"Can I help you with something?"

"You guys want anything?" Ike asked.

"We're done," Steele said.

"Henry Miller." Paulie pulled out a hardback. "First-edition Air-Conditioned Nightmare, pristine wrappers, and get this, inscribed to Nelson, A, Rockefeller."

Out on Rivington, an argument broke out in Spanish, someone being bumped into the window of the cafe with a muffled thud.

"This neighborhood," Steele said brightly, looking directly at Eric for the first time this deader-than-dead morning. "A little too much mix, not quite enough match, yeah?" Then he turned to his dealer: "How are you fixed for splinters of the True Cross?"

"For what?"

And with that, Eric, the boy-faced dog, was out the door.

A block from the restaurant, his heart thundering as he wondered exactly how he'd go about doing what had to be done, someone called, "Yo, hold up," and he turned to see Ike walking towards him, lighting a cigarette.

"You going to see the Virgin?"

"Sort of," Eric said.

"I'm on break, can I come with you?"

Eric hesitated, wondering if a witness would make it harder or easier, but then Ike just fell in step.

"Eric, right?" "Right."

"Ike Marcus," offering his hand. "So, Eric, what do you do?"

"What do you mean, what do I do?" Eric knowing exactly what he meant.

"I mean other than . . ." The kid at least quick-witted enough to cut himself off.

"I write," Eric said, hating to tell people, but just wanting to get them both off the hook.

"Oh yeah?" Ike said gratefully. "Me too."

"Good," Eric said briskly, thinking, Who asked.

His only viable project right now was a screenplay, five thousand down, twenty more on completion, anything about the Lower East Side in its heyday, Aka Jewday, commissioned by a customer from Berkmann s, a former Alphabet City squatter turned real estate gorilla, who now wanted to be an auteur; everybody wanting to be an auteur . . .

"Are you from here originally?" Ike asked.

"Everybody's from here originally," Eric said, then, coming off it: "Upstate."

"No kidding. Me too."

"Whereabouts?"

"Riverdale?" Then, grabbing Erics arm as he put on the brakes: "Oh, check this out."

The roof of the massive synagogue had caved in just two nights before, leaving only the three-story back wall with its lightly damaged twin Stars of David, shafts of sunlight streaming through the chinks. In the lee of that wall, the cantors table, Torah ark, a menorah with the spread of a bull elk, and four silver candleholders still stood like props on a stage, an intact row of six pews further enhancing the suggestion of an open-air theater. All else was reduced to an undulating field of rubble, Eric and Ike pausing on their way to the mini-mart to stand on the roped-off sidewalk with a gaggle of kufied deli men, off-duty sweatshop workers, and kids of various nations all cutting school.

"Check this out," Ike said again, nodding to a large Orthodox in a sweaty suit and fedora, his ear glued to his cell phone as he picked his way through the hilly debris to rescue the tattered remains of prayer books, piling loose and torn pages beneath bricks and chunks of plaster to keep them from blowing away. Two teenagers, one light-skinned, the other Latino, were following him and stuffing the salvaged sheets into pillowcases.

"Looks like one of those modern stage sets for Shakespeare, you know?" Ike said. "Brutus and Pompey running around in full camo with Tec-9s."

"More like Godot."

"How much you think he's paying those two kids?"

"As little as he can get away with."

A tall young guy wearing a kelly green yarmulke emblazoned with the New York Jets logo stood next to them writing furiously in a steno pad. Eric had the uncomfortable impression that he was taking down their conversation.

"Who are you writing for?" Ike asked without edge.

"The Post," he said.

"For real?"

"Yup."

"Excellent." Ike grinned and actually shook his hand.

This kid, Eric thought, was a trip.

"So what happened here, man?" Ike said.

"Fell the fuck down." The reporter shrugged, closing his pad. When he walked away, they noticed that he had a clubfoot.

"That's got to suck," Ike said under his breath.

"Excuse me, sir!" a bespectacled black man, his clothes nearly in rags but carrying an attache case, called out to the Orthodox, still on his cell. "Are you rebuilding?"

"Of course."

"Very good," the raggedy man said, and left.

"We should go too," Ike said, slapping Eric on the arm and heading out for the Virgin.

As they came up on the Sanaa, Eric turned to Ike, ready to school him on slipping the line, but the kid had already done so, giving Nazir his dollar admission fee and disappearing inside.

Hemmed in by supplicants, they knelt side by side like batters in an on-deck circle before the Virgin, the shrine-pile of offerings having tripled since Erics previous visit.

His first thought was to approach one of the brothers, appeal to them to least reroute the line outside so it wouldn't screw up all the other businesses in the neighborhood, but he realized that the line was just that: outside, as in, out of their control. Which left asking them to lose the Virgin altogether, not likely given the cash coming in. Which left . . .

"Fuck me," Eric whispered, then to Ike: "Can I ask you something personal?" his voice feathery with tension.

"Absolutely."

"All those tattoos, what are you going to tell your kids someday?"

"My kids? I'm my own kid."

"My own kid," Eric said, massaging his chest as if to get more air in there. "I like that."

"Yeah? Good, it's true."

"Shit," Eric hissed. "How do you do this . . ."

"Do what?" Ike whispered, then casually reached for the glass door, opening it for a few seconds, then closing it back. "That?"

Within a minute the inrush of humid air had changed the condensation pattern and sent the Virgin packing. Fifteen minutes later, as the news shot back across Rivington, the milagro line was no more. And by noon, over at Cafe Berkmann, there was a twenty-minute wait for tables.

"See you din't live round here back in the heyday, so no way you'd know, but about ten, twelve years ago?" Little Dap Williams yakking away as he stopped to scoop up the next bunch of Bible pages from under a brick. "Man, it was, there was some bad dudes up in here. The Purples on Avenue C, Hernandez brothers on A and B, Delta Force in the Cahans, nigger name Maquetumba right in the Lemlichs.