Living in a house that has a web of bra.s.s pipes linking all the rooms means coming into auditory contact with fellow residents a hundred subtle times a day. In the days following Kross"s arrival, I repeatedly heard a note of indignant thrill. People laughed too often and too loud, as if advertising the fact that they were happy in their single rooms; happy with the shared toilets, bathrooms, and the single doors that all led outside, into the musty hallways.

No one heard Kross laugh. I neither heard nor saw him throughout the first month following his grand arrival. I did learn his name one morning, while going through the house mail by the front door. An envelope caught my eye because of the Swiss stamp; there was a name that implied a financial inst.i.tution – it included the word "Kredit". It was addressed to an unfamiliar Mark Kross, and by then I knew all of the names living in my house – half received government checks twice a month (it made me feel relieved my own government checks had ceased to arrive; at the studio I"d previously inhabited they were discreetly tucked away in an elegant bra.s.s mailbox).

Mark Kross. It has an artificially snappy sound, doesn"t it? At least that"s what I thought; it was the kind of name Tad would"ve thought up for what we used to call a lifestyle representative. He had business with a Swiss Kredit inst.i.tution, too - with solemn, suited gentlemen in wire-rimmed spectacles, keys snicking in well-oiled locks, bricks of cash within the cold steel of silent vaults. I was curious. I wanted to meet him.

I literally ran into him the very next day.

It was a historical day in its own right, for I had just decided to take up jogging. I"d woken up feeling f.u.c.ked up beyond repair. If only I could have just run away from all this, leave all this behind - but of course I couldn"t, so I did the next best thing, and went out for a morning run for the first time ever - I had always detested people making a big show of staying fit and healthy. At least I wasn"t wearing the latest in designer kiddie gear: I"d retrieved a pair of shorts I used to wear when playing soccer, back in the early pleistocene. They pinched my waist.

So: I"d just left the house and was running towards the nearest intersection, maybe a hundred paces away. I"d noticed two construction guys in blue overalls examining the dilapidated mansion on the corner – not unlike the meat magnate"s, but on a smaller scale, and in a terrible state of disrepair. It didn"t look lived in; it looked haunted.

The construction guys were wearing white hardtops; as I approached, I saw that one of the helmets featured a marijuana leaf and the motto "Born to Build" deftly executed in black marker. The guy under the helmet had a beard and an incipient beer belly, and seemed to be frowning at the ruin on the corner - as I pa.s.sed, he scratched the back of his neck in a manner expressing great doubt and general pessimism (I felt an instant wave of empathy).

Parked nearby was what I took to be the guys" vehicle: a four-wheel drive on an elevated cha.s.sis, with all sorts of grim-looking odds and ends attached – it only lacked a machine gun mounted on the cab. It was an absorbing vehicle, and I didn"t notice Kross until he was right in front of my face.

He was running along the street intersecting mine; he was about to cross the road. He wasn"t wearing kiddie gear. He wore long camo pants with big, floppy pockets on the sides, the pant legs tucked into the ankle cuffs of brown leather boots that resembled the paratrooper footwear some of the stylish crowd had taken to wearing recently. His upper half was clad in a green T-shirt, and I caught a glimpse of a wide dark strap on his left wrist as his arm swung down. He ran past me without a glance, splashing snow and water.
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I wanted to speak to him, even if it was to be something as inane as a shouted greeting. I turned and started following him. I could tell he became aware of me right away. He lengthened his long, loping stride even more and practically left me standing within half a block. I stopped, gasping and wheezing, my Jello legs, joke legs burning and twitching and forcing me to claw at a wire fence for support.

Fortunately, no one was watching. After a while, I moved off in a chastened trot, heading home.

I made it with teeth bared from pain. As I stood by the front door, wondering whether the molten lead in my thighs would let me make it up the stairs, the door to the caretaker"s flat opened with a sharp crack. Mister Natarajan, superintending officer (that"s what it says on the card pinned to his door) came bounding out, waving a FedEx envelope in an agitated manner.

"Mister Hansen! Mister Hansen!" he warbled excitedly. "Special delivery for you."

I nodded wordlessly - I still hadn"t gotten my breathing right - and extended a hand.

"I do hope it"s good news," gurgled Mr. Natarajan. His dark eyes implored me to let him in on the secret.

"I hope so too," I wheezed, and crawled up the stairs.

I examined the FedEx waybill before opening the envelope. It had been sent by Donna. The company was listed as Abner, Hansen, & Gutowski - Donna had been made a partner. I tore the envelope open rather savagely.

There was another envelope inside - a hand-addressed, heavy creamy paper, personal envelope. Inside this second envelope was a handwritten, personal letter. It spoke warmly of all my virtues as a man and human being. It regretted that my positive qualities, and Donna"s too, failed to bloom fully in what the letter called the greenhouse of our marriage. Donna had always been very fond of colorful similes and metaphors that teetered on the edge of good sense, and I"d always disliked that. It was one of the reasons we talked less and less as time went on.

Anyway, the upshot of all this stunted growth was that Donna wanted a divorce. We had been separated for over a year, so we"d met the legal requirement. She proposed a simple, no-fault divorce without any messy a.s.set-splitting or alimony-setting (her words). She proposed to keep the house and offered me the car (empty offer - I couldn"t afford it). She thought it would be only fair if we split the divorce costs in half. The whole process would be handled by a lawyer she knew at another legal firm. He was a genius whose divorces were minor works of art, and had magnanimously agreed to handle the case for only $1,000 – a tiny fraction of his usual fee.

I reflected that I"d seen ads touting divorces from $200, but of course Donna wouldn"t agree to a divorce handled by any less than one of the best law firms in the city (and it was a big city). Anyway, the bottom line was that my share of the whole thing would come to five hundred dollars, which I didn"t have.

I sank down on to the edge of my bed and rubbed my face, as if that would produce a solution. There was a ponderous, tentative cough from across the wall, followed by a scratchy retching noise; the old man next door was conducting exploratory artillery fire prior to the main a.s.sault. His unseen hand turned on the radio; there was a blare of tinny music. Like all the inhabitants of the house, he was the soul of discretion; he preferred to cough his lungs out under the soft cover of pop rock.

After a while, the music ended and a cheerful male announcer came on. He informed everyone it was a beautiful sunny day, and proceeded to enumerate some of the attractions available to the paying consumer. The Rolling Stones, or maybe Bones, had come into town for the umpteenth time. The newest Cannes Festival winner was opening at five movie theatres. There would be a hockey match that promised to be a grand spectacle –

I listened on without hearing, my mind working on this last piece of information.

My brother Todd was in town.