“No, thanks,” said Pearce. “No time for tea. Work to be done. Planet and what have you…Raging against the…” He hawked up some phlegm and spat it into a polka-dot handkerchief. “Dying of the light.”

“OK. Good to see you,” said Israel. “Look after yourself, OK?”

“Aye, you enjoy yourself there,” said Ted.

“I’ve been measuring my pond at home,” said Pearce.

“Right ye are, auld fella,” said Ted to Pearce. And “Let’s get in here, my back’s killing me,” he said to Israel.

“One hundred and two feet,” said Pearce.

“Very good,” said Israel. “Excellent.”

Pearce raised the viola and the neckerchiefed dogs stirred at his feet, preparing themselves. “I’ll see you on Sunday, of course?” said Pearce.

“Yes,” said Israel. “Of course.”

“Sunday?” said Ted.

“I visit him sometimes on Sundays.”

“Very cozy,” said Ted.

“Sshh,” said Israel.

“Good,” said Pearce, waving them away with his bow. “Now, no time to chat. Must get on. Bach.”

“Ing,” said Ted.

“Sshh!” said Israel.

“Bloody header,” said Ted, as they walked into Zelda’s.

“I like him,” said Israel. “He’s my favorite person in the whole of Tumdrum.”

“Aye,” said Ted. “’Cause he’s not all there, an a big lump trailin’.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“He’s as bloody crazy as you are.”

They waved good-bye to Pearce playing his viola outside and pushed into the crowds. Even by the usual packed standards of Zelda’s on a Friday morning, Zelda’s was packed: you couldn’t move for the thick fug of car coats, steamed milk, and potpourri.

“Oh god. What the hell’s happening in here?” said Israel.

“Busy,” agreed Ted.

Zelda’s Café was a kind of holding area for the nearly departed, a place where the retired of Tumdrum assembled for coffee and scones before ascending toward the Judgment Seat and the Gate of Heaven; it was a place neither in nor entirely of this world, or certainly not of the world that Israel wished to inhabit; not a world he could ever feel a part of. It wasn’t that they were bad people, the ever-fragrant coffee-and-scone crowd in Zelda’s. In fact, they were very decent people-sweet, sweet milky coffee ran in their veins, and they were as good-hearted as the glacé cherry in a cherry scone. They just weren’t Israel’s kind of people. And here they all were, gathered together, just about every last one of them: it was as though Zelda’s was staging the worldwide scone and coffee fest. Scoffest.

“We’ll never get a seat,” said Israel, staring at the heaving throng. “Shall we go somewhere else?”

“There is nowhere else,” said Ted.

“Ah,” said Israel. “Yes. You see. There’s the rub.”

“Give over,” said Ted.

“Come on, ye, on on in,” said Minnie, bustling over, frilly pinny on, brown cardigan sleeves rolled up. “Plenty of room, gents, plenty of room!”

“God. Really?” said Israel. “Isn’t it a little-”

“And none of yer auld language here today, please. We’ve a visitor. Come on on.” She waved them forward and started to lead them through the crowded café, like a guide taking tourists through a souk in Marrakech.

“Who’s the visitor?” said Israel, squeezing between car coats.

“A Very Important Person,” said Minnie.

“Who?” said Ted.

“Nelson Mandela?” said Israel.

“Och!” said Minnie.

“The Berlin State Philharmonic?”

“What?” said Minnie.

“You know you’ve got Pearce outside busking?”

“Ach, he’s harmless, bless him,” said Minnie.

“He’s away in the head,” said Ted, demonstrating what he considered to be a state of away-in-the-headness by rolling his eyes and lolling his tongue.

“He’s not well,” said Minnie.

“It’s the Haltzeimer’s,” said Ted.

“The what?” said Israel.

“Have you lost weight, pet?” said Minnie, glancing behind her.

“Just a bit,” said Israel.

“He’s depressed,” said Ted.

“I am not depressed,” said Israel.

“Split up with his girlfriend back in London,” said Ted.

“Oh dear,” said Minnie. “And you’ve grown a beard as well,” she added.

“Adding insult to injury,” said Ted.

“Top-up of coffee when you’ve a minute,” said a man in the traditional Zelda’s getup of car coat, plus a suit and a tie, and a zip-up pullover, with a Racing Post propped before him, as Minnie bustled by.

