At a shop window, he stares at a custom-made leather shoe. It glows like the hull of a conquistador’s ship. Starting price: five grand. Would it leave a trail of slug-slime wherever he walked? Would hummingbirds fly from dress-print jacarandas to feast on the ghastly sweetness of that trail? Would the walk turn to a run—past the stately brick buildings, past projects, past the fire pits where kids roast plastic dollar-store Halloween masks of cats and pigs, past the last brittle-boned streetlamp, and out onto the boiled-peach-skin surface of the river? Would it float? Would it chart a course backward through history? Would it stomp on each image in the kingdom of images? He lingers there at the window and wonders; knowing it’s creepy to linger, maybe even to wonder. Then a sewer rat slides out from inside of the shoe like a magician’s rabbit, and stares at him, and doesn’t seem afraid.