The Illumination_ A Novel Part 10

Their skin was raw from the wind, their eyes glowing with fatigue or fever, allergies or conjunctivitis, and almost always they pa.s.sed him by. Occasionally, though, one would stop and look at his merchandise.

"What does that mean, one for two?"

"One of my books, two of yours. Or cash money."

"What if I don't have any books with me?"

"Then cash money."

"How about for the Basilakos? The hardcover there? What would that set me back?"

"Price inside the cover."

It happened the same way every day, eight to ten hours of work for a few dollars in sales. No one ever came to him with books to trade, except for a handful of his regulars. The one with the clip-cloppy high heels and the endless collection of alternate history novels. The one who shopped for his bedridden grandmother, picking out the kind of mysteries that had the name of the author embossed across half the cover. The one who sorted through Morse's entire stock every Monday and Thursday, deftly and selectively, as if culling the almonds from a jar of mixed nuts. And the smaller one, the talker, who had left Morse staggering across the hospital parking lot the day the Illumination began, his body whitewashed with lacerations.

"How goes it, MP?" That was what he called him, MP-short, he said, for Morse Putnam, Missing Person, Mister Popularity. "Keeping busy?"

"Yeah, yeah, keeping busy."

"Selling a few books?"

"Selling a few."

"And how are you feeling today? Feeling good?"

"Mm-hmm. Feeling good."

This was their ritual, although sometimes it was "Are you feeling groovy today?" and Morse would say, "Feeling groovy," or "Are you feeling lucky today?" and Morse would say, "Feeling lucky," which made the one with the gold watch and the vein in his forehead chuckle and tell him, "You're okay, my friend. Nothing wrong with the old Morse-man, is there? Anyway, two of yours for one of mine, right? That's the bargain?"

"One for two. One for two or cash money."

"Yeah, I know, I know. I'm just twisting your b.a.l.l.s a little. Here you go," and he would hand Morse a pair of hardcovers he had just purchased from Barnes & n.o.ble, the printing sheen still on the jackets. Sometimes, if the smaller one was in the middle of a job, he would leave immediately, but often he would stay and chat with Morse for a while, telling him about the college girl, a real looker, he had goated around with at his cousin's wedding, or the flatbed truck that had woken him grinding its engine that morning, or the trouble he was having with one of the smackheads over on Spring Street. His first few visits to Morse had been guilt visits, pity visits, his way of showing faith to a living thing he had hurt and tried to help, like a man stopping off at the pound to look in on a stray dog he had clipped with his car. Let's take a peek at the poor battered son of a b.i.t.c.h. Let's see if we can't donate a few bucks to the cause. Soon, though, somehow, he had developed a real affection for Morse. He began confiding in him, telling him dirty jokes, asking after his health. On torrid summer days, when Morse's old wounds lit up, the smaller one would make a wincing noise of drawn breath and shake his head in apology. He seemed genuinely sorry to have injured him-and in spite of himself, Morse responded to his contrition.

"All right, then, take it easy, MP," he would say after he had plucked some yellowing old best seller from Morse's blanket. "Don't let the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds grind you down," and once he had left, Morse would turn the books he had given him spine-side-up and riffle through the pages, watching the shower of fives and tens that fell ticker-taping to the ground.

In the winter you could never stay comfortable. It began with your hands, which grew chapped from the cold and turned a frayed, weather-bitten red. You could breathe on them, you could wedge them under your arms, but it made no difference. They would not stop aching. Your blood showed its pain in them with every pump, phosph.o.r.escing through your skin like those deep-water krill that glowed in the wake of a s.h.i.+p. Your eyes dried out, and your stomach gripped you. You experienced a piercing sensation in your eardrums. There was a specific dental pain, brought on by the way you clenched your teeth against the chill, that you could see throbbing through your gums in the morning, bouncing up at you when you cupped your palms to your mouth. As for your feet, you could not feel them at all. Sometimes, walking, you were amazed to see them stumping away beneath you. It was as if they belonged to another being who had fallen mysteriously under your command. You wore layer after layer of clothing, wrapping everything you owned around yourself-jackets on top of sweaters, jeans on top of flannels-and as the sun rose, your sweat wicked gradually into the fabric. Because you had nowhere to do your laundry, colonies of fungus formed around you. You did not notice the smell usually, but now and again, caught in the warm burst of air from a subway grate, an awful fetor would billow up around you. There was the outdoor life, and there was the indoor life, and you had far too much of the one and far too little of the other. The outdoors offered speed, commotion, and freedom of movement. The indoors offered comfort, security, and its own kind of freedom, freedom from the jabs, nicks, and toothmarks of the cold and the rain. Occasionally, when the smaller one had been unexpectedly generous with you, you would check into a cheap hotel for the night, taking advantage of the warmth, but such nights were rare, and from time to time, in your desperation, you were willing to settle for something less-if not the indoors, then at least the illusion of it.

