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gold, he had paused, from time to time, in satisfaction and amazement.
    And sometimes he thought that it was at that moment, that first moment on Lemuel Sparks’s roof, that he was given his calling.
    For when he first opened his eyes on that rooftop, Mr. Pittilio’s fingers trailing from his shoulder, it was to an assault of light: broad trapezoids and bars of it, the planes of space become mirrored surfaces, hard, reflective plates that caught and refracted light in a mighty sport. And so when he first saw Lemuel Sparks and raised his arm to shield his eyes from the light, it was because he meant to protect himself. He could not be equal to the gift Lemuel was about to make.
    He had known then, though he knew it more now, that this was an extraordinary moment in his life. Now, considering the angel in his garden, he thought that perhaps he had been too aware of the plain and humble matter of the world, the imperfect form that lay beneath the gold veneer. After all, he thought, if you flood something with gold, with light, perhaps it really is different. It isn’t anymore the dull, humble thing it once was. It is transformed, something sacred, something beautiful.
    And that was why, now, he had chosen to believe that his angel was in fact what it said it was: not a hallucination, not a grieving man’s worshipful vision, but a miracle. Conrad had never been aman who expected more in the face of life’s abundance. He had expected less, expected that what was good and satisfying would last a lucky moment and then drain away like water vanishing down a whirlpool. It wasn’t that he was unappreciative or morose. But low expectations were reasonable, he thought. Rose might have saved herself some pain, he’d always felt, if she’d just expected less. It’s wanting too much, he used to think, that leads a man to disappointment.
    But now Conrad felt he had no expectations left, small or large. His life had become, in the breathtaking instant between Rose’s life and death, in the terrible privilege of staying on behind her, a scale in which all things weighed equally, or weighed nothing at all, a solemn time in which he was simply waiting. So though he suspected that he might have failed in the past to appreciate the nature of what Rose would have called grace, or Lemuel, magic, he was willing, now, to believe. He had stepped, he decided, whether accidentally or not, into the path of a miracle.
    SO HE STOOD there that autumn evening on Mr. Lemuel Sparks’s roof, the setting sun firing up that miniature world in the sky. The tin chimney baffles, the many-angled copper roof of Lemuel’s pigeon loft, the carpet of glinting stone beneath his feet—all of it was aflame in the sun’s final frenzy of illumination, that last moment of day’s light. Lemuel stood before Conrad, his hat in his hands, his hair blowing over his eyes. “Mr. Pittilio,” he said, “you have an extraordinary sense of timing.”
    â€œMy young friend,” he said, turning to Conrad, “I have a surprise for you.”
    Mr. Pittilio sat down on a battered wooden folding chair, withdrew his cigar from his pocket, relit the crushed end of it, and inhaled deeply, squinting. Lemuel turned and strode toward his loft,the hundred or so birds there stepping lightly back and forth at their gates. He motioned for Conrad to follow him to the far end, to a larger enclosure where a dozen homers, Conrad’s homers, jostled together.
    â€œHere are your birds,” he said. “I’ve kept them together. They fly well together now. The problem, of course, is that now they unfortunately believe this is their home.” He frowned, as if a solution to this problem had so far escaped him. He moved to the door and regarded the pigeons. They did not feel to Conrad as though they belonged to him anymore.
    â€œIt isn’t your fault I was able to capture them so easily,” Lemuel said then