The last of the second bottle of wine is in Josie's glass. The first, an unlabelled bottle of the house white, was a disappointment considering the reputation of the restaurant. Pirate called the waiter over, but not daring to send the wine back, ordered a French Chardonnay. This was much more of a success, everyone complimenting him on his completely random success, and they were even inspired to finish off the first bottle, which didn't taste so bad after all.

Time seems suspended for a while, everyone lost in their own thoughts, subdued for a change, silent. Josie holds her glass up to the light, gently swirling the wine and watching the candle through it. Pirate in turn watches her, as the flickering rays refract back through the amber liquid to dance about her face. Much later, he will mark this moment as the turning point of the evening, the start of the fall from grace. She notices his attention and, eyes steady on him, drains the glass with a flip of her wrist, breaking with this casual gesture the fragile truce of her last night in town.

Eight days ago, she called Pirate long-distance to say she was coming in on the morning flight and would it be all right if... of course, said Pirate, puzzled by the sudden request, but grateful for the excuse to ignore his senior thesis for another week. He drove his two roommates to the airport for their trip out, lounged idly in a hard plastic chair for an hour until her flight landed, met her at the arrival gate, collected her luggage, drove her back to the city, gave her a few minutes to freshen up, and swept her off to meet his friends.

It was the final day of classes before reading week, and everyone left in town was doing their best to be elsewhere. Each hour brought a fresh wave of traffic, as students released from their last obligations leapt onto all available modes of transportation and headed for beaches. The cafés were thronged with people having a last cappucino for the road; Pirate found his group at an outside table of a feminist dairy bar called Mother Courage.

"Gentlemen, this is Josie. Josie, these are - in clockwise order - Schnell, Sven, Boswell, Old Blind Nick - known to his friends as Nickless - Marxman and Dervish." There was a pause, two beats precisely, and they all laughed together, Josie included.

The same group now encircles a large table at the best French restaurant in town. There are others who could be there: roommates, hangers-on, other foils and sycophants, but there are merely bit players; these six form the heart of Pirate's world. The maitre'd is even now regretting the choice seating he gave them. He may be excused, for it takes only a slight blurring of vision, a momentary squint on the part of the casual observer, to see them perhaps as undergraduates at Oxford, between the wars, escorting a music-hall star to dinner, conversing with just the right blend of youthful insouciance and premature worldliness. Undergraduates, yes, but there the resemblance ends; for they live in a plug-in world, a culture of plastics, wonder drugs, electrons whizzing at the speed of light, and have fashioned from it a scythe under whose gleaming edge the weeds of tradition fall even before they have a chance to sprout. The names are just the beginning.

"They're not nicknames," insisted Pirate, "they're legitimate appellations. People change constantly - why shouldn't names?"

"Punishment to fit the crime," said Marxman.

"I got the idea from, um, Pirate's letters," she said, "but not the explanation."

"Take Sven here, our pale Nordic ice-surfer. Merely because of some marriage not at all reflected in his genes, he was saddled with some Welsh monstrosity of a name. See, he blushes at the very thought of it." Sven hadn't been blushing, but that set him off - an old trick, though he's learning to deal with it. He spoke softly.

"Sometimes I've written you notes in those letters, here at this very table."

"Ah, yes," Josie smiled at him, "the coherent parts. Okay, some of the names are obvious, but 'Schnell' - you aren't German?"

"It means 'fast'," said Schnell. "I wasn't called that until a few weeks ago, when I developed tendonitis," holding up a cane.

"That's terrible. What were you called before that?"

Schnell frowned. "I don't remember."

"Philip Mazzei," volunteered Marxman, "after the guy on the postage stamp."

"It's pronounced Mah-zee," retorted Schnell, "not Mau-say." This had been a recurring argument the month before last, although neither of them knew what the hell they were talking about.

"Mau-say!"

"Mah-zee!"

"Graf Spee!"

"Sashay!"

"I can't call you any of those," protested Josie. "What did your mother call you?"

"Ah, my dear departed mother, said to me -"

"Nicht so schnell," interrupted Pirate. "The forms have to be observed."

"Fascist," observed Marxman. "Appellation controllé."

Form is important, these days. They have a theory to explain it all, suitable for exposition in cafés, bars, and small seminars. It hinges on vague aesthetic groupings called "concepts", originally intended to be impromptu impositions of structure on chaos otherwise difficult to deal with, but used increasingly to justify outrageous behaviour. Thus the all-purpose excuse: "It's a concept." It was a concept when Boswell and Marxman, ran off small stickers that, properly applied, converted the bus company's request to "HELP COMBAT VANDALISM" into "HELP COMMIT VANDALISM". The casual acquaintances and lesser satellites who are frequent victims of such concepts often complain that, far from imposing structure, these acts seem designed to subvert it. That, the theory holds, is why they are lesser satellites.

"Three years is a bit much for a name," said Boswell, sipping at his milkshake, "but he's so dreadfully dull that we can't think of anything new to call him."

