The Illumination (30 page)

It was a different rain, nearly eight months later, and Morse was watching the water create beads on his poncho, when the smaller one brought him two new books. The first was called
Mister Parsons
, the second
Mansfield Park
, and he said, “Two MPs for my main MP. Don’t let them get wet now. I think you’ll like these.”

“One for two or—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, one for two or cash money. Give me that hardback number right there. The big red fella. It’ll match my sofa.”

Morse weaseled the book out from under the Visqueen and handed it to the smaller one, and the smaller one slipped it into his coat, gave a little
cha-cha
with his tongue, and pretended to fire his finger at Morse. Then he walked away whistling. Morse would never understand people who exulted in bad weather.

It was barely noon, but it seemed as if the sun had already gone down. The sky was a solid brick of gray, so dark that Morse lost sight of the smaller one long before he made his turn onto Tenth
Street. The rain that dotted his poncho formed tiny solid-looking drops that merged by threes and fours into trembling half-domes, then broke free of their shapes and streamed away. The effect was mesmerizing, soporific. It was an effort for him to look anywhere else, though eventually he did. On the corner, beneath the black canopy of a newsstand, he saw an abscessed tooth blazing like a newborn star. The stacked blocks of a degenerative disk disorder came leaning out of a taxi. Behind the window of the drugstore were a pair of inflamed sinuses, by the counter a shimmering configuration of herpes blisters, on the bench a lambent haze of pneumonia. And across the street Morse saw a great branching delta of septicemia slide through the rear doors of an ambulance and disappear in a glory of light.

The subway shrieked and released its passengers. Up they trudged from under the street, hunching and shivering. The one shaking the water from his hands was named Charles Dennison, the Attuned and the Obedient, Beloved of the Lord and His Angels, and issuing its proclamations in his mind was the Divine Vibratory Expression named Hahaiah. Hahaiah had given Charles a single holy task: to provide fresh experiences to Eternity. The responsibility was profound.
Fish the magazine out of that trash can. Whack the sports car with it. See the license plate:
DADSTOY
. Yes, that one. No, not the window, the door! Hit the DOOR! Now bite your hand, there where the palm thickens at the base of the thumb
. Charles set his mouth to his palm.
HARDER
. His teeth drew light from his skin.
Good
. In Eternity everything had already taken place—that was the problem. Nothing happened there that was not happening again. Only here, in the Physical and Contingent World, could one generate fresh experiences for the Lord and His Elect, which was why it was incumbent upon Charles to do exactly what Hahaiah bade him.
Stop that woman, the one in the fur jacket
. Charles took the woman by
the sleeve.
Say, “Truly, my lady, it is a Marvelous and a Blessed Day.
” “Truly, my lady, it is a Blessed and a Marvelous and Day.”
A MARVELOUS and a BLESSED
. “A Marvelous and a Blessed.” The woman wrenched herself away from Charles and continued through the door of the hotel. He saw her standing in the lobby with a look of vexation and disordered pride, trying to tease the oil from her jacket with her fingers while the doorman folded her umbrella. This was what the world was: the one and only place where things could still happen for the first time.

It was late afternoon before the rain finally drove Morse to his alcove and he had the chance to give the books the smaller one had traded him a shake. From
Mister Parsons
fell a thousand dollars in hundreds. Another thousand fluttered from the pages of
Mansfield Park
. The bills were authentic, newly printed, with that sweet, antiseptic smell that reminded him of window spray.

Never before had the smaller one given him so much cash money. Not for the first time Morse wondered where it all came from.

He was having one of his indoor moods, so he took his cart to the lockers at the bus station, then checked into a hotel, the old Beaux Arts building across from the modern art museum. He put his clothing in a drawstring bag to be laundered, showered until the water no longer ran gray, then settled down in a bathrobe and slippers to ply his way through the TV stations. He had brought only a single book with him, the diary of
I love you
’s with the torn binding and the foxed pages, which the one with the loose shoelaces had never retrieved. Every now and then, when Morse had nothing better to do, he liked to open it and read a few lines at random.
I love your avocado and Swiss sandwiches. I love the way your neck arches like a cat’s whenever you hear a car slowing down on the street outside our window. I love the story of the Sticky Bandit—aka Mr. Splat. I love your fascination with crop
circles, but as landscape art, not UFO indentations or messages from the Circlemakers of the Beyond. I love swipping your triggle gitch
. He was fascinated yet vexed by the book. Between each sentence, it seemed, there was a gap, a chasm, a whitening away of meaning. He did not understand how something so sweet, so earnest and candid, could also be so wayward and enigmatic. He kept expecting to return to the book and discover that it had pondered all his questions while he was gone and then fortified itself with the answers.

