Yoked.

Yo mama.

Mingus made the pipe disappear into his jacket. The two of them clambered up the grade, scaled the fence easily, and in silence stalked back along Pierrepont, putting the Promenade behind them. Though Dylan was ready now to be offered the El Marko, ready to uncap the pinned-out, purple-soaked felt and feel it flow under his own hand, to discover his own graffiti name and to plop it dripping on the sides of lampposts beside Mingus's DOSE DOSE , they tagged nothing. Mingus's hands remained buried in the pockets of the jacket, fists pushed into the lining to grip the lighter and the pipe and the El Marko so they didn't clank together as they bounced against his thighs. , they tagged nothing. Mingus's hands remained buried in the pockets of the jacket, fists pushed into the lining to grip the lighter and the pipe and the El Marko so they didn't clank together as they bounced against his thighs.

Mingus stalking ahead. Leaf still in his hair.

Dylan wasn't even a toy toy, not yet.

Probably Mingus was high too, his brain in some other quadrant, the Negative Zone maybe. That part was too much to factor. Just another revoltin' development another revoltin' development, to quote Ben Grimm, more commonly known as the Thing.

He'd learned to let the mail sit until the boy came home from school, to let the boy toss down his knapsack and sort whatever had been pushed through the mailslot and palm away the Running Crab postcard, when one had come, hide it among his private stuff private stuff, a category of the boy's that was ever-expanding. Only after Dylan had slid the mail around with his foot, spreading it on the hallway floor and abandoning it there did Abraham Ebdus retrieve the bills, letters, exhibition announcements, whatever else might have come. So the day's mail sat all afternoon just inside the door, and Abraham on his journeys downstairs from studio to kitchen for coffee or sandwiches did his honest best not to notice whether there might be a postcard sticking out of the pile. He didn't want to know.

Tonight, after Dylan had passed through the hallway and moved to the kitchen to unpack his homework on the table, Abraham found a thin package pushed through the slot, return-addressed with the name of his new employer. Though he guessed its contents instantly, he held the package in his gaze for a long minute, darkness massing behind his eyes, a sort of headache of pride and rage. When he finally tore it open a shudder of self-loathing went through him, and he nearly ripped the package in half down the center, destroying the thin mass-market paperback book before it was unveiled.

Neural Circus by R. Fred Vundane, the first in a series called the New Belmont Specials, heralded as "Mind-Warping Speculative Fiction for the Rock Age." Jacket art by Abraham Ebdus: a third-rate surrealist landscape or moonscape or mindscape of brightly colored yet somehow ominous biomorphic forms, indebted to Miro, indebted to Tanguy, indebted to Ernst, indebted even to Peter Max, and repaying none of those debts in the least. The art department of Belmont Books had overlaid his gouache-on-pasteboard with an electric-yellow sans serif font meant to resemble computer-screen lettering. Abraham wished now he'd denied them the use of his real name, substituted a pseudonym instead, as the author apparently had: A. Fried Mothball or J.R.R. Foolkiller. The colors he'd applied with his own brushes hurt his eyes. by R. Fred Vundane, the first in a series called the New Belmont Specials, heralded as "Mind-Warping Speculative Fiction for the Rock Age." Jacket art by Abraham Ebdus: a third-rate surrealist landscape or moonscape or mindscape of brightly colored yet somehow ominous biomorphic forms, indebted to Miro, indebted to Tanguy, indebted to Ernst, indebted even to Peter Max, and repaying none of those debts in the least. The art department of Belmont Books had overlaid his gouache-on-pasteboard with an electric-yellow sans serif font meant to resemble computer-screen lettering. Abraham wished now he'd denied them the use of his real name, substituted a pseudonym instead, as the author apparently had: A. Fried Mothball or J.R.R. Foolkiller. The colors he'd applied with his own brushes hurt his eyes.

Abraham carried the book into the kitchen, thinking he'd drop it casually onto the table in the middle of Dylan's homework. Pique compelled his wrist and he flipped the book to the floor instead. It skidded, spinning to a spot under the table near Dylan's feet. Dylan raised his eyebrows, looked under the table.

"What's that?" said Dylan.

"My first published book," said Abraham, unable to modulate the bitterness in his tone.

