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    I noticed the place starting to fll up with people. There were all kinds, not just more "rockers" like the band. Farmers, merchants— people were genuinely curious.

    A couple of waitresses, quasi-young women who looked like hardened veterans of earth-bars, came in to help Allallo. It seemed strange not to see somebody taking money at the door, but then I remembered how things worked here. The band would actually be compensated somehow by the people watching. Everybody got whatever they wanted here, they just had to provide some kind of valuable, free service for other people.

    I know, it shouldn't work. I guess this is the only place it could.

    Thinking about this reminded me to ask someone just when exactly when I was expected to start earning my keep—but it could wait. I was having too much fun right then to worry about reality.

    I got off the stage and went back over to the bar, watching as the band got up to play their sound check.

    It was no surprise that the band itself consisted of everybody that had been at Mikio's place. There was the guitar player, and the pompadour guy, who was obviously the singer: he got up and grabbed the ear horn/mic and started making wailing noises into it. Lidelei was the totally Archies tambourine player, and the munchkin girl was playing on another Mustang with heavy bass strings wound on it. Another guy was setting up some ancient-looking drums that looked like they'd been swiped from some marching band: an oversized bass drum, a little snare, some cymbals and some long skinny drums of a type I'd never seen before. Another guy was playing something like a cross between an accordian and a bagpipe.

    The drummer counted off, and they launched into a fairly competent version of "Pretty Vacant" by the Sex Pistols. I was surprised. Oh, it was weird alright, like when you say something backwards into a tape recorder, then play that backwards. But they had the guts of it nailed. And they were loud.

    Allallo had his hands over his ears, and was shaking his head. I thought it was gonna be all over with, but he didn't do anything about it, just glowered over at the stage and poured another drink for somebody. It was getting busy, and I guess 'busy' won out over 'loud'.

    Just as they hit the second "We're so pretty, oh so pretty..," a disheveled group of very wasted winged monkeys stumbled through the front door. They were bandaged, some of them limping, and all of them looked like they were going to have a good time, if it killed them, or anybody else that happened to get in their way.

    My heart sank as I fashed on the vision of the horde of monkeys blanketing the horizon, diving into the cuisinart that I'd been handily rescued from. All the stuff I'd been trying to forget, had successfully buried most of the day, hit me full in the face when I saw them.

    Allallo either read my mind or was a really good bartender. He put one hand out and squeezed my shoulder, and plopped down a beer in front of me with the other. It was too loud to say anything, so I tipped the beer in his direction and took a big swallow of it.

    The band decided—I guess after seeing how crowded it was already—to just go ahead and start playing their set. It was amazing, if just in how unselfconsciously eclectic it was. They did "Crazy" a la Patsy Cline. They did "Hello Skinny" by the Residents. Then they played "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys (complete with harmonies) followed by "Don't Worry Kyoko" (Lidelei sang the lead on that one, with a perfect Yoko impersonation that only caused me to be that much more in lust.)

    We made eye contact a few times, and each time, she'd smile like maybe she forgave me. I wanted nothing more at that moment than to make up for my behavior earlier in the day. But this was not to be.

    Right about the time I started speculating about whether or not Lidelei lived by herself, I spotted a long-haired, completely shit-faced, derelict-looking guy over in a dark corner. He was sitting by himself, not far from the table full of winged monkeys who were bouncing up and down, chugalugging, perched up on their chairs, hooting and beating their chests. I'd seen this behavior before many times, except for the wings, but I wasn't ready for this guy in the corner, with his beard hanging down into his pint, flthy dirty except for where tears had cleaned parts of his face—

    It was Ralph.

    I couldn't believe it. I was sure he was dead or at least captured. There had been no way out of there—well, few ways.

    I pushed through the crowd and sat down next to him, just as the band, to wild applause and a strange sort of warbling the Ozians do when they like something, announced their frst break.

    "Ralph.." I said, "Ralph, hey. It's me." He looked up blearily, squinted at me.

    "How the hell did you get out?" I asked him. "What about the rest of them? What about Tinman?"

