“He knew who you were?”

  “I told him I used to model for Nat. Our accidental meeting on the street. He

  pretty much ordered me to go away from you.”

  “Is that why you walked out tonight?”

  “How do I know?” she said petulantly. Curling close against him. Tips of her

  breasts grazing his back. Turn around and do her? No. Not tonight. That lousy

  meddling fucker Gomez. Like to tell him a thing or two. If only I could. If

  only. What a bitching mess. But tomorrow’s another day. She’s snoring already,

  anyway. Let her rest. Maybe I will too. To sleep. Perchance to dream.

  Three days of relative tranquillity. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. His first weekend

  with Lissa. No news out of Hamlin, save only some irregular psychic belchings

  and rumblings. Obviously the shot that Lissa had given him had left him pretty

  feeble. No news out of Gomez, either. A quiet weekend together. Where to go,

  what to do? The first edge of summer heat lapping the city. We stay in bed late.

  We screw to Mozart. Dee-dum-dee-dum-dee-dum-dum, diddy-dum diddy-dum diddy-dum.

  Her legs up over his shoulders in a nicely wanton way. Her eyes aglow afterward

  in the shower. Playful, kittenish. Soaping his cock, trying to get him up again

  and succeeding. For a man of my mature years I’m pretty virile,hein? Laughter.

  Breakfast. The morning news coming out of the slot.

  Then out of the house. Her mood already descending; he could sense her turning

  sullen, starting to withdraw. It just didn’t seem possible to keep her happy

  more than two hours at a stretch. He tried to ignore her darkening outlook,

  hoping it would go away. Such a beautiful day. The golden sunlight spilling out

  of the Bronx.

  “Where do you want to go, Lissa?” She didn’t answer. It seemed almost that she

  hadn’t heard him. He asked again.

  “Voices,” she muttered. “These fucking voices. I’m a crapped-up Joan of Arc.”

  Lissa? Lissa? Turning toward him, torment in the ocean-colored eyes. “A river of

  mud,” she said. “Thick brown mud piling up in my head. Coming out my ears, soon.

  A delta on each side.”

  “It’s such a beautiful day, Lissa. The whole city’s ours.”

  “Wherever you want to go,” she said.

  At his random suggestion they went to the Bronx Zoo. Wandering hand in hand past

  the cunning habitat groups. Hard to believe that those lions really had no way

  of jumping the moat. And what kept those birds from flying out of their dome?

  Wide open on one side, for Christ’s sake! But of course they did clever things

  with air pressure and ion-flows these days. The zoo was crowded. Families,

  lovers, kids. Most of them funnier-looking than the population behind the moats.

  The raucousness of the animals. Wet twitching noses, sad eyes.

  Every third cage or so was marked with a grim black star, signifying that the

  species was extinct except in captivity. White rhinoceros. Pygmy hippo.

  Reticulated giraffe. European bison. Black rhinoceros. South American tapir.

  Wombat. Arabian oryx. Caspian tiger. Red kangaroo. Bandicoot. Musk-ox. Grizzly

  bear. So many species gone. Another hundred years, nothing left but dogs and

  cats and sheep and cattle. But of course the Africans had needed meat in the

  famine years, before the Population Correction. The South Americans, the Asians.

  All those babies, all those hungry mouths, and still it hadn’t done any good, by

  the end of it they were eating each other after the animals were gone. Now the

  zoos were the last refuge. And for some it was too late.

  Macy remembered a trip with his father, when he was a boy, ten, twelve years

  old, the San Diego Zoo, seeing the giant panda they had there. “That’s the last

  one left in the world, son. Smuggled out of Commie China just before the

  blowup.” A big two-toned fuzzy toy sitting in the cage. No giant pandas left

  anywhere, now. Some stuffed ones, as reminders. His father? The San Diego Zoo?

  Really? Who was his father? Where had he grown up? Had he ever been to the San

  Diego Zoo? Did they truly have a giant panda there, once? The oscillations of

  memory. Surely it had never happened. Perhaps there had never been any such

  animal.

