A Ship Made of Paper

[3]

They had no idea where they were going.They walked.The crunch of their foot-steps.The cries of invisible birds.Daniel cupped his hands around his mouth and called Marie’s name, silencing the birds.The noise of their footsteps on the brittle layer of dried leaves that covered the forest floor was like a saw going tirelessly back and forth.

They walked up a hill, zigzagging around fallen trees and swirls of bramble.

Daniel walked in front.He looked over his shoulder.Hampton was having a hard time keeping his balance.

“I’m ruining these shoes,”Hampton said.He leaned against a partially fallen

cherry tree and looked at the sole of his English cordovan.The leather was shiny, rosy and moist, like a human tongue.

The next morning, Daniel takes Ruby with him to a new bakery in the village, where he plies her with chocolate croissants and chocolate milk.Daniel recalls Iris having mentioned this place—chrome and glass, with a sort of1940s feel, overpriced, but with comfortable, long-legged chairs lined up facing the huge window overlooking Broadway— and he sits there with Ruby, ostensibly reading the paper and drinking espresso, but in reality watching for Iris or her car.After an hour ofthis maddening activity, during which he is unable to read more than a few headlines, and the coffee tastes like scorched ink, he takes Ruby back home with a cup oflatte and a cranberry muffin for Kate, who, to his surprise, is awake and dressed when they return.

“Where was everybody?”she asks.

”Breakfast,”he says, handing her the takeout bag.

”What did people eat in pre-muffinAmerica?”Kate asks, peering into the bag.She notices Ruby, whose mouth is ringed with chocolate and whoseT-shirt is spotted with it.Kate looks questioningly at Daniel.

“That’s what happens to little girls whose mothers sleep late,”he says, surprising himself with the bite ofhis own voice.

“I want to play with Nelson,”Ruby says.

It seems strange to Daniel:as his heart swells from the added freight oflove and desire, it becomes in its fullness less and less substantial, un-til it is like a feather in a stiffwind, unpredictably blowing this way and that, spiraling up, plunging down, rocketing sideways at the slightest provocation—the lucky-sounding ring ofthe phone, the melancholy shift ofthe afternoon light, the hum ofan oncoming car.He has resisted all morning the treacherous impulse to plant in Ruby the idea that she and Nelson get together today, but now, God bless her, she has come up with the idea all on her own, and his spirits soar.

“I don’t think so,”Kate says.“Nelson’s father is home and that’s their private time over at Nelson’s house.”

Ruby looks at Kate, squinting, wringing her little hands, as she tries to think ofsome counterargument to this.But the combination ofKate’s professional needs and temperament has made the concept of“private time”sacred.Still, Ruby cannot hide her disappointment, and she even manages to enter into a brief, unsuccessful negotiation, during which Daniel stands transfixed, unable to shake the feeling that his happiness hangs in the balance.

In the end, Kate prevails.Not only can Ruby not go to Nelson’s house, but Nelson cannot come to hers.And when Ruby counters with all she has left—“Then I’m going to be so bored”—Kate says that maybe they can all go to Lubochevsky Farms, where the enterprising owners have devised a way to get tourists and even some ofthe locals to pay for the privilege ofharvesting the annual raspberry and apple crops.Daniel is taken aback by Kate’s suggestion.He cannot imagine her climbing the rickety stepladders, filling the flimsy baskets with apples, enduring the sunlight and the hefty autumnal bees.And then what? Eat the apples? In three years ofknowing her he has never seen her take a bite ofan apple.

No.There is only one explanation.She is concocting this little outing as a way ofroping him in, and when Daniel realizes this he reacts like some-one jumping away from an onrushing car.

“I have to go to the office,”he says.He feels the desperation ofa gambler:ifhe can just sit at the table, then maybe he can catch a card.

“On a Saturday?”

“Sorry.It happens.”He is experiencing that bicameral lunacy ofa man with a secret life;he is talking to Kate, making his excuses, arrang-ing his features in a way that would suggest regret.He is already gone.

“I need to work, too,”she says.“I’ve got two O.J.articles going, and both are due.”

“What is with you and that case? I thought you were a novelist.”

“He butchered his wife and might end up walking.I know we like to cheer for theAfrican-American side, but there is a question ofjustice at stake.I’m sure even Iris Davenport would agree with that.”

It is unnerving to hear her say Iris’s name, and he shifts his eyes, afraid for a moment that he might give himself away, though he is beginning to wonder ifthere is much secrecy to his secret life.He might be no better hidden than an ostrich with its head in the sand and fat feathered ass in the air.

“Why don’t we split the day, then?”he says.“All I need is two or three hours.I can take them now or I can take them in the afternoon.Or I can take them at night, for that matter.”It really doesn’t matter.All he needs is to get out ofthis house for a couple ofhours.But as soon as that thought crosses his mind, it is replaced by a second, more urgent idea.

