"Who's that guy?" she asked Duncan, after trying to read a paragraph of his feverish, occasionally rather affecting prose.

"Oh. Him. Poor old Jerry Warner. He used to teach English at some public school somewhere, but he got caught with a sixth-form boy a couple of years back, and he's been a bit off the rails since. Too much time on his hands. Why do you keep looking at the website, anyway?"

She'd finished her essay now. Somehow Juliet, Naked Juliet, Naked-or her feelings about it, anyway-had woken her from a deep sleep: she wanted things. She'd wanted to write, she wanted Duncan to read what she'd written. She wanted the other message board members to read it, too. She was proud of it, and she had even begun to wonder whether it might not be socially useful in some way. Some of these cranks, she hoped, might read it, blush a deep crimson and return to their lives. There was no end to her wanting.

"I wrote something."

"What about?"

"About Naked Naked."

Duncan looked at her.

"You?"

"Yes. Me."

"Gosh. Well. Wow. Ha." He smiled, stood up and started pacing around the room. This was the closest she would ever get to telling him that he was about to become the father of twins. He wasn't thrilled by the news, but he knew he wasn't allowed to be openly discouraging.

"And do you think . . . Well, do you think you're qualified qualified to write something?" to write something?"

"Is it a matter of qualifications?"

"Interesting question. I mean, you're perfectly at liberty to write whatever you want."

"Thanks."

"But for the website . . . People expect a certain level of expertise."

"In the first paragraph of his post, Jerry Warner says that Tucker Crowe lives in a garage in Portugal. How expert is that?"

"I'm not sure you're supposed to take him literally."

"So, what, he lives in a Portuguese garage of the mind?"

"Yes, he's wayward, Jerry. But he can sing every word of every song."

"That qualifies him to busk outside a pub. It doesn't necessarily make him a critic."

"I'll tell you what," said Duncan, as if he had a crazy gut feeling that the receptionist should be offered a place on the board of his company. "Let me see it."

She was holding the piece in her hand. She gave it to him.

"Oh. Right. Thank you."

"I'll leave you to it."

She went upstairs, lay down on the bed and tried to read her book, but she couldn't concentrate. She could hear the sound of his shaking head all the way through the floorboards.

Duncan read the essay twice, just to buy himself some time; the truth was that he knew he was in trouble after the first reading, because it was both very well written and very wrong. Annie had made no factual errors that he could find (although someone on the boards would always point out some glaring and utterly inconsequential mistake, he found, when he wrote something), but her inability to recognize the brilliance of the album was indicative of a failure in taste that appalled him. How had she ever managed to read or see or listen to anything and come to the right conclusion about its merits? Was it all just luck? Or was it just the boring good taste of the Sunday newspaper supplements? So she liked The Sopranos The Sopranos-well, who didn't? He'd had a chance this time to watch her have to come to her own conclusions, and she'd messed it up.

He couldn't refuse to put the piece up, though. That wouldn't be fair, and he didn't want to be put in the position of turning her down. And it wasn't as if she didn't get the greatness of Tucker Crowe: this was, after all, a long hymn of praise to the perfection of Dressed Dressed. No, he'd post it on the site and let the others tell her what they thought of her.

He read it through once more, just to make sure, and this time it depressed him: she was better than him in everything but judgment-the only thing that mattered in the end, but still. She wrote well, with fluency and humor, and she was persuasive, if you hadn't actually heard the music, and she was likable. He tended to be strident and bullying and smart-alecky, even he could see that. This wasn't what she was supposed to be good at. Where did that leave him? And supposing they didn't shoot her down in flames? Supposing, instead, that they used her as a stick to beat him with? Naked Naked, which just about everyone had heard by now, was getting a very mixed reaction, and the negative stuff, he feared, had been provoked by his original, overenthusiastic review. He was just beginning to change his mind about accepting her into the community when she appeared in front of him.

"Well?" she said. She was nervous.

"Well," he said.

"I feel as though I'm waiting for my exam results."

