"As soon as you can." He clicks off.
It rings again, immediately.
"Hello?"
"Parkaboy. Where are you?"
"Saint Martin's Lane."
"London? I need to run something by you. We're having a problem. With Judy."
"Judy?"
"Judy Tsuzuki. Keiko."
"The girl in the picture?"
"All five-eleven of her. She likes to drink, after work, so she started going over to Darryl's place, and Darryl, he's challenged in the girl department. So he gives her drinks and tries to impress her with how big his computer is. That doesn't work, he demonstrates what a great lin-guist he is, and the effect her picture's having on this dork in Japan. He reads her parts of Taki's e-mails. She's fucking furious with him, all five-eleven in a leather mini-skirt from the bar. Because he's a dickhead to do this to this guy in Japan, this guy who's saying things to her that no man has ever said before—"
"But he thinks she's a schoolgirl—"
"I know, but she's had a few drinks, so Danyl is a dickhead—"
"You're a dickhead too. I'm a dickhead myself for going along with this." Two older British women look at her as they enter. Look away.
"Let's save the metaphysics for later. The problem is, Judy feels sorry for the guy, she's pissed at Darryl, and by extension with us, and she wants to write him back. She wants to send him more pictures, attachments this time, and make him happy. That's what she says she wants, and if Darryl doesn't want to go along with it, she says she'll go to this journalist from the
"She knows it's about that?"
"It's evident from the translations of Taki's e-mails. She got them away from Darryl and read them herself."
"So what do you want from me?"
"How do we make her go away? Tell me."
"You don't. You can't. Let her write to Taki."
"You serious?"
"Of course I am. Try to keep her in character, if you want to keep it going. Remember, Taki's in love with who you've told him she is."
"I was afraid of that. Actually I'd pretty much come to the same conclusion. It's just I hate the loss of control, you know?"
"It was probably an illusion that you were ever in control in the first place."
"With a dickhead of Darryl's caliber around, no fucking kidding. What's happening on your end with that T-thing?"
"It's being looked at."
"Who by?"
"Friends of a friend. I don't really know."
"You okay, there? You sound tired."
"I am, but I'm okay."
"Keep in touch. Bye."
She looks at the phone and wonders who Parkaboy is. Other, that is, than Parkaboy, ascerbic obsessive theorist of the footage. What does he do when he's not doing this? She has no idea, and no idea what he looks like or, really, how he came to be as devoted as she knows he is to pursuing any further understanding of the footage. But now, in some way she can't quite grasp, the universe of F:F:F is everting. Manifesting physically in the world. Darryl Musashi's pissed-off Japanese-Texan barmaid seems to be an aspect of this.
But she's glad that someone else dislikes what they've done to Taki.
THE phone rings again when she's nearing Blue Ant,
"Where are you?"
"Almost there. Two minutes."
He hangs up.
She walks on, past the window of a gallery where the central blue shape in a large abstract canvas reminds her of Taki's T-bone. What is that? Why bury it in that flare of light? What else might be hidden in other segments?
As she's reaching out to push the button on the Blue Ant intercom, the door is opened by a dark-haired man in sunglasses, his nose elaborately braced with flesh-colored fabric tape. He freezes for an instant, does an odd little duck-and-weave, then pushes suddenly past her out-stretched arm and sprints off down the street, in the direction she's just come.
"Hey," Cayce says, catching the door before it can close, the back of her neck prickling.
She steps inside.
"They're waiting for you upstairs," says the young receptionist, smiling, a stud glinting on the side of her nose.
"Dickheads," Cayce says, and looks back at the door. "Who was that who just left?"
The girl looks puzzled. *
"Tape on his nose."
The girl brightens. "Franco. He drives Dorotea, from Heinzi and Pfaff. Been in an accident."
"She's here?"
"Waiting for you." The girl smiles, "Third floor."
- /
Bernard Stonestreet, uncharacteristically sour and distracted, is passing the head of the stairs as she reaches the third floor, his upthrust thatch and immaculately disheveled black suit reminding her all too clearly of her previous visit.
"Hullo," he says, with an instant's confusion. "I'd wondered where you were. Meeting Hubertus and Dorotea?"
"Looks like it."
"Is everything all right?" Seeming concerned at her tone.
"Dandy," she says, biting it off between her front teeth.
"It's a bit of a surprise, isn't it?" Lowering his voice slightly, though there's no one to hear. "Dorotea, I mean."
"What about her?"
