| s-1
| He wondered if the young Auster had been any better at it than he was. |
| s-2
| Across the way, occupying the greater part of the station's east wall, was the Kodak display photograph, with its bright unearthly colors. |
| s-3
| The scene that month showed a street in some New England fishing village, perhaps Nantucket. |
| s-4
| A beautiful spring light shone on the cobblestones, flowers of many colors stood in window boxes along the house fronts, and far down at the end of the street was the ocean, with its white waves and blue, blue water. |
| s-5
| Quinn remembered visiting Nantucket with his wife long ago, in her first month of pregnancy, when his son was no more than a tiny almond in her belly. |
| s-6
| He found it painful to think of that now, and he tried to suppress the pictures that were forming in his head. |
| s-7
| Look at it through Auster's eyes, he said to himself, and don't think of anything else. |
| s-8
| He turned his attention to the photograph again and was relieved to find his thoughts wandering to the subject of whales, to the expeditions that had set out from Nantucket in the last century, to Melville and the opening pages of Moby Dick. |
| s-9
| From there his mind drifted off to the accounts he had read of Melville's last years – the taciturn old man working in the New York customs house, with no readers, forgotten by everyone. |
| s-10
| Then, suddenly, with great clarity and precision, he saw Bartleby's window and the blank brick wall before him. |
| s-11
| Someone tapped him on the arm, and as Quinn wheeled to meet the assault, he saw a short, silent man holding out a green and red ballpoint pen to him. |
| s-12
| Stapled to the pen was a little white paper flag, one side of which read: This good article is the Courtesy of a DEAF MUTE. |
| s-13
| Pay any price. |
| s-14
| Thank you for your help. |
| s-15
| On the other side of the flag there was a chart of the manual alphabet – LEARN TO SPEAK TO YOUR FRIENDS – that showed the hand positions for each of the twenty-six letters. |
| s-16
| Quinn reached into his pocket and gave the man a dollar. |
| s-17
| The deaf mute nodded once very briefly and then moved on, leaving Quinn with the pen in his hand. |
| s-18
| It was now past five o'clock. |
| s-19
| Quinn decided he would be less vulnerable in another spot and removed himself to the waiting room. |
| s-20
| This was generally a grim place, filled with dust and people with nowhere to go, but now, with the rush hour at full force, it had been taken over by men and women with briefcases, books, and newspapers. |
| s-21
| Quinn had trouble finding a seat. |
| s-22
| After searching for two or three minutes, he finally found a place on one of the benches, wedging himself between a man in a blue suit and a plump young woman. |
| s-23
| The man was reading the sports section of the Times, and Quinn glanced over to read the account of Mets' loss the night before. |
| s-24
| He had made it to the third or fourth paragraph when the man turned slowly toward him, gave him a vicious stare, and jerked the paper out of view. |
| s-25
| After that, a strange thing happened. |
| s-26
| Quinn turned his attention to the young woman on his right, to see if there was any reading material in that direction. |
| s-27
| Quinn guessed her age at around twenty. |
| s-28
| There were several pimples on her left cheek, obscured by a pimpish smear of pancake makeup, and a wad of chewing gum was crackling in her mouth. |
| s-29
| She was, however, reading a book, a paperback with a lurid cover, and Quinn leaned over ever so slightly to his right to catch a glimpse of the title. |
| s-30
| Against all his expectations, it was a book he himself had written – Suicide Squeeze by William Wilson, the first of the Max Work novels. |
| s-31
| Quinn had often imagined this situation: the sudden, unexpected pleasure of encountering one of his readers. |
| s-32
| He had even imagined the conversation that would follow: he, suavely diffident as the stranger praised the book, and then, with great reluctance and modesty, agreeing to autograph the title page, since you insist. |
| s-33
| But now that the scene was taking place, he felt quite disappointed, even angry. |
| s-34
| He did not like the girl sitting next to him, and it offended him that she should be casually skimming the pages that had cost him so much effort. |
| s-35
| His impulse was to tear the book out of her hands and run across the station with it. |
| s-36
| He looked at her face again, trying to hear the words she was sounding out in her head, watching her eyes as they darted back and forth across the page. |
| s-37
| He must have been looking too hard, for a moment later she turned to him with an irritated expression on her face and said, You got a problem, mister? |
| s-38
| Quinn smiled weakly. No problem, he said. |
| s-39
| I was just wondering if you liked the book. |
| s-40
| The girl shrugged. I've read better and I've read worse. |
| s-41
| Quinn wanted to drop the conversation right there, but something in him persisted. |
| s-42
| Before he could get up and leave, the words were already out of his mouth. Do you find it exciting? |
