A

Two

Parkdale was a two-hour walk from Cabbagetown. (Baddeley could not afford the streetcar.) And though Cowan was not a long street, it was just long enough — almost a kilometre, running from south of Springhurst north to Queen Street — to be difficult for one man to patrol on his own. At which end of Cowan should he begin? Should he walk up and down the street looking for a man in a yellow cardigan? He — that is Baddeley — would almost certainly look suspicious. And what would he do if he actually found Avery Andrews? How would he address him? What would he say? How would Andrews react?

These were all questions to which Baddeley gave himself easy answers. Excited by even the faintest possibility of meeting Andrews, he refused to allow practical concerns to stand between himself and the poet. He would walk up and down Cowan. For one week, beginning at the furthest point south, he would walk the southernmost end of the street: Springhurst to King. The following week, he would walk north between King and Queen. In the event he met a man in a cardigan and reddish oxfords, he would follow him about for a day, watching to see where the man went and to which address he returned. Once he’d found the man’s house, he would — at some later time — break in and leave a copy of Time and Mr. Andrews somewhere prominent: on the kitchen counter, say, or on a living room table. How could Andrews — if it was Andrews — be anything but intrigued by such an intrusion? More: once Andrews had read the manuscript, he would — wouldn’t he? — welcome Baddeley’s company. (And if the man he found was not Andrews? Well, that would be unfortunate, it’s true, but there were worse things in life — weren’t there? — than a home invader who stole nothing but left a manuscript behind.)

Baddeley set out in search of Andrews the day after learning about Marva. He was immediately rewarded. At eleven o’clock on his first morning patrolling Cowan, Baddeley saw a man in reddish oxfords leaving the house at number 29. To be more expansive… it was a cool but sunny day in November. Beyond the highway and the asphalt promenade, the lake was greenish- grey and as placid as a corpse. Baddeley was filled with the spirit of adventure. He was so excited at the thought of meeting Avery Andrews that he did not immediately clock the man coming out of number 29. Of course, but for his oxblood shoes the man was the essence of nondescript.

— That couldn’t be him

was Baddeley’s first thought. But then, as if to mock Baddeley’s disbelief, the man turned towards him, unbuttoned the dark raincoat he was — oddly, given the sunshine — wearing, and revealed the canary yellow cardigan he had on beneath it. The man slid the key to his front door into the pocket of his sweater and then set off along Cowan, heading north.

Immediately, despite the sunshine, it began to rain.

Though he did not (could not) believe that the man walking before him was any kind of poet, Baddeley chose to follow him rather than dawdling in the rain waiting for a more likely candidate. Also, he assumed that pursuit would keep him warm. How true this turned out to be! The man walked quickly, so that it was difficult for Baddeley to keep up. Then, instead of waiting for a streetcar at King the man kept going: from King to Bathurst, and along Bathurst north to Dundas. It was a walk of some four kilometres that left Baddeley out of breath but un- chilled.

Though Baddeley managed to keep up with the stranger, the man finally shook him in the most unusual way. That is, though the stranger seemed entirely unaware that he was being followed, Baddeley lost him in the basement of the Toronto Western Hospital. As quickly as one can say “gone”, the man disappeared. No, it was more mysterious than that. The man took the stairs down. Baddeley followed. The man stepped into a room: Radiography 11A. Baddeley hesitated. What would he say, once inside? How would he justify his intrusion? He stared at the grey door, its shiny metal panel. And after a minute, he hit on the most obvious excuse. He would pretend to have lost his way. Once inside, he would take a close look at the man in the cardigan, then he would apologize and leave.

Baddeley had the words

— I’m so sorry on the tip of his tongue as he pushed the door open. In fact, he said those very words to the empty room.

The room was thirty feet by thirty feet by thirty feet. Its ceiling lights — far above — were banks of fluorescents tubes. It had one door, only one, the one by which Baddeley had entered. There was, in other words, no obvious way for the short man to have left. Not only was the room empty of occupants, but it was also bereft of furniture or any sort of medical equipment. It being a room in radiography, one might have expected a side chamber or alcove in which the controls for an X-ray generator were kept. There was no such alcove, only the empty, white cube.

