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girl's shoulder. Her features seemed to blur before she turned over and dug her face into the pillow. He grasped her shoulder again and felt the long thin bone, the prominent wing jutting out from her back. "Go 'way," she muttered into the pillow.

    "No. We're going to talk."

    "It's too late."

    He shook her, and when she did not respond, tried to roll her over by force. Thin and small as she was, she was strong enough to resist. He could not make her face him.

    Then she turned over by herself, as if in contempt. Lack of sleep showed in her face, but beneath the puffiness she looked adult.

    "What's your name?"

    "Angie." She smiled carelessly. "Angie Maule."

    "Where do you come from?"

    "You know."

    He nodded.

    "What were your parents' names?"

    "I don't know."

    "Who took care of you before I picked you up?"

    "It doesn't matter."

    "Why not?"

    "They aren't important. They were just people."

    "Was their name Maule?"

    Her smile became more insolent. "Does it matter? You think you know everything anyhow."

    "What do you mean, 'They were just people'?"

    "They were just people named Mitchell. That's all."

    "And you changed your name yourself?"

    "So what?"

    "I don't know." That was true.

    So they looked at one another, he sitting on the edge of the bed, holding the knife behind him and knowing that whatever was going to happen, he would be unable to use it. He supposed that David too had been unable to take life—any life but his own, if he had done that. The girl probably knew he was holding the knife, he thought, and simply dismissed it as a threat. It was not a threat. He too was probably not a threat She had never been even apprehensive of him.

    "Okay, let's try again," he said. "What are you?"

    For the first time since he had taken her into the car, she really smiled. It was a transformation, but not of a kind to make him feel easier: she did not look any less adult. "You know," she said.

    He insisted. "What are you?"

    She smiled all through her amazing response. "I am you."

    "No. I am me. You are you."

    "I am you."

    "What are you?" It came out in despair, and it did not mean what he had meant the first time he asked it.

    Then just for a second he was back on the street in New York, and the person before him was not the stylish suntanned anonymous woman, but his brother David, his face crumbled and his body dressed in the torn and rotting clothing of the grave.

    ... the most dreadful thing ...

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    P ART O NE
    After Jaffrey's Party
    Don't the moon look lonesome, shinin' through the trees?
Don't the moon look lonesome, shinin' through the trees?
    —Blues
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I
The Chowder Society: The October Stories
    America's first fictional heroes were old men.
    —Robert Ferguson
    Milburn Observed Through Nostalgia
    One day early in October Frederick Hawthorne, a seventy-year-old lawyer who had lost very little to the years, left his house on Melrose Avenue in Milburn, New York, to walk across town to his offices on Wheat Row, just beside the square. The temperature was a little colder than Milburn expected so early in its autumn, but Ricky wore his winter uniform of tweed topcoat, cashmere muffler and gray, no-nonsense hat. He walked a little briskly down Melrose Avenue to warm up his blood, moving beneath huge oaks and smaller maples already colored heart-wrenching shades of orange and red—another unseasonal touch. He was susceptible to colds, and if the temperature dropped another five degrees, he'd have to drive.
    But in the meantime, as long as he could keep the wind from his neck, he enjoyed the walk. After he had turned out of Melrose Avenue toward the square, he was warm enough to go at a more leisurely pace. Ricky had little reason to rush to his office: clients rarely appeared before noon. His partner and friend, Sears James, probably would not appear for another forty-five minutes, and that gave Ricky enough time to amble through Milburn, saying hello to people and observing the things he liked