He nodded, smiling into their eyes, which caught the evening light.

"Oh, come on. He's famous. Henry Gaines. He's Mrs. Gaines's son," Lila said.

"Oh, wow," Alice said. "What did you do to deserve that?"

What, indeed, Henry thought grimly, but he smiled anyway. Henry thought grimly, but he smiled anyway.

"Henry doesn't talk," Lila said, and then she grinned. "At least n.o.body's heard him yet." She giggled and reached out to tickle the side of his neck.

He managed not to exclaim, and he caught her hand with his own. He held it tightly, the way he imagined a man would hold a woman's hand, and he watched with satisfaction as the surprise colored Lila's face.

"How old is he?" Alice asked.

"I don't know," Lila said, looking straight at Henry. "How old is he?"

HE HAD IMAGINED it would be in his bedroom, but as it happened, Lila seemed more inspired by the parlor, despite its mess of paint cans and papers, its smell of paint thinner and plaster.

It was difficult. It was his first time, and though Lila tried to seem older and more experienced, Henry suspected that it was her first time, too. They were on the newspaper-covered floor, but every time he pushed his way into her, she slid a little away from him, and papers flew up around their ankles. He tried gripping her shoulders, but that seemed to make no difference, only made him slide along with her. They were a boat in choppy water, leaving a wake of paint-spotted newsprint. He had always imagined that the girl would be rooted in place, wrapping her legs around him and moving up as he moved down. The action would be vertical-hammer and nail-not diagonal or horizontal, not something slipping, quite literally, out of control. In fact, it was the lack of control-over Lila's position, her pleasure, his own-that was the biggest surprise of s.e.x. By the end, he had unintentionally steered them up against the closet door, and everything he was feeling escaped from him in sighs and breaths, and, finally, something close to a groan.

IT SEEMED A LONG TIME LATER when Lila stood up and walked across the room to retrieve her panties and light a cigarette. It took a while for Henry to identify what it was that seemed strange about her. Then he realized that she had newspaper ink on her backside. It was exactly like a comic strip that you picked up with Silly Putty and stretched.

In all the time he'd been mute, Henry hadn't once found anything so funny that he had absolutely had to laugh out loud at it. But this was his undoing. The giddiness from the whole day, the joyful relief in knowing that he'd finally gotten laid, and then the thought of reading Joe Palooka upside down and backward on Lila's rear ... Whatever the reason, Henry started laughing.

Lila wheeled around, reacting first to being laughed at, and only second to the realization that Henry was making sounds.

"What are you laughing at?" she said accusingly, then: "Oh my G.o.d, I knew knew you weren't mute!" you weren't mute!"

"You have Joe Palooka on your a.s.s," Henry said hoa.r.s.ely.

"I have what?"

Henry walked toward Lila on his knees, then put a hand on her backside.

"Look," he said, and she torqued her head over her shoulder to see what she could.

"Oh, wonderful," she said.

"It is!" he told her.

She pulled her panties up.

"I wonder how long it'll stay there," Henry said.

"Well, I suppose you can find out if you want," Lila said.

"How about tomorrow?" he asked, grinning.

She smiled, too, rather softly.

"It was your first time, too, wasn't it?" he asked.

She grimaced. "Now that I know you can talk," she said, "that's all you want to say?"

Henry knew it was a test of some kind, but all he could think of was thank you. thank you.

"Thank you," he said.

"Thank you? For what?"

"For-I don't know."

"For being your your first?" first?"

"Yes. Thank you for being my first."

"Was it what you thought it would be?"

It had been so much worse, Henry thought.

"It was so much better," he said.

WHATEVER MENTAL PICTURE Henry had kept of Dr. Gardner in the last few years, it certainly bore no resemblance to the man who walked into the practice house the next morning and found Henry and Lila necking at the kitchen table. Apart from the expression on the old man's face-suitably horrified, with what looked like a touch of nausea thrown in-Henry had not remembered him being so small.

"Who are you?" Dr. Gardner asked immediately. "What's the meaning of this?"

Lila looked at Henry, and Henry looked back at Lila.

"Well, aren't you going to say something?" Lila asked Henry.

Henry gave her a warning glare.

"Henry?" she said. "Aren't you going to tell Dr. Gardner who you are?"

"Henry?" Dr. Gardner said, but then Henry could see him fighting through his confusion. "Henry," he said again, more softly this time. "I'm sorry, I-I hadn't expected to see you so-It's been quite a few years, hasn't it?"

"Answer him, Henry," Lila said.

Dr. Gardner turned icily toward Lila. "Are you a student in this house?" he asked her.

Henry could tell that she was intimidated, but that she was trying not to show it. "Yes, Dr. Gardner. I'm Lila Watkins," she said.

"Well, to begin with, Miss Watkins, where is the baby for whom you're supposed to be caring?"

Lila smiled like a contestant on a quiz show who knows that she knows the answer. "He's out with Carol for a walk. It's not my week on duty, Dr. Gardner," she said proudly, and Henry-despite his youth, his inexperience, and above all his profound grat.i.tude for having just lost his virginity-made a mental note that this girl Lila was something of an idiot.