He should go first, then Kate could work in the afternoon, and then he could take more time away in the evening.That way he could have as many as six hours.To do what?That part hasn’t been worked out yet.To cruise by Iris’s house?To patrol the village in search ofher car?To sit at his desk dialing and redialing her number?

“All right,”Kate says, her voice measured, a little cool.“Then you go first.”He knows she is onto him.He can feel the pressure ofher intelli-gence and her deep common sense.He feels like a half-wit miscreant tracked by a master sleuth.

His sense ofimpending exposure quickens his pace, and in minutes he is out ofthe house, in his car, and on his way to somewhere or other.

From the house onWillow Lane to his office in the middle oftown is a ten-minute drive and one that could, without any loss oftravel effi-ciency, bring him past Iris’s house, ifhe should choose to take that route, which he does.

The Saturday has turned warm;it’s already October, winter is next.

Daniel drives past the familiar landmarks ofhis childhood.Putnam Lake, with little puckers ofsilvery light caught in its waves, ringed by tall blue spruce;Livingston High School, surrounded by cornfields, its asphalt parking lot in the process ofreceiving freshly painted yellow lines;the infamous ranch house where his old friend RichardTaylor lived with his drunken parents, where you could walk right in without knocking, where there was no housekeeping, no food, no supervision, where the lamps did not have shades, and where Daniel drank his first whiskey when he was eleven years old, smoked his first joint at twelve, and, that same year, got into a ferocious fist fight with Richard’s deafolder cousin.

TheTaylor place was one ofa dozen houses around Leyden where Daniel spent his time after school, where he slept on weekends, where he hid like a little desperado.In those grim but somehow fondly remembered childhood days—when he was his own man, needed by no one, respon-sible to no one, when the unanimous possession ofhis selfwas a pleasure that outflanked every deprivation and annoyance—he would rather have been anywhere in the known world than in his own home.He would rather have slept in school than in his parents’house.

His parents were latecomers to parenthood, vegetarians, Congrega-

tionalists, campers, tall gray people with solitary tastes for reading, hik-ing, and the brewing ofhomemade beer.They were in their forties when Daniel was born, and by the time he was a teenager they were nearly sixty, their habits thoroughly calcified.The foods they liked, the Mozart that soothed them, their ten o’clock bedtime and their six-forty-five ris-ing, their hour-long ablutions, their CanadianAir Force exercises, their aversion to moving air (no air conditioners, no fans),their daily porch sweeping, their dishes, cups, and silverware cleaned in kettles ofboiling water—these were the things that Julia and Carl Emerson revered.These were, in their minds, the cornerstones not only ofcivilization but ofsan-ity;without them they would be plunged into madness.

When Daniel entered their lives they taught him not to touch the vases, which antique carpets to avoid, which lamps were safe to use.He was not to run, jump, or shout.He was not to play the stereo console in their parlor, nor was he to use the electric typewriter, the adding ma-chine, the juicer, the blender, either ofthe vacuum cleaners, or the elec-tric toothbrushes.Above all, the back halfofthe house was off-limits; this was where the Emersons saw their patients.Here was the waiting room with its intriguing collection ofoffbeat magazines—fromPreven-tiontoThe Saturday Review—the dark walnut apothecary case filled with amber bottles ofvitamins, the vanilla plastic skeleton hanging from a hook, and the his and hers chiropractic tables—neither ofthem ever worked on someone ofthe opposite sex.Here came everyone from beefy back-strained farmers to neurasthenic housewives, here backs were cracked, hips were realigned, toes were pulled, fingers were popped, heads were yanked suddenly to the left or right, moans were moaned, and for some reason that Daniel never could fathom, people re-turned again and again.

Daniel continues his drive along the outskirts ofthe village.There are tourists in town today—the weekend, the splendid color change, when the maples turn to flame and the oak leaves are the color ofhoney.It strikes him as funny that the town has become a tourist destination;he cannot imagine how the day-trippers pass the time.There are jokey T-shirts for sale that say Paris LondonTokyo Leyden.There are home-made jellies to be purchased.But the bagels here aren’t as good as in the city, and the same goes for the breads, the pies, the croissants.Shoes, slacks, dresses, hats—all are cheaper and better in NewYork.The restau-rants are merely adequate.The antique stores have been shopped clean and now sell items from the1970s.Still, every weekend, except for the long dead ofwinter, there are at least a hundred new arrivals, parading up and down the two-block commercial center, with an ice cream cone in one hand and aT-shirt in the other, glancing shyly at the locals and de-lighting when someone nods back or says hello.

Not far from the high school is the town cemetery, where the headstones are thin as place mats and worn smooth and illegible over time.It was to this graveyard, in the company ofall that Colonial dust and the ceaseless squirrels, that Daniel used to go when there was no one left to visit and it was still too early to go home.With the marker ofone ofthe Stuyvesants to support his back, Daniel read the books ofhis youth— Salinger, Heller, Baldwin—and, in his thirteenth year, before his parents released him from their benign bondage and sent him offto a third-tier prep school in New Hampshire, it was here that he wrote poetry for the first and only time in his life.

