“Now tell me about your dream,” she said.

“Okay.”

“What’ll I do if you cry? Is there somethin’ I can say?”

“Oh, I don’t think I will. But thanks, anyway.”

“Go on then, what you dream about?” she asked.

“My brother,”

“Is he dead?”

“No!” Clinton exclaimed. “He’s alive! He’s Berry-berry Williams!”

“Oh! I forgot.” She frowned and looked away for a moment. “Go ahead, what you dream about him?”

“I dreamt I went to see him in jail.” He laughed.

“Lord, I hope it was some nice jail,” Shirley said.

“It was! It had these real thick walls and when I got into the cell where he was, they wouldn’t let me out.”

“Were you scared?”

“No. I kind of liked it. It felt good bein’ in there with him. It was a nice place, and it had two bunks. So I got in one of ‘em, and he got in the other one; and we went to sleep. One of my favorite things is sleepin’ in a room where somebody else is.”

Shirley leaned forward eagerly, as if a dream held for her more suspense than any tale of an actual event. “Then what?”

“That’s all.” He felt that his story had disappointed her. “Sometimes I just dream these very crazy things that don’t amount to anything.”

Suddenly Shirley said, “Do you believe when people die, it’s just absolutely ker-plunk? Forever?”

“No.”

“No what?”

Clinton said: “I don’t think they die just absolutely ker-plunk forever. I think they sort of float around like when you dream.”

Shirley thought that over. “And they still like to have songs sung to them, don’t they?” she said.

“I guess they do,” Clinton said. “I would, anyway.”

“Isn’t it funny,” Shirley said, “how, down on the street, I just knew to trust you?”

The talk went on between these two people, Shirley and Clinton, for a long time. Here in this second-story room at the Tin Pot Arms Hotel on Gasparilla Street, with the shutters drawn against the sun, there was talk of her growing up in various Kentucky towns, and of his childhood in the Old Neighborhood, talk of all the places and towns the girl had worked in during the numberless years that followed her thirteenth birthday; there was talk of Berry-berry and Ralph and Annabel, the White Tower and Mevvin from Heaven, and the motorcycle ride through the mangroves; and each one told what he believed in and gave utterance to profound thoughts and deep secrets: life-and-death matters like heaven and hell, love and hate, ghosts and flesh, parents and children, religion and movies and favorite songs, even politics and the brotherhood of man. The discourse was rich and rapid and nobody knew or cared what time it was. Clinton took a bath while Shirley sat outside the door with the lavender panda on her knee, and pretty soon they took to singing songs together: Red River Valley, For Me and My Gal, The Isle of Capri, sad songs and fast ones, and Way Down Upon the Swanee River, and they dedicated their songs to the ghosts of all the children who had ever died or grown up in the world. And they danced on the wooden floor of this second-story room of the Tin Pot Arms Hotel, humming their own music, Clinton with a towel about his waist, and Shirley in her pajama top. She showed him how to do the cakewalk as they sang: