Dancing in the street, purple pool-ring like an octopus about his waist, stubby inflated tentacles bobbing to the music from the speakers clipped to his rainbow suspenders, lyrics striding over a slinking beat, fuck the lease, I’m on my knees, he’s an atheist, I give him reason to believe, God bless, tiny white lights strung about his shoulders against the falling night, and glow sticks of every prismal color lopped about his purple capotain, stole his heart cause my cheeks thick as thieves. Half a dozen men and a woman in lederhosen and Tyrolean hats, and cradled in their arms the brassy curls of tubas, a euphonium, a sousaphone, Trebel Frei, says the sternly Gothic blackletter on the white cap over the big bell end of it, someone cheers. A squad of transparent umbrellas, the poles of them neon tubes of actinic pinks and yellows and greens twirled about to more applause. “Friends!” an amplified voice from speakers somewhere oddly distant, pointed away, “Neighbors! Honored guests!” and “Here we go,” says the man with the contrabass bugle, “Visitors from far and wide!” that booming voice, “Gracing our not-too-chilly and only somewhat rainy waterfront! Welcome, as we light up the Rose Festival with the one, the only, the best to ever do it, the greatest west of the Mississippi, welcome here and now, tonight, to the CareOregon! Starlight! Parade!”

“Okay,” she says, and sets a clipboard on the table between them, “okay. So I’m gonna read you your rights, and when I’m done, you’re gonna sign that, to show you understand.”

“I don’t need any rights,” he says.

“First, you have the right to remain silent.”

“I don’t want to be silent!”

She holds up a hand. “Bear with me. We’ll get through this. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you, in a court of law.”

“There’s no need!” he almost wails, “I came here to confess!”

“You have the right to an attorney,” and he slaps the table with both his hands. She starts back, blinking, slowly getting to her feet. “I need you to let go of that,” she says. “Leave it there, good. Lift up your hands, up and obviously empty, now: leave them there, okay? Or shit gets ugly, fast.” She leans back, without taking her eyes off him, “Officer Villaraldo? Could you, maybe, join us a minute? Keep ’em up, you’re doing fine,” as an officer in black fills the doorway, “Corey,” she says to him, “mind telling me if y’all patted him down already?”

“Yeah,” he says, “of course we, Jesus!” hand leaping to hip, “ut, ut,” she says, raising that hand of hers.

There on the middle of the round grey table a revolver, laid on its side, black cylinder in a silver frame that sprouts a barrel long and slender pointed nowhere in particular, darkened hammer uncocked, handle of it paneled with black, inset with silver smudged and nicked.

“I’m giving that to you,” says Chillicoathe, the Harper.

‘You’re doing fine,” she says. “Officer Villaraldo, you mind bagging and tagging that piece in accordance with our clearly stated protocols and procedures?” He slips sideways past her, nitrile glove clutched loosely in his fingers to keep the skin of them from touching the revolver. “Now. Where’d you have that?”

“Wherever it was,” says Chilli.

“And where is that?”

“It’s mine, now. I put my hand to it when I’ve need of it.”

“Wheel’s empty, Detective,” says Villaraldo. “Frisk him again?”

“You’ve done enough on that front, Officer. Get it squared away. Chilli? Chilli. Eyes on me.”

“I traded my sword for it,” he’s saying, “and the Outlaw’s sword, that I took as mine. And now I’m giving it to you! All I’ve left are my spurs.”

“Let’s, table that. You’re saying, you killed the girl, Melissa De Voor, with one of those swords.”

“Yes.”

“And then you traded the swords for that gun?”

“Yes!”

“Chilli,” she says. “Tell me. What did you do with the gun?”

“Absolutely not,” he says.

“Chicken.”

“Oz, you are positively frisky in a crowd.”

“Well, you’re a chicken, and now everyone knows.” She’s wrapped in a red down coat, white socks on her feet, and striated clogs of purple and red, a black broad-brimmed bolero hat that turns to follow the group all dressed in red T-shirts over flannels and sweats, Portland Firefighters, they say in white, carrying a great round life net between them, beckoning as they do to the crowds along either side, come on, it’s okay, try it!

