Harborview

‘Harborview House.’ The name was chiselled into a granite rock inside a halfmoon drive that butted up to the main entrance. This drab squat rock echoed the building itself: three stories, not more than forty rooms in all, Con had estimated. Less than a hundred patients. ‘Exclusive / caring intimate touch,’ hummed Harborview’s brochures. The best money can buy, Fritz had assured. Don’t let the neighborhood mislead you. He was on Harborview’s Board, was, she now knew, on so many Boards that most of his choices were made like this, from within. You realize, he’d said, we’re talking about a form of investment. Boston is not so far that I can’t keep an eye on you.

As if security didn’t matter, only a low iron fence separated Harborview from the surrounding Victorian hilltop houses, now chopped to apartments and strung together by laundry lines. The houses clustered around Harborview like camouflage. From below the hill, from bustling Huntington Avenue, you wouldn’t guess Harborview existed, at all.

Despite frigid wind gusting down the narrow street, Con arrived sweating from her climb. She always left her car parked and locked down on the Avenue, afraid that on the steep hill the brake wouldn’t hold.

A clump of headless crocusses, petals scattered on half-thawed ground, rimmed the base of the stone. Con paused here, rehearsing what she would say inside. If she spoke fluidly and calmly the visit might go well. Silence—or some giveaway hesitation—could open an abyss.

There was, even from the top of this lookout hill, no harbor view. What she glimpsed—framed by the precipitous street and a flapping edge of Kleenex as she wiped her nose—was the back side of Boston. A jigsaw of hospitals and slums, tree-lined parkways snaking west. Under the fast-moving sky a distant plain of brick row houses, and further beyond a bluish island of skyscrapers—shimmering, insubstantial. But then, as she realized anew every time she drove in, Boston wasn’t a real city. It only pretended, like a homely little kid trying to look grown up at a dance.

Con was nineteen, and felt a need to catch her breath, in general as well as here, right now, standing in the barren garden of Harborview House.

“How’re you today, Miss Appel …”

“Good. How’re you?”

The woman behind the counter—a glamorous Haitian with weightlifter biceps bulging from the cap sleeves of her uniform—smiled as she handed Con the Visitor Book. Con consulted a lumbering wall clock for the time. Three oh eight. Signing-in was an instant time warp—she saw City Hall, world-weary guards, her cardboard briefcase: remembered Chicago.

“How is she, today?” asked Con.

“Couldn’t tell you. I just came on.” The smile intensified. “Not to say all our ladies haven’t been, you know, especially perky, all weekend. Natural, isn’t it? Spring’s all that’s bothering them.”

“Must be.”

Con knew her way. Down a wide corridor, past the Common Room, right turn to the elevator which she usually had to share with something complicated: a gurney and IV, or a wheelchair case. Today she joined an orderly with mealcart. Steel shelves of steel-lidded dishes. A sickening smell. She made herself skinny to squeeze in.

“What’s for dinner?” she asked, to break the mistrustful silence as the elevator rose and her insides lurched upward, too.

“Take your choice. Diet city. High carb, low carb, fiber … Slop I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.”

“Applesauce. My God. I know that smell.”

The doors slid apart. Con escaped into the second floor.

She knew her way: straight through the central station area and into the opposite wing, this corridor always dim thanks to the thrift of low watt bulbs. Then room 211, on the left. Cherry stayed in the same room every time, maybe even demanded it; she liked to insist on her habits as if habit was a kind of privilege, a lift in status … Con walked briskly to prove she was no patient, but kept her eyes unfocussed; she was aware only of shapes, obstacles. From her shoulder swung a leatherette satchel crammed with gum and candy, notebooks and pens, Chapstick, keys, Kleenex, money, identification—all the paraphernalia of the outside.

When they first came to Harborview—late night, seven months ago, in a warm September rain—the main concern had been over Cherry’s purse, not Cherry. Cherry sat slumped on a bench beside a nurse who held her violently trembling hand … We’ll list her belongings, then you sign, someone told Con, upending the purse over the white counter. Clatter of ‘belongings,’ tinkle of pennies, dry rain of loose tobacco. For your safekeeping, Miss. We can’t be responsible, understand? Cherry begged for her cigarettes but no one seemed to hear. Instead the nurse unclasped a string of small pearls from Cherry’s bowed neck, threading them out from between Cherry’s clutching fingers.