Dylan scooped the book up from the floor and took it into the parlor, wordlessly. Abraham moved a package of defrosted lamb chops from the refrigerator to the sink, ran the tap. Set onions on the counter, considered them. He could only bear the silence for a few minutes before peering in to see Dylan screwed into the corner of the couch, his whole body curled around Neural Circus Neural Circus. Dylan didn't look up as Abraham entered. The kid read books like he was engaged in some sort of scavenger procedure, scowling in concentration, turning pages at improbable speed while he flayed away the inessential flesh of prose and inspected the skeleton of story, the bare facts or crucial nonsense. Dylan Ebdus didn't read, he filleted filleted.

Abraham returned to the kitchen. He sliced onions, tossed the chops in a pan. By the time he'd gotten dinner on the table and was about to summon Dylan, the boy trotted back in with the garish little book.

"Not bad," said Abraham Ebdus's son. His tone suggested he'd read plenty that were worse. And then, in an act of almost unbearably dry wit, the boy returned the book carefully to the spot on the floor where Abraham had thrown it, covered his mouth with his fist and mimicked a slight cough, and turned to his dinner.

The book lay there through dinner, at sea between their feet. Later, after the television was on, Dylan safely established at his pew in the church of The Six Million Dollar Man The Six Million Dollar Man, Abraham retrieved the book and slipped it into his back pocket, carried it upstairs to his studio. There he cleared a row of ink bottles from a shelf just above eye level, at the desk where he painted film. Neural Circus Neural Circus would have company soon enough: he'd already painted three more jacket designs for the New Belmont Specials, and a fourth lay in rough form on a table across the room. He couldn't consider it now. would have company soon enough: he'd already painted three more jacket designs for the New Belmont Specials, and a fourth lay in rough form on a table across the room. He couldn't consider it now.

He dipped his brush, and focused his hot, onion-stinging eyes on the small celluloid frame where he'd left off work. His film's plot had lately turned to the banishment or purgation, by degrees, of color. By infinitesimal movements, small blottings and eclipses, black and gray were coming to dominate the zone above the horizon line at the center of the frame, and white and gray the zone below. What colors remained were muted, fading rapidly as though disheartened by the trend, their obvious death sentence. They'd seen the writing on the wall. First they came for the crimsons and I didn't speak up, then they came for the ochres First they came for the crimsons and I didn't speak up, then they came for the ochres - - The New Belmont Specials were purgatory for the banished colors, Abraham decided now. By expelling onto the jacket designs his corruptest impulses-the need to entertain or distract with his paints, the urge to do anything with his paints apart from seeing through them seeing through them to the absolute truth-he'd further purify his film. The published paperback art, he saw now, with a thrill that felt almost vindictive, would be a Day-Glo zombie standing in for his painting career, a corpse that walked. Meanwhile, thriving in seclusion, like a to the absolute truth-he'd further purify his film. The published paperback art, he saw now, with a thrill that felt almost vindictive, would be a Day-Glo zombie standing in for his painting career, a corpse that walked. Meanwhile, thriving in seclusion, like a Portrait of Dorian Gray Portrait of Dorian Gray in reverse, would be the austere perfection of the unpublished, unseen film. in reverse, would be the austere perfection of the unpublished, unseen film.

Mole-boy ventures out in springtime unprotected. Takes his chances. He folds a dollar into sixteenths and works it into a slot on the inside of his belt buckle, arms himself with a double bluff: two quarters in his pocket, and another fifty cents he's willing to cough up tucked into his sock. Whatever it takes. This operation is routine. In his front pocket, though, the scrabbling furtive creature has a stash he's nervous about, his hands eager, prickly. His own El Marko, jet-black, seal unbroken. At Pearl Paint on Canal Street the Saturday before, on a run for art supplies, the mole-child had gathered it up with a sketch pad and a long tin box of colored pencils. Abraham Ebdus paid for the lot, no questions asked.

