 
Collected Short Stories: Volume V

by

Barry Rachin

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

Published by:

Barry Rachin on Smashwords

Damaged Goods

Copyright © 2016

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This short story represents a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

*****

Table of Contents

Damaged Goods

Will the Rain Hurt the Rhubarb?

The Hornback Alligator Belt

Synchronicity

The Third Fairy Tale

Sanitation

Succotash

Old Man, Old Woman

Hummus

Leakey Pipes

Kindred Spirits

A Guide for the Perplexed

The Indigo Children

Fatally Flawed Women

A Middlemarch Reunion

Lyuba

Thyroids, a Love Story

I and Thou

Sanctuary of the Whirligigs

Turgenev's Lost Tale

The Willy-nilly Hedonist

Damaged Goods

Jesse Caldwell loathed Miranda Huffington, the business secretary at Patterson Toyota. Whenever the mechanic delivered repair orders to the front office, he kept conversation brief as possible, scrupulously avoided making eye contact or inadvertently staring at the woman's deformed leg. Jesse had even considered taking a job with another dealership to be rid of the wretched woman. For her part, the only time Miranda paid Jesse even the slightest mind was when he did something wrong, which was why she was presently standing in the repair bay wearing an evil expression. "No signature on this form." Miranda waved a three-part invoice truculently in the air.

In her late twenties, the business secretary exuded no joie de vivre. She lurched about Patterson Toyota with a profound limp, her body pitching forward in a herky-jerky manner as though she were about to take a pratfall and end up on her keister from one humorless moment to the next. Miranda wasn't exactly ugly. Rather, she was one of those infuriatingly nondescript types who, despite her infirmity, might have been reasonably attractive if, once in a blue moon, she smiled or cracked a joke. The operative term here was 'might have been'. But the dark-haired woman didn't and so she wasn't.

Jesse signed off on the brake job and handed the three-part invoice to the secretary, who swung about on her heels with less than military precision and hobbled disjointedly from the repair bay. A lilac-scented perfume lingered in the stale air until it was quickly overwhelmed by the stench of exhaust fumes and burnt rubber.

Well thank you, too, and have a stupendously nice day, Ms. Huff, Huff, Huffington.

Al Florentine, the repair manager approached from the showroom floor. "What a clod!" Jesse muttered as Miranda retreated back to the comfort of the heated showroom. "That troll treats mechanics like garbage."

"She ain't so bad." Al assumed a mollifying tone. The middle-aged Italian with the swarthy complexion and sloping shoulders arranged appointments when customers called the dealership. He also assigned work orders and oversaw the repair bay operation. "No worse than the last few goofballs in her position."

The manager had a point.

The previous secretary arrived late most days and couldn't file properly. A record labeled 'Munson' might, if lucky, end up in the 'M's but that was it. She never bothered to position the manila folder to the rear between the MT's and MV's. It was organizational chaos pure and simple such that, inside of a month, customer accounts were a garbled mess, a regular automotive Tower of Babel. The middle-aged woman who preceded her was a menopausal hypochondriac with a drinking problem; she lasted a sum total of two months before filing a bogus disability claim.

If nothing else, the grim-faced Miranda Huffington was an anal-retentive workaholic. All customer records had to be properly indexed. She retyped the entire Rolodex file on pristine, three-by-five cards and, using a desktop publishing program, revamped several of Patterson Toyota's customer care forms. At a staff party Mr. Patterson presented the new employee with a mahogany plaque acknowledging her 'exceptional team spirit and personal initiative'.

"Miranda's had a tough life," Al blurted.

"How so?"

The repair manager clearly knew something about the dour-faced woman to which no one else was privy but waved a hand distractedly in the air. "More to the point, what you got against her?"

The question caught Jesse off guard and he felt his face flush with shame. "There's a busted water pump on a Celica needs replacing."

"The water pump can wait."

Thirty feet away an acetylene blow torch fired up as a mechanic began loosening the corroded bolts on a blown muffler. "I dunno." The rusty muffler fell away from the undercarriage of the car hitting the cement floor with a dull clatter. Jesse's brain had reached the temperature of the softened bolts scattered about under the hydraulic lift. He waved a stubby finger in the air listlessly. "She's a sadistic bitch!"

"That's a bit of a stretch," Al chuckled. "Miranda ain't a bad sort. She's just..." Without bothering to finish the sentence, the man smiled weakly and wandered back into the showroom.

*****

Shortly after joining Patterson Toyota, Jesse signed a lease on a studio apartment off route 106 in Plainville, Massachusetts. In his late twenties, the move was Jesse's first real taste of independence. He took the apartment for a year, paying the first and last month's rent plus a hefty security deposit. On June first, Jesse Caldwell bought a secondhand dresser and end table at the Salvation Army thrift shop, threw his lumpy bed in the rear of his Ford F-150 pickup truck and drove off to a new life. Or so he thought.

The new life was, in truth, no different than his stultified old life, except that now the mechanic returned home from work to a claustrophobically tiny, studio apartment. He had his dirty movies – small consolation – but in the bargain had bartered away something ephemeral yet infinitely essential. The apartment at Beacon Woods Estate was quiet – excruciatingly so. Jesse kept the radio blaring from early morning until he lumbered off to work.

Weekends he relaxed by the pool, twirling his high school ring in endless circles like the revolving drum on a Tibetan prayer wheel. The residents seemed friendly in a neighborly sort of way but kept their distance. Sunning themselves on chaise lounges by the pool, the women were, for the most part, white collar professionals - twenty-something school teachers, secretaries and businesswomen with no particular interest in a grease monkey with calloused hands, burgeoning beer gut, salt and pepper hair.

So where were the eligible women his own age? Probably living elsewhere. Or, like his sister, Eunice, married, divorced, divorced again and now living with a new lover. What difference did it make? From Jesse's perspective, finding a life partner, a soul mate, had devolved into a scavenger hunt.

One Saturday night toward the tail end of the following summer, an unfortunate incident pushed Jesse over the edge. With nothing to do, he had been stir-crazy all day, totally and irrevocably alone. Following the eleven o'clock news, he killed the lights and crawled under the covers. Two doors down, a Hispanic couple was blasting the radio ridiculously loud – a riotous mix of salsa and Latin jazz. Jesse finally dropped off to sleep but woke before dawn to angry voices. He glanced at the mint green numbers on the bedside clock. Five-thirty.

"Where the hell was you?" A gruff voice filtered down from the floor above.

"None of your business, Shit-for-Brains!" The woman was drunk, slurring her words.

Jesse knew the couple, but only to offer a brief greeting as they checked mail or passed in the lobby. Lean and morose with a nervous tic, the guy was a roofer. His shrimpy, dark-haired girlfriend worked at a Burger King. At least once a month, she slipped out alone bar hopping and came home sloshed. The roofer and his wayward girlfriend cursed each other, hurled insults back and forth but nothing ever came of it. Eventually the accusations petered away and they went off to bed. Sometimes Jesse heard the dysfunctional duo moaning with lust, the sexual release heightened by the foul-mouthed sparing - the titillating foreplay of culturally-challenged dimwits.

But this was different. The woman never stayed out all night. "I ask questions but get no answers," The roofer growled. "Where'd you spend the night?"

"Put a ring on the third finger of my left hand and I'll answer your moronic questions."

Fluffing the pillow, Jesse placed his hands behind his head. This was about as entertaining, as a carnival freak show. "One more smart-mouth remark," the roofer snarled, "and I'll slap you silly."

Dead silence.

Jesse eased up on his elbows and listened attentively. Don't feed into his homicidal rage. Back off. Leave the room. Go take a shower. Keep your pie hole shut. Don't say another solitary thing. Don't –

"Asshole!"

Two sets of feet scurried back and forth about the one-bedroom flat, followed by the crash of overturned furniture as the roofer beat his unfaithful lover. Jesse jumped out of bed and rushed up the stairwell taking the risers two at a time. By the time he reached the apartment, the door was already ajar. Several male residents, who lived on the same floor, were restraining the boyfriend. The distraught girl sported a chipped tooth and black eye. A clump of hair was missing off the top of her head. Like an oversized dust bunny, the frizzy strands lay in a jumbled heap on the living room rug. Five minutes later police arrived and carted the roofer off to the lockup. The following week, Jesse spotted the lovebirds lounging by the pool. A shadowy bald spot on the right side of her scalp, where the boyfriend yanked the hair out, remained but new growth was filling in nicely.

In early August when the letter to renew his lease arrived from the rental agency, Jesse called home. "How you doing, Mom?"

"Good and you?"

"Well, that's just it. Five hundred bucks a month for a hole-in-the-wall, efficiency apartment... this complex is grossly overpriced. Plainville isn't really all that convenient to where I work, and things can get a bit lonely especially when nobody's around on holiday weekends and..." He paused to catch his breath. Such a mortal embarrassment - a grown man in his mid-thirties tucking his tail between his stubby legs and escaping back to the safe haven of his parent's home!

"For crying out loud," Mrs. Caldwell interrupted in a face-saving gesture. "Don't waste your hard-earned money on some crappy, sardine can of an apartment. Cancel the lease and come home where you're always welcome." She slammed the receiver down mercifully sparing him any further mawkishness.

Jesse lowered his grizzled beard into his hands and had a good cry. Stumbling into the bathroom, he washed his face, patting the mottled skin dry with a terrycloth towel. Then he pulled a cardboard box from the closet and began packing the cutlery, dishes, pots and pans for the eight and a half mile trip home.

*****

At noontime Al Florentine was back again standing near the tire balancing machine. "Wanna grab lunch?"

Jesse's head was buried under the hood of a Camry sedan checking the transmission fluid. "Give me a few minutes and I'll be done with this bag of bolts."

At a Friendly's situated two blocks from the dealership, the waitress took their order and ten minutes later set a bowl of chili in front of the repair manager and tuna fish sandwich with a diet Pepsi next to Jesse. "Last December when the boss was away in Vegas," the repair manager stirred his chili, directing his words into the spicy broth, "I interviewed Miranda for the job." He sprinkled a bag of oyster crackers over the top of his chili. "The girl attended junior college for a couple years, but that didn't work out so hot. What with her handicap, she wasn't much of a party animal."

"She told you all this during the stupid interview?"

"Not exactly," Al qualified." The repair manager pursed his lips and spoke tentatively. "Got a problem with her gimpy leg?"

Jesse opened a bag of potato chips and splayed them on the plate alongside the tuna melt. "At first, but I don't hardly notice it now."

Up down, up down, up down. When she crossed a room it seemed as though the woman was placing her right foot in an endless progression of shallow potholes. Now the mechanic hardly paid any attention. Or perhaps Jesse logically associated the secretary with the odd gait – so much so that, if she suddenly began walking with fluid grace, that might have seemed equally peculiar. "No, her handicap don't bother me."

"She's a beekeeper. The half dozen hives in her back yard brought in over two hundred pounds of honey last year."

"How'd you learn that?"

"During the interview."

Jesse tried to picture his personal nemesis decked out in an alabaster bee suit with dark veil and calfskin gloves. Beekeeping – yes, that would be the perfect pastime for an antisocial control freak like Miranda Huffington.

"It's really amazing stuff how honey bees arrange things. In July and August when the weather gets too hot, they'll fan the entrance with their wings to cool the hive. Amazing stuff, I tell you!" The more Al raved about Miranda Huffington's stupendous bees, the more infuriated his coworker became. "Wanna hear something funny?" He rushed ahead without waiting for any response. "In late August all the drones get the bum's rush."

"What're drone?" Jesse muttered.

"Male bees. They don't do much of anything other than play footsie with the queen and gorge on honey. In late summer, the female bees close things down for winter and the drones become persona non grata."

"Persona what?"

"What with the frigid weather coming, there ain't no place for moochers and deadbeats."

Jesse raised the tuna fish sandwich to his lips but, felt a sharp pang – acid reflux – and promptly lowered it to the plate. "So the drones get kicked out in the cold to die a miserable death?"

"That's right," Al confirmed. "With absolutely no say in the matter." The middle-aged man raised the spoon to his lips and ate with gusto making a raucous slurping sound as he shoveled the brown beans into his mouth. Al didn't speak again until the food was gone. "Just before we broke for lunch, I was in the office shooting the breeze with Miranda and she says, 'That Caldwell never remembers to sign the goddamn work orders. If I didn't know any better, I might think the nitwit was screwing with my brain.'" Al snickered as though at some private joke. "Then, without skipping a beat, she adds, 'Is the jerk dating anyone?'"

Jesse's eyebrows scrunched together. "She called me a nitwit... a jerk?"

"You're missing the point." Al reached across the table and tapped Jesse forcefully on the forearm. "All the time I'm eating this chili, I been considering your options and it all boils down to this. Your personal circumstances ain't more promising than that rusty minivan with the blown cylinder head over by the dumpster, and all the while Miranda Huffington limps through life in search of a good-time Charley."

The waitress arrived and warmed Al's coffee. When she was gone, Jesse leaned over the table. "I got this problem with the opposite sex."

Al grabbed another roll, sawed it in half with a knife, smearing a pat of butter down the middle. "There's medication for that," he replied, lowering his voice several decibels. "Not that I ever needed any."

Jesse wagged his head in protest. "No, it's got nothing to do with plumbing." A group of high school students wandered in and were seated at a booth near the back of the restaurant. "In social situations I just get tongue-tied... never know what to say, that's all."

"A personal shortcoming... so now you got something in common with the woman. Ask her out."

"A date?" Jesse felt lightheaded. "She'd laugh in my foolish face."

"Not hardly!" Al wiped the bowl clean with what was left of the roll. "Miranda thinks you're a bit rough about the edges but salvageable... an automotive diamond in the rough, so to speak." Al belched, loosening his belt buckle several notches. "The woman might be a sourpuss cripple, but I seen women like her mellow like a vintage Bordeaux when treated halfways decent."

"That's a tad melodramatic," Jesse groused, "and I still don't see -"

"This is what you do," Al counseled. "Ask the broad out on a date. Treat her like there ain't no female on the planet half as desirable." He waved his hands frenetically in the air. "Sex on her terms, not yours! You don't lay a perverted pinky finger on the woman until she sanctions it." Several customers at adjacent tables looked up from their meals. In addition to a lingering dizziness, Jesse was developing a brutal case of heartburn.

"If there's a freakin' foreign flick from Kazakhstan playing at the Avon Cinema that she wants to see, you go and read the subtitles and tell her it was just about the finest movie you ever seen."

"Okay," Jesse muttered. "I think I understand."

Clearing away the empty plates, the waitress placed the bill on the table. Al Florentine pulled a twenty from his wallet. "My treat. You pick up the tab next time."

*****

At five o'clock the mechanics packed up their tool chests and went home. Office help generally followed a half hour later. Jesse lingered in the repair bay until quarter passed the hour then meandered into a cramped office off the main showroom. "The Blue Grotto, it's a fancy schmancy restaurant on Federal hill." If you got nothin' better to do, I was wondering..." Miranda glanced up from a pile of service orders strewn across the desk, her features as inscrutable as Sanskrit.

"A date?" She laid the yellow NCR copy she was processing on the desk and smoothed the edges with the spatulated tips of her fingers. "Never been there myself but I heard they got valet parking."

Jesse cringed. He knew that the gourmet restaurant was notoriously expensive but hadn't factored the added expense into the price of the meal. Miranda kept her eyes focused on the paperwork littering her desk. "It's against company policy." she spoke in a gravelly monotone.

"What is?"

"Secretaries fraternizing with the work-bay help... Mr. Patterson told me so when I was hired."

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Jesse felt the turgid blood congealing in his brain. He shuffled halfway to the door on wobbly legs when her voice sounded again. "On the other hand, there's no mention of it here." She was clutching a copy of the Paterson Toyota employee handbook. "And I should know. I revised the manual... all thirty-five pages." She sandwiched the three-ring binder between a row of paperwork neatly stacked on her desk. "I'm not doing much of anything tomorrow night."

"Pick you up around seven," Jesse replied. "I'll make reservations."

*****

Saturday afternoon, Jesse found his mother hunched over the kitchen table stripping the skins off a bowl of Clingstone peaches. Earlier in the week she brought home a bushel of fruit purchased at a farmers' market. The flesh, which clung to the pits, was softer and juicier than the freestone variety sold in the grocery stores.

Crooking her thick neck to one side, Mrs. Caldwell sniffed the air. "What's that god-awful stench?"

"English leather."

Mrs. Caldwell gawked at her son. "Got a date?" Jesse's head bobbed up and down. A squat woman with a doughy nose, Mrs. Caldwell lifted her watery blue eyes heavenward. "I'll be a grandmother yet!"

Jesse watched her dice the blanched peaches into bite-size pieces which she tossed into a copper pot simmering on the stove. When the pot was half-filled, she sprinkled a generous cup of sugar over the fruit. Quartering a fresh lemon, she drizzled the juice over the mix.

"What's with the lemon?"

"Brings out the flavor." Mashing the soggy wedges in the palm of her hand, she drained the last few drops. "Opposites attract," his mother chuckled at the clever repartee, "even in food." She stirred the ingredients thoughtfully with a wooden spatula. "So who's the lucky girl?"

"Just a secretary from work."

The bubbling peaches exuded a tart aroma. "Can't go out on a first date looking like an ignoramus."

"What?"

"That grease spot on your fly isn't going to endear you to anyone. Go back in the bedroom and change your pants."

"The others are in worse shape."

Mrs. Caldwell eyeballed the thickening slurry before reducing the heat. "Take them off. I'll clean the stain by hand."

In the bedroom Jesse removed his pants and returned to the kitchen. "I never said anything about a first date," he groused.

Now that the mixture had thickened Mrs. Caldwell proceeded to ladle the steamy fruit into individual preserve jars. A yearly ritual, she always steeped the preserves in a separate pan of water for ten minutes before tightening the lids. "Yeah, well..." She scrubbed the cloth with a wet rag and dish detergent. "The stain... it's thinning away to nothin'. Don't hardly show now." She handed him the soggy pants. "Throw them in the dryer and I'll run a hot iron over them when they're dry."

Drifting back to the stove, she teased a spoonful of fruit onto the ladle. "Taste."

Jesse nibbled at the hot fruit. A look of sublime joy ebbed across his grizzled face, the dark eyes scrunching shut. "Don't get much better than that!"

"Go dry your pants," his mother barked.

A half hour later as Jesse was inching down the driveway, the front door burst open and his mother waddled down the bricked steps. She thrust a jar of the homemade jam through the open window. "Geez," Jesse bellowed. "It's hot as hell!"

"Give the fruit to your girl friend."

"She ain't my girlfriend. Just a ..." He left the sentence dangling.

"You tell her I don't use no pectin. Nothin' artificial to thicken the spread. It's all-natural, fresh-grown. .. none of that high fructose, sicky-sweet, corn syrup crap."

"Yeah, okay." Releasing his foot from the brake, he continued down the driveway toward the street. Before Jesse reached the highway, he cracked the glove compartment, tossed his mother's unsolicited gift into the cavity and slammed it shut.

*****

"I ain't much of a conversationalist." They were cruising down the interstate ninety-five in the direction of downtown Providence. Wearing an inscrutable, sphinxlike expression, Miranda Huffington sat stiffly in the passenger seat, her slender hands folded in her lap. Since picking her up at the three-decker tenement behind the public library, Jesse hadn't spoke more than a half dozen words.

"All that mindless prattle," Miranda observed, "is greatly overrated."

"That's for sure." Jesse balked, not knowing what else to say. If he tried to elaborate was he further contributing to the garbage heap of vacuous jibber jabber?

"My Uncle Jack was painfully shy." Miranda cut short his self-damning reverie. "The man could sit in a room full of people and hardly string two words together." The golden dome of the Rhode Island state house loomed diagonally to their left. "Then he married Aunt Rita."

"And how did that work out?"

"Not so hot. The new wife was a non-stop talkaholic. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. The woman never came up for air... never shut her trap two seconds back to back."

The last remnants of late afternoon light bleeding from the sky, Jesse could view the road clear enough but hadn't a clue where Miranda's monologue was heading "One day in mid-August, Uncle Jack drove to Green Airport in Warwick. He left the Toyota sedan with the keys in the ignition and booked a one-way ticket to the West Coast. No more captive audience. No more endless rants. No more Aunt Rita."

Not a bona fide smile per se, but the intimation of good humor flickered across Miranda's features. Jesse turned off the Atwells Avenue exit ramp. The Blue Grotto with its eggshell white, stucco veneer came into view directly ahead. "My father joked," she continued dryly, "that Uncle Jack should have married a deaf mute."

During the meal she ordered the gamberie aragosta scampi, which featured gulf shrimp and fresh lobster poached in a garlic butter. Jesse opted for the potato gnocchi tossed with caramelized onions, pancetta and pomodoro sauce.

"Al Florentine mentioned that you raise honeybees."

"Yes, that's true." Miranda dabbed at her thin lips with a napkin and a faint hint of burgundy lipstick came away with the sauce. The girl never wore makeup to work. The color softened her features. "Fifty thousand bees in a single hive... all working for the survival of the colony," she spoke in a confidential tone leaning forward across the table, "they're truly selfless creatures."

Dressed in a black tuxedo with cummerbund, the maître d', a smallish man with a scant wisp of dark hair covering an otherwise bald forehead, was showing an older couple to their table. The last time Jesse wore a penguin suit with onyx studs down the front of a pleated shirt was during his sister Eunice's last wedding. "At the end of the summer the females kick all the drones out of the hive. That doesn't seem terribly fair."

Miranda eyed him pensively. "No, but the males might eat down the honey reserves and the colony starve to death."

"But then, Jesse protested, "in the spring when the bees emerge from the hive, there wouldn't be any males to mate with the queen."

"Toward the end of the winter," Miranda explained they just make a new batch of drones to replace the ones that were evicted."

After the meal they strolled about Federal Hill. Over the past few decades, the gritty, blue-collar community had witnessed a series of seismic upheavals. Those greenhorn Italians who originally settled the community had long since dispersed to the more affluent suburbs of North Providence, Johnston and Warwick as a wave of scrappy Hispanics invaded the streets running parallel as far down as dirt-poor Olneyville. Over the last decade, gentrification brought back the white-collar grandchildren of the original settlers to reclaim their heritage along with a mix of college kids and affluent yuppies.

At a bakery three blocks down from the restaurant Miranda bought a box of vanilla biscotti. "Did Uncle Jack ever resurface?" Jesse ventured.

"No, never." A short distance from the bakery they paused in front of an art gallery featuring high-end pottery, ceramics and custom-made jewelry boxes. "You lived at the Beacon Woods apartments a while back," she suddenly blurted in a peremptory, no-nonsense tone. "How come you moved home with your parents?"

Everything was blissfully perfect and now this.

Jesse hesitated considering his options. He could lie - resort to verisimilitude, bloviate, confabulate, bullshit his way out of the ticklish situation. Stalling for time, he peered through the display window of the art gallery at a keepsake box fashioned from a shimmery orangey black wood. A tag hanging from the box read: Cocobolo, Mexican rosewood. Two hundred fifty dollars. A pair of brass hinges was cleverly recessed into the carcass of the box, the back wall mitered to support the lid at a comfortable angle. The craftsman probably used a slot cutter chucked into a drill press to make the cut with the thin, sliver of a blade spun on a horizontal axis at low speed - six to eight hundred rpm's. Jesse didn't know any of this for sure. As a mechanic his stock-in-trade was finding solutions, fixing what was broke.

Everything but his sorry existence.

"If it's something you'd rather not discuss..." Miranda's voice jolted him back to the present.

"Living on my own wasn't what I expected. No, not at all." In a gush of emotional diarrhea, Jesse described his wretched loneliness and inability to make friends at the apartment complex. He even told her about the roofer and his shrimpy, dark-haired punching-bag-of-a-girl-friend. "Pretty pathetic, huh?"

Miranda screwed her features up in a bittersweet smile. Time seemed to flow in slower and slower increments. "Damaged goods... that's what we are." There was nothing maudlin or self-serving in her tone. Stepping in front of him, she thrust her face up under his chin. "Give me a kiss."

*****

"Peach jam... when I was a kid, my mother cooked it up in huge, copper pots every fall." They were back at the car. "The mushy yellow fruit didn't look half as nice as store-bought jams or jellies. What with the dented lids and smudged labels, I thought it was bogus... stupid as hell." Opening the glove compartment, Jesse handed her the glass jar. "My mother whipped up a batch earlier today. She don't use that gobbledygook thickener."

"Pectin."

"Yeah, whatever... It's nothing fancy, but the taste is to die for." Jesse fired up the car and glanced at his date. Miranda was staring straight ahead with just the faintest smudge of a smile brightening her mouth, the jar cradled in her lap like a precious heirloom, a fruity talisman.

back to Table of Contents

Will the Rain Hurt the Rhubarb?

"Adrian Flanagan's working three to eleven over at the Brentwood Nursing Home." Like a poker player dealt a lousy hand and waits for his opponent to fold or raise the ante, Jason Flanagan fidgeted with his hands. "Thought I might drop by later this week to see how she's doing."

His wife, who was stuffing the washing machine with a load of soiled towels grimaced but never bothered to raise her head. The wiry, elderly man, who stood a tad less than six feet, watched her measure a cupful of Borax liquid detergent. Kate, a petite Italian woman with a pointy nose and auburn hair streaked with gray, sprinkled softener into the machine before closing the lid. Her eyes flared and lower jaw flattened like a battering ram. "Not a good idea."

Jason could sense his wife raising the emotional drawbridge, walling herself up behind a thick slab of brittle-minded certitudes "Why's that?"

"The nursing home is a private business, and you've no legitimate reason being there."

Jason cringed. After thirty-three years of marriage, his wife was still doing 'the voice'.

The voice was a stilted, phony as a three-dollar bill inflection that she inadvertently slipped into when out of her natural element. A set of gears in the washer clicked and the agitator began swirling the dirty clothes in the sudsy water. Only now did the woman step back, hands on hips, and look her husband full in the face. "Some things are better left in the past."

"Maybe I'll go see my brother." He scratched his stubbly chin reflectively. "What's it been... fifteen years now? I'm sure he's heard from Adrian by now."

Kate Flanagan cringed. "You'll be wasting your breath talking to that moron?"

Jason knew better than to argue the point. His older brother, Jack, was worse than a moron. He was a belligerent slug who never regretted a personal indiscretion no matter how much damage caused. A pot-bellied Irishman, Jack Flanagan was a loudmouth braggart who made it big in the durable medical supply business. Adrian's mother was a non-stop talkaholic, who would rather slash her wrists than spend two hours alone in the house with her own private thoughts.

In later years, Jason developed the bizarre notion that his niece, Adrian, was switched at birth. Her parents—that is, the bogus couple who brought her home from the maternity ward—couldn't possibly be biologically related to this soft-spoken, angelic soul. It was luck of the draw, and Adrian Flanagan got dealt a pair of duds, imbecilic jokers from the bottom of the deck.

Fifteen years earlier, Jack Flanagan's mug was smeared all over the Providence Journal, when the IRS indicted him for tax evasion. A private accounting firm sent to review his corporate records at the medical supply company discovered that the flamboyant businessman, who favored Cuban cigars, Lincoln Continentals and off-colored jokes, was 'cooking the books'. A slew of hospital beds and motorized wheelchairs that never left the company showroom had been billed to Medicare along with a hundred eighty-five bogus claims for bottled oxygen. Worse yet, an elderly woman with rheumatoid arthritis receiving inhalation therapy had been deceased a half dozen years.

Rumors circulated that Jack Flanagan was heading to Connecticut for a little rest and relaxation courtesy of the federal government. Jack's new mailing address was a minimum security facility with an outstanding law library, soft ball field and state-of-the-art exercise gym. Nolo contendere. In the end, he copped a plea, paid a hefty fine and received a two-year suspended sentence. Case closed!

Throughout the ordeal, the man never showed a speck of remorse.

The week before his final court date, Adrian's old man was yakking it up like a remorseless jackass at a Fourth of July barbecue. Decked out in Bermuda shorts and a garish print shirt, Jack Flanagan poked fun at the district attorney. Everyone cheated on their income tax, right? The unfortunate glitch with the hospital beds, bottled oxygen and wheel chairs was just sloppy bookkeeping. Sloppy bookkeeping to the tune of over two hundred thousand dollars!

At the cookout, not a single neighbor snubbed the man or expressed moral indignation. Even Jason's parents, who damned the thieving bastard to hell in the privacy of their own home, laughed at their son's flippant jokes and snide remarks. Jack Flanagan didn't give a rat's ass about a fall from grace. His only regret was getting caught.

Some things are better left in the past. The Thanksgiving following the indictment Jason was visiting his brother's family. Adrian was hunkered down in the den, playing with a one-legged Barbie doll, which she was dressing in a glitzy evening gown. Jason remembered her as a round-faced imp with coal black hair cropped short —a persnickety tomboy with sparkling eyes, burnished coppery complexion and stocky frame. Adrian snuggled up alongside him on the couch with an impishly brazen smirk. "Uncle Jason, do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Adrian," he hunched over and whispered with a conspiratorial flair, "They're forecasting a ninety-nine percent chance of torrential downpour, but if it's in cans, everything should be okay."

Adrian giggled infectiously but just as abruptly her features darkened and the girl lowered her voice several decibels. "Daddy told mom that she's got shit for brains."

In the kitchen, the thermometer popped and Jason's sister-in-law was easing the turkey from the oven. "Cripes!" He didn't know what else to say.

"She called daddy a two-timing louse... a human turd." Adrian reached out furtively and grabbed her uncle's wrist. "My parents hate each other so much they're getting divorced. It's supposed to be a secret so don't tell no one."

For a second time in as many minutes, Jason was rendered speechless. He was carrying on a conversation with a nine year old about things that no child should comprehend. "I want to come live with you and Aunt Kate."

Jason watched as an array of holiday concoctions – string beans with almond slivers, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and butternut squash laced with honey – was laid out on the dining room table. "That's not possible," he countered. "And anyway, I'm sure your parents will work things out."

"No, they won't," Adrian insisted glumly. "They're too selfish."

Jason stared at the crippled Barbie doll. One of her oblong breasts was jutting out from the tattered gown. "Time to eat!" The call to table rescued him from the need for any further half-truths and cowardly evasions regarding Jack Flanagan's marital intentions.

* * * * *

A few months later, Adrian vanished from the home, dragged off to live with the garrulous mother's extended family. Jack remarried the following year and his new wife, who was really just a repackaged, jazzed up version of his old wife, got down to business.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

They had three children, all daughters, in rapid succession. No one ever talked about Jack's first child anymore. Ten years passed. One day Jason's daughter, Rachel, took him aside. "Saw cousin Adrian last night."

"Where?"

"Outside a musical in downtown Boston." In her early twenties, Rachel was a prettier version of the mother with an equally blunt temperament but less pointy nose. "She was in the Theater District just off Tremont Street near Park Square, working the crowd."

Jason's face clouded over. "I don't follow you."

"Adrian was gussied up like a hooker. A car pulled up and the driver rolled down the passenger side window. They negotiated a price. Adrian jumped in and they drove off."

Adrian Flanagan as streetwalker decked out in a flimsy halter top, neon hot pants and stiletto heels - this latest bit of titillating garbage fit neatly with the outlandish potpourri of hearsay, idle gossip and innuendo that filtered back to him over the years. "Did you say anything to mom?" His daughter shook her head.

Jason felt nauseous, light headed. "Sure it was Adrian?"

Rachel nodded once. Jason's favorite niece still wore her dark hair in a close-cropped, pixie style. The same squat, compact torso. "She's all grown up now," Rachel reported with a sober expression. "Got hips and breasts."

* * * * *

Later that night after supper, Jason removed the food processor from the cabinet over the sink and arranged a collection of spices and cooking utensils on the kitchen table. What're you making?" His wife asked.

"Hummus." He ladled a healthy dollop of tahini from a metal tin into the bowl, then sliced a lemon in half and squeezed the juice into the mix. "Still visiting your brother?" Kate's voice had mellowed since their conversation in the laundry room.

"Tomorrow morning," Jason confirmed. Into the creamy paste he added salt and several tablespoons of olive oil. Grabbing a knife, he pried a garlic clove apart and began peeling the outer skins away from the fleshy interior. "I don't expect much... just want to find out if he's heard from his daughter."

"I was a bit harsh earlier today," Kate pulled up a chair at the table and cracked an apologetic smile, "but just the mention of your brother's name sends me off the deep end."

He reached for a jar of turmeric and sprinkled a half-teaspoon of the orangey powder into the food processor. "What are you reading?" he said, indicating a paperback at his wife's elbow.

"G.K. Chesterton... Orthodoxy." She took the crushed lemon rinds and deposited them in the garbage. "A Christian writer... very unusual."

"In what way?"

"Chesterton said that children possess endless vitality. They want thing repeated and unchanged."

"True enough," Jason confirmed.

"Here, let me read a passage." She thumbed through to a section near the middle of the book. "It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." She abruptly laid the book aside.

"No, keep reading," He insisted, but his wife began tidying the soiled counter and showed no inclination to return to the book.

Jason shook a dash of cumin into the mix. From the refrigerator he located a package of red peppers in vegetable bin and brought them to the table, where he sliced them methodically lengthwise into thick slivers. He was considering his niece and the rhubarb. How many times had she sprung that insanely corny joke on him? A thousand, ten thousand?

The childish prank never got tiresome. Each time he came to visit, Adrian set the trap. A child's sacred ritual. Pure magic! Do it again! Do it again! Do it again!

Jason placed the peppers on a baking sheet, skin-side up and slid them under the broiler for ten minutes until the skin charred. Placing the slices in a resealable plastic bag, he set it aside until the vegetable steamed sufficiently to remove the peel in one piece. Dumping the bright flesh into the food processor, he reduced the pepper to a fluffy froth.

"Here, taste." Jason tore a slice of pita bread into a wedge and scooped a generous helping of the coffee colored dip.

"Yes, that's delicious. Real tasty!" Slipping her arms around his waist, she pulled him close. "Fourth of July's right around the corner. If you hunt down your long-lost niece, invite her over for the holiday. We'll cook up traditional fare... hot dogs, cheeseburgers, potato salad."

"And red pepper hummus," Jason quipped.

* * * * *

"I should have done something?"

They were lying in bed with the lights out, Jason comfortably nestled up against his wife's rump, an arm slung around her waist. Kate only half-heard the unsolicited remark. "What did you say?"

"Back then... before Adrian fell off the edge of the earth, I should have done something."

"Your brother's toxic," she replied acidly. "Everything he touches turns to shit."

"True enough but I should have done something."

"Like what?"

"I dunno. She was a dark-eyed innocent. What's happened over the years... it felt like a Biblical curse."

"You're beating yourself up over nothing." The room fell silent. Finally his wife rolled over and, wrapping her arms around his back, pulled him close. "The proper thing to do," she said soberly, "would have been to remove Adrian from the maternity ward the day of her delivery and place the newborn with a decent family."

* * * * *

Saturday morning, Jason was up early and on the road. Half an hour later he pulled into the parking lot of a shabby, split rib concrete building with a sign that read Flanagan's Medical Supplies. Killing the engine, he went inside. A portly middle-aged man with sagging jowls and a bald head looked up from behind the counter. "My kid brother, Jason... what brings you here?"

"Nothing special." Jason glanced around the cluttered space. A collection of hydraulic Hoyer lifts were neatly stacked along the far wall. That was new. The oxygen canisters – portable and fixed had been repositioned further down the room. Respiratory care was a major part of Jack's business. "How are the girls?"

"Good, good..."

"And Jasmine?"

Jack waved an arm, a peremptory gesture of disgust. "Royal pain in the ass... that's what she is. Second wife ain't no goddamn better than the first."

"Your daughter's back in town."

"So I heard," he replied.

"You haven't seen Adrian?"

"I'm the father," Jack shot back abrasively. "It's her responsibility to chase me down."

Jack Flanagan rubbed his flabby face with a mottled hand. "The feds hit me with another, stinking RAT-STATS." When there was no immediate reply, he added, "You familiar with the term?"

"Yeah, I know what it means." When the authorities did a Medicare audit and found discrepancies, they used an algorithm, a mathematical equation, to predict the likelihood of the event recurring over a broad span of time, usually a year. If Jack Flanagan inflated a bill by several hundred dollars and averaged seventy similar claims each year, he would have hypothetically defrauded the tax payers out of fourteen thousand dollars!

"How much this time?"

"Three hundred big ones."

"Tough luck."

Jack Flanagan smirked. "I'll survive."

"Why can't you keep your nose clean?"

"I didn't do nothin' wrong," he blustered, running all the words together. "It was a minor indiscretion... a bookkeeping error."

An elderly woman with a pronounced limp hobbled into the store. Balancing on a three-pronged cane, she picked her way haltingly to the aisle with the motorized wheelchairs.

Between the digitalized parenteral feeding equipment, inhalation therapy supplies, hospital beds, wheelchairs and portable oxygen, there must have been a quarter of a million dollars in inventory littering the showroom floor. And that didn't even take into account what his brother had squirreled away in the rear warehouse. With Jack, being honest earned you a comfortable living but was never enough, certainly not when the only valid crime was being stupid enough to get caught.

Reaching home, Jason found his wife puttering in the rock garden. "How'd your meeting with Jack go?"

Reaching down, Jason grabbed a clump of velvety blue lavender and let the delicate blossoms slip through his hand. Raising the fingers to his nose, he inhaled the bittersweet, cloying scent. "About as well as might be expected."

His wife gestured with a flick of her head. "Did you notice the visitors?" The ripe lavender buds were loaded with golden honeybees foraging for nectar. As they descended, helicopter fashion, onto a pale blossom, the delicate pastel stem dipped precariously.

Reaching down, she fondled an emerald green dahlia. The blood red flowers wouldn't emerge for another month or more toward the tail end of the season when all the other plants, except for a handful of hardy plants like sedum asters and toad lilies, had already played themselves out. Kate slowly rose from a crouched position next to the dahlias. "Are you going to see Adrian?"

"Later tonight."

"I could come along for moral support."

"No, it's not necessary."

* * * * *

After the evening meal, Jason drove to the Brentwood Nursing Home and sat in the car with the engine idling for a good twenty minutes before mustering the nerve to enter the building. "Adrian Flanagan?"

"Over in the west wing." The receptionist gestured in the direction of a passageway. "Check in with the nurse's station at the far end of the hall."

The Brentwood Nursing Home had a distinct odor—an odd mix of body wastes, Phisohex and medicinal ointments. Several bedridden women in adjoining rooms were moaning in a repetitive, sing-song fashion. As Jason passed the elevator, an emaciated gentleman dressed in a white johnny rose from his wheelchair setting off a shrill beep. A nurses aide came running and eased the fellow back down. As soon as his withered rump made contact with the padded leather seat, the hidden monitor fell silent.

At the nurse's station a colored woman was writing in a patient's chart while a male nurse sorted pills in thimble-sized paper cups on a medicine tray. A stocky, attractive woman with dark hair and a pink smock exited a room carrying a carton of juice. The worker hurried past toward the nursing station. "Adrian?"

The woman abruptly stopped and came back to where Jason was standing. Staring at him for the longest time, her features dissolved in a wispy smile. "Uncle Jason!" She leaned forward and, as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world, brushed her lips across his cheek.

At the nurse's station a telephone rang. The fellow with the pill tray was locking the medicine cabinet with a brass key. For a split second, it was like they were back on the sofa at his brother's house. "I'm off duty in ten minutes," she instructed in hushed tones. "Wait for me outside in the parking lot."

Like an apparition, Adrian floated off down the corridor disappearing into an adjacent room. Jason went outside and sat in his car. He felt mildly disoriented, as though time had begun flowing in the wrong direction, bleeding back into the past and forward into an as yet, unfathomable future - Einstein's theory of relativity turned upside down. A dozen years flushed down the toilet as though nothing had changed in the interim.

A little after seven o'clock, a steady stream of employees began dribbling out of the building. "Wanna grab a coffee?" Jason asked.

Adrian shook her head. "Got to get home to my little girl. I only live a few miles down the road. You can follow in your car."

Jason went back to where he parked. Adrian was a mother. A rumor to that effect circulated for years. At nineteen, she delivered a baby out of wedlock but signed away maternal rights at birth. A month later she was pregnant with a second child. Sadly, like everything else, the ephemeral truth lay buried beneath a bruising avalanche of tall tales, hearsay, melodrama and patently bad fiction.

Adrian lived on the second floor of a modest apartment complex in the Maryville section of town. When they opened the door, a small dog barking hysterically rushed to greet them. "My baby," Adrian said by way of explanation. In the kitchen Adrian removed a plastic container from the refrigerator. Scooping a serving into a bowl, she warmed it in the microwave. Before offering the food to the dog, she held the container under Jason's nose. "Bowtie macaroni, sweet potato, peas, carrots, corn, sliced apples, chicken livers and ground turkey."

The dog, a dirty gray shiatsu, devoured a chunk of turkey then went to work on the macaroni. Wolfing down the entire bowl in less than thirty seconds, it licked its chops, and then began rushing about the kitchen with its corkscrew tail arched over the hind quarters.

"You cook your own dog food from scratch?"

Adrian nodded. "How's my dad doing?" she asked.

"Okay. We sometimes get together at the holidays," Jason replied stiffly. "He had three more daughters with his second wife."

"So I heard," Adrian's lips turned up ever so slightly in a dry smile. "Are they nice?"

Jason hesitated. "The first two are obnoxious, but the youngest, Dawn, is rather sweet... reminds me of you."

Adrian scooped the dog up in her arms and nuzzled its face with her chin. "My father got himself into a legal mess a while back. Whatever came of that?"

"He beat the rap... walked away with a lousy fine and slap on the wrist."

"Sounds about right." The wistful smile lingered, but now her eyes turned flinty hard. "What have you heard about me over the years?"

The question caught Jason off guard. "A lot of hooey... lies and innuendo."

"Lies and innuendo..." She lobbed the words back at him like a tennis player parrying a well-placed shot. "And how do you know it isn't true?"

"Other family surely heard I'm back in town," Adrian continued after an uncomfortable silence, "but you're the only one with the decency to look me up." Adrian refilled the dog's water bowl and watched as Mitzi gulped her fill. She put the kettle on the stove and, when the water sent up a wheezy hiss, poured tea and placed a plate of sugar cookies on the table.

"This young lady," Jason reached for a physically challenged doll propped inelegantly on top of the sugar tin, "is she -"

"The only thing of value," Adrian interrupted with a sardonic smile, "I salvaged when my parents split up." "Did you know that Ruth Handler, a middle-aged businesswoman from Montana, originally invented the Barbie doll?"

When there was no response, she continued, "During a European trip Handler came across a German doll named Bild Lilli." The chesty novelty item wasn't exactly what Handler had in mind for a new product, but she purchased three of them anyway.

As Adrian explained it, the doll was based on a popular comic strip character. Lilli was a working girl who knew what she wanted and wasn't above using men to get it. At first, the executives at Mattel, where Handler worked, didn't like the idea so the businesswoman put up her own money to bring the doll to market. The Barbie doll made its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York and sold three hundred fifty thousand the first year!

"Is there any particular reason you're telling me this?" Jason sipped at his lukewarm tea.

"On a merchandiser's whim, the doll could reinvent herself... take on an endless variety of extravagant personas from astronaut to medical doctor. She held a pilot's license, and operated commercial airliners in addition to serving as a flight attendant. In the late nineties, she even drove formula one race cars on the nascar circuit!" Adrian became animated as she spoke. "Later, Barbie and her longtime boyfriend, Ken, decided to split up and she settled in with Blaine, an Australian surfer dude."

"All of which proved what?"

"Despite endless permutations, Barbie was essentially an airhead – a vapid, egomaniacal, anorexic, over-sexed numbskull. But none of that mattered in the grand scheme of things, because Barbara Millicent Roberts - AKA Barbie – was every adolescent girl's role model. In the miraculous landscape of make believe, every woman edits the script of her own destiny."

Jason rose and went to where she was sitting. Wrapping his arms around his favorite niece's shoulders, he pulled her close. "We're having a barbecue Fourth of July weekend... just me and your aunt. Will you join us?"

"Yes, I'd like that very much."

"Uncle Jason," she murmured as she accompanied him to the entryway. "Do you think the rain..."

back to Table of Contents

The Hornback Alligator Belt

A squat man sauntered directly to the bar at the Marriot Hotel and ordered a boilermaker. "Chivas Regal... not that rotgut you pass off on regular customers," he called in a cautionary tone as the bartender went off to fix his drink. The man, who spoke with a thick Scottish brogue, wore a tuxedo, five onyx studs decorating the front of his pleated shirt below a black bowtie. A strong chin complimented fair-skinned, boyish features.

The dapper fellow turned to the man seated at his right. "What you drinking?"

Ralph Tucker lifted a glass of brownish liquid. Half the ice had already melted away. "Coke."

The Scotsman's dark eyes narrowed to thin slits. "A non-drinker?"

"Just trying to keep a clear head," Ralph clarified.

The man's lips curled in a conspiratorial grin. "Woman troubles."

His pronouncement had the sting of incontrovertible certitude. Ralph nodded once but held his tongue. "I'm with the band. The two men shook hands just as the bartender, a lanky, middle-age fellow with sagging jowls and a doleful expression, returned with the drink. "We're playing a wedding... next room over." Having said that, he reached for the shot glass, tossed the liquor down his throat then followed up with a stiff swig of beer.

"Isn't it a bit early to be hitting the sauce, if you're working all night?"

The man's dark eyes sparkled as he wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. "My family hails from Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands." He lowered his voice several decibels. "Unlike the stumblebum Irish, who can't hold their liquor, women, paychecks, land or much of anything else, we Scotsmen suffer no such difficulties."

"Look here." The man extended his right hand, palm down over the bar. The stubby fingers never trembled. Reaching into his rear pocket with his free hand, he removed a pair of metal brushes and began tapping out a percussive rhythm at breakneck speed on the mahogany surface of the bar. After several fancy flourishes he returned the brushes to his pocket, polished off what was left of the beer and ordered another whiskey with beer chaser. "Paddy Macgregor," the musician introduced himself.

"Our friend's got woman problems," Paddy announced when the sallow-faced bartender glanced up.

"No, it's not like that," Ralph insisted. "Twenty years ago a woman threw me over for a guy with a six-figure income. This past June, her husband got nabbed embezzling funds at an investment firm. Following the indictment, the chump dropped dead of a heart attack, leaving massive debts, a mortgage stretching six months in arrears and a pile of dirty underwear."

"Aw crap!" Paddy sipped judiciously at the neat whiskey and ran a tongue over his lips. "When was the last time you seen this two-timing rat?"

"Over twenty years ago," Ralph replied meekly.

The bartender's bushy eyes brows heaved in disbelief. "Two decades you carried a torch for some money-grubbing bitch?"

"It's not like that," Ralph protested.

"Maybe she was a dazzling beauty?" Paddy offered.

"Not especially. But she had a reasonably nice figure."

"My ex-wife," the bartender leaned closer, "was partial to dirty movies... mostly soft porn, not the triple X variety." Even though the man behind the bar was a good ten years younger than the drummer, his wearisome manner and dreary horse face made him seem considerably older. "For the few lousy years we were together, we shared a common interest."

Ralph shrugged philosophically. "We didn't have much in common, but sometimes you love a woman for no apparent reason. The romance defies logic." He sliced the air with the flat of his hand trying to extract a tidbit of coherent sense from his fractured thoughts. "This woman... over the years I never properly got her out of my system."

"I ain't so particular." The drummer lifted his beer and studied the amber liquid briefly before draining the second glass. "Anyone of the bridesmaids in tonight's wedding party, with the exception of the maid of honor, could satisfy my basic needs."

"Ditto!" The bartender screwed up his face in masochistic angst. He bent over the counter assuming a confidential tone. "Between alimony and shared assets, my spouse cleaned me out in the divorce settlement." He crooked his head to the side, addressing his remarks specifically for Ralph's benefit. "I don't need no money-grubbing femme fatale to fill in the missing pieces or make me whole. You're problem, if you don't mind me saying so, is that you're too damn nice."

"C-H-U-M-P!" With a staccato flourish, Paddy Macgregor spelled the word out, leaning hard on each letter for dramatic effect. "Once you start indulging a dame, you lose the upper hand." Paddy threw an arm around Ralphs shoulder and pulled him close. "But don't take it personal. I'm just trying to school you in the ways of the flesh."

Ralph first learned of Becky Steinberg's domestic debacle from a mutual friend, Sid Bentley. It was Sid who told him about the indictment and Becky's precipitous fall from grace. The news caught him like a sucker punch to the gut. "The woman's down on her luck," Sid noted. "Like that pathetic character in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth." When no comment was forthcoming, Sid, who was as much an insatiable reader as gossipmonger, observed acidly, "That nineteenth century novel where the New York socialite plummets into abject poverty."

"Never read the book," Ralph replied.

"Under the circumstances," his friend added, "maybe you should keep it that way."

Grabbing the half-empty beer, Paddy Macgregor slid off his stool. "Gotta finish setting up my drums."

When he was gone, the bartender pushed a plastic bowl of pretzels in front of Ralph. A minute passed in total silence. "Ever seen an alligator leather belt?"

The question was a frivolous non sequitur, but the bartender took no notice. "Yeah, they're stupid looking and cost a goddamn fortune."

Ralph reached for a pretzel but thought better of it and pulled his hand away. "Ever seen an Orvis, genuine hornback alligator belt?"

* * * * *

"No, Ralph. I can't marry you and stop pestering me. It gets tiresome." They were standing in the women's department of Ann Taylor at the Chestnut Hill Mall in Newton, Massachusetts. Big boned with prominent cheeks that sloped precipitously to a narrow, petulant jaw, Becky Steinberg – her maiden name was Shapiro - was the sort of girl most men would reward with an appreciative passing glance, nothing more. She walked flatfooted with her wide shoulders thrown back. The weight of her big-boned body rested on the heels as though a metal pole had been taped from the nape of the neck straight down to the tailbone.

Becky Steinberg dangled a skinny, emerald strand with a gold clasp under Ralph's nose. The Orvis genuine hornback alligator retailed for five hundred ninety-eight dollars.

Six hundred smackers!

That was more money than he could earn fresh out of college at an entry-level salary! And the belt wasn't even all that attractive. Ralph swallowed hard. With her predilection towards plumpness, Becky's waist would swell beyond the outermost loop by early spring and then what? Did she try to sell the absurdly expensive designer original on EBay or through an upscale consignment shop? "You're gonna blow all that money on a stupid belt."

"No," she returned the pricey strap to the rack. "I already have one... picked it up at Bergdorf Goodman when I was in New York last month. I'm just trying to make a point."

I already have one... picked it up at Bergdorf Goodman when I was in New York last month... Becky's father owned a kosher butcher shop in Manhattan. The man had given his only daughter an American Express Platinum credit card three years earlier when she went off to college. Mr. Shapiro didn't care how often she used it. Each month he paid the balance down to nothing. The tacit agreement was that she marry well \- that is to say, the prospective groom should arrive at the altar with a healthy investment portfolio because, once the marriage was consecrated, the father-in-law's American Express credit card became defunct.

"I'm addicted to fancy-schmancy." Becky ran her fingertips over the stippled surface of the Orvis original one last time, caressing the elegant hide.

How many times had they had this conversation in the last six month? Becky had never agreed to an exclusive relationship. She dated other men regularly and probably slept with them as well. Over the February vacation she joined her family at a ski resort in Vale, Colorado. For stress reduction, she booked regular appointments with a reiki masseuse or jetted off to Club Med vacations in Cancun.

All this on a part-time job and her father's largess.

"I love to spend money," she quipped. "It's part of my genetic makeup." "A shopping spree," she added as an afterthought, "is like a trip to Mecca."

Ralph wanted to point out that most Moslems could only afford to make the trip once in a lifetime, but clearly that wasn't her intent. "You won't marry me?"

She leaned over and kissed him playfully on the side of the mouth. "No and, for the hundredth time, stop asking."

They were back out in the main concourse of the mall where a jazz quartet from the local high school was playing a Sonny Rollin's original, Oleo, on a makeshift bandstand. "All this shopping makes me horny. When we get back to my apartment, I'm going to do obscene and unspeakable things to your body."

The saxophonist finished the main theme and now the pianist was negotiating the circle of fourths pattern that composed the bridge of the lightening fast, bebop tune. Ralph ignored the lewd invitation. "As soon as you meet Mr. Moneybags," he groused, "I'll get the bum's rush."

"That's a bit crass." She grabbed his hand, raised it to her lips and planted a mushy kiss squarely in the center of the palm before folding the fingers back on themselves. "We get along great and always have a ton of laughs." As the last eight measures of the standard wound down, the reed player launched into an angular, improvised solo - pentatonic scales and broken arpeggios that ventured away from the original tonal center before the rhythm section, which had laid out for several measures, attacked the tune with renewed fury. "I'm horny as hell," she whispered under her breath. "Let's go home and get raunchy."

* * * * *

Ten minutes later Paddy Macgregor returned to the lounge. His eyes coated with a glossy film, he seemed less steady on his legs. "Hit me again, Freddy."

"So what's the decision?" the drummer pressed.

"Still weighing my options."

Paddy pulled the bowtie away from the collar and undid the topmost button on his tuxedo shirt. Somewhere between the bandstand and the bar, he had discarded the fancy jacket. "Yer former goilfriend... she cheated on you."

"We never had an exclusive relationship," Ralph qualified.

"Likegeysed," the drummer was beginning to garble his words in a verbal salad, "the slutty bitch donyadoity."

