During the year since Avery Deane had appeared in Holden’s lonesome store, pacing and snarling and shouting at him to “Lock ‘em up,” Holden’s life had changed for the better, even though he had not taken Deane’s advice to lock up his rugs. Instead he had sold them. At first he had tried selling them the same way Deane did, by stomping around and shouting and comparing them to Mercedes Benz automobiles. Holden had tried standing a little too close to customers, had experimented with being overbearing, and had sometimes been obnoxious. It didn’t suit him. He was embarrassed by his behavior. He would bully a customer and then excuse himself. He would cajole and then apologize. His customers were embarrassed, too. They left the store. During this time of experimentation, he didn’t sell anything at all, though Deane continued to sell Holden’s rugs right and left by using the same methods.

But there came a time when he discovered his own way of selling, and there was no trick to it at all: With Deane’s support, Holden eventually became confident that his rugs were wonderful, and he stopped assuming that no one would ever buy them. Even though he now kept a respectful distance from his customers and did not take them by the elbow, and though he neither tricked nor bullied them, they began to buy from him.

From the very beginning, Deane had gossiped with him about the rug scene in London, Hamburg, Paris and Zurich. He had dropped names of famous rug people throughout the world, telling stories about them. All the while, he talked as if Holden were a fellow insider. Slowly, Holden began to believe that he actually was part of the rug world and not an imposter. And when he began to communicate his new confidence to customers—well, that sold rugs, too.

Of course, in the next breath after gossiping conspiratorially about a famous rug scholar, Deane would ask to borrow $1,000. Then later he would talk Holden into investing in a rug that never materialized. And then, finally, he would borrow another $5,000. So it was hard for Holden to feel unmitigated, joyous gratitude toward Deane. In fact, Holden became angrier and angrier as he felt more and more foolish for letting himself be taken advantage of.

He tried to explain it to Laura. “I have no idea of who he is. I don’t know where he comes from. I don’t know whether he is a real figure in the rug world…and I guess I don’t care. It’s just that I don’t know. I don’t know whether he’s rich or poor. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? He won’t take money from me when he sells one of my rugs. But on the other hand he won’t pay me back what he owes me. He’s bossy. He’s exciting. He gets everyone engaged. He takes advantage of everyone. He’s generous. He’s grumpy. So who is he?”

“What do you think?” Laura asked.

Holden closed his eyes and thought. “I think I’m missing something I need to know about him before I’ll understand who he is. I mean, someday I’ll learn that he spent fifteen years in prison for embezzlement and everything will make sense. Or I’ll find out that he is enormously wealthy and that will explain it all. Or whatever. Maybe he’s a mad-man. I don’t know what it will be, but something’s missing.”

About a week after the private viewing of the Ferrier Dragon Rug at the museum, Holden got the clue he needed. Deane showed up at the showroom, as grouchy as he had been the first time he had appeared. He didn’t even glance at Holden but began stalking the store from one mounted rug to the next. He looked at the price tag of one and he threw his arms in the air in exasperation. “Giving them away!” he shouted. “Well, I’ve done the best I could. I wash my hands. The pup won’t learn.”

“Uh oh,” Holden thought. “He’s in a foul mood. What next?” Deane carried a rug over his shoulder. It was wrapped in white butcher paper, but it was obvious to Holden by the way it flopped that it was a rug.

“Here’s your damned silk Kerman. Hope you’re happy.” Deane tossed the package onto the floor beside where Holden stood. “I’m moving on.”

Wait. The silk Kirman? He had long ago decided that it was a fiction. Avery was moving on?

“You’re what?”

“Going. Fleeing. Flying. Running. Jumping bail. Driving off into the sunset. It’s time, lad.” Deane’s sonorous voice had softened. For the first time since he had burst into the store he looked at Holden.

“But Avery…” Holden didn’t know what to ask first. “What about Sandra?”

He twirled away and resumed his dash from rug to rug. Staring for a moment at a recent discovery of Holden’s, an old Bashir prayer rug, he answered, “What about, what about, what about! What about Sandra? She wants to know where I’m going. Hah! You tell me!”

“She won’t come?”

“Doily unit! She won’t be parted from it or the other rooms. The damned place is her life. I told her I have two reclining seats: driver’s and passenger’s. She wasn’t impressed.” He laughed, not bitterly, and he came back to where Holden was standing by himself.

“And the vineyard?”

