She stuck out her chin. 'You calling me a whore?'

He smiled. 'You need a pimp? There's money in it, I hear.'

You want breakfast, Gard, or do you want to piss me off?'

How about both?'

'No,' she said, and he saw she was really mad – Christ, he was getting worse and worse at seeing things like that, and it used to be so easy. He hugged her. I was only kidding, couldn't she see that? he thought. She always used to be able to tell when I was kidding. But of course she hadn't known he was kidding because he hadn't been. If he believed different, the only one getting kidded was himself. He had been trying to hurt her because she'd embarrassed him. And it wasn't her offer that had been stupid; it was his embarrassment. He had more or less chosen the life he was living, hadn't he?

And he didn't want to hurt Bobbi, didn't want to drive Bobbi away. The bed part was fine, but the bed part wasn't the really important part. The really important part was that Bobbi Anderson was a friend, and something scary seemed to be happening just lately. How fast he seemed to be running out of friends. That was pretty scary, all right.

Running out of friends? Or running them out? Which is it, Gard?

At first hugging her was like hugging an ironing board and he was afraid she would try to pull away and he would make the mistake of trying to hold on, but she finally softened.

'I want breakfast,' he said, 'and to say I'm sorry.'

'It's all right,' she said, and turned away before he could see her face – but her voice held that dry briskness that meant she was either crying or near it. 'I keep forgetting it's bad manners to offer money to Yankees.'

Well, he didn't know if it was bad manners or not, but he would not take money from Bobbi. Never had, never would.

The New England Poetry Caravan, however, was a different matter.

Grab that chicken, son, Ron Cummings, who needed money about as much as the Pope needed a new hat, would have said. The bitch is too slow to run and too fat to pass up.