"Don't call it a thing. Respect it, Jack. It's a well-designed weapon. Practical, lightweight, easy to conceal. Get to know your handgun. It's only a question of time as to when you'll want to use it."

　　"When will I want to use it?"

　　"Do we live on the same planet? What century is this? Look how easy I got into your backyard. I pry open a window and I'm in the house. I could have been a professional burglar, an escaped con, one of those drifters with a skimpy beard. A wandering killer type that follows the sun. A weekend mass murderer with an office job. Take your choice."

　　"Maybe you need a gun where you live. Take it back. We don't want it."

　　"I got myself a combat magnum parked near my bed. I hate to tell you what mischief it can cause with the placement of a man's features."

　　He gave me a canny look. I resumed staring at the gun. It occurred to me that this was the ultimate device for determining one's competence in the world. I bounced it in the palm of my hand, sniffed the steely muzzle. What does it mean to a person, beyond his sense of competence and well-being and personal worth, to carry a lethal weapon, to handle it well, be ready and willing to use it? A concealed lethal weapon. It was a secret, it was a second life, a second self, a dream, a spell, a plot, a delirium.

　　German-made.

　　"Don't tell Babette. She'd get real put out if she knew you were harboring a firearm."

　　"I don't want it, Vern. Take it back."

　　"Don't put it just anywhere neither. A kid gets ahold of it, you have an immediate situation. Be smart. Think about where to put it so it'll be right there at the time. Figure out your field of fire beforehand. If you have an intruder situation, where will he enter, how will he approach the valuables? If you have a mental, where is he going to come at you from? Mentals are unpredictable because they don't know themselves what they're doing. They approach from wherever, from a tree limb, a branch. Think about putting jagged glass on your window ledges. Learn dropping to the floor fast."

　　"We don't want guns in our little town."

　　"Be smart for once in your life," he told me in the dark car. "It's not what you want that matters."

　　Early the next day a crew came to fix the street. Vernon was out there at once, watching them jackhammer and haul the asphalt, staying close to them as they leveled the smoking pitch. When the workmen left, his visit seemed to end, collapsed into its own lading momentum. We began to see a blank space where Vernon stood. He regarded us from a prudent distance, as if we were strangers with secret resentments. An indefinable fatigue collected around our efforts to converse.

　　Out on the sidewalk, Babette held him and wept. For his departure he'd shaved, washed the car, put a blue bandanna around his neck. She could not seem to get enough of crying. She looked into his face and cried. She cried embracing him. She gave him a Styrofoam hamper full of sandwiches, chicken and coffee, and she cried as he set it down amid the gouged-out seat stuffing and slashed upholstery.

　　''She's a good girl," he told me grimly.

　　In the driver's seat he ran his fingers through his ducktail, checking himself in the rearview mirror. Then he coughed a while, giving us one more episode of lashing phlegm. Babette wept anew. We leaned toward the window on the passenger's side, watching him hunch around into his driving posture, setting himself casually between the door and the seat, his left arm hanging out the window.

　　"Don't worry about me," he said. "The little limp means nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It's healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can't harm you as long as it doesn't settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough's all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia's all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less minute to do useful things. To cough or limp. Never mind the women. The women are all right. We rent a cassette and have some sex. It pumps blood to the heart. Forget the cigarettes. I like to tell myself I'm getting away with something. Let the Mormons quit smoking. They'll die of something just as bad. The money's no problem. I'm all set incomewise. Zero pensions, zero savings, zero stocks and bonds. So you don't have to worry about that. That's all taken care of. Never mind the teeth. The teeth are all right. The looser they are, the more you can wobble them with your tongue. It gives the tongue something to do. Don't worry about the shakes. Everybody gets the shakes now and then. It's only the left hand anyway. The way to enjoy the shakes is pretend it's somebody else's hand. Never mind the sudden and unexplained weight loss. There's no point eating what you can't see. Don't worry about the eyes. The eyes can't get any worse than they are now. Forget the mind completely. The mind goes before the body. That's the way it's supposed to be. So don't worry about the mind. The mind is all right. Worry about the car. The steering's all awry. The brakes were recalled three times. The hood shoots up on pothole terrain."

　　Deadpan. Babette thought this last part was funny. The part about the car. I stood there amazed, watching her walk in little circles of hilarity, weak-kneed, shambling, all her fears and defenses adrift in the sly history of his voice.

　　34

　　The time of spiders arrived. Spiders in high corners of rooms. Cocoons wrapped in spiderwork. Silvery dancing strands that seemed the pure play of light, light as evanescent news, ideas borne on light. The voice upstairs said: "Now watch this. Joanie is trying to snap Ralph's patella with a bushido stun kick. She makes contact, he crumples, she runs."

　　Denise passed word to Babette that Steffie was routinely examining her chest for lumps. Babette told me.

　　Murray and I extended the range of our contemplative walks. In town one day he went into small embarrassed raptures over diagonal parking. There was a charm and a native sense to the rows of slanted vehicles. This form of parking was an indispensable part of the American townscape, even when the cars were foreign-made. The arrangement was not only practical but avoided confrontation, the sexual assault motif of front-to-back parking in teeming city streets.

　　Murray says it is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.

　　The two-story world of an ordinary main street. Modest, sensible, commercial in an unhurried way, a prewar way, with prewar traces of architectural detail surviving in the upper stories, in copper cornices and leaded windows, in the amphora frieze above the dime-store entrance.

　　It made me think of the Law of Ruins.

　　I told Murray that Albert Speer wanted to build structures that would decay gloriously, impressively, like Roman ruins. No rusty hulks or gnarled steel slums. He knew that Hitler would be in favor of anything that might astonish posterity. He did a drawing of a Reich structure that was to be built of special materials, allowing it to crumble romantically—a drawing of fallen walls, half columns furled in wisteria. The ruin is built into the creation, I said, which shows a certain nostalgia behind the power principle, or a tendency to organize the longings of future generations.

　　Murray said, "I don't trust anybody's nostalgia but my own. Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It's a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country."

　　A humid spell of weather. I opened the refrigerator, peered into the freezer compartment. A strange crackling sound came off the plastic food wrap, the snug covering for half eaten things, the Ziploc sacks of livers and ribs, all gleaming with sleety crystals. A cold dry sizzle. A sound like some element breaking down, resolving itself into Freon vapors. An eerie static, insistent but near subliminal, that made me think of wintering souls, some form of dormant life approaching the threshold of perception.

　　No one was around. I walked across the kitchen, opened the compactor drawer and looked inside the trash bag. An oozing cube of semi-mangled cans, clothes hangers, animal bones and other refuse. The bottles were broken, the cartons flat. Product colors were undiminished in brightness and intensity. Fats, juices and heavy sludges seeped through layers of pressed vegetable matter. I felt like an archaeologist about to sift through a finding of tool fragments and assorted cave trash. It was about ten days since Denise had compacted the Dylar. That particular round of garbage had almost certainly been taken outside and collected by now. Even if it hadn't, the tablets had surely been demolished by the compactor ram.

　　These facts were helpful in my efforts to believe that I was merely passing time, casually thumbing through the garbage.

