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zero—and the block fell apart as if opened by a spell. He brought the axe away, looking with self-satisfaction and casual ferocity at the boy. “Why do pigs sleep in trees?” he said.
    Her brother was more like their mad uncle Ira than he knew, she’d mused. It was not a thing she planned to mention to him. He’d be flattered and maybe turn still meaner.
    â€œBoy, go inside where it’s wahm,” James said, pointing with the axe.
    â€œI ain’t cold,” Dickey said. He continued dancing, steam all around him, his mittened hands tucked inside his armpits.
    â€œThe hell you ain’t, boy,” the old man snapped, chaining him there by the pride in his voice. She had turned from the window, disgusted.
    To will one thing.
    She looked back at her novel—or rather, began to pay attention again, since while her mind had wandered her eyes had gone on reading, dutifully moving from word to word like well-trained horses through a haylot. She drew them back to where the sense had stopped registering and realized with satisfaction that Peter Wagner spoke not, as she’d thought at first, in earnest, but in anger and scorn, taunting the psychiatrist, taunting all the stiff, self-righteous world. Again she saw him dangling in his overcoat, below him churning fog and San Francisco’s colored lights. She imagined the psychiatrist, at the rail above, with baggy-lidded eyes, the policemen like storm-troopers in a World War II movie.
    â€œGet the rope,” someone said.
    Looking down at the fog, insofar as he could, was like looking at clouds from above.
    â€œThat’s from Kierkegaard,” Dr. Berg said with sugary interest.
    â€œYou’re an intellectual,” he said.
    A rope came down, with a grapnel on the end, and they fumbled it toward him. He broke free with his left hand, hanging only with his right, and Dr. Berg said, “Lay off,” then whispered, “Let me talk to him.” Dr. Berg said, “You think I don’t know about suffering? You’re suffering.”
    â€œIt’s true. Christ.” It was not true, except that his fingers had lost their numbness and his knuckles were in pain.
    â€œYou feel as if all life’s a waste. You’ve read the philosophers—hungry, hungry—and nobody’s got a real answer. You’re practically an authority on existentialism, absurdism!” He carefully spoke French.
    â€œChrist, yes.”
    â€œLove is an illusion. Hope is the opiate of the people. Faith is pure stupidity. That’s how you feel.”
    â€œYes,” he said. “Yes.”
    â€œLet him drop,” Dr. Berg said coldly.
    The gloved hands let loose but he hung on.
    â€œIs there a ship underneath me?” he asked.
    Berg laughed. “You’re testing me, friend. You’re a very complex person.”
    â€œIs there?” he said.
    â€œNo. Not right now.”
    â€œYou’re a very complex person too. If you can’t win, you want me smashed on some fucking ship.” He looked up and the mushroom face smiled.
    â€œThat may be true,” Dr. Berg said. “It puts you in kind of a bind, doesn’t it? You’re too drunk to tell if there’s a ship underneath you, and since I’m a professional psychiatrist, with a certain inevitable ego-involvement in the work I do, maybe I’d rather see you smashed on a ship than gently sucked out by the ocean if I’ve got to lose.”
    â€œThat’s true,” he said. He began to cry, carefully listening to the foghorns. “The whole modern world is a catastrophe for the individual psyche. I’ve tried everything—love, drugs, whiskey, withdrawal to the Old Symbolic Sea, but everywhere I turn falsehood, illusion. I want to die.” He glanced quickly at Dr. Berg, then down again. “Waaa!” he bawled.
    â€œI know how you feel,” Dr. Berg said, vastly gentle. “You think I haven’t felt it?