    Ralph pointed at me, still squinting, holding his index fnger out shakily. "Lou. Neal? Je—Jeff..."

    "Gene."

    "Gene. YEAHH. Gene. OF LOS ANGELES!" He was yelling, and people started looking our way.

    He quieted down. "Gene. Gene. Have some drinks, Gene." Ralph waved sloppily to the nearby waitress. "Hey, Eileen, bring somethin nice for me and my fren. Gene.

    "Gene, Gene, the Laptop Man." He tipped his pint to me, spilled half of it, then drank.

    I was nearly speechless. "Jesus, Ralph, what happened to you? I thought you told me you were clean and sober? And how exactly
did you get out?"

    "How did you get out? How did you ged out? Huh? How did
you? I saw you and your skeleton girl. I fukin saw you. I saw you.
" His scowl turned into a chuckle, and he started singing, "I wanna liiive witha skeleton giiirrll...I could be happy... I..."

    Then he was sobbing. He was all over the place, like he hadn't

aired out his true feelings, for anything, for years.

    "I fukin walked out of there, that's how. I fukin walked out, and called me a cab. That's how.

    "That fuck let me go."

    Then Eileen showed up with two glasses, and a bottle of something vile-looking. I looked up at her like she was crazy. This guy was already so tanked that I was afraid to light a match near him. Eileen just shrugged her shoulders, and sauntered off. Ralph grabbed the bottle, opened it, and sloshed out two glasses worth. He shoved one at me, and lifted one into the air.

    "To Gene. Gene, Gene, the Dancing Machine." And downed the contents.

    Against my better judgement, I downed a hit of the amber stuff in the glass. It wasn't half bad.

    "What 'fuck' let you go?" I asked.

    "That fuck. That fuck bitch shit... Tha fuhh... with the Towers, that fuck. The ones... you saw the smoke, man. Up underneath em are dishes. Giant sattelite dishes. But they still—they're still workin, man...You seen the clouds?"

    I guess concentrating on telling me the story sobered him up a little—because now he started making a little more sense, but not much more.

    "Now he runs the goddam show. We were trying to suck in animates. Mickies, like in your laptop. Thought we could harness some new amazing power source. Maybe build a living computer. Anyway, that didn work, huh?"

    I didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about. I asked him to clarify. About a year went by where he waved off the question, searched his pockets for cigarettes, then fnally succeeded in lighting one. I asked him again.

    "All that dish bullshit. Didn't do fuck all to pull in animates. Ozma must have known it. Let us play with our toys." He blew out some smoke. "But she must not have been able to see across the desert. Cause we called something—awful—from out across the wasteland, from who knows where.

    "It came through the satellite dishes.

     "The Hollow.

    "We called it."

    Then he sat back and sucked in some smoke.

    I sat back and sucked down some of my drink. And as I drank, starting to develop a taste for the stuff, something really obvious dawned on me.

    "Ralph, when you say, 'that fuck', do you mean The Hollow Man?"

    "Bingo, my friend, DING DING DING DING DING! That little lame ass, MUTHERFUKIN JERK!"

    Now the monkeys were looking over, and they didn't know Ralph, and drunk off his ass or not, he took the hint. They were ready to kick the shit out of anyone that looked at them funny. He tipped his glass at them and smiled, real big. "Gentlemen..." And he downed another glass. I joined him.

    I was starting to feel almost as nice as Ralph. No, on second thought, I don't think I've ever seen anyone standing up who'd had as much to drink as Ralph. But I was getting there.

    "Who are you, Ralph? What are you doing here?"

    He stared me down, crosseyed. "Who do you think I am, bud? Who do you think I was standing right behind you when that big jerk was peeing on the tree? Huh? Nice laptop, Laptop Man."

    "Nice what? You were almost making sense for a minute there."

    "I'm C.I.A., get it? Intelligence. I'm the Boogie Man. BOOOO!"

    Laptop. C.I.A. Mickey. Artifcial Intelligence. It was starting to make sense—not much, but some. My own altered state of conscousness wasn't helping things.

    "Jesus, Ralph, you were following me? I mean, my laptop? Why didn't you just take it? Why go through all the trouble of chasing me around?"

