“And it all depends,” says the radio, “on the nature of the day. Was it good?” A man’s voice, unpolished, but not unpleasant. “Then it’s all good, for one more day. Kick back. Relax. You’ve earned it. But if it was a bad day?” Groans from an unseen audience. Up behind the radio the wall’s been tiled with old album jackets, color photos of men with horns, or keyboards, muted duotones of women crooning into elaborately caged microphones. “One bad day,” the radio says. “Enough to take everything you’ve taken years to gather, and to build, to take it all and pull it down around you.”

Out in the middle of the room a big round table covered in green felt, surrounded by a motley herd of armchairs and recliners, one of them laid flat. Curled apparently asleep atop it an old man in a brown suit much too big. “Our prosperity,” the radio’s saying. “Our security. The walls around us, the roofs over our heads, the floors beneath the very shoes on our feet, how secure are they? When all it takes is one bad day to lock it all away from us. How real are they, if one bad day’s enough to make them disappear?”

One wall’s mostly free of albums, taken up instead by an overhead garage door, a smaller door beside it creaking open on sullen afternoon. Christian squeezes through, sagging brown jeans, grey-green hoodie, tugging the door shut as an afterthought. “In this,” says the radio, “the richest country in the history of the world that ever was.” He stoops, snagging empty cans from the floor, dropping them a-rattle into a blue tub. “Like many of you,” says the radio, “I had my bad day,” and murmurs swell, a general air of affirmation, “oh, indeed I did. I used to be an up-and-coming architect, what they call a starchitect, if you can believe it,” and a pause for almost laughter. “But I can’t show you any buildings I built, because I never built a one. Not while I was an architect. I told other people how to build them. And they’re all garbage.”

More empty cans, plastic cups, a bottle still a-slosh with dregs. Christian sets the blue tub down to pick his way through all those chairs toward the back wall, the shelf, the radio, “Everything,” it says, “that, before my one bad day? I would’ve considered my life’s work? Crap. All of it, I’m telling you, every building, not even crap. You see things differently, when it all comes crashing down.”

It’s old, the radio, sleekly rounded, a dignified brown overwhelmed by an ivory dial in the middle of its mattely translucent grille. Christian twists it, dissolving that voice in static, advertising yammer bent into woozy synths and a slapping pop, Nissan babes with the body burgundy, love my car same way I used to love key, “You turn that back!” snarls the old man from the recliner, and Christian jumps, knocking something over with a clatter on the shelf.

Pressure pressure pressure pressure pressure, from the radio.

“Now, goddammit,” from the old man on the recliner.

“Best do as he says,” from the man stepping through that smaller door, brown sack coat, grizzled cheeks, cream Kangol cap. “Yes sir, yes sir, what Duckie says,” from the man following after, ducking his head, chewed-up brim of his old straw hat. Christian, scowling, turns the dial back squawking through babble, spoke fenders and two-way sneeze-through, a pirouette of sitar, elect had this to say, a whine and then “a bad day of their own,” that voice.

“What on earth,” says the man in the Kangol cap. “What’s he going on about?” says the man in the straw hat. “What is this?”

“Found a dead bum,” says the man sat up on the recliner. “Them tunnels, under the Ross Island Bridge. You know.” An eyelid, his cheeks, a smatter of spots across his high forehead palely pink against the seamed and wrinkled brown. “The only thing,” the radio’s saying, “ever does any damn good.”

Christian tips back enough to take in the rest of the clutter up there on the shelf, jars filled with nails and bolts and picture hooks, a loose tumble of wood screws and a gnawed nub of pencil, a long and slender copperly shining bullet that he sets back up on end.

“So he’s giving a speech?” says the man in the Kangol cap, sitting himself in a soft plaid armchair. “On the radio?” says the man taking off his straw hat, turning it over in his hands.

“Community radio,” says the man on the recliner, leaning down with a grunt to lever up the back of it.

Christian reaches past the bullet to a couple of fallen picture frames, lifting up the one, a scrap of paper behind the glass of it, a handwritten numeral four, we believe that if the white landlords will not give decent houseing, Christian sets it upright by the larger frame filled with patches pinned to a white ground, an upraised fist blocked out in black, the letters BPPSD, a stylized leaping panther, a flag of red and black and green and gold, “to take away from this,” the radio’s saying, “what I want you to keep in mind.”

“Who’s dealing,” says the man in the Kangol cap. “Who’s got the cards?” says the man who lets his straw hat fall to the felt.

“Never leave the table,” says the man on the recliner, leaning over the table to the middle of it, where there’s a tub that says Aunt Ruby’s Peanuts in faded letters, filled with flat washers and lock washers and nuts hexagonal and square, and beside it a greasy pack of cards he takes up in his suddenly nimble hands, clatter and ruffle. “Then who will do for us?” the radio says. Christian lifts the other toppled frame, a photograph within, blurred black and white on newsprint, dots of ink gone green on time-browned paper, kids at a table laughing over plates of food, two men, three, leaned over, stood behind them, a woman smiling with them, Breakfast, says the caption, at Highland United Church of, and the rest torn away. “That was Michael Lake,” a suddenly different voice is saying, “speaking yesterday at Chapman Square.”

“Where the hell is he?” says the man in the Kangol cap, leaning over to dig a handful of nuts and washers from Aunt Ruby’s tub, and “Why’s he always late?” says the man sitting himself in a wooden swivel chair before his battered straw hat, but even then the overhead door with a clanking grind has started rising. They look up, around, to see him, the boots, the denim overalls, the sharkskin coat, the broad smile and the laugh, “Ha ha!” he claps those big brown hands, and a generically jaunty funk vamp’s kicked off from the radio. “I can’t be late!” says Gordon, stepping into the garage. “It’s my game!”

“Has a point,” says the man scattering a handful of washers by his straw hat. The radio’s burbling something about a proud co-sponsor of the seventeenth annual Portland Zine Symposium. Cards spin over green felt with deft wrist-flicks, two face-down there, two there, two more, and again. Christian’s studying the scrap of newsprint, the men behind those happy kids, the one of them small and skinny, spots across his forehead clearly pale despite years-softened ink, grinning up at the man beside him, tight white T-shirt, big hands leaned on the backs of the chairs of the kids at the table before him, not yet bald, his hair a mighty round of tight black curls.

“Go on, boy,” growls Gordon, pulling a wing chair around to the table with a scrape. “Finish up and get on out of here.” Digging into the tub for his own handful, he lets four or five drop to the felt in the middle before spilling the rest by his cards. “Ante up, gentlemen! I’m here to take your nuts.”

Shoulders shake with muffled chortles, and the one man slaps the table by his straw hat with a yelp. Christian puts the frame back by the radio.

Trinkets and fallalery, bangles and geegaws, furbelows, the occasional bagatelle all racked and scattered, sorted, spread over shelves in the glass case before her, sunglasses in silver, or tortoiseshells of blue, amber, green, or plainly classic black, candy-colored charm bracelets, a bowl of tarnished cufflinks, copper mule mugs and glittering shot glasses set before a couple of silvery cocktail shakers. She looks up, about the store, windowed walls that narrow to a point where glass doors propped open on a not especially sunny day. Deco to Disco, says the sandwich board on the sidewalk, 1960, the numerals painted in reverse on the clear glass lintel. Over in an odd back corner behind another glass case a clerk sits on a stool, reading a paperback. Poor People, says the cover. She coughs demurely. He doesn’t look up.

Past a couple-three mannequins draped and posed in polyester finery to a small high table clouded over with filmy scarves printed with maps, cartoons, faux-embroidery and trompe-l’œil batik, twisted in infinite loops. She selects one spangled with toy rockets and flying saucers, slips it over her head, lifting out of the way her wild hair the color of clotted cream. She winds it twice about her throat, smooths it over the nubbled collar of her sheepskin coat, issues another, louder cough. The clerk turns a page, shoulder shifting in his pinstripe vest. His beard thinly patched.

Back to the glass case filled with baubles. Cocking her head to one side, the other, shaking out her hands, she plants her feet. Holds her right arm out, fingers wiggling. Something slips from the sleeve of her coat, a length of wood, finely turned and polished, improbably lengthening until those fingers close about the tapered handle of it, a baseball bat she twirls once and lifts above her head. One last glance for the clerk, who turns another page.

Splash of glass she drives the bat through the case, shatter and crash she twists it about, knocking loose the jagged shards so she might reach in to pluck a pair of sunglasses, thin wire frames, aviator gold.

“Hey!” the clerk’s shouting, “Whoa! Hey!” Flinching as she rounds on him, sunglasses on her face, scarf about her throat, bat choked high. “The Shrieve,” she snarls.

“Take,” he says, “whatever, money,” lifting to drop a cashbox on the glass, “there’s, we’re mostly cards, you know, debit, and – ”

“Shut up,” and a shake of her bat. “Howling saayungkas, you aren’t even in it.”

“Take the money,” he says, half-lilted to a question.

“Call your boss,” she says. “Have your boss call their boss. Sooner or later you’ll find someone who knows the Shrieve. Say the name.”

“Sharif?” he says, blinking.

“Tell them Marfisa waits upstairs. Say that name.”

“Mar,” he says, “Marfissa.”

“Tell them,” she says, headed off toward the back of the shop. “But,” says the clerk.

Kicks open a door at the back, rattle and skew a sign that says Employees Only. Hallway narrowed by boxes along one wall, a wooden crate at the end, an ottoman tilted on a broken leg. The lobby beyond, handful of steps to the landing of a steep staircase she quickly climbs, up and up to the very top, a single brown door, the numerals three and two and one hung above the peephole of it. Tap-tap she knocks, and listens. Bat swung restlessly down a chop at the air, back up and ready. She tries the knob.

