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hands were like what you see on models. She came up to him in the hall at school sometimes, and just touched his arm for a second, with hands you see on commercials, every finger like a brand-new Corvette—different colors, metallic blue, purple, pink. Like something you would save up your money to buy.
    She smelled good, though, the one that had just left the store—the cat lady. She looked dirty but she always smelled like soap, one of those health-food store soaps, the smell of the health-food store soap section. Cindy smelled good too, but more like fresh towels, shampoo—that kind of thing, but this crazy cat woman . . . she’d looked at him once, straight at him, not blinking, staring him down almost, the way his mother did sometimes, her eyelids droopy, and with her hair out of her face she looked not half bad. With a bit of work he could see himself, you know, actually getting interested in her.
    Kevin looked down at the counter: the wrapper was stillthere, bits of smeared chocolate and wrinkled paper, paid for but still in the store. For a second the feet of his mind scuffed at something about the idea of goods turning into garbage even before you actually bought them; but he stepped around the next bit, an insight that would bring it all down—his new Red Wing hiking boots; the picture of a jade-green Corvette he kept in his wallet. It was a struggle for him, the insight it would lead to; so he thought about Cindy again, her hands: the things they promised him, with that cream she used sometimes, what they told him about what he was finally going to get for his birthday next week.

4
    Slain in the spirit . . .
    Joyce Hayward wondered how she would explain it to her son if he ever found out. Here she was telling this man she’d just met things about Simon that her best friends could only guess at.
    â€œElijah Thornquist,” it said on his card. “Calliope Associates.” And she had taken it at face value: as credentials. A business card. A thing you could mock up on a vending machine at the airport—five dollars for fifty. Her daughter, Beth, had told her all about it. She’d bought some as a joke for her new husband—a card with “Beer Taster” or something likethat on it. She realized she’d never seen her own name on a business card.
    â€œI can’t believe our Simon had anything to do with it.” Joyce Hayward paused and turned away from him. She let her gaze rest benignly on the small children squealing and splashing in the pool beyond the plate glass of the members’ lounge window. “He was a complicated child, but all children are at that age—aren’t they? I was complicated. My husband, George, was complicated. Beth was not so complicated but she’s like that—his sister, Beth? Sensible. ‘Together’ is the word for it. She’s got her act together.”
    â€œYou say this happened when he was about eight.”
    â€œThis one time, yes. The church-service thing. Eight or nine, I guess. Around there. We’d moved to Wheaton, oh, a year or so earlier than that. George had just got his new job with Pitney Bowes, and we had to up and move right in the middle of the school term. Simon didn’t like it, I remember, leaving all his friends, having to start all over. His sister, she was younger so it didn’t matter so much to her.” Joyce smiled and took another sip of coffee, resting on the memory of her daughter’s imperturbability.
    â€œIt was Episcopalian, I remember. The church. All that chanting back and forth, but George liked it—his mother had been an Episcopalian—a good way to get to know people in the community. He wanted to lay down roots, he said. Simon hated it right from the start. So did I, to be honest.”
    â€œIn the newspaper accounts, they never mentioned Simon having anything to do with it.” Mr. Thornquist raised his head as if he were setting his sites