Tug got wearily to his feet. "All right, if that's how it's gotta be. Do I dare ask if you stumbled on any housing leads?"

"No, I haven't. It's incredible. The shorebirds have totally deranged the rental landscape. But listen, here's what I can offer. You can store all your stuff in the basement here for as long as you want."

The basement of the Little Theatre was a huge labyrinth of unused storage space, save for some ancient props from the days of the live-performer Salmagundi Circuit.

"Okay, that's better than nothing. Thanks for all the years of employment, Pavel. The Little Theatre always felt like my second home."

"Just think of it as leaving the nest at last, Tug. It's gonna work out fine. Bigger and better things ahead."

Tug wished he could be as optimistic as Pavel, but right this minute he felt lower than Carole Lombard's morals in Baby Face.

4. Trash Platter Chatter

Hangdogging his way through the lobby, Tug ran into the Little Theatre's lone janitor and custodian.

Pieter van Tuyll van Serooskerken was a Dikelander. Like a surprisingly uniform number of his countrymen and countrywomen, Pieter was astonishingly tall and fair-skinned. In the average crowd of native brunette and ruddy-faced Carrollborovians, he resembled a stalk of white asparagus set amid a handful of radishes. Today, alone in the lobby and leaning daydreamily on his broom, he seemed like a lone droopy stalk tethered to a supportive stake.

Pieter's native country had been one of the first to collapse under the rising oceans. Dikeland now existed mostly underwater, its government in exile, its citizens dispersed across the planet. The Dikelanders were among the longest-settled Big Retreat immigrants in Carrollboro and elsewhere in the USA, hardly considered an exotic novelty any longer.

Back home, Pieter had been a doctor. Informed, upon relocation to America, of the long tedious bureaucratic process necessary to requalify, he had opted out of the prestigious field, although still young, hale and optimally productive. Tug suspected that Pieter's discovery of Sal-D, or Ska Pastora, had contributed to his career change. Blissfully high throughout much of each day and night on quantities of Shepherdess that would turn a novice user's brain to guava jelly, Pieter found janitorial work more his speed.

With a paradoxically languid and unfocused acuity, Pieter now unfolded himself and hailed Tug.

"Hey, Ginger Ale."

Pieter, in his perfect, nearly accentless yet still oddly alien English, was the only person who ever called Tug Gingerella by that nickname. The Dikelander seemed to derive immense absurdist humor from it.

"Hey, Pete. What's new?"

"I have almost gotten 'Radar Love' down. Apex of Dikelander hillbilly-skiffle music. Wanna hear?"

Pieter drew a pendant ocarina from beneath his work vest and began to raise it to his lips.

"Naw, Pete, I'm just not in the mood right now."

"How is that?"

Tug explained all his troubles, starting with his eviction and culminating in his dismissal from the Little Theatre.

Pieter seemed truly moved. "Aw, man, that sucks so bad. Listen, we approach lunchtime. Let me treat you to a trash platter, and we can talk things through."

Tug began perforce to salivate at the mention of the Carrollboro gastronomic speciality. "Okay, that's swell of you, Pete."

"So long as I still possess a paycheck, why not?"

Pieter stood his broom up in a corner with loving precision, found a coat in the cloakroom-not necessarily his own, judging by the misfit, Tug guessed-and led the way five blocks south to the Hatch Suit Nook.

The clean and simple proletarian ambiance of the big diner instantly soothed Tug's nerves. Established nearly a century ago, the place ranked high in Carrollboro traditions. Tug had been dining here since childhood. (Thoughts of his departed folks engendered a momentary sweet yet faded sorrow, but then the enzymatic call of his stomach overpowered the old emotions.) Amidst the jolly noise of the customers, Tug and Pieter found seats at the counter.

Composing one's trash platter was an art. The dish consisted of the eater's choice of cheeseburger, hamburger, red hots, white hots, Italian sausage, chicken tender, haddock, fried ham, grilled cheese, or eggs; and two sides of either home fries, French fries, baked beans, or macaroni salad. Atop the whole toothsome farrago could be deposited mustard, onions, ketchup, and a proprietary greasy hot sauce of heavily spiced ground beef. The finishing touch: Italian toast.

Pieter and Tug ordered. While they were waiting, Pieter took out his pipe. Tug was appalled.

"You're not going to smoke that here, are you?"

"Why not? The practice is perfectly legal."

"But you'll give everyone around us a contact high."

"Nobody cares but you, Ginger Ale. And if they do, they can move off. This helps me think. And your fix demands a lot of thinking."

Pieter fired up and, as he predicted, no neighbors objected. But they were all younger than Tug. Another sign of his antiquity, he supposed.

After a few puffs of Shepherdess, Pieter said, "You could come live with me."

Pieter lived with two women, Georgia and Carolina, commonly referred to as "The Dixie Twins," although they were unrelated, looked nothing alike and hailed from Massachusetts. Tug had never precisely parsed the exact relations among the trio, and suspected that Pieter and the Dixie Twins themselves would have been hard-pressed to define their menage.

"Again, that's real generous of you, Pete. But I don't think I'd be comfortable freeloading in your apartment."

Pieter shrugged. "Your call."

The trash platters arrived then, and further discussion awaited whole-hearted ingestion of the jumbled mock-garbage ambrosia…

Pieter wiped his grease-smeared face with a paper napkin and took up his smoldering pipe from the built-in countertop ashtray. Sated, Tub performed his own ablutions. A good meal was a temporary buttress against all misfortunes…

"Maybe you could live with Olive."

Tug's ease instantly evaporated, to be replaced by a crimson mélange of guilt, frustration, anger and shame: the standard emotional recipe for his post-breakup dealings with Olive Ridley.

"That-that is not a viable idea, Pete. I'm sorry, it's just not."

"You and Olive had a lot going for you. Everybody said so."

"Yeah, we had almost as much going for us as we had against. There's no way I'm going to ask her for any charity."

Pete issued hallucinogenic smoke rings toward the diner's ceiling. His eyes assumed a glazed opacity lucid with reflections of a sourceless starlight.

"Tom Pudding."

Tug scanned the menu board posted above the grill. "Is that a dessert? I don't see-"

Pieter jabbed Tug in the chest with the stem of his pipe. "Wake up! The Tom Pudding. It's a boat. An old canal barge, anchored on the Attawandaron. People are using it as a squat. Some guy named Vasterling runs it. He fixed it all up. Supposed to be real nice."

Tug pondered the possibilities. A radical recasting of his existence, new people, new circumstances… Life on a houseboat, rent-free. The romantic, history-soaked vista of the Attawandaron Canal. Currier & Ives engravings of grassy towpath, overhanging willow trees, merry bargemen singing as they hefted bales and crates-

"I'll do it! Thanks, Pete!"

But Pieter had already lost interest in Tug and his plight, the Dikelander's Shepherdess-transmogrified proleptic attention directed elsewhere. "Yeah, cool, great."

Tug helped his hazey-dazey friend stand and don his coat. They headed toward the exit.

Pieter stopped suddenly short and goggled in amazement at nothing visible to Tug. Other customers strained to see whatever had so potently transfixed the Dikelander.