The Weird Part 66

My G.o.d, it is everything, he thinks. It is Hamlin in reverse; all the abused ones, the gentle ones, are leaving the world. He risks another glance back and thinks he can see a human child too and maybe an old person among the throng, all measuredly, silently moving together in the dimness. An endless host going, going out at last, going away. And he is feeling their emanation, the gentleness of it, the unspeaking warmth. He is happier than he has been ever in his life.

'You're taking us away,' he says to the King-Beast beside him. 'The ones who can't cut it. We're all leaving for good, isn't that it?'

There is no verbal answer; only a big-stemmed ear swivels to him briefly as the King goes gravely on. Lipsitz needs no speech, no explanation. He simply walks alongside letting the joy rise in him. Why had it always been forbidden to be gentle? he wonders. Did they really see it as a threat, to have hated us so? But that is all over now, all over and gone, he is sure, although he has no slightest idea where this may be leading, this procession into chthonian infinity. For this moment it is enough to feel the silent communion, the rea.s.surance rising through him from his hand on the flank of the great spirit-beast. The flank is totally solid; he can feel all the workings of life; it is the body of a real animal. But it is also friendship beyond imagining; he has never known anything as wonderful as this communion, not s.e.x or sunsets or even the magic hour on his first bike. It is as if everything is all right now, will be all right forever griefs he did not even know he carried are falling from him, leaving him light as smoke.

Crippled, he had been; crippled from the years of bearing it, not just the lab, the whole thing. Everything. He can hardly believe the relief. A vagrant thought brushes him: Who will remain? If there is anything to care for, to be comforted, who will care? He floats it away, concentrating on the comfort that emanates from the strange life at his side, the myth-beast ambling in the most ordinary way through this dark conduit, which is now winding down, or perhaps up and down, he cannot tell.

The paving under his feet looks quite commonplace, damp and cracked. Beside him the great rat's muscles bunch and stretch as each hind leg comes under; he glances back and smiles to see the King's long ring-scaled tail curve right, curve left, carried in the relaxed-alert mode. No need for fluffy fur now. He is, he realizes, going into mysteries. Inhuman mysteries, perhaps. He doesn't care. He is among his kind. Where they are going he will go. Even to inhumanity, even alone.

But he is not, he realizes as his eyes adapt more and more, alone after all! A human figure is behind him on the far side of the King, quietly threading its way forward, overtaking him. A girl is it a girl? Yes. He can scarcely make her out, but as she comes closer still he sees with growing alarm that it is a familiar body it could be, oh G.o.d, it is! Sheila.

Not Sheila, here! No, no.

But light-footed, she has reached him, is walking even with him, stretching out her hand, too, to touch the moving King.

And then to his immense, unspeakable relief he sees that she is of course not Sheila how could it be? Not Sheila at all, only a girl of the same height, with the same dove-breasted close-coupled curves that speak to his desire, the same heavy dark mane. Her head turns toward him across the broad back of the King, and he sees that, although her features are like Sheila's, the face is wholly different, open, informed with innocence. An Eve in this second morning of the world. Sheila's younger sister perhaps, he wonders dazedly, seeing that she is looking at him now, that her lips form a gentle smile.

'h.e.l.lo,' he cannot help whispering, fearful to break the spell, to inject harsh human sound into his progress. But the spell does not break; indeed, the girl's face comes clearer. She puts up a hand to push him back, the other firmly on the flank of the King.

'h.e.l.lo.' Her voice is very soft but in no way fragile. She is looking at him with the eyes of Sheila, but eyes so differently warmed and luminous that he wants only to gaze delighted as they pa.s.s to whatever destination; he is so overwhelmed to meet a vulnerable human soul in those lambent brown eyes. A soul? he thinks, feeling his unbodied feet step casually, firmly on the way to eternity, perhaps. What an unfashionable word. He is not religious, he does not believe there are any G.o.ds or souls, except as a shorthand term denoting what? compa.s.sion or responsibility, all that. And so much argument about it all, too; his mind is momentarily invaded by a spectral horde of old debating scholars, to whom he had paid less than no attention in his cla.s.sroom days. But he is oddly prepared to hear the girl recite conversationally, 'There is no error more powerful in leading feeble minds astray from the straight path of virtue than the supposition that the soul of brutes is of the same nature as our own,'

'Descartes,' he guesses.

