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Licensor shall not be bound by any additional provisions that may appear in any communication from You. This License may not be modified without the mutual written agreement of the Licensor and You. $A @`ۭC7@@ $A @`ۭC@@@Blurb$A @`ۭCAA1@Blurb $A @`ۭA  ۭCAqAA@ $A @`ۭCAB^@SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN, SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. & It is more. & It is a glorious book unlike any book you ve ever read. $A @`ۭCBAC*@ --Gene Wolfe $A @`ۭCC@D@ $A @`ۭCDQDa"@Dedication$A @`ۭCDD$@Dedication $A @`ۭA(  ۭCE EYE1@ For the family I was born into and the family I chose. I got lucky both times. $A` @`ۭA HۭCEFqFI@ $A` @`ۭCFF @The novel$A @`ۭCFG"@The novel $A` @`ۭA$  ۭCGYGG @ Alan sanded the house on Wales Avenue. It took six months, and the whole time it was the smell of the sawdust, ancient and sweet, and the reek of chemical stripper and the damp smell of rusting steel wool. Alan took possession of the house on January 1, and paid for it in full by means of an e-gold transfer. He had to do a fair bit of hand-holding with the realtor to get her set up and running on e-gold, but he loved to do that sort of thing, loved to sit at the elbow of a novitiate and guide her through the clicks and taps and forms. He loved to break off for impromptu lectures on the underlying principles of the transaction, and so he treated the poor realtor lady to a dozen addresses on the nature of international currency markets, the value of precious metal as a kind of financial lingua franca to which any currency could be converted, the poetry of vault shelves in a hundred banks around the world piled with the heaviest of metals, glinting dully in the fluorescent tube lighting, tended by gnomish bankers who spoke a hundred languages but communicated with one another by means of this universal tongue of weights and measures and purity. The clerks who d tended Alan s many stores--the used clothing store in the Beaches, the used book-store in the Annex, the collectible tin-toy store in Yorkville, the antique shop on Queen Street--had both benefited from and had their patience tried by Alan s discursive nature. Alan had pretended never to notice the surreptitious rolling of eyes and twirling fingers aimed templewise among his employees when he got himself warmed up to a good oration, but in truth very little ever escaped his attention. His customers loved his little talks, loved the way he could wax rhapsodic about the tortured prose in a Victorian potboiler, the nearly erotic curve of a beat-up old table leg, the voluminous cuffs of an embroidered silk smoking jacket. The clerks who listened to Alan s lectures went on to open their own stores all about town, and by and large, they did very well. He d put the word out when he bought the house on Wales Avenue to all his protgs: Wooden bookcases! His cell-phone rang every day, bringing news of another wooden bookcase found at this flea market, that thrift store, this rummage sale or estate auction. He had a man he used part-time, Tony, who ran a small man-with-van service, and when the phone rang, he d send Tony over to his protg s shop with his big panel van to pick up the case and deliver it to the cellar of the house on Wales Avenue, which was ramified by cold storages, root cellars, disused coal chutes and storm cellars. By the time Alan had finished with his sanding, every nook and cranny of the cellar was packed with wooden bookcases of every size and description and repair. Alan worked through the long Toronto winter at his sanding. The house had been gutted by the previous owners, who d had big plans for the building but had been tempted away by a job in Boston. They d had to sell fast, and no amount of realtor magic--flowers on the dining-room table, soup simmering on the stove--could charm away the essential dagginess of the gutted house, the exposed timbers with sagging wires and conduit, the runnels gouged in the floor by careless draggers of furniture. Alan got it for a song, and was delighted by his fortune. He was drunk on the wood, of course, and would have paid much more had the realtor noticed this, but Alan had spent his whole life drunk on trivial things from others  lives that no one else noticed and he d developed the alcoholic s knack of disguising his intoxication. Alan went to work as soon as the realtor staggered off, reeling with a New Year s Day hangover. He pulled his pickup truck onto the frozen lawn, unlocked the Kryptonite bike lock he used to secure the camper bed, and dragged out his big belt sander and his many boxes of sandpaper of all grains and sizes, his heat strippers and his jugs of caustic chemical peeler. He still had his jumbled, messy place across town in a nondescript two-bedroom on the Danforth, would keep on paying the rent there until his big sanding project was done and the house on Wales Avenue was fit for habitation. Alan s sanding project: First, finish gutting the house. Get rid of the substandard wiring, the ancient, lead-leaching plumbing, the cracked tile and water-warped crumbling plaster. He filled a half-dozen dumpsters, working with Tony and Tony s homie Nat, who was happy to help out in exchange for cash on the barrelhead, provided that he wasn t required to report for work on two consecutive days, since he d need one day to recover from the heroic drinking he d do immediately after Alan laid the cash across his palm. Once the house was gutted to brick and timber and delirious wood, the plumbers and the electricians came in and laid down their straight shining ducts and pipes and conduit. Alan tarped the floors and brought in the heavy sandblaster and stripped the age and soot and gunge off of the brickwork throughout, until it glowed red as a golem s ass. Alan s father, the mountain, had many golems that called him home. They lived round the other side of his father and left Alan and his brothers alone, because even a golem has the sense not to piss off a mountain, especially one it lives in. Then Alan tackled the timbers, reaching over his head with palm-sanders and sandpaper of ever finer grains until the timbers were as smooth as Adirondack chairs, his chest and arms and shoulders athrob with the agony of two weeks  work. Then it was the floorwork, but not the floors themselves, which he was saving for last on the grounds that they were low-hanging fruit. This materialized a new lecture in his mind, one about the proper role of low-hanging fruit, a favorite topic of MBAs who d patronize his stores and his person, giving him unsolicited advice on the care and feeding of his shops based on the kind of useless book-learning and jargon-slinging that Fortune 100 companies apparently paid big bucks for. When an MBA said low-hanging fruit,  he meant easy pickings,  something that could and should be snatched with minimal effort. But real low-hanging fruit ripens last, and should be therefore picked as late as possible. Further, picking the low-hanging fruit first meant that you d have to carry your bushel basket higher and higher as the day wore on, which was plainly stupid. Low-hanging fruit was meant to be picked last. It was one of the ways that he understood people, and one of the kinds of people that he d come to understand. That was the game, after all--understanding people. So the floors would come last, after the molding, after the stairs, after the railings and the paneling. The railings, in particular, were horrible bastards to get clean, covered in ten or thirty coats of enamel of varying colors and toxicity. Alan spent days working with a wire brush and pointed twists of steel wool and oozing stinging paint stripper, until the grain was as spotless and unmarked as the day it came off the lathe. Then he did the floors, using the big rotary sander first. It had been years since he d last swung a sander around--it had been when he opened the tin-toy shop in Yorkville and he d rented one while he was prepping the place. The