Distancewise, I only had to walk a few gloomy steps before arriving at the place purported to be the home of our Miss L. By then it was quite clear what I would find. There were no surprises so far. When I looked up at the neon-inscribed name of the shop, I heard a young woman's telephone voice whispering the words into my ear: Mademoiselle Fashions. A fake French accent here, S.V.P. And this is the store-no?-where it seems you acquire so many of your own lovely ensembles. But I'm jumping ahead with my expectations.

What I did not expect were the sheer lengths to which you would go in order to arouse my sense of strange revelation. Was this, I pray, done to bring us closer in the divine bonds of unreality? Anyway, I saw what you wanted me to see, or what I thought you wanted me to see, in the window of Mlle Fashions. The thing was even dressed in the same plaid-skirted outfit that I recall Miss Locher was wearing on her only visit to my office. And I have to admit that I was a bit shocked-perhaps attributable in part to the unstable climatic conditions of the day-when I focused on the frozen face of the manikin. Then again, perhaps I was subliminally looking for a resemblance between Miss Locher (your fellow conspirator, whether she knows it or not) and the figure in the window. You can probably guess what I noticed, or thought I noticed, about its eyes-what you would have me perceive as a certain moistness in their fixed gaze. Oh, woe is this Wednesday's child!

Unfortunately, I was unable to linger long enough to positively confirm the above perception, for a medium-intensity shower began to descend at that point. The rain sent me running to a nearby phone booth, where I had some business to conduct anyway. Retrieving the number of the clothes store from my memory, I phoned them for the second time that afternoon. That was easy. What was not quite as easy was imitating your voice, my high-pitched love, and asking if the store's accounting department had mailed out a bill that month for my, I mean your, charge account. My impersonation of you must have been adequate, for the voice on the phone reminded me that I'd already taken care of all my recent expenditures. You thanked the salesgirl for this information, apologizing for your forgetfulness, and then said goodbye. Perhaps I should have asked the girl if she was the one who helped rig up that manikin to look like Miss Locher, if indeed the situation was not the other way around, with Miss Locher following the fashion of display-window dummies. In any case, I did establish a definite link between you and the clothes store. It seemed you might have accomplices anywhere, and to tell you the truth I was beginning to feel a bit paranoid standing in that little phone booth.

The rain was coming down even harder as I made a mad dash back to my black sedan. A bit soaked, I sat in the car for a few moments wiping off my rain-spotted glasses with a handkerchief. I said that I felt a slight case of paranoia coming on, and what follows proves it. While sitting there with my glasses off, I thought I saw something move in the rearview mirror. My visual vulnerability, combined with the claustrophobic sensation of being in a car with rain-blinded windows, together added up to a momentary but very definite panic on my part. Of course I quickly put on my glasses and found that there was nothing whatever in the back seat. But the point is that I was forced to physically verify this fact in order to relieve my spasm of anxiety. You succeeded, my love, in getting me to experience a moment of self-terror, and in that moment I, too, became your accomplice against myself. Brava!

You have indeed succeeded-assuming all my inferences thus far are for the most part true-perhaps more than you know or ever intended. Having confessed this much, I can now get to the real focus and "motivating factor" of my appeal to you. This has far less to do with A. Locher than it does with us, dearest. Please try to be sympathetic and, above all, patient.

I have not been well lately, and you know the reason why. This business with Miss Locher, far from bringing us to a more intimate understanding of each other, has only made the situation worse. Horrible nightmares have been plaguing me every night. Me, of all people! And they are directly due to the well-intentioned (I think) influence of you and Miss L. Let me describe one of these nightmares for you, and thereby describe them all. This will be the last dream story, I promise.

In the dream I am in my bedroom, sitting upon my unmade bed and wearing my pajamas (Oh, will you never see them?). The room is partially illuminated by beams from a streetlight shining through the window. And it also seems to me that a whole galaxy of constellations, although not actually witnessed firsthand, are contributing their light to the scene, a ghastly glowing which unnaturally blanches the entire upstairs of the house. I have to use the bathroom and walk sleepily out to the hallway...where I get the shock of my life.

In the whitened hallway-I cannot say brightened, because it is almost as if a very fine and luminous powder coats everything-are these things lying up and down the floor, at the top of the stairway, and even upon the stairs themselves as they disappear into the darker regions below. These things are people dressed as dolls, or else dolls made up to look like people. I remember being confused about which it was.

Their heads are turned in all directions as I emerge from the bedroom, and their eyes shine in the white darkness. Paralyzed-yes!-with terror, I merely return a fixed gaze, wondering if my eyes are shining the same as theirs. Then one of the doll people, slouching against the wall on my left, turns its head haltingly upon a stiff little neck and looks into my eyes. Worse, it talks. And its voice is an horrific cackling parody of speech. Even more horrible are its words, as it says: "Become as we are, sweetie. Die into us." Suddenly I begin to feel very weak, as if my life were being drained out of me. Summoning all my powers of movement, I manage to rush back to my bed to end the dream.

After I awake, screaming, my heart pounds like a mad prisoner inside me and doesn't let up until morning. This is very disturbing, for there's truth in those studies relating nightmares to cardiac arrest. For some poor souls, that imaginary incubus squatting upon their sleeping forms can do real medical harm. And I do not want to become one of these cases.

You can help me, sweetheart. I know you didn't intend things to turn out this way, but that elaborate joke you perpetrated with the help of Miss Locher has really gotten to me. Consciously, of course, I still uphold the criticism I've already expressed about the basic absurdity of your work. Unconsciously, however, you seem to have awakened me to a stratum (zone, I know you would say) of uncanny terror in my mind-soul. I will at least admit that your ideas form a powerful psychic metaphor, though no more than that. Which is quite enough, isn't it? It's certainly quite enough to inspire the writing of this letter, in which I plead for your attention, since I've failed to attract it in any other way. I can't go on like this! You have strange powers over me, as if you didn't already know it. Please release me from your spell, and let's begin a normal romance. Who really gives a damn about the metaphysics of invisible realms anyway? It's only emotions, not abstractions, that count. Love and terror are the true realities, whatever the unknowable mechanics are that turn their wheels, and our own.

