JOHN WAS RUNNING through the early morning, running like a slowed-down movie past the blooming flowers, the tulip trees with their buds, and the new-sprouted grass of Central Park. His hunger made him feel as if a living thing were moving in his stomach. His eyes bulged, his mouth opened wide as he ran. He must be hideous in his flapping raincoat and dirty blue suit, with the fingernails of a demon and the face of a corpse. People shrank from him, children shouted alarm. He felt like a hermit who had been knocked out of his hiding place by a wrecker’s ball.

His heart skipped and thuttered. Pain shot down his shoulder. He staggered. Then the beat started again: food, foodfood, food, FOODFOODFOOD! He coughed, running along the Bridle Path, lurching past Cleopatra’s Needle, finally plunging into the shrubbery beside the path.

He could go no farther, his breath was fire, his heartbeat a confused rattle. This place was redolent of hot, strong flesh. Every few minutes another jogger passed. He listened to one, a big man breathing easily. Too strong. Then another—lighter but still not tired enough. His victim would have to be practically exhausted, just at the end of a long hard run. Yesterday little Alice had nearly gotten the better of him. Today he was even weaker. In his extremity he began to recollect an almost forgotten time of his life, which he now saw as the best time—before he met Miriam. He remembered the grassy slope at Hadley where he and Priscilla lay intoxicated with the smell of the heather on windy spring days. The clouds rolled madly down the sky. God, what wonderful times! He was ceasing to love the drama and speed of this age, and to cherish the quieter time before. Even old Hadley was gone now, the ruined house rebuilt and turned into an orphanage by the strange populist state that had followed the Empire.

Without warning, a cough burst out of him. He found himself pitching backward, almost losing consciousness. Above him he saw the sky through a tulip tree. And the clouds in it were the same! The same as that day at Hadley! “Oh, Johnny, my pladies awa’,” Priscilla had cried, “awa’ with the win’!” And there bouncing across the heather went her fluffy plaid skirt. How he had run! Run in the wind and the kind land, run for that plaid with all the might of his young years.

Another cough, not his own. He struggled up, heard it again. Thud-thud on the gravel, thud-thud, thud-thud. Here came a girl who had put on a little extra during the winter, jiggling along in a purple sweat suit, gasping like a tophorse at a coach stop.

He connected with her right side as she jogged past. She let out a surprisingly shrill scream for one so heavy.