The Illumination_ A Novel Part 9

I love the way you stand at the mirror in the morning picking the lip balm from your lips.

I love the inexplicable accent, from nowhere anyone has ever visited, you use when you're trying to sound French.

I love that first moment, at night, when you trace the curve of my ear with your fingernail.

Soon the situation no longer seemed strange to her. It was as if the two of them were kneeling on opposite sides of the bedroom door, sliding notes to each other along the floor. Then it was as if the door had vanished, vanished entirely, and they were simply sitting in the bedroom together. When she had crossed the threshold she could not say, only that she had. He was her fiance-she did not doubt it-but what had brought him back to her?

It was one of those peaceful mid-April evenings with a coral sky the uniform hue of a paint sample, and from the hills of Los Angeles came the s.h.i.+ck-shack s.h.i.+ck-shack of insects, and from the highways came the gusting sound of traffic, and because of a broken stoplight at Sunset and Laurel Canyon, she was fifteen minutes late to the bookstore, so one of the cas.h.i.+ers escorted her directly to the reading annex, a dimly lit room lined with shelf after shelf of remainders, where twenty or thirty people sat in poses of quiet thought or conversation, their shoulders touching as they swiveled around in their chairs, and he was not there, or at least she did not see him, and of insects, and from the highways came the gusting sound of traffic, and because of a broken stoplight at Sunset and Laurel Canyon, she was fifteen minutes late to the bookstore, so one of the cas.h.i.+ers escorted her directly to the reading annex, a dimly lit room lined with shelf after shelf of remainders, where twenty or thirty people sat in poses of quiet thought or conversation, their shoulders touching as they swiveled around in their chairs, and he was not there, or at least she did not see him, and Once there was a country where no one addressed the dead except in writing Once there was a country where no one addressed the dead except in writing, and Who was she? Who had she become? Who was she? Who had she become? and and She sensed that every word had demanded some mysterious payment from him, a fee that could only be understood by those who had already been laid to rest She sensed that every word had demanded some mysterious payment from him, a fee that could only be understood by those who had already been laid to rest, and by the time she finished presenting the story, reaching the ever ever and the and the after after, her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she knew for certain-he had given up on her. It was just as well. The ulcer on her lip was still stinging, but a seal had begun to form over it, a clear bandage of skin with the texture of overlapping threads. She was recovering in spite of herself. She gave her mouth a quick investigation with her tongue. Deep in the pocket of her gums was the firm polyp of a sore, like an unpopped kernel of popcorn, that had developed without ever quite breaking the skin. On one of her cheeks was a minuscule dimpled lesion, and on her tongue itself was the same small scuff she had noticed the night before. None of them had become painful yet, though. If, after the reading, she spoke as little as possible, there was the slim possibility they would die away without getting any worse, and the ulcer on her lip would heal, and she would be graced with a few days of well-being before the next outbreak began.

She would bake a pizza-or better yet: a lasagna-and eat until she was stuffed.

She would have a long conversation with Wallace about his father.

She would find someone to f.u.c.k and she would f.u.c.k him.

A woman in the front row asked, "So that part where the dead begin to glow-is that supposed to be because they're in pain? Because they don't seem seem to be in pain. Are they?" to be in pain. Are they?"

Well, there was physical pain, Nina answered, and there was emotional pain. This particular story offered little evidence of the former, maybe, but abundant evidence of the latter. Ever since she was a child, she answered. English Lit, she answered, with a minor in biology. No, she answered, not yet. She was afraid that as soon as she decided to incorporate it into her stories, the phenomenon would end as mysteriously as it had begun, and everything she had written would be cemented to a particular time and place. Now, she supposed. Now and here. (What else could she mean?) Constantly, she answered. At least two or three books a week. In fact, it was reading that was truly at the center of her life-experiencing stories, not making them. She was sure most other writers would say the same. No, she answered. Usually, she answered. Once or twice, she answered. Certainly she had changed since then, in innumerable ways. With her first book she had seen the world as a narrative, seen human lives as narratives. Now, instead, she saw them as stories. She wasn't sure what had happened. Maybe she had experienced too much sickness. Maybe her sickness had made her less intelligent. Maybe her sickness had made her more sentimental. Maybe her sickness had returned her to the simple receptiveness of her childhood, when fitting people together seemed more important than taking them apart. No, it wasn't that, she answered. She was just as interested in characters as she had ever been. But somehow she'd come to believe that characters were made up of their ideas and perceptions rather than their actions. A mistake, perhaps. She couldn't argue with that. Yes, exactly, she answered. The traveling, she answered. The fact that she could go to work in a T-s.h.i.+rt and shorts, she answered, along with the privilege of partic.i.p.ating in other people's dreams, and most of all the thrill she got, the feeling of wondrous correctness, when a handful of words she had been organizing and reorganizing suddenly fastened themselves together, forming a chain that seemed to tug at the page from some distant, less provisional place, as if through an accidental pattern of sounds, rhythms, and insinuations she had linked herself to the beginning of the world, a time when words were inseparable from what they named and you could not mention a thing without establis.h.i.+ng it in front of your eyes. It was the same feeling, she was convinced, that painters experienced through color, dancers through movement, photographers through light. The same feeling that mathematicians experienced through equations and actors experienced through emotion.