"What I'd do...," the bartended sniggered. "I'd visit the widow on the pretext of offering condolences... lay it on thick. Tell her what a swell gal she was and how she didn't deserve all this grief. Then I'd waltz her into the bedroom and screw her mortal brains out!"

"Count me in on plan A!" Paddy paused just long enough to upend the shot glass, emptying the contents down his gullet. The drummer slapped Ralph on the back and winked his bleary-eyed, moral support before rushing back to the bandstand.

Ralph glanced up at the bartender. "How long have you known that man?"

"Paddy's been with the house band five years now. He's an alcoholic in denial."

"Can he make it through the night?"

Freddy shook his head vehemently. "Not hardly. I'm afraid that demonstration of fancy brushwork earlier this evening may have been Paddy's high-water mark."

The bartender threw the towel he had been polishing the countertop with down on the brass rail and lurched out from behind the bar. Freddy led the way two doors down to the Emerald Room function hall, where the band was negotiating a brisk waltz, Sunrise, Sunset. Seated behind the drums Paddy Macgregor was laying down a raggedy beat with only his right drumstick and left foot. The other hand hung limply at his side and his head slouched at a precipitous angle, the chin resting on his chest.

As they were heading back to the lounge, Ralph asked, "If you found yourself in my predicament, what would you do?"

"Aw, shit, I dunno!" Freddie spoke in the raggedy, disaffected drawl of a man who had come up on the short end of the stick more often than he cared to remember. "Life's a crapshoot. The dame's probably got a drawer full of hornback crocodile belts in her dresser drawer, so why lose any sleep over the selfish twit?" Freddy raised a hand in the air, indicating that he had something further to add but was struggling with his thoughts. "They got a term for women like her... hedonists. Yeah, that's it! Someone who puts their personal pleasure ahead of everyone else's." Freddy seemed particularly pleased with his appraisal. "She got what she wanted and don't deserve your sympathy."

"Hedonist," Ralph repeated. "Yes, that's true enough. She sure as hell indulged herself."

"Hedonists... they're worse than atheists," Freddy confirmed, "because they got no scruples, no morals." His droopy face convulsed with a bewildering mix of conflicted emotions. "Worst case scenario...what if you went back with this woman and she treated you same as before?"

"Wouldn't make a solitary bit of difference."

"What if squandered your money and was unfaithful as a Babylonian whore?"

"I'd forgive her on a daily basis and thank God for the privilege of a second chance at happiness."

The bartender gawked at him in disbelief. "In my capacity here at the hotel, I meet tons of unusual folk - psychopaths, weirdoes, homicidal maniacs, perverts, riffraff and assorted, eccentric whack jobs," Freddy ventured, "but I ain't never met anyone like you."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Ralph settled his tab and wandered out into the lobby. He dialed a number on his cell phone then, after a brief conversation, left the hotel and drove across town.

* * * * *

Rebecca Steinberg led Ralph into the living room, where the forty-watt bulb in a Tiffany lamp bathed the room in murky gloom. A soul in transit, all the woman's worldly possessions were in boxes, under covers or in profound disarray. She pulled a white bed sheet off the leather sofa. "I didn't come to gloat," Ralph confessed self-consciously.

"I appreciate your candor." She gestured to the sofa and he sat down. "What's it been... twenty years?"

"Closer to twenty-five," he confirmed.

"Seeing a friendly face is so nice," Becky noted with a papery-thin smile. "Following the indictment, most of my former, A-list friends deleted my number from their cell phones."

Ralph glanced around the dreary, airless room. The furnishings were all high end - high end and high maintenance. A forty-inch, plasma TV with a wireless hookup to an array of quadraphonic Bose speakers hung on the wall over the fire place. The custom-built bar was trimmed with ebony and claret-colored rosewood. The exotic woods alone must have set the deceased back a small fortune - not that household expenditures concerned the former Mr. Steinberg any more. "Have you eaten?"

"Don't have much of an appetite lately."

Ralph rose to his feet and rearranged the silk bed sheet back over the couch. The room felt more like a mausoleum. "Maybe we could go somewhere and grab a coffee. I know you're busy, what with the foreclosure so I won't keep you."

He shouldn't have said that.

Becky had never mentioned anything about the bank. He learned that unsavory tidbit from Sid Bentley, the mutual friend. At some point in the near future, a marshal would show up at the front door to put Rebecca Steinberg out on the curb. The woman had exhausted every legal loophole. The checking account was drained dry. Having pawned all jewelry and disposable belongings, nothing remained.

"I'm going to live with my daughter in San Diego, while I get my affairs in order." There was no reply. "At this late hour, any options are fairly limited. The bank intends to change the locks and board up the windows by the middle of the month." It wasn't so much a house as a mini-mansion with kidney-shaped swimming pool, wraparound deck and two-car garage. "A week from Tuesday, I'll set the keys on the kitchen table, close the door behind me and never look back."

The sun was setting casting an even gloomier pall on the soon-to-be-abandoned property. Pulling into the driveway ten minutes earlier, Ralph noticed the lawn overgrown with crabgrass and dandelions - this in a community where a family who didn't schedule monthly visits from ChemLawn, was considered pariah! The swanky pool had been drained, the bottom coated with a greenish scum of dead algae and rotting maple leaves. "What did you do after college?" she asked, deflecting the conversation.

"I opened a medical supply business. We sell motorized wheelchairs, hospital beds, inhalation therapy equipment."

"You've done well?" Becky seemed genuinely pleased by his success.

"We staffed a third location this past August."

"My husband, may he rest in peace, was a first-class schmuck." Her resignation was palpable.

"You mentioned coffee... give me a minute to freshen up." Becky disappeared into the bedroom, emerging a short time later wearing a silk blouse and skirt. She had powdered her face, adding blush, where a mild case of acne back to high school left residual scarring. "Do you remember these beauties?" she quipped, placing a hand under her sagging breasts. The tone was humorous, not the least bit salacious.

"I remember," Ralph replied soberly.

"After breastfeeding three daughters, there's been considerable wear and tear." The bluntness caught him off guard. Becky Steinberg was already pudgy when they first met, but her breasts were... Well, there were no proper words to describe God's penultimate creations.

* * * * *

At the coffee shop Ralph learned that Becky's father passed away eight years earlier. Mr. Shapiro had mercifully been spared the humiliation of his daughter's precipitous fall from grace. A younger brother, Joel, showed no aptitude for kosher foods, retail or much of anything else. Ralph vaguely remembered Joel as the pampered, ben ha'bachoor, Jewish first-born son, who stood to inherit the family fortunes. But as Becky explained over a cup of mocha latte cappuccino, the ben ha'bachoor proved a feckless ne'er-do-well who flitted aimlessly from one ill-suited job to the next.

So much for the Shapiro family dynasty!

"I want to show you something," Becky announced when they arrived back at the house. The late afternoon light was fading to murky gray as she led the way to the back yard. In recent days, the November weather had turned unseasonably warm with temperatures hovering in the low sixties. Behind a stand of diminutive box elders that resembled a mishmash of shrubs rather than bona fide trees a rickety Langstroth beehive was propped up on cinder blocks.

Originally painted eggshell white, the rectangular boxes, which were peeling profusely, exuded an aura of profound neglect. A handful of bees milled about the landing strip. "Eight years ago Howie comes home from work one day and tells me that a broker at the firm is an avid beekeeper. The guy manages upwards of a hundred hives. In addition to collecting honey he rents the bees out each spring to local cranberry bog farmers, who need their crops pollinated."

"Howie buys a bee suit, calfskin gloves, a smoker... al the glitzy paraphernalia plus a fifteen-thousand-strong plywood box of Italian honeybees." As Becky explained it, the bees were energetic and spirited. Every day they left the nest to forage for nectar in nearby fields and by late June filled the hive with ten frames of golden syrup.

"Howie removed a couple of frames from the hive," Becky continued. "He claimed that the bees had more than enough honey to suit their needs and that if we didn't take preventative measures, the colony might be inclined to swarm."

Bending over, she cleared a handful of weeds obstructing the mouth of the hive. "He carried the frames into the kitchen, mashed the wax into a soggy lump and ran it through a mesh strainer."

"So you had plenty of honey that first season?" Ralph noted.

"Enough to last six months or more," Becky confirmed. "But Howie was obsessed. All summer long, he kept pilfering from the hive, so by Labor Day, the bees were lucky if they had twenty, lousy pounds of honey to last through a New England winter."

"How much would they normally need?"

"Ninety minimum." "Did I mention that, from when they first arrived, the honeybees were an utterly contented lot? Becky made a wry face. "Once they caught on that my husband was playing fast and loose with their honey stores, their blissful mood changed. Bamboozled, flimflammed, conned out of their hard labor, they sensed that the gathering season was too-far gone to recoup the losses and became frantic... desperate."

"Their fate was sealed." Ralph anticipated her thoughts. As Becky explained things, by mid-August Howie was persona no grata. If the stocky man with the salt and pepper goatee ventured within fifty feet of the hive, the vindictive bees chased him off with homicidal rage.

The winter that Howie became a beekeeper was particularly harsh with several nor'easters back to back and a protracted icy cold spell that petered out in early May. The bees starved then froze. "When we removed the top cover the day after Mother's Day, it was not a pretty sight. A mountain of moldy carcasses... that's what we found."

"Howie blustered, 'I'll spruce things up, replace the damaged frames and order a new box of bees.'" "In all fairness, he did clean things up a bit but never got around to ordering the bees."

"He didn't replenish the hive?"

"No," Becky confirmed. "His interest in beekeeping never extended beyond his first failed effort."

Ralph gestured at the insects flitting about the entrance to the hive. "I don't understand."

"Seven years the hive remained empty. Year after year, nothing. The day Howie dropped dead, a swarm of feral bees found its way here. Given how he had mistreated both his business clients and the honeybees, I viewed their arrival as a cosmic joke."

"Or an omen," Ralph quipped. He gestured at the twin boxes stacked together. "How much honey have the feral bees gathered?"

"I never took a drop... not a single frame, so they should have more than enough." Becky made a disagreeable face. "But it won't make a bit of difference because, when the bank officials walk the property next week and discovers the hive, they'll call an exterminator."

"Hadn't thought of that." Ralph shook his head in disgust.

"Sometimes in the late afternoon I come out here and watch the bees... their comings and goings." Becky spoke in a matter-of-fact, unruffled tone, directing her remarks at the shaggy hemlock trees on the far side of the lawn. "Honeybees are very community-minded. The welfare of the colony trumps all other considerations. They don't know from hedge funds or sub-prime realty."

* * * * *

With a flick of her head, Becky indicated a copper urn nestled on the fireplace mantle. "Meet my former spouse."

"Howie would have preferred a cemetery plot, but prematurely cashed in his life insurance policy." As though a constraining presence had to be dispensed with, Becky relocated her husband's ashes to a cardboard box labeled 'cutlery and dining room furnishings'.

She did not immediately return to where Ralph was standing. Rather, the woman studied the crumpled box with an opaque smile. Dropping down on her haunches, she undid the flaps and removed the urn. Uncapping the metal lid, she held the contents under his nose. "What do you see?" The sardonic smile deepened.

"Chalky dust," Ralph replied.

Becky clapped the lip down with an irreverent thud. "The third time I caught him cheating, I threatened divorce. Howie begged me not to leave. The other woman... she was nothing more than an aberration, a momentary lapse of good judgment."

"We went for counseling. After six months, the therapist took me aside. He says, 'Your husband's a phallic character disorder. People like Howie are narcissistic, opportunistic, self-indulgent... Hope for the best but plan for the worse.'"

"There's no therapy... medication?"

"The psychologist," Becky continued, "explained that the condition was structural."

"Strange choice of words," Ralph interjected.

"Structural," she elaborated, "like a cornerstone or load bearing wall in a thirty-story high rise." She cradled the urn in both hands. Becky smiled bleakly, a sad, disheartened broken expression of her current circumstances. "When I married Howie, he seemed such a swell guy." Retracing her steps, she sealed her husband's remains away in the cardboard box, running several beads of masking tape over the top for good measure.

Ralph placed a hand on her shoulder. "Come spend a week with me for old-time sake. We can wipe the slate clean... a new beginning. If nothing comes of it, go live with your daughter in California. No one need know."

Becky took a deep breath and let the air out sharply. "You want Romeo and Juliette?" The tone was more acerbic now. "We're too old for that adolescent mush."

The single bulb drenched the room in a dreary pall. Covered by a moss green comforter, a Steinway, baby grand piano rested near the bay window. "Still play?"

"Not in years."

Ralph recalled a rather eccentric interpretation of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the melody in the right hand overpowered by booming arpeggios that transformed the lilting, gossamer tune into a bombastic riot that had more in common with roaring twenties ragtime than classical music. "You still wear those outlandish belts?"

"Which belts?"

"The ones fashioned from alligator skin."

Becky's features dissolved in an impish grin. "Not in years. They're passé. I've moved on to other, equally garish accessories." She said nothing else for the better part of a minute. "I treated you badly, always putting myself first, and now you're willing to settle for the dribs and drabs of a squandered life."

"I don't see it that way."

She lowered her eyes. In the hallway a Kieninger grandfather clock recessed in a quarter-sawn, white oak cabinet stroked the hour. Edging closer, Becky placed three fingers on his chest, maintaining a safe but manageable distance. "A week for old-time sake?" she repeated the earlier offer. "How about a package deal?" Her fingers finally came to rest flat on his flannel shirt.

"I don't follow you."

"I need a safe haven... a sanctuary for the feral bees, either your place or someplace where no one will cause them harm."

Ralph's brain, which had temporarily shut down with the offbeat ultimatum, kicked into overdrive. He turned away, went and stood in front of the clock. "The mouth of the hive could be sealed shut with sheets of crumpled newspaper." He directed his words at the oak paneling. "Other than the front entrance, are there any other openings?"

"No, just the one."

His mind shifted back and forth in rhythm with the brass pendulum. "The best time to move a beehive is..." He left the sentence dangling.

"At night... once the temperature drops, they retreat to the interior and cluster together for warmth."

"Yes, but it's not that cold out," he countered, "and the insects are still active. What about the drive?"

After a brief silence, Becky replied, "Bees are cold-blooded Turn on the air conditioner and let the car cool down. They won't be able to fly."

"Or sting," Ralph added rounding off her thought." He returned to where she was standing and placed his lips alongside her ear. "I'll block off the hive entrance and then back the car up alongside the box elders. In the meanwhile, why don't you grab a toothbrush and pack an overnight case.

Becky's nostrils gently flared. The eyelids drooped to half-mast. "I won't be long locking things up."

back to Table of Contents

Synchronicity

"Haaaaah!" Marie Brewster, let out a brief whimper like a mortally injured animal before slumping to the ground unconscious. When she came to, a rotund, bearded man with pebbly teeth and a bald spot on the back of his head was bent over the middle-aged woman fanning her with a fully-illustrated Kaufman's Field Guide for Birds of North America.

"Feeling better?" The hairy man eased the woman to a sitting position with her back supported against a white birch. The unfortunate incident happened this way. Marie had gone for a stroll at the Oak Knoll bird sanctuary a mile down the road from where she was visiting with her brother's family in Brandenburg. Meandering down the rock-strewn trail to an open area fronting on a lake peppered with patches of pastel-colored algae, Marie was admiring a chokeberry bush ripe with crimson fruit. Suddenly, a man's voice, gruff and menacing, called out, "Don't move!" The woman, who under the best of circumstances suffered from a myriad of insecurities, felt every molecule of breath crushed from her lungs as her legs turned rubbery and mind went blank.

"A Baltimore oriole," the man sputtered, "was perched on a branch no more than ten feet from where you were standing, and I was trying to focus my birding binoculars for a better view."

A Lhasa apso that scampered into the brush when the woman collapsed returned. Nestling in her lap the manicy pooch with the pushed in snout and pronounced overbite began licking the woman's face. "No need to explain." Marie tentatively touched her scalp. The ebony comb holding her hair in place had listed to one side at a cockeyed angle. With the faintest hint of a double chin, the pudgy blonde had surely been a knockout in her youth. Now, in her middle years, she had become more matronly."Since childhood, I've always been prone to silly uncertainties and fainting spells."

Gabe helped the woman to her feet then glanced up into the topmost branches of a leafy polar. "They come up this way every spring to mate."

"Who does?"

"The orioles," he clarified. "The birds summer here, hatch their chicks and migrate south again to Florida and Central America for the winter. Don't suppose you caught a glimpse -"

Marie raised a hand fretfully, indicating that she had missed the sighting. "Fainting in a bird sanctuary... I'm so embarrassed!" An elderly couple with expensive-looking hiking gear and matching safari hats wandered down the trail. "He's over there now," Gabe observed.

Marie squinted uncertainly. From the outset they seemed to be communicating at cross purposes. "Who is?"

"The oriole. Here, see for yourself." Gabe handed her the binoculars. "Over there... in the topmost branch of the sugar maple."

"How beauuuutiful!" Marie gushed. The bird's sides and belly were drenched in tangerine hues, the sooty-black wings edged with distinctive, eggshell white markings. For a day that started out like a Greek tragedy things were getting noticeably better.

"I recognize you from somewhere," Gabe replied, "but I'm not sure where."

"Marie Brewster," the woman replied extending a manicured hand. She had shifted to a rustic bench fashioned from a block of maple near the path. "That's my stage name, when I'm performing with the Brandenburg Theater Troupe."

"Yes, of course!" Gabe slid down on the bench next to her. The dog, which had curled up in her lap, growled briefly sending up a throaty protest but quickly lost interest. "I saw you in the Alice in Wonderland production several years ago. You played the White Queen." His smile quickly faded. "I brought my wife. It was our last evening out together. She passed away a few months later."

Reaching out she patted him on the forearm. "I'm so sorry."

"A phantom limb," he added as a bitter afterthought. "The mourning process... even on good days, that's what it feels like."

Marie breathed out heavily and her features darkened. "I, too, recently just lost a loved one."

"Was it a prolong illness?"

"Infidelity... I caught her with another woman." In response to Gabe's bewildered expression, Marie added, "I'm gay."

He paused just long enough to digest the information. "A lesbian thespian?"

"A rather droll choice of language but, yes, I suppose." The blonde reached up and reset the hair comb. "Does my sexual affiliation bother you?"

"No, not particularly."

"I only mention it because some people consider homosexuals freaks of nature."

Gabe opened his mouth but could think of nothing to say.

The Lhasa suddenly bolted from her lap and began scooting on his hind quarter across the grass. The dog settled down but almost immediately tucked his hindquarters forward and began scooting with the front paws in a bizarre, compulsive ritual. "His scent glands are acting up," Marie observed, as though it was the most ordinary detail to share with a complete stranger. "It happens every so often. When we get home, I'll have to 'express' the excess fluid."

Gabe didn't particularly care to know what that process entailed, but before he could conjure up a neutral topic Marie blurted, "There are these two, pea-shaped glands at four and eight o'clock just inside the anus. You insert a lubricated pinkie finger and squeeze to manually remove the oily, brownish fluid. It relieves pressure and helps protect against infection."

Marie hadn't mentioned anything about wearing latex gloves. "Sounds like a barrel of fun." "Last month," Gabe noted, deflecting the conversation to a more neutral topic, "my company closed down for a week to upgrade inventory. Figured I'd hike a small section of the Appalachian Trail in northern New England, maybe even climb Mount Katahdin in central Maine. I did it once before and it proved a spectacular trip."

"So what happened?"

Gabe shrugged. "Don't know. Without my wife it just wasn't the same."

She shrugged. "Ever think of remarrying?"

"No, not at my age." He was seldom this candid, even among close friends. But because the garrulous woman had no use for men, at least not in the romantic sense, Gabe didn't mind baring his soul. Nothing would come of their clandestine tēte-á-tēte. It was like making small talk with a cloistered nun or younger sibling.

Marie swept the dog back up in her arms and began rubbing his furry scalp with her generous chin. "Synchronicity... are you familiar with the concept?" He shook his head from side to side. The woman had the weirdest habit of leapfrogging about from one random topic to the next. "Synchronicity," Marie continued, "suggests that life isn't just a series of random events but an expression of deeper order in the universe." "There's a scene in Through the Looking-Glass where the White Queen says to Alice: 'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards'"

"Yes," Gabe confirmed. "I vaguely remember that line from the play."

"The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam today." The blonde woman slipped effortlessly into a reprise of her role with the theater troupe. 'It must come sometimes to jam today,' Alice objects, but the Queen insists, 'No, it can't. It's jam every OTHER day: today isn't any OTHER day, you know.'"

After the gush of unsolicited drama, Marie suddenly fell silent as she paused to collect her thoughts. All the giddy theatrics - the posturing and gesticulations – had fallen away, replaced by a muted gravitas. "Synchronicity... maybe that's what drew us together on this bench today... this utterly random moment in time and space."

"A gay actress and middle-aged widower," Gabe observed. "We make for strange bedfellows." Before she could reply, he reached out and tapped her forearm. "Excuse me, I'll be right back."

Without further explanation, Gabe sauntered off down the path to a small pond that was the centerpiece in the idyllic sanctuary. Behind a scrubby box elder tree no taller than his belt buckle he dropped his fly to half mast and peed on the tiny tree. When he was finished relieving himself, Gabe wandered down to the pond and stared out across the placid water.

The temperature hovered in the mid-seventies under a radiant blue, cloudless sky. In a boggy nook no more than twenty feet away, a painted turtle stuck its black snout out of the water. The turtle submerged leaving a ripple of silvery water eddying toward shore and, a minute later, reemerged in the middle of an oblong shaped bed of lily pads. If Gabe counted off several dozen additional sightings, the loquacious lesbian would probably have gone off elsewhere, leaving him free to continue his bird watching.

Synchronicity... are you familiar with the concept?

What was he to read in the woman's cockamamie pronouncements? The amateur actress possessed a dry sense of humor, a precocious wit. But what good was it to him? Since his wife's passing Gabe hadn't felt an affinity for another woman, until this ditsy female collapsed in fright on the trail. A gravelly rumbling welled up in his throat, an irksome mix of desolation and futility. The painted turtle had resurfaced a dozen times already, but Gabe felt no great sense of urgency.

Synchronicity – they were both alone, beleaguered and loveless, but nothing could ever come of their serendipitous meeting. The event resembled some cosmic joke – as though a divine presence was thumbing its sadistic nose at their human predicament. Gabe scratched his beard languidly and watched as the turtle finally tired of the water, climbing up on a rock to sun itself. Only then did he finally shuffle back to the bench, where the woman was still sitting.

"I thought you'd abandoned me."

"Obviously, there's something more happening here than birds and social pleasantries," Gabe replied, ignoring the remark. "We seem to share a certain..."

"Je ne sais quoi," she interjected with a sly grin. "Yes, I sensed that from the outset."

"But nothing can ever come of it, because you don't consider men in a romantic sense."

"Unfortunately not," she confirmed, "but that doesn't mean we can't be friends."

Gabe shrugged. "Feels like a plot straight out of the theater of the absurd," he countered morosely.

From the top of the ridge a stocky mulatto leading a Great Dane on a rawhide leash was shambling toward them. The slovenly woman wore a tattered pair of rawhide moccasins, a blouse that resembled a burlap sack and paisley culottes. The woman stopped at a metal post with a rectangular box. From the container she ripped half a dozen navy blue plastic bags, which she jammed into a hip pocket then proceeded on her way.

Approaching no more than twenty feet from where Gabe was standing next to the blonde, the gawky dog suddenly hunched over and dropped a steamy load of feces directly on the walking path. When the dog was finished, the woman delivered a sharp tug on the leash and the twosome continued on their way. "This is the fourth time I've seen her do this."

Marie cracked a conspiratorial grin. "You're keeping track?"

"Not anymore." Gabe rose and chased after the light-skinned Negro as she was heading in the direction of a grove of red birch. "Lady, your dog just defecated on the walking path and you didn't clean the mess."

"Oh no, sir," the woman replied in an affable, syrupy tone. "My dog squatted to pee, that's all. He never moved his bowels." She fingered the free litter bags that bulged from her pocket.

Gabe shook his head emphatically. "Your dog urinated further back up the path. Then he emptied his bowels... a huge mess over by the bench." He gestured with his eyes to where Marie Brewster was still resting with the Lhasa apso cradled in a forearm.

"No, you're mistaken." The beefy woman wasn't the least bit intimidated. If anything, she seemed to enjoy the verbal jousting. "It's those silly lap dogs that cause all the trouble," she tittered, indicating the actress' dog, "but I most certainly appreciate your concern." Pivoting away with a supercilious flourish, the woman meandered off in the direction of a clump of goldenrod in full blossom, leading her gangly dog on the leather leash.

Gabe rushed wildly ahead, blocking her path. "Go back and pick it up!"

"What you say?" The light-skinned Negro made a tight fist with her pudgy hand.

"Pick up your dog crap or there'll be hell to pay."

She began clenching and unclenching the knuckles in a rhythmic gesture. "You're a goddamn bigot, who don't especially like us Afro-Americans, so you look for every opportunity to torment my people."

He gestured at the steaming pile of excrement - a huge, fetid, freshly-baked turd that stood out in bold relief on the walkway. "You can't use a wildlife sanctuary as your private toilet."

The brawny woman, who ran a solid two hundred-fifty pounds, dropped the leash altogether. Her dog traipsed off sniffing the fragrant wildflowers. Curling both hands into tight fists, she rested them on her ample hips. Puffs of air burst from her nostrils with rhythmic intensity. "And if I don't pick it up, what you gonna do?"

Gabe stepped closer. The formidable woman never blinked. "First thing, I'm going to knock you on your derriere. Then I'm gonna drag your worthless carcass over there and reintroduce you to your dog's artistic handiwork."

"You and whose army?" The scenic stretch of countryside bordering the small pond was empty. Not a single creature, animal or otherwise, graced the trail beyond where they stood. Even Marie Brewster along with her finicky pooch had mysteriously disappeared. "It's you're move, wiseass."

* * * * *

When he reached home later that afternoon, Gabe put his birding binoculars away and drifted down to the basement. From a pile of white cedar shingles he selected a pair of six-inch shakes. Flicking on the band saw, he listened to the soothing hum of the carbide-tipped, quarter-inch blade. Each Sunday throughout the summer months up until Labor Day, Gabe manned a booth at the local farmers' market selling homemade birdhouses. It was hobby, something to kill time, and in his wife's absence, there were far more hours in the day to account for than Gabe cared to consider.

With the aid of a miter gauge, he squared shingles and, placing a triangular, cardboard template over a slab of knotty pine, traced outlines of the front and back of the dwelling. The birdhouse would resemble a rustic A-frame with a hardwood dowel for a perch centered directly below an opening just large enough to accommodate a full-grown sparrow or chickadee.

At the four-inch belt sander, Gabe cleaned up the ragged teeth marks left from the band saw. Spreading a row of finished nails on the work bench, he reached for a small tap hammer and began assembling the miniature structure. The process was fairly straightforward. Over the past year he had assembled a hundred similar projects. Measure, cut, join – after so many years, he could accomplish the tasks with his eyes closed.

The showdown with the mulatto ended badly. From the outset, Gabe was bluffing, trying to intimidate the woman into cleaning up her dog's mess. But the slatternly shrew would have none of it. For her, a violent confrontation represented little more than cheap entertainment, a blood sport. But there were no fisticuffs, no physical confrontation. In the end, Gabe stood by impotently as she meandered away, grinning triumphantly, her long-legged pet bringing up the rear.

When the birdhouse was finished, he went back upstairs and located a raggedy pair of boxer shorts in his bedroom cabinet. Back in the basement he ripped the underwear into narrow strips, tossing the elastic waistband into the trash. Dipping a patch of cloth into a metal container, he slathered a thick coating of tung oil on the cedar and watched with mute satisfaction as the wood darkened and the chocolaty knots stood out in bold relief. The tung oil with its glossy, amber hues would seal the surface grain, protecting the fragile structure from the elements once placed out of doors.

That the pudgy blonde, who visited the bird sanctuary earlier in the morning - was it nothing more than a meaningless coincidence or wink from the cosmos? "A middle-aged widower and a loquacious lesbian," Gabe muttered under his breath. "What a hoot!"

The shock of hearing his own voice gave the middle-aged man a start. Since losing his wife, the house, which at times felt more like a mausoleum, remained morbidly quiet. In the evening, television and radio did little to fill the void.

He rinsed the oily rag with water, a precautionary gesture, and then took the bird house, which was almost dry and placed it on a shelf along with a dozen similar offerings. The front and back panels were decorated with an array of semi-gloss earth colors, the roof peaks capped with a V-shaped wedge of copper. An added bonus, the decorative metal helped keep the interior dry.

Gabe turned off the lights and went back upstairs, where he lingered under a hot shower and, without pulling back the sheets, lay down on the bed. It had been a bizarre, unsettling day. The gay actress with the mystical mindset was preempted by the pugnacious mulatto and her goofy dog. Gabe's attempt to face the brown-skinned woman down failed miserably. Dealing with humanity was habitually a messy affair, not nearly as manageable as woodworking or bird watching.

Gabe's wife, Jenifer, had been a devout Catholic. From the outset, he experienced no fondness for organized religion but tagged along every Sunday morning for thirty-two years. He never took communion or attended holy days of obligation, and when she died, he never set foot in a place of worship. A Baltimore oriole flitting capriciously through the treetops at the Oak Knoll bird sanctuary was far more appealing than all the church's liturgy or flamboyant ritual.

Gabe blinked and crooked his neck to the side. A fly was buzzing back and forth near the Venetian blinds. He would have to kill the bug before settling down to bed or the bothersome pest would keep him awake half the night. On the night table was a slender book of poems. Grabbing the volume, he read a verse at random.

'The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you;

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want;

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth

Across the doorsill

Where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.'

The poem, one of Jenifer's favorites, was by the Persian mystic, Rumi.

Gabe returned the book to the nightstand alongside a picture of the twosome in happier times. Whether it was a week in Bermuda or a trip to the local library, they had always functioned as a unit. In the spring he dug the holes in the back garden for her prize dahlias and in the fall unearthed the bulbs and stored them away in a darkened niche next the furnace. Jenifer occasionally accompanied him on his bird watching expeditions.

A marginal hypochondriac, the standing joke was that Gabe would predecease his wife and, in her twilight years, Jenifer would be left to fend for herself. If a rear brake light on their Honda CRV burnt out, there would be no indulgent life partner, to remove the mounting screws, pull the plastic housing away from the sedan's back panel and replace the bulb. For a five-minute job the garage would grab twenty bucks plus parts. That was Gabe's biggest fear. But fate had a different agenda in store. It was a blessing of sorts. Where Jenifer was now, burnt out brake lights were a non-issue. No such earthly nuisances applied.

In happier times, Gabe built his birdhouses. Jenifer canned fruits and vegetables. One day she put up a batch of applesauce. While the fruit was reducing on the stove, Gabe sampled a spoonful. "What's in it?

"A little of this, a little of that."

He swallowed a second helping of the concoction. "Could you be a bit more specific?"

She lowered a half-dozen jars into a cauldron of boiling water and watched as air bubbles escaped from the lids creating the vacuum. "Fresh-squeezed lemons, a cup of raisins, cinnamon and a pinch of cardamom."

"You could sell this by the bucket-load at the farmer's market," Gabe insisted.

"Hadn't considered it."

"All you need is a gimmick... some advantage to give you a leg up on the competition." Drumming his fingers on the counter, Gabe allowed his thoughts to percolate and congeal into a plan of action. "Maybe you offer free samples in miniature pastry cups."

Jenifer dipped a pinkie finger in the pot then lowered the digit in her mouth. "No one flavor overpowers the others," she said with smug satisfaction. "Each remains distinct in its own right."

A month later at the farmer's market, Jenifer sold out her entire stash of homemade applesauce by noontime and, for what was left of the day, sat alongside Gabe while he hawked his birdhouses. In their later years, Gabe's wife used to quip, "I'm gonna sell the goddamn house and pull a Lao Tzu. The term was code for disengaging from society and vanishing into the boondocks of northern Maine or some rural, hardscrabble Vermont village with a population of less than a hundred inhabitants, including chicken, sheep and cattle. They would live off their pensions and what crops they could grow on a few acres of granite-strewn, New England soil.

Gabe found an intricately detailed plan for a chicken coop in a holistic, back-to-nature magazine. The structure ran twenty feet with a corrugated metal roof and hinged door. He printed out the plans with accompanying three-color photos and studied the woodworking joinery for hours on end. Yes, he could manage the outer run enclosed with lengths of chicken wire stapled to pressure-treated two-by-threes and all the structural details.

A separate, interior shelter situated several feet off the ground offered cozy protection from predators and harsh, wintry weather. The two crates, where the hens laid their eggs, were easily accessible from a rear window with a sturdy latch, so eggs could be collected effortlessly without ever setting foot in the coop. Gabe and his wife would have a surplus of fresh eggs all year round and what they didn't need, they could sell, barter or share with neighbors.

That was the original plan.

But then, Jenifer dropped dead and the Mathew's second act fizzled. Gabe tried to conjure up an image of 'pulling a Lao Tzu' without his gentle soul mate, but, something essential had dried up and blown away in the ephemeral wind. Without Jenifer, the metaphysical adventure was dead in the water, little more than a cruel parody of their original pipedream. He tried to imagine himself on a farm – alone, unencumbered, spiritually rejuvenated, self-reliant, fully-realized, in failing health, suffering a terminal case of existential ennui, or, worse yet, presenile dementia – no, it didn't work anymore. With her spunky determination, brash pronouncements and brazen willfulness, Jenifer was the trailblazer. Quietly and innocuously, Gabe manned the passenger seat. He seldom if ever led the way.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. Gabe threw the book of Persian poetry aside and rolled over on his stomach. Five minutes later he was sound asleep.

* * * * *

A week later when he visited the bird sanctuary, Marie Brewster, was sitting on the bench, her hands folded neatly in her lap. "How did you make out with the mulatto and her Great Dane?"

"Not so well," Gabe settled down next to her. A black-capped chickadee was flitting through the branches of a spruce tree twenty feet away. "I threatened to beat her up if she didn't clean up the mess, but she was only too happy to pick a fight."

"Actually, as I recall," the blonde corrected, "it was you who picked the fight."

Gabe shrugged and his features dissolved in a self-effacing grin. Marie, who was staring absentmindedly at a wilted dandelion that had gone to seed, reached down. She plucked the slender stem and puffed lightly at the weed, sending a profusion of feathery filaments to scatter in the summery air. "Are you familiar with the Myth of Sisyphus?"

"The Greek king cursed to spend eternity rolling a huge stone up the side of a mountain."

"When I was a sophomore in high school and realized that I had a penchant for full-figured women, I went and told my family."

"And how did that work out?"

"There was shock at first, but eventually my parents were accepting. Within a month my dark secret was common knowledge. Everyone learned about my 'situation' – neighbors, nieces, in-laws, Aunt Tillie from Cincinnati... even the freakin' mailman." "Problem is," Marie continued, "just like Sisyphus, each time I meet someone new the process of "coming out', emerging from the figurative closet repeats again and again and again."

"Never thought of it that way," Gabe muttered. On a cone flower a short distance away a ruby-throated hummingbird was drawing nectar from the flower. He recognized it as a male, because females of the species possessed no telltale, scarlet markings.

Having drunk his full, the humming bird flitted off to another clump of colorful vegetation. In the far distance a group of birdwatchers crested a hill. A short distance behind them, the mulatto and her gangly dog brought up the rear. Marie grabbed his hand and gave the fingers a gentle squeeze. "Would you like to go out on a date?"

Gabe blinked violently. "But I thought –"

"No, not with me." Marie gestured waving fitfully with her plump, pale hands. "My best friend from the theater group... her husband was a bastard, a regular lothario. They're divorced five years now."

Gabe was feeling light headed, his thought processes thick as molasses. "What's your friend like?"

"Rather exotic-looking... with a decidedly dark complexion."

Gabe watched as his nemesis crested the last hillock, heading in the direction of the bench. "How dark?"

"Parivash is of Persian descent." Releasing his hand, Marie swiveled to face him. "You see, it's like this. My friend lives on a two-acre spread up in Chepachet. Shortly after her children grew up and moved away, the good-for-nothing husband ran off."

"Chepachet... that's farm country."

"Yes... well the husband fashioned himself a gentleman farmer, until he lost interest in both the livestock and marriage." The woman's indignation was palpable. "Last winter when the barn roof caved in, Parivash had to get rid of the animals." A week later following a blizzard, a pack of coyote broke into the chicken coop, which was also in shambles, and left a trail of feathers and bloody entrails scattered across snow in the front yard."

"Chickens," Gabe repeated with a sharp intake of breath. "What sort does she have?"

"A handful of Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rocks and Leghorns."

Sporting a petulant sneer, the mulatto shambled past the bench. Fifty feet further down the path, as if on choreographed cue, the huge dog pulled up short and emptied his bowels. The stout woman waited patiently for the dog to finish his business before continuing on her way.

"In answer to your earlier question," Gabe picked up the thread of their previous conversation, "about the Persian woman whose personal life and farm are falling to pieces..."

back to Table of Contents

The Third Fairy Tale

Ned Scoletti rose early, well before dawn, to catch the seven a.m. bus streaking up the coastal highway. With the cloying scent of orange blossoms snaking through the countryside, his mother was probably only just crawling out of bed, utterly clueless to the fact that Ned was on a Greyhound bus hurtling north. Final destination: Spaulding, Massachusetts. Two days. That's how long it would take to get from Fort Pierce, Florida to New England. By late afternoon, his parents would realize the boy was missing, but it would be too late. The bus would be far up the coast near Saint Augustine or even Jacksonville just shy of the Georgia line.

A large black woman wedged her ample rump into the seat next to him and began nibbling on a bunch of red grapes. The woman thrust a fistful of fruit at Ned, but he only smiled and shook his head. "Where're you headed?"

"Spaulding." Having never actually said the word before, it sounded foreign on his lips. "Spaulding, Massachusetts. To visit my Aunt Josie."

The black woman extended a huge paw of a hand and introduced herself as Hattie Mae Jackson. "Always nice when kinfolk move away but still remain close."

Ned didn't know what to say. He glanced out the window at an endless procession of cabbage palmettos. Front lawns and rock gardens were littered year-round with a colorful array of Jamaica dogwood, Spanish bayonet, and rhododendron. "I'm spending a week with my sister, Darlene. Her family's situated just outside Arlington. I head up there every year about this time, and she visits with the kids around Christmas." The woman shifted in the seat "Should be cooler in Virginia. Not so humid."

Ned was happy to be seated next to the pleasant, dark-skinned woman and not some nasty old coot who slept with her mouth open or stared sullenly out the window. "Do you make the trip often?" she asked.

"What trip?"

Hattie Mae peered at him uncertainly. "To see your aunt."

"Never met the woman," he confessed. "Aunt Josie doesn't even know I'm coming."

The black woman was holding a plump grape up to her lips but lowered her hand and put the fruit back in the plastic bag. By way of explanation, Ned added, "My mother had an identical twin sister. For the past fourteen years, I thought she was dead. Dead and buried. And now, a week ago last Friday, I discover Aunt Josie's very much alive."

Hattie Mae cocked her head to one side as though she were trying to process what she had heard. Finally, she tapped him lightly on the wrist. "Either you're on some heavy-duty medication," she spoke in a throaty bass, "or you've got one heck of a weird family."

The bus driver shifted into the left-hand lane to pass an elderly man puttering along in a battered pickup truck. A white egret on skeletal legs was resting in a drainage ditch, which bordered a grapefruit grove. The sun climbed slowly in an azure sky. "One heck of a weird family," he confirmed.

Ned stared out the window at the endless expanse of sandy soil that covered the land. The well-drained loam which blanketed most of the Lake District was ideal for citrus groves, and Ned's father cultivated several varieties of oranges, grapefruits, lemons and limes in their back yard. The best soil in the state, though, was the muck and peat deposits of the southern peninsula, a soil type born of the decayed vegetation from the marshes and swamp forests. Not that Ned gave two hoots about Florida topsoil or much of anything else right now except reaching his final destination in one piece.

At the tender age of fourteen, Ned understood how early settlers felt striking out on their own: Louis and Clark traipsing up the Missouri River toward the Rocky Mountains; the Midwest prairie farmers staking claim to wilderness homesteads. Of course, those early adventurers didn't have the luxury of an air-conditioned, Greyhound bus with a lavatory in the rear.

Passing under a bridge, Ned glimpsed his reflection in the darkened window. His brown hair flopped down over a wide brow like an unkempt weed patch gone to seed. From his mother, Ned inherited hazel eyes flecked with brown plus a tendency to somber moods and prolonged periods of quiet reflection. From his easygoing father, a willingness to conjure up the numerous shades of gray sandwiched between contentious opposites.

The Greyhound passed Cape Canaveral, Titusville and Daytona Beach. Then a huge forest of longleaf, loblolly pine interspersed with slash pine, black gum and tupelo. Up around Jacksonville, they reached the state line. Halfway through Georgia near Fort Frederica, they crossed the Altimaha River. When the bus pulled into Savannah, Ned got off for ten minutes to stretch his legs, grab a root beer and ham salad sandwich from the snack bar. "Last call! All aboard!" the driver shouted. Ned settled in next to Hattie Mae Jackson, slouched down in the leather seat and closed his eyes.

On Friday two weeks earlier, Ned woke up in the middle of the night to the familiar sound of his parents bickering. "Twenty years, for God's sake!" Mr. Scoletti muttered. "When does the insufferable feuding end?"

"A hundred and twenty years," Ned's mother shot back acidly, "wouldn't be long enough."

"So you'll never make peace with your sister." His father's voice sounded menacing as a late-summer, Florida thunderstorm. "Carry the infernal grudge to the grave and beyond."

Sister. What sister? Aunt Josie died almost fifteen years ago. Right? At that moment a sharp pang of terror swirled through Ned's gut.

"It's over and done with." His mother's voice was calmer, more conciliatory now. "In all the ways that truly matter, Josie's dead."

Ned glanced at the glowing face of the clock on the night table. Two a.m.. The central air conditioning broke down after supper. When Ned's father called the repairman, he reached an answering machine. The bedroom was hotter than a furnace in hell, an interminable, bone-weary heat that wore you down through the steamy, summer and left you wishing you lived anywhere else but South Florida. Ned rolled over on his back. The sheets were drenched with sweat. He gazed out the window where a swarm of moths flitted crazily about the streetlights lining the roadway. In the hazy darkness the tropical vegetation exuded a dank oppressiveness. How many times had his father tamed the wiry brush and weeds before they crept back to reclaim the cleared land? Their relentless quest to overrun his mother's flower and vegetable gardens crippled a half dozen lawn mowers and gas-driven weed whackers.

Ned was usually a heavy sleeper. If the air conditioner hadn't broken down he would have slept straight through the night, waking non-the-wiser in blissful ignorance. But not really. He always figured Aunt Josie among the living, sensed a bewildering presence that his parents would neither deny nor confirm.

For one thing, no one ever mentioned how she died - a disease or untimely accident? - or where his aunt's body lay buried. This woman who was the spitting image of his mother simply evaporated into thin air, transformed into a wraithlike wisp of nothingness. If her name was mentioned twice a year, that was plenty.

Aunt Josie, the ubiquitous nonperson. Aunt Nobody from Nowheresville.

One further, unsettling clue: a card postmarked July 3, 1987. Place of origin: Spaulding, Massachusetts. The crumpled card lay buried beneath a pile of odds and ends in Mrs. Scoletti's sewing machine drawer. Signed Love, J, it bore no message.

The day after his parents' quarrel, Ned found his mother sorting clothes in the laundry room. "Is Aunt Josie alive?"

If the outlandish remark caught Mrs. Scoletti off guard, she revealed nothing. Rather, she dropped a pile of dirty towel into the washer and adjusted the temperature setting. "When was the last time you had a friendly heart-to-heart, with your favorite aunt?" His mother spoke into the belly of the washer as the rising water swirl over the towels.

The element of surprise having slithered away, it counted for nothing. But then, Ned should have known better. Where his headstrong mother was concerned, such reckless strategies never worked. Especially when the subject was taboo. Off-limits. "Never laid eyes on Aunt Josie much less talked to her."

Mrs. Scoletti added a dash of detergent. "Well I guess you answered your own question."

In all the ways that truly matter, Josie's dead! Ned recalled her scathing indictment from the previous night. In the back yard, Ned's father was pouring some foul-smelling chemical over a colony of fire ants and the boy retreated to the rear of the house. "No one hardly ever talks about Aunt Josie."

Mr. Scoletti stuck a twig in the mouth of the anthill and a platoon of smallish red ants rushed out to discover what was causing the commotion. "Yes, that's a fact."

"She isn't dead, is she," Ned pressed, "in the conventional sense?"

Several of the ants succeeded in climbing halfway up the offending stick before Mr. Scoletti threw it aside. "An interesting choice of words."

Ned fingered a hibiscus with its large, showy flowers. His mother had ringed the edge of the fruit trees with a mix of royal poinciana, camellia, and fragrant gardenia. "Well, is she or isn't she?"

His father soaked the ants a second time with the lethal mix and straightened up. "You heard the fight last night?" Ned shook his head. "Figured as much," he said and walked away without elaboration.

What unspeakable crime had Aunt Josie committed to be banished - in his mother's spiteful words - for a hundred and twenty years? There had been a falling out. Something outlandish on the scale of the Hatfields and McCoys. And here he was jumping right into the center of the maelstrom. God help Ned Scoletti!

*****

The next day Ned called information. "Josie Applebee in Spaulding, Massachusetts." Applebee was his mother's maiden name.

After a short pause the operator said, "Yes, I have that listing for you. Area code 508..."

The next day, weighted down with a pocketful of loose change, he trekked a mile and a half to the Cumberland Farms and dialed the number. "Hello."

"Is Josie Applebee there?"

"Yes, this is Josie."

Something short-circuited in Ned's brain. A light dimmed and flitted out like a circuit breaker on overload. He jammed the receiver back on the hook.

Okay. Let's not have a nervous breakdown or do anything rash! We need a plan. A sensible course of action. But how could he develop a coherent plan if his parents continued to deny Aunt Josie's physical existence? On Wednesday Ned withdrew 500 dollars of his college savings from the Sun City Bank and bought a round trip ticket to Spaulding, Massachusetts.

*****

At nine p.m. the bus passed through Charleston en route to Myrtle Beach. Ned dozed off and on. Dinner was a bag of tortilla chips and a soft drink. His teeth felt grimy, but he forgot to put a toothbrush in his backpack.

"Now there's some serious reading," Hattie Mae whispered mischievously. A gaunt Jewish man, wearing a knit skullcap and lugging the largest book Ned had ever seen, joined the passengers an hour out of Daytona Beach. The bearded man, who was dressed in black, settled into the seat across from them, cracked the book open and never lifted his eyes from the volume. His lips fluttering noiselessly as he read, an emaciated finger accompanied the text across the page.

"Right to left," Hattie Mae observed. "That monstrous book ... he's reading right to left. Opposite of English."

Ned leaned far forward in his seat. Sure enough, the Jewish man's finger inched across the printed page as though he were reading backwards. Ten minutes later when Ned got up to visit the lavatory, he stole a glance at the immense volume. On one side, words blossomed in a flowery, exotic script he'd never seen before, presumably Hebrew. On the facing page was the English translation.

"While you were gone," Hattie Mae confided when Ned returned, "I asked him about the book. Some Spanish philosopher wrote it almost a thousand years ago. Imagine that!"

"Yes, it's quite amazing," Ned replied.

"A Guide for the Perplexed. That's what it's called."

A Guide for the Perplexed. What if a person could simply consult an ancient, moth-eaten manual and, abracadabra, solve all his worldly problems - set the universe spinning on an even keel. Was it just wishful thinking, a fanciful pipe dream? Ned gazed at the Jewish man. He was still bent over the heavy tome. A lock of dark hair, which he absent-mindedly twirled around an index finger, hung down almost to his shoulder. For this religious zealot, the world with all its intricacies and complications fell away. There was only a thousand year-old text and a Greyhound bus speeding north.

At the next stop an elderly couple boarded the bus and sat diagonally across, a seat in front of the scholarly Jew. "Hillbillies," Ned mused. The elderly man, who looked like he'd slept a month-of-Sundays in his rumpled clothes, had a wide grizzled jaw that reminded Ned of the tempered steel scoop on a backhoe. He seemed angry and distracted as he stuffed a lumpy canvas bag into the overhead rack.

"Here let me help," his wife offered.

"Leave me be!" He kept repositioning the bag but it was much too wide for the cramped space. "The morons who design these infernal contraptions never leave enough room. It's disgraceful!" He spoke loud enough to insure that everyone on the bus was aware of his sentiments. The wife was trying to help ease the bag into the overhead rack but finally the man changed his mind, wrenched it free and crammed it under his seat. "Well, we're off to a great start."

"No need getting yourself lathered up over nothin'," the wife spoke pleasantly.

"Shut up, you dimwitted fool!"

The woman winced as though she had been walloped with a pressure treated two-by-four. Then she screwed her face up in a hurt expression and sulked while her husband sneered at the back of the bus driver's head. To the left, the Jewish man poured over his divinely inspired text. At the next stop the elderly couple got off. Lugging his lumpy, canvas bag, the hillbilly muttered something unintelligible and made a threatening gesture as he left the bus. Following on his heels, the downtrodden wife wore the look of martyrdom like a badge of honor.

The seat remained empty until a young woman with a newborn baby took their place. A shroud of darkness wrapped the countryside. "Was you tellin' me the God's honest truth back there in Saint Lucie County?" Hattie Mae was staring at Ned with a solemn expression. "About going to visit some auntie you ain't never laid eyes on?"

At times, it didn't seem real to Ned either. And he was the one making the trip! The revelation scared him half to death. But not enough so to scramble off the bus at the next scheduled stop and put his return ticket to practical use. "I wouldn't lie about such a thing."

Ned Scoletti was fourteen years old, a thousand miles from home and finally out from under his mother's wrath and chronic consternation. The bus driver had turned off the lights so passengers could catch some shut eye. The Rabbi lit the tiny overhead light and was still grappling with his Guide for the Perplexed.

Darkness felt reassuring. A person could hide in the dark, take solace, and lick his wounds. "Sometimes I feel like I'm living some Greek tragedy." He knew the pronouncement sounded melodramatic if not outright silly, but Ned needed to vent. He felt edgy, a mass of percolating emotions. In a word, a mess!

Hattie Mare Johnson wriggled her nose. Her black skin was perfectly smooth, flawless, so that it was impossible to gauge her age. "I knew some Greek people once, but never was partial to that goat cheese or stuffed grape leaves."

"My family's like a Greek tragedy," Ned continued. "My mother murdered off her own twin sister twenty years ago."

"But she ain't really dead," Hattie Mae interjected, "least not rotting in some moldy grave."

"That's why I'm sitting on this bus in the middle of the night," Ned affirmed. "I aim to bring the metaphorical corpse back to life."

"You," Hattie Mae patted his arm, a comforting gesture, "sure got a funny way with words." She stared out the window for the longest time, her jaw grinding back and forth as though the woman was chewing a mouthful of leathery meat. "Truth is, you don't chuck family out with the trash," she said grimly, "like a pair of smelly, worn-out sneakers." Hattie Mae stroked her fleshy chin thoughtfully. "Can't imagine what awful crime your auntie committed to be banished forever."

"Sort of like Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter."

"Can't rightly say as I know the woman."

Ned told her a condensed version of the Hawthorne story. "Infidelity. Yeah, well it's a possibility. But I was thinking your aunt must have done somethin' a hell of a lot worse.... something flat out awful. Strangled a newborn child with her bare hands or become a depraved dope fiend nymphomaniac."

Ned shrugged. He fingered the rectangular piece of cardboard in his front pocket. The roundtrip ticket had cost a hundred and thirty dollars. That left $370 for incidentals. If his aunt were a murderer or slutty dope fiend, he'd turn around and catch the next bus south. But not before treating himself to a lavish, sit down meal in the best restaurant he could find. And maybe a restful night in a decent hotel.

"Can't say's I envy you." Hattie Mae patted his hand reassuringly.

Ned located a scrap of paper and scribbled a number on it. "When you get to your sister's would you call my folks and tell them I'm okay." He pressed the paper into the black woman's pudgy hand. "Tell them I'm on my way to find Aunt Josie."

"Sure will. And I'll mention what a fine young man they have for a son."

Ned didn't think his straight-laced mother would be any too happy to hear that her son, who ran off without so much as a kiss goodbye, was a fine upstanding person.

*****

Mrs. Scoletti was a woman of extremes. A flawed creature prone to emotional excesses. Once, during a domestic squabble, she hurled a breakfast plate at his father. The dish shattered against the far wall leaving the buttermilk pancake and a half-eaten, hickory-smoked sausage plastered to the wallpaper. Bursting into tears, his mother ran from the room. Mr. Scoletti swept the broken plate into a dustpan then wiped the soggy pancake batter off the wallpaper.

"Your mom's a humdinger!" Ned's father chuckled. Judging by the veneration in his tone, Ned took that as an act of charitable forgiveness. Regarding the plate-throwing incident, there were no repeat performances. Over the years, Ned had learned to accommodate his mother's whimsical moods. To love someone was to make allowances even when their behavior bordered on flagrant nuttiness.

In the morning they passed through Fayetteville and Elizabeth City. The endless stretches of Florida flat land were left far behind. Hattie Mae poured herself a cup of tea from a thermos and sipped at the steamy liquid.

