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The squeal of tires in the street in front of my house is loud enough to get the neighborhood dogs barking. I am sitting in my room staring at the blank computer screen. "Two whole chapters gone and Muse is on his way. He's gonna be upset."

My muse, who just goes by Muse, isn't the type to mess around. He looks a little like that comedian, Jon Lovitz, except he is over six feet tall and muscular. There is a scar across his left cheek he says he got from a knife fight with Kit Marlowe. "He was a ripe, bloody scoundrel." Muse once told me. But then again, Muse always had a major jones for Shakespeare. Even has his face tattooed on his right arm with the words "Write or Die" below it.

"All right, all right," Muse says, "so you did it again." He holds a gun in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other.

"Look, I don't know what happened, honest."

"You stinking well do. I told you before - never take your eyes off the page. Johnny White is sneaky."

"It's not that big a deal. I'll just rewrite the chapters later."

Muse spun around and threw the vodka bottle against the wall. "That's what you said about your last seven unfinished novels. Enough of your crap, lad. I haven't invested all this time and energy in you just so you could turn out to be a piker."

Muse points the pistol at my forehead. To call it a pistol isn't even a fair description. It's a fifty-caliber Desert Eagle, gold-plated with an ivory handle. He calls it "Annie," after the poet Anne Sexton. I once asked him why he named his gun after a dead confessional poet. He said, "Obviously, you've never met Annie Sexton. Besides, nothing'll make a man confess like a fifty-caliber auto-mag." True enough. If he pulls the trigger, he'll take the top of my head off and splatter my brains all over the room. He taps the barrel on my forehead and winks.

"You're lucky, lad, that Annie and I already have an appointment across town. Failed poet I have to put out of his misery. Poets are such crybabies. I expect a fair amount of begging from him. So, it's your lucky day. But I'm telling you, this is your last chance. Recover those pages or I'm putting you on my Things To Do list."

"How do I find him?"

"Aye, there's the problem. Johnny White usually finds you. But this being Sunday, you might try the bowling alley. "

"The bowling alley?"

"Yeah, he likes to bowl."

An hour later, I'm standing in the lobby of the bowling alley. I go up to the counter. The guy on the other side of it pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "Yeah,

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