Craig ran down the alley away from the street and ducked to his left. He wiggled through the gap in the Wilsons' back gate. Away from the bright yellow glare of the alley lights, the slow summer dusk was already turning to night. Soon, his mother would be calling him home.

But two of the guys from the next block had shot him before dinner, and he wanted to get a couple of them before their mothers called them home. The new tenants at ground level probably wouldn't raise a fuss at his being in the yard; they certainly wouldn't know his name if they did. That left the old couple upstairs to worry about. Mrs. Wilson would scream at him if she saw him in her yard. Even worse, she would scream at him by name, letting everybody know where he was.

He got across the back yard unseen, though. Now all he had to do was to sidle along the side of the building. The Wilsons wouldn't see him from upstairs, and the kids in the street wouldn't be looking for him here. He had, however, to avoid a faint light from one of the downstairs rooms. He ducked down to crawl under the window level. A woman's voice froze him. "What are you doing down there?" she asked.

Before Craig could begin to think of an answer, a man replied, "You mean that you can't feel?" The two of them, Craig realized, were a few feet the other side of the window above him. He lay motionless.

"Come up here," the woman said. "I need you!" Something sounded like bedsprings, and then someone grunted.

Suddenly suspicious, Craig risked rising on the far side of the window. The light, which was coming from the room beyond, lit the window screen more than the bed against the far wall. Still, with a little peering, Craig could see the woman lying on the bed.

Her knee was raised and her hip was mostly concealed by folds of sheet. He could see her breast, including most of its tip. This exciting development, however, was less important than the position of the man. He was between her legs, moving slowly back and forth above her.

They were doing it! Despite her stillness and his slow motion, they were both breathing heavily. As he watched, her hips rose from the bed, and his drove them back down into the mattress. "Oh!" she said.

"Bang!" somebody said from the street. "Got you, Craig."

He couldn't let the couple hear. He ran to the gate, swung it open, and eased it shut. In the middle of the public sidewalk, he turned to face Davy from the next block.

"I got you fair and square," shouted Davy. "Craig's a cheat."

When Davy fired again, Craig writhed onto the sidewalk in a dramatic death scene. As long as it happened out here, it didn't really matter that much.