"I've got pictures." Ned pulled two snapshots from his breast pocket and handed them to his seatmate. The first photo showed two young children, Ned's mother and Aunt Josie, dressed in matching sailor suits. The twin toddlers were hugging each other and mugging it up for the camera. A sign overhead read 'Manatee Cove, Fort Pierce, Florida. Home of the Sea Cows!' The second picture showed the girls in their late teens leaning up against a palm tree.

"Which one's your mother?" Hattie Mae asked.

Ned took the print and studied it for the longest time. Everything about the women - their slim build, curly brown hair and impish smiles - was identical. Ned could stare at the picture until the bus reached its northerly destination and still come away unsure who was who. "Hard to say. Maybe the one on the right. Like I said, they're identical twins."

The black woman pointed to the first picture taken at Manatee Cove. "These kids sure looked happy." She drank the rest of her tea then wiped the cup dry with a napkin before screwing the lid back onto the thermos. "I'm a God-fearing woman. Not one of those Bible-thumping lunatics you see on cable TV \- the fanatics who talk in tongues and cast out demons. No, none of that fundamentalist mumbo jumbo for me!" She paused just long enough to put her thoughts in order. "While you was sleeping early this morning I prayed and asked the Lord to keep an eye on you. Then, this still, small voice spoke to me in my heart-of-hearts. It said you were sent as a messenger to mend damaged souls and heal festering wounds."

The temperature in the bus dropped and the driver turned on the heater. The warmth was making Ned groggy. "Messengers bring something... a message or a gift," Ned protested. "I'm going empty handed."

"Yes, but what if you are the message? Your presence is what's required."

To be sure, Hattie Mae Jackson was a good-hearted soul. Her intentions were pure, beyond reproach, but her logic didn't add up; it seemed more wishful thinking than common sense. Ned was on his way to visit a relative who wasn't expecting him. Probably didn't even know he existed. His presence was not required.

*****

At noontime Hattie Mae gathered her belongings and left the bus. As the black woman was exiting, a young girl accompanied by her mother boarded. The mother settled the daughter in the seat next to Ned and found a place for herself several rows up. "Don't bother the nice man," the mother instructed.

"No, Mummy, I wouldn't do any such thing." The girl who was rather chubby with a pendant lower lip and dark brown eyes turned to Ned. "My name is Samantha Crowley and I'm in the red reading group."

Ned smiled at the girl. She looked to be about six or seven years old. "Average readers are blue, dummies and sped-busers green."

"Sped," Ned mused. "That would be special education."

The girl smoothed the front of her dress. Ned made a mental note that her fingernails were the same color as her reading group. "I got this swell book. I could read you a story."

Ned was hoping the chatty girl would just shut up and leave him alone long enough to digest and make sense of Hattie Mae's last few remarks. How had she put it? Even though he brought neither gift nor message, perhaps Ned -

"Siberian Fairy Tales," the girl had rose up on her knees and was whispering in his ear. She was a sloppy talker and every time she hit a hard consonant, a 'p' or a 'b', a slurry of warm spit sprayed across the tight compartment.

"What was that?" Ned wiped his damp earlobe and leaned away from the girl.

She waved a children's book up in the air. "Got this swell book for my birthday. Here, I'll read you a story."

"Actually," Ned grabbed the book away from her just as the girl was settling in, "I'm tired and think I'll take a little nap if you don't mind." He wedged the book in the leather pouch hanging from the seat in front of the girl, but she retrieved it immediately and made a disagreeable face. He didn't really care if the girl minded or not. The first adrenaline rush of the clandestine trip north having dissipated, Ned was exhausted. With his eyes closed, he slipped back into a protective mode, collecting his thoughts for what lay ahead.

"You probably weren't a very good reader," the girl muttered. "That's why you don't want to hear this Russian story, but I'm going to read it to you anyway."

"Ninth grade," Ned replied. "I'm going into high school next year, and I'm currently in the vermillion reading group." The chubby girl eyed him suspiciously. "You don't know what color vermillion is, do you?" The girl hesitated. "It's bright red with orange highlights and a half mile ahead of your red group."

That shut her up. Finally. Ned closed his eyes, slouched down in the seat and was fading off to sleep when an insistent drone drew him back from the solace of an incipient dream.

"Once upon a time there lived the Crane and the Heron," the little girl recited in a singsong fashion as though reading exclusively for her own enjoyment. "They lived in the same bog but at the far end of it. Mr. Crane who lived all alone felt lonely and decided to get married."

"'I'll take Miss Heron for my wife,'" thought the Crane

Her voice was tinged with a cloying, sickly-sweet quality. Samantha Crowley knew he wasn't asleep and, even if he was, the girl could care less. "I don't really want to hear about the Crane and the Heron. Why don't you just read the story quietly to yourself?"

"Well I'm going to read it to you anyway as punishment for your rudeness. I'll start from the beginning and, this time, don't interrupt."

"Once upon a time there lived the Crane and the Heron," They lived in the same bog but at the far end of it. Mr. Crane who lived all alone felt lonely and decided to get married."

"'I'll take Miss Heron for my wife,'" thought the Crane and he went to her. He walked seven miles through the mud. When he came to the Heron he said, 'Heron, are you in?'"

"Birds don't marry,!" Ned interjected.

"Siberian fairy tale birds can do anything they want," Samantha corrected. "Heron, are you in?" she repeated.

"I am."

"Will you marry me?"

No, I will not. Your legs are too long and your flimsy feathers too short. You can't fly well and you haven't food enough for two. Go away you skinny-legged Crane!"

"The Crane went home his hopes ruined."

"The Heron gave it another thought. 'It's better to marry the Crane than live alone.' So she hurried to the Crane and said, 'Crane, you may marry me!'"

"No, Heron. I don't want to marry you. Go away!"

The Heron went away, weeping and ashamed. The Crane thought, 'I was wrong not to marry the Heron. It is dull to live alone. I'll go and marry her right now. He came up to her and said, 'Heron, I made up my mind to marry you.'"

"'No, Crane, I won't marry you! The Crane went away. Now the Heron thought, 'I shouldn't refuse him. What's the good in living alone? I'd better marry the Crane.' She came to the Crane, but he didn't want to marry her. And to this day they visit each other constantly making proposals, but are not married."

When she finished the story, Samantha closed the book. "Well, how did you like it?"

"Actually, it was rather depressing."

"So you didn't like it."

"No, not particularly."

Tucking her legs onto the seat, she lifted up on her knees so that she was staring down at Ned with an impudent grin. "Folktales are fables... stories that teach a valuable lesson. What did you learn from the story of the Heron and the Crane?"

How he hated the little girls officious, nasally voice! "Absolutely nothing. Nothing at all."

"But you must have learned something," the girl insisted.

"Given the opportunity to do the right thing or the wrong thing, most people generally opt for the latter."

South of Fredericksburg the Chesapeake Bay loomed into view. Arlington came and went in a blur. The bus cruised the length of the New Jersey Turnpike, skirted New York and continued, full throttle, in the direction of Connecticut. Around eight o'clock that night, Ned glanced out the darkened window. The sign up ahead read 'Providence Exit one mile'. The bus wasn't scheduled to stop in Spaulding. Ned would catch a connecting bus from Rhode Island. He closed his eyes. It was just a matter of time now. The end of one journey. The beginning of another.

The obnoxious girl fell asleep leaning her head against Ned's shoulder. She dozed with her mouth open, leaving a line of drool snaking down to the wrist. As the sun was climbing over the horizon she opened her eyes and asked, "Do you know why the Gopher has a short tail and the Elk a long muzzle?"

"Not really, but I'm sure you're going to enlighten me."

She opened the book to the spot where she had left off. "Once, an Elk was arguing with the squeaky taiga Gopher. The Gopher said. 'Summer should be two times longer than it is now.'"

"The Elk disagreed very strongly with her. 'Oh, no! I don't like summer at all. It is too hot and there are too many flies and midges in summer. There should be no summer at all. It would be much better.'"

"The squeaky Gopher answered, 'If winter lasted all year round, there would be so much snow that you wouldn't be able to run quickly. And man would be sure to kill you.'"

"'Kill me? You rascal!' the indignant Elk stomped on the Gopher, but she managed to escape and hide herself in her hole. Only her tale was left under the Elk's hoof. The Elk, sulky and angry, stretched his muzzle and fixed his eyes on the hole. But the Gopher never appeared."

"Summer had passed but the Elk still waited for the Gopher. But the Gopher didn't want to meet with the Elk any more. The Elk kept waiting by the hole. Rainy autumn had ended. Winter came along and covered everything with snow. And now again noisy spring had arrived, and summer was approaching."

"Only then did the Elk understand that the Gopher would not come out to argue with him, and he left." "Since that time the Elk's muzzle is long and sulky, while the Squeaky Gopher's tail is short."

No sooner had Samantha Crowley finished the second fairy tale then her mother stood up and began pulling down their luggage from the overhead rack. "Did the Moose remind you of anyone?"

The white statehouse dome loomed in the far distance as the bus left the interstate. "With his nasty disposition, the animal reminded me of my mother."

"And the Gopher?"

"My Aunt Jessie, my mother's nemesis and personal tormentor, who passed away twenty years ago but was miraculously resurrected from the dead in recent days."

The bus arrived at the Providence, Rhode Island bus terminal. Ned thanked the child for her Siberian fairy tales, collected his bag and left the bus.

*****

Everything in downtown Providence was shut down except for a cold snack bar. A couple of college kids were gabbing away. When the girl said 'car' it came out 'cahhr'. A cardboard box became a 'bwox'. "When's the next bus to Spaulding?"

The ticket agent pointed over Ned's left shoulder. "Tough luck! You just missed it by ten minutes. There won't be another until 7 a.m." Ned laid a bill on the counter.

"One way or round trip?" the ticket agent asked.

"Round trip." Ned took his overnight bag and settled in as far from the door as possible. The boy caught a chill back in New Jersey where the temperature dropped to 50 degrees, and now his throat was sore, rough as 50-grit sandpaper. The temperature outside had dropped another degree or two since the bus arrived. Hungry and cold, he was worn out from the trip. Maybe if he rested the chill would run its course and he'd be in better shape for ....

What word was he searching for?

Reunion, perhaps? No, you can't reunite with someone you only met except in a Polaroid snapshot. Well, whatever it was, the event was imminent. Since the decision to come north two weeks ago, Ned had rehearsed this scene a hundred times or more in his overheated brain. He'd head straight to the house where Aunt Josie lived, ring the doorbell and announce, "Hi, I'm Ned Scoletti. Mary-Ellen's son."
Nothing more. Short and sweet!

Let his aunt play her hand, make the first move. Either Aunt Josie would welcome him graciously or treat him with the same callous indifference that caused her to pull a Houdini vanishing act so many years earlier. Hi, I'm Ned Scoletti. Mary-Ellen's son. I want you to bare your soul and explain why the identical twin sisters in this fading picture hate each other so.

Ned swallowed hard; his throat had swollen shut. Glancing at the clock on the opposite wall, the small hand was edging up on midnight. Seven more hours and he would be back on the road. But the trip to Spaulding was a lark. A mere hour and fifteen minutes. Then a taxi to 105 Eddy. And then...

Hi, I'm Ned Scoletti, your sister, Mary-Ellen's boy. Hi, I'm your nephew, Ned, newly arrived from Fort Pierce, home of the manatee sea cows. You don't know me, but I just traveled up the Atlantic Coast on a Greyhound Bus to ....

The Providence bus reached Spaulding well before noon. When Ned slung the backpack over his shoulder, the nylon bag felt as though it was weighted down with rocks. Worse yet, he was giddy, lightheaded. Ned couldn't seem to keep his mind clear for more than two seconds at a time, his thoughts flitting about distractedly in his feverish brain. "Eddy Street," Ned asked a cabby pulled up at the curb near the center of town, "can you take me there?"

The driver stuck a beefy arm out the driver's side window and pointed at a red brick building. "Eddy Street's over by the YMCA. You can walk there faster than I can drive." The cabby looked him up and down. "Been jogging?"

"Huh?"

"You're drenched with sweat."

Ned ran a hand over his neck and his fingers came away wet. His shirt collar was soaked through. "I just got a bad cold, that's all." Halfway up the street he located a tidy, cedar-shingled ranch house with a sun porch. Strange! After the short walk from the taxi stand, his legs had gone haywire - all weak, wobbly and totally uncooperative.

Hi, you don't know me, but I'm... Well, who I am isn't really all that important. Oh yes, I'm your nephew, Ned, newly arrived from Arlington, Virginia. No, that's where Hattie Mae Jackson, the kind-hearted black lady who hears whispery voices in her heart-of-hearts, left the Greyhound Bus. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm Ned Scoletti from Fort Pierce, Florida, home of the manatee sea cows. And I'm here because ... because ...

He knocked twice. When the door opened, Ned groped aimlessly for the rehearsed lines but his mind was a sieve that couldn't hold a drop of rainwater much less a coherent thought. "Can I help you?" the woman asked.

"Mom!" It was more an undeniable statement of fact rather than an open-ended question. His usually sturdy legs felt like a pair of pasta noodles cooked al dente.

The woman laughed, making a breathy, musical sound. "I'm a mother, but most definitely not yours. Who exactly are you looking for?" The woman was standing no more than two feet away but her robust voice, which seemed to emanate from the far side of a distant universe, quickly faded away to nothing.

"After traveling two solid days on a bus," Ned protested, "you think I wouldn't know my own mother?" Those were his last words before he slumped forward into the cedar-shingled ranch house at thirty-five Eddy Street, collapsing on Aunt Josie's living room rug.

When he opened his eyes fifteen minutes later, Ned was sprawled out on a couch. A young girl with jet black hair and a Metallica T-shirt was leaning over, scanning his features like a tattered roadmap. "Who are you?" Ned asked weakly.

"Wrong question." The girl wormed a digital thermometer under his tongue, waited for the beep and raised it to her pale brown eyes. "A smidgen over a hundred," She called over her shoulder and a moment later a woman who resembled his mothers in every way imaginable entered the room.

"You gave us quite a scare, Ned Scoletti."

"How'd you know my name?"

Aunt Josie waved the Polaroid pictures in the air. "These prehistoric prints fell out of your pocket following your less-than-graceful entrance." Ned tried to sit up, but his aunt gently eased him back down. Someone had placed a pillow under his head and draped a light blanket over his chest.

Hi, I'm Ned Scoletti, your sister, Mary-Ellen's boy.

Someone handed him a bogus script - the one titled 'Ned Scoletti's slapstick arrival at Josie's place'. More hilarious than a three stooges, TV marathon! Regardless how inelegant, he had arrived, and Ned was situated dead center in the proverbial eye of the storm. Ground zero! Aunt Josie bent down, cupped his face in both her hands and, as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world, gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. "Already spoke to your mom back in Fort Pierce. She said some lady called from Virginia to say you, pulled a Jack Kerouac and were on the road traveling north."

So Hattie Mae did contact his parents.

"We'll keep you here a week or so until you're physically well enough to travel then put you on a plane out of Logan Airport." Aunt Josie felt his forehead. "When's the last time you ate?"

"I grabbed an éclair at the bus station."

All the while, the raven-haired girl gawked at Ned like some freak in a carnival sideshow. Eyeballing him through narrow, slitty eyes, her pokerfaced expression never changed. Aunt Josie turned to the girl. "Go to the market, Heather. Pick up some pork chops and baking potatoes. There are plenty of vegetables in the bin. After his ordeal, your Cousin Ned's earned a meal fit for a king."

Cousin? Now I got a cousin, too. Cousin Heather. Another complication!

The girl scrunched up her nose. "I don't suppose they had showers on the bus." Ned blinked several times. "That was just a joke." Heather took some bills from her mother and headed out the door.

"I'm feeling stronger now and would like to wash up."

Aunt Josie lugged the backpack into the bathroom and began pulling a bra and several pair of nylon stockings down from the shower stall. "Obviously, we weren't expecting company. Did you bring clean underwear?"

"Only one pair."

She produced a fresh towel and washcloth. "We'll pick up a few things at the Value Plus in the morning along with whatever else you need." Before closing the door, Aunt Josie gave him another generous kiss and announced, "Welcome to Spaulding, Ned Scoletti. I hope the rest of your visit turns out better than the trip north."

Ned adjusted the water temperature and settled under the shower, but the hot spray pummeling his back only heightened the foul stench. A bar of Irish Spring soap rested in the soap dish. Ned washed himself thoroughly from head to toe, then repeated the process. With a forefinger and some borrowed toothpaste, he brushed his teeth. He hadn't planned well, skipping over practical details and leaving everything to chance. But then, Ned was here in Spaulding, Massachusetts, on a special mission, a mission that was being redefined from one, tenuous minute to the next.

"Scoletti," Aunt Josie inquired without looking up, when Ned emerged from the bathroom. She was in the kitchen preparing an early supper. "Your father wouldn't be Frankie Scoletti."

"Yeah, that's my dad."

Cousin Heather was seated backwards straddling a chair at the kitchen table. She stared at him with a deadpan expression - like a bug under a microscope or a long lost relative she never knew existed until fifteen minutes earlier. Surprise! Surprise! "I went to school with your father," his aunt elaborated. "He played guard on the varsity basketball team. All the girls were crazy for Frankie Scoletti."

"You never told me about him," Heather piped up indignantly.

Aunt Josie slipped the chops into a Pyrex dish and centered it in the oven. "You never asked and, anyway, that was a hundred years ago back when your drop-dead beautiful mother had hormones and a full head of natural blond hair."

An aunt with a sense of humor. What next? Clearly Aunt Josie approved of the match and was delighted to hear Ned's mother hooked up with Frankie Scoletti. She had nothing to hide - harbored neither grudge nor grievance. So what was the problem? Why a decade's worth of unquenchable bitterness? Ned felt even more confused than before he'd stumbled over the threshold.

Neither Aunt Josie nor her stony-faced daughter realized that Ned's mother had a son. They didn't even know she married Frankie Scoletti. But Cousin Heather was privy to certain, hidden secrets. Of that, Ned was absolutely sure. All the while he sat there making small talk, chewing the fat, his cousin's eyes never strayed from his face. She seemed to be enjoying the intrigue, like a bonus chapter in a favorite book. But what genre - spy, mystery, romance, detective?

"I got this notion." Aunt Josie opened the oven and placed a pat of butter on each pork chop then sprinkled the meat with breadcrumbs and cooking sherry. "Depending on how things go, you might want to extend your visit ... spend the remainder of the summer with us and fly home a few days before school starts." She placed some string beans in a steamer, added water and set the timer for fifteen minutes. "Of course we'd need your folk's permission."

She removed a bottle of virgin olive oil from the cabinet. "We like to keep things simple. Oil and salt on the beans."

Strange! That's exactly the way his mother fixed them back home in Fort Pierce. "Yes, that's fine."

"About the beans or spending more time with us?"

Ned grinned easily. "Both."

His aunt, who was setting the table, slipped her arms around him and gave him a quick hug. "Heather will show you around the city and maybe introduce you to some of her friends." The girl, who had hardly said two words since returning from the market, swung her leg off the back of the chair and helped her mother finish setting the table.

There it was again - that Cheshire cat grin that screamed, "I know the murky, convoluted history of the Applebee clan... what you've traveled the length of the East Coast to discover... the unseemly buried truth you've come to unearth and lay bare."

At supper Heather asked what he wanted to drink. Ned pointed to a bottle of soda resting on the table near the peas. "Cola's fine." Filling his glass, he took a swig of the liquid and almost gagged. It had a strong, almost medicinal scent that burned the roof of his mouth with an acrid, smoky aftertaste. "What's this?"

"Moxie," his aunt replied.

"Never heard of it."

"It's made from an extract of gentian root with a dollop of wintergreen. Good for digestion."

"So how do you like your new, extended family?" Heather quipped. Her mother flashed a dirty look, but Heather kept her eyes riveted on her newly discovered cousin.

"Just fine, I guess." He steered a pile of corn onto his fork with the blade of a knife.

"What if we Applebees were a bunch of Neanderthals," Heather would not be denied, "who picked their noses in public and had no redeeming virtues?"

"Jeez, Heather!" He mother shook a finger at her daughter. "You're such a boorish twit!"

Ned wasn't the least bit put off by his cousin's antics. "If the visit was a bust, I planned to check into the nearest hotel for the night and catch the first bus out to Fort Pierce."

"There are none," Heather noted. "No hotels in sleepy Spaulding. Only a 7-Eleven and an all-night gas station."

Ned tried another sip of the Moxie and discovered that, once he got past the tart aftertaste, his taste buds craved more. "If you're gonna stay with us for any length of time," his aunt assumed an apologetic tone, "you'll have to make allowances for Cousin Heather. She tends to say any fool thing that comes into her flighty head."

"Better that," Ned replied, "than keeping secrets for the better part of eternity." Aunt Josie shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and there was only light banter through the rest of the meal.

After supper, Ned's aunt insisted that he call home. "And make sure you apologize a thousand times over for running off." She dialed the number, handed him the phone and left the room, closing the door behind her.

"How could you do such a thing?" Ned's mother hissed, but there was hardly any bitterness in her questioning tone, only relief.

"I had an aunt... all along." Ned flung the accusation back at his mother. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Perverts lurk in bus station lobbies." She ignored the question, glossed right over it. "Winos, degenerated, panhandlers, child molesters..."

"All I met was a religious black woman with a bag of red grapes."

"How's your fever, Ned?"

His pushy cousin had crammed the digital thermometer in his mouth again shortly after supper. The temperature was down to 99.5 and his swollen throat was greatly improved. "Much better. I just caught a chill passing through New Jersey."

"Your father wants to say a few words."

Ned's father blustered for a good five minutes without saying anything he didn't already know about the perils of traveling alone then put his mother back on the phone for a final goodbye. Strangely, no one asked to speak to Aunt Josie.

"She's got a kid." Ned said as the conversation ebbed.

"Who does?"

"Aunt Josie." Aunt Josie - except on the bus trip, Ned hadn't ever used those two words in normal conversation.

"Really?"

"Yeah, a daughter, Heather."

"How old?"

"I dunno. About sixteen or so." He waited but there was no response on the other end of the line. "She's sort of weird."

"Most teenage girls tend to weirdness." They said their good-byes and hung up.

Later that night Aunt Josie pulled out the sleep sofa in the den and made up a bed for him. She fluffed the pillow and pulled the covers back at a diagonal. "Are there any other Scolettis I should know about?" Ned stared at his aunt trying to decipher her intent. "Brothers or sisters?"

"Two younger sisters, that's all."

"Imagine that!" Aunt Josie seemed genuinely pleased. "My kid sister with three youngin's."

"Why do you call her your kid sister if you're identical twins?"

"I skittered down the birth canal first. Your mother followed three minutes later." Aunt Josie chuckled as though at some private joke. "Not much of a horse race, huh?"

"No photo finish." Ned agreed.

They went to bed promptly at ten o'clock and Ned lay under the covers in the split-level ranch house in Spaulding, Massachusetts with his Aunt Josie - heart as big as the Grand Canyon - and super-weird Cousin Heather a short distance down the hall. His fever was gone altogether, the throat still scratchy but on the mend.

So where did things stand?

His mother had been totally in the dark that her own sister possessed a teenage daughter, and, until earlier, Aunt Josie wasn't even remotely aware that Ned's mother married Frank Scoletti, Spaulding's most-eligible heartthrob, much less had a family of her own. And what about Cousin Heather's father? Was he still in the picture?

Just before he turned off the light and settled under the covers, his cousin shuffled into the room. She wore cotton pajamas and slippers that made a crisp, slapping sound on the hardwood floor. "You okay?

"Yeah I'm fine."

"Do you know the story of the heron and the crane?" Ernie asked. Heather wagged her head. He repeated the story almost word for word as Samantha Crowley had told it. Then he explained how the gopher lost his tail and elk got his long muzzle.

Heather sat down on the side of the bed. She kissed him on the cheek then rubbed the moistness away with her fingers. "Are all the relatives from Florida as flakey as you?"

"Now," Ned ignored the question, "I want you to tell me a fairy tale."

"Don't know any."

"The story of the identical twin sisters who acted every bit as childish as talking animals in the Siberian folktales."

Heather took his hand and held it tight. Then she leaned over and placed her lips against his ear. "Tony Scoletti was not your mother's first love. A year before she started dating your father she was engaged to another man... Henry Whipple."

Ned felt nauseous, lightheaded. "Why are you telling me this?"

"You risked your neck traveling all this way alone. You've earned the truth."

"The week before the wedding, the groom ran off with the bride's older sister. That is, older sister by three minutes." Josie and Henry were married by a justice of the peace a week after they reached Spaulding. Henry Whipple - the man who loved two sisters, but not equally - died of pancreatic cancer three days before their daughter's first birthday.

"Push over," Heather whispered as she slid under the covers next to him. Ned lay on his side facing the wall. "I'll stay here until you fall asleep."

Fifteen minutes passed. His cousin's presence was comforting. Just before dozing off, it occurred to Ned that the Heron and Crane might have enjoyed similar solace had they shown better sense.

back to Table of Contents

Sanitation

When Hal McCarthy arrived at agility training, a coal-black Scottish terrier with stubby legs and a huge tuft of chin hair resembling a Fu Manchu was negotiating the course. The squat dog hurried effortlessly through the six-weave training chute, cleared the bar jump before heading off in the direction of the teeter totter. The dog's owner, an Hispanic woman in her early thirties, waved a treat in front of the pooch's nose. Leading the dog to the center, she pressed gently on the wooden plank. The raised portion settled to the floor and the dog promptly rushed off toward the thirty-foot tunnel.

"Nice run," Hal noted when the woman exited the course. The Scottish terrier was well-behaved if somewhat skittish. Maria Santos warned Hal a week earlier not to pet the dog, which was food-aggressive and tended to snap at outstretched hands.

"He lost focus on the final turn." Like her shaggy companion, the copper-skinned woman was short and squat with a broad forehead. On the final turn, the dog was supposed to leap through a vinyl tire suspended several inched off the ground, but the high-strung canine took a detour, waddling back into the thirty-foot, orange tunnel.

"What do you do for a living?" Maria asked.

"Up until retiring last August," Hal explained, "I inspected food facilities for the health department." A toy poodle, extremely fast and skittish, was racing about the course.

The woman eyed him curiously. "I'm opening a diner on Howard Avenue."

"The old Breakfast Nook?" Hal asked. The woman nodded.

"We used to inspect the place. They had problems with the dishwasher." Fifty feet away, the poodle was snaking through the training chute effortlessly en route to the bar jump. From previous experience Hal knew that the tiny dog would be in rare form for another twenty minutes or so until he tired and his attention span melted away to nothing.

"Water was never hot enough," Hal picked up on the thread of his previous remark. "The previous owner had to install a booster to get dishwasher temperature up to code."

"Yes, he mentioned something to that effect." Maria noted. "Who does the inspections now?"

The toy poodle scampered around the final turn. Hal's Lhasa Apso, Teddy, would be going next. Reaching down he checked the dog's collar. "Donna Hadley took over when I retired."

"And what's Ms Hadley like?"

Hal rose to his feet and began leading the Lhasa toward the gate. "Finds fault with everything... a restaurant owner's worst nightmare!"

Later that night at home Hal took Teddy outside one last time to pee. The dog was sure to sleep like the dead after the hour-long workout. The Hispanic woman knew next to nothing about sanitation or the Minotaur's maze of health regulations governing food service. She never worked in the field or taken a single course at the community college. Inside the first minute, Donna Hadley would tease the truth from Ms Santos then set to work dismembering the Breakfast Nook with one petty code violation after another. Too bad! She seemed nice enough, even if her Scottish terrier was a bit high-strung.

*****

To insure a smooth transition, the Brandenburg Department of Health brought Donna Hadley on board a full month before Hal left his job. The only child of a neurosurgeon who owned a three-story brownstone in the posh Chestnut Hill section of Newton, Massachusetts, Donna's family maintained a vacation home on Block Island.

"We had a thirty-foot sloop and stable full of horses," Hal's replacement gushed. "It was a truly bucolic existence, like something out of a Victorian novel." The twosome had just returned from inspecting a Chinese restaurant. A dead roof rat lay near the dumpster; a strong oily smell – usually a sign of cockroaches – laced the air in the dry storage area, but otherwise the business was in compliance. Pest control had visited the facility a month earlier.

"Pride and Prejudice," Hal offered.

"Yes, exactly that sort of rustic bliss." Donna Hadley was a tall woman with a wide, mannish jaw. Boasting a masters degree in public health from Stanford, she struck Hal as rather unimaginative, the sort of brittle-minded hack who, despite a 3.5 grade average, seldom puts her intelligence to proper use.

They had arrived back at the department of health where Hal was writing up his report. "All summer long, I rode bareback through meadows of tiger lilies and salt spray roses. From June when school got out straight through to Labor Day, I never wore shoes."

Hal thought the last remark a bit of a stretch, but obviously the youthful Donna Hadley lived a blessed existence far removed from the humdrum monotony that most middle-class working stiffs endured. "Our summer home was a mile and a half from the Southeast Lighthouse," Ms Hadley prattled on. "A favorite tourist spot, it draws thousands of visitors to Block Island each year."

Hal had toured the structure during a trip to Block island a few years back when his wife was alive. The lighthouse featured a six-sided, red brick base leading up to a formidable steel enclosure which housed the light element. An attached, three-story building with scalloped windows was only slightly shorter than the massive light itself.

"There is so much history in the region. The area has been the site of numerous shipwrecks, including the Steamer Larchmont in 1907."

"And, of course," Donna Hadley was tripping over her words, "the wreck of the Princess Augusta, also known as the Palatine ship, which was later immortalized by John Greenleaf Whittier in his poem, The Wreck of the Palatine". Raising an arm in a theatrical gesture, she recited from memory in a stilted, breathy monotone.

"Circled by waters that never freeze,

Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,

Lieth the island of Manisees,..."

"Very pithy!" Hal responded when the woman finished the poem. He felt like throwing up. This narcissistic clod who spent her childhood summers galloping frenetically around an historic island off the Atlantic coast, clearly considered herself royalty, an aristocratic breed apart.

"What about the Norwegian rat?"

"Roof rat," Hal corrected. Roof rats were physically smaller and darker. "The dumpster was properly covered with no refuse lying about."

"And the cockroaches?" Donna pressed.

"We didn't actually see any bugs, and according to the pest control log, the place was fumigated recently."

"I see."

Hall didn't think the woman saw much of anything.

On the contrary, she was spoiling for a fight – wanted to make her mark as a no-nonsense, upwardly mobile professional. But the owner of the restaurant, Mr. Lee, who enjoyed a respectable track record, had always been cooperative and forthcoming. More to the point, no history of food poisoning or complaints associated with the facility existed.

"A while back," Hal noted in a flat monotone, "slaughterhouses in Kentucky were forced to make expensive renovations or go out of business."

"Where did you learn this?"

"An essay by Wendell Berry." He rose and went to the window. The last of the winter snows had melted away, crocuses tentatively thrusting delicate purple shoots up through the frozen earth. "These slaughterhouses were small, mom-and-pop operations. They didn't process meat for the wholesale, commercial market but did custom work for local farmers... exclusively for their own, private use."

"Why are you telling me this?" Donna Hadley demanded in a decidedly pinched tone.

"Local authorities," he ignored the question, "passed even stricter legislation regulating creameries and poultry. Grocers couldn't accept farmers' eggs or chickens and small-scale dairy operations closed down over night."

"The public has to be protected," The woman, who made no effort to mask her disdain, glowered.

"Protected from what? People seldom got ill. The meat they brought home from the local slaughterhouses fed immediate families. It wasn't a money-making proposition." "Maybe a farmer kept a cow or two... sectioned off a milking stall in the barn with wooden partitions. So bacteria didn't grow, milk was cooled in containers suspended in tubs of frigid well water. No one got sick. The locals knew what the hell they were doing. It's what their parents did and their parent's parents going back generations."

"The greater good," Ms. Hadley insisted by way of rebuttal, "trumps personal consideration."

Hal's mind wandered back to the Hong Kong Restaurant and its owner, Mr., Lee. Donna Hadley was untroubled by life's ambiguities, nuanced shades of gray. A brittle-minded bureaucrat with a chip on her shoulder, the damage perpetrated over the course of a professional lifetime would be exponential.

"Circled by waters that never freeze,

Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,

Lieth the island of Manisees,..."

The woman, with the gilded spoon between her middle-aged lips was a government-sanctioned ignoramus.

* * * * *

The following Tuesday, Hal ate a leisurely breakfast then drove downtown, parking the Toyota near the public library. The Breakfast Nook was closed up tight, tables and chairs pushed against the far wall. Behind the counter a stout elderly woman was bent over the grill. Hal rapped on the plate glass door. "Not open." Hunched over the food, the woman never bothered to look. "A week from Monday... come back then." In response to the noise, Maria Santos emerged from a storage area, came and unlocked the door.

"Just wanted to see how you were getting along." Hal surveyed the room. The floor was spotless, the Formica counters and tables equally clean. "I brought you this." He handed her a thick, blue book. On the glossy cover, a chef decked out in culinary white was chopping celery on a cutting board. "It's the National Restaurant Association Servsafe manual."

Maria held the book lightly with her fingertips and her face assumed a look of reverence as she surveyed the table of contents. "I'll need to know all this?"

"Pretty much." Hal gestured with his eyes. "What's she preparing over there?"

"Home fries... my mother will be helping out in the kitchen. She's here today because she wanted to familiarize herself with the grill."

Hal edged closer. The older woman, whose grayish hair was tied back in a bun, smiled over thick shoulder. "Well, there's a problem right off the bat."

"Excuse me?"

"What happened to her finger?" He gestured toward the grill, where the elder Mrs. Santos was flipping a pile of pearlescent home fires with a metal spatula.

"Nicked it dicing vegetables the other day... a tiny scratch. The cut's almost completely healed over."

"Yes but, a health inspector could shut your place down for something as minor as that."

Maria's face dropped. She said something to her mother in Spanish and the woman's affable manner quickly dissipated. Laying the spatula aside, she disappeared into a back room only to emerge a moment later with a band-aid covering the cut. Returning to the grill she retrieved the spatula and lifted a pile of potatoes that, in her absence, had darkened about the edges.

"Stoppppp!" Hal shouted.

The older woman promptly dropped the spatula scattering its contents on the clean floor. "Your mother just made a minor problem ten times worse," Hal explained in a phlegmatic tone. "According to state law, all food handlers must cover cuts with both a Band-Aid and single-use disposable glove or finger cot."

Maria stooped down and helped her mother clean the mess. All the while the older woman was speaking furiously, non-stop in her native tongue. Ignoring her daughter's placating gestures, Mrs. Santos no longer bothered to acknowledge Hal's presence in the restaurant.

"Show me the refrigerator."

"Why?" Maria replied in a beleaguered tone.

"It's one of the first places health inspector's look." Maria led him into the supply room and cracked the refrigerator wide open. "Who lined the shelves with aluminum foil?"

"I did."

"Get rid of it and everything else that blocks the flow of refrigerated air through the unit." Hal lifted the lid on a plastic container. "Chicken and all meat products are routinely stored on the lowest shelf so juices don't accidentally drip onto fresh produce or prepared foods." "An outbreak of Salmonella or E. coli could put you out of business over night."

"You should invest in a set of professional, temperature gauges – immersion for soups, infrared and thermocouple for cooking surfaces and general culinary." Judging by her panicky expression, Hal doubted she understood what he was saying. He pointed at the three-bay sink. "And I didn't notice any commercial-grade sanitizing solution." When there was no reply, he added, "You'll need a formal system for monitoring employee training, hand washing procedures, cross-contamination controls..."

Back out in the main dining door, Mrs. Santos was glaring at the retired food inspector as though he was an emissary from hell. She handed him a plate of home fries and a fork. Hal teased a couple of potato wedges onto the tangs of the fork. "What did you use for seasoning?"

"Dried parsley, paprika, thyme, nutmeg, salt and pepper," the woman replied then burst into an extended harangue, the bulk of which was in Spanish and directed at her daughter.

"What did she say?"

"She said," Maria translated, "that the herbs must be dry not fresh. Heat from the grill releases the subtle flavors. By using only a tiny pinch of each, the various, seasonings intertwine, marry so to speak, without overpowering the main dish."

"My wife used to cook home fries," Hal mused, "but they never tasted this good."

"She doesn't cook anymore?"

"Died... a year ago," Hal clarified. "Thirty years we were married."

*****

Tuesday Hal clipped Teddy's nails and trimmed the thicket of bristly hairs around his bulbous eyes. The previous spring the crazed dog ran headlong into a thicket of bramble and came away with a thorn on his eye. The vet cleansed the wound and applied a topical antibiotic. Now a faint scar was visible on the cornea.

Tuesday evening Maria Santos was waiting outside when he arrived for agility training. "The aluminum foil... I didn't realize it was the wrong thing to do." The Scottish terrier by her side lifted his leg and a stream of steamy, fluid gushed from his hind quarters. Without waiting for the dog to finish relieving himself, Teddy promptly sniffed the dog's privates.

"An innocent mistake," Hal observed. "Not the end of the world."

"The Servsafe book... we open in a week and a half. I can't possibly read through four hundred pages and makes sense of it in such a short period of time." She looked utterly miserable.

The manicky terrier inspected Teddy's anus and the Lhasa returned the favor. "Forget about the book. I'll mentor you... make sure that the Breakfast Nook is up to code." Hal rubbed his chin with a liver-spotted hand then scratched a hairy ear. "I'll teach you to clean, rinse, sanitize and air dry all the prep surfaces, hot-hold foods at the proper temperature, inspect deliveries for damaged foods."

Maria looked the balding man full in the face. "I'm strapped for cash... can't afford to -"

"If you offered me a penny," Hal brought her up short, "I'd be insulted."

"I don't understand."

The grizzled man grinned opaquely. "Circled by waters that never freeze, beaten by billow and swept by breeze, lieth the island of Manisees,..." In response to her baffled expression, Hal added, "It's a private joke."

They entered the building where the charcoal-gray, toy poodle was sprinting about the course. Several obstacles had been reconfigured. The teeter totter, which originally stood in the center of the room, was near the far wall. Without warning, the poodle suddenly veered wildly off course heading in the direction of the tunnel. Emerging from the tunnel he skittered through a crack in the fence. The owner finally retrieved his pet, which pulled up short alongside a frizzy Pekinese, but the frazzled pooch was unable to pick up where he left off.

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Succotash

The evening Alexis brought Tom home to meet her parents things went reasonably well. Mrs. Hamilton flitted about the kitchen overseeing the meal – a spicy pot-roast with candied carrots, potatoes au gratin and asparagus in a lemony butter sauce. She basted the meat in a Kikkoman teriyaki marinade before slow-cooking the roast in its own juices with garlic and black pepper. For dessert, she served a lavish selection of creamy pastries from Konditor Meister.

"Where did you meet that silly boy?" Mrs. Hamilton queried after Tom went home. A tall, fair-skinned blonde with broad shoulders, her tone was blithely dismissive.

"At a book store."

"He seems rather... limited."

Alexis, who hadn't expected her mother to like Tom, would have been shock to learn otherwise. "That's the appeal. He is rather limited but in all the right ways."

"Needless to say, your father was even more disappointed."

Alexis' mother grinned maliciously. "Peter Pan syndrome," Mrs. Hamilton continued when there was no immediate response. "Perennial adolescents slough off adult responsibilities. Among today's young people, the aberration is epidemic." The woman was thinking out loud, asserting a convenient string of unassailable, apriori truths.

"That might be fine for professional beachcombers and middle-age hippies displaced from the psychedelic sixties, but..." The verbiage dribbling away, she left the unfinished thought dangling in midair.

"Your collective disgust is duly noted. I won't bring Tom home ever again."

Mrs. Hamilton opened her mouth to deliver a rebuttal but reconsidered, settling on a sullen frigidity. Later, as Alexis was getting ready to leave, her mother asked, "Whatever happened to that lovely Harvard man... the economics major Aunt Edna introduced you to?"

Alexis felt something snapped in her brain, a subtle misfiring of neurons somewhere in the frontal lobe. "He groped me... in the parking lot of the Newbury Steakhouse three blocks down from the Prudential Center. After quoting a paragraph from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, the Harvard man stuck his grubby hand up my crotch."

"Oh, dear!" A fluttery palm drifted to the milky skin at her mother's wrinkled throat. "He seemed so refined and self-assured."

Alexis laughed sarcastically. "Unfortunately, those are the ones you have to watch out for."

Mrs. Hamilton pursed her lips. "You're opting out of the American dream for what?" The tone had turned decidedly caustic, almost accusatory.

"Haven't thought that far ahead."

Mrs. Hamilton countered with an indignant rant but her daughter was no longer listening. She was reflecting on something Tom told her the previous day.

Mother Teresa of Kolkata was once asked what words she used in her daily silent prayer. 'I don't say anything,' she replied. "I just listen to God." When the interviewer asked what God said to Mother Teresa, the nun replied, "Nothing, He only listens." Alexis' mother inhabited an insular world of moral certitudes. Tom was a flat earther, a Luddite. A person of no pedigree, promise or consequence.

Unlike Mother Teresa, Mrs. Hamilton felt no obligation to listen.

Alexis drifted over to the baby grand and ran a taut index finger across the middle register. Her father purchased the instrument, which was fashioned from East Indian Rosewood veneer, to celebrate her parents' silver wedding anniversary. Lowering her voice several decibels, she added, "I'm rather fond of Tom. We're twin souls."

"Twin souls," her mother repeated derisively. "God, what will you think of next!"

"It's rather late and I have a long drive."

Alexis went home and poured herself a Heineken. Three beers later when she was reasonably drunk, she reached for the phone. "What're you doing?"

"Nothing, why?"

"Come over... now. Bring a toothbrush and change of underwear."

*****

In late March Alexis meandered into the Brandenburg Book Nook. Unable to find what she wanted, she returned to the front of the store. "Edith Wharton... I checked the stacks but found nothing by the author."

The clerk, who looked to be in his late twenties, stepped out from behind the counter. A mop of dirty brown hair and wispy, anemic beard did nothing to dispel Alexis' initial impression of a bleary-eyed youth trapped in a man's body. "Ms Wharton is situated in literary fiction." He led the way to the rear of the store directly behind young adult fiction. Teasing a slim paperback off the shelf, he handed it to her. "The House of Mirth was a relatively early work. The author won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence. I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know."

"No, I wasn't aware of that."

The clerk, who was following the peregrinations of a dust bunny the size of a silver dollar as it caromed drunkenly off the baseboard heading in the direction of the Travel and Leisure section, had a queer penchant for drifting off topic. "Keeping up with the Jones... are you familiar with the expression?"

"Yes, sort of."

"The Jones originally trace back to Ms. Wharton's wealthy family."

"You're joking?"

"No, that's historical fact."

Ten minutes later Alexis wandered back to the front of the store and found the clerk hunched over a cardboard box of paperbacks. "Which did you choose?" he asked.

"Age of Innocence. I'll read it first and work backwards." Alexis stepped closer, lowering her voice. "Are you seeing anyone?"

Only now did the clerk straighten up. "Excuse me?"

"Would you like to go out?"

He glanced at her but only briefly allowing his eyes to droop until finally settling on the bright neon cover of the book he was holding. "A date... that would be nice." His right hand came up as though he meant to shake her hand but thought better of it. "I'm Tom."

"Alexis. Alexis Hamilton." She resumed talking in normal, conversational tones. "Here, let me give you my cell number." She jotted the digits on a scrap of paper and handed it to him. "Since I put you on the spot, choose whatever you like."

Easing a stack of books onto a shelf, Tom smiled affably. "I'll call closer to the weekend."

******

Friday evening the phone rang. "Any thoughts about succotash?" Tom was on the other end of the line.

Succotash – wasn't that lima or shell beans cooked together with corn in a sweet broth? "I'm rather neutral on the subject."

"The Seakonke-Wampanoag Tribe is holding its annual Powwow in Rehoboth this weekend. Indians from all over New England will be converging -"

"What time," she cut him short, "will you pick me up?"

"Around noon. We can eat there." He hung up the phone. Alexis drifted into the bedroom. On the comforter, a black strapless bustier outfit with metallic beading at the waist lay next to an Andrew Marc drape chemise with cap sleeves, an asymmetrical neckline and ruching at both the sides and shoulders. Having pulled them out in anticipation of Tom's call, she hung both dresses back in the closet.

Saturday, Tom arrived a little after noon. They drove through Brandenburg center, passing out of the city into a rural stretch of New England country. Out the passenger side window, a blur of oaks, box elder and maples descended to a wide lake stocked with largemouth bass, sweet perch, pickerel and catfish. "Where'd you go to school?" he asked.

"Wellesley College."

He flipped the directional and took a sharp left onto Arcade Avenue heading towards Seekonk. "Didn't Hillary Rodham Clinton attend Wellesley?"

"Yes, along with Diane Sawyer, Secretary of State, Madeline Albright and. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek."

A fleeting smile drifted across his face. "Anyone among those A-list alumnae you care to emulate?"

"No, thank God!" They passed the Grist Mill Restaurant with its huge turn-of-the century paddle wheel originally powered by a relentless deluge of water cascading over a granite dam. In recent times, the immobile wheel was more decorative than functional.

Up ahead and to the right stretched a huge open field. They could already hear the pulsating rhythms of a huge tribal drum being struck by multiple sticks. Tom pulled into the grassy parking area at the front of the field alongside a stand of birch trees. A profusion of wigwams and eggshell-white, EZ-Up canopies ringed a hundred-foot enclosure where both men and woman in Indian garb were furiously dancing. Two sets of drummers and singers were alternately accompanying the dancers as they twirled, trotted, skipped, shuffled and hopped about the perimeter of the circle. Dead center, a hardwood fire which had burnt down to coals, discharged a plume of aromatic smoke.

Tom parked the car in a grassy lot and removed the key from the ignition. "What I do at the bookstore pays my bills but it's basically a dead-end job." The man wasn't apologizing, simply setting the record straight.

An elderly Indian wearing a loincloth and buckskin britches hobbled by with the aid of a much younger man and an aluminum walker. The handicapped senior entered the circle and joined the revelers. "Why are you telling me this?"

"As a Wellesley girl, who may on occasion rub shoulders with America's elite," he noted tongue in cheek, "I thought you ought to know."

They meandered halfway around the perimeter of the circle and pulled up in front of the music tent, where a half-dozen brown-skinned men were pounding away on a communal drum. Behind them women decked out in feathers and native costumes were singing wordless accompaniment, a rambunctious call and response. More people were arriving every minute with giddy tribal members rushing off to greet long-lost friends and relatives. "Considering some of the men I've dated recently," she muttered with a self-deprecating half-smile, "downwardly mobile is a refreshing change."

Alexis found a pair of turquoise earrings plus a matching bracelet at one stalls, while Tom bought a flute fashioned from fire-killed, old-growth cedar originally harvested in British Columbia. Alexis was three tents down looking at a collection of handmade moccasins while Tom spoke with the Mashpee instrument maker, who had driven up in a rust-bucket camper from the tribal reservation on Cape Cod.

"Find the seam." Tom handed her the amber colored flute he just purchased.

Alexis flipped the flute over in her hand. The satiny smooth wood shimmered in the early afternoon light. "There's no break in the grain. It looks all of one piece."

"The wood was split down the middle, each half carefully hollowed out and planed smooth before being glued back together." "That craggy-faced Indian," he pointed to the elder with a single eagle feather wedged in his gray ponytail, "claims the assembly is so exact that most people can't find the joint line even if he shows them where to look." Tom's enthusiasm over the ingenious workmanship was infectious, and Alexis grinned foolishly even though she wasn't quite sure why the design was such a big deal. A young toddler dressed in moccasins and beaded leather shirt wandered by nibbling on an ear of corn. Near a display of handmade Indian artifacts, a huge pile of unshucked corn was roasting on a blackened grill.

"Hungry?" Tom queried. They ignored the hot dogs and hamburgers in favor of a watery succotash and traditional corn tortillas with vegetables, a roasted meat of unknown origin, generous dollop of sour cream and pungent, herbal sauce.

A new group of drummers and singers replaced the original musicians as a stream of children and teenagers, some brandishing war clubs and elaborate, handmade jewelry, entered the dance circle. Out of breath, the elderly man with the breechcloth and geriatric walker shuffled unsteadily off to the side and collapsed onto a folding chair. His companion ran off momentarily and returned with a large bowl of succotash. Many of the participants didn't especially look like Indians. A tall black man sporting dreadlocks and a broad, fleshy nose was talking to a blond woman with pigtails. Both wore feathers, leggings and traditional Indian regalia. With an impromptu change of clothing, the WASP'y blonde could have passed for a cheerleader or collegiate homecoming queen.

Alexis was feeling slightly woozy from the food and excitement. Somewhere between the changing of the guard with the drummers and young people joining the older dancers, Tom had slipped an arm around her waist. She felt his hips lean up against her. "So, what are you doing next weekend?"

The following Saturday night, Tom took Alexis to a Russian foreign film, Dersu Usala. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, the joint-venture movie won the Grand Prix at the Moscow Film Festival in 1975. Loosely based on the memoirs of a Russian explorer, Vladimir Arsenyey, the movie described his exploration of the Sikhote-Alin region of Siberia in the early twentieth century. By the end of the film, when the aged, half-blind hunter discovered his ancestral ways slipping into oblivion, Alexis found herself dabbing away the tears. "I'm not usually like this," she sputtered averting her soggy face.

*****

"Is there a literary precedent for what we're doing?" Alexis asked. Lying in bed, Tom was kissing the satiny skin between her shoulder blades.

A minute passed before he spoke. "E.M. Forster... A Room with a View."

"I read it in high school but can't remember a thing."

Tom lay supine, fingers laced behind his neck. "In the final chapter, the love birds elope to Italy... rush off impetuously in the middle of the night without telling a soul."

Alexis flipped over on her stomach, rising up on her elbows. A Room with a View - the plot was coming back to her in bits and pieces. Rediscovering the novella, which she read in late adolescence, was like fitting the frayed pieces of a favorite puzzle together. Every time Alexis located a matching piece, another scene or subplot suggested itself.

Around five o'clock in the morning, Tom slid off the side of the bed. A moment later she heard pee splattering against the toilet bowl. "My mother thinks you suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome," she said when he returned to bed.

"That's not true... it's something else altogether.

Without bothering to inquire what that 'something else' might be, Alexis said, "It doesn't really feel like we're dating anymore,"

They had been together three months now and settled into a comfortable domesticity. A car door slammed. An engine fired up and the vehicle crawled out of the parking lot in the direction of the highway. When it was gone, the bedroom was engulfed in soothing silence. Alexis rolled over and straddled Tom. Resting lightly on his stomach, the girl sat up straight, draping her forearms provocatively over her head. "Like what you see?"

Lips parted, he lay transfixed, breathing through his mouth in shallow puffs of air. An unintelligible, guttural sound welled up in his throat. Inching back down, Alexis placed her lips up against his ear. "Consider yourself a risk taker?"

"For the most part, no," he spoke haltingly, "but on rare occasion, I'll go for broke."

"Listen closely." Alexis whispered gruffly, "Conventional wisdom be damned, this is what I think we ought to do..."

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Old Man, Old Woman

Phyllis Moon was sifting through a stack of messages when both telephone lines lit up simultaneously. "Caring Hearts Home Care, please hold." The office coordinator put the first caller on hold and attended to the second.

Alex, who had just arrived at work, picked up the flashing line. Eighty-seven-year-old Sarah Cohen from Scenic View Apartments was complaining that her homemaker late. Alex glanced at the clock on the far wall. "It's not quite nine o'clock, Mrs. Cohen. Your girl should be there momentarily."

"The podiatrist... I got an eleven o'clock appointment," the client reported in a gravelly monotone. "Senior van is picking me up at ten-thirty, and she gotta help me get dressed."

"Your homemaker will be there shortly," Alex promised.

"My ingrown toenail... it's all infected. The girl's got to help me get ready."

"Has Mildred ever been late?"

"No, never," the Jewish woman sputtered with genuine warmth. "She's a goddamn saint!"

"So you're all set then?"

"Yeah, for sure." There was a slight pause. "It's the third time."

"Third time what?"

"This lousy infection." The woman was diabetic. Untreated, foot infections might lead to necrosis, septicemia, gangrene or worse. Alex could hear a commotion in the background. "Wait, somebody's at the door. I gotta hang up."

"That would be Mildred," Alex noted but the line had already gone dead.

Hanging up the phone he turned back to Phyllis. The receptionist's dark skin and short-cropped raven hair framed a pleasant if somewhat unremarkable face. She favored unfashionable, dark-framed glasses and an assortment of infuriatingly drab skirts and blouses. Despite her physical limitations, Phyllis Moon was efficient and dependable. She knew how to comfort a crotchety client addicted to stool softeners or finesse a homemaker into taking on a difficult case, while keeping office politics to a bare minimum.

"My fiancée, Clarice, wants to live together... cohabitate."

"That's nice," Phyllis replied in a low-keyed monotone. "Your accountant is stopping by this morning. The general ledger is locked in the middle cabinet."

"Clarice and I decided to live together," Alex repeated.

"Yes, you just told me a moment ago." Phyllis tilted her slender neck to the side and smiled opaquely. "Congratulations."

Alex glanced about the office distractedly. "Do you like Clarice?"

Phyllis Moon gawked at him with a quizzical expression. "You put me in an awkward spot with a question like that."

