 
Death Made me Famous

Phil Wohl

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Phil Wohl

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Everyone has their breaking point and for me it was the day when "Little" Johnny Prescott got his memoirs published by a major house and then shot up the New York Times Bestseller List. Mind you, this was the same kid that repeatedly swallowed glue paste in my son Miles' class and had absolutely no control over his sphincter muscles much of his formative years.

While the kids were now adults and I was on the cusp of turning 55, the shock of seeing My Anal Exploration: To Diarrhea and Back by Jonathan Prescott at the top of the bestseller list was... palatable. In fact, it sent me running to the bathroom to explore my own issues with anal fireworks.

It had been only two weeks since my wife Sharon gathered her stuff and walked out on me, saying "You are perhaps the most useless pile of shit that I have ever encountered! How I ever let you sleep with me is still a mystery?"

Then she asked the question that appeared to give me some hope in what seemed to be a sea of despair. Because every writer simply just wants to be thrown a bone of acknowledgement every now and then.

"Why did I marry you again?"

Since she apparently had the floor and I was purportedly there only for her amusement, it was clear that she would not only be asking the questions, but also answering them.

"Oh, that's right! she said, gaining some measure of clarity. "I read one of your books."

She flashed back to the night we met at a bar and how I had one of my novels prominently displayed on my night stand after I brought her back to my apartment. We were making out, rolling around on my queen-sized bed until there was a brief break in the action, as I predictably fumbled to unhook the back of her bra.

"What is that?" she asked as she spotted the bound, 275-page book.

"That's my book," I replied.

"You're book? You're a writer?" she said with all of the emphasis suggesting that nothing I had done up to that point indicated that I could perform such an arduous task.

"I always enjoyed showing my masterpiece, "BAD DOG" to whomever would read it, as airing out the details of my frustrating life in the pages of such 'fiction' was quite liberating.

"Bruce Schindler?" she questioned and then joked, "I better watch it or I might wind up on some sort of list."

Sharon transitioned from the flashback and I came along with her, "I probably should have walked out before I unhooked my bra. You should have titled that book 'Lazy' or 'Underachieving Dog' not 'Bad Dog'"

She walked toward the door and then threw one last punch. "You have as much chance of publishing those books as you do getting back in my pants."

And then she picked up her suitcase, turned around one last time and said, "I hope you eat shit and die!" and slammed the door behind her.

It was the best advice a woman had given me... except the part where I had to eat shit.

I had as much luck publishing my novels as I did maintaining relationships. Rejections from publishers and agents fueled my passion for writing for years and only made me hungrier. But, once I turned 50, the enchantment wore off and I became—for a better word—bitter.

The bartender at the local bar and grille had become more familiar with me as the days following Sharon's exit passed. Carl put an ice-cold, tall-neck Budweiser in front of me and asked, "Can I get you something to eat my friend? You're starting to look pale and thin, like that woman we were talking about last night that left you."

I dropped my head, partly in hunger and primarily in shame.

"A little too close to home on that one?" he sheepishly asked.

I raised my head and looked him in the eye, "Yeah, just a little bit."

He recovered quickly, "The appetizer and desert are on me."

I smiled, "Deal."

Carl handed me a menu and the only thing that immediately caught my eye was the "Nachos Platter."

He smiled back and said, "I've seen that 'Nachos Platter' look in people's eyes before."

I laughed, "Just hold the jalapeños and please put the sour cream on the side. Nothing worse than soggy nachos."

"Amen, brother," he rang a large gold bell and then placed the order on a touch screen at the end of the bar.

I continued to drink and munch on peanuts and pretzels in the bowl in front of me until the nachos platter made its way from the kitchen through the galley hole of the bar. I was instantly captivated by the large plate of food, which would have been quite the full meal by its lonesome on most nights.

Carl picked up the massive plate with the help of his Popeye-like forearm and then glided over and placed the offering to the gods in front of me. Just as the chips and cheese settled, a person sat on the stool next to me after intently following the path of the irresistible food.

"Wow, those nachos look good!" the voice said with great enthusiasm.

"Tell me about it," I replied, fully thinking for a moment that the comment was made without real intent.

I reached into the pile and pulled out a few connected chips and then was about to shove them into my mouth, when I saw what appeared to be the face of an angel sitting next to me. And, if it was in fact my actual guardian angel, then it probably would have been poor form not to offer a few chips to extend an olive branch.

"Do you want some?" I asked, motioning toward the chip pile as I then stuffed my face.

She grunted in approval and then proceeded to attack the left side of the pile while I did work on the right side. The pace of the eating fervor eventually slowed as chips disappeared at an alarming rate, until there were only a few chips remaining in order to be certified into the 'clean plate club.'

"You gonna' eat those?" she asked, glaring in my general direction. "What's your name?" she questioned, partially out of curiosity but mostly because she wanted to bullshit me out of the remaining morsels.

She reached out with her right hand, which effectively blocked any chance that I had to grab the remaining food. I admitted defeat by shaking her sticky free hand and replying, "Bruce. Bruce Schindler."

She smirked as she greedily scooped up the remaining chips and flipped them in her mouth like a seal consuming fish.

"Vicky Hitler, Mr. Schindler. Glad to finally make your acquaintance."

Now, I have heard my fair share of Hitler jokes in my time, but never from a person with a mouthful of gooey chips that I wanted to plow like a John Deere tractor!

She was ready to continue her coy act, but when she looked into my eyes while wiping a glob of yellow cheese from the side of her mouth, she must have noticed the landscape of sadness - and utter surrender - in my eyes. Two qualities that obviously attracted anyone within range like a mega dose of Spanish fly.

"Are you okay, fella?"

First of all, who uses terms like 'fella' anymore, and how can she see that I'm all fucked up behind the huge mask of nacho euphoria?

"Sure, why wouldn't I be okay?' I replied with all of the denial of, well, a person in complete denial.

She took a huge swig out of my tall beer and then countered, "I don't know, to me you looked pretty fucked up."

I started to wonder why an attractive girl that was at least 10 years my junior would be sharing my nachos, let alone have any interest in my generally shitty state of mind. As you can tell, it was one of my high self-esteem days.

She looked down at me like a mother would do to her truth-stretching son trying to get out of trouble. She then got the bartender's attention with a confident nod and flipped a $20 bill on the bar, gulped down the last third of my beer and then wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her shirt.

"I got to be someplace. You wanna' go?" she asked.

Carl saw the $20 bill in his zone and we both thought of the promise of appetizers and desert on the house, so he quickly wrapped up a few pieces of cake and securely placed them in an inconspicuous brown paper bag. He knew an opportunity when he saw one, so he tried to facilitate our joint exit.

"Here are a few pieces of cake for the road. You two kids go have a good time."

I reached for the bag but my new lady friend snapped it out of Carl's hand before I could get a hold of any paper. She looked into the bag and spied pecan and apple pie slices and boldly asked, "Can you throw in something loaded with chocolate?"

Carl smiled because he knew this woman's appetite would test the boundaries of my capabilities, and then some. He wrapped up an extra-large piece of 'Death by Chocolate' and placed it in another small brown bag.

"Now we're talking!" she exclaimed as she took possession of the other bag and said, "Thanks," to Carl. She then said to me, "Let's go. We're gonna' be late. Trish hates it when I'm late."

BLOW

We jumped into a taxi and she barked "75th and 2nd Avenue!" but the taxi driver ignored us both and continued to talk into his earpiece in some foreign language that must have been a real bitch to learn and even more difficult to talk with so much anger and emphasis.

Not a word was spoken in the back set during the 10-minute ride from West Side of Manhattan to its more docile cross-town neighbor the East Side. My now ex-wife and I had been living the city life for the past two years in a little shithole of an apartment on 68th and Broadway, but I was a month or maybe two away from being on the street with not a friend in the world that would take my sorry ass in!

Before I had a chance to reach in my pocket my female counterpart whipped at another $20 bill, which appeared to be in abundant supply, and paid the man whose name appeared to be 'SJON' or 'SEAN?' I don't know my close-up vision isn't what it used to be...

I followed the brown bags of pie and the dirty blonde with buns of steel into a place called Manhattan Peaks. Since I had given up fitness and my self-image years earlier, such places no longer existed in my world. The sight of a huge rock wall and both kids and adults hanging on for dear life at all heights made me wonder even more why I was standing in this yuppie paradise in the middle of the city?

"Fuck, my sister looks pissed," she said as she surveyed the room and located her older sister, or perhaps a younger sister that was getting her ass kicked by Father Time.

"That bitch always acts like I did her wrong," she muttered to herself but obviously wanted to be heard.

I'm still not sure how they fit a 100-foot rock wall in a former apartment building, but I always did marvel at what they could shoehorn into close quarters in New York City.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward what appeared to be a fire-breathing dragon on crack. I had become so depressed that I was now even past the point of masturbation, so experiencing anything seemed a lot better than waiting for my last days to elapse before death mercifully swooped in to save me.

"Have you ever been on time for anything in your whole life?" the angry bitch whined in her irreplaceable Long Island accent.

She looked at me and said, "Who the fuck are you? She'll probably be late for her own funeral!"

"Is this another loser that you picked up at a bar?"

I was ready to answer, "I was just sitting there minding my business, about to eat my nachos," but there was just so much left in the room for a rational response.

"What the fuck do you know about my life?" my sister shot back. "All you do is pick on everything I do and everyone I meet."

Then they both started talking at the same time as if the rules of an actual conversation did not apply to them.

Older sister voiced, "If you weren't such a loser magnet and took jobs that you could have done right out of college..."

And my new friend plowed back, "If you weren't such a vapid bitch and the inside of your vagina didn't look like a fuckin' haunted house on Halloween..."

The cutting words shot back and forth and made me wonder why I had left my bar stool in the first place. Honestly, the only thing that kept me from leaving was the free pie, which was now being choked to death and was a few angry barbs away from potential extinction.

I decided to walk away from the fray and use the bathroom to let some excess water runoff. It was a relief to enter the men's room on flat ground and not have to climb a wall to complete the task. I was greeted by my new female friend just as I exited the bathroom.

"Can you wait out here for me?" she asked as she walked into the ladies room. "Don't be sneakin' off on me. I'll hunt you down if you leave me alone with her."

And just before she was able to disappear from view a familiar voice bellowed, "Get the fuck ova' here! We're blowing out the candles!"

The formerly confident look on her face drained, and she was once again a child about to be rehumiliated by a sibling who took every opportunity to pour salt in a wound that never seemed to heal.

"Fuck me," she nervously grunted as we walked toward the cake with the number 11 in the middle of it. I instinctively reached for her left hand with my right hand and she grabbed the fingers like it was a vital lifeline. I'm still not sure why I did that - might have been the flickering lights of my empathy kicking in?

As we approached the main area table where the cake was positioned her sister flipped open a lighter and mocked my sister, who was obviously candle-blowing challenged. Each step we took made me angrier and more defiant toward such abuse.

"Not today, bitch," I mouthed, looking at the sister as I flipped her 'the bird' with my left hand. I spun baby sister around and started walking the opposite way away from danger.

"You don't deserve that. Not from that sack of shit you call a sister!"

We walked toward the bathrooms and my antics inspired her to aggressively pull me into the women's bathroom for my reward. The funny and amazing thing was that she didn't even check to see if anyone else was in the bathroom before pushing me against a stall and kissing me passionately. No one had ever stuck up for her before against her evil sister, not even her parents. And there was never a guy in her sorted past that had the balls or the interest to fight the fight that could never be won. Yes, I was that guy! Moron!

The kissing went on for a bit until she realized that utilizing the contents of the bag in her right hand would kick the party up a few notches. She grabbed a handful of pie and wedged it in between our mouths, as we devoured pecan/apple/chocolate delectables and then each other.

She continued to chew and said, "I know what will taste even better with some pie," as the instant sugar rush had me both excited and confused about her pronouncement. But, as she unzipped the fly of my jeans and then let them fall toward my sneakers with my boxers, I quickly realized that older sister did not have quite all of the intel on little sister because she could, in fact, blow.

Nice to Meet You

Cake was everywhere as I was now ready for the main event. It was hard to know at first bulge what position she would prefer. In hindsight, I guess it was fortuitous that she was wearing a skirt because she jumped in the air with her legs spread - the cake and excitement must have endowed my with super powers because I caught my counterpart like we were an ice skating duo, and then found my way to the promised land with our faces smushing together full with cake.

The actual length of the session was less important than the results, as we both grunted and panted to conclusion just as a few women were about to walk into the bathroom. One of those women was the big sister, who was shocked to see pie hanging from the stalls and even the ceiling as we emerged and my girl pushed her way past and said, "That was some good cake!"

The door swung closed behind us as we giggled like two kids making a phony phone call. All the while, big sister's mouth was wide open from shock and disbelief.

We were still zipping and buttoning pants when she turned and extended her hand in greeting, "Hi, my name is Karen. Karen Zeller."

I looked back at her and it finally good to put a name with a face, "Bruce Schindler. Nice to meet you Karen Zeller."

"The pleasure was all mine, Cousin Brucie," a euphoric Zeller replied.

We continued the physical dialogue back at my place for the next few days until we finally came up for air. It was Tuesday and neither one of us were running to work, so the questions were on the verge of being asked.

Karen was in the bedroom and I was only a few feet away in the common living area of my small one-bedroom apartment that cost me more per month then I paid for an entire engagement ring when I got married. Ordering Chinese take-out must have required all of my attention because I didn't hear her rustling in the bedroom. Normal phone calls were difficult enough, but the language barrier between a Brooklyn-born Jew and a Beijing-born Chinese man was so vast that it was amazing that anything got delivered from China Palace to my door in the first place!

Meanwhile, Karen was back in the bedroom picking up a stack of papers she knocked over on her way to the bathroom. Since she was in need of reading material, she brought the pages into the spacially-challenged room to keep her company. She turned the first dusty page and then sneezed, which elicited me from the next room to yell, "Bless you!

I didn't hear her say thank you because it took me five minutes to convince the guy on the other end of the phone that I didn't want a lobster dish that must have sounded a lot like "Bless you!"

Ten to 15 minutes later, the food had arrived in such speed that the guy must answered the phone and then cooked the food on a hibachi in my lobby.

I closed the door and then yelled toward the bedroom, "Food is here!"

And when I had opened the cartons of food on my table and all of the paper plates, silverware and napkins were out, I thought I would go in for a closer look.

"Is everything okay in there?"

When I didn't hear a reply I looked into the bedroom and said, "Hello?"

And then I did the right thing by knocking on the bathroom door before entering, even though we had sex in there like three times in two days.

"Hello, is everything all right in there?"

I opened the door and saw something I had never seen in my 55 years on the planet. Karen was holding my words and she was crying."

"Are you all right?"

"You never told me you were a writer?" she looked up at me with salty tears streaming down her cheeks and I shrugged my shoulders to convey that we really hadn't done a lot of talking since we entered my apartment.

I Got an Idea

"Back on out so I can finish up in here. "I'll meet you out there in a minute," Karen said while struggling to maneuver her rather long frame in such a small space. Her flexibility was quite an asset in tight spots.

I had been so beaten down, and it has been so long since I had successfully used my novels for sex, that I had no idea what to expect when we shared chicken low mien, sesame chicken and steamed dumplings?

Karen walked in and dropped my pages on the coffee table, which was the only a few paces away from the dining room table. She then sat down across from me and started digging in, again showcasing her voracious appetite.

"You don't understand. I have been pushing so much shit over the years that because someone above me told me to, but now..."

I had never even been close to convincing anyone over to even read my books, let alone publish them, and this was my first time to actually see what was transpiring on the other side of the wall.

"Are you an agent?" I asked seriously and then turned to my sarcastic side as a defense mechanism. "Because I have heard of you guys but I wasn't sure you actually existed.

Karen flipped a dumpling in her mouth after dunking it in a soy sauce bath.

"I can understand your frustration, but I was simply playing the game and following orders. I quit a few months ago because I couldn't take the bullshit anymore."

I paused the necessary few seconds to give the appearance that I was taking her statement seriously, and then replied in my most direct yet sensitive tone, "So, you got fired?"

She nodded and then smirked in surrender, "Yeah, I got shit-canned."

"So, it's been almost six months?"

"Five," she countered.

"Running out of unemployment soon?"

"Yep," she said. "How about you?"

"I ran out months ago. Barely on life support before we shared nachos."

"Yeah, me too," she concurred.

"So, the big gorilla in the room wanted me to ask you if you think you could get my books published." I asked with all of the enthusiasm of a kid on Christmas morning.

She pondered the question and then replied, "Nope," as she seamlessly continued on to the next dish without skipping a beat.

I was stunned by the definitive nature of her response.

"What do you mean, nope? You're not going to give it more thought, or even leave the door open just a crack for a maybe?"

She continued eating and looked me dead in the eye and gently shook her head from side to side, "Nope."

"Nope? Is that all you're going to say?"

She continued the theme, "Nope," but I could see the wheels spinning furiously in her head as a smile permeated her countenance.

I continued to curiously eat as she was obviously formulating a plan in her head. The one thing I was sure about at that moment, though, was that my life would never be the same again.

"I got an idea," she confidentially and somewhat disturbingly stated. And then the fun started.

"Thoreau," was all she said.

"What about Thoreau?" I impatiently questioned.

"Emily Dickinson," was next on the list.

She was casually sipping noodles as I waited for the next name on the completely confusing list.

"Anne Frank."

I had a train of thought going before the last one, and then it got derailed by the tragic little Jewish girl.

"They were all killed by Nazis?"

She looked at me in disbelief, "No! They were all famous authors."

"Anne Frank was a famous author?" I questioned preferring to remember her as a tragic figure more than a little girl hiding from death while keeping a rather compelling diary.

"They all became famous authors only after their deaths," she said simply.

I, of course, was waiting for something else to be added to a statement because I wasn't quite sure about how a conversation about famous dead people had anything to do with... oh shit! Is she thinking that I have to die in order to become famous?

So I asked the question that was obviously front and center on my mind.

"Are you saying that the only way that I am going to become famous is to die?"

She smirked, "That's exactly what I am saying, and we have to do it soon if you want to be included in the summer reading list."

I was excited at the thought of fame but was still unsure about some of the major details.

"Will I actually have to die?"

She played it straight, "I'm still working on some of the details..." and then she laughed hysterically, so I tackled her to the ground as we rolled around while eating the rest of the food.

Wife/Life

Usually kids are shocked when their parents get divorced, and many times they need extensive therapy to cope with feelings of abandonment and detachment. I appeared that m two kids were having more difficulty being associated with me than spending a second thinking at the downside of having me out of their lives.

"Mom, have you considered divorcing him?" my son Charlie asked my wife.

His older sister Gretchen was already following closely in her mother's footsteps and now hated men just as much.

"You never should have married that asshole to star with!"

Gretchen Schindler was a few days from her 29th birthday and had as much of a chance getting married as a lone inhabitant of a desert island. It was also debatable whether she would ever have her own children, being that she viewed herself as the center of the universe and nothing or no one else really mattered.

Charlie rolled his eyes and replied, "Then we wouldn't be here."

Even Gretchen couldn't argue with such logic, but she was definitely less forward looking on this day.

"She's wasted enough time!" which really meant that "she should be spending all of her time thinking about me!"

There was no denying the fact that I was only a shell of the person that I thought I was, or had always wanted to become. The years had stripped away my slim barrier if resolve and hope I had clung to and left me bitter and distant. I was definitely in line for some extended alone time.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Karen asked as we cracked open a couple of beers.

As a virtual 'dead man walking' there was little I could say or do that would squash the lines of good taste.

"What the fuck happened to me? No sister, I think the 600-pound Twinkie in the room is you and your fucked up journey."

She laughed at my Twinkie reference, which made me feel the creativity that sparked my writing in my 30s and 40s was being reinvigorated. Perfect! Just in time for me to leave the planet!

When she realized I was half-serious the chuckle subsided and it was replaced by a quite healthy mental barrier, which was marginally disguised as an iron-clad defense mechanism.

"You know nothing about my life and what I have been through!"

Usually, that kind of response would have squashed the intended direction of a conversation, but I wasn't about to go that way.

"So why don't you tell me what you've been through? Maybe I can help you talk it through."

"Fuck you! You don't really care about me!"

This was a typical response for a person interested at avoiding the subject at all costs while, deep down inside, trying to make all of the hurt and dysfunction all go away.

"If you didn't want to talk about it," I clumsily countered, not currently having the words at my disposal to bridge the gap between pain and freedom, "then why did you bring it up?"

She took a giant step backwards and I tried to step forward to fill the personality void.

"Look, I'm going to be officially deceased before long, so why don't shed some light on the subject of your life before it's too late."

She rolled her eyes, mostly in embarrassment and vulnerability, and then replied, "What do you want to know?"

I smirked because I had just transitioned into the Dalai Lama.

"No my child, I think the real question is, what do you want to know?"

