The Frumious Bandersnatch

in dope. So don’t count on Josie,ever, and don’t count on your shield, either.”

“What should I count on, Oll?”

“This,” he said, and tapped his temple with the forefinger of his right hand. “We’re smarter than any of them. That’s all you have to remember.”

“But throw back your jacket and show the weapon, anyway, right?” she said knowingly.

“With some of them, it still works,” he said.

“Admit it,” she said.

“Okay, it still works sometimes.”

“Who’s Steve?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Who’s Steve?”

They were walking up the concrete path to her red brick building. Some teenage boys and girls were sitting on the stoop, under a lamp swarming with the first insects of the season. One of the boys seemed about to say something, either to Patricia about her splendid tits or Ollie about his splendid girth, but he spotted the Glock and cooled it. Ollie gave him a look that saidWise decision, lad, and walked Patricia into the hallway. In this city, especially on Hamp Bull, too many bad things happened in hallways.

The tiled walls were covered with graffiti.

So were the elevator doors.

“Would you like to come up for a while?” she asked.

“Thanks, no, it’s late,” he said.

“I had a wonderful time,” she said.

“So did I, Patricia.”

She looked into his eyes. Her face seemed suddenly forlorn.

“Will I ever see you again?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” he said, genuinely surprised. “Why not?”

“Well,” she said, and shrugged, and then opened her hands wide to indicate the building and the hallway and the graffiti. “This,” she said.

“Where you live is where you live,” he said, and shrugged.

The elevator door slid open.

The elevator was empty.

Ollie put his foot against the door to hold it.

“Well, thanks again,” Patricia said, and took his hand, and then reached up to kiss him on the cheek, surprising him again.

“Listen, what are you doing Tuesday night?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Wanna go see a movie?”

“Sure.” She was still holding his hand. “Will you know ‘Spanish Eyes’ by then?”

“I don’t think so. I won’t be able to ask Helen for the sheet music till Monday. My piano teacher. That’s when I have my piano lesson. Monday nights.”

“Remember, it’s the Al Martino one.”

“I’ll remember. Patricia…?”

“Yes?”

“I really did have a very nice time tonight.”

“I did, too.”

“So I’ll see you Tuesday, okay? Are you working Tuesday?”

“Yes. The day shift.”

“Me, too. So maybe we could go straight from the precinct…”

“That sounds good…”

“Grab something to eat…”

“Okay. But nothing fancy like tonight.”

“No, just a hamburger or something.”

“Okay.”

“And then go to the movies afterward.”

“That sounds good, Oll.”

“We’ll talk before then, find a movie we’d both like to see.”

“Not a cop movie,” she said.

“Definitely not a cop movie.”

They were still holding hands.

“Well…” he said. “Goodnight, Patricia.”

“Goodnight, Oll.”

She dropped his hand, and stepped into the elevator. He watched as she pressed the button for her floor, waved as the elevator door closed on her. He listened for a moment as the elevator started up the shaft.

Smiling, he walked out of the building and down the steps past the teenage kids, and then up the path to where he’d parked the car.

His jacket was still thrown back to show the Glock.

“THIS IS HONEY BLAIRfor Channel Four News, coming to you live from the ballroom deck of theRiver Princess, somewhere in the middle of the River Harb. In about a minute and a half, we’ll be privileged to see and hear Tamar Valparaiso, the rock world’s new singing sensation, performing live and in person the title song from her debut album,Bandersnatch. For those of you who may be wondering what on earth a bandersnatch might be, the word derives from Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘Jabberwocky,’ which some of you may recall from your childhood reading ofThrough the Looking- Glass. Remember sweet little Alice in Wonderland? Well, from what I understand…hold it, I’m getting a signal here…”

Honey looked off camera, striking the familiar “Legs Slightly Apart” pose that had gained her millions of devoted viewers, mostly male, assuming as well the somewhat bewildered expression that made her appear like an innocent trapped in the wilds of TV-Land, a moue that seemed particularly appropriate to the song she was introducing.

“They’re telling me we’ve got forty seconds,” she told the microphone and the millions of people who would later be watching the Eleven O’Clock News. “I was saying that Tamar’s rendering of ‘Bandersnatch’—if you remember the poem—has nothing to do with childhood fun and games. In fact, what this emerging diva boldly addresses here is the attempted rape of an innocent…ten seconds, they’re telling me, you can already see the lights beginning to change behind me, in eight, seven, six, five seconds…ladies and gentlemen, here’s Tamar Valparaiso with‘Bandersnatch’!”

On the video, the song was introduced with a repetitive bass note strummed on a synthesizer, no melody as yet, just a resounding B-flat note repeated against an animated yellow sky with pastel colored clouds and whimsical budding flowers and fanciful floating insects, a children’s garden of delights, with the only sound that of the insects’ whirring wings and the resonant synthesizer bass note.

Here on the ballroom deck of theRiver Princess, the speakers picked up the same repeated note from the video, yes, but of course there wasn’t any animated garden. Instead there was only a playful display of lights suggesting the innocence of childhood, and suddenly, in a pale saffron spot that bathed Tamar in its ivory-yellow glow (on the video, she materialized in a field of blooming white flowers) she appeared now from nowhere, it seemed, wearing a short creamy-white tunic, palms flat on her thighs. On both the video and here in this simpler performance aboard the launch, she looked directly out at the audience, raised her hands in open-fingered surprise, grinned in delight at the magnificence of this sparkling new fairyland-day, and began singing a melody she herself had written, a tune that played around a blues figure, hinting at misery to come, but which—unlike real blues—stayed rooted in the key of B-flat for the first stanza.

“ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

“Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

“All mimsy were the borogoves,