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Mal walked to the door; Karen stayed behind. I walked quickly after Mal, feeling as though I was cheating on Hiko.

“How long is this going to be?” I asked.

“Thirty minutes. Forty-five at most.” He saw me looking back at Hiko and Karen and said, “They won't even know we're gone. Be back in plenty of time.”

I was a little scared to go with him. From the look of his van, I should have been terrified. Redbach got behind the wheel. It came to a rumbling start and a spiral of smoke drifted out from under the hood.

I shook my head. “I should really stay.” I thought if I said it out loud, it would actually happen.

“Still whipped. Just like with Darla.” He turned to get into the van. “You feel anything spheroid grow down there”—he pointed a finger at my crotch—“then you give me a call, okay?”

“You're sure we won't be long?”

Mal smiled and said, “If we're a little late, it'll be worth it.” He got in the passenger seat and I climbed through the sliding side door. I had to sit in the back on a floor painted electric blue beside boxes of video equipment and cables stacked high enough to promise toppling. Long elastic cords tied in large loops, harnesses, and hooks filled a box nearby.

“What are we doing?”

Redbach smiled and looked at Mal.

Mal said, “Living my life.”

The van died as Redbach started to pull away from the curb, and when he tried to restart it a fresh cloud of smoke poured forth.

“Is this van okay?”

“You're full of questions. ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?' Just sit down and relax.”

I squatted on the box of cables and hung on to the backs of both front seats for some type of stability as Redbach finally got the van started again and we lurched forward.

Over the rattle of the engine I said, “You know, I have an agent who said he's willing to take a look at any acts that my friends might have.”

Neither of them responded; I wasn't certain they could hear me over the groan rising from the van. By the time we got to the first light smoke was billowing from underneath the hood. The engine released a loud snap and flames belched at the windshield.

“Maybe this ain't so good,” Redbach said. The engine cut out again and as he tried to turn toward the curb the gears seized and the van shook dead, partway through a red light. For a second we all sat there while tongues of fire peeked at us from over the hood.
Like a mirage,
I thought. The cars along the street and the lights on the buildings shimmered behind heat waves. Then smoke found its way inside.

It streamed in through the air vents. The engine let  out another loud pop and the smoke turned black and thick. Mal and Redbach opened their doors and I climbed to the back door, knocked the stacks of gear aside, and pushed at the handles. Only one door opened
and I half fell out of the van. Mal pulled me the rest of the way.

“Grab something.” He pulled at the ropes and rigging near the back. “This stuff is too expensive to burn.”

In a daze I pulled rope and backpacks and hard metal suitcases out the back door with Mal and Redbach as the front of the van glowed and burned. All the traffic stopped and someone pulled a fire extinguisher from their car. Thin white foam shot into the flames jetting out from under the hood. It did no good. Fire engulfed the van, the front seats caught, and the smoke became so acrid that my eyes watered. I couldn't see. I backed away and Mal and Redbach tried for another moment to get the last of the boxes. Redbach gave up first. Mal fought the smoke and coughed so hard that spit hung from his lips.

A crowd formed in a circle around us. My mouth tasted like plastic and my eyes still burned. Next to me Redbach doubled over, coughing toward his feet.

Someone pushed by me, a small body but strong. “He's going to die in there.” Karen headed for the van. I grabbed her shoulder and she knocked my hand away. “Do something!” she yelled over and over.

Metal and burning plastic fell out of the engine. It smoldered on the street under the van. Black smoke rose above the crowd and spiraled toward First Avenue. Light from street lamps and apartment windows filtered through. Silhouettes floated in windows as the burning
van became more interesting than TV. Another firecracker pop and the flames began to creep back, under the van and toward the rear. The gas line must have caught.

I could have run to the van and grabbed Mal. I didn't. I stood behind Karen and wondered if he would die. I stood there thinking he might. Everyone stood there thinking it. I took a step forward, unsure what to do. The fire truck arrived.

Two firemen in yellow-and-black hazard gear jumped into the van, and together they pulled Mal out. Another fireman approached with a large canister attached to his back and began to coat the van in thick foam like whipped cream. It piled on so fast that in minutes the entire van became a dessert topping large enough for the entire crowd to enjoy. The circle of people, most of them from the art gallery, applauded politely as the last of the smoke stopped. There were some murmurs about the van not having exploded. I sensed their disappointment.

Karen and I found Mal on the ground near the fire truck, an oxygen mask on his face, which was black with soot; trails of sweat revealed the skin underneath. His hair was partially burned, covered by its own ash, a light orange dust that fell away when he turned his head.

