As they navigate the lobby, there are new boards up announcing that free teeth-whitening sessions are available in suite 412 for qualified superheroes. Billie looks over at the front desk and sees Aliss looking back. Aliss draws her finger across her throat. If looks could kill you wouldn’t be reading this e-mail.

Conrad Linthor goes through a door that you’re clearly not meant to go through. Billie follows anyway and they’re in a corridor, in a maze of corridors. If this were an MMORPG, the zombies or the giant fruit bats or the gnoles with their intricately knotted, deadly ropes would show up any minute. Instead, every once in a while, they pass hotel cleaning staff; bellboys sneaking cigarettes. Everyone nods at Conrad Linthor, just like the superheroes in the Starbucks in the lobby.

Billie doesn’t want to ask, but eventually she does. “Who are you?”

“Call me Eloise,” Conrad Linthor says.

“Sorry?” Billie imagines that they are no longer in the hotel at all. The corridor they are currently navigating slopes gently downward. Maybe they will end up on the shores of a subterranean lake, or in a dungeon, or in Narnia, or King Nermal’s Chamber, or even Keokuk, Iowa. It’s a small world, after all. Bigger on the inside.

“You know, Eloise. The girl who lives in The Plaza? Has a pet whale named Moby Dick?”

He waits, like Billie’s supposed to know what he’s talking about. When she doesn’t say anything, he says, “Never mind. It’s just this book—a classic of modern children’s literature, actually—about a girl who lives in The Plaza. Which is a hotel. A bit nicer than this one, maybe, but never mind. I live here.”

He keeps on talking. They keep on walking.

Billie’s hangover is a special effect. Conrad Linthor is going on and on about superheroes. His father is an agent. Apparently superheroes have agents. Represents all of the big guys. Knows everyone. Agoraphobic. Never leaves the hotel. Everyone comes to him. Big banquet tomorrow night, for his biggest client. Tyrannosaurus Hex. Hex is retiring. Going to go live in the mountains and breed tarantula wasps. Conrad Linthor’s father is throwing a party for Hex. Everyone will be there.

Billie’s legs are noodles. The ends of her hair are poison needles. Her tongue is a bristly sponge, and her eyes are bags of bleach.

Two wheeled carts come round the next corner like comets, followed at arm’s length by hurtling busboys. They sail down the corridor at top speed. Conrad Linthor and Billie flatten themselves against the wall. “You have to move fast,” Conrad explains. “Or else the food gets cold. Guests complain.”

Around that corner, enormous doors, still swinging. Big enough to birth a Greyhound bus bound for Keokuk. A behemoth. A white whale. Billie passes through the doors onto the far shores of what is, of course, a hotel kitchen. Far away, miles, it seems to Billie, there are clouds of vapor and vague figures moving through them. Clanging noises, people yelling, the thick, sweet smell of caramelized onions, onions that will never make anyone cry again. Other savory reeks.