" 'Let them go?'

" 'I mean they can't do for us anymore. We can't keep them. There's only the three of us. Our apartment isn't that large. You're out most of the time. Georgie's in school all day.'

" 'They pitched in,' Mills said. "They pitched in, Nancy, when you weren't feeling well.'

"It isn't what you think," Wickland said. "It wasn't what it sounds like. She was mad, not crazy. She was still in control of the ironies. She didn't want you ever to find out about the Millses. She made him promise. Only then would she agree to stay with him.

"The girls wouldn't be coming once she was on her feet again. She would have no one to work her judgments on. She had already judged her husband. She had already judged you."

"Me?" George said. "What did she say about--"

" 'This child must have no ancestors. I am on the child's side in this. If the child is to a.s.sign blame it will have to a.s.sign it to the near-at-hand, to its own propinquitous, soured operations, its own ordinary faults and weaknesses, errors in judgment, deficiencies of will, the watered cement of its inadequate aspirations and gla.s.s-jaw being. I will have done all I could. I will have set it free.' "

"She's going to leave me after all," George said.

"She's not even talking about you," Wickland said harshly.

"But--"

"The girl," Wickland said. "She's talking about the girl, she's referring to Janet."

"But--"

"Janet starts school in September. I don't think she knows we're poor. She knows I have to work of course, and that our little family is dependent upon even what George brings in from working after school. She isn't a stupid child, but when she asked me that time about her daddy she seemed to accept my answer. She only questioned me that once. Perhaps she's really rather sensitive. Perhaps she understands more than she lets on. Maybe she speaks to Georgie about it at night in their room in the dark. Up to now, I don't think he's told her any more about it than I have, but I've noticed that he's restless and a little angry. Someday he'll tell her the truth, what he knows about it. Why kid myself? He's told her already. Of course he's told her. He's told her of a grand man, a strong, kind man waiting in Milwaukee, and that if things are ever terrible enough he'll take her there and then they won't be terrible anymore. And if he hasn't written yet, it's because things aren't terrible enough yet. He's afraid of course. It's his trump card and he's afraid to play it. Poor Georgie.

"But I hope she's sensitive. But who knows? She's so docile. She accepts everything. She's like everyone else finally. As Georgie is. As I am. As George is like a thousand years of Millses and has never dared not to be.

"We take what comes. Everybody does. Even a little girl. I am certain she has never said, 'Write him then. You showed me his address. Write him then.' We take what comes. And if nothing comes we take that. Everybody does. George was wrong. You can't quit Corinth. There isn't any Corinth to quit.

"You're wondering if I shall ever get to the point. But I already have, you see. Must I spell it out for you? Very well then.

"I shall do no more references. There's no need. In my judgment there isn't a dime's worth of difference between any of us. There's no such thing as character. It's as I said in Milwaukee. One size fits all.

"Now look," Wickland said. "Can you see her?"

"Yes," George said, sobbing. "But I don't want to."

"It won't last," Wickland said. "Nothing lasts."

"But--"

"Yes?" Wickland said. "Was there something else?"

George didn't know. That is, he didn't know what it was. He was certain there was something else and that Wickland would show it to him, and that it would be terrible, worse than anything yet. It had begun by his wanting to know if he had powers. Kinsley had said he had and, for a time, he thought he had. But only Wickland had powers. He was a reverend of reality and George believed that at that moment he could have shown him anything, everything. But he didn't know. He didn't know what was left to see or if he wanted to see it, but Wickland had powers and Wickland hadn't dismissed him yet.

They sat for perhaps an hour. The sun was beginning to set. There was a chill. He wanted to be released but the reverend was not ready to let him go. Or he wasn't ready.

Then George sighed.

"You said he didn't want me to find out about the Millses. You said she got him to promise that he wouldn't tell."

"Yes," Wickland said.

"But I did did find out about them. He find out about them. He has has told me." told me."

"Yes. He still thinks there's a Corinth. He thinks it's Ca.s.sadaga."