A homemaker wearing a green smock came to pick up directions plus pay slips for a new client. "It's not a trick question," Alex groused when the homemaker was gone. "Either you like my future wife or not."

Phyllis removed her dark-frame glasses, sprayed the lenses with a pocket-size cleaner then wiped the surface dry with a tissue. "You just went from casual dating to cohabitating to wedding bells."

Before he could respond, a dark blue Toyota sedan with a moon roof pulled up in front of the building, and, what was turning out to be a reasonably pleasant day got a whole lot worse. "Oh, God!" Alex muttered. "That's Jessica Stern from the Department of Health."

Every year without notice the Brandenburg Department of Health bushwhacked the home care agencies with unscheduled visits. They came ostensibly to insure that paperwork was in order and employee medical records up to date.

That was the stated purpose for the inspections. But Jessica Stern always brought a secondary agenda. The dour woman would dig, until she unearthed some petty indiscretion or infinitesimal sin of omission. Then, like a Roman gladiator, Jessica Stern would launch a full frontal attack.

Alex set the inspector up in a small vestibule off the entryway. Five minutes into her visit Jessica flagged him down. "The elder abuse hotline number on the Patient Bill of Rights form is incorrect," she announced in a pinched tone. The woman was tall, over six feet, with a wide jaw and meticulously combed auburn hair. "What you have here," she repeated "is outdated."

"We were never notified of the changed," he replied weakly.

"We contacted every provider." Jessica gave him a withering look that precluded any further discussion of the matter. "When did you print these forms?"

"Just last week. We ordered fifteen hundred."

"They'll all need to be destroyed, and every client issued a new one with the correct telephone number," she added for good measure. "Where's your Emergency Disaster Control Plan?"

"Disaster Control Plan," Alex repeated dully.

Three years earlier, following the 911 terrorist attack, the state ordered all health care providers to draw up a written plan detailing how they would continue operations following a national catastrophe such as germ warfare, terrorist attack, nuclear explosion, earthquake, flood, holocaust, God-knows-what. Alex had dutifully churned out ten pages of surrealistic drivel. The original document was buried in his computer hard drive, the printed version filed away somewhere in the office.

The dystopian directive read like third-rate, pulp fiction. When militant Pakistanis dropped a nuclear bomb on downtown Brandenburg, Alex would of course ignore his own, immediate family and rush back to the site of the demolished home care agency.

To do what? To insure that Sarah Cohen from Scenic View Apartments got her pussy toe lanced by the podiatrist and then make a side trip to the drug store - if it hadn't already been burnt to the ground or looted - to purchase an organic laxative for the ninety year-old client with fecal impactions. Brandenburg had just been demolished, annihilated on a scale similar to Hiroshima, but Jessica Stern's bureaucratic master plan trumped all mundane considerations.

Alex rummaged through every three-ring folder and manual lining the credenza. No luck. He slouched into a chair. A fat bumblebee just outside the window was circling the mouth of an orangey tiger lily. Across the street the driver of a Pepsi Cola van was stacking crates of soda on a hand truck to be wheeled into the grocery market.

"Did you check the blue binder?" Phyllis was leaning against the door jamb.

Alex looked up. "That's where we store outdated telephone logs."

"Yes, but you cram all sorts of junk in there." She opened the folder and thumbed through the blue binder, section by section. "Yes, here it is... right where you put it three years ago." She pried the metal rings apart, extricating the report. "I'll bring it out to Mrs. Stern." She hurried off.

After Jessica Stern left the building, Alex called the Brandenburg Department of Health. "I'm calling from Caring Hearts Home Care. We need the new Elder Abuse Hotline number."

"Yes, I have that right here," the woman on the other end of the line replied. "Eight, four, nine... nine, six, five, three."

Alex felt like he had been sucker punched in the solar plexus. "No, that's the number we presently have. It's been replaced... updated."

"One minute please." After a lengthy pause the receptionist returned. "I'm so sorry. The correct number is six, one, five..."

"Well that went well." Alex told Phyllis about the comedy of errors with the outdated telephone number. "Jessica Stern is writing us up with multiple deficiencies."

Phyllis smirked. "It's sort of like high school, when you get caught smoking in the bathroom."

"A lot more costly," Alex observed. "Those non-carbonated forms we have to scrap cost over a hundred bucks." He stepped closer. "What are you doing this weekend?"

"Camping in the White Mountains," she replied. "Gonna hike the trails and maybe do some fly-fishing."

"You don't strike me as the outdoors type."

There was no immediate reply. "What's my full name?"

Alex stared at her queerly. "Phyllis... Phyllis Moon."

"I was born Phyllis Half Moon. After moving east from the reservation in Butte, Montana, I dropped the 'Half'. I'd like to think that a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian should know a thing or two about communing with Mother Nature."

*****

"Regarding accounts receivable," Howie Tittlebaum observed, "company income is way up, but profits are in the toilet."

Alex was seated behind his desk in the back office. A coffee-colored UPS truck swerved onto the street. That would be the non-surgical glove shipment he ordered the middle of last week - ten cases of latex-free, powdered gloves for the health aides who bathed clients and provided personal care. "I'm projecting a million five this year."

A small man with pale, flaccid skin and a receding hairline, the accountant laid a spreadsheet on top of the desk. "Look here." He stabbed at a double line midway down the page. "Caring Hearts brought in close to four hundred thousand in gross sales through March, but blew three-quarters of the revenue on payroll and operating expenses."

Alex's expression darkened. "Our business is labor-intensive. To stay competitive with the nursing homes, we need to offer regular pay raises." Alex cracked his knuckles and shook his head in disgust. "But then the state nickel-and-dimes us to death. A ton of money flows in every month but flies back out the window."

"You think you're in health care?" Howie waved his slender hands in the air, assuming the gently mocking tone of a practical jokester. "Surprise! Surprise! You're in the garment trade!"

He burst out laughing hysterically at his own joke. "The garment industry in New York," the humor was tempered now with an equal measure of gravitas, "functions on razor-thin profit margins. Smaller shops can't raise prices, because the jerk down the street might undercut them; so clothiers got no control over their bottom line."

"Millions of dollars in, millions out," Alex observed sardonically. Receivables went chasing expenses like the proverbial carrot on the end of an absurdly long stick. No matter how much money he brought in, no profit remained from one month to the next. In April, Alex borrowed ten thousand dollars to cover payroll and a federal tax payment. He couldn't screw around with the Feds.

"You can cart the goddamn money to the bank in a freakin' wheelbarrow," Howie observed, "but if it's all eaten up in salaries and benefits, there isn't a plug nickel's worth of profit at the end of the day."

"What are you suggesting?"

"You don't need more money, you need stronger profit," he replied. "Hit the state up for a rate increase when you renegotiate contracts." Howie rose and, reaching across the desk, pumped Alex's hand up and down. "When you own your own company," he quipped, "everybody thinks you're rolling in dough."

Alex gazed distractedly about the room. His eyes came to rest on the new computer and dot matrix printer they used for processing the continuous-feed payroll slips. That purchase alone set him back a good penny. Now he had to fork over another three hundred dollars to the software company that designed the automated accounting program. Every couple of years they introduced an updated program that rendered what Alex was currently using obsolete.

*****

Later that night, Alex called Phyllis at home. "You work for me five goddamn years and only just now get around to telling me about your heritage?"

"How many Native Americans do you rub shoulders with on any given day?" She had never spoken to him in that way and the caustic tone brought him up short.

What did Alex know about the American Indians?

His junior year in high school the history teacher touched briefly on the ugly legacy of Manifest Destiny. In the far west, the Spanish wanted to convert all the natives to their way of life and, on the whole, were surprisingly successful. The English, on the other hand, never tried to make Englishman out of the Indians; instead they saw the red man as part of the wilderness that they aimed to clear away.

"How many tribes make up the Blackfoot Nation?" This time she didn't wait for a reply. "Four – the North and South Peigans, the Kinai Nation, also known as the Bloods, and the Siksika."

"I want to go camping with you in the White Mountains."

The remarked was greeted with a whooping belly laugh. "That's ridiculous! You're engaged to Clarice."

"Not so," he protested. "And, anyway, I just need to get away."

"A vision quest," Phyllis snickered tongue in cheek.

"What's that?"

"A young Indian wanders off into the wilderness alone and fast. After three or four days of mortification of the flesh, the Great Spirit sends a message. Or maybe nothing at all."

"Sounds a bit too intense. Can I accompany you to the White Mountain?"

"No," she hissed. "Absolutely not."

"For my mental well being, I got to get away."

Alex watched the second hand on the wall clock tick ten, fifteen, twenty-five seconds. Out in the street, an ambulance sped by red light and siren. "Separate tents. No funny stuff. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, of course. So what do I need to bring?"

"I'll do up a list. What about Clarice?"

"I'll just say I'm away on business."

"You'll do no such thing. You can tell her that you're camping in the White Mountains with friends."

"What if she demands particulars?"

"That's none of my business, because I'm driving up alone," she replied and hung up the phone.

*****

Alex allowed himself one colossal, ignominious blunder per year.

Every three hundred and sixty-five days, give or take a month, he could transgress, do something so utterly regrettable that he cringed with mortal embarrassment. One stupendously stupid blunder per year.

Clarice was physical perfection – the straw-colored hair and velvety skin that blushed pink when she stepped out of a steamy shower. The other night, she wore a strapless, black evening gown with pearl drop earrings to a family gathering, and the odd thought flitted across Alex's mind that the woman was quite possibly even more beautiful with clothes than in the buff. But outside of maintaining her gorgeous looks, the woman, who pulled up short every time she passed a mirror, cultivated no hobbies or creative pursuits. She was a trophy wife, not a woman to grow old with, and agreeing to cohabitate registered a perfect ten on the Richter scale of dopey deeds.

Alex had no intention of ever setting up house with the blonde much less marrying her. He would tell his girlfriend the truth straight out. Clarice would throw a hissy fit, but inside a week, she would dry the crocodile tears and put her luscious, thirty-something flesh back in circulation. More guys would be queuing up for a date with Clarice than diehard Yankee fans vying for tickets to a World Series game.

So why tell Phyllis they were moving in together? And, worse yet, why did he describe Clarice as his future wife? One lie heaped on another. A fetid pile of deceit! If Alex wasn't going to marry Clarice, what did he really want? Alex yearned for someone like Phyllis Moon. The near-sighted, rummage-sale fashionista was pleasant, reliable, dependable, durable, forthright, solid, stolid and on and on and on and....

She was also spoken for.

Phyllis had a steady boyfriend, Donald. On the few occasions he stopped by the office to take Phyllis out to lunch, the pudgy man with the swarthy, pock-marked face was always polite, with a gently, self-effacing smile, Though she never discussed her personal life, Alex assumed Donald and his office manager were engaged.

*****

The rest of the week flew by. Jessica Stern from the Department of Health mailed a list of infractions which required written plans of correction within ten days. Thursday evening Clarice called. "I'm three blocks from your apartment."

Alex immediately hung up and began rehearsing his we-need-to-talk spiel, but when Clarice arrived the issue never came up. "My father had emergency surgery to remove a blood clot in his leg."

Alex felt a sense of relief. "When was this?"

"Earlier this morning." I'm flying out tonight to be with my mother... won't be back from Miami until sometime the middle of next week."

"Need a lift to Logan?"

"You're so sweet." She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned forward. "Want to grab a quickie before I go?"

By the scattered tone and the way her eyes flitted distractedly about the room, Alex understood the offer as more formality than sexual need. "Not necessary."

She kissed his cheek, wiping the wetness away with the heel of her hand. "Poor boy, you'll be all alone this weekend."

Alex felt a queer rush of joy tinged with anticipation. "Howie Tittlebaum stopped by the office Monday."

"The accountant?"

"He claims I've been spending too much time growing revenue when I should be focusing on profit."

Clarice picked at a cuticle. "What's the difference?" He explained the comparison Howie had made between home care and the garment industry. "You earn over a million dollars," she spoke slowly measuring her words, "but are still a pauper?"

"The agency rakes in tons of money," Alex said, "but after-tax profit is pitifully low."

She flashed him a sick look. "I'm sure you'll figure something. I got to get to Logan Airport in less than two hours."

*****

Friday afternoon Alex told Phyllis about Clarice's abrupt departure. "Is Donald joining us?"

"Joining me," Phyllis corrected. "No. Donald has a drinking problem and we're not dating anymore."

"For the life of me, I don't see why we can't drive up together."

"Because," Phyllis' stony expression never wavered, "to do so would be crass and smarmy."

"I'm not two-timing Clarice."

"No," Phyllis replied evenly, "but you're not being terribly honest either."

"Travelling in one car is more economical."

Phyllis turned away. "Clearly you didn't hear a solitary thing I said."

*****

Saturday morning, Alex drove north through Boston, where he caught the Route 93 Interstate to the New Hampshire state line. He continued on through Plymouth and Compton, cruising to the western shore of Lake Winnipesauke. The campground was well over two hours away and the unsavory thought had occurred to Alex even before he left Brandenburg that Phyllis might pull a practical joke and not show up.

Then what would he do? Check into a motel for the night? That made perfect sense! He had bought a tent, sleeping bag and lengthy list of necessities that Phyllis Moon (or was it Half Moon?) recommended, but would end up spending the night in some dumpy, flea-bitten motel before driving home like a total fool.

At Holderness he entered the southern tip of the White Mountains National Forest and continued on for another thirty miles veering off the interstate onto route 112 heading east to Loon Mountain. At the third set of traffic lights he pulled over at a small coffee shop; Phyllis was waiting near a picnic table sipping a cup of coffee. She was dressed sensibly – a pair of heavy-soled hiking boots, khaki shorts and plaid blouse.

"Is there anything you need?" He shook his head. "The campground is two miles up on the right. You can follow me." She climbed into a tan Subaru sedan and edged out into traffic.

*****

"You'll want to get the gear set up and campsite arranged to your liking." Phyllis had called ahead earlier in the week to reserved a space near the lake.

Once they lugged their supplies down to the water, the lanky woman started unpacking. Alex wandered down to the lake then doubled back to the registration office where he picked up a few brochures describing local attractions. "Is that a tent or a Mediterranean villa?"

Phyllis, who was pounding a metal stake into the spongy earth, nudged her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and grinned. The elongated tent featured two doors with a massive vestibule plus a six-pocket gear loft. The poles were anodized aluminum with a mesh canopy and overhead vents to eliminate condensation.

"It's the Big Agnes Emerald Mountain model." "The design is particularly good," she added as she pounded away at the last stake, "for weathering high wind situations." Having finished she ran a hand over the bed of pine needles carpeting the earth. "Where's your hatchet?"

"I forgot to buy one."

"Here, use this." She handed him the one at her feet. "I'm going back to the car to get the rest of my stuff." It took Phyllis three leisurely trips back and forth to retrieve the rest of her camping gear. She brought a sleeping bag, flashlight with extra batteries, a kerosene lantern, transistor radio and folding chair. The bug spray and plastic cooler she squirreled away under a shaggy hemlock tree. Other items such as the mess kit, plastic cups, pot holders, a slightly scorched aluminum pan and spatula she arranged alongside the Big Agnes.

"What's the bucket for?" Alex asked.

"Hauling water." Phyllis wound a plastic alarm clock and set it just inside the front tent flap. "We can cook simple meals over the fire," she pointed to a blackened cooking pit ringed by large stones, "but there's a pizza joint and breakfast nook three miles down on the right so, if the weather turns bad, we don't have to starve."

She grabbed a short handled spade. "I'm going to dig a shallow hole over behind that stand of birch trees. Do your business in the hole." Rummaging about in one of her waterproof storage sacks she removed a roll of fluffy toilet paper. "Don't throw the paper on the ground. Put it here." She held up a Ziploc storage bag with a plastic clip. "I'll hang it beside the hole." She pointed at a scattering of wildflowers sprouting on a rocky granite outcrops. "Be careful not to step on any of those."

Alex studied a delicate, rather homely looking plant with tiny pastel pink buds. "And why's that?"

"Silverlings have been disappearing here in the Northeast and some blame recreational hikers."

When Alex's tent was erected and sleeping bag unrolled, Phyllis announced that she was going for a walk. "Did you bring extra socks?" Alex shook his head up and down. "How many pair?"

"Three."

"That's good, but I've got a clothesline and detergent just in case."

"Was there anything you didn't bring?" She cracked a tepid smile and headed away from the lake toward the main trail.

*****

The campground was shot through with an endless series of ponds, bogs and rocky hillocks that weaved around the lake. As they came up over a gravelly hill, Phyllis knelt down and fingered a dull pink flower with feathery tendrils bursting from the center. "Blazing star," she pointed to a charred tree trunk nearby. "They don't like shade and tend to appear after the land's been scorched by fire."

Reaching a clearing where the dense pine trees no longer hemmed them in, the sky was clear with a scattering of cumulus clouds. A brown hawk circled on an updraft, searching for prey. "I climbed that mountain directly ahead last summer." At the summit, there were balsam fir and black spruce only thigh-high like miniature clumps of bonsai trees."

As she explained it, at the higher elevations many of the alpine plants were dwarfed to avoid the brutal winds and survive in the nutrient-poor substrate that couldn't possibly maintain regular forest plants. Even the heartiest shrubs were ground-hugging with thick, leathery leaves that sometimes curled at the margins to help reduce the physical abuse and dehydrating effects of the mountain winds.

"So when exactly," Alex pressed, "were you planning to tell me about your Indian heritage?"

Phyllis shrugged. Cresting the rise, she started down the far side. "What do you want to know?"

"I'm not sure."

They passed a clump of fleshy white baneberry. "According to Blackfoot oral tradition, once there were only two people in the world, Old Man and Old Woman."

As Phyllis Half Moon explained it, the Old Man insisted that they should decide how everything worked properly in the new world they were creating, and that he should have first say in everything. Old Woman agreed as long as she could have the second say. Then the Old Man said, "Let the people have eyes and mouths in their faces, but they shall be straight up and down."

"No,' said the Old Woman. We will not have them that way. We will have the eyes and the mouth in the faces, as you say, but they shall be set crosswise."

They passed through a gash in the hillside where granite boulders rose thirty feet high on either side of the cleft. Small wildflowers, mosses and seedlings that Alex hadn't noticed previously clung to the steep sides of the bald-faced rock—a vegetative world in microcosm. "Is that the only story about the Old Man and Old Woman?"

"Oh, no," Phyllis laughed. "Here's another." "The Old Man said people shall have ten fingers on each hand, but the Old Woman said, 'Oh, no. That will be too many and they will be in the way. There shall be four fingers and one thumb on each hand.'"

"'Well' said the old man, 'we shall beget children. The genitals shall be at our navels.'"

"'No', said the Old Woman, 'that will make childbearing too easy; the people will not care for their children. The genitals shall be further down.'"

Alex began to chuckle. They had arrived back at the campsite. "That's enough Indian folklore for the time being."

*****

"Why did you change your name?" They were down by the pond in the early afternoon. Phyllis was fly-casting, whipping a strand of translucent monofilament line out over the placid water. As she retrieved the feathery lure, she flicked her wrist to simulate a bug flitting about the watery surface.

The woman waded further away from shore until the water crawled up her slender thighs and was nipping at the hem of her shorts. She let out a length of line, slingshotting the fly in a wavy ribbon across the pond. "Being Native American," she addressed his earlier question, "is a state of mind. I don't have to wear my Indian heritage like some badge of honor."

Sitting twenty feet away on a stump Alex, nodded. He had always felt uncomfortable at Fourth of July ceremonies, watching doddering, eighty year-old VFW members with pot bellies, pointy military caps and hip replacements limp past.

"My people lived for centuries in these very same woods before migrating to the northwestern Great Plains where they hunted buffalo and gathered wild plants. The Blackfeet were the strongest military power in the region during the buffalo days. All the neighboring tribes, the Shoshonis, Kutenais and Flatheads, feared them."

Slogging back to shore she removed the fly, exchanging it for another with a fluffy lemon-colored feather and silver spinner. "Being Indian is a state of grace," she repeated what she had said a moment earlier altering the last word.

*****

In late afternoon, Phyllis sent Alex to collect kindling and scrounge up thicker deadwood for the campfire. Once the fire was established, she steamed a cup of whole grain rice and sautéed onions and green peppers over the open flame."

"You even remembered to bring salt," Alex shook his head, "and sugar for the coffee." The light was seeping out of the sky leaving the landscape shrouded in dull shadows. "Howie says we're not doing so hot." After they had finished the meal, he told Phyllis the accountant's grim assessment earlier in the week.

She sat on a blanket sipping black coffee from a battered tin cup. "This is what I think." A light breeze sent a rustling through the trees. Somewhere in the distance a small creek was gurgling a soothing, repetitive melody. "Hold off until September, then slash benefits. Do away with sick days. No more time-and-a-half for evening service, and make the direct-care employees pay fifty-fifty toward their medical coverage."

Alex mulled the suggestion. "Isn't that a bit drastic?"

"And what are your alternatives? Howie says we're no better than the garment industry. Well, the garment industry has been around for a hundred years. We won't survive much beyond January, from what I can see, unless you do something rash."

"Homemakers will quit."

"So you swallow hard and hire replacements at entry-level pay. When the state grants us a rate increase, reward the loyal troops with a decent raise." Phyllis rose and threw the last few drops of coffee onto the fading embers, which sent up a steamy, aromatic smoke. "Now, I'm going to bed."

Around three o'clock, Alex had to pee. He had forgotten to bring a flashlight, but the moon was bright, and he relieved himself behind a clump of evergreen bushes with bright red berries that Phyllis identified earlier as a rare mountain variety of wild cranberry that only grew in western Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. Back in the cozy comfort of the sleeping bag, Alex realized that, for the first time in ages, he was sublimely happy.

Earlier while Phyllis was preparing supper, he said, "Tell me another story about Old Man and Old Woman."

She was filleting a trout she caught. "Old woman asked, 'What should we do about life and death? Should the people always live or should they die?'"

They had some difficulty in agreeing on this; but finally Old Man said, that he would throw a buffalo chip into the water, and, if it floated, the people will die for four days and live again. But if it sank, they would die forever. So he threw it in and it floated.

But Old Woman said that they would not decide in that way. She would throw a large rock. If it floated the people would die for four days. If it sank they would die forever. Then Old woman threw the rock into the water, and it sank to the bottom. "There," she said. "It is better that the people die forever, for, if they did not die forever, they would never feel sorry for each other, and there would be no sympathy in the world."

Somewhere in the darkness an owl hooted. An army of bullfrogs buried in the rushes was croaking an impromptu chorus. Of the four Blackfoot creation myths, Alex definitely liked the last story best. Rolling over on his side, he went soundly off to sleep.

*****

In the morning while Alex got the fire ready, Phyllis drove to a convenient store and purchased English muffins, fresh eggs and bacon. In her absence, he let the wood flare up then burn down to a smoldering redness before adding a few small branches. "I'm breaking up with Clarice as soon as she gets back from visiting her parents."

Phyllis, who was cracking eggs in a bowl, didn't bother to raise her eyes. "You didn't seem very well suited for one another." Drizzling shredded cheddar cheese over the egg, she poured the mixture into the frying pan. "Such a pretty woman, Clarice won't have much trouble finding a new partner."

A light breeze kicked up, fanning the smoke in Alex's face, forcing him to shift a half-turn to the right. "After I settle things with Clarice, I thought maybe we could start seeing each other."

"Perhaps, but not right away... that would be in bad taste and give rise to gossip." The egg batter began to congeal and Phyllis stirred it with a spatula. "Maybe we could hike over to Sabbaday Falls this morning."

"What's there to see?"

"It's a three-tiered waterfall just off the Kancamagus Highway in Waterville. The upper drop is about eight feet, plunging into a deep, emerald punchbowl with a flume that empties out in a broad basin far below."

"How long should we wait before dating?"

Strips of hickory-smoked bacon were bubbling on a separate griddle that Phyllis positioned on a slower burning section of wood. "At least a month, perhaps two." She scraped some eggs onto a plastic dish and handed him the food. Phyllis hooked a hand around his neck, pulled Alex close and planted a kiss on a stubbly cheek. Not the least bit provocative - blustery excesses were not a part of Phyllis Moon's emotional makeup - the impulsive gesture was more an intimation of things to come. Pushing him away at arm's length, she said, "The bacon will be ready in a moment. You can brown your English muffins with a dab of butter on the griddle, but wipe the bacon grease away first."

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Hummus

"Naomi Shamir is on the phone." Sonny Gossage's mother was standing on the second floor landing just outside her son's closed bedroom door. "She wants to speak to you."

Sonny was thumbing through a back issue of National Geographic, ogling pictures of an annual West African fertility ritual. In an open field, teenage virgins were parading in front of the tribal leader. Decked out in leopard skin robes, the grizzled ruler sat on a rickety, straight-backed chair. The debilitated king, who appeared to be in his eighties, smiled regally as over a hundred bare-chested woman passed in review. The girls wore necklaces of gold, silver, ivory and shells at their throat and sported similar finery on their wrists and ankles. Everyone, especially the geriatric ruler, seemed to be having a splendid time.

"Don't know anybody by that name," the boy replied as he scanned the column of dark-skinned beauties waiting to present their physical assets.

"The Israeli woman whose husband ran off last summer," Mrs. Gossage clarified. "She lives with her daughter in that fancy schmancy, split-level house with the green shutters.

Sonny felt his heart begin to race out of control. Throwing the magazine aside, he rose from the bed and made his way to the telephone. "Hello?" There was a brief pause. "Yes, that was my flyer." After a moment, Sonny hung up the phone and grinned self-consciously. "She wants me to mow her lawn twice a month."

A week ago Tuesday, Sonny hoofed it up and down the neighborhood stuffing mailboxes with flyers.

Lawn care and landscape services.

Reasonable rates!

Call 508-226-5987 Free estimate

Sonny had no idea what he meant by 'landscape services'. He was using his father's beat-up mower and a Black and Decker electric weed whacker with a hundred-foot extension cord. "Now I got thirteen accounts, including the Jewish lady."

*****

Mrs. Shamir was a dark-skinned Sabra, native born Israeli, who moved into a spacious ranch house at the far end of Baxter Street when Sonny was still in elementary school. A year later the husband disappeared, flew the coop. It was rumored he deserted his wife and returned to Israel. Naomi was an ophthalmologist who did eye exams at the Vision World up the road in Wrentham. Sometimes she wore a short, white jacket like a medical doctor. The woman had a daughter in first grade, drove a beige BMW and grew her own vegetables in the back yard. Just the other day, Sonny saw her returning from work in the late afternoon her lush, dark hair pulled back in a tight bun.

Saturday morning a pickup truck dumped a load of smelly manure by the side of the house. Later that afternoon, Sonny watched from his upstairs window with binoculars as Mrs. Shamir, dressed in cut-off dungarees and a flimsy halter, made multiple trips with a red wheelbarrow, lugging the smelly cow-poop to the back yard where she raked the brown gold out over her newly-seeded vegetable garden. Observing the voluptuous, brown-skinned woman wield a short-handle spade was even more arousing than viewing glossy pictures of West African natives parading in front of their king naked from the waist up.

Timing was everything.

Sonny trimmed three other lawns and pruned a fifty-foot hedge over the first half of the following week. Then it rained, a spitting drizzle, straight through until Saturday morning when the sun emerged and temperatures soared into the high eighties. The boy dragged the Toro twenty-one inch, mulching mower over to the Shamir home at ten o'clock in the morning. Naomi was already out in the rear puttering in her garden. Her dark-haired daughter was pushing herself on the swing.

"I've been waiting for you," Naomi stood up and brushed the dirt from her hands. A six-pointed star dangled from a silver chain, her jet black hair knotted in a pony tail. Sonny could smell the pungent dung, but it was pleasant. A noisy band of crows flitted back and forth among the Scotch pines that bordered the property. "Why don't you start in the front?"

The girl said something to her mother in a gruff, guttural language and the mother responded in kind. "This is Ruth." She pronounced the word as though there was no 'h'. The girl, who shared the mother's olive skin tones and hooked nose, wasn't nearly as pretty.

Near a clump of lilacs, the woman had planted a profusion of tulips and assorted wild flowers. Taking care not to damage any of the blossoms, Sonny mowed the front lawn then both sides. Where the stringy weeds had grown right up to the foundation he ran the weed whacker, paring the unruly mess away to nothing. The temperature climbed steadily throughout the morning into the low nineties. Sonny would have preferred to peel his T-shirt off but felt self-conscious. By the time he reached the back, Mrs. Shamir had finished her gardening and gone inside with her daughter. He shut the mower down momentarily to move a picnic table and when he looked up the Israeli woman was standing to one side with a glass of soda.

"You poor boy!" The tone was more humorous than genuinely sympathetic. "We get oppressive heat in my country, too, throughout the summer months. It's called 'hamseen'. When the weather gets crazy, so does the population, and there's an epidemic of traffic accidents, mental breakdowns, robberies and reports of husbands beating their wives. The searing heat makes people mentally unstable."

She handed him the soda. Sonny didn't know what to say. She was so insanely pretty with her high cheekbones, plump lips and exotic accent. "Last Sunday," she continued with the same devilishly engaging smile, "I was taking little Ruthie out for breakfast and saw your family leaving church after Mass." Mrs. Shamir pursed her lips. "Everybody imagines that Jews don't believe in Jesus but that's not completely true. We tend to think of him as just another Biblical prophet in the tradition of Jeremiah, Jonah, Micah or Ezekiel." She tapped her lips with a slender finger. "He spent some time wandering about Nazareth, you know?"

"Who did?" Sonny's brains were a bit muddled with the heat and physical exertion.

"Hamoshiach... Jesus Christ."

The boy felt like a total dunce. The woman spoke with such unassuming, matter-of-factness that the boy thought she might have been referring to a mutual acquaintance rather than the Son of God. "Yes, of course," he blustered, gawking at her chest. Naomi Shamir's magnificent breasts, which were unearthly huge, they jutted out from her cotton blouse like a pair of perky sentinels.

"I lived in Upper Nazareth with my family all through high school. Your savior was a neighbor a few centuries removed."

"Never thought of it that way." Sonny chuckled. "You must attend the synagogue over by the mall."

"No, I'm not religious. Not in the least."

"You're an atheist?"

"Agnostic," she clarified. "Do you know the difference?" Sonny, who wasn't totally clear on the subject, shook his head from side to side.

"You must be familiar with the Holocaust and what happened during the Second World War."

"We studied that in history last year."

"Following the war, many Jews asked how a compassionate God could turn his back and let six million innocent people perish in concentration camps." Her tone was sober, almost clinical in its detachment. "Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher, wrote a short book, The Eclipse of God. He said that during the Nazi evil, God was eclipsed – hidden behind an impenetrable shroud of human wickedness."

Ruth came skipping down the front stairs and wrapped both her stubby arms around her mother's lovely thigh. "Buber reasoned that God wasn't insensitive to the suffering of his people. Humanity was its own undoing." She reached out rather suddenly and tapped him playfully on the shoulder with a taut index finger. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, I get it, but why are you telling me this?"

"I didn't want you to think that a Jew, arrived straight from the Holy Land and who doesn't go to temple, is necessarily ignorant of such things."

"I would never do that," Sonny promised.

Naomi Shamir retrieved the empty soda glass. "Good!' The serious mood dissipated and a radiant smile suffused her dark face. Digging deep in her pocket, she pulled out a twenty dollar bill. "See you in two weeks." Handing him the money, she swept her daughter up in her fleshy arms and disappeared back into the house.

Pushing the mower down the street, Sonny's brain was in such a state of molten upheaval he couldn't manage to string two coherent thoughts back to back.

A perverse notion finally occurred to him: Mr. Shamir had been driven away by his wife's beauty. No one could live in that blinding light of human perfection for any length of time without going bonkers, drooling like a mindless idiot. Of course the prickly heat didn't help. What was the Hebrew word she had used? Hamseen. Normally mild-mannered, respectable husbands' beat their wives; drivers negotiated the highway like they were competing in a demolition derby. But that didn't explain everything – not even the half of it.

Later that night, lying on top of the covers in his bedroom, Sonny's mind was fixed on his Hebrew neighbor like a compulsive fetish. Naomi Shamir, Naomi Shamir, Naomi Shamir, Naomi Shamir, Naomi Shamir, Naomi Shamir,...

*****

Mrs. Gossage claimed Jews were the 'People of the Book'. They were real smart and rich and good in math and science and banking and just about everything else. The freckle-faced woman had gained fifty pounds since Sonny left middle school. At about the same time her waist began to spread like an over inflated truck tire, Mrs. Gossage switched over to the Charismatic wing of the Catholic Church. She liked their emotional spontaneity and exuberance. Unfortunately, neither Mr. Gossage nor her son shared her enthusiasm and stayed put at Saint Phillips on the west side of Brandenburg.

Agnostics took no stand on the existence of God.

They simply didn't care one way or the other. If God was dead or simply a figment of some fanatic's delusional mindset, so be it. Sonny wasn't about to tell his mother about Mrs. Shamir's religious predilections for fear the woman with the bowling pin legs and pear-shaped physique would blow an ecumenical gasket!

The previous May, Sonny, his father and eight year-old sister, Laverne accompanied Mrs. Gossage to a Charismatic service in Holdenville. Just once. Toward the end of the raucous service, several wild-eyed parishioners began to dance ecstatically in the aisles waving their arms over their heads. One elderly couple was making weird, glottal noises that sounded like gibberish. "What the hell are they doing?" Mr. Gossage muttered.

"Talking in tongue," his wife replied pleasantly as though the bizarre histrionics were totally commonplace."

"Those lunatics belong in straightjackets," he directed his remarks at the linoleum tile. "I'll just wait outside until the service is finished," Mr. Gossage muttered, rising from the pew. Sonny followed his father out the door. Laverne, who appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the three-ring circus, opted to stay.

A half hour later parishioners began filing out of the building. "I fear," Sonny's father noted with a poker face, "your mother has gone over to the dark side."

Bedlam. Goddamn, hedonistic bedlam. That was Sonny's terse assessment. True enough, the service had a surrealistic, otherworldly quality. At any minute, the boy would not have been overly surprised to see white-coated orderlies burst through the sanctuary doors to haul the true believers off to the loony bin! After the fiasco in Holdenville, Mrs. Gossage continued to attend Charismatic prayer meetings several nights a week. She went alone and said nothing to her family about any extravagant shenanigans, tomfoolery or emotional excesses.

*****

Two weeks later, Sonny was back at the Shamir residence. The BMW was in the driveway but the front door was locked tight. He primed the Biggs and Stratton engine and pulled fiercely on the starter cord. Running the mower the length of the backyard, he turned around and walked back, keeping the inside of the wheels firmly planted in the previous cut mark. This conservative approach added another half hour to the time normally required to finish the job, but guaranteed a perfect cut with no holidays.

Throughout the summer, Sonny serviced his other accounts. Mrs. Reardon, a widow who lived in a shabby, run-down place at the far end of the street, demanded a senior citizen discount. The old lady had a heart condition and was getting by on social security, so Sonny didn't mind cutting her a break.

The boy didn't feel quite so magnanimous toward the real estate broker diagonally across from the invalid.

"Your prices are a bit steep," the man groused.

Sonny eyed him mistrustfully. He had already mowed the lawn, trimmed thirty feet of hedges and swept the clippings into a recyclable rubbish bag. "You didn't mention any problem, when I originally gave you my rates."

"I didn't mention anything," the customer replied glibly, "because, as a businessman, I always prefer negotiating face-to-face." He gesticulated vaguely with his chubby hands. "It's so much more personal that way." The broker pulled some bills from his pocket and kept waving them enticingly in the air but without any clear indication that he would fork over the money. "Any chance you can you cut me a break?"

"I give discounts to cripples and senior citizens," Sonny's voice cracked but he didn't waver. "If I charged you less, I might as well give all my other full-paying customers a rebate. What's fair is fair."

"Then don't come back any more," the real estate broker barked gruffly, flinging the money at his feet and turning way. "Smart-ass kid like you don't know nothin' about business etiquette."

Sonny counted the crumpled bills. He was short five dollars. The broker never intended to pay the full amount and probably would have offered even less if Sonny lost his nerve. "Asshole!" the boy muttered under his breath as he rolled the Toro mower down the street in the direction of his house. "Stingy, two-bit asshole!"

*****

On Saturday Sonny returned to the Israeli woman's home. The car was gone from the driveway. He rang the doorbell but then noticed a note scotch taped to the screen door.

Sonny,

I got called into work.

Go ahead and mow the lawn.

I'll touch bases with you

sometime during the week.

Thanks,

Naomi Shamir

"Aw, crap!" Sonny primed the engine and pulled on the starter cord. He pushed the mower the length of the backyard, turned around and trudged back again. Sonny ran his Black and Decker fourteen-inch GrassHog weed whacker around the perimeter of Mrs. Shamir's flower beds. Then he used the edger to tidy up the flagstone walkway leading to the front steps. All of the extra work was gratis. He wouldn't get paid an extra cent, but, for some inexplicable reason, it made him feel euphoric.

He had been looking forward to seeing the lovely woman and perhaps having another conversation. No one ever took him half-serious – certainly not his God-crazed mother. Had she ever heard of Martin Buber and The Eclipse of God? The other day Mrs. Gossage asked Sonny if he might like to accompany her to the Tuesday night prayer meeting. Laverne had long since lost interest with the metaphysical buffoonery, and the woman had better sense than to ask her husband.

"No Thanks," Sonny mumbled.

"There are young girls your age who attend," Mrs. Gossage replied coyly.

Sonny recalled a pimply-faced blonde at the prayer service he attended with his father. When the religious chaos reached a crescendo, the girl collapsed on the floor writhing about like an epileptic experiencing grand mal seizures. If the goofy girl had torn her clothes off and danced an Irish jig, the tawdry sideshow could not have been more revolting.

"In the Bible," Sonny replied, "it says that a person should go in a closet and pray quietly." He fixed his mother with a challenging expression. "Pray quietly and alone," he repeated. "Don't make a big show of your devotion."

Mrs. Gossage grinned defiantly at her son; her double chin and squat nose lent the face a vulgar coarseness. "The reading you're referring to is from the Old Testament. Charismatic believers tend to worship more energetically."

"I'm not going," Sonny said tersely and his mother hurried out the door.

*****

"Sonny!" One evening in late October, Mrs. Gossage came rushing up the stairs like a bull elephant on the rampage. Her voice was shrill, borderline hysterical.

"What's wrong?" Sonny was at his desk finishing a chemistry assignment.

"Mrs. Shamir is downstairs and needs to speak to you."

Sonny closed the book. He hadn't seen the woman in over two months. "What does she want?"

"It's a long story." Mrs. Gossage, still gasping for breath, waved her hand fitfully implying that he should speak directly with the neighbor.

Dressed in a strapless black evening gown and high heels, Naomi Shamir was standing in the foyer with Ruthy clutching her mother's hand. "Asone gadoal... a huge calamity," Mrs. Shamir announced with a pained expression. "I have a dinner party this evening, and my babysitter called out sick at the last moment. Is there any chance you could mind Ruthy for a few hours?"

Sonny stared at the woman. Something was subtly different. The woman never wore a stitch of makeup, but tonight she sported a glossy, wine-colored lipstick and eye shadow. Nothing more. That was all she needed. The steep V-cut in front of her dress left nothing to the imagination. "I didn't finish my homework," Sonny stammered. "Can I bring my books?"

"Of course. My date is due in due in fifteen minutes."

"I'll be over in five," he replied.

She angled her dark eyes toward the ceiling and murmured. "Barooch haShaim!"

"What's that mean?"

"Thank God!"

"I thought you weren't religious."

"It's just an expression." Naomi clarified.

Mrs. Shamir's date arrived promptly three minutes after Sonny. Mr. Solomon was a solidly built, rather handsome Israeli man with angular, chiseled features and a wide jaw. From the minute he entered the house he spoke in rapid-fire Hebrew, ignoring Sonny altogether.

"If you're hungry," Naomi said, "there are bagels and cream cheese, some leftover pizza and a plate of hummus."

"What's that?"

She brought him into the kitchen. Cracking the refrigerator open she pointed to a dish containing a coffee colored sauce. "Hummus – ground chickpeas, jalapeno pepper, lemon, parsley, garlic, a dash of olive oil and tahini, which is a paste prepared from sesame seeds. You can eat it with bread or crackers." In the living room, Mr. Solomon, was pacing about rather impatiently.

When they were gone, Sonny looked at Ruthy. "You got half an hour until bedtime. What do you want to do?"

The girl, who was already dressed for bed in flannel, feety pajamas, scampered into the living room. "SpongeBob SquarePants!" She jumped up on the couch and, grabbing the TV clicker, channel surfed until she found her favorite cartoon. When the program finished, Sonny let the girl thumb through some picture books while he polished off his chemistry homework. Finally she threw the books aside. "I'm tired." He took her to bed and ten minutes later the child was sound asleep.

Sonny wandered into the kitchen. Removing the hummus from the refrigerator, he fished a spoon from the drawer and a box of Ritz crackers. The Middle Eastern delicacy definitely had a distinctive taste. Like savoring a fine wine, he let the creamy dip linger on his tongue relishing the exotic seasonings. A half hour later the food was gone, the entire plate wiped clean. Having finished with the hummus, Sonny wandered through the house. Every room was neat and tidy. In the master bedroom a large hard cover text lay on the bedside table: Diseases of the Eye: etiology and treatment options by Dr. Rudolph Heffernan. Sonny slid his thumb under the bottom cover and lifted the text. The book ran to over a thousand pages.

The queen-size bed was covered with a patchwork quilt comforter, a pair of pillows propped at the headboard. What would it be like to crawl into bed next to Naomi Shamir and, when she was finished reading a chapter or two of Dr. Heffernan's seminal work, to snuggle, pet, comfort, cuddle, make love and to do all that was required?

Sonny went back to the living room and began an English assignment due later in the week. Around eleven Mr. Solomon brought Naomi home. She didn't invite him in. Rather she kissed him on the cheek rather brusquely, said something in her native language and the man drove off.

"Let me change out of this silly Halloween costume." Kicking her high heels off, she hurried into the bedroom and emerged a minute later in jeans and a cotton pullover. Naomi went and checked on her daughter.

"Everything okay?"

"I ate all your hummus," Sonny confided. "It was very good."

"No great loss. It only takes a short while to mix up a fresh batch. "Did Ruthy give you any trouble?"

"No, she was good." Sonny stole a glance at her chest but, since abandoning the svelte evening dress, there was nothing to see now. Still, he couldn't get his brain disentangled from Naomi Shamir's stunning cleavage. By all estimates, it had been a vertical drop of two to three inches from the beginning of the voluptuous furrow to the steep ravine that disappeared beneath the delicate lace material that defined the top of her evening dress. "How was your date?"

Naomi pursed her lips and cocked her head to one side but did not answer immediately. "Rather disappointing."

She went a second time to check on her daughter who was scrunched up like a tight fist under the covers sleeping peacefully. "Americans tend to be rather..." She stared at him helplessly. "I know the words in my own language but not in English."

"In Hebrew, what would you say?"

"Metoosbach... metooskal," She threw the odd-sounding words out with confident authority. "A person, who worries about the silliest things and can't simply get on with his life, is 'metoosbach'." She nodded her pretty head up and down as though confirming the truthfulness of what she was telling him. The other word is quite similar."

"Compulsive. Neurotic."

"Yes, that's it! You said it perfectly!" Naomi's eyes brightened and her strong white teeth flashed with satisfaction. "It's not good to be a tortured soul, but a certain amount of hardship builds character. Mr. Solomon unfortunately is like..." Again she was floundering at a loss for words, stymied by the unmanageable language.

"He's like a bowl of hummus," Sonny offered, "with just the mashed up chickpeas – no garlic, parsley, olive oil or tahini. No seasoning at all." Naomi smirked—a conspiratorial gesture—and Sonny grinned back at her.

Mr. Solomon was an arrogant dolt. The one-dimensional, cartoon character, SpongeBob SquarePants, had more personality, if somewhat less innate intelligence, than the Israeli Adonis. "Are you going to see him again?"

"He already asked me out, but I don't think I'll accept."

*****

A week later when Sonny returned from school in the late afternoon Laverne, was standing next to her mother grinning foolishly. "Your girl friend stopped by," his sister announced in a taunting, singsong voice. "Brought you a little present."

Sonny turned to his mother. "Mrs. Shamir was here about ten minutes ago." She went to the refrigerator and removed a plastic Tupperware bowl with a green lid. "She dropped this off by way of thanks for helping her out the other night when the babysitter stood her up."

Sonny cracked the lid and sniffed. "What is it?" Laverne pressed.

"Hummus... it's what they eat in the Middle East." He returned the container to the refrigerator and, with a newfound sense of pride, lumbered upstairs to start his homework.

Later that night Sonny spooned a generous helping of the brownish dip onto a dish and left it on the counter to warm to room temperature. A half hour later he tore some pita bread into small pieces and settled in with his exotic treat. Laverne sidled into the kitchen and sat down at the table. "How is it?"

Sonny dabbed the bread in the plate, sopping up the hummus. "Goddamn good!" He plunked the soggy bread in his mouth and reached for another piece.

"No need for foul language." Mrs. Gossage was standing in the doorway.

"So what's it taste like?" his sister sniffed the air to no avail.

"Impossible to describe." He tossed a crust of bread across the surface of the table and watched with a smug grin as Laverne shoveled the bread the length of the plate before plopping it in her mouth. "So what's the verdict?"

Laverne's eyes became glassy and the girl's features melted into an ecstatic grin. "Double-damn good!"

Mrs. Gossage cringed. Lurching forward, she grabbed a piece of bread. When the plate had been wiped clean, she added, "It would appear that our Israeli neighbor is a woman of many talents."

*****

From late October leading up to Thanksgiving, Sonny babysat for Mrs. Shamir on three separate occasions. For a variety of reasons, none of the would-be suitors measured up and, falling back on the 'hummus metaphor' that worked so well with the rather crude, stiff-jawed Mr. Solomon, Sonny discretely offered his unsolicited two cents on the matter.

"I am making a visit to my country the beginning of December," Mrs. Shamir said, "and I was wondering if you could look after my property while I'm gone... water the plants and just keep an eye on things until we return."

The announcement caught him off guard. "How long will you be gone?"

"A month, that's all."

A month, that's all. Sonny felt panicky. "Yeah, I can come by every week. If there's anything seriously wrong like a broken pipe, my father will know what to do."

Suddenly and without forewarning, the woman swept Sonny up in her arms and planted a sticky kiss on both cheeks. "You are the sweetest boy imaginable! Just like mishpachah, family." She abruptly thrust him away at arm's length, fished about in her pocket and handed him a brass key. "How can I thank you enough?"

Sonny rubbed the wetness on his cheek. "I think you just did," he mumbled. He wanted to say more but Mrs. Shamir had already gone off to check a pot roast in the oven. How many times had he seen her sweep little Ruthy up in her resilient arms and spontaneously shower the girl with affection?

The kiss pierced his soul like a benediction – a wondrous, ineffable blessing.

*****

The Saturday before Christmas the snow came down in a wet slurry. Mrs. Gossage, who had been out shopping for groceries, trudged upstairs. Sonny was lying on the bed reading National Geographic. He wasn't looking at the bare-breasted woman of West Africa. That didn't interest him quite so much anymore. Rather, he had located an article: Potable water and the Gaza Strip: a humanitarian crisis. "I got you something special in the deli department." She winked impishly and left the room. Sonny threw the magazine aside and went downstairs.

On the counter next to the electric can opener was a small container of Athenos original style hummus. "They also sell roasted eggplant and another selection with artichokes and garlic," Mrs. Gossage explained, "but both sounded a bit extravagant."

Sonny cracked the lid open. The gritty texture didn't look terribly appetizing. He found a spoon in the drawer and sampled the mix, which tasted like sawdust. "Well, what do you think?" Mrs. Gossage was leaning forward expectantly.

"Actually, it's quite good," Sonny lied. Replacing the lid he went back upstairs. Closing the door, he flopped down on the bed, curled up in a fetal position and began to cry.

What if. What if. What if. What if...

What if Naomi Shamir never returned? She got the obnoxious real estate broker, who flimflammed him out of five bucks, to put her property on an internet multiple listing website? Now that certainly wouldn't represent an Eclipse of God, a human tragedy, but it didn't make him feel any better. A half hour later, he washed his face in the bathroom, patting his eyes dry.

The day the Israeli woman took the early morning connecting flight to New York, Sonny moped about the house. Her religious nuttiness taken aside, the boy's mother had the common decency to leave him alone and not make things worse. The hummus was an act of maternal devotion. Not that the gesture helped one single iota. All Sonny could do now was traipse over to the house with the emerald green shutters, water the plants, check to make sure everything was in order and wait. Again, he reached for the National Geographic. The problem of clean water for the Palestinian residents of Gaza – he would learn a thing or two about why one group had glistening, perfectly clean water to cook, bath and even wash their pets with while their neighbors subsisted in abject filth.

*****

The day after New Years, Sonny visited Vision World. "Can I help you?" A middle-aged lady in a lab coat behind the counter was inserting a tiny screw into an earpiece with a spindly screwdriver.

"Is Doctor Shamir in today?" Sonny tried to act blasé, as thought he hadn't a solitary clue that the woman was on the other side of the planet.

"No, she's away for a while. Can anyone else assist you?"

"No I don't think so. Do you know when she's expected back?"

"Another week and a half," the woman replied. "She's visiting relatives."

Sonny shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet. "She didn't quit or anything?"

The lady lowered the tiny silver screwdriver and peered at him over the tops of her bifocals. "Is this an emergency?"

"No, I'm just looking after her property while she's away and wanted to make sure everything was all right."

With no great sense of urgency, the woman removed her glasses. She sprayed the lenses with a mist from a small bottle and rubbed the lenses in a circular motion with a polishing cloth. "Do you have any reason to believe otherwise?"

Sonny felt the façade disintegrating, coming apart at the seams. "No, I just..."

Having finished polishing her glasses, the woman held them at arm's length scrutinizing the sparkling glass. "Why don't you wait here a moment and I'll check with another staff person. She went off down the hallway. As soon as the technician was gone from sight, Sonny bolted for the door.

Back at the house, Sonny did damage control. What had he accomplished as a consequence of his moronic visit to Vision World? He learned nothing more than what he already knew before his abortive trip. To get his mind off the fiasco, he went over to the Israeli woman's house and watered the plants then pushed the heat up on the thermostat. The boiler immediately fired up. He lowered the temperature and the aquastat shut down. He checked the basement. Everything looked dry. The electric iron was unplugged. Right is tight; left is loose - both water intake valves on the washing machine were closed.

Back upstairs he went and looked in the woman's closet. The faint smell of perfume clung to the evening wear. He sighed and slid the closet door shut again. Next to the night table, something was sticking out from under the dust ruffle. Sonny bent down and fished Dr. Heffernan's weighty clinical text out from under the bed. A ragged slip of paper was wedged between the pages. Sonny sat down on the bed and cracked the book open.

Histoplasmosis is a disease caused when airborne spores of the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum are inhaled into the lungs, the primary infection site. This microscopic fungus, which is found throughout the world in river valleys and soil where bird or bat droppings accumulate, is released into the air when soil is disturbed by plowing fields, sweeping chicken coops, or digging holes.

What was he doing? His only legitimate purpose in being there was to water the stupid plants and check for problems. Sonny had a premonition that such voyeuristic behavior could only end badly. He slammed the book shut and sat listening to the silence. A minute passed. An oil delivery truck turned the corner and sped off down the street. Naomi had topped the tank off before leaving; the floating gauge over the metal, heating oil reservoir in the basement still registered three-quarters full. Sonny ran the palm of his hand over the binding, reopening the book to the flagged page.

Histoplasmosis is often so mild that it produces no apparent symptoms and any symptoms that might occur are often similar to those from a common cold. In fact, if you had histoplasmosis symptoms, you might dismiss them as those from a cold or flu, since the body's immune system normally overcomes the infection in a few days without treatment. However, even mild cases, can later cause a serious eye disease called ocular histoplasmosis syndrome (OHS), a leading cause of vision loss in Americans ages 20 to 40.

Scientists believe that Histoplasma capsulatum (histo) spores spread from the lungs to the eye, lodging in the choroid, a layer of blood vessels that provides blood and nutrients to the retina, the light-sensitive layer of tissue that lines the back of the eye. Scientists have not yet been able to detect any trace of the histo fungus in the eyes of patients with ocular histoplasmosis syndrome. Nevertheless, there is good reason to suspect the histo organism as the cause of OHS, and in cases where...

Sonny slammed the book shut a second time, placed it back under the bed and went home. In less than two weeks, Naomi Shamir, the unrequited love of his life, would be returning home. Hopefully, if between now and then, he contracted ocular histoplasmosis syndrome, his failing vision would hold out for a few weeks longer.

Back home Laverne was waving a postcard teasingly up over her head. "Mail man just delivered a love letter from your Hebrew sweetie pie."

Sonny relieved her of the card which featured a picture of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Arab East Jerusalem. The dome of the six-sided, ornate shrine was covered in gold, the upper portion decorated with blue and pale green mosaic tiles. Ivory marble columns lined the front entrance. On the back, Naomi had scribbled: See you soon. So much to tell! Love Naomi and Ruth.

*****

Late Thursday the third week in January, Mrs. Shamir's snow-covered BMW drove down the street. Sonny's father was in the driveway clearing snow from the most recent winter storm. He went back inside. "That Jewish lady's home now," he said. "They're probably all tired out though from such a long trip, so you might want to go over and help shovel them out.