technique came back to him quickly enough, and he fell into a steady rhythm that soon had all the floors cool and dry and soft with naked, exposed woody heartmeat. He swept the place out and locked up and returned home. The next day, he stopped at the Portuguese contractor-supply on Ossington that he liked. They opened at five a.m., and the men behind the counter were always happy to sketch out alternative solutions to his amateur construction problems, they never mocked him for his incompetence, and always threw in a ten percent contractor s discount  for him that made him swell up with irrational pride that confused him. Why should the son of a mountain need affirmation from runty Portugees with pencil stubs behind their ears and scarred fingers? He picked up a pair of foam-rubber knee pads and a ten-kilo box of lint-free shop rags and another carton of disposable paper masks. He drove to the house on Wales Avenue, parked on the lawn, which was now starting to thaw and show deep muddy ruts from his tires. He spent the next twelve hours crawling around on his knees, lugging a tool bucket filled with sandpaper and steel wool and putty and wood-crayons and shop rags. He ran his fingertips over every inch of floor and molding and paneling, feeling the talc softness of the sifted sawdust, feeling for rough spots and gouges, smoothing them out with his tools. He tried puttying over the gouges in the flooring that he d seen the day he took possession, but the putty seemed like a lie to him, less honest than the gouged-out boards were, and so he scooped the putty out and sanded the grooves until they were as smooth as the wood around them. Next came the beeswax, sweet and shiny. It almost broke his heart to apply it, because the soft, newly exposed wood was so deliciously tender and sensuous. But he knew that wood left to its own would eventually chip and splinter and yellow. So he rubbed wax until his elbows ached, massaged the wax into the wood, buffed it with shop rags so that the house shone. Twenty coats of urethane took forty days--a day to coat and a day to dry. More buffing and the house took on a high shine, a slippery slickness. He nearly broke his neck on the slippery staircase treads, and the Portuguese helped him out with a bag of clear grit made from ground walnut shells. He used a foam brush to put one more coat of urethane on each tread of the stairs, then sprinkled granulated walnut shells on while it was still sticky. He committed a rare error in judgment and did the stairs from the bottom up and trapped himself on the third floor, with its attic ceilings and dormer windows, and felt like a goddamned idiot as he curled up to sleep on the cold, hard, slippery, smooth floor while he waited for his stairs to dry. The urethane must be getting to his head. The bookcases came out of the cellar one by one. Alan wrestled them onto the front porch with Tony s help and sanded them clean, then turned them over to Tony for urethane and dooring. The doors were UV-filtering glass, hinged at the top and surrounded by felt on their inside lips so that they closed softly. Each one had a small brass prop-rod on the left side that could brace it open. Tony had been responsible for measuring each bookcase after he retrieved it from Alan s protgs  shops and for sending the measurements off to a glazier in Mississauga. The glazier was technically retired, but he d built every display case that had ever sat inside any of Alan s shops and was happy to make use of the small workshop that his daughter and son-in-law had installed in his garage when they retired him to the burbs. The bookcases went into the house, along each wall, according to a system of numbers marked on their backs. Alan had used Tony s measurements and some CAD software to come up with a permutation of stacking and shouldering cases that had them completely covering every wall--except for the wall by the mantelpiece in the front parlor, the wall over the countertop in the kitchen, and the wall beside the staircases--to the ceiling. He and Tony didn t speak much. Tony was thinking about whatever people who drive moving vans think about, and Alan was thinking about the story he was building the house to write in. May smelled great in Kensington Market. The fossilized dog shit had melted and washed away in the April rains, and the smells were all springy ones, loam and blossoms and spilled tetrapak fruit punch left behind by the pan-ethnic street-hockey league that formed up spontaneously in front of his house. When the winds blew from the east, he smelled the fish stalls on Spadina, salty and redolent of Chinese barbecue spices. When it blew from the north, he smelled baking bread in the kosher bakeries and sometimes a rare whiff of roasting garlic from the pizzas in the steaming ovens at Massimo s all the way up on College. The western winds smelled of hospital incinerator, acrid and smoky. His father, the mountain, had attuned Art to smells, since they were the leading indicators of his moods, sulfurous belches from deep in the caverns when he was displeased, the cold non-smell of spring water when he was thoughtful, the new-mown hay smell from his slopes when he was happy. Understanding smells was something that you did, when the mountain was your father. Once the bookcases were seated and screwed into the walls, out came the books, thousands of them, tens of thousands of them. Little kids  books with loose signatures, ancient first-edition hardcovers, outsized novelty art books, mass-market paperbacks, reference books as thick as cinderblocks. They were mostly used when he d gotten them, and that was what he loved most about them: They smelled like other people and their pages contained hints of their lives: marginalia and pawn tickets, bus transfers gone yellow with age and smears of long-ago meals. When he read them, he was in three places: his living room, the authors  heads, and the world of their previous owners. They came off his shelves at home, from the ten-by-ten storage down on the lakeshore, they came from friends and enemies who d borrowed his books years before and who d forgotten  to return them, but Alan never forgot, he kept every book in a great and deep relational database that had begun as a humble flatfile but which had been imported into successive generations of industrial-grade database software. This, in turn, was but a pocket in the Ur-database, The Inventory in which Alan had input the value, the cost, the salient features, the unique identifiers, and the photographic record of every single thing he owned, from the socks in his sock drawer to the pots in his cupboard. Maintaining The Inventory was serious business, no less important now than it had been when he had begun it in the course of securing insurance for the bookshop. Alan was an insurance man s worst nightmare, a customer from hell who d messenger over five bankers  boxes of detailed, cross-referenced Inventory at the slightest provocation. The books filled the shelves, row on row, behind the dust-proof, light-proof glass doors. The books began in the foyer and wrapped around the living room, covered the wall behind the dining room in the kitchen, filled the den and the master bedroom and the master bath, climbed the short walls to the dormer ceilings on the third floor. They were organized by idiosyncratic subject categories, and alphabetical by author within those categories. Alan s father was a mountain, and his mother was a washing machine--he kept a roof over their heads and she kept their clothes clean. His brothers were: a dead man, a trio of nesting dolls, a fortune teller, and an island. He only had two or three family portraits, but he treasured them, even if outsiders who saw them often mistook them for landscapes. There was one where his family stood on his father s slopes, Mom out in the open for a rare exception, a long tail of extension cords snaking away from her to the cave and the diesel generator s three-prong outlet. He hung