She nods, smiling across the big brown shape between them. The King's great leaflike ears have flickered to their interchange, returned to forward hold.

'He started it all, didn't he?' Lipsitz says, or perhaps only thinks. 'That they're robots, you can do anything to them. Their pain doesn't count. But we're animals too,' he adds somberly, unwilling to let even a long-dead philosopher separate him from the flow of this joyous River. Or was it that? A faint disquiet flicks him, is abolished.

She nods again; the sweet earnest woman-face of her almost kills him with love. But as he stares the disquiet flutters again; is there beneath her smile a transparency, a failure of substance even a sadness, as though she was moving to some inexorable loss. No; it is all right. It is.

'Where are we going, do you know?' he asks, against some better judgment. The King-Beast flicks an ear; but Lipsitz must know, now.

She smiles, unmistakably mischievous, considering him.

'To where all the lost things go,' she says. 'It's very beautiful. Only...' She falls silent.

'Only what?' He is uneasy again, seeing she has turned away, is walking with her small chin resolute. Dread grows in him, cannot be dislodged. The moments of simple joy are past now; he fears that he still has some burden. It is perhaps a choice? Whatever it is, it's looming around him or in him as they go an impending significance he wishes desperately to avoid. It is not a thinning out nor an awakening; he clutches hard at the strong shoulders of the King, the magical leader, feels his rea.s.suring warmth. All things are in the lotus....But loss impends.

'Only what?' he asks again, knowing he must and must not. Yes; he is still there, is moving with them to the final refuge. The bond holds. 'The place where lost things go is very beautiful, only what?'

'Do you really want to know?' she asks him with the light of the world in her face.

It is a choice, he realizes, trembling now. It is not for free, it's not that simple. But can't I just stop this, just go on? Yes, he can he knows it. Maybe. But he hears his human voice persist.

'Only what?'

'Only it isn't real,' she says. And his heart breaks.

And suddenly it is all breaking too a fearful thin wave of emptiness slides through him, sends him stumbling, his handhold lost. 'No! Wait!' He reaches desperately; he can feel them still near him, feel their pa.s.sage all around. 'Wait...' He understands now, understands with searing grief that it really is the souls of things, and perhaps himself, that are pa.s.sing, going away forever. They have stood it as long as they can and now they are leaving. The pain has culminated in this, that they leave us leave me, leave me behind in a clockwork Cartesian world in which nothing will mean anything forever.

'Oh, wait,' he cries in dark nowhere, unable to bear the loss, the still-living comfort, pa.s.sing away. Only it isn't real, what does that mean? Is it the choice, that reality is that I must stay behind and try, and try?

He doesn't know, but can only cry, 'No, please take me! Let me come too!' staggering after them through unreality, feeling them still there, still possible, ahead, around. It is wrong; he is terrified somewhere that he is failing, doing wrong. But his human heart can only yearn for the sweetness, for the great benevolent King-Beast so surely leading, to feel again their joy. 'Please, I want to go with you'

And yes! For a last instant he has it; he touches again the warmth and life, sees the beautiful lost face that is and isn't Sheila they are there! And he tries with all his force crazily to send himself after them, to burst from his skin, his life if need be only to share again that gentleness. 'Take me!'

But it is no good he can't; they have vanished and he has fallen kneeling on dank concrete, nursing his head in empty shaking hands. It was in vain, and it was wrong. Or was it? his fading thought wonders as he feels himself black out. Did something of myself go too, fly to its selfish joy? He does not know.

...And will never know, as he returns to sodden consciousness, makes out that he is sprawled like a fool in the dirt behind his rat cages with the acid taste of wormwood sickly in his mouth and an odd dryness and lightness in his heart.

What the h.e.l.l had he been playing at? That absinthe is a b.u.mmer, he thinks, picking himself up and slapping his clothes disgustedly. This filthy place, what a fool he'd been to think he could work here. And these filthy rats. There's something revolting back here on the floor, too. Leave it for posterity; he drags the rack back in place.

