Her moods were as unpredictable as her appearance. One day, pleased with his progress, she would promise him a show of his own—“A main tent show, Ed. A real show.” The next she would shake her head, throw away her cigarette and say in a voice of professional disgust:

“A kiddie sees better futures than you. I can’t sell them this.”

One afternoon at the Dunes she told him, “You’re a true visionary, Ed. That’s your tragedy.”

They had been working for perhaps an hour, and Ed, slumped in one corner so tired he thought he could feel himself slipping down through the floor, had prised the fishtank off his head for a breather. Outside, the seabirds croaked and wheeled over the beach. Harsh violet light fell between the slatted louvres and sliced Sandra Shen’s emerald green cheongsam into the uneasy colouration of some jungle predator. She lifted a shred of tobacco from her lower lip. Shook her head.

“It’s my tragedy too,” she admitted. “Mine too.”

If Ed had hoped to learn something from her about the process itself, he was wrong. She seemed as confused by it as he was.

“What I want to know,” he said, “is what my head’s in.”

“Forget the tank, Ed,” she said. “There’s nothing in there. That’s what I want you to understand: nothing there at all.” When she saw how this failed to reassure him, she seemed at a loss. Once she said, “Never forget: with prophecy you find your own heart at the heart of it.” Finally she recommended: “You’ve got to duck and dive in there. It’s a full-on Darwinian environment. You’ve got to be quick to bring back the goods.”

Ed shrugged.

“That so doesn’t describe the experience,” he told her.

He really didn’t know what happened to him when his head was in the fishtank, but he knew it wasn’t anything as twitchy or aggressive as that. He thought that was her temperament showing. As a description it revealed more about her than it did about prophecy. “Anyway,” he told her, “direction was always the difficulty with me. Speed was never a problem.”

He added, for no reason he could see: “My dreams have been bad lately.”

“Things are tough all over, Ed.”

“Thanks a lot.”

Sandra Shen grinned at him. “Talk to Annie,” she advised. A few white motes seemed to drift out of her eyes. Unsure whether this was menace or a joke, he put his head back in the tank so he didn’t have to watch. After a moment he heard her say:

“I’m sick of selling the past, Ed. I want to start on the future.”

“Do I say anything when I’m in here?”

The more he worked with the fishtank, the worse Ed’s dreams became.