It's Saturday, not quite ten in the morning the fifth day of June. Sixth grade is nearly shed now, the I.S. 293 Annex a one-year carapace, like a gross bodily phase, a mistake. What's the point of a one-year school? You couldn't grow into any useful stature. Next year was what mattered now, always had been, if you'd only known. You were readying for seventh grade. The main building on Court Street, with Mingus Rude in the grade ahead. There you'd stand some chance. Maybe. Seventh grade: concentrate, bring it into being. Looking anywhere beyond that, to high school, the guilty muffled fantasy of girls, blond girls like the lost-not-forgotten Solvers, is likely unwise for a mole-creature looking to avoid getting yoked. Take it one step at a time, o creature of the depths.

Meantime, prepare to enter Mingus's ranks. Earn your stripes, locate your name. Saturday morning you could dare to hope the kids in the projects were all still in their Jockey underwear, five to a couch, watching Merrie Melodies Merrie Melodies on black-and-white screens. The stink of the solvent factory on Bergen is the only thing loud today, the Puerto Ricans not yet assembled in front of Ramirez's store, the vacant bus floating like a chubby mote in new-summer light toward Third Avenue. A morning like this one might be a safe time to bring your name into being, throw it up on a wall. Nevertheless, mole-boy moves with nothing short of usual caution. Day, night, doesn't matter. Who knows how he'll explain if he's cornered and forced to empty his pockets, show the El Marko. The thing's a stolen passport, a charm he hasn't earned the right to carry. on black-and-white screens. The stink of the solvent factory on Bergen is the only thing loud today, the Puerto Ricans not yet assembled in front of Ramirez's store, the vacant bus floating like a chubby mote in new-summer light toward Third Avenue. A morning like this one might be a safe time to bring your name into being, throw it up on a wall. Nevertheless, mole-boy moves with nothing short of usual caution. Day, night, doesn't matter. Who knows how he'll explain if he's cornered and forced to empty his pockets, show the El Marko. The thing's a stolen passport, a charm he hasn't earned the right to carry.

Glancing behind, he moves up Nevins.

On the block of Pacific Street between Nevins and Third a couple of side-by-side empty lots had been converted into what was called a vest-pocket park. Really just a dent in the block's facade of brownstones, a square of ungreen public space, full of an oddly deep sandpit and some modernistic climbing furniture made of heavily lacquered wooden beams, plus the conventional slide and swings. The vest-pocket's floor was black rubber matting in squares, joined by jigsaw-puzzle hinges, and strewn everywhere with broken glass and stubbed cigarettes and evaporated puddles of urine that marked the site's true life. The slide and swings and the bolted-down garbage bins and the brick of the walls that made the vest-pocket's three sides were thick-layered with tags in spray paint and marker. A kid was widely regarded as an idiot for setting foot in that sand even in sneakers, forget barefoot. That's if you entered the Venus Flytrap of the park at all. Mole-boy regards it as a zone he sees the less of the better, and it takes courage for him to enter it now, though a quick glance confirms he's alone.

He fumbles the El Marko free of his pocket and looks for a clean spot.

The last square of untagged surface in the vest-pocket is low on the underside of the slide, the angle awkward-to-impossible. Knees bent, he duckwalks into the slide's shadow and uncaps. Smells the fresh reek of the black ink. He's got a name ready, a secret with himself, practiced a thousand times the past two weeks, ballpoint on school desk, Sharpie marker on loose-leaf binder, bare fingertip in the air.

But this isn't going to happen today.

Because today is the day the flying man falls from the roof.

First a shadow flashing at the corner of the boy's eyes as he crouches under the slide, an immense bird- or bat-like stretch of black against the brick wall. Flight, reversed. Then a collapsing thud, someone thrown, and the wheezing sigh, the exhale thrown from a body by force of impact. The long sigh resolving into a moan. The boy starts, grazing his head on the slide's underside, drops the marker. Caged in the slide's shadow, he wonders if he could somehow hide there from the whatever.

Answer's nope, he can't.

"Little white boy," groans the voice. "Whatchoo doin'?"

The flying man is huge, up close. He's seated on the rubber matting and against the wall, a few feet away, knees up, two hands at his right ankle, rubbing. The skin of his knobby, flinty hands and at his ankle, at each of his ankles, bare above ratty red sneakers- rejects rejects, in point of fact-is scaly, psoriatic, white tracing on alligator black. He's dressed in jeans oiled gray with filth and a formerly white shirt, cuffs shredded, a button dangling by a thread. And over his shoulder, crumpled between his wide back and the brick wall, a bedsheet cape, knotted at the neck just like the kid in Where the Wild Things Are Where the Wild Things Are, only stained yellow. Unavoidably the boy thinks: pee pee -stained. And the flying man smells like pee, even worse than the park does. -stained. And the flying man smells like pee, even worse than the park does.