She thought about the question and then nodded from understanding, and then I joined in a good nod or two.

A relationship built on honesty and complete disclosure is a coupling that is built the right way, from the bottom up. There was talk of divorce, potentially-abusive uncles that appeared to be showing more interest in the perky teen than the mom whose moods varied hourly and failed relationships due to trust issues.

"Have guys cheated on you?" I asked.

"There have been a few, but only after I appeared to lose interest."

"And you appeared to lose interest in order to protect yourself getting hurt?"

She nodded "Yes."

"We'll, I can tell you that I would never hurt you, at least not knowingly or without being provoked first."

She took my statement into consideration.

"Nobody ever intends to hurt anyone else, at least in the beginning."

Then she indulged my confidence, "What makes you so sure that you will be the one?"

After spending my entire life both expressing and defending my unique point of view, it was time to lay down my sword.

"Because I will be dead."

We both nodded again at the answer to almost every question that we've had in life. My death would effectively ensure that all of the wrong in our lives would now turn right as if guided by the stroke of a magic wand.

Action

"The first thing I have to do is read your books and then we can decide on the order of publishing," Karen said while we sat at the local diner and had brunch on a usually-busy Sunday morning.

I looked around and paranoia started setting in. It was one thing to talk about such insanity in private, but quite another to air our dirty laundry in public.

Karen also looked around but came to a distinct conclusion, "Do you think anybody really gives a shit?"

She turned to the 20-something couple sitting almost top of us to our right and asked, "If I stuck through his heart would you find that offensive?"

The girl took a stab at it first, "Would it be messy?"

"Yeah, would it get on my food?" the guy added.

Karen looked at me and I was stunned, then she turned back to the couple.

"No."

The girl looked at the guy, "No, we're good," and then they both rolled their eyes and returned to communicating with other people through their phones while being completely oblivious to each other and the other restaurant patrons.

Karen went back to eating her bagel with lox cream cheese spread,

"See, unless we spill blood on other people's food, they don't really give a shit if we are here or not."

"But what about all that money you won in the lottery that we need to invest?" I said with enough emphasis that all of the busybody's could here. I then got up and ate my bagel while walking out into the street, while all of Karen's new friends - including the texting twins - descended upon her like a swarm of faux-friendly locusts.

It took Karen a few minutes to shake free from all of the people trying to exchange numbers and make plans with her like they were old buddies. I was already well down the block on the path back to my apartment when she ran to catch up with me.

"I can't believe you left me in there with those vultures!"

I countered, "I can't believe you lived in New York your whole life and you don't know that your business is everyone else's business."

She smiled, "All right, we'll keep it on the down-low."

I was still unconvinced, "Very down and very low."

"Six feet under," she panned.

"Exactly," I concurred.

A few days later, Karen had read through most of my words and was ready to talk strategy.

"You definitely have written in a pattern that will make for a nice natural progression of words."

"Thanks."

"But I am curious about one thing. It seems that you work out a lot of your issues in here," Karen stated as she lifted some of my pages." So, why aren't you better adjusted in here?" she asked, touching my head and then my heart.

While she was looking for sage wisdom from me, sadly none was forthcoming.

"Fuck if I know?"

And then I stepped up, "If life was as easy out there as it is in there," I said, pointing to my books, "then there really wouldn't be much for me to talk about."

"Good point. But you should be a little better adjusted than you are. For god's sake, before I found you it was looking pretty bleak."

I wasn't buying it.

"So, you are going to take all of the credit for my transformation even though you're only going to revive me long enough to kill me?"

She wasn't buying my smoke screen.

"Who's blocking now? Is that why you're so willing to talk and write about other people's problems and issues so you won't have to talk about your own?"

"Sounds like a pretty good theory, a least on the surface," I shot back. "But I am wide open to talk about anything. Just because I don't bring it up, that doesn't mean that I won't talk about it."

She jumped right in, "What's the deal with your kids?"

"I don't want to talk about that shit!" I abruptly answered. "Anything but that. I can't do anything about the fact that my kids hate me. I didn't do anything to them! Heck, I was barely involved with anything they did after a while."

"And that's probably where all of the anger stems from," Karen stated.

That must have been the right button, "Fuck that! Fuckin' kids these days drain you of every last ounce of energy and money, and then wonder what you're going to be doing for them next! It is never enough! So, instead of continuing to throw every in a deep sea of nothingness, I decided to conserve my energy and be a little selfish with my time for a change. Even if it meant that I was miserable, unresponsive and unfulfilled, at least I was responsible for soliciting such feelings not because somebody else was making me feel that way!"

Karen mulled it over and replied, "That makes a whole lot of sense. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but you were right!"

"Right?" I said. "So, how are we going to attack this thing?"

"We'll, let's talk about money first."

"Okay," I replied, getting comfortable in my floral rub chair.

"Do you have any money left?" she asked.

I scanned my mental bank account to give the appearance of tallying up my assets, but that proved to be an exercise in futility.

"I have enough to get through another month."

"Life insurance?" she asked, knowing that my current flow would be mostly dry.

"One point two million," I replied.

"Beneficiaries?"

"Wife, primary, kids, secondary."

She moved to the edge of the couch, "You know, they can't get anywhere near that money."

I raised my hands in the air and then clasped them behind my head, which was my best thinking pose besides the fingers on the forehead.

"What do we have to do?"

Karen planned the sequence of events n he head and then spoke.

"You have to get a divorce."

"When?"

"As soon as possible," she stated and then clarified, "Before you die."

I nodded in understanding as my hands unclasped and then rested comfortably on my legs.

"Who am I leaving the money to?"

Karen looked serious, "You're leaving it all to charity."

I was appalled, "Charity? Why would we give it all away?"

Her serious face turned to the proverbial 'cat ate the bird' look.

"It's all going to Zeller Publishing LLC."

I rolled around the name in my head and then said, "So, I'm leaving all of the money to the publishing company that finally gave me a shot?"

"Exactly. For 1.2 million, we can get a few books published, hire a small staff and also grease the right wheels."

"Do you think it will work?" I asked, fully knowing that I was already up shit's creek without a paddle.

"Listen, you're dead whether we do this or not. He'll, we're both dead if we just sit here and do nothing. We might as well enjoy ourselves and, if it works out and you become famous, then we can both realize our dreams."

"Sounds like a plan."

Le Divorce

I checked my mailbox the next day and the divorce papers were not there, so I was about to call my wife as I stood near the elevator in the lobby of my building.

The planets must have been aligned because a guy with a messenger's backpack walked into my building and stopped at the front desk to talk to the doorman. He looked down at a picture and then did a double-take when he saw me standing right in front of him. He pointed toward me and then Paco the doorman nodded that it was indeed me. I played along and waved the guy toward me, hoping he was the answer to my current prayers.

"Are you Bruce Schindler?" he asked.

"Yes."

He pulled an envelope from his sack.

"I am here to serve you with divorce papers from your wife Sharon."

I suppose this process server had been met with varied reactions over the years, but most if it was anger and frustration. But, anger and frustration were nowhere to be found in my emotional register on this day.

"Could you just wait here a minute?" I asked the courier as I put my index finger of my large right hand up.

"I'd rather not," he said, as the awkwardness of the situation dictated that he was merely supposed to serve papers and then get the heck out of there.

"I'm gonna' make this real was for everyone," I said as I opened the envelope and then searched for a pen in my pocket to no avail. I looked over at Paco, because as a New York doorman he was supposed to have the answer to just about everything and anything.

"Hey Pac, do you have a pen I could borrow for a minute?"

Paco was all-too-happy to fill the request because my wife had bought him a fuckin' pen for the holidays the previous year and, unbeknownst to her, I had slipped him a $100 bill because who the fuck wants a pen when they can have cold, hard cash?

I guess it was only fitting that I would sign our divorce papers with that fuckin' pen!

"The document need to be notarized to be official," the courier said just before I was about to sign.

"You know a notary?" I asked.

The guy smiled, "I am a notary," he replied as he took out his pad.

"Señora Sharon not coming back?" Paco asked in his best Hispanic slave voice.

It was amazing that someone so annoying that made me so miserable and squashed my dreams into a frothy pulp could make me sad because she left me? What the hell was I thinking? I should have thrown a freakin' party the day she left! I had barely made the bed with the 20 freakin' pillows! Those pillows are history once I get back upstairs!

"No, that bitch is gone," I said in my most defiant voice as I looked around my tight triangle of brothers.

Paco and the messenger named Theo both nodded their heads in solidarity. Paco was back to his South Bronx accent, "Bitch makes me do all kinds of crazy shit. Punta!" he grunted and then simulated spitting on the floor.

"I just came here today because I wanted to see who the lucky son of-a-bitch was getting free of her," Theo said then we pounded fists.

"You can keep that pen and shove it up he ass!" Paco said to Theo as they walked to the door and I walked the other way toward the elevator.

Karen just got out of the shower and had a towel wrapped around her body as I stepped into the small bathroom and waved a notarized copy of the document that was going to jumpstart our plans. She wiped the steam from the glass and said, "Is that what I think it is?"

I smiled as I moved closer to her and unhinged her towel as it dropped to the floor.

"All signed, sealed and delivered thanks to my friend the courier."

She turned around and kissed me passionately.

"I never thought I would be so turned on by divorce papers," as we tussled like two sumo wrestlers on the way to the bedroom.

Week's Work

There were five business days between the time divorce papers were filed and when the divorce became official, so Karen and I had some time to plan my death. In order for me to be most effectively deceased, both the divorce and the change of beneficiary on m fully paid life insurance policy would have to be completed. The timing of my death would also be an issue if we were to get the maximum bang for our buck.

There was a danger in kicking it too soon f=after the divorce, although waiting too long would certainly dull the impact on my family. It appeared that the impact would be much greater when accompanied by the divorce then without it. Of course, these findings came through massive field research...

Karen and I were sitting at Ray's Pizza eating a slice the size of a manhole cover, when I said, "I'm sick of being treated like I never existed. Like my own contribution to the family was releasing two sets of powerful swimmers into regions that have since gone unexplored.

"What do you think will kill them more, the death or the fame?" Karen asked.

"My death will only have a limited effect on my kids and ex-wife. What will be shocking is the lack of money coming their way. Do you think we should wait a few weeks for me to die, or should we just get the show on the road when both the beneficiary change and divorce are official?"

Karen thought for a moment about what would bother her more - sudden impact or time - and then came to an obvious conclusion.

"Sudden impact for sure. That shit is always a bitch because you never have time to cushion the blow."

"Sudden impact it is," I concurred.

"How do you want them to be informed?" she asked.

I smiled, "Let it route through that douche bag of a lawyer she's been boning for years. It will be good for him to get a kick in the ass, too."

"Yeah, won't he be surprised when the will he has on record will be as useless as..." Karen's counter set me up for the punch line.

"My wife's uterus."

We both laughed, but I could only fully realize the true extent of that statement.

There were a number of things we both had to do to prepare for our big life change. For me, it was less of an adjustment to life in complete obscurity, because it had been my existence for a few years leading up to my death. But, I wouldn't really know the extent of my personal sacrifice until things fully swung into motion.

For Karen's part, her days were now filled with calling in favors, from a policeman she knew from her days in college to a dentist she went to summer camp with, and the medical examiner she also knew. I had absolutely no idea of the depth - or lack of it - of these connections, and I honestly could have cared less!

"It's amazing what people are willing to do for just a little scratch," Karen said after coming back to my apartment one night.

"Is everything falling into place?" I asked, almost half-listening to her initial comment.

"Yes," she replied. "I even picked out a place where we can live after things happen. It's an old warehouse turned condo in Long Island City."

"L.I.C.?" I questioned, breaking free from my riveting television program. "Who the fuck wants to live in that shit hole?"

Karen smiled, "Exactly."

I nodded and replied, "I bet you know a guy that manages the building?"

Her shit-eating grin widened even further, "Head of the co-op board."

"Who don't you know?" I asked, not fully fathoming the depth of my barb.

Official

September 18th was an important day for a few reasons. First of which, it was the official end to my marriage to the now Sharon Roth and her kids - who had stormed the social security office to get their names officially changed to Gretchen and Charlie Roth, from Schindler. Secondly, the beneficiary on my life insurance policy changed from my wife and kids to Karen's bullshit foundation, which was now an actual foundation thanks to her lawyer friend.

"You ready to die?" she asked me as we ate breakfast.

"When?" I asked somewhat apprehensively as the weight of the moment was starting to get the best of me.

"We could do it tomorrow," Karen proposed.

I was starting to melt down, "What's tomorrow, the 19th?"

"Yeah, the 19th."

"I don't like odd numbers. Let's do it on the 20th," I countered, starting to exhibit unstable and irrational tendencies usually possessed by serial killers and school vice principals.

Karen was doing her ignore my spell of crazy, "Then the 20th it shall be. Do you have any idea where you want to go for your last meal?"

Of course, it wasn't going to be my last meal, but I had the feeling that I would be inside for a while.

I had never really thought about where I would go for a last go-round, being that I had ceased thinking anything fun or adventurous years earlier.

"Where would you go for your last meal?" I asked, turning the tables.

"Wow, that's a good one!" Karen exclaimed. "And it's much easier to watch you make the decision than come up with the answer myself. When I was a kid the answer would have been easy..."

We both said, "Tavern on the Green!"

"Right!" she yelled.

"I know!" I added.

"But now things have changed and I think I would go with something more familiar... something that would bring the years of your life into simpler focus," Karen said without telling me where she would actually go.

She realized that it wasn't her day, and her words of guidance had led me to place that I last remembered being happy.

"We're going to Feller's Chicken on Long Island."

We loaded into a Toyota Prius that was sitting on the corner of 73rd and Columbus, waiting for us to Zip Car-it and to the not-so-friendly confines of Long Island, where I lived for all but five of my 55 years. I lived in Manhattan for three years until me and the wife moved to the suburbs when we wanted to start a family, and then we returned for the last two years when the kids were grown. I also went to college and graduate school on Long Island, and I also have a burial plot that my grandfather bought for me in a scenic cemetery in Farmingdale - which is obviously the town where everyone goes when their dead - although the instructions on my latest will called for cremation, which would be immediate so no one could snoop around and uncover the truth about my staged death.

"This chicken is awesome!" Karen exclaimed as we ate in the car because there were no tables in the take-out only business.

She shot me a look that asked the question, "Why haven't you brought me out here before?" and then she realized that we had only known each other a short time, and for most of that time was planning how to make me famous.

We sat in the car for the next hour and consumed two more rounds of fried chicken bits fried on the bone that were the size of my thumb. Feller's had all kind of side dishes like mash potatoes, stuffing, corn on the cob and other variations on the fixin' theme, but we deemed the window dressing unnecessary.

'I can't stop eating this," she said while continuing to stuff her lightly greasy face.

"I know, it's totally addictive. I used to sneak over here for years before going home at night. My wife couldn't cook worth shit, but these fuckers really know what they're doing!"

"Amen!" Karen grunted.

Judgement Day

So many of us spend years preparing for our eventual deaths, not waiting in earnest to reap the benefits of such a joyous event. Of course, that was easy for me to say, being that I was simply going to hop in a cab and take my walking dead ass to Long Island City where Karen's friend was waiting to let me in the back door and recently-hired Paco was going to make sure that I had the service elevator to myself.

Fire appeared to be the best way to die. A dentist could create a mold of my teeth, which could be placed along with a toothless cadaver extracted from the morgue that approximated my physical dimensions. The real question was where and when, but mostly where?

It wouldn't be cool to burn my entire apartment building down, because it wouldn't be fair to the other tenants. The idea was to stage my death, not harm anyone including myself. Karen knew of this bar owner that was looking to get out of the business, but the only way he could walk away with cash in his pocket was to light the place up. They figured that when the words "grease fire" were used to explain the four-alarm blaze, that anybody that had dared to eat at Briggs Tavern would understand such a likely event.

James Briggs wasn't serving health food and he also hadn't smelled a profit in two years. This coincidentally was the last time he had also changed the oil in the fryer. There was also the issue of a faulty front door latch - when the door was closed, which was fairly infrequently because of the barely-functioning air system, people could walk into the bar but no one could get out.

Staff was really lean on Tuesday nights. Usually the bartender also doubled as the fry cook if anyone wanted to eat. Bruce was instructed to order the cheeseburger platter, which of course came with French fries. The bartender named James was in the dark about the plot and simply reacted in the way he could, which also happened to mirror the way it was designed.

Karen and I had planned it so well, because I had been going into the place every night for the two weeks leading up to the night of the fire. Jimmy and I were now on a first name basis and he would be able to identify me by my full name because I had provided him with such information. I sort of felt bad for the poor son of-a-bitch! The guilt he would feel would not soon go away and the staged event would probably ruin his life as much as it would make mine.

Jimmy Parsons stood behind the bar and was texting a friend about how slow his night was going when I walked in about 9:44 p.m. The bar was open until 11:00 p.m. and I had made a habit of coming in after nine every night in order to establish a pattern that he could then tell questioning detectives about.

All it took was a few sips of beer every night for me to open up about my recent divorce. While I was able to tap into genuine sorrow and loss from my recent past, I was actually feeling pure joy and fulfillment on the inside. This was the best I had felt in years and I had Karen to thank for giving my life direction and making me feel whole again!

"You should probably eat some healthier food," Johnny stated right before I was going to request - hell, demand - the artery-clogging, heart-stopping cheeseburger platter.

Of all the nights to get a conscience and dispense medical advice! I felt invincible, so I said the first thing that popped into my mind.

"I guess I have a freakin' death wish," and then followed it up with raucous laughter. Jimmy followed suit and broke down in laughter, too, pounding the bar with his left fist for emphasis.

"I'll start getting in shape tomorrow," I added.

He smiled, "Well, if you're gonna' do something about it, I have no choice but to kill you tonight."

His words hung in the air like they were glued to the moon with a gigantic sign. I almost felt bad for him... not really though. I was sick and tired of sparing other people's feelings. I considered myself a nice guy and would no longer settle for finishing last. Yes, it was finally my time to shine!

Just before Jimmy went to the back to prepare my food or more accurately throw a frozen disk on the small grill and chuck a handful of dead potatoes in an oil bath. A homeless man walked in and sat down next to me at the bar. His 'ripeness' almost made me search for greener pastures, but I held my ground because I knew what he was there for.

Bralen McAfee had two crumpled dollars in his hand as he displayed the proudest toothless smile in all of the five Burroughs of New York City. Karen found the former steel worker turned street urchin earlier in the evening and guided him to the bar with the two-dollar beer special after nine o'clock.

McAfee said, "A pint of your finest ale, governor," as he slapped the purposely-worn bills Karen had given him on the bar.

Money was money, so Parsons collected the bills and poured a pint of whatever cheap crap he had on tap.

The ale is quite pale for two bits," McAfee joked with whatever brain cells he had left.

Parsons looked at me with a "Can you believe this fuckin' guy?" look, spilled out the piss-water and then filled the glass up with the stout he had on tap.

"Ahhh, as dark as the crap I took earlier today."

The imagery was nauseating and I glad that I didn't have to eat another one of those hockey puck burgers with cheese.

Jimmy placed the beer in front of McAfee and then looked at me and said, "Keep an eye on this guy for me."

I nodded in agreement and then he went into the back to prepare my last supper. The fryer had been heating up and the oil was about to turn deadly once the cold of the frozen fries made contact with a few extra untraceable ingredients in the vegetable oil base.

I stood up in anticipation of having to make a run for it. It also gave me an opportunity to stretch my long legs and rid myself of a stench only rivaled by an excrement-laden subway platform. McAfee was swimming in his tall beer glass, his beard soaking up much of the foam and adding a layer of fuzz he could access later in the evening.

Parsons peeled most of the paper encompassing the frozen burger and then flipped it on the grill. He then reached over and dropped a handful of fries in the fryer. As the flame flashed off the grill, the heat contacted the sparks from the mega-oil and then science ensued. A huge fireball consumed the small kitchen, ejecting Parsons from the room and toward the back door that led to an adjacent alley.

The flickering flame quickly transitioned into a fire as Parsons attempted to get back into the main part of the bar to warn his two patrons. However, once he realized that his path was blocked, he yelled, "Get out!" He forgot my name for a second in all of the confusion and then he remembered.

"Bruce! Get out of the bar! There's a fire back here!"

Then Parsons realized that leaving would be difficult, being that the front door could not be easily opened from the inside. He tried to remember if it was open and came to the conclusion that it was. He ran out the back door because the heat and smoke were becoming unbearable. He then took out his phone and dialed '911' to report the fire.

Meanwhile, Karen came and escorted both me and McAfee out of the bar and put him in a car with a driver that was taking him out of town. Karen and I sped away as her friend from the morgue placed two bodies on the floor in the bar next to the stools and then slammed the door shut as the flames dangerously spread.

