The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Part 42

Joe nodded, watching his face, and Sammy looked away.

"I'd like a cigarette," Joe said.

Sammy fished one out of his jacket and stuck it between Joe's lips.

"I'm sorry," Joe said.

"Are you?"

"About Tracy, I mean. I know it was a long time ago but I..."

"Yeah," Sammy said. "Everything was a long time ago."

"Everything I'm sorry about, anyway," Joe said.

10

The view out the windows was pure cloud bank, a gray woolen sock pulled down over the top of the building. On the walls of Joe's strange apartment hung sketches of the head of a rabbi, a man with fine features and a snowy white beard. The studies were tacked up with pushpins, and they depicted this n.o.ble-looking gentleman in a variety of moods: rapturous, commanding, afraid. There were fat books on the tables and chairs; thick reference volumes and tractates and dusty surveys: Joe had been doing a little research himself. Sammy saw, stacked neatly in a corner, the wooden crates in which Joe had always kept his comics-only there were ten times as many as he remembered. Over the room lay the smell of long occupation by a solitary man: burned coffee, hard sausage, dirty linens.

"Welcome to the Bat Cave," Lieber said when Sammy came in.

"Actually," Longman Harkoo said, "it's apparently known as the Chamber of Secrets."

"Is it?" Sammy said.

"Well, uh, that's what I call it," said Tommy, coloring. "But not really."

You came into the Chamber of Secrets from a small anteroom that had been painstakingly decorated to simulate the reception area of a small but going concern. It had a steel desk and typist's table, an armchair, a filing cabinet, a telephone, a hat stand. On the desk stood a nameplate promising the daily presence behind it of a Miss Smyslenka, and a vase of dried flowers, and a photograph of Miss Smyslenka's grinning baby, played by a six-month-old Thomas E. Clay. On the wall was a large commercial painting of a st.u.r.dy-looking factory, luminous in the rosy glow of a New Jersey morning, chimneys trailing pretty blue smoke. kornblum vanishing creams, read the engraved label affixed to the bottom of the frame, ho-ho-kus, new jersey.

No one, not even Tommy, was quite sure how long Joe had been living in the Empire State Building, but it was clear that during this time he had been working very hard and reading a lot of comic books. On the floor stood ten piles of Bristol board, every sheet in each pile covered in neat panels of pencil drawings. At first Sammy was too overwhelmed by the sheer number of pages-there must have been four or five thousand-to look very closely at any of them, but he did notice that they seemed to be uninked. Joe had been working in a variety of gauges of lead, letting his pencils do the tricks of light and ma.s.s and shadow that were usually pulled off with ink.

In addition to the rabbis, there were studies of organ-grinders, soldiers in breastplates, a beautiful girl in a headscarf, in various att.i.tudes and activities. There were buildings and carriages, street scenes. It didn't take Sammy long to recognize the spiky elaborate towers and crumbling archways of what must be Prague, lanes of queer houses huddled in the snow, a bridge of statues casting a broken moonlit shadow on a river, twisting alleyways. The characters, for the most part, appeared to be Jews, old-fashioned, black-garbed, drawn with all of Joe's usual fluidity and detail. The faces, Sammy noticed, were more specific, quirkier, uglier, than the lexicon of generic comic book mugs that Joe had learned and then exploited in all his old work. They were human faces, pinched, hungry, the eyes antic.i.p.ating horror but hoping for something more. All except for one. One character, repeated over and over in the sketches on the walls, had barely any face at all, the conventional V's and hyphens of a comic physiognomy simplified to almost blank abstraction.

"The Golem," Sammy said.

"Apparently he was writing a novel," Lieber said.

"He was," Tommy said. "It's all about the Golem. Rabbi Judah Ben Beelzebub scratched the word 'truth' into his forehead and he came to life. And one time? In Prague? Joe saw the real Golem. His father had it in a closet in their house."

"It really does look marvelous," Longman said. "I can't wait to read it."

