I turned to page 95. It was a picture of the human body, with all the parts labeled and their functions explained. It looked like a booklet of stereo instructions. “See anything unusual?” he asked.

I couldn’t. It looked like a pretty standard human body. Sure, it was lacking some common elements like love handles, wrinkles, and stretch marks, but otherwise it was relatively comprehensive.

“She did it on purpose. She knew I’d be too pissed to check through it before printing.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“The brain! Look at what she’s called the brain!”

I looked. It said “The Testicle.” And where the testicles were, it was labeled not just “The Brain” but “ Stanley ’s Brain.” In fact, now that he’d pointed it out, almost every organ in the human male was a critique of Stanley’s drinking, gambling, and womanizing: the heart, the kidneys, the lungs, the intestines, you name it, she had accompanying notes that described his excessive alcohol consumption, his bad diet, his aggressiveness and poor sexual performance. It went on and on. I could see how this wouldn’t be appropriate for certain schoolchildren.

“She sabotaged me. All on account of me sleeping with a barmaid at our local. OK, I shouldn’t have done it, but to ruin my livelihood! Ten thousand books I can’t sell! And I can’t sue anyone because I signed the approval form. I delivered the book to the printers myself. Of course she lost everything too, but she doesn’t care. That’s how vindictive women are. It was worth it, she says, just to put me in the ground. Have you ever heard such venom? You’re not likely to. Now I’m waiting for the creditors to come knocking. I can’t even pay the rent on this office. So as much as I’d like to publish your delightful little satire…”

“It’s not a satire.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

He looked down at the manuscript and thumbed through it quickly.

“This is on the level?”

I nodded.

“Then this would be a textbook for young criminals?”

I nodded again.

“You could get both of us arrested for publishing this.”

“I’m willing to risk it if you are.”

He leaned back into his chair and said, “How about that.” He looked at the manuscript again, and a little while later he said, “Well, well.”

He closed his eyes a moment before opening them again. The moment seemed endless, but it was probably only half that.

“What made you come to me?” he asked.

“Everyone else said no.”

“Of course they did,” he said, chuckling. That seemed to please him no end.

His mouth widened into a smile, and he jumped up as though answering a call to duty, that smile just kept on widening and widening, until my mouth hurt.

I ran all the way to Harry’s and stumbled up the front steps. I was so excited I almost forgot the secret knock. It was too elaborate. Four knocks, a pause, one knock, a pause, three knocks, then my voice saying, “Hey, Harry. It’s me, Martin.” If you ask me, we could’ve done just as well without the knocks, but Harry was inflexible about it. I fumbled the knocks all right: two…pause…three- no, better start again…I heard the ominous sound of a shotgun pumping into readiness. “It’s me, Harry!” I said in a fluster. Realizing my mistake, I ducked down, waiting for the spray of bullets. They didn’t come. A series of clicks and slides. Harry was going through the tedious routine of unlocking the dead bolts. It took longer than usual. He must’ve added a couple of new ones. The door crept open. Harry stood there in his underwear, shotgun in one hand and an ax in the other. His eyes were full of fire and fear. I couldn’t wait. I told him the news.

“I found a publisher! He loves it! He’s from England, so he grew up on a diet of scandal! He’s not afraid to put himself on the line. He loves your book! He’s putting everything into it! The book’s going straight into publication!”

Harry was too stunned to speak. He was frozen solid. Have you ever seen a man congeal from good news? It’s hilarious.

“Waaa- what did you say?”

“We did it! Your book is going to be a book!”

Relief and fear and love and terror and elation crowded his face. Even the most self-confident egotists have a secret part of themselves that doubts anything will ever go right. That part of Harry was going into tumult. It was just so unexpected. Harry’s ESP had a blind spot because of that pessimistic voice, which shouted louder than the prophetic whispers of his third eye. He laughed and cried and raised his shotgun in the air and fired. The ceiling came down in large plaster chunks. It was terrifying. He hugged me. We danced around the hallway, but it was hard to enjoy it because Harry still held the shotgun and the ax. He tried to kiss me on the mouth again, but this time I was ready for it. I gave him my cheek instead. He kissed my ear. As we kept on spinning, Harry’s dead leg swung around and knocked over the side table. This was it! His book! His baby! His legacy! His immortality!

The next few weeks passed in a blur. Thrilling times! I went into Stanley ’s office almost every day. We did everything together: chose the typeface, reorganized the chapters. He asked me to ask the mystery author to pen a preface and Harry went to work on it, day and night, guarding it from my eyes. Stanley had sold everything he owned to get the money to pay the printers. “They won’t know what hit them,” he kept saying. “They’ll be in an uproar when it lands on the shelves. Then it’ll be banned. Free publicity! There’s nothing like censorship to boost a book’s sales. There’ll be moral outrage! Banned copies will pass surreptitiously from hand to hand! The book will live in the shadows and grow like mushrooms in the dark and the damp! Then a lone voice, someone will say, ‘Ho! This is genius!’ Then the other heads who were shaking in disgust will start nodding in assent! Our champion will be someone who may not believe a word of what he’s saying. That doesn’t matter to us. Luckily, some critics just have to go against the grain, no matter what the grain is. The grain could be ‘Love your neighbor’ and the critic will say, ‘No! Detest him, the worm!’ ”

Stanley went into this rant every day. It was always the same. He was predicting big things for Harry’s book, although he kept pressing me to reveal the author’s name. “Nothing doing,” I always said. “On the day of printing, all will be revealed.” Stanley hit the desk. He did everything he could to wheedle it out of me. “I’m putting myself on the line here, Marty- how do I know the author isn’t a pedophile? I mean, scandal is one thing, you know I’m not afraid of it, but no one would touch the book if the author’s hands had been all over some kid.”

I gave him my word Harry was just an ordinary run-of-the-mill murdering thief.

One day Stanley ’s wife came in to see what he was up to. She was a thin attractive woman with a pointy nose that didn’t look sculpted so much as it looked like it had been sharpened on a grinder. She circled the office and tried to take a peek at the manuscript on his desk, but he threw a newspaper on top of it.

“What do you want, hag?”

“You’re up to something.”

He didn’t answer, just gave her a smile that said, “Maybe I am, you rotten wench, but it’s none of your fucking business.”

She turned to me and started examining. “I know you from somewhere.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you ask me for money on a train once?”

I said I had never asked anyone for money on a train, which was not true, because once I had asked someone for money on a train.

“All right, visit over,” Stanley said, grabbing her by the shoulders and pushing her out of the office.