Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

skinny as death.

  #

  Trey's phone number was still current in the video store's database, so she called him.

  "Hey, Trey," she said. "It's Lara." "Lara, heeeeeeyyyy," he said, in a tone that left no doubt that he was picturing her panties. "Sorry, your bro ain't here."

  "Want to take me out to dinner tonight?" The silence on the other end of the line made her want to laugh, but she bit her lip and rolled her eyes and amused the girl browsing the chop-socky epics and visibly eavesdropping.

  "Trey?" "Lara, uh, yes, I'd love to, sure. Is this like a group thing or..."

  "No, Trey, I thought I'd keep this between the two of us. I'll be at the store until six -- meet me here?"

  "Yeah, okay. Okay! Sure. I'll see you tonight."

  #

  Brad was so thin he looked like a corpse. He was still tall, though, andhis hair and beard were grown out into long, bad-smelling straggles ofknot and grime. In the half-light of the garage, he had the instantlyidentifiable silhouette of a street person.

  He gathered Adam up in a hug that reeked of piss and booze, a hug like abundle of twigs in his arms.

  "I love you," he whispered.

  Andrew backed away and held him at arm's length. His skin had gone todeep creases lined with soot, his eyes filmed with something that lookedlike pond scum.

  "Brady. What are you doing here?"

  He held a finger up to his lips, then opened the door again onto thenow-empty alley. Alan peered the way that Davey and Krishna had gone,just in time to see them turn a distant corner.

  "Give it another minute," Blake said, drawing the door nearly closedagain. A moment later, they heard another door open and then Kurt'schain-draped boots jangled past, headed the other way. They listened tothem recede, and then Brian swung the door wide again.

  "It's okay now," he said.

  They stepped out into the sunlight and Bert started to walk slowlyaway. Alan caught up with him and Bert took his arm with long bonyfingers, leaning on him. He had a slight limp.

  "Where have you been?" Alan asked when they had gone halfway homethrough deft, confident turnings led by Blake.

  "Watching you," he said. "Of course. When I came to the city, I workedout at the racetrack for a week and made enough money to live off of fora couple months, and avoided the tough guys who watched me winning andwaited to catch me alone at the streetcar stop. I made enough and then Iwent to watch you.

  "I knew where you were, of course. Always knew where you were. I couldsee you whenever I closed my eyes. I knew when you opened your shops andI went by at night and in the busy parts of the day so that I could geta better sense of them. I kept an eye on you, Alan, watched over you. Ihad to get close enough to smell you and hear you and see you, though,it wasn't enough to see you in my mind.

  "Because I had to know the *why*. I could see the *what*, but I had toknow the *why* -- why were you opening your stores? Why were you sayingthe things you said? I had to get close enough because from the outside,it's impossible to tell if you're winking because you've got a secret,or if you've got dust in your eye, or if you're making fun of someonewho's winking, or if you're trying out a wink to see how it might feellater.

  "It's been four years I've been watching you when I could, going back tothe track for more when I ran out of money, and you know what? I knowwhat you're doing."

  Alan nodded. "Yeah," he said.

  "You're watching. You're doing what I'm doing. You're watching them tofigure out what they're doing."

  Alvin nodded. "Yeah," he said.

  "You don't know any more about the world than I do."

  Albert nodded. "Yeah," he said.

  Billy shook his head and leaned more heavily on Alan's arm. "I want adrink," he said.

  "I've got some vodka in the freezer," Alan said.

  "I'll take some of the Irish whiskey on the sideboard in the livingroom."

  Adam looked at him sharply and he shrugged and smiled an apologeticsmile. "I've been watching," he said.

  They crossed the park together and Buddy stopped to look hard at thefountain. "That's where he took Edward, right? I saw that."

  "Yeah," Alvin said. "Do you know where he is now?"

  "Yeah," Billy said. "Gone."

  "Yeah," Adam said. "Yeah."