So it was that Morse made up his mind one day to pay a visit to the camps. He went to the bus station and stowed his shopping cart in one of the large roll-in storage lockers across the lobby from the ticket counter, then caught the northbound train from the platform across the street. He got off at the third stop after the river, hiking past strip malls and used-car dealers.h.i.+ps until he reached the warehouse with the painting of the American flag on its side, where he slipped through the rent mesh of a chain-link fence and cut through the tree line to the freeway. The culvert was dry, so he followed it under the road, then scaled the bluff that looked down over the traffic. Sometimes, during rush hour, he would sit on the bare ma.s.s of marble at the top and watch the cars and trucks streaming by. Every so often a squirrel or a possum would dart out of the woods and vanish into the chaos of wheels, reappearing as a flash of golden light that popped open and scattered across the concrete.

The camps were a quarter-mile into the trees. Morse walked through tussocks of yellow gra.s.s and over the slanting roofs of half-buried stones, then past a rickety wire coop where a line of chickens sat meditating eggs. Suddenly a clearing opened up, and there it all stood: the lawn chairs and the clotheslines, the circles of charred dirt, the clumps of nylon tents that seemed to bloat out of the ground like sheeny orange mushrooms. A stop sign had been nailed to the trunk of a white oak and along the bottom someone had spray-painted the word TIBET TIBET. Toward the back of the clearing was a pile of trash, filled with all the waste pieces and bits of metal the camp's countless fires had not succeeded in consuming-beer cans with their labels whitened away, clothes hangers straightened into antennas, the spoonlike keel bones of chickens. And to the west, beneath the arms of an ancient chestnut, was a canvas tarp with a soft glow leaking from inside.

Something drew Morse toward the light. He found a dozen men sitting hunched on crates and logs around a gas lantern. Their bodies seemed to whisk around inside themselves. Tucker was the one with the eczema scales on his face and the respiratory ache in his chest, the cramps in his stomach and the chilblains on his feet, and G.o.d only knew what terrible baroque infection casting its glow from the beds of his fingernails. His body had become a horror novel: The Fall of the House of Tucker The Fall of the House of Tucker. He couldn't remember the last time he truly felt like himself, the last time he sensed that old strength of spirit pulsing inside him. When he was thirteen or fourteen, probably, around the time he met Jeff Moody and that crowd and his parents tossed him out for huffing paint and breaking into storage units. Those were the days. All that ravaged holiness. Things had never been better. Show me a person who rambles on and on about his childhood and I'll show you a person whose life has disappointed him. Tucker watched a praying mantis take a few stiltlike steps across the ceiling of the tarp. Praying, preying, praying, preying. Praying, he decided. It seemed to be moving in slow motion. He put his knuckles to his eyes and rubbed them. The hissing sound surprised him. Then he looked up and realized it was just the lantern, venting propane into its chamber. The one letting the matchstick bob between his teeth had turned up the burner. His name was Aaron, and he'd be d.a.m.ned if he went back to the shelters, where they tried to steal your backpack while you were sleeping, except you weren't sleeping at all, were you? No, no, you were pulling the old fluttery eyelash trick, and when you bounded up from the mattress to bust some skulls, they nailed you from your weak side with a twelve-inch Maglite. So what if the volunteers gave you a hot meal and let you use the showers? So what? The place was full of crooks, perverts, and evangelicals-f-a-c-t fact fact. Him, he would rather be safe and freezing on a pallet of oak leaves, lying where he could stare out of his own sleeping bag, and not at the walls or rafters but the sky, watching the birds light up the trees with their own little infections and heart attacks. He held his hands out toward the Coleman lantern. His fingertips seemed to waver in the fumes. What was with everyone? A silence had fallen over the group, a heavy quilt of exhaustion. Screw that s.h.i.+t. Time to liven things up with his favorite joke. "Hey, fellas," he said, and he nodded across the circle. "Why does David here smell so bad?" David. That was the one whose hair was receding in a perfect arc, like the gently spreading ripple on the surface of a pond after a goldfish lips at a mayfly. Her real name, though, was Kristi, and she had known it ever since she was a little boy, gazing at herself in the mirror as she tucked her p.e.n.i.s between her legs. That wonderful tightening of the skin. That glorious nectarine smoothness. She should have paid for the operation fifteen years ago with her student loan money, just like she had threatened she would. Whose body was it, after all? I mean, really, Mom-whose? A bent green insect dropped onto the lantern, casting its giant shadow onto the tarp. In a million years Kristi could never explain why it startled her into beating Aaron to the punch line, but it did. "So that blind people can hate me, too," she said. Everyone laughed. The joke never changed. Oh what a riot. What a f.u.c.king, f.u.c.king riot. How dismal it was to wake up every morning as the same gamy, balding mammoth of a man she had been when she went to sleep. Oh to wake up one morning as what she truly was-a gamy, balding mammoth of a woman woman. Hah! Now that that really really was was funny. Good one, Kristi. funny. Good one, Kristi.