“Do you want it? No title. No income. Damned vines just hanging on. They’re ninety years old and if I stay I’ll be the one who killed them. Tax bills come every day. It’s a tragedy, though, about the wine. 45 barrels of fine Napa cabernet and I can’t get even one of them in my hatchback.”

Holden wondered vaguely about how he might manage to send them to Deane, wherever he was going. Actually, there really might be some way. A train or something. “Where will you go?”

“Hah!” Avery looked restless again. He tapped a toe of one shoe on the floor.

“But Avery, I was there. You have nearly a million dollars into that place.”

Deane shrugged impatiently as if Holden had missed the point. “I have the car. Free and clear.” He looked at Holden, not unkindly. “Listen, lad, take my advice. Throw that silk Kirman down your famous black hole of Calcutta. Leave it wrapped. Forget about it. Open it someday when you’re old and famous and you’ll remember me.”

Holden felt confused. Avery had become more and more of a problem for him, causing scenes in his shop, demanding to be driven around, borrowing money, ranting and even raving, killing time in the rug store when Holden had work to do. Many times he had wished that Avery would disappear. But now, hearing that he was leaving, Holden suddenly felt almost frightened, as if he were being left behind. “Well, uh, thanks for the rug. I didn’t think I’d ever see it.”

“Should have trusted me. Right, lad?” Avery smiled a huge, ironic smile.

“I did,” Holden protested. Actually, he hadn’t. Still didn’t.

Avery straightened his beret and pulled his scarf tighter around his neck. “Well, time to toddle off. Remember, lad: don’t give ‘em away. And publish, that’s the thing. Publish or parish! Write a novel!” He stuck out his hand and Holden shook it and watched as Deane crossed the sidewalk in front of the store. Avery turned back and looked at Holden briefly and said, “Only one more thing to do before I flee. I have to return a book to the library.” With that, he flung himself into his white Porsche and roared away from the curb.

Holden shook his head. Back inside his shop, he wondered what was in the package. It was about the right size to be a silk Kirman, he supposed. But why had Avery suggested that he not open it? It could be anything. It was also about the right size and weight to be a worn-out Hamadan. Holden carried the package across his showroom floor and then through the curtain to his apartment, then to his bedroom to which the black hole of Calcutta opened. But instead of throwing the package down its mouth, he pulled the tape from the paper and opened the package.

One by one Deane’s victims showed up at the store, wondering whether Holden knew where he had gone. The four Afghan women were the first: Zainab, Soroya, Katija and Fatima. They hadn’t been paid for the last work they did for him. Then Sandra. Deane owed her for rent, though it was obvious that her regrets had to do with losing him rather than anything having to do with money. Khalil came, Kammy and Star in tow. Khalil asked if he knew where the boss was. Clem Briano showed up, wondering what the hell had happened to Deane. He had had to reclaim his property and pay back taxes and save his vines from death. What the hell was he supposed to do about all the money Deane had paid for the place? Cherise Hollander phoned him from Oregon asking if he knew anything about Avery Deane. He had stiffed her for a bunch of dyeing-work she had done for him. Even Judge Barron called up Holden, wondering whether Deane might have changed his mind and might like to buy his Rolls Royce after all. Many people drifted in over the next several months looking for Deane. He owed them all money. A fellow came in who claimed that Deane owed him either money or a silk Kirman, whichever. An investigator from the Claremont Hotel said that Deane had freeloaded there many times during the past year, eating at the expense of various trade-groups. Holden assured all of them that he had no idea where Deane had gone and that he doubted Deane even had a plan.

One day Marley Highland visited his shop, wondering whether he knew where Deane had gone. Highland was not surprised to learn that no one knew of Deane’s whereabouts. During his visit, he called Deane a genius but did not explain his thinking. And he bought a rug from Holden, paying full price.

And, finally, Sarah Atwood phoned, asking about Deane. She said she “just wanted to see him.”

On the first anniversary of Deane’s disappearance, Holden phoned all of them except Highland and Sarah Atwood and invited them to a party at his store: a “survivors party,” he called it. They all came, even Cherise from Oregon, and after they had a couple of drinks, they told Avery Deane stories.

“Few people besides Avery and Sandra have been able to find me in my little home in the woods,” Cherise said.” She spoke softly and tentatively, like someone not used to talking, and, instead of drinking beer or wine like the rest of them, she sipped from time to time from a small vial she carried in a pouch tied around her waist. “When I saw your car coming slowly down the dirt road, I was going to disappear,” she explained to Sandra, “but I had a premonition that I should greet you.” Disappear? Holden wondered about that. “Of course, Avery was not human, and I understood that from the first. He was a spirit, wrapped in lightning and energy. He couldn’t be still.