At least let me dress for the occasion, she had joked nervously, back in the old apartment, as Con dressed her to leave. Mama gave them. My one and only heirloom. In the plane from Chicago to Boston she downed Coke after Coke. A cab took them from the airport straight to Harborview. All through admittance Lordie wandered in the dark outside. The wall clock lurched past midnight, a typewriter stuttered out the list. What is this place? Con had suddenly asked, turning, as if Cherry ought to know. Cherry shook her head with an impish secretive smirk that said, your guess is as good as mine … Then she’d let the nurse lead her away a few steps and began sobbing only when she realized Con was not to follow … The pearls lay coiled in Con’s palm. They were yellowish, flaked, the knotted string brown from age. Still warm. Con had wanted to drop them. She had felt like a witch doctor, holding those pearls.

Cherry’s obsession here was privacy. The door of number 211, punctuated by a one-way peephole Con would not insult her by using, was firmly shut. Con knocked, listened, knocked harder.

“Entre! Willkommen! Bienvenue!” bellowed a guttural voice. Con obeyed. The door swung slowly to reveal a sink, neat empty bed, barred window. On the second bed a colossal recumbent woman whom Cherry had roomed with before. Fran, Con suddenly remembered, wasn’t this giantess named Fran? Fran’s fur-edged mules and raised nightgowned knees pointed straight at her.

“‘Velcum to the Caa-baa-ray!’” The woman gasped, levering upward. Her knees sank apart. “Just doing a last run-through. Auditions paralyse me.” She winked.

“Hi … Fran.”

“Over here, hunbun. Places, everyone. Her bed, take her bed, don’t bother looking for a chair my gosh no imagine what one of us could do with a chair. Course that leaves me in an awkward situation should my agent that blankety blank sonofabitch or heaven help us my fans drop by. Don’t worry, I know who you are. You’re Cherry’s hunbun. Still you could’ve at least brought me a check … Oh, I’m going to kidnap you, hunbun, I swear. I want my own visitor. Don’t I deserve my own visitor, for crying out loud? How long has it been, anyway? Two weeks? Two years?”

“I don’t know. I mean, Cherry’s only been in five days, this time.”

“Oh that Cherry’s one hot ticket … Her and me are like that, you know.” Fran linked her thumbs, then swam forward through the sheets to ask in a stage whisper, “Honest injun, now. Is it really true she danced?”

Con nodded. She let part of her weight rest on the edge of the empty bed. Her skin tightened all over when she looked down at broad webbed straps riveted to the bedframe. Restraints, tucked up discreetly beneath the mattress. The bed itself was bolted to the floor. “Yeah. She used to dance.”

“Aah …” Fran rocked back and forth, ruminating. Her brindled grey hair, permed at the ends, swung like a bell. “You lose track, I swear. Electro has its advantages but it does that to you.”

“Sure. I guess that’s … what it does.” Electro. When Con and Cherry first glimpsed Fran she had been wheeled in lying on her back, snug in a straitjacket. Her eyes were rolled up to unseeing slits but tears ran from their corners. She dribbled, and her nose ran too. Her whole face flaccid, as if some large nerve had been cut. Pink squares of adhesive flapping off shaven spots on her head.

That had been way back in October. Eyeing Fran now, Con could hardly tell where she’d been shaved, couldn’t connect her with that white mountain on the cot, thank God. Zombies, was what Cherry disdainfully termed the electros. ‘Risen from the dead’ … Still, on that day when Fran was pushed into the room and left to rest there, Con and Cherry had at first avoided looking at each other and then had exchanged one long look until Cherry said, Jesus. Maybe they planned this, huh, to make me count my blessings. There’s always some poor bitch closer to the bottom of the heap. Well see, Cutie? I’m not so bad off. By the way, they can’t pull that crap on you here unless you sign something legal. Oh, they try. I should sink so low. You wouldn’t sign—

And Con had said, please. That’s not even funny.