The sun had fallen behind the audience. In the deepening shade of the room, it was easy to see their wounds and contagions: the wrenched backs and sciatic hips, the legs cramped with heat lightning, a glittering pathology of sprains, rashes, and carcinomas. Nina sat at the table by the lectern and signed the books she was handed-a half-dozen Girls and Boys Girls and Boys and twice that many and twice that many Twin Souls Twin Souls, plus a mint-edition copy of her ancient small-press poetry chapbook, Why the House Loves the Fire Why the House Loves the Fire, preserved in an acetate sleeve for the store's first-editions case.

She had spent too much time talking and had worn the seal off her ulcer. She could feel it s.h.i.+ning through her lips. You've been stung by a bee or a wasp before, haven't you? You've been stung by a bee or a wasp before, haven't you? she answered. she answered. You know how at first it's only a faint irritation, and you can almost disregard it, but then the venom spreads and suddenly, in the smallest division of a second, the injury blossoms open and becomes alarmingly, almost You know how at first it's only a faint irritation, and you can almost disregard it, but then the venom spreads and suddenly, in the smallest division of a second, the injury blossoms open and becomes alarmingly, almost hyperphysically, hyperphysically, bright? Well, it was like that blossoming-open moment, continually renewing itself, for days and days. Yes bright? Well, it was like that blossoming-open moment, continually renewing itself, for days and days. Yes, she answered, she had seen a doctor about it. The problem was that n.o.body knew what caused them. Rumors she had seen a doctor about it. The problem was that n.o.body knew what caused them. Rumors, she answered. Rumors and folk remedies. Flaxseed oil. L-lysine. Hydrogen peroxide. Warm salt.w.a.ter. For a while she had tried burning them closed with a sulfuric acid compound that left a cap of white crust over the top, but every time she used it her mouth filled with the sickening taste of aluminum foil, and often the sores would keep expanding underneath the cauterant and absorb it anyway. All the time Rumors and folk remedies. Flaxseed oil. L-lysine. Hydrogen peroxide. Warm salt.w.a.ter. For a while she had tried burning them closed with a sulfuric acid compound that left a cap of white crust over the top, but every time she used it her mouth filled with the sickening taste of aluminum foil, and often the sores would keep expanding underneath the cauterant and absorb it anyway. All the time, she answered. Because words on paper didn't hurt. No Because words on paper didn't hurt. No, she answered. No. They had made a ruin of everything she cared about. She didn't want adulation anymore. She didn't want love. She only wanted to carve a small path of painlessness and blunted feeling through her life until she came out the other side No. They had made a ruin of everything she cared about. She didn't want adulation anymore. She didn't want love. She only wanted to carve a small path of painlessness and blunted feeling through her life until she came out the other side.

Back at the hotel, before she phoned Wallace, she stood at the mirror practicing her diction. "h.e.l.lo. h.e.l.lo. M Make m me b better. M Make m me b better. This is your m mother. M Mother. Mother." She would wait for him to ask her how she was doing, and "I'm better," she would say. Which was true, or very nearly. She would be better soon. She was sure of it. The trick was to speak deliberately enough to rid her consonants of that lunging electric quality that gave her condition away, but not so deliberately that it sounded unnatural or calculated. Even the slightest measure of strain in her voice, and Wallace would pick up on it. He was like a hero in a cla.s.sic detective novel: Father Brown, Hercule Poirot. She worried sometimes that she had pa.s.sed her syndrome along to him, that one day in his mid-thirties he would wake to discover that his immune system had broken apart inside him like a crossette, bursting open in an eruption of pus and cankers, and everything he loved had become difficult. She hoped the thought would never occur to him. She didn't want him to dread growing up.

She called her home number. Someone answered on the first ring, speaking with the heavy gravel of a smoker or a barroom blues singer. She thought she heard him ask, "Who am I, and how can I help you?" but in the initial air pocket of the connection, she might have been mistaken.

"I'm sorry?"

There was a whispered flurry of dudes dudes, and then the man said, "This is the wrong number. Say good-bye. Hang up," and the line went silent.

She stared at the phone. After a few seconds, the LCD became dim from inactivity, and her face peered back at her with the blank puzzlement of a prisoner in a cage. She pressed redial. Her home number marched across the screen, appearing digit by digit beneath the phone icon transmitting its telepathy waves.

This time Wallace answered. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Wallace. What is going on?" is going on?"

