"Photograph live nudes," the man said sleepily.

Selvy turned right into another corridor. He stopped by a window. Down on the street a mounted policeman was moving through the crowd. He passed another open door. Gadgets, novelties, devices, creams, ointments, marital aids. Wholesale only. At the end of the corridor was a black metal door with two words painted on it in vivid red: NUDE STORYTELLING.

Selvy looked behind him. Then he opened the door and stepped inside. The outer office consisted of a desk, a telephone and a couple of chairs. A chubby black man in a porkpie hat sat at the desk, smoking a cigar. He had a racing form spread in front of him.

"Be a short wait," he said.

"Who's doing the storytelling?"

"Not me, guarantee."

"How much per story?"

"Cost you upwards of thirty-fi' dollars for a half-hour story, depending."

"How much minimum?"

"I let you get away with fifteen down. What I'm saying, the basic story is fifteen. Activities can run you a little more."

"All right," Sehvy said.

"You a cop, Jim?"

"Just want to hear a nude story."

"Because if this is a sweep of the area, you ought to be sweeping anywheres but here. What I'm saying, it's all seen to."

"How long do I wait?"

"Pick out a chair, Jim. There's a story in progress."

Mudger trued up the cutting edge with a coarse hone. He found this mysteriously pleasing. There was a lightbulb directly overhead so that he could determine the best sharpening angle by noting the shadow cast by the blade on the stone, and its gradual disappearance. Sight, sound, touch. He maintained a steady pressure as he moved the blade-edge into the stone.

The shape of tools. Proportions and heft. The satisfactions of cutting along pencil lines, of measuring to the sheer edge of something and coming out right, of allowing for slight variations and coming out right, of mixing fluids and seeing the colors blend, a surface texture materializing out of brush striations.

Cleaning up grit wheels. This made him happy. He liked the touch of rough surfaces. He liked the sounds things made when excess finish was removed. Sandpapering, grinding, buffing. He liked the names of things.

It was midnight. He went into the washroom. Standing over the commode he tried to spit into the stream of urine as it emerged. On the third try he connected, watching the blob of spit go skipping into the bowl.

He set to work on the handle. It would be burl maple. The names of things. Subtly gripping odors. Glues and resins. The names. Honing oil. Template. Brazing rod. The names of things in these two rooms constituted a near-secret knowledge. He felt obscure satisfaction, something akin to a freemason's pride, merely saying these names aloud for Tran Le or her grandmother or the two men, Van and Cao. Carborundum. Emery wheel. Tenon and drawbore. You couldn't use tools and materials well, he believed, unless you knew their proper names.

Cleaning up grit wheels. Hand-stitching a leather sheath. Doing your own heat-treating.

Sharpness: dry-shaving a square inch of your forearm with a freshly honed blade.

By heat-treating the steel blank himself, he knew he was sacrificing some of the exactness a commercial firm would provide. But he preferred it this way. _His_ instrument start to finish.

He fitted a brass guard to the steel. Then he took two slabs of burl maple and roughed out a fit. He sanded, applied epoxy and set rivets. Ought to hold forever.

When the unit was dry he leveled out the finger grooves and used the belts and sanders to get the handle down to a tighter, firmer fit.

He buffed the wood and brass to a fine sheen. Then he alternately polished and sharpened the blade, finally using various buffing wheels to get the edge and finish he wanted.

Sharpness: the sight of blood edging out of a cut in your thumb.

He climbed the back stairs to the kitchen and opened a can of beer, taking it with him up one more flight to the bedroom. He moved quietly past the cradle and looked at Tran Le curled in bed. Her face was touched pearl gray by a night light nearby. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, a Saigon bar girl at fourteen, leaning against a parked jeep eating an Almond Joy when he first set eyes on her eight years ago. He took off his shirt. When he sat on the edge of the bed, she turned toward him.

"Sleep," he said.

"Where Van is, Earl?"

"Out of town. With Cao."

"Business."

"They be back maybe tomorrow, next day. You sleep."

"Sleep," she said.

"Maybe Van come back with gift for his sister. This because Van know she such a good little wife. Earl tell Van. She is de sweetest little wife in de whole wide world."

Mudger's rudimentary speech often degenerated into stock Negro dialect, catching him unaware. All those recruits he'd trained and pained. The less power you have, the more dominance you maintain in secondary areas. Speech rhythms, foot speed, hair texture. He finished his beer sitting on the edge of the bed. He needed only a couple of hours sleep. Then he'd watch the sun come up.

The woman was young with a healthy reddish face, oval in shape, and large brown eyes. Her hair, center-parted, billowed evenly to either side. She wore an ordinary shift and sandals.

Selvy watched her walk to the outer office. The room was medium sized with a few vinyl chairs, a coffee table and a lamp constructed out of a football helmet. In a corner was a folding bed, doubled up, on casters.

"Stony, is this all?"

"What you see."

"They said two minimum."

"Man's been waiting."

"I'm kind of beat, frankly."

"Tell him a story, Nadine, Man's entitled."

"Being I'm new, I won't make waves. But ordinarily there'd be a tussle over this. Two's the minimum, Stony, and you know it."

"Do him a quickie, hon, and we'll all go home."

She sat across from Selvy. Her knees had a tender sheen. He liked shiny knees. He also liked her voice, a modified drawl. It took her a second or two to gear up to the introductory routine.

"Goes like this: you're allowed to pick one story out of the following three. More, you pay extra. Each story runs ten minutes, depending. Longer of course for activities. Okay. 'Flaming Panties.' 'The Valley of the Jolly Green Giant, Ho Ho Ho.' And the 'Story of Naomi and Lateef.' The second one's mostly gay, just so we get our preferences right."

"Wouldn't I want a man to tell it?"

"Look, who knows?"

"You're new here."

"My second full week and I'm ready to bow out. Quit while they still love you. How much did you give Stony?"

"Fifteen down."

"Just checking," she said. "You have to do that with horseplayers. Okay, pick one."

"I'll try 'Naomi and Lateef.'"

"You're only the second person to pick that. Most everybody picks 'Flaming Panties.' It's really sick, too. The mind that comes up with stuff like that."

"They're not your stories."

"I don't make them up. I just recite them."

"I thought they were your stories."

"If I made up 'Flaming Panties,' I don't know, I think I'd run a sword through my body. It is _the_ sickest."

Selvy heard the man in the outer office talking to someone. He seemed agitated, although the words weren't clearly audible through the closed door.

"If you get stimulated by the story, pay attention, you can give me an extra ten if you want, or an extra twenty, depending. We leave it up to customer preference. What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said.

"That's just Stony making life hard for the kid who brings his sandwich."

Selvy nodded.

"The 'Story of Naomi and Lateef,'" she said, standing momentarily to unzip the shift down the back, then stepping out of it and sitting down again. She looked at him impatiently.