it over the mantel, using two hooks and a level to make sure that it came out perfectly even. Tony helped Alan install the shallow collectibles cases along the house s two-story stairwell, holding the level while Alan worked the cordless powerdriver. Alan s glazier had built the cases to Alan s specs, and they stretched from the treads to the ceiling. Alan filled them with Made-in-Occupied-Japan tin toys, felt tourist pennants from central Florida gator farms, a stone from Marie Laveau s tomb in the St. Louis I Cemetery in New Orleans, tarnished brass Zippos, small framed comic-book bodybuilding ads, carved Polynesian coconut monkeys, melamine transistor radios, Bakelite snow globes, all the tchotchkes he d accumulated over a lifetime of picking and hunting and digging. They were gloriously scuffed and non-mint: he d always sold off the sterile mint-in-package goods as quickly as he could, squirreling away the items that were marked with Property of Freddy Terazzo  in shaky ballpoint, the ones with tooth marks and frayed boxes taped shut with brands of stickytape not offered for sale in fifty years. The last thing to go in was the cellar. They knocked out any wall that wasn t load-bearing, smeared concrete on every surface, and worked in a loose mosaic of beach glass and beach china, smooth and white with spidery blue illustrations pale as a dream. Three coats of urethane made the surfaces gleam. Then it was just a matter of stringing out the cables for the clip-on halogens whose beams he took care to scatter off the ceilings to keep the glare to a minimum. He moved in his horsehair sofa and armchairs, his big old bed, his pots and pans and sideboard with its novelty decanters, and his entertainment totem. A man from Bell Canada came out and terminated the data line in his basement, in a room that he d outfitted with an uninterruptible power supply, a false floor, dry fire extinguishers and a pipe-break sensor. He installed and configured the router, set up his modest rack and home servers, fished three four-pair wires through to the living room, the den, and the attic, where he attached them to unobtrusive wireless access points and thence to weatherproofed omnidirectional antennae made from copper tubing and PVC that he d affixed to the building s exterior on short masts, aimed out over Kensington Market, blanketing a whole block with free Internet access. He had an idea that the story he was going to write would require some perambulatory cogitation, and he wanted to be able to take his laptop anywhere in the market and sit down and write and hop online and check out little factoids with a search engine so he wouldn t get hung up on stupid details. The house on Wales Avenue was done. He d repainted the exterior a lovely robin s-egg blue, fixed the front step, and planted a low-maintenance combination of outsized rocks from the Canadian Shield and wild grasses on the front lawn. On July first, Alan celebrated Canada Day by crawling out of the attic window onto the roof and watching the fireworks and listening to the collective sighs of the people densely packed around him in the Market, then he went back into the house and walked from room to room, looking for something out of place, some spot still rough and unsanded, and found none. The books and the collections lined the walls, the fans whirred softly in the ceilings, the filters beneath the open windows hummed as they sucked the pollen and particulate out of the rooms--Alan s retail experience had convinced him long ago of the selling power of fresh air and street sounds, so he refused to keep the windows closed, despite the fantastic volume of city dust that blew in. The house was perfect. The ergonomic marvel of a chair that UPS had dropped off the previous day was tucked under the wooden sideboard he d set up as a desk in the second-floor den. His brand-new computer sat centered on the desk, a top-of-the-line laptop with a wireless card and a screen big enough to qualify as a home theater in some circles. Tomorrow, he d start the story. $A` @`ۭtA WXd ! B\ۭCG@*** $A` @`ۭ C@gT@ Alan rang the next-door house s doorbell at eight a.m. He had a bag of coffees from the Greek diner. Five coffees, one for each bicycle locked to the wooden railing on the sagging porch plus one for him. He waited five minutes, then rang the bell again, holding it down, listening for the sound of footsteps over the muffled jangling of the buzzer. It took two minutes more, he estimated, but he didn t mind. It was a beautiful summer day, soft and moist and green, and he could already smell the fish market over the mellow brown vapors of the strong coffee. A young woman in long johns and a baggy tartan T-shirt opened the door. She was excitingly plump, round and a little jiggly, the kind of woman Alan had always gone for. Of course, she was all of twenty-two, and so was certainly not an appropriate romantic interest for him, but she was fun to look at as she ungummed her eyes and worked the sleep out of her voice. Yes?  she said through the locked screen door. Her voice brooked no nonsense, which Alan also liked. He d hire her in a second, if he were still running a shop. He liked to hire sharp kids like her, get to know them, try to winkle out their motives and emotions through observation. Good morning!  Alan said. I m Alan, and I just moved in next door. I ve brought coffee!  He hefted his sack in her direction. Good morning, Alan,  she said. Thanks and all, but--  Oh, no need to thank me! Just being neighborly. I brought five--one for each of you and one for me.  Well, that s awfully nice of you--  Nothing at all. Nice morning, huh? I saw a robin just there, on that tree in the park, not an hour ago. Fantastic.  Great.  She unlatched the screen door and opened it, reaching for the sack. Alan stepped into the foyer and handed it to her. There s cream and sugar in there,  he said. Lots--don t know how you folks take it, so I just figured better sure than miserable, better to err on the side of caution. Wow, look at this, your place has a completely different layout from mine. I think they were built at the same time, I mean, they look a lot alike. I don t really know much about architecture, but they really do seem the same, don t they, from the outside? But look at this! In my place, I ve got a long corridor before you get to the living room, but your place is all open. I wonder if it was built that way, or if someone did that later. Do you know?  No,  she said, hefting the sack. Well, I ll just have a seat while you get your roommates up, all right? Then we can all have a nice cup of coffee and a chat and get to know each other.  She dithered for a moment, then stepped back toward the kitchen and the stairwell. Alan nodded and took a little tour of the living room. There was a very nice media totem, endless shelves of DVDs and videos, including a good selection of Chinese kung-fu VCDs and black and white comedies. There was a stack of guitar magazines on the battered coffee table, and a cozy sofa with an afghan folded neatly on one arm. Good kids, he could tell that just by looking at their possessions. Not very security-conscious, though. She should have either kicked him out or dragged him around the house while she got her roomies out of bed. He thought about slipping some VCDs into his pocket and returning them later, just to make the point, but decided it would be getting off on the wrong foot. She returned a moment later, wearing a fuzzy yellow robe whose belt and seams were gray with grime and wear. They re coming down,  she said. Terrific!  Alan said, and planted himself on the sofa. How about that coffee, hey?  She shook her head, smiled a little, and retrieved a coffee for him. Cream? Sugar?  Nope,  Alan said. The Greek makes it just the way I like it. Black and strong and aromatic. Try some before you add anything--it s really fantastic. One of the best things about the neighborhood, if you ask me.  