“No, what?”

“She said, ‘Yes, I do, but I don’t think he’ll appeal to you.’ And drove off. Just like that. And Clint, I swear, things like that happen to me all the time. Wild things; I don’t even understand it myself. So who knows, maybe next winter I might even try some of these resorts. Palm Beach, Nassau. And I mean, breathe some air. D’you know a reason why I shouldn’t?”

“No, why?” Clinton said.

“No. I mean, can you name one. A reason why I shouldn’t?”

“Oh.” Clinton thought for a while. Then, “No, I can’t think of any right off.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do next,” Berry-berry said. “I never know myself. I just follow the breeze.”

“Or else you get kicked out of town, huh?” Clinton said.

Berry-berry searched his face quickly, and finding no malice in it, he smiled and said, “Yeah, I’ve had my share of that, too. You can say that again.”

“What the hell, though,” Clinton said, “that’s part of the game, huh?”

Sure.

“How old,” Clinton said thoughtfully, “does a guy have to be?”

“For what?” Berry-berry snapped.

“Oh, I just mean, to travel around, without having a cop put you on the bus and send you home.”

“Clint?”

“What?”

Berry-berry had his mouth open, but he said nothing. His eyes seemed not to focus on anything in the room, but on something inside his head.

Clinton said, “What’re you thinkin’ about?”

“Peanut butter.”

“Peanut butter?”

“Yeah. You still eat it?”

Clinton nodded. “Uh-huh. Why?”

“Nothin’. I just got to thinking about peanut butter is all. The time Annabel couldn’t find it in the kitchen, and you had it in bed with you.”

“I did?”

“You used to eat it with your fingers. You don’t remember, hunh?”

“Huh-uh.”

Berry-berry, lost in his own thoughts, looked at Clinton for a long time. Clinton knew that he himself was somehow the subject of these secret thoughts, and so he studied Berry-berry’s face, hoping to get some clue to whatever it was that was unspoken. The two brothers went on looking at each other in this way, without speaking, until at last, in combination with the brandy he had drunk, this staring created in Clinton a sense of dreaming. All feeling of flesh-and-blood reality eluded him: Berry-berry was not there any more. He was an image he had dreamed up, a private fiction of his own making. Then Berry-berry, no longer real to him, lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. Clinton sat in the easy chair and went on looking at this projected image of his brother.

Suddenly he felt that he had to move, do something, speak, or he would himself cease to exist. He stood up and looked at the opened bureau drawer. He glanced at the contents of the treasure box, his brother’s freedom: the gun, the money, the jewelry. Then he closed the cover of the directory, closed the bureau drawer, and walked over to the other side of the bed. Berry-berry was asleep. Clinton quietly lowered himself onto the bed and lay there next to him, his head propped up on his arm, and scrutinized every detail of Berry-berry’s sleeping face. He thought of the many times, before the move, that he had been in this position as a child, studying his brother.