The flying man grumbles again, looks up even as he goes on rubbing his ankle. His jaw is stubbled and pitted, curls of white boiled in dark acne. His nose points sideways. And where the flying man's eyes ought to be white they're that same pee-stain color, as though he's somehow urinated even into his own eyeballs.

Dylan Ebdus doesn't speak, he stares.

The flying man nods at the fallen El Marko. "Scrawling up some nassyshit on the walls, I seen you."

"You fell down," says Dylan Ebdus.

"Nah, man, I flew flew down," says the flying man. "Fucked up my motherfucking leg, though. Can't land right no more." down," says the flying man. "Fucked up my motherfucking leg, though. Can't land right no more."

"How-how can you fly?"

"Hah. Ain't 'cause of this fucking thing, that's for damn sure." The flying man pulls now at the sheet around his neck, sticks his blunt fingers in the knot and jerks it loose, surprisingly easily. He balls the soiled cape and tosses it to the side, into a pile of broken glass. "Tangle me up, hurt my leg, dang," he mutters. "Got to be fallin' all the time."

Dylan Ebdus takes a cautious step toward the uncapped El Marko where it lies on the rubber floor of the park.

"Gohead, pick it up. I don't give a shit 'bout no fucking graffiti graffiti, man. Least of my problems, shit."

Dylan grabs the marker, caps it, and puts it away. The flying man seems to be talking to himself now, anyway.

"Hey, man, you got a dollar, man?"

Dylan Ebdus stares again. The flying man shows his teeth, which are small and too spacious. His gum a flare of brown and pink.

"You can't talk, man? I axed if you got a dollar."

The mole-boy is almost relieved to shift to such familiar turf. On automatic, he digs in his pocket. Another part of him, though, still calculates trajectories, replays that flash and thud of descent a minute before. His eyes flicker to the rooftop, three stories high. From there there to to here here ? ?

Elsewhere this day's unstarted. The park an empty bracket, no one walking Pacific Street's sidewalk to confirm or triangulate any goings-on.

The flying man reaches up and Dylan Ebdus hands him fifty cents, stepping into the aura of stink to do it. He steps quickly back.

The flying man palms the quarters, turns a silver ring on his pinky finger, his eyes locked on Dylan's. There's a rime of white crusted in the fine lines of the flying man's neck, as though he's been beached, baked in evaporating salt.

"I used to fly good," says the flying man.

"I've seen you," says Dylan, nearly whispering, the knowledge appearing with the words.

"Can't no more," says the flying man angrily, then licks his lips. "Muthafucking"-here he works to find a word-"air waves always got to be knocking me down." always got to be knocking me down."

"Air waves?"

"Hah. Hah. I can't stay in the air air no more. That's the no more. That's the problem problem, man." The flying man suddenly spots the quarters shining in his cracked palm, like shards of mirror sun-caught in a muddy curb. "That's all you got, man? That's all you got for me?"

Dylan nods mutely, then undoes his belt and surrenders the tiny, wadded dollar, not unfolding it but dropping it like a Chiclet into the cup of the flying man's vast fissured hand.

"Hah. You really seen me flyin'?"

The flying man lifts his chin to point at the distant rooftops above Pacific and Nevins, the roof of P.S. 38 and beyond, to the Wyckoff Houses. Seagulls wheel in the pale sky, strayed from Coney Island or Red Hook.

Dylan Ebdus nods again, then flees the park.

chapter7.

