Annie choked back a kind of wail of protest. Where had it come from? She hadn’t had anything to drink—she liked alcohol but was afraid of it because it made her talk too much. She pushed her way down to a little hall and opened a door to a small bathroom. She was coughing violently; she covered her face with her greasy fingers. A magazine reproduction of the Mona Lisa had been pasted over the mirror above the sink.

“Are you all right, honey?” asked a liquid voice outside the door. With a mighty effort, Annie cleared her throat…“Fine,” she said, “just caught a piece of chicken in a tooth.”

The door opened, and Mrs. Poole, her barbaric loop earrings swinging, looked at her tenderly. “You sure?”

Lord, she was pretty! Imagine looking like that!

“Ah, now,” said Mrs. Poole. “Christmas makes us all miserable.” She took a firm grip on Annie’s hand and led her back to the party room. Walter was standing in the middle of the room, shouting that the oppressed colonial peoples of the world would one day join with the downtrodden Negroes of the American South and rise up, and—“Blah! Blah! Blah!” screamed Leonard Poole and fell, laughing, against Walter’s back. No one paid them any attention.

“I have to put the children to bed,” said Mrs. Poole softly. “You come along with me.”

Annie followed her and the children to a tiny hot room. Two unmade narrow cots stood against opposite walls. The children murmured sleepily, holding their mother’s arms, the little girl sliding Mrs. Poole’s bracelets up and down her fine skin. A new doll sat on one pillow. The boy asked for his truck and his mother said no, it might hurt him if he rolled over on it in his sleep. Kisses. The slow drawing up of the blankets.

Mrs. Poole led Annie to a larger bedroom and sat her down on a bench in front of an elaborate dressing table. “It’s the only thing I brought with me from New Orleans,” Mrs. Poole explained. “Leonard had a fit, said I was no painter’s wife. I told him I was his wife…I had to have a little token of past glory.” A slender volume, The Prophet, lay next to an empty perfume bottle. From its sepia-colored jacket, a frail face gazed out with an expression of mild lunacy. Annie picked it up. “One of his students gave it to Len. We haven’t read it, but my little girl says the man on the cover is God…Now, look here. Your hair’s all wrong like that, braided up so tight.”

She took Annie’s hair down, throwing the rubber bands into a basket. “They’ll ruin your hair, break the ends,” she said. She brushed and combed the long mane. Annie watched her drowsily in the mirror as she made a thick chignon and pinned it in place. She felt an extraordinary peacefulness. Mrs. Poole suddenly laughed. “My little girl just hates to have her hair brushed. Now, here. I’m giving you this lipstick. It makes me look like a gypsy. I’ve only used it once or twice. How old are you anyhow? Seventeen, I bet. Leonard says you’re a wonderful model, so quiet.”