'That's what I thought you'd say,' smiles Gloria. 'Debbie, is it okay if I use that yarn?' she asks, pointing to a plastic box full of jean patches and thread and b.a.l.l.s of wool.

'Not the aqua-blue stuff.'

'How 'bout the gold one?'

'Go ahead,' says Deb, newly enthused by the idea of Gloria and Lionel's visit to Serenity Grove if it helps her prospects of getting some alone-time with her warrior poet. 'Just bring it back,' she says. 'Good yarn don't grow on trees.'

'Thanks,' says the dancer. Then to Lionel, 'It's time you got outta that friggin' chair. There's a big world out there.'

'Yeah, look what good it's done me.'

Without answering she moves and squats and grabs the yarn and walks back to the Marine.

'Hold still,' she says and bends and begins wrapping it around his torso, tight around his sweatshirt.

'What are you doing?'

'Taking your sorry a.s.s for a walk.'

Normally his mom would object to any of this nonsense relating to her son's happiness and general security, but love's got her by the cash register locked with the tall Indian in what looks like a pro-wrestling hold. And they're whispering dirty things, tongues in ears.

Now Gloria trots over to her trusty moped, the ball of gold yarn unraveling behind her, and ties the last of it to the rusted bar above the back tire. Then she deftly straddles the machine and throws her helmet on and turns the key and lurches forward, pulling Black Jesus from his rocker, as obedient as any sleepwalker, arms out and his legs dancing a rusty two-step.

And off they go, out of the parking lot and onto the waiting roadside, two kids, nothing much to lose, tied to each other by more than just yarn somehow.

By this hour of day Bebop Billy is certainly high as a News 10 helicopter. Out at the far end of the boardwalk he sways to and fro studying the wide blue living emptiness that rolls out before him. After a while, he lifts the plastic recorder to his mouth and blows a slow lament for the world he lives in, the country he stands at the edge of.

What are we headed toward? he wonders as he fingers the holes, lifting, landing, lifting again. How will it all play out?

When the tune is through he breathes and closes his eyes, feels the warm drugs inside him, the warm ocean air on his face. Turning his head slowly to one side he sees he's got company. It's the junky transvest.i.te everybody calls Lady Di. Bebop's seen her plenty of times round the speedway but oddly the two have never shared a word, a needle. No telling how long she's been standing here, watching, listening. Wearing a purple boa about her brown neck and a green see-through sun visor on her head and a t-shirt that says cancer above a big red smiling cartoon crab, she purses her lips and claps a soft little clap, the kind commonly mustered by aristocracy after they've been mildly entertained, maybe a yawn would follow, maybe a paper fan in this heat.

'You in s...o...b..z?' asks Lady Di.

'No,' says Bebop. 'I'm camera shy.'

's.h.i.t, that makes you one in a million in this tacky a.s.s jungle nine oh two one oh.'

'How 'bout you?'

's...o...b..z? s.h.i.t, I was almost a big eff-in' star one time. Had a record deal and all that. Opened up for Fester p.u.s.s.ycat.'

'What happened?'

'I don't know. I guess you could say it went down the tubes. That's the easy way to say it. Who can ever really pinpoint the moves that lead us to our own disaster? s.h.i.t, that would make a hot chorus. You could use that in one of your songs, man. Just cut me in on the royalties.'

'Do you miss it?'

The tranny takes a moment to reflect. She's tall. The three-day-old make-up on her face makes her look like a rodeo clown who just checked himself into a hospital after a significant bender.

'I miss the show,' says the tranny. 'The roar of the crowd. When they scream for you it's like nothing else on earth. You're G.o.d for an hour and a half. You know how you know you're doing a good show?'

'How?'

'It's when the girls start throwing their panties at the stage. You know how you know when you're doing a fabulous show?'

'No.'

'It's when they throw the panties and the panties stick to you like glue. That's how you know you're really on fire. Why'd you choose the recorder, man? Kinda gay, don't you think?'

'Look who's talking.'

'Take that back! This creature you see before you is not gay by any stretch of the imagination. He's just caught between two worlds, baby. But never mind that. All I'm saying is I'd love to see you pick up a Flying V or something. Something with some b.a.l.l.s.'

Bebop looks down at the blue recorder in his hands. What are we headed toward? Then he looks out to the sea. How does it all play out? His high is waning, his stomach a little uneasy.

