He stood gazing at her, his head quivering with anger, his color like new brick. He parted his lips to speak and shut them again. She faced him. The room smelled of wet wool, sweat, fear, coffee. After a long moment he turned his back to her and began picking up the broken china from the sink. Then he stood like that, not moving. After a moment one hand lifted from the sink heaped with shards. He piled them carefully on the drainboard. His back to her, he said, “So she’s all right?”

“Go see yourself. Take up whatever it is that fat man wants and see your wife. She’s fine.”

He then turned, his face now thoughtful. He nodded. “She knew what she was up to. She’d asked me, I’d have been hard pressed.” He paused, glanced toward the hall and went on, “She strike you as being not within reason?”

Connie smiled. “She’s ferocious all right.”

“Yuht.” He would not grin back but said, “So how’s that Pete ride?”

“Kind of broad but wicked smooth. Why’d you lose your hurry to get upstairs?”

“Thought I’d let things settle out with the three of them first.” He shook his head. “That Hurdle’s a pushy little son of a gun, idn’t he?”

“More a popgun than anything else.”

“Well,” said Norman, “I’m going upstairs.”

The doctor had lighted a lamp in the upstairs hall and was tilted back in a straight chair there with his heels up on a rung. He scanned them as they came, his face wrung in smirked disgust. “I’m no use here. The colored girl won’t allow examination or cooperate otherwise. The hag Ballou sits in the rocker chirping laughter like a squirrel. A pair of monkeys the two of them.”

“Shut that.”

“You’ll carry me back overstreet.”

“I’ll carry you nowhere right now.” Norman opened the bedroom door and stepped in. As he did the doctor said, “My fee’s the same I sit here or deliver the child.”

Connie looked down at him as she passed into the room. “Thank goodness for that,” she said. “We can all rest easy now.”

Marthe had the lamps down and the room was golden. She sat in a corner working a cat’s-cradle, her hands up before her with spread fingers, the geometry of strings taut and everchanging as her erect fingers dipped and lifted, her hair a waterfall onto her shoulders. The room redolent of her wood-smoked woman and the stale mint tea and underlying all that the faint taint of blood. Leah was still up against the pillows, her head back deep into them and her arms spread over the covers in ease. On the night-table the washbasin stained in a swirled stream. A clot of damp cloth also stained beside the door.

Norman went to the bedside and stood over it, looking down. She looked up at him, her face relaxed, without expression. As if waiting for him. She said, “Hey there, Norman.”