In Miss Locher I believe you sent me the embodiment of your deepest convictions. But suppose I start admitting weird things about Miss L? Suppose I admit that she was somehow just a dream. (Then she must have been my secretary's dream too, for she saw her.) Suppose I even admit that Miss Locher was not a girl but actually a multi-selved thing-part Man, part manikin-and with your assistance dreamed itself for a time into existence, reproduced itself in human form just as we reproduce ourselves as an infinite variety of images and shapes, all those impersonations of our flesh? You would like to have me think of things like this. You would like to have me think of all the mysterious connections among the things of this world, and of other worlds. So what if there are? I don't care anymore.

Forget other selves. Forget the third (fourth, nth) person view of life; only first and second persons are important (I and thou). And by all means forget dreams. I, for one, know I'm not a dream. I am real, Dr.-(There, how do you like being anonymized?) So please be so kind as to acknowledge my existence.

It is now after midnight, and I dread going to sleep and having another of those nightmares. You can save me from this fate, if only you can find it in your heart to do so. But you must hurry. Time is running out for us, my love, just as these last few waking moments are now running out for me. Tell me it is still not too late for our love. Please don't destroy everything for us. You will only hurt yourself. And despite your high-flown theory of masochism, there is really nothing divine about it. So no more of your strange psychic deceptions. Be simple, be nice. Oh, I am so tired. I must say good night, then, but not good Bye, my foolish love. Hear me now. Sleep your singular sleep and dream of the many, the others. They are also part of you, part of us. Die into them and leave me in peace. I will come for you later, and then you can always be with me in a special corner all your own, just as my tittle Amy once was. This is what you've wanted, and this you shall have. Die into them. Yes, die into them, you simple soul, you silly dolling. Die with a nice bright gleam in your eyes.

THE CHYMIST.

Hello, miss. Why, yes, as a matter of fact I am looking for some company this evening. My name is Simon, and you are...Rosemary. Funny, I was just daydreaming in the key of Rosicrucianism. Never mind. Please sit, and watch out for splinters on your chair, so you don't catch your dress. It appears that everything around here has come to the point of frays and splinters. But what this old place lacks in freshness of decor it amply makes up in atmosphere, don't you think? Yes, as you say, I suppose it does serve its purpose. It's a little lax as far as table service, though. I'm afraid that in the way of drinks one must procure for one's self. Thank you, I'm glad you think I have a nice way of talkin'. Now, can I get you something from the bar? All right, a beer you shall have. And do me a favor please: before I come back, you will already have taken that wad of gum out of your mouth. Thank you, and I'll return shortly with our drinks.

Here you are, Rosie, one beer from the bar. Just don't belch and we'll get along fine. I'm pleased to see you've gotten rid of your gum, though I hope you didn't swallow it. The human stomach should probably remain ignorant of what it's like to accommodate beer and bubble gum in the same digestive episode. I know it's your stomach, but I'm concerned about what gets mixed up inside any human vessel. No, I said vessel, not that anatomical cavity to which you smuttily refer: Man's hole is not his vessel. We're talking about things in which other things may be contained.

That's right, like that dirty little glass in your immaculate hand, now you're getting it. My glass? Yes, you do see a lot of red in there. I like red drinks. Created this one myself. A Red Rum Ginny, I call it. White rum, gin, pale ginger ale, and, ideally, cranberry juice, though the bartender here had to substitute some undistilled maraschino solution, which has neither the rich red color nor a fraction of the tartness of your smile. Would you like a sip? Go ahead, take a good belt. If you don't like it, say so. Yes, different is the word for it, the wellspring of its interest, as you've observed. I wonder, though, in whose mouth it tastes more different-mine or yours? We'll never know. Even adhering to the same mixological formula there's always some difference in taste, if only you have the sensitivity to notice it. In general, I think, there are always those varying factors that make every moment of our lives unique and strange to every other moment.

I have a high tolerance for diversity myself. You're smiling at my emphasis. You think you know something about me, and perhaps you do. Sharp girl! Of course, the imp of perversity in your thoughts is only one of the many offspring of the imp of the diverse. And diversity is the soul of life, or at least of life's amusement.

Pardon me? Yes, I have created other drinks. There's another red one I've pioneered that's actually just a variation on a standard number, but I like it. The Sweet and Sour Bloody Mary, made with high-test vodka, sugar, a lemon slice, and ketchup. It does sound like a meal in itself at that. Very fortifying. No, sorry to spoil your joke, my fondness for red drinks does not extend to the vampire's neck-drawn nectar. Besides, I'm quite able to work during daylight hours.

Where? Well, I suppose I can tell you, sub rosa, that I'm employed by a pharmaceutical company not far from here, near that run-down warehouse district. I'm a chemist there. Yes, really. Well, it's nice the way you could see right off that I wasn't no average guy just comin' round after work lookin' for some fun. Perceptive girl! However, I did in fact come directly here after working a little overtime. I noticed while I was at the bar that you were eyeing and toeing the briefcase I brought in with me and set so discreetly under the table. Yes, there are papers in there relating to my work, among other things, never mind just now about that. But you're right that it would be foolish to leave anything important outside in one's car in this neighborhood.

Well, I wouldn't say that this part of town is simply a pit. It is, of course, that; but the word doesn't begin to describe the various dimensions of decrepitude in the local geography. Decrepitude, Ro. It has your pit in it and a lot more besides. I speak from experience, more than you would believe. This whole city is a pitiful corpse, and the neighborhood outside the walls of this bar has the distinction of being the withering heart of the deceased. Yes, I've gotten to know it over the years. I've gone out of my way to note its outlandish points of interest.

