The Believers (33 page)

The train roared into the station and Karla stepped forward, planting one foot on the yellow line at the edge of the platform. What if this were all a vast mistake? What if she surfaced from her romantic dream a few months from now and discovered that she had ruined her marriage for nothing?

Ding-dang
, the doors slid open.

It was not too late; she could still go back and tell everyone that she had been out for a walk. Mike would reprimand her; life would go on.

Ding-dang,
the doors slid shut. She was on the train.

Her car was filled with a tour group of wide-eyed, slack-jawed French boys. She sat down and closed her eyes, letting herself be lulled by their pretty-sounding, incomprehensible chatter. After a couple of stops, the door to the next car slid open with an angry clang and a scruffy, middle-aged black man stumbled in. The tourist boys stirred anxiously. "Hello, ladies and gentlemen," the man said. "My name is Floyd. I am homeless and suffer from diabetes and epilepsy. Please don't be nervous. I ain't begging. I'm here to entertain you."

He closed his eyes and let out a long, wordless falsetto note. The song was "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," a silly novelty number that Karla had always associated with oldies radio stations and kitsch. But now, hearing it sung in this dingy subway car, she was struck by its beauty. How simple and true it seemed! How filled with the mystery and sadness of life!

The train suddenly emerged from the tunnel, and the car was filled with daylight. They were crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. From the window, Karla could see the Brooklyn waterfront spread out before her: the Williamsburg clock tower, the brownstones of Brooklyn Heights, the smokestacks of the Navy Yard, the skyscraper cranes of Red Hook pointing yearningly out to sea. She thought of Khaled, waiting for her in his apartment, and willed the train to go faster. If she didn't get there soon, he might disappear, or decide that he didn't want her after all.

Floyd finished his song and began walking up and down the aisle, holding out a crumpled paper bag. "Ladies and gentlemen, if you enjoyed my musicality, please show your appreciation with a financial donation. Nothing is too little or too large. I take coins, bills, checks, American Express..."

The train was pulling into the station by the time he reached Karla. "Thank you, ma'am," he said with a bow as he took her dollar bill. "Thank you and God bless you." The doors opened, and he jumped off. As the train began to move off again, Karla glimpsed him standing on the platform, sorting through the money in his bag. She had just enough time to raise her hand in an awkward gesture of salute and farewell before the train picked up speed, and she was plunged into the darkness of the tunnel once more.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am very gratef Number Yaddo and to the MacDowell Colony for allowing me to take two brief but highly productive holidays from domestic life in order to work on this book. I would also like to thank Jennifer Barth, Amanda Urban, Juliet Annan, Gill Coleridge, Sarah Coward, Norman Rosenthal, Melvin Konner, Scott Rudin, Patrick McGrath, Patrick Marber, Tshering Dolma, Marina O'Connor, Colin Robinson, and Lucy Heller for all sorts of help, literary, technical, and otherwise, that they gave me while I was working on this book. Above all, I am thankful to my daughters, Frankie and Lula, who always ask when I'm going to be done writing, and to my husband, Larry, who never does.

About the Author

ZOE HELLER
is the author of two previous novels,
Everything You Know
and
What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal
, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. She lives in New York.

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ALSO BY ZOE HELLER

Everything You Know

What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal

Credits

Jacket Illustration by Gray318

Jacket type by Will Staehle

Jacket design by Evan Gattney

Art direction by Archie Ferguson

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

"Soliloquy" copyright (c) 1945 by Williamson Music. Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

THE BELIEVERS. Copyright (c) 2008 by Zoe Heller. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Mobipocket Reader January 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-177519-2

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