"Where's that?" I said.

"Iron City. It's the old German section. Behind the foundry."

"I didn't know there was a section in Iron City called Germantown."

'The Germans are gone, of course."

I went straight home. Denise was making check marks in a paperback book called Directory of Toll-Free Numbers. Directory of Toll-Free Numbers. I found Babette sitting by Wilder's bed, reading him a story. I found Babette sitting by Wilder's bed, reading him a story.

"I don't mind running clothes as such," I said. "A sweatsuit is a practical thing to wear at times. But I wish you wouldn't wear it when you read bedtime stories to Wilder or braid Steffie's hair. There's something touching about such moments that is jeopardized by running clothes."

"Maybe I'm wearing running clothes for a reason." "Like what?"

"I'm going running," she said. "Is that a good idea? At night?"

"What is night? It happens seven times a week. Where is the uniqueness in this?" "It's dark, it's wet."

"Do we live in a blinding desert glare? What is wet? We live with wet."

"Babette doesn't speak like this."

"Does life have to stop because our half of the earth is dark? Is there something about the night that physically resists a runner? I need to pant and gasp. What is dark? It's just another name for light."

"No one will convince me that the person I know as Babette actually wants to run up the stadium steps at ten o'clock at night."

"It's not what I want, it's what I need. My life is no longer in the realm of want. I do what I have to do. I pant, I gasp. Every runner understands the need for this."

"Why do you have to run up steps? You're not a professional athlete trying to rebuild a shattered knee. Run on plain land. Don't make a major involvement out of it. Everything is a major involvement today."

"It's my life. I tend to be involved." "It's not your life. It's only exercise."

"A runner needs," she said.

"I also need and tonight I need the car. Don't wait up for me. Who knows when I'll be back."

I waited for her to ask what mysterious mission would require me to get in the car and drive through the rain-streaked night, time of return unknown.

She said, "I can't walk to the stadium, run up the steps five or six times and then walk all the way back home. You can drive me there, wait for me, drive me back. The car is then yours."

"I don't want it. What do you think of that? You want the car. you take it. The streets are slippery. You know what that means, don't you?"

"What does it mean?"

"Fasten your seat belt. There's also a chill in the air. You know what a chill in the air means."

"What does it mean?"

"Wear your ski mask," I told her.

The thermostat began to buzz.

I put on a jacket and went outside. Ever since the airborne toxic event, our neighbors, the Stovers, had been keeping their car in the driveway instead of the garage, keeping it facing the street, keeping the key in the ignition. I walked up the driveway and got in the car. There were trash caddies fixed to the dashboard and seat-backs, dangling plastic bags full of gum wrappers, ticket stubs, lipstick-smeared tissues, crumpled soda cans, crumpled circulars and receipts, ashtray debris, popsicle sticks and french fries, crumpled coupons and paper napkins, pocket combs with missing teeth. Thus familiarized, I started up the engine, turned on the lights and drove off.

I ran a red light when I crossed Middlebrook. Reaching the end of the expressway ramp, I did not yield. All the way to Iron City, I felt a sense of dreaminess, release, unreality. I slowed down at the toll gate but did not bother tossing a quarter into the basket. An alarm went off but no one pursued. What's another quarter to a state that is billions in debt? What's twenty-five cents when we are talking about a nine-thousand-dollar stolen car? This must be how people escape the pull of the earth, the gravitational leaf-flutter that brings us hourly closer to dying. Simply stop obeying. Steal instead of buy, shoot instead of talk. I ran two more lights on the rainy approach roads to Iron City. The outlying buildings were long and low, fish and produce markets, meat terminals with old wooden canopies. I entered the city and turned on the radio, needing company not on the lonely highway but here on the cobbled streets, in the sodium vapor lights, where the emptiness clings. Every city has its districts. I drove past the abandoned car district, the uncollected garbage district, the sniper-fire district, the districts of smoldering sofas and broken gla.s.s. Ground gla.s.s crunched under the tires. I headed toward the foundry.

Random Access Memory, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Mutual a.s.sured Destruction.