“He asked me for six colors. They were the six colors of ancient Chinese culture, the ones they called the ‘true colors’: imperial yellow, gold, light blue, medium blue, deep blue and russet. I knew he was on an important quest and that I had been chosen to take a small part in it. I had never before been selected to do great things, but Avery called on me. I was surprised that he paid me the first time. Sprites are careless about money. They will say anything; do anything. It’s all the same to them. A half-year later, still on his mission, he again asked for my help, and this time he didn’t pay. Now he has passed on to wherever spirits go. We won’t see him again, I think.”

Holden would not have said that Cherise was smiling, but there was something like a smile playing on her face. She looked pleased with the roll she had played in the Avery Deane story. It suited her. She just added this, and then she was done talking for the evening: “People aren’t made to make their way alone. We try to be true to our calling, whatever it is, and to do a good job. But we need something other, something outside of us, a spirit, a person, an audience, a reader to make us have meaning. That’s what Avery is. He is a spirit who gave my work with color meaning. That was payment enough.”

Holden looked around his showroom, caught as he had been so often by the beauty of the rugs that had somehow survived decades of being walked on, danced on, prayed on and preyed on and loved and ignored and stored and treasured and had wound up here on his walls, at least for a time.

“Well, I don’t know about him being a ‘spirit,’” Sandra broke the silence. “I suppose he was just another man, mainly. He still is. He’s not dead, you know. He must be out there someplace.” She seemed sad. “It’s just that I had such a good time running around with him and finding you out in Oregon, Cherise, and going around to Holden’s store and here and there.

“He loved the room he rented form me, the doily unit. I think all my tenants have liked the doilies, but Avery was the only one who ever said so. He could talk about each one of them. I helped him wind up the wool that you ladies spun.” She smiled at the four friends from Little Kabul. “He paid me rent for a while and then he didn’t. Then he paid up again and then he beat me for three month’s rent. I don’t really care. I think he was broke or he would have paid me.” She swirled her drink. “We ran around together for a while, but I knew he was never going to stay. As you said, Cherise, he couldn’t stay still. So, I wish him well if he’s alive, which I hope he is.”

Clem told the other survivors that Deane had caused him a lot of trouble. “The son-of-a-bitch nearly killed all the vines. That’s all that place is is vines. Ninety years old. Then I had to come back and save them. Hell, I don’t mind. The truth is, I had gotten tired of the old farm until that Brit or whatever he is came along. Then we drove around the farm and he thought it was swell. I got excited about it all over again. He’s the kind of guy that can get you all wound up about something. Did me, anyway. That’s worth something, isn’t it? I don’t know if the fellow was a crook or a saint. Or a spirit like you say. But I like working the vines again. I guess I’ll just putter around out there until I pass on. No harm in that.” Clem caught his breath after all his talking.

“He had some kind of voice, didn’t he? Loudest son-of-a-bitch I ever did hear.” He shook his head.

Zainab spoke for the spinners. “He was nice to us. He liked to watch us spin. He said we were magic.” She laughed. “It’s good that somebody liked what we do. He paid us for the first job.”

Khalil took his turn. “Man, I don’t know who he was or what he was. There’s a lot about this country and the people that I never have understood, even if he didn’t come from here. He made me promise not to talk about some things. That’s okay. He was the boss. I think about it and I can’t understand how I could have given up a half of a year away from the restaurant to work on Avery’s rugs. It was crazy. But he got me to do it. How did he get everyone to do all those things? He made everything a lot of fun, that’s how.

“Sitting at the loom again after all those years got me to thinking again about Afghanistan. All my people in the North. I want to take my family back there for a while to meet my people. I don’t know what they’ll think of Star. They’ll love her. But she’d better be a little more modest. They’ll teach her.

“But Avery…what the heck was he, Holden? It seems like you knew him better than anyone. Was he a crook? Because some of the things he swore me to secrecy about may not be so good, if you know what I mean. Or was he a good guy, or what?”

