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VOICI LE ROI DU MONDE!
 Was that on a Christmas card? Easter maybe? Must have been a picture, some arresting Canadian folk art or amazing European rendering.
He remembered conceptually.
Concept of the sort of thing, but not the thing itself. Just as well. Fine and good. Precision not demanded in this circumstance.
Did you wear your special shoes? She'd asked that.
This special‹he was uncertain what might be hiding in that. Maybe nothing. Maybe the implication of abnormality.
The air was heavy. It hung heavy, the air, did it not?
They were all special or none of them were, weren't they? Unless she meant the imputation of value. Was that what the question was about?
My boots have been in cement no doubt. That was what he'd replied. She had not pursued it. Let it rest.
Which reminded him he'd once worked with Sleeper. That guy could drop off anywhere. Cafeteria, break room, bus stop. All those years back. Lived in that ice-cream-layered house of his.
Yes, he thought of his professional antecedents, but why go back so far to the irrelevant? Unavoidable, but why?
As the earplugs. He'd put those earplugs on because he'd had to back then and because he did not want to damage his hearing but even now the feeling sometimes came to him. His breath, his heart, laboring, it seemed, under those earplugs. Nerves, really. Having the plugs in for some reason made him nervous.
He had not wanted to feel bad at the time. He had not wanted to fail at the time.
Unhappiness and failure had seemed terrible yet unavoidable. What curious notions he'd held. But not about foreign-language cards or special shoes.
Somebody had called his machine‹some woman, or, more likely, some girl‹and screamed, Pry that fish from you. That was it. Hysterical-sounding. No background laughter‹no background.
A prank.
A mistake.
Wrong number.
Nothing.
Nothing but what it was. It was‹a shout‹a shouted utterance at least. Something but something not to worry about though it had intruded into his life inexplicable.
If he had wanted the broken globe, she wanted to know. The stand broken, the globe itself fine though it could not stand upright. And out of date. All the changes in the last thirty years. Still a pretty globe. With relief. State of the art in its day and not, no doubt, cheap. A very nice globe all told with relief. Relieved?
But broken it was now worth what? What utility? What value?
Someday it would be an antique and perhaps inhere some monetary value then. Or perhaps not and not everything could be saved. What should he do, cram his house with everything and await its eventual valuation? Impractical and too reliant on hope and what kind of grasping hope was that?
But to throw away his globe?
He'd had it for years.
It was his.
Although that was not in dispute. Not even in question.
She was asking him to assert something or the request was an assertion.
To her it was trash, right?
And he was to join her in that assertion. But if he threw it out, he would not throw it out the way it was now. The globe was intact; it was only the stand broken. If he were going to throw it out, he'd smash it, puncture it, take a look at what was inside.
He knew there was nothing inside.
He knew he'd go and look at the globe and hold it and try to make up his mind. It seemed as though in making a decision he was making some kind of a bargain. Some sort of a transaction between the object and himself.
And where would that end? Would he have to examine every thing he owned and come to a decision about each object's disposition?
Wasn't that process generally left to others? Later?
What was her motive in bringing all this forward?
A kind of inventory, really, if he extended it. A bit of what would, extended, be an inventory.
Why not extend it?
How far?
After every thing, where?
To her?
Now he told himself he was going too far. Certainly she was not asking anything like that. She had merely --
What?
That globe had been there for years; why did it attract her scrutiny now?
He would go to the park. It opened at six a.m. He would go there before work and sit in his car and prepare for his day. Relax. Think about things.
Before work.
Other people did that.
It was a way to make things more sensible.
More bearable.
He often thought about it, but he'd never done it.
Still, what was he waiting for? If he was going to find a way to make things bearable, here was a place to start. Here or not, of course. Not here. Somewhere else, presumably, if not here. Or absent. Not or. Absent.
That nagging question of absence.
What was that‹what was the‹that key thing‹that question‹the‹it escaped him.
Why should he state the obvious?
Why should he think the irrelevant?
And out on the sidewalk in front of the house, a dead squirrel. Probably it was hit by a car and made it up onto the walk. Yet he thought of animals dying at the beginning of a plague. Not the case, he was certain, but what was he supposed to do with the dead squirrel? The trash haulers, he happened to know, would not cart off any dead animal if they knew it was a dead animal. Probably there was some regulation in effect.
He could bury it.
Yeah. He could. But it wasn't his responsibility. Shouldn't the city be required to do something?
Maybe he was better not to do anything. Leave the squirrel.Forget the globe.
Not do anything at all.
That wasn't the issue. Neither was she. Nor the globe.
He had to do something‹this or that‹and it seemed like somebody‹and maybe it was him‹was doing something to him and he did not know what to do about it.
He'd gone out to get the mail‹that's when he'd seen the squirrel. The numerology of his zip code. Maybe that would tell him.
But he knew he did not need to know.
Before --
So angry it sickened him.
So sad it sickened him.
So scared it sickened him.
All that in the past. Over.
But what about now now now? Couldn't he attempt to focus on that? The globe? What she meant was‹yeah‹why wouldn't she want something more than this.
Than what they had.
It was simply a thing. With, true, all enknotted associations.
Was he?
He'd seen the pay-per-views in darkened motel rooms. No primal mystery was revealed.
But she had a card in a scrapbook, and she wanted him to throw out his globe.
Broken.
If every thing began as a thing, how could he imagine it might end as a dream?
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