“I will be pleased to tell them one and all,” says Jimmy, with a distractedly disapproving mien, “I’ve proved myself a coward.” His cardigan patterned with yellow feathers and red berries. Someone’s stepping out from the crowd, black jacket, purple hair, and the firefighters lower the life net to help them, laughing, step aboard. A bass drum thumps a regular cadence, a rattling line of snares, a shimmering carillon of xylophones and glockenspiels, a marimba, PSU Pedestrian Percussion, says the banner across the front of it, “Wait a minute,” says Oz, “that, sounds awfully familiar.”

“I believe,” says Jimmy, “they mean to essay Radiohead’s seminal composition, Paranoid Android. There – those are supposed to be the guitars,” as meanwhile, ahead, the firefighters haul up the life net in sudden unison, hurling the laughing black-jacketed someone laughing into the air, “and there, see?” says Jimmy, pointing with his chin. “Thus am I vindicated.”

Oz squawks, grabs his arm jerking back, and unrest ripples through the crowd about. He looks down to see a gurgling freshet slickening the bricks, slopping his black running shoes, a grunt and he joins them all, pressed back from the wee flood slipping away down the slope of the street, while out on the pavement, seemingly unconcerned, the parade marches on.

“How did you get this number?”

“I, don’t have the countersign for that,” says the phone.

“Dr. Uniform,” he says, black hair oiled and combed in a part, round glasses rimmed with clear plastic. “Let’s not play games.”

“Let’s not play games,” says the phone, “is that, I’m sorry, Mother, is that boots without shoes? Solve mu for mi?”

“We shall,” he says, “forego the challenge. Why are you not here.”

“Even burning at one end, you eventually run out of candle.”

“Expense another.”

“Can you source for me a felon, on the West Coast, who’s been hanged by the neck until dead?”

He looks up, glasses glossed over with green-white fluorescence. The man to his right, dull black suit, crisp white shirt, shrugs haplessly. “There are other paths,” he says, looking back down to the phone. “You’re needed here.”

“Did you get my report.”

“Your,” he says.

“Should be in the drawer to your right.”

“Drawer,” he says, and yanks it open with a grating squeal. Draws out a manila folder that he opens to reveal a stapled sheaf of laserprint, TO MOTHER/HQ, it says, across the front in a boldly serifed font, FROM UNIFORM/ROSE, AGILE SAFFRON COLOR GLASS SITUATIONAL ASSESSMENT. “How,” he says.

“November owed me a favor.”

He looks up, sharply. The man to his left, white linen jacket, shirt of silky grey, shakes his head, an elaborate pantomime of disavowal.

“I must warn you,” says the phone, “events on the ground have already outstripped the projections on page four. I was,” a briefly considering pause, “too conservative.”

“Uniform,” he says, and takes a swig of smoke from his cigarette. “Station Rose hereby stands relieved.” Exhaling a tenuated stream of smoke. “You are ordered back to Home Office by whatever available means.”

“Mother? You’re breaking up. Can you repeat that?”

“Uniform!” he snaps, “this is no time for,” but the phone’s muttering away, “If you can hear me, Mother,” and “Uniform!” he roars, the man in the white suit flinches, “as events warrant,” the phone’s saying, and the man in the black suit’s blinking rapidly. Smoke seeps up from the cigarette held high. “Uniform,” he says, quietly, and more calm. “Answer me.”

The phone says nothing.

A sip of smoke, a more considered inhalation. He folds the phone shut, snap. “Color Glass?” says the man in the black suit.

“Gluon saturate,” says the man in the white suit. “Decelerating from a significant percentage of c.”

“Antethesis?” says the man in the black suit.

“Gentlemen!” He gets to his feet, cigarette upright. “Saddlebag protocols are to be maintained at all times, without exception.”

“Sir,” says the one, and “Mother,” the other, heads contritely ducked.

“The infraction has been noted,” he says, closing up the folder. Looking over the index cards arrayed on the tabletop beyond it, goldenrod, salmon, cornflower, peashoot, each with a neat word precisely centered in blue ink, Apple, Engine, Nickel, Rocket, Camellia, Rose, Fountain, Angel, Electric, Sand. “Leave me the room,” he says. “There’s recalibration to be done.”

