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Roberto appeared from around the corner, carrying a big blue box that said DVD PLAYER . He was grinning freely, despite his nose being covered with bandages that made it look as if he had a small pillow in the middle of his face.
    “What’s in the box?” I said, though it was obvious what was in the box.
    “Robbie!” said the cobbler, waving. “You buy me DVD player?”
    Roberto laughed, and so did the cobbler. The cobbler’s laugh was intended to make me the odd man out.
    In his apartment Roberto sat cross-legged on the floor, tearing open the box as if it were Christmas Day. Styrofoam peanuts went everywhere, and when he removed the thin silver DVD player, it gleamed sharply in the evening light. He smiled at it lovingly. I sat on the sofa and fumed, dripping with sweat. His apartment was even hotter than outside. It was one square room with a kitchenette, a saggy sofa bed, and three folding chairs; the bathroom was down the hall and shared with six other tenants. All Roberto’s furniture belonged to the cobbler, and so did the television and dishes. The wall of his kitchenette had been covered meticulously with those pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the most prominent of which was him in a suit and tie with his arms and thighs pressing hard againstthe fabric. The apartment felt like a boiler room in a sub-subbasement. It even sounded like a boiler room, with the constant low-frequency vibration coming from the cobbler’s shoe machine. Roberto seemed wholly unaffected by the heat. He was always unaffected by the heat. I had never seen him sweat.
    “Can’t you open a window?” I asked.
    With one gigantic arm, he swung open the window and then got back to fitting inputs into outputs. Immediately a fly came in through the window, but no breeze. I watched the fly settle on a plate and crawl around. Then a second fly came in. Roberto turned on the television to a game show that was nearing its climax. A woman had to pick the right color if she wanted to win fifty thousand dollars. The audience was screaming at her, and she was flustered.
    “What will you do with
all that money
?” the host asked.
    “I-I-I-I don’t know.”
    “Pay back the greatest guy,” I answered for her.
    “What?” Roberto said. His pillow face swung in my direction.
    “Pay back the greatest guy in the whole world,” I said.
    He stood up straight. In his small apartment, his size was immense, his camel legs notwithstanding, and as he loomed over me on the couch, I felt a twinge of vulnerability.
    “I told you, I’m going to pay you every penny!” he said. His face twitched and the pillow-bandage bobbed, and from his pocket he withdrew a slip of paper on which was printed the company logo of Dr. Scholl’s. Beneath this he had written in very precise handwriting, “I O Dean $200.00.” He had datedit “June 14th” and added his initials, as if it were an official document he was endorsing. The gesture was surprisingly touching, and I felt remorseful, even guilty, as if I were the one who owed money.
    Out loud I said, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Get it notarized?”
    “Motorized?” he asked.
    He shrugged. He folded the paper and put it in his pocket and got back to work on the DVD player. The woman was just about to pick the color yellow when the game show was interrupted by breaking news: every branch of the military had been ordered to join the marines on high alert—the navy, the army, the air force, the coast guard, and branches I’d never heard of. There were maps with arrows, and the peninsula was highlighted. The experts were all in agreement; even the experts who used to disagree now agreed. Everything made sense. There was a sexy reporter interviewing soldiers at their base.
    “We could be attacked without warning,” she said. “Right here and now.” Her eyes were dewy, her lips were thick. She wore a flak jacket and a helmet from under which flowed long brown hair.
    “Do you miss your