The toilet in the light of morning sparkles, peach enamel, polished chrome, half-filled with water clear as crystal. Leaned over it Becker shirtless one hand braced on porcelain tile, sweatpants sagged below his buttocks and his other hand, his arm works quickly, with a rhythm, breath gone ragged rough but quiet, quiet, held, expression gripped with effort, a swallow interrupted.

The first jet splots the rim, the underside of the upraised seat. The second’s less of a jet than an ooze that heavily falls to mar the water, a whitely oily bolus that unskeins itself apart, a creamy cloud thinning to watery milk, and Becker shivers. Sighs as he catches sight of his sticky fingers. Tears away a couple of squares of toilet paper to fold and wipe. Eyes the splotch left slickly glistening on the toilet rim as he drops the wadded paper in the bowl. Flushes. Lowers the seat, the lid, to hide it away.

Dressed now, grey trousers, blue-striped shirt, hastening down the stairs into the parlor, shoes in one hand, leatherette portfolio in the other. A messenger bag slumped on the floor there, and with a green-socked foot he toes open the flap of it to tuck the portfolio within. “Hail, the conquering hero!” calls someone from the dining room beyond, Jimmy, baggily soft pants in a zig-zagged profusion of bricky, earthen reds and oranges and yellows, his sideless T-shirt printed with a smiling cartoon, a monocled brown face under a limp-brimmed yellow hat, a signature that says Panama Jack.

“That’s what you’re wearing,” says Becker, slipping on his shoes, hoisting one onto the overwhelmed sofa to tie it.

“You know,” says Jimmy, “it’s a pleasure? To see your grasp of the obvious remains as firm as ever.” Stepping into the parlor, dubiously eyeing the pile of coats, the crumpled cardboard box of books that Becker’s trying not to dislodge. “You really think Oz wants you stepping on the cushions?”

“You told me to wear a tie,” says Becker, setting both feet on the floor, tobacco wingtips, cracked but shining.

“I did,” says Jimmy. “You have a job interview, and ties are appropriate for interviews. I, on the other hand, already have gainful employment, and this?” a gesture, for his own ensemble, “is appropriate for attending a riverfront carnival, which we shall do together, upon the conclusion of today’s job of work.”

Becker stoops, buckle-jangle as he scoops up the messenger bag. “You really think I’m gonna get it.”

“Arnie,” says Jimmy, brushing off Becker’s shoulders. “They hired me, didn’t they?”

Last of the water crashing about her feet, she leans a moment against the stained shower wrap, one hand on the knob, dripping head hung low until a growling ratcheting cough drives her up to hawk and spit at the drain.

Sunlight slices through an otherwise unlit office to brightly strike abandoned cubicle walls, slash shadows across empty aisles. At the one end, glass doors look out on a dusty lobby, and one of the cubicle walls has been wrestled into the stark hot light, meanly nubbled panel of it knocked out, and damp dark clothing draped over the top rail to dry, black jeans, a T-shirt, briefs and a limp grey bralette, a pair of once-white socks. Jo sits tailor-fashion on the carpet before it, back to the sun, hair still wetly dark despite the light, mud-colored eyes hooded in shadow. Laid before her a black glass phone, screen cracked, and a limp black leather sheath under a long lean knife, hilt wrapped in dark wire, blade of it tapered to an ineluctable point, but streaked and blotted with darkening orange. A stained bit of cloth wadded in the one hand on her knee. She lifts her other arm to sniff the black-haired pit of it. Tips back her head. Gets to her feet, snags the damp briefs from the rail to yank them on.

Quickly across a small and empty parking lot toward the overgrown verge, through high stiff grass, dark clothing mostly dry, small grey T-shirt plastered to her, it says something like Bicholim Conflict Diamonds in cracked and fading letters. Hair dried a stiffly indifferent brown. Jo crouches in the scrub and waits, as whipping past the road ahead, from left to right cars trucks and vans until a pause, a gap, she darts across the pavement to the narrow median, clutching the slender trunk of one of the shortly neat young trees planted there at regular intervals, watching, waiting for another gap in the traffic that roars by now right to left.

Crossing a wide field under a cloud-scraped sky, she’s headed for the caravanserai in the far corner, the tilted sedan, the hatchback, the trailer rocked back on its wheels, all paying court among the tents and mounds of junk to the motorcoach stranded before the far line of trees, wheels tangled in scrub, sheet pinned to the side of it, a sign, The Last of the International Harvesters, letters greenly sprayed. Someone’s calling, “Chit-chit!” A dumpy woman, shaking an enormous tub of kibble in both her hands, “chit-chit!” Her sweatshirt says The Thing, What Is It? in letters red and green across the front. Heavy black spectacles seal her eyes away. She sets the tub in the rutted dirt track as Jo approaches, and turns for one of the lawn chairs there before the motorcoach, as rustling threads through the grass all about and junk rattles and clinks, a draped tarp lofts, and cats, a dozen or more, streaming leaping mewling flowing yowling spitting gyring about as she sets the lawn chair by the tub, marmalade and mackerel, lilac and chocolate, spotted, ticked, tuxedo and torbie, cinnamon, silver, and scrabbling over the roof of the motorcoach an extravagantly filthy cream, one eye screwed-up and lost in a flat-nosed face. The dumpy woman sits herself, unlocks the lid of the tub, and reaches for a makeshift scoop, a milk jug with the bottom of it hacked away. She scatters kibble to the ground, over the roil of fur at her feet.

“Jellyroll,” says Jo, pointing. “Handsome Boy. Whitman, Elimiel?” Squatting at the edge of the frenzy. “Elimiel. Jetson, Sir Snugalot. Tony P and Tony Q.”

“Other way round,” says the dumpy woman, “chit-chit!” scattering another scoopful.

“Tony Q,” says Jo, revising her point. “Tony P. Hot Soup. Moonsault, Heisenberg, but I don’t see Springbok?”

“She’s around. Chit-chit!”

“That’s Suplex, and there’s the Majestic Mister Freel, right? And Archibald, and Inquiline, Ersatz, and this,” as that filthy white cat ripples up to her, butting her knee, “is Malocchio, the Great and Terrible.”

“Chit-chit!” The dumpy woman tosses one more scoopful, currents shifting among the cats to follow its pattering fall, and drops the scoop in the tub, starts locking its lid back down. Kibble-crunch and crack, an outraged hiss or two, a scuffle there, “So,” says Jo, “ah, May? You maybe have something that’s good for cleaning knives?”

“What do you have to clean off a knife?” says the dumpy woman, her eyes unreadable behind lightlessly opaque lenses.

“Rust,” says Jo. “I think.”

“Well, rust. You just need some vinegar. Let it soak a bit, then rub it down. It’ll come right off.”

“Vinegar.”

“Might have some, under the sink.” A calico leaps into May’s lap, turns about once and leaps off again as she lift her hand. Almost immediately a blue tabby leaps up to luxuriate in her stroke. “Help me get this inside,” she says, nudging the tub of kibble as Jo gets to her feet. “We’ll see what we can find.”

Onion, carrots, celery, the quickly even whicking of the knife reducing each to the same small regular dice swept neatly into segregated piles, white, orange, green. The onions tipped into the smaller pot on the camp stove, crackle and pop in the hot oil coating the bottom, stir and sizzle. A single bubble breaks from the richly surface of the stew that brims the larger pot beside. “An but Lily,” says the old man, closely watching them at work, and none of the rest that mill about the warehouse floor, or the art-filled stalls. “Herself most powerful sad.” A bucket hat rumpled in his hands. “Missin your ways about’n house. The marvelous scent a yon pottage.” His eyes close beatifically. The Buggane with a shrug stirs softening onions. Powys dices the last of the celery.

“Lea this place,” says the old man. “Come home wi me.” Goggie, scattering a pinch of salt over the onions, timidly shakes her head. “Can’t,” says Powys, wiping down his knife.

“Can’t?” says the old man, with a flash of heat. “Yer nawt suchen fool, a course ye’n.”

“Can’t,” says Powys, eyeing the onions. “I never served your house.”

That hat’s dashed to the floor, “Nen matter!” the old man snaps, and then, relenting almost immediately, “Y’ars mended be done. Broths a simmer. Herself missen’em so, an all.” He makes no move to retrieve his hat. “Ye’n your portion, ever an always. Bonds’n bond.”

“We have our portion.” Powys lays a hand on Goggie’s, Goggie who’s trembling, eyes fixed on that hat. “The Queen herself has seen to that.”

“As unnatural! All yon standen about. An work needs done!”

“True, m’lord,” says Powys. The Buggane spills carrots into the pot with the onions, stirring, stirring. Goggie leaps to stoop for the hat, darts behind the old man to set it on his seething head, smooth the rumpled brim, “Thar,” he says, “good girl. We’s go.”

Goggie quickly shakes her downturned head.

“Ranh!” The old man shoves the smaller pot to topple off the camp stove spilling clatter and yellow, white and orange, oily splat at the Buggane’s shaggy feet. “Enow! Herself’s awaiten! Is’t a-comin home, and back wi’me, anow!” Seizing Goggie by an arm she tries to yank away with a shriek. Powys turns away. The Buggane drops the spoon. “Hey!” says someone, someone else.

Scrape and clank she steps from the crowd that’s gathered about, black motorcycle jacket over a flowery sundress, planting a scabbard the dull iron chape of it ringing on concrete, wood frame rising to a polished throat cuffed with felted wool, the mighty quillions of the greatsword within high and and wide enough she folds her elbows crooked to lean her weight on them. “We got a problem?” says the Huntsman, Melissa.

“Nar, ne problem,” mutters the old man, letting go of Goggie. “Y’en move along.”

“And who the hell are you, telling me to move along?”

“Gwenders are the Addition, miss,” he says, touching the brim of his hat.

“And what, Gwenders, is the not-problem that made this awful mess?” A gesture, for the carrots and onions spilled to the floor. The old man turns away with a dismissive wave. “That’s right,” says Melissa. “Move the fuck along.”