  Lissa said, “I can feel their minds. The animals.”

  “Can you?”

  “I never realized I could. I never went to the zoo before.”

  He was poised, wary, ready to rush her toward the tube if the impact overwhelmed

  her. It wasn’t necessary. She was joyful, ecstatic, standing in the plaza by the

  seal tank and drinking in the oinks and bleats and honks and nyaaas of a hundred

  alien species. “Maybe I can transmit some of what I’m getting to you,” she said,

  and held both his hands and frowned earnestly at him and peered into his eyes,

  so that passersby nodded and smiled at the sight of true love being expressed

  between the seals and the tigers, but he was unable to pick up a shred of what

  she sent him.

  So she described it, in intermittent bursts, whenever she could spare him a

  moment out of her contemplations. The high piping throaty thoughts of the

  giraffe. The dull booming ruminations of the rhino. The dense, complex, bleak,

  and bitter output of the African elephant, he of the big ears, a Kierkegaard of

  zoology. The sparkling twitter of the chimps. The flippant outbursts of the

  raccoon. The Galapagos tortoise pondered eternity; the brown bear was

  surprisingly sensual; the penguins dreamed icy dreams.

  “Are you making all this up?” he asked her, and she laughed in his face, like

  Aquinas accused of inventing the Trinity. Within an hour she was wholly spent.

  They snacked on algae-burgers and Lenin soda, and took the conveyer to the exit.

  Lissa giggling, manic, stoned on her beasts. “The orang-utan,” she said. “I

  could tell you exactly how he’d vote in the next election. And if I could only

  let you hear the gnu! Oh, shit, the gnu!”

  But she was brooding again before dark. They went into Manhattan in the

  afternoon, circling around the burned-out places and drifting through the

  flamboyant new downtown section, and he tried to interest her in the amusement

  parlors, the sniffer palaces, the swimming tanks, and such, only she was glassy

  and distant. They had dinner at a Chinese restaurant on one of the Hudson piers,

  and she picked idly at her food, leaving most of it, getting clucked at by the

  waiter. A quiet evening at home. We have no friends, Macy realized. They played

  Bach and smoked a lot.

  Just before bedtime Hamlin seemed to stretch and yawn within him, or was it an

  illusion? Bad sex that night, Lissa very far down, he not much better, both of

  them clumsy and halfhearted as they groped each other in bed. He tried to go

  into her and she was dry. Persevered, God knows why. Finally some lubrication.

  Not much response from her, though. Like fucking a robot; he was tempted to quit

  in the middle, but thought it would be impolite, and he chased himself on to a

  solitary, unrewarding coming. Some nasty dreams later, but nothing he hadn’t had

  before.

  Saturday a fizzle. Lissa vacant, absent. An endless day. Sunday much better.

  Throwing herself on him at sunrise, straddling him, lowering herself until

  impaled. Good morning, good morning, good morning! Up and down, up and down.

  Breasts jiggling overhead. His startled fingers encircling the smooth cool

  globes of her ass. After which she fixed a hearty breakfast. Bouncy, a

  breathless adolescent giddiness about her, perhaps fake: trying hard to be a

  good companion, he suspected. After that sulking bitchy day she gave me

  yesterday. Lose one, win one.

  “Where to?” she asked.

  “Museum of Modern Art,” he suggested. “They’ve got some Hamlins there, don’t

  they?”

  “Five or six, yes. But do you really think it’s wise to go? I mean, he’s been so

  quiet the last couple of days. The sight of his work might stir him up again.”

  “That’s exactly what I want to find out,” he told her. They went. The museum, it

  developed, hadseven Hamlins, two big pieces almost though not quite as

  impressive as theAntigone, and five minor objects. They all were on display in

  the same room, four grouped in one corner and three assembled against the

  opposite wall, which gave Macy the opportunity for a critical test: would the

  presence of so much of Nat Hamlin’s handiwork arouse the submerged artist by

  some process of psychic leverage?

