Mainheart pushed himself to his feet on the vanity. “No, the little packets of stuff they pack in with electronic equipment and cameras.”

“The ‘Do Not Eat’ stuff?”

“Exactly.”

“But it says right on the packet—she ate that?”

“Yes. The furrier put packets of it in with her furs when he installed that cabinet.” Mainheart pointed.

Charlie turned, and behind the large closet door where they had entered was a lighted glass cabinet—inside hung a dozen or so fur coats. The cabinet probably had its own air-conditioning unit to control the humidity, but that wasn’t what Charlie was noticing. Even under the recessed fluorescent light inside the cabinet, one of the coats was clearly glowing red and pulsating. He turned back to Mainheart slowly, trying not to overreact, not sure, in fact, what would constitute an overreaction in this case, so he tried to sound calm, but not willing to take any shit.

“Mr. Mainheart, I appreciate your loss, but is there something more going on here than you’ve told me?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.”

“I mean,” Charlie said, “why, of all the used-clothing dealers in the Bay Area, did you decide to call me? There are people who are much more qualified to deal with a collection of this size and quality.” Charlie stormed over to the fur cabinet and pulled open the door. It made a floof-tha sound that the seal on a refrigerator door makes when opened. He grabbed the glowing jacket—fox fur, it appeared to be. “Or was it this? Did the call have something to do with this?” Charlie brandished the jacket like he was holding a murder weapon before the accused. In short, he thought about adding, are you fucking with me?

“You were the first used-clothing dealer in the phone book.”

Charlie let the jacket drop. “Asher’s Secondhand?”

“Starts with an A,” Mainheart said, slowly, carefully—obviously resisting the urge to call Charlie an idiot again.

“So it has nothing to do with this jacket?”

“Well, it has something to do with that jacket. I’d like you to take it away with all the rest of it.”

“Oh,” Charlie said, trying to recover. “Mr. Mainheart, I appreciate the call, and this is certainly a beautiful collection, amazing, really, but I’m not equipped to take on this kind of inventory. And I’ll be honest with you, even though my father would be spinning in his grave for telling you this, there is probably a million dollars’ worth of clothes in this closet. Maybe more. And given the time and space to resell it, it’s probably worth a quarter of that. I just don’t have that kind of money.”

“We can work something out,” Mainheart said. “Just to get it out of the house—”

“I could take some of it on consignment, I suppose—”

“Five hundred dollars.”

“What?”

“Give me five hundred dollars and get it out of here by tomorrow and it’s yours.”

Charlie started to object, but he could feel what felt like the ghost of his father rising up to bonk him on the head with a spittoon if he didn’t stop himself. We provide a valuable service, son. We are like an orphanage to art and artifact, because we are willing to handle the unwanted, we give them value.

“I couldn’t do that, Mr. Mainheart, I feel as if I’d be taking advantage of your grief.”

Oh for Christ’s sake, you fucking loser, you are no son of mine. I have no son. Was that the ghost of Charlie’s father, rattling chains in his head? Why, then, did it have the voice and vocabulary of Lily? Can a conscience be greedy?

“You would be doing me a favor, Mr. Asher. A huge favor. If you don’t take it, my next call is to the Goodwill. I promised Emily that if something ever happened to her that I wouldn’t just give her things away. Please.”

And there was so much pain in the old man’s voice that Charlie had to look away. Charlie felt for the old man because he did understand. He couldn’t do anything to help, couldn’t say, It will get better, like everyone kept saying to him. It wasn’t getting better. Different, but not better. And this fellow had fifty more years in which to pack his hopes, or in his case, his history.

“Let me think about it. Check into storage. If I can handle it, I’ll call you tomorrow, would that be all right?”

“I’d be grateful,” Mainheart said.

Then, for no reason that he could think of, Charlie said, “May I take this jacket with me? As an example of the quality of the collection, in case I have to divide it among other dealers.”

“That would be fine. Let me show you out.”

As they passed into the rotunda, a shadow passed across the leaded-glass windows, three stories up. A large shadow. Charlie paused on the steps and waited for the old man to react, but he just tottered on down the staircase, leaning heavily on the railing as he went. When Mainheart reached the door he turned to Charlie, extending his hand. “I’m sorry about that, uh, outburst upstairs. I haven’t been myself since—”

As the old man began to open the door a figure dropped outside, casting the silhouette of a bird as tall as a man through the glass.

“No!” Charlie dove forward, knocking the old man aside and slamming the door on the great bird’s head, the heavy black beak stabbing through and snapping like hedge clippers, rattling an umbrella stand and scattering its contents across the marble floor. Charlie’s face was only inches from the bird’s eye, and he shoved the door with his shoulder, trying to keep the beak from snapping off one of his hands. The bird’s claws raked against the glass, cracking one of the thick beveled panels as the animal thrashed to free itself.

Charlie threw his hip against the doorjamb then slid down it, dropped the fox jacket, and snatched one of the umbrellas from the floor. He stabbed up into the bird’s neck feathers, but lost his purchase on the doorjamb—one of the black talons snaked through the opening and raked across his forearm, cutting through his jacket, his shirtsleeve, and into the flesh. Charlie shoved the umbrella with all he had, driving the bird’s head back through the opening.

The raven let out a screech and took flight, its wings making a great whooshing noise as it went. Charlie lay on his back, out of breath, staring at the leaded-glass panels, as if any moment the shadow of the giant raven would come back, then he looked to Michael Mainheart, who lay crumpled on his side like a stringless marionette. Beside his head lay a cane with an ivory handle that had been carved into the shape of a polar bear that had fallen from the umbrella stand. The cane was glowing red. The old man was not breathing.

“Well that’s fucked up,” Charlie said.

6

VARIABLE SPEED HEROES

In the alley behind Asher’s Secondhand, the Emperor of San Francisco hand-fed olive focaccia to the troops and tried to keep dog snot from fouling his breakfast.

“Patience, Bummer,” the Emperor said to the Boston terrier, who was leaping at the day-old wheel of flat bread like a furry Super Ball, while Lazarus, the solemn golden retriever, stood by, waiting for his share. Bummer snorted an impatient reply (thus the dog snot). He’d worked up a furious appetite because breakfast was running late today. The Emperor had slept on a bench by the Maritime Museum, and during the night his arthritic knee had snaked out of his wool overcoat into the damp cold, making the walk to North Beach and the Italian bakery that gave them free day-old a slow and painful ordeal.

The Emperor groaned and sat down on an empty milk crate. He was a great rolling bear of a man, his shoulders broad but a little broken from carrying the weight of the city. A white tangle of hair and beard wreathed his face like a storm cloud. As far as he could remember, he and the troops had patrolled the city streets forever, but upon further consideration, it might have just been since Wednesday. He wasn’t entirely sure.