"Wait. Are we moving?"

"It's a revolving bar," she said.

"Jesus. Where am I?"

"Isn't it strange? New York has fallen."

He watched Broadway float into the curved window and felt as if blocks of time and space had come loose and drifted. The misplaced heartland hotel. The signs for Mita, Midori, Kirin, Magno, Suntory-words that were part of some synthetic mass language, the esperanto of jet lag. And the tower under construction across the street, webbed and draped against the weather, figures moving fleetly past gaps in the orange sheeting. He saw them clearly now, three or four kids playing on the girders, making the building seem a ruin, an abandonment.

"I also have to tell you I don't understand the drill. I would prefer to get there on my own."

"Get where? You wouldn't know where you were going."

"You could tell me, couldn't you?" she said.

"Bill insists we do it this way."

"A little melodramatic maybe?"

"Bill insists. Besides, we're very hard to find."

"All right. But for the man's own peace of mind, why not choose a neutral site? That way there's no problem over disclosure. His whereabouts remain secret."

"I don't think you'll have very much to disclose. And Bill knows you won't talk anyway."

"How does he know?"

"We saw the piece about you in Aperture. That's how we decided you were the one. And he couldn't meet you somewhere else because he doesn't go anywhere else, except to hide from the book he's doing."

"I do love his books. They really mattered to me. And he hasn't been photographed in what? We must be speaking in the multi decades. So why don't I just relax?"