Free Half the Day Is Night by Maureen F. McHugh Page A

she didn’t think he would give it away.
    â€œCall it Mephistofele,” he said. “From the opera,” he added.
    â€œWell,” she said, “he probably will turn out to be a little devil.”
    He was pleased that she knew the name. “Ah, non,” he said, “I was thinking, he will never see the sun.”
    She looked at him oddly. Foolish thing to say, she lived here, she didn’t see the sun much either.
    *   *   *
    At Mayla’s request, Tim took him to get some clothes. They went into a part of town where he had never been. Here the traffic was all motor scooters and bicycles, and they had to park the car and take escalators and walk.
    The air was damper here and didn’t smell right. David found he kept taking deep breaths. The shops were all small. The shop where Tim took him to buy clothes was a deep narrow place that had once been a restaurant. The flash unit and grill were gone, but the counter and stools were still there and the counter was piled high with stacks of sweaters. The Indian who ran the shop bobbed along behind them.
    â€œTights,” Tim said, “for him.”
    â€œSirs,” the Indian said, “what size?”
    David didn’t know, sizes were different here. He gave his inseam in centimeters and the shopkeeper turned to the wall of shelves and rifled through neatly folded stacks of tights. “Sirs, will you be wanting the new colors? I have bright colors, all very popular.”
    He gestured towards the wall opposite the counter where shelves were stacked high with neatly folded pairs of tights. Two columns of tights were vivid rainbows: rose madder and cobalt blue and bright hard yellow.
    Tim grinned. “No, I don’t think so. Just black and gray.”
    Three pairs of black, three pairs of gray. And sweaters.
    David went into the dressing room and tried on tights. They looked cold, the outside was some slick, rubbery-looking material. But the inside was soft, like chamois, and warm. He found a pair of gray that fit. They were wonderful, so much better than pants.
    He eyed his reflection. The dressing room was barely big enough to turn around in, but he could still see the effect. Embarrassing. He had not really paid much attention to the way other people looked in divers’ tights. Except for at the bank, where the men wore suits, most everybody on the street seemed to wear them.
    He had legs like a chicken. Tim did not have legs like a chicken, Tim had broad, strong legs like tree trunks. He did not relish the idea of wearing these around Tim. He considered critically, did they show his bad knee?
    Probably, he thought, and sighed. Still, they were warm. Vanity or comfort? Everybody wore them.
    He bought a gray pair and a black pair. And four sweaters: a dark green, a navy blue, a kind of olive green and a red one. The last because the red looked so warm. He also bought a pair of sandals. Nobody wore shoes, shoes looked foolish with tights. He stood there in his new tights and the olive sweater, feeling foolish, and tried to sort through the maze of Caribbean currency.
    So Tim was amused, he told himself.
    Still, on the street with his purchases he felt a little less conspicuously foreign. Tim walked fast, took long strides, and he had to work to keep up. The sandals had no backs and there was a knack to keeping them on; if he wasn’t careful he would walk right out of them.
    Silly to buy clothes when he wasn’t going to stay here. Which made him think of the kitten. It was a bother. He had looked in the directory for a place for animals but there was nothing. But he couldn’t take it back to France. It would cost so much. He supposed he would have to have it put down.
    Poor little refugee.
    Tim would be pleased to know he didn’t plan to stay although mostly Tim ignored him. Even walking down the street, Tim paid no attention to him. Like the way he used to ignore his little sister when he was a