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presumably to pull out a shiny quarter from behind my ear. But when he pulled back his hand, he was holding, not a coin, but a long, wriggling black centipede. He let it dangle over his fist, turning his hand over as it crawled around and around. One of the girls squealed.
    He pinched it between thumb and forefinger, held the wriggling thing up for everyone to see. I noticed for the first time he had a few layers of first-aid tape wrapped around his other hand. He passed this hand in front of the bug and in a blink, the centipede was gone. The girls gasped.
    “Well, the bug was a nice touch,” I said, glancing at my watch.
    “You wanna know where it went, mon?”
    “No.” I wasn’t feeling well all of a sudden. This guy was giving me an odd feeling in my gut. “But, you know, don’t get me wrong. I am one entertained son of a bitch.”
    “I got other talents, you know.”
    “Yeah, but I bet all your really good tricks are back at your apartment, right? And you’d be happy to show them to me, if only I were sixteen and female?”
    “Do you dream, mon? I interpret dreams for beer.”
    That’s the town of Undisclosed in a nutshell. This run-down half city with more weirdos per capita than you’ll find anywhere outside of San Francisco. We should have that printed on the green population sign coming into town: WELCOME TO [UNDISCLOSED]. DREAMS INTERPRETED FOR BEER .
    I said, “Well, I don’t have any beer so I guess I’m outta luck.”
    “I tell you what, Mr. Skeptic Mon. I’ll do it just like Daniel in the Old Testament. I’ll tell you the last dream you had, then I’ll break down its meaning for you. But if I’m right, you gotta buy me a beer. Okay, mon?”
    “Sure. I mean, you’ve obviously been blessed with supernatural gifts. What better way to use them than to fish for free beers at parties.” I craned my head around, and thought I saw the dog trotting around a tent where somebody was selling corn dogs. I told my feet to turn and walk after it. I commanded my mouth to tell this guy “never mind.” Neither responded.
    I knew that absolutely nothing good could possibly come from this encounter and, somehow, that a whole lot of bad could come instead. But my feet were planted.
    “You had a dream early this morning, in the middle of the thunderstorm.”
    I looked him in the eye.
    Pfft. Lucky guess . . .
    “In the dream, you were back with your girl Tina . . .”
    Whoa, how’d he know—
    “—and you come home, and she’s there with a big honkin’ pile of dynamite. One of those big cartoon plunger detonators, ready to blow. You ask her what she’s doin’ and she says ‘this’ and shoves down the handle and,” he spread his hands in the air, “boom. Your eyes snapped open. The explosion in your dream became the clap of thunder outside your window. So tell me, mon. Am I close?”
    Ho. Lee. She. It.
    He smiled. All eyes were on me, the naked shock on my face. A girl whispered, “Oh my God . . .”
    There is no feeling I hate as much as speechlessness in the face of another man. I mumbled something.
    One of the girls muttered, “Was he right? He was right, wasn’t he?”
    A raven-haired girl next to her wearing raccoon eye shadow suddenly looked like she had been drained by a vampire. The group had unconsciously taken a step or two backward, as if there was some kind of safe distance at which the world would start making sense again.
    “The look on his face tells me I was right,” he said, through a grin. “Wouldn’t you say, girls? But wait, there’s more.”
    I wanted to walk away. Up on the pallet stage behind me John was tearing away the solo that marks the end of “Camel Holocaust,” rapping some impromptu lyrics, all over the cacophonous drums of Head “the entire show is one big drum solo in my mind” Feingold, and the band’s thunderous triple-threat bass. I’ve been to a lot of concerts, everything from garage bands to Pearl Jam. Maybe my opinion is biased, but I