He saw Cleo poised near the nursing station, her eyes locked on each of the men as they ambled past her. Francis could see the large woman's mind working, her brow furrowed in examination, one hand lifted, pointing as the three men sailed down the hallway. It seemed to him that she was measuring, and suddenly, in a loud, near-frantic voice, Cleo shouted out: "You're not welcome here! None of you are!"

But none of the men turned, or broke stride, or showed for a second that they heard or understood anything Cleo said.

She harumphed loudly and made a dismissive gesture with her hand. Francis hurried past her, trying to keep up with Little Black's quick march.

When he entered the dormitory, he saw that the retarded man was being situated in Lanky's old bunk, while the others were being moved into spaces not far from the wall. He watched as Little Black oversaw making the beds and stowing the belongings, and then took the men on the short tour, which consisted of pointing out the bathroom, the poster of hospital rules that Francis imagined were the same as the dormitory they had been transferred from and informing them that dinner would begin within a few minutes. Then he shrugged and headed out, pausing only to say to Francis, "Tell Miss Jones that there was a helluva fight over in Williams. The guy she pissed off, went right for the big guy there. It took a couple of attendants to pull him off, and the other two kinda got caught up in it by accident. The other son of a bitch is gonna do a couple of days in a detention and observation cell. Probably gonna get a whole lot shot into him to calm his butt down, too. Let her know it worked out pretty much like she thought it would, except that everyone over in Williams is strung out and upset and it's likely to take a couple of days for everything to settle down over there."

Then Little Black pushed through the door, and left him alone with the three new men.

Francis watched as the large retarded man sat on the edge of the bed and gave his doll a hug. Then he began to rock back and forth, with a little half grin on his face, as if he was slowly assessing his new surroundings. The Dancer did a little spin, and then went over to the barred window and simply stared out at what remained of the afternoon.

But the third man, the stocky one, spied Francis and seemed to stiffen instantly. For a second, he recoiled. Then he rose up and pointed accusingly at Francis and stepped quickly across the floor, dodging the beds, and right up into Francis's face. He was hissing with rage. "You must be the one," the man spat, his voice barely a whisper, but filled with an awful low noise of anger. "You must be the one! You're the one that's looking for me, aren't you?" Francis did not reply, but pushed himself back tight to the wall. The man lifted a fist and held it beneath Francis's jaw. His eyes flashed fury but it was contradicted by the snakelike sound of his voice, words that filled the space around them like a rattler's warning sound.

"Because I'm the one you're looking for." He sliced words from the air.

Then, with a nonchalant smile, he pushed past Francis and out the door into the hallway.

Chapter 22

But I knew, didn't I?

Perhaps not right at that moment, but soon enough. At first, I was still taken aback, surprised by the vehemence of the admission thrust in my face. I could feel a quiver within me, and all of the voices shouted out warnings and misgivings, contradictory impulses to hide, to follow, but mostly to pay attention to what I understood. Which was of course, that it didn't make sense. Why would the Angel simply walk directly up to me and confess his presence, when he had done so much to conceal who he was? And, if the stocky man wasn't really the Angel, why had he said what he did?

Filled with misgivings, my insides a turmoil of questions and conflicts, I took a deep breath, steadied my nerves and rushed through the dormitory door in order to trail the stocky man out into the corridor, leaving the Dancer and the retarded hulk behind. I watched him as he paused, lighting a cigarette with a dandified flourish, then looking up and surveying the new world that he'd been transferred into. I realized that the landscape of every housing unit was different. Perhaps the architecture was similar, the hallways and offices, dayroom, cafeteria, dormitory spaces, storage closets, stairwells, upstairs isolation cells all following more or less the same pattern, with maybe little design distinctions. But that wasn't the real terrain of each housing unit. The contours and topography were really defined by all the variety of madnesses contained within. And that was what the stocky man hesitated, assessing. I caught another glimpse of his eyes, and I knew that he was a man usually on the verge of an explosion. A man who had little control over all the rages that raced around his bloodstream contending with the Haldol or Prolixin that he was given daily. Our bodies were battlefields of contending armies of psychosis and narcotics, fighting from house to house for control, and the stocky man seemed to be caught up as much as any of us in that war.

I didn't think the Angel was.

I saw the stocky man push aside an elderly senile fellow, a thin, sickly sort who stumbled and almost fell to the floor and just as nearly burst into tears. The stocky man persisted down the corridor, pausing only to scowl at two women rocking in a corner singing lullabies to baby dolls held in their arms. When a wild-haired, disheveled Cato in loose pajamas and long, flowing housecoat, harmlessly meandered into his path, he screamed at the blank-faced man to move aside, and then continued on, his pace quickening, as if his footsteps could keep the beat defined by his anger. And every step he traveled took him farther, I thought, from the man we were pursuing. I don't think I could have said exactly why but I knew it with a certainty that grew as I followed down the corridor. I could see in my imagination precisely how when the fight broke out in Williams that had been orchestrated by Lucy, the stocky man had been instantly caught up in the trading of blows, and that was why he was transferred to Amherst. An addendum to the incident. He wasn't the sort who could ever idly sit back and watch a conflict unfold, shrinking into a corner, or taking refuge against the wall. He would respond electrically, leap in immediately, regardless of what the cause was, or who was fighting whom, or the why or wherefore of any of it. He just liked a fight, because it allowed him to step away from all the impulses that tormented him, and lose himself in the exquisite anger of trading blows. And then, when he rose, bloodied, his madness wouldn't allow him to wonder why he'd done what he'd done.

Part of his illness, I recognized, was in always drawing attention to himself.

But why had he been so specific, thrusting his face up to mine? "I'm the man you're looking for"?

In my apartment, I bent forward, leaning my head up against the wall, placing my forehead against the words that I'd written, while I paused, deep within my own memories. The pressure against my temple reminded me a little of a cold compress placed on the skin, trying to reduce a childhood fever. I closed my eyes for an instant, hoping to get a little rest.

But a whisper creased the air. It hissed directly behind me.

"You didn't think I would make it easy for you?"

I didn't turn. I knew that the Angel was both there and not there.

"No," I said out loud. "I didn't think you would make it easy. But it took me some time to figure out the truth."

Lucy saw Francis emerge from the dormitory, trailing after another man and not the one that she'd sent him to keep an eye on. She could see that Francis's face was pale, and he seemed to her to be riveted on what he was doing, almost oblivious to the pre dinner half step, do-si-do square dance of anticipation going on in the crowded corridor. She took a stride in his direction, then stopped, knowing somewhere within her that C-Bird probably had a reasonable grasp on what he was doing.