Theodosia walked behind him and began massaging his neck muscles.

"There might be a way," she said.

"What's that?"

"There's a county for sale in Indiana."

"A county?"

"Right. A whole county. It used to have one industry, something to do with knitting. Then that folded. The whole county government went broke and now it's for sale."

"What's that got to do with Animal Instincts?" Pruiss asked.

"Buy the county and it'll be yours. You can do anything you want there."

"I'll still get busted," Pruiss said. He tilted his head to one side, so Theodosia could work on a particularly irritating mass of tightness in his neck.

"How'll you get busted? Every cop and every judge will work for you."

"The people will go apeshit," Pruiss said.

"Cut their taxes. That'll quiet them down," Theodosia advised.

"It won't work," Pruiss said. He sat upright in the chair and flung his hands into the air. "Unless..."

Theodosia worked around the clock for sixty hours, putting all the details in order. And one day later, Wesley Pruiss bought Furlong County, Indiana. With a check. From his personal account.

He was the owner of 257 square miles of American heartland, mineral rights, water rights, fields, town hall, police departments, county courthouse, everything.

He announced it to the world at a hastily called press conference in the New York Gross-Out club. For the occasion, the Grossie Girls were almost clad and the dwarf-a-go-go had been closed down.

"Why are you buying a county?" one of the reporters asked. "What do you want with a county?"

"Because there weren't any countries for sale," Pruiss said. When the laughter had subsided, he looked earnestly at the reporter. "Seriously," he said. "For a number of years, I've been concerned with the nation's energy crisis. The government seems unwilling to break the stranglehold the big oil companies and the Arabs have on America."

"What's that got to do with you buying a county?"

"I'm buying Furlong County to make it a national laboratory for solar energy," Pruiss said. "I'm going to prove that solar energy can work. That it can heat and light and cool and power an entire American county. And to that end, I'm putting all the resources of Gross into the project. We're going to make it work."

He looked around triumphantly. Staff members applauded. Grossie Girls sitting in the audience next to the press members nudged them into applause too. Pruiss looked around the room, nodding vigorously, then stepped back from the microphone and whispered to Theodosia:

"Yeah, we'll make it work. But it may take twenty years. In the meantime, we'll make our movies too. Tell me, did you check? Do I own the sun in Furlong County?"

"Honey, you arethe sun in Furlong County," Theodosia said with a tight-lipped smile.

The people of Furlong County had been prepared to be outraged when they heard that Wesley Pruiss, that filthy disgusting easterner with the dirty filthy mind who thought money can buy anything, had bought their county. Then they received letters from Pruiss announcing that whatever they had paid in real estate taxes last year would be cut in half this year. They decided they could not understand what all the fuss was about. After all, Mister Pruiss had a right to make a living and nobody forced anybody to read his magazine, and if you didn't like it, you didn't have to read it, and that, Mister Gentleman from the New York Times, is what freedom of speech is all about, and we're surprised at you all picking at a fine gentleman like Wesley Pruiss who wants to do something about the energy crisis and we're all proud to be helping him and playing a part. This is America, you know, or maybe you don't, because we hear what goes on there in New York City, fella.

The combined bands of Furlong County High School, St. Luke's High School, Lincoln Junior High School, Ettinger Junior High and the police and fire marching society were playing when Wesley Pruiss arrived in Furlong.

He was with Theodosia. He introduced her as his secretary. She wore a white cotton top and matching houri trousers and the sun behind her made them transparent.

One woman in the crowd looked at Pruiss and said, "He don't look like no perverter, Melvin."

"Who?" said Melvin, staring at Theodosia and gulping a lot.

Wesley Pruiss said he was happy to be among his people. The band played some more. It kept playing as Pruiss and Theodosia left the airport.

Pruiss had already decided that the only building in the county that he would consider spending a night in was the Furlong Country Club, so he closed down the golf course and took it over as his home.

The bands lined up alongside the practice putting green as Pruiss and Theodosia went inside. They played "Hail to the Chief" a lot. Pruiss told them to go home. They cheered and played some more.

Pruiss told them he loved them all.

The audience cheered. The band played "Hail to the Chief."

Pruiss told the crowd that they must have more important things to do than just greet him.

They shook their heads and cheered. The band played "Garryowen."

"And now I am weary and must sleep," Pruiss said, working hard at keeping his smile.

"We'll play soft," the bandleader shouted. He raised his hands to put the bands into Brahms's Lullaby.

"Get the fuck out of here!" Pruiss screamed.

The longer he had been away from the Jersey City slum he grew up in, the more golden it had grown in Wesley Pruiss's memory. He had invested the town with some kind of mythic quality, an ability to create toughness and smarts, which he credited for his success in the world.

In talking to the press, Pruiss always referred to himself as a street kid, a slum lad, a kid who learned to fight almost as soon as he learned to walk. A kid who had to fight to survive. He gave bonuses to members of the Grosspublic relations staff who could get that point of view into any national publication. He relished reading about himself as the tough urchin, the child of the streets.

Across the street from the Furlong Country Club, there was a small cluster of three-story frame buildings. One of them looked to Pruiss a little like the cold-water tenement building in which he had been raised in Jersey City. He sent for an architect.

When he explained his idea, the architect said: "You sure you want to do this?"

"Just do it," Pruiss said.

"It'll cost a lot of money."

"Do it."

"You really want me to import garbage and break windows and throw rubble in those lots?" the architect asked.

"That's right."

"You could do it a lot cheaper by starting an affirmative-action housing program," the architect said. "Those people litter a lot faster than workmen on an eight-hour shift."

"That's all right," Pruiss said. I'm interested in quality, not quantity. You do it."

The architect tore down the two end buildings in a three-building cluster. He showed up with contractors and plans and took the structurally-sound, neat, three-story building and turned it into a six-family cold-water walkup. He grumbled a lot and refused to let his name be used in any promotion Pruiss might do about the building.

Every day, as his little transplanted slum area took shape, Pruiss looked from the window of his bedroom, which used to be the country club's card room, and nodded approvingly.

It was done in two weeks.

"You want to inspect it?" the architect said.

"You did it just the way you were supposed to?"

The architect nodded.

"It looks just like the building in Jersey City?" Pruiss asked.

"Exactly. God help me."

"Fine. Send your bill to Theodosia. She'll pay you right away."

That night, there was a full moon over Furlong County. Theodosia was downstairs in the country club's suite of offices, working on Pruiss's personal profit and loss statements.