Portrait of a young con artist

 

Chapter 13

 

Hello, My Name Is Sparrow

 

 When the tap came on the door, it didn't sound like the police. Still Kenny McDonald's head jerked up, nearly spilling the accumulation of burned pot and broken roaches spread across the album on his lap.

 Was it the tip of a Billy club?

 That was how the cops did it in LA, gently, acting as if it was a buddy knocking, or someone at the wrong door.

 "Did someone knock?" Louise asked, a note of the same panic in her voice. She peered cautiously out of the small bathroom in the corner, one curl plopping out after another like soft blond springs.

 "Yes," Kenny said, keeping his voice down, wondering if he had time to reach the toilet and flush before the cops kicked in the door. Or did the dogs smell it already? The shadow of something shuffled from side to side in the crack of the door.

 The tap came again with a degree more insistence. Had they heard the voices?

 "Answer it, Kenny," Louise said, obviously unable to stand the suspense. She no more wanted to see who was there than Kenny did-- the big, bad city perpetually huffing and puffing outside this small apartment in her mind.

 Kenny rose from the bed, album cover and pot rolling down his knees to the floor.

 That did it! Even if he flushed the rest, the dogs would sniff out something. He recovered what he could, pot seeds rolling along the creases of his palms as he brushed the remnants back onto the album cover and placed it carefully on the bed.

 Then, he squinted through the peep hole into the hall where the dim bulb glowed like an eye on the ceiling over the stair.

 "Who is it?" Kenny asked, mouth pressed against the crack.

 A shadow moved across his line of sight, emitting a muffled reply. It could have been the police or a neighbor. Kenny grumbled and snatched off the police bar and latch, then yanked the door open to the end of the chair.

 Outside, caught in the angle of light from the apartment, a set of green eyes sparkled -- like foggy emeralds blinking at the sudden change in brightness. The sparse figure shuffled from side to side, his young face trapped in a willowy body, a sprig of blond hair falling across his brows. He brushed this out of his eyes and struggled to smile.

 "Hello," he said. "My name is Sparrow. Can I have five bucks?"

 "What?" Kenny barked, suddenly struck with echoes of LA again, not the cops this time, but the mind games people played constantly, calling in the middle of the night with evil tales.

 You're old lady's screwing around behind your back, man, they'd say, then hang up.

 Yet the boy's face lacked the smug LA expression, the green eyes as blank as innocence can be.

 "Five dollars," the boy repeated. "I need it to make rent."

 "But we don't even know you," Kenny said, as Louise appeared at his elbow, whispering in his ear.

 "What does he want, Kenny?"

 "Five dollars," Kenny whispered back.

 "Is he a junkie?"

 "Junkies don't knock," Kenny said. Or did they?

 There was something odd in the boy's gaze as it studied the apartment, sweeping over Kenny's sparse possessions like a adding machine. The boy looked disappointed with the sum.

 "I knew this wouldn't be easy," Sparrow said. "You being new to the building an all. But everybody in the building helps me out. Some give me clothing. Others food. But I've got all that I need of those. So I'll take cash from you."

 "But how do we know you'll pay us back?" Louise blurted, making an appearance around the edge of the door.

 "Oh, I won't," the boy said.

 Louise's face turned vivid red-- her eyes flashing with the all too familiar hate of the city.

 "We're no charity," she said, casting a dark glance at Kenny. "Tell him to go away, Kenny, before we call the police."

 Kenny swallowed slowly. "I'm sorry, ah--Sparrow," he said softly. "But we just don't have any money to spare."

 The boy's gaze fell Kenny's collection of roaches. "Would you like to buy some pot?" he asked.

 

 

 

 

 

 "You sell drugs, too?" Louise asked, her fingers closing like claws around Kenny's wrist.

 "Mostly pot," the boy said, shifting his gaze to her, eyes narrowing as they studied Louise's pregnant belly. "The landlord gives it to me to make rent."

 "Gives it to you?" Kenny said, suddenly appalled, glancing over his shoulder at the brown mess on the bed-- a mess for which he had scrimped and saved for weeks, and now, hoarded the precious remains in order to make it last.

 "Close the door, Kenny," Louise urged.

 "But he's got pot," Kenny protested.

 "Close the door!"

 "Sorry," Kenny mumbled and shut the door, the green eyes remaining fixed in his head like a after glow.

                                                       ***********

 "We need to move," Louise said.

 Kenny opened his eyes. Strips of street light illuminated the ceiling from a gap in the curtain. The rest of the room was dark.

 "What time is it?" he asked, his head whooshing in a hangover from the roaches. "It can't be time for work yet."

 "Didn't you hear me? I said we have to move."

 He squinted. Across the room the face of the clock glowed, its hands stretched out in an unfamiliar morning position. "My God!" he moaned. "It's four o'clock. I have to be at work in three hours."

 "Don't go! Quit. We can move in with Hank and Peggy till you find another job."

 "I don't want to move in with Hank and Peggy. I don't want to find another job. I just want to go to sleep."

 "Kenny, I mean it. I won't have drug dealers knocking at my door."

 "Are you still harping on that?"

 "He scares me, Kenny."

 "Everything scares you," Kenny said. "But he was hardly your typical dope peddler."

 Still something about the boy still bothered Kenny, a nagging sense of familiarity he couldn't quite place, dancing in the back of his head with all the associated discomfort. He should have recognized something in him.

 "Only you would know the difference," Louise snapped.

 "What's that supposed to mean?" Kenny asked, pulling himself up to a seated position so he could yank the chain to the bathroom light. The blaze of yellow stung his eyes, but illuminated the Halloween features of Louise's angry face.

 "You know."

 "You woke me up in the middle of the night to discus my smoking habits?"

 "I woke you up because I was afraid."

 "Of that little guy?"

 "Of anyone that comes knocking at our door, Kenny. Look what happened in California."

 "You mean Manson?"

 "Yes."

 "He's rotting in a California jail, Louise."

 "There are others like him," she said. "Even here in New York. You said as much yourself when we got here."

 "I said the place had changed, Louise. Nothing more."

 Though he could have said much more, about the decay and the mutated face of old East Village. Two years gone from it and it had become another world.

 

 "Why can't we move?" Louise asked, snuggling closer, her pregnant belly softly touching Kenny's bare back.

 "Because we have a home," Kenny said, struggling away from her touch. "And I have a job I like. I don't want to lose both trying to make things work in New Jersey."

 "Hank and Peggy said they would help..."

 "Like they did last time?"

 "It wouldn't be as bad as that. They have more room where they are."

 "And we have all we need right here."

 "And junkies. And winos," Louise said bitterly. "And we have to climb over them every time we come home. But then, maybe you feel some kinship with them."

 "I just use the pot to relax after work."

 "I'm sure you do," she mumbled and rolled away from him, her face to the wall. Kenny sighed then flicked off the light, lowering himself back into the cup of pillows, trying to recapture the mood that would bring on sleep.

 But sleep didn't come. Sparrow's face floated on the ceiling like some trick of shadow, like a map of Greenwich Village itself-- the old Summer-of-Love Village with people prancing in the street, wearing wild clothing and happy highs.

 Where had that village gone? What ever happened to those people? Even Hank didn't know and he had been here the whole time.

 "Louise?"

 "Yes." the voice was cold in the dark.

 "I know there are problems here. But I don't want to make the same mistake we made in Portland. Wait until the baby's born. Then we'll see."

 Silence.

 Kenny closed his eyes. But the image remained, pressed against the inside of his lids like a tattoo. He said he name was Sparrow.

                                                       ***********

 Kenny climbed the dank subway stairs like a beaten dog, each step adding to the lay long torture. Even his empty messenger bag seen weighed down, strap raising welts through the fabric of his coat. Up top, Astor place was alive with tourists, comic-colored jackets and hats floating by him in a cheap imitation of the old days here. A new more mundane version of teenybopper stared from the curb, searching desperately for signs of hippie. It reminded Kenny of the whale hunts out west with curious people flocking out on barges to witness the extinction of another breed.

 Their presence here startled him. It was still too cold for their kind, and he tried to avoid their stare as he hurried passed them and across the street into the shadow and safety of the Cooper Union building. Ragged junk-picker predominated here, cluttering the sidewalk with broken clocks and worn out clothing, each was a grim reminder of what New York and the Bowery had always been about, and Kenny felt as uncomfortable among them as he had among the Teenyboppers, hurrying through their begging faces for the other corner.

 St. Marks greeted him with its usual grin, headshops, book stores, record and clothing markets lining both sides of the street, colors and shapes muted by a layer of dust and grease and automobile fumes. Everything seemed grimy and cold and he walked down the south side of the street afraid to touch anything or anyone, the blue glow of the Electric Circus casting odd shadows on the faces of the others. They looked and sounded like the hippies he knew, but their gazes seem hard, and their step stilted by the rhythm of hard rock blaring from store fronts. Only Gem Spa seemed warm, its tattered awning struggling to keep the wind and rain off the piles of newspapers and magazines stacked out front. Inside, people gathered at the counter or the magazine rack, thumbing through the girlie pictures as they sucked on cigarettes, joints or cups of coffee.

 But it was the ruins of the Filmore East that stopped Kenny, drawing up short near the awning, its scarred face patched with posters to Broadway Musicals and political protest like a mocking, Frankstein surgery that had left the shape without any of its textures. He pealed back the edges of several posters, cringing as if pulling open still warm wounds. Then, after a few more attempts he found the poster he was seeking. The lettering had faded with the effects of winter, but he could make out message demanding freedom for yet another mistaken political hero. Charlie Manson's eyes glared out with all the haunting familiarity of California's bad trips. But there was nothing in those eyes that even remotely suggested Sparrow and Kenny quickly turned away.

                                                       ***********

 Bankster was sweeping winos off the downstairs stoop when Kenny arrived, batting at the with the end of his worn broom as if they were little more than dust settling into the sidewalk cracks. They acted like dust, settling again a few doorways down.

 "Damned them," the small bald-headed man growled. He wiped dust from his brow, smearing it across his ribbed forehead. "I should take a shotgun to them. But it would be me the cops locked up. Some priorities this town has."

 "You can't blame the winos," Kenny said, leaning against the door frame, lacking all inclination for the climb up to his apartment. He needed rest. A week or two to gather strength. But with his small paycheck, he couldn't even afford a day.

 "Oh? Who do we blame? The bottles they drink from?"

 Kenny shrugged and glanced across the street at the darkened doorway that became havens for their kind at night, little alcoves into which men crawled seeking relief from the elements. Kenny had slept in such places while in LA, thinking how little distance humanity had crawled from the cave.

 "They've been part of this city as long as I can remember," Kenny said, recalling them during his first days visiting here and the disgust he had felt.

 "A bad part if you ask me."

 "They appreciate the cigarettes I give them."

 "Which is probably why they keep coming around," Bankster said, eyeing Kenny from under two heavy and folded brows, a glint of suspicion rising into his dark eyes. "It's time to clean up this city before they take over."

 "There are more of them," Kenny admitted.

 "And not all of them on the street," Bankster said, glancing up at the glowing windows in the building behind them. "God knows where they managed to find the rent, or why I put up with them."

