But out at the horizon, out near the burnished edge of the world, who are these visitors standing… these robed figures—perhaps, at this distance, hundreds of miles tall—their faces, serene, unattached, like the Buddha’s, bending over the sea, impassive, indeed, as the Angel that stood over Lübeck during the Palm Sunday raid, come that day neither to destroy nor to protect, but to bear witness to a game of seduction. It was the next-to-last step London took before her submission, before that liaison that would bring her at length to the eruption and scarring of the wasting pox noted on Roger Mexico’s map, latent in this love she shares with the night-going rake Lord Death… because sending the RAF to make a terror raid against civilian Lübeck was the unmistakable long look that said hurry up and fuck me, that brought the rockets hard and screaming, the A4s, which were to’ve been fired anyway, a bit sooner instead… .

What have the watchmen of world’s edge come tonight to look for? deepening on now, monumental beings, stoical, on toward slag, toward ash the color the night will stabilize at, tonight… what is there grandiose enough to witness? only Slothrop here, and Sir Stephen, blithering along, crossing shadow after long prison-bar shadow cast by the tall trunks of palms lining the esplanade. The spaces between the shadows are washed a very warm sunset-red now, across grainy chocolate beach. There seems to be nothing happening of any moment. No traffic whispering in the circular driveways, no milliards of francs being wagered because of a woman or an entente of nations at any of the tables inside. Only the somewhat formal weeping of Sir Stephen, down now on one knee in the sand still warm from the day: soft and strangled cries of despair held in, so testifying to all the repression he ever underwent that even Slothrop can feel, in his own throat, sympathetic flashes of pain for the effort it is clearly costing the man… .

“Oh yes, yes you know, I, I, I can’t. No. I assumed that you knew—but then why should they tell you? They all know. I’m an office joke. The people even know. Nora’s been the sweetheart of the psychic crowd for years and years. That’s always good for some bit of copy in the News of the World—”

“Oh! Yeah! Nora—that’s that dame that was caught that time with that kid who-who can change his color, right? Wow! Sure, that Nora Dodson-Truck! I knew your name was familiar—”

But Sir Stephen has gone on: “… had a son, yes we came complete with sensitive son, boy about your age. Frank… I think they sent him to Indo-China. They’re very polite when I ask, very polite but, they won’t let me find out where he is… . They’re good chaps at Fitzmaurice House, Slothrop. They mean well. It’s been, most of it’s been my fault… . I did love Nora. I did. But there were other things… . Important things. I believed they were. I still do. I must. As she got along, you know… they do get that way. You know how they are, demanding, always trying to-to drag you into bed. I couldn’t,” shaking his head, his hair now incandescent orange in this twilight, “I couldn’t. I’d climbed too far. Another branch. Couldn’t climb back down to her. She-she might even have been happy with a, even a touch now and then… . Listen Slothrop, your girl, your Katje, sh-she’s very lovely, you know.”