I turned around. Peter was up on one of the framing catwalks, grinning at me. Dani was with him and the fat guy Langston, and a couple of other people who probably had to do with the construction rather than the design. He said, “I’m glad you’re on this for me. I like your style.” He tossed down a Mars bar. Maybe there was another candy machine up on the ceiling. “Me and you,” he said, “I think we’re two of a kind. You’re my kind of guy.”

I thought about ripping off the candy wrapper and dropping it on the ground, but decided that that would be small. I bit through the paper instead.

Peter smiled wider and said, “Man, you are wild.”

Pat Kyle shook her head.

We walked out through the big doors and into the light. The paper tasted terrible. If Daryl Hannah was watching, I hope she was impressed.

Chapter Four

Four

Pat Kyle and I walked back to the Kapstone offices where someone had set up a Sony Betamax VCR along with several yellow legal pads and sharpened pencils for the taking of notes. There was a check for four thousand dollars in an envelope taped to a Beta cassette on top of the VCR, along with a fresh pot of coffee on a side table with a tray of bagels and cream cheese and lox and sliced tomatoes and red onions. Pat said, “Would you like company?”

“Sure.”

Pat turned on the machine and inserted the cassette and we watched as nineteen-year-old Karen Shipley Nelsen walked into an empty room and stood next to a stool. She wasn’t made up like the waitress now. Now she was wearing faded jeans and an airy white top and red boots and she looked tanned and outdoorsy. The brown hair was cut in a sort of fluffy shag and the eyes were hazel. No makeup.

She looked at someone behind the camera and said, “What do you want me to do?” The sound coming out of the television was hollow and sort of tinny. Even with that her voice was light and girlish. She giggled.

Peter Nelsen’s voice came from where she looked. “Give us the left and the right and the back. Try not to giggle.”

She showed her left profile, and then her back, and then her right. She said it as she did it, and when she moved she sort of squiggled and swayed and bounced, the way fifteen-year-old girls do when they’re acting grown-up and people are watching. “This is my left side, and this is my back, and this is my right.” And then she giggled. “Hee hee hee.”

Pat Kyle said, “Oh, God.”

“She’s not impressing you with her talents?”