"Like what?" Trey called after him, ignoring the loafer crack, but Hicaya didn't answer. He patted at his hair, touched his rump to be sure the mail was still there, and walked on, slapping lightly at the hood of Cable's car as it drove past at a crawl. Stephanie was behind the wheel, and she stopped when she spotted Trey.

"Hey," she said, smiling broadly, teeth and lips gleaming.

"Hey yourself."

"You going to the casinos tonight?"

He hesitated, wondering, before saying, "I don't think so, kid."

"Oh," with the slightest hint of disappointment.

"Maybe I'll come see you instead."

Her laugh was quick, and coy. "You'll need a telescope, then."

An eyebrow went up, and he leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. "What? You mean you're not going to work? On a Saturday?" He gestured at the car. "I thought-"

She shook her head. "Just heading for the store, that's all. I forgot a couple of things yesterday." The smile became grim. "Cable and I have plans for tonight." She looked back toward her house. "He was let go the other night, Trey." The little girl voice deepened. "Some asshole complained about his . . . you know . . . and they let him go."

"Damn, I'm sorry."

The car began to coast as she faced forward. "I'm not," she said flatly. "Now he'll have to listen to me for a change."

Again he wasn't sure what he was supposed to say, but her attitude, her posture, made the decision easy- he didn't say anything. He watched until she turned the corner onto the tarmac, wincing when she floored it and the Olds fishtailed a little, nearly sideswiping the mailboxes. When the engine's roar faded, he scratched briefly at his cheek, wondering what had gotten into everybody.

He stiffened for a moment.

No.

Good God, no, not today, too.

Fearfully he looked back at the road, half expecting to see Harp and Beatrice there, and was immensely, almost comically relieved when he saw nothing but the dying cloud of dust Stephanie had left behind.

You're doing it again, pal, he warned as he set the soda down beside the chair; you're spooking yourself.

He reached to his breast pocket for a cigarette, realized he'd left the pack inside, and sighed loudly. Go in? Be strong and wait? "Screw it." He went in, found an unopened pack on the nightstand, and wandered out again.

And stopped.

Starshine was in his chair, draining the can, legs stretched out. Feet bare. Ponytail draped over her shoulder. She let out a monstrous belch when she finished, and Moonbow, on the floor beside her, giggled behind both hands.

"That," he said, "is disgusting."

"Where were you?" Moonbow demanded petulantly. "We knocked, but you wouldn't let us in."

"He was drunk," her sister said without inflection.

Moonbow punched her arm. "Was not."

"I was tired," he told them, moving to the steps, sitting on the slab with his legs crossed, back against the post. "I had a long day."

He could see their faces now, and neither seemed very happy. Starshine's brow was creased above her sunglasses; and Moonbow looked as if she'd lost her best friend. They were dressed the same, in the same colors, as if they were canary twins-glossy yellow shorts and yellow tops. That's when he knew there was definitely something up, because Starshine would rather die than have to dress like her sister. Their skin gleamed, as if fresh from a hard bath, and their ponytails had been recently brushed, no wind or racing tangles.

"You guys going out?"

Starshine didn't answer, just glared at the soda can.

Moonbow scooted up a bit so she could see around her sister's legs. "You hear about Roger?"

He shook his head, but he was pretty sure he didn't want to know and was going to hear it anyway.

"He was arrested yesterday."

He looked quickly up the street, back at the girls, and pulled off his sunglasses. "He was what? Arrested?"

She nodded, bouncing with the news and trying hard to be cool. "He beat up his boss. In his bare feet."

"Almost killed him," Starshine said, still studying the can.

"He was drunk when they found him."

"He wasn't drunk when he did it, though."

"There was blood all over the place."

"It took ten people to put him down."

Moonbow pushed her sister's knee. "No, it didn't, dope."

"That's what I heard."

"Well, I was there, too, and I didn't hear it."

"Then you weren't listening."

"I was too listening. I heard-"

"Hold it!" Trey said loudly.

The girls jumped as if they'd forgotten he was there, and Starshine finally couldn't help an evil grin. "They brought him home last night. Late. Momma had to help. The jerk could barely stand up."

Trey lifted a palm to shut her up, turned the palm up in silent question-would one of you mind telling me what's going on?

They looked at each other, and Moonbow slumped, began picking at her knees.

"Roger," Starshine said, making the name sound like a bad taste in her mouth, "hit his boss over the head with something, okay? I don't know what it was."

"Clipboard," Moonshine whispered.

"Yeah. A clipboard. I don't know why, but he did. A bunch of kids saw it. It was right outside Roger's class. When the cops came, he was sitting at his desk, barefoot, drinking right out of a bottle." Finally she put the can aside and looked straight at him. "He didn't fight or nothing. They took him away, and arrested him." She waved impatiently. "Other way around. But they took him away."

"What about his boss?"

"Went to the hospital. Nineteen dozen stitches in his head."

"Twenty," Moonbow whispered.

"Yeah. Okay. Like twenty, maybe, something like that."

