Hard News

That’s what I’d like to learn. Put ‘em right to sleep.”
    “What’s a Vulcan?” Courtney asked. Then she disappeared into the bedroom without waiting for an answer. She returned a few minutes later, pulling a stuffed dragon by the tail.
    Rune made the dragon dance, then hugged Courtney. She asked the little girl, “What’s her name? Do you remember?”
    “Persephy.”
    “Very good. Persephone. And who was Persephone?”
    Courtney held up the dragon.
    “No, I mean in real life?”
    Claire said, “Real life?”
    “She was a goddess,” Courtney answered. “She was Zeus’s little girl.”
    Claire said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea you’re teaching her that stuff like it’s true.”
    “What isn’t true about it?”
    “About the gods and goddesses and fairies and all that shit.”
    “Shit,” said Courtney.
    Rune said to Claire, “You’re saying it’s not true?”
    “You believe in Roman goddesses?”
    “Persephone was Greek. I’m not saying I believe and I’m not saying I don’t.”
    “I want her to grow up to be a highly grounded person,” Claire said.
    “Oh, get real,” Rune said. “Your goal in life is to get to every club in downtown Manhattan and never pay for a drink yourself.
That’s
reality?”
    “I want her to be an adult.”
    Rune whispered, “She’s three years old. She’ll grow up fast enough.”
    Claire cocked an eyebrow at Rune. “Some people I know have resisted adulthood totally successfully.” She smiled sweetly. “Favor, please?”
    “I’m broke.”
    “Naw, what it is is I gotta go out tonight. Babysit, will you?”
    “Claire—”
    “I met this guy and he was talking about a job. He might hire me.”
    “Which
club’re
you going to meet him at?” Rune asked wryly.
    “S.O.B.’s,” Claire admitted. “But he really thinks he can get me work. Come on, please….” Nodding at her daughter. “You two get along so good.”
    Rune looked at Courtney. “We
do
get along, don’t we, dude? Gimme five high.” She held up her hand and Courtney crawled forward. They slapped upraised palms.
    “Dude,” the little girl said then crawled back to Persephone. Rune looked at her face and didn’t see much of Claire in it. She wondered who the father was. Claire, she knew, occasionally wondered the same.
    After a moment Rune said, “You know, I’m not, like, too good with saying things like this….” Rune paused, hoping Claire would pick up on the hint. But she was concentrating on putting a fake diamond earring into one of the holes on the side of her nose. Rune continued, “What I’m saying is you really’ve
got
to find a place to live.”
    “I didn’t plan on staying this long. It’s not that easy to find a place to live in Manhattan.”
    “I know,” Rune said. “Look, I don’t want to kick you out.”
    Claire got solemn for a moment. “The truth is I’m thinking about going back to Boston. Just to get my act together for a while. What do you think?”
    Hallelujah!
    Rune said, “I think that’s a very mature thing to do.”
    “Really?”
    “I do. Absolutely.”
    “I’ll stay with my mother. She’s got a nice house. I can have the upstairs to myself. The only thing that bothers me is I don’t know what I could do there exactly.”
    Rune wasn’t sure what Claire could do here in Manhattan either, except hang out and go to clubs, which she could probably do in Boston just as easily and for a lot less money. But she said, “Boston’s supposed to be a wonderful place. History, lots of history.”
    “Yeah, history. But, excuse me, what do you do with history?”
    “You don’t have to
do
anything with it. It’s just neat.” Rune hefted Courtney to the windowsill, propped her on her hip. “Just look out there, honey, and picture it three hundred years ago. You know who lived there? Indians! The Canarsie Indians. And there were bears and deer and everything.”
    “Like the zoo,” the girl said. “Can we go to the zoo?”
    “Sure we can. Maybe tomorrow. And see over there, all those roads? They used to be tobacco fields. They called the place Sapokanikan. It means the tobacco plantation. Then the settlers came up here from New York City—which was all down by the Battery then. They came up here because they had all these terrible plagues or epidemics—and they saw all these fields and farmland and the place got called Green Village—”
    Claire interrupted, “And now it’s Greenwich Village and it’s got bagels and