That is how Babe plays.

She comes back to the table stooped, trembling, nervous, old.

“That was beautiful, Babe,” Rabbit tells her.

“It was,” says another voice. A small white girl is standing there prim, in a white dress casual and dirty as smoke.

“Hey. Jill,” Buchanan says.

“Hi Buck. Skeeter, hi.”

So Skeeter is his name. He scowls and looks at the cigarette of which there is not even butt enough to call a roach.

“Jilly-love,” Buchanan says, standing until his thighs scrape the table edge, “allow me to introduce. Harry the Rabbit Angstrom, he works at the printing plant with me, along with his daddy.”

“He has a daddy?” Jill asks, still looking at Skeeter, who will not look at her.

“Jilly, you go sit in here where I am,” Buchanan says. “I’ll go get a chair from Rufe.”

“Down, baby,” Skeeter says. “I’m splitting.” No one offers to argue with him. Perhaps they are all as pleased as Rabbit to see him go.

Buchanan chuckles, he rubs his hands. His eyes keep in touch with all of them, even though Babe seems to be dozing. He says to Jill, “How about a beverage? A 7-Up? Rufe can make a lemonade even.”

“Nothing,” Jill says. Teaparty manner. Hands in lap. Thin arms. Freckles. Rabbit scents in her the perfume of class. She excites him.

“Maybe she’d like a real drink,” he says. With a white woman here he feels more in charge. Negroes, you can’t blame them, haven’t had his advantages. Slave ships, cabins, sold down the river, Ku Klux Klan, James Earl Ray: Channel 44 keeps having these documentaries all about it.

“I’m under age,” Jill tells him politely.

Rabbit says, “Who cares?”

She answers, “The police.”

“Not up the street they wouldn’t mind so much,” Buchanan explains, “if the girl halfway acted the part, but down here they get a touch fussy.”

“The fuzz is fussy,” Babe says dreamily. “The fuzz is our fussy friends. The fuzzy motherfuckers fuss.”

“Don’t, Babe,” Jill begs. “Don’t pretend.”

“You let your old black mamma have a buzz on,” Babe says. “Don’t I take good care of you mostly?”

“How would the police know if this kid has a drink?” Rabbit asks, willing to be indignant.

Buchanan makes his high short wheeze. “Friend Harry, they’d just have to turn their heads.”

“There’re cops in here?”

“Friend”—and from the way he sidles closer Harry feels he’s found another father—“if it weren’t for po-lice spies, poor Jimbo’s wouldn’t sell two beers a night. Po-lice spies are the absolute backbone of local low life. They got so many plants going, that’s why they don’t dare shoot in riots, for fear of killing one of their own.”

“Like over in York.”

Jill asks Rabbit, “Hey. You live in Brewer?” He sees that she doesn’t like his being white in here, and smiles without answering. Screw you, little girl.

Buchanan answers for him. “Lady, does he live in Brewer? If he lived any more in Brewer he’d be a walking advertisement. He’d be the Owl Pretzel owl. I don’t think this fella’s ever gotten above Twelfth Street, have you Harry?”