Other Voices, Other Rooms Part I, Chapter 4 Summary

  • Joel drinks sherry (yup, he's thirteen) with Randolph at dinner, telling him about the lady he saw in the window. Randolph says that he was probably hallucinating after getting too much sun.
  • Randolph offers to tell Joel the story of Keg Brown, Zoo's husband who cut her throat one night and is now on the chain gang (a prisoner). Randolph is really lighthearted about the whole thing, which upsets Joel.
  • Amy wants to play the pianola, which is a player piano, and Randolph teases Joel about seeing the "ghost." Joel is suspicious that Randolph knows who the lady is and isn't telling him.
  • Amy asks Randolph if he's been… (really, just dot dot dot) and he kicks her under the table to shut her up. Amy freaks out, starts repeating that a snake bit her. Randolph slaps her and she snaps out of it.
  • Randolph lets Amy play the pianola to apologize for kicking and slapping her.
  • Amy puts a song onto the pianola and then reminds Randolph to thank her for the blue jay feathers she gave him.
  • While they talk about whether to put on another song something comes drumming down the stairs. A red tennis ball rolls into the room, and Amy picks it up.
  • She leaves the room and Randolph tries to change the subject. Joel is totally freaked out, understandably.
  • Joel asks when he is going to see his dad, and Randolph says that he'll see him when he's settled in.
  • Randolph is wearing a kimono and has curly blonde hair and Joel asks him if the Lady is real, but also thinks that's not the question he wants to ask, really.
  • Randolph says that he knows the lady very well, and that she is a ghost to him. Mysterious.