Apostcard from Running Crab, postmarked Bloomington, Indiana, August 16, 1976. The front a black-and-white photograph of Henry Miller on the beach at Big Sur, naked apart from a loincloth so big it's like a baby's diaper, wrinkled chest sagging below caustic grin and sunburned brow. A statuesque, black-haired woman stands aloof behind him, in a bikini and a filmy wrap, ankles in surf, ignoring the camera.

don't let hank fool you d a brooklyn street kid never quits a brooklyn street kid never quits dreaming of stickball triples dreaming of stickball triples egg creams and the funnies egg creams and the funnies in his mind he's dick tracy in his mind he's dick tracy she's brenda starr she's brenda starr not venus on the half shell not venus on the half shell love beachcomber crab love beachcomber crab

He stared at the tickets so long his eyeball vibes might have scoured off the ink bearing that blind coon's name and replaced it with his own. Some fool up at Artists and Repertory had sent him two tickets to see Ray motherfucking Charles Ray motherfucking Charles at Radio City Music Hall, as though he was likely to sit pondering a mile of the spangled white pussy known as the Rockettes-from the goddamn balcony!-just to see that haughty jive-ass banging on a grand piano hollering "God Bless America." Never wished to at Radio City Music Hall, as though he was likely to sit pondering a mile of the spangled white pussy known as the Rockettes-from the goddamn balcony!-just to see that haughty jive-ass banging on a grand piano hollering "God Bless America." Never wished to play play Radio City, why would he be found in the Radio City, why would he be found in the balcony balcony ? ?

He'd propped his parlor windows open high. Outside, Dean Street moaned in an ailment of humidity. The heat was granular, undissolved. The sunlight on the strewn mirror blobby, swimmy. Nothing rippled the curtains, the air didn't move. Just a steady distant Puerto Rican beat from the square in front of Ramirez's store, might be the same song for the last two hours, the whole afternoon. Cars moved like jellyfish, barely distinguishable from their medium, a ripple where the tar met the air.

Four black kids dancing like startled spiders in the flow of a wrenched-open hydrant on Nevins and Bergen.

He tossed the tickets on the mirror, then carved out a line, taking care to point his toes outward, ten and two on the face of an imaginary clock. He'd recently developed a technique of widening his hips and knees and keeping his back arched as he leaned forward, so that breathing a line became more natural, the blow raining into his open lungs, flushing him through with cool air. Too many cats snorted while balled up, imbibing the drug ragefully, their bodies fistlike.

It was like singing, a matter of what distant quadrants in your belly and chest you could find to offer up.

Commitment on a deeper level.

From the low angle he puzzled the tickets with his eyes, exploring how they lay twinned on the mirror, dark writing inaccessibly sandwiched in shadow between the two pairs, the real and the reflected. Maybe Crowell Desmond, his so-called manager, had engineered this affront. A widely unknown historical fact was that Ray Charles had personally bounced a reel of Subtle Distinctions' demos when he was running Tangerine, saying, reputedly, Don't come around here with this Motown-sounding doo-wop horseshit Don't come around here with this Motown-sounding doo-wop horseshit. But could Desmond, who'd crept onto the scene only a year ago, be savvy to that fact? Not likely. Anyway, Crowell Desmond lacked initiative for such a cryptic put-down.

Barrett Rude Junior picked up a rolled dollar bill and drew a line clear into his lower gut, into his balls and dick. Felt the chill there shudder outward everywhere through his clammy, sweat-boiled carcass.

Nigger, he thought. Nig- guh guh, major falling to minor, an interval of sevenths.

Fugitive melodies lurked in the space between syllables, niggers themselves crouching in the dark.

No, the bestowal of the Ray Charles tickets was A&R working on its own, twitches from a corporate body which had never walked, only groveled. The resemblance to sentient life purely accidental. Someone in the offices had the wholly asinine and improbable notion they'd sweet-talk him up to Montreal to record some discofied bullshit with the German producer of the Silver Convention, wanting to turn him into Johnnie Taylor, maybe, or the Miracles after Smokey split, soul men in mirror-studded spandex bodysuits singing for horny Valley of the Dingbat housewives.

Move it up, move it down, move it in, move it out, Disco Lady! Then take me out behind the house and shoot my lame black ass. Then take me out behind the house and shoot my lame black ass.

Nihhh- gahhh gahhh, like breathing.

Could turn into a Curtis Mayfield falsetto thing, maybe.

In the same cause the sycophantic flacks had one month earlier dragged to his doorstep a slick new four-track tape recorder with a note on cream-colored gold-embossed stationery reading Barry, never forget you wrote Bothered to get me off your back, I'm still on it, Ahmet Barry, never forget you wrote Bothered to get me off your back, I'm still on it, Ahmet. As if that white-goateed upper-management hipster had likely even noticed the tune until the Mantovani Strings version had floated into his private fur-lined elevator.

