"The Azalea convention."

"Oh." He smiles as he shakes his head slowly, rolling his forehead against the beer can. "That's a wild one. Not Azalea-you had me confused. Azazel. The Azazel convention. After the fallen angel."

"What is the Azazel convention?"

"It means you're in a hell of a mess. It is a way of minimizing loss."

"How does it work?"

"It's in the bidding. If you discover that you and your partner are bidding different suits and are at cross purposes and over your heads, you signal to her that it is better for her to go down in her suit. We'll lose less that way. You do it by bidding your opponents' suit for one round."

"You mean if your opponents are bidding hearts, and your partner is raising you in your suit, hoping for a slam, you wave her off by bidding hearts for one round, signaling to her: You go back to your suit and go down."

"You got it."

"I see."

"I think you've played more bridge than you're letting on, Tom."

"Why do you think that?"

"You know the jargon and you're even on to their harmless little double entendres."

"Double entendres?"

"You made one yourself-bidding hearts and going down."

"So I did." Azazel. "So Azazel can be more than one kind of invitation."

"You got it, cud'n."

When we round our grand canal of a bayou and come in sight of The Quarters, Van Dorn makes a sign to me.

I cup my ear to hear over the motor.

"Cut the motor."

I cut the motor.

"It's about Ellen, Tom."

"Yes?"

"There's something I want you to do."

"What's that?"

"I want you to go to Fresno with Ellen, Tom."

"You're not going?"

"No way. I got these kids starting up school and soccer. First things first."

"She seemed disappointed."

"She'll do fine! True, we've done well, won some tournaments, but what she doesn't know is that I'm not indispensable. She's the one. That's why I wanted you to go."

"I couldn't play tournament bridge."

"No. I mean to watch her."

"Watch her?"

"Tom, you got to see it to believe it. And I think you'd be interested even if it weren't Ellen." As the boat drifts, Van Dorn takes off his Wehrmacht helmet, leans forward, and gives me a keen blue-eyed look.

"See what?"

"I can only give you the facts. You're the brain man, the psychologist. Maybe you've got an explanation."

"Of what?"

"Tom, it's not her bidding-which is okay, better than okay, somewhat shaky but highly proficient-after all, bidding is nothing more than a code for exchanging information. No, it's in the play. Tom, she knows where all the cards are. Do you hear what I'm saying? She knows what cards her opponents are holding. Now, most of us can make an educated guess after a few rounds of play, but she knows!"

"So?"

"Tom, let me ask you a question."

"All right."

"Do you set any store in ESP, clairvoyance, and suchlike?"

"No."

"Neither did I. But how else do you explain it? She's not cheating. So either she is reading the cards, which is clairvoyance, or she's reading the minds of the players, which is telepathy, right?"

"Yes."

"What do you think, Tom?"

"You did mention A.I. earlier. Artificial intelligence."

"Yes."

"If, as you say, brain circuitry can be understood as a fifth-generation computer, maybe she's able to use hers as such and after a few rounds of play calculate the exact probabilities of where the cards are."

Van Dorn gives me his keenest look. "And that would be even more amazing than ESP, wouldn't it? You mean like an idiot savant. Don't you think that hasn't occurred to me? But Ellen is no idiot."

"No."

"Tom, look."

"Yes?"

"You're a very intuitive therapist-on top of having made an early breakthrough in cortical function. But we're not talking about brain circuitry. We're talking about something else. We're talking about someone who may be able to use her own brain circuitry. How about that? Think of the implications."

"All right."

"Tom."

"Yes?"

"I think you should go to Fresno with Ellen."

"I see."

"Tom?"

"Yes?"

"I really think you ought to do something about this."

"I will, Van. I will."

Azazel is, according to Hebrew and Canaanite belief, a demon who lived in the Syrian desert, a particularly barren region where even God's life-giving force was in short supply. God told Moses to tell Aaron to obtain two goats for a sacrifice, draw lots, and allot one goat to Yahweh as a sacrifice for sin, the other goat to be marked for Azazel and sent out into the desert, a place of wantonness and freedom from God's commandments, as a gift for Azazel.