For instance, have you ever been to that place not far from here called Speakeasy? Well, then you have some acquaintance with the beautiful corruption of nostalgia, the putrescence of things past. Yes, up a flight of stairs from a crooked little street facade is a high echoey hall with a leftover Deco decor of silvery mirrors and sequined globes. And there the giant painted silhouettes of bony flappers and gaunt Gatsbys sport about the curving ballroom walls, towering over the dance floor, their funereal elegance mocking the awkward gyrations of the living. An old dream with a shiny new veneer. It's fascinating, you know, how an obsolete madness is sometimes adopted and stylized in an attempt to ghoulishly preserve it. These are the days of second-hand fantasies and antiquated hysteria.

But there are other sights in this city that I think are much more interesting. Not the least of which are those storefront temples of dubious denomination. There's one on Third and Snoville called the Church of the True Dividing Light, not to be mistaken, I presume, with that false light which dazzles so many searching eyes. Oddly enough, I've yet to see any light at all shining through the windows of this gray dwarfish building, and I always look for some sort of illumination as I ride by. I tell you, no one worships this city as I do. Especially its witticisms of proximity, one strange thing next to another, adding up to a greater strangeness. One of the more grotesque examples of this phenomenon occurs when you observe that a little shop whose display window features a fabulous array of prosthetic devices is right next-door to Marv's Second Hand City. Then there are those places-you've noticed them, I'm sure-that are freakishly suggestive in a variety of ways. One of them is that pink and black checkerboard box on Bender Boulevard that calls itself Bill's Bender Lounge, where a garish marquee advertises Nightly Entertainment. And if you stare at that legend long enough, the word "Nightly" will begin to connote more than the interval between dusk and dawn. Soon this simple word becomes truly evocative, as if it were code for the most exotic and unspeakable entertainments of the infinite night. And speaking of entertainment, I should cite that establishment whose owner, no doubt an epicure of musical comedy, gave it the title of Guys and Dolls, Inc. What a genius of vulgarity, considering that this business is devoted solely to the sale and repair of manikins. Or is it really a front for a bordello of dummies? No offense intended, Rosalie.

I could go on-I still haven't mentioned Miss Wanda's Wigs or a certain hotel that boasts a "Bath in Every Room"-but maybe you're becoming a bit bored. Yes, I can understand what you mean when you say you don't notice that stuff after a while. The mind becomes dull and complacent. I know. Sometimes I get that way myself. But it seems that just when I'm comfortably mired in complacency, some good jolt comes along.

Maybe I'm sitting in my car, waiting for a red light to change. A derelict, drunk or brain-diseased or both, comes up to my defenseless vehicle and pounds on my windows-with both fists, like so-and demands a cigarette. He touches his ragged lips with scissored fingers to convey his meaning, having left speech behind him long ago. A cigarette? Indeed! The traffic signal changes and I drive on, watching the bum's half-collapsed form shrinking in my rearview mirror. But somehow I've taken him on as a passenger, a ghostly shape sitting cozily beside me and raving about all kinds of senseless and fascinating things, the autobiography of confusion. And in a little while I'm back on the lookout once more.

Touching story, don't you-Yes, I suppose it is getting a bit late and we haven't made much progress. Your apartment? I think that would be fine. No, nothing else in mind as far as places go. Yours is okay. Where is it, though? No kidding? That's the old Temple Towers with a new cognito. Excellent, our ride will take us through the neighborhood in the shadow of the brewery. What floor of the building do you live on? Well, a veritable penthouse, an urban aerie. The loftier the better, I say.

Shall we go, then? My car is parked right out front.

I hope it hasn't decided to rain. Nope, it's a beautiful night. But look, that's my car where that cop is standing. Just stay calm. I certainly won't say anything if you don't. You're not, by chance, a vice officer in disguise, are you, Rosiecrantz? You wouldn't betray this unsuspecting Hamlet. A simple "no" would have been sufficient. If you use that kind of language again I'll turn you in to the cops right now, and then we can see what sort of arrest record you've accumulated in your brilliant career. Silence, that's good. Just let me do the talking. Here goes.

Hi, officer. Yeah, that's my car. It's parked okay, isn't it? Geez, that's a relief. For a second I thought-My driver's license? Sure thing. Here you go. Beg pardon? Yeah, I guess I am a little far from home. But I work real close to here. I'm a stockbroker, here's my card. You know, I've been in the business for some time now, and I can almost tell just by the look of a guy if he's got something invested in the market. I'd bet that you have. See there, I knew I was right. Doesn't matter if you're just small-time. Listen, have you been in touch with an investment counsellor lately? Well, you should. There's a lot going on. People talk about inflation, recession, depression. Forget it. If you know where to put your finances, I mean really know, it doesn't matter if it's Friday the thirteenth and the streets are bloody with corporate corpses.

Smart advice is what you need. It's all anyone needs. For example-and I tell you this just to make a point-there's an outfit right in this city, not a half-mile from here in fact, by the name of Lochmyer Laboratories. They've been working on a new product and are just about ready to market it. 'Course I don't understand the whole technical end of it, but I know for sure that it's going to revolutionize the field of-what d'you call it-psychopharmaceutics. Revolutionize it the way tranquilizers did in the Fifties. It'll be bigger than tranquilizers. Bigger than LSD. You know what I mean? That's the kind of thing you got to know.

That's right, officer, Lochmyer Laboratories. And they're on the New York Exchange. Good outfit all around. I own stock in it myself. What tip, hell? Hey, you don't have to thank me. Beg pardon? A tip for me? Well, now that you mention it, probably there are better neighborhoods for a man like me to be frequenting. I guess you probably won't be seeing me around here anymore. I appreciate that, officer. I'll remember. And you remember Loch Lab. Right, then. 'Night to you.

Wait for his car to turn the corner, Rosie, before getting in mine. We'll let the lawman maintain the illusion that his warning has set me straight with regard to the dangers of this seamy area and your seamy self. He looked at you like an old friend. Could have been trouble for both of us. You're a smart girl to have sat at my table tonight. I think my briefcase impressed him, don't you? Okay, we can get in the car now.

