HE IS FALLING down a shaft of light as bright as the hundred million suns of his potential, candlepower to the Nth, falling at last to the great black pyramid of the Underworld, to dwell forever as a Voice, a vibrating shadow unseen by any but the lonelyhearted and deranged, el hombre invisible at long last. He is pure light at last, pure in the sense that he was about to be extinguished forever and reborn as light’s blissed and unholy opposite, oblivion, darkness. Only the Voice to remain, only words burning in the void beneath the world…

Henry Bethel came awake. This time the dream was not shattered by the shrill ring of the ancient phone he never answered, nor by the knocks and insistent pressure on a doorbell whose wires had been cut, nor by the insistent morning pressure of his bladder—life’s only constant—forcing him out of his gray sheets and into the dull white bathroom down the hall, shuffling like a mental patient in search of the TV room. No, this time the dream was cut short by sudden below-zero chill that had come over the room, raising the hairs on his arms and washing over him like an occult hand. In fact, it was an occult hand that had pulled Henry Bethel painfully back into the conscious world he could little bear anymore.

It was the ghost of Jack Samson.

“Hello, Jack,” said Henry thickly. You had to initiate conversation with Jack because otherwise Jack would just hang there like the sick visceral memory of a bad bout of the stomach flu and, bereft of Jacob Marley-style chains, stare at you for what seemed like hours. But if you spoke to Jack he could speak back (and why this was, why Jack Samson, who never waited for anyone to speak before dominating them with his ink-sharpened tongue in his former life, had to wait for this permission was beyond Henry, who imagined it was either a karmic punishment or some obscure ectoplasmic rule that he had never stumbled upon during his long hours nodding over texts at Miskatonic U.), and speaking to Jack was the surest way of getting rid of him (something else that was utterly the opposite of Jack’s earthly existence).

“Time, time, time, see what’s become of you,” said Jack, whose voice sounded as if it was being run through a wah-wah pedal off in some distant room. “Hank, baby, what are you doing in bed at one in the p.m.?”

Henry opened his eyes fully and saw Jack hovering off to the left, wearing his black leather blazer as always, his porkpie askew on his shaved head, his eyes forever gone behind granny shades. It was how he always appeared. Henry once nearly asked if Jack, in his spectral state, could in fact take his sunglasses off, and then thought better of seeing what the actual eyes of a ghost might look like.

“Jesus, Hanky. You look like hell. You look worse than I do, and I’m dead. What’s with you?”

“Oh, you know,” said Henry quietly. “Just watching life’s rich pageant.” He had yet to move since waking, and he thought dimly that after Jack faded to white in a few minutes, so then could he.

Jack, in that irritating, otherworldly way he had now (and, come to think of it, had in life) sensed this. “Wow. You have a black dog the size of a VW sitting on you chest.”

Henry smiled. “Yes. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t get up.”

“Someone has done a number on you, Hanky. What was her name? Why aren’t you banging away at the typewriter in melodramatic exorcism?”

“I don’t write anymore, Jack,” said Henry.

Jack Samson snorted and lit a ghostly cigarette… or at least, went through the motions, there being no cigarette and no lighter in his hands as they wen through their dumb show of memory. “What a crock. This is not the Henry Bethel I know, prodigious thinker of Big Thoughts, aesthetic gadfly, devastating cultural critic-at-large. What’s happened, professore?”

“I’m not a professor anymore, Jack,” said Henry.

“Stop kidding around, boyo.” And Jack’s form and face wavered and stiffened as he realized Henry was not kidding. “What’s going on?”

“For a ghost, you’re woefully uninformed, Jack.” Henry realized he was not going to go back to sleep, and with a rueful creaking of muscle and bone, sat up. “I don’t do the art critic bit anymore. I gave it up after SOL folded. And I gave up the chair at the university.”

Jack floated and let out a long, sepulchral whistle. “Sorry, baby. I’ve been limboing, you know? What the hell happened?”

“Nothing happened, everything happened,” said Henry wearily.

“C’mon, Hanky, spill it. I walk into the disintegration of Mighty Henry Bethel, you gotta tell me about it.”

Fuck it, he thought. He wasn’t going to go over it all again with this fucking hallucination, not after going over it to the tune of $200 an hour with that other fucking hallucination known as therapy. Normally these visitations from Jack were pleasurably creepy, but this was too much like a superficial chitchat with some old asshole you once thought you were friends with. He hadn’t seen Jack for some time… maybe this was another step toward that blissful oblivion.

“It’s exhausting, Jack. Please let it go. I’m a different person these days. Re-invented myself like everyone else.”

“Jesus fuck,” said Jack, who drifted over to the spartan desk by the window whose blinds had been closed for so long it was uncertain if there was still a window behind them at all anymore. “Okay, baby, I won’t push it. I’m never in a hurry anymore,” he cackled, “and you’re still a stubborn ass. So what’s your brilliant new career if you’re not dispensing pearls of insight anymore?”

Henry rubbed his neck and go up, walking stiffly to the desk. He pulled open the drawer and took out a cream-colored business card and flung it toward the semi-translucent form of the person who was once his very best friend, if not his only true friend. The card read, in elegant Times Roman:

HENRY BETHEL Sinatraist Ivanhoe 4-5451

Embossed in the card’s center was the barely discernible image of a snap-brim hat with a very high band.

“Sinatraist?” barked Jack with that unsettling laugh the dead have. “What the fuck is that?”

Henry smiled. “I make my living buying and selling rare Sinatra recordings and memorabilia.”

“What? And his estate isn’t all over you?”

Henry yawned. “You forget The Favor.”

“Oh, right,” said Jack. The card slowly passed though his hand and fluttered to the floor. His face screwed up, and Henry prepared for the withering torrent of his dead friend’s scorn and wit.

But, weirdly, it was not forthcoming, not this time. A change came over Jack; his whole form shifting like smoke caught in a draft from an open door. “Well, that’s the damndest fucking thing, Hanky old boy. But I’ve got to go now.”

“Oh. Well, nice to see you Jack.” Now even Henry’s hallucinations were unstable and inconsistent. What did you expect, he sighed.

Jack was fading, the room temperature slowly rising back to normal. Suddenly he turned and mock-smacked his forehead. “Oh fuck! I nearly forgot why I was here!”

“Yeah,” said Henry, and suddenly, inexplicably, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up for real.

“The omen,” said Jack, smiling his old, wicked smile. “Heh. Or portent, whatever you want to call it.”

“Omen?” said Henry.

“Yeah. Apparently, you’re going to become Lord Hierophant of Las Vegas, Emperor of Stones.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hey, that’s how it was put to me.” Jack was fading fast, his voice beginning to resonate like a cell phone call inside an iron lung. “And something about your love will be your only shield, your shield your greatest sacrifice…”

Jack was almost smoke. “See you around, baby… oh, and there’s that pounding at the door tooooooooooo…”

It was like the hand of God letting the air out of your tires. Henry Bethel closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, and when he opened them Jack Samson was really and truly dead and there wasn’t a sound in the room, not even an echo real or imagined.

There was, however, a pounding at the door.

FROM THE POUNDING at his front door, Henry Bethel would have thought a very hefty repo man or hulking homicidal maniac (it was a toss-up which one he would be happier to see) was on the other side. “Hang on,” he half-shouted, fumbling into his old black robe and trying to shake off Jack’s visitation.

When he threw open the door, however, he was shocked to see a small, rather birdlike man, impeccably dressed in a dark gray suit. He was pale, almost translucent, with close-cropped fire red hair and elegant oval glasses alight on his sharp Roman nose. He was so thin he looked to Henry like a human matchstick. The incongruity between this and the thunderous knocking brought Henry up short.

“Uh, yes?” said Henry.

“Mr. Henry Bethel? I hope I didn’t rouse you from too deep a slumber.” The man’s voice was crisp and faintly acid, somewhere just this side of Basil Rathbone. “My name is Madison Monroe, and I have come to see you on urgent matter. May I come in?”

Henry half began to close the door with whatever protestations he used these days to get rid of people. But he stopped, vaguely intrigued by this odd creature. “I suppose I have a few minutes,” he said, opening the door and ushering the man inside.

Madison Monroe glided into the house. Henry had never actually seen anyone, not even runway models, actually “glide,” but this man did. He was like a wisp from a burning candle, and Henry looked past him to see if there was some burly brute lurking around the corner before closing the door.

If Madison Monroe was nonplussed by the décor of Henry’s front room, he did not betray it. There was a knockoff Eames chair in one corner, next to a freestanding lamp. Otherwise the hardwood floors were bare; the fireplace yawned blackly in the white wall. At the far end of the room, however, there as a giant photograph covering the entire north wall: a reproduction of the cover of Frank Sinatra’s album No One Cares (arranged and conducted by Gordon Jenkins). Sinatra, wearing trademark hat and a trenchcoat, sat at a bar and stared disconsolately into his glass as happy, blissfully unaware barflies chatted in the background. Monroe seemed to take all this in with a glance, and, unasked, moved directly to the chair and lowered himself into it with single, fluid motion.

