There were white curtains inside, but they weren’t completely closed. Hogg and me fell a little behind the others. Once he reached down to pat my ass; and got two fingers in the tear Big Chico had put in my trousers. We stopped, just before the window; I pressed back. One finger slipped in to the knuckle. The other was prodding. “Goddamn …” Hogg whispered. But I couldn’t tell if he was talking about my ass or what we were looking at.

A heavyish woman sat on the couch. She wore a house dress. Her hair was curly and brown and loose. She had on slippers and she was frowning at a paperback novel. One button had come loose on a small triangle of stomach skin I don’t think anybody else in the room saw.

Her husband—I guess he was her husband—sat in a big, green chair by a fireplace which had been converted from gas a long time ago; the gas nozzles had been hammered down. He wore a sleeveless undershirt. His hair was gray; gray hair stuck out from the crease of his armpits. He was very red in the neck. But his arms were pale. He was looking at a newspaper folded small.

A redheaded kid, maybe my age, maybe a year older, sat crosslegged on the tan rug, at a chess board. (The janitor of the building where I used to live had taught me to play chess, which he said I was good at. Before he died.) We could hear the television set: it must have been right below the window—because we couldn’t see it.

The kid moved a piece, but didn’t take his hand off.

The woman uncrossed her legs.

“Yeah …” Hogg whispered. We were all crouching. Hogg’s face moved next to mine. “That’s gonna be some pussy.” I felt him close to me, his stubble on my cheek. I smelled him, his sweat and his breath. He chuckled and wiggled his finger and I pushed back against it some more. His arm tightened across my back. “Man, Hogg’s gonna have some fun gettin’ his pecker into that!” The wop was in front of us now, Denny and the nigger behind. “I’m gonna stick it in that slop box and split her up. And split her down again.” She put down her book, turned, and look directly at us. Everybody moved, just a little. Except Hogg, who went on:

“She lookin’ at the evenin’ news report now. Don’t even see us out the window above the fuckin’ TV screen. Don’t even know in a few minutes I’m gonna have that big ol’ pussy wrapped around my dick like greased velvet, like itchy meat, like hot oysters with teeth—”

It must have been Denny who flung the rock.