Yes, I did get us out of a touchy situation with that cop. But I hope when you just mentioned my B.S. apropos of that scene with the policeman, you were referring to the Bachelor of Science degree I received when I was sixteen years old. This is your last warning about unclean idioms. Now roll down your window and let's air your words out of this car as we drive. And as far as my deceiving that fine officer goes-I actually didn't. No, I'm not really a stockbroker. I told you the truth about being in chemicals. And I told that mole-eyed patrolman the truth when I advised him to put his money in Lochmyer Lab, for we are about to market a new mind medicine that should make our investors as pleased as amphetamine addicts at an all-night coffee shop. How did I know he owned stock in the first place? That is strange, isn't it? I guess I was just lucky. This is just my lucky night-and yours too.

You don't much like the policia, do you, Rrrosa? Yes, of course I can blame you. Without them, where would all of us outlaws be? What would we have? Only a lawless paradise...and paradise is a bore. Violence without violation is only a noise heard by no one, the most horrendous sound in the universe. No, I realize you don't have anything to do with violence. I didn't mean to imply you did. Yes, I can drop you off back at the bar when we've finished at your apartment. Of course.

Right now let's just enjoy the ride. What do you mean "so what's to enjoy"? Can't you see we're nearing the brewery? Look, there's its beer-golden sign, advertising the alchemical quest to transmute base ingredients into liquid gold. Alchemical, Rosetta. And I'm not referring to that shoddy firm of Allied Chem. Just look around at these hollowed-out houses, these seedy stores, each one of them a sacred site of the city, a shrine, if you will. You won't? You've seen it all a million times? A slum is a slum is a slum, eh? Always the same. Always?

Never.

What about when it's raining and the brown bricks of these old places start to drip and darken? And the smoke-gray sky is the smoky mirror of your soul. You give a lightning blink at a row of condemned buildings, starkly outlining them. And do they blink back at you? Or does that happen only in another type of storm, when windows are slyly browed with city-soiled clumps of snow. Was it under such conditions that you first thought of all the cold and dark places in the universe, all the clammy basements and gloomy attics of creation? Maybe you didn't want to think about those places, but you couldn't help yourself at the time. Another time you could have. No two times are the same. No two lives are alike: you have yours and others have theirs. And when you're traveling through these streets with some stranger, you have to contend with the way someone else sees things, the way you now must deal with my 20-20 visions and I with your blase nearsightedness. Are these the same gutted houses you saw last night, or even a second ago? Or are they like the fluxing clouds that swirl above the chimneys and trees, and then pass on?

The alchemical transmutations are infinite and continuous, working all the time like slaves in the Great Laboratory. Tell me you can't perceive their work, especially in this part of the city. Especially where the glamor and sanity of former days wears a new mask of rats and rot, where an old style is transformed by time into a parody of itself which no man could foresee, where greater and greater schisms are forever developing between past shapes and future shapelessness, and finally where the evolution toward ultimate diversity can be glimpsed as if in a magic mirror.

This is, of course, the real alchemy, as you've probably gathered, and not that other kind which theorized that everything was struggling toward an auric perfection. Lead into gold, lower matter into higher spirit. No, it's not like that. Just the opposite, in point of fact. Please don't put that hunk of gum in your mouth; throw it out the window, now! As I was saying, everything is just variation without a theme. Oh, perhaps there is some solid and unchanging ideal, shining very dimly and very far off. Scientifically, I suppose, we should allow for that improbability. But to reach that ideal would mean a hopeless stroll along the path to hypothetically higher worlds. And on the way our ideas become feverish and confused. What begins as a solitary truth soon proliferates like malignant cells in the body of a dream, a body whose true outline remains unknown. Perhaps, then, we should be grateful to the whims of chemistry, the caprices of circumstance, and the enigmas of personal taste for giving us such an array of strictly local realities and desires.

No, I didn't always think this freaky, as you put it. But I can tell you almost precisely when I began to see the truth of things. I was a callow freshman in college, even callower than most, given my precocious progress. One day something seemed to change in my chemistry, as I like to think of it. It was quite horrible for a while. Eventually, though, I realized that the alteration was from a false chemistry to a true one. Yes, that's when I decided to pursue the subject as my career, my calling. But that's a story in itself, and here we are now at your apartment tower.

Please don't slam the car door the way you were about to. No need to draw attention to our presence. You're right, there's really no one around to be attentive anyway. The local street vermin seem to have withdrawn into their holes. Very good: "But their holes are not their vessels," indeed. Not the hole of man but the whole man is the true vessel, as some pompous sage might have said. And the right vessel is the whole point of the thing, for the best vessel will ultimately take the shape of its contents.

Never mind what I'm talking about. I just like to talk, as you may have noticed. Oops, almost forgot my briefcase. Wouldn't want to leave it unattended in this neighborhood, isn't that right? You're smiling about my briefcase, aren't you, Maryrose? You think you know something again. Well, go ahead and think that if you like. Everybody likes to think he has inside information. That policeman, for example. You could see how pleased he was to instantly become a man of knowledge, even if it's only by way of a knowledgeable tip on the stock market. Everybody wants to know the secret truth, scientia arcana, the real dope.

Maybe I do have some dope in my case. Then again, maybe it's just an empty prop, a leather vessel with a void inside. But you already know that I work for a dope company. You were thinking that, weren't you? Well, let's go up to your place and find out.

Cozy little lobby you have here; but I'm afraid the atmosphere is doing strange things to that pot of ferns over there. Of course I know they're artificial. Which only means that Nature, one of the Great Chemists, made them at one remove, that's all. Here, this elevator seems to be working, though a little noisily. After you, Lady R. The twenty-second floor if I remember right, and I always do. Uh, I believe there's to be no smoking in this elevator, if you don't mind. Thank you. And here we are. I'll bet your place is down this way. See, I am always right. Isn't that funny? Yes, I'm coming, I'm coming.

