“Paulie Pastrami learned that a misunderstanding could often be settled with a cupcake.”

“Pastrami on wheat.”

“and then woe is you, Pauly. Woe to the max.”

“In a word, and bluntly: as they walked around Sankt Pauli, it came to Pelletier and Espinoza that the search for Archimboldi could never fill their lives. They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn’t laugh or be sad with him, partly because Archimboldi was always far away, partly because the deeper they went into his work, the more it devoured its explorers. In a word: in Sankt Pauli and later at Mrs. Bubis’s house, hung with photographs of the late Mr. Bubis and his writers, Pelletier and Espinoza understood that what they wanted to make was love, not war.”

“I would as lief look upon a piece of pastrami-stained paper as on the face of Alfred Kazin.”

“But growing up hadn’t been all cupcakes and parties, and he could remember wishing for a different life.”