"Gracias."

"Don't mention it."

"You must never tell Goldie."

"No, ma'am."

"It was a secret, Seora and me."

"What if he'd found out?"

"Seora Cabrera, she would take care of him. You don't have curses, no?"

"I'm not into that yet," Julie said.

9.

JULIE WANTED TO LAUGH at the Rodriguez situation-a Rose by any other name-and h.e.l.l, as the woman said, what harm? If Westchester housewives turned belles du jour, why not Rose Rodriguez of Forty-fourth Street, Manhattan? Julie hated her wildly and she liked the feeling, never mind what about it, Doctor. She hated her more than she did Goldie. And she hated the child with her mutilated dolls. And there it was: the child that was being mutilated, used, the silent, obedient victim.

G.o.dd.a.m.n.

She took a long letter from Jeff into the bath with her and read it just above water level. He was going to Cyprus for a couple of weeks. After which he would be in Paris. "If you feel you can take the time away from Dr. Callahan, how would you like to join me for the month of June in Paris? It's time we had another honeymoon. I find myself missing my little girl very much tonight..."

"Me too," Julie said aloud. A reflex. Her me-toos were a cop-out. She could hardly remember the first honeymoon. What she did remember was the fight with her mother in the bedroom while she changed into traveling clothes. She'd rather have changed into blue jeans and sneakers and she wound up screaming at Mother, You go, why don't you go instead of me? You're more married to him than I am... something like that, and she was. She'd courted Jeff from the moment she laid eyes on him. On the platform at Julie's graduation from college. He'd got an honorary degree. c.u.m Julie.

Come Julie.

She tried a half-hour of Yoga.

When the phone rang it startled her. It hadn't been ringing much lately.

"Pete! What a nice surprise."

"I just met Mrs. Ryan and her G.o.dd.a.m.n dog. If he had more teeth he'd 've chewed off my ankle."

"I don't think he likes men. How are you, Pete?' She could feel her heartbeat in her throat.

"How should I be? I'm working with a bunch of stupid micks at the New Irish Theatre. They don't know a ceiling spot from the star of Bethlehem. How's the wheel of fortune?"

"Going round and round. Something new every day."

He waited. Then: "I'm listening."

"Today there was Mrs. Rodriguez upstairs. It's a long story."

"I've got a pocketful of dimes."

She was tempted to ask him if he would like to come down to Seventeenth Street But if he said no? "It turns out my predecessor had a deal with Goldie. Do you know who he is?"

"I know him."

"Friend Julie's Place used to be a way station, a sort of connection between trick and... treat. Hey!"

"I got it. Are you surprised?"

"I guess not really. But the lady upstairs-that's something else." She told him about Mrs. Rodriguez's expectations.

"Street games," Pete said.

"It's the child that bugs me, those great big empty eyes."

"Little Orphan Annie."

"Warbucks," Julie said. "Money is rotten, Pete."

"That's where we left off. What isn't rotten?"

"You, me, spring, poetry, hope... There's a girl that's been in to see me twice now, a sixteen-year-old wh.o.r.e who wants to go home."

"Sixteen," Pete said.

"Going on seventeen, she says. I'd have said younger."

"Did she tell you where home was?"

"No."

"So you couldn't give her the exact fare."

"Don't be cynical, Pete. It's not like you."

"Honey, what's like me? Do you know?"

"No."

"Then don't romanticize me. I'm not a romantic figure. I'm not even nice most of the time. Would you like to see the plays? Yeats-what else would the New Irish Theatre do?"

"I love Yeats. I would like to see them, yes."

"They make nice noise."

"When am I invited for?"

"It opens Friday night. That'll be a shambles. Come on Sat.u.r.day. A few minutes before eight and I'll walk you through."

"Thank you, Pete. I'm looking forward to it."

"Take care."

He had only needed one dime.

She found herself listening to what seemed like the echo of her own words. Thank you, Pete. I'm looking forward to it. She thought of Mrs. Ryan standing on tiptoe in Mr. Kanakas's wanting to be in on everything, but careful not to touch.

Touch, touch, touch.

"Dearest Jeff, I'll talk to Doctor about Paris in June..." April in New York... April is the crudest month... They had honeymooned on an island off the coast of Maine. They had bathed in the rock pools... two different pools, his and hers. After dark they had made love, retaining a certain anonymity.

10.

