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you’ve spent a lot of time in the town graveyard since you arrived. Looking for what?”
    He scanned the empty ceiling and replied.
    â€œIt seems to me you’ve been down at that train station where hardly any trains arrive. Why?”
    She did not turn, but said, “It seems both of us are looking for something but won’t or can’t say why or what.”
    â€œSo it seems.”
    Another silence. Now, at last, she looked at him.
    â€œWhich of us is going to confess?”
    â€œYou go first.”
    She laughed quietly.
    â€œMy truth is bigger and more incredible than yours.”
    He joined her laughter but shook his head. “Oh, no, my truth is more terrible.”
    She quickened and he felt her trembling.
    â€œDon’t frighten me.”
    â€œI don’t want to. But there it is. And if tell you, I’m afraid you’ll run and I won’t ever see you again.”
    â€œEver?” murmured Nef.
    â€œEver.”
    â€œThen,” she said, “tell me what you can, but don’t make me afraid.”
    But at that moment, far away in the night world, there was a single cry of a train, a locomotive, drawing near.
    â€œDid you hear that? Is that the train that comes to take you away?”
    There was a second cry of a whistle over the horizon.
    â€œNo,” he said, “maybe it’s the train that comes, God I hope not, with terrible news.”
    Slowly she sat up on the edge of the bed, her eyes shut. “I have to know.”
    â€œNo,” he said. “Don’t go. Let me.”
    â€œBut first … ,” she murmured.
    Her hand gently pulled him over to her side of the bed.

CHAPTER 19
    Sometime during the night, he sensed that he was once more alone.
    He woke in a panic, at dawn, thinking, I’ve missed the train. It’s come and gone. But, no—
    He heard the locomotive whistle shrieking across the sky, moaning like a funeral train as the sun rose over desert sands.
    Did he or did he not hear a bag, similar to his own, catapult from a not-stopping train to bang the station platform?
    Did he or did he not hear someone landing like a three-hundred-pound anvil on the platform boards?
    And then Cardiff knew. He let his head fall as if chopped. “Dear God, oh dear vengeful God!”

CHAPTER 20
    They stood on the platform of the empty station, Cardiff at one end, the tall man at the other.
    â€œJames Edward McCoy?” Cardiff said.
    â€œCardiff,” said McCoy, “is that you?”
    Both smiled false smiles.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” said Cardiff.
    â€œYou might have known I would follow,” said James Edward McCoy. “When you left town, I knew someone had died, and you’d gone to give him a proper burial. So I packed my bag.”
    â€œWhy would you do that?”
    â€œTo keep you honest. I learned long ago you leaned one way, me the other. You were always wrong, I was always right. I hate liars.”
    â€œâ€˜Optimists’ is the word you want.”
    â€œNo wonder I hate you. The world’s a cesspool and you keep swimming in it, heading for shore. Dear God, where is the shore? You’ll never find it because the shore doesn’t exist! We’re rats drowning in a sewer, but you see lighthouses where there are none. You claim the Titanic is Mark Twain’s steamboat. To you Svengali, Raskolnikov, and Hitler were the Three Stooges! I feel sorry for you. So I’m here to make you honest.”
    â€œSince when have you believed in honesty?”
    â€œHonesty, currency, and common sense. Never play funhouse slot machines, don’t toss red-hot pennies to the poor, or throw your landlady downstairs. Fine futures? Hell, the future’s now, and it’s rotten. So, just what are you up to in this jerkwater town?”
    McCoy glared around the deserted station.
    Cardiff said, “You’d better leave on the next train.”
    â€œI got twenty-four hours to steal