"Hey, Mom. Nothing. Just me and the campaigners are taking a break. What's up?"

"Who was that man who answered our phone?"

"Man?"

"Wallace, I just just called you, and a man called you, and a man just just picked up." picked up."

She could always tell when he was lying by the seesawing quality of his voice, as if some hidden athletic force were propelling his sentences up and then catching them as they fell back down. "I don't know. You must have dialed the wrong number or something."

"I pressed redial." In the background the same deep voice that had spoken to her earlier said something like wonder who wonder who or or hundred and two hundred and two before the others hushed him. " before the others hushed him. "Him. That man." man."

Wallace paused. "Okay. Listen," he said. "Don't freak out. There's this guy we met. He sells books from a blanket over by that Chinese place. Mom, I'm telling you, he had a first-edition Cities in Dust manual, still in the wooden box, with both the Twelve Nations supplement and and the original Gazetteer. We're negotiating the price down, that's all." the original Gazetteer. We're negotiating the price down, that's all."

"Out! Get him out of our house!"

"Give us just a...second...more," Wallace told her, "and we'll be-"

She heard someone say, "All right, man. You can have that one and one other. But that's it."

"-almost-"

"Kendall Wallace Poggione!"

"Finished," Wallace concluded.

"Now!"

"Okay, okay, we're done. Jesus! Problem solved. He's leaving." The front door opened and closed, its damaged hinge clacking against the frame. With a cavernous sigh her son declared, "You know, Mom, just because your your life frightens you doesn't mean life frightens you doesn't mean my my life has to frighten me." life has to frighten me."

The next day, a message came while she was sitting on her front steps. She glanced away for a moment, and there it was, nestled in the thick fringe of gra.s.s around the fissure, like a mushroom springing up after a thunderstorm. I love you I love you, it read, and I want you to join me. I want us to be together again, my jewel, my apple. Whatever the cost, I want it, I want it. And I don't want to wait until you die, because G.o.d knows how long that will be and I want you to join me. I want us to be together again, my jewel, my apple. Whatever the cost, I want it, I want it. And I don't want to wait until you die, because G.o.d knows how long that will be.

It was his longest letter yet. She sensed that every word had demanded some mysterious payment from him, a fee that could be understood only by those who had already been laid to rest. What was he asking? That she end her life? That she suspend it? Or something else altogether, something she could hardly imagine?

For the next few days he left no love notes in her yard, no entreaties, only a single question that appeared late one night on the back of a chewing gum wrapper: h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo?

He was giving her time to think. He was waiting for her belowground-she knew it, she knew it. Every day the crack by her porch grew a little larger. At first it was only a c.h.i.n.k in the dirt, no wider than the slot where she dropped her mail at the post office, but gradually it stretched open until it was as big as an ice chest, and then a steamer trunk, and then a gulf into which she could easily have fit her entire body. She wondered what it would be like if she accepted his invitation. She began to dream that she was living beneath the field on the far side of the woods, moving through a long procession of rooms and hallways where the dead milled around like guests at a trade convention. Throughout the day, at various angles, the sun pierced the hills and the pastures, sending bright silver needles through the ceiling of the earth, so that it was never completely dark, and at night, when the land was soaked in shadows, the people around her glowed with a strange heat. She watched them flare and s.h.i.+mmer through their skin, their bones going off like bombs, every limb a magnificent firework of carbon, phosphorus, and calcium. It seemed that the surface of the world had two sides: on one were the bereaved spouses, the outcast teenagers, the old men and women who had no one left to reminisce with, and on the other were the lovers and friends and parents they had outlived-all of them, whether above or below, aching for those who were gone; all of them, whether above or below, pressing their fingers to the soil. Her eyes flickered in her face, and her teeth shone in her mouth, and when she woke, before the dream had lost its color, she felt that she was recalling some earlier existence, like a house she had lived in as a child, familiar down to its last curved faucet and last chipped floorboard.

The truth was that the thread connecting her to the world was as thin as could be. A sunrise here or there, the feel of suede against her skin, the aroma of strong coffee in the morning, and a few moments of forgetful well-being-that was it, that was all she had, and she knew that it could snap at any moment. She had always believed that one day someone would come along and love her and she would understand how to live. Maybe the idea was juvenile, but she had carried it with her all her life, like an ember smoldering in a pouch of green leaves. It was only the past awful year that had forced her to give it up. And now here it was again, the hope that she had finally found him, the man who would wrench her into the world, the good and beautiful world, where people got married and had children and slowly grew old together.

One afternoon, as she was standing at the kitchen counter eating a turkey-and-diced-olive sandwich, she realized that she had made up her mind. She swept the bread crumbs into her palm and brushed them gently, caressingly, into the sink, as if she were stroking a cat. Then she went outside and knelt at the edge of the crevice. Her neighbor was grilling a steak in his backyard. A forsythia bush rustled in the wind.

