But I’d insisted that we stop. I sprawled across a bench. I put my head back, flexed my neck, and tried to ease the aching in my body. You’d think my legs would hurt the most, but they didn’t. The pain was in my hands, my wrists, my arms, and worst of all, my shoulders.
I needed rest. And more than that, I wanted, if I could, to push our business just a little nearer a conclusion.
“You’d find the offer more than generous,” I said.
I watched a small Chihuahua-mix, there in the dog park, furiously barking at a Rottweiler some twenty times its size, and I thought of Angel’s dog, Riff, and how we used to walk him in Chicago, last year, in that weird, unearthly summer that we’d shared.
“I’m serious,” I said. “We’d pay you well. And keep it somewhere safe. That’s important, too, you know.”
She clucked, a mirthless little laugh.
“Frugs,” she said at last, “he always told me that I’d find religion one day. Duch, he said—he always called me Duch—you are due for such a conversion. I always went to church with him, of course, we had to for the business, but I’d no real use for it myself. All those thees and thous. It just holds people back, I used to think.
“Now here I am.” She placed her hands across her chest. “I have my own god.”
“Well,” I said, “we call them gods, but in the sense most people mean, they’re not like that . . .”
“Young man.” She straightened up, casting her grand, imperial gaze upon me. “If I say it’s a god, then it’s a god. All right?”
“The money we can offer—it could set you up for life. You’d have someone to take you out, any time you wanted—galleries, restaurants, or just a walk, like this. Anywhere you want to go.” Some other sucker, I thought. Anyone but me. “Hire a car, go for a drive. It’ll be good.”
“Paid company,” she said. “There’s a name for that.”
“I don’t think it would be . . . quite that way. We can put you in touch with a very good agency. Or perhaps you’d like a change of scene. A house in Florida, a trip to Europe—”
She raised a hand. “Wanna know where the money’s going? Truly?” I wondered if she was about to admit to a secret heroin habit, or a history of online gambling, but she said, “Mt. Sinai Hospital. Soon as the insurance runs out. Mark my words.”
“Not yet, though, surely? You’ve got—” I had been going to say, “Years,” but looking at her, I wasn’t so sure. “A long time yet,” I said.
She folded her hands across her knees. A schoolma’am’s pose.
“Let me tell you something, sweetheart. When you’re young, you think you just go on forever. You think your life’s a thousand years long, there’s time for everything. Everything you’ve dreamed of, you’ll get around to it. Not this year maybe. But next year, or the next, or . . . one day. Well, listen up. ’Cause ‘one day’ never comes, and that’s a fact. And ‘one day,’ it don’t matter anymore, ’cause one day, you’ll be dead.”
“You’ve got a point,” I said.
“More than a point, young man. I got the truth.”
“The god—” I said.
“Don’t ask again.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Not today. But look. I’m concerned, OK? These things are dangerous. To you, your neighbors—everyone around. Just ’cause it’s not in city bylaws doesn’t mean it’s OK.”
“Bylaws.”
“Ordinance. Whatever you call it. It’s like—it’s like having your own nuclear weapon. It’s safe if it’s contained, but otherwise—”
“I’m not against ’em, you know. Nuclear weapons. Not like some people.”
“You wouldn’t want one in your front room, though, would you?”
“They kept the Russians off our backs. And the Japs.”
“Just you tell me one last thing. Then we can drop it. Promise.”
She sniffed.
I said, “Where did you get it? I mean, how does someone . . . come by something like that? You know?”
“Someone like me, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Same way I come by everything, Christopher. I bought it. What d’you expect?”
Chapter 4
The Seller
Three young men wheeled racks of coats across the street. They didn’t even look before they crossed, just slid out straight into the road, regardless of the honking cars, the scurrying pedestrians, the woman in the wheelchair, and the poor sap pushing her, and trying, even now, to carry on a conversation.
“But, see,” I said. “You can’t just walk into a supermarket, pick it off the shelf, can you?” I pretended to read signs. “Bread . . . canned veg . . . deities.”
“I didn’t buy it that way.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“It’s a very obvious remark, then.”
Her headscarf had slipped back. I could see the pink scalp under her thin, fine hair: hair like baby’s hair, it seemed so delicate.
I said, “You bought it on the internet?”
“I don’t use that thing.”
“It would be good if you could tell me. Helpful. Also,” I said, “personally. I’d really like to know.”
“Personally?”