On the drive to the construction site he scoured his faulty memory, but couldn't come up with a likely scenario by which a huge wad of gum might have ended up in his pubic hair. Sure, he'd had an odd encounter with Trish the night before, in which she'd fed him leftovers, taken him to bed, gotten naked, pinned him down, tickled him and pulled his pants around his ankles, only to get upset and lock herself in the bathroom. Just one more baffling episode in a life that had become full of them. Strange as it was, it didn't explain where the gum had come from (Trish, as far as he knew, didn't chew gum, and he was sure she didn't have any in her mouth when they'd kissed). He decided the gum's origins didn't matter nearly as much as what it represented: that he was not in control of his life, that at any given moment of the day he had no idea what was happening to him. He was a man with a crush on a prost.i.tute, a condom in his wallet, and gum in his pubic hair-what could it all mean?

All he could say for sure was he had come to Nevada to escape, to embrace a solitary life, but with Weela gone, he had been overtaken with a loneliness that verged on desperation. At home, his children and wives gathered around for scripture reading, he felt, more piercingly than ever, that his existence was a sham, something quickly a.s.sembled for the sake of a photograph. During the long weekend in Virgin he was not allowed an idle moment: he spent several foggy hours in priesthood council before and after church, changed out the shocks on Trish's Volkswagen, drained silt from all three of Big House's water heaters, suffered through a Rose-of-Sharon Sunday dinner (her special undercooked chicken with a side of Ritz-cracker-and-cauliflower ca.s.serole), chopped wood, took in three junior league basketball games and two band concerts, attended the Sunday afternoon Summit of the Wives, in which he had to referee a complex dispute over the yearly distribution of hand-me-down clothing and which lucky children might be in the running for a new pair of shoes, failed to repair a broken heat pump in one of his rental houses despite two hours of knuckle-busting, lost a forty-five-minute-long argument with Nola at midnight, in bed, about Beverly's handling of the family finances-and over that entire long weekend there was not a single minute in which the dark-skinned woman of mystery did not a.s.sert herself into his waking mind. Even as he conjured her face and replayed her laugh over and over again in a looping reel, another line of thought ran like a crackling cross-current against the flow: Was it possible that right now, somewhere far away and lost in the particulars of her own life, she could be thinking of him him?

Of course, all of this thinking thinking-an activity he was not widely known to engage in on such an intense or extended basis-did not go unnoticed. Beverly seemed always to be nearby, noticing noticing, the whole of her formidable radar on duty. At Sunday dinner he sat at the head of the table lost in a memory of Weela's wet cheek against his, when he looked up and saw Beverly standing in the kitchen doorway, watching him. He looked away and thought, Am I smiling? I'm not smiling, am I? Am I smiling? I'm not smiling, am I? Of course he was, and what was worse, he had no right to be: he had just sampled a forkful of Rose's ca.s.serole. He sifted the food in his mouth-and with little effort composed a suitably pained expression-but when he glanced up again, Beverly had disappeared into the kitchen. Of course he was, and what was worse, he had no right to be: he had just sampled a forkful of Rose's ca.s.serole. He sifted the food in his mouth-and with little effort composed a suitably pained expression-but when he glanced up again, Beverly had disappeared into the kitchen.

That night, they prayed together, kneeling at the foot of the bed, Golden, in his plaid plus-sized pajamas with a split in the inseam, saying, Hmm, Hmm, and, and, Uh-hm Uh-hm, and thanking and blessing what-or whoever wandered into his mind. Beverly laid out her own prayer like a lawyer presenting closing arguments; she outlined the family's many problems, the financial difficulties and spiritual malaise, the sibling rivalries, the strife among sister-wives, and finished up with a plea: "Give this family, Heavenly Father, the leadership and guidance it has been sorely lacking of late, to bring us through our trials, to make us happier and safer, and to one day bring us, together, into Thy care, In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." After which she looked Golden straight in the eye, climbed into bed, and proceeded to ignore him.

