transferred him to the uptown store so he would be among people who didn’t know about his breakdown.
Not that they hadn’t found out soon enough. He remembered the girl from Better Dresses asking him when he had sat next to her at the picnic. It had been a mistake; she had been like all the rest, a single woman looking frantically for the kind of man who would never consider her if she found him, a handsome, wealthy, athletic college man who was sensitive, intelligent, cultured, and completely blind to what she was.
He laughed softly to himself.
And yet was he any better? Yes, he thought. Yes, I am. I’m willing to admit what I am.
But what am I? Surely not God, and it was God who said,
He hung up his topcoat, his jacket, and his tie and put on water for coffee; his feet hurt, as they did at the end of each day. While he pulled off his shoes, he found himself wondering whether there was any brandy left—not from then, not from that night. He could not remember when it had been, but it had been a long time ago.
The built-in cabinet in the living room held half a bottle of rum. He could not recall buying it and thought it might have been left by another tenant, but it reminded him of the captain he had been for one night, and the captain’s desk. He stirred an inch of rum into the mug of instant he prepared for himself, on top of the cream and sugar.
The carton was tied with heavy cord. He carried his coffee back into the kitchen, got out the large knife he sometimes used to slice onions, and sharpened it.
For a moment he waited, fingering the edge, sipping his rum and coffee, smiling a little. There was a pleasant excitement in not knowing what might be in the carton or even if it was his at all. The custodian was old and might easily (he told himself) have fastened his tag on the wrong container. He looked through his tape collection for an appropriate one to put on the stereo, and settled in the end for
He cut the string and flipped back the cardboard flaps. A thick sweater-vest lay on top. He picked it up and admired it; it was of that light brownish tan they called camel, thick and soft, with a V-neck and buttons up the front—just the thing, he told himself, to keep the wind from his chest while he waited for the bus. As he searched it for its labels, he congratulated himself on remembering these things.
It was a Medium, which should fit him well. A second label announced that it was one hundred percent virgin wool, that it should be dry-cleaned only, and that it had been made in Toronto—that would be Canada, he thought. He carried it to the closet and hung it with his topcoat and jacket.
When he had pulled the sweater from the carton, he had been careful not to look at the next item. Now he rubbed his hands in anticipation as he returned to it for his second discovery.
It was a pair of gloves, gloves of soft dark leather lined with fur. Never worn—the store’s price-tag still dangled from the plastic cord that bound the two together. He cut it, pulled them on, and punched the air, although he had never boxed. They fit him perfectly, and he imagined himself playing the piano in them, although he could not really play the piano. The stereo had launched into
Next was a long, knit muffler of bark brown, and under it the overcoat he had remembered. He took them from the carton, thrust his arms in the wide sleeves of the coat, and wound the muffler about his neck. Both seemed to exude palpable warmth. He went into his bedroom and stood before the mirror to button the overcoat, which fit just loosely enough for him to be sure it would be perfect with a jacket under it. While feeling its thickly napped material with his hands, he discovered that there was something in one of the side pockets.
It was a map. Too warm already, he took off the coat and laid it on his bed, seated himself beside it, and opened the map on his knees.
The area depicted seemed to be heavily forested and almost without roads, traversed mostly by narrow blue streams marked with rapid after rapid. Its highest elevation was Mt. Hieros; judging from its white center, Mt. Hieros was capped with snow. There was nothing to indicate where either the mapped tract or its mountain might be. Straggling letters stretching from one corner of the map to the opposite corner spelled OVERWOOD.
He shook his head, refolded the map, and tossed it onto his dresser for further study after dinner. He had not been to the Italian place in a long time. It had been conveniently near his old apartment—the neighborhood of his old apartment had returned to his mind vividly now—but it was ten blocks or more from this one, and he had not relished the walk. Now he found that he was not only hungry but eager to test his reclaimed winter clothing against the wind. He put on his second-best shoes, the sweater-vest, his jacket, and the gloves, added the muffler, and last of all wrapped himself in the long, dark overcoat.
Outside, the wind refused to cooperate. It had vanished with the daylight, leaving a clear cold night in which the air seemed to stand upon shelves of glass, like crystal goblets in Fine China. He hurried along admiring the ghostly plume of his own breath, his body warm, his cheeks nipped by frost.
Mama Capini was still there, and she remembered him, though he scarcely remembered her. She welcomed him back and presented him with a straw-cushioned bottle of Chianti on the house. He ordered lasagna, drank several glasses of the wine, and collided full-tilt with another patron as he was leaving.
The accident was only an embarrassment; he apologized, the stolid middle-aged man he had bumped told him to think nothing of it, and it was over. Yet it made him aware that there was something in the breast pocket of his overcoat, something long and hard and irregularly shaped. His first guess was that it was another bottle, his second that it was a gun; but it seemed oddly made for either. When he took off one glove and explored the object with his