There she was, and then there she wasn't, and two large, pale ants were exploring the impression her knees had left in the gra.s.s.

It was the last the world would see of her, or at least the last the sun would, the last the sky.

I am here to tell you what happened next.

In Phoenix the streets ran flat and straight, and the jacaranda blossoms made strange ghosts in the slipstreams of the cars, and even at seven, after the sun had set, when the hotel's valet motioned one of the taxis over for her, the city was clothed with a l.u.s.trous violet sky that seemed to have the full force of the day s.h.i.+ning inside it, and her driver asked her why she was in town, and, "No kidding. Have you ever read those Stainless Steel Rat books?" and, "Tempe Square, d'ya say?" and she kept flattening her tongue against the sleek patch where her sore had been, rea.s.suring herself that it scarcely hurt anymore, though her tongue itself was already perforated where she had rasped it against her teeth, and it felt as if she were balancing a seed, a small bitter seed, on the tip, and she knew it would be only a day or two before the tiny pock spilled out of itself and ulcerated, but for tonight at least she was better, she was better, and the bookstore smelled of bread and coffee from the bakery next door, and there was something about the way the microphone dislocated her speech, taking her Annie Lennox contralto and the slightly too-long hiss she gave her s s's and making them gigantic, directionless, that she was still unpracticed enough to find amusing, as if she were nothing but a voice, a big spectral voice, and she could lose herself in it, forgetting all the people who sat before her with their tics and abscesses, their blisters and swollen glands, the intestinal disorders that floated in their abdomens like foxfire, the conjunctivitis infections that made their eyes gleam and s.h.i.+mmer, gathered in their chairs between the podium and the horror shelves, and when she reached the end of the story, someone raised his hand and asked, "What's wrong with your people?" and then, "Don't mistake what I'm saying. I liked that. I really did. But you write these stories about characters who have great sectors of what one would ordinarily regard as the common human experience entirely unavailable to them. I mean, they don't seem to realize it, but they do. I'm just trying to understand why," and the only answer she could think to give was that she had spent the last four years doing exactly the same, trying to understand why, and then there arrived the usual questions about her favorite books and her writing schedule and her teaching philosophy and her cover designs, and after she was finished responding to them, when she had thanked the audience for attending and signed the bookstore's stock, one of the managers gave her a T-s.h.i.+rt with the words FICTIONAL CHARACTER FICTIONAL CHARACTER printed on the front, and the bandage on the inside of his arm held a single brilliant point of silver that reminded her of the picture on an old cathode ray tube, collapsing to a starlike remnant of itself as the power was switched off, and the arches along the back of the store were crowned with paintings of mountains and houses, and the gold pillars were washed in light and shadow, and she was getting ready to leave when there he came, printed on the front, and the bandage on the inside of his arm held a single brilliant point of silver that reminded her of the picture on an old cathode ray tube, collapsing to a starlike remnant of itself as the power was switched off, and the arches along the back of the store were crowned with paintings of mountains and houses, and the gold pillars were washed in light and shadow, and she was getting ready to leave when there he came, him him, striding past the magazine racks, giving her his funny, bashful, enthusiastic smile, and he said, "Two days, you told me. Well, it's been two days. It took me almost that long to drive here. I was wondering if-" and she interrupted him by gripping his wrist and stroking it with her thumb, slowly lifting her hand free until her fingers were barely skimming the risen tips of the hairs, and she asked him if he would mind too much, too terribly much-"John. John-with-an-h Catau"-if he would mind driving her back to her hotel, and she wondered if she had lost her senses, but she felt only the slightest nettling of pressure on her lip, and all she had was this one night, and he only had to look at her to see her. Catau"-if he would mind driving her back to her hotel, and she wondered if she had lost her senses, but she felt only the slightest nettling of pressure on her lip, and all she had was this one night, and he only had to look at her to see her.

Soon after the woman went to join her fiance, as the final sweltering days of summer came to a close, an unusual event took place. Late one night, while everyone was sleeping, something s.h.i.+fted beneath the brown pastures and the dry creek beds, and a hundred thousand fissures spread across the landscape, leading to a hundred thousand front doors. Shortly after the sun rose, in one house after another, the lights went on, and people showered and got dressed, and then they stepped outside to go to work. Earlier that week, a ma.s.s of clouds had been seen at the horizon, which meant that it was almost time for the rains to begin again, but this particular day had dawned hard and clear. The heat rang out like a coin. The gra.s.s twitched and straightened in the morning air. And the lawns-they were split down the center, and from every rift projected a sheet of paper: I love that perfect little cl.u.s.ter of freckles on your wrist.

I love the way your hair curls when you work up a sweat.

I love how good you were to me when I got sick.

I love watching you sit at your desk, the sun s.h.i.+ning on you through the philodendron leaves.

