"That's all I want to know, man. You know you're my main man, Dillinger. D-Train."

It was a rehearsal and now Dylan learned what for. As they slipped into the park Mingus exaggerated his ordinary lope, raised a hand in dreamy salute. Arrayed at the concrete chessboard tables were three black teenagers in assorted slung poses. One more chaotically slung than the others, a signature geometry of limbs which caused Dylan's heart to guiltily, madly lurch. Nevertheless he strolled beside Mingus into the thick of it, accepted whatever was meant to unfold in the park from within his own sleepwalker's daze, which, perfected at the new school, covered even the resurrection of Robert Woolfolk as a presence in his life.

"Yo," said Mingus Rude, lazily slapping at hands, humming swallowed syllables which might be names.

"What's goin' on, G?" said Robert Woolfolk.

Robert Woolfolk called Mingus G G, for Gus, Dylan supposed. Did it mean he'd also met Barrett Rude Junior?

Then Robert Woolfolk recognized Dylan. He flinched with his whole face, his sour-lemon features hiding nothing, yet didn't alter the arrangement of his limbs an inch.

The park was full of little white kids with bowl haircuts, maybe second or third graders from Packer Institute or Saint Ann's. They ran and screamed past the chessboard tables, dressed in Garanimals, arms loaded with plastic toys, G.I. Joes, water pistols, Wiffle balls. For all they inhabited the same world as Dylan and Mingus and Robert Woolfolk they might as well have been animated Disney bluebirds, twittering harmlessly around the head of the Wicked Witch as she coated an apple with poison.

"Shit," said Robert Woolfolk and now he smiled. "You know this dude, G?"

"This my man D-Lone D-Lone," said Mingus. "He's cool. We go back, he's my boy from around the block."

Robert looked at Dylan a long while before he spoke.

"I know your boy," he said. "I seen him from before you were even around, G." He flicked his eyes at Dylan. "What up, Dylan man? Don't say you don't remember me because I know you do."

"Sure," said Dylan.

"Shit, I even know this dude's mother mother," said Robert Woolfolk.

"Oh, yeah?" said Mingus, carefully blase, downplaying any further speculations. "So you down, right? You cool with my man Dylan."

Robert Woolfolk laughed. "What you need me to say, man? You can hang with your white boy, don't mean shit to me."

At that the thin, worthless pretense of Robert Woolfolk's fondness for Dylan was shattered in hilarity. The other two black teenagers snorted, slapped each other five for the words white boy white boy, as ever a transport to hear said aloud. "Ho, snap snap," said one, shaking his head in wonderment like he'd just seen a good stunt in a movie, a car flipped over or a body crumpled in a hail of blood-spurting bullet thwips.

Dylan stood frozen in his stupid backpack and unpersuasive Pro Keds in the innocent afternoon, his arms numb, blinking his eyes at Mingus.

Weebles wobble but they don't fall down.

"We going down to bomb some trains or we sit here all day talking 'bout this and that?" said Robert Woolfolk.

"Let's go," said Mingus Rude softly.

"You bringing your homeboy here?"

Suddenly a woman stepped into the thick of them. Out of nowhere she made herself present where they sat and stood around the tables. It was a shock, as though she'd ruptured a bubble, disturbed a force field Dylan hadn't thought was permeable, one where their talk, no matter how many times the word fuck fuck was included, was sealed in a glaze of distant car horns and bird tweets and the younger kids' sweet yells. was included, was sealed in a glaze of distant car horns and bird tweets and the younger kids' sweet yells.

The woman was a mom, surely, one of the running kids had to be hers. She was maybe twenty-five or thirty, with blond hair, matching blue-jean jacket and bell-bottoms, and granny glasses-she might have been familiar from one of Rachel's parties. Dylan could see her now, waving a joint around, making some passionate digression about Altman or Szechuan, aggravating men accustomed to holding the floor. Or Dylan might have been kidding himself. There were probably a million like her, false Rachels who'd never known his.

"You okay, kid?"

She spoke to Dylan alone, there was no mistaking. The rest of them, Mingus included, were one thing in her eyes, Dylan another. Dylan felt Robert Woolfolk had somehow called the nearest thing to Rachel into being, as though white women everywhere were charged with bearing Rachel's one crucial intervention however far into the future it needed to go.