It was one of those moments he had become all too familiar with: she was mad at him, and he wasn't sure exactly why. She'd even involved G.o.d, which meant she was deadly serious. He'd learned that actually asking her to tell him what was wrong never got him anywhere in instances like this. It was best to say nothing, to cut his losses, to maintain the dignity of the ignorant. He turned off the lamp, pulled the sheet up to his neck, and waited for the good-night kiss. Just like their double-prayer at the foot of the bed, the good-night kiss was a two-decades-old custom that never varied: she'd roll over, give him a kiss on the cheek, say, "Good night, Goldy," and he'd wait a beat or two before rolling over to kiss her and say, "Good night, Oldie," which at one time had been funny enough to make them giggle-Beverly having three years on him as she did-but was now bedrock ritual and no laughing matter. He listened to coyotes yipping somewhere far up the canyon, settled his large behind into its crater in the mattress, wondered when was the last time they had for-gone the good-night kiss, and could not remember it ever happening.

He did remember some of the other jokes they'd had between them, how she used to tease him gently and he would respond like a bashful, happy child. Sometimes when she was feeling frisky Beverly would turn off the lights and say, Where is my big man, the One Mighty and Strong? Where is my big man, the One Mighty and Strong? She would grope for him in the darkness, until she found him and remarked upon how mighty and strong he truly was. It was unlike her to be irreverent about something so sacred, and this Golden found enormously arousing. It had been years, five or six at least, since they had played that game. She would grope for him in the darkness, until she found him and remarked upon how mighty and strong he truly was. It was unlike her to be irreverent about something so sacred, and this Golden found enormously arousing. It had been years, five or six at least, since they had played that game.

While he stared at the patterns on the dark ceiling, he decided if he did not pee right now he would be up in the middle of the night; his bladder, like every other part of him, was not what it used to be. He slipped into the small master bath, flipped the light, and with an inaudible sigh read the sign above the toilet tank:

Golden, Please Take a Seat

He would admit it, urinating neatly and accurately was not easy for a man of his considerable height and occasional lack of focus, but did that mean he had to sit down when he did it? As always, he took a moment to consider disobeying the placard. Why shouldn't a man, in his own bathroom, in his own house, be able to pee any way he saw fit? He sighed again, lowered his pajama bottoms and took a seat.

When he settled back into bed, he noticed Beverly had not moved. He listened to the clock tick, the ponderous workings of his own lungs. Finally, he gave in. He turned over and spoke meekly into the darkness, "Is there something wrong?"-but her eyes were closed, her breathing even, her arms tucked neatly at her sides.

He watched her for a solid minute, waiting for movement, any sign at all, and then put his mouth to her ear. "Good night, Oldie," he whispered. She didn't grin, she didn't so much as flinch.

A HOLE IN THE GROUND Out at the job site, Golden called Nola to inquire how best to get gum out of hair. He had thought the gum would have disintegrated on its own, but now, a week after he'd discovered it, it seemed to have hardened into a lump of gla.s.sy plastic that yanked on the sensitive hairs of his groin with every step he took.

"So you have gum in your hair," said Nola in her playful, let's-have-a-little-fun tone. Nola, of all his wives, was the easiest to talk to; she was rarely jealous or needy and never failed to say exactly what she meant. For the last two or three years-ever since Glory's death, really-she'd been trying every trick in her considerable book to jolly him out of the funk he was in.

"Yeah," Golden said. "A little. In my hair. In the hair on top of my head."

"Now how'd that happen? You don't chew gum, do you?"

"Me? No. Somebody else. A kid in a car...I was out by the highway and a kid in a car, in a convertible, threw his gum at me and it stuck in my hair."

Nola let out a honk of laughter that made him wince. "Why was there a kid throwing gum at you?"

For a moment he did nothing but listen to the sound of the bad connection, the squeaks and hisses of the ionosphere. What had ever possessed him to call Nola? He could have talked to Rose-of-Sharon, who had become so remote and withdrawn lately her whispery voice barely registered over the phone line, but certainly she would have given him a few tips without any fuss, and Beverly would have lectured him, but probably would have kept it to herself.

