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 blandishing 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 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 clitter 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 button glow beneath his index finger. In the elevator he sat like a king on the stool’s satin cushion. 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’s and cross all your 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 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 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 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 screwing with you. Hell, 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, 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. 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. He watched the one carrying the grape cluster 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. 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, the second 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 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 shimmering 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 passengers. Up they trudged from under the street, hunching and shivering. The one shakin
g 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: 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. His teeth drew light from his skin. 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 incumbent upon Charles to do exactly what Hahaiah bade him. 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.” “Truly, my lady, it is a Blessed and a Marvelous and Day.” 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 fell a thousand dollars in hundreds. Another thousand fluttered from the pages of 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’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 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. Shining 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—that was what Tom and Amy called it. Or sometimes the 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 spaceship, a spaceship that was also a go-cart, a go-cart that bumped 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 twos and 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 God, my own lips and hands received a passing 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 lustrous 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 hell 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 passed 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 pushing 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 stree
t. The one holding the paper bag and the soda bottle hummed along to his own private music. He stopped short as he was passing 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 damned. 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?”
“No chili. One for two or cash money.”
“Yeah, but I just spent my last five dollars. How’s this, look—a bowl of chili, a bottle of 7Up, unopened, and”—his hand fished a few coins from his pocket—“a quarter, a dime, and one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight … twelve pennies?”
And because Morse was thirsty, he nodded.
The one with the soda bottle gave a firecracker-like clap. “It was a pleasure doing business with you,” he said once the exchange was made, and strutted away.
Morse decided to eat his lunch in his alcove. He picked up his milk crate, parceled his blanket around his books, and lifted the bundle into his shopping cart. In the alley behind New Fun Ree, on the blind side of a dumpster, he found the smaller one crouching like an injured dog. His eye had long since healed over, but a hundred other injuries illuminated his body. The fingers of his right hand, wrapped in a T-shirt, yielded a flat and powerful light. His bruised ribs and galled right cheek printed the air with their sigils. His face shone from beneath the skin, slung over his skull like a scarf over a lamp. He said, “I think I’m in some trouble here, MP,” and once again Morse watched as the film of the world came loose on its spindle. His name was Lee, Lee Hartz, and oh Jesus, oh Jesus, how was he going to protect himself? Vannatta would find him and finish what the others had started. He would rip him open, flay him apart, proceeding digit by digit, layer by layer, until there was so much blood that whoever found him would have to shield his eyes from the light. The currency of punishment—that was what Vannatta called it. As in, “We’re going to give our friends on Ninth Street an important lesson in the currency of punishment.” A blow for every hundred, he meant. A broken bone for every thousand. A human life for every million. Lee had seen it happen to countless thieves and swindlers, watched their fragile bodies spraying outward from themselves like the glass from a hurled bottle, shattered and gleaming on the pavement. Where could he hide? Where? Vannatta knew the city down to its pores, its nerve endings, its last filthy alley and its last wind-etched bridge bearing. He could find Lee wherever he went. He could snap his fingers and kill a man. He never rested, never slept. Oh my sweet Lord above.