Clinton whispered, “She’s asleep.”

Then the lieutenant looked at Clinton for a long moment, his eyes curiously aflame; like tongues of vision, they lapped up the room, the boy, the woman. At length, he motioned to Clinton to follow him into the hall.

Ramírez leaned against the railing of the stairwell, and watched Clinton as he buttoned his shirt. “You got a bus to catch,” Ramírez said. “Leaves in three minutes.”

“I’ll never make it, will I?”

“You will. The driver’s waitin’ for you.”

“Then I guess I got to get on it, huh?”

“You don’t got to,” Ramírez said. “But I would. Go get your shoes.”

Clinton returned to the room and finished his dressing. Then he checked his belongings: money belt, duffel bag, notebook, a pocketful of assorted articles. When he glanced at the bed, he saw Shirley’s eyes, wide open and staring at him. And he heard her little girl’s voice once again: “I di’nt roll you!”

He said, “The cop is puttin’ me on the bus.”

She nodded. He blew a kiss into the air. “Bye.”

She smiled at him. “You go straight home now, Willy,” she said.

In the police car, as they drove toward the bus station, Ramírez turned to Clinton: “Big night, huh? Did you light up?”

“Light up?” Clinton was puzzled for a moment, and then he understood.

“The pipe,” Ramírez said. “Didn’t she give you a drag on her pipe?”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, sir,” Clinton lied. “Can I ask you, how’d you know I was up there?”

“How does a plumber fix bathtubs? I got a job to do. —Went di-rect to the Festival last night, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

” ‘Cause I said not to?”

“No, sir.”

“How many times you screw her?”

Clinton looked straight ahead.

“Don’t frown at me, kid. I ast you something. How many times, six or seven? I could’ve busted in there any time I wanted. You know that, don’t you? So thank me. You got me to thank, hear that?”

Ramírez was filled with some puzzling emotion. Clinton could feel this strangeness, even though the officer tried to suppress its signs. But his face was pale and his breathing unnatural. “She was your first. Right?”

Clinton determined not to answer.

“Remember this,” Ramírez said. “Whatever you got from that tramp, two or three times, whatever it was, you wouldn’t have got it except for me. A gift from Ramírez. Hadn’t been I’m big-hearted, you’d of waited for the bus in jail. You know that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, now you got a lot to think about, huh? Am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ramírez removed one hand from the wheel and raised it toward Clinton. For a moment it hovered in the air, near the boy’s neck, caught between an act of strangling and a caress. But without touching Clinton at all, the hand returned to the wheel.

“Goddam you, you got a nerve,” Ramírez said, “sittin’ there bein’ polite to me, callin’ me ‘sir.’ So goddam smart.” He stopped the car. “Get out.”