Rita shook her head, her eyes going dead.

"Why not?"

She was a long time letting go of the explanation. "What you said. They'd be so glad to see me."

"That's what you're really afraid of, isn't it? Not the blackmail or anything like that"

"Maybe."

"You think of yourself as a snail leaving a trail of muck."

"That's me."

Julie sat down at her usual place at the low table. "Did you ever think of going to a psychiatrist for help?"

"No, ma'am." Emphatically.

"Why not? If you cut your hand... suppose you were running down the street and fell, cut yourself, and got all kinds of c.r.a.p in the wound. Wouldn't you go to a doctor and have him clean it out?"

"Maybe."

"What do you mean, maybe?"

"I'd go home first and try to take care of it myself."

"And if it got infected?"

"I do go to a doctor now. Mack insists on it. He pays the doctor for all of us."

Mack, Mac?

"All right. I've got a doctor I go to, a psychoa.n.a.lyst. She's great. You wouldn't believe the things I tell her about what goes on in my head. Wild. I'll bet there's nothing you've ever experienced in The Life that hasn't gone through my mind. I mean I'm a walking p.o.r.n shop, if you want to look at it that way."

The youngster looked at her, not believing. "s.e.x stuff?"

"You bet. I got an imagination that runs to gang rape sometimes. Sometimes I even think of G.o.d as one great big p.e.n.i.s."

Rita's eyes had become little dark b.u.t.tons. "You're saying those things because I'm a wh.o.r.e."

"You'd be surprised who I'd say them to if I thought it would mean something." The fact was she had not said them to Doctor. The fact was she had read the gang rape fantasy somewhere and the G.o.d part had just come into her head while she was talking. "I kind of like the idea that I've shocked you, if you want to know the truth. Sometimes I used to try to shock Doctor Callahan. But she caught on and she's shockproof anyway. The way I see your situation, little girl, little shocked girl... oh, my G.o.d... you are in a bind, but the bind is in your head, don't you see? Somebody who knows how to think straight and knows more about the human psyche than I do could straighten you out in a jiffy. Just by putting things, one by one, in the right place. What bugged you just now: that I said those things because you're a wh.o.r.e? Or was it because I said them?"

"It was that, I guess. I didn't think you'd say anything like that."

"What am I supposed to be? Some kind of holy woman? Well, let me tell you right now, I'm not any holier than thou."

The flit of a smile.

"Will you call Doctor Callahan and go see her? Just once. See what happens. You took a chance coming in here, didn't you? Are you any worse off than you were before?"

She shook her head.

"I'll write the phone number down for you," Julie said, and tore a piece of paper from the back of her notebook. She remembered the little box of cards, but used the notebook paper nonetheless. "Tell Doctor that Julie told you to call her."

"Friend Julie."

"Just Julie."

All the anxiety symptoms of the first visit had disappeared.

"Where's your boss today?" Julie asked at the door.

"He's breaking in a new girl."

"I see," Julie said, although she didn't.

Rita knew she didn't. "It's kind of like a honeymoon, supposed to be."

"For goodness' sake," Julie said, getting the picture. She wasn't often shocked herself.

"Thanks for everything," Rita said, on the way down again.

"Are you going to call Doctor Callahan?"

"I've got to think about it"

"She's expecting you to," Julie said. Her last trump.

Julie had got into the habit of stepping outside the shop when visitors were leaving, a moment or two outside the walls and with a swatch of sky to look up into. Her upstairs neighbor was at the window. She often was.

"How is business?" the woman asked.

"Okay."

"You will stay?"

"Not forever, but I'll stay for now."

"Would you like to have supper with Juanita and me? My husband works late tonight."

Juanita came to the window, seven or eight, with dark solemn eyes and a mouth that looked as though it had been built around a thumb.

"That's very nice of you. All right."

"Whenever you close up."

At six Julie locked the shop door and went up the green-walled tenement stairway. She took with her a fresh bunch of tulips she had bought that morning.

"Our name is Rodriguez," the woman said and engulfed Julie's hand in a clasp that felt like warm bread dough.

"How do you do? I'm Julie Hayes."

"Julie." Mrs. Rodriguez made it sound like "Woolie." "Papa works extra sometimes on the ferry boat to Staten Island."

"Is he a pilot?' That was something out of Julie's own fantasy.

"Only up here," Mrs. Rodriguez said and tapped her head.

"Me too," Julie said.

