Redial.

"You've reached-"

"Kimmery? Kimmery? Kimmery? Are you there? Kimmery?"

I was my syndrome's dupe once again. Here I'd imagined I was enjoying a Touretteless morning, yet when the new manifestation appeared, it was hidden in plain sight, the Purloined Tic. Punching that redial I was exhibiting a calling-Kimmery-tic as compulsive as any rude syllable or swipe.

I wanted to hurl the doorman's cell phone out onto the grassy divider. Instead, in a haze of self-loathing, I dialed another number, one etched in memory though I hadn't called it in a while.

"Yes?" The voice was weary, encrusted with years, as I remembered it.

"Essrog?" I said.

ut onto tht="0em" width="1em" align="justify">"Yes." A pause. "This is the Essrog residence. This is Murray Essrog. Who's calling, please?"

I was a little while coming to my reply. "Eat me Bailey."

"Oh, Christ." The voice moved away from the phone. "Mother. Mother, come here. I want you to listen to this."

"Essrog Bailey," I said, almost whispering, but intent on being heard.

There was a shuffling in the background.

"It's him again, Mother," said Murray Essrog. "It's that goddamned Bailey kid. He's still out there. All these years."

I was still a kid to him, just as to me he'd been an old man since the first time I called him.

"I don't know why you care," came an older woman's voice, every word a sigh.

"Baileybailey," I said softly.

"Speak up, kid, do your thing," said the old man.

I heard the phone change hands, the old woman's breathing come onto the line.

"Essrog, Essrog, Essrog," I chanted, like a cricket trapped in a wall.

I'm tightly wound. I'm a loose cannon. Both-I'm a tightly wound loose cannon, a tight loose. My whole life exists in the space between those words, tight, loose, and there isn't any space there-they should be one word, tightloose. I'm an air bag in a dashboard, packed up layer upon layer in readiness for that moment when I get to explode, expand all over you, fill every available space. Unlike an airbag, though, I'm repacked the moment I've exploded, am tensed and ready again to explode-like some safety-film footage cut into a loop, all I do is compress and release, over and over, never saving or satisfying anyone, least myself. Yet the tape plays on pointlessly, obsessive air bag exploding again and again while life itself goes on elsewhere, outside the range of these antic expenditures.

The night before, in Kimmery's alcove, suddenly seemed very long ago, very far away.

How could phone calls-cell-phone calls, staticky, unlikely, free of charge-how could they alter what real bodies felt? How could ghosts touch the living?

I tried not to think about it.

I tossed the cell phone onto the seat beside me, into the wreckage of Zeod's sandwiches, the unfurled paper wrapping, the torn chip bag, the strewn chips and crumpled napkins gone translucent with grease stains in the midmorning sun. I wasn't eating neatly, wasn't getting anything exactly right, and now I knew it didnt matter, not today, not anymore. Having broken the disastrous flow of dialing tics, my mood had gotten hard, my attention narrow. I crossed the bridge at Portsmouth into Maine and focused everything I had left on the drive, on casting off unnecessary behaviors, thrusting exhaustion and bitterness aside and making myself into a vehicular arrow pointed at Musconguspoint Station, at the answers that lay waiting for me there. I heard Minna's voice now in place of my incessant Tourettic tongue, saying, Floor it, Freakshow. You got something to do, do it already. Tell your story driving Floor it, Freakshow. You got something to do, do it already. Tell your story driving.

Route 1 along the Maine coast was a series of touristy villages, some with boats, some with beaches, all with antiques and lobster. A large percentage of the hotels and restaurants were closed, with signs that read SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER! SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER! and and HAVE A GREAT YEAR! HAVE A GREAT YEAR! I had trouble believing any of it was real-the turnpike had felt like a schematic, a road map, and I in my car a dot or a penpoint tracing a route. Now I felt as if I were driving through the pages of a calendar, or a collection of pictorial stamps. None of it struck me as particular or persuasive in any way. Maybe once I got out of the car. I had trouble believing any of it was real-the turnpike had felt like a schematic, a road map, and I in my car a dot or a penpoint tracing a route. Now I felt as if I were driving through the pages of a calendar, or a collection of pictorial stamps. None of it struck me as particular or persuasive in any way. Maybe once I got out of the car.