She hefts the scabbard up against her shoulder and, unsteady with the weight of it, makes her way on up the aisle, busy stalls to either side and a confusion of conversations, two and not three, herself with the veil in her, plum’s a best for sweet smoke and, totaled indeed, it fell true! it fell true! and somebody somewhere is taking another run at a jig on a tin whistle. Up ahead, the wooden tub out in the middle of it all shines softly golden in the daylight, and someone slips up for a pinch, smiling as they do, and behind and above it all the upraised stage, empty but for the greenly nubbled couch, unlit.

An eruption of shrieks and screams and whooping peals of laughter, there under the overhead door, Gloria Monday in the midst of an overlapping swarm of engulfing hugs from a swirl of girls in summery togs, pogoing in their excitement, “Oh my God!” she’s crying, as they break apart enough to turn about, “Oh my God!” Seizing the shoulder of one of them, tall and blond in a T-shirt that says Catholic School, Girls Rule, St. Mary’s Academy, she bellows, “Where’s your hall pass, young lady?” and the laughter climbs wildly higher. “You should be in your third period class!”

“Well, you should be in senior year!” shouts a girl in a magenta hijab.

“Basutāsōdo!” shouts a girl in overall shorts, pointing to Melissa there at the edge of them all, both hands clamped about the wooden frame of the scabbard leaned back against her shoulder.

“Big damn sword,” says the girl in the hijab, as if explaining something, and “Is this one of your cosplayers?” says the girl in the T-shirt.

“She’s the Huntsman,” says Gloria, with a wicked grin, and Melissa glares. “But what’s going on?” says Gloria, turning away, “What is this? Why’d you guys come here?”

“Why are we here?” says the girl in the hijab, as if offended by the very question.

“It’s the last Thursday in May!” says a girl in white boots and expertly shredded jeans.

“CityFair, bitches!” shouts the girl in the T-shirt.

May’s primly crouched over low stacks of magazines, head and shoulders swallowed by the lower cabinets of that terribly compact kitchenette, rooting around. Jo’s stood in some of the only cleared space available in the motorcoach, a marginal meander from the bed in its nook in the back past the booth here, across from the kitchenette, up to the front seats there, windshield curtained with plain dark burlap. “You must have,” she says, “just about every single one of these by now, huh.” Every otherwise available surface is covered stacked piled high with magazines, hundreds, thousands of them neatly bulwarked against the wall, collapsing in drifts across the table, a shepherd on a donkey, a hippo plashing open-mouthed in shallows, a handful of geese in flight before two identically great blocky skyscrapers, distantly indistinct in dawnlight, the lavishly painted face of a sarcophagus, and a black leather glove clamped over the mouth of it, Inside Animal Minds, Along Afghanistan’s War-torn Frontier, Puerto Rico’s Seven-League Bootstraps, and every cover, each image and slogan neatly contained within the same rigorous border of brightly jonquil yellow.

“Oh,” May’s saying, “not hardly. They’ve been around since, oh, eighteen eighty-something? There it is.” Backing out slowly, rickety, slither and thump of a glossy toppling stack. “Snake, it would’ve bit me.” Holding up a filthy plastic jug with a scored and peeling label that says Heinz All Natural Distilled White Vinegar.

“Thanks,” says Jo, taking it from her hand. “Not just for this, the vinegar, I mean, but. Everything, you know. Letting me stay. It’s been, ah, it helped. A lot.”

“Letting you stay?” May’s smile a vague little thing, eyes hidden away behind those dark black lenses. “Come and go as you like. Who am I, that I could tell you to leave.”

“Anyway,” says Jo.

“And you and Jack have hit it off so well.”

“I guess,” says Jo.

“Use what you need,” says May, and lays a hand on the jug. “Bring back the rest.”

“Okay,” says Jo.

Becker’s pen, still uncapped, wobbles, pinched between thumb and forefinger. He looks up. The kid across from him, blondly sallow, too small for that brick red tie wound about in an involuted knot, scratches dutifully away with his pen, and the woman to his left, the man beside her, his bowtie crooked, and the man at the foot of the conference table, black leather vest and three or four golden necklaces. Becker frowns at the paper before him. Employment Eligibility Verification, say the letters across the top. Department of Homeland Security.

“How is everything?” says Jimmy, looking in through the doorway. He’s pulled a long grey cardigan over that T-shirt, a freighted clipboard in his hand, he’s noting the nods and mumbled affirmations, and then Becker’s hapless shrug. Jimmy, with a half-grimaced smile, crooks the fingers of his free hand. “Walk with me, Mr. Becker.”

The hall without’s made narrow by redwelds laid up along the one wall, stuffed each of them with neatly reams of printed paper, and the office there across the way lit only by the blinking lights of servers stacked on wire shelves. “I just, I don’t know,” says Becker, low and quiet. “I was expecting more of an interview. What do you even do, here?”

“It’s right there in the name of the company, Arnie. LST. Litigation Support Technologies.”

“But what does that mean.”

Jimmy looks away. “What do you know,” he says, “about pressboard siding.”

“What?”

“Hardboard siding? Composite siding? Take sawdust, scraps, whatever you sweep off the mill floor, and instead of throwing it away, mix it with glue, resin, pour it in a mold, stick it in a pressure-cooker, voila! A cheap plank in a variety of styles and colors you can hang on the side of a house. Siding.”

“Wonderful,” says Becker.

“We are in timber country, Arnie. Don’t scoff. The downside is, if any moisture’s trapped behind the siding when it’s installed – and, one must keep in mind, the only environment sufficiently desiccate to install the stuff might be found in certain craters on the Moon, well. It rots. It falls off the house. And thus: an insurance claim.”

“Those,” says Becker, looking to the redwelds on the floor.

“One hundred and twenty-five thousand thereof, so far. And each must be examined, capturing the essential information, claimant’s name, location of the house, date of the alleged product failure, under what conditions, manufacturer and brand, was it Choctaw, Miranda, et cetera, and of course, which insurer’s on the hook.” He tucks the clipboard under his arm, reaches out to adjust the knot and drape of Becker’s tie. “You have a pulse. You can read. There are twenty-seven keyboards on the coding floor here that have to be kept clicking for at least a month to get through all of this. There’ll be a more, shall we say, precise, training, in about ten minutes. You start at fourteen an hour.”

“Litigation Support Technologies,” says Becker.

“We build databases for lawsuits,” says Jimmy.

“And all this, this really helps the, ah, claimants? With, what, a class-action lawsuit or something?”

“Oh, sweet summer child,” says Jimmy, clapping Becker on the shoulder. “Plaintiffs can’t afford an operation like this. We work for the insurance companies. Mostly.”

“All this is yours?”

“One of the perks of running the joint,” says Gloria, trying the switch by the door to no effect. “I get a room for me, and a room for my stuff.” She pulls out a great rosy plaque of a phone and pokes the screen, switching on a white light she shines over boxes stacked on the floor, a duffel bag, a couple of suitcases, four or five enormous blank canvases, leaned against the wall. “Where are you staying, these days?”

Melissa shrugs. “Here, I guess.” Stood in the doorway, knee up, boot planted back against the jamb, enormous sword in its scabbard against her shoulder. “I haven’t been back to my place in,” watching Gloria pick her way across the unlit room, “uh, since,” that thin brightness swept about, “Cinco,” says Gloria.

“Really?” says Melissa. Her propped boot slipping to the floor. “Shit, I never even got any of my,” lurching to catch the unbalanced scabbard, “shit,” she says. “What are you after, anyway?”

“An outfit for tonight.” Gloria lowers the phone, swooping the room into darkness. “I just had it out. You’d think it would be hard to misplace a thing that big.”

“Just have somebody dig it out for you. Or make you something else! One of the, uh, sewing-people? Seamstress? Made me, like, a half-dozen of these?” Fingering the briefly skirt of her flowered sundress. “I guess this is, my look, now, or something.” Clatter and scrape as Gloria shoves something aside. “So,” says Melissa. “You’re going out? With those girls?”

“My friends, yeah,” says Gloria. “It’s something we do every year. First night of the Rose Festival, when they open the carnival in Waterfront Park.” Taking a broad unsteady step over something. “I mean, I haven’t gone out in,” shoving a box aside, “Jesus.”

“I have to go with you,” says Melissa, nudging a ring at the throat of the scabbard, clink.

“What?”

“Her majesty said. If you go out, I go with you. To keep you safe.”

“From what?”

Melissa shrugs.

“I swear,” says Gloria, throwing up her hands, the light a wildly flaring beacon, “she is such a fucking,” dragging the light back, shining it on something in the corner by the door. “Well, shit.”

“You’re, like, important, to all of this,” says Melissa, as Gloria struggles back across the room. “But also, she, you know,” as Gloria reaches a hunched shape in the corner, and the buzz of a zipper, “cares. About you. Whoa,” as light glimmers over the dark stuff within. “I am gonna be underdressed.”

Propped on the mantel a portrait in oils, a beagle, white, spotted with black and tan, stood proudly in a field. He eyes it, hands clasped behind his back, stiff dark jeans and a two-tone shirt, pale blue and cream, embroidered across the back with calligraphy that says Spare No One. Slick black hair tied back with a red scarf. His posture shifts at the footfall behind him, but he doesn’t look away from the painting. Trees lower in the distance, and clouds fill the sky of it with brushstrokes.

“Your pardon, sir,” says the man in the doorway, shoulders straining his blue T-shirt, mustaches long and thick, ends of them weighted with pewter beads. “I hadn’t known our host to’ve been previously engaged.”

The man by the mantel offers a gracious nod. “Your Viscount’s quite the busy man. Perhaps he seeks efficiency.”

“Then I must ask your pardon a second time – I am Pyrocles, Anvil of the court, but yourself I do not know at all.”

“Joaquin,” says the man by the mantel. “Late of Sacramento.”

“The Camellia Court?”

“That court is no more, sir.”

“I,” there, in the middle of the room, Pyrocles folds his hands together. “I see. Your, Queen, is she – ”

“It was quick,” says Joaquin, “though it had been coming for some time.”

“You’re here, then, at the Viscount’s invitation?” Rattle of china in the doorway, a glumly narrow man slips in to set a tray on the table low between wingback chairs, cups and saucers and a steaming clay pot, sugar bowl and tongs, dishes of cream and lemon slices. “What is it?” says Joaquin.