“Where is she?” Con asked.

“Cherry? Peut-etre in the john? Nah, in the showers again, ten to one. ‘Gonna wash that man right outta my hair—.’ Boy, is she a bundle of nerves. Definitely the nervous type. Sprucing herself up for you, hunbun. Takes a girl time! Look—wouldn’t you think they could let us have a mirror?”

Con looked. Above the sink hung only a calendar from Lamb Insurance showing a Norman Rockwell family saying grace.

“You got a mirror, hunbun?”

“My compact …” Con dove into her satchel, handed the plastic brown oval to Fran, who expertly flipped the catch.

“Brand new! I ado-ore that aroma.”

“Well I hardly use it. Maybe you—”

“Oh I can believe that, Goldilocks! Miss peaches-and-cream, the date queen. Bet you keep the boys wagging their puppydog tails.”

Con winced under the compliment. Her complexion was terminally pale. She had no boyfriend, unless you counted Dexter, and Fran wasn’t likely to count a guy you hadn’t talked to for over two years. But Dexter still sent postcards—three in as many weeks. Panorama views of San Diego, Flagstaff, then Kansas City. He was drifting closer. How long you up there for? he’d written, implying he might eventually check out Boston, too. If Con thought there was the chance of a snowball in hell she’d be … what? Not exactly ecstatic. Maybe freaked. By now he’d be a stranger. As it was, except when a postcard came she hardly thought of him at all.

“Nobody dates.” Con forced a laugh. “It’s out of date.”

“Oh la la. Shame on you kids.” Fran arched back on one elbow. The mirror flashed a prism of sunlight across her face. Suddenly she sang, deeply, truly: “‘My life ha-ad no color, before I met you! / What could ha-ave been duller, the times I went through—.’ What’s that from, hunbun? Quick-quick.”

“Gypsy?”

“Ah shoot. I already told you.”

“Yeah. But I like it. Sing it again.”

The orderly crashed his mealcart into 211 just as Con was dredging up an excuse to go hunt down Cherry. ‘I don’t have all day.’ Would that phrase mean much to Fran? The orderly set a tray (the domed plates, Sweetheart cups pierced by flexible straws) on each bedside table.

“Yuck,” said Fran. “Who needs it? Do I look like I need it? What I need is grapefruit, for crying out loud. See how my teeth wiggle? You go tell the head honcho here I want grapefruit!”

Deaf and dumb, the orderly backed out. Fran unrolled blunt utensils from her napkin and lifted the lid from her plate. Steam coiled from potatoes.

“Bon appetit,” said Con.

“Urn.” Fran dug in. Con peeked at Cherry’s plate. Some kind of white mush. Barley? Cherry was on a ‘bland diet’. This female has the stomach of a sixty-year-old, the emergency doctor in Chicago had shouted, waving x-rays. He’d kept Cherry three days, despite there being no insurance. His tone so outraged, accusing. Grisly, to think of body parts aging in secret high-speed. How old was Con’s own stomach?

Afterwards Lordie had soothed: It’s a figure of speech. He meant she could’ve died, that’s all.

Now Con cooked for her, but at home Cherry cheated, stalled and snuck out for candy bars. Despite so much sugar she weighed only ninety pounds. We’re Laurel and Hardy, she once laughed to her roommate. Ralph and Alice? Yin and Yang! This was her second relapse. Con had driven in to Harborview on Cherry’s frantic command while Cherry lay curled in the back seat holding her small distended belly and moaning at the bumps. But they both knew the main purpose of Harborview wasn’t to treat bleeding ulcers.

Having survived the terror of her first stay Cherry seemed to like Harborview. Maybe loyalty was part of it—loyalty to what Con had managed, with Fritz’s behind-the-scenes coaching, to let Cherry think was her own choice. Cherry praised the nurses. The old-time Sisters, she said, real human beings. For sacrifice you can’t beat a Catholic nurse.

Of course, Harborview was set up to take better care of her than Con could.