 "In our building?" Kenny said, surprised.

 "In every building-- but my share's enough."

 "Do you know the tenants well?" Kenny asked, stiffing slightly as the man stared at him again.

 "Well enough to collect rent," Bankster said mouth twisting to one side. "Has one of them been bothering you?"

 "Bothering is the wrong word," Kenny said, staring off at the curb and the collection of empty bottles piled near the wheels of a parked car, some broken with the shards facing upward, others still warm from recently being abandoned.

 "Which one?"

 "He said his name was Sparrow."

 "Ah!" Bankster said with a long satisfied sigh. "Our prized possession, that one."

 "What do you mean?"

 "The worst of the lot."

 "Really? He didn't strike me as-- well, dangerous."

 "I didn't say he was dangerous," Bankster said, though it was clear he wasn't excluding that possibility either. "He's just out there." He made a circling motion with his finger near his temple.

 "He seems normal enough to me," Kenny said, though the green eyes seemed to float again before him, bearing their familiar look of distance.

 "If that's normal, then I'm Richard Nixon. He's space cadet if I ever saw one."

 "From what? Drugs?"

 "Who can tell these days?" Bankster grumbled. "I'm no rocket scientist. But I'm sure that boy's hovering around some planet other than ours."

 "You don't like him, I take it?"

 "I don't lose sleep over him. If that's what you mean? How much did he want from you?"

 "Five dollars."

 "Tell him to drop dead. He's got more money than the whole building put together. Maybe more than the owner even. You know--" the superintendent leaned closer "--I sometimes think he's really Howard Hughes. They say Howard Hughes is a burn-out, too."

 "I thought Hughes was older."

 The man shrugged. "One theory's as good as another."

 "So what do I do about him?" Kenny asked.

 "If he bugs you, call the police. I'm sure the precinct would be interested in some of his activities."

 Something tightened in Kenny, like a knot pulling down into his stomach. Don't talk to the man, an old East Village friend had warned in those early days coming over the Hudson, a white-haired hippie that most people knew as Gandalf. It was only name Kenny had ever used, and the familiar face leaped into his mind again, bringing back a wave of those more cheery days when he, Hank and Gandalf sang merrily on the streets. Don't ever trust a cop to save you, Gandalf had said. Cause he'll hurt you more than what's already ailing you.

 "Do we really need them?" Kenny asked weakly.

 The superintendent studied Kenny for a moment, the gray eyes thick with suspicion as if evaluating Kenny's mental status. "It was only a suggestion," he said.

 "Has Sparrow ever bothered you?"

 "Me?" the man laughed. "He wouldn't dare."

 "Why not?"

 "He knows I own a shotgun."

                                                       ***********

 Sparrow appeared out of the shadows of the stairs, the dim light making a half-moon out of his face. Kenny stopped, a sudden surge of panic rising up in the back of his head with Louise's voice saying: See, Kenny! Didn't I tell you he was dangerous?

 "Hello," Sparrow said softly. "You remember me?"

 "Yes," Kenny said, looking back down the stairs, half expecting to find Sparrow's accomplices there. But it was vacant. Sparrow seemed quite alone. "Do you always hide in the halls like this?"

 "I wasn't hiding," Sparrow said. "I was waiting for you."

 "Why?"

 The boy grinned, turning his head with a slight expression of embarrassment. He eyed Kenny's apartment door just up the steps on the next landing. He lowered his voice. "I thought you might like a little sample," he said. "You seemed interested yesterday."

 "Of pot?"

 "Sure," the boy said, beaming a little. "I give samples to all my prospective customers."

 "But I told you I wasn't going to buy."

 "Not now maybe, but later you might."

 Kenny stared up passed Sparrow at the apartment door, the bad taste of burned roaches still lingering on his tongue. Even they had been re-rolled roaches two or three generations old, collected and treasured in the humidor on top of the refrigerator for some desperate time like this. And this fool wanted to give him a taste of the real thing again, and his head ached for it -- the way it had for other more serious drugs out in LA, needing something to ease the pain of the every day. But Louise's voice was there behind it, a fearful, warning voice telling him to remember the baby.

 "Forget it, Sparrow," Kenny mumbled. "I don't think Louise would appreciate me dragging you home for a pot party."

 "We could go up to my apartment," Sparrow said, glancing up the space between the curving railings, somehow indicating a significant distance. Kenny's legs throbbed. But the lure of the pot was already winning.

 "Really?" he asked.

 "Sure," Sparrow said.

 Still, Kenny hesitated. Louise would little appreciate his coming home stoned. And perhaps she had a point. Kenny and Pot had a relationship that all Louise's anger could not break. His last finger hold on the hip world of giggling teenagers, the one escape remaining to him after he'd vowed off the sterner drugs like LSD.

 "Well?" Sparrow asked, already a step closer to the landing. "Are you coming?"

 "Yes," Kenny said with a gush of breath. "But we're going to have to be quiet about this. I don't want Louise upset."

 A smile flickered to Sparrow's lips, though the gaze seemed puzzled. He didn't seem to understand what Kenny meant, his dilated eyes nearly devoid of green the dim light.

 "We won't upset her," he said softly, then began a slow climb upward, twisting himself up each step like a hunch back. Yet he moved with silence Kenny could not match. Each step was a noise trap to Kenny, the sagging wood creaking loudly as he came closer to his door. He half expected the door to fly open with Louise's angry glare, and even when they had slid passed, he felt the potential, relieved only when they began the climb to the next flight and the next-- by which time the ache in his already worn legs had begun to replace the fear.

 "This way," Sparrow whispered from above when Kenny had stopped half way up the next set of stairs.

 "I'm coming," Kenny said and grit himself to the climb, pausing briefly on the landing as one of the doors opened. It didn't open much. Just enough for someone inside to peer out. Then like a clam, it snapped shut again, though Kenny could almost feel the person's eye still on him through the peephole as he passed. The doors on the next flight repeated the performance, and the superintendent's haunting message darted around in his head.

 Worst of the lot, that one!

 Kenny stopped at the foot of the next flight of stairs.

 "How much farther, Sparrow?" he asked.

 The boy stared down from the darkness above. No light lit the next landing, but a gust of cool air hinted of some opening.

 "It's my legs," Kenny explained. "I've been on them all day."

 On them all day every day week in and out. Sometimes he simply staggered from place to place no sure of how he'd managed the passage, or how he'd kept his balance.

 "It's not far now," Sparrow said.

 Not far because there was little building left to climb. This flight proved to be the last, ending up in a narrow hallway where another, shorter set of stairs led to the room. The other door sat in the dark illuminated by street light through from the roof. A glistening padlock hung the poor man's penthouse-- a penthouse, obscure enough even for the likes of Howard Hughes.

 Sparrow spun the dial on the combination lock and flicked it from its hasp. He pushed open the door and held it, motion Kenny to enter. A peculiar warehouse smell eased out. The smell of paper and dust Kenny remembered from wandering the storage rooms back in high school. He hesitated. Sparrow reached in and flicked on a light.

 Boxes and crates filled the front room floor to ceiling with narrow aisle in-between more store front than apartment, lacking only the sign saying: open for business. Shirts, pants, sweaters, shoes and other things stacked on metal shelves-- all dusty, but all clearly sealed in their original packaging.

 "What is this?" Kenny asked, taking the first step before stopping again.

 "Stuff," Sparrow mumbled.

 "But where did it come from?"

 "People are very kind to me."

 "You mean the landlord gave you this, too?"

 "No," Sparrow said, closing the door behind them, sliding several thick bolts into place. "Other people."

 He didn't elaborated, but motioned towards one of the aisles. When Kenny didn't move, he shrugged, allowing Kenny to follow him through the maze.

 It surprised Kenny to discover the apartment no bigger than his own-- though behind it all, a small cubical had been carved out for living space, marking a more Spartan existence. His personal world seemed made up of one small cot, a wooden chair, a pre-fabricated-cardboard-dresser -- and a stereo.

 This last stood out from the cheap things like a shard of glass, its bright silver face glinting even in the dim light. Kenny took a staggering step towards it, his fingers reaching towards the buttons and dials like a child's, almost feeling warmth from it-- though the thing was clearly off.

 Sometimes, during his cross-town runs, Kenny stopped at the stores on 42nd street where the windows were filled with such items, each an inaccessible dream he wished he could afford. He whistled softly, drawing up Sparrow's curious stare. The boy was rustling through the drop drawer of the shaky dresser.

 "You like it?" he asked, hands deeply entangled oddly useful junk like spools of threat and jars of screws, none of which Kenny imagine his having any use.

 "It's something," Kenny said, admiring it from a step farther away.

 "You want to buy it?"

 "You'd sell this, too?"

 "Why not?" the boy said, seemingly unbothered by Kenny's concern. "I don't use it."

 Kenny laughed. "Next you'll be trying to sell me the cot or the dresser."

 Sparrow shrugged and continued his search. Kenny studied the stereo again, the old wishes rising up into him, not so much for himself as for Louise. She loved music. Especially the ragged collection of folk music records she'd dragged with her from place to place: Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and others whose faces haunted Kenny as much as his old village friends. He remembered the first time hearing them when he swept her out of Colorado. He remembered hitch-hiking with them, sleeping with them on the side of the road, lugging them in and out of cars as if Louise ever really had a hope of hearing them again. And there were nights now when he came home to find her sitting with them on the bed, crying over their lovely faces as if they were her friends.

 Kenny shook himself. "We can't afford it," he said.

 Sparrow glanced up again and smiled. "I'll sell it cheap," he said, lifting a black film canister out of the drawer. "I sell everything cheap."

 "It doesn't matter how cheap it is with the baby on the way," Kenny mumbled. "Though Louise would love it."

 Sparrow frowned-- his eyes registering something that might have been alarm, the canister open on his palm with a few precious pale-green flowers of pot laying in the creases like a dream, seeds thick around each bud.

 "Baby?" he said. "She's going to have a baby?"

 "Any time now," Kenny said, staring down into the palm and licking his lips. The slightly musty smell rose up into him with memories of LA, when there was no shortage of money or drugs.

 "That explains it," Sparrow said.

 

 It was Kenny's turn to frown.

 "Explains what?"

 "Why she looks fat in places where she shouldn't," he said, turning back to his project. "I'd forgotten all about having babies."

 The boy clearly wasn't joking and this startled Kenny. How did one forget about birth? The urge to ask the boy welled up in Kenny, but the boy's gaze had narrowed again, concentrating upon the rolling the joint.

 The whole issue reminded Kenny of the old days when he and Hank and first wandered over the Hudson from New Jersey, two fools looking for thrills in Greenwich Village-- loose women and outrageous song.

 But the life they confronted was a thousand times more strange than either had ever imagined, teeming with behavior and people so alien that neither could comprehend it: gays wiggling their fingers along Christopher street, Hari Khrishnas chanting for their souls. Even the hippies had defied the images he and Hank had come to expect. Peace and love came out of them, but with so many other startling visions that both boys had run straight back thinking they would never return.

 Drawn back a weekend later and slowly seduced.

