'This was worse,' he said.

Kiki whistled. 'No,' she said, 'no, you are not sitting here and telling me it was as bad as Yale. That's just not even possible.' 'Worse.' 'I don't believe you, I'm sorry.' Here Howard, who had a tuneful voice, began an effective impersonation.

Kiki held her jaw. Her bosom shook. She was giggling into her bosom, but now her head jerked back and out came her big bellow of a laugh. 'You are making this shit up.'

Howard shook his head in denial. He kept singing. Kiki wagged her finger at him. 'No, no, no -I need to see the hand signals. It ain't the same without all that business.'

Howard rose from his seat, still singing, and turned to face the couch. He did nothing physical yet; he had first to envisage the moves and then fit them to his own badly coordinated body. He panicked for a moment, not able to grasp the idea 'and the muscles in the same thought. Suddenly it came together. His body knew what to do. He began with a spin and a click.

'Oh, shut your mouth. I do not believe you! No! No they did not!'

Kiki fell back into the cushions, everything on her wobbling. Howard upped the tempo and the volume, growing more confident and fancy in his footwork.

'Oh, my gosh. What did you do?'

'Had to leave,' said Howard quickly, and carried on singing.

The door of Levi's basement room opened. 'Yo! Keep it down, man. Some of us trying to sleep!'

'Sorry!' whispered Howard. He sat down, picked up his glass and brought it to his mouth, still laughing, hoping to hold her, but at the same moment Kiki stood up, agitated, like a woman reminded of a task she hadn't completed. She was also still laughing, but not happily, and, as the laughter slowed, it became a kind ofgroan, and then a wispy sigh, and then nothing. She wiped her eyes.

'Well,' she said. Howard put his glass down on the table, ready to say something, but she was already at the doorway. She told . him there was a clean sheet for the divan to be found in the upstairs closet.

Levi needed his sleep. He had to get up early in order to pay a call in Boston and be back in school by midday. By eight thirty he was in the kitchen, keys in his pocket. Before leaving, he stopped by the larder, not quite sure what he was looking for. As a child he had accompanied his mother as she paid calls in Boston neighbourhoods, visiting sick or lonely people she knew from the hospital. She would always arrive with food. But Levi had never paid this kind of call before, not as an adult. He looked blankly into the larder. He heard a door open upstairs. He grabbed three packets of Asian noodle soup and a box of rice pilaf, stuffed them in his knapsack and left the house.

The uniform ofthe streets comes into its own dUringtheJanuary freeze. While others shivered, Levi was cosy in his sweatshirts and hoods, wrapped up in there with his music. He stood by the bus stop, unconsciously reciting, listening to a tune that really called for a girl to be right in front ofhim, moving when he moved, fitting her curves into his sculpted crevices, bouncing. But the only female in sight was the stone Virgin Mary behind him in the courtyard of St Peter's. She was, as ever, missing both her thumbs. Her hands were full of snow. Levi studied her pretty, sorrowful face, familiar to him from so many waits at this bus stop. He always liked to have a look at what she was holding. In late spring she held flower petals, which had rained down from the trees above her. When the weather grew less volatile, people put all kinds ofweird stuff in her mutilated hands -little chocolates, photos, crucifixes, a teddy bear, once -or 353.

sometimes they tied a silk ribbon round her wrist. Levi had never put anything in her hands. He didn't feel it was his place to do so, not being a Catholic. Not being an anything.

The bus approached. Levi did not notice it. At the last minute he stretched out his hand. The bus screeched and stopped a few feet ahead of him. He did his funky limp towards it.

'Hey, man, how about a Iitde more wah-nillg next time?' said the bus guy. He had one of those broad-as-hell Boston accents. Hah-vahd, for Harvard. Made cost sound like cast. He was one of those fat old Boston guys with stains on their shirts that work for the city and liked to call brothers man.

Levi slotted his four quarters into the box.