Morse picked up an orange crate and edged his way into the circle. Reluctantly the others made room for him. He had just settled down when the one with the smudge of oil on her gla.s.ses asked, "Say, man, you got a cigarette?"

"A cigarette?" Morse made a show of checking his pockets. "No cigarette."

"Pfft. What makes you think you're welcome here without any cigarettes? I don't even know know you. Does anyone else here know this joker?" you. Does anyone else here know this joker?"

"I don't know him."

"Never seen him before."

"Yeah, that's what I figured. You got a light, at least?"

"No, no, got no light."

"Then here's a question: what exactly are you good for?"

"Good. Good. Good. Good." Morse took a breath. "Good question."

Accidentally he had delivered a wisecrack. That, it seemed, was all it took-he had established his credentials. He was the squirrelly guy, the comedian, quiet but sort of funny if you gave him half a chance, and n.o.body would object if he sat with them around the lantern, watching as they held their fingers to the heat or drank from a bottle of liquor, smoked a joint or played high-card-low-card. The one suffering from the trembling disease that caused a hard light to glare from his body invited Morse to join the game, but he declined with a shake of his head. The one who had been chewing on the matchstick touched it to the burner, watching it ignite with a fizz of sulfur. The one with the dragonfly tattoo squeezed the knee of the one whose long black hair fell almost to her waist, and she closed her eyes and pa.s.sed him a slow, stretching, easy-baked smile. Morse had the impulse to squeeze her other knee, that fat little beanbag he saw marking its shape in her skirt, but he knew better than to try it. All the goodwill he had earned would evaporate in an instant if he did. The sun was nearly gone. It was only a few seconds before the last moment of left light came angling over the field and disappeared.

An hour or so later, shortly after the one with the broken veins on his cheeks snuffed out the lantern, Morse dragged a sheet of cardboard to the border of the clearing and lay down. For warmth he brought his legs together and pulled his arms inside his clothing. As usual, he found himself tracing his scars with his fingers. His wounds had healed long ago, forming raised white lines that remained stiff and pale no matter how flushed he became. He was fascinated by them, by their singular alien braille. They still hurt when he prodded them, not unbearably, not even unpleasantly, but enough. Enough so that he noticed. Enough so that his awareness yielded itself over to them and whatever else he had been thinking about gradually gave way and drifted out of his mind. He had learned to love them, those firm embossments of st.i.tched skin. They gave him the same feeling of comfort he imagined devout Catholics must experience fingering the beads of a rosary.

Nearby an owl filled the night with its blooming sound, a strange low death call that grew softer and softer until Morse woke to the sight of the morning graying the trees. His heart sank. Once again, it was a question of inside versus outside, a question of proportions. The hotel rooms he rented were 90 percent inside; all they lacked was another living person-a wife, say; a child-to round them off to 100. The alcove behind New Fun Ree, by contrast, was 90 percent outside; outside; sure, now and then, as he crouched behind the barrier of his shopping cart, a dreamlike inside seemed to form itself around him, wrapping him in an illusion of protection and tranquillity, but it was only that-an illusion-and he never quite forgot it. The camps were something else altogether. They were just as outside as the alcove, but because he was surrounded by other people, with their odors and their voices and footsteps, the illusion was even stronger, even worse. And when that beautiful inside fantasy of his finally thinned away and broke in the sunlight, he felt completely exposed and forsaken. sure, now and then, as he crouched behind the barrier of his shopping cart, a dreamlike inside seemed to form itself around him, wrapping him in an illusion of protection and tranquillity, but it was only that-an illusion-and he never quite forgot it. The camps were something else altogether. They were just as outside as the alcove, but because he was surrounded by other people, with their odors and their voices and footsteps, the illusion was even stronger, even worse. And when that beautiful inside fantasy of his finally thinned away and broke in the sunlight, he felt completely exposed and forsaken.

It happened the same way every time. Why could he never remember?

On Friday afternoons, when the weather was clear, he liked to go book hunting. He would push his shopping cart from one block to the next, rattling over every seam in the sidewalk, every steel vent, until he had returned to the subway entrance. To walk the whole circuit of thrift stores and libraries took him two hours and forty-five minutes. His cart's left front wheel had become detached, and when he forgot to apply his weight to the handle, the empty holding bracket sc.r.a.ped the pavement and left a streak of orange rust. He was always nervous some police officer would cite him for vandalism and arrest him, so he shuffled along with his head down, glancing up only when he saw a light so bright he was sure someone must be dying, though invariably it was only the sun rebounding off a winds.h.i.+eld or a manhole cover. Or almost invariably. One day, shortly after the Illumination, when Morse had just returned to his books, he was offering his usual pitch to the pedestrians when a few yards away, beneath the lamppost in front of the subway entrance, the one plugging quarters into the parking meter put his hand to his head and collapsed. The one walking her dachshund rushed to his side to perform CPR, and the one in the business suit phoned 911, but already the rules were second nature to Morse: light equaled pain, and as the glow from the man's body sharpened to a million pinpoints that bleached together and then faded to a shadow, he knew that death had taken him, in his polished shoes and Burberry coat, away.

