When the Nines Roll Over by David Benioff

telescope’s lens and eyepiece, undressed, climbed into bed. It was a marvelous bed, with four tall cedarwood posts and handwoven mosquito netting from the Ivory Coast. There weren’t many mosquitoes in the brownstone, but I loved how the netting swayed in the air conditioner’s breeze, pale lungs inhaling and exhaling.
    In the strange space between sleeping and waking I imagined myself lionized. I paced the avenues, mane dreadlocked by city dirt. I met my stone brothers on the Public Library’s steps; I sat with them and watched the beat cop pass, orange poncho clad, walkie-talkie chattering on his hip. I went underground, below the sidewalks, prowled the subway tunnels. The big-bellied rats fled when they smelled my hide. I curled up beside a soliloquizing madman, a filthy bundle of piss-damp rags, once a babe in a cradle, a shiny possibility. I licked the dirt from his face; he buried his head in my mane. Soon he slept, and it was the first good sleep he’d had in years.

    Rain pounded the pebbled glass of my skylight, the hoof-steps of a cavalry brigade heard from a great distance. It was almost dawn. The house was less empty than it had been. I pulled on a pair of green plaid pajamas, walked downstairs and knocked on the door of the master bedroom.
    â€œCome in,” called my father.
    I opened the door. He sat cross-legged on the floor, the parts of his rifle disassembled, gleaming and oiled, on a spotted towel thrown over his steamer trunk. He wore his undershirt and a grass-stained pair of khakis; wire-framed glasses; a black steel wristwatch with a nonreflective face, the gift of a Ugandan general.
    If you are sitting in your home, late at night, alone, strange noises echoing down the hallways, disturbing your mind, and if you look out across the street, look through the window of a stranger’s apartment, the apartment lit only by the television’s static, and the stranger’s room glows a cool and eerie blue—that was the exact color of my father’s eyes.
    He wiped his hands clean on a corner of the towel, stood up, walked over and clasped my shoulders, kissed me on the forehead. “You look thin.”
    â€œI was sick for a while. I’m okay.”
    â€œYou’re eating?” He watched me carefully. I was never able to lie to my father. I mean, I was able to lie to him but I never got away with it.
    â€œI forget sometimes.” That was the truth. On bad days the idea of eating seemed somehow ridiculous, or indulgent.
    He walked to his desk, a rolltop of luminous mahogany that supposedly belonged to Stonewall Jackson. Hanging on the wall above the desk were four masks—carved wood embellished with feathers and shredded raffia—that my father had bought in Mali. Each represented a figure from the old Bambaran saying: “What is a crow but a dove dipped in pitch? And what is a man but a dog cursed with words?”
    My father pulled a sheaf of fax papers from his desktop and looked through them. “I saw your name in here. You were one of the witnesses?”
    â€œHe winked at me.”
    My father continued reading through the papers, holding them at arm’s length because his prescription was too weak and he never bothered to get reexamined. Being farsighted had no effect on his aim, though. I remember reading a profile of my father in a glossy hunting magazine; accompanying the article was a photograph of a silver dollar that had been neatly doughnuted by a high-caliber bullet. The caption below the picture read: Shot by MacGregor Bonner at 400 Yards in the Transvaal (prone position). My father had bet a drunk Johannesburg socialite one thousand dollars that he could make the shot; when the woman paid up she told him, “I hope I never make you angry, Bonner.”
    My father read through the fax papers and I said again, “He winked at me. The lion. He was staring right at me and then he winked and then he walked away.”
    My