" said how about a Iitde more time there, young man, so , can stop safely?' Levi slowly removed one ear of his cans. 'You talking to me?' 'Yeah, I'm talIGng to you.' 'Hey, buddy, can we close that door and get this bus moving?' called somebody from the back.

'Ahlright, ahl -right!' shouted the bus guy.

Levi put his cans back on, scowled and walked to the back of the bus.

Jumped-up Iitde...' began the bus guy, but Levi didn't hear the rest. He sat down and leaned the side of his head against the cold glass. He silently rooted for a girl who was tearing down the snowy hill to meet the bus at the next stop, her scarf fluttering behind her.

When the bus reached Wellington Square it connected with its overhead cables and went underground, winding up outside the T-stop that takes you into Boston. Here, in the subway, Levi bought a doughnut and a hot chocolate. He got on his train and switched off his iPod. He opened a book on his lap and held its pages flat with his elbows, leaving both hands free to hold the drink for warmth. This was Levi's reading time, this half-hour trip into town. He'd read more on the subway then he'd ever read in class. Today's book was the same one he'd been reading since way before Christmas. Levi was not a fast reader. He read maybe three volumes a year, and only in exceptional circumstances. This was the book about Haiti. He had fifty-one pages left to go. If asked to write a book report, he'd have to say that the main impression he'd gleaned from it so far was that there's this little country, a country real close to America that you never hear about, where thousands ofblack people have been enslaved, have struggled and died in the streets for their freedom, have had their eyes gouged out and their testicles burned off, have been macheted and lynched, raped and tortured, oppressed and suppressed and every other kind ofpressed ... and all so some guy can live in the only decent-looking house in the whole country, a big white house on a hill. He couldn't say if that was the Teal message of the book -but that's how it seemed to Levi. These brothers had an obsession with that white house. Papa Doc, Baby Doc. It was like they'd seen white people in the white house for so long that now it seemed reasonable to them that everybody should die so that they got a chance to live in it too. It was pretry much the most depressing book Levi had ever read. It was even more depressing than the last book he got all the way through, which was about who killed Tupac. The experience ofreading both books had wounded him. Levi had been raised soft and open, with a liberal susceptibiliry to the pain of others. While all the Belseys shared something of this trait, in Levi -who knew nothing of history or economics, of philosophy or anthropology, who had no hard ideological shell to protect him -it was particularly pronounced. He was overwhelmed by the evil that men do to each other. That white men do to black. How does this shit happen! Each time he returned to. the Haiti book he felt impassioned; he wanted to stop Haitians on the streets of Wellington and make it better for them somehow. And, conversely, he wanted to stop the American traffic, stand in front of the American cars, and demand that somebody do something about this wretched, blood-stained little island a mere hour's boat trip from Florida. But Levi was also a fair-weather friend when it came to books of this kind. He need only leave the book on Haiti in a forgotten knapsack in his closet for a week, and the whole island and its history gtew obscure to him once more. He seemed to know no more about it than he ever had. Haitian Aids patients in Guantimamo, drug barons, institutionalized torture, state-sponsored murder, enslavement, CIA interference, American occupation and corruption. It all became a haze of history to him. He retained only the searing, unwelcome awareness that somewhere, not far from him, a people were suffering gready.

Twenry minutes and five pages ofimpenetrable statistics later, Levi got off at his stop and switched his music back on. At the exit to the T he looked around him. The district was busy. How strange it was to see streets where everybody was black! It was like a homecoming, except he'd never known this home. And yet they all hurried past him as if he were a local -nobody looked at him twice. He asked an old guy by the exit for directions. The man wore an old-fashioned hat and a bow-tie. As soon as he started speaking Levi realized he was going to be of no use whatsoever. Very slowly, the old guy told him to take a right here, walk three blocks, past the blessed Mr Johnson -Beware of them snakes! -and then take a left into the square because the street he was looking for was someplace around there if he was not mistaken. Levi had no idea what the guy was talking about, but he thanked him and took the right. It began to rain. The one thing Levi was not was waterproof. If all this gear got wet, it would be like dragging another boy his own weight around on his back. Three blocks down, under the awning of a pawnshop, Levi stopped a young brother and was directed precisely in language he recognized. He ran diagonally across the square and soon found the street and the house. It was a big square property with twelve windows out front. It looked like it had been sliced in half. The sliced side was raw brick red. Shrubs and garbage grew up against this wall, alongside a burned-out car, turned upside down. Levi walked to the front of the properry. Three defunct commercial properties faced him. A locksmith, a butcher and a lawyer had all failed to make a go of it here. Each doorway had multiple bells for the apartments above. Levi checked his piece ofpaper. 1295, Apartment 68.