I love your many doomed attempts to give up caffeine.

Once there was a country where it rained for most of the year, and everyone resided underground, and no one was quite sure who was dead and who was living. But it did not matter because they were happy. And they were ever. And they were after.

Morse Putnam StrawbridgeIt is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds they have made.-Franz Kafka

At first he was sure he had died. When the one with the shaved head gave him another blow to the midriff and his stomach erupted with four long shears of light, he believed he was watching his soul flee from his body. He had never been certain he had a soul, but there it went, like a flock of birds flooding through an open gate. Out it poured from the gash on his arm. Out it poured from the puncture on his thigh. Out it poured from that frog's neck of tissue between his thumb and his forefinger, where the one with the ski jacket had nicked him with a paring knife and forced him to splay his hand open until the skin split to the muscle. So much light. What else could it have been?

Then he noticed that the one who had caught him below the knee with the tire iron was glowing from his front tooth. And the one with the shaved head was examining the scuff marks on his knuckles, foiled with drops of blood. And the smaller one, the talker, who had started things off by pus.h.i.+ng him against the wall and saying, "Where are they, huh? Where did you hide them, buddy?" was swiping at a glinting bruise on his arm, eyeing it with aggravation and curiosity, like a cat batting at a laser pointer.

So either all of them had died or none of them had.

He decided they were still alive. Abnormal but alive. Luminescent but alive. The cars were still gunning their engines at one another. New Fun Ree was still steaming the air with its smell of noodles and battered chicken. And his wounds were still pulsing and burning. The only difference was that he could see the nerves working now, growing brighter with each burst of pain.

The one whose tooth was s.h.i.+ning said, "What the h.e.l.l is up with you guys? Have you seen yourselves?" and the others said, "Have you you seen seen your yourself?" and, "Look in a mirror, Stephen Hawking," and, "'Oh, my tooth, my tooth. Christ, fellas, I've gotta get to a dentist. This thing is about G.o.dd.a.m.n killing me.'" They traded a laugh at the impersonation. From the mouth of the alley he listened to the four of them argue: What was happening? How long would it last? Who else was it affecting? Every so often they paused to smack him or use the knife, but without any real brutality now, as if they were hurting him just to see the light blossom open beneath their fists, the glittering silver stream the blade left in his skin. His head was clear despite the pain. He was no longer angry or frightened. He watched with interest as his body was chafed and torn, thinking, Look what's here inside me. Who ever would have guessed? Look what's here inside me. Who ever would have guessed?

Finally the one with the hoops in his ear said, "Um, listen, guys, which was it? Did Vannatta say the twelve hundred block or the twenty-one hundred?"

"Look for the Chinese place with the red awning is all I remember."

"It was twelve hundred, right, wasn't it?"

"No, twenty-one, I thought."

"s.h.i.+t, did somebody keep the note?"

The one with the insect bites spattering his neck took a square of yellow paper from his jacket and unfolded it. "Twenty-one hundred," he read.

The conversation seemed to drop down a well. Somewhere overhead an exhaust fan was whirring. On the street a basketball slapped the pavement.

"Well," the smaller one said. "I don't think the King of the City here's our man."

Which was exactly what he had tried to tell them when they marshaled him into the alley: he wasn't their man, he didn't have the bricks, he wasn't even sure what the bricks were. But as usual, somewhere between the thought and the statement, his words had hit a blind curve and been wrenched out of shape, so that what he said was not at all what he had intended to say: "No, no, I'm him. Bricks, uh-huh, bricks."

"All right," the smaller one decided. "Here's the agenda. You, you, and you-go find the other Chinese restaurant. Red awning. Twenty-one hundred block. Track down the dude who's got our stuff. Me, I'll stay here and clean up this this mess." The three of them tramped past the dumpster, the one with the ski jacket rubbing his neck with the bent end of a tire iron, his insect bites p.r.i.c.king the air like a firework. mess." The three of them tramped past the dumpster, the one with the ski jacket rubbing his neck with the bent end of a tire iron, his insect bites p.r.i.c.king the air like a firework.

As soon as the others were out of sight, the smaller one made a study of the damage they had done to him, his eyes pausing at each radiant wound like a kid playing with his first magnifying gla.s.s. When he had finished, he gave a long drawn-out whistle and said, "Hey, I'm sorry, man. We really worked you over, didn't we? Look, let me help you get home. Where do you live? Somewhere around here?"

"Around here." He gestured farther down the alley, to the alcove where he kept his shopping cart, with his books and his blanket all bundled up inside.

"Jee-zus. All right, then. Let me get you to the ER."

