"Tell Wyatt what you just told me."

She shrugged. "I said everybody knows Phil isn't dead. That the thing was a whole big ugly setup."

The Finky voice disappeared and Wyatt's came back, soft but on edge. "What are you talking about?"

"He's been showing up all over town since it happened. I mean, come on, Wyatt, what about that shootout at the cemetery? Do you really think that was spontaneous? The whole thing's a setup."

"Where was he seen?"

"Someone saw him having a hotdog at Tommy's, Walt Plotkin saw him on Melrose at L.A. Eyeworks, I don't know – I've heard a lot of people saw him in different places."

"Doing what?"

"Hanging around. Drinking, eating dinner. Normal things."

I looked at him. "Sounds to me like a National Enquirer headline: 'Philip Strayhorn Found Alive and Shopping on Melrose Avenue.'"

"But it would explain your tapes, wouldn't it? Instead of being tapes from the dead."

"Wyatt, for Christ's sake, do you really believe that bullshit? They say it about every celebrity who ever died! Elvis lives. JFK lives. Howard Hughes."

"Bullshit? Thank you very much!" Linda turned and walked away.

Neither of us paid attention. Wyatt counted things off on his fingers. "It would make complete sense, Weber. A horrible, melodramatic sense. The little girl, an angel messenger, if you please, comes with warnings from God not to make these movies. And we know he didn't want to do them anymore. And we know he was very much on edge, maybe even sick. And it wouldn't be the first time this has happened out here. Either as a publicity thing or because someone cracks and winds up in Lu-Lu Land."

"What about Sasha?"

"What about her? Somehow Phil knew she was sick before she did."

"Come on! What about her pregnancy? Did he know that too?"

"You can tell when certain women are pregnant by the look on their faces. That's nothing new."

"What about my tattoo, then?"

He took my coffee and had a sip. "That may be your magic and not his, Weber. We haven't even talked about that yet. Remember, you were the one who went to Rondua, not Phil."

6

Whenever a dream comes true, you take one step closer to God. But the closer you are, the better you see him, and he may not be at all what you imagined.

I fell in love with Cullen James the way I'd always wanted to fall in love: with the joyous enthusiasm and devotion of a teenager, the grateful appreciation of experience. I wanted her the moment I met her. She was someone to fight for, someone to long for. I spoke to her too fast, wanting her to know everything. Her smile said she understood my hurry. My dream came true.

We never went to bed. I never tasted her thin mouth. She was happily married to a man I had no quarrel with, a man who was capable and strong and essential for her. I wasn't, and that is where my dream came true too much. I'd finally found what I wanted, an invaluable coin in the street, but there was no image on the other side of that coin. Cullen wanted a friend, not someone else to share her life with.

Why Danny James and not Weber Gregston? An array of reasons, some of which you'll find in her book Bones of the Moon. But what I remember best (and most painfully) was a conversation we once had where I asked her that very question. Why him and not me?

"Because you and I drive each other crazy too much, Weber. I drive myself crazy enough with all my nervousness and eccentricities. You and I fan each other's flames. Right now that's okay – it's wonderful! – but we're only just beginning. You always smell good and are on your best behavior at the beginning of an affair. But what happens later when you know from one glimpse the other's in a shitty mood and has no way to get out of it? Or the best way to retaliate is to stay silent for – days? You and I would do that to each other. We'd fight too long and be mean, even when we didn't really want to. We're too alike, Weber. The person who drives me craziest is me. What happens when two me's or two you's get into bed at night? Sure, we make great love and have the best conversations in the world, but we also know the tenderest parts, like karate masters. All the most dangerous pressure points. Hit them here and they die in a second. Hit them there and destroy their ego.

"Danny gives me peace. It's not a dull peace, either. We balance each other. Isn't that what we should be doing – looking for balance?"

"How do you know all this without even trying?"

"Because I'm afraid I'd like living with you too much, and then I'd find out way too late it was a terrible mistake ever to try."

"That sounds cowardly."

"Being safe and being loved is not cowardice. We'd love each other, but there's no safety between us, Weber. We'd be flinging each other across trapezes without a net. That's all right when you're young and have nothing to lose but your heart, but when you're older and know your heart is only a piece of the whole, then you pull back and say I'd rather have a family than the air. I'd rather lie on my back on the earth and look up at the stars than try to fly to them with little chance of getting there."

"You think we'd have a chance of that?"

"Of course. But only a small one, and I don't want to gamble anymore. I have a good man, a baby, and a pretty charmed life right now. What am I supposed to do, put all those chips on the table in hopes of winning a jackpot? How many jackpots are won? How many people walk away from the table rich?"

That conversation isn't in her book, but the reason I remember it so clearly is because that night I had my first Rondua dream.

What was Rondua? Take a child's perception and experience in a toy store at six or seven years old. Where the stuffed animals are as big and all-encompassing as skyscrapers; where you want to see and touch everything, even when it frightens or repels. That was Rondua. A place where dreams you once had, creatures and situations that knew you (yes, situations knew you in Rondua) all returned to visit, instruct, astonish. But those were only part. It wasn't only things you knew but a world where new wonder and surprise were common currency and certainty had no place.

People dream of strange lands all the time, but the difference here was Cullen James and I dreamed the same view, saw the same wondrous landscapes and creatures, and could thus compare notes and draw maps the next day.

What did it mean and why did it happen? Nervously, I asked a number of people, but the explanation that sounded truest came from Venasque, Phil's shaman and our one-time neighbor with the pig. The only proof I knew of the old man's power was Strayhorn's unequivocal belief in him, which didn't remove my skepticism, however. But when the Rondua dreams came more and more frequently, I thought it could do no harm to ask him.

"You know the joke about the thermos bottle? A bunch of researchers are interviewing people to hear what they think is man's greatest invention. Someone naturally says the wheel, another the airplane, the alphabet . . . then one guy says, The thermos bottle.'

"Thermos bottle? What are you talking about?

"The guy says, 'Look, in the winter when it's ten below out, I fill my thermos bottle with hot soup and go to a football game. Two hours later it's still cold as hell out, but when I open up the bottle there's hot soup in there. Right?

"'Okay. Then in the middle of summer, when it's ninety out, I fill that same bottle with ice-cold lemonade. Two hours later when I'm dying of the heat, I open it up and there's still ice-cold lemonade in there. I got one question for you: How does it know?'"

Venasque took a handful of M&M's and handed them to the pig.

"I don't understand your analogy."

"Love is the greatest invention of human beings, Weber. It's such a great invention that man made it and brought it to life, but then it got so strong and smart it took itself out of our hands and now runs its own affairs. It's like that thermos bottle – It knows. How it knows can be applied all over the place.