"Then you must tell me this: are you with us?"

"I am with those," Ahmad says slowly, "who are with G.o.d."

"O.K. Good enough. Be as silent as G.o.d about this. Do not tell your mother. Do not tell your girlfriend."

"I have no girlfriend."

"That's right. I promised to do something about that, didn't I?"

"You said I should get laid."

"Right. I'll work on it."

"Do not, please. It is not yours to work on."

"Friends help each other out," Charlie insists. He reaches over and squeezes the young driver's shoulder, and Ahmad does not entirely like it; it reminds him of Tylenol's bullying grip that time in the high-school hall.

The boy states, with a new-won man's dignity, "One more question, and then I will say nothing until I am spoken to on these matters. Is there a plan developing, with these seeds that are being watered?"

Ahmad knows Charlie's facial expressions so well he does not have to look sideways in the truck to see the man's rubbery lips work around as if exploring the shape of his own teeth, and then heavily exhale in an exaggerated sigh of exasperation. "Like I said, there are always a number of projects under consideration, and how they develop is somewhat hard to predict. What does the Book say, Madman? And the Jews plotted, and G.o.d plotted. But of those who plot, G.o.d is the best." And the Jews plotted, and G.o.d plotted. But of those who plot, G.o.d is the best."

"In these plots, will I ever have a part to play?" "You might. Would you like that, kid?" Again, Ahmad feels a juncture being reached, and a gate closing behind him. "I believe I would."

"You believe? You got to do better than that." "As you say, individual events are not easy to predict. But the lines are clear." "The lines?"

"The lines of battle. The armies of Satan versus those of G.o.d. As the Book affirms, Idolatry is worse than carnage." Idolatry is worse than carnage."

"Right. Right," Right," Charlie agrees, and slaps his thigh as if to wake himself up, there in the pa.s.senger's seat. "I like that. Worse than carnage." He is a naturally talkative and humorous man, and it has been hard for him to keep a straight face, talking with Ahmad like two men walking through a cemetery where they may some day lie. "One thing to keep in mind," he adds. "There's an anniversary coming up, in September. And the people who call the shots-our generals, so to speak-have an old-fashioned thing about anniversaries." Charlie agrees, and slaps his thigh as if to wake himself up, there in the pa.s.senger's seat. "I like that. Worse than carnage." He is a naturally talkative and humorous man, and it has been hard for him to keep a straight face, talking with Ahmad like two men walking through a cemetery where they may some day lie. "One thing to keep in mind," he adds. "There's an anniversary coming up, in September. And the people who call the shots-our generals, so to speak-have an old-fashioned thing about anniversaries."

Jacob and Teresa have made love and bring the sheets up over their naked bodies. The breeze through her bedroom windows is cool. September is drawing near; single yellow leaves, like isolated sparks, show in the wearying greenery. They both, he reflects after his warm bath in her flesh, could lose a few pounds. Her skin, where it is not freckled, is almost too pale, like that of a plastic doll except that it yields under his thumb, leaving a pink dent slow to erase itself. His s.h.a.ggy arms and chest pain him with their slack, rumpled look; at home the bathroom mirror shows him the beginnings of puckery pseudo-b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and his stomach under its twin black swirls of hair has developed another fold. On his chest, the white hairs have no curl, and stick out like wavery antennae: an old man's hairs.

Terry cuddles against him, her snub nose snuggled into his armpit. His love for her stirs widiin him like the start of nausea.

"Jack?" she breathes.

"What?" He sounds ruder than he had intended.

"What makes you so sad?"

"I'm not sad," he says. "I'm f.u.c.ked. You really do it. I thought my old cha.s.sis was ready for the junk heap, but you get those spark plugs firing. You're gorgeous, Terry."

"Cut the malarkey, as my father used to say. You haven't answered my question. Why are you sad?"

"Maybe I was thinking, Labor Day's coming. It's going to be harder to work us in." He has learned to express his difficulties in deceiving his wife without mentioning Beth's name, which Terry hates to hear, for some reason that eludes him. If the truth were known, Beth should be the jealous and indignant one.

