"Yeah, that's OK. Trying to get a through draft," said Joe. Then repeated trying in ironic acknowledgment that not so much air was moving between the open window and door as would have fluttered a maidenhair fern.

"All right if I sit down?" said the YFG, sinking on to an old dining chair with the confidence of one whose creamy slacks have been treated with a dust- repellent potion unobtainable by the common herd. "My name is Porphyry. Christian Porphyry."

"U-huh," said Joe, unsurprised. Creature like this wasn't going to be called Fred Jones, not if (as he firmly believed) there was an underlying order to things.

Also the name wasn't totally unfamiliar, at least the Porphyry bit. He'd seen it in the paper recently, but even memory found it hard to move back through this heat haze. He could check it out later if he had the energy, because he'd certainly not had the energy to dump any newspapers for the past week or so. In fact, come to think of it, he doubted if he'd had the energy to open one, so the Porphyry reference must have been front page or back page, i.e., headline news or sport. He realized that these thoughts had occupied rather more time than they would have done normally, and since his u-huh the sort of companionable silence had developed between them that was OK between a pair of buddies fishing off a river bank but didn't promise to move the PI/client relationship forward very far.

He said, "Sixsmith. Joe Sixsmith."

"Yes. I thought you must be," said Porphyry with a pleasant smile.

Joe found himself smiling back. There was something very attractive about this guy. He felt really easy with him, which was not a good way to feel with someone who'd just strolled into your office. For all Joe knew, Porphyry could be a cop interested in the provenance of the six-pack of Guinness cooling in his washroom hand basin, which he'd got (plus another nineteen) from his taxi-driving friend Merv Golightly on the assurance that the fifty percent discount Merv was offering derived from their being bankrupt stock.