“Like a father,” the young man says, adding, “Right?”

“—gets me so bombed out of my mind on that barrel beer I can’t remember anybody by face or name, where was I? Yes, that woman, she just upped and left him the other week, left him flat to go chasing around with some other gentleman, something like an I-talian, didn’t you say Harry?”

“A Greek.”

Babe clucks. “Honey, now what did he have you didn’t? He must of had a thumb long as this badmouth’s tongue.” She nudges her companion, who retrieves from his lips this shared cigarette, which has grown so short it must burn, and sticks out his tongue. Its whiteness shocks Rabbit; a mouthful of luminous flesh. Though fat and pale, it does not look very long. This man, Rabbit sees, is a boy; the patch of goatee is all he can grow. Harry does not like him. He likes Babe, he thinks, even though she has dried hard, a prune on the bottom of the box. In here they are all on the bottom of the box. This drink, and his hand, are the whitest thing around. Not to think of the other’s tongue. He sips. Too sweet, wicked. A thin headache promptly begins.

Buchanan is persisting, “Don’t seem right to me, healthy big man living alone with nobody now to comfort him.”

The goatee bobs. “Doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Gives the man time to think, right? Gets the thought of cunt off his back, right? Chances are he has some hobby he can do, you know, like woodwork.” He explains to Babe, “You know, like a lot of these peckerwoods have this clever thing they can do down in their basements, like stamp collecting, right? That’s how they keep making it big. Cleverness, right?” He taps his skull, whose narrowness is padded by maybe an inch of tight black wool. The texture reminds Rabbit of his mother’s crocheting, if she had used tiny metal thread. Her blue bent hands now helpless. Even in here, family sadness pokes at him, probing sore holes.

“I used to collect baseball cards,” he tells them. He hopes to excite enough rudeness from them so he can leave. He remembers the cards’ bubble-gum smell, their silken feel from the powdered sugar. He sips the Stinger.

Babe sees him make a face. “You don’t have to drink that piss.” She nudges her neighbor again. “Let’s have one more stick.”

“Woman, you must think I’m made of hay.”

“I know you’re plenty magical, that’s one thing. Off that uptight shit, the ofay here needs a lift and I’m nowhere near spaced enough to pee-form.”

“Last drag,” he says, and passes her the tiny wet butt.

She crushes it into the Sunflower Beer ashtray. “This roach is hereby dead.” And holds her thin hand palm up for a hit.

Buchanan is clucking. “Mother-love, go easy on yourself,” he tells Babe.

The other Negro is lighting another cigarette; the paper is twisted at the end and flares, subsides. He passes it to her saying, “Waste is a sin, right?”