The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

1

“I feel different from other people. Really different. Yet whenever I have a conversation with a new person it turns into a discussion of things we have in common. Work, places, feelings. Whatever. It’s the way people talk, I know, I share the blame, I do it too. But I want to stop and shout no, it’s not like that, it’s not the same for me. I feel different.”

“I understand what you mean.”

“That’s not the right response.”

“I mean what the fuck are you talking about.”

“Right.” Laughter.

She lit a cigarette while E. went on.

“The notion is like a linguistic virus. It makes any conversation go all pallid and reassuring. ‘Oh, I know, it’s like that for me too.’ But the virus isn’t content just to eat conversations, it wants to destroy lives. It wants you to fall in love.”

“There are worse things.”

“Not for me.”

“Famine, war, floods.”

“Those never happened to me. Love did. Love is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

“That’s fatuous.”

“What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

She was silent for a full minute.

“But there, that’s the first fatuous thing I’ve said. Asking you to consider my situation by consulting your experience. You see? The virus is loose again. I don’t want you to agree that our lives are the same. They aren’t. I just want you to listen to what I say seriously, to believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“Don’t say it in that tone of voice. All breathy.”

“Fuck you.” She laughed again.

“Do you want another drink?”

“In a minute.” She slurped at what was left in her glass, then said, “You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“Other people do feel the way you do, that they’re apart from everyone else. It’s the same as the way every time you fall in love it feels like something new, even though you do the exact same things over again. Feeling unique is what we all have in common, it’s the thing that’s always the same.”

“No, I’m different. And falling in love is different for me each time, different things happen. Bad things.”

“But you’re still the same as you were before the first time. You just feel different.”

“No, I’ve changed. I’m much worse.”

“You’re not bad.”

“You should have seen me before. Do you want another drink?”

The laminated place mat on the table between them showed pictures of exotic drinks. “This one,” she said. “A zombie.” It was purple.

“You don’t want that.”

“Yes I do. I love zombies.”

“No you don’t. You’ve never had one. Anyway, this place makes a terrible zombie.” He ordered two more margaritas.

“You’re such an expert.”

“Only on zombies.”

“On zombies and love is bad.”

“You’re making fun of me. I thought you promised to take me seriously, believe me.”

“I was lying. People always lie when they flirt.”

“We’re not flirting.”

“Then what are we doing?”

“We’re just drinking, drinking and talking. And I’m trying to warn you.”

“And you’re staring.”

“You’re beautiful. Oh God.”

“That reminds me of one. What’s the worst thing about being an atheist?”

“I give up.”

“No one to talk to when you come.”

2

Morning light seeped through the macrame curtain and freckled the rug. Motes seemed to boil from its surface. For a moment she thought the rug was somehow on the ceiling, then his cat ran across it, yowling at her. The cat looked starved. She was lying on her stomach in his loft bed, head over the side. He was gone. She lay tangled in the humid sheets, feeling her own body.

Lover—she thought.

She could barely remember.

She found her clothes, then went and rinsed her face in the kitchen sink. A film of shaved hairs lined the porcelain bowl. She swirled it out with hot water, watched as the slow drain gulped it away. The drain sighed.

The table was covered with unopened mail. On the back of an envelope was a note: I don’t want to see you again. Sorry. The door locks. She read it twice, considering each word, working it out like another language. The cat crept into the kitchen. She dropped the envelope.

She put her hand down and the cat rubbed against it. Why was it so thin? It didn’t look old. The fact of the note was still sinking in. She remembered the night only in flashes, visceral strobe. With her fingers she combed the tangles out of her hair. She stood up and the cat dashed away. She went out into the hall, undecided, but the weighted door latched behind her.

Fuck him.

The problem was of course that she wanted to.

It was raining. She treated herself to a cab on Eighth Avenue. In the backseat she closed her eyes. The potholes felt like mines, and the cab squeaked like rusty bedsprings. It was Sunday. Coffee, corn muffin, newspaper; she’d insulate herself with them, make a buffer between the night and the new day.

But there was something wrong with the doorman at her building.

“You’re back!” he said.

She was led incredulous to her apartment full of dead houseplants and unopened mail, her answering machine full of calls from friends, clients, the police. There was a layer of dust on the answering machine. Her address book and laptop disks were gone; clues, the doorman explained.

“Clues to what?”

“Clues to your case. To what happened to you. Everyone was worried.”

