Magic Street Page 0,16

could count to ten without getting lost?"

"I'm holding the baby!" Ceese protested.

"Your lap is holding the baby," said Ura Lee. "Use your head."

"I was," Ceese murmured as he let go of the baby and pulled the seatbelt across his middle.

Of course, the baby's head flopped down and hung like fruit from a tree. Ura Lee reached over and supported the head. "You don't just let go of the head, you want to break its neck?"

"You said to... I was just..."

"What were you doing with Raymo? Smoking something made you stupid?"

At first she thought he was being smart-mouthed and she was about to smack him when she saw that his eyes were glistening. It occurred to her that maybe this boy had been called stupid a few times too often.

His seatbelt fastened, he got his hand back under the baby's head, and she was free to shift into gear. She backed the car out of the carport and onto Burnside, then headed for Coliseum and then La Cienega. She drove gently, because she wasn't sure this boy could hold on to the baby. It looked like he was being so gentle that he couldn't get a decent grip on it.

"You sure you got no idea where that baby comes from?" she asked.

"I know exactly where it came from," said Ceese coldly.

"All right then," she said. "Who's the mother?"

"How should I know?"

"You said - "

"They showed us a movie in P.E.," said Ceese scornfully. "But it didn't tell us how to figure out who's the mother of a naked ant-covered baby you find in the grass by a rusty old drainpipe. I guess they only teach that to nurses."

Well, that was an interesting reaction. Seemed like young Ceese Tucker didn't take crap from anybody. Maybe there was more to the boy than tagging along after Raymo Vine.

At a light, she reached into her purse, pulled out her cellphone, and called work to tell them she was late because she had to bring a baby to the emergency room. She was explaining it for the second time to her supervisor, who seemed to think Ura Lee was so stupid that this is the kind of excuse she'd invent for being late to work, when she realized that the car in front of her was stopping suddenly. She jammed on the brakes and saw the baby fly forward out of Ceese's arms. It hit the dashboard - with its naked butt, fortunately, instead of its head - and dropped like a rock onto the floor.

The baby lay there, silent. Not crying, not whimpering, not even squeaking.

"God have mercy on you boy, if you killed that baby!"

"Why'd you stop so fast?" Ceese shouted back at her.

"What did you want me to do, you smart-mouthed little coprocephalic? Run into the car in front of me?"

"He's breathing," said Ceese. "You got so many McDonald's wrappers on the floor it probably saved his life."

"You criticizing how I keep my car, now?" brakes without warning!"

"I couldn't make the car in front of me disappear!"

"And I couldn't repeal the law of inertia that made this baby fly out of my arms," said Ceese.

"What you yelling at me for?"

It was a question to which Ura Lee had no rational answer. "Because you're here and I'm mad," said Ura Lee. "Are you going to pick the baby up or use it as a footrest?"

He bent over and scooped it up. Clumsily, but then it's not the kind of thing people got to practice much, picking up babies off the floors of cars. The baby still didn't make a sound. Hadn't made a sound the whole time, before or after falling on the floor.

Ceese was stroking the baby. Murmuring to it. "You all right? You okay?"

He wasn't careless with this baby. She'd judged him wrong.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," she said.

He didn't look at her.

"I was just upset and I took it out on you," she said.

"That's okay," he murmured, so soft she could hardly hear him.

"That how you accept an apology?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Nobody ever apologize to me before."

"Oh, now, that's just silly," she said.

"Sorry," he said.

Then again, he was the youngest, with nothing but brothers, and she didn't see Madeline or Winston doing much apologizing to their baby.

"Was that true?" she asked. "Nobody ever told you sorry?"

"Sure," he said. "My brothers. All the time. One of them hits me upside the head, he says,

'Sorry.' One of them walks by and knocks me against the wall, he