Part Two

CHAPTER 1.

A gaudy dawn came slowly up in the east. Against the purple cloud streaks and pink sky the factory chimneys could have been cut out of black paper.

Rob stared out the window at them. He felt gutted, empty. He had wept himself out, but the misery couldn't be eroded by tears. Without thinking about it, he had transferred from bus to subway to the downtown bus depot, paying no fares, cloaked in his invisibility. He hadn't bothered to note where this Greyhound was going. It had been the first departing interstate bus. That was all he cared about.

When the bus stopped and everyone got out, Rob did the same. He followed the other passengers out into a cavernous and grungy bus terminus. From there he wandered aimlessly out into the city: New York City.

I cannot bear this any more, Rob reflected dully. Oh God, if there is a god, take this thing away! It's a curse. It has ravaged my life. I wish I were dead.

Though it was so early, the narrow streets thronged with people. Rob walked like a ghost through them, unseeing and unseen. Millions upon millions of people lived in this city, all steaming with thought, thick with their histories. He couldn't hold their minds at bay any more. It had been madness to come here. New York was the last place for him. He should have gotten on a bus to Michigan, or Tennessee, someplace rural.

He walked at random for hours and hours through a repellent maze of grim commercial streets. At last he came to a park, a tiny wedge of struggling grass and broken bottles. One of the benches had been vandalized, its slats burnt away, but the other was still reasonably whole. Rob slumped down onto it, exhausted. He stretched out on his back and stared up at the slice of sky remaining between the tall gray office towers. The roar of city traffic surged in his ears, and the workings of a million minds scoured through his skull. I am not going to cope with this any more, he thought. I am going to do nothing and think nothing. I give up.

Vaguely he felt the danger of this. When I think it, it happens. If I tell myself to die, I may very well die. But Rob didn't care any more. He willed himself to stillness, to emptiness, to oblivion, and sank gratefully into the dark.

Time passed, an unreckoned period that could have been forever. It was the rain that brought him back. Little annoying drops tapped on his forehead, refusing to go away. Then they rolled down into his eyesockets, forcing him to blink. Of themselves his dry lips parted and the rain trickled in. He realized he was horribly thirsty. He had neither eaten nor drunk since leaving home.

Sullen thunder rumbled in the sky as Rob slowly sat up. His joints creaked, and his arms and legs were full of pins and needles. The rain poured down, digging its cold fingers into his scalp. He was soaked to the skin, right through his coat and jeans and shirt. It was night. The streetlights cast a ghastly pinkish light over the dirty wet avenue. There was only moderate traffic, so it must be very late. His watch said it was quarter to four on Sunday morning. Confused, he could hardly believe it. But he rubbed his chin-at least three days' worth of bristle there. What a horrible city! How come no one had noticed a person lying here, trying to be dead, for three whole days? At the very least somebody should have ripped off his watch.

A man walked briskly by, a bartender on his way to the subway. Rob glanced at himself through the bartender's eyes and saw the problem immediately. He had never stopped doing his tarnhelm trick. He was so strong now, the trick could just run on automatic. His bleak despair might even have subconsciously repelled anyone who wanted to sit on the bench. It occurred to him that all he had to do was quit being invisible, and a mugger would come along and put him out of his misery. He'd be too weak to resist.

Putting it like that made Rob realize he didn't want to die. At least, not by being mugged. Or from starvation and thirst. That single trickle of rain had been enough to revive his will to live. The streetlights wavered and danced as he blinked at them, and he repeated to himself, I am not Superman. If I don't eat or drink I will die. What a laugh if I die now after all, a real triumph of mind over matter. If there is a God, he has a sick sense of humor.

He sat in the pouring rain without the strength to do more than lick the raindrops off his upper lip. More footsteps. He would have to ask this one for help. Rob dropped the tarn-helm trick and whispered, "Help." I'm your friend, he thought at the man, who stopped in his tracks.

"My god! Is that-"

"Rob Lewis," Rob supplied. The tinder-dry creak of the words surprised him.

His voice was almost gone.

"Jeez, Rob, what happened? You're hurt!"

"In pretty poor shape, uh-" He fished for the name. "-Jim."