“Well, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”

“Everyone had theories. The whole building.”

“I understand.”

“The man in charge is a good man, Miss Rush. The building feels a great confidence in him.”

“Good.”

“I’m supposed to call him if something happens, like someone trying to get into your place, or you coming back. Do you want me to call?”

“Let me call.”

The card he handed her was bent and worn from traveling in his pocket. Cornell Pupkiss, Missing Persons. And a phone number. She reached out her hand; there was dust on the telephone too. “Please go,” she said.

“Is there anything you need?”

“No.” She thought of E.’s cat, for some reason.

“You can’t tell me at least what happened?”

“No.”

She remembered E.’s hands and mouth on her — a week ago? An hour?

Cornell Pupkiss was tall and drab and stolid, like a man built on the model of a tower of suitcases. He wore a hat and a trench coat, and shoes which were filigreed with a thousand tiny scratches, as though they’d been beset by phonograph needles. He seemed to absorb and deaden light.

On the telephone he had insisted on seeing her. He’d handed her the disks and the address book at the door. Now he stood just inside the door and smiled gently at her.

“I wanted to see you in the flesh,” he said. “I’ve come to know you from photographs and people’s descriptions. When I come to know a person in that manner I like to see them in the flesh if I can. It makes me feel I’ve completed my job, a rare enough illusion in my line.”

There was nothing bright or animated in the way he spoke. His voice was like furniture with the varnish carefully sanded off. “But I haven’t really completed my job until I understand what happened,” he went on. “Whether a crime was committed. Whether you’re in some sort of trouble with which I can help.”

She shook her head.

“Where were you?” he said.

“I was with a man.”

“I see. For almost two weeks?”

“Yes.”

She was still holding the address book. He raised his large hand in its direction, without uncurling a finger to point. “We called every man you know.”

“This — this was someone I just met. Are these questions necessary, Mr. Pupkiss?”

“If the time was spent voluntarily, no.” His lips tensed, his whole expression deepened, like gravy jelling. “I’m sorry, Miss Rush.”

Pupkiss in his solidity touched her somehow. Reassured her. If he went away, she saw now, she’d be alone with the questions. She wanted him to stay a little longer and voice the questions for her.

But now he was gently sarcastic. “You’re answerable to no one, of course. I only suggest that in the future you might spare the concern of your neighbors, and the effort of my department — a single phone call would be sufficient.”

“I didn’t realize how much time had passed,” she said. He couldn’t know how truthful that was.

“I’ve heard it can be like that,” he said, surprisingly bitter. “But it’s not criminal to neglect the feelings of others; just adolescent.”

You don’t understand, she nearly cried out. But she saw that he would view it as one or the other, a menace or self-indulgence. If she convinced him of her distress, he’d want to protect her.

She couldn’t let harm come to E. She wanted to comprehend what had happened, but Pupkiss was too blunt to be her investigatory tool.

Reflecting in this way, she said, “The things that happen to people don’t always fit into such easy categories as that.”

“I agree,” he said, surprising her again. “But in my job it’s best to keep from bogging down in ontology. Missing Persons is an extremely large and various category. Many people are lost in relatively simple ways, and those are generally the ones I can help. Good day, Miss Rush.”

“Good day.” She didn’t object as he moved to the door. Suddenly she was eager to be free of this ponderous man, his leaden integrity. She wanted to be left alone to remember the night before, to think of the one who’d devoured her and left her reeling. That was what mattered.

E. had somehow caused two weeks to pass in one feverish night, but Pupkiss threatened to make the following morning feel like two weeks.

He shut the door behind him so carefully that there was only a little huff of displaced air and a tiny click as the bolt engaged.

“It’s me,” she said into the intercom.

There was only static. She pressed the button again. “Let me come up.”

He didn’t answer, but the buzzer at the door sounded. She went into the hall and upstairs to his door.

“It’s open,” he said.

E. was seated at the table, holding a drink. The cat was curled up on the pile of envelopes. The apartment was dark. Still, she saw what she hadn’t before: he lived terribly, in rooms that were wrecked and provisional. The plaster was cracked everywhere. Cigarette stubs were bunched in the baseboard corners where, having still smoldered, they’d tanned the linoleum. The place smelled sour, in a way that made her think of the sourness she’d washed from her body in her own bath an hour before.

He tilted his head up, but didn’t meet her gaze. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

His voice was ragged, his expression had a crushed quality. His hand on the glass was tensed like a claw. But even diminished and bitter he seemed to her effervescent, made of light.

