I cleared my throat. “No. Why?”

She unfolded her legs with a snap. “Then I take it you haven’t started to hurt yet.”

She was wrong; I’d had long enough to realize that that was what had made me wake up. “Waiting for the note was a formality. He would have done it anyway,” I said.

“Would he? What in the Devil’s name did he think you’d done to deserve it?”

“Behaved like an asshole about three times too many.”

“My, my. They have the death penalty for assholeism now?”

“I told you he wasn’t going to kill me.”

Frances leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin propped on her laced fingers. “No? Then who was it who almost did? Doctor Brick Wall out there spent four hours over your unpromising-looking carcass saying things that will probably damn his soul to hell by whatever faith he subscribes to. Many of them he shouted at you. He seemed to think you weren’t helping.”

“I wish I’d been there. Sounds pretty funny.”

In measured cadence, she said, “It was not funny.”

I didn’t want to disagree with her. She seemed to have temporarily run out of things to say.

After a little while I ventured, “He said I couldn’t have any more dope, didn’t he?”

“He said that. And before you ask, I am not here to smuggle in a pipe of hash. But I’d be delighted to distract you with stories.”

I must have put the question mark on my face.

“What I had in mind,” she said, answering it, “is the tale in one part of The Rescue of the Protagonist from Durance Vile, a tragic omedy. Since I’m here and Sherrea isn’t, I claim dibs on first telling. Don’t you want to know how you were got out?”

I thought about it. I realized with a kind of gentle disappointment that I didn’t, really. I was out, and they had been exercised enough about it to get me out, which was nice. That seemed to be it. But it would be rude, I decided, not to let her tell me.

It may have taken longer than it seemed to work this out. Or some of it may have showed in my face. Whichever it was, it made Frances look at me strangely. “If you’re tired, I’ll go away.”

“It’s all right. Tell me.”

The look didn’t quite disappear, but she began. “So. After sitting quietly for two hours in the dark on the sweet soft throne of a tar barrel and breathing in lungfuls of dead fish smell, I’d figured out my plan. I would have my methanol pirates take me straight to China Black’s safe place, where I would extort an irresistible amount of ransom money from the locals, and send it back in lieu of my note, to Beano. I meant to count out five thousand pounds or make some blood flow — do you know that song? The pirates, unfortunately, refused to accept changes in the script. They would boot me off just past the checkpoints, and they had to have a note to send back. I think they were afraid that if I stuck around, I’d talk them out of the trike.”