have some specialty, or just take what comes?"
She sits up. "She really hurt you, didn't she?" And eases back. She stares at Harry interested. Perhaps she didn't expect in him such reserves of resentful energy. The living room is dark though the noises that reach them from outside say that children are still playing in the sun. "You're all soft," she says, lulling, "like slugs under fallen leaves. Out there, Harry, there are no leaves. People grow these tan shells. I have one, look." She pulls up her pinstripe blouse and her belly is brown. He tries to picture the rest and wonders if her pussy is tinted honey-blonde to match the hair on her head. "You never see them out in the sun but they're all tan, with -flat stomach muscles. Their one flaw is, they're still soft inside. They're like those chocolates we used to hate, those chocolate creams, remember how we'd pick through the Christmas box they'd give us at the movie theater, taking out only the square ones and the caramels in cellophane? The other ones we hated, those dark brown round ones on the outside, all ooky inside. But that's how people are. It embarrasses everybody but they need to be milked. Men need to be drained. Like boils. Women too for that matter. You asked me my specialty and that's it, I milk people. I let them spill their insides on me. It can be dirty work but usually it's clean. I went out there wanting to be an actress and that's in a way what I got, only I take on the audience one at a time. In some ways it's more of a challenge. So. Tell me some more about your life."
"Well I was nursemaid to this machine but now they've retired the machine. I was nursemaid to Janice but she upped and left."
"We'll get her back."
"Don't bother. Then I was nursemaid to Nelson and he hates me because I let Jill die."
"She let herself die. Speaking of that, that's what I do like about these kids: they're trying to kill it. Even if they kill themselves in the process."
"Kill what?"
"The softness. Sex, love; me, mine. They're doing it in. I have nó playmates under thirty, believe it. They're burning it out with dope. They're going to make themselves hard clean through. Like, oh, cockroaches. That's the way to live in the desert. Be a cockroach. It's too late for you, and a little late for me, but once these kids get it together, there'll be no killing them. They'll live on poison.
Mim stands; he follows. For all that she was a tall girl and is enlarged by womanhood and makeup, her forehead comes to his chin. He kisses her forehead. She tilts her face up, slime-blue eyelids shut, to be kissed again. Pop's loose mouth under Mom's chiselled nose. He tells her, "You're a cheerful broad," and pecks her dry cheek. Perfumed stationery. A smile in her cheek pushes his lips. She is himself, with the combination jiggled.
She gives him a sideways hug, patting the fat around his waist. "I swing," Mim confesses. "I'm no showboat like Rabbit Angstrom, but in my quiet way I swing." She tightens the hug, and linked like that they walk to the foot of the stairs, to go up and console their parents.