five or fifty minutes.

five or fifty minutes. e wrote, I am looking for an acceptable compromise. I wanted to know how he lived through that night. He touched my breasts, easing them apart. I think this will be good, he wrote. I wanted to know what will be good. How will it be good? e touched me all over. I can tell you these things because I am not ashamed of them, because I learned from them. And I trust you to understand me. You are the only one I trust, Oskar. The positioning was the sculpting. He was sculpting me. He was trying to make me so he could fall in love with me. He spread my legs. His palms pressed gently at the insides of my thighs. My thighs pressed back. His palms pressed out. Birds were singing in the other room. We were looking for an acceptable compromise. The next week he held the backs of my legs, and the next week he was behind me. It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love? I looked at the unfinished sculpture of my sister, and the unfinished girl looked back at me. Why does anyone ever make love? We walked together to the bakery where we first met. Together and separately. We sat at a table. On the same side, facing the windows. I did not need to know if he could love me. I needed to know if he could need me. I flipped to the next blank page of his little book and wrote, Please marry me. He looked at his hands. YES and NO. Why does anyone ever make love? He took his pen and wrote on the next and last page, No children. That was our first rule. I understand, I told him in English. We never used German again. The next day, your grandfather and I were married. THE ONLY ANIMAL   I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all. When Dad was tucking me in that night and we were talking about the book, I asked if he could think of a solution to that problem. "Which problem?" "The problem of how relatively insignificant we are." He said, "Well, what would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it one millimeter?" I said, "I'd probably die of dehydration." He said, "I just mean right then, when you moved that single grain of sand. What would that mean?" I said, "I dunno, what?" He said, "Think about it." I thought about it. "I guess I would have moved a grain of sand." "Which would mean?" "Which would mean I moved a grain of sand?" "Which would mean you changed the Sahara." "So?" "So? So the Sahara is a vast desert. And it has existed for millions of years. nd you changed it!" "That's true!" I said, sitting up. "I changed the Sahara!" "Which means?" he said. "What? Tell me." Well, I'm not talking about painting the Mona Lisa or curing cancer. I'm just talking about moving that one grain of sand ne millimeter." "Yeah?" "If you hadn't done it, human history would have been one way..." "Uh-huh?" "But you did do it, so...?" I stood on the bed, pointed my fingers at the fake stars, and screamed: "I changed the course of human istory!" "That's right." "I changed the universe!" "You did." "I'm God!" "You're an atheist." "I don't exist!" I fell back onto the bed, into his arms, and we cracked up together. That was kind of how I felt when I decided that I would meet every person in New York with the last name Black. Even if it was relatively insignificant, it was something, and I needed to do something, like sharks, who die if they don't swim, which know about. nyway. decided that I would go through the names alphabetically, from Aaron to Zyna, even though it would have been a more efficient method to do it by geographical zones. Another thing I decided was that I would be as secretive about my mission as I could at home, and as honest about it as I could outside home, because that's what was necessary. So if Mom asked me, "Where are you going and when will you be back?" I would tell her, "Out, later." But if one of the Blacks wanted to know something, I would tell everything. My other rules were that I wouldn't be sexist again, or racist, or ageist, or homophobic, or overly wimpy, or discriminatory to handicapped people or mental retards, and also that I wouldn't lie unless I absolutely had to, which I did a lot. I put together a special field kit with some of the things I was going to need, like a Magnum flashlight, ChapStick, some Fig Newtons, plastic bags for important evidence and litter, my cell phone, the script for Hamlet (so I could memorize my stage directions while I was going from one place to another, ecause I didn't have any lines to memorize), a topographical map of New York, iodine pills in case of a dirty bomb, my hite gloves, obviously, a couple of boxes of Juicy Juice, a magnifying glass, my Larousse Pocket Dictionary, and a bunch of other useful stuff. I was ready to go. On my way out, Stan said, "What a day!" I said, "Yeah." He asked, "What's on the menu?" I showed him the key. He said, "Lox?" I said, "Hilarious, but I don't eat anything with parents." He shook his head and said, "I couldn't help myself. So what's on the menu?" "Queens and Greenwich Village." "You mean Gren-ich Village?" That was my first disappointment f the expedition, because I thought it was pronounced phonetically, which would have been a fascinating clue. "Anyway." It took me three hours and forty-one minutes to walk to Aaron Black, because public transportation makes me panicky, even though walking over bridges also makes me panicky. Dad used to say that sometimes you have to put your fears in order, and that was one of those times. I walked across Amsterdam Avenue, and Columbus Avenue, and Central Park, and Fifth Avenue, and Madison Avenue, and Park Avenue, and Lexington Avenue, and Third Avenue, and Second Avenue. When I was exactly halfway across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, I thought about how a millimeter behind me was Manhattan and a millimeter in front of me was Queens. So what's the name of the parts of New York--exactly halfway through the Midtown Tunnel, exactly halfway over the Brooklyn Bridge, the exact middle of the Staten Island Ferry when it's exactly halfway between Manhattan and Staten Island--that aren't in any borough? I took a step forward, and it was my first time in Queens. I walked through Long Island City, Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights. I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me. When I finally got to the building, I couldn't figure out where the doorman was. At first I thought maybe he was just getting some coffee, but I waited around for a few minutes and he didn't come. I looked through the door and saw that there was no desk for him. I thought, Weird. I tried my key in the lock, but it didn't go in past the tip. I saw a device with a button for each apartment, so I pressed the utton for A. Black's apartment, which was 9E. No one answered. I pressed it again. Nothing. I held down the buzzer for fifteen seconds. Still nothing. I sat down on the ground and wondered if it would be overly wimpy to cry in the lobby of an apartment building in Corona. All right, all right," a voice said from the speaker. "Take it easy." I jumped up. "Hello," I said, "my name is Oskar Schell." "What do you want?" His voice sounded mad, but I hadn't done anything wrong. "Did you know Thomas Schell?" "No." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "Do you know anything about a key?" "What do you want?" "I didn't do anything wrong." "What do you want?" "I found a key," I said, "and it was in an envelope with your name on it." "Aaron Black?" "No, just Black." "It's a common name." "I know." "And a color." "Obviously." "Goodbye," the voice said. "But I'm just trying to find out about this key." "Goodbye." "But--" "Goodbye." Disappointment #2. I sat back down and started to cry in the lobby of an apartment