Holden thought he had figured it out. Because, when he had opened that package, expecting to see either a silk Kirman or a worthless, worn-out rug, he had instead found something so strange that he could at first make no sense of it at all. There was the dragon, staring at him, the gold field and flaming pearls and wave-patterns. There was the Ferrier Dragon Rug: old, breathtaking, gorgeous, fleecy, alive. It was the rug he had seen on the wall of the museum just a week before, and now he held it in his own trembling hands there in his little behind-the-store apartment. He wanted to run to the street and stop Avery and say, “There’s been a mistake…”

There was something different about it, though. He knew there was, but he couldn’t see it. He counted the toes of the dragon. Five. That was the same. What was different? He couldn’t place it, but suddenly he knew that it was not the same rug, not the Ferrier rug. Were there two Ferrier rugs? And what was Deane doing with one of them?

The truth, when he suddenly understood it, snapped his head back and shut his eyes. No, there was no Ferrier rug, or, if there was, it wasn’t the rug he held, nor was it the rug in the museum. This rug, the second one, totally destroyed the validity of the first. Two of them turn up at the same time? Obviously made by the same weaver; in the same condition; the same patterns of wear? They were both fakes. Incredible, fantastic, impossible fakes—incredible, that is, that someone could fake them, that someone could make rugs that were so good. And who had made them? Avery Deane. That’s what he had had Khalil weaving.

Holden opened his eyes now and admired the rug’s undiminished beauty. How could he have done this? How could Avery have made something so good? And how could he have been so dishonest as to sell it, rug number one, as the Ferrier Dragon Rug? He had made and sold a fake, a forgery.

It occurred to Holden that this rug suddenly made Ulysses Pope’s rug worthless. No, not worthless, but worth far less than the amount of money Avery had carried in his briefcase. Not only that, but it made a liar out of Marley Highland, who had authenticated it. And he supposed that it also made a monkey out of Sarah Atwood who had been so obviously triumphant to land it for the museum. He smiled. “Is that why he gave it to me?” he wondered. “For me to revenge myself on those three? Or just to pay off his debts to me? Fake or not, this rug is worth far more than what he owed me. Or just for fun?” He didn’t know. But he didn’t seriously consider coming forward with this rug for revenge or for money. “A friend gave it to me,” he thought. “I should keep it.”

And so Holden carefully moth-proofed the rug and finally threw it down the black hole of Calcutta, to be pulled out and opened some distant day. And when he had tossed it down the shoot and still sat on his bed and thought about everything, he believed he now had the clue he needed to understand Avery Deane.

So when Khalil asked Holden who or what Avery Deane was, he answered, “He was an artist. Nothing else was important to him: not money, not love, not fame, not us. Oh, I think he liked a few people, but he used us for his ends, and his end was to make rugs. They were his medium. And the rugs he made were works of art.

“I used to wonder whether he was a con man.” Holden laughed. “Maybe artists are con men. And maybe art is an illusion, if not a lie. That’s what Avery used to say. I mean, those people up on the stage are just pretending, aren’t they? They’re acting, creating an illusion. And the plot of a novel isn’t something that really happened, is it? It’s just a story. That’s why they call it fiction. The perspective in a painting is nothing more than a tricky way of making a one-dimensional medium seem like three. And that portrait of George Washington—it’s not Washington. It’s an impression, an illusion, a series of tricks.” Holden could have gone on, but what he was thinking about were Avery’s rug’s. Now there was illusion: making something brand new look nearly 400 years old.

“Anyway,” Holden went on, “that was the fire in Avery’s belly: his rugs, his art. That was his right and wrong. That was his testosterone. It was his reason to borrow and lie and finagle. Or at least that’s what I think.”

The others didn’t know whether they understood what Holden had just said. Cherise still thought Avery was a spirit.

Holden laughed out loud. Actually, everyone was having a good time and doing a fair amount of laughing. But Holden laughed because suddenly now, a year after he had thrown the dragon rug down the black hole, it came to him how the rug Deane had given him was different from the rug that had become the official Ferrier Dragon Rug. Just like the rug Pope had bought, his rug’s dragon stared and glowered and maybe even accused: “Who are you,” it seemed to ask. But this dragon’s stare could only get so intense and only so accusatory. Just one of its eyes was open. The other was closed in what could only be a wink.

Three months had passed since Deane bought Clem’s vineyard. He had been annoyed to find that he had not succeeded in ducking certain tax obligations. For instance, the County of Napa had billed Clem Briano $38,000 for property taxes, which was absurd, of course, because Clem was no longer the owner. He was. But if they thought he had $38,000, they were crazy. No one could get that much money together when there had hardly been time to harvest any grapes at all and now it would be next year before he could get any grapes to market. Well, Napa County would just have to wait for its tax money.

