Too Much Happiness

her-indeed she did not expect him to-but put his hand just lightly on her back to steer her in the direction they were supposed to go.
    “Do you still smoke your pipe?” she said, sniffing the air and remembering how he had taken up pipe smoking in high school.
    “Pipe? Oh. No. It’s the smoke from the fire you smell. We don’t notice it anymore. I’m afraid it’ll get stronger, in the direction we’re walking.”
    “Are we going to go through where it was?”
    “No, no. We couldn’t, even if we wanted to. They’ve got it all blocked off. Too dangerous. Some buildings will have to be taken down. Don’t worry, it’s okay where we are. A good block and a half away from the mess.”
    “Your apartment building?” she said, alert to the “we.”
    “Sort of. Yes. You’ll see.”
    He spoke gently, readily, yet with an effort, like someone speaking, as a courtesy, in a foreign language. And he stooped a little, to make sure she heard him. The special effort, the slight labor involved in speaking to her, as if making a scrupulous translation, seemed something she was meant to notice.
    The cost.
    As they stepped off a curb he brushed her arm-perhaps he had stumbled a little-and he said, “Excuse me.” And she thought he gave the least shiver.
    AIDS. Why had that never occurred to her before?
    “No,” he said, though she had certainly not spoken aloud. “I’m quite well at present. I’m not HIV positive or anything like that. I contracted malaria years ago, but it’s under control. I may be a bit run-down at present but nothing to worry about. We turn here, we’re right in this block.”
    “We” again.
    “I’m not psychic,” he said. “I just figured out something that Savanna was trying to get at and I thought I’d put you at rest. Here we are then.”
    It was one of those houses whose front doors open only a few steps from the sidewalk.
    “I’m celibate, actually,” he said, holding open the door.
    A piece of cardboard was tacked up where one of its panes should be.
    The floorboards were bare and creaked underfoot. The smell was complicated, all-pervasive. The street smell of smoke had got in here, of course, but it was mixed with smells of ancient cooking, burnt coffee, toilets, sickness, decay.
    “Though ‘celibate’ might be the wrong word. That sounds as if there’s something to do with willpower. I guess I should have said ‘neuter.’ I don’t think of it as an achievement. It isn’t.”
    He was leading her around the stairs and into the kitchen. And there a gigantic woman stood with her back to them, stirring something on the stove.
    Kent said, “Hi, Marnie. This is my mom. Can you say hello to my mom?”
    Sally noticed a change in his voice. A relaxation, honesty, perhaps a respect, different from the forced lightness he managed with her.
    She said, “Hello, Marnie,” and the woman half turned, showing a squeezed doll’s face in a loaf of flesh but not focusing her eyes.
    “Marnie is our cook this week,” said Kent. “Smells okay, Marnie.”
    To his mother he said, “We’ll go and sit in my sanctum, shall we?” and led the way down a couple of steps and along a back hall. It was hard to move there because of the stacks of newspapers, flyers, magazines neatly tied.
    “Got to get these out of here,” Kent said. “I told Steve this morning. Fire hazard. Jeez, I used to just say that. Now I know what it means.”
    Jeez. She had been wondering if he belonged to some plain-clothes religious order, but if he did, he surely wouldn’t say that, would he? Of course it could be an order of some faith other than Christian.
    His room was down some further steps, actually in the cellar. There was a cot, a battered old-fashioned desk with cubbyholes, a couple of straight-backed chairs with rungs missing.
    “The chairs are perfectly safe,” he said. “Nearly all our stuff is scavenged from somewhere, but I draw the line at chairs you can’t sit on.”
    Sally seated herself with a feeling of exhaustion.
    “What are you?” she said. “What is it you do? Is this one of those halfway houses or something like that?”
    “No. Not even quarter way. We take in anybody that comes.”
    “Even me.”
    “Even you,” he said without smiling. “We aren’t supported by anybody but ourselves. We do some recycling with stuff we pick up. Those newspapers. Bottles. We make a bit here and there. And we take turns soliciting the public.”
    “Asking for charity?”
    “Begging,”