　　I unfolded the bag cuffs, released the latch and lifted out the bag. The full stench hit me with shocking force. Was this ours? Did it belong to us? Had we created it? I took the bag out to the garage and emptied it. The compressed bulk sat there like an ironic modern sculpture, massive, squat, mocking. I jabbed at it with the butt end of a rake and then spread the material over the concrete floor. I picked through it item by item, mass by shapeless mass, wondering why I felt guilty, a violator of privacy, uncovering intimate and perhaps shameful secrets. It was hard not to be distracted by some of the things they'd chosen to submit to the Juggernaut appliance. But why did I feel like a household spy? Is garbage so private? Does it glow at the core with personal heat, with signs of one's deepest nature, clues to secret yearnings, humiliating flaws? What habits, fetishes, addictions, inclinations? What solitary acts, behavioral ruts? I found crayon drawings of a figure with full breasts and male genitals. There was a long piece of twine that contained a series of knots and loops. It seemed at first a random construction. Looking more closely I thought I detected a complex relationship between the size of the loops, the degree of the knots （single or double） and the intervals between knots with loops and freestanding knots. Some kind of occult geometry or symbolic festoon of obsessions. I found a banana skin with a tampon inside. Was this the dark underside of consumer consciousness? I came across a horrible clotted mass of hair, soap, ear swabs, crushed roaches, flip-top rings, sterile pads smeared with pus and bacon fat, strands of frayed dental floss, fragments of ballpoint refills, toothpicks still displaying bits of impaled food. There was a pair of shredded undershorts with lipstick markings, perhaps a memento of the Grayview Motel.

　　But no sign anywhere of a shattered amber vial or the remains of those saucer-shaped tablets. It didn't matter. I would face whatever had to be faced without chemical assistance. Babette had said Dylar was fool's gold. She was right, Winnie Richards was right, Denise was right. They were my friends and they were right.

　　I decided to take another physical. When the results were in, I went to see Dr. Chakravarty in his little office in the medical building. He sat there reading the printout, a man with a puffy face and shadowy eyes, his long hands set flat on the desk, his head wagging slightly.

　　"Here you are again, Mr. Gladney. We see you so often these days. How nice it is to find a patient who regards his status seriously."

　　"What status?"

　　"His status as a patient. People tend to forget they are patients. Once they leave the doctor's office or the hospital, they simply put it out of their minds. But you are all permanent patients, like it or not. I am the doctor, you the patient. Doctor doesn't cease being doctor at close of day. Neither should patient. People expect doctor to go about things with the utmost seriousness, skill and experience. But what about patient? How professional is he?"

　　He did not look up from the printout as he said these things in his meticulous singsong.

　　"I don't think I like your potassium very much at all," he went on. "Look here. A bracketed number with computerized stars."

　　"What does that mean?"

　　"There's no point your knowing at this stage."

　　"How was my potassium last time?"

　　"Quite average in fact. But perhaps this is a false elevation. We are dealing with whole blood. There is the question of a gel barrier. Do you know what this means?" '"No."

　　"There isn't time to explain. We have true elevation and false elevations. This is all you have to know."

　　"Exactly how elevated is my potassium?"

　　"It has gone through the roof, evidently."

　　"What might this be a sign of?"

　　"It could mean nothing, it could mean a very great deal indeed."

　　"How great?"

　　"Now we are getting into semantics," he said.

　　"What I'm trying to get at is could this potassium be an indication of some condition just beginning to manifest itself, some condition caused perhaps by an ingestion, an exposure, an involuntary spillage-intake, some substance in the air or the rain?"

　　"Have you in fact come into contact with such a substance?"

　　"No," I said.

　　"Are you sure?"

　　Positive. Why, do the numbers show some sign of possible exposure?"

　　"If you haven't been exposed, then they couldn't very well show a sign, could they?"

　　'Then we agree," I said.

　　"Tell me this, Mr. Gladney, in all honesty. How do you feel?"

　　"To the best of my knowledge, I feel very well. First-rate. I feel better than I have in years, relatively speaking."

　　"What do you mean, relatively speaking?"

　　"Given the fact I'm older now."

　　He looked at me carefully. He seemed to be trying to stare me down. Then he made a note on my record. I might have been a child facing the school principal over a series of unexcused absences.

　　I said, "How can we tell whether the elevation is true or false?"

　　"I will send you to Glassboro for further tests. Would you like that? There is a brand-new facility called Autumn Harvest Farms. They have gleaming new equipment. You won't be disappointed, wait and see. It gleams, absolutely."

　　"All right. But is potassium the only thing we have to watch?"

　　"The less you know, the better. Go to Glassboro. Tell them to delve thoroughly. No stone unturned. Tell them to send you back to me with sealed results. I will analyze them down to the smallest detail. I will absolutely pick them apart. They have the know-how at Harvest Farms, the most delicate of instruments, I promise you. The best of third-world technicians, the latest procedures."

　　His bright smile hung there like a peach on a tree.

　　"Together, as doctor and patient, we can do things that neither of us could do separately. There is not enough emphasis on prevention. An ounce of prevention, goes the saying. Is this a proverb or a maxim? Surely professor can tell us."

　　"I'll need time to think about it."

　　"In any case, prevention is the thing, isn't it? I've just seen the latest issue of American Mortician. Quite a shocking picture. The industry is barely adequate to accommodating the vast numbers of dead."

　　Babette was right. He spoke English beautifully. I went home and started throwing things away. I threw away fishing lures, dead tennis balls, torn luggage. I ransacked the attic for old furniture, discarded lampshades, warped screens, bent curtain rods. I threw away picture frames, shoe trees, umbrella stands, wall brackets, highchairs and cribs, collapsible TV trays, beanbag chairs, broken turntables. I threw away shelf paper, faded stationery, manuscripts of articles I'd written, galley proofs of the same articles, the journals in which the articles were printed. The more things I threw away, the more I found. The house was a sepia maze of old and tired things. There was an immensity of things, an overburdening weight, a connection, a mortality. I stalked the rooms, flinging things into cardboard boxes. Plastic electric fans, burnt-out toasters, Star Trek needlepoints. It took well over an hour to get everything down to the sidewalk. No one helped me. I didn't want help or company or human understanding. I just wanted to get the stuff out of the house. I sat on the front steps alone, waiting for a sense of ease and peace to settle in the air around me.

　　A woman passing on the street said, "A decongestant, an antihistamine, a cough suppressant, a pain reliever."

　　35

　　Babette could not get enough of talk radio. "I hate my face," a woman said. 'This is an ongoing problem with me for years. Of all the faces you could have given me, lookswise, this one has got to be the worst. But how can I not look? Even if you took all my mirrors away, I would still find a way to look. How can I not look on the one hand? But I hate it on the other. In other words I still look. Because whose face is it, obviously? What do I do, forget it's there, pretend it's someone else's? What I'm trying to do with this call, Mel, is find other people who have a problem accepting their face. Here are some questions to get us started. What did you look like before you were born? What will you look like in the afterlife, regardless of race or color?"

　　Babette wore her sweatsuit almost all the time. It was a plain gray outfit, loose and drooping. She cooked in it, drove the kids to school, wore it to the hardware store and the stationer's. I thought about it for a while, decided there was nothing excessively odd in this, nothing to worry about, no reason to believe she was sinking into apathy and despair.

　　"How do you feel?" I said. 'Tell the truth."

　　"What is the truth? I'm spending more time with Wilder. Wilder helps me get by."

　　"I depend on you to be the healthy outgoing former Babette. I need this as badly as you do, if not more."

　　"What is need? We all need. Where is the uniqueness in this?"

　　"Are you feeling basically the same?"

　　"You mean am I sick unto death? The fear hasn't gone, Jack."

　　"We have to stay active."

　　"Active helps but Wilder helps more."

　　"Is it my imagination," I said, "or is he talking less than ever?"

　　'There's enough talk. What is talk? I don't want him to talk. The less he talks, the better."

　　"Denise worries about you."

　　"Who?"

　　"Denise."

　　"Talk is radio," she said.

　　Denise would not let her mother go running unless she promised to apply layers of sunscreen gel. The girl would follow her out of the house to dash a final glob of lotion across the back of Babette's neck, then stand on her toes to stroke it evenly in. She tried to cover every exposed spot. The brows, the lids. They had bitter arguments about the need for this. Denise said the sun was a risk to a fair-skinned person. Her mother claimed the whole business was publicity for disease.

　　"Besides, I'm a runner," she said. "A runner by definition is less likely to be struck by damaging rays than a standing or walking figure."