    "If nothing happened, I'm was supposed to help you get where you were going, you being a U.S. citizen after all, then split. If, on the other hand, something extraordinary occurred, like it did, I was supposed to snatch that thing in the interest of your U.S. security. I was getting around to it, but we kinda got sidetracked for awhile, didn't we?" He clanked our glasses together, and drank some more.

    "You were just gonna take it?" I asked him. "What if I didn't want to give it to you? You'd beat me up? Kill me?"

    He made a face at me, as if injured. "Persuade you. However I could."

"What about now? Why don't you try to grab it now?"

    This made Ralph laugh. "Do you know how many people are trying to grab that thing? At least three in this room right now. They wouldn't try it here, but my suggestion to you is to get through Ozma's Gate just as soon as she opens it up again. If she does.

    "I don't want it anymore. What am I gonna do with it? Give it to that FUCK? Get it out of here. You get out of here, Gene. This is a really bad time to be here. Really bad time. I hate my fucking stupid life."

    He started crying again. Talk about an emotional roller-coaster. Then he stopped all at once, like he turned a switch, and looked me in the eye. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I'm everybody's friend, I'm everybody's enemy, I'm a big fat professional LIAR LIAR LIAR."

    The fying monkeys looked over again, and Ralph put one hand up to either ear and wiggled his fngers at them. "LIAR LIAR, PANTS ARE ON FIRE!!!" he shouted at them. Then he started singing the Wicked Witch theme music from "The Wizard of Oz."

    I didn't want to turn around. I heard several chairs shuffing, and prepared for the worst. I could see their shadows come up behind us, smell alcoholic hot breath close behind my head. Ralph was grinning at them like an idiot.

    I turned around, and saw one of the ugliest faces I'd ever seen, even on a monkey, about an inch from my face. That whole nose-tonose thing.

    "You're bothering us," the ugly monkey face said.

    "Look," I said, "My friend is really, really drunk and he doesn't mean anything by it, really..."

    "So?" He picked me up by my shirt, my really nice Gigantor shirt, ripping it, and held me out in the air in front of him. I heard a bottle breaking against something.

    "ALRIGHT," came a loud voice from behind me. I was promptly dropped back into my seat, right on my tailbone. It hurt. Allallo was standing there with something that looked remarkably like a baseball bat. "Inky, why don't you take your friends out of here until you can learn to behave yourself a little better? What's wrong with you guys? Huh?"

    The monkeys looked suddenly like a bunch of schoolkids who'd been caught smoking in the lavatory.

"Go on, now."

    While the hushed crowd made way for them, with heads hung low they fled out of the front door.

    Then Allallo looked at Ralph and me. "Haven't you had enough now, Ralph?"

    "You don't have enough."

    Then he spoke to me. "Why don't you fetch Mikio, and get this guy some food in him, then into a nice bed somewhere? I hate it when he gets like this. I shouldn't have allowed it—but it's hard to say 'no' to Ralph."

     I found Mikio, who was a little bummmed about missing the rest of the show, but assured me that he could come get the equipment tomorrow, and would help me get Ralph out of there, not to mention run interference with respect to anyone who might want to make a grab at my backpack.

    Ralph protested a little bit, but with some coaxing we got him up, and out the front door.

    I was getting that sick feeling in my stomach—the one that happens when you have too much alcohol in you and not enough food— so a couple of tacos, goomer or otherwise, sounded really good. And since I hadn't checked in with Aurora for awhile, The Burrito sounded like the place to take Ralph. Then, also, perhaps I could convince her to let him crash at her place, or maybe the restaurant, or something...

    Also, it was the only restaurant I knew about.

    We got Ralph out into the cool night air, and it felt good after the stuffy bar. He could walk, but looked a little rubbery, so we stood on either side of him as we walked, just in case.

    I looked around at the soft glow on everything in the quiet night, like green colored lights on snow, and heard the faint sounds of hooves clacking, wheels rolling over cobblestones. The placid scene was all the more unreal when I remembered the black terror approaching the city.