House of Blues

sort. Accuracy is my passion, and I do not make
mistakes so easily avoided."
    He and his wife had now led her into a cramped and
dreary kitchen, still smelling of breakfast. Skip refused coffee, but
joined them at a table under a hanging light fixture that threatened
to decapitate anyone who moved too fast.
    Josie was silent. "A blue person," Milton
said, "is a person of compassion, someone who feels for other
people, who is kind and who wants to please. Josie is one as well. I
myself am a green person—a scholar, something of a recluse, an
intellectual, someone who loves studying above all else."
    In spite of herself, Skip was fascinated. "Is
this your own system or someone else's?"
    " Well, we green people are indeed the creative
ones—the inventors, the scientists. But this is not my handiwork.
It is something I learned in a seminar. I attend every seminar I am
able. I also read constantly. But never fiction, of course. No, sir,
I am interested only in facts." Here his voice rose as if he
were either angry or in the pulpit, making his most vital point.
"Only facts!" he raged, and his face turned red.
    He lowered his voice. "If there are no facts, I
do not have interest. I do not watch television for any reason."
    " Are there other colors?"
    " Of course. The world could not survive without
gold people. These are the doers; the movers and the shakers."
    "I see. Which one is Dennis?"
    An odd expression came over Milton's face. Skip could
have sworn it was confusion, but Milton didn't seem the sort who went
in for that. He recovered quickly.
    "He is not intelligent enough to be a green
person. He does not do enough to be gold person. I would say that he
is a blue person except that he does not listen. No system is
perfect."
    Skip turned to Josie and smiled. "I wonder if
you've heard from him since yesterday?"
    "Of course we have not," said Milton. "If
we had, we would have mentioned it. Dennis was always a hellion. He
skipped school more often than he went, he associated with unsavory
individuals, and he smoked marijuana. I was obliged to whip him at
least three times a week. Quite often, he even failed to come home—he
stayed out all night with fringe-element friends."
    Milton had curly hair and looked like a laborer of
some sort. Skip had never in her life heard anyone—especially
anyone who looked like him—talk this way.
    " Worried us to death," said his mother.
"And such a smart boy. He finished two years at UNO, did you
know that? But then he disappeared and didn't come back for a while."
    "Somehow or other, he managed to meet Miss Reed
Hebert. Neither Josie nor I will ever have the slightest notion how
he did it. She civilized him as no one else had been able to do. We
watched her turn him into a different person altogether. At this
moment, a good friend of his is dying of AIDS—a neighborhood boy,
two blocks away. This neighborhood. AIDS.
    " This young man is as red-blooded as I am. He
contracted this disease by using needles. That is correct. In this
neighborhood. I stress that this boy is not a homosexual—this thing
could have happened to Dennis. It did not because of Reed Hebert."
    He set his lips in a grim line, and Skip wasn't sure
she didn't hear regret in his voice. She thought he had probably
predicted it and hated to be proved wrong.
    " As it happens, I was talking to Mrs. Sugar
Hebert when the kidnap occurred. I had called Dennis to tell him
about his " friend Justin—the boy who is ill—and Mrs. Hebert
answered the phone."
    "What kidnap, Mr. Poucher? What did you mean by
that?"
    "That is what happened, of course. Surely the
police have figured this out."
    Josie said, "Did he mention green people like to
control things?" Skip thought she was trying to be playful, but
it wasn't working.
    As always, Milton ignored her. "We will soon be
receiving a ransom note—that is, Mrs. Hebert will. These people
could not get a cent from the Fouchers." His voice was smug.
    " This friend—Justin. Could you give me his
address?"
    "You wish to visit Justin? What on earth for?"
    " I want to see Justin and any of Dennis's other
friends."
    Both the Fouchers looked furious—Skip couldn't
think why, but she thought it had to do with the control Josie had
mentioned. Blue person or not, she shared her husband's world, and
very likely his reality. Perhaps they wanted to be the only sources,
the world's greatest living experts on Dennis Foucher, dope fiend.
    " We will be glad to comply," said Milton,
"with