As he got out of the elevator, he heard the ringing of a phone and sensed — though how could he be sure? — that it was coming from his apartment. It took him a while to find his key, to get it out of his pocket, to get it into the lock, to get the door opened. It took a while. And the more he hurried, the longer it seemed to take — his back as burdensome now as it had been at its worst. Just as he got the door open, the ringing stopped. Could he know what he had lost? He sat down, cautious of himself, in the stiff-backed leather chair and waited with dim and undefined prospect for the phone to ring again. Narrowing down the possibilities, Peter decided that it was Diane who had called, or possibly Lois, or Oscar Patton, or even — it was not impossible — his son Phil. It could even have been a wrong number. Not knowing was always worse for Peter than knowing the worst. If the call had been important, he decided, making an effort to keep himself awake, the phone would most likely ring again, but it didn’t. Or if it did, he had no recollection of it in his dreams.
If he remembered anything, it was the thumping on his door, a series of thunderous knocks that actually seemed to shake the walls of the room. As Peter went to answer it, the door cracked loose from its hinges, capsized murderously in front of him a few inches from his feet.
“I didn’t mean it, Pop,” someone said, a huge boy lumbering in. (Peter, who was six foot two himself, came up to the boy’s chin.) “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”
Pop? Peter looked around to see what the boy’s father was like — another, even larger monster perhaps — but there was no one else there.
“Phil?”
“Pop.” They embraced, the son almost crushing the father with his enormous arms. Why hadn’t his in-laws told him that the boy was almost a giant, almost a freak of a creature, too big to be kept in a New York apartment? (He would do his best, he vowed, to make room for his son.)
There was a party going on in his living room, dancing and drinking, a couple on the couch making love with their clothes on. He was embarrassed to bring the boy in; enormous as he was, he was only thirteen, an innocent.
“Everyone will have to go home now,” he announced in a loud voice. Lois, dancing with Herbie, waved to him. No one else seemed to notice him. “The party is over,” he yelled. Phil stood next to him, staring, mouth agape, his tongue hanging out, lolling like a dog’s.
“Let’s go to a movie, Phil. How about a movie, boy?” Peter tugged at his son’s arm.
His jaw hanging as though dislodged, Phil continued to stare blankly ahead of him. One of the girls, a secretary from Peter’s office, was doing a strip on an improvised stage in the center of the living room, the others standing in a circle around her, clapping, chanting: “Shake those tits, rock that ass.” It was no place for a young boy.
Peter pleaded with Lois for help. “What do you want me to do?” she said. “He’s not my son. Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with him, Peter? He looks rabid to me. When I was a kid we had a dog that got like that and we had to gas him.”
“Nothing’s wrong with him,” Peter insisted. “He’s just big for his age. If he were smaller, you’d think his behavior was perfectly normal.”
The boy was guffawing at something.
“Phil, what are you laughing at? Cut it out. Everyone’s looking at you. Cut it out.”
“You may have to gas him,” Lois said.
“What are you saying? It’s just that he’s probably not used to crowds. Come on, Phil. Let’s get out of here. Come on, son.”
Diane went by. Like a sleepwalker, his arms out in front of him, Phil lumbered after her, knocking over, not meaning to, whoever was in his way. Peter couldn’t watch.
Someone screamed.
“Let’s get out of here,” Lois said, “before the police come.”
“What’s happening?” he asked. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s just trampled a little girl,” someone said, “and all she did, the little thing, was offer him a flower.”
“Phil,” Peter called. “Phil, come here.”
“They got him now,” the man next to him said — Peter remembered him as the fight fan from the park. “They’ll teach the boy that in this country of ours you got to make a fair fight. Oh, if only Dempsey were still around, or Willard, or any of the good old boys …”
When Peter tried to get to the boy, no longer able to see him, Lois held him back. “That’s a mean crowd, Peter. If I were you I wouldn’t get too close, and whatever you do, don’t let them know he’s a friend of yours.”
Friend? Peter pushed his way into the crowd. “Let me through,” he yelled, knocking people out of his way, someone always in front of him blocking his view. One of the men he had knocked down, he noticed, was his father. “Sorry,” he said, “but my son’s in there somewhere.”
“My son too,” the old man said. “What’s his name? Maybe we got the same son.”
“Pop,” Phil called as though from a long way off, a child’s frightened voice. “Don’t let them hurt me.”
“I’m coming, Phil,” he called back. He had tears in his throat for his son. “Leave the boy alone,” he tried to say, his voice trapped in his throat. “I’ll put in the hospital the next man who touches my son.”
“Fuck off, buddy.” Someone tripped him.
“Pop …” The voice much fainter than before. “Pop …” Fainter still. It was an agony to listen.
As soon as Peter got to his feet, he was tripped again. Two policemen were sitting on him, one holding down his hands, the other his feet.
“I haven’t had so much fun,” the fatter of the two said, “since I shot my own son for running away.”
“I know what you mean,” the other said. “Kids nowadays are spoiled silly by their parents.”
Somehow Peter got up. The crowd had dispersed and he saw clearly that his son was dead, a huge formless carrion, vultures gnawing at the flesh, a dead girl lying next to him, a woman in black crying over the bodies.
“I’m responsible,” he announced, “but I’m innocent.” He tried to flee, though there was nowhere to go, a network of police surrounding him.
He leaped toward the ceiling. Shots. A bullet catching him in the back. He kept going, his hands out in front of him like a diver. The ceiling yielded, and suddenly he was outside, free of everything, flying. The air like water. The only problem was: Which way to fly? And did it matter? There seemed to be too many choices and no means of making a choice. No place he wanted to go. It struck him that his son Phil was dead, Diane also perhaps. He continued to fly straight up (or was it down?) — imprisoned, in his freedom, by regret. “Forgive me, Phil,” he said. “Forgive me, Father.” He had a feeling that no matter how far he flew he would never arrive anywhere. It was what he remembered first — the first and last of his knowledge — when he awoke.