　　Denise spun in my direction, arms flung out, her body beseeching me to set the woman straight.

　　'The worst rays are direct," Babette said. "This means the faster a person is moving, the more likely she is to receive only partial hits, glancing rays, deflections."

　　Denise let her mouth fall open, bent her body at the knees. In truth I wasn't sure her mother was wrong.

　　"It is all a corporate tie-in," Babette said in summary. 'The sunscreen, the marketing, the fear, the disease. You can't have one without the other."

　　I took Heinrich and his snake-handling buddy, Orest Mercator, out to the commercial strip for dinner. It was four in the afternoon, the time of day when Orest's training schedule called for his main meal. At his request we went to Vincent's Casa Mario, a blockhouse structure with slit windows that seemed part of some coastal defense system.

　　I'd found myself thinking of Orest and his snakes and wanted a chance to talk to him further.

　　We sat in a blood-red booth. Orest gripped the tasseled menu with his chunky hands. His shoulders seemed broader than ever, the serious head partly submerged between them.

　　"How's the training going?" I said.

　　"I'm slowing it down a little. I don't want to peak too soon. I know how to take care of my body."

　　"Heinrich told me you sleep sitting up, to prepare for the cage."

　　"I perfected that. I'm doing different stuff now."

　　"Like what?"

　　"Loading up on carbohydrates."

　　"That's why we came here," Heinrich said.

　　"I load up a little more each day."

　　"It's because of the huge energy he'll be burning up in the cage, being alert, tensing himself when a mamba approaches, whatever."

　　We ordered pasta and water.

　　'Tell me, Orest. As you get closer and closer to the time, are you beginning to feel anxious?"

　　"What anxious? I just want to get in the cage. Sooner the better. This is what Orest Mercator is all about."

　　"You're not nervous? You don't think about what might happen?"

　　"He likes to be positive," Heinrich said. "This is the thing today with athletes. You don't dwell on the negative."

　　"Tell me this, then. What is the negative? What do you think of when you think of the negative?"

　　"Here's what I think. I'm nothing without the snakes. That's the only negative. The negative is if it doesn't come off, if the humane society doesn't let me in the cage. How can I be the best at what I do if they don't let me do it?"

　　I liked to watch Orest eat. He inhaled food according to aerodynamic principles. Pressure differences, intake velocities. He went at it silently and purposefully, loading up, centering himself, appearing to grow more self-important with each clump of starch that slid over his tongue.

　　"You know you can get bitten. We talked about it last time. Do you think about what happens after the fangs close on your wrist? Do you think about dying? This is what I want to know. Does death scare you? Does it haunt your thoughts? Let me put my cards on the table, Orest. Are you afraid to die? Do you experience fear? Does fear make you tremble or sweat? Do you feel a shadow fall across the room when you think of the cage, the snakes, the fangs?"

　　"What did I read just the other day? There are more people dead today than in the rest of world history put together. What's one extra? I'd just as soon die while I'm trying to put Orest Mercator's name in the record book."

　　I looked at my son. I said, "Is he trying to tell us there are more people dying in this twenty-four-hour period than in the rest of human history up to now?"

　　"He's saying the dead are greater today than ever before, combined."

　　"What dead? Define the dead."

　　"He's saying people now dead."

　　"What do you mean, now dead? Everybody who's dead is now dead."

　　"He's saying people in graves. The known dead. Those you can count."

　　I was listening intently, trying to grasp what they meant. A second plate of food came for Orest.

　　"But people sometimes stay in graves for hundreds of years. Is he saying there are more dead people in graves than anywhere else?"

　　"It depends on what you mean by anywhere else."

　　"I don't know what I mean. The drowned. The blown-to-bits."

　　"There are more dead now than ever before. That's all he's saying."

　　I looked at him a while longer. Then I turned to Orest.

　　"You are intentionally facing death. You are setting out to do exactly what people spend their lives trying not to do. Die. I want to know why."

　　"My trainer says, 'Breathe, don't think.' He says, 'Be a snake and you'll know the stillness of a snake.'"

　　"He has a trainer now," Heinrich said.

　　"He's a Sunny Moslem," Orest said.

　　"Iron City has some Sunnies out near the airport."

　　"The Sunnies are mostly Korean. Except mine's an Arab, I think."

　　I said, "Don't you mean the Moonies are mostly Korean?"

　　"He's a Sunny," Orest said.

　　"But it's the Moonies who are mostly Korean. Except they're not, of course. It's only the leadership."

　　They thought about this. I watched Orest eat. I watched him pitchfork the spaghetti down his gullet. The serious head sat motionless, an entryway for the food. that flew off the mechanical fork. What purpose he conveyed, what sense of a fixed course of action pursued absolutely. If each of us is the center of his or her existence, Orest seemed intent on enlarging the center, making it everything. Is this what athletes do, occupy the self more fully? It's possible we envy them for a prowess that has little to do with sport. In building toward a danger, they escape it in some deeper sense, they dwell in some angelic scan, able to leap free of everyday dying. But was Orest an athlete? He would do nothing but sit— sit for sixty-seven days in a glass cage, waiting to be publicly bitten.

　　"You will not be able to defend yourself," I said. "Not only that but you will be in a cage with the most slimy, feared and repulsive creatures on earth. Snakes. People have nightmares about snakes. Crawling slithering cold-blooded egg-laying vertebrates. People go to psychiatrists. Snakes have a special slimy place in our collective unconscious. And you are voluntarily getting into an enclosed space with thirty or forty of the most venomous snakes in the world."

　　"What slimy? They're not slimy."

　　"The famous sliminess is a myth," Heinrich said. "He's getting into a cage with Gaboon vipers with two-inch fangs. Maybe a dozen mambas. The mamba happens to be the fastest-moving land snake in the world. Isn't sliminess a little besides the point?"

　　"That's my argument exactly. Fangs. Snakebite. Fifty thousand people a year die of snakebite. It was on television last night."

　　"Everything was on television last night," Orest said.

　　I admired the reply. I guess I admired him too. He was creating an imperial self out of some tabloid aspiration. He would train relentlessly, speak of himself in the third person, load up on carbohydrates. His trainer was always there, his friends drawn to the aura of inspired risk. He would grow in life-strength as he neared the time.

　　"His trainer is teaching him how to breathe in the old way, the Sunny Moslem way. A snake is one thing. A person can be a thousand things."

　　"Be a snake," Orest said.

　　"People are getting interested," Heinrich said. "It's like it's starting to build. Like he's really going to do it. Like they believe him now. The total package."

　　If the self is death, how can it also be stronger than death?

　　I called for the check. Extraneous flashes of Mr. Gray. A drizzling image in gray shorts and socks. I lifted several bills from my wallet, rubbing hard with my fingers to make sure there weren't others stuck to them. In the motel mirror was my full-length wife, white-bodied, full-bosomed, pink-kneed, stub-toed, wearing only peppermint legwarmers, like a sophomore leading cheers at an orgy.

　　When we got home, I found her ironing in the bedroom.

　　"What are you doing?" I said.

　　"Listening to the radio. Except it just went off."

　　"If you thought we were finished with Mr. Gray, it's time to bring you up to date."

　　"Are we talking about Mr. Gray the composite or Mr. Gray the individual? It makes all the difference."

　　"It certainly does. Denise compacted the pills."

　　"Does that mean we're all through with the composite?"

　　"I don't know what it means."

　　"Does it mean you've turned your male attention to the individual in the motel?"

　　"I didn't say that."

　　"You don't have to say it. You're a male. A male follows the path of homicidal rage. It is the biological path. The path of plain dumb blind male biology."

　　"How smug, ironing handkerchiefs."

　　"Jack, when you die, I will just fall to the floor and stay there. Eventually, maybe, after a very long time, they will find me crouching in the dark, a woman without speech or gesture. But in the meantime I will not help you find this man or his medication."