Anyway, these days, if he wanted to visit the farm he had to get Holden or Sandra to pay for the petrol. And even then, the utilities had been turned off in the house and it wasn’t much fun to be there without lights and heat and all the rest.

There was one bright spot, though. Two, actually: the wine that Clem had sold with the house was superb! And there were still 48 barrels of the stuff. Secondly, the new rug had come along splendidly. Everyone had pitched in, excited about the new project. The spinners had produced large baskets of hand-spun wool in a very short time. It was wonderful to see them filling the little apartment with their industry and their singing. Cherise had done her magic, too, dyeing the yarn in record time. Khalil had taken another leave from his restaurant and had happily strung his loom for the new rug. This time, his hands flew from the very start and at the end of each day he could boast at least two inches of progress. The rug was off the loom in just two months, and now, already, Deane had dug it up from its muddy grave by the banks of Strawberry Creek in Tilden Park, where he had been careful to avoid park rangers. He had hosed it off and dried it and brushed it smooth, and he was admiring it as its glow filled his small apartment—when the phone rang.

“Avery, did you hear that they found the Ferrier Dragon Rug?” It was Holden. He was excited.

“I’m not surprised to hear it, lad.”

“I am! What are the chances of that rug being discovered nearly four hundred years after Ferrier wrote about it, and in good condition? It’s incredible! And here’s the best part. Apparently Sarah Atwood from the Museum managed to land the rug for a one-night private preview next week by the Bay Area Rug Society. Want to go see it?”

“My car, your gas,” he answered.

Of course, this was the rug-event of the decade, and everyone came: Sarah, as curator of the museum’s carpet collection, hosted the event; Holden came and brought his girlfriend, Laura. Of course he invited Avery Deane who brought along Sandra; unknown to Avery Deane, Holden also invited Khalil, who brought Kammi and Star. Tom, who nearly a year earlier had bought Holden’s Bijar and had come along to Little Kabul where they discovered Khalil, came, too. All of Holden’s rug-dealer friends were there; the many collectors who for three years had showed Holden the rugs they had bought from his competitors and who finally, now, were buying rugs from him—they were there, too. And then, to crown the event, Ulysses Pope tottered in like royalty, accompanied by Marley Highland, Kyle Berman from the Carpet Museum and Charles Evans Green, the grand old man of the Oriental rug world.

Holden, one of the most forgiving and charitable of all people, was not happy to see Pope. Pope had never thanked him for putting together the meeting in which he had solicited membership in the Ali Babbas (but had not accepted Holden’s application), nor had he apologized, nor had he in any way made good for having taken scandalous advantage of Holden in a number of ways. Holden’s face burned with embarrassment, thinking back on it. But it didn’t matter. The old man was there, and he acted like he owned the Ferrier rug. Which was a thought. Did he own it? Pope’s kingly air said yes. His patronizing pose said he was the rug’s owner. And one could guess that Pope, of all people, was the one and the only person who had the money and clout to collect it.

But it didn’t matter. The rug, occupying one wall of room by itself and lit by a host of spotlights that enhanced the warmth of it’s colors—the rug was astonishing, gorgeous, simply beyond compare, a work of art of the first order. It was far more than an artifact. Holden was moved almost to tears by it.

All those in the room had drawn up before the rug and were silently taking it in. Deane and Sandra came in a little later than the others and moved to Holden’s side. “Avery, have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Holden whispered. Deane seemed pleased but not terribly interested. “Really, Avery, look at it!” Holden quietly insisted. But Deane was staring at Khalil, who was at the very front of the crowd, so close to the rug that he could have tasted it if he had stuck out his tongue. Khalil turned away and began jerking on Kammy’s sleeve, pointing at the rug and excitedly whispering something to her. He pointed to his chest with a thumb and then at the rug with a finger; then to himself again. He was attracting attention. Sarah Atwood, Marley Highland and Ulysses Pope were standing together just opposite Khalil on the other side of the rug and very near it. Though Holden couldn’t hear what Khalil was saying, apparently the three rug Titans could, and they were obviously very unhappy. All three glared at him with obvious ill will.

Holden glanced at Deane, who was still at his side but who had become quite still and pale. Then Deane dashed away toward where Khalil and his family were standing. Before he could reach Khalil, though, something unexpected happened. Khalil’s daughter, Star, looked around at all the people who were staring either at the rug or at her gesticulating father, and she believed that they were looking at her. Ever the performer, she believed that they were all here to hear her sing, and with that she took a stance directly before the dragon rug, faced her audience, threw open her arms in the age-old manner of people who belt out songs and launched into Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It was astonishing how loudly the small child could sing. Her clear piping filled the chamber so that those closest to her actually took a couple of steps backwards. Khalil reached out to stop her, but Kammy, with a mother’s fond smile, waved him off, evidently thinking that, once she was started, it was best to let Star finish her song. By this time, Deane had reached Khalil and he took him by his arm and hustled him away from the crowd.