"I don't--"

"Because he's no rebel," Wickland said, "because there's nothing you can do to him to make him one. Because telling you was his his trump card, and playing it was the only way he had to avenge what I did and to stand by history." trump card, and playing it was the only way he had to avenge what I did and to stand by history."

"What you did?"

"You told me you saw her, you said you could see her. She's going to have a baby."

He did not return to Kinsley's. It was already dark when he left Ca.s.sadaga. In the sky the stars must have looked like salt.

PART THREE.

1.

Messenger, running late, found the little street off Carondolet and parked. It was his second day on Judith Gazer's route. When he took Mrs. Carey's tray from the insulated box there were three left. He locked the door on the driver's side, found the house and opened the gate of the little low fence, low as a fence in storybooks.

He had called first, phoning from Albert Reece's apartment, the man's permission grudgingly granted.

"That wasn't long distance, was it?" Reece asked when Messenger had hung up. "If it was only across the river they'd charge me a toll."

"It was in the city," Messenger said.

"Could I see that paper?" Messenger showed him the number and Reece studied it for a moment. "All right then," he said. "Call it a dime." Cornell handed him the coin. "If this was Russia you could call for free. They got Socialized Telephone in Russia."

"Long distance too?"

"Kids," Reece said, "don't ever talk about you. You get a free ride with kids. Kids don't give a s.h.i.t about your morals or your politics. I'm talking infants, toddlers, boys on tricycles. Kids just ain't shockable. If a little golden fairy was to tip his cap to a kid in the street, the kid would just look at the fairy and tell him good morning. The only way to shock a kid is to hold his finger to the socket. The elderly is different. Old-timers love to correct you. They enjoy it that you're a traitor or that you live in sin. They love that you sit with your legs apart or are on the take. It warms their hearts the parks ain't safe and you're going to h.e.l.l.

"Don't get me wrong, Professor. The old are just as hard to shock as any six-year-old. They not only seen it all, they done eighty-six percent of it. Christ, they're as crazy about bad news as you are. Why shouldn't things stink if you're going to die soon? It's just that we love to correct, show our disapproval like preserves we've put up. If we had the strength we'd throw stones. So just don't underestimate us. Don't be sly and don't be disrespectful. Don't ask an old-timer 'Long distance too?' when he's trying to explain Socialized Telephone in the USSR to you.

"All I want to know is this. How'd a son of a b.i.t.c.h like you get into this line of work?"

"What do you want from me?" Messenger asked. "Tomorrow we have chunks of braised beef served with noodles in a rich broth, b.u.t.tered Texas toast, French-style green beans and glazed pineapple tidbits. Or you could have breaded beef cutlet, Wisconsin whole-grain corn and red beet slices. What do you want from me?"

"Wise guy," Reece said. "That's all right. We love it you're a wise guy. We think it's terrific you're a horse's a.s.s."

Messenger, understanding that they didn't like him, was untroubled. He only found it a little unfair. He brought their dinners, he did for them, even helping to feed those one or two of his clients who could not manage for themselves. He spent perhaps fifteen minutes with each of them, twice as much as Judith told him would be necessary. At some other time of his life he would have been bothered perhaps by their hostility, but now it was a matter of indifference to him, as things were a matter of indifference to him to which he had never thought he would become accommodated.

