The hummingbird, scouting ahead, was the first to see Leon. Through its eye, Jack watched the handsome young man, who was playing pool with a stranger and grinning. Always grinning. Not faking, either. This was a happy man. Irrepressible, really. After Jack broke his heart, he'd be grinning again in hours. Over the girl in a day.

Nothing to worry about.

He saw Leon spot the hummingbird, and damned if the man didn't smile bigger, and if, once Jack himself arrived, Leon didn't throw a huge hug at him.

"Didn't think you'd be pleased to see me, considering my mission," said Jack, fiddling with his rumpled collar.

"Your mission, far as I'm concerned, was to lose a bet. I'll take my Canadian passport, please, and two more for Hector and Imogen."

"But I didn't lose."

Bless Leon's big heart, he didn't argue, or yell, or start a fight, or do anything but give a small shrug. "Figured you'd say that. Even though you're my friend, an Odysseus helmet's a lot to give up. Have a seat, I'll buy you dinner, and you can try to convince me Imogen slept with you."

"Son, I'm Anahuac Jack. It's not a question of trying."

"Just of lying. It's inevitable – I don't even mind you doing your best. Here, have a seat."

The kid sat beside Jack, not across from him, and they both put their feet up on the table. Leon had acquired cowboy boots somewhere, and his facial hair was growing out. He looked more like Jack than ever.

And was determined to have a good time in spite of Jack's claim. Wouldn't even let the subject come up again until drinks, chips, and salsa had arrived, and entrees were ordered. He asked about the journey. No, Jack hadn't run into any more Infinity Loops. Or sandstorms. The animals were fine, except for a scare with the tiger trying to eat the jackelope. Fortunately, the jackelope's antlers were already growing back, and the tiger had been forced to spit his friend out before any damage was done.

"Now," said Leon, with an enormous sigh and a sympathetic look at his friend. "Lie to me."

"I saw her," said Jack. "Talked to her. We watched your vids together, you sappy bastard, that was some teenage garbage. She loved it."

"Poetry, man. You liked her?"

"Hell of a woman. You're a lucky man, to have ever had her. But you know, the prettier they are, the worse it hurts, once the heartbreak comes."

"Break my heart, buddy. Tell me lies. I'm seriously curious to see what you come up with. How you think you can convince me she'd cheat. That is the story, right?"

"It is. Took two hours."

The kid was putting on a great show of complete disbelief, but his zark tattoo wiggled, betraying a hint of a rising heartbeat – the slightest sliver of fear. Only natural.

"Tell me," he said, and he put a hand over Jack's shoulder.

"She was missing you – couldn't lie about that, buddy. We had a drink, three, four, to celebrate you surviving the journey out here. Silver Valley blush champagne, that's what she drinks."

"I'll be damned, Jack, that is what she drinks! Here, have the helmet, what more proof do I need?"

If Leon had been wrong – if Jack had in fact slept with Imogen – the teasing would have been enjoyable. Nothing like building up, then slapping down a punk who was both smug and wrong. Leon, however, was smug and right, and his light, confident tone curled Jack's moustache.

"She's thinking about one handsome man," Jack ruffled Leon's curly hair, "And looking at another. Drinking, feeling good. A little upset, too. Had a long couple weeks in the castle without you. She's feeling weak. Needs comfort. Most natural thing in the world. Beautiful, in fact. I comforted her, and I ain't even sorry."

Leon's zark had calmed down. So far, Jack knew, he hadn't said anything irrefutable.

"She gave me this in the morning," he said, tossing Jack the disk with Imogen's vlog diary (minus, naturally, the final entry regarding Jack and the kiss). "Vids for you. She's still in love with you, course. Wants to run off with you. Don't worry about that. A real woman can love two men at once, you know. Three, four, even. Their hearts are big enough for all of us."

Jack went to sip his beer, and ended up draining the bottle.

Leon pressed the touchpad, and a hologram of Imogen's upper body, small-scale, appeared on the table. Jack watched the kid's eyes light up, and felt sick. Imogen was crying and smiling, talking about her ankle monitor – this video had been recorded the day after his banishment.

"You really did see her," Leon said. "Thank you for this, man." He scrolled through the data files, and added, "A hundred entries?"

"Told you, man, you're all she thinks about."

"Can't wait to watch them. Anything else?"

"I can describe her bedroom."

"Go for it."

Jack did. Pulled out his notebook and read from it the descriptions of Imogen's wide, canopy bed, the pictures on her walls, the brands of makeup he'd seen sitting on her dresser.

Leon's smile was strained, and he said, "Honestly, man, I've only been in there a couple times, and wasn't paying as much attention to the furniture as you, but that sounds right. So you saw her bedroom. Or a picture of it in a magazine, or a vid of it. Even if you'd been there, so what? Where else was she going to take someone she brought illegally into the castle?"

Without a word, Jack tossed Imogen's panties onto the table. That got the attention of their nearby neighbors, who turned, and made themselves into an audience without a hint of apology.

"Now those," said Leon slowly, "those I remember."

He picked up the panties. Unique enough that Jack couldn't have just found them somewhere. Red and lacy, with bows on the sides. Expensive.

"Clean," Leon said after a moment's examination. But his fingers weren't as steady as they'd been earlier, and he was sweating. "So either she put them on exactly long enough for you to take them off, or while you were in her room, you snuck open one of her drawers. BFD."

