CHAPTER SIX

 

 

  "Our young brothers and sisters that are in what you call the gangs, they're a very strange breed.

  Parents, you never seen anything like your children before. They're a different breed, and you know why they're different? Because they represent the Age of Fulfillment—and you represent the Age of Hope. You've always hoped for freedom, hoped that one day you'd be delivered. Your children are born to bring into reality what you hoped for. [cheers] And as fulfillment don't look nothin' like hope, your children are from you, but they don't really spiritually resemble anything like you. You can't get them to school, because they know white man's school is a failure. You can't drag 'em to church, because they had enough of that. They out in the street, waitin' for The Call! They are warriors. [cheers] Just look at the name they call themself: the 'War Lords'! What do the War Lords know that you don't know, that Reagan knows? Reagan knows it's the time for war; the War Lords know it got to be war in order to get what rightfully belong to you... [ovation]

  "They're young and they're tough, because they're born to fight. They just don't have the general.

  The general to show them who to fight, and then when to fight, and when to train the right hand and keep it cocked—and when it's time to throw it, knock the hell out of the enemy in the name of God! [sustained ovation]"

  —Minister Louis Farrakhan, Chicago, Oct. 3, 1981

 

 

  "Men do not revolt merely because they are poor and oppressed. They revolt because they are aware of a gulf between their expectations and their present condition, and of a possibility of crossing that gulf in a single bound."

  —de Tocqueville

 

 

  "This," Jennifer thought as she left the apartment with José, "is the happiest night of my life." And it was just starting!

  Ecstasy too great to be borne—

  Jennifer was an extraordinary child, and not only intellectually. She knew about the roller coaster of joy. She recognized the increasing acceleration and upward slope of her emotions, and she could discern that the peak ahead was a higher one than she had yet dared. She knew, from both her parents' counsel and her own experiments, that there was a scary downslope on the other side, that emotional binges are a fly-now pay-later deal which usually turns out to cost just a little more than one can afford. But she didn't give a damn. This was her second week in New York, and for the past week she had been an uneasy combination of tickled pink and bored stiff. A restless, reckless mood had been growing on her for days—if she had been an adult, she might have gone out and gotten gloriously drunk or stoned.

  And then suddenly everything in the universe that could possibly go right had begun to do so, all at once. She heard the little warning voice in the back of her mind that whispered, this will be expensive, and she replied, stuff it, little voice. It's on the plate and I am going to eat it—as the Juice would say.

  It had begun this afternoon, when José had produced the pair of tickets to the Juice concert.

  A big part of it, of course, was simply the tickets themselves. Naturally Jennifer had known about the concert. Everyone in North America between the ages of six and sixteen knew that the Juice were on tour; she had known before she left Halifax that they would be in New York the same time she was—and that she was not going to see them. She had lied to her father this evening. Grandpa had tried valiantly for her, had stood on line for seven hours and failed to secure tickets; it was said that no one who had waited less than twenty-four hours had even got close to the window. (Russell heard nothing of this: knowing that her father hated flash groups in general, she had thought it best not to consult him before phoning Grandpa.)

  So she had resigned herself. She had made José take her on only three pilgrimages to Madison Square Garden to contemplate the shrine-to-be, and had firmly resolved not to join the ticketless thousands who would surely surge around the Garden on The Night in the futile hope of getting a glimpse of the Fan' Five. She had planned to spend the night sensibly, maturely, bravely crying her eyes out at home—and now she was actually going to see them after all. Live! In person!

  An equally large part of her exhilaration lay in the fact that the tickets had come from José.

  For the last ten days she had been, as she put it in her diary, "discovering her sensuality," by practicing it on José. She was aware that he probably called it something else, but she intended to be fair—the last night before she went home to Halifax she was going to let him kiss her, while her parents were out loading the car. Meanwhile he was an older man, he was gorgeous, he was virile and— unlike Bobby Amatullo back home—he was absolutely safe. She knew that honour was everything to José, and he was honour-bound not to notice her as a sexual being no matter what the provocation. Her parents had confirmed this by hiring him. So it was okay to make it tough for him, and she never overdid it, always slacked off as soon as the sweat began to actually pour off him. The whole idea was to keep it low-key, to keep him as bothered as possible without ever making an overt move. At the Statue of Liberty, for instance, he had had to let her go first up the narrow helical stairs, which placed her shorts-covered rump in his face for several hundred steps...then on the way down she had gone first again, frequently stopping and turning to talk to him, so that her face was inches from his crotch, and he could not help but see down her neckline. She had caught him sneaking peeks—and he had not caught her sneaking peeks. It was a delightful, mysterious, fascinating game, the prize was a tented trouser front, and José had at least as much chance as any other fish in a barrel...she had just been starting, the last few days, to feel slight stirrings of guilt for the suffering she was putting him through. And now he had brought her the best present she could imagine.

  On a sheerly financial level, the gift was impressive. She reckoned that the tickets had to have set him back at least a hundred dollars apiece, not to mention inconvenience. No man but her father had ever spent so much on her before.

  On a personal level, the gift was thoughtful, insightful. She had never mentioned the Juice aloud to him, had not explained why she wanted to walk past the Garden three times—she believed that truly mature people suffered silently, privately. He had guessed her need without a word being spoken. And on a subconscious level, the tickets said that he did not hate her for toying with him—a possibility which had begun to genuinely trouble her.

  Could it be that, despite everything that Bobby Amatullo and her parents had told her, boys actually enjoyed being tortured? Jennifer felt that she was at the verge of one of the great adult mysteries.

  The whole thing had gone perfectly. José had produced the tickets early enough in the day for her to make plans. He had let her pay him for her ticket, but refused to accept more than twice its face value, a figure both absurdly low and within her budget. He had helped her work the old "Dad/Mom says it's all right with him/her if it's okay with you" gag on both parents in succession. Dena had been in a hurry to get off the phone, something about having her hair done, and Russell had obligingly come home too tired to escort her himself. Best of all, he had been distracted enough from a traumatic day to see nothing wrong with her choice of outfit when she left.

  There had been nothing wrong with it when she left. A sensible, modest jacket-and-long-skirt affair, heel-less shoes, blouse buttoned to collarbone—the outfit could have been worn by a nun. But two blocks from her apartment, she made José wait while she went into a restaurant washroom.

  When she emerged, he sucked a satisfying amount of air through his teeth.

  She held the jacket slung across her shoulder. The blouse was entirely unbuttoned, tied together beneath her newly developed breasts in a knot that was secure but looked flimsy. The snap-on heels were in place. The skirt had lost its side panels all the way up to the waistband, was in effect a long loincloth, which not only revealed green fishnet stockings, but made it seem that the garter belt supporting them was the only underwear she wore—the little front-to-back loinstrap did not show at the sides. Her hair was styled differently and her make-up was much bolder. The overall effect would have made Dena distinctly uneasy and sent Russell into cardiac arrest. She looked, in short, like most girls her age in New York.

  Save, she thought smugly, that she looked better than most girls her age. Let her period take as long to show up as it wanted—in all other respects she was doing just fine, thanks.

  "Jesus Christ, Jennifer!"

  "What's wrong?" Blink. Blink.

  "You look like a sex crime lookin' for the spot marked X, that's what's wrong."

