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wonderful,” he said to Dane. He would lie on his bed, the phone cradled at his cheek, and stare lonesomely at the steeple made by the shadow of the bookcase against the wall. “Tell me that we are going to die dreamfully and loved in our sleep.”
    “You’re always writing one of your plays on the phone,” said Dane.
    “I said, something wonderful. Say something about springtime.”
    “It is sloppy and wet. It is a beast from the sea.”
    “Ah,” said Harry.
    Downstairs every morning, when he went to get the paper and head for a coffee shop, there was Deli, the hooker, always in his doorway. Her real name was Mirellen, but she had named herself Deli because when she first came to New York from Jackson, she had liked the name Delicatessen, seen it flashing all over in signs above stores, and though she hadn’t known what one was, she knew the name was for her.
    “Mornin’, Harry.” She smiled groggily. She had on a black dress, a yellow short-sleeved coat, and white boots. Scabs of translucent gray freckled her arms.
    “Mornin’, Deli,” said Harry.
    Deli started to follow him a bit up the block. “Haven’t seen your Breck woman around—how things be with you-all?”
    “Fine.” Harry smiled, but then he had to turn and walk fast down Forty-third Street, for Deli was smart and sly, and in the morning these qualities made him nervous.
    It was the following week that the trucks started coming. Eighteen-wheelers. They came, one by one, in the middle of the night, pulled up in front of the 25 Cent Girls pavilion, and idled there. Harry began waking up at four in the morning, in a sweat. The noise was deafening as a factory, and the apartment, even with the windows closed, filled with diesel fumes. He puton his boots, over his bare feet, and threw on his overcoat, a coat over nothing but underwear and skin, and stomped downstairs.
    The trucks were always monstrous, with mean bulldog faces, and eyes of glassy plaid. Their bodies stretched the length of the block, and the exhaust that billowed out of the vertical stovepipe at the front was a demonic fog, something from
Macbeth
or
Sherlock Holmes.
Harry didn’t like trucks. Some people, he knew, liked them, liked seeing one, thought it was like seeing a moose, something big and wild. But not Harry.
    “Hey! Get this heap out of here!” Harry shouted and pounded on the driver’s door. “Or at least turn it off!” He looked up into the cabin, but nobody seemed to be there. He pounded again with his fist and then kicked once with his boot. Curtains in the back of the cabin parted, and a man poked his head out. He looked sleepy and annoyed.
    “What’s the problem, man?” he said, opening the door.
    “Turn this thing off!” shouted Harry over the truck’s oceanic roar. “Can’t you see what’s happening with the exhaust here? You’re asphyxiating everyone in these apartments!”
    “I can’t turn this thing off, man,” shouted the driver. He was in his underwear—boxer shorts and a neat white vest.
    The curtains parted again, and a woman’s head emerged. “What’s happening, man?”
    Harry tried to appeal to the woman. “I’m dying up there. Listen, you’ve got to move this truck or turn it off.”
    “I told you buffore,” said the man. “I can’t turn it off.”
    “What do you mean, you can’t turn it off?”
    “I can’t turn it off. What am I gonna do, freeze? We’re trying to get some sleep in here.” He turned and smiled at the woman, who smiled back. She then disappeared behind the curtain.
    “I’m trying to get some sleep, too,” yelled Harry. “Why don’t you just move this thing somewhere else?”
    “I can’t be moving this thing,” said the driver. “If I be moving this thing, you see that guy back there?” He pointed at his rearview mirror, and Harry looked down the street. “I move and that guy be coming to take my spot.”
    “Just turn this off, then!” shouted Harry.
    The driver grew furious. “What are you,