hairs standing out in your pores. That identical look on your face.'
'What look?' I said.
'Haunted, ashen, lost.'
It was nine days before they told us we could go back home.
III Dylarama
22
The supermarket is full of elderly people who look lost among the dazzling hedgerows. Some people are too small to reach the upper shelves; some people block the aisles with their carts; some are clumsy and slow to react; some are forgetful, some confused; some move about muttering with the wary look of people in institutional corridors.
I pushed my cart along the aisle. Wilder sat inside, on the collapsible shelf, trying to grab items whose shape and radiance excited his system of sensory analysis. There were two new developments in the supermarket, a butcher's corner and a bakery, and the oven aroma of bread and cake combined with the sight of a bloodstained man pounding at strips of living veal was pretty exciting for us all.
'Dristan Ultra, Dristan Ultra.'
The other excitement was the snow. Heavy snow predicted, later today or tonight. It brought out the crowds, those who feared the roads would soon be impassable, those too old to walk safely in snow and ice, those who thought the storm would isolate them in their homes for days or weeks. Older people in particular were susceptible to news of impending calamity as it was forecast on TV by grave men standing before digital radar maps or pulsing photographs of the planet. Whipped into a frenzy, they hurried to the supermarket to stock up before the weather mass moved in. Snow watch, said the forecasters. Snow alert. Snowplows. Snow mixed with sleet and freezing rain. It was already snowing in the west. It was already moving to the east. They gripped this news like a pygmy skull. Snow showers. Snow flurries. Snow warnings. Driving snow. Blowing snow. Deep and drifting snow. Accumulations, devastations. The old people shopped in a panic. When TV didn't fill them with rage, it scared them half to death. They whispered to each other in the checkout lines. Traveler's advisory, zero visibility. When does it hit? How many inches? How many days? They became secretive, shifty, appeared to withhold the latest and worst news from others; appeared to blend a cunning with their haste, tried to hurry out before someone questioned the extent of their purchases. Hoarders in a war. Greedy, guilty.
I saw Murray in the generic food area, carrying a Teflon skillet. I stopped to watch him for a while. He talked to four or five people, occasionally pausing to scrawl some notes in a spiral book. He managed to write with the skillet wedged awkwardly under his arm.
Wilder called out to him, a tree-top screech, and I wheeled the cart over.
'How is that good woman of yours?'
'Fine,' I said.
'Does this kid talk yet?'
'Now and then. He likes to pick his spots.'
'You know that matter you helped me with? The Elvis Presley power struggle?'
'Sure. I came in and lectured.'
'It turns out, tragically, that I would have won anyway.'
'What happened?'
'Cotsakis, my rival, is no longer among the living.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means he's dead.'
'Dead?'
'Lost in the surf off Malibu. During the term break. I found out an hour ago. Came right here.'
I was suddenly aware of the dense environmental texture. The automatic doors opened and closed, breathing abruptly. Colors and odors seemed sharper. The sound of gliding feet emerged from a dozen other noises, from the sublittoral drone of maintenance systems, from the rustle of newsprint as shoppers scanned their horoscopes in the tabloids up front, from the whispers of elderly women with talcumed faces, from the steady rattle of cars going over a loose manhole cover just outside the entrance. Gliding feet. I heard them clearly, a sad numb shuffle in every aisle.
'How are the girls?' Murray said.
'Fine.'
'Back in school?'
'Yes.'
'Now that the scare is over.'
'Yes. Steffie no longer wears her protective mask.'
'I want to buy some New York cuts,' he said, gesturing toward the butcher.
The phrase seemed familiar, but what did it mean?
'Unpackaged meat, fresh bread,' he went on. 'Exotic fruits, rare cheeses. Products from twenty countries. It's like being at some crossroads of the ancient world, a Persian bazaar or boom town on the Tigris. How are you, Jack?'
What did he mean, how are you?
'Poor Cotsakis, lost in the surf,' I said. 'That enormous man.'
'That's the one.'
'I don't know what to say.'
'He was big all right.'
'Enormously so.'
'I don't know what to say either. Except better him than me.'
'He must have weighed three hundred pounds.'
'Oh, easily.'
'What do you think, two ninety, three hundred?'
'Three hundred easily.'
'Dead. A big man like that.', 'What can we say?'
'I thought I was big.'
'He was on another level. You're big on your level.'
'Not that I knew him. I didn't know him at all.'
'It's better not knowing them when they die. It's better them than us.'
'To be so enormous. Then to die.'
'To be lost without a trace. To be swept away.'
'I can picture him so clearly.'
'It's strange in a way, isn't it,' he said, 'that we can picture the dead.'
I took Wilder along the fruit bins. The fruit was gleaming and wet, hard-edged. There was a self-conscious quality about it. It looked carefully observed, like four-color fruit in a guide to photography. We veered right at the plastic jugs of spring water and headed for the checkout. I liked being with Wilder. The world was a series of fleeting gratifications. He took what he could, then immediately forgot it in the rush of a subsequent pleasure. It was this forgetfulness I envied and admired.
The woman at the terminal asked him a number of questions, providing her own replies in a babyish voice.
Some of the houses in town were showing signs of neglect. The park benches needed repair, the broken streets needed resurfacing. Signs of the times. But the supermarket did not change, except for the better. It was well- stocked, musical and bright. This was the key, it seemed to us. Everything was fine, would continue to be fine,