“His excellency,” says the narrow man, a rusty croak, “does crave your kind indulgence – ”

“The tea,” says Joaquin. “What is it.”

“Da Hong Pao,” says the narrow man, chin tucked behind a high white collar. “A Wuyi oolong, from a mother tree.” Nodding, he takes his leave.

“We’re to serve ourselves, it seems.” Joaquin tongs a couple of cubes of sugar into a cup.

“Efficiency,” says Pyrocles.

Joaquin’s smile is faint as he pours the tea. “So,” he says, lifting his cup, “was it,” even as Pyrocles is saying, “The last few months,” and they both stop, interrupted.

“Difficult, but,” says Pyrocles.

“Of course,” says Joaquin.

“Gentlemen!” Agravante in shirtsleeves sweeps into the room, “excellent, excellent,” a hand for Pyrocles to shake, and Joaquin, “you’ve had some refreshment, and accomplished already what I’d hoped to achieve, acquainting yourselves each with the other.” His tie of pink and blue in a loose wide knot, and about his neck a bulky set of headphones, nestled under bobbing dreads.

“Joaquin tells us the Queen of Camellias has fallen, and the court there is no more,” says Pyrocles.

“Indeed,” says Agravante. “Bitter news. And of course our sympathies must be extended to them all – but from such generosity, opportunity does likewise grow.”

“My lord?” says Pyrocles. Joaquin sips his tea.

“Despite our late King’s efforts,” says Agravante, “we’re yet a number short of a court’s full complement.”

Pyrocles looks to Joaquin. “What office, sir, did you fulfill, in Sacramento?”

“Shootist,” says Joaquin.

“Every modern court must have one,” says Agravante. “But!” A gesture with the phone in his hand, cords lopping from it to the headset. “Acquaintanceship’s not friendship. There’s work yet to be done, if we’re to be friends,” a smile for Joaquin, “pleasant work, to be sure, but work nonetheless.” Turning to Pyrocles. “It would give us all great pleasure, good Sir Anvil, I am certain, were you but to entertain our guest this very night. Show him the city as you know it to be, and he in turn might show himself to you.”

“My lord,” says Pyrocles, “forgive me, but perhaps, another night?”

Agravante frowns. “He’s away tomorrow – quickly to return, no doubt,” another gesture with that phone, at once forestalling and magnanimous, to Joaquin, who says, “I’m next for the Saltwater Court.”

“They, too, wish to be modern?” says Pyrocles.

“I’m certain,” says Agravante, after a moment a touch too long, “our Anvil will show you the best the City of Roses has to offer. Indulge yourselves!” Reaching up to settle the headphones over his ears, opening the phone in his hand, he turns and leaves the room. Pyrocles sighs.

“Subtle,” says Joaquin, setting down his cup, empty but for a sludge of undissolved sugar.

A flatbed trailer, backed onto the grass, perpendicular to the river, parallel to the span of the bridge above, and a compressor kicks itself to chugging life. Squeal of an electric guitar, percussive keyboard riff, some handclaps all tinny from speakers mounted there, and there, on lofted poles all strung with lights, the wind blows hard against this mountainside, a soaring voice, across the sea into my soul, and roustabouts and teamsters hop onto the sides and tail of the trailer, looking over its hulking load, knocking this loose with a clang, shunting that home. Sigh and groan of pneumatics as two great girders red and yellow and green hoist themselves, hinged at the front end, up until they tower above the traffic passing back and forth along the bridge. Kyrie eleison, down the road that I must travel, kyrie eleison through the darkness of the night. Compressor-chug redoubles, another groaning sigh, and two more girders hinged at the tail end lift themselves and also the bulk of the trailer’s load, a great stack of rattling beams lashed to those girders, capped at their lifting ends with neat white circles faced out to either side, Funtastic, they say, in fading rounded letters, Traveling Amusements. They halt not straight upright but at an angle, and with an overwhelming hiss of air released the first two girders at the front relax, fall back from their upright stance until with a proper thunk the tips of them meet the capped tips of the others, and there’s an equilateral truss, hoisted up from the flatbed by the bridge.

Roustabouts busy themselves at the base of it, loosening the lashes of that bundle of beams until it sways depended from the apex of the truss, okay! Okay! Two of them seize the pair of beams on one side of the bundle and haul them swinging out toward the tail of the trailer, until there’s room enough for the struts at the bottom to drop, clang! into place, bracing those two beams at an angle out away from the bundle, and even as they do two others have done the same on the other side, swinging that first pair out, away, clang! toward the front. The compressor’s whine rises in pitch, chug of it now a flutter, and the whole assemblage seems to sigh, hup! shouts someone, and trembling the next pair of beams toward the tail end swing themselves out, away, as roustabouts yank down the struts, clang! and the next pair toward the front swing out, away, and so it goes, pair by pair erecting itself, segment by segment, wedge by slice, until the circle’s complete, those first two pairs meeting high above the apex of the truss at the top of what’s become a Ferris wheel. Another truck pulls up beside the trailer, and now the roustabouts leap to open the back of it, and begin unloading gondolas.

“Somebody’s coming,” a warning lilt from the man in one of the lawn chairs.

“No one’s coming, Hector,” says May, in the other. “Cats would’ve said.”

“Ask him yourself, then,” says the man, with a wave off that way, past the front end of the motorcoach. Distant crunch of gravel, footfall yet loud enough to carry all that way. Jo, sat on the grass before them, hikes up on a knee. A man’s approaching down the dirt track that’s not quite a driveway, tall in trim black trousers and a bright white shirt, skinny black tie, and a pair of classic black sunglasses. “May,” says Jo, and then, sharper, louder, “May.”

“Go on,” says May, without turning to look. “We got this. Go.”

Up on her feet, jug in her hand, Jo heads away around the back of the motorcoach, out of sight of the track, into the scrub, to crouch under heavy, breathless trees. “Excuse me,” someone’s saying, that man, “if you could give me a hand,” maybe, and May’s response can’t be made out. “Looking for,” the man’s saying. Jo heads further into the deepening shade. “Johanna Draper,” the last that can be heard.

She hauls herself from gnarled and crooked trunk to trunk, mismatched Chucks uncertain in the rootily treacherous underbrush. Winking in and out to the left a stretch of water coolly green, littered with fallen leaves and occasional twigs, a twitching cloud of midges on the penumbral threshold of the opposite bank, flickering as they pass in and out of the sunlight. She turns away from the water, up through the trees to the scrub that untidily edges the vast field, where she crouches, looking back. Mounds of junk, a couple cars now between her and the motorcoach, there’s the tall man, black suit coat over his shoulder, genially chatting with May and Hector. Keeping low she darts across the field from mound to pile, from fender-shade to high-kicked trailer, past a tent, the tarp-awned side of a van, and someone sat on the floorboard of it, leafing through a tiny notebook. Ahead now the largest mound, a low wide tummock of cinderblocks and upended pallets, stuffed garbage bags, the torn remains of unidentifiable clothing, a wheelless bicycle frame, a bent torchiere. She sets the jug up as high as she can reach and follows it, feet choosing steps more stable than they seem, hands grasping holds that do not falter, over the top to hang a moment on the other side, the mound a wall encircling a little paddock cleanly scraped, green grass cropped close, the little dome tent beige and orange pitched atop some wooden pallets, and looking up at her, black eyes unblinking, the tiny unicorn.

“Roy,” she says, “I’m just gonna,” freezing when he steps toward her, chewing thoughtfully, maybe five hands high at the most, his palely glossy coat of rosy grey, the mane of him iridescent in the hot flat light, the horn even now the color of the inside of a shell. “I’m just gonna climb down,” she says, lowering a foot, freezing again as he takes another step with a daintily cloven hoof. “Jack?” she calls, but quietly. “Jack!” again, with more urgency than volume. “You back? Tell me you’re back.”

A boot’s thrust through the tent-flap, followed by a blue-denimed leg, another boot, probing for the ground, blue-denimed buttocks under the flap of a blue denim jacket tugged clattering down as he settles himself on his knees, wavering, “Jo?” he says, blinking, looking about.

“Call off your horse,” she says.

Turning about he nearly topples. “Whoa,” he says, “what are you,” shaking his head, holding out a hand to Roy.

“Somebody’s out there,” she says, dropping to the grass, fetching down the jug.

“More of your guys?”

“They wouldn’t dare.” She edges along the paddock wall to a lap of cloudy plastic. Lifting it, peering through the rust-feathered mesh of an upended shopping cart. There’s the motorcoach, the tall man laughing at something maybe Hector’s said. “I don’t know him,” she says, “but I’ve seen guys like him.”

“Looks like a cop,” says Jack, close over her shoulder.

“Yeah,” says Jo. “Asking about somebody named Johanna.”

Jack blinks. Roy’s nuzzling his distracted hand. “Not you?” he says.

“My name’s not Johanna.” And then, looking back at him, “Jesus, Jack, are you high?”

He grins. “Shit, I hope so.” An enormous sniff. “Want some?”

“No,” she snaps, turning back to the impromptu loophole.

Becker’s working the strap of his messenger bag up over his head with one hand, repeatedly stabbing the Lobby button with the other. Settling the strap on his shoulder, untwisting it about. Music jangles, a quietly sashay, the lights are on, and someone’s home, but I’m not sure if they’re alone. A bare arm slips between the closing doors, tripping the mechanism that slides them open again, Jimmy, beaming, “Arnie!” he cries, shoving his way in, “it’s five hours past the meridian! We’ve worked hard,” leaning over to press the Lobby button firmly, once, “so now, it’s time to play hard!”

“I, ah, I don’t know, Jimmy,” says Becker, squeezed back into a corner. It’s not a large elevator.

