“What time is it?” Clinton said. The words sounded strange to him. There was no time in this room, not now, not any more. Something else had taken its place.

Shirley said: “I watched you quite a bit. Do you mind?”

“Watched me sleep?”

“Uh-huh. I felt like a thief. But it was nice. And nights are long.”

She got to her feet and stepped out of the closet.

Clinton said, “Do you sit in the closet quite a bit?”

“Only when I turn on. It’s better in a small place. You want some?”

“Some what?”

“Don’t you know?” she said, approaching the bed.

“You mean the pipe?”

“You can keep a secret, can’t you, Willy?”

“Sure.”

She held the pipe under his nose. It smelled like sin itself: exotic, faintly acrid, indescribable.

“What is it?”

Shirley put her mouth next to his ear, and whispered: “It’s marijuana.” Then she stood straight, thrust her stomach forward in the attitude of a little girl, and gave a false little laugh.

Clinton stared hard at the pipe. “If I tried a little puff, would I become a fiend?” Then, quickly, he added, “I mean, would I get addicted?”

“Huh-uh, not if you got a strong will. Have you got a strong will?”

In his mind Clinton reviewed rapidly certain of his own vices, and the strength of their hold on him. “Not very,” he said.

“Then maybe you better not have any,” Shirley said.

“Okay.”

“What’d you dream about?”

He thought for a while. “My brother, I guess.”

“Me, too! That’s what I dreamt about. My brother.”

“I thought you didn’t sleep,” Clinton said.

“Oh, I dream awake. I do it all the time. You want to hear my dream?”

“Sure.”

“You may have to help me some,” she said, settling into one of the straw armchairs.

“How can I?” Clinton asked.

“Well, if I start to cry, you have to stop me. Just take hold of my shoulders and say, ‘Shirley, you look very pretty in lavender,’ and make me listen. Okay? Just in case. But maybe I won’t cry atoll. —Anyway, I dreamt about my little brother Willy. It’s not my fault or anything, but he’s dead. Everybody says it’s not my fault because it was accidental. But when I dream about him, we’re both settin’ in the tree singin’ songs. The Isle of Capri and Billy-Boy and every song you ever heard of. I never think about him bein’ dead and all, ‘cause I don’t really believe in it. We just sing songs and I change the words for him. Like I sing:

“‘Summertime was nearly over,

Blue Kentucky skies above;

I said, Willy, I’m a rover,

Can’t you spare one sweet word of love?”

“Which is all purely my own imagination. I mean the part about Kentucky and Willy. But he thought I made up the whole thing for him. And when I sang Billy-Boy, I made it Willy. Don’t you think that was cute?”

Clinton said: “I think I heard you singin’ while I slept.” He rose from the bed and sat in the chair opposite the girl, facing her.