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Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

Then the singer portraying the emperor made his entrance, and for the first time I sensed something odd going on. It wasn’t anything about the performer, at least, not to look at. He wasn’t particularly handsome, a bit thick-faced, with a sagging, wrinkled neck, and his legs were a bit skinny for the toga he was wearing, but I sure didn’t recognize him. Others did, however, and he was greeted with applause and, to my surprise, a few catcalls and some laughter. Also, unlike the other singers, he did not look particularly comfortable on stage, which made him an odd choice to play the monarch. I supposed he had a fabulous voice to make up for it, because everyone else in the cast seemed world-class. I was mildly startled when he got ready to sing, because his throat swelled like the bulging neck-sac of a bullfrog, though even that didn’t seem unusual: a lot of the other cast members and most of the audience bore some physical sign of what they were. But when he finally began his aria, the emperor’s voice was a distinct disappointment, more than a bit rough and not very strong. Some in the audience actually laughed, which made him falter, and the jeers grew louder as he doggedly pursued the song, his throat sac distending and shrinking like the bellows on an accordion, his face growing more fearful by the moment as the crowd shouted at him.

He finished and someone else began singing, but the spell of attention had been broken and many in the audience were talking or laughing out loud. I couldn’t figure it out at all, but as I wondered why such a poor singer should be trotted out in front of the nobility of Hell that way, I was distracted by a late entrance in the upper boxes. A hush fell over the crowd and some poor soprano’s aria was suddenly less important than everybody turning around to see who was being seated in President Caym’s box.

The late arrival didn’t look the same as the last time I’d seen him, but I still knew him instantly. He was dressed in a beautifully-cut white dress uniform, the kind of thing you’d expect to see at a royal funeral in some old newsreel, except that the white fabric was so artfully splattered with arterial splashes of scarlet that I had no doubt it had been designed that way. The only question was whether it was real blood or just dye. I thought I could guess.