“Drink?” Henry asked, rubbing his chin and already answering in the affirmative for himself.

“Thank you, no,” replied Monroe as Henry went into the kitchen. “You are a very difficult man to reach, Mr. Bethel.”

Henry poured himself a rum and coke. “Incommunicado, Mr. Monroe. It’s a pleasant place to be.” He walked back into the room to see Monroe arranging a slim leather portfolio across his knees. Monroe’s expression seemed one of earnest bemusement.

“It is unfortunate that an art critic of your standing should absent himself from the fray. May I say that I greatly admired your book of essays, Fiesta Machinery?”

“You can say it,” said Henry, stifling a yawn. “People say all sorts of things. What can I do for you, Mr. Monroe? I fear I’ve retired from the art world and gone into another line of work entirely, so if you’re a curator…”

Monroe’s short bark of a laugh stopped Henry’s thought. “No, no, Mr. Bethel, I’m not a curator. And I am aware of your recent career realignment. Sinatraist, isn’t it? My sister-in-law is herself an Yma Sumactrix. Very lucrative, especially here in Las Vegas, I’m sure.”

“It keeps me in contented silence, Mr. Monroe. Incommunicado.” Henry hoped his tone would be apparent, and that this strange little man, who he was already regretting letting in, bizarre knock or no, would get to his point and go.

“Yes. Silence is something to be desired in this brave new world of tomorrow, isn’t it, Mr. Bethel?” Monroe unsnapped his portfolio. “Let me go straight to the point, then. I represent the collector Don Ix Ixmal. You are familiar with his excellency?”

Bethel was vaguely familiar. “Um, yes. Specializes in Mayan art, doesn’t he? Some sort of big wheel in the Mexican government…”

Monroe smiled. “A former ambassador. Don Ix has worn many hats in his long life of philanthropy and public service, Mr. Bethel. And his taste ranges far and wide, from ancient to contemporary.” Monroe removed a long gray card from the portfolio. “And Don Ix is at present most interested in the work of this artist.”

Henry took the card from Monroe’s proffered hand. It was slate gray, the color of cold, dark stone. It read, in raised lettering:

SACRED MONSTERS An Exhibition of New Sculpture by Maude S— February 28-April 27 The Elise Valkenburg Gallery 1225 Industrial Road

“It’s nice to see Elise is still in business,” remarked Henry. “The market for art in Las Vegas, you may know, is rather limited to fourth-rate Venetian glass and paintings of dolphins." Who, he wondered to himself, was Maude S—?

“Maude S— is a recent and mysterious addition to the local art scene, Mr. Bethel,” said Monroe, as if reading his mind. “Don Ix has received very, shall we say, intriguing reports about her work. But these reports have been of a rather clandestine nature, for they refer to sculptures that almost no one has seen. In fact, they’ve likely been seen by the same handful of people who have actually seen the artists herself.”

“What do you mean?”

Monroe shifted slightly in the chair. “Maude S— came, as the cliché goes, literally out of nowhere. Her sculptures—the ones she shows in public—have appeared in odd places outside the international art circuit. But the works are so striking that they have slowly filtered into the art world, bit by bit, by mere word of mouth. Perhaps you saw the photographs of her works in Art in America three months ago?”

“I let my subscription lapse.” Henry didn’t bother to conceal his yawn. This was all so pleasantly distant now. Why did he not tell the Matchstick to go away?

“They’ve created quite a buzz, nonetheless,” said Monroe somewhat archly. “But the real buzz is the Garbo-like behavior of Maude S— herself. She is a recluse, dealing only with galleries through representatives, and spurning any kind of exclusive deal. She roams from one odd city to another, showing her works, selling several, than moving on as suddenly as she arrived. But most enigmatically she refuses to show any of her private works, the tales of which have started a furious rustling among collectors and other artists.”

Henry regarded Monroe over the top of his glass. “And now she’s come to our radiant city, has she.”

“Indeed. And Don Ix is anxious to make an assessment of her works before she disappears again. That, Mr. Bethel, is where you come in. Don Ix wishes to contract your services as a critic and advise him as to the quality and importance of this artist’s work.”

Henry sighed. “You’ve wasted your time, Mr. Monroe. As I stated before, I’m out of the whole dirty and dispiriting art game. Certainly a man as wealthy as Don Ix can hop on a lear jet to Vegas and see the works for himself.”

Monroe smiled. “Alas, Don Ix has duties elsewhere of the utmost urgency that prevent him from making a personal assessment.”

Henry waved his hand. “Then he can fly in somebody from L.A. or New York. I’m sad to say there are plenty of overpaid and underintelligent art consultants around.”

“Don Ix wants someone who is, shall we say, local. And you are the only art critic of any stature in the whole state of Nevada, I would wager.”

“I’m retired,” said Henry forcefully. “And what does being local have to do with this?”

At this, Madison Monroe’s smile paled somewhat, and he stood up with the same light grace as before. “The assessment of Maude S— that Don Ix most desires is not of her work at the Elise Valkenburg Gallery, Mr. Bethel.”

Monroe walked closer, as if for dramatic effect, and small as he was, achieved it. “Don Ix wants an assessment of the private works. The ones that no one has seen. We feel someone with experience in the city can get closer to the artist than is possible for some hired gun, as it were.”

Henry paused, than laughed, snorting, and shook his head. “I’m not interested, Mr. Monroe. Tell your boss he should talk to the people who’ve already seen these works.”

Monroe’s smile returned like a flickering lightbulb, oddly twitchy and bright. “Unfortunately, Mr. Bethel, those who have seen these works have proved to be very difficult to contact. Many seem to have vanished off the face of the earth.”

What is this, Henry thought to himself, Pickman’s Model meets the X-Files? “I’m very sorry, Mr. Monroe,” he said

“It it’s a question of your fee, Mr. Beth-"

Henry cut him off. “It has nothing to do with money. Nothing these days has anything to do with money, except for the Chairman of the Board. I am not an art critic, cultural commentator, talking head, pundit or writer of any kind for any price,” he said, handing him back the invitation.

Monroe deftly moved around him toward the door. “Keep it, Mr. Bethel. I will convey your refusal to Don Ix, who will naturally be deeply disappointed. But perhaps you will reconsider.”

“I’m afraid I won’t, Mr. Monroe.” He continued to hold out the card, a little unnerved by Monroe’s swiftness. Monroe already had the door open.

“Well, we’ll see, Mr. Bethel. It is my job, on occasion, to be an optimist.” He smiled once again. “It was a pleasure to meet you. Good day.” And with that he was gone with a soft click as the door closed behind him.

Henry stood there a moment, stupidly holding his breath. At last he let it go with a low whistle, and drained the rest of his drink. He wasn’t sure if he was more annoyed by the man’s disdainful, I-work-for-someone-important manner or by the whole bizarre scenario he had proposed. Was he considered a potential spy precisely because he had left the scene? And what would Don Ix do with the information once he had it? Obviously, the works are private because they’re not for sale. No doubt Don Ix was some obsessive rich weirdo who felt he could wave enough money around and have whatever he wanted.

“Feh,” said Henry aloud. He realized he was still holding the card for the show. He walked into the kitchen and, with great satisfaction, stepped on the pedal to the trash can and flung it into the depths.

It took a second to register what he had seen. He opened the lid again, and peered at it for a long moment before reaching down and retrieving it. He had neglected to turn the card over during his interview with Monroe. He now looked closely at it, and felt a horrible coldness in his gut, felt it spread up into his heart with all its sorrows and lodge there, heavy as a ton of ice. For he knew immediately that he would see the works of Maude S— in spite of himself.

There, on the other side of the card, was a photo of a sculpture. It was a recreation of a figure from the Tarot. It was, in fact, as the Roman letters carved into it’s base proclaimed, the Hierophant.

And it was the spitting image of Francis Albert Sinatra.

ONE’S REPUTATION should be a sword and shield, mused Henry as his decrepit red Karmen Ghia sailed through the Charleston Underpass, out of the smell of freshly baked bread that hovered like an invisible cloud around the Holsum Bakery (whose giant neon clock read one minute to midnight) and into the soot of a truck lumbering in front of him. Henry swung out of the noxious fumes and onto Commerce, the invitation to Sacred Monsters in the seat next to him. A sword and shield, and Henry felt as if he had hung up his armor for good, trading it in for a vulnerability that made him feel slightly human, and was bearable because it was secret—the vulnerability of an exile. But he knew that upon entering the Elise Valkenburg Gallery that half of the Vegas art crowd would see only the miraculous glinting of that armor while the other half would see him as more naked than he really was.