Within an airy kitchen, cabinets white and blue left open on bare shelves, a countertop scrubbed clean. Past that three low steps down to an open room, windowed walls that narrow to a windowed point. The daylight seeping through’s uncertain enough it’s difficult to say how high the sun might be. And boxes everywhere, banker’s boxes white and brown that cover the floor, the sofa, that barricade the great maroon chair in the narrowed point, and man sat tailor-fashion on the one cleared bit of floor before the coffee table. In one long slender-fingered hand a delicate pair of tweezers pinch a yellowed scrap of paper. The other readies a brown glass bottle of mucilage.

“What are you,” Marfisa starts to say, when he blurts, “This one but does the bidding of her grace!”

“Her grace.”

“Even so! The morgue was to be moved upstairs, her grace did say. In the event of rain.”

“Rain.”

“It’s as her grace has said. And now,” looking to tweezers, brush, the photo overturned before him, “the work resumes.” Daubing the bottom of it with the bottle’s rubber stopper, fitting the tweezed scrap of paper to the corner, setting bottle aside to take up a brush, carefully smoothing the typewritten scrap into place.

“When was her grace last here?” she says.

“Oh,” leaning down to blow, gently, on the caption, June 7 1967, it says. MAC L-242 R. Perry, A. Gerton. “Not for days and days.” Thump and bustle without, below. Marfisa turns back to the door half-open, footsteps pounding their way on up. She takes off the sunglasses.

The Harper Chillicoathe bursts through the doorway, bulky sweater and narrowed eyes, big yellow beard a-snarl with an ugly grin, “Oh, Outlaw,” he says. “How kind of you, to bring me back my coat.” He pulls from a flare of light a short but serviceable blade. She shrugs. The man in the room below gathers with alacrity and care his tools, the photos, packing them away.

The first few savage chops aimed at her head, her arms, easily knocked aside by twitches of her upraised bat. Howling he jerks back, shoulders slung, both hands about the hilt above the heavy golden pommel as sidelong, shuffle-stomp, she flicks her bat at him. His hasty parry cracks her askew. She laughs.

He thrusts, she sideswipes, shifts back and back toward the three steps, one foot unsteady on the very edge. Shouting she swings a slap at his face he one arm cycling sideways ducks, feet slipping back into the kitchen. She follows with relentless jabs. He manages to snag the jamb before the hall to right himself, tensing pushing a leap of a lunge blade over her extended bat to punch a fold of her coat and lodge itself deep in her chest. She gasps. He braces to yank but she twists away, ripping the hilt from his hands to quiver there before her. Two heavy limping steps away. She leans a hand on the counter.

“Marfisa,” he says, sternly edged.

Clatter the bat to the floor. Grips with both hands the hilt below that hammered golden pommel. Grimacing she pulls the slowly steely length from out her body with another hissing gasp. Sits back against the counter planted feet to lower the sword an ooze of something thickly white the length of it to dangle a moment from the tip.

“You are a thief,” he says, “an accoster, and a budge, and I have proved it – ”

“You wrecked my coat, is what you’ve done,” she snaps, pulling away the lapel of it, eyeing the matted wool about the hole that glistens wetly.

“Outlaw,” he says, but “Harper,” she says, flatly. Pointing the sword at him with a bitter smile. “The coat,” she says, “is mine. This sword, is mine. These rooms?” Lifting the tip of it to point, the one way, the other, “Mine,” she says. Unwinding the scarf from about her throat. “Go and tell the Shrieve,” she says, and wipes down the blade. Peers the length of it in this light. A sudden lurch at Chilli both hands on the hilt she jerks it up over her head a chop on the trembling verge of coming down, “Go!” she roars, and he’s two steps back out of the apartment on the landing, hastening, footsteps receding away down the stairs.

She drops the sword to clang with a wince by the sink. Works her way out of the sheepskin coat to let it fall to the floor. Looks over the counter to the room below, the man still crouched behind a stack of boxes. “You,” she says. “You may stay. A while, at least. You seem quiet enough.”

Hand to her side, then, out of the kitchen, into the dim hall, away toward the doors at the end of it.

“If I am being honest?” says the gleaming amber phone, there on the unfolded writing surface of the escritoire. “I would have to say I do not know.” Clear, loud, only a hint of crackle. “What you’re saying is, she’s back.”

“She’s been back,” says Petra B, a hand on the back of the nubbled green armchair. “Ah, this is Petra. Anyway, she’s been back about a month now.”

“No,” says the phone. “Well, yes. She is here. There. She is there, she has been there, we can set aside for the moment how honest you should have been with me, with us all, on this point.”

“We haven’t been dishonest,” says Anna, white blouse crisp, sat to one side of the escritoire.

“She didn’t,” says Melissa, perched on the cushion of the armchair, “sorry, this is Melissa, she didn’t, you know, have anywhere else to go.”

“We shall set it aside,” says the phone. “Put a pin in it. We’ll loop back to it, but. The point I wish to make. That I wish to have made. What I mean, when I say, she is back.” Rustle of paper. “You called it a spell.”

“Yeah,” says Melissa.

“It might be called that,” says Anna.

“A spell, you’ve said, she cast,” says the phone.

“Yeah,” says Melissa, motorcycle jacket a-clink over a lacy shift.

“The question,” says Anna, pushing her narrow glasses back up her nose.

“It’s why we started meeting, in the first place. This is Petra.”

“Sorry, this is, I’m Melissa,” says Melissa.

“This spell was broken,” says the phone. “When she came back. When she, returned, to your group. She no longer had this, power.”

Petra looks across the small close office to Anna. “Yeah,” says Melissa. “I guess. Yeah.”

“I want to make certain I have your frame of reference.”

“It will do,” says Anna.

“But now,” says the phone. “What I am given to understand. What I’m hearing you tell me, is that. And this is the point I wish to impress. What you have said is that you believe, as of, a few days ago. What you have said to me is this power has been restored. And thus, that she, is back.”

“Yeah,” says Petra, and “Yes,” says Anna, and Melissa perks up, “Oh,” she says. “I get it. Uh, this is Melissa, sorry.”

“And yet,” says the phone. “It doesn’t concern you. None of you is, concerned. That, having returned, being back, she might now, once more, put. One of you. Any of you. All of you, under that,” again, paper rustles, “spell.”

Anna looks to Petra B, who shrugs, “Not at the moment?” she says.

“She wouldn’t,” says Melissa.

“But what,” says the phone, “is the basis, for this assertion?”

“Sorry, this is Melissa?”

“She’s focused on,” says Petra, “ah, other. People.”

“There’s been a shift in the dynamic,” says Anna.

“What I’m hearing,” says the phone. “What you’re saying. You have put your, trust. In this woman, who has, who had been, the author. Of every, heartache, of every,” a sigh palpably blown from the phone. “Trauma, is not too heavy a word. In this context. That you, as a group, have aired, to me. To each other, these past few weeks. Forgive me. Is, have we heard from. Is, Gloria, on the call?”

Chime and clink Melissa tips back her head, rolling her eyes. Petra lifts her hand from the chair to adjust her thickly black-rimmed glasses. “No,” says Anna.

“You must,” says the phone, “understand. If I am being honest, I would have to say. This, is not, an appropriate, therapeutic. Posture.” A deep breath in through the speaker. “Over a phone. But. Setting this, reluctance. Aside. As regards a decision, we can’t. You can’t. I, can’t. Ask, the others,” Anna leans over the side of the escritoire, “to, bring themselves. Into a situation such as you have outlined. With her,” rustle. “Back.”

“We appreciate your time, Addison,” says Anna, to the phone. “Send your invoice. It will be paid.” Taps the screen of it, cutting it off in the middle of “As you – ”

“The hell,” says Melissa, elbows on her knees. “We didn’t even get to talk about the whole Hunter bullshit.”

“Huntsman,” says Anna distractedly, tucking the phone away.

“Hunter,” says Melissa. “Huntswoman. Whatever,” getting to her feet, “I’m not a guy. That is literally the whole fucking point.”

“She’s not wrong,” says Petra. “Speakerphone’s a terrible way to do group.”

“It was a mistake to go ahead without Gloria,” says Anna.

“Where is she, anyway?” says Melissa, reaching for the greatsword leaned up behind the armchair. “I mean, this whole deal is, like, her thing, right? It’s why we’re here? Why we started coming here, anyway. Is she just, blowing us off, now? Now she’s shacked up with Daddy Jim?” Looking back and forth, from Petra to Anna. “What, am I speaking too bluntly?”

“It wasn’t an I-statement,” says Petra.

Anna opens her mouth to say something, but “Yeah, well,” says Melissa, sweeping past them both, “I, have nothing to do, since her highness is off on some errand, so I am gonna find where she’s stashed the liquor, because I say it’s never too early to start day-drinking around here.” Turning as she opens the door, scabbard awkward in her arms, walkway behind her, dim daylight softly through high and narrow windows. “You’re welcome to join me,” she says, stepping out, “but I don’t think that’s an I-statement, now, is it,” and shuts the door behind her.

“Okay,” says Petra B.

“The stress of what she’s been through, lately, has doubtless – ”

“Oh, stop. You really don’t have to try so hard, you know? To find something nice to say. Not with me.”

“Her position’s rather unique, within our group.”

“The whole quote-unquote Hunter bullshit?”

“The stress imposed must be relieved. Profanity can – ”

“I swear,” say Petra, “I don’t know if it’s because you’re a lawyer, or because you’re,” a gesture, “you’re, you know, but,” that hand brushed back through her black, black hair, “the whole diplomatic thing, it’s totally unnecessary. You don’t have to go to the effort when I’m just, bitching about something.”

“Someone,” says Anna.

“Oh for God’s sake.”

“And,” says Anna, turning back to the escritoire, “I’m not a lawyer.” Taking up a small stack of mail, each envelope already neatly slit. Petra tips back her head, a bit of black lace at her throat. “See?” she says. “Diplomatic. Even when you’re telling me to go fuck myself.”

“That was certainly never my intention,” says Anna, unfolding something on official-looking letterhead.

“And yet.”

Anna tucks the letter away in one of the escritoire’s pigeonholes. “What troubles you?” she says.