　　'The eternal wisdom of those who iron and sew."

　　"Ask yourself what it is you want more, to ease your ancient fear or to revenge your childish dopey injured male pride."

　　I went down the hall to help Steffie finish packing. A sports announcer said: "They're not booing—they're saying, 'Bruce, Bruce.'" Denise and Wilder were in there with her. I gathered from the veiled atmosphere that Denise had been giving confidential advice on visits to distant parents. Steffie's flight would originate in Boston and make two stops between Iron City and Mexico City but she wouldn't have to change planes, so the situation seemed manageable.

　　"How do I know I'll recognize my mother?"

　　"You saw her last year," I said. "You liked her."

　　"What if she refuses to send me back?"

　　"We have Denise to thank for that idea, don't we? Thank you, Denise. Don't worry. She'll send you back."

　　"What if she doesn't?" Denise said. "It happens, you know."

　　"It won't happen this time."

　　"You'll have to kidnap her back."

　　"That won't be necessary."

　　"What if it is?" Steffie said.

　　"Would you do it?" Denise said.

　　"It won't happen in a million years."

　　"It happens all the time," she said. "One parent takes the child, the other parent hires kidnappers to get her back."

　　"What if she keeps me?" Steffie said. "What will you do?"

　　"He'll have to send people to Mexico. That's the only thing he can do."

　　"But will he do it?" she said.

　　"Your mother knows she can't keep you," I said. "She travels all the time. It's out of the question."

　　"Don't worry," Denise told her. "No matter what he says now, he'll get you back when the time comes."

　　Steffie looked at me with deep interest and curiosity. I told her I would travel to Mexico myself and do whatever had to be done to get her back here. She looked at Denise.

　　"It's better to hire people," the older girl said helpfully. "That way you have someone who's done it before."

　　Babette came in and picked up Wilder.

　　'There you are," she said. "We're going to the airport with Steffie. Yes we are. Yes yes."

　　"Bruce, Bruce."

　　The next day there was an evacuation for noxious odor. SIMUVAC vehicles were everywhere. Men in Mylex suits patrolled the streets, many of them carrying instruments to measure harm. The consulting firm that conceived the evacuation gathered a small group of computer-screened volunteers in a police van in the supermarket parking lot. There was half an hour of self-induced gagging and vomiting. The episode was recorded on videotape and sent somewhere for analysis.

　　Three days later an actual noxious odor drifted across the river. A pause, a careful thoughtfulness, seemed to settle on the town. Traffic moved more slowly, drivers were exceedingly polite. There was no sign of official action, no jitneys or ambulettes painted in primary colors. People avoided looking at each other directly. An irritating sting in the nostrils, a taste of copper on the tongue. As time passed, the will to do nothing seemed to deepen, to fix itself firmly. There were those who denied they smelled anything at all. It is always that way with odors. There were those who professed not to see the irony of their inaction. They'd taken part in the SIMUVAC exercise but were reluctant to flee now. There were those who wondered what caused the odor, those who looked worried, those who said the absence of technical personnel meant there was nothing to worry about. Our eyes began to water.

　　About three hours after we'd first become aware of it, the vapor suddenly lifted, saving us from our formal deliberations.

　　36

　　Now and then I thought of the Zumwalt automatic hidden in the bedroom.

　　The time of dangling insects arrived. White houses with caterpillars dangling from the eaves. White stones in driveways. You can walk at night down the middle of the street and hear women talking on the telephone. Wanner weather produces voices in the dark. They are talking about their adolescent sons. How big, how fast. The sons are almost frightening. The quantities they eat. The way they loom in doorways. These are the days that are full of wormy bugs. They are in the grass, stuck to the siding, hanging in the air, hanging from the trees and eaves, stuck to the window screens. The women talk long-distance to the grandparents of the growing boys. They share the Trimline phone, beamish old folks in hand-knit sweaters on fixed incomes.

　　What happens to them when the commercial ends?

　　I got a call myself one night. The operator said, 'There's a Mother Devi that wishes to talk collect to a Jack Gladney. Do you accept?"

　　"Hello, Janet. What do you want?"

　　"Just to say hello. To ask how you are. We haven't talked in ages."

　　"Talked?"

　　"Swami wants to know if our son is coming to the ashram this summer."

　　"Our son?"

　　"Yours, mine and his. Swami regards the children of his followers as his children."

　　"I sent a daughter to Mexico last week. When she gets back, I'll be ready to talk about the son."

　　"Swami says Montana will be good for the boy. He will grow out, fill out. These are his touchy years."

　　"Why are you calling? Seriously."

　　"Just to greet you, Jack. We greet each other here."

　　"Is he one of those whimsical swamis with a snow-white beard? Sort of fun to look at?"

　　"We're serious people here. The cycle of history has but four ages. We happen to be in the last of these. There is little time for whimsy."

　　Her tiny piping voice bounced down to me from a hollow ball in geosynchronous orbit.

　　"If Heinrich wants to visit you this summer, it's all right with me. Let him ride horses, fish for trout. But í don't want him getting involved in something personal and intense, like religion. There's already been some kidnap talk around here. People are edgy."

　　"The last age is the Age of Darkness."

　　"Fine. Now tell me what you want."

　　"Nothing. I have everything. Peace of mind, purpose, true fellowship. I only wish to greet you. I greet you, Jack. I miss you. I miss your voice. I only wish to talk a while, pass a moment or two in friendly reminiscence."

　　I hung up and went for a walk. The women were in their lighted homes, talking on the phone. Did swami have twinkling eyes? Would he be able to answer the boy's questions where I had failed, provide assurances where I had incited bickering and debate? How final is the Age of Darkness? Does it mean supreme destruction, a night that swallows existence so completely that I am cured of my own lonely dying? I listened to the women talk. All sound, all souls.

　　When I got home I found Babette in her sweatsuit by the bedroom window, staring into the night.

　　Delegates to the Hitler conference began arriving. About ninety Hitler scholars would spend the three days of the conference attending lectures, appearing on panels, going to movies. They would wander the campus with their names lettered in gothic type on laminated tags pinned to their lapels. They would exchange Hitler gossip, spread the usual sensational rumors about the last days in the führerbunker.

　　It was interesting to see how closely they resembled each other despite the wide diversity of national and regional backgrounds. They were cheerful and eager, given to spitting when they laughed, given to outdated dress, homeliness, punctuality. They seemed to have a taste for sweets.

　　I welcomed them in the starkly modern chapel. I spoke in German, from notes, for five minutes. I talked mainly about Hitler's mother, brother and dog. His dog's name was Wolf. This word is the same in English and German. Most of the words I used in my address were the same or nearly the same in both languages. I'd spent days with the dictionary, compiling lists of such words. My remarks were necessarily disjointed and odd. I made many references to Wolf, many more to the mother and the brother, a few to shoes and socks, a few to jazz, beer and baseball. Of course there was Hitler himself. I spoke the name often, hoping it would overpower my insecure sentence structure.

　　The rest of the time I tried to avoid the Germans in the group. Even in my black gown and dark glasses, with my name in Nazi typeface over my heart, I felt feeble in their presence, death-prone, listening to them produce their guttural sounds, their words, their heavy metal. They told Hitler jokes and played pinochle. All I could do was mutter a random monosyllable, rock with empty laughter. I spent a lot of time in my office, hiding.

　　Whenever I remembered the gun, lurking in a stack of undershirts like a tropical insect, I felt a small intense sensation pass through me. Whether pleasurable or fearful I wasn't sure. I knew it mainly as a childhood moment, the profound stir of secret-keeping.