"Heave to, ye mouth-breathing vowelmonger," snarled Pirate, "ere I shanghai yer sister for a session of rape and pillage."

"Recall where we are," whispered Boswell in mock horror, tipping his head towards the large portraits of suffragettes in the windows, "a No-Rape Zone. However, pillage her if you like."

"I've seen your sister," said Sven, "he'd be a pillage idiot if -" and the rest of the sentence is drowned out by violent protests. The banter does not always follow this abbreviated, punning fashion. At times, especially when world-weary sophomores are within earshot, they tend to go off on long, convoluted narratives in which fact and fiction are interwoven past anyone's ability to unravel them. Pirate, in an economy of style, would often take elements from these conversations and knit them into the oblique constructions of his letters, doing multiple drafts to smooth them into the overall scheme. Only Josie, out of all his correspondents, would never remark on his creative efforts. She confined her replies to gossip about mutual hometown acquaintances, with only an occasional reference to the more obviously factual of Pirate's statements. This was probably the reason he had continued to write her.

"If you gentlemen will excuse me a moment," said Josie.

"Inside, at the back," said Schnell. "The door marked "SISTERS"."

"I'm beginning to see why you guys hang out here," said Josie, noticing the disapproving stares of the waitresses. "What's the men's washroom called?"

"There isn't one."

Josie raised her eyebrows impishly, slung her purse over her shoulder, and went inside.

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Who is she?"

"She's a friend from high school, goes to the state college back home. I found out she was coming only last night. Do you think there's no straws here because they're considered phallic symbols?"

"She's quite beautiful," observed Sven. Pirate was startled. He had never thought of her as beautiful before. They all looked back after her; she had stopped to talk to one of the counter attendants, who had taken the opportunity to warn her about the boys' attitude. She glanced over, saw them watching, and smiled, a full, honest smile that blossomed like the glow of sunlight though an opening door.

"Yes," said Pirate, "I suppose she is."

Most of the senior class left town during reading week, disregarding assignments and papers, snatching one last intense bit of communal recreation before the whirlwind blows them all away. Pirate and company hung around, conserving their funds for the obligatory post-graduation trip to Europe. Already there is a map tacked up in Nickless' bedroom, covered with multicoloured arrows in an attempt to let everyone make their individual pilgrimages -- Pirate's art museums, Boswell's libraries, Schnell's pretty women -- in a manner that maximizes their Combined Assault on the Continent.

As if in preparation, they've spent the last week on a scale exercise with Josie, a miniature blitzkrieg through the local sights at a breakneck pace, fuelled on manic energy, each day a different set of guerillas in different uniforms off to a different point of the compass. Josie, once she stopped worrying for her life, realized that her role was that of audience, halfway between innocent bystander and active participant, and learned to ignore the frowns of more conventional tourists. Not even the restaurant tonight was immune; only Josie's protests prevented them from taking full advantage when they learned that the waiter's haughty Gallic attitude hid a lack of knowledge of French. At times the repartee came so fast and furious that it would prove impossible, post-mortem, to figure out exactly who said what. Always some phrase too silly or obscure would bring the whole shooting-match to a halt, the offending remark hanging in the air, no one willing to claim it.

The waiter brings the bill and there is brief discussion about who had what before justice is abandoned in favour of simple division. Nickless and Dervish are off to a Hitchcock double bill, but Josie's had her share of catching her breath in little repertory cinemas this week, waiting for the rain to abate. Outside, Sven offers his arm to her, but Marxman grabs it before she notices, and the two of them go goose-stepping up the avenue at a furious pace. Pirate, Josie and Boswell hang back to escort Schnell, hobbling along cheerfully. Eventually they all wash up at Wholly Korova, a trendy little spot decorated with a jumble of old advertising trinkets, stained glass, stuffed animals of dubious taxonomy, highway signs and faded Persian rugs. A claim is staked to a table under a moosehead that stares at them with dolorous eyes long since crystallized to glass.

The bar boasts an extensive cocktail menu, complete with cute illustrations and improbable names. Josie tries to order a tongue-twister of indeterminate composition; she has to take three passes at its name. Marxman dismisses the menu and orders something he calls a Screaming Fascist, though he has to write out the recipe on a napkin for the waitress. Pirate decides to fulfil a long-standing fantasy of going through the whole alphabet, ordering a drink for each letter. Disdaining the traditional A's, he orders an avocado daquiri. No one believes such a beast exists, but there it is on the menu, one of twenty-nine flavours offered.

A party of young collegians file by their table, exuding after-shave and confidence, wearing sweaters with their fraternity name embroidered in restrained letters on the breast. They are escorting women who seem to be manufactured out of something smoother and cooler than ice, who pass through their surroundings paying the least amount of attention necessary. Pirate's motley group falls silent as they pass, watching with a mixture of curiosity and disgust, as if struck by a nagging feeling, deep down, that those golden youth possess something that they should desire. Not until they are out of earshot does Sven has the presence of mind to whisper, "Eugenics parade," which sets everyone off on a round of preppy wisecracks.

