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“Nothing deadens magic like the day-to-day onslaught of unrelenting grief.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #134

FIRE ISLAND PINES

May 3, 1989 … early morning

As Howie Fishbein searched the drizzly Great South Bay, his headphones blasted Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” Flames of long silver hair whipped his weathered face, while his velvet bathrobe, the color of thick raspberry jam, billowed in the wind behind him. From a distance it appeared as if the island was bleeding.

There had been several omens indicating “a being of significance” would be arriving by water. What exactly the significance was, he did not know.

“We’ll just have to wait,” Howie said to a passing double-crested cormorant he thought might very well be the reincarnation of one of his many dead friends. “It’s all we can do.”