All of these haunt me, but they aren’t as bad as the nearly omnipresent pictures of Charlie. The media is rife with feuding camps—some want her punished capitally, some want her in Congress; some denounce her as the most contemptible thief of the new millennium, others petition to appoint her as the head of a new watchdog agency for the international art community—and everyone from her past is coming forward for their fifteen minutes.73 A lot of magazines run that familiar graphic of a jaggedly broken heart, sundered as if by a bolt of lightning, with a glamour shot of Charlie in one half and my hangdog mug shot in the other. Someone has put up a Web site called IAmThePolecat.com that features all sorts of Charlie miscellany, including but not limited to biographical details, reprints of her academic papers, both published and unpublished, theories of her current location, and starred reviews of her various “restorations.” Apparently there is also quite a large portion dedicated to her multifarious love life, complete with prurient Photoshopped images that I cannot describe.

Never before have I so craved a dark, solitary room.

I keep thinking, fondly, that Deke will rub me out but it never happens. Finally I start cruising around his neighborhood, hanging out in dark stairways, by the pool table at Alibi, under the Navy Street overpass. One night I finally see a familiar silhouette doing some business under a tree in Fort Greene Park. He’s wearing a hoodie and hunched up underneath a low-brimmed hat. When he sees me, he recoils as if just the sight of me has singed his eyeballs. He shoos the guys away and turns from me into the shadows.

“What do you want?” he says from over his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I thought you might want to shoot me?”

“What?”

“Shoot me.”

“Shoot you? Are you out of your mind?”

“No.”

“What you want me to shoot you for?”

“What the hell do you think for?”

“Nah,” he says. “You don’t owe me. You’re square.”

“I am?”

“You know you are. Now get out of here.”

“Well, maybe you could shoot me for—I don’t know—old times’ sake?”

“Haven’t you done enough to me? Isn’t this enough?” He turns around. His face looks like it’s been moonlighting as an anvil and his left arm is in a sling, the fingers red and bloated as raw sausages. Even his voice sounds broken. “You got to come down here and mock me now? That what you want to do?”

“No,” I say. “I didn’t—”

“Man, I’m not even supposed to be talking to you.”

He glances furtively around, as if searching for snipers, then starts backing away from me. His steps are delicate and careful, as if he’s worried that any noise might beget certain doom.