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As Meredith cradled the phone, it rang. It was Boyle with reluctant news. They were behind schedule due to the collapse of a critically located I-beam. The overall cost of the project was getting frisky and his son, Carmine Mondello, lost two fingers on Wednesday while cutting pipe and ogling a female jogger simultaneously. June was out of the question, even with a renegotiated contract.
      Henry went wild. "Oh, Christ, there goes my phone again. I keep getting signals from Uranus." He hammered his desktop with the handset before getting back on. "You fucking shanty micks better think about who you're putting the squeeze on. Take a nap, sober up and hoist that beam, you worthless piece of smegma. Get a hand surgeon for the dago and put his indolent ass back on the job. We chiseled that contract in rock. It's June or I'll sue you back into the Bronze Age. Now, I'm going to hang up and pretend I didn't hear this uncommonly defiling line of pig shit. It's a long way to Tipperary, pal-boy."
      From her desk, Lacy heard this tirade and it quickly dampened the glow engendered by the image of Jablonski waving his tits at fellow convicts again. Henry sprang from his office, yelling at her to do this and that. Then he shouted: "Lunch is a privilege! Where do you get off using your desk as a dial-a-date agency? Do you think this is Coney Island? You could end up as Miss May in Playboy! I just might forget to sign your paycheck this week."
      Dial-a-date, Coney Island, Playboy? These kinds of outbursts had become sufficiently routine to spare him another broken telephone, but not the little Oh Gee, Uncle Hank expression she made in response. Henry ranted while Lacy mockingly pursed her lips and spread her eyes. She knew that she would be lying to herself if she denied that Meredith's harangues were gathering a measure of sordid amusement. Finally, he reached for his coat, snarling. "I notice you've been putting on the pounds, just like Karen Kern."
      He stepped through the door before the words stopped resonating in her head. That last remark did not qualify as entertainment, sordid or otherwise. Meredith had never mentioned Karen's name in Lacy's presence before. Something was piling up inside her like rocks on an ancient cairn. She rooted through her bag for Revel's card but stopped upon realizing the knee-jerk quality of her reaction. Meredith's statement was not the kind of evidence that Calvin needed to get involved. The police already knew that Karen had worked for Meredith. So what if he brought her up in the middle of a shit fit? If Lacy became a chronic alarmist, she could forget about petitioning Calvin if things should really turn ugly.
      She switched on the answering machine and went to lunch, her newly declared privilege. At Tiny's she thought about the putting on the pounds part of Meredith's invective and ordered from the lite menu. Halfway through a flaccid pita bread concoction, she looked down at her thighs. They looked the same to her and Dale had not mentioned anything.
      "Hey Tiny," she called, from over a limp, dog-eared wedge of dough.
      "I know, it sucks doesn't it? You want the fried chicken?"
      "With the mashed. Next time, warn me," she said, dumping iceberg lettuce through the laughing metal mouth of the garbage clown.
      Meredith and Lacy returned to the office at the same time, each quietly sizing up the other for signs of forgiveness or repentance. They settled on a stewing resentment. He held the door for her and, as she passed beneath his arm, she smelled Chinese food. Not too disgruntled to stuff your face, she thought.
      Waiting for Henry was a message from Nancy Littlecrow to return her call ASAP.
      He hiked up one pant leg and sat on the corner of his desk. While dialing, he stared through the door at Lacy as she arranged a stapler, roll of tape, Rolodex and computer mouse into a fanciful, miniature theme park. Paper clip people were enjoying the rides.
      "What is it, Nan?" Calling her Nan represented his trademark form of genuflection.
      "I once did a two-weeker in Cozumel; just fun in the sun, no business. I kept getting the old good-news, bad-news routine. Yes Senorita, we have clean towels, but at the moment, they're soaking wet. It was hilarious."
