“Hey, how is old Ollie?”

Peggy shrugs. “He calls. Usually to cancel his Sunday with Billy. You know he never was the family man you are.”

Rabbit is surprised to be called that. He is getting too tame. He asks her, “How does he spend his time?”

“Oh,” Peggy says, and awkwardly turns her body so Rabbit sees pricked out in windowlight the tonic bubbles in her drink, which is surprisingly near drunk, “he rattles around Brewer with a bunch of creeps. Musicians, mostly. They go to Philadelphia a lot, and New York. Last winter he went skiing at Aspen and told me all about it, including the girls. He came back so brown in the face, I cried for days. I could never get him outdoors, when we had the place over on Franklin Street. How do you spend your time?”

“I work. I mope around the house with the kid. We look at the boob tube and play catch in the back yard.”

“Do you mope for her, Harry?” With a clumsy shrug of her hip the woman moves off her radiator perch, her walleyes staring to either side of him so he thinks he is her target and flinches. But she floats past him and, clattering, refills her drink. “Want another?”

“No thanks, I’m still working on this one. I gotta go in a minute.”

“So soon,” she croons unseen, as if remembering the beginning of a song in her tiny kitchenette. From far below their windows arises the razzing, coughing sound of the boys on the mini-bike. The noise swoops and swirls, a rude buzzard. Beyond it across the river hangs the murmur of Brewer traffic, constant like the sea; an occasional car toots, a wink of phosphorescence. From the kitchenette, as if she had been baking the thought in the oven, Peggy calls, “She’s not worth it.” Then her body is at his back, her voice upon his head. “I didn’t know,” she says, “you loved her so much. I don’t think Janice knew it either.”

“Well, you get used to somebody. Anyway, it’s an insult. With a wop like that. You should hear him run down the U.S. government.”

“Harry, you know what I think. I’m sure you know what I think.”

He doesn’t. He has no idea. She seems to think he’s been reading thoughts printed on her underpants.

“I think she’s treated you horribly. The last time we had lunch together, I told her so. I said, ‘Janice, your attempts to justify yourself do not impress me. You’ve left a man who came back to you when you needed him, and you’ve left your son at a point in his development when it’s immensely important to have a stable home setting.’ I said that right to her face.”

“Actually the kid goes over to the lot pretty much and sees her there. She and Stavros take him out to eat. In a way it’s like he gained an uncle.”

“You’re so forgiving, Harry! Ollie would have strangled me; he’s still immensely jealous. He’s always asking me who my boyfriends are.”