“Oh those fucking poor Indians,” Harry says. “What were we supposed to do, let ’em have the whole continent for a campfire site?” Sorry, Tonto.

“If we had, it’d be in better shape than it is now.”

“And we’d be nowhere. They were in the way.”

“Fair enough,” Stavros says. “Now you’re in their way.” He adds, “Paleface.”

“Let ’em come,” Rabbit says, and really is, at this moment, a defiant bastion. The tender blue flame has become cold fire in his eyes. He stares them down. He stares at Janice and she is dark and tense: an Indian squaw. He’d like to massacre her.

Then his son says, his voice strained upward through choked-down tears, “Dad, we’re going to be late for the movie!”

Rabbit looks at his watch and sees they have four minutes to get there. The kid is right.

Stavros tries to help, fatherly like men who aren’t fathers, who think kids can be fooled about essentials. “The opening part’s the dullest, Nellie, you won’t miss any of the space parts. You got to try some baklava for dessert.”

“I’ll miss the cave men,” Nelson says, the choking almost complete, the tears almost risen.

“I guess we should go,” Rabbit tells the two other adults.

“That’s rude to Charlie,” Janice says. “Really rude. Anyway I won’t be able to stay awake during this interminable movie without coffee.” To Nelson: “Baklava is really yummy. It’s honey and flakes of thin dough, just the kind of dry thing you love. Try to be considerate, Nelson, your parents so rarely get to eat in a restaurant.”

Torn, Rabbit suggests, “Or you could try that other stuff you wanted for the main deal, mellow patties or whatever.”

The tears do come; the kid’s tense face breaks. “You promised,” he sobs, unanswerably, and hides his face against the white bare wall.

“Nelson, I am disappointed in you,” Janice tells him.

Stavros says to Rabbit, tucking that pencil behind his ear again, “If you want to run now, she could get her coffee and I’ll drop her off at the movie house in ten minutes.”

“That’s a possibility,” Janice says slowly, her face opening cautiously, a dull flower.

Rabbit tells Stavros, “O.K., great. Thanks. You’re nice to do that. You’re nice to put up with us at all, sorry if I said anything too strong. I just can’t stand to hear the U.S. knocked, I’m sure it’s psychological. Janice, do you have money? Charlie, you tell her how much we owe.”

Stavros repeats that masterful small gesture of palm outward, “You owe zilch. On me.” There can be no argument. Standing, himself in a hurry to see the cave men (raw meat? a bone turning into a spaceship?), Rabbit experiences, among them here, in this restaurant where the Penn Park couple are paying their bill as if laying a baby to rest, keen family happiness: it prompts him to say to Janice, to cheer Nelson up further, “Remind me tomorrow to call your father about those baseball tickets.”