To be fair, without my gallery and the tattered, faded cloak of respectability it had conveyed, I could no longer command a prestige position—and Sirin had found younger, cheaper writers for the article assignments that had once gone to Duncan and me. So, five days a week, a trickle of tourists would find their way to my office and sign up for such ridiculous tours as “Gray Cap Haunts and Habitat”—which consisted of showing them where various famous people had been “disappeared” or killed by the gray caps, then descending into the basement of the newly rebuilt Borges Bookstore, a place in which no gray cap had ever been seen. Another favorite tour was the dusk-to-midnight “Haunted Ambergris” expedition, to which I had to bring a measure of acting skills I did not possess, and a ream of notes to read from, since the stories all blended together otherwise. (I imagine I might have been good at this kind of work, if you’d ever given me an invite.)

But the worst tour, over time, was “Literary Highlights of Ambergris,” since, as Sabon’s popularity grew, I would be forced to take them past whatever expensive hovel she was currently renting, where they would gawk and circle, certain they would soon catch a glimpse of the author peering out from behind a curtain.

“This is the home of the controversial and talented Mary Sabon,” began the official spiel I was made to mutter and cough to tourists who may or may not have cared very much.

“It is in this house that Sabon wrote much of her book More Banal Banalities, which disproved many of the more paranoid theories about the gray caps.” And so on and so forth.

Sometimes, Sybel stared out at me from a nearby tree, sporting a not-unsympathetic smirk on his face and dressed in his most familiar outfit: the woodland greens and browns of his youth.

“Gently, Janice,” he would soothe. “It’s not so bad. It could be worse. I know all about worse.”

“Worse? How much worse could it get?” I would ask him, but by then he was already a mote of dust spiraling at the corner of my eye, and me having confused myself and tourists alike by having spoken aloud.