"I know you."

"Yes. f.u.c.k me."

"All these things you haven't"I entered her hard"told me!"

"Yes." Her legs wrapped around my waist. I felt the socks on my back. Her arms tightened around my neck. "Secrets. Crybaby. Secrets."

"I hate them."

She stopped moving.

"I hate your secrets."

The fear on her face turned into a smile. "Take them. Take them all. f.u.c.k me now. You can have them all."

I pushed as hard as I could. She closed her eyes, chuckled.

"I want them. Promise me"

"Just do this now. Yes, that. Whatever you want. Whatever you want. You..."

It was so good. And when it was over, the boy would come home and we three would sit at the kitchen table and be a family again.

Lily came quickly, which was not like her, but then kept pumping and moving, keeping it going as long as she could. "Max, I love you. Oh, Max." She rose and fell. Her eyes were shut above a huge smile. I watched. Half of me swam in her like a sea, the other half watched. Watched her from as far away as the moon.

"Absence makes the heart lose weight."

Gus Duveen looked at Ibrahim like he was a bad smell. "What does that mean?"

"This is a saying in Saru. It is what Lily felt when Max was not here. I had an uncle who married a woman who turned into paper. This is not uncommon, but he did not know it until it was almost too late."

Squeezing my knee under the table, Lily leaned over and whispered, "I love Ibrahim's stories."

"My uncle went on a business trip to Umm Hujul and met a woman there. They fell madly in love and he asked to marry her. This was all right and everything went according to plan. After the wedding, they returned to Saru and he created a household for her. Then he is a businessman, so he must go out and return to work. He is a traveling salesman all over the Middle East but no big worry. He told his new wife he would be coming back every week to see her. Now, the first time he returned, she was happy to see him but was much, much lighter. When he picks her up in bed, she almost floats out of his arms. 'You must eat something!' he says, but they are so glad to see each other nothing more is said about it. The next time he returns to his house, she is fifteen times lighter. She can walk on water now, but no one is impressed because she is not holy, only skinny. My uncle thinks this is not love, but blackmail: this is her way of making him stay at home. So he tells her he did not marry a balloon, and if she wants to lift off the earth, he will not be interested in her anymore. Desperate, she says, 'Take me with you and I will do anything.' 'Are you crazy? Women do not go with men to their business.' But she is very stubborn and says, 'Well then, unless I can be near you always, I will lose the rest of my weight and disappear. I cannot help it. My body loves you too and has its own mind. I don't want to die, but if it wants to it will, husband.'"

Lily caressed the inside of my thigh. Since returning from New York, I'd experienced a completely new side of her: hungry, worried, agitated. We made love more than ever before, but her body stayed tight as a strung bow and never seemed to relax. Even when we'd finished and lay there in the calm dark, I felt her tension. Too soon she would want to start again and I had to catch up to her desire. Out of the bedroom, she was overly bright and peppy. There were few quiet moments anymore; out of the bedroom everything had to be either in motion or in the planning stage. I had the feeling she instinctively knew what I'd discovered and wanted to steer our lives away from that moment of truth, that moment of impact. As long as she kept moving, talking, planning... the disastrous facts could be avoided. Yet how could she know what I'd found? I knew about women's eerie sense of intuition, but did it go this far?Were they that clairvoyant?

On my part, I simply hadn't had the courage to confront her. I justified this cowardice by figuring I wanted to observe her a while with my new knowledge in hand. Scrutinize someone from a different position and you see new things. Look at them with Xray eyes and their beauty becomes bones and blood, curves, dips, cells, cause and effect.

"But G.o.d does not let us love someone only a little while." Ibrahim reached over and touched Gus on the arm. His grumpy lover smiled back at him and nodded. "My uncle was a man first and a businessman second. He loved his wife and did not want to see her turn into air. What could he do? One day right before he was to leave again, they were playing together. You know the way lovers play. He had a ballpoint pen, and because the point was not out, he pressed it to his wife's neck and pretended to write something. Now remember how thin she was. He kept on doing it. But you know what happened?

She was so slender that her blood rose up to the edge of her skin when the pen touched over it, like fish to food in the aquarium. And then there was his name, written in blue blood beneath his poor skinny wife's skin! My uncle was horrified but fascinated too, of course. Once he saw this and showed her, he wrote many other things too and all of them stayed visible on her the longest time. Hours, probably."

"f.u.c.king guy used his wife for a pad, and they lived happily ever after," Gus said, ruining the end of the story.

Ibrahim was delighted. "You're so smart, Gus. That's right. He took his wife to his business meetings now and could explain her presence there when he said he would be taking notes on her during the meeting. If n.o.body believed him, he would just show them how it worked. She became his paper."

