“Hey there Babychuck,” Skeeter calls. “You want to whip me, right?” Skeeter hops up, does a brittle bewitched dance, strips off his shirt so violently one cuff button flies off and strikes the lampshade. His skinny chest, naked, is stunning in its articulation: every muscle sharp in its attachment to the bone. Rabbit has never seen such a chest except on a crucifix. “What’s next?” Skeeter shouts. “Wanna whup my bum, right? Here it is!” His hands have undone his fly button and are on his belt, but Nelson has fled the room. His sobbing comes downstairs, diminishing.

“O.K., that’s enough,” Rabbit says.

“Read a little bitty bit more,” Skeeter begs.

“You get carried away.”

“That damn child of yours, thinks he owns this cunt.”

“Stop calling her a cunt.”

“Man, wasn’t this Jesus gave her one.” Skeeter cackles.

“You’re horrible,” Jill tells him, drawing the torn cloth together.

He flips one piece aside. “Moo.”

“Harry, help me.”

“Read the book, Chuck, I’ll be good. Read me the next paper clip.”

Above them, Nelson’s footsteps cross the floor. If he reads, the boy will be safe. “Alas, that the one?”

“That’ll do. Little Jilly, you love me, right?”

“Alas, this immense wealth, this gilded splendor, this profusion of luxury, this exemption from toil, this life of ease, this sea of plenty, were not the pearly gates they seemed—”

“You’re my pearly gate, girl.”

“The poor slave, on his hard pine plank, scantily covered with his thin blanket, slept more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who reclined upon his downy pillow. Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance. Lurking beneath the rich and tempting viands were invisible spirits of evil, which filled the self-deluded gormandizer with aches and pains, passions uncontrollable, fierce tempers, dyspepsia, rheumatism, lumbago, and gout, and of these the Lloyds had a full share.”

Beyond the edge of the page Skeeter and Jill are wrestling; in gray flashes her underpants, her breasts are exposed. Another flash, Rabbit sees, is her smile. Her small spaced teeth bare in silent laughter; she is liking it, this attack. Seeing him spying, Jill starts, struggles angrily out from under, hugs the rags of her dress around her, and runs from the room. Her footsteps flicker up the stairs. Skeeter blinks at her flight; he resettles the great pillow of his head with a sigh. “Beautiful,” is the sigh. “One more, Chuck. Read me the one where he fights back.” His carved chest melts into the beige sofa; its airfoam is covered in a plaid of green and tan and red that have rubbed and faded toward a single shade.

“You know, I gotta get up and go to work tomorrow.”

“You worried about your little dolly? Don’t you worry about that. The thing about a cunt, man, it’s just like a Kleenex, you use it and throw it away.” Hearing silence, he says, “I’m just kidding, right? To get your goat, O.K.? Come on, let’s put it back together, the next paper clip. Trouble with you, man, you’re all the time married. Woman don’t like a man who’s nothin’ but married, they want some soul that keeps ’em guessing, right? Woman stops guessing, she’s dead.”