They were not great poems or even good poems, they were not by most standards really poems at all.They were poetry as he understood it, the poetry ofwhich he was capable, and they ran through the changes of longing and desolation, seduction and heartbreak, trust and betrayal like a hamster on a wheel, celebrating lips he had never kissed, eyes into which he had never gazed, caresses he had yet to enjoy.They were for Baby, they were for Darlin’,they were for Janey, though he knew no one by that name, they were for Suzie, and though he did happen to know a Suzie, he did not love or even like her.In each ofthese poems, Daniel was alone, carrying within him a heart that ticked like a bomb.A great many ofthem began:And I walk…One wentAnd I walk through this night / with only one light / and that’s my heart, darlin’,burning for you.Another:And I walk and I walk and I walk and I walk /And wherever I go I’m looking for you.

But who was this“you”? She did not exist.There were girls in his daily world whom he liked and who seemed to like him, but they could not be fit into the staggering, narcoticized world ofhis desire, the atmosphere was not conducive, it made them shrivel and die.And then, one day, the longing was gone.He cannot remember a precipitating event.It just hap-pened, like the day he suddenly stopped believing in fairies and ghosts, or the day the notion ofSanta Claus was abruptly ridiculous.Weeks went by without him writing in his notebook oflove poems, and then it struck him that ifanyone ever came upon those verses the humiliation would not be survivable, and he brought them down to the river, thinking ofmaking a ceremony oftheir disposal, a kind ofburial at sea, but in order to get to the river he had to trespass across one ofthe immense riverfront estates and by the time he was at the water’s edge he heard the rumble ofa care-taker’s truck, surely on the way to roust him out, and he ended up tossing the notebook into the water wildly and running.

Now, as he makes a couple ofleft-hand turns that bring him ever closer to Iris’s house, he is remembering those mawkish scribblings for the first time in twenty years.

Side-arming that notebook into the river did not mean that from then on he lived in some anguished exile from romance;he was not like a priest who loses his faith and then becomes a drunk or a fornicator.He did not feel bitterness, he did not feel any loss.He simply knew better and it was over.Those feelings were like his milk teeth;his bite was stur-dier after that.And in place ofall that inchoate desire, he went on to other pursuits:public service, respectability, sex, money.His briefchild-ish dream oflove was over, and he went on.He had relationships.He had a life,by which people seemed to mean a certain accumulation ofdays and experience, all mortared into some kind ofshapeless shape by an adult gravitas.He went on to prep school, on to college, on to law school, on to a year traveling on the cheap in Europe, on to a year in Mis-sissippi working for a civil rights lawyer, on to Minneapolis for more public service, where he lived with the daughter ofa blind Norwegian piano tuner, a large, brown-haired girl with creamy skin and enormous eyes, who seemed to him like an old-fashioned dessert, the kind they serve you when you’re too sated to eat another bite, and on to NewYork, to Kate and Ruby, and on and on and on—but had he been walking an ellipse all that time? Because here he was again, not exactly at the spot at which he had written those rhymes twenty years ago, but certainly within shouting distance ofit.Around and around he’d gone, and now it seemed to all be coming to this:that phantom female, that ghostly girl, Darlin’,Baby, all those creatures ofhis longing, all those spirits oflove and desire whom he thought he had exorcised with the power ofplain old common sense, put in their place at the back ofthe class by irony, experience, and practicality, they had survived after all, they had not been cast out, they had merely shrunk back, they had hibernated, and now they are awake, they are swirling around and around, and they have fused into a single woman.

Juniper Street.The fashion ofthe playful flag has arrived.On Iris’s block Daniel counts eleven flags displayed over the entrances, and of these only two are the stars and stripes.The other households seem to be pledging their allegiance to countries ofthe imagination.Flags here de-pict a crow perched on a pumpkin, Dorothy and theTin Man, a cobalt heaven riveted with silver stars, a golden retriever, a pair ofballet slip-pers.It’s after ten on a pretty morning but no one is on the street, a fact for which Daniel is grateful, since he is now driving so slowly that he may as well be parked in the middle ofthe road.

Iris’sVolvo is no longer in their driveway and his mind races as he tries to assign meaning to this fact.One thing he knows for sure:it means they are no longer in bed together—at least one ofthem is out ofthe house.Perhaps Iris has gone to run some errands, in which case Daniel might run into her ifhe drives quickly over to Broadway.Or maybe she’s gone to the campus, or across the river to one ofthe malls.Or maybe it’s Hampton who’s gone, in which case Iris is right there in the house.

He reminds himself not to suddenly introduce a new aspect to the plan; he told himself that all he would do is drive by her house and move on.

Now he is casting about for reasons he might knock on her door, and he forces himself to ignore every spontaneous scenario and to stick with the original plan.