"I don't know," Golden said. "Kids these days. Terrible. I'm glad it was gum and not something else."

"What kind of gum is it?"

"Well, you know, Dubble Bubble or one a them, I think. Juicy Fruit. Something along those lines. Why does it matter?"

"It doesn't, honey, it doesn't." She laughed again. "You know I just like to have the facts."

After several more rounds of questioning having to do with the age and att.i.tude of the gum-thrower and what kind of car he was driving, she finally got down to the important stuff. "The first thing you can try is ice. It never works, but try it anyway. The next thing is peanut b.u.t.ter. That works sometimes, but almost never. Rub it in there and see what happens. The foolproof method is get out your scissors and start cutting. Works every time."

"I don't have any scissors."

"You've got peanut b.u.t.ter, don't you?"

"I think so."

"Then break out the Skippy, buster, and get to it."

There was a knock at the door of the trailer and Golden looked up to see the smiling face of Ted Leo framed in the dusty gla.s.s panel. In his early sixties, Ted had a nearly full head of unnaturally chestnut hair and a chest-and-belly combination that jutted out over his belt like a threat: Clear the way or get dumped on your a.s.s Clear the way or get dumped on your a.s.s. On his fingers and wrists he wore the gaudy ornamentation of a once-poor man who now considered himself a person of means.

Though Golden was grateful to Ted Leo for giving him a job when he most needed one, it was often hard to overlook the fact that the SOB and his unpredictable moods made his working days a misery. He had a brittle, childlike temper that showed itself at the most unlikely or trivial moments, and when he wasn't angry, an overbearingly chummy style that made you nostalgic for the temper tantrums. He had once taken an eight-pound sledge and knocked down most of a framed-in wall because he wasn't happy with a door placement, but when Golden once called him, hands trembling, to tell him their electrical contractor had fled the country under threat of arrest for statutory rape, delaying the whole project by at least a month, Ted Leo simply told Golden to take care of it, he had more important things to do.

As Leonard had once observed, the only thing you knew you were going to get from Ted Leo was that you never knew what you were going to get from Ted Leo.

A few days after Golden won the bid for p.u.s.s.yCat Manor II, Ted Leo had taken him on a driving tour of his many land and business holdings: the p.u.s.s.yCat Manor I; the local weekly, called The Valley Cryer The Valley Cryer, which was mostly letters to the editor, advertis.e.m.e.nts and brothel coupons; a small ranch that seemed to feature nothing but miniature horses; the Stop-n-Drop Truck Stop; a defunct copper mine that one day, Ted Leo claimed, would produce a fortune in gold.

Ted Leo told Golden he had one last thing to show him, a secret, so long as Golden could keep a secret, wink wink wink wink. They took a vague dirt road heading north along the eastern boundary of the Nevada Test Site. The man driving was Ted Leo's hulking henchman, an Arizona Papago named Nelson Norman. Golden, as a member of the relatively exclusive Fraternity of Very Large Men, welcomed Nelson as a brother and equal; though he had barely met the man and knew almost nothing about him, he was inclined to like anyone who knew what it was like to move through life so conspicuously. And Nelson was nothing if not conspicuous. With his expansive, neckless torso and powder-barrel legs, he had the bursting, overgrown quality of a prizewinning pumpkin. His head alone, topped with a neat black brush cut, must have weighed in at forty pounds, and Golden had to wonder, as they drove along the fence that stretched north and south into separate infinities, how Nelson ever managed, with those stubby dinosaur arms sticking out of his torso at a forty-five-degree angle, to b.u.t.ton his own pants.

Without warning, Nelson gave the steering wheel-which was partially buried in the cushion of his belly-a hard yank to the left and expertly surfed the big Chevy cross-country over swales of sand and rabbit brush. To Golden it felt very much like fighting through rough seas, and to keep the nausea at bay he focused on the picture of a little girl attached to a string of rosary beads and hung from the rearview mirror. She had a full head of glossy black hair and big liquid eyes so bright and full of wonder that to look into them gave him a warm ache in his throat.

