| s-2
| Two empty coffee cups sat on the table between them. |
| s-3
| In the foreground, facing the magazine rack, a young student stood with an open magazine in his hands, staring at a picture of a naked woman. |
| s-4
| Quinn sat down at the counter and ordered a hamburger and a coffee. |
| s-5
| As the counterman swung into action, he spoke over his shoulder to Quinn. |
| s-6
| Did you see game tonight, man? |
| s-7
| I missed it. Anything good to report? |
| s-8
| What do you think? |
| s-9
| For several years Quinn had been having the same conversation with this man, whose name he did not know. |
| s-10
| Once, when he had been in the luncheonette, they had talked about baseball, and now, each time Quinn came in, they continued to talk about it. |
| s-11
| In the winter, the talk was of trades, predictions, memories. |
| s-12
| During the seasons, it was always the most recent game. |
| s-13
| They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of that passion had created a bond between them. |
| s-14
| The counterman shook his head. |
| s-15
| First two times up, Kingsman hits solo shots, he said. Boom, boom. Big mothers – all the way to the moon. |
| s-16
| Jones is pitching good for once and things don't look too bad. |
| s-17
| It's two to one, bottom of the ninth. |
| s-18
| Pittsburgh gets men on second and third, one out, so the Mets go to the bullpen for Allen. |
| s-19
| He walks the next guy to load them up. |
| s-20
| The Mets bring the corners in for a force at home, or maybe they can get the double play if it's hit up the middle. |
| s-21
| Pena comes up and chicken-shits a little grounder to first and the fucker goes through Kingman's legs. |
| s-22
| Two men score, and that's it, bye-bye New York. |
| s-23
| Dave Kingman is a turd, said Quinn, biting into his hamburger. |
| s-24
| But watch out for Foster, said the counterman. |
| s-25
| Foster's washed up. A has-been. A mean-faced bozo. Quinn chewed his food carefully, feeling with his tongue for stray bits of bone. |
| s-26
| They should ship him back to Cincinatti by express mail. |
| s-27
| Yeah, said the counterman. |
| s-28
| But they'll be tough. Better than last year, anyway. |
| s-29
| I don't know, said Quinn, taking another bite. |
| s-30
| It looks good on paper, but what do they really have? |
| s-31
| Stearns is always getting hurt. |
| s-32
| They have minor leaguers at second and short, and Brooks can't keep his mind on the game. |
| s-33
| Mookie's good, but he's raw, and they can't even decide who to put in right. |
| s-34
| There's still Rusty, of course, but he's too fat to run anymore. |
| s-35
| And as for the pitching, forget it. |
| s-36
| You and I could go over to Shea tomorrow and get hired as the top two starters. |
| s-37
| Maybe I make you the manager, said the counterman. |
| s-38
| You could tell those fuckers where to get off. |
| s-39
| You bet your bottom dollar, said Quinn. |
| s-40
| After he finished eating, Quinn wandered over to the stationery shelves. |
| s-41
| A shipment of new notebooks had come in, and the pile was impressive, a beautiful array of blues and greens and reds and yellows. |
| s-42
| He picked one up and saw that the pages had the narrow lines he preferred. |
| s-43
| Quinn did all his writing with a pen, using a typewriter only for final drafts, and he was always on the lookout for good spiral notebooks. |
| s-44
| Now that he had embarked on the Stillman case, he felt that a new notebook was in order. |
| s-45
| It would be helpful to have a separate place to record his thoughts, his observations, and his questions. |
| s-46
| In that way, perhaps, things might not get out of control. |
| s-47
| He looked through the pile, trying to decide which one to pick. |
| s-48
| For reasons that were never made clear to him, he suddenly felt an irresistible urge for a particular red notebook at the bottom. |
| s-49
| He pulled it out and examined it, gingerly fanning the pages with his thumb. |
| s-50
| He was at a loss to explain to himself why he found it so appealing. |
| s-51
| It was a standard eight-and-a-half-by-eleven notebook with one hundred pages. |
| s-52
| But something about it seemed to call out to him – as if its unique destiny in the world was to hold the words that came from his pen. |
| s-53
| Almost embarrassed by the intensity of his feelings, Quinn tucked the red notebook under his arm, walked over to the cash register, and bought it. |
| s-54
| He made it to Grand Central well in advance. |
| s-55