Of all times, it would have to be now. Dylan had wished what felt like a million times for an adult to step up, for a teacher or a friend of his mom's to turn a corner on Bergen or Hoyt and collide with one of his unnameable disasters, to break it open with a simple question like You okay, kid? You okay, kid? But not now. This disaster sealed his status as But not now. This disaster sealed his status as white boy white boy with Robert Woolfolk forever, precisely when Mingus had been working to change it. with Robert Woolfolk forever, precisely when Mingus had been working to change it.

Mingus, it was clear, had been communicating a message to Dylan by his three-week vanishing act, his elusiveness: that at the new school Dylan was on his own. Nobody had his back had his back. It simply wasn't possible. It had taken every day of those three weeks for Dylan to abandon the fantasy that Mingus would float him through seventh and eighth grades. Mingus cannily showed himself only after the message was sunk in: I can't carry you, son, it's beyond my power I can't carry you, son, it's beyond my power. Then, in a compensatory statement of equal clarity, he'd guided Dylan into Cobble Hill to the park on Amity Street to meet and make a pact of being down being down with Robert Woolfolk in order to say, with Robert Woolfolk in order to say, Where I can help, I will. I'm not actually blind or indifferent here, Dylan. I'm Where I can help, I will. I'm not actually blind or indifferent here, Dylan. I'm looking out. looking out.

"Hey, kid? Something wrong?"

Dylan had turned to her, helpless, gaping. There was no way to tell her how right and wrong she was at once, no way to make her evaporate. All the worse that she was beautiful, gleaming like the cover of one of Rachel's MS. MS. magazines which stacked up scorned by Abraham in the living room for Dylan's eventual guilty perusal of illustrated features on bralessness. Dylan wanted to protect the blond woman from Robert Woolfolk's eyes. She shouldn't have popped out of the other world, the Cobble Hill world of private-school kids and their caretakers, it was a misunderstanding. He wanted to send her home to entice Abraham from his studio, that was where she might have done some good. magazines which stacked up scorned by Abraham in the living room for Dylan's eventual guilty perusal of illustrated features on bralessness. Dylan wanted to protect the blond woman from Robert Woolfolk's eyes. She shouldn't have popped out of the other world, the Cobble Hill world of private-school kids and their caretakers, it was a misunderstanding. He wanted to send her home to entice Abraham from his studio, that was where she might have done some good.

Of course, Robert Woolfolk didn't really matter. He was only an enemy, finally. The worst thing the woman had done was humiliate him with Mingus.

"They're my friends," Dylan said feebly. As it was out of his mouth it occurred to him he'd failed another test, another where the correct answer was Fuck you lookin' at? Fuck you lookin' at? That phrase, robustly applied, might have actually transported them all back in time to a moment before Robert Woolfolk had said the words That phrase, robustly applied, might have actually transported them all back in time to a moment before Robert Woolfolk had said the words white boy white boy. Dylan might have then been invited to trail the others to a transit yard or wherever else they were going in order to bomb some trains bomb some trains, a richly terrifying prospect. Dylan craved to bomb some trains as fiercely as if he'd heard that phrase for years instead of just once, moments ago. And he had the El Marko in his backpack to bomb them with, if he'd only get a chance to produce it.

No one else piped up to say Lady, mind your own fuckin' business Lady, mind your own fuckin' business and Dylan saw that Robert Woolfolk and his two companions, Robert's laugh track, were missing. Gone. Dylan had slipped a gear in staring perplexedly at the blond woman, lost a moment in dreaming, and in that moment Robert Woolfolk had shunted away, out of the blithe park which seemed intended to contain anything but him. As though making a silent confession of whatever it was the woman suspected was going on. Only Mingus remained, and he stood apart from the table where the others had sat, and from Dylan. and Dylan saw that Robert Woolfolk and his two companions, Robert's laugh track, were missing. Gone. Dylan had slipped a gear in staring perplexedly at the blond woman, lost a moment in dreaming, and in that moment Robert Woolfolk had shunted away, out of the blithe park which seemed intended to contain anything but him. As though making a silent confession of whatever it was the woman suspected was going on. Only Mingus remained, and he stood apart from the table where the others had sat, and from Dylan.

"Do you want me to walk you home?" asked the woman. "Where do you live?"