Terry smells his very thought. "You're so afraid of Beth's finding out," she spitefully says. "So what if she did? Where can she go? Who would want her, in the shape she's in?"

"Is that the point?"

"No? So what is the point, baby? You tell me."

"Not hurting people?" he suggests.

"You don't think I hurt? You think being f.u.c.ked and deserted die next minute doesn't hurt?"

Jack sighs. The fight is on, the same old fight. "I'm sorry. I'd like to be with you more." Leaving before he gets bored suits him, actually. Women can be boring. They make everything personal. They're so wrapped up in self-preservation, self-presentation, self-dramatization. With men you don't have to keep maneuvering, you just punch. Dealing with a woman is like jujitsu, looking for the trip.

She senses die threatening run of his thoughts and says, mollifyingly if grumpily, "She probably guesses anyway."

"How would she do that?" Though of course Terry is right.

"Women know," she tells him smugly, bragging up her gender, cuddling closer to him, and toying annoyingly with the hair on his rumpled slack belly. She says, "I keep telling myself, 'Love him less. For your own good, girl. For his good, too.' "

But as Terry says this, she feels an inner sliding and glimpses the relief she might experience if he indeed were to become less to her-if her tacky relationship with this melancholy old loser of a guidance counselor were in fact to end. At the age of forty she has parted from a number of men, and how many of them would she want back? Widi each break, it seems to her in retrospect, she returned to her single life with a fresh forthrightness and energy, like facing a blank, taut, primed canvas after some days away from the easel. The broken circle of her, an arc of it held open in hope of a phone call from a certain man, a knock on the door, an invasion and transformation from without, would close again. This Jack Levy, smart as he is, and even sensitive at times, is a heavy case. A guilty Jewish gloom weighs him down, and her too, if she lets it. She needs somebody nearer her own age, and unmarried. These married men are always more married than they let on at first. They even try to marry bet; bet; without letting go of the legal one first. without letting go of the legal one first.

"How's Ahmad doing?" he asks her, pseudo-paternally.

He keeps asking her about Ahmad, though as far as she's concerned she wants to move on from mothering to something she's better at. "With me on night duty lately," she says, "and him doing deliveries until after dark many days, we hardly overlap. He's gotten fuller in the face and the rest of him more muscular, what with all this lifting he does- this Charlie he loves so much just comes along for the ride, as far as I can tell. These Lebanese, they get the last penny's worth out of their help. The blacks they hire keep quitting on them, Ahmad did mention. Lately they seem to have promoted him-at least he comes home later and, the few times I see him, acts preoccupied."

"Preoccupied?" Jack says, preoccupied himself-worrying about big Beth, no doubt. Face it: much as she would miss Jack's flattery in bed when they get there, he would be good riddance. Maybe she needs another artist, even if he's like the last, Leo: Leo the un-lion-hearted, utterly stuck on himself, a dripper and scrubber channeling Pollock sixty years too late, quick to push and slap back when he's de-inhibited on liquor or meth, but at least he made her laugh and didn't try to lay a guilt trip on her, implying he could have been a better mother of Ahmad than she was. Or maybe she should go out with a resident, like that new little guy with a blinky stammer on his way to be a neurosurgeon; but, face it, she is too old for a resident now, and in any case they always pa.s.s up the nurses they f.u.c.k and go for the proctologist's daughter. Still, just the thought of the world of men out there, even at her age, even in northern New Jersey, hardens her heart against this lugubrious, boringly well-intentioned, stale-smelling man. She resolves to put him behind her.

"Secretive," she clarifies. "Maybe he's found a girl. I hope so. Isn't he way overdue?"

Jack says, "Kids today have more to worry about than we did. At least than I did-I shouldn't talk as if we're the same age."

"Oh, go ahead. Help yourself."

"It's not just AIDS and the rest; there's a certain hunger for, I don't know, the absolute, when everything is so relative, and all the economic forces are pushing instant gratification and credit-card debt at them. It's not just the Christian right-Ashcroft and his morning revival meeting down in D.C. You see it in Ahmad. And the Black Muslims. People want to go back to simple-black and white, right and wrong, when things aren't simple."

