He confesses to her, “Not like I should have. She was sort of out of my class.” Saying this makes him feel guilty, he imagines how hurt Jill would be hearing it, so to right himself he accuses Janice: “If you’d stayed in there, she’d still be alive somewhere.”

Her eyes lift quickly. “No you don’t. Don’t try to pin that rap on me, Harry Angstrom. Whatever happened in there was your trip.” Her trip drowns babies; his burns girls. They were made for each other. She offers to bring the truth into neutral. “Peggy says the Negro was doping her, that’s what Billy says Nelson told him.”

“She wanted it, he said. The Negro.”

“Strange he got away.”

“Underground Railroad.”

“Did you help him? Did you see him after the fire?”

“Slightly. Who says I did?”

“Nelson.”

“How did he know?”

“He guessed.”

“I drove him south into the county and let him off in a cornfield.”

“I hope he’s not ever going to come back. I’d call the police, I mean, I would if—” Janice lets the thought die, premature.

Rabbit feels heightened and frozen by this giant need for tact; he and she seem to be slowly revolving, afraid of jarring one another away. “He promised he won’t.” Only in glory.

Relieved, Janice gestures toward the half-burned house. “It’s worth a lot of money,” she says. “The insurance company wants to settle for eleven thousand. Some man talked to Daddy and offered nineteen-five as is. I guess the lot is worth eight or nine by itself, this is becoming such a fashionable area.”

“I thought Brewer was dying.”

“Only in the middle.”

“I tell you what. Let’s sell the bastard.”

“Let’s.”

They shake hands. He twirls the car keys in front of her face. “Lemme drive you back to your parents’.”

“Do we have to go there?”

“You could come to my place and visit Mom. She’d love to see you. She can hardly talk now.”

“Let’s save that,” Janice says. “Couldn’t we just drive around?”

“Drive around? I’m not sure I still know how to drive.”

“Peggy says you drove her Chrysler.”

“Gee. A person doesn’t have many secrets in this county.”

As they drive east on Weiser toward the city, she asks, “Can your mother manage the afternoon alone?”

“Sure. She’s managed a lot of them.”

“I’m beginning to like your mother, she’s quite nice to me, over the phone, when I can understand what she’s saying.”

“She’s mellowing. Dying I guess does that to you.” They cross the bridge and drive up Weiser in the heart of Brewer, past the Wallpaper Boutique, the roasted peanut newsstand, the expanded funeral home, the great stores with the façades where the pale shadow of the neon sign for the last owner underlies the hopeful bright sign the new owners have put up, the new trash disposal cans with tops like flying saucers, the blank marquees of the deserted movie palaces. They pass Pine Street and the Phoenix Bar. He announces, “I ought to be out scouting printshops for a job, maybe move to another city. Baltimore might be a good idea.”