“Where is this going?” Unakimboing, Petra leans a hand on the back of the nubbled armchair. “I moved in here, what, a month? Six weeks ago? Whenever. And, I don’t pay any rent, which is great. Electric, cable, water, sewage, none of that crap I have to worry about, and that’s great. Some of the stuff they have me shoot is, okay, is not, you know, ideal, but it keeps her happy, so that’s a wash. And it’s all I have to do. No hustling for waitstaff or bartending or barista gigs, no running PA errands for whatever basic cable producer just hit town, and whatever gear I want? I can just, order it? That, I mean, that’s spectacular. I have time, Anna. I can do what I want with it. And that,” a sigh, “that is, great.”

“It doesn’t sound as if it’s going anywhere,” says Anna. “It sounds as if it’s where it needs to be.”

“But for how long?” says Petra, stepping toward her. “How long can this keep going? How can it possibly keep going? I swear, Anna, I wake up in the morning, I just, know, like an ache, in my chest, I’m gonna open the door and everybody will be, gone. I’ll come downstairs and it’ll all be empty, the art all gone, the bazaar cleared out, that, stew that’s been simmering for weeks, no more coffee, or donuts, the gold, Gloria, you, and, and then, then, what will I do, Anna? What could I possibly do?”

Anna gets to her feet, takes one of Petra’s hands in hers. “That will never,” she says, “would never, could never happen. A court such as ours can’t pack itself up and steal away in the night. What has been built, here? Already? For ourselves, and her majesty, one day it might must come to an end, yes. But it will have lasted. It already has.” Lifting Petra’s hand. “And if it does? Come to that end?” Clasping it to her breast, blinking behind her narrow lenses. “It will only be because we’ll already have gone on, to whatever it is that’s next.”

“Do I,” says Petra, “get to go, to wherever that is?”

“If you come,” says Anna, “you’ll be there.”

Petra closes up her eyes behind her glasses. Tugs her hand free of Anna’s. “Fucking diplomat,” she says.

Jumble and clink the keys in his hand, falling to chime on the pile of them in that wide-mouthed jar, seventy-five cents the price on the tag about it. Past the bins of loose handles and knobs, dulled nickel and pitted brass, wood smoothly turned to satiny finishes, white enamel cleanly bright but chipped, cracked, he stoops, there at the end of the aisle, over a low bucket filled with tiny dice like chips of ruby, sapphire, diamond, emerald.

“Anvil?”

He straightens, shoulders shifting in a blue-sheened coat a trifle tight. “Mason,” he says. In one hand a worn brown leather satchel.

Back through an angled corridor more doorways than walls, out one of them into a courtyard crowded with birdbaths leaned companionably one against another, cold fire pits set before a line of chimineas, great earthen pots and planters and mirror-bright gazing globes, a clustered flock of spindly orreries and armillary spheres flanked by blocky concrete sundials poured from the same mold, and in the middle of it all a dry and empty fountain, the heavy-lipped basin surmounted by reticent angels. A low doorway opens on a steep flight of stairs to a cramped hall, lumpily carpeted and no angle entirely square. Luys knocks once sharply at a door, then opens it wide.

The office within surprisingly spacious, tall dimly shaded windows, spotless dark-stained floorboards, a brusquely modern desk in a corner, and behind it Bruno in a moleskin vest. “You weren’t kept long?” he says.

“I did pass the time,” says Pyrocles. “You’ve a great many distracting articles below.” In the other corner an armchair, a low table with a single cut glass decanter, a dark shelf tastefully appointed, a dourly analog clock. “Someone would’ve met you direct,” says Bruno, with a look for Luys hung back there, by the door, “but her majesty did need a car today.”

“You’d have this business done most privily,” says Pyrocles.

“I’d have it done as smoothly as it might,” says Bruno, “an her majesty says it shouldn’t.”

“Her majesty,” says Pyrocles, stroking with a knuckle those long iron mustaches from his lip, “forbade it the brother of the Guisarme, which is neither here nor there for – ”

“It’s been forbidden to any who yet serve the Hound,” says Bruno. “As well we all do know. To think, it’s come to this,” a shake of his head, “the mighty Pyrocles would cloak himself in sophistry.”

“Bruno,” says Luys, crossing the office to lay a hand there on the desk, and Bruno sitting back. “Give it to me,” says Luys, “if your delicacy forbids.”

“It’s not delicate,” says Bruno, opening a drawer, “to be specific.” Pulls out a rounded golden brick tight-wrapped in clingfilm. Lets it fall, heavily, to the desk.

“You’d press a point, but wouldn’t break the skin,” says Luys, a hand on that brick. “In this, we serve no Hound nor Hawk. We serve the Rose.” Bruno looks away. Luys takes up the brick, turns to Pyrocles, who lifts up his satchel, holds it open, empty. Luys drops the brick within. Pyrocles hefts it with a nod, and zips it shut.

“We only delay what’s inevitable,” says Bruno.

“We provide,” says Luys, “what stability we might.”

“Stability,” says Bruno, “sediments. The crack, when it comes – and it will come – will be all so much the worse, by how much more firm, how stable, all has seemed.”

“You’d have us do nothing?” says Luys.

“I’d have us consider the implications.”

“The desperate, Shrieve – the hungry – are the more likely to lash out. It’s merely as simple as that.”

“The comfortable, Mason, might be just as rash, if they smell a change in the wind. And the well-fed wield a stronger bite.”

“Gentlemen,” says Pyrocles, but “This,” says Luys, a gesture flung toward him and the satchel in his hands, “nonetheless grants us time. A measure of peace.”

“Is it peace we’d buy?” says Bruno. “Or a festering resentment?” A gesture of his own for the satchel, weightily a-dangle. “If this is a gift you’d have us give, the obligation’s well beyond whatever we might bear. But if it’s our duty? To the court, as you might have it?” A shake of his head, rhetorically slow. “You’d have us doling out their portion. You’d forge a bright new link of toradh. You’d set the Hound beneath the Hawk.”

“We’re neither of us the Hawk!” snaps Luys.

“Yet you did decide,” says Bruno.

“And you did concur!”

“Gentlemen!” says Pyrocles, a bit too loud, a touch too quick. “I’d take my leave, if I have leave to take?”

Bruno’s studiedly impassive gaze shifts to him from Luys, and Luys turns about, his frown a disconcerted blend of skeptical amusement and temper interrupted. Pyrocles lowers his head, muttering, “Levity was never my forte.”

“Just as well,” says Bruno. “A light Anvil’s pretty much useless.”

Luys snorts, once, his frown tipping over till a shake of his head recovers his expressionlessness. Pyrocles blows out his mustaches, pewter beads at the ends of them a-sway. “We forget ourselves,” says Bruno. “From one servant of the Rose, then, to another, good Sir Pyrocles? Go as you might; make of it,” a breath, “whatsoever you will.”

“I’ll,” offers Luys, taking a step, but Bruno holds up a hand, “The Anvil knows the way.”

A hand on the knob of the door, Pyrocles looks back. “He means well, the Viscount,” he says. “They all do. Like you, they only want what’s best. What’s right, for all.”

“Of course,” says Luys, stood in the middle of the room.

“That may not be enough,” says Bruno, behind his desk.

Pyrocles hoists the satchel up onto his shoulder, rumpling his coat. Out into the hall and down those stairs, the door at the bottom opening on a wide room crowded with the jetsam of abandoned bathrooms, bowls of old sinks stained and cracked stacked one within another along the floor, parched toilets crowded cheek by jowl, seats of them haphazardly raised or lowered. Coming up along another aisle the Harper Chillicoathe, scowling over his big yellow beard. A hitch in Pyrocles’ step and the scuff of his footfall reaches Chilli, who looks up, over the toilets between them, his scowl becoming something more considered. “Hound,” he says.

“Harper,” says Pyrocles. Chilli’s scowl redoubles, those narrowed eyes noting the satchel. “You had business with the Shrieve?”

“An I did,” says Pyrocles, “it’s none of yours.”

Chilli looks away. Abruptly continues up the aisle, past tubs, over sinks, ducking through a low doorway, around a corner and down a couple of steps into a cramped hall, lumpily carpeted and not an angle entirely square, and Luys, who’s shutting one of the many doors.

“Well,” says Chilli, reaching to push open what hadn’t fully closed. “He’s awfully busy today.”

“What?” says Luys, but Chilli’s closing the door between them.

“You’re early,” says Bruno, still behind his desk.

“Better than late,” says Chilli.

“Sometimes.”

“What did the big lug want?” Chilli crosses the office, but toward the armchair, not the desk.

“The Mason?”

“There was another big lug?” Chilli plucks the stopper from the decanter, waves it under his nose. Cocks an appreciative brow. “Oh, you know Luys,” Bruno’s saying. “Hold on, hold tight, don’t rock the boat, and soon enough her grace will set it right.”

“Her grace,” says Chilli, selecting a squatly heavy glass from the shelf, “seems happy enough in her tent, of late, with her boy, and his by-blow.”

“You’re keeping an eye on them.”

“We’re keeping an eye, yes, though it spreads us terrible thin. Peg Greentooth’s out there now, and Gradasso next to spell her, and there’s two who could be otherwise – ”

“You’re no longer interfering.”

“No,” says Chilli, pouring a slug from the decanter, “we’re no more interfering.”

“We can’t have her riling the Marquess again.”

“Relax, dear Shrieve,” says Chilli, stoppering the decanter with a fillip, “neither you, nor our old dear friend Linesse, has any cause for concern. My associates and I take great, meticulous, horribly terribly boringly detailed pains,” waving the glass, “not even to be seen, at all.” He sips.

“Chilli,” says Bruno, “who pissed in your whisky?”

Shoulders slumping, Chilli lowers his head. “Her majesty’s bitch,” he says, “has claimed her majesty’s old pied-à-terre.” He throws back what’s left of the liquor.

“What?” says Bruno, after a moment.

“The flat,” says Chilli, waving his empty glass. “Hawthorne and Twentieth, above the resale shop.”

