In the factories and the fields, the Gentlemen are strangers to each other. In newspaper offices and business meetings they rub elbows, trade barbs, make weekend plans, empty rituals against prying ears. The parks around the canyons and water towers are dark and anonymous after the last bus has rumbled away, and while starlight and a sliver of moon might catch on an eye, a belt buckle, a flash of teeth, what can be made of that?

But in the bars they discover each other. Fellow workers see each other for the first time in the Red Door or Cherokee House, and cross the room to grip arms, shoulders, touch knees, laugh together freely. The lighting is poor but sufficient; if the floor is sticky and the beer watered down, so be it. The owners are unmoved by talk. They police themselves, keep an eye on the door and the end of the alley, but otherwise breathe together, respire, conspire.

Out of this tumult is formed the order of the clowns. Out there, in the city under occupation, it has a grander name, pretensions toward history; but here in the yeasty womb that birthed it, the Gentlemen hold the truth close, and whisper jolly poison into every unguarded royal ear.