It took the smaller one a while to persuade him to leave his shopping cart where it was, concealed between a dumpster and a plat of cardboard. He helped him totter to the sidewalk, supporting him as he limped on his busted kneecap, which thrilled with light every time his foot struck the ground. By the time they reached the curb, the glare was unremitting. The smaller one looked up and down the street and complained, "Those dumb a.s.sholes took the car, can you believe it?" He hailed a taxi. At the hospital, he removed a horseshoe of hundreds from his jacket, thumbed off five, six, seven bills, and reached across the seat with them. "Good luck, man," he said. "No hard feelings, I hope." He tucked the money into his pocket, then opened the door and urged him outside.

He stumbled into the entrance bay, where several tired-looking doctors sat watching people arrive, pointing, nodding, shaking their heads, as if at a street performance they were too exhausted to appreciate. No one seemed to know what was going on. The halides were altering the whites and yellows of everyone's clothing, lending them a flat blue baseball-park color, but the strained tendons and broken bones of the incoming patients were still plainly visible, even to him. There was the one in the tank top, the young mother, two big s.h.i.+mmering battery bruises on her back. The one with the star cl.u.s.ter of hives on his face. The elderly one with a dog bite showing through her stockings, as round and dazzling as a crown tipped with diamonds. But in all that s.h.i.+ning parade of injuries, none was so spectacular as his own. As the taxi sped away, the doctors saw him stumbling along the handicap ramp and sprang up from their benches, calling for a stretcher. A radio was playing at the front desk. He heard a newscaster intoning, "From all over the world this evening we are receiving similar reports-of the ailing and the wounded, shedding light from their bodies," which meant it wasn't just them, it wasn't just here, it was everyone and it was everywhere.

Quickly he was wheeled down the hallway. In the waiting area, he saw a man he knew from the camps, the one with the old photo of himself heat-pressed onto his T-s.h.i.+rt, a young peroxide-blond lifeguard with a girlfriend on his arm and a stripe of zinc on his nose. And there at the water fountain was another, the one with the braided gray beard and the Scottish terrier. And later he would hear that a third, the one who sold hairbrushes from the sidewalk in front of Fantastic China, had been hospitalized and died that same night with six broken ribs and a cerebral hemorrhage.

Two of the doctors lifted him onto a bed, and the room flooded with technicians and orderlies, anesthesiologists and nurses. The one whose eyes were two different colors asked him his name. If ever there was a question whose answer he had rehea.r.s.ed, it was this, but he must have been in more pain than he realized, because his tongue let him down again. "More. More Put. More." He felt something brus.h.i.+ng his fingers and looked down to find himself holding a notepad and pen. His left hand, his dominant one, the hand that was torn at the webbing, kept filling with a silver mercury he eventually recognized as his blood, so he used his right, spelling his name out one slow letter at a time: Morse Putnam Strawbridge.

"Well, Mr. Strawbridge, hang in there, and we'll get you put back together."

He watched as his clothes were shorn from his body, felt a pinch on his arm, and much later, when he woke up, a pair of women were standing over him, the high clouds of their faces hovering against the blue ceiling. The one with the hint of a headache glowing on her brow said, "It's good to see you again, Mr. Putnam. Are you ready for your morning exercises? We're going to start with the heel slides today. Last night we made it to ten. We're going to shoot for fifteen this time, okay?"

He tried to swallow, and everything shuddered slightly. The one with the headache was Diane, and the one gazing out the window, watching the buckeye pluck at the wind with its leaves, was Cici. Cici, who believed she was so much better than Diane, so much prettier, so much more sophisticated. Cici, who earned twice the pay for half the work, the lazy sponge. Diane lifted Morse's blanket aside, exposing the fearsome light show of his joints and muscles. Her temples were pounding. She didn't want to touch him. There was dirt and then there was dirt dirt, she thought, G.o.d's good soil and the grime that sank into a person's flesh and never went away, no matter how thoroughly you scrubbed his filthy body. Heaven forbid her Billy end up like that one day. It's your job, Diane. You don't have to like it. Just brazen up and do it. One hand on the ankle, and the other on the hip. That's the way.

He left the hospital with seven scars decorating his body. To his fingers they felt like segments of fis.h.i.+ng wire, taut little lines threaded just below his skin, except for the cut the doctors had made to his peritoneum, which had swollen with infection while he was in recovery and now rose rippling from his stomach like a fat red hairless caterpillar. He was still in pain, still recuperating. An aurora flickered through his gut every time he stretched or coughed, sneezed or bent over. Someone had stolen his shopping cart and blanket from the alley, dumping his books into the alcove behind New Fun Ree, and he sorted through them, throwing out the ones that were rat-gnawed or waterlogged, glued shut by grease or mildew. He bought another blanket from Goodwill, stole another shopping cart from Costco, and four years after the Illumination, that day when something struck a switch in his injuries, he was still sitting cross-legged by the subway entrance, selling books to pedestrians.

