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corridor on the second floor. The women arrived within five minutes. Papa’s woman rode in on the waft of her own un-subtle cologne, and right away he liked the cut of her. Her hair dangled in braids like metallic coils, and her skin was burnt almond. He frowned to cover his excitement.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Is that important?” she said.
    “Wouldn’t have asked, would I?” With his pants off, he had the hind legs of a dog, but the strut of a peacock.
    “Inez.”
    “Sounds foreign,” he said and with gimlet eyes watched her undress. Her body outshone all others in his memory.
    “I’m homegrown, my little man. Homegrown.”
    Some twenty minutes later, from the bed, he pounded the wall and shouted through it. “How you doin’ in there, Junior?” When he got no answer, he pounded it again, with vigor.
    “We ain’t started yet,” Junior called back in a voice that did not sound wholly his.
    “For Christ’s sake, time’s runnin’ out. Don’t waste it.” Papa turned back to the woman, trailing a knobby hand over the smart curve of her abdomen. “I got another son ain’t like that one at all.”
    Junior cried through the wall. “I’m gettin’ there!”
    A half hour later, father and son made their way along the corridor to the stairs. Junior, invigorated, hooked a thumb into the waist of his jeans and, swinging his free arm, imitated his father’s gait. “I ain’t ever had a black gal before.”
    “Black, white, it don’t make no dif’rence,” Papa said, stopping at the stairs and patting his pockets to make sure he had not left anything behind. “Long’s you get it off.”
    “You ever bring Clement here?”
    “Clement didn’t need to be brought.”
    “Maybe I can bring myself sometime.”
    Papa’s eyes flared. “You can’t
never
bring yourself
nowhere
. Look what you did at the high school. Let yourself be made a God-damn fool of.”
    “I know, Papa.”
    “No, you
don’t
know. Shit like that the chief uses against me, always has.”
    “Me that done it, Papa. Not you.”
    “That don’t matter to him. Come on, let’s go!”
    They descended to the lobby, where once again the smell of disinfectant almost awakened something in Junior. The fat desk clerk was eating pizza and did not look up. In their path was a man trying to pass as a woman, his face hyperbolized with abundant paint and lipstick. Stiletto heels scraped the carpetless floor. The voice carried the rhythmic cadence of a Haitian.
    “You ought to try me sometime, junior.”
    Outside, the sun pouncing at them, Junior said, “How’d she know my name?”
    “I don’t think he did,” Papa said.
    The loitering youths were gone. The truck was as they left it, except for a beer can someone had thrown into the bed. Farther up the street music shot out of a storefront church. Papa started up the motor, and pondering something, took his time pulling onto the street.
    “I ain’t seen a ballgame in ages.”
    “I ain’t either, Papa.”
    “We’re lucky, maybe we can get bleacher seats.”
    “You takin’ me, Papa?”
    “I just said so, didn’t I?”
    Papa turned left at the tail of the street and rejoined the city’s hot traffic, fiery in its sound, eye-maddening in its confusion, which several times made him curse, especially when cabbies cut in front of him. He threw a look at Junior, who was fidgeting in his seat. “Keep an eye out for the Citgo sign. That’s how I can find Fenway Park.”
    Junior wheezed, as if too much were going on, a question of whether he could juggle it all. Papa threw him another look.
    “You gonna be sick, I’ll turn around right now,” he threatened.
    “I won’t be, Papa, I promise.”
    • • •
    Chronicle
aired at seven-thirty on Channel Five, opening with a shot of the village green and a sweep of the town hall, the Congregational church, and the ivy-matted library, outside of which the names of war dead were scored in marble. Then came glimpses of Tuck’s General Store,