"Can't, doll. Tell ya. We can do it nice, or do it rough. Honey and Frankie can come in if you want and hold you down. Yes? You want that? Or you and I can have a party. Just the two of us. You ain't going nowhere."

The girl's face did not change. He had seen it all, and now he expected something. But there was nothing.

She said quietly, "My dad will come. My father will come and find me. You'll be sorry."

Lorlo laughed again. He felt clean and young and fit, and ready as a donkey. "Don't think so, doll." He glanced at Bette Davis on her back with the dust of cocaine in her hair. "Now go and wash. Don't be too long."

CHAPTER 19

WERE TWO PEOPLE DOWNSTAIRS on the late bus, and one of them smiled as Malach got on. The smile was not for Malach. It was a twisting up of elderly male lips that showed stained, smoker's, bad false teeth bathed in Steradent once every seven or eight days. The eyes were shiny with venom. The smiling man angled himself a little to the aisle.

"What do you think of that, then?"

The elderly woman, nothing to do with the elderly man, stretched her mouth subserviently. "Ah." And looked away.

The bus started off into the Martian-lit darkness.

Malach sat about halfway down the bus, in his black, his long legs edged a little out into the aisle. His white hair lay back behind him, gleaming like a sheet of ice.

"Get to Woolworth's soon," announced the elderly man. "Knock 'em up. Get some scissors."

The elderly woman giggled. If she had been young, she might have liked Malach's hair. It sparkled, was tactile, and savage as fur. But she was getting on now, and the wicked crime of youth was, it was wasted on the young. The man spoke again. "Yes, some good sharp scissors. That's what he needs."

Seen from the front, Malach's eyelids had lowered themselves a centimeter over the pale lapis eyes. That was all.

The bus lurched around a corner. The smiling man got up. His stop was coming. He edged past Malach, and stood near the doors. He peered back.

"He's like Goldilocks," said the man, " 'n' he?"

Malach looked up at him.

"And are you one of the three bears?" he asked politely.

But the elderly man was too entrenched in his poison to hear.

"Six years I served my country," he said. He stood straight, muffled in his dirty, musty garments of faded sick yellows and browns. On his head the properly short hair greasily coiled, laved with soap once a fortnight, otherwise washed in ashtrays. "Six years, for the likes of this."