  "José, don't be junior. It's hotter now than it was this afternoon, and I wore shorts this afternoon—and it's going to be even hotter at the concert. You don't want to get me all sweaty, do you?" The last line was delivered with no English at all—a listening maiden aunt would have heard no double-entendre—but she saw it strike home and kept her face innocent with great effort.

  "Jennifer, listen to me. I gotta explain somethin' to you.

  Suppose I come walkin' down this street with five hundred dollars in my hand, just wavin' it around, and some guy that hasn't eaten in a week drags me in a alley and takes the money. Who could blame him, right? It's my fault for bein' so stupid, right?"

  "So?"

  "It's up to me to protect my treasure. But you young fems, you got the treasure of them all, every one of you, and it's the only treasure in the world the owner don't have no obligation to hide. You can just leave it out on the windowsill and nobody's supposed to take it."

  "But José, I have you to protect me."

  He got mad. "So how come you gotta make it hard for me?"

  She dropped her eyes. "José, you know the last thing I want to do is make it hard for you." Again, no emphasis on the words, and again she could almost hear the harpoon thud home. "Everyone else there is going to be dressed just like this...but if you don't think I'll be safe with you, I'll go change back and—"

  "Don't bullshit me. We're gonna have to hurry if we want to get our seats—"

  She rewarded him with her best smile, and came closer, until he was within the striking range of her (mother's) perfume. "Well? Aren't you going to offer rne your arm?"

  He glanced away. "I gotta keep my hands free."

  "Of course. Shall we go, then?"

  It kept getting better. She drew a few stares as they walked up 31st, and José had to glare fiercely at one middle-aged businessman in a pearl-grey suit. But when they reached the immense crowd around the Penn Station-Garden-Felt Forum complex, she saw that she was by no means exotically dressed for the occasion. She had heard about girls going topless in public, but had never actually seen it before, in Halifax or New York. Not for the first time she suspected that José was not taking her to the fun neighbourhoods. She noticed that all the topless fems were with a powerful-looking male or a gang. She saw only a few close to her age, with gangs—it must be hard for fourteen-year-olds to get a ferocious enough escort. She had total faith in José herself—and was wishing she had settled for unbuttoning a few buttons of the blouse. The crowd was vast and noisy and exciting and terrifying, the largest crowd that she had ever seen.

  And the Juice were in there somewhere, getting ready to perform!

  The next hour was a general chaos amid which the excitement of the crowd slowly built to something like frenzy. A ticketholders' line had been marked off with barricades. The lane was choked eight and ten deep with bodies, and the barriers were thronged along the outside with hucksters, hustlers, hecklers, vendors, dealers, pushers and scalpers. Everyone was shouting, laughing, dancing, smoking, drinking, eating. Those who had wristwatch video watched chips of the Juice, holding up their wrists so that their immediate neighbours could share and sing along; or else they tuned to a news channel and tried to spot themselves in the crowd. Every time a news chopper went by overhead, kids whose parents did not know they were here ducked frantically away from the cameras; the rest mugged. The air was full of pot and hash and more exotic smoke. The police looked harassed, and had evidently been ordered to ignore anything below a Class A felony; Jennifer saw one crack dealer ask a cop for a light, and get it.

  She did observe some incidents which disturbed her. There was one small fight ahead of them, fists only. But the general mood of the crowd was benign, benevolent; for its size and location it was an astonishingly well-behaved mob. She could tell that the police were pleasantly surprised, warily relieved. She was not at all surprised.

  The Juice were an up band: their work was happy, life-affirming; their magic was white magic. (Their dark clone, the Pulp, were another matter; they dealt in dark imagery and violent symbols. When they had played the Garden the previous Fall, there had been trouble: six deaths, over a hundred hospitalized, autos flung bodily into the lobby of the Statler Hilton and set ablaze. Her father said it had been much the same in his day, with the Beatles and the Skipping Stones or whatever they were. But the Juice had made it plain that they wanted no part of their quasi-imitators, and notoriously would not perform for a violent crowd.) This was the kind of joyous gathering that got to even hardened cops—the happy excitement was infectious.

  "What pieces do you think they'll do?" she asked José excitedly. "'Mental Floss'? 'Totality'? Or even—"

  "I dunno, I guess they'll do whatever's their latest ones."

  She stared in disbelief. "José! Do you mean to say you don't follow the Juice?"

  He became defensive. "Well, I know about 'em, I seen a couple of their tapes. They're just not my brand, you know?

  Like maybe I'm too old for them or something."

  "I don't believe you. You've got to know 'Eat It' at least."

  "Yeah, sure. Everybody knows it. I dunno, though—if it's on the plate and I don't like it, I don't eat it. I go get another plate of somethin' better an' eat that."

  "Oh, that's junior and bogus." Secretly she was delighted.

  He had gone to all this expense and trouble and he didn't even like the Juice himself. Power!

  A collective scream broke loose as the doors were opened somewhere up ahead, and the vast serpent of ticketholders began to writhe forward spasmodically. The rest of the crowd simply writhed. She and José were swept forward as though by a terrible riptide, and he held her wrist with a grip like iron. He maintained it through all the madness that followed, but despite his best efforts she had been intimately groped at least half a dozen times by the time they reached their seats—once by a cop. It was not fun, being handled, but it was not quite not-fun either.

  It was even hotter in here, and a cloud of smoke was already forming below the high roof, where immense fans struggled to chop it up. She began to perspire freely, and thought about losing the blouse now that she was safely in her seat. But there were several single males in her row, and anyway she did not dare. She could feel her face tingling from a combination of excitement and the hallucinogens in the air, and an even stronger tingling in her belly. She was beginning to wonder how much more joy she could tolerate.

  Just studying the equipment waiting for them on the stage was exciting. It was their equipment, set up the way she remembered from their videos. The high bubbledomed tower on which Tamila would dance the drums dominated the stage; clustered around its base were the twin synthesizer consoles (rumour was right: they were Spangler Fives) and the U-shaped array of visuals controls; mammoth columns of speakers and lasers at either side defined the area within which Travis would sing, speak, and dance.

  A crescendo of shrieks. Tamila, proudly, chastely nude, strode out from the wings, entered the door in the base of her tower and was raised up into the transparent bubble.

  She was the Spiritual One, the perc-dancer: wireless EMG leads implanted in most of her major muscle groups would control the synthesized percussion while she trance-danced. She was bare only because clothing or body hair would have masked or distorted the signals; it did not hurt that she was beautiful. The moment she appeared on her platform, the bubble's sensors picked up the tension in her thighs and set up a bass rumbling which was audible even over the swelling white noise of the crowd.

  At once Mark and Iyechi ran out from either wing and took their places at the twin Spanglers. "H" was the Technician, who understood electronics and designed the Juice's equipment hookups; Mark was the Sexy One, achingly beautiful, and the composer who had earned the respect of the grownups. It was an open secret that the boys were lovers, but it did not affect their popularity: they were both bisexual and known to appreciate fem groupies. They wore matching Mylar tunics and boots. Jennifer noted that Mark, who usually wore his hair Mandinka-style, was shaven completely bald tonight, and it made him look even sexier.

  She had seen the bald-head fad in New York, but until now she'd thought it was strictly for grownup blacks.

