ing your tongue to your lip. You’re making a sore there.” She walked to him with a step almost like a waltzstep, and reached out her hand to his forehead. She smoothed the stray strand of hair that had fallen over his forehead into place as she spoke. “I don’t want you to get a sore on your little lip.” Her voice came smooth, almost cooing. 2? Nathan clutched his hands tighter behind his back. His breath jerked past his throat and when his voice came it was strangely coarse and strangled. “Mother, why aren’t you wearing the black dress for Daddy's dying?” Nathan’s stomach twisted and an acrid sourness came into the top of his throat. She slid her hand stiffly through the space from his forehead to her chin. Her smile became the powdered and the transfixed features color drained of on her face from her cheeks behind the rouge smeared there. She blinked her eyes twice. The graying hair at her temples moved with each blink. “That dress is for sadness,” she said. Her voice came in’ monotone and_ harshness. She turned, her hand to her chin, and her face settled from the smile to composure. Nathan touched his lip with his tongue, jerked his tongue back in his mouth and breathed, his breath rasping and swift. He stared away from her profile to the room in the watery sunlight. The thinness of light changed the furniture of the room into ghosts of furniture, mountains “Mother, gaunt and pale, in the fog. Nathan I’m sad he’s gone. like spoke. Aren’t you sad that Daddy’s gone?” She turned, sweeping her arms out and stepping toward him. Nathan moved back smelling the sweet smell of her face powder. “You should be sad. You should be; you should be. Oh please, Mother, you must be sad.” The tension in his voice grew tumultuous while the tone remained quiet. “Of course,” she said. “I was sad. But we have the piano now, and there’s no reason to be sad.” She stepped forward and_ touched his shoulder. She smiled, patronizing him. Nathan’s body swayed and his head tipped back. The water in his eyes made them glitter. The smell of her face powder nauseated him, and he bit his lips between his teeth. He closed his eyes. “Yes, Mother,” he whispered. He remembered now because he’d wanted to demand something from his mother that day, the last time he had needed to demand. And now, thirteen years later he was on his way home. He walked along the street that night. Snow sparkled in drifts and pillows on the bushes beside the walk, and a thin mashed carpet of dirty white held prints beneath his feet. An omnicient pinkness filled the air and gathered into a stark red line near the horizon. Nathan Green pulled his black wool jacket tighter to his chest, and tucked his long rounded chin under the collar. The cold filtered through the cloth of his slacks and coated his legs. He moved his legs with joints that felt frozen and stiff. He cupped his lower lip outward and exhaled a waft of air up to his nose. The misty breath dangled like a puppet, floated in the air and faded into pinkness. The pink glow of the air worked like a fog, enclosing Nathan in a space surrounded by unreal houses and cobweb trees. He breathed shallowly through the frozen network of hairs in his nose. Now cand then a strand of hair hung (20) across his forehead and his head to slide it back. he shook Nathan tightened his arms across his abdomen and hunched over as if he had a stomach ache and picked his way hurriedly along the ice. He crossed a wavering circle of light made by the arc-light. Sunddenly a figure darted across his path. It darted toward the street and promptly became a shadow of flailing arms and legs. Nathan jumped forward, grabbing for the personified shadow, skidded, and thudded on the ice as the shadow came to life as a girl on his lap. She laughed, quick bubbling laughter, and clung to his shoulders. Her small white cap had loosened and fallen to the ground. Her hair tumbled across her shoulder and up to cover her chin and mouth with a puff of dark curls. Her dark eyes shown as the arc-light reflected in them. She swept the hair away with a white laughed mittened hand, and again. “My goodness,” she she gasped. “Don’t look so shocked.”” She tipped her head to one side. “I didn’t do this on purpose. | only wanted to catch . . .” Her voice trailed off as she pointed across the street. A bus chugged a cloud of mist as it careened down the street on the gravel specked street of ice. “My bus, and aware of his hands on her bulky coat, he jerked them away. Her bubbling laughter rolled to him then. “I’ll bet this looks hilarious to anyone watching us,” she said. She looked at him. Her eyelids fluttered once, as she brushed a stray hair from the corner of her mouth. “I guess you can stand me up now.” They stumbled and skidded on the ice together; she giggled, and he muttered scraps of words in apology. He picked up her cap and handed it to her as he straightened up. She grasped his hand and steadied herself, her other hand flat at her throat. Nathan beni his slender height down to her and said, “Are—are you all right now?” “Certainly, Sir Launcelot,” she said with a dramatic wave of her hand. “Only my bus. I'll freeze waiting for the next one.” Her lips pouted as she looked up at Nathan. Nathan swallowed. The lump seemed to go sideways or backwards or end over end in cartwheels down his throat. When he spoke, his voice carried the after affects of the lump. “Would you—I mean since you missed your bus—well, my car is—” “Certainly, Sir Launcelot,” she broke in. “You have an honest face. | think | can trust you to give me a there it goes,” she wailed. The pink radiance of the air had faded and had been replaced with a faded grayness. Nathan and girl sat in the spreading circle of light from the arc-light and gazed after the puffing, overfed bus. The wetness seeped through Nathan’s slacks until his skin seemed to prick up with the cold. He looked down at her. He could smell the citrus sweet smell of her hair. He could almost taste cotton candy because the fluff of curls at her forehead looked fine and webbed like spun sugar. She had a firm grasp on she settled back against the seat near- his er shoulder; and when he became (21) lift.” She still clutched his hand with hers. She nodded toward the lone car on the street, a black, 1953 Ford. ‘Is this the chariot, Lance?” she asked. Nathan mumbled, “Uh huh.” She dropped his hand and tottered precariously across the ice. At the car, he opened the door for her, and she slid in past the steering wheel to the center of the front seat. He slid in after her and shut the door behind himself. When to him. As he had the car started, Nathan breathed, his