"No. No. Not dead."

Too many thoughts. Where were the feelings? Normally they would have been proud and excited to have engineered such a scene as had happened with the railroad bridge. Now that they had thought about it, it was causing strife and suffering. Hot Dog had stopped a car in the road and hauled the driver out so that he could get Crazy to the House faster. He hadn't even shot her. He hadn't even wanted to. What was going on?

"It's O'Malley," he said to Crazy. "We'll get him, man. We'll get that fuck. He's just messing with your head, is all, and it's getting into mine. We'll find some way under his fucking skin and we'll get him."

The front of the House looked good. The House Man had thrown buckets of coffee on it and the bullet holes and broken window fronts had repaired themselves. Hot Dog knew that the House Man did not like for such things to happen, and that he did not like to use coffee for such things, and that he would be angry. Well, they would have to deal with that. First thing was Crazy. Hot Dog went inside but stopped dead in the doorway.

"Oh, no."

O'Malley was seated at a booth, his glasses pointed at them.

Hot Dog wanted to shoot him. He wanted to shoot him very badly, and hurt him. He knew that neither he nor Crazy would be welcome in the House ever again if he did, but he wanted to just the same.

The House Man came over, stern. "I can't have this," he said.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I can't have it. I had to use a lot of coffee for the front, and you know I don't like to use coffee for such things. You boys are dangerous, and I don't mind that, but you can't bring trouble to the House like this."

"I'm sorry. I'm trying to fix it. Please help me."

The House Man softened as he looked at Crazy. "All right," he said quietly. "The House welcomes you." He signaled to Rick and Tommy and pointed to the still form. "Take him in the back and get him some coffee," he said. "Get them both some."

"No. Not for me. It won't do any good right now. Just a cloth for me, please."

The House Man looked at him. "Take mine," he said, pulling his hand cloth from his apron.

Hot Dog faltered. "No, I can't. I couldn't. I couldn't take that, I just need a regular one-"

"Take it," the House Man said gently, wrapping it with care around Hot Dog's hand. "Let it give you strength to carry on. It is a difficult time, perhaps the end of some things. There may come a time when I will not welcome you here, so let me help you now."

"I don't understand."

"It is confusing," the House Man admitted. "Almost senseless. You all seem to be almost one big conglomerate to me, parts of a whole. It seems almost by convention that there have to be sides at all, and it is certainly at random that we are assigned to them." Hot Dog looked at him, bewildered and sad.

"It is natural to despair in the light of the unknown," the House Man continued. "It is the common response to change. I don't know your situation, but I can see that you are experiencing change. The forces that change you are beyond your control. You may be forced to let go when you are not yet ready. Time sweeps you along, and still you always reach back for the unfinished. Farther and farther you are swept, and still you reach, you reach with pain and love and lust and life, for the sake of that one breath you never took, for the sensation of skin on skin, for the blindness that let you sleep at night when now you cannot, for completion and absolution and singularity. Then you break and it is finished. What is left of you turns to look and screams in terror at what looms ahead. You are thrust headlong into it, unprepared, and are streamlined, feeling yourself slough off, feeling the constriction, and always feeling the broken bit of you trailing and chafing in the wake of the past. We cling to our masts with great fury, but are ripped away by the greater fury of the storm. And ever we long for the handhold offered by that mast, though the whole vessel was sinking into the black water." He sighed. "The securities of the known are not replaced by the mysteries of the unknown."

Hot Dog was frightened. "What will I do?"

"You will do. You will be. It depends on how you view it, but perhaps they are both the same thing anyway. You will go on, at any rate. Even if you choose not to go on, you will go on. Maddening, isn't it? And often unfair. Yet it is so." The House Man paused, his eyes drifting. "You two boys are my favorite customers," he said, with a sadness in his voice. "I care for you." The House Man cradled Hot Dog's head gently in his large hands and held the wounded gaze in his own. "Know always that I care for you." He took Hot Dog's hand and squeezed it warmly, firmly, with knowledge behind the squeeze. Though it was the wounded hand he squeezed, Hot Dog noticed that it did not hurt anymore. The bleeding and pain had stopped when the cloth was wrapped around it.

"Now," the House Man said, "I believe there's someone here who wants to speak with you."

"Yes. Thank you."

Hot Dog walked over to the booth. O'Malley smiled at him.

The Lanky Man looked up with a start. He had been thinking of the goldfish. He had tried to get back to what was before the goldfish, but his memory only went as far as the first hazy visionary moments just before he woke up in the alley. What was before that was the wrong, and the proof of its existence for him came whenever he rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. But he did not know what to do now. He had his smokes, and he had his gun, and he knew there was a wrong which needed to be righted. Or at the very least, another stage which must be completed. Perhaps that was all anything was: a series of stages, and one after the other. But the Lanky Man was a chaser by nature, and felt restless at not knowing where to go. He did not like waiting, and not being able to speak, and simply walking around, though even when he chased he kept his speed of two-and-a-half miles an hour, to maintain the pall. He wanted to do his part, and bring everyone to completion. But as yet he had nothing and no one to chase. So he did not chase.

That is, until the moment when Hot Dog burst into the small Chinatown restaurant where he was sitting and having a smoke, thinking of the goldfish.

At that moment, everything else dropped away, and all was still. The spectacle before him unfolded in what seemed like a dumb show; but a dumb show with sound. At first, nothing more than a smoky restaurant, made so by the Lanky Man's ever-increasing pall; and several frightened patrons, made so by the register boy's tumbling motion through the air and into the wall and finally down to a small heap in the corner in response to his quizzical look at the Lanky Man. Then a series of images. The screech of tires outside and a sudden eruption of gunfire. Hot Dog bursting through the door. The shouted order for stir fry. The glint of light, visible even through the pall, off of the waving gun. The barking report and the disappearance of the unfortunate manager's head in response to the discovery of a mixed-up order. Frightened restaurateurs diving onto the floor for cover. Then gone again.

The Lanky Man knew that this was what was missing in him. This was what he must chase after, though tortured into a grotesque image of image in his muteness and his strolling behavior. He must chase after this figure, whatever his name might be now. It did not matter, was in fact arbitrary. He must chase after this figure and make him see the wrong, for he now knew what the wrong was. It was that he should be chasing after this figure at all.

The Lanky man went out into the now devastated street. The pall seemed to hold the door open by itself to allow all of itself to escape and surround him again. There was nothing left out here but a few dazed cops and a large pile of dead ones. The pile had a cruiser-sized opening in it. The Lanky Man walked through the opening and began to follow the same path that O'Malley had taken.

He was close to the river a short while later when two dead pleasure cruisers came sailing over the treetops and landed with a meaty thud in front of him. The Lanky Man looked at them and knew that they were Hot Dog's work.

He lit a smoke.

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