  Last came Maria and Travis, entering together hand in hand. The crowd's frenzy peaked and held. She was the Witty One, the visualist, who could make dreams real with her lights, lasers, smoke generators, and holograms. He was the Poet—the collaborative creation of all Juice pieces began with his words—and at nineteen was the oldest member of the group. The two were legendary lovers.

  Their shorthand appelations were really a matter of convenience for reviewers and commentators—each of the five was a witty, sexy, spiritual poet, and technician, in varying degrees. Together they were what most kids dreamed of—a family so loving and self-sufficient that it did not need parents. And even grownups had to admit they were competent musicians; most of their tapes, CDs, and chips contained at least a few tracks that were faithful recreations of antique musical forms like rock, swing jazz, punk, or even classical, sort of.

  All around, Jennifer saw and heard girls her age freaking out, shrieking and babbling mindlessly, flopping spastically in their seats. She felt amused and faintly superior— she understood how they felt, but one after all had one's dignity to preserve. She hoped they would ease off once the show started, so that she could hear the music.

  The moment the Fan' Five were in place, Tamila raised up on the balls of her feet and began to dance. Thundering drums filled the great hall, cymbals hissed, counterpoint crickets rasped. On this "floor," H wove a carpet of sound, over which Mark's twin Spangler walked in eight-league boots. The stage shimmered and sparkled, lasers swept the air above it, giant holographic images flitted among the beams and out over the crowd. And Travis began to raise his arms slowly over his head. By the time his hands met, the cacophony sounded like all the cymbals in the world being destroyed by heavy caliber automatic weapons fire while God played the electric violin. Travis held it for an aching three seconds—then whipped his arms down and the whole band slammed as one into "Let's Do It Tonight," their first megahit.

  The Garden dissolved in pandemonium.

  And Jennifer's dignity went south without saying goodbye.

  This was precisely what she had been anticipating all day—and the reality was unendurable. She lost all control, lost the power of rational thought, lost her identity. It was not a choice she would have made—to let go utterly in the presence of José risked destroying the psychological edge she had established—but it was not a matter of choice. Her mind melted; she became only one of thousands of capacitors in the huge circuit the Juice was building.

  And an Indescribable Thing happened.

  She did not recognize it for what it was, though she knew of such things intellectually—but she did vaguely understand that her life had changed in some major way.

  She did not associate it with any specific part of her body.

  It went on for years. Fortunately José was strong enough to keep her from hurting herself or damaging her clothing.

  By the fourth number she lay limply in his arms, utterly unaware of him or the chair-arm that dug into her ribs, too exhausted even to weep any more. The music and spectacle still reached her, but she was too spent to react.

  =

  Eat it...if they put it on the plate you better

  Eat it...it won't help to hesitate, they'll just

  Repeat it...for all you know it might be great, go on and

  Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!

  Don't be queasy

  It goes down easy

  Fill the hollow

  Go on and swallow

  Eat it now or heed my warning

  You'll have it cold tomorrow morning

  Close your eyes and hold your nose

  Now open wide and down it goes, just

  Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!

  =

  The Juice had their house now and knew it. They picked the energy up a notch—but only one—with a fast funny number, a verbally, musically, and visually punstrewn piece called "Current Events." Then they held it there with an extended trance piece called "Totality," a Maria showcase based on the solar eclipse she had once made them all fly halfway around the world to see. The sun she built in the air above Tamila's bubble was not bright enough to damage retinas—there were strict laws—but it seemed to be, when at last the moon had turned it loose.

  Then the Four on the Floor sat out while Tamila did her solo, "Heritage," a hypnotic tour-de-force which mixed and brilliantly blended the rhythmical traditions of her Tamil and Tagalog ancestors. New York held sizable communities of both Southern Indians and Filipinos; enough were present that when Tamila's fingers made the last tabla roll and hit the tonic, the Garden seemed to go mad with joy. The instant the applause began to diminish, Tamila's comrades, who had been so still as to be invisible, suddenly whipped into the opening bars of one of their most driving numbers, "Older Than I Look," and the fans screamed even louder. The entire throng clapped and stomped along with the beat, the vast hall shuddered cops and Garden personnel went white with fear and began edging toward the exits, and Jennifer, who in her heart loved this song more than any other in the Juice's repertoire, turned shrieking to share her joy with José—

  —and as she saw his broad white grin, the Indescribable Thing happened to her for the second time.

  Her ears roared louder than the surrounding din. Her vision began to grey out from hyperventilation. She felt her legs turn into water and knew she must be going down. And faintly—but oh, unmistakably—she heard José bellow in her ear: "You're all right! I got you!"

  She let go. She never knew how long she clung to him. By the time she returned to sentience, she was sitting in her seat again, head buried in the hollow of his neck. Her face and his collar were soaking wet, and a different song was already in its closing bars. She had never felt so wonderful and terrible. The music and lights were something far away and unimportant—beautiful, fitting in their beauty, but not truly necessary—and the screaming thousands had ceased to exist. She marinated in bliss and despair, until they distilled down to joy and melancholy.

  What made her mind switch on again was Travis's amplified voice saying, "This will be our last one tonight." That reached her even in her languor. The Juice never did encores. This was it—the last morsel to be savoured. "It's a new piece we've just composed, especially for this concert." That reached her too. She looked at José, and found that she could not bear to look him in the eyes—so she kissed him hard and quick on the cheek, and turned her eyes to the stage. "Mark wrote the words for this, it's called 'The Night of Power'—"

  The piece was just what she wanted it to be, an attention-holder. It was hard to grasp. The musical underpinning was more like the Pulp than the Juice, dark and simplistic, full of ominous power chords and evil vamps. But the accompanying visuals were pure Juice, happy and positive and good; the lasers tended toward golds and blues and the hologram images were something like erotic angels with dark skin. The lyrics seemed opaque, ambiguous. Something about changes, something about sad but necessary, something about desperate times calling for desperate measures, desperate crimes and desperate pleasures, precious junk and useless treasures...Jennifer concentrated, but the words slipped away from her grasp; she retained only the chorus, which kept repeating:

  It is the Night of Power

  The appointed hour

  They're tearing down the tower

  The shit is gonna shower

  She watched Mark, who had composed this, and he was absolutely unreadable—was actually wearing sunglasses.

  Red sunglasses.

  There was an extended instrumental coda, plainly improvised, and it turned into an event, one of those once-in-a-career moments when each member of a group transcends herself and achieves telepathic rapport with her partners. The beat was infectious; most of Tamila's body was only a blur. Mark and H were working with four limbs apiece, grinning furiously at each other across the stage.

  Maria made shades and shapes that hovered on the very edge of recognition, and Travis sang wordlessly with his eyes closed, throbbing with the power. Their combined energy whipped the crowd into its ultimate excitement; again stomping feet threatened to shatter the great hall.

  People swayed and wept and babbled, until finally the sound swept up into one final ear-splitting, teeth-grinding explosion, a thunderous final chord, a nova-blast of pure white light in all directions, and—total darkness, total silence. And in the split second before the audience went mad, a hundred Travises shouted "NIGHT OF POWER!"

  from the bottom of a great cavern.