"I swear, they look so damn happy," says Boswell, "they should have an inspirational motto on the back of those sweaters. Something like 'Form over Content.'"

"Ignorance is bliss."

"Bliss is ignorance," ventures Josie.

"No," muses Pirate, "'is' doesn't mean equivalence, it's an implication. Ignorance implies bliss. The logical meaning is 'not-ignorance or bliss'."

"Same objection -- the English "or" doesn't work like the logical one. You can't make the transformation. All you can do is take the contrapositive, turn it around. Not-bliss is not-ignorance."

"Pain is knowledge," paraphrases Sven, cutting cleanly to the heart of it.

"Cute," says Pirate. He pauses for a moment, then adds dryly, "I hate cute." They all laugh; but only Pirate knows how close Sven's remark had come. He's vulnerable to aphorisms like that; he has to pull them off, like leeches, before they sink their teeth in.

The waitress brings their drinks. Pirate looks at the green viscous concoction placed before him and has to remind himself that it's a concept. Marxman's mysterious cocktail is revealed to be a pretty pousse-café with layers of red Cherry Heering, white creme de cacao and blue Curacao. The bartender, who looks like a moonlighting deputy sheriff, is giving them suspicious looks. Josie's drink, like all the drinks with amusing names, is a frothy mixture of rum and fruit juices. Pirate raises his drink - not without some difficulty, for it is served unfashionably in a large martini glass so that the contents can be coaxed out - and announces, "A toast, to someone special to all of us."

"Garibaldi," says Marxman.

"Marcel Proust," says Boswell.

"Jessica Lange," says Schnell.

"Susie Sorority," says Josie.

They've been remarkably together this week, considering their difficulties are more often a problem than a blessing. None of them are in the same department; they live separately, and maintain their own circles of acquaintances and colleagues, the only way to ensure that they never become jaded, that they remain challenges to each other. Whether the European campaign will work is an open question, whether they will have any sort of cohesion away from the ever-changing environment of school. Faced with a weight of tradition beyond manipulation, might they not slip into a dogma much like that of the ugly Americans they abhor, creating small replicas of their native habitat that extend no further than their hotel walls?

Pirate remembers well the last time they braved the vast, unnoticing face of nature. During their sophomore year, someone organized a week-long backpacking trip into the interior. Most of the current group went along, though under different names, of course. The first night out, Epididymis, a slender, rather neurasthenic chap - this was just before he got religion - brought out from his pack a cappucino-maker, screwed on an intricate steam-tube attachment, and set it proudly on the fire. Pirate tried to throw it in a ravine.

This led to an unhealthy row, one screaming about desecration and the other about hypocrisy, and finally they had to be pulled apart. The days were too hot, the nights cold, the mosquitoes infernal; Marxman was trying to teach them all political correctness, Pirate went around with a grim, forced cheerfulness, and Schnell dislocated his shoulder -- he was still mobile, thank God, or they might have left him for dead. Only Sven, calm and deep as the mountain lakes they hiked around, managed to hold them all together and deliver them safely back to civilization. All except Epididymis, who stomped off to join the Rosicrucians, or some equally appalling fate. Just as well, said Pirate; he never had a sense of when to let go of things.

"What happens to old concepts?" asked Josie, as they sat sipping lattès in the Café Louis XVI. They were at a table by the front window, the brightest seats in the house, away from the smoky, cavernous interior pierced only by the single great shaft of light from the overhead skylight. "Is there some sort of committee decision to kill them off? Do you put them out on ice floes, like Eskimos?"

"Inuit", corrected Pirate, "and you're anthropomorphizing. Everyone realizes when one has run its course. We let others take them over, if it comforts them, makes them feel trendy. But there's no sense in our being too comfortable. You remember that little drugstore two blocks from campus? One day they put out a box of old wraparound sunglasses that had probably been in the storeroom for years, and priced them at a couple of dollars. We all went and bought a pair, plus extra to give to friends, and started wearing them to school, being careful to not be seen in large groups. At first everyone laughed; but within two weeks the store was sold out and had to procure more, which they put on display at a much higher price. At which point we gave away all our glasses, and sat back to watch the fun."

"Your turn to laugh."

"We weren't being malicious."

"It seems just as trendy to me."

"No - that's the point! We don't wait for things to become trends. There's such inertia in people - if an idea wins mass approval, it's time to forge ahead. It's the act of creation that's important."

"But can't you take time out to enjoy what you've created? Surely you can't always have change, never being sure... sometime you have to retreat to a place that's safe, surroundings you can trust."

"There's no place for trust. No, that sounds paranoid. What I mean is that it's not necessary."

"Not necessary?! That's the whole point of civilization: Conquering our instinct to be selfish, because we needn't be continually on guard. I can walk down the sidewalk because I know the cars aren't going to try to run me over. Trust is the basis for security - for all our relationships."

It sounded like a litany to Pirate. "It isn't, not any more, not in this age. It's an enforced trust, with something more fundamental beneath it."

