The girl opened her mouth to speak, then checked it. On the sofa, Lita stirred, letting out a slight moan. The girl frowned and spoke in a whisper, “Better I say no more. She wakes up, she will hear.”

“She ain’t wakin’ up yet. Come on, say what you wanna say.”

“Is perhaps not important.”

“Say it,” he urged.

“Well—at first today, when she comes downstairs, everything is pleasant. Like always, she says good morning.”

“What time was that?”

“Just a little while ago. Always she sleeps until middle of day. So then she sits at table and I bring the coffee and toast and she starts to drink the coffee and read the newspaper. Is something she sees on front page.”

“You sure it was the front page?”

The girl nodded emphatically. “I was standing near table. She sits there looking at front page with her eyes coming out of her face. She jumps up and knocks over chair; and coffee spills all over the floor. She walks around saying terrible things, dirty words.”

“Where’s that newspaper?” Corey cut in.

“In wastebasket. In kitchen.”

“Wait here,” Corey said. “If she comes to, tell her I went to the kitchen to get her some water.”

He hurried from the parlor. In the kitchen he reached into the wastebasket and took out the crumpled newspaper. The pages were disarranged. He leafed through them, came to the front page and scanned the headlines. The banner headline told of another flare-up in the Middle East. There was a three-column write-up dealing with a plane crash costing seventeen lives. And a prominent politician was accused of embezzling public funds. In the lower left hand corner of the page there was a single column headline. It read, “Two Die In Gun Battle.” He focused on the first paragraph, and then the short paragraphs that followed. The final paragraph stated that the two men who had obviously slain each other were mobsters with criminal records and it gave their names. Macy and Lattimore.

Corey tossed the newspaper into the wastebasket, then went to the sink and filled a glass with water. He returned to the parlor, where the East Indian girl was straightening up the room, setting the chairs in their proper places and cleaning the littered carpet. On the sofa, Lita was slowly coming to her senses, grimacing with genuine confusion as she managed to sit up. Corey handed her the water glass. She sipped some water, took several deep breaths, then murmured, “Thank you.”