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quality, the man bent closer, angling the umbrella over them like a canopy, isolating them from the onlookers so that beneath that black dome there was only himself in quick consultation with the would-be frog. Michael was perplexed; behind the ridiculous fake nose, transcending the demeanor that both attracted and repulsed him, he recognized a look of contemptuous pity, not unmixed with compassion, the look one gives an incorrigible little brother in trouble again through his own foolish fault.
    Michael—and this had never happened to him before—was intimidated; he felt somehow diminished. In the man’s bearing there was reproach, an absence of humor, an unequivocal gravity. For in trying to force the man to recognize himself, Michael had fatally recognized something in his own person, though of what this might have been he was at present unaware. Yet he felt neither chill nor premonition, but some intuitive flash, in which he perceived his fellow, his counterpart, his other self. Surely the old man felt it too.
    The man gazed down. His soft-hoarse voice spoke in a tone of deep intimacy.
    “Are you then a frog?”
    Leering, mouth opening and closing, cheeks puffed, Michael felt obliged to give a froggy nod.
    “Very well. Be a frog. ”
    Somewhere beyond the black scallop of the umbrella the city sounds suddenly stopped. Michael acknowledged something akin to a thrill, a limpid rush through his limbs, a docility, as the man now described a half circle around him, Michael still hopping, the man raising the umbrella in the fashion of a stage curtain and making his way among the nearest spectators, the crowd parting before him, Michael hop-hop-hopping after, twisting his head grotesquely, still hopping, hands dangling between his flexed, straining thighs, the frog-leer still contorting his face, the crowd trooping after, hooting in amusement, thinking it all part of the act.
    With aplomb the man proceeded across the street. Michael hopped after him, along the sidewalk toward the fountain, where more onlookers gathered, all watching as the man came, followed by this ridiculous whitefaced frog-fellow, and Emily slowly trailing the crowd, clutching her flute. Though she could not tell what it was, she knew something was drastically wrong, saw Michael hop-hop-hopping, saw the old man pointing to the rim of the fountain, bidding Michael-the-Frog to hop up there and from the ledge into the water, and there was Michael knee-high in water, with that horrid face, the crowd still laughing, applauding as the man disappeared among them, leaving Michael-the-Frog ridiculously hopping-jumping-splashing in the algaed fountain, while two policemen came running and shouting for him to get the hell out of there. But he did not, or would not, or could not, for though the fun had ended he discovered to his horror that the frog business had not.
    The cops waded in after him and dragged him to the fountain’s rim and pulled him over it, half strangling, onto the sidewalk. Michael felt something rising in his throat, a mess of fluids in which floated the remains of his breakfast, which came roiling up and spewing forth uncontrollably onto the pavement, while, realizing something strange and awful was happening and not knowing what, the watchers stood back. Then, with foam and spittle hanging from his lips and the water drenching him cold and a terrified uncomprehending look in his eyes, he formed himself into some fetal creature as yet unborn and toppled slowly to one side and over, where he lay hunched and hugging himself in a ghastly shivering ball of pain, while his thoughts raced on into a chaos he could in no way imagine imagining.

C HAPTER T HREE
Slide Show
    M ICHAEL’S CONSCIOUSNESS HAD SEPARATED into compartments, each of them operating independently of the others. One of them knew exactly where he was, on the slope of grass just inside Central Park, and of course Emily was with him. He could see the half-drained muddy pond, the subway