“We — something happened when we made love,” she said. The words came tenderly. “We lost time.”

“I warned you. Now leave.”

“My life,” she said, uncertain what she meant.

“Yes, it’s yours,” he shot back. “Take it and go.”

“If I gave you two weeks, it seems the least you can do is look me in the eye,” she said.

He did it, but his mouth trembled as though he were guilty or afraid. His face was beautiful to her.

“I want to know you,” she said.

“I can’t let that happen,” he said. “You see why.” He tipped his glass back and emptied it, grimacing.

“This is what always happens to you?”

“I can’t answer your questions.”

“If that happens, I don’t care.” She moved to him and put her hands in his hair.

He reached up and held them there.

3

A woman has come into my life. I hardly know how to speak of it.

I was in the station, enduring the hectoring of Dell Armickle, the commander of the Vice Squad. He is insufferable, a toad from Hell. He follows the donut cart through the offices each afternoon, pinching the buttocks of the Jamaican woman who peddles the donuts and that concentrated urine others call coffee. This day he stopped at my desk to gibe at the headlines in my morning paper. “Union Boss Stung In Fat Farm Sex Ring — ha! Made you look, didn’t I?”

“What?”

“Pupkiss, you’re only pretending to be thick. How much you got hidden away in that Swedish bank account by now?”

“Sorry?” His gambits were incomprehensible.

“Whatsis?” he said, poking at my donut, ignoring his own blather better than I could ever hope to. “Cinnamon?”

“Whole wheat,” I said.

Then she appeared. She somehow floated in without causing any fuss, and stood at the head of my desk. She was pale and hollow-eyed and beautiful, like Renée Falconetti in Dreyer’s Jeanne d’Arc.

“Officer Pupkiss,” she said. Is it only in the light of what followed that I recall her speaking my name as though she knew me? At least she spoke it with certainty, not questioning whether she’d found her goal.

I’d never seen her before, though I can only prove it by tautology: I knew at that moment I was seeing a face I would never forget.

Armickle bugged his eyes and nostrils at me, imitating both clown and beast. “Speak to the lady, Cornell,” he said, managing to impart to the syllables of my given name a childish ribaldry.

“I’m Pupkiss,” I said awkwardly.

“I’d like to talk to you,” she said. She looked only at me, as though Armickle didn’t exist.

“I can take a hint,” said Armickle. “Have fun, you two.” He hurried after the donut cart.

“You work in Missing Persons,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Petty Violations.”

“Before, you used to work in Missing Persons—”

“Never. They’re a floor above us. I’ll walk you to the elevator if you’d like.”

“No.” She shook her head curtiy, impatiently. “Forget it. I want to talk to you. What are Petty Violations?”

“It’s an umbrella term. But I’d sooner address your concerns than try your patience with my job description.”

“Yes. Could we go somewhere?”

I led her to a booth in the coffee shop downstairs. I ordered a donut, to replace the one I’d left behind on my desk. She drank coffee, holding the cup with both hands to warm them. I found myself wanting to feed her, build her a nest.

“Cops really do like donuts,” she said, smiling weakly.

“Or toruses,” I said.

“Sorry? You mean the astrological symbol?”

“No, the geometric shape. A torus. A donut is in the shape of one. Like a life preserver, or a tire, or certain space stations. It’s a little joke of mine: cops don’t like donuts, they like toruses.”

She looked at me oddly. I cursed myself for bringing it up. “Shouldn’t the plural be tori?” she said.

I winced. “I’m sure you’re right. Never mind. I don’t mean to take up your time with my little japes.”

“I’ve got plenty of time,” she said, poignant again.

“Nevertheless. You wished to speak to me.”

“You knew me once,” she said.

I did my best to appear sympathetic, but I was baffled.

“Something happened to the world. Everything changed. Everyone that I know has disappeared.”

“As an evocation of subjective truth—” I began.

“No. I’m talking about something real. I used to have friends.”

“I’ve had few, myself.”

“Listen to me. All the people I know have disappeared. My family, my friends, everyone I used to work with. They’ve all been replaced by strangers who don’t know me. I have nowhere to go. I’ve been awake for two days looking for my life. I’m exhausted. You’re the only person that looks the same as before, and has the same name. The Missing Persons man, ironically.”

“I’m not the Missing Persons man,” I said.