Musconguspoint Station was one with boats. It wasn't the least of these towns, but it was close to it, a swelling on the coast distinguished more than anything by the big ferry landing, with signs for the Muscongus Island Ferry, which made the circuit twice a day. The "place of peace" wasn't hard to find. Yoshii's-MAINE'S ONLY THAI AND SUSHI OCEANFOOD EMPORIUM, according to the sign-was the largest of a neat triad of buildings on a hill just past the ferry landing and the fishing docks, all painted a queasy combination of toasted-marshmallow brown and seashell pink, smugly humble earth tones that directly violated Maine's barn-red and house-white scheme. This was one shot that wasn't making the calendar. The restaurant extended on stilts over a short cliff on the water, surf thundering below; the other two buildings, presumably the retreat center, were caged in a fussy, evenly spaced row of pine trees, all the same year and model. The sign was topped with a painted image of Yoshii, a smiling bald man with chopsticks and waves of pleasure or serenity emanating from his head like stink-lines in a Don Martin cartoon.

I put the Tracer in the restaurant lot, up on the hill overlooking the water, the fishing dock, and the ferry landing below. It was alone there except for two pickup trucks in staff spots. Yoshii's hours were painted on the door: seating for lunch began at twelve-thirty, which was twenty minutes from now. I didn't see any sign of Tony or the giant or anyone else, but I didn't want to sit in the lot and wait like a fool with a target painted on his back. An edge, that's what I was after.

Edgerog, 33, seeks Edge.

I got out of the car. First surprise: the cold. A wind that hurt my ears instantly. The air smelled like a thunderstorm but there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I went over the barrier of logs at the corner of the parking lot and clambered down the grade toward the water, under the shade of the jutting deck of the restaurant. Once I'd dipped out of sight of the road and buildings, I undid my fly and peed on the rocks, amusing my compulsiveness by staining one whole boulder a deeper gray, albeit only temporarily. It was as I zipped onlurned to see the ocean that the vertigo hit me. I'd found an edge, all right. Waves, sky, trees, Essrog-I was off the page now, away from the grammar of skyscrapers and pavement. I experienced it precisely as a loss of language, a great sucking-away of the word-laden walls that I needed around me, that I touched everywhere, leaned on for support, cribbed from when I ticced aloud. Those walls of language had always been in place, I understood now, audible to me until the sky in Maine deafened them with a shout of silence. I staggered, put one hand on the rocks to steady myself. I needed to reply in some new tongue, to find a way to assert a self that had become tenuous, shrunk to a shred of Brooklyn stumbling on the coastal void: Orphan meets ocean. Jerk evaporates in salt mist.

"Freakshow!" I yelled into the swirling foam. It was lost.

"Bailey!" vanished too.

"Eat me! Dickweed!"

Nothing. What did I expect-Frank Minna to come rising from the sea?

"Essrog!" I screamed. I thought of Murray Essrog and his wife. They were Brooklyn Essrogs, like me. Had they ever come to this edge to meet the sky? Or was I the first Essrog to put a footprint on the crust of Maine?

"I claim this big water for Essrog!" I shouted.

I was a freak of nature freak of nature.

Back on the dry land of the parking lot, I straightened my jacket and peered around to see if anyone had overheard my outburst. The nearest activity was at the base of the fishing docks below, where a small boat had come in and tiny figures in Devo-style yellow jumpsuits stood handing blue plastic crates over the prow and onto a pallet on the dock. I locked the car and strolled across to the other end of the empty lot, then scooted down the scrubby hill toward the men and boats, half sliding on my pavement-walker's leather soles, wind biting at my nose and chin. The restaurant and retreat center were eclipsed by the swell of the hill as I reached the dock.

"Hey!"

I got the attention of one of the men on the dock. He turned with his crate and plopped it on the pile, then stood hands on hips waiting for me to reach him. As I got closer, I examined the boat. The blue cartons were sealed, but the boatmen hefted them as though they were heavy with something, and with enough care to make me know the something was valuable. The deck of the boat held racks covered with diving equipment-rubber suits, flippers, and masks, and a pile of tanks for breathing underwater.

"Boy, it's cold," I said, scuffing my hands together like a sports fan. "Tough day to go boating, huh?"

The boatman's eyebrows and two-day beard were bright red, but not brighter than his sun-scrubbed flesh, everywhere it showed: cheeks, nose, ears and the corroded knuckles he rubbed under his chin now as he tried to work out a response.

I heard and felt the boat's body clunking as it bobbed against the pier. My thoughts wandered to the underwaterropellers, whirring silently in the water. If I were closer to the water I'd want to reach in and touch the propeller, it was so stimulating to my kinesthetic obsessions. "Tugboat! Forgettaboat!" "Tugboat! Forgettaboat!" I ticced, and jerked my neck, to hurl the syllables sideways into the wind. I ticced, and jerked my neck, to hurl the syllables sideways into the wind.