Con stood, smoothed the blanket. “I’m going to ask someone, okay? I haven’t got all day …”

Chewing, Fran nodded. Thin blue eyebrows raised.

As Con reached the door it opened, scraping her hand. For God’s sake, she thought, at least knock—. It was the orderly’s hairy arm that thrust the door wider. Then a gurney rolled toward her, backing Con into the rim of the sink. A senior nurse with black stripes kicked down the brake, obscuring her view.

The nurse asked, “Two eleven. Appel, right?”

“Yes,” said Con.

“One mix-up after another, today. You’re a relative?”

“Yes.”

“Her daughter.”

“Well …” Con gave a tentative smile.

“Why you people don’t call. Wasting your time, aren’t you, coming by just now? She won’t talk. Best to let her sleep it off. In two, three days she’ll—”

“Is she all right?”

“Beautiful!” The nurse beamed, in passing she gripped Con’s arm. “Your mother is a real trooper. We were very, very proud.”

Then Con was alone, with silent Fran, and Cherry. She forced herself closer to the cot, to the body in its straitjacket as rigid and fragile as a museum display: a child mummy. Only the face left uncovered. But the face was old. Ancient. Not Cherry’s. No trace of the spidery red blotches that Cherry strove to hide under Dawnglow foundation. This face stone grey. Two furrows gouged between the brows. Even the tip of the tongue, just visible, was pale grey. The old woman’s sparse hair looked dark and damp. Con tasted salt: her own hand pressed hard against her mouth.

Fran said, “I forgot. Cherry went down to electro. I didn’t forget to tell you, I just forgot.”

“Why?”

What, why.”

“I never signed anything! No release, no—”

“Maybe she did. Or maybe you did, hunbun. What makes you so sure you remember?”

In her mind Con tried to review, one by one, all the forms she had signed. The meandering shapes of paragraphs.

“Don’t wake her up,” Fran warned. “If I may speak from experience. She’d hate you for good.”

Con crouched down, digging in her satchel through keys and Kleenex and the tangled pearls to her gift. Crackling paper: a Baby Ruth bar. Cherry’s all time favorite. She wedged this under the cot’s thin pillow but then realized it could be confiscated. “Where can I leave this?” she asked. “Somewhere safe.”

“You just give it to me.”

“Well if you can promise—I mean—”

Fran held out a palm, puffy pink. “Give it! For crying out loud. What kind of doublecrossing bitch do you think I am?” She had cleaned her plate. Applesauce glistened on her fingertips. Its cinnamon soul filled the air.

Con drove northward on Route One, automatically pumping brake and accelerator in the rush hour stream but unable to think, her half-thoughts swerving and crashing into each other as if a treatment had affected her, too.

She concentrated on what to buy for dinner. Whether to stop for gas or chance it. Whether she had a clean enough outfit for work tomorrow. Finally one long thought took form, like a huge fish finning slowly toward the surface of a pond: that wanting to do what’s right doesn’t mean you know how. That you can fool yourself, for selfish comfort or worse. That you should leave people alone. As Lordie said, people need to save themselves. Too late. You should have left her alone.

They lived on the cheap side of Northport, the inland highway side, where at night the lonesome blasts of semitrailers echoed like ships navigating through open sea. Station Street was Irish-Italian, sewn together by marriages and feuds. It looked like a mirror trick. Asphalt-shingled duplexes built tight to the sidewalk left just enough dirt for a plaster madonna or scraggy yew. A few of the backyards, including her own, nourished a tree.

She pulled her dented Pinto (diarrhea brown, Lordie called it) into the short driveway. Right behind Dom Zamprelli’s gold Impala, between the cyclone fence and trash cans weighted with boulders to discourage dogs. Zamprelli was the landlord; he sometimes occupied the other half but since the first solid frost and until some unspecified warmer day in April he’d been AWOL (his own phrase) in Key West. Lordie and Con fed his cats.

Lordie had set their potted Christmas tree out on the shared front porch, to grow. A few threads of tinsel, ridiculous now in the rosy March light, still fluttered from its needles. Con would have plucked them off but her arms were full. She nudged the door open with her knee.