"Which is -"

"Fear."

That was going too far; Josie pulled her wrap tightly about her and watched the street. The week is littered with conversational deadends like that, paths in a maze, and as Pirate looks back over his shoulder he sees all the branchings not taken, walled in by a pretension on his part that even he finds astonishing, bricked over by Josie's unwillingness, wisely or blindly, to continue them. Some of these arguments Pirate honestly believed, some of them were extemporized in an effort to provoke her, into what he did not know, an involuntary comprehension, a telling rage. Some were meant exclusively for Pirate, for he too must move down his own cul-de-sacs, finding reasons to turn back.

Pirate is bidding adieu to the D's, represented proudly by an elegant glass of Drambuie which promises to return many hours later reincarnated in a Rusty Nail, when he notices Sven and Boswell conspiring at one end of the table. His efforts to find an alternative to the inevitable Eggnog are cut short by their announcement that they are tired of the beer here and want to move on. "That's what you get for drinking beer," says Pirate. "Besides, all the other places are isomorphic to this one."

Josie's head is cocked, listening to a distant beat. "I know," she says brightly, "let's go dancing!"

"God, Josie," groans Pirate, "after that meal? We'll perish in violent convulsions."

"It'll help you digest."

"What about Schnell? He can barely walk, let alone dance."

Schnell waves off this objection. "You folks go ahead. I was planning to go to bed early, anyway."

Pirate's not convinced. He wants to continue his alphabetic journey through the menu. Josie turns to Sven. "Sven, do you want to go dancing?" she pleads. "Oh, Sven...," clutching at his sleeve, "...damn, I can't call you that... what's your real name?"

Sven considers, leans over, whispers in her ear, one hand coming to rest casually against her right shoulder. She beams. Pirate is annoyed, for no good reason - she knows Pirate's name, though she hasn't used it once this past week, and everyone else knows Sven's - but for one frozen moment it seemed like their secret, knowledge withheld, a conspiratorial betrayal of form... After that there is no question of resistance. Josie gets directions from the bartender, bids farewell to the moosehead and to Schnell, and they step out into the evening.

Pirate's head is a picture-machine tonight. He has this flash image of a culture that buries their dead vertically, facing north. Their territory lies in gently rolling terrain, and the graveyard is in a sheltered valley, by the side of a stream that nourishes a canopy of great trees. But in the winter come torrential rains. The creek swells into a river; trees are uprooted, markers wash downstream. There is no one to tend the gravesites - where have they gone? The sodden grass gasps, drowns, loses its grip on the earth. The soil is gradually eroded away, and the dead emerge in perfect formation, hands at their sides, staring sightlessly ahead, an army of the night...

The moonless sky is ominous... who looks at the goddamn sky? They're all scuttling along like waterbugs in Josie's wake. This is her territory, now. The club recommended by the bartender is just a few blocks up the street, hiding behind an anonymous door, betrayed by a dull, thumping vibration leaking through. It opens onto a long, narrow, low-ceilinged room in the early stages of pandemonium. Tables and chairs are scattered at random throughout the smoky gloom; a bar lines the right wall. In the narrow space between the stage and the tables, a score of dancers move unenthusiastically. Josie and Marxman attempt to inspire them, while the others take up residence at a table near the back. Even there, conversation is difficult; Pirate cannot hear what Sven is saying.

"What?"

"I said, do you want to be left alone with her?"

"Good Lord, no... she thinks we're all interchangeable, you know." This was a corrupted summary of a conversation that had taken place just that afternoon. Josie had decided to do some last-minute shopping. Cutting across the deserted campus, they plunged into the brush lining the main campus road, ducking under stray branches, moving through dense vegetation on a path barely distinguishable from the surrounding terrain. "Why didn't we just follow the road?"

"Well, this is a geodesic of sorts - nearly level, no sense in climbing a hill only to descend again -"

"Lazy bastard -"

" - and, somewhere around here, we come upon--" as they emerged into a clearing, an oasis of space flanked by half a dozen eucalyptus trees, clothed in peeling bark, their indifferent scent permeating the air. Sunlight filtered through jagged leaves to dapple the rich moist trampled floor. A chapel -- no, a devolved cathedral, returned through time to its primeval state, with a rude wooden bench for worshippers, onto which Pirate and Josie sank gratefully. Overhead, birds conversed in staccato pipings. The wind stirred the leaves, changing the winking patterns of light and shadow that fell all about them.

Josie closed her eyes blissfully, revelling in the warmth of the late afternoon. Pirate glanced at her, recalling a childhood observation of how much more angelic people looked while asleep. Suddenly he found himself stricken with the desire to lean forward and brush his lips across her forehead. It was a surprising thought, coming completely out of the blue, and for a while he sat perfectly still, trying to decide how to deal with it.