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

He was only nine years old the summer he learned that he could speak more easily when he had practiced what he was going to say. His parents had enrolled him in a workshop at the children's theater. His teachers tried to lure him into their acting-is-believing games, but he was terrified, and nothing worked, until the hairy one, whose clothes gave off the musky smell of tennis b.a.l.l.s in a freshly opened canister, took a gamble and cast him as Owl in The House at Pooh Corner The House at Pooh Corner. Morse studied the script until he had his part memorized, and taking the stage on the last day of camp, he discovered he could deliver his lines with grace and authority, as if he truly were perched on his floor that had once been a wall, telling a story to Pooh and Piglet on the bl.u.s.terous morning his tree blew down. He spent the next few years believing he would become a movie or TV star when he grew up. Then one of his high school teachers explained that in proper Stanislavskian acting you should live in the moment, as if you were pioneering your words the second you spoke them, and that was it, it was all over, whatever eloquence he had imagined he possessed went bursting into the sky like dandelion snow. He could live in the moment or he could speak in it. He could not do both.

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

That was his first method-memorization. His second was replication-sorting through the expressions he heard, weighing this piece and that, until he found the right words to mimic a real conversation. He was like a cas.h.i.+er returning a handful of change. In his imagination, each time he spoke, a drawer slid open and a silver bell ka-chinged ka-chinged.

How are you doing today? "How are you?" "How are you?" I'm fine, and yourself? I'm fine, and yourself? "I'm fine, I'm fine." "I'm fine, I'm fine."

Or: Our records indicate that your full name is Morse Putnam Our records indicate that your full name is Morse Putnam Strawbridge-is that correct? Strawbridge-is that correct? "Correct. Morse Putnam Strawbridge." "Correct. Morse Putnam Strawbridge."

Or: h.e.l.lo, and welcome to KFC. Would you like to try our new two-piece white-meat value meal? h.e.l.lo, and welcome to KFC. Would you like to try our new two-piece white-meat value meal? "New two-piece white-meat value meal." "New two-piece white-meat value meal."

Though the technique could be surprisingly effective, he used it sparingly, since people tended to become angry when they realized what he was doing. Usually he relied on the dozen or so stock phrases he had already learned by heart.

"One for two or cash money."

"What have you got here, books?"

"Books. One for two or cash money."

"Let's see. I think I'll take the Poggione. How much is it?"

"Price inside the cover. Cash money."

"Here you go then."

Here you go then, he would think. You go here then. Then here you go You go here then. Then here you go. And he would accept two or three dollars from their hands, scrunching the bills together and stuffing them in his pocket. Then it was, "G.o.d bless you, brother," or, "G.o.d bless you, sister," and on to the next prospect. The one with the army surplus backpack and the wire-rimmed gla.s.ses. The young one, the schoolkid, rehearsing a mustache on his upper lip. The one with the in-town shoes and the out-of-town boyfriend, hoping to impress him with her daring and generosity by buying a book from the scruffy guy with the dirt browning his face. Never the one s.h.i.+fting her child protectively to her outside arm. Never the one discussing the stock market on his cell phone. The Readers and the Good Samaritans-that was who he wanted. He could identify the Good Samaritans from half a block away, zeroing in on him in a fury of benevolence, their fingers sharp and rigid, but the Readers were harder to spot. They could be young or old, sickly or robust, attractive or disagreeable. They inspected the books on his blanket as if they were meeting his eyes. Sometimes they would reach for one with a tiny bated coo of recognition, and he would think they were going to buy it, but no, they had already read it, and they only wanted to know if he had liked it as much as they did. They cherished certain books and disdained others with a zeal that seemed totally genuine yet totally arbitrary. Frequently they wore too much clothing. They rarely haggled. The one feature they seemed to share in common was a tightness at the nape of the neck, as if someone had fixed a stiff metal lozenge where their spine emerged from their shoulders. Though Morse himself was not a Reader, he had been studying them for years, alert for that compressed diamond of tension and the light it cast over their collars.