“Cornell Pupkiss. I could never forget a name like that.”

“It’s been a burden.”

“You don’t remember coming to my apartment? You said you’d been looking for me. I was gone for two weeks.”

I struggled against temptation. I could extend my time in her company by playing along, indulging the misunderstanding. In other words, by betraying what I knew to be the truth: that I had nothing at all to do with her unusual situation.

“No,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

Her expression hardened. “Why should you?” she said bitterly.

“Your question’s rhetorical,” I said. “Permit me a rhetorical reply. That I don’t know you from some earlier encounter we can both regret. However, I know you now. And I’d be pleased to have you consider me an ally.”

“Thank you.”

“How did you find me?”

“I called the station and asked if you still worked there.”

“And there’s no one else from your previous life?”

“No one — except him.”

Ah.

“Tell me,” I said.

She’d met the man she called E. in a bar, how long ago she couldn’t explain. She described him as irresistible. I formed an impression of a skunk, a rat. She said he worked no deliberate charm on her, on the contrary seemed panicked when the mood between them grew intimate and full of promise. I envisioned a scoundrel with an act, a crafted diffidence that allured, a backped-aling attack.

He’d taken her home, of course.

“And?” I said.

“We fucked,” she said. “It was good, I think. But I have trouble remembering.”

The words stung. The one in particular. I tried not to be a child, swallowed my discomfort away. “You were drunk,” I suggested.

“No. I mean, yes, but it was more than that. We weren’t clumsy like drunks. We went into some kind of trance.”

“He drugged you.”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“What happened — it wasn’t something he wanted.”

“And what did happen?”

“Two weeks disappeared from my life overnight. When I got home I found I’d been considered missing. My friends and family had been searching for me. You’d been called in.”

“I thought your friends and family had vanished themselves. That no one knew you.”

“No. That was the second time.”

“Second time?”

“The second time we fucked.” Then she seemed to remember something, and dug in her pocket. “Here.” She handed me a scuffed business card: CORNELL PUPKISS, MISSING PERSONS.

“I can’t believe you live this way. It’s like a prison.” She referred to the seamless rows of book spines that faced her in each of my few rooms, including the bedroom where we now stood. “Is it all criminology?”

“I’m not a policeman in some cellular sense,” I said, and then realized the pun. “I mean, not intrinsically. They’re novels, first editions.”

“Let me guess; mysteries.”

“I detest mysteries. I would never bring one into my home.”

“Well, you have, in me.”

I blushed, I think, from head to toe. “That’s different,” I stammered. “Human lives exist to be experienced, or possibly endured, but not solved. They resemble any other novel more than they do mysteries. Westerns, even. It’s that lie the mystery tells that I detest.”

“Your reading is an antidote to the simplifications of your profession, then.”

“I suppose. Let me show you where the clean towels are kept.”

I handed her fresh towels and linen, and took for myself a set of sheets to cover the living room sofa.

She saw that I was preparing the sofa and said, “The bed’s big enough.”

I didn’t turn, but I felt the blood rush to the back of my neck as though specifically to meet her gaze. “It’s four in the afternoon,” I said. “I won’t be going to bed for hours. Besides, I snore.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Looks uncomfortable, though. What’s Barbara Pym? She sounds like a mystery writer, one of those stuffy English ones.”

The moment passed, the blush faded from my scalp. I wondered later, though, whether this had been some crucial missed opportunity. A chance at the deeper intervention that was called for.

“Read it,” I said, relieved at the change of subject. “Just be careful of the dust jacket.”

“I may learn something, huh?” She took the book and climbed in between the covers.

“I hope you’ll be entertained.”

“And she doesn’t snore, I guess. That was a joke, Mr. Pupkiss.”

“So recorded. Sleep well. I have to return to the station. I’ll lock the door.”

“Back to Little Offenses?”

“Petty Violations.”

“Oh, right.” I could hear her voice fading. As I stood and watched, she fell soundly asleep. I took the Pym from her hands and replaced it on the shelf.

I wasn’t going to the station. Using the information she’d given me, I went to find the tavern E. supposedly frequented.

I found him there, asleep in a booth, head resting on his folded arms. He looked terrible, his hair a thatch, drool leaking into his sweater arm, his eyes swollen like a fevered child’s, just the picture of raffish haplessness a woman would find magnetic. Unmistakably the seedy vermin I’d projected and the idol of Miss Rush’s nightmare.