The day wore on; the sun inched its relentless way towards the horizon. Pirate felt the wind blow fresh across his face, and tried to hold time back by sheer force of will. At length he saw what would happen if he yielded to the impulse--

"I'm sorry-"

"I didn't know-"

"I wouldn't have-"

- no, it could have been done years ago, but too much time had passed, they had aged in all the wrong ways. He knew then with certainty what had been true all along, and what this place meant to him, knew with a futility that descended like a premature nightfall. As if on cue, a cloud passed over the sun, and she spoke.

"This is where you really belong, not in those cafés. All this jaded cynicism you exhibit -- it's just a pose. You haven't lost your ability to wonder."

"Careful," said Pirate. "I might be acting."

"You're always acting," she replied. "There's so many layers there that I'm surprised you can find yourself under them all."

"No layers. All of them are me. New names, new faces, new personas."

"But you don't assume them; you just wear them like masks. You keep the world in flux so you can be in charge, so the game's always played with your rules. But you have to feign detachment because you can't care about anything for very long."

"Except cappucino."

"Be serious. I think you really do want to care. This urban sophistication is an artifice, a product of this city and this university. None of you are really like that."

"Saw through us in a week, eh?"

"Now it's your turn to be careful; I'm not just another smalltown girl. I saw through you a long time ago. The others -- well, you're all just projections of the same concept."

"I didn't mean--"

"No, I know. Pirate, I do appreciate your suggesting books to read, or taking me to obscure films. I know you're not trying to condescend -- but I'm capable of some invention, too. I can even get some of the literary references in your letters. I just choose not to constantly do the things you do."

"I'm sorry," said Pirate.

"Forget it, we're friends. I understand. But there's a lot of people out there who are also capable. They're not leaders, but they're not really followers. They've maybe found something they like and want to stick with. They may not understand. What if you push them too far and they start to push back?"

Pirate had no answers; it would take too long to justify his not caring about all those "people out there", and at any rate he had suddenly lost interest in the conversation. "The stores will close soon; we'd better get going. Do you want cute, picturesque, or politically correct souvenirs?" They rose, stretched, and came out into the concrete complexity of the city, the hubbub and noise smothering the moment.

A round-robin arrangement evolves under which Josie is kept continuously busy on the dance floor, which gives the boys a lot of time with their drinks. Pirate, not at all impressed with the creativity of the mixed drinks offered, has opted for a more classic, simple style. This initially takes the form of Scotch-on-the-rocks, which he modifies to neat Scotch upon returning to whiskey-flavoured water after a particularly long version of "Louie, Louie".

Tumbler in hand, he makes a survey of the other patrons, and is surprised to realize that none of them are students. A few of the men are even wearing vests, their jackets left behind at their tables, discreetly mopping perspiration from their brows with white handkerchiefs. These are locals - businessmen, salesmen, university employees, junior clerks, tipsy receptionists, girls from the steno pool, sneaking into the students' unguarded territory for a last fling before the hordes return. Or is this their territory? They keep coming in -- the place seems familiar to them...

None of them have been dancing for years. Pirate remembers the early years of high school dances, which were nothing like this. No smoke. Nothing stronger than pop - at least, not inside the building. And no one would dare go out on the dance floor alone. That was for losers. It was in the era just before disco, and everyone would go dressed in their usual clothes, to jump around to the old familiar tunes they had heard on their radios that morning over breakfast. Pirate would go with Jimmy, Alan, Stu, the whole gang. Josie would be there, with her little clique of girlfriends, all chewing gum, wearing a little too much makeup, laughing a little too loudly. Pirate detested them all, their prattling, their painted faces. Had Josie not been his main rival in English, he might never have spoken to her.

The night would be filled with juvenile intrigues, who liked whom, getting up the courage to dance with that special one, dedications and requests, periodic strategy conferences in the washrooms, awkward attempts to dance to those songs that kept changing tempo, rumours, backbiting, hearts mended and broken. Around eleven the teacher-chaperone would announce the last song, to a chorus of boos, and the action would move to the local ice-cream parlours. Gradually the silliness would die down as people departed, tired and happy. Pirate went to every one of them, he and the gang, until disco broke, and people started dressing stylishly and learning the Hustle. But by that time, they had discovered alcohol.

At some late stage Pirate notices that Josie appears to have returned permanently to the table, outlasted by the band, who seem incapable of ending their set. She and Sven are talking by putting their mouths to each others' ears, and gesticulating a lot. The noise has gotten worse as the place becomes crowded; tables and chairs have lost their affiliations to each other, and the service has become impossibly slow. From time to time the sound of breaking glass heralds the downing of a waitress.

The banter at the table has taken on a cutting edge; they are talking about women. It's the subject they are least qualified to talk about, not for lack of experience, but because they have no female friends in common; there are none in the group, only in their "other lives" -- women met in their classes, or through their hobbies, friends of friends of friends. From time to time one of them disappears for a few weeks, popping up suddenly at Mother Courage one day, the only explanation for his absence a sheepish smile, and the others are left to ferret out the details of the pursuit. Pirate was well aware of this when he left them in the dark about Josie, that very first day.

