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removing the bunny and the carrots, dropping bits of white and orange thread on the dirt. Patty was taking out the large hems she had sewed in her jeans the night before, like Penelope unraveling her weaving in the Odyssey, only backward and for different reasons.
    “Maybe I can iron them out in the home ec room,” she said. “So they hang down better.”
    “And then maybe you can smoosh them up so they’re not all crispy,” said Debbie.
    “I don’t care so much if they’re crispy,” said Patty. “Just so they’re long enough.”
    While they were working, a pair of playful chipmunks chased each other through the branches, and a few fat robins, seeking refuge from the rain, now more a downpour than a drizzle, chirped. It felt very Arcadian, as if a shepherd might appear with a harp and some grapes.
    What appeared instead was a car blasting down the alleyway, throwing up wild sprays of puddle water as it clunked in and out of potholes. The two girls froze, only their eyes moving, and remained hidden. In the noise and commotion, neither one noticed that behind them a startled chipmunk had jumped from a narrow limb to the ground. A slender gold chain was momentarily tangled around his front paws. He dragged it for a short distance before he got free of it and scampered away. It settled down into the neatly mowed grass of someone’s backyard, in the rain, getting wet.

CHAPTER 7

The Fable of Lenny
     
    A t least the windows were open. Even so, the odor was thick and pungent. Debbie experimented with different methods of breathing. Nose only. Mouth only. Hand casually over nose. Nose casually over right shoulder, hunk of hair used casually as an air filter. She was looking for ways to inhale that would not make her want to gag. She tried pulling her T-shirt up over her nose. Probably the smell was something you could get used to. She was used to her dad’s cigarettes, but Lenny’s chewing tobacco had a sour, heavy mintiness suggestive of putting your nose in the armpit of someone who had applied scented deodorant after already having sweated.
    Every now and then he leaned out of the window and spit.
    “That stuff stinks,” said Phil. “How can you stand having it in your mouth?”
    “I like it,” said Lenny.
    He did like it, sort of. He was going to like it, once he got used to it. It had startled him, at first, to have the flavor inside his own mouth, but it was the taste of the smell of his father, and his father’s friends. It was strange to him, but it was also friendly.
    Debbie, between Lenny and Phil, breathed shallowly the aromas of laundered cotton and her own skin and scrutinized her bare feet, up on the dashboard. She had put decals on her toenails that afternoon, but she thought she might take them off later. They were the last set left in the package, and they weren’t very good. All the good ones were used up. From any farther than six inches, these were just irregular black squiggles with some blurry blobs of purple and blue. It looked like she had banged her toes one at a time with a hammer. Lenny looked at them, too. He couldn’t make out what they were. Dragonflies? Skull and crossbones?
    “What are those on your toes?” he asked. “Are they supposed to be grapes?”
    The lump in his cheek caused him to speak a little less clearly, as if he had a lump of something wedged between his gum and his cheek. Which he did.
    “Fish,” Debbie said to the inside of her T-shirt. “Tropical fish.”
    “Maybe you should just chew gum,” suggested Phil. “Since when do you dip snuff, anyway?”
    “The guy I work for over at the garage asked me if I wanted a pinch,” said Lenny. “So I decided to try it.
    “I like it,” he said again. He was sticking to his story.
    The garage where Lenny swept up a few hours a week, emptied trash, helped out, was run by a friend of his dad’s. Sometimes Jerry let him do easy jobs, like changing oil and spark plugs. He could have done quite a bit more; he knew