Later, when he asked, "Where were you born?" she answered, as he had expected she would, "Vic, I don't know."

A little over a month after they gave up Vic Serotonin to Site Crime, Fat Antoyne and Irene the Mona sat at the Long Bar in the Cafe Surf. Antoyne had on a new suit-yellow double-breasted drape with hologram buttons of Irene laughing and saying how Antoyne would always be a star to her-and they were drinking Boiru Black with chasers of something local Irene had never tried before, which she called "dickweed," although Antoyne thought he could have misheard that. It was early evening after a day of sunshine and showers along the Corniche, both heartbreaking and heartwarming; a day, as Irene said, which allowed you to see the true, beautiful balance of things, with both positives and negatives of your mood reflected back to you in the weather.

"It's good," she told him now, "that we take part in the great see-saw of life, but never forget, Antoyne, that the balance for this girl must always be on the positive side."

It was a slow night under the Live Music Nightly sign. Twenty minutes ago, its equipment assembled, its gin rickey appreciatively swallowed, the two-piece had begun chasing down a groove via the twenty minute interrogation of a tune of their own they called Adipose Annie. But Annie wasn't disclosing herself to them or anyone else tonight. Offered a solo, the saxophone shrugged no. They took fours briefly, restated the theme and left town on the first rocket out, while the paying clientele shook their heads judiciously and dug into their reserves of goodwill. Band and audience saving themselves for later on: a recipe for mutual misunderstanding.

Antoyne and Irene clapped desultorily, along with the rest, and Antoyne ordered more drinks.

"I am blue," he said. "I admit that."

"And I know why, Antoyne," the Mona said, resting her hand on his forearm. "Don't think I don't. At least," she said, "it's good to get an evening away."

When Paulie DeRaad's connexions came down to Saudade two days after Vic and Paulie disappeared, the first thing they did was take over Paulie's club. The Semiramide was less fun after that. As Irene said, the work was there but you missed Paulie, who always had something to say to a girl. All these EMC guys wanted was to track down Paulie's bolt-holes, which no one could tell them much about; also his habits after he got ill. They stayed in the back office all day; they had filled it with FTL routers, also they were going through Paulie's shadow operators with heavy-duty professional software, looking for something, they wouldn't say what, perhaps they didn't even know. All this would be fine, Irene said, but they didn't do much business themselves, whereas until his illness Paulie was always interested that way.

"That man was as unsparing with his money as he was with himself," she concluded. "He had the knack of making you feel wanted."

Antoyne looked into his drink.

"He'll be missed," was all he could think of to say.

"Antoyne," the Mona told him, "you lost the art of enjoying yourself since all this. How are we going to get that back?"

Antoyne shook his head and looked away.

The bar now made its long day's journey into night. In addition to her signature dish, chocolate lasagna, the chef offered Emmenthal amp; capers in choux pastry followed by a cappuccino of chickpeas; as if in response, keyboard and saxophone discovered their missing groove hidden in a chamame remix of the popular standard Barking Frog Buzz. Smells, music, kitchen heat: a seachange could now take place in the room, shy and emergent at first, in little pockets all around, then catastrophic, irreversible, global. Noise levels rose. The regular clientele, settling into the irradiated zone under the Live Music sign, began volume consumption of Ninety Per Cent Neon and Giraffe beer. Soon it was like any other night at the Surf. Deep into the first set, figures began squeezing themselves out of the space between the band and the bar. They were tentative-unsure what was required of them or what they required for themselves-yet young, pliant, labile, willing to dance. Their faces were as yet unwritten-to, their eyes only reflections of the lights in the bar, lights flickering off glass and bottle, reflections of reflections which though warm had no expression you could read. At first it was as if they were meant to be viewed only under this kind of illumination-and only for a moment, before your eyes took in something else. They had appetites, but didn't yet know what they were. They blinked in the neon, they drank thirstily at the bar, they struck up the quick friendships of children or animals and, arms linked suddenly, adventured out into the night.

Looking, Irene wondered, for what?

She thought love. She thought fulfilment. "Don't you think that too, Antoyne?"

Antoyne said he had no opinion.

"But don't you hope that's what it is?"

He could only reiterate what he already said, Antoyne told her. Then he stood up so suddenly he knocked over his stool. "Jesus," he whispered to himself. He tipped back his drink, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and, without a word to Irene, pushed his way through the Long Bar crowd until he could stand trembling on the Corniche looking down at the beach where, a month before, he had sold Vic Serotonin to Site Crime. The tide was high. Two women and a man were trying to have sex on the thin strip of sand under the Corniche lamps. Laughter rose in the cold air. "Here! No, here!" Someone sang two or three bars of tango music. The man's face was a white smear of pleasure under swept-back black hair. Antoyne wanted to call out but could not. He felt as if he was frozen in some other kind of time. As he watched, they came up from the beach adjusting their clothing and, arms linked, wandered off into the lamplight.

Irene found him standing there, staring along the Corniche towards Saudade. Tears ran down his face.

"Antoyne, honey," she said, "what is it?"

"It was Vic. I saw him."

"Honey, you didn't. Vic is gone now and he won't return. He was too inner a man to know another way. Don't do this to yourself any more! Vic Serotonin had no heart, but Antoyne, you have all the heart in the world! Come back inside. Please come back in." Antoyne shook his head, no, but allowed her to lead him back to the Long Bar. The two-piece played, the people were squeezed out into the room. He watched them leave.

"Life always goes on, Antoyne. It always goes on."

That was the crisis for Antoyne Messner. It got easier for him after that, and he was increasingly able to learn the gifts of happiness and self-belief.

Momentum ran the Cadillac halfway up a long bank of broken earthenware tiles before it slowed suddenly, slid a little way back, then rolled on to its driver side in a cloud of dust. For a minute or two, as the slope restabilised itself through the medium of small random avalanches decreasing in force and frequency, the man who looked like Einstein did nothing. He was content to rest, hanging awkwardly against the seatbelt with his chin pushed into his clavicle.

A bluish, sourceless light lay over everything. Everything seemed mixed together. Just as fluids trickled out of the car, all sorts of thoughts and images trickled out of his mind. "This was never an investigation," he heard his assistant complain. His wife said, "Aschemann, you would give the world the whole of yourself-if only you could find it." Meeting her for the first time, he had thought the same of her. That was on the Corniche, late one summer afternoon, with the light on the sea like mild steel. She was sitting outside a cafe, in a yellow silk frock and glasses so dark that she had to raise them to see him, eating an ice. Her air was one of disorientation, her eyes looked as bruised as if their life together had already occurred. An hour later she was sitting on his lap in the back of a rickshaw, with the silk frock up round her waist.