Holden was confused. He watched as Khalil continued to point to the rug and then to himself, even as Deane got a kind of hammerlock on his other arm and more or less dragged him even further away from the others. As Star sang the lines about wishing on a star, which she sang with extra feeling, Deane was saying something in Khalil’s ear and Sarah, Highland and Pope were glaring in turn at Khalil, Deane, and at Star. Finally Star’s song ended, she curtsied, the crowd clapped uncertainly, and she returned to her mother’s side. Khalil returned to them but kept a little distance now between the rug and himself and, though he still seemed upset, he no longer spoke or gestured.

When Deane came back to where Holden, Laura and Sandra still stood, he glowered at Holden. “So, it was you who invited him to come?” he growled.

“Well, why not?” Holden asked innocently. “What’s going on?”

“Khalil was up there telling everyone he made that rug.”

Holden laughed. “When, four hundred years ago?” By this time, Sarah stood facing the audience where Star had stood moments before. She held a laser pointer and began lecturing, speaking first of the 17th century Ferrier account of a certain dragon rug. She read aloud Ferrier’s description of the rug as it had been translated by Martin a hundred years ago, and then she pointed out the similarities between that description and the rug mounted on the wall before them. Holden was enthralled as the story unfolded.

“Therefore,” Sarah announced, “the Museum has concluded that it is most likely that this, ladies and gentleman,” and here her arm swept the air before the rug in a motion that was remarkably similar to Star’s theatrics, “is the Ferrier Dragon Rug. Of course it will never be possible to be completely certain, but let’s just say that we feel 99% certain that it is.”

Throughout her talk, the crowd had often murmured and had even oooh-ed and ah-ed. “Do you have any questions?” she asked.

“Who owns the rug?” someone from the audience asked.

“The owner, who has graciously loaned it to us for a very short while, wishes to remain anonymous. But I’m sure you are as grateful to him—or her—as we are.” Everyone looked at Ulysses Pope, who looked pleased with himself.

“Wait!” Khalil shouted. Sarah glared at him.

“Well, what?” she demanded.

He opened his mouth and then looked around the room as if looking for someone or remembering something. When he didn’t speak, Sarah called for other questions.

Someone asked, “How can you be certain the rug is as old as the Ferrier rug would have to be?”

“I will let Dr. Highland address that,” she said, and she handed the pointer over to Highland who was beside her. He proceeded to describe in detail a series of tests he had conducted on the rug to determine its age and concluded that it was between 300 and 500 years old.

“Please look for my article about all this in “Ancient Arts Magazine” in the fall,” he added.

After that, Kyle Berman said a few very respectful words about the rug and finally Charles Evans Green, now quite old, said, “I don’t know what this rug is. I suppose it’s the Ferrier rug. Maybe not. Maybe it’s brand new. But I’ve never seen a rug more beautiful in my life. I’m glad I’ve lived so long.”

And that was it. That was the showing. Holden was so excited that he couldn’t sleep that night, even though Laura rubbed his fevered brow.

Forty minutes after he left San Francisco Airport in the backseat of a taxi, and now parked in front of Sandra Smith’s apartment building in Berkeley, Deane pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his briefcase, gave it to the Indian driver and told him to keep the considerable change. The fellow eyed Deane’s briefcase and for a moment he hesitated, as if company policy prohibited him from accepting large bills pulled from a briefcase, but he reconsidered and the hundred-spot quickly vanished. Deane started for the building, then remembered the briefcase which he had left in the backseat of the cab. Luckily, the driver was twisted in his seat, still eyeing the briefcase on the back seat. He hadn’t yet pulled away, and Avery was able to retrieve his property.

He walked past Sandra Smith’s door, wondering whether she was at home. He was startled suddenly to remember that he owed her for three month’s unpaid rent. “Funny,” he thought, “I haven’t thought about paying rent in a long time and she hasn’t said a word. Well, I’ll see her later.” Honestly, he hadn’t thought about Sandra at all for the past week or so, ever since he had finished the rug and had been preparing to show it to Sarah. Until then they had been spending quite a lot of time together. Of course he had been without a car for some time and she had taken him here and there—including to Oregon to find Cherise Hollander. “Hmm, I owe her, too: Cherise. Don’t remember how much. Maybe I wrote it down.” He had talked Cherise into advancing him all of the naturally-dyed wool that went into the dragon rug. “Well, that was a good investment for her,” he thought, inaccurately. “And Khalil. Don’t know how much I owe him. Quite a bit. Have to ask.”

