She shook her head. Not really. Cornelius just asked me to help out tonight.

Did he ask you in French?

No. I don’t parlez franais. Do you?

No. I know a few words. I used to date someone who was fluent. Did he pay you?

She shook her head — it was a favor. That’s why you’re buying. Go buy more.

I went over to the bar and bought us another round.

It seems like a pretty questionable gimmick, I said when I got back to the table. I mean, do they have people who actually want to pay to have that done to them?

Tulip shrugged. It’s the times, she said. It’s in the air. Gloom and doom. New York — style. Aris says it falls under the rubric of the danse macabre.

That’s French.

So is the Statue of Liberty, honey. Not to mention Dior and cognac. Would you like to hear some Latin?

Are you serious?

Spiritus meus attenuabitur, dies mei breviabuntur.

What the fuck does that mean?

“My spirit is corrupt, my breath grows extinct.” It’s from the Bible. I saw it in one of Aris’s books. Ask him to show it to you. It’s mostly a picture book. Full of skeletons and people doing the danse macabre. Mostly the skeletons are doing the dancing. “Ring around the Rosie” is more or less what we’re talking about.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!” A danse macabre for kids growing up in plague times.

I heard that wasn’t true. That it didn’t have anything to do with the plague.

Whatever. It’s true enough. Can you think of anything?

Dead man’s float, I said, remembering once bobbing facedown in the water at the Hamilton Fish Park pool long enough for the lifeguard to jump in.

Or just playing dead. It’s all the same thing. The closer you think you are to death, even if you haven’t thought about it, the more you …

Danse? I said.

Yeah. And anyway, people pay to have all kinds of bizarre and/or anodyne shit done to them.

Like what?

Like hair implants, collagen injections, liposuction, skin lightening, complexion alteration, extreme makeovers, safaris, Rolfing.

Do you think the knockout …?

The what?

Never mind. It’s stupid. Any idea why Mr. Kindt wants me involved?

Who knows, you never know with Aris. Maybe Cornelius told him he needed a new guy. I understand that pretty boy from last night isn’t going to work out.

You mean Anthony?

Is that what you call him?

Pretty boy? I said.

The knockout? she said.

Tulip did the smile/smirk thing again. I sagged a little into my chair.

Don’t worry, Henry, you’re pretty too, she said.

Yeah? I said, the way I quietly say it when someone has just told me something I’d like to hear again. I leaned back, then forward, then cleared my throat.

But she just shook her head and told me about the blade, that it was a kind of scalpel, once owned by a famous Dutch embalmer, that Mr. Kindt owned the embalmer’s entire set of tools.

It’s an impressive little collection, she said. You should ask Aris to show it to you when you look at the danse macabre book.

Do you think he brought it down with him from Cooperstown?

Maybe, she said. But I was under the impression that he was pretty broke when he hit town. I’m guessing he got it, like most of his stuff, when things started picking up.

Do you really think I’m pretty? I said.

I do, she said.

With that she got up and walked out the door.

I stayed another hour, playing the murder scene over, again and again, comparing it with the mess from the night before. I thought about how I had taken Tulip down not so much onto as into the plush carpet — hard but not too hard — how I had put my forearm against her throat and pulled her forehead back, how she had gasped and grinned madly and looked into my eyes, then passed out. How the knockout and contortionists had emerged for a moment, taken in the scene, then withdrawn.

I’m pretty, I thought. I ended this little colloquy with myself by letting my head fall to my chest, my shoulders droop, and my mouth sag open.

Danse macabre, New York — style, I said.

I repeated this the next day when I went over to Mr. Kindt’s. He did his own version, one that involved shutting his eyes, sucking in his cheeks, and leaning back into his chair. Then he told me that he too liked to play dead, and that once he had had to play dead to stay alive when a business affair he had been involved with had gone “terribly wrong.”

It was so strange, he said, to have a pulse when those around me did not, to have hands and feet and toes I could still wiggle when those around me did not, to be able, after those long minutes, to rise and leave when those around me could not.

I had more or less not stopped playing dead while he spoke. When he had finished, I opened my eyes and looked at him. He was sitting up straight with his arms folded over his chest, looking at me.

The episode I just described did not happen, he said. But I have often imagined such a scenario and it is true that I like to play dead.

And you’ve been murdered before.

He smiled. He suggested we play dead a little longer. While I was still lying there with my eyes shut he put a cracker in my hand and asked if I would like a cup of hot tea.

EIGHTEEN

One gray morning, Job walked into my room and said, get rid of it.

I nodded, and Job walked out.

An hour or so later, after I had taken the little case of vials and the white robe with its badge to the incinerator chute — burning my hand on the chute’s handle in the process — he came back.

He said, we’ve got difficulties — they called the cops after that last one.

Yeah? I said.

So we stop. Call a temporary halt until things quiet down. It should be O.K., all good, you know, but keep cool. They talk to you, you don’t know anything, right?

I remember, I said.

Job went away. I never saw him again. The next day I heard from a new nurse that he had gotten himself picked up walking out of his apartment door with a suitcase and a fat wallet, had made some commentary, and had gotten smacked a couple of times, before being encouraged to kiss the pavement while he was cuffed.

I was sure I was next. In fact, I could practically hear them coming down the hall, a whole lot of them, probably more than was necessary. Since they were about to arrive at any second, I tried to get myself in the right frame of mind to be hauled off, imagining how I would act (tough, impervious) and what I would say (nothing) and what kind of look (devil-may-care, baby) I would give Dr. Tulp, standing in the door of the hospital as they shoved me into the car, and to Mr. Kindt, standing beside her (noble, resigned), and what I would do to Job (unmentionable) when I saw him, if I saw him.

For a couple of days (they didn’t come), I ran through a lot of permutations of this basic scenario, permutations that got pretty strange when I’d get my meds. I won’t get into all of them, because that would just be too boring, but, as an example, in one I hugged Mr. Kindt, who had very awful, very fishy breath, then kicked Dr. Tulp’s shin as the police were dragging me away.

Mr. Kindt, you’re my friend, Dr. Tulp, I hate you, I called as they stuffed me into the waiting patrol car.

It would probably be only fair to note, as a kind of corrective to the above-expressed sentiment, that most of the permutations in fact only involved Dr. Tulp. I mean there were no police and there was no Mr. Kindt and no hospital in them, and believe me, I wasn’t kicking shins. I was both elegant and gallant as I escorted Dr. Tulp to various local purveyors of handsome vintage apparel so that she could appropriately outfit herself for her upcoming green card proceedings and subsequent celebratory gatherings with her colleagues in the medical profession. At said gatherings, I would stand beside her in appropriate apparel of my own, holding a handsomely housed Cape Cod or Campari and soda, whose rich colors would add that subtle touch of depth to the convivial atmosphere. Occasionally, Dr. Tulp would flick her hand out and stab me with her pen, or lean close and sink her teeth into the soft flesh of my neck, but no one would take any notice and the smiles and soft chatter would go on and on. It is true that both Job and Mr. Kindt occasionally trespassed into these scenarios, but they invariably appeared in a service capacity, moving in and out of the crowd with trays of drinks and small, mysterious edibles encased in puffed pastry.