Buttons clatter and clack as spindled fingers clamp his shoulders, push the one, pull the other, twisting him about, “whoa,” he’s saying, “whoa,” as he plants his feet to hold him fast, but the elderly man’s relentless, tugging and shoving as all over his grimy denim jacket those badges and buttons and pins so strikingly colored, distinctly sloganed, PROTECT Each OTHER, says one, and Star Grease another, ACT-UP, HE / HIM, Think Younger ’74, Queer But Tired jangle and clank until he’s turned about just so, his back to the ruddy, low-slung sedan parked athwart an otherwise empty street, “Boy,” the elderly man is saying, “I put up with far too much the last few days to have any patience left in these my bones,” the face of him weathered away to extraordinary furrows and prominences, eyes sunk deep in calderas beneath the whitely shagged escarpment of his brow, pinched mouth set in a wrinkled moraine, “so kindly do us a solid, and hold still.”

“What he said,” from the kid, sat back against the fender, scowling under a matted pompadour.

The elderly man opens the long driver-side door, squats in his shapeless linen suit to lever up the front seat, “Go on,” he’s saying as he does so, “she just wants to talk.”

“Who?” says the young man in the denim jacket, “Who?” even as the elderly man is tugging and pushing, folding him into the back seat of the car, closing up the door of it with a gentle chunk that’s nonetheless terribly loud in the silence about them, and not even a susurrant rumble or whir of traffic on the overpasses laced above.

“Jack,” she says.

Her hair a bit too ruddy to be brown, per se, pushed back to sweep her shoulders, black top turtlenecked, sleeveless, bare arms folded, those eyes the color of mud to either side of that nose, looking at him with such, such concern.

“Fuck you,” he says, looking away with a clack of buttons.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she says. “All week, ever since, Jack. Do you know what happened to May. Her son, her son’s worried sick.”

“I bet,” he snaps.

“Do you know where she ended up? Just, tell me, Jack, yes or no, and I – ”

“You mean, after the cops arrested you? Busted everything up, kicked us all out? No, Jo. No fucking clue. Been too busy, trying to put my life back together.”

“Jack,” she says, reaching out a hand, “I’m so, so sorry, about,” but before she can lay it on his knee he jerks away, “Don’t,” he spits, “don’t you dare.”

She draws back her hand. “You know I didn’t shoot anybody. You know that was bullshit.”

“What do I know!” he shouts, and she flinches. “You,” he says. “Look at you, some, what is it. Duchess. And your goons? Driving you around in this,” and “Jack,” she says, sharply, but he plows on, “this fucking car,” he snarls, and “Jack!” she barks, flatly loud in these confines, and then, as he’s catching his breath, “I had to find you,” she says. “I used what I had. Those guys?” and she looks away, with a sigh. “Who you saw, out by the airport, that’s me, Jack. That’s, who I am. Not,” a hand, laid on the back of the seat before her, “not this.”

“Yeah?” he says. “Well, which one of you’s looking for May? You with the goons? They can round up all her cats, maybe. Put all her magazines back together. Wouldn’t that be swell.”

“We’ve already,” she says, “done, what we can, with that, already. You,” leaned back, away from him, against the passenger-side door, “you’re here, but you can leave, whenever you want. But. You might want, a hot bath? Change of clothes? Something to eat, a bed, perhaps, under a roof?”

A moment, then, as he doesn’t look at her, but doesn’t reach for the handle of the door, either. And then, leaning over him, she reaches across to rap on the window-glass, and nods to Sweetloaf when he leans down to scowl through it at them both.