“I said play hard, Arnie. Not hard to get. We’re going to the carnival.” Hauling his backpack up on a shoulder, Jimmy reaches to take hold of Becker’s yellow tie, gently tugging it out from behind the strap of the messenger bag that crosses his chest. “It’s but a short walk away through lovely weather, there’s an alcohol pavilion, and as I’m management, the first round will be on me.” Smoothing the drape of it with his fingertips. “One of those droits du seignuer they don’t so much advertise.” He’s ditched the cardigan, and the pale swell of his belly there, through the gaps in the sides of that Panama Jack T-shirt, dark hair a touch too long, waves of it cresting in tufts and spikes that don’t quite know what to do. “I just,” says Becker, “can’t see you as a manager.” His smile a touch to genial to be a smirk. “Hit your rate, get me fifteen on the coding floor, stat! Who knew.”

“What is it they say? We contain multitudes?”

“You were carrying a clipboard.”

“A sight you shall take to your grave,” says Jimmy. The doors slide open. “So tell me, Arnie,” stepping out into the lobby, “what do you think of this industry in which you’ve found a new home?”

“I think,” says Becker, following after, “I like how I didn’t have to talk,” frowning, slowing, “to anyone,” he says, “on the phone,” and stops, there in the middle of that cramped little lobby, that once had been richly appointed, brass trim and fittings pitted now, cloudy gold-veined marble chipped, spare deco chandelier in need of dusting. “Arnie?” says Jimmy, turning back from the vestibule doors. Becker’s looking through another door that leads to a tiny storefront off the lobby, Moonstruck Café, says the darkly blue sign in the glass of it. A man on the other side, his brawny back to them, shoulders straining his blue T-shirt, and past him another, a wide red scarf tying back his hair.

“Who is that?” says Jimmy.

Becker opens the door, and that man turns about, mustaches a-sway, “What,” he says, “what are you, how did you, how are you here? I didn’t even know I was going to be here. How did you know. How did you know where I was?”

The hiss and gurgle of a milk steamer. “My love,” says Pyrocles, “though I’ve sworn to see you safe, it’s not – ”

“Don’t,” says Becker, “say that. Don’t call me that.”

“This is coincidence,” says Pyrocles, “and nothing more.”

“Your cocoas, gentlemen,” says the woman behind the counter, pushing forth two white paper cups, each topped with a paper-wrapped truffle. “Habanero and sea-salt caramel, and Wild Card absinthe.”

“We’re here at my request,” says the man with the wide red scarf. “I wished to try your chocolate.” Taking the cups, he leaves a stack of heavy silver coins.

“Oh, but you’re our guest,” says Pyrocles.

“I insist.”

“So,” says Jimmy, there behind Becker, as the woman behind the counter picks up the coins with a frown, and a shrug, “Of course,” says Pyrocles. “May I present Joaquin, of Sacramento, and of course, this is Arnold Becker.”

“Of Portland,” says Becker.

“Your pardon, sir,” looking past Becker, “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“Oh,” says Becker, “this is,” but Jimmy’s reaching past him, “James Dupris,” he says, offering a hand to Pyrocles, as “Jimmy,” says Becker, with a sigh. Pyrocles shakes Jimmy’s hand, “And I,” he says, “am Pyrocles, the Anvil.”

“Ah,” says Jimmy.

“We should probably,” says Becker, turning, but Jimmy’s hand’s on his shoulder. “Out on the town?” he says, sprightly.

“I’ve found myself with time on my hands,” says Joaquin. “The Anvil has offered to fill it.”

“There’s a carnival but a few blocks away,” says Jimmy. “Let’s make it a double date!”

Becker closes his eyes.

A cramped low space, lit by neon laser lines across the ceiling, vermillions and violets and bright lime greens that chase their reaching arms, their knees, that pulse in time with a loping beat under stabs of brass, an airhorn, die Wasserbetten durchzuroken und die Nachbarn zu schocken, “I forget,” says the one girl, tall and blond, who’s traded her school T-shirt for a halter of silver lamé. “Is it high pH that’s good? Or low?” Perched on the edge of the padded bench that runs down the one long side, lifting and tilting bottles from the bar that runs down the other, peering at the labels in what light’s afforded.

“This one’s from glaciers in Iceland,” says the girl in the hijab, magenta of it weirdly teal in this light. “Apparently, it’s the first bottled water to be declared carbon neutral.”

“Ooh,” says the blond girl.

“It’s all just tap water,” says the girl in the overall shorts. “I saw it on Penn and Teller.”

“Not all of it, Olivia,” says the girl in the oversized dress shirt.

“There’s also some fruit juice,” says the girl in the expertly shredded jeans. “Oh, hey, kombucha!”

“The heck is yuzu?” says the girl with a clatter of beads and bangles about her wrists.

“They get the water from the sink, Edith, okay?” says the girl in the overall shorts.

“It’s like a lemon, Lizzi,” says the girl in the hijab.

“It is a lemon,” says the girl in the jeans.

“Basically? You’re paying five bucks for a label.”

“Not tonight, Olivia,” says the blond girl. “Wet bar’s comped with the wheels!” Sitting back, grinning amidst the whooping and the laughter, “Little Suzie Wilson ain’t the only one who can throw daddy’s plastic around.”

“Gloria Monday,” says Olivia, grabbing a bottle that says Le Bleu, Ultra Pure.

“Sic transit blah blah,” says the blond girl.

“It’s her name, Chloe,” says the bangled girl, grimacing as she tries to push the marble into a Codd-necked bottle of soda.

“Whatever. She’s taking forever to get ready.”

“You have to admit,” says the girl in the hijab, “what she’s got going on here’s on a whole other level than covering transpo for a girls’ night out.”

“Please, Sanaa,” says Chloe, rolling her eyes, “it’s like a jumped-up community center or something. I was led to expect the second coming of the Holocene.”

“It’s not even six!” says the girl in the hijab.

“You think the joint starts jumping after dinner?”

“There was some music,” says Olivia.

“Totally Riverdance,” says Lizzi.

“Those little galleries are cool,” says the girl in the oversized dress shirt.

“And the murals!” says the girl in the jeans.

“How true, Penelope!” says Chloe. “It’s a McMenamins. What was I thinking.”

“It’s a sad leftover corner of First Thursday crammed into a dorm for homeless freaks,” says Lizzi.

“Actually,” says Sanaa, “the preferred term, these days, is unhoused.”

Chloe’s the first to laugh, and Lizzi, Edith and Penelope, Olivia, as Sanaa just sits there smirking, an unopened bottle of lime seltzer in her hand.

“If this is what you get for banging a vampire,” says Edith, “I say bring it on, Vlad.”

“He was not a vampire,” says Chloe, and “There’s no such thing as vampires,” says Sanaa, “I don’t know,” says Penelope, “did he sparkle?”

“He totally murdered her dad, is what he did,” says Lizzi, to gasps and whoas and a forceful “He did not,” from Sanaa. Chloe says, “I thought that was a home invasion or whatever.”

“Her father’s dead?”

“Jesus, Olivia, keep up.”

“It was a domestic thing, is what I heard,” says Edith.

“How,” says Penelope. “Suzie’s mom was long gone.”

“Gloria’s,” says Olivia, and “Whatever,” says Penelope, and “It’s her name,” says Lizzi. “It wasn’t her mom,” says Edith.

“Well, there wasn’t a stepmom,” says Chloe. “Or a girlfriend.”

“Maybe, it was a boyfriend?” says Penelope.

“Maybe it was the vampire,” says Edith.

“There are! No! Vampires!” shouts Sanaa, through the shrieks and clamoring peals of laughter, swigs and swallows, clacks and clinks of bottles toasted, the thumping beat, “So anyway,” says Edith, adjusting the undone collar of her shirt, “when I tell you, believe me when – ”

“Here she comes!” shouts Lizzi, leaned forward, peering through the heavily tinted window above the bar, and “Stations!” shouts Chloe. “Cue it up,” to Sanaa, who’s already grabbing a charm-bedecked phone from the bar, “get those sun roofs open,” to Lizzi and Olivia, who reach for buttons set in discreet wall panels. The music stops to start up again, a stomping piano-driven hook, volume climbing as the lasers flicker away. Panels lift and slide apart to reveal the barely evening light, and they leap to their feet, pushing up and out.

The limo long and pink is parked along the loading dock, the smaller stall doors cranked up as people gathered about take in the improbable bulk of it, the music swelling from it, ain’t being fun, an aggrieved voice sings, I know another bee’s been in that hon, the girls popped up through the sun roofs, waving in a sort of unison as sweeping out from under the largest overhead door, Gloria Monday in a black high-waisted gown, arms socked in black-striped white, her jet-black hair threaded with silver ribbons and gathered in two great hanks over either shoulder, her bangs a virulent pink, her face lighting up with laughter that doubles her over, clutching Melissa beside her for support, as the girls in the limo bellow along with the chorus, “We miss that pussy, that pussy, that pussy, that pussy, no, no!”

Melissa in her motorcycle jacket, her flowery sundress, helps Gloria push herself upright, smiling, shaking her head, and Sanaa eyes them, frowning even as she waves, as Gloria shimmies toward the steps down from the dock, and Melissa’s stumping after. Sanaa leans toward swaying Chloe there beside her to mutter, “Looks like she’s bringing the babysitter.” Chloe shrugs.