"So my son is simple-minded."

"In a way. But so is most of mankind. Otherwise, being human is too tough. Unlike the other animals, we know too much. They, the other animals, know just enough to get the job done and die. Eat, sleep, f.u.c.k, have babies, and die."

"Jack, everything you say is depressing. That's why you're so sad."

"All I'm saying is that kids like Ahmad need to have something they don't get from society any more. Society doesn't let them be innocent any more. The crazy Arabs are right- hedonism, nihilism, that's all we offer. Listen to the lyrics of these rock and rap stars-just kids themselves, with smart agents. Kids have to make more decisions than they used to, because adults can't tell them what to do. We don't know know what to do, we don't have the answers we used to; we just futz along, trying not to think. n.o.body accepts responsibility, so the kids, some of the kids, take it on. Even at a dump like Central High, where the demographics are stacked against the whole school population, you see it-this wish to do right, to be good, to sign up for something-die Army, the marching band, the gang, the choir, the student council, the Boy Scouts even. The Boy Scout leader, the priests, all they want is to b.u.g.g.e.r the kids, it turns out, but the kids keep showing up, hoping for some guidance. In die halls, their faces break your heart, they're so hopeful, wanting to be what to do, we don't have the answers we used to; we just futz along, trying not to think. n.o.body accepts responsibility, so the kids, some of the kids, take it on. Even at a dump like Central High, where the demographics are stacked against the whole school population, you see it-this wish to do right, to be good, to sign up for something-die Army, the marching band, the gang, the choir, the student council, the Boy Scouts even. The Boy Scout leader, the priests, all they want is to b.u.g.g.e.r the kids, it turns out, but the kids keep showing up, hoping for some guidance. In die halls, their faces break your heart, they're so hopeful, wanting to be good, good, to amount to something. They expect something of themselves. This is America, we all expect something, even the sociopaths have some sort of a good opinion of themselves. You know what they wind up being, the worst discipline cases? They wind up being cops and high-school teachers. They want to please society, though they say they don't. They want to be worthy, if we could just tell them what worth is." His discourse, delivered in a rapid, edgy mutter from within his hairy chest, lurches: "s.h.i.t, forget what I just said. The priests and Boy Scout troop leaders don't to amount to something. They expect something of themselves. This is America, we all expect something, even the sociopaths have some sort of a good opinion of themselves. You know what they wind up being, the worst discipline cases? They wind up being cops and high-school teachers. They want to please society, though they say they don't. They want to be worthy, if we could just tell them what worth is." His discourse, delivered in a rapid, edgy mutter from within his hairy chest, lurches: "s.h.i.t, forget what I just said. The priests and Boy Scout troop leaders don't only only want to b.u.g.g.e.r them; they want to be good, too. But they can't, the little boys' bottoms are just too inviting. Terry, tell me: why am I going on like this?" want to b.u.g.g.e.r them; they want to be good, too. But they can't, the little boys' bottoms are just too inviting. Terry, tell me: why am I going on like this?"

Her inner sliding brings her to: "Maybe because you sense that this is your last chance."

"My last chance at what?"

"At sharing yourself with me."

"What are you saying?"

"Jack, it's no good. It's hurting your marriage and isn't doing me any good either. It did at first. You're a great guy- just not my my guy. After some of the jerks I've been dealing widi, you're a saint. I mean it. But I got to deal with reality, I've got to think about my future. Already, Ahmad's gone- all he needs from me is some food in the refrigerator." guy. After some of the jerks I've been dealing widi, you're a saint. I mean it. But I got to deal with reality, I've got to think about my future. Already, Ahmad's gone- all he needs from me is some food in the refrigerator."

"1 need you, Terry."

"You do and you don't. You tliink my painting's a crock-"

"Oh no. I love your painting. I love it that you have this extra dimension. Now, if BetJi-"

"If Beth had an extra dimension, she'd break through the floor." She laughs at diis image, sitting up in bed so her b.r.e.a.s.t.s bounce free of the sheet, their top half freckled, the half witii tiie nipple untouched by die sun no matter how many other men have put their lips and fingers there.