"Already did," Sonny replied. After every snow storm, the boy had cleared away Naomi's driveway. He even went back the following day to dig out the rock-hard slabs of frozen ice left behind by the municipal plows and street sanders.

"Well that's good." Mr. Gossage went back outside.

Sonny didn't go over right away. He waited until the weekend. Friday night after supper he put on his khaki Docker slacks and a plaid sport shirt. He combed his hair and dabbed some English leather cologne on his neck but thought better of it and washed the sharp scent away as best he could. Then he plodded through the packed snow down to the Shamir house.

"Did you get my card?" She invited him into the house. He was hoping for a welcoming hug, but the woman didn't seem in a particularly playful mood. Ruthy, who was hunkered down in the den with a coloring book and fistful of crayons looked up momentarily before settling back down.

"Would you like some coffee?" Sonny shook his head. A half-empty bottle of wine and a glass rested on the kitchen table. Ruthy wandered into the kitchen. She grabbed a banana, tore the peel away and retreated back to the den. "When I'm in Israel," Naomi spoke softly, "I wish that I was here, and when I'm home again, I miss the Holy Land." She poured herself a drink filling the glass almost to the rim. Lifting the wine to her lips, she hesitated and placed it back on the table.

A weak glow as though from an infant's nightlight was flickering on the Formica counter next to the toaster. Sonny went to take a better look. The light sputtered dimly from a thick tumbler filled with milky white wax. The wick had burned down three-quarters of the way to the bottom. A piece of paper with Hebrew lettering was glued to the outside. "It's a yahrzeit candle," Naomi said by way of explanation. "Jews light a candle on the anniversary of a family member's death. My mother died a year ago today." Again she picked up the glass, sloshed the pale liquid in an undulating motion then set it down without drinking. "I was here in Massachusetts a thousand miles away when she passed."

"I'm sorry." Sonny didn't know what else to say. The Israeli woman was even more beautiful than he remembered, if that was humanly possible. All his smutty and indecent fantasies fell away in an instant. He wanted to hold and comfort her, to say something profoundly grownup, brilliant and resolute in order to blunt her sorrow.

You got my postcard?" He nodded. "The Al-Aqsa Mosque is very close to the Jewish quarter, so after I said a prayer at the Wailing Wall for my mother I went to an Arab kiosk and bought the card. I thought to myself, 'Sonny will like this one, for sure.'" She rose abruptly, tossed the wine in the sink and put the bottle away. "Like I said, when I'm here I'm homesick for my family in Israel, but when I'm there visiting I can't wait to return home."

Sonny thought a moment. "Which is home – here or there?"

Naomi smiled sadly. "Both. In the spring I shall apply for American citizenship. It won't make the pain go away, but it's a step in the right direction."

Mrs. Shamir, a self-professed non-believer, recited a prayer for her departed mother at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Was it a logical inconsistency or just another example of Sonny's all-encompassing ignorance? In the den Ruthy was singing along with the silly tune that opened Malcolm in the Middle.

You're not the boss of me now.

You're not the boss of me now.

You're not the boss of me now,

and you're not so big.

Life is unfair....

"Just in case you came home early, I shoveled out your driveway every week," Sonny said, "and threw traction gravel on the flagstone walkway and back stairs." Mr. Gossage had bought a sixty pound bag at the beginning of the winter. Sonny filled a pail and hauled it down to the Shamir residence each time after cleaning the walkways. The heavier crushed stone was a better choice over playground sand or rock salt, which could discolor or damage the mortar in the brickwork.

The dark-skinned woman was puttering at the sink and he didn't think she heard him. "I'm tired," Naomi announce. "I'm going to bed now."

Saturday night Mrs. Shamir had a dinner engagement. Sonny arrived a half hour early. Naomi was dressed rather conservatively in a dark blue dress that looked like something more appropriate for Vision World than a romantic soirée. "Mr. Klezmer is treasurer of the brotherhood at Temple Agudas Achim. Tonight is the board members' installation dinner-dance."

"But I thought you weren't religious?"

Naomi grinned devilishly. "That's our dirty little secret." She was fumbling with an earring; the backing kept coming loose. Rushing back into the bedroom, she slammed the door. Sonny drifted into the kitchen and cracked the refrigerator open. Removing a small dish covered with cellophane, he placed it on the counter.

The doorbell rang. Mr. Klezmer was a stocky man with dark-framed glasses and gentle, almost feminine features. He wore a shapeless brown suit and wing-tipped shoes. Despite a boyish charm, he suffered from a bad case of male pattern baldness. In a few short years, Sonny mused, the few remaining tufts of frizzy brown hair would be ancient history and the middle-aged man would look positively prehistoric. "Mrs. Shamir is still getting ready. I'm the babysitter."

He led the way into the living room just as Naomi cracked the bedroom door open and gestured to Sonny with a crooked finger. "I found a run in my nylons," she whispered pettishly. "I'll just be a minute longer, if you could keep Sheldon occupied."

He went back into the living room, where the man was studying an oil painting of an Arab village with stucco, sand-colored houses and a cedar forest fading into a mountainous background. "A humanitarian crisis exists in the Gaza Strip," Sonny blurted the words out all in a jumbled heap, "and many of the residents lack safe drinking water."

Sheldon stared at the young boy through thick glasses and ran a hand over his balding head. "I didn't realize you were Jewish."

"Actually, I'm Catholic," Sonny stammered. "Last month National Geographic featured an article on Gaza, although I can't say as I understood the half of it."

As Sonny explained it, the journalist who wrote the report flew over the region in a small, single-engine plane. On the Jewish side were verdant fields, farms, flower gardens and even luxurious swimming pools filled to overflowing. But less than a mile away in Gaza, the water—what little existed—was foul-smelling, polluted and undrinkable. The Israelis, who controlled the pumping stations rationed water to the Palestinians while refusing to allow them to build modern purification facilities. Many of the Arab children were malnourished and sickened with diseases spread by putrid water.

When Sonny finished talking, Sheldon observed, "Something that has enormous value in useage, might be taken for granted simply because it's plentiful."

"Like water," Sonny ventured.

"Smart boy!" Mr. Klezmer winked playfully. "When you think about it, nothing is more useful than water, but its cost is negligible. A diamond, on the other hand, has few if any practical applications outside of fashion or as a sharpening agent, and yet we pay a small fortune for a single gem."

"I don't see how any of this applies to the situation in Gaza."

Mr. Klezmer cracked a dreamy, introverted smile. "The value of water depends inversely on the thirst of the person and availability. Suppose a Palestinian is dying with thirst and there is fresh water available but beyond his reach, the Arab will give everything for that water, even a sack full of precious diamonds."

"Where did you learn all this?"

"I studied finance in college," Sheldon replied. "It's all part of eighteenth century economic theory." The congenial demeanor faded away and his expression turned bitterly grim. "The Israeli government's policy toward the Arabs is inhumane; it's why Gaza is little better than an open-air prison with security checkpoints and Jewish soldiers as wardens."

Mr. Klezmer looked Sonny full in the face. "Water tainted with raw sewage is symptomatic of a deeper moral malaise."

"Then what's the solution?"

Sheldon smiled in his silly boyish manner and was just about to reply, but the bedroom door burst opened and Naomi rushed from the room.

"So what have you men been gossiping about?"

"The shortage of clean drinking water for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip," Sheldon replied. "It appears your babysitter has been brushing up on the subject."

Naomi's eyes brightened as she turned to Sonny. "Since when did you become an expert on Middle Eastern diplomacy?"

When they were gone, Sonny brought Ruthy into the kitchen where they sat together silently devouring the hummus. The plate licked clean, they went back to the den and curled up on the couch together watching the latest episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Patrick and SpongeBob were capturing baby jellyfish in butterfly nets, but then a grownup jellyfish interrupted their fun electrocuting them with high-voltage shocks. Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! It reminded Sonny of the cautionary tale Mr. Klezmer told him before Naomi emerged in her new hosiery.

Mr. Solomon, the chisel-faced Jew, was a tank commander in Tzahal, the Israeli Defense Force. Sonny could picture the reptilian oaf single-handedly shutting every spigot in the Arab households of Gaza. No more water, clean or otherwise, for you rotten Palestinian bastards! Yes, poker-faced Mr. Solomon definitely seemed the type.

Sonny had made a joke of it. Mr. Solomon – his first name was "Ariyah', which meant lion in Hebrew - was hummus minus all the rapturous herbs and spices – no tahini, no garlic, no fresh lemon, no jalapeño pepper. No nothing. On the other hand, Mr. Klezmer, despite a receding hairline and myopic eyes, was just the person to ease Mrs. Shamir's heartache in a year's time when Sonny was far away at college, and she had to light yet another funny little candle in the thick glass tumbler.

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Leaky Pipes

Bartholomew Schroeder watched the girl approach from the entrance to the hotel dining room. In her late teens, she was about the same age as his youngest granddaughter. "My name," she stumbled over the words, which sounded stilted and rehearsed, "is Holly Heatherton, and my family came over Monday on the same ferry from Woods Hole."

"Yes, I remember -"

"No, don't speak!" She waved a hand distractedly and, for a brief moment, Bart thought the girl might do something outlandish. He once watched a woman dancing with her husband at a wedding. The woman was quite drunk. The husband said something disagreeable and the woman pulled her slinky black evening dress up over her head, revealing a dainty white camisole and a pair of control-top nylons. Not that he thought Holly Heatherton was inclined to make a similar scene, but the girl was noticeably agitated, distraught.

"I dreamed about you last night." The girl moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and slid down into the vacant chair opposite the older man. A thin girl with chestnut colored hair that hung limply down almost to the small of her back, there was an austere refinement to the pale face. A patrician's daughter? An ax murderer?

"In the dream you were surfcasting off the breakwater." She pointed out the window toward the Oak Bluffs Bay.

"I don't fish," he replied. "Not salt water or fresh."

"I was walking near the shore searching for sea glass," she conveniently ignored the remark, "and, when I passed by, you whispered, 'I've a message for you.'"

Mr. Schroeder blinked and stared at his breakfast - eggs scrambled with flaked salmon, chives and a tart, Monterey jack cheese - which was growing cold. The waitress approached and asked the girl if she needed a menu.

"No, that looks scrumptious." She pointed at Mr. Schroeder's plate. "Could you also bring me a coffee and small orange juice?"

"Listen here!" Mr. Schroeder objected. "Your parents will be coming down to eat any minute now, and when they see you sitting here -"

"They already know," Holly interrupted.

"Know what?" Bart Schroeder could feel any semblance of normality slipping away.

"I told them about my mysterious dream, and that I intended to speak with you."

The elderly man cleared his throat but could think of nothing to say. Finally, he took a sip of tepid coffee and glanced out the bay window. A trawler with a winch at the stern and woven net was sputtering out toward open water. "My name is Bartholomew Schroeder. I'm a plumber by trade and recently retired. I spent the last forty years installing boilers and commercial air conditioning units. I possess no supernatural powers... don't commune with the dead or much of anyone else if I can help it. I'm a misanthrope."

That the girl was emotionally disturbed was fairly obvious. Even a blue collar, working stiff with no college education could sense her distress. The waitress returned with her drinks. "Why me?" Bart asked.

Holly shrugged. Since breaking the ice, she seemed less agitated. More to the point, all of the willowy young girl's anxiety had been conveniently transferred over to Bartholomew Schroeder. "I had a feeling about you from when we boarded the ferry back in Falmouth."

"A feeling?"

"You came to the island unaccompanied. Each day I see you roam the beach alone, and in the late afternoon, you sit over by the landing staring out to sea like a true believer, a mystic."

"I believe in central heating and keeping cool during the dog days of August."

That his wife of forty years died a year ago to the day, he wouldn't tell her. Three days earlier, Bart drove across the Bourne Bridge to Falmouth, parked his car and took the shuttle to Woods Hole. He was a man on the run from memories, loneliness and profound grief. The mourning process had continued unabated through the previous year. Bart Schroeder had come to the island of Martha's Vineyard to find solace; instead he got Holly Heatherton, a mentally unbalanced, first year piano major at the New England Conservatory of Music.

During her freshman year at college, something had gone haywire. Reclusive by nature, Holly made few friends. A psychiatrist prescribed Adapin for anxiety, but then she got depressed. Really depressed. The young girl didn't bother to complete the semester, taking a medical leave of absence. "I'm not totally whacked out." There was a subtle loosening, a relaxation in her tone. "It's not like I'm going to swill a bottle of sleeping pills or rat poison." She grinned sheepishly. "I just prefer being alone more than with people." She ran an index finger around the rim of her coffee cup.

The waitress brought the girl's eggs. "Do you have many friends?" Mr. Schroeder asked.

The girl flicked a strand of dark hair away from her hazel eyes. "No, not particularly."

"On occasion, you must meet someone pleasant or interesting?"

Holly placed a sliver of salmon on her tongue and washed it down with a swig of coffee. She slathered her toast with jelly from a small crock. "Yes, of course, but most people ..." She seemed to lose interest in the topic. "Does that make me crazy?"

Mr. Schroeder smiled. Her candor was a bit unnerving. "No, certainly not." He glanced distractedly at his plate. The cheese had congeals, stuck to the flaked salmon like mortar on chimney brick. Not a very appetizing sight. "You said something about a dream?"

Holly's eyes brightened and she leaned forward across the table. "As I approached, you put your fishing rod aside and said, 'Holly Heatherton, I have a message for you.'" She stared intently at the older man as though this latest tidbit of information might jog his flawed memory.

"A message," he repeated dully. Gurus and wise men brought messages. So did hucksters, charlatans and flimflam artists, when the price was right. Lawyers, politicians and priests favored portentous pronouncements. Bartholomew Schroeder had nothing to tell the petite, dark-haired girl. The waitress arrived with the bill. "My treat."

As they were leaving the dining hall Bart said, "Let me think about it and I'll get back to you, Holly."

Should he have used her first name? Mr. Schroeder climbed slowly to the second floor landing, lumbered into his room and locked the door behind him. For good measure he threw the security bolt.

*****

In December two years earlier, Penelope Schroeder suffered a massive stroke. "Your wife requires round-the-clock, custodial; care," the hospital social worker spoke in a no-nonsense, officious tone.

"Custodial," Bart muttered. He usually associated the word with janitors and maintenance workers.

"We're talking parenteral feeding tubes, nasal oxygen, a Foley catheter to manage incontinence, infusion therapy and a host of other neurological and skilled nursing services." The woman removed her glasses and gently massaged the bridge of her nose. She wasn't soliciting Bart's opinion; she only wanted a signature on the hospital paperwork.

The following day, the brain-damaged woman was shipped via ambulance to Shady Pines Rehabilitation Center. The two-story building offered independent living on the first floor and, for people in failing health, a fully-accredited, acute-care rehabilitation center upstairs. Strange thing was, the residents on both floors looked pretty much alike. They hobbled about on canes and aluminum walkers. Some arrived in wheelchairs; more than a handful lugged oxygen about in portable canisters.

"Hey, mister." An elderly woman in a motorized wheel chair was beckoning to Bart Schroeder, who had just arrived to visit his wife. The woman was gussied up in a floral pantsuit. The outfit was impeccably tailored with a matching scarf knotted at the neck. She wore a collection of gold bracelets and her nails were brightly enameled.

Bart approached and bent down. "The waiters served an absolutely mouthwatering cherry cobbler al a mode for lunch." The woman's eyes sparkled. "A la mode... it's a French expression. It means - "

"I know what it means."

The woman stabbed at a lever on the armrest causing the wheelchair to lurch forward banging Bart in the knee. "Go to the kitchen and speak with Alfonzo about extra servings... one for me, one for you."

"But I don't work here. I'm visiting my—"

"Make sure," the woman continued, "he warms the cobbler. It never tastes right unless the ice cream softens before it's served."

Bart went out into the main hallway and headed off down the corridor toward the rehabilitation unit. Off to one side was the dining hall where healthier residents ate their meals. The space was arranged like a swanky restaurant with a centerpiece of fresh-cut flowers on each table. The high back chairs were covered in a maroon, floral brocade fabric.

The place reminded Bart of a Holiday Inn he renovated in the late sixties. Halfway down the corridor was a small reading room with hardcover books arranged neatly on shelves. A copy of Tom Sawyer in large print for the visually impaired lay on an end table.

"Well, this is cozy," he mused, "except for the fact that nobody's here." At the end of the hall was a spacious recreation room with a flat screen TV showing local news. A dark-skinned, Hispanic woman dressed in a white uniform was sitting on a sofa nibbling an apple. A banner across the top of the television news desk read La Planetera.

Bart counted thirty doors the length of the hallway but not one solitary human being. Nobody was coming or going, all the doors shut tight. The place was less like a hotel than a morgue, exuding a tedious sameness, a benign gentility, the man found unnerving.

So where were the residents? Squirreled away in their tidy apartments? Doing what? Reading the newspaper? Watching television? Waiting to give up the ghost with neither family nor friends to bless their soul's passage to the next world?

On the wall at the end of the corridor hung a picture done in watercolors of a young girl wearing a sun bonnet and lace shawl as she escorted a herd of cows down a country lane. A very safe and appropriate painting. Bart felt an evil urge to blacken a couple of the girl's front teeth with an indelible marker and scrawl a bristly moustache over the dainty top lip for good measure. In the morning, how many of the elderly residents would appreciate the bawdy humor?

A bullet to the brain.! If I ever become that debilitated, get a gun and put me out of my misery. The third week of January Penelope Schroeder died in her sleep. A meager blessing of sorts, the woman never emerged from the coma.

*****

God was playing a trick on Bartholomew Schroeder - a nasty, malicious prank. Struggling with his own dark night of the soul, what scintillating message could he possibly offer Holly Heatherton, musical prodigy and social malcontent? He lay down on the unmade bed and fell asleep.

At noon Bart wandered down to the bar. He found a stool at the far end of the mahogany bar and ordered his drink. Tilting the glass at an angle, he poured the amber liquid. Right brain, left brain – a couple of Heinekens might lubricate the powers of reasoning.

A message for Holly Heatherton. What message? Someone entered the room and Bart shifted in his seat so that his back was facing the door. He felt a moral obligation to do something for the girl, who reminded him of a frail and utterly defenseless animal caught in a snare. Holly's life was just beginning while his was winding down. How many close friends had died in the last year alone? If death was simply a culmination, a recapitulation of all the successes and failures of a life well lived, then he ought to be able to tell the child something. But Bartholomew Schroeder was never particularly good with words, copper pipes, blowtorches, solder and PVC being his stock in trade.

"Retired?" The bartender, a tall, stoop-shouldered man on the front side of forty, was leaning on the bar.

Bart looked up momentarily. "Five years now."

He nudged a plastic bowl of pretzels crusted with salt within arm's reach. "That's swell." The bartender looked bored. There would be little activity in the bar until after supper. Five minutes passed without a word. "Red Sox won last night."

"That so?"

"Five to three. Wakefield the knuckleballer got the win." It was a guy thing. - a room full of men could stand around scratching their crotches and nursing beers. They didn't agonize over the inevitable or suffer existential ennui tinged with spiritual angst. Rather, they nibbled pretzels and talked sports. The bartender rubbed at a water spot with a towel and went off to service another patron.

A message for Holly Heatherton. Bart Schroeder was getting nowhere fast.

Earlier in te morning there was that odd incident with the piano.

Bart Schroeder was heading back to his room after breakfast. As they reached the staircase, Holly Heatherton grabbed his arm. "Just a moment." In a small sitting room off the dining hall was a baby grand piano. Holly slumped down on the padded bench. Positioning her hands, she began to play an impressionistic passage built on fourths and odd-sounding passing tones. The music was fairly simple, an intermediate level version of the original composition. After only a few, meager measures, she removed her hands from the keys. "Did you recognize that?"

"Debussy," Mr. Schroeder replied.

She nodded. "And this?" She offered up a jagged, dissonant theme in a percussive rhythm. The meter kept changing every third or fourth measure so that it was impossible to follow.

"Not even a clue," Mr. Schroeder said when the uneven tune came to an abrupt end.

"Bartok." She launched into a third piece that was even more obscure with a series of tone clusters played in the bass as the right hand hammered out single notes in a random, vertical pattern. She played the melody through from beginning to end, including a legato interlude.

"That was a twelve-tone row by Hindemith," Holly said, turning completely around to face him. A large, egg-shaped tear glistened in the corner of either eye. She reached up and deftly wiped them away. "Very unusual, don't you think?"

"Not as accessible as the Bartok," Mr. Schroeder said, "but interesting."

"Few people appreciate Hindemith's music. It's an acquired taste." The tears had reformed but this time she let them be. They quickly multiplied, dripping down her cheeks in thick rivulets. "You do understand what I'm talking about?" Her chest, what there was of it, heaved up and down in womanly anguish.

"Yes, I understand."

"So what should I do?"

Bart Schroeder was beginning to feel edgy again. "I don't understand the question."

"About my miserable life?"

A young family cut through the sitting room on their way to the dining room. "Let me think about it," Bart replied, "and I'll get back to you."

*****

After leaving the bar, Bart rented a three speed bike with a straw basket draped over the handlebars. "You'll find the bike path up by the dock," the proprietor noted, "where it winds all the way to Edgartown and the southernmost beaches. "Take it slow, though, in this heat."

Bart pedaled out to the landing and watched the afternoon ferry lazing into the dock with a fresh load of tourists, before heading out to the bike path that skirted the harbor. Up ahead, a pink burst of color from a hedge of salt spray roses edged the trail. A seagull resting on a telephone pole watched him pass with stony indifference.

The plan was to ride several miles south from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown along the winding trail dotted by sand dunes and scenic marshland. Bart walked the bike up the steeper hills and glided down effortlessly with the shift set in first gear.

A message for Holly Heatherton. Salt air and a tart, late-summer breeze off the ocean accompanied the ride. Yes, this was much better than trying to sort things out in the bar, which reeked of stale cigars and flat beer.

"Hey, dude!" A teenager with hair down to his shoulders and a goatee was waving at Bart, who braked to a halt. A paisley bandana was knotted around the youth's neck. "Any idea where John Belushi's buried?"

"The cemetery in Chilmark," Bart replied.

"Where the hell's that?"

"Fifteen miles that way." He pointed due east.

"Way wicked cool!" The youth flung a backpack with an aluminum frame over his shoulders, and headed off down the road. Bart rested the bike on the kickstand and leaned against a scraggily pine. Ten minutes passed. He climbed back on the three-speed and pedaled leisurely back to Oak Bluffs.

*****

"The Heathertons, what room are they in?"

The desk clerk checked the register. "Room 301."

Bart took the elevator to the third floor, locating the room at the far end of the hallway. "My name is Bartholomew Schroeder and I'm here to see Holly."

"Yes, of course." The woman stepped out on the landing and closed the door behind her. "I haven't a clue what you said to my daughter earlier, but she's so much calmer since breakfast."

"I'm a plumber not a psychiatrist," Mr. Schroeder qualified.

"Holly hasn't cried... not once all today." The woman reached out and grabbed his hand. "That's a good omen."

"In the morning, I'm leaving the island on the first boat out from Vineyard Haven and wanted to say goodbye." He gave the woman's hand a gentle squeeze. "I'll wait for her downstairs."

Before descending to the lobby, Bart went back to his room, washed his face and combed his hair what little there was of it. Then he bent down and felt the pipe under the toilet tank. The metal was dry. The night he arrived at the Oak Bluffs Hotel a ring of wetness was pooling on the floor near the toilet. Drip, drip, drip. A steady stream of cold water was bleeding out from the compression fitting. He closed the shut-off valve feeding the tank and went down to the front desk.

"My toilet's leaking."

"Oh, dear," the desk clerk seemed flustered. "Finding a plumber at this late hour could be a problem."

"I am a plumber."

The woman's mouth fell open. "You're joking?"

"If you can scare up an adjustable wrench, I'll fix it myself."

The desk clerk fished a toolbox from under the counter. Bart rummaged through the offerings, finally settling on a small pair of pliers. "This should do the trick."

Back in the room, he loosened the fitting and separated the flared section of tubing from its narrower counterpart. The metal was mildly corroded but structurally undamaged. After washing the crud from the mating surfaces with hand soap, Bart dried the metal.

The trick was to secure the fitting, which looked to be about ten or fifteen years old, tight enough to seal the joint and no more. Even the slightest excess pressure might stress the metal and fracture the delicate tubing. Sliding the pipes together, Bart screwed the compression fitting in place, hand tight with a little play, then opened the water supple. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Grabbing the fitting with the pliers, he twisted the nut clockwise a quarter-turn. Drip. Pause. Drip. Pause. Drip.

Another eighth of an inch. One final drip then nothing. He wiped the pipes dry and a slick film of moisture quickly reappeared but it was condensation, nothing more. The leak was sealed. He sat down on the edge of the tub. Five minutes later the floor beneath the toilet intake line was still bone dry.

*****

Booth Bay Harbor, Maine. Four decades earlier.

Bartholomew Schroeder and his new bride were settling into their honeymoon suite. A six-foot tall, soft bellied woman of Norwegian descent, Penelope ran the bath water but the tub wouldn't fill. Using a silver quarter as an impromptu screwdriver, Bart loosened the bolts and pulled the chrome lever and face plate away from the tub. The rod that connected the drain and overflow assembly had slipped off its mounting bracket. He crimped the wire and tightened the two bolts holding the mechanism in place but, when he raised the lever and turned the water back on, the gurgling continued unabated.

Coming up behind him, Penelope wrapping her arms around his chest. "What's the matter?"

"Minor adjustment," he murmured, brushing her cheek with a flurry of kisses. "No need to panic."

Bart removed the bolts a second time, pulling the entire bucket assembly out through the hole in the tub wall. He adjusted the heavy brass plunger three, full revolutions and put everything back together. Yes, that did it! Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder enjoyed their first bath together as a married couple.

"I'm getting out now," Penelope said and leaned forward, but her husband held her by the shoulder.

"Open the drain." Penelope reached up with her right toe and nudged the chrome lever upright. The soapy water rimmed with lavender scented bubble bath made a loud gurgling sound before beginning its slow descent.

"Now close it again," Bart instructed. Curling her toe like a prehensile tail around the lever, she yanked the metal straight down.

Glob! There was an abrupt noise as the brass plunger slammed downward like a guillotine shutting off the rush of water. Silence. Bart released his grip. His bride of ten hours rose from the warm bath water but, instead of climbing from the tub, turned to face him. Penelope Schroeder raised her elbows high in the air, crisscrossing the forearms directly overhead then nonchalantly squatted, her glistening buttocks coming to rest on his stomach. "Now, if you have no objections, I'd like to go in the next room and make babies."

*****

Holly Heatherton wore a print dress, her hair tied back in a French braid when she joined him in the lobby. Bart led the way back up the main drag toward the Steamship Authority landing where they watched as an endless stream of cars, motorcycles and produce trucks crept out of the belly of a docked ship. When the last vehicle left the hold, the ferry began loading passengers heading back to the mainland.

Bart turned away from the pier and, in no great hurry, retraced his route toward the town center. He ducked into a building where a crowd of parents and young children were queuing up to ride the musical carousel. The hardwood floor was littered with pop corn, the nonstop calliope music deafening. Riders leaned far forward gripping the horses' reins with one hand as they lunged for brass rings dangling from a wooden chute positioned at a steep angle. Each time a rider managed to snare a ring, another slid down to take its place.

Bart bought bags of popcorn. They went out in the street where the sun was almost down. A trawler that might have been the same ship he had noticed on the morning Holly joined him for breakfast was lurching in to shore. "There's something I want to show you."

He led the way back to the hotel and brought the girl up to his room. "Sit there." He indicated a Windsor chair with curved armrests and spindly legs splayed at a generous angle. Next to the chair was a bedside table that Mr. Schroeder had dragged to the center of the room.

"Where did you get all this weird stuff?" Holly indicated a collection of plumbing supplies—tube cutters, copper fittings, emery cloth, lead-free solder and rosin flux.

"Hardware store." Mr. Schroeder reached for a propane torch. "I'm going to teach you what little I've learned about this beautiful and sordid world we live in. Are you ready?"

Holly Heatherton, folded her hands in her lap. "Yes, I'm ready."

Half an hour later he shoved the night table back where it belonged. "That's all I have to say," Mr. Schroeder muttered. "Understand what I told you?"

"Yes, emphatically."

Shrouded in a twilight haze, objects in the room were beginning to lose definition, blend and blur. The nautical pictures hanging over the brass bed had shed their vivid colors in favor of more somber, elegiac tones, while the reading lamp was dissolving into the night table. "So what did you learn," Bart pressed, "about the human condition?"

"Copper tubing must be properly cleaned, bone dry and heated to the proper temperature," she said, "before solder can flow into a fitting, sealing the joint."

"Patience is a virtue. What else?"

A muggy breeze from the open window carried with it an acrid potpourri of decomposing fish, slimy seaweed, salt spray roses and fresh-mown grass. "Some plumbers dress the joints by cleaning away excess flux and solder but the final step is more a matter of professional pride, not necessary."

"You'll be alright, then?"

"Can't imagine why not."

"Here, take this," he handed her a small piece of emery cloth stained with flux, "to remember me by."

"A talisman of sorts."

In the morning for his last meal on the island, Mr. Schroeder ordered the salmon omelette with Monterey jack cheese, chive and diced scallions. The ferry departed promptly at eight o'clock. For the first time in over a year, he felt free and unencumbered, as though a slab of stone as thick and weighty as a marble cemetery monument had miraculously lifted from his heart.

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Kindred Spirits

Harry Jankowski stood under a flowering dogwood tree in the Brandenburg Arboretum. Directly above his head, a raucous collection of jays was feasting on clumps of wine-colored berries scattered among porcelain petals. Thirty feet away in the trellised rose garden, a middle-aged woman sat on the same bench he had recently abandoned, a familiar, moss green volume with a cracked spine resting on her lap. Bent over slightly at the waist, her lips fluttered in silent accompaniment to the printed text. From his vantage point, the slim, dark-haired woman looked reasonably attractive, but as he drew closer, Harry realized his favorable impression had been premature.

She wasn't ugly per se. Rather, it was as though, early on, God had become distracted and wandered away from the wet canvas before completing a meager handful of details. The woman's features were drab, colorless. The unassuming face, an aesthetic work in progress, exuded a disconcerting blankness.

"Is this book yours?" she asked.

Harry had driven halfway home before realizing the tattered anthology of Persian verse, was missing. He stepped closer. "It's a library book," he noted apologetically. "I must have gotten distracted and..."

"Would you mind terribly if I read through to the poem's end."

"No, of course not." He sat down beside her. "Which verse were you reading?"

"The Rumi." She lowered her head again. Leaning closer, Harry could just barely make out the final stanza.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you;

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want;

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth

Across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

The woman returned the book. "What do you think it means?"

Harry ran an index finger thoughtfully over the faded buckram cloth. "Sleep would seem a metaphor for most people's natural state. Even wide awake, we often miss the secrets Rumi hints at." The intoxicating scent of roses coupled with the woman's perplexing features catapulted the normally reticent man in an uncharacteristically chatty mood. "So few people take an active interest in poetry these days," Harry added. "Here, see for yourself." He opened the slim volume and pointed with a taut index finger at the yellowed slip of paper pasted on the inside of the front cover where, at cockeyed angles, a smattering of dates was stamped in black ink.

Prior to Harry checking the book out, the anthology hadn't seen the light of day in six years. Before to that, it languished in the musty stacks another four. "Over the last forty years," Harry noted with morbid humor, "only twelve readers showed interest."

The woman studied at her fingers, which were slender with pale pink, lacquered nails. "Do you come here often?

"Mostly weekends, when the weather's decent."

"I'm Dora." She extended a hand. He pressed her fingers gently.

"Harry Jankowski."

The woman rose and, began moving at a leisurely gait down the flagstone walkway past a profusion of pink blossoms that reeked sweetly like incense. Before she had proceeded very far, Dora abruptly returned. "Just for the record, I'm partial to the traditional poets - writers such as Frost, Ferlinghetti, e e cummings, Robert Lowell, Ann Sexton and John Berryman."

"Berryman's Dream Songs are rather challenging," Harry noted.

"Yes, I know," Dora agreed. "Much of his later writing is beyond my limited abilities."

Harry missed Dora's final observation. Rather, he was concerned by the disconcerting fact that the last three writers on Dora's list of personal favorites had met with tragic ends. "Sylvia Plath, the author of the Bell Jar, wrote some interesting free verse."

"I was never a great fan." Dora shook her head vigorously from side to side. "Plath glorified mental illness... her poetry a snake pit of nuttiness."

The vigorous rebuttal set his mind at ease. "Yes, I totally agree!"

On the ride home, Harry glanced at the frayed anthology resting on the passenger seat and grinned foolishly. A senior moment - that's how he understood the miscue when he realized the book was missing. A dumb, addled-brained bit of mental torpor guaranteed to waste gas and time.

Not that Harry had any special place to go most Saturday afternoons.

Since his wife left, his social calendar had atrophied, shriveled away to nothing. Monday through Friday he managed a temporary employment agency; weekends mostly found him treading water, waiting for the workweek to resume.

It was almost two in the afternoon when Harry pulled into the driveway. He tossed a meager load of laundry in the washer - mostly dress shirts he needed later in the week. Then he swept the kitchen floor, filled the bathtub and even threw some of his ex-wife's lavender-chamomile bubble bath in the steamy water. He didn't usually indulge in such questionable extravagance, but the chance meeting with the woman with the unremarkable, slapdash face had propelled him in a weird frame of mind.

Twenty minutes later when the buzzer in the basement sounded, he switched the damp clothes over to the dryer, went back up stairs and gingerly climbed into the tub. Only now did Harry grasp why he left the arboretum without the book. Since early spring, when the weather finally became warm enough to visit the park with any regularity, he had begun studying the deciduous trees. There were numerous maples - the Norway, silver, sugar, mountain and diminutive box elder, as well as the striped or moosewood varieties – he was attempting to identify. Maples shared certain unique characteristics - sweetish watery sap and long leafstalks. Almost all had palmately veined, fan-lobed leaves. Harry absorbed all this from the plaques that dotted the landscape.

Even with trees as common as birch, things got dicey. Harry could easily identify the ever-present American or paper birch. But then there were the black, gray and yellow birches and, of course, the American hornbean, also known as musclewood, ironwood or blue beech. They all fell under the same generic species, betulaceae, sharing simple, alternate, stipulate leaves, which were generally thin and often doubly serrate with fruity catkins and a one-seeded nutlet. He had gone off on a walking tour to take one last look at the trees before heading home, forgetting the book.

What were the odds of meeting a fellow poetry enthusiast in the Brandenburg Arboretum on a late summer afternoon? With his big toe, Harry flicked the hot water on and waited as the soothing warmth crawled from the front of the tub to the rear. Sliding down in the sudsy water, the perfumed bubbles tickled his ears.

*****

During their marriage, on the rare occasion when his ex-wife, Nadine, reach for reading material, she favored the National Inquirer or Reader's Digest. The busty blonde Harry had fallen hard for some twenty-five years earlier was a dolt, the woman's fleshy loveliness little more than a paper-thin mask. Three years earlier in the throes of a hormonally-induced midlife crisis, Nadine ran off and left him.

The summer his wife flew the coop, the couple had signed up for a tour of the Holy Land through a local church group. Rather than forfeit the deposit and air fare, Harry went alone. He visited Jerusalem then toured the Upper Galilee before heading down through the Negev Desert into the southern Sinai to the Monastery of Saint Catherine. Saint Catherine, the tour guide explained, lived in Alexandria during the persecution of the Christians under the reign of Maximus. When she converted to Christianity, the Romans tortured and finally killed her in 307 A.D., cutting off her head as a gruesome admonition to her Christian zealots.

The Sinai was barren, a dried-up, godforsaken wilderness infested with poisonous snakes and wild camels. A short distance from the monastery stood a huge outcropping of reddish rocks, what was thought to be the original site where Moses witnessed the burning bush. The reddish-brown hills strewn with huge boulders, the thousand year-old, stucco monastery was thrown together from brick, mortar and whatever raw materials lay readily at hand.

Initially, Harry found the landscape otherworldly, apocalyptic, hideous, an affront to everything civilized. But when his eye was drawn back for a second look, an intrinsic harmony emerged from the desolation. He noticed a small cluster of fir trees off to the right of the main gate and how the stunted mountains directly behind the monastery heaved up toward an unbounded sky.

Harry returned home chastened. The barren, blistering wilderness of the southern Sinai mirrored his inner spiritual wretchedness. Some nights he sat in his condo contemplating the desert's message. At the Monastery of Saint Catherine Harry sensed that he was not just growing older. Men in their late twenties grew mature and settled. In their thirties and forties their hair fell out or went gray; they developed a glut of yuppie ailments - tennis elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, trick knees, spinal subluxations, acid reflux and hemorrhoids.

No, that wasn't it either. Harry wasn't easing into middle age - he already plateaued a decade earlier. Now he was just plain growing old. It's why he made weekly pilgrimages to the secular shrine that was the Brandenburg Arboretum, where he meandered among the greenery like some fetishistic obsessive-compulsive, reading the plaques, memorizing the genus, species and identifying characteristics of the various trees and shrubs. While other men in similar quandaries downloaded soft porn from the internet, Harry Jankowski staked his purse on botany.

This middle-aged poetry lover with the unfinished face - would she return or was Dora's appearance in the park a fleeting aberration? Five minutes after meeting, Harry no longer noticed the drab exterior.

No, that wasn't terribly accurate. It was more like viewing sepia tones in an old-fashioned print. The murky, monochromatic reddish brown shadings exuded a distinctive warmth seldom attained from modern, digital photography. Once past the initial shock, Dora wasn't terribly unattractive. Unlike Nadine's flamboyant, chameleon charms, Dora's rudimentary features, in their ragged simplicity, hid nothing.

* * * * *

The previous December at three a.m. with the tail end of an icy blizzard raging in the streets, Nadine called. Groping for the receiver, Harry knocked the bedside lamp over. With his left ear epoxied to the receiver, he recognized the familiar, nasally voice.

The woman was babbling a clutter of barely coherent sentence fragments. "Met this guy at a club... a musician. We went out a few times and got intimate." Nadine's voice cracked. "Earlier tonight he says he's got two lovely daughters and another bun in the oven." "Could you come over for a while, just until I get a handle on my freakin' nerves?"

With a grinding of gears and metallic scraping noise, a snowplow turned the corner and lumbered down the street. Harry, who could set his watch by his ex-wife's failed romances, ran a hand through his thinning hair; he retrieved the overturned lamp. His face went through a series of contortions. "At this hour of the night? No, definitely not!" He hung up the phone.

Harry knew the woman was wacky when he married her.

His crime was thinking he could make Nadine over in his own image. He wandered to the window. The storm was relenting, the sticky, wind-driven snow that battered the East Side of Providence since early evening replaced by a flurry of windblown powder. In the front yard, a thick sheet of icicles bowed a birch tree almost to the ground. The grimy snow was piled four feet on the impassable sidewalks from the last storm. Harry rubbed his finger on the frost-covered window. From the basement, the boiler purred softly sending a wave of hot water gurgling through the pipes. The sheer curtains began to sway listlessly with the rising heat.

Brinnnng! Brinnnng! The phone rang shrilly.

Was there anyone else to comfort her? Harry shook his head emphatically and reached for the receiver. "Yes, Nadine. I'll come." Dressing silently, he chose a thermal undershirt and pair of insulated socks before easing his rubber galoshes over a pair of Sperry Top-Sider boat shoes and stumbled out the door.

Normally a 15-minute drive, it took three quarters of an hour to crawl from Randall Street to the far end of Douglas. Harry passed the Charlesgate Nursing Home on North Main Street, inching along the ice-packed road at five miles an hour. A parking ban was in effect. Except for the heavy plows and sand trucks, his was the only car on the road. He felt like a total idiot.

Pulling up in front of Nadine's apartment, Harry stumbled through the slush to the front door. With an air of slighted pride, Nadine showed him into the living room. She was heavier than he remembered. A decade earlier, her sagging jowls had been 'remodeled' by a plastic surgeon, the double chin reduced by one. Still, like a well-kept car hitting a hundred thousand miles, the rust and rot of an unhappy life had taken its toll. It wasn't so much that Nadine had aged. Whether it was a receding hairline or spidery pattern of varicose veins, they had all grown noticeably older. Cloistered away in his one-bedroom efficiency apartment, Harry was approaching forty-five. His hair, what little was left of it, was silvery gray and, like the Brazilian rain forest, losing ground each year.

Nadine offered Harry a drink but he declined. "When I told the bastard I didn't date married men, he laughed... made a joke of it." "They stunk," she added as an afterthought. "The crummy lot of them!"

Harry was sprawled in a stuffed chair with his overcoat and rubbers still on. "I don't follow you."

"The musicians he played with," Nadine clarified. "They couldn't keep a goddamn beat."

"You never mentioned what instrument he played."

"What the hell's that got to do with anything?"

Harry cracked his knuckles. "Just making small talk."

"Drums... he played drums. I could probably do a better job."

Harry leaned forward and squinted. Even with bifocals, his vision was poor. The problem was depth perception, the right eye being hopelessly nearsighted while the left only focused on objects at a healthy distance. For that reason, he frequently failed to see what was right under his nose. Like the fact that Nadine was wearing a see-through negligee, the top fashioned from a sheer, transparent fabric that left nothing to the imagination. Only now did he actually see Nadine's sagging breasts - more tubular than round - rocking crazily like a pair of derailed, out-of-control carnival rides.

Her nakedness aroused Harry; it made him horny - not the normal, end-of the-week horny but a vulgar offshoot, the product of sleep deprivation and chilled feet. "You should never have gone to bed with him." Harry blurted in a dispirited tone. "You should have sensed something wasn't right."

Nadine began to sob uncontrollably. "How could I know such a thing?"

"ESP, female intuition... a burst of cosmic insight." Harry was numb with exhaustion. Pushed beyond a certain fixed point, he became vindictive. "You never come up for air... never stop yapping long enough to hear the hidden message in the mindless prattle."

Nadine dabbed her nose with soggy Kleenex. "And I invited you over for moral support?"

"You shouldn't have slept with him," Harry repeated and lowered his eyes. There was a dark water stain where the ice and snow had melted onto the Persian Carpet. He spent five hundred dollars on the rug the year they were married. In his exhaustion, his mind was running amok. He pictured a cluster of young Arabic women, dressed in chadors with thick, black veils hiding their faces, sitting in a row weaving his Persian carpet – an intricate tapestry of designs and colors that he was ruining with mud and chalk-colored road salt. Worse yet, he didn't care, not about the carpet or Nadine's endless series of mindless misadventures. "If I go home, are you going to kill yourself?"

She blew her nose and sat up straight. "I'll go in the kitchen, fix a TV dinner and cup of chai."

Harry gave her a hug and didn't release his grip for a full minute. "I'm going home now."

"That was a horrible thing you said... about not coming up for air." Nadine dried the remnant of tears with the back of her wrist. "It's the most awful thing anyone's ever said to me in my whole life."

"No, it isn't," Harry replied. "The most awful thing was the two-timing louse not bothering to tell you he was married." He pushed the door open and was met by a blast of sub-zero, arctic air. "Take care, Nadine."

* * * * *

The following Saturday, Harry returned to the arboretum. The weather was humid but not oppressively so for mid-July. Twenty minutes after settling in Dora arrived. She wore a blue chintz dress with a matching scarf tied up in her hair. The woman was clutching a small paperback. "Are you familiar with the poet, Robert Hayden?" Harry shook his head. She sat down on the bench next to him, opened the book to a page that had been flagged with a slip of paper.

Sundays too my father got up early

And put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,...

The poem was a dazzling tour de force describing a blue-collar laborer who rose early every Sunday throughout the frigid winter to light a cast-iron stove and shine his son's shoes before traipsing off to church. It was a brief piece– three stanzas, a total of fourteen meager lines – resembling an epic novel in that the reader could visualize the man's devotion, his humble dignity. When Harry finally laid the book aside, Dora asked, "Who is Robert Hayden?"

"I told you I'm not familiar with his poetry."

"Yes, but take a guess," the woman pressed, "based on this short poem."

"That's tough," Harry hedged. The language was simple enough but too precise not to be the work of a highly disciplined, academic - perhaps, an imagists or confessional poet from the early sixties. "No, I haven't a clue."

Her limpid eyes were transfixed on the opaque maze of summer foliage just beyond the rose garden. "Hayden was a black man born into crushing poverty. He grew up in a Detroit foster home where he was sickly, both physically and emotionally abused." A wistful yearning washed over her face. "From such ugliness and heartache, pure beauty... how do you explain such things?"

"I don't really know," Harry replied.

From such ugliness and heartache, pure beauty...

Harry was eight years old. The family lived on Providence's East Side. His mother gave him a quarter to buy a balsa wood airplane at the local 7-Eleven. The boy gently nudged the delicate, papery wings through the fuselage then inserted the tail section. With care, the toy might last a hundred throws. Even if the fragile wings cracked along the grain, which they inevitably always did, Harry could bind them back together with masking tape or a few drops of Elmer's glue and manage the better part of a week before begging his cash-strapped mother for another quarter.

On the third throw, the plane caught on a gusty updraft of air, depositing his prize possession on the second-story porch of a three-decker tenement. What to do? Little Harry was despondent. A perfectly good balsa wood glider without a single blemish, crack or nick irretrievably gone astray. Forever lost! Ascending the front stoop, the boy found the door ajar. He plodded up the smelly stairs to the second floor landing and knocked.

A fat black woman about the same age as his mother cracked opened the door but only as far as the metal security chain would allow. The careworn face was puffy with sagging jowls. She wore a tattered bathrobe and a jumble of pink rollers ranged across her frowzy, graying hair. "Yeah, what you want?"

"My balsa airplane flew up to your deck, and I was wondering - "

"Who... what?" Now the tone was belligerent.

"My toy airplane - it landed on your deck."

Releasing the chain, the woman threw the door wide open. Harry could hear a baby fretting in another room. The congested child coughed - once, twice then let out a mournful, sputtering wail. The apartment smelled of exotic vegetables - spices and seasonings that were both comforting and disconcerting all at the same time. From another room a man's voice barked in a gravelly voice, "Who the hell's that? What they want?"

"Wait here." The woman disappeared and returned a moment later with Harry's airplane perched between a nubby thumb and forefinger. Then she smiled the most beautiful fat-black-woman-trapped-in-an-awful-life smile that the boy had ever seen. "Here, kid. Have a swell day." She slammed the door shut.

Harry stood there foolishly holding the glider cupped in his palms. He wanted to thank the morbidly obese woman, give her a kiss and a hug, nurse her tubercular child back to health and make her psychotic husband speak to her in soothing tones. Instead he went three blocks down to an open field where he could fly his plane without fear of a similar mishap.

* * * * *

Dora was sitting on the bench with her long-fingered hands splayed across her lap. Except for pearl earrings, she wore no jewelry or makeup. The Hayden poem had surely triggered the bizarre flashback. Harry thought he might like to tell Dora about the kind-hearted black lady but certainly not today. "You're not married?"

"My husband suffered a stroke... passed away a year ago this October," she replied in a flat tone.

"Was it a happy marriage?"

"No, not particularly. And you?"

Harry told Dora about his ex-wife. "About a year ago," he added almost as an afterthought, "on a whim, I started learning the various plants and trees here in the park." Pivoting a half turn, he pointed at a flaming mass of foliage closer to the entrance. "That black tupelo is one of the more flamboyant offerings. In the fall you can find shadings of yellow, orange, bright red and purple all on the same branch." Rising to his feet, he led her over to take a closer look. Reaching out, Harry placed his hand against the trunk. "The distinctive bark resembles alligator hide."

"How interesting!" Extending her hand, Dora stroked the textured wood. "And you learned all this from the plaques?"

He took several steps back and pointed into the upper branches of the slender, fifty-foot tree. "Notice anything?"

"Lots of noisy birds."

"Those fruity clumps scattered among the leaves are berries. The tree is an important food source for migratory birds." Harry rubbed his chin and, lowering his eyes, stared absently at his fuddy-duddy, wing-tipped shoes. "Would you like to get together some time?"

"A date?" Her features brightened. "That would be nice."

"Are you doing anything later tonight?"

When Dora was gone, Harry followed his weekly ritual, making a walking tour of the grounds, while carrying on an interior monologue with his leafy acquaintances. Yes, over there by the trash barrel was a scattering of quaking aspens with their twenty-five foot spread of noisy greenery. Sometimes he confused them with American beech. The late-blooming Magnolia directly behind with its greenish-yellow flowers was a bit easier to spot.

Dora lingered another half hour after Harry screwed up the courage to ask her out. The woman confided that she played second-chair flute in the Wheaton College wind ensemble. A Fourth of July concert was scheduled. They were doing Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain as well as excerpts from a Tchaikovsky symphony. Harry, for his part, told her several funny stories about a senior-league, slow-pitch softball team he recently joined, where the ballplayers were forty and up. Most of his teammates had non-life-threatening disabilities of one sort or another – a torn rotator cuff, inguinal hernia, pulled hamstring, asthma, emphysema, knee replacement - which made for some interesting athletic buffoonery.

The Eastern Redbud off to the right was a no-brainer. The riot of plum-colored leaves was a dead giveaway. And the mountain ash close by an outcropping of granite ledge had already lost its showy, spring flowers in favor of a thick crop of orangey-red fruit clusters. Harry remembered how the previous November the leaves looked like they had been dipped in yellow ink. Further down the twisty path, a tulip poplar was nestled between an eastern hemlock and diminutive chokeberry.

Over by the linden tree... Harry wasn't so deluded as to imagine that he was in love with a woman he had only recently met. What were the prospects of sex on the first date? Probably nil to non-existent. Harry didn't doubt for one second that Dora would prove a passionate lover; the woman was far too clever and kind-hearted not to be. But physical intimacy proved a minor concern. Deeper emotions eventually might set down roots, like old-growth timber, over a broad expanse of time. In the end, God or whatever animist power governed the universe ultimately got it right.

Now Harry had to go home and decide on a nice restaurant and what to wear.

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A Guide for the Perplexed

Ernie, the owner's son, lingered in the rear of the Levinson's Wholefood Market where Shifrah Fienberg was preparing a sesame chicken casserole. The dish was one of the market's most popular items, especially during the summer months, since it could be served chilled directly from the refrigerator. "I've fallen in love," he spoke morosely, "and want you for my wife."

The Israeli woman never even bothered to lift her eyes from the chicken breast she was dicing with a Mercer eight-inch, chef's special. Shifrah brought the knife to work each day in a leather carrying case. Forged from high-carbon, German steel, the paper-thin blade was razor-sharp. If she inadvertently left it out on the cutting surface during coffee break, no one among the help would go near the lethal weapon. "A date or a dozen long-stemmed roses might be a bit more appropriate."

"Okay, I'll take you out to dinner this weekend... a swanky Italian restaurant on Federal Hill." He gazed at the small, olive-complected woman with the short-cropped, black hair and pinched features. She wasn't pretty. Worse yet, Shifrah had an insular, tetchy disposition that held coworkers at arm's length. She seldom initiated conversations, was brief and crabby when spoken to. Her saving grace – the woman was wizard with herbs, spices, exotic oils and condiments.

Reaching for a plate full of steamed cabbage, she tossed the shredded vegetable in with the chicken. "That doesn't work for me."

"Why not?"

"Your reputation precedes you, Ernie." The woman drizzled a handful of chopped almonds over the concoction then reached for a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil. "How many woman have you slept with in the past month?"

"A few... not many," he blustered, tripping over the words. Eight girls – Ernie had slept with eight different girls over the past four weeks. More to the point, the number of nights he slept alone could be counted on the fingers of one hand with several digits to spare. "All that's changed," he croaked. "I'll take a vow of celibacy."

Shifrah raised her eyes from the food and glanced vaguely in his direction. "You think that because you're the owner's son, you can intimidate me?"

"A date... that's all I'm asking."

She sampled the food, added a teaspoon of sugar and tasted again. "Pitgum... how do you say?" She was fumbling for the proper term in English. "Pitgum, pitgum... a story that teaches a lesson."

"I don't know." Ernie was becoming emotionally unhinged. "A fable or parable."

"Two little boys decide to play hide and seek. One says, 'Go hide somewhere and I'll count to a hundred and come look for you.' The youth starts counting, but long before he reaches a hundred he hears the other boy crying. He goes to him and asks, 'What's the matter?' and his friend replies, 'I hid and no one came looking for me.'"

For the first time since Ernie accosted the woman, Shifrah looked him full in the face. "The other boy says, 'Now you know how God feels.'"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

The Israeli woman shifted her grip on the handle and brought the knife down, full force, in the center of the butcher block table, burying the blade an inch into the hardwood surface. "Leave me alone or I'll quit on the spot, and you can explain to your father why his best chef went to work for the competition."

*****

Later that night at home, Ernie confided to his father, "I love Shifrah Fienberg."

Saul Levinson rubbed his jaw with a stubby hand. He was a short man, squat but powerfully built. A petulant, gruff outward manner masked an emotional softness. "No, you don't want her for a soul mate. Find another bride." Mr. Levinson slumped down on the sofa in preparation for the evening news. Each night he gorged on thirty minutes of war, pestilence, and political mayhem before taking a shower and getting ready for bed. "Damaged goods... a woman with a broken spirit, that's what she is. You want to start life with a freakin' albatross like that weighing you down?"