“No, I mean, you’re talking about the Outlaw. Marfisa.”

“Yes,” says Chilli, setting the glass quite deliberately there, by the decanter.

“Chilli,” says Bruno.

“She has my sword,” quick and quiet and cross.

“You,” says Bruno, looking away. “You lost a duel. Another. To the Outlaw.”

“I didn’t lose.”

“She has your sword!”

“She cheated!” Crossing from armchair to desk, “that woman, Shrieve, I, I found her, took her in when she wandered witless through a parking lot. She didn’t have her words,” thump his fist on the top of the desk. “And in return she steals my coat, she decides it’s my delivery needs hijacking, if it weren’t for her, Conary would still – ”

“If not for her,” says Bruno, “you’d not be here, with me. We’ve spoken, Harper, about your propensity,” he opens a drawer of his desk, “for squandering opportunity,” dropping a plastic baggie swollen with gold to the desktop, “responsibility, good will,” shutting the one drawer, opening another. “You really ought to look to that.” Pulling out a small white note card, plucking a pen from the rack to one side of the desk. “See to it the Outlaw’s removed from the premises. Do not do the deed yourself.” Consulting a small black notebook, he writes out a ten-digit number. “This man,” he’s saying, “did scutwork for the Duke. Chad, though he’s known as the XO.” Pushing the card and the baggie across the desk.

Chilli takes up the baggie. “I want my sword,” he says.

“There will be time and opportunity enough,” says Bruno. “After.”

“I want,” says Chilli, but Bruno slaps the desk, “This is not an exchange, Harper,” he says. “This is a thing for you to do. Make the arrangements to have your mess cleaned up. Keep me apprised of her grace’s doings. We must know the angles, if we’re to play them.”

Now Chilli takes the card. “If I’m to make arrangements,” he says, “on our behalf, perhaps some petty cash?”

Bruno takes a deep breath in through his nose, and opens a third drawer.

“Imagine, then, your majesty,” says the kid behind the wheel, “the fucking look on my face,” brown pompadour a-bob over the brass and leather goggles pushed up his forehead, “when I find out there’s a whole fucking kingdom of Brooklyn, in the fucking Court of Apples, and that’s the one he’s fucking going on about,” hurtling through an intersection, horn-blare dopplering behind, “any-fucking-way, that’s the sort of shit that maybe ought to be seen to,” twitch of the wheel edging left around a paused bus, back to the right before the startled windscreen of an oncoming truck, “if you’ll pardon me for saying so, ma’am,” eyeing the rearview mirror for a glimpse of the Queen in the backseat, bracing her jostled self as the car humps up and bouncing over a speed bump, “but as I was fucking saying, there’s none of that horseshit to worry about up here! Even though North’s not fifteen fucking blocks away,” one hand flicking a gesture at the driver’s side window as the other twists the wheel, bending them around a slow hatchback, “shit!” at the stuttering honk from an approaching van, hands leaping about, the one to twist the wheel right as the other yanks to downshift, engine whining, a slower floating rise and fall over another speed bump, and “Nothing, to worry,” the Queen mutters as the engine roars.

Another intersection, squealing into a right turn. Squared buildings two and three storeys high and brightly freshly painted whip past either side, a bicycle scoots out of the way, a couple of pedestrians have second thoughts about a crosswalk. “Hang on,” says the kid, flicking the wheel to the right then wrenching left, working the gearshift, engine yowling, rear end slewing all the way around in the middle of the street juddering drifting back a smidge to the side as he rights the wheel and stomps the parking brake. Sudden thunderous silence. “Here we are!” he cries. “Last free house in the Northeast Marches. Oh!” at the sound of the Queen resuming herself, squeak of naugahyde, squonk of springs, he’s throwing open his door to dash around the trunk and open the passenger door smoothly, levering the front seat forward, offering his hand. “So I should announce you?” says the kid.

“This is more by way of a personal appearance,” she says, her new white jeans, old boots, her long and lemon-colored cardigan. “Were it a matter for the court, perhaps, but,” looking past the welter of bicycles along the sidewalk, thick hedges at the corner, to the building across the side street, two storeys of green clapboard and a neon sign unlit, Alberta Rexall Rose. “We’d be there. Not here.” The house before them painted pink with mud-red trim, cramped front porch strung with tiny lights and crowded by a single enormous figure, an evidently empty suit of wicker armor topped by a great woven barrel of a helm.

“I’ll just, wait in the fucking car, then,” says the kid, shutting the passenger door, darting around the front of it, “just, it’s as I’ve said, ma’am!” Opening his door. “The fucking trains! Brooklyn Intermodal! Not the fucking Brooklyn of the Apples!”

Up the steps, onto the porch, she lifts her hand to the doorbell but thunk and clack the door creaks open, purple curtains a-sway. She spares a look for the suit of wicker armor.

Past the foot of the stairs, the hall butler hung about with all manner and type of hat, a derby and a Stetson, a floppy bonnet, a boater and a meshback cap, a dusty black stovepipe and a shako, elaborately plumed, set on the bench of it. Through the wide doorway into a dim, high-ceilinged room, drapes tight-shut and only a couple lamps lit, and seven or eight men and women, black turtlenecks and T-shirts, black tights and trousers, each of them fitted with a black beret, stood in two lines, an aisle that leads to a brownish-pink sofa, pulled away from the hearth, and two women sat upon it, leaned back against either arm, outstretched legs entwined beneath a couple of blankets and a quilt, the one her white hair bound and braided tight, the other her white hair loose, undone, and both the same small crafty smile. The Queen’s expression vacillates, amused, perplexed, widening in alarm as a little round man steps from his place right up before her, “Sic omnes lusere pii,” he intones, savoring the orotundity, “Dionysius, et qui increpuit magno mystica verba sono.” Those men and women all in black utter in a union mirthlessly polished, “Ha! Ha! Ha!” and then file past, one after another, out of the room.

“Well,” says the Queen.

“It’s not often we receive a head of state,” says the one of them.

“Such occasions,” says the other, “must be marked, with pomp and pageantry.”

“You knew, that I was coming?” says the Queen.

“Oh, none of that was for your majesty.”

“Not specifically.”

“It’s something they’ve been working on.”

“By way of,” an airy gesture, “a statement of purpose.”

“An artistic philosophy, expressed within, and by, the art.”

“They did think you might appreciate it.”

“They were quite,” a brow, wryly lifted, “excited.”

“And enthusiasm can be contagious.”

“But also exhausting.”

“Well. It can be exhausting.”

“Will this take long, do you think?”

The Queen turns away, a shake of her head, “This was a mistake,” she says.

“Is her majesty really such a coward?”

Pausing, in the middle of a step. “Do we seem afraid?”

“We seem a bit rude.”

Turning back. “We’d rather not waste anyone’s time,” says the Queen.

“Then don’t.”

“Tell us why you’ve come.”

“It must be terribly important, to have dragged you all this way.”

“I,” she says, “came,” stepping back toward the sofa.

“Thou cam’st?”

“For your help,” says Ysabel.

“But whatever could we possibly offer your majesty.”

“Whose reign is one of plenitude, and peace.”

Ysabel looks away, looks up, “When all,” she says, “was lost,” the picture molding crowded with wigstands and the heads of mannequins, each garishly painted with its clunically peculiar churlish buffoonish face.

“The owr,” says one of them.

“The King,” says the other.

“Our son.” One hand squeezes another, there on the quilt.

“Your son.” The hand lets go, withdraws.

“When all was lost,” says Ysabel, a bit more forcefully. “They chose to stay. The hobs and clods, domestics all, some knights, and also the Starling, and Christienne, her sister, Petra and sweet Jessie, your old amanuensis, even Gloria, even,” a breath, “Marfisa, my Outlaw. Though all was lost. Until Jo Gallowglas came back. And we did turn the owr once more. But.” Looking down, to them on the sofa. “Just yesterday, Marfisa walked away from me. Again. And Gloria, Gloria’s turned her back. Jessie was here, with us, the one day, gone the next. And Jo,” but here she looks away from them again.

“It sounds as if some few are left to you.”

“Enough, at least, to crowd a queen-sized bed.”

“This is not that,” says Ysabel, quickly.

A serrated cack of a laugh. “Isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” a rough-hewn chuckle.

“Do not think to mock me, Mother.”

“Whyever not?”

“You openly consort with whores.”

“And strumpets.”

“I am the very Queen of Heaven!” cries Ysabel, flinging up her hands. “The Zenith, and the Acme! The Rose Arisen from our bitter tears! I will do, whatever brings me pleasure, when, and how, it please me!”

“And still, they have the gall to break your heart.”

“That is not why I am here!” Turning, stepping away, arms folded about herself. “Gloria,” she says. “We never, there was never,” and then, “her entanglement with us was nothing but a cruel jape of the Mooncalfe’s – yet such a lovely grace has come of it. The house, that she has made, and opened, to us all.” Letting go of herself there, in the middle of the room. “We thought to create her a Chatelaine,” says the Queen. “She spat on the office in our hands.”

One of them says, “Then – perhaps – it’s not the company you keep.”

“Perhaps,” says the other, “it’s how you keep that company.”

“Ask again, my pet.”

“Be done with it.”

“I can’t,” says Ysabel.

“You can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

“I can’t,” says Ysabel. “I only ever asked when I knew what the answer would be. When I asked Jo Gallowglas that first time, I knew she would refuse. That’s why I asked.”

“Poor girl.”

“Poor fool.”

“She saved me, Mother.” Stepping back toward the sofa. “She saved us all. And when, unbidden, she told me that, she loved me? A gift I never,” blinking quickly, looking away. “The night that she returned? When we restored the owr? I knew, the answer. She’d told me her answer. But I was, greedy. I needed to hear it, once more. And so I asked again.”

“And she refused you.”

“For a second time.”