"Yours?" Golden asked over the roar of the engine, and Nelson nodded. "Marjorine. Three years old." He glanced at the picture and Golden caught a split-second expression of intense fatherly pride that disappeared as quickly as it had come, replaced by the default mask of professional boredom.

Nelson slowed a little to guide the truck down into a sand wash and then they were driving along the dry, rock-littered riverbed, bouncing against each other like dice in a cup, Ted Leo in the middle and taking the worst of it. They stopped when they came to the Test Site fence, a standard chain-link ten-footer topped with three rusted strands of barbed wire that spanned the steep banks of the arroyo just above their heads.

Nelson rolled out of the cab to pull away piles of dead brush and they drove directly under the fence, the snipped-off ends of the wire screek screeking on the pickup's roof, and proceeded up the wash for another mile or so. They climbed out of the wash onto a broken plain of creosote and biscuit-colored sand and walked a few hundred feet until Ted Leo gave the order to stop.

"Isn't this place restricted or top secret or something?" Golden said.

"For some people," Ted Leo said, checking his watch. "A patrol comes along that ridge every thirty minutes, so don't get your undies tied up just yet. Years ago I did a tour here, back in my GI days, saw a good number of the big ones, you know, Hardtack, Dirty Harry, Upshot-Knothole. Got friends up and down the chain of command, and if they ain't my friends, well, more likely than not they owe me a favor or two. So there's nothing at all to worry about. Now." He stepped back and gestured to the expanse of sand and brush that curved away toward every horizon. "See anything?"

Golden made a show of looking around and said that he didn't see anything of note.

"Try again," Ted Leo said.

This time Golden made no effort to humor the man. "I'm not seeing anything."

"Take your time."

"Nothing. I don't see anything."

"Give you a hint. Look under those pontoons you call your feet."

Golden looked down. Under his boots was nothing but the pebbly outer territories of a defunct anthill.

Ted Leo accepted a shovel from Nelson, who had it at the ready like a bored nurse a.s.sisting a routine surgery. Ted Leo nudged Golden aside with his hip and began pushing sand around with the shovel. There was a sc.r.a.pe and a clink, and Ted Leo made a delicate eight-step ritual out of hitching up his avocado polyester golf slacks and lowering himself to his knees. With the reverential patience of a dedicated archaeologist he pushed and dusted and flicked away the crumbling clumps of sand until he had revealed a steel hatch door fitted with a crude latch-handle fashioned from one-inch rebar.

Ted Leo offered to let Golden open it but Golden, sensing a practical joke, declined. Ted Leo yanked open the hatch with such a scripted flourish that Golden stepped back despite himself, but no paper streamers or joke-store snakes flew into the air, no one in a werewolf mask leapt out growling and waving his arms.

a.s.suming something of a professorial air by elevating his diction and occasionally gesturing with a stick, Ted Leo explained what they were standing on was a buried test bunker, constructed of reinforced concrete and filled with animal subjects and scientific equipment meant to record the response of these animals to the shock waves and radiation of one nuclear test, dubbed Shot Priscilla ("Seven megatons of pure persuasion," Ted said wistfully), detonated twenty years ago, exactly a thousand feet from this spot. "The blast collapsed the ventilation system and the dogs and all the other little critters they had in here suffocated, bless their souls. The average person like yourself looks out across this landscape and sees nothing, but underneath our feet are miles and miles of bunkers and shelters and tunnels and elevator shafts, depots and storehouses and control centers. It'll put a chill down your spine to see it all, to know it's there, like something out of a science fiction movie. Most of it never to be used or seen again, like this one here."

Golden gestured to the hole. "What's down there now?"

Ted Leo accepted the flashlight that Nelson had been patiently holding in his pillowy fist.

"Why don't you take a look yourself?"

Choosing not to reveal himself as an unredeemable pansy, Golden edged toward the mouth of the bunker and caught a whiff of its cold, iron-tainted breath. In the beam of his flashlight he couldn't make out much more than a ma.s.s of hanging wire that threw writhing shadows against a concrete wall covered with faint equations and cryptic instructions scribbled in oil pencil.

