10.

The alleyway was dark, and had the character of being nestled into a some crevice of the city--a place between places, an anonymous corner neither somewhere nor anywhere.

Joshua was dressed in fine clothes--he looked down at his Rolex watch, his briefcase, the gold rings on his fingers. And this was strange--he had the distinct impression that he was taller, taller than his real height was, seeing everything from a few important inches higher than the stature to which he was accustomed.

The Cadillac rolled slowly toward him, then halted. Out of the driver's side a deep-toned, heavy-set Italian man stepped out.

"You're Joshua?" he said.

Joshua was surprised at his own confidence--from his jumpsuit, his face, even the character of his complexion, the man was Mafia. Italian Mafia. "Yes," said Joshua.

"You've got the money?" he asked.

Joshua looked down at his hands. The briefcase. That must be it.

He held it up. "Right here," he said.

"Let's go for a drive," said the Italian.

In the car, the Italian was speaking in low, intimate tones. "If you want it painful I can make it painful," he said. "Shooting out the kneecaps first. Slicing the tendons of the hand. I can do all that. But I'm afraid that if you want it easy on him, you've asked the wrong guy."

Joshua knew what was going on. He said nothing. He knew whom he wanted dead: his father.

"People think of me--they think I'm inhuman, perverted beyond all humanity," the Italian was saying now. "So many people though--so many murders--every day someone deciding to take a life. I'm not that unusual, am I? I take money from people every day--clean-cut guys like you, grandmothers, fathers who love their children--people like this want someone dead. They don't care that to someone out there, someone they know--that to them this means the most awful horror imaginable. We really don't feel for one another on this earth--we really don't realize that when we break a finger, someone out there has his finger broken."

Joshua stayed silent as the city lights sent a shifting orange glow over the Italian's face, one after another. He realized now that he was not in New York. Jersey City? He wasn't sure. Maybe Atlantic City. Maybe Chicago. Shit, maybe Calcutta for all he knew--he recognized nothing here.

"We don't get it--the people who kill. We don't make the connection. When we wave to someone we know--all we care about is that we don't look foolish. If the other guy looks foolish, say, salutes us like some idiot? We laugh; we're just glad it wasn't us who was foolish. We're on a date and she belches? We think it's funny; but she's mortified, just like we would be had it been us. We hold ourselves to a higher standard when it comes to humiliation, but congratulate ourselves when it's some other jerk that got hit by a car instead of us. We don't give a shit so long as we ourselves don't die. We don't get it--we don't get that someone died. We never understand the dying--your mother is on her deathbed? She lives in a whole other world from you. To you she will be a memory soon, and you're willing to accept it; you'll go on and there will be one less person in your life. But to her--to her you won't be a memory, nothing will exist at all; she'll be erased forever. Different world. Society. It is the very nourishment egoism needs. A man raised in the woods doesn't care to stand out from the crowd, to excel over others. He may get that others are real, but he really has no desire to appear before them, distinguish himself, make himself known. He would be perfectly happy if all the world never knew he existed at all. But we're social--which means society matters to us--and this does nothing but feed the ego--we want to stand out, make waves."

Joshua said, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

The Italian sighed. Then he said, "Yeah. Sure. Why the fuck not? No skin off my nose."

"Do you think this is a test?" said Joshua.

"What, this world?" said the Italian.

"No," said Joshua. "This dream. This dream I'm in and can't get out of."

"Well," said the Italian, "I believe that men have the idea that life makes sense--but that's just one way of looking at it, maybe not the real way. The other idea--the idea that nothing makes sense? That can be the only true idea--because if nothing makes sense, this very idea doesn't have to make sense. So then this idea can't be wrong, can it? That's why the illogical is immune to its own contradictions."

"Is this the Dreamtime?" asked Joshua.

"What's the Dreamtime?" asked the Italian.

"I . . . I'm not sure," said Joshua.

"Then I guess it more or less is," said the Italian.

He pulled up and stopped the car.

"Here's where you get off," he said. "Leave the briefcase." Joshua did as he was told and stepped out of the car. The streets were deserted. The Italian's Cadillac slowly crept on away down the dark street, finally disappearing into the distance.

Joshua stood for some time on the street corner. He did not know where he was, what city, what street. He did not know anyone here. But he didn't care about that. All he cared about was that he finally succeed in not caring about anything.