I went to the bar and ordered an Irish coffee, and considered. Briefly indulging a fantasy of personal power, I rebuked myself for coming here and making him real, when he had only before been an absurd story, a neurotic symptom. Then I took out the card she’d given me and laid it on the bar top. Cornell Pupkiss, Missing Persons. No, I myself was the symptom. It is seldom as easy in practice as in principle to acknowledge one’s own bystander status in incomprehensible matters.

I took my coffee to his booth and sat across from him. He roused and looked up at me.

“Rise and shine, buddy boy,” I said, a little stiffly. I’ve never thrilled to the role of Bad Cop.

“What’s the matter?”

“Your unshaven chin is scratching the table surface.”

“Sorry.” He rubbed his eyes.

“Got nowhere to go?”

“What are you, the house dick?”

“I’m in the employ of any taxpayer,” I said. “The bartender happens to be one.”

“He’s never complained to me.”

“Things change.”

“You can say that again.”

We stared at each other. I supposed he was nearly my age, though he was more boyishly pretty than I’d been even as an actual boy. I hated him for that, but I pitied him for the part I saw that was precociously old and bitter.

I thought of Miss Rush asleep in my bed. She’d been worn and disarrayed by their two encounters, but she didn’t yet look this way. I wanted to keep her from it.

“Let me give you some advice,” I said, as gruffly as I could manage. “Solve your problems.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Don’t get stuck in a rut.” I was aware of the lameness of my words only as they emerged, too late to stop. “Don’t worry, I never do.”

“Very well then,” I said, somehow unnerved. “This interview is concluded.” If he’d shown any sign of budging I might have leaned back in the booth, crossed my arms authoritatively, and stared him out the door. Since he remained planted in his seat, I stood up, feeling that my last spoken words needed reinforcement.

He laid his head back into the cradle of his arms, first sliding the laminated place mat underneath. “This will protect the table surface,” he said.

“That’s good, practical thinking,” I heard myself say as I left the booth.

It wasn’t the confrontation I’d been seeking.

On the way home I shopped for breakfast, bought orange juice, milk, bagels, fresh coffee beans. I took it upstairs and unpacked it as quietly as I could in the kitchen, then removed my shoes and crept in to have a look at Miss Rush. She was peaceably asleep. I closed the door and prepared my bed on the sofa. I read a few pages of the Penguin softcover edition of Muriel Spark’s The Bachelors before dropping off.

Before dawn, the sky like blued steel, the city silent, I was woken by a sound in the apartment, at the front door. I put on my robe and went into the kitchen. The front door was unlocked, my key in the deadbolt. I went back through the apartment; Miss Rush was gone.

I write this at dawn. I am very frightened.

4

In an alley which ran behind a lively commercial street there sat a pair of the large trash receptacles commonly known as Dumpsters. In them accumulated the waste produced by the shops whose rear entrances shared the alley; a framer’s, a soup kitchen, an antique clothing store, a donut bakery, and a photocopyist’s establishment, and by the offices above those storefronts. On this street and in this alley, each day had its seasons: Spring, when complaining morning shifts opened the shops, students and workers rushed to destinations, coffee sloshing in paper cups, and in the alley, the sanitation contractors emptied containers, sorted recyclables and waste like bees pollinating garbage truck flowers; Summer, the ripened afternoons, when the workday slackened, shoppers stole long lunches from their employers, the cafes filled with students with highlighter pens, and the indigent beckoned for the change that jingled in incautious pockets, while in the alley new riches piled up; Autumn, the cooling evening, when half the shops closed, and the street was given over to prowlers and pacers, those who lingered in bookstores and dined alone in Chinese restaurants, and the indigent plundered the fatted Dumpsters for half-eaten paper bag lunches, batches of botched donuts, wearable cardboard matting and unmatched socks, and burnable wood scraps; Winter, the selfish night, when even the cafes battened down iron gates through which night-watchmen fluorescents palely flickered, the indigent built their overnight camps in doorways and under sidestreet hedges, or in wrecked cars, and the street itself was an abandoned stage.

On the morning in question the sun shone brightly, yet the air was bitingly cold. Birds twittered resentfully. When the sanitation crew arrived to wheel the two Dumpsters out to be hydraulically lifted into their screeching, whining truck, they were met with cries of protest from within.

The men lifted the metal tops of the Dumpsters and discovered that an indigent person had lodged in each of them, a lady in one, a gentleman in the other.