"I think you should try meeting some of these," says Marxman to Pirate, referring to the apparently unescorted women out on the dance floor. "It's been a while since what's-her-name."

"You don't mean Miss Ann Thropic, the ice maiden," says Boswell.

"I can't imagine who you mean," says Pirate haughtily.

"The senator's daughter... the one who gave you the vote of no confidence."

"Tabled your motion."

"Vetoed your budget."

"I never knew anyone in politics. That's more your style. I seem to remember a certain visiting scholar--"

"Don't evade the subject. You have not explained how you could fall for someone whose views you consider dangerous."

"I wasn't going to vote for her - or her father, for that matter. Call it a failed covert action."

The foils are off; some of these barbs are capable of drawing blood. This is the type of treacherous ground Pirate really enjoys, where gaps in knowledge are patched over with a blend of facts, deductions, and invented memories. There are no worthier opponents than my friends, he thinks. His blood sings. Josie watches quietly from the other side of the table, her face betraying no opinion.

"Those two over by the bar. Pick one. Or take two, they're small."

"Talk about dangerous views. Look at these folks, living for the weekend, partying it up, swilling this stuff that passes for Scotch, sunk in the delusion that their workaday world is a prison which they must return to on Monday."

"And you know better," says Boswell, baiting him.

"What they do during the week isn't work - it's guaranteed comfort. They don't have to think at all; it'll all come if they put in their time, the suburban home with the filled two-car garage, the wet bar and the wide-screen TV in the finished rec room. They'll never realize that there are three layers to society, just as in Marxman's fascist drink. They're in the upper layer; their success is certain. The lower layer is guaranteed unhappiness; there is no way they'll ever make it. They're as dead inside as these poor souls. It's only the middle layer that is truly alive - and yet they are to be pitied, for they are doomed to uncertainty, without destiny, suspended, trapped in the Mittelwelt - "

"You're really on a German kick these days," says Josie. "Isn't English good enough for you? Why not just call it the Middleworld?"

"German is more precise. Those long compound nouns, harsh gutturals, clicking consonants. Ach du Lieber. Blut und Eisen. The sonority of these terms is important, the cadence, the prosody..." His train of thought keeps getting derailed. The atmosphere is viscid, crawling in and out of his throat with each breath.

"And which layer do you inhabit?" asks Boswell, to get him back to the subject, though the answer is now obvious.

"I'm here in the middle," sighs Pirate," with no one to blame but myself. Struggling against an uncaring world -- ow," he complains, as he is hit with a shower of pennies, kept in the pockets of the others for occasions such as this. No one's ever going to pity Pirate except the one person who shouldn't, namely himself.

"Come, old bean, it's better than being down in the red layer with the peasants," says Marxman.

"But their misery is not their fault. They at least have the consolation of knowing their fate. They have their champions: Jesus Christ, the Statue of Liberty, Superman..." Pirate trails off. These mythologies, so simple on the shelves of his mind, always sound foolish when he gives them voice. He begins to realize that he isn't going to get out of this one.

"Really," sniffs Boswell, "we must teach this boy to stop talking in Capital Letters."

"You're romanticizing," says Josie sharply. "You think there's something desireable about being poor and sick? There's no glory in starvation."

"Not glory," says Pirate, though he senses that she will never understand. "Grace. A state of grace."

"Blessed are the weak," intones Sven, who seems to have materialized out of the darkness behind Josie's chair, something cool and wet in his hand. Pirate barely glances at him.

"And I say there's nothing graceful--"

"You're missing the point. Concern about the lower layer is just a way of taking the heat off the upper layer. They're the ones we should be concerned about."

"I recognize this analogy," says Marxman. "Didn't Orwell mention three layers, with revolutions being just an exchange of the top two?"

"No, no, Orwell was talking about politics; this is social. And no one's interested in exchange. These people need some shaking up. This sanitized chaos of theirs - these Saturday-night rituals, co-opting the fun without the danger, ready to drop it all in the name of 'responsible behaviour' at a moment's notice -"

"When they do it for fun, it's contemptible," Josie bursts out, "but when you do it seriously, frightening people, maybe even hurting them in the name of some social ideology, then it's all right? Your Mittelwelt -"

"Yeah, your Mittelwelt," interjects Sven deftly, trying to defuse the situation, "I got your Mittelwelt right here," mugging, grabbing his upper thigh.

"'s true," mutters Pirate. "You do. I concede. Forget the whole thing. Let's dance," this last for Josie, who is staring at him with an anger that will not be easily placated. He drains his drink -- a lot of that this evening, very theatrical gesture - and stands up. It is a mistake. Suddenly the band is plugged directly into the base of his skull. A cymbal crashes and he winces. Josie glances at Sven -- what is that look on his face? Pirate wants none of it -- and rises, turning away into the crowd. Pirate follows. Sven is shouting something about "the Mittelwelt champion", most uncharacteristic behaviour, but of course he'll apologize tomorrow.