It was one of those rare times in New York City when the streets were quiet enough to avoid big-mouthed bystanders that could recant what they saw at a later time. People are always so self-consumed in the city that they would barely notice a person dying, let alone bodies being shuffled into a burning bar.

Parsons

It took Jimmy Parsons four minutes and 45 seconds to get over the shock and run all the way around the block and to the front of the building. At least half of that time was spent talking to the emergency dispatch operator who put him on hold after she spilled some coffee on her brand new blouse.

By the time he got up to the front door, which to his shock and dismay was closed shut, the blaze had spread throughout the bar. He reached for the front door and just as he was about to grip the white-hot handle, the pressure from the fire exploded the window and pushed him back flying toward the curb in an unconscious state even before he hit the ground.

By the time the fire trucks weaved in and out of the congested streets and arrived at the bar, the inside was gutted and the two bodies were burned beyond recognition to ash. Dental records were the only way to establish identity, aside from anything the police could process from Parsons' statement.

"Were there people in the bar prior to the fire?" Detective Christopher O'Reilly, a fourth generation New York City Police officer asked.

Parsons was still a bit shaken, "Ugh, yes there were two people."

"No one else in the bathroom or out of sight?"

"No, just the two men," Parsons replied.

"You didn't happen to get a name on those two guys?"

Parsons was regaining some of his confidence because I had come in the bar for two weeks straight before the fire.

"One guy was a regular. His name was Bruce. His last name was..." Parsons stated until he went fuzzy on my last name.

"What was that movie about the Nazis?"

"Inglorious bastards?" the young-ish detective guessed.

"No, the one with that guy who helped those people," Parsons countered.

"Defiance?"

Parsons was confused, "What movie was that?"

"That guy who plays James Bond was in the woods helping people," O'Reilly replied in his best New York accent.

"When did that come out?"

"A few years ago."

"Was it any good? Because I can probably get it on Netflix," Parsons said.

An elder detective, Mario Manetti, chimed in, "I would definitely recommend 'Twelve Angry Men' or 'Schindler's List' before that movie."

"That's it!" Parsons exclaimed. "Schindler! His name is Bruce Schindler!"

O'Reilly looked at his partner Manetti in amazement and then refocused his attention on Parsons.

"Who was the other guy in the bar?"

"He was a homeless guy."

"Had you ever seen him before?" O'Reilly asked.

"No."

"Did you get walk-ins like that often?" Manetti questioned.

"Every once in a while, especially after nine when we had two-dollar beers."

"Did the guy have any teeth in his mouth?" O'Reilly asked.

Parsons thought back to McAfee's toothless grin and replied, "I don't think so."

We obviously wanted a homeless man who had no visible teeth, so this would match the body of the homeless guy that was taken from the morgue and placed in the bar. The guy they used for my body had some of my clothes on, which mirrored what I was wearing that night. The detectives would obviously find my teeth imprint and conclude that I had died in the fire.

"How did you get out and the other people might not have?" O'Reilly asked Parsons.

"The fire started in the back where I was cooking a burger and fries for Schindler."

"When was the last time you replaced the oil in the fryer?" Manetti asked.

Parsons had never changed the oil and tried to lessen the appearance of guilt.

"It's been a while."

So, how did you get out?" Manetti asked.

"The fire got so big, so fast, so I yelled for the guys to get out of there and then I ran out the back door."

"Then what?" O'Reilly kept it going.

"I called 911 and then ran around the block to make sure the front door was open and they had gotten out."

"Was it open?" O"Reilly asked, although he already instinctively knew the answer.

"No, it was closed."

"Was it open before the fire," Manetti questioned.

"Yes, I believe so."

"It could have slammed shut once you opened the back door," Manetti, an ex-fire fighter interjected.

O'Reilly and Manetti started walking away from Parsons until he blurted out, "The door was broken!"

That statement must have pushed the right button for Manetti. He turned a lunged at Parson, grabbing his shirt with both hands.

"What do you mean it was broken?"

"When it closed you could only open it from the outside. You couldn't get out from the inside! We had some theft, so we wanted to be able to control the flow of people getting out!"

Manetti pushed Parsons against the side of the ambulance.

"That's why I ran to the front and try and open the door!" Parsons moaned as he buried his sobbing head in his scraped hands.

O'Reilly was always about strategy first above all else, "Let's see if anybody gives a shit about the two of them and then we'll decide if we want to do anything," meaning that if there was no money to be made then who really gave a crap?

Manetti nodded and then walked away from O'Reilly, who moved in real close to Parsons.

"If you want to stay out of jail, never mention the faulty door again. As far as you know it was a grease fire, which is a very common accident in restaurants serving shitty food. Do we understand each other?"

Parsons was inconsolable but nodded his head in agreement.

"Now you be a good boy and take a real long vacation on the NYPD," O'Reilly said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of $100 bills secured by a rubber band, which he had absconded from a recent drug bust. He tossed at least 20 of the bills at Parsons, who quickly gathered the money and stuffed it in his left pocket.

"I don't want to see you for at least four months. Go somewhere warm for the winter and get a job as a bartender."

Next of Kin

Once my body was identified and the police tagged Bralen McAfee's non-remains as a John Doe, unidentifiable remains, they followed protocol and were on their way to inform my next of kin. My ex-wife had moved back to Long Island, so detectives O'Reilly and Manetti headed out to Huntington to deliver the news. Of course, they could have dispatched some junior, or let the good officers of Long Island handle it, but they were on their way to shake down a drug dealer in Huntington Station so the trip wouldn't be a total loss.

Days after my ex-wife left me, she rented a house in Huntington and my kids moved back in with her. And, only a week after that, they stormed the local social security office and applied for a name change, which was quickly granted. Was there no one that even cared to hear my side of the story?

Sharon, Charlie and Gretchen Schindler erased the last vestiges of their old man and became Sharon, Charlie and Gretchen Roth. O'Reilly and Manetti received notification of the name change and definitely had a collective chip on their shoulder when they knocked on the door.

Sharon came to the door and opened it without even asking who was there. She was surprised to see two brawny men standing in front of her and just assumed they were there looking for a donation.

"Can I help you?" she asked with a tone that suggested that she really didn't give a shit.

"Yes ma'am," O'Reilly said without a hint of false respect only a fellow Long Islander could muster.

"Are you Sharon Schindler?" he asked, knowing the reference to her old last name would completely get under her skin.

Sharon frowned and replied, "My name is Roth. Sharon Roth."

O'Reilly continued his passive-aggressive assault, "Where you married to Bruce Schindler, ma'am?"

Calling my ex-wife ma'am was sure to rile her feathers. She was in her mid-50's and was clinging to the last remaining strands of her fading sexuality.

"I'm not sure who you people are, and I don't think I appreciate you asking me all of these questions?"

Just then, my walking vagina of a son somehow extracted himself from the couch and wondered if the pizza he ordered had arrived in less than 20 minutes, as promised?

"Pizza here yet? Charlie asked his mother before seeing two, rather imposing men in the doorway.

"Who are these guys?"

Before Sharon could answer, my walking social disease of a daughter chimed in.

"Who the fuck are these guys?"

"I don't know?" Sharon replied to her kids, while completely ignoring the detectives. Now they knew how I felt!

"I think this fuckin' guy was better off dead," Manetti said under his breath.

"I would have ended myself if I had to live with these three," O'Reilly added.

Sharon grew impatient, "I'm sorry, whatever you're selling I'm not interested in buying," as she reached around her daughter and was about to close the door in the detectives faces.

Manetti thrived on confrontation and was obviously the partner that stepped forward when physical force was necessary.

"What makes you think we are selling anything?"

Sharon stopped for a moment and was going to answer the question before the bitch that was my daughter stepped in and reached for the door.

"Close the door mom, these guys are losers!"

Manetti looked at Gretchen with his 'death' eyes and said, "I wasn't talking to you."

Gretchen was about to go back at Manetti, but Sharon sensed that something else was in play.

"I got this," she said to Gretchen, who was going to give her mom a solitary chance at confronting the men, but fully expected to continue the assault once her mom made her usual feeble attempt.

"I just assumed you were here for a donation or something. Why are you here?"

Manetti stared down Gretchen as O'Reilly took over, "Detectives Manetti and O'Reilly of the NYPD," as they flashed their badges.

My wife and daughter both looked at my son Charlie and Gretchen shamelessly asked, "Have you been downloading porn again?"

Charlie had no shame in his game, "Yes, but it was the good porn."

O'Reilly needed the noise to stop, "Well, we will be sure to look into that," as he looked sternly at Charlie, who needed more than a few stiff kicks in the ass!

"We are here to inform you that Bruce Schindler has passed away," not wanting to waste any more time among such wretched people.

Three completely varied reactions came out of the usually somber news.

"Fuckin' asshole!" Gretchen grunted and then walked away from the door and back to the seclusion of her room at the top of the castle.

The pizza guy pulled up and Charlie said, "Pizza's here!" and walked past the detectives without even the hint of a reaction.

But Sharon, the driving force of all the propaganda behind the 'FUCK YOU, BRUCE!' campaign, stopped for a moment to reflect.

"How did he die?"

"It was a bar fire," O'Reilly replied.

"Do you think he suffered?" she asked.

Ex-fireman Manetti filled in the blanks. "Yes, very much. It's probably one of the most painful ways to die."

Sharon regained her usual demonic footing, "Good! I hated the fucker!" she spewed as she took a step back and slammed the door.

"Well, that was fun!" Manetti exclaimed, as they turned away from the door of hell down the front path toward their Dodge Charger police car.

"That dead guy is definitely in a better place now," O'Reilly stated.

"Yeah. You hungry?" Manetti asked.

O'Reilly thought about it, "Yeah, I can always eat. What were you thinking about?"

"Pizza looks good about now," Manetti said and then took the box out of Charlie's hand and then pushed him to the ground.

"You ungrateful sack of shit! I should splatter your useless brains all over the sidewalk for disrespecting your old man like that!"

"Amen, brother!" O'Reilly added.

"If you fuckin' move off that spot, I'll shoot you in your fuckin' head!" Manetti snarled as he was about to get in the car. "That's what you get for coming back to Long Island," Brooklyn-born Manetti said to O'Reilly.

They sat in the car and ate all of the pizza in front of Charlie. Manetti dangling in his '44' in one hand while eating pizza with the other hand.

"Let's go get paid," the ever-conscious O'Reilly said.

Manetti was a real psychopath as he simulated shooting Charlie while laughing and winking him as they backed out of the driveway and spun around to leave the block. My disloyal son didn't dare move after he fired off a text, until the pizza guy came back with another order for him to consume.

"Wow! You must be really hungry!"

Charlie replied, "Yeah, something like that."

Plan A in Action

Now that I was effectively dead, Karen had to fill out the necessary paperwork for us to get paid. Sharon's lawyer stepped forward with what he thought was the latest copy of my will. Hell, the bastard used to be my best friend before he started sleeping with my wife! So, I took great pleasure in imagining them both twisting in the wind and getting all bent out of shape when they were informed that there was more recent copy of the will on file.

Sharon even went so far as to drive into New York City and walk into the very precinct of the detectives that had been on the front stoop a few weeks earlier.

"There has been a grave injustice committed and I would like to file a report!" she pronounced at the front desk.

"I will have one of our detectives look into it for you, ma'am," the officer replied.

He stood up and went into the next room so my ex-wife could not hear what he was saying, but she could still see him. He then pronounced over the interior phone system so the pool of detectives could her him.

"I have a real beauty here. She says a grave injustice has been committed, and I can only assume that it must have something to do with the fact that nobody will fuck this loudmouth!"

A few of the detectives looked up at the video image of Karen and then went back to doing nothing. Mario Manetti was reading the New York Post and glanced at the screen and then went back to reading about some local team that was underachieving. Sharon's face then registered in his brain and he nudged his partner while saying, "We'll take this one. Send her into Interrogation Room 4, Schmitty."

"Roger that," Schmidt replied.

Meanwhile, my ex-wife was waiting for satisfaction and wondering why everyone had resorted to calling her ma'am as of late? She pushed her boobs up to make sure they were extra perky and then followed officer Schmidt into a room with a wood number four plate on the outside. He opened the door and she walked in.

"The detectives will be with you in a minute. They are just finishing up some paperwork on a case they just solved."

"Oh, what kind of a case was it?" Sharon asked, trying to sound interested.

"Murder. Wife killed husband after she divorced him," Schmidt replied unknowingly.

She shook off the coincidence and tapped her fake fingernails on the table waiting to unload her angst on anyone that came through the door. Karen knew that I had more than a million in life insurance and desperately wanted to cash in on the unexpected windfall. She was planning on playing the part of the crestfallen widower who had been wronged by an apparent clerical error.

They sent one of the rookie cops into the room as sort of a training exercise. The kid had some issues when he got nervous and they told him to listen to this woman's problems and report back to them with a solution.

Interrogation Room 4 was a decent-sized room with a two-way mirror and audio capabilities that was usually used for higher profile cases and also training.

"Good evening, ma'am," Officer Brian Murphy greeted Sharon as he came into the room, as his flame-orange hair was apparently matching her sullied mood.

"What can I help you with??

Sharon was all set to be patient and kind with the young officer. In other words, she was in full manipulation mode.

"My husband died recently," she said.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," he replied, as the stress of a woman losing her husband made his stomach groan just a little bit.

"It was quite unexpected. We have two children together."

The detectives knew that Murphy's father had died when he was only eight, leaving behind his mom and his two brothers, but they didn't really give two shits.

His stomach started to churn and he released a little bit of air from behind.

"Excuse me," he said. "My mom died when I was young, too."

The smell from Murph's toxic ass wafted across the table and threatened to engulf Sharon in a potent fart bubble.

Her eyes were burning and she wasn't really sure what to do, as the detectives were cracking up on the other side of the glass.

"My kids are older, but it looks like we won't be able to live comfortably now that my husband's will has been tampered with and we were left with nothing."

This new information disturbed Murphy further and he was now releasing bombs without any cheek control. Karen started coughing as she was trapped within the massive fart cloud, her fingers somehow found their way over her nose to restrict the inhalation of the pungent smell.

"What kind of food do you eat?" she gasped.

He yelled, "Indian!" as he quickly exited the room in hot pursuit of the nearest restroom. "Excuse me, ma'am!"

Sharon stood up and yelled, "I am not a ma'am!"

O'Reilly used a liberal amount of scented spray before entering the room and said, "You are definitely a ma'am," as his partner Manetti was laughing so hard that he was crying as he cleared the doorway.

"It's you two!" Karen exclaimed.

"Why don't you sit back down, "Mrs. Schindler," Manetti finally said after he wiped away his tears.

Sharon acted like she was going to walk out of the room, which triggered the killer.

"That wasn't a suggestion, Sharon."

She backed down for the moment and sat back down in the same chair.

"So, what seems to be the problem?" cooler-headed O'Reilly asked, trying to move the conversation along.

Sharon really wasn't in a talking mood.

"He left all of his money to a literary foundation."

"Why would he do that?" O'Reilly asked.

"He was a writer," Sharon replied.

O'Reilly looked at Manetti and said, "Makes sense," and Manetti nodded in agreement.

"So, you're upset that he left you with nothing?"

"Yes," she grunted.

"Even though you left him, poisoned your kids against him and left him so depressed and pouring his heart out to some bartender for weeks before he died in the fire?" O'Reilly questioned.

"I'm still entitled to something, if not everything!" she countered.

O'Reilly looked over at a seated Manetti and then at the reflective glass, where other officers were watching the drama unfold.

"You see, that's what's wrong with society these days. People generally treat each other like shit and then want to reap all of the rewards like they actually stood by someone."

Sharon was astonished, "What do you mean?"

"Have you been a good wife?" O'Reilly asked in his best interrogative voice.

Sharon replied without hesitation, which was obviously part of her DNA.

"Of course I was a good wife!"

Partners O'Reilly and Manetti were the perfect pairing - O'Reilly would always set up the pins and Manetti, without fail, would knock them down. They had been doing their homework about me and my life just in case the subject ever reared its ugly head again. It was all part of their design of being good, crooked cops.

"So, were you being a good wife when you slept with your attorney years ago?" Manetti spewed.

Sharon remained incredulous, "We got past that..."

"Our poisoning your kids' minds against their father to the point that they were willing to spit on their god-give name and change it along with you?"

Sharon was about to talk but Manetti put a single finger up over her lips and it silenced her. Yes, even she knew her limits in this room.

"For that insubordination alone you shouldn't get a dime!" true loyalist Manetti stated.

His partner, as usual, was there for backup.

"I couldn't agree with you more."

He then looked at my ex-wife, "You basically kicked a guy that was already down just because you could."

Sharon nodded in agreement and felt somewhat relieved that someone had finally verbalized her bullying and abuse, and she was able to move on - even though I was the one that had suffered and was now presumably dead. Good for her. Bitch!

Inside

It was a horrible winter. Since I was neither a fan of cold weather nor snow, being inside presented the best of all possible worlds for me. I slept past noon and watched sports and porn all day and night until I discovered that I could stream as man movies and TV shows as I wanted for $8 a month.

Karen was up at the crack of dawn every day, and often came home after dinner a night. We had appeared to be the perfect couple until my death, when I swaddled in the comfort of my familiar and safe surroundings and she sought to be anywhere but in one place. Her life was built on action and change, which kept her from thinking about the things from her past.

Assembling a team proved to be a lot less weighty task then being near me every day, once my insurance money was paid in full. Karen was free to spread her book web from everything from pre-production and promotion, to press and even more promotion.

She always told me that it wasn't so much the material that made the star, it was the unrelenting publicity machine behind the name that mattered. Put someone's name or face in front of people enough and they start to froth at the mouth each time they see that person again.

So, with this in mind, Karen and her superstar publicist friend, Serge Barro, started there, "Have you seen this man? Have You Read This Man?" campaign with a few well-placed billboards in and around New York City. And once the sufficient buzz was created and people really started to cha up and ask who this strange man on the billboards was, they made a billboard with picture and the website name, 'letbruceloose,com,'

Karen must have been inside my head, because she placed one billiard so I could see it when I stood up while taking a piss in our bathroom.

"Cool!" I said out loud to myself.

It inspired me to get back to writing and give up the remote control for a while. That billboard motivated me every time I cleared off the steam from the fogged up window that cold winter. Karen told me the website crashed for days after they put those billboards up, until a few intrigued tech companies stepped in to give us a hand with our server capabilities. It appeared that they were just as interested in finding out who I was as everyone else.

Other well-known companies became involved the face of the general public was turning completely frothy. And all of this was happening without anyone outside of our little circle having read a word of my writing. It must have been the way they were plugging me...

"Major undiscovered writer recently passed away and endowed us with his collection of unpublished works."

Although I never claimed to offer life tips in my words, my books were being billed as: "The answer to many if life's mysteries."

I must admit that I laughed when I heard that one! If I had truly found the answer too many of life's mysteries through my words, then why the fuck hadn't I figured out some of that shit in my own life? If I was such a sage and wise man, then why the fuck was I only a nachos platter and a few more beers away from taking my own miserable life? Why did it take an outsider with an insatiable appetite and career as an underachiever to figure out what I couldn't make materialize?

"We're gonna' start with the first book you wrote that I found in your bedroom," Karen said to me one night when I prodded her for an update.

It seemed to me by her explanation - words and phrasing are everything to me—that I could have taken a steamy, smelly shit on a paper and she would have been able to sell it as a masterpiece. Sometimes it's not only the words that people say that has impact, but also the manner in which they phrase their words.

What she didn't immediately tell me, if ever, was that my book "BAD DOG!" had been significantly reworked by a ghost writer into the kind of vehicle they were looking for.

I didn't immediately react to Karen's pointed words, preferring to stare at my billboard in the distance and completely believe the hype.

"I've been writing a new book," I disclosed at the end of our conversation.

He eyes lit up, "Really? That is great! What is it about?"

I replied with a straight face, "It's about an author who didn't become famous until he died."

She was half-listening, but heard enough to inquire further.

"What is it called?"

"Posthumousity: Death Made Me Famous."

All Karen could see in front of her rose-colored glasses was dollar signs, and she was happy to keep me busy so I wouldn't ask trivial questions.

"That sounds great! How far along are you?" she asked, hoping to her the book half-empty not the book half-full.

"About a quarter of the way through."

She breathed an audible sigh of relief and countered, "We'll, you stay at that. It sounds really promising! We can definitely fit that in once we get rolling."

Karen might have reacted differently if she knew that I was writing a tell-all autobiography about my days in captivity leading up to and following my staged death. While I had always written about bits and pieces of m shattered life and incorporated them into fiction novels, in this book I was truly baring my soul and not just hiding behind the thinly-veiled, made-up characters. Publishing this book was not in the forefront of my mind. This was now an intensive therapy session with the decisions I had made my entire life under the microscope - especially my most recent decision to agree to staging my own death in order to achieve fame.

FAME

Emily Dickinson once said, "I do not like men who squander life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name."

