Paul D could not command his feet, but he thought he could still talk and he made up his mind tobreak out that way. He would tell Sethe about the last three weeks: catch her alone coming fromwork at the beer garden she called a restaurant and tell it all. He waited for her. The winterafternoon looked like dusk as he stood in the alley behind Sawyer's Restaurant. Rehearsing,imagining her face and letting the words flock in his head like kids before lining up to follow theleader.
"Well, ah, this is not the, a man can't, see, but aw listen here, it ain't that, it really ain't, Ole Garner,what I mean is, it ain't a weak-ness, the kind of weakness I can fight 'cause 'cause something ishappening to me, that girl is doing it, I know you think I never liked her nohow, but she is doing itto me. Fixing me. Sethe, she's fixed me and I can't break it.
"What? A grown man fixed by a girl? But what if the girl was not a girl, but something in disguise? A lowdown something that looked like a sweet young girl and fucking her or not was not the point,it was not being able to stay or go where he wished in 124, and the danger was in losing Sethebecause he was not man enough to break out, so he needed her, Sethe, to help him, to know aboutit, and it shamed him to have to ask the woman he wanted to protect to help him do it, God damn itto hell.
Paul D blew warm breath into the hollow of his cupped hands. The wind raced down the alley so fast it sleeked the fur of four kitchen dogs waiting for scraps. He looked at the dogs. The dogslooked at him.
Finally the back door opened and Sethe stepped through holding a scrap pan in the crook of herarm. When she saw him, she said Oh, and her smile was both pleasure and surprise.
Paul Dbelieved he smiled back but his face was so cold he wasn't sure.