“Geddoudadare,” snarled the eldest sanitation engineer, a man with features like a spilled plate of stew.

The indigent lady rose from within the heap of refuse and stood blinking in the bright morning sun. She was an astonishing sight, a ruin. The colors of her skin and hair and clothes had all surrendered to gray; an archaeologist might have ventured an opinion as to their previous hue. She could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty years old, but speculation was absurd; her age had been taken from her and replaced with a timeless condition, a state. Her eyes were pitiable; horrified and horrifying; witnesses, victims, accusers.

“Where am I?” she said softly.

“Isedgeddoudadare,” barked the garbage operative.

The indigent gentleman then raised himself from the other Dumpster. He was in every sense her match; to describe him would be to tax the reader’s patience for things worn, drab, desolate, crestfallen, unfortunate, etc. He turned his head at the trashman’s exhortation and saw his mate.

“What’s the—” he began, then stopped.

“You,” said the indigent lady, lifting an accusing finger at him from amidst her rags. “You did this to me.”

“No,” he said. “No.”

“Yes!” she screamed.

“C’mon,” said the burly sanitateur. He and his second began pushing the nearer container, which bore the lady, towards his truck.

She cursed at them and climbed out, with some difficulty. They only laughed at her and pushed the cart out to the street. The indigent man scrambled out of his Dumpster and brushed at his clothes, as though they could thereby be distinguished from the material in which he’d lain.

The lady flew at him, furious. “Look at us! Look what you did to me!” She whirled her limbs at him, trailing banners of rag.

He backed from her, and bumped into one of the garbagemen, who said, “Hey!”

“It’s not my fault,” said the indigent man.

“Yugoddagedoudahere!” said the stew-faced worker.

“What do you mean it’s not your fault?” she shrieked.

Windows were sliding open in the offices above them. “Quiet down there,” came a voice.

“It wouldn’t happen without you,” he said.

At that moment a policeman rounded the corner. He was a large man named Officer McPupkiss who even in the morning sun conveyed an aspect of night. His policeman’s uniform was impeccably fitted, his brass polished, but his shoetops were exceptionally scuffed and dull. His presence stilled the combatants.

“What’s the trouble?” he said.

They began talking all at once; the pair of indigents, the refuse handlers, and the disgruntled office worker leaning out of his window.

“Please,” said McPupkiss, in a quiet voice which was nonetheless heard by all.

“He ruined my life!” said the indigent lady raggedly.

“Ah, yes. Shall we discuss it elsewhere?” He’d already grasped the situation. He held out his arms, almost as if he wanted to embrace the two tatterdemalions, and nodded at the disposal experts, who silently resumed their labors. The indigents followed McPupkiss out of the alley.

“He ruined my life,” she said again when they were on the sidewalk.

“She ruined mine,” answered the gentleman.

“I wish I could believe it was all so neat,” said McPupkiss. “A life is simply ruined; credit for the destruction goes here or here. In my own experience things are more ambiguous.”

“This is one of the exceptions,” said the lady. “It’s strange but not ambiguous. He fucked me over.”

“She was warned,” he said. “She made it happen.”

“The two of you form a pretty picture,” said McPupkiss. “You ought to be working together to improve your situation; instead you’re obsessed with blame.”

“We can’t work together,” she said. “Anytime we come together we create a disaster.”

“Fine, go your separate ways,” said the officer. “I’ve always thought ‘We got ourselves into this mess and we can get ourselves out of it’ was a laughable attitude. Many things are irreversible, and what matters is moving on. For example, a car can’t reverse its progress over a cliff; it has to be abandoned by those who survive the fall, if any do.”

But by the end of this speech the gray figures had fallen to blows and were no longer listening. They clutched one another like exhausted boxers, hissing and slapping, each trying to topple the other. McPupkiss chided himself for wasting his breath, grabbed them both by the back of their scruffy collars, and began smiting their hindquarters with his dingy shoes until they ran down the block and out of sight together, united again, McPupkiss thought, as they were so clearly meant to be.

5

The village of Pupkinstein was nestled in a valley surrounded by steep woods. The villagers were a contented people except for the fear of the two monsters that lived in the woods and came into the village to fight their battles. Everyone knew that the village had been rebuilt many times after being half destroyed by the fighting of the monsters. No one living could remember the last of these battles, but that only intensified the suspicion that the next time would surely be soon.