| s-43
| The girl shrugged again and cracked her gum loudly. Sort of. There's a part where the detective gets lost that's kind of scary. |
| s-44
| Is he a smart detective? |
| s-45
| Yeah, he's smart. But he talks too much. |
| s-46
| You'd like more action? |
| s-47
| I guess so. |
| s-48
| If you don't like it, why do you go on reading? |
| s-49
| I don't know. The girl shrugged once again. |
| s-50
| It passes the time, I guess. |
| s-51
| Anyway, it's no big deal. It's just a book. |
| s-52
| He was about to tell her who he was, but then he realized that it made no difference. |
| s-53
| The girl was beyond hope. |
| s-54
| For five years he had kept William Wilson's identity a secret, and he wasn't about to give it away now, least of all to an imbecile stranger. |
| s-55
| Still, it was painful, and he struggled desperately to swallow his pride. |
| s-56
| Rather than punch the girl in the face, he abruptly stood up from his seat and walked away. |
| s-57
| At six-thirty he posted himself in front of gate twenty-four. |
| s-58
| The train was due to arrive in time, and from his vantage in the center of the doorway, Quinn judged that his chances of seeing Stillman were good. |
| s-59
| He took out the photograph from his pocket and studied it again, |
| s-60
| paying special attention to the eyes. |
| s-61
| He remembered having read somewhere that the eyes were the one feature of the face that never changed. |
| s-62
| From childhood to old age they remained the same, and a man with the head to see it could theoretically look into the eyes of a boy in a photograph and recognize the same person as an old man. |
| s-63
| Quinn had his doubts, but this was all he had to go on, his only bridge to the present. |
| s-64
| Once again, however, Stillman's face told him nothing. |
| s-65
| The train pulled into the station, and Quinn felt the noise of it shoot through his body: a random, hectic din that seemed to join with his pulse, pumping his blood in raucous spurts. |
| s-66
| His head then filled with Peter Stillman's voice, as a barrage of nonsense words clattered against the walls of his skull. |
| s-67
| He told himself to stay calm. |
| s-68
| But that did little good. In spite of what he had been expecting of himself at this moment, he was excited. |
| s-69
| The train was crowded, and as the passengers started filling the ramp and walking toward him, they quickly became a mob. |
| s-70
| Quinn flapped the red notebook nervously against his right thigh, stood on his tiptoes, and peered into the throng. |
| s-71
| Soon the people were surging around him. |
| s-72
| There were men and women, children and old people, teenagers and babies, rich people and poor people, black men and white women, white men and black women, Orientals and Arabs, men in brown and gray and blue and green, women in red and white and yellow and pink, children in sneakers, children in shoes, children in cowboy boots, fat people and thin people, tall people and short people, each one different from all the others, each one irreducibly himself. |
| s-73
| Quinn watched them all, anchored to his spot, as if his whole being had been exiled to his eyes. |
| s-74
| Each time an elderly man approached, he braced himself for it to be Stillman. |
| s-75
| They came and went too quickly for him to indulge in disappointment, but in each old face he seemed to find an augur of what the real Stillman would be like, and he rapidly shifted his expectations with each new face, as if the accumulation of old men was heralding the imminent arrival of Stillman himself. |
| s-76
| For one brief instant Quinn thought, So this is what detective work is like. But other than that he thought nothing. |
| s-77
| He watched. |
| s-78
| Immobile among the moving crowd, he stood there and watched. |
| s-79
| The next morning, and for many mornings to follow, Quinn posted himself on a bench in the middle of the traffic island at Broadway and 99th Street. |
| s-80
| I wish it was. But this has nothing to do with literature. |
| s-81
| With what, then? |
| s-82
| Quinn paused, looked around the room without seeing anything, and tried to start. |
| s-83
| I've a feeling there's been a terrible mistake. |
| s-84
| I came here looking for Paul Auster, the private detective. |
| s-85
| The what? Auster laughed, and in that laugh everything was suddenly blown to bits. |
| s-86
| Quinn realized that he was talking nonsense. |
| s-87
| He must just as well have asked for Chief Sitting Bull – the effect would have been no different. |
| s-88
| The private detective, he repeated softly. |
| s-89
| I'm afraid you've got the wrong Paul Auster. |
| s-90
| You're the only one in the book. |
| s-91
| That might be, said Auster. |
| s-92
| But I'm not a detective. |
| s-93
| Who are you then? |
| s-94
| What do you do? |
| s-95
| I'm a writer. |
| s-96
| A writer? Quinn spoke the word as though it were a lament. |
| s-97
| I'm sorry. Auster said. |
| s-98
| But that's what I happen to be. |
| s-99
| If that's true, then there's no hope. |
| s-100
| The whole thing is a bad dream. |