"These gang members, they're everywhere, like roaches! .New York's going down the toilet! You must've got knocked on the head-what'd they get, your keys, your credit cards? Come on, I'm taking you home to Marge. Can you walk? Hey! Taxi!"

Jim was a dapper older man, maybe in his sixties, but in great shape. He drew Rob's arm over his Burberryed shoulders and hoisted him to his feet with ease. Probably he went to the gym every day. The first taxi was, naturally, off duty, but Jim bundled him into a second one and gave the driver an Upper East Side address.

Good, Rob thought. Wouldn't want to sponge off a garment worker or a waitress. My buddy Jim can afford to give me a meal. When a uniformed doorman opened the taxi door Rob decided to let all scruples slide. The doorman tenderly helped Rob into the elevator and promised, "I'll buzz Mrs.

Deacon and let her know you're coming, sir."

"With Rob Lewis, tell her that," Jim instructed. Boy, will she be confused, Rob thought.

The elevator arrived on the 22nd floor. Halfway down a long carpeted hallway Marge stood in a paisley bathrobe holding the apartment door open.

"Jim, who on earth-"

Friend, Rob thought at her hazily. "You remember Rob, don't you, Marge?"

Jim called.

"Of course I do! Oh, you poor boy, you're drenched!" Marge was an easy twenty years younger than Jim, but old enough to be motherly. Rob let her take away his sodden clothes and bundle him into a hot shower, Jim interrupting only to press a brandy snifter into his hand. The brandy was excellent, but far too strong for Rob's shrunken stomach. He had to run some of his shower water into it. I think I'm going to survive, he thought.

That first day Rob ate chicken soup and slept, a genuine sleep, not the deathlike trance. In a couple of days he recovered his health and strength completely. By that time he was too uncomfortable to trespass on Jim and Marge any more.

The problem was, saying "friend" didn't make Rob their friend. He had nothing in common with Jim, a television executive, or Marge, who ran charity banquets. Because he wished it, they adored Rob, plying him with food and liquor, giving him the run of their ritzy apartment. But at the dinner table conversation limped. Rob didn't dare confide his own affairs, and when the Deacons tried to include him in their chat he didn't know or care about any of their concerns. They couldn't remember where they had known Rob before-unsurprisingly-and that tended to throw a monkey wrench into any reminiscence or story.

So as soon as he felt able, Rob took his leave. "You saved my life, Jim,"

he said. "I'll never forget it."

"It was nothing, nothing!" Jim protested. He squeezed Rob's hand in a painfully muscular grip. "God, it's been so great to see you!"

"Why don't you visit more often?" Marge demanded. "Bring the wife and children next time!"

Rob held onto his smile with an effort. "Thanks for the great meals, Marge." Marge kissed his cheek. Jim hugged him around the shoulders. They walked him down the long corridor and waved as the elevator doors closed on him. As the elevator went down, Rob tried to decide whether he had just committed a crime or not. The Deacons would never prosecute. No court would ever convict. I am not going to worry about it, he told himself. I left all these petty moral agendas in the park. Still it seemed impolite to just walk away from the Deacons' hospitality.

He strolled east towards Madison Avenue. At the corner was a stationery shop. A bread-and-butter note, that's it, he decided. That's the concession I'll make to my middle-class upbringing. He went in and selected the toniest notepaper in the store, in keeping with the Deacons' status. A quick glance into the storekeeper's head showed Rob that nobody ever became a tycoon selling cards in Manhattan. He paid up fair and square.

To camp outdoors in June in New York is no great hardship, at least as far as the weather goes. Central Park had plenty of grassy nooks for Rob to choose from. Rolled up in his toggle coat and tarnhelmed from cops and petty criminals, he slept well. From a street vendor he bought a brown duffel bag to keep the coat in on warmer days. He also scrounged some black plastic garbage bags to use as a groundcloth.

For the first week, money was a worry. Rob wasn't often hungry any more, but eating at coffee shops even once a day soon depleted his cash. And using the credit cards would only shift his expenses to Julianne-No! He wasn't going to think about home, about the family! The effort of holding himself back from that abyss made Rob shake all over. He leaned suddenly against a lamp post, almost unable to stand.

