“Poor Jill got scared; the other kids at school would tell her not to be a self-destructive fool. Her mother, still in mourning, was being kept bus-ee, by a divorced tax lawyer from nearby Westerlee. Bad Freddy was promising her Heaven above, when all Jill wanted was his mundane love. She wanted the feel of his prick, not the prick of the needle; but Freddy would beg her, and stroke her, and sweet-talk and wheedle.”

And Rabbit begins to wonder if she has done this before, that rhyme was so slick. What hasn’t this kid done before?

“She was afraid to die”—strum, strum, pale orange hair thrashing—“he asked her why. He said the world was rotten and insane; she said she had no cause to complain. He said racism was rampant, hold out your arm; she said no white man but him had ever done her any harm. He said the first shot will just be beneath the skin; she said okay, lover, put that shit right in.” Strum strum strum. Face lifted toward them, she is a banshee, totally bled. She speaks the next line. “It was hell.”

St-r-r-um. “He kept holding her head and patting her ass, and saying relax, he’d been to life-saving class. He asked her, hadn’t he shown her the face of God? She said, Yes, thank you, but she would have been happy to settle for less. She saw that her lover with his tan skin and white smile was death; she feared him and loved him with every frightened breath. So what did Jill do?”

Silence hangs on the upbeat.

Nelson blurts, “What?”

Jill smiles. “She ran to the Stonington savings bank and generously withdrew. She hopped inside her Porsche and drove away, and that is how come she is living with you two creeps today.”

Both father and son applaud. Jill drinks deep of the beer as a reward to herself. In their bedroom, she is still in the mood, artistic elation, to be rewarded. Rabbit says to her, “Great song. But you know what I didn’t like about it?”

“What?”

“Nostalgia. You miss it. Getting stoned with Freddy.”

“At least,” she says, “I wasn’t just playing, what did you call it, happy cunt?”

“Sorry I blew my stack.”

“Still want me to go?”

Rabbit, having sensed this would come, hangs up his pants, his shirt, puts his underclothes in the hamper. The dress she has dropped on the floor he drapes on a hook in her half of the closet, her dirty panties he puts in the hamper. “No. Stay.”

“Beg me.”

He turns, a big tired man, slack-muscled, who has to rise and set type in eight hours. “I beg you to stay.”

“Take back those slaps.”

“How can I?”

“Kiss my feet.”

He kneels to comply. Annoyed at such ready compliance, which implies pleasure, she stiffens her feet and kicks so her toenails stab his cheek, dangerously near his eyes. He pins her ankles to continue his kissing. Slightly doughy, matronly ankles. Green veins on her insteps. Nice remembered locker room taste. Vanilla going rancid.