Roland said, “Sweet Jesus working on this?” and pronounced it Jesus. “I never knew he had a sister. I never knew what he had. He don’t talk hardly at all.”

Vivian said, “Listen, all right? The recorder is in Marta’s room. Every night she takes the cassette out and gives it to Jesus.”

“Then what?”

“Then-he was bringing it here, but now he gives it to you and you listen to it. You write down the names of men she talks to. If it looks like she’s got something going with one of them, you find out about him, go see him, tell him Mrs. DiCilia would like to be left alone. You understand? You don’t hit anyone unless you ask us first.”

“For how long?”

Vivian shrugged. “Long as she lives, I don’t know. She’s not to see anyone in a serious way that she might go to bed with.”

Roland squinted, like he was looking into sunglare. “Grossi want her for himself?”

“It’s not his idea, it’s the husband’s.”

“The man’s dead.” Still squinting.

“Is that right? But people still do what he wants,” Vivian said. “He wants his wife to remain pure, true to him even after death, and we see to it.”

“That’s a good looking woman,” Roland said.

“Yes, very stylish.”

“And she’s not getting anything? Jesus, she must be dying.”

“Everyone isn’t a sex maniac,” Vivian said.

“You don’t have to be wild with the notion to want some poon.” Roland saw the poor woman alone in her house at night, looking out the window. “Maybe she has some boy sneak in, give her a jump.”

Vivian shook her head. “Marta says no one stays, they don’t go in the bedroom.”

Roland was thinking, You don’t have to do it in the bedroom. Shit, he’d done it in a car trunk, in sand, weeds, an air boat in the middle of Big Cyprus Swamp, one time right on the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway like she was sitting on the railing… on floors-all kinds of floors, carpet, linoleum-on a table- He’d never done it on a glass table though.