'Hey, Choo?'

There was silence. Levi knew someone was there because the intercom had come on.

'Choo? You there? It's Levi.'

'Levi?' Choo sounded half awake, his sleepy accent Gallic and smooth, like Pepe Ie Pew. 'What are you doing here, man?'

Levi coughed. The rain was now coming down hard. It made a harsh metallic sound as it hit the sidewalk. Levi put his mouth close to the intercom. 'Bro, I was passing, 'cos I live not so far and ... and this shit's coming down outside, yo, so ... well, you gave me your address that time, so, as I was passing...'

'You want to come into my place?'

'Yeah, man... I was just ... Look, Choo, it's chilly out here, man. You gonna let me in or what?' Silence again. 'Stay there, please.' Levi released the intercom and tried to get both his feet on the thin doorstep, which afforded him about three inches of cover from the overhang of the roof. When Choo opened the door, Levi practically fell on top of him. Together they stepped into a concrete stairwell that smelled bad. Choo met Levi's fist with his own. Levi noticed that his friend's eyes were red. Choo jerked his head upwards to signify that Levi should follow him. They began to climb the stairs.

'Why did you come here?' asked Choo. His voice was dull and quiet, and he did not turn to look at Levi as he spoke. 'You know... I just thought ]' d pay you a call: said Levi awkwardly. It was the truth.

'I don't have a phone.'

'No, I mean: said Levi, as they reached a landing and a damaged door, patched up with a panel of unpainted wood, 'pay a call. It's like in America when you go visit someone to see how they are, you know.'

Choo opened his front door. 'You wanted to see how I am?'

This too was true, but Levi now acknowledged that it sounded a litde weird. How to explain it? He wasn't sure himself. Simply: Choo had been on his conscience. Because ... because Choo wasn't like the other guys in the team. He didn't travel with the pack, didn't screw around or go dancing, and he seemed, by contrast, lonely, isolated. Basically,. Levi figured that Chao was just plain smarter than all the people around him, and Levi, who lived with people similarly cursed, felt that his own experience in this area

'Yeah ... basically... I was thinking, well, we down, ain't we? I mean, r know you don't talk too much when we be working, but ... you know, I consider you my friend. I do. And brothers look out for each other. In America.'

For what felt like an awful long time, Levi thought Chao was about to kick his ass. Then he began to chuckle and put his hand heavily on Levi's shoulder. 'You have nothing to do, I think. You need to be more busy.'

They came into a reasonably sized room, but now Levi noted that the kitchen units, the bed and the table were all compressed . into this one space. It was cold and it stank of marijuana.

Levi slipped off his rucksack. 'I brought you some stuff, man.'

'Stuff?' Chao picked up a fat joint from his ashtray and relit it. He offered Levi the only chair and took for himself the corner of the bed.

'Like, food.'

'NO: said Chao indignantly, cutting the air with his hand. 'I'm not starving. Forget about charity. I worked this week -I don't need help.'

'No, no, it ain't like that -I just ... it's like, when you go see someone, you bring something. In America -that's how we do. Like a muffin. My mom always takes muffins or pie.'

Chao stood up slowly, reached over and took the offered packets from Levi's hands. He seemed unsure as to what exactly they were, but he thanked Levi and, peering at them curiously, walked across the room to put them on the kitchen counter.

