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Show Night Keys/13 You meet me here. We take the night train. We're on the beach by sunrise, naked. We swim for awhile. It's our own private beach. We have some wine and a picnic basket. We make love. The compressor room. That's the compressor room. I know where I am. They were in there. At first a whine and then another one took it up, a whole pack of them, snarling and yipping. He jogged directly across the paint line, the handle of the billyclub catching at the crook of his elbow. He tried to keep close to the spray frames which were lighted but in the shadows between he tripped, a pain shot up his leg, metal clanked loudly. He went down and came up again running. Something slapped his face hard and his cap flew off but he kept-running towards a faint blue slice ahead which grew wider and higher, the east bay door. Outside with his back to the wall he waited with the billyclub, panting. Nothing came out. Anything that stuck its head out would get its skull crushed flatter than a Ritz cracker. He blotted sweat from his eyes. His cheek still stinging. The slap must have been a dangling paint hose. No blood, just sweat. Lucky it wasn't one of the hoist chains. A car passed on the highway far to the north of the plant, only the sound of it. Otherwise, silence. The box cars on the tracks hadn't moved for a week. Nothing. The lines hanging slack on the trailers, the bugs swirling under the floodlight near the top of the door and, moving slowly over the fields now, the moon. Genie, I want us to take that long night train to the Gulf. I want to see you bad. You were right. About trusting people. Not trusting them too. I know I wasn't reliable. I still love you. That won't change. Let me tell you about old man Clyde. Son, I'm taking you under wing. You could see through him in a New York minute. You could, Genie. The son of a |