Another young woman, rail-thin with a shaved head, baggy jeans, and a tight t-shirt that he could count her ribs through, shuffled into the living room. Alan got to his feet and extended his hand. Hi there! I m Adam, your new neighbor! I brought coffees!  She shook his hand, her long fingernails sharp on his palm. Natalie,  she said. The other young woman passed a coffee to her. He brought coffees,  she said. Try it before you add anything to it.  She turned to Alan. I thought you said your name was Alan?  Alan, Adam, Andy. Doesn t matter, I answer to any of them. My mom had a hard time keeping our names straight.  Funny,  Natalie said, sipping at her coffee. Two sugars, three creams,  she said, holding her hand out. The other woman silently passed them to her. I haven t gotten your name yet,  Alan said. Right,  the other one said. You sure haven t.  A young man, all of seventeen, with straggly sideburns and a shock of pink hair sticking straight up in the air, shuffled into the room, wearing cutoffs and an unbuttoned guayabera. Adam,  Natalie said, this is Link, my kid brother. Link, this is Arthur--he brought coffees.  Hey, thanks, Arthur,  Link said. He accepted his coffee and stood by his sister, sipping reverently. So that leaves one more,  Alan said. And then we can get started.  Link snorted. Not likely. Krishna doesn t get out of bed before noon.  Krishna?  Alan said. My boyfriend,  the nameless woman said. He was up late.  More coffee for the rest of us, I suppose,  Alan said. Let s all sit and get to know one another, then, shall we?  They sat. Alan slurped down the rest of his coffee, then gestured at the sack. The nameless woman passed it to him and he got the last one, and set to drinking. I m Andreas, your new next-door neighbor. I ve just finished renovating, and I moved in last night. I m really looking forward to spending time in the neighborhood--I work from home, so I ll be around a bunch. Feel free to drop by if you need to borrow a cup of sugar or anything.  That s so nice of you,  Natalie said. I m sure we ll get along fine!  Thanks, Natalie. Are you a student?  Yup,  she said. She fished in the voluminous pockets of her jeans, tugging them lower on her knobby hips, and came up with a pack of cigarettes. She offered one to her brother--who took it--and one to Alan, who declined, then lit up. Studying fashion design at OCAD. I m in my last year, so it s all practicum from now on.  Fashion! How interesting,  Alan said. I used to run a little vintage clothes shop in the Beaches, called Tropicl.  Oh, I loved that shop,  she said. You had the best stuff! I used to sneak out there on the streetcar after school.  Yup. He didn t remember her, exactly, but her type, sure. Solo girls with hardcover sketch books and vintage clothes home-tailored to a nice fit. Well, I d be happy to introduce you to some of the people I know--there s a vintage shop that a friend of mine runs in Parkdale. He s always looking for designers to help with rehab and repros.  That would be so cool!  Now, Link, what do you study?  Link pulled at his smoke, ashed in the fireplace grate. Not much. I didn t get into Ryerson for electrical engineering, so I m spending a year as a bike courier, taking night classes, and reapplying for next year.  Well, that ll keep you out of trouble at least,  Alan said. He turned to the nameless woman. So, what do you do, Apu?  she said to him, before he could say anything. Oh, I m retired, Mimi,  he said. Mimi?  she said. Why not? It s as good a name as any.  Her name is--  Link started to say, but she cut him off. Mimi is as good a name as any. I m unemployed. Krishna s a bartender.  Are you looking for work?  She smirked. Sure. Whatcha got?  What can you do?  I ve got three-quarters of a degree in environmental studies, one year of kinesiology, and a half-written one-act play. Oh, and student debt until the year 3000.  A play!  he said, slapping his thighs. You should finish it. I m a writer, too, you know.  I thought you had a clothing shop.  I did. And a bookshop, and a collectibles shop, and an antique shop. Not all at the same time, you understand. But now I m writing. Going to write a story, then I imagine I ll open another shop. But I m more interested in you, Mimi, and your play. Why half-finished?  She shrugged and combed her hair back with her fingers. Her hair was brown and thick and curly, down to her shoulders. Alan adored curly hair. He d had a clerk at the comics shop with curly hair just like hers, an earnest and bright young thing who drew her own comics in the back room on her breaks, using the receiving table as a drawing board. She d never made much of a go of it as an artist, but she did end up publishing a popular annual anthology of underground comics that had captured the interest of the New Yorker the year before. I just ran out of inspiration,  Mimi said, tugging at her hair. Well, there you are. Time to get inspired again. Stop by any time and we ll talk about it, all right?  If I get back to it, you ll be the first to know.  Tremendous!  he said. I just know it ll be fantastic. Now, who plays the guitar?  Krishna,  Link said. I noodle a bit, but he s really good.  He sure is,  Alan said. He was in fine form last night, about three a.m.!  He chuckled pointedly. There was an awkward silence. Alan slurped down his second coffee. Whoops!  he said. I believe I need to impose on you for the use of your facilities?  What?  Natalie and Link said simultaneously. He wants the toilet,  Mimi said. Up the stairs, second door on the right. Jiggle the handle after you flush.  The bathroom was crowded with too many towels and too many toothbrushes. The sink was powdered with blusher and marked with lipstick and mascara residue. It made Alan feel at home. He liked young people. Liked their energy, their resentment, and their enthusiasm. Didn t like their guitar-playing at three a.m.; but he d sort that out soon enough. He washed his hands and carefully rinsed the long curly hairs from the bar before replacing it in its dish, then returned to the living room. Abel,  Mimi said, sorry if the guitar kept you up last night.  No sweat,  Alan said. It must be hard to find time to practice when you work nights.  Exactly,  Natalie said. Exactly right! Krishna always practices when he comes back from work. He blows off some steam so he can get to bed. We just all learned to sleep through it.  Well,  Alan said, to be honest, I m hoping I won t have to learn to do that. But I think that maybe I have a solution we can both live with.  What s that?  Mimi said, jutting her chin forward. It s easy, really. I can put up a resilient channel and a baffle along that wall there, soundproofing. I ll paint it over white and you won t even notice the difference. Shouldn t take me more than a week. Happy to do it. Thick walls make good neighbors.  We don t really have any money to pay for renovations,  Mimi said. Alan waved his hand. Who said anything about money? I just want to solve the problem. I d do it on my side of the wall, but I ve just finished renovating.  Mimi shook her head. I don t think the landlord would go for it.  You worry too much,  he said. Give me your landlord s number and I ll sort it out with him, all right?  All right!  Link said. That s terrific, Albert, really!  All right, Mimi? Natalie?  Natalie nodded enthusiastically, her shaved head whipping up and down on her thin neck precariously. Mimi glared at Natalie and Link. I ll ask Krishna,  she said. All right, then!  Alan said. Let me measure up the wall and I ll start shopping for supplies.  He produced a matte black, egg-shaped digital tape measure and started shining pinpoints of laser light on the wall, clicking the egg s buttons when he had the corners tight. The Portuguese clerks at his favorite store had dissolved into hysterics when he d proudly shown them the $300 gadget, but they were consistently impressed by the exacting CAD drawings of his projects that he generated with its output. Natalie and Link stared in fascination as he did his thing with more showmanship than was technically necessary, though Mimi made a point of rolling her eyes. Don t go spending any money yet, cowboy,  she said. I ve still got to talk to Krishna, and you ve still got to talk with the landlord.  