Karen dropped to her knees next to him. “What were you thinking?” His eyes followed her and he smiled as he coughed through the mask. He reached out and took her hand and squeezed it. She repeated the question and
then wrapped herself around him, the buzz of a repeated “Oh God, oh God, oh God” on her lips.

Redbach nudged me. “You okay?” I told him I was. “Then you better get over to your old lady.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the gallery. Michael stood with Hiko near the doorway, his arm around her shoulders. When I got over to them she hugged me and then pulled back sharply.

“You smell like an oven.” She stepped back carefully, her cane in one hand. “You smell like burnt plastic.”

Michael turned his back to Hiko. He whispered to me, “What the fuck happened?”

“I don't know. The van blew up somehow.”

“Yeah, I see that, but where the hell were you going?”

“The Manhattan Bridge, I think.”

Hiko tapped at me with her cane. “You were going to the Manhattan Bridge?” Her face turned away from me, her ear pointed in my direction, daring me to lie. “During my showing?”

“I was going to come back. I hadn't seen Mal in so long, and we—we were going to the bridge.”

Karen came up to us. She held my arm. “Mal wanted me to tell you he's going to be okay. He wants you to call him.” Then she took Hiko's hand. “He also wanted me to tell you how sorry he is. They were going to come right back after getting some flowers for you, and then that fucking van blew up. I always knew it was a piece of shit.”

Hiko nodded and smiled. “You're sure he's okay?”

“Yeah, but he's going to cough up ashtrays for a while.”

Karen and Hiko hugged and Karen held Hiko's face in her hands. “Your show wasn't ruined tonight, honey. It was just too full of energy.” Hiko hugged her back.

Before she went back to the ambulance to be with Mal, Karen looked at me. She said, “Take care of her,” but I felt something else in her eyes. It wasn't pity, which I'd gotten good at seeing in people. It was anger. It reminded me of Mal from back at the hospital when we'd fought. I had done something wrong in her eyes and it hung there between us as she walked away.

Hiko called to me and I took her hand. As Michael and I led her to the car she said to me, “Were you really getting flowers for me?”

I said, “Why would Karen lie?”

DURING THE NEXT
two weeks Hiko's apartment either blazed with light or remained sealed like a dark crypt. When Hiko wasn't there, I left all the lights off. I no longer felt at home. I felt wrong being there after I'd nearly deserted her at her show, so I closed myself off. She was becoming too famous, moving beyond the limited notoriety of art circles. I didn't want to see anything in her house, none of her furniture or sculptures, none of her patterned stucco walls or labeled food cans in the kitchen. It all reminded me of her and the attention she drew to herself, and therefore to me.

When Hiko returned home she would turn on every light, even in the rooms where she wasn't doing anything. She would go into every room, flip all the switches, then
leave the room. I never asked why, but when she did this I tried to stay near the front door, as if ready to flee.

The day after the event, Hiko was quiet. She kept to herself in her studio and emerged only to eat. After the sun had set she stood in the center of the dark room as if waiting for spotlights to come on and focus on her. She said, “Odd that you knew Mal. I never would have guessed.”

I swallowed hard before answering. I didn't recognize my own voice when I said, “We used to perform in the same circus.” I left it at that, feeling it was a lie even though it was factually true.

I thought she could sense the missing pieces, imagined that she had heard from Karen or even from Mal the details I avoided. I expected her to ask for more information. Instead, all she said was, “Isn't it funny how life brings people back to us?”

News of the burning van had been in the papers the next day but soon gave way to other, more interesting accidents. Reviews of Hiko's show hung around a bit longer. Requests came in for interviews and invitations to attend other showings. Hiko was most excited by an invitation to be a guest teacher at the Museum of Modern Art.

“You'll be okay without me at home?” she teased. “All alone?”

“I'll find stuff to do.”

She was gone every night for a week.

When alone I made a point of turning off every light
in every room as I moved through the apartment. I ended my wandering in the kitchen. I sat in the dark, a glass of water nearby, and stared at the card Mal had given me. I taped it to the wall above the door, well out of Hiko's reach.

Monday through Thursday I sat listening to music. When the music stopped, I listened to sounds from the street. Michael called early in the week.

“Have some contracts for you. The photo shoot for the cover is coming up in a few weeks. And I've got research material to share with you. We don't think any of it is you, but you never know what might jog your memory, right?”

“Right.”