“Try reading the sign, Lizzi,” says the girl with the bangles about her wrists.

“Marysville Strawberry Festival,” says Lizzi, peering through rain-speckled glass. “The sign isn’t helping. And she’s singing.”

“Talent is an important consideration of any beauty pageant,” says the blond girl in the camisole.

“She’s singing Pink Pony Club.”

“The Marysville Strawberry Festival Queen,” says the girl in the hijab, reading from her phone, “and all her princesses, and princes, have come to Portland’s Rose Festival as ambassadors of all things strawberry, from Marysville, obviously enough, some thirty-five miles north of Seattle, on the Snohomish River delta, though still very much a part of the greater Seattle metropolitan area.”

“Viva viva viva SeaTac!” shouts the girl in tights and big black boots.

“Ladies, there’s a pickleball tournament,” says the girl in the hijab, “how can we resist,” but the girl in the paint-spattered smock’s leaning over to shove the girl in boots, “Shut up, Penelope,” she hisses, “they’re gonna kick us out.”

“Edith,” says the blond girl, “nobody’s kicking anyone out.”

“Chloe,” says the girl in the smock, with an acidic twist, “we’re not supposed to be here.”

“Leave, if you’re nervous,” says the blond girl. “Now, let’s all wave bye-bye to the Strawberries,” she steps up onto the bottom rail of the balustrade by Lizzi, “Sanaa,” she says, “careful,” steadying the girl in the hijab, and Penelope to one side of them all, Edith to the other, all of them leaned forward, foreheads pressed to the glass, looking down as the lit-up float swans beneath, sparks of white light sprinkled over lumpish plastic grass, Pink Pony Club, the queen and her court in rich dark red, blouses and gowns, black trousers, I’m gonna keep on dancin down in West Hollywood, waving laconically to the crowds before display windows left and right, Godiva Chocolatier, say the awnings, and True Religion Brand Jeans, Ann Taylor, say placards in the window there, they’re on a bridge, the five of them, enclosed in glass a couple-three storeys up, stretched over the street between two beigely concrete midrise blocks of a downtown shopping mall, either end of it opening onto genteel walkways, glass-fronted shops about open atriums, but each end blocked by velvet ropes slung between stanchions, Closed, says a sign hung askew, CareOregon® Starlight Parade.

“What do you think Gloria would say, with a real queen here like this,” says Penelope, as the float trundles away below.

“Who gives a shit about Suzie Gloria Monday freaking Wilson,” mutters Chloe, even as Lizzi says, “Gloria! Whatever. Where the fuck is Olivia?”

“Ready?” she says, all in black but for the pink and silver ribbons in her hair, jet black but for the bangs dyed pink, crouched beneath the stiff cloth tented above them, hefting the two-by-four stretched horizontally to the bracketed cross-bar ahead, a frame obscured by drooping golden cloth.

“Always, sweetling,” he says, with a quick kiss for her mouth, the black of his mustache hatched with white, and stooped he takes up his two-by-four, parallel to hers, hoisted, braced, he looks about, to all the others darkly dressed, hunched beneath that tenting gold, hands on poles and struts, and out there the laughter and the cheers, a whoop, the cheerful buzzing of what sounds like a flotilla of kazoos, “Ready?” he bellows, and then, “Go!”

The flimsy door of the motorcoach bangs open, fluttering the yellow strip of tape, CRIME SCENE, say the black letters printed over and over the length of it. Down he stumps, a hissing camp lantern held out in one hand, balancing his short but portly frame to the grass. An awning’s hung, blue plastic tarp held up by a couple of canted poles, protecting what’s laid out on more blue tarp beneath, stacks and piles of magazines, and pages ripped from magazines and fragments of pages filling a plastic tub there, and more spilled from black plastic bags, and the crumples and twists of them all, the softly ragged edges torn, split spines all painfully evident even in the thin lantern light, gleams shifting, limns slipping as he sets it on the ground. His fingers long and slender take up a candidate from the pile there by the door, careful of the pages loosely tucked within, lingering over the imprint of a bootheel cruelly pressed into the cover, marring the title, Planet or Plastic? it asks, over a floating shopping bag, all framed in rumpled jonquil yellow.

