“Yeah. You gotta go. Say! How’s your cheek? Heal okay?”
“Cheek?”
“Where I socked you?” Biff’s solicitude was genuine this time, and not fatuous as it had been when he’d lain on the receiving-room table—many nights ago.
Jimmie chuckled. “I’d forgotten. Sure, it healed. Why, you conceited damn’ rat, I’ve had flies bite me worse!”
“Yeah. Well—so long, fellow.”
Jimmie went to the door. It was he who had the wish, then, to linger on, to probe more deeply into this unfurling aspect of his kid brother’s personality. “Well—want anything? Books? What you reading?”
Biff picked up the volume and showed the dust jacket. It was Shirer’s Berlin Diary. “ Hell of a thing,” he said. “Who do those Nazis think they are anyhow! You suppose this bird Shirer tells the truth?”
“Happen to know he does.”
“How do you know?”
Jimmie was more moved, more astonished and upset, than he wanted Biff to see.