He has seen the house.Enough.Maybe he will return in an hour or so to see ifthe car has returned.Maybe there will be other signs oflife, little changes, clues from which he can concoct a plausible narrative of their day.He steps on the gas pedal, bringing the speed ofhis car up to fifteen, but as he pulls away from the house he is gripped by the idea that Iris is in there, and that all that separates them is fifteen paces and a knock on the door.And though he has promised himself no unplanned actions, he does add one thing to today’s reconnaissance.He dials her number on his cell phone.Yet on the first ring, he feels an overpowering sense ofcreepiness and remorse, and he pushes his thumb against the end call button on his phone with such force that he almost veers into a parked car—an old Mercedes with a bumper sticker that sayscommit randomacts of irrational kindness.

Because he told Kate he was going to do some work, Daniel heads toward his office, for the tiny squirt ofmoral salve it might afford him, though not before driving down Broadway one last time and looking for Iris’s car.He pretends not to see everyone who waves hello to him, and he thinks to himself that ifhe had remembered more clearly all the wav-ing or howdy-doing that goes on in Leyden, he would never have moved back here.Yet to not have moved back here is now unthinkable, a specu-lation that leads to an infinity ofemptiness, like imagining not having been born.The equation is simple.No Leyden = No Iris.Ofcourse, there are a million details oflife and circumstance that had to fall into place to bring him to the spot in which he now finds himself.But in the end it seems to Daniel to come to this:ifhe hadn’t lost that case back in the city, ifhe hadn’t been kicked down the stairs by those three thugs, with their huge hands and reddish eyes, ifhe hadn’t developed the hu-miliating, excoriating fear ofevery dark-skinned stranger he saw on the street, then none ofthis would be happening.

He wonders what Iris will think ofthe story ofhis flight from New York.He wonders ifhe will ever need to tell her.He nervously imagines how it will sound toAfrican-American ears—the panicky white boy packing his bags, quitting his practice, heading for the cornfields and the pastures and the perfect white village with his southern girlfriend and her porcelain daughter in tow.Surely this will have a meaning to Iris somewhat different from the meanings to which he is accustomed, and for no other reason than she is black.He is getting way ahead ofhimself, but he can’t help it.He remembers Kate’s remark about Leroy from the night before:His people came over in chains and mine sat on the porch sipping gin.Something that begins that badly can never end well.So will that be the contest? History in one corner and Love in the other? Fine.Ring the bell.

Let the fight begin.Love,he thinks,will bring history to its knees.

At last, it is Monday, and Daniel is in court, standing in front ofJudge Hoffstetter.On one side ofDaniel stands Rebecca Stefanelli, who most people know by her nickname, Lulu.She is a five-times-divorced, hard-living woman in her early forties, with red hair and a tentative, defensive smile on her face, the smile ofa woman who has had a number ofunkind remarks made at her expense, and who would rather appear in on the joke than be its unwitting target.On the other side ofDaniel stands James Schmidt, a muscular, scrubbed widower who runs a little lawn mower and chain saw repair business out ofhis garage;Rebecca and James had a brief, more or less geographically determined fling a couple ofyears ago and relations between them have been stormy ever since.

Standing next to Schmidt is a barrel-chested, white-haired, flush-faced old lawyer named Montgomery Paisley, in semiretirement but still mak-ing a handsome living representing the company that sold Schmidt his home insurance.Though summer is long past, Paisley is wearing a blue-and-white seersucker suit and light brown shoes.

Rebecca is suing Schmidt for failure to keep his section ofthe public sidewalk clear ofice.She slipped and fell in front ofSchmidt’s house last March, sustaining a concussion, and she claims to have been suffering from debilitating headaches ever since.

Judge Hoffstetter is manifest in his dislike ofLulu Stefanelli.“Miss Stefanelli,”he says,“I’ll thank you not to wear sunglasses in my courtroom.”

“Your Honor,”Daniel is quick to say,“my client is wearing dark glasses on the advice ofher physician, as a way ofwarding offheadaches.”

“This is not a sunny room, Mr.Emerson.Please instruct your client to remove her sunglasses.”

It’s outrageous to Daniel that Hoffstetter is harassing Lulu about her glasses.Hoffstetter used to be a state patrolman inWindsor County;in fact, it was he who gave Daniel his first and only speeding ticket, twenty years ago, when Daniel was seventeen.In those days, Hoffstetter was a hard, fit man, with an accusatory, military bearing, and he was never without his mirrored sunglasses.Now, however, the judge is fleshy;his eyebrows are a thick tangle ofsilver wire above his professorial half-glasses, his long, porous nose is a ruin ofself-indulgence.

Hoffstetter is silent.He leans back in his creaking chair, taps his fingertips together.He peers at Daniel as ifhe’s about to cite him for con-tempt.But then he sits forward, claps his hands together.

“Okay, you two, chambers.”

“What’s he doing?”Rebecca Stefanelli whispers to Daniel.Her breath has a warm vermouth quality to it and Daniel can only hope Hoffstetter hasn’t gotten a whiffofit.