  Thousands of voices echoed the shout in the dark hall. For an endless few seconds, the only illumination came from the exit signs and a few hundred smouldering cigarette- and joint-tips. When the house lights went up, the stage was empty. A few reporters, half-blinded by the sudden glare, were nonetheless astute enough to activate their stopwatches at that instant, and the New York Times would have quoted the final ovation at fourteen minutes and forty seconds, if the Times had published an edition the next morning. It set a new all-time decibel record for the Garden, and may have killed a janitor with a bad heart.

  Jennifer took part in it, of course, screamed off what remained of her throat-lining, but somewhere below the conscious level she knew this moment was not the emotional high point of the evening, and it made her feel a little strange. Vaguely she noticed a few people in the audience and staff removing and putting away pairs of red sunglasses like the ones Mark had just worn; they all seemed to be black people. She decided it was some New York thing she didn't understand and dismissed it. She would have to write every detail of the concert to Sophie tonight, before it blurred in her mind. What had that last song been about, anyway? My, it was hot in here; her whole body felt clammy and her feet squished in her shoes.

  The ovation officially ended at the moment when the decibel level dropped below 90 db, but it was some time after that before the mass stampede for the exits really got under weigh. José did not need to restrain Jennifer; she was far too intelligent to join a line that was not going anywhere. Russell had taught her that the last passenger to stand up in the airplane left the airport in the best mood.

  They sat together, silent in the din, and waited while thousands of stupider people dissipated a great deal of their good spirits trying to achieve the impossible among the incompossible. Jennifer passed the time by scrutinizing every person within her field of vision except José, cataloguing their peculiarities to herself. She was done long before the herd showed any significant movement toward the doors, so she decided to look herself over, straighten her seams, repair her face and get ready to meet the public again. She was certain the butterflies on her cheeks were smudged, and the eyes were sure to be a total loss. She reached down to get her compact from the pouch at her hip, and felt dampness as her hand brushed her lap.

  God, she thought, I'm dripping with sweat, how gross—oh, shit! She froze, afraid to look down.

  That's not sweat, that's—I must be lubricating. I didn't know there could be that much, really making love must be sloppy. Shit, I hope I didn't stain my dress—

  She looked down, and her first thought was that José had had to stab somebody while she wasn't paying attention, and here was the blood. But almost at once she knew what it was.

  Oh my God—

  Oh, my God—

  Oh my dancing lefthanded baby-pink God, I've got my period. It finally finally finally came down, Mom will flip and Dad will freak and what in the hell am I going to do now?

  No more fuzzy thinking. Time to act like a grownup. She folded her hands across her lap, sat perfectly still and began meditational breathing, using a silent chant to measure her respiration into four slow equal parts, concentrating her attention on the air that entered and left her. Gradually the adrenalin was reabsorbed, the buzzing in her brain diminished, even the noise of the crowd went away. Once she had reached tranquility and her thoughts had stopped altogether, she restarted her mind and considered her dilemma dispassionately. "José?"

  He was staring at the high ceiling, frowning slightly.

  "I hate to tell you this, but I just got my period."

  "What are you—oh wow!"

  "My very first."

  "No shit?" He smiled weakly. "Hey, that's fantastic! God damn, what do you know, that's really somethin'.

  Congratulations, Jennifer, no shit—that's terrific."

  She loved him for that reaction. "Yes it is. I think. And thank you for not saying 'Fuckin' A.' But it presents a problem. This spot in front is nothing to the one I'm sitting on, and I can't do anything with the side panels of the dress—it's going to be dripping down my legs. Any ideas?

  "Ai, chinga." He frowned in thought and looked around.

  "Wait a minute."

  They waited until there was no one left forward of their row. "Look," José said then, "the dress is shot anyway.

  Okay if I cut it up some?"

  "Sure, I guess." The blood would not wash out. She arranged the jacket across her lap, unsnapped the waistband at either side and worked the skirt out from under her as discreetly as possible, wiping herself dry with Kleenex. He produced his knife—she still did not know where he kept it, it always seemed to simply occur in his hand—and picked at stitches with it until there was nothing left but waistband. She caught on at once, put the waistband back on and rotated it ninety degrees so that the snaps were now at her navel and spine. When she reattached the skirt's side panels to their velcro fasteners, they would be front and back panels, and she would be acceptably covered.

  "José, you're a genius. But there's still a problem. Pads are the only thing I'm going to find in the ladies' room, and I've got nothing to hold one on now."

  "First off, forget the ladies' room. All the pads'll be ripped off, and you don't wanna meet the kinda fems that hang out in the bathroom after a concert. I got a big hunk of Kleenex—"

  "But what's going to hold it there? Uplifting thoughts?"

  He took the discarded former front panel of her dress, folded it below the small stain, slid his knife into the fold and ripped upward, cutting the swatch in half. He folded the unstained half lengthwise and handed it to her. "You put this under you, pull it up through the belt in front and back, then fold the ends over and tuck 'em under the skirt.

  Presto—one Kleenex holder."

  She was impressed. "You're as good a designer as Da— Father." He looked away while she assembled things. The scheme worked on the first try, and she felt infinitely more secure with the thick wad of Kleenex held up against her.

  She realized that she was losing her zen detachment, and that the three dominant feelings seeping back into her were relief, fatigue, and elation. "How's that?"

  He looked her over carefully. "That's gonna work fine."

  She was slightly annoyed. He was not seeing her, he was seeing his design. She struck a pose that exposed much thigh and to the tune of the American national anthem sang, "José, can you see...?" She regretted it at once: he looked away and she wished she could borrow his knife and cut her tongue out. Computers were better than people in only one way: they let you unsay things.

  A rentacop was shouting at them. "Hey! Come on, God dammit, take her home and bang her, we're closed."

  José went rigid, and for a second Jennifer thought there was going to be a fight—over her!—but he relaxed, and the knife the guard had not seen magically vanished from his hand. "Come on, let's go, your parents'll be getting worried."

  She followed him up the aisle. The Madison Square Garden, nearly empty, will make anyone feel small.

  He insisted they take a cab home, and she was glad to give in. It felt strange to walk with something so thick between her legs; her whole lower belly felt subtly, disturbingly rearranged; her upper thighs were sticky; and her legs were much too tired for a long walk. The passenger compartment of the taxi was, of course, essentially an air-conditioned bulletproof cell from which one had to pay to gain exit. The windows, of course, would not open. The air-conditioning was, of course, not working. It made for tension in the confined space, so she chattered all the way across town.

  "What did you think of that last number?"

  "Be honest with you, I didn't understand it."

  "Neither did I. Mixed metaphors, ambiguous signals— symbols, I mean—murky imagery, it was all scary somehow. Sort of sad and scary and...resigned."

  "I thought it sounded like those other guys, what is it, the Pulp?"

  "Yes! Or even that stupid new nihilist band that call themselves the Rind."

  "Hah! Long career those guys are gonna have, with a member suiciding every third or fourth concert. I mean, they're huge in a lot of cities, but fuckin' A, how long can it go on?"

  "I hear they're down from twelve to five. They're not allowed into Canada, you know."

  "In this country we got a law that a person can pick the time and manner of his own death, as long as he don't freak nobody out or leave a mess. I think that's a good law. You can't freak nobody out if they paid to see you do it. And they pay plenty. There's people in the world—fuckin' A, there's people in this town—that'd do themselves up with a blowtorch for a hundred bucks cash to give to their kids. I think it's gonna catch on."