"Yo, Dylan man, I'll check you later," said Mingus. He wasn't fearful, only uninterested in contending with the blond woman and anything she thought she knew. Dylan felt her irrelevance to Mingus. Mingus's own mother having been cleanly bought off with a million-dollar payment, he was immune to echoes. "Be cool," Mingus said. He held out his hand, waiting for Dylan to tap it with his fingertips. "I'll check you on the block, D."

With that Mingus hunched his arms around his jacket pockets as though leaning into a strong wind and ambled into the sun-blobbed trees in the far corner of the park, toward Henry Street, the BQE, the shipyards, wherever he was going where Dylan wasn't going to be swept along now. His gait was mock-infirm, a quotation of something amusing and profound you'd seen somewhere but couldn't place, Mickey Rivers or Weird Harold or Meadowlark Lemon. He seemed a figure cut out of one kind of day and plopped into another, a cartoon squiggle or bass line come to life.

That's my best friend, Dylan wanted to tell the blond woman, who the longer he didn't reply to her offer was more and more squinting at Dylan like she might have miscalculated, like he might be a thing spoiled by the company she'd found him in, a misfit, not a kid worth her rescue in the first place.

And that's what he wanted to be to her, spoiled, stained with blackness.

Racist bitch.

Where do I live? In his fantasy Dylan replied, I live in the Wyckoff Gardens, the housing projects on Nevins and Third, that's where. You know the ones, they're always on fire. If you want to walk me home, lady, let's go. I live in the Wyckoff Gardens, the housing projects on Nevins and Third, that's where. You know the ones, they're always on fire. If you want to walk me home, lady, let's go.

Arthur Lomb and his mother lived on Pacific Street between Hoyt and Bond, the far side of the hospital. Arthur's block was eerie, kidless, no bus, the hospital's laundry stack cascading silent white steam to the sky, the bodega on the corner another sidewalk congregation of old men on milk crates but graver, less amused, less musical than Old Ramirez's bunch. On Pacific the men grumbled in some middle distance, leathery fingers shifting dominoes across felt. Everything on Pacific including a gray cat darting across the street seemed farther away and more pensive. The block might have been the Bermuda Triangle of Boerum Hill, a space arranged the precise distance from the Gowanus Houses, the Brooklyn House of Detention, and Intermediate School 293 to fall under no domain whatsoever. Not a long-term solution to anything, Arthur Lomb's stoop nevertheless formed a kind of oasis on certain October afternoons when he and Dylan would tiptoe there unharassed and set out a chessboard under the furling shadow of the hospital's steam.

"You're in Winegar's science class, huh? I feel sorry for you. He's a worm. You see the way he toys with his mustache when he's talking to the Puerto Rican girls with developed breasts? It makes me want to vomit. Doesn't matter, pretend you like him. Science teacher's your ticket out of here, that's my view. Don't move that bishop, it's the only thing keeping me from crushing you. I told you a thousand times, link your pawns."

Arthur Lomb sat with one leg folded under his body like a kindergartner. His monologues were all brow-furrowed and lip-pursed, craven machinations cut with philosophical asides and vice versa. His jabber had a glottal, chanted quality, seemingly designed to guide you past the territory where you might wish to tell him to shut up already or even to strike him, into a realm of baffled wonderment as you considered the white noise of a nerd's id in full song. Arthur Lomb had been at Saint Ann's until the day his parents divorced and his mother could no longer afford the private school. Now he was intent on getting into one of the specialized public high schools, one of those with academic requirements, entrance exams. Arthur Lomb never pined for the lost school behind him, for the company of other white children whom Dylan could only surmise had loathed him in their way as acutely as the black kids at 293. He was all grim necessity, a soldier in open ground casting for his next foxhole.

"Only thing that matters is the test for Stuyvesant. Just math and science. Flunk English, who gives? The whole report card thing's a joke, always was. I haven't gone to gym class once. You know Jesus Maldonado? He said he'd break my arm like a Pixy Stix if he caught me alone in the locker room. Gym's suicide, frankly. I'm not stripping down to my underwear anywhere inside the four walls of this school, I'm just not. If I have to BM, I hold it until after school."