"A comic book novel," Sammy said. He thought of his own by-now legendary novel, American Disillusionment, American Disillusionment, that cyclone which, for years, had woven its erratic path across the flatlands of his imaginary life, always on the verge of grandeur or disintegration, picking up characters and plotlines like houses and livestock, tossing them aside and moving on. It had taken the form, at various times, of a bitter comedy, a stoical Hemingwayesque tragedy, a hard-nosed lesson in social anatomy like something by John O'Hara, a bare-knuckles urban that cyclone which, for years, had woven its erratic path across the flatlands of his imaginary life, always on the verge of grandeur or disintegration, picking up characters and plotlines like houses and livestock, tossing them aside and moving on. It had taken the form, at various times, of a bitter comedy, a stoical Hemingwayesque tragedy, a hard-nosed lesson in social anatomy like something by John O'Hara, a bare-knuckles urban Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn. It was the autobiography of a man who could not face himself, an elaborate system of evasion and lies unredeemed by the artistic virtue of self-betrayal. It had been two years now since his last crack at the thing, and until this very instant he would have sworn that his ancient ambitions to be something more than the hack scribbler of comic books for a fifth-rate house were as dead, as the saying went, as vaudeville. "My G.o.d." It was the autobiography of a man who could not face himself, an elaborate system of evasion and lies unredeemed by the artistic virtue of self-betrayal. It had been two years now since his last crack at the thing, and until this very instant he would have sworn that his ancient ambitions to be something more than the hack scribbler of comic books for a fifth-rate house were as dead, as the saying went, as vaudeville. "My G.o.d."

"Come on, Mr. Clay," Lieber said. "You can ride over to the hospital with me."

"Why are you going to the hospital?" Sammy said, though he knew the answer.

"Well, I feel pretty strongly that I have to arrest him. I hope you understand."

" Arrest Arrest him?" Longman said. "What for?" him?" Longman said. "What for?"

"Disturbing the peace, I suppose. Or maybe we'll get him for illegal habitation. I'm sure the building is going to want to press charges. I don't know. I'll figure it out on the way over."

Sammy saw his father-in-law's smirk shrink down to a hard little b.u.t.ton, and his generally genial blue eyes went dead and gla.s.sy. It was an expression Sammy had seen before, on the floor of Longman's gallery,[15][15] when he was dealing with a painter who overvalued his own work or some lady with a t.i.tle and most of a dead civet around her shoulders, who was better equipped with money than judgment. Rosa called it, in reference to her father's origins in retail, "his rug-merchant stare." when he was dealing with a painter who overvalued his own work or some lady with a t.i.tle and most of a dead civet around her shoulders, who was better equipped with money than judgment. Rosa called it, in reference to her father's origins in retail, "his rug-merchant stare."

"We'll see about that," Longman said, with deliberate indiscretion and a sideways look at Sammy. "Surrealism has agents at every level of the machinery of power. I sold a painting to the mayor's mother last week."

Your father-in-law is kind of a blowhard, said Detective Lieber's eyes. I know it, Sammy's replied.

"Excuse me." There was a new visitor to the offices of Kornblum Vanishing Creams. He was young, good-looking in a featureless governmental way, wearing a dark blue suit. In one hand he held a long white envelope. me." There was a new visitor to the offices of Kornblum Vanishing Creams. He was young, good-looking in a featureless governmental way, wearing a dark blue suit. In one hand he held a long white envelope.

"Sam Clay?" he said. "I'm looking for Mr. Sam Clay. I was told I might find him-"

"Here." Sammy came forward and took the envelope from the young man. "What's this?"

"That is a congressional subpoena." The young man nodded to Lieber, touching the brim of his hat with two fingers. "Sorry to disturb you gentlemen," he said.

Sammy stood for a moment, tap-tap-tapping the envelope against his hand.

"You better call Mom," said Tommy.

11

HOSE Saxon, the Queen of Romance Comics, was at her drawing board in the garage of her house in Bloomtown, New York, when her husband phoned from the city to say that, if it was all right with her, he would be bringing home the love of her life, whom she had all but given up for dead.