Well, fuck you Emily Dickinson! I'm not the only one that had to die to become famous! Your fuckin' sister discovered your countless number of poems and was probably a few seconds from throwing the shit in a bonfire before she had an epiphany, "How can I make some money from this shit?"

I bet you that wherever there is an undiscovered author, there is a person who finds the works and wonders how the can profit from it? And the true beauty of the money-making opportunity is that it doesn't have to be shared with the person with the talent, the one that penned the prose to start with.

My full-blown fame occurred on, coincidentally, the first day of spring, March 21st. The vernal equinox was signaled with the changing of my pee billboard with my picture on one half and the book cover of BAD DOG! by Bruce Schindler. It was the first time I had either seen a book with my name on it or viewed my name written so large.

I'm sure my parents would have been proud of me if they were around to see it, but they were year-round residents of schvitz palace that is Scottsdale, Arizona and were unaffected by things that occurred outside of their small haven - outside of the presidential elections, grandchildren's accomplishments and news of other old people that were either sick or had died.

My ex-wife and my kids had been tucked in the quiet hamlet of Huntington, New York and had not driven into the city all winter. The constant pounding of snow prevented Sharon Roth - who was a horrendous driver under optimal driving conditions - from driving her children into see a matinee Broadway show on Saturday and still be home in their pajamas by 6:00 p.m.

On this late morning, they were headed in to see 'Revenge of the Nerds,' a new Broadway production in previews that was adapted from the wildly successful movie franchise of the 1980s.

I never let Sharon drive in the city because she became too easily distracted. Between the crazy people, vibrant storefronts and billboards, there was more than enough to distract someone with the attention span of a stapler remover. She was driving on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway after languishing on the Long Island Expressway, and was about to make the turn into the city through the 59th Street Bridge, because there was no toll associated with this crossing. She turned the corner in her Honda Civic and it seemed that the car was engulfed by a giant billboard that was directly in their path.

"N.Y. Times #1 Bestseller" was the caption in huge letters with my book BAD DOG! on the right side and my picture on the left side. My son Charlie sat in the front seat and spit out a massive mouthful of Mountain Dew on the inside of the windshield, while my wife became paralyzed and my daughter sat up from the back seat and yelled, "What the fuck, Charlie?" until she saw the billboard , which caused an instant revolution in her pants. She sounded off a long, loud fart that eventually transitioned into a more solid than liquid form.

And while Charlie was choking and Gretchen was fudging her pants, Sharon kept driving even as the cars in front of her had come to a halt from the gridlock, igniting a 15-car pileup that stalled traffic for the next six hours. All three members of my ex-family were placed into traction with multiple broken bones, but that did little to deter the fireman - who needed nose plugs to remove the trio with the 'jaws of life'—from making a side bet.

"Which came first, the fudge or the accident?" Brian Davies asked.

Bill Christian replied, "Well, I've seen many people go to the bathroom after an accident."

"I can hear you!" a humiliated Gretchen grunted.

They ignored her and continued their query.

"Something must have triggered the accident and poopy pants," Brian stated.

Bill looked up in the sky because the overpowering broccoli smell was permeating his senses.

"How much broccoli would someone have to eat to create a smell like that?"

"Fuck you! I like broccoli. It's good for you!"

"Twenty says she sharded before impact," Bill said.

"No way. You're on!" Brian exclaimed.

And just before they were going to ask Gretchen, or anyone else in the car that would have that information, Bill saw the billboard and said, "That fuckin' book by Bruce Schindler is amazing! I bought that shit yesterday and stayed up all night and finished it this morning. That shit changed my life! Truly inspirational!"

Gretchen then released whatever stalks of green that were left in her body into her already squishy pants.

Bill looked over at Brian and stuck out his hand, and Brian slapped a $20 bill in it.

"Don't feel bad. I'll buy you a copy of the book on the way home," Bill said.

"Thanks, brotha'!" Brian gushed.

Gretchen rolled her eyes and breathed a heavy sigh, "Fuck me."

A policeman looked into the car and caught a whiff of Miss Smelly Pants.

"Not a chance. Even if you clean that shit up!"

In-famous

I was initially concerned when I saw my family on the local news, which was covering the massive car crash just outside the 59th Street Bridge. But the sight of Gretchen's soiled pants definitely brightened my day. It was also quite uplifting to see the apparent cause of their demise was my huge billboard with my likeness and book cover.

While I had hoped that the book would be recognized, I had no idea of the effectiveness of Karen's well-placed publicity machine. It definitely seemed like a great time to celebrate!

One rule of my captivity was that I could not use phones under any condition that went outside of the building. So, my lifeline was the phone near the door that was connected to the doorman at the front desk. And I also could not initiate communication with my voice, so I would beep the front desk three times in order to ensure that our inside man Paco was on the other end of the line. Without Paco, I would have had no connection to the outside world other than Karen, TV and the Internet.

I beeped down to the front desk and Paco answered the phone, "Good morning, Mr. S!"

"Good morning, Paco. It looks like a beautiful day for a celebration!"

"What are we celebrating?" Paco asked.

"Why don't you come up and I'll show you," I replied.

I knew that Paco probably could have given a shit about what I was celebrating but for the exorbitant sum of money we paid him to keep our secret, he would have done just about anything without blinking.

He knocked three times on my door and I let him in our spacious three-bedroom apartment.

"So, what has you in such a good mood today?" he inquired.

I walked him over to our huge main window and then said, "Ta-da!"

He didn't react at first, until he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of thick, coke bottle-like glasses.

"I have a problem with distance," he snickered and the focused.

"Holy shit, bro! You are one famous motha' fucka'!" he yelled and then slapped me one upstairs.

"All this shit is worth it, bro! You IN-FAMOUS!" he added. With emphasis.

Yes, I was definitely famous and inside, all at the same time. My celebration called for a big bottle of champagne and all of the cheesy Bar-mitzvah-style hors-d'oeuvres Paco could find, including bit-sized knishes and franks in blankets. For some reason, these delectables gave me comfort and were must-haves for any celebration.

It had been quite a while since I had reason to celebrate anything... I put the champagne on ice and took a long, peaceful nap - perhaps the best sleep I had for years dating back to before the kids were born. Since the news was so great, I anticipated Karen coming home to shower and change before she went out, stopping for a moment to enjoy the fruit of the spoils with the man that made it all possible, me.

It was approaching dinner time, which for me had receded to five or five-thirty in the afternoon. I put the bit-sized delectables in the oven and took a deep, cleansing hot shower. My smile spread from one end of the city to the other as I stepped out of the shower and dried myself off. I felt a certain glow that cane with such a lofty accomplishment. At times, I considered it the happiest moment in my entire life! All the things I had worked for all of my life had now come to fruition.

It was one of the rare times in the last three months that I decided to put on some real clothes. I found my favorite dress shirt, tie and suit and started feeling like a mainstream human being again. As I finished maneuvering my tie into place and then slipped in my black wing-tip loafers - not a big fan of lace-up shoes - I could smell the years of my youth wafting from the kitchen and to my well-trained proboscis. It was show time but my date had not yet arrived.

I removed the trays of dressed franks and knishes in the potato and kasha variety from the oven and turned off the heat. The clock on the stove read 6:15 and the lure of such delicacies was far beyond my recently-attained celebrity. So I waited the customary one minute and three seconds for the heated wonders to cool and then I used a spatula to remove them from the silver cookie sheets and place them on a long platter. Usually, co-mingling was forbidden, but on this night all of the kids were allowed in the pool together. It was definitely a proud moment in the history of segregation!

Seven o'clock came and went and so did the hors d'oeuvres without even the hint of a Karen sighting. My belly was so full that I waited another half-hour before cracking open the bottle of champagne, all the while sitting in a chair with the lights off and the blinds up facing my billboard.

I slowly drank the rather large bottle of bubbly as eight and nine o'clock stepped by, while I continued to stare off into space while cradling the champagne. The next sound I heard was the front door opening and I painfully opened my eyes to the brightness of a new day.

Karen must have been out all night and she was obviously still under the euphoric influence of the drinks and other chemicals she took in throughout the night.

"Party!" she lightly whispered to herself as she entered the main room.

"Whoa! Bright light!" she exclaimed en route to draw the blinds.

"There, that's better," she said as she turned and finally noticed me hugging the bottle of champagne in the chair facing her.

"Looks like you had a little party in here as well! Smells like you made some killer hors d'oeuvres as well. Thanks for saving me some!" Karen said somewhat sarcastically as the munchies took over.

I was on the other end of the emotional spectrum, as the bottle of sparkling depression had converted my incredible spirits into mostly anger and grumpiness.

"Yeah, I was waiting for you last night. Where were you?" I asked.

"We were out celebrating! We jumped to number one on the New York Times Bestseller List in our first week!" she beamed.

The one thing about the "we" concept is that it implies more of a group slant to a project that I completed myself. It was my book, yet when it came time to celebrate I was nowhere to be found!

"We?" I asked rubbing my eyes. "Who the fuck is we?"

"Me and all of the people that worked to make you famous," she replied, not knowing she was standing on a Bruce mine.

"Famous?" I questioned as I slowly stood up with the bottle still in my hand. "I am famous out there," I stated pointing to the other side of my window to the world, "but not so famous when I'm in here."

I put the bottle down on the table and then added, "It seems that the only people that are able to enjoy my fame are out there, and not in here. It has gotten so bad that you don't even want to be with me," I said in a saddened tone.

"Well, what did you expect Bruce? You're dead," Karen replied as I walked past her and towards the bedroom.

"Well, I didn't expect all of this," I said and then walked into the bedroom to sleep it off.

"Well, you got all of this," she said to herself before showering and then leaving.

Transition, Direction

I was alone. While the country and now the world was embracing BAD DOG!, I was alone. Karen did not return to the apartment after that fuzzy morning, but I did see her constantly on TV interview after TV interview and on the cover of magazines and front pages of newspapers. It was like she was benefiting most from my fame - like she had set up my death so that she, not me, would really be the one to become famous. I really had a lot of time to think while I wrote Posthumousity.

Every fiber of my being wanted to complain about a process that had left me out. The one really good part of my life that had changed, however, was that I no longer had bills to pay and money was no longer a concern.

That didn't stop me from wanting to sue the shit out of Karen, who was pocketing all of the money I should have made, of course under false pretenses.

I wasn't really sure why I was writing another novel - being that writing had kind of gotten me into the life I was leading in death - but I figured that the only thing that kept me going all those years was telling stories. And now I was telling another story - my story - that I assumed would propel me to greater things and even higher ground.

It was hot outside but it remained cool in my place. I thought it was time to get my shapeless form back in tone, so I requested an elliptical machine, a bike and a treadmill, which Paco brought and assembled in days.

Karen even sent me a message with the equipment.

"Strange request from a dead guy... but I like it!"

The rough translation of her words made me think that I should never quit, not even in death. That I could somehow figure out how to resurrect myself from the grave. Yes, my ego was at an all-time high as my second book was about to be released, even though my self-esteem and self-image was something less than stellar.

Book number two was the logical sequel to book one and was titled GOOD DOG! While I spent the entire first book dressing down people and demolishing many of the walls they had in their lives, the second book celebrated a robust foundation and a view of the future possessing unlimited freedom.

If ever the public needed a pick-me-up it was now. I also read and saw on TV that they were making the first book into a movie with top stars lining up to play the major roles. Karen's foundation was now worth billions, but she would only go as far as the books I had written. She only had the first two books in her possession and I still had the other big bunch under lock and key. She probably didn't even think that the public would get through more than a book, so she told me to hold on the rest of the books. It was probably the only macro power I had left in the world.

Karen really had no interest in my other books, especially Posthumousity, which she thought was a foolish venture that would never see the light of day. No, what she wanted was what the public seemed to demand, another book in my DOG series. I became intrigued when I heard a show-biz report one night.

"We have received word that Karen Zeller is preparing the next novel in Bruce Schindler's dog series to be released sometime next year," the model turned reporter said.

Another woman back in the studio said, "I hope its early next year!"

The reporter broke character, "Yeah, me too!"

So I figured that Karen would either be knocking on my door soon or she had figured out how to do the process herself.

Ten minutes after I heard the report, that knock on my door happened. And then it became clear to me that it was the creational phase of the work that was both critical and irreplaceable, not the touching made by editors or ghost writers.

Now that my books addressed the restructuring and rebuilding of self it was instantly logical to me that a roadmap to life was not only necessary, it was critical. I knew that when I wrote the books but marriage and children had eroded much of the zeal I had for my own life, so I moved my writing and thoughts in a different direction. Now I had a chance to go on a journey of self and plot a course for my life as if I had another chance, another chance at happiness.

The Karen that came through the door that evening was much different than the Karen that I never saw leading up to the days of her living somewhere else. Hey, she was even more upbeat than the woman I shared nachos with that first night we met. She made me instantly feel that I was the most important, engaging person in the world and it was making me feel loved and nervous at the same time.

"We need you!" she cooed. "There is great demand for a third book in your dog series. But, as you and I both know, there is no third book."

I smirked, "At least not yet," I replied, playing along. It had been some time since the outside world really cared if I was dead or alive—or still dead.

"Are you serious?" Karen asked as if the fate of the free world rested on my pen.

"I guess it all depends?" I countered, trying to preserve any remaining leverage.

"On what? You can have anything!" she said with all of the unrestrained marketing of a high-priced call girl.

"I'll give it some thought," I replied, fully knowing exactly what I wanted.

She snuggled closer and purred, "Let me give you something else you can have."

It wasn't her best line, but it had been months since I had anything else but my own hand. So, contact with a familiar female body was definitely appreciated.

TOP DOG!

I woke up the morning after one of my better performances in the bedroom, witnessed by Karen still passed out in the bed next to me. As I stood up, drained my main vein and then looked at another one of my billboards, I smiled and then had a sobering thought: she gave up the ass was too easily! I mean, I was happy to be getting some ass, but also devilishly wondering how much game I really had there.

By the time Karen arose from the bed and made her way to the breakfast table, I had already made eggs, pancakes and bacon, and had both a title for my third book and a road map for my own life.

Karen dove right into the deep end before her cute butt even hit the chair.

"So, did you have a chance to think about what we talked about last night?

I was in too good a mood to put off the inevitable, "Yeah, I want my life back."

She was confused, "What? How can we do that? The only reason you're famous is because you're dead."

"So it has nothing to do with my writing?" I asked.

She backed up, "It has everything to do with your writing, but I don't think the public will be very receptive or forgiving? They could turn off as quickly as they turned on."

I simplified my request.

"I just need to get out of here and feel like I'm part of this thing."

She gave a little, "I think we could get you out every now and then."

"Bullshit!" I thought to myself. Control was everything in this game and I had to keep it.

"I have a title."

She almost jumped out of her chair, "Really? Already? What is it?"

I picked up a pen and wrote "TOP DOG!" on a loose piece of scrap paper.

Her eyes almost popped out of her head, "I love it!"
She then shoved eggs, bacon and pancakes down her throat at the same time and then frantically scrambled for her clothes and shoes.

"That is brilliant! You get to writing and I'll see what I can do to get you out of here."

She kissed and I asked, "When?"

"When do you want to get out?"

"Tomorrow," I countered.

"Give me a brief synopsis of the book and you have a deal," she replied, extending her right arm to seal the deal with a handshake.

I gripped her hand and replied, Deal!" and I had the synopsis written in my head before she cleared the doorway.

AIR

I easily stuck to my end of the bargain by providing Karen with a brief synopsis of TOP DOG! Little did she know that I was so deep into my Posthumousity book that I wasn't going to start the DOG! book until this real-life account was finished. But, it wasn't out of the ordinary for me to multi-task and pen two works at once.

"I can't let you just walk out on the street looking the way that you do," Karen said to me after she already had my book notes in tow.

It was one of the rare days since I had been on the inside that I even bothered to get dressed, so I walked over to the mirror to check out my hair and clothes.

"I know, I haven't seen people for a while, but it don't think there is anything wrong with the way I look."

Karen acted quickly to diffuse my temporary drop in personal confidence.

"No, no, not how you look or what you're wearing. I enlisted a friend of mine who works in hair and makeup to alter your appearance enough so that no one will recognize you."

My initial reaction was "Cool!" although, in hindsight, I should have been questioning the discovery of yet another one of Karen's "friends."

She left and Carston Gressler knocked on my door about 40 minutes later, just as I was starting to think that she double-crossed me. What would I have done, walked out in the street and told a police officer that I had been robbed?

"What did she take?" the cop would have asked.

"A billion dollars!" I would have yelled.

"In cash?"

Then I would have lowered the boom, "In notes."

The cop would have been confused, "In bonds?"

"No, my book notes."

"Was it written on gold paper with diamonds around the edges?"

"No, I am that guy who writes those DOG! books," I would have explained with a straight face.

He would have processed the information in an unspectacular and deliberate fashion.

"You mean you're that guy that died and then they found all of his books? Yeah, I already ready the first two books and I hear a third book is in the offing. That shit changed my life!"

Yeah, I had it all planned until that question about me being the dead guy who wrote all of those books and then was living and breathing in front of him. But I did appreciate the fact that he was a fan. I did have a lot of time on my hands, but at least I was thinking things through and not reacting rashly.

Carston pounded on my door, which propelled me to envision a rhino of a man stampeding through the foyer once I cleared the path. But, to my surprise, a diminutive man with platinum blonde hair pranced in, gave me the once over and said, "My gosh, this is going to take longer than I thought."

So much for having confidence in my appearance...

I was stunned to learn that a man that had worked to disguise many stars from the paparazzi would dress so flamboyantly himself. It appeared that one with a camera would have to do was follow Carston around and then wait for a made-over star to emerge from the location.

Carston started by raiding my closet and trying to find anything with a smidgen of style.

"Do you buy all of your clothes at least two years after they are popular?"

At first I thought his statement was a compliment, and then changed the subject.

"Aren't you here so people WON'T notice me? How many people do you think will look at me when I'm wearing this stuff?" trying to appeal to his sensibility.

"Right!" he replied. "Well, in that case, you look just right for the part."

He then looked at my clothes with a renewed sense of appreciation, "Then, in that case, would you mind if I used some of these for my other clients?"

"Sure!" I replied.

"Great. Because they wouldn't be caught dead in any of this shit, honey."

He gave me some hair extensions, found a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball hat in my closet and glued a beard and mustache on my face despite my objection.

"Can I grow my own facial hair?"

He stepped back and put his hands on his hips, as if he was better able to make evaluations in this position.

"Honey, do you want to go out today or in a month?"

It was a good point, but it was like wearing the itchiest Mohair sweater on your face. I wasn't even sure that I would be able to breathe any fresh air through that forest?

It was funny that I could walk the streets only months earlier without anyone recognizing me and/or generally giving two shits if I was even alive! But since the billboards and the books were being consumed like McDonald's French fries, I would definitely be on the radar - not that any rational human being would expect a well-known dead guy to be walking around the dingy streets of Long Island City, anyway...

I looked in the mirror after Carston claimed, "You are ready to roll!"

Perhaps my old school sensibility was wearing off on the self-proclaimed diva. Perhaps it was the mind-altering, industrial strength glue he used to tack on the beard? In any event, the woman with low hanging fruit was finally speaking my language!

"Try not to overdo it in the first few days. I wouldn't recommend eating in a public place with that thing until you've had a chance to test drive it at home first," pointing at the beaver that had taken up residence on my face.

Carston always went misty when he completed one of his creations.

"Bring it in, you big lug!" he squealed and then proceeded to kiss me on both cheeks, or at least where they would have been.

He pulled a few hairs from his mouth and offered this bit of sage wisdom while pointing to my crotch, "That's why I don't go down there unless someone's shaven clean."

He opened the door and continued talking to himself, "I have to focus on my craft. I'm not pulling hair out of my mouth when I'm doing my thing!"

The imagery was mind-numbing and I even wondered briefly if I was wearing a pubic hair beard that had been assembled from random trimmings before going down south. But then I quickly dismissed the notion because I didn't want to walk around with vomit all over my beard. Not quite the explosion that Carston would have been expecting.

It was still early spring, so there was still a decent chill in the air as Paco open the back service door to give me an airing.

"Your face looks like the fuckin' wolf man," he said.

"Do you think anyone will recognize me?" I innocently asked.

"Not a chance. If I saw you I would walk on the other side of the street," he added.

"Okay," I replied, as I was sort of overwhelmed by the moment.

"Stay clear of the park. You don't want a pack of squirrels humping your face," Paco stated, adding one more verbal kick in the balls as he shut the door behind me.

"So much for your Christmas bonus," I regained my stride and kidded back.

"I hope you enjoyed being famous," he delivered the knockout blow.

While the beard kept the chill off my face, it was so itchy that it made me feel that I had a case of crabs on my face.

