"He'd want it told," I suggested.

"Yeah, yeah, of course. I don't know about the ending, though, Dylan. I'm not happy about that ending."

He spoke as though The Prisonaires The Prisonaires was already filmed and edited and he'd just screened it and been disappointed. Now we were left with the sorry task of mopping up, cutting our losses. "It's so vague, he gets out, he goes back, the band never reunites. And I kept expecting something to happen with that woman, the one in the audience, you know? The crying one." was already filmed and edited and he'd just screened it and been disappointed. Now we were left with the sorry task of mopping up, cutting our losses. "It's so vague, he gets out, he goes back, the band never reunites. And I kept expecting something to happen with that woman, the one in the audience, you know? The crying one."

Inescapably, absurdly, I fell to the same tone. "I guess we could end it sooner. After the first parole."

"Oh, I doubt that would work."

"Okay," I said, helpless.

"Listen, I don't want to-I don't want to tell anyone about this thing until we pull it together. It should be perfect perfect. A slam dunk. You and I should both think really hard about the third-act problems and do nothing nothing until we've cracked them. If I bring this upstairs I want it to be airtight, you know?" until we've cracked them. If I bring this upstairs I want it to be airtight, you know?"

"That makes sense."

"Did you talk to your agent?"

"He, uh, feels the same way, actually."

"Of course he does. He knows how these things work."

"So-" I was baffled. "What happens next?"

"The question is what you you do next. This is all in do next. This is all in your your hands." hands."

"Uh, okay."

"I'm not easily discouraged, you know. I believe in you, mister."

"Thanks."

"There's nothing wrong with taking some time, by the way. This isn't going anywhere. It'll happen when it's meant to happen."

"Okay."

"So, do you have a driver? Because I need to have you out of my office now."

"I can call-"

"Yes, but use Mike's phone."

In the middle chamber I handed Nicholas Brawley's card to Mike and asked him to call.

"Jared was really knocked out," Mike whispered, eyes wide at what I'd accomplished inside.

"I think he'll recover," I said.

I waited with my overnight bag in the shady lot for a long fifteen minutes before Nicholas Brawley's cab pulled up again at the gate. The man with the Oscar never came back. Brawley's radio was still tuned to MEGA 100, and the station was broadcasting my old nemesis of a theme song, Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music." Of course, the thirty-five-year-old rock critic knew what the thirteen-year-old scrap of prey on the sidewalks outside Intermediate School 293 never did: Wild Cherry was a bunch of white guys white guys. The tune which had been enlisted as an indictment of my teenage existence was in fact a Midwestern rock band's rueful self-parody. I'd wondered many times since then whether knowing would have helped. Probably not. Anyway, it struck me now in a different light, as being yet another bit of personal meaning which had been taken from me, stripped off like clothes I'd only borrowed or stolen. I had maybe the least persuasive case for self-pity of any human soul on the planet. Or anyway, the most hilarious.

chapter3.

Abraham and Francesca stood together in the lobby of the Anaheim Marriott, still as sculpture. All around them the lobby boiled with arrivals, misshapen travelers clad in black and purple, peering nervously side to side as though concerned with the impression they made as they wheeled suitcases in agitated confusion to the check-in desk. Others lurched or darted through the vast open space of the lobby, gathering briefly in groups of four or five to hug and talk, to crinkle brochures with circled program items, or present one another with buttons or ribbons to affix to suspenders or knapsack straps. Some wolfed sandwiches, licking gummy fingers unselfconsciously. Many wore plastic-frame eyeglasses or floppy hats or molded jewelry, others T-shirts with proud enigmas emblazoned: MORE THAN HUMAN MORE THAN HUMAN , , DONATE YOUR BODY TO SCIENCE FICTION DONATE YOUR BODY TO SCIENCE FICTION , , I USED TO BE A MILLIONAIRE THEN MY MOTHER THREW OUT MY COMIC BOOK COLLECTION I USED TO BE A MILLIONAIRE THEN MY MOTHER THREW OUT MY COMIC BOOK COLLECTION . Photocopied signs, taped inelegantly to corridors and glass doors, offered suite numbers for hotel parties, advertised special events, and directed attendees to the registration table or the art show or the first aid station. Certain laminated name badges were labeled . Photocopied signs, taped inelegantly to corridors and glass doors, offered suite numbers for hotel parties, advertised special events, and directed attendees to the registration table or the art show or the first aid station. Certain laminated name badges were labeled PRO PRO or or VOLUNTEER VOLUNTEER . Voices rose and were lost in a babble of others-monotonous harangues, kooky laughter, anxious questions, hysterical reunions. ForbiddenCon 7 was under way in all its glory. I only had to figure out what it was, or else not bother. I didn't sense it needed me to know. . Voices rose and were lost in a babble of others-monotonous harangues, kooky laughter, anxious questions, hysterical reunions. ForbiddenCon 7 was under way in all its glory. I only had to figure out what it was, or else not bother. I didn't sense it needed me to know.