A moment later Ib was called to the phone and got up from the table, leaving the rest of us to look at each other in the wake of this story. Gus spoke first.

"Sometimes I genuinely think he believes them."

Lily waved him off. "Oh, he does not. He's just being entertaining."

"But they all have some kind of point, don't they? They're not just Arabian Nights." Sullivan Band spoke. "What was that one about?" She was due to go on duty in a few minutes. "Sometimes I use his stories in our drama group. As exercises. The only thing I got from this was women are weak and'll do anything to be by their men. s.e.xist!"

"It's not about weak women, it's about transformation. What happens to us, or what we are willing to do for the people we love."

"That's right, Max."

"I agree."

Sullivan held up both hands. "I think you're wrong, but c'est la vie . I have to go be a waitress."

She stood and walked to the kitchen, pa.s.sing Ibrahim on the way. They spoke for a moment, then continued in their different directions. When he got to the table, he grinned at me.

"You think my uncle's story's about love, Max?"

"Whatever it's about, I liked it. Would you mind if I used some of it in 'Paper Clip'?"

"No, that would be an honor. Does everybody have enough to eat? Yes? Because I'm sorry but Gus, Lily, and I have to go and talk to a man about salmon. Come, partners, the salmon man is waiting."

The three of them walked out together, leaving Alberta Band and me at the table. Lunch for employees at Crowds and Power was a fullblown affair, starting around eleven and continuing for the most part until they were done and not when the doors opened for the day to the public. I loved eating with them, listening to their stories, offering some of my own. The restaurant was a United Nations, a hotel lobby of comings and goings, greetings and goodbyes. The food was good, the people who prepared and presented it intriguing.

"Max, can I ask a favor?"

"Sure."

"I never told you, but I'm a really big fan of your comic strip. Could you draw me a little sketch of the two guys in it? Nothing elaborate or involved. I'd love to frame it and put it on the wall of my apartment."

"Alberta, I'd love to. Do you want it drawn on something special?""No, anything would be great."

"I've got a nice sketchpad in the car. Let me go get it and I'll do one in there. But stick aroundI've got an idea and need you here to do it."

When I returned, she had combed her hair and freshened her lipstick.

"Okay, sit right where you are. I need you for about ten minutes."

Alberta is a goodlooking woman, so it was a pleasure to use her as a model.

"What're you doing?"

"Keep your pants on. You'll see when I'm finished. Turn your head a little to the left. Yeah! Like that. Stay still."

We chatted while I drew and she gave up trying to guess what I was doing.

"Alberta, tell me about Lily. Whatever comes to your mind. I always like to hear what other people have to say about her."

Rather than ask what I meant, she folded her hands in her lap and looked into the near distance.

"She was the one who hired us, you know. Sullivan and I'd been working at this dreary deli up on the Strip. The boss pinched our a.s.ses too many times, so we hauled freight out of there. Not many places hire two people at a time, and you'd be surprised at how biased they are against hiring sisters. Like the two of you're in cahoots and'll steal 'em blind. Anyway, we heard there might be something here and we came down for an interview. First thing I saw when I came in the door was Mabdean, who'd just cut off all his hair and looked like a big black genie in a bottle. I turned to my sister and said, 'I'll wash floors for this place if he works here.' Gus came around but wouldn't deign to talk to us, Ibrahim was out, and we waited around till finally Lily asked if she could help us. We thought she owned the place, judging by the way people kowtowed to her. I don't think we talked ten minutes before she gave us both jobs and then a week later Mabdean and I moved in together.

"What do I think of her, aside from the fact the woman turned my life around so I was finally happy for the first time in years? I think she's solid and really caring. But I'll tell you something. The moment you asked me that question, this one funny thing came to me immediately. You know how she likes biographies? Always reading about someone's life, but it's never really one kind of person or another. Composers, businessmen, Hitler... I guess she just likes knowing how other people lived, huh?

Anyway, once she was reading the autobiography of John Huston, the director. I asked if I could borrow it when she was done. When she gave it to me, there was one thing marked. Love her as I do, I think she's extremely a.n.a.l retentive about her books, because every one I've borrowed is in perfect condition, no matter if they're hardcover or paperback. All my books are very well lived in, you could say. But she lent me this Huston autobiography and inside there was a pa.s.sage tipped with one of those orange markers kids use in school. I was so shocked to see it. That's alljust that one the whole three or four hundred pages, but I remember it because I'd never seen it done in any of her books. It said, 'I've had nine lives so far, and I regret every one of them.' "

I had to will my head to stay down and my hand to keep drawing. "What was it again?"