Miss Saxon was at work on the text of a new story, which she intended to begin laying out that night, after her son went to bed. It would be the lead story for the June issue of Kiss Comics. Kiss Comics. She planned to call it "The Bomb Destroyed My Marriage." The story would be based on an article that she had read in She planned to call it "The Bomb Destroyed My Marriage." The story would be based on an article that she had read in Redbook Redbook about the humorous difficulties of being married to a nuclear physicist employed by the government at a top-secret facility in the middle of the New Mexico desert. She was not writing so much as planning out her panels, one by one, at the typewriter. Over the years, Sammy's scripts had grown no less detailed but looser; he never bothered with telling an artist what to draw. Rosa couldn't operate that way; she hated working from Sammy's scripts. She needed to have everything figured out in advance-storyboarded, they called it in Hollywood-shot by shot, as it were. Her scripts were a tightly numbered series of master shots, the shooting scripts for ten-cent epics that, in their spa.r.s.e elegance of design, elongated perspectives, and deep focus, somewhat resemble, as Robert C. Harvey has pointed out, about the humorous difficulties of being married to a nuclear physicist employed by the government at a top-secret facility in the middle of the New Mexico desert. She was not writing so much as planning out her panels, one by one, at the typewriter. Over the years, Sammy's scripts had grown no less detailed but looser; he never bothered with telling an artist what to draw. Rosa couldn't operate that way; she hated working from Sammy's scripts. She needed to have everything figured out in advance-storyboarded, they called it in Hollywood-shot by shot, as it were. Her scripts were a tightly numbered series of master shots, the shooting scripts for ten-cent epics that, in their spa.r.s.e elegance of design, elongated perspectives, and deep focus, somewhat resemble, as Robert C. Harvey has pointed out,[16][16] the films of Douglas Sirk. She worked at a bulky Smith-Corona, typing with such intense slowness that when her boss and husband called, she did not at first hear the ringing phone. the films of Douglas Sirk. She worked at a bulky Smith-Corona, typing with such intense slowness that when her boss and husband called, she did not at first hear the ringing phone.

Rosa had gotten her start in comics soon after Sammy's return to the business, after the war. Upon taking over the editor's desk at Gold Star, Sammy's first move had been to clear out many of the subcompetents and alcoholics who littered the staff there. It was a bold and necessary-step, but it left him with an acute shortage of artists, in particular of inkers.

Tommy had started kindergarten, and Rosa was just beginning to understand the true horror of her destiny, the arrant purposelessness of her life whenever her son was not around, one day when Sammy came home at lunch, harried and frantic, with an armload of Bristol board, a bottle of Higgins ink, and a bunch of #3 brushes, and begged Rosa to help him by doing what she could. She had stayed up all night with the pages-it was some dreadful Gold Star superhero strip, The Human Grenade The Human Grenade or or The Phantom Stallion The Phantom Stallion-and had the job finished by the time Sammy left for work the next morning. The reign of the Queen had commenced.

Rose Saxon had emerged slowly, lending her ink brush at first only now and then, unsigned and uncredited, to a story or a cover that she would spread out on the dinette table in the kitchen. Rosa had always had a steady hand, a strong line, a good sense of shadow. It was work done in a kind of unreflective crisis mode-whenever Sammy was in a jam or shorthanded-but after a while, she realized that she had begun to crave intensely the days when Sammy had something for her to do.

Then one night, as they lay in bed, talking in the dark, Sammy told her that her brushwork already far exceeded that of the best people he could afford to hire at lowly Gold Star. He asked her if she had ever given any thought to penciling; to layouts; to actually writing and drawing comic book stories. He explained to her that Simon and Kirby were just then having considerable success with a new kind of feature they'd cooked up, based partly on teen features like Archie Archie and and A Date with Judy A Date with Judy and partly on the old true-romance pulps (the last of the old pulp genres to be exhumed and given new life in the comics). It was called and partly on the old true-romance pulps (the last of the old pulp genres to be exhumed and given new life in the comics). It was called Young Romance. Young Romance. It was aimed at women, and the stories it told were centered on women. Women had been neglected until now as readers of comic books; it seemed to Sammy that they might enjoy one that had actually been It was aimed at women, and the stories it told were centered on women. Women had been neglected until now as readers of comic books; it seemed to Sammy that they might enjoy one that had actually been written and drawn written and drawn by one of their own. Rosa had accepted Sammy's proposal at once, with a flush of grat.i.tude whose power was undiminished even now. by one of their own. Rosa had accepted Sammy's proposal at once, with a flush of grat.i.tude whose power was undiminished even now.