The downstairs had a parlor, middle room, kitchen in back. Upstairs a bath and three small bedrooms. Big enough. Their furniture, scavenged from Goodwill, had been scraped down and glossed over in experimental ice cream tints by Lordie, under Con’s direction. One hell of an improvement, was what Cherry called all this. For once in a blue moon, Cutie, a move in the right direction. Lordie had agreed: practically a mansion, compared. But what he really loved was that even from Station Street he could smell the sea, and he’d spied out footpaths between the real mansions on Sandpiper Drive that led down to the shore, a rocky coast that legally belonged to everyone who had the guts and agility to crawl down and take possession.

Con couldn’t fathom their enthusiasm. Walking in at the end of any long day, dumping her groceries and satchel and books and noting the warmth, and a shaft of sunlight on the newly-leased TV, and pussywillows Lordie had jammed into a Nescafe jar, she tried to summon up some satisfaction. Even pride. But instead she heard Fran’s rich alto voice belting: ‘Some people can thrive and bloom / Living life in a living room—’

Anyway, they had the dark north side. Darkened further by the crummy maroon carpeting Zamprelli saw no reason to replace …

No. Truth was, her dislike began even before she walked in, the minute she reached Station Street—one way, windswept, winter plastic tacked over windows, patrolled by gangs of mongrels and meaneyed kids. Station Street, her own swift slapdash choice after two days’ search and that choice the least of her worries back then. Station Street now made her want to scream.

“Con? Be you?”

“Be me.” She heard the whole rickety upstairs swing to his footfall, and returned to the hallway just as he clattered down two steps at a time, sneakers gaping, laces flying. His hair, ashy and straight as hers, fanned a comet tail. He wore a batik orange tee-shirt and jeans bisected at the knees. In a final leap he pivoted off the quaking bannister rail.

“Hi.”

“Hi. Tell me you went to school, dressed like that.”

She had no difficulty eyeing him critically, these days. At sixteen had he already already stopped growing? At an age when most boys were either lumpy or gangling Lordie was slimhipped, broadshouldered. Not nearly as tall as she’d hoped for: five eight at the most. Which wasn’t the end of the world. “You left the door unlocked again,” she said.

“No I didn’t.”

“Of course you did, damn it!”

He followed her into the kitchen, where she began with angry efficiency to unpack the groceries. Soups, V8, baked beans. Fresh vegetables all had frost burn, this time of year. Lordie helped, managing like a klutzy dancer to keep moving smack in her way. Con said, “I guess it doesn’t matter. So much.”

“Naws. Guys’ll get in anyway.” He laughed. “What’s to rip off?” Discovering a yogurt in the bag he grabbed a spoon from the drainer and began to shovel it in. “Better than them breaking a window, right?”

“What about the TV?” she reminded.

Kingsize. Color. They hardly watched, had leased the box specially for Cherry, despite the monster deposit. But now if Cherry wanted to watch her soaps she’d have to go join the assorted weirdos in the Common Room, strain to hear the box over their gibberish and shouts. It occurred to Con she could have taken Zamprelli’s box, nobody the wiser … You never do anything right.

Lordie peered down at her books and notebooks, threatening them with the dripping spoon. “So how was work?”

“Okay. How was school?”

“Okay.”

“You went?”

“What do you mean, ‘I went’? The whole afternoon till you came home I was studying, four hours—”

“I just don’t want you doing what I did.”

“I won’t quit.”

“I didn’t either. I just …” She remembered spring of her junior year. Two years was a long time ago—exam time, prom time, popsicle and daffodil time. Maybe in September she would have gone back, except, except …

“Hey.” Lordie moved closer, his sleeve brushed hers. “Don’t act sad.” With the low fire of sunset behind him he was only a shadow. What would he do if she gave in, just gave up for once and fell on his solid shadow?

He laughed. “Come on, let’s skip to something else. What gives in the Cellar of Babel?” ‘Babel’ meant the language cram school where she worked. A last-ditch prep for grad students, quartered in a church basement between Harvard and MIT. A long haul from Northport on potholed highways but convenient to Harborview and better than cashiering—good money, if they’d give her enough hours. “Who’d you torture today? The Jellybean? The Alabama Princess? Hey, did that creep make a pass at you again?”

