J R

— the American Indian, who is no longer segregated on the reservation, but encouraged to take his rightful place at the side of his countrymen, in the cities, in the factories, on the farm…

— Just hang on, I’m coming over there anyway. Yeah, driving, I’ll get a ride over if… she banged down the phone, dismounting the desk in an open slide toward Mister Pecci. — Is Skinner’s car still out front? It’s a green one, this textbook salesman. He’ll ride me over…

— My wife, said Mister Pecci withdrawing a knee from the sweep of her heel, — she was one of the original Miss Rheingolds, maybe she still has a specialty number she could help you out with introducing your Rhinegold story…?

— See you all on the hungry eye, said Miss Flesch winking one of her own and threatening one of Mister Pecci’s with a sweep of the umbrella under her arm, and whether Mister diCephalis was making a last grab for it or fending it off was not clear as she passed him for the door that banged hollowly on her call to — Skinner, Mister Skinner, can you ride me over…

Mister diCephalis had by now reached and dialed the telephone, where he kept in undertone — Yes I know it that’s why I’m calling, because… from the Foundation yes they’re here now, that’s what they’re coming for, to… what? The silkworms, yes, the Kashmiri… cultural aspect of… yes. But I do want them to see you, that’s why I’m calling…

— They must be out there now they, we can’t keep them waiting… Whiteback inclined to meet the screen’s glassine stare with his own reaching the channel selector, — if there’s something on while we’re waiting for the, for Miss Flesch something in the, something…

— about money… to free the slaves and… typifying the grandeur of our natural resources and the national heritage that makes all of us proud to be Amer…

— That’s good, there…

— What is it Dan, what’s…

— I’m cleaning up this coffee she wait, wait this must be hers this book about Mozart Mozart’s letters, she…

— Look out you’re spilling those what’s all that it looks like her script, part of her script get it over to her, there’s a page under the…

— Mind moving your foot…

— There’s another one…

— the mighty Sequoia, which may reach a height of three hundred fifty feet and be almost thirty feet at the base. An age of a thousand years old is still young for the mighty Sequoia…

— Wait the pages are getting mixed up she’ll be…

— Let her straighten them out just get it over to her wait there’s one under the desk, have you got your car Dan?

— national parks. In the vast public domain, the federal government owns one hundred seventy million acres in our glorious west…

— No just hurry Dan, hurry up or she’ll come in! We thought you’d never get here… and he opened the door full on the two figures standing there as the wall clock beyond them dropped its longer hand with a click for the full minute and hung, poised to lop off a fragment of the next as Gibbs passed, looked up and saw that happen, fingering the change in his pocket on his way to the outside door and the cloudless sky filled with the even passage of the sun itself in brightness so diffuse no shadow below could keep an edge on shaded lawns where time and the day came fallen through trees with the mottled movement of light come down through water, spread up an empty walk, over gravel and empty pavement, and lawn again, lending movement to the child motionless but for fragmenting finger and opposable thumb opening, closing, the worn snap of an old change purse, staring in through the glass with an expression of unbroken and intent vacancy.

Beyond the glass, the boy inside darted a glance from his newspaper out into the purse snapped open; snapped shut, he smoothed the porous fold of the obituary page away from him, nagged his lip with a pencil and then scratched his knee with it before his foot returned to forcing back, and forth, and back, the idle vent on a floor grating, shut, open, shut, as the light on his paper dimmed with the sun abruptly pocketed in a cloud and what shadow the child beyond had cast was lost beneath the trees where she sought the greenest leaves fallen from the pin oaks shading the grass around her. The largest she found, she folded its dark face in, creasing across the veins, then folded another as carefully chosen over it, pausing with one blown here from a maple and slightly discolored, the green already run from its edges but folded at last with the others stained back outside and snapped all together into the purse, as a wind rustled those on the ground around her and touched the trees above, the cloud past, their movement scattering the sunlight against the glass, never disturbing those within.

— Rhine… G O L D! they howled into the glare of footlights, cowering round the empty table at the center of the stage.