A rustle, out there, he looks up. Sets down the pages, steps away from pile, and coach, and light, slowly, into shadow. There, out in the grass, a small pale shape, sat looking back at him, the glint of one fierce eye. He steps back toward light’s verge, slips a little notebook from his pocket, peeking quickly within. “You are,” he says, looking up to the small pale shape, “Malocchio, the Great and,” a quick look back down, “Great and Terrible. This one,” a hand pressed to his sternum, where the lapels of his windowpane vest give way to his green linen shirt, “serves the Duchess,” he says. “There’s kibble, and fresh water. Go,” a gesture, that hand reaching out, but the pale shape spooks, “tell your brothers and sisters,” he says, lowering his hand. “This one is charged with setting things to rights.”

The first of them leaps from the onlooking crowd, “Hup!” a darkling figure on prancing, stamping boots, spinning to flare the skirts of a long dark coat, “Ho!” the head, the head too large and round, the great long corvid beak of it gleaming with rainwater whipped with the spinning jerk and point, jerk and point, dancing between the trundling tail of the float ahead, a complex interplay of swirling ribbons of light that tangle high in the air above the men and women in spotless white coveralls pulling it along, between them and the vanguard of the band that marches after, all in black with strings of colored lights about their foreheads and their necks and shoulders, Black Cross Marching Kazoo Band and Temperance Society, says the banner folding up as the bearers at either end are jostled pushed and shoved aside by comrades pushed themselves, the buzzing tootle of their chorus snarled into aimlessly arhythmic atonality by a second figure leaping whirling splashing among them, flap and slapping whip of a great wide ankle-length dress, the head an oversized crudely shaped snub-nosed prick-eared cat’s. A drum pops to thumping life, a fiddle skirls through a squall of feedback, a third figure, a fourth, a crocodile’s head, a bull’s, crudely shaped, hastily painted, too clumsily large as they dip and bob in frenetic time, splashing slashes of rainwater, “Ha!” and here comes the whistle, whirling and twirling around and about the fiddle line, punctuating the melody with piercing rills and runs, and then, the first of the puppets.

Wriggled from the exit there of the parking garage a ripple of gold held out and up on a pole pushed high and followed by another to become the arms of an enormous figure unfolding, the people beneath it, four, five, hoisting upright the poles they hold to open those long arms wide, the gown of gold gleamed rain-wet in the streetlights, head of it lifted slowly, a mass of paper pulp dried to a hard shell over shaped chickenwire, suggesting a mass of artful black curls hung loose to drape the canvas tarp sprayed with glitter over sturdy shoulders of two-by-four, the whole of it crowned by, click, a wheel of countless white lights as this towering queen a-sway lumbers vertiginously into the route of the parade, scattering kazooers before the prow of her already soaking hem, to the manifest wonder and evident surprise of the crowd, and also delight, but, as well, the growing alarm, as a second puppet appears.

Long skinny arms jank their way out and up, draped in tattered swathes and fluttering ribbons of glossy black, the length of it levering up to become another towering height all in black, and a hood made from a black garbage bag, and within two bright white spots light up as eyes to peer this way, that, those long and skinny arms outstretched, hands reaching, click, shining, powerful spots now blaze from each palm, lighting upturned faces to either side, gasping and squealing and shrieking in playful terror in that drifting not-quite rain, the water running more quickly now down the street, wavelets, rivulets ripple the pavement, plop and splash with every dancing leap and twirl and kick, with every step of the puppeteers up that onrushing stream, slopping the curbs to slick the sidewalks and lick at the shrinking, retreating, consternated crowds, as a wallop of white lops from the exit, a third puppet emerging.