He fished in the breast pocket of his jean jacket and found a stub of pencil and a little steno pad, scribbled his cell phone number, and tore off the sheet. He passed the sheet, pad, and pencil to Mimi, who wrote out the landlord s number and passed it back to him. Okay!  Alan said. There you go. It s been a real pleasure meeting you folks. I know we re going to get along great. I ll call your landlord right away and you call me once Krishna s up, and I ll see you tomorrow at ten a.m. to start construction, God willin  and the crick don t rise.  Link stood and extended his hand. Nice to meet you, Albert,  he said. Really. Thanks for the muds, too.  Natalie gave him a bony hug, and Mimi gave him a limp handshake, and then he was out in the sunshine, head full of designs and logistics and plans. $A` @`ۭAf<h L (6 TۭC HHa@*** $A` @`ۭA @ۭ CIAIIY$|@ The sun set at nine p.m. in a long summertime blaze. Alan sat down on the twig-chair on his front porch, pulled up the matching twig table, and set down a wine glass and the bottle of Niagara Chardonnay he d brought up from the cellar. He poured out a glass and held it up to the light, admiring the new blister he d gotten on his pinky finger while hauling two-by-fours and gyprock from his truck to his neighbors  front room. Kids rode by on bikes and punks rode by on skateboards. Couples wandered through the park across the street, their murmurous conversations clear on the whispering breeze that rattled the leaves. He hadn t gotten any writing done, but that was all right. He had plenty of time, and once the soundwall was in, he d be able to get a good night s sleep and really focus down on the story. A Chinese girl and a white boy walked down the sidewalk, talking intensely. They were all of six, and the boy had a Russian accent. The Market s diversity always excited Alan. The boy looked a little like Alan s brother Doug (Dan, David, Dearborne) had looked when he was that age. Doug was the one he d help murder. All the brothers had helped with the murder, even Charlie (Clem, Carlos, Cory), the island, who d opened a great fissure down his main fault line and closed it up over Doug s corpse, ensuring that their parents would be none the wiser. Doug was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch, though, and his corpse had tunneled up over the next six years, built a raft from the bamboo and vines that grew in proliferation on Carlos s west coast. He sailed the raft through treacherous seas for a year and a day, beached it on their father s gentle slope, and presented himself to their mother. By that time, the corpse had decayed and frayed and worn away, so that he was little more than a torso and stumps, his tongue withered and stiff, but he pled his case to their mother, and she was so upset that her load overbalanced and they had to restart her. Their father was so angry that he quaked and caved in Billy (Bob, Brad, Benny) s room, crushing all his tools and all his trophies. But a lot of time had gone by and the brothers weren t kids anymore. Alan was nineteen, ready to move to Toronto and start scouting for real estate. Only Doug still looked like a little boy, albeit a stumpy and desiccated one. He hollered and stamped until his fingerbones rattled on the floor and his tongue flew across the room and cracked on the wall. When his anger was spent, he crawled atop their mother and let her rock him into a long, long slumber. Alan had left his father and his family the next morning, carrying a rucksack heavy with gold from under the mountain and walked down to the town, taking the same trail he d walked every school day since he was five. He waved to the people that drove past him on the highway as he waited at the bus stop. He was the first son to leave home under his own power, and he d been full of butterflies, but he had a half-dozen good books that he d checked out of the Kapuskasing branch library to keep him occupied on the 14-hour journey, and before he knew it, the bus was pulling off the Gardiner Expressway by the SkyDome and into the midnight streets of Toronto, where the buildings stretched to the sky, where the blinking lights of the Yonge Street sleaze-strip receded into the distance like a landing strip for a horny UFO. His liquid cash was tight, so he spent that night in the Rex Hotel, in the worst room in the house, right over the cymbal tree that the jazz-drummer below hammered on until nearly two a.m.. The bed was small and hard and smelled of bleach and must, the washbasin gurgled mysteriously and spat out moist sewage odors, and he d read all his books, so he sat in the window and watched the drunks and the hipsters stagger down Queen Street and inhaled the smoky air and before he knew it, he d nodded off in the chair with his heavy coat around him like a blanket. The Chinese girl abruptly thumped her fist into the Russian boy s ear. He clutched his head and howled, tears streaming down his face, while the Chinese girl ran off. Alan shook his head, got up off his chair, went inside for a cold washcloth and an ice pack, and came back out. The Russian boy s face was screwed up and blotchy and streaked with tears, and it made him look even more like Doug, who d always been a crybaby. Alan couldn t understand him, but he took a guess and knelt at his side and wiped the boy s face, then put the ice pack in his little hand and pressed it to the side of his little head. Come on,  he said, taking the boy s other hand. Where do your parents live? I ll take you home.  $A` @`ۭAHۭCIninA@*** $A` @`ۭA @ۭ Cnnn@ Alan met Krishna the next morning at ten a.m., as Alan was running a table saw on the neighbors  front lawn, sawing studs up to fit the second wall. Krishna came out of the house in a dirty dressing gown, his short hair matted with gel from the night before. He was tall and fit and muscular, his brown calves flashing through the vent of his housecoat. He was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and clutching a can of Coke. Alan shut down the saw and shifted his goggles up to his forehead. Good morning,  he said. I d stay on the porch if I were you, or maybe put on some shoes. There re lots of nails and splinters around.  Krishna, about to step off the porch, stepped back. You must be Alvin,  he said. Yup,  Alan said, going up the stairs, sticking out his hand. And you must be Krishna. You re pretty good with a guitar, you know that?  Krishna shook briefly, then snatched his hand back and rubbed at his stubble. I know. You re pretty fucking loud with a table saw.  Alan looked sheepish. Sorry about that. I wanted to get the heavy work done before it got too hot. Hope I m not disturbing you too much--today s the only sawing day. I ll be hammering for the next day or two, then it s all wet work--the loudest tool I ll be using is sandpaper. Won t take more than four days, tops, anyway, and we ll be in good shape.  Krishna gave him a long, considering look. What are you, anyway?  I m a writer--for now. Used to have a few shops.  Krishna blew a plume of smoke off into the distance. That s not what I mean. What are you, Adam? Alan? Andrew? I ve met people like you before. There s something not right about you.  Alan didn t know what to say to that. This was bound to come up someday. Where are you from?  Up north. Near Kapuskasing,  he said. A little town.  I don t believe you,  Krishna said. Are you an alien? A fairy? What?  Alan shook his head. Just about what I seem, I m afraid. Just a guy.  Just about, huh?  he said. Just about.  There s a lot of wiggle room in just about, Arthur. It s a free country, but just the same, I don t think I like you very much. Far as I m concerned, you could get lost and never come back.  Sorry you feel that way, Krishna. I hope I ll grow on you as time goes by.  