Henry sighed. His relinquishing of his identity—the persona that he had willingly and assiduously created over many years—had generated untold amounts of stories and gossip, both in Vegas and in L.A., New York, etc. Not that he cared, since he was no longer required to interact with anyone in the art scene anymore. They could mock him for his “Duchamp Lite” act (as one fellow critic had put it) all they wanted. He wasn’t around for it anymore, professionally, aesthetically, emotionally. Living in Vegas (something that gave him, he knew, an idiosyncratic charm) he was isolated from the heavy hitters anyway. But now he was showing his face in his own backyard—in the continually despairing, constantly embattled Las Vegas art scene. Which had always treated him with awe for his connections to the larger world or disgust for his perceived half-hearted contributions to their quixotic dreams of a town that gave a damn about “art.” He was no less tired of the dichotomy now then he was when he threw in the towel.

High above the city a full moon pressed its face against the mountainous clouds. He hoped that Elise was correct, that he would be able to avoid most of those dreaded and familiar faces in the candlelit interior of the gallery. For he had discovered that the mysterious Maude S—‘s sculptures were to be seen only by candlelight, and only after midnight. How terribly Goth, Henry had said on the phone to Elise.

“I know,” said Elise bemusedly. “But that was her condition. I think it will be fun. Anything to break up the wine and cheese monotony of these things.” Elise, he knew, was nearly as disenchanted as he was with the life of art with a capital “A.” But Elise was married to a retired casino magnate, and without the gallery would have nothing to do but slowly succumb to vast couches of Italian leather in the airy boredom of a house in Summerlin.

“And of course it will be wonderful to see you again, Henry,” she had continued. “I thought perhaps this might prick your interest, but I wasn’t very optimistic.”

“Nor should you be,” Henry had replied. “I’m not coming out of retirement; I have ulterior motives for wanting to see the show.” Henry had tried to arrange a private showing—which was why he had broken down and called Elise in the first place—but Elise talked him into coming to the opening. “It’ll be your only chance to meet Maude S—,” she said, “and even then I can’t guarantee she’ll show up. But when she does, it’s only on the opening night. I don’t know, Henry, either she’s the most melodramatic artist I’ve ever dealt with, or she’s in the Witness Protection Plan.”

(Considering that most of the artists Elise had dealt with were either outsized academic egos or minor figures safely dead, it was a safe bet that Elise hadn’t come into contact with the more outrageous figures in conceptual art circles. But Henry kept that thought to himself.)

“Mystery is the highest value a work of art can have, Elise,” said Henry, and winced inside at how easily one of his own tropes had rolled off his tongue.

“You should know,” said Elise. “It’s only been two years, but everyone still buzzes about you…”

“You’re not selling this when you tell me that.”

“Oh, please,” said Elise. “Slip in the back through my office after midnight, and hardly anyone will notice you. Wear a hat,” she added with a laugh.

So finally, against all misgivings and instincts to avoid this admittedly intriguing but disturbing turn of events, here he was, wearing an old fedora and turning into the alley that led, between rows of anonymous warehouses, to Elise’s reclaimed industrial laundry plant, it’s ceilings now strung with chic track lighting where once rows of fluorescent had washed over everything in their equalizing, benumbed light. As nice as the gallery space was, Henry had often wondered if the laundry hadn’t been a better work of art.

The parking lot was packed, of course. The artist’s enigmatic behavior had preceded her, and the midnight hour made the whole thing too good to resist. Henry gave his keys to the terminally bored valet and pulled his fedora down over his eyes, ducking around the side of the building to door to Elise’s office. He spoke a little mantra under his breath: “Please no Stan Dayton, please no Stan Dayton, please no Stan Dayton…”

Of course, Stan Dayton was standing just inside Elise’s office, his third glass of wine already in his hand.

“Henry! Good god, I thought this might bring you out!” Stan practically bellowed it. His walleyes behind thick glasses and mass of white beard made him resemble a demented Santa Claus.

“Hello, Stan,” said Henry with a tone so weary he hoped Stan would catch it.

“What the hell have you been up to? Did you see the piece on me in the paper?” Dayton was the chair of the art department, and somehow had managed to avoid the studied disdain of his colleagues. He always came off as enthusiastic and insincerely ebullient as a PR flak, even when he was demoting someone or breaking the bad news about some budget cut (doubtless the reason he had been made chair in the first place).

“No, Stan, I missed that. I was in Sumatra, you know.”

“Sumatra?” Dayton blinked as if he couldn’t quite process that.

“Oh, yes,” said Henry. “Became very ill”—he coughed into his hand—“you’ll excuse me”—and coughing slipped around Dayton to where Elise stood in the doorway. She looked as she always did; a middle-aged woman who was never beautiful but always oddly attractive, and who now always appeared as if she had just stepped out of an overpriced salon. Tonight she was in a black pants suit, and her hoop earrings were big enough to lob a grenade through. She beamed at Henry and gave his arm a squeeze, then whispered:

“Follow me.”

He smiled, and they moved like bosom conspirators down the short hallway and into the cavernous dark of the gallery, lit now with hundreds of candles. The soft glow spread away from them in wavering pools, congealing around a parade of figures as stately and grave as saints in a medieval cathedral. The candles, Henry was grateful to see, were only placed around the base of the statutes themselves, like votive offerings; it would indeed be easy to go unrecognized in the gloom, even though the gallery was quite full, the murmur of voices weaving in and out as the viewers walked slowly from work to work, each of which was ten feet tall on four foot pedestals. The installation had indeed created a medieval hush of sorts, and it seemed that most people were actually looking up at the statues, rather than engaging in the typical, butterflying banter that usually had everything to do with who was who and who was here and nothing to do with the art. (Henry often thought how amusing it would be to give exiting gallery types a little quiz on what they had actually seen; he was sure most of the form would be vague to the point of blankness).

Now, still close to Elise and moving along the wall, Henry approached the works themselves. They were indeed figures from the Tarot, but rendered as if they were Egyptian idols on ceremonial thrones, and each one was a figure associated with the history of Las Vegas. Some were obvious: Elvis as the Magician, Bugsy Siegel as the Hanged Man. But here was the Empress: Helen Stewart, whose husband had been killed in the late 19th Century leaving her with a vast ranch that was now the heart of the city, an obscure figure made even obscurer by a town that threw away its own past every three years. Henry moved from each to each with glowing admiration: the technique was stunning, with each figure looking stately and divinely unreachable yet somehow alive, like all the best religious sculpture.

“Masterful, don’t you think?” whispered Elise. The churchly hush had even blunted her usually high-pitched voice.

Henry murmured. They were impressive, but odd. A Las Vegas Tarot is a fun and logical conceit, especially for a city ripe with myth and symbol, with psychics and folks longing for second chances… but why in marble? Why not the deck itself? The figures felt so monumental for a city without monuments.

Henry stopped beneath the Devil, the cool stone figure floating, it seemed, above him in a warm cradle of light. His face was a blank: completely featureless, but for what appeared to be a head of coifed and blow-dried hair. Shadows flickered across his suit; his right hand grasping what appeared to be money trickling through his fingers. In his left, a fistful of earth and roots. Something caught Henry’s eyes and he squinted closer to see tiny figures in the roots, writhing in agony like sinners in Dante, carved in astonishing detail…

“Odd spelling, eh?” said Elise again.

Henry felt a slight chill. His eyes caught those of one of his former graduate students across the way, and nodded in embarrassed recognition. He quickly turned down to read the title at the base again:

THE DEVEL

“The Devel,” repeated Henry aloud.

“Give the Devel his due.”

For a moment, Henry thought Elise had spoke, so close was the phrase to his ear. But when he looked up again, he noticed a hush creeping over the gallery as the talk died away. Elise was looking up into the darkness to the old catwalks high above, and she nudged Henry with her elbow.

Standing with a huge candelabra in hand, looking for all the world like someone who had stepped out of a Roger Corman Sixties Poe flick, a hooded figure was standing above them. Instantly, Henry realized that it was her voice he had heard, even though it had been no more than a low rustling whisper.

“That’s her,” said Elise, and her breath came out with an excited little gasp. “That’s Maude S—.”

CONVERSATION CEASED as if the air had been sucked from the room, leaving it a soundless void, all eyes now fixed upon the dark, hooded figure above them. Henry peered through the gloom and could make out that Maude S— was wrapped in a long, burgundy velvet gown; her arms sheathed in black opera gloves, her face almost completely obscured by the great, owlish hood.

“Thank you all for entertaining my sacred monsters,” she said. Her voice was clear and strong, and somewhat light, not at all the voice Henry thought he had heard in his ear a second ago. That voice had been like water rushing in an underground river.

“And my thanks to Elise Valkenburg for giving these monsters a grotto in which to rest from their weary journey.” There was some laughter and a smattering of applause. “They are quite at home here in your radiant city, even though they have no fortune to give.” Some more laughter, somewhat nervous, thought Henry. He glanced around, seeing some rapt faces, some smirking at the theatricality of it all.