　　What a sly device a handgun is. One so small in particular. An intimate and cunning thing, a secret history of the man who owns it. I recalled how I'd felt some days earlier, trying to find the Dylar. Like someone spying on the family garbage. Was I immersing myself, little by little, in a secret life? Did I think it was my last defense against the ruin worked out for me so casually by the force or nonforce, the principle or power or chaos that determines such things? Perhaps I was beginning to understand my ex-wives and their ties to intelligence.

　　The Hitler scholars assembled, wandered, ate voraciously, laughed through oversized teeth. I sat at my desk in the dark, thinking of secrets. Are secrets a tunnel to a dreamworld where you control events?

　　In the evening I sped out to the airport to meet my daughter's plane. She was excited and happy, wore Mexican things. She said the people who sent her mother books to review wouldn't leave her alone. Dana was getting big thick novels every day, writing reviews which she microfilmed and sent to a secret archive. She complained of jangled nerves, periods of deep spiritual fatigue. She told Steffie she was thinking of coming in from the cold.

　　In the morning I sped out to Glassboro to take the further tests my doctor had advised, at Autumn Harvest Farms. The seriousness of such an occasion is directly proportionate to the number of bodily emissions you are asked to cull for analysis. I carried with me several specimen bottles, each containing some melancholy waste or secretion. Alone in the glove compartment rode an ominous plastic locket, which I'd reverently enclosed in three interlocking Baggies, successively twist-tied. Here was a daub of the most solemn waste of all, certain to be looked upon by the technicians on duty with the mingled deference, awe and dread we have come to associate with exotic religions of the world.

　　But first I had to find the place. It turned out to be a functional pale brick building, one story, with slab floors and bright lighting. Why would such a place be called Autumn Harvest Farms? Was this an attempt to balance the heartlessness of their gleaming precision equipment? Would a quaint name fool us into thinking we live in pre-cancerous times? What kind of condition might we expect to have diagnosed in a facility called Autumn Harvest Farms? Whooping cough, croup? A touch of the grippe? Familiar old farmhouse miseries calling for bed rest, a deep chest massage with soothing Vicks VapoRub. Would someone read to us from David Copperfield?

　　I had misgivings. They took my samples away, sat me down at a computer console. In response to questions on the screen I tapped out the story of my life and death, little by little, each response eliciting further questions in an unforgiving progression of sets and subsets. I lied three times. They gave me a loose-fitting garment and a wristband ID. They sent me down narrow corridors for measuring and weighing, for blood-testing, brain-graphing, the recording of currents traversing my heart. They scanned and probed in room after room, each cubicle appearing slightly smaller than the one before it, more harshly lighted, emptier of human furnishings. Always a new technician. Always faceless fellow patients in the mazelike halls, crossing from room to room, identically gowned. No one said hello. They attached me to a seesaw device, turned me upside down and let me hang for sixty seconds. A printout emerged from a device nearby. They put me on a treadmill and told me to run, run. Instruments were strapped to my thighs, electrodes planted on my chest. They inserted me in an imaging block, some kind of computerized scanner. Someone sat typing at a console, transmitting a message to the machine that would make my body transparent. I heard magnetic winds, saw flashes of northern light. People crossed the hall like wandering souls, holding their urine aloft in pale beakers. I stood in a room the size of a closet. They told me to hold one finger in front of my face, close my left eye. The panel slid shut, a white light flashed. They were trying to help me, to save me.

　　Eventually, dressed again, I sat across a desk from a nervous young man in a white smock. He studied my file, mumbling something about being new at this. I was surprised to find that this fact did not upset me. I think I was even relieved.

　　"How long before the results are in?"

　　"The results are in," he said.

　　"I thought we were here for a general discussion. The human part. What the machines can't detect. In two or three days the actual numbers would be ready." "The numbers are ready."

　　"I'm not sure I'm ready. All those gleaming devices are a little unsettling. I could easily imagine a perfectly healthy person being made ill just taking these tests."

　　"Why should anyone be made ill? These are the most accurate test devices anywhere. We have sophisticated computers to analyze the data. This equipment saves lives. Believe me, I've seen it happen. We have equipment that works better than the latest X-ray machine or CAT scanner. We can see more deeply, more accurately."

　　He seemed to be gaining confidence. He was a mild-eyed fellow with a poor complexion and reminded me of the boys at the supermarket who stand at the end of the checkout counter bagging merchandise.

　　"Here's how we usually start," he said. "I ask questions based on the printout and then you answer to the best of your ability. When we're all finished, I give you the printout in a sealed envelope and you take it to your doctor for a paid visit."

　　"Good."

　　"Good. We usually start by asking how do you feel."

　　"Based on the printout?"

　　"Just how do you feel," he said in a mild voice.

　　"In my own mind, in real terms, I feel relatively sound, pending confirmation."

　　"We usually go on to tired. Have you recently been feeling tired?"

　　"What do people usually say?"

　　"Mild fatigue is a popular answer."

　　"I could say exactly that and be convinced in my own mind it's a fair and accurate description."

　　He seemed satisfied with the reply and made a bold notation on the page in front of him.

　　"What about appetite?" he said.

　　"I could go either way on that."

　　'That's more or less how I could go, based on the printout."

　　"In other words you're saying sometimes I have appetitive reinforcement, sometimes I don't."

　　"Are you telling me or asking me?"

　　"It depends on what the numbers say."

　　"Then we agree."

　　"Good."

　　"Good," he said. "Now what about sleep? We usually do sleep before we ask the person if they'd like some decaf or tea. We don't provide sugar."

　　"Do you get a lot of people who have trouble sleeping?"

　　"Only in the last stages."

　　"The last stages of sleep? Do you mean they wake up early in the morning and can't get back to sleep?"

　　'The last stages of life."

　　'That's what I thought. Good. The only thing I have is some low threshold animation."

　　"Good."

　　"I get a little restless. Who doesn't?"

　　'Toss and turn?"

　　'Toss," I said.

　　"Good."

　　"Good."

　　He made some notes. It seemed to be going well. I was heartened to see how well it was going. I turned down his offer of tea, which seemed to please him. We were moving right along.

　　"Here's where we ask about smoking."

　　'That's easy. The answer is no. And it's not a matter of having stopped five or ten years ago. I've never smoked. Even when I was a teenager. Never tried it. Never saw the need."

　　'That's always a plus."

　　I felt tremendously reassured and grateful.

　　"We're moving right along, aren't we?"

　　"Some people like to drag it out," he said. 'They get interested in their own condition. It becomes almost like a hobby."

　　"Who needs nicotine? Not only that, I rarely drink coffee and certainly never with caffeine. Can't understand what people see in all this artificial stimulation. I get high just walking in the woods."

　　"No caffeine always helps."

　　Yes, I thought. Reward my virture. Give me life.

　　"Then there's milk," I said. "People aren't happy with the caffeine and the sugar. They want the milk too. All those fatty acids. Haven't touched milk since I was a kid. Haven't touched heavy cream. Eat bland foods. Rarely touch hard liquor. Never knew what the fuss was all about. Water. That's my beverage. A man can trust a glass of water."

　　I waited for him to tell me I was adding years to my life.

　　"Speaking of water," he said, "have you ever been exposed to industrial contaminants?"

　　"What?"

　　"Toxic material in the air or water."

　　"Is this what you usually ask after the cigarettes?"

　　"It's not a scheduled question."

　　"You mean do I work with a substance like asbestos? Absolutely not. I'm a teacher. Teaching is my life. I've spent my life on a college campus. Where does asbestos fit into this?"

　　"Have you ever heard of Nyodene Derivative?"

　　"Should I have, based on the printout?"

　　"There are traces in your bloodstream."

　　"How can that be if I've never heard of it?"

　　"The magnetic scanner says it's there. I'm looking at bracketed numbers with little stars."

　　"Are you saying the printout shows the first ambiguous signs of a barely perceptible condition deriving from minimal acceptable spillage exposure?"

　　Why was I speaking in this stilted fashion?

