Part 8 (1/2)

”Nor in the other direction But sadly, I leaved my tools in the Flat Bush” He pulled a san to probe the lock with its thin blade

”Hold on,” Julie said ”Wait a second, Houdini Sa in-”

”Are you sure you knohat you're doing?” Saht,” Joe said ”We're in a hurry” He put the knife away and started back down the stairs Sammy and Julie went after him

In the street, Joe pulled hiht-hand baluster of the front steps, a chipped ce-vanished tenant had inked a cruel caricature of the querulous lunar face of the late Mr Waczukowski He pulled off his jacket and threw it to Sa?”

Joe didn't answer He perched for afeet side by side in their rubber-soled oxfords, and studied the retractable iron ladder of the fire escape He pulled a cigarette frohtful cloud of sarette between his teeth and rubbed his hands together Then he sprang fro out The lire escape rang against the iroan slid slowly doard, six woozy inches, a foot, a foot and a half, before jale five feet off the pave his legs back and forth; but it stayed latched

”Come on, Joe,” said Sammy ”That won't work”

”You'll break your neck,” said Julie

Joe let go of the ladder with his right hand, snatched a puff froarette, then replaced it Then he took hold of the ladder again and swung hi describing an increasingly wider arc The ladder rattled and chiainst the fire escape Suddenly he folded hio of the ladder completely, and allowed his momentum to jackknife him out, up and over, onto the bottom platform of the fire escape, where he landed on his feet It was a coratuitous performance, done purely for effect or for the thrill of it; he easily could have pulled himself up the ladder hand over hand He easily could have broken his neck He paused for a arette

At that instant, the steady northerly wind that had been harrying the clouds over New York City all day succeeded at last in scattering the clear over Chelsea a patch of wispy blue A shaft of yellow sunlight slanted doisting with ribbons of vapor and s ribbon of honey, a searanite of the afternoon The s of the old red row house pooled with light, then spilled over Lit thus fro , Josef Kavalier seemed to shi+ne, to incandesce

”Look at him,” said Sa for friends or journalists or, still later, the reverent editors of fan in stories, fanciful and , but it was out of a conjunction of desire, the buried memory of his father, and the chance illumination of a row-house , that the Escapist was born As he watched Joe stand, blazing, on the fire escape, Sammy felt an ache in his chest that turned out to be, as so often occurs when memory and desire conjoin with a transient effect of weather, the pang of creation The desire he felt, watching Joe, was unquestionably physical, but in the sense that Sammy wanted to inhabit the body of his cousin, not possess it It was, in part, a longing-co the inventors of heroes-to be soins that always ran afoul of his perennial inability to locate an actual self to be improved Joe Kavalier had an air of competence, of faith in his own abilities, that Sammy, by means of constant effort over the whole of his life, had finally learned only how to fake

At the sa, cavalier frath for its own sake and for the love of display, the stirring of passion was inevitably shadowed, or fed, or entwined by the memory of his father We have the idea that our hearts, once broken, scar over with an indestructible tissue that prevents their ever breaking again in quite the same place; but as Sammy watched Joe, he felt the heartbreak of that day in 1935 when the Mighty Molecule had gone away for good

”Reested there was so funny, and not in the sense of humorous, about the expression on his old friend's face ”Now if only he could draw”

”He can draw,” said Sa up the steps of the fire escape to the fourth-floor , threw up the sash, and fell headfirst into the room A moment later there was an impossibly musical Fay Wray screaht do all right in the cartoon business”

6

A GIRL ild brown ringlets, looking like she was going to cry, ca a bone overcoat Joe stood in theat a co at the back of his neck Sa a pair of black engineer boots in one hand and a knot of black hose in the other before she brushed past Julie Glovsky, alged down the stairs In her i at one another, stunned, like cynics in the wake of an irrefutablehis cheek where she had brushed against hiht have been beautiful”

”She was” Joe went to a battered horsehide chair and picked up a large satchel lying on it ”I think she forgot this” It was black leather, with heavy black straps and complicated clasps of black metal ”Her purse”

”That isn't a purse,” purse,” said Julie, looking nervously around the living rooe they had already done He scowled at Sa another one of his friend's harebrained sche to fall apart ”That's probablynervously around the living rooe they had already done He scowled at Sa another one of his friend's harebrained sche to fall apart ”That's probably my brother's You'd better put it down”