I hope that you won t have the chance to,  Krishna said, flicking the dog end of his cigarette toward the sidewalk. $A` @`ۭ9>@ Frederick huddled in on himself, half behind Edward on the porch, habitually phobic of open spaces. Alan took his hand and then embraced him. He smelled of Edward s clammy guts and of sweat. Are you two hungry?  Alan asked. Edward grimaced. Of course we re hungry, but without George there s nothing we can do about it, is there?  Alan shook his head. How long has he been gone?  Three weeks,  Edward whispered. I m so hungry, Alan.  How did it happen?  Frederick wobbled on his feet, then leaned heavily on Edward. I need to sit down,  he said. Alan fumbled for his keys and let them into the house, where they settled into the corners of his old overstuffed horsehide sofa. He dialed up the wall sconces to a dim, homey lighting, solicitous of Frederick s sensitive eyes. He took an Apollo 8 Jim Beam decanter full of stunning Irish whiskey off the sideboard and poured himself a finger of it, not offering any to his brothers. Now, how did it happen?  He wanted to speak to Dad,  Frederick said. He climbed out of me and wandered down through the tunnels into the spring pool. The goblin told us that he took off his clothes and waded in and started whispering.  Like most of the boys, George had believed that their father was most aware in his very middle, where he could direct the echoes of the water s rippling, shape them into words and phrases in the hollow of the great cavern. So the goblin saw it happen?  No,  Frederick said, and Edward began to cry again. No. George asked him for some privacy, and so he went a little way up the tunnel. He waited and waited, but George didn t come back. He called out, but George didn t answer. When he went to look for him, he was gone. His clothes were gone. All that he could find was this.  He scrabbled to fit his chubby hand into his jacket s pocket, then fished out a little black pebble. Alan took it and saw that it wasn t a pebble, it was a rotted-out and dried-up fingertip, pierced with unbent paperclip wire. It s Dave s, isn t it?  Edward said. I think so,  Alan said. Dave used to spend hours wiring his dropped-off parts back onto his body, gluing his teeth back into his head. Jesus.  We re going to die, aren t we?  Frederick said. We re going to starve to death.  Edward held his pudgy hands one on top of the other in his lap and began to rock back and forth. We ll be okay,  he lied. Did anyone see Dave?  Alan asked. No,  Frederick said. We asked the golems, we asked Dad, we asked the goblin, but no one saw him. No one s seen him for years.  Alan thought for a moment about how to ask his next question. Did you look in the pool? On the bottom?  He s not there!  Edward said. We looked there. We looked all around Dad. We looked in town. Alan, they re both gone.  Alan felt a sear of acid jet up esophagus. I don t know what to do,  he said. I don t know where to look. Frederick, can t you, I don t know, stuff yourself with something? So you can eat?  We tried,  Edward said. We tried rags and sawdust and clay and bread and they didn t work. I thought that maybe we could get a child and put him inside, maybe, but God, Albert, I don t want to do that, it s the kind of thing Dan would do.  Alan stared at the softly glowing wood floors, reflecting highlights from the soft lighting. He rubbed his stocking toes over the waxy finish and felt its shine. Don t do that, okay?  he said. I ll think of something. Let me sleep on it. Do you want to sleep here? I can make up the sofa.  Thanks, big brother,  Edward said. Thanks.  $A` @`ۭLA)<ۭC>yZZY@*** $A` @`ۭA @ۭ CZ[)[V@ Alan walked past his study, past the tableau of laptop and desk and chair, felt the pull of the story, and kept going, pulling his housecoat tighter around himself. The summer morning was already hotting up, and the air in the house had a sticky, dewy feel. He found Edward sitting on the sofa, with the sheets and pillowcases folded neatly next to him. I set out a couple of towels for you in the second-floor bathroom and found an extra toothbrush,  Alan said. If you want them.  Thanks,  Edward said, echoing in his empty chest. The thick rolls of his face were contorted into a caricature of sorrow. Where s Frederick?  Alan asked. Gone!  Edward said, and broke into spasms of sobbing. He s gone he s gone he s gone, I woke up and he was gone.  Alan shifted the folded linens to the floor and sat next to Edward. What happened?  You know what happened, Alan,  Edward said. You know as well as I do! Dave took him in the night. He followed us here and he came in the night and stole him away.  You don t know that,  Alan said, softly stroking Edward s greasy fringe of hair. He could have wandered out for a walk or something.  Of course I know it!  Edward yelled, his voice booming in the hollow of his great chest. Look!  He handed Alan a small, desiccated lump, like a black bean pierced with a paperclip wire. You showed me this yesterday--  Alan said. It s from a different finger!  Edward said, and he buried his face in Alan s shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. Have you looked for him?  Alan asked. I ve been waiting for you to get up. I don t want to go out alone.  We ll look together,  Alan said. He got a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, shoved his feet into Birkenstocks, and led Edward out the door. The previous night s humidity had thickened to a gray cloudy soup, swift thunderheads coming in from all sides. The foot traffic was reduced to sparse, fast-moving umbrellas, people rushing for shelter before the deluge. Ozone crackled in the air and thunder roiled seemingly up from the ground, deep and sickening. They started with a circuit of the house, looking for footprints, body parts. He found a shred of torn gray thrift-store shirt, caught on a rose bramble near the front of his walk. It smelled of the homey warmth of Edward s innards, and had a few of Frederick s short, curly hairs stuck to it. Alan showed it to Edward, then folded it into the change pocket of his wallet. They walked the length of the sidewalk, crossed Wales, and began to slowly cross the little park. Edward circumnavigated the little cement wading pool, tracing the political runes left behind by the Market s cheerful anarchist taggers, painfully bent almost double at his enormous waist. What are we looking for, Alan?  Footprints. Finger bones. Clues.  Edward puffed back to the bench and sat down, tears streaming down his face. I m so hungry,  he said. Alan, crawling around the torn sod left when someone had dragged one of the picnic tables, contained his frustration. If we can find Daniel, we can get Frederick and George back, okay?  All right,  Edward snuffled. The next time Alan looked up, Edward had taken off his scuffed shoes and grimy-gray socks, rolled up the cuffs of his tent-sized pants, and was wading through the little pool, piggy eyes cast downward. Good idea,  Alan called, and turned to the sandbox. A moment later, there was a booming yelp, almost lost in the roll of thunder, and when Alan turned about, Edward was gone. Alan kicked off his Birks and splashed up to the hems of his shorts in the wading pool. In the pool s center, the round fountainhead was a twisted wreck, the concrete crumbled and the dry steel and brass fixtures contorted and ruptured. They had long streaks of abraded skin, torn shirt, and blood on them, leading down into the guts of the fountain. Cautiously, Alan leaned over, looking well down the dark tunnel that had been scraped out of the concrete centerpiece. The thin gray light showed him the rough walls, chipped out with some kind of sharp tool. Edward?  