Josie stops, looking for a hole in the mass of people; Pirate leans over from behind to whisper in her ear. "We've never gotten drunk together, have we?"

She is remote. "I was on one of your taco expeditions. The one you called the bombing run."

The bombing run... it was in their glory days, years and years ago, when they were seniors in high school, and the world was circumscribed by suburban boundaries. They would gather in someone's basement on a weekend evening, music running strong, lending background to discussion of wine, women and song, not necessarily in that order, punctuated by the explosions of beer cans being opened. The TV would always be on, silent, its effect transmuted into flickering monochrome shadows, its visual idiocy occasionally drawing catcalls and thrown wads of newspaper. Around midnight someone would inevitably suggest a trip to pick up tacos, still a novelty then. One by one, each participant would deny the ability to drive - and so it was always the last one to respond, the one too drunk to even lift his tongue off the floor of his mouth, who by default had his inert body dumped in the driver's seat and his hands wrapped around the steering wheel.

Picking up anyone who could be commandeered without parents being the wiser, they would careen through the deserted streets at high speed, miraculously avoiding the cops. The night of the bombing run, Jimmy had a couple of cases of brew in the back seat of his Dodge. The late-night shift at the taco stand would look the other way if you wanted to supply your own beverage. On the way back, someone ditched an empty bottle out the window. That started a general run of target practise on mailboxes, telephone booths, and fire hydrants. Jimmy had to keep both hands on the wheel to keep from drifting onto the sidewalk; but at the next light, he decided to join in the fun. He reached back with his right arm, pulled a full bottle out of the case, and aimed a lob through the driver's window, which happened to be closed at the time.

The bottle exploded; suds and shards of wet glass flew everywhere. For a few seconds everyone froze; the car stalled as the clutch was let out. Then a primal sound rose out of Jimmy's throat. It was laughter... deep, full, uncontrollable laughter, in which everyone joined, unharmed, laughter without end, a celebration of invulnerability, of the clarity and intensity and boldness of youth.

Pirate's projector is jolted temporarily out of commission by an elbow in the ribs. The singer in the band is howling something about going home. It seems to be a popular sentiment; the dance floor is jammed, and most people are singing along. Everyone is shrugging and twisting up and down in their own cleanly defined locus... the standing dead, reanimated... those nearest Pirate are getting annoyed at his inability to stick to his own space. Josie won't look at him. No matter: he always dances alone. He resists the urge to strike out rhythmically at those around him, and gives himself up to the music.

He was watching for her sullen presence, but he cannot remember it. Nothing in his memory corresponds to this creature tracing intricate patterns before him with her toes. Not for the first time that week he thinks: who is she? and why has she come to haunt me? After four years of discontinuous experience, going home during Christmas and summers to find her in the same familiar environments, he had come to confuse the place with the girl. Any number of substitutions could have been made for the person he thought he knew, and he would not have known the difference. He had been proud of the convolutions in his letters, lies in the name of structure; did it ever occur to him that she could also lie?

Say, where have Jimmy and the others disappeared to? Why has she survived, and not they? When did it all become so uncertain? Who took away that clean, breezy style, and substituted this murky struggle, this grappling in half-light with an assailant whose face remains unseen, between the shadows one dreads and the light in which too much may be revealed... It is too late to ask Josie these questions. There is far more space between them than the dance floor will admit to.

The dancers draw narrow patterns across the night, intertwining, combining and recombining. They all seem to know each other; the place is on the verge of locking into one of those massive, complex pieces of group choreography that one sees in movies. Pirate suddenly feels outside it all; he tries one last time, taking Josie by the shoulders, hoping for the explanation he doesn't expect her to deliver. What he gets instead is that look she has been withholding, which causes him to recoil as if stung. Is it anger? contempt? triumph? Later he will remember only the intensity; it lasts too briefly for him to comprehend.

The band is winding up their song, to the cheers of the crowd. Eddies and currents form in the mass as dancers head for their tables, the bar, the washrooms. Josie slips into one of them and is past him before he has quite stopped moving. He reaches after her and knocks the lens out of someone's eyeglasses. By the time it is retrieved, she is well ahead. Sven stands firm at what used to be the edge of the floor, calling her name, as people flow about him. Incredibly, the music starts again. Bodies leap and jerk, can she hear? She raises her arm, reaches out, their fingers seek each other across the narrowing gap...

Pirate is carried away and past them. He curses the crowd, then realizes that he's no longer in control. His legs are operating entirely on reflex, carrying him roughly through the crush, towards the exit. Something at the base of his spine is directing operations. It's vestigial, he thinks, I'm regressing, reverting to form, becoming reptilian. He tries snapping his jaws like an iguana at a waitress as she glides past, but succeeds only in biting his tongue. The pain brings a curtain down; tears spring to his eyes and he brushes angrily at them. But they won't go away, though their salt taste changes to freshwater, flowing in all directions, up through his hair and over his ears. Eventually, he realizes that it's raining. He's outside, headed south.

