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"I’d like to have a fewif I could"

"Jesus, Henry," the e!" "He alas an old pervert," said the guy in the bow tie

"Oh, get a life, Stewart," Thelentle else"

"Jesus, Henry, you’re gonna be et out of this rooe," Thelma continued "And as far as I’e doesn’t have to be part of it"

They all roared at that, and Holly said, "I can see I’ets what she’s after athered the cards up and was shuffling the deck, Holly said, "I don’t ame"

"Oh, don’t worry yourself," Henry said His words were slightly slurred as a result of his stroke, but he was quite intelligible

"We’ll just take a bathrooe said, "if we didn’t coordinate our bathroom breaks, there’d never be more than two of us at the card table at any one time!" The others wheeled away, and Holly pulled up a chair to sit near Henry Ironheart

He was not the vital-looking, square-faced -roo, and without help Holly ht side weak, though not paralyzed, and a lot of the tiainst his chest, the way an injured aniht and was no longer a burly h his skin had good color; the facialhis features to droop a little

His appearance, coht have sent Holly into a depression over the inevitable direction of every human life-if not for his eyes, which revealed an unbowed soul And his conversation, though slowed soht and huive the fates the satisfaction of his despair; his treacherous body was to be cursed, if at all, in private

"I’m a friend of Jim’s," she told him

He made a lopsided "O" of his mouth, which she decided was an expression of surprise At first he did not seem to knohat to say, but then he asked, "How is Jiood, Henry He’s a very troubled man"

He looked away from her, at the pile of poker chips on the table

"Yes," he said softly

Holly had half expected hi monster who had been at least in part responsible for Ji but that

"Henry, I wanted to meet you, talk to you, because Jim and I are more than friends I love him, and he’s said that he loves ether a long, long time"

To her surprise, tears briht beads in the soft folds of his aged face

She said, "I’ood lord, no," he said, wiping at his eyes with his left hand

"Excusebut that"

"It’s just, I never thoughtWell, I figured Ji to spend his life alone"

"Why did you think that?" "Well"

He seerandson, co expectations that he would be a tyrant of so people at ar, he said, "Even me I’ve loved him with all my heart, all these years, and I know he lovesit, and he could never say it" As Holly was about to ask him a question, he suddenly shook his head violently and wrenched his distorted face into an expression of anguish so severe that for an instant she thought he was having another stroke "It’s not all him

God knows it’s not" The slur in his voice thickened when he grew ot to face it-part of the distance between us is me, my fault, the blame I put on him that I never should’ve"

"Blame?" "For Lena"

A shadow of fear passed across her heart and induced a quiver of angina-like pain

She glanced at thethat looked out on a corner of the courtyard

It was not the corner to which Jione She wondered where he was, hoaswho he was

"For Lena? I don’t understand," she said, though she was afraid that she did

"It seeivable to me nohat I did, what I allowed h her noard a distant tie in those days, not the child he had been Before you can even hope to understand what I did, you have to know that, after Atlanta, he was so very strange, all locked up inside"

Iht of Sam and Emily Newsome, whose lives Jim had saved in an Atlanta convenience store-and Norun in a blind rage But Henry obviously was not talking about a recent event in Atlanta; he was referring to some previous incident, much further in the past

"You don’t know about Atlanta?" he asked, reacting to her evident h the roo Holly For an instant she could not identify the noise, then realized it was several birds shrieking the way they did when protecting their nests No birds were in the roo down the fireplace chimney from the roof Just birds Their chatter faded

She turned to Henry Ironheart again "Atlanta? No, I guess I don’t know about that"

"I didn’t think you did I’d be surprised if he talked about it; even to you, even if he loves you He just doesn’t talk about it"

"What happened in Atlanta?" "It was a place called the Dixie Duck-" "Oh, my God," she whispered She had been there in the dream

"Then you do know some of it," he said His eyes were pools of sorrow

She felt her face crurief, not for Jim’s parents, whom she had never known, and not even for Henry, who presumably had loved them, but for Jim "Oh, my God" And then she couldn’t say any more because her words backed up behind her own tears

Henry reached out to her with one liver-spotted hand, and she took it, held it, waiting until she could speak again