The four of us get back in the Pony and move to the yellow house, virtually quivering with anticipation. We have to case the house first, of course, the usual three-wide, and P volunteers to take my place, so I’m left on the patio doing a sort of guard duty. The three clear the main floor and head upstairs, which is when Bob is standing before me, not in what he was wearing last time but in the same outfit as on the cover of The Ancient Rain, the big black hat and the Mexican poncho sorta thing with a puffy white-collared shirt under it, and he’s in black and white, just like the cover.

“Bob Kaufman,” I say to him in as calm and collected a voice as I can muster when I’m freaked outta my feet. “Been admiring your poetry.”

“Fake mystics who photograph God while ecstatic pygmies burp the Christ child,” Bob says to me in a confiding undertone, though every word he utters is clear, as clear as he is, though I can see through him at times, the ocean fluttering behind his poncho every few seconds like he’s beaming up to the Enterprise and Scotty’s yelling, “She’s not workin’ right, Cap’n!”