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eagerness that comes when you're twenty-three. Instead, he laid down the newspaper he'd been reading on the bus that morning. There was a page of advertisements of vacant situations clamoring for web designers. ”Mr.
        Ryde, a fifty-percent raise would put me at a salary of thirty thousand a year. There's a dozen companies here willing to recruit web site designers at salaries of forty thousand a year”
        ”Come on, West, that would be out of the question. Last week you were sorting mail in the basement.”
        Benedict said nothing, merely looked Ryde in the eye.
        Ryde had let out a breath of air that said all too clearly: I'm an important man, West, and you're wasting my time. Irritably, Ryde had snapped, ”It's not for me to agree to that kind of raise. I'll have to refer your demands upward. But you might regret it.”
        Ten minutes later came one of the moments that only happen a few times in life. Ryde returned red-faced but wearing a fixed smile. ”I've put your request to the vice-president himself. You'll need to sign a new contract of employment with a clause prohibiting you from working for any of our competitors.”He cleared his throat. ”We're prepared to offer you a salary of forty thousand dollars a year, plus bonuses, plus a company car. Ahm… how does that sound, Benedict?”
        This sounded sweet. The silver BMW added an extra spoonful of honey to the deal, too.
        That embarrassed climb-down by Ryde fanfared the start of a very happy time. Within months he was dating Mariah. By Christmas she'd moved into a new apartment with him that overlooked the ocean. Then one day in the spring of ten years ago Mariah upped and left. She didn't say where she was going or why she'd left. He'd simply returned home bursting with news of a promotion to the head office in New York and she wasn't there anymore. She'd taken most of her clothes, her car and transferred her savings to a checking account.
        The police, figuring a spat between lovers, did nothing. It took him three weeks to learn through her sisters that she'd moved to a bed and breakfast hostel in Chicago. Why Chicago? That question had haunted him long enough. She didn't have family or friends there. The last time he saw her was when he tracked her down to an old dance hall called the Luxor. On placards flanking the entrance to the parking lot were signs announcing: The Luxor bids you goodnight and good-bye. Farewell concert season March-June. He'd parked the car facing a flight of marble steps that led up to an Egyptian-style facade, complete with columns and carvings that could have come right out of a pharaoh's tomb. Tonight a tribute band was playing Motown hits.
        He'd watched Mariah walk up the steps and into the Luxor alone. She'd been wearing a short black dress; her long pale blond hair had hung loose down her back. She'd paused at the top of the steps, then glanced back as if sensing he'd been there. Only she hadn't seen him. Then she'd turned and walked through the colossal doors.
        Benedict waited all night, long after the crowds had streamed out of the Luxor and the lot had emptied of cars. Mariah never left the building.
        
***
        
        Ellery got out of his head. He didn't need vodka or drugs or solvent adhesives, or any of the shit others used to get wasted. Ellery Hann got out of his head by sitting in this old armchair in the middle of the Luxor dance floor and just… just letting go. That's the only way he could describe it. It came naturally. Always had. He didn't have to force it. When he used to seek refuge as a child from the street kids in his grandfather's cigar store, he'd sit and stare at the carved Apache chief that stood in the doorway and ”let go.”Then he'd be whoever he wanted to be. In any place he wanted to be. An astronaut on the moon. An explorer in a jungle. A diver in a drowned city at the bottom of the ocean. He'd found it easy to