When she'd finished the grape juice, she smiled, her lips and face a mess of purple, her cattish eyes narrowed in joy. She laughed and said something he didn't understand. Her hands made ambiguous gestures.
She followed Will back into the living room. Since the TV had survived her wrath, or whatever it had been, he turned it on for her and went back to the kitchen to start cleaning. When he came back out a few minutes later, dish towel in hand, he found her crouched in front of the screen, murmuring to herself, touching the glass like she was trying to touch the images trapped inside. It was a PBS show about bats. They swooped from one edge of the screen to the other.
Will put down the rag, went to his bedroom and pulled an old tape recorder from the closet. In the living room he found a cassette on the floor, loaded it into the machine and recorded several minutes of her yammering. She gave no indication she understood what he was doing. He cleaned up the milk, picked up his books and rewired the stereo. Then he went and sat on the carpet beside the girl. He’d meant to get up and keep cleaning, but he wound up staying there beside her, watching TV for several hours instead.
