The Throat

I began walking up Fifth Avenue, looking at all the people going to work, and saw Charlie concealing his motorboat behind the tall reeds at the edge of Lily Sheehan's property. He jumped out onto damp ground, letting the boat drift back out into the lake. He moved through the reeds and wiped his face and hands with his handkerchief. Then he dabbed at the damp places on his suit. He stopped a moment to comb his hair and straighten his necktie. No lights showed in Lily's windows. He moved quickly across the long lawn toward her porch.

At Fourteenth Street I stopped for a cup of coffee. At Twenty-fourth Street Lily came out of her kitchen and found Charlie Carpenter standing inside her front door.Decided to stop off on your way to work, Charlie? She was wearing a long white cotton robe printed with little blue flowers, and her hair was shapeless. I saw that Lily had recently applied eggplant-colored polish to her toenails. You're full of surprises.

Then it stopped moving, at least until it would start again. At Fifty-second Street, I went into the big B. Dalton to look for some books. In the religion section downstairs I bought Gnosticism, by Benjamin Walker, The Nag Hammadi Library, and The Gospel According to Thomas. I took the books outside and decided to walk to Central Park.

When I got past the zoo I sat on a bench, took out my notebook, and looked for Charlie Carpenter and Lily Sheehan. They had not moved. Lily was still saying You're full of surprises, and Charlie Carpenter was still standing inside her front door with his hands in his pockets, smiling at her like a little boy. They both looked very fine, but I was not thinking about them now. I was thinking about the body squad and Captain Havens. I remembered the strange, disordered men with whom I had spent that time and saw them before me, in our shed. I remembered my first body, and Ratman's story about Bobby Swett, who had disappeared into a red mist. Mostly, I could see Ratman as he was telling the story, his eyes angry and sparkling, his finger jabbing, his whole being coming to life as he talked about the noise the earth made by itself. Ratman seemed astonishingly young now—skinny, with a boy's unfinished skinniness.

Then, without wanting to, I remembered some of what happened later, as I occasionally do when a nightmare wakes me up. I had to get up off the bench, and I shoved my notebook in my pocket and started walking aimlessly through the park. I knew from experience that it would be hours before I could work or even speak normally to anyone. I felt as though I were walking over graves—as though a lot of people like Ratman and di Maestro, both of whom had only been boys too young to vote or drink, lay a few feet beneath the grass. I tensed up when I heard someone coming up behind me. It was time to go home. I turned around and went toward what I hoped was Fifth Avenue. A pigeon beat its wings and jumped into the air, and a circle of grass beneath it flattened out in the pattern made by an ascending helicopter.

It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps.

I saw the face of the man I had killed on a Chinese man carrying his daughter on his shoulders. He jumped up on an almost invisible trail. His face looked frozen—it was almost funny, all that amazement. I watched the Chinese man carry his daughter toward a Sabrett's hot dog cart. The girl's round face filled like a glass with serious, gleeful concentration. Her father held a folded dollar in his hand. He was carrying a ridiculous old rifle that was probably less accurate than a BB gun. He got a hot dog wrapped in white tissue and handed it up to his daughter. No ketchup, no mustard, no sauerkraut. Just your basic hot dog experience. I raised my M-16 and I shot him in the throat and he fell straight down. It looked like a trick.

Charlie Carpenter and Lily Sheehan had turned away from me, they were grinding their teeth and wailing.

I sat down on a bench in the sun. I was sweating. I was not sure if I had been going east toward Fifth Avenue, or west, deeper into the park. I slowly inhaled and exhaled, trying to control the sudden panic. It was just a bad one. It was just a little worse than normal. It was nothing too serious. I grabbed one of the books I had bought and opened it at random. It was The Gospel According to Thomas, and here is what I read:

The Kingdom of Heaven

Is like a woman carrying a jug

Full of meal on a long journey.

When the handle broke,

The meal streamed out behind her, so that

She never noticed anything was wrong, until

Arriving home, she set the jug down

And found that it was empty.

    The Kingdom of Heaven

Is like a man who wished to assassinate a noble.

He drew his sword at home, and struck it against the wall,

To test whether his hand were strong enough.

Then he went out, and killed the noble.

I thought of my father drinking in the alley behind the St. Alwyn Hotel. Hard Millhaven sunlight bounced and dazzled from the red bricks and the oil-stained concrete. Drenched in dazzling light, my father raised his pint and drank.

I stood up and found that my legs were still shaking. I sat down again before anyone could notice. Two young women on the next bench laughed at something, and I glanced over at them.

One of them said, 'You are sworn to secrecy. Let us begin at the beginning.'

Back on Grand Street I typed my notes into the computer and printed them out. I saw that I had mapped out the next few days' work. I thought of going downstairs for lunch so I could show Maggie Lah those enigmatic, barbaric verses from the gnostic gospel, but remembered it was Friday, one of the days she worked on her philosophy M.A. at NYU. I went into my own kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Fastened to the door is a photograph I cut out of the New York Times the day after Ted Bundy was executed. It shows his mother holding a telephone receiver to her ear while she plugs her other ear with an index finger. She has bangs and big glasses and concentration has pulled her thick eyebrows together. The caption is Louise Bundy, of Tacoma, Wash.,