This work soothes him. You slide up the aluminum screen, putting the summer behind you, and squirt the inside window with the blue spray, give it those big square swipes to spread it thin, and apply the tighter rubbing to remove the film and with it the dirt; it squeaks, like birdsong. Then slide the winter window down from the slot where it has been waiting since April and repeat the process; and go inside and repeat the process, twice: so that at last four flawless transparencies permit outdoors to come indoors, other houses to enter yours.

Toward five o’clock Skeeter and Jill return, by taxi. They are jubilant; through Babe they found a man willing to give them six hundred dollars for the Porsche. He drove them up-county, he examined the car, and Jill signed the registration over to him.

“What color was he?” Rabbit asks.

“He was green,” Skeeter says, showing him ten-dollar bills fanned in his hand.

Rabbit asks Jill, “Why’d you split it with him?”

Skeeter says, “I dig hostility. You want your cut, right?” His lips push, his glasses glint.

Jill laughs it off. “Skeeter’s my partner in crime,” she says.

“You want my advice, what you should do with that money?” Rabbit says. “You should get a train ticket back to Stonington.”

“The trains don’t run any more. Anyway, I thought I’d buy some new dresses. Aren’t you tired of this ratty old white one? I had to pin it up in the front and wear this sweater over it.”

“It suits you,” he says.

She takes up the challenge in his tone. “Something bugging you?”

“Just your sloppiness. You’re throwing your fucking life away.”

“Would you like me to leave? I could now.”

His arms go numb as if injected: his hands feel heavy, his palms tingly and swollen. Her nibbling mouth, her apple hardness, the sea-fan of her cedar-colored hair on their pillows in the morning light, her white valentine of packed satin. “No,” he begs, “don’t go yet.”

“Why not?”

“You’re under my skin.” The phrase feels unnatural on his lips, puffs them like a dry wind in passing; it must have been spoken for Skeeter, for Skeeter cackles appreciatively.

“Chuck, you’re learning to be a loser. I love it. The Lord loves it. Losers gonna grab the earth, right?”

Nelson returns from the football game with a bruised upper lip, his smile lopsided and happy. “They give you a hard time?” Rabbit asks.

“No, it was fun. Skeeter, you ought to play next Saturday, they asked who you were and I said you used to be a quarterback for Brewer High.”

“Quarterback, shit, I was full back, I was so small they couldn’t find me.”

“I don’t mind being small, it makes you quicker.”

“O.K.,” his father says, “see how quick you can take a bath. And for once in your life brush your hair.”

Festively Jill and Skeeter see them off to the Fosnachts. Jill straightens Rabbit’s tie, Skeeter dusts his shoulders like a Pullman porter. “Just think, honey,” Skeeter says to Jill, “our little boy’s all growed up, his first date.”