  "You use up a lot of musicians that way."

  "There's some shortage?"

  "And of course they won't record..."

  "Why have your big farewell scene in some recording studio? Who'd believe it wasn't faked?"

  "I suppose. I just thought of the word for that 'Night of Power' song. My da—father taught it to me.

  'Weltschmertz.'" "Jewish?"

  "German. It means homesickness for a place you've never seen."

  "Sounds Jewish to me."

  "Are you prejudiced against Jews, José?"

  "Me? Nah. I almost got married to a Jewish girl once."

  "Really? What happened?'' She imagined some romantic tragedy.

  He grinned. "The same thing that just happened to you. Her period came. So it wasn't necessary. She dumped me."

  "Oh. Are you prejudiced against anybody?"

  "Hey, look, you live in New York you gotta prejudge people. Only I don't do it by colour or ethnic. I'm prejudiced about size and money. Like, if a guy is bigger than me, seven chances out of ten sooner or later he's gonna push on me some way, and I gotta push back. If a guy is real skinny and his sleeves is rolled down, eight chances out of ten he's a junkie and you gotta watch him. If he's dressed rich, eight chances out of ten he's a cocksucker, excuse me."

  "You don't like gays?'

  "Hey, my brother down in Miami is gay. Gays are okay.

  That word is just like a expression. I mean, like, most rich guys in this town, they don't think that nobody else is a human being that isn't rich. They don't like Puerto Ricans and black people and Chinees and Pakis 'cause they're scared we might be hungry enough to do them up. And most of them, even if they're heterosexual, they don't think any women are human beings, no matter what color they are or how much money they got."

  "What about rich women?"

  "They're the worst. They don't even believe theirselves is human beings."

  Jennifer thought about that. By José's standards, she was rich.

  "But the people I'm prejudiced about the most you can't tell from appearance. They could be white or black or Puerto Rican, rich or poor or middle-class. I can tell 'em when I see 'em lookin' at me, and I keep my hand near my knife.

  People that are prejudiced about me— because I'm half black, or because I'm half Puerto Rican, or because I'm half black and half Puerto Rican. Some white people look at me like if my old man was gonna marry outside his race he should have married white. Some black people look at me like my old man shoulda been castrated. Funny thing, Spanish people don't give me too much shit. But people like Shaw Nuff, the guy that rented you your spot—sometimes I want to kill that bastid."

  Traffic was slow. Jennifer saw a man staring at her from the curb. He was her father's age, black, heavily bearded, and totally bald. He looked sad. Somehow she felt as if it were her fault. "José?"

  "Yah."

  "About tonight—"

  "You don't hafta—"

  "Let me get this said, okay, we're going to be home in a minute. A lot of girls, when they get their first period, it's like a major trauma. I always wondered what mine was going to be like. That wasn't the time or place I would have picked. It could have been a disaster." She reached across the seat and took his hand. "You were wonderful. You helped me a lot. Not just what you did, but the way you did it. You didn't freak out or anything. You made it good. This has been the best night of my life, and I owe you for it."

  "Nah, you don't—"

  "Shut up, please. I have been cockteasing you for almost two weeks now. I'm not going to do it any more."

  "Oh."

  They were passing Third Avenue; a few blocks uptown she absently noted a great number of police cars and ambulances with attendant crowd. "Not just because you were nice to me, understand. Not even just because it's mean. It's—it's like before it was okay, because I was just kind of practicing. Now it's for real. You can't fool around with a gun any more once it's loaded. Pay the man, we're here."

  He secured their release from the mobile sauna, tipping as he thought appropriate, and insisted on getting out first and checking the street in both directions before letting her out.

  She bought a box of Maxithins in the drugstore on the corner. He stopped her when they were safely inside the apartment building.

  "Two things. Your parents aren't gonna be too crazy about what happened, me bein' there and cuttin' up your dress and stuff. They wouldn't understand. So why don't we make it that you got your period in the can, and a nice lady with a pair of scissors helped you out?"

  "Sound. What's the second thing?"

  "What you said in the cab, what you been doin', it's okay."

  "I've been a bitch."

  "I'm not bogus, it's really okay." He hesitated. "But I'm really glad you're not gonna be doin' it no more."

  She felt a warm glow. "Was I terrible?"

  "Hell no, you were great. A regular Cruise missile. You're gonna break some hearts in a couple of years, no shit.

  Come on, your parents'll be waiting up for you."

  But they were not. The light was on in the main room, and the door to her parents' bedroom was open, but no one was in sight. "We're back," she called, and got no answer. She checked the garden and they were not there either. A small alarm bell was ringing somewhere in the back of her head, and she didn't know why. Perhaps it was the air-conditioning cooling the sweat on her body, giving her goosebumps?

  "They left us notes," José said, taking two envelopes from the top of the refrigerator. He opened the one with hls name on it in large block letters, and handed her the other.

  Hers was in Dena's sprawling hand, and covered two sheets of note paper:

  "Jennifer, hon, your father and I got the crazy impulse to go out for a walk and talk a bit. We might be late, so don't wait up for us. I know I have to be up early for rehearsal, and I guess it does seem like an awfully hot night to leave a perfectly nice air-conditioned apartment—but you know dancers love to sweat, and your father and I just don't seem to get a chance to spend a lot of time together lately, and we're tired of spending it in a little stone box, no matter how comfortable. Now, it must be way past your bedtime, so pop right in, okay? I understand José is sleeping over tonight, so help him fold out the couch and then get a good night's sleep. See you tomorrow. I hope your concert was wonderful. Love, Mom."

  Mom must have smoked some grass, Jennifer thought, this rambles all over the place. She looked up; José was just slipping his own note into his pants pocket. "What did yours say?"

  "Oh, just says they went out for a walk, and she told me where to find the sheets and stuff."

  Suddenly she realized why the little alarm bell was ringing. "José, the TV's off."

  "And it stays off—time you were asleep."

  "You don't understand. You taught us that we should leave it on whenever we were leaving the apartment empty, to fool the junkies. Once, I forgot, and Daddy gave me a lecture. He doesn't forget things like that."

  He took her note and glanced through it. "Okay, let's say he didn't forget. How about this: some junkies came in through the locked door and held them up, marched 'em out of here with machine guns, and waited real polite while your ma wrote us both long chatty letters. The part I don't understand is how come the TV is still there at all. Of course, it weighs about eight ounces, and those junkies ain't strong—"

  She glared him into silence. "All right, dammit, lay off.

  Menstrual women are supposed to be paranoid."

  "And they're supposed to be asleep by this time' of night."

  "All right. Dibs on the john." She got pajamas and clean underwear from her room, noticing on the way that her parents' bed was unmade—really unmade, the mattress visible on Russell's side. Once in the bathroom she opened her first box of Maxithins and studied the instructions, then stripped down and cleaned herself up. She studied the soiled kleenex for a long time. Somewhere in there, she told herself, is what was nearly another human being.

  Fantastic. How sad to waste it. Briefly she fantasized having a baby with José, and giggled. Its first words would be, "Fuckin' A." She put the minipad in place, the way she and Sophie had practiced in secret months ago, put her pajamas on, and went through the ritual of washing and brushing and flushing. When she emerged from the bathroom she could see into her parents' bedroom. José was standing on tiptoe, looking for sheets on the closet shelf. "In the box on the floor," she called.

