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in their right mind would have been, but all down Broadway I was mostly afraid that if he didn't keep his eye on the road we were going to crash. Isn't that peculiar? I'm terribly hot. Are you hot?'" She walked over to the wall and pretended to open a window. '"There. That's better.'" She fanned herself. '"I know you must think I'm foolish running on like this, but I talk to so few people and I have... I was going to say I have so many thoughts to express, so many tragic thoughts. So many tragic things have happened. But my thoughts aren't really tragic, or maybe they are, they're just not nobly tragic. The only thing noble I ever saw was a golden anvil shining up in the clouds over Bayou Goula, and that was the day before I came down with chicken pox. No, my thoughts are like the radio playing in the background, pumping out jingles and hit tunes and commercials and the news bulletins. Flash. A tragic thing occurred today, ten thousand people lost their lives, then nervous music, typewriters clicking, and moving right along, on the last leg of her European tour the First Lady presided over a combined luncheon and fashion show for the wives of the foreign press. Ten thousand people! Corpses, agony, death. All that breath and energy flying out of the world. You'd think there'd be a change in the air or something, a sign, maybe a special dark cloud passing overhead. You'd think you would feel something..."'

Donnell had been absorbed by the performance, and when Otille relaxed from the manic intensity she had conjured up, he felt cut off from a source of energy. 'That was pretty good,' he said grudgingly.

'Pretty good!' Otille scoffed. 'It was a hell of a play, but the trouble was I tended to lose myself in the part.'

Otille's pets and the black man she had called Baron were waiting by the doors of the ballroom. Though the doors were shut, the music was deafening and she had to raise her voice to be heard. 'I really hate to interrupt things on account of Dularde,' she said, looking aggrieved.

Downey and Clea and Papa put on expressions of concern, displaying their sympathetic understanding of Otille's position, but Simpkins' smile never wavered, apparently feeling no need to cozy up. The black man stared at Jocundra, who hung back from the group, ducking her eyes, lines of strain bracketing her mouth.

'Is this important?' asked Donnell. 'We're tired. We can meet him in the morning.'

'I won't be awake in the morning,' said Otille angrily; she turned to the others. 'Please try to find him once more. I'll wait here.' She gestured to the Baron, and he flung open the doors.

Music, smoky air and flashing nights gusted out, and Donnell's immediate impression was that they had pierced the hollow of a black carcass and stumbled onto an infestation of beetles halfway through a transformation into the human. Hundreds of people were dancing, shoving and mauling each other, and they were dressed in what appeared to be the overflow of a flea market: feathered boas, ripped dinner jackets, sequined gowns, high school band uniforms. Orange spotlights swept across them, coils of smoke writhing in the beams. As his eyes adjusted to the alternating brilliance and dimness, he saw that the ceiling had been knocked out and ragged peninsulas of planking left jutting from the walls at the height of about twenty feet; these served as makeshift balconies, each holding half a dozen or more people, and as mounts for the spotlights and speakers, which were angled down beneath them. Ropes trailed off their sides, and at the far end of the room someone was swinging back and forth over the heads of the crowd.

'... party!' shouted Otille, as her pets infiltrated the dancers, pushing their way through.

'What?' Donnell leaned close.

'It's Downey's party! He just released...' Otille pointed to her ear and drew him along the hall to where the din was more bearable. Jocundra followed behind.

'He's just released his first record,' said Otille. 'We have our own label. That's him playing.'

Donnell cocked an ear to listen. Beneath the distortion, the music was slick and heavily synthesized, and Downey's lyrics were surprisingly romantic, his voice strong and melodic.

'... Just like a queen upon a playin' card,

A little cheatin' never hurt your heart,

You just smile and let the deal go on

'Til the deck's run through...

See how they've fallen for you.'

'It's one of the