Neal looked like he stood between two pools: the one that went up to his waist and the one that fell upon him from the sky.

That great Goblin rain.

“Happy birthday dear Huuuuuuunter…”

Hunter.

Neal’s nickname. For being the best. The best hunter. A big-game hunter. A trophy hunter.

“Happy birthday to you!”

The guests erupted into cheers, and the sound of smashed glasses crashed through the falling rain.

Neal bowed.

Guns were shot into the sky. Half-naked, half-painted jockeys rode horses around the house. People threw food. Arrows were sent into the sky.

As Neal got out of the pool, helping Barbara out by the hand, a pickup truck pulled up onto the lawn. The bed was loaded with boxes: presents wrapped in every color. A blue tent protected them from the sky. Neal stepped up onto the opened truck-bed door and waved his hands for silence.

“This is fucking great,” he said. “Where did we learn to have so much fun? Who taught us how to have so much goddamn fun?” More cheers. More laughter. “Tonight I’m sixty years old and thanks to you people I feel…eighty!”

“Where’s Crawford?” someone yelled.

“Crawdaddy?” Neal answered, his face a half scowl. “Crawdaddy couldn’t make it. Hell, someone has to work tonight, yeah?”

Laughter. Cheers. False boos for Dean Crawford.

Dean Crawford was the other half of Nash & Crawford, Inc. Neal knew exactly where his partner was. Waiting at his own home in Rolling Hills; waiting for the delivery of a crate.

“And where’s Mayor Blackwater?” someone else said.

Neal chuckled. “Everyone Gobliner is welcome to break some laws in the Nash household, all except those who make them.”

Laughter. Riotous. Applause that became a word:

“Caaaaaaake!”

Saul Stein led Neal through the guests, then the back deck’s glass doors and into the house. Neal’s shoes sloshed on the brown carpet as he walked through rows of people more drunk than himself. He believed he was happy.

Seated at the head of his oak dining room table, Saul told him to sit tight, then vanished into a wall of guests. The tablecloth had embroideries of deer and fox humping in various positions. The walls were lined with antlers, and in this room stood a zebra so well preserved it looked like it might be a guest.

It was cake time.

Everyone that could fit packed into the room. Some watched from the yard through the windows and many lay down on the grass, too drunk to stand up. Neal grabbed a fork and knife and pounded both on the table like an impatient child.

“Where’s my cake, Mommy?” he yelled.

Honk! Honk! Gun-horns blared as Barbara entered, pushing a great steel cart before her.

Sixty candles, bright as police lights.

“Barbara!” Neal exclaimed, eyeing the cart she rolled.

It was a meat cake. A cake of meat. At one hundred and ten pounds, it weighed more than some of the guests.