By now everyone along Morse's route knew him so well that his question-"Any books for me today?"-was merely a formality.

"Well, someone donated a few Harlequins I can give you," they said.

Or, "I left a couple for you back by the restrooms."

Or, "Sorry, brother. Try us again next week."

Or, "Here you go. They're in pretty ratty shape, but you're more than welcome to 'em."

Welcome to 'em, he thought. Well come two um. Welc'm to'm Well come two um. Welc'm to'm.

One mid-April evening, he had just completed his itinerary when he pa.s.sed a pile of furniture resting at the base of someone's stoop, the remnants, he guessed, of an estate sale or an eviction. The lamps, chairs, mirrors, and such had already been picked over, but he found a stack of old books sitting in a cardboard box and loaded them into his cart. When he reached the subway entrance, he fanned them out next to the rest of his merchandise. At the bottom of the stack was a flat wooden coffer that hardly resembled a book at all, but he included it anyway, using it to sh.o.r.e down the corner of the blanket.

A school bus backfired, striping the air with a plume of black exhaust. The sidewalks were bustling with people. The one taking the tiniest, most judicious steps as she walked out of New Fun Ree winced at the blast. She felt as if she were crossing a high wire hundreds of feet above the ground. Her name was Zoe, and for her it had been a long life of falling ill whenever the seasons changed, regarding her body as it slowly broke down and defeated her. Its agonies and odors. Its sad animal deterioration. They always followed the same pattern, her sicknesses: first the raw burred patch of a sore throat spread slowly across the roof of her mouth, and then she felt a tack in her left ear when she swallowed, and then her neck grew stiff, and her eyes burned, and finally her joints ached and her nose ran and every inch of her incandesced inside the bright aura of a fever. But that wasn't right, was it? The pain was old, as old as she was, but the light was new. It was easy to forget it had not always been there. It was so soft, so intimate, like the colors in a Giroux print. Or that was how she saw it, at least. Some of her colleagues in the Art Department described it rather differently: like the marshy blotches of a Jaeger painting; like the sun-streaked elliptica of an Ozu film. She would not have been surprised if every person in the world observed her own distinct version of the phenomenon, eight billion unique, privileged variations. Another car honked. She tried to keep going. How would she ever cross the street to her apartment? Feed a cold, starve a fever, they said, but she really needed to get something solid in her stomach.

Because the sky was bright and the air was warm, Morse worked later than usual that night. The traffic was fitful, moving forward in clots and gaps, and the moon was already rising over the buildings when three boys dashed across the street, cheating the signal. They leaped onto the curb a few steps in front of a pickup truck and headed toward New Fun Ree, the colors of their clothes shuddering around them. The one whose shoelaces were whipping at the pavement was named Wallace. He had three pizzas from Pie R. Squared in his hands: a cheese, a pepperoni, and for Camarie, the vegetarian, a black olive and pineapple, which was pretty d.a.m.n disgusting, if you asked him. He was thinking about the campaign he was running-how if the group followed the Eastern path, they would encounter the last of the elder folk, and if they followed the Western path, they would find the seal of Raxhura, but if they strayed toward the Smoke Mountains, the fire genasai would consume them in flames-when he spotted it, a pale wooden box the size of a laptop computer, sitting at the margin of that old book guy's blanket. Holy s.h.i.+t, was that what he thought it was? He said, "Hey, hold up, guys," and Ben P. and Conrad turned around. Wallace handed the pizzas over to them, then bent down to give the wooden box a closer look. His palms were sweating something ridiculous. His heart was racing like he didn't know what kind of crazy engine. Everything was exactly right: the scorched brown lettering, the blurred ill.u.s.tration of the Phoenix, the "Arise, Oh Generations of the Dead" slogan with the famous "Generations of the Dad" misprint. No doubt about it-what they had here was a first-edition Cities in Dust manual. And not only that, but the brads on the corners of the box were still in place, which meant that odds were the set was intact, with both the Twelve Nations supplement and the original Gazetteer. Unbe-f.u.c.king-mazing. Buy it, Wallace. Buy it. Borrow the money. Do whatever it takes.

"How much is that book right there?" he asked, keeping his voice nonchalant.

"One for two or cash money."

"Mm-hmm. What exactly does that mean?"

And after Morse had explained it to him, the one with the loose shoelaces said, "Dude, my mom's got a whole wallful of books at home. Come with us. You can take your pick." So Morse followed the boys to an apartment building on the 1400 block, then onto an antique elevator with an operator's stool in the corner. The walls were so narrow the four of them were barely able to fit inside. He had to leave his shopping cart in the lobby. The one with the crickety voice led them into the front room of his apartment, which, just as he had promised, contained seven full-length rows of recessed shelving, jammed with several thousand books.