JUANITA PLAYED IN FRONT of the shop so much of the time Julie wondered if Mrs. Rodriguez wasn't psyching her into the baby-sitting role in spite of the cordon sanitaire. She often did find herself looking out to see how the child was doing. Why wasn't she in school? Why, when other children in the block were not in school, wasn't Juanita playing with some of them? The child hauled a cardboard box b.u.mp, b.u.mp, b.u.mp down the stairs and took her dolls out one by one and seated them against the wall beneath Julie's window. That solemn little face was always bobbing up and down in the window as she went from doll to doll to punish each for an imaginary wickedness.

Julie did more reading than writing, and a lot of watching; she knew she was waiting. Five days had pa.s.sed since Rita's last visit. She avoided Eighth Avenue, not wanting to see her there. If she was there. The rodeo was still in town, the trick from Wyoming. Now and then a seeker came for a throw of the Tarot, Friend Julie's card in hand. Always women, bored, stuck, discontented women who wanted something about which they were calling to do nothing. They came for a fix. Julie had made seventy-four dollars to date. Seventy-four. Seven, four, and one were numbers that often recurred in her life. She lived on Seventeenth Street. Her childhood phone number had been 7714, Rita was going on seventeen, and Pete lived at 741. Whenever she doodled in numbers, it was with a combination of the three. And on the first of June Jeff was going to be forty-one, he had reminded her in his letter. She decided to invent a layout of the Tarot, seven, four, and one. At the moment it occurred to her to wonder if Juanita might by any chance be seven years old, she leaned back in her chair and looked out the window in time to see a sleek giant of a man stoop and roughly push the child out of his way. Both Mrs. Rodriguez and Julie responded. He looked up to the window above and down to the door, then up to the window again. Julie drew back without opening the door. He was a caricature, but of what? The cream-colored, tight-fitting suit with its braided lapels, contoured with muscles. Sulky good looks and wavy red hair that was almost orange, a dye job that must have curdled. He kept answering Mrs. Rodriguez back, his soft mouth curling into the shape of what Julie was sure were obscenities. Finally he took some coins from his pocket and flung them on the ground for the child to gather. He came into the shop, the scent of his male cologne like an emanation.

Julie waited, her hands fisted in the pockets of her smock.

He looked at her as though it was she who was ridiculous. "Are you Salvation Army or what?"

"There's a sign in the window. What can I do for you?"

"They call me Mack around the neighborhood. Now do you know?"

"I've heard the name," Julie said.

"I don't like Jesus freaks messing with my girls."

"You got the wrong address, Mister Mack. I don't think I could even call myself a friend of Jesus."

He sat down in the chair out front without being asked. Fine. She preferred to look down to him than to look up.

"How about Rita? A friend of hers?"

"An acquaintance."

"Where is she?"

"I've been wondering the same thing myself, and that's the G.o.d's truth."

"If it ain't, I'll find out and it won't do you any good, sister."

"I don't know that I'd tell you if I did know, but the simple truth is, I don't."

"That's twice you don't know. Once more."

"Same answer."

"She come to you, didn't she, saying how she'd like to quit The Life and go home? That's bulls.h.i.t. She's the best little hustler on the street, but she's so jealous of me taking a new girl, she cuts out every time."

"Well," Julie said, feeling a little sick, if this were so, at having possibly involved Doctor Callahan, "you know her better than I do." Rita had admitted Mack was breaking in a new girl. What Julie thought was something like disgust might have been jealousy.

"Straight people don't understand how my girls feel about me."

Julie shrugged. Then, on impulse: "How do you feel about you?"

"I like me a lot."

Julie just nodded.

"Don't understand that, do you?"

"That's right, man."

"The only way to dig The Life is from the inside."

"Goldie said something like that to me the other day."

"That man's something else, isn't he? Now if you was to ask me how I feel, a white man in a black man's trade, that'd show you understood a little."

"You know what, Mack? I just realized something: I'm not really curious. I don't give a d.a.m.n."

"Then don't try getting my girls out of The Life, because you can't do it."

"I keep telling you, that's not my mission. Where did you get the idea it was? How come you're here anyway?"

"My girls take care of one another when I'm not around. Wife-in-laws, do you dig that?"

"Not mathematically."

"You're too d.a.m.n smart, too smart for your own good."

"Sorry," Julie said. "But I would like to know where the idea that I'm into religion came from."

"Don't get me wrong, sister, I've got no objection to religion as long as it don't get in the way of business."