Inside the door, you're standing on a metal grate, suspended over the edge of the pit, while Wendy, a hollow-eyed string bean of a girl with pale watery eyes and skinny, track marked, arms looks you over and decides: Are you a spectator? Are you a performer? Or are you a cop? Spectators go up to the balcony, performers down to the pit — if a cop walks in Wendy hits a hidden switch connected to a blue strobe mounted in the ceiling. You may think you're just a spectator, but Wendy knows. She took one look at Fanci and sent them down to the pit.

"When is the performance?" Rand asked.
"It's already begun," Fanci replied.
"I don't understand."
"That's part of the performance."
"I see," he said — but of course he didn't.

"That man in the photograph, over to the right?" he asked; "Is that the sculptor you've been talking about?"
"Not really. That's his avatar."
"He looks real to me."
"Reality is deceiving."

A waitress set two bottles of Heineken on the table and walked away.

"I think you're the avatar," he said.
"You do? . . . Oh well. It's all made up anyway, isn't it?"
"What's all made up?"
"Well . . . everything really . . . " 
—— at that instant . . . .