"Say that again."
"I'm staying," Ossie said. His voice shook on the second word and he hated it. "I have to. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to take your corner. I just have to be here at four. Every day. You can have it the rest of the time."
"You have to," Zoli said.
"Yes."
"Why."
Ossie did not answer, because at that moment the screen door of the narrow white house across Consaul Street opened, and an old woman came out onto the porch.
She was small and straight-backed and she wore a navy blue dress with white buttons and a hat with a little net on it, the kind of hat nobody had worn to anything in twenty years. She had a handbag over her arm. She came down the porch steps one at a time, holding the rail, and she looked both ways along Consaul with great care, and then she crossed the street toward the bench with the slow, certain steps of someone going somewhere important.
Zoli saw her. Ossie watched him see her. Something in the bigger boy's shoulders changed. He took a step back from the bench, and then another one, and he bent and picked up his bike.
"Afternoon, Mrs. Kertesz," Lenny said, and took off his cap. Spud took off his too.
"Good afternoon, boys," the old woman said, in an accent that rounded every word like a stone in a river. She did not seem surprised to see them. She sat down on the bench beside Ossie and arranged her handbag on her knees. "Is it late?"
"No, Aunt Yolie," Ossie said. "It's right on time."