 Come here, boys, the odd people sang. We'll teach you a thing or two.

 Bikers, hippies, beatniks, crazies, radicals, and more, all swirling together into an inevitable stew which Kenny's uncles had warned him against.

 All offering some form of salvation. In their hands sugar-cubed communion. Take this child and you'll never be the same.

 Kenny never did understand what attracted Gandalf to them. Maybe he pitied their utter confusion-- the village scenes bursting inside and outside of their heads like one large freak show, replacing sword swallowers and fire eaters with mandolin players and women snapping chimes. And the Eastside near St. Marks and Avenue A was worse, bearing the brunt of the more extreme experiments in love-making and getting high. Kenny's baggy pants and scuffed sneakers had no place there and all the freaks knew it.

 Gandalf alone seemed to take pity on them, his white beard and dilated eyes sweeping across the street at them like their grandfather, arms surrounding them as he pushed them to safety-- the smell of emanating from his breath like dragon fire. And once aside, he studied them with a sad shake of his head.

 And what planet did you children come from? he asked.

 They might have asked him the same question. Or a thousand related questions. Yet never among those questions was there one of birth.

 Oh there were things Kenny didn't dwell on any more, things from those days of Gandalf and Woodstock. Three years had hardened him. He no longer believed wholeheartedly in the magic or the dream. He would never again be one of those half-million blurred faces screaming at the temple-stage begging for Miracles, Hendrix teasing them with his guitar, asking them: Are you experienced?

 And they-- Kenny, Hank and all the other converted fools fresh from the boondocks-- screaming back saying: Yes! Yes!

 "Louise is due any time now," Kenny said, watching Sparrow's green eyes soften as they looked up. "Everything would be fine if we had money."

 Something in this last connected in Sparrow's eyes. He licked the edge of the rolling paper and finished his project in silence. His fingers were nimble and the joint they produced was a work of art. He handed it to Kenny who eyed it with admiration. The folds were smooth and the pot smelled of Southern California.

 A match flared under Kenny's nose and he pushed the tip into the flame, sucking thick smoke into his lungs. Here was the real magic, the one that worked miracles, and it moved through him loosening the knots and bonds of the day.

 "Good pot," Kenny grunted, the pot hissing out of his lungs as he passed the joint back to Sparrow.

 The boy shook his head.

 Kenny frowned. "Why not? Something wrong with it?"

 "Oh no," Sparrow giggled. "I just don't smoke."

 "But you deal the stuff!"

 "Only to make rent," Sparrow said, stuffing the remaining brown buds back into the canister. "The landlord says I don't need it, that I'm wacky enough."

 And then again came that familiar glaze over the boy's eyes, one that said he wasn't quite in touch with this world. Maybe it was the look Gandalf had seen in Kenny's eyes during that first meeting. But it seemed unlikely.

 The joint burned between him and Sparrow, Kenny's arm still outstretched with the offering. He sighed.

 "No uses letting the weed go to waste," he said and sucked at the joint again.

 Time slowed.

 There were no clocks here and yet the ticking sounded-- sharp snaps inside Kenny's head that had been drilled in by the weeks and months of steady work. The ritual of rising. Of punching the time clock. Of signing in and signing out. Of subway stops and elevator floors.

 The pot shifted each to some new pace, one more in rhythm to the beat of his heart. Yet he became overly conscious of his breathing, the in and out of air. The sucking in of the pot smoke. The letting it go again with regret. It was as if he could only truly find freedom from the world with the last unexpired input of smoke.

 Yet the pot was not the only drug tugging at him then, the workday had done its part. A nerve in his leg twitched as the rest of him melted, and the ache grew with the high.

 "Enough," Kenny said, shoving the joint into Sparrow's hands, staggering for a moment as his legs refused to take him towards the door. "I need to get home before Louise starts to worry."

 But looking around, he frowned. The wall of merchandise seemed impenetrable now.

 "Which way?" he asked.

 Sparrow pointed, his brow folding forward as he studied Kenny's bumbling retreat into one of the passages. The maze of boxes looked like skyscrapers to Kenny, only shrunken now with Kenny, a clean-shaven King Kong peeping into the windows.

 At the other end, Sparrow waited-- like a twin of the one Kenny had just left behind. He had squirted down one of the other passages to beat Kenny to the door, but it startled Kenny just the same. The boy swung the door open like a butler. Kenny stepped through it to the hall, the dark and dusty world bringing him down a little with its dull reality.

 "Wonderful pot, man," Kenny mumbled. "I'm really sorry I can't buy any."

 "Maybe later," Sparrow said, then closed the door.

                                                       ***********

 The face haunted Kenny the whole next day, floating in the street ahead of him on his rounds, pressed into billboards and subway advertisements like a hidden message-- a mute, grinning face bearing its strangely familiar stare. For some reason, Kenny couldn't comprehend, it dredged up images of Gandalf, and by the end of the day the two faces stared out at him from every surface, a slightly distant pair of twins swearing the same perplexed expression.

 What is it, kid? Gandalf's ghost seemed to ask. What are you trying to remember?

 Between the two of them, Kenny felt crowded, and hurried passed places where he should have stopped, back tracking with added wear to his legs when he discovered his mistake. It might have been them or the overall weariness that made him climb on the wrong train home, coming out on the west side the way he had years earlier with Hank.

 It was odd had he'd not exited there since, as if he'd deliberately avoided it. The stairs, indeed, seemed much more dismal now. Filth cluttered the corners of the stairs along with the huddled, ragged and shivering men whose hungry gazes pleaded for money as he climbed. On the street, the prosaic marquee of the Waverly Theater advertised some unknown thriller marked XXX instead of Dustin Hoffman's "The Graduate," which Kenny last remembered playing there.

 Other difference glared with closer examination. The tinsel trappings of the old West Village could not disguise the decay or replace the vanishing monuments which had served Kenny and Hank as landmarks during their first few visits here. Like the Zodiac Restaurant and the Club Bizarre. Few of these had any overall importance to "the scene." In most cases, people probably were glad to see them gone. But their disappearance left an emptiness in Kenny, too. A few of the spaces had been covered over with posters and sheets of plywood. He stopped and peered through the cracks, greeted by more dust and darkness. People on the sidewalk, stared at him with suspicion, the word `nark' glinting in their eyes.

 He straightened and moved on, weaving through the narrow streets to Washington Square Park. While there were still a few people strumming guitars, most of the magic had vanished here. The faces he saw seated on the benches and low walls were gnarled and sullied, corrupted eyes rising at his approach like animals waiting for meat. Some whispered offers of dope.

 Kenny shook his head, but could not shake their polluted stares from his back. They seemed so twisted and wrong -- a thousand years distant from the love & peace hippies that had once occupied their spaces. Even the strands of music that floated over to Kenny from the guitar players had a bluesy air to them, the lyrics harping on booze and lost women -- not love or light or happiness.

 This was not new to Kenny. He had been here a few times since his return, copping cheap pot from some of the less contaminated figures, always returning home disappointed for the lack of quality.

 "Spare change?" one of them asked.

 "Sorry," Kenny said, brushing passed the upturned palm which waited for money he didn't have, crusted with weeks worth of routing through trash.

 Off to the right, near a small brown brick building which housed the bathrooms, a man stirred, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses as Kenny passed. While he was dressed as raggedly as the others, his skin seemed cleaner and something seemed to registered in the glass-bloated eyes. Kenny stiffened, but didn't glance back. He knew the man despite the disguise, and hurried on towards the trees at the Eastern edge of the park.

 Sharp steps sounded behind Kenny in pursuit. The same step that had pursued Kenny before.

 A cop, Gandalf's voice whispered from inside Kenny's head.

 The same cop that had glimpsed Hank and Kenny in the old days, making a project to save their souls from the street, telling them often that he would someday bust one of them. Once the cop even managed to catch Kenny in mid-transaction, mistaking him for the dealer, letting the real dealer slip away with the dope and money. The cop had been that much more annoyed to find nothing on Kenny but a one-way ticket home to New Jersey.

 Kenny stopped. So did the cop.

 For a moment they stared at each other in full recognition. The cop just outside the ring of trees. Kenny already well into them.

 Waiting and watching each other, taking in the changes three years had made.

 Three years earlier, people in the park would have come to Kenny's aid, jostling the cop, pushing their bodies between to keep the cop from making his bust. Now, the dark figures slumped in the park benches slunk away, crawling over the shadowed lawns, thankful that it wasn't them this time.

 A cruel and twisted smile rose to the cop's lips.

 Welcome home, buddy, that smile said.

 Kenny shivered and turned and pushed his aching legs to move more quickly, out of the park and the Canyons of New York University that rose around it-- back towards the part of town where he belonged.

 Home?

 No, this wasn't home any more, despite the cop's cruel claim.

                                                       ***********

 He legs felt broken by the time he reached his building and the climb up the stairs an exercise in self-torture. Too many weeks of walking deliveries to save on subway fairs. The luxury of a bath and bed floated in his head the way the previous faces had. Everything was a dream.

 Even the sudden jolt when he tried to open the door didn't wake him completely. He frowned at his hand on the knob, questions registering inside his head as to why he wouldn't move. Slowly, it sank in that someone had barred it from the inside.

 

 "Louise?" Kenny called and turned the handle again.

 "Go away," the hushed voice whispered from inside.

 "Louise? It's me. What's wrong?"

 "Kenny?"

 "Who did you expect, Abbie Hoffman? Open up."

 Behind the door, things moved-- a banging and a shoving that suggested she had barricaded herself inside. Finally she fumbled open the police bar and lack and plunged into his arms, sobbing and shaking like a small frightened child.

 "I'm so scared, Kenny," she moaned, pulling away to stare into his face.

 "What are you scared of?" he asked.

 "Of him!" she said, motioning madly towards the stairs.

 "You mean Sparrow?"

 "H-He actually knocked on our door, Kenny. I told him you weren't home yet and that I didn't have five dollars. But he wouldn't go away."

 Kenny glanced over his shoulder and into the dark hallway which seemed to echo her words.

 "Let's go inside," he said and slowly moved her back into the relative safety of the apartment. He closed the door and latched it. The room smelled of cigarettes-- a habit she had promised to give up for the baby. She only smoked in times of stress, but it was all stress now, pressing down on her through the walls of the apartment.

 "What did he say he wanted?" Kenny asked, putting his messenger bag down on a chair, aching to sit him  own beside it.

 "He said he wanted to lend me his stereo," she said, shaking her head, coughing over the words.

 "What?" Kenny said, half laughing.

 "It's not funny!" Louise howled. "God knows what he really wanted."

 "I'm sure it was innocent," Kenny said, touching her tense shoulder. "I talked to him yesterday. He wanted to sell me the stereo then."

 "Talk to him all you want, Kenny McDonald. I don't trust him or anything else out there."

 "Out there?" Kenny asked.

 "You know what I mean. This city isn't fit for us to live in, but I can't help feeling like a prisoner here, all cooped up. And with him in the hall, I can't even go and talk to the neighbors. It isn't fair!"

 All of it was true. Kenny, at least, got out to see the living part of the city every day, while Louise rotted in these rooms waiting for him and the birth of their baby.

