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said.
    â€œY?” Ves asked.
    â€œWhy not?” the landlady demanded. “Gold always has to go up in value because there isn’t enough of it to make earrings, now that pierced ears are coming back. You can’t use tin because it will rot your earlobe off.”
    â€œThat’s right, Y,” Swift said. “ I’ll meet you in front.”
    â€œOkay,” Ves said.
    â€œI should think so,” the landlady said. “My stepdaughter-in-law told me that. And she should know: she’s in training to become a beautician.”
    â€œThank you, Mrs. O’Gorman, you’ve been a big help,” Ves said, preparing to take his hurried leave.
    â€œAlso silver, but not as much,” she said, taking the cup from his hand. “Come again.”

CHAPTER SIX
    Swift followed Alex: as easily as a trailer follows a truck. The man strode down the street as disdainful of cars or pedestrians as though he had written assurance of a place in the hereafter. He never glanced to the right or left, and if the world behind him had been dismantled and crated as soon as he passed he would not have known it. Nate could have dressed in a clown suit and rode on the neck of an elephant three paces behind, and Alex: would still have marched on obliviously. Which was a good thing: in Nate’s present state of exhaustion, the subtler methods of tailing would have been beyond him. But he was able to stagger on, maintaining a more-or-less steady ten meters behind his subject.
    Alex: went into a branch library. Nate checked for other possible exits and, finding none, settled down happily on a bus stop bench to await Alex’s return. The only problem was that as soon as Nate sat down, he felt himself drifting into the euphoric pre-sleep state where the eyes close of their own volition and fantasy and reality erase their common border. Nate stood up to stamp his feet and stop from going to sleep, but just then Alex: Hamilton came out of the library.
    He had changed clothes while inside, and was now wearing a brown frock coat with wide lapels and matching vest, a white silk cravat, brown knee breeches with white stockings, and leather slip-ons with great brass buckles. He carried a cocked hat under his arm and wore a white periwig on his head. He walked by muttering, “I’m late, I’m late, the General will have my head.” Nate tried to follow him, but found that he couldn’t move, seeming to be frozen in one spot. He tried to move, he willed himself to move, he strained to move, then his head fell forward onto his knee and he woke up.
    This time he did jump to his feet and stamp around. He pinched himself in the lobe of the ear to make sure that he was really awake, and hoped that Alex: had not left the library in the minute or so that he had dozed.
    Luck was with him, and two minutes later Alex: emerged, trotted down the front steps, and strode down the street. Swift took up the pursuit.
    A few ground-eating minutes later Alex: arrived at the VENUS-ADONIS Turkish Bath and entered. “Who would have believed?” Nate thought, as he settled down outside to wait. The problem was finding a comfortable position that wouldn’t put him to sleep. After a few minutes of fidgeting, he decided that any position would put him to sleep; the only hope was to keep in motion. He walked back and forth in front of the VENUS-ADONIS’s front door, trying not to look like a shy fan or a process server. He shifted to the bank across the street, walking back and forth in front of its massive doors until he noticed a man with a formal mustache, thin, humorless lips, and a nervous, jumpy gaze peering at him suspiciously through the open blinds in the bank’s front window. Then he moved back to the VENUS-ADONIS.
    All of a sudden, a clock of realization parted the surrounding fog of tiredness and woke him up completely. Swift remembered that he hadn’t performed the first and most basic check;