Finally the citizens of Pupkinstein gathered in the town square to discuss the threat of the two monsters, and debate proposals for the prevention of their battles.

A group of builders said, “Let us build a wall around the perimeter of the village, with a single gate which could be fortified by volunteer soldiers.”

A group of priests began laughing, and one of them said, “Don’t you know that the monsters have wings? They’ll flap twice and be over your wall in no time.”

Since none of the builders had ever seen the monsters, they had no reply.

Then the priests spoke up and said, “We should set up temples which can be filled with offerings: food, wine, burning candles, knitted scarves, and the like. The monsters will be appeased.”

Now the builders laughed, saying, “These are monsters, not jealous gods. They don’t care for our appeasements. They only want to crush each other, and we’re in the way.”

The priests had no answer, since their holy scriptures contained no accounts of the monsters’ habits.

Then the Mayor of Pupkinstein, a large, somber man, said, “We should build our own monster here in the middle of the square, a scarecrow so huge and threatening that the monsters will see it and at once be frightened back into hiding.”

This plan satisfied the builders, with their love of construction, and the priests, with their fondness for symbols. So the very next morning the citizens of Pupkinstein set about constructing a gigantic figure in the square. They began by demolishing their fountain. In its place they marked out the soles of two gigantic shoes, and the builders sank foundations for the towering legs that would extend from them. Then the carpenters built frames, and the seamstresses sewed canvases, and in less than a week the two shoes were complete, and the beginnings of ankles besides. Without being aware of it, the citizens had begun to model their monster on the Mayor, who was always present as a model, whereas no one had ever seen the two monsters.

The following night it rained. Tarpaulins were thrown over the half-constructed ankles that rose from the shoes. The Mayor and the villagers retired to an alehouse to toast their labors and be sheltered from the rain. But just as the proprietor was pouring their ale, someone said, “Listen!”

Between the crash of thunder and the crackle of lightning there came a hideous bellowing from the woods at either end of the valley.

“They’re coming!” the citizens said. “Too soon — our monster’s not finished!”

“How bitter,” said one man. “We’ve had a generation of peace in which to build, and yet we only started a few days ago.”

“We’ll always know that we tried,” said the Mayor philosophically.

“Perhaps the shoes will be enough to frighten them,” said the proprietor, who had always been regarded as a fool.

No one answered him. Fearing for their lives, the villagers ran to their homes and barricaded themselves behind shutters and doors, hid their children in attics and potato cellars, and snuffed out candles and lanterns that might lead an attacker to their doors. No one dared even look at the naked, miserable things that came out of the woods and into the square; no one, that is, except the Mayor. He stood in the shadow of one of the enormous shoes, rain beating on his umbrella, only dimly sensing that he was watching another world being fucked away.

6

I live in a shadowless pale blue sea.

I am a bright pink crablike thing, some child artist’s idea of an invertebrate, so badly drawn as to be laughable.

Nevertheless, I have feelings.

More than feelings. I have a mission, an obsession.

I am building a wall.

Every day I move a grain of sand. The watercolor sea washes over my back, but I protect my accumulation. I fasten each grain to the wall with my comic-book feces. (Stink lines hover above my shit, also flies which look like bow ties, though I am supposed to be underwater.)

He is on the other side. My nemesis. Someday my wall will divide the ocean, someday it will reach the surface, or the top of the page, and be called a reef. He will be on the other side. He will not be able to get to me.

My ridiculous body moves only sideways, but it is enough.

I will divide the watercolor ocean, I will make it two. We must have a world for each of us.

I move a grain. When I come to my wall, paradoxically, I am nearest him. His little pink body, practically glowing. He is watching me, watching me build.

There was a time when he tried to help, when every day for a week he added a grain to my wall. I spent every day that week removing his grain, expelling it from the wall, and no progress was made until he stopped. He understands now. My wall must be my own. We can be together in nothing. Let him build his own wall. So he watches.

My wall will take me ten thousand years to complete. I live only for the day that it is complete.

The Pupfish floats by.

The Pupfish is a fish with the features of a mournful hound dog and a policeman’s cap. The Pupfish is the only creature in the sea apart from me and my pink enemy.

The Pupfish, I know, would like to scoop me up in its oversized jaws and take me away. The Pupfish thinks it can solve my problem.

But no matter how far the Pupfish took me, I would still be in the same ocean with him. That cannot be. There must be two oceans. So I am building a wall.

I move a grain.

I rest.

I will be free.