The next day Michael sent the research he and his assistant had gathered in a batch of accordion folders. I don't know how many people were looking into my possible past, whether it was just Michael and his assistant, someone else he'd hired, or a team of unpaid interns. I received pages of photocopied newspaper articles, some from so long ago I would have to be twice as old to match the story. I read about American fakirs, yogis who used pain as a path to enlightenment, who had studied pain meditation techniques in India and returned home, “different” and “wiser,” to measure their spirits by hanging their bodies from hooks and piercing their faces and tongues with metal spikes. They spoke of scars as emblems of transcendence.

I read missing-persons reports. Men my age and build, but always with an element, sometimes minor, but more often as obvious as skin color, height, or missing teeth, to demonstrate a difference and remove any hint they might be me. Phone numbers, often the same ones, dotted the bottoms of the reports for tipsters, tricksters, or the bored to call.

Pages of printouts from online search engines stacked two inches high. Questions in multiple hands across the tops of pages or circled around blurred faces in poorly rendered photographs, the red ink bleeding through the paper. Michael or his investigators or both saw any possible connection as a connection. The questions revealed a complete lack of knowing where to start.

Have you ever met the band U2?
asked one.

Were you on
Star Search Kids? asked another.

I received disks with videos, articles, clippings, bad photos from security cameras. Rumor. Innuendo.

A film crew had once disappeared while shooting a film in north Texas. A freak windstorm had tried to blow Oklahoma into Texas and resulted in dozens of people ill or missing, most just for a few days, but the film crew never returned. I read this story multiple times until I saw a blurred date at the top of the page. I would have been a preschooler.

In the Pacific Northwest a man who claimed to be “going numb” disappeared, an apparent suicide, wandering away from family and friends into the woods. He'd
sold all his belongings, all save the suit he repeatedly referred to as his “coffin duster,” and when he had finally followed through on his repeated threat of suicide he took the suit with him. The suit had been light gray, with a vest. A picture showed a short, stocky, thick-haired man in the suit. A note in red ink at the side read,
I know this isn't you, but still—???

I saw myself in all of these. How small a twist it would take to be any of them, I thought, a fiction built out of contradictions. If only I had stopped reading some after the first or second sentence, I could have closed my eyes and accepted the story as my own, gone forward claiming to have discovered something of myself, repeated the tale, embellished, as my own history. A few almost provided smells and sounds as real in my mind as Caesar's cage or the feel of Redbach's bar. Shaking them out proved hard, even knowing they weren't mine, that I had no more claim to them than the readers who took the stories in over morning coffee, muffin crumbs stuck to their chins, gasping at details not because they had happened but because they hadn't happened to them. I couldn't unwatch the footage from a club where a man eviscerated himself onstage. I couldn't remove my sense of fear at the police report of an armed robbery where the suspect fought six cops to a standstill, ignored being Tasered and shot once, then ran through a barbed-wire fence and floated away in a muddy river. I couldn't close my inner eye to the
images of car wrecks with no victims present, bloody crime scenes with no bodies.

I kept these pages and disks, these piles of useless evidence in boxes I hid deep beneath my side of the bed. At night I sensed them, heard them settling under me, turning to dust, cracking under the weight of other pages. I lay in bed, not sleeping, thinking of pasts that weren't mine. Figures appeared around my bed: men of various ages, pierced and bleeding, some bewildered and lost, others with a glow in their eyes, flickering with the shivers of pain that ran up their arms from self-skewered limbs and lips. The faces, blurred and obscured, from the photocopies and Web searches, low-quality video and phone video capture, swung back and forth over me, and as they began to speak to one another, calmly, about minor events of their day, restaurant meals, and weather patterns, even as they bled on one another, fell to the floor, and refused any help, they ignored me, to a man. They held their discussions over me and Hiko's sleeping form. I realized I was asleep, dreaming of those I couldn't be, and yet I couldn't wake, not for many hours, as those who bore something so close to me refused to share the secret only they seemed to know.

On Friday Michael and I spoke again. He didn't ask about the research, which was both a relief and a disappointment. Instead, he focused on work. On Monday a photo shoot would take place. “Looks like
Interview
wants you on the cover.” He provided the information I needed to find the shoot and I promised to get there early.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No,” I said, unsure why I didn't bring up the research myself. “Nothing at all.”

That night I leafed through Hiko's Braille books, felt words I couldn't understand. I laid one after another around the living room, on the table and on the floor. I ran my hand over pages and pages of tiny bumps. Maybe I could take the information into my subconscious. I groped my way into her world, but I didn't comprehend the language.

Against the wall opposite the sofa sat a new sixty-inch flat-screen television set. Hiko had suggested that I get one so I would have something of my own. Not knowing what else to get or do, I agreed and bought one. Michael helped me pick it out.

