Thousand: Three Hundred Twenty-One

contract and, perhaps, the employer. It is the middle of the night somewhere. Years have elapsed. Then contracted into a tight spiral. At one end is the revenant leprechaun wearing lederhosen. His cold limp hand is being clutched by the fisher gnome whose smile is rigid as a clock. Their portrait, stroke by stroke, is being applied to the face of a stone by the soft bristles of a paintbrush. The artist, a girl with a pronounceable name, one like “Emily,” say, though when she is doing portraits she responds only to her nom de arte, “Butternut,” touches the brush