“Make that two,” said his similarly attired companion.

“And I’ll take another date and wheaten scone,” piped up another identically clad man at another table.

“And me!”

“Cinnamon scone, and a large cappuccino?” called someone else.

“Och, all right,” said Minnie, squeezing past women whose calorie intake had clearly exceeded recommended daily amounts for some years, and men whose red, flushed faces suggested that an occasional tipple had become a rather more regular routine. “Give me a wee minute here, will ye?”

Zelda’s was not the Kit Kat Club.

“So who’s the VIP?” said Ted. “Not the fat boy off the radio? He gets everywhere.”

“Stephen Nolan?” said Israel. “Oh god, no. Not him.”

“Stop it,” said Ted, pointing a finger at Israel. Ted insisted on the highest standards of nonblaspheming. “I like him.”

“No,” said Minnie. “Maurice Morris.”

“Oh god, not him, the f-” began Israel.

“I said, no language!” said Minnie. “He’s getting worse,” she said to Ted.

“I’ve warned you,” said Ted to Israel. “Ye bad-mannered bastard.”

“Come on, now,” said Minnie. “Let me squeeze you in the wee huxter here, and I’ll see if I can’t bring Maurice over for a wee chat. I’m sure he’d love to meet you.”

“No!” said Israel.

“I’ll be back in a minute for your orders,” said Minnie, bustling away.

“Maurice Morris,” said Ted. “Well, well, well. The Man with the Plan.”

Maurice Morris, the Man with the Plan: Independent Unionist candidate for Tumdrum and District, out on the stump, one of Northern Ireland’s most popular politicians, admired by all and loved by many, until he’d fallen from favor and had been defeated-crushed, humiliated-by the Democratic Unionists at the last election, not because of any policy or political crisis, but because of the small complicating matter of his affair with one of his constituency workers, and the accompanying slight whiff of financial impropriety, which never came to more than a whiff but which was more than enough for the good people of Tumdrum, the scone and coffee crowd, who could smell a rat when they saw one and who had turned their car-coated backs to him and set their po-faces against him. It had taken Maurice years to patch things up and make himself anew, and only now was he seeking to regain his seat, which is why he was here in Zelda’s, the very heartland of Tumdrum, busy working the crowd, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, receding hair swept boldly back from his vast lined but deeply un-troubled forehead, looking every thickset square inch the comeback politician. In his campaign literature Maurice liked to draw attention to his confidence-inspiring six-foot-five-inch frame and his well-cut suits-suits for which he was, according to his campaign literature, renowned provincewide. His Savile Row pinstripes and his Jermyn Street shirts and ties, he believed, spoke for themselves, and they most certainly did; they told you everything you needed to know about Maurice Morris, or M ’n’ M, as he preferred to be called. His sparkling white teeth and his perma-tan spoke eloquently also-they sang out on his behalf-as did his reputation as North Antrim’s most successful independent financial adviser. What M ’n’ M did not know about mortgages, repossessions, and trusts in kind simply was not worth knowing: Maurice was the man, the big man in the big picture, financially, politically, and socially; this was a man who had been photographed consistently, for over a decade, in the Ulster Tatler, and the Belfast Telegraph, and the Impartial Recorder, with every Irish and Northern Irish celebrity, major and minor, excepting Bono, who was still on his wish list. Maurice was not just a politician or a businessman: he was a brand and a celebrity, and he was not a man to be underestimated, overlooked, doubted, mocked, questioned, queried, or in any other way challenged. Maurice Morris had been blessed at birth-by whimsical, apparently homonymic-and possibly crossword-puzzle-minded parents-with his own surname for a first name, and he had known from an early age that this somehow made him impregnable and unassailable, like God with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Maurice was like New York, New York. He was entirely in and of himself; he was, according to his campaign literature, the Man with the Plan. His ostensible plan was accountable government, investment in jobs, reform of the planning process: all of the usual. His actual plan was to win back power by any means necessary. He’d done his penance, he’d made his apologies, and now he wanted back in. Israel had followed Maurice’s charmless charm offensive on the many billboards of County Antrim as he drove in the van every day, Maurice Morris’s shining face staring down at him: dominant, necessary, and appalling.