I still felt extraordinarily light-lighter than air, colorless, odorless, invisible. But around the lightness and dreaminess, something else was building, an emotion of a different order. A surge, a will, an agitation of the pa.s.sions. I reached into my pocket, rubbed my knuckles across the grainy stainless steel of the Zumwalt barrel. The man on the radio said: "Void where prohibited."

39.

I drove twice around the foundry, looking for signs of some erstwhile German presence. I drove past the row houses. They were set on a steep hill, narrow-fronted frame houses, a climbing line of pitched roofs. I drove past the bus terminal, through the beating rain. It took a while to find the motel, a one-story building set against the concrete pier of an elevated roadway. It was called the Roadway Motel.

Transient pleasures, drastic measures.

The area was deserted, a spray-painted district of warehouses and light industry. The motel had nine or ten rooms, all dark, no cars out front. I drove past three times, studying the scene, and parked half a block away, in the rubble under the roadway. Then I walked back to the motel. Those were the first three elements in my plan.

Here is my plan. Drive past the scene several times, park some distance from the scene, go back on foot, locate Mr. Gray under his real name or an alias, shoot him three times in the viscera for maximum pain, clear the weapon of prints, place the weapon in the victim's staticky hand, find a crayon or lipstick tube and scrawl a cryptic suicide note on the full-length mirror, take the victim's supply of Dylar tablets, slip back to the car, proceed to the expressway entrance, head east toward Blacksmith, get off at the old river road, park Stover's car in Old Man Treadwell's garage, shut the garage door, walk home in the rain and the fog.

Elegant. My airy mood returned. I was advancing in consciousness. I watched myself take each separate step. With each separate step, I became aware of processes, components, things relating to other things. Water fell to earth in drops. I saw things new.

There was an aluminum awning over the office door. On the door itself were little plastic letters arranged in slots to spell out a message. The message was: NU MISH BOOT ZUP KO.

Gibberish but high-quality gibberish. I made my way along the wall, looking through the windows. My plan was this. Stand at the edges of windows with my back to the wall, swivel my head to look peripherally into rooms. Some windows were bare, some had blinds or dusty shades. I could make out the rough outlines of chairs or beds in the dark rooms. Trucks rumbled overhead. In the next to last unit, there was the scantest flicker of light. I stood at the edge of the window, listening. I swiveled my head, looked into the room out of the corner of my right eye. A figure sat in a low armchair looking up at the flickering light. I sensed I was part of a network of structures and channels. I knew the precise nature of events. I was moving closer to things in their actual state as I approached a violence, a smashing intensity. Water fell in drops, surfaces gleamed.

It occurred to me that I did not have to knock. The door would be open. I gripped the k.n.o.b, eased the door open, slipped into the room. Stealth. It was easy. Everything would be easy. I stood inside the room, sensing things, noting the room tone, the dense air. Information rushed toward me, rushed slowly, incrementally. The figure was male, of course, and sat sprawled in the short-legged chair. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and Budweiser shorts. Plastic sandals dangled from his feet. The dumpy chair, the rumpled bed, the industrial carpet, the shabby dresser, the sad green walls and ceiling cracks. The TV floating in the air, in a metal brace, pointing down at him.

He spoke first, without taking his eyes from the flickering screen.

"Are you heartsick or soulsick?"

I stood against the door.

"You're Mink," I said.

In time he looked at me, looked at the large friendly figure with the slumped shoulders and forgettable face.

"What kind of name is Willie Mink?" I said.

"It's a first name and a last name. Same as anybody."

Did he speak with an accent? His face was odd, concave, forehead and chin jutting. He was watching TV without the sound.

"Some of these sure-footed bighorns have been equipped with radio transmitters," he said.

I could feel the pressure and density of things. So much was happening. I sensed molecules active in my brain, moving along neural pathways.

"You're here for some Dylar, of course."

"Of course. What else?"

"What else? Rid the fear."

"Rid the fear. Clear the grid."

"Clear the grid. That's why they come to me."

This was my plan. Enter unannounced, gain his confidence, wait for an unguarded moment, take out the Zumwalt, shoot him three times in the viscera for maximum slowness of agony, put the gun in his hand to suggest a lonely man's suicide, write semi-coherent things on the mirror, leave Stover's car in Treadwell's garage.