Needless to say, my first outing amounted to me walking up to the local convenience store, purchasing a bottle of cold water and then to the YOGO Hut to help myself to a big tub of chocolate yogurt with nuts and chocolate sprinkles. My face was on fire and I readily accepted my own personal challenge to find the coldest food to toss down my throat once I located my mouth through the thicket.

As fate would have it, it was mid-afternoon during the work week, so I was the only person in the yogurt place. The one girl that was working rang me up without even looking at me. The 20-something was so attached to her phone that I could have been Frankenstein and she still would have continued her assuredly riveting discussion without pause. She represented a generation with such fractured social skills that their recovery would be unlikely.

It took me a while to finish my tub of yogurt and toppings. I felt like a parent feeding a newborn baby eating for the first time with a spoon. I went to throw out my trough and the most startling thing happened, the girl actually spoke to me, a live human being.

She flipped her phone around and simply said to me, "GOOD DOG!" in an excited tone as she showed me the cover of the mobile version of my book. At first I thought she had recognized me through the pubes and was giving me props for writing such a masterpiece, but when she sat back down and was voraciously devouring most of my words, it proved to be exhilarating!

I was right all along - fame is only important if you can enjoy it firsthand! My lifelong pursuit of having someone, hell anyone, read my words had obviously come to fruition and I could finally gain some sort of satisfaction in one of life's rare "A-ha!" moments.

I texted Paco on my way back and he opened the door for me. He looked at me and then looked again when he saw a sparkle in my eyes that had been previously missing.

"Are you smiling?" he asked. "Because you look happy, but I can't really tell through that wild bush on your face."

I simply replied, "I am somebody!"

He didn't understand what I was saying at first, but then we walked past his desk and he picked up a hardcover copy of my book and said, "The book is bangin'."

I nodded in appreciation.

"Even if you do look like Grizzly Adams. Mr. Adams, can you autograph my book?"

We were both caught up in the moment and it was the first time since my divorce papers that I was asked to sign anything.

Paco handed me a pen and I opened the jacket cover and turned to the first blank page, much in the way I had imagined during the years when I was still able to dream. I wrote...

Paco,

You have been a friend even when others chose to let me go. I will dedicate my next book to you, but I won't be able to mention you by name because that might fuck me up. Otherwise, go fuck yourself! Hope you enjoyed reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Grizzly Adams

a.k.a.

Bruce Schindler

Paco was genuinely touched by what I wrote and slapped my hand and we bumped bro' chests. He then pulled away and said, "Go fuck yourself! You big, hairy bastard," in a true New York derogatory compliment.

NYC

Fame is definitely intoxicating. It seemed that everywhere I went locally, people were reading my books. It was ironic that I was giving people hope in rebuilding their lives at a time when I had all but given up hope on my own life.

Within a week of my initial venturing out, I had wrangled Carston back to painfully remove the facial hair. He was apparently better at applying looks than taking them off, and the session left my skin so raw that I had to wait a few weeks for it to heal. Then I was able to grow my own facial hair, which looked more natural and was a lot less itchy, at least at first.

Karen came by the apartment to see how I was doing because she hadn't heard from me in a while - at least that's what she claimed. I think she really wanted to see what kind of progress I was making on the third book.

"So, how have you been doing?" she somewhat clumsily asked as she hugged me.

I had finished the first few chapters after ripping through much of my Posthumousity book, which was definitely the spark that I needed to get going. But, instead of simply handing over my words to the publicity police, I had learned to tack on something she wanted with something I wanted in return.

"Hey, I want to come in and meet the gang."

She was caught off guard, "In New York City? Are you sure you're up to it?"

"Yeah! Have your driver bring me in through the back way and send another person to escort me to your offices."

"I don't know?" she hesitated, which was the equivalent to a parental "We'll see," which was always a veiled refusal.

But I had the equalizer, "I'll bring you the first couple of chapters of the book."

"I'll have the care pick you up at 10," she stated without hesitation.

Karen must have been so excited that she didn't give much thought to the person that would bring me up through the basement garage. The task required meeting me at the car, escorting me to the service elevator and then bringing me up to the 15th floor conference room.

She looked around the room and decided to pick the one person she liked the least, graphic artist Jessica Kaplan. The two women were sorority sisters in college but seemed to be butting heads lately over similar suitors. Kaplan was busy designing the jacket for book number three, so Karen took the opportunity to break her concentration.

Kaplan rolled her eyes and grunted, "Get a fuckin' kid to pick him up," in true Roslyn, New York fashion.

Karen had to hire only people she knew for a long time and trusted for such a delicate operation, so there were no young, bouncy interns to pick up all of the dirty jobs that others would gladly pass on.

Karen looked around the room, "We don't have any kids here. This is an adults-only project," she replied, trying to maintain her professionalism. Then Kaplan shot her another look and that was all that Kaplan could take.

"Get the fuck up or I will kick you in the vagina!" summoning an old joke between the two friends.

While the people around them grew tense, the two women started laughing hysterically.

"I love you!" Kaplan exclaimed as she kissed her friend on the cheek.

Karen smacked her in the butt, "Go meet him. It will give you inspiration for the cover."

In reality, Karen was feeling so much pressure about the third book because she had overextended herself by purchasing properties in Vale, Colorado, Southampton, New York and Manhattan as if the money train would keep rolling at its current pace. She realistically had a few more months of luxury living until the shit would start hitting the fan. But, for now, she needed those pages to secure a seven-figure advance on the next book.

The thought of someone meeting me and that meeting proving to be inspirational was a bit of a stretch, or was it? Yeah, I was feeling like pretty hot shirt when the car rolled past Barnes & Noble and my books were everywhere in their display windows. People were actually lining up outside to take pictures with a cardboard cutout of me on the sidewalk. I was about to stop and get out to greet my fans, but then realized that if I left the car I probably wouldn't have any more fans. So I sat back and simply enjoyed the moment.

I was feeling great when the car rolled down the ramp and into the lower level of the garage. It appeared that this driver was quite experienced at making conspicuous drop-offs appear inconspicuous. We were heading toward this leggy blonde and I momentarily thought, "I could get that," not knowing that she was, in fact, waiting for me.

When the driver came to a stop I said, "Thanks for the ride, Ronald. Try that sprouted wheat bread at Whole Foods," effectively ended our rather lengthy conversation.

I unfolded my large frame out of the car - my height always seemed to catch people off guard like they were waiting for a person of more normal size.

Jessica smiled and extended her right hand, "I'm Jessica Kaplan and I design your book jacket," she said, waiting for some sort of bone as a reward.

"Bruce Schindler," I replied, shaking her hand back.

She giggled and I followed.

"It must be nice to get out and stretch your legs."

I was behind her and looked up and down her legs, which were barely obscured by her short skirt.

"Yes, legs do need to be stretched."

I had transformed from the forgettable kid in your high school graduating class to 'Most Popular' in a matter of months, if not days - at least in my inflated mind.

Jessica had heard a few stories from Karen about me, but most of them were less flattering than her first impression.

We walked into the service elevator, which had some sort of cloth barrier in place to protect the wood walls from scratches. I looked around and said, "They must be expecting things to get pretty rough in here."

She smiled and replied, "Let's save that for the way back down."

I like this going out thing! It sure beat sitting in that jail cell of an apartment - albeit a rather expansive jail cell - and watching the world go by, and seeing other people benefiting from my fame. The 'other people' I had in mind was really focused on only one other person, and that person was waiting impatiently for us by the elevator.

Karen barely waited for me to clear the elevator archway before basically throwing herself at me, her arms drawing me into her bosom. She then looked past me at Jessica, and gave her a look like, "This shit is mine, yo!"

All Jessica did was think to herself, "Challenge accepted!"

"Did you bring my pages?" Karen whispered into my ear like a junkie looking for a fix.

I kept walking with Karen still attached to me and looked for Jessica to guide me through the hallway.

"Yeah, I have it in my pocket," I said as Karen backed off and then waited to fetch my words. I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and then removed about 50 pages of folded paper that I had scribbled on. It was the old school writing of placing pen on paper that kept me going strong, as I chose to forego the use of my Apple computer.

Karen grabbed the wad out of my left hand and then said, "Eureka!" and disappeared down the hallway.

I looked at Jessica and then asked, "Where is she going?"

Nobody knew Karen better than Jessica, "She needs to read those pages. Probably rubbing them against her vagina as we speak," she said and then smiled as she led me into the conference room.

"Coffee, tea?" Jessica asked and then looked herself over in a sexy offering of human flesh.

"How about decaf tea now, and then I'll take all of that later," I replied, motioning to the body that was just offered to me.

Jessica smiled and then walked out of the room to fulfill the first part of my order, as other people involved in the production of my books walked in and started greeting me enthusiastically. At that time, I assumed that since the books were doing so well Karen must have spread the wealth and paid all of these people real well. But it was the genuine interest in meeting a 'dead man walking' that genuinely sparked interest on this day.

We sat in the room and talked for the better part of an hour, with Jessica coming back for much of that time with an organic herbal tea and a bare foot that alternated between my Johnson and ball sacks.

I probably should have been more concerned about Karen's whereabouts, but she was reading my book and my thoughts were on Jessica and hitting it at our earliest convenience. Just as the mood in the room was reaching a crescendo, Karen entered with a huge smile on her face. She clutched my pages in her right hand and exclaimed, "We have another winner here people!"

Everyone in the room cheered as Karen walked over to Jessica and said, "I have some ideas for the cover. I'll give them to you once I get back from lunch."

Jessica nodded and then slid her magical toes back in her pumps. My blood pressure receded for a moment as I grabbed my jacket and placed it in front of my bulge as I stood up, much in the way I did as a teenager with my textbooks.

"When can you get me more pages?" Karen asked as she leaned in for more word crack.

"Next week," I replied, trying to wrap it up as I looked at Jessica like a plate of meatballs and brown rice pasta. I would have said 'juicy steak' but I have moved on from eating red meat as of late and the thought of it wasn't as appetizing as it once was.

The promise of a few more chapters had a limited shelf life.

"And when will the book be done?" she anxiously asked.

I never liked to be pressured about my work because writing is such a rhythmical art form. Sometimes you're on and sometimes you're not. Luckily for Karen, I was completely 'on' lately. I chose to take a different tactic.

"When do you want it?"

"Tomorrow," she grunted without hesitation and I'm sure she meant it.

I looked down at her like a stern parent that wanted the truth.

"Okay. My drop dead date - literally - is the middle of next month."

And she wasn't kidding because all of her financial maneuvering was coming to a head about that time.

"Okay, that's reasonable," I said and then moved in closer so that only she and I could hear what I would say next.

"I'll get you it before that, so don't worry. Everything is going to be all right."

"I gotta' run to lunch. I'll talk to you when I get back," she said to Jessica.

She dashed out of the room and I turned to Jessica and said, "Is it time for that elevator ride?"

There was no one else in the room.

"I don't think I can wait that long," she said as she clomped across the room and jumped up and then straddled me with those legs as I kicked the door closed with the back of my heel, as we disappeared from view under the table.

Unblocked x 2

Jessica and I eventually dad mike it to the service elevator, and we took or sweet-ass time getting to the basement level. It was the best time I ever had in New York City!

But I still had a book to write in probably less than a month. I was definitely conflicted writing the book that I never intended to write versus the book that I had to write I couldn't get pen to paper fast enough to scribble down the words.

I found myself putting off the last DOG book simply because it became a labor to get myself going. Three days had elapsed and I hadn't written a word of my advice column posing as a novel. There was plenty to write about in my Posthumousity novel, though, until I was in need of more material. So I decided to get out of my apartment and work at the office for a change of pace.

The beard thing was getting old and itchy, so I decided to drastically reduce the face afro down to a goatee. While this reduction in hair might get me more readily noticed on the street, I really didn't give a shit anymore!

Part of my vow to be more independent was to make my own modes of transportation and not be shuttled around from place to place like some big shot. So I ventured out to the subway for a trip from Long Island City to Midtown Manhattan. I was all gung-ho to walk through the front door and up the main bunk of elevators until I realized that I would have to present some mode of identification once I advanced to the security desk. Since the only thing I had in my pocket was cash, it stood to reason that having only currency would be a problem unless I was outside of the bribery friendly environs of non-U.S. soil.

It was only 11:00 a.m. when I arrived outside of the office so I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I waited for a friendly face to come out. This was the best I could do without a cell phone or any way to identify myself. Three days had elapsed since I had been in New York City and, concurrently, Jessica Kaplan. Honestly, it wasn't really sure what the protocol was for asking for some more, being that it was not easy for me to leave home or accept new visitors. Karen kept a tight grip on Paco's balls and she would make his life miserable if he sided with me.

Like clockwork, when the little and big hands merged on the 12, people from the company - amongst others in the building - started coming out of the building on the nice spring day to get lunch. I saw a few people from our meeting flow out onto the street but I didn't feel the right vibe to approach them because they would probably act out of the ordinary when they saw me. I definitely didn't want to make a scene.

Twenty more minutes passed and I was starting to think that it just wasn't my day, until busty and leggy Jessica bounced through the door as if she was about to start a rhythmical flash mob. She had so much energy that I thought it was only fair to tap into the source.

Simply walking up to her and saying hi would have been completely lame and ordinary, so I decided to follow her to a nearby buffet at a Korean grocer. You know the kind of place that you take a large, plastic container and fill it to the rim with assorted items that have been sitting out and waiting to be showered with the germs of just about every person in the city! Big fan...

I watched as she placed item after item in the container and then she shelled out $10 for her lunch. Jessica then walked to a nearby park and took a seat on a classic New York bench made of wood and stone, and elegantly crossed her legs. Waiting for the right moment was slightly annoying and I hoped that she wouldn't just get her food and then quickly retreat back to the office. It would have been a crime to not give those legs at least a little air, even if the air was polluted.

My hat was low to my brow as I walked behind the bench and sat down at the opposite end. She looked over at me and smirked a phony smile and I nodded back. Since she couldn't see my eyes of much of my face, she had no idea it was me.

"You know, they put all kinds of preservatives in those salad bars to keep the food fresh."

"I really don't have any time to make anything else," she defensively replied what she thought was a complete stranger. "Why do you care, anyway?" she swiveled to her left to confront me.

I continued to look forward, collar up and sunglasses and hat shielding my identity.

"Because, as inviting as those legs are, I'm not sure if I would hit that again with all of that toxicity inside of you."

She thought, "Again?" and instead of running away or spraying me with the mace in her purse, she left the toxic waste lunch on the bench and stood in front of me. I continued to look straight ahead as she indicated through her posture that she was ready to combat whatever I threw her way. It was marginally brave, being that we were in a park full of people in broad daylight.

"Did you stand up to confront me, or walk me through the service entrance so we can ride that elevator again?"

It took a second or two for my words to penetrate her defenses, and then I looked up and pushed my sunglasses down so she could see my familiar brown eyes.

"Oh god. I didn't recognize you without beard!" She looked around and reached toward me with her left hand.

"C'mon, let me get you out of here."

I took her hand and looked back at the plastic container of food, which had just lost out to a mid-day booty call.

"Is Karen in the office?" I asked like we were going back to her house and I wanted to check and see if her mom was home.

She understood the reference and replied, "No, mommy has not been in the office today. She said something about fulfilling an obligation that she couldn't get out of."

While I was curious about Karen's whereabouts, I was much more interested in the fireball that escorted me through a quiet side street and into the alley behind the building. She unbuttoned a few buttons on her light pink blouse, making the girls quite visible for the guard on duty.

"Just keep walking," she said as she flashed a smile, her ID and her assets, but he focused on the latter and then her backside.

We picked up the pace as we turned the corner and disappeared into the elevator. I didn't even bother to remove my disguise as we came together like Velcro and furiously went at each other.

"You taste like the inside of a Korean grocer," I said and then and then she pulled back, stepped out of her underwear and said, "Well, I got something else you can taste," as she hit the top button and offered me the nectar of the gods.

I didn't get much work down that day, but I did sit down to write the following day. Posthumousity got me going and then I jumped into the third chapter of my TOP DOG! book. And just as I was getting to the point where I was in the zone and the outside world ceased to exist, I heard my front door open and I came back to my senses.

"Are you crazy?" the angry female voice bellowed.

I said to myself, "Yes."

"Are you completely out of your mind?" Karen asked rhetorically as she walked briskly into the room.

"Yes, definitely," I answered out loud this time.

She temporarily lost her train of thought when she saw me sitting at my desk with a pen in my hand and words in my notebook.

"Are those my words?"

"Yes," I replied. "And there would have been a lot more of them if you hadn't invaded my space. I was just about to take off into a place that isn't visible form this planet."

She felt like shit because those words meant everything to her.

"What can I do to get you back on track?"

I shot her a lock that said, "I can think of a few things," and an hour later we were sweaty and lying on my bed staring at the ceiling.

"I hope that was inspirational?" she asked.

"Yeah, we should do this more often. Maybe I would get done faster if you came by more often during the day."

"Just tell me why you came by unannounced yesterday to the office?"

"I just needed to get out. It was getting stale in here and I wanted to find a different place to write," I replied.

"Well, did it work?"

"Oh yeah, it worked. It was very pretty around your office. I like coming there."

"That's great, but next time you have to take the car to the basement and use the service elevator," she countered, thinking that she was keeping me in check.

I hadn't stopped thinking about that service elevator and the girl with the fireworks. "Okay," I said without a fight.

We got dressed and I walked her to the door.

"See you tomorrow?" I asked with a purposely tinge of apprehension.

She hadn't planned on it because she figured that any writer's block had been pounded out of me, but then looked over at the desk and her reassessed her need for a complete manuscript.

"Of course," she replied as she walked out and I closed the door behind her.

I took a shower, ate some dinner and then sat down to write some more. I again started with the book that detailed my death making me famous and then transitioning into "DOG" mode once the wheels were sufficiently greased. I was flying through pages and lost track of time until the front door opened again. Since Karen and Paco were the only people with keys, I figured that either food or more beaver was forthcoming, and I was right.

I kept writing my head down and focused on the blissful marriage between pen and notebook until the sound of high-heeled shoes walking across the wood floor stopped. I instinctively picked up and saw what looked like Jessica standing 10 feet in front of me with nothing more than a trench coat and a pair of black pumps. Classy!

All of the thoughts that were flowing through me went on break for a bit as I flipped my black pen around and put the cap back on the top.

"How did you get past Paco?" I asked.

"He was sleeping."

"Who gave you a key to the apartment?"

"I was the one who made the copies when you first bought the place. Decided to keep one for myself."

She walked slowly toward me as I moved all of the things away from the front of my desk.

"Are you going to ask me questions all night? Aren't you glad to see me?" she asked without trying to break character.

"Of course, you're just in time for desert," I said as I motioned for her to come on the desk as I patted the wood.

I was no longer afflicted with writers or any other kind of block. Good times!

Knowledge is Power

The procession of Karen during the day and Jessica at night continued for the next few days until Karen apparently lost interest. Jessica spent all of her free time with me and I was nearing conclusion of the third "DOG" book. Her body and brain proved truly inspirational and I never felt better, both inside and out. Once the novel was finished, I needed to put it aside for a few days before I looked at it again. It was a special technique that I had learned in order to get a fresh look at my words, by picking it up as if I was reading it for the first time. This need for pause sent me on a field trip to our corporate office. It was perhaps the most educational journey I had in years...

Karen was surprised to see me so quickly, and all she could think about was getting her book.

"Bruce, "I didn't think I'd see you so quickly. Shouldn't you be working on the book?"

I was getting pretty tired of being treated like a common pen for hire, so I thought I would play along for a while.

"What book?" I asked with all of the sincerity I could muster.

Karen was about to either school me or explode, or simply just spontaneously combust. I noticed that her usually pale face turning tomato red, so I quickly intervened.

"I'm almost done! No need to blow a gasket."

She started to breath more normally and the color flushed out of her face.

"What's up with anyway?" I asked, trying to reconnect with her.

She was in another galaxy, far, far away from the planet earth.

"I gotta' go," she blurted. "You keep working on that book," she added. Without even looking at me before she walked away. Karen was having some sort of nervous breakdown and I just happened to have time to look into the root of this distraction.

Once Karen left the building it didn't take me long to gather the necessary intel to come up with a somewhat shocking conclusion. Although, in hindsight, I was pretty much brain dead for not noticing previously.

I seemed like I was a magnet for pissed off employees to sound off about the boss once she stepped out. I'm not sure what is so unique about my receptiveness, other than my desire to be polite and sit in one place for an extended period of time? I felt like the pile of shit that simply wanted some alone time, but was constantly harangued by flies.

"That bitch hasn't paid us for almost a month now!" publicist Armond Allison said to me with a tinge of hurt in his voice.

"How can that be? The book is on the bestseller's list," I innocently replied.

"Boyfriend!" he said rolling his eyes. "Has that girl given you a taste of her coochy?"

I nodded "Yes."

"Shoot! You and every other straight man with a penis and woman with a strap-on!"

I was stunned.