Morse took his time looking over the selection. In the next room, gathered around a coffee table strewn with dice, papers, and metal figurines, was a cl.u.s.ter of seven young teenagers. The one with the green silk fillet braided into her hair, the only girl in the bunch, was sitting on a futon with her knees folded to her chest, clutching a throw pillow like a mother protecting her baby. Camarie was her name, and no matter what she tried, she kept falling in love. With Wallace and that ribbed blue sweater of his-its smoky sort of pencil-shavings smell. With Mr. McKim, her math teacher, and the dry-erase marker bruises on his knuckles. With the News at Nine News at Nine anchor-the weekend guy-and the way he pressed his lips together and made a little anchor-the weekend guy-and the way he pressed his lips together and made a little mm mm sound, as if he were scratching a hard-to-reach itch, whenever he had to report something tragic. With Ben P. and that lock of hair he couldn't keep out of his eyes. With Ben F. and his strong brown tennis-player's arms. With Wallace again and how he laughed louder than anyone else at his own jokes. With Nathan and the hundred different ways he had of saying "dude." With Conrad and how he bit the loose threads from the cuffs of his s.h.i.+rt, bringing his perfect white teeth together like nail clippers. With her brother's friend Hal and his beard that looked as soft as Jesus'. With Wallace one more time and that night she rolled a ninety-nine for agility and he said, "Kick-a.s.s," and then winked at her. Boys! sound, as if he were scratching a hard-to-reach itch, whenever he had to report something tragic. With Ben P. and that lock of hair he couldn't keep out of his eyes. With Ben F. and his strong brown tennis-player's arms. With Wallace again and how he laughed louder than anyone else at his own jokes. With Nathan and the hundred different ways he had of saying "dude." With Conrad and how he bit the loose threads from the cuffs of his s.h.i.+rt, bringing his perfect white teeth together like nail clippers. With her brother's friend Hal and his beard that looked as soft as Jesus'. With Wallace one more time and that night she rolled a ninety-nine for agility and he said, "Kick-a.s.s," and then winked at her. Boys!

Morse had already chosen the first of his books, a thick volume of Impressionist paintings he knew would sell right away, when the phone on the table rang. Without thinking, he picked it up. The one who lived there flung his hands about as if flailing at a mosquito. "s.h.i.+t, man. That's gonna be my mom. Why did you answer? Give me the phone. No, quick, find out who it is, and say, 'How can I help you?'"

The words plunged at Morse like bats, filling the room with their clacks and their squeaks, and he barely had time to fight his way through them before he spoke. "Who am I, and how can I help you?"

"I'm sorry?" the voice in his ear said.

The one folding the slice of pepperoni pizza said, "Tell her, 'This is the wrong number,' dude."

The red-haired one dove in with, "Dude, say good-bye. Hang up."

Morse repeated the phrases as best he could, then returned the phone to its cradle.

A second later, it rang again. This time the one who lived there answered: "Hey, Mom. Yeah, just me and the campaigners are taking a break." The blandis.h.i.+ng tones of his voice became more bruised, more salted. "You must have dialed the wrong number or something. Okay, listen, don't freak out. There's this guy we met and-"

Morse scoured the shelves for the second of his two books. Impressionist Masterpieces in Full Color Impressionist Masterpieces in Full Color was the kind of oversize hardcover whose thick, coated paper was cool to the touch and gave off a smart perfume of expensive ink. The binding was so heavy he had to support the book on his hip. He wanted his other choice to be smaller, lighter. He was sure he would know it when he saw it. Dimly, as he scanned the bookcase closest to the front door, he heard the noise of an argument, or half an argument, the raised voice of the one letting the dice c.l.i.tter in his hand, but it was of no significance to him. was the kind of oversize hardcover whose thick, coated paper was cool to the touch and gave off a smart perfume of expensive ink. The binding was so heavy he had to support the book on his hip. He wanted his other choice to be smaller, lighter. He was sure he would know it when he saw it. Dimly, as he scanned the bookcase closest to the front door, he heard the noise of an argument, or half an argument, the raised voice of the one letting the dice c.l.i.tter in his hand, but it was of no significance to him.

The one whose retainer was drawing a silver line across his teeth groaned. "All right, man. Hurry it on up. You can have that one and one other, but that's it."

On impulse Morse selected a worn volume with a frayed silk bookmark dangling over its spine from the corner of the top shelf.

"Fine. Fantastic. You have your two books. Now go. Go. You have to go now."

Morse heard the one on the phone saying, "Okay, okay, we're done. He's leaving. Problem solved," as he placed the wooden box with the brown lettering on the sideboard and took his exit. In the hallway he made the call b.u.t.ton glow beneath his index finger. In the elevator he sat like a king on the stool's satin cus.h.i.+on. From the lobby he retrieved his silver chariot. And then he was gone, back outside, among the night smells and the speeding cars and the bars with their gray windows and the diners with their bright ones.