“Don’t worry,”Daniel says.And when she looks at him questioningly, he adds,“We’re right and they’re wrong and that still means something.”

Montgomery Paisley is fastening the clasp ofhis enormous old briefcase;

he looks as ifhe’s carrying the folders for every case he’s ever tried.He hoists it up and, with his free arm, gestures gallantly for Daniel to go first.

Judge Hoffstetter’s chambers are really just one room, which he has turned into the Judge Hoffstetter Historical Museum, with pictures of himself on every wall, depicting the highlights ofhis life, from high school baseball, to his induction into the state police, to his marriage to Sally Manzardo and their fifteenth wedding anniversary in Barbados, to his late-in-life graduation from Fordham Law School and becoming a county judge.

Hoffstetter sits heavily behind his desk, opens the top drawer and pulls out a cigarette and a little battery-operated fan, to dispel the smoke.

“You’ve got no case, Mr.Emerson,”he says.

”Do you mind ifI sit?”says Paisley.

”You do whatever you want, Monty.You’re walking out ofhere a winner.”

“That’s highly improper, Your Honor,”Daniel says.

”Counselor, Mr.Paisley has three statements from Leyden Hospital emergency room staff, all ofthem stating that when your client came in after having suffered a head injury in front ofSchmidt’s house she was drunk as a skunk.”

This is not the first time Daniel is hearing this.The whole thrust of his case is to dispel the allegations ofStefanelli’s drunkenness.

“Your Honor, the salient fact ofthis case is not my client’s score on a Breathalyzer test, or the alcohol level in her bloodstream—though no such tests were given to her and the allegations ofher being under the influence ofalcohol are completely without proof.The salient fact is that Mr.Schmidt failed—and, in fact, refused—to remove the snow and ice in front ofhis house, thereby creating a hazard.Anyone could have fallen on that treacherous piece ofpavement.”

“But no one did, Daniel,”Hoffstetter says, smiling.“No one but your booze hound ofa client.”

“Your Honor, I really must object—”

“Don’t bother.”Hoffstetter sighs, shakes his head, and continues.“I must say, Mr.Emerson, I never thought I’d see you in my court arguing a case ofsuch little merit.Why did you go to the trouble ofgetting such a prestigious education ifall you’re going to do is practice law ofthe lowest common denominator?”

Is that what this is going to be about?wonders Daniel.That I went to Co-

lumbia and Hoffstetter did law at proletarian Fordham?Yet there is something weirdly sincere in the judge’s question and it finds its way through Daniel’s customary defenses.He is capable offeeling a bit ofchagrin over some ofthe cases he handles, though, frankly, Lulu Stefanelli’s fall is, he thinks, a decent case, unlike a couple ofthe divorces he’s worked on, or the estate work he’s done for a few ofthe local pashas.

Yet, like many lawyers, Daniel looks back at his beginnings and feels that he has fallen more than a little short ofhis initial goals.In law school, Daniel envisioned himself practicing some kind ofpublic service law, though exactly what kind constantly shifted.Children’s rights.Civil rights.

Environmental law.Something that could make the world a little better.

And in order to practice that sort oflaw he had to be in a major city, New York, Washington.His first job out oflaw school was with the doomed Lawyers’Immigrant Defense Society, which lost its funding six months later.From there he went to a private law firm, with its share ofcorporate clients but with a reputation for doing interesting pro bono work—one of the partners had a son in prison in Malaysia on trumped-up drug charges and it resulted in the inflammation ofthe entire firm’s conscience.

“My client deserves some consideration here, Your Honor,”Daniel says softly, indicating with his tone that he’s ready to deal.Lulu would be happy with Schmidt’s insurance company covering her emergency room bills and maybe coming up with ten or fifteen grand for her pain and suffering.

“All this for a few measly bucks?”Hoffstetter shakes his head.“How the mighty have fallen.”

Paisley speaks from the depths ofhis chair.“We’re willing to pay her initial medical costs, Judge.”

“Let’s not encourage her, Monty.She’ll be throwing herselfin front ofcars and diving into empty swimming pools ifwe go along with her little scheme here.”

“Your Honor—”

“Mr.Emerson, I really did expect better things from you.”

But Daniel persists.He knows he’s getting whipsawed by Paisley and Hoffstetter, but in a few minutes he’s able to go back to the courtroom and tell Rebecca Stefanelli that the other side is willing to settle for med-ical expenses plus ten thousand dollars, and she is so thrilled that she hugs him excitedly and kisses him first on the ear and then on the eye.And a few minutes after that, he’s in his car, driving through a cold, pelting rain, on his way north to Leyden, for his next appointment.The mountains on the west side ofthe river are obscured by mist.A stiffwind comes from the northwest;the trees barely sway, they just bend and stay that way.