　　"The magnetic scanner is pretty clear," he said.

　　What had happened to our tacit agreement to advance smartly through the program without time-consuming and controversial delving?

　　"What happens when someone has traces of this material in his or her blood?"

　　"They get a nebulous mass," he said.

　　"But I thought no one knew for sure what Nyodene D. did to humans. Rats, yes."

　　"You just told me you'd never heard of it. How do you know what it does or doesn't do?"

　　He had me there. I felt I'd been tricked, carried along, taken for a fool.

　　"Knowledge changes every day," he said. "We have some conflicting data that says exposure to this substance can definitely lead to a mass."

　　His confidence was soaring.

　　"Good. Let's get on to the next topic. I'm in something of a hurry."

　　"This is where I hand over the sealed envelope."

　　"Is exercise next? The answer is none. Hate it, refuse to do it."

　　"Good. I am handing over the envelope."

　　"What is a nebulous mass, just out of idle curiosity?"

　　"A possible growth in the body."

　　"And it's called nebulous because you can't get a clear picture of it."

　　"We get very clear pictures. The imaging block takes the clearest pictures humanly possible. It's called a nebulous mass because it has no definite shape, form or limits."

　　"What can it do in terms of worst-case scenario contingencies?"

　　"Cause a person to die."

　　"Speak English, for God's sake. I despise this modern jargon."

　　He took insults well. The angrier I got, the better he liked it. He radiated energy and health.

　　"Now is where I tell you to pay in the outer office."

　　"What about potassium? I came here in the first place because my potassium was way above normal limits."

　　"We don't do potassium."

　　"Good."

　　"Good. The last thing I'm supposed to tell you is take the envelope to your doctor. Your doctor knows the symbols."

　　"So that's it then. Good."

　　"Good," he said.

　　I found myself shaking his hand warmly. Minutes later I was out on the street. A boy walked splay-footed across a public lawn, nudging a soccer ball before him. A second kid sat on the grass, taking off his socks by grabbing the heels and yanking. How literary, I thought peevishly. Streets thick with the details of impulsive life as the hero ponders the latest phase in his dying. It was a partially cloudy day with winds diminishing toward sunset.

　　That night I walked the streets of Blacksmith. The glow of blue-eyed TVs. The voices on the touch-tone phones. Far away the grandparents huddle in a chair, eagerly sharing the receiver as carrier waves modulate into audible signals. It is the voice of their grandson, the growing boy whose face appears in the snapshots set around the phone. Joy rushes to their eyes but it is misted over, infused with a sad and complex knowing. What is the young- ? ster saying to them? His wretched complexion makes him unhappy? He wants to leave school and work full-time at Foodland, bagging groceries? He tells them he likes to bag groceries. It is the one thing in life he finds satisfying. Put the gallon jugs in first, square off the six-packs, double-bag the heavy merch. He does it well, he has the knack, he sees the items arranged in the bag before he touches a thing. It's like Zen, gramma. I snap out two bags, fit one inside the other. Don't bruise the fruit, watch the eggs, put the ice cream in a freezer bag. A thousand people pass me every day but no one ever sees me. I like it, gramma, it's totally un-threatening, it's how I want to spend my life. And so they listen sadly, loving him all the more, their faces pressed against the sleek Trimline, the white Princess in the bedroom, the plain brown Rotary in granddad's paneled basement hideaway. The old gentleman runs a hand through his thatch of white hair, the woman holds her folded specs against her face. Clouds race across the westering moon, the seasons change in somber montage, going deeper into winter stillness, a landscape of silence and ice. Your doctor knows the symbols.

　　37

　　The long walk started at noon. I didn't know it would turn into a long walk. I thought it would be a miscellaneous meditation, Murray and Jack, half an hour's campus meander. But it became a major afternoon, a serious looping Socratic walk, with practical consequences.

　　I met Murray after his car crash seminar and we wandered along the fringes of the campus, past the cedar-shingled condominiums set in the trees in their familiar defensive posture—a cluster of dwellings blending so well with the environment that birds kept flying into the plate-glass windows.

　　"You're smoking a pipe," I said.

　　Murray smiled sneakily.

　　"It looks good. I like it. It works."

　　He lowered his eyes, smiling. The pipe had a long narrow stem and cubical bowl. It was pale brown and resembled a highly disciplined household implement, perhaps an Amish or Shaker antique. I wondered if he'd chosen it to match his somewhat severe chin whiskers. A tradition of stern virtue seemed to hover about his gestures and expressions.

　　"Why can't we be intelligent about death?" I said.

　　"It's obvious."

　　"It is?"

　　"Ivan Ilyich screamed for three days. That's about as intelligent as we get. Tolstoy himself struggled to understand. He feared it terribly."

　　"It's almost as though our fear is what brings it on. If we could learn not to be afraid, we could live forever."

　　"We talk ourselves into it. Is that what you mean?"

　　"I don't know what I mean. I only know I'm just going through the motions of living. I'm technically dead. My body is growing a nebulous mass. They track these things like satellites. All this as a result of a byproduct of insecticide. There's something artificial about my death. It's shallow, unfulfilling. I don't belong to the earth or sky. They ought to carve an aerosol can on my tombstone."

　　"Well said."

　　What did he mean, well said? I vanted him to argue with me, raise my dying to a higher level, make me feel better.

　　"Do you think it's unfair?" he said.

　　"Of course I do. Or is that a trite answer?"

　　He seemed to shrug.

　　"Look how I've lived. Has my life been a mad dash for pleasure? Have I been hellbent on self-destruction, using illegal drugs, driving fast cars, drinking to excess? A little dry sherry at faculty parties. I eat bland foods."

　　"No, you don't."

　　He puffed seriously on his pipe, his cheeks going hollow. We walked in silence for a while.

　　"Do you think your death is premature?" he said.

　　"Every death is premature. There's no scientific reason why we can't live a hundred and fifty years. Some people actually do it, according to a headline I saw at the supermarket."

　　"Do you think it's a sense of incompleteness that causes you the deepest regret? There are things you still hope to accomplish. Work to be done, intellectual challenges to be faced."

　　"The deepest regret is death. The only thing to face is death. This is all I think about. There's only one issue here. I want to live."

　　"From the Robert Wise film of the same name, with Susan Hayward as Barbara Graham, a convicted murderess. Aggressive jazz score by Johnny Mandel."

　　I looked at him.

　　"So you're saying, Jack, that death would be just as threatening even if you'd accomplished all you'd ever hoped to accomplish in your life and work."

　　"Are you crazy? Of course. That's an elitist idea. Would you ask a man who bags groceries if he fears death not because it is death but because there are still some interesting groceries he would like to bag?"

　　"Well said."

　　"This is death. I don't want it to tarry awhile so I can write a monograph. I want it to go away for seventy or eighty years."

　　"Your status as a doomed man lends your words a certain prestige and authority. I like that. As the time nears, I think you'll find that people will be eager to hear what you have to say. They will seek you out."

　　"Are you saying this is a wonderful opportunity for me to win friends?"

　　"I'm saying you can't let down the living by slipping into self-pity and despair. People will depend on you to be brave. What people look for in a dying friend is a stubborn kind of gravel-voiced nobility, a refusal to give in, with moments of indomitable humor. You're growing in prestige even as we speak. You're creating a hazy light about your own body. I have to like it."

　　We walked down the middle of a steep and winding street. There was no one around. The houses here were old and looming, set above narrow stone stairways in partial disrepair.

　　"Do you believe love is stronger than death?"

　　"Not in a million years."

　　"Good," he said. "Nothing is stronger than death. Do you believe the only people who fear death are those who are afraid of life?"

　　"That's crazy. Completely stupid."

　　"Right. We all fear death to some extent. Those who claim otherwise are lying to themselves. Shallow people."

　　"People with their nicknames on their license plates."