“Of course, fortune is never written in stone, is it?” Henry could swear she was smiling, even though he really couldn’t see her face. “At least, not until after the fact. Only Time enthrones us.” As she said this, her arm drifted out above them with a broad gesture, as Kristine and Oliver, Elise’s gallery assistants, slowly wheeled out another sculpture though the parted curtains that separated the storage room from the main space. It was the same base as the rest, but the grand throne upon it sat empty. The inscription was plain to see even in the gloom, for, unlike the rest, it was cut in gilded Roman letters:

THE EMPEROR

There was another smattering of bemused applause, and a guffaw or two. But when everyone’s eyes turned back to the catwalk, Maude S— was gone. There was a moment of confusion, broken at last by Elise’s clapping, which brought on a full-blown ovation of sorts.

“Who is she kidding with that The Lady Vanishes crap?” It was Doug Hardin, one of Henry’s former graduate students. He had sidled up to Henry in the dark, along with the ever-present Jenny Matsui and Ginger Arnold.

“Life is all about entrances and exits, Douglas,” said Henry. Hardin’s art consisted of keeping pictures of crooked politicians in clear jars filled with formaldehyde.

“You should know, professor,” said Jenny teasingly. Jenny painted oil portraits of violent war scenes onto the D cups of white bras. “Wow, it’s great to see you here. How are you? What have you been doing?”

“Practicing to be a sunshine millionaire,” said Henry. He was looking over her shoulder at Elise as she disappeared behind the storage room curtain. “How are you doing?”

“I graduated, and you didn’t even come to my show,” said Jenny with a pout.

“Sorry, kiddo, I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.”

Jenny gave him a quizzical look. “It’s a Leonard Cohen song, dummy,” said Ginger with the unkind affection that fast friends cultivate. Ginger took photographs of people’s knees.

“Yeah, you’re well out of it, prof,” said Doug. “Although I could use some help with my fucking committee.”

“That would require talking to Dayton. I don’t think you could afford my new hourly rate for talking to Dayton.”

Jenny laughed, and Ginger said, “What do you think of these, professor?”

“Please, Ginger, my name is Henry. And these are very interesting.”

“Vedddy interesting,” said Doug. “That’s what you say when you don’t want to say anything.”

Henry smiled. “Good, Doug, nice to see you weren’t always asleep.” Henry caught sight of Elise again. “Listen kids, nice to see you, but I’ve got to ask Elise something.”

“Are you writing again?” asked Jenny. “Is that why you’re here?”

“He’s not writing again,” said Ginger wearily (which was how she said everything). “You just wanted to check out the Garbo of sculpture, right?”

“If she was a real recluse, she wouldn’t leave her studio,” said Doug.

“Well maybe that wasn’t even her,” offered Jenny. “She probably hires someone to go around pretending to be her.”

“Oh, is that why the melodramatic bullshit is piled so high here?”

“Shut up, Dougie,” said Ginger. “These pieces are really beautiful. They have the drama, not her.”

“Well said. Nice to see you all,” said Henry, pulling his hat down again and moving around them. He smiled to himself and felt a brief pang at seeing his old students. He had liked most of his students, and the few that he didn’t like he had gently demolished. The pang became a bloom of pain and passed.

He caught Elise’s elbow as she was giving Kristine some instructions.

“That was pretty Gothic after all, wasn’t it?” he asked.

Elise shrugged. “That little display probably sold at least a couple of these.”

“Listen, where is she now? Can you make an introduction?”

Elise waved her hand in exasperation. “An introduction? I didn’t even know she was going to be here! Her assistant called an hour before to say that she wasn’t going to make an appearance. Suddenly she’s on the catwalk, which no one is supposed to have access to!” She shot a look at the hapless Kristine.

“I swear I don’t know how she got up there,” said Kristine. “The access ladder is still locked. All we were told was to roll out the last piece at the mention of Time.”

Elise grimaced. “Her cold fish assistant insisted on that too. Next time, Kristine, you better damn well double check these things with me.”

“Oliver said he got your approval!”

“What!? Go find Oliver and tell him to get his ass over here.”

“Elise, please,” said Henry. “You can sort this out later. Right now I really would like to meet Maude S—.”

Elise sighed. “You’re better off talking to that icy sliver over there.” Elise threw her hand in the direction of a tall, thin woman who now stood by the Fool (a hideous tourist replete with finely detailed camera around his neck and fanny pack). The woman struck Henry as a dead ringer for Sigourney Weaver, but with higher, severe cheekbones. She was wearing steel-framed elliptical glasses and her dark hair was pulled back in an elaborate French twist. Her suit was as elegant and gray as stone, and she appeared to be entering information into a palm pilot.

Elise walked over to her with Henry in tow, a pleasantly artificial smile surmounting her irritated expression.

“Henry, this is Stephanie No, assistant to Maude S—,” said Elise. “Ms. No, this is the critic Henry Bethel.”

“Former critic,” said Henry, and silently kicked himself. Don’t blow it right off the bat, he thought.

“I’m familiar with your writing,” said No, and Henry could see what Elise had meant. Her voice was like an unwarmed stethoscope on your heart. “But you won’t be writing on this exhibition, will you.” It was not a question.

“I haven’t made up my mind,” said Henry. “But if I did it would not be for publication.”

No made a face that passed, in her mind, for a smile. “That’s what all writers say,” she replied.

Henry chuckled. “I would actually like to discuss these works with the artist herself, if it is at all possible.”

“Anything is possible, but that would be unlikely,” said Ms. No. “Madame is highly selective about who she talks to in the press, whether they are active or inactive.”

Madame, thought Henry. They really are carrying this isolated genius thing to the limit.

“Believe me, Ms. No, my interest is purely aesthetic. I look for conversation these days when it comes to art, not commerce. My card,” he said, handing it to her.

Ms. No took it and studied Henry’s current profession without a flicker of interest. “I will convey this to Madame,” she said. “If you will excuse me,” she said.

“There’s something I want to discuss,” began Elise, but the sliver had already glided swiftly off. “Snooty bitch,” Elise fumed. “Anyone else I would tell where to get off.”

“But not the Riddle of the Year, eh?” said Henry staring after her. He realized that more people had spotted him now, and any moment would be descending to find out what he had been doing. He had to make a quick exit. But as he walked briskly with Elise through the candlelit gallery, he suddenly realized that something was missing from the icons around them.

“Elise, where’s the Hierophant?”

“The what? Oh, Sinatra,” she said. “I was wondering when you would notice that. It sold before the show even opened” She lowered her voice. “I snuck someone in for a very private showing last night, in violation of my agreement, I might add.”

As they reached her office, Henry paused. “Who? Who bought it?”

Elise smiled. “Who do you think?”

Henry felt the awful thought come over him. “Oh no. He didn’t, did he? Christ, please tell me he didn’t.”

Elise shrugged sadly. “Who else but Win Stevenson?”

SCOTCH ALWAYS HELPED, thought Henry to himself. It's helping me to get over this fence right now. He tottered, unsteady, as he swung his leg over a jagged ridge of chain link. He knew he wasn't going to land gracefully, sensed the pain in his knee before he even hit the ground. No matter. Scotch helps that too.

After he brushed himself off, patting his jacket pocket to make sure his silver-plated flask had not dislodged and spilled his little helper all over his lining, Henry walked toward the great skeleton of steel that rose in intersecting lines into the neon-drenched night. To the south, the clouds reflected an evil green, green like a cartoon character about to be sick, courtesy of the emerald monolith that was the MGM Grand. But here, just behind The Paradise Resort and Casino, there was only mundane orange-sodium light bouncing off of what was to be Win Stevenson's crowning glory in his bid to turn High Kulchur into an attraction that would pack the rubes in as surely as any white tigers or motion simulator rides.

Henry stared up into the spaces of night between the girders where no stars would ever be seen. Vegas had obliterated the stars quite efficiently, and somehow the knowledge that a mere hour's drive would put you into a wilderness so black you could see every jewel in the firmament didn't quite take the edge off of Henry's melancholy. He was now just drunk enough to trespass without a second thought, a direct result of the evening's oddly disturbing events.

Leaving the gallery, his mood had quickly spiraled downward. What the hell had he been doing there tonight? At first the whole thing had the intriguing camp appeal of a detective story: Poor Jack's weird warning, Madison Monroe's "mysterious employer" (Henry half-expected him to say he was working for Keyser Sose), the pulp theatrics of Maude S—, who clearly was a talented sculptor in no need of any smoke and mirrors (perhaps defensive because she was doing figurative work?). But to have Win Stevenson so richly thrown in his face at evening?s end, to see his old students and know that people had spotted him and were whispering madly about his sudden re-appearance had turned his soul sour. What had he been doing there?