"You're not from around here, are you?" he said carefully. I'd expected his voice to come out like Yosemite Sam's or Popeye's, scabrous and sputtering. Instead he was so stolid and patrimonial with his New England accent-Ya nawt from around heah, ah you?-that I was left with no doubt which of us resembled the cartoon character.

"No, actually." I affected a bright look-Illuminate me, sir, for I am a stranger in these exotic parts! It seemed as likely he'd shove me off the dock into the water or simply turn away as continue the conversation. I straightened my suit again, fingered my own collar so I wouldn't be tempted to finger his fluorescent hood, to crimp its Velcro edge like the rim of a piecrust. It seemed as likely he'd shove me off the dock into the water or simply turn away as continue the conversation. I straightened my suit again, fingered my own collar so I wouldn't be tempted to finger his fluorescent hood, to crimp its Velcro edge like the rim of a piecrust.

He examined me carefully. "Urchin season runs October through March. It's cold work. Day like today is a walk in the park."

"Urchin?" I said, feeling as I said it that I'd ticced, that the word was itself a tic by definition, it was so innately twitchy. It would have made a good pronunciation for The Artist Formerly Known As Prince's glyph.

"These are urchin waters out around the island. That's the market, so that's what's fished."

"Right," I said. "Well, that's terrific. Keep it up. You know anything about the place up the hill-Yoshii's?"

"Probably you want to talk to Mr. Foible." He nodded his head at the fishing dock's small shack, from the smokestack of which piped a tiny plume of smoke. "He's the one does dealings with them Japanese. I'm just a bayman."

"Eatmebayman!-thanks for your help." I smiled and tipped an imaginary cap to him, and headed for the shack. He shrugged at me and received another carton off the boat.

"How can I help you, sir?"

Foible was red too, but in a different way. His cheeks and nose and even his brow were spiderwebbed with blossoming red veins, painful to look at. His eyes too showed veins through their yellow. As Minna used to say about the St. Mary's parish priest, Foible had a thirsty face a thirsty face. Right on the wooden counter where he sat in the shack was evidence of what the face was thirsty for: a cluster of empty long-neck beer bottles and a couple of gin quarts, one still with an inch or so to cover the bottom. A coil heater glowed under the countertop, and when I stepped inside, he nodded at the heater and the door to indicate I should shut the door behind me. Besides Foible and his heater and bottles the shack held a scarred wooden file cabinet and a few boxes of what I guessed might be hardware and fishing tackle beneath their layers of grease. In my two-day suit and stubble I was the freshest thing in the place by far.

ght="0em" width="1em" align="justify">I could see this called for the oldest investigatory technique of them all: I opened my wallet and took out a twenty. "I'd buy a guy a drink if he could tell me a few things about the Japanese," I said.

"What about 'em?" His milky eyes made intimate contact with the twenty, worked their way back up to meet mine.

"I'm interested in the restaurant up the hill. Who owns it, specifically."

"Why?"

"What if I said I wanted to buy it?" I winked and gritted through a barking tic, cut it down to a momentary "-charp!"

"Son, you'd never get that thing away from them. You better do your shopping elsewhere."

"What if I made them an offer they couldn't refuse?"

Foible squinted at me, suddenly suspicious. I thought of how Detective Seminole had gotten spooked by the Minna Men, our Court Street milieu. I had no idea whether such images would reverberate so far from Gotham City.

"Can I ask you something?" said Foible.

"Shoot."

"You're not one of them Scientologists Scientologists, are you?"

"No," I said, surprised. It wasn't the impression I'd imagined I was making.

He winced deeply, as though recalling the trauma that had driven him to the bottle. "Good," he said. "Dang Scientologists bought the old hotel up the island, turned it into a funhouse for movie stars. Hell, I'll take the Japanese any day. Least they eat fish."

"Muscongus Island?" I'd only wanted to feel the word in my mouth at last. Island?" I'd only wanted to feel the word in my mouth at last.

"What other island would I be talking about?" He squinted at me again, then held out his hand for the twenty. "Give me that, son."

I turned it over. He laid it out on the counter and cleared his rheumy throat. "That money there says you're out of your depth here, son. Japanese yank out a roll, the smallest thing they got's a hundred. Hell, before they shut down the urchin market, this dock used to be littered with thousand-dollar bank bands from them Japanese paying off my baymen for a haul."

"Tell me about it."

"Humph."

"Eat me."

"Huh? What's that?"

"I said tell me about it. Explain about the Japanese to a guy who doesn't know."

"You know what uni uni is?" is?"

"Forgive my ignorance."

