It’s solid stone, he says. A stone corridor.

What does that mean? a girl asks.

Dirk turns the wooden knob and the door opens inward. The light shows them six feet into the hallway and nothing more. Cold air comes out slowly, mingles with the fog, makes frost of the breathing.

It’s the tour! a child exclaims.

Dirk touches his belly and hopes to God not too much fog has gotten inside him. He feels okay. He feels all right. He feels like he can do this.

He stares hard at where the light ends. There is something white there. Something sticky. Something like…webbing.

Follow me, he says. And the children do.

The tour begins.

12

When Dirk woke the next morning it was already raining lightly outside. Just barely. It was possible that not even all of Goblin knew it yet.

He stepped into the bathroom and stood before the mirror. The toothbrush in his mouth, he thought,

Tonight I’m going to be my own boss.

And he believed it.

Tonight was the night he and Patrick were going to the City Slope. They were going to meet some women. Dirk was going to start living a regular life. What was it Patrick said? Oh yes, they were going to “mix things up.”

After brushing his teeth he opened his mouth wide before the mirror, ready lest a finger or two suddenly poked out of his throat.

Dirk dressed quickly and went to work.

13

Because he needed something to cheer. He needed to be able to lift his drink and say, Because of this.

And “going out” wasn’t going to cut it. For Hell’s sake, that was something he should have been doing every night. No. And it wasn’t going to be “to the good fortune” he’d had so far at the zoo and the House. That idea made him sick. No way. Tonight he was going to sit down in a booth across from Patrick and Dirk was going to lift his drink and say, Patrick! Here’s to me quitting one of my jobs.

In his pants pocket, Dirk had his two weeks’ notice. Patrick would have no problem drinking to that. And the whole thing gave Dirk the shivers. The good kind. A quiet voice in his overlapped mind kept saying something about the animals not thinking the same way he does.

Something about fog, too, and guiding a tour into Hell.

14

The tours were less unbearable for the little secret Dirk had hidden in his pocket beneath his brown uniform. In fact, they were almost enjoyable. To see the faces of the kids as he showed them things and told them things they’d never learned anywhere else before…it was very close to amazing.

At lunch a co-worker said, “You’ve got a little extra oomph in you today, Dirk. What gives?”