he called. His voice did not echo or bounce back to him. Tentatively, he reached down the tunnel, bending at the waist over the rough lip of the former fountain. Deep he reached and reached and reached, and as his fingertips hit loose dirt, he leaned farther in and groped blindly, digging his hands into the plug of soil that had been shoveled into the tunnel s bend a few feet below the surface. He straightened up and climbed in, sinking to the waist, and tried to kick the dirt out of the way, but it wouldn t give--the tunnel had caved in behind the plug of earth. He clambered out, feeling the first fat drops of rain on his bare forearms and the crown of his head. A shovel. There was one in the little coach house in the back of his place, behind the collapsed boxes and the bicycle pump. As he ran across the street, he saw Krishna, sitting on his porch, watching him with a hint of a smile. Lost another one, huh?  he said. He looked as if he d been awake all night, now hovering on the brink of sleepiness and wiredness. A roll of thunder crashed and a sheet of rain hurtled out of the sky. Alan never thought of himself as a violent person. Even when he d had to throw the occasional troublemaker out of his shops, he d done so with an almost cordial force. Now, though, he trembled and yearned to take Krishna by the throat and ram his head, face first, into the column that held up his front porch, again and again, until his fingers were slick with the blood from Krishna s shattered nose. Alan hurried past him, his shoulders and fists clenched. Krishna chuckled nastily and Alan thought he knew who got the job of sawing off Mimi s wings when they grew too long, and thought, too, that Krishna must relish the task. Where you going?  Krishna called. Alan fumbled with his keyring, desperate to get in and get the keys to the coach house and to fetch the shovel before the new tunnels under the park collapsed. You re too late, you know,  Krishna continued. You might as well give up. Too late, too late!  Alan whirled and shrieked, a wordless, contorted war cry, a sound from his bestial guts. As his eyes swam back into focus, he saw Mimi standing beside Krishna, barefoot in a faded housecoat. Her eyes were very wide, and as she turned away from him, he saw that her stubby wings were splayed as wide as they d go, forming a tent in her robe that pulled it up above her knees. Alan bit down and clamped his lips together and found his keys. He tracked mud over the polished floors and the ancient, threadbare Persian rugs as he ran to the kitchen, snatching the coach-house keys from their hook over the sink. He ran back across the street to the little park, clutching his shovel. He jammed his head into the centerpiece and tried to see which way the tunnel had curved off when it turned, but it was too dark, the dirt too loose. He pulled himself out and took the shovel in his hands like a spear and stabbed it into the concrete bed of the wading pool, listening for a hollowness in the returning sound like a man thudding for a stud under drywall. The white noise of the rain was too high, the rolling thunder too steady. His chest heaved and his tears mingled with the rain streaking down his face as he stabbed, again and again, at the pool s bottom. His mind was scrambled and saturated, his vision clouded with the humid mist rising off his exertion-heated chest and the raindrops caught in his eyelashes. He splashed out of the wading pool and took the shovel to the sod of the park s lawn, picking an arbitrary spot and digging inefficiently and hysterically, the bent shovel tip twisting with each stroke. Suddenly strong hands were on his shoulders, another set prizing the shovel from his hands. He looked up and blinked his eyes clear, looking into the face of two young Asian police officers. They were bulky from the Kevlar vests they wore under their rain slickers, with kind and exasperated expressions on their faces. Sir,  the one holding the shovel said, what are you doing?  Alan breathed himself into a semblance of composure. I &  he started, then trailed off. Krishna was watching from his porch, grinning ferociously, holding a cordless phone. The creature that had howled at Krishna before scrambled for purchase in Alan s chest. Alan averted his eyes from Krishna s shit-eating, 911-calling grin. He focused on the cap of the officer in front of him, shrouded in a clear plastic shower cap to keep its crown dry. I m sorry,  he said. It was a--a dog. A stray, or maybe a runaway. A little Scottie dog, it jumped down the center of the fountain there and disappeared. I looked down and thought it had found a tunnel that caved in on it.  The officer peered at him from under the brim of his hat, dubiousness writ plain on his young, good-looking face. A tunnel?  Alan wiped the rain from his eyes, tried to regain his composure, tried to find his charm. It wasn t to be found. Instead, every time he reached for something witty and calming, he saw the streaks of blood and torn clothing, dark on the loose soil of the fountain s center, and no sooner had he dispelled those images than they were replaced with Krishna, sneering, saying, Lost another one, huh?  He trembled and swallowed a sob. I think I need to sit down,  he said, as calmly as he could, and he sank slowly to his knees. The hands on his biceps let him descend. Sir, do you live nearby?  one of the cops asked, close in to his ear. He nodded into his hands, which he d brought up to cover his face. Across the street,  he said. They helped him to his feet and supported him as he tottered, weak and heaving, to his porch. Krishna was gone once they got there. The cops helped him shuck his drenched shoes and socks and put him down on the overstuffed horsehide sofa. Alan recovered himself with an effort of will and gave them his ID. I m sorry, you must think I m an absolute lunatic,  he said, shivering in his wet clothes. Sir,  the cop who d taken the shovel from him said, we see absolute lunatics every day. I think you re just a little upset. We all go a little nuts from time to time.  Yeah,  Alan said. Yeah. A little nuts. I had a long night last night. Family problems.  The cops shifted their weight, showering the floor with raindrops that beaded on the finish. Are you going to be all right on your own? We can call someone if you d like.  No,  Alan said, pasting on a weak smile. No, that s all right. I ll be fine. I m going to change into some dry clothes and clean up and, oh, I don t know, get some sleep. I think I could use some sleep.  That sounds like an excellent idea,  the cop who d taken the shovel said. He looked around at the bookcases. You ve read all of these?  he asked. Naw,  Alan said, falling into the rote response from his proprietorship of the bookstore. What s the point of a bunch of books you ve already read?  The joke reminded him of better times and he smiled a genuine smile. $A` @`ۭ\A Tx@ bۭC[i!@ *** $A` @`ۭ$A @ۭ C!@ Though the stinging hot shower revived him somewhat, he kept quickening into panic at the thought of David creeping into his house in the night, stumping in on desiccated black child-legs, snaggled rictus under mummified lips. He spooked at imagined noises and thudding rain and the dry creaking of the old house as he toweled off and dressed. There was no phone in the mountain, no way to speak to his remaining brothers, the golems, his parents. He balled his fists and stood in the center of his bedroom, shaking with impotent worry. David. None of them had liked David very much. Billy, the fortune-teller, had been born with a quiet wisdom, an eerie solemnity that had made him easy for the young Alan to care for. Carlos, the island, had crawled out of their mother s womb and pulled himself to the cave mouth and up the face of their father, lying there for ten years, accreting until he was ready to push off on his own. But Daniel, Daniel had been a hateful child from the day he was born. He was colicky, and his screams echoed through their father s caverns. He screamed from the moment he emerged and Alan tipped him over and toweled him gently dry and he didn t stop for an entire year. Alan stopped being able to tell day from night, lost track of the weeks and months. He d developed a taste for food, real people food, that he d buy in town at the Loblaws