"I'm sorry. I was just thinking about what you wrote."

"And?"

"You know I don't agree with it. But it's really not bad."

"Oh. Thank you."

"And I'm happy to put it up, if that's what you really want."

"I think so."

"You have to include your e-mail address, you know that."

"Do I?"

"Yes. And you'll get a few nutters contacting you. But you can just delete them, if you don't want to get involved in a debate."

"Can I use a fake name?"

"Why? Nobody knows who you are."

"You've never mentioned me to any of your friends?"

"I don't think so, no."

"Oh."

Annie looked rather taken aback. But was that so weird? None of the other Crowologists lived in the town, and he only ever talked to them about Tucker, or occasionally about related artists.

"Have you ever had a contribution from a woman?"

He pretended to think about it. He'd often wondered why they only ever heard from middle-aged men, but it had never worried him unduly. Now he felt defensive.

"Yes," he said. "But not for a while. And even then they just wanted to talk about how, you know, attractive they found him."

The only women he could invent, it seemed, were cliched airheads, unable to contribute to serious debate. He'd only had a couple of seconds to imagine them, but even so, he could and should have done better. If he ever did write his novel, he'd have to watch that.

"Do women find him attractive?"

"God, yes."

Now he was beginning to sound weird. Well, not weird, because homosexual attraction wasn't weird, of course it wasn't. But he was certainly sounding more vehement about Tucker's good looks than he had meant to.

"Anyway. Send me the piece as an attachment and I'll put it up tonight."

And, after only a couple of arguments with himself, he did what he'd promised.

At work the next morning, Annie found herself logging on to the website a couple of times an hour. At first, it seemed obvious to her that she'd want some feedback on what she'd written-she'd never done this before, so she was bound to be curious about the process. Later in the day, however, she realized that she wanted to win, to beat Duncan hollow. He'd had his say, and for the most part his say had been greeted by hostility, sarcasm, disbelief and envy; she wanted people to be nicer to her than they had been to him, more appreciative of her eloquence and acuity, and, to her great delight, they were. By five o'clock that afternoon, seven people had posted in the "comments" section, and six of them were friendly-inarticulate, and disappointingly brief, but friendly nonetheless. "Nice work, Annie!" "Welcome to our little online 'community'-good job!" "I completely agree with you. Duncan's so far off-base he's disappeared off of the radar." The only person who wanted to make it clear that he hadn't enjoyed her contribution didn't seem very happy about anything. "Tucker Crowe is FINISHED get over it you people are pathetic just going on and on about a singer who hasn't made an album for twenty years. He was overrated then and he's overrated now and Morrissey is so much better its embarrassing."

She wondered why someone would bother to write that; but then, "Why bother" was never a question you could ask about more or less anything on the Internet, otherwise the whole bunch of them shriveled to a cotton-candy nothing. Why had she bothered? Why does anybody? She was for for bothering, on the whole; in which case thank you, MrMozza7, for your contribution, and thank you, everybody else, on every other website. bothering, on the whole; in which case thank you, MrMozza7, for your contribution, and thank you, everybody else, on every other website.

Just before she shut down her computer for the day, she checked her e-mails again. She'd suspected that Duncan had told her she had to provide an address in an attempt to frighten her off; clearly the comments section was the preferred method of providing feedback. Duncan had implied that there would be a host of homicidal cyber stalkers, spewing bile and promising vengeance, but so far, nothing.

This time, however, there were two e-mails, from someone called Alfred Mantalini. The first was titled "Your Review." It was very short. It said, simply, "Thank you for your kind and perceptive words. I really appreciated them. Best wishes, Tucker Crowe." The title on the second was "P.S.," and the message said, "I don't know if you hang out with anyone on that website, but they seem like pretty weird people, and I'd be really grateful if you didn't pass on this address."