Well, your apartment has a very nice door. No, you're wrong. There's no such thing as "just like all the others." Yours is quite different, can't you see that? And tonight your door is visibly different from any other time you've ever seen it. I'm not just being egoistical about my unique presence at your threshold this evening. Do you see what I mean? Well, I'm sorry if you feel I've been lecturing you all night. I was a pedagogue once, which I suppose is obvious. It's just that there are some important things I must impart to you, my little rosebud, before we're through. Okay? Now, let's go in and see what kind of view you have from up here.

Keep the ceiling light off please, so that I don't have to look at a double of this dour room reflected in your window. One of your dim lamps should give us all the light we need. There, that's fine. You do have a good view of the city from this height. I think it's perfect, not too far up. I live in a mere two-story house myself and being up here makes me dizzily realize what I'm missing. From this lofty keep I could nightly observe the city and its constant mutations. A different city every night. Yes, Rosie, I have to say you're right-sarcastic tone and all-the city is indeed also a vessel. And it's one that obediently takes the shape of very strange contents. The Great Chemists are working out unfathomable formulae down there. Look at those lights outlining the different venues and avenues below, look at their lines and interconnections. They're like a skeleton of something...the skeleton of a dream, the hidden framework ready at any moment to shift its structure to support a new shape. The Great Chemists are always dreaming new things and risking that they may wake up while doing so. Should that ever happen you can be assured there will be hell to pay.

My imagination? No, I don't think it's vivid at all. On the contrary, it's not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed...extensions. That's why I'm here with you. You're smiling again, or rather you're smirking. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds?

Yes, maybe we are wasting too much time. But of course we'll have to endure just one more delay while I rummage around in my briefcase and remove what you've been waiting for. So you hope it's good dope, eh? Well, you'll have a chance to find out, since you seem so anxious to become a vessel yourself for my chemicals. No, stay seated just where you are please. There's no reason for you to glimpse every little secret I've got in here. All you're interested in seeing is one squat little bottle screwed tightly closed with a black cap...and here it is!

Yes, it does look like a bottle of powdered light. That's very observant. What is it? I thought you would know by now. Here, hold out your hand and you can have a closer look. Just a little powdery mound in the middle of your sweaty palm, about one brainful to be precise. Doesn't it look like pulverized diamonds? It glitters, yes it does. I don't blame you for thinking it might be dangerous to snort, or whatever else you imagine you're supposed to do with it. But by watching your hand very closely you'll see that you don't have to do anything at all.

See, it dissolved right into your palm. Disappeared completely, except for a few stray grains. But don't worry about them. Calm down, the burning will soon go away. There's no point in trying to rub the drug off your hand. It's in your system now. And it certainly won't help to get excited, nor are threats of any use to you. Please remain seated in that chair.

Can you feel any effects yet? I mean besides the fact that you're no longer able to move your arms or legs. That's just the beginning of this nightly entertainment. You see my glittering powder has now made possible a very interesting relationship between us. Between you and me, my red red rose. The drug has rendered you fantastically sensitive to the shaping influence of a certain form of energy, namely that which is being generated by me, or rather through me. To put it romantically, I'm now dreaming you. That's really the only way I can explain it that you might understand. Not dreaming about you, like some old love song. I'm dreaming you. Your arms and legs don't respond to your brain's commands because I'm dreaming of someone who is as still as a statue. I hope you can appreciate how remarkable this is.

Damn! I suppose that was your attempt to scream. You really are terrified, aren't you? Just to be safe, perhaps I'd better dream of someone who hasn't anything to scream with. There, that should do it. You do look strange, though, like that. But we've only just begun. These minor tricks are child's play and I'm sure don't impress you in the least. Soon I'll show you that I can really make an impression, once I put my mind to it.

Is there something in your eyes? Yes, I can see there is. A question. Right now you would like to ask, if only you still had the means to do so, what's to become of old Rosie? It's only fair that you should know.

We are presently coming into perfect tune with each other, my dreams and my dream girl. You are about to become the flesh and blood kaleidoscope of my imagination. In the latter stages of this game anything might happen. Your form will know no limits of variety, for now the Great Chemists themselves are working through me. Soon I will put my dreaming in the hands of greater forces, and I'm sure there will be some surprises for both of us. That is one thing which never changes.

Nevertheless, there is still a problem with this process. It's not really perfect, certainly not marketable, as we say in the pill business. And wouldn't that be boring if it were perfect? What I mean to say is that under the stress of such diverse and alien metamorphoses, the original structure of the object somehow breaks down in a way even I don't understand. The consequence of the thing is simple: you can never be as you once were. I'm very sorry. You'll have to remain in whatever curious incarnation you take on at the dream's end. Which should rattle the wits of whoever is unfortunate enough to find you. But don't worry, you will not live long after I leave here. And by then you will have experienced god-like powers of proteation which I myself cannot hope to know, no matter how intimately I may try.

And now I think we can proceed with what has been your destiny all along. Are you ready? I am entirely ready and by degrees am giving myself over to those forces which, with any luck, I will never completely comprehend. Can you feel us both being caught up in the great web of delirium? Can you feel the fevers of this chemist? The power of my dreaming, my dreaming, my dreaming, my...

Now Rose of madness-Bloom!

DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH LABYRINTHINE EYES.

Everyone at the party comments on them. They ask if I had them altered in some way, suggest that I've tucked some strange crystallized lenses under my eyelids. I tell them no, that I was born with these singular optic organs; they're not from some optometrist's bag of tricks, not the result of surgical mayhem. Of course they find this hard to believe, especially when I tell them I was also born with the full powers of a master hypnotist...and from there I rapidly evolved, advancing into a mesmeric wilderness untrod before or since by any others of my calling. No, I wouldn't say business or profession, I would have to say calling. What else do you call it when you're destined from birth, marked by fate's stigmata? At this point they smile politely, saying that they really enjoyed the show and that I certainly am good at what I do. I tell them how grateful I am for the opportunity to perform for such fancy persons in such a fancy house. Unsure to what extent I'm just kidding them, they nervously twirl the stems of their champagne glasses, the beverage sparkling and the crystal twinkling under a chandelier's kaleidoscopic blaze. Despite all the beauty, power, and prestige socializing in this rather baroque room tonight, I think they know how basically ordinary they all are. They are very impressed by me and my assistant, who have been asked to mingle with the guests and amuse them in whatever way we can. One gentleman with a flushed face looks across the room at my assistant, guzzling his drink as he does so. "Would you like to meet her," I ask. "You bet," he replies. They all do; they all want to know you, my somnambule.