Francesca saw me first. "There you are!" she cried out. Abraham nodded and they surged toward me as I came through the revolving door. I hurried forward, trying to save them the trouble. "You're late!" said Francesca. "We're practically going to miss Abe's panel panel."

I'd promised to meet them in the lobby at three-it was almost four. Nicholas Brawley had laughed and shaken his head when I gave him the destination. "You should have rented a car," he said, and by the time we'd crossed the ocean of suburb between Hollywood and Anaheim I saw his point. The fare was $114.00. Now, however, stepping into the lobby of the convention hotel, I considered the even greater conceptual distance I'd covered, moving from Jared Orthman's office to ForbiddenCon. Brawley's fare was a bargain.

"Dylan," said my father. We embraced, and I felt him sigh against my body. Then I turned and dipped to Francesca, just in time to be enveloped in her swarming attack, not soon enough to plan where on my exposed surface the lipstick would be delivered. It landed north-northwest of my mouth, a misaligned mustache in beet purple. I swabbed it with my thumb and said, "Sorry I'm late."

Francesca's badge was unadorned, while Abraham's bore a special purple ribbon, reading GUEST OF HONOR GUEST OF HONOR . .

"They need Abraham in the greenroom," she said gravely.

"Lead the way," I said.

"That's all you have?" said Abraham, looking at my bag. He seemed disappointed. "You're staying the night?"

"Of course."

"You're registered already," said Francesca. "Zelmo took care of everything." She scrabbled in her purse as we moved through the lobby. "Here's for your room. It works like a credit card-you swipe swipe. The key's for the minibar."

"I'll be hitting it hard," I joked, taking the keys.

"Oh, you won't have time," said Francesca. "Zelmo Swift, the committee chair, is taking us to dinner." She goggled her eyes at the honor.

"He knows you're coming," added Abraham. "I asked and was told it's fine."

"You're being foolish, darling," said Francesca. "You're the guest of honor, why wouldn't your family be invited?"

"It's an extra body at dinner. I asked." He turned to me. "We'll talk there if Zelmo lets us get in a word. Now I have to do this thing. I hope you won't mind sitting."

"Mind?" said Francesca, taking my arm. "He'll be proud!"

My father had lived alone for fourteen years after I left Dean Street for college in Vermont. Little changed in those years-he'd gone on painting paperback-book art to cover his mortgage and shopping, and gone on pouring every spare hour on the clock and spare ounce of energy in his frame into his epic, endless, unseen film. In 1989, at last granting the absurdity of having three floors to himself, he'd converted the brownstone to two duplexes, adding a small kitchen to the second floor and renting out the parlor level, with the basement, to a young family. What remained untouched was the upstairs studio, the monk's quarters where he daubed out days in black paint on celluloid. The neighborhood, in fits and starts, gentrified around him, Isabel Vendle's curse or blessing realized in lag time. For Abraham it was primarily a matter of raised property taxes. He'd never asked what the rental market would bear-the duplex was always leased at a bargain.

There were never women, that I heard of. If Abraham knew how to seek for that part of his life, after Rachel, he didn't know how to mention it. Then he'd come to the attention of Francesca Cassini, a fifty-eight-year-old receptionist working in the offices of Ballantine Books. This man slumping into the offices with his latest jacket art tucked into a pebbly black pressed-board portfolio tied together with black laces, this man slumping from the elevator dressed humbly, in his Art Students League proletarian garb, fingertips slightly stained with paint, his demeanor mordant, as ever-this man had caught the eye of the fresh widow from Bay Ridge. A woman who, despite her immigrant's name, had lived all her life among the postwar generation of New York Jews, Francesca spoke in their manner and recognized them as one recognizes oneself. She'd lost a Jewish husband six months earlier, a career accountant, a man bent, I imagined, over a lifelong column of figures likely as dear to him as the world's longest abstract film in progress was to my father. Abraham, jacket-art celebrity, butt of corridor jokes for his Bartelbyesque mien, didn't stand a chance. If ever a man cried for Francesca's salvaging, here he was. She'd announced herself. She'd attached herself. One winter I visited Brooklyn and there she was, moved into the Dean Street house. I couldn't complain. Francesca organized my father, and she seemed, in a peculiar way, to make him happy. She made him visible to himself, by her contrast.