“What creep?” For a moment she turned cold inside.

“That sleazy spic who runs the joint.”

“Watch your mouth,” said Con, without anger.

“Lay off. I’m just trying to … you know.” Exasperated, he bumped away from her through the twilit kitchen until his hand met the lightswitch. Con blinked. She heard another click as he picked up the phone. “I’m starving. I’ll order us a couple of pizzas, okay?”

“I said I’d cook!”

“No, you never …” He stopped, hung up. “Hey. Con. Want to hear some good news?”

“Sure.”

“Coach Welch says my stroke’s a hundred percent improved and I can swim on the A-team, from now on. The Ateam, Con!”

Silence. “That’s neat, Lordie … Neat.” She had to smile, at his shy pleased wiseguy monkeyface. With sudden resolve she began pulling cans back out of the cupboards, greasing the skillet—as she should have been doing all along, instead of moping, making Lordie see her mope, keeping him from his dinner and homework, stuff that mattered.

“Only …”

“Only what. You need more dough?”

The franks popped yellow grease bubbles the moment they hit the pan. Con thought, swimming should be free, all it takes is water. But Lordie needed uniform trunks, locker fees, goggles, extra gear.

“Only A-team means evening practice four or five nights a week. Hey. I’m organized, Con. I can handle it.”

Oh no, she thought. No Lordie, you can’t—you can’t leave me at home in the dark or with her when they let her out—. I can stop you. I could tell Welch about your headaches, or I could—

“I’m not going to be a star, Con. I just want to swim with guys who …” He paused, while she slid a mess of beans and franks onto two plates and then sat down with him, keeping her face low, hidden. “Know what else?”

“No. What.” Thinking: Okay. You want friends. Well so we’ll have some kids over. Now, while she’s gone. I could help you throw a party …

“Welch says if I hold my average—I mean don’t think I’m showing off but I’m sure I’ll get the math prize—plus being on his team, he’ll see I get a scholarship. For college? When it’s time.” He swigged his milk, considering, frowning. “Maybe that’s just a bribe.”

“Maybe.” She tried again to smile. “If it is a bribe, you take it!”

She pushed a piece of hot dog through her beans: a tugboat rolling through sludge. Lordie was watching her, watching her not eat. Just like—nah. But what she couldn’t understand was why he didn’t blow up at her. Nothing she did could spoil his mood, tonight. Well, that was good, it let her relax in a way, the way you relax when something breakable is taken out of the room. But why? And not just tonight, so not just because big shot Welch was buttering him up. No. For days. Maybe since Sunday …

“Be glad for me?”

“Aws, Lordie …” Since Sunday. Cherry vomiting all down her legs, still smashed, falling with every other step. Lordie had helped carry her to the car. That was why. Because she was gone, but so what? This time might take longer but they’d fix her, enough—

Lordie sighed, a grown up sound. “Come on, Con. What’s wrong. Sag.”

If she told him, blubbered it all out—

“Nothing. I’m tired, Lordie. I’ve just been tired, all days.”

He stood, reaching for her plate. “I’ll give yours to the cats, okay? What’s wrong, Con? Did he call you again? Oh yah. That’s it, right? He’s been bugging you, you know I don’t like that guy anymore, he bosses you—”

“No.” Con knew he meant Fritz. Even with Cherry out of the house neither of them would dream of saying the name, ‘Fritz.’

“Naws. What, then …”

She put her head down on the smooth table. Faint sweet perfume of paint. Her arms closed around her head, dark again, dark. Clatter of dishes, running water, silence. Lordie’s hands on her shoulders, awkward paws at first, then stronger, more confident, encouraging her to give in.

“Well if you won’t even eat—”

“Nothing’s wrong.” She spoke into her arms’ echoing cave. From so high above he might not even hear. “I went to see her today, is all.”

