An eidetic memory, his brain said, which enabled me to remember wholesale an entire novel, which by great and weird chance no other fucker in the world has ever heard of. You know the Great Dictator? I’m the Great Dictated-To.

“—a creative mind,” said Todd. “And don’t ask me if that’s something I was born with, or something I learned how to cultivate. Maybe it’s a little bit of both, I don’t know. But someone once said, genius is ninety percent perspiration and ten percent inspiration. Only I guess in my case…”

On Todd went, and on. Only Timothy guessed that Todd was talking the purest, most refined bullshit imaginable, because you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. But not even Timothy could work out how it was bullshit, or why. He only knew that tonight, here, in his bookstore, a new strain of bullshit was being unleashed on the world for the first time.

And not, thought Timothy to himself, for the last.

*  *  *

The evening finally wound up, a full two hours after it was supposed to. Todd signed all the advance copies that the publisher had sent, shook a lot of hands, and listened to a lot of people say they were looking forward to reading All My Colors, if those two bits he read out were anything to go by. Todd assured everyone that they were something to go by, allowed himself a glass of Timothy’s Chateau Execrable, and finally said goodbye at eleven thirty.

Sara drove them back. She kept throwing glances at him from behind the wheel.

“Do I have something on my face?” Todd asked. “Because you keep staring at me.”

“I’m storing up memories,” she said. “Of the old Todd.”

“Oh, come on,” said Todd, although he was pleased.

“Todd, I saw you tonight,” said Sara, “and you were great. You were funny, you were kind, you were serious… Not that you can’t be all those things normally… but tonight you were all of them at the same time.”

“I was just enjoying myself,” said Todd. “Everyone was great, weren’t they? The reading went well, the questions”—apart from Billy, chewing his own face off—”it was all great.”

“I think it’s the book,” said Sara. “I don’t know how else to explain it. But ever since you got that book out of you, you’ve been… don’t take this wrong, Todd, but you’ve been better.”

“I suppose writing a book is like excavating something from one’s soul,” said Todd, and Sara laughed so hard she almost changed lanes.

“Please,” she said, spluttering. “Please don’t ever say that in a talk.”

Then she got serious again.

“You know, maybe you’re right. Maybe getting that book out of you got something else out too.”

“Like gold in the rock?” asked Todd. “Or like poison from a wound?”

Sara didn’t answer.

“You okay?” said Todd.

“Look,” said Sara.