Specimen Days

"There's something strange about the kid's associations," she said. Back to regular voice. "It's like he's programmed. A concept trips a wire, and he's got the line, but he hasn't got the circuitry to make sense of it. He's like a vessel for someone else's wishes. The poetry signifies something for him, but he's not able to say what it is."

"I thought we'd have a trace by now," Pete said. "These are kids."

"Someone is putting them up to it," Cat said.

"I don't know," Ed said. "No one's taken any credit yet."

Cat said, "Unless whoever it is wants these kids to call in. Unless that's his way of taking credit."

Pete said, "I started that Whitman book last night. Can't make head or tails of it, frankly."

"I'm seeing a woman at NYU later today." "Good."

"What more do we know about Dick Harte?" Cat asked.

"A lot," Pete answered. "But nothing's jumping out. No history with boys. Or girls, even. Nothing we can find. It's all pretty standard. Went to law school"

"Where?"

"Cardozo. Not Harvard. Practiced for a few years, then went into real estate. Married a decent girl, got rich, dumped the decent girl and married a new decent girl but prettier. Had two pretty children with wife number two. Big house in Great Neck, country place in Westhampton. All in all, a very regular guy."

"Apart from all that money," Cat said.

"Right. But it's real estate. He didn't have sweatshops. His employees didn't love him, but they didn't hate him, either. They got their salaries. They got their benefits. They got Christmas bonuses every year, plus a party at the Rihga Royal."

"In my experience," Cat said, "very few rich people have no enemies."

"His enemies were all on his level. Basic business rivalries, guys he outbid, guys he undersold. But these people didn't hate him. It doesn't work that way. It's a club. Dick Harte was one of the less sleazy members."

"What about the son who had to be sent away to school in Vermont?"

"Just a troubled kid. Got into drugs, grades started slipping. Mom and Dad shipped him off to the country. I'm sure they weren't happy about it, but it doesn't seem like any big deal."

"What was Dick Harte up to at Ground Zero?" Cat asked.

"He was one of a group of honchos pushing for more retail and office space in the rebuild. As opposed to those who favor a memorial and a park."

"That might be a big deal to any number of people," Cat said.

"But to a ten-year-old?"

"This is a ten-year-old who's memorized Leaves of Grass."

"A freak," Ed added.

"Or maybe a savant," Cat said.

"The one doesn't necessarily rule out the other," Pete said.

"No," Cat answered. "It doesn't."

* * *

She spent the morning waiting in her cubicle, hoping for another call. Who were the great waiters in literature?

Penelope waiting for Odysseus, undoing her weaving every night
Rapunzel, in her tower
Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and all the other comatose princesses

She couldn't think of any stories about men whose job it was to wait. But as Ed had put it, Hey, don't get all Angela Davis on me. She'd do her best.

She listened to the tape, several times. She looked through Leaves of Grass.

They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but
rather the outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus or to be
content and full,
Whom they take they take into space to behold the
birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the
ceaseless rings and never be quiet again.

Little boy. Who do you want to take into space to behold the birth of stars?

* * *

At ten-thirty, she tossed her cell into her bag and went over to Rita Dunn's office at NYU. Dunn was in a building on Waverly. One of these buildings, Cat had never been quite sure which, had been that sweatshop, where the fire was. She knew the story only vaguely the exits had been blocked to keep the workers from sneaking out early. Something like that. There'd been a fire, and all those women were trapped inside. Some of them had jumped. From one of these buildings was it the one she was entering? women with their dresses on fire had fallen, had hit this pavement right here or the pavement just down the street. Now it was all NYU. Now it was students and shoppers, a coffeehouse and a bookstore that sold NYU sweatshirts.

Cat went up to the ninth floor and announced herself to the department secretary, who nodded her down the hall.