Henry walked cautiously, stepping over construction detritus to get a better look at the new satellite branch of the Margaret C. Dressler Museum of Modern Art that was now opening like a grand weed in the Strip's money-soaked soil. He had seen the plans, of course, in what seemed like a million years ago in Win's panoramic office atop The Ravenna. "I couldn't get Pei," Win had boasted, "so I bought everyone who had ever worked for him." The result was going to be a vast, transparent museum, its structure wrapped in semi-opaque materials that would make it feel (in the language of his PR flacks) "like a palace of ice in the desert oasis of Las Vegas."

"More like an ice cube with some bits of metal frozen in it," Henry had opined.

Win looked up toward Henry's left and smirked. "That's why I hired your wife and not you, Bethel."

And Jill had smirked as well, but in a tolerant, such-is-the-humor-of-the-Patron manner she had long ago adopted. Jill always referred to Stevenson as The Patron, in a manner that combined mockery and flattery in equal measure. Win, naturally, got a big kick out of it. He had gotten a very big kick out of Jill Bethel ever since he had hired her to be the consultant to his buying spree of the few top Impressionist paintings still on the open market.

Jill, thought Henry. He took a sip from the flask, and tried her name aloud in the vast emptiness of the construction site. "Jill," he said thickly. Her name came out like a bit of nonsense, a piece of dada without meaning. "Jilljilljilljilljilljill?" Henry repeated, his voice trailing off. He smiled in the dark.

It was the conventional wisdom among his friends and colleagues, Henry knew, that his withdrawal had begun with the failure of his marriage. And why not? It was conventional wisdom for a conventional pattern. But Henry knew better. Hadn't his withdrawal begun much earlier, with Jack Samson's death? Or earlier still, in a way, when he had relocated to Vegas from L.A. in the first place? Or perhaps, Henry mused, couldn't it be said that his withdrawal had been ongoing before he ever even made a deposit?

Henry took another slip. Nothing is so simple as that. It's not one dramatic thing, but a whole series of them, like a string of firecrackers going off in your hand, racing up toward your flesh as you watch, paralyzed, dumbfounded. It's only the last one that blows your fingers off.

Henry walked a little ways into the structure. Shadows lengthened all around him; the dim bustle and noise of the Strip, only a few hundred yards away, seemed to be sucked into silence in his wake. Henry stood there some moments, listening to nothing in particular, looking up into the grid of dark steel. They should leave it like this, he thought, and hang the art from rusty chains. It will never look any more transparent then it does now.

"A good critic merely articulates his response to something," he said aloud in a soft voice. "And a great critic focuses his responses to the things that he loves, the things that bring him to passion."

Henry took another sip. "And when a critic can no longer look upon things with love, he should shut the hell up."

That was the secret, really. But most people, especially the lot of careerists and pedants he had suddenly found himself surrounded with, couldn't quite understand why he had thrown away the edifice that was Henry Bethel. Some of the artists he knew understood, of course. Jack would have understood implicitly.

"Where the hell are you when I really need you, Jack?" he said softly.

At some point, Henry looked at himself in the mirror and had seen a bit of a fraud. At some point, the only thing he really wanted to do was to sit in a dark room, listening to the Voice, to the perfection of Nelson Riddle's arrangements.

Someone had once written that Sinatra's only real subject was loneliness—even his up-tempo numbers were really just about the temporary relief from loneliness.

At some point, Henry began to suspect that it was his only subject as well. Even with Jill, sadly.

His mind was rambling now, moving from thought to thought, seeing Jill flash by every so often. He sat down on the cold concrete foundation, then stood back up when he realized that he might not get up again until much later. What was he doing here now? His disdain and resentment for the city's most successful success story couldn't really account for it. He didn't blame Win for Jill's leaving him, though Win had been the catalyst (he had even briefly harbored the fantasy that perhaps they were having an affair, a fantasy that had dissolved into laughter when he actually tried picturing them in the act). Win Stevenson had seduced his wife with something far more invidious then sex: the promise of a globe-trotting, jet set existence and professional autonomy that Henry had long ago turned his back on.

Suddenly the memory of Jill walking down the sidewalk swam into his brain for the briefest moment. "Enjoy your records," she had said in voice beyond contempt.

Henry pushed it away, taking a deep swig from his flask. No, it wasn't that. It wasn't even Win Stevenson's reduction of art to the level of Pirates of the Caribbean. Getting Middle America to stand for ten minutes with an audio wand to their ear while looking intently at a Braque wasn't such a bad thing at all, ultimately, no matter how casually vulgar Stevenson's presentation of such things could be. It wasn't even the whiff of legitimacy that he would now shrewdly exploit at the Dressler's expense that angered him.

It was his purchase of Maude S—'s version of Sinatra as the Hierophant.

Win Stevenson was a huge, monstrous fan of Sinatra, the sort of fan who made other fans question their devotion. For Win loved everything that was wrong and flawed with the singer: his egomania, his tough guy persona, his sadly dated Rat Pack myth. His knowledge of Sinatra's art went no further than tuxedoed "New York, New York" twilight of Frank's career. Win's office was crammed with the worst sort of Sinatra memorabilia, collector's plate-style dreck that had astonished Henry in the level of its banality.

Worse, when accompanying Jill to one of Win's bloated soirees, Henry had been appalled at the sight of him yukking it up with a set of inept Rat Pack imitators, even to the point of Win bellowing a wretched karoke version of "Luck Be A Lady." It had nothing to do with art or even music: Win's devotion was the knee-jerk response to Sinatra as Vegas icon, the same kind of know-nothingness that kept a half-dozen Elvis impersonators working the low-rent showrooms year round.

It was hard, in fact, to think of Win Stevenson as anything but the Anti-Sinatraist.

Henry laughed ruefully to himself. Now he'd bought the perfect trophy for his attraction. Henry wondered if he would insist on foisting it upon the Dressler's curators, or if he would stick it in the Paradise's lobby like the bronzed asses of the Crazy Girls at the Riviera. Or worse still, that he would place it in his private cactus garden at his estate, like some kind of ridiculous garden gnome. How would Maude S— feel about that?

"Win, you're a loser," Henry hissed into the darkness. The flask was empty and his head was beginning to hurt. As he was trying to slip the flask back into his pocket, a sliver of light suddenly flashed to his right.

Oh fuck, thought Henry. It was security, of course. The flashlight was bobbing this way and that in the distance, coming toward him. Had he been spotted? He had to get out here.

Henry crouched and began backing, crab-like, out of the structure. Fuck fuck fuck, he thought. His breathing came in heavy little gasps, and he realized he was drunker than he thought.

As he came out of the structure, he stood up a ways, ready to dart behind a stack of steel. "Hey!" a voice suddenly called out.

Fuck! Henry sprinted behind the girders toward the fence. He reached it only to find a huge ditch on the other side, one that would likely involve the breaking of his neck. The point at where he had hopped the fence was several yards to the north, and the flashlight was now sweeping that section.

Henry followed the fence south, feeling far too old for this sort of thing. At last he reached a point where the fence abutted the Paradise's parking garage. He scrambled up the fence, breathing hard, suddenly getting stuck at the top. "HEY!" the voice called again.

Fuck it, he thought. I'll tell them I took a wrong turn in the casino and wound up out here. Or something. He was about to let go, when suddenly a hand shot out from over the barrier at the garage's edge above him.

"Need a hand, prof?"

Henry looked up into the thick glasses of Claude Griffith, whose wide grin above his soul patch gave him a demented look. He grasped Griffith's arm, and two seconds later was lying in a heap between two white lines, his head spinning.

Griffith kept grinning, and raised his camera up, snapping a shot of the discombobulated Henry. "The Great Escape," he said with a laugh.

"PERHAPS SCOTCH isn't such a big help after all," said Henry Bethel from the depths of a booth at the Peppermill Coffee Shop where he lay with a hand over his eyes, a barely touched BLT on the plate above him.

"Depends on the scotch," replied Claude Griffith from the other side. He took out his bag of Drum and began to roll yet another cigarette; the deliberateness of the routine made his chain smoking seem somehow less manic than most.

"Spoken like a true snob," said Henry, seeking to cut Claude off before he launched into another discourse on the subtleties and betrayals of good and bad single malts.

Claude chuckled. "I thought you were the official snob," he said. "Or is that former snob, along with everything else?"

Henry kept his eyes closed. He was only now beginning to feel more sober, and he could feel the headache building within. "If only I could be the former Henry Bethel as well. If only we could all be the formers of ourselves."

"Not me," said Claude, lighting his cigarette and waving the waitress over for a refill of mediocre coffee. "I am at long last perfectly content with the slob in the mirror. It only took forty years, but what the hell."

Henry smiled. Sooner or later he was going to have get up, and thank Claude again for his sudden rescue from embarrassment. "You're a pretty ugly deus ex machina, you know," he said.