Nodding, Ysabel takes a trembling breath. “And now,” she says, “I don’t know. Not anymore, not anyone. I didn’t know what Marfisa would say, or Gloria. I look at the Starling, I look at Christienne, even sweetly stupid Melissa, I look at them and I do not know how any of them would answer. How, how is it, how can I not know? Mother, tell me, how do I do this? How, when I don’t know that I’ll ever know again?”

One of them says, “How, thou art.”

“Why, the rule,” says the other.

“Thou art regal.”

“That is all.”

“So it must be enough.”

“Oh,” says Eddie. “It’s you,” glowering over the taut-stretched security chain.

“Is she within,” says Marfisa.

“The question you should be asking,” he says, “is whether she’s awake. As it turns out – ”

“Eddie,” a sternly quaver somewhere behind him, and he sags against the door. “Well,” he says. “She wasn’t.”

The chain scrapes loose, the door swings wide, he steps back out of her way. A grandly overstuffed loveseat in the middle of the room, piled with pillows and a box or two and more of pads of yellow paper, leaves of them rumpled crimped and pressed by wavering wandering lines of ink that pinch and hump and curl to make the letters that make up words, words, words. Abby Tinker, bundled in a quilted housecoat, pulls herself to her feet at the one end of it, waving away whatever Marfisa isn’t saying, “Don’t mind me,” she rasps. Eddie hustles over to offer an arm she leans on to work her bare brown feet into terrycloth slippers. “I don’t sleep much, but it sure does take an awful long time to do it.” Lifting an admonishing finger. “I’ll be right back. No tomfoolery.” Teetering only a little, she makes her way from the loveseat to the doorway in the corner there, a plank laid above it from one bookshelf to another, bowed beneath the weight of yet more books. Eddie watchfully monitors her progress until she’s passed beneath, then turns balefully to Marfisa, “Why are you here.”

She turns away, wild hair whitely gold, rainshell light and grey. “It does concern you both,” she says, looking over the books close by, the names on the spines of them, Virginia Hamilton, Zenna Henderson, Basma Ghalayini, Eve L. Ewing, Kaiama L. Glover, Sonia Nimr, Grace Lavery, Katherine Kurtz.

“So tell me. I’ll tell her when she’s done. You wouldn’t have to wait.”

“Why are you here?” says Marfisa, looking to him then, his dwindling hair clipped close, his epauletted safari shirt the color of algæ. “You’re not her son. Abby Tinker has no children.”

“Oh, she’s got lots of kids,” he says. “I’m her mule.”

“Mule?”

“I help her with the Forty-Acre Wood,” he says, gesturing at the books, and then, glower resumed, “You people have got to keep it down, over there.”

Marfisa blinks. “That’s none of my concern.”

“I told you, I would call the cops. Whatever it is you’re up to over there, with all those people, it can’t be legal. There’s no way it’s legal.”

“Have you? Called the police?”

“They’re not,” he says, “exactly, rolling up. Are they.”

“That’s not exactly an answer,” she says. A clash of contrary waters from somewhere deeper in the apartment.

“It’s not your concern,” says Eddie. “Why aren’t you concerned.”

“As I said,” says Marfisa. “It concerns you both.”

Eddie steps close, arms up and widening, “That’s not,” he starts to say, but “This smells,” growls Abby Tinker, there beneath the book-freighted board, “distinctly of balderdash.”

Eddie drops his arms, hangs down his head, “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he says. “She can be quite irritating.”

“He told me to go,” says Marfisa.

Abby Tinker shuffles across the room, back toward the loveseat. “I never,” she says, “get tired, of hearing white boys call me ma’am. Bit mannered, maybe, too stiff to fold like money. But it’s sweet in the ear.” Griping the overstuffed arm, lowering herself with a grimace. Peering up through her Coke-bottle lenses, looking for Marfisa. “Now,” she says. “White girls? Are a whole other matter.”

“I have found new rooms,” says Marfisa. “We must determine a time when it is convenient to pack your books and things, and move them.”

“You,” says Eddie, “what?”

“I have found new rooms for you. In a building on Hawthorne, not far away. The views are excellent.”

“You’re kicking us out?”

“I would not kick you anywhere, Edward.”

“You gave this place to us! You said it was ours, to keep!”

“These new rooms are also yours.”

“Bullshit.”

“I can take you there, and show them to you. Now, if you’d like.”

“I knew better than to trust you,” he says.

“What changed,” croaks Abby Tinker. “What happened, that we aren’t safe here anymore. Why do we all of a sudden have to leave.”

“I,” says Marfisa, and suddenly drops to one knee. Eddie takes a single jerk of a step closer. “I must,” says Marfisa.

“Yes?” says Abby Tinker.

“I had thought,” says Marfisa, “all would be well. She would be able, I had thought. She is the Queen.” Shutting her bright blue eyes. “But she will fall. And you did trust me.” Looking up, then, to those light-glazed lenses looking down. “You trusted me, but I did trust, I, I am.” Swallowing a great breath. “I must, apologize,” she says. “My lady, I am so, so very sorry.”

Abby Tinker sits up in her quilted housecoat, hands in her lap, leaning over Marfisa bent before her. “Nobody’s moving,” she says, gently.

“I would do the moving,” says Marfisa. “I would carry it all, from here, to there. You wouldn’t lift a finger, nor Edward neither.”

“You’re gonna move all this,” says Eddie.

“Domestics have packed up a house entire in one brief afternoon,” says Marfisa. “This cannot but be easier.”

“All my books,” says Abby Tinker.

“Are there more within?” says Marfisa, looking to the doorway beneath the plank, and then, as Abby not unkindly laughs, “I will build you shelves! Shelves on every wall, in every room, and set your books upon them in whatever order you wish. And when I’m done, we’ll carry you there, Edward and I, this couch a palanquin, and a wide-brimmed hat to shade your eyes from the sun.”

Abby Tinker takes Marfisa’s hand in her own, there on her lap. “But,” she says, quiet enough the rasp is almost gone from her voice, “there wouldn’t be a lawn.”

“There is!” says Marfisa. “Not so large, but not so starkly new, either. And planting-boxes, for flowers, herbs, or vegetables, as you’d like. Oh, my lady, and a porch, and you might step from it direct onto the cool grass.”

“It sounds lovely,” says Abby Tinker. “But I’m not going anywhere.”

“My lady,” says Marfisa, but Abby Tinker’s let go of her hand, she’s sitting back, resettling the folds of her housecoat. “I’ll stay right here,” she says, and the rasp’s returned, cheerfully rough. “Everything’s fine, and it’ll keep on being fine, until it’s not. Same as it always was.” Marfisa slumps back on her heels. “I am too comfortable,” says Abby Tinker, “and too set in my ways. Which for sure means I’m too old, but there it is.”

“I’ll hold the rooms for you,” says Marfisa, sitting up, hands on her knees. “And prepare them. This,” looking up to Eddie, “I do swear. Stay here, my lady Tinker, but know that should you ever need it, you’ll have another home to come to.”

“That’s, great,” says Eddie. Abby Tinker takes off her glasses, rubs at her eyes, working her fingertips into the corners of them, pressing her thumb to a point just above the bridge of her nose, blinking sightlessly as she returns her glasses to their place. “Girl,” she says, her voice gone quiet again, and gentle. “What you’re trying to give me. It’s, it’s so much. Too much, for me to take.”

“I would only ever ease your burdens, ma’am,” says Marfisa, a hand on the arm of the loveseat.

“What would I ever do with so, so much,” says Abby Tinker. Eddie scowls.

Fluorescents flicker above an oblong table, to starkly light the printed woodgrain peeling at the corners, the shelves stuffed with plastic tubs of abstruse gear, all tangled cords and anonymous shells and casings, black, grey, matte silver plastic, tagged with ragged strips of masking tape, O-DARK 13 and SHADOW UNITS, they say in handwritten scrawls, GIMP and FIDDLE-DEE PARTS, WTF 2ND, DO NOT TOUCH. “This is where we usually do department meetings,” says an unobtrusive man, clutching a tablet computer to his chest, “if it was just one of you, we’d use Geoffrey’s office, but that’s even more crowded,” and a distracted laugh. “Um,” he says, pressed back to allow them room to pass, “I’m sorry,” he says, “I don’t mean to offend, or, but, you’re, which, I mean who, I mean your names, I’m – ”

“Stevie,” says Ettie, dropping into a plastic chair at the far corner.

“Star,” says the Starling, slipping into the chair beside her.

“Tina,” says Chrissie, with a small smile, a little wave.

“Okay,” he says, “so,” tilting the tablet to glance at the screen of it, “maybe,” a shrug, “name-tags? No, wait, I’m sorry, but, I mean, to keep track, maybe we, uh – ”

“There’s only the three of us,” says the Starling. Her tight black T-shirt says Corduroy Queen.

“I think they’ll figure it out,” says Ettie. Hers says Suspiciously Cheap Lasers. Chrissie’s says Bubbles O’Day & the Night. Their hair, the three of them, strictly yellow, rounded in blown-out bobs, their lips the same meticulous shade of dark rich red. “I, ah,” he’s saying, tipping the tablet away again, unfolding the case of it into an angled stand he sets at the one end of the table. “Did you know,” he says, “when they first started shooting here, the, uh,” the tablet falls flat. He sets it up again, muttering, “this might need to be higher,” looking about. “Leverage,” he says, reaching for a couple of thick black binders bursting with typescript, “used these offices,” stacking them on the table, and the tablet on the binders. “The teevee show?” The tablet falls flat again.

“We don’t watch a lot of television,” says Chrissie.

“Well,” he says, re-uprighting the tablet, “I’ll just,” but there are voices in the hall, “a shit about shit at this level,” getting louder, “so get off my dick and go do whatever it is you do about it. Jesus.” A short and thickset man backs into the room, wide head shaved clean, turning about with a click and a switched-on smile. “Ladies!” he booms, and smack of his clapping hands. His violet wide-collared shirt undone a couple-three buttons. “So jazzed you could take this meeting. I was, blown away! By what I saw, a couple days ago at the street fair,” offering one of those hands to Chrissie for a shake, “and I just had,” then the Starling, “to bring your magic,” and Ettie, “to our show. Torni?” The pale and narrow man who’s slipped in after nods, once. “All right!” Slapping both hands on the table. The unassuming man jolts. “All right.” Sits himself across from the Starling, leaving Torni to squeeze between chair-back and shelves so he might work himself into a chair across from Ettie. “We’re doing a couple-three things at once,” the thickset man’s saying, as Torni pulls out a phone to poke and scroll the screen of it. “Because, we’ve got the room on Tuesday?”

