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there, too. Marking this whole new world as its territory. It came toward me at a trot, the chain hissing through the grass behind it. It sniffed around my shoes, decided I was dead, I guess, and began snuffling around my pockets to see if I had died with any beef jerky on me.
    It recoiled when I reached up to pet it, a catty “don’t touch the hair” look on its face.
    A brass tag, on its collar.
    Etched with a message.
I’ M M OLLY .
P LEASE RETURN ME TO . . .
    . . . with an address in Undisclosed listed below. At least seven miles from home. I wondered how long it had taken the animal to etch that tag.
    The dog, having nothing else to gain from our relationship, trotted away. I followed it, deciding on the spot that I would load up the dog and return it to the owners, who were probably worried sick about it. Probably a family with a little girl, crying her eyes out waiting for it to come back.
    Or, a couple of sorority girls dealing with their grief through a series of erotic massages . . .
    It’s hard to look cool chasing after a dog, especially since I sort of run like a girl anyway. The dog pitched annoyed glances back my way as I trotted after it, picking up speed each time. I wound up taking a circuitous path all the way to the other side of the field, where I heard something that turned my guts cold.
    A shriek. High-pitched, almost a whistle. Only two creatures on God’s Earth can make that sound: African Grey Parrots and fifteen-year-old female humans. I spun around, moved toward the commotion. The dog seemed to eye me carefully, then ran off in the other direction. I looked around—
    Ah. Giggling now. There was a bundle of girls, away from the stage, huddled with their backs to the band. They were surrounding a black guy with dreadlocks, an overcoat. He had one of those Rastafarian berets on his head, definitely going for a look, wanting the attention. Two of the girls had their hands over their mouths, eyes bulging, screaming for the guy to do it again, do it again. From the reaction I figured I had just encountered the most dreaded of all partygoers: the amateur magician.
    “Oh my gawd!” said the nearest girl. “That guy just levitated!”
    One girl looked pale, on the verge of tears. Another threw up her hands and walked away, head shaking.
    Gullibility is a knife at the throat of civilization.
    “How high?” I asked blandly.
    The Jamaican turned his gaze on me, trying to pull off the piercing stare of the exotic voodoo priest. It was an expression that was supposed to make me hear theremin music in my head.
    “You gotta love the skeptic, mon,” the guy said in a rubber accent that was part Jamaican, part Irish and part pirate.
    “Show him! Show him!” screeched a couple of the girls.
    I’m not sure why I feel the need to rain on this kind of parade. I like to think I’m standing up for skepticism but in reality I was probably just pissed that this guy was going to have sex tonight and I wasn’t.
    “What, about six inches above the grass, right?” I asked him. “Balducci levitation? Made famous by magic hack David Blaine in his television special? All you need is some strong ankles and a little acting, right?”
    And a stupid, drunken audience . . .
    His gaze froze on me. I had a familiar, nervous sensation, one that goes all the way back to elementary school. It’s the simultaneous realization that I may have talked my way into another fistfight, and that I had not spent any time learning to fight since the last one. In a town where Friday night bar brawls make the Undisclosed emergency room look like the aftermath of a Third World election, sometimes it’s better for smart-asses like me to just keep walking.
    Then, he broke out in a big, white, toothy smile. A charmer.
    “Let’s see . . . what can I do to impress Mr. Skeptic Mon? Ah, lookee there. You didn’t wash behind your ears, did ya?”
    I let out a loud, theatrical sigh as he reached out to the side of my head,