Earlier in the evening we presented our show to these lovely people. I instructed the host of the party to serve no alcohol before our performance, and to arrange the furniture of this wonderfully ornate room in a way that would allow everyone a perfect view of us on our little platform. He complied obediently, of course. He also conceded to my request for payment in advance. Such an agreeable man, giving in to the will of another so readily.

At the start of the show I am alone before a silent audience. All illumination is cancelled except a single spotlight which I have set up on the floor exactly two point two meters from the stage. The spotlight focuses on a pair of metronomes, their batons sweeping back and forth in perfect unison like windshield wipers in the rain: smoothly back and smoothly forth, back and forth, back and forth. And at the tip of each baton is a luminous replica of each of my eyes swaying left and right in full view of everyone, while my voice speaks to them from a shadowy edge of the stage. First I give a brief lecture on hypnosis, its name and nature. After that I say: "Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, please direct your attention to that tall black cabinet with the stunning gold embellishments running riot upon its surface. Within stands the most beautiful creature you have ever laid eyes on. She is everything you can imagine in the way of physical perfection. Everything. And just for you she is already in the deepest trance. You will see her." There is a dramatic pause during which my eyes fix upon that beast of a congregation, keeping my control. Then I look back toward the cabinet and softly utter the simple but strategic words: "Darling, you may come out now."

The trick door opens, seemingly of its own will. Suddenly the audience emits a quiet gasp, and for a second I panic. Then there is applause, reassuring me that everything is all right, that they like the thing they see within the cabinet. What they see is standing upright inside, almost as tall as the cabinet itself. She is wearing a tiny outfit entirely of sequins, a vulgar costume whose rampant glitter somehow transcends the cliche, resurrecting its vaudevillian soul. Her gaze is fixed on an infinity slightly above the heads of everyone. "Darling?" I say invitingly. At this pre-arranged signal she begins to totter within the box. Finally she teeters into a forward fall, straight down toward the hard surface of the stage. At the last moment I rush over and catch her rigid and unflinching figure before it hits. There is applause while I restore her to a vertical position.

Now begins the performance proper, which is a regimented array of the usual mesmerian gimmicks. I place the somnambule's hypnotically stiffened body horizontally between two chairs and ask some behemoth from the audience to come up and sit on her. The man is only too glad to do this. Then I command the somnambule to become inhumanly limp, after which I stuff her into a small box which resembles a coffin. (And inwardly I titter at my tasteless joke.) Next I fire a gun loaded with blanks straight at her, not six inches from her face, and she doesn't wince one bit. We perform a few other routines in defiance of death and pain, afterward moving on to the memory tricks. In one of them I have everybody in the audience call out in turn his or her full name and birthdate. Then my somnambule repeats this information when requested at random to do so by individual audience members. She gets all the names right-and of course everyone is amazed-but she systematically fails to reply with the right dates. Instead she forecasts a future occasion which never coincides with the birthdate she was given. Some of the years of the dates she offers are in distant posterity and some disturbingly near. I express astonishment at my somnambule's behavior, explaining to the audience that portentous fortune-telling is not normally part of the show. I apologize for this ominous display of clairvoyance and vow to make it up to them with an unbelievably diverting finale. A blare of heavenly horns would not be inappropriate at this point.

I signal my assistant to move to the precise center of the stage. Here she positions herself with legs outspread to form an upside-down V out of her lower body. Another signal from me, and her arms rise slowly until they are stretched outward to their furthest limit, fingertips tensely straining for that extra millimeter or so. A final signal commands her nodding head to lift fully erect upon the muscle-knotted column of her neck, eyes glaring out at the audience. The eyes beyond the edge of the stage glare back at her with the same gaze. "Now," I admonish them with poised palm, "there must be total silence. This means no coughs, no sniffs, no clearing of throats." And they obey this unreasonable command; their bodies are silent, for I am their master. They are a noiseless maze of flesh. "Ladies and Gentlemen," I continue, "you are about to see something that I need not tout with tawdry preliminaries. My assistant is now in the deepest possible trance. The particles of her being are obeisant to forces beyond mundane existence, beyond life, death, and so on and so forth. At my instruction she will begin an astounding metamorphosis-entirely through the power of hypnotic energy-which will reveal to you one of the multitudinous unseen facets of the human diamond. Nothing more need be said. My dear, you may commence your change of form, code name: Sarah McFinn."

There she stands-arms, legs, towering head-my five-pointed somnambule: a star. "Already you can see the glowing," I tell the audience. "She begins to luminesce; she begins to effloresce; and now she approaches such radiance that up here on stage I am nearly blinded. But there is no pain, there is anything but eyesore." No one in the audience is even squinting, I notice, for the beams from her body-this labyrinth of light!-are dream beams without physical properties. "Keep watching," I shout at them, pointing to the human luminary. "Are those snow-white wings you see sprouting beyond the horizon of her shoulders? Have the slender lengths of her arms, her legs, her neck all turned to a quivering, angelified alabaster? Is she not the very image of celestiality discarnate?"

But I cannot sustain the moment. The light fades in the eyes of the audience, growing dimmer by the second, and my assistant collapses back into an earthly incarnation. I am exhausted. What's worse, all our efforts seem to have been wasted, for the audience answers this spectacle with only perfunctory applause. I can hardly believe it, but the finale fell flat. They don't understand. They actually like all the mock-death and bogus-pain stuff better. These are what fascinates them. Bah. Double bah.

"Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen," I say when the lights come back on and the meager applause dies entirely. "I hope my beautiful assistant and I haven't bored you too much this evening. You do look a little sleepy, as if you've been lulled into a trance yourselves. Which is not such a bad feeling, is it? Sinking deep into a downy darkness, resting your souls on pillows stuffed with soft shadows. But our host informs me that things will liven up very soon. Certainly you will awake when a little chime commands you to do so. Remember, it's wake-up time when you hear the chime," I repeat. "And now I believe we can prosecute this evening's festivities."

I help my assistant down from the platform and we mix with the rest of the partiers. Drinks are served and the noise level in the room rises several decibels. The party's populus begins to coagulate into groups here and there. I separate myself from a boisterous congregation surrounding my assistant and me, but nobody seems to notice. They are entranced with my sequined somnambule. She dazzles them-a sun at the center of a drab galaxy, her costume catching the light of that monstrous chandelier winking with a thousand eyes. Everyone seems to be trying to command her attention; but she just smiles, so vacant and full of grace, not even sipping the drink some lucky person was allowed to place in her slender hand. They are transfixed, just like lady spiders during the mating ritual. After all, didn't I tell them that my lanky hypnotizee was their very own vision of fleshly perfection? And perfection is master! Or at least one's idea of it.

But I too have my admirers. One dark-suited bore asks me if hypnosis can help him stop drinking; another inquires if I can show him and his partners the way to undiscovered realms of wealth. I hand them each a business card with a cloud-gray pearl finish, on which is printed a non-existent phone number and a phony address in a real city. As for the name: Cosimo Fanzago. What else would one expect from a performing mesmerist extraordinaire. I have other cards with names like Gaudenzio Ferrari and Johnny Tiepolo printed on them. Nobody's caught on yet. But am I not as much an artist as they were?

And while I am being accosted by people who need cures or aids for their worldliness, I am watching you, dear somnambule. Watching you waltz about this remarkable room. It is not like the other rooms in this great house. Someone really let Fancy have its wild way in here. It harkens back to a time, centuries ago, when your somnambulating predecessors did their sleepwalking act for high society. You fit in so well with this room of leftover rococo. It's a delight to see you make your way about the irregular circumference of this room, where the wall undulates in gentle peaks and hollows, its surface sinewed with a maze of chinoiserie. The serpentine pattern makes it difficult to distinguish the wall's recesses from its protrusions. Some of the guests shift their weight wallwards and find themselves leaning on air, stumbling sideways like comedians from an old movie. But you, my perfect sleepwalker, have no trouble; you lean at the right times and in the right places. And your eyes play beautifully to whatever camera focuses on you; indeed, you take so many of your cues from others that one might suspect you of having no life of your own. Let's sincerely hope not!

Now I watch as you are encouraged to be seated in an elegant chair of blinding brocade, its delicate arms the texture of cartilage and its color like some powdery disc in a woman's cosmetics case. Your high heels make subtle points in the intricate scheme of the carpet, puncturing its arabesque flights of imagination. Now I watch as our host draws you over to the bar he has hospitably set up in this cornerless room. He waves his hand and indicates to you the many bottleshapes to choose from, shapes both normale and baroque. The baroquely shaped bottles are doing more interesting things with light and shadow than their normal brothers, and you select one of these with a gesture of robotic finesse. He pours two drinks while you watch, and while you watch I am watching you watch. Guiding you to another part of the room, he shows you a tableful of delicate figurines, each one caught in a paralyzed stance of some ancient dance. He places one of them in your hand, and you pass it back and forth before your unfocused eyes, as if trying to awaken yourself with this distraction of movement. But you never will, not without my help.

Now he directs you to a part of the room where there is soft music and dancing. But there are no windows in this room, only tall smoky mirrors, and as you pass from one end to the other you are caught between foggy looking-glasses facing their twins, creating endless files of somnambules in a false infinity beyond the walls. Then you dance with our host, though while he is gazing straightforwardly at you, you are gazing abstractly at the ceiling. O, that ceiling! In epic contrast to the capricious volutions of the rest of the room-designs tendriled to tenebrosity-the ceiling is a dark, chalky blue without a hint of flourish. In its purity it suggests a bottomless pool or an infinite sky wiped clean of stars. You are dancing in eternity, my quadrillioning mannequin. And the dance is indeed a long one, for another wants to cut in on our gracious host and become your partner. Then another. And another. They all want to embrace you; they are all taken in by your frigid elegance, your postures and poses like frozen roses. I am only waiting until everyone has had bodily contact with your powers of animal magnetism.

And while I watch and wait, I notice that we have an unexpected spectator looking down on us from above. Beyond the wide archway at the end of the room is a staircase leading to the second floor; and up there he is sitting, trying to glimpse all the grown-ups, his pajama-clad legs dangling between the Doric posts of the balustrade. I can tell he prefers the classic decor elsewhere predominating in this house. With moderate stealth I leave the main floor audience behind and pay a visit to the balcony, which I quite ignored during my performance earlier.

Creeping up the triple-tiered and white-carpeted stairway, I sit down on the floor beside the child. "Did you see my little show with the lady?" I ask him. He shakes his head horizontally, his mouth as tight as an unopened tulip. "Can you see the lady now? You know the one I mean." I take a shiny chrome-plated pen from the inside pocket of my coat and point down toward the room where the party is going on. At this distance the features of my sequined siren cannot be seen in any great detail. "Well, can you see her?" His head bobs on the vertical. Then I whisper: "And what do you think?" His two lips open and casually reply: "She...she's yucky." I breathe easier now. From this height she does indeed appear merely "yucky," but you can never know what the sharp sight of children may perceive. And it is certainly not my intention tonight to make any child's eyes roll the wrong way.