The greenroom had been set up in a small conference room off the lobby, guarded from the ordinary public by a volunteer at the door. In breathless tones Francesca explained we were a guest of honor's entourage, and we were allowed into the sanctum. It held two urns containing coffee and water for tea, and a sectioned plastic dish full of cubed cheddar and Triscuits. A pair of volunteers sat behind a tray of blank badges and their plastic holders. From them Francesca demanded a pass "for Abraham Ebdus's son," then clipped the result to my shirt pocket.

It wasn't clear what we were waiting for. My father stood, stalled in consternation, in the center of the room, while Francesca dithered around the edges.

"Mr. Ebdus?" ventured a volunteer.

"Yes?"

"The other program participants went upstairs. For your panel. I think it's beginning now."

"Without him?" said Francesca. him?" said Francesca.

"The Nebraska Room, I think. Nebraska West."

We hurried out. "I told you we could go direct," said Abraham to Francesca as we went up the wide central stair to the mezzanine.

"Zelmo said meet at the greenroom."

Abraham just shook his head.

Everyone moved awkwardly in this space, drifting as though rudderless, then abruptly accelerating, in explosions of tiny steps. Crossing paths they'd glare, mutter, wait for apologies. Through this fitful human sea we made our way to Nebraska Ballroom West. A sign taped to the door announced the program as "The Career of Abraham Ebdus," as though this were self-explanatory. I supposed it was, or would be by the time the panel accomplished its work.

We entered at the back of the room. At the front, four figures already occupied the elevated dais, behind table microphones and sweating pitchers of ice water. The dais was covered in maroon bunting which matched the acoustic padding of the ballroom's walls and the thin upholstery of the stackable chairs that were arranged in rows, wall to wall. A crowd of perhaps fifty or sixty sat, attentive and respectful, scratching, coughing, crossing and uncrossing legs, wrinkling papers.

"Good of Abraham to honor us with his presence," said one of the panelists into his microphone, with heavy sarcasm. It drew a burst of relieved laughter from the audience, then a scattering of applause.

"Up," egged Francesca, and my father obeyed. She and I took seats at the aisle, Francesca clutching my arm in her excitement.

The moderator, who'd wisecracked at our entry into the room, was a balding, sixtyish man, distinguishable at this distance from Abraham himself primarily by a garish blue ascot. He introduced himself as Sidney Blumlein, formerly art director for Ballantine, and if not exactly Abraham Ebdus's discoverer then at least his main employer and patron during what he called the crucial first decade the crucial first decade of my father's work. "I've also been his apologist for longer than he'd want me to remind you," Blumlein continued. "I'm not ashamed to say I protected his art from editorial meddling a dozen times, two dozen. And I talked Abe out of refusing his first Hugo." Another warm chuckle from the crowd. "But truly, it was always an honor." of my father's work. "I've also been his apologist for longer than he'd want me to remind you," Blumlein continued. "I'm not ashamed to say I protected his art from editorial meddling a dozen times, two dozen. And I talked Abe out of refusing his first Hugo." Another warm chuckle from the crowd. "But truly, it was always an honor."

The others introduced themselves: first Buddy Green, who blinked through thick glasses and couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen, editor of an on-line zine called Ebdus Collector Ebdus Collector, dedicated to the purchase of the rare original painted boards of my father's designs. I'd blundered across Green's Web site a few times, Googling the name Ebdus to search my own archived journalism. Next was R. Fred Vundane, a tiny, withered man in a Vandyke beard and mad-scientist glasses, author of twenty-eight novels, including Neural Circus Neural Circus, the very first for which my father had painted a jacket. Then Paul Pflug, another paperback painter, a fiftyish biker-type, fat in leather pants, with a blond ponytail and eyes concealed by dark wraparounds. Pflug seated himself at the far edge of the dais, leaving an empty chair and unfilled water glass between himself and Vundane.

