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he said, “believe me, they would stop at nothing to possess the power of the Stones … and the ones who carry them.” On and on he went, leaping from one thought to the next. Finally, we said good night and I walked into my room alone. In the great room, I heard the Fleur-du-Mal still talking and extinguishing the wall lamps one by one. The last thing I heard him say was, “Process, Zezen, the answer is in the process .”
    The night couldn’t pass fast enough for me. I tried not to think ahead, but it was no use. I worried all night about what was wrong with my plan. I was gambling on so many unknown factors. I went through every contingency, and there were many, yet I still didn’t have an answer for the very first problem—the exact words in my first question to Koki. It would make or break the plan. I was already dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed when I heard two sharp raps on my door, followed by the familiar, “Rice, mister.” As I was walking to the door, the answer came to me— a question wouldn’t work, it had to be a statement!
    I swung open the door. Koki was smiling and rocking back and forth. He held a candle in one hand and a bowl of steaming rice in the other. His brown eyes were huge and watery behind his glasses, and he was looking directly at me. I let a moment pass, then said the words evenly, one by one, “Take me to the black girl, Koki. Now.”
    Koki nodded his head up and down. “Yes, hello. Yes,” he said without hesitation. I waited for him to say something else, or turn and move. He didn’t. Then I realized he had no idea what to do with the rice. His “routine” had not yet been completed. I reached for the bowl and set it down inside my room. “Thank you, Koki,” I said. “Now, take me to the black girl.”
    We started toward the back of the great room, Koki leading the way and staying close to the wall. His candle was the only light in the room and as he shuffled past Goya’s head, I glanced at it and stopped. Koki walked on a pace or two before I said, “Wait, Koki.” Then, for some unknown reason, I reached out and dislodged the skull from the iron clamps and put it under my arm. “Keep going, Koki,” I said. He was staring wide-eyed at the skull and moaning. “It is all right, Koki, it is all right,” I repeated. “Keep going.”
    At the far end of the great room we walked through wide double doors into the kitchen area, then beyond and through a smaller door into Koki’s apartment. The room stank of stale tobacco and the scent of sardines. He pushed back a curtain in the corner of the room and opened a heavy wooden door reinforced with three iron straps. The door led to a dark stone passageway. There was a flimsy string of electric lights along the wall, but the electricity was out. I found another candle in the room and lit it, using Koki’s candle. He walked ahead of me. The air in the passage became cooler and slightly damp. We took two right turns and passed by three doors, all reinforced in the same manner. At the fourth door, Koki came to a halt. The door was no different from the others except for a long iron key hanging from the wall next to the door. Koki spun around and grinned. “Hello, mister. Yes.”
    “Yes,” I said, grinning back, “yes, Koki, yes!” I handed Goya’s skull over to him and said, “Hold this.” Koki’s mouth dropped open, but he nodded his head and began rocking back and forth, holding his candle high in one hand and Goya tight against his chest with the other. I slipped the ancient key off the hook and inserted it in the lock, then turned it once to the right and heard the click. I pushed on the heavy wooden door. The hinges groaned and creaked from the weight. I held up my candle and took a step inside. I could see a Persian rug beneath my feet, but that was all. Then I heard a match being struck and a small bloom of flame flared in the darkness. In its light I saw her sitting on a bed ten feet away and looking