His heels went skyward, rubber tennis shoes, those white clunking sneakers you see old folks wearing, and then he was out of my vision and I had a moment’s pause: in that moment I recollected that the blind man was named Harrington and that he was made blind (is that the proper term?) in a freak flash fire on his yacht when he was spreading sealing putty and the vapors ignited. He was owner of the boatyard down the river and had an estate near there, too. When I got out to the steps a crowd was gathering around, stepping carefully to avoid the pool of dark blood around his head. For some reason I stood unwilling to commit myself to going down the steps, and in that moment a girl—maybe fourteen or twenty (it’s hard for me to differentiate between ages of these kids)—glanced at me. Our eyes met, as they say. Hers were hazy and dark, maybe hazel-colored. She drew forth her hand and pointed her finger like a pistol and said, loudly, He pushed him. I saw that fucker push the guy. That asshole shoved the blind man down the stairs. Before I could move I was beset upon from behind by two burly men, both with security guard uniforms and fake sheriff badges. They put me into a proper headlock and secured my wrists with cuffs.

Iswell with a solicitous desire to help the blind man tick tick ticking his way ahead of me out of the bank, with an almost imperative desire to help at all costs, no matter what his needs. No question about it, I’m going to help him through the doors and out and into the street after properly guiding him down the stairs. Counting my bills, fanning the crisp ones out, at the same time closing in on the guy, all the while also searching memory banks for more information on the blind man, putting together fragments of gossip—the owner of that boat with the fire, his house clearly available to my mind’s eye, wondrously large, situated on about five acres of expensive land stretching in wide vistas of rolled lawn all the way down to the river. Almost ready to burst with the desire not only to take his elbow but to touch it, too, to feel the sharp (is there a sharper, more protruding object in the human body?) bony nub of it in my hands, and to help him down the walk whether he wants it or not. No matter what his feelings are on the matter, I’m bound by some deeper internal duty to help him out and in doing so, of course, as will be pointed out to me later, after the fall, when his blood is pooling around his head, to help myself out as well by satisfying my compulsion to help.