Sunset Park

that body hidden by clothes but a full nude sketch, perhaps several sketches, similar to the ones she did in her life classes at art school. It is therefore an awkward moment for both of them when they go upstairsto Ellen’s room after lunch and Ellen asks Alice to take off her clothes. Alice has never worked as a model, she is not accustomed to having her naked body scrutinized by anyone, and although she and Ellen occasionally catch glimpses of each other going in and out of the bathroom, that has nothing to do with the torture of having to sit stock-still for an hour as your closest friend looks you over from top to bottom, especially now, when she is feeling so miserable about her weight, and even though Ellen tells Alice that she is beautiful, that she has nothing to worry about, it is merely an art exercise, artists are used to looking at other people’s bodies, Alice is too embarrassed to give in to her friend’s request, she is sorry, terribly sorry, but she can’t go through with it and must say no. Ellen is stung by Alice’s refusal to do this simple thing for her, which is in fact the first step in reinventing herself as an artist, which is no less than reinventing herself as a woman, a human being, and while she understands that Alice has no intention of hurting her, she can’t help feeling hurt, and when she asks Alice to leave the room, she closes the door, sits down on the bed, and starts to cry.

Miles Heller
    He thinks of it as a six-month prison sentence with no time off for good behavior. The Christmas and Easter holidays will give Pilar temporary visiting rights, but he will be confined to his cell for the full six months. He mustn’t dream of escape. No digging of tunnels in the middle of the night, no confrontations with the guards, no hacking through barbed wire, no mad dashes into the woods pursued by dogs. If he can last through his term without running into trouble or going to pieces, he will be on a bus heading back to Florida on May twenty-second, and on the twenty-third he will be with Pilar to celebrate her birthday. Until then, he will go on holding his breath.
    Going to pieces. That was the phrase he kept using during the course of his trip, during the seven conversations he had with her over the thirty-four hours he spent on the road. You mustn’t go to pieces. When she wasn’t sobbing into the phone or ranting against her maniac bitch of a sister, she seemed to understand what he was trying to tell her. He heard himself uttering platitudes that just two days earlier he couldn’t have imagined would ever cross his lips, and yet a part of him believed in what he was saying.They had to be strong. This was a test, and their love would only deepen because of it. And then there was the practical advice, the injunctions to go on doing well at school, to remember to eat enough, to go to bed early every night, to change the oil in the car at regular intervals, to read the books he left for her. Was it a man talking to his future wife or a father talking to his child? A little of both, perhaps. It was Miles talking to Pilar. Miles doing his best to hold the girl together, to hold himself together.
    He walks into the Hospital for Broken Things at three o’clock on Monday afternoon. That was the arrangement. If he came in after six o’clock, he was to head straight for the house in Sunset Park. If he arrived during the day, he was to meet Bing at his store on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. A bell tinkles as he opens and shuts the door, and when he steps inside he is struck by how small the place is, surely it is the smallest hospital in the world, he thinks, a dingy, cluttered shrine with ancient typewriters on display, a cigar-store Indian standing in the far corner to his left, model biplanes and Piper Cubs hanging from the ceiling, and the walls covered with signs and posters advertising products that left the American scene decades ago: Black Jack gum, O’Dell’s Hair Trainer, Geritol, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Old Gold cigarettes. At the sound of the bell, Bing emerges from a back room behind the counter, looking larger and bushier than he remembers, a great big grinning oaf rushing toward him with open arms. Bing is all smiles and laughs, all bear hugs and kisses on thecheek, and Miles, caught off guard by this slobbering welcome, bursts out laughing himself as he wriggles free of his friend’s crushing embrace.
    Bing closes up the Hospital early, and because he suspects