Koko

an adult American male. Knowing what he knew. That he could do anything, really anything he wanted to, at this one golden godlike point in his life. The sexual thing blasting through him.

Let someone say it was bad—they had not been there. If your body spoke that loudly, how could it be bad?

Sometimes a man was blessed, that was what it came down to. Sometimes a man touched pure original power and felt it take over his whole body—sometimes, maybe once in your life, you knew whole worlds were coming out of your cock because at that moment nothing you did could be wrong.

His life was finally coming full circle. I almost laughed out loud, Harry thought, and then did laugh out loud. He and Koko were going to go back there again, to the hot center of their lives. When he came out of the cave this time, he was going to come out a hero.

Exultant, Harry turned back toward his apartment.

2

But by six Harry felt his energy finally begin to consume itself and turn into anger and doubt. Why was he sitting here, in the middle of this messy apartment, in these ridiculous Action Man clothes? Who was he trying to kid? He had finally lived long enough to be able to see what happened to his best, highest moments when their goals were suspended. The world turned black. Harry knew this had nothing to do with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or anything else undergone by weaker, shallower people than he. The blackness was simply him, part of what had always set him apart. At such times whatever it was that he wanted and needed and knew he was going to get faded away into a vaguer and vaguer future, and his whole character seemed no more than a facade of competence and stability over a spinning chaos. Once he had been on trial, accused of murdering civilians, and the world had come close to judging him a madman—what had been filled with blazing Tightness was coldly evaluated as the act of a criminal. The demons had come in very close that time, he had heard them snicker and seen the red glitter of their eyes, felt the terror and emptiness they brought with them.

The demons had known his secret.

If Koko called him back, the world itself was in its proper shape: the center was the center, which was the secret, and the power of what Harry Beevers had felt and done radiated out through the rest of his life and took him where he had to be. Why else had Koko appeared?

Koko had appeared again in the world to give himself to Harry Beevers, he thought, writing this sentence in his mind as he half-heartedly watched a man turned dusty brown by makeup predict the weather for the next five days.

At ten o’clock he heard the radio repeating the same news—the earthquake, the flood, the dead children, disaster skimming over the planet like a great black bird that touched down with a claw here and toppled buildings with a wingbeat there, unseen, always moving.

Half an hour later one of its great wings seemed to flap directly over his head. He had given in and made a drink—his only one, to calm his nerves. Harry was pouring vodka into a glass when the telephone rang, and he sloshed some of the liquid onto the counter. He hurried into the living room just as Michael Poole identified himself.

Stay there another two days, Harry silently said, but heard Poole’s voice telling him of arriving the next day on a certain flight at a certain hour. Then Poole spoke of going to the police. Poole’s voice was earnest and concerned and kindly, and in its cadences Harry Beevers could hear the collapse of all his designs.

Later in the evening Harry got hungry, but could not stomach the thought of eating more Chinese food. Also nauseating was the idea of Michael Poole and Tim Underhill, both of whom had seemed to give up on sex, being with Maggie Lah—only he would really know what to do with a girl like that. This was so funny it hurt. He went to his refrigerator, thinking almost angrily about Maggie Lah, and found within it a couple of apples, a few carrots, a wedge of cheese already beginning to go dry and hard.

Resentfully Harry dropped most of these things on a plate and carried it into the living room. If nothing happened—if his instincts had been so entirely wrong—he would have to go out to the airport and try to muzzle Poole. Maybe he could send him somewhere else for a day or two.

Late at night Harry sat in the dark with the telephone and answering machine before him, sipping his drink and watching the red message light on the machine. In the silver city light coming through the window, everything looked poised. Countless times Harry had waited like this in the jungle, not moving, the world suspended around him.

Then the telephone rang, and the message light began to blink. Harry extended his hand and waited for the caller to identify himself. The tape switched on, and a second of silence hissed through the speaker. Harry lifted the receiver and said, “I’m here.”

It was not until then that he knew: he heard Koko waiting for him to say more.

“Talk to me,” Harry said.

Tape hiss came through the little speaker in the answering machine.

“Backwards and forwards, isn’t that right? You wrote that? I know what you mean. I know—you want to go back to the beginning.”

He thought he heard a soft slow intake of breath.

“This is how we’re going to do it. I want you to meet me in a certain place, a safe place. Called Columbus Park, right on the edge of Chinatown. From there we can cross the street and go into the Criminal Court building, where you will also be safe. I know people there. These people trust me. They will do whatever I say. I will take you into a private room. You’ll be able to sit down. Everything will be over. Do you hear me?”

Hissing silence.

“But I want to be certain that I will be safe too. I want to see that you will do what I ask you to do. So I want you to take a certain route to Columbus Park, and I will be watching you all along this route. I want to see you follow my orders exactly. I want to see that you do exactly what I ask you to do.”

When no words came from Koko, Harry said, “Tomorrow afternoon at ten minutes to three, I want you to start on Bowery, across from the north end of Confucius Plaza. Enter an arcade in the middle of the block between Canal and Bayard and walk through the arcade to Elizabeth Street. Turn left and go to Bayard Street. Walk west on Bayard until you come to Mulberry Street. Across the street is Columbus Park. Go across and enter the park. Go down the path and sit on the first bench. In exactly two minutes I will enter the park from the southern end and join you on the bench. Then it will all be over.”

Harry took a deep breath. He could feel his whole upper body sweating into the turtleneck. He wanted to say something else—something like we both need to do this—but the other end of the line clicked down, and the dial tone began.

Harry sat for a long time in the dark. Then he switched on the desk lamp and called the Tenth Precinct. Without giving his name, he left a message for Lieutenant Murphy that Timothy Underhill would be arriving at La Guardia airport at two o’clock the next afternoon on a Republic flight from Milwaukee.

That night he lay awake in bed a long time, indifferent to sleep.

3

Crime and death surrounded the elephant, crime and death were the atmosphere through which he moved, the air he pulled into his lungs through his long grey trunk. And this is one thing Koko knew: though you move through the city the jungle stares at you, every step. There is no jungle but the jungle, and it grows beneath the sidewalks, behind the windows, on the other sides of the doors. Birds cry out in the midst of traffic.

If he could have gone up to the old lady on West End Avenue, she would have dressed him in fine clothes and tamed him by easing his heart. But Pilophage the Doorman had turned him away, and the mad beasts had growled and shown their teeth, and his heart had not been eased.

The door opened, and—

The door opened, and Blood the Butcher slid into the room. Here was the demon Misfortune, and with the demon came the wire-haired bat, Fear.

Koko sat alone in his room, his cell, his egg, his cave. The light burned, and the egg the cell the cave caged all the light and reflected it from wall to wall, let none escape for Koko needed it every bit.