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head.
See, I haven’t got brothers
… But of course I did. Lobby Boyd, Frik-knuckles Weinstein, Tooley Kochinski—all those kids I grew up with.If they weren’t brothers what were they? If they weren’t brothers, why was I doing this with my life?
It’s all good deeds
. But it wasn’t, was it? It was one bad deed piled on another like camp-corpses, like gar-bags in an abandoned bunker…
Could I try one of those smokes?
But he might decide to hit me, and I wasn’t large, and there wasn’t room here for my kind of fighting.
    One more coughing fit, one more rollie, and Jelly seemed to come awake—well, in a blind sort of way. He opened the Fiore case and took the baby out, and all her kit, piece by piece. He set her up, as if for the first time and learning as he went. Off to one side, I closed the case so the rain wouldn’t ruin her blue crushed-velvet bedding.
    Jelly pointed her at the rainclouds through a gap in the stone balusters. I was quite happy to admire her. I could see why he’d—what, console himself?—with the sight of her all solid and beautiful, with the thought of Benato drawing her forth out of nothing, into metal and usefulness. It was enough to look at her, without sullying her with actual work. Jelly was right.
    But then.
    Jelly brought a foil out of his jacket. He unwrapped it too carelessly for it to be drugs. Worse than drugs, a white nub of something glowed in the gloom. My whole body pulled back from it against the tower wall.
    He didn’t need a mirror. He drew a perfect white oval around his face from hairline to chin-dimple, and filled it in.The stuff clagged on his eyebrows and stubble; it waxed his fingertips; it brought his every wrinkle and pore into relief. My twitch came on and turned my body to rock.
    Next, Jelly produced a red-lead crayon. He drew himself a mouth, as if in his sleep; a million times before, he’d done this. It was as smooth and shiny as a rubber stick-on. As it always does, the lipless, puckery real mouth gave the lie to the big-happy drawn one; if he looked at me, I would wet myself. The old terrors were frothing the fizz I’d had, kicking up the cod. All this time and running I’d spent, and here I was, plastered on the church-stone like a splatted paint-ball, trapped with one of the things hardly an arm’s reach away, in full muck—
    It got worse. He put the nose on. It made him move differently; it gave him that terrible pretend-childlikeness they have. The face dipped and floated as he stood,
ooh!
, surprised to find himself,
why, here!
A breath honked into me, the first for a while.
    He shook his khaki jacket inside out, off his hands, then tweaked it again somehow, so that it burst open into layered orange furbelows. He stepped into it and stretched, becoming the familiar, dreaded star-shape, his feet orange-bootee’d on the pocked stone, his fingers gloved in tight orange kid. A practised
zip
and he was gone, leapt up the ladder to the class he belonged in. He unclipped the backpack; it was brimming with clowngear, packed special so he could ‘discover’ it in a certain order.
    As soon as he started, I could tell he was good. Why hadn’t they taken him at the auditions? He must’ve chokedbadly on the day. He juggled as if the knives, the firesticks, the golden coshes weighed nothing, as if they were making their own crescents and circles, with his hands just patting them for reassurance. He tumbled like a squirrel, running up wall and down balustrade, flipping along the stone coping as if nothing yawned beyond, as if the city were a safety net he’d never
think
of needing. He mimed all the mimes: the full three-course meal, the stint in the mini-car, the case-of-mistaken-identity; he slipped from pose to ritual pose through the rolls and shocks and blanches I remembered, in my bones and muscles, from my own classes in the homes—except perfect, never wondering what the point was. Not a fumble, not a wobble, not a pause.
    The only thing that