“You got to quit smoking,” he said, and he remembered her fingers touching him as she fixed his shirt.

THIRTEEN

Brazil had a lot to think about. He wrote his stories fast and shipped them out within seconds of various deadlines for various editions. He was strangely unsettled and not remotely tired. He did not want to go home and had fallen into a funk the instant West had let him out at his car in the parking deck. He left the newsroom at quarter past midnight and took the escalator down to the second floor.

The press room was going full tilt, yellow Ferag conveyors flying by seventy thousand papers per hour. Brazil opened the door, his ears overwhelmed by the roar inside. People wearing hearing protectors and ink-stained aprons nodded at him, yet to understand his odd peregrinations through their violent, dirty world. He walked in and stared at miles of speeding newsprint, at folding machines rat-a-tat-a-tatting, and belt ribbon conveyors streaking papers through the counting machines. The hardworking people in this seldom-thought-of place had never known a reporter to care a hoot about how his clever words and big-shot bylines ended up in the hands of citizens every day.

Brazil was inexplicably drawn to the power of these huge, frightening machines. He was awed to see his front page racing by in a blur, thousands and thousands of times. It was humbling and hard to believe that so many people out there were interested in how he saw the world and what he had to say. The big headline of the night was, of course, Batman and Robin saving the hijacked bus. But there was a pretty decent piece on WHY A BOY RAN AWAY, on the metro section front page, and a few paragraphs on the altercation at Fat Man’s Lounge.

In truth, Brazil could have written stories forever about all he saw while riding with West. He wandered up a spiral metal staircase to the mail room and thought of her calling him partner. He replayed her voice over and over. He liked the way she sounded, deep but resonate and womanly. It made him think of old wood and smoke, of fieldstone patched with moss, and of lady’s-slippers in old forests scattered with sun.

Brazil did not want to go home. He wandered out to his car, in a mood to roam and think. He felt blue and did not know the source of it. Life was good. His job couldn’t be better. The cops didn’t seem to despise him quite as intensely or as universally. He contemplated the possibility that his problem was physical, because he wasn’t working out as much as usual and wasn’t producing enough endorphin or pushing himself to the point of exhaustion. He cruised down West Trade, looking at the people of the night trolling, offering their bodies for cash. Sh’ims followed him with sick, glowing eyes, and the young hooker was out again, at the corner of Cedar.