Was it possible? Even asking the question felt stupid, and the sudden breathlessness was simply pathetic. Of course it wasn't possible. It was obviously a joke, even though it was a joke removed of all discernible humor. Why bother? Don't ask. She draped her jacket over the back of her chair and put her bag on the floor. What would be an amusing response? "Fuck off, Duncan"? Or should she just ignore it? But supposing . . . ?

She tried mocking herself again, but the self-mockery only worked, she realized, if she thought with Duncan's head-if she really believed that Tucker Crowe was the most famous man in the world, and that there was more chance of being contacted out of the blue by Russell Crowe. Tucker Crowe, however, was an obscure musician from the 1980s, who probably didn't have much to do at nights except look at websites dedicated to his memory and shake his head in disbelief. And she could certainly understand why he wouldn't want to contact Duncan and the rest of them: the torch they were holding burned way too bright. Why Alfred Mantalini? She Googled the name. Alfred Mantalini was a character in Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby, apparently, an idler and philanderer who ends up bank rupting his wife. Well, that could fit, couldn't it? Especially if Tucker Crowe had a sense of self-irony. Quickly, before she could think twice, she clicked on "Reply" and typed, "It isn't you really, is it?"

This man had been both a presence and an absence in her life for fifteen years, and the idea that she had just sent him a message that might somehow appear somewhere in his house, if he had one, seemed preposterous. She waited at work for an hour or two in the hope that he'd reply, and then she went home.

TUCKER CROWEFROM WIKIPEDIA, THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIATucker Jerome Crowe (b. 1953-09-06) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Crowe came to prominence in the mid- to late seventies, first as the lead singer in the band The Politics of Joy, and then as a solo artist. Influenced both by other North American songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen, and by the guitarist Tom Verlaine, he achieved increasing critical success after a difficult start, culminating in what is regarded as his masterwork, Juliet Juliet, in 1986, an album about his breakup with Julie Beatty that frequently features in "Best of All Time" lists. During the tour to support that album, however, Crowe abruptly withdrew from public life, apparently after some kind of life-changing incident in the men's toilet of a Minneapolis club, and has neither made music, nor spoken in the media about his disappearance, since.

BIOGRAPHYEARLY LIFECrowe was born and raised in Bozeman, Montana. His father, Jerome, owned a dry-cleaning business, and his mother, Cynthia, was a music teacher. Several of the songs on his earlier albums are about his relationship with his parents, for example, "Perc and Tickets" (from Tucker Crowe Tucker Crowe, "perc" being the abbreviation for "perchloroethylene," the chemical used in the dry-cleaning process) and "Her Piano" (from Infidelity and Other Domestic Investigations Infidelity and Other Domestic Investigations), a tribute to his mother written after her death from breast cancer in 1983. Crowe's older brother, Ed, died in 1972, aged twenty-one, in a car accident. The inquest found that he had "significant" levels of alcohol in his bloodstream.

EARLY CAREERCrowe formed The Politics of Joy at Montana State and dropped out of school to tour with the band. They split up before they were offered a recording contract, although most of the members of the band played with Crowe on his albums and tours, and his third album was titled Tucker Crowe and The Politics of Joy Tucker Crowe and The Politics of Joy. Crowe's self-titled first album, released in 1977, was a famous music-industry disaster: the record company's confidence in the artist led them to place a series of advertisements in trade magazines and on billboards bearing the hubristic tagline BRUCE PLUS BOB PLUS LEONARD EQUALS TUCKER underneath a photograph of a pouting Crowe wearing eyeliner and a Stetson. A drunken Crowe was arrested for attempting to tear a gigantic poster down on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California, in October 1977. The rock critics were merciless-Greil Marcus in Creem Creem ended his review with the line "Drivel plus feyness plus John Denver equals not much to go on?" Stung, Crowe recorded a savage four-track EP, ended his review with the line "Drivel plus feyness plus John Denver equals not much to go on?" Stung, Crowe recorded a savage four-track EP, Can Anybody Hear Me? Can Anybody Hear Me? (now the name of a website given over to earnest, sometimes pompous, discussion of his music), which helped to turn his fortunes, and the critical reception, around. (now the name of a website given over to earnest, sometimes pompous, discussion of his music), which helped to turn his fortunes, and the critical reception, around.

