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Show Woodworth/39 home, and make sure everything was still there. I thought you would laugh if I told you that. Because I didn't think you cared about any of the rest of them at all. And I thought you'd be hurt, too. That I cared what happened to them. But I always did, Jake. Even when I agreed with you that they were dumb, or that Mom was a bitch. I always cared about them, too. "Wanna go there?" Rachael points to a bar, quiet with plants hanging in the windows. "Let's go out on Lewis Wharf first. I want to get high." "God, it smells good down here." "It's probably polluted as Hell." "Yeah, but it still smells a whole lot better than Sommerville." "A sewage treatment plant would probably smell better than your building." The landlady who eats garlic sandwiches, onions for breakfast, comes and peers out her door at Rachael every time she hears footsteps on the landing, ""arty feels guilty walking by this guardian mother, as if she is the drug connection, the gay girlfriend, the corrupter of young adults. A big, ol'd-fashioned ship is tied at the end of the wharf, her rigging tangled in the stars and clouds. There's a light shining through one of the portholes, hammering coming from inside, singing, a low laugh. The hammering stops, and Marty hears the ship knock the pier like a lullaby. "We should probably go over .there." They sit, sheltered by an old lobster shed. Splinters, the smell of tar. They smoke in silence, passing the joint. Inhaling, passing, exhaling. To ""arty, this is a ritual, the rite of hospitality, the communion. "Jake has died. It was drugs." Her fingers touch Rachael's as the joint burns small. The smoke takes effect, washing over her |