  They started walking now, Billy's limp more pronounced.

  "What's with your leg?"

  "My foot. I lost a couple toes last year to frostbite and never got themlooked at properly." He reeked of piss and booze.

  "They didn't...grow back?"

  Bradley shook his head. "They didn't," he said. "Not mine. Hello,Krishna," he said.

  Alan looked to his neighbors' porch. Krishna stood there, stock still,against the wall.

  "Friend of yours, huh?" Krishna said. "Boyfriend?"

  "He offered me a bottle of wine if I let him take me home," Bradleysaid. "Best offer I had all week. Wanna make it a threesome? An *'ow yousay* 'mange ma twat?'"

  Krishna contorted his face into an elaborate sneer. "Puke," he said.

  "Bye, Krishna," Buddy said. Alan put his key into the lock and let themin.

  Blaine made a hobbling beeline for the sideboard and picked up the JimBeam Apollo 8 commemorative decanter that Adam kept full of Bushmills1608 and poured himself a tall glass of it. He drank it back in twoswallows, then rolled his tongue around in his mouth with his eyesclosed while he breathed out the fumes.

  "I have been thinking about that bottle ever since you bought it," hesaid. "This stuff is legendary. God, that's good. I mean, that's fuckingmagical."

  "It's good," Andrew said. "You can have more if you want."

  "Yeah," Burke said, and poured out another drink. He carried it and thedecanter to the sofa and settled into it. "Nice sofa," he said. "Niceliving room. Nice house. Not very normal, though."

  "No," Andrew said. "I'm not fitting in very well."

  "I fit in great." He drank back another glug of whiskey and poured outanother twenty dollars' worth. "Just great, it's the truth. I'm totallyinvisible and indistinguishable. I've been sleeping at the Scott Missionfor six months now and no one has given me a second glance. They can'teven steal my stuff, because when they try, when they come for my shoesor my food in the night, I'm always awake and watching them and justshaking my head."

  The whole living room stank of whiskey fumes with an ammoniactinge. "What if I find you some clothes and a towel?"

  "Would I clean myself up? Would I get rid of this protective colorationand become visible again?" He drank more, breathed out the fumes. "Sure,why not. Why not. Time to be visible. You've seen me, Krishna's seenme. Davey's gonna see me. Least I got to see them first."

  And so he let his older brother lead him by the hand upstairs to thebathroom with its damp-swollen paperbacks and framed kitsch-artpotty-training cartoons. And so he let his brother put him under thestinging hot shower and shampoo his hair and scrub him vigorously with aback brush, sluicing off the ground-in grime of the streets -- thoughthe calous pads on his hands remained as dark with soot as the feet ofan alleycat. And so he let his older brother wash the stumps of his toeswhere the skin was just a waxy pucker of scar, like belly buttons, whichneither of them had.

  And so he let his brother trim away his beard, first with scissors andthen with an electric razor, and so he let his brother brush out hislong hair and tie it back with an elastic taken from around a bunch ofbroccoli in the vegetable crisper.

  And so, by the time the work was done and he was dressed in too-bigclothes that hung over his sunken chest and spindly legs like a tent, hewas quite sober and quite clean and quite different.

  "You look fine," Adam said, as Brent fingered his chin and watched thereflection in the full-length mirror on the door of Alan's study. "Youlook great."

  "I look conspicuous. Visible. Used to be that eyes just slid off ofme. Now they'll come to rest on me, if only for a few seconds."

  Andy nodded. "Sure, that's right. You know, being invisible isn't thesame as being no
rmal. Normal people are visible."

  "Yeah," Brad said, nodding miserably. He pawed again at the smoothhollows of his cheeks.

  "You can stay in here," Alan said, gesturing at his study. The desk andhis laptop and his little beginning of a story sat in the middle of theroom, surrounded by a litter of access points in various stages ofrepair and printed literature full of optimistic,