“Where do you think you’re going?” I panted.

Abner turned back. Then he closed the door. The color red had trouble covering his entire face.

“Nowhere,” he said, innocently.

Abner was an adaptable guy, but he hadn’t made the greatest career moves. He had blown his on-air LCM gig by cheating on Taylor. He had been fired from writing Quelman for, well, having no talent. And he had alienated himself from the human race by hooking up with Stanley Lager.

But he could always go back to being king of the trivial. And what better way than with Clown?

“We had a deal.”

“I told you in my e-mail, Milano,” he said, awkwardly, “that that was null and void.”

“Well, why don’t you get one of your fancy Hollywood friends to renegotiate it then?”

Abner sighed. This option was lost to him now, as were all of his industry contacts. Our correspondence wasn’t worth the e-mails they’d been written with.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” he said.

That was the end of our attempt at civilized interaction. Both of us now tensed, prepared to return to the jungle.

“Give me that tape.”

“Make me.”

“I will.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

Then we stopped.

“Hey!” a small voice cried. “Hey!”

Abner and I both moved, quickly, to the window. There, on the back lawn, the tour guide and his guests had suffered the results of Stanley’s sudden landing. A few tourists were splayed on the grass, unhurt but stunned. Laughing, their teenage offspring were slapping each other’s palms. A piece of ledge rested near them. The guide was yelling to no one in particular.

“He got away!”

I sighed. Being the trivial rat he was, Stanley Lager had once more scurried to safety.

“Well, I hope you’re satis—” I started to say.

Abner didn’t let me finish. He hit me in the back of the head with a porcelain water bowl, the room’s only accoutrement. A turn-of-the-century artifact, it shattered, lessening its impact on my skull, but spraying sharp pieces into the air.

I turned, swiftly, my head sore and starting to bleed. Abner ducked from the shards zinging past his own face. This made him lose his balance; I didn’t even have to push him to the floor.

He landed on his plastic bag, the tape both breaking his fall and punching him in the stomach. I stood over him, wincing from pain, relieved that he was beating himself up.

Instinctively, Abner rolled off the object stuck in his solar plexus, exposing the bag and the cassette inside. I reached down to pull it toward me. But Abner kicked it away before I could.

The tape went sailing under the vintage bed, hitting the wall it stood against. Like the steel ball in pinball, it immediately ricocheted back into the room.

“Good going,” I said, rubbing my head.

Again, I bent to retrieve the tape. But, still flat on his back, Abner kicked it again, now sending it sliding near an ancient chest of drawers.

“You’re going to break it!” I said.

“If I can’t have it, nobody will!”

Abner sounded like the crazy villain in an old sci-fi serial. Still wincing, I laughed as I stooped to get the tape.

I didn’t laugh for long.

With both feet, Abner got me in a scissors hold around my ankles. Shifting suddenly, he snapped me toward the floor. I grabbed hold of the old dresser, but it was a bad idea. The shaky furnishing crashed down with me.

The wooden chest headed directly for the prone Abner. He rolled away at the last minute, and it smashed onto the floor, directly between us. I heard a hundred years’ worth of wood crunch and collapse. I was only glad the maid wasn’t alive to see it.

Now Abner was an old Western villain. He leaned up over the chest to see me, using it like a barricade in a barroom gunfight. I jabbed a fist at him, but he darted back behind it. I waited to see his face again. In a second, he reappeared. I punched again; he dodged.

“Abner,” I said, “this is getting ridiculous.”

So I directed my attention elsewhere.

The tape was lying past our feet, as if it had fled to safety from the falling chest. I didn’t know whether, preoccupied with me, Abner had noticed.

If I scrunched down too low to be seen, using the dresser as a shield, I might be able to crawl and reach it. Then I could stand, run, and hit the door before Abner.

I flipped slowly around, so my head was pointing toward the cassette. Crawling like a soldier, all elbows and knees, I began my silent journey toward it. I might have made it, too.

Except that Abner had the same idea.

I met him there, both our heads poking out beyond the chest at the same time. Our eyes locked. Then our hands began to reach.

The tape was achingly beyond our grasp. Our fingers strained to touch it. The digits were like little tired runners, trying to cross a finish line. We were equally determined, neither one falling away.

But only one of us had recently had surgery.

“Oh, no!” Abner said and stopped. “My staples!”

I kept reaching. In one second, Clown was mine.

But I didn’t even have time to celebrate.

“What’s going on in here?”

Both of us looked up. The security guard was standing in the doorway.

I LEFT HIM TO ABNER.