"By coming in here, you agree to a certain behavior," Mink said.

"What behavior?"

"Room behavior. The point of rooms is that they're inside. No one should go into a room unless he understands this. People behave one way in rooms, another way in streets, parks and airports. To enter a room is to agree to a certain kind of behavior. It follows that this would be the kind of behavior that takes place in rooms. This is the standard, as opposed to parking lots and beaches. It is the point of rooms. No one should enter a room not knowing the point. There is an unwritten agreement between the person who enters a room and the person whose room had been entered, as opposed to open-air theaters, outdoor pools. The purpose of a room derives from the special nature of a room. A room is inside. This is what people in rooms have to agree on, as differentiated from lawns, meadows, fields, orchards."

I agreed completely. It made perfect sense. What was I here for if not to define, fix in my sights, take aim at? I heard a noise, faint, monotonous, white.

"To begin your project sweater," he said, "first ask yourself what type sleeve will meet your needs."

His nose was flat, his skin the color of a Planter's peanut. What is the geography of a spoon-shaped face? Was he Melanesian, Polynesian, Indonesian, Nepalese, Surinamese, Dutch-Chinese? Was he a composite? How many people came here for Dylar? Where was Surinam? How was my plan progressing?

I studied the palm-studded print of his loose shirt, the Budweiser pattern repeated on the surface of his Bermuda shorts. The shorts were too big. The eyes were half closed. The hair was long and spiky-. He was sprawled in the att.i.tude of a stranded air traveler, someone long since defeated by the stale waiting, the airport babble. I began to feel sorry for Babette. This had been her last hope for refuge and serenity, this weary pulse of a man, a common pusher now, spiky-haired, going mad in a dead motel.

Auditory sc.r.a.ps, tatters, whirling specks. A heightened reality. A denseness that was also a transparency. Surfaces gleamed. Water struck the roof in spherical ma.s.ses, globules, splashing drams. Close to a violence, close to a death.

"The pet under stress may need a prescription diet," he said.

Of course he hadn't always been like this. He'd been a project manager, dynamic, hard-driving. Even now I could see in his face and eyes the faltering remains of an enterprising shrewdness and intelligence. He reached into his pocket, took a handful of white tablets, tossed them in the direction of his mouth. Some entered, some flew past. The saucer-shaped pills. The end of fear.

"Where are you from originally, if I can call you Willie?"

He lapsed into thought, trying to recall. I wanted to put him at ease, get him to talk about himself, about Dylar. Part and parcel of my plan. My plan was this. Swivel my head to look into rooms, put him at his ease, wait for an unguarded moment, blast him in the gut three times for maximum efficiency of pain, take his Dylar, get off at the river road, shut the garage door, walk home in the rain and the fog.

"I wasn't always as you see me now."

"That's exactly what I was thinking."

"I was doing important work. I envied myself. I was literally embarked. Death without fear is an everyday thing. You can live with it. I learned English watching American TV. I had American s.e.x the first time in Port-O-San, Texas. Everything they said was true. I wish I could remember."

"You're saying there is no death as we know it without the element of fear. People would adjust to it, accept its inevitability."

"Dylar failed, reluctantly. But it will definitely come. Maybe now, maybe never. The heat from your hand will actually make the gold-leafing stick to the wax paper."

"There will eventually be an effective medication, you're saying. A remedy for fear."

"Followed by a greater death. More effective, productwise. This is what the scientists don't understand, scrubbing their smocks with Woolite. Not that I have anything personal against death from our vantage point high atop Metropolitan County Stadium."

"Are you saying death adapts? It eludes our attempts to reason with it?"

This was similar to something Murray had once said. Murray had also said, "Imagine the visceral jolt, watching your opponent bleed in the dust. He dies, you live."

Close to a death, close to the slam of metal projectiles on flesh, the visceral jolt. I watched Mink ingest more pills, throwing them at his face, sucking them like sweets, his eyes on the flickering screen. Waves, rays, coherent beams. I saw things new.

"Just between you and I," he said, "I eat this stuff like candy."

"I was just thinking that."

"How much do you want to buy?"

"How much do I need?"