The gate, a skeletal stretch of scaffolding hung between two scaffolded towers, each wrapped in roughly woven tarps of this one black and that one red, and great yellow letters across the length of it, CityFair, they say, under a stylized rose. Beyond it over a stretch of flattened grass a couple of booths under signs that say Tickets in patriotic colors, but stretched across beneath a taut red ribbon holding at bay a crowd queued restlessly between spindly barricades wound back and forth to the sidewalk. Pop and crackle the speakers hung about, “Ladies and gentlemen!” a booming voice, “and those otherwise defined, developed, and endowered! It is with the greatest pleasure and the utmost pride that we are privileged here today to welcome you to the verdant sward of the Tom McCall Waterfront Park for our opening night, and you all know what that means,” the cheers, the whoops, the claps, “fireworks! As soon as night falls, folks, but till then, we’re about to open the gates, and you, yes, you, in your multitudinous and your splendiferously spectacular glory, all y’all here assembled, get to play the games and scream your screams as you ride our rides, the Kamikaze!” and bang! a burst of confetti from the black tower, “The Inferno!” and another burst from the red, “The Paratrooper, and the Hard Rocker!” and fluttering explosions from them both. “Alien Abduction! The Extreme Scream!” Ribbons dance upright in roaring gusts, and even more confetti, “and all your tested, tried, and true-blue favorites, the Scrambler, the Tilt-a-Whirl, and of course the tallest Ferris wheel this side of the Willamette!” The shrieks, the yells, the rattling of barricades. “And we have shows!” A sprightly riff starts revving from those speakers, and a brightly blat of horns. “Tonight only, on the RoZone Stage, we have Whenever Buckingham warming you up as only they can for the one, the only, Nu Shooz Orchestra! Admittance free with a wristband or a badge. Are you ready?” The cheers, the whoops, the applause. “Are you ready?” The music ratchets, the crowd roars, the streamers dance, the driver of a passing truck leans on the horn. “Then without further ado! Friends and neighbors! It gives us more joy than we could possibly hope to express or contain to throw open the gates to you, one and all, on the opening night of this, the greatest show on the riverfront, the wondrous, the fantastical, the serendipitiously stupendous, the exquisitely ecstatic and soaringly supreme, the absolute acme, the one, the only, the Portland Rose Festival CityFair!”

Pop! and the taut red ribbon leaps apart in a clap of sparks, a fluff of smoke, signed ends of it twisting, rippling, falling, kicked aside and trampled to the grass as the crowd surges in, waving armbands, flashing badges, heading for the ticket booths.

“Brought to you by Xfinity!”

The poignard gleams in its makeshift cauldron, an empty garbage bag tugged open, bulk of it rucked up and cuffed to make a lip about a limpid pool of vinegar. Jo sits to one side, legs folded tailor-fashion, wall of junk behind her, and the deepening sky above.

“You sure?” says Jack.

“Yes,” says Jo. Taking delicate hold of the wire-wrapped hilt, turning the blade over in its bath. Wiping her fingers on meagre grass.

“There’s no,” says Jack, “strings. If that, it that’s what you’re. Thinking?” Flat on his back in his button-dappled jacket, head pillowed on a rumpled sleeping bag. Smoke tendrils from the hand cupped on his chest.

“What I’m thinking,” says Jo, “is I don’t want any.”

“Who doesn’t like pot?”

She leans over cauldron, pool, blade, the vinegar faintly hazed, wispiest threads of rusty milk seeping from those orange blotches, fading to nothingness almost immediately. Her lips purse, her shoulders shift, a suggestion of a shrug. “Who,” Jack’s saying, clink of buttons as he lifts a hand, “doesn’t,” back of it hung above his supine face. Crunch of grass as Roy steps out from around the tent, chewing absently, dipping to nuzzle up another scant mouthful. “I was,” says Jack, hand floating down to settle on Roy’s haunch, that shivers at his touch.

“Maybe you’d better,” Jo sighs, “just give me however much of whatever it is that’s left, so you don’t smoke yourself into orbit.” He giggles, sputtering into a coughing fit. Jo’s holding out her hand. “Come on,” she says.

He’s peering at a singed twist of paper and ash. “Ossifer,” he says, “I think,” more giggles, “you’re too late, officer.”

A sigh, a shake of her head. She lifts the poignard dripping from the vinegar, wipes the blade down with a bit of cloth, holds it up, sleekly flawless in the light. “Would you look at that.”

“But,” says Jack. “I mean.”

She sniffs the wire-wrapped hilt, pats it dry with the cloth. “Never had to do this with my sword.”

“You had a,” says Jack, his frown growing more elaborate, “a sword?” He tries to sit up. Tries again. “You got blood? On your sword?”

“Not blood,” says Jo, slipping the poignard into its sheath. She jumps at the rip of grass too close, Roy nosing a last lush tuft there by her knee, “Jesus!” she blurts, and Roy prances away, setting Jack off on another round of giggles. “You have got to keep him away from me,” she snaps.

“You,” says Jack, giggles subsiding, “have to relax.” Making his way toward her on hands and knees, buttons a-clack. “I told you,” says Jo, “I don’t want any, and anyway, it’s, it’s all, used up.”

“There are other,” says Jack, plopping himself beside her, propped on an elbow, “ways,” he says, hand placed quite deliberately there, on her knee, “to relax.” She looks at it, half-swallowed by his jacket-cuff, knuckles delicate against the rough folds of her jeans.

Crunch of a guitar chord squalling echoes loud enough to drown a moment the shrieks, the screams, the cheers, the hissing groans and knocking chugs, the claps, the barking shouts, the whistles and dings and bleeps. Becker leans an elbow on a little standing table, there in a crowded corner roped off by yellow ribbon slung from flat-footed stanchions. No Alcohol Beyond This Point, says the sign facing them thronged within. “They’d keep us penned, as livestock,” says Joaquin, setting by that elbow a red cup brimming with beer.

“And charge us ten dollars for the privilege,” says Jimmy, a small clear cup of something dark in his hand.

“What’d you get?” says Becker.

“They said it was a Manhattan. I’m dubious.”

“Maybe one of the lesser boroughs?”

“I’m afraid,” Jimmy takes a sniff, “we’re somewhere in New Jersey.”

“Quien no recorre,” says Joaquin, crumpling his empty cup, “no se corre! Shall we go and see what carnival this county fair affords, or order up another round?”

Becker eyes his own, still full. “What about, ah – ”

“Mr. Pyrocles?” says Jimmy. Joaquin cranes up to peer over the shoulders of the crowd, “There,” he says, pointing. “Still waiting to be served. I’ll chivvy him along, and then, perhaps, we’ll see what’s to be seen.” He sets off, strings of colored light striking gleams from his embroidered shirt, his slick black hair. Jimmy seizes Becker’s hand. “You have got to tell me everything.”

“Jimmy,” says Becker.

“Arnie. Yon Mr. Pyrocles is your mysterious silverback, or I’ll buy a hat to eat.” Becker closes his eyes, and Jimmy’s smirk becomes something more considered. “Now.” Nudging the crumpled cup between them. “What’s with short, dark, and thirsty?”

Becker shrugs. “He’s Joaquin, from Sacramento.”

“I bet. Okay, give it to me straight: on a scale of one to ten, how,” Jimmy looks up, away, for just the right word, “exciting,” he says, “is tonight likely to get?”

“That’s not,” says Becker, lifting his cup, “that’s not on me.” Swallowing deeply.

“Get your head in the game, Arnie. You’re here for a reason. Figure it out.”

“You dragged me here, Jimmy F.M. Dupris!”

“Some people have all the class,” says Jimmy, but he’s looking past Becker, past the crowd, the lights, the trees and the fence to the parkway, the stop-and-go traffic, the halting limo long and pink in the thick of it, and the girls stood up through the sun roofs, cheering, dancing, waving.

“Wait,” says Jo, drawn back, “wait.”

“For what?” says Jack, shifted closer, over.

“You’re sure.”

“About what?”

“I, ah,” says Jo. Rustle of grass, clack of buttons.

“Sure,” she says. “Okay,” she says.

Jack smiles. Another kiss.

“Where we going? Where are we going?” Penelope dancing ahead through the midway crowd, Olivia hastening after, and Lizzi her bangles a-clatter, “Tilt-a-Whirl!” cries Chloe, pointing, strings of tickets fluttering in her hand, but “Kurve!” shouts Edith, pointing somewhere else.

“We just gotta make sure we’re in time for the parade,” says Olivia.

“That’s next week,” says Edith.

“Every time,” says Lizzi, and “We have to tell you every time,” says Edith.

“We see the parade every time,” says Olivia.

“Not on the first night,” says Penelope. “God, Olivia.”

“The Starlight Parade is not on the first night,” says Edith.

“I,” says Sanaa, “am getting me one of those,” as a kid traipses by with a stuffed giraffe not quite as big as he is.

“Tilt-a-Whirl first,” says Chloe.

“In this dress?” says Gloria, spreading her arms, full skirts a-sway.

“What, you’re not gonna ride any rides?” says Olivia.

“Princess Gloria’s here to be seen,” says Chloe. “Enjoying herself would defeat the purpose.”

“Like I’m the only one,” says Gloria, with a look for Edith, who’s unbuttoned her shirt to reveal a black lace bra. “I’m fine with rides. Just,” pointing off toward the end of the midway, the imperially wheeling magenta lights, yellow and orange, brightly shining green, of the Ferris wheel. “Something more genteel.”

“We,” says Chloe, lifting her hands full of tickets, “will ride all the rides, win all the games, eat so much fried dough and tacos and all the cotton candy, we will scam drinks from pretty young men, and throw up behind the Honey Buckets, and we will know we had a hell of a good time, and we are going to start with the goddamn Tilt-a-Whirl!”

“Why not split up?” says Melissa. “If everybody,” faltering, as they all turn their various attentions to her, “wants to, ah,” a shrug, “different?” she says.

“We can do more damage that way,” says Olivia.

“The point is, we do it together,” says Sanaa.

“We always have,” says Chloe.

“Why are you even here?” says Lizzi.

“I, ah,” says Melissa, a sidelong look to Gloria, who’s balled up her fists, scowling, “She’s my friend, okay? So fuck you, that’s why.”

“Whatever!” shouts Chloe. “Who cares.” She starts handing out tickets, a string each to Olivia, Lizzi, Penelope, “Split up, hang out,” she says, handing tickets to Edith and Sanaa, “whatever.” Turning to Gloria, peeling a couple more strings away from the hank in her hand, fluttering as she waves it about, “CityFair, bitches,” she says. “What’s it gonna be?”

Plastic crinkle, splot and squish, “Ah,” he says, “I got my knee in the, I’m sorry. Vinegar.”

“Oh, shit, I meant to,” she says, and “It’s okay, I wasn’t,” he says, and they’re both laughing. Scratch and scuff as Roy steps close, light shifting, and all the colors, as he lowers his head to snuffle the rumpled garbage bag. “Take ’em off,” she says.

“What?”

“Your jeans. Go on.”

“I don’t think,” he says, and “The smell,” she says, and “Oh, like you’re so,” and “I had a shower,” she says, “I smell fine.”

