I heard about it from Anna, who called me from the county hospital. She told me straightaway what had happened. Her voice was thin and frightening. I totally misunderstood why until she reminded me.

"I don't know what any of this means now, Thomas." I could hear things bustling, people talking, someone being paged over the loudspeaker in the background.

"What what means?"

"This is the first thing that has gone wrong again since you started writing the biography. I don't understand what's going on."

"Look, Anna, it doesn't mean anything. You just got your hopes up too high before. How can things start to go right until the book is written?" As I spoke, I realized how convinced and confident I sounded. Like it was all a snap now: I would just finish writing this book, and bango, there would be Marshall France, back from the dead.

A Dr. Bradshaw was paged while I waited for her to speak.

"Anna? Is there anyone there with you?"

"Richard." She hung up.

I started working like a man possessed. Two, three, four pages a morning, research in the afternoons, three or four more pages at night.

I had never gotten over the initial shock of "discovering" Galen, but being there every minute of the day forced me to accept it. I was the moth and the town was the flame, and the damned place had me going in such circles that I didn't know what to do much of the time except to keep writing.

I was living in the middle of the greatest artistic creation in the history of the world. In my own tiny way, I was chronicling the life of the man who had done it. Whether that chronicle would bring him back to life… No, no, that's not true. I was going to say that it made no difference to me whether that chronicle brought him back to life, but that's a bunch of bullshit. He had said that it was possible, and then his daughter had chosen me to do it. That's partly why I sent Saxony away. The other "part" was of course Anna, but after the car accident we didn't make love much. I assumed that old Richard was still socking it to her, but even that didn't really bother me that much, because all of my energy – all of it – was going into the work. I would like to have known, though, why she slept with him, but I had a sneaking suspicion now. Suppose Richard had gotten bored with living in Galen. Since Anna and he were the only two "normals" in the town, how could she keep him there? Simple: go to bed with him. Never in his wildest imaginings would a guy like him have thought (or hoped!) of having someone like Anna France. So, so long as she kept him hot and bothered and interested, he was hers. And Galen's. I wondered if his wife knew what was going on between them.

I went out very rarely. Mrs. Fletcher started cooking for me, and Anna came over once in a while to see how things were progressing. Saxony called a couple of times, but our conversations were short, dry, and stale. I didn't ask about Geoff Wiggins and she didn't ask about Anna. I was too tired by then to want to play games, but I did realize that it would be better not to tell her how celibate I had become. Nevertheless, she got so fed up with our conversation one time that she called me a sourpuss and hung up.

Joanne Collins gave birth to a bouncing baby boy who was supposed to be a bouncing baby girl according to the journals.

Anna came over and demanded to see my manuscript. I astonished myself by holding fast and not letting her. She went away but was not at all happy.

Saxony called and asked if I was aware of the fact that she had already been gone a month.

I wrote Tom Rankin back and told him that I would try very hard to get back for his graduation in June.

My mother wrote, and feeling guilty for having been out of touch since September, I called her and chatted on about how wonderful things were for me these clays.

Joanne Collins went in to take care of her new baby one morning and found a three-week-old bull terrier fast asleep in the crib.

I had had enough work for one day and decided to go over to the Green Tavern for a drink. It was nine at night and the town was dead quiet. The snow was slushy in the streets, but up on the sidewalk it was still white and crunchy under your feet. A silent, nasty wind drilled through the dark. Once in a while it stopped, waited for you to come up out of your shell, and then shot back, sniggering. The telephone wires were glazed over, but when the wind gusted it shook them and the ice fell into the street in short straight pieces. By the time I got to the bar I knew I either should have stayed at home or else taken the damned car. It was that cold.

The place had a thick oak front door that you really had to get your shoulder behind to open. A warm blast of stale heat, cigarette smoke, and George Jones's voice from the jukebox. The bar dog – really a dog, as far as I knew – whose name was Fanny, came over wagging her tail. The official greeter. I took off a glove and patted her head. It was warm and wet.

Because of the dark outside it didn't take long to get accustomed to the dark fog light in the bar.

I knew most of the people in there: Jan Phend, John Esperian, Neil Bull, Vince Flynn, Dave Marty.

"How are you doin', Tom?"

I turned around and squinted into the darkness. Richard Lee got up from a table and came over.

"What're you having, Tom?"

I sniffed back my runny nose. "I guess a beer and a shot."

"A beer and a shot. That sounds good to me. Johnny, two beers and two shots."

Richard smiled and came closer. He slapped me on the arm and kept his hand there. "Come on over and sit down at the table with me, Tom. Fuck these up-your-ass bar stools."

I took off my coat and hung it on a wooden peg by the door. There were other smells in the room now: perfume, potato chips, wet leather.

"So, kid, how're you doing over there at Goosey's? Here's the drinks. Thanks, Johnny."

I took a sip of beer and a taste of whiskey. One bitterer than the other, the whiskey thick and fiery in my stomach. But it felt good after being outside so long.

"I bet I know one thing for sure, buddy. Ever since Phil Moon's accident, I bet Anna ain't so happy with you, is she?"

"You've got a point there." I drank some more whiskey.

"Yep, that's what I figured. Did you hear about the Collins baby?"

"Yes. Is it still… a dog?"

Lee smiled and drank off the rest of his beer. "I guess so. The last I heard it was. Things are changing around here so fast lately, you never know." He drank some of the whiskey and stopped smiling. "I'll tell you one thing, buddy, it scares the hell out of me."

I hunched in close to the table and tried to talk as quietly as possible. "But why you, Richard? I can see it for the others – the worrying, I mean – but you're normal." I lowered my head toward him and said the word in a whisper.

"Normal, shit! Sure I am, but my wife isn't, and neither are my kids. You know what's been happening to my Sharon lately? I rolled over in the bed one morning last week, and there was fucking Krang on the pillow next to me! Can you believe that?"

I didn't say anything, but I believed it. I had seen it happen the night we went over there for dinner.

"I'm not shitting you, Tom. All of a sudden all of Marshall's characters are beginning to run together. Not only aren't things going like they're supposed to in the journals, but now they're mixing up all together, changing back and forth. Look at the Collins kid. One minute it's a kid and the next it's a fucking dog!" He snatched up my glass of whiskey and drank it off with one flick of the wrist. "What the hell is a man supposed to do, huh? I can't even turn around nowadays without being afraid that my wife or one of my little girls is going to be different. And then what'll happen if one day one of them stays that way?"