| s-101
| Instead, it was a young man, dressed entirely in white, with the white-blond hair of a child. |
| s-102
| Uncannily, in that first moment, Quinn thought of his own dead son. |
| s-103
| Then, just as suddenly as the thought had appeared, it vanished. |
| s-104
| Peter Stillman walked into the room and sat down in a red velvet armchair opposite Quinn. |
| s-105
| He said not a word as he made his way to his seat, nor did he acknowledge Quinn's presence. |
| s-106
| The act of moving from one place to another seemed to require all his attention, as though not to think of what he was doing would reduce him to immobility. |
| s-107
| Quinn had never seen anyone move in such a manner, and he realized at once that this was the same person he had spoken to on the phone. |
| s-108
| The body acted almost exactly as the voice had: machine-like, fitful, alternating between slow and rapid gestures, rigid and yet expressive, as if the operation were out of control, not quite corresponding to the will that lay behind it. |
| s-109
| It seemed to Quinn that Stillman's body had not been used for a long time and that all its functions had been relearned, so that motion had become a conscious process, each movement broken down into its component submovements, with the result that all flow and spontaneity had been lost. |
| s-110
| It was like watching a marionette trying to walk without strings. |
| s-111
| Everything about Peter Stillman was white. |
| s-112
| White shirt, open at the neck; white pants, white shoes, white socks. |
| s-113
| Against the pallor of his skin, the flaxen thinness of his hair, the effect was almost transparent, as though one could see through to the blue veins behind the skin of his face. |
| s-114
| This blue was almost the same as his eyes: a milky blue that seemed to dissolve into a mixture of sky and clouds. |
| s-115
| Quinn could not imagine himself addressing a word to this person. |
| s-116
| It was as though Stillman's presence was a command to be silent. |
| s-117
| Stillman settled slowly into his chair and at last turned his attention to Quinn. |
| s-118
| As their eyes met, Quinn suddenly felt that Stillman had become invisible. |
| s-119
| He could see him sitting in the chair across from him, but at the same time it felt as though he was not there. |
| s-120
| It occurred to Quinn that perhaps Stillman was blind. |
| s-121
| But no, that did not seem possible. |
| s-122
| The man was looking at him, even studying him, and if recognition did not flicker across his face, it still held something more than a blank stare. |
| s-123
| Quinn did not know what to do. |
| s-124
| He sat there dumbly in his seat, looking back at Stillman. |
| s-125
| A long time passed. |
| s-126
| No questions, please, the young man said at last. |
| s-127
| Yes. No. Thank you. |
| s-128
| He paused for a moment. |
| s-129
| I am Peter Stillman. |
| s-130
| I say this of my free will. Yes. |
| s-131
| That is not my real name. No. |
| s-132
| Of course, my mind is not all it should be. |
| s-133
| But nothing can be done about that. No. About that. No, no. Not anymore. |
| s-134
| You sit here and think: who is this person talking to me? |
| s-135
| What are these words coming from his mouth? |
| s-136
| I will tell you. |
| s-137
| Or else I will not tell you. |
| s-138
| At the corner of 72nd Street and Madison Avenue, he waved down a cab. |
| s-139
| As the car rattled through the park toward the West Side, Quinn looked out the window and wondered if these were the same trees that Peter Stillman saw when he walked out into the air and the light. |
| s-140
| He wondered if Peter saw the same things as he did, or whether the world was a different place for him. |
| s-141
| And if a tree was not a tree, he wondered what it really was. |
| s-142
| After the cab had dropped him off in front of his house, Quinn realized that he was hungry. |
| s-143
| He had not eaten since breakfast early that morning. |
| s-144
| It was strange, he thought, how quickly time had passed in the Stillman apartment. |
| s-145
| If his calculations were correct, he had been there for more than fourteen hours. |
| s-146
| Within himself, however, it felt as though his stay had lasted three or four hours at most. |
| s-147
| He shrugged at the discrepancy and said to himself, I must learn to look at my watch more often. |
| s-148
| He retraced his path along 107th Street, turned left on Broadway, and began walking uptown, looking for a suitable place to eat. |
| s-149
| A bar did not appeal to him tonight – eating in the dark, the press of boozy chatter – although normally he would have welcomed it. |
| s-150
| As he crossed 112th Street, he saw that the Heights Luncheonette was still open and decided to go in. |
| s-151
| It was a brightly lit yet dreary place, with a large rack of girlie magazines on one wall, an area for stationery supplies, another area for newspapers, several tables for patrons, and a long Formica counter with swivel stools. |
| s-152
| A tall Puerto Rican man in a white cardboard chef's hat stood behind the counter. |
| s-153
| It was his job to make the food, which consisted mainly of gristle-studded hamburger patties, bland sandwiches with pale tomatoes and wilted lettuce, milkshakes, egg creams, and buns. |
| s-154
| To his right, ensconced behind the cash register, was the boss, a small balding man with curly hair and a concentration camp number tattoed on his forearm, |
| s-155
| lording it over his domain of cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. |
| s-156
