I let K use my room, because it seemed like he was really in love with that girl. Where else was he going to take her—the boat?

So I had to stay out all night while they were up there. I sat in the drugstore across the street and read comic books. I figured I could go out walking when Doc Bopp closed up—it was a summer night, there was lots to do. But Doc Bopp never did close up. There were people crawling in and out of there all night long. Whenever I got sleepy I drank another coke, until my teeth hurt.

K thought my place was a sty. He's right, it was. So he'd bought a special light bulb at Food Town, like a dim brown gold color. He screwed it into the socket in the ceiling. That way, his new girl wouldn't have to see what a dump my place is. All my walls are full of mirrors—whenever I see a mirror put out with the trashcans somewhere, I grab it and take it home. Not because I love looking at myself, because I don't. But it makes the place look more interesting. It must have been kind of cool up there, with that dim golden light and the breeze coming in from the window to the fire escape.

I could hear them sighing, up there in the top floor, like pigeons, so drunk with love they'd want to pour the night hours onto plates and eat them with spoons, taking time to feed each other, tiny bites. All lit up like the buildings across the river.

I waited and waited for the golden brown light to go off, but it never did. Packet came by the drugstore some time before morning. He was dragging a golf club and wearing a sombrero. He'd been in a fight: he was radiant and one eye was purple. He didn't want a coke so I bought him a ginger ale and the smallest size of cough syrup. He used the bottle of ginger ale to cool down his swollen eye. He said: "Let me have the key, I need a shower." He sniffed in the direction of his armpits, none too close. "Woof. I'm smelling rowdy. It keeps coming up to me. In waves."

"You can't," I said. "K's up there. With somebody."

"With that girl?"

"No not that girl. She went back to Germany. That was a long time ago!"

"So who?"

"You know Sue?"

"Sue the Princess?" I wasn't sure, so Packet made his neck long and did something with his wrist and turned his gaze to one side, like a princess, with one pinkie in the air.

"Yeh yeah! That's the one."

Doc Bopp gave us scrap paper from the printer so we could draw a graphic novel: K and the Princess. It was getting light when K staggered into the drugstore, with his hair pointing everywhere. We said: "How'd it go?"

"Kill me now," said K, "sweet gods and goddesses. I'm toast. I'm slug bait. I'm aardvark leftovers. Why do you have a golf club?"

"In case the fuckers from Sixth Street come back," said Packet. "Tell you what, they'll kill you now. Or any time you like."

"Those little fuckers? Man them guys got all their growth stunted from sniffin glue. You could probably sit on them and they'd, like, die."

"He's busted," Packet observed, sadly. "He's in love. He's in love with everything. Do you love the ugly li'l fuckers from Sixth Street? Tell the truth."

"Yes I do love the ugly little fuckers from Sixth Street. Even Frankenstein."

"Frankenstein threw you in the East River when you were ten."

"He was bigger than me then. I don't care. He's beautiful too. Okay well kind of."

The birds were making a racket. The sun was starting to pour in. Doc Bopp had gone home to bed and Doc Bopp's husband was sweeping out the store. Still the drugstore wasn't closed. There wasn't anybody else there so he fixed us all coffee.

"How come you didn't walk her home?" said Doc Bopp's husband. You thought he wasn't paying attention, but he always was.

K said: "She wouldn't let me. Anyway she had her bike."

"You can walk a bike."

"She wouldn't let me."

K grabbed the comic book of K and the Princess. He didn't even unfold it to find out what happened. He just wanted to gaze at Sue the Princess on the cover. "I just never knew," he said. He kissed the picture.

"Do you have any idea what she is gonna do to you?"

"No, but man I am ready to find out."

"No dummy! Not her. The sister."

"Oh god!" said K. "Wonder Woman."

"Yes Wonder Woman."

"You're dogmeat," I said. "Wonder Woman's gonna rip you into two pieces, so she can kill you twice."

"Yeah I guess I do represent a blot upon the family." K thought about this while he tried to smooth his hair down again. "Jesus!" he decided. "Now I fucking love Wonder Woman too. She's her sister. They grew up together."

Packet sighted along the golf club with his bad eye, aiming at K's heart. "Pow," he said. "You are fucked. Deeply, profoundly, comprehensively cluster-fucked."

K sighed. We went up to my room. I thought there might be something to eat, but there wasn't. Dolores was awake next door, and she lent us some rice. I couldn't find my pot, so we cooked up the rice in a coffee can on the stove. Then we had to sleep, with the birds singing their heads off and the jackhammers just starting. We let K have the bed because he was in love.


.