“It’s here. You ought to see the middle of Brewer; it’s all parking lots.”

“But the things that grow here you can eat, and the sun is still some kind of friend. Out there, we hate it. We live underground. All the hotels are underground with a couple of the windows painted blue. We like it best at night, about three in the morning, when the big money comes to the crap table. Beautiful faces, Harry. Hard and blank as chips. Thousands flow back and forth without any expression. You know what I’m struck by back here, looking at the faces? How soft they are. God they’re soft. You look so soft to me, Harry. You’re soft still standing and Pop’s soft curling under. If we don’t get Janice propped back under you you’re going to curl under too. Come to think of it, Janice is not soft. She’s hard as a nut. That’s what I never liked about her. I bet I’d like her now. I should go see her.”

“Sure. Do. You can swap stories. Maybe you could get her a job on the West Coast. She’s pretty old but does great things with her tongue.”

“That’s quite a hang-up you have there.”

“I just said, nobody’s perfect. How about you? You have some specialty, or just take what comes?”

She sits up. “She really hurt you, didn’t she?” And eases back. She stares at Harry interested. Perhaps she didn’t expect in him such reserves of resentful energy. The living room is dark though the noises that reach them from outside say that children are still playing in the sun. “You’re all soft,” she says, lulling, “like slugs under fallen leaves. Out there, Harry, there are no leaves. People grow these tan shells. I have one, look.” She pulls up her pinstripe blouse and her belly is brown. He tries to picture the rest and wonders if her pussy is tinted honey-blonde to match the hair on her head. “You never see them out in the sun but they’re all tan, with flat stomach muscles. Their one flaw is, they’re still soft inside. They’re like those chocolates we used to hate, those chocolate creams, remember how we’d pick through the Christmas box they’d give us at the movie theater, taking out only the square ones and the caramels in cellophane? The other ones we hated, those dark brown round ones on the outside, all ooky inside. But that’s how people are. It embarrasses everybody but they need to be milked. Men need to be drained. Like boils. Women too for that matter. You asked me my specialty and that’s it, I milk people. I let them spill their insides on me. It can be dirty work but usually it’s clean. I went out there wanting to be an actress and that’s in a way what I got, only I take on the audience one at a time. In some ways it’s more of a challenge. So. Tell me some more about your life.”