Superstore, but he couldn t leave Davey alone in the cave, and he certainly couldn t carry the howling, shitting, puking, pissing, filthy baby into town with him. So they ate what the golems brought them: sweet grasses, soft berries, frozen winter fruit dug from the base of the orchards in town, blind winter fish from the streams. They drank snowmelt and ate pine cones and the baby Davey cried and cried until Alan couldn t remember what it was to live in a world of words and conversations and thought and reflection. No one knew what to do about Davey. Their father blew warm winds scented with coal dust and loam to calm him, but still Davey cried. Their mother rocked him on her gentlest spin cycle, but still Davey cried. Alan walked down the slope to Carl s landmass, growing with the dust and rains and snow, and set him down on the soft grass and earth there, but still Davey cried, and Carlos inched farther and farther toward the St. Lawrence seaway, sluggishly making his way out to the ocean and as far away from the baby as possible. After his first birthday, David started taking breaks from his screaming, learning to crawl and then totter, becoming a holy terror. If Alan left his schoolbooks within reach of the boy, they d be reduced to shreds of damp mulch in minutes. By the time he was two, his head was exactly at Alan s crotch height and he d greet his brother on his return from school by charging at full speed into Alan s nuts, propelled at unlikely speed on his thin legs. At three, he took to butchering animals--the rabbits that little Bill kept in stacked hutches outside of the cave mouth went first. Billy rushed home from his grade-two class, eyes crazed with precognition, and found David methodically wringing the animals  necks and then slicing them open with a bit of sharpened chert. Billy had showed David how to knap flint and chert the week before, after seeing a filmstrip about it in class. He kicked the makeshift knife out of Davey s hand, breaking his thumb with the toe of the hard leather shoes the golems had made for him, and left Davey to bawl in the cave while Billy dignified his pets  corpses, putting their entrails back inside their bodies and wrapping them in shrouds made from old diapers. Alan helped him bury them, and then found Davey and taped his thumb to his hand and spanked him until his arm was too tired to deal out one more wallop. Alan made his way down to the living room, the floor streaked with mud and water. He went into the kitchen and filled a bucket with soapy water and gathered up an armload of rags from the rag bag. Methodically, he cleaned away the mud. He turned his sopping shoes on end over the grate and dialed the thermostat higher. He made himself a bowl of granola and a cup of coffee and sat down at his old wooden kitchen table and ate mindlessly, then washed the dishes and put them in the drying rack. He d have to go speak to Krishna. $A` @`ۭACpۭC!@*** $A` @`ۭA @ۭ CIՉa0@ Natalie answered the door in a pretty sun dress, combat boots, and a baseball hat. She eyed him warily. I d like to speak to Krishna,  Alan said from under the hood of his poncho. There was an awkward silence. Finally, Natalie said, He s not home.  I don t believe you,  Alan said. And it s urgent, and I m not in the mood to play around. Can you get Krishna for me, Natalie?  I told you,  she said, not meeting his eyes, he s not here.  That s enough,  Alan said in his boss voice, his more-in-anger-than-in-sorrow voice. Get him, Natalie. You don t need to be in the middle of this--it s not right for him to ask you to. Get him.  Natalie closed the door and he heard the deadbolt turn. Is she going to fetch him, or is she locking me out? He was on the verge of hammering the buzzer again, but he got his answer. Krishna opened the door and stepped onto the dripping porch, bulling Alan out with his chest. He smiled grimly at Alan and made a well-go-on gesture. What did you see?  Alan said, his voice tight but under control. Saw you and that fat guy,  Krishna said. Saw you rooting around in the park. Saw him disappear down the fountain.  He s my brother,  Alan said. So what, he ain t heavy? He s fat, but I expect there s a reason for that. I ve seen your kind before, Adam. I don t like you, and I don t owe you any favors.  He turned and reached for the screen door. No,  Alan said, taking him by the wrist, squeezing harder than was necessary. Not yet. You said, Lost another one.  What other one, Krishna? What else did you see?  Krishna gnawed on his neatly trimmed soul patch. Let go of me, Andrew,  he said, almost too softly to be heard over the rain. Tell me what you saw,  Alan said. Tell me, and I ll let you go.  His other hand balled into a fist. Goddammit, tell me!  Alan yelled, and twisted Krishna s arm behind his back. I called the cops,  Krishna said. I called them again and they re on their way. Let me go, freak show.  I don t like you, either, Krishna,  Alan said, twisting the arm higher. He let go suddenly, then stumbled back as Krishna scraped the heel of his motorcycle boot down his shin and hammered it into the top of his foot. He dropped to one knee and grabbed his foot while Krishna slipped into the house and shot the lock. Then he hobbled home as quickly as he could. He tried to pace off the ache in his foot, but the throbbing got worse, so he made himself a drippy ice pack and sat on the sofa in the immaculate living room and rocked back and forth, holding the ice to his bare foot. $A` @`ۭ) >@*** $A` @`ۭA @ۭ C > > >@ Lyman had taken to showing up on Alan s stoop in the morning sometimes, on his way to work, for a cup of coffee. He d taken to showing up at Kurt s shop in the afternoon, sometimes, on his way home from work, to marvel at the kids  industry. His greybeard had written some code that analyzed packet loss and tried to make guesses about the crowd density in different parts of the Market, and Lyman took a proprietary interest in it, standing out by Bikes on Wheels or the Portuguese furniture store and watching the data on his PDA, comparing it with the actual crowds on the street. He d only hesitated for a second when Andrew asked him to be the inaugural advisor on ParasiteNet s board, and once he d said yes, it became clear to everyone that he was endlessly fascinated by their little adhocracy and its experimental telco potential. This party sounds like a great idea,  he said. He was buying the drinks, because he was the one with five-hundred-dollar glasses and a full-suspension racing bike. Lookit that,  he said. From the Greek s front window, they could see Oxford Street and a little of Augusta, and Lyman loved using his PDA and his density analysis software while he sat, looking from his colored map to the crowd scene. Lookit the truck as it goes down Oxford and turns up Augusta. That signature is so distinctive, I could spot it in my sleep. I need to figure out how to sell this to someone--maybe the cops or something.  He tipped Andy a wink. Kurt opened and shut his mouth a few times, and Lyman slapped his palm down on the table. You look like you re going to bust something,  he said. Don t worry. I kid. Damn, you ve got you some big, easy-to-push buttons.  Kurt made a face. You wanted to sell our stuff to luxury hotels. You tried to get us to present at the SkyDome. You re capable of anything.  The SkyDome would be a great venue for this stuff,  Lyman said settling into one of his favorite variations of bait-the-anarchist. The SkyDome was built with tax-dollars that should have been spent on affordable housing, then was turned over to rich pals of the premier for a song, who then ran it into the ground, got bailed out by the province, and then it got turned over to different rich pals. You can just shut up about the goddamned SkyDome. You d have to break both of my legs and carry me to get me to set foot in there.  About the party,  Adam said. About the party.  Yes, certainly,  Lyman said. Kurt, behave.  Kurt belched loudly, provoking a scowl from the Greek. $A` @`ۭ