”Is Jerry transporting secret docu from Joe ”Suddenly he's Peter Lorre?” He undid the clasps and lifted the heavy flap

”No!” said Joe He lunged to snatch the bag, but Sa to reach around and grab it ”We should respect her privacies”

”This couldn't be couldn't be hers,” said Sammy And yet he found in the black courier's pouch a pricey-looking tortoiseshell compact, a much-folded pamphlet entitled ”Why Modern Ceramics Is the People's Art,” a lipstick (Helena Rubinstein's Andalucia), an enaold pillbox, and a wallet with tenties and a ten Several calling cards in her wallet gave her na Saks, and reported that she was employed in the art department at hers,” said Sammy And yet he found in the black courier's pouch a pricey-looking tortoiseshell compact, a much-folded pamphlet entitled ”Why Modern Ceramics Is the People's Art,” a lipstick (Helena Rubinstein's Andalucia), an enaold pillbox, and a wallet with tenties and a ten Several calling cards in her wallet gave her na Saks, and reported that she was eazine

”I don't think she earing any panties,” said Sammy

Julie was too moved by this revelation to speak

”She wasn't,” said Joe They looked at hi there” He pointed to Jerry's bedroom ”In the bed You heard her scream, yes? She put on her dress and her coat”

”You saw her,” said Julie

”Yes”

”She was naked”

”Quite naked”

”I'll bet you couldn't draw it” Julie pulled off his sweater It was the color of Wheatena, and underneath it he wore another, identical sweater Julie was always co that he felt cold, even in eather; in the wintertime he went around swelled to twice his nore gleaned fronosed hi she obliged him to s a variety of pills and tablets, eat a raw onion, and take a teaspoon each of Castoria and vitareat perpetrator of nudes, and idely adhborhood for his unclothed renditions of Fritzi Ritz, Blondie bumstead, and Daisy Mae, which he sold for a dime, or, for a quarter, of Dale Arden, whose lovely pubic display he rendered in luxuriant strokes generally agreed to be precisely those hich Alex Raymond hiencies of interplanetary travel had permitted it

”Of course I could draw it,” said Joe ”But I would not”

”I'll give you a dollar if you drawnaked in bed,” said Julie

Joe took Rosa's satchel from Sammy and sat down on the horsehide chair He seeainst the desire he felt, as had Sammy, to hold on to a hed and tossed the satchel to one side

”Three dollars,” he said

Julie was not happy with this, but nonetheless he nodded He pulled off another sweater ”Make it good,” he said

Joe knelt to grab a broken stub of Conte crayon lying on an overturned milk crate at his feet He picked up an unopened overdue notice froainst the ht hand, stained yellow at their tips, skated leisurely across the back of the envelope His features grew animated, even comical: he squinted, pursed his lips and shi+fted theriun, his hand caers kicked the crayon loose He held up the envelope, wrinkling his forehead, as if considering the thing he had drawn and not siretful It was not too late, he see, to tear up the envelope and keep the pretty vision all to himself Then his face resumed its habitual mien, sleepy, unconcerned He passed the envelope to Julie

His short flight through thehad landed him on the floor of the bedroom, and Joe had chosen to draw Rosa Saks the way he'd first seen her, at eye level as he picked hi past a carved acorn that crowned the footboard of the bed She was lying passed out on her belly, her sprawling right leg kicked free of the blankets and leaving exposed rather ht foot looround, slender, toes curled The lines of her bare and of her blanketed leg converged, at the ulti point, in a coarse black bramble of shadow In the distance of the picture, the hollows and long central valley of her back rose to a charcoal Niagara of hair that obscured all but the lower portion of her face, her lips parted, her jaide and perhaps a bit heavy It was a four-by-nine-inch slice cut fresh from Joe's memory but, for all its immediacy, rendered in clean, unhurried lines, with a precision at once anatomical and emotional: you felt Joe's tenderness toward that curled little foot, that hollow back, that open, drea a last deep breath of unconsciousness You wanted her to be able to go on sleeping, as long as you could watch

”You didn't show her boobs!” said Julie

”Not for three dollars,” said Joe