"'I've had nine lives so far, and I regret every one of them.' I mean, that does not sound like Lily Aaron to me. To tell you the truth, I think she can be a little screechy sometimes, and a bit tightlipped, but in toto she has it together. A h.e.l.l of a lot more than me, that's for sure. I mean, a nice son, a semifamous boyfriend... Hey, am I ever going to get to see your picture?"

I turned the pad around and handed it to her. Across the top was written: "Alberta and the Band."

I'd drawn her and my characters holding hands, taking a bow, as if after a performance.

"Max, that's fabulous! Thank you."

She pulled it carefully off the pad and kissed my cheek. "I know exactly where I'm going to put it.

I'll tell you one last thing about Lily. A few months before she met you, there were a couple of actors in here one night making trouble. They were drunk and got uglyrowdy. Mabdean usually takes care of things like that, but it was his day off. First Ib, then Gus tried to talk them down, but these a.s.sholes were out of control. This was their party and they were goin' to do it their way, f.u.c.k you very much. Things started getting out of hand and someone said maybe we should call the cops. But Lily said no. She reached into her purse, pulled out this little black gadget that looked like a light meter, and went over tothem. Without saying a word, she touched one, then the other on the arm and these guys flipped off their barstools onto the floor like they'd been shot. Neither moved, and the whole place got real quiet real fast. Lily stood there like Madame Gunslinger and put the black thing back in her bag. The only comment she made was: 'They'll come around in a few minutes.' She had one of those totally illegal cattle prod things you use against muggers. The kind that shoot out five trillion volts into whoever's trying to jump you. ZAP and ZAPon the floor like dead meat. That took b.a.l.l.s! I don't know if I'd have the nerve to use one. I've heard they can cause some serious permanent damage if you do it wrong or touch a guy in the wrong place. But your girlfriend didn't hesitate a second. These guys crossed the line and she zapped them. ZZZZZ. You should have heard the sound. Like this high cracking. Phew. It still gives me the shivers."

"What happened to the men?"

"Nothing. We carted them into the kitchen until they came to and then they took off. No one ever told them what happened either. They had absolutely no idea what hit 'em."

"Where'd Lily get the zapper?"

"Wouldn't say. Even when I said I wanted to get one, she wouldn't tell. What nerve, huh? Walk up to a stranger and stick 'em with that. Something else tooI was looking at her face when she did it.

Max, it was real cool. Not scared or nervous, like you'd expect. Tough. I would not make that woman p.i.s.sed off if I were you.

"Time to go. Thanks a million for the drawing. I can't wait to show Mabdean."

I sat at the empty table finishing my meal and my drawing. I started by sketching a little boy and a giant dog standing side by side. Guess who? In the next frame, a baseball comes flying in from the side.

Next frame, ball hits boy on the head. Next frame he goes down. The drawing became almost automatic.

I wasn't really sure what was up, so I let my hand continue. The kid lies motionless. His dog watches for a frame, then picks him up in its mouth and carries him to a house. It's obviously not the boy's home, because when the people open the door and see what's there, both throw up their hands and scream.

The dog is scared into dropping his bundle and running away. They pick up the stillunconscious boy and bring him inside. I stopped there and checked my watch. I'd been working almost two hours but something was definitely upmy brain hatching an idea in this, its vocabulary for the day. I went on. At first, Alberta and Sullivan kept coming round asking if I wanted anything, but after I said no, thanks enough times they left me alone. The restaurant filled with the lunch crowd and the women were busy enough with their customers.

The couple bring the boy into the bedroom and lay him down on their bed. Until now there'd been no dialogue in the story, no captions, no words. I decided to keep it that way. The man and woman look at each other and smile foxily. He runs out of the room and comes back in the next picture with a giant tool and paint boxes. Bending over the unconscious child, the two of them go to work on him. Sawing, painting, hammering, things fly up in the airclothes, bones, a sneaker. Arms and legs, tools and flurries of wild work. The woman runs out of the room and returns with a bizarre, forbidding tool. Holding it in front of her, she literally dives back into the high dust cloud that's risen above the bed. The two step out of it a moment for a rest, but magically the melee of flying objects and dust continues without them. They leap back in. The cloud disappears, but all we see are their two backs and many working arms over the bed/operating table.