 "You think we could go see the window?" she asked, tilting her head slowly to one side, squinting slightly as if not wanting to hear his reply.

 "But that's all the way across town," he mumbled, picturing a painful retracing of steps along the route by which he had just come.

 "Will your legs stand it?"

 Her face showed the pain.

 "Sure," Kenny lied, stamping his foot to show its endurance. "Another few blocks won't dent them any. But get your cape. It's getting cold outside."

 She drew the wrap out of the closet and he opened the door to the hall. The sound of retreating steps came from above on the stairs.

 "Louise shrank back. "It's him," she hissed, her cape folded over her arm as her fingers dug into Kenny's hand.

 "I'll go and have a talk with him," Kenny said, disconnecting Louise's fingers.

 "No," she said, tightening her grip. "Let's just go."

 "But I thought you wanted him to stop bothering you?"

 "I do. But don't deal with it now. I need to see the window. Please."

 "All right," Kenny said, still glaring towards the stairs and the figure he imagined hidden in its twists and turns. "I'll have one very serious talk with him later about his hall way habits."

                                                       ***********

 Outside, a wino leaned against frame, arm lifted across the door. He half looked like a cop and Kenny slowed when he reached the bottom of the last flight of stairs. Louise's fingers clawed at Kenny's arm.

 "Hey you," Kenny said, trying to make his voice sound like the superintendent's, but couldn't get the gruffness and the drunken man peered into the darkness, his smirk half hidden by the angle of light.

 "You got a cigarette?" the man asked as Kenny eased forward into the vestibule where broken mailboxes hung open vomiting con-ed bills. The stink of alcohol permeated the place.

 "Sure," Kenny said a( +

bled for his crumpled pack, flipping a cigarette out. The drunk took it without thanks, but moved on, hand sliding along the brick face of the building for support. He settled into the next doorway where he sat down hard.

 Louise stared, her horror translated through her fingers and into Kenny's arm, the grip easing only after they passed the man-- though even then, not completely, tightening and loosening with each new shadow.

 But Kenny's attention wandered. He wasn't concerned with the dangers, imaginary or real, but with the changes evident around him, changes he hadn't noticed before in his comings and goings as if a cancer was spreading which he couldn't stop. In two years away from the place, even the East Village had been transformed, losing color that had been part of its distinctive personality. The painted rainbows that encircled many of the windows were now thick with grime, or painted over, or posted upon with advertisements for some new food establishment.

 It made the city seem that much grayer, even to Kenny, and made him wonder if perhaps those vivid memories of earlier adventurers here hadn't been made brighter by time. That old place and this one seemed utterly unrelated.

 Still, he found relics of the previous place everywhere he looked like archaeological ruins from which he was expected to reconstruct the original, to draw up from the dust a vision of Gandalf-- a Gandalf who had just leaped out of a Beatles cartoon movie spreading color as he came, making live here with painted rainbows the most attractive thing in the world.

 

 Slowly, Kenny and Louise weaved through the heart of that world, up Avenue A to St. Marks, then up St. Marks towards the west again. Each step a search for a familiar face among the ruined gnarled hippie-types that inhabited store fronts like wraiths. Seeing anyone from the old days seemed to matter to Kenny, he believing that one face would shatter this artificial edifice that had descended upon the Village he knew. Or perhaps seeing Gandalf or any of the old crew would provide a clue to why it had changed, and maybe a way to turn things back to the way they were.

 "Kenny?" Louise asked as they walked.

 "What?"

 "Are you thinking about the baby?"

 "Not at this exact moment."

 "Do you ever think about it-- I mean what we're going to do when it's born?"

 "Sometimes," he said, glancing into alleyways and storefront and brownstone interiors, half expecting a ghost to emerge, or a sign to appear, or some spiritual being to tell him which way the other had gone. "Usually I'm too tired to think about anything."

 Louise nodded. "Someday you won't have to work so hard," she said and touched his arm. He stiffened and stopped abruptly, several freaks bumping into him from behind, his face like a mask of panic made worse by a flashing strobe light from one of the stores.

 "What's the matter, Kenny?" Louise asked, glancing around, her puzzled eyes searching the sidewalk. "Why have we stopped?"

 A pair of horn-rimmed glasses peered out from one of the doorways a half block up, the shifting head behind them trying to look nonchalant. He succeeded badly, his hands fumbling deep his pockets advertising themselves. His gaze could not avoid Kenny's and instantly the electricity leaped between their eyes.

 "I just need a breather," Kenny said, leaning against the window of a high-priced T-shirt shop. The logo for the Grateful Dead grinned out from several shits. So did the tongue and lips of the Stones.

 The nark slipped out from his hiding place and slithered down the street, keeping to the deeper shadows. Kenny watched until all trace of him vanished and then he wasn't sure he had seen him at all. He swallowed thickly, his mouth very dry.

 "Can we go now?" Louise asked, her jittery legs moving in place as she stared up the street towards the distant corner where they would turn-- her eyes shimmering with expectation she couldn't disguise.

 "I guess so," he mumbled and let her lead him forward, her arms wrapped in his. He felt like one of the crippled war veterans who hung around the Port Authority begging for coins. Perhaps desperate crippled all men-- simply in different ways. And as he walked, he studied the faces around him, all of them crippled, all of them taking on tints of that hazy distant look Kenny had seen in Sparrow. Or was it simply weariness like his own. After a while, he couldn't tell any more.

 At Sixth Avenue they turned uptown, Kenny sharply aware of the Waverly Theater behind him-- it and its triple X feature reminding him of his earlier visit and just how many more miles he had put on his legs than had been necessary. He needed to sit down. But there were no benches this side of Washington Square and he vowed never to go there again.

 "Are you all right?" Louise asked when he staggered and clutched at her to keep from falling.

 He laughed sourly. "As all right as I'll ever get," he said. "But I can hold out for a look at your window. But let's not make this a long visit this time, okay?"

 She stared, her eyes doing a quick survey of his face, reflecting back the pain which must have showed there. She nodded and moved on, weaving through the Christmas Shoppers who had come to the village for hip gifts long after such things had ceased to exist. Then, three blocks uptown, the glow of the window showed, a fluorescent haze that lightened the color of the buildings around it, casting the sidewalk and doorways into a artificial dream world not unlike the early stages of an LSD trip.

 Louise stopped-- her face taking on the haze and the unbridled expression of awe that Kenny had seen on the faces of children visiting Disneyland for the first time. Her eyes didn't blink, and her small hands unfolded from fists like ferns, slowly rising as she neared the glass, rising to point at items she believed they needed for the coming baby-- a small dot of flesh pressing against the cold transparency, leaving the subtle smudge of her fingerprint behind.

 Kenny nodded as she named each item, but he was already nearly asleep, sagging down into his sneakers as if shrinking: baby-chairs and rockers; walkers and crawlers; diaper-putter-on-ers, taker-off-ers and more. Everything that magazines and television could hype, everything the radio and newspapers said was required for modern parents to raise their child properly.

 Then, in the corner of his eye he caught a flash of red-- something shifting along the line of parked cars on the far side of the street. He turned for a better look, but Louise had seen the figure's reflection in the glass and stiffened in horror, turning with all the dread of a waiting firing squad. This time it was she who staggered, clutching Kenny's arm to stop herself.

 "It's him," she hissed. "He's followed us-- here!"

 "Maybe not," Kenny said, holding her shaking body close to his, feeling the shudder turn into one of his own. He stared into the darkness and caught another glimpse of the moving figure who was now well up one of the side streets. The distinctive limp and twisted spine left no doubt in Kenny's mind as to who it was. Still, New York was full of strange people and Kenny wanted to believe it was someone else.

 "Let's go home," he whispered to Louise. Her face rose and her hurt stare greeted his as if he was the one who had caused the hurt.

 "I think we should call the police," she said.

 "Oh come on, Louise. Let's not get carried away with this," he said, hearing Gandalf's raspy voice in the back of his head, translating the word "Police" into "Pig."

 Don't trust your life to them, pal, his former friend had said more than once. They'll hurt you more than help you.

 Hurt me, how?

 By blaming you for whatever it is they need to blame you for

 

 It was never a totally clear sentiment, but it had stuck with Kenny over the years and miles, proving itself true again and again as cops sought to make him into the villain.

 "We'll talk to the boy first," Kenny said.

 "When?"

 "Tomorrow," Kenny said. "When my legs aren't threatening to collapse out from under me. Let's go home, please."

 She stared at Kenny, her lips puckered slightly, souring her whole expression. He wanted to hug her and make things all right the way he had in LA, but somehow knew no hug would do this time. She walked stiffly beside him -- and in silence, making her disapproval abundantly clear.

 "All right," Kenny mumbled when he couldn't stand her mood any more. "I'll talk to him when we get back."

 Her posture eased a little but she didn't speak. Perhaps the window display had captivated her again with its world of things they could never have -- A Disneyland of dreams which were being sold as parenthood.

 When they arrived at the apartment, Kenny felt dead -- he didn't even have strength to shoo away the winos, bribing them to move with cigarettes instead. Then, he leaned on the banister as he climbed up towards the apartment, and paused only briefly to see Louise tucked safely behind the locked apartment door. The additional flights to Sparrow's door were absolutely hell, and he was bent in half by the time he made the top, clutching at the tightened muscles as if attempting to keep them from bursting.

 He pounded weakly on Sparrow's door, hearing the dull thudding echo inside. The padlock was missing from the hasp, but Sparrow -- if he was inside -- did not respond.

 "We don't want any trouble," Kenny said, his voice sounding as weary as he felt. He could picture the slinking green-eyed boy inside, listening at the keyhole. "Just leave us alone, all right?"

 Without an answer, Kenny turned and descended the stairs again-- this act almost as painful as the climb. Around him, the haunting doors he had seen earlier, opened and closed, the noses and glinting eyes of Sparrow's neighbors eyeing Kenny briefly before vanishing again-- other mysterious and deadly ghosts with stories of their own, too frightened or stoned to even exit their rooms. Is that what people became over time, gnarl little gnomes fighting simple to keep the city from crashing through the door.

 Kenny didn't stop at his own floor, but allow the momentum of descent to take him down to the first floor where he pounded on the superintendent's door until something scraped inside. The peep hole darkened.

 "Who is it?" the raspy voice of the superintendent asked.

 "Me, Kenny McDonald. I have a complaint."

 There as a pause and the slow hiss of an intaken breath.

 "If it's the heat you'll have to wait till morning," the man said finally. "I'm just getting to bed and nobody's making me go down into the basement tonight."

 "It's not the heat, it's Sparrow," Kenny said.

 Inside, the locked snapped and the chain scraped across the inside as the door swung open, revealing the shimmering balding head of the little man. His bony fingers clutched a shotgun.

 "Oh?" he said with perverted interest. "And just what's up with our little friend?"

 "He's been bothering my wife."

 The bald man's bushy brows rose in surprise. "Oh ho! I didn't think the squirt had it in him."

 "Not that way," Kenny growled.

 "How then?"

 "He's been knocking on our door again and following us around in the streets."