Arthur Lomb and his mother lived in an apartment on the top floor of a brownstone and Arthur Lomb had the back bedroom. His comics were stacked on low shelves in neat piles, all in plastic. He handled them with somber disdain, and radiated disapproval when Dylan turned pages too quickly to have read certain essential thought balloons. Though carefully archived, his comics bore faint marks where Arthur Lomb had placed thin paper over the pages and traced the breasts of the Wasp and Valkyrie with a ballpoint pen. The resultant page of blue parenthetical breasts was stashed like secret Chinese writing in Arthur Lomb's desk drawer. There Dylan found it one day while Arthur Lomb prepared a plate of graham crackers.

"Just pass that test. Your life depends on it. You think this is bad, wait until high school. If you don't get into Stuyvesant or at least Bronx Science you're dead. That's how the test works, highest scores get into Stuyvesant, next highest Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech's a last resort. Sarah J. Hale or John Jay, those places are practically like prison. A teacher got shot at Sarah J. Hale, it was on TV. Algebra, geometry, biology. Get Winegar to give you a practice test, I'm telling you out of kindness. Make him think you like him. Say you want to enter some kind of project in the science fair. You don't really have to do it. If he knows you want to go to Stuyvesant maybe he'll call someone. Do whatever it takes."

On the same shelves as his comics Arthur Lomb kept mass-market paperback editions of Al Jaffe's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions and Dave Berg's and Dave Berg's The Lighter Side The Lighter Side. The snippy irony of the Mad Magazine Mad Magazine cartoonists seemed perfectly matched to Arthur's bitter views, everything funny in a not-funny-at-all kind of way. Sarcasm as something you practiced like karate. Later concealing your mute fury when nobody fed you the opening lines. cartoonists seemed perfectly matched to Arthur's bitter views, everything funny in a not-funny-at-all kind of way. Sarcasm as something you practiced like karate. Later concealing your mute fury when nobody fed you the opening lines.

Arthur Lomb's bedroom windows faced the rear entrances and neglected, ailanthus-choked backyards of the stores on Atlantic Avenue, the rear windows of apartments above the stores, the Brooklyn House of Detention above the rooftops, the municipal buildings and courts of downtown Brooklyn behind the jail, the trace of Manhattan's high teeth visible past downtown Brooklyn. Arthur Lomb gazed out of his bedroom with a pair of binoculars. Fading evenings after their inevitable chess Arthur and Dylan would gaze through the binoculars in turn, spying on nothing in particular, in silence for once, until Arthur snapped on his radio, which was tuned to an AM station permanently playing "Dream Weaver" or "Fly Like an Eagle."

Mostly, though, they sat on the stoop, studying Pacific Street's failure to acknowledge its connection to Bond or Hoyt. On certain summer days they might have made up the contents of a diorama in the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side, creatures shot by Theodore Roosevelt, then stuffed and mounted in a case: Dylan Ebdus, Arthur Lomb, Homo sapiens, Pacific Street, Brooklyn, 1976. Days were falsely still, gelled in slow motion, Dylan not thinking of Mingus Rude or Dean Street at all, just studying the gray cat as it skittered under a car, the hypnotic tumbling cloud of hospital steam, the mailman reading magazines on another stoop halfway down the block, wondering how long weird detachment could cover losing a thousand chess games in a row to Arthur Lomb's blunt but remorseless rook play.

Arthur Lomb using both hands to knead sensation back into his folded-under leg, brain whirring behind consternated gerbil eyes as he dialed up another digression.

"It makes no sense to be a Mets fan, not when you look at the facts. Few people our age have actually considered the record, but the Yankees are simply the greatest team in the history of baseball based on sheer championships, players in the Hall of Fame, etcetera. The whole Mets things is a very recent development. But so many kids like you have fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. I maintain you can't argue with the Yankee legacy."

"Hmm."

"You've probably wondered why I always wear shoes. I had a pair of Pro Keds and some kids took them from me, made me walk home in my socks if you can believe it. My mother bought me another pair but I keep them at home. My sources tell me Pumas are actually what's coming next. If you go in for that sort of thing: wearing what everyone's wearing just because they're wearing it. I don't, really."

"Hmm."

"Mel Brooks's funniest film is The Producers The Producers, then Young Frankenstein Young Frankenstein or or Blazing Saddles Blazing Saddles. Terri Garr is hot. I feel sorry for any kid who hasn't seen The Producers The Producers. My dad took me to all the humor movies. The best Panther is probably Return Return. The best Woody is Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex."