All right, get this over. Humming to himself, he turns the power hose on the messy floor, gives the stupid rats in their cages a blast too for good measure. There are his jars but whatever had possessed him, trying to kill them individually like that? Hours it would take. He knows a simpler way if he can find a spare garbage can.

Good, here it is. He brings it over and starts pulling out cage after cage, dumping them all in together, Nests, babies, carrots, c.r.a.p and all. Shrieks, struggling. Tough t.i.t, friends. The ether can is almost full; he pours the whole thing over the crying mess and jams on the lid, humming louder. The can walls reverberate with teeth. Not quite enough gas, no matter.

He sits down on it and notices that a baby rat has run away hiding behind his shoe. Mechanical mouse, a stupid automaton. He stamps on its back and kicks it neatly under Sheila's hamster rack, wondering why Descartes has popped into his thoughts. There is no error more powerful s.h.i.t with old D., let's think about Sheila. There is no error more powerful than the belief that some c.u.n.t can't be had. Somehow he feels sure that he will find that particular p.u.s.s.y-patch wide open to him any day now. As soon as his project gets under way.

Because he has an idea. (That absinthe wasn't all bad.) Oh yes. An idea that'll pin old Welch's ears back. In fact it may be too much for old Welch, too, quotes, commercial. Well, f.u.c.k old Welch, this is one project somebody will buy, that's for sure. Does the Mafia have labs? Ho ho, far out.

And f.u.c.k students too, he thinks genially, wrestling the can to the entrance, ignoring sounds from within. No more Polinskys, no more s.h.i.t, teaching is for suckers. My new project will take care of that. Will there be a problem getting subjects? No look at all the old walking carca.s.ses they sell for dogfood. And there's a slaughterhouse right by the freeway, no problem at all. But he will need a larger lab.

He locks up, and briskly humming the rock version of 'Anitra's Dance,' he goes out into the warm rainy dawnlight, reviewing in his head the new findings on the mid-brain determinants of motor intensity.

It should be no trick at all to seat some electrodes that will make an animal increase the intensity of whatever it's doing. Like say, running. Speed it right up to max, run like it never ran before regardless of broken legs or what. What a natural! Surprising someone else hasn't started already.

And just as a cute hypothesis, he's pretty sure he could seal the implants d.a.m.n near invisibly; he has a smooth hand with flesh. Purely hypothetical, of course. But suppose you used synthetics with, say, acid-release. That would be hard to pick up on X rays. H'mmm.

Of course, he doesn't know much about horses, but he learns fast. Grinning, he breaks into a jog to catch the lucky bus that has appeared down the deserted street. He has just recalled a friend who has a farm not fifty miles away. Wouldn't it be neat to run the pilot project using surplus Shetland ponies?

The Beak Doctor.

Eric Ba.s.so.

Eric Ba.s.so (1947) is an American poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, born in Baltimore, Maryland. 'The Beak Doctor' novella reprinted herein has had a cult following among avant-garde Gothic writers since it was first published by the Chicago Review in 1977. Since then he has published a novel, several plays, many poetry collections, and a book of nonfiction. In part, 'The Beak Doctor' reads like a modern, more Joycean version of the first selection in this anthology, Alfred Kubin's 'The Other Side,' in that the nameless city is plagued by a strange sleeping sickness. Despite being criminally overlooked, Ba.s.so is an important part of the landscape of weird fiction.

Now I will try to keep awake. The fog. They must have come for me before morning. Empty streets. Across a dimly lit room. She lay in the shadows. The steps. One at a time. Not that I'm old. It was the mask. Plaster chipped off the walls. She lay asleep on a couch. A network of cracks and branching veins like the surface of an antique painting. Chiaroscuro. Figures half formed. And she was naked. Little water-blots the color of rust. An odor of disinfectant emanated from the bannisters. Mothb.a.l.l.s. The smell on my hands as I return there. From the bottom of the rickety stairs I could make out the febrile glow of a bulb screwed into the pitted ceiling on the landing. Step-shadows dwindling over the tips of my shoes as I neared the top.

