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Neon
Truly concerned whether or not he would live, the surgeons labored for many hours over Roger
Charna. They cryogenically removed the pain areas in his anterior hypothalamic nucleus, and froze
parts of him to be worked on later. Finally, it seemed they would be successful, and he would live.
They bestowed on him three special gifts to this end: a collapsible metal finger, the little finger of
the left hand; a vortex spiral of neon tubing in his chest, it glowed bright red when activated; and a
right eye that came equipped with sensors that fed informational load from both the infrared and
ultraviolet ends of the spectrum.
He was discharged from the hospital and tried to reestablish the life-pattern he’d known
before the accident, but it was useless. Ruth’s family had sent her abroad, and he had the feeling she
had been more than anxious to go. She could not have helped seeing the Sunday supplement piece
on the operation. His employers at the apartment house had been pleasant, but they made good sense
when they said as a doorman he was useless to them. They gave him a month’s termination wages.
He had no difficulty getting another job, happily enough. The proprietors of a bookstore on
Times Square felt he was a marvelous publicity item, and they hired him on the spot. He worked the
seven o’clock to three A.M. shift, selling paperbacks and souvenirs to tourists and the theater crowd.
The first message he had from her was in the lightflesh of the Newsweek sign on the other
side of 46th Street. He was sweeping out the front of the bookstore when he looked up and saw
ROGER! UP HERE! ROGER! spelled out in the rapidly changing lights. It spasmed and changed
and became an advertisement for timely news. He blinked and shook his head. Then he saw the
crimson spiral shining through his shirt, flickering on and off. There was a soft cotton candy feeling
in his stomach. He swept the cigarette butts and dustballs furiously...out onto the sidewalk and
across the sidewalk and into the gutter. He walked back to the bookstore, looking up and over his
shoulder only as he stepped through the doorway. The sign was as he had always seen it before.
Nothing strange there.
At his dinner break, he walked to the papaya stand near the corner of 42nd and Broadway
and stood at the counter chatting with Caruso (which was not his name, but because he wanted to
become an opera singer and went into the basement of the juice stand and sang arias from Il
Trovatore and I Pagliacci, that was the name by which he was known).
“How do you feel?” Caruso asked him.
“Oh, I’m okay. I’m a little tired.”
“You been to the doctor?”
“No. They said I didn’t need to come around unless I hurt or something seemed wrong.”
“You got to take care of yourself. You can’t fool around with your health, yeah?” He was
genuinely concerned.
“How’re you?” Roger Charna asked. Caruso wrapped the semitransparent square of
serrated-edged paper around the hot dog and handed the bunned frank to him. Charna reached for
the plastic squeeze-bottle of mustard.
“Couldn’t be better,” Caruso said. He drew off a large papaya juice and slid it across the
counter. “I’m into Gilbert & Sullivan. Pirates of Penzance. I hear there’s a big Gilbert & Sullivan
revival coming on.”
Roger Charna ate without making a reply. He felt very sorry for Caruso. When he had first
met him, the boy was not quite twenty, working at the stand, high hopes for a singing career. Now
he was going to fat, his hair was thinning prematurely, and the dreams were only warm-bed
whispers to impress the girls Caruso hustled off Times Square. It would come to nothing. Ten years
from now, should Roger come back, he knew Caruso would still be there, singing in the basement,
