Martin died several months after I made the photograph.

I remembered the photograph the other day; it was on the first half of a roll of film in an old Rolleiflex I rarely used. I put the camera away for a few years with the second half of the roll unexposed. I wasn't in any hurry to develop the film; I thought it would be best to wait a few years before seeing the last photograph I made of Martin.

I finally finished the roll of film and developed it this month. When I looked at the photograph of Martin, though, he wasn't there. I remembered a photograph that never existed.

I wonder what goes on in there?

It could be a spy shop for the British Secret Service. I can imagine the bad guys looking in every phone directory in the world for "James Bond" without success. He's using his fictitious name, "James Bong!"

Or maybe Agent 007's real name is James Bong, but he changed it from "Bong" to "Bond" after running it by some focus groups and the British Secret Service's marketing department.

Or there may be an entirely different explanation. Perhaps James Bong invented the bong without using it too much, and thus remembered to patent his creation. I still see bongs in lots of store windows; I suppose the royalties could have accumulated over the decades.

I needed an excuse to see what they were doing, so I told one of the hulks with an ear implant I needed to use the fax machine in the far corner of the lounge. And he believed me! As if anyone still used faxes! I walked through their ranks, and that's when I saw the prime minister of England's performance.

Tony Blair was sitting on a sofa. He had his pants rolled up to his knees to expose the metal plates in his socks and shoes. He was playing the spoons! He banged the spoons on his shoes, slammed them against the metal plates on his socks, and bounced them against each other.

Whacketa-whackety-whacketa!

The most amazing thing, though, was his expression. He had an idiotic ear-to-ear grin; he was smiling like a man who's just seen the angels come to rescue him as he was about to be hanged. His eyes were almost popping out of their sockets as he rapidly gazed from one approving sycophant to the next.

I kept feeding the same three sheets of blank paper through the fax machine, but I needn't have. All eyes were on Tony. Even Prince Charles seemed enraptured; his head bobbed from one side to the other with his ears swaying gently back and forth to the rhythm. He was snapping his fingers like the beatnik he always wanted to be. (He told a friend of mine that, when he was 15, his mother told him, "We do not wish for the heir to the throne to be known as 'Chuck.' " And that was that.)

A woman approached me and said, "I think you should leave now."

I recognized her from the press photos; it was Cherie Blair; the prime minister's wife, who, by most reputable accounts, was the person who really ran their miserable little island.

"I trust you shall not mention this, er, my husband's talents. It's just that the stress of ordering bombing raids distresses him greatly, you see. You will be discreet, won't you?"

Obviously not.

This is art.

He was well into a story from ten or twenty years ago when he shook his head and said, "You know, you never forget your first cult."

I don't know how I could tell he was shaking his head over the phone, but I could. I knew.

"It's simple," I announced. "Drink enough until you can look in the mirror and see a great person. Then gradually reduce the dose until you can look in the mirror and see a great person when you're sober."

"It doesn't seem to have worked for you," said a skeptical but observant friend.

"I didn't say it was a quick fix," I replied. "And besides, I have a steep learning curve. Anyway, it's like the guy who sold a lot of soda--or was it computers?--said, 'the journey is the reward.' "

It seems the M&M Corporation has put an end to such nonsense. I found a store that sells M&Ms in separate colors. One dispensers was full of light brown M&Ms , another had only red ones, and so on.

That's progress, I suppose.