“Sure I can hear you,” Roy replied, but his voice sounded like it was coming from downstairs. “I know all you did and are doing . . . I know it all . . .”

“That’s good.”

“You think so?” Roy opened his eyes and stared at De Lakes.

“Why did you make me do it, Roy?” he wondered, pressing his hand in an ironlike grip.

“Why did you make me do it?” came the languid weary response.

“You’re sassing me, Roy . . . Well, go ahead if it suits you. Sass away if it makes you feel better. I deserve sassin’. I deserve, oh, I don’t know what. I am so mixed up, Roy, I don’t know who I am . . .”

“Did you ever?”

“Did I ever what? My mind is sort of wandering . . . Know who I am? . . . Oh I don’t know . . .”

Sidney made dolorous whinnying sounds like those which had come from the horses awhile back when they had heard their owner scream.

“Everything comes to you in the end,” Roy began speaking now while putting his hands through Sidney’s hair, gently pulling the strands of thick yellow hair, then rearranging it gently this way, that way, then stroking his head. “By and by it all comes down on a fellow.”

“Why did you want Brian to see you nailed?” Sidney mumbled, almost too low for the scissors-­grinder to catch.

Without warning, turning away violently, Roy vomited up some more blood.

Sidney patiently, sleepily cleaned the places over which he had hemorrhaged and went then into the bathroom and emptied the basin and brought back fresh water.

Sidney got very calm then. He was looking at Roy’s breast steadily. It was the pectorals, he decided, of an Olympic runner. One could see not only all the muscles easily defined as in a school anatomy text, but he felt he could perceive also the veins and arteries and even the marrow of his bones. He leant over and kissed Roy again and again.

The wounded man opened his eyes and looked down at Sidney.

“It’s too late, Sidney,” he said, scrutinizing the man embracing him.

“No it ain’t, Roy . . . You’ll get better. See now if I ain’t right. You’ll mend. Let me call the doctor.”

“No,” Roy spoke with indifferent emphasis. “I don’t want no doctor in my house. I’m a doctor. I know more about the human body than Doc Ulric or a whole college of doctors could learn in another thousand years of study.”

“You should have nailed me to the door, Roy,” Sidney whispered.

“No, no, that wouldn’t have worked. It had to be this way.”

“Do you want me to take it in my mouth to show you,” Sidney said, for his hand had been slowly moving down toward Roy’s sex and now he held it fast.

“No.”

“I want to.”