CONCERT TOURSCrowe toured extensively between 1977 and his retirement, although his live shows are generally regarded as being variable in quality, mostly because of Crowe's alcoholism. Some shows could be as short as forty-five minutes, with long breaks between songs broken only by Crowe's abuse of, and evident scorn for, his audience; other nights, as the justly celebrated "At Ole Miss" bootleg demonstrates, he played for two and a half hours to ecstatic, devoted crowds. Too often, though, a Crowe concert would degenerate into name-calling and violence: in Cologne, Germany, he leaped into the crowd to punch a fan who had repeatedly requested a song he didn't want to play. Most members of The Politics of Joy had quit before the end of Crowe's career, most of them citing abuse from the singer as the reason for departure.

PERSONAL LIFETucker Crowe is presumed to be the father of Julie Beatty's daughter, Ophelia (b. 1987), although her mother has always denied this. He is believed to have achieved sobriety.

RETIREMENTCrowe is believed to be living on a farm in Pennsylvania, although little is known about how he has spent the last two decades. Rumors of a comeback are frequent, but so far unfounded. Some fans detect his involvement in recent albums by the Conniptions and the Genuine Articles; the album Yes, Again Yes, Again (2005) by the re-formed The Politics of Joy is regarded-wrongly, according to the band-to feature two songs by Crowe. (2005) by the re-formed The Politics of Joy is regarded-wrongly, according to the band-to feature two songs by Crowe. Juliet, Naked Juliet, Naked, an album of demo versions of the songs on Juliet Juliet, was released in 2008.

DISCOGRAPHYTucker Crowe-1977Infidelity and Other Domestic Investigations-1979Tucker Crowe and The Politics of Joy-1981You and Me Both-1983Juliet-1986Juliet, Naked-2008

AWARDS AND NOMINATIONSCrowe received an honorary degree from the University of Montana in 1985. Juliet Juliet was nominated for a Grammy in the "Best Album" category in 1986. Crowe was nominated for a Grammy in the "Best Male Rock Performance" category, for "You and Your Perfect Life," in the same year. was nominated for a Grammy in the "Best Album" category in 1986. Crowe was nominated for a Grammy in the "Best Male Rock Performance" category, for "You and Your Perfect Life," in the same year.

four.

While Annie was waiting hopefully in her office for Tucker Crowe's reply, Tucker Crowe was wandering around his local supermarket with his six-year-old son, Jackson, trying to buy comfort food for somebody neither of them knew very well.

"Hot dogs?"

"Yeah."

"I know you like 'em. I was asking you whether you think Lizzie might."

"I dunno."

There was no reason why he would.

"I've forgotten who she is again," said Jackson. "I'm sorry."

"She's your sister."

"Yeah, I know that," said the boy. "But . . . Why Why is she?" is she?"

"You know what a sister is," said Tucker.

"Not this kind."

"She's the same as every other kind."

But of course she wasn't. Tucker was being disingenuous. As far as a six-year-old boy was concerned, a sister was someone you saw at the breakfast table, someone who argued with you about what TV shows to watch, someone whose birthday party you tried to avoid because it was so pink, someone whose friends laughed at you a fraction of a second before you left a room. The girl who was coming to stay with them was twenty and had never come to stay with them before. Jackson had never even seen a photograph of her, so he could hardly be expected to know whether or not she was a vegetarian. It wasn't as if this were the first time Jackson had had a mystery sibling thrust upon him, either. A couple of years ago, Tucker had introduced him to twin brothers he'd previously been unaware of, neither of whom had remained a consistent presence in his life.

"I'm sorry, Jackson. She must seem like a different kind of sister to you. She's your sister because you've got the same dad."

"Who's her dad?"

"Who? Who do you think? Who's your dad?"

"So you're her dad, too?"

"That's it."