Michael Chabon

Freud’s letters to Fliess make much of the near-cosmic interaction of the human nose with matters of sexual health. Work on my paper, therefore, proved to be relatively entertaining, and I wrote for a long time, stopping rarely to drink from the humming fountain or even simply to look up from my hilarious scholarship. Late in the long afternoon I saw a young man looking at me from behind his book. Its title was in Spanish and on its cover there was a bloody painting of a knife, a woman in a mantilla, and a half-undressed brown strongman. I smiled at him and lifted an eyebrow in skeptical salute to what must be a pretty racy book. It looked as though he might keep his eyes on me awhile longer, but I told myself that one of those kinds of exchanges a day, and that with a woman, was excitement enough, and I dropped back to the nose, nexus of all human desire.

When I put down my pencil it was almost eight o’clock. I stood up with a habitual silent “Oy” and went over to one of the tall, narrow windows that looked out over the plaza below. The sky was whitish brown in the twilight through the smoked glass. Small groups of kids called and ran on the concrete down below, obviously heading somewhere, in a way that made me think of getting something to eat. At the far left, toward the front of the building, I saw a flashing light. I gathered up my books and papers and noticed that the Spanish Potboiler Guy had left. Where he’d been sitting there were a small empty can of pineapple juice and a little scrap of origami that was like a dog or a saxophone.

Going down in the elevator, I thought about the Girl Behind Bars, but at the ground floor everything was closed up, and an articulated wooden shutter had been pulled down behind the grille. There was one disheveled dramat type slumped behind the checkout counter now, and as I went clicking through the theft detectors he waved me away without looking up.

I stood feeling the air and smoking a nice cigarette for a little while, then heard the loud crack of police voices on radio and saw again that flashing light, off to the left. Little bunches of people were there, balanced between walking and sticking around. I walked over and came through the outer ring of people.

In the center of everything stood a young woman, her head slightly bowed, whispering. To her left a fallen cop with a cut on his face pulled himself to his knees and then tried to stand, gesturing with unconvincing menace toward a huge boy. To the girl’s right, across the impromptu arena we formed, stood another cop, his arms struggling to enlace those of another huge boy, who swore at the policemen, at the girl, at his enraged twin who faced him, and at all of us who watched.

“Let me go, you fucker,” he said. “You bitch, you fucker, you assholes, I’ll kill you! Let me go!”

He was tremendous and fit, and he tore away from his captor with a short backward wrench that dropped the tiny blue cop to the concrete. The two boys came closer to each other, until they both stood within arm’s length of the woman. I looked at her again. She was slender and blond, with a green-eyed, small-nosed, nondescript kind of hillbilly face and a flowery skirt. She looked down, at the sidewalk, at nothing. Her thin ankles wobbled on four-inch spikes and her lips moved soundlessly. The two cops were both on their feet now, billy clubs drawn. There was a strange momentary lull in the action, as though the police and the giants were waiting for some soft command from the dazed woman before grabbing for the various difficult things they had assembled to grab. It was suddenly cool and almost night. A new siren threatened and grew from the distance. The girl looked up, listening, and then turned toward the boy who had just freed himself. She pushed against his great chest and clung.

“Larry,” she said.

The other boy undid his fists and looked at the two of them, then turned toward us, with tears in his eyes and an uncomprehending look on his face.

“Too bad, man,” someone said. “She picked Larry.”

“Good going, Larry,” said another.

It was done; people clapped. The battered policemen rushed over, the reinforcements squealed up, Larry kissed his girl.

“One more Pittsburgh heartbreak,” said a voice right beside me. It was Spanish Potboiler.

“Hey,” I said. “Yes. Right. There’s one for every kielbasa on Forbes Avenue.”

We moved off together in the general chattering retreat of those who weren’t interested in seeing the actual arrests.

“When did you come in?” he asked. There certainly was sarcasm in his tone, yet at the same time I thought it seemed as though he’d been impressed or even shaken by what he’d seen. He had short, white-blond hair, pale eyes, and a day’s growth of beard, which lent his boyish face a kind of grown-up decadence.

“At the good part,” I said.

He laughed, one perfect ha.

“It was crazy,” I continued. “I mean, did you see that? I never understand how people can be perfectly frank all over the sidewalk like that, in public.”