| Stillman's train was not due to arrive until six-forty-one, but Quinn wanted time to study the geography of the place, to make sure that Stillman would not be able to slip away from him. |
| s-56
| As he emerged from the subway and entered the great hall, he saw by the clock that it was just past four. |
| s-57
| Already the station had begun to fill with the rush-hour crowd. |
| s-58
| Making his way through the press of oncoming bodies, Quinn made a tour of the numbered gates, looking for hidden staircases, unmarked exits, dark alcoves. |
| s-59
| He concluded that a man determined to disappear could do so without much trouble. |
| s-60
| He would have to hope that Stillman had not been warned that he would be there. |
| s-61
| If that were the case, and Stillman managed to elude him, it would mean that Virginia Stillman was responsible. |
| s-62
| There was no one else. |
| s-63
| It solaced him to know that he had an alternate plan if things went awry. |
| s-64
| If Stillman did not show up, Quinn would go straight to 69th Street and confront Virginia Stillman with what he knew. |
| s-65
| As he wandered through the station, he reminded himself of who he was supposed to be. |
| s-66
| The effect of being Paul Auster, he had begun to learn, was not altogether unpleasant. |
| s-67
| Although he still had the same body, the same mind, the same thoughts, he felt as though he had somehow been taken out of himself, as if he no longer had to walk around with the burden of his own consciousness. |
| s-68
| By a simple trick of the intelligence, a deft little twist of naming, he felt incomparably lighter and freer. |
| s-69
| At the same time, he knew it was all an illusion. |
| s-70
| But there was a certain comfort in that. |
| s-71
| He had not really lost himself; he was merely pretending, and he could return to being Quinn whenever he wished. |
| s-72
| The fact that there was now a purpose to his being Paul Auster – a purpose that was becoming more and more important to him – served as a kind of moral justification for the charade and absolved him of having to defend his lie. |
| s-73
| For imagining himself as Auster had become synonymous in his mind with doing good in the world. |
| s-74
| He wandered through the station, then, as if inside the body of Paul Auster, waiting for Stillman to appear. |
| s-75
| He looked up at the vaulted ceiling of the great hall and studied the fresco of constellations. |
| s-76
| There were light bulbs representing the stars and line drawings of the celestial figures. |
| s-77
| Quinn had never been able to grasp the connection between the constellations and their names. |
| s-78
| As a boy he had spent many hours under the night sky trying to tally the clusters of pinprick lights with the shapes of bears, bulls, archers, and water carriers. |
| s-79
| But nothing had ever come of it, and he had felt stupid, as though there were a blind spot in the center of his brain. |
| s-80
| In spite of everything, it was impossible for Quinn not to feel glad of this. |
| s-81
| They sat there for a short time without saying anything. |
| s-82
| At last, Auster gave a little shrug, which seemed to acknowledge that they had come to an impasse. |
| s-83
| He stood up and said, I was about to make some lunch for myself. |
| s-84
| It's no trouble making it for two. |
| s-85
| Quinn hesitated. |
| s-86
| It was as though Auster had read his thoughts, divining the thing he wanted most – to eat, to have an excuse to stay a while. |
| s-87
| I really should be going, he said. |
| s-88
| But yes, thank you. A little food can't do any harm. |
| s-89
| How does a ham omelette sound? |
| s-90
| Sounds good. |
| s-91
| Auster retreated to the kitchen to prepare the food. |
| s-92
| Quinn would have liked to offer to help, but he could not budge. |
| s-93
| His body felt like a stone. |
| s-94
| For want of any other idea, he closed his eyes. |
| s-95
| In the past, it had sometimes comforted him to make the world disappear. |
| s-96
| This time, however, Quinn found nothing interesting inside his head. |
| s-97
| It seemed as though things had ground to a halt in there. |
| s-98
| Then, from the darkness, he began to hear a voice, a chanting, idiotic voice that sang the same sentence over and over again: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. |
| s-99
| He opened his eyes to make the words stop. |
| s-100
| There was bread and butter, more beer, knives and forks, salt and pepper, napkins, and omelettes, two of them, oozing on white plates. |
| s-101
| Quinn ate with crude intensity, polishing off the meal in what seemed a matter of seconds. |