Sharply angular shoulder, whipping slap of enormous lacey veil splashed in all that water, but it flutters, the lace. The air’s changing, rising to a sound, the rush and wash of water become a rumble to drown out shouts and cries and screams, the float ahead swamped by a rising swell, ribbons of light lashing as it twists and tilts, abandoned by white-suited attendants scrambling away with band and dancers and clowns and acrobats and firefighters, the crowd all full-tilt fleeing the water that rises shoving spilling slosh, the lit-up float lifted, skewing, sparking, picking up speed with the churn, rushed back toward the golden puppet already a-sway, one arm dangled, abandoned, so slowly toppling back and back into the collapsing arms of the second all in black, sparks and pops from the great crown of light, and the third puppet slumps not even half out the gate.

Around the corner, riding the last of the failing swell, here comes a canoe, a ponderous dugout of a thing a-wallow on the settling slosh through and past the detritus, piloted by a couple of men, one in a black suit coat and a beaverskin chimney-pot hat, the other in shearling and a coonskin cap, the both of them paddles held up and out, ready, waiting as they look around, astonished, aghast, at the walls, the windows, the lights all reaching up and up to a starless sky.

“Nah,” says Sweetloaf, ducking around behind the concierge desk, “it’s, ah, it’s fucking under here,” rattle and thump, and up he comes to set on top of it a Bakelite telephone, dusty face angled with a worn dial, sleekly angular handset in the cradle. “There,” says Sweetloaf. “Oldest fucking working phone in the city.” Light sweeps the lobby, passing headlights overwhelming for a moment the chandelier, brightening the gold that threads the wallpaper. “Go on, pick it up. It’s all wired in, you get the fucking tone and everything. You, ah,” twirling a finger in the air, “you know how to fucking dial it, right?”

“I, yeah,” says Christian, taking up the handset, turning it about, the unkinked cloth cord trailed awkwardly, pressing it to his ear, his other hand over the dial, but he frowns, “Hello?” he says, and then, “Op, operator? Do you, um, can you hook me to, a, Vanport number? The, the Vanport exchange, yeah, that’s it.” Tilting the handset away from his mouth, “She just, started talking,” he says to Sweetloaf, his other hand digging through the pockets of his oversized jeans. “Yeah,” he says, unfolding a much-folded sheet, “can you, um, put me through to,” peering in the dim light at the printed image of an old sheet of typescript, “Tyler four, five six, four two?” Tilting the handset away again, “It’s ringing,” he says.

Sweetloaf, looking away, distracted, nods.

“Still ringing. Uh. Operator? Can we try another number? Can we try Tyler, ah, Tyler four, oh one eight oh? Thanks.”

Sweetloaf, stepping away, ostentatiously rolls his eyes.

“It’s, ah,” says Christian, and then, leaning over the concierge desk, “Hello? Ah, is this, is this Mrs. Bunch?” Angles shifting from cheekbones to brow, skepticism perplexing toward something like wonder. “This is,” he says, “I’m Christian Beaumont, ma’am.” Sweetloaf nudges his elbow, he shifts, “I was looking for Cora? Is she there?” Sweetloaf grabs his sleeve, irritated, he pulls it away, “went to the, I’m sorry,” something’s dripping, Sweetloaf tugs, “Christian,” he hisses, “did you say,” says Christian, turning to glare, “cakestand?” His glare faltering, fading, he turns more fully around, his back to the concierge desk, “Tell her,” he says, “I called,” lowering the handset, reaching back, hanging up by fumbling touch. “Holy fuck,” he breathes.

The short man before him blinks behind thick spectacles, his brow a mighty shelf of disapproval, “Language, son,” he rumbles.

“Reverend Lee!” The woman behind him seizes his arm for comfort, for balance, but her grip squelches. He’s soaked, the Reverend, his pastoral lavender rendered more of a violet by the water dripping from his suit. “I will not tolerate,” he growls, turning to her, but “Reverend?” says someone else, and “Where,” and “Oh, my,” and someone’s calling “Pearl! Pearl!” and a shriek of “What happened?” and wailing, wailing. Water’s dripping from all of them, everyone, trousers and dungarees heavily pasted, skirts of various dresses runneled, clinging, water flung from outthrust, pointing, reaching hands, water squeezed from grips and embraces, water swamping the marbled marmoleum floor.