"What do you want to know for?"

"Just curious."

The door opened. Bobby, revealed beside him, had one hand around his chained wrist, stroking the clumsy beads.

"I can't decide," Mrs Richards announced when they walked in, "whether we should take the big things up first or the little things. I really haven't arranged this very well in my head. I assumed because we were moving inside the building, it wouldn't be any trouble."

"I want my old room!"

"What do you mean, dear? We're moving into a new apartment."

"It's just the same as this one; only backward. And it's blue. I want my old room."

"Of course, darling. What room did you think you were going to have?"

"I just wanted to make sure." Bobby marched off down the hall. "I'll start putting my stuff together."

"Thank you, dear."

"I'll start with the couch and the beds and things, Mrs Richards. They're the hardest; but once they're up, you'll really be moved in, just about, you know?"

"All right. But the beds, they're so big!"

"I'll take them apart. You got a hammer and screwdriver?"

"Well, all right. I guess if you're going to get them upstairs, you have to. I'm just feeling guilty that I didn't organize this thing any better. Now you want a screwdriver. And a hammer. You're sure you'll be able to put them back together?"

Mrs Richards was pulling off the bedding as he came back from the kitchen with the tools. "You see, ma'am," he explained, hoisting off the mattress, "these big beds, the frames just come off the headboards." Even so, as soon as he got to work, he realized five full-sized beds, to dismantle, move, and reassemble, would take at least two hours.

He'd been working for one when (Mrs Richards herself had already made several trips) he heard Bobby and June out in the front room. He put down his screwdriver as Bobby said: "You didn't tell on me about this… and Eddie; so I won't tell about your old picture."

Kidd walked out of the bedroom and stopped by the living room door.

June, her back to him, was reaching into the sideboard. Silverware clashed in her hands. She turned with the bunched, heavy spoons and forks.

"Only," Bobby continued by the bookshelf, "you shouldn't have taken yours off." This and yours apparently referred to the optic chain that bound his wrist; he was holding his arm up to show his sister. "Eddie took his off, and you remember what happened."

"I was just scared," June protested. "Because of all that other stuff. If you hadn't stolen that one from Eddie, he wouldn't have—"

"I didn't steal it!"

"He didn't give it to you, did he?"

"I didn't steal it," Bobby insisted. "If you say I stole it, I'll tell them about your bad picture—"

"It isn't bad!"

"Of course it's bad; if it wasn't bad, you'd let me see it."

"Hey," Kidd said.

Both children looked.

"Eddie's your brother, isn't he? What happened to Eddie, anyway."

Both looked at each other.

The silverware recommenced clanking.

Bobby moved his palm over his beaded wrist.

"Okay," Kidd said. "I guess it isn't really any of my business."

"He went away," June said.

"He ran away from home," Bobby said. "Only—"

"— he came back a couple of times," June said. "And did terrible things. It wouldn't have been so hard on Mommy if he hadn't kept coming back like that."

"Daddy said he was gonna kill him if he ever came back like that again—"

"Bobby!"

"Well, he did. And Mommy screamed—"

"Look, it isn't any of my business," Kidd concluded. "Once we have all the kitchen stuff upstairs, your mother can start getting ready for dinner — in your new apartment." Which sounded perfectly inane. He wondered where Eddie was—

"We don't know," Bobby said in a way that, once, in the mental hospital, when someone did the same thing, made Kidd go around for ten hours thinking all the other patients could read his mind, "where Eddie is now. He said he was going to another city. I wanted to go with him. But I was scared."

June looked more and more uncomfortable.

"Come on," Kidd said, "take the silverware. And Bobby, you start on those books. We'll have everything up but the rugs by the time your father gets home."

He got most of the disassembled stuff into the hall, a couple of times thinking that the thumping, banging, and scraping might be causing as much unrest in Thirteen's place as any running in the halls or banging on the doors had caused in the Richards'.

He loaded springs and headboards into the elevator — the empty shaft, whose door apparently opened at whatever floor the car beside it stopped, hissed blandly by his side.

The ride up in the dark, with only bed springs, the orange number "19" before him, and his own harsh breath, was oddly calming.

"They should have the padding in the elevators when people are moving furniture," Mrs Richards, waiting for him in the upper hall, admonished. "Well, there's no one to get it out for us. There's nothing we can do."

In the new apartment (an hour later), he had reassembled the frames and, going from room to room, put the springs on — he was sitting on the last spring, staring at the folded mattress on the floor when Mrs Richards came in carrying a small night-table against her chest, its legs stuck forward like four horns. "You know, I didn't believe you were actually going to get them up here?" she exclaimed. "You really have been working like a madman! You should take a rest, I think."

He said, "Yeah, I'm resting," and smiled.

She put the table down, and he noticed her distraught expression. For a moment he thought she'd taken offense at his flip answer. But she said: "They were back, just a moment ago. Downstairs. Running in the halls, making that terrible noise!"

Kidd frowned.

"I am so happy to be out of there…" Mrs Richards shook her head, and for a moment he thought she was going to cry. "I'm so happy! Really, I was practically afraid to take this—" her fingers swayed on the night table's carved corner—"out of there. And carry it up here. But we've done it. We've moved! We've… done it!"

He looked about the room, at the folded mattress, at tke night table, at the dresser out from the wall. And the rugs were still downstairs.

"I guess we have…" He frowned. "Just about."

A bubble grew at the caldron's rim, reflecting both their faces, one front, one profile, tiny and distant.

Jommy's spoon handle, circling the soup, passed: the bubble broke.

Kidd, still panting, asked, "You seen Lanya?"

"Sure." Jommy's face was wider ear to ear than from chin to forehead. "She was right over there talking to Milly—hey, before you run off again! Will you two be back for dinner?" He rested the spoon on a black pipe, crusted with burnt grease, sticking from the cinderblocks.

"I guess so. I took off before the lady at my job could get a chance to feed me."

Soup ran down the granular grey, bubbled and popped. "Good." Grinning, Jommy went back to stirring. His khaki shirt sleeve, rolled loosely up his thin arm, swung: the shirt was about three sizes too big. "It'll be ready about time it gets dark. Lanya knows, but I guess I gotta tell you again: Now come and eat, any time you want, you hear? John and Milly won't mind…"