She knew what it had meant to Sammy to return to comics and take the editor's job at Gold Star. It was the one moment in the course of a long and interesting marriage when Sammy had stood on the point of following his cousin into the world of men who escaped. He had sworn, screamed, said hateful things to Rosa. He had blamed her for his penury and his debased condition and the interminable state of American Disillusionment. of American Disillusionment. If there were not a wife and a child for him to support, If there were not a wife and a child for him to support, a child not even his own a child not even his own... He had gone so far as to pack a suitcase, and walk out of the house. When he returned the next afternoon, it was as the editor in chief of Gold Star Publications, Inc. He allowed the world to wind him in the final set of chains, and climbed, once and for all, into the cabinet of mysteries that was the life of an ordinary man. He had stayed. Years later, Rosa found a ticket in a dresser drawer, dating from around that terrible time, for a seat in a second-cla.s.s compartment on the Broadway Limited: yet another train to the coast that Sammy had not been on.

The night he offered her the chance to draw "a comic book for dollies," Rosa felt, Sammy had handed her her a golden key, a skeleton key to her self, a way out of the tedium of her existence as a housewife and a mother, first in Midwood and now here in Bloomtown, soi-disant Capital of the American Dream. That enduring sense of grat.i.tude to Sammy was one of the sustaining forces of their life together, something she could turn to and summon up, grip like Tom Mayflower gripping his talisman key, whenever things started to go wrong. And the truth was that their marriage had improved after she went to work for Sammy. It no longer seemed (to mistranslate) quite as blank. They became colleagues, coworkers, partners in an unequal but well-defined way that made it easier to avoid looking too closely at the locked cabinet at the heart of things. a golden key, a skeleton key to her self, a way out of the tedium of her existence as a housewife and a mother, first in Midwood and now here in Bloomtown, soi-disant Capital of the American Dream. That enduring sense of grat.i.tude to Sammy was one of the sustaining forces of their life together, something she could turn to and summon up, grip like Tom Mayflower gripping his talisman key, whenever things started to go wrong. And the truth was that their marriage had improved after she went to work for Sammy. It no longer seemed (to mistranslate) quite as blank. They became colleagues, coworkers, partners in an unequal but well-defined way that made it easier to avoid looking too closely at the locked cabinet at the heart of things.

The more immediate result of Sammy's offer had been Working Gals, Working Gals, "shocking but true tales from the fevered lives of career girls." It debuted in the back pages of "shocking but true tales from the fevered lives of career girls." It debuted in the back pages of Spree Comics, Spree Comics, at the time the lowest-selling t.i.tle put out by Gold Star. After three months of steadily increasing sales, Sammy had moved at the time the lowest-selling t.i.tle put out by Gold Star. After three months of steadily increasing sales, Sammy had moved Working Gals Working Gals to the front of the book and allowed Rosa to sign it with her best-known pseudonym. to the front of the book and allowed Rosa to sign it with her best-known pseudonym.[17][17] A few months after that, A few months after that, Working Gals Working Gals was launched in its own t.i.tle, and shortly thereafter, Gold Star, led by was launched in its own t.i.tle, and shortly thereafter, Gold Star, led by three three "Rose Saxon Romance" books, began to show a profit for the first time since the heady early days of the war. Since then, as Sammy had moved on from Gold Star to editorships at Olympic Publications and now Pharaoh House, Rosa, in a tireless and (for the most part) financially successful campaign to portray the heart of that mythical creature, the American Girl, whom she despised and envied in equal measure, had filled the pages of "Rose Saxon Romance" books, began to show a profit for the first time since the heady early days of the war. Since then, as Sammy had moved on from Gold Star to editorships at Olympic Publications and now Pharaoh House, Rosa, in a tireless and (for the most part) financially successful campaign to portray the heart of that mythical creature, the American Girl, whom she despised and envied in equal measure, had filled the pages of Heartache, Love Crazy, Lovesick, Sweetheart, Heartache, Love Crazy, Lovesick, Sweetheart, and now and now Kiss Kiss with all the force and frustration of a dozen years of lovelessness and longing. with all the force and frustration of a dozen years of lovelessness and longing.