Sometimes, on the gray-soaked days of February and March, when the sun seemed to dissolve into the clouds like an antacid tablet, he would peer down the street and see nothing but a gleaming field of injuries, as if the traumas and diseases from which people suffered had become so powerful, so hardy, that they no longer needed their bodies to survive. From the doors of shops and art galleries came strange floating candles of heart pain and arthritis. Stray muscle cramps spilled across the sidewalk like sparks scattering from a bonfire. Neural diseases fluttered in the air like leaves falling through a shaft of light. A great fanning network of leukemia rose out of a taxi and drifted incandescently into an office building, and he watched as it vanished into the bricks, a s.h.i.+ning angel of cancer. On sunny days, like today, the light was still visible, but Morse had to look more closely to make it out. It was people-they were the problem. Their bodies got in the way. A team of Mormon missionaries walked by in their s.h.i.+rts and ties. It was only after examining them carefully that he noticed that the heavy one, the one with the lumbering gait, had a crescent of athlete's foot glowing from the heel of his shoe. The Chinese family who operated New Fun Ree wheeled their baby into the restaurant, her colic the same silvery white as her jumper. A young couple emerged from the subway, stroking each other's hands. They turned toward the street, and their outlines blurred like plucked wires. The one with the poison ivy rash was named Adam. Just that morning he had stepped into the shower and found an awful p.r.i.c.kling Nike swoosh of blisters crimsoning his calf. "I'll be d.a.m.ned," he said, poking his head past the curtain. "Hey, honey? Did you take me hiking or something this weekend and forget to tell me about it?" In the mirror, Helen had c.o.c.ked an eyebrow, spitting her toothpaste out. "I don't think so. Did you go away and miss me when I wasn't looking?" She was always doing this-amazing him by drawing up some half-forgotten endearment of his, a flirty little line she had greeted with a m.u.f.fled thank you thank you months before, and offering it back to him like a pet.i.t four on a tray. She months before, and offering it back to him like a pet.i.t four on a tray. She did did love him. She love him. She did did. He steered her past the street b.u.m with his milk crate and his blanket. G.o.dd.a.m.n poison ivy. G.o.dd.a.m.n nature. If he grazed his calf with his shoe while he was walking-accidentally, let's say-would that count as scratching? Do it, Adam. Go ahead. No one will mind. "Don't you dare, mister," the one in the turtleneck, Helen, warned him. "If that stuff spreads, it will be your own fault." She took a sip of the coffee she had bought from the subway vendor, the Exotic Autumn blend. You'll love it You'll love it, he had said. Best of the season Best of the season, he had said. But it had an ultrasweet botanical taste she couldn't stand, like the dried cloves her mother always punched into the hams she prepared at Easter. Yuck. Why bother? She tossed the cup in a trash can. An alley cat leaped out from behind the pizza boxes and newspapers and sprang between her legs, bawling at her with its teeth bared, a shrill iamb of hatred. She backed away. Sometimes it seemed to her that she had no place in the world. There was no pity, no consolation. Everything she did ignited these wild billows of spite and resentment. She couldn't even throw a cup of coffee away without causing trouble for herself. She used to be so at home in her life, so happy, and now there was Adam, only Adam, and he was too lovestruck to see her properly. How could she explain that the woman whose sweat he liked to lick off his fingers, the woman he wanted to marry, wasn't Helen at all but the ruins of Helen, the s.h.i.+pwreck of Helen?

Morse lost his grasp on them as they crossed the street. Ever since he was a child he had experienced these occasional episodes of deep understanding. Now and then, unpredictably, things would s.h.i.+ver as if from the cold, and he would know what someone nearby was thinking and feeling. It was happening more often all the time. One day, he was afraid, his life would be nothing but other people's minds. Across the street, for instance, were a pair of glaziers unloading a sheet gla.s.s window from a truck flas.h.i.+ng its hazards. The one supporting the lower end was named Ezra. A scrim of clouds breezed across the sky, filtering the sunlight, and there in the gla.s.s suddenly, as he tilted the pane, he saw his reflection, his dreadlocks spilling out of their elastic band like snakes from a can of novelty peanut brittle. Behind him the world was a claylike city color, the gray and brown of weathered sidewalks and high-rises st.i.tched with fire escapes. It was so strange, so strange. He was backing up when the heel of his boot struck the curb. His reflection lurched away from him. He barely managed to steady the gla.s.s in time. Have a nice trip, Ezra. See you next fall. To his partner he said, "Take it a little slower there, why don't you, yeah?" Every word was like a blade in his sore throat. The pain showed through his Adam's apple, a dazzling string of broken beads. He hated himself when he got this way, hated his voice, hated his body. It was the city that did it to him. The crowds, the noise, the pollution. Two years, and he still wasn't used to it. There were days when he could not close his eyes without seeing his Moms and Pops, his four younger sisters, his old bedroom, the luminescent stars on his ceiling, the above-ground pool in his backyard, the beautiful green and yellow of the trees sashaying in the breeze along the coast. He wished he could hear them rustling the way they did on those sunlit summer afternoons when he and his friends stood shaking them for nuts. I don't like this place. I don't want to be here.

And then he was gone.

Morse heard a train grinding metal, that unmistakable city sound, and from out of the subway came an enormous spreading tide of pedestrians. Bike messengers pedaled along the curb and swerved across the median, their wheels tilting back and forth. Cars followed one another into empty parking s.p.a.ces like bowling b.a.l.l.s tock tocking into a ball corral. A bus stopped at the corner to discharge its pa.s.sengers. In scarcely a second they broke apart, disappearing down side streets and alleys, into clothing stores, restaurants, and apartment buildings. To all of those who crossed in front of his blanket Morse repeated his sales pitch.

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