  Boldly Macy planted himself between the two groupings, where he would be exposed

  to the maximum output of the pieces. Well, Hamlin? Where are you? But though

  Macy detected some cloudy subliminal squirmings, there was nothing else to

  indicate Hamlin’s existence within him. He studied the sculptures closely. The

  connoisseur making his lofty observations. Only a few weeks ago, in Harold

  Griswold’s office, the sight of a Hamlin piece had knocked him slappy, and here

  he was listening critically to the resonances, noting the subtle recurvings of

  the contours, doing the whole art-appreciation number with great aplomb.

  Some kids in the room, researching a report on Hamlin, maybe. Apparently

  recognizing him. Looking at his face, then at his Rehab badge, then at his face

  again, then at the sculptures, then at each other. Whispering. Even that didn’t

  bother him, being found out as the walking zombie relict of the great artist.

  The kids didn’t dare approach him. Macy gave them a benevolent smile. I’d give

  you my autograph if you asked. With these very hands, you know, those

  masterpieces were created.

  He was impressed by his own newfound resilience. To come here, to confront

  Hamlin’s work, to take it all so calmly. Although not entirely calmly. He found

  the sight of these pieces gradually stirring in him that dismal depressing

  nostalgia, that yearning to have access to the past in which this body had

  brought into being those sculptures. His true past. As he was starting to regard

  it. Implying that his own past was unsatisfactory, insufficient, insubstantial,

  inadequate. As if he too had come to agree with Hamlin that he was mere fiction,

  a freakish aberrant unreality that had been appended to Nat Hamlin’s authentic

  life. So he craved knowledge of that other time. Who was I when I was he? How

  did I bring forth these works? What was it like to be Hamlin? A bad moment. The

  subtle corrosive influence of Hamlin within me, undermining me even when he’s

  quiescent. So that I have begun to doubt myself. So that I have started to scorn

  myself. And hunger to be him. This is the road to surrender; let me turn from

  it.

  Lissa seemed troubled by the Hamlin group too. Remembering a jollier past,

  perhaps. The happy days of first love. The awesome sensation of being chosen by

  Nathaniel Hamlin for his bed, for his studio. A world of endless sunrises before

  her. All highways open. And to have come to this. How great the contrast. Macy

  could see the bleakness spreading across her face. A mistake to inflict Hamlin’s

  art on her? Or maybe she merely felt oppressed by the museum’s Sunday throng. We

  will go now, I think.

  Midmorning, Monday, Macy hard at work. Griswold had just assigned him to a new

  story. Preliminary charisma-level statistics for the 2012 election came out last

  night, late; let’s do a feature on all the candidates, run up a chart of

  pulse-figures, hormone counts, recognition profile, the whole multivalent works,

  right? Right. And so to the task. Research assistants scurrying madly. Their

  pretty pink boobies bobbling. Stacks of documents. Fredericks stopping by to

  offer bland, useless suggestions. Loftus staggering in with a load of

  simulations and color overlays for his approval. The hours whisking swiftly by;

  the mind fully engaged in purposeful activity.

  And then an unscheduled interruption. Someone down here to see you, Mr. Macy. No

  appointment. A visitor for me? Who? Image of Lissa, bedraggled, obsessed,

  freaking out in the reception hall. Please, I must see him, matter of life and

  death, I’m going to snap, I’m going to blow, let me go upstairs! A messy scene.

  Only his visitor wasn’t Lissa. His visitor turned out to be a Dr. Gomez.

  Panic. Gomez, here? Hamlin’ll kill me!