Messenger had had what he thought of as a curious life. He had published a collection of stories and three novels, all of which were out of print, none of which had ever come out in paperback. And though he was still occasionally invited to read from his work on various campuses, the fees were always small and the invitations invariably came from friends who themselves hoped to be invited to his school in return. (It was a point of pride with him that he never returned the favor.) There were seldom more than thirty or forty people in his audiences, half of whom were there because they had been asked to the party in his honor afterward. He was forty-five years old and accepted these offers not for the money and certainly not for the opportunity they gave him to see his old friends but because on one such trip, shortly after the publication of his second novel, he had met a really beautiful young graduate student who had driven him back to his motel after the party and spent the night with him in his room. She said she was nuts about his work, but when he ordered breakfast for them the next morning it turned out she had read only one of his stories. It was the single story he had published in The New Yorker, The New Yorker, the t.i.tle story of a collection he was to publish a year later, and the only thing he'd ever written to be optioned for the movies. The amiable madman who had purchased the option, Amos Ropeblatt, a hopeful fellow who had once had something to do with an Orson Welles film made back in the fifties, renewed it annually for five hundred dollars. the t.i.tle story of a collection he was to publish a year later, and the only thing he'd ever written to be optioned for the movies. The amiable madman who had purchased the option, Amos Ropeblatt, a hopeful fellow who had once had something to do with an Orson Welles film made back in the fifties, renewed it annually for five hundred dollars.

Messenger felt he was clearly second string, a man who had been granted tenure by his university when he was still in his mid-thirties, on the basis, it seems, of that same New Yorker New Yorker story that had gotten him laid a dozen or so years before, the memory of which incident kept him returning to those campuses neither for his token fees nor for those spa.r.s.e audiences to whom he read from what even he could not seriously think of as his "work," and still less for his friends, but for those parties. story that had gotten him laid a dozen or so years before, the memory of which incident kept him returning to those campuses neither for his token fees nor for those spa.r.s.e audiences to whom he read from what even he could not seriously think of as his "work," and still less for his friends, but for those parties.

Then, at a time of his life when he no longer really needed it, he came into an inheritance, or an inheritance by default. An aunt, preceded in death by her maiden daughters, left him three hundred thousand dollars. On two occasions he had himself almost died, once from a heart attack and once from a bone stuck in his throat on which he had nearly choked. And he was troubled by his children.

And something else. He had grown tolerant of his own bad driving. Regularly he dinged cars in parking lots, gouging metal divots from his once smooth fenders and altering the face of his grille, the delicate crosshatching piecemeal collapsing as he sought to negotiate parking s.p.a.ces at four and five and six miles an hour. There was one car, a black '76 Gremlin, that, parked by the curb in the narrow faculty lot behind his building, seemed always to be in his way, the dark molding about its left rear wheel an obstacle he seldom missed as he attempted to move into his slot in the single cramped row of cars. Each accident, each small engagement, brought a brief anger, then a queer, righteous, irrational fulfillment. The car was never not not there, always, it seemed to Messenger, in a favored position among the automobiles lined up like race horses at a starting gate. Messenger cursed its owner's regularity, the long-suffering smugness of the scarred and battered Gremlin. He never left a note-when he left in the afternoon the car was still there-or sought to hide the evidence of his guilt, the injured auto's black paint smeared like spoor across his cream-colored Pontiac. On each occasion he made the same speech to himself. "My hand-eye coordination's. going. f.u.c.k him. Why should I worry about a little scratched paint?" But he knew he would neither die nor ever hurt anybody in an accident, that he would simply drive over curbs as he turned corners, skin cars parked along side streets, dent the odd fender here and there along life's highway. there, always, it seemed to Messenger, in a favored position among the automobiles lined up like race horses at a starting gate. Messenger cursed its owner's regularity, the long-suffering smugness of the scarred and battered Gremlin. He never left a note-when he left in the afternoon the car was still there-or sought to hide the evidence of his guilt, the injured auto's black paint smeared like spoor across his cream-colored Pontiac. On each occasion he made the same speech to himself. "My hand-eye coordination's. going. f.u.c.k him. Why should I worry about a little scratched paint?" But he knew he would neither die nor ever hurt anybody in an accident, that he would simply drive over curbs as he turned corners, skin cars parked along side streets, dent the odd fender here and there along life's highway.

He was forty-five years old, an old middle-aged man, and required marijuana whenever he left his home.

"Meals-on-Wheels," Messenger called as he pushed open the unlocked door.

"That's all right," a voice called thinly.