“That’s it,” says an older man, grey suit coat, trimly silver beard. “Non-negotiable.”

“So plan on twelve, fifteen hours, call at six. We don’t usually work days that long,” as the older man sits with a shake of his head across from Chrissie, “but, like I say, we’re really excited to bring your magic to our show,” lifting his hands, he takes a breath, and “Hi!” says Ettie in the breach. “My name’s Stevie, my sister there’s Tina, and this is our good friend Star. Hello!”

The thickset man blinks, then laughs, slapping his hands back to the table. “We are going a bit fast! Okay, hi, hello, this is Aamos Torni, who’s directing the episode,” the narrow man nods without looking up from his phone, “directing most of them, this is our first season, and Al Smith here – ”

“Call me Phonse,” says the older man. “I keep the train on the tracks.”

“Everybody calls him Phonse,” says the thickset man. “Yes. And she’ll be here in Stumptown day of, next week, but today she has to come to us from sunny LA, if Bob can ever figure out how to get the tablet to work, that’d be Terry Prudhomme, our intimacy coordinator. And I,” spreading his hands, straining his violet shirt, “am Geoffrey Elliot. I am the showrunner; I run the show.”

“Sorry,” says Ettie, “to interrupt, again, but what is it, you said, the person who’s calling in, does?”

“Intimacy,” Chrissie starts to say, but Ettie holds up a hand. “It’s one of the little things,” says Geoffrey, “we’re getting out of the way, today, just to make sure we’re all on the same page. Setting boundaries. But you ladies are professionals! This won’t be a thing.”

“Professionals?” says Ettie. “Jeff, you saw us sing.”

“Geoffrey,” says Geoffrey. Torni pokes and scrolls. Phonse adjusts the jut of his beard. “Didn’t Reg talk to you?”

“I don’t know, Tina,” says Ettie. “Did Reg talk to us?”

Chrissie sighs. The Starling says, “Her, ah, Ysabel. Told us.”

“Ysabel’s another friend of Reg’s,” says Ettie. “So tell us, Jeff, what – ”

“Geoffrey, please.”

“ – what exactly is this magic you’re hoping we – ”

“Got it!” blurts the unassuming man, stepping back from the tablet, screen of it filled with a woman’s lined, foreshortened face. “Geoffrey?” she’s saying. “You there?”

“Bob,” growls Geoffrey.

“It was,” says the unassuming man, “the wifi back here is – ”

“Bob,” says Geoffrey, “my suggestion to you is to find something far away that keeps you busy long enough I can forget how very much I want to fire you right now. Capisce?”

“You let that boy alone,” says the tablet. Bob, head down, slips out between a burly tattooed man and a guy in an aloha shirt, stood there in the doorway. Geoffrey turns to the tablet, smiling again, “Terry!” he booms. “So glad you could join us.”

“Are they there?” Muffled thumps, swelling in the screen, dropping back, “Fuck’s sake, Geoffrey, can you fix this thing so I can see what’s going on?”

Geoffrey sits there, hands on the table, smile at half-strength. “Hello?” says Terry. “Geoffrey?” The Starling leans over to peer up at the tablet, but Ettie gently pulls her back. The guy in the aloha shirt steps into the room to adjust the tablet, peeking sidelong at the three of them, “Whoops!” says Terry. “There we go. Ladies, good morning, pleased to meet you,” rustle of paper, “I’m Terry Prudhomme, intimacy coordinator for Shadow Unit, and you must be,” peering down, “the Triplets.”

“Triplettes,” says Ettie.

“Got the new pages, Terry?” says Phonse.

“Brady’s flashback?” Another shuffle of paper. “With the tulpas? I don’t see Gus there. Is Gus there?”

“He’s in Toronto,” says Geoffrey, and then, a bit louder, “Gus is in Toronto, Terry.”

“Fuck’s sake! Geoffrey, we cannot possibly work like this.”

“This is not,” he says, as she’s saying “over a goddamn video conference,” and “this is not, you’ll be,” he says, and “with one participant entirely,” and “day of, you’ll be,” and “not even present!”

“Terry!” he shouts, and restores his smile. “Day of, you’ll be hands on. Choreography, rehearsal, the works. Today’s just, dotting tees, crossing eyes for the streamer, the insurance, you know, the stooges in suits.”

“This isn’t busywork, Geoffrey. It’s a process, and must be taken seriously.”

“We understand, and hear, your concern,” says Phonse, looking at his hands.

“We’re going a bit fast, yes,” says Geoffrey, “which we can, because, end of the day? We’re all professionals. Ladies,” turning his smile on the three of them, “what we have in mind is you’d appear in a flashback, and a coda. Agent Brady, one of our ensemble, he’s played by Gus Kenworthy, you’re gonna love him, he’s telling Agent Lau about his first encounter with the anomaly, which is the Big Bad of our show. It’s a one-night stand, with a woman who, played by you, one of you, is anomalous. Her desire generates tulpas. Thoughtforms. Physical manifestations of her mental state. So, we’d have our paramour,” both hands presented toward the Starling, and then the one hand toward Chrissie, “her desire,” and the other toward Ettie, “and her guilt, or reticence, or whatever. Shoulder-angel, shoulder-devil. Like that.”

“But sexy,” says Ettie.

“Think premium cable,” says Phonse. “Hard R. But tasteful.”

“Tastefully intimate.”

“Ettie,” says Chrissie.

“Stevie,” says Ettie with a warning lilt.

“Stef,” says Chrissie, flinching at the look Ettie turns on her, but “This,” she says, “it’s no different, than any other scene or bit or shoot we’ve ever done.”

“It isn’t?” says Ettie extravagantly. “Well, all right! Let’s set those boundaries. So, nudity: frontal, backal, or dorsal or pectoral or whatever, we’re good with that, obviously. It’s what we’re here for. Contact? Well, anything with, whatsisname, Gus, would have to be either me or Star. Not Tina. That’s a bright line. And as for anything between us?” Looking, then, to the Starling, and Chrissie. “Breast-play, sure. Anything genital, oral or digital, that’ll be simulated, but we’ll happily simulate ass or pussy, so you’re good there. Dildos, strap-ons, any kind of toy, that’s also simulated, there’s to be no penetration on the day of, Jeff, there’s another bright line, and if these tulpas get themselves into some kind of bondage scenario – tasteful, of course – there’s some fuzz we’ll need to work out, but we’ll have plenty of time what with all the rehearsal and the choreography, right? But!” Leaning over to address the small crowd in the doorway, “Anybody in the audience, there’s absolutely no touching the girls.” Turning back to Geoffrey. “And if you’re gonna sit in the front row, you’re gonna tip. That’s just common courtesy. Sound about right, sis?”

“Don’t be a bitch, Stephanie,” says Chrissie. Ettie closes up her eyes. The Starling, very still between them.

“Fuck’s sake,” says Terry.

“Well!” says Geoffrey, but Ettie’s chair scrapes back, “oh, now, hold on,” he says, as she gets to her feet, “let’s not do anything rash in the heat of the moment,” but Ettie’s raising her voice over his, “Sorry, Ms. Prudhomme, Phonse,” a brittle little laugh, “Mr. Torni, thanks, Jeff, but no thanks. We’re just not feeling it,” hand on the back of the Starling’s chair, squeezing behind it, “come on.”

“Don’t say no in the room,” says Geoffrey. “Take it home with you. Sleep on it.”

“Come on,” says Ettie, with a quick shove for Chrissie’s chair.

“Geoffrey,” says Terry, “what am I always telling you.” Torni’s tucking his phone away. Phonse has folded his arms. “It may seem chaotic today,” Geoffrey’s saying, and then Chrissie with a jerk seizes Ettie’s hand, “but I assure you,” says Geoffrey, trailing away.

“You want this,” says Ettie, quietly. “This, is what you want.”

Chrissie looks up. The Starling’s hand on Chrissie’s other arm.

Ettie yanks herself free. “Well, Jeff,” she says, “I guess you get to see how much magic you get out of two Triplettes.” Squeezing toward the crowded doorway, she mutters, “Jesus, can’t a girl even leave in a huff anymore?”

“Everybody out!” roars Geoffrey, but she’s shoving her way through them all before anyone can react.

The shoe in her hand a soft-cuffed slip-on printed with checks of white and primary colors. Gordon nods. A piano boogies softly to itself somewhere under a chugging bass. She watches him looking over the cubbies, drumming her fingertips on the countertop in time. A dented cash register hulks at one end, a label freshly pasted at an angle to the back of it, The Order of American Mechanicals United, it says, Local 235. Gordon sets a pair before her, one a double-buckled pump in scuffed blue pseudo-alligator, the other a checkerboarded slip-on. “So,” she says. “These are mine?”

“Welcome to Portland,” says Gordon.

“They won’t fit,” she says.

“You’ll figure it out.” He sets the pump atop the mound of mismatched shoes on the worktable. The bell jingles as she leaves.

Through the pattering beaded curtain, into a cramped kitchen all scarred linoleum and darkly looming cabinets. Filling a kettle at the red tub of a sink, he sets it on a burner, cranks the knob to high, absently scratching the back of his head, where white curls ring his dark bald pate. “Too blasted many,” he mutters. Opening a cabinet, he rummages for a thick-walled mug, a red plastic jar that says Folgers 1/2 Caff. The bell jingles, out in the shop.