“You do,” he says, nuzzling close, a kiss for her cheek, the line of her jaw, her throat, “Are you sure,” she says, “you’re up for, whoa! Not there,” grabbing the wrist of the hand well up under her T-shirt. “Not there. Don’t.”

“What is it,” he says, muzzily, hands planted now in the scruffed grass, either side of her hips. “Why’d you, you’re, so scared, of Roy. Why? Why did you – ”

“He’s a fucking unicorn, Jack!”

Rocking back on his heels, blinking once. Propping up on her elbows, shaking her head, “I’m sorry,” she says, but “You really, need,” he says, tugging at the waistband of her jeans. Roy steps daintily away, over toward the tent, watching as he undoes her fly, as she lifts her hips.

Canvas roughly stolid under his hand stroked back and forth, “Through here?” says someone behind him, and “He said it was this one,” says someone else. “I should not have had that second beer,” he says.

“Third,” says someone behind him. He turns, blinking at a guy rope abruptly angled before him. “I thought,” he says, “we were leaving? The alcohol tent?” Frowning. “Pavilion,” he says, with great care.

“We did,” says someone, now before him. “Are you sure it was this one?”

“The roustabout said. Look for the flap.”

“Roustabout,” he says, the word rippled by a chuckle. “Rostabit.” He’s laid a hand on the rope, too bristly thick, too tautly strung to pluck. “Your pardon,” says someone, moving past him, a hand on his shoulder he reaches for, but doesn’t clasp. “You’re certain.”

“No other tent like it is pitched on the field,” says someone else. “There should be a loose flap.” The canvas behind him wobbles as it’s pushed, pressed, he looks up at it, rising taupely sere to a rumpled eave reinforced with dark saltires of gummy stitching and about it, beyond it, a vast emptiness of such an unearthly indigo. Slowly, tenderly, he lets out the breath he’s caught.

Looking away from it when he can. Someone’s to his right, and he smiles to see him. Someone else to his left, slapping the canvas wall, a jump of dust. He looks back, over his shoulder, turns about, “Where’s,” he says, “there was,” a frown, troubling his face, “Jimmy?”

“Here we go,” says someone else, lifting a weighty panel of canvas, and he turns back, someone’s hand on his shoulder once more, to see the color within.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh, my.”

Fuchsia twirling lofted wobbles dropping clang and skip a-clatter rattling to drop a ring upended between the close-packed bottles, next to a green ring similarly trapped. A pink one there on the edge of the low wide bin that holds the ranks and files of tinted empty glass, an apricot ring bright against the grass below, and only baby blue is neatly snugged about a slim glass neck. “Five up, one on,” says the woman behind the counter, rotely gathering up the rings. Her T-shirt, elaborately ripped and tied into a halter, says Ten Minutes of Gunshots across the front. “First tier only,” she says, setting the rings in a stack on the counter.

“Again,” snarls Sanaa, slapping a handful of tickets by the rings.

Close-quartered in a gondola high above the bustling midway below, the busy bridge behind, that stretches out across the river to the left, and unskeins to the right through the brightening lights of downtown. Thrum and groan, the Ferris wheel starts up, lurching the gondola down a few degrees from its perch at the top toward the darkening river, toward oncoming night, then groan and clank it stops again, setting the gondola a-sway. Gloria grips the pole behind her for support. Melissa’s braced a boot against the spoked wheel like a table in the center of the gondola, careful of the stuffed and bustling overspill of Gloria’s gown. “You guys do this every year?” she says.

“Since, ah, sixth grade. That was me, Chloe, Olivia. So.” Gloria shrugs. “This is the seventh time, I guess?”

“And you always wore a prom dress?”

“No,” says Gloria, “no, this?” Smoothing the satiny skirts. “This is what I wore to the Bellamy Bach show.” Sitting back, tightening her grip as the great wheel thrumming groaning slips them down another few degrees, clank and groan and sway. “Me and Chloe, Sanaa, Edith, and Rod,” she exaggerates the name, “with his fucking top hat,” a sigh, another shrug. “Dolled up all gothic punk because, you know, Bellamy Bach. And there was this guy? This, beautiful man, sitting, all by himself, in a booth. And I,” a shake of her head. “Chloe dared me, to go talk to him. So I did.”

The thrum knocks up, clanks into a groan, the wheel turns, jerks to one more halt. Gloria lets go of the pole, leans forward, elbows propped on her skirt-clouded lap. “That,” she says, “was the last time any of them saw me, until today.”

Buckles chime as Melissa sits back, looks away, out over the downtown lights.

“And I mean,” says Gloria, “it’s not like we weren’t little shits to each other, before. And it’s not like I haven’t done shitty stuff since, you know?” A corner of Gloria’s mouth reaches for something sheepish. “But I started a, a support group. An art studio. A gallery. I’m running a fucking palace for a regular Mother Goose queen and all her fucking butchers and bakers and candlestick makers, and I,” sitting back, round face softly shadowed, pink bangs struck by a flash, “I’m stuck in a goddamn pissy mood because it’s like they never noticed I was gone.”

Melissa says, “It’s almost time for fireworks.”

“Were you even,” says Gloria, but once more the thrum, the grinding groan, it all slips into smooth acceleration, and their gondola swoops toward the bottom of the wheel’s rotation, aways through bright fluorescent light past waiting riders cheering, jeering as they swing through climbing up over the trees that line the parkway, the sudden lights of the city, up and up toward the top again, and the midway spread below.

Crudescent light from one enormous lantern hung high up on the king pole, so bright, yet so intensely, insistently red, obliterating any other colors, leaving only outmatched shadows to suggest what shapes might move beneath, shadows, and here and there a sharply fleeting light-struck gleam of sweat on skin a-shift and push and sway and shove, and the effortful susurrus built from scuff of boots in dust, and running shoes, moccasins, clogs, the hissing shuck of denim on khaki, duck snagging jersey, chamois rubbing twill, the lop of belts undone, slither of vinyl, jangle and clank of unheeded buckles, rasp of flys unzipped, flap of plackets unbuttoned, and the sighs, the grunts, the groans, fragments of sentences too urgent to finish, too unnecessary to pay any attention, and also the wordless imprecations, but above all the slap, the pop, the slip and shuff, the lick and lap of flesh against flesh, with flesh, on flesh, but up he pushes himself and away, feet bare on trampled grass, trousers sagged about his hips, shirt long gone but his tie, his tie still somewhat knotted a mantle about his shoulders, and what’s left of his hair awry. He laughs, half-swallowed, as a glove clamps about his upper arm to spin him not unroughly about, his own hand up to catch, to brace himself against a meaty shoulder. The other glove up between them tangles his tie about clumsy fingers, yanking him close with a chuckling growl, but shaking his head he pushes back, uncertain steps away, tie trailing fleurs-de-lis from a slackening grip.

The man, stood there, apart.

Blinking, heel of his hand wiping sweat from his eyes, he steps through all that light toward the man, his back to him, not so far away as he seems, nor so tall, squat legs thickly thewed and buttocks bare beneath a jacket black enough to insist upon itself in all that red, the slogan across the back of it legible only by the prick and pucker of embroidery, a single word, IRRUMATOR.

Something, a crackle of underfoot grass, a shout, a laugh, a pop in the hum of the lantern hung up high, something catches that man’s attention, something enough to look over a shoulder, and smile to see him there, to turn, that jacket swaying open, close enough now to reach within, to lay a hand, to stroke the broad and hairless chest. That smile turns sinister, as horn-knuckled hands lay themselves on his shoulders, pushing, but he’s already sinking on his own, to one knee, both, as one of those hands shifts to brush aside the weighty tail of that jacket, presenting a cock he takes almost immediately into his mouth, hiking up a bit to manage it, hard hands gripping his head as those hips, that cock, begin to pump.

Rumpled jeans a yoke about her ankles knees spread wide one low against the grass one high and him, he’s awkward crouched above, clutching either side of her lap, the buttons pinned about his jacket clacking as his shoulders dip, I’m Not GAY I’m ANGRY can just be made out on the one, and Let GO When You GIVE another, and the back of his head in the darkness cants and nods. She’s leaned back on her elbows looking up, and up, it’s dark, so dark, the only light from a far-off parking lot, yet powerful enough to hazily pollute an empty, starless sky.

The only light, but also Roy, stepped close, those delicately cloven hooves back-and-forthing as he doesn’t quite bring himself to stamp. A brilliant shake of his mane, a blowsy whicker, and stilling he plants those hooves. She looks down to see him there, too much too close, too bright, she blinks, nods absently with the rocking effort, her breath quickening, and meets Roy’s darkly unblinking gaze, a lightless constant in the soft but relentless shimmer and pulse of iridescence that is his coat, and that horn held motionless above. She lifts a hand from the head in her lap to her breast, though there is no hole in this T-shirt, no gleam can be made out through the cloth of it, and he does not lower his unflinching horn. Still. She lays her hand on her breast, a gasp, and closes up her eyes.

Uncertain steps that don’t quite manage to stumble under the vaulting radiant effulgences that bloom above, his baggy pants, his Panama Jack shirt, limp backpack slung from his shoulder, and clamped beneat an arm a messenger bag, “Becker!” he calls, and then, louder, to carry over intermittent explosions, “Becker? Becker!” What crowd there is at the edge of the midway mostly gazes raptly up, but here and there this person or that looks down, about, to see him there, who’d been calling, who’s turning away with a shake of his head from the screams, the sparking whooshes, the bang and rattling pops above. He works a hand into a pocket of those pants, letting the messenger bag slip to dangle from its strap in his other hand, and hauls out a phone in a fake leather case. “Needs must,” he mutters, working it nimbly with his thumb, the code, the app, the green-lit icon of a handset. Holds it to his ear, wincing at all the sound and light.

A muffled chime answers from below.

His lips purse, a grimace of realization, and he stoops to lay the messenger bag on the grass, opens the flap of it on a dim light, a chime unmufffled. He fishes out a second phone, glossy and black, Jimmy F.M., says the screen of it. Accept or Decline. His own phone says Arnold Becker, Calling, Mute, Keypad, Speaker.