Because it was late and the alley behind New Fun Ree was unilluminated, Morse wasn't able to page through the second book until the next day. It turned out to be a diary, handwritten in blue ink, each page lined from top to bottom with thousands of small slanting letters.

I love how dark your hair gets after you wash it. I love waiting for you in the airport at the bottom of the escalator. I love the way you run your hands under the hot water a hundred times a day when it gets cold outside. I love how you "dot all your t' t's and cross all your i i's." I love my birthday present-thank you so much. I love hearing you rise to someone's defense, and twice in one night, too: Woody Allen and and Neville Chamberlain. I love watching you upend a whole bottle of water after you've exercised: that little bobber working in your throat, and the gasp you make after you finish swallowing, and the way you slam the bottle back down on the counter. I love how cute you are when we're watching basketball together and you pretend to care who's winning. I love your idea for a hard rock supergroup made up of the members of Europe, Asia, and America-Pangaea. I love your cleansing rituals (but I love your dirtying rituals even more). I love your morning breath Neville Chamberlain. I love watching you upend a whole bottle of water after you've exercised: that little bobber working in your throat, and the gasp you make after you finish swallowing, and the way you slam the bottle back down on the counter. I love how cute you are when we're watching basketball together and you pretend to care who's winning. I love your idea for a hard rock supergroup made up of the members of Europe, Asia, and America-Pangaea. I love your cleansing rituals (but I love your dirtying rituals even more). I love your morning breath.

That was all it was, line after line of love notes, none of them longer than a sentence. They appeared to be from the father of the one with the loose shoelaces and the crickety voice, addressed to his mother.

I love the e-mails you send me in the middle of the day.

I love trying to coax you to pick out a restaurant.

I love the way you groan whenever adult human beings start talking about comic books.

The cover was scuffed, the pages were buckled with moisture, and Morse was uncommonly disappointed. No one would ever buy such a thing. He presumed the one who had allowed him to take it would come looking for it within a day or two. He decided to save it for him.

The next week, when the smaller one, the talker, came by to swap his books and slide Morse a few extra dollars, he made a show of considering his choices. "No, not the Lawrence," he said. "And not the Ramirez. And definitely not the Railey. A man's got to have some some scruples. How about that one?" and he reached for the diary of miniature love letters. scruples. How about that one?" and he reached for the diary of miniature love letters.

Morse surprised himself with the force of his objection. "No! Not that one."

"MP!" The smaller one shook his head. "I'm ashamed of you. A businessman never gets attached to his own merchandise. That's the first rule of success: sure, fine, love the product, whatever-but love the sale sale more. I thought I taught you that." more. I thought I taught you that."

"Sure, fine, whatever." Morse slipped the book into his coat. "Not that one."

The smaller one's hand cuffed Morse's shoulder. "Hey, I'm just s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with you. h.e.l.l, give me the Railey. It doesn't make any difference to me."

That afternoon, when it began to sprinkle, Morse rolled a sheet of Visqueen over his books. The diary seemed to broadcast its message straight through the plastic, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, pulsing like a beacon. All around him people were braking their cars or ducking into buildings, zipping their jackets or opening their umbrellas. He fixed his mind on the pretty one standing under the awning of the jewelry store and thought, I love your green dress and your loneliness and your matching green shoes I love your green dress and your loneliness and your matching green shoes. He turned to the one who was limping into the subway station and thought, I love how you have a foot cramp and you keep saying "Stop it, stop it, stop it" to yourself I love how you have a foot cramp and you keep saying "Stop it, stop it, stop it" to yourself. He watched the one carrying the grape cl.u.s.ter of plastic bags and thought, I love it that you're walking down the sidewalk and now you've turned the corner and I can't see you anymore because you're gone I love it that you're walking down the sidewalk and now you've turned the corner and I can't see you anymore because you're gone. He had expected it to be effortless, expected his love to ease right out of him, as gently and clearly as notes from a piano, but soon enough he realized it was impossible. It couldn't be done, or at least he couldn't do it. He did not love anyone, he only understood them, and who in this world would choose understanding over love?

It was a different rain, nearly eight months later, and Morse was watching the water create beads on his poncho, when the smaller one brought him two new books. The first was called Mister Parsons Mister Parsons, the second Mansfield Park Mansfield Park, and he said, "Two MPs for my main MP. Don't let them get wet now. I think you'll like these."

"One for two or-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, one for two or cash money. Give me that hardback number right there. The big red fella. It'll match my sofa."

Morse weaseled the book out from under the Visqueen and handed it to the smaller one, and the smaller one slipped it into his coat, gave a little cha-cha cha-cha with his tongue, and pretended to fire his finger at Morse. Then he walked away whistling. Morse would never understand people who exulted in bad weather. with his tongue, and pretended to fire his finger at Morse. Then he walked away whistling. Morse would never understand people who exulted in bad weather.

