He was speaking to a mirage of students from the rotunda of a lecture hall in the Engineering Building on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder at four-thirty in the afternoon a few days after leaving Seattle, when he saw in the audience, way at the back, an older woman: Painted Turtle. He hadn't noticed her at first. But when he became aware of her he started tripping over the bumpy surfaces of words on his tongue, choking on double entendres. He became a dying man swallowing a fishbone of language. There was another older person, a man, sitting beside her. The man was snickering, covering his mouth, whispering to Painted Turtle. He'd cock his head toward Mason, listen for a few seconds, then rock with suppressed laughter. Painted Turtle wasn't responding to her companion's jollity. Why was she here and who was the scornful mirth-maker with her? Mason struggled through the talk and the reading then leaped offstage, pushing his way through the unruly crowd of exiting students — against the flow. His heart was apitapat. Not to loose sight of her. Many blonde heads. In a blood curdling frenzy, he knocked the students aside. “Hay! What the hell—!” “Mister Lather, ha… ” “Get a load of—” But she wasn't there when he got to the top. He was twitchety and hysterical. Frantically, he scanned the remaining people — some of them waiting to ask him questions in private. “May I speak to you a moment?” “Huh?” He brushed the student back and dashed down the aisle. The Turtle had to have gone out this way. “Uh, excuse me: I was wondering if you'd explain—” “In a minute, a minute please!” But she wasn't out in the hallway either, nor outside the building. He looked up at the sky. Blue potatoes. Clear as it can get. What bad medicine was this? Some warning? Could she have thought he wouldn't see her? He took in a deep breath of the sharp dry Colorado air. “Excuse me, but… ” “Yes, yes… ” When the students lingering behind finished with him, Mason's host — one of the many kindly old professors of the English Department — led the badly shaken and now muffish “writer” away to the parking lot near Old Main. As they walked Professor Tippoff pointed out the wonders of his campus. Mason hardly heard him. He was jerking his head about: still searching. Then suddenly — on the sidewalk at his feet, these words in blue chalk: MRF owns Cowie: you're a cow on crutches. Professor Tippoff: “I apologize for the graffiti. Some student with a laconic message for another. I suppose some things can't be relayed by telephone and sky writing is out of their reach.” He chuckled at his own foolproof humor. Professor Tippoff would put him up that night in his elegant old mansion near the hospital just north of Canyon Road. The spring city was atwinkle and, as they drove by the mall, people were strolling in their thin clothes, watching the tightrope walkers, fire-eaters, belly dancers, sword-swallowers, and each other in their endless blondness. Here at the base of the Flatirons perhaps a kind of calmness might be possible, thought Mason. Anyway, in the morning he'd go skiing, for sure. It had to be one of the last possible days. Perhaps the spirit of the Arapahoe and hoodoo itself would protect this native son on the white slopes. He thanked the Tippoffs and set out. Up at Lake Eldora he stood in the lift ticket line behind a woman who turned around and giggling, said, “Beautiful day, isn't it.” She introduced herself as Sharon Seeberg.
The fanbelt of time pulled the days weeks months along and everything went smoothly till Mason got his November statement from Chase — one at First Avenue and Twenty-Sixth Street across from Bellevue — which didn't show a MRF deposit. It was now the morning of December eighth and when he went down for coffee at the bar, Sweden, who had no Swedish accent to speak of, handed him a telephone message: “Urgent: call John Armegurn. About your account.” The fanbelt? Coffee, moments later, tasted of axle grease and Frankish Morea sewage in Killini… Mason bought the Times and returned to the cup. Tricks? Cooler, it hadn't improved. Times: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation had announced its new grantees. Mason recognized none of them. Urgent? Steep, sharp winds swept down the Alps of his nerves. Red clouds of fear moved over the baked-blood stillness of his mind. Sahara with a blistering scirroco. What an ungodly excuse for foreshadowing! Perhaps he'd need a new identity to get away… Already the fanbelt was about to snap — or the shit to hit… Mason suddenly got such an uneasy feeling — he felt as though he were being led by three captives into the jungle toward an awful confrontation. Wasn't three a magical number? Maybe only twenty-two was magical. Who knew. Yet he saw himself as a masked figure brought into a village somewhere, perhaps in South America or… God knows where, stripped and forced into an arena of Truth: made to account for his sins, his crimes. Brought before the altar of his family, his children, the women he'd betrayed. And he was supposed to have some kind of message (either in writing or deliverable in some other form) for his executioner — but he couldn't remember where he'd stored it. He was also supposed to drink something called wongo soup before going to the site. He'd failed. Then there was something else about wearing a mask — and, shit, he knew nothing about masks. During this time, too, he kept dreaming of an old man in a red robe but none of it made any sense. Now, Old man Bryn Maur over there, religiously, sipping coffee and reading the Times, too. His troubles? Any? And there: the retired Lockheed Aircraft guy, Courtlandt, troubles…? And the ex-Commissioner of the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission retiree, Mister Tredyffrin? The city for him was a troubleless haven? Did their coffee taste of the Middle Ages in Greece? of a sewer in Malusi Nquakula? Wasn't it possible to wake to cello and violin, a friendly woman in Green Pastures—green emeralds, fire engine-red rubies, cocaine white-diamonds, sapphires, rather than rusty wheelbarrows-without-white-chickens-beside-them and shovels of hardtimes, disappointment, corruption? Corruption? “Urgent… ” Banjo buggy rubbish! Shouldn't have sold the Polish machine pistol. The bar mirror gave him back his nutmeg face with sleep-puffiness still clinging to its green chrome. The cortex deep in there was tighter. Tensions between the vertebrae and the disc caused a yanking, a painful fear, he'd not before felt. The yin couldn't find the yang and the outer gray area was a disaster zone with screaming, fleeing mobs. Well, he had to face it. Back upstairs in his room, expecting the police to break the door in any moment, he phoned Armegurn. And he was listening to Armegurn for a full five minutes before he heard what he was saying: “Two hundred fifty eight of our accounts were sublet last week to Gwertzman, Meisnner, Lowell and Associates which is a division of the Kraus-Worner Foundation for the Arts and Sciences. So if your check is late this month this is the reason. Don't worry… ” “But—” “You see, Magnan-Rockford owns Kraus-Worner. We're just equalizing some of the responsibilities.” Mason didn't care for Armegurn's chuckle.