So what, thought Billy to himself. If I drink the damn poison I’ll die an awful death or if Sanseli catches me I’ll die an awful death. Any way I look at it I’m gonna die an awful death. An’ if I don’t get on that damn TV program, where in God’s name will I come up with three hundert an’ eighty thousand dollars to pay off all my gamblin’ debts? Damn, I never should have stole them box seats.

“Don’t forget about your dream, Billy, and your omen,” said Rosie Feinstein cheerfully, trying everything she could think of to pep him up.

“Yeah,” said Billy, thinking to himself, I should never have left Bowling Green is what I should never have done.

“I can’t get over seein’ Linus,” said Jimmy Joel Jenks. “Wow!”

Billy wished he had never met JJ.

Very few people could sit still in the green room. They wandered about playing with the refreshments. They fingered the muffins, poured coffee from the urns into paper cups, took sips, then placed the nearly full cups on any available space they could find and walked away.

Among the unidentified guests loitering about the green room was a new arrival: a short, plump fellow in his fifties. He was dressed in a herringbone sport coat over a flowered sport shirt and tan slacks. The man had a patch over one eye, which he hid behind dark Ray-Ban sunglasses. The man wore his topcoat over his shoulders, European-style. One arm was bent at the elbow and pushed into his sport coat between two buttoned buttons, Napoleon-style. The other arm was jammed into his sport coat pocket. The short, squat man looked around the room, spotted the imam, and walked straight to him.

“Remember me?” asked the man in a very low voice hardly anyone else could hear.

Retta Mae Wagons, sitting beside Jamal, looked up from her magazine.

The imam checked the man out, then calmly answered, “No.”

Retta Mae returned to her magazine.

“That’s odd. I know you. I know you very well. I would never be able to forget that shit face of yours as long as I live. You sure you don’t remember me?” asked the man.

Retta Mae Wagons looked up from her magazine again.

“I don’t remember you,” said Rasheed Jamal, without looking up.

“You’re Cleveland Steve Beastie from Chicago, aren’t you?”

“You have the wrong person, mister,” said the imam.

“That’s funny. Thought you were Cleveland Steve Beastie from Chicago,” said the man. “Thought you were the ex-con two-time loser they sent up to Attica for involuntary vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence. Could have sworn you changed your name to Rasheed Jamal before I got there. Even proclaimed yourself some kind of reverend or something. I thought for sure we shared a jail cell together. Cell Eight/Third Tier? You don’t remember any a that?”

“No, I don’t,” snapped the imam, not looking up at the man.

Retta Mae Wagons went back to her magazine.