"I even hit that a few months ago when she was trying to convince me to sign on. I haven't had anything but dick since the eighth grade! If I would have known that bitch was paying in ass and pussy... pussy dollars no good in Boys-town!" he said wagging his index finger back and forth.

How could it be that the books were jumping off the shelf but her shell staff wasn't being paid? I was about to call the CFO, better known as Morty the accountant, but he found his way to me.

"Are you guys planning on paying anyone? Because all of us have to pay bills, but the last time I checked, pussy dollars are not a widely accepted form of payment!"

Morty Drucker's head had been jammed in a book since he was five years old. Somehow he got married and had two kids, although their winter births suggested a brief respite following the primary tax season.

I was about to inform him of the history of the oldest profession of all, but then realized that prostitutes generally got paid for their skanky services - they usually did not use their assets as payment, but it had happened.

"How much are we behind?" I asked.

"A million," he replied without hesitation.

"I can get it to you be the end of the week," I confidently replied.

"Really?" Drucker happily questioned.

"Really," I replied.

Karen gave her workers an initial taste of big cash payouts and then combined them vagina bucks once they were fully on board. The people working for her were so enthralled by the promise of being rich that they had been willing to overlook a few missed paydays. But, that was then and this is now.

When you're entire corporate existence is a sham—a historically monumental stretch of the truth - there is just so long you can go before the bubble bursts. Especially when people aren't being compensated for their extreme discretion.

Person after person came to visit me with tales of loose behavior by Karen both in the office and outside the cushy walls. it was obvious that word got around that I was going to make good on the salaries in arrears, and everyone was looking to stick it up Karen's rear if they hadn't already been up that well-traveled highway.

While Karen was the right person to take me from a nobody to a somebody, she hadn't let success get to my head and was keeping all of the spoils to herself. She did not return to the office over the next few days, so Marty and I used her computer to not only trace the funds but also get an idea of what she was up to.

Part of my agreement was to have two million dollars wired to an offshore account that I could access once things got rolling. My life had been so self-contained that I hadn't bothered to ask if the transfer had been initiated. She was taking care of all of my needs and then I was concentrating on writing, so I guess the time must have gotten away from me and everyone else?

I went back to my apartment after the two days of eye-opening evaluation, and dove back into reading TOP DOG! while looking into the future and coming up with an ending for the Posthumousity book. My options seemed to be narrowing but I felt that I still had a few tricks left up my sleeve.

Old Friends

I had been giving change to a homeless man near the entrance of the subway off and on for the better part of a week, and then I came back one day and he had a friend with him. My glasses were so dark and my hat so low that I barely noticed who was in front of me, other than a lost soul that needed a little help.

I removed a dollar from my pants pocket and wasn't really thinking about how two guys would split it between them. Getting in without being noticed was my only priority at the moment. This happened a week before I discovered that Karen had skimmed all of the money and was funneling it for her own purposes.

The dollar bill was exposed and the elder of the two men reached for it like it had his name on it. The younger man balled his fist without hesitation and swung furiously with his right hand and struck the man with such force that he banged into me on his way down. The force of the collision sent my hat and glasses through the air and to the ground as the younger man gained possession of the bill.

The younger guy stood up and was initially blinded by the sun until I stood back up after retrieving my glasses and hat. We looked directly into each other's eyes before I put my disguise back on and was on my way. The man watched me as I walked down the block and then spotted a billboard of me and my book. Months of depression and guilt over killing two men had taken its toll on Jimmy Parsons, but now the one-time bartender had momentarily gained his senses.

"Fuck me," he muttered under his breath and then kicked the other man before taking whatever money he had left on him.

"I gotta' get into the city," he said, displaying hope in his eyes and then his step as he disappeared into the depths of the subway.

The old guy on the ground was none other than Bralen McAfee, the homeless man that Karen planted in the bar the night that we supposedly died in the fire. Parsons was so messed up that he didn't even recognize one of the people he thought perished in the fire that night. McAfee had been dropped off by Karen's people about the same time that Detectives O'Reilly and Manetti were in Florida celebrating the completion of a big drug bust that they profited handsomely from.

McAfee made his was back up the East Coast, proceeding further north as the temperature moderated. He was a New Yorker from the day he was born and was planning to take both his first and last breaths on this earth in the Empire State.

Jimmy Parson had plenty of room in the subway car on the way to 17th Precinct in Midtown Manhattan. His lack of personal hygiene had become a deterrent to mingling freely with the warm and accepting denizens of the tri-state area. While he was wearing a tattered covering of a vagabond, this man was no longer lost as he made his way through the streets and into the precinct.

Parsons walked up to the main desk and said, "I need to talk to Detective O'Reilly," in a somewhat forceful tone.

He asked for O'Reilly because he was the more rational of the two, from what he could remember. Manetti might have been emotional and easily dismissed him, or so he thought.

"What may I ask is this in reference to, my good man?" the cop at the front desk asked, trying to remain polite to someone who was obviously a lower life form.

"I have information about a murder," Parsons replied, trying to keep his words as brief and concise as possible.

The officer turned his back on Parsons and then picked up the black handset and dialed 3743, O'Reilly's extension.

"O'Reilly," the supremely-confident detective bellowed into the phone.

"I got a fuckin' bum up here who claims that he's got some information on a murder."

Manetti looked at O'Reilly and O'Reilly said, "A bum has some information on a murder."

Manetti smiled, "Yeah, he fuckin' killed his own life!" as he yelled it loud enough for both the guy at the front desk and Parsons to hear.

O'Reilly stopped laughing long enough to reply, "Okay, bring him back into room number four."

He hung up the phone and then reached into the bottom drawer of his desk in one fluid motion.

"Maybe we should offer our friend a drink?" as he picked up his bottle of scotch and showed it to his partner.

"Only if he gives us good intel," Manetti stated.

Most of the leads these detectives were exposed to came up empty, but they ruled with a more 'shots on goal' philosophy to their life of crime.

Officer Kraske walked Parsons back to Interrogation Room 4 and let him in.

"Can I get you a cup of java or something, buddy?"

Parsons thought about the question and would have jumped at the opportunity to get something warm and jumpy in his body a few hours earlier, but everything changed when he came face to face with a dead man.

"Coffee will kill you," he replied.

Kraske looked at Parson's like he had just landed a spaceship from another planet.

"Whatever," he muttered and then walked back to the front desk.

Parsons eyes four chairs in the room and decided to sit in the right chair in front of him with his back to the door.

O'Reilly walked in the room first and Manetti trailed him and said, "What can we do for you, pal?"

O'Reilly liked to see a person's face before opening his mouth, unlike his partner who talked first and then swung later. He knew the person sitting in front of him, but months of abuse and being on the street had weathered Parson's soft and fit features.

"Do I know you?" O'Reilly asked Parsons as he sat down directly across the table.

Manetti half-chuckled and backhanded his partner's arm as he turned his chair around and put one leg up on the seat while still standing.

"You say you know everybody!" he yelled at O'Reilly.

But then he looked at Parsons and repeated the same question that his partner just asked.

"Do I know you?"

Parsons now had full control over the room, which was a rare event with Detective's Manetti and O'Reilly in the same room.

Parsons thought back to the day that his life took a huge turn for the worse. It started like any other day - waking up at 11, eating breakfast, going to the gym for a few hours, taking his time to shower and get ready to start his shift at the bar, which usually was 3:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. The night was moving at a brisk pace until there was a lull between the after dinner crowd and the 'I can't sleep so I might as well be drunk' crowd, which was fairly sparse on a Tuesday night.

"I was at my bar one Tuesday night," Parsons said as he started to recount the story. His words permeated the thick skulls of O'Reilly and Manetti until O'Reilly said, "What the fuck, Manetti?"

Manetti said to his partner, "This is the fuckin' guy from that bar with that writer guy who was torched.

They both were familiar with the story and quickly started to lose whatever patience they had.

"Are you here to report a murder?" O'Reilly asked.

Manetti kicked his chair down and lunged at Parsons, grabbing him by his coat, picked him up and threw him against the wall.

"Did you kill that guy?"

"You better come clean!" O'Reilly interjected as he moved off his chair and toward Parsons.

"No! That guy is still alive!"

"What?" Manetti grunted as he pushed Parsons against the wall and then backed up out of shock.

Parsons started to cry, "He's alive! Bruce Schindler is alive!"

"What proof do you have?" O'Reilly asked.

"I just saw him before I came here!" Parsons moaned as he sobbed and slid with his back to the wall until he rested on the floor. "He's alive," he said as he buried his head on his grimy hands.

The two detectives came together near the doorway.

"We gotta' go check this shit out," Manetti stated.

"Yeah, we don't want this coming back to us," O'Reilly replied. "Let's take your car."

"Fuck that! That motha' fucka' smells like shit!" Manetti yelled because nobody messed with his immaculate car.

"What if we cleaned him up?" O'Reilly asked.

Manetti was a sick fuck, "Only if you give him a sponge bath yourself."

"Lick my ass," O'Reilly joked.

"In your fuckin' dreams, Leprechaun. In your fuckin' dreams."

Plan B

It was definitely time for O'Reilly and Manetti to be a lot nicer to their guest Jimmy Parsons, who had the ability to blow the lid off their cushy careers if he decided to open his mouth. But, in their world, Parsons' desire to speak would be instantly suppressed with a few well-placed bullets in his cranium.

They brought him by the YMCA in Midtown Manhattan and got him his own room and a long, hot shower while they picked him up a new set of clothes. Angela Sparacio, an acquaintance of Manetti's and a local hairstylist, was also brought in to trim Parsons' hair.

"You owe me for this, Mario" Angela said to Manetti as she got out of the car and started walking inside the shelter with skin-tight black pants and leopard-printed high heels.

"Mario Manetti owed no man, or woman, anything.

"I'll take you to a show."

"You took me to a show last time," she whined.

"What's the matter? You didn't like the show? I paid like 300 freakin' dollars for those tickets!" he yelled and the smiled at O'Reilly, who smirked back. Both men knew that the tickets had simply fallen into their hands following a drug bust at the theater the show was playing at.

Sparacio was given a 100 dollar bill for her 20 minutes of styling and then a slap on the butt from Manetti's meaty paw, which left a hand print on her left cheek for the better part of the afternoon.

By the time Parsons walked out of the Y he almost felt like a human being again. He plopped down in the back seat of Manetti's souped-up Dodge Charger and O'Reilly took his customary position in the passenger seat.

"Where to, chief?" Manetti asked Parsons as he looked in the rear view mirror.

"Long Island City," Parsons replied.

"LIC!" Manetti beamed, because it had been the location of some of their biggest scores.

O'Reilly had more of a sense for details. He turned around and looked at Parsons like the informant had just made fun of his mother.

"If you tell anybody else about what you just told us, you're gonna' have two bullets in your head real fast."

Manetti was usually the trigger man, so he raised his right fingers and shaped them like a gun before simulating two bullets being fired.

"Capiche?" the Irishman asked.

"Capiche," Parsons anxiously replied.

"Now you're using my words?" Manetti joked. "You didn't even say that right or use your fingers like I taught you!" Manetti said as he sped off out of the city and toward Long Island City, which was neither an island or in the city.

The elderly homeless man that Parsons had been hanging out with had just recovered from the punishment he was subjected to earlier in the day and had returned to his feet. He was still on the same corner when Parsons yelled, "That's the place that I saw him!"

Manetti parked the Charger in front of McAfee and the three men got out.

"Is this where it happened?" O'Reilly asked, trying to do his usual thorough investigation.

"Yeah," Parsons replied. "He had a dollar bill in his hand and this fucker went for it like it was his," he said, referring to McAfee.

McAfee was intrigued by the activity and immediately recognized Parsons even with his makeover.

He waved hello to Parsons and showed of his toothless smile completely lacking in short-term memory of the guy that just kicked the change out of him

Parsons was back to being Parsons and he said, "Hello, Mr. McAfee."

"Do you know this bum?" Manetti asked and then turned to McAfee, "No offense."

"None taken," McAfee somewhat clearly replied.

Parsons turned to the detectives like they knew what was going on. Parsons had been with McAfee for weeks but never realized the connection they shared. Then it dawned on him, "Holy shit! This is the guy who walked into the bar that night of the fire."

O'Reilly and Manetti looked at each other and yelled at the same time, "John Doe!"

"But why would they put a homeless guy in the bar at the time of the fire?" Parsons asked.

"Because he couldn't be identified," O'Reilly answered. "It was easy."

"I can't believe we are all wound up in the same place," Parsons uttered in disbelief.

"Yeah, karma's a real bitch," Manetti the philosopher mused as everyone thought about it and nodded in agreement.

"We gotta' stake this place out and pick that mother fucker up if he walks around again," O'Reilly stated.

"We gotta' get a hose on that motha' fucka' first," Manetti said about McAfee. "He is ripe."

O'Reilly was always ready with a plan. He turned to Parsons and said, "Here's 20 bucks. There's a resale shop and a shelter down the block. Get him cleaned up and some clothes and we'll be back to pick you up in a few hours."

He then turned to Manetti and said, "We have to pick up that surveillance van from the precinct."

They walked toward the car and Manetti kept talking, "The gray one or the black one?"

"Which one do you like better?" O'Reilly asked Manetti, who turned the key and the muscle car's engine growled.

"The blue one smells like feet..." Manetti said as the car sped off.

Stakeout

This is about the time that I came back into the picture. I heard the growl of the Dodge Charger and part of me thought "Cool!" while another part exclaimed "Douche!" I knew that whoever was in that car was a real show-off, but I also secretly wished that I could have the confidence to be that bold.

Jessica was with me and she said, "Guys that drive cars like that are always assholes."

I didn't see that across the street, Parsons had noticed me again and stopped dead in his tracks as he was walking the other way with McAfee. They then followed me to see what building we were going into. He then put the 20 dollars in his pocket and said to McAfee, "This can wait."

McAfee was peeing against the wall when O'Reilly and Manetti came back with the black van.

"I hate it when we work with civilians," O'Reilly stated.

"Look at this fuckin' guy peeing against the wall!" Manetti added, "No respect."

Honestly, if everyone peed against the walls on Long Island City you would barely notice it. The place was already the toilet bowl of the world. I never would have lived here in a million years when I was alive, so it was only suitable that I had to inhabit the ass-end of the planet in death.

Manetti and O'Reilly were surprised that Parsons did not take care of McAfee while they were gone.

"That's why you don't give money to a crackhead," Manetti said to his partner.

"I'm not a crackhead!" Parsons yelled back until he realized that he actually didn't have a death wish anymore.

"What I meant to say was that I saw Schindler walk into that building over there. Wanted to make sure we didn't lose him."

O'Reilly looked at Manetti again and both men nodded in appreciation and respect. Manetti put his arm around the smaller Parsons and then squeezed him tight while affectionately slapping him in the face.

"Look at this fuckin' kid! We should make him an honorary detective or something."

O'Reilly then looked at the spotless van and said, "We'll take it from here, junior. Go take Mr. McAfee and get him all showered and changed and then come back here and we'll order a few pizzas."

McAfee was pretty out of it, "I like pizza. Pepperoni."

O'Reilly processed the request like he did with just about everything else and replied, "We'll give that some thought," once he got the image of the homeless guy and the damage a pepperoni could do to the digestive system already in distress. Somehow Manetti had tapped into O'Reilly subconscious.

"Can you imagine the bombs that guy could drop?" as McAfee and Parsons walked away from the van and out of sight down the street.

I was feeling like I was above the law, because I had not only cheated death but now life itself. We rolled a few joints after dinner and everything got real mellow until we got the munchies.

"Man, am I hungry!" I said. "Want me to go out and get some desert?"

"You shouldn't risk it," Karen replied. "It's not like you can wear your sunglasses at night without being conspicuous."

Paranoia was setting in, "Good point. Wouldn't want to get caught."

"We should try that new yogurt place on the corner."

"Totally!" I replied, imagining a vat of yogurt with cake crunch on top.

"Big cup of chocolate with chocolate crunch, please," was my order.

She slipped her shoes on and then her jacket after I handed her a $20 bill.

"I'll be right back," she said as she gave me a kiss and then left the apartment.

It must have been a few minutes later - or it could have been mere seconds - when I decided to stretch out on my long, blue leather sofa and close my eyes.

Meanwhile, Jessica was at the new yogurt store down the block. These self-serve stores seemed to be popping up everywhere, and appeared to be the modern-day version of the 1970s Photo mats drive-thru, stand-alone photo processing huts in the era before digital cameras. She became enthralled with the mini sample cups and spent the better part of 10 minutes trying every flavor in the line of eight machines with two flavor variations each. Her hands were all wet and sticky by the time she transitioned into filling two huge cups with chocolate yogurt and then cramming them with toppings.

"Do you have lids?" she asked the pimple-faced high school sophomore behind the counter.

He handed her a couple of lids and then asked, "Do you have a rewards card? When you buy 10 yogurts you get the next one free," he said with about as much enthusiasm as he attacked his math homework.

"No, I don't, but I would definitely like one. It looks like we're going to buy lots of yogurt from the..." she looked around for the name of the place.

"YOGO Hut."

The kid broke out a fresh card and slid it through his terminal. He then handed Jessica the card and said, "Your total is $19.44."

She pulled the crumpled $20 bill out of her pocket and said, "Good deal!" because she had just enough money in her pocket.

He handed her the 56 cents change and then put the two covered yogurts in a plastic bag with a few napkins and colored spoons. He then handed her the bag and she dropped the change into a glass container with the hopeful marking of "TIPS." She winked at him and then stumbled a bit as she turned to leave.

The kid rolled his eyes and said, "Thank you!" before extracting his phone from his pocket and removing himself from the physical world.

Jessica made her way to the door and then walked outside.

While all of the yogurt madness was going on, there was also heightened activity across the street in a fairly conspicuous black police van. Forty minutes earlier, Parsons returned to the van with a cleaned-up McAfee - he even shaved his partner and cut his hair. McAfee was all decked out in a pair of Timberland boots and a North Face fleece jacket.

It was dark outside but the inside of the van was very well lit.

O'Reilly looked McAfee over and then glared at Parsons.

"What the fuck, Parsons? I don't even dress that well!"

Parsons didn't even bother to engage O'Reilly in a game of wits, he simply reached into his pocket and handed him $15 left over from his $50 investment.

"No fuckin' way" Manetti interjected. "All of that shit cost only $35? What, did you still it?"

"No, there's an awesome resale shop down the block! I'm not shittin' you!" Parsons countered and then looked at McAfee for confirmation.

McAfee appeared unresponsive at first and then smiled and said, "25 percent off!"

Everyone laughed and O'Reilly said to Manetti, "We gotta' check this place out."

Manetti replied, "Definitely," and then lit up his phone and dialed Carmine's Pizzeria.

Carmine Scagglia, Jr. heard the phone ring and spied the caller ID before picking it up. When he saw the name 'Manetti' he picked up the pace and lunged at the phone. It was never good to make Mario Manetti wait, either in his professional or personal life.

"Detective, what can I get you tonight?" Scagglia asked, summoning his most accommodating tone.

Manetti looked around the van at O'Reilly, Parsons and McAfee and evaluated the potential for eating capacity. But no matter what he ordered, O'Reilly would come in and make a slight adjustment. After all, he was the efficiency expert and the brains of the operation.

"Ok, Little Carm, give me two pies, one with sausage and peppers and the other with..." he looked at the well-quaffed McAfee and gave in, "Pepperoni. A chicken parm hero, three Cokes and a Sprite and an order of garlic knots."

He then looked up at O'Reilly for the usual late addition while Scagglia asked, "Can I get you anything else?"

"Make mine a Diet Coke and add another order of knots."

Manetti repeated the changes as Scagglia looked out of his window for a drop-off location.

"That will take about 15 minutes and we hope to see you at the St. Francis Feast this weekend, which was his code words for Manetti to wave from his location.

Manetti never liked anyone to tip off his activities across phone lines, as his rampant paranoia only was exceeded by his volatile temper.

Manetti slid open the main door of the van and waved his right, pinky-ringed hand in the air.

"Manga italiana," Scagglia said.

"Si," was all that Manetti said and then hung up and nodded to his partner, who removed a wad of rolled bills from his jacket pocket and tossed it to Manetti, who caught the money and put it in his jacket pocket.

Fifteen minutes later, Scagglia and one of his delivery guys walked up to the van with arms full of food. Scagglia knocked three times consecutively on the van door and then hesitated before knocking another two times. Manetti swung open the door and stepped outside, grabbing whatever food the kid had and then handing it to O'Reilly and Parsons on the inside. Then Scagglia turned and said, "Get lost!" to the kid that was helping him while he handed Manetti the food that he brought across the street.

Once Scagglia's arms were free, he and Manetti hugged and the kissed each other on both cheeks. Manetti then reached into his pocket and pulled out his wad of $100 bills and handed it them to Scagglia while they were still close.

"Gracia," Scagglia said and then disappeared into the night.

