“I’m cured.”

Buchanan interposes, “Babe helped her out.”

“Babe is a beautiful person,” Jill says. “I was really a mess when Babe took me in.”

“Jilly is my sweetie,” Babe says, as suddenly as in playing she moves from one tune to another, “Jilly is my baby-love and I’m her mamma-love,” and takes her brown hands away from Harry’s to encircle the girl’s waist and hug her against the rooster-comb-red of her dress; the two are women, though one is a prune and the other a milkweed. Jill pouts in pleasure. Her mouth is lovable when it moves, Rabbit thinks, the lower lip bumpy and dry as if chapped, though this is not winter but the humid height of summer.

Buchanan is further explaining. “Fact of it is, this girl hasn’t got no place regular to go. Couple weeks ago, she comes in here, not knowing I suppose the place was mostly for soul, a little pretty girl like this get in with some of the brothers they would tear her apart limb by sweet limb”—he has to chuckle—“so Babe takes her right away under her wing. Only trouble with that is”—the fat man rustles closer, making the booth a squeeze—“Babe’s place is none too big, and anyways …”

The child flares up. “Anyways I’m not welcome.” Her eyes widen: Rabbit has not seen their color before, they have been shadowy, moving slowly, as if their pink lids are tender or as if, rejecting instruction and inventing her own way of moving through the world, she has lost any vivid idea of what to be looking for. Her eyes are green. The dry tired green, yet one of his favorite colors, of August grass.

“Jilly-love,” Babe says, hugging, “you the most welcome little white baby there could be.”

Buchanan is talking only to Rabbit, softer and softer. “You know, those things happen over York way, they could happen here, and how could we protect”—the smallest wave of his hand toward the girl lets the sentence gracefully hang; Harry is reminded of Stavros’s gestures. Buchanan ends chuckling: “We be so busy keepin’ holes out of our own skins. Dependin’ where you get caught, being black’s a bad ticket both ways!”

Jill snaps, “I’ll be all right. You two stop it now. Stop trying to sell me to this creep. I don’t want him. He doesn’t want me. Nobody wants me. That’s all right. I don’t want anybody.”

“Everybody wants somebody,” Babe says. “I don’t mind your hangin’ around my place, some gentlemen mind, is all.”

Rabbit says, “Buchanan minds,” and this perception astonishes them; the two blacks break into first shrill, then jingling, laughter, and another Stinger appears on the table between his hands, pale as lemonade.

“Honey, it’s just the visibility,” Babe then adds sadly. “You make us ever so visible.”

A silence grows like the silence when a group of adults is waiting for a child to be polite. Sullenly Jill asks Rabbit, “What do you do?”

“Set type,” Rabbit tells her. “Watch TV. Babysit.”