'1 didn't have no muffins and 1 just thought ... Chinese soup. Good for when it's cold: said Levi and mimed coldness. 'So. How you been? 1 didn't see you Tuesday evening.'

Chao shrugged. '1 have a few jobs. 1 did a different job on Tuesday.' Outside on the street came the loud voice of someone crazy, cursing a lot. Levi flinched, but Chao didn't seem to notice. 'Scene: said Levi. 'You got a lot ofprojects, like me -that's cool. Keeping it all rolling. Hustling.' Levi sat on his hands to keep them warm. He was beginning to regret coming here. It was a room with no distractions from its own silence. Usually, when he was hanging at a mend's place, the TV would always be on for background noise. The lack of a television, of all the privations in evidence in this room, struck Levi as the most poignant and unbearable.

'Would you like some water to drink?' asked Chao, 'Or rum? 1 have good rum.'

Levi smiled hesitantly. It was ten in the morning. 'Water's good.'

While the tap ran, Chao opened and closed cabinets, seeking a clean glass. Levi looked around himself. By his chair on a little table was a long sheet of yellow paper, one of those Haitian 'bulletins' they gave out for free everywhere. The main feature was a photograph ofa little black man on a gold chair with a mixed-race woman on another gold chair beside him. Yes, I am Jean-Bertrand Aristide, read Levi from the caption, and of course I care about the illiterate, poor Haitian scum! That is why I have married my wonde1fo1 wife (did I mention she is pale-skinned???), who is bourgeois de souche, not like me, who came from the gutter (and can't you see how I remember it!). I did not buy these reasonably priced chairs with drug money, no way! I may be an uncommonly totalitarian dictator but I can still have my multimillion-dollar estate while protecting the grinding poor ofHaiti!

Chao put a glass of water down over this photo and sat back on the bed. The damp ring spread out across the paper. He smoked his jOint and said nothing. Levi got the feeling that Chao wasn't used to entertaining.

'You got any music?' asked Levi. Chao did not.

'OK if! ... ?' said Levi, and took from his knapsack a little white speaker set which he plugged into the wall by his feet, and then connected to his iPod. The song he had just been listening to in the street filled the room. Chao came forward on his hands and knees to admire the thing.

'Jesus! It's so loud and so tiny! '

Levi got down on the floor too and showed him how to pick songs or albums. Chao offered his guest some of his joint. 'No, man -I don't smoke. I'm asthmatic and shit.' They sat together on the floor and listened to Fear of a Black Planet all the way through. Chao, though very stoned, knew it well and repeated all the words, and tried to describe to Levi the effect first hearing a bootleg of this album had had on him. 'Then we knew,' he said eagerly, bending his bony fingers back on the floor. 'That's when we knew, we understood! We were not the only ghetto. ] was only thirteen but suddenly ] understood: America has ghettos! And Haiti is the ghetto of America!'

'Yeah ... that's deep, bra,' said Levi, nodding largely. He felt stoned just breathing in this room.

'Oh, man, YES!' cried Chao when the next song began. He did this whenever the songs changed. He didn't nod his head like Levi; he did this strange shaking of his torso -like he was hanging on one of those elastic straps that vibrate and make you thin. Every time he did it Levi cracked up all over the place.

'] wish I could play you some of our music, Haitian music,' said Chao mournfully, as the album ended and Levi used his thumb to flick through other possibilities. 'You would like it. It would move you. It's political music, like reggae -you understand? ] could tell you things about my country. They would make you weep. The music makes you weep.'

'Scene,' said Levi. He wanted -but did not feel sufficiently confident -to speak of the book he'd been reading. Now Levi brought his little music machine close to his face, looking for a particular track whose name he had slightly mistaken, making it impossible to find in the alphabetical lists.

