Josh: I'll Take A Blue Question For A Pie Piece, Please. Yes, I Know My Specialty Is The Pink Category In Trivial Pursuit, But Humor Me

"I know where the Magician is going. I know the place he's been looking to conquer the entire time." I was planning on strutting in and playing it cool for a bit; chatting about the weather and how great life was now that I had discovered the fantastic new world of prescription painkiller abuse, but of course the words just spilled out of me the second Mary answered her door.

I had spent the afternoon in my room with the Magician's top hat, dumping out the contents, staring at them and replacing them over and over. There was something about that cheap, kitchy, globe key chain that nagged at me, and I spent a good half-hour tossing it up and down, twirling it on my finger and just generally being captivated and owned by it like a hippie with a kaleidoscope.

When I saw it I rushed next door to Mary. "The answer is on the globe on the key chain. Look at it."

She took it, skeptical. "I have looked at it. What do you see?"

"Take another look. Tell me what you see. More to the point, tell me what you don't see."

Giving me a withering look (which, on a scale of one to ten, with one being a corgi puppy staring at you after they figured out that you tried to trick them by not actually throwing the stick during a game of fetch but just hiding it behind your back instead, and ten being my Mother even when she's not giving a withering look, I give Mary's withering look about an eight), Mary said, "Why don't you just tell me what you've found."

"I actually detected something important before you did! Can't I revel a little? Just look at it. What isn't there?"

She sighed and gave it another look as I closed the door behind me and threw myself down on her bed. "There are no cities on here. It's too small. Is that it, Josh?"

"It's not a city. Think bigger. Mind if I turn on your TV?"

"Yes. There are no names on the continents, only the drawings. It's missing writing?" I shook my head and pointed at the key chain, indicating that she should look again.

Scowling, Mary sat down on the hotel chair as I turned on the TV, making sure to keep the volume low. On the screen was a woman staggering around a mud pit while a soccer ball was fired out of a cannon about a hundred feet straight up into the air. It hung there at its apogee, then plummeted down straight into the woman's face as she tried to catch it, the ball making a loud "POOONG" sound as it ricocheted off her head. She fell face down into the mud, paralysed with pain.

Mary looked up at it, aghast. "What the hell are you watching?"

"Game show."

She shook her head in disbelief. "What kind of sick, weird game show would-" Her eyes widened and she stared back down at the globe key chain. "It isn't there. Why isn't it there? You're right, Josh. That's where he's going. It's where he was always going. I thought the destination was only misdirection, but the truth is he didn't care if we knew it or not.

He's going to Japan."