"Now listen closely to everything I say," I say in a very soft but not condescending tone, making sure the child's attention is held by my voice and by the gleaming pen on which his eyes are now focused. He is a good subject for a child, who usually have wandering eyes and minds. He agrees with me that he is feeling rather sleepy now, that bedtime is imminent. "And when you go back to your room, you will fall right to sleep and have wonderful dreams. You will not awaken until morning, no matter what sounds you hear outside your door. Understand?" He nods; he is a great nodder, this one. "Very good. And for being such an agreeable subject, I'm going to make you a present of this beautiful pen of sterling silver, which you will keep with you always as a reminder that nothing is what it seems to be. Do you know what I'm talking about?" His head moves slowly and gently up and down with the chilling appearance of deep wisdom. "All right, then. But before you go back to your room, I want you to tell me if there's a back stairway by which I may leave." His finger points down the hall and to the left. "Thank you, young man. Thank you very much. Now off to bed and to your wonderful dreams." He disappears into the Piranesian darkness at the end of the hallway.

For a moment I stand staring down into that merry room below, where the laughing and the dancing have reached their zenith. My fickle somnambule herself seems to be caught up in the party's web, and has forgotten all about her master. She's left me on the sidelines, a many-tendriled, mazy wallflower. But I'm not jealous; I can understand why they've taken you away from me. They simply can't help themselves, now can they? I told them how beautiful and perfect you were, and they can't resist you, my love.

Unfortunately they failed to appreciate the best part of you, preferring to lose themselves in the labyrinth of your grosser illusions. Didn't I show our well-behaved audience an angelized version of you? And you saw their reaction. They were bored and just sat in their seats like a bunch of stiffs. Of course, what can you expect? They wanted the death stuff, the pain stuff. All that flashy junk. They wanted cartwheels of agonized passion; somersaults into fires of doom; nosedives, if you will, into the frenzied pageant of vulnerable flesh. They wanted a tangible thrill.

And now that their own miniature pageant seems to have reached its peak, I think the time is right to awaken this mob from its hypnotic slumber and thrill the daylights out of them. It is time for the chime.

There is indeed a back stairway just where the boy indicated, one which leads me to a back hallway, back rooms, and finally a back door. And all these backways lead me to a vast yard where a garden is silhouetted beneath the moon and a small wood sways in the distance. A thick lawn pads my footsteps as I work my way around to the fine facade of this house.

I am standing on the front porch now, just behind its tall columns and beneath a lamp hanging at the end of a long brazen chain. I pause for a moment, savoring each voluptuous second. The serene constellations above wink knowingly. But not even these eyes are deep enough to outgaze me, to deceive the deceiver, illude the illusionist. To tell the truth, I am a very bad mesmeric subject, unable to be drawn in by Hypnos' Heaven. For I know how easily one can be led past those shimmering gates, only to have a trap door spring open once you are inside. Then down you go! I would rather be the attendant loitering outside Mesmer's Maze than its deluded victim bumbling about within.

It is said that death is a great awakening, an emergence from the trance of life. Ha, I have to laugh. Death is the consummation of mortality and-to let out a big secret-only heightens mortal susceptibilities. Of course, it takes a great master to pry open a pair of postmortem eyes once they are sewn tightly closed by Mr. D. And even afterward there is so little these creatures are good for. As conversationalists they are incredibly vacant; the things they tell you are no more than sweet nullities. But there is not much else you can do with them, they are so hideous and smell to high heaven. So mostly we just talk. Sometimes, however, I recruit them for my show, if I can manage to get their awkward forms out of the mausoleum, hospital, morgue, medical school, or funeral emporium I have deviously insinuated my way into. But there is one great problem: You just can't make them beautiful. One is not a sorcerer!

But perhaps one is a mental prestidigitator, an unusually adept whammy artist. One may make an audience think them beautiful, mistake them for spellbinding, snake-eyed charmers. One can do this at least, and loves to.

Even now I hear them still laughing, still dancing, still making a fuss over my charismatic doll of the dead. We showed them what you might be, O Seraphita, now let's show them what you really are. I have only to press this glowing little button of a doorbell to sound the chime which will awaken them, to send the toll rolling throughout the house. Then they'll see. They'll see the sepulchral wounds: your eyes recessed in their sockets, sunken into mouths-those labyrinthine pits! They'll wake up and find their nice dancing clothes all clotted with putrescent goo. And wait'll they get a sniff of that stiff. They will be amazed.

EYE OF THE LYNX.

No architectural go-betweens divided the doorway-a side entrance off a block of diverse but connected buildings-from the sidewalk. The sidewalk itself was conjugally flush with the curb that bordered a street which in turn radiated off a boulevard of routine clamor, and all of this was enveloped by December's musty darkness. Sidewalk doorway, doorway sidewalk. I don't want to make too much of the matter, except to say that this peculiarity, if it was one, made an impression on me: there was no physical introduction to the doorway, surely not in the form of a little elevated slab of cement, certainly not even a single stair of stone. No structure of any kind prefaced the door. And it was recessed into the building itself with such deliberate shallowness that it almost looked painted directly onto the wall. I looked over at the traffic light above the intersection; it was amber going on red. I looked back at the door. The sidewalk seemed to slip right under it, urging one to step inside. So I did, after noting that the wall around the doorway was done up, somewhat ineptly, like a castle tower flanked by toothy merlons.

Inside I was immediately greeted by a reception committee of girls very professionally lounging in what looked like old church pews along an old wall. The narrow vestibule in which I found myself scintillated with a reddish haze that seemed not so much light as electric vapor. In the far upper corner of this entranceway a closed circuit camera was bearing down on us all, and I wondered how the camera's eye would translate that redly dyed room into the bluish hues of a security monitor. Not that it was any of my business. We might all be electronically meshed into a crazy purpurean tapestry, and that would have been just fine.

A fair-haired girl in denim slacks and leather jacket stood up and approached me. In the present light her blandness was actually more a murky tomato soup or greasy ketchup than fresh strawberry. She delivered a mechanical statement that began "Welcome to the House of Chains," and went on and on, spelling out various services and specific terms and finally concluding with a legal disclaimer of some carefully phrased sort. "Yes, yes," I said. "I've read the ads, the ones set in that spikey Gothic type, the ones that look like a page out of an old German bible. I've come to the right place, haven't I?"