"Why is she damaged goods?" Ernie demanded.

"It's complicated." Mr. Levinson flicked off the news midway through the third story and retreated to the bathroom where he washed his face, patting the skin dry with a towel before smearing a layer of shaving cream over his plump cheeks.

Trailing on his father's heels, Ernie lowered the toilet seat and sat down. "The Fienberg woman... what's the big mystery?"

Mr. Levinson reached for his twin razor. "She lived on a kibbutz, a communal farm in the upper Galilee where they tended orchards... mostly oranges, grapefruit, apples and pears."

"She told you this?"

"No. She don't never say nothing about her past. The Fienberg woman's a closed book... an emotional cadaver. I gleaned the information second hand from one of her coworkers so the facts may not be a hundred percent reliable."

He ran the blade tentatively down the right side of his face away from the sideburn. "Moslem terrorists infiltrated the kibbutz... stole down from the Golan Heights on the Syrian border, attacking the defenseless farmers in the middle of the night. When the dust settled, eight kibbutzniks along with her mother and father lay dead. A twin sister had her throat slashed." The short man cleaned the stubble from under his chin. "Shifrah Fienberg lost faith... in God, humanity, the universe. She's an empty vessel – a regular luftmensch if ever there was one."

Saul Levinson pivoted on his bare feet and shook the soggy razor at his son soberly. "Weltschmertz... you know what that is?"

When there was no reply the older man continued. "Welt - world, schmertz – pain. The pain and suffering of the universe... Shifrah Fienberg's got a terminal case of weltschmertz." Mr. Levinson finished shaving and splashed Old Spice aftershave on the smooth skin. "You don't want nothin' to do with a tragic character like her."

*****

"What's this?" The first week in September, Ernie showed up at Shifrah Fienberg's apartment with a dozen roses.

"I'm still in love with you. Nothing's changed."

"Yes, well nothing's changed on my part either," she replied with a guttural inflection. Tossing the flowers on the coffee table, several rolled off onto the shag carpet. The woman was wearing flannel pajamas, her freshly washed hair wrapped like a turban in a white, terrycloth towel. "Thank you for the lovely flowers. Chalamoat paz."

"What's that mean?"

"Golden dreams."

"I dream in shades of gray since you rejected me." When there was no response, he added, "You don't care for me... even a little?"

"I never said any such thing! Shifrah was becoming angrier by the minute. "Now you put false words in my mouth... make me out for a liar." "All I ever said was that I wouldn't marry you. Nothing more!" The Israeli woman had rubbed a moisturizer into her skin, which glistened with an oily sheen. "Don't foist your dirty laundry on me."

Several more flowers dangling precariously on the lip of the coffee table slid off onto the floor. "Since when did unrequited love become dirty laundry?" Ernie replied.

"Unrewhat?"

"I haven't slept with a woman in three months."

"That's your loss. Go away or I'll call the police," Shifrah growled, slamming the door shut.

*****

The week of Thanksgiving Ernie cornered Ruthie Adleman in the bakery wing of the market. "You're on decent terms with Shifrah?"

Ruthie, a skinny, florid woman who suffered from chronic roseola, was pulling a tray of cinnamon raisin bagels from the oven. "That poor woman... she's been to hell and back."

"I heard about the terrorists," Ernie confirmed.

Ruthie gawked at him. "What terrorists?" Ernie recounted what he learned from his father, but the woman with the blotchy complexion shook her head vehemently. "No, that never happened. You got it all wrong."

Ruthie went and got a tub of cream cheese shot through with chive. Tearing a steamy bagel in half, she handed a piece to Ernie. "Before moving to the States, Shifrah lived in a Jewish enclave near the Arab sector of Hebron. One of the Jewish militants, a messianic crackpot, took an Uzi machine gun and went on a rampage... slaughtered an Arab woman and three children on their way to market." Ruthie slathered the warm crust with cream cheese and took a bite.

"That's nothing like the story I heard," Ernie noted.

"There's a ton of imaginations run amuck where Shifrah Fienberg is concerned." Ruthie rubbed at a patch of inflamed skin running down the side of her nose. "She sure is one hell of a cook, though!"

*****

Because the bulk of their employees were non-Jewish, The Levinsons held an annual Christmas party, a small, catered affair at the Marriot Hotel. "You lived on a kibbutz in the Upper Galilee?" Ernie inquired.

"Wherever did you hear such a ridiculous thing," Shifrah Fienberg exclaimed. She wore a simple, strapless back dress with a Star of David on a gold chain and no makeup whatsoever.

"From a coworker," he hedged.

"Well it's not true."

"I also heard that you spent time on a settlement in the occupied, Arab territories."

"More lies," she confirmed with a note of finality. "I was born in Nazareth... the new city, not the Biblical town further down the valley."

Ernie lowered his voice so that none of the other guests would hear. "I want to marry you."

"Of, God!" she groaned. "Will you ever leave me in peace?" In the far corner of the room a piano trio was playing a medley of Christmas carols at a brisk tempo. "Go study Maimonides," she muttered in a dismissive tone.

"Why Maimonides?"

"He wrote a book, Darach ha'Nivoochim... a Guide for the Perplexed. You're behaving very odd lately. Maybe the book will help you sort things out."

*****

A week later Ernie approached the Israeli woman as she was leaving work for the day. "The Maimonides... I found a copy of the book at the Jewish community center but couldn't make any sense of it."

"It was written in the tenth century based on Talmudic law." She unlocked the key to her car and slid the black leather bag containing her knife onto the passenger seat.

"Yes, but what's the underlying message?"

"In order to become free in this world one must become a slave to the laws of God." She turned the engine over and rolled down the window.

"And how does that work for you?"

Flicking on the windshield wipers, an inch of powdery snow flew off the vehicle. "I'm not a believer," she eased the car into reverse, "so The Guide for the Perplexed holds absolutely no relevance."

*****

The week after New Years, Mr. Levinson went into the back of the kitchen. "Am I a good boss?"

Shifrah smiled indulgently. "Yes, of course!"

The market was trying to appeal to Hispanic clientele with a new offering - Mexican Delight. The casserole contained sautéed ground beef, basmati rice, scallions – both the diced tops and pearlescent bulbs – along with mild chili peppers and salsa. "Sure, you're a peach!"

"In eight and a half years, I never took liberties or treated you unfairly?"

"No, never."

"Then marry my goddamn son."

Shifrah scooped the scallions she was chopping with her Mercer eight-inch chef's special and sprinkled them over the orangey rice. "I layered a bed of tortilla chips on the bottom for flavor and crunch," she noted as an afterthought. "It also improves the presentation."

"Levinsons is a family supermarket." He ignored the remark. "Marry Ernie and become family in the literal sense."

Shifrah Fienberg breathed out heavily. "A while back, your son offered to take me to some fancy-schmancy restaurant on Federal Hill."

"A restaurant... it's not enough." Mr. Levinson's voice was beginning to crack. He stepped closer and put his paw of a hand over her wrist. "Even marriage won't suffice. He wants you for eternity, in this world and the next."

Shifrah took a slender wooden spatula and lifted a small amount of the Mexican Delight from the bowl. "Taste." The older man tasted the rice dish. "Does it need anything?"

"No, it's fine. Maybe a little sea salt... I dunno."

"B'tabaat zu, art mikoodashat lee," Shifrah spoke the ancient Hebrew verse in a singsong cadence. "With this ring, I thee wed." She kept her eyes lowered and continued in a hushed monotone. "With this ring art mikoodashat lee... You are beloved... sacred unto me."

"From the Aramaic Hebrew... that's the original meaning?" He tightened his grip on the woman's hand. "My son cherishes you; he worships you from afar."

"Yes, then I'll marry him," Shifrah relented. "I'll be his wife and your daughter-in-law."

In the far corner of Levinson's Whole Food Market, Ernie was stacking vine-ripened tomatoes on a bin alongside the Italian plum variety. The tastier, native-grown vegetables that through the summer months sold for a dollar less a pound had disappeared from the market by the middle of October. The older man pressed her close and kissed his future daughter-in-law on the cheek. "Why don't we go break the good news to the future groom?"

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The Indigo Children

Jason Endicott arrived at the Seekers of Truth commune shortly before noontime. Lingering outside a renovated cow barn that served as a meditation hall, the mid-July air was stifling, temperatures hovering in the low nineties. Most of the animals having been sent away, the few remaining Holsteins were housed elsewhere. Over the years, the building's foundation settled, pitching the post-and-beam structure at an odd angle. The red paint had flaked away or faded to a muddy brown.

"Sister Wendy's been delayed," a young, rather effeminate-looking man wearing Bermuda shorts and floppy sandals approached from the direction of the dining hall. "You can wait here or down by the lake." He pointed toward a ridge of trees at the far end of an organic vegetable garden. No water was visible from where they were standing. "She'll be back half an hour tops." The young man shuffled away.

A bug-eyed gray squirrel scurried across the rutted ground before disappearing up a thick maple tree. Subdued by the oppressive humidity, the songbirds were less vocal than earlier in the morning. Abandoning the meditation hall, Jason struck out for the wooded area beyond the vegetable garden. He passed a group of women weeding. Dressed in jeans and cotton blouses, they were in their early twenties to late thirties. Nobody looked particularly happy with the brutal weather as they bent over the rock-strewn earth, tugging clumps of weeds and throwing them aside.

At the edge of the field, Jason spotted a dirt path leading down to a small lake, where fifty feet from shore a solitary woman sat on a rock. She was lean with no figure to speak of. A thin slash of a mouth was offset by dark hair and hazel eyes. The girl possessed an androgynous face that would have been equally suited for a member of either sex. Still, she was mildly attractive with a rough-textured feral quality that stood in stark contrast to most of the women he passed a moment earlier.

"Want a toke?" The girl, whose dirty brown hair was tied back with a red bandana, raised her arm to reveal a marijuana joint." Jason shook his head, and the girl promptly sucked a deep draft of sweet smelling smoke into her lungs and gazed serenely out over the placid water. Alongside a clump of water lilies, a painted turtle's wedge-shaped head emerged for a brief moment before disappearing beneath the surface.

"Is that allowed?"

"I should hope not," the girl replied with mock severity. "But I been here three months now and know all the tight-ass elders. You don't fit the mold." She took another hit and leaned back. "I'm Maribel. Maribel Munson."

"Jason Endicott. I'm with the Brandenburg Gazette. We're doing an article on the commune, and I'm here gathering information."

The newspaper had sent him to do a human interest story on the New Age commune that set down roots five years earlier in the dilapidated farmhouse west of the city. The Seekers of Truth were antagonizing local residents with their long, flowing robes, occult practices and messianic zeal. Jason visited the commune once previously to see about doing a piece for the newspaper's Sunday supplement, but nothing came of it. As an outsider and 'nonbeliever', the elders who managed the sect's day-to-day operation nixed the project. But now they needed some positive press to offset the creeping paranoia.

"Have you seen the trout?" Maribel strolled over to a small dock that extended twenty feet out into the shallow water. Before they even reached the pressure-treated, slatted walkway, he could see a school of huge fish gliding back and forth between the short pilings. Their underbellies sported a rainbow of pastel hues ranging from tangerine to neon green. "What a waste of protein!" Maribel muttered.

"How's that?"

She fixed him with an impish grin. "The Seekers of Truth follow the Buddhist concept of ahimsa, which states that all life is one and sacred."

"The sect is vegetarian." She nodded once. "And what's your take on that?"

She took a final hit on what was left of the joint, flicking the smoldering roach in a lazy arc into the water. Several curious fish swam to the surface for closer inspection. "Give me a worm, a piece of string and a barbed hook... I'll hand you your answer on a serving platter."

A huge trout suddenly broke the surface of the water snagging a water bug in its smallish mouth. "After three months, you must have formed an opinion regarding the sect."

Maribel retreated back to a grassy stretch of soil and sat down. "I'm leaving next week. That should tell you everything you need to know."

"Actually, it tells me nothing," Jason replied.

The girl removed her bandana and let her hair cascade down around her shoulders. "You passed a bunch of girls weeding the vegetable garden on your trip down to the pond." Jason nodded. "Did you notice the freckle-faced blonde with the big boobs?"

Jason grinned sheepishly. "She's probably the only one from the group I remember."

"That's Gwen. She's twenty-three and just walk out on her marriage... ran off and left her husband and three-month-old infant in a ratty, third-floor apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, so she could come here and connect with her inner essence."

Maribel stuck a piece of straw between her teeth and lay back prone on the lumpy ground. "The woman abandoned her spouse and child all in the name of cosmic consciousness." She rose up on her elbows and smiled good naturedly at Jason. "Like I said, next Wednesday I'm heading out to Alaska. See if I can scare up a job cooking on a commercial fishing trawler." She pointed at the endless parade of trout slithering in and out from under the dock. "No more ahimsa."

*****

"All that exists is God... nothing more."

Sister Wendy was the perfect shill, huckster, promoter, pitchman and metaphysical cheerleader for the Seekers of Truth. Her dark hair knotted in a tight bun, the white-robed woman was college educated and svelte - the poster girl for discrete respectability.

They were sitting on ornate, brocade cushions in the air-conditioned meditation hall. The room was empty except for a large Persian carpet near an altar decorated with fresh-cut wild flowers and a picture of the sect's leader, an elderly man of Eastern descent with a flowing white beard. The chilled air reeked of incense – patchouli, sandalwood and several exotic scents Jason couldn't identify. "Many of your Christian neighbors," the reporter countered, "view New Age practices as the spiritual version of AIDS."

Sister Wendy's expression soured, but she never lost her composure. "From a pantheistic point of view, all religions are simply different paths to that ultimate reality." The woman spread her arms, palms upward, in an expansive gesture. "The universal religion can be visualized as a mountain with many sadhanas or spiritual paths." "All divergent paths," she held the final consonant in 'all' out for dramatic effect, "eventually reach the top."

Jason wasn't buying a solitary word of Sister Wendy's fabulous esoterica. To be sure, the woman possessed a clever tongue. She would have made a great lawyer or politician, but the Seekers of Truth were just a tad too far left of the loony bin to ever gain traction in a straight-laced community like Brandenburg.

Acupuncture or homeopathy were fairly mainstream, but primal scream therapy pushed the local yokels over the edge. Each whacky pursuit – polarity, therapy, iridology, crystal healing, spirit channeling, divination, I Ching, Tarot Cards, scrying, dervish whirling, séances, reflexology and therapeutic touch – only served to nudge the loose-knit clan further to the metaphysical margins. At one point toward the end of their meeting, a young boy – he couldn't have been any older than six or seven – ran pell-mell into the room. Spotting Jason, he smiled and sprinted back out the door. "One of our Indigo Children," Sister Wendy gushed.

"Never heard the term."

"It is our belief in the New Age movement that children with special powers and indigo colored auras have been born in recent years. Indigo's are easy to recognize by their unusually large, clear eyes."

"Okay," Jason murmured skeptically.

"These children are precocious with amazing memories and a strong desire to live instinctually. Indigos are sensitive, gifted souls with an evolved consciousness; they have come to help change the vibrations of our lives and to create one land, one globe... one species."

Jason experienced the sudden urge to vomit, to regurgitate his entire lunch, a Kentucky Fried Chicken value meal with coleslaw and potato wedges, onto Sister Wendy's eggshell white lap. "And that child?"

"My son... one of the Indigo Children."

Kaching! Kaching! Kaching! The Seekers of Truth planned to build a three-story guest house divided into dormitories where, for a modest fee, spiritual novices could deepen their appreciation of the Eastern mysteries. Of course, it was no mystery where they acquired money to bankroll the new venture. A brochure of scheduled summer events listed no less than fifty-two offerings, which probably explained why Sister Wendy could afford to drive around in a fully-loaded BMW convertible. Kaching!

*****

Later that night after supper Jason drifted into the living room and put on Frank Zappa's Hungry Freaks, Daddy from the classic mid-sixties recording. He raised the speaker volume then went in the kitchen where he mixed a sloe gin and tonic. The sickly-sweet, pink liqueur always gave him a fuzzy drunk followed by an atrocious hangover, but sometimes that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

At two in the morning, his Shih Tzu, Grover, began pawing insistently at the bed rail. Throwing a flannel bathrobe over his pajamas, he accompanied the dog to the back door and watched as it scampered down the stairs, disappearing into the darkness. Normally, Jason might have gone back inside, fixed a cup of tea and waited for the dog to return, but coyotes were recently sighted in the nearby woods and residents warned to keep small pets indoors. Wandering out to the middle of the yard, he found Grover sitting on his haunches like a halfwit staring aimlessly into space. When he approached, the dog stuck out its tiny tongue and started panting. "False alarm?"

Earlier, while Jason was relaxing in the air-conditioned comfort of the meditation hall with Sister Wendy, his mind kept flitting back to the young girl at the trout pond. In a few days, Maribel Munson would travel to Alaska. He imagined her below decks on a rust-bucket trawler slopping gooey pancake batter onto a griddle to feed a dozen hungry fishermen.

There certainly was nothing glamorous about such work. Along with the crew, she would freeze in winter, risk being caught out at sea in dangerous weather. Jason sensed that, from Maribel Munson's flinty perspective, the only calamity more terrifying than shipwreck was the prospect of spending another tedious week with The Seekers of Truth.

"Finally!" Grover lifted a hind leg and did his business. Almost immediately, the dog rushed aimlessly in circles sniffing the darkened grass - always a sure sign that the best was yet to come.

Jason gazed up at a clear sky, quarter moon and broad expanse of stars; an aromatic potpourri of fresh-mown grass and lilacs perfumed the dew-drenched, early morning air. When Jason was Maribel's age, had he ever done anything as reckless as shipping out on a commercial fishing trawler? Perhaps reckless was a poor choice of words. Courageous, endearing, pigheaded, dopey, daring, desperate, exhilarating – all more vivid terms pulling Maribel's outlandish wanderlust into focus!

A handful of 'magical' first moments Jason could look back on with fading nostalgia came to mind: the first time he snagged a large mouth bass on monofilament line with a lemony hula popper lure; the first time he smacked some wiseacre in the nose at a high school hockey game. The jerk promptly got up off the ice and returned the favor bloodying Jason's lip, which matriculated out as another unforgettable experience. The first time he rode the death-defying roller coaster at Nantasket Beach - the amusement park was closed down many years now; the first time he made love to his wife. So when had these magical moments become passé? Or were they nothing more than transitory rites of passage from reckless youth to bland adulthood?

The Shih Tzu with the corkscrew tail suddenly flipped about, a full three-sixty, hunched over, grunted and dumped yesterday's lunch under a red oak sapling. "Okay, Grover, let's call it a night." Sweeping the pooch up in his arms, he bounded up the steps and returned to bed.

*****

A week passed. Jason wrote the commune article. The reportage was fair and objective, leaving readers to decide for themselves if The Seekers of Truth was a legitimate religious order or motley collection of dysfunctional weirdoes. Wednesday afternoon, the receptionist at the Brandenburg Gazette buzzed Jason on the intercom. "Yung girl wants to see you."

Tanned legs splayed to either side, Maribel Munson was sitting in the lobby. "I left the commune."

"For good?"

She nodded. "I'm driving cross-country." She rose and stretched her lanky limbs. "Where can I get a decent burger around here?"

"Depends on how you define the term."

Maribel lowered her eyes. When she finally looked up, a smirk inched its way across her face from the upturned corners of the lips to the flinty, hazel eyes. Maribel lowered her voice a handful of decibels. "I've spent the last twelve weeks farting my fucking brains out on tofu salads, organic bean sprouts and whole grain breads heavier than paving stones. Now I need some real food."

Jason grabbed his car keys off the desk, "I know just the place."

They drove across the town up route 156 past the junior high school and Benny's Hardware to Toner Boulevard. A Burger King loomed directly ahead. "What do you think?"

"Yeah, that should do just fine!"

At the counter, the girl ordered a double cheeseburger and fries with a strawberry smoothie. "Would you like to biggie-size that for an extra fifty cents?" the cashier asked.

"I'll have the same," Jason blurted without waiting for Maribel's reply, "and biggie-size both orders."

"How old are you?" he asked when they were seated.

Maribel dangled a French fry dripping with catsup in front of her lips. "Twenty-five."

"I got a daughter your age."

"That's nice."

"The busty blond girl weeding the vegetable garden," Jason said, shifting gears. "Is she still there?"

"Studying feminine, pagan rituals. Gwen's decide to be a Wiccan priestess. She's putting her husband and kid on the back burner indefinitely so she can howl at the moon." Maribel screwed her face up in a foul expression. "There are a lot of lost souls – mostly college dropouts – at the farm. But, truth be told, they're just a symptom of what's ailing this country."

Reaching out, Maribel rested a hand on Jason's forearm, "I don't condemn Gwen. The Wiccan priestess wannabe,... she's just metaphysical road kill... one more disenfranchised soul." The door burst open and a clot of teenage girls dressed in soccer uniforms and calf-high athletic socks flooded into the restaurant. Jason watched the youngsters mugging it up as they formed a raggedy line snaking toward the front counter.

Maribel crammed what little remained of her double cheeseburger in her mouth. The food gone, she wiped her lips then leaned across the table, kissing Jason lightly on the cheek. "If you don't mind, I'm going to grab a bowl of chili to take with."

*****

As weeks passed and the impression left by Maribel Munson congealed, taking on a life of its own. Jason could see the angular, chiseled features as though the young girl was standing in the room no more than three feet away. She wore no makeup. The clothes neat but utterly unremarkable, her only bit of jewelry, if you could even call it that, a braded rawhide bracelet looped over her slender right wrist. At night sometimes when he was having trouble falling asleep, Jason would conjure up her image for a nocturnal tête-à-tête.

"Well hello there, Maribel."

She was sitting on the faux-leather sofa Jason's ex-wife, Denise, a real estate broker, bought with money she earned from the sale of a duplex early on in the marriage "Why do you keep dragging me back here, Jason?"

"I found this poem by the German poet, Rilke, buried away in the stacks at the library." Jason recited the short verse from memory.

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his house,

dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

toward that same church, which he forgot.

After the poem was done, the spectral Maribel sat perfectly still for the longest time. "Hope you're not planning to share those sentiments with your straight-laced coworkers at the Brandenburg Gazette."

"Not in this lifetime," Jason snickered. "Lately I feel more and more like the pathetic slob, dying inside the dishes and glasses."

"Problem is," Maribel replied, "there are no more churches in the East. Your ex-wife and Sister Wendy put a match to them."

"Then why travel cross country on a whim?" When there was no reply, he added, "I need help sorting things out."

"What things?"

"My failed marriage... the train wreck which has become my personal life."

"My life is more screwed up than yours. Can I leave now?"

"No, please... just a little longer." Maribel flopped own on the carpet, curling her tanned legs up under her in a half-lotus position. "Okay, it's your dime."

Jason's former wife, Denise, flipped houses.

She bought foreclosed real estate - commercial or residential, it made no difference. She caught wind of someone in a financial bind, medical crisis or personal upheaval and turned a tidy profit on their misfortune. Since the property owner's calamity was none of her doing, Denise insisted the transactions were scrupulously honest. If anything, she was simply 'facilitating' a resolution of unfortunate circumstances.

When Mrs. Abercrombie, who lived three streets over, lost her husband to prostate cancer, Denise arrived at the woman's front door in the late afternoon following the funeral with a condolence card, bouquet of roses and offer to buy the property. Her figures topped out at eighty per cent of the appraised, fair market value of similar residential property in the area, but the distraught widow was only too happy to get rid of the home and move to an assisted living facility in Brookline that boasted gourmet dining and regular trips to hear the Boston Pops Orchestra perform at Symphony Hall.

Denise unloaded the property within a month of the widow vacating the premises and pocketed close to thirty thousand dollars in clear profit. Then she drove to the newsstand at the corner of Murphy Boulevard and bought a newspaper to check obituaries and new listings of distressed properties being sold for liens and back taxes.

By the time their daughter entered college, Jason refusal to buy into the Denise's version of the American Dream had them sleeping in separate bedroom. The previous June, he returned home from work and found the answering machine flashing with a new message. "Angelina Fuentes... from 32 Scenic Vista Drive," the woman with the thick Hispanic accent sobbed into the phone. "Please call me."

Denise got home late that night. She checked messages, fixed herself a Caesar's salad and cup of tea. "What did Mrs. Fuentes want?"

His wife teased a crouton onto the tangs of her fork and raised it to her lips. "The poor woman's three months behind on her mortgage payments, and now the bank has started eviction proceedings."

"But why is she calling here?"

Denise shrugged. Reaching for a knife she slathered butter on a slice of fresh sourdough bread. "No idea."

It was a cat-and-mouse game. Denise wouldn't volunteer information about the tearful Mrs. Fuentes. A reporter, Jason was used to puzzling stories together from tidbits of random information. Three years earlier, his wife hooked up with Willow Tree Lending, a financing firm that specialized in the subprime real estate market. The firm wrote mortgages for people with bad credit, no credit and questionable employment. Since then, there had been at least eight similar calls from homeowners being evicted and thrown out in the street.

"What you're doing is criminal." Jason made no effort to hide his feelings.

"Coming from someone who considers 'work' a four-letter word, I'll let that slide." Finishing with the light meal, she leaned back leisurely in the chair and sipped her tea.

"Want to know the difference between you and a vulture?" Jason didn't bother waiting for his wife's response. "By scavenging nature's waste, the bird serves a useful purpose."

In early May, just before Mother's Day, Jason spotted Denise sitting at the counter in Ryan's Diner. They had been divorced two years. She was hunched over a copy of The Brandenburg Gazette clutching a yellow magic marker. Jason imagined his ex-wife circling prime pickings among the obituaries and recently foreclosed properties. Her hair was going gray at the temples and the crow's feet dappling her eyes left the middle-aged face haggard. Denise had always been modestly pretty in an ebullient, if somewhat harsh, sort of way. Now the effusive enthusiasm that blunted the sharp edges of her temperament had dissipated. All that wheeling and dealing came with a price tag. Cosmetic surgery or a few Botox injections could repair the external damage - only the external damage.

Things had been spiraling out of control in the marriage long before Denise walked out. His ex-wife complained that Jason wasn't enterprising. He lacked motivation, direction, and initiative. All of which was true or at least it was accurate from her stilted perspective.

Jason once considered cataloguing Denise's verbal abuse in an informal compendium. He would pilfer a roll of toilet paper from the hall closet and, with an indelible marker, inscribe each new level of insult on the perforated sheets. 'I wipe my ass with a chronicle of your complaints' was the not-so-subtle message. The fantasy was infantile and only lent further credibility to his wife's argument that Jason was a lost soul.—half baked, childish, atrophied, a ne'er-do-well, inadequate personality (Denise borrowed that twenty-five cent gem from a friend with a PhD in abnormal psychology), and all-around ineffectual loser.

His wife earned conservatively three times what he did. She labeled him low energy – worse yet, an inveterate underachiever. So Jason was secretly ecstatic when Denise rented a U-haul and cleared out her belongings to set up housekeeping with a senior partner at the firm. Experiencing a queer sense of moral vindication, he never felt cuckold, betrayed.

*****

One rainy afternoon in late October, Jason was in the upstairs study writing out a check for the quarterly real estate tax. Eight hundred thirty-one dollars and seventy-five cents made payable to the City of Brandenburg. All that money for the privilege of living on the goddamn street three more months! A sudden impulse to rip the check in a hundred pieces seized him along with a similar inclination do the same with the rubbish and water bill that would be arriving in a week's time. But the town would quickly put a lien on his split-level house or, worse yet, after a few years, confiscate the property. Then he'd be penniless. Homeless. You couldn't win. All the precocious, bright-eyed Indigo Children had grown up and put their prodigious intellects to work as city planners, public officials, lawyers, speculators, financiers and politicians.

Frank Zappa's Hungry Freaks, Daddy – the ghoulish nightmare had become commonplace. For fear of ending up in a straight jacket, Jason scrupulously avoided telling anyone about his growing disenchantment with the American dream. Now, for the first time, haltingly and with a growing sense of personal conviction, he told the luftmensch, Maribel Munson. But he only did so late at night when he had trouble dropping off to sleep and, whenever she complained about his morose moods, Jason quickly changed the subject.

"First few years of our marriage, my wife and I used to go camping in the White Mountains. Sleeping bags, Coleman stoves, birding binoculars, hiking gear—the whole shebang." Jason was lying in bed at three forty-five in the morning, a late night thunderstorm whipping sheets of rain against the storm windows with unrelenting force.

Maribel Munson's wraithlike doppelganger was perched on a Windsor chair strategically placed near the foot of the bed. "If this degenerates into another rant against your ex-wife," she warned, "I'm history."

"You already are history," Jason corrected.

"Your ex-wife," Maribel was clearly unimpressed, "is less a physical presence in your life than I am, but you're still agonizing over her."

Sliding off the bed, Jason scooped up a backpack mounted on an aluminum frame resting in the corner of the room and slipped the harness over his shoulders. The price tag was still dangling from a chrome post. "I'm taking a sabbatical from the rat race. Bought a Eurrail Pass...ten countries over three weeks

Maribel's face cycled through a series of unflattering contortions. "What about the newspaper?"

He waved a hand in a placating gesture. "I've accrued a month's vacation so it's no big deal." Locating a map, he splayed it on the surface of the bed. The itinerary took Jason in a sweeping arc from Luxembourg up through the Scandinavian countries before backtracking through southern Germany, Switzerland and Italy. "From Florence," he thumped the map weaving a finger along the Mediterranean, "I'll skirt the coast and spend a few days in Paris. From there, head south, cross the Pyrenees and tour Spain."

"When do you leave?"

"A week from Friday." Jason removed the backpack and leaned the metal frame up against the bedrail. "Regarding accommodations, there are dozens of dirt-cheap pensions and youth hostels along the way." He waved a copy of Fodor's Essential Europe under Maribel's nose. "Already drew up a list, country by country."

"Aren't you a little old for the youth hostel circuit?" Maribel quipped.

"I'm considering a side trip," he ignored the remark, turning his attention back to the crumpled map, "through southern Spain to the port city of Algeciras, where I could cross the Bay of Gibraltar by ferry to North Africa and from there..."

back to Table of Contents

Fatally Flawed Women

Every woman Ernie Summers ever dated was fatal flaw.

A case in point: the previous winter the thirty-five year-old mechanic spent time with a woman of Chinese background. Maureen Kwong held a masters degree in education. She had been teaching fifth grade math for eight years, when the vice-principal at Brandenburg High School left on maternity leave and she assumed the administrative position.

"School committee meets tomorrow night," Maureen explained, "so we can't get together." They were sitting at Starbucks down from the Emerald Square Mall sipping mocha latte cappuccinos. "The PTO is considering a car wash to raise money for the harvest festival dance. I suggested selling magazine subscriptions or a bake sale."

"What's wrong with a car wash?"

She scrunched up her bronze nose. "High school girls dress too provocative. The skimpy clothes and all that fleshy exuberance send the wrong message."

Ernie gawked at the woman but held his tongue. The statement made no sense. It was late October with temperatures dipping into the low fifties by early morning. Nobody would be prancing around in halter tops and cutoff jeans! And even if they were, it was a carwash.

"You see," Maureen pressed her point with brittle obstinacy, "parents lack common sense, and I constantly need to redirect their misguided energies."

The skimpy clothes and all that fleshy exuberance send the wrong message. This from a woman who wore a flimsy, low-cut blouse and stiletto heels when Ernie met her three months earlier at the Foxy Lady lounge!

Maureen Kwong had no compunction about cleavage, risqué small talk or casual sex on a first date but was worried half to death about middle-aged men getting erotically aroused at a car wash. Despite a master's in administration, the vice-principal seemed like the stupidest cow on the planet.

Sipping his tepid drink, Ernie glanced about the coffee shop. A pimply-faced youth several booths down was ogling Maureen Kwong with a fawning expression. "What about the graffiti prank?"

"I'm still working on it," Maureen replied tersely. "These things take time."

The week following New Years, somebody decorated a stall in the second floor, boy's bathroom with an obscenity-laced poem. The first stanza read:

Roses are red

Lemons are sour

Open your legs

and give me an hour.

The janitor scrubbed the lengthy verse away but not before Ms. Kwong took a dozen digital photos of the raunchy musings. A week passed and a second somewhat longer and more intellectually challenging poem appeared on the same spot. Both were scribbled using indelible markers.

Sex is like math

You subtract all the clothes

Add in the bed

Divide the legs

And Pray to god

You don't multiply.

The pithy verse was far too clever to be the work of adolescent minds. Ms Kwong hypothesized that the writer plagiarized the smut from a collection of internet erotica, passing it off as an original creation. Needless-to-say, no one claimed literary credit. The vice-principal, who was in charge of disciplinary matters, grilled a handful of prime suspects, who pleaded ignorance; long after the metal stalls were scoured clean, the woman was still hard at work trying to solve the adolescent caper.

"A few dirty words scribbled on a bathroom stall," Ernie assumed a breezy tone, "it's a victimless crime - hardly worth getting your panties twisted in a knot."

"Maybe for you," Maureen's voice soured. "I'm having several photos enlarged."

"For what purpose?"

"To check handwriting against samples from some of our more troublesome students."

"That almost seems like an invasion of privacy." He no longer made an effort to mask his irritation. As a prelude to more extensive interrogations, Ernie imagined Maureen Kwan brandishing a high-powered magnifying glass over the script, examining each verse for distinctive flourishes, embellishments, misspellings and grammatical inconsistencies.

"Are the poems in bad taste?' "Yes, of course." Ernie answered his own question. "Are they mean-spirited, vulgar and crass? Yes, again, but teenage boys... and I speak from personal experience, are like that."

"And you're not embarrassed to admit as much?"

Ernie leaned halfway across the table. "It's a quasi-degenerate stage most healthy males go through... a pubescent rite of passage."

Roses are red

Lemons are sour...

In the Starbucks Coffee Shop on a Saturday night in the middle of October, Ernie decided to pull the plug on Maureen Kwong, the newly-minted vice-principal of Brandenburg High School. Not that the autocratic, Asian woman was an anomaly. There were a million females out there just like her - well-educated, bright, sexy, professionally competent and dangerous as hell. You couldn't marry a woman like Maureen Kwong. Even as a casual date, Ernie could tolerate her eccentricities for no more than a handful of hours back to back.

* * * * *

Three months later while easing a corroded water pump out from under the hood of a Ford pickup, Ernie gingerly placed the damaged part on the concrete floor and wiped his grimy hands with a rag that wasn't any cleaner than his fingers. Only when he stood fully erect did he notice the olive-skinned woman waiting patiently near the hydraulic lift. "Can I help you?"

She gestured with her eyes at a maroon colored sedan parked near the furthest bay. "My Toyota Celica... the air conditioner's busted."

"Leave a number where you can be reached. We'll take a look and call you in a few hours."

She pursed her lips and stared at a mound of gashed, punctured, crushed and otherwise ravaged tires heaped in the far corner of the repair bay. "I work over at the library in reference and am on a rather tight budget."

"I'll see what I can do."

After replacing the defective water pump, Ernie finished a brake job, junking the scarred rotors on a late model Subaru. Around eleven he pulled the Toyota into the bay and raised the hood. Twenty minutes later he called the library. "Your compressor's shot... completely dead."

"Oh dear!"

"New units cost a small fortune, but I can scare one up at salvage for a fraction of the cost. Even though it's used, we'll warrant the part for a year just in case anything goes wrong." He wasn't quite sure why he said that as the garage never offered warranties on used parts.

There was a short pause. "That sounds fair enough."

When he hung up, Buddy Evers, who pumped gas and did odd jobs, stuck his head in the garage bay. "Are my eyes playing tricks on me or was that Jillian Crowley stopped by earlier?"

"Where do you know her from?" Ernie asked.

"Attended high school together. The guys called her the 'Virgin Mother' 'cause Jillian was such a prude. She always treated me swell, even though I never moved in her circle."

"Which circle?"

"The straight 'A', goody two-shoes set." A rusty van pulled up at the self-service pumps. "You still dating that Chinese girl?"

Ernie grimaced and shook his head violently. "That blockhead?"

"Thought she had a half dozen sheepskins hanging on the wall."

"Just one - a PhD in foolishness," Ernie muttered. "What else can you tell me about Ms Crowley?"

"Her parents brought their Chevy Cavalier for oil changes but moved to Florida a few years back. Jillian shares an apartment over behind the fire station with a younger sister."

"What's the sister like?"

"Abigail?" Buddy flashed him a queer look. "Nothing like the Virgin Mother!"

"Which tells me nothing."

*****

Three days later, Ernie visited the library on his lunch break. "How's the air conditioner?"

"Wonderful! I can't thank you enough."

"Anything goes wrong," Ernie added magnanimously, "you bring it back to the garage and I'll set things right." He shifted back and forth on the heels of his feet. "I was wondering if you could recommend something." His original intent was to ask the librarian out but his mind got hamstrung.

Jillian folded her hands together on the desk. "What type of fiction do you prefer?"

"I don't know... nothing too demanding. Since high school, I mostly favor hot rod magazines."

She led the way across the room to the stacks and in the first row pulled a slim volume down from the top shelf. "Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson... it's an American classic."

"Anything else?"

"No, I think that about does it," Ernie replied meekly. Jillian stood quietly with her delicate fingers laced together, the nails polished with plum colored lacquer. "He sold paint for a living," Jillian muttered as an afterthought.

"What's that?"

"Sherwood Anderson... when he wrote Winesburg, Ohio, which is generally considered his greatest work, he was writing advertising copy and working days for a paint factory." Uncoupling her fingers, the supple hand drifted down to her hips. "It's just a bit of literary trivia that I thought you might appreciate."

Ernie promptly went home and read the novel. He liked it well enough but wasn't terribly sure that he understood the half of what he had read. Each short vignette contained a subtle, evocative message. Winesburg, Ohio \- it was sort of like Jillian Crowley. The woman was an enigma. She confounded his sensibilities. But if Buddy Evers said she was a decent sort, that's all Ernie cared about. Buddy had been married to the same woman since high school. He coached Little League, never drank to excess or fooled around. Buddy mentioned that it was no great surprise Jillian, who was always shy and reclusive, became a librarian.

The only mystery was why such a pretty woman was still unattached.

* * * * *

The following Tuesday Ernie returned to the library. "Which story did you like best?"

"The one about the middle-aged school teacher."

"Yes, that one's terribly sad but beautifully written," Jillian agreed. "Are you looking for more books?" Ernie nodded. Again he trailed her across the slate blue carpet to adult fiction where she gathered up an armload of hardcover offerings.

"I was wondering," Ernie screwed up his courage, "if you might like to go out for dinner this Saturday... maybe catch a movie."

"A date?" She handed him the books.

"I don't mean to -"

"I live with my sister, Abigail." Jillian scribbled her name and telephone number on a scrap of paper. "Usually one of us is home in the evening." She suddenly reached out and pulled the topmost book from the pile. "This Alice Munro novel is grossly overrated. Let me suggest something else." Several rows over, she pulled a tattered volume off the shelf. "Read the third story then go back and take a look at the others if you like."

"The third story?" Ernie opened the volume at random. The pages were yellowed and frayed.

Thursday evening Ernie called Jillian at home but she was out. "Could you tell your sister Ernie called?"

"Bernie?"

"No, Ernie... from the garage. I'll pick her up around seven this Saturday night." There was no immediate response. "Around seven." After waiting a discrete interval he added, "Could you make sure Jillian gets the message?"

"Yeah, whatever." The line went dead. The following day he called Jillian at the library. "Did you get my message?"

"What message?"

Ernie felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that quickly fermented into blind rage. "Your sister didn't mention that I called?"

"Abigail's a bit scatterbrained... not good with information, but Saturday's fine," she replied. "Did you read the Turgenev?"

The question caught Ernie unawares. It had been a rough week at the garage. He single-handedly pulled a drive train on a Chevy truck, which backlogged the scheduled repairs. Since the beginning of the week, he hadn't closed shop much before seven. There was no time or residual brain power for intellectual calisthenics. And anyway, he was far too excited about the date to worry about musty, nineteenth-century Russian literature. "Yes, I read it," Ernie lied.

"Did you like the story?"

"Oh," he was getting flustered now, "I'll tell you all about it Saturday night." The response seemed to please Jillian immensely and they ended the conversation on a happy note.

Later that night, Ernie took an early bath and climbed into bed with the bearded Russian. Reading the story required almost as much personal investment as pulling the drive train! Each time his mind wandered off from the printed page Ernie lost the gist of what the author was saying and, more often than not, the convoluted language spoke on several different levels at once.

The Turgenev story - it was a stupid, stupid, stupid bit of literary fluff!

A young Russian girl from an aristocratic family had fallen under the influence of a crazed, religious zealot. Her life was ruined. Putting the tattered book aside, Ernie killed the light and lay on his back in the dark. He ran a thumb over a scab on his index finger where an errant wrench had opened a deep gash earlier in the week. Momentarily turning the light back on, he gazed at the formidable stack of books on the bedside table. All that unfettered truth and wisdom - it felt like a talisman, an omen of good things to come. But why had Jillian insisted that he read such a crappy tale?

* * * * *

Saturday evening Ernie arrived around quarter to seven at Jillian's apartment. Abigail let him in. "You're the grease monkey?"

"Mechanic," he corrected.

The younger girl wasn't nearly as pretty as her older sister. She had the same dark hair and burnished Mediterranean complexion, but that's where similarities ended. Scrawny and disheveled with a wide, mannish jaw, she wore raggedy jeans below a wrinkled T-shirt with no bra. Abigail's hazel eyes flitted distractedly about the room as though she couldn't wait to be rid of him. "You don't seem like my sister's type."

Ernie coughed self-consciously. "Jillian's not here?"

"Director called a last minute staff meeting at the library. She's running late and asked me to entertain you in her absence." Flinging herself down on the sofa, her unencumbered breasts swung lazily from side to side.

"Do you work locally?"

"I'm between jobs." She teased a piece of lint off her jeans and deposited it on the rug. "I was employed over at the Dairy Mart until I had a disagreement with the assistant manager. Now I'm thinking of going into business for myself."

"What did you have in mind?"

Abigail shuffled over to a computer tucked away in the far corner of the room. "Ever heard of bawdybodies.com?" Without waiting for an answer, she typed an address into the search engine and brought up a screen.

Ernie leaned over and read through a raunchy doggerel. "You're gonna sell sexual toys and herbal supplements?"

"Hell no!" Abigail seemed genuinely miffed at the suggestion. "This smutty crap is just a lost leader." She tilted her head at an angle and smirked impudently. "You know what a lost leader is?"

Ernie was getting aggravated. He wanted Jillian to rescue him from this crazy woman."Something a businessman gives away to encourage customers to shop their store."

She wagged a forefinger at the computer screen. "Over to the right... what do you see?"

"A bunch of naked women in erotic poses."

"Correctamundo!" Abigail scrolled down the menagerie of topless females until she reached a slightly pudgy blonde with sclerotic legs and a strawberry birthmark on her inner thigh. "That's Bethany Garret."

"Name doesn't ring a bell."

"Beth was a year ahead of me at Brandenburg High."

"Not necessarily the valedictorian." Ernie was feeling light headed.

"When some horny guy clicks on this racy photo," Abigail positioned the cursor over the blonde's left breast, "the hyperlink transports him directly to Bethany's personal website where, for a small fee, he can view more photos and steamy videos."

"How far along are you in your start-up venture?"

"I need a professional camera." She reached for a cell phone resting on an end table. "All I got for now are these grainy nudes I shot with -"

"Sorry I'm late." The door flew open and Jillian burst into the room. "We had this spur-of-the-moment staff meeting and then I got stuck in traffic.

"I'm bringing Ernie up to speed on my latest business venture." Edging closer to the computer, Abigail flipped a switch and the monitor faded to black. Lifting up on her toes, she kissed him on the cheek. "He's a real peach of a guy."

"What business venture?" Wiping the wetness away with the heel of her hand, Jillian clearly had no idea what Abigail was talking about. "We're already ten minutes late, but I do appreciate your keeping him company in my absence.

* * * * *

"You sister's got a wild streak." Ernie and Jillian were hunkered down at the Cathay City Chinese Restaurant with a pu pu platter and pot of Oolong tea.

"Abby's all bluster and false bravado." Jillian maneuvered a pair of wooden chopsticks over a nugget of Colonel Tso's chicken. The supple fingers moved with a ballet-like precision as she effortlessly lifted the food. "At some point my kid sister has to grow up."

"I read the Turgenev story."

"Yes, you told me." Jillian's eyes, which normally were opaque, sparkled with a rich luster. "And you understand it?"

"I lost focus and had to go back and reread certain passages."

"But you grasped the underlying message?"

"Yes, of course."

"Sometimes," Jillian confided, "when I'm reading Russian literature or the Victorian writers, I feel like I might have been happier in the 19th century horse and buggy days."

"Wouldn't work so good for me," Ernie quipped, "without cars to repair."

"But you could have been a wheelwright, blacksmith or a carpenter."

"Hadn't considered the possibilities." Jillian Crowley was the wholesome, earthy, slightly ascetic girl next door, and her effervescent chitter-chatter set him at ease.

"So how was your day?" Jillian asked shifting gears.

"A funny incident," Ernie lowered an egg roll back to the plate. "A tow truck hauls a rat trap Chevy from the high school to our repair shop. A seventeen-year-old kid sat in the parking lot with the air-conditioning cranking full blast, the radio tuned to heavy metal. Problem was, he never bothered to leave the engine running so the battery drained away to nothing." Ernie sipped at a miniature tea mug. "He just got his driver's license a month ago and said his father would kill him when he found out what happened."

"So what did you do?"

"I hooked up the charger. When the battery was restored to full life, I read the kid the riot act and told him to 'pay it forward.'"

"You didn't charge him?" Ernie shook his head. "It was the right thing to do."

Maybe yes, maybe no. The other day a customer bounced a check for eight hundred and thirty-five dollars. The deadbeat swore it was a mistake and wrote out a duplicate. The second check came back marked 'insufficient funds', and the garage ended up eating the cost of a catalytic converter and replacement exhaust system.

"I have to use the lady's room." Jillian rose from the table. Her hips swayed side to side with a lilting gait, as she picked her way toward the rear of the restaurant.

Later in the car before he turned the engine over, Ernie kissed her on the mouth. "I want to see you again."

She placed her lips next to his ear. "Yes, I'd like that."

Reaching the apartment complex, he accompanied her to the door. Slipping his arms around her waist, Ernie pulled her close. "If you don't mind my asking, what was the big deal with the Turgenev story?"

"Was there something you didn't understand?"

"No, not really. When the religious fanatic started spouting all that gibberish about personal atonement..."

"You lost me." Jillian's eyes suddenly narrowed and her sing-song voice assumed a caustic edge. "What are you talking about?"

Just then, the apartment door opened and Abigail stood gawking at them. "The crackpot who ran off with the landowner's daughter... he ruined the girl's life. And at the very end of the story, when they reached the inn during the rainstorm -"

"You read the wrong story." Jillian's smile faded. "I told you to read the third story, and you read the one before it."

Kachunk! Kachunk! Kachunk! Ernie felt the turgid blood thudding in his ears, the precursor to a full-blown anxiety attack. "I did what you told me!" Over the woman's shoulder he could see the braless younger sister smirking vicariously.

"Apparently not very well, because you read the wrong story." There were no more kisses, hugs or terms of endearment. Jillian Crowley disappeared into the apartment as her future porn-star-of-a-younger-sister slammed the door shut.

Ernie went home and had a good cry.

Then he got drunk, threw up all over himself and fell asleep on the couch still dressed in his clothes. In the morning, hung over and overwhelmed with self-loathing, he took a closer look at the tattered Turgenev book. Yes, he read the wrong story. Punin and Baburin \- that was the name of the tale he should have read. But Ernie, incorrigible dope that he was, began counting from Edward Garnett's scholarly introduction, leaving himself one short. One short - he might as well have been a thousand pages off the mark!

Punin and Baburin \- it was another, equally stupid story! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Baburin travels about the country with his friend Punin, who is bald with a head shaped like an egg. Ernie stopped reading around lunchtime. He was only halfway finished but needed protein in his stomach before soldiering on. The kitchen phone began ringing with shrill insistence until the answering machine finally picked up. The caller left no message. Brinnng! Brinnng! Brinnng! The phone erupted again, demanding, begging, pleading to be answered. Fleeing the apartment, Ernie wandered down to the lobby and gathered his mail.

When he returned the red LCD light was flashing on the answering machine. A thoroughly remorseful Jillian Crowley would be calling to leave the first of many unanswered apologies for his public humiliation. Ernie pressed the message tab.

"Hi, it's Maureen. Just got back from an education seminar in Palo Alto. Still upset about that silliness with the bathroom graffiti? Give me a call. We'll patch things up over a bottle of wine and a porn flick."

Ernie slumped down in a kitchen chair. He hit the playback tab a second time and listened to Dr. Kwong's officious nasal twang. A third and a fourth time he listened to the message, and then Ernie tried to imagine the despotic oriental, married with family, structuring domestic bliss with the same autocratic efficiency she favored at Brandenburg High School.

Around seven Ernie called Jillian's apartment. "She doesn't want to talk to you." Abigail was sounding particularly self-righteous.

"If nothing else, would you at tell her I read the story... the right one."

"I'll do no such thing." She slammed the phone shut.

An hour later, Ernie showed up at the apartment. "Punin and Baburin... I finished the story earlier this afternoon."

"And what did you learn?"

"Baburin was a republican."

"Which tells me nothing."

Ernie began to whimper, making crude snuffling sounds and blotting the wetness away with the back of a hand. Abigail was sitting on the sofa, looked back and forth between her sister and the uninvited guest. Only when the mechanic began blubbering did she rise to her feet, yawn languidly and disappear down the hallway into the bedroom.

"For Baburin being 'republican' meant respecting the freedom of others... he took care of Punin even though he didn't work, spouted sappy poetry and acted like a halfwit."

"Turgenev's nothing like Tolstoy." Jillian wet her lips with her tongue, "bludgeoning you half to death with mystical malarkey."

"I don't give a crap about Tolstoy," Ernie protested. "I don't even like Russian literature. I only read it to get to know you."

"And the young girl?" Jillian pressed.

Ernie paused to catch his breath. "Baburin takes Musa Pavlovna under his wing. When she elopes with the college student, Baburin doesn't rush after her... he simply lets her go."

"He doesn't force his will her."

Only now did he cover his moist eyes with a calloused hand. "This is all new to me. It's all getting mixed up in my brain."

"It's a package deal," Jillian replied dryly.

"Yes, I figured as much." Ernie understood intuitively that they were no longer talking about the Turgenev tale.

His tormentor moved closer and, wrapping her arms around his waist, rested her head up against his chest. "It's package deal," she whispered what she said a moment earlier but so softly her words were barely audible.

"I need to speak with your sister before I go."

"Okay."

The door to Abigail's bedroom was open. Ernie entered, closed the door behind him and flopped down on a straight-back chair in the far corner. Abigail was resting in a full lotus position on the top of the covers thumbing through a copy of The National inquirer. "What are you doing?" she bristled.

Ernie continued to sit staring morosely at his penny loafers. Five minutes passed in total silence. "I want to go to sleep. How much longer are you going to sit there like a goddamn retard?"

"Bawdybodies.com... I don't think it's such a great idea, but everybody's got to make their way in life. God knows I've done some dumb-ass things that I regret even to this day."

"You're freaking me out!" Abigail muttered, throwing the magazine on the floor.

"If your entrepreneurial venture doesn't pan out, my brother-in-law works in human services over at WalMart. I could get you an interview. Pay isn't the greatest and you would have to work your way up."

She shut the light and the room went totally dark. "Anything else?"

"No, that's about it." Ernie rose to his feet. "Goodbye, Abigail."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Loyalty was a big thing." Back out in the foyer, Ernie picked up where he had left off. "Turgenev kept yammering on and on about how, even after Baburin went into political exile, he stood by his friends and principles." He fished about in his pocket for the car keys.

"Baburin was loyal in ways that most people couldn't begin to imagine," Jillian confirmed. "I thought you said you didn't like books."

"The ending worked out rather nicely, don't you think?" The mechanic and the reference librarian seemed to be communicating at cross purposes.

"Yes, it did." Jillian kissed him on the side of the mouth. "Come over for supper tomorrow night. I'll cook a small pot roast with baked potatoes, glazed carrots and string beans. What would you like for dessert?"

back to Table of Contents

A Middlemarch Reunion

Arriving at the restaurant, Glenn Stottlemeyer ordered a gin and tonic – heavy on the gin, light on the tonic. Hopefully, a couple of stiff drinks before the meal arrived would loosen him up sufficiently to deal with whatever unpleasantness the ten-year, high school reunion might throw at him. He had no insatiable craving to relive the past. High school had been a confusing, bittersweet experience – a dreary nether world intended to prepare young people for 'adult life', whatever the hell that was. But it hadn't worked all that well. The illusive dream – college, professional career, wife and family - had somehow gone awry, the trajectory falling far short of its mark somewhere between college and adoring spouse.

The reunion was held at the picaresque Grist Mill Restaurant in Seekonk. The huge nineteenth century wooden paddlewheel was still intact as water from the abutting lake cascaded over the motionless wooden blades. The restaurant's interior was done in a colonial New England theme, with antlered deer heads on the walls, carved ducks and other period pieces scattered about the bar and dining area.

"Hello, Glenn," a woman's voice cut through the noisy din.