Even from the nurses’ station she could tell the door to 211 stood open. Which could mean anything—both women transferred elsewhere, the room being cleaned—or that a visitor was expected. But Con hadn’t said when she’d come back. Fran, brain maybe riddled like a sieve, might not recall Con’s ever having been there, at all.

She couldn’t hesitate. Patients tried to block her: shuffling like crabs, their freckled rounded backs gleaming through gaps in thin johnnies. Others whizzed around in wheelchairs, in reckless ecstasy.

She heard humming as she approached, and then a snatch of Fran’s song. “‘Do do that, voodoo that, you do so we-ell’”

“Cutie pie! Oh, darlin’!”

Con stood in the light that poured through the barred window. “Hi.” She let her satchel slide to the floor. “Hi, both of you.”

“Come give a kiss. Come here—”

The two women sat on their respective beds, leaning toward each other with cozy, almost conspiratorial alertness. Fran gargantuan, Cherry frail. Now Cherry stretched both arms high as if she were Fran, ending the song with a flourish. Con slowly moved within her reach, scarcely breathing and for some reason expecting to smell something terrible, singed. But Cherry smelled only of oatmeal. Milk and powder. Baby powder? Her lips brushing Con’s cheek were dry as an insect’s wing.

“I sure as hell hope,” said Cherry, releasing her, “that you remembered to bring me a fag. Or two.”

Con flushed, glancing back at the open door. At her satchel, which contained a stale pack of Marlboros along with the other ‘belongings’ she had signed for last fall, things Cherry had never demanded back, seemed not to want again. “They’d know, Cherry. This joint must be lousy with smoke alarms.”

“Boy, are you getting paranoid in your old age! What do you think they can do to us, huh?” Cherry laughed, winking for Fran to join in. Fran’s laugh bubbled from a pent-up deep fountain.

“Okay.”

She watched Cherry light up, wrinkle her nose and cough, waving at the blue smoke. Con’s eyes had adjusted to the light. She saw that this pixie-slender woman draped in a flower-sprigged johnny still wasn’t Cherry. She had lost Cherry, at least misplaced her, hadn’t seen her for weeks. Finally, reluctantly, amazed, Con said, “You look fantastic.”

“Do I?” Cherry smiled. With a certain complacency she tilted her face toward the window, revealing a new fullness to her cheeks and lips, and a subtle pinkness, a natural color Con had never seen before.

“Honest. You—”

“We were just goofing around,” interrupted Fran. “You know, experimenting.” As she shifted sideways something flashed in her lap: the compact Con had forgotten to take with her, last time. “What many people don’t know about electro is it’s great for the complexion. Say, let’s open a salon, make a killing!” She burbled. “Also, I swiped these off a nurse who wasn’t looking.” She held up a tweezers. Her brows, Con now noticed, were plucked to constant surprise and slightly inflamed.

“Make-up?”

“You said it, hunbun. We’re helping each other. We’re on our way out. Just down the Avenue? A promenade. ‘Strolling down the a-ve-nue—’”

“They’re letting you out?”

“Why not?” Cherry inquired. She rose to open the window and flick her cigarette through the bars. Con watched the butt sail end over end to land on the granite stone.

“Well … so then you can come home?”

“We’re not entirely certain ‘home’ is good for us. Are we?” She mimicked a doctor’s ‘we.’

“I just thought—it costs a lot per day, here.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Cutie.” Pouting, Cherry grabbed the compact, began dabbing the bridge of her nose. “You told me the Social Services type had all that jazz under control. So who cares? Long as it’s not our money—is it?”

“No.”

“So? See? But I’ll be home. I’ll be back … Don’t worry. And don’t you rush me.”

“Time we changed. Costume switch,” Fran said pointedly.

“Yah. Me too. I better be shoving off …” Con inched backward, through the motionless blue smoke. “Cherry? Would it matter then—would you mind if I went away for a few days?”

“Away where?”

“Oh just to the country. For the weekend.”

“Oo-oo. Get that. She’s invited … What about, um, your brother?”

“He can handle things.”

“So go, so go.” Cherry’s eyes widened. Green light, pindot pupils. “It’s a free country. Who’s stopping you?”