Neal Nash was, as the invitation for his party proudly boasted, the most celebrated big-game hunter in the history of Goblin.

“Look,” Andrew Belle said, pointing through the glass of the backseat window, confetti on the tip of his finger, “that’s a hell of a team of Shermans.”

Between the front gates and the Nash compound, set squarely on the front lawn, stood the second tallest pair of Sherman topiaries in all of Goblin. At thirteen feet and three inches, the pristine renderings of Barbara and Neal looked something like a president and his First Lady.

But the rain ruined the perfect view. Even the four people in Roger Fletcher’s car, native Gobliners all, had to acknowledge its severity.

“Like the sea is somehow above us,” Harper Belle said. “And leaking.”

With the assistance of a man in a white slicker, Roger parked his BMW beside a dented Ford truck. The Nashes hadn’t invited only the city’s finest; as the Fletchers and Belles knew, this wasn’t the sort of night for fellow magnates to sip brandy and exchange political concerns. Neal Nash was attempting to throw the biggest, most varied, most all-inclusive party Goblin had ever seen. It was as if he was hoping to add a bust of the party itself to his hangar of severed beast heads beyond the house.

The mail carrier of Rolling Hills had received the same invitation as the biggest investors in Nash & Crawford, Inc. The beat-up Cavalier belonging to Barbara’s favorite waitress, Jenny Sparks, was parked beside Senator John Garret’s Mercedes. The VW Bus belonging to Hank Houghton blocked the view of the marble fountain, now overflowing, in the yard.

By the time Roger parked, the Nash compound was most certainly already alive. Guests honked clown horns made to look like guns, pointing them at one another, beep beep, as the rain pounded the manicured green grass. Multicolored lanterns fashioned to look like Colonel Wes Farraline’s distended face floated between the cars, carried by guests already two, three drinks deep into the night. Some wore headlamps. Some wore masks. The top of a hot-air balloon showed just beyond the home’s east wing, and the brave wildlife, deer and rabbits, watched from the evergreens bordering the lawns.

Roger parked no more than a hundred feet from the toes of the great Sherman topiary of Neal himself.

It was nine oh nine p.m.

“This is how most parties look when they end,” Harper Belle said.

Welcome to wasteland, Roger thought. He wondered how many blond women were roaming the compound, women something like the one back in the booth with Duggan.

Then he grabbed hold of the umbrella for his wife, exited the car, and entered another man’s dream.

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