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Art for this whole lazy stretch. What with his duties and hers, their assignations, although exciting, had been hasty and brief. She had seldom even stayed the night at his digs, and he had never yet been to her apartment. But now they’d raise their affair to new heights through constant companionship.
    Art appeared at first to accept this plan of Merritt’s with enthusiasm. “Wonderful! We’ll play Sermak and Gretchen, in our impoverished cold-water flat!” Merritt hugged and kissed him, relieved that he had accepted her attempt at deepening and strengthening their affair.
    On Thursday they hung out at Tupelo Park. A Block devoid of buildings and devoted to raising a manicured crop of grass still summer-green, Tupelo Park hosted live music, ball-playing and en plein air snogging in private gazebos. On Friday they went clubbing, with Merritt carefully avoiding any venues featuring Cady Rachis/Loona Poole.
    But by Saturday morning, Art seemed itchy and irritable with Merritt. He poked at his breakfast of buckwheat flapjacks with lingonberry syrup (lovingly cooked and served by Merritt); vented dramatic sighs without apparent provocation; refused to speculate on future polypolisological expeditions; and cursed disproportionately when he couldn’t find a certain book on his well-stocked shelves. Even knocking back a shot of amrita failed to mellow him out.
    Merritt felt nervous. Was she being too possessive? Did she perhaps not offer enough depth to captivate her man? After all, Arturo Scoria was a veteran of a hundred exotic milieus and encounters. How could her sole companionship hold a candle to associating with, say, the Jumblies of Jingly Hall?
    Desperate for some entertainment that would appeal to Art and reveal her own sophistication, Merritt hit upon the weekly medstudent party held at the meatpacking-district establishment district establishment of Yun and Adams.
    Her lover’s excited response to her proposal was both heartening and dismaying. “Excellent! It sounds like a stimulatingly louche affair among a vibrant subculture!”
    Merritt had no trouble finding the place. And with Art on her arm, she experienced no apprehension at shadowy alleyways.
    She half-expected to confront Yun’s unnervingly self-composed features upon the opening of the warehouse door. But instead, rather more disconcertingly, Merritt faced her one-off bed partner of weeks ago, the gracile, tat-patterned, coal-haired young woman. The nameless gal smiled at Merritt and Art without any apparent recognition of either, and invited them inside. Merritt sighed at having dodged that particular bullet.
    Searching for Ransome Pivot became Merritt’s next mission. She wanted to show off Art and see Ransome’s reaction. But not only could she not find her Stagwitz-born peer anywhere—he seemed among the entirely missing, as did Henry Yun and Goodge Adams themselves—but she also got separated from Art in the hullabaloo. The crowd here was louder and more aggressive, fueled by stronger drink than amrita, and Merritt thought to discern a clot of predatory, red-taloned women around her man.
    She was fighting her way to his side when with a tremendous percussive boom a pack of Wharton Constables inexplicably broke down the outer door and swarmed inside, at least a dozen buff-uniformed, strongarm, no-nonsense, ass-kicking name-takers.
    The partygoers shrieked and scattered aimlessly. Glasses crashed. Merritt was carried nearly off her feet and toward the back of the building. She felt her ankle twist in the process, and it instantly began to throb painfully.
    What was this assault all about? Retaliation against some mild, harmless dope-smoking? The raid made no sense….
    Now Merritt regained her feet, surrounded by single-minded Constables, these wordless enforcers ignoring her as they zeroed in on that mysterious door that Yun had steered her away from during her first visit. Two of the Constables carried a lock-puller like a lance. They rammed