 "He knocks on everybody's door."

 "Well, I want it stopped."

 "I think you have me confused with the police," the superintendent said.

 "I can't call the police," Kenny said.

 "Then I suggest you buy a shotgun. Good night," the man said and shut the door, the sound of snapping locks echoing through the stairwell even as Kenny turned back towards the climb to his apartment.

                                                       ***********

 "What did he say?" Louise demanded the moment Kenny was through the door. Her hands shook, spilling chicken bouillon from her cup, its yellowish tears dripping over the side and onto the floor.

 "He didn't answer his door," Kenny said, dropping down onto the bed as his legs gave out under him. He shook, too. He wasn't sure he could stand again, even to get undressed. He wanted to curl up in the corner and sleep for weeks, forgetting Sparrow, Louise, the baby and his job. He stared at the cracked walls as if each line had meaning.

 "We have to do something, Kenny," Louise moaned. "I mean he followed us there."

 Kenny nodded. "The first chance I get," he mumbled. "Meanwhile, you'll just have to keep the door bolted."

 She put the cup down on the room's only kitchen chair which served as night stand, though the lamp shade was bent badly from where it pressed into the back of the chair. She stared angrily at Kenny, waiting for some other response.

 "Oh, come on, Louise. You're not going to blame him on me, are you?" he asked.

 "You said you liked him, remember?" she asked, sitting coldly on the bed beside him, her hands folded across her lap.

 "He knocked at the door and I answered," Kenny said, not daring to tell her about the affair with the dope in his apartment. "Besides, he's the least of our problems right now-- not with the baby on its way."

 She glanced towards the door, then at Kenny again, her icy stare making an enemy out of Kenny. He should have agreed with her. It wasn't Sparrow; it was the city she feared and hated. Sparrow simply took on the color and shape of the place she hated. Kenny loved New York and made no attempt to hide it. And if the job didn't take so much out of him everyday, it would have been a thrill-- seeing every aspect of the New York City street. He felt a voyeur. He felt as if he should have been arrested just for liking it too much.

 "Sparrow is dangerous," Louise reminded him.

 

 "So is not having money for the baby," Kenny said. "And that's what I'm worried about right now."

 "We can't do anything about the money," Louise said. "But we could call the police and have him taken away."

 "I was thinking about taking on a second job," Kenny said, ignoring her remark about the police.

 Her attention snapped back. "Another job," she said, her mouth dropping as the fear shifted to disbelief in her eyes. "But you can barely walk with the one you have."

 "I know," he said and stood, verifying the fact with a wobble or two. "But I figure it'll be okay if I find something sitting down."

 "Who's going to pay you money to sit down, Kenny?"

 "A theater might if they hired me as a ticket salesman," Kenny said. "There are plenty of those kind of jobs out there. I just have to look for them. And with the second income, I could afford to take the trains on the messenger job. I wouldn't be nearly as tired from walking."

 "It sounds crazy," Louise said, thawing a little as the worry replaced the disbelief. But a spark rose into her eyes, too. Kenny could almost see the shape of things from the windows hidden in the deeper darkness there.

 "Maybe it is crazy," Kenny admitted. "But we won't know until I try."

 And it things worked out, maybe Kenny could even afford one or two of the cheaper things from the window, just to make Louise feel the part of a proper parent.

                                                       ***********

 "Gandalf?" Kenny shouted, the midtown businessman looking up sharply at his call, their frowning expression saying they didn't approve of Hippies screaming amid their lunch. But the white haired figure didn't look, walking down Lexington Avenue as if deaf. Kenny chased, waving his messenger bag and shouting again, until he reached the figure and turned him around, only to discover it wasn't Gandalf. Just an old man with a wrinkled face and an expression fully expecting violence.

 "You want my money?" he muttered, reaching for a pull string bag at his belt, coins jangling as he thrust it at Kenny-- his hands shaking almost as much as Kenny's.

 "No, no," Kenny said, pushing the bag back. "I thought you were a friend of mine. Sorry."

 He staggered away, suddenly out of step with himself, as if he didn't quite know the year or where he fit in the pattern of passing time. He confused several assignments and had to retrace his step to make up for the mistake and was later that much more exhausted when he came up from the Astor Place subway-- his legs and mind quivering with the consistency of Jell-O.

 He heard rather than saw something ahead of him on the dark stares and blinked twice before catching sight of the two thugs huddled there, their trollish shapes as gray as the stone walls around them. They stared down at him as he approached, hiding something between them that had crumpled on the stair.

 It took a few steps upward for Kenny to see what it was -- the pinkish form like bread dough rather than a human being, its eyes catching light from the station below. There was blood trickling down one cheek from a wound on his temple. Something of a muttered cry escaped him for which he was rewarded by another blow from the thugs.

 "Shut up, you," they said.

 "Hey!" Kenny yelled. "What the hell's going on here?"

 The two thugs glanced down, light from the platform catching sharply in their eyes. Kenny swung his messenger bag then slowly advanced, and they let go of the man on the stair and retreated out into the darkness of the street above.

 Kenny stopped beside the man and helped him up, the flesh quivering beneath his touch, the face thick with wrinkles and scars. Just another wino, Kenny thought, the smell of urine and wine curling around them both in the enclosed space. The man's ragged shirt had been torn in the attack, and the chest looked concave. He tore his arm free of Kenny's grasp, backing up the stairs-- his hands held before him seemingly expecting Kenny to attack him, too. Then, Kenny saw the eyes. Black as empty billboards.

 He was one of them!

 And Kenny stumbled down a step like a mocking reflection of the ghostly creature, unable to focus completely on the bleeding face-- though the pill-dilated eyes seemed to engulf the whole stairwell, sucking in light like a black hole. In them, Kenny saw flashes of his own life, the streets of LA crowded with men and women just like him, a living, breathing, stumbling race of alien beings that somehow survived their own stupidity. Space Cadets who had taken off on an LSD trip and not landed again. No one was sure they ever would.

 The figure backed up another step, then another, both shaking hands gripping the icy metal banister until he reached the top, then slowly, he vanished, too, the way the thugs had, into the hazy darkness of Astor Place.

 Kenny, recovering from his own shock, climbed the stairs t(* %3a time to the top, but the figure had already crossed over towards the Cooper Union building, bumbling his way through beeping yellow taxis which somehow miraculously did not crush him in their rush uptown. Yet behind the finger, like a pheromone trail, an air of familiarity remained-- and in it, Kenny saw vague traces of Sparrow's face.

                                                       ***********

 But there was no Sparrow in the hall when Kenny got home, only the closed door of his own apartment which wouldn't open to his key or repeated shoves, police bar and furniture piled high behind it like a New York City version of the Alamo.

 "Louise?" Kenny called. "Will you please stop this nonsense and let me in?"

 Louise stirred inside the apartment, like a caged beast rustling through stained straw. He could almost hear her panting from the panic. The locks and latches and chains came free with an aggravating deliberation that seemed to want to exclude Kenny as well as the rest of the world. Her angry gaze verified this when she finally pulled open the door, visions of imagined horrors staining the deeper recesses. The smell of tobacco wafted out.

 "He was here, Kenny," she hissed, staring around Kenny at the hall-- her lower lip quivering.

 "You mean Sparrow?"

 "Of course I mean Sparrow," she snapped.

 "He knocked on the door again?"

 "No," she said with a shudder. "Thank God! But he was moving around in the hall all day, dragging things up and down the stairs."

 "Must be collection day," Kenny mumbled, glancing around the hall and at the crevices and shadow. On the floor, the dust showed foot steps and scratches of heavy things. "I wonder what he's enticed out of his victims this time?"

 "I don't care, Kenny," Louise said, pulling into the apartment. She closed the door and bolted again, though did not refit the chair against the handle. "Why can't we move?"

 "You forget we have a baby on the way."

 "Hank and Peggy have a baby, too, and they moved."

 "The baby was three years old by then and Hank had another job lined up."

 "Hank said you could get a job with him."

 "Like I did last time?"

 "Yes, what's wrong with that?"

 Kenny couldn't explain it sufficiently for Louise to understand the burden of debt such a situation would produce-- the months of added favors which Hank had demanded for a simple introduction to his Boss. Moving to Jersey, depending on Hank would stretch the debt out into years. And yet, something grew out of the image of now greedy Hank, years shedding from the face of the memory into the more favorable, younger Hank to whom Kenny had been a friend. Only this Hank wasn't sitting in some factory in New Jersey. His face and shoulders were framed in a dark woody atmosphere that Kenny knew instinctively as New York. The greasy scent of cooking hamburger seemed to come with the vision. Kenny could almost hear Hank's squeaky voice saying: Don't forget the fries.

 "Damn it!" Kenny said, pounding his palm down on the kitchen counter. "Why didn't I think of it before?"

 Louise looked stunned.

 "You mean you'll do it?" she asked.

 "Get your cape," he said, throwing down his messenger bag. "We're going cross town."

 "But Hank doesn't... You mean we're going to the window?"

 Kenny gave her a side ward glance and grin. "Eventually," he said.

                                                       ***********

 "Slow down, Kenny, you're rushing ahead like a race horse," Louise pleaded, tugging on his arm. "I'm pregnant, remember?"

 "Sorry," he mumbled, pausing at the corner. The traffic light clicked through its sequence as cabs, trucks and cars from New Jersey plunged uptown in a made movement of rubber and steel, the faces blurred by the darkness and sheer speed. He felt as if the world had suddenly speeded up and he need to hurry before it all came to an end.

 "I've never see you like this," Louise said, putting her hand through the crook of his arm. She was panting the way he normally did, her pink face floating out from under her hooded cape with an expression of deep concern. "You're usually so tired."

 "I am tired," Kenny said, releasing himself from her as the light changed to green. He eased ahead more slowly despite the urge to run. St. Marks was deserted. The cold had driven even the die-hards underground. Only the newspapers remained flapping up with the gusts of wind like wings trying to take flight. At the other end, the Cooper Union building showed more life, a few of its windows illuminated with late night classes. Easels showing half completed paintings shimmering with the latest fashion in art.

 At the foot of the building, ragged men huddled between the columns in an effort to escape the bite of wind, their gray faces peering hopefully up for a moment before bending back into their nodding misery.

 Kenny paused at the Cube which marked the center of Astor Place. Again, he seemed to be retracing his steps. But the man he had saved an hour earlier was no visible. Nor were his assailants. A hush seemed to cover everything as if it had snowed. Only the creaking gate to the parking lot sounded, moving back and forth in a uneven metal music.

 Kenny turned uptown.

 "Hey!" Louise protested, dragging him to a stop by his elbow. "That's not the way to the window."

 "I know," Kenny said. "But I have to see something. It's only a block out of the way."

 But an odd block that Kenny rarely walked in these days of predictable patterns and economized steps. As a messenger, he usually took the most direct ways from place to place, avoiding the aimless wanderings he had Hank had taken as boys. It was no wonder he had forgotten about the old coffee house on 9th and the hours he, Hank and Gandalf had spent hovering over cups of steaming coffee, calculating the end of capitalism, the war in Vietnam, and the faith of their families in New Jersey.