As I knelt on the floor, my hands resting on the pages of Hiko's books, I saw my reflection in the flat, dark screen. I could see no details, only vague shapes, but there I was, fuzzy and dim and distorted. A dark splotch at the center against the white backdrop of the walls behind me. I went to the kitchen and pulled a knife from the cutting board. From the utility drawer I pulled a roll of masking tape.

The Braille books looked like normal books on the outside. The titles were written normally on the covers, and on the bindings as well. Like a person wearing a mask of a smiling face, the true nature of the books lurked deeper. On the inside differences emerged. I looked over the titles until I found one that I couldn't
imagine Hiko reading:
Mythologies
by Roland Barthes. It must have been a gift. Flipping to the end, I pressed the knife hard into the crease of the binding and slid it through the pages. I cut away twenty pages, laying each one in front of me until I saw that I had enough.

When I finished, Braille pages covered the television screen. Small loops of masking tape held each page in place. I turned on the television and found a channel with a signal and played with the antenna until the sound cleared. The images illuminated the pages from behind with a wavy, multicolored light. The colors hinted at what the images were but I couldn't be certain what I saw. A woman or a man or a cat or a car, something moved around the screen. Hundreds of bumps across the pages lit up, small explosions of meaning being highlighted. After five minutes of listening to commercials and entertainment news, I turned the set off so that the pages and the room were dark again. I knelt on the floor and placed my hands back on the books.

The phone rang. As I walked to it I said aloud to myself, “Let the machine get it.” Stepping carefully around the books, I repeated this. I said it one last time as I picked up the phone and said hello.

“Hey. It's Mal.”

For a moment I couldn't think. “I think I lost your card.” A lie; the card was still taped above the kitchen door.

“That's okay. You've gotta do me a favor.”

I didn't like the sound of that. “What sort of favor?”

“Meet me at the Manhattan Bridge. On the Brooklyn side.”

“It's late.”

“I know. That's why you'll do it. You've got nothing else to do.”

He hung up.

I quickly gathered Hiko's books and put them back on the shelf. I pocketed an extra page cut from
Mythologies
.

In the backseat of the cab I obsessed over why I had agreed to meet him. As the driver headed down Flatbush Avenue, still busy with people, I wondered what makes some people go out and do things while others build shelters and reasons to not go anywhere. I pulled the book page from my pocket and felt the Braille bumps and imagined myself watching television while Hiko wandered around the room, lightly feeling her way past the set with its screen hidden by dots on the pages. I obscured something only I could see with something only she could understand, but she wouldn't notice unless I directed her hands there, unless I brought her to the television—a mostly useless object for her—and laid her fingertips on the screen. Before I could think of what Hiko might say if she discovered the pages, the cab arrived at the bridge. I placed the page into my wallet after paying the cabbie his fare.

At the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, under the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway sign, Mal stood with seven people. When he saw me, he raised both arms and shouted, “Back from the great beyond.”

I wondered how they had all gotten there so fast. “Where's the van?”

Mal let out a deep laugh. “What van?”

His group laughed too. Three women and four men, two of whom had the same hair and beard as Mal. He cloned himself, apparently. They dressed and stood exactly as he did. Even their hair color looked the same. I thought his strangely trimmed, cut short in odd places and randomly unkempt. Then I remembered the fire. He'd lost several inches from different parts of his head.

Mal grabbed my shoulder and led me to the pedestrian walkway over the bridge. “Man, you saw for yourself. That van died a sad death. We're stuck with cabs for the time being.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the group following. They carefully watched Mal as he talked to me. They were like Caesar in his cage, scared of me and likely to vomit. I received quick glances but no direct eye contact, nothing in the way of conversation. They avoided me, as if they'd been told I was dangerous.

Redbach reminded me of Yuri the lion trainer. He pushed a cart full of rattling gear covered by a blanket. I could almost believe it hid rancid meat.

The bridge was silent. Leaning over the handrail, I looked down the Manhattan-bound car lane. It was
empty. “Where's the traffic?” A woman walking beside Mal laughed.

Mal gave a sidelong glare and said, “They've been closing this down at night for years. Rebuilding.” He didn't try to hide the annoyance in his voice. “You've lived here how long?”

“I didn't know.”

“Lists of stuff you don't know.”

We walked in silence for several minutes. A Q train rattled past. Inside it row after row of empty seats glowed under fluorescent lights. As the last car finally passed us and the noise disappeared with it down the Manhattan side of the bridge, Mal pointed and said, “Dead center, right there.” I might have imagined it, but it seemed the wind died as we reached the middle.