Archibald with Earwig, by Ludwig Poncer, Trillian Era, oils on canvas. This titular crenellation of high and low styles, by virtue of its unerring instinct for the foibles of both the human thumb and the inhuman earwig, has delighted generations of art lovers who pine for the shiver of dread up the spine even as their lips part to offer the sinister white of a smile.

Blah blah mumble mumble and so forth and so on yawn yawn.

Duncan also wrote, under the pseudonym “Darren Nysland,” the three-hundred-page Hoegbotton Study of Native Birds (which included my lovely, poetic entry on the plumed thrush hen), still in print and often referenced by serious ornithologists. (As well it should be. It came into existence with excruciating slowness over many months. I soon wished a pox upon the entire avian clan. I never want to see another bird, unless eggwise, sunny-side up on my breakfast plate, or simmering in some sort of mint sauce.)

When, much later, I could not complete an essay on Martin Lake for the Hoegbotton Guide to Ambergris, Duncan did an admirable job of presenting my (crackpot, or at least unsupportable) ideas in good, solid prose. (And doing what you would not—protecting the identity of Lake’s real lover. I wonder if you noticed. That and the peculiar “messages” I embedded in the text.) As if this was not confused enough, my work sometimes appeared under pen names, and thus when this work was actually written by Duncan, he appeared in print twice removed from his words.

I loved helping Duncan in this way. I loved that his style and my style became entangled so that we could not between us tell where a Janice sentence began and a Duncan sentence ended. For this meant I was very nearly his equal. (No comment.)

It was during this period that the Spore of the Gray Cap first became his favorite haunt. He had begun to put on a little weight, to grow a mustache and beard, which suited him. He even began to smoke a pipe. Thus outfitted, he would spend a few hours a day at the Spore, sitting in the (this very) back room, where he could keep a friendly eye on the bar’s regulars and yet not have to speak to them. The bartenders loved him. Duncan never made a fuss, tipped well when he could, and added a sense of authentic eccentricity that the Spore needed. (These were not the only or even the primary reasons I spent so much time here. At some point, Janice, you will have to abandon suspense for a fully dissected chronology, will you not? Or perhaps I can help. It just so happens that below the back room of the Spore lies the easiest portal to the gray caps’ underground kingdom.)