The concrete-walled room had not seen daylight in eighty years. Its only visitors were the occasional mouse or dung beetle which died of thirst or hunger shortly after happening along. There was a growing collection of the bones and husks of such spread around in little dried piles. The room’s furnishings-which consisted of little more than a small card table and a turn-of-the-century rocking chair-had been perfectly preserved in the dry, North Texas climate, and the room’s only permanent occupant, seated in the rocking chair, grinned vacantly in the dark, waiting to greet the first interloper to come along.

The occupant was a skeleton, little more than fine clothing over crumbling, desiccated flesh and protruding bone. Had the skeleton still retained its meat and had blood still coursed through its now empty spaces, it would have been surprised at the sudden present that shushed through the inky blackness overhead and landed on its lap, cracking its pelvis and sending decades of dust flying.

The present, a leather physician’s bag, itself an antique, was partially open. The bag landed upside down and its contents spilled out onto the dust-laden trousers and slapped down onto the concrete floor with a dull thud.

Perhaps if the occupant still had eyes with which to see and a light to see by, it would have seen the denominations of the bills in each deck of a hundred, and perhaps after a lifetime spent in earnest chasing after just such, it would have grinned even wider, if old corpses could.

Instead it accepted the gift from above silently and began again to mark time in the dark as it had done for decades.

Outside, above, lightning flashed and thunder boomed.

Inside, the dust that had for a brief moment stirred, slowly settled back down.

All the hell started on Monday morning while I was driving north to work along the Loop near the pulsing heart of Austin. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper-I could have made as much headway on foot.

I kept seeing this red roadster. Flashy. One of those kit jobs that make no pretense at posing as original. One minute it was behind me and I could see it in my side view mirror, then in a flash past me, several cars ahead, then I passed it again. I wouldn't have cared too much about the roadster, only there was this girl. Story of my life.

A man gets up into his late thirties and the chances are he stops looking and begins observing. I don't know when exactly this happened to me. Couldn't pin it to a day or even a year, really. Just sort of crept in and one day I found myself completely aloof in my watching; peripheral vision on automatic. Not shifty, no. But peripheral. That in spades.

The girl in the roadster that morning knew I was looking, but I got the feeling that she didn’t mind so much. I caught just the hint of a smile as she trundled up even with me one more time, just before I had to pass her again.

She had big hair, even though it was tied off into a ponytail. Women with ponytails do funny things to me. This one had both a ponytail and hair with actual mass to it, but at the same time her hair looked fine, like baby hair. It was reddish blond, the color of an East Texas sunset-that's where I'm from-and it rippled like the wind through the high grass. Also, she wore huge, snotty sunglasses. In a word she wore “bitch” like a totem, except of course for her mouth, her glorious soft mouth.

Behind me, ahead of me, behind.

I didn't turn my head. Not even once.

But then she came right alongside. My exit lane was coming up, but suddenly I wasn’t taking it. I had bigger fish to fry. My aging heart, God bless it, didn't even miss a chug-too seasoned to stop working over a goddess in traffic. There was a dead standstill ahead, likely some kind of accident. Happens every day in the big city. Unlucky for somebody else, but so far I was liking it.

My peripheral vision extended to encompass points west, like maybe Fiji Island. My window was cracked just two inches-enough to muss my hair a little-and the wind was coming from that way and upon my life I could smell her.

My finger jabbed at the window button, lowering it to half mast. I knew she was still looking. It felt like she wanted me to look at her.

I counted: one-Mis-sis-sip-pi-two-Mis-sis-sip-pi-three-Mis-sis-sip-pi, and turned slowly. No smile. Just deadpan. A guy in traffic on his way to work.

She removed her sunglasses and smiled a little and old faithful betrayed me: Clang!

I looked at her and tried not to smile, which was difficult, the way she smiled at me. Playful, as if to say: “There are possibilities here. The door is slightly ajar. Maybe you could come on in. Maybe not. We’ll see.” She was the cat and I the mouse and some kind of game was in progress.

I wasn’t paying any attention to what was going on ahead of me, and it just so happened that that was the game she’d been playing all along-distraction.

She looked forward, taking those lovely eyes off me.

When I finally looked forward, the line ahead of me had moved up perhaps fifty or so yards.

My right foot began the motion to switch from brake to gas and before that small space between foot and pedal was closed completely I heard rubber peeling on asphalt in a growing whine. There was a red and white blur just as I pushed on the gas and my reflex was to brake again, but before I could even do that the beautiful girl with the man-slaying smile and the bitch glasses and the red roadster that I wouldn’t have minded too much sitting in my own driveway darted into the narrow space between her and the car ahead of me and my heart lurched and my ears winced in anticipation of a metal-on-metal screech that didn’t come.

I suppose my ears turned red. It felt like that, anyway. Maybe someone behind me had seen it all and knew that I’d been played for a fool.

And maybe not. The problem was that Iknew.

As the shock wore off I moved forward again, my window full up now and destined to remain so. I’d been thoroughly put in my place.

By the time I got caught up to the traffic in front of me the red roadster with the snotty little bitch had switched lanes again, merged into moving traffic and was gone.

So what does a man who’s a blink away from forty do? He does what he’s supposed to do. He goes to work as if nothing has happened at all.

“Good morning, Mr. Travis,” Penelope, my receptionist greeted me. No difference between this and any other given morning. Sometimes I wished Penny wasn’t so damned cute. That morning her cuteness was slightly accusatory.

I smiled and nodded and quickly disappeared around the corner and down the hall and into my office. Comfort and safety was to be found there.

I dropped my briefcase into a chair covered with papers and marveled that nothing spilled.

I made a quick jaunt down to the kitchen for a cup of hot coffee and managed to catch Nat Bierstone’s back disappearing into his own office where he’d probably be until about lunch time.

Back to my Corinthian leather executive chair. I propped my Dr. Martens up on my desk at the same time that I noticed a stack of bills that needed to be paid before the week was done. I’d get around to it.

I sipped my coffee, read the sports section and began to enliven.

I was in the middle of an article on Lance Armstrong, who could probably ride through hell and back on a bicycle-and I was enjoying the article-when my phone buzzer went off. That’s almost always the way it happens.

“Yeah, Penny?”

“Mr. Travis, your first appointment is here.”

Appointment? I didn’t have any appointments. I always kept my own calendar, so no one else actually knew my schedule.