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eye, one brown. Her cheekbones were pulled even higher by a line of makeup. She reached across, lifted Corrigan’s teacup, blew it cool, left a smudge of lipstick on the rim.
    “I don’t know why you don’t put ice in this shit, Corrie,” she said.
    “Don’t like it,” said Corrigan.
    “If you wanna be American you gotta put ice in it.”
    The parasol hooker giggled then as if Jazzlyn had just said something fabulously rude. It was like they had a code going between them. I edged away, but Jazzlyn leaned across and picked a piece of lint off my shoulder.
    Her breath was sweet. I turned again to Corrigan.
    “Did you get him arrested?”
    My brother looked confused: “Who?” he said.
    “The bloke who beat you up?”
    “Arrested for what?”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Why would I get him arrested?”
    “Did someone beat you up again, honey?” said the parasol hooker.
    She was staring at her fingers. She bit a long edge of fingernail from her thumb, examined the little slice. She scraped the fingernail paint off with her teeth, and flicked the slice of nail towards me from off her extended finger. I stared at her. She flashed a white grin. “I can’t stand it when I get beaten up,” she said.
    “Jesus,” I muttered to the window.

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    “Enough,” said Corrigan.
    “They always leave marks, don’t they?” said Jazzlyn.
    “Okay, Jazz, enough, okay?”
    “Once, this guy, this asshole, this quadruple motherfucker, he used a telephone book on me. You want to know something about the telephone book? Lots of names and not one of them leaves a mark.”
    Jazzlyn stood up and removed her loose blouse. She wore a neon-yellow bikini underneath. “He hit me here and here and here.”
    “Okay, Jazz, time to go.”
    “I bet you could find your own name here.”
    “Jazzlyn!”
    She stood and sighed. “Your brother’s cute,” she said to me. She buttoned her blouse. “We love him like chocolate. We love him like nicotine.
    Isn’t that right, Corrie? We love you like nicotine. Tillie’s got a crush on him. Ain’t you, Tillie? Tillie, you listening?”
    The parasol hooker stepped away from the mirror. She touched the edge of her mouth where the lipstick smeared. “Too old to be an acrobat, too young to die,” she said.
    Jazzlyn was fumbling under the table with a small glassine package.
    Corrigan leaned across and touched her hand. “Not here, you know you can’t do that in here.” She rolled her eyes, sighed, and dropped a needle in her handbag.
    The door bounced on its hinges. All of them blew kisses, even Jazz -
    lyn, with her back turned. She looked like some failed sunflower, her arm curving backwards as she went.
    “Poor Jazz.”
    “What a mess.”
    “Well, at least she’s trying.”
    “Trying? She’s a mess. They all are.”
    “Ah, no, they’re good people,” Corrigan said. “They just don’t know what it is they’re doing. Or what’s being done to them. It’s about fear. You know? They’re all throbbing with fear. We all are.”
    He drank the tea without cleaning the lipstick off the rim.
    “Bits of it floating in the air,” he said. “It’s like dust. You walk about and don’t see it, don’t notice it, but it’s there and it’s all coming down, covering everything. You’re breathing it in. You touch it. You drink it. You eat it. But it’s so fine you don’t notice it. But you’re covered in it. It’s ev-McCa_9781400063734_4p_01_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:31 PM Page 30
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    erywhere. What I mean is, we’re afraid. Just stand still for an instant and there it is, this fear, covering our faces and tongues. If we stopped to take account of it, we’d just fall into despair. But we can’t stop. We’ve got to keep going.”
    “For what?”
    “I don’t know—that’s my problem.”
    “What are you into here, Corr?”
    “I suppose I have to put flesh on