Mohammedans believe that Azazel is a jinn of the desert, formerly an angel. When God commanded the angels to worship Adam, Azazel replied, "Why should a son of fire fall down before a son of clay?" Whereupon God threw him out of heaven and down into the Syrian desert, a hell on earth. At that very moment his name was changed from Azazel to Eblis, which means despair.

Milton made Azazel the standard-bearer of all the rebel angels.

II.

1. MONDAY MORNING. Sitting on the front porch of my office waiting for a patient, sailingpaper P-51s, and watching the sparrows flock around the martin hotel.

I am not paranoid by nature, but I think someone is following me. Several times this week I've seen a Cox Cable van, sometimes following, sometimes ahead of me, sometimes parked and fixing a cable.

Ellen's gone to Fresno alone. She seemed sober this morning, unhungover, cheerful, and in her right mind, full of practical plans. Van Dorn, she said, may join her later. How could he not? They have never lost a tournament. If not, at least he had promised to save her from the humiliating ordeal of the partnership desk, would fix her up with a worthy partner in the Mixed Pairs competition.

Worried about Ellen. Call home to try to reach Chandra.

Chandra answers, offhandedly, "Yeah?"

"Chandra, I want you to do me a favor. Would you?"

Chandra, alerted, voice suddenly serious: "I will."

"Chandra, I am counting on you to help me with the kids while my wife is gone. Can I depend on you to be there after three when the kids get home from school?"

"You certainly can," says Chandra in her new Indiana voice but not sounding put-on.

"Thank you." I can count on her.

"But-"

"Yes?"

"Mrs. More said she made other arrangements."

"What other arrangements?"

"I don't know."

Other arrangements. "Chandra, don't worry about the other arrangements. I need you there when the children get home."

"I'll be here."

A note in the mail and a recorded message on the machine, both from my cousin Lucy, Dr. Lucy Lipscomb.

The note, dashed off on a prescription pad: "Tom" (not Dear Cousin Tom, though we are cousins, certainly not cud'n): "I need to see you. Important. Bob C. and Van Dorn are up to something. It concerns you, dope. Call me. L."

That's her laconic style all right, maybe slightly overdone, what with her new doctoring manner. She's completed her residency at Tulane and is back here as house physician at the local hospital.

I call. Can't reach her at Pantherburn, where she lives, or at the hospital, but leave message: I'll be at the hospital later to see Mickey LaFaye.

The sweet-gum leaves are speckled with fall but the morning sun is already hot. Sparrows flock. The martins are long gone for the Amazon. My nose has stopped running.

Taking stock.

Time was when the patients I saw suffered mainly from depression and anxiety: prosperous, attractive housewives terrified for no apparent reason; rich oilmen in a funk after striking it rich; in a funk after going broke; students, the best and the brightest, attempting suicide for reasons unknown to themselves; live-in couples turning on each other with termagant hatred.

I had some success with them. Though I admired and respected Dr. Freud more than Dr. Jung, I thought Dr. Jung was right in encouraging his patients to believe that their anxiety and depression might be trying to tell them something of value. They are not just symptoms. It helps enormously when a patient can make friends with her terror, plumb the depths of her depression. "There's gold down there in the darkness," said Dr. Jung. True, in the end Dr. Jung turned out to be something of a nut, the source of all manner of occult nonsense. Dr. Freud was not. He was a scientist, wrong at times, but a scientist nonetheless.

Two years in the clink have taught me a thing or two.

I don't have to be in a demonic hurry as I used to be.

I don't have to plumb the depths of "modern man" as I used to think I had to. Nor worry about "the human condition" and suchlike. My scale is smaller.

In prison I learned a certain detachment and cultivated a mild, low-grade curiosity. At one time I thought the world was going mad and that it was up to me to diagnose the madness and treat it. I became grandiose, even Faustian.

Prison does wonders for megalomania. Instead of striking pacts with the Devil to save the world-yes, I was nuts-I spent two years driving a tractor pulling a gang mower over sunny fairways and at night chatting with my fellow con men and watching reruns of Barnaby Jones.