"Then, Miss Watkins, unless the rules of the practice house have changed without my knowledge, you have no business being here."

Caught, she looked down. "Yes, sir," she said.

"Miss Watkins," Dr. Gardner said.

"Yes, sir."

"Is it your usual practice to seduce young boys?"

"Me? Seduce him?" him?" Lila said. Lila said.

"What other word would you suggest to describe this kind of activity between a college student and a mentally defective high school boy?"

"Mentally defective!" Lila said with outrage completely suitable to the recent events. But even as she spoke, she was looking around the kitchen-perhaps for her purse, certainly for an exit. Henry considered speaking up. He ruled it out almost immediately. Later he would soothe himself somewhat by recalling that he had at least had the impulse impulse to defend Lila. For now, his sense of the practical easily outweighed any urge toward chivalry. to defend Lila. For now, his sense of the practical easily outweighed any urge toward chivalry.

"Mrs. Gaines will hear about this from me," Dr. Gardner told Lila. "I can a.s.sure you, Miss Watkins."

"Dr. Gardner, I-" Lila said, then halted immediately and merely directed whatever energy she had left into a long, low, X-ray-vision stare at Henry. It was the kind of look that the Ray would have given, with a wash of powerful yellow light.

"Henry, I am not happy with you, either," Dr. Gardner said, and Henry-silent, of course-decided not to hang his head but to look frankly at Dr. Gardner. Frankly, as if they were both men of the world, but apologetically, too, as if Dr. Gardner would understand completely, if only Henry had the voice to explain it to him.

IT WAS EXACTLY THE WAY it had been after the fire at Humphrey. There was a girl who knew the truth about something Henry had done, and whom he would have to trust to tell no one. The difference, however, between Daisy knowing that Henry had started the fire and Lila knowing that Henry could talk, was that Lila did tell. First she told Dr. Gardner. Then she told the other girls in the practice house program. They, in turn, told anyone and everyone they saw. So when Henry, seeking solace-and perhaps even more-from Mary Jane, found her outside the press building the next afternoon, her usual look of pleasure had already turned into something sour and disdainful.

"So I guess you heard," Henry finally said, hands in his pockets.

"Yeah. I heard," Mary Jane answered. She stared at him, seething, for a long time. Finally, she said: "So this is what your voice sounds like."

"What were you expecting?" he asked her. "Hissing and snarling?"

She didn't smile. "I really don't want to look at you right now," she said. She tossed her hair over one shoulder as she pulled her macrame bag up on the other.

"You're mad," he said to her.

"Shucks," she said. "What gave me away?"

"I'm sorry," he said.

She bent to tie a shoelace, but ended up swatting away a bee instead.

"It really wasn't that big a deal," Henry said.

She looked startled. "What wasn't?" she asked.

"Lila," he said.

"Lila! You think I'm mad because you had s.e.x with Lila?"

"I know know you're mad because I had s.e.x with Lila." you're mad because I had s.e.x with Lila."

"I am not."

"Oh, please," Henry said. "That's such bulls.h.i.t."

"I couldn't care less that you had s.e.x with Lila. Do you care that I've had s.e.x with George?"

"Who's George?" Henry asked.

It struck him again as quite impressive that, even with only one good eye, she could convey a full spectrum of disdain, frustration, and outrage.

"Okay, I know who George is," Henry said.

"And?"

"And have you really had s.e.x with him?"

"So you do do care," Mary Jane said. care," Mary Jane said.

At that moment, Henry realized not only that he did care but that he cared enormously. Mary Jane, who had until this moment been the object of only his casual, even lazy desire, suddenly became the focal point of an obdurate need. Walking beside her in the moist July heat, Henry almost wished he had not been with Lila the day before-and not because of the trouble it was causing him but because he wished that Mary Jane had been his first. He stopped walking at that moment, directly beside an oak tree whose two main branches were splayed like a woman's thighs.

"I wish you had been my first," he told her. "And that I had been yours."

She looked at him warily. "Maybe that's half true," she said.

He tried to grab her shoulders, but finding them through the silk strands of her hair was oddly difficult. Mary Jane neatly shook him off, the hill rejecting the climber.

"So you're not mad about Lila," Henry said.

"You jerk. There's just this little lie you've been telling me for the last three hundred years," she said.

"Could you just stop walking a minute?"

Mary Jane stopped.

"Seriously, would it have made any difference if you'd known I could talk? It's not like we've seen each other. I wouldn't have written to you more often."

"That's not the point."

"What's the point, then?"

"The point is, I thought I could trust you," she said. "I thought we could tell each other anything."

"You can can tell me anything," Henry insisted. tell me anything," Henry insisted.

"Oh, I see," she said acidly. "Then it's just that you can't tell me."

Her one good eye looked sad, so Henry pulled her in and kissed her, hard.

"I love you," he said.

"No," Mary Jane said. "You don't."

MARTHA WAS EVEN MORE punishing when she heard about Henry's two deadly sins: s.e.x and speech. Having recovered from her illness at the conference, she returned to a whirl of gossip and-somewhat mercifully-decided to dole out a silent treatment of her own. The sultry days pa.s.sed little differently from the days before, except that it was now Martha who seemed unreachable.