“Last ferry, mister,” said a man locking the Key Service ticket booth from the outside. “You on it?”

I told him I was being picked up by a friend at the main gate but had thought the park was open later than it was, so I’d had to wait. For his benefit, I got up and started to walk down the Esplanade in the direction of the entrance. I walked slowly until the ferry had carried its passengers and the ticket salesman into the night, then reversed my direction.

I looked at my watch. If I began the trek now across the empty parking area that occupied the northern tip of Treasure Island, I would reach at the appointed time the place where Gail’s anger and musical composition had both become inflamed.

I stepped off North Boulevard and onto the vast blacktop that gave way on all three sides, at some merging point my eyes could not see, to the black water of the bay. It took no exertion of my imagination to feel as if I were taking a stroll along the end of the universe. I would not have known which way to walk had it not been for the three stanchions still lighted in the parking lot. They were spaced in a line, each a great distance from the others, like three stars in a constellation.

I wondered how I would locate Gail—or whoever it was my assignation might be with—once I passed the third light. I would have to be careful I didn’t walk off the rim of Treasure Island. The last of the stanchion lights was now behind me, making me a fine target, but I doubted I’d been lured here solely to be attacked. Someone, good or evil, needed me here for some function I’d yet to serve. If I was wrong about this, then I’d been a fool to come alone. But Gail had made the choice academic. I didn’t feel any particular sense of courage, but I did feel excited, and calm, and purposeful. For one rare evening of my life, I knew I was doing what I was meant to do and had no desire to turn away.

A beam appeared about thirty yards in front of me. Its vague yellow glow was amplified by the fog in the same way that light from a streetlamp becomes brighter during a snowfall.

Now I could see that the light was coming from the dims of an old sedan parked next to the same white trailer truck that had been there the day before.

A woman was walking around the front of the car to face me. She was wearing a gold gabardine trench coat with a belt of gold kid. It was open, and within it she had on a dress of dark crepe.

She looked surprised and extremely unhappy to see me.