More peculiar still: the room was not quite empty. Yes, Baddeley was alone, but there seemed to be another world in there with him. As if the room were the aperture of a conch shell, he heard the sound of the sea and, along with it, the tones of familiar voices. The voices belonged to his parents, both of whom were long dead. The effect of hearing his parents’ voices was deeply disturbing and Baddeley left the room at once.

Once outside of 11A, the world was restored to him. He knew exactly where he was: the basement of Toronto Western Hospital. He stood before a door on which the word “Radiography” was stencilled. In fact, the “real” world came back to him with such force that he felt puzzled rather than alarmed at what he’d experienced. The man in the cardigan had eluded him. No doubt about it. And the voices he’d heard? Nothing more than the hum of fluorescence. His imagination had played tricks on him. He was sure of it.

He was less certain about how to proceed. Should he leave a copy of his manuscript in the living room at 29 Cowan? He wasn’t convinced the short man actually was Avery Andrews, but one had to start somewhere. Why not start at the home of this gentleman who, after all, had both the yellow cardigan and the oxblood shoes?

He hadn’t worked out how he would break into the man’s house but, as it happened, this was no problem at all. Though the man in the cardigan had locked his front door, the back door was open. So, Baddeley walked into a spotless kitchen. At least, “spotless” is what he thought on entering. But it was more that the place seemed uninhabited, expectant. There were no cobwebs and not much dust. The rooms were in order, the furniture arranged “just so.” The lamps and wicker wastebaskets, the books in bookcases and the pictures on the walls were all neatly arranged. The place smelled faintly of incense. The further he went into the house, the less likely it seemed that anyone actually lived there.

Despite his sense that something wasn’t right, Baddeley placed a copy of his manuscript — which he’d optimistically brought with him — on a coffee table in the living room. He left the house by the door he’d come in, resolving to return the following morning. But as Baddeley closed the kitchen door behind him and turned to go, he was confronted by the man in the yellow cardigan.

Caught off guard, Baddeley stuttered.

— I’m sorry. I’m sorry, he said. The door was open. I thought there was someone home.

The man stared at Baddeley a moment.

— I’m home now, he said.

— That’s just it, said Baddeley. I thought a friend of mine lived here. That’s why I went in. I must have the wrong address. — Stop lying, said the man. I’m Avery Andrews and I know who you are, assassin.

When he thought about this moment later — and he was to think about it often — Baddeley thought about how strange his face must have looked. On learning that he had found Avery Andrews, the emotions that coursed through him were myriad, contradictory, and sharply experienced. He felt excitement, wonder, fear, confusion, guilt, deference, arrogance, and disbelief. And each emotion must have imposed its own fleeting expression on his face.

— But, but, but…, he said.

Andrews interrupted him.

— I apologize, he said. I shouldn’t have called you “assassin.”

Let’s play this out. — Play what out?

was Baddeley’s first thought, but he almost dutifully followed Andrews back into the house. They walked through the kitchen into the living room.

— Don’t sit down, said Andrews. I don’t like housecleaning.

Baddeley stood, as Andrews sat down on the sofa. Andrews saw Baddeley’s manuscript, picked it up from the coffee table — Baddeley’s heart raced as his idol touched its pages — and threw it so that Time and Mr. Andrews hit Baddeley on the shoulder.

— You don’t know anything about my work, said Andrews. None of you do. You’re all deluded.

The bitterness in Andrews’ voice was so corrosive, Baddeley accepted his own insignificance as if it were an obvious fact.

— Yes, he said. But if only you’d help me interpret your work, it would be even more popular than it is.

— Are you out of your mind? asked Andrews. I write poetry. It’s not meant to be popular. Anyway, I can’t help you interpret what I don’t understand myself.

It was not going as Baddeley had hoped. He was certain a mind as acute as Andrews’ would know the springs and coils of its own mechanism intimately. If only he could coax certain things from the poet.