Manetti stepped back inside of the van and slammed the sliding door behind him.

"Expensive pizza!" an observant and mentally-worn McAfee said out loud.

Manetti already advocated popping McAfee and Parsons, and this appeared to be all of the incentive he needed. He and O'Reilly laundered their dirty money through various locations around the city, but he never liked to be questioned about his activities and most people knew not to step on that land mine.

Manetti removed his gun from his side holster and then jumped at McAfee and held the cold gun to his head. The outburst caused some of the dipping sauce from the garlic knots to go astray.

"Look what you did!" O'Reilly sighed. "You just got sauce on my new shirt!" He then opened a small bottle of seltzer he had for such occasions and dabbed some on napkin and blotted the stain off.

"We could kill these guys after we eat," O'Reilly said in a matter-of-fact manner.

Parsons looked on as O'Reilly continued, "Or, we can talk about other options once we obtain the other packages?"

Manetti backed off and put his gun away as he located the sausage and peppers pizza. He then looked at McAfee and said, "This is your lucky day, pops."

He took a huge bite of a slice and then said with a full mouth of pizza, "Either of you make one more comment and its lights out."

That was about the point when Jessica emerged from my building and was headed toward the yogurt store. Parsons was trying to focus on anything but his impending death, so he was staring at one of the television monitors when Jessica came into the picture.

He pointed at the screen and yelled, "That's the girl!"

Both Manetti and O'Reilly looked at the screen and then O'Reilly asked, "Are you sure?"

Parsons looked intently at the screen as O'Reilly zoomed in with one of the van's cameras.

"Yes, I'm sure," Parsons replied as if his life depended on it, and it probably did.

O'Reilly looked at Manetti and both men nodded. Manetti was already on his third slice of pizza and would wait until Jessica walked near the corner to exit the van. He was an expert tracker and usually was impossible to thwart once he was in full pursuit. He wolfed down another slice and gulped down his Coke before brushing himself off with a napkin before walking away.

O'Reilly was constantly working on an angle. While Manetti saw McAfee and Parsons as basic hinderances, O'Reilly saw them as potential opportunities.

"Do you guys want to live past today?" he asked once Manetti was out of earshot.

Parsons said, "Yes" while McAfee pondered the question. He looked at Parsons for guidance, and his eyes were wide and he was nodding "Yes!"

"Yes?" he replied at first and then followed with a more definitive "Yes, I want to live!" after some additional non-verbal prodding from Parsons.

O'Reilly shook his head in disbelief and then said, "Okay, then I need you both to back me up when the time is right."

He then looked at Parsons and asked, "He's not going to ask me when that's going to be, is he?"

McFee had a rare blast of clarity, "No, I'm good."

O'Reilly looked back at Parsons for confirmation "Yeah, I'm good too!" as McAfee sounded off the first of many atomic farts brought on by the potent pepperoni, causing the other two to scatter.

Snatch

Manetti was losing his patience waiting outside of the yogurt place for a spacey Jessica, as I dozed off on the couch back home. He was pissed that he didn't bring a few more slices, or at least half of the hero, to eat while he waited. All he could think about was his partner comfortably sitting back in the van eating the other half of the chicken parm hero.

Jessica finally emerged with her $19.44 worth of yogurt in a white bag and Manetti immediately tailed her on the sidewalk back to the apartment. And, just as she was almost parallel to the van, Manetti caught up with her and moved to her left, putting his right arm under her left and guiding her off her track and across the street.

"We have some things we need to discuss with you," he said calmly and then recognized the smell of marijuana on her.

"Have you been smoking pot tonight, ma'am?"

She was so lit up that she tried to bargain with him. "Do you like yogurt? Because I just got a bunch and you can have some."

Manetti didn't even hear what Jessica said as he guided her across the vacant street and toward the entrance of the van. O'Reilly nodded at Parsons to open the door, because he always took advantage of opportunities to make someone else do the dirty work. The door opened and the contained stench of McAfee's gas tried to find a pocket of air to escape.

"Oh! Holy shit!" Manetti yelled. "What the hell is going on in there?"

O'Reilly countered, "I told you that pepperoni was a bad idea!"

"You, out!" Manetti pointed at McAfee who reluctantly exited the van and said to Jessica, "Howdy, ma'am."

O'Reilly sprayed the van with air freshener, which was never far from his reach.

Manetti then turned to Jessica, "You, in," and she complied and stepped in the van with the help of Parsons. Manetti then grabbed a few slices of pizza and McAfee's drink and handed it to him at his customary spot on the pavement.

"Move and I'll kill you," he threatened as Parsons slammed the van door shut while McAfee's toothless grin faded from sight.

Jessica sat down on one of the seats in the back next to Parsons, who she had an instant attraction to. She blushed and smiled at him and his boyish good looks as O'Reilly and Manetti looked on in amazement.

"It's like watching Wild fuckin' Kingdom," Manetti stated.

O'Reilly thought the world revolved around him, "I don't get it. She picks him with us sitting here. That guy was a speck of dust before we cleaned him up."

The van opened again and Parsons was standing next to McAfee on the sidewalk. O'Reilly said, "You two become reacquainted. We have some business to take care of."

Jessica had no train of thought, and she was also fearless.

"Do you mind if I eat my yogurt? It's gonna' start melting," she said as the munchies took over.

She opened the bag and then found her chocolate yogurt adorned with fruit. O'Reilly was the one that always asked the initial questions, but he had an instant 'jones' for the frozen treat and couldn't concentrate. Jessica was digging in when O'Reilly asked, "Do you mind if I try the other one you got?"

She looked in the bag and replied, "That one's for Bruce."

"Bruce Schindler?" O'Reilly asked, letting the yogurt guide his line of questioning.

"Yeah, how did you know?" she said as she handed the yogurt to O'Reilly.

"Oops, I wasn't supposed to tell you that!" she giggled. "Can we all just make pretend that I didn't say that?"

Manetti looked at O'Reilly in disbelief, "I don't know how you do it? Even when you don't try to find the truth it finds you like a magnet, or something sticky."

O'Reilly smiled and then took a big spoonful of yogurt.

"The luck of the Irish!" O'Reilly exclaimed and then said to Manetti, "This shit is good!"

"Right!" Jessica agreed.

"Here, try some," O'Reilly said to Manetti and then fed him a spoonful of the threat like they were a married couple.

"That is fuckin' good! We gotta' pay those fuckers a visit and get in on the action," Manetti stated, turning pleasure to business, as usual.

I felt my pants buzzing and thought it was Jessica playing around, so I laughed and fell back asleep. The same thing happened a few more times so I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone and then sat up. My mouth was dry and I was so hungry that I could have eaten a water buffalo.

Just as I was about to get up and scrounge around in the kitchen to find something to eat, I looked at my phone and saw that I had a series of texts from Jessica:

"Down at the yogurt store."

"The yogurt is amazing!"

O'Reilly became frustrated after the second text, so he decided to take her phone and go for the jugular.

"It's amazing! The yogurt is free and there giving it away. ALL YOU CAN EAT! Come down."

At that point, I wasn't thinking about the fact that I was supposed to be dead. The words 'yogurt' and 'free' and 'ALL YOU CAN EAT!' were used together in one text and it was more than any burnt mortal could resist. So I threw on a jacket and slipped on a pair of shoes and a hat, and went downstairs and out the back exit. Paco, as usual, was fast asleep from having to work three jobs to support the five kids he had with three women.

It felt good to be so free and not worry about anything but walking down the block to get a shitload of free yogurt. And I was so focused on the end of the block that I never saw Detective Mario Manetti coming towards me. He used the same technique on me that he used on Jessica - the hand under the arm guiding me across the street to the van. I was too hungry to refocus on paranoia at that point.

"Just come with me across the street and we will have a little talk, Mr. Schindler."

It didn't even dawn on me at the time of how this burly guy walking me toward an unmarked van knew my name.

"Is this where the free yogurt is?" I innocently asked.

O'Reilly opened the van and I saw Jessica so I yelled, "Jessie! Thanks for inviting me to the yogurt party in the unmarked van!"

I sat down and expected somebody to hand me some free yogurt, but all I saw was other people eating yogurt. There was even a dude sharing yogurt with Jessica and the other guy.

"Where is my yogurt?" I protested.

"We have some questions we want to ask you," O'Reilly said.

I was feeling funky, "I'm not doing shit until I get some yogurt!"

O'Reilly and Manetti were not usually fond of succumbing to demands, but the yogurt was real good. Manetti re-opened the door and motioned for Parsons to come toward him. He broke off a fifty from his wad and said, "Go get a bunch of yogurt for everyone.

I interjected, "Chocolate with chocolate crunch!"

"Yeah, get a lot of that shit!" O'Reilly added.

Manetti never did anything out of the goodness of his heart. He looked at O'Reilly and said, "We'll get that shit back later," referring to the $50 bill.

Exit Strategy

"I would like to introduce ourselves," O'Reilly said to me while we waited impatiently in the van for the yogurt and Parsons to return. "I am Detective O'Reilly and this is Detective Manetti," he added, nodding toward his partner.

The names seemed so familiar to me that I started to become paranoid, because the source of the familiarity eluded me.

"Where do I know those names from?" I said out loud, although I'm not quite sure at the time that I actually meant it for public consumption.

"We were the detectives assigned to investigate your murder case," O'Reilly replied as Parsons knocked on the door and Manetti gladly opened it.

"Oh shit," I said, again out loud.

Then I looked around the van at O'Reilly and Manetti, and then at Jimmy Parsons and all of the stored images flooded back into my consciousness. All of those months of caring about myself and my stupid fame and I didn't think once about the impact that night might have had on Jimmy Parsons!

"Jimmy, are you okay?" I asked, feeling pretty good about the answer because he looked fairly well.

McAfee tried to gain access to the van but he blew another massive fart, so Parsons handed him a yogurt and then closed the door with McAfee still standing on the street. I looked at McAfee's face and flashed back to the night he sat next to me at the bar.

Manetti could see the bewildered look on my face and said, "Yeah, Brucie, the gang's all here."

"Except for the person that probably started the whole thing. The person that has been front and center with your books, "O'Reilly said playing a hunch that Karen Zeller was the real mastermind behind the plan.

Manetti, as usual, was clued into his partner and tapped into more devious thoughts.

"I bet she's running some sort of scam where she gave the people that work for her a taste of the money and has been keeping most of it since then for herself."

"Totally!" Jessica yelled as if she just won bingo.

All that Manetti was after was the money. It was always the money...

He locks eyes with O'Reilly and they were in concert about planning the perfect exit strategy where they could acquire some extra retirement money.

I again looked at Parsons and his eyes became watery as he patted me on the shoulder, "I'm just glad you're all right."

O'Reilly mulled over his plane for the next few minutes while we all enjoyed the yogurt, which helped me somewhat get back my senses. Since I was a keen observer of people - and this skill enabled me to better feel the people in my life as well as evaluating the characters in my books - I focused my attention on O'Reilly and Manetti, because all of the heat in the van centered on them.

At that moment, I realized that there wasn't a scenario that I would survive the next phase of my life. There wasn't a pocket of the country they could hide me that I wouldn't be recognized. And I was just as much to blame as Karen for the deceitful crimes that had been committed.

Manetti would probably pop me after, and only after, I had done my part and funneled the money their way. I looked at both of them and could see they knew I was in deep thought. Their "don't even think about it!" expressions told me everything I needed to know about my impeding brush with mortality.

O'Reilly then abruptly changed his mood as he looked at me, "I just wanted to tell you that I'm a big fan of your books!"

There might be a light at the end of the tunnel...

"Thank you," I replied.

"At first I started reading them because we were on the case, but then I got sucked in like everyone else. So, is the rumor true? Have you written a third book?" O'Reilly the fan gushed.

Manetti shot him a look of death.

"What? You got both books in your car!" O'Reilly countered.

Manetti smiled, "Yeah, it's true."

"Yeah," I said, "I just finished writing the third book."

"And I am working on the cover," Jessica added.

"Wow! Did you do the other covers, too?" super-fan O'Reilly asked.

"Yeah, that was me," Jessie beamed.

O'Reilly thought, "All we need is an editor and we have the makings of a dynasty."

"And I also did all of the desktop publishing on the books," Jessica added, all but insuring her survival.

O'Reilly nodded and then turned back to me, "May I be so bold to ask what the title is for the book?"

I said proudly, "TOP DOG!"

"With an exclamation point and all in capitals," Jessica stated. "I think it's even better than the other two. I also edited the book... we're a lean staff."

"Bingo!" O'Reilly screamed internally.

Manetti could see that his partner was percolating which usually meant that he was about to come into even more money.

"Have you written any other books?" O'Reilly continued down the yellow brick road.

"Yeah, I have another 10 or 15. But I just finished a book I wrote about the entire experience, but I never thought it would get published.

Parsons was intrigued, "What is it called?"

"Posthumousity: Death Made Me Famous."

"I gotta' read that!" Parsons exclaimed.

O'Reilly had a brain blast, so he opened the van door and invited McAfee back into the van, "Try corking that shit up for a few minutes, Mac."

"Will do, chief," McAfee said as he reentered the van with an almost empty cup of yogurt.

Manetti always loved it when O'Reilly came up with plans. It was a long way from years earlier when the 'Italian Stallion' was told by Captain Greeley that his new partner was the 'Lucky Leprechaun.' It was the most unnatural of couplings, at least in the beginning. The cultural divide was bridged partially through food, but mostly by their shared thirst for cash. Neither man had a conscience nor a problem with going to see Father Donahey once a month for confession, which he always cleaned the slate with a sizable donation to the church.

"What I say now is not for public consumption, and if anybody outside of this van should find out about this, then bullets will find a way into each one of your heads."

Everyone looked in fear at Manetti because he took out his gun and had the look of malice intent on his face.

"Until we finish the operation, you all will be living in Schindler's apartment across the street." He looked over at Jessica, "You continue to go to work and act naturally." Then he looked at me, "You can't be prancing around the streets like you're totally alive! We'll send you in on select occasions to grab intel when we need it, and you both will be wearing wires when near Zucker."

"How long will this take?" I asked.

O'Reilly calculated the possibilities and probabilities, "A week, 10 days at most," he replied. "I don't think we have time to mess around here. If we wait too long then - we'll see," he concluded, not trying to give away too much of his plan.

"We have this bar in Arizona that we were thinking of buying in an area that - shall we say - is somewhat protected."

Manetti said, "Interested?" as he turned to Parsons.

"Hell, yeah!" Jimmy answered as his eyes lit up.

McAfee was all excited too.

"You are all charged up too, gramps? I bet you are! You guys are lucky to be alive!"

Then he turned to O'Reilly, "We're gonna' have to keep an eye on that guy."

O'Reilly then looked at me and Jessica.

"There's no sense killing either one of you, because we can make millions together!"

Manetti laughed, "Lucky for you! Because I thought you both were dead about five minutes ago."

I breathed a sigh of relief, "Like a cat with nine lives..."

End Game

We piled out of the van and gently walked past Paco who was sleeping even heavier than when I left. My apartment was the only one on the floor, which really gave me and now us, the privacy necessary for such an operation. We also had fail-safes in place if Karen ever decided to do one of her unannounced drop-by's.

The three bedroom apartment was plenty spacious for Jessica and me in the master bedroom and the other two guys in the other bedrooms.

It had been some time for McAfee to sleep in a bed. Once his bed was made he removed all of his clothes and put them in a neat pile in the corner of the room. He was out cold before his head even hit the pillow, and literally slept for the next two days. Likewise, Parsons' life had been in flux since the day he thought he caused a fire that killed two people. Lucky for him, and I guess for us, he was now living with us instead of mourning us.

"How do you think this is going to end up?" Jessica asked me once the boys went to sleep.

I thought before I answered for a change, "We'll either be dead in a few weeks or in Arizona."

She nodded in agreement.

"So, either way we'll be in hell," I joked and she laughed.

I knew what once I brought the finished manuscript in, Karen would be impossible to stop. So I trickled a few chapters to her at a time, even though my work on the book was already done. O'Reilly had instructed me on the finer points of planting a bug on Karen so we could always track her whereabouts. It was fairly obvious over a few-day period where the bug would nest. Karen could not stop talking about, and showing off, her latest purchase, a $1,500 Prada purse.

And since Parsons had become O'Reilly's junior detective, he entrusted the bartender to keep track of Karen's every move. If she farted, he wanted to know about it!

"Meet me at the store in 20 minutes," O'Reilly said to Parsons via landline phone to discuss his preliminary findings. Manetti and O'Reilly had made their move and were now majority owners of the YOGO Hut. They even put some of their own people on the inside to make sure that the laundering operation ran smoothly.

"What's going down, Jim?" O'Reilly asked his new friend Parsons. They were both in their mid-30s and had similar backgrounds. In fact, their fathers were partners briefly when they graduated from the police academy before it became mandatory to pair a rookie with a veteran.

O'Reilly knew who Parsons was and how his father had once taken a bullet for the elder O'Reilly. This fact came to the surface between the time the Schindler case was officially closed and then unofficially reopened. O'Reilly was going through some of his father's old photos, and he flipped one over of NYPD graduation day - on the back of the photo it said, "Graduation Day with Jimmy Parsons."

That peaked O'Reilly's curiosity and then he uncovered the truth behind the association between police records and the public database. His father and Parsons, Sr. opened a bar together in Arizona and Parsons could often be seen behind the bar before he became ill and then passed away. Both kids were the youngest of five siblings and their fathers were already in their 40s when they were born.

Images of hanging out and playing baseball and football with Parsons flooded back into O'Reilly's mind from police family picnics and outings. The two guys hadn't seen each other since they were about 12 years old, so it was quite a shock when O'Reilly discovered the connection. While the name initially jogged his memory, he didn't put the pieces together until he saw the picture of their fathers.

"The woman is never in one place more than 30 minutes at a time," Parsons said to O'Reilly as they sat down and had some more free yogurt.

"Well, either she has ADD or owes people a bunch of favors," O'Reilly surmised.

Parsons was in a learning mode, "What do you mean?"

"Straight up. That woman's a ho! She's running out of moves and the only currency she has left is her body."

Both men had a good laugh and then O'Reilly took the picture of their fathers out of his jacket pocket and placed it on the table.

Parsons didn't notice it at first because he was too busy eating yogurt. He then looked down and saw a familiar face or two.

"Holy shit!" he exclaimed and then looked up at O'Reilly. "How long have you known?"

"A few months. You?" he asked, turning the tables.

"I have always known," Parsons replied.

"Are you saying that you knew that day I questioned you about the fire at the bar?"

"Yes, of course," Parsons countered. "I was in shock that night. It was like I was having an out-of-body experience."

"Let me get this straight. You knew when you came to the precinct the other day?"

"Yeah, but you knew too!" Parsons countered.

O'Reilly rarely showed emotion, but he seemed overwhelmed by the moment.

"I couldn't believe that the accident had such an impact on your life! You sort of dropped off the face of the earth after it happened. I tried to find you once I knew about our past but you were nowhere to be found."

"Then why do you always treat me like you don't know me?"

O'Reilly rolled his watery eyes, "Have you ever met my partner?" he said sarcastically. "Manetti never backs up and if I show him one second of weakness he will bury me!"

It was a week into the plan and Karen was frantic. She had been suffering from anxiety since the money started rolling in and the problem was now escalating, which increased the likelihood that she would do something rash or completely stupid - or both. The deadline to complete her house transaction was now four days away and she was starting to completely lose it.

"Where are my fuckin' pages, Schindler?" she yelled at me in the office so that everyone within four blocks could hear her.

Of course I had already finished the book but was told to play along by O'Reilly in my earpiece.

"I am doing the best I can! Pressuring me won't get it done any faster!" I shot back.

Karen's eyes were bulging out of her head, so I scoured her desk for sharp objects fearing that one might be plunged into me at any moment.

"Well, you're going to have to do better than that! I need the finished manuscript by tomorrow - maybe Friday. Get back to work and stop fuckin' around!"

I walked out of her office and into the men's bathroom so I could speak freely to O'Reilly and Parsons. I looked in the stalls and they were empty, so I said, "Looks like Friday is our day."

"We'll make the necessary plans," O'Reilly stated.

TGIF

I sat at home, basically picking my ass on Thursday, saving all of my energy for what would probably be the most dramatic day of my life. A day in which I would be reborn in more ways than just the obvious.

Karen stopped coming by my place, which was a good thing because Parsons and McAfee were always in the living room watching TV at night, and Jessica and I were always not watching TV, if you catch my drift. Although we had Karen on constant surveillance, it would have been an imposition to have to stage normalcy at the apartment.

We woke up on Friday morning and expected a day that we wouldn't soon forget. It was 8:00 a.m. and Jessica was in a fairly frisky mood. She was almost as insatiable as Karen, but had a heart that had the capacity to show love and feel love. An hour later, I was fast asleep and Jessica was in the shower, or so I thought.