In the next frame the boy is sitting up, but looks completely different. He is obviously still dazed from the smack on the head and the transforming operation. Holding up a mirror, he looks at his reflection with no recognition. Next, the three of them are at a table eating a big turkey dinner. The little guy's plate is full and he's smiling. There's someone at the door. Closeup of a hand going BANG BANG BANG. Closeup of "parents" exchanging worried looks. Mom answers. Outside, two sadfaced adults stand next to the big dog who brought the kid here. There's a discussion. Closeup of four mouths talking at each other simultaneously. But it's plain the new parents lie to the real: Are you crazy? He's our boy.

Look at him, does he look like either of you? Not at all. Not one speck. The real parents and dog leave together, brokenhearted. The dog looks back over its shoulder as the three of them walk away into a sad sunset. In the meantime back at the dinner table, something else terrible is happeningthe boy's body andface are coming apart and beginning to melt.

"Cooool, Max. Definitely gross!" Lincoln dropped his school bag on the chair next to mine and, leaning on my shoulder, bent over for a better look. He was holding a sandwich they'd probably made for him in the kitchen. "Elvis, you gotta see this."

Elvis Packard, Lincoln's best friend, came over and condescended to look while devouring one of the restaurant's fat eclairs. I felt like s.n.a.t.c.hing it out of his hand. I disliked Elvis so much that anytime he came within radar range, my tongue turned dry in my throat and I could barely greet the little s.h.i.t. The son of two movie agents, he had the manners of a hungry jackal and generally behaved like a spoiled brat gone nuclear. Worse, he was only ten but already capable of seriously nasty things. Even worse, Lincoln was fascinated by him and the two were inseparable.

"Hi, Linc. Elvis, how are you?" He chewed. He stared at me. He said nothing. "Are you speaking today, ElVoid? How about 'Hi, Max, nice to see you'?" Both Lincoln and I looked at him to see if there'd be a response. There wasn't. "Elvis, granted we don't like each other. But I don't like you for good reasonsyou're rude and sneaky. You don't like me because you don't like anything, and because I'm probably the only person who ever talked to you like this. Therefore, let's work out a deal: we're allowed to dislike each other, but we must remain civil. Know what that means? We say h.e.l.lo, goodbye, please, and thank you. That's all. Those are the rules from now on. If you fail to follow them, I have the right to squeeze your eyeb.a.l.l.s into your sockets until you become civil again."

Lincoln was giggling but Elvis was not.

"Why are you always mean to me?"

"Because you threw a hamster against a wall. Because you hit my son on the head with a flashlight.

Because you step on our dog's tail whenever you don't think anyone's watching. Because of two hundred other reasons. However, Lincoln likes you, so I will endure you. But behave around me, sweetie pie. I'm bigger than you."

We dueled with our eyes a moment until the little poltroon looked away. I'm sure he was planning some later outrage against me, but for the moment I'd won and victory was sweet.

"So, Lincoln, what's up?"

"Nothin'. What are you drawing? Can I see the whole thing?"

Sliding the book closer to me, I slowly closed the cover. "Not yet. Maybe if it comes to something. You know how I amI don't like people looking till something's finished."

He turned and translated for his friend. "Max's weird about his cartoons. He won't show them till he thinks they're ready. You should see some of the great stuff he threw out!"

"My father doesn't think your cartoons are funny."

"Tell him that's a compliment, coming from the father of Elvis Packard."

"Huh?"

"Hey, Max, you wanna do something?"

"Like what?"

"I dunno. Elvis has to go home and I thought we could hang around. You know."

"Okay. What do you want to do?"

"Where's Mom?"

"At a meeting with Ibrahim and Gus."

"You think we could go to the movies? Remember we wanted to see the robot one?"

"Right. Sure. Let's do that."

He threw a beaming look at Elvis that said, "Isn't my dad great?" and made me feel bulletproof.

He was such a nice fellow. Generally it was so easy to please him. Looking at the two boys, I couldn't imagine what it would be like to live with Elvis Packard. If he didn't whine, he snuck. He lied outrageously, but when caught, he denied ever saying any such thing. I am making him out to be a dreadful human being but that's only because he was. I'm sure most parents know an Elvis P. Usually these Children from h.e.l.l live next door (i.e., conveniently nearby for endlessly frequent visits) and for some inexplicable reason are the favorites of your own normally sane, wellbalanced offspring. You ask yourself a hundred times what do they see in these weasels, these snide whippersnappers who enteryour house every time like minor criminals casing the joint or sn.o.bs vastly amused by what they see.

Luckily Elvis took off after finishing his eclair. He said "See ya" to Lincoln but nothing to me till I put a thumb on my eye and demonstrated what I'd do if he wasn't civil. The "Bye" he offered could only have been picked up with a hearing device.

"You hate him, huh, Max?"