Ossie nodded. He understood that, too.
He took out the spiral notebook, which was getting soft and furred at the corners now, and opened it to the map, and found the bench at the corner of Consaul and Front, where in careful small letters it said Zoli, four o'clock, and Ossie, four o'clock. Under Zoli's name, he wrote, in pencil, Summers. Then he looked at it, and thought about it, and added a question mark, because he had learned that summer that you didn't write anything down in pen that you couldn't be sure of. Then he thought about it some more and erased the question mark, and left the word alone, and closed the book.
It was three fifty-five.
Across Consaul Street, the screen door of the narrow white house opened, and Aunt Yolie came out onto the porch in her navy dress and her hat with the little net. She came down the steps one at a time, holding the rail, missing the loose one. She looked both ways along the street with great care. Then she crossed toward the bench with the slow, certain steps of someone going somewhere important, and she saw the two boys sitting there, one at each end, and her face lit up.
"Zoltán," she said. "Oszkár. You are waiting also?"
"Yes, néni," said Zoli.
"We're staying," said Ossie.
She sat down between them and patted their knees, one and then the other, and arranged her handbag, and looked up Front Street toward the bridge, where the four o'clock bus was just coming into sight, small and bright in the September sun. Pista would not be on it. They all knew that, in their different ways, even her, in some room of herself the boys couldn't get to. Some day soon she might not come across the street at all. Some day Zoli's patched-up Schwinn would not be leaning on the sign, and the bench would have one boy on it, or none, and the map would need new names.
But it was not today.
The bus came up the hill toward them, and slowed, and the doors began to open, and the three of them sat on the old green bench at the corner of Consaul and Front and watched to see who would get off.