"Uh yes, absolutely."

"It went like this," and Amy hummed. "When I'm calling yoo boo de da dum de da…"

"… from ear to ear: ruined a roseleaf quilt my great-great aunt in Tennessee lost her eyesight stitching."

"Zoo says he's on the chain gang, and she hopes he never gets off: she told the Lord to make him into an old dog."

"Will you answer da de de da… that isn't quite the tune, is it, Randolph?"

"A little off-key."

"But how should it go?"

"Haven't the faintest notion, angel."

Joel said: "Poor Zoo."

"Poor everybody," said Randolph, languidly pouring another sherry.

Greedy moths flattened their wings against the lamp funnels. Near the stove rain seeped through a leak in the roof, dripping with dismal regularity into an empty coal scuttle. "It's the kind of thing that happens when you tamper with the smallest box," observed Randolph, the sour smoke from his cigarette spiraling toward Joel, who, with discreet hand-waves, directed it elsewhere.

"I do wish you'd let me play the pianola," said Amy wistfully. "But I don't suppose you realize how much I enjoy it, what a comfort it is."

Randolph cleared his throat, and grinned, dimples denting his cheeks. His face was like a round ripe peach. He was considerably younger than his cousin: somewhere, say, in his middle thirties. "Still, we haven't exorcized Master Knox's ghost."

"It wasn't any ghost," muttered Joel. "There isn't any such of a thing: this was a real live lady, and I saw her."

"And what did she look like, dear?" said Amy, her tone indicating her thoughts were fastened on less far-fetched matters. It reminded Joel of Ellen and his mother: they also had used this special distant voice when suspicious of his stories, only allowing him to proceed for the sake of peace. The old trigger-quick feeling of guilt came over him: a liar, that's what the two of them, Amy and Randolph, were thinking, just a natural-born liar, and believing this he began to elaborate his description embarrassingly: she had the eyes of a fiend, the lady did, wild witch-eyes, cold and green as the bottom of the North Pole sea; twin to the Snow Queen, her face was pale, wintry, carved from ice, and her white hair towered on her head like a wedding cake. She had beckoned to him with a crooked finger, beckoned…

"Gracious," said Amy, nibbling a cube of watermelon pickle. "You really saw such a person!"

While talking, Joel had noticed with discomfort her cousin's amused, entertained expression: earlier, when he'd given his first flat account, Randolph had heard him out in the colorless way one listens to a stale joke, for he seemed, in some curious manner, to have advance knowledge of the facts.

"You know," said Amy slowly, and suspended the watermelon pickle midway between plate and mouth, "Randolph, have you been…" she paused, her eyes sliding sideways to confront the smooth, amused peach-face. "Well, thatdoes sound like…"

Randolph kicked her under the table; he accomplished this maneuver so skillfully it would have escaped Joel altogether had Amy's response been less extreme: she jerked back as though lightning had rocked the chair, and, shielding her eyes with the gloved hand, let out a pitiful wail: "Snake a snake I thought it was a snake bit me crawled under the table bit me foot you fool never forgive bit me my heart a snake," repeated over and over the words began to rhyme, to hum from wall to wall where giant moth shadows jittered.

Joel went all hollow inside; he thought he was going to wee wee right there in his breeches, and he wanted to hop up and run, just as he had at Jesus Fever's. Only he couldn't, not this time. So he looked hard at the window where fig leaves tapped a wet windy message, and tried with all his might to find the far-away room.

"Stop it this instant," commanded Randolph, making no pretense of his disgust. But when she could not seem to regain control he reached over and slapped her across the mouth. Then gradually she tapered off to a kind of hiccuping sob.

Randolph touched her arm solicitously. "All better, angel?" he said. "Dear me, you gave us a fright." Glancing at Joel, he added: "Amy is so very highstrung."

"So very," she agreed. "It was just that I thought… I hope I haven't upset the child."

But the walls of Joel's room were too thick for Amy's voice to penetrate. Now for a long time he'd been unable to find the far-away room; always it had been difficult, but never so hard as in the last year. So it was good to see his friends again. They were all here, including Mr. Mystery, who wore a crimson cape, a plumed Spanish hat, a glittery monocle, and had all his teeth made of solid gold: an elegant gentleman, though given to talking tough from the side of his mouth, and an artist, a great magician: he played the vaudeville downtown in New Orleans twice a year, and did all kinds of eerie tricks. This is how they got to be such buddies. One time he picked Joel from the audience, brought him up on the stage, and pulled a whole basketful of cotton-candy clean out of his ears; thereafter, next to little Annie Rose Kuppermann, Mr Mystery was the most welcome visitor to the other room. Annie Rose was the cutest thing you ever saw. She had jet black hair and a real permanent wave. Her mother kept her dressed in snow white on Sundays and all clear down to her socks. In real life, Annie Rose was too stuck up and sassy to even tell him the time of day, but here in the far-away room her cute little voice jingled on and on: "I love you, Joel. I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck." And there was someone else who rarely failed to show up, though seldom appearing as the same person twice; that is, he came in various costumes and disguises, sometimes as a circus strong-man, sometimes as a big swell millionaire, but always his name was Edward R. Sansom.

Randolph said: "She seeks revenge: out of the goodness of my heart I'm going to endure a few infernal minutes of the pianola. Would you mind, Joel, dear, helping with the lamps?"

Like the kitchen, Mr Mystery and little Annie Rose Kuppermann slipped into darkness when the lifted lamps passed through the hall to the parlor.

Ragtime fingers danced spectrally over the upright's yellowed ivories, the carnival strains of "Over the Waves" gently vibrating a girandole's crystal prism-fringe. Amy sat on the piano stool, cooling her little white face with a blue lace fan which she'd taken from the curio cabinet, and rigidly watched the mechanical thumping of the pianola keys.

"That's a parade song," said Joel. "I rode a float in the Mardi Gras once, all fixed up like a Chink with a long black pigtail, only a drunk man yanked it off, and set to whipping his ladyfriend with it right smack in the street."

Randolph inched nearer to Joel on the loveseat. Over his pyjamas he wore a seersucker kimono with butterfly sleeves, and his plumpish feet were encased in a pair of tooled-leather sandals: his exposed toenails had a manicured gloss. Up close, he had a delicate lemon scent, and his hairless face looked not much older than Joel's. Staring straight ahead, he groped for Joel's hand, and hooked their fingers together.

Amy closed her fan with a reproachful snap. "You never thanked me," she said.

"For what, dearheart?"

Holding hands with Randolph was obscurely disagreeable, and Joel's fingers tensed with an impulse to dig his nails into the hot dry palm; also, Randolph wore a ring which pressed painfully between Joel's knuckles. This was a lady's ring, a smoky rainbow opal clasped by sharp silver prongs.

"Why, the feathers," reminded Amy. "The nice bluejay feathers."

"Lovely," said Randolph, and blew her a kiss.

Satisfied, she spread the fan and worked it furiously. Behind her, the girandole quivered, and shedding lilac, loosened by the ragged pounding of the pianola, scattered on a table. A lamp had been placed by the empty hearth, so that it glowed out like a wavery ashen fire. "This is the first year a cricket hasn't visited," she said. "Every summer one has always hidden in the fireplace, and sang till autumn: remember, Randolph, how Angela Lee would never let us kill it?"