"Boo!" shouted Ted Leo, giving Golden a poke in the behind with his stick. Golden jumped as if something had bitten him. Ted Leo roared with laughter and looked back at Nelson to gauge what he thought of this wonderful bit of leg-pulling; if his expression was any guide, Nelson thought nothing of it at all.

Golden forced a smile, to show what a good sport he was. "Looks like lots of wire in there."

"Pretty much, and some leftover equipment, plus the mortal remains of those dogs and rabbits and whatnot. The s.h.i.tbird scientists-I don't think I have to tell you how little respect I have for scientists-decided their little tests were compromised, so they salvaged the expensive equipment and had the rest buried. Tidy up, move on to the next fiasco and forget about it, that's how your tax dollars work around here. Or maybe you folks don't pay taxes, I don't know. Anyhow, as far as the bra.s.s here is concerned, this little ma.s.s grave no longer exists."

Golden nodded with somber understanding even though he had no earthly idea why they were out here or what Ted Leo was trying to tell him. Ted Leo, who claimed to have once been a devout Christian and a minister of the word, believed in the power of parable, of the well-ill.u.s.trated metaphor. He was always trying to send a message of some kind or another-he wouldn't have wasted his valuable time driving Golden out here just to give him a history lesson-and Golden decided it would be best just to wait it out and hope he spotted the message when it decided to show itself.

"Sad," Golden said. "A real shame."

"No it isn't," Ted Leo said. "Not for me. Of all the real estate I own or will own in the future, this might prove to be the most valuable. Because I'm the only one-besides you and big boy here, and maybe a couple a guys who mustered out years ago and forgot about it-who know it's here. You with me now?"

Now Golden was really starting to get confused. He said, "Sure. I see what you mean."

"See, if a place is secret, if you're the only one knows about it, doesn't that place belong to you? It's yours yours, you can do with it whatever you want, you can put anything you want in it, and n.o.body will ever know. Poof Poof, disappeared, like something on The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone. Bugsy Siegel? Would have given his little Jewish soul for a place like this. No more dumping bodies out under a bush for some hunter or forest ranger to find. This place right here is a Mafioso's wet dream." Bugsy Siegel? Would have given his little Jewish soul for a place like this. No more dumping bodies out under a bush for some hunter or forest ranger to find. This place right here is a Mafioso's wet dream."

Golden said, "Bugsy Siegel?"

Ted Leo gave Golden a hard look. "You telling me you don't know who Bugsy Siegel is."

Golden shook is head.

"Bugsy Siegel. The man who built Las Vegas."

"Sorry," Golden said.

"Lefty Rosenthal, heard of him?"

"Nope."

"Anthony 'The Ant' Spilotro? The Fischetti brothers?"

Golden could see that Ted Leo was starting to get worked up; this time he just shrugged.

"Amazing!" Ted Leo cried. "Your own father, I saw with my own eyes, had dinner one night with Lefty at the Bellagio. I would have given my own left f.u.c.king arm to have a sit-down with Lefty Rosenthal, but who was I? Just another little guy, dreaming what it would be like to be a big shot like your old man. Your own father, you see what I'm saying, having words with Lefty Rosenthal, one of the greats. And you don't even know who any of these people are."

"My father never talked about that kind of thing."

"Even so!" Ted Leo was fairly shouting now. "How can you not know who Bugsy f.u.c.king Siegel was? How! You people just sit around reading your funny Mormon Bible, is that what you do?"

Golden shrugged again. Short of jumping into the hole at his feet, he couldn't figure out how to make himself less of a target.

"Didn't your father teach you anything?"

"Not really."

This answer seemed to please Ted Leo, at least. He looked at the bunker hole and sighed. "Dear Jesus. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that for somebody like Bugsy or Lefty or Frank, a place like this would be invaluable, see what I mean?" He squatted, still shaking his head, and patted the steel hatch with a kind of wistful fondness. "n.o.body could find anything here, because there's no here here, see? Nothing to find. You've got enemies, a place like this could come in handy."