No corners. I had to turn my head from side to side to see what lay around me. The eyeholes were a shade too narrow. My own fault. In cutting them I hadn't followed the pattern closely. They made a dark vignette. The goggles were fogging up. Darkness around a darkness where I came into the room. I was suffocating.

The women backed away. They seemed a bit startled at first, muttering to themselves.

Something too low for me to hear. I told them they would have to speak up. A lamp burned by the mantelpiece clock. An oval scatter rug in the center of the floor, just out of reach of a faded pool of light. I remember now. In the lull you could hear a ticking. Maybe I only imagined that the women had spoken. It might have been a rumbling on the floor above coupled with the random movements of their lips. The father took me by the hand. He was old. The skin of his palms was dry, his fingers soft and lifeless. He didn't want to talk. A door closed behind me. The two of us were left alone with the body.

I probably had to help him get across the room, he was so weak. His eyes were bad. He stopped a few times on the way to take his bearings and scratched at his eyebrows as though he too were trying to remember that even in this subdued lighting her flank was visible, pale against the black hulk of the couch. Her face was turned away or hidden under a ma.s.s of long dark hair, or in a shadow. No one had thought to cover her with a blanket. We listened to her breathing between ticks of the little porcelain clock; a miniature pendulum swung in its oblong window, a low click sounded the whir of a grinding mechanism from within the hour chimed out slowly at the bottom of the mirror.

Her diaphragm rose and fell. Her ribs contoured faintly, intermittently stretching and relaxing the expanse of whitish skin above the broad swell of her belly. I would have made her anywhere between thirty and forty-five in age, but the light was weak. And her father babbled incoherently before he managed to get something out about having found her on his way home from a walk.

She was lying on her side...curled up like a ball by the curb.

He scratched again at his bushy eyebrows. The women had carried her up the stairs and laid her on the sofa. Fast in a deep sleep, she showed no signs of waking.

The old man held her legs for me and looked down through the red-white traces my penlight etched in the dark. The slight movements of my hand left an afterimage of knotted lines on his retina. He seemed to be still trying to remember, leaning forward, thrown a bit off kilter with his daughter's feet a dead weight crossed behind his head, fanning his white hair out as the bra.s.s links of his watch chain glittered in a double loop that swayed above the peaks of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His spectacles slid down to the tip of his nose.

It was just after five. Scratches. Contusions. A few deep welts cut purple stripes along the back of her thighs like claw-marks left by a wild animal. And between. I didn't need to use a speculum. The genitals already formed a swollen ma.s.s in the darkness. Blackened l.a.b.i.a puffed out around the area of inflammation. The mucous lining was raw to the point of turning blue. A trail of dried blood flaked off the skin at the touch of my finger. I felt a crust under the back of my hand as I probed for internal lesions. A brown discharge had had enough time to spread to the cushion and congeal there.

How long had she been lying here like this?

I...no, I was just...

The old man looked as though he were about to pa.s.s out. He let go of one of the legs and put his hand on the arm of the couch. Something hard struck the crown of my mask. I dropped to my knees. The penlight flew out of my hand and I heard it roll under the sofa. Another weight came down heavily on the middle of my back. I saw a gray moon plummet toward the couch, into eclipse. My gasps rushed hot air up through the inside of the mask. I heard the wind roar. It knocked the breath out of me.

I lay there on the floor, trying to readjust the eyeholes, my goggles clouded with steam. He stood over me, the father, crossed by the broad diagonal silhouette of a bare leg. The ceiling, dark gray melting into black with swarms of gilt-edged cobalt blue.

Another minute pa.s.sed. The gray would have been white in the daylight. The curtains were drawn, the blinds closed. A few branching cracks hung jagged shapes like pieces of stalact.i.tes. The old man had me by the hands. He wanted to pull me up.

What about something to drink? You must be stifling. Or perhaps a face cloth soaked in cold water?

Wait. Lift her leg back onto the couch. I can't manage it alone.

It's gotten foggier than ever. You can't even see across the street. I'll just switch off the lamp.

