Skeeter asks down into her, “Who’s your Lord Jesus, Jill honey?”

“You are.”

“I am, right?”

“Right.”

“You love me more’n you love yourself?”

“Much more.”

“What do you see when you look at me, Jill honey?”

“I don’t know.”

“You see a giant lily, right?”

“Right. You promised.”

“Love my cock?”

“Yes.”

“Love my jism, sweet Jill? Love it in your veins?”

“Yes. Please. Shoot me. You promised.”

“I your Savior, right? Right?”

“You promised. You must. Skeeter.”

“O.K. Tell me I’m your Savior.”

“You are. Hurry. You did promise.”

“O.K.” Skeeter explains hurriedly. “I’ll fix her up. You go upstairs, Chuck. I don’t want you to see this.”

“I want to see it.”

“Not this. It’s bad, man. Bad, bad, bad. It’s shit. Stay clean, you in deep enough trouble on account of me without being party to this, right? Split. I’m begging, man.”

Rabbit understands. They are in country. They have taken a hostage. Everywhere out there, there are unfriendlies. He checks the front door, staying down below the three windows echoing the three chime-tones. He sneaks into the kitchen. Nobody is there. He slips the bolt across, in the door that opens from the garage. Sidling to make his shadow narrow, he climbs upstairs. At Nelson’s door he listens for the sound of unconscious breathing. He hears the boy’s breath rasp, touching bottom. In his own bedroom, the streetlamp prints negative spatters of the maple leaves on his wallpaper. He gets into bed in his underwear, in case he must rise and run; as a child, in summer, he would have to sleep in his underwear when the wash hadn’t dried on the line. Rabbit listens to the noises downstairs—clicking, clucking kitchen noises, of a pan being put on the stove, of a bit of glass clinking, of footsteps across the linoleum, the sounds that have always made him sleepy, of Mom up, of the world being tended to. His thoughts begin to dissolve, though his heart keeps pounding, waves breaking on Jill’s white valentine, stamped on his retinas like the sun. Offset versus letterpress, offset never has the bite of the other, looks greasy, the wave of the future. She slips into bed beside him; her valentine nestles cool against his belly and silken limp cock. He has been asleep. He asks her, “Is it late?”

Jill speaks very slowly. “Pretty late.”

“How do you feel?”

“Better. For now.”

“We got to get you to a doctor.”

“It won’t help.”

He has a better idea, so obvious he cannot imagine why he has never thought of it before. “We got to get you back to your father.”

“You forget. He’s dead.”

“Your mother, then.”

“The car’s dead.”

“We’ll get it out of hock.”

“It’s too late,” Jill tells him. “It’s too late for you to try to love me.”

He wants to answer, but there is a puzzling heavy truth in this that carries him under, his hand caressing the inward dip of her waist, a warm bird dipping toward its nest.