Tom's eyes widened. "I didn't know you were a poet. You published? Not"-he held up a restraining palm-"that publication is any measure of a work."

Jimmy edged closer to Tom's desk, picked up what looked like a fossil, and studied the ridges. "But it is, Tom; it is a measure. Emily d.i.c.kinson thought so despite all that garbage about her not caring, not wanting to see her poems published, at least in her lifetime. When I got my book published it was as if I'd been released from solitary; now, at least, I could mix with the other prisoners."

"The 'other prisoners' being us, I take it?"

Jimmy nodded. "I could communicate." Keeping his eyes on the fossil, still in the palm of his hand, he sat back.

"That's fossil bark, in case you're wondering."

"Where's it from?"

Tom shrugged. "No idea. I like to rub it around. That's why it's so smooth."

Jimmy thought of the wood behind his house. ("The woods were golden then. There was a road-") He loved the suspension of those four words, "road" hanging at the end of the sentence as if it might go on forever. And that was the way he had felt; that was the way Lily had felt, he was sure, a long time ago. "In another year, I'll probably quit."

"Quit writing poetry?"

"No. Quit being an agent."

"Oh, Christ, Jimmy! Don't tell me that! You're the only f.u.c.king agent around who has the least idea of what it's all about. You're the only one who can see the skull beneath the skin."

("Webster was much obsessed by death-") " 'And saw the skull beneath the skin.' "

"Eliot, T.S." said Tom. "I know my quotations, if not my poets. When do I get to read some of yours?"

"Anytime you want. I'll bring you the book next time I come."

"Good." Tom scooted down in his chair, looked up at the ceiling, in the manner of one who expected to find cracks and loosening plaster. "You know, being unselfish about it in one weak moment, I'd say maybe you should get out of this business. I'm happy in it because I do what I want." He gave Jimmy an earnest look. "I'm considered to be a fairly valuable commodity, see." He said this earnestly, as if he'd only recently made the discovery.

"As if everyone didn't know that, Tom."

"The thing is, if you're seen to be valuable, people-people here being Bobby-don't try to mess with you. Because if he did, I could just go elsewhere. And probably take a writer or two with me."

"They'd all go with you, Tom. Some of the best writers in New York. Bobby would go nuts." Jimmy rose. "I'd better go."

"Okay, okay, okay." Looking as if he were about to be given lye to drink, Tom said, "I'll dig up the Giverney book, but I'm only reading a little of it. That's all it'll take, probably."

"You're a good sport, Tom."

"No, I just think it would be insulting to you if I didn't at least try."

Jimmy smiled. "Oh, it would be."

At the door he turned. "Tom, is Bobby trying to screw up Ned Isaly?"

Tom got up, frowning. "Why do you say that?"

"Pau-" Jimmy stopped short of naming him. "Someone warned me I should be looking out for Ned's interests. That's all he said, no explanation."

"What do you think he meant?"

Jimmy shrugged. "I don't know. Ned has a ma.n.u.script due pretty soon, hasn't he?"

Tom levered up the top bunch of papers on his desk. "I've got it here somewhere. Next week, I think."

"Has Bobby ever invoked the clause about failure to deliver?"

"He better not start now."

"You know Bobby enough to know he can do anything he wants. At times I wonder if he's even got a reason for what he does. Or if he simply does things because he can." Jimmy nodded. "See you, Tom. Thanks for recommending me as an agent."

Tom shrugged. "Who the h.e.l.l else would I trust?"

THIRTY-NINE.

Ned had spent the entire morning and some of the afternoon in bed. He couldn't understand what had made him so tired. He felt as if he were being watched. He felt hounded. Paranoid, that's what he was.

It had begun in Pittsburgh, but he was too busy observing things himself to pay much attention to it. It was like ignoring signs of a cold until the cold or flu hit you in earnest. He sat up and took two more Motrin and lay back down again.

Ghosts. That would explain the sensation, the air hovering around him.

He thought back; he pictured the places he had been-Schenley Park, watching the kids play kickball. The Isaly's Ice Cream stores. Shadyside. The stadium across the river. But his problem was that most of what he saw happened inside his mind. He was shamefully un.o.bservant. He didn't know how he managed. He wondered if the Jardin des Plantes and the Luxembourg Gardens were anything like the way he described them. Which took him back to Nathalie again and the very odd sensation she was gone. He should never have gone to Pittsburgh; it was like walking out on her. He should have stayed here and spent his time trying to right the miserable state he had left her in.

A knock at his door startled him, especially since it was a sound he rarely heard. Maybe a package, UPS or Fed Ex. As he was getting out of bed he imagined a man whose only contact with the world beyond his door was a courier service. He stood thinking about this and forgot to go the door. Knuckles rapped again, louder, and he went to the door.

It was Saul.

Ned was flabbergasted. They were friends of long standing, of more than a decade, but Saul hardly ever came here. "Saul!"

"Ned. Will you do me a favor?"

"Sure. Of course. Come on in. What's wrong? You look like h.e.l.l. It's the first time I ever saw you look like h.e.l.l. What's this?"

Saul was reaching out a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, some three or even four inches thick. "A ma.n.u.script. The one I've been working on."

Ned's eyes widened. He was almost alarmed.

Saul went on. "In Pittsburgh it came to me suddenly that maybe the reason I couldn't write the ending was because I'd already written it. Maybe what I had down was the ending."

Ned was hefting the ma.n.u.script as if weighing it. "I'll be more than glad to read it, Saul." An understatement if there ever was one.