After Sammy had hung up, Rosa stood for a moment holding the phone, trying to make sense of what she had just heard. Somehow-it was a little confusing-their truant son had managed to find the man who had fathered him. Joe Kavalier was being fetched back, alive, from his secret hideaway in the Empire State Building ("Just like Doc Savage," according to Sammy). And he was coming to sleep in her house.

She took clean linens from the built-in cupboard in the hall and carried them toward the couch on which, a few hours from now, Joe Kavalier would lay down his well-remembered, unimaginable body. Where the hallway met the living room, she pa.s.sed a kind of star-shaped atomic squiggle with a mirror at its nucleus, and caught sight of her hair. She turned around, went into the bedroom she and Sammy shared, put down her fragrant armful of sheets, and yanked out the variety of junk, office supplies, and small bits of hardware she used to keep her hair out of her face when she was at home. She sat down on the bed, got up, went to her closet, and stood there, the sight of her wardrobe filling her with doubt and a mild sense of amus.e.m.e.nt that she recognized as, somewhat magically, Joe's. She had long since lost the sense of her dresses and skirts and blouses; they were rote phrases of rayon and cotton that she daily intoned. Now they struck her as, to a skirt, appallingly sensible and dull. She took off her sweatshirt and rolled dungarees. She lit a cigarette and walked into the kitchen in her underpants and bra.s.siere, the bramble of her loosed hair flapping around her head like a crown of plumes.

In the kitchen she took out a saucepan, melted half a cup of b.u.t.ter, and thickened it with flour to a paste. To the paste she added milk, a little at a time, then salt, pepper, and onion powder. She took her roux off the stove and started a pot of water for noodles. Then she went into the living room and put a record on the hi-fi. She had no idea what record it was. When the music began she did not listen, and when it finished she took no notice. It puzzled her to see that there were no sheets on the couch. Her hair was in her face. When flakes of ash had fallen into her roux, she now perceived, she had stirred them right in, as if they were dried bits of parsley. She had, however, forgotten to add the actual dried parsley. And for some reason, she was walking around in her bra.

"All right," she told herself. "And so what?" The sound of her voice calmed her and focused her thoughts. "He doesn't know from suburbia." She ground out her cigarette in an ashtray that was shaped like an eyebrow arched in surprise. "Get dressed."

She went back into the bedroom and put on a blue dress, knee-length, with a white waistband and a collar of dotted swiss. Various contradictory and insidious voices arose within her at this point to say that the dress made her look stout, hippy, matronly, that she ought to wear slacks. She ignored them. She brushed out her hair till it shot from her head in all directions like the mane of a dandelion, then brushed it back and tucked it up at the nape and fastened it there with a silver clasp. A dazed hesitancy returned to her manner over the question of makeup, but she settled quickly on lipstick alone, two plum streaks not especially well applied, and went out to the living room to make up the bed. The pot in the kitchen was boiling now, and she shook a rattling box of macaroni into the water. Then she began to shred into a mixing bowl a block of school-bus-yellow cheese. Macaroni and cheese. It seemed, as a dish, to exist at the very center of her sense of embarra.s.sment over her life; but it was Tommy's favorite, and she felt an impulse to reward her son for the feat he had performed. And somehow she doubted that Joe-had he really been cooped up in an office in the Empire State Building since the nineteen-forties?-would be sensitive to the socioeconomic message inherent in the bubbling brown-and-gold square, in its white Corning ca.s.serole with the blue flower on the side.

After she had slid the ca.s.serole into the oven, she returned to the bedroom to put on a pair of stockings and blue pumps with white buckles that were covered in the same glossy fabric as the waistband of the dress.