No. I have to give her an injection. Help me turn her over. Grab her under the knees. That's it. Gently now.

Penicillin, 10cc. No reaction to the p.r.i.c.k of the needle. She simply lay there on her stomach, her open mouth drooling into the cushion. It was too soon for dehydration to have set in. The father fished a pack of cigarettes out of his vest pocket. He tapped it and held it out to me.

Are you sure? I don't like to smoke alone.

I had gone to the window and was about to pull the blinds when the lamp on the mantelpiece went out, pitching the two of us into total darkness with nothing but the sound of her breathing and the tick of the clock. I should have turned her on her back again. But it didn't matter. She seemed comfortable enough. I made a c.h.i.n.k in the blinds with two fingers and peered out into the fog. The old man was right.

This is what I know. Don't ask me why I waited so long. If my wife and sister had had their way she'd still be lying out there stark naked and, well, let's just say I thought it best to wait until the fog lifted...and when it didn't lift, you know the rest...she was lying by the curb under a lamppost, otherwise I wouldn't have seen her at all, my eyes aren't what they used to be, if she had been on the sidewalk I might have tripped right over her and broken my neck; to tell the truth, I wasn't even sure I was on the right block...the fog...couldn't see my hand in front of my face...no, if I were you I'd wait a bit before going back out there...something to drink perhaps?...you see I've put out the light so there's nothing to worry about...I can grow accustomed to almost anything, but this fog! when I think of how things used to be and what they are now rumors, the streets deserted I'm really afraid to go out, even in the daytime...I used to take the bus to go shopping down by the Olde Market, now I have to walk the streets alone like all the others...but why don't you sit down? I'll have Duma that's my wife bring us out something to eat...what do you say to some pretzels and a nice bottle of beer? it's the last we have left, the pretzels I mean, but this is something of an occasion...haven't had anyone in the house for years since my brother-in-law pa.s.sed on...he was forty-one...did you notice her face?...maybe we ought to close her mouth, unless you think that would interfere with her breathing...didn't know what the h.e.l.l to do at first. I thought I hadn't seen right...had to get up almost on top of her before I realized it was a woman and not a pile of garbage someone had heaped under the lamppost...she's not from around here at least I think she's not I've never seen her, not that I would remember...she was lying there all crumpled up like a ball...I thought she was dead...now what about that beer? I won't turn on the lamp.

Through a small crack in the blinds nothing. Flat gray up from where the street lights were diffused without contour. Lost haloes in a soundless fog. Not even a muted echo. Something had moved inside. Everything became absorbed in that one brief movement. It might have been on the floor below or in an outside corridor, or on one of the landings. A footfall. The latch-click of a closing door. Who knew what it was or where it came from? It brought me back to her breathing. The old man had finished his monologue. He may have taken a step forward. It may have been him. I couldn't tell. It was too dark.

What now?

Pardon?

I mean what are we supposed to do with her?

The police will take care of everything.

Are you hot?

Why?

Nothing, I just wondered.

Let the women put some clothes on her. And if you can find a driver's license or any sort of ident.i.ty card, poke a hole through it and tie it around her neck with a piece of string. Don't use a rubber band or anything elastic that might affect her breathing.

That's no good...you see her just as I found her...without a st.i.tch.

Maybe there's something in her room. In one of the drawers. You could ask your wife.

Or, here. Take this and fill it out later. I've already signed it. If you want, you can turn the light back on. I have to be going.

What is it, a prescription?

No, it's for the police. Give it to them when they come for the girl. And don't forget to fill it out. I'll go on ahead to make the necessary arrangements. Don't try to move her. Get her dressed as best you can. They'll take her to the roundhouse.

The roundhouse? You mean the old railroad museum? That hasn't been open for years.

Somehow he managed to get to the door without knocking against the furniture. An amber light filtered in from the corridor, framing his bent silhouette with a dull nimbus. He took off his gla.s.ses.

I'd like to get rid of these...can't see a thing with them any more...try them on...see how they fit.

I have to go. When you find my penlight, you can send it to me care of the roundhouse. The address is at the top of the certificate. Or you can always get me at the office. You have my number.

