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"It’s set up for to rapher Cheer up, Del A spin out to Sunset City should be real scenic Some fresh air would put roses in your cheeks You’ve been too deep into all that sickoto make the old dear happy A little attention should do wonders for her latest face lift"

I sleepwalked out of there, living up to my new rep, Zombie Reporter So that was my new beat, Death Warmed Over? Kinda like my career at the uys, instead of hyper nutso like raphers Deadlines, dead bodies in rapid rotation, it can unment at Sunset City

"What’s the deal with this Sunset City daraphers never paid any attention to the news, the culture, and the wider world It was all inside the box with them The camera box

I explained "If you have the ets the quarters from his or her favorite time of life There are rumors that they live on only there, like a Virtual Reality personality"

Eddie shrugged "Weird world"

"Yeah, the Retread Retreat She probably won’t look a day over this," I said, waving the photo

"Sexy"

"That was then We can’t expect a woe at Sunset City to resemble any available photos of her salad days She was a real star once, though, back in the days of the Silver Screen"

"So e all, kiddo" Eddie snapped his gum and rolled his eyes back toward the TV studio "Didya hear the latest on Undead Ted? He’s had his incisors artificially lengthened You knohat they say about va"

Suddenly, I felt better

Eddie loved gossip Orinto Witch Twitch What a biot you down?"

"It’s personal"

"What? You got a life away froht about Fast Eddie’sa life beyond WTCH I stared into lass-topped coffee table Achilles used to stretch out underneath it, dog under glass: safe, sleeping, and elegant in his wavy-haired, short-legged, sharp-toothed way

The sight of myself on Dead TV still haunted me I picked up my cell phone to dial one of my few female friends, a street-producer for CSI Bismarck

"Hey! It’s Del Listen, Annie, I need a copy of the latest Vegas CSI V episode Yeah, it was a live feed here in Wichita" Or a dead feed, to be precise "No tapes available I need the addresses of the producers and writers Oh, just for a piece I’ the latest ’in’ thing

"You have a digital recording? Really? Fabulous! Sure Just Fed Ex it Overnight? Thanks, you’re a doll"

Once I had the names and titles, oing on

Figuring out as going on in my drea with the usual nasty frag around in ht out the Wizard of Ozfor me, on the yellow brick road Only he hite instead of black like Toto, and the whole scene was black and white and gray, like the opening part of the film set in Kansas, not wildly Technicolor like the "merry old land of Oz’" sections

I looked down to sparkly sequined pu somewhere unexpected Soon But not into Dorothy’s Oz Someplace darker, a Wonderland allfor me somewhere out there

Chapter Six

"Can that piece" Fuck-up Freddy was standing by e shirtsleeves from the classic forties newspaperwas the green eyeshade and a garter on his flabby biceps

"The old da Cancelled the contract"

Oddly enough, I was sorry to hear that "Maybe her death, the reason for it, is a story"

"Nah The feature’s na After Death,’ not ’Death After Death’ I need someone don to do a stand-up for a Cub Scout ca as filreat story out of anything Jeez, are you losing it, Street, or what?’

I drove honer seat of the Caddy, just as Achilles’ "documents" had acco to feel like "loss" was o wrong?

I had not counted on the Revenge of the Weather Witch

I had soalow on Moody Road Because it wasn’t there anyot out of the car, sla socket of dirt where erator, lying on itslike a heavy-round streith toothpicks splintered froalow It wasn’t merely a rental It was my first real hoone, sucked up into so tornado funnel

Other houses of that era stood whole and sturdy on either side of it My house was the only molar that had been pulled Freak tornadoes, they were called Unpredictable

This one wasn’t

When you piss off a weather witch, she can erator lay there like a beached steel whale Barnacled to its side was e duds and every last freaking piece of sterling silver I had ever collected at an estate or garage sale Victorian fork tines bristled like WWII underwater s Mexican jewelry draped the handles Nineteen-twenties ht The sky was blue, like my eyes; the clouds hite, like my skin No black thunderclouds, like my wild Irish hair, appeared

This was a very specific tornado

At thatin the sunlight The tiny woman behind the wheel hopped down

"Street residence?" she asked

"What’s left of it"

"Too bad! Was this house a tear-down?"

"Kinda"

"Sign here"

I did She handed e enough to hold a videotape and a newsy letter about Nightwine Productions from Annie in Bismarck

I stood there, on the wind-blown prairie, conte my losses

The fact was, my cup was overturned, but I wasn’t We were both half-full, and

I had Achilles’ ashes in a dragon vase and a lock of his hair in a silver Victorian locket I had Dolly Parton, a running vintage car with 28,000fins, and chrouts, and up-front plastic surgery I had solitz and an ee nu flatware sharp enough to function astheas, where they carved up way-too-familiar corpses on CSI and where a writer-producer na to do Never trust a s Or both

And I wasn’t leaving Sin City until I kneho I am Or who I am not