He climbed the stairs to his apartment, flipped on a light by the door and stood quietly, feeling the room’s emptiness. While once it was filled with Zainab, Soroya, Katija, and Fatima plus Sandra and himself and later filled by the loom and Khalil and always a person or two watching the work progress line by line, now the room was nearly empty except for dark, Victorian-looking furniture and doilies spread on every surface. During the past several days the dragon rug—at times spread on the floor and at other times pinned to the wall like a painting, and sometimes draped over his bed—had seemed to fill the studio apartment, even though the rug was small and there had been none other than himself in the room to admire it. Now it was gone, and in its place was a briefcase full of money.

“Hmm. Guess I owe the spinners, too. And then there’s Holden. He never got the silk Kerman, did he? Hate to give them money, though. Just doesn’t seem right. They all deserve better.” Deane thought for a while, still standing in his doorway, studying the emptiness of his room. “Better get mobile,” he concluded. “That’s the first thing. New wheels. Believe I’ll go see Holden. He’s always up for a lark.” Deane still held his briefcase, so all he had to do was to turn off the light and back out of his door.

Holden was skeptical. He had stood by in the past while Deane had peaked the hopes of many a would-be seller, including Judge Barron in Napa who had hoped to sell him his Rolls Royce. Nothing ever came of these encounters except, ultimately, the disappointment of the sellers. Holden doubted that Deane had had any money as he had teased the hopeful would-be sellers, and he doubted that he had any money now as he put a salesman through his paces at the Oakland Porsche dealership. Deane had explained to Holden that Porsche quit making its eight-cylinder 928 model after 1989, so he was here to look at the new Porsche 911s, which started at around $70,000.

Deane had declined the young, snappy salesman’s invitation to test-drive a new metallic-blue Porsche. Instead, after walking around the car a time or two and scowling at it, he asked to inspect the driver’s-side seat adjustments. Ultimately, Austin, the Porsche salesman, failed Deane’s request to make the seat fully recline. Austin protested that no car seat fully reclines, and, besides, why would anyone want a car seat to flatten out? Deane sneered at the fellow. “Oh, no car seat reclines?” he asked sarcastically. “Not even on the 928? But of course you’re an ignorant pup and wouldn’t know about a noble car that ceased to be made when you were in grammar school. Austin, I have shoes older than you are. Come on, Holden. Let’s find a real automobile.”

By that evening, Deane had bought a 1983 white Porsche 928 with 110,000 thousand miles on the odometer. He paid $3,800 in cash for it and was extremely pleased. Holden was surprised that he actually had some money and he contemplated reminding Deane that the silk Kerman had still failed to materialize. But, as always, he considered how Deane had turned his business around, and he found himself unwilling to make an issue of it.

As Deane was buckling his seat belt to drive his new car home and Holden was heading toward his own car, he remembered that he had a message for Deane. He put his hands on the door of Deane’s Porsche and asked through the open window, “Avery, do you remember the old farmer, Clem Briano?”

“Of course I do, Holden. The man with the tractor and the sixty acres of Cabernet.”

“Yes. He called me, trying to get in touch with you. He said that he sold twenty acres of the property just like you suggested, but he says that now he needs to sell the rest, the forty-acre parcel with the ninety-year-old vines. He’s no longer able to do the work himself and he wants to sell them to you. You made a good impression on him when you told him to keep the property. He’ll make you a good deal.”

Deane straightened in his bucket seat; he twisted and looked thoughtfully at Holden. “Hmm. Put down roots. Make wine. Quit the rug game.” As he spoke, he patted a briefcase in the passenger seat beside him. “Well, lad, let’s go see Clem tomorrow. But do you mind if we take my car? You can buy the gas.”