Atlantic had ripped him off in his incarnation as the lead voice of the Servile Distinctions, siphoned royalties from his account like draining a pool. Then as final insult brought in Andre Deehorn and some no-name scab singers and built tracks around unfinished vocals, for release as a bogus final album- The Subtle Distinctions Love You More! The Subtle Distinctions Love You More! -after he'd quit. Now they wheedled and cajoled for the chance to resume ripping him off as a solo act. Only heartfelt emotion they'd ever know, like hungry cousins ringing your phone: -after he'd quit. Now they wheedled and cajoled for the chance to resume ripping him off as a solo act. Only heartfelt emotion they'd ever know, like hungry cousins ringing your phone: Come back and spread green on us again, brother! Come back and spread green on us again, brother! He'd stashed the four-track below, in Mingus's apartment, its magnetic virginity intact. Now he turned the same way with the tickets, shouted down the stairwell. He'd stashed the four-track below, in Mingus's apartment, its magnetic virginity intact. Now he turned the same way with the tickets, shouted down the stairwell.

"Gus, man, get up here. Got something for you."

Mingus came upstairs in a T-shirt and his Jockey shorts, looking sleepy-eyed at one in the afternoon. He cocked his head at the drift of cocaine on the sun-mottled mirror, the smeary ghosts of inhaled lines that trailed out of it.

Kid stared at the blow like he'd never seen it before.

"What?" said Barrett Rude Junior. "You want to get high?" He waved his hand at the mirror from his big chair where he sat, felt the weight of his arm, a banner of flesh moving in the damp air.

Nihhh-gahhh, nihh-gahh, got you-self an itchy tri-ggahhh fin-gahhh. Could be a theme song for some movie about a pimp. Maybe he ought to fish that four-track recorder upstairs, shock their minds with a new track, number-one hit single on the R&B charts, first time the word nigger nigger 's ever been on the radio. 's ever been on the radio. Go fuck yourself, Omlet! Go fuck yourself, Omlet!

It seemed to take a thousand years for Mingus to quit staring and shake his head.

Barrett Rude Junior just laughed. "Don't tell me you ain't hittin' it when I'm not around. Nothing to be ashamed of."

"Lay off."

"I know what's wrong with you. You're saying, Barry best get this cleaned up before Senior comes up here. Read your eyes, man."

"I didn't say nothing."

"Whatever. I got these tickets for you if you want them. Brother Ray Charles, up at Ray- dee dee -oh City. -oh City. Drinkin' wine spo-de-o-dee, drinkin' wine Drinkin' wine spo-de-o-dee, drinkin' wine."

"You don't want to go?"

"Nah, not tonight. Why don't you call up a friend, hop up there on the F train."

Mingus took the tickets. Barrett Rude Junior rubbed his nose and upper lip with his knuckle, waiting. Him and Mingus both fine-beaded in the day's wet heat.

"Ray Charles is the man, Gus. Big part of your cultural heritage right there, my man. You'll be telling your kids you were there, Ne-ver fo-get the time I saw Bruth-a Ray Ne-ver fo-get the time I saw Bruth-a Ray." He couldn't say why he wanted the boy to go. "Plus they got some fine air-conditioning up there in that balcony, man. Go cool out with a friend, get out the heat. Take Dylan. Or that raisin-looking ghetto child you been bringing around, what's his name? Robert. Radio City likely blow that boy's mind."

The talk came out of him in one breath and was strangely taxing. He closed his eyes and when he opened them Mingus stood there still looking at the tickets as though Barrett hadn't spoken.

"You gonna go, or what?"

"You got other plans?" asked Mingus.

"What's that got to do with it?" In truth, Barry had his eye on a double feature at the Duffield Theater up on Fulton Street, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings and and Car Wash Car Wash. Leverage his own ass out of the day's heat, into some dark windowless auditorium with best-be-working air-conditioning. Just not to contemplate Ray Charles in a tuxedo. "You want the tickets?"

Mingus shrugged. Scratching himself in his underwear, eyeballing his father, trying to figure the angle.