beside the Pentacrest were forced to stop at each intersection by the conspiracy of Iowa City traffic lights, and slid sideways when they began to move, as though they were large gray animals being led home on a long rope.
“You got a place to stay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure, I got a place.”
“I just thought, because you were sitting here, I mean—”
“Right.” And they were quiet again for a while.
“You a student?” she asked.
“No. Not now.”
“You mean you were?”
“Sure. For a while.”
“What’s the matter—run out of money or flunk out or something?”
C almost laughed.
“No. I guess I just quit. You want a cigarette?” He shoved a half-filled pack toward her after his hand had bumped into them inside his coat pocket.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Keep ’em. I think I ought to stop.”
“Thanks . . . non-filters. That’s good.”
“You a student?”
“Me?” She was looking at him in the dark. “No . . . oh, no.”
“I don’t know, I just thought—”
“You sure you don’t want one of these cigarettes?”
“Well, maybe one last one.” She held them out to him, then gave him her own to light from.
“You cold?”
“No, I’m fine. How ’bout you?”
“You haven’t got any more of that terpin hydrate, do you?” she asked, very slowly, stirring the snow around with her high-top work shoes.
“No. But I can get—” Then he stopped. He couldn’t. “Are you sure you’re not cold?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I just thought. I mean, because of wanting some more cough syrup.”
“No. I didn’t want any; I just wondered. I wondered if maybe you were addicted to that stuff.”
“Oh. No, I’m not.”
“Oh.”
“How about you?”
“What?”
“You addicted to that stuff?”
“No. Say, you getting ready to go?” she asked. He could feel her shivering, though he had not thought they were touching.
“Go where?” More shivering. “And you’re cold. What’s the matter with you anyway? Why don’t you get on out of here?”
“Damn it,” she said, half crying. “I ain’t got any place to go. I’m cold, and hungry . . . and I don’t know what the fuck the difference is to you. So why don’t you get on out of here yourself, Jackshit? I can stay in the lobby of the girls’ dorm anyway.”
“In the lobby of the girls’ dorm!” he exclaimed. “Why do you do that?”
“Why? Because it’s free and it’s cold out here. That’s why.”
“You mean you want to go on . . . living like that?”
“Of course not. What do you think, I like it there and wouldn’t want to be in a house or apartment or someplace where the campus police wouldn’t chase me out? Things are tough now, Pigass. No work . . . and some of the girls bring me food back from the cafeteria.”
“Look,” he said, wondering how long he had spent inside, outside of this normal flow of things, away from the streets. “Take . . . well, I haven’t any more money. You see that car over there? The blue one? Well, here are the keys. Drive it down to 718 Jefferson and in the basement there’s an apartment that’s paid for up until next month. If the landlady says anything, tell her that I told you to go there. And then sell the car—and don’t let them give you less than three hundred dollars. The title’s in the glove compartment.”
“Listen. Listen, whatever you think, I ain’t no kept woman.”
“What?”
“Sure, I know, you don’t expect nothing. Except later, when you come bustin’ in that apartment of yours and start deciding then and there that you got something coming. And then maybe it’s better if I don’t, so you can hit.”
“You stupid bitch,” he said, surprising himself with a language that he had until that time only read about in paperback novels. “I don’t give a good god-damn what you do. I’ve given my money away. My father’s dead and he was a shit. I quit school because I wanted to stop studying . . . to stop everything. And my landlady has got over three hundred and fifty pictures of herself in the nude and her children are very liberal, and I’ve had it. . . . Can you understand that? Can you!”
“Fuck off,” she said. “I can’t understand any of that. I don’t know any of those people.”
“In ordinary terms, I’m going to sit here until something happens.”
“You’ll die—that’s what will happen, you jerk.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I just wonder how it’ll happen. I mean, if it will be the cold or the hunger, or what.”
“You got any food in your apartment?”
“Some. A lot. I never got much of a chance to eat it because of the upstairs landlady inviting me up to eat with her fat-faced, liberal, sneering children.”
“Let’s go back and eat,” she said.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“I wasn’t listening. I was thinking.”
“You mean everything would be good with you if you had a place? That’s all? Just those things? What were you thinking about?”
“Food. And of course it would. What else is there? Let’s go.”
“Aren’t you afraid that I’ll want something from you?”
“I was thinking maybe you would. And it doesn’t worry me much. You seem sort of weak, I guess. And I can’t drive anyway, or read street signs. And I don’t know your name to tell the landlady.”
“C,” said C.
“My name’s Cell,” said Cell.
“First,” he said, “you should know I’m not
