Blackie’s Rod is flat on his back, sleeping with his mouth open. Blackie lies beside him chuckling to herself. What would happen if she poured a thimbleful of Triple Sec down his throat? Once, briefly, she was with a man, a sculptor, who wore a long skinny braid down his back. When he abused her she left him, only to be plagued by an extended fantasy about cutting the braid off. She would make a clean cut at the nape of the neck. She would take care to dispose of the braid without leaving a trace. She imagined tracking him to a crowded restaurant. He would be drunk, engaged in an animated conversation. Everybody at the table would be animated, drunk. She would slip past, barely visible in an overcoat and a hat, her face concealed by a delicate web of veil. With a very sharp, small pair of scissors, she would cut the braid off and slip it into her coat pocket. She’d drift around a little as if looking for someone, and then she’d walk out the door. She’d find a garbage can on the street and drop in the braid. She’d continue on to her own favorite restaurant and order the clam linguini. She’d flirt with the owner, who, she knew, harbored a special weakness.
Suddenly she finds herself prodding her Rod. “Rod! Rod!” she cries. “Wake up, darling!”
“Why?” he mumbles and, turning, throws an arm over her. “Why do I have to?”
“Because,” she says. “I’ve come to an important decision.”
“Yes, Blackie,” he mumbles. “Tell me quickly, will you. .”
“We must find a way to have more fun. We must!”
Already he is fast asleep, his nose mashed up against her armpit.
Blackie imagines the sculptor would finish the evening unaware his braid is gone. At evening’s end he would put on his overcoat, the one with the thick fur collar, and drive home. He’d peel off his clothes and tumble into bed. In the morning he’d take a shower. He’d reach for his braid to undo it and it would be gone. He would touch the back of his scalp first with one hand and then with the other. His palms flat against the back of his head he’d shout out a string of obscenities. He’d slam his fists together. He’d confront the inescapable.
That night Charter dreams he is a man made of paper. Lifted by the wind, he floats above a paper city, its windows, doors, bricks, and roof tiles all printed in colored inks. He wants to be dropped into the streets; he wants to wander among the shops and houses. But he is held suspended in the air without bone or muscle, a victim of the wind. He looks down at the city and calls out for help.
And then he gets his wish. He is dropped to the street and sees the walls of the city rise all around him. He wills himself to stand. But he is made of paper and can only lie on his back with the knowledge that sooner or later someone will step on his heart.
In the morning he sleeps in. There is a world of weight pressing down on him. Outside, the day is balmy and bright, a clear sky, a kind of sacred stillness until Blackie cuts loose—I need a bigger theater than this! — and Asthma, a screen door jangling behind her, dashes out of the house and into the cemetery. Just behind Dr. Swoboda’s obelisk she nearly stumbles over Pea Pod who, on her knees, is packing a freshly made hole with indeterminate refuse. Pea Pod looks up at Asthma with terror.
“What are you doing? Pea Pod!”
“Shut your trap,” Pea Pod implores her. “Mind your own business, Asthma!”
But Asthma is already poking around the hole.
“It’s my hair.” Pea Pod says it defensively. Asthma finds a tooth.
“It’s my tooth,” says Pea Pod. “All my teeth are there. Goldie keeps them. And my baby hair. I found this box. She keeps fingernails! Every time she cuts—”
Asthma is aghast.
“I’d hate it!” she tells Pea Pod ragefully. “If Blackie held onto, onto. . my own body’s stuff!” And she settles down beside her as Pea Pod finishes burying her hair, packing the top of the hole with earth. For a second they sit together behind the obelisk looking at the fresh spot of earth in the wet grass. Other than the birds, the cemetery is so still they can hear one another breathe. It is Asthma who breaks the silence. “What if all the mothers keep our bodies’ stuff?” she whispers in horror, lamenting. In the distance Blackie pounds away at The Boy Beamed to Mars.
A Sunday brunch on the lawn, Charter squirreled among the lilacs. Blackie’s Rod does all the talking. He speaks and cannot stop speaking. Asthma is silent. Brooding. Silence fills her head like small bells, the kind sewn to woolen Christmas hats, ringing. A kind of tinnitus of the soul. The child, Charter thinks, will break away any minute. Unspool like a dervish, maybe ramble among the graves.
Blackie’s Rod has his theories. . at the moment he is attempting to prove that Michelangelo did not exist. Blackie knows he is compelled to deny the existence of genius because he is no genius himself. He loves smaller men. Puvis de Chavannes, for instance. A painter who never learned how to paint. If Puvis de Chavannes were alive today, he’d be designing labels for cold cream and chowder.
Blackie’s Rod likes Senator Ratmutterer’s courage. Ratmutterer, too, has no love of genius. Both hate the pretentious Hollywood crowd, whereas Blackie torments herself with envy for Ava Gardner, who at this very moment Blackie knows is having one hell of a good time. Her Rod likes to think he is related to Rusas, Chaldea’s last king. A thing impossible to prove. He’s going on and on about Chaldea right now. Perhaps he speaks more intelligently about other things. It’s hard to say. Hard to say because no one can listen to him for long. She thinks he is like a negative vessel. A sinkhole. Things getting sucked into him. Air, for example. The minutes of the day. The passing of the hours.
Suddenly Asthma leaps up with a small, irritated cry and dashes into the house. For the next hour he cannot track her down. What Charter does not know — no one does — is that there is a trapdoor in the attic that opens onto the roof. The roof is steep, shingled in slate, but she makes her way to the chimney and perches there. In a sea of branches, she has a full view of the Circle below. She sees Charter doing his funny thing among the lilacs, slipping in and out of the shadows. She has never understood why he doesn’t just walk around like everybody else but, after all, Brightfellow is not everybody else! A small flock of crows break into the air above her; she gazes at them, excited by the closeness of their wings and bellies, their little feet. When she looks down, Charter is gone.
Just next door, Goldie’s jewelry, scattered on the dresser, glitters. Charter pockets some loose change. These women remind him of his mother. Her vanity, her restlessness, her fistfuls of paste and glass. He thinks that someday they will walk out, just as his mother did. Their houses too small, their lives too small; even their children are too small! Perhaps for the first time he thinks of his mother’s betrayal as the crime that eats up his life.
He knows the family is gone for the day and that he can take his time. Luxuriating, he rifles through Goldie’s Rod’s office. His coin collection is kept in heavy leather folders like talismans, and he has no idea as to their value, or how he can get money for them. But there is one thin little coin, possibly very ancient, stamped with a rooster-headed man with the tail of a snake. This he pockets, thinking: Wonder is the first of the passions. Was this. . Descartes? Yes! The rest comes to him: