She nudges closer and her arm encircles his thick waist. “I feel you’re a funny big teddy bear my Daddy has given me. He used to bring home these extravagant Steiff toys from F.A.O. Schwarz’s in New York, giraffes six feet high that cost five hundred dollars, you couldn’t do anything with them, they’d just stand around taking up space. Mother hated them.”

“Thanks a lot.” Sluggishly he rolls over to face her.

“Other times, when you’re over me, I feel you’re an angel. Piercing me with a sword. I feel you’re about to announce something, the end of the world, and you say nothing, just pierce me. It’s beautiful.”

“Do you love me?”

“Please, Harry. Since that God thing I went through I just can’t focus that way on anybody.”

“Is Skeeter out of focus for you too?”

“He’s horrible. He really is. He feels all scaly, he’s so bitter.”

“Then why in holy hell—?”

She kisses him to stop his voice. “Shh. He’ll hear.” Sounds travel freely down the stairs, through the house of thin partitions. The rooms are quadrants of one rustling heart. “Because I must, Harry. Because whatever men ask of me, I must give, I’m not interested in holding anything for myself. It all melts together anyway, you see.”

“I don’t see.”

“I think you do. Otherwise why did you let him stay? You had him beaten. You were killing him.”

“Yeah, that was nice. I thought I was out of shape worse than I am.”

“Yet now he’s here.” She flattens her body against his; it feels transparent. He can see through her to the blue window beyond, moonlit, giving onto the garage roof, composition shingling manufactured with a strange shadow-line, to give an illusion of thickness. She confesses, in such a whisper it may be only a thought he overhears, “He frightens me.”

“Me too.”

“Half of me wanted you to kick him out. More than half.”

“Well,” and he smiles unseen, “if he is the next Jesus, we got to keep on His good side.” Her body broadens as if smiling. It has grown plain that the betrayals and excitements of the day must resolve into their making love now. He encloses her skull in his hands, caressing the spinelike ridges behind the seashell curve of her ears, palming the broad curve of the whole, this cup, sealed upon a spirit. Knowing her love is coming, he sees very clearly, as we see in the etched hour before snow. He amends, “Also, Janice has been doing some things out of the way, so I have to do things out of the way.”

“To pay her back.”

“To keep up with her.”

The item was narrow-measure:

Sentenced for Possession

Eight local men and one woman were given six-month sentences for possession of marijuana Thursday.

The defendants appearing before Judge Milton F. Schoffer had been apprehended in a police raid on Jimbo’s Lounge, Weiser Street, early in the morning of August 24.

The female among them, Miss Beatrice Greene, a well-known local entertainer under her nom de plume of “Babe,” had her sentence suspended, with one year’s probation, as were four of the men. Two minors were remanded to juvenile court.