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Stop it, she commanded herself. They want me to be doing this. She unwound her hair and brushed it out. Three hours from now, she knew, it would be limp as ever because of the damp.
The next day, she tried to raise her new theoretical problem with her friend Jetske. Jetske was in Urban Design, too. She was from Holland, and could remember ru
“You learn how to take care of yourself,” she’d said. “It didn’t seem hard at the time, but when you are a child, nothing is that hard. We were all the same, nobody had anything.” Because of this background, which was more exotic and cruel than anything A
“The trouble with what we’re doing… ,” she said to Jetske, as they walked towards the library under A
“Of the city?” Jetske said.
“No,” A
Jetske laughed. She had what A
“I’m not,” A
Jetske laughed again. “Did you know,” she said, “that in some countries you have to get official permission to move from one town to another?”
A
“I think that’s awful,” A
“Of course you do,” Jetske said, as close to bitterness as she ever got. “You’ve never had to do it. Over here you are soft in the belly, you think you can always have everything. You think there is freedom of choice. The whole world will come to it. You will see.” She began teasing A
A
In the third week of March, A
When she got back to the house and started to climb the stairs, it struck her that something was different. Upstairs, she knew. Absolutely, something was out of line. There was curious music coming from the room next door, a high flute rising over drums, thumping noises, the sound of voices. The man next door was throwing a party, it seemed. Good for him, A
But the noises were getting louder. From the bathroom came the sound of retching. There was going to be trouble. A
The music and thumpings got louder. After a while there was a banging on the floor, then some shouting, which came quite clearly through A
This time Mrs. Nolan didn’t even wait for A
“I guess you saw the mess in there,” she whispered.
“Yes, I did,” A
“I guess you heard all that last night.” She paused.
“What happened?” A
“He had some dancing girls in there! Three dancing girls, and two other men, in that little room! I thought the ceiling was go
“I did hear something like dancing,” A
“Dancing! They was jumping, it sounded like they jumped right off the bed onto the floor. The plaster was coming off. Fred wasn’t home, he’s not home yet. I was afraid for the kids. Like, with those tattoos, who knows what they was working themselves up to?” Her sibilant voice hinted of ritual murders, young Jimmy and ru
“What did you do?” A
“I called the police. Well, the dancing girls, as soon as they heard I was calling the police, they got out of here, I can tell you. Put on their coats and was down the stairs and out the door like nothing. You can bet they didn’t want no trouble with the police. But not the others, they don’t seem to know what police means.”
She paused again, and A
“Who?”
“The police.”
“Well, you know around here it always takes the police a while to get there, unless there’s some right outside. I know that, it’s not the first time I’ve had to call them. So who knows what they would’ve done in the meantime? I could hear them coming downstairs, like, so I just grabs the broom and I chased them out. I chased them all the way down the street.”
A
“Heavens,” she said weakly.
“You can say that again,” said Mrs. Nolan. “I went in there this morning, to get his things and put them out front where he could get them without me having to see him. I don’t have such good nerves, I didn’t sleep at all, even after they was gone. Fred is just go
“What about his native costume?” A
“He had it on,” Mrs. Nolan said. “He just went ru