| He sat there impassively, reading the night-owl edition of the next morning's Daily News. |
| s-157
| The place was almost deserted at that hour. |
| s-158
| He would arrive early, never later than seven o'clock and sit there with a take-out coffee, a buttered roll, and an open newspaper on his lap, watching the glass door of the hotel. |
| s-159
| By eight o'clock Stillman would come out, always in his long brown overcoat, carrying a large, old-fashioned carpet bag. |
| s-160
| For two weeks this routine did not vary. The old man would wander through the streets of the neighborhood, advancing slowly, sometimes by the merest of increments, pausing, moving on again, pausing once more, as though each step had to be weighed and measured before it could take its place among the sum total of steps. |
| s-161
| Moving in this manner was difficult for Quinn. |
| s-162
| He was used to walking briskly, and all this starting and stopping and shuffling began to be a strain, as though the rhythm of his body was being disrupted. |
| s-163
| He was hare in pursuit of the tortoise, and again and again he had to remind himself to hold back. |
| s-164
| What Stillman did on these walks remained something of a mystery to Quinn. |
| s-165
| He could, of course, see with his own eyes what happened, and all these things he dutifully recorded in his red notebook. But the meaning of these things continued to elude him. |
| s-166
| Stillman never seemed to be going anywhere in particular, nor did he seem to know where he was. |
| s-167
| and yet, as if by conscious design, he kept to a narrowly circumscribed area, bounded on the north by Riverside Park, and on the east by Amsterdam Avenue. |
| s-168
| No matter how haphazard his journeys seemed to be – and each day his itinerary was different – Stillman never crossed these borders. |
| s-169
| Such precision baffled Quinn, for in all other respects Stillman seemed to be aimless. |
| s-170
| As he walked, Stillman did not look up. |
| s-171
| His eyes were permanently fixed on the pavement, as though he were searching for something. |
| s-172
| Indeed, every now and then he would stoop down, pick some object off the ground, and examine it closely, turning it over and over in his hand. |
| s-173
| It made Quinn think of an archeologist inspecting a shard at some prehistoric ruin. |
| s-174
| Occasionally, after poring over an object in this way, Stillman would toss it back onto the sidewalk. But more often than not he would open his bag and lay the object gently inside it. |
| s-175
| Then, reaching into one of his coat pockets, he would remove a red notebook – similar to Quinn's but smaller – and write in it with great concentration for a minute or two. |
| s-176
| Having completed this operation, he would return the notebook to his pocket, pick up his bag, and continue on his way. |
| s-177
| As far as Quinn could tell, the objects Stillman collected were valueless. |
| s-178
| They seemed to be no more than broken things, discarded things, stray bits of junk. |
| s-179
| Over the days that passed, Quinn noted a collapsible umbrella shorn of its material, the severed head of a rubber doll, a black glove, the bottom of a shattered light bulb, several pieces of printed matter (sogged magazines, shredded newspapers), a torn photograph, anonymous machinery parts, and sundry other clumps of flotsam he could not identify. |
| s-180
| The fact that Stillman took this scavenging seriously intrigued Quinn, but he could do no more than observe, write down what he saw in the red notebook, hover stupidly on the surface of things. |
| s-181
| At the same time, it pleased him to know that Stillman also had a red notebook, as if this formed a secret link between them. |
| s-182
| Quinn suspected that Stillman's red notebook contained answers to the questions that had been accumulating in his mind, and he began to plot various stratagems for stealing it from the old man. |
| s-183
| But the time had not yet come for such a step. |
| s-184
| Other than picking up objects from the street, Stillman seemed to do nothing. |
| s-185
| Every now and then he would stop somewhere for a meal. |
| s-186
| Occasionally he would bump into someone and mumble an apology. |
| s-187
| Once a car nearly ran him over as he was crossing the street. |
| s-188
| Stillman did not talk to anyone, did not go into any stores, did not smile. |
| s-189
| He seemed neither happy nor sad. |
| s-190
| Twice, when his scavenging haul had been unusually large, he returned to the hotel in the middle of the day and remerged a few minutes later with an empty bag. |
| s-191
| On most days he spent at least several hours in Riverside Park, walking methodically along the macadam footpaths or else thrashing through the bushes with a stick. |
| s-192
| His quest for objects did not abate amidst the greenery. |
| s-193
| Stones, leaves, and twigs all found their way into his bag. |
| s-194
| Once, Quinn observed, he even stooped down for a dried dog turd, sniffed it carefully, and kept it. |
| s-195
| It was in the park, too, that Stillman rested. |
| s-196
| In the afternoon, often following his lunch, he would sit on a bench and gaze out across the Hudson. |
| s-197
| Once, on a particularly warm day, Quinn saw him sprawled out on the grass asleep. |
| s-198
| When darkness came, Stillman would eat dinner at the Apollo Coffee Shop on 97th Street and Broadway and then return to his hotel for the night. |
| s-199
| Not once did he try to contact his son. |
| s-200
| This was confirmed by Virginia Stillman, whom Quinn called each night after returning home. |