her name came back to me the moment before he spoke it. He opened a bottle of warm champagne and we gathered together, at angles of caricatured intimacy, huddled all three in the room's lone dollop of sunlight. Globke passed out the drinks in paper cups he had brought along, suspecting unsanitary conditions in the native glassware. Seated in my bowl-shaped chair, knees above my belly, I drank to the health of the mountain tapes.

"Bucky, you remember Michelle."

"Definitely."

"You had dinner with us over at our place about a year ago, right after we just moved in."

"I remember."

"We had roast leg of lamb and two kinds of wine. Michelle made those fantastic Hindu vegetable things she makes. We listened to highlights from Madame Butterfly. We sipped our wine in the candlelight."

"I remember," I said.

"Then we sat on the upper terrace and talked about the uses of money. Then we talked about greed. Then we talked about the misuses of money. Then we had tea and that gummy dessert-shit I hate so much. Then I called a limousine to take you to the airport So anyway here she is. My young wife. Wife, mother, lover, colleague, friend. You remember Michelle."

"Sure," I said.

"Don't touch her," Globke said.

"I won't."

"It makes me nervous when she gets touched. See, oldness and fatness. See that? See what it does? Makes me a figure of fun. But I'm not succumbing without a fight. I'm pushing on ahead. I'm double-clutching through middle age. You should have seen me when I got my hands on the tapes. I was all action. My voice crackled with authority. I rounded up personnel, made plans, gave instructions. Then I put the tapes in my Pan Am flight bag and flew off in the night to Cincinnati, where I called you from. Combination studio-warehouse-record plant. Small but big enough. Known to few. A place where for years they recorded marching bands and high school chorales. Cincinnati. Queen city of the early West. All technical work on the tapes plus final pressing being done there. Call it unfounded fear but I was afraid to take that material anywhere else. Too much chance of sabotage. Material that there's no way to duplicate can't be handled like a job-lot product. We drink to the mountain tapes. The mountain tapes. Keep them safe, God of my fathers, until the record's in the racks."

"When do I leave?"

"We drink to the tour now. The tour. Day after tomorrow, Bucky. Zap, you're gone. Drink up, everybody.

It's all set. Day after tomorrow. We inaugurate the greatest record promotion in history. In fact I'm leaking word about the mountain tapes starting today. Tomorrow I begin co-opting the rumors behind the reason for your comeback. You've got an incurable disease. One year to live. You want to spend it with your fans."

"Other rumors are bound to arise."

"Will they compare?"

"I guess not," I said.

"For sheer bad taste, will they compare? Will they even come close? I appropriate all other potential rumors. I sponge them up. They belong to me by divine right of bad taste. I come out of a tradition, Bucky. I'm not new money, new culture, new consciousness. I emerge from a distinct tradition. Bad taste. Michelle softens the edges of it but nothing can kill it completely. It's there to stay and I'm proud and delighted. The dynamics of bad taste is something they should investigate with a research grant. A fantastic subject. My whole life is a study in bad taste. Bad taste is the foundation for every success I've ever had. I'm a self-made mogul in an industry that abounds in bad taste. Look at me. Mogul is written all over me. How did I get there? Aggressiveness got me there. Massive double-dealing. Loudmouthedness. Insults beyond belief. Little white lies. Farts and belches. Betraying a friend and then bragging about it. These are the things that give you stature in the industry. Not just respect or clout or notability. Stature. It's not enough t............