Positioning, positioning, Arthur Lomb was forever positioning himself, making his views known, aligning on some index no one would ever consult. Here was Dylan's burden, his cross: the accumulated knowledge of Arthur Lomb's smug policies on every possible question. The cross was Dylan's to bear, he knew, because his own brain boiled with pedantry, with too-eager trivia ready to burst loose at any moment. So in enduring Arthur Lomb Dylan had been punished in advance for the possibility of being a bore.

"Develop your pawns or Hulk Will Smash."

Now and again Dylan saw a shutter wink open, a glimpse into the furnace of anger inside Arthur Lomb. Dylan didn't mind. He regarded himself as deserving, according to the same principle of similars which had dictated their friendship in the first place. Just as Dylan should absorb the ennui of Arthur's poseurdom because of that kernel which thrived inside himself, so again with those glimpsed coals of rage.

"I couldn't help but notice the other day you were talking to that Mingus Rude kid after school. Ahem, keep your eye on the board, you're going to be shocked again. It's going to be bad for your health until you learn to start castling. As I was saying, I noticed you talking to Mingus Rude, he's an eighth grader, how'd you get to know him? Not that he's in school much, huh. Still, it must be advantageous to be friends with, hurrh, that sort of person."

Arthur Lomb's speech bore like a small puckered scar a characteristic hitch of intaken breath in that place where he'd omitted the word black black from a sentence but not from the thought which had given rise to the sentence. And that hitch of breath, it seemed to Dylan, was Arthur in a nutshell, making such show of a card unplayed that he tipped his whole hand. from a sentence but not from the thought which had given rise to the sentence. And that hitch of breath, it seemed to Dylan, was Arthur in a nutshell, making such show of a card unplayed that he tipped his whole hand.

"How'd you know Mingus's name?" Dylan heard himself say. He'd been concentrating on the game for once, waiting for Arthur to castle as he always ostentatiously castled, but ready this time, with something in store. Distracted, he'd blurted a question which confessed his possessiveness of Mingus, his jealousy. Listen to Arthur Lomb for a month of afternoons and your own talk would be stripped of disguises, that was the price you'd pay.

"Oh, various kids talk about him," said Arthur airily.

Dylan couldn't imagine which various kids would ever be seen speaking to Arthur Lomb in school, as opposed to browsing his pants pockets for loose change. Dylan himself shunned Arthur inside the school building, only met up with him afterward for their mutual creeping to the safety of Pacific Street. He understood Arthur's acceptance of the humiliation of Dylan's silent treatment at school as a clear measure of Arthur's desperation and loneliness. So, which various kids?

"Yeah, well, I knew him before," said Dylan, shutting up before it was too late. Let Arthur fish. Dylan advanced his knight in reply to Arthur's castling. He made the move lackadaisically, but his heart pounded. Arthur was blind to knights, it had only taken the first thousand games to see it.

"Before what?" said Arthur with thin sarcasm. He pushed a pawn absently, scowling past Dylan and the chessboard, toward Hoyt Street, perhaps mentally groping for a suitable Snappy Answer.

"Check," said Dylan.

Now Arthur frowned at the board, his eyes racing hectically to consider this unanticipated turn.

"Is this pawn here here or or here here ?" he asked. ?" he asked.

"What?"

Arthur pointed, Dylan leaned in. Suddenly the board rattled, jarred at the corner. Then the ripple among the chessmen became an explosion, and the board was lost, pieces tipping, rolling, Arthur's doomed king clattering atonally down the stoop toward the street, revealed as plastic.

"Look what you made me do," said Arthur Lomb.

"You knocked it over."

Arthur opened his palms: sue me.

"I was going to beat you."

"Now we'll never know."

"You win every time and you couldn't stand letting me beat you once!"

Arthur Lomb stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Actually, I do think we were headed for a stalemate. You shouldn't get overexcited, Dylan, it may be a while before you beat me. But your game is improving. I congratulate you. You've definitely picked up a few things. Speaking of which, har har, would you pick up that king? My leg seems to have fallen asleep."

