Underworld

In the mid-1980s, Marian Shay travels to a job interview. After a two-hour drive, she takes a rest at a car show. There, she happens to run into Brian Glassic, whom she vaguely recognizes as Nick’s colleague. They have lunch together in the dining room of an old hotel and discover that they have a connection. As they flirt, they begin to share their vulnerabilities with each other. Marian confesses that she abandoned the family puppy in the middle of the wilderness because it barked too much. At the end of the lunch, Marian imagines going up to a hotel room with Brian. Their parting words are “oddly polite” and the two go their separate ways, both feeling an unexplained guilt and a need to prepare themselves to return home.

Brian visits a baseball-memorabilia collector named Marvin Lundy. He has read about Marvin in a magazine on an airplane. When they meet, Marvin suggests that the reason for their meeting is because Brian feels as though he is “missing something.” Marvin talks about the Cold War and how it gives both the United States and the Soviet Union an excuse to show the world their power. Continuing the subject, he compares the radioactive core of a nuclear bomb to a baseball. They are similarly sized. He compares the birthmark on Mikhail Gorbachev’s head to a map of Latvia. Marvin shows Brian the most prized item in his collection: “the Bobby Thomson home-run ball” (174). The ball took years to find; Marvin even hired private detectives to investigate. He believed that examining millions of photographs would reveal the truth to him, in accordance with his belief that “all knowledge is available if you analyze the dots” (175). He refers to this theory as the dot theory of reality. Eventually, a woman telephoned him and claimed to have the ball. The ball had belonged to her husband, a victim of the Texas Highway Killer. The police impounded the ball and held it as part of their investigation. Alongside the ball, Marvin stores all the paperwork he accumulated during his search. Brian leaves and heads to a landfill on Staten Island named Fresh Kills. The “stink” of the landfill inspires Brian, revitalizing his belief in his work and humanity in general.

After Brian leaves, Marvin ventures out of his basement to purchase bread. As he walks through New York City, he thinks about his late wife. He and Eleanor lived a simple but happy life. At the same time, he thinks about his own death. After eating a fried dumpling, he argues with a man who is angered by Marvin staring through a shop window. The interaction makes Marvin lose faith in humanity. He goes home and receives a call from a person from Phoenix who wants to buy his treasured baseball. Marvin does not know that this man is Nick Shay; he does not know why the buyer is so desperate to own the ball. Marvin admits that he is willing to sell it. He tells the buyer that he has a “mushroom-shaped tumor” (192). The man, Marvin assumes, must share Brian’s desire to find something missing from his life. Marvin’s years of memorabilia collecting have been an attempt to fill the void left by his wife’s death.

Nick agrees to buy the baseball from Marvin. He travels to New Jersey to make the purchase and stops in Matt’s house on the way. The brothers have not seen one another in a few years but their conversation quickly resumes its familiar, friendly tone. They talk about their mother, wondering whether she should move to Phoenix, where Nick lives. They wonder where their father went. As they eat dinner together, they listen to their mother describe their father’s time as a bookie. Remembering him is what “[makes] them a family, still” (199). His clients were mostly police officers, meaning that violently forcing people to pay up was not necessary. He famously never needed to write down his bets or his sums. Everything was stored in his memory. Later, Nick and Matt quietly debate whether their father was actually taken away by someone or whether he “didn’t want to be a father” (203). Nick tells a story about seeing a rat in a date’s apartment. Nick takes a taxi to his motel, thinking about his mother.

As he walks through the streets where he spent so much time as a child, Matt notices the changes that have taken place in the city. The streets of his childhood are now run-down and impoverished. He visits Bronzini, his old chess mentor, and they talk about Matt’s chess lessons. When he was 11, Matt was told that he had the potential to be a genius chess player. He stopped playing because he did not like the way the game made him feel, particularly when he needed to “destroy” his opponent. They talk about the old neighborhood and how it has changed.

At his mother’s home, Matt watches the news on television. The anchor is talking to someone who claims to be the Texas Highway Killer, his voice changed by an electronic device. In the background, the infamous video plays on repeat. He wants to counter “twisted” claims in the media, insisting that he does not suffer from low self-esteem and has never had a severe head injury. Killing people is a game, he claims. Matt calls out to Janet, but she is unimpressed. Later, Matt and his mother talk about washing a pan, his time in the military, and Nick’s need to erase certain memories from his past. Matt hears a noise in the hall that frightens him, but it’s nothing.

The “old science teacher” Bronzini visits Eddie (222). It is time for Eddie’s haircut, and Bronzini carefully lays out the tools, which he does not really know how to use. They discuss the way in which the local neighborhood has changed, particularly the noticeable presence of drugs and drug users. Eddie worked in a token booth in the subway. He misses his job. Recently, he read about space burials—in which “they send your ashes into space” (225)—and he and Bronzini wonder whether such a ritual would be worth the $10,000 per pound that it would cost. The idea puts Bronzini in mind of a recent space mission that went wrong. The “failed mission” hit him harder than the moon landing.