'I've gotta go,' he tells the tranny. 'So long,' he says and turns away and starts down the boardwalk.

'Hey, I'm sorry, baby,' calls Lady Di.

Billy doesn't hear him because he's blowing on the recorder again. A tune to fix the evening. A tune to bring a scary rain. Just a tune to fill the emptiness that gnaws.

'I didn't mean it, man! That flute's the perfect thing for you. Let's be friends, okay? You're beautiful in every way! Look at you. You're like the Pied Piper with that thing. Fooling all the rats. Leading all the rats out to drown!'

Half an hour later Bebop's lying in the speedway. Spine on the asphalt. Happy eyes on a sick sky. A red balloon in his grimy pocket, his poison, his medicine. Half the contents of that balloon in his bloodstream once again and he strikes the piper's pose and blows a hapless prayer into the warm wind.

'Do you hear that, sweets?' says Tracy on the black sofa. 'I think it's coming from down on the street,' she says and gets up and prances to the window. 'I heard it once or twice before. I think you were sleeping. It's really pretty. But it's just as sad. Isn't that weird?'

'Oh you pretty things,' croaks a nude Ross Klein off-key, smoldering on the other side of the apartment. 'Don't you know you're driving your mommas and poppas insane?'

'Umm, baby? All these lyrics are really brilliant, and enlightening and everything, but sometimes I just wanna talk to you. The real you. I'm sorry. Don't be mad. It's my fault. Maybe I'm missing the point.'

'Let's give them something to talk about. A little mystery to figure out. How about love?'

'Really?' says the girl, turning from the window to face him. 'You wanna talk about love?'

'Sure. Why not? But first I need you to do something for me.'

'Anything.'

'Where's your cell phone?'

'I turned it off like you told me to. And threw the battery out the window.'

'You don't have to lie to me. I saw you sending a text yesterday. It's okay. Just go get it. I want you to make a phone call for me.'

The girl lowers her strawberry blonde head like a shamed child and walks back over to the sofa and squats in her sundress and fishes under the leather cushions for her Nokia. There it is.

'Who am I calling?' she says once the flip-top's open to her view.

'Three two three, seven seven nine, four four four six.'

'Is it a takeout place? I really hope so. We haven't really eaten anything for a while.'

'Don't worry. Just call and ask for Desiree.'

The girl looks at him there by the stove. His ragged beard. His wild eyes. Don't argue with him, she thinks. He must have some greater plan in store. Like those TV preachers back home, she decides.

'Three two three, seven seven nine . . . ?' She dials and waits for the last bit.

'Four four four six,' he says and steps backwards and hoists himself up onto the big iron stovetop like some prehistoric gymnast and watches her dial the rest.

'Cat House, Brown Shugah at your beck and call,' says a woman's voice, loud music in the background.

'Hi, is Desiree there?'

Nothing from the other end, just a guitar solo screaming.

'h.e.l.lo? I'm looking for someone named Desiree.'

'Yeah, you and everybody else down here,' says Brown Shugah. 'We ain't seen her since just after Easter. She covered my shift so I could take my mom to church. You know where she is? You best to tell me if you do.'

'Umm . . . no. I'm calling on behalf of a friend,' says Tracy, glancing up at Ross to find a wretched smile on his mouth.

'Oh. Now I get it,' says the voice.

'Get what?'

'I know exactly what friend you callin' on behalf of. Put him on the phone.'

'I'm sorry,' says the girl, her free hand pinching her dress material, twisting it tight. 'I must have the wrong number.'

'No, you got the right number, b.i.t.c.h. He knows it by heart. Used to call down here every night askin' for her. You tell that creepy motherf.u.c.ker I know he did somethin' to my girl. s.h.i.t, he probably got her hanging in a meat locker downtown. No, better yet, had her hacked up in a million pieces for shark bait when he takes his friends out on Daddy's yacht.'

Tracy from Florida is speechless. She looks at Ross Klein and lifts her cell phone aloft, a searching ripple in her forehead. But he just smiles that poltergeist smile. And crosses his pale legs in a provocative sweep while Brown Shugah's tirade spews quietly into the stale air.

'Best to pack your bags right now if you know what's good for you, baby. Silver spoon motherf.u.c.ker. Lyin' a.s.s motherf.u.c.ker. You tell him Brown Shugah's got his number. Freddy Krueger motherf.u.c.ker.'

