The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem Page B

how to refuse, and found himself alone with him.
    Robert said, sleepily, “I saw them take yo mama outside the house naked .”
    Dylan said, “What?”
    “In the truck. They wrapped her all in blankets but they fell off. I saw her hanging out all over the street like a ho .”
    Dylan calculated distances between the spot where they stood and the four exits from the schoolyard, despairing at the emptiness of a November afternoon that had succumbed to the Woolfolk Principle of human desertion. “That wasn’t my mother,” was what came out of his mouth. It wasn’t half an answer to Robert’s craziness.
    “Came out of your house, man, naked like a witch. Don’t lie. They put her in a police truck and took her away.”
    Now Dylan was baffled. Had Robert Woolfolk seen something Dylan hadn’t? He couldn’t really be confusing paintings with a person, art handlers with police.
    At the same time a glow of fear rose in him, knowing that however muddled, Robert Woolfolk grasped that Rachel was no longer around to kick his ass .
    Robert went on, in a reasonable tone of commiseration. “Threw her in jail, I expeck. Locked her up for being too motherfuckin’ loud and crazy.”
    “She wasn’t naked,” Dylan defended, laps behind. “Those were paintings.”
    “She weren’t wearing no paintings when I saw her. She was hanging out all over the street for anyone to see. Ask somebody if you think I’m a lion.”
    “A liar?” In dizziness Dylan wanted to lead Robert Woolfolk back to his home, to show him the trails of dust and shadows of faded housepaint on the parlor walls marking where the nudes had hung, missing pictures of a missing woman, ghosts of ghosts.
    “Don’t call me no fuckin’ lion, man. I’ll fuck up your white ass before I’m done. Show me your hand.”
    “What?”
    “Your hand. Right here. Let me show you something.” Robert encircled Dylan’s wrist with his long fingers and turned it downward—Dylan watching in fascination as though from a vast distance—then curled it in one sharp motion toward Dylan’s shoulder blade, so Dylan doubled at the waist, following the line of force. Dylan’s knapsack tumbled over his head, notebook pages spilling to the concrete in view between his knees. His face flooded with blood and breath.
    “See, don’t let nobody get you like that,” said Robert. “You do anything they want, they get you arm twisted back. I’m just telling you for your own good. Pick up your shit and clear out of here now.”
    None of this was tellable. As they sat in the winter-squeezed light of Mingus Rude’s backyard window, Barrett Rude Junior upstairs, strains of the Average White Band and his slippered footfalls trickling through the hardwood, Dylan and Mingus downstairs with their two heads bent together, leafing through the new issues of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire and Warlock , Dylan couldn’t ask Mingus whether he’d also seen the art handlers loading their truck or whether he’d instead somehow witnessed Robert Woolfolk’s imaginary police. It was outside speech. To begin with, Rachel’s disappearance didn’t want to be given a name, a form to etch it in Dean Street history. And if Mingus had seen that parade of fleshy canvases, Dylan didn’t want to know. Too, he couldn’t describe how the balance of terror Rachel had struck in Robert Woolfolk was now tipped, because he felt a queasy instinct that Mingus and Robert should be kept ignorant of each other. If they were destined to meet Dylan didn’t want to be the one who introduced them, and if they were already familiar it was another thing Dylan was in no hurry to learn. Finally, Dylan couldn’t ask Mingus Rude if black people called liars lions because Mingus Rude was black. Sort of.
    So silence and comic-book word balloons and the bass thump of the stereo upstairs.
    One December afternoon Mingus tossed down his loose-leaf binder, bowed cardboard pressed with blue fabric, fraying at the corners, and Dylan saw that