“Well, shit.” He thumbs the red button on his phone, and the chiming dies away. A fusillade of light fills the sky above, and oh, the applause.

A lonesome banjo plucked and bent over makeshift percussion, a warmly disinterested voice, Burlington Northern pulling out of the world, she twists a key, shuts off engine, radio, headlights all at once. The only streetlight a ways ahead, shines mostly on the rough stone wall that steeply rises to the right, the sidewalk narrow at its base. Across the street a curve of houses, demurely lit, and each at first seems discretely different from the rest of them about, yet all of them, every one, of a size, a type, with their scraps of yard, their brief driveways, their artfully unkempt flowerbeds and shrubs, that each ends up looking much like the others.

The key tucked away in her hoodie, she opens the toolbox on the seat beside her. Lifts aside a massive cleaver and a thinly elegant honing steel to pull out a tiny knife, the blade of it maybe half the length of its handle, whittled to a wicked point. She tucks it away in her hoodie. Takes another knife, as pointed but much longer, in her left hand, blade of it laid back against her forearm, and one more item, a lumpy wad of something rubbery and brown. Snap and clack the lid of the toolbox.

Quick across the street and up the shallow curl of driveway past a garage door shut up tight to the corner where she crouches, back to the house, silently panting through her wide-open mouth. Shakes out the wad, blankly goggled, blackly crackle, and, careful of the handle of the knife, ducks to slip it on, a horse’s head, loosely floppy, a lopping wobble as she tugs it into place.

From the corner into darkness, through stiff hedge-sheaves with a minimum of rustle, then wary, sidelong steps down a steepening slope, fingertips brushing the wall beside her as the the bulk of the house lofts from the ground into darkness, just the hint of a flicker, candlelight, perhaps, ahead. When she can she ducks beneath, a step, two, criss-cross to a shadow solid enough to hold, a piling, and another, there. That weakly candlelight suggests by where it will not, cannot shine the shape of things, a sparse network of spindly piers lifting the enormity of the house above away from the falling slope, a wall there, a slender cellar of a sort, depended from that bulk, opening on an airy porch licked by that candlelight, slung out over a night sky only vaguely relieved in the distance by downtown’s glow, hidden behind a shadow-scrim of trees.

Under the house, across the slope, slither of dry dirt, till her back’s to the wall of the slender cellar, she waits out the silence. Careful steps, that wobbling snout a faint oddity in the shadows, tipped up to scan the joists and girders of the subflooring above, down to take in the cellar wall, ending abruptly to become the porch that itself takes flight, lifting in turn from the slope on piers of its own. She takes hold of the edge of that wall, breathlessly still until slowly, so slowly her other hand reaches up, candlelight glinting the blade of the knife swung away from her forearm, laid ever so carefully on the floor between two balustrades.

Nothing happens for a terribly lengthy minute.

Up and silently up her feet a-sway an elbow hooking the rail hunch and twist of hip a hoisted knee to soundless over the railing drop to the floor of the porch in a motionless crouch, arms wide, lop-muzzled head quite still.

The porch mostly taken up by one long table, thicketed with dead candles, only a handful at the far end burning, the rest of them sagged, leaned, melted in heaps of particolored slag, toppled and broken over bulwarks of filthy plates, glassware slimed with sticky dregs. Someone’s slumped by those last few burning candles, the fitful flicker of them lapping at a bald head face-down in a tipped-up bowl, pink hand limply splayed.

She takes hold of the hilt of the knife on the floor by her knee.

Quietly down the porch, around and over the chairs shoved back from the table, that knife held out, away, to float over platters piled with limply rancid bacon, with furry blackened bread, with shriveled slices of tomato and withered herbs, a haze of gnats and fruit flies twirling, disturbed by the passage of the blade. Down to the end of the table and around to loom above the figure slumped there, pink-cheeked face turned sideways, pillowed on sodden noodles, shiny with coagulated broth, more flies a-whirl about an upright goblet, still cupping a wine-dark puddle.

She turns the blade as she lifts it, switching her grip from forward to reverse, up above her wobbling head as her other hand comes up to cap her grip.

Her shoulders lift with one deep breath. The other doesn’t stir.

Thunk of blade-tip in tabletop a clinking squelch, the bowl rolling upright. The knife’s pinned a shirt-collar, detached, yellowed with old sweat, there by a pink dish glove. She lets go. Steps back. Lifts away that horse’s head, shakes out her black hair, spiky short. “Huh,” says Ellen Oh. Looks up.

Frances Upchurch stands at the other end of the table, her pearly suit, her corkscrew curls. She lifts a finger to flawlessly painted lips, shush.

Then she turns and climbs the stairs into the house.

Leaving knife, collar, glove, the candlelight, the rotting feast, Ellen races up the length of the table leaping a toppled chair to follow her up those stairs, up and out into a dark and empty room, far corners of it and the floor vaguely gleamed by city-glow through the one great wall of broken glass. She shakes out the horse’s head without stopping and tugs it back over her own, quickening her pace down a long and narrow hall, front door glancingly lit, a footfall to the left, above, a doorway enclosing a spiral staircase up to another hall, a light here and another at the end of it, past photographs hung on the walls, a rain-filled light-struck window, a twilit street of anonymous warehouses and power lines.

A padlock’s bolted to the door at the end of the hall, but the shank of it’s undone, hung loosely from the hasp. She reaches to lift it away, but something’s clung to the rubbery felted stuff of her sleeve, a feather, long, a puff of white about the quill, vanes of it grimly barred with brown.

The goggled eyes of the horse head scan the hall, the walls, the darkness of the stairwell at the end. The feather drifts to the floor. She undoes the hasp, turns the knob, opens the door.

The room within’s almost entirely walled away behind a canopy of netting. A single lamp is lit, and shadows lop and flutter, small and flimsily clumsy about a tall still silhouette. “Marfisa is the Horse,” a light clear voice pitched low, “but you are not Marfisa.”

“She said,” says Ellen, a hand coming up to the cuff of the mask, “if I wore this, no one would stop me. But no one’s, here,” she says, horse-head turning away, dim hall barely visible between the light at this end, and at that. “Except,” she says.

The silhouette steps closer to the netting, light shifting, shadow-scraps a-whirl. “What have you done.”

Ellen lifts the mask from her head. “I killed him,” she says.

“No.” The silhouette steps back, and back again. “No, you didn’t,” she says, a darkness looming over the lamp. “Close up the door,” she says, “and run.” She shuts it off.

“Where did,” says Ellen, looking away from the dark room to see the dimness trembling a blur that tumbles her prone to the dull carpeting. Bracing she kicks back but uselessly through a scribbled chiaroscuro that writhing grips and yanks, flipping her onto her back hands up that mask a-dangle to kick out again her free foot through air that ripples, whips away, resurges. Another kick at the shivering knot of light and shadow that’s gripped her other foot. A howl roars the trembling length of the hall, displacing air to swell by yanks and jerks a monstrous weight that crumpling drops on her strangled grunt the dust that jumps from the carpet, and a wrinkled crease of light surrounds her head, wrenching up to slam her gasping back. Those are eyes now above her, burning beneath brows of guttering smoke, and that hole punched in the space beneath them becomes a mouth that yawning growling clenches in a sneer to drop a single word like a bullet, “You.” The weight of the other above her blurring pulls from air and shadow and dust a torso, unfurls the arms that end in fists that hold her down, spins up a crown of wild white light to whirl above those eyes. “Who are you,” words chiseled from the sound of grinding stones.

“Phil,” she manages to say.

That weight rears up, improbably stretching those arms. “Phil?” and then, “Dr. Kilo?” Collapsing, floorboards groaning with the sudden burden, those fists squeezing her shoulders, that fizzing, hissing, sparking face too close. “Berlin,” says the other, and that scramble of light and shadow sloughs away from pale lips licked by a grey-pink tongue, peels from ruddy cheeks below gimlet eyes, boils away from a crown of wild white hair adrift about a bald pink pate, the whole set oddly atop that trembling bolus of tight-wound light and air, dust and shadow. Those lips part, revealing sharp white teeth. “You aren’t candy floss,” says the other, leaning almost tenderly to bite, there, where her black-inked shoulder turns into her throat.

Her hand leaps up for one sharp blow.

A thunderclap lashing light that head snaps back, chin dark with blood but also the hair now lank about the temple, the once-pink ear, the hand that’s slapping uselessly at the hilt of the tiny knife she’s jammed into the side of that skull. The air, the light, the shadows unsprung, whipped free, wild blows that shiver photos from their hooks and crumple sheetrock, rake the carpet, knock her kicking knees askew and drive the breath from her as she manages to scramble out from under just as all of it implodes, a great intaken breath, swallowed away. Her feet under herself, a hand coming across to cup the blood that wells from her throat as the mewling other scrabbles the carpet strewn with feathers, a pinkly naked body much too small.

“You’re alive,” says the woman in the darkness behind the netting.

Ellen upright leaned trembling against the wall looks down at the other sat up on the carpeting, belly a swelling eructation pinkly plumped that pushes, pop! those arms now long enough to cradle a wailing, bleeding head. “I’m not done,” she says.

“You’re not enough.”

Her one hand still clamped about the shoulder of her hoodie already heavy with blood, wincing as her other hand shuts the door between them. Closes up the hasp, fits the padlock to it. Snaps it shut. Turns back to the other but one of those arms too long too thin for the great swollen paw of a hand at the end of it swiping at her, she takes a skipping step away to stumble catch herself back braced against the wall. “Jyidshe,” a sound that struggles from those lips, and she lifts a foot to aim a kick at that head, but the one great hand’s being dragged back scuttling across the carpet, and the other’s lifted, fingers spread to catch, to hold, to twist, and with a groan she pushes herself away, unsteady steps away, still leaned against the crumbled wall, smearing a trail of blood and gypsum in her wake as she heads for the darkness of the stairwell.

Feathers crackle as those hands flop to the carpet, grab and pull that body after her, tiny feet kicked uselessly, too slow, too slow, that swollen head the hilt of the knife still jutting from it lifting itself, a horrible sludgy wail of rage and frustration that manages to shape a word, “Midch!”