For two nights, Morse stayed in his hotel room eating grilled steak and cheese agnolotti, seared scallops and grilled duck breast, and drinking sparkling water and tempranillo and white burgundy. The cake he ordered was too rich, and the raspberry sorbet gave him an ice cream headache, the kind that smoldered across his temples for thirty seconds and then flared out, but he barely noticed it. It felt good to eat and drink, to stand at the window looking out over the city, to sleep in a soft bed, to wake without quite realizing he had. It felt good to be alive. Wounded but alive. Shining but alive.

By the time he returned to his milk crate and his six squares of sidewalk, the weather had turned cold and serene, ice-still. Everyone was puffy with extra clothing—coats, jerseys, sweat suits, long johns, wool socks, and ribbed hats. He could see the cars breathing from their tailpipes like looming metal monsters. A station wagon rabbited forward to beat the light, then braked to a stop behind a delivery van. The family inside leaned into the momentum. Their bodies seemed to quiver, their minds seemed to dance, and Morse waited for them to reveal themselves to him. The one sitting Indian-style in the cargo area was named Evie. The
chump seat
—that was what Tom and Amy called it. Or sometimes the
chimp seat
. Which meant that Evie was the chump.
Or sometimes the chimp. But she didn’t care. She liked riding back there with the groceries and the jumper cables. It was like camping out in her own private fort, a fort that was also a spaceship, a spaceship that was also a go-cart, a go-cart that bumped down the track at sixty miles an hour while she pretended to steer with her hands and also sometimes even her feet. “Are you okay back there in the caboose, Evie-girl?” her mom called out, and Evie said, “I’m fine,” and most of the time her mom asked, “Whatcha doing?” next, but fortunately she didn’t this time, because what Evie was doing was peeling the scab from her knee. It was nearly the size of a silver dollar, or maybe a piece of gum after it’s been flattened on the driveway, and just like the gum it was crisp on the top side but gummy on the bottom, and just like the silver dollar it sparkled in the light. It hurt a little as she lifted it free, trailing a few strings of something wet and sticky. Total and complete grossness.

All that day, Morse kept up a patter of
one for two
s and
cash money
s, but it made no difference. No one was willing to stop in such a chill. He busied himself rearranging his books. His lips froze together each time he licked them, separating with a slight click. Whenever he moved, gusts of detergent wafted from the folds and gathers of his clothing.

I love your Elvis impression—the worst Elvis impression I’ve ever heard, or ever will hear, in my entire life. I love your thing for lips and hands—and the fact that, thank God, my own lips and hands received a passing grade. I love the little meditative puffing noises you make when you’re exercising. I love watching you dive into a swimming pool, the way your body wavers underneath the water, the way your legs frog open and closed, the way you breach the surface with your eyes shut good and hard
.

He had just set the diary aside when a shadow stretched across
his blanket. The smaller one was standing there, his body all doubled in on itself. His arms were crossed, his knees locked tight, and his left eye wore a lustrous white bruise. A two-day growth of bristles covered his face. It was the first time since the Illumination that Morse could remember seeing him without a pair of books in his hands. The first time, for that matter, his voice sounded so thin and frightened, though he tried his best to manufacture some of his old swagger. “MP! Maximum Penalty! Listen, those books I gave you on Tuesday? The money? That was a mistake.” He scuffed the pavement with his shoe. “And, well, I need it back, just this once.”

“The money.” Morse shook his head and shrugged. “The money.”

“Jesus Christ, you stupid dimwit, what’s that supposed to mean? What, are you telling me that you spent it already? Great! Perfect! What the hell have you been feeding yourself, gold-dusted truffles?” The smaller one stalked away, then turned back around. “Thanks for your help. MP. Buddy. Friend of mine. It’s good to know I can count on you in my time of need.” He flinched at the sound of a car door slamming, then stiffened his neck, like a brawler recovering from a punch, and descended into the subway station.

Several months passed before Morse saw him again. By then the trees were leafing out, and the last hard saddles of gray snow were melting from the recesses of the alleys. Warm breezes kept pushing at the ground, as if an invisible highway were running just overhead. From the ledges and the power lines came startling polyphonies of birdsong. All over the city people had taken to the streets to enjoy the first breath of spring. Morse watched the one with the bad case of acne—his neck, cheeks, and forehead a glimmering and resplendent red—pop a wheelie on his racing bike. The one whose bare legs were goose-pimpling in the breeze
crossed the street. The one holding the paper bag and the soda bottle hummed along to his own private music. He stopped short as he was passing Morse’s blanket. “Tell me, is that Tevis you’ve got there, the original Gold Medal paperback?”