He shuts the drawer he’s opened, sets a spoon by the mug, “Better not,” he mutters, pushing out through the beaded curtain, “if that’s you, boy – ”

It’s the Marquess of Northeast, the Helm Linesse, stood in the middle of the shop, gunmetal hair cropped close, her two arms pale and bare the length of them. “Porter,” she says.

“If it’s titles and affairs of state you’re after,” he growls.

“It’s clarity I’d have,” she says, looking past him to the cash register. “Do we speak now Northeast to North?”

Following her gaze, his scowl curdles. “Rabbits always about, yipping and flexing, that’s all it is.”

“You haven’t taken it down.”

“They’d only put up another. And this is, after all, a free house.” The hissing of that unseen kettle climbs enough to be heard over the softly music. “I could make two cups,” says Gordon.

“You were worried, before,” says Linesse, sitting at the small kitchen table.

“I never worry,” he says, and dollops steaming water into mugs. “No future in it.”

“You came to me, concerned,” she says. “That their yipping in your shop might discourage your domestic kaffeeklatsch.”

“We never klatsched,” he says, dumping spoonfuls of grounds. Chiming as he stirs. “But I did come to you.”

“You’re no more concerned?”

He sets a mug before her. “Nobody here to discourage, anymore.” Sitting himself across from her. “All of them what’s loosed and fancy-free are down Southeast, taking their due direct from her majesty’s own hand.”

“You’re alone?”

“Boy’s about, time to time.” Gordon sips his coffee. “He’d like a fight, but not with bravos. He’s got beef with the mortal hounds, up St. Johns.”

Linesse smiles at her mug. “There’s a grocery on the line, at Fremont. The Mooncalfe duels there in the parking lot, most nights. Boasts she’s yet to lose a bout.” Lifts it, breathing in. “And you still take the shoes,” she says.

“No one else to do it.” Another sip. “Although,” he says. “Last week, a man in a suit and tie, but dirty, frayed, shoulder sprung, accustomed to good barbering, but hadn’t shaved in days. Had a saddle Oxford, grey suede gone brown, cream of it grey, and I didn’t, Linesse, I didn’t know it. Spent an hour or more, tossing shoes about. Nothing.”

“The match hadn’t come?”

“For all I know,” says Gordon, “it never was.”

“Come back with me,” says Linesse. He lifts up his head, on the verge of a frown. “Come back with me,” she says, again. “They don’t come here for this, this building. Those shelves. They come to where the Porter is. Come back with me.”

“I give no drop,” he says. “I take no pinch.”

“It would be as free a house as this,” she says. “More. Never another morning coffee spoiled by preening hares.” His shoulders lift with a grumbled snort. “I know a dozen storefronts that would do, on Going, Albina, Killingsworth. Come back with me, to see.”

“A dozen,” he says, sitting back. “This offer’s not a whim. You came here to make it.”

Those pale shoulders shrug. “There’s no more bond between us, Gordon. Our eyes are clear on that. Unstiff your neck. Come back with me. Do your work in peace.”

“To go, from Hare, to Helm,” he says. “Your eyes may be clear, Linesse, and mine, but they’re no more the only eyes in the world.”

She’s the first to look away, to the mug she lifts for one quick sip. “Blast and rot your pride, old fool,” she says, and scrapes back from the table.

“Soon enough,” he says. “And grace and beauty dog your steps, woman.”

She’s pushing through the beaded curtain, but the bell’s already jingling, out there in the store. Tipping back his head, he says, “Again?”

But it’s Christian, stood in the middle of the shop, Linesse off to one side. “Boy,” growls Gordon, heading for the counter.

“George Honeycutt,” says Christian, and Gordon freezes. Linesse lifts the back of her hand to her mouth. “That’s your name, isn’t it,” says Christian. “That’s why it says George’s on the window.”

“That ain’t why,” says Gordon, but Christian says, “It was the kids started calling you Gordon,” says Christian. “At those free breakfasts you were running. Because you looked like the guy on Sesame Street.”

“Who have you been talking to,” says Gordon.

“People,” says Christian. “Around. About. You’re a goddamn hypocrite.”

“Boy!” snaps Gordon, but Christian plows on, “Don’t go home, you’re telling me, you can’t go home, your mother will never know you again, boy, don’t even try, and here you are, playing poker every other goddamn night with your buddies from back in the day!”

“Stop this!” cries Linesse.

“You don’t know what you’re messing with,” says Gordon.

“You’re right,” says Christian. “One thing I can’t figure, it was, forty? Fifty years ago, when George Honeycutt up and vanished. You couldn’t’ve been more than, what, twenty-five? So why the hell you look like that?”

“Boy!” roars Gordon, pounding the countertop.

“No,” says Christian. “Damn your boy, and you,” turning, heading for the door, “and all this goddamn bullshit.” The bell, frantic at the force with which the door’s yanked open, slammed shut.

“Blasted Duckie,” mutters Gordon, “filling his blasted head with nonsense. What.” Stepping back from the counter. Linesse staring wordless at him. “What is it, woman? What?” His one hand, both of them coming up to his forehead, the top of his head, and the look on his face when his fingers find there not a balding pate, but a mighty round of tight black curls.

The sidewalk whiles away through trees top-heavy, greenly thick, a line of concrete shirred with drying mud. The Harper Chillicoathe picks his way along toward a flatly sheen of water glimpsed through the trunks. A sudden awkward decline ends the walk in a clean-scraped roundel, a railing jerry-rigged from old pipes at the very edge of the riverbank. A rope-lined tar-papered gangway angles over the water to a short but crowded wharf, a couple cabin cruisers and a smattering of motorboats, a line of sailboats nestled close, empty masts a white-branched thicket against more grey-green trees across the river, and a cul de sac of floating homes and houseboats. It’s all astonishingly quiet against the distant endless thrum of freeway traffic. Chilli looks up to the closely ceiled wet-cotton grey of the sky, scratching his chin beneath his yellow beard. Sleeves of his bulky oaten sweater pushed past his elbows. The windows of the one house there scummed over all with dust. A floating deck, boards greyly desiccated, long since out of true, the hot tub in the center of it filthily dry.

He sets off down the gangway, aluminum ringing under his boots, but halfway along he stops, looks back. A little man’s stood at the top of the ramp, gazing down at Chilli with a blandly lack. Chilli shakes his head, turns with a sigh to go on, but the little man’s on the ramp before him, much too close, and smiling about too many teeth.

“Cearb,” says Chilli.

That smile somehow grows wider.

“You serve herself,” says Chilli.

“So much depends upon a word,” the little man says, conversationally enough.

“The loathly lady,” says Chilli. “I’d ask of her a boon.”

“And yet, you’re here,” says the little man.

“A by-blow,” Chilli’s saying, “just one, of which she still has dozens, I don’t doubt. I had one, once, myself. A lovely creature. Not much I wouldn’t do, to have her like again.”

“And yet,” the little man says, “you’re here.”

“I’ve business with these mortal hounds,” says Chilli.

“Far be it from me to get in your way.” The little man opens his mouth and those teeth, those teeth do part as he lunges for Chilli toppling backwards clang his one hand flung wide curling a fist to grip about nothing, nothing at all.

Slumped beneath the little man, the bouncing gangway slowing, gentling, Chilli winces at the polyp of slabber that dribbles to hiss close by his beard. Lips purse over those teeth, shutting them away. “Far be it from you,” says the little man, “to draw a blade on me.”

“I’m yet a knight,” spits Chilli.

The little man shifts his weight, pushes up and back, “You’d threaten me with spurs?”

“I’ve more than spurs,” growls Chilli, kicking shoving to roll himself over and out from under as the little man laughs, “Good!” the cry, somehow at once quite loud, yet far away. “You’ll need it!”

Chilli gets to his feet on the jouncing gangway. There’s no one else there with him.

A step forward, another, as the gangway settles again. He looks back over his shoulder to see the little man returned to the top of the ramp, smiling down with teeth too bright for such a cloudy day. “Eleleu!” he crows. “Eleleu!”

Chilli heads on down the gangway to the rough grey boards of the wharf, the small white cabin at the corner. Hayden View Moorage, says the sign over the door of it. Beyond the façades of floating homes and towering bows of boats crowd close to either side, the wharf a shadowed alley between, clink of sailboat fittings nudged by a fainting breeze, and the lap and sluff of water drowns the distant traffic’s thrum. Boots loud on the boards he counts off moorings to his left, stopping at the fifth, a crooked gangplank propped between wharf and yellowing deck, the blocky snout of a houseboat snugged between a cabin cruiser draped with blue tarpaulins an an attempt at a miniature Queen Anne, the siding and spindlework a folly of lavender and teal. Chilli casts about, looking over cleat wound about with thick grey line, the railing about the porched-over bow, screen door blank against the shadows within. “Hello?” he calls.

“The request,” a voice lazily loud from within, “is for permission to come aboard.”

“I was told to meet the XO here.”

“You have but to ask,” with a sing-song lilt. Chilli sighs. “Do I have it?”

“What’s that.”

“Permission,” says Chilli.

“To?”

Looking about, arms akimbo, shaking his big yellow head. “Permission to come aboard,” he says.

Thump, the screen door’s kicked open. “There,” that voice within. “Was that so hard?”

The cabin’s dim, brief curtains drawn, a table to one side and a figure slumped over it, wrapped in a thickly bulk. A flag pinned to the back wall, red of it bright even here, criss-crossed with spangled bars of midnight blue. A sharply narrow man leans out to pull the screen door shut with a click. “So,” says Chilli. “You’re Chad.”

“Chad’s dad,” says the man, dropping onto the table’s other bench.

“You’re Chad’s, father?”

A laugh. “Nah, man, Chad is dad.”

“I was told he was the XO.”

“Meet Danny Moody,” hand pressed to the lapel of his army-surplus jacket, “the new Executive Officer of this outfit.” Chilli’s eyeing the other figure, still unmoving, the swaddling an unzipped nylon sleeping bag. “Don’t mind Jasper,” says Moody. “He’s a rusty old weathervane. Takes a hell of a gust to shift him, but he always ends up pointed the right way. So!” A clap too loud for that close space. “I was told you want somebody out of somewhere.”

