350
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Hey, yourself. You want some beer?"
"No. Well, maybe." But he came up to the window and stood
beside me, looking out. "What a warm voice," he said.
They were singing
If I could only hear my mother pray again!
"Yes," I said, "and she can sure beat that tambourine."
"But what a terrible song," he said, .and laughed. He dropped
his notebook on the sofa and disappeared into the kitchen. "Where's
Isabel and the kids?"
"I think they went to see their grandparents. You hungry?"
"No." He came back into the living room with his can of beer.
"You want to come some place with me tonight?"
I sensed, I don't know how, that I couldn't possibly say No.
"Sure. Where?"
He sat down on the sofa and picked up his notebook and started
leafing through it. "I'm going to sit in with some fellows in a joint
in the Village."
"You mean, you're going to play, tonight?"
"That's right." He took a swallow of his beer and moved back
to the window. He gave me a sidelong look.
"If
you can stand it."
"I'll try," I said.
He smiled to himself and we both watched as the meeting across
the way broke up. The three sisters and the brother, heads bowed,
were singing
God be with you till we meet again.
The faces around
them were very quiet. Then the song ended. The small crowd dis–
persed. We watched the three woman and the lone man walk slowly
up the avenue.
"When she was singing before," said Sonny, abruptly, "her
voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes
-when it's in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool
at the same time. And distant. And-and sure." He sipped his beer,
very deliberately not looking at me. I watched his face. "It makes
you feel-in control. Sometimes you've got to have that feeling."
"Do you?" I sat down slowly in the easy chair.
"Sometimes." He went to the sofa and picked up his note–
book again. "Some people do."
"In order," I asked, "to play?" And my voice was very ugly, full
of contempt and anger.
"Well"-he looked at me with great, troubled eyes, as though, in
