— I haven’t got any friends, he said without turning from the window, sitting that way at the edge of the seat looking out until they stopped, and a doorman opened the door. — Is Papa home yet?
— We’ll see.
He pushed the door in as soon as she’d turned the key, ran into the dark foyer and stopped. — When will he be here?
— Probably not till after you’re asleep. You’ll see him in the morning.
— Can I watch television till he comes?
— It’s late, you’d better get to bed. You’ll see him in the morning.
— Can I read before I turn the light off?
— For a few minutes… she came down for his quick embrace, standing, watching him go, till a bathroom door closed and she turned for the bedroom to undress in the dark, and lie awake, half awake in the dark, and then awake at the sound of the bedroom door, opening in the dark.
— Francis?
— Amie?
— Lucien?
— He is here? Francis?
— In the cubby, he’s asleep. Don’t wake him now.
— I? I don’t wake him.
— I told him he’d see you in the morning. I hope you can do something with him, take him somewhere tomorrow. There’s a hockey game he wants you to take him to.
— Hockey game… a shoe dropped to the floor, then coins spilling, rolling off the carpet. — Hockey game, eh?
— He says he hasn’t any friends.
— He has what?
— No friends, at school. He says he has no friends… bedsprings strained in the dark, and were still. — Lucien?
— Eh?
— He said you talked to him about moving to Geneva, living in Geneva… Lucien?
— Eh?
— Well what have you told him, what are you…
— Perhaps he goes there to school some day, in Geneva.
— Yes but you can’t, someday maybe but you can’t simply take him…
— Look Amie… Bedsprings strained abruptly under weight coming up in the dark, — you are always afraid. So he went to Genève with no friend? He must not also be always afraid Amie, until something is settled…
— Well why won’t you then! Why won’t you settle things?
— I? Yes, I wait for the lawyer, this one of your father, tell him. The Nobili settlement? I still wait, tell him.
— I’ve never heard of it it doesn’t…
— Yes, I still wait, tell him.
— I don’t know what you’re talking about Lucien.
— The boy, yes?
She lay awake, half awake in the dark, then awake at the sound of the bedroom door opening, the rustle across the carpet, the faint figure paused between the beds and then, as she started to one elbow and caught her breath, and sank back, the strain of the springs across the gap, and the toss of covers on the bed there.