The house looked like the inside of a stringed instrument, the wood unpainted, gray as kindling. Even the furniture was unfinished. Messenger, looking at the warped woodwork and canted floors and walls, had the sense that the rooms needed to be tuned.

"Is it still hot?"

"Should be," Messenger said, raising his voice to the woman he had not yet seen. "I could warm it up on your stove if you like."

"Yeah," the woman said, "that'd be terrific. A hot free lunch would make all the difference in my life." She came out of her room. She was pushing an aluminum walker. "I'm Mrs. Carey," Mrs. Carey said.

"Cornell Messenger."

"Yeah," she said, "how do you do? I missed you yesterday. I was to the clinic for tests. I didn't know I'd be gone so long or I'd have left a note. Cigarette?"

"No thanks." He had already begun to reheat the chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes.

"It was the first time I was out in over a month," she said. "It felt real good. They picked me up in one of those minibuses they send round for the handicapped. They got them equipped with special lifts for wheelchairs. Welfare gave me a wheelchair but I swear to you it's easier to get around with my walker. I ain't got the strength in my arms to roll it. A woman needs somebody to push her. I'll tell you something," Mrs. Carey said. "I think it looks common when a lady pushes her own wheelchair. That sound funny? That's the way of it. I'm a heavy smoker but even when I was walking I never smoked in the street. That looks common, too. You think it's foolish a woman with a Welfare wheelchair and a free walker that travels the town in the handicap bus and waits on the warmed-over charity lunch should say such things and have such notions? You put me down for pride I sit in the kitchen in my nightgown and robe while some strange guy heats my meal?"

"No, of course not."

"Ain't you nice," she said. "I'm going to tell you something you're so nice. I qualify for benefits from seventeen agencies of the United Way. Last year it was only six. Next year, if I live and nothing happens, it could be thirty."

"You should look on the bright side," Cornell said.

"Yeah? You think so?"

"I certainly do."

"How about that? Say, let me ask you something. Are you important? You told me on the blower you're making Mrs. Glazer's deliveries, and she's married to a big shot over at the university. Maybe you're important too."

"No," Cornell said.

"Yeah, I'll bet. What's wrong with Mrs. Glazer anyway?"

"I guess she's sick."

"Mind my business, huh? Okay. Let me ask you something else. What did you do with that lunch you had left over yesterday?"

"I ate it."

"No kidding? Yeah? Maybe you ain't important."

"Important people eat a different lunch?"

"They eat omelets. They eat salads. They eat cold soups and thin fish. Let me ask you a question. I don't get out much anymore. Just to the clinic, just to the agencies. Mrs. Glazer used to tell me, but she ain't been by in weeks now."

"Mrs. Glazer has cancer," Messenger said.

"Oh s.h.i.t," Mrs. Carey said.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything," Cornell said.

"No no, that's all right. Can I call her up? Is she home?"

"Well she's home," Messenger said, "but she's very tired. It might be better if you waited."

"You know a lot about it."

"She's a friend of mine."

"Geez, I almost put my foot in it, didn't I? How about that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Hey, forget it," Mrs. Carey said. "I didn't know you was that that Messenger." Messenger."

"That Messenger? What do you mean? What were you going to ask me?" Messenger? What do you mean? What were you going to ask me?"

An odd change seemed to have overtaken her. She became suddenly coy, teasing, returned quite mysteriously to a time when she had not been ill, the new quality somehow unseemly, as if she powered her own wheelchair perhaps, or smoked in the street. She wanted coaxing, Messenger saw, but he was annoyed. "Ha ha," she laughed, almost singing. "Ha ha ha." It was as if she remembered not flirtation exactly but flirtation's poses and noises. He hoped she wasn't going to hold her knees and sway in place. "Ha ha," she chirped again.

"I seem to have been a regular tonic for you," Cornell said. Was she rolling her eyes at him? Was she pursing her lips? What was this teenage pantomime all about?

"Are you holding? Have you got any mary jane on you?"

"What?"

"Are you high? Do you see visions? They jump the rates on your car insurance?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Ha ha."