　　"Excellent, Jack. Do you believe life without death is somehow incomplete?"

　　"How could it be incomplete? Death is what makes it incomplete."

　　"Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?"

　　"What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing."

　　'True. The most deeply precious things are those we feel secure about. A wife, a child. Does the specter of death make a child more precious?"

　　"No."

　　"No. There is no reason to believe life is more precious because it is fleeting. Here is a statement. A person has to be told he is going to die before he can begin to live life to the fullest. True or false?"

　　"False. Once your death is established, it becomes impossible to live a satisfying life."

　　"Would you prefer to know the exact date and time of your death?"

　　"Absolutely not. It's bad enough to fear the unknown. Faced with the unknown, we can pretend it isn't there. Exact dates would drive many to suicide, if only to beat the system."

　　We crossed an old highway bridge, screened in, littered with sad and faded objects. We followed a footpath along a creek, approached the edge of the high school playing field. Women brought small children here to play in the long-jump pits.

　　"How do I get around it?" I said.

　　"You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature."

　　"It is?"

　　"It's what we invented to conceal the terrible secret of our decaying bodies. But it's also life, isn't it? It prolongs life, it provides new organs for those that wear out. New devices, new techniques every day. Lasers, masers, ultrasound. Give yourself up to it, Jack. Believe in it. They'll insert you in a gleaming tube, irradiate your body with the basic stuff of the universe. Light, energy, dreams. God's own goodness."

　　"I don't think I want to see any doctors for a while, Murray, thanks."

　　"In that case you can always get around death by concentrating on the life beyond."

　　"How do I do that?"

　　"It's obvious. Read up on reincarnation, transmigration, hyperspace, the resurrection of the dead and so on. Some gorgeous systems have evolved from these beliefs. Study them."

　　"Do you believe in any of these things?"

　　"Millions of people have believed for thousands of years. Throw in with them. Belief in a second birth, a second life, is practically universal. This must mean something."

　　"But these gorgeous systems are all so different."

　　"Pick one you like."

　　"But you make it sound like a convenient fantasy, the worst kind of self-delusion."

　　Again he seemed to shrug. 'Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justification enough for our hopes and dreams, although I wouldn't say that to a dying man."

　　He poked me with an elbow. We walked toward the commercial part of town. Murray paused, raised one foot behind him, reached back to knock some ashes from his pipe. Then he pocketed the thing expertly, inserting it bowl-first in his corduroy jacket.

　　"Seriously, you can find a great deal of long-range solace in the idea of an afterlife."

　　"But don't I have to believe? Don't I have to feel in my heart that there is something, genuinely, beyond this life, out there, looming, in the dark?"

　　"What do you think the afterlife is, a body of facts just waiting to be uncovered? Do you think the U.S. Air Force is secretly gathering data on the afterlife and keeping it under wraps because we're not mature enough to accept the findings? The findings would cause panic? No. I'll tell you what the afterlife is. It's a sweet and terribly touching idea. You can take it or leave it. In the meantime what you have to do is survive an assassination attempt. That would be an instant tonic. You would feel specially favored, you would grow in charisma."

　　"You said earlier that death was making me grow in charisma. Besides, who would want to kill me?"

　　Once more he shrugged. Survive a train wreck in which a hundred die. Get thrown clear when your single-engine Cessna crashes on a golf course after striking a power line in heavy rain just minutes after takeoff. It doesn't have to be assassination. The point is you're standing at the edge of a smoldering ruin where others lie inert and twisted. This can counteract the effect of any number of nebulous masses, at least for a time."

　　We window-shopped a while, then went into a shoe store. Murray looked at Weejüns, Wallabees, Hush Puppies. We wandered out into the sun. Children in strollers squinted up at us, appearing to think we were something strange.

　　"Has your German helped?"

　　"I can't say it has."

　　"Has it ever helped?"

　　"I can't say. I don't know. Who knows these things?"

　　"What have you been trying to do all these years?"

　　"Put myself under a spell, I guess."

　　"Correct. Nothing to be ashamed of, Jack. It's only your fear that makes you act this way."

　　"Only my fear? Only my death?"

　　"We shouldn't be surprised at your lack of success. How powerful did the Germans prove to be? They lost the war, after all."

　　"That's what Denise said."

　　"You've discussed this with the children?"

　　"Superficially."

　　"Helpless and fearful people are drawn to magical figures, mythic figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom."

　　"You're talking about Hitler, I take it."

　　"Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death. You thought he would protect you. I understand completely."

　　"Do you? Because I wish I did."

　　"It's totally obvious. You wanted to be helped and sheltered. The overwhelming horror would leave no room for your own death. 'Submerge me,' you said. 'Absorb my fear.' On one level you wanted to conceal yourself in Hitler and his works. On another level you wanted to use him to grow in significance and strength.

　　I sense a confusion of means. Not that I'm criticizing. It was a daring thing you did, a daring thrust. To use him. I can admire the attempt even as I see how totally dumb it was, although no dumber than wearing a charm or knocking wood. Six hundred million Hindus stay home from work if the signs are not favorable that morning. So I'm not singling you out." 'The vast and terrible depth." "Of course," he said. "The inexhaustibility." "I understand."

　　'The whole huge nameless thing." "Yes, absolutely." "The massive darkness." "Certainly, certainly." 'The whole terrible endless hugeness." "I know exactly what you mean."

　　He tapped the fender of a diagonally parked car, half smiling. "Why have you failed, Jack?" "A confusion of means."

　　"Correct. There are numerous ways to get around death. You tried to employ two of them at once. You stood out on the one hand and tried to hide on the other. What is the name we give to this attempt?" "Dumb."

　　I followed him into the supermarket. Blasts of color, layers of oceanic sound. We walked under a bright banner announcing a raffle to raise money for some incurable disease. The wording seemed to indicate that the winner would get the disease. Murray likened the banner to a Tibetan prayer flag.

　　"Why have I had this fear so long, so consistently?" "It's obvious. You don't know how to repress. We're all aware there's no escape from death. How do we deal with this crushing knowledge? We repress, we disguise, we bury, we exclude. Some people do it better than others, that's all." "How can I improve?" "You can't. Some people just don't have the unconscious tools to perform the necessary disguising operations."

　　"How do we know repression exists if the tools are unconscious and the thing we're repressing is so cleverly disguised?"

　　"Freud said so. Speaking of looming figures."

　　He picked up a box of Handi-Wrap II, reading the display type, studying the colors. He smelled a packet of dehydrated soup. The data was strong today.

　　"Do you think I'm somehow healthier because I don't know how to repress? Is it possible that constant fear is the natural state of man and that by living close to my fear I am actually doing something heroic, Murray?"

　　"Do you feel heroic?"

　　"No."

　　'Then you probably aren't."

　　"But isn't repression unnatural?"

　　"Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive in the universe. This is the natural language of the species."

　　I looked at him carefully.

　　"I exercise. I take care of my body."

　　"No, you don't," he said.

　　He helped an old man read the date on a loaf of raisin bread. Children sailed by in silver carts.

　　"Tegrin, Denorex, Selsun Blue."

　　Murray wrote something in his little book. I watched him step deftly around a dozen fallen eggs oozing yolky matter from a busted carton.

　　"Why do I feel so good when I'm with Wilder? It's not like being with the other kids," I said.

　　"You sense his total ego, his freedom from limits."

　　"In what way is he free from limits?"

　　"He doesn't know he's going to die. He doesn't know death at all. You cherish this simpleton blessing of his, this exemption from harm. You want to get close to him, touch him, look at him, breathe him in. How lucky he is. A cloud of unknowing, an omnipotent little person. The child is everything, the adult nothing. Think about it. A person's entire life is the unraveling of this conflict. No wonder we're bewildered, staggered, shattered."

　　"Aren't you going too far?"

　　"I'm from New York."