They would be here in two hours. She went back to her table and sat down to work. It was the only sensible thing she could think of to do. Sorrow, irritation, doubt, anxiety, or any other turbulent emotion that might otherwise keep her from sleeping, eating, or, in extreme cases, speaking coherently or getting out of bed, would disappear almost completely when she was in the act of telling a story. Though she had not told as many as Sammy over the years, working, as she did, exclusively in the romance genre, she had told them perhaps with greater intensity. For Rosa (who, from the first, and uniquely among the few women then working in the business, had not only drawn but, thanks to the indulgence of her editor husband, also written nearly all of her own texts), telling the story of pretty Nancy Lambert-an ordinary American girl from a small island in Maine who put all her foolish trust in the unstable hands of handsome and brilliant Lowell Burns, socialite and nuclear physicist-was an act that absorbed not merely the whole of her attention and craft but of her senses and memories as well. Her thoughts were Nancy's thoughts. Her own fingers turned white at the knuckles when Nancy learned that Lowell had lied to her again. And little by little, as she peopled and developed the world she was building out of rows and columns of blocks on sheets of eleven-by-fifteen Bristol board, Nancy's past was transformed into her own. The velvet tongues of tame Maine deer had once licked her childish palms. The smoke from burning piles of autumn leaves, fireflies writing alphabets against the summer night sky, the sweet jets of salt steam escaping from baked clams, the creaking of winter ice on tree limbs, all of these sensations racked Rosa's heart with an almost unbearable nostalgia as, contemplating the horrific red bloom of the bomb that had become her Other Woman, she considered the possible destruction of everything she had ever known, from kindly Miss Pratt in the old island schoolhouse to the sight of her father's old dory among the lobster boats returning in the evening with the day's catch. At such moments, she did not invent her plots or design her characters; she remembered them. Her pages, though neglected by all but a few collectors, retain an imprint of the creator's faith in her creation, the beautiful madness that is rare enough in any art form, but in the comics business, with its enforced collaborations and tireless seeking-out of the lowest common denominator, all but unheard of.

All this is by way of explaining why Rosa, who had been stricken with panic and confusion at the telephone call from Sammy, gave so little thought to Josef Kavalier once she had sat down to work. Alone in her makeshift studio in the garage, she smoked, listened to Mahler and Faure on WQXR, and dissolved herself in the travails and shapely contours of poor Nancy Lambert, as she would have on a day that included no reports of her son's wild truancy or revenants from the deepest-buried history of her heart. It was not until she heard the sc.r.a.pe of the Studebaker against the driveway that she even looked up from her work.

The macaroni and cheese turned out to be a superfluous gesture; Tommy was asleep by the time they got him home. Sammy struggled into the house with the boy in his arms.

"Did he have dinner?"

"He had a doughnut."

"That isn't dinner."

"He had a c.o.ke."

He was deeply asleep, cheeks flushed, breath whistling through his teeth, mysteriously lost in an extra-large Police Athletic League sweatshirt.

"You broke your ribs," Rosa told Joe.

"No," Joe said. "Just a bad bruise." There was a fiery welt on his cheek, partially covered by a taped square of gauze. His nose looked luminous at the nostrils, as if it had recently been bleeding.

"Out of my way," Sammy said, through his teeth. "I don't want to drop him."

"Let me," Joe said.

"Your ribs-"

"Let me."

I want to see this, thought Rosa. In fact, there had been nothing in her life that she had ever wanted to see more.

"Why don't you let him?" she said to Sammy.

So Sammy, holding his breath, wincing in sympathy and wrinkling his brow, tipped the sleeping boy into Joe's arms. Joe's face tightened in pain, but he bore it and stood holding Tommy, gazing with alarming tenderness down at his face. Rosa and Sammy stood ardently watching Joe Kavalier look at his son. Then, at the same instant, they each seemed to notice that this was what the other was doing, and they blushed and smiled, awash in the currents of doubt and shame and contentment that animated all the proceedings of their jury-rigged family.

Joe cleared his throat, or perhaps he was grunting in pain.

They looked at him.

"Where is his room?" Joe said.

"Oh, sorry," said Rosa. "G.o.d. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"It's this way."

