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He stood against the frame of the terrace door, with his arhts out there behind hi like it? The spectacle of an electrified city, dense with towers glowing like narrow grids in an old gas fire?

He'd clipped his hair short; he wore plain yet elegant twentieth-century clothes: gray silk blazer and pants, and the red this time, for there was always red, was the dark turtleneck shirt

"I want you to put the book aside and come join us," he said "You've been locked in here for over a month "

"I go out now and then," I said I liked looking at him, at the neon blue of his eyes

"This book," he said "What's the purpose of it? Would you tell me that much?"

I didn't answer He pushed a little harder, tactful though the tone was

"Wasn't it enough, the songs and the autobiography?"

I tried to decide what made him look so amiable really Maybe it was the tiny lines that still ca of flesh that came and went as he spoke

Big wide eyes like Khay effect

I looked back at the coe Almost finished And they all knew about it; they'd known all along That's why they volunteered soaway

"So why talk about it?" I asked "I want to make the record of what happened You knew that when you told me what it had been like for you "

"Yes, but for who made?"

I thought of all the fans again in the auditoriuhastly od without a na warht when she called us selfish, greedy? When she'd said it was self-serving of us to want the world to remain the same?

"You know the answer to that question," he said He drew a little closer He put his hand on the back of my chair

"It was a foolish dream, wasn't it?" I asked It hurt to say it "It could never have been realized, not even if we had proclaioddess and obeyed her every command "