in a millennium or two, a seeming paradox of our civilization will be best understood by those men versed in the methods of counter-archaeology. They will study us not by digging into the earth but by climbing vast dunes of industrial rubble and mutilated steel, seeking to reach the tops of our buildings. Here they'll chip lovingly at our spires, mansards, turrets, parapets, belfries, water tanks, flower pots, pigeon lofts and chimneys.

I turned south on Broadway.

Scaling our masonry they will identify the encrustations of twentieth-century art and culture, decade by decade, each layer simple enough to compare with the detritus at ground level — our shattered bank vaults, cash registers, safes, locks, electrified alarm systems and armored vehicles. Back in their universities in the earth, the counter-archaeologists will sort their reasons for our demise, citing as prominent the fact that we stored our beauty in the air, for birds of prey to see, while placing at eye level nothing more edifying than hardware, machinery and the implements of torture.

Hanes was sitting in the last car on the downtown local. The package angled out of an airline bag between his feet. I sat next to him, drawing a tap on the wrist. The noise was devastating, a series of bending downriver screams. Conversing I tilted my head and spoke directly into his ear. There were four or five other people in the car. Hanes looked weak and sick, a reproduction of my image in the mirror when I first arrived at Great Jones and cut myself shaving.

"What do you want?" I said.

"There's a rumor you're in New York living in an old building on some obscure street. Seriously, that's the strongest rumor about you right now. I've been to enough places lately to know which rumors are current and choice. I've been through so many time zones I'm almost bodiless."

"What places?"

"Literally or figuratively?" he said. "Literally about fifteen cities in three countries. Thought I had a sure sale at one point. Not quite, as it turned out. Question of ethics, they said. Time zones nearly did me in. I couldn't write my name on a traveler's check. ì couldn't add simple figures. That was the literal journey I took. Figuratively I lived in a lamasery in Tibet, being guided through the mysteries of the highest level of death. That's what my whole vacation was about. Death-in-life. A string of make-believings. I moved through progressions of passive trains of thought. Nobody wanted to use me. I was prepared to be used. I did everything but take out ads in the newspapers. It was all a mistake. I'm meant to ride elevators floor to floor. More than that requires the mettle of demigods like yourself. I'm meant to crouch in stairwells reading interoffice mail. There's a tremendous lure to becoming bodiless. I see it but fear it. It's like a junkie's death. A junkie's death is beautiful because it's so effortless."

Hanes insisted on changing trains every few stops. We spent the afternoon this way, shouting into each other's head, standing on platforms, hurrying through barren tunnels, altering our level of descent from train to train. In the last car again, somewhere beneath the ruck of Red Hook, we saw a boy and two girls steal a sleeping derelict's shoes. The man stirred, then curled more tightly into the bouncing seat. Opening the door between cars, the three children headed for the heart of the train.

"Too young to understand the dignity of shoes," Hanes said.

"Why did you call me?"

"I keep moving. I haven't stopped since I got back. Those people are not pleased with me. You'll have to intervene, Bucky. Return the product to Happy Valley with my deepest regrets for the delay involved. My vacation ends tomorrow morning. I'm due back at the office. Clearly I can't appear in such an obvious place with Bohack lathered up the way he undoubtedly is. What do I do then? I can't go to my apartment. I can't keep riding subways. I can't get on another plane and soar away. You'll have to intervene."

"No good," I said.

"You'll have to tell them you've got the product and it's theirs for the aski............