— Mr. Andrews, Baddeley said, I really believe people would have a deeper appreciation for your work if…

Andrews cut him off.

— You don’t understand, he said. I can’t help you. I know nothing about my poems. I don’t understand them at all. The only thing I know for certain is where they come from. I’ll share that with you. That’s what you want, isn’t it?

On hearing Andrews’ words, it was — for Baddeley — as if a distant star had entered the living room. Did he want to know the source of Andrews’ poetry? Yes, he most certainly did.

— Thank you, Mr. Andrews. You don’t know how much it would mean if you helped me understand where the poems come from.

For the first time, Avery Andrews smiled.

— They come from God, he said.

— Oh…, said Baddeley. They come from God.

He did not hide his disappointment.

— I believe it’s God, said Andrews. But I’ve never asked. I’ve been too busy taking things down. You can decide for yourself. It would have been difficult for Baddeley to say which aspect of this moment shook him most. Was it the change in Andrews’ tone, from bitter to… something else? Or was it Andrews’ strange offer to show him how the poems came “from God”? With creative types, there was always the possibility of madness, but Andrews’ poetry had always seemed to Baddeley so sane and clear that the idea the poet himself was mad had not once — not in all the readings and re-readings — occurred to him.

Baddeley assumed Andrews would invite him to his desk, to the place where inspiration touched him and then lecture him about creativity. He did not imagine that Andrews would take him to see the “god” in question. But it appeared that’s what Andrews intended to do. They walked to King and from there they took the streetcar.

— I prefer to walk, said Andrews. But I’m tired.

And he paid Baddeley’s fare.

Where’s this madman taking me? Baddeley wondered. But he went anyway. Avery Andrews was determined to show him something and Baddeley’s love for Andrews’ work was sufficient to spur him on. But how strange genius was! Like something from a world where they breathe iridium.

As they approached Bathurst, the Wheat Sheaf tavern looking gothic in the silvery afternoon, Andrews spoke.

— So, you want to be a poet, he said.

— I don’t have the talent to be a poet, answered Baddeley. I only wish I could write the poetry you write. It would…

Andrews cut him off.

— I wanted to be a novelist, he said. I’ve always hated poetry. They got off the streetcar at Bathurst, and Baddeley, alert in the company of Avery Andrews, looked up at the world. In one distance, the city rose to a craggy peak of metal, cement, and glass. In another, it was the lake that seemed to rise, like the inside of a glinting, grey-green cup. Behind them was the Parkdale from which they’d come.

— We’ll walk from here, said Andrews.

Which they did, going wordlessly north, until they came to the Western.

We’re going to Radiography 11A, Baddeley thought, alarmed, but they went, rather, to the fifth floor of the north wing. As they left the elevator, Avery Andrews stood still a moment before moving towards Ward 55A.

Now, disappearance generally moves along a line from “done with mirrors” to “sudden drop.” The suddenness of a disappearance is, of course, part of what makes it uncanny. And if, on entering the room, Avery Andrews had disappeared in any of the “usual” ways, Baddeley would have been dismayed and, no doubt, frightened. But as the two went into Ward 55A, Andrews was absorbed by the room. It was as if the man were a streak of ink blotted up, his disappearance taking a full five seconds: time enough for Baddeley to wonder what was happening; time enough for him to realize he was alone in the same room he had entered in the hospital’s basement — thirty feet by thirty feet by thirty feet, white. More than that, it was now obvious to Baddeley that the room could not be as it appeared to be, its dimensions making it impossible to fit between the fourth and sixth floors of the Toronto Western.

As much as Baddeley feared the madness of others, he was even more terrified of losing his own sanity. At the “absorption” of Avery Andrews, he looked away, as if he’d inadvertently seen something taboo. No sooner did he look away, however, than 55A turned into a typical ward: a ceiling ten feet above them with four banks of fluorescent lights; four beds, all of them occupied; a window looking out on another wing of the hospital, beyond which he could see more buildings and smoke rising from a tall chimney.

