Stony ditched the cigarette and got dressed. He took down his suitcase barricaded on the top of the closet by the old games he or Albert hadn't touched in years—Video Village, Parcheesi, Stratego, a Gilbert microscope, two shoeboxes of baseball cards, Careers, a Nok-Hockey board and a big crumpled bag filled with the pieces of half a dozen never attempted jigsaw puzzles.

He threw in underwear, socks, a few pairs of dungarees and a couple of shirts. He slipped quietly into the bathroom, collected his toothbrush, his hot comb and his razor, dumped this stuff in and snapped the suitcase shut. Amsterdam. You pick them out of the windows, Cleanhead had said. Ten bucks a throw. Nice blondes. They'd go for him too. A guinea stud with New York soul. Cleanhead said everybody spoke English there, but even if they didn't all you had to do was throw in some ooks and icks every few words and you could make out O.K.

Stony took out his bankbook: 638 dollars and 41 cents.

Amster, Amster, doity woid
Amster, Amster, doity woid.

Two-thirty in the morning. Stony picked up the suitcase and headed down the foyer.

"Stony..." Marie stood behind him like a ghost in the dark. She turned on the hall light, blinding them both. She wore a white nightgown. A bloody brown piece of cotton hung from one nostril. A half-moon of dull red under her left eye. She grabbed Stony's hand. "Stony, I just want you to know, that whatever you do, I'll always love you." She pouted, ready to cry. "I'll always forgive you."

Stony was dumbstruck. "Ma?" He tightened his grip on the suitcase. "You're a fuckin' hoowah." He pulled the plug of cotton from her nose. She winced, letting go of his hand, and he was gone.

***

"I couldn't do it, Butler. Last night I got down to Kennedy, first thing I realize, you can't pay for a plane ticket wit' a bankbook, so I come all the way back up to the Bronx, hang around till the bank opens an' take out all my money. I was gonna take a cab back out to Kennedy, I think, at least lemme say goodby to Albert, so I go to Jacobi instead. I walk into his room there an' he's sleepin' like a baby. The doctor says he gonna be O.K., he just needs to rest for a couple a days. The doctor wants to start puttin' him on tranks, see a shrink for a while, that scares the shit out of me. You know, seein' a shrink. The kid's eight years old."

Butler and Stony aimlessly tossed around a basketball on a concrete court. Stony took a one-handed jumper from twenty feet out, missing the basket and backboard completely. The ball clanked noisily into the chain link fence separating the court from the sidewalk. The noon sun was hot. Made them slow.

"Anyways, so I just sit there in his room with my suitcase watchin' him sleep. That kid never sleeps at home. Lays in bed late at night until two and he's up at dawn. I never really seen him sleep an' he's always having nightmares. He told me this dream once about Mrs. Halzer, his teacher, makin' him drink this big glass of milk that turns to blood when he's halfway finished."