“Her guitar,” the woman repeated, and perhaps having forgotten that her daughter played brought her eyes down, made her round face red and brought the man over to comfort her, a man blank like men in advertisements, his coat impeccable and in the breast pocket a three-folded maroon handkerchief. “I have nothing,” she wailed, “she didn’t even leave me a note when she left.” And her voice had shed its sexy roughness, become high and helpless; it was Jill again, begging, Hold me, help me, I’m all shit inside, everything is crashing in.

Harry turned from the sight. The chief, leading him out the side door, said, “Rich bitch, if she’d given the girl half a reason to stay home she’d be alive today. I see things like this every week. All our bad checks are being cashed. Keep your nose clean, Angstrom, and take care of your own.” A coach’s paternal punch on the arm, and Harry was sent back into the world.

“Pop, how about a quick one?”

“Not today, Harry, not today. We have a surprise for you at home. Mim’s coming.”

“You sure?” The vigil for Mim is months old; she keeps sending postcards, always with a picture of a new hotel on them.

“Yep. She called your mother this morning from New York City, I talked to your mother this noon. I should have told you but you’ve had so much on your mind I thought, Might as well save it. Things come in bunches, that’s the mysterious truth. We get numb and the Lord lets us have it, that’s how His mercy works. You lose your wife, you lose your house, you lose your job. Mim comes in the same day your mother couldn’t sleep a wink for nightmares, I bet she’s been downstairs all day trying to tidy up if it kills her, you wonder what’s next.” But he has just said it: Mom’s death is next. The number 16A bus joggles, sways, smells of exhaust. The Mt. Judge way, there are fewer Negroes than toward West Brewer. Rabbit sits on the aisle; Pop, by the window, suddenly hawks and spits. The spittle runs in a weak blur down the dirty glass. “Goddammit, but that burns me,” he explains, and Rabbit sees they have passed a church, the big gray Presbyterian at Weiser and Park: on its steps cluster some women in overcoats, two young men with backwards collars, nuns and schoolchildren carrying signs and unlit candles protesting the war. This is Moratorium Day. “I don’t have much use for Tricky Dick and never have,” Pop is explaining, “but the poor devil, he’s trying to do the decent thing over there, get us out so the roof doesn’t fall in until after we leave, and these queer preachers so shortsighted they can’t see across the pulpit go organizing these parades that all they do is convince the little yellow Reds over there they’re winning. If I were Nixon I’d tax the bejesus out of the churches, it’d take some of the burden off the little man. Old Cushing up there in Boston must be worth a hundred million just by his lonesome.”