Daniel is on his way to his office, where he needs to gather some papers before going to his next appointment.He stops at a gas station a couple miles outside ofLeyden.It’s an Exxon station that used to be run by the father ofone ofDaniel’s boyhood friends and is now owned by a couple ofEgyptian brothers.He pumps a tank ofgas into his car and then goes in to get a cup ofcoffee and a shrink-wrapped bagel.The rain lashes the windows ofthe station.There is a display ofheavily scented carved wooden red roses, drenched in some artificial, vaguely roselike scent; the smell mingles with the smells ofthe coffee machine, the wax on the linoleum floor, and the residual aroma ofgasoline.Both ofthe brothers are behind the counter, heavy men in their thirties, with rough skin, dark, wavy hair, and short-sleeved shirts.

Even when his friend’s father owned this station, it was one ofthe few spots in the area where boys and men could find pornographic magazines.

In the past, the magazines had names likeChic,andCheri.Now, the mag-azines are not only more numerous, but their names are more overt, even a little nutty.Juggs,andBeaver,are next toAss TimeandPink andTight.And though there are precious few black people who live in Leyden, this store stocks a wide range ofAfrican-American porn magazines.

Daniel has been eyeing the black porn covers for quite some time, though he has yet to muster the courage to even browse through what’s inside.But today, after getting his coffee and choosing his bagel, he saun-ters over to the magazine rack.He imagines the Egyptians will be watch-ing him, but it’s something he can live with.

Big Black Butt, Brown Sugar, Black Booty…There is something about the stridency ofthese titles that strikes a reluctantly responsive chord in Daniel.He picks up one ofthe more benign titles—Sugar Mama—and opens it up.

He has never slept with a black woman, never seen a black woman undressed.In high school in the hills ofNew Hampshire, he had a crush on a black girl named Carol Johns.They kissed, she pressed her hand against the fly ofhis jeans.But when he tried to touch her breasts, she moved away and said,“Uh-uh,”and then the next day her brother, an am-bitious, bespectacled kid in a blazer, hit Daniel full force in the back of the head with his algebra book.

The women inside the magazine havenoms de porn,like Afreaka, Supremacy, Kenya, and Downtown Sugar Brown.Afreaka is photographed pulling herselfopen like someone showing an empty wallet.Downtown Sugar Brown has shaved, moist armpit skin that looks like cracked leather, long aqua fingernails, and a barbered crotch greased along the labia.She has hardworking hands, with dark, bunched skin at the knuck-les, a faded butterfly tattoo on her shoulder, long, pendulous breasts, with lusterless coronas.The stretch marks around her hips are like fork marks in brown butter.Daniel feels vaguely sick, reduced, helpless, yet in communion with some reptile selfthat has been waiting for him.He turns the page and Downtown Sugar Brown is joined by another woman—Cydney.They are on their hands and knees on an unmade bed, their long tongues touching.

Suddenly, a hand grabs his shoulder;he feels the scrape ofchin whiskers against his ear, and his head fills with the hoarse, aggressive whisper ofhis assailant.“Whatcha got there, you horny sonofabitch? Going for the dark side?”

It’s Derek Pabst, one ofthe four cops on the Leyden Police Department.Derek and Daniel have been friends since the first grade.Derek was a sturdy kid with an oversized head and the defiant, wayward grin of a boy with a great many siblings and overworked parents.He never did his homework, he rarely passed a test, yet the teachers quietly promoted him at the end ofevery year, with the tacit understanding that his life was hard and that school was finally so unimportant to him that they should all be grateful he was attending at all.He had a wild streak that mes-merized Daniel.Through the course oftheir boyhood, through school days and summers, they were each other’s constant companions.They climbed trees, forded rivers, shot guns, kissed girls.As far as Derek was concerned, they were to this day best friends, though the persistence of their friendship has largely been Derek’s doing.When Daniel was sent off to boarding school, Derek wrote him letters and hitchhiked the hundred miles to sleep on the floor ofDaniel’s dormitory room.When Daniel fi-nally moved back to Leyden, Derek was there to meet the van, with a picnic cooler full ofbeer, another filled with sandwiches, and three ofhis own children to help unpack the truck.

Feeling exposed and ridiculous, Daniel puts the magazine back in the rack and goes to the counter to pay for the gasoline, the coffee, and the bagel.“Will zat be ull?”the Egyptian asks, as ifchallenging Daniel to pur-chase one ofthe magazines.

“That’s it for me,”says Daniel, forcing his voice to sound cheerful.

”How are you, Eddie?”Derek asks.He slaps a five-dollar bill onto the counter.“Let me have a pack ofCamel Lights.”He accepts the pack of cigarettes, the few pieces ofchange.Eddie acts frightened ofDerek, dis-playing the almost ritualized respect ofa man who has been warned.

Derek eagerly tears the pack open, lights up.“Since Stephanie got the new furniture delivered, she won’t let me smoke in the house,”he says, smoke streaming out ofhis large, dark nostrils.

Daniel and Derek stand beneath the eaves ofthe gas station and watch the pelting rain.

“How’s Stephanie doing?”Daniel asks.