"That's the national food of Japan, son. That's the whole story around Musconguspoint anymore, unless you count the Scientologists camped out in that damn hotel. Japanese family's got to eat uni least once a week just to maintain their self-respect. Like you'd want a steak, they want a plate of urchin eggs. Golden Week-that's like Christmas in Japan-uni's the only thing they eat. Except Japanese waters got fished out. You follow?"

"Maybe."

"The Japanese law says you can't dive for urchin anymore. All you can do is hand-rake. Means standing out on a rock at low tide with a rake in your hand. Try it sometime. Rake all day, won't get an urchin worth a damn."

If ever there was a guy who needed to tell his story walking tell his story walking, it was Foible. I stifled the urge to tell him so.

"Maine coast's got the choicest urchin on the globe, son. Clustered under the island thick as grapes. Mainers never had a taste for the stuff, lobstermen thought urchins was a pain in the ass. That Japanese law made a lot of boatmen rich up here, if they knew how to rig for a diving crew. Whole economy down Rockport way. Japanese set up processing plants, they got women down there shucking urchins day and night, fly it out the next morning. Japanese dealers come in limousines, wait for the boats to come in, bid on loads, pay in cash with wads like I said before-the money would scare you silly."

"What happened?" I gulped back tics. Foible's story was beginning to interest me.

"In Rockport? Nothing happened. Still like that. If you mean up here, we just got a couple of boats. The folks up the hill bought me out and that's that, no more cars with dark windows, no more Yakuza making deals on the dock-I don't miss it for a minute. I'm an exclusive supplier, son, and a happier man you'll never meet."

In the little shack I was surrounded by Foible's happiness, and I wasn't enthralled. I didn't mention it. "The folks up the hill," I said. "You mean Fujisaki." I figured he was deep enough in his story not to balk at my feeding him the name.

"That's correct, sir. They're a classy outfit. Got a bunch of homes on the island, redid themselves a whole restaurant, brought in a sushi cook so they could eat the way they like. Sure wish they'd outbid the Scientologists for that old hotel, though."

"Don't we all. So does Fujisaki-Superduperist! Clientologist! Fujiopolis!-does Fujisaki live here in Musconguspoint year-round?"

"What's that?"

"Fly-on-top-of-us!"

"You got a touch of Tourette's syndrome there, son."

"Yes," I gasped. "You want a drink?"

"No, no. The classy outfit, do they all live up here?"

"Nope. They come and go in a bunch, always together, Tokyo, New York, London. Got a heliport on the island, go back and forth. They just rode in on the ferry this morning."

"Ah." I blinked madly in the wake of the outburst. "You run the ferry, too?"

"Nope, wouldn't want any part of that bathtub. Just a couple of boats, couple of crews. Keep my feet up, concentrate on my hobbies."

"Your other boat's out fishing?"

"Nope. Urchin-diving's an early-morning affair, son. Go out three, four in the morning, day's over by ten o'clock."

"Right, right. So where's the boat?"

"Funny you ask. Let a couple of guys take it out an hour ago, said they had to get to the island, couldn't wait for the ferry. Rented my boat and captain. They were a lot like you, thought I'd be real impressed with twenty-dollar bills."

"One of them big?"

"Biggest I ever saw."

My detour through the middle of Boston had cost me the lead in the race to Musconguspoint. Now it seemed silly that I'd imagined anything else. I found the red Contour and the black Pontiac in a small parking area just past the ferry landing, a tree-hidden cul-de-sac lot for day-trippers to the island, with an automated coin-fed gate and one-way exit with flexible spikes pointed at an angle and signs that warned, DON'T BACK UP! SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE! DON'T BACK UP! SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE! There was something I found poignant in Tony and the giant each paying to park here, fishing in their pockets for coins before enacting whatever queer struggle had led them to hire the urchin boat. I took a closer look and saw that the Contour was locked up tight, while the Pontiac's keys were in the ignition, the doors unlocked. Tony's gun, the one he'd pointed at me the day before, lay on the floor near the gas pedal. I pushed it under the seat. Maybe Tony would need it. I hoped so. I thought of how the giant had strong-armed Minna wherever he wanted him to go and felt sorry for Tony. There was something I found poignant in Tony and the giant each paying to park here, fishing in their pockets for coins before enacting whatever queer struggle had led them to hire the urchin boat. I took a closer look and saw that the Contour was locked up tight, while the Pontiac's keys were in the ignition, the doors unlocked. Tony's gun, the one he'd pointed at me the day before, lay on the floor near the gas pedal. I pushed it under the seat. Maybe Tony would need it. I hoped so. I thought of how the giant had strong-armed Minna wherever he wanted him to go and felt sorry for Tony.