“You have your date,” Janice tells him.

“We ought to get a color television, the pro football is a lot better.”

“Who’s this we?”

“Oh—me and Pop and Nelson and Mom. And Mim.”

“Why don’t you move over on that bed?”

“You have your bed. Over there.”

She stands there, firm-footed on the wall-to-wall carpet without stockings, nice-ankled. Her dull wool skirt is just short enough to show her knees. They have boxy edges. Nice. She asks, “What is this, a put-down?”

“Who am I to put you down? The swingingest broad on Eisenhower Avenue.”

“I’m not so sure I like you anymore.”

“I didn’t know I had that much to lose.”

“Come on. Shove over.”

She throws the old camel loden coat over the plastic chair beneath the motel regulations and the fire inspector’s certificate. Being puzzled darkens her eyes on him. She pulls off her sweater and as she bends to undo her skirt the bones of her shoulders ripple in long quick glints like a stack of coins being spilled. She hesitates in her slip. “Are you going to get under the covers?”

“We could,” Rabbit says, yet his body is as when a fever leaves and the nerves sink down like veins of water into sand. He cannot begin to execute the energetic transitions contemplated: taking off his clothes, walking that long way to the bathroom. He should probably wash in case she wants to go down on him. Then suppose he comes too soon and they are back where they’ve always been. Much safer to lie here enjoying the sight of her in her slip; he had been lucky to choose a little woman, they keep their shape better than big ones. She looked older than twenty at twenty but doesn’t look that much older now, at least angry as she is, black alive in her eyes. “You can get in but don’t expect anything, I’m still pretty screwed up.” Lately he has lost the ability to masturbate; nothing brings him up, not even the image of a Negress with nipples like dowel-ends and a Hallowe’en pumpkin instead of a head.

“I’ll say,” Janice says. “Don’t expect anything from me either. I just don’t want to have to shout between the beds.”

With heroic effort Rabbit pushes himself up and walks the length of the rug to the bathroom. Returning naked, he holds his clothes in front of him and ducks into the bed as if into a burrow, being chased. He feels particles of some sort bombarding him. Janice feels skinny, strange, snaky-cool, the way she shivers tight against him immediately; the shock on his skin makes him want to sneeze. She apologizes: “They don’t heat these places very well.”

“Be November pretty soon.”

“Isn’t there a thermostat?”

“Yeah. I see it. Way over in the corner. You can go turn it up if you want.”

“Thanks. The man should do that.”

Neither moves. Harry says, “Hey. Does this remind you of Linda Hammacher’s bed?” She was the girl who when they were all working at Kroll’s had an apartment in Brewer she let Harry and Janice use.