I’d guessed that the Dionysus Theater would be like La Scala or something, one of those fancy opera places, a big classical building with columns, meant to proclaim, “Hey, we got culture!” but I was reckoning without Hell’s sense of humor. The theater was a few blocks off Dis Pater Square, tucked in at the end of a wide street full of strange, misshapen buildings, not the high towers of the wealthy but the hivelike habitations that the rest of Pandaemonium’s residents fought to get into, with their bottom floors given over to small shops and other businesses. But the joke, I realized when I saw the electrical sign with its vertical letters glowing through the permanent dusk, was that the Dionysus was a dark-mirror copy of the Apollo Theater in Harlem, a place I’d actually been once—the closest your friend Bobby Dollar had ever come to a religious pilgrimage.

Cars and carriages and even more bizarre forms of transportation crowded the street as the high and mighty arrived, along with interested spectators and crowds of beggars who were one tossed bone away from turning into a snarling wolfpack. The Dionysus had a large troop of brawny house soldiers armed with what looked like most of the history of warfare, from clubs to steam-driven Gatling guns, and since most of the really well-to-do traveled with their own household guards as well, even the most dangerous and desperate of the onlookers kept a respectful distance. But it was a reminder that, like any place that specialized in the snatch-and-grab style of wealth acquisition, the only real security was what you could buy.

As we waited to go in, I asked Vera again who the “Himself” was who was performing. It wasn’t advertised out front, only the name of the opera, The Coronation of Poppaea. I’d never heard of it. Then again, I’ve never been big on classical music or opera, at least compared to what jazz and blues do for me.