'And] know you don't live near here, Levi,' added Chao. 'Are you listening to me? I'm not an idiot.' He was sitting on his heels and now laid his back right along the floor. His T-shirt rode up his rigid chest. There was not an extra piece of flesh on his body. He blew a large smoke ring into the air and then another one that fit into that. Levi kept flicking through his thousand songs.

'You think we're all peasants: said ehoo, but without any sign of rancour, as if objectively interested in the proposition. 'But we don't all live in dumps like this. Felix lives in Wellington -no, you didn't know that. Big house. His brother runs the taxis there. He saw you there.'

Levi knelt up, still with his back to ehoo. He never could lie straight to someone's face. 'Well, that's 'cos my uncle, see, he lives there ... and, I like, I do small jobs for him, stuff around his yard and -'

'I was there Tuesday: said ehoo, ignoring him. 'In the college.' He treated this word like ink upon his tongue. 'Fucking serving like a monkey ... teacher becomes the servant. It's painful! I can tell you, because I know.' He thumped his breast. 'It hurts in here! It's fucking painful!' He sat up straight suddenly. 'I teach, I am a teacher, you know, in Haiti. That's what I am. I teach in a high school. French literature and language.'

Levi whistled. 'Bro, I hate French, man. We have to do that shit. 1hate that.'

'And now: continued ehoo, 'my cousin says -come and do this, serve them one night, thirty dollars in the hand, swallow your pride! Wear a monkey suit and look a monkey and serve them their shrimps and their wine, the big white professors. We didn't even get thirty dollars -we had to pay to dryclean our own uniforms! Which leaves twenty-two dollars!'

ehoo passed Levi the joint. Once more Levi declined it.

'How much do you think their professors get paid? How much?'

Levi said he didn't know and it was true, he didn't. All he knew was how hard it was to get even twenty bucks out of his own father. 'And then they pay us in cents to serve them. The same old slavery. Nothing changes. Fuck this, man: said ehoo, but it sounded harmless and comic in his accent. 'Enough American music. Put some Marley on! I want to hear some Marley!, Levi obliged with the only Marley he had -a 'Best Of' collection copied off his mother's CD.

'And I saw him: said Chao, kneeling and staring past Levi, his bloodshot eyes acute and fixed upon some demon not in this room. 'Like a lord at the table. Sir Montague Kipps ...' Chao spat on his own floor. Levi, for whom cleanliness had long superseded godliness, was repelled. He had to move position to where the phlegm was not in his sightline.

'I know that guy: said Levi as he shuffled across the carpet. Chao laughed. 'No, I do ... I mean I don't know him know him, but he's this guy that ... well, my pops hates his ass, he's like, you even mention his name and he's like -'

Chao pointed his long forefinger right in Levi's face . 'If you know him, know this: that man is a liar and a thief. We know all about him, in our community, we follow his progress -writing his lies, claiming his glories. You rob the peasants of their art and it makes you a rich man! A rich man! Those artists died poor and hungry. They sold what they had for a few dollars out ofdesperation -they didn't know! Poor and hungry! I served him his wine -' Here Chao lifted his hand and pretended to pour out a glass, with a crude servile look on his face. 'Don't ever sell your soul, my brother. It isn't worth twenty-two dollars. I was weeping inside. Don't ever sell it for a few dollars. Everybody tries to buy the black man. Everybody: he said, pounding the carpet with a fist, 'tries to buy the black man. But he can't be bought. His day is coming.'

'I hear you,' confirmed Levi and, not wanting to be an ungrateful guest, took the joint that was, once again, offered to him.

This same morning, in Wellington, Kiki also paid an unannounced call.

'It's Clotilde, isn't it?'

The girl stood shivering, holding the door ajar. She gazed at Kiki vacantly. She was so slender Kiki could see her hip bones through her jeans.

'I'm Kiki -Kiki Belsey? We met before.'

