"Good idea," I said, stood.
After I'd dropped off Bernie I walked down to the park under the Hell Gate Bridge. It was one of those beautiful Fridays when everybody decides to ditch work, trust sheer numbers will protect them from retribution. Hondurans roasted chickens near the river, kicked soccer balls at their toddlers' knees. Indian families spread out curry feasts on blankets. A magician did card tricks for a field trip of drooling tweens. Mothers puttered around the quarter-mile track in velour running slacks.
Beside a stone tower some youngish men played touch football with a battered Nerf. They were young me's by the look of them, their watch caps and lazy passing routes, their Clinton-era trash talk. They had marked the end zones with packs of organic cigarettes and film theory pamphlets.
I skirted their game, found a quiet spot in the grass under an elm, read Schopenhauer, or read a scholar's long introduction in the paperback I'd dug out of my closet. Some of the stuff I remembered from college. It was foolish to want. You would never get what you wanted. Even if you got what you wanted you would never get what you wanted. It was better to strip yourself of the wanting. But this was impossible. So you suffered. Your raw eyeballs suffered.
I fell asleep before I got to Professor Schopenhauer's tips on dating. The introduction noted that he once beat a woman senseless on his doorstep. She sued for assault and he paid her off for twenty years. When she died, he wrote, "Obit anus, abit onus."
"The old woman is dead, the burden is lifted."
As I slept in Astoria Park, I dreamed of a park in 1820s Berlin. I squatted at the lip of a pond, tossed hunks of black bread to geese. A man with fierce side-whiskers and a greasy coat pushed an immaculate Maclaren stroller along the walkway. A cigarette bobbed in his lips. Two children hunched in the stroller, a boy and a girl. The boy sat on the girl's lap. They were laughing, but suddenly the boy punched the girl in the mouth.
"Anus," said the man, "don't hit your sister."
I tried to say something, couldn't get my tongue right.
The man smiled, spoke, his voice muddy and loud.
"Hey, you," he said.
Something pressed into my side and I opened my eyes.
Predrag stood over me. He tapped my ribs with his boot.
"You," he said.
"Predrag," I said.
"Hungry?" He dropped a doughnut on my chest.
"Thanks," I said, sat up, bit into a honey-glazed. "Thank you. Wow, I was having the weirdest dream."
Predrag held up his doughnut sack.
"I like to take some around, spread the wealth, you know? I usually give them out to homeless guys. But then I saw you."
"I might be homeless one of these days."
"Yeah?"
"It's tough to call."
"You come to the store, you need help."
"That's nice of you."
"We've got to stick together," said Predrag, lifted his face to the sun.
"Who exactly are we?" I asked.
"The American Dreamers. There aren't too many of us left."
"I don't know if I qualify."
"You an American? Or want to be an American?"
"I am an American."
"You said you were having a dream."
"It's true, I did."
"Was it the one where you're inside the girl and you are pumping her and pumping her and you are so happy but then it turns out it's not a girl, it's really one of those super poisonous box jellyfish, and it stings you and you are screaming and screaming and the sky rains the diarrhea of babies?"
"The… no, I don't think so."
"I get that sometimes. Anyway, see you around."
I went home to the home that Maura said was still my home and made myself some breakfast. It had been a while since I'd been alone in the apartment. I pulled books off shelves, dug into boxes of old junk, snooped through Maura's drawers. The pills were gone. I sat on the sofa and did nothing for a good hour but sit on the sofa. I could not remember the last time I had managed such a thing.
I tried to recall the words I'd hurled at McKenzie Rayfield, the outburst that started it all. I couldn't really summon them, or at least the proper sequence. A few individual utterances returned, like "shut," and "mouth," and "spoiled" and "dreck" and "sopressatta" and "daddysauce." But most of it was gone. I was glad of it. Those words had never made me proud.
Out the window I watched a deliveryman ride up on a bicycle, buzz the house across the street. He wore a sweatshirt that read "New York Yankees 2001 World Champions." The Yankees, however, had lost the series that year. Arizona, with no regard for the national narrative, or even story, beat them in game seven. The deliveryman must have gotten the shirt in a poor country in Asia or Africa or South America, wherever they sell the runner-up crap, the memorabilia of a parallel universe, maybe the one with the gesso-smeared assistant and my name on public radio. I wondered if Sasha had learned to tip these guys yet.
I still had her cell phone number and I called her now. When she answered, it took her a moment to place me.
"Right," she said. "That guy. The envelope man. Why are you calling?"
"Just… I don't know… checking in."
"You still on some kind of mission? For Purdy?"
"I don't work for Purdy. I don't work for anybody right now."
"Got downsized?"
"Right," I said. "Cut down to size."
"Okay," said Sasha.
"I wanted to say hello," I said. "Maybe I could even… I don't know. Come up and talk about things. About all that's happened."
"You think I might ask you to squeeze my tits again."
She spoke evenly, nothing coy in her tone.
"It hadn't occurred to me."
"Liar. Anyway, you know how high I was that last time? I had to get away from Don to get my head straight. Unlike you, I do have a job now. And a guy I love. And I'm going to school."
"Don told me. That's great. I didn't call for that. I really didn't. I just wanted to talk. To ask some questions."
"What, like a detective?"
"Not really. I'm just…"
"You're a little too obsessed, is what you are. A little too involved in a situation that's got nothing to do with you."
"You're probably right. Things have been pretty tough for me."
"Believe me, mister, I don't want to hear it."
"Sorry. Well, I guess Don's heading back your way."
"I know. He called me. Like I'm up here waiting for that bastard. I've moved on. My boyfriend, Bobby, is the best thing that ever happened to me. Besides, this is probably not the best place for Don these days."
"What do you mean?"
"Things got sort of bad up here for him before we went down to the city. He had a fight with some guys at Cudahy's. You know how it is. You can bitch about the government all you want, but don't talk shit about the troops. He shot his mouth off about something or other. They really started messing with him, kicking his girls and stuff-I can't believe I still call them girls. God, he was crazy! But those guys got out of hand. They were clubbing him with pool cues."
"Was it that guy Todd? The happy warrior?"
"Todd Wilkes? You've got a good memory. No. Some of them were Todd's friends, maybe. Todd really doesn't leave his house much anymore. People say he's got PTSD really bad. And his burns, they never really got better. He's a sad case. Anyway, after those guys messed with Don at Cudahy's, Don went and got a tire iron from his car. People busted it up before it could get too bad, but Don broke one guy's ribs. A rumor went around they were planning to go after Don. And the whole thing didn't help his reputation around here. Probably why he was itching to get out in the first place. Everybody treated him nice with what happened to his mom and the injury. But then they started to wonder about him. At least the ones drinking at Cudahy's. Look, I've got to go pick up my boyfriend."