"Then make a copy and cut the last word." He tipped his head toward the beige telephone on the wall, with its twenty-foot cord. "And deliver the original yourself."
She looked at the phone for a long time.
It was four-thirty on Christmas afternoon. The sun was going down already, the way it did in Buffalo in December, red and fast over the river, and the windows of the houses across Amherst Street were turning gold one at a time as people turned on their lamps. Mrs. Wilk snored gently on the sofa. Roman had moved to the windowsill and was lying on his stomach beside the Zenith, explaining to it, in a low voice, about the iceberg.
"Will you stay?" Harper said, without looking away from the phone. "After. The buses run tomorrow. But you don't have to take one. Roman's room is big enough for a cot, and he'd think it was the greatest thing that ever happened to him, and Mrs. Wilk has already decided you're harmless, which is the highest honor she gives." She swallowed. "I don't know how long I'll have this place. I don't know what's going to happen after the fifteenth. I don't know if WJNY will even listen to the tape. I'm not promising anything. I'm just asking."
Lucian was quiet for a while. He took the yellow Checker cab out of his pocket and turned it over and put it back.
"I've never been good at staying in other people's houses," he said. "I tend to rearrange the coffee."
"Rearrange it."
"I snore. Cecilia said like a foghorn on Horseshoe Reef."
"Roman sleeps through the Belt Line."
"I'm seventy-seven years old, my dear. I won't be any use to you. I'll be the opposite of use."