"You can put your things on the pile," he said, pointing to the coats and boots. He was already shucking his hat and mittens and boots and snow pants and coat. His skin flushed with the warm vapors coming off of the sulfur spring. "You *live* here?" she said. The light from the flashlight was dimming and he reached over and gave it a couple of squeezes, then handed it back to her. "I live here. It's complicated." Davey's eyes were open and he was staring at them with squinted eyes and a frown. "Where are your parents?" she said. "It's complicated," he said again, as though that explained everything. "This is my secret. No one else knows it." Edward-Frederick-George tottered over to them with an armload of toy cars, which he mutely offered to Marci, smiling a drooly smile. Alan patted him on the head and knelt down. "I don't think Marci wants to play cars, okay?" Ed nodded solemnly and went back to the edge of the pool and began running his cars through the nearly scalding water. Marci reached out a hand ahead of her into the weak light, looked at the crazy shadows it cast on the distant walls. "How can you live here? It's a cave, Alan. How can you live in a cave?" "You get used to it," Alan said. "I can't explain it all, and the parts that I can explain, you wouldn't believe. But you've been to my home now, Marci. I've shown you where I live." Davey approached them, a beatific smile on his angelic face. "This is my brother, Daniel," Alan said. "The one I told you about." "You're his slut," Davey said. He was still smiling. "Do you touch his peter?" Alan flinched, suppressing a desire to smack Davey, but Marci just knelt down and looked him in the eye. "Nope," she said. "Are you always this horrible to strangers?" "Yes!" Davey said, cheerfully. "I hate you, and I hate *him*," he cocked his head Alanward. "And you're all *motherfuckers.*" "But we're not wee horrible shits, Danny," she said. "We're not filthy-mouthed brats who can't keep a civil tongue." Davey snapped his head back and then forward, trying to get her in the bridge of the nose, a favorite tactic of his, but she was too fast for him and ducked it, so that he stumbled and fell to his knees. "Your mother's going to be very cross when she finds out how you've been acting. You'll be lucky if you get any Christmas pressies," she said as he struggled to his feet. He swung a punch at her groin, and she caught his wrist and then hoisted him to his tiptoes by his arm, then lifted him off the floor, bringing his face up level with hers. "Stop it," she said. "*Now*." He fell silent and narrowed his eyes as he dangled there, thinking about this. Then he spat in her face. Marci shook her head slowly as the gob of spit slid down her eyebrow and over her cheek, then she spat back, nailing him square on the tip of his nose. She set him down and wiped her face with a glove.