Standing beside the patient in the bed furthest from the door was Avery Andrews. In the bed was a very old man or, perhaps, a young one with a long, white beard. It was difficult to “read” the patient, but something about the man did not feel old. Without moving his lips or at all shifting position, the whitebeard said

— Come closer.

It was as if a statue had spoken. There was no doubt that the “statue” had spoken to him, however. So, warily, and still shaken by his vision of Andrews’ absorption by the impossible room, Baddeley approached.

— You’re interested in poetry, said the patient.

Once again, the patient’s lips did not move. It was both uncanny and fascinating.

— It is better if you don’t look at me, said the patient. I am not where you see me, but I am close.

— Look out the window, said Andrews.

And Baddeley noticed that Avery Andrews had turned away from the patient, had all the while been observing the smoke as it writhed from the chimney — bringing to Baddeley’s mind a thin, old woman struggling out of a stone boot. The world could not be as he was now experiencing it and still be the world. Therefore, he had lost his mind, or some drug — mysteriously administered — had taken it from him.

The patient said

— It wouldn’t make any difference if you did lose your mind.

Alexander Baddeley felt light-headed. The room spun 290 degrees and the floor politely rose to meet him. What met him first, however, was the laughter of the patient — the last sound he heard before he lost consciousness. No, that’s too easily said: “he lost consciousness.” As if something were taken away. In this instance, it would be truer to say that Alexander Baddeley gained a consciousness that, manifestly, was not his own. He fell to the floor, but instead of darkness there came… not voices, exactly, but a presence, something like the soundless manifestation of a collective. There on the floor with him, a knot of red ants were at work carrying off the remnants of a crust of bread, and it seemed to Baddeley that he would have given anything to be one of them. That is, he experienced the purposeful delicacy of “mindlessness.”

How long he spent both inside and beside himself, Baddeley never learned. After a time, he woke in Andrews’ house on Cowan. Judging by the light coming through the windows, hours or perhaps minutes had passed. There was sunlight but, for some reason, Baddeley imagined it was evening. He was on the living room sofa. Andrews was standing above him.

— What happened? Baddeley asked.

Avery Andrews looked down at him, all sympathy.

— Don’t look at Him, he said. And try not to speak. Look out the window or keep your eyes closed. There’s nothing to see, anyway.

— But what happened?

— You’ve been out for a while. I didn’t know where you’d gone. I found you here, because He told me you’d be here. It could have been worse. I was gone for three days the first time He spoke to me. But don’t think about that. You want to write, don’t you?

At that moment, Baddeley had no idea what he wanted and no clear idea how he felt. He was concerned for his state of mind. Had he really met “God”? Or was it, rather, that Andrews had found some way to pull him into a delusion? (What, if it came to that, did “God” mean, in this situation?) Yet, along with the fear and the mistrust, there was exhilaration. Baddeley was in thrall to the depth of feeling he’d experienced while watching the red ants carry crumbs away. If he was capable of feeling anything so deeply — and it was a revelation to him that he was capable — it might just be possible for him to write poetry as well, especially if Avery Andrews was guiding him. Insane though the man might be, Baddeley would follow him quite a ways, if it led to such depths.

— Yes, he said. I want to learn to write like you.

Andrews said

— It’ll be a short apprenticeship. There isn’t much to learn.

You have to prepare yourself, that’s all. I’ll show you how you do it, then you’ll take over from me. If I were you, I’d get my life in order. Pay off your debts. Say goodbye to your friends. Three days from now, meet me at the Western at seven a.m. If you find the room on your own, everything I have will be yours. This house, that sofa you’re lying on. Everything.

Andrews held up his hand, as if to ward off conversation.

— Three days, he said. I’ll answer the rest of your questions then. Now, please… I need to get ready.

Although, at that moment, there were a thousand questions on Baddeley’s mind, when Andrews asked him to leave, he got up from the sofa and left the house, still in shock. Nor, in the days that followed, could Baddeley grasp why it was important that he “get his life in order.” Neither why nor how, for that matter. His life amounted to so little, it was, in a sense, inevitably “in order.”