The tributes and anecdotes weren't so terribly interesting that I couldn't mostly study my father and his reactions. I didn't recall ever seeing him this way, onstage, at a distance, held in a collective gaze. The result was a kind of nakedness I realized now he'd always avoided. Green spoke gushingly in a high whine, claiming Ebdus as the successor in a line of science-fiction illustrators from Virgil Finlay through Richard Powers-names which meant less than nothing to me-and it was evident Abraham took pleasure in it, however masochistically. Vundane spoke with aggrieved vanity-perhaps he yearned for a panel on "The Works of Vundane"-about Ebdus's deep and uncommon insight into the surrealist nature of his, Vundane's, writing. And when Pflug's turn came he reminisced, gruffly, about meeting my father at the beginning of his career, and claimed Abraham's seriousness, his regard for standards, as an example which had altered the course of his, Pflug's, career.

Abraham didn't speak, just nodded as the others alternated on the microphones. But his distaste for whatever it was Vundane and Pflug had accomplished-or failed to-was painfully obvious. For that matter, it was unmistakable that nobody nobody on the dais liked Pflug. I wondered how he'd come to be invited. on the dais liked Pflug. I wondered how he'd come to be invited.

"I've told this story many times," said Buddy Green. "I was trying to trace the provenance of the original art for the Belmont Specials-his first seventeen paintings. They weren't in the hands of any of the major collectors. They weren't in the hands of any of the minor collectors. Unfortunately, they weren't in my my hands. I kept writing to the Belmont people and they said they didn't know what I was talking about. I thought they were hands. I kept writing to the Belmont people and they said they didn't know what I was talking about. I thought they were stonewalling stonewalling. So, being a little slow on the uptake, it finally occurred to me to ask Abraham. And he explained, like it was no big deal, that he destroyed destroyed them. He couldn't imagine anyone cared." them. He couldn't imagine anyone cared."

Abraham's eyes scoured the crowd, looking for me, I permitted myself to imagine. I wondered how it felt to hear those called his first seventeen paintings his first seventeen paintings.

"It's true," said Sidney Blumlein, with great avuncular gusto. "When I hired him away from Belmont, Abe was systematically systematically destroying the work." destroying the work."

This drew oohs and aahs, a kind of titillated awe from the crowd.

"This man is the only one your father respects," whispered Francesca. "None of the others. Not even Zelmo."

"Zelmo?"

"The chair. I mean, of the whole convention. You'll meet him at dinner. He's a very important lawyer."

"Ah."

Now the microphone was retaken by Blumlein, whom Francesca had claimed as Abraham's only friend on the panel. Being moderator, Blumlein took it upon himself to prize open the jaws of the clam-to find a way to force Abraham Ebdus to acknowledge and address his admirers.

"For more than two decades Abe has graced our field, and I do mean graced. All well and good. But at this time of celebration there's no reason to pussyfoot around the question-he's done so at a remove. His background isn't science fiction, and in that he's an exception from the vast majority of professionals at this gathering, at any any gathering in our field. We're fans, our interests begin in the pulp-magazine tradition, however we might like to hope we've elevated it." gathering in our field. We're fans, our interests begin in the pulp-magazine tradition, however we might like to hope we've elevated it."

Pflug sneered. Vundane took a pitcher and topped off his untouched glass.

The audience was stilled, silenced from its murmurs of approval and recognition, perhaps less certain now that everything they were hearing fell safely in the vein of an Elk Lodge testimonial dinner.

"Abraham Ebdus, let's not kid ourselves, had no interest in elevating elevating it. He was looking to make a buck to support his art-what he regarded as his real art. As perhaps some of you, perhaps it. He was looking to make a buck to support his art-what he regarded as his real art. As perhaps some of you, perhaps many many of you may know, Abe is a filmmaker, an of you may know, Abe is a filmmaker, an experimental experimental filmmaker, of terrific seriousness and devotion. This is how he spends his days, when he's not painting jackets for books. It has nothing to do with science fiction. What's miraculous-what we're all here to celebrate-is that being a filmmaker, of terrific seriousness and devotion. This is how he spends his days, when he's not painting jackets for books. It has nothing to do with science fiction. What's miraculous-what we're all here to celebrate-is that being a real real artist, one of depth and profundity, Abe brought to the books a visionary intensity that artist, one of depth and profundity, Abe brought to the books a visionary intensity that did did elevate. That contained beauty and strangeness. Because he couldn't help himself." elevate. That contained beauty and strangeness. Because he couldn't help himself."

I saw how well Sidney Blumlein knew my father. He was urging Abraham into the weird light of this roomful of celebrants, baiting him with the possibility of an audience worth worth addressing. I didn't know whether I wanted him to succeed. addressing. I didn't know whether I wanted him to succeed.

"This is what, Abe? Only your fifth or sixth time at a convention?"

