“What an elegant little nose,” she says, of his, and pinches it. “That’s right. Skeeter and I had iced tea this afternoon.” She keeps caressing him, rubbing against him, making him sad. “You’re elegant all over,” she says. “You’re an enormous snowman, twinkling all over, except you don’t have a carrot for a nose, you have it here.”

“Hey,” he says, hopping backwards.

Jill tells him urgently, “I like you there better than Skeeter, I think being circumcised makes men ugly.”

“Can you make the supper? Maybe you should go up and lie down.”

“I hate you when you’re so uptight,” she tells him, but without hate, in a voice swinging as a child wandering home swings a basket, “can I cook the supper, I can do anything, I can fly, I can make men satisfied, I can drive a white car, I can count in French up to any number; look!”—she pulls her dress way up above her waist—“I’m a Christmas tree!”

But the supper comes to the table badly cooked. The lamb chops are rubbery and blue near the bone, the beans crunch underdone in the mouth. Skeeter pushes his plate away. “I can’t eat this crud. I ain’t that primitive, right?”

Nelson says, “It tastes all right, Jill.”

But Jill knows, and bows her thin face. Tears fall onto her plate. Strange tears, less signs of grief than chemical condensations: tears she puts forth as a lilac puts forth buds. Skeeter keeps teasing her. “Look at me, woman. Hey you cunt, look me in the eye. What do you see?”

“I see you. All sprinkled with sugar.”

“You see Him, right?”

“Wrong.”

“Look over at those drapes, honey. Those ugly home-made drapes where they sort of blend into the wallpaper.”

“He’s not there, Skeeter.”

“Look at me. Look.”

They all look. Since coming to live with them, Skeeter has aged; his goatee has grown bushy, his skin has taken on a captive’s taut glaze. He is not wearing his glasses tonight.

“Skeeter, He’s not there.”

“Keep looking at me, cunt. What do you see?”

“I see—a chrysalis of mud. I see a black crab. I just thought, an angel is like an insect, they have six legs. Isn’t that true? Isn’t that what you want me to say?”

Skeeter tells them about Vietnam. He tilts his head back as if the ceiling is a movie screen. He wants to do it justice but is scared to let it back in. “It was where it was coming to an end,” he lets out slowly. “There was no roofs to stay under, you stood out in the rain like a beast, you slept in holes in the ground with the roots poking through, and, you know, you could do it. You didn’t die of it. That was interesting. It was like you learned there was life on another world. In the middle of a recon action, a little old gook in one of them hats would come out and try to sell you a chicken. There were these little girls pretty as dolls selling you smack along the road in those little cans the press photogs would throw away, right? It was very complicated, there isn’t any net”—he lifts his hand—“to grab it all in.”