Morse opened the book he had indicated and displayed the copyright page.

“It is, isn’t it? I’ll be damned. How much?”

“One for two or cash money.”

“One for two what?”

“Books.”

A car pulled up to the curb, its parking lock clicking and chirping.

“I don’t have any books with me. Hmm. Hey, look, this is going to sound ridiculous, but what about a bowl of chili?” He extended his paper bag. “Can I trade you a bowl of chili instead? It’s good. Good chili is worth two books easy, right?”

“No chili. One for two or cash money.”

“Yeah, but I just spent my last five dollars. How’s this, look—a bowl of chili, a bottle of 7Up,
unopened
, and”—his hand fished a few coins from his pocket—“a quarter, a dime, and one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight … twelve pennies?”

And because Morse was thirsty, he nodded.

The one with the soda bottle gave a firecracker-like clap. “It was a pleasure doing business with you,” he said once the exchange was made, and strutted away.

Morse decided to eat his lunch in his alcove. He picked up his milk crate, parceled his blanket around his books, and lifted the bundle into his shopping cart. In the alley behind New Fun Ree, on the blind side of a dumpster, he found the smaller one crouching like an injured dog. His eye had long since healed over, but a hundred other injuries illuminated his body. The fingers of his right hand, wrapped in a T-shirt, yielded a flat and powerful light.
His bruised ribs and galled right cheek printed the air with their sigils. His face shone from beneath the skin, slung over his skull like a scarf over a lamp. He said, “I think I’m in some trouble here, MP,” and once again Morse watched as the film of the world came loose on its spindle. His name was Lee, Lee Hartz, and oh Jesus, oh Jesus, how was he going to protect himself? Vannatta would find him and finish what the others had started. He would rip him open, flay him apart, proceeding digit by digit, layer by layer, until there was so much blood that whoever found him would have to shield his eyes from the light.
The currency of punishment
—that was what Vannatta called it. As in, “We’re going to give our friends on Ninth Street an important lesson in the currency of punishment.” A blow for every hundred, he meant. A broken bone for every thousand. A human life for every million. Lee had seen it happen to countless thieves and swindlers, watched their fragile bodies spraying outward from themselves like the glass from a hurled bottle, shattered and gleaming on the pavement. Where could he hide? Where? Vannatta knew the city down to its pores, its nerve endings, its last filthy alley and its last wind-etched bridge bearing. He could find Lee wherever he went. He could snap his fingers and kill a man. He never rested, never slept. Oh my sweet Lord above.

Lee used his good hand, his left one, to grip Morse’s arm. “I need someplace to hide. I need to flat fucking vanish. Can you hide me, buddy? Can you do that?”

“Someplace to hide.” And it came to Morse like a crack of thunder. “I can do that.”

He led the smaller one out of the alley and around the corner, then past a modest streetside park where the benches were peppered with men and women whiling away their lunch hours. The one with the ulcer flaring from her lip was named Nina. The foul
thing shone like a penlight, with much too bright a brightness, though she wasn’t talking, wasn’t chewing, wasn’t even moving. Why? she wanted to know. What was wrong with her? For nearly five years,
five years
, it had been one ulcer after another, a plague of shining sunken wounds. She was hungry, but she could not eat. She was lonely, but she could not speak. And she no longer believed it would stop. Oh, there had been a lover once, and he kept e-mailing to ask her when he could visit, and maybe someday she would say
yes
to him, maybe someday she would say
now
, but every time she dared, she felt that briary sensation on her lips and tongue, and she knew that it would soon be getting worse. She had never found love, or if she had, she had rejected it, and she was nearly certain she would die young—or at least younger than she otherwise would have—because no one had ever come along and saved her. She leaned back, distending her arms behind the bench. Overhead a pair of gray squirrels were sparring around the trunk of a beech tree. She watched as they dashed in and out of sight, their tense little brushes flickering a half step behind them. If only she could have been one of them, she thought—could have been anyone, or anything, else for a while, a bird, a kite, a cloud. What sense did it make that such a thing wasn’t possible? It would take so little. Who had created this world, anyway? All her life she had avoided bar fights, contact sports, political protests—anywhere there was the slightest chance she might get hurt. She had been so careful, so excruciatingly careful. Not once had she ever been punched in the mouth, and yet that was how she felt now, all the time: as if she had just been punched in the mouth. But it’s not my
fault
. I didn’t
do
anything.