At Yankee Stadium

A firecracker goes off, another M-80 banging out of an exit ramp with a hard flat impact that drives people's heads into their torsos. Maureen looks battle-stunned. There are lines of boys wending through empty rows high in the upper deck, some of them only ten or twelve years old, moving with the princely swagger of famous street felons. She decides she doesn't see them.

'I'll tell you this,' Rodge says. 'I fully intend to examine this organization. Hit the libraries, get on the phone, contact parents, truly delve. You hear about support groups that people call for all kinds of things.'

'We need support. I grant you that. But you're light years too late.'

'I think we ought to change our flight as soon as we get back to the hotel and then check out and get going.'

'They'll charge us for the room for tonight anyway. We may as well get tickets to something.'

'The sooner we get started on this.'

'Raring to go. Oh boy. What fun.'

'I want to read everything I can get my hands on. Only did some skimming but that's because I didn't know she was involved in something so grandiose. We ought to get some hotline numbers and see who's out there that we can talk to.'

'You sound like one of those people, you know, when they get struck down by some rare disease they learn every inch of material they can find in the medical books and phone up doctors on three continents and hunt day and night for people with the same awful thing.'

'Makes good sense, Maureen.'

'They fly to Houston to see the top man. The top man is always in Houston.'

'What's wrong with learning everything you can?'

'You don't have to enjoy it.'

'It's not a question of enjoy it. It's our responsibility to Karen.'

'Where is she by the way?'

'I fully intend.'

'You were scanning so duteously. What, bored already?'

A wind springs up, causing veils to rustle and lift. Couples cry out, surprised, caught in a sudden lightsome glide, a buoyancy. They remember they are kids, mostly, and not altogether done with infections of glee. They have a shared past after all. Karen thinks of all those nights she slept in a van or crowded room, rising at five for prayer condition, then into the streets with her flower team. There was a girl named June who felt she was shrinking, falling back to child size. They called her Junette. Her hands could not grip the midget bars of soap in the motel toilets of America. This did not seem unreasonable to the rest of the team. She was only seeing what was really there, the slinking shape of eternity beneath the paint layers and glutamates of physical earth.