“Something like that.”

“So we’re in the neighborhood.”

“It’s a delicate matter.”

“That you want smashed in a million pieces,” says Moody. “Hey.” He shrugs. “We’re honest about what it is we do.”

“What we want,” Chilli takes a breath, “what I need,” tipping back his head, sighs. “Take your time,” says Moody. Chilli shoots him a look. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says.

“You don’t want somebody gone,” says Moody.

“I’ll do it myself,” says Chilli.

“You’ll do it yourself. Okay.” Pushing back the cuff of his jacket to check the golden watch about his wrist. “That it? Because, if so, ipso, you wasted my time, you wasted yours, you’re wasting Jasper’s, which, frankly, takes effort – ”

“There’s something else you can do for me.”

“Which,” says Moody, “would,” leaning forward, sharp elbows on the table, “be, what?”

Chilli’s hands in his pockets, looking down, yellow beard spread over his chest. “Watch someone for me. No smashing. No interfering, no contact at all. Is that something I can hire your hounds to do?”

“My men,” says Moody, pointedly, and then a shrug. “What do you think, Jasper?” The slumped figure doesn’t budge. “We can evolve, no question, but should we? Ought we?” Peering up at Chilli. “Ah, what the hell, buddy. We’ll do it. Who and what and where and when?”

“A camp,” says Chilli. “East of the airport, hard by the slough. You’ll find her there,” looking away, the flag on the back wall. “Among a dozen others or so. But,” he takes a step toward the windows across the cabin, elaborate gingerbreading visible through the gap in the curtains.

“Let me guess,” says Moody. “It’s another delicate matter.”

“This can’t come back to me. To us. You can’t be seen, and if you are, no one can know who asked it of you.”

“It’s a homeless camp,” says Moody. “Right? Who’s gonna ask?” Leaned away from the table, a hand on his knee. “Look, buddy, discretion’s a watchword, but we need to know at a minimum who it is we’re keeping an eye on, here.”

“Someone,” says Chilli, “who once was, highly placed.”

A chime sounds. Chilli turns back. Moody’s grin’s quite sharp, and there’s the flash of gold about his wrist. “Oh,” he almost croons, and, relishing each word, “could this possibly be, the dear, departed, Bambi Jo Maguire?”

“You know her,” says Chilli, each word distinct, deflated.

“Aw, man, me and her, we go way back!” says Moody. “She was the best man at my wedding! Aw, hell, buddy, I’d do this one for free!”

Slither and squeak, Jasper sits up, sleeping bag falling away from tangled matted hair and glaring eyes. “But the men, you know,” says Moody, holding out a hand. “They won’t.”

Chilli pulls out a thick roll of bills wrapped about with a rubber band. Sets it, upright, on Moody’s palm.

“Force and Victory!” someone calls, and Christian starts awake. “End of the line, y’all,” whoever it is, the driver, at the front of the bus. “Ollie ollie oxen free!”

He’s on a bus. Sat on a slatted wooden bench toward the front of it, passengers filing past and off, ducking their way out the front door, men and here and there an occasional woman in coveralls, lunch pails in hand, jackets slung from shoulders, hard hats still on a couple of heads, a man in a brown suit and a bow tie, shifting from one foot to another as he waits for the press to pass, a gaggle of kids in dungarees and sneakers, swaying poodle skirts, subdued perhaps the lot of them but clearly amused by some entirely private joke. Christian, smiling, frowning, shifts on the bench to look out the sunstruck window spotted with old rain. “Puertas a mi izquierda,” he mutters, watching them make their way along the sidewalk, waving, laughing, calling out, trudging stoop-shouldered away, tipping back a head to smile at the still-high sun so bright, and in her arms a broad round footed platter, a cakestand, all of milky green glass.

Christian leaps to his feet almost to collide with an older woman veiled in black and hatted, clutching the arm of an even older man, his loosely double-breasted suit and tie of black. “Sorry,” says Christian, hung back with a grimace, following after as they shuffle together to the front of the bus. Nodding to the driver as the couple works their way down the steps, the driver’s uniform and cap of navy stripes on periwinkle, and the badge at his breast says Portland Traction Co. His dark-jowled face unaccountably amused. “Interesting sweater you got there,” he says.

“What?” says Christian, and then, “It’s a hoodie.”

“Hoodie. Sounds like hoodlum, but I bet that’s why you kids like it.” The doorway cleared, Christian leaps down the steps, “Get on home!” the driver calls. Levers the doors shut. The sigh of releasing brakes, snort of the engine, the drably olive bus pulls away. Slipped through the milling crowd he turns about. A big band’s strutting somewhere, led by a scratchy chorus of horns from the big wooden speaker mounted on a corner of a couple of rambling storeys, Vanport City Shopping Center, chrome letters in a cursive sleekishly austere. Across the way a flat-roofed building, United States Post Office, the sternly sans-serif letters across the front, Vanport, Ore. A flagpole high before it, and canted on the grassy curb a small round sign, Jay-Walking is a Grave Mistake. Another flagpole there before another ramble of a building, Administration, say the sternly letters by the glass front doors, and a slip of red’s been pasted to the one of them. The only cars are parked, extravagantly streamlined, small windows, narrow wheels. The crowd from the bus almost entirely dispersed along side streets, footpaths, an aproned woman, box on her hip, left chatting with a suited woman in a skirt, a few of those kids share a furtive cigarette, and that song still chugs from the speaker, you’d turn your back on a star, your heart is fixed, and you’re against, the state of things as they are. No one to be seen that carries a cakestand.

“Okay,” mutters Christian. “Now what.”

Past the city offices the street curves along a slender stretch of water neatly edged by trim low trees and shrubbery to the right, and two storey houses lining the left, each of a length, each with three wrought-iron porticos spaced along the front to shelter two front doors side-by-side, and clusters of windows above and around, and each with the same low-hipped roofs, and the siding and the trim of each the same warm yellowing browns and creams. Curtains here and there, lace-trimmed, tied back, or roman shades, venetian blinds, or stark bare light-struck glass are all that differentiate this apartment from that, or the blue tin wagon left by the one front step there, a nosegay wound among wrought-iron curls, but each and every one of those front doors has something red, a sheet of paper, pinned to it, or beside it, hung limply in the still and quiet air.

A distant peal of laughter, someone far-off calling. The street about him empty. No one to be seen, moving through a doorway, past a window. No cars at all, no busses, trucks. The slender water glassily flat.

Off the dusty street, over the grassy curb, a foot on the step lifting up to the narrow portico. Red paper flyers, pasted to the sidelight of the one door, pinned to the lower panel of the other, simply printed in big block letters:

REMEMBER
DIKES ARE SAFE AT PRESENT
YOU WILL BE WARNED IF NECESSARY
YOU WILL HAVE TIME TO LEAVE
DON’T GET EXCITED

The paper flutters. Christian steps back and back again, out into the street. The air’s changing, rising to a sound, the rush and wash of tossing leaves, though the greenery about him’s unruffled, becoming a rumble. Around the curve of the street here comes a pickup truck all bulbous fenders and slanted, bifurcated windscreen, the wood-paneled rear of it slewing about so slowly toward him as it rides a bubbling slurry of Christian’s running, running, “Jesus!” gasping as his foot hits water, a puddle spread before him rising a-tremble with the swelling sound, waves skirl and spilling slosh before him ankle-deep, now stumbling shins arms wide his pell-mell slowed to frantic, kicking strides, the water climbing his legs now sucking at his knees as that pickup backward floats on by, fenders swallowed in froth. The first time he falls he manages to work his drenched way back to his feet. The next swell topples him, and when his head finds air his feet churn groundlessly beneath him. An enormous groan off that way, a mighty crack, “Oh, God!” arms flapping uselessly about, pop of glass a screaming wrench a splintering fusillade of snaps, “Oh, shit,” water spinning him along, tossed and turned about to just catch sight of the first of those houses, curtains trailed in humped and bubbling rolls of white-grey water sloshing over sills of ground-floor windows, blundering through doorways beneath those porticos slowly turning, the whole long face of it swinging away from him, a building entire, shoved from its footing, stately to float away. And there, another, and another, jagged spars and broken wood at the corners shockingly bright against staidly colors of trim and siding, there’s one foundered broadside on the spindly legs of a water tower too frail, it seems, to bear up under the brunt and yet, and yet

Christian’s hand finds a branch, seizing, pulling, both hands braced against the rush of water choking on the filthy spume his leg now crooked about an unseen trunk, breathing when he can as he holds, he holds, until sometime later he doesn’t have to hold on quite so tightly, until sometime later his sodden clothing no longer floats but drags at him plastered against him shivering, relaxing, half-falling from his perch to find the muddy ground not even a foot below. All about the gentle patter of dripping trees, the particular crackle and lick of water seeping into earth.

An old road paved some time ago, trees grown up where none had been, and not a splinter or shard, not a crumble of brick or rusted curl of iron, no pickup truck, no water tower somehow lofted high. A slender stretch of water glimpsed through the trees, mikily brown, and there on the raggedly overgrown bank of it, he blinks, one last lone bit of flotsam, tipped heavily back against the mud a statue of stone, perhaps, or molded concrete, an eagle’s head much too large for an eagle, blank-eyed, starkly beaked, the rounded shoulders of its folded mighty wings.

Squelching he heads down the road toward the bend, blocked by a stretch of cyclone fence. A sign’s hung high, Heron Lakes Golf Course, it says, and an arrow points right, North Gate Entrance. Beyond, hillocks and hummocks cloaked in shaved green grass roll away with politely shady copses. Christian dripping wipes mud from his forehead, plap, fingers curled through the links of the fence. Faint laughter, thirty-three, can you believe it? Two men in brightly shirts, lemon yellow, salmon-belly orange, crest a not too-distant ridge, chatting companionably until one of them stoops to press a tee into serenely evened grass, and carefully sets a small white ball atop it.