And all Tracy wanted to do today was talk about love.

'Are you seein' what I'm seein'?' says the alcoholic.

'Does a bear s.h.i.t in the woods?' says his buddy.

The two of them squint in the late morning sun on Shakespeare's porch, a can of Coors Lite in each of their hands, a cigarette dangling from the tall one's mouth.

'I'll be d.a.m.ned, that's that war hero kid of fat Debbie White.'

'War hero my a.s.s. Look at that skinny p.u.s.s.y, getting drug along Route 23A by some s.k.a.n.k on a Vespa.'

'You be careful what you say, Dennis. I don't have to remind you how I went to Nam and got shot at for six hundred days by a bunch of crazy little rice farmers on speed when you went to Canada to live on some Harry Krishna s.e.x commune. That kid there,' he points to Black Jesus by the roadside, stumbling with his arms out, as if the mounted stranger he's tied to were some witch or healer guiding him down to the river in his dark shades and sorrow, h.e.l.lbent to get him in the water and wash away the terror so that once again he might see. 'That kid lost his friggin' sight in the G.o.dforsaken desert so that you can sit around in this piece-a-s.h.i.t town and drink yourself s.h.i.tty and go to Wal-Mart and buy a steak and jerk off to American Idol at night on your couch without fear some towel-headed dune-c.o.o.n's lookin' in yer window with a RPG. That kid might be a few cards shy of a full house but you can bet yer bottom dollar he's got twice the set of b.a.l.l.s you got.'

'How do you know, f.a.ggot? You been watchin' me at the urinal?'

Here the tall man patiently bends and squats and sits his beer can on the concrete stoop. On his way back up he pivots and strikes with his fist and catches the draft dodger square in the mouth.

Now blood runs down his eagle t-shirt. Now he retaliates. Now they're rolling and kicking in the sandy lot. One jabs his finger in the other's eye. They curse. They grunt. This is not a new fight. Nothing new about blood and sand.

The lady at the front desk looks at them warily and chews her sugarless gum. Then she hands them the clipboard to sign and tells them where they can find Bea Two-Feathers: Room 11, 2nd floor.

Gloria knocks at the door. The knock produces a single muted word in the small room beyond, 's.h.i.t' by the sound of it. The visitors hear movement, light footfalls, the sound of an aerosol can. After a little while Bea turns the k.n.o.b and stands there in her nightgown, the long white braid falling down her breast, an uncanny look upon her face, as if she might have expected these strays to come calling.

'Bea?'

'You must be the ballerina Joe Boy told me about.'

'Gloria,' says Gloria, the white lie surrounding her life and livelihood sounding stranger to her ears by the day.

'And Black Jesus, I presume?'

'At your service,' says the soldier, high as a kite and oddly invigorated by the forced march he just endured.

'Well, do come in,' says Bea. And as they smile their awkward smiles and slip past her into the room, she lingers to shoot a suspicious glance down the empty hall, now to the left, now to the right, eyeing the vicinity for spies. None there, so slowly she backs into her world and shuts the door.

'Where would you like us to sit, Bea?' asks a polite Gloria, something about the look in the old woman's eyes giving the runaway the sense that maybe she's in the presence of something rare, someone not unfamiliar with the supernatural arts of mischief and unfiltered glee, the magic of far-flung daydreams, the magic of loneliness.

'Sit wherever you like, dears,' says Bea in her soft raspy voice like a fifties movie queen. 'I for one like it by the window, never know what you're gonna see out there.'

Gloria smiles and helps Lionel to the small bed against the wall, hand on his forearm, hand on the small of his back. Slow and easy. And once he's settled, his hands crossed in his lap, Gloria takes a seat beside him and says, 'I'm sorry they won't let you out. I know how it feels to be trapped. Worst feeling in the world.'

'Oh, Joe Boy musta spilt the beans about my very unglamorous house arrest. Please don't feel bad for me, I brought it upon myself I suppose.'

'How?'

'Reach underneath the mattress and I'll show you.'

'Where?'

'Right between your legs.'

Gloria does as she's told.

'Deeper,' says Bea, and soon the girl feels the cool thin metal there and pulls the tarnished cigarette case from its stash spot.

'Smoking? That's what got you in trouble?'

'You can say that again. Big trouble.'