"C. C.?"

Colors radiated from the spot she touched and then vanished. The car became black and almost vanished from the sight of the watchers. Words appeared as they had before: lyrics of songs C.C. had written and only her best friend, Rosemary, had ever heard. The watchers stood, too stunned to move.

You can sing about pain

You can sing about sorrow

But nothing will bring a new tomorrow

Or take away yesterday

Images appeared on the side of the car as if projected there. The first scene was an attack, a rape in a subway station. A hospital bed with the figure of Rosemary recognizable beside it. Someone in a hospital gown walked down fire escapes.

"That's how you got out of the hospital, C. C. Why did you run away?" Rosemary looked up and spoke to the car as if it were a friend.

The next scene showed another subway station, another attack, but the person in the hospital gown was a witness this time. She tried to stop the attack and was flung aside, hurled onto the tracks. The colors of pain and rage. The trash and just about anything else unsecured on the unoccupied platformvending machines, discarded newspapers, a dead rat, everything-was sucked down onto the tracks as if pulled into the voracious heart of a black hole. A train with six cars shrieked into the station. Suddenly another car joined it. The attacker, escaping, entered the new car and-the scene turned to crimson, as though blood were washing across the phantom car. More subway stations, more crimson. Another attacker in a leather jacket, an old woman.

"Lummy?" Rosemary stepped back from the sight of her fiance caught in mid-mugging. "Lummy?"

"Lombardo!" Don Carlo was livid at seeing his son-to-be enter the car and be slaughtered. "Joey, get Maria away from that… thing. Ricardo, where is the rocket launcher? You'll get your chance now. Frederico, move that old woman over by the car. I want them all destroyed. Now!"

Rosemary fought Joey as he hauled her out of range. "Christ," he said, not to her, not to anyone in particular. "It's just like it used to be in the villages. Jesus." Bagabond went quietly, holding the calico cat tightly to her.

Ricardo sighted the rocket launcher carefully. Bagabond straightened.

Forty pounds of angry, wild black cat hit Ricardo squarely in the back. He fell forward as the tube tilted up and the rocket he had just fired headed for the roof. It exploded in a shower of red and gold sparks.

Rosemary pulled away from Joey and ran for the car. Water began spraying into the tunnel. Jagged concrete blocks started to separate along their sealed junctures and then more water poured in.

"Ricardo, you idiot, you blew a hole in Central Park Lake!" Frederico the Butcher yelled at someone who was no longer an interested party. The mafiosi scattered down the tunnels in disarray.

"Get into the car. Come on!" Rosemary grabbed Bagabond.

"Maria, I'm coming for you. Hold on." Don Carlo struggled against the rising flood to save his only daughter. "Papa, I'm going with

C.C."

"No! You must not. It's cursed." Don Carlo tried to move farther and realized his leg was trapped. He thrust both hands into the chilly water in an effort to free it and grasped scaly skin. He looked down and saw rows of ivory teeth. Implacable reptilian eyes looked back at his.

Rosemary had gotten everyone on board, even the black cat. The car began to move back up the west tunnel. "Wait. Jack's back there. Don't leave him." Bagabond tried to open the doors. Rosemary grabbed her shoulders. "Who's Jack?"

"My friend."

"We can't go back," said Rosemary. "I'm sorry." Bagabond sat in the rear seat, once more flanked by her two cats, and stared back at the water rushing into the tunnel behind them as they moved toward higher ground.

As the subway car climbed the 86th Street incline, the skirt of dark water followed, lapping at C.C.'s flanged wheels. She eventually reached a rise in the tunnel where the tide behind ceased to follow. C.C. stopped, started to roll back, locked her brakes.

Her passengers crowded against the rear connecting door, straining to see anything of what they had left in the darkness. "Let us out, C.C.," said Rosemary. "Please."

The subway car obligingly opened her side doors with a hiss. The four of them, two human and two feline, clambered down to the roadbed and stood at this new beach. The calico sniffed at the water's edge and turned away. She whined and looked up at Bagabond.

"Wait," said the bag lady. An unaccustomed smile played for just a moment.

Rosemary strained, concentrating, attempting to peer through the darkness. The last thing she remembered seeing was her father trying to reach her, then just his face, his eyes. Finally nothing.

"There," said Bagabond flatly.

They all tried to make something out. "I don't see anything," said Rosemary.

"There. "

Now they all saw something: a vee of ripples trailing from a wide, shovel-blade of a snout. They saw the pair of armorprotected eyes protruding from the water, inspecting the group on shore.

The cats began to yowl with excitement, the calico leaping back and forth, the black switching his tail like a blacksnake whip.

"That's Jack," said Bagabond.

After a time, the dust literally settled, the water receded, wounds were bandaged, bodies buried, and the long-suffering city crews did their best to clean up the mess at union scale. Manhattan returned to normal.

The bottom of Central Park Lake was resealed and the basin refilled. Reports of sea monsters (more properly, lake monsters) were persistent but unverified.

Sixty-eight-year-old Sarah Jarvis finally realized what hidden identity surely must lurk beneath the surface of the President. In November 1972, she voted for George McGovern.

The fortunes of Joey Manzone rose -or at least they changed. He moved to Connecticut and wrote a novel about Vietnam that didn't sell, and a book about organized crime that did.

Rosa-Maria Gambione legally changed her name to Rosemary Muldoon. She completed her Columbia degree in social work and aids Dr. Tachyon with C.C. Ryder's therapy. She has entered law school and is contemplating a takeover of the family business.

C. C. Ryder is still one of the doctor's toughest cases, but there is apparently some progress in bringing both her mind and body back to human form. C.C. continues to create fine, sharp-edged lyrics. Her songs have been recorded by Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, and others.

From time to time-especially during bad weatherBagabond and the black and calico cats move into the Alfred Beach pneumatic subway tube with Sewer Jack Robicheaux. It is a comfortable arrangement, but has necessitated a few changes. Jack no longer hunts rats. A common lament around the Victorian dining room is, "Wha' dis now, chicken again?"

Interlude Four

From "Fear and Loathing in Jokertown," by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Rolling Stone, August 23, 1974.

Dawn is coming up in Jokertown now. I can hear the rumble of the garbage trucks under my window at the South Street Inn, out here by the docks. This is the end of the line, for garbage and everything else, the asshole of America, and I'm feeling close to the end of my line too, after a week of cruising the most vile and poisonous streets in New York… when I look up, a clawed hand heaves itself over the sill, and a minute later it's followed by a face. I'm six stories above the street and this speedcrazed shithead comes climbing in the window like it's nothing. Maybe he's right; this is Jokertown, and life runs fast amp; mean here. It's like wandering through a Nazi death camp during a bad trip; you don't understand half of what you see, but it scares the piss out of you just the same.