I was sun-dazzled, even after I took my shades off, and it took me a moment to register what was being done in the barn. Then I murmured to Rico, “I win.”

“Close only counts in horseshoes,” she answered. She had taken off her sunglasses, too.

“What do you mean? It’s a paper mill.”

“Don’t tell that to him,” Rico said, jerking her head at the figure coming toward us.

He was very large. Not just tall, but with shoulders big even in proportion to his height, and with great thick arms poking out of his T-shirt. His hair was thick and black, and even damp went every which way; his eyebrows formed a single unpruned hedge across the field of his forehead; his moustache bristled further forward than his nose; and his beard seemed to continue over his throat, down the neck of his shirt, and out the armholes to his wrists. Beneath the hair, his exposed skin was apple-red. For a moment I wondered if he’d dyed it. Then I remembered the big vat behind him with its cumulus cloud of steam, and realized he was just lightly parboiled. His T-shirt read, “Art doesn’t kill. Artists do.” He was scowling at us.

“You a copper, too?” he said to me as he came up, in a voice that shook the cross-timbers.

“No,” Rico answered for me. “He’s an independent contractor. Orient, this is Dave.”

“Just Dave?” I asked, probably unwisely.

“Orient. You’re the one who finds shit.” He said it with a little snort. “Anybody who loses something deserves to be without it.”

“That’s kind of harsh.”

“I don’t owe anything, and nobody can make me do anything. You know many people in this town can say that?”

I was careful not to look at Rico.

“Did you make this?” she asked, and handed him the mauled piece of paper.

Dave took it to the door we’d come in. I noticed that he barely glanced at the writing; he turned it over to its relatively unmarked side, rubbed his thumb across it, then held it up to the light. “Yeah, I did. I remember this batch, with the silk fibers in it. And it’s got part of my watermark. See?” He held it up for me, because I was closer. “Somebody cut this in half, but you can see the fish head at the edge.”

The irregular pale areas, like reverse shadows cast on the paper, resolved themselves into pouting mouth, an X where the eye would be, the curve of cheek and gill. “How do you do that?” I asked him.

“Huh?” Dave said. Rico widened her eyes at me. Even I was a little surprised, actually.

“The watermark. I’ve always wanted to know how they’re done.”