He had been so engrossed observing patrons streaming into the restaurant, Glenn never noticed the slim woman approaching diagonally from the bar. Helene Fischer was standing on the far side of the table clutching a small beaded purse. Her thin fingers resting on the back of a red oak chair, the blonde woman with the sallow complexion wore a sedate blue skirt and no jewelry. Glenn patted the chair next to him, and she slid down into the seat. Senior editor of the Brandenburg High School newspaper, Helene possessed a sensible, moderately pretty face. A decade earlier, her shy intelligence and wry humor had the teenage boy thinking about her away from class.

"Are those new glasses?" As soon as the words left his mouth, Glenn realized the sheer idiocy of the remark.

"Yes, they are." She didn't seem to mind. With an index finger, she adjusted the stylish black frames up on the bridge of her slender nose. Helene reached for a warm roll. "Do you still paint?"

The room was filling up now and the wait staff was passing out the Caesar salad. "Yes, but you won't find a Glenn Stottlemeyer original at any of the prestigious galleries on Newbury Street." Closer to the dance floor, a three-piece jazz trio with a female vocalist was fine-tuning the sound equipment. Testing one, two, three. Testing one, two, three.

Helene sliced a roll lengthwise, spreading butter on the lower half. "I'm with a publishing firm off Tremont Street in downtown Boston, so I'm still up to my ears in printed matter."

Several couples, who already seemed well acquainted, drifted over and seated themselves at the table. Glenn didn't recognize any of the faces and, even after introductions, could only just barely recall one of the women, a matronly brunette with wide hips, who sang in the glee club. Fifteen minutes into the event and, with the exception of Helene Fischer, the Brandenburg High School reunion was beginning to feel surrealistically unpleasant. "I ran into Jerry Yeager in the parking lot," Glenn blurted.

"How's he doing?"

"Married with five kids!"

If there had been a 'Least Likely to Succeed' category in the Brandenburg High School yearbook, Jerry Yeager would have won the title running away. A perennial C and D student, the shabbily-dressed youth with the chipped tooth missed as many days out of school as he attended, seldom ran a comb through his hair or polished his ratty shoes.

With sloth-like amiability, the teen, whose fingernails were habitually caked with dirt, wished everyone only the best. Directly out of high school, Jerry got a job with the department of public works, plowing and sanding roads in the winter, filling pot holes and landscaping through the summer months. Ten years ago, the marginal nebbish on the fast track to nowhere was the butt of endless jokes. But, grubby fingernails and broken teeth taken aside, the ne'er do well enjoyed a passable life.

Helene blinked behind the dark-framed glasses. Her malleable features, momentarily frozen in a blank expression, melted in a wispy smile. "Caleb Garth."

Glenn swiveled a quarter turn at the waist. "Excuse me?"

"At the publishing house we just bought the rights to print a limited edition of George Elliot's Middlemarch."

"Never heard of it," Glenn replied.

"It's the Victorian author's tour de force, her literary masterpiece... a thousand pages of dazzling prose." Helene raised a wineglass to her thin lips and sipped at the pink liquid. "Every character you ever met in life somehow reemerges in the pages." "There's a middle-aged farmer," Helene continued, "by the name of Caleb Garth in Middlemarch who reminds me of Jerry."

George Elliot—now Glenn remembered. In junior English the class read Silas Marner. He vaguely remembered something about a miserly linen weaver who was robbed of all his gold. "Jerry reminds you of the fictional character... how so?"

"Caleb has a litter of children. He's hardworking, honest, pleasant as hell and, despite the best of intentions, never gets ahead in life."

"So far so good."

"Caleb loves his wife dearly and, despite his meager circumstances, is perfectly content. Nobody owes him a living. Life is good."

"Okay. Okay." Glenn held a hand up in mock protest. "You just described Jerry Yeager to a T."

The door opened and a stunning, dark-haired woman in a strapless blue evening gown floated into the room. "There's Andrea Molina," Helene noted. "Swell necklace, don't you think?"

Decked out in a braided gold necklace that hung to her ample cleavage, Andrea swept through the function hall with an aloof, vixen's swagger. A pair of glittering earrings matched the stunning chain; stiletto heels showed her sleek calves and tight rump to best advantage. Andrea passed right by their table without the faintest recognition, choosing a chair at a table near the salad bar. Almost immediately a crowd of long-time friends and admirers convened on the spot. Andrea draped a lace shawl over the back of a chair. Her bare arms and shoulders exuded an erotic charm that could be felt halfway across the room.

Several girls that Helene worked with on the school newspaper suddenly materialized and dragged her away. Glenn felt uncomfortable sitting alone at the table. He reached for the gin but thought better of it and went outside, where the sun had already gone down. A thin sliver of gritty light still lingered over the placid water. Ducks were floating close to shore – a couple of smallish buffleheads, speckled mallards, a solitary Mandarin with orangey plumage and zebra-like patchwork dappling the chest. Further down the shore was a collection of ringed teal, slightly larger and more imposing than the other birds along with a dirty brown, speckled woodcock. Sad to say, he felt more comfortable among the waterfowl than his former classmates in the restaurant.

* * * * *

Somewhere in Glenn Stottlemeyer's freshman year at Brandenburg High, the troubling notion that he wouldn't survive much beyond his teenage years began to eat away at the adolescent's confidence. Life was too complicated and unmanageable. He wasn't lazy. On the contrary, Glenn was reasonably intelligent, honest and conscientious.

But was that enough?

Did one require an extra measure of ubermensch cunning that a boy, who spent his days reproducing still-life watercolors couldn't possibly lay hold of? Jerry Yeager had found his earthy niche early on. One look at Andrea Molina and you knew she had the world at her sensuous fingertips. Helene Fischer was preparing a limited edition of George Elliot's Middlemarch for publication.

Glen was wallowing in existential ennui, a spiritual limbo resembling purgatory. After finishing his education degree, he spent a year in the classroom. Teaching elementary and middle school students the basics of color and design left him mildly disoriented. What had seemed so gratifying in college proved stultifying drudgery.

The craft show circuit proved an endless grind of travelling from show to show, sometimes not even earning enough profit to cover expenses and vendor fees. Now he was teaching privately through the local arts collaborative. Several of his older students showed real promise.

Not that it made a difference.

They progressed from week to week and renewed for the next session when the final class ended. Between the collaborative and the meager income he earned at juried art shows he eked out a modest living. Things were better lately, but still he was just drifting, marking time.

Jerry Yeager had a solid job with the DPW and a nuclear family exploding exponentially by the year. Andrea Molina was solidifying her position as the most desirable (and obnoxious) twenty-something on the planet. Helene Fischer held a management position at one of the more prestigious publishing firms in downtown Boston. Like a barnacle-encrusted ship with a broken rudder and tattered mainsail, Glenn was drifting aimlessly. Drifting. Drifting. Drifting.

Through the window Glenn noticed the waitresses lugging the main course out to the tables and went back in. "I thought you deserted us," Helene said in a chiding tone tinged with mock indignation. "Made it an early night."

Glenn prodded his stuffed chicken with the tings of a fork. "Andrea Molina," He lowered his voice, speaking haltingly into the linen tablecloth. "Who is Andrea Molina?"

"What's that?" Helene stared at him curiously trying to decipher his intent.

Glen sliced his baked potato lengthwise, laid a pat of butter in the warm center and watched the golden wad melt across the bottom. "In your thousand-page masterpiece," he spoke deliberately now, "is there a character that resembles Andrea Molina?"

Helene considered the question briefly. "Rosamond Vincy. She is the perfect prototype."

"And what sort of person is Rosamond?"

Helene leaned back tilting her head to one side. The pale, flawless skin and thin lips were held in bold relief by her dark glasses with the thick lenses. "Rosamond is an utterly selfish, narcissistic twit who views everyone in the English small town where she lives as socially inept - no matter that she has no special talents of her own or that her debt-ridden parents are hopelessly middle class."

A wan smile colored her features. Helene leaned closer, her lips no more than a few inches from his face. "An egotistical snob and social climber, Rosamond marries a doctor, a dedicated medical researcher, but the marriage proves disastrous." Helene paused to let him digest the facts. "When her despairing husband drops dead, she promptly remarries a wealthy businessman twice her age, who pampers Rosamond for the rest of her supercilious life." Helene pursed her lips and smiled wickedly. "Don't you just love Victorian tales with happy endings?"

Toward the end of the meal as coffee was being served, Glenn tapped Helene gently on the wrist. "Did your Victorian authoress find a place for two improbable characters like us in her fictional masterpiece?"

Helene responded with a good-natured laugh. "Why don't you read the book and draw your own conclusions?"

"A thousand pages?"

"More or less." Helene was poised to say something else, but the chairwoman of the reunion committee approached the dais, tapped the microphone several times and began addressing the high school alumni. For the remainder of the evening there was no more mention of nineteenth-century English literature.

* * * * *

The second week in August, Glenn displayed his watercolors at the Mansfield Art Show. The two-day affair was held on the grassy town common. He erected a ten-by-ten, cloth canopy under a huge maple tree the night before and arrived around eight the following morning to set out his paintings. Foot traffic was only moderate but plenty of serious shoppers were scattered among the casual onlookers, hagglers, horse traders and WalMart crowd.

'WalMart crowd' was a term that Glenn had coined to describe a low-brow shopper who illogically assumed that every hand-made work of art viewed at a juried craft fair could be had for pennies-on-the-dollar at the bargain outlets. They drifted past the booths with indignant haughtiness and seldom bought anything more expensive than a pastry and cup of coffee from the food vendors.

"This is rather nice." A young black woman was admiring a medium-size watercolor done in earth tones. "That's the Grist Mill Restaurant in Seekonk. We had our high school reunion there last month. I went back the next week and painted the paddlewheel with the ducks and lake in the foreground." The woman smiled and took a step closer, studying the upper portion of the sky. "I used a graded wash," Glenn explained, "to push the lighter tones further away from the horizon."

The woman nodded appreciatively. "I don't know much about painting technique."

Glenn pointed toward the top of the picture where the lighter blue tones had faded away to nothing. "The pigment is applied to a sloping surface in slightly overlapping, horizontal bands from the top down. Once complete, the wash is left to dry and even itself out." He dropped his hand down to the lower left near the shoreline. "Over here burnt sienna was dropped in while the paper was still very wet to create the suggestion of a bush. I let the Prussian blue and alizarin dry before wetting the paint again and lifting the pigment off to produce the hard-edged lines defining the mill and adjoining structure."

"How much?"

"One-twenty-five," Glenn replied.

She reached for her purse. "Do you take credit cards?"

A spitting light rain erupted late in the day, but Glenn had already sold five paintings before two p.m. and was a bit giddy with both the brisk business and fact that bright sunshine was forecast for Sunday. Even if he sold half as many pieces the following day, the show would be a huge success. He moved his paintings to the center of the canopy away from the slanting rain, positioning a plastic tarpaulin over several favorite offerings.

The public had gone home, but craft vendors were obliged to stay straight through until four before packing up. Glenn poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos and reached for a paperback squirreled away behind his cash box. He opened the absurdly thick book and settled in for the next hour.

* * * * *

Three weeks later, the agency receptionist buzzed Helene Fischer on the intercom. "A young man is asking to see you."

She scanned her appointment book and desk calendar. "No one's scheduled until late this afternoon. What's the mystery man's affiliation?"

"The fellow says he met you at a high school reunion... a Glenn Stottlemeyer."

"Yes, send him back."

A minute later Glenn was hovering in the doorway. "I know you're busy so I won't waste your time." She was staring at him with that signature, deadpan expression that invariably dissolved into a feathery-soft smile, an utterly disarming expression that left her lovelier by the second. "The Elliot book – is it in print yet?"

Helene slid a rather plump volume finished in wine-colored, faux leather across the desk. Glenn ran a hand lightly over the ridge where the stiff cover was joined to the spine by a linen mull. Opening the book at random he studied the prose. "The print is rather large."

Helene shook her head. "No, not really. It's standard eleven-point Garamond."

"By comparison," he pulled a paperback out from under his arm and handed it to her, "I nearly went blind reading this fly poop."

Helene studied the tight script. "Dear God, that is tiny!"

"Within the first hundred pages, I located your alter ego." Glenn spoke in a rambling unhurried tone. "Dorothea Brookes, with her straw colored hair and peaches-and-cream complexion, was a dead ringer for the publishing house editor who sat at my left elbow throughout the Brandenburg High School reunion."

"Dorothea Brooke's life paralleled mine," Helene added, "in that both our early marriages failed miserably and for similar reasons."

"And Will Ladislaw, the struggling artist, was a good match for the teenage neurotic, Glen Stottlemeyer." His face flushed with embarrassment. "I don't know that I'm quite the cosmopolitan humanist of my fictional alter ego, but still the resemblance is unnerving, don't you think?" There was no reply. Glenn glanced across the room at a teetering pile of unsolicited manuscripts that rose almost as high as his belt buckle. "Will Ladislaw and Dorothea Brookes were kindred spirits and best friends, but the reader has to wade through the better part of a thousand pages to discover what happens to them."

Helene nodded, flicking a strand of straw-colored hair out of her eyes. "The star-crossed lovers never even kiss until page seven hundred and fifty- three."

"It's the ending of Middlemarch," Glenn deflected the conversation elsewhere, "I came here to discuss."

"Denouement," Helene interjected in a whispery soft voice. "The outcome, solution, unraveling or clarification of a plot in a story."

"Is it a matter of fiction mirroring reality," Glenn pressed, "or the other way around?"

"Do you have any plans this weekend?" Helene ignored the question.

"Why do you ask?"

"I'm not doing anything, and I thought we might spend some time together."

"Yes, I'd really like that." Glenn's heart was racing and his voice cracked when he spoke again. "But you didn't answer my question."

She came out from behind the desk and placed a hand on his chest, a natural, unaffected gesture. Leaning forward she kissed him on the lips. "On the contrary, I just did."

back to Table of Contents

Lyuba

The maintenance worker was patiently waiting for the widow, Lyuba Russova, as she passed through the lobby of the Meadow Lanes housing complex. "The visiting nurse needs you in Mr. Grushko's apartment."

Lyuba pulled up short. For the past five years, the stocky man with the watery blue eyes never once looked her full in the face. Even now he was fiddling with his calloused hands. "The blonde with the beaky nose?"

Mitchell nodded. Of the forty-eight apartments at Meadow Lane, thirty-nine were occupied by Russian immigrants. Eight years earlier, Lyuba arrived in America from the Altai region close by the Mongolian border. She rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and knocked on a door at the end of the corridor. Mr. Grushko was sitting in a straight back chair. The emaciated six-footer wore a blank, impassive expression as the nurse bent over a blood pressure cuff. When she was finished, the woman turned to Lyuba. "Has Fyodor been taking his heart medication?"

Lyuba turned to the old man and interpreted the nurse's question. "Da. Da."

"Any bleeding from the rectum?"

The man balked at the question. "Maybe just a little." Lyuba replied.

The nurse scribbled furiously on a pad. "His stools... are they firm or loose?"

Stools were three-legged chairs. Mr. Grushko had a cheap kitchen set that he picked up at the Salvation Army and a camel-colored Naugahyde recliner. "I don't understand the question."

"Bodily wastes... feces. I'm trying to determine if the bleeding is from stomach ulcers or hemorrhoids."

Lyuba told Mr. Grushko what the nurse needed to know. The man stiffly erect with his mottled hands resting in his lap. Like tenacious, late-summer weeds, several strands of white hair, curled from either nostril. "Last time she wanted to know about my testicles, now my anus. Why does the woman always ask embarrassing questions?"

"I don't know." Lyuba replied. "Hard liquor is bad for your stomach. She wants you to -"

"My only pleasures in life are pelmeni and vodka." A messy scattering, remnants of the spicy, meat-stuffed dumplings, littered the kitchen table and surrounding floor. He glanced at the nurse and cracked an ingratiating, gap-toothed smile. "Ask the old hen if her bowel movements are firm or loose."

Lyuba cringed.

"What did he say?" the visiting nurse demanded, sensing that a joke was being played at her expense.

"Find out," Mr. Grushko bellowed, "if her hemorrhoids swell up to the size of golf balls after a particularly hard -"

"He says his stools are normal lately... no problem." Lyuba was growing weary of the verbal sparring. Mr. Grushko would never stop swilling liquor, just as on her deathbed the visiting nurse would still be an officious prig.

A cell phone twittered and the blonde woman reached for her purse. "Excuse me a moment." Pressing the phone to her ear, she rushed out into the hallway.

"I'm going to the ethnic market later. I'll pick up an Izvestia, some chopped herring in white wine sauce, a chunk of sesame halva and those buckwheat blinis you like."

For the first time since Lyuba entered the apartment, Mr. Grushko's stoic features eased. "How did you know to come here?"

"Mitchell... the maintenance worker."

"Nice man."

"He's got no personality."

Mr. Grushko rubbed the back of his neck with an arthritic hand. For thirty years he worked as a welder at a factory in Smolensk. Stalin toured the facility. Mr. Grushko spent thirteen days at the infamous Lubyanka Prison for talking back to a supervisor. They beat him with a rubber hose, but it could have been worse. A coworker was sent to the Gulag for a lesser offense.

Lubyanka - in Soviet Russian jokes it was referred to as 'the tallest building in Moscow, since Siberia could be seen from its basement'. Another joke referred to the building as 'Adult's World' as compared to 'Children's World,' the name of the popular toy store across the street.

"No, you're wrong," the old man cautioned. "Last Thursday, Mitchell went and got Mrs. Brodsky's groceries when her legs swelled like tree stumps, and she couldn't leave the apartment. The maintenance worker went after work on his own time." The old man cleared his throat, making a series of retching sounds. "And when the exterminators sprayed for roaches in December, he moved my furniture out into the hallway - even the heavy bureau - and wouldn't take a penny for his troubles."

"So what's his problem?"

Mr. Grushko stared pensively out the window, where the muddy earth was flecked with the remnants of late-winter snow. He shrugged and rubbed his unshaven cheeks. "No great mystery... he's just damaged good like the rest of us."

Damaged goods. Lyuba sensed something to that effect early on. The maintenance man smiled easily enough but the expression was tinged with a covert sadness, a melancholy she felt in her bones. It was an entrenched misery that could only be kissed or petted away - and even that with great difficulty. Strangely, that bleak sorrow only intensified her attraction for the man who never looked her full in the face.

Suddenly the front door burst open and the nurse reappeared. "So, where were we?"

*****

Lyuba went back down stairs. Mitchell was washing windows in the recreation room. She watched as a shiny streak of ammoniated cleaner evaporated on the glass. "When you're done with the windows, come to my apartment." The ethnic Russian woman from Bysk in central Siberia had a chronically hoarse voice, and her thick Russian accent heightened the guttural inflection.

"Okay."

Back upstairs, Lyuba removed a container with a reddish liquid from the refrigerator. Transferring the food into a smaller bowl, she heated it in a microwave.

"Borscht... beet soup," She said when the maintenance man arrived. She sat him down at the kitchen table. "Everyone in Russia eats borscht." She spooned a dollop of sour cream in the center of the bowl and placed it in front of him. "For flavoring we use meaty bone-in beef shank, diced onion, carrots, russet potatoes, fresh dill and a tablespoon of red wine vinegar."

Mitchell stirred the sour cream toward the edge of the bowl mixing it with the vegetables then watched wistfully as the sour cream absorbed the broth and darkened to a pinkish hue before tasting the soup. "This is damn good!" He emptied the bowl.

Reaching out, she rested a hand on his forearm. "Want to spend time together?"

"A date?"

"Yes, something of the sort," Lyuba replied.

"All this time," Mitchell mumbled sheepishly, "I've been trying to get up the courage..."

"More soup?" Lyuba placed the ladle back in the bowl and stirred the vegetables in the sweet broth.

back to Table of Contents

Thyroids, a Love Story

"Nock. Nock. Nock. Aram noks but nobody seams home."

Beatrice Monahan, the writing instructor, read from the wrinkled manuscript in a flat monotone then waved the half dozen pages over her head like a moral indictment at the disheveled young man sitting three rows back near the water cooler. "The verb, knock, begins with the letter 'k' and seams are stitches used to bind fabric." Her hazel eyes drifted off at an oblique angle, as though addressing the student directly might push the writing instructor beyond her emotional limits.

Dressed in steel-toed work boots and a blue shirt with the Firestone Tire emblem stitched above the left pocket, Abi Petrosyan ran a thumb and index finger over a bearded chin in a repetitive, soothing gesture. A wild outcropping of curly black hair cascaded down over his ears. "Story is goot... yes, no?"

"I appreciate the fact that that English is a second language," The barrel-chested woman observed, "but, perhaps on rare occasion you could consult a dictionary?"

"Computer hab spell check," he offered. "Is same thing."

Sage, who sat near the front, wondered if the writing instructor went out of her way to foster the image of a physical grotesque. The frumpy woman stood five foot three and weighed a hundred and sixty pounds. Like some displaced time traveler from the psychedelic sixties, she favored flowery, moo moos and wire-framed granny glasses. Under the best of circumstances, the woman with the orangey hair would never be a fashion plate. Sage wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to discover that Ms. Monahan never shaved her armpits or bothered with feminine deodorants.

At the previous meeting of the writers' group, Abi told a funny story.

Over the winter he traveled back to his homeland to visit relatives. As the Beechcraft King Air twin-prop landed in Baku, the plane badly overshot the runway by several hundred feet, caroming off the asphalt into an open field of barley. The Caspian Sea was visible out the grimy passenger window a short distance to the east. "Was not so good the brakes," the Armenian immigrant noted with a goofy smile that belied his somber tone recounting the ordeal.

As Abi explained it, the region was desperately poverty stricken, the government feudal and corrupt. When a domestic plane experienced mechanical problems or needed routine maintenance, spare parts were often purchased on the black market. They were third rate, the substandard metal either too soft or brittle. It's just the way things were. The provincial country was one of six independent Turkish states with Russia to the north and Iran due south.

Abi desperately wanted to get it all down on paper, to chronicle his bizarre experiences. "I go home for Christmas to visit family, not for to swim in Caspian Sea." He chuckled and rubbed good-naturedly at his hairy chin. Abi was just Abi - a grease monkey, heartbroken over the immutable loss of his spiritual homeland. So he joked in fractured English and, as best he could, jotted down his life story. Nock. Nock.Nock.

Eight students signed up for the creative writing workshop. Two dropped out before the first class. Among the participants, there was Carl, a sixteen year-old high school junior with a twitchy eye. Phyllis, the menopausal housewife, admittedly hadn't written anything more challenging than a grocery list in years. A chubby girl, Sage Ostrowski, waitressed at Ryan's Diner. Abi, the Armenian who emigrated from Azerbaijan in central Asia, worked as a mechanic at the tire shop.

The first session, Ms Monahan inquired about the mechanic's name.

"Is short for Abimelki," he explained. Abi meant father and melik king. The Assyrian variant was Abimelki, a name which was common in biblical times but not so anymore. The Armenian mechanic's short stories contained a veritable junk heap of dangling participles, split infinitives, ill-chosen adjectives and other syntactical abominations. But everyone in the writing group was grammatically challenged. Phyllis, the grocery list lady, favored absurdly prolonged sentences that gobbled up entire paragraphs before a period ever materialized to bring the verbal chaos to a thudding halt. Wearing his anal-compulsive angst like a badge of honor, Carl, the child prodigy, suffered autobiographical diarrhea, and Sage wrote exclusively in short, choppy sentences. Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Abi, whose name meant 'father-king' in a defunct, thoroughly moribund language, was still grappling with the proper spelling of one-syllable words.

"I liked Abi's story just fine," Sage blurted.

Beatrice lowered her head and stared at the girl over the top of her bifocals. "How so?"

"Faulty grammar taken aside, he did well describing the tension between local the Christian villagers and their Moslems neighbors."

"Unfortunately, editors wading through a slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts at the Yale Review are looking for something a bit more polished." The instructor's rebuttal was accompanied by a glacial smile. Retreating to the safe haven of the oak desk at the front of the room, the teacher set the class to work on an impromptu, flash fiction assignment.

Abi, who was unfamiliar with the Yale Review, grinned proudly and continued to stroke his lush beard. Nothing fazed the middle-aged man. His people had been massacred by the Turks, routed from their ancestral homeland and dispersed to an unsympathetic Diaspora. What more could a mean-spirited Beatrice Monahan do to deepen the hurt?

"Screw the Yale Review!" As if on cue, everyone in the class ceased writing and shifted their attention to the rear of the class, where Carl was seated with his head down and legs splayed out at a perverse angle beneath the desk. "Dickens wrote in run-on sentences. Nobody gave him grief for the endless wordiness."

"Excuse me?" Beatrice compressed her lips together in a tight, bloodless line and eyed the youth with mild annoyance. "What was that?"

"Jane Austen was addicted to double negatives. William Faulkner frequently started sentences with conjunctions." Carl waved a slender wrist fitfully in the air, carving the space into manageable chunks. When he spoke again, there was a shrill, neurasthenic intensity to his tone that was offsetting, almost unnerving. The boy's eyes flitted about the room as though searching for moral support.

"Your point?" The instructor could sense her iron-fisted control over the class ebbing away.

"Maybe Abi's grammatical gaffes aren't so terrible."

"It's true that not all grammar violations are created equally." Beatrice Monahan was clearly on the defensive, "but then, some blunders indicate a blatant disregard for what's commonly accepted. These are the result of laziness, cluelessness, or lousy editing, and they're not okay."

Carl shook his head violently and began karate chopping the air with renewed vigor. "Cummings refused to capitalize,... H. L. Mencken wrote incomplete sentences. Arthur Conan Doyle favored the passive tense."

Beatrice waited a good ten seconds before addressing the agitated student. "Are you done?"

Whatever elicited the verbal eruption had run its treacherous course. Carl retreated into his insular, ever-so-private universe. "Just trying to make a point," he added meekly.

* * * * *

An hour later toward the end of the class, Beatrice asked, "As writers, who would you want to emulate?"

The minute hand on the clock over the chalkboard was edging up on nine p.m.. Everyone was tired, their creative juices played out. Carl announced that Raymond Carver was the best contemporary American writer.

"He's dead," Beatrice interjected, "which makes him less than contemporary."

"Yes,..." Carl blushed and his eyelid twittered an impromptu ballet, "but he's still quite popular."

Phyllis was a diehard Alice Monroe addict, having slogged through most everything the Canadian writer had written. Sage was partial to Hemingway and J.D. Salinger.

Beatrice smiled frigidly. "And who do you read, Mr. Petrosyan?" The reptilian expression deepened, grew more intractable. "Of all the great literary figures, who's your favorite?"

"Greatest writer is Saroyan... William Saroyan!"

"Saroyan," Beatrice repeated. Abi's response caught her off guard but only momentarily. "Some people have accused him of excessive sentimentality."

Sage cringed. Why couldn't she just let Abi alone? Give him his space?

"What have you read by Saroyan?" she pressed.

"I dunno." Abi's eyes fogged over. After an uncomfortable pause he mumbled, "The Human Comedy."

"Anything else?"

"My Name is Aram."

Beatrice Monahan drummed her pudgy fingers on the Formica desktop. Her mannish jaw screwed to one side, deep in thought. "And what did you learn from Saroyan?"

"I dunno," he returned dully. "Was Armenian like me."

"Yes, but that doesn't answer my question. You mentioned a specific author so you must remember some plot, narrative... denouement." Drawing the last word out with a decidedly French accent, she was clearly baiting the mechanic with the Goodyear Tire logo emblazoned on his chest.

"Last chance to redeem yourself," Beatrice chirped," and offer your classmates some personal insight into the writer's weltanschauung."

Abi cracked his knuckles noisily then rubbed his somber face with calloused, grease stained hands. "Saroyan... is greatest writer whole universe!"

* * * * *

"Want to grab a coffee?" Sage was waiting outside the community college center when Abi emerged.

"Would be nice," Abi watched as the other students filtered out into the parking lot. A Honey Dew just up the street stayed open until eleven. At the donut shop they ordered hot drinks. "Something to eat with that?" the waitress asked.

Sage shook her head self-consciously. "I'm watching my weight."

When they were seated, Abi sipped at his coffee and glanced out the front window. The last of the dusky, late summer light had bled out of the sky wrapping the town in wooly darkness. From his wallet he withdrew a tattered picture postcard folded in quarters. "Is mine country. Murovdag... is the highest mountain range in the Lesser Caucasus."

He handed her the picture, which showed a rugged, hilly country with grassy valleys and snowcapped mountains in the far distance. A stone structure constructed in a combination of Byzantine or Roman styles – she couldn't be sure – stood in the foreground. A dozen arched columns rose thirty feet in the air creating an outdoor portico. "Is beautiful...no?"

"Yes, quite lovely."

She returned the card, which he refolded with infinite care like a family heirloom.

"Key, kitten, kite, kilo, kiss, kick, kangaroo is begin with k,", Abi sputtered bitterly, remembering Beatrice Monahan's snide indignities. Is no 'k' sound with knock."

Sage suddenly felt a surge of homicidal rage toward the florid, red-haired teacher with her effete predilections. "The 'k' is also silent," Sage explained almost apologetically, "in the verb 'to kill'."

"Silent letter," Abi repeated wearily. "Is stupid... makes no sense."

"For what it's worth, Beatrice hasn't had a nice thing to say about anyone's writing."

The previous week the instructor trashed one of her stories, insisting the main characters were unsympathetically drawn - little more than one-dimensional stick figures and talking heads. The expository prose was tedious, dialogue stiff. "I thought your story rather touching," Sage noted. "What Beatrice said earlier was a cheap shot."

"I spell," Abi observed glumly, "like second grader."

"Getting published in the Yale Review isn't the point," Sage shook her head emphatically. "Never was." "Maybe you're lonely... homesick, so you write about a mountain village ten thousand mile away in the Lesser Caucasus and, in pouring your heart out, comes to terms with the loss."

A mother with two freckle-faced children entered the doughnut shop. They bought an assortment of donuts and disappeared back out into the street. "How's your thyroid condition?"

The odd question caught Abi totally off guard. In response to his baffled expression, Sage added, "When I got to class, you were shaking one of those distinctive, butterfly-shaped pills from a plastic prescription container into your palm." She blew on the coffee before raising the Styrofoam cup to her lips. "I took Synthroid for six month. Gave me the goddamn heebie-jeebies... almost had a nervous breakdown."

"You don't take medicine now?"

"Not that crap!" Sage shook her head violently then leaned closer over the table and continued in a confidential tone. "We belong to an exclusive club... more like a carnival freak show," the fleshy girl added almost as an afterthought.

"What is?"

"People with thyroid conditions... we're always looking for something better, comparing notes."

"You have funny way of putting things."

A black man with dreadlocks and a guitar case slung over his shoulder entered the donut shop. He ordered a coffee with a glazed donut and headed back out into the evening stillness. "Brain fog... ever get it?"

Abi nibbled at his jelly donut. "Some days is worse," he confided.

Brain fog. You couldn't think straight or remember the simplest detail. It was like being diagnosed with presenile dementia forty years too soon. How did you explain such nuttiness to 'normal' people? Brain fog - what a stupid expression!

"Some days," he noted, "I can hardly think straight, I'm so screwed up." He cleared his throat. "Cold... always cold. Even in summer, sleep with two, wool covers."

"What about the heebie-jeebies?" Abi's face went blank. Sage raised a hand, palm down over the table and the fingers fluttered listlessly. "The jitters, shakes, the creeps..."

"Yeah." The middle-aged man smiled sheepishly. "I go work Goodyear Tire, but brain go somewhere else."

Sage nodded sympathetically. "Some days are definitely worse than others."

The endocrinologist initially started Sage on a regimen of seventy-five micrograms levothyroxine. The first week she was bushwhacked by panic attacks in the lobby of the Brandenberg Public Library; a few days later while climbing a short flight of stairs, she felt an erratic flurry of palpitations mimicking angina, then broke out in a cold sweat.

Dr. Balcewicz response was to increase dosage.

"Why are you giving me more medicine, if I don't feel good?"

Dr. Balcewicz, a pear-shaped man with a florid complexion and bristly, salt-and-pepper moustache, grinned affably. "Your TSH levels are still much too high. The temporary unpleasantness will subside over time. Trust me."

What good was trust when a patient found herself in worse shape than before she sought medical intervention? At their next meeting Sage complained, "If you don't take me off this dog shit, I'm gonna go nuts."

"You aren't giving the pills enough time to work properly."

"What about desiccated animal hormone?" Sage learned about the old-school therapy on the internet.

"Wrong percentage of T3 versus T4," the older man in the clinical white jacket replied authoritatively. "What works for pigs and bovines is ineffective for humans... chemistry is all wrong."

"But I read where tons of people swear by the stuff."

"Mostly crackpots and older people," the doctor said, "who took the stuff a century ago, before there was any sensible alternative." Leaning forward, he patted her lightly on the shoulder. "Look, you're a reasonable kid. You want the best that modern medicine has to offer, not some outmoded, nineteenth century snake oil." Actually, Sage did want outmoded, nineteenth century quackery. Outdated, outmoded, poppycock, twaddle, quackery - what the hell did Sage care as long as it made her feel half-human again?

Dr. Balcewicz stared at the morose young woman seated on the opposite side of the desk. His pokerfaced expression never wavered. The impasse was broken only when the doctor reluctantly reached for his prescription pad and began scratching out a new order. "Levoxyl is a safe alternative to the generics." He pushed the script across the desk. "Let's see how you make out on this new medication." Before Sage could collect her addled thoughts, the endocrinologist was already racing out the door toward an adjacent examining room.

Levoxyl stabilized Sages illness but created a whole new set of disturbing side effects that Dr. Balcewicz blithely dismissed of with nonchalant humor.

Abi finished his donut and dabbed his mouth with a napkin. "What you take now?"

"A desiccated supplement made from pig thyroids.

"Doctor gipt you?"

She shook her head. "Most traditional MD's won't prescribe organics. They claim it's voodoo medicine, so I gave doctor Balcewicz the bum's rush and switched to a naturopath." Reaching into her purse Sage located a pen, scribbled some numbers on a clean napkin and handed it to him. "There's my telephone. Like I said, it's an exclusive club and us thyroid freaks got to stick together."

* * * * *

Prickly ash bark, sarsaparilla, oat seed, shizandra berry, ashwaganda and maca root.... Before leaving the community college parking lot, Sage fished about in the glove compartment of her Toyota. "Here try this." She handed Abi a smallish, opaque bottle.

"What is?"

"An adrenal support herbal formula. I got a spare bottle at home. Just follow the directions."

From a backpack Abi withdrew an inch-thick paperback with a lemony yellow cover. "Is goot, no?"

Sage glanced at the title. _English Grammar for Dummies._ "Yes, I'm sure it will help."

"There, their, they're... is difficult language, but I learn."

"It's hard enough," Sage confirmed, "for people who were born in America."

Abi retrieved the book and buried it back in the canvass bag. "Yesterday I went to library...read Chekhov, second best writer whole world."

"What did you learn from the Russian?"

"Only write ordinary life."

"What else?"

"Don't waste words."

Later that night, Abi dribbled ten drops of the rust-colored herbal solution into a tumbler of water and tossed down the bitter solution. Sage was seeing a naturopath. Maybe he would make an appointment with the holistic practitioner to discuss a non-pharmaceutical alternative. An hour after taking the herbal remedy, the Armenian already felt better, although he realized, full well, that the euphoric sense of well being was probably more wishful thinking. Still later that night as he lay under the covers, Abi felt warm. He removed a blanket - just one as a precautionary gesture. The heebie-jeebies weren't completely gone, but manageable. And his spirits lifted ever-so-slightly.

Maybe when the hormonal brain fog finality dissipated and an implacable universe of silent 'k's had been laid to rest, Abi Petrosyan, whose plane almost ended up at the bottom of the Caspian Sea and name meant father-king in an ancient tongue, would write the next contemporary American masterpiece.

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I & Thou

The Orthodox Jew moved into the freshman dormitory early Sunday morning. Celeste and Jennifer watched the odd looking creature accompanied by an equally exotic, extended family lugged his belongings up to the second floor landing, three doors down from Jenifer's room. All the women were homely as sin with chalky skin that wouldn't tan in a hundred cloudless summer days stretched end to end. Even in the oppressive, Indian summer heat, they wore drab skirts that hung down well below their knees, their hair tied up in kerchiefs. The menfolk wore black hats or yarmulkes, white shirts buttoned at the wrist and dark pants.

The boy - his name was Joel Shapiro - had a scraggily black beard and piles of kinky hair obliterating his ears. As if that wasn't weird enough, he sported a pair of old-fashioned, wire-framed glasses with absurdly thick, coke-bottle lenses. Like some incongruous caricature from the previous millennium, he lugged a Mackintosh computer into the room depositing it on a study desk before lumbering disjointedly back down stairs for more personal effects.

"The Yarmulke's the only freshman with a room to himself," Celeste grumbled. She had dubbed him 'the Yarmulke' almost from the minute Joel arrived at school. Celeste and Jenifer roomed together. She drank too much and was a bit of a slut but tons of fun. When Celeste's gynecologist put her on birth control in eleventh grade, the girl went hog wild. No need for moderation or self-control; the tiny, multi-colored pills trumped all moral taboos. Problem was, her acidic humor could get out of hand, downright vitriolic at times, and she never knew when to back off.

A lot of girls gained weight when they went away to college. The 'freshman fifteen' – that's what they called it. Jenifer had seen pictures of Celeste from her high school years when she was svelte and a real looker. But her roommate bulked up since then and, being petite, the surplus flesh had taken up permanent residency on her hips, thighs and mannish shoulders. Celeste was still passably pretty but for how long with all the booze she consumed on weekends?

"He's probably got religious or dietary restrictions," Jennifer offered.

"What I wouldn't give for a private room!" Celeste groaned. The Jewish boy was wearing a black, felt hat now which looked rather silly given the high humidity and endless parade of undergrads wearing T-shirts with the college logo or chic, designer outfits.

* * * * *

Friday evening the third week in October, Celeste staggered back to the dorm polluted out of her gourd. "Yarmulke at ten o'clock," she sniggered, garbling her words. It was another of her acerbic jokes. If Celeste whispered, "Yarmulke at ten o'clock," Jenifer gazed left to see the hairy Jewish boy loping towards them with his disjointed gait. Everybody laughed hilariously but it was mean-spirited, and Jenifer always felt guilty afterwards – both for joining in the nasty buffoonery and making Joel the butt of their infantile humor.

In the hallway three doors down, the Jewish boy was easing a key into the lock. He held a navy blue, felt pouch with a Star of David embroidered on the front in gold thread. A thick black book was tucked under his arm. Cracking the door, he disappeared into the room. "These religious Jews... what's their take on the birds and the bees?"

"Leave him alone, Celeste," Jennifer hissed.

"Do you think he wears that foolish felt hat to bed when he makes love?" Celeste snickered idiotically. She was really blotto – sloppy, fall-down drunk. Lurching down the corridor at a lopsided gait, she made her way to Joel's room and pounded on the door. When it opened, she brushed passed him into the room, the door slamming shut with a resounding thud.

Half an hour passed. Jennifer stepped into the hallway. All was quiet, not a sound filtering back from any of the adjoining dorm rooms. Then the third door down creaked opened slowly and Joel inched out in the corridor. He was still dressed formally with a dark jacket and his signature yarmulke. Long strands of curly hair hung down in back of his ears like tendrils. Jennifer remembered seeing such locks in artwork depicting the Medieval Hasidic Jews.

As he passed in the hallway Joel looked up and smiled – the gentlest expression of human affection. "Good evening," he said softly. "Your friend isn't feeling well... a problem with her stomach." He spoke in a plodding, unhurried manner then stared pensively at the book he was clutching for the longest time. "You're Christian?" Jennifer wagged her head.

"Which denomination?"

"Catholic."

Joel lowered his gaze a second time and rubbed the frayed spine of the book in a rhythmic, undulating motion with a thumb. "Idol worshippers and petty hoodlums."

Jennifer felt her brain go numb.

The off-hand comment caught her like a sucker punch to the rib cage. When he finally raised his eyes again the expression was opaque, inscrutable. "When I was in second grade, one of my classmates told me that Easter was coming." "Easter... the word meant nothing to me. I was eight years old, an orthodox Jew." "My classmate told me in somewhat fuzzy details about the crucifixion," Joel chuckled mirthlessly. "Jesus Christ... I didn't know your Savior from a hole in the wall, so I just shook my stupid head up and down like a big dope, went home and asked my seventy year-old grandmother for clarification."

Joel removed his broad, felt hat and ran an index finger along the circumference of the sweatband. "I said, 'Grandma, who was Jesus Christ, the Catholic messiah?'" "I asked this of a decrepit, old woman who spoke broken English with a Slavic accent... a woman, who had seen three-quarters of her family slaughtered by the Nazis, carted off to the gas chambers at Bergen Belsen, Dachau and Treblinka." Joel blew out his cheeks and wagged his head, a gesture of futility.

"Your grandmother... what did she say?" Jennifer pressed.

"She claimed that she knew Him from the old country. They were neighbors."

"Jesus Christ?"

Joel cracked a wry, close-lipped grin. "Jesus, Mary, Joseph... the whole unsavory clan. Good-for-nothing troublemakers, that's what they were." "She remembered Him from when he was a little boy, throwing stones and breaking windows. An incorrigible, farshinkener, juvenile delinquent!"

"And why exactly are you telling me all this," Jennifer insisted.

Joel cleared his throat and shrugged. "The Son of God threw stones and broke windows. Christians kept graven images... worshipped idols in their church. For my grandmother, the world was a frightful and unforgiving place."

"Which doesn't answer my question."

Joel shuffled his feet. Buried in a wispy beard, his lips sagged in a bittersweet smile. "I've got to go now." Without further explanation, the Jewish boy sauntered away.

For a good five minutes after he disappeared, Jennifer couldn't collect her thoughts or think what to do. Gathering her nerves back under control, she shuffled down the hallway and cracked the door to Joel's room. The air reeked of vomit and sloe gin. Celeste was lying on the bed, fully clothed and sound asleep. A damp towel and washcloth were stretched over the back of a chair in the corner of the room. In a drunken stupor, Celeste moaned and rolled over on her stomach but never opened her eyes. A minute later she was snoring like a lumberjack. On the desk, a book lay open with the pages facing down – Martin Buber's I and Thou.

Letting herself quietly out, Jennifer hurried back to her own room.

*****

Saturday morning Celeste was still too hung over to make more of a nuisance of herself than she already had the previous night, and Jennifer kept her distance. She hadn't bothered to brush her teeth or bathe and the stench from dried vomit and rancid body odor was overpowering in the claustrophobically small dorm room. "You smell like a goddamn garbage truck in late August," Jennifer muttered around noontime.

His room locked up tight through the remainder of the weekend, Joel Shapiro never returned to the dormitory. Jennifer anticipated seeing him Thursday afternoon in a French literature lecture hall, but he never showed up for class. Finally, in the late afternoon, she noticed the door three rooms down slightly ajar. "Where's Joel?" Jennifer sputtered in total disbelief when a photogenic youth sporting short-cropped hair stood leaning against the door jamb. Decked out in khaki slacks, an IZOD sports shirt and boat shoes, the student resembled a fashion plate straight out of GQ Magazine.

"Who are you looking for?" The Waspish youth was obscenely handsome with a strong jaw, wide cheekbones and ashen skin tones.

"The Jewish boy... this is his room."

The interloper's face dropped and tone turned rancorous. "Do I look like a freakin' Yid?" There was no mistaking his tone or intent. "This is my room." Without any further elaboration, he slammed the door shut.

Another week passed with no sightings of Joel Shapiro. "Haven't seen the Jewish kid in a week," Jennifer noted.

"That's no great loss." Celeste rolled over on her bed. Already late for an early morning sociology class, she didn't seem overly concerned.

"What exactly did you do to him?"

Celeste scowled and jutted her chin in a defiant manner. "You make it sound like I committed the crime of the century." She kicked the covers off her legs revealing a pair of bulging thighs, the pinkish flesh just below the crotch pockmarked with rivulets of cellulitis. "I went over there to have a little fun last Friday, but everything fell to shit."

Jennifer turned away in frustration. Celeste had filed Joel Shapiro away in some musty corner of her brain designated 'reject' category. The girl, who never thought much beyond the tip of her nose, had anticipated a kinky, late night dalliance and ended up in a pile of vomit reeking of sloe gin and pork burritos.

Malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance - the previous semester, Jenifer enrolled in an elective, three-credit course titled, Legal Procedures, where they examined various degrees of criminal behavior, personal intent and culpability. Malfeasance was clearly the worse of the lot. A person did something wrong. The act was deliberate, behavior motivated by enlightened self-interest, not moral precepts or personal conscience. In most instances, if the individual experienced any remorse, it was only after-the-fact, once caught and facing retribution.

Celeste ridiculed the Jewish boy – not a crime that would land anyone in a criminal court, but a wrongdoing nonetheless. On dozens of occasions, Jennifer should have told her friend to exercise a smidgeon of common decency, but she bent double and laughed like a hyena just like the other girls in her clique. No one ever held Celeste accountable for her loutishness. "Next time you act like an idiot or say something stupid, I'm going to put you in your place."

Celeste, who was clutching a pillow over her face, made an effort to sit up but promptly fell back prone. "Good grief!" she groaned.

Malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance – no one would ever find Celeste guilty of a punishable crime, but it didn't soften the blow.

*****

So what happened to Joel Shapiro?

Was he even still enrolled at the college? He never returned to the French Literature class, and when Jennifer questioned the teacher regarding his whereabouts, the man shrugged noncommittally. "I'm not at liberty to share confidential information... not even with family members, unless students grant permission."

Perhaps the adjustment to college proved too extreme.

Female students ran about the coed dorms half naked, scampering down the hallways en route to shower stalls with nothing more than a flimsy bath towel wrapped around their bodies. Jennifer couldn't imagine any of the priggish Jewish men who accompanied Joel on moving day coping with such libidinous chaos. Or maybe the boy from upstate New York simply got homesick, missed his spiritual family and friends. The free-spirited debauchery of girls like Celeste was too much for his straitlaced brain. Unable to fit in, Joel Shapiro went home where he belonged – belonged in both the allegorical and literal sense.

Regarding the interloper who slammed the door in her face, Jennifer had seen him earlier in the week on the quadrangle near the athletic center. A bunch of rowdy football jocks were tossing a Frisbee. The boy with the fancy shirt and cargo pants was racing after the spinning disc. So how did that arrogant twit rate a single room? Just as Celeste had groused about Joel's privileged status, Jennifer felt a surge of resentment tinged with contempt for the new arrival.

* * * * *

In the last meeting of the French lit class before Joel dropped off the edge of the known world, Professor Archambault asked, "What do you consider Guy de Maupassant's greatest work?"

Several students cited The Necklace. Another suggested Mademoiselle Fifi.

"Yes, you with the beard in the back row," the professor pressed. "You said something."

Joel Shapiro, wearing his signature fedora hat, had mumbled a weakly unintelligible offering. When he spoke again his papery thin voice never quite reached to the front of the lecture hall. "Speak up... I can't hear you," Professor Archambault barked.

"Boule de Suif," Joel repeated.

"Really?" No one could be quite sure if the irascible professor was genuinely impressed or being facetious. "And how does 'boule de suif' translate."

"Ball of fat."

"Ball of fat..." The professor's sarcastic tone dissipated altogether. He walked to the far end of the podium, turned his back abruptly on the class and stared at an empty chalkboard for the better part of a minute. "Why is Boule de Suif better than either of the two stories previously mentioned?"

"The French prostitute's behavior with the Prussian officer suggests complicated ethical issues the other stories lack."

"You forgot to mention the other villagers who accompanied the French prostitute on their journey."

"When the townspeople needed to show courage, each failed miserably," Joel shot back.

"Failed where the fleshy whore succeeded?"

"Yes and no," Joel qualified. "She succeeded as best she could under brutal circumstances."

Professor Archambault stared at the young man wearing the fedora hat and absurdly thick glasses with bewilderment. Then his harsh features dissolved in an appreciative grin. Following class Jennifer waited outside the lecture hall until Joel emerged. "About that story, Boule de Suif... how could you discover so much?"

Joel stared at her momentarily with a blank expression. "De Maupassant was a cleverly efficient writer. Everything a person needs to understand about the human condition... it's all there in a handful of pages." Averting his eyes, he directed his words at the top of his wingtip shoes. "You just need to read and listen to the language with the third ear."

"The third ear," Jennifer repeated his strange observation.

"It's a story about what happens to people when they lose courage and turn against each other."

The lecture hall had finally emptied out and Professor Archambault, lugging a huge satchel full of notes and term papers, could be seen retreating down the hallway. "Perhaps we could study together sometime."

"Yes, I don't see why not," he replied, shifting his backpack to the opposite shoulder.

"Do other orthodox Jews read world literature?"

He fixed her with an earnest, melancholy smile. "No, not as a rule, but even back to kindergarten, I tended to color outside the lines." Having shared that revelation, Joel nodded and walked away.

* * * * *

"Where can I find this book?" The reference librarian glanced at the slip of paper Jennifer nudged across the counter and, shifting in her chair, indicated a row of shelves on the far side of the room.

"Philosophy follows computer sciences in the thirteen hundred grouping."

Jennifer located Buber's I and Thou with little trouble and settled in at a table toward the back of the room. The tattered volume with a badly frayed spine was all that remained, the meager legacy of one Joel Shapiro. Jennifer read from the preface:

A person sitting next to a complete stranger on a park bench may enter into an "I-Thou" relationship with the stranger merely by beginning to think positively about people in general. The stranger gets instantaneously drawn into a mental or spiritual relationship. It is not necessary for the stranger to have any idea that he is being drawn into an "I-Thou" relationship for such relationships to arise.

Strange! She experienced something similar when Joel brushed past her in the hallway after Celeste's drunken debacle. Yarmulke at ten o'clock! With her sarcastic pronouncements and boorish insolence, Celeste was the queen of I-It, reducing the orthodox Jew to a farcical nonentity. Jennifer's roommate used and abused people for her own sadistic gratification. On a drunken whim, she might fornicate with Tom on Monday – Dick and Harry over the remainder of the week - the male of the species being little more than interchangeable widgets.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. Solitude is the place of purification.

A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human is what this individual person has been created for.

Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.

What did Buber's obtuse pronouncements mean? For sure, the soft-spoken Jewish student would have offered answers. Jennifer slammed the book shut with such force that several visitors to the library looked up indignantly. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a supple body sliding into an adjacent seat. Sitting next to her was the brazen youth, who presently occupied Joel Shapiro's dorm room. "The Yid... the former tenant, who vacated the premises posthaste, without formal notice... you asked about him." His voice was devoid of anger or malice.

"Yes?"

"After your roommate puked her guts out, making an ignominious fool of herself, Joel spent the night at a motel."

His casual, off-hand tone was beginning to frighten her. "How do you know this?"

"In the morning the Jew with the coke-bottle glasses had the desk clerk reserve his room for a second night."

Only now did he pause and look Jennifer full in the face. "You still don't get it, do you?" When there was no response, he continued, "Then the Jew ate a leisurely breakfast at a diner a few blocks down – bacon and eggs, Italian toast and home fries. When the mall opened, he purchased a whole new wardrobe, which he lugged back to the motel. Snipping the scraggily beard away with a pair of scissors, a Gillette, twin-blade razor took care of the rest."

The new tenant's head bobbed up and down, confirming the stark veracity of what he was telling Jennifer. "At a hair salon across the street from city hall, Joel Shapiro completed the cosmetic transformation."

"But Joel wore old-fashioned, wire-rimmed glasses," Jennifer protested.

Reaching into his pocket, the youth withdrew a small contact lens case with two, round compartments. "Among my family, I've always been," he rushed ahead, anticipating her muddled thoughts, "a bit of a rabble rouser.... a non-conformist."

"That's putting it mildly." Jennifer grinned sheepishly. "I'm glad you're back, Joel."

"I never left." He glanced at the Buber lying open on the reading table and then placed a hand gently on her forearm. "Don't tell Celeste about our little conversation."

* * * * *

"Have you seen the dreamboat who moved into the Yarmulke's old room?" Celeste tittered. She had already set her sights on the undergraduate Adonis and, in dirty-street-fighter fashion, was warning off the female competition.

"Good luck."

"You already met him?"

"After a fashion." Jennifer had no intention letting her roommate know that the pretty boy three doors down was one and the same with the tortured Jew she scared off premises less than a month earlier.

Celeste ran a comb over her brunette hair and smeared a clear gloss on her thin lips. "If you got no objections, I'm gonna pay a little visit to the male hotty down the hall."

"Should I leave a night light?" Jennifer quipped.

Flitting out the door, Celeste flashed her roommate a dirty look. A rotten feeling welled up in the pit of Jennifer's stomach. Grabbing her sweater, she headed over to the campus lounge and settled in with a cup of mocha latte cappuccino. Nerves on edge, the caffeine only further scrambled her agitated brain. Jennifer hated Celeste.

She hated her smarmy, self-promoting nastiness - the way she reduced everything decent to chintzy reproductions. She hated the way she smelled the morning following her drunken debacle – a potpourri of cheap liquor and pork burritos. She hated Celeste's tabula rasa approach to life and unwillingness to ever accept a molecule of responsibility for the mayhem she caused. All was not forgiven. There were consequences for loutish behavior.

Around eight o'clock Jennifer headed back to the dorm, where she found Celeste curled up in a fetal position on top of the bed, whimpering fitfully. "What happened?"