  "Oh yeah, how stupid, I just read that five minutes ago." He found the sheets, brought them out and began making up the unfolded couch-bed.

  "Won't my parents wake you up when they come in?"

  "I never have no trouble getting back to sleep. Goodnight, Jennifer."

  "Goodnight, José. Thanks again for everything." She gave him a chaste peck on the cheek and went to bed. Where she lay and stared at the ceiling and tried to put all the chaotic events of the evening into some kind of perspective and integrate them. But she got sidetracked.

  She was exquisitely tired, her brain spinning with a thousand randomly skittering thoughts, which would soon melt into the white noise of sleep. But before they could, a few of them bumped together—and became more than the sum of their parts.

  The first thought was: boy, Mom sure went on and on in her note. Half of one of those little notepad sheets is all she usually ever uses—and in the whole two pages she really had nothing to say except goodnight.

  Which led to: why a separate note for José? And why sealed up in envelopes, for heaven's sake? And why leave them on top of the fridge instead of the usual place on the table?

  And: why didn't José know where the sheets were, after Mom wrote him a special note just to tell him, when I could have told him, and in fact did?

  Suddenly she was not tired at all.

  She heard the bathroom door shut and water begin running.

  She was out of bed at once, and silent as a ghost she made for the living room. As she had hoped, with her "safely in bed" José had stripped down—even with air-conditioning, it was warm in the apartment. His trousers were folded on the arm of the couch. She knelt beside it, rifled his pockets and slipped out the folded note.

  The only point she could see to all the rigamarole with the notes was to make sure she didn't get to them before José did, and to keep her distracted long enough for him to absorb his own. She actually hesitated with the note in her hands, knowing there was something in it that she wouldn't like. But José might shut off the sink at any minute, and she needed the noise to cover the sound of unfolding the paper.

  Now or never!

  "José: Jennifer's note says we've gone out for a walk. Act like this one does too. We're in big trouble and a big hurry.

  Some time before dawn a major race riot is going to happen. Protect Jennifer. We hope to be back before then, but if we don't get back by [there were four successive crossouts here] noon, she's in your hands. There's a yogurt container full of cash in the fridge. Try to get her to Russell's father's place. Wilson Grant, 3 Seaside, Orient Point, phone 516-555-1858. We're depending on you.

  —Dena."

  It was only on the third and slowest reading that she grasped all the words. She closed her eyes tight, and then tighter, until she saw purple novae in a paisley universe.

  The floor began to shift under her, and she dug her knees into it savagely until it held still.

  I am not, she told herself, a normal child. I know the difference between TV and reality. Clearly this is TV.

  Therefore I am only a character, an actress, and my motivation in this scene is I can't deal with this now and that means it must be about time for the commercial—

  It was actually then that she fell asleep, and not ten seconds later when her head hit the pillow; her automatic pilot got her to bed.

  Sleep can be an interval of unconsciousness, blessed escape from pressing problems—or it can be a kind of superconsciousness. Without the distraction of a conscious mind colouring everything with emotion and editing everything for memory, the underbrain can run multiple high-speed evaluations of a problem with cold ruthless honesty. A sleeping person can think the unthinkable, can work with and plan for it. It is often wrongly said that this part of the mind is totally selfish, loyal only to itself. That is not true; it can encompass as many others as that mind loves. But it is totally devoid of any trace of hypocrisy, polite or otherwise.

  Some kind of race riot and they're out in it together? Bad, bad, they're a walking focus of trouble, have to assume they're not coming back. Sit out a race riot at Mrs.

  Grandma's? Bogus program. Sooner hole up here. How long can it last? Worst case, say three or four days, we've plenty of food for two people even if power fails. Fill the tub and all the pots with water, heavier curtains. This apartment is a fortress. Might use up José, staying here, but that's an acceptable risk and he could just as easily be hurt getting me out to Long Island where I am not going to go.

  Resist being moved. And if you have to move, anyplace is better than Orient. If I can make it back home to Halifax somehow maybe Uncle Fred will take me on, real uncle or not. I'm running out of guardians too fast. Maybe go underground with José—would he take that much risk for me? Work on him...for a start tell him to God damn it

  "—stop shaking me, José!"

  He was leaning over her in the darkened bedroom, hand on her shoulder, face close. Behind him, the door was closed.

  She twisted violently away.

  José stepped back at once. "Jennifer, I'm sorry to wake you, you only slept an hour. But we got bad trouble and you gotta wake up."

  "I'm not going to Grandpa's, I don't care."

  "Yeah, I figured you read the note, you forgot to put it away. You ain't going to your Grandpa's, not now anyway.

  But we gotta talk, and fast. You sure you're awake?"

  She sat up. "Sure."

  "Did your mother ever mention a dancer named Jerome?"

  "Yes. Jerome Turner. Why?"

  "What did she say about him?"

  "Why?"

  "Because there's a guy out in the living room right now says he's Jerome, and he's got a message from your parents, and I gotta know how much to believe him. Okay?"

  "She used to work with him once before. I think he's black, and she said something about not recognizing him with his head shaved. What's the message?"

  "What else?"

  "Noth—uh...I think, I'm not sure, but I think he and Mom were close once. Daddy acted funny. What is the message?"

  "Okay, that fits. Look, this guy says your parents sent him to get us, you and me, and bring us to them. He don't say where and he don't say why, he just says he ain't leavin' without us. I asked him about the race riot and he says he don't know about no riot, but I don't believe him. He told me some stuff only your father would know about, but he could have made your father tell him that stuff, you understand? He's black and bald and he moves like a dancer and he doesn't seem to like your father worth a shit and he's got funny vibes like he doesn't want to do this and he does at the same time. So from what you say it fits."

  "Do you think we should go with him?"

  "It could still be a setup."

  "It doesn't make much sense that way. In the middle of a race riot, why go through all this trouble for a fourteen-year-old hostage?"

  "Maybe to put some kind of pressure on your folks."

  "They could do that just by threatening to firebomb this apartment. Okay, suppose we don't go?"

  "For a start, I'll have to fight that guy out there. He's pretty determined."

  "So if Mom and Dad really did send him to get us out of danger, maybe they know what they're talking about and we should go. You say he knows things only Dad could have told him."

  "But they could have made him tell them that stuff."

  "I don't think so."

  "Jennifer, the world ain't like the movies. Anybody can be tortured into telling anything."

  "If so, I want to get closer to the people who did it. Give me one of your knives. The small one."

  "No way! I may need it."

  "José, if this is some kind of a trap, they're going to take your weapons. But they won't search where I'm going to put it."

  "Oh." He thought for a second. "You promise you'll give it back when I tell you?"

  "Give me the fucking knife and turn your back."

  She had fetched a second panty-shield in case it turned out that one was not enough to get a person through a night—how did she know, who could she ask? She checked, and the first one wasn't bad. The knife was a flick knife; folded it was not much bigger than a tube of mascara. She made a knife sandwich of the two pads, adjusted it for comfort, and turned her attention to dressing. Jeans would make the knife inaccessible, but a dress would slow her down if she had to run. She settled on a shortie, a currently fashionable item whose nearest relative was the miniskirts of her father's youth. She did not like to wear one without pantyhose, but it fit her needs, and it made her look little and undangerous. Red sneakers supported the image. "Did Father leave us the gun?"