　　"We create beautiful and lasting things, build vast civilizations."

　　"Gorgeous evasions," he said. "Great escapes."

　　The doors parted photoelectronically. We went outside, walking past the dry cleaner, the hairstylist, the optician. Murray relighted his pipe, sucking impressively at the mouthpiece.

　　"We have talked about ways to get around death," he said. "We have discussed how you've already tried two such ways, each cancelling the other. We have mentioned technology, train wrecks, belief in an afterlife. There are other methods as well and I would like to talk about one such approach."

　　We crossed the street.

　　"I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of us are diers. We don't have the disposition, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer. We let death happen. We lie down and die. But think what it's like to be a killer. Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. The more people you kill, the more credit you store up. It explains any number of massacres, wars, executions."

　　"Are you saying that men have tried throughout history to cure themselves of death by killing others?"

　　"It's obvious."

　　"And you call this exciting?"

　　"I'm talking theory. In theory, violence is a form of rebirth. The dier passively succumbs. The killer lives on. What a marvelous equation. As a marauding band amasses dead bodies, it gathers strength. Strength accumulates like a favor from the gods."

　　"What does this have to do with me?"

　　"This is theory. We're a couple of academics taking a walk. But imagine the visceral jolt, seeing your opponent bleeding in the dust."

　　"You think it adds to a person's store of credit, like a bank transaction."

　　"Nothingness is staring you in the face. Utter and permanent oblivion. You will cease to be. To be, Jack. The dier accepts this and dies. The killer, in theory, attempts to defeat his own death by killing others. He buys time, he buys life. Watch others squirm. See the blood trickle in the dust."

　　I looked at him, amazed. He drew contentedly on his pipe, making hollow sounds.

　　"It's a way of controlling death. A way of gaining the ultimate upper hand. Be the killer for a change. Let someone else be the dier. Let him replace you, theoretically, in that role. You can't die if he does. He dies, you live. See how marvelously simple."

　　"You say this is what people have been doing for centuries."

　　'They're still doing it. They do it on a small intimate scale, they do it in groups and crowds and masses. Kill to live."

　　"Sounds pretty awful."

　　He seemed to shrug. "Slaughter is never random. The more people you kill, the more power you gain over your own death. There is a secret precision at work in the most savage and indiscriminate killings. To speak about this is not to do public relations for murder. We're two academics in an intellectual environment. It's our duty to examine currents of thought, investigate the meaning of human behavior. But think how exciting, to come out a winner in a deathly struggle, to watch the bastard bleed."

　　"Plot a murder, you're saying. But every plot is a murder in effect. To plot is to die, whether we know it or not."

　　'To plot is to live," he said.

　　I looked at him. I studied his face, his hands.

　　"We start our lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. The efforts of a huge and powerful government are brought to bear on a ceremony that will shed the last trace of chaos. If all goes well, if they bring it off, some natural law of perfection is obeyed. The nation is delivered from anxiety, the deceased's life is redeemed, life itself is strengthened, reaffirmed."

　　"Are you sure?" I said.

　　"To plot, to take aim at something, to shape time and space. This is how we advance the art of human consciousness."

　　We moved in a wide arc back toward campus. Streets in deep and soundless shade, garbage bags set out for collection. We crossed the sunset overpass, pausing briefly to watch the cars shoot by. Sunlight bouncing off the glass and chrome.

　　"Are you a killer or a dier, Jack?"

　　"You know the answer to that. I've been a dier all my life."

　　"What can you do about it?"

　　"What can any dier do? Isn't it implicit in his makeup that he can't cross over?"

　　"Let's think about that. Let's examine the nature of the beast, so to speak. The male animal. Isn't there a fund, a pool, a reservoir of potential violence in the male psyche?"

　　"In theory I suppose there is."

　　"We're talking theory. That's exactly what we're talking. Two friends on a tree-shaded street. What else but theory? Isn't there a deep field, a sort of crude oil deposit that one might tap if and when the occasion warrants? A great dark lake of male rage."

　　'That's what Babette says. Homicidal rage. You sound like her."

　　"Amazing lady. Is she right or wrong?"

　　"In theory? She's probably right."

　　"Isn't there a sludgy region you'd rather not know about? A remnant of some prehistoric period when dinosaurs roamed the earth and men fought with flint tools? When to kill was to live?"

　　"Babette talks about male biology. Is it biology or geology?"

　　"Does it matter, Jack? We only want to know whether it is there, buried in the most prudent and unassuming soul."

　　"I suppose so. It can be. It depends."

　　"Is it or isn't it there?"

　　"It's there, Murray. So what?"

　　"I only want to hear you say it. That's all. I only want to elicit truths you already possess, truths you've always known at some basic level."

　　"Are you saying a dier can become a killer?"

　　"I'm only a visiting lecturer. I theorize, I take walks, I admire the trees and houses. I have my students, my rented room, my TV set. I pick out a word here, an image there. I admire the lawns, the porches. What a wonderful thing a porch is. How did I live a life without a porch to sit on, up till now? I speculate, I reflect, I take constant notes. I am here to think, to see. Let me warn you, Jack. I won't let up."

　　We passed my street and walked up the hill to the campus.

　　"Who's your doctor?"

　　"Chakravarty," I said.

　　"Is he good?"

　　"How would I know?"

　　"My shoulder separates. An old sexual injury."

　　"I'm afraid to see him. I put the printout of my death in the bottom drawer of a dresser."

　　"I know how you feel. But the tough part is yet to come. You've said good-bye to everyone but yourself. How does a person say good-bye to himself? It's a juicy existential dilemma."

　　"It certainly is."

　　We walked past the administration building.

　　"I hate to be the one who says it, Jack, but there's something that has to be said."

　　"What?"

　　"Better you than me."

　　I nodded gravely. "Why does this have to be said?"

　　"Because friends have to be brutally honest with each other.

　　I'd feel terrible if I didn't tell you what I was thinking, especially at a time like this."

　　"I appreciate it, Murray. I really do."

　　"Besides, it's part of the universal experience of dying. Whether you think about it consciously or not, you're aware at some level that people are walking around saying to themselves, 'Better him than me.' It's only natural. You can't blame them or wish them ill."

　　"Everyone but my wife. She wants to die first."

　　"Don't be so sure," he said.

　　We shook hands in front of the library. I thanked him for his honesty.

　　"That's what it all comes down to in the end," he said. "A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people. How does he say good-bye to himself?"

　　I threw away picture-frame wire, metal book ends, cork coasters, plastic key tags, dusty bottles of Mercurochrome and Vaseline, crusted paintbrushes, caked shoe brushes, clotted correction fluid. I threw away candle stubs, laminated placemats, frayed pot holders. I went after the padded clothes hangers, the magnetic memo clipboards. I was in a vengeful and near savage state. I bore a personal grudge against these things. Somehow they'd put me in this fix. They'd dragged me down, made escape impossible. The two girls followed me around, observing a respectful silence. I threw away my battered khaki canteen, my ridiculous hip boots. I threw away diplomas, certificates, awards and citations. When the girls stopped me, I was working the bathrooms, discarding used bars of soap, damp towels, shampoo bottles with streaked labels and missing caps.

　　PLEASE NOTE. In several days, your new automated banking card will arrive in the mail. If it is a red card with a silver stripe, your secret code will be the same as it is now. If it is a green card with a gray stripe, you must appear at your branch, with your card, to devise a new secret code. Codes based on birthdays are popular. WARNING. Do not write down your code.

　　Do not carry your code on your person. REMEMBER. You cannot access your account unless your code is entered properly. Know your code. Reveal your code to no one. Only your code allows you to enter the system.

　　38

　　My head was between her breasts, where it seemed to be spending a lot of time lately. She stroked my shoulder.

　　"Murray says the problem is that we don't repress our fear."

　　"Repress it?"