THE ROOM WAS AGLOW with the light of seven or eight lamps and crowded with bric-a-brac and heavy furniture in plastic covers. There was a general feeling of cleanliness which was rea.s.suring. A picture of the three Rodriguezes, the Seora in bridal veil and Juanita not much different from the way she looked today, stood on the table. Papa's main distinction was a mammoth moustache. A second marriage, Julie decided. The wall was hung with a picture of Jesus after open-heart surgery. The way He pointed it out caused her to think of Goldie and his golden cross. Mrs. Rodriguez removed some artificial flowers from a horn-shaped vase, put water in it, and set Julie's tulips under the Christus. Juanita was left to entertain the guest while her mother set out their supper on a table near the windows. In the absence of conversation, Julie suggested that Juanita show her her dolls. She had seen most of them at one time or another on the sidewalk outside the shop, not a one of them that wasn't missing clothes or an arm or leg. "Old friends," she said, and asked their names. That got them by until supper was served. Chicken and rice and salad. It wasn't much easier to talk with the mother than with the child.

"Seora Cabrera was like family," Mrs. Rodriguez said, and Julie hoped to G.o.d they could get a conversation going on that old lady.

"I wish I'd known her."

"She could teach you. Do you have good powers?"

"Pretty good."

"You will read the cards for me and I will tell you the truth."

"Okay."

"I am like a daughter to her, you know? Juanita, she tells everybody, her grandchild. Sometimes she plays for hours in the waiting room-an old deck of cards."

Julie felt she was being measured for a built-in baby-sitter. Something. "Do you work, Mrs. Rodriguez?"

Mrs. Rodriguez ignored the question. "People like to see a child. If their luck is not so good, a child speaks for something better going to happen in the future. They come in to find out."

She was being offered a little shill.

"She never interrupts and does what she's told. Five days a week Papa works for the subway. Weekends and nights he does the moonlight. He sends all his money home to buy a farm. I think his brothers steal it from him. He never knows, but if I steal it, he knows twenty-five cents."

Julie would have thought from the looks of the place that Papa was a pretty good provider. She betrayed the thought, glancing around the room. She didn't care. To h.e.l.l with all complainers.

"I like nice things. You can see?" The woman smiled.

"Beautiful," Julie said.

"When you finish your supper I will show you the bedroom."

Oh, boy. That invitation to supper: Mrs. Rodriguez had popped it, seeing Rita come and go downstairs. "I think I've had enough to eat thank you. It was delicious."

Mrs. Rodriguez ordered the child to clear the table. She spoke in Spanish. The child obeyed like a mama doll. Julie was given the bedroom tour.

Louis-something-or-other-style chairs, a taffeta cover on the bed, crystal jars on the dresser. Just the place for Papa when he came up out of the subway. It smelled like a perfume factory.

"Very nice," Julie said, staying close to the door.

"You'd never know from the outside, would you?"

"That's for sure."

"So we can make the same arrangement?"

"Hold everything. What arrangement?"

The smile slipped out of the voice and off the face. "I know the arrangement with Mr. Goldie."

"I canceled that contract, Mrs. Rodriguez."

"But that girl..."

"A friend and she doesn't go with Goldie."

"She's on the street. I'm not on the street."

"So?"

"Now and then, just one. Goldie never knows and Juanita stays downstairs with you. We go half and half. It is such a good arrangement. What harm?"

"I'm just not into that scene. I'm sorry." Sorry!

"Friend Julie"-the woman's lips curled nastily around the words-"I don't believe you."

"Okay. Ask Goldie."

"Don't smart-a.s.s me, little blond b.i.t.c.h."

Right out of Goldie's repertoire.

"Thanks for the supper, Mrs. Rodriguez." Julie got out of the bedroom and found her purse.

"What did you come up here for?"

"To bring flowers to Jesus. Buenos noches, Juanita."

"Julie, wait. I do not understand, you know? I think everything is the same." The voice had changed again, b.u.t.tery, and she closed the bedroom door behind her. "I will make us coffee. Good Spanish coffee."

"I don't think so, Mrs. Rodriguez, but no hard feelings. What you do is none of my business. I don't care. I don't judge, I don't care. Okay?"

"Okay. What harm?"

"I said it's none of my business. Only I'm not in the racket."

"If somebody comes... Terry maybe, and asks for Rose..."

"I get it. I'll say you still live upstairs. It's only the downstairs management that's changed."