Now Saul looked genuinely pained. "Well . . . I was thinking of Tom Kidd. Do you think he would? Since I don't have an editor."

"Are you kidding? Of course he would. My G.o.d." Ned started to laugh. "G.o.d . . . a new book from Saul Prouil. I can guarantee he'd read it. I can take it over there right now." Ned had never seen Saul in what one might call "a state." Saul was always the epitome of cool. He was disappointed that Saul was not giving the ma.n.u.script to him for a reading, but he himself would have done the same thing. Or would he? Probably he would have felt a ma.n.u.script was getting a far better reading if in Saul's hands than in the hands of an editor. Except, of course, Tom Kidd. "I'll get dressed."

Saul called after him, "Are you sick? You were still in bed."

"I was just tired. That trip seemed to wear me out." In five minutes he was out of the bedroom, barefoot, pulling a sweatshirt over his head. "I don't know what the h.e.l.l it was. Did you ever get the feeling you were being watched?"

"Watched? No. You going paranoid on us?" Saul smiled.

Ned stuffed his feet into shoes. "Yeah. Right. Who'd want to watch me? Let's go."

He gave Saul a push through the door, locked it, and they left.

FORTY.

Candy and Karl were standing in front of a travel agency in Chelsea looking at a flock of cardboard flamingos whose shocking pinkness advertised two weeks in South Beach and Key West. That poster sat against a hodgepodge of smaller pictures and travel ornamentation: a bucket of sand, a bikini, an exotic drink with a stirrer featuring a naked girl.

Ruminatively, both were chewing gum. They were not talking about Key West, but about Ned Isaly.

Candy said, as he studied the bikini, "So how do we proceed here? I mean, the only other time this happened was with that little kid? Remember that little kid, K?"

"Do I remember? How could I forget. Six years old, cute as Christmas."

"Heir-or is it heiress-to twenty million smackers," said Candy.

"Well that was a no-brainer. We just gave the jerk his money back."

"Before we put him on a plane to Australia," said Candy.

"Dumb f.u.c.k went, too." Karl sn.i.g.g.e.red. "Without so much as a complaint."

"Easy to do with a Walther in your ear." Now they both sn.i.g.g.e.red.

"Tell you one thing, C. If it was this Mackenzie creep, it'd be no trouble for me taking him out in the middle of Lincoln Center. I mean it."

They stood for another silent minute thinking about that and looking at the window, Candy tilting his head nearly to his shoulder to look at a picture of a couple of women playing with a huge beach ball.

Karl said, "Listen, let's go in."

"We want to go to Key West? You kidding? That's where all the f.a.ggots live."

"Not all a them. A lot are in Provincetown, the ones not in Chelsea." Karl said this out of the corner of his mouth so the travel agent wouldn't hear them as he bent his glossy strawberry blond head over some brochures.

Karl got the agent's attention and made his inquiry. Candy laughed. "You thinkin' what I think you're thinkin'?"

"Wouldn't be surprised." Karl laughed, too.

The agent sighed with all the pleasure of one who'd finished either a good meal or good s.e.x. "Now, gentlemen, I think I've got everything in order here," at which point he shoved over a ticket, an itinerary, and several brochures. And a glossy magazine advertising one of the cruises. "In case you decide later."

Candy pocketed the ticket, Karl the glossy stuff. They thanked him and left.

Fresh sticks of gum in their mouths, they stood on the sidewalk as the swell of gypsy-looking women and kids with nose rings on skateboards swept around them.

"I could use a beer, C, how about you?"

"Swill's?"

"Yeah, why not?"

They had come to think of themselves as regulars and the table midway down the room as theirs and were offended when they found others occupying it, Candy fantasizing bringing in his sawed-off shotgun and gunning them down as would, he claimed, have happened in Depression years.

Swill's was, as usual, dusk dark; one seemed to be looking through the gray haze of time, which was kind of restful. Almost like watching one of those black-and-white movies they didn't make anymore, except when some director wanted to make one over again.

Candy had got their beers at the bar and said h.e.l.lo to Ned, who was standing there talking to that f.a.g poet. He returned to the table to hear Karl talk about this black-and-white movie thing. "One of these days some a.s.shole producer is going to do Casablanca in color."

"a.s.sholes," said Karl, pulling his beer over. "Casablanca's got to be in black and white." Karl had lit a cigar and sucked in on it and was inspecting the coals at the end. "Trouble is, everyone wants something for nothing. Make a movie already been made once, you can do it with your head up your a.s.s. I ask, where's the imagination in that?"

"It's only foreign movies show any imagination. That and in-dies." Candy had heard this observation made more than once in Swill's. "You got your Fellinis, your Kurosawas-"

"He's dead."

"Did I say he wasn't? You got your David Lynch, your John Sayles."

"You're right, one hundred percent. Think of the guy who remade Psycho. What he was doing was just playing on people's nostalgia. You know, the Hitchc.o.c.k one."

Candy gave a moment's thought to this and said, "Well, but wait a minute, K. You can't feel nostalgia for Psycho. You never been to the Bates Motel."

"I know I haven't. But I could think I was when I was watching that movie."

Candy was dismissive. "Come on, K. You can't feel nostalgia for someplace you never been."

Ned was still standing at the bar, talking now to the bartender and owner, Jimmy Longjeans.

Karl pointed toward Ned and said, "Let's get him over."

One on each side, they got him.

"I would have gone peacefully, for G.o.d's sakes," said Ned. "Something on your mind?"

Karl said, "We're having a kind of argument."

"About what?"

Karl said, "I'm saying you can feel nostalgia for a place or time you've never been to."