Then we caved their heads with about twenty thousand watts of frozen sound. The pressure of their response was immense, blasting in with the force of a natural disaster, and it became even greater, more physically menacing, as they pressed in around the stage, massing for the holocaust, until finally it broke, all hell, and the only lucid memory I later had was of someone slightly familiar pushing across the stage, his face brilliant with pain, eyes clearly seeking me through every layer of chaos, Hanes, stopping now to punch the drums, whirling in his torn shirt, a sleeve hanging empty, Hanes himself, tumbling backward over a bank of amps.

"I've got a new Garrard changer," he said.

"Glad to hear it."

"My tone arm setup has zero tracking error."

"Do one thing for me," I said. "Take these contracts back."

That night there was a fire in an oil drum on the street below the window. Four people stood around the drum, occasionally tossing wood and garbage into the flames. I tried to read one of the newspapers Hanes had left. The words made no sense to me. I looked at the cover of a magazine and could not quite put together the letters in big block print. In time I fell asleep in a chair, remaining there after waking. There was a knock at the door. I went to the window and looked down to the street, where three of the people were still gathered, bouncing on their toes in the cold. The fourth was at the door, an ageless girl in defeated wet fur, trying to blink her way back to the realm of events. Her long druid's face rested on a package she carried high on her chest.

"I'm Skippy, Bucky. I just want to give you something from somebody and I won't hang around and bother you, I really promise and all. Can I come inside for a minute and no more?"

"But not your friends," I said.

"There's a body in the hall downstairs."

"Probably mine."

"First off this boy I know from New Mexico, Bobby from New Mexico, made me promise to tell you he knows where to get some unbelievable hash that you can have for nothing and you don't even have to talk to him. I'm pretty sure that's it – hash, for nothing, unbelievable."