It was toward the end of a rainy autumn afternoon. Since morning, every other fare had coughed or blown his nose right into the back of Moe's neck. He was sure he'd caught something; his nose was already tingling. The man in his fifties who'd just climbed in seemed to have dodged whatever was going around, Moe thought as he looked him over in the rearview mirror.
"Evening, mister."
"Good evening. Sweet Street, please. Number forty-two."
Moe must've heard wrong. He tried to think what other streets might sound like Sweet, which he'd never heard of. Not coming up with anything, he decided to ask the fare to repeat the address.
"Sorry, but… where'd you say again?"
"Forty-two Sweet Street."
"Sweet Street? You sure? I don't know any Sweet Street in this city, or around:"
"Few do," the stranger said. "Head for Granary Hall, and I'll tell you where to go from there"
Moe pulled out, awfully intrigued. After five years of driving around, he thought he knew his territory. A little more and he'd have had doubts about his passenger's seriousness. How could so "few" know of a street that a cabbie hadn't heard of it at all? But the man's gaze had fallen on the stash of books.
"Say, those books… Pardon me for being nosy, but I'm in the business: I'm a book dealer. Are you a collector?"
"Collector? Yeah, I mean… I collect them!"
"Hmm… eighteenth century? May I?" The book dealer extended a hand over the front seat. Moe grabbed two books and passed them to him.
"Thanks. Let's see now… ah! Father Margolin, an old friend! And what have we here? Mesambierre! Have you read these? What I mean to say is: Have you actually read them?"
"Sure, you gotta, it's a book. I mean, what else…"
Moe trailed off. In the rearview mirror, the book dealer frowned slightly. For him, books were for buying and selling before reading.
"Quite. But take fine wines, for example… Some bottles are so old, drinking them is no longer a possibility. They've become utterly undrinkable. Still, we don't pour them down the sink. So we keep them for display, like works of art."
"I read my books," said Moe.
His fare opened his mouth, as if about to sail that Father Margolin's sermons and Mesambierre's pastoral odes were completely indigestible today. He must have been afraid of insulting Moe, who gave every impression of having thoroughly enjoyed them. He changed his mind, shut his mouth, and set the dreadful octavo on the front seat.
"You sell books like these?" Moe asked.
"Yes, I deal in rare books. I traffic in books as old, but also as new-looking, as I can find. That's the trick of it, you see. You have to dig up three-hundred-year-old books that look fresh as newly laid eggs… Make a left here, and go straight. Where do you find your books?"
"Flea markets and yard sales."
"Yard sales can be good. It's surprising, what people put out on the sidewalk sometimes. Sorry, left, then the first right. I get most of my stock from auctions or private collectors. You have to take the good with the bad, buy whole libraries to treat yourself to a few nice pieces. I've got boxes full of Mesambierre, if you're interested."
Moe's eyes lit up. "Really?"
"Mesambierre and more… eighteenth and seventeenth of course, not very sought-after, but in good condition, at modest prices…"
"Stop here, please. Number 42 is just a bit farther down."
Moe felt cheated. Captivated by the conversation, he'd unthinkingly followed the book dealer's directions, his lefts and rights, and now they'd arrived at their destination, catching him off guard.
"This is Sweet Street? Are you sure?"
"Positively," his fare replied with a little laugh. "How much do I owe you?"
He paid, got out, and disappeared. The street was narrow; Moe had parked to let the man out, so he didn't have to drive off again right away. Now that he was alone, his curiosity about the little-known street got the better of him. He cut the engine, rummaged through the glove box, and pulled out from between two books a city map almost as worn out as they were. He knew it like a priest knows his breviary. With a quick glance, he gave himself a religious refresher. Sweet Street didn't exist, since it wasn't in the holy writ. But if it didn't exist, where had he brought his fare, and where was he right now? He swore. He stepped out of the car and, in his annoyance, slammed the door.
He looked around. Night was falling on Sweet Street. He took three steps without noticing a thing, then froze. There was something… in the air, or the light. Or in himself? No, not in him. He was just the same as before, when he'd picked up the book dealer. The same as he'd been at lunch, sitting down to lamb stew at the diner. The same as that night in Maria's arms, his face buried in her armpit. The same as last night at the apartment of his benefactress and godmother, whose birthday they'd been celebrating. The same as a year, a decade, or two earlier. So if the cause of this sensation-at once foreign and familiar, brandnew and very old-wasn't in him, it had to be somewhere around him.
Rain can be a friend-even a gray city rain. It can settle on your hands and forehead like a caress. Evening can hover in the air like a perfume, and the modest lights of daily life give off a glow like lanterns at a festival. Despite being unknown, Sweet Street was still lively and bustling. Without a care for the shower, a relaxed crowd thronged the sidewalks, clustering about the shop windows. The owners of a large fruit and vegetable stall praised their product in stentorian tones. Moe had to admit he hadn't seen apples that beautiful since… He tried to find something to compare them to, but all he could come up with were things he'd read. No apple in his memory could equal them except the golden ones from the Garden of the Hesperides, in a little book of stories from Greco-Roman mythology. Taken all together, the jumble of fruits and vegetables on display recalled to him the cornucopia on a banknote long since out of circulation. Right away he bought a small bag of apples and another of tomatoes for Maria and the girls. A few yards down, a baker right out of an operetta, plump and tempting as a cream puff in her white apron, sold him an archetypal loaf that seemed to have come more from an artist's brush than a breadmaker's hands. He brought his purchases back to the car before heading off again in search of the street sign the sight of which would alone settle the disbelief that continued quietly to haunt him.
He struck out toward where his fare had vanished: the far end of the street. He soon passed forty-two and had reached sixty-four when he stopped again in surprise. In the lengthening shadows, the street that appeared on no official city maps, which he himself had never heard of before tonight, was in fact quite a long one. He kept walking. The shops went by one after the next. Pigs' and calves' heads in the butchers' windows-their eyes closed, their nostrils stuffed with parsley-seemed to be laughing contentedly in a dream. Before a scene of garter belts and gauzy stockings, thongs and the lace-eyeleted brassieres in a lingerie boutique, he stopped, filled with wonder like a child before a nativity scene. Just as he was tearing himself away from his examination, a human projectile shot out from a porch and ran straight into him. He went hurtling backward. His skull smashed into a lamppost, and he collapsed, taking a scooter parked by the sidewalk down with him as he went.
He woke to find himself in a chair, in the neon glow of a pharmacy. An assistant was tapping his right hand while another bandaged the wound on his left. An older woman, also in white, was dabbing at his head with arnica. Their kindly faces were pressed together before the window, in the sign's green light. Right in front of Moe, her skateboard under her arm, a girl in a hot pink tracksuit with green stripes was watching Moe with relief.