  "No. I checked."

  Daddy and Mom were in trouble then. She wanted a weapon easier to get at than the knife. She got a hatpin from her dresser, a vicious little thing ninety millimeters long, and slid it down the inside of the flap that covered the zipper in the back of the shortie, so that only the head showed, looking like a button. She could think of nothing else. "Okay. We don't go anywhere until I've talked to this guy. If I decide it's not Jerome, or he's bogus some other way, I'll mention how hot it is. If I do, take him out."

  "You want me to ice him?" José asked, and she completely missed the irony in his tone.

  "No. We can use him for a counterhostage. Maybe we can torture information out of him."

  "We," he said, with no irony at all. "Jesus Christ. Hey, we're taking too long, he's gonna be paranoid. Let's go."

  "José?"

  "What?"

  "Have you ever killed anybody?"

  "Have you ever let a boy touch you between the legs?"

  "That's none of—oh. I get you. Let's go."

  He stopped her at the door. Mostly José looked old for his age; now he looked as old as Russell. "I killed two guys but one don't count. I went to punch this guy and he moved and I got him in the throat. He, like, choked. The other guy, I was trying to stay alive and that's what it took. I didn't get tagged for either one."

  His face held an expression of deep sadness that seemed vaguely familiar; she had seen one much like it not too long ago, somewhere. She could see that both deaths bothered him, but that he had learned to live with both. "I let two boys touch me, but one didn't count. I had jeans on and he couldn't find it. The other was fun." He grinned, and the sadness was gone. "So come on, killer."

  They left the bedroom.

  Her first sight of the man on the couch made her ears hot.

  She kept her face impassive with a conscious effort. José was handsome by anyone's standards, and in her eyes strikingly so. But this man was...the current buzzword was lickable. After the briefest of glances, he ignored her, so she let herself look him over carefully. There was no visible part of him that was not ideally formed. He wore cords and a jean jacket, and was barechested. She decided he could not have been more than adequate as a dancer, to have evaded fame into his thirties. He rose to his feet with lithe quickness, his gaze fixed on José's hands.

  I hope, she thought, that we don't have to kill him. It would be a terrible waste. No wonder Daddy gets all crinkly when his name comes up. And he's the exact same colour as mom. Maybe I should kill him...

  "It took you long enough," he said. To José. "I told you that minutes counted. I called for a cab, it's probably waiting now, so let's get her—"

  Jennifer stood tall, and with just enough volume to override him, said, "Hold it, chump!"

  He stopped talking and stared at her, for the first time. She imagined he would have had that same expression if a tree had suddenly addressed him, or a fire hydrant.

  Maybe I will kill him. "Do an arabesque turn on a tilt, arched spine, into an inside turn with a contraction."

  "What?''

  "Do it."

  "Now? Why?''

  "You claim to be a colleague of my mother. I do not identify you." She pressed José's arm to keep him where he was and crossed the room to move a chair out of the way.

  "If you expect me to go anywhere with you, do the combination I said."

  He frowned ferociously at his watch. "Damn it, little girl, there is no time for this nonsense—"

  "Any minute now it is going to dawn on you that what you are talking to is a human person, who happens to be shorter than you and smarter than you and, oh yes, younger than you, and once that happens we'll be out the door in no time, wait and see."

  She gave him credit; he wasted no more seconds, but rolled his eyes and did as she had requested. He did it fairly well. His contraction wasn't quite deep enough, but he was unmistakably a professional. "Can we go now?" he said as he finished. José was looking at him reappraisingly.

  "First tell me the things my father told you to tell José."

  He started to protest—then gritted his teeth and did as she told him. José explained the significance of all three briefly, and she nodded, satisfied. If her father had been made to supply recognition codes, she was sure that he would have built in some innocent sounding tipoff that would ring false, at least to her ears. Provisionally, this was a trusted emissary of her father. But was he trustworthy?

  "Where are you going to take us?"

  "To your parents."

  "Where geographically?"

  "I can't tell you that, because I don't know. The first stop is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are in a place of safety, waiting anxiously for you to join them."

  "Safety from the race riot?"

  If she had hoped to knock him off balance she was disappointed. "Your bodyguard mentioned that too. I know of no race riot planned for tonight." She could tell that he was telling the truth—but not all of it.

  "What about after tonight?"

  "I am not a party to any race riot at any time."

  "Safety from what, then?"

  "I've answered all the questions there is time for. We have blown that cab by now, we'll have to pick one up on...damn. I am leaving now, Miss Grant. If you're staying, that's up to you."

  She decided to bluff a little—she could always run after him—and stood quite still. He got halfway out the door before whirling in his tracks and hollering, big, "You've got to come! I promised Michael."

  "Michael? You mean—"

  "The man that saved you and your parents when you first got to town."

  She blinked. "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?" She scooped up her pouch on the way to the door.

  "Maybe the cab will still be there."

  But of course it was not. Jerome turned left and started for Second Avenue.

  "Second is one-way downtown," Jennifer said. "We're going uptown." Her father had taken her to the Met the week before. She pointed right toward Third Avenue.

  "We want Second," Jerome called back, continuing to walk east.

  She turned right and headed west to Third. José followed her. They heard muffled swearing behind them and Jerome caught up nearly at once.,"When we get to the corner," he said in a clenched-teeth voice, "we are going to turn left."

  "That's still downt—"

  "God damn it, stop jerking my chain. I've got my reasons, and I am not about to explain them to a fourteen-year-old with a smart mouth."

  José stopped. "Then why don't you explain them to me, motherfucker?"

  Jerome bristled. "Look—" he began. Then he closed his eyes, took a deep slow breath, opened them again. "I am here because Michael wants you two protected, for reasons I am finding increasingly hard to understand. José, Russell said you define a 'nigger' as someone who would hate Jennifer just because of her colour. I am getting the idea that you two are niggers."

  "No, we're n—"

  "Then why are you giving me such a hard time?"

  She thought it over. "Left at the corner it is." She resumed walking, and José took up the rear.

  Mollified, Jerome unbent enough to explain. "There was a small altercation a couple of blocks up on Third, not that long ago. It'll still be crawling with the raise—the police—"

  "I know the word." She remembered seeing something like that on the way home from the Garden.

  "—and if they see a spade, a spic and a little shade teeny with no pants on flagging a cab at two in the morning, we're going to lose time we can't spare."

  "I'm sorry, Jerome. I—"

  "It's all right. Forget it."

  "I didn't mean to—"

  "I said 'forget it.'" His voice was flat. He did not want her for a friend. He wanted a cooperative parcel.

  She wondered about his attitude as she walked. She had the confident, unsmug awareness that she was not easy for a man of mature years to dislike, even one as handsome as Jerome, but he was managing. It was more than the usual disdain some adults had for all children. She wondered if somewhere in there Jerome was, by José's definition, a little bit nigger. What else could account for the chip on his shoulder?

  As they turned the corner she glanced uptown. She noticed that neither of the others did, so she did not look long, but she could see that while the crowd and the ambulances and many of the blue-and-whites had gone, the police crime scene barricades were still up and there were plenty of people, in and out of uniform, still on the street. She wondered what the event had been. A robbery? A gangland hit? Another draft riot?

