Specimen Days. Michael Cunningham

he had, everything his family had, was worn and plain.

      He had money, though. He could buy her something.

      But all the shops were closed. He went along Fifth Street, past the darkened windows that offered nothing to give as a present even when the shops were open. Behind these windows were meat and bread, dry goods, a cobbler’s stall. Passing the shops, Lucas was aware of their slumbering contents, their beef and boots. He looked through the glass past his own dimly reflected face at the red-and-white haunches hanging against the tiles, at the shelves of silent shoes, at the bottles upon which a mustached man in spectacles was expressing his gratitude for the tonic the bottles held, the same man over and over again, expressing the same pleasure.

      Lucas went to Broadway. Something there might be open still.

      Broadway might have been a toy for a giant child. It was like a gift to lay before a sultan, a turbaned invader who had refused all other offerings, who had been indifferent to a forest full of mechanical nightingales, who had yawned over golden slippers that danced on their own.

      But the shops on Broadway were closed, too. At this hour it was only cafés and taverns and the lobbies of the hotels. He went down Broadway as far as Prince Street, and saw a boy standing at the corner, offering something to those who passed. The boy was ragged, older than Lucas. He wore breeches half again too large for him, cinched with a rope. A limp felt hat, the color of a rat’s pelt, was pulled down over his head. From it a single lock of lank orange hair protruded like a secret he couldn’t keep.

      He held in his hand a small white bowl. He displayed it to passersby, who ignored him. Was it an alms bowl? No, it seemed that he was offering it for sale.

      Lucas stopped near the ragged boy, who had of course stolen the bowl and was trying to sell it, as people did. Lucas knew how it must be for him. His bowl was a prize, and it was a burden. Something more common would be easier to sell; a turnip, in its way, would be more valuable. The people of the boy’s neighborhood wouldn’t want a thing like the bowl, and those who walked on Broadway might want it but wouldn’t buy it from a boy like this. He extended the bowl to passersby in his outstretched hands with weary hopefulness, like a priest offering the holy cup. Lucas thought the boy had been here a long time, had begun by shouting out a price and had declined, as the hours passed, to this condition of mute resignation.

      He approached the boy, looked more closely at the bowl. The boy drew away from Lucas, cradled his prize to his breast. Lucas could see it well enough, though. It was a white china bowl, undamaged. It bore along its rim a band of pale blue figures.

      Lucas said, “How much?”

      The boy regarded him nervously. He would naturally suspect a trick.

      To allay him Lucas said, “I want it for my sister. How much?”

      The boy’s eyes were as shrewd and avid as a cat’s. He said, “A dollar.”

      A dollar and three pennies was what Lucas had in his pocket. It seemed for a moment that the boy somehow knew that, that he was a sprite who haunted Broadway with his treasure and asked in payment all that everyone had.

      Lucas said, “That’s too much.”

      The boy compressed his lips. The bowl was worth more than a dollar, and he might get a dollar if he stayed longer on the street, but he was tired, he was hungry, he wanted to go home. Lucas felt a pang of sympathy for the boy, who was wily and cunning, a thief, but who wanted, as everyone did, to be finished with his work, to be restored to himself, to rest.

      The boy said, “You can have it for seventy-five cents.”

      “That’s still too much.”

       The boy settled his mouth. Lucas knew: he would go no further. He was a thief, but he was someone; he had a private realm inside him, and he would not let himself be any poorer than this.

      He said, “That’s the last price. Take it or leave it.”

      Lucas was filled with sympathy and rage. He knew how much seventy-five cents would mean to the boy. But the bowl had cost him nothing. He could give it to Lucas, who needed it, and in so doing be no worse off than he’d been before. Lucas felt, briefly, the turning of the inscrutable world, in which a bowl that had cost nothing, a bowl he might have stolen himself (though he never stole; he was too nervous for that), would cost him most of what he’d earned by a week’s labor.

      He glanced up and down the street, as if he hoped another bowl, or something better, might lie ahead or behind. There was nothing. He might walk all night to find only someone selling a few leeks or a half bottle of ale.

      He said, “All right, then.”

      He took the money from his pocket and counted out seventy-five cents. He and the boy paused over who would relinquish first and found a way to exchange bowl for coins so that neither was empty-handed. Lucas felt the money taken from him by the boy’s calloused fingers. He felt the bowl settle into his palm.

      The boy ran off, fearful that Lucas might change his mind. In a panic, Lucas examined the bowl. Was it false? Had it turned to wood? No, it was in fact a bit of finery. It seemed, in his hands, to emit a faint white light. The figures inscribed along its rim were mysterious. They appeared to be tiny blue suns, icy disks from which rays emanated, finer than hairs.

      The bowl was good, then. But he had only twenty-eight cents left, which was not enough for a week’s food for three. Still, he had a gift to take to Catherine. He would think about food and money later.

      He returned to Fifth Street and knocked at the door until the tiny woman opened it. She wondered that he was back again but admitted him more easily, because he was becoming visible to her. She warned him again that there was to be no mischief. He agreed and mounted the stairs to Catherine’s apartment.

      Catherine answered the door. She seemed neither pleased nor sorry to see him. He wondered if he’d changed again, if he was unrecognizable to her again, though he wore the same clothes and the same dirt he’d worn yesterday.

      He said, before he could help himself, “Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt.”

      She said, “Hello, my dear. How are you?” Tonight she wore her new face, the wearied one.

      Lucas heard a sound from within the apartment, a strange sort of wailing laughter that sounded like Alma’s. It was followed by a man’s voice, deep and urgent, saying something undecipherable.

      Catherine stepped out into the hallway, closed the door behind her. “Lucas,” she said, “it’s not a good time to call, just now.”

      “But I’ve brought you something,” he answered.

      He produced the bowl. He extended it toward her on outstretched palms.

      She looked at it uncertainly, as if she could not quite discern its nature. Lucas found he couldn’t speak, not as himself or as the book. He was the bowl and his hands. He was only that.

      Presently she said, “Oh, Lucas.”

      Still he couldn’t speak. He was a bowl and a pair of hands offering a bowl.

      “You mustn’t,” she said.

      He answered, “Please.” It was what he had to say.

      “How have you come by this?”

      “I bought it. For you. I was paid today.”

      It was not as he’d expected. He had imagined her glad and grateful.

      She bent toward him. She said, “It’s sweet of you. But you must return it.”

      “I can’t,” he said.

      “Did you pay for it? Truly?”

      She suspected he’d stolen it, then. He could think of nothing to tell her but the truth.

      “I bought it from a man on Broadway,” he said. “He was selling them from a tray.” It seemed better to have bought it from a man with a tray. It seemed truth enough.