 It was here Gandalf performed his daily ritual, dividing up the sugar cube as if the body of Christ, telling them to ease it under their tongues where the drug would enter their blood stream more directly. It was there that Kenny watched the eyes of his companions dilate, his own piece of sugar melting in his palm, uneaten, refusing to slip through the door Gandalf held ajar for them.

 He never told them, or even understood why he refused to take the leap just then. Perhaps he felt too much on the edge, believing someone needed to keep hold on the safe and normal world while the others wandered off. And watching them and the transformations they went through frightened him more, Hank and Gandalf staring at the walls and ceiling gasping at imaginary wonders.

 He turned down 9th Street. Dark factory walls changed gradually into a line of brownstones, like one of thousand ravines and gullies Kenny had wandered through out west. Only colder. And darker. With only a few lighted windows to say life existed here.

 But the store sign still glowed a half block down, though it seemed to illuminate the street better than Kenny remembered, casting sharp clinical shadows into the street. He slowed his pace as he came close. Gone were the shade of purple that had decorated the windows. Gone was the huge purple wooden cow that had hung over the door. In its place, a long rectangular internally lighted sign read: EAST VILLAGE DRUG REHABILITATION CENTER.

 Kenny staggered into the side of a parked car, his legs suddenly unable to bear his weight for a few steps more. He stared at the sign, Louise clutching at his arm asking: "What's wrong, Kenny? Why are you so upset?"

 "Just give me a minute," he said, sucking in the cold air through his teeth, feeling his bones chattering. He wanted to squint in through the door, wanted to see the booths and the black lights and rock & roll posters up inside, as if the exterior was simply one more joke played on the general public by its owner. But he knew better. Everything had been gutted. White covered tables had taken their place with medical men issuing tranquilizers instead of LSD.

 Gone to where?

 Perhaps it never existed. Nor the man. Nor the memories now confused inside Kenny's head. All those things like the ghosts of the subway, haunting him with their blank stares.

 "Kenny?" Louise said, squeezing his arm, her face concerned and anxious. Her lover was going crazy before her eyes.

 "It's all right," he said and took a gulp of air. "I'm just tired that's all."

 "You want to go back to the apartment?"

 "No," he mumbled. "We'll go see your window. Before that vanishes, too."

                                                       ***********

 By the time they reached home again, Kenny was nearly dead. Both legs felt numb below the knees and his head swam with the odd sensation of floating in space. Like the Acid trips he took in LA Flying six feet above the ground. Even the buildings on his block seemed different. Darker. Their brick faces tilted in, windows shimmering with mystery. The worst was his own building where Sparrow's lofty apartment glowed like the eye of Cyclops.

 "Hold on a second," Kenny said, pulling up at the door where he leaned against the sill like a wino, thinking in terms of what a joint might do for him, fearing the click of the superintendent's shotgun from deep in the shadows.

 The air smelled of urine and stale wine. It twisted the knife deeper into him, as if saying Louise had been right. Nothing would be the same here. And life for the child would only gradually grow grayer. No more rainbows here. No more dreams. Only the rock solid face of brick, freezing beneath Kenny's trembling fingers.

 "You don't look well," Louise said, brushing the hair out of his eyes, her own brow crinkled with concern.

 "Nothing a few weeks of solid sleep wouldn't cure," Kenny said, his own fingers probing at his legs. He half expected to find them gone as well. He tried not to think about his morning messenger route or the long climb upstairs before he could fall into bed.

 "No, Kenny, it isn't just that," Louise said, staring into his eyes. "Something's changed in you."

 Kenny laughed weakly. "Everything changes," he said. "It's just that I've always been last noticing them. Let's just get upstairs before I...."

 Something moved in the shadows up the street. Not Sparrow's red shirt this time. but something darker, and as Kenny turned, he saw light flash off the surface of the figure's horn-rimmed glasses. Both vanished instantly into a doorway.

 Kenny stumbled back. Louise, still stroking his brow, noticed nothing.

 "When we get to New Jersey, you're going to have a job that doesn't wear you down so much," she said.

 Kenny hardly heard her, his ears roaring with imagined sirens.

 "Up," he said, bumbling forward into the dark lower hall, empty wine bottles clattering as his feet. He stubbed his toes on the first step without seeing it, then yanked himself up the steps, hands clutching the railing.

 Like an old man. Like his grandfather just before the end.

 Half way up the first flight, Sparrow appeared, a half shadowed face that might have been the waiting moon, his teeth glittering with the dim light like a mass murderer's.

 "Go away!" Louise screamed. "We don't have five dollars for you! We don't have anything for you!"

 The light seemed to fade in the deep green eyes. He looked puzzled. "I don't want five dollars," he said.

 "Then what do you want?" Kenny asked, feeling as if had been caught between two hard places, one with horn-rimmed glasses, the other with shifting green eyes.

 "I want to show you something," the boy said.

 "Kenny, don't," Louise said, her shaking fingers gripping his arm.

 "Let him show us," Kenny mumbled. "Or we'll never get rid of him."

 Her mouth shifted sideways, tooth grinding on tooth as she eyed the boy distrustfully. "All right, Kenny," she said reprovingly, enough of an edge in her voice to say Kenny would hear about it later.

 Sparrow's grin reappeared. "This way," he said, twisting his malformed spine around to climb back the way he'd come, motioning for them to follow. "You'll really like this," he said over his shoulder. Then, slowly, they climbed, winding around the banisters with all the austerity of a execution march. Only Sparrow seemed not to notice, nearly humming with his delight, urging them up the first flight, then the second before coming to a stop before their door.

 Louise stiffened as she reached the landing, her eyes and mouth opening as if attached by strings. "Kenny?" she gasped. "It's the..."

 Before them in the hall was the stuff from the window, laid out like the display of a second-hand shop. Except that each piece was still wrapped in the original plastic and clearly new. A complete collection, as if the boy had come along after Louise, tracing her fingerprints from the glass.

 She edged forward, her thick fingers uncurling from her side like rising fern leaves, reaching out towards a wicker bassinet -- terminating an inch from contact as if the glass still stood in-between.

 "Where did it come from?" she asked in a husky but hushed voice.

 "I have good friends," Sparrow said, obviously delighting in his accomplishment. "You want to buy?"

 Louise's back arched like a cat's, her hands falling away from the collection, reforming into fists beneath her pregnant belly. Her face caught the light and in her enraged eyes hate bloomed.

 "Damn it, Sparrow," Kenny said, intervening. "How many times do we have to tell you we don't have any money?"

 "But it's cheap!" he protested. "I got it all cheap for you."

 "Cheap or not, we can't afford it. We don't even have the cash for the hospital yet!"

 The joy drained from Sparrow's green eyes. "No money?" he muttered.

 "None."

 Then, a howl rose in the hall, like some dying prairie dog from Kenny's days on the road, defining life in the wilderness in one single note of desperation. It took Kenny a moment to realize that it came from Louise, tears streaming down either cheek as she bolted for the door. Her finger nails scraped the wood until Kenny undid the locks. He touched her elbow gently, but she jerked away from him and plunged inside.

 Behind Kenny, Sparrow stirred, staring after Louise with his green eyes startled. "What's wrong with her?" he asked.

 "As if you didn't know," Kenny growled, glancing over the collection of baby things again, his stomach tightening with a pinch of regret. "Go away, Sparrow," he whispered. "And take this shit with you."

                                                       ***********

 It pressed on Kenny the whole next day like a weight he couldn't lift from his shoulders, making each step drag on. He could see nothing but the pile of baby things inches from Louise's fingers and the momentary glimmer of hope in her eyes. He cursed Sparrow a dozen times a block for putting her through that pain, giving her hope, then snatching it away.

 Kenny had seen the look before in LA, Portland, and even during their first few days in New York. That "Things will be better now," look that never transformed into reality.

 Then, over the hours of walking his route, the germ of an idea grew in him. By the time he punched out and hurried to the subway, it bloomed, the leaves and branches of it flowering out of his ears and mouth.

 Up the stairs of the apartment building he charged, then pounded sharply on Sparrow's door. The padlock was missing, but no one answered.

 "Open it, damn it! I know you're in there," Kenny shouted, the echoes of his own voice curling around in the hall like a cop's. Doors from the apartments below seemed to shudder under its impact. "Look, Sparrow," Kenny said in a lower, friendlier voice. "I just want to talk with you."

 Inside something stirred, like the rustle of an animal trapped in the brush, the door locks scraping open to reveal a set of hunted and distrusting eyes. Green eyes that caught the light like emeralds. The gaze studied Kenny's face uncertainly.

 "You want something?" he asked with all the enthusiasm of a rejected used car salesman.

 "I want to make a deal with you," Kenny said, lowering his voice to avoid the echoes.

 The boy's eyes focused more closely on Kenny's, a slight, hopeful smile rising to his thin lips. "You want to buy pot?"

 "I didn't say that," Kenny growled, glancing over his shoulder at the stairs and the darkness and the shadows that seemed to crawl up behind him. He could almost make out the shape of horn-rimmed glasses, staring. "And for God's sake keep your voice down. All these doors have ears. Let's talk. Inside."

 He looked perplexed, but let the door swing in, motioning Kenny to enter. Inside, the room had altered, looking even more congested than it had before, the baby things not quite able to fit in with Sparrow's sense of organization. The arm of a high chair stuck out at one point. The wheel of a carriage at another. But the entire collection of baby things seemed out of step with the neat boxes around which they had been fit.

 "In back," Kenny said after Sparrow had closed and relocked the door. But this time, Kenny led, marching down the aisle as if he owned the place instead of Sparrow, stopping only when he'd reached the Spartan world of cot and dressed. He went immediately to the stereo and placed both hands upon it.

 "I want to make a deal for this," he said.

 Sparrow's lips shifted slightly into a confused twist. "But you have no money."

 "You're not listening," Kenny said impatiently. "I didn't say buy, I said deal."

 "I don't understand."

 "Sit down," Kenny said taking hold of the boy's shoulder and maneuvering him into the rickety chair. "I'll explain."

 The details had come to Kenny during the day as he had wandered the 42nd street business district, admiring as he usually did the fine collection electronics displayed in the windows. Faces of others floated in the window beside his own, like ghosts, some looking vaguely familiar as if they were those lost over the previous two years.

 It occurred to him that Gandalf and the others might not have vanished at all. Certainly the places where many they had hung out together had gone under. But then, in this city, places came and went almost daily, even among the thriving uptown establishments to which he delivered. But the people, they simply shifted-- like sand settling into some new shape or habit. It was Kenny who had changed. Kenny who had shifted from their lackadaisical way of life into one of routine and structure. It just didn't fit in with the pattern of their lives and he couldn't expect to snag them by accident, searching through the crowds after work when his friends were most likely somewhere else, doing their thing.

 If Kenny wanted to find them, he couldn't do it with an occasional visit; he had to get down on the street and stay there, the way he and Hank had, dip himself back into the pool of people who lived and breathed the street. His life had become too much uptown delivery. People here didn't know him or trust him or let him into the secrets that only village people knew. He went from home to work and back without real contact with the natives.

