“That why you threw the Bible at me?”

He snorted.

“It could as easily have been the Koran or the Vedas, I suppose. It would have been neat to see you vanish in a flash of fire. But no go.”

I smiled.

“How can I find Melman?”

“I’ve got it here somewhere,” he said, lowering his eyes and opening a drawer. “Here.”

He withdrew a small notebook and flipped through it. He copied out an address on an index card and handed it to me. He took another drink of wine.

“It’s his studio, but he lives there, too,” he added. I nodded and set down my glass.

“I appreciate everything you told me.”

He raised the bottle.

“Have another drink?”

“No, thanks.”

He shrugged and topped off his own.

I rose.

“You know, it’s really sad,” he said.

“What?”

“That there’s no magic, that there never was, there probably never will be.”

“That’s the breaks,” I said.

“The world would be a lot more interesting place.”

“Yeah.”

I turned to go.

“Do me a favor,” he said.

“What?”

“On the way out, set that sign for three o’clock and let the bolt in the door snap shut again.”

“Sure.” I left him there and did those things. The sky had grown a lot darker, the wind a bit more chill. I tried again to reach Luke, from a phone on the corner, but he was still out.

We were happy. It had been a terrific day. The weather was perfect, and everything we did had worked out right. We went to a fan party that evening and afterward had a late dinner at a really good little place we’d stumbled upon by accident. We lingered over drinks, hating for the day to end. We decided then to prolong a winning streak, and we drove to an otherwise deserted beach where we sat around and splashed around and watched the moon and felt the breezes. For a long while. I did something then that I had sort of promised myself I would not. Hadn’t Faust thought a beautiful moment worth a soul?