It was barely noon, but it seemed as if the sun had already gone down. The sky was a solid brick of gray, so dark that Morse lost sight of the smaller one long before he made his turn onto Tenth Street. The rain that dotted his poncho formed tiny solid-looking drops that merged by threes and fours into trembling half-domes, then broke free of their shapes and streamed away. The effect was mesmerizing, soporific. It was an effort for him to look anywhere else, though eventually he did. On the corner, beneath the black canopy of a newsstand, he saw an abscessed tooth blazing like a newborn star. The stacked blocks of a degenerative disk disorder came leaning out of a taxi. Behind the window of the drugstore were a pair of inflamed sinuses, by the counter a s.h.i.+mmering configuration of herpes blisters, on the bench a lambent haze of pneumonia. And across the street Morse saw a great branching delta of septicemia slide through the rear doors of an ambulance and disappear in a glory of light.

The subway shrieked and released its pa.s.sengers. Up they trudged from under the street, hunching and s.h.i.+vering. The one shaking the water from his hands was named Charles Dennison, the Attuned and the Obedient, Beloved of the Lord and His Angels, and issuing its proclamations in his mind was the Divine Vibratory Expression named Hahaiah. Hahaiah had given Charles a single holy task: to provide fresh experiences to Eternity. The responsibility was profound. Fish the magazine out of that trash can. Whack the sports car with it. See the license plate: Fish the magazine out of that trash can. Whack the sports car with it. See the license plate: DADSTOY DADSTOY. Yes, that one. No, not the window, the door! Hit the DOOR! Now bite your hand, there where the palm thickens at the base of the thumb. Charles set his mouth to his palm. HARDER HARDER. His teeth drew light from his skin. Good Good. In Eternity everything had already taken place-that was the problem. Nothing happened there that was not happening again. Only here, in the Physical and Contingent World, could one generate fresh experiences for the Lord and His Elect, which was why it was inc.u.mbent upon Charles to do exactly what Hahaiah bade him. Stop that woman, the one in the fur jacket Stop that woman, the one in the fur jacket. Charles took the woman by the sleeve. Say, "Truly, my lady, it is a Marvelous and a Blessed Day. Say, "Truly, my lady, it is a Marvelous and a Blessed Day." "Truly, my lady, it is a Blessed and a Marvelous and Day." A MARVELOUS and a BLESSED A MARVELOUS and a BLESSED. "A Marvelous and a Blessed." The woman wrenched herself away from Charles and continued through the door of the hotel. He saw her standing in the lobby with a look of vexation and disordered pride, trying to tease the oil from her jacket with her fingers while the doorman folded her umbrella. This was what the world was: the one and only place where things could still happen for the first time.

It was late afternoon before the rain finally drove Morse to his alcove and he had the chance to give the books the smaller one had traded him a shake. From Mister Parsons Mister Parsons fell a thousand dollars in hundreds. Another thousand fluttered from the pages of fell a thousand dollars in hundreds. Another thousand fluttered from the pages of Mansfield Park Mansfield Park. The bills were authentic, newly printed, with that sweet, antiseptic smell that reminded him of window spray.

Never before had the smaller one given him so much cash money. Not for the first time Morse wondered where it all came from.

He was having one of his indoor moods, so he took his cart to the lockers at the bus station, then checked into a hotel, the old Beaux Arts building across from the modern art museum. He put his clothing in a drawstring bag to be laundered, showered until the water no longer ran gray, then settled down in a bathrobe and slippers to ply his way through the TV stations. He had brought only a single book with him, the diary of I love you I love you's with the torn binding and the foxed pages, which the one with the loose shoelaces had never retrieved. Every now and then, when Morse had nothing better to do, he liked to open it and read a few lines at random. I love your avocado and Swiss sandwiches. I love the way your neck arches like a cat's whenever you hear a car slowing down on the street outside our window. I love the story of the Sticky Bandit-aka Mr. Splat. I love your fascination with crop I love your avocado and Swiss sandwiches. I love the way your neck arches like a cat's whenever you hear a car slowing down on the street outside our window. I love the story of the Sticky Bandit-aka Mr. Splat. I love your fascination with crop circles, but as landscape art, not UFO indentations or messages from the Circlemakers of the Beyond. I love swipping your triggle gitch circles, but as landscape art, not UFO indentations or messages from the Circlemakers of the Beyond. I love swipping your triggle gitch. He was fascinated yet vexed by the book. Between each sentence, it seemed, there was a gap, a chasm, a whitening away of meaning. He did not understand how something so sweet, so earnest and candid, could also be so wayward and enigmatic. He kept expecting to return to the book and discover that it had pondered all his questions while he was gone and then fortified itself with the answers.

