Please accept the assurance of our high esteem, and with it the hope for a favorable response. We remain,

A twig snapped loudly. I strained to listen. It was all I could do to keep from raising a cupped hand to an apprehensive ear and whispering, “Hark!”

“You hear that?” I asked.

“Jesus!” Val said. “Here we go again. It’s the wind in the trees.”

“I’m going to have a look.”

“Why? I mean, if nobody’s there, it’s a waste of effort. And if there is somebody, the sensible thing would be to avoid him.”

“I want to know.” I doused the lamp, waited a moment until my eyes grew accustomed to the dark mucilage of the hut. Then I slithered out the door.

There was nothing I could detect in a night so suffocatingly black it had no gradations. It was like being inside a mountain, and just as reassuring. Still I stumbled ahead, from one shrub to another, and then I saw a dense shadow weaving about, close to the ground, like a large warthog rooting for acorns. I squinted; now I was not more than twenty feet from him, but he didn’t notice, so intent he was on… on what?

My foot caught a creeper. I did a kind of loopy half gainer, landing on all fours and eye to eye with the warthog. The warthog blinked first, aware of my shadow, and shied from it. He said, “You come out to help me look?”

“Look for what, Derek?”

“I dropped that goddamn bowl of beer,” Derek said, cottonmouthed. He smelled sour. “Can’t find it anywhere. R’diculous.”

“Come on in,” I said, wobbling him to his feet.

He sagged in a corner, curled in the fetal position. “I’m sick,” he said, digging his fists uneasily into his crotch. His face was sullen and flaccid. “I want to go home.” Unexpectedly, untheatrically, he started to cry.

Valerie and I exchanged a muddled glance. “Going home shouldn’t be too hard to arrange,” I said. “Haven’t you seen Abdul about it?”

“He won’t see me. We’re not friends anymore. We just don’t see neck to neck…”

“What about the play?” I asked. “It’s not going well?”

“Nobody cares, not even the actors. They just laugh.” A tear like a vagrant tributary veered toward his nose. He brushed it away. “I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he went on, “would you talk to Abdul for me? I’ve been hanging out there for a week now, trying to build up the courage to ask.”

From far off on the square came the jangle of a native band jiving in the night. The muffled beat of rat-skin drums, the rattle of wooden tambourines, the eldritch shrill of nose flutes supplied a fitting accompaniment to Derek’s plaint.