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"Life goes fast, Poet"

Memphis cupped her cheek in his hand and put his mouth on hers Theta had never been kissed the way Me boys thru with nervous want There had been theater owners, older "uncles" who pawed at her when she walked past or anted to "inspect" her costuarranted the occasional kiss in order to stave off so worse And there was Roy, of course Beautiful, cruel Roy, whose kisses were declaratory, as if he needed to conquer Theta, to brand her with his mouth Those men had never really seen Theta But Me like theirs It was passionate, yet tender A ree her He ith her

Me jake?"

"No," Theta said

"What’s the h thick, dark lashes "You stopped"

He drew her to hirabbed the clothesline to steady herself, and they fell to the ground, laughing, in a tuain

"Let’s just stay right here," Meainst his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart as he held her close

Outside, the city stirred and sighed in its sleep Stearates and coiled around a laround, in the half-finished tunnels of the neay lines, rats scurried along tracks just ahead of so more horrible than their rat dreams ever conjured A storefront psychic whose connection to the spirits was nothingunder the table felt compelled, quite suddenly, to cover her crystal ball with a cloth and lock it up in a wardrobe In Chinatown, the girl with the dark hair and green eyes bowed reverently to her ancestors, offered her prayers, and readied herself to walk in drea the Hudson, in an abandoned, ruined village, the wind carried the terrible death cries of so ever so faintly in the village below so that the eneral store glanced nervously at one another, their play suspended, their breath held for several seconds until the wind and the sound were gone Elsewhere in the country, there were sihter and woke, she could swear, to the chilling sound of the words Ma in the woods to piss by an old tree ju across the tops of his shoulders,there, but he brushed at his shoulders anyway, scurrying back toward the fire and his brothers in white A young Ojibway man watched a silvery shimmer of a hawk circle overhead and disappear In an old farirls calling me to play hide-and-seek with them in the cornfields," he whispered His father ordered him sleepily back to bed, and when the boy passed by the upstairs , he saw the incandescent girls in their long skirts and high-necked blouses fading into the edges of the corn, crying mournfully, "Come, come play with us…"

And farther still, in the vast prairies ure stood shadowed in the dark, biding his ti harvest

THE ANGEL GABRIEL

Gabe didn’t feel the press of ghosts as he walked west toward ho froht had turned chilly, and he blew on his hands to warood as any Gabe could rehteen, but the other cats treated hi as he took his solos, co hiht with Meirl to their party? Sure, she was pretty But there were lots of pretty girls eren’t trouble--or, at least, no more trouble than most women were He didn’t like that they’d left it on such a bad note Meood-bye If that was the way he wanted to play it, fine When that girl dropped hi shot, ould have to hear the whole sob story? Gabe, that ho

A sound startled hied cadence, like an off-tempo waltz But when he turned around, he saw no one

He was getting worked up about Me Gabe flipped up the collar of his jacket, a te off the Hudson, and kept walking The wind had to content itself with kicking a tin can down the street Overhead, the tracks of the Ninth Avenue El groaned in their emptiness In his head, Gabe replayed the day’s besthands with Clarence Williaht future with Okeh Records "Gonna have you playing for everybody," he’d said, and Gabe felt made