Mom was too embarrassed to tell the truth. She never said a word. But I'm not entirely stupid. I figured it out on my own.

I was born under an evil star. Maybe an evil galaxy. With zigging mad lights quarreling all over angry lead skies.

The planets had to've been so cruelly misaligned that no equally malignant conjunction will be possible for another hundred lifetimes.

I have a feeling, though, that my partner will be there to gloat when those celestial maladroits again foregather to conspire.

Grumbling, head aching, empty mug in shaky hand, I stomped toward the front door. Some soon-to-be sporting an iron hook for a hand pest refused to stop bruising the oak with his knuckles.

The air shivered with amusement that only rendered me more glum.

Anything my partner found entertaining was bound to be unpleasant for me.

In the small front room the Goddamn Parrot harangued himself in his sleep, his language fit to pinken the cheeks of amazons.

I had to preserve the woodwork personally because Dean was out visiting his gaggle of homely nieces. And the Dead Man won't get off his can and answer no matter what the circumstances might be. He's had a severe attitude problem for about four hundred years. He figures just because somebody stuck a knife in him back then he doesn't have to do anything for himself anymore.

I peeked through the peephole.

I cussed some. Which always makes me feel better when that old devil sixth sense tells me that things are about to stop going my way.

Nowhere in sight, for as far as my eagle eye could see, was there even one tasty morsel of femininity.

I was so disappointed I grumbled, "But it always starts with a girl." My seventh and eighth senses started perking. They couldn't find a girl, either.

Then my natural optimism kicked in. There wasn't a girl around! There wasn't a girl around! There wasn't anybody out there but my old pal Playmate and a skinny gink who had to be a foreigner because there was no way a Karentine of his type could have survived the war in the Cantard.

No girl meant no trouble. No girl meant nothing starting. No girl meant not having to go to work. All was right with the world after all. I could deal with this in about ten minutes, then draw a beer and get back to plotting my revenge on Morley Dotes for having stuck me with the Goddamn Parrot.

Another ghost of amusement tinkled through the stale air. It reminded me that the impossible is only barely less likely than the normal around here.

It was time to air the place out.

Then I made my big mistake.

I opened the door.

Playmate isn't really nine feet tall. He just seems to fill up that much space. Though he did stoop getting through the doorway. And his shoulders were almost too wide to make it. And there wasn't an ounce of fat on the not really nine feet of him.

Playmate owns a stable. He does the work himself, including all the blacksmithery and most of the pitchfork management. He looks scary but he's a sweetheart. His great dream is to get into the ministry racket. His great sorrow is the fact that TunFaire is a city already hagridden by a backbreaking oversupply of priests and religions.

"Hey, Garrett," he said. Repartee isn't his main talent. But he does have a sharp eye.

That's me. Garrett. Six feet and change inches of the handsomest, most endearing former Marine you'd ever hope to meet. The super kind of fellow who can dance and drink the night away and still retain the skill and coordination to open a door and let a friend in at barely the crack of noon the next day. "That's not your usual homily, buddy." I've had a listen or two on occasions when I wasn't fast enough or sly enough to produce a convincing excuse for missing one of his ministerial guest appearances or amateur night sermons at some decrepit storefront church.

Playmate favored me with a sneer. He's got a talent for that which exceeds mine with the one raised eyebrow. The right side of his upper lip rises up and twists and begins to shimmy and quiver like a belly dancer's fanny. "I save the good sermons for people whose characters would appear to offer some teeny little hint of a possibility that there's still hope for their salvation."

Over in the small front room the Goddamn Parrot cackled like he was trying to lay a porcupine egg. And that amusement stuff was polluting the psychic atmosphere again.

The dark planets were shagging their heinies into line.

Playmate preempted my opportunity to deploy one of my belated but brilliantly lethal rejoinders. "This is my friend Cypres Prose, Garrett." Cypres Prose was a whisper more than five feet tall. He had wild blond hair, crazy blue eyes, a million freckles, and a permanent case of the fidgets. He scratched. He twitched. His head kept twisting on his neck. "He invents things. After what happened this morning I promised you'd help him."

"Why, thank you, Playmate. And I'm glad you came over because I promised the Metropolitan that you'd swing by the Dream Quarter to help put up decorations for the Feast of the Immaculate Deception."

Playmate glowered. He has serious problems with the Orthodox Rite. I gave him a look at my own second-team sneer. It don't dance. "You promised him? For me? That's what friends are for, eh?"

"Uh, all right. Maybe I overstepped." His tone said he didn't think that for a second. "Sorry."

"You're sorry? Oh. That's good. That makes everything all right, then. You're not presuming on my friendship the way Morley Dotes or Winger or Saucerhead Tharpe might." I would never presume on them. Not me. No way.

The scrawny little dink behind Playmate kept trying to peek around him. He never stopped talking. He strengthened his case constantly with remarks like, "Is that him, Play? He ain't much. From the way you talked I thought he was gonna be ten feet tall."

I said, "I am, kid. But I'm not on duty right now." Cypres Prose had a nasal edge on a cracking soprano voice that I found extremely irritating. I wanted to clout him upside the head and tell him to speak Karentine like a man.

Oh, boy! After closer appraisal I saw that Prose wasn't as old as I'd thought.

Now I knew how he'd survived the Cantard. By being too young to have gone.

Playmate put on a big-eyed, pleading face. "He's as bright as the sun, Garrett, but not real long on social skills."

The boy managed to wriggle past Playmate's brown bulk. Ah, this child was definitely the sort who got himself pounded regularly because he just couldn't get his brilliance wrapped around the notion of keeping his mouth shut. He just naturally had to tell large, slow-witted, overmuscled, swift-tempered types that they were wrong. About whatever it was they were wrong about. What would not matter.

I observed, "And the truth shall bring you great pain."

"You understand." Playmate sighed.

"But don't hardly sympathize." I grabbed the kid as he tried to weasel his million freckles into the small front room. "Not with somebody who just can't make the connection between cause and effect where people are concerned." I shifted my grip, brought the kid's right arm up behind his back. Eventually he recognized a connection between pain and not holding still.

The Goddamn Parrot decided this was the ideal moment to begin preaching, "I know a girl who lives in a shack... " Playmate's friend turned red.

I said, "Why don't we go into my office?" My office is a custodian's closet with delusions of grandeur. Playmate is big enough to clog the doorway all by himself. We could manage the kid in there. If I dragged him inside first.