Then she glanced around his apartment. She couldn't figure it-that somebody who wore black leather and tapped the tops of his beer cans with such elegant fingers could live in a place with white Conran furniture, rock and roll posters on the wall, and a metal sea gull statue.

A copper sea gull?

"Just let me check on something."

He disappeared into the kitchen. Whatever he was cooking smelled great. None of her girlfriends could get that kind of smell out of a kitchen. Lord knew, she never had.

She was examining his bookshelves. Mostly technical books about things she didn't understand. College paperbacks. Stacks of the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly.

He came back into the room. Stood with his arms crossed. "So." Skittish now.

"Uh-huh. So." She couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. Then she blurted out, "I thought, maybe, after dinner, you might want to go for a ride. I found a great place. It's in Queens, a junkyard. I know the owner. He lets me in. It's really radical, like a huge dinosaur graveyard. You can sit up on some of the wrecks-it's not gross dirty, you know, like garbage-and watch the sunset over the city. It's really wild. It's your mega junkyard… Okay, Richard, come on. Tell me what I did to fuck up tonight."

"The thing is-"

"Hi," came the woman's voice from the door.

Rune turned to see a tall woman with long, blond hair walk through the open door. The woman was wearing a gray pin-striped suit and black pumps. She gave Rune a friendly glance, then walked up to Richard and hugged him.

"Rune, this is Karen."

"Uhm, hi," Rune said. Then to Richard, "Your message? About dinner?"

Karen lifted a perfect eyebrow knowingly, took a bottle of wine out of a paper bag, and disappeared tactfully into the kitchen.

"Actually," Richard said delicately, "that was supposed to be Thursday."

"Wait. The message said tomorrow. And the date on it was yesterday."

He shrugged. "I told the guy I talked to-Frankie somebody-I told him Thursday."

She nodded. "And he thought today was Thursday. Goddamn heavy metal. It's destroyed his brain cells… Shit, shit, shit."

Yo, Fairy Godmother! Yo! Wave your magic wand and get me the hell out of here.

"Listen, you want to stay? Have some wine?"

That'd be a pretty picture, she thought. The three of us sipping wine while he's waiting for me to leave so he can put the Tantra moves on too-tall Karen.

"No, think I'll go."

"Sure. I'll walk you to the elevator."

Oh, don't argue too hard now.

Richard continued. "Oh, wait, let me get you what I have for you."

"My surprise?"

"Right. I think you'll like it."

"So, Rune, how do you know Richard?" Karen was calling from the kitchen.

Yeah. He picked me up the other night and's been trying to fuck me ever since.

"Met in a video store. We talk about movies some."

"I love movies," Karen called. "Maybe we could all go sometime.

"Maybe."

Richard appeared from his bedroom. He was carrying a white envelope.

That's my present?

"Be right back," he said to Karen.

"This sauce is so good," she called from the kitchen. She stuck her pert head into the doorway.

"Nice meeting you. Oh, love the earrings!"

As they walked to the elevator Richard said, "Karen's a friend. We work together."

Rune wondered: How does somebody work with you when you write novels?

They got four doors down the corridor before he said, "This's a little awkward but she and I really are just friends."

"We are going out, aren't we? You and me, I mean."

"Sure, we're going out. I mean, we aren't going out all the time though, right? We can have other friends."

"Sure. That's the way it has to work."

"Right."

I am absolutely going to murder Frankie Greek…

He pushed the down button.

Aren't we in a hurry.

"Oh, here." He thrust the envelope at her.

She opened it. Inside was an application to the New School, over on Fifth Avenue.

A joke. It had to be a joke.

"I've got a buddy works for admissions," Richard explained. "He told me they're starting this new program. Retail management. You don't even need to get a degree. You get a certificate."

She felt sick. "Wait. You're giving me career counseling?"

"Rune, you're so smart, you've got so much energy, you're so creative… I'm worried about you wasting your life."

She stared, numb, at the paper in her hand.

Richard said, "You could work your way up in the video store business. Become a manager. Then maybe you could buy a store. Or even a chain. You could really be on a hell of a vertical track."

She laughed bitterly. "But… that's not me, Richard. I'm not a vertical-track kind of person. Look, I've worked in that diner I told you about, in a bike repair shop, a deli, a shoe store. I've sold jewelry on the street, done paste-ups and mechanicals for a magazine, sold men's colognes at Macy's, and worked in a film lab. And that's just in the couple years I've been here. Before I die I'm going to do a lot more than that. I'm not going to devote my life to being manager of a video store. Or any other one thing."

"Don't you want a career?"

She felt utterly betrayed. More so than if she'd found Karen and Richard in bed, an event that was probably only minutes away.

When she didn't answer he said, "You should think about it."

Rune said, "Sometimes I get this idea I should go to school. Get a degree. Law school, maybe business school like my sister. Something. But then, you know what happens? I have this image. Of myself in ten years at a cocktail party. And somebody asks me what I do. And-this is the scary part-I have an answer for them." She smiled at him.

"Which is…?"

He didn't get it. "That's the point. It doesn't matter; the scary part is that I have an answer. I say, 'I'm a lawyer, an accountant, a hoosey-whatsis maker.' Bang, there I am. Denned in one or two words. That scares the hell out of me."

"Why're you so afraid of reality?"

"My life is real. It's just not, apparently, your kind of reality."

He said harshly, "No, it's not real. Look at this game of yours…"

"What game?"

"Find-the-hidden-treasure."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Do you understand that a man. was killed? Did it ever occur to you that it wasn't a game to Robert Kelly? That you could get hurt? Or a friend of yours could get hurt? That ever occur to you?"

"It'll work out. You just need to believe…"

She gasped as he took her angrily by the shoulders and led her to a window at the end of the hallway. Pointed outside. Beneath them was a mass of highways and rail sidings and rusting equipment-huge turbines and metal parts. Beyond that was a small factory, surrounded by standing yellowish water. Mud. Filth.

"What's that?" he asked.

She shook her head. Not understanding.

"What is it?" His voice rose.

"What do you mean?" Her voice crackled.

"It's a factory, Rune. There's shit and pollution. It makes a living for people and they pay taxes and give money to charity and buy sneakers for their children. Who grow up to be lawyers or teachers or musicians or people who work in other factories. It's nothing more than that. It's not a spaceship, it's not a castle, it's not an entrance to the underworld. It's a factory."

She was completely still.

"I like you a lot, Rune. But going with you is like living in some movie."

She wiped her nose. The cars below whined past. "What's wrong with movies? I love movies."

"Nothing. As long as you remember they aren't real. You're going to find out I'm not a knight and that, okay, maybe there was some bank robbery money-which I think is the craziest frigging thing I've ever heard-but that it's spent or stolen or lost somewhere years ago and you'll never find it. And here you are pissing your life away in a video store, jumping from fantasy to fantasy, waiting for something you don't even know what it is."