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this shit that’s flying around and I can’t breathe or see and the wind is still blowing hot shit—see on my arm here, this burn came from some shit blown against me, and this cut, four stitches there—I’m crawling on my hands and knees until I bump the corner of a building and I crawl through a broken window and over people and I can’t tell if I’m inside or out—it’s all black—except the floor beneath all the dust is marble, so I think, I must be inside and it seems like I crawl forever, and then I get up and walk, and allof a sudden there’s a hundred of us, ghosts, gray and choking, and we come out of this cloud one at a time, like little fuggin’ kids waking up on Christmas morning, and no one says a word, not a single word, and we’re walking toward Battery Park, like someone threw a switch and we couldn’t speak no more. All we could do was walk. Just walk.”
    The Yankees stared.
    Paul blinked it away. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll cover all of that once we get inside. Any questions so far?”
    Nothing.
    Then Paul had a thought: “Oh, oh, oh! Look at Brian’s eyes.”
    Remy rubbed his temples.
    “Come on, man. Show ’em.”
    Remy turned in his seat and opened his eyes wide. Paul liked to make sure people saw the broken blood vessel in Remy’s right eye.
    “He’s got that muscular vicious disintegration. You know what that shit is?”
    The Yankees didn’t know.
    “Macular degeneration,” Remy corrected. “And vitreous detachment .” He’d told Guterak ten times that his eye condition had nothing to do with the burst blood vessel in his right eye, and therefore with that day, that he’d had escalating eye problems for years. But Paul insisted on making it part of the tour.
    “What it is, see, is his fuggin’ eyes are flaking off. From inside, is what that shit is. Creepy, huh? I mean this is some serious shit we went through here.”
    The relief pitcher winced. “That sucks.”
    “Yeah,” Remy said to the genial reliever, and he thought about how nice that would be: relief, a guy in the bullpen waiting to take over when you run out of gas. Go to the left-hander. Life would be much easier if we all had a coach watching us, looking for any sign of fatigue or confusion, specialists waiting just down the foul line to stride in and saveour work, to salvage what we’ve done so far, make sure we don’t waste the end of a well-lived life. A good reliever might’ve saved his career, his marriage—what else? That’s all Remy wanted: someone to save him.
    They eased up to the checkpoint, third on line.
    “What are those?” the pitcher asked.
    “Those?” Paul looked out his window. “Reefers. Refrigerated meat trucks.”
    “For…”
    “Bodies.”
    “Jesus, are they…”
    “The trucks? Nah, they’re empty.” He leaned back conspiratorially between the seats. “Look, don’t tell no one, but the truth is…we can’t find the people. Little pieces. A body here and there. But mostly the people are…” Paul held up his fingers and rustled them like a field of wheat. Then he began driving again.
    They pulled up to the checkpoint and a street cop stepped forward. “Hey, boss. How’s it goin’?”
    “Goddamn tough duty, you know?” Guterak said.
    Remy wondered, wasn’t I just here? Didn’t I just hear this conversation? Were the gaps moving him backward now? Skipping like a record? Maybe he’d get to go back and drink that gin, or find out what the guy in the ghost bar had wanted. He felt a vibration, put his hand on his waist and found the pager again.
    “Fuckin’ raghead motherfuckers,” the street cop was saying.
    “Yeah. That’s right. That’s right.”
     
    REMY’S EX-WIFE Carla lived out past Jericho with her new husband Steve in a grand new house—four bedrooms, three dormers, two baths, something called a great room, and a lovely brick façade—and that’s where Remy found himself, sitting on the couch, drinking weakcoffee from the good