So Holden was witness to Deane’s next purchase, too. It was a deal put together by two men who would rather not involve realtors or attorneys. Clem slowly typed it out on an old Underwood and both men signed. Holden witnessed and signed as well. The terms were: $2,500,000 selling price; $980,000 down; the balance of $1,520,000, carried by the seller at 10%, was to be paid at $8,000 per month beginning as soon as the buyer could produce a profit from the property or within two years, whichever came first; sale to include all rolling stock, among which were a pickup truck and several tractors; sale to include fifty barrels of homemade cabernet sauvignon wine. And that was it. Deane counted out $980,000 in cash. He complimented Clem for his voice and his “dialect.” They all went outside and the farmer showed Deane how to operate the tractor. They walked around and Clem pointed out this and that and offered some advice here and there. By the time Holden and Deane left, Clem was nearly in tears, not because of having just sold his beloved vineyard, but because he hated to see Deane leave.

Deane was exuberant as they drove back to the city. He sang. He raved about the vineyard, the view, the climate and Clem’s honest attitude. His voice was stratospheric. Holden was in shock. Finally he asked, “Avery, where did you get that much cash?”

“I sold a rug, lad.”

“A rug…”

“Don’t ask. Not allowed to tell.”

Holden felt plastered to his seat, he was so surprised by the whole, unlikely event. But he was worried. “I hope you held some money back, Avery.”

“I did. I did.”

“I mean for sales tax on the house and property tax, too. Right? Aren’t you going to have to pay taxes?”

Deane frowned, but he wasn’t going to be denied his celebration. “Oh that will all work out,” he said with confidence. “It always does.”

Of course, prudently, he had held back money: about $15,000. With it he paid Sandra, Khalil, the spinners and Cherise Hollander. At the same time, he put them all on the payroll again, all except Sandra. He commissioned them to make another rug. “I never got to see the last one after it was finished, boss.” Khalil said.

“This one’s going to be even better,” Deane told him.

Of course, to say that he put Khalil and the others on the payroll was an exaggeration. Deane had grossly misjudged the amount of money he should have held onto. In order to record the purchase of the vineyard he would have to pay all kinds of fees and taxes—an absurd amount; an outrageous and even maddening amount, Deane felt, and for some time he was in a rage. Finally, though, he realized that, really, the matter was between him and Clem. If Clem knew he had sold the place and Deane knew he had bought it, and Holden had witnessed the exchange, then it was their own business and there was no reason to get the bureaucrats involved. That way, by not bothering to record the sale, he was able to avoid a great many expenses.

Still, he had to go to Holden and ask for a loan of $5,000. “Tide me over, sort of thing,” he explained. “Forgot about petrol and all that driving back and forth to the farm.” In fact, he hardly had time even to visit his new digs. It would have been splendid if he could have staged the new rug project in the Napa Valley—gorgeous country in which to bring a new rug into being—but neither the spinners nor Khalil would be able to commute that far. So Deane had to keep the studio apartment and hope that Sandra would be kind about the rent money. And he had to count on his production team not to need wages right away.

Holden had been a little prickly about the loan. “What happened to all that cash you had?” he asked.

“I spent it. You were there, man. Were you blind?”

“But…”

“I can’t very well bring in the whole crop myself, now can I? Have to hire someone to harvest the grapes. That kind of thing costs money. Have to spend it to make it, right? And then we’ll be rolling in money. Coming out of our ears! I’ll pay you back in the Fall plus I’ll throw in a barrel of Cabernet, one of Clem’s.”

“Have you forgotten about the Kirman? I still haven’t seen it.”

“Patience, lad. Worth waiting for.”

Of course Holden had sprung for the $5,000 as Deane knew he would. “The boy has a good heart. All those others took advantage of him: that old pirate, Ulysses Pope. Had Holden out there driving him around, getting together a bunch of his customers for the Ali Babbas and then he wouldn’t let him join. Well, we’re going to get even, aren’t we? Holden will hold that old man in the palm of his hand.”

But what about Sarah? Deane had been right: She had loved the dragon rug. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that she had turned down a chance to keep it. “It could have been on her wall right this moment and I could have been pouring her a glass of Pinot Noir as we admired it. But she wanted the money. Can’t blame her, even if it’s not my thing. She probably wouldn’t fancy sleeping in my car. Good enough for me, though. Under the stars.” Then he remembered his vineyard and the farmhouse, tucked away in the rolling Tuscany hills of the Napa Valley. “It doesn’t seem real, does it? Too good to be true. We’ll have to get out there again and have a party or something. Have a go at that wine in the barrels. The whole gang. Holden and his girlfriend, Khalil, the spinners, Sandra. I think I’ll forget Sarah. I’ll bet Sandra wouldn’t mind sleeping in a Porsche in a pinch. You can look right up at the stars through the moon roof. That’s what I like.”