 "You make most of your rent selling pot, right?" Kenny asked, pressing close to the boy, suddenly aware of the smell of soap -- like the smell of the hospital Kenny hated as a kid.

 "Some people give me money..."

 "I said most, not all."

 Sparrow's head eased up and down slowly in an uncertain nod, his green eyes slightly fogged with doubt.

 "I want to help you sell it," Kenny said.

 The eyes widened slightly with surprise. "Help me?"

 "I want to deal for you, Damn it!" Kenny said, drawing back from the chair as he began to pace back and forth in front of the boy. "I still know some people down around Washington Square."

 This time, the eyes grew scared. "Washington Square is dangerous!" the boy blurted.

 "I know it's dangerous," Kenny said, the vision of horn-rimmed glasses leaping into his head. "But I won't have trouble if I'm careful."

 Know who's who, Gandalf had once said. Deal to those you know.

 "But why?" Sparrow asked.

 "For Louise," Kenny said. "She sobbed all night over those things you left in the hall."

 "She cried?"

 "Yes, damn it. Until you brought those things, she could dream about having things for our kid. But sitting there within reach, it hit her just how little chance there is of having anything good for the baby, let alone a window full of stuff like that."

 To get anything or to find anyone he used to know Kenny had to take chances. Working hard wasn't enough in the world.

 "I don't think the landlord would approve," Sparrow said.

 "Why should he care? He gave you the pot for you to make rent. You'd still be selling it, only some of it would go through me."

 Sparrow's green eyes studied Kenny's face, working up from the uneven shape of his mouth to the ridges in his forehead, all of these things giving some secret message to the motives behind the offer.

 "I guess that's true," Sparrow mumbled.

 "Well then?"

 The boy nodded reluctantly, like the marks on Hollywood Boulevard who the spare change artists confused so much with hard luck tales that they agreed just to be rid of the confusion. Sparrow didn't seem totally sure of what he had just agreed to.

 "Then I can take the stereo now?" Kenny asked with all the careful balance of a punch line to a joke.

 "Now?" the boy asked, confused again.

 "She needs something to cheer her up," Kenny explained. "A few of her old songs and she'll be like new."

 Sparrow gave a more enthusiastic nod this time like a dog anxious to do anything that would please his master. He seemed to like Louise and wanted to do something for her. This struck an odd chord in Kenny, some vital note out of tune with the rest. Why should he care for her when she hated him so much?

 Or did she?

 Louise feared Sparrow, but didn't know him. To her, Sparrow was the sum total of the whole dark city-- a city pounding upon her door, ready to kick it in and take everything valuable to her. She never got to see the good side of the city, the ins and outs of everyday life the way Kenny did, the people like her who struggled with daily routines to survive.

 "Great!" Kenny boomed and grabbed Sparrow's shoulders, the bones of which poked into his palms, revealing how truly fragile they were, how anyone-- Kenny or Louise -- could have broken him in two. No shotgun needed here. A loud noise might have done.

 Then, Kenny went to the machine and disconnected its chords, the wires detaching themselves from the wall like threads of a shattered web. "Get the speakers for me, will you, Sparrow," Kenny said. "We'll go down and spring the surprise on her now."

 With his arms full, Kenny barely fit through the corridors to the door, his hands scraping the exposed elements of Sparrow's collection of baby things. The power chord trailed behind him like a tail. Sparrow opened squiggled through to the door down one of the other passages, managing to pull open the door despite the burden of the speakers. These he clutched to his chest the way a child would a teddy bear. His face looked many years younger than even that first sight of him in the hall. He looked as if he wanted to cry for some reason.

 On the way down, doors opened and closed with all the motivation of a fun house, curious dark eyes watching them as they passed. Kenny half expected a cry for them to stop or the barrel of a shotgun to appear. He strained to hear the sound of a siren rushing up from the street.

 Stop thieves! How would Kenny explain to the police about their deal?  Sorry, officer, I'll be selling pot from here on out.

 He was actually relieved to reach the door of his own apartment unmolested, though he was puzzled when Louise didn't open the door to his call, shouting back weakly from within: "I can't."

 He struggled to pluck the key from his pocket, then to undo the latches without putting the stereo down. Then, when the door fell in, Louise's glowing face greeted him from the bed.

 It was an expression Kenny had never seen on her before; every bit of horror had vanished as her eyes gleamed. She didn't even look at the stereo or Sparrow standing behind Kenny clutching the speakers.

 "I think it's time, Kenny," she said softly.

 "Time? You mean for the baby?"

 "I think so."

 Kenny started to speak, then stopped, staring at her flushed face and the bloated belly before her, half expecting the baby pop out then and there.

 "Don't you think you should call the cab?" Louise asked. "Like we planned."

 "Oh!" Kenny said, stereo sliding out of his arms and into the straight back kitchen chair in the corner. They had made elaborate plans what to do when this moment came, a detailed strategy of things they needed to do. But his head had gone blank.

 "The number is on the wall, Kenny," Louise said, pointing to a piece of paper scotch-taped the wall near the door.

 He tore the paper off the wall and fished in his pocket for a coin as he plunged passed Sparrow towards the hall. This time he noticed none of the opening and closing doors or the wine bottles cluttered on the stoop outside. He didn't even remember Sparrow until he was seated in the phone booth of the bar two doors down and then only half way through the sequence of dialed numbers that would bring on the cab. His fingers froze.

 

 Upstairs with Louise was a man who had forgotten birth and babies, who had inspired enough dread in the building for the landlord to carry a shotgun, who somehow floated outside the normal world of living and breathing in a way Kenny didn't understand.

 He slammed the phone down and recovered his coin, submitting it again to the mechanism before dialing again. Even then, he came up with a wrong number and someone asking him what he wanted in a thick Spanish accent.

 When Kenny finally got through to the dispatcher and gave the man instructions, his heart was pounding madly in his chest. Smelling of hops, sweat and cigarette smoke he charged back out to the frigid street -- and came face to face with a set of horn-rimmed glasses. The cop stared at him from a doorway across the street, brows rising above the black glass frames with surprise and interests. The eyes said: Got you now, Pal!

 Kenny's head swam with sudden disorientation, feeling a strange drug working up inside of him with the paranoia of speed and a deeper anger that rose from his bones. He wanted to go over and shake the man.

 Can't you see what's going on here? Is everything a fucking plot to you?

 Kenny had outgrown these little hide & seek games. There was no room or time in his life to waste on their dark visions. Nor time to teach any lessons in life to a man caught up in them. Kenny simply shook his head and plunged back into his building, his aching legs suddenly driving up the stairs as if they hadn't walked for miles that day. Visions of Sparrow danced in his head instead. Why wasn't the cop protecting Louise from monsters like that? Why couldn't the authorities see who the real criminals were?

 But whatever prophecy of mass murder Kenny imagined, evaporated from his head, replace one more uncanny than any he could have manufactured for himself. Louise was still seated on the bed. But now, Sparrow sat on the floor at her feet, curled like a dog, his green eyes stark and frightened.

 "She's hurting, Kenny," Sparrow moaned. "Make it stop."

 "Labor pains. They're worse than I thought they'd be," Louise said, her face pale and eyes glazed over in their battle against the contractions. He had never seen her like this -- or anyone in the process of birth before. It had always been glossed over by TV images of beauty and ease, or by the childhood myths parents taught about storks or watermelon seeds.

 Pain?

 Where did it fit in this remarkable thing? Why did she have to suffer to bring their child into the world?  He knelt down beside her, somehow avoiding Sparrow.

 "Can you manage to get downstairs?" Kenny asked, her hand finding his on the bed, squeezing his fingers till they ached.

 "I think so," she said, beads of sweat thick on her upper lip. "But we'll have to go real slow."

 "Not too slow," Kenny said with a giggle that sounded even odd to himself. "I already called the cab. It won't wait long in this neighborhood."

 "Look out there, Sparrow," Kenny said, nudging the boy away with his foot, like a too-affectionate dog, the green eyes staring up at Louise struggled to gain her feet. A shaky Louise who immediately cringed with the next contraction.

 "How long between them now?" Kenny asked, searching the room for the pre-packed suitcase.

 "I don't know," Louise said. "But they're coming often."

 Kenny took her arm. Sparrow took the other. Somehow, they got her into the hall, where Kenny put the suitcase down and locked the door. It seemed an odd gesture, one that had no place in this process. The apartment sounding hollow with the turning of the key. Then, one slow step after another, Kenny, Sparrow, Louise and suitcase made the descent. There was no shadow of winos on the door step. Only the aberration with horn-rimmed glasses.

 "All right, McDonald," the nark said. "Just hold it right there."

 "Damn it, are you crazy!" Kenny screamed, trying not to lose the suitcase or Louise. "Can't you see what's going on here?"

 Around the nark, blue uniforms swarmed like bees, each of them with buzzing radios and drawn gun-gray stingers aimed, their expression grim and determined, as if Kenny had done some dirty thing to stain their dirty city-- as if he was to blame for Gandalf's disappearance or the rapidly fading colors, turning people dreams into shades of gray.

 "What is this about, Kenny?" Louise asked, her eyes half closed in her struggle against the pain, her arm shivering beneath Kenny's hand. "What do they want from us?"

 "Trouble," Kenny said. "They're always looking for trouble. But in the wrong places with the wrong people."

 "You don't listen well, McDonald," the nark said again. "We don't want people hurt here. Just move away from the woman, nice and easy."

 "You move," Kenny barked. "We're in a hurry."

 Behind the accumulation of cops and cop cars, the cab pulled up, its driver glancing out at the flashing lights with a skittish expression.

 "Bullshit," the nark said. "You're not wiggling out of things this time, boy."

 The cab driver shook his head in disgust and then drove off.

 "That was our cab," Kenny said.

 "I guess you'll have to miss it, eh?"

 "It's not for me, fool! It's for my old lady. We were on our way to the hospital."

 Only then did the cop look at Louise, his glasses reflecting the street light over her like a search beam, illuminating the swollen breasts and belly, and the grimacing expression of birth that must have been evident even to him.

 Or had he forgotten birth, too, frowning suddenly, the way Sparrow had when Kenny had mentioned up in the rooftop apartment, the eyes behind the glasses focusing outward for the first time -- the veil lifting from the secrets of the man.

 Kenny staggered back, staring at the face and eyes, shaking his head at them, seeing the face of the subway victim superimposed over the cop's face, seeing Sparrow's face flashing across it, too, as if part of some great cosmic LSD trip into which humanity itself had gone.

 Then, the cop blinked and the hood fell back over the eyes, and ]with a turn of head, the lights of the police car washed it all away.

 "Drive them to the hospital," the nark said, motioning towards one of the uniformed cops.

 "What?" the cop said, looking up startled. "But I thought you said...."

 "Just do it, damn it," the nark snapped without looking at the cop, then vanished back into the shadows, only his shiny shoes and shimmering glasses showing from the doorway into which he'd step.

 "All right, all right, you heard the man," the uniform cop grumbled, waving towards the open door of the car with the muzzle of his shotgun, the man seeming to forget its purpose; he had expected a drug bust. His partner looked equally confused, holding open the back door to the cop car like a butler, his badge as much an illusion as Louise's Manson.