There was a strange sensation between my legs as a warm mouth house my still-throbbing member. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming, but the oral handiwork seemed familiar if not in very recent memory. A scream awoke me from heavenly state, although the source of the noise definitely caught me by surprise.

"You fuckin' asshole!" the female voice angrily exclaimed as I furiously rubbed my eyes to enable a visual. You've been fucking my best friend! Where is she? I'm gonna' kill both of you!" Karen yelled with eyes of a crazy and deranged person as she picked up her purse from the bed and removed a shiny silver hand gun.

"I can taste her on you!" Karen yelled at me as I was finally able to sit up and focus. "If you don't have those final pages, then I will be forced to really end your miserable life and then put a bullet in my own head. Do you know how difficult it is to maintain appearances?"

I was about to ask, "Appearance of what?" but figured it was best to keep my yapper shut while waiting for my question to be answered.

"I've gotten into a bit of a situation buying places in Colorado, the city and the Hamptons. All of the people I need to sell you books to are waiting, and if I don't have the finished manuscript by close of business today then I will lose all three houses and have to file for bankruptcy." She scratched her head with the loaded gun, "And that's not going to happen."

I looked at my nightstand for the earpiece that would link me to O'Reilly, because he would have surely known about Karen's whereabouts. The device appeared to be in the 'off' position, primarily because I needed some away time in my private life.

O'Reilly told me that I was never to give Karen the completed manuscript of TOP DOG! no matter the circumstance, but I would have liked to get his opinion on this predicament.

"So, do you have the completed manuscript?" she asked with a strong suggestion of implosion in her voice.

I looked past Karen and saw a shadow near the window curtains, so I figured that I was covered no matter what I said. So I went for the more bold approach, simply because Karen had it coming for using me and then squandering my fortune. Little did she know that all of the money she had teed up to buy her houses had already been siphoned from her bank account to untraceable offshore accounts controlled by O'Reilly and Manetti - who were equal partners in two separate accounts that neither one of them could access without the other, because they both would have opted to not share any and all monies they illegally collected.

"Fuck you, Karen!" I said as I was unable to hold back my true feelings any longer. "I'll get that shit to you when I'm good and ready!"

Karen took it all in and then fired back, "Fuck me? Where the fuck would you be if I hadn't come along? Doubt if you would be so famous? Asshole!" she yelled as she pointed the gun at me and undid any safety net I previously relied on.

The last thing I heard was two pops and then a big bang before my world faded to black. Parsons and O'Reilly were in my room - although it's still unclear how long they were there - one shot at my jugular with a tranquilizer dart while the other found the mark on Karen's long neck.

O'Reilly had taken his new untold best friend, Parsons, to the shooting range for a few days of instruction prior to this day. The key shot was delivered by O'Reilly, who hit me in the neck just before Karen was hit by Parsons' dart, causing her finger to relax once it squeezed the trigger. Her gun fired as I plopped down on the bed, the bullet narrowly missing me. Under normal conditions, the bullet would have pierced mu chest and I probably would have bled to death.

The bullet lodged into the concrete wall behind my bed as Karen planked toward the ground. All of the noise and commotion also roused the senses of Jessica, who was busy blowing her hair in the bathroom. She must have thought I had clumsily tripped and hit the floor trying to get out of bed.

"Are you all right?" she yelled as she emerged from the bathroom with wet hair and a birthday suit.

Parsons was so enthralled with Jessica's body that he accidentally shot his gun and the dart found a home in O'Reilly's left thigh.

O'Reilly looked at Parsons and said, "Get her and then call Manetti," as Parsons caught him and gently placed him in a tub chair. He looked across the room to a still-naked and wildly-anticipating Jessica, who had a 'love Jones' for Parsons the minute she met him.

He walked toward her and past the fallen bodies and they met in a passionate kissed that spilled over into the bathroom for the next 45 minutes. Parsons then called Manetti, "Clean-up on aisle four. We're gonna' need a few adrenaline shots. I accidentally hit O'Reilly."

"And you didn't call me right away?" Manetti yelled.

"How did you know that I didn't call you right away?" Parsons questioned

"I got ears too, kid," Manetti replied as parsons realized that he still had the communications device lodged in his ear.

"You worked her over pretty good!" the Italian Stallion added. "I've been sitting outside in my car eating yogurt for the past half-hour. Quite riveting theater. I'm wondering what you'll do for an encore?" Manetti asked as Parsons turned off his device and removed it from his ear.

Manetti was not one to fool around. He came into the bedroom and removed one long needle from his pocket, removed the cap and then plunged it into my bare chest, releasing enough adrenaline to get me through a 26.2-mile marathon. I gasped for air as it felt like a jet plane was removed from my chest. He then went over to O'Reilly and repeated the same procedure, and then his partner awoke in a gasp the same way I did moments earlier.

"Wow! Good morning!" O'Reilly yelled. Once he regained his bearings, Manetti asked, "What are we doing with this bitch?"

O'Reilly looked at Karen's limp body and then at me and said, "I think it's time for you two to take a little drive."

"I think I had her before," Manetti said after he looked Karen over. "The chick was very giving. Never got so much out of a parking ticket in my life!"

"Who hadn't Karen slept with?" I asked myself, preserving Manetti's moment of sexual pride.

It was a topic of great discussion amongst all of us the previous night. While murder came quite easily for O'Reilly and especially Manetti, it wasn't so simple for the rest of us.

"So, you're gonna' take the chance that this could come up again one day?" O'Reilly asked.

"But I'll always be thinking about it and that won't be any good for my writing," I said. "I mean, I'm pretty pissed off at the bitch, but I'm not sure if I could go through with it?"

Manetti was less of a philosopher and more of a realist.

"She lives, you die. She dies, you live. Do you understand the delicate balance of the situation, buddy?"

I was in a good mood despite the fact that my life was apparently hanging in the balance.

"So, let's get this straight. One of us lives and the other one dies."

Manetti had no sense of humor unless it was at the expense of others.

"You got it."

So I was leaving my fate up to a homicidal maniac who had more to profit if I died than if I lived. Or would he make more money on the books I could write if I lived? The whole thing was rather confusing for a dead man, although I'm sure O'Reilly had already run the numbers and made up his mind.

Jessica was concerned about my well-being, and gave me quite the sexual send-off the previous night. Her heart was with Parsons even before she walked into the room naked and they hooked up, and deep down inside I already knew it.

There were many things going through my mind during the next few hours, but my primary thought was that it wouldn't be so bad if it all ended now. I had accomplished just about everything that was on my plate, even though my fame had been largely manufactured. Once your name and face get in the mainstream and influential people start saying good things about you, it becomes difficult for the average person to go against the grain - meaning that most people will go along with what the big herd is saying in order to avoid scrutiny and public embarrassment.

On the life side, I was also leaving my life in the hands of two dirty cops who would look to exploit me in any way that would produce the maximum profit and deflect blame from them. One thing I knew for sure was that the outcome would be a lot different from my perception of what was to come. That my fate was relatively unimportant. I just needed to control what I could control and let the rest fall in any place it would fall.

It must have been tranquilizer dart day because Manetti shot Paco on the way out and placed him in a supply closet, while Parsons took over the front desk during the notoriously slower mid-day hours. O'Reilly then dismantled the back alley camera as Manetti drove Karen's new BMW convertible to the back so they could load the passengers for today's lovely springtime drive.

I wedged myself into the passenger's seat, as my long legs appeared to a serious affront to advanced German technology. Manetti carried an unconscious Karen out of the building and carefully placed her in the driver's seat. If I didn't know any better I would have thought he had a thing for her, because he was exhibiting softer-than-usual tendencies. When a serial killer acts mainstream that's usual when you have to start worrying.

The plan was to initially glue her hands to the wheel, but Manetti carefully applied black tape around her hands and the wheel and then propped her head with color-matching cord. He had rigged the inside of the car with government-issued robotic technology that he lifted from a government storage facility earlier in the year. Manetti would always be driving close by with O'Reilly at the controls and operating our vehicle remotely.

We started out in Long Island City and then proceeded to Midtown Manhattan and West End Avenue, also known as the West Side Highway. While stopped at a light and O'Reilly put down the controls and shot some videos with the camera installed in Manetti's police car. I opened my tinted windows and looked directly at the car.

O'Reilly said, "Is that Bruce Schindler?"

Manetti played along, "I thought he was dead, but you should run his face through the database."

"Holy shit, it's a match! How is that possible?" O'Reilly exclaimed.

Then they rolled sound of Karen's earlier outburst, "I'm going to kill you!"

"That's Karen Zucker!" Manetti yelled, as the shot sound and the flash of light they had rigged in the BMW went off and then my window closed.

"Shot fired!" O'Reilly yelled and then casually uplinked the one minute video clip to a satellite feed the police knew would be picked up by all of the major television and news outlets.

Within minutes, the clip was all over network and cable television worldwide and all of the traffic helicopters were in hot pursuit of the BMW with what news anchors coined, "Schindler Lives!"

I was listening to the radio broadcast in the car as we made our way downtown, as police had guided traffic off of West End Avenue and the FDR Drive so we could have safe passage. Of course, this directive came from Detectives O'Reilly and Manetti, who had backed off and were leading a long line of police cars that were following us.

Television coverage transformed New York into a typical California news day, where the pursuit of a rogue vehicle chased by police was a more common occurrence.

Reactions to my rising from the dead met with differing opinions. Religious nuts viewed my rebirth as sort of a second coming, because they were obviously desperate to witness a Jew, any Jew, returning to bring all of his faithful subjects to salvation. Intellects saw my reemergence as a betrayal to so many of the loyal people that believed in me. But, most of my fans still had so many questions about their own lives that it was important that I was still around. The third book was so eagerly anticipated that people were less concerned with potential fraud then real answers and direction for their meaningless existence.

"Let's close them off at the Seaport," O'Reilly said over the police scanner. If they get above there it will be difficult to maintain."

The detective chose the South Street Seaport because it was a huge tourist attraction on Friday afternoons. It was the start of Spring Break and there were thousands of people lining the streets of downtown on the route like one of the New York sports teams had won a championship and the city was throwing them a parade in the 'Canyon of Heroes.'

"It appears to be a hostage situation," Manetti detailed. "Zucker appears to be hostile toward Schindler and us. She is armed and dangerous."

I looked over at Karen and she was still quite under the influence of the tranquilizer dart, which was designed to take down a two-ton elephant, so it would stand to reason that she would be out for a while. The dose that O'Reilly and I had absorbed was considerably less than Karen's.

We made the turn at the tip of downtown Manhattan near Battery Park and throngs of white collar workers had come out of their buildings and were cheering us on as we transitioned from West to East side. It had been a long time since these people had anything to cheer for in this part of the city, but I still enjoyed the first real acknowledgment to my contribution on this earth. It was obvious that for however long I would be on this earth - whether it be five minutes, five years or 50 years - that this was the place that I was meant to be, that I would always be.

The caravan moved slowly into the tunnel between the lower Manhattan arc and the FDR Drive, and this is when the switch occurred. All of the lights were turned off in the tunnel and our car stopped only a few feet into the tunnel and O'Reilly never turned our lights on so everything remained pitch black and obscured from view.

"Give them some room!" O'Reilly yelled into the police radio as his car and ours were now the only cars in the tunnel and were not visible to anyone else.

Within seconds, the BMW was moving again with its lights on and the 10 cars in pursuit followed diligently.

An officer asked, "Why did they stop?"

O'Reilly punched the license plate number into his dashboard computer and replied, "She just purchased the vehicle. I bet she didn't know how to turn on the lights!"

An older cop opined, "Fuckin' women drivers!"

The last mile or so was perhaps the longest for me. Manetti's final words to me were ringing in my head, that one of us would live and the other would die. While I was privy to certain parts of the plan, the other details were as dark to me as the inside of the tunnel. Would these be my last moments on this earth, in this life?

Neither O'Reilly nor Manetti had given me instructions about what was to happen or what I should do once the car stopped. I wasn't even completely sure where we would stop or how that would happen?

We rolled down the block that was adjacent to the Hudson River and then made a right turn at the Seaport with the ship 'The Peking' now in view only a few feet in front of us. There were people on the deck of the ship, but they were a considerable distance away from us and out of harm's way. I looked out of the driver's side door at the Brooklyn Bridge, which was the conduit to the place of my birth. So, if this was going to be my end, it was probably fitting that it would happen here.

It felt like a long time from the moment we stopped until the time when the action sped up. In real time, however, it was actually only seven minutes.

O'Reilly was back on the police channel.

"Shooter one, are you in position to take the shot?"

"Roger, team leader. I will go at your signal."

He then checked with a few other marksmen, and they were also in position.

I looked over at the lifeless body next to me and wondered if that would be me in a couple of minutes? And then I thought about something that O'Reilly whispered to me just before I got in the car. He said, "If all else fails, open your window."

I had no idea what he was talking about at the time, especially when it came to the actual timing of such an act. But looking straight ahead at the Hudson River, a calm feeling came over me in an instant and I thought I had decoded the secret message.

"Take the shot!" Manetti instructed his first shooter.

Since the shooter was at a relatively close distance to the car, he used a silencer, which was also an important measure to not further excite the crowd.

Luckily for me, the shot was aimed at the gas tank, a move that had become standard for the NYPD when pursuing a fugitive. Taking out the gas tank would obviously limit a driver's range and keep the chase to a minimum. But the SWAT team had to wait until the car was in a prime position to gain access, free from potential civilian danger.

The shot found its mark and a small fire started in the rear of the car. Manetti turned to O'Reilly and nodded his head, which signaled that it was time for the car to be set in motion. O'Reilly slowly rolled the car forward as Manetti yelled, "The vehicle is in motion, shooter two take your shot!"

The second shooter connected and the entire back of the car was in flames as O'Reilly gunned the engine. The car sped from the edge of the street to the banks of the water adjacent to 'The Peking.' The third shooter also connected as the car reached the embankment and then went airborne when it ran out of pavement.

I really didn't care about shooting or bullets at that point. The care was getting hot and I desperately needed some air, so I opened my window all the way. The car hit the water hard, but I managed to brace myself enough so as to not incur significant head trauma. But I still did take a pretty good shot from my head making contact with the glove compartment.

I floated out of the window and the last thing I remember under the water was a huge explosion beneath me...

O'Reilly and Manetti rigged the car with some C4, which was guaranteed to produce a significant explosion that they could use to distract attention away from what was really going on under the murky water. A huge fireball erupted into the sky as the helicopters and cameras on the ground focused on the air not the sea.

Meanwhile, under the water, Manetti and O'Reilly had a team of divers performing various tasks. Manetti had some friends in the sanitation business in New Jersey and they just happened to be running a garbage barge through the Hudson River from New York to the dumps of Staten Island and New Jersey. One diver used a huge hook to connect the front of the BMW and another made sure the wire was connected to the barge itself. This would ensure that NYPD divers looking for the car in the immediate area would not find it until it was fully cleaned.

Another diver placed oxygen around my mouth until a second diver, posing as a concerned citizen standing on the deck of the ship jumped into the water to save me in dramatic fashion for the entire world to see. She jumped in wearing normal street clothes typical for a middle-aged woman in her mid-40s - jeans, a button-up shirt and a pair of sneaker-like shoes.

She crashed into the water feet first and bumped fists with her fellow diver, who handed the package off for extraction. She then acted as if she was struggling to get to the shoreline, eventually paddling close enough to hand me off to officers that were waiting on street level.

CPR was performed and I did have some water in my lungs that eventually was pumped out. It felt as if I swallowed water down the wrong pipe when I came to and was coughing rather violently. The sun must have been angled just right because I thought an angel with a halo was right in front of me.

"Are you all right?" the woman asked me, although she was wet and must have been in the water with me. From what I could see she had dirty blonde hair and her bra was visible through his moist white shirt. It was a full go...

I sat up like I was doing a sit-up \- upper body moving only - and moved in for an unobstructed smooch of gratitude. The crowd waited nervously to see if I was still alive, and when I kissed her they went crazy with applause and cheer, which I didn't realize until I watched the clip over again on the news that night!

Sidney Krauss had read my books and was definitely a fan. She did odd jobs here and there for O'Reilly and Manetti and was always valued for her skill and discretion. But it wasn't part of the plan to fall in love with me - all of the jobs were in and out with no emotional attachment.

O'Reilly and Manetti were right there when the kiss happened.

"Sid the kid, "Manetti muttered.

"Good for her!" O'Reilly added before breaking up the party and leading me to the police car. The press blocked our entry to the vehicle, which lent itself for us to make statements about the day's events.

O'Reilly stepped forward and earned his place in the sun.

"It comes with great shock and surprise that Mr. Schindler is indeed alive. We investigated his death months ago and the case was closed, so obviously we need to question him extensively and will reveal our complete findings once they become available. We will also be sending some divers into the Hudson to hopefully recover Karen Zeller from her car. Thank you."

O'Reilly and Manetti then tried to escort me through the crowd but they weren't budging.

"We want to hear from Bruce!" a biased reporter shouted and then everyone reasserted the request.

O'Reilly looked at Manetti for dramatic affect and he nodded in agreement. So he loosened his grip on my arm and let me step forward.

I wiped some water off my face and then ran my fingers through my hair before taking a deep breath.

"It's been a long road for me the last number of months. While I am honored that my books have been warmly received, I am sad to say that I was not able to enjoy it. This is not the way I envisioned it or wanted it to happen. The details of my captivation will emerge in the coming days. I hope we all can begin to mend personal scars, map out a plan for our futures and then full leverage our individual potentials," I said, momentarily transforming into self-help guru.

And then I said, "Despite my struggles, I still have faith and I believe in the greater good."

The police put a blanket around me and Sidney and then put us in the back seat of Manetti's Dodge Charger, where we proceeded to continue the irrepressible lip lock as we pulled away, much to the delight of the cheering onlookers and cameras.

Epilogue

"You fuckin' magician!" Manetti said as we sped away. "I told you that fuckin' guy would come through in the clutch!"

We broke the kiss a few minutes later and she said, "I'm Sidney Krauss."

And I said, "I'm Bruce Schindler."

She replied, "Yeah, I know," with the purest and bluest eyes I had ever seen.

I had seen my life flash before my eyes during the moments I was under water, and felt that I had little time to waste. So when the car stopped at the police station, I turned to Sidney and asked, "Will you marry me?"

She ran the question through her mind and couldn't think of a single reason against the idea, so she said, "Yes Bruce Schindler, I will marry you!" much to the surprise of Manetti and O'Reilly. They even called ahead and had a Justice of the Peace waiting at the station for us to get married later that day.

We eventually made the tour of all of the television stations as I recounted the trials and tribulations of being held against my will while a deranged woman profited from my books.

I went on to publish another 15 of my books through our own publishing house, where we eagerly published many talented writers without crooked agents, splitting the profits with Manetti and O'Reilly, who were happy to have to have a steady stream of cash.

The body and the BMW washed onto the Sandy Hook, New Jersey shore about a month after the incident, with no traces of C4 or robotics to control the vehicle. The body inside the vehicle strapped to the driver's seat was burned beyond recognition, but the dental records confirmed that it was public enemy number one, Karen Zeller. Interestingly enough, the real Karen Zeller had been removed from the car by Parsons and taken through a passageway to freedom. Paco snoozed in the supply closet and McAfee waited at a private airfield in Westchester County for Zeller and Parsons, who eventually boarded a private jet bound for their new life in Arizona. O'Reilly retired early and ran the bar with his partner Parsons, while Manetti had other plans for his life with Karen.

Manetti followed the men to Arizona a week later as Parsons kept Karen in a tranquilized state. Manetti then took Karen and his new Shelby Mustang across the border to Mexico, while money continued to flow through the offshore accounts. It took weeks for the good doctors down there to alter her appearance complete with facial reconstruction, including nose job, and body work including a boob job.

Karen awoke in her bed in the couple's beachside villa, refreshed after a month of being knocked out. She was fully healed as she stretched her arms toward the sky and felt as good as she could ever remember. She slowly rolled out of bed and walked into the bathroom, as most people do after a lengthy sleep. Karen finished her tinkle business and then stood in front of the mirror and couldn't believe what she was looking at, or who she was looking at. As vein as she always was, Karen had low self-esteem and tended not to care so much about her appearance. She marveled at the beauty of her face and the petit nature of her nose. And then she felt herself up and was elated to have so much more than a handful \- and two breasts of equal size and shape - for a change.

Karen walked out of the bathroom and smelled some good food cooking, so she followed her new nose into the kitchen area, where a man was working near the stove. She looked outside of the huge bay window and the Pacific Ocean was her canvas. Karen then turned back toward Manetti and he guided her to a made table and distributed some eggs and bacon to each plate.

"I thought we both could use a change of scenery," he simply said.

She looked out the window again and then back at Manetti, who was now sitting across from her.

"Yeah, I can live with that," she replied, as the less important details of her journey seemed unimportant.

