"What is he, a Jew?"

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Your roof gutter's sagging," he told me. "You know how to fix that, don't you?"

Vernon liked to hang around outside the house, waiting for garbagemen, telephone repairmen, the mail carrier, the afternoon newsboy. Someone to talk to about techniques and procedures. Sets of special methods. Routes, time spans, equipment. It tightened his grip on things, learning how work was done in areas outside his range.

He liked to tease the kids in his deadpan way. They answered his bantering remarks reluctantly. They were suspicious of all relatives. Relatives were a sensitive issue, part of the murky and complex past, the divided lives, the memories that could be refloated by a word or a name.

He liked to sit in his tortured hatchback, smoking.

Babette would watch from a window, managing to express love, worry, exasperation and despair, hope and gloom, more or less simultaneously. Vernon had only to shift his weight to arouse in her a series of extreme emotions.

He liked to mingle with shopping mall crowds.

"I'm counting on you to tell me, Jack."

"Tell you what?"

"You're the only person I know that's educated enough to give me the answer."

"The answer to what?"

"Were people this dumb before television?"

One night I heard a voice and thought he was moaning in his sleep. I put on my robe, went into the hall, realized the sound came from the TV set in Denise's room. I went in and turned off the set. She was asleep in a drift of blankets, books and clothes. On an impulse I went quietly to the open closet, pulled the light cord and peered inside, looking for the Dylar tablets. I closed the door against my body, which was half in, half out of the closet. I saw a great array of fabrics, shoes, toys, games and other objects. I poked around, catching an occasional trace of some childhood redolence. Clay, sneakers, pencil shavings. The bottle might be in an abandoned shoe, the pocket of some old shirt wadded in a corner. I heard her stir. I went still, held my breath.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Don't worry, it's only me."

"I know who it is."

I kept on looking through the closet, thinking this would make me appear less guilty.

"I know what you're looking for, too."

"Denise, I've had a recent scare. I thought something awful was about to happen. It turned out I was wrong, thank goodness. But there are lingering effects. I need the Dylar. It may help me solve a problem."

I continued to rummage.

"What's the problem?"

"Isn't it enough for you to know that a problem exists? I wouldn't be here otherwise. Don't you want to be my friend?"

"I am your friend. I just don't want to be tricked."

'There's no question of tricking. I just need to try the medication. There are four tablets left. I'll take them and that'll be the end of it."

The more casual the voice, the better my chances of reaching her.

"You won't take them. You'll give them to my mother."

"Let's be clear about one thing," I said like a high government official. "Your mother is not a drug addict. Dylar is not that kind of medication."

"What is it then? Just tell me what it is."

Something in her voice or in my heart or in the absurdity of the moment allowed me to consider the possibility of answering her question. A breakthrough. Why not simply tell her? She was responsible, able to gauge the implications of serious things. I realized Babette and I had been foolish all along, keeping the truth from her. The girl would embrace the truth, know us better, love us more deeply in our weakness and fear.

I went and sat at the end of the bed. She watched me carefully. I told her the basic story, leaving out the tears, the passions, the terror, the horror, my exposure to Nyodene D., Babette's sexual arrangement with Mr. Gray, our argument over which of us feared death more. I concentrated on the medication itself, told her everything I knew about its life in the gastrointestinal tract and the brain.

The first thing she mentioned was the side effects. Every drug has side effects. A drug that could eliminate fear of death would have awesome side effects, especially if it is still in a trial stage. She was right, of course. Babette had spoken of outright death, brain death, left brain death, partial paralysis, other cruel and bizarre conditions of the body and mind.

I told Denise the power of suggestion could be more important than side effects.

"Remember how you heard on the radio that the billowing cloud caused sweaty palms? Your palms got sweaty, didn't they? The power of suggestion makes some people sick, others well, it may not matter how strong or weak Dylar is. If I think it will help me, it will help me."

"Up to a point."

"We are talking about death," I whispered. "In a very real sense it doesn't matter what is in those tablets. It could be sugar, it could be spice. I am eager to be humored, to be fooled."

"Isn't that a little stupid?"

"This is what happens, Denise, to desperate people."

There was a silence. I waited for her to ask me if this desperation was inevitable, if she would one day experience the same fear, undergo the same ordeal.

Instead she said, "Strong or weak doesn't matter. I threw the bottle away."

"No, you didn't. Where?"

"I put it in the garbage compactor."

"I don't believe you. When was this?"

"About a week ago. I thought Baba might sneak through my room and find it. So I decided to just get it over with. Nobody wanted to tell me what it was, did they? So I threw it in with all the cans and bottles and other junk. Then I compacted it."

"Like a used car."

"Nobody would tell me. That's all they had to do. I was right here all the time."

"It's all right. Don't worry. You did me a favor."

"About eight words was all they needed to say."

"I'm better off without it."

"It wouldn't have been the first time they tricked me."

"You're still my friend," I said.

I kissed her on the head and went to the door. I realized I was extremely hungry. I went downstairs to find something to eat. The kitchen light was on. Vernon was sitting at the table, fully dressed, smoking and coughing. The ash on his cigarette was an inch long, beginning to lean. It was a habit of his, letting the ash dangle. Babette thought he did it to induce feelings of suspense and anxiety in others. It was part of the reckless weather in which he moved.

"Just the man I want to see."

"Vern, it's the middle of the night. Don't you ever sleep?"

"Let's go out to the car," he said.

"Are you serious?"

"What we have here is a situation we ought to conduct in private. This house is full of women. Or am I wrong?"

"We're alone here. What is it you want to talk about?"

"They listen in their sleep," he said.

We went out the back door to keep from waking Heinrich. I followed him along the pathway at the side of the house and down the steps to the driveway. His little car sat in the dark. He got behind the wheel and I slid in next to him, gathering up my bathrobe and feeling trapped in the limited space. The car held a smell like some dangerous vapor in the depths of a body-and-fender shop, a mixture of exhausted metal, flammable rags and scorched rubber. The upholstery was torn. In the glow of a street-lamp I saw wires dangling from the dash and the overhead fixture.

"I want you to have this, Jack."

"Have what?"

"I've had it for years. Now I want you to have it. Who knows if I'll ever see you folks again? What the hell. Who cares. Big deal."

You're giving me the car? I don't want the car. It's a terrible car."

"In your whole life as a man in today's world, have you ever owned a firearm?"

"No," I said.

"I figured. I said to myself here's the last man in America who doesn't own the means to defend himself."