She led him down the hall and into Tommy's bedroom. Joe laid the boy on top of the bedspread, which was patterned with colonial tavern signs and with curl-cornered proclamations printed in a b.u.mpy Revolutionary War typeface. It had been quite some time since the duty and pleasure of undressing her son had fallen to Rosa. For several years, she had been wishing him, willing him, into maturity, independence, a general proficiency beyond his years, as if hoping to skip him like a stone across the treacherous pond of childhood, and now she was touched by a faint trace of the baby in him, in his pouting lips and the febrile sheen of his eyelids. She leaned over and untied his shoes, then pulled them off. His socks clung to his pale, perspired feet. Joe took the shoes and socks from her. Rosa unb.u.t.toned Tommy's corduroy trousers and tugged them down his legs, then pulled up his shirt and the sweatshirt until his head and arms were a lost bundle within. She gave a kind of slow practiced tug, and the top portion of her boy popped free.

"Nicely done," Joe said.

Tommy had apparently been plied with ice cream and soda pop at the police station, to loosen his tongue. His face was going to have to be washed. Rosa went for a cloth. Joe followed her into the bathroom, carrying the shoes in one hand and the pair of socks, rolled into a neat ball, in the other.

"I have dinner in the oven."

"I'm very hungry."

"You didn't break a tooth or anything?"

"Luckily, no."

It was crazy; they were just talking. His voice sounded like his voice, orotund but with a slight ba.s.soon reediness; the droll Hapsburg accent was still there, sounding doctoral and not quite genuine. Out in the living room, Sammy had turned over the record she'd put on earlier; Rosa recognized it now: Stan Kenton's New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm. New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm. Joe followed her back into the bedroom, and Rosa scrubbed the sweet epoxy from Tommy's baby-boy lips and fingers. An unwrapped Charms Pop that he had plunged, half-sucked, into his pants pocket had mapped out a sticky continent on the smooth hairless hollow of his hip. Rosa wiped it away. Tommy muttered and winced throughout her attentions; once, his eyes shot open, filled with alarmed intelligence, and Rosa and Joe grimaced at each other: they had woken him up. But the boy closed his eyes again, and with Joe lilting and Rosa pulling, they got him into his pajamas. Joe hefted him, groaning again, as Rosa peeled back the covers of the bed. Then they tucked him in. Joe smoothed the hair back from Tommy's forehead. Joe followed her back into the bedroom, and Rosa scrubbed the sweet epoxy from Tommy's baby-boy lips and fingers. An unwrapped Charms Pop that he had plunged, half-sucked, into his pants pocket had mapped out a sticky continent on the smooth hairless hollow of his hip. Rosa wiped it away. Tommy muttered and winced throughout her attentions; once, his eyes shot open, filled with alarmed intelligence, and Rosa and Joe grimaced at each other: they had woken him up. But the boy closed his eyes again, and with Joe lilting and Rosa pulling, they got him into his pajamas. Joe hefted him, groaning again, as Rosa peeled back the covers of the bed. Then they tucked him in. Joe smoothed the hair back from Tommy's forehead.

"What a big boy," he said.

"He's almost twelve," Rosa said.

"Yes, I know."

She looked down at his hands, by his sides. He was still holding on to the pair of shoes.

"Are you hungry?" she said, keeping her voice low.

"I'm very hungry."

As they went out of the room Rosa turned to look at Tommy and had an impulse to go back, to get into his bed with him and just lie there for a while feeling that deep longing, that sense of missing him desperately, that came over her whenever she held him sleeping in her arms. She closed the door behind them.

"Let's eat," she said.

It wasn't until the three of them were seated around the dinette in the kitchen that she got her first good look at Joe. There was something denser about him now. His face seemed to have aged less than Sammy's or than, G.o.d knew, her own, and his expression, as he puzzled out the unfamiliar sights and smells of the cozy kitchen of their Pen.o.bscott, had something of the old bemused Joe that she remembered. Rosa had read about the Einsteinian traveler at the speed of light who returned after a trip that had taken a few years of his life to find everyone he knew and loved bent or moldering in the ground. It seemed to her as if Joe had returned like that, from somewhere distant and beautiful and unimaginably bleak.

As they ate, Sammy told Rosa the story of his day, from the time he had run into the boys at the Excelsior Cafeteria until the moment of Joe's leap into the void.

"You could have died," Rosa said in disgust, slapping gently at Joe's shoulder. "Very easily. Rubber bands." Rubber bands."