"Oh, do they still let you use Latin after you've been defrocked?"

"I wasn't defrocked, you idiot," said Henry from below the table. "I made a lateral move. Mid-life career change. Quite acceptable these days."

Claude exhaled and leaned back as the waitress refilled his cup. "Hm. Okay. From ivory tower to recluse, that's a definitely a lateral move, prof."

Henry snorted. It was terribly peaceful down here, laid out in this booth as if he was passed out. Luckily it was 3am and nobody seemed to care. "If I'm a recluse, Claude, what was I doing wandering around a construction site waiting to get nicked by security?"

Claude took off his glasses and began wiping them, cigarette held fast in the arms of his lips like a newborn. "I don't know, Hank, what were you doing wandering around there? No, wait, I can take a guess."

"Please don't start to analyze me, clyde," Henry said in mock irritation. "I've got that covered."

Claude laughed, and began singing, off-key:

I cover the waterfront,
I'm watching the sea,
Will the one I love
Be coming back to me…

"Nice," said Henry. "You sound like Billie Holiday after a particularly bad bender."

"That's why I hide behind the lens," said Claude. "Okay, fine. I won't play doctor. It's every man's right to get drunk and either tell the world all about it or willfully keep it locked up. Either way, you owe me."

"I know," said Henry. He opened his eyes, staring into the Peppermill's dark blue ceiling. He sat up slowly and looked over at Claude Griffith, photographer for the Las Vegas Desert Star, photographer to his deceased friend Jack Samson, someone Henry had come to know slowly, in the friend-of-a-friend manner, and who he liked for his no-nonsense wit, his shrug, hiS—yes—his obvious contentment with the path his life had taken. Claude regarded him over his own plate of half-eaten fries, a slightly bemused expression, at once tolerant yet ready to throw anyone on this ship of fools overboard.

"Claude," said Henry quietly. "Do you ever see Jack?"

"See Jack? You mean, do I think about Jack or…"

"No, I mean see him. His shade, his specter, his dread apparition stalking the night."

Claude laughed, then frowned. "No. Jack haunted me plenty when he was alive. What would he need my sorry ass for, unless it was to try to take pictures of an ectoplasmic Marilyn Monroe." He shrugged. "But I think about him, sure. Especially whenever I'm trying to get a woman into bed."

Henry smiled, and stared down at the BLT that seemed to rebuke him. When had he eaten last?

"Do you see him?" asked Claude, his cigarette leaving his mouth just long enough to allow in the other god, caffeine.

Henry was silent. He was also very sober now, he realized. Sober, but still not hungry. "Only when I sleep on my Ouija board, Claude."

Claude laughed. "Look, it really isn't any of my business. Sitting around all day selling Frank Sinatra stuff on eBay sounds like a nice life." He took deep drag and exhaled. "But why? Just burnt out? Too much crap from those assholes at UNLV?"

Henry stifled a yawn. Sure, burnt out. Why not? Burnt out as if there was never a fire in the first place. Henry was about to shrug it off again and suddenly found himself saying "I needed to change my life, Claude, and I couldn't find the way forward. So I went to some other place, it may be back, the past, I don't know…" He trailed off.

Claude nodded. "Say no more," and Henry hoped his relief didn't show.

They sat a while, each finishing their coffee, the murmur of the slightly lost, the ravenous insomniacs, the kids crawling out of the end of a bender drifting around them in the other booths, mixing with the sounds of short-order cookery coming from the kitchen. Then Henry said:

"Listen, will you do me a favor? A commission, I mean."

"Sure. I am a Camera," said Claude, smiling.

Henry laughed. "I want you to take some photos of the sculptures at Elise Valkenburg's gallery."

"Ah, rising from the art mafia dead already, eh?"

"Nothing like that. It's more of a personal project… you know, obsessive hermit stuff."

Claude laughed. "Okay. No problem. Who's the artist?"

"A rather talented and rather mysterious woman known as Maude S—."

Claude stopped for the briefest of moments, his cigarette suspended in his hand, frozen, his eyes a little blank and cold. Then it swiftly passed, and he dragged deep again.

"You've heard of her?" said Henry, surprised. Claude, like many a bitter fine arts graduate school dropout, made it a point to mock contemporary art and profess ignorance.

"Nope," he said. "Never heard of her." His manner had changed.

"Hm," said Henry, brow furrowed. "Okay. It seemed like you had—"

"Naw, screw art," said Claude, his smile restored. "Listen, I need to get out of here. I've got a shoot first thing."

"Of course," said Henry, who then insisted on picking up the check. "Least I can do for my prince charming," he said. They got up, Henry feeling rumpled, Claude looking distracted, and walked to Claude's old Toyota, out under the light from the Stardust's sign across the street

They were silent until they reached Henry's car, parked (he was thankful to see) a good two blocks away from the Paradise and the skeleton of the museum.

"Thanks again," said Henry.

"Hey, how often do I get to save a Sinatraist," said Claude with his trademark shrug.

"I'll call Elise and set things up."

Claude nodded, and seemed to look intently at Henry.

"Well, good night," he said. Henry caught himself at the last moment. "Hey, what the hell were you shooting tonight from the garage?"

Claude looked at him evenly. "Same thing as you, prof. Ghosts. The moon. Win Stevenson's ego." He smiled. "I'll catch you later."

As he sped away down Sands Boulevard, Henry stared after him, thinking about his words, but not really thinking. Tired, he turned and opened the door to his car and slipped in, thinking now only of his bed.

He nearly expired from a stroke when Madison Monroe, sitting as quiet and as invisible as a cat in the passenger seat suddenly spoke to him: "Good morning, Mr. Bethel. I was beginning to despair of you."

HE HELD HIS HEAD in his hands and knew that if he looked up the world would be moving. He felt it, the world moving. He felt the light streaming past the mask of his fingers and he didn't want to move. But he did move. He lifted his head and saw the streaming, the colors against the backdrop of night. He was not driving, but when he turned to look at who was driving he saw only himself.

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to the party."

And then they were moving through a rectangle of light into the party. He couldn't see the party at first, or the house, but he could see beyond it, into the dark maw of the golf course, the hissing of sprinklers, the sharp slapping sound as jets of water hit the trees.

Somebody handed him a drink. It was a cocktail party, and people were chatting, loudly, on the edge of drunkenness, and somewhere behind the crowd spilling on the white shag carpet (and oh, it was hideous white shag, he looked down and noted, the kind that some hostess somewhere was screaming over, locked in the basement in a straightjacket as elbows bumped and sloshed drinks over its whiteness), somewhere two people were arguing about what music to play, and a few notes drifted up and then there was a scratch.

He cringed at the sound. Someone, a blonde in a black dress, handed him a drink. He tasted it, but it was too sweet and familiar, like a gin and tonic during college, and for moment he thought he was in college.

"Drink up, Henry," said a red faced man in a sharkskin jacket, his tie askew.

"Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink anymore," said an old man next to him. Henry laughed, and others laughed, and he wondered for a moment why he was laughing. Then he saw Patricia Newell, oh god the lovely and distant Patricia Newell in a purple metallic cocktail dress and she was gliding and smiling and she had Jill on her arm and Jill was smiling, but Jill looked so much older, and gray, the gray of executive suits and hours in the shadows just to the right of colors, her voice diffused by the numb breathing of the projector.

"Is that Patricia Newell?" Henry asked the woman on his right.

The woman, who was brunette and whose face was vague and unfocused but for her teeth brayed with laughter. "DAH-ling, you know, 'rhythm control' doesn't mean you make it with every trio that plays the Blackhawk!"

More laughter, and someone talking about ice squeezed by on their way to the kitchen, another rectangle of light, and Henry moved away through the crowd, looking for Patricia and his wife, wondering where they were going, picturing dark bedrooms with piles of coats and the darker grass on the other side of the pool (surely there must be a pool), and he squeezed past his brother's stupid friend Tim, and thought about the comic books he ripped off from him again and was briefly angry and then realized that Tim was dead from cancer and so he would never, ever see those comic books again, that rare complete set of Steve Ditko's run on Dr. Strange, and the thought made Henry so sad, and he stood for a moment on a platform of green light and stared over at Dread Dormammu with his flaming face, and then Dormammu spoke with Jack Samson's voice.

"By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, Hank, your nerves are smashed. You'll never be able to operate again."

"Jack," said Henry. "Jack, did you see where Patricia and Jill went?"

And Jack must have known, because then Henry was outside, looking over the pool, and of course there was a pool, it was that kind of house on that kind of golf course, and Henry looked back inside and the party was even more crowded, and he could tell the hosts' house, whoever they were, had really, really, really bad taste, the kind bad taste that only a great deal of money could buy, but out here it was cool and the light was coming up from the bottom of the pool like star sapphires, and it was like a Hockney without a splash, and then of course there was a Hockney splash hovering above the water in the dark and the light, a splash where the dark and light met.