      "Nan …"
      "Yes, Madam, the cocina is open but the chef is on siesta. It wouldn't stop. It got to the point where I could finish their sentences for them. He'd say, our camarones are the best in all of Mexico, and I'd say, but the shrimp boat hasn't come in yet. And we'd both bust a gasket. You had to be there."
      "Nancy …"
      "If your offer still stands, send me the check and consider your moron defended. I can cut a deal. He'll walk. But I wouldn't recommend future auto repair at Cusky's, even with the check that'll have to go their way."
      Small bubbles appeared at the corners of Meredith's mouth. He slid off the desk and commenced a Saint Vitus dance in his wing tips. "Are we still talking Mexico here?"
      "Yes. The bad news is Bram is dead. I figured that fucker for a dead beat. One shot through the palate, Colt 45, military issue. His psychiatrist became suspicious when Bram didn't show. The suicide note read something about a dybbuk? Stop gagging, I had some checks coming too."
      Meredith dropped back into his chair, shaking. A web of throbbing, blue capillaries erupted across his nose like a field of mole tunnels.
      Nancy went on. "There's more. Remember that business about Bram's invested pay? Well, that money was put into trust by a sister who acquired power of attorney during Bram's third stay at the fun house. Our checks were good, but unauthorized. She's going to fight for the money but we can beat her on that. By we, I mean of course, you and your attorney and me and mine. You might also sue the chilies off that private dick in New Haven. Are you there?"
      Henry jammed a pair of scissor tips repeatedly into his desktop. His eyes turned the color of blood and his voice rose to a pitch far higher than usual. "Maybe you could be Bram for one more check."
      "I don't understand."
      "You know, forge his signature on something before the bank catches wind." He started to cry.
      "Henry, maybe it's time to find a hobby, something soft like clamming or mah-jongg."
      "Please, Nancy …"
      "Or try the Cayman Islands for a week. It's just like in the brochures, British subjects in stiff, white uniforms and the ocean is warm as piss."
      "But …"
      "There's a Shinnecock axiom about souls wandering in the warmth of sleep. I'd offer it as solace but the exact words escape me. Look, I promise to spring your goon when the retainer arrives. Good-bye, Henry."
      Meredith wound the telephone cord around his neck several hitches and let the plastic handset dangle over his shoulder. He rocked menacingly in the swivel seat, running fingers through his silver hair.
      From her desk, Lacy had witnessed this frightening plunge into enraged despair. She prepared her escape by means of an old telephone stunt whereby her own line rings with the correct combination of pressed buttons.
      "Meredith Holdings," she said loudly to nobody. "You'd like to see the beach bungalows? Mr and Mrs who? Pope? Yes, Mr Pope, they're still available. You're in town on a lark? It has to be right now?"
      She had one arm through her coat sleeve. The soliloquy continued. "Yes, yes, of course. Absolutely. Where are you? I'll fly right over."
      Meredith never heard the report of Lacy's mission on her way out the door. He did not even know she had left. From his office window, he watched a bank of blue clouds glide over a disabled gasoline truck on Montauk Highway. The driver knelt on one knee and examined the drive shaft.
      Henry blinked and, from behind some unimaginable inner curtain, saw the man climb the rear ladder of the truck and drop a lighted cloth into the open tank. What followed was not the pyrotechnic display depicted in film, but a silent veil of fire that rose slowly through the clouds, turning them dead white. Ignited rubble settled upon the passing cars, upon the shops along the road. A low moaning of human voices permeated all of space in sickening choral unison. Yet, nowhere was there smoke. Mares from Chelsea Stables buckled to the ground in flames, eyes bursting in their heads from a ghostly heat. Beyond the burning meadows, an eerie berth separated the tidal marshes from the conflagration that hovered just above the water. Within that zone, all of life struggled to escape the end of time. And while the rest of Earth succumbed, wind blew clamorously but without transgression through the walls of the Rottkamp house.
           With fingers lighter than air, Meredith made out a check to Nancy Littlecrow and drove to deliver it.

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