V.

"I know a girl I can take along," said he, "I suppose, her name is Rachel Owlglass, who lives on 112th."

Ruby fiddled with the catches on her overnight bag. "Your wife wouldn't like that too much. Why don't McClintic and I just go up in the Triumph. You shouldn't go to that trouble."

"My wife," angry all at once, "is a fucking Fascist, I think you should know that."

"But if you brought along -"

"All I want to do is go now somewhere out of town, away from New York, away to where things you expect to happen do happen. Didn't they ever use to? You're still young enough. It's still that way for kids, isn't it?"

"I'm not that young," she whispered. "Please Roony, be easy."

"Girl, if it isn't Lenox it will be someplace. Further east, Walden Pond, ha ha. No. No, that's public beach now where slobs from Boston who'd be at Revere Beach except for too many other slobs like themselves already there crowding them out, these slobs sit on the rocks around Walden Pond belching, drinking beer they've cleverly smuggled in past the guards, checking the young stuff, hating their wives, their evil-smelling kids who urinate in the water on the sly . . . Where? Where in Massachusetts. Where in the country."

"Stay home."

"No. If only to see how bad Lenox is."

"Baby, baby," she sang soft, absent: "Have you heard,/ Did you know/ There ain't no dope in Lenox."

"How did you do it."

"Burnt cork, she told him. "Like a minstrel show."

"No," he started across the room away from her. "You didn't use anything. Didn't have to. No makeup. Mafia, you know, thinks you're German. I thought you were Puerto Rican before Rachel told me. Is that what you are, something we can look at and see whatever we want? Protective coloration?"

"I have read books," said Paola, "and listen, Roony, nobody knows what a Maltese is. The Maltese think they're a pure race and the Europeans think they're Semitic, Hamitic, crossbred with North Africans, Turks and God knows what all. But for McClintic, for anybody else round here I am a Negro girl named Ruby -" he snorted - "and don't tell them, him, please man."

"I'll never tell, Paola." Then McClintic was back. "You two wait till I find a friend."

"Rach," beamed McClintic. "Good show." Paola looked upset.

"I think us four, out in the country -" his words were for Paola, he was drunk, he was messing it up - "we could make it, it would be a fresh thing, clean, a beginning."

"Maybe I should drive," McClintic said. It would give him something to concentrate on till things got easier, out of the city. And Roony looked drunk. More than that, maybe.

"You drive," Winsome agreed, weary. God, let her be there. All the way down to 112th (and McClintic gunned it) he wondered what he'd do if she wasn't there.

She wasn't there. The door was open, noteless. She usually left some word. She usually locked doors. Winsome went inside. Two or three lights were on. Nobody was there.

Only her slip tossed awry on the bed. He picked it up, black and slippery. Slippery slip, he thought and kissed it by the left breast. The phone rang. He let it ring. Finally:

"Where is Esther?" She sounded out of breath.

"You wear nice lingerie," Winsome said.

"Thank you. She hasn't come in?"

"Beware of girls with black underwear."

"Roony, not now. She has really gone and got her ass in a sling. Could you look and see if there's a note."

"Come with me to Lenox, Massachusetts."

Patient sigh.

"There's no note. No nothing."

"Would you look anyway. I'm in the subway."

"Come with me to Lenox [Roony sang],

It's August in Nueva York Ciudad;

You've told so many good men nix;

Please don't put me down with a dark, "see you Dad" . . .

Refrain [beguine tempo]:

Come out where the wind is cool and the streets are colonial lanes.

Though the ghosts of a million Puritans pace in our phony old brains,

I still get an erection when I hear the reed section of the Boston Pops,

Come and leave this Bohemia, life's really dreamy away from the JDs and cops.

Lenox is grand, are you digging me, Rachel,

Broadening a's by the width of an h'll

Be something we've never tried . . .

Up in the country of Alden and Walden,

Country to glow sentimental and bald in

With you by my side,

How can it go wrong?

Hey, Rachel [snap, snap-on one and three]: you coming along . . ."

She'd hung up halfway through. Winsome sat by the phone, holding the slip. Just sat.

II

Esther had indeed got her ass in a sling. Her emotional ass, anyway. Rachel had found her earlier that afternoon crying down in the laundry room.

"Wha," Rachel said. Esther only bawled louder.

"Girl," gently. "Tell Rach."

"Get off my back." So they chased each other around the washers and centrifuges and in and out of the flapping sheets, rag rugs and brassieres of the drying room.