He did follow one bit of Andrews’ advice, though. He spoke with a friend. The day before he was to meet the poet, Baddeley met Gil Davidoff at The Cobourg, a bar in Cabbagetown. More than anything, he wanted to tell someone about his encounters with Avery Andrews. Davidoff would not give a damn about his experiences and Baddeley knew it. That was why he wanted to tell Davidoff everything. Davidoff’s self-regard had a way of turning even the most dire things in Baddeley’s life trivial, rendering them less painful.

They were sitting at the front of The Cobourg. Their table was in a bay, its tall windows looking out onto Parliament Street. Cabbagetown was not bustling, exactly, but it was almost lively.

— I met Avery Andrews, Baddeley said.

— You see? answered Davidoff. I told you chicks can’t lie to me.

— You’re right, said Baddeley. And he wants me to meet him at the Toronto Western tomorrow morning. He didn’t say where.

— The Western’s not that big, said Davidoff. I met a couple nurses there once. They’re pretty good, nurses. Know their stuff. But I prefer actresses. You can screw an actress for weeks without doing the same woman twice. Know what I mean?

— Not really…, said Baddeley. But what about Andrews? Do you think I should go? I felt like I was hallucinating when I was with him. I really think he might be crazy.

— So? You should meet him if you want to, said Davidoff. What’s the worst a poet can do? Throw up on your shoes? Just remember, Hemingway punched Stevens’ lights out. Not the other way ‘round. And that’s how poets should be treated.

Davidoff turned away to look out at the late-autumn world, lowered his dark-rimmed glasses to get a better look at a woman just then passing on the street.

— You think I should go, then, said Baddeley.

— What? Sure. Are we still talking about you? answered Davidoff.

— No, no, said Baddeley. I’ll figure it out.

So, despite his trepidation, he went to the hospital on the appointed day, at seven in the morning. Having no idea where in the maze of Toronto Western he was to meet Avery Andrews, he simply followed what might be called “instinct.” It was not a strong “instinct.” He wandered about for an hour before he went up to the sixth floor of the east wing. He felt a certain “curiosity” about a janitor’s closet between two wards. The closet was unnumbered. A panel on the door said “Employees Only.” When Baddeley opened the door, however, he found himself in the ward in which he had first encountered the patient, and there the patient was again. Avery Andrews stood near his “God,” looking out the windows.

The room was, of course, astonishing. It could not possibly fit in the closet Baddeley had entered. What’s more, this time, the view from the windows was as if from the middle of Lake Ontario looking back on Toronto, looking back, impossibly, on the Toronto Western and on the very window in which Baddeley and Andrews were framed. Looking out the window and raising his right hand, Baddeley saw his own hand rising in the distance. It was, to say the least, disconcerting: an illusion of some sort, obviously, but most confusing.

Without waiting for a question, the patient said

— The answers I could give you would not help. I am here because I too suffer. You remember how peaceful it was for you to share the mind of ants at work? So it is for me when I am in your mind, my son. It is such bliss to find simplicity.

It didn’t seem to Baddeley that his thoughts were simple.

— Your thoughts are simple, said the patient. You’re only worried about what you call your sanity. A negligible matter, Alexander. The boundary is subtle, even for me. But, I understand you’d like to write poetry. There are two obstacles to your writing. One is within you. You must learn to listen to me when I am with you. And that will not always be pleasant. The other obstacle is before you. You’ll have to free Mr Andrews, if you’d like to take his place. I don’t believe you’re capable of it, but Avery is convinced that you are.

Avery Andrews turned to face the man he had, from the moment he’d set eyes on him, assumed to be his killer: Alexander Baddeley.

— I want to die, he said.

