They stood, a bit unsteadily, and headed toward the ladder down into the main roller. They reached the ladder just as two other people came up it, a man and a woman. The man’s face triggered a flurry of memory fragments: fighting back to back in the choking streets of ­Baltimore, drinking heavily on the edge of a canyon in the Arizona desert, charging a riot line with pipes and hammers in their hands. A name bubbled up from inside the memories.

“Mike!” he shouted before he really thought about it. “Hey brother!”

Skullfucker Mike froze. Roland was already halfway to a hug when he realized Mike wasn’t feeling it. And then he caught his first good look at the woman coming up the ladder behind him. She had short-cropped teal hair, damascene fangs, and eyes so loud he could almost hear her thoughts. Topaz.

“R–” she started to say his name and then her voice caught. He heard the ghost of tears beneath it, and then she finished, “…Roland.”

“Yes,” he said, not sure of what else to say.

“Do you remember me?”

“No,” he admitted. Part of him wanted to lie. But he couldn’t. The broken scraps that remained of his love for her made it impossible. So he gave the honest answer, and he watched her die a little inside.

Topaz nodded. She closed her eyes for a second, bit down on her bottom lip, and then she put a quick hand on Mike’s shoulder before she walked away, up one of the gantrys and into the chaos of night in Rolling Fuck.

Roland looked to Mike.

“I’m sorry.”

Skullfucker Mike smiled sadly back.

“I know, buddy.”

And then he left too. Roland felt confusion and a distant hurt. He had a feeling that he should have been crying. But, for some reason, he couldn’t. And so he didn’t. Instead he took a fistful of Oxycontin and stumbled down the ladder, following Jim.

Rolling Fuck’s conference room was sumptuous, elegant, and surprisingly professional. Two old people sat at the far end of a conference table. Roland had a vague memory tingle of having met the man before, long ago, but neither of their faces brought a name to his mind. Jim introduced them but their names fled his head a few seconds later. In fact, the first minute or two of conversation flowed around him in an indistinct haze.

That may have had something to do with the softball-sized mass of Oxycontin he’d eaten as he’d climbed down the ladder with Jim. Roland had assumed the drugs would help him focus through the boredom. Apparently he’d miscalculated.

“So,” the old lady said with a hint of finality, “that’s the situation we’re in. Are you willing to help us?”