At the front door of the house he rented for the boys of The White, Hugh paused to gather strength. He frisked his coat for a lost cigar and found it laying along the hem, behind the lining, fraternizing with the enemy, a breath mint. They had tunneled out through the same hole in his pocket. The music leaking through the door faded and started up again. The cigar was successfully maneuvered back into the light to be lit and chuffed until Hugh could belch thick smoke and disregard had settled on his shoulders. When no-one answered his knock, or his swift kicks to the door, he let himself in.

Music gear lined the hallway, but that might be as much a result of a lazy arrival as a prepared exit. The White were in the lounge room, asleep in their seats, upright with chins on chests, grey and waxy in the face, ashtrays and empties stacked around them. Hugh wondered how much of the accumulation was the work of the evening and how much the last week. He turned up the stereo until he found the volume that woke the dead, that flexed the desiccated membranes of their ears. Heads raised, eyes squinted, hands groped for cigarettes, then for any residual beer that might loosen a tongue from a palate.

Tim waved down the volume and to Hugh mumbled through a claim of assault and trespass. Sean and Grace signaled agreement with coughing fits extinguished by cigarettes. Nodding, silently counting rather than agreeing, Hugh considered again where Bob had found that thing, that mutant domino, and began to sour towards it. Bob had the dollar eye of a magpie and he probably handed over too much cash. That would be a pity because refunds must be as shady as the deals they reversed. Tim lapsed into silence. Using the glowing tip of his cigar as a lure, as a hypnotist might use a coin, Hugh spoke in soothing tones and promised success and breakfast waited at the studio they were late in attending, but he would help them, facilitate them per their signed agreement, to the door and into his car and towards the welcoming arms of a world that did not realize how much it needed The White and one day would not be able to live without them.