"I see you as a heavyset white man about fifty. Does this describe your anguish? I see you as a person in a gray jacket and light brown pants. Tell me how correct I am. To convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, this is what you do."

There was a silence. Things began to glow. The dumpy chair, the shabby dresser, the rumpled bed. The bed was equipped with casters. I thought, This is the grayish figure of my torment, the man who took my wife. Did she wheel him around the room as he sat on the bed popping pills? Did each lie p.r.o.ne along one side of the bed, reaching an arm down to paddle? Did they make the bed spin with their lovemaking, a froth of pillows and sheets above the small wheels on swivels? Look at him now, glowing in the dark, showing a senile grin.

"I barely forget the times I had in this room," he said, "before I became misplaced. There was a woman in a ski mask, which her name escapes me at the moment. American s.e.x, let me tell you, this is how I learned my English."

The air was rich with extrasensory material. Nearer to death, nearer to second sight. A smashing intensity. I advanced two steps toward the middle of the room. My plan was elegant. Advance gradually, gain his confidence, take out the Zumwalt, fire three bullets at his midsection for maximum visceral agony, clear the weapon of prints, write suicidal cult messages on the mirrors and walls, take his supply of Dylar, slip back to the car, drive to the expressway entrance, head east toward Blacksmith, leave Stover's car in Treadwell's garage, walk home in the rain and the fog.

He gobbled more pills, flung others down the front of his Budweiser shorts. I advanced one step. There were cracked Dylar tablets all over the fire-r.e.t.a.r.dant carpet. Trod upon, stomped. He tossed some tablets at the screen. The set had a walnut veneer with silvery hardware. The picture rolled badly.

"Now I am picking up my metallic gold tube," he said. "Using my palette knife and my odorless turp, I will thicken the paint on my palette."

I recalled Babette's remarks about the side effects of the medication. I said, as a test, "Falling plane."

He looked at me, gripping the arms of the chair, the first signs of panic building in his eyes.

"Plunging aircraft," I said, p.r.o.nouncing the words crisply, authoritatively.

He kicked off his sandals, folded himself over into the recommended crash position, head well forward, hands clasped behind his knees. He performed the maneuver automatically, with a double-jointed collapsible dexterity, throwing himself into it, like a child or a mime. Interesting. The drug not only caused the user to confuse words with the things they referred to; it made him act in a somewhat stylized way. I watched him slumped there, trembling. This was my plan. Look peripherally into rooms, enter unannounced, reduce him to trembling, gut-shoot him maximally three times, get off at the river road, shut the garage door.

I took another step toward the middle of the room. As the TV picture jumped, wobbled, caught itself in snarls, Mink appeared to grow more vivid. The precise nature of events. Things in their actual state. Eventually he worked himself out of the deep fold, rising nicely, sharply outlined against the busy air. White noise everywhere.

"Containing iron, niacin and riboflavin. I learned my English in airplanes. It's the international language of aviation. Why are you here, white man?" "To buy."

"You are very white, you know that?" "It's because I'm dying." "This stuff fix you up." "I'll still die."

"But it won't matter, which comes to the same thing. Some of these playful dolphins have been equipped with radio transmitters. Their far-flung wanderings may tell us things."

I continued to advance in consciousness. Things glowed, a secret life rising out of them. Water struck the roof in elongated orbs, splashing drams. I knew for the first time what rain really was. I knew what wet was. I understood the neurochemistry of my brain, the meaning of dreams (the waste material of premonitions). Great stuff everywhere, racing through the room, racing slowly. A richness, a density. I believed everything. I was a Buddhist, a Jain, a Duck River Baptist. My only sadness was Babette, having to kiss a scooped-out face.

"She wore the ski mask so as not to kiss my face, which she said was un-American. I told her a room is inside. Do not enter a room not agreeing to this. This is the point, as opposed to emerging coastlines, continental plates. Or you can eat natural grains, vegetables, eggs, no fish, no fruit. Or fruit, vegetables, animal proteins, no grains, no milk. Or lots of soybean milk for B-12 and lots of vegetables to regulate insulin release but no meat, no fish, no fruit. Or white meat but no red meat. Or B-12 but no eggs. Or eggs but no grains. There are endless workable combinations."