The Irish in her, he thinks. That's what he loves, that's what he can't do witJiout. The moxie, the defiant spark of craziness people get if they're sat on long enough-the Irish have it, the blacks and Jews have it, but it's died in him. He wanted to be a comic but he's become a humorless enforcer of a system that doesn't believe in itself. All those mornings waking up too early, he was giving himself time to die in. Learn to die in your spare time. What did Emerson say about being dead? At least you're done with the dentist. That struck him forty years ago, when he could still read something that mattered. This zaftig redhead isn't dead yet, and she knows it. But he has to protest to her, of Beth, "Let's leave her out of it. She can't help the shape she's in." he thinks. That's what he loves, that's what he can't do witJiout. The moxie, the defiant spark of craziness people get if they're sat on long enough-the Irish have it, the blacks and Jews have it, but it's died in him. He wanted to be a comic but he's become a humorless enforcer of a system that doesn't believe in itself. All those mornings waking up too early, he was giving himself time to die in. Learn to die in your spare time. What did Emerson say about being dead? At least you're done with the dentist. That struck him forty years ago, when he could still read something that mattered. This zaftig redhead isn't dead yet, and she knows it. But he has to protest to her, of Beth, "Let's leave her out of it. She can't help the shape she's in."

"Oh, c.r.a.p. c.r.a.p. If she can't, who can? As to leaving her out of it, I'd have loved to, Jack, but you can't. You bring her with you. There's a look on your face, a look that says, 'So help me, dear Lord, this is just for an hour.' You treat me like a fifty-minute cla.s.s period at school. I can feel you waiting for If she can't, who can? As to leaving her out of it, I'd have loved to, Jack, but you can't. You bring her with you. There's a look on your face, a look that says, 'So help me, dear Lord, this is just for an hour.' You treat me like a fifty-minute cla.s.s period at school. I can feel you waiting for the buzzer." This is the way, This is the way, she thinks. This is the way to repel him, to make herself repulsive-attack his wife. "You're she thinks. This is the way to repel him, to make herself repulsive-attack his wife. "You're married, married, Jack. You're too f.u.c.king married for me." Jack. You're too f.u.c.king married for me."

"No." It comes out as a whimper.

"You are," are," Terry tells him. "I tried to forget it, but you wouldn't let me. I give up. For my own sake, Jack, I got to give up. Let me go now." Terry tells him. "I tried to forget it, but you wouldn't let me. I give up. For my own sake, Jack, I got to give up. Let me go now."

"What about Ahmad?"

This surprises her. "What about him?"

"I worry about him. Something's fishy with this furniture store."

Her temper is getting short; it has not been helped by Jack's lying there in the sweaty warmth of her bed as if he was still her lover and had some rights of tenancy. "So what?" she says. "Something's fishy everywhere these days. I can't live Ahmad's life for him, and I can't live yours. I wish you well, Jack, I truly do. You're a sweet, sad man. But if you call me or come around after you go out the door today, it'll be hara.s.sment."

"Hey, don't," he says brokenly, just wanting things back the way they were an hour ago, she greeting him with a wet kiss that carried down to their groins, the apartment door not even closed behind them. He liked having a woman on the side. He liked her baggage: her being a mother, her being a painter, her being a nurse's aide, forgiving of other people's bodies.

She gets out of the bed that smells of them both. "Let go, Jack," she tells him, standing just out of his arm's reach. With a wary quickness she bends down to retrieve some of her clothes where she dropped them. Her tone is getting pedagogic, scolding. "Don't be a leech. I bet you're a leech on Beth, too. Sucking, sucking the life out of a woman, drag- ging her down into your feeling so sorry for yourself. No wonder she eats. I've given what I can, Jack, and must must move on. Please. Don't make it hard." move on. Please. Don't make it hard."

He begins to resent and resist this c.u.n.t's scolding tone. "I can't believe this is happening, for no reason," he says. He feels soft, too limp and damp to get out of her bed; her image of a leech has penetrated him. Maybe she's right; he's a burden on the world. He stalls. "Let's give ourselves some time to tb.ink about it," he says. "I'll call you in a week."