Months pass and spring arrives. Eddie dies, and Bronzini is glad that his sister is present in his life. She lives with him now, the first time that he has lived in the same house as a woman since he and his wife, the famous artist Klara Sax, divorced. These days, Bronzini mostly thinks about his youth and the “textures of unmeasured time” (229). He thinks about calling his daughter, who lives on the other side of the country. He takes an inventory of the food in his cupboards and wonders how long he could sustain himself without a trip to the store. While out, he sees a nun named Sister Edgar who is known for terrorizing her students.

Sister Edgar wakes up and dresses in her veil and habit before washing, thinking about whether the soap can ever actually be considered clean. She and Sister Gracie travel through the city in search of abandoned cars. She sees vacant lots and graffiti murals, one painted by the well-known artist Ismael Munoz in an area called the Wall. Each time one of the local children dies, Ismael and his “crew of graffiti writers” add an angel to the wall mural (239). To Sister Gracie, the mural perpetuates the bad things people say about poor neighborhoods. They stop to buy groceries from Brother Mike, a monk who claims that he is concerned about a 12-year-old girl named Esmeralda who is “living in the ruins” (240).

Sister Edgar and Sister Gracie enlist Ismael to help them distribute the groceries. They are the people who help Ismael find cars that have been abandoned along the Bronx River, which Ismael and others then salvage for any usable or valuable parts. Ismael pays the sisters for every car they find, and they use this money to buy groceries for people in the poor neighborhood. Ismael lives in an apartment with young people who have run away from home. They help him take apart the abandoned cars. Sister Edgar suspects that Ismael has AIDS; she wears rubber gloves in his apartment. She spots Esmeralda through the window and speaks to Ismael about her, asking him to tell Brother Mike if he sees her. She knows that Ismael was once a notorious graffiti artist known as Moonman 157.

The groceries are given to needy people, including a sex worker whose silicone breast implants have exploded and a man who sliced open his own eye “because it contained a satanic symbol” (247). Sister Gracie is furious when a bus filled with tourist stops in the neighborhood and the tourists begin taking photographs. Sister Gracie chases after Esmeralda but fails to catch her. Sister Edgar insists that she’ll be fine.

When Nick visits Houston for work, Marian arranges to meet Brian at the house belonging to her assistant because it is better than meeting in a hotel. In the house, Marian examines her nude body in a mirror. She finds Brian’s reluctance to meet for these trysts “fairly maddening,” so she lies to him that Nick knows about their affair. Brian knows that she is lying. In turn, he tries to get a reaction from her by mentioning her assistant. He wonders whether they can trust the assistant to keep their secret. Marian is not concerned. As they lie together in bed, however, she becomes increasingly irritated by Brian’s attitude. She is the person who always arranges their meetups, whereas he simply shows up. Nevertheless, she wants to continue the affair. Brian similarly enjoys their relationship, but he is not nearly as invested in it as Marian. To him, she seems to need the relationship as a matter of “life and death” (257). When he suggests that they end the affair, Marian flatly refuses him. She surprises Brian by taking a small bag from her purse. Inside the bag is heroin, which she prepares using a cigarette lighter and tinfoil. Marian smokes the heroin and asks Brian if he would like to join her. She wants him to partake so that he will be “deeper” in their affair. Brian says nothing. She returns to her joke, teasing him that her husband knows about the affair. Brian mentions ending their affair, but Marian insists that the affair is “not [his] to end” (260). They burst into laughter and return to bed. After, they go their separate ways.

Richard is a middle-aged man whose father is unwell. He prepares himself a sandwich and then drives to meet his friend Bud. Since he cannot contact Bud on the telephone, he must drive 40 miles to tell Bud that his phone isn’t working. During the drive, Richard reflects on his father’s condition. A part of Richard wonders whether his father might be better off if he just died. Richard arrives at Bud’s house, where Bud is blunt and unresponsive. He wonders why Richard would drive all this way just because he could not contact his friend on the phone. During the conversation, Richard’s thoughts turn to Aetna, Bud’s wife. Richard is attracted to Aetna. He then remembers how he taught himself to shoot a gun with his left hand because he reasoned it would be better if he needed to shoot from inside a vehicle. Richard works in a grocery store but the job makes him miserable. As he considers his life, he thinks about how the television spreads lies about him. This annoys Richard.

Richard feels hurt. He leaves Bud, hiding his embarrassment. He wants to speak to someone who will treat him honestly, so he decides to call Sue Ann Corcoran. She is an anchor on the television news. While driving home, Richard breaks into an empty house. He sets up a device that modulates his voice on the phone and turns on the television. Then he calls Sue. As he talks to her, he watches her on the television and finally feels that he is “real.” Later that night, Richard goes back to care for his father. He thinks to himself about “the other person” who shot someone. Though he does not think about himself in these terms, Richard is the Texas Highway Killer. This other shooter is a copycat, someone who has borrowed Richard’s signature killing style. The thought of the copycat bothers Richard, and when he wakes up the next morning, he goes out hunting, his head filled with violent thoughts.