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3) A drawing, folded and crumbling, of the Golem, stouter, somehow more countrified-looking than the one in Joe's epic, wearing big hobnailed boots, striding down a moonlit street. The lines, though recognizably Joe's, sketchier, more tentative, nearer to Tommy's own.
4) An envelope containing the torn stub of a movie ticket and a grainy yellowed photograph, clipped from a newspaper, of the glamorous Mexican actress Dolores Del Rio.
5) A box of unused Kavalier & Clay stationery, left over from just before the war, the letterhead a charming group portrait of all the various characters, superpowered and otherwise-Tommy recognized for certain only the Escapist, the Monitor, and Luna Moth-that the team of Kavalier & Clay had come up with in those days.
6) A manila envelope containing a large black-and-white photograph of a handsome man with hair that shone like a sheet of molded chrome. The mouth a hard thin line, but the eyes holding a reserve of delight, as if he is about to break into a smile. His jaw square, chin cleft. In the lower right corner of the picture an inscription, signed Tracy Bacon, written in a large and looping hand: To the man who dreamed me up, with affection.
7) A pair of heavy woolen socks with orange toes, in a cardboard sleeve printed with two bright orange bands. Between the bands a conventionalized picture of a merry fire in a country hearth and the word ko-zee-tos in big orange letters.
And then, bent and twisted and adrift at the bottom of the box, a strip of four photographs, from a coin booth, of his mother and Joe-gri
He could hear their lips meeting and parting with a sticky sound; the clicking of their teeth or the buttons on their clothes.
"I have to work," his mother said at last. " 'Love Made a Monkey Out of Me.'"
"Ah," he said. "Autobiography."
"Shut up."
"How about if I make di
"Hey, that would be swell. Unheard of. Maybe you want to be careful, I could get used to that."
"Get used to it."
Those two people are in love.
"Have you talked to Tommy yet?" she said.
"Sort of."
"Sort of?"
"I haven't found the right moment."
"Joe. You have to tell him."
The folder filled with memorabilia of the Mighty Molecule's career slipped from Tommy's hand. Photographs and clippings fluttered everywhere, and as he tried to gather them up, he knocked against the crate, and its lid fell shut with a splintery crack.
"What was that?"
"Tommy? Oh, my God. Tommy, are you in here?"
He sat in the dim hollow of his sanctum, clutching the strip of photographs to his chest.
"No," he said, after a moment, knowing that it was, without question, the most pathetic thing he had ever said in his life.
"Let me," he heard Joe say. There was a scrape of crates and some grunting and then Joe's head poked into the I
"Hey," he said. "Hi."
"Hi."
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"So," Joe said, "I guess maybe you heard a few things out there."
"Yeah."
"Can I come in?" It was his mother.
"I don't think there's room, Rosa."
"Sure there is."
Joe looked at Tommy. "What do you think?"
Tommy shrugged and nodded. So Joe pulled himself all the way in and crammed himself, hunched over, up against the side of the Cell, his hips pressed against Tommy's. Tommy's mother's head appeared, her hair hastily and imperfectly tied up in a scarf, her lips showing right through her lipstick. Tommy and Joe each reached out a hand and pulled her in with them, and she sat up and sighed and said, happily,
"Well," as if they had all settled down together on a blanket in the shade beside a sun-dappled stream.
"I was just about to tell Tom a story," Joe said.
"Uh-huh," Rosa said. "Go on."
"That isn't something I-I'm more used to doing it-with pictures, you know?" He swallowed, and cracked his knuckles, and took a deep breath. He smiled a weak little smile, and unclipped a pen from his shirt pocket. "Maybe I should draw it, ha ha."
"I already saw the pictures," Tommy said.
His mother leaned forward to look with Joe at the two people they once had been.
"Oh, my God," she said. "I remember that. It was that night we took your aunt to the movies. In the lobby of the Loew's Pitkin."
They all moved a little closer together, and then Tommy lay down with his head in his mother's lap. She stroked his hair, and he listened while Joe went on unconvincingly for a while about the things that you did when you were young, and the mistakes that you made, and the dead brother for whom Tommy had been named, that unlucky, unimaginable boy, and how everything had been different then, because there was a war on, at which Tommy pointed out that there had also, until recently, been a war in Korea, and Joe replied that this was true, and it was then that he and Rosa both realized that the boy was no longer listening to anything they were telling him. He was just lying there, in the Bug's Nest, holding his father's hand, while his mother brushed the bangs from his forehead.
"I think we are okay," Joe said finally.
"Okay," said Rosa. "Tommy? Are you okay? Do you understand all this?"
"I guess so," the boy said. "Only."
"Only what?"
"Only what about Dad?"
His mother sighed, and told him they were going to have to see about that.
20
Sammy let himself into the house. It was past midnight, he was sober as a headstone, and in his pockets there were tickets for the Broadway Limited and the City of Los Angeles. There was a light on in the living room, and he saw that Joe had fallen asleep in the armchair with one of his dusty old books on Kabbalah or whatever it was-Volume IV of Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews-pitched like a tent on his lap. A half-empty bottle of Piels sat on a raffia coaster on the deal table beside him. When Sammy came in, Joe roused a little and shifted in the chair, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the bulb. He gave off a stale, drowsy smell of beer and ash.
"Hey."
"Hey," Sammy said. He went to Joe and put a hand on his shoulder. He kneaded the muscles there; they felt knotted and hard. "Everyone all right? Tommy all right?"
"Mmm." Joe nodded, then closed his eyes again. Sammy switched off the light. He went over to the sofa, picked up a peach-and-mustard afghan-one of the few things his mother had ever knit and the only visible remnant of her in his life-carried it to the armchair, and draped it over Joe, careful to cover the orange-tipped toes of Joe's stocking feet.
Next Sammy walked down the hall and entered Tommy's bedroom. In the bend of light from the hall, he could see that Tommy had wandered, in his sleep, to the far edge of the bed, and lay with his face mashed against the wall. He had kicked away all the bedclothes; he had on powder-blue pajamas with white piping at the lapels and cuffs (Sammy, naturally, owned an identical pair). Tommy was a very energetic sleeper, and even after Sammy pulled his head away from the wall, the boy went on snuffling, twitching, his breathing so rapid that it sounded almost like the panting of a dog. Sammy started to pull the covers up over him. Then he stopped and just stood there looking at Tommy, loving him, and feeling the usual spasm of shame that it should be while he was watching the boy sleep that he felt most like a father, or rather, the happiest to be one.