Nothing about this moment made any sense to Baddeley. For one thing, who could comprehend the trajectory he was expected to make: from admirer of Avery Andrews to Andrews’ assassin? How was he supposed to put aside years and years of admiration for Andrews? At this moment, in this place, for this audience, he was to murder a man he loved? There was no question of him doing any such thing. Whatever Andrews’ emotional problems, Baddeley could not see himself killing a man who was one of the only sources of beauty and consolation in his life. Someone had misjudged him.

Turning towards the patient, Baddeley asked

— Who are you?

— Don’t look at him, said Andrews. Look at me. I’m the one begging for mercy. I’ve been bound to him for thirty years. I’ve looked after him for thirty years. Every line of poetry I’ve written, everything you’ve admired has come from him, from listening to him. I’m nothing but a vessel for his ramblings. I want to be free. I want to die.

— But I’m not a killer, said Baddeley.

— You must be, said Andrews, or you wouldn’t have found me.

Turning toward the patient but not looking at him directly, Andrews pleaded.

— Tell him, he said

— What should I tell him? asked God.

— Tell him that I’m nothing. There’s no poetry in me, except for what you put there. All these years, he’s admired a stenographer. It all comes from you. There’s nothing of me in it. I’m a fraud. He could do what I do just as well as I do. Better! He’s a critic!

His hands shaking, Andrews pulled a notebook and pen from his shirt pocket. Opening the book to a blank page, he held it up for Baddeley to see.

— Look, he said and, then, turning to the hospital bed, he bowed his head and mumbled something or other. Baddeley could not make out Andrews’ words. Baddeley himself was thinking of nothing so much as how to escape from the men into whose awful company he’d wandered — the poet and his “God.” But then, a strange “mind” was made manifest to him. Yes, insofar as he could recognize “divinity,” the mind Baddeley experienced was “divine.” In a way, it was the twinned opposite of the red ants’ mind. While there, with the ants, a purity beyond words had brought peace; here, in this presence, he experienced a peace brought forth from infinite ramification: mind without end, pattern without border, a reachable horizon. For the first time in his life, Alexander Baddeley knew a different order of beauty, an unworldly vision that lay just within the range of words.

How long this moment lasted, neither man could have said. It was accompanied only by the scritch-scratching of Andrews’ pen on paper, by the shedding of words — a shedding that seemed to Baddeley more an irritation than a gift, though Baddeley had been, and knew he had been, attendant at the creation of a poem by Avery Andrews. The poem was unmistakably Andrews’ but unfamiliar…

While the Eumenides sharpen their thumbs

To scratch our prophecies, bitter in fall:

The immortal benefits of glorious life,

Resplendence of our everlasting story,

No prayer advances down the shopping mall,

Pure wheat of which is baked the bread of life.

When the spell was broken, when the moment had passed, Baddeley and Andrews stood facing each other, exhilarated, both of them fascinated by the residue that God’s presence had left: poetry, though these — oddly enough — were not the words Baddeley himself would have saved from the listening.

If there had been doubt about the patient’s identity before this moment, there was no doubt left in Baddeley’s mind immediately after it. The illusions, the tricks with time and space, were paltry compared to the vision he and Andrews had shared. Baddeley was ecstatic. Andrews’ exhilaration was short- lived, however. He had been here before, often. He knew this moment well and was tired of it, though he tried to talk it up.

— You see? Said Andrews. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? How could you turn this down, Alexander? Think what it would mean to live your life in His presence!

Every one of Andrews’ words rang hollow.

— All I’m asking, he continued, is this small thing. Please, Alexander. I’m being eaten alive by the sacred! No! I don’t mean it that way. It’s not as bad as that. It’s wonderful. But I’d like to pass it on. For that, I need someone who’ll free me.

— Why don’t you free yourself? asked Baddeley.

— I can’t. I have a duty to…

Andrews moved his head in the direction of the Being in the hospital bed. Neither man looked at Him directly, but as Andrews completed his ever-so-slight gesture there was a moment of desolation. God’s recession was not gradual or graceful. It was not like a wave receding from the shore. It was immediate, as if all seas had suddenly ceased to be. There was, in Baddeley’s soul, the most complete abandonment he had experienced; so agonizing that, for a moment, it occurred to him that his life was worthless, that the best thing for him, under the circumstances, was death. In fact, he looked towards the window wondering how high up they were.

