What Sifkitz said instead was, “Who are you to tell me I can’t get fit? Do you want me to die at fifty? Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?”

Freddy said, “I ain’t no philosopher, Mac. All I know is that my truck needs a tune-up I can’t afford.”

“And I’ve got one kid who needs orthopedic shoes and another one who needs speech therapy,” Whelan added.

“The guys working on the Big Dig in Boston have got a saying,” Berkowitz said. “‘Don’t kill the job, let it die on its own.’ That’s all we’re asking, Sifkitz. Let us dip our beaks. Let us earn our living.”

“This is crazy,” Sifkitz muttered. “Totally-”

“I don’t give a shit how you feel about it, you motherfucker!” Freddy shouted, and Sifkitz realized the man was almost crying. This confrontation was as stressful for them as it was for him. Somehow realizing that was the worst shock of all. “I don’t give a shit about you, you ain’t nothing, you don’t work, you just piddle around and make your little pitchers, but don’t you take the bread out of my kids’ mouths, you hear? Don’t you do it!”

He started forward, hands rolling into fists and coming up in front of his face: an absurd John L. Sullivan boxing pose. Berkowitz put a hand on Freddy’s arm and pulled him back.

“Don’t be a hardass about it, man,” Whelan said. “Live and let live, all right?”

“Let us dip our beaks,” Berkowitz repeated, and of course Sifkitz recognized the phrase; he’d read The Godfather and seen all the movies. Could any of these guys use a word or a slang phrase that wasn’t in his own vocabulary? He doubted it. “Let us keep our dignity, man. You think we can go to work drawing pictures, like you?” He laughed. “Yeah, right. If I draw a cat, I gotta write CAT underneath so people know what it is.”

“You killed Carlos,” Whelan said, and if there had been accusation in his voice, Sifkitz had an idea he might have been angry all over again. But all he heard was sorrow. “We told him, ‘Hold on, man, it’ll get better,’ but he wasn’t strong. He could never, you know, look ahead. He lost all his hope.” Whelan paused, looked up at the dark sky. Not far off, Freddy’s Dodge rumbled roughly. “He never had much to start with. Some people don’t, you know.”

Sifkitz turned to Berkowitz. “Let me get this straight. What you want-”

“Just don’t kill the job,” Berkowitz said. “That’s all we want. Let the job die on its own.”

Sifkitz realized he could probably do as this man was asking. It might even be easy. Some people, if they ate one Krispy Kreme, they had to go and finish the whole box. If he’d been that type of man, they would have a serious problem here…but he wasn’t.

“Okay,” he said. “Why don’t we give it a try.” And then an idea struck him. “Do you think I could have a company hat?” He pointed to the one Berkowitz was wearing.

Berkowitz gave a smile. It was brief, but more genuine than the laugh when he’d said he couldn’t draw a cat without having to write the word under it. “That could be arranged.”

Sifkitz had an idea Berkowitz would stick out his hand then, but Berkowitz didn’t. He just gave Sifkitz a final measuring glance from beneath the bill of his cap and then started toward the cab of the truck. The other two followed.

“How long before I decide none of this happened?” Sifkitz asked. “That I took the stationary bike apart myself because I just…I don’t know…just got tired of it?”

Berkowitz paused, hand on the doorhandle, and looked back. “How long do you want it to be?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Sifkitz said. “Hey, it’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?”

“It always was,” Berkowitz said. “We always kept it nice.” There was an undertone of defensiveness in his voice that Sifkitz chose to ignore. It occurred to him that even a figment of one’s imagination could have its pride.

For a few moments they stood there on the road, which Sifkitz had lately come to think of as The Great Trans-Canadian Lost Highway, a pretty grand name for a no-name dirt track through the woods, but also pretty nice. None of them said anything. Somewhere the owl hooted again.

“Indoors, outdoors, it’s all the same to us,” Berkowitz said. Then he opened the door and swung up behind the wheel.

“Take care of yourself,” Freddy said.

“But not too much,” Whelan added.

Sifkitz stood there while the truck made an artful three-point turn on the narrow road and started back the way it came. The ductlike opening was gone, but Sifkitz didn’t worry about that. He didn’t think he’d have any trouble getting back when the time came. Berkowitz made no effort to avoid the Raleigh but ran directly over it, finishing a job that was already finished. There were sproinks and goinks as the spokes in the wheels broke. The taillights dwindled, then disappeared around a curve. Sifkitz could hear the thump of the motor for quite awhile, but that faded, too.

He sat down on the road, then lay down on his back, cradling his throbbing left wrist against his chest. There were no stars in the sky. He was very tired. Better not go to sleep, he advised himself, something’s likely to come out of the woods-a bear, maybe-and eat you. Then he fell asleep anyway.

When he woke up, he was on the cement floor of the alcove. The dismantled pieces of the stationary bike, now screwless and boltless, lay all around him. The Brookstone alarm clock on the crate read 8:43 P.M. One of them had apparently turned off the alarm.

I took this thing apart myself, he thought. That’s my story, and if I stick to it I’ll believe it soon enough.

He climbed the stairs to the building’s lobby and decided he was hungry. He thought maybe he’d go out to Dugan’s and get a piece of apple pie. Apple pie wasn’t the world’s most unhealthy snack, was it? And when he got there, he decided to have it a la mode.

“What the hell,” he told the waitress. “You only live once, don’t you?”

“Well,” she replied, “that’s not what the Hindus say, but whatever floats your boat.”

Two months later, Sifkitz got a package.

It was waiting for him in the lobby of his building when he got back from having dinner with his agent (Sifkitz had fish and steamed vegetables, but followed it with a crиme brыlйe). There was no postage on it, no Federal Express, Airborne Express, or UPS logo, no stamps. Just his name, printed in ragged block letters: RICHARD SIFKITZ. That’s a man who’d have to print CAT underneath his drawing of one, he thought, and had no idea at all why he’d thought it. He took the box upstairs and used an X-Acto knife from his work-table to slice it open. Inside, beneath a big wad of tissue paper, was a brand-new gimme cap, the kind with the plastic adjustable band in back. The tag inside read Made In Bangladesh. Printed above the bill in a dark red that made him think of arterial blood was one word: LIPID.

“What’s that?” he asked the empty studio, turning the cap over and over in his hands. “Some kind of blood component, isn’t it?”

He tried the hat on. At first it was too small, but when he adjusted the band at the back, the fit was perfect. He looked at it in his bedroom mirror and still didn’t quite like it. He took it off, bent the bill into a curve, and tried it again. Now it was almost right. It would look better still when he got out of his going-to-lunch clothes and into a pair of paint-splattered jeans. He’d look like a real working stiff…which he was, in spite of what some people might think.

Wearing the LIPID cap while he painted eventually became a habit with him, like allowing himself seconds on days of the week that started with S, and having pie a la mode at Dugan’s on Thursday nights. Despite whatever the Hindu philosophy might be, Richard Sifkitz believed you only went around once. That being the case, maybe you should allow yourself a little bit of everything.