"Don't you dare."

This imperious command gets his goat; he snaps, "What's your reason again? I missed it."

"You teach school, you've heard of a clean slate."

"I'm a guidance counselor."

"Well, give yourself some guidance. Clean up your act."

"If I got rid of Beth, what would happen then?"

"I don't know. Nothing much, probably. Anyway, how would you get rid of her?"

Indeed, how? Terry's bra is back on, and her jeans are being angrily tugged up, his inert nakedness becoming increasingly shameful and abject. He says, "O.K. Enough said. Sorry if I've been thick." Still he keeps lying there. A melody from long ago, when the downtown bristled witJi movie marquees, enters his head-a cascading, slippery tune. He croons the concluding phrase: "Deedee-dit-dtf-dat-daaa."

"What's that?" she asks, angry tiiough she has won.

"Not a Terry tune. Another kind, Warner Brotliers. At the end a stuttering pig would pop out of a drum and say, "Th-th-that's all, folks!"

"You're not cute, you know."

He kicks off the sheet. He likes the feel of being a naked hairy animal, spent genitals flopping, yellow-soled feet smelling cheesy; he likes the flare of alarm in the other animal's gla.s.sy bulging eyes. Standing naked, his creased and sagging s.e.xagenarian self, Jack Levy tells her, "I'll miss the h.e.l.l out of you." As the cool air licks his skin, he remembers reading years ago how that paleontologist Leakey, who found the world's oldest human in the Olduvai Gorge, claimed that a naked human being could run down and kill bare-handed any prey, even a toothed predator, smaller than he. He feels that potential within him. He could wrestle this smaller member of his own species to the floor and strangle her. "You were my last-" he begins.

"Your last what? Piece of a.s.s? That's your problem, not mine. You can hire it, you know." Her freckled face is pink with defiance. She doesn't get it, that she doesn't have to fight him, being crude and spelling everything out. He knows when he's flunked the course. He feels his exposed flesh as dead weight.

"Hey, Terry, easy. My last reason to live, I was going to say. My last reason for joie de vivre."

"Don't do a sentimental kike number on me, Jack. I'll miss you, too." Then she has to add hurtfully, "For a while."

Charlie greets Ahmad one morning early in September saying, "This is your lucky day, Madman!"

"How so?"

"You'll see." Charlie has been sober yet brusque lately, as if something is eating at him, but whatever this surprise is pleases him so simply that, seen from the side, the corner of his restless mouth tucks into his cheek with a smile. "First, we got a ton of deliveries, one of them way down to Camden."

"Do they need both of us? I don't mind doing it alone." He has come to prefer it. In the solitude of the cab he is not alone, G.o.d is with him. But G.o.d is Himself alone, He is the ultimate of solitude. Ahmad loves his lonely G.o.d.

"Yep, they do. One's a Hide-A-Bed, they weigh a f.u.c.king ton with all that internal metal, and the Camden delivery is an eighty-eight-inch all-actual-leather nail-head sofa, with flared arms. But you mustn't lift by the arms; they crack right off, as one of your predecessors and I discovered. Marked down from over a thousand, for the waiting room of a fancy clinic for disturbed children."

"Disturbed?"

"Who isn't, right? Anyway, with the two matching armchairs it's a two-grand deal, and we don't get those every day of the week. Watch that oil truck on your left; I think the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's stoned."

But Ahmad already has his eye on the speeding, grimy Getty tanker, wondering if the driver is taking sufficient account of liquid surge and other factors requiring caution. September brings with it an extra danger on the streets and highways, as returning vacationers jostle and joust for their old place in the pack. "Excellency is heading upscale," Charlie is saying, "with all these new houses selling for a million up. Have you noticed, on the quiz shows, the audience no longer laughs when you say you're from New Jersey? We're getting to be Connecticut South, only a tunnel away from Wall Street. My dad and uncle, they thought modest- stained poplar and stapled vinyl for the ma.s.ses-but now we get these white-collar commuters from Montclair and Short Hills who think nothing of forking over two grand for a bone leather sectional or three for an Old World-style dining suite, say, with a matching Gothic-style curio cabinet and everything carved oak. Stuff like that moves these days; it never used to. We'd take die odd quality piece at an estate clearance and have it on the floor for years. There's new money even in poor old New Prospect."