Two men, two fathers. Two fathers expelled from their lairs, headed to Manhattan for a change, dressed for a day threatening rain, having shaved their chins to make some nominal impression at their target destinations, tightened scarves with momentary vain glances at hallway mirrors before flushing themselves out of hiding, onto the street. Two fathers each sighing as they plunge down stairwells to underground trains, to endure the shoulder-jostling crowds which mill on platforms and pass through the jerky opening doors, then hang wearily from straps or clutch poles in the blinking, grinding trains. One carrying evidence, a black pebbled-cardboard portfolio with lace ties, the other empty-handed, his instrument his throat and lungs, carried in the valise of his chest. Two fathers ride a while on two separate trains, then, stations attained, Times Square for one, West Fourth for the other, two fathers again put shoe leather to pavement, out on the big island now, two fathers negotiating Abe Beame's crumbling, deranged infrastructure in the year of the Tall Ships. Two fathers blinking in confusion, each startled how reclusive they've become, drifted into their Dean Street solitudes, Brooklyn a mind-state peeling further from Manhattan each day, like continental drift. Two fathers briefly and involuntarily recalling other less morbid and sensitized selves as they move dazed through strobing faces in the late-October streets, two fathers each realizing he alone is distracted by a slide-show sequence of false recognitions- You! Didn't you go to City College? Ain't you Charles What'sisname? You! Didn't you go to City College? Ain't you Charles What'sisname? -among dulled millions trudging Manhattan daily, millions jaded out of such free-associated overstimulation. Two fathers shake it off, forcibly raise the thresholds of their own naivete, get back to their twin metropolitan missions in the chill-now-beginning-to-rain. Two fathers bearing down, recalling their work-selves, their places in the world. Two fathers here after all for a reason, to do some business, no fooling around. -among dulled millions trudging Manhattan daily, millions jaded out of such free-associated overstimulation. Two fathers shake it off, forcibly raise the thresholds of their own naivete, get back to their twin metropolitan missions in the chill-now-beginning-to-rain. Two fathers bearing down, recalling their work-selves, their places in the world. Two fathers here after all for a reason, to do some business, no fooling around.

One father stops abruptly, ducks beneath an umbrella to trade fifty cents for a hot dog from a street vendor, another lost ritual unavailable in his part of Brooklyn, his circumscribed rounds. He juggles the portfolio full of painted boards to one arm, then frees both hands, crumples wax paper back and consumes the mustardy dog in four chunks more swallowed than chewed. The snack glowing nicely in stomach's pit but, breath possibly fouled, conscious again of the impression he'll make, the hot-dog-gobbling father halts again at a newsstand for mint chewing gum. Forty-one blocks south, the other father's got similar pangs and is tempted to stop by the siren odors, suspended in misty cold, of a similar cart with hot dogs in boiling water and greasy knishes on the grill, in fact pats his stomach at the smell but pushes on, relying in anticipation on the spread he's been promised waits at the recording studio, corn bread and barbecued brisket and red beans and rice trucked down from Sylvia's Sylvia's, that's the word.

Two fathers come to their respective thresholds, pause. Rain's falling sideways now, borne on wind, hastening them to curtail reflection. Two fathers exhale deeply. One steps inside the elevator in the lobby of the Forty-ninth Street office tower and pushes the button for the eighteenth floor. The other squints through a porthole window, then rings the buzzer at the door of the squat recording studio on West Eighth Street, the place known as Electric Lady.

To be in this place is to admit you exist.

To be in this place is to admit you want something.

Or maybe tell yourself you're doing it for the kid.

One father paces at the reception desk, stands rather than sits waiting for the art director of the second-largest publisher of science fiction in mass-market paperback in the city, no fly-by-night Belmont Books offices now, Belmont Books with its three-months-late checks and Fashion District office of six guys in Chinese-food-stained shirts, no, this is publishing proper, dour receptionist with butterscotch sucking candy in a jar and a phone with three blinking lines. Other father, downtown, is welcomed off the street of leather outlets and white teenage vagabonds into the odd brick fortress of a building by the soundboard man, apologetic, telling him the others are late, no sweat though, come in. Guy knows your name and is a big fan of your work a big fan of your work, actually says it, rare for one of these guys not to disguise any awe, hoarding their technician's seen-it-all cool. Fine, fine. Downtown father nods coolly, taking it out on the guy, feeling like an ass for being early, for being first.