Pinkish-orange sodium vapor light strips details from the mural, and color, leaving only suggestions of flowers, gestures toward bees, the dark curl of the boteh over the shut-tight overhead door, and it blows out the brightness of the limousine turning the corner, leaving only a faintest blush to tinge the ungainly length of it slowing to a stop along the loading dock. The rear door pops open on jewel-toned neon and a thumping beat, a blazing fire, that’s getting brighter, don’t need nobody here that don’t believe in me. Gloria in shorts and a blank white T-shirt wrestles out her empty gown, hauling it over her arm as Melissa half-falling follows, and a chorus from within of byes and love yous and see you next weeks cut off by the closing door. Gloria slaps the roof. The limousine smoothly pulls away.

Up onto the loading dock, Gloria losing an armload of gown for every armload she gathers back up. “Need a hand?” says Melissa.

“I got it,” says Gloria, chin propped by the precarious pile.

Melissa opens a smaller door there by the large overhead. The warehouse within is quiet, dim, lit only here and there by this lamp still shining from a stall, that trouble light hung low, but mostly by the warmly golden glow of the great tub out in the middle of it all. Gloria turns about, chasing a trailing drape of skirt, turning about again at the sound of footsteps hastening close, “Chatelaine!” cries someone, Charlichhold, approaching. “Let us help you with your burden.”

“Don’t call me that,” mutters Gloria. “Wait a minute.” Melissa’s headed off toward the unlit stage, where the shadowy bulk of the Buggane’s sat, “Hey,” says Gloria, setting off after her. “Hey!” Melissa leans to take the weight of what the Buggane lightly offers, her tremendous greatsword in its bulky scabbard. “You didn’t have that with you?” Gloria says, an ell or more of her slithery gown trailing the concrete after her. “Why did you leave that here?”

“I was supposed to put it in my pocket?” says Melissa. “Strap it to my back and just, waltz through the gate?”

“What if somebody,” says Gloria, yanking her armful of gown away. Charlichhold’s trying to gather up the draggled skirts. “What if somebody went and pulled something? What were you gonna do, exactly, to keep me safe, without,” twisting to yank again, “without,” says Gloria, and then, blinking, blankly flat, “you weren’t there for that at all.”

Melissa shrugs, and a clink of the fittings about the scabbard’s throat.

Gloria shoves the pile of gown at Charlichhold, who scrambles to catch it. “Her majesty didn’t tell you to do a goddamn thing, did she.”

“If I came to you,” says Melissa, “if I said, hey, can I come out with you, and your friends, just to get out of here, for a night – would you have said yes?”

Gloria leans into an exasperated shrug, eyes wide, “Maybe!”

“Cleaned and mended by morning, ma’am,” says Charlichhold, peering about a satiny fold of the heap of gown in his arms, “as well as ever it was.”

“Whatever,” snaps Gloria, stomping away.

“Hey,” calls Melissa, “hey!” But she’s looking to the tub, where someone’s stepped up, blue robe and a great steel bowl. “You take what you need, right?” Hefting the scabbard up on her shoulder. “You really need that much?”

Past those murmurous, half-lit stalls, under and through the pitch-black arch, out into the stark fluorescence of the stairwell, up and up to the landing at the top. A brief hall, double doors to the right, to the left a corridor at this end and another at the other, paralleled, the both of them sparsely lit by brand new sconces, set in patchworks of wallpaper samples. Head down, Gloria heads down the one at the far end, but not too far along, to open a door on a room indifferently revealed by streetlight glaring through flower-shapes painted on the window-glass, a credenza there, and a high thick mattress laid upon the floor, piled with sheets and pillows rendered monochromatically pale, and the shadow rolling over in them, to sit up on an unseen elbow, “Gloria?” says Big Jim. She sits herself on the foot of the mattress, kicks off a shoe. “Did you,” he says, and a throat-clearing rumble, “have fun? with your friends?”

She leans down to pull off her other shoe. “Fun,” she says, “is for the bourgeois. I,” she sighs. Lies back on the pale sheets. “I think I’m having an idea.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, no,” she says, rolling over on her belly, shaking her black-haired head. “Not yet. Not yet,” pulling herself handful by handful of rumpled sheets toward him, “because,” she says, and an edge to her smile, “I am going to give you such a kiss,” closer still, “that you are gonna rise up and fuck the daylights out of me, and then we’ll go to sleep, and then we’ll wake up, and we’ll have ourselves some breakfast, and then, maybe, maybe I’ll tell you. If it’s ready.”

Those sheets fall away from his furred belly, his bare hips. “I await my lady’s pleasure,” he says, and Gloria starts to giggle.

Starting awake, a hand to her temple, Jack on his back beside her, snoring into an upflung elbow.

Out of the tent a rustle of mesh and canvas-flap, grommet-clink on pole. Crouched, hands clenched in close-cropped grass, listening. Flubbery snort from Roy, a dozing pool of impossible moonlight. Jack’s snore tucked behind her, slowly gentle.

Silent to the wall of junk and up, black jeans, bralette, bare foot on cinderblock, fingers gripping sideways plastic crate to haul herself up top, laid flat, listening again. The schuss and whuff of distant traffic.

Twisting over and down, clatter abbreviated tink and click a thunk as something shifts, crackle of tarp she presses back against the junk-wall, shadowed, holding herself quite still. Once more listening. Waiting.

Further along the mound of junk, across grass lit indistinctly by a far-off blaze of parking-lot lights, a pale slice turns in the shadow of an abandoned sedan, opening out a white shirt-front that snaps into focus the negative space of a black black suit, scored by a skinny black tie, and she sighs, stands, steps out, “Hey,” she says, and he jumps, black sleeve yanked up, across, a hand to his heart, “Jesus,” he says. “Don’t do that.” And then, “You aren’t Johanna, are you.”

“That’s,” says Jo, “not, what it’s short for.”

“I, ah,” he says, “I’m Mr. Loudermilk, and I’m looking for Johanna Draper. She has something,” lifting his voice over the rising rumble of an approaching plane, “she has something she, ah, shouldn’t have? And I’m pretty sure,” looking to the mound of junk as the plane roars blinking overhead, and another shadow, enormous, shapeless, dislodges to swallow Mr. Loudermilk, crashing tangibly against the fender of that sedan as the plane dopplers away, struggle and jerk, a blow, a yelp, a brutal thump, “Hey!” Jo steps out onto the somewhat lighted grass, hands empty, ready, as the shadows resolve themselves, Mr. Loudermilk in his black suit held back against someone much larger, a swaddled bulk that barely registers his pushes and his strains, “Let me go!” slumping in that implacable grip. “I’m not gonna,” he says, looking to Jo, “hurt anybody, but he? Needs to let me go.”

“Oh, but Jasper’s not with Bambi,” says someone else. “He’s with me.”

Suddenly starkly lit, Mr. Loudermilk’s white shirt a-dazzle, Jasper’s matted hair a tangle over his scowl, and the man somehow in the midst of them all, sharp-honed smile beneath the brim of a big black hat. The flare fades, leaving the wire-wrapped hilt in Jo’s hand of a leanly tapered poignard, and Danny Moody bursts into laughter, “Lucinda!” he shouts, “you perfidious bitch.” A step toward Jo, her blade up, free hand by it, elbow a bit too high. “Neat trick,” says Moody, “but you forgot something.”

“Excuse me?” says Mr. Loudermilk, and a strangled yelp as Jasper shakes him, once.

“I would’ve sworn,” says Moody, “you swore a mighty oath never to do this kind of,” a gesture, for her crouch, the blade in her hand, “work, again. Not for them. Not for anybody.”

“If I could just?” says Mr. Loudermilk, and Jasper shakes him again, “How the fuck,” Jo’s saying, hands still up, that knife, “how is it you think you have any idea what I said.”

“But I was there?” says Moody. “With you, and King Long Gone, and dear old Daddy Hook?” Slipping a hand in the pocket of his surplus jacket. “Whatever. There’s another thing you forgot, which is what it is they say about knives,” and he pulls something out, “and gunfights. Bambi, I’m telling you,” pointing it at her, “you can’t leave something like this,” a stubby squared barrel, sprouted from his fist, “lying around where just anybody could think of it.”

“Honestly?” says Mr. Loudermilk. “If you would,” and then, peevishly, “stop that,” to Jasper. “Look. All this?” A futile wave from a pinioned hand. “This is Agile Saffron business. Whole different ops profile. Now. I don’t know where Dr. Uniform is,” looking about at them all, “but me? I’m on a milk run. So if you’ll just,” but Moody whips around, dragging the mouth of the pistol with him, and the flash, the flash is quick and bright enough to show them all again for an instant, the pop an echoless crack, an afterthought, and Mr. Loudermilk jerks once in the wake of it. “Oh,” he says, struggling to lift himself, sunglasses askew, “that wasn’t,” but he’s already shriveling away, black suit collapsing into itself with a mildly disquieting rustle and pop! Jasper, blinking, lowers his empty arms.

“Huh,” says Moody. Pistol still pointed where it had shot. “There’s something you don’t see every day.”

“Danny,” says Jo, “you didn’t have to – ”

“Sorry,” he says, lifting his free hand, without looking away from what’s no longer there, “Jasper, but,” shifting the gun, just, “for this to work, you know,” he says, “we have to have a body.”

Another flash, lighting up Jasper’s scowl as it becomes astonishment. Another crack, too loud, too quick. Jasper sags against the fender, and the patter of the blood leaping from his chest to his swaddled lap, and the slowly oozing of a second overflowing pump, and then.

“You didn’t,” says Jo, and then, “why.”

“Okay!” shouts Moody, a matador’s whip away in the barely light, and Jasper slumped against the sedan. “Step three? Call the cops!” He lets the pistol drop to the grass between them, and lifts a hand to his ear. “Or maybe I already did?” Smiling, sharply, at the thready, distant siren that’s wailing louder, closer. “Be seeing you, Bambi.”

Jo sinks to her knees. The gun there flat and black before her, barrel of it not much longer than the trigger-guard, grip wound about with glossy tape, and just visible in the darkness letter-shapes that say Kel-Tec, stamped in the pebbled metal.