“I’ve got a fan, but all it does is move the hot air around. If I take off any more clothes, I’ll get arrested for indecent exposure.” She wore a light housecoat and kept her arms crossed tightly in front of her body.
“It’s brutal,” Raphael agreed, “and it’s probably not going to get any better for a while.”
Up the street one of Heck’s Angels was fighting with his girlfriend. They stood on the lawn, screaming obscenities at each other.
“Does that go on all the time?” the girl asked.
“More or less.”
“Aren’t there an awful lot of them living in that house?”
“Fifteen or twenty. It varies from week to week.”
The young man up the street got into his car, slammed the door, and roared away. The girl on the lawn screamed at him until he turned the comer. Then it was quiet again.
The girl from downstairs sank down onto the small bench Flood had brought up to the roof a few weeks ago and laid her arm on the railing. “This is a fun neighborhood,” she said dryly.
“That it is.” Raphael thought briefly of telling her about the losers-simply to pass the long hours until things cooled down enough to allow two or three hours of sleep just before dawn-but he decided not to. He didn’t know her that well, and he didn’t want to take the chance of offending her.
They sat in the silent darkness on the roof, watching the children loitering on corners or creeping furtively around the houses.
“Is your husband out of town?” Raphael asked finally.
“I’m not married.”
“I’m sorry. I just assumed-” He stopped, embarrassed.
“Because I’m pregnant? You don’t have to be married to get pregnant. It happens in the best of families these days.”
“I’m not being nosy. It’s none of my business.”
She laughed. “In a few months it’ll be everybody’s business. It’s a condition that’s pretty hard to conceal.”
“Things’ll work out.”
“Sure they will. Nothing like a little unwed pregnancy to add spice to a girl’s life.”
A police car cruised by, and there was the usual scramble out the back doors of the neighborhood.
The night wound on, still hot and close, and, as the losers began to seek their beds for a few hours of restless sleep, the crickets and tree frogs began to sing the raspy song of summer.
Lulled by their song, Raphael caught himself half dozing in his chair a few times.
The girl talked about many things-mostly about the little town near the Canadian border where she had grown up. Her voice was soft, almost dreamy, and in his weariness Raphael listened not so much to her words as to the soft murmur of her voice.
“It’s all so trite,” she said. “It’s almost like a bad soap opera. Poor little girl from Metalline Falls comes to the big city to go to college. Girl meets boy. Boy seduces girl. Girl gets pregnant. Boy runs away. I feel like the heroine in one of those gloomy nineteenth-century novels we used to have to read in high school. I guess I’m supposed to drown myself or something.”
“I don’t particularly recommend it. That river over there’s got a fierce current to it. You could get yourself pretty thoroughly beaten up by all the rocks in the process.”
“You’ve got a point there.” She laughed. “Drowning yourself in the Spokane River could be a pretty hectic experience. I checked out a couple of those homes they have, but I don’t think I’d like that. The girls all looked kind of pale and morning-sicky, and the nuns are very kind and maternal, but you can see that they disapprove. I just don’t feel like being disapproved of right now.”
“Do you plan to keep the baby?”
“Of course. I’m not going to go through all of this and then not have anything to show for it.” She fell silent again.
Quite clearly, almost like the obvious plot of a piece of bad fiction, Raphael could see the girl’s life stretched out in front of her. The baby would come at its appointed time; and because there was no alternative and a baby must be clothed and fed and suitably housed, the girl would turn to those social agencies that even now lurked on the horizon waiting for her. The agencies were very kind, very understanding, but they demanded of their clients a certain attitude. First of all there must be no pride, no dignity. The girl would have to learn to grovel. Groveling is one of the most important qualifications for welfare recipients. Once she had been taught to grovel in front of the desks of superior young ladies with minimal degrees in social science, she would almost be ready to join the ranks of the losers. With her pride and self-respect gone, she would be ready to accept the attentions of one of the horde of indolent young men who can smell a welfare check the way a shark smells blood. Her situation would quickly become hopeless, and her humor and intelligence would erode. She would begin to court crisis out of sheer boredom, and any chance for meaning or improvement would be blown away like dry leaves in the first blast of winter.
“Not this one,” Raphael murmured more to himself than to any blind, impish gods of mischance.
“What?” the girl asked.
“Nothing. Do you have to stay here-in Spokane, I mean?”
She shrugged, and Raphael almost ground his teeth at the futility of the gesture. Indifference was the first symptom of that all-prevalent disease that infested the streets below. If she was to be salvaged, that would have to be attacked first.
“The hospitals are good,” she said, “and I’m going to need a hospital before the year’s out.”
“There are hospitals everyplace, and it’s not like you were going to be going in for brain surgery, you know.”
She shrugged again. “Spokane’s as good as any place certainly better than Metalline Falls. I couldn’t go back there.”
“Why not?”
“I just couldn’t. You don’t know small towns.”
“I know big ones,” he said grimly.
The night was still warm, and the hot reek of dust still rose from the sun-blasted street below, and the crickets and tree frogs sang endlessly of summer as Raphael for the first time began carefully to attack the disease that until now he had only observed.
iii
One night, several evenings later, Flood came by with some beer, and he sat on the rooftop with Raphael, talking dispiritedly.
“I thought you were a martini man,” Raphael observed.
“I’ve fallen in with evil companions. Most of these cretins don’t know a martini from a manhattan. Besides, it’s too hot. Unless you swill it right down, a martini turns lukewarm on you in this kind of weather.”
“Nothing like a belt of warm gin to fix you right up.”
Flood shuddered.
Down at the corner a motorcycle snarled and popped as Big Heintz made his appearance. He pulled up onto the lawn of the house up the street and stepped off his bike. “The Dragons are in town,” he announced to the Angels and their women, who lounged in wilted discomfort on the porch.
“Dragons?” Raphael murmured. “What’s that big clown been smoking?”
“It’s a rival gang,” Flood told him, his voice tensing slightly. “They’re from Seattle. They come over here every so often, and there’s always a big fight.”
“Whoopee,” Raphael said flatly.
On the lawn Heck’s Angels gathered around Big Heintz, all talking excitedly. “Who seen ’em?” Jimmy demanded.
“Leon was at the Savage House.” Heintz flexed his beefy shoulders. “He seen a couple of ’em come in flyin’ their colors. The Mongol was one of ’em.”
“Wow!” Jimmy said. “They mean business, then. The Mongol is one bad motherfucker. I seen ‘im a couple years ago. He absolutely creamed Otto.”
“I ain’t afraid of that fuckin’ Mongol,” Heintz declared belligerently.
“Anybody know where they’re hangin’ out?” Little Hitler asked.
“We’ll find ’em.” Heintz said it grimly.
Jimmy ran into the house and came back out with a length of heavy chain. He swung it whistling around his head.
“This is it,” Big Heintz announced solemnly. “This is really it-the last and final war. Them fuckers been comin’ over here every summer. They find one or two of our guys and stomp ’em, and then they all run back to Seattle. This time it’s gonna be different. This is gonna be the last and final war.” He strode up and down in front of the Angels, his beard bristling and his helmet pulled low over his eyes. “I sent out the word,” he went on. “Everybody’s comin’, and I mean everybody. This time them fuckeis ain’t gonna find just one or two of us. They’re gonna find all of us, and it’s gonna be a war!”
They were all talking at once now, their voices shrill and excited. Several of the others ran into the house for chains and lengths of pipe and nail-studded baseball bats.