I thought of Dib and decided in favor of the bus. I wanted to tell him all that Rinaldo had told me. But a block before Hickory I turned into Playwicky Road. While I’d been at the Deems’, I’d forgotten Lasher and Creery. For all the luxury at Sevens, I’d missed cooking, and eating a meal in a quiet room where there was a female. I’d missed a living room and a four-legged creature padding around. I remembered Jazzy dressed up as a question mark in a kindergarten play last Christmas. She’d had to recite some lines from Kipling: I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. Temporarily, anyway, I’d parked the six serving men at the curb, and reveled in the idea of being in a real home again. Playwicky Arms was a row of two-story houses, each with its own twin entrances onto the street. The houses on the winding street were alternately gray and white, with brass lanterns in front and cobblestone sidewalks meeting the city’s paved ones.