”She’s okay.She says she’s going to give Kate a call, put together a dinner or something.”

Daniel’s heart sinks.He knows Kate will decline Stephanie’s invitation, he only hopes she does it without being too blunt.Hurting Stephanie’s feelings will only hurt Derek’s.

“The kids could play, too,”Derek adds.He takes another long drag of his cigarette.“How’s Kate doing?”

“Hanging in there.”

“You really scored on that one,”Derek says.“She’s a great lady.She’s so pretty, and so fucking smart.You know what I like about her? Her laugh.She’s got a great laugh.I look for that, you know.It’s a sign.”

Daniel raises his to-go cup, shrugs.“I’m sort ofrunning late.”It sounds too abrupt to Daniel, and so he extends the excuse.“I’m going over to Eight Chimneys, finally getting to wet my beak in some ofthat river gen-try cash-o-rama.”He grins, rubs his thumb against his first two fingers.

But Derek, fully aware that money doesn’t mean very much to Daniel, acts as ifDaniel hasn’t said a thing.“I had a runaway kid this morning,”Derek says.“At large and dangerous.I picked him up at the train station.”

“Whose kid?”

“One ofthe boys from Star ofBethlehem.I swear, the people running that place don’t have the slightest fucking idea what they’re doing.

They keep trying torespectthose boys, orrehabilitatethem, and mean-while it’s a fucking jungle, with some ofthe worst juvenile offenders in the state, with nothing to keep them in but a couple ofcounselors and an electric fence.”He looks at Daniel, trying to gauge the level ofagree-ment or disagreement.“These are the‘boys’that made you decide to get your white liberal ass out ofthe city and come back home.The kid I picked up? First ofall, his mother, who was probably twelve or some-thing when she had him, names him Bruce, probably after some Bruce Lee movie, and then, just to be Ebonic and make sure he never learns how to spell, she spells it B-r-e-w-s-e.”

“Since when do you care so much about spelling?”

“I learned how to spell.You used to cram it into my head before spelling tests.”

“I don’t remember it doing all that much good.Anyhow, spelling’s just custom.African-Americans are making their own customs.”

“Yeah, well this kid makes alotofhis own customs.Like the custom ofcapping the first motherfucker who stands between him and a new pair ofNikes.”

There’s a sourness in Derek’s voice, a disdain, which Daniel believes is an occupational hazard for cops, like squinting for a jeweler, or grisly jokes for a surgeon, but there’s an element ofracial scorn that Daniel can’t recall ever having heard from Derek before.Is it because he caught Daniel looking at theAfrican-American porn magazines? Or does Derek somehow sense that Daniel has fallen in love with a black woman? Did Daniel ever, in some swoon ofnostalgia for their old boyhood closeness, talk to Derek about Iris?

Derek draws on his cigarette and pulls the smoke deep into his lungs—he smoked marijuana before cigarettes and it shows.When he fi-nally exhales, very little ofthe smoke comes back out.

“What about tonight?”he asks Daniel.“Want to get a bite to eat orsomething?”

“I don’t know, Derek.It’s really hard to get Kate to go out, you know that.”And, for all Daniel knows, Derek may sense that Kate finds him dull company and that Stephanie is a sort ofparadigm for suburban fu-tility, with her mall bangs and turquoise spandex tights, her exhausting cheerfulness—Kate calls her the last ofthe StepfordWives.

“I was thinking just you and me, Danny,”Derek says.His face colors and Daniel realizes with a helpless lurch that his old friend feels embar-rassed asking him to sit down and share a meal.But the embarrassment, rather than make Derek shrink back, somehow propels him forward.He has nothing more to lose.“I really would like that,”he says.“We—”

“No, that would be great,”Daniel says, not being able to bear the awkwardness a moment longer.“I’ll just make sure nothing’s pending at home.

I’ll call you around six, six-thirty.”Who knows?They might go to a restau-rant and end up accidentally seeing Iris.Wouldn’t that be something?

Derek flicks his Camel Light into the rain.“How cool is it that you moved back here?”he says, grinning, shaking his head.His cruiser is parked next to Daniel’s car, blue lights slowly revolving, and every car that passes on the highway slows down at the sight ofit.He has left the window open and the sound ofhis radio can be heard.The dispatcher’s voice, static moving through it like whitewater.Daniel cannot under-stand a word, and Derek seems not even to hear it.

“How’s Mercy Crane working out?”he asks.

”She’s great.Thanks for putting us in touch with her.”

“She used to baby-sit for Chelsea.”He clasps his hands behind his back and stretches extravagantly.“She’s really something.”

“Mercy?”

“Real strict parents, though.Especially Jeff.He’s nuts, you gotta watch out for him.He’s the kind ofcop that gives cops a bad name.”

“She likes movies.I always try and rent something interesting for her to watch.”

“Oh yeah, she likes movies.And music, and just laughing her ass off.

