them bleached white. He is locking his bicycle to a lamppost, unscrambling the combination with dirty fingers, when he feels the proximity of another body, feels warm breath against his hair. He turns around, still crouched, and a man is standing over him, a tall man in a gray leather jacket and jeans, a man who is at once a stranger and oddly, intimately familiar to himâbut where from? A student of his fatherâs? A cousin he doesnât remember? âExcuse me,â the man says, âIâm sorry to bother you, Iââ He puts his hands in his pockets, looks away. âDanny,â he says. âDanny.â
Dannyâs eyes suddenly fill with tears. His cheeks flush. He looks at the ground.
âIâm you,â the stranger says. âIâm who youâre going to become. And Iâve come to tell youâto reassure youâyouâre going to be fine, just fine.â
The boy stands. Of course he sees it now, all of itâthat face so familiar because it is his own, but also so strange, because heâs never seen his own face before, not really, except in a mirror, and now he understands how mirrors distort, and where his legs will stretch to, and the awkward unpuzzling of his own face. Tears are welling in his eyes, and in his grown selfâs eyes as well, as the man bends down, leans over him, puts a hand on his shoulder. âAll the things youâre worried about,â he says, âall the things that make you sufferâtheyâre nothing. Theyâre smoke. I know. And Iâve come so youâll know, so you wonât have to suffer anymore. For youâre going to be fine. Youâre going to leave California and head East, just like you hope. And youâll have love, Danny. I know you canât believe it now, I know everything you feel. You donât imagine anyone will ever love you, you canât conceive how anyone could love you. But someone will. Youâll see.â
The hand on his shoulderâlarger, thickly veined, bristled with short brown hairsâis his own hand. Young Danny, crouching still by his bicycle, runs his own fingers over those long fingers, feels the warmth of the skin. One after the other he traces them, until his hand comes to rest on a slender silver ring. Slowly he strokes the ringâs rounded outer edge; slowly he rotates it around the finger on which itâs lodged. Under the ring is a perfect white band where the skin has not been touched by the sun.
Chapter 3
T hey were Walterâs hands, Danny understood later; manâs hands. Bronze-colored, the skin tough and slightly dry, so that you could see the lines traced as if in white ash. Thick veins tunneling just under the surface of the skin; the nails blunt; a shiny gold Rolex slung low on the wrist, beneath the brilliant white cuff, the black sleeve.
At home Walter took off his shoes and dropped his pants almost as soon as he was in the door. The pants fell heavily and suddenly, the change and keys in his pockets made a crashing noise as they hit the ground. Then for an hour or so he wandered from room to room in black socks, boxer shorts, and suit jacket, seemingly incapable of undressing any further, biting into apples, tearing open bills and throwing the envelopes on the floor. Danny felt a strong impulse to shed the outfits of his working day as soon he was back; before he did anything else he was in a T-shirt and jeans and white socks, he was a boy again. He was usually home earlier than Walter; he didnât work as hard or as late. So when Walter stumbled through the door, Danny said hello and kissed him, he asked how his day had gone. Their suburban nights stretched out shapelessly, a series of corridors with many turns. They rarely ate formal meals, rarely ate together at all. Walter spooned reheated gourmet frozen dinners from tinfoil containers he had to balance on potholders to keep from getting his fingers burned. Hewalked as he
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