On East 86th Street he turned right and came across a pizzeria. He ducked inside and ordered a slice of pepperoni and a can of Coke and sat on an uncomfortable orange stool looking out the window. “Walk Like An Egyptian” was playing on the boom box behind the counter. Peeling back his straw, luxuriating in this cramped steamy space, Dan watched the reflection of the slim man with a Fu Manchu mustache glide in after him and order a plain slice. The guy seemed agitated, preoccupied with life inside his skull. He wore nice khakis, a crisp tan jacket, polished brown loafers, and one of those hairstyles.
What did they call them? Short on the top and sides, long in back. There should be a name for that.
Lately people had begun making a big deal out of fancy kinds of pizza. Goat cheese, chicken, asparagus, pineapples, white sauce. But that wasn't real pizza. Real pizza was about simplicity, and you found simplicity in places like this. Hard orange plastic seats. Harsh lights. White and red delivery boxes stacked on top of the ovens. It was like Houston Heights where Dan had grown up. It was like a good piece of television journalism: unsurprising, easy to follow, satisfying. When you wanted real pizza you wanted doughy crust, tangy red sauce, plenty of mozzarella. You wanted grease pooling on your slice, seeping into your paper plate. And most important — this was the secret nobody on the other side of the Hudson seemed to get — you wanted absolutely no skimping on the oregano. There had to be lots of oregano. Otherwise the point was what, exactly?
Dan stepped onto the street again, heading for Park Avenue. This was often the time of night when loneliness started sifting through him. Jean and he were carried on different currents all day long. She worked on her own art, saw her friends, visited her favorite galleries. Dan worked on his stories, saw his colleagues, got ready for the next broadcast. Often it was past midnight before they convened over scotches on the living-room sofa to reintroduce themselves to each other.
This evening Jean was home with a bad cold. She had caught it while Dan was overseas working on the Chernobyl story. They hadn't wanted to let down Estelle and Robert, so Dan had attended the dinner party alone. Now he wanted to see his wife. He believed he could jet anywhere in the world so long as he could imagine her waiting for him when he returned.
When they had first met, Dan hadn't become Dan yet. He was still this skinny eager guy with a B.A. in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College. His father laid oil pipeline. His mother bagged groceries at Weingartens'. Dan never kept a job very long because he was always looking for something that made him feel awake and most of them did just the opposite. He started each believing it would be his last, only something better always seemed to come along.
For some reason, he could never bring himself to think much about his coworkers as coworkers. He conceived of them in simple terms, as impediments to his prospects. He wasn't mean to them. He didn't wish them anything but good. He treated them cordially, as if each were an acquaintance he had just bumped into on the street while late for a more important appointment. Every time he came across them standing around someone's desk or at the water cooler, he smiled, maybe asked a question or two about their families, and remembered his father telling him about locusts. Locusts were usually solitary insects, but they had a secret trigger built into them. When they saw more than two of their species facing a certain direction, they would also start facing that direction. That was how swarms appeared to swell out of nowhere.
Dan did some work for United Press International, some stringing at a couple of local radio stations, a two-year stint at The Houston Chronicle. Jean was game every time the scene changed. They had a little girl named Dawn and a little boy named Danjack. Then in 1961 Dan got his big break. He ended up covering Hurricane Carla live from Galveston. TV stations didn't own radar systems back then, so Dan took his camera crew to a nearby Navy base and got a technician there to draw an outline of the Gulf on a sheet of plastic and hold it over the radar display to give viewers a sense of the storm's size and position. CBS executives in New York saw the piece, enjoyed Dan's audacity, and offered him a job.
But Jean never stopped treating him like that skinny eager guy from Sam Houston State Teachers College. Dan appreciated that. It helped keep things spare. With other people he always felt different from himself. With Jean he could be whoever he had to be outside his apartment and then inside be himself. Sometimes at gatherings he noticed her looking at him from across the room, wine glass in hand, trying to figure out who he was supposed to be this evening, who she was supposed to be in turn.
Recently she began cutting her graying hair short like middle-aged Midwestern women did so they didn't have to deal with it. She wore large tortoise-shell glasses. Dan could see where sun damage stained her face with small brown clouds. She had gone slightly swaybacked, developed the beginnings of a potbelly, something until it happened Dan didn't know women could do. That was okay with him, too. Jean and Dan had earned their bodies. Although he had become more handsome in that rough way men do as they aged, he had also become thicker around the middle, puffier around the eyes. His lower teeth had started migrating around inside his lower jaw.
Whenever he thought about Jean and him, he imagined two overweight cats sharing the same couch. They enjoyed not so much interacting with each other as simply being aware of each other's presence.
Dan turned north on Park Avenue, deciding when he got home he would slip into their bedroom and see whether Jean was still awake. If so, he would ask her if she needed anything and sit with her for a while. He wanted to tell her about how Jerome and Robert went after each other. Jean and Dan would have a good laugh over that. Next he would change into his pale blue pinstriped pajamas, crawl in beside her, and read Paradise of the Blind until he got too tired to concentrate.
The first punch came from behind him, landing at the base of his skull. Dan stumbled forward and a bluewhite surge overflowed his vision. He semi-straightened, began to rotate, and the second punch caught him square on the cheekbone and ear. He went to his knees.
Instinctively he raised his hands to protect his face.
Hey, he said. Hey. Stop.
Someone was beating him up. That's what was happening to him. Someone was beating the shit out of him. Dan heard fast heavy breathing and fast shoes scraping pavement behind him like someone was doing boxing moves. Maybe there were two sets of scraping. He couldn't tell for sure. Things were going by too quickly.
A fist knuckled him hard in the right temple and Dan went down on his side. He curled into himself, knees to chest, head tucked.
The footwork ceased.
Kenneth, the voice above him said, panting, what's the frequency?
Dan didn't understand. He opened his eyes and saw polished loafers and white socks.
I said what's the fucking frequency, the voice said.
You've got the wrong guy, Dan said. I'm not the guy you're looking for.
The mugger kicked him in the back, tentatively at first, then with increasing zest. A few seconds later he stopped again, winded. Maybe he was examining his work. Maybe he was thinking about his options. Dan couldn't believe no one was coming to help him. There had to be someone around who had noticed what was going on. He heard cars passing by on Park Avenue, but none of them was even slowing down.
Tell me, the voice said.
You want money? Dan asked from beneath his arms. Let me up and I'll give you all the money I've got on me.