  The third cab they signalled opted to pick them up. Jennifer made sure the air-conditioning was working before getting in—the night was even hotter and muggier than it had been earlier. She sat carefully, but the hidden knife caused no great discomfort. Jerome got in last.

  "Look," he said when their destination was named and the privacy curtain drawn, "let's get something settled right now. When we get to the Museum, your weapons will be taken from you." He was, she noted smugly, speaking only to José.

  "Nobody takes my weapon," José said, and the total lack of expression in his voice made him seem more sincere than any amount of macho posturing could have done.

  Jerome rolled his eyes heavenward again; Jennifer was beginning to recognize it as a characteristic expression.

  "There is no argument," he said patiently. "You can not see Michael or Dena or Russell holding. If you won't give up your gun, settle with the driver and get out right now."

  Jennifer and José exchanged a long look. At last she said aloud, "We put ourselves in his hands the moment we left our building. There could have been an ambush waiting.

  We have no choice now."

  José turned back to Jerome. "Look at me. Will she be safe?"

  "As safe as anyone in New York. Safer than most."

  "You want it now?"

  "Whatever."

  José had not moved, but somehow the knife was in his hand. "Here." He passed it over quite slowly, hilt-first.

  "You don't carry a gun?"

  "Don't like 'em."

  "And you only carry this one knife? Balanced for throwing?"

  "Well—" José added another knife.

  "Doesn't really matter," Jerome said. "They'll search you thoroughly, anyroad."

  José frowned. "Shit. Well, in that case—" He produced a third knife and a small automatic. At Jerome's look he shrugged and looked bland. "I said I didn't like them; I never said I don't carry them sometimes."

  "Jesus. T-shirt, vest, and tight jeans on you, and you have all this tucked away. Hell, I have more pockets than you, and I haven't got room to put all this shit. Take this fucking piece back until we get to—" Suddenly, incongruously, he smiled broadly. It was a dancer's professional smile, and it was one of the most beautiful things Jennifer had ever seen.

  He was so glad to be here tonight, so proud that God had given him this opportunity to express the magic of dance, his whole career led to this night and his legs didn't hurt a bit. And smiling that brilliant smile, he slowly said, "Oh, my, God."

  He was looking past them out the lefthand window. They were stopped at a red light. "Raise?" José asked without turning around.

  "Yes," Jerome agreed happily.

  "Can he see the iron?"

  "No. But he can see our colour mix, and he doesn't like it.

  Oh, Christ."

  A shrill police whistle split the night. Jennifer looked then, saw a beefy old Irish cop who was gesturing the cabbie to stay where he was with one hand and waving for backup with the other. She smiled at him.

  "Nowhere to hide this stuff," Jerome said through his beautiful teeth. "We'll have to try and take them. Take your gun back—"

  "Don't be a jerk," Jennifer snapped, opening her pouch. "In here, all of it. Yours too. Hurry."

  "Are you crazy?—what if they—"

  "Have you got a better idea?"

  The cop had left the sidewalk, was approaching with routinely drawn gun; in a few more seconds he would be able to see the hardware. Smiling more winningly than ever, Jerome piled it into her pouch. "Damn it—"

  "Shut up and listen. You're my uncle, get it? Mom's brother.

  I'm your favourite niece, down for a visit from Canada, and you're taking me back to the Museum because I think I lost an earring near there this afternoon."

  The cop was conferring with the driver, his gun and eyes on the passengers. "I am sorry I mistook you for a child," Jerome said. "You are eight hundred years old." The doors unlocked and the cop motioned them out with his gun.

  "Yes, officer? What is the trouble?"

  "Step outa the car, please. All of you." Jennifer liked that response. If it wasn't "Shut up, nigger" yet, there was hope.

  All three got out. A second officer trotted up and joined the party, a black man with an Afro under his uniform cap. The burly Irish cop had the two males assume the position, then took Jennifer aside while his partner checked their ID.

  "Awright. Number one: are you with these guys of your own free will?"

  She blinked and smiled. "Of course, Constable."

  He sighed. "You a working girl?"

  She gave him the little frown of puzzlement that made her look eight. "I'm still in school."

  "That ain't an answer, Missy."

  "Constable, I'm from Halifax. The capitol of Nova Scotia.

  In Canada." She started to open her pouch.

  "Hold it!"

  She froze. "I was getting out my wallet," she said indignantly.

  "Never mind that. What are you doing with those two at this time of night?"

  "The black man is my Uncle Jerry. My stepmother is black, we're not silly about that up in Canada like you Americans.

  José is my bodyguard. My father hired him."

  "Huh," he said. "The nig—the black guy doesn't look like a skell at that." Jennifer rejoiced. This was going to work.

  He got her name and her parents' names and address. The other cop was questioning Jerome and José just out of earshot. "All right, get over there with them." The two cops conferred in prison-yard murmurs. "You lost a gold earring?" the big cop called to her.

  "Yes, a tau cross." It was the first thing that came into her head, she actually owned such a pair, but as the words left her mouth she knew they were a mistake. Never embellish a lie, dummy.

  "Uncle Jerry over there says it was a diamond chip."

  "I told you it was the gold tau, Uncle Jerry," she tried. "I wouldn't have worn the diamonds with this dress."

  "How come you waited until now to come looking?"

  "I just noticed it was gone a little while ago."

  "What are you doing up this late?"

  She was ready for this one. "I went to see the Juice tonight at Madison Square. It was great, I was too excited to sleep after." But again as the words passed her lips she knew she was stepping in shit. Jerome knew nothing of the concert, would have given some other answer to that question.

  "Look, constable,"she said, moving forward, "I have the other earring here, see?" She contrived to look like she was lifting it out from under her hair for inspection while actually keeping her ear covered—she was not wearing earrings—as she covered the distance between them. The big cop watched her, gun at his side; his partner was well trained and kept his eyes and gun on the two males, so that after she kicked the big cop smack in the balls, she had time to shrug the pouch strap off her shoulder, catch it in her hand, and whip the heavily weighted pouch around in a vicious overhand circle. She hit the wrist true and the second cop lost his gun. She meant to get his head with the next swing, but instinctively he leaped away from her and rolled, and José came off the side of the cab like a cannonball and intercepted him with an exquisite karate spin-kick that broke his jaw. José leapt over him, spun Jennifer around, pushed her square in the ass as hard as he could so that she ran instead of falling, and yelled "Run!"

  He came after her and in a few steps had her by the hand.

  She glanced over her shoulder as she ran. "Wait!" They slowed and turned. The cabbie had grabbed Jerome's arm through the window, a good two handed grip, and Jerome was trying unsuccessfully to get free. The cop Jennifer had kicked, though on his knees and clearly still disabled, was trying to lift his revolver. He cold not quite manage it, it went off and slug spanged off the pavement. Jerome broke the cabbie's thumb and vaulted in a single fluid movement over the cab, putting it between him and the gun. He yelled something to Jennifer and José and ran in the opposite direction.

  José yanked her hand and they ran again. "What'd he say?"

  she yelled as they ran.

  "I think he said to meet at the Museum."

  Half way down the block she glanced back again. Cab and cops were out of sight around the corner and there was no pursuit. At the end of the block there was still no one visible, so they slowed to a walk, turned downtown, and entered the subway as soon as they had their breath back.