  After the first quick surge of fright, some rethinking. Hamlin had warned him

  not to go to the Rehab Center, or to telephone his doctors, yes. But the doctor

  had come to him. Was that covered by the threat? A debatable point. In any case,

  Hamlin didn’t seem to be raising objections. Macy waited a long troubled moment,

  expecting a sign from within, a squeeze of his heart, a pinching of his nerves,

  some sort of don’t-fool-around signal. Nothing. He sensed Hamlin’s presence like

  a dull heavy weight in his gut, but he got no specific instructions about seeing

  Gomez. Perhaps Hamlin wants to find out what Gomez will say. Maybe he’s still

  recovering from the jolt Lissa gave him. Anyway. Tell Dr. Gomez he can come up.

  Gomez, out of context, looked unfamiliar. At the Rehab Center, surrounded by his

  phalanxes of computers and his electronic pharmacopoeia, Gomez was dynamic,

  formidable, aggressive, indomitable, confidently vulgar. Entering Macy’s sleek

  office he was almost meek. Without his throne and scepter a king’s but a

  bifurcated radish. Gomez came slipping hesitantly through the fancy sliding

  door. Dressed in excessively contemporary business clothes, greens and reds,

  much too young for him, instead of the customary monochrome lab outfit. Looking

  shorter and more plump than in his own domain. His thick drooping mustache seedy

  and in need of trimming. The weakness of his chin somehow mattering much more

  here. Ten feet apart; eyes meet eyes. Gomez moistening his lips. How strange to

  see him on the defensive.

  Macy said, “I guess you’ve decided to believe me after all.

  “We’ve been discussing your case nonstop for three days,” said Gomez hoarsely.

  “But I had to have firsthand data. And since you wouldn’t come to us—”

  “Couldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t.” Gomez nodded. Scowled. Not at Macy but at himself. His distress was

  apparent. Coming here today was a considerable gesture. The cocky doctor eating

  crow. He said, voice ragged, “I didn’t want to chance phoning you. In case it

  might provide too much time for the former ego to build up negative reactions.

  Is my presence here causing any repercussions?”

  “Not so far.”

  “If it does, tell me and I’ll leave. I don’t want to endanger you.”

  “Don’t worry, Gomez, I’ll tell you fast if anything begins.” Checking to see if

  Hamlin is stirring. All calm. “Hamlin hasn’t been very active since Thursday

  night.”

  “But he’s still there?”

  “He’s there, all right. Despite your loud assurance that it wasn’t possible for

  him to come back.”

  “We all make mistakes, Macy.”

  “That was a pretty fucking big one. I asked you to run an EEG. You said no, I

  was merely hallucinating, merely having a fantasy, there was no chance in the

  world that Hamlin was intact and surfacing. And then you said—”

  “All right. Let’s not go into that now.” Dabbing at his sweaty forehead. “I’m

  concerned with therapy for this, not with placing blame. When did it start?”

  “The day I left the Center. When I met the girl, Hamlin’s old model, mistress,

  the one you spoke to a couple of times on the telephone.”

  “Miss Moore.”

  “Yes. Bumped into her, literally, on the street. I told you all this. She kept

  calling me Nat, ignoring my badge—you remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “I saw her again, last Monday. She said she was in trouble and wanted me to help

  her. I didn’t want to get involved and started to leave. She hit me with a

  two-pronged blast of telepathy. Which woke him up fully, completing the job of

  arousing him that had started when—”

  “Telepathy?”

  “ESP. Communication between minds. You know.”

  “I know. This girl’s a telepath?”

  “I’m trying to tell you.”

  “You knew she was a telepath, and also that she was a figure out of Hamlin’s

  past who you therefore were under instructions not to see, and nevertheless you

  arranged to meet her and—”

  “Ididn’t know she was a telepath. Until it was too late. Not that I’d have had

  any particular reason to avoid her because of that. You never said anything

  about telepaths, Gomez. I didn’t even know there were such things as telepaths,

  not real ones, not walking around in New York City.”

  Gomez closed his eyes. “All right. I get the picture. What we have here is an

  apparent case of induced identity reestablishment under telepathic stimulus. Of

  all the shit. A minute theoretical possibility, but who ever expected to run