There was no one out there. The noise of the party was gone too, but Henry didn't look behind him. He looked out into the golf course, covered in a thick black velvet, dense and black except for the stars. Except they weren't really stars. Henry peered at them, walking around the pool to the edge where the lawn stopped and began again. They were twinkling like stars, and seemed to draw closer, and Henry perceived that they were mouths, female mouths, floating, lipsticked in the dark, disembodied mouths, and they were speaking, and he could not catch the words, and he was staring at them and straining as if to make out what they were saying. It was babble, and he felt frightened as words and phrases began to congeal:

"…not for nothing I did this not for nothing…" "…at last he came, at last…"
"…well what did you expect did you expect great expectations did you expect…" "…painted like this, held like this, in the paint…" "…and kissed and it was cold and wept cold, weeping cold…" "…three we were three…"
"…I want to say, I can't say, I must say, I can't say, I want to say…" "…hope forever, hope forever, hopeless forever…" "…my sisters won't allow it, they will kill it, they will gaze…" "…stay with me, stay, oh please, oh stay…"

Henry blinked. He thought he heard Patricia and Jill, and stared hard, like trying to see fireflies against a setting sun, and then he noticed a man standing next to him, a tall, thin man with a face like a hawk and light glinting off his spectacles.

"It's ahl wrang," the man said in a thick accent, waving his hand at the babble. "They're doing it ahl wrang…"

"Help them," said Henry, suddenly moved, and the man just stared at him, not unkindly, and then he looked down and said "Aren't you going to answer you phone?"

Henry looked down. A dwarf in a butler's outfit was holding Dali's lobster telephone on a silver platter, and it was ringing. Oh fuck, thought Henry, a dwarf with a lobster phone. He reached down and picked up the receiver.

"Hello," he said. "This is a dream, isn't it?"

A chuckle from the other end, a voice he couldn't quite place. "It's all a dream for you, isn't it, Mr. Bethel? It's never been real to you at all, has it?"

Henry looked back toward the house. The party was cacophonous now, but everyone inside beyond the sliding glass door looked gray, an ocean of gray, a horrible mass of gray, like stone, like angels abandoned in a tombstone cutter's workshop. Henry walked where the pool had been, straight toward the open door, almost running, he could see Jack Samson's shiny shaved head weaving amidst the tombstone angels, and when he reached the open door he walked right into the glass, and it shattered, and there was a rushing and darkness and the sound of a record being scratched…

HENRY CAME awake, his legs tangled in his sheets. He shook himself free from the dream and slowly sat up, shaking his head and softly slapping his legs to make himself fully conscious. Christ, what an odd dream, he said to himself. He looked around the room, and realized by the light shooting through the blinds that it must be mid-afternoon. What a horrible night, he thought. No wonder.

He stood up, stretched and stumbled into his robe, turning the fragments over in his mind. I haven't thought about Tim Boronsky and his swindle in years, he thought. And the appearance of Patricia Newell, the artist that he and Jill had briefly and ill-advisedly become entangled with, unsettled him deeply.

"Well," he said aloud, shuffling into the kitchen, "it's been an unsettling 24 hours." He was already beginning to regret being sucked into seeing Maude S—'s show, and he most certainly regretted the nearly maudlin romp through Win Stevenson's museum site. If not for Claude, he thought, and cringed slightly as he put a kettle on for tea. What a mess, he said to himself. One night out in his old life and he was wallowing in bitterness. Christ. Decent of Claude to sober me up and bring me home…

Henry stopped in mid-motion, his mug hanging from his frozen hand. Wait a minute. How had he gotten home? He didn't remember Claude bringing him home. Henry snapped the blinds up and looked out his kitchen window. His Karmen Ghia was parked where it should be. I don't remember driving home, he realized. He hadn't been so drunk as to black out… was he?

"What the hell…" said, Henry trailing off. And then he thought of Don Ix's lackey, Madison Monroe, for no clear reason, and his stomach went a little cold…

The phone rang. Henry snatched it off the wall without thinking.

"Hello?" he barked, trying to clear the fog.

"Mr. Bethel? This is Stephanie No. Maude S— will see you now."

BESIDES DEVELOPING a sudden twitch in his right eye—Henry kept thinking of Herbert Lom's character in the "Pink Panther" films, driven mad by Inspector Clouseau... perhaps he would wind up a super-villain as well—Henry felt much better. After hanging up with the icily precise Ms. No, he had taken a very long bath and drank a great deal of tea while listening to Sinatra sing in tribute on I Remember Tommy, the standards he had made famous with the Dorsey band early in his career. He wrote out everything that had transpired in the previous 24 hours in an old leather notebook, and writing had calmed him, just as it once had.

The fog had lifted somewhat and he now felt that the ease with which he had become slightly unhinged meant that he wasn't doing nearly as well as he supposed. But he also felt consoled by the knowledge that he had not turned into some kind of wise ascetic. He had not traded one false persona for another. He was still alone and still easily lost, and this made him feel perversely strong.

He was even humming "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" as he turned off Shadow Lane and into the Scotch 80s neighborhood, where the moneyed class of Vegas had built elaborate homes during the Sixties and where Maude S— had rented a sprawling ranch-style home for her stay in town. Henry had even recognized the address on Waldman Avenue that Ms. No had given him while setting up the appointment to meet the artist, an appointment whose swiftness had made Henry suspicious (now that he was thinking clearly, there were many questions and curious events that needed some answers).

Henry scratched at his twitching eye, silently requesting whatever gods there were to make it stop for the duration of his meeting, and pulled up to the elaborate wrought-iron gates of Bobby Apollo's former home. The late crooner, a poor man's Tony Bennett, had built the home in his Strip heyday, and it still presented itself in all its Palm Springs-meets-Greco-Roman tackiness. Henry pressed the intercom.

"Yes." The voice was pure machine.

"Henry Bethel. I have an appointment."

The gate slowly slid back and Henry pulled into the enormous half-moon driveway. No other car was in sight. The house, a cobalt fake-brick with white trim and semi-opaque glass brick windows, shimmered and sucked all the light out of the sky at the same time. Incongruously, a very old screw bean mesquite tree (the Scotch 80s residents had planted them all over) presented a picture of Desert Gothic in the yard between the driveway and the street. Its twisted dark branches curled like wisps of suspended smoke outward, low to the ground, like a tree that had once aspired to the heavens and then thought better of it.

No doubt the tree appealed to Maude S—, but Henry already guessed at why she should lease this house, besides its privacy. For Bobby Apollo had fancied himself a sculptor, creating clumsy abstract ballerinas out of bronze in his declining years. The house, Henry knew, surrounded a central studio with a skylight that Apollo had designed himself.

Henry rang the bell, just below the leonine face of a heavy brass door knocker. There was a long pause, and fast-moving clouds blotted out the sun as a breeze blew down the street. At last, the door swung open. Ms. No, if anything, looked more severe than the night before, and she was all-business.

"Hello again, Ms. No," Henry said, smiling.

She nodded. "Your punctuality is unexpected and appreciated." She stepped aside and ushered him in.

"Really? Did I seem so dissolute to you last night? Or does my reputation precede me?"

Ms. No looked at him evenly. "Save your charm for Madame, Mr. Bethel."

Henry smiled. "It appears you don't like me already, Ms. No."

She turned and gestured. "Please wait here. Madame will be with you momentarily."

"Here" was, as Henry expected, an expansive sunken living room, pale blue walls anchored by wall-to-wall slate gray carpeting. Faux Doric columns separated it from a formal dining area, and it was empty but for two Empire-style chaise lounges hovering like barges in the ocean of shag. They were exactly the sort of things the 18th Century had envisioned the ancient Greeks draped over. They were framed by vast picture window overlooking a ubiquitous pool. Henry felt queasy for a moment, but it was nothing like his dream.

"I assume the house came furnished," said Henry, but he was speaking to empty air. Maude S—'s assistant had vanished down a dark hallway to his left. Henry sat down on one of the lounges, casting a glance at the faux Greek pottery that lined one shelf. A moment later he stopped, and stood up, and looked again. He walked over to the urns, their black and orange lines vivid against the blue walls. He was not an expert on ancient art, but the hair raised on the back of his neck as he realized that these were not contemporary knockoffs, but originals. His finger hovered in the air above one urn, tracing the line of the hero's-Hercules?-arm…

"Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss," said an amused voice behind him.

Henry turned, and for a moment the air seemed charged with electricity, as if a spotlight had illuminated everything, the flash on a camera recording some spectacular thing. But it passed, and standing there in the dining room was merely a handsome woman of average height, her red hair plaited in odd, swirling braids around her head, wearing a smart, black Donna Karan suit. The only eccentric touches were dark oval glasses and a pair of short velvet gloves. Her lips were the same deep red as her hair, which seemed to Henry voluminous yet fiercely restrained.

