The four weeks he was in the warren, everyone imitated him. Had they ever been so close to a human being before? What exactly did that mean to them? They came to the cubicle doorway and looked in at him with a kind of sombre passivity. A typical gesture of his, a manner of speaking, would go round the whole place in an hour. The kids ran from room to room imitating him. Neena Vesicle imitated him even when he was fucking her.

“Open up a little more,” she would suggest, or, “Now me in you,” then laugh. “I mean, you in me. Oh God. Oh fuck. Fuck.”

She was perfect for him because she was stranger and even harder to understand than he was. After they finished she lay there awkwardly in his arms, said, “Oh no, it’s nice, it’s quite comfortable.” She said: “Who are you, Ed Chianese?” There was more than one way to answer that, but she had her preferences. If he said, “I’m just some twink,” she actually looked angry. After a few days he felt himself returning from the tank. He was a long way away, and then he was closer and it was the voices of withdrawal which had retreated right to the edge. He began to remember things about the real Ed Chianese.

“I’ve got debts,” he explained. “I probably owe everyone in the universe.” He stared down at her. She stared back for a moment, then looked away suddenly, as if she hadn’t meant to. “Shh, shh,” he said absently. Then: “I guess they all want to collect off me or fuck me over. What happened in the tank farm was over who got first fuck.”

Neena put her hand over his.

“That’s not who you are,” she said.

After a minute he said: “I remember being a kid.”

“What was that like?”

“I don’t know. My mother died, my sister went away. All I wanted to do was ride the rocket ships.”

Neena smiled.

“Small boys want that,” she said.

13
Monster Beach

Kearney and Anna stayed in New York for a week. Then Kearney saw the Shrander again. It was at Cathedral Parkway Station on 110th Street, during some kind of stalled time or hiatus, some empty part of the day. The platforms lay deserted, though you sensed that recently they had been full; the heavily riveted central girders marched off into the echoing dark in either direction. Kearney thought he heard something like the fluttering of a bird among them. When he looked up, there hung the Shrander, or anyway its head.