So, two fathers each given more time for stewing than they'd banked on. Then the art director emerges to pump the hand of the one father uptown, guy in a sweater-vest and chewing an unlit pipe, well-fed corporate hipster head-to-toe, while downtown at that same moment the doors to Electric Lady burst open and piling in from a white limo parked at the curb is the whole gang in their Elton John glasses and pimp hats and boas, the bassist in his spaceman outfit of puffy satin shoulder pads and belt, dressed this way just because that's the way they're dressed, not for stage or a photo session but because they're a bunch of freaks who think they're Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone and Marvin the Martian rolled into one-and the father reminds himself he knows these guys, they like him and that's why he's here, they come from the same place. Shit, they all-every one of these jokers and himself-were signed to Motown back in the day.

Taking his elbow and steering him inside, saying, Really good to meet you, Ebdus. I have the feeling we're both going to be glad you called Really good to meet you, Ebdus. I have the feeling we're both going to be glad you called.

Slapping his hands high and low, insisting on the whole circuit of bullshit, saying, Hey, man, we just couldn't get out of bed this morning! But we're here now! You're gonna luuuv this motherfuckin' track, man. Hey, man, we just couldn't get out of bed this morning! But we're here now! You're gonna luuuv this motherfuckin' track, man.

You outgrew Belmont before you started working for them, Ebdus. Don't think everyone didn't notice your work the minute it appeared. This isn't a big industry, not once you're in it. It's like high school, everybody knows who the cool kids are. I frankly don't understand why you didn't come to us in the first place.

Forget the legal bullshit, man. We'll put some other name on the sleeve, call you, huh, Pee-Brain Rooster. You like that? Anyone with ears is gonna know it's you the minute you open your mouth, man. Minute you let out that motherfucker of a voice. We'll sort out the legal shit some other time, can't let that trouble us.

What one father doesn't say is that being here means admitting that what he's engaged in is some sort of career career. The arrangement with Belmont, he'd always told himself, with admittedly perverse logic, was a sort of favor to Perry Kandel: permitting his old teacher to imagine he'd welcomed him back into the world. It was a lark. Plus the notion of the New Belmont Specials suggested a sort of limited engagement, a run to some conclusion. But to make this call and keep this appointment was to grant that he's a paperback painter now, a commercial artist. And being welcomed so eagerly here meant despite the contempt dripping from his brush he'd done acceptable work. The seduction of craft had led here, to the seduction of praise. In the elevator he'd sworn he'd heard Perry's bitter wheezing laughter.

What the other father doesn't say is that though he envies these men dressed as cartoon pimps and superheroes their freedom, that though a part of him thinks Shit, why didn't I haul out the overt freak shit myself, why did I always stay so buttoned down in the goddamn Philly system Shit, why didn't I haul out the overt freak shit myself, why did I always stay so buttoned down in the goddamn Philly system, another part just doesn't think the singing and playing on the backing track is any good. Funk is soul on acid, for better and for worse; today worse. This track sprawls to no purpose, slack, in its way, as disco. Pornographic disco, that's really what it is. He's expected to doodle over a harmonizing backdrop but the harmonizing isn't any good, and for the first time since leaving the Subtle Distinctions he misses their sweet uptight voices, the way they provided him such a smooth clean cushion of sound from which to launch his rhapsodies, his flights.

You want a cup of coffee? It's not too bad, actually.

Hey man, food's gonna get here. Need a little blow?

Something the matter?

Just say what you need, man.

Fathers, fathers, why so grim? Today you emerged from your houses, your hiding, and were warmly welcomed. Smile, fathers. Relax. Today this world wants you in it.

chapter9.

At the end of another winter, lion giving way to lamb, he comes to lie there one day in the long sun and shadows and stays for good, curled into a ball at the corner of Atlantic and Nevins, at a spot on the pavement just short of the street, in front of the never-closed liquor store and the never-open locksmith. Fouled in himself, baked in vomit and urine and sweat, his pants black with it, he lies still as a bog man or mummy preserved in a glass case, eyes shut and mouth rigid, arms wrapped around his middle, fighting the chill of one week before, when he first took the position. He's huddled as if against time itself, enduring the winter that's already past, his pose a record of pain, a full-body grimace frozen in sunlight. Over his shoulders and tucked under his ass is a child's thin synthetic sleeping bag, feeble cover though if he's alive it must have gotten him through. The sleeping bag's two corners are peeled away in torn strips, exposing cottonoid filler stained gray with street filth, and the two strips meet in a knot under his white-grizzled chin, so the thing weirdly resembles a superhero's cape.