119

papery surface as the hosing curled away from the van, dropping down a fenced-in manhole.
    The smoke smelled clean, fruity. Whatever work was going on was soundless.
    A man wearing a clear vest stood by the manhole with a clipboard. After vigorously massaging my face to prepare it for speech, I asked him what was going on.
    He smiled, shook his head, pointed to his ear.
    This meant, what, he was deaf?
    I pointed at the manhole, shrugged, and mouthed: “What is it?”
    The man shook his head in the negative again.
    A worker climbed from the hole as I walked away. He picked clumps of a
wet cheese from his face. Tethered to his waist was an orange cable as thick as a man’s leg, and he dragged it from the hole where they pinned it in place on a specimen table. I’d seen that cabling before. The man with the clipboard grabbed his radio and, instead of speaking into it, held it out at the cable, as if whoever was on the other end of the radio needed to hear this.
    But then I heard it, too, and it was unmistakable. From that orange cable, with no listener attached, came the voice of Rabbi Burke, singing one of his songs. A song I’d heard before.

In the lobby of the Oliver’s I looked for Murphy.
    People hurried around breaking things down, packing boxes. A stack of
crates sat at the door, waiting to be loaded into the vans. The crates had breathing holes drilled into them, arrows painted on their sides, pointing up. The sweet, gamey smell of a zoo was in the air.
    A young man in coveralls sat at a table up front, seeming official. When I asked him if Murphy was here, he could only repeat the name back to me, as if I’d issued a math problem he was not expected to solve.
    I explained that Murphy had invited me down here. Spitting image of LeBov, I didn’t say. Rest his soul.
    It was hard to understand him through his respirator, a steamed-over mask covering his mouth.
    “Invitations aren’t required,” I think he said, pointing at the open door.
    An elderly couple swept into the lobby. They clung to each other,