But he was not. If anything, he was just the opposite. He found himself energized by the disaster. He clung to the branches and avidly watched as each corpse, each struggling survivor, passed by. And when dark had fallen completely, he hung on to the sounds of the night, each cry of misery and pain, each howl of terror, drawing strength from them.

The hurt and fear of others was like a balm to his own pain, draining it away. Never had he felt so strong, so alive!

He wanted more.

To his dismay, the waters receded too rapidly. Soon a boat came by and the soldiers upon it picked him from his branch like a stranded kitten. They took him to a church in the highlands that had been converted to a makeshift hospital where they patched his left eye and laid him down to rest.

But he couldn't rest! He had to be up and about, had to roam, had to drink in all the destruction, the loss, the death. He wandered the ruins along the edge of the slowly receding waters. He found children crying for their parents, for their brothers and sisters, grown-ups weeping for their mates, for their children. He found hundreds of dead animals—dogs, cats, cows, goats, chickens—and occasionally a dead person. If no one was in sight, he'd poke the dead folks with a stick to see if he could puncture their bloated remains.

The air was so heavy, so oppressive with misery, it was all he could do to keep from screeching with ecstatic laughter.

But he knew he had to keep quiet, had to look glum and lost like everyone else. Because he knew then that he was different from the people around him.

Different from everyone.

After that it took him years of trial and error, but he learned to hide his differentness from the world. Eventually he found legal, even productive ways to keep his hungers in check. And over the years he came to learn that he had traded one sort of sight in his left eye for another. It was that sight that had wrenched him from his sleep tonight.

His good eye blazing, he pushed the accelerator to the floor.

7

The Back Fence, Greenwich Village

Carol watched with relief as Jim returned from a quick trip to the rest room. She and Bill had had the table to themselves for a few moments and the atmosphere had become strained. Bill seemed so uptight when he was alone with her.

"How about another round?" Jim said.

Carol didn't want another drink—she had switched to Pepsi a while ago—and she didn't want Jim to have another, either. She wanted to say something, but not in front of Bill— anything not to sound like a nagging wife in front of Bill. So she held off.

Besides, he hadn't mentioned warts yet.

"One more," Bill said. "Then it's time to go."

They've both got hollow legs! she thought. Where were they putting it all?

"Carol?" Jim said, pointing at her glass.

She glanced down at the flat brown liquid that was nearing room temperature now, at the thin oily scum on its surface— Who's their dishwasher?—and decided to stick with what she had.

"I'm fine. And so are the two of you, I'd think."

"Nah!" Jim said with a laugh. "We're just getting started!"

He ordered two more beers, then turned back to Bill, pointing a finger at him.

"Quick! 'Theology is anthropology.' "

"Uh…" Bill squeezed his eyes shut. "Feuerbach, I think."

"Right. How about, 'We are proceeding toward a time of no religion at all.' "

"Bonhoeffer."

"I'm impressed!" Jim said.

"Do I detect a common thread in those quotes? Is the Village Atheist trying to make a point?"

Carol let her mind drift off. She might as well have been home in Monroe for all the attention they were paying her. It was quieter here in the Back Fence, at the corner of Bleecker and something. No live music, just records. "Boogaloo Down Broadway" was thumping softly in the background at the moment. The relative quiet had got Bill and Jim talking and they'd been going at it like two college freshmen debating the meaning of life, of everything!

Maybe it was a male thing. Male bonding—wasn't that what they called it?

Bill looked at her and smiled beatifically, obviously more comfortable with her now that Jim was here. He seemed to be at peace with himself. A man who knew himself, an idealist who was sure that he was doing exactly what he wanted with his life. She was certain there were ambitions and dissatisfactions bubbling under the surface there, but she detected none of the wild turmoil she knew to be raging within her husband, James the Skeptic, skewerer—was there such a word?—of Current Wisdom and Common Knowledge.

Oddly enough she found both extremes appealing.

She said, "I'm just glad to hear the two of you stop arguing for ten consecutive seconds."

"Didn't you know, Carol?" Bill said, poising the mouth of his Budweiser an inch from his lips. "Jim and I agreed long ago to disagree on everything."

"The hell we did!" Jim cried, and the two of them cracked up like schoolboys.

Jim suddenly stopped laughing. His face grew stern. "Wart's so funny about that?"

"Wart?" Carol said, immediately alert. "Did he say 'wart'?"

"Of course," Bill said. "Haven't you been listening? We've been talking about the wart in Vietnam all night."

"I'm thinking of going to business school," Jim said. "I wonder if Warton will accept me?"

"A good place to make love, not wart," Bill replied, nodding vigorously.

"That does it!" Carol said. Two of them! "No more for either of you. The bar is closed as far as you two are concerned. It's late and we're going home as soon as you finish those! And I'm driving!"

8

Carol clutched Jim's arm as they walked into the icy wind on their way to the car, which he had parked somewhere east of Washington Square. Suddenly he broke away and left her with Bill as he darted into an all-night deli. In a moment he was out again, carrying three oranges.

He began juggling them as he returned to the sidewalk. From there he led them along like a circus act, pausing under each streetlamp to show off in its cone of light, then moving on. He dropped them at least once between each lamp.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" she asked, amazed that he could juggle.

"In the living room," Jim said as he somehow managed to keep the oranges aloft in the dark.

"When?"

"I practice while I'm writing."

"How can you do that?"

"Not all writing is done at the typewriter. A lot of it's done in the head before you start hitting the keys."

Carol was suddenly uneasy. She didn't remember it being so dark and deserted-looking along this stretch earlier in the evening. It had seemed safer then.

"You know something, Jim?" Bill said. "I've always wanted to juggle. In fact, I'd give my right arm to juggle like that."

Jim burst out laughing and the oranges went rolling into the street. Carol began to laugh too.

A strange, whiny voice cut her off.

"Hey, you laughin' a' me, man?"

She looked around and saw a half dozen or more figures huddled at the edge of a vacant lot to their left.

"No," Jim said, good-naturedly. He pointed at Bill. "I'm laughing at him. He's crazy."

"Yeah, man? Well, I don' tink so. I tink you wuz laughin a' me!"

Carol felt Bill grip her upper arm.

"Let's head for the car, Jim," he said.

"Right."

Jim fell in on her other side and the three of them started up the street. But they didn't get far before they were surrounded by the gang. If that's what they were. All were a little underdressed for the weather, Carol noted, all on the thin side, all smaller than Jim or Bill, the ex-football players. But there were six of them.