The old man scratched his eyebrows and, shrugging his shoulders, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. He breathed on the lenses, smiling.

I'd save myself a lot of breath just by sticking them out the window.

He called down after me.

Be careful. One of the steps has a loose mat.

I came down slowly, out of the amber light, squeak by squeak on the stairs. That odor. I could smell it later on my hands. I heard the tenants shutting their doors before me. All the way to the bottom. Into the mist.

Into the night. Night into dawn. The sun comes up the other side of what remains unseen: a cloud at the bottom of shadowy buildings, fuzzy lights along a lost itinerary of upper rooms, the map he carries in his head. Gunmetal haloes, one pole to another, a double row up the hill in moveless smoke. Less and less distinct. You can never get too close or keep too far away from this mesh of blind s.p.a.ces; they coalesce at the top of the street, whittling the map down to a cold stretch of pavement two or three yards across the one remaining hollow. Each step is a push against the fog, but never enough, even though you take it step by step, to give a proper clue to the mask. The middle distance vanishes behind neutral gray, and if a muted noise were to find its way back to the father killing time beyond reach of the lampposts, he looks down out of his open window on nothing it would only come to linger, an invisible blot he might almost feel the weight of on his eyes, crossing what he knows to be the street somewhere below, a subtle rumor of dislocation hovering in the doctor's wake: the doctor who has left him, who has left them all (wife/sister, brother-in-law/husband, sister-in-law/sister, and the daughter/the niece/the unknown) to their darkness and the ticking of the clock. The doctor is in footsteps, sounding dulled claps of heel and sole off a sidewalk that tilts upward out of its center of gravity.

If roofs are up above, birds are asleep on the roofs. But those who walk the streets have felt the tilt of everything that is lost in the fog. A pair of cat's eyes comes floating, paw by paw, before its black head becomes visible. Dense air, close to the asphalt of the street, a blind alley, a dead-end room without walls, where noxious odors drift. Within this compa.s.s of a few cubic yards the scavenger picks its way through a heap of empty liquor bottles, old newspapers stained with grease and coffee grounds, tatters of oilcloth wrapped around moth-eaten books, foxed page-ends curling in the damp.

The steps, paw by noiseless paw, driving the hollow back a little, as in a footloose vignette, toward a crash of shattering gla.s.s. m.u.f.fled bursts of laughter come in waves, now louder, now softer, as the bricks glide by, covered with graffiti: carved initials that almost seem to have been burned in between the lumpy strips of mortar, stick figures in colored chalk, telephone numbers, obscene witticisms, marmalade men on a span of crossing ladders, the outline of a hand, eyes the shape of fish, a rudimentary phallus-on-wheels pointing the way. Nothing but this wall of bricks and the sidewalk. A horizon lost in the gray blur a few feet beyond a manhole cover. Tarred cracks in the pavement squares. Curbs half eaten away, with drainage holes tunneling into their sides. A labyrinth of pipes runs beneath the city in old blueprints if you stop to listen, a faint gurgle of metalized water comes to you from below the street, no matter where you may have happened to wander. Black paws creep gingerly over flattened wads of chewing gum, brown cigarette b.u.t.ts crushed in a smear of ashes, ticket stubs bleached white by rain, odd bits of rubbish, wire coils twisted by chance into numberless abstract shapes that will skitter across the cement if a breeze comes up, old rubber bands blackened with filth. Spittle and p.i.s.s have corroded the lamppost bases: pod-like disks at the bottom of fluted columns, a coat of green paint pitted with rust. Each pole rises into a hazy cataract of light. Before it comes to the next street lamp, the cat pa.s.ses the remains of a sawed-off tree trunk lost in a circle of weeds behind some wrought-iron palings.

It stops at the very end of the graffiti maze, where bricks become a brownstone wall, paws on the cold grating above a cellar window. Eyes, black lozenges dilating almost to the corners of their lid-slits, discern the form of a vise clamped to the edge of a workbench near a heap of planks. Traces of movement in the murk below. The mice are out of their holes, sniffing for breadcrumbs or a pellet of cheese amid the wood shavings. Elsewhere, a distant clatter of furniture rumbling down, shaking the inner walls of the old townhouse from top to bottom. A tremoring echo falls through the empty stairwell and throws a shudder into the mice that sends them scurrying off to the four corners of their pitch-dark cellar.

Past the door and its stucco pediment to where the light dies gradually away. The first window, less sooted than the one beneath the street, gives on a corridor lit by green pools to the foot of the stairs. Someone glides into the darkness on tiptoe, a fat man with plaid suspenders hanging in a double loop from his belt. He has waddled out of his room, where one of the green lamps glows above the door in a leafy sconce of bra.s.s, to put his foot on the bottom step and give an ear to the stairwell laughter a hollow echoing beside him, where the steps go down to blackness under their rubber mats. Yet the source is higher, beyond the reddish haze of a second corridor much like the first but with no man, fat or lean, to do the listening. Here you can almost see the tops of the radiator pipes glint on the landing under the curtained window. In the third corridor a deep blue light catches eyes through the taut chain of a half-open doorway. Bleak fluorescences, cast in flickers on a wall behind the silhouettes, indicate someone must have turned the sound quite low. They wait, between the door and the jamb, in rapt silence as another laugh filters down amid what seems to be the clamor of a wild stampede. Two men in shirtsleeves, ties askew, are tumbling arm in arm out of the upper reaches, a blur of somersaulting legs and heads head-over-heels, thundering into the corridor. The metalodious squawk of an irate pheasant announces from on high the descent of a third reveler by way of slippage down the mahogany bannister a prankster appears, more disheveled than the rest, nose and lips hidden behind an outrageous chrome-yellow panache held by a bronze clasp the shape of b.u.t.terfly wings encrusted with costume jewelry to a b.u.t.ton at the apex of a mauve skullcap which reposes, albeit somewhat precariously, upon his occipital peak. He comes bellytobogganing down, a blind swimmer flailing his arms with the hickory squawker in his mouth, blowing sqwahnk! sqwahnk! to disperse a sudden traffic in the corridor which, at present, a.s.sumes the collective form of his two a.s.sociates lying crosswise in eclipse, bloodshot eyes turned to the ceiling, gasping for air as he lands pfoomph! on their cushioned paunches, bouncing off to make the rounds of the bare walls, blowing his quacker while they struggle to reinflate their lungs.

One floor above, it is completely dark. The corridor, littered with confetti and streamers, comes little by little under the weakening beam of a flashlight. Someone says s.h.i.t! and feels the crunch of broken picture-gla.s.s beneath his heel, sundering the calm of what had begun, inauspiciously, as an unhurried inventory of the debris. He quickly sees his mistake. The xix-century sporting print continues its suspension from the wall, unmolested, beside the thermostat (reset to 9F). In truth, the querent has put his foot through gla.s.s and silvering. A gulf opens. Behind his fractured silhouette fragments of a body viewed from the ground up, swaying in the depths of the oval mirror a second ceiling comes to light in pieces, below the floor. A soundless image, faint if he aims his flashlight directly into it, much brighter if he tilts it to the ceiling above, toward a noise of scuffing heels that grows at the landing, a left turn up the last flight of stairs under the ruins: shards of a flowerpot upended in its mound of dirt, a twisted vine with fuzzy purple leaves, streamers of pleated crepe speckled with confetti. The last pa.s.sage. From here you need a ladder to get to the roof. The birds are asleep.

Now, almost in silence, they listen for the sound of sleeping birds. Where have they gone? The men loosen their ties beneath a pale oval in the wallpaper. The women are bending forward in front of them, their heads out the window, still in a daze. It's useless. They can only hear the revelers coming out onto the street below. Normally an amber light would cast dwindling shadows across the walk from the bottom of the stoop. But the fog leaves everything to a confusion of half-smothered rumors, blunting the d.i.c.kory sqwahnk! sqwahnk! with an echo of cowbells as the prankster and his cohorts roll out onto the pavement over the jagged slivers of a champagne gla.s.s tossed from one of the high windows. The stem alone is intact, a thick helix of smoked crystal with a tinge of blue. The remains glitter like stardust against the flinty texture of the concrete.