The street sleeps upon the earth, its broad back an animated pointillist sketch created by thousands of raindrops ending their brief lives in tiny splashes. Pirate tries to populate its deserted stretch with the carnival inside his head, hoping to jam the picture-machine, which is sending out cracked echoes of the dance floor. The street's having none of it. It tries to throw him off, buckling and twisting like some massive sea-serpent. Pirate hangs on, riding it, a modern surfer on an asphalt wave, until it quiets down. Like a fighter who has tasted first blood, he bellows his challenge to the surrounding urban landscape. There is no answer.

Curse them all, he thinks, especially her. Does she know what she does, is she the last remnant of the old order come to destroy the new, or has she unwittingly hit some Achilles' heel that even Pirate overlooked? He has no clear idea of where to go next. The buildings turn their backs on him. Even the rain stops; all is silent, glistening under the streetlamps, waiting. He is in an uncharted part of town. And here there be dragons.

Look! there, one approaches, belching forth fire into the darkness, searching restlessly through the mists that rise sluggish into the air. See the malice in its yellow eyes and gleaming teeth; hear the murmur of its breath and the grinding of its bowels. It looks first this way, then that, stopping to listen for your footsteps. Surely you are too small a target. But no, it has spotted you, Pirate; it commences its run. The beast is upon you, and you without cape or sword, trapped in this narrow canyon. Where will you hide now? Who is here to protect you?

The smell of death in his nostrils, Pirate grabs at the nearest object, which turns out to be a lamppost. Dazed and bewildered, he clings to it as the last bus to downtown roars by in a cloud of exhaust, the driver honking impatiently at him. His legs fail him at last, and he slides to the sidewalk in a sodden heap. In the distance a siren wails. Suddenly he has had enough. I must go back, he thinks, even if vanquished, I must go down fighting.

But which way is back? His mind only admits to two directions, but the streets, perversely, go every which way. At this point he couldn't find the way back if he tried, though he does try, down several sidestreets, weaving a most irregular search web. All in vain, Pirate, your responses are preordained, there's no will within, only the will of God, which He reveals to the preterite on a need-to-know basis, in small slices intended as object lessons... but the eyes of God are off him tonight, for a few brief hours he is nameless... they won't call me Pirate any more, I wonder what they'll call me...

When he sees his house he gains a small understanding. They always leave you a way out; there is no sanctuary, but there is escape. He accepts the proferred truce, knowing it means that he has lost the fight. It takes quite a while to find the key and fit it into the lock. Josie's things sit forlorn in the living room, packed for her morning flight. He gathers his wits about him sufficiently to go back and unlock the door. The house, having lured him in, keeps him in his place; the floor gently tilts out from under him, forcing him to keep compensating.

He sheds his wet clothing in stages as he moves about. All the rooms seem unfamiliar. Whose pictures are these, on the wall? Who ate from these dishes that sit, unwashed, beside the kitchen sink? "What is happening to me?" he whispers, half-expecting to hear a kindly voice lecture him in reply. For the first time since leaving the club, he realizes that what surrounds him is not a howling cacophony, but silence.

It unnerves him. He sees the whiskey bottle standing beside the bed, in the spot he left it several weeks ago, when he sipped from it while reading Faulkner. He starts towards it, searching among the assorted tastes in his mouth for its harsh memory, and the picture-machine, almost beyond repair, coughs up one last still frame, of a room, dark and wet, encrusted with barnacles, dripping, secreting... he recoils, and the hallway gives a start and shakes itself in sympathy. The bathroom floats towards him, engulfs him.

But even that is a little shop of horrors. When he finally locates the toothpaste tube, an inverse sculpture of his hand, its top immediately leaps off and jumps into the toilet. Holding his brush firmly so that it cannot escape, he takes uneven passes at his mouth, scrubbing away at the accumulated evil, which forms again as quickly as he can remove it. Spit and rinse. There was something else -- he should sit down to remember it, but everything's in motion. Ah, yes, the dental floss...

He unreels several feet of the waxy thread, winds it very carefully around his forefingers -- gently, now, remember Mother used to cut layer cakes apart with that stuff - aw, no, Mom, not the minty kind -- opens his mouth and looks in the mirror to aim, but he cannot get his teeth to focus. Other parts of his face are no better. He spends quite a while on his eyes, something strange there about their inability to focus on themselves, some intricate self-referential truth that might explain a lot... But the thought is lost in a general urge to collapse, sweeping over him from the tip of his toes. Never mind, don't need the mirror... as he weaves towards the bed he is following the drill of childhood, fingers probing from memory, molar, cuspid, bicuspid, ignoring the twinges as he saws away at that most ancient of enemies...

When he wakes the next morning, the first thing he sees is the yard of floss, pink with his own blood, still wrapped around his left forefinger. The sun is high in the sky. Light pours through the open drapes to wash in great rebounding waves against the opposite wall, to fill up the red bowls of his retinas. He can see no reason in what he remembers, only an endless hunger, and in partial penance he closes his eyes and lets it all sweep back over him.