"You're blocking the crosswalk," an Asian woman with a briefcase snapped as she shouldered past. Viciously Rob directed her descending foot onto a storm grating as she stepped off the curb. "Oh shit! My heel!" She balanced on the other foot and pulled off her beige leather pump. But it gave Rob no real pleasure to see her hobbling away, the broken shoe in hand. He slumped down to sit on the curbstone. "What have I done to deserve this?" he demanded of the morning rush hour.

To his astonishment, an older black woman bent to address him. "Look, get yourself a square meal," she said kindly. And she stuffed a ten-dollar bill into his hand.

Did he really appear so seedy? Rob took a look at himself through the eyes of the crowd waiting to cross Lexington Avenue. Since leaving the Deacons he had given up combing and washing and shaving. His light-brown stubble, always thick and vigorous, was fast approaching the status of a beard. His jeans and shirt looked grimy and thoroughly slept in. But it was his eyes and his expression that really marked Rob as strange. He had the desperate look of a man pushed too fast, too far: like a drunk or a mental case.

"Oh great," Rob muttered sourly. First a criminal and now a vagabond. Only two weeks ago I was a completely normal human being. Too bad my former self, that meddling Rob Lewis who aspired to a cape and tights, won't come along to reform my life!

But he could use this down-and-out appearance to advantage. Panhandling might be time-consuming and unprofitable for other street people, but not for him. Rob plucked a paper cup from an overflowing trash bin and leaned against his lamp post. If everyone on this corner gave him a quarter he'd be set for the week. But the congestion might look odd. So he settled for muscling a quarter from every third or fourth passerby. He skipped anyone who seemed like they couldn't afford it. By lunch time, his pockets were so weighted with coin that he had to transfer some quarters to the duffel bag.

This is going to be a snap, Rob told himself. It was much easier being a predator than a benefactor!

On rainy days, and whenever he felt like a home-cooked meal or sleeping in a bed, Rob selected a fat cat and briefly became his best friend. The first time, staying with a hotel magnate in his Fifth Avenue penthouse, Rob didn't even bother to bathe. But the image of a smelly street bum sitting beside a baronial fireplace soon lost its humor. Besides, when the owner of a bathroom the size of a racketball court begged him to try out the hot tub, how could Rob resist?

There were thousands of really rich people in New York City. Rob figured he wouldn't have to leech off anyone twice for years, which was just as well.

He didn't want to see any of his hosts again. No application of power would ever make him feel at home among his victims. And without human feeling to season it, luxury cloyed fast. Always after a day or two, Rob returned to Central Park.

Panhandling only took him a couple of hours a week. The rest of his time Rob mostly spent at the library. Particularly in the bad neighborhoods, the branch libraries were dumps compared to Fairfax County. But the main Central Research library at Forty-Second Street was delightful, with a reference collection like a dream. Rob found a dozen out-of-print H. Rider Haggard novels he had never heard of before. Across the street, the Mid-Manhattan branch was more like the circulating suburban libraries he was used to. There he delved systematically through the mystery section. He was through with self-exploration and analysis. It hurt too much. Better to occupy the surface of his mind with fiction.

Whenever the shoot-'em-up stuff began to pall Rob stretched himself by trying poetry. He had never had time to read poems before. Now he began with T.S. Eliot, whose work was tough sledding. Working back in time and reading older poems was easier. He liked Swinburne, and Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were quite understandable.

Instinctively he skipped Dante-the very first lines of the Inferno were off-putting-but he spent weeks working through translations of the Iliad and the Aeneid of Virgil. That, plus the daily papers and the news magazines, kept him busy just about every day shuttling between the two libraries. Except for the occasional thank-you note, he never set pen to paper. Nor did he ever touch a telephone. Let it be a total amputation.

Dimly Rob realized he was systematically severing himself from all meaningful human contact. Adrift, rootless, there were days when he hardly spoke a word to anybody. Certainly he never talked about anything important. The teeming population around him consisted of either patsies or fish too small to exploit. His rich hosts were exactly that, playing contemptible host to his parasite. Like many men, he had few emotional outlets outside of his family. Severed from that natural intimacy he had nothing.

July brought the heat, atmospheric inversions that muffled the entire city like a filthy plastic garbage bag. The air was brown with exhaust and ozone. It was hellish, sullen weather that fostered madness. Tempers shortened, the crime rate soared, and the wail of police sirens and ambulances sliced over and over through the foul air.