"Linus, you spent years roaming the continent looking for all sorts of answers, didn't you?"

"I did. In Las Vegas especially. It was a shithole, but it gave me space to think. And you're not answering my question, Jared."

"I will. Did you reach any conclusions in Las Vegas?"

"No. Not really. I thought I was going to see God or reach an epiphany or to levitate or something. But I never did. I prayed so long for that to happen. I think maybe I didn't surrender myself enough—I think that's the term: surrender. I still wanted to keep a foot in both worlds. And then this past year I've still been waiting for the same big cosmic moments, and still nothing's happened—except you're here and instead of feeling cosmic, it simply feels like we're cutting gym class and coming up here for a butt. Your arrival seems somehowappropriate; I wish I could feel more awe. I wish you could be here all the time. We're so bloody lonely."

Another smaller rumble tickles the ground and we can see lava flows treacling down Mount Baker's slope. Linus wants to blurt words so I let him: "Jared, I know God can come at any moment in any form. I know we always have to be on the alert. And I know that day and night are the same to God. And I know that God never changes. But all I ever wanted was just a clue. When do we die, Jared?"

"Whoa! Linus—it's not that easy. I don't have that kind of exact answer."

"Nobody ever seems to dish out the real answers."

There's a strangely uncomfortable pause, and I try and switch moods: "Look at Mount Baker," I say. "Remember that ski weekend there when we trashed the transmission in Gordon Streith's Cortina?"

"I kept the gear-shift knob as a souvenir."

The lava now burns gullies through the mountain's glaciers and steam rises as high as a satellite. Linus feels calm and his voice becomes gentle: "I guess this is what the continent looked like to the pioneers back when they first came here, eh Jared? A land untouched by time or history. They must have felt as though they were walking headlong into eternity, eager to chop it down and carve it and convert it from heaven into earth. Don't you think so?"

"Yeah. The pioneers—they believed in something. They knew the land was holy. The New World was the last thing on Earth that could be given to humankind: two continents spanning the poles of Earth— continents as clean and green and milky blue as the First Day. The New World was built to make mankind surrender."

"But we didn't," Linus says.

"No, we didn't."

"But time, Jared—is it over? You never said."

Linus knows he's on to something, but I'm unable to give him an answer. "Not quite yet."

"Again, nobody has full answers. Where's everybody else now— the people who fell asleep? What are we supposed to be doing now?""Linus—buddy—I'm not trying to dick you around. There's a reason for everything."

"Always these eternal mysteries," says Linus. "I don't think human beings were meant to know so much about the world. All this time and all this exposure to every conceivable aspect of life—wisdom so rarely enters the picture. We barely have enough time to figure out who we are and then we become bitter and isolated as we age."

"Wait a second, Linus." I approach him and place my hands on top of his head, making his body jiggle like a motel bed. I say, "There." Linus goes rigid, grows limp, and then swoons to the pavement; I've shown him a glimpse of heaven. "You'll be blind for a while now," I tell him. "A week or so."

Linus is silent, then mumbles, "I've seen all I've ever needed to see."

"Good-bye, Linus." With these words I pull backward, up into the sky, smaller smaller smaller into a blink of light, like a star that shines in the day.

"Well, Hef, I grant you that these seats are comfy, but not nearly as comfy as being dragooned through the grottoes of Fez on a litter carried by four of Doris Duke's seven-foot Nubians."

"Babs, you sassy vixen—make me jealous."

"Shush, Hef—I need to make a transatlantic phone call to the Peppermint Lounge. 'Pardonez moi—est-ce-que je peut parle avec Monsieur Halston?'"

"Sure—call Halston. Last week / had lunch with the Princess Eugenie, Joe Namath, and Oleg Cassini. Lobster Thermador, Cherries Jubilee, and Crepes Suzette. Ha!"

"You tire me, Hef. Please leave."

Hamilton and Pam lounge on the front seat of an unsold Mercedes 450 SE inside the dusty dealership showroom on Marine Drive. The car doors are shut, the tires are flat, and on the seat between the two sits a trove of bric-a-brac connected to their drug use as well as cartons of cigarettes and stray unopened tequila bottles. I appear outside the front window, hovering in the middle of the pane. I glow.Pam shivers. "Umm—honey—I think maybe you should look out the window."

Hamilton is weighing various cones of powder and says, "I'm busy, Babs. I'm hiding my stash of dental-grade cocaine inside Gianni Agnelli's leather ski boots."

"Hey goofball—look up!" I shout; Hamilton turns and I shatter the showroom window and float above the shards through the now-open air toward their car.

"Ucking-fay it-shay," Pam says.

"Oh man, it's Jared."

I lower myself down onto the dealership's floor and then walk across the showroom and into the engine so that my body is half inside the car. "Hi, Pam. Hi, Hamilton."

"Um—hi, Jared," Pam says. The two feel slightly silly being surrounded by so much contraband. Pam giggles.

"Jared—buddy. This is so Bewitched."

"No, Hamilton, it's real life. What are you guys doing inside the car here?"

"We wanted to smell the interior. We miss the smell of new things," Pam says with further titters. "There's nothing new anymore. Everything just gets older and older and more worn down. One of these days there'll be nothing new-smelling left in the world. So we're taking whatever newness we can get." She looks at the dashboard. "Older older older." She lapses into a child's song.

"Old old old," Hamilton adds. "Everything's old. We'd kill for a new newspaper, a freshly mowed lawn, or a fresh coat of paint on something. By the way, great light show this morning at the Save-On. It was like you lifted a rock and everything underneath scurried to burrow into the crap underneath."

They're high and not responding soberly. "Tell me, where else have you been today?" I ask.

"Just you come and have a look." Hamilton and Pam slither out of the car and we go to their pickup truck outside the building. The bed is filled with gems, gold coins, cutlery, jewelry, and other treasures."We raided the safe-deposit boxes at the Toronto Dominion Bank in Park Royal," Hamilton says.

"It's not as treasure-ish as you might think," adds Pam. "There were things like locks of hair, Dear John letters, fishing trophies, blue ribbons, keys, garter belts—not pricey stuff. More like stuff you'd expect to find left over after a garage sale."

"Oh—here's a strange one …" Hamilton says, lifting a plaster casting of a large phallus. On its bottom is felt-penned a date, November 4, 1979, and no other information.

"Must have been a good day for somebody," I say as Pam starts pouring handfuls of diamonds back and forth between her hands and the occasional stray tinkles down onto the pavement, clicking like a camera's shutter. She tosses the diamonds onto the center pile, one at a time. "Pear-shaped, suncrest, radiant, marquise, baguette, my little best friends." She looks toward me: "You're real, Jared, aren't you— it's not just the drugs?"

"I'm real. I'm like a biology test come back to haunt you."

"Oh, wow," Hamilton says.

"Oh wow? I come back to life and all you can say is, 'Oh wow?"

"Jared," Hamilton says, "Mellow out. I seem to remember you were the one who had fourteen people toking their brains out inside your parents' Winnebago the night Elvis died."