 Then, Louise and Kenny slipped in. It wasn't until the cop slammed the door that Kenny noticed Sparrow seated on the other side of Louise, the shaken, green-eyed boy still clutching Louise's hand.

 "Hey! Wait a minute," Kenny objected. "Sparrow's not supposed to come with..."

 "Don't give us a hard time, kid," the cop behind the wheel said as he started the car. "We don't like being a taxi service. What hospital?"

 "Belleview," Kenny mumbled and took Louise's other hand, feeling the moment slightly soured by it all.

 The car leaped forward, pressing them back into the seat. Outside, curled into one of the doorways like a cornered animal, the nark watched them pass, horn-rimmed glasses catching like flames in the headlight before blinking out of existence.

 Just a match in the wind, Kenny thought, as the sad awareness of something else vanishing from the past, good going with evil into a place he couldn't define.

 Inside the car, Sparrow swayed with each swerve, as the wheels pounded over the potholes of First Avenue, his gaze as frosted over as a statue's in Central Park, lacking only the pigeon shit and icicles. He felt to Kenny like a ticking Weatherman's bomb which could explode at any moment, ticking beside Kenny and Louise, ticking inside them.

 But he forgot Sparrow as the city began to overwhelm him as it always did, the East Village changing into one of the more fashionable midtown neighborhoods. It was a magic act Kenny had never been able to understand, how one block could lead into another and another until a whole different creature emerged. Then, out of that, like a wolfman's man emerging hair in the light of a full moon, the brick blister of Belleview appeared.

 The police car swerved into the oval drive, squealing to a stop at the curb. Glass mouth of the hospital fortress grinned with blinding florescent light. It spilled out onto the sidewalk into a pool at their feet, like ice, with the same cold feeling. And yet, it reminded Kenny of the window display to which Louise had dragged him, and he stared up through the glass half expecting to catch glimpse of Sparrow's collection of baby things. But it was old and gnarled he saw instead, twisted faces and empty eyes, moaning and groaning people cluttered in pink plastic chairs near the door.

 "Out," the cop commanded.

 The three clamored out into the light. Sparrow jerked to a stop after only two steps, his gaze rising to study the arch and the face of the building. Something dark registered in his green eyes with the reflected lights.

 "No!" he moaned.

 "What is it?" Kenny asked, suddenly caught between two people in apparent pain.

 "Not this place," Sparrow said, shaking his head slowly from side to side, his eyes moving to maintain their fix upon the doors and the moving white-clad people just inside. "You shouldn't have brought her here."

 "It's all we can afford," Kenny growled, mistaking the man for comments made by others at work.

 A welfare hospital? You're going to let you baby get born in a welfare hospital?

 Louise trembled with another pang of pain. She seemed ready to melt on the spot and deliver the baby here on the sidewalk.

 "We really should hurry," she said through clenched teeth.

 "All right, honey," Kenny whispered and led her towards the doors. Behind him, Sparrow let out a small cry, then started to follow, shoulders slumped, head shaking from side to side again with the same unerring stare. He looked defeated. He looked like a beaten dog.

 Louise gripped Kenny's hand through another bout of pain, and yet her face had ceased to show it. A veil of tranquillity had fallen over her features. Her eyes were blank and Kenny stuttered in horror, feeling something sharp twisting up into his stomach.

 "Louise?" Kenny whispered, trying to keep the sudden surge of panic from his voice, his fingers reaching up to touch her face. The flesh was warm, but she looked like a statue.

 "It's all right, Kenny," she said, all of her face but the eyes smiling.

 But it wasn't all right. Everything seemed wrong, the wrong time, the wrong city, the wrong mood for a birth-- as if life as Kenny knew it had crumbled at his feet, leaving no sense of future for his child. It was more than just the lack of color, it was the memories themselves, draining out of him. He felt empty and lonely and wanted to go dig up Gandalf or Hank or any other familiar face that would help fill him again. To tell him what was happening here and how he was supposed to handle this so-called miracle of life.

 He stumbled to the nurse's station to check Louise in, white clad figures glancing up from their paper work. Two men came around and took Louise's elbows.

 "This way," they said softly, walking her through the double doors and deeper into the hospital.

 "Fill these out," the women behind the desk said, pushing forms in front of Kenny. Sparrow stirred uncomfortably at his side, staring at the room and the other people, his face transformed by the horror of it as if he and Kenny were seeing two different places.

 Finally, Kenny took his arm and led him away from the nurse's station towards the rows of blue plastic chairs marked off as the waiting area. Other people in various stages of pain filled them, a rogue's gallery of scarred faces and dilated eyes. Kenny sat Sparrow down somewhat away from the others.

 "You shouldn't have brought her here, Kenny," Sparrow kept mumbling.

 "Don't worry," Kenny said, sitting himself beside the boy, feeling many times more tired than he ever had before. Whatever drug that had kept him on his feet over the previous nine months was finally gone, drained out of his veins, leaving a more ordinary and weak human being behind. "Everything will be all right, Sparrow," he muttered, closing his eyes, the weight of his life dragging down the lids and him into sleep.

                                                       ***********

 "Mr. McDonald?" the voice said, coming out of a cloud of white. He had dreamed of flying, his limbs light as a balloons, sailing from coast to coast with the ease of a bird. Then, the voice called again. "Mr. McDonald. Wake up."

 He opened his eyes. The dream world tore away like curtain, revealing the deranged and disheveled real world, grimy faces and curious stares from the seats around him.

 "You're the proud father of a baby girl," the nurse said.

 "I am?" he said, the words drawing him up another level into consciousness. A vague glow sparked to life in his chest. "Did you hear that Spar...?"

 But the seat that Sparrow had occupied earlier was now vacant. Only the dangling speaker cord said he had ever existed. Kenny staggered to his feet.

 "Can I see her?" he asked, not sure of which "her" he meant.

 The nurse smiled and led him through the double white doors Louise had taken earlier, and down a long corridor to a wide picture window-- on the far side of which lines of babies were displayed, tags dangling from the ends of their cribs. Bright fluorescent light from above gave them a packaged look, as if each had been stamped out of some mold. And yet, they all reacted differently, some crying, some giggling, but Kenny's child was silent, staring straight out at him.

 "NO!" he roared and reeled back from the window, holding his hands up to block the vision.

 "What is it?" the nurse asked, pinching his arm as she grabbed him.

 He waved at the window, at the child whose blank stare seemed a miniature of Sparrow's. "S-She doesn't see me," he moaned.

 The nurse laughed. "That's nothing to worry about, Mr. McDonald. It sometimes takes a day or two for the child to orient herself. Remember she is new to this world."

 He nodded vaguely and glanced through the window again, cringing at the child. But the face there -- his daughter's -- did not stare back blankly this time. Instead, the color had returned both to the face and the eyes, and as he hesitantly wiggled his fingers, a smile grew on the child's lips.

 "See," the nurse said. "She knows her Daddy."

 When he reached the room, Louise was asleep, her face as smooth as the child's. Gone was the mask of fear he had come to associate with her. She seemed beyond the dictates of the city now. he brushed her arm with his finger tips then eased out the door. He would come back and see her in the morning.

                                                       ***********

 Outside, the temperature had dropped. The shabby city hung over him like a tall gray curtain, dirty windows and clutter doorways adding to the misery of the cold. He walked quickly, staring at each gray building face, suddenly understanding that the rainbows had faded forever. His fingers ached and blew steam into his hands, aching for a cup of coffee, or chocolate, or a joint. Just below 14th Street, he saw him -- the white beard floating among the woolen caps like a image of Santa Claus.

 "GANDALF!" he shouted.

 But there was no hitch in the tall man's stride to indicate that he had heard. The same old clown, Kenny thought, too dignified to acknowledge the call in public.

 Kenny charged through the crowd of shoppers, pushing and shoving his way through shopping bags and metal carts, overriding their objections with his momentum.

 "Gandalf, you old fool!" Kenny said, grabbing the man's shoulder and twisting him around. "Don't you walk away without saying...."

 The man's blank stare greeted Kenny, settled in like a pool of water long polluted. It was Gandalf, all right. There was no mistaking the stern jaw trust out proudly beneath the white beard, or the crinkled flesh around each eye that made him look old before his time. But the space behind had gone vacant, a store front whose frosted windows bore signs saying: out of business.

 Nor did he move or speak, but clung to Kenny's hand as if waiting for him to pull the proper string. Kenny's fingers released his collar slowly. The man straightened, rising onto his shaking limbs before resuming their long gait-- the man and memory floating back into the crowd as if no one had stopped him or called out his name.

 "Damn it, Gandalf," Kenny groaned. "Why you?"

 But it was Kenny at which the passerbys stared, he, the abnormality here, leaning against the light post like a junkie, holding his stomach against the sudden urge to retch. Deep down, the pain knifing through him, cutting up towards his heart.

                                                       ***********

 Kenny stopped, staring up the flights of what seemed like unending stairs. His limbs sagged. He had walked too much after seeing Gandalf, and rush of birth had vanished in the dark. He took the first step, his whole weight contained in that one foot. He felt like a crippled, swinging his spine up the way Sparrow had. He had already made all the appropriate calls-- to his boss, canceling work the next day, to Hank making arrangements for a new job in New Jersey. He would take a bus out in the morning to pick up newspapers and a clue to a new apartment, dreading the temporary stay with Hank, yet dreading this place of ghosts more. The Greenwich Village Kenny remembered no longer existed, and living here was only a torture of memory, endured day in day out for no reason.

 Slowly, he climbed, the whisper of the building echoing in his head, footsteps and rubbing cloth and the low clink of metal and plastic from the flight above him. His flight. And as he came around the banister, he stopped. Piled up in front of his door like a collection of trash was Sparrow's baby stuff.

 "Damn it!" Kenny yelled up the stairs after the sound of the boy's retreating step. "I told you we cant' afford it!"

 But when he reached the first item, Kenny saw the note, pinned to the top saying: "Free."

                                                       ***********

 Two days later, he made the pilgrimage up the stairs to Sparrow's apartment-- his legs already stronger for the rest. Even the stairs, he saw the door open and the padlock gone, and rising dust from the Superintendent's sweeping broom. The rooms were empty with Bankster pecking at the cracks in the floor as if suspecting something hidden there that he wanted out.

 "Where's Sparrow?" Kenny asked, stopping on the far side of the threshold.

 "Gone?"

 "Just like that?"

 "Over night it seems," the bald man said seemingly disinterested, though his broom struck the cracks with a degree more vehemence.

 "Where did he go?"

 For the first time the landlord looked up, his eyes full of contempt. "Who the hell cars as long as he went. Off to where all space cadets go in the end, I suppose. I say good riddance. If only I could get rid of the rest as easily..."

 Kenny studied the empty room, trying to place the things that had occupied it previously, coming up with the impossibility of it ever having contained all that Sparrow had fit there.

 "You know anyone who wants an apartment?" Bankster asked.

 "Only ghosts," Kenny mumbled and turned and started down the stairs again. Louise was waiting. So was New Jersey.

 

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