“Yes. DeMarcus.”

“Do you suppose he saw me naked?”

“It’s very likely. Does it matter?”

She shrugged and popped a grape into her mouth. “It’s pretty here. I might like to stay.”

Trigo woke up, barked to tell me.

“Trigo has to poop.”

“I should get dressed and go to my room.”

“Okay.”

Eigen stood, stretched, bare and unabashed. “I don’t think he’ll let me go back now,” she said.

“Why do you think that?”

“I think I heard him talking to someone. Anyway, I have a memory, I think, of hearing him talking to somebody. Or it was a dream. I don’t know. He said something about things starting to get rolling, that the window is open, the stage is set, the ducks are lining up, the storm is gathering.”

“That’s what you heard?”

“Does sound more like a dream, doesn’t it?”

I put some bacon into Trigo’s mouth. “Sill has a submarine. Did you know that? It looks like a spaceship. Do you think he’s dangerous?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

Corsica

1

After receiving a new set of clean clothing from DeMarcus, quite remarkably identical to my dirty clothes, down to the striped tie I used for a belt, I found myself again on Sill’s fancy jet flying away from Miami. I, reluctantly, but confidently, left Trigo with DeMarcus. He seemed absolutely unfazed by the instructions regarding my one-legged friend’s bodily functions. And I liked him, DeMarcus. His lack of affect came across to me as trustworthiness and dependable. Sill was coy about our destination, said only that it was an island and that we would love it.

“I don’t know why we have to fly way up to Iceland to get across this damn ocean,” Sill said. “But that’s what my pilot tells me.”

“The curved route is shorter than the straight one,” I said.

“What?”

“Euclid doesn’t work on Earth,” Eigen said. “Only in space.”

“You see, this is why I have you two with me. Well, it’s a long flight, regardless. There are snacks and drinks in the back. I am quite fond of snacks. Luckily I have a fast metabolism or else I’d be fat.”

Perhaps Sill had drugged me the way he had Eigen or perhaps his expensive jet was just so insanely comfortable, but whatever the cause I found myself drifting into a deep, luxurious sleep. Trigo was not with me so I did not dream.

We landed very briefly at a private airport in Scotland. I was told it was Scotland and by the fog I was certain that was true.

“I don’t have my passport,” I said.

“Me, either,” Eigen said. “If fact, mine is expired, having never been used.”

Sill unwrapped a chocolate candy bar, stared at us, and took a big bite. “Fuck passports,” he said. “We don’t need no stinkin’ passports. Treasure of the Sierra Madre. You ever see it? No? Jesus.”

Despite the fog we somehow managed to get airborne again and again I was asleep.