It rains all the time, except during the nights that remain lit by clouds beneath the black of the sky. People leave. The rentals are abandoned. But the counselors and the holiday campers – they stay behind. The children are under blue tents held down by piles of large rocks. And under those tents they’re still singing and telling stories. About what, they don’t even know at this point, but the children listen. Even in Chinese they would listen, in Javanese, in American. If the counselors want to make them laugh like maniacs they sing in Chinese. Then the children fall over laughing, they shout with laughter, and afterward they all sing “in Chinese” and the young counselors scream with laughter like the children. The children with parents and villas and automobiles come to see what’s going on where all that laughter is, and they laugh too and sing with the disenfranchised children. The people go home. The café sidewalks are pelted by the rain, empty. The streets are deserted.