"It is good," Ahmad says cautiously, "that business thrives." He dares to add, seeking harmony with Charlie's upbeat mood, "Perhaps the new customers expect to find a cash bonus tucked into the cushions."

Charlie's profile doesn't acknowledge any joke. He keeps his tone offhand. "We've done our payouts for now. Uncle Maurice has headed back to Miami. Now we're the ones waiting for delivery." His tone becomes less offhand; he says, "Madman, you don't talk about your job here with anybody, do you? The details. Anybody ever quiz you? Your mother, say? Any guys that she dates?"

"My mother is too self-absorbed to spare me much curiosity. She is relieved I have steady employment, and contribute now to our expenses. But we come and go in our apartment as strangers." This is not quite true, it occurs to him. The other night, during an unusual, well-cooked dinner together at the old round table where he used to study, she asked him if he had ever felt anything "fishy" at the furniture store. Not at all, he told her. He is learning to lie. To be honest with Charlie, he tells him, "I tJiink recently my mother has suffered one of her romantic sorrows, for the odier night she produced a flurry of interest in me, as if remembering that I was still diere. But this mood of hers will pa.s.s. We have never communicated well. My father's absence stood between us, and tJien my faith, which I adopted before entering my teen years. She is a warm-natured woman, and no doubt cares for her hospital patients, but I tiiink has as little talent for motherhood as a cat. Cats let the kittens suckle for a time and then treat them as enemies. I am not yet quite grown enough to be my mother's enemy, but I am mature enough to be an object of indifference."

"How does she feel about your not having a girlfriend?"

"I think she is relieved, if anything. An attachment to my life would complicate hers. Another woman, however young, might begin to judge her and hold her to a certain standard of conventional behavior."

Charlie interrupts: "There's a left turn coming-I think not this light but die next-where we get Route 512 to Summit, where we drop off the dinette set with the cinnamon finish. So you haven't gotten laid yet?" He takes Ahmad's silence to confirm his a.s.sertion, and says, "Good." The dimpling smile has returned to his profile. Ahmad is so used to seeing Charlie in profile that it shocks him when the man turns in die shadows of the cab and shows him botJi sides of his face. Having done this, Charlie returns his gaze to die shifting lights seen through die windshield. "You're right about Western advertisers," he says, picking up an old thread between them. "They push s.e.x because it means consumption. First the liquor and flowers diat go with dating, and then the breeding and the buying diat goes with that, baby food and SUVs and-"

"Dinette sets," Ahmad supplies.

When Charlie is not kidding he is so serious he invites teasing. The lone eye in his profile blinks and his mouth makes a swigging motion, as if he has tasted a sour truth. "A bigger house, I was going to say. These young couples spend and go deeper and deeper into debt, which is just what the Jewish usurers want. It's die 'buy now, pay later' trap-very seductive." But he did hear the teasing; he goes on, "Sure, we're merchants. But Dad's idea was, reasonable prices. Don't encourage die customer to buy more dian he can afford. Bad for him, and eventually bad for us. We didn't even accept credit cards until a couple years ago. Now we do. One must join the system," he says, "until the moment."

"The moment?"

"The moment to give it a blow from within." He sounds impatient. He seems to think Ahmad knows more than he does.

Ahmad asks him, "When does such a moment arrive?"

Charlie ponders. "It arrives when it has been created. It can be never, or can be sooner than we think."

Ahmad feels he is balanced on a scaffolding of straws, in the dizzying s.p.a.ce of tlieir shared faith, revealed when the other man spoke of the Jewish usurers. Having been admitted, die boy feels, to a rare level of Charlie's confidence, he in turn confides, "I have a G.o.d to whom I turn five times a day. My heart needs no other companion. The obsession with s.e.x confesses the infidels' emptiness, and their terror. "