My father hunched, seeming to wish he could reply with his shoulders. Finally he leaned into the microphone and said, "I haven't counted."

"I first dragged you to a LunaCon, in New York, in the early eighties. You weren't happy."

"No, it wasn't to my taste," said Abraham reluctantly.

The crowd tittered.

"And wouldn't it be fair to say, Abe, you rarely if ever read the books under your jackets?"

Now a collective gasp.

"Oh, I've never done," said Abraham. "I say it without apology. Mr. Vundane, your book, what was the title?"

"Neural Circus," supplied R. Fred Vundane, his jaw so clenched it mashed the vowels.

"Yes, Neural Circus Neural Circus. I was always stopped by that title. It seemed, I'm sorry, vaguely distasteful to me. You speak of surrealists-I suppose you mean the poets. It feels a very poor shade of symbolist imagery, actually. Rimbaud, maybe? No, I was asked to envision other worlds, and I did. Any congruence with the work is happenstance."

I'd read R. Fred's book. I recalled a troupe of genetically altered acrobats residing in a hollowed asteroid.

Blumlein rode in to the rescue now, perhaps pitying Vundane, who'd shrunk even smaller in his chair. "This is just an example, I think, of the wider context, the erudition erudition, that Abe brings to what he touches. In our field he's a comet streaking past, whom we've managed to lure into our orbit. A fellow traveler, like a Stanley Kubrick or a Stanislaw Lem. He disdains our vocabulary even as he reinvents it to suit his own impulses."

"I have to interrupt, Sidney, to say you're overstating the value of what I do." Here was a subject to rouse Abraham's passion. "You throw names, Kubrick, Lem. And Mr. Green, god bless him, throws Virgil Finlay, whom I've never had the good fortune to encounter. Let me me throw a few names. Ernst, Tanquy, Matta, Kandinsky. Once in a while, the early Pollock or Rothko. If I've accomplished one thing, it's been to give a rough education in contemporary painting, or what was contemporary painting in 1950. The intersection of late surrealism and early abstract expressionism. Period. It's derivative, every last brushstroke. All quoted. Nothing to do with outer space, nothing throw a few names. Ernst, Tanquy, Matta, Kandinsky. Once in a while, the early Pollock or Rothko. If I've accomplished one thing, it's been to give a rough education in contemporary painting, or what was contemporary painting in 1950. The intersection of late surrealism and early abstract expressionism. Period. It's derivative, every last brushstroke. All quoted. Nothing to do with outer space, nothing remotely remotely. Honestly, if you people hadn't put such a seal on yourselves, if you'd visit a museum even once, you'd know you're celebrating a second-rate thief thief."

"You stopped at pop art?" asked Blumlein.

"Please. You have Mr. Pflug for that. That's all there was was when I began doing jackets-pop art." when I began doing jackets-pop art."

Blumlein and Ebdus had begun to seem a kind of vaudeville act, scripted at the expense of the fall guys who'd made the mistake of joining them onstage. The audience ate it up.

"Yet here you are, Abe, among us. LunaCon wasn't to your liking, but you've spent a career among us, sharing your gift. You're the guest of honor guest of honor."

"Look, that's fair. You want an explanation. It isn't pretty. If I were a stronger person I wouldn't wouldn't be here. I'm tempted by flattery, so I come. My work on film is hardly known. It's be here. I'm tempted by flattery, so I come. My work on film is hardly known. It's unknown unknown. You people have been very kind, too kind. I've grown fond, despite myself. My companion enjoys travel. There isn't one explanation, there are several."

"Do you feel a part of the field, warts and all?"

Abraham shrugged. "It's a bohemian demimonde, like any other. There are similar convocations in the world of so-called experimental film, but I've always declined to go. Some attend imagining they can further themselves. But the work, the true true work, is of course carried on elsewhere. Perhaps for me the stakes there are too high, so I accept your invitations instead. I don't ponder these things. An event like this is an accident, not necessarily a happy one. I frankly marvel at the oddness of a room gathered in honor of a forgotten man, a nobody. Perhaps I can wake you from the trance you're in, but I doubt it." work, is of course carried on elsewhere. Perhaps for me the stakes there are too high, so I accept your invitations instead. I don't ponder these things. An event like this is an accident, not necessarily a happy one. I frankly marvel at the oddness of a room gathered in honor of a forgotten man, a nobody. Perhaps I can wake you from the trance you're in, but I doubt it."

Fifty people laughed in delighted recognition, and a light spontaneous applause broke out. I heard a woman in the row ahead whisper appreciatively, "He always says that."