The door to Ricky’s apartment was open wide. The building maintenance man said, “Sorry, we had to open it up. We were trying to find the source of the main problem…” He stopped then, as if no further explanation were necessary, but added a single word, “… Shit…” which also didn’t need expansion.

Ricky took a single step into his apartment and stopped in his tracks.

It was as if some kind of hurricane had swept through his home. Water was pooled up an inch deep. Electrical lights had shorted out, and there was a distinct odor of material that had been burned then extinguished in the air. All the furniture and carpeting were soaked, much of it clearly ruined. Huge portions of the ceiling were bowed and buckled, others had burst open, spreading white snowlike plaster dust around. Strips of Sheetrock had come loose and fallen into piles resembling papier-mâché lumps. Too many places for him to count still dripped dark, brown-tinged noxious water. As he stepped farther into the apartment, the smell of waste that had insinuated itself into the lobby increased insistently, almost overwhelming him.

Ruin was everywhere. His things were either inundated or scattered. It was a little bit as if a tidal wave had slammed into the apartment. He cautiously entered his office, standing in the doorway. A huge slab of ceiling had fallen onto the couch. His desk was beneath a curled strip of Sheetrock. There were at least three different holes in the ceiling, all dripping, all with shattered and exposed pipes hanging down like stalactites in a cave. Water covered the floor. Some of the artwork, his diplomas and the picture of Freud, had fallen, so there was shattered glass in more than one spot.

“Little like some kinda terrorist attack, ain’t it?” the maintenance man said. When Ricky stepped forward, he reached out and grabbed the doctor by the arm. “Not in there,” he said.

“My things…” Ricky started.

“I don’t think the floor is safe no more,” the man said. “And any of those pipes hanging down could break loose anytime. Whatever you want is likely ruined anyway. Best to leave it. This place is a helluva lot more dangerous than you think. Take a whiff, doc. Smell that? Not just the shit and stuff. I think I smell gas, too.”

Ricky hesitated, then nodded. “The bedroom?” he asked.

“More of the same. All the clothes, too. And the bed was crushed by some huge chunk of ceiling.”

“I still need to see,” Ricky said.

“No, you don’t,” the man replied. “Ain’t no nightmare you can think up gonna equal what the truth is, so best leave it and get the hell out. Insurance gonna pay for just about everything.”

“My things…”

“Things are just things, doc. A pair of shoes, a suit of clothes-they can be replaced pretty easy. Not worth risking sickness or injury. We need to get out of here and let the experts take over. I ain’t trusting what’s left of that ceiling to stay put. And I can’t vouch for the floor none, either. They gonna have to gut this place, top to bottom.”

That was what Ricky felt in that second. Gutted from top to bottom. He turned and followed the man out. A small piece of ceiling fell behind him, as if to underscore what the man had said.

Back out on the sidewalk, the building maintenance man and the stockbroker, accompanied by the man from DPW, all approached him.

“Bad?” the broker said. “Ever seen worse?”

Ricky shook his head.

“Insurance guys are already coming by,” the broker continued. He handed Ricky his business card. “Look, call me at my office in a couple of days. In the meantime, have you got a place to go?”

Ricky nodded, pocketing the man’s card. He had just one untouched place left in his life. But he did not have much hope that it would remain that way.

The last of the night clothed him like an ill-fitting suit, tight and uncomfortable. He pressed his cheek up against the glass of the window, feeling the coolness of the early morning hour penetrate past the barrier, almost as if it could seep directly into him, the darkness outside joining with the bleakness he felt inside. Ricky longed for morning, hoping that sunlight might help defeat the blackness of his prospects, knowing that this was a futile hope. He breathed in slowly, tasting stale air on his tongue, trying to dislodge the weight of the despair that filled him. This he could not do.

Ricky was in the sixth hour of the Bonanza Bus late-night ride from Port Authority to Provincetown. He listened to the diesel drone of the bus engine, a constant rise and fall, as the driver changed gears. After a stop in Providence, the bus had finally reached Route 6 on the Cape, and was making its slow and determined progression up the highway, discharging passengers in Bourne, Falmouth, Hyannis, Eastham, and finally his stop in Wellfleet, before heading to P-Town at the tip of the Cape.

The bus was by now only about one-third filled. Throughout the trip, all the other passengers had been young men or women, late teenage through college and just entering the workforce age, stealing a getaway weekend on Cape Cod. The weather forecast must be good, he thought. Bright skies, warm temperatures. Initially, the young people had been noisy, excited in the first hours of the trip, laughing, jabbering away, connecting in that method that youth finds so automatic, ignoring Ricky, who sat alone in the back, separated by gulfs far greater than merely his age. But the steady dull throb of the engine had done its work on virtually all the passengers, save him, and they were spread out now in various sleep positions, leaving Ricky to watch the miles slide beneath the wheels, his thoughts flowing past as quickly as the highway.

There was no doubt in his mind that no plumbing accident had destroyed his apartment. He hoped the same was not true of his summer home.

It was, he realized, pretty much all he had left.

Internally, he measured what he was heading to, a modest inventory that did more to depress than encourage: a house dusty with memories. A slightly dented and scratched ten-year-old Honda Accord that he kept in the barn behind the house solely to use during the summer vacation, not ever having needed a vehicle while living in Manhattan. Some weathered clothes, khakis, polo shirts, and sweaters with frayed collars and moth holes. A cashier’s check for $10,000 (more or less) awaiting him at the bank. A career in tatters. A life in utter disarray.

And about thirty-six remaining hours before Rumplestiltskin’s deadline.

For the first time in days he fixated on the choice facing him: the name or his own obituary. Otherwise someone innocent would face a punishment that Ricky could only begin to imagine. All the harsh ranges from ruin to death. He had no doubt any longer of the man’s sincerity. Nor of his reach and his determination.

Ricky thought: For all my running around and speculating and trying to figure out the puzzles presented to me, the choice has never changed. I am in the same position that I was when the first letter arrived at my office.

Then he shook his head, because that wasn’t quite right. His position, he realized, had worsened significantly. The Dr. Frederick Starks who had opened the letter in his well-appointed uptown office, surrounded by his carefully ordered life, in control of every minute of each day as it arrived in his palm so regularly, no longer existed. He had been a jacket-and-tie man, unruffled and every hair in place. He stared for a moment at the bus window, just catching his reflection in the dark pane of glass. The man who looked back at him barely resembled the man he thought he once was. Rumplestiltskin had wanted to play a game. But there was nothing sporting about what had happened to him.

The bus jerked slightly, and the engine decelerated, signaling another stop arriving. Ricky glanced at his wristwatch and saw that he would arrive in Wellfleet right around dawn.