where everyone was healthy and there were trees and mountains to look at. There was a breathless American airiness to her, one of blue eyes and strict, unblemished lightness. But now she was being seduced into coming to Manhattan by an 8-foot statue and its swarthy little jester. Feeling his eyes on her, the girl faced Fitz. She did so with a garish gaze, almost dyspeptic, as though by sitting at her feet Fitz somehow desecrated Athena with his buzzed head, his meaty chin with bits of coleslaw and the rest of his looming, muscular broadness emerging from the Dickies overalls. When the girl's mother caught Fitz looking, she took her daughter's hand. This gesture, too, reminded him of something, something far away—vast stretches of heat and sand interrupted only by the stirred eyes of strangers—dark faces whose disgust nourished in him a conqueror's glory.

But they were mere echoes now, muffled by some dull thickness growing inside his brain. Now things were different. He moved back to his father's house and was often awakened at night by wood-cracking floors and the hollow metallic gurgling of ancient plumbing. These were the sounds of domesticity and they frightened him. So each afternoon, after taking the ferry and two subway transfers to Columbia University, he rested his eyes on Alma Mater from half-sleeping in a house where nothing worked. And now that he learned about the hidden owl, the act of staring at a statue took on a shroud of sanity. A sense of mission. But then, just as quickly, he would remember that he wasn't even a student. He just worked there. Another day, another dollar, he told himself finishing his lunch, realizing that even if the legend were true, it wouldn't apply to him.

His official title was Custodial Maintenance Technician. I can fix anything, he told Bernie Seltzer, the Facilities Manager who hired him. Back in Fallujah, it took me just ninety seconds to repair a drivetrain on a Humvee, he boasted, anxious for the job. What he never told Bernie was that those engines were disabled by bullets and mortars; and that he worked while they whizzed and clanged off the armored plates; or that ninety seconds was all he had to fix jammed personnel carriers full of the wounded so they could flee the searing corners alive. He didn't tell Bernie about that mostly because he couldn't remember all of it. And although he got hired anyway, in the few months since the most he ever got to fix was a large wet-dry Swiffer Sweeper which broke after Tito, one of the other guys in Facilities, used it to kill a mouse. Instead Fitz ended up cleaning bathrooms and helping unload freight trucks that brought supplies to the Library. But he didn't mind. Not really. Another day, another dollar, he told himself, hoping to save enough to move out of his father's house.

"Excuse me."

As he pushed the mop cart past empty classrooms along the Dodge Hall the owl stayed with him.

"Excuse me!"

Fitz stopped and turned around. It was the kid, the Columbia tour guide, no doubt a student himself. He stood in front of a vending machine with soda, chips and sandwiches behind the glass.

"Do you work here?"

Fitz halted.

"This machine took my money," the kid pushed against the glass with his palm. "Again."

Fitz pressed his lips apologetically, "I'm sorry, can't help you with that."

The boy hissed and slapped the glass another few times, "So how do I get my money back?"