He gave Golden a long steady look, waiting to see if his message was having the intended effect. Golden thought about it and said, "I'm not your enemy, Mr. Leo."

"Course not!" said Ted Leo brightly. "But things change, we both know that, Brother Richards. And we both know that we have to do everything to protect what is ours. The world, especially this part of it, is full of cheats and liars. And that's why I chose you to build my palace. I believe you're a person who, in his own nutty little way, believes in G.o.d and doing right by his fellow man. I believe we're two of the same kind. I believe I I can trust can trust you you."

Golden Richards, as a general contractor, had had many strange dealings with his clients: he had been sued and countersued, he had been bribed and stiffed and conned, he had been asked to accept a flea-bitten male lion in exchange for a three-thousand-dollar debt, but n.o.body had ever threatened, even in the most oblique way, to murder him and hide his body in a secret nuclear testing bunker full of dead animals if he didn't mind his manners. He wondered if there weren't already one or two unfortunates interred with the dogs and rabbits somewhere under his feet. If he weren't so desperate for work, he might have thought twice about working for a man like this.

"You'll have nothing to worry about, Mr. Leo," Golden said.

"I know, Brother Richards. Why do you think I brought you out here?"

A LOVELY EVENING So while Golden was on the phone with Nola getting tips on gum removal, Ted Leo was sticking his head inside the work trailer, shouting, "Brother Richards!" in his croaking voice. Ted Leo had promised from the beginning he wouldn't mention Golden's secret lifestyle to anyone, but yelling "Brother Richards!" every time he saw him did not seem like the height of discretion.

Golden motioned him in, told Nola that he'd call her back, and hung up. Ted Leo made himself comfortable on the dusty love seat across from Golden's desk, picked up a roll of blueprints, looked at them upside down before tossing them aside. He wore a yellow guayabera, beige gabardine pants and polished Top-Siders that matched his artificially chestnut hair with their otherworldly shine.

"Looks like you've got somebody working out there, at least," he said. "With all the mess and equipment you'd think we were trying to rebuild the Colosseum."

The man was in as good a mood as he'd ever seen him, but Golden knew to keep his guard up; Ted Leo's good moods, he knew from experience, could go south very quickly.

"You can see we're getting there, Mr. Leo," Golden said. "We've got the new trusses in, and Ratlett is sending a crew back to fix the window casings I was telling you-"

"Brother Richards," Ted Leo said, holding up both hands as if to stop an oncoming car, "let's forget the professional talk for a minute, which we'll get to soon enough. Do you know why I'm here?"

Golden said that he didn't.

"Do you know how long it's been since you and I had a nice one-on-one conversation?"

Golden shook his head. This was one of the things that annoyed Golden most about Ted Leo: this asking of questions, one after the other, in a way that seemed incomprehensible until Ted Leo finally got to the point. Before he bought the brothel and became what amounted to a glorified pimp, Ted Leo had run a successful evangelical ministry somewhere in the jungles of Central America. Golden imagined this was how Ted Leo converted the locals: asking a series of seemingly unrelated yes-or-no questions until they had unwittingly agreed to be baptized.

"Do you enjoy a good lasagna?" Ted Leo asked.

Golden had to admit that he did.

"And do you have big plans on your social agenda for this evening?"

With a pained look on his face Golden said, "Don't think so."

"Then why don't you come over to my place for dinner. Seven o'clock. My private residence is in the back, as you know. Don't go through the front door or my girls'll jump your bones and not let go." He winked. "Been a slow week."

That night, Golden sat in Ted Leo's living room, hair plastered to his forehead and fingernails scrubbed clean, doing his best to carry on a polite conversation with two hookers. Janine, a disturbingly thin woman with huge silver hoop earrings and ribs like lobster traps, sat to Golden's left sipping wine and adjusting her wig, while Chalis, the plump blond girl who looked no older than sixteen, was telling them how living next to a feedlot in New Mexico her whole life had turned her into a dedicated vegetarian.

"G.o.d, those poor cows!" she cried. "Do you know how much they suffer so we can enjoy our burgers and hot dogs and all that?"

Golden allowed that he didn't.