She’s an amazing girl.And sexy, don’t you think? Not that I would ever do anything, but God, she is so fucking hot, those big eyes and those little spindly wrists and always wearing just enough perfume to let you know she knows exactly what you’re thinking.”He claps Daniel on the back.

”All right, buddy, go back in there and do your business, I’m out ofhere.”

“Me, too.”

“Yeah?What about your magazines?”

“Just looking.”

“I didn’t mean to bust you, Danny.Feel free.Our age, a nice jerk-off helps keep the lid on.Though I could never, not with a black lady.It just doesn’t do it for me.”

“I’ll call you tonight, then,”Daniel says.

”Okay, good.I really need to talk to you.”

“Is everything okay, Derek?”

Derek looks at him as ifhe were insane.“Ofcourse not,”he says, and then laughs.Daniel stands there and watches Derek get into his cruiser and drive away.He gets into his own car and drives into Leyden, through the rain that is now just beginning to include a few intermittent streaks ofsnow, loose skeins ofwhite woven into the gray ofthe day.

Daniel arrives at his office building, swings around back, where there is parking for tenants and clients only.The first thing he sees is a green Volvo station wagon, with the license plateWDC785.

Iris.

What’s she doing here?It’s unlikely she is doing business at Software Solutions, and the financial planner is inAustria for the month.She must be here to see the child psychologist, Warren Maltby, an exceptionally small man, with tar-black hair.The thought ofIris up there, with Nelson or without him, strikes Daniel with sudden force.What could the trouble be?Were they taking him to a shrink because he supposedly hit a kid at day care? Daniel sensed that Nelson is one ofthe teachers’favorites—with his clean cubby, princely table manners, perfect diction, and star-tling beauty.Ruby has actually enjoyed a rise in status since becoming Nelson’s best friend.Like the homecoming queen on the arm ofthe school’s football hero.

By now he has wandered over to Iris’sVolvo and peers into it.The baby seat is strapped into an otherwise empty and immaculate backseat.

The family dog, an elderlyAustralian shepherd named Scarecrow, sleeps deeply in the way back, her eyelids trembling while she dreams.Daniel raps a knuckle against the side window and Scarecrow opens one red-dened eye.“Hi, Crow,”he says, currying the dog’s favor.Then he looks into the front ofthe car.In the passenger seat is a stack ofbooks with li-brary markings on their spines.On top ofthe books is a spiral notebook, opened to a page ofher handwriting, black flowing letters, old-fashioned in their shapeliness.Through the glare and his reflection, he reads,Harlem Ren.economic engine B.intell.repudiate Marx 19% unem.extend.fam“A safety net made not of government giveaways and fashioned by would-be social engi-neers, but consisting of a weave of family structure, rural communalism and Chris-tianity.”And then he opens the door and picks up the notebook.He riffles through the pages like a spy, and then, miraculously, and terribly, he sees, on an otherwise blank page, his initials.DE,written small, in the center ofthe page, the exact center, with a circle drawn around them.His heart accelerates as ifhe has suddenly sprouted wings and begun to fly.

But he doesn’t have a chance to obsess, not just then.He turns around to see her walking across the parking lot.She is alone, not a hun-dred feet away.It’s always so startling to see her, like spotting a celebrity.

She seems to float toward him.

“I thought your lights were on,”he says, dropping her notebook and swinging the door shut.It closes with a sturdy Swedish finality that he hopes will prevent her from asking any questions.

“You’re all dressed up,”she says.

Daniel touches the knot ofhis tie.“I was in court.”

“Did you win?”

“That’s the thing about court, you rarely win and you rarely lose.”

“I once thought I was going to be a lawyer,”Iris says.“My dad always said I should be one, but just because I argued over everything, you know that way slightly spoiled kids do.I thought I could talk him into anything.”

The thought ofher as a child both stuns and provokes Daniel, imagining her that way, in that distant world.

She senses his mind is elsewhere and moves her face a little closer to his.

”Is that why you wanted to be a lawyer?”she asks.

”I never argued with my parents, I was too afraid ofthem.I thought they’d fire me.”

“I like to think ofpeople when they were little kids.You must have been one ofthose heartbreaking little kids, with a serious face and se-cretive, really secretive.The kind ofkid that a mother sort ofhas to spy on to figure out what’s really going on.”Distress courses across her eyes, like speeded-up film ofclouds moving through the sky.Daniel guesses she is thinking about Nelson.

“That was fun Friday night,”she says.Her voice rises with what seems like forced gaiety.

“My office is here,”Daniel says, gesturing toward the building.

”I know,”says Iris.She opens her oversized purse and pokes around for her car keys, finds them.“I knocked on your door on my way out.”

“You did?”

“I guess you were down here.”

“Yes, I was.”A little more explanation seems called for.“I’m on my way to see a client…butIstarted looking at the snow.Early for snow, isn’t it?”

She gets into her car, turns on the engine.The windshield wipers cut protractors into the fuzzy coating ofsnow.While Daniel watches her Volvo backing up, he thinks:She knocked on my door.