I tell Thelma I will work into the wee hours because my insomnia will surely keep me up tonight. I do not tell her I have not slept in days. Still, she is not pleased. “You need your rest,” she scolds, waving her hands about. “The trial starts tomorrow. You need to be fresh.” I lie that I will sleep on the couch in my office, and she finally caves in. Before she leaves, she wraps her arms around herself and squeezes. This is our code: when she hugs herself this way, she means she is hugging me. Peter Peter tells me not to work too hard. “Don’t kill yourself, son,” he says, and then looks away embarrassed because his wording is ill-chosen.

“Rest in peace,” they both tell me as they are leaving.

I decide to spend the night here because I need to talk to Zig. I feel closer to him at Curios, probably because I am surrounded by the unusual objects he sends our way. The shelves lining my office walls are filled with these objects. A bottle of white wine from the Napa Valley, a cash register, a jumbo box of diapers, a biography of American crooner Barry Manilow, a slender electric razor used to trim nostril hairs. And on and on and on.

Some objects are obvious mistakes, things Zig sent us accidentally. Falling into this category are diapers (newborns here are already toilet-trained, ha-ha) and nostril-hair trimmers (boys here have little facial hair, certainly no protruding nostril hairs).

But other items may not be mistakes. Two weeks ago, for instance, our heaven received its first photocopier, a clunky, stove-size machine now shoved into a corner of my office near the door. Like all electrical devices, it works without being plugged in. I suppose—and Peter Peter tends to agree—that the photocopier is a test. Zig wishes to see how we will make use of this new contraption, just as, a year ago, he sent us our first microwave oven and, decades ago, he sent us our first washing machine.

Will we use the photocopier wisely? Will we, say, copy the books, stories, and plays we write? Will we distribute these works of fiction throughout Town for others to enjoy? If so, Zig may send us other photocopiers. Or will we use the device recklessly, maybe to copy dead-or-alive posters of a Gunboy we wish to put to death?

In other words, we may be his guinea pigs. My guinea-pig theory is what I wish to discuss with him tonight. I sit at my desk and turn the crank on my music box. The little figurine wiggles on his broom as the box tinkles out its playful tune about the pitiful goblin who trades in his broken broom for an airplane.

I identify with this goblin tonight. Boo, too, is wobbly. My hand trembles as I turn the crank. My voice is shaky as I speak aloud. “You are watching, aren’t you?” I say, looking at my beat-up couch as though our old god is lounging there like an old dog. I must say I feel silly—I have never spoken to Zig like this. “You sent us a photocopier to see what we would do with it,” I say. “And you sent us a Gunboy to see what we would do with him.”

I am admitting aloud to Zig that Johnny may have killed someone (killed me, I should say). Maybe I am the last person involved to come to this conclusion. I came to it slowly because, as a junior scientist, I do not jump to conclusions.

“Johnny Henzel is a curious object, but he is no mistake,” I go on. “You fixed him as best you could. You tinkered with his faulty parts and erased his painful memories so he can cope in his afterlife. And now you want to see how townies react to this boy you dropped into their world.”

The god sprawled on the couch stays invisible.

“Is my theory right?”

No answer.

“Speak up!”

My music box winds down. The goblin stops wobbling.

“Johnny is a test case. If we all pass your test, if we all show mercy and compassion to this boy you fixed, maybe one day you will send us more boys like him.”

I pick up my music box and turn the crank again.

“Townies all say heaven is a second chance. Why shouldn’t we give Johnny his?”

No more music comes out of the music box. I keep cranking but for naught. Darn it. Is the goblin already broken? When I shake the box, I hear something rolling around beneath the platform that the goblin wobbles on. Batteries? No, that makes no sense: music boxes run on cranks, and batteries are not needed in heaven. I take my fake-tortoiseshell letter opener and wedge it under the edge of the platform. With a little elbow grease on my part, the platform springs up.

I peek inside the box.

What the dickens?!

I drop the music box on my desk and push back my chair so fast it almost overturns. I stand there flabbergasted for a second or two before throwing an angry eye at the couch.

“What foul tricks are you playing, you old dog?”

Inside the goblin’s music box, lying side by side, are two bullets.