“No,” Dennis said, “that’s true. I don’t belong in a place like this. I’m an accountant.”
“Good profession. It requires an education.”
“It does,” Dennis said. “And an education is so important. It really is. People talk about education all the time, but they don’t really know what it means. They don’t understand what it requires to turn a boy into a man.”
“The marines can’t do it,” the man said.
“No, no, they can’t,” Dennis said. “Only mentors can do it. I’m a mentor, or I try to be.”
“I know,” the man said.
Dennis waited. He had no idea what was supposed to happen next. He had never been in a situation like this one before. The world around him seemed unreal. Who could believe that humans being lived the way the ones in this place lived? Who could believe that these people were really human at all?
“You could come with me,” the man said.
Dennis smiled.
“I’d have to be sure you could make a commitment,” the man said. “I can’t have men in my house who only want something for themselves. I’d have to be sure you wanted to give them your time. And your self. You’d have to give them your whole self.”
“I would,” Dennis said. “I’ve always wanted to.”
“We have to go around the back,” the man said.
I don’t know his name, Dennis thought. I should find out who he is. Dennis looked up, and the man was already disappearing down a side street. He picked up his pace until it was almost a run, then slowed down as the man did. The side street was even less appetizing than the main drag had been. The main drag had a kind of vitality to it. The shops and the crowds were evidence of its viability. The side street was not viable. Many of the buildings were boarded up.
“I don’t know your name,” Dennis said, coming to a stop where the man had.
“I’m Carter Michaelman,” the man said. “My mother named me after Jimmy Carter, when Carter was president. I don’t like Jimmy Carter.”
“Nobody likes Jimmy Carter,” Dennis said.
“My house is that way,” Carter Michaelman said. “Up that street and toward the middle. The houses on the sides of it are abandoned. So is the house across the street. You have to be so careful for this. People don’t understand. People think you’re hurting them.”
“Oh, I know,” Dennis said. “I know. They’ve taken something noble and beautiful and made it sound like a disease.”
Carter Michaelman sprinted across the street and then up the opposite block to the intersection. Dennis sprinted, too, but there was no need to. There was no traffic here. There wrere very few people. He caught up and looked around.
“Does anybody live here at all?” he asked. “It’s like an abandoned block.”
“It’s like us,” Carter Michaelman said. “You see the outside and it looks like trash. You see the inside and it’s a miracle. We’re miracles. Did you know that? We’re miracles. Because we weren’t taken in by it, and we didn’t succumb to the pressure to be like everybody else.”
“Oh, yes,” Dennis said. “Yes. Exactly.”
He hadn’t been aware of the fact that they had been moving, but they must have been. They were up on the top of the stoops to one of the houses, standing right at the front door. It was an odd kind of door for the city. It had glass in it, big ovals of glass as tall as a man, Dennis was amazed that nobody had broken those before this. Or maybe this was what Carter Michaelman meant. Maybe this was the miracle.
“You have to come inside,” Carter Michaelman said, pushing the door open,
Dennis stepped into a vestibule and looked around. The building still looked abandoned. The floor of the vestibule was littered with trash. Dennis tried to see in past the interior door, but he couldn’t. That door had only very small windows in it and those close to its top.
“Have you fixed this place up?” he asked. “If you have, you’ve done a wonderful job. It’s an incredible disguise. I don’t know how you manage it.”
“I manage it like this,” Carter Michaelman said, stepping just a little closer.
The vestibule was small. They were already close together. Carter Michaelman did not have far to step. It wasn’t until Dennis looked down that he saw the long knife in Carter Michaelman’s right hand, and when he first saw it all he thought was that it fit Carter Michaelman perfectly. It was a very clean knife. It had been sharpened and polished. It gleamed.
“It’s like this,” Carter Michaelman said.