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“A new life. I have a different body; I can do all kinds of things.”
    “A step up,” Stuart said.
    “Yes,” Hoppy mumbled. “A step up. I’m like everybody else; in fact I’m better than anybody else. I can do anything they can do and a lot more. I can go wherever I want, and they can’t. They can’t move.”
    “Why can’t they move?” the frycook demanded.
    “Just can’t,” Hoppy said. “They can’t go into the air or on roads or ships; they just stay. It’s all different from this. I can see each of them, like they’re dead, like they’re pinned down and dead. Like corpses.”
    “Can they talk?” Connie asked.
    “Yes,” the phoce said, “they can converse with each other. But—they have to—” He was silent, and then he smiled; his thin, twisted face showed joy. “They can only talk through me.”
    I wonder what that means, Stuart thought. It sounds like a megalomaniacal daydream, where he rules the world. Compensation because he’s defective … just what you’d expect a phoce to imagine.
    It did not seem so interesting to Stuart, now that he had realized that. He moved away, back toward his booth, where his lunch waited.
    The frycook was saying, “Is it a good world, there? Tell me if it’s better than this or worse.”
    “Worse,” Hoppy said. And then he said, “Worse for you. It’s what everybody deserves; it’s justice.”
    “Better for you, then,” Connie said, in a questioning way.
    “Yes,” the phoce said.
    “Listen,” Stuart said to the waitress from where he sat, “can’t you see it’s just psychological compensation because he’s defective? It’s how he keeps going, imagining that. I don’t see how you can take it seriously.”
    “I don’t take it seriously,” Connie said. “But it’s interesting; I’ve read about mediums, like they’re called. They go into trances and can commune with the next world, like he’s doing. Haven’t you ever heard of that? It’s a scientific fact, I think. Isn’t it, Tony?” She turned to the frycook for support.
    “I don’t know,” Tony said moodily, walking slowly back to his grill to pick up his spatula.
    The phoce, now, seemed to have fallen deeper into his beer-induced trance; he seemed asleep, in fact, no longer seeing anything or at least no longer conscious of the people around him or attempting to communicate his vision—or whatever it was—to them. The séance was over.
    Well, you never know, Stuart said to himself. I wonder what Fergesson would say to this; I wonder if he’d want somebody who’s not only physically crippled but an epileptic or whatever working for him. I wonder if I should or shouldn’t mention this to him when I get back to the store. If he hears he’ll probably fire Hoppy right on the spot; I wouldn’t blame him. So maybe I better not say anything, he decided.
    The phoce’s eyes opened. In a weak voice he said, “Stuart.”
    “What do you want?” Stuart answered.
    “I—” The phoce sounded frail, almost ill, as if the experience had been too much for his weak body. “Listen, I wonder…” He drew himself up, then rolled his cart slowly over to Stuart’s booth. In a low voice he said, “I wonder, could you push me back to the store? Not right now but when you’re through eating. I’d really appreciate it.”
    “Why?” Stuart said. “Can’t you do it?”
    “I don’t feel good,” the phoce said.
    Stuart nodded. “Okay. When I’m finished eating.”
    “Thanks,” the phoce said.
    Ignoring him stonily, Stuart continued eating. I wish it wasn’t obvious I know him, he thought to himself. I wish he’d wheel off and wait somewhere else. But the phoce had sat down, rubbing his forehead with the left extensor, looking too spent to move away again, even to his place at the other end of the coffee shop.

    Later, as Stuart pushed the phoce in his cart back up the sidewalk toward Modern TV, the phoce said in a low voice,
    “It’s a big responsibility, to see