"And how many Grecian urns, do you suppose, were created a hundred years ago so girls could quote Keats like that?" said Henry.

"Not enough, I'm sure," said Maude S—. Her voice was… well, Henry couldn't quite place what her voice was. It was husky, but light, as if unaccustomed to use but beautiful nonetheless. "There are never enough opportunities to quote Keats these days I'm afraid."

"Only to point out his failings as a dead white European male I imagine,"
said Henry.

"Well, dead white Europeans are my favorite kind of male." Maude S— smiled.

Henry approached, hand extended. "Henry Bethel."

"Yes," said Maude, shaking his hand firmly. "I know."

She stood there, silently, looking at him. Henry felt awkward, and gestured. "You've certainly picked a representative place for your Vegas stay. Well, representative of the myth at least, which is what's important."

"Is it?" Maude pursed her lips. "Sometimes, I think too much has been made of myths." She smiled again. "But I do always look for… representative experiences. Do you fit into that category, Mr. Bethel?"

"I suppose you'll only know after you get to know me," said Henry.

She had not moved since he had turned around. Now she stepped down into the living room abruptly, but with grace. "Won't you sit down?"

Maude eased into the lounge in a repose so artful it was almost comical. Henry half-expected to be asked to peel her a grape. He sat down on the edge of the other lounge facing her, and suddenly realized by her smile that the pose was a put-on for him.

"If only you had muses to attend you," said Henry jokingly.

Maude laughed, and the sound was charming yet… harsh to Henry's ear. "How do you know I don't? You might be one of them in disguise."

"I hope not. My track record as muse is pretty poor."

"I don't think so, Mr. Bethel. Many have been inspired by your writings."

Now it was Henry's turn to strike a pose. "That's kind of you to say."

Maude righted herself, crossing her legs. Henry had yet to see her eyes, and it was slightly unnerving.

"I'm never kind, Mr. Bethel. I mean what I say." Her expression was serious.

"Please, whatever else transpires between us, call me Henry."

Her expression did not change. "Well, Henry, I think your criticism is always first-rate. That's part of the reason we're having this discussion."

Henry's heart jumped a little. "I feel I should tell you that I have since—"

Maude waved her hand. "I'm aware of your retirement, Mr. Bethel. The art world hasn't ceased to be a small and petty place. I'm not expecting a piece about my work or me. There are plenty to fill that uninteresting void. Still, you came to my show." Her gaze remained even.

"And you would still like to hear my opinion, unpublished or not?" Henry smiled, and geared up to render his response.

"Actually, no," replied Maude, to his surprise. "If your impression was unfavorable last night, you wouldn't have asked to meet me. Your reputation is better known than perhaps you might think. You are known for keeping a certain distance from the artists you have written about. So the question, Henry…" and here she suddenly stood and walked toward him, her arms crossed, looking in an instant imperious and skeptical, "… is this: why did you want to meet me?"

Deep within, Henry felt a tiny crack, a fissure in his composure. Tell her about Don Ix and his interest, a voice said. Warn her… warn her? About what? Where did that come from?

Henry swallowed and smiled, hoping his eye did not take this moment to start its new twitch. "I wanted to meet you, Maude, because your reputation is well-known as well. Or should I say, the reputation of the sculptures you do not publicly show."

She seemed a frozen for a second. Then, Henry thought he saw her shoulders sag somewhat, even as she smiled brightly. "Oh, I see. The enigma of the unseen. Is that all?"

"You seem dismissive for someone who seems to have cultivated an air of mystery," said Henry.

"An air of mystery and mystery itself are different things," said Maude. Her tone had changed. "One is a useful for creating both privacy and publicity. The other…" She gave a little shrug. "The other is, sadly, what belongs to me."

She turned away then, and cleared her throat. Inwardly, Henry smacked his forehead. Idiot.

Ms. No appeared in the doorway.

"Is it time for the delivery of those materials?" said Maude S—.

"They just arrived, Madame."

Maude turned and smiled as before. "You must forgive me, Henry. I have a very busy schedule today."

"Of course," said Henry, standing. "I hope I haven't offended you with my directness."

"Well," said Maude with a little smile. "I am still calling you Henry."

Henry walked toward the door. You stupid fool, he thought. Ms. No held the door with a barely contained smirk.

"Perhaps we can see each other again. In less formal circumstances."

Henry turned, surprised, and from the corner of his eye caught the smirk draining away from Ms. No's face. "Thank you. That would be highly desirable. If for no other reason than to make up for my rudeness."

Maude S— smiled. "I believe I have your number," she said. Then she turned away, and Henry watched the door slowly swing shut in his face.

He stood for moment, thinking. The sky was completely overcast now, heavy with rain. "Unravished bride of quietness," he said aloud, unexpectedly. Then his eye began its twitching.

IT WAS TIME to go back to work. After his meeting with Maude S—, Henry spent a full day with the phone unplugged, dealing with email, and slipping back into his solitude as if the last few odd days had not happened. He needed to catch up on his neglected business, to slip into the world of selling and buying manifestations of Francis Albert Sinatra. Fortunately, WaxCon 2001 had arrived just in time to claim him. He called Housman on Friday morning after 24 blissful hours of isolation.

"The needle descends once again," Henry intoned.

"Already? Ahhhh, Jesus fuck," said Housman, sleepily. "Give me an hour."

An hour and twenty minutes later, they were on the escalator to the Sahara Hotel & Casino's convention center, Housman with a Parliament in the side of his mouth and clutching a large cup of 7-11 coffee; Henry feeling more calm and alert than he had in days, his large, leather satchel hung loosely over his shoulder, ready to be stuffed with old vinyl.

Henry looked over at Housman, whose hair hung over his thick glasses. His mustache looked like a definition of the word "scraggly." "Hous, I hope you're not expecting me to lug your finds around for you," said Henry.

Housman made a face. "I'm probably not going to buy anything. The store is overflowing with crap as it is."

"Right. As if you can ever resist."

"You'd be surprised how much I can resist these days," Housman said wearily. It was true: the turnover of rare stuff at Roomful of Mirrors CDs and Records had dropped off quite a bit in the last few months. Every time Henry saw Housman his enthusiasm had waned just that much more, the bright collector's fire in his eye had dimmed just that much further. Housman had entered the ennui stage of record collecting, had even sold off things that five years before he would have parted with only on pain of death. Housman himself looked grayer and grayer with each passing year. Perhaps if he had been Roomful of Mirror's owner his motivation would still be there, but he was merely its manager, constantly enduring petty humiliations at the hands of the absentee owner. Somewhere along the way, Henry reflected, Housman resigned himself to his fate as a used record store clerk, a figure sitting, Buddha-like, serenely smoking and occasionally ringing up a purchase or answering someone's question in a flat voice, drained of the excitement that music once generated in it.

As they flashed their badges at the desk and walked into the main hall, Henry, at least, allowed himself a little twinge of anticipation. He rarely spent a day at WaxCon without finding something, and the thought of being here after the hectic strangeness of the past week was very soothing. He stopped for a moment and appraised row upon row of vendor booths, with every conceivable kind of music represented, every desperate collector's urge ready to be satisfied or dashed. Bargains and rip-offs floated around in the grooves, a great black spinning that always made Henry a little dizzy with excitement. Trash or art, cherished or discarded, the music in the room drifted from passion to commodity and back again. Henry smiled, while Housman squinted and stubbed out his cigarette.

"Let's just work our way around the fringe first," said Henry.

Housman shrugged. They stepped into the desultory flow of scattered bodies. It was early yet, and many vendors and collectors looked fresh, not yet exhausted by hours of flipping through album after album or searching face after face hoping for a sale. Pompadours hovered in a booth selling 60s rockabilly, while a pale curtain of dark hair and silver rings hunched intently over industrial and goth imports from Germany. One booth was dominated by life-size statues of KISS; a cute girl was arguing with the vendor over the price of a hideous Journey baseball jersey while telling her friend in Spanish to "just hang on for a fucking minute." Henry lingered at a booth with some marvelous 78s of country blues, but saw nothing outstanding. Housman took an obscure Ornette Coleman live album out of its sleeve a half-dozen times, staring at it in the light like a jeweler, before finally putting it back in its bin to the disgust of the vendor, a graying hippie who looked almost as washed out as Housman.

They had only worked their way down to the end of the north side of the hall, where Henry was carefully going through a young lounge lizard's collection, when he heard a familiar voice. "Hey, Bethel."

Henry smiled to see Vaughn Ellison, a thin Englishman with an enormous beard, and embraced him. "I was wondering when you'd turn up."

"I've already picked up some fantastic garage stuff," said Vaughn, waving a slightly weathered copy of The Standells' Good Guys