"Thought you might say that," Jack said. At some point, a waiter had replaced his beer, and he drank again. God, he was as nervous as the kid. This was the part that was going to hurt. No putting it gently.

"You want proof," he said at last. "Something I couldn't have seen or touched without her permission. Something I couldn't have seen, or even known about, without getting in bed with her. Hard to know what something like that would even be."

"You said you'd convince me. It was included in your half of the deal."

"So it was. Let's see, then. If I hadn't seen her naked, would I know she has a mole on her left breast, just under the nipple?"

Leon didn't answer.

Or move.

Beside them, the small audience of miners decided to get involved. One cried, "Touch luck, kiddo," and another, rooting for Leon, said, "That ain't proof of nothing! Coulda got that from a hole in the wall."

"A hole in the wall," Leon echoed absently.

"Then there's the two moles, freckles really, at the top of her thigh."

"Yeah."

"She's waxed."

Leon stood up suddenly, rattling the glasses on the table. Then he sat again, trying to laugh.

"She wouldn't cheat," he said. "She wouldn't."

Poor kid was aging before Jack's eyes. His skin was an ugly gray; his zark tattoo made nervous chewing motions at his ear.

"She smells like vanilla bean," said Jack, and actually saw the veins in Leon's clenched hand rise. All this time, he'd been assuming the kid would keep his word, but now he wondered if he wasn't going to all this trouble to buy himself a broken spine.

"And," said Jack, "If you really want proof… something tangible, something I couldn't have gotten from a drawer, couldn't have gotten without her knowing about it, I can give you not one, not two, but three handy dandy proofs."

Well, Leon wasn't grinning now. And he didn't grin, or laugh, or react, at the first two items the cowboy placed on the table in front of him. First, the lock of Imogen's hair. Second, a glossy photograph of Imogen smiling, and lying naked. Her eyes in the picture were so lightly closed, she didn't look asleep at all. She looked like a stretching, sated girl caught off-guard by a camera, and the angle didn't leave any possible doubts as to wear Jack had been standing when he took it.

Finally, Jack played his last card: Between the tips of two fingers, he held out to Leon the earring he'd taken from Imogen's bellybutton. The purple Joystone hovered between them, catching the light, sending wild, snapping sparks of reflected light over every eye in the place, all of which were fixed on Leon's haggard face.

How long did it hang there? Waiting for a blow to fall – for Leon to laugh, to cave, to leap to his feet, to scream, to tear Jack's balls out through his mouth – Jack imagined he could actually feel the adrenaline coating his veins, pushing itself through him, thick and cold, ready to ooze out his pores.

At last, Leon reacted. He reached out and took the Joystone. Not a word. He held it up, examined it briefly, set it on the table beside the hair and the photograph.

"Kid," said the man who'd been rooting for him – an old, pleasantly grizzled, bearded miner. "Don't worry about it. Guy's a liar. Look at him."

Leon didn't look at Jack. He looked at the Joystone. "He's not lying."

"What, because of an earring?"

"Because she couldn't have lost that earring on accident. He couldn't have stolen it. It wasn't on her ear. And… It meant everything to her. To me. Maybe not to her, looks like, but to me, she knew what it meant, and she couldn't have lost it."

All this, Jack was aware of. He'd watched Imogen's videos, heard the story of the Joystone, and understood the value of the "proof" he'd been lucky enough to snag.

"Well," said the old man, "Hate to suggest it, but maybe Cowboy here took it by force."

"That had occurred to me."

Though the surfer kid was pale and shaken, suddenly wrinkled, no longer handsome, Jack, reflecting on the kid's martial arts skills, thought Leon had never looked bigger or stronger. His shoulder muscles were swelling, pulling at his duster sleeves, and it was clear he was one small push away from turning Jack's face into a Picasso painting.

But he didn't.

He brushed a finger over the picture of Imogen, who lay smiling, contented. In the picture, she wasn't wearing the Joystone.

The bar watched, spellbound, as Leon reached inside his coat.

Jack drew his own weapon, quick as a thought.

"Not necessary," said Leon. He had only been going for his wallet. Now, he threw three bills on the table – three times what the drinks and dinner, which they hadn't yet been served, should have cost – and strode out of the bar so quickly, his coattails flew out, and the batwing doors swung and squeaked behind him.

The barrel of Jack's gun was still pointed into the space Leon had occupied when the blonde man returned, shaking less, face harder. Older. The way anyone else might toss a horseshoe, Leon tossed the Odysseus helmet across the bar, and it looped around Jack's gun, spun dangerously, then hung safe.

Then Leon was out the door again.

For a crazy minute, Jack's muscles cramped and burned. His whole body was consumed with a wild, impossible idea. Go after him. Catch him. Tell him the truth.

Hell, you can still run off with the helmet. He'll be so relieved, he won't chase you.

He's your friend.

But Jack didn't get up. He removed his hat, put the Odysseus helmet on – nothing to worry about, nobody in this bar would recognize it as more than a common orienter – and replaced his hat, then his gun. Talk resumed; Jack finished his second beer.

The only movement was from the old, grizzled man who had called Jack a liar. He left the bar a minute after Leon, and Jack hoped he'd catch him. The poor kid could use a friendly face.