Mr. W., he says his own folks, they couldn't cope. They have four other kids to raise. It's the only way they could afford the nursing home, by making him a ward of the court. After that, they'd show up and visit less and less.

And telling that, with some soft guitar ballad playing, Mr. W. will start to cry.

The one wish he wanted most was to love someone. To really make love. Not die a virgin.

Right then, the tears still rolling down from his stoner-red eyes, he'd say, “Please . . .”

This wrinkled old kid, he'd sniff and say, “Please, stop calling me Mister.”

The angel stroking his bald, spotted head, he'd tell her, “My name is Brandon.”

And he'd wait.

And she'd say it:

Brandon.

Of course, after that, they'd fuck.

Her, gentle and patient. The Madonna and the whore. Her long, yoga-trained legs spread to this naked, wrinkled goblin.

Her, the altar and the sacrifice.

Never as beautiful as she looked, next to his spotted, veined old skin. Never as powerful as she felt, as he drooled and trembled over her.

And, damn—for a virgin—if he didn't take his own sweet time. He'd started missionary-style, then had one of her legs in the air, splitting the reed. Then both her feet, gripped tight around the ankles and framing his panting face.

Thank God for the yoga.

Viagra-hard, he rode her on all fours, doggy-style, even taking himself out and poking at her ass until she said to stop. She was sore and stoned, and as he bent her legs to force her feet up, behind her head, by then her bright, fake angel's smile had come back.

After all that, he came. In her eyes. In her hair. He asked her for a cigarette she didn't have. Taking the bong off the floor beside the bed, he torched another bowl and didn't offer her a hit.

The angel, she got dressed and tucked her kid's bong under her coat. She knotted a scarf around her sticky hair and started to leave.

Behind her, as she opened the door to the hallway, Mr. Whittier was saying, “You know, I ain't ever had a blow job before, neither . . .”

As she stepped out of the room, he was laughing. Laughing.

After that, she'd be driving, and her cell phone would ring. It would be Whittier suggesting bondage, better drugs, blow jobs. And when the angel finally told him, “I can't . . .”

“Brandon . . .” he'd tell her. “The name's Brandon.”

Brandon, she'd say. She couldn't see him, not anymore.

It's then he'd tell her—he lied. About his age.

Over the phone, she'd say, “You don't have progeria?”

And Brandon Whittier would say, “I'm not eighteen years old.”

He wasn't eighteen, and he had the birth certificate to prove it. He was thirteen years old. Now a victim of statutory rape.

But, for enough cash money, he wouldn't squeal to the cops. Ten grand, and she wouldn't suffer through an ugly courtroom drama. Front-page headlines. All her lifetime of good works and investments reduced to nothing. All for a quick fuck with a little kid. Worse than nothing—her the pedophile, now a sex criminal who would need to register her whereabouts for the rest of her life. Maybe get divorced and lose her kids. Sex with a minor carried a mandatory five-year prison sentence.

On the other hand, in another year he'd be dead of old age. Ten grand was a small price to pay for the rest of her life.

Ten grand and maybe just one little knob job for old times' sake . . .

So of course she paid. They all paid. All the volunteers. The angels.

None of them ever went back to the old-folks' home, so they never met each other. To each angel, she was the only one. Really, there were a dozen or more.

And the money? It just kept piling up. Until Mr. Whittier was too old and tired and bored to just fuck.

“Look at the stains in the lobby carpet,” he said. “See how those stains have arms and legs?”

The same as the volunteer ladies, we were trapped by a boy in the body of an old man. A thirteen-year-old kid dying of old age. The part about his family abandoning him, that much was true. But Brandon Whittier was no longer dying ignored and alone.

And, the same way he'd bagged one angel after another, this wasn't his first experiment. We weren't his first batch of guinea pigs. And—until one of those stains came back to haunt him—he told us, we would not be his last.

7

Morning starts with a woman yelling. The woman's voice, the shouting, is Sister Vigilante. Between each shout, you can hear the butt of a fist pound on wood. You can hear a wooden door boom and bounce in its frame. Then the yelling again.

Sister Vigilante yells, “Hey, Whittier!” Sister Vigilante shouts, “You're late with the fucking sunrise . . . !”

Then the fist, pounding.

Outside our rooms, our backstage dressing rooms, the hallway is dark. Beyond that, the stage and auditorium are dark. Pitch-dark except for the ghost light.

We're each getting up, grabbing some clothes, not sure if we've been asleep an hour or a night.

The ghost light is a single bare bulb on a pole that stands center stage. Tradition says it keeps any ghost from moving in when a theater is empty and dark.

In theaters before electricity, Mr. Whittier would say, the ghost light acted as a pressure-relief valve. It would flare and burn brighter, to keep the place from exploding if there was a surge in the gas lines.

Either way, the ghost light meant good luck.

Until this morning.

First it's the yelling that wakes us. Then it's the smell.

Here's the sweet smell of the black muck Lady Baglady might find slumming in the bottom of a Dumpster. It's the smell of a garbage truck's gummy, sticky back mouth. The smell of swallowed dog mess and old meat. Chewed and swallowed and packed tight together. The smell of old potatoes melting into a black puddle under the kitchen sink.

Holding our breath, trying not to smell, we're feeling our way out our doors and down the black hallway, through the dark, toward all the yelling.

Here, night and day are a matter of opinion. Until now, we just agreed to trust Mr. Whittier. Without him, whether it's a.m. or p.m. is a matter for debate. No light comes from the outside. No telephone signals. No sounds.

Still pounding the door, Sister Vigilante shouts, “Civil dawn was eight minutes ago!”

No, a theater is built to exclude the outside reality and allow actors to build their own. The walls are double layers of concrete with sawdust packed between them. So no police siren or subway rumble can wreck the spell of someone's fake death onstage. No car alarms or jackhammer can turn a romantic kiss into a belly laugh.

Each sunset is just when Mr. Whittier looks at his watch and says good night. He climbs up to the projection booth and throws the breakers, blacking out the lights in the lobby, the foyers, the salons, then the galleries and lounges. The darkness herds us toward the main auditorium. This twilight, it falls room by room until the only light left is in the dressing rooms, backstage. There, each of us sleeps. Each room with one bed, one bathroom, a shower, and a toilet. Room enough for one person and one suitcase. Or wicker hamper. Or cardboard box.

Morning is when we hear Mr. Whittier in the hallway outside our rooms, shouting good morning. A new day is when the lights come back on.

Until this morning.

Sister Vigilante shouts, “This is a law of nature you're violating . . .”

Here, with no windows or daylight, the Duke of Vandals says we could be trapped in an Italian Renaissance space station. We could be deep underwater in an ancient Mayan submarine. Or what the Duke calls a Louis XV coal mine or bomb shelter.

Here, in the middle of some city, inches away from the millions of people walking and working and eating hot dogs, we're cut off.

Here, anything that looks like a window, draped with velvet and tapestry, or fitted with stained glass, it's fake. It's a mirror. Or the dim sunlight behind the stained glass is lightbulbs small enough to make it always dusk in the tall arched windows of the Gothic smoking room.