Now Clotilde opened the door a little wider and, upon recognizing Kiki, became distressed. She gripped tbe door handle, twisting the plank of her upper body. She had no English words to convey her news. 'Oh ... madale, oh, 1011 Dieu, Meeses Kipps -Vous ne Ie savez pas?Mme Kipps Il'est plus ici ... Vous comprrnezf'

'Sorry, 1-' 'Meeses Kipps -elle a fte tres malade, et tout d'ull coup elle est mortel Dead!'

'Oh, no, no, I know ...' said Kiki, fanning her hands up and down, putting out tbe fire ofClotilde's anxiery. 'Oh, God, I should have called ahead -yes, Clotilde, yes, I comprehend ... I was at the funeral... no, it's OK... honey, I just wondered whether Mister Kipps was here, Professor Kipps. Is he in?'

'Clotilde!' came Kipps's voice from somewhere deeper in the house. 'Close tbe door -fernIe -must we all freeze? C'est frOid, c'est tres frOid. Oh, for goodness sake -'

Kiki saw his fingers curl round the edge of tbe door; the door swung wide; he stood before her. He looked astonished and not quite as dapper as usual, although his three-piece suit was in place. Kiki sought the anomaly and found it in his eyebrows, which were wildly overgrown.

'Mrs Belseyf'

'Yes! I-I...'

His huge head, with its glossy pate and brutal, protruding eyes, proved too much for Kiki. She lost her words. Instead she held up the wrist of her left hand, around which one of the thick paperbags of Wellingron's favourite bakery hung.

'Por me?' asked Monry.

'Well, you. were so ... so killd to us in London and I ... well, really [just wanted to see how you were and bring you -' 'Cake?' 'Pie. [just think sometimes when people suffer a -' Monry, having processed his astonishment, now took control.

'Wait -come in -it's Baltic outside -there is no point talking out here -come in -Clotilde, out of the way, take the lady's coat -'

Kiki stepped into the Kippses' hallway.

'Oh, thank you -yes, because I think when people suffer a loss, well, the temptation is for folk to stay away -and I know when my own mother died, everybody stayed away and I felt most resentful of that, and bottom line, I felt, you know, abandoned, and so I just wanted to come by and see how you and the kids were doing, bring some pie and... I mean, I know we've had our differences, as families, but when something like this happens I just really feel ...' Kiki saw that she was talking too much. Monty had snatched the briefest of glimpses at his pocket-watch.

'Oh! But if this is a bad time -'

'No, not at all, no -I am on my way into college, but .. : He looked over his shoulder, and then put a hand to her back, ushering Kiki forward. 'But I am just in the middle of something -if you could possibly -could I leave you here, for two minutes only, while I ... Clorilde will make you some tea and... yes, just make yourself comfortable here,' he said, as they stepped on to the cowhide rug of the library. 'Clorilde!'

Kiki sat down on the piano stool as she had before and, with a sad smile to herself, checked the shelf nearest to her. All the N's were in perfect order.

'I'll be back in one minute,' murmured Manry, turning to go, but just then there was a loud noise in the house and the sound of someone charging up the hallway. The someone stopped at the library's open door. A young black girl. She had been crying. Her face was full ofrage, but now, with a start, she spotted Kiki. Surprise supplanted anger on her features.

'Chantelle, this is -' said Monty.

'Can I get out? I'm leaving,' she said and walked on.

'If you wish to do that,' said Monty calmly, and followed her a few steps. 'We'll continue our discussion at lunchtime. One 0'clock in my office: Kiki heard the front door slam. Monty stayed where he was for a moment and then turned back to his guest. 'I'm sorry about that: 'I'm sorry,' said Kiki,looking at the rug beneath her feet. 'I didn't realize you had company.'

'A student ... well, actually that is the question,' said Mority, walking across the room and taking the white armchair by the window. Kiki realized she had never really seen him like this, sitting down, in a normal, domestic setting.

'Yes, I think I met her before -she knows my daughter.'

Monty sighed. 'Unreal expectations,' he said, looking at the ceiling and then at Kiki. 'Why do we give these young people unreal expectations? What good can come from it?'

'Sorry, I don't ... ?' saidKiki.