He frowned, stopped frowning, frowned again and said, "This is Roger Freneau we're talking about here, right? Professor Roger Freneau? Rog?" He pointed. "Rog who lives up there? That Rog?"

They nodded.

"And . . . and he was let go? The cops brought him home last night?"

They nodded again.

He leaned back and gave them a crooked smile. "This is a joke, right?"

They shook their heads.

"It's got to be a joke, guys, because if he did what you say he did, they wouldn't let him out. That's like ... I don't know, attempted murder or something."

"With a clipboard?" Moonbow asked.

He couldn't help it; he started to laugh. The idea that one of the world's biggest self-pitying klutzes had beaned his boss with a clipboard, then walked, was too much. It was the best, weirdest thing he'd heard in ages, a classic that cried out for dramatic embellishment each time it was told.

"How..." He put a hand to his throat and swallowed until the laughter stopped. "How did he get out?"

"Now that's the weird part," Starshine said, nodding, knees bobbing, feet jiggling. "His boss, I don't know what his name is, what I heard was, his boss didn't do whatever he's supposed to do."

"Press charges," Trey said.

"Yeah," Moonbow said. "He didn't do that."

"Clobbered in front of witnesses, twenty stitches, and he didn't... ?"

The girls said it in unison: "Nope."

"It still doesn't make sense. The cops-"

"Some judge let him go," Starshine said, disgust creeping back into her voice. "It was like, I don't know, bail or something."

"Yeah," her sister said, nodding. "There was bail, and somebody gave the money to somebody, and the cops brought him home because he was too drunk to walk. Or ride, I mean. By himself, I mean."

"Well, well," Trey said. "The man has friends in high places, it looks like." Then he saw their expressions, and knew there was something more. "What? You know who it was?"

They nodded.

"And it was...?"

They shook their heads, Moonbow giggling.

He stared at them for a minute, trying to read their faces, then shook his head. "Good grief, don't tell me it was your mother."

"Not hardly," Starshine said, giving him a look that made him lift a hand in an apology he wasn't sure she accepted.

He checked the street, scanning each of the houses, trying to figure out which one of them had the clout, not to mention the money, to get Freneau out in such a short time. Not to mention doing something to prevent the victim from pressing charges. It didn't take long to eliminate the whole block, and he felt really, briefly, incredibly stupid for even suggesting Jude's name.

He was about to give up, when the girls scrambled to their feet and dashed off the porch. "Hey," he called.

"Late," Starshine called back. "See you later maybe."

"But who?"

Their laughter made them stumble, but only when they reached the middle of the street did Moonbow suddenly change direction and race back to him. "Eula," she said, waggling her eyebrows. "Can you believe it, it was Eula."

2.

For a while, Trey remained where he was, watching the street, wondering why someone like Eula would help out someone like Rog Freneau. Christian charity aside, it didn't make much sense.

When his legs began to protest, he stood, still leaning against the post, arms folded. He watched Muriel Carmody lumber across the street toward Freneau's house, with what looked like a casserole in her hands. He didn't wonder about that; Muriel would want to know all the details, and wouldn't be satisfied getting them secondhand. She had never been above a little gastronomic bribery. She had tried it on him when he'd first taken the house, and when he hadn't finished the meal-dry mashed potatoes, fresh green beans boiled soggy, and the world's heaviest meat loaf-she had taken it so personally she barely spoke to him now. Hadn't learned anything, either, so he figured it was a fair trade.

She knocked once on Freneau's front door and went in, too far away to see if she was smiling or not. He waited a few seconds, then shrugged and shifted over to the chair. Opened the pack and pulled out a cigarette. Rolled it between his fingers as if it were an expensive cigar, staring at the tip, the filter, while he debated paying a visit on old Roger himself. A look to his right, through all the porches up to Freneau's house, and he changed his mind. Muriel was still there. His gaze drifted across the street, to the house opposite Roger's: Eula's place. Back or not, he wondered, and figured, probably not. He couldn't hear any music, and the house, even at this distance, looked flat out empty.

Just a feeling, but he thought it was empty.

Like the street now-empty, silent, pressed flat under the sky and heat.

He lit the cigarette, blew smoke, and watched it hang there, curling in upon itself, forming a cloud that seemed too lazy to drift away.

Like an old man long retired, he thought then, and smiled briefly. He's sitting on the porch like an old man, waiting for something to happen in a place where hardly anything ever happened. Waiting for a chance to have a word or two with a neighbor, except the neighbors weren't coming around, weren't anxious to fill him in on all the latest gossip.

Even if everyone had been in the street, he'd still feel as if there was no one here.

Funny, that no one had come around to see him earlier, wake him from his afternoon sleep, eager to tell him about old Rog and his. . . Good-God, with a clipboard?

Funny, that people who depended on the city for a living had decided to give the city a pass on the busiest night of the week, and didn't seem to care that they might lose their jobs for it. Especially Stephanie. For every one of her, there were scores more waiting for her to turn an ankle, break a leg, get the damn Sickness so they could step in and prove they were a Star.

It wasn't like her; and it sure wasn't like Cable to let her do it without a fight.