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down in front of the monitor.
Suddenly, Philip grinned. A thought rushed him and he could hardly
contain it.

    Flaxen One says: “I want you to call me.”
    Tdye says: “How is that managed?”
    Flaxen One says: “Bottom left hand side of the
screen. Phone tag. See it?”
    Tdye says: “How clever. How . . .”

    The screen flashed and the phone rang. Philip’s hand
went for the receiver. The door opened. Kurt popped his head in
giving the Flaxen One a thumbs-up. Perhaps the Porn Nazi would be rethinking his generous offer of not sharing in zie
tipz. He disappeared as fast as he appeared.
    “Hello,” Philip gasped. “Thomas?”
    “Well,” said the caller, “there is an angel’s voice
to match the body Adonis.”
    “Say what? You’ll make me blush.” He stared into the
monitor. “And you’ll be able to see it. Wait. I have an idea.” He
pressed the Ctrl-F9 key and the screen turned a faded shade
of green. “Since we’re just talking, I’ll go on a break. You can
still see me, but all the others can’t. And . . . the meter’s not
running.”
    “Can you do that?” Thomas asked. “Will you court
trouble? I do not want to cause a problem.”
    “No problem.” He winked into the monitor — a long,
deliberate wink. “I’m the star attraction. Lose me and they might
as well close the place down.” He had a mental whiff of the Porn
Nazi — Der straße hast mit kinder gefüllen. “It’ll be
okay.”
    “I am greatly honored,” Thomas said.
    “Well, not so fast. I can’t be on like this forever.
The meter’s not running, but my clock’s still ticking. So answer me
this.”
    “Shoot!”
    “You’ve seen pretty much every part of me.”
    “And then some.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I think I may have glimpsed your soul.”
    “How’s that?”
    “I think somewhere between your backside and your
pole polishing, I saw a twinkle in your eye. Now I cannot subscribe
that that was your soul, but it may have been a glimpse of
something beyond the flesh.”
    Philip laughed. It was like listening to his book.
Had he strolled off the beach and onto the Nantucket wharves? He
glanced at his watch, and thought he might take a long, long break
— one that challenged the Porn Nazi’s time clock and
Sprakie’s gloom and doom warnings about the losers in the
dark .
    “Well, maybe you did see something other than my art
and ass. Whatever it was, did you like it?”
    “I am here, am I not?”
    “Am I not?” Philip laughed. “I love the way you
speak, Professor.”
    “Writer. In fact, an author.”
    “What have you written?”
    “What haven’t I written?”
    “I read, you know. I’ve never seen your name on a
book cover.”
    “You do not know my name.”
    “Thomas . . .” Philip laughed. He found himself
trying to match the intellectual weight of this conversation. He
was losing.
    The caller filled in some blanks: “Thomas Mann.
Thomas Wolfe.”
    “Thomas’ English Muffins.”
    Laughter now from the distant end. “Thomas Dye. I
would not be insulted if you had never heard of anything that I
have scrawled.”
    Philip hadn’t, but felt to admit it would be
an insult. Here he was on the phone with an honest-to-god published
author. So maneuvering seemed in order.
    “I read the good stuff.”
    “Meaning my books are in the shanties?”
    Philip didn’t follow this, but he knew umbrage when
he heard it. “No, I mean, I’m reading a great book now.” He
swallowed, and then smiled, recalling that Thomas Dye, author of
unknown works, could still see his every inflection. “Moby
Dick.”
    “How appropriate,” Thomas said.
    “Bitch!” Philip stood and waggled his own Moby,
raising an approving laugh from the mysterious author. “I haven’t
finished it, but I know how it ends. I couldn’t wait, so I rented
the DVD. It was really . . . really . . .”
    “Wet?”
    “Shut up.” Philip flipped him the finger, and then
punctuated it with a laugh and a wink. “No. Compelling.” Now