For two nights, Morse stayed in his hotel room eating grilled steak and cheese agnolotti, seared scallops and grilled duck breast, and drinking sparkling water and tempranillo and white burgundy. The cake he ordered was too rich, and the raspberry sorbet gave him an ice cream headache, the kind that smoldered across his temples for thirty seconds and then flared out, but he barely noticed it. It felt good to eat and drink, to stand at the window looking out over the city, to sleep in a soft bed, to wake without quite realizing he had. It felt good to be alive. Wounded but alive. s.h.i.+ning but alive.

By the time he returned to his milk crate and his six squares of sidewalk, the weather had turned cold and serene, ice-still. Everyone was puffy with extra clothing-coats, jerseys, sweat suits, long johns, wool socks, and ribbed hats. He could see the cars breathing from their tailpipes like looming metal monsters. A station wagon rabbited forward to beat the light, then braked to a stop behind a delivery van. The family inside leaned into the momentum. Their bodies seemed to quiver, their minds seemed to dance, and Morse waited for them to reveal themselves to him. The one sitting Indian-style in the cargo area was named Evie. The chump seat chump seat-that was what Tom and Amy called it. Or sometimes the chimp seat chimp seat. Which meant that Evie was the chump. Or sometimes the chimp. But she didn't care. She liked riding back there with the groceries and the jumper cables. It was like camping out in her own private fort, a fort that was also a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p that was also a go-cart, a go-cart that b.u.mped down the track at sixty miles an hour while she pretended to steer with her hands and also sometimes even her feet. "Are you okay back there in the caboose, Evie-girl?" her mom called out, and Evie said, "I'm fine," and most of the time her mom asked, "Whatcha doing?" next, but fortunately she didn't this time, because what Evie was doing was peeling the scab from her knee. It was nearly the size of a silver dollar, or maybe a piece of gum after it's been flattened on the driveway, and just like the gum it was crisp on the top side but gummy on the bottom, and just like the silver dollar it sparkled in the light. It hurt a little as she lifted it free, trailing a few strings of something wet and sticky. Total and complete grossness.

All that day, Morse kept up a patter of one for two one for twos and cash money cash moneys, but it made no difference. No one was willing to stop in such a chill. He busied himself rearranging his books. His lips froze together each time he licked them, separating with a slight click. Whenever he moved, gusts of detergent wafted from the folds and gathers of his clothing.

I love your Elvis impression-the worst Elvis impression I've ever heard, or ever will hear, in my entire life. I love your thing for lips and hands-and the fact that, thank G.o.d, my own lips and hands received a pa.s.sing grade. I love the little meditative puffing noises you make when you're exercising. I love watching you dive into a swimming pool, the way your body wavers underneath the water, the way your legs frog open and closed, the way you breach the surface with your eyes shut good and hard.

He had just set the diary aside when a shadow stretched across his blanket. The smaller one was standing there, his body all doubled in on itself. His arms were crossed, his knees locked tight, and his left eye wore a l.u.s.trous white bruise. A two-day growth of bristles covered his face. It was the first time since the Illumination that Morse could remember seeing him without a pair of books in his hands. The first time, for that matter, his voice sounded so thin and frightened, though he tried his best to manufacture some of his old swagger. "MP! Maximum Penalty! Listen, those books I gave you on Tuesday? The money? That was a mistake." He scuffed the pavement with his shoe. "And, well, I need it back, just this once."

"The money." Morse shook his head and shrugged. "The money."

"Jesus Christ, you stupid dimwit, what's that supposed to mean? What, are you telling me that you spent it already? Great! Perfect! What the h.e.l.l have you been feeding yourself, gold-dusted truffles?" The smaller one stalked away, then turned back around. "Thanks for your help. MP. Buddy. Friend of mine. It's good to know I can count on you in my time of need." He flinched at the sound of a car door slamming, then stiffened his neck, like a brawler recovering from a punch, and descended into the subway station.

Several months pa.s.sed before Morse saw him again. By then the trees were leafing out, and the last hard saddles of gray snow were melting from the recesses of the alleys. Warm breezes kept pus.h.i.+ng at the ground, as if an invisible highway were running just overhead. From the ledges and the power lines came startling polyphonies of birdsong. All over the city people had taken to the streets to enjoy the first breath of spring. Morse watched the one with the bad case of acne-his neck, cheeks, and forehead a glimmering and resplendent red-pop a wheelie on his racing bike. The one whose bare legs were goose-pimpling in the breeze crossed the street. The one holding the paper bag and the soda bottle hummed along to his own private music. He stopped short as he was pa.s.sing Morse's blanket. "Tell me, is that Tevis you've got there, the original Gold Medal paperback?"

Morse opened the book he had indicated and displayed the copyright page.

"It is, isn't it? I'll be d.a.m.ned. How much?"

"One for two or cash money."

"One for two what?"

"Books."

A car pulled up to the curb, its parking lock clicking and chirping.

"I don't have any books with me. Hmm. Hey, look, this is going to sound ridiculous, but what about a bowl of chili?" He extended his paper bag. "Can I trade you a bowl of chili instead? It's good. Good chili is worth two books easy, right?"