But there was no window. There was no window, no ward, no God, no beds, no lacustrine vista. He and Avery Andrews were in a darkened room that smelled of disinfectant. At least, he was in a darkened room of some sort. He could not see the person with him. Rather, he heard the muffled sobs of another man, the intake of breath. Baddeley reached out in the dark, meaning only to touch Andrews’ shoulder, but as he did the door to the room opened and there was a flood of light.

— What the hell’s wrong with you people? Can’t you do your nasty business at home? This is a hospital, for Christ’s sake!

Baddeley and Andrews were in a janitor’s closet. Baddeley’s hand was raised. It was in the vicinity of Andrews’ cheek, as if the nurse who’d opened the door had interrupted them in mid caress. Both men stared at her as if she were an apparition.

— Come on, get out of there, the nurse said, or I’ll call the guard.

Still dazed, Andrews and Baddeley left the closet, walking down the hall towards an elevator.

At the entrance to the hospital, Andrews — who had kept quiet and avoided Baddeley’s gaze — suddenly held on to Baddeley’s arm, keeping him from leaving the premises, the sliding doors opening and closing, closing and opening, like Scylla and Charybdis.

— Please, said Andrews.

And he tried to convince Baddeley that, despite the desolation one felt when God turned his back (a thing that happened after every poem), the chance to be His servant was worth all. Wasn’t it better to be Abd Allah than a second-rate reviewer? Wasn’t it worth the personal sacrifice to attain the heights of Art? And why would he — that is, Baddeley — have gone through such trouble to find him — that is, Andrews — if, in the depths of his soul, he wasn’t searching for this very servitude. Yes, it would be inconvenient to do away with Andrews. But Andrews wanted nothing more than release.

— You’d be doing me a kindness, he said. I’ll even take poison, if you administer it.

For Baddeley, this was a complex moment made even more bewildering by its proximity to the sublime episode he had just lived. It isn’t every day, after all, that one meets “God.” Although, in light of the fact that this “god” seemed to approve of murder, doubt about the Being’s true nature had already begun to dampen Baddeley’s enthusiasm. Yet, there was enthusiasm still. How could a man who had for so long studied the ends of creativity (books and paintings and such) be anything but thrilled by his (admittedly strange) experience of creativity’s origin? Some part of Baddeley’s soul wanted to go on experiencing “inspiration” for ever and ever. But, really, he wanted to go on experiencing it as an observer. The strangeness of Andrews’ attitude (Andrews’ desire for death) frightened him, and he was afraid to be alone in the room with whatever that presence was.

Maybe, if Andrews had allowed him time to think about it, time to consider what it would be like to live without inspiration, time to long for the listening, Baddeley might have more seriously considered his plea for death. (Though, when he did think about it, later, it brought nightmares: pushing Andrews onto subways tracks, throwing him from a bridge or a tall building, stabbing him, shooting him, drowning him, his hands around the poet’s neck, breaking it as one would a bread stick…) Instead, feeling rushed and bewildered, Baddeley wanted only to get away from Avery Andrews. He wanted to get away from what Andrews had put him through and from the death Andrews wanted of him.

He pulled the poet’s fingers from his arm and backed towards the sliding doors.

— Find someone else, he said. If you come near me again, I’ll call the police.

— But you came to me, Andrews pleaded. You came to me!

Once out of the hospital, Baddeley looked to see if the man was following him. But, no, Avery Andrews stood rooted to his spot before the door, looking out at him as he looked back. So this was Avery Andrews: a forlorn, psychologically damaged man in reddish shoes. Once Baddeley was far enough away, once he was certain Andrews would not follow him, a sadness welled up to accompany his dismay. Andrews was pathetic, yes, but somewhere within Baddeley’s soul the admiration he’d felt for Avery Andrews guttered but was not extinguished.