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278 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2003
So, since Shadrach certainly wouldn't move in to protect me and my art from the cold pricklies of destruction - I mean, I couldn't go it alone; I had this horrible vision of sacrificing my ceramics, throwing them at future Pick Dicks because the holo stuff wouldn't do any harm of a physical nature (which made me think, hey, maybe this holo stuff is Dead Art, too, if it doesn't impact on the world when you throw it) - since that was Dead Idea, I was determined to go down to Quin's Shanghai Circus (wherever that was) and "git me a meerkat," as those hokey nuevo Westerns say. A meerkat for me, I'd say, tall as you please. Make it a double. In a dirty glass cage. (Oh, I'd crack myself up if the Pick Dicks hadn't already. Tricky, tricky pick dicks.)
You can still hear Nick's sentences, but you don't want to complete them, for they are monstrous, guttural creations, and they reek of blood. They are not the constructions of the Nick you know, the Nick who loves the Canal District for its many-layered conversations, the deals being made, the mysterious magic of it that defies easy definition.
Another week passes into gray oblivion. You're a slow dream, an autumn freeze, a ship in the doldrums. Thoughts come slow and ponderous, like deep-sea fish floating heavy and memory-bound to the surface; coelacanth reborn.