"Nothing."

"He didn't..."

"No, of course not." Too ashamed to even look at Jennifer, the roommate cupped her hands over her face. "I almost wish he had raped me," Celeste added with self-loathing. "At least I wouldn't feel nearly as bad."

"You're making no sense."

Celeste finally uncurled her legs and sat up on the edge of the bed. "We got to talking... joking around and one thing led to another. He was kissing me on the neck and then, before I knew it, my bra came off..." Celeste suddenly fell silent, showing no inclination to continue. "Then he asks, 'Who's the current president of the United States... George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln or Calvin Coolidge. Who's president?' 'He repeats the same foolish question and like a goddamn fool I say 'George W. Bush.'"

"That was last time around," Jennifer replied. "Obama's been in the White House six and a half years now."

"He called me a birdbrain and said he could never date a woman who wasn't up on current events."

Wrapping Celeste in her arms, the roommate held on for dear life. "Well, if nothing else," Celeste added, "now I know who's running the country."

Jennifer waited until Celeste fell off to sleep before picking her way three doors down. "She came looking for me," Joel insisted.

"Celeste... she's clueless... still hasn't figured out who you are."

Joel shrugged. "There's a vote at the United Nations tomorrow morning. The Palestinians on the West Bank of the Jordan want recognition for statehood, but the Israeli and the American delegation are adamantly opposed. I'm the only one in my family who supports the measure."

"Yes, it's been all over the news," Jenifer replied. A familiar, well-thumbed paperback lay on the floor next to the single bed. "World leaders need to learn a thing or two about I-Thou or the UN resolution won't amount to diddlysquat."

Joel nodded but had nothing more to say on either topic. Five minutes passed in total silence. The religious Jew, who read Martin Buber and half-heartedly fondled Celeste, seemed perfectly at home in mutually exclusive, parallel universes, reinventing himself and morphing into some as yet-to-be-determined, hybrid species. Finally, Jennifer cracked a convoluted smile. "There's a foreign film playing at the cinema in town, and I was wondering if you might be interested..."

back to Table of Contents

Sanctuary of the Whirligigs

Ignoring the paved, red brick walkway, the dark-haired woman cut across the lawn to where Marcus Rosedale was lounging on the front stoop. Even by the most generous standards, she wasn't particularly pretty. Thick, charcoal eyebrows perched over pallid cheeks, sloping haphazardly toward fleshy lips. It was the sort of unremarkable, aesthetically commonplace face one seldom noticed in a crowd.

Some women possessed a certain penache. Even when wearing torn jeans and a blouse bought off the discount rack at the bargain outlet, they wreaked of haute couture. Sadly, this one was not of that ilk. How she appeared in middle age was not much different from how Marcus imagined she would look thirty years later when applying for Medicare and her social security pension.

She waved an arm at a collection of wind-driven lawn ornaments scattered across the weedy grass. "Are these gizmos for sale?"

"Whirligigs," he corrected. "They're called whirligigs and yes, I've got plenty in the basement."

The woman stabbed at a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, pushing the frames up on the bridge of a doughy nose. "Yes, well I really like the feisty chicken." She pointed toward a brightly painted wooden ornament perched on a spruce pole. A gust of wind tickled the blades of a purple propeller, sending the chicken's upper torso bobbing up and down in the direction of a terrified earthworm. A red barn with tufts of hay spilling out of an upper loft served as a makeshift rudder, steering the contraption into the fitful breezes.

"Hennie Penny." Marcus grinned good-naturedly. He disappeared into the house, returning moments later with a replica of the mechanical device.

"They're all so clever," she said, gesturing toward a red-capped lumberjack, who was chopping wood with an axe near a rock garden. Several feet away, a less-ambitious, bearded man snoozed leisurely in a rocking chair that rhythmically bobbed back and forth as the wind pumped a drive shaft hidden just below his feet. Directly to the left, a brown bear clawed the air with an outstretched paw, just out of reach of a salmon leaping from a frothy pond. It was all good fun – a comical, self-contained universe in microcosm where only good things happened and nothing ever went terribly awry.

"Do you teach?" She inched the glasses up on her humped nose.

"Teach what?"

"Woodworking... how to make them... The whirligigs, that is."

He rubbed his grizzled chin and looked away. "In the ten years I been assembling these mechanical contraptions, you're the first person to ask."

"How sad!" The woman ran a taut index finger over the brass welding rod that served as the drive shaft. She stroked the acrylic paint that decorated the wings and fancy plumage. "How much would you charge to teach me?"

* * * * *

Andrea Simpson – that was the dark-haired customer's name. After purchasing Hennie Penney and registering the unusual request, she was in no great hurry to leave. The woman was a psychologist with a PhD. Dr. Andrea Simpson – she worked at the women's reformatory in Evanston, where she counseled lifers, hard-core recidivists and assorted social riff raff.

When Andrea finally left, Marcus went back indoors, fired up the band saw and cut a base plate replacement for the sold item, but, before he could measure for the brass drive shaft, the kitchen phone began ringing with shrill insistence. "What are you doing Wednesday night?" His sister, Brenda, was on the other end.

"What I do pretty much every night," he replied cryptically.

"There's something we need to discuss. Meet me at the Longhorn Steakhouse."

Something we need to discuss... Marcus saw Brenda only sporadically. They seldom spoke even at holidays and when they did, his sister never mentioned anything more timely than the weather. Since elementary school, they shared no common interests. When there was no immediate reply, she blurted, "Six o'clock. I'll be waiting in the lobby." The phone went dead.

Marcus returned to the basement. He cut a slot for the metal cam then routed a quarter-inch groove from the propeller end. The brass rod was considerably thinner, but he always seated the metal in nylon bushings to reduce friction.

* * * * *

Andrea Simpson arrived early for her first woodworking session. Marcus brought her downstairs into the basement. "Table saw, drill press, router and scroll saw... these are the tools we will be using." He laid a whirligig on the workbench alongside the metallic gray scroll saw. The elaborate design featured a bearded man in farmer jeans chopping at an upturned log. A pile of neatly stacked wood lay a short distance away. A brown dog resting on his haunches sat close by the propeller watching the woodchopper with a quizzical, upturned face. On the far side a tree in full leaf and stipled with pink blossoms served as a rudder to steer the ornament into the wind. "Thought we'd start with the woodcutter."

"Isn't this project a bit involved for a beginner?"

"Each design has a unique theme," Marcus parried her question. "And, anyway, like I said earlier, we're in no great hurry. Bit by bit, it all comes together." Flicking on the scroll saw switch, the reciprocal blade pounded the air with an insistent fury. "We'll cut the torso from half-inch pine... the legs from thinner stock."

Marcus reached for a blonde board on which the man's upper body including the axe had already been outlined in pencil. He inched the board into the thin blade then adjusted the blower to clear away debris. As the blade proceeded up the chest, down the back and over the shoulders, Marcus angled the wood to follow the penciled line. When the blade approached the back of the neck, he shut the machine down and stepped away from the table. "Now you finish the cut."

Andrea reached for the switch, but Marcus grabbed her wrist. "Always know where your hands are in relation to the blade... that's the cardinal rule in woodworking. He raised both hands, splaying the calloused fingers. "The tool has no preferences... it doesn't discriminate between wood and flesh."

"Yes, I'll be careful." Andrea set the saw in motion and watched as the blade tentatively proceeded up the back of woodcutter's scalp. As she rounded the tip of the nose, the woman momentarily backed off the cut in order to accomplish the sharp angle, but everything was proceeding nicely.

"Watch what you're doing," Marcus counseled as the blade negotiated the underside of the grizzled chin. "You're forcing the cut, dragging the blade at a cockeyed angle. Let up on the pressure or you'll snap the blade." Andrea relaxed her grip and the metal strand eased back perpendicular. Sliding the board a quarter turn to the right, she finished the cut and continued past the belly to the hips.

"Not bad for a novice!" Marcus grinned good-naturedly. "You drifted a bit wide on the brim of the hat, but we'll clean that up on the vertical belt sander."

"What about the legs?"

"We'll tackle them in a moment, but let's tidy things up a bit." At the sander he showed the girl how to remove the excess stock then handed her a small strip of 180-grit sandpaper. "Round over the sharp edges and the piece is ready for painting."

As the sandpaper polished the surface silky smooth, Andrea's expression settled into a determined grin. "Do you enjoy working at the prison?" he asked.

"I've only had the job a few months."

Marcus' visits to the lumberyard for rough-cut poplar and pine took him past the Evanston facility at least several times a month. A collection of drab, cinderblock buildings was connected by an equally depressing concrete walkway. A thirty-foot fence was capped with coils of razor wire. "They're hardened criminals."

She crooked her head to one side. "Yes, for the most part."

"How do you rehabilitate incorrigible thugs?" he pressed.

Andrea was sanding the crevices around the eye socket and nose. All the features stood in bold relief. "There is no silver bullet or standard treatment," she said and brushed a gossamer film of loose sawdust away with her slender fingertips. "Most are severely character disordered. From a psychological perspective, their problems are structural."

It took Marcus several minutes to digest the queer remark. Pointing at a thick, hardwood beam that ran the length of the ceiling, he observed, "That timber is structural. Tamper with it and the whole building falls down."

The woman lay the sandpaper aside momentarily and stared at him obtusely. "It's the same with the human psyche. Given the opportunity, the level three sex offender will continue to molest young children, the pyro burn your house down without the slightest pang of conscience. Short of divine intervention, most of them will never see the light of day." Satisfied that all the saw marks had been sanded away, Andrea placed the torso on the worktable. "Is there time to shape the legs? I'd love to see how the body parts fit together."

Marcus handed her another board, half as thick with a pair of identical legs faintly outlined in pencil. Andrea cut and sanded the pieces then drilled matching holes in the upper thigh, assembling the various parts with a slim bolt and matching locknut. Standing the figure upright on the workbench, Marcus rocked the upper portion back and forth sending the long-handled axe in a sweeping arc. Chop! Chop! Chop!

The psychologist, who worked with the worst-of-the-worst female offenders at the state prison, grinned ecstatically. "Truly awesome!"

Marcus glanced at his watch. "Time for one last thing." He grabbed an oddly shaped metal object from the tool rack. "We're going to thread a length of eighth-inch brass, welding rod. The metal will be bolted to the propeller and serve as the drive shaft that powers the whirligig."

He locked the bronze-colored rod in a vice-grip before slipping an end into a narrow hole in the center of the tool. "Feed the rod into the center hole and twist clockwise, until you feel the teeth grab metal," Marcus instructed, handing the tool to the girl,

Andrea seated the tool on the rod and made several revolutions. On the fifth try she blurted, "Yes, that's it! I feel something."

"Good. Now make another half-dozen turns."

She spun the slender handles end over end until a brass filament spiraled out the mouth of the tool. Marcus retrieved the golden thread from the concrete floor and held it in front of her eyes. "Another thirty or forty turns and you'll have your threaded rod."

When the welding rod was finally removed from the thread cutter, Marcus studied the perfectly formed threads – not a single blemish or imperfection over the entire length of the cut. "Too bad," he mused, "that prison administrators couldn't conjure up a similar device to 'retool' deviant behavior, convert character disordered misfits into law-abiding citizens. Mechanical alchemy – that sort of miraculous twaddle only happened in the misguided Middle Ages."

Marcus spun a matching nut onto the freshly-minted thread. "The propeller will seat on that first nut while a second locknut on the far side holds everything firmly in place." Laying the welding rod aside, he dimmed the lights and headed for the stairwell. "I think we'll call it quits for today."

* * * * *

I'm not smart enough

for the life I've been living,

a little bit slow

for the pace of the game.

It's not I'm ungrateful

For what I've been given

But nevertheless, just the same...

In the foyer of the Longhorn Steakhouse a bitter-sweet James Taylor tune drifted over the Bose speakers. Brenda had already arrived. The hostess showed them to their seats, provided menus and went away. "I'm thinking steak tips." Reaching for a glass of ice water, Brenda perused the menu. "Although the ribeye looks scrumptious."

Whatever seemed so urgent when she phoned earlier in the day, no longer was a priority. "How are you doing with the flea markets?"

"Craft fairs... I sell whirligigs at juried craft fairs," Marcus replied. "An art gallery on the East Side is also selling some of my original creations on consignment."

"That's swell." She was clearly underwhelmed.

According to Brenda's highly-refined sensibilities, Marcus' woodcrafts were tacky, vulgar and tawdry – the sort of frivolous chachkies that only knuckle-dragging blue-collar types and the culturally challenged could appreciate "Actually, I sold a whirligig earlier this week." He told her about Andrea Simpson.

"You're gonna teach a psychologist, who works with female inmates, to cut wood and bend metal rods?"

"She came to the house yesterday for the first lesson."

"Any possibility," Brenda sniggered, "of a romantic tryst?"

"She's not my type."

Brenda sliced a hot roll in half and slathered it with butter. "Didn't you have a craft fair last weekend?"

Marcus nodded.

"Weather was awful!" His sister noted. "As I remember, it rained nonstop from mid-morning through late afternoon."

"That's about right," he replied morosely. The fair was held at a local farm. No sooner had the crafters set up their displays, the heavens opened with a flood of Biblical proportions, a deluge to put Noah to shame! Marcus was assigned a spot on a gravel embankment. The tent leaked. The unrelenting rain kicked mud onto the legs of the table, splattering the wood. When he got home, he had to wash all the merchandise that had been out on display. Several whirligigs had to be repainted. No customers showed up. He sold nothing and was out the seventy-five dollar booth fee plus travel expenses.

Marcus' experience at the East Side art gallery, where he was selling his crafts on consignment, proved even more demoralizing. Among creative artisans an unspoken code of conduct existed: every crafter, if humanly possible, deserved to earn a reasonable profit not just break even. But Carl Swenson, the gallery owner, didn't see it that way. "It's a buyer's market," the proprietor glibly argued, "and I got a surplus of artisans, who would die to show their merchandise in my store." With niggardly persistence he then proceeded to nickel and dimed Marcus down to an absurdly low, wholesale cost.

Marcus wanted the account for prestige as much as name recognition, but when he heard through a word of mouth that the shrewd dealer had tripled the retail price, passing Marcus' merchandise off as high-end collectibles, he realized the blunder. The cartoonish creations weren't whirligigs, per se, but the folk art of a gifted artisan. Like any lucrative, financial investment, their worth could only appreciate with age. The dealer was a crook – not nearly as sinister as the hoodlums and nut cases Andrea Simpson counseled, but an entrepreneurial thug nonetheless.

Nothing was negotiable. Carl Swenson owned the store, set the policies as he saw fit. At the Swenson Art Boutique a keepsake jewelry box fashioned from rosewood and bird's-eye maple sold for three hundred dollars, but the owner couldn't cough up a piddly ten bucks, allowing Marcus to share the benefits of free market capitalism. He placed five of his best pieces at the store that day, but as he walked out the door and down the street past a Japanese sushi bar and theater that featured foreign films, the whirligig maker knew that he would never return.

The waitress arrived and took their orders.

Brenda reached across the table and tapped her brother forcefully on the wrist. "I'm leaving Jeffrey... moving out of the house over the weekend."

"What?" Marcus felt blindsided.

"It's been four years now," she continued in a cavalier tone, "I've outgrown him."

He stared at his sister bleakly. The body language didn't jive with the topic at hand. Brenda was grinning mischievously, like an impudent adolescent who had committed a foolish prank. "You outgrow a pair of shoes, not a spouse." She glowered at him but held her tongue. "I assume you've told him."

"No, not yet. Jeffrey has been away all week on a business trip. I'm clearing out Friday. When he returns, there will be a note taped to the bedroom mirror." She cleared her throat of a non-existent obstruction. "Maybe you could..."

Jeffery and Marcus were best friends from high school. He introduced Jeffrey to his future wife. From best friend to brother-in-law and now this! Brenda knew a devastated and bewildered Jeffrey would contact her brother searching for answers. By telling Marcus, she could slip away without the need to defend her decision. "Maybe," Marcus picked up where his sister left the sentence dangling in midair, "I could act like the guy who trails the circus elephants with a short-handled broom and metal scoop."

"That's a bit crass."

"No, what you're doing is crass. It's also gutless." The waitress arrived with the food and they ate in silence. Toward the end of the meal, the James Taylor tune returned in the background, the lyrics hitting him full force.

"Who's the third party?"

"That's not important," Brenda shot back in a snippy tone.

* * * * *

At their second meeting Marcus taught Andrea how to shape the drive shaft. He inserted the rod into the groove they routed previously then, with a felt-tipped pen marked the entrance to the cam shaft. Locking the rod in a pair of vise-grip pliers, he explained, "We're going to bend the threaded rod at a right angle from the black mark."

Bracing both elbows against his side, Marcus began bending the rod with his free hand. Well before the bend was completed, he handed the rod to Andrea. "Now you finish."

She fumbled with the metal, adjusting her grip several times until she felt the stiff rod relent. "It's coming now."

"Yes, but is it ninety degrees?" Marcus held a Tri-square alongside the bent shaft. "Just a tad more and you'll be there." When the angle was respectably close, they repositioned the vise-grip and completed the final two bends. "Character disorder... that psychological term... you said it's a structural problem." The odd comment having nothing to do with the task at hand, Andrea stared at Marcus with mild confusion, trying to decipher his intent. "What you see is what you get," he stumbled over the words.

"In a manner of speaking." Andrea turned the bent rod over in her hand. She had drifted slightly astray on the third bend, but Marcus finessed the metal, brought it back in line with an adjustable wrench. Now the rectangular section fit perfectly in the wooden base. "There are all sorts of exotic, mental disorders... hysterical, compulsive, sociopathic." She began to chuckle as though at some private joke. "Even a phallic character disorder."

"Really!" Marcus eyebrows arched ever so slightly. "And what might that be?"

"Do you want the Freudian definition or the stripped down version?"

"Keep it simple."

Andrea's pushed her dark-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of her pudgy nose as her features morphed through a series of comical expressions. "The phallic type... they're generally selfish and egotistical as hell... notorious for cheating on their spouses."

"Which is to say, they got a major screw loose."

"Couldn't have said it better!" Andrea's dark bangs bobbed up and down. "Now can we get back to woodworking?"

"One last thing." Marcus stabbed at a blond pile of sawdust with the toe of his shoe. "Is it just criminal types who suffer these fatal flaws or - "

"Oh, no," Andrea cut him short, waving both hands in the air emphatically. "There are more character disordered people walking the streets on any given day than locked up behind bars." Andrea pursed her lips, a mischievously wry smile. "Perhaps you know somebody who fits the bill."

"I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"Phallic character disorder... anyone from your immediate family, friends or business associates who deserves that unsavory moniker/"

Marcus chuckled and shook his head. "No, not really."

Andrea held the drive shaft chest high. "Now can we mount the propeller and glue the wooden cover in place?"

* * * * *

The middle of the week, Marcus' brother-in-law wandered into the back yard where he was tearing rotten plywood paneling from the side of the shed. Jeffrey had the look of a beaten dog. The man hadn't shaved in days, and his graying hair was matted in the front. He stood with his disheveled head tilted to one side, watching as the wall came down. "The shed tilts to one side."

"Yes, I know. It's been that way for eighteen years." Unfortunately, when Marcus built the structure, he was a rank amateur. The foundation tended to follow the downward pitch of the land. He hadn't a clue how to fix the problem. The finished structure, which resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa, was sturdy enough if somewhat irregular. "I suspect it will limp along in that precarious state for another couple decades."

Jeffrey took a couple steps closer. "What spacing did you use on the two-by-fours?"

"Sixteen on center." Marcus pried a mangled nail from the damaged wood.

"How you gonna hammer nails in new wood, when you can't see where the studs are located?"

"I had a funny feeling you were going to ask about that little dilemma." Marcus tapped the wall a foot above his head. "I'll set a nail in the wall above each vertical piece and then snap a chalk line to a corresponding mark on the foundation where the stud rests."

"Clever as hell!" Jeffrey nodded appreciatively.

"Even if the chalk line careens at an utterly cockeyed angle, it will faithfully follow the lumber hidden on the far side."

"So the nail grabs solid wood."

"Yeah," Marcus confirmed, "that's the general idea."

"Brenda left me... moved all her stuff out of the house while I was away on a business trip." Jeffrey retrieved a bent nail that had fallen in the grass. "Did you know she was seeing someone on the sly?"

"She stopped by the other day," Marcus spoke haltingly, measuring his words. "That was the first I heard of it."

"The cheating... it wasn't the first time." Jeffrey's voice cracked and he had to turn away to compose himself. "Over the years, there's been a series of romantic intrigues."

His sister in the role of home wrecker - Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary. Unaware of his sister's salacious propensities, Marcus felt nauseous, lightheaded.

The other party – she never even mentioned his name, never intimated anything about falling in love or meeting a spiritual, twin soul. Rather, there was a detached, business-like quality to the impending breakup, as though his sister was using the present arrangement as a slimy stepping stone from a tiresome marriage to a more manageable situation. "Did you ever confront Brenda with her shenanigans?"

"In the past," Jeffrey replied bitterly, "she got all maudlin, teary-eyed... claimed that the debauchery meant nothing. Each affair only made her realize how much she treasured our marriage."

"Until this last time." Marcus shook his head. "My sister... she's all mixed up."

"On the contrary," Jeffrey shot back, "I'm the emotion wreck. Brenda knows perfectly well what she's doing."

Marcus seated the claw of his hammer on a bent nail and pried it free. When he looked up again, Jeffrey was gone. Marcus replaced the front and both sides but ran out of steam before reaching the back of the shed. By the afternoon, the late June heat had topped out in the low nineties with a tropical-grade humidity that sucked all the oxygen out of his lungs and left him weak in the knees.

Putting his tools away, he went indoors and showered. In the kitchen, he removed a tub of red pepper hummus from the refrigerator and popped an onion bagel in the toaster. Several years previously, his sister decided to go strictly vegetarian, allowing no meat, cheese or poultry across the threshold. No matter that her husband was an all-American, meat-and-potatoes kind of guy.

At a pool party Brenda hosted, she served up a platter of bagels slathered with hummus, spinach and tomato slices. She drizzled the exotic appetizer with olive oil, freshly minced basil and parsley. The unusual hors d'oeuvres was just about the only thing of worth that Marcus associated with his sister anymore.

And now the marriage was defunct, blown to smithereens.

Marcus bit into the onion bagel and luxuriated as the disparate flavors enveloped his taste buds. The tomato dissolved into the salty chickpea paste as the succulent herbal garnish worked its flavorful magic.

With woodworking, whether it was repairing a rotted shed or building whirligigs, Marcus always found solutions for seemingly impossible problems. The cockeyed shed was a classic case in point. With the wind-powered ornaments, hardly a week passed that Marcus didn't discover a way to improve on a craft design. Frequently it was a matter of trial and error, a stumbling, bumbling process of elimination. Not this, not this, not this, THAT!

But you couldn't finesse human nature.

The damage Brenda perpetrated on a guileless world at large was exponential. Common decency never factored into the cosmic equation. Thirty-eight years on planet earth and, except for hummus bagels, she hadn't learned a practical thing of value.

* * * * *

"I can't paint for crap... got no eye for color or proportion," Andrea confided.

They were situated upstairs in the kitchen, where Marcus spread a collection of acrylic paints, brushes, a plastic palette and the unassembled pieces of her whirligig across the length of the table.

"This isn't the Sistine Chapel," he returned dismissively. "Not the Mona Lisa either."

"Yes, but I'm really quite awful."

"When you were a little girl, did you have coloring books?"

"Sure, every kid did."

"Well then, just think of what we're doing as coloring with paints instead of crayons." Marcus handed her a brush and the woodchopper's left leg. A light pencil line at the bottom of the limb indicated where the ankle left off and the shoe began.

Squirting a generous dollop of blue paint into the palette, he handed her a sable brush. "Paint the pants down to the pencil mark near the ankle."

Andrea's hand trembled as she raised the bristles to the upper thigh. "If you're having trouble controlling the brush, brace your right wrist with your left hand. She did as he said and the tremors subsided. "Start your initial stroke a half inch away from the edge and brush up. Any globs you can work back down into the piece."

When Andrea reached the bottom, she looked up. The blue had smudged well across the pencil mark onto the top of the shoe. "See, I told you I couldn't paint!"

"There's a trick... a technique for fixing irregularities." She eyes him doubtfully. "We can fix it," Marcus continued, "once the paint dries on both sides."

Andrea painted the legs front and back. With a tiny brush, Marcus added shoe laces. Reaching across the table he tapped her lightly on the forearm. "Watch closely." Grabbing a felt-tipped Sharpie he deftly ran a thick black line across the area where the paint had smudged and the defect disappeared, swallowed up by the crisp, dark line that now separated the pant cuff from the top of the shoe.

Andrea shook her head in disbelief.

"Your first coat of paint sealed the wood grain so the black ink couldn't bleed into the porous wood. You get a razor-sharp line every time. It's a simple fix with the added benefit that the silky-smooth line makes the surrounding colors pop."

"Everything looks so much better... more professional!"

"What color should we use for the face and hands?" Marcus shifted gears.

"I don't know. Nothing you've got here looks quite right."

"Then we'll improvise... concoct our own." He squeezed a generous splotch of white onto the palette, mixed several drops of chocolaty brown plus an even smaller quantity of orange. Stirring the mixture forcefully with a paint brush, a lightly tinted flesh color emerged. "Keep the wood directly in front of you, even if you have to rotate the work several times as you paint," Marcus instructed as she spread a film of the blended paint over the forehead toward the broad-brimmed hat.

"How many craft fairs are you doing this summer?" she asked when the face was finished.

"I'm not doing any." He told her about the soggy debacle at the farm and his more recent fiasco with Swenson's Boutique.

"Why not set up your own website and sell your crafts through the internet."

"I can just barely retrieve my emails," Marcus replied sheepishly. "Setting up an online store isn't a realistic consideration."

"Too bad." Andrea turned her attention back to the woodcutter's hands, painting to the wrists before flipping the wood end over end and tidying up the fingers that gripped the axe handle. "Selling on the internet... it's the way of the future."

"Unfortunately, I'm mired in the past."

* * * * *

At the final meeting they assembled all the wooden parts with glue, nuts and bolts. Marcus attached a strand of 16 gauge wire from an eye hook embedded in the woodchoppers belly to the metal cam. A ceremonial gesture, they spun the propeller and the axe arched high in the air over the man's shoulders. Chop! Chop! Chop! The twosome watched as the tiny log was blasted to splinters.

"Well' that does it." With a bittersweet half-smile, Marcus handed Andrea the finished craft. They climbed the basement stairs and lingered awkwardly in the kitchen, neither knowing what to say.

"Couldn't help noticing your latest creation... the king or rock and roll."

Marcus' features lit up momentarily. "Yeah, that's a hoot!" The newest whirligig featured a slightly rotund Elvis Presley decked out in an ivory-colored jump suit and dark sunglasses, strumming a guitar. When the propeller was set in motion, a wire rod fixed to the crooner's waist sent the hips gyrating in a maniacal frenzy. "Elvis' Pelvis... that's what I call it."

Andrea Simpson approached and stood so close that Marcus could feel her breath on his face. "A business proposition...I construct a website for your line of custom-built whirligigs with pictures, product captions, merchandise order form and email contact... the whole shebang, and you teach me how to make Elvis Pelvis."

In response to Marcus' dumbfound expression, she added, "I took a course in web design as an undergraduate... got all the computer software, everything you need to get up and running in cyberspace."

When there was still no response, she thumped him in the chest several times with a taut index finger. "So, what's the verdict?"

Marcus was only now looking her full in the face – that unremarkable, acquired taste of a face that he could never quite get out of his mind anymore. Twenty-four-seven, it floated back to him throughout the day, even in that Arcadian, twilight realm between sleep and fleeting wakefulness.

She held a hand out. He grabbed, shook once and sealed the pact. "Okay, I'll teach you."

"The Elvis' Pelvis whirligig... how long should it take?"

"Oh I dunno. That's tough to predict." Marcus' expression was perfectly serious. He still hadn't thought to let go of the woman's hand. "A few weeks... a month maybe. Perhaps the rest of our lives."

back to Table of Contents

Turgenev's Lost Tale

I

"Who was the main character in Turgenev's novella, The Inn?" Professor Portman opened the discussion the third week of class. The lecture hall was half-filled, twenty-five students on a Monday morning.

There was no immediate response. A minute passed. In his late fifties, the balding, stoop-shouldered man wore wire-rimmed glasses and a habitually congenial expression. An inveterate bachelor, the professor favored that indolent, reflective manner common among scholastic types. "Did anyone bother to read the story?" His tone was more joking than accusatory.

"Akim Semyonitch, the Russian serf who belonged to the widow landowner, Lizaveta Prohorovna," a female voice three seats down from Frankie Endicott rang out. Since the first day of class, the girl wore a habitually surly expression like a badge of honor. She was cranky and taciturn. Perhaps churlish would be more apt. She possessed no social graces and yet, in Frankie's eyes, each fatal character flaw only heightened the woman's physical appeal.

"And how would you describe the widow landowner?"

"A conniving shrew!" the same voice rang out. The sound of light laughter filtered through the room.

"Shrewd and greedy," Professor Portman confirmed.

A hairy arm shot up in the air. "How come no Hispanic writers were included in the course outline?" The challenging jibe drifted to the rostrum from the far back of the lecture hall, where a dark-skinned Hispanic, Julio Rodriguez, slouched in an insolent, half-reclining position. Frankie recognized the speaker from a previous English class. In his early twenties, Julio usually sat with the minority students in the cafeteria and, on the several occasions when Frankie greeted him in the school hallways, he never bothered to acknowledge the friendly gesture.

Over the last several years, Overland Community College welcomed large numbers of minorities – many on scholarships - from the low-income housing projects bordering the campus to the west. Diamonds in the rough, these students lacked basic skills. They couldn't do simple math or punctuate a compound sentence. Worse yet, many were unprepared for the demands of academic life. They were increasingly confrontational and belligerent in class. Faculty couldn't call them to task, because it was considered politically incorrect and anyone voicing concern was branded a bigot. Frankie tried to remain open-minded but felt the school's generosity ill-conceived. Invasion of the Huns - it was an equal opportunity, public relations strategy gone haywire!

"Turgenev's been dead a hundred years." Julio made a vulgar gesture with his left hand. Without pivoting his neck, Frankie surreptitiously glanced to his right. The girl in the torn jeans three seats down perked up and was following the tête-à-tête with an amused expression.

Did she sympathize with the dissident Hispanic or were her allegiances with the instructor? He couldn't be sure.

"We're here to study literary classics," the professor spoke softly, measuring his words. "Chekhov, de Maupassant, Turgenev, Flaubert... their works are anthologized over and over again for good reason."

"Those names don't mean crap to me." Julio's tone altered ever so slightly, taking on a more surly edge. "You never heard of Hector Santos?"

"A young Panamanian, who won the prestigious Booker Prize recently," the professor replied. "Santos is an emerging writer with a certain amount of talent but not nearly the stature of any of the writers we will be discussing this semester."

"That's just your misguided opinion." Julio glowered at the instructor.

Sensing that he was losing control, Professor Portman was becoming visibly flustered. Turning back to the class, he asked, "What other characters figure significantly in the story?"

"Kirillovna!" The girl's booming voice echoed up into the rafters.

Even the professor was startled by the scruffy girl's lightning-quick response. "Correct again... the despotic woman who manages Madame Pohorovna's estate."

Now the hand of a pudgy, freckle-faced girl with a receding chin near the front of the room shot up in the air. "Kirillovna... she took the five rubles that her mistress gave her for Akim, rushed off to her bedroom and locked the stolen money in a metal strong box."

As though to bring closure to the earlier discussion, the Hispanic youth flung his pencil on the floor. "Still don't see where any of this is relevant to my life!" With a theatrical flourish he stomped out of the lecture hall. A sinister tittered fluttered through the room. Clearly, among younger black and Latino students, Julio had his supporters.

"Stay a minute." The class had ended. The whisper-soft injunction floated through the stagnant air from three seats away. Frankie gawked at the edgy girl, who was still facing the lectern. "Don't leave... not yet."

She never looked at him as she mouthed the stingy handful of words in a flat monotone. Only when the room had emptied out completely did she approach. By conventional standards, she wasn't terrible pretty. The olive-colored face was plain and utterly non-descript. But if you looked long and hard enough, at odd moments an unadorned loveliness emerged from the aesthetic wreckage only to fade away like a fleeting afterthought.

"Something lousy is going to happen."

"How so?"

"That skinny Puerto Rican has been organizing minority students. They're pressuring the administration to revamp the curriculum."

Frankie scowled and blew out his cheeks. "The jerk can't bully faculty."

"It's worse than you think" she cautioned. "He's organizing a coalition from the Latino Coalition to meet with President McElroy."

A sense dread pervaded Frankie's brain. "For what purpose?"

Reaching up with both hands, she rearranged her black hair. It was only then that Frankie noticed the gold band on the fourth finger of her left hand. Any romantic notions he might have entertained instantaneously went up in smoke. "Don't know. I just wanted to give you a heads up." Pushing past him, she headed for the door.

* * * * *

"Don't suppose you ever read Hector Santos?" Frankie was sitting in the school cafeteria nursing a tepid cup of coffee and grilled cheese sandwich. Julio Rodriguez pulled up a chair next to him.

"Actually, I have."

"And where do you stand on the issue?"

Frankie had no intention of humoring the man. "Hector Santos... he's a one-trick pony, who writes about the same sappy themes over and over and over again."

If he was offended by the sarcastic rebuttal, Julio kept his composure. "Which are?"

"Hispanic men who cheat on their dishrag wives... teens who bunk school, deal drugs and shoplift at the local mall." Frankie sipped at his coffee. "In Santo's writings there's never a happy ending. The men are all misogynists... the women subsist on welfare and AFDC. It's worse than a Greek tragedy."

"He won the freakin' Booker prize!"

"Yes, he won the prize," Frankie countered, "but, in literary circles politics influences decision-making more than innate talent. Everyone remembers a decade ago when writers from the Indian subcontinent were all the rage. Later we went absolutely gaga over Haitian short fiction. Then Cuban chick lit was center stage. Flavor-of-the-month – a week from Tuesday, transgender hermaphrodites may be flooding the marketplace. Who knows?" Frankie pushed his tray aside. "To say that Hector Santos won the Booker Prize means nothing."

Julio rubbed his bristly chin. He rose and, much as he had in the lecture hall, skulked theatrically away.

Toward the end of the semester, the nasty impasse reached the tipping point, metastasizing like a terminal disease and spilling over beyond the classroom. One summer day in late May, a hundred students milled about the quadrangle that abutted the student union. "What do we want?" A student with a wispy goatee and blue-checked bandana knotted around his forehead barked into a bullhorn. Climbing up on a stone terrace, he converted the landscaped structure into an impromptu speaker's platform. "What do we want and when do we need it?"

"In response to each question the crowd shouted, "Free Choice! Now!"

A series of speakers was demanding the creation of a minority studies program, women's center and hodgepodge of esoteric demands that Frankie could make little sense of. At odd intervals, Professor Portman's name resurfaced, eliciting derisive catcalls and jeers.

"The devil incarnate... Professor Portman's the Antichrist," the young girl who sat three seats down from Frankie in the lecture hall was standing next to him. He still didn't know her name but, in recent weeks, had begun to think of her as the 'wedding band girl'.

Julio Rodriguez, who was standing at the front of the crowd, leaped onto the terraced wall. Totally in his element, he brandished the bullhorn like a lethal weapon. "I gotta study some nineteenth century, Bolshevik bullshit," he shrilled, "while native-born Latino and Afro-American authors go neglected... unread. Is that fair?" An irate rumble percolated through the crowd.

"Organizers met yesterday in the student union building." The wedding band girl lowered her voice several decibels so the others couldn't hear. "Our friend, the Puerto Rican, suggested mobilizing the ACLU so they can transform the protest into a civil rights issue. The Afro-American Coalition, wants to contact the NAACP."

"All this because Professor Portman won't give in to their moronic demands?"

"See that coppery-skinned girl over by the brick walkway?"

Frankie glanced to his right where a skinny girl was inching through the crowd to secure a better vantage point. She wore a skimpy halter top and cut-off jeans.

"That's Trish. She's in my creative writing class," she continued. "The sweetest creature imaginable!" None of the crowd's hostility or belligerence had rubbed off on the lithe girl, who was alternately giggling and chattering away with another student. For her, the demonstration resembled a street festival. "

"Trish... she's a barrel of laughs but a moron... an utterly benign creature, who hardly ever shows up for class." The wedding band girl paused to clear her throat. "Trish will flunk three-quarters of her courses and be gone from school by the end of the semester, but no matter - students like her... they're a cash cow for the college, because their education is federally funded."

"And Overland College understands perfectly well," Frankie conceded, "who butters their bread."

The wedding band girl waved an index finger at the mob. "Administration will be only too happy to throw Professor Portman under the bus, when the pencil-pushing geeks cave to their demands."

"Something's happening!" The throng unexpectedly lurched off, en masse, toward the building entrance.

"They're gonna occupy the dean's office," she speculated. "Stage a sit-in."

The crowd quickly disappeared into the forum, snaking its way haphazardly up the stairwell to the second floor landing where administrative offices were located. With her halter top that left little to the imagination, Trish, was giggling like an adolescent and pumping a closed fist up and down even though it was unclear whether she understood what was happening. It was all great fun.

"For sure," Frankie muttered, "the school will capitulate to all their bogus agenda."

The first week in May, Frankie met with Professor Portman at his office. "Mr. Endicott, what can I do for you?" The older man looked haggard, his bloodshot eyes mottled with dark circles.

"Nothing," Frankie spoke briskly. "I came to offer moral support." In recent weeks, the minority students had coalesced into a block of angry dissidents. Refusing to participate during class discussion, they only showed up in the lecture hall when the spirit moved them. The smoldering rage was palpable.

"It would appear that the inmates are running the institution." Professor Portman sat slouched at an odd angle, his wire-rimmed glasses drifting precariously on the bridge of his nose. "The dean of students arranged an impromptu meeting with the minority advisory committee. That's what they call themselves... the minority advisory committee."

"Bunch of thugs." Frankie muttered dismissively. "When is the meeting?"

"Already took place... yesterday afternoon." Professor Portman stared at a tattered hardcover resting on the desk. "I asked them, 'What do you want?'"

"And?"

The older man shrugged and his lips curled in a bleak smile. "No one seemed to know. Finally one of the hooligans shouted, 'To be treated like goddamn human beings!'"

The professor fell silent, displaying no great desire to pursue the topic. Finally, he cleared his throat. "They want to be treated like human beings." "For the past twenty-three years I've taught comparative literature at community colleges. It's not my fault that Julio Rodriguez grew up in a broken home, on welfare and food stamps." Professor Portman chuckled darkly as though at some private joke. I could have told the minority advisory committee that and a whole lot more, but they probably would have tied me to the chair with an electrical cord and set the building on fire."

II

Ten years later while vacationing in central Maine, Frankie Endicott visited the hotel bar for a nightcap before going to bed. When he returned, his wife asked, "Are you okay or do I need to call an ambulance?"

Frankie did not immediately reply. Rather, he rested on the edge of the bed with his head slumped at an odd angle. His hands which rested in his lap were trembling noticeably. "At the bar I recognized someone I hadn't seen in a decade."

"And who might that someone be?" His wife, Alice, sat down on the bed and draped an arm over his shoulder. A petite woman, she wore her dark hair close cropped over a pert nose and pallid skin tones.

"Harry Portman, a chairman of the English Department at Overland Community College." He rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. "The fall semester of my senior year, Professor Portman went AWOL... literally dropped off the face of the earth. The disappearance caused quite a commotion."

Alice stared at him curiously. "And how is it you never mentioned any of this until now?"

"I told Harry we were touring Booth Bay Harbor for the next few days," Frankie ignored the question altogether, "and he invited us to visit. He's got a place not five miles from here."

"When exactly?"

"Tomorrow after breakfast we'll take a drive down."

Alice's features congealed in a perverse grin. "What was that peculiar business about dropping off the face of the earth?"

Frankie glanced at the radio clock on the night table. It was quarter to eleven. "What happened to Professor Portman... it's a rather lengthy, convoluted story."

His wife kissed his cheek and rose from the bed. "Go take your bath and brush your teeth. While we're snuggling under the covers in lieu of salacious sex, you can tell me the saga of Professor Portman's vanishing act.

In the morning the Endicotts enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the picture window in the main dining room overlooking the scarred, granite coast. "Frankie, you never quite explained why Professor Portman ran off." As she spoke, Alice stabbed at a wedge of scrambled egg laced with cheddar cheese, chopped scallions and ham.

"I was in the process of explaining," Frankie countered, "but you fell asleep and began snoring rather loudly."

The waitress approached and freshened their coffees. "President McElroy, who ran Overland Community College, was intimidated by the hard-core agitators. When Professor Portman still refused to include any third world writers in his selected readings, more demonstrations erupted."

"Inside the classroom?"

"Both inside and elsewhere on campus. The troublemakers raised an awful stink." Frankie sipped at his coffee then added a spoonful of sugar and stirred briskly. "In Professor Portman's course, we were trudging through some really tough stuff. In addition to Turgenev there was a novella by Flaubert and an obscure gem by the nineteenth century Swiss writer, Ernst Zahn."

"Never heard of him," Alice noted.

Out in the bay a trawler with lobster pots stacked six feet high was lumbering into port. A braided rope was tossed to shore and secured around a pair of metal mooring posts. "Few of his writings have been translated into English."

The atmosphere in the classroom had been poisoned, but Professor Portman survived to the end of term without any overt anarchy. Grades were posted and classes emptied out for the summer recess. In the fall when classes resumed, Professor Portman was nowhere to be found.

College administrators soon discovered that the truant professor placed his townhouse on the market in late July and absconded to parts unknown. Even extended family hadn't a clue regarding his whereabouts. In early October, a senior faculty member was promoted to department head and his courses reassigned.

Many faculty at the college viewed Professor Portman's behavior as vindictive. He was lashing out at an administration unwilling to censure agitators questioning his authority. At an impromptu faculty meeting, the dean of students, Professor Blackman, shouted, "Despicable, despicable... only a petty, little man runs away from healthy dissent." Like some ritualistic incantation, Professor Blackman repeated that tiresome refrain over and over. "Despicable, despicable... the actions of a petty, little man!"

"Dropping off the face of the earth like that... most saw it as a cowardly act." Frankie watched as the ship's crew, dressed in knee-length, waterproof boots, came ashore. "Other detractors went even further, arguing that Professor Portman had a moral obligation to acknowledge minority students' demands,... that the former chairman of the English Department had always been an intellectual Luddite out of touch with contemporary trends."

"And where did you stand?" Finishing her breakfast, Alice dabbed her lips with a napkin and pushed the empty plate away.

Frankie placed a generous tip on the table next to a water glass. "Let's go find the professor," he replied, sidestepping his wife's question.

Five miles due west heading away from the ocean they turned off the highway onto a scraggily, dirt road. A hundred feet from a tidy farmhouse, a battered mailbox with PORTMAN scrawled in red acrylic paint on both sides tilted at a cockeyed angle. Harry Portman was in the front yard scattering feed to a half dozen chickens. A dumpy, white-haired woman with braided pigtails on either side of her plump face was bending over near a pair of rickety beehives.

"How do you like the new chicken coop?" Professor Portman waved an arm at a broad enclosure where a dozen hens were pecking at the gritty dirt. "I built it with hand tools from do-it-yourself plans I found on the internet."

The professor had cut lap joints into the eight-foot vertical lumber that framed the outer enclosure, securing the wood, not with nails, but sturdy nuts and bolts. The frame was then covered with chicken wire held in place by rust-proof staples. The henhouse, where the birds spent their nights, was fashioned from particle board overlaid with cedar shingles.

"They don't teach such basic skills," he chuckled, "at colleges these days."

"Unfortunately not," Frankie agreed. He gestured with his eyes at the plump, middle-aged woman showing Alice the beehives.

"My wife, Chepi. We married five years ago. She's Micmac... originally from Newfoundland." "Last night," Professor Portman shifted gears, "you mentioned that you were teaching high school English."

"Six years now."

"And how's that working out?"

Frankie paused long enough to allow his thoughts to congeal. "Between cell phones and cyberspace I'm fighting a losing battle."

"I don't suppose they read much Turgenev."

Frankie rolled his eyes, a disparaging gesture. "No, not in this lifetime."

"That's a shame," he replied with genuine regret. A scarlet Cardinal and his coffee-colored mated flitted across the lawn, weaving in and out of the slender willow trees. "And whatever came of that upheaval at the college?"

"The minority students prevailed... got everything they wanted. Now there's even a separate degree program focusing on emerging, third-world authors."

Professor Portman listened with a vaguely disinterested smile. Clearly, he harbored no bitterness or remorse. The turmoil and subterfuge remained buried in the far distant, prehistoric past. "And that Puerto Rican dissident, the one who stirred up all the commotion... Whatever happened to him?"

"Julio Rodriguez," Frankie confirmed. "A few years back he brought out a slim collection of short stories through an indie publisher. The book was all the rage with the academics. Now he teaches creative writing at a university in Upstate New York."

"Did you read the book?"

Frankie cracked a sick smile. "Neither Turgenev nor Flaubert would have been terribly impressed."

"And why not?"

"There was little plotting, just an endless stream of four-letter words, gratuitous violence and explicit sex bordering on hard-core pornography." In the distance he could see his wife carrying on an animated conversation with Chepi. "The main characters were nothing more than one-dimensional, talking heads."

Frankie kicked at the dirt sending a piece of gravel skittering across the path. "Julio Rodriguez managed to parlay his lack of talent into a lucrative career."

"In today's literary circles," the professor confirmed, "that would appear to be the new normal."

For the first time since arriving, Frankie gazed at the land surrounding the professor's property. In the far distance the meadow was peppered with wildflowers and blueberry bushes - beyond that a placid lake dappled with a border of ivory water lilies hugging the shore. It was a Pantheistic, self-contained universe, sublimely at peace with itself - an Edenesque safe haven for damaged souls.

"Your wife is Micmac?"

"The region has a population of about forty thousand." Professor Portman shook his head sadly. "Most of the young people are losing touch with the ancestral ways, although, to her credit, Chepi can still speak her native Algonquian. Unfortunately, few of her people in this region of Maine understand the tongue."

"What about written language?"

"Professor Portman wagged his head a second time. "In the old days they used a fairly sophisticated hieroglyphic script, but that's gone now... lost to progress and innovation."

"Your wife speaks English?"

"Yes, of course. Chepi went through the Indian school to the sixth grade. She can read and write well enough for practical purposes."

For practical purposes... Professor Portman, the former Chairman of the Overland College English Department and scholar of nineteenth century European literature, had set up housekeeping with a woman who was only semi-literate. Frankie wondered what the esteemed professor's former colleagues might think of that outlandish bit of incidental trivia.

At the rear of the henhouse, the professor unlatched a rectangular, shuttered window and slid the wood out of the way to gain access to the inside of the coop. Reaching into a straw-strewn box, he deftly removed a pair of golden brown eggs. "Tomorrow's breakfast," he announced with a droll smirk. "Think I'll put on a pot of coffee."

"Coffee... yes that would be nice." Frankie watched as his former college professor lumbered off in the direction of the front porch.

Close by an outcropping of silver birch trees the two women were standing next to a top bar beehive propped up on four, split-ribbed cinder blocks. "Since the spring thaw, the bees have built eighteen bars of honey to the rear of the hive," Chepi explained. "Brood comb is up front closer to the entrance, which is where the bees store most of their pollen to feed newborn. Winter honey reserves are further back." She gestured with a pudgy palm toward the rear of the box.

"Where did you learn all this?" Alice pressed.

"That's the way honeybees organize the hive." She thought a moment. "It's just common knowledge." "Everything you need to know about the colony can be learned by watching the entrance." She pointed to the half-inch opening in front of a short landing strip where half a hundred insects were helicoptering, swirling in a dizzying, choreographed ballet in broad circles. "These are newborns making their maiden flight." "The worker that just returned with the golden saddlebags on her hind legs is an older bee who has been out foraging for nectar."

"Is that pollen?" Alice asked.

"Yes... probably goldenrod or pepperbush. It's hard to say exactly what's blooming now." Chepi angled her head closer to the entrance. "Hear that deep humming?"

"Actually, it's quite loud," Frankie interjected. Like jet engine heard at a considerable distance, the muffled sound was quite constant. The electric thrumming energized the air, whipping the insects into a giddy frenzy.

Chepi pushed her thick lips outward in an appreciative attitude. "Happy bees... very happy bees," She shared this certitude, with unwavering conviction.

"And why are they so happy?" Frankie asked.

"Plenty of nectar... much clean water. Sun and warmth and a fertile queen, who lays two thousand eggs a day."

"Two thousand!" Frankie did the math in his head. "That would grow the colony by ten to fifteen thousand bees a week. Upwards of fifty thousand a month!"

"Like I said," Chepi picked up her original theme, "very happy bees!"

"Coffee is read." Professor Portman was standing on the porch waving an empty coffee mug over his head. "If you would like to come in for a while."

III

Such a charming couple!" They were back at the motel later that night. Alice flossed her teeth, while Frankie sat on the edge of the bathtub. "Did you see her moccasins?"

"Very intricate needlework," Frankie noted. During their visit, Chepi wore farmer jeans and a plaid blouse. The only nod to her Native American heritage was the moccasins.

"All that intricate beadwork was done with porcupine quills. Her grandmother taught her the traditional skill."

As Chepi explained it, in the olden days, tribes moved constantly following seasonal cycles. In March the Indians converged on the smelt spawning grounds. Following that they hunted geese and collected waterfowl eggs. In the early spring Micmacs returned to the coast in search of fresh cod and shellfish. "By Autumn most of the biting insects – the mosquitoes, black flies and midges – were killed off in the first frost so the Indians could send hunting parties into the forest in search of caribou and moose."

"A very resourceful race!" Frankie confirmed from his vantage point on the bathtub, "The professor was telling me that Micmacs used the moose for clothing and meat much as the plains Indians did with the buffalo."

Alice rinsed her mouth and put the plastic cup aside. "Well, this vacation has turned into quite an adventure."

Frankie came up behind his wife, wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed the nape of her neck. It was never the over-the-top, ostentatious happenings but the unanticipated and inconsequential that ultimately brought them closer, deepening the marriage.

Eight years earlier, the day that Frankie proposed to his future wife, he drove Alice into Boston. They cruised down Massachusetts Avenue, taking a hard right onto Huntington. Two blocks up, he pulled the Toyota into a concrete parking garage. They had front row seats to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Seiji Ozawa was conducting Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, the entr'acte to an opera by Verdi and Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia.

Through his teenage years, Frankie played trumpet in the high school concert band. He owned a cheap student horn, a Holton Collegiate model. The bell was riddled with dents and dings. Half the lacquer had fallen away. He played third trumpet – the low notes mostly – and seldom practiced.

During the spring concert of his senior year the orchestra played a stripped-down version of Borodin's, In the Steppes of Central Asia. Midway through the symphony, while the rest of the brass section soared in the upper register, Frankie was blasting away triple forte – a series of low c's, bass tones that rang out like a sonic boom! The recurring eastern melody in Borodin's symphony – it was the highlight of his abortive musical career. That haunting, repetitive refrain - it repeated over and over in the flute section like some musical elixir or soothing balm for the human soul.

When the final notes died away and Seiji Ozawa rested the baton on the conductor's stand, Frankie glanced at his future bride. Alice blinked several times to clear the residual moistness. She had felt the music every bit as deeply. Afterward in the lobby, she chattered away effusively. The Beethoven and Verdi were wonderful, but the minor-keyed Russian symphony stole her heart. Later that night when they reach home, Frankie produced a small velvet box and stole that ephemeral organ a second time.

"Chepi... did you ever learn what the name means?"

"Fairy spirit," Alice replied. "Just before we left the Portmans I remembered to ask."

She returned to the bedroom. "With all the excitement of the meeting your long-lost teacher, you never told what happened in the motel lounge."

The previous night when Professor Portman recognized his former student, the older man hustled him into a booth away from the noisy bar. "You might find this hard to believe," Frankie confided after the initial small talk ran its course, "but I kept the anthology... the paperback we used in your final course. Every year or so, I read a few stories."

"Do you have a favorite?"

"Well, of course, Turgenev's The Inn is wonderful but the de Maupassant piece is still my favorite."

The older man pursed his lips. "The Frenchman wrote so many excellent stories that I can't remember which one we covered in the coursework."

"Boule de Suif... the Ball of Fat."

The professor's eyes lit up instantaneously. "Such a wonderful tale!" He thumped Frankie energetically on the forearm and leaned across the table. "You know, scholars consider The Necklace the author's most famous work, which, of course is true, but Boule de Suif is far and away a superior piece of prose."

"It takes place during the war."

"The Franco-Prussian War." Professor Portman was back in his element talking literary fiction. "A Prussian officer won't allow the fleeing residents of Rouen to travel to safe haven. Only when the French prostitute is pressured by the group to sleep with the enemy are they finally allowed to continue on their journey."

"Such a sad story."

"Yes," the professor agreed, "especially that poignant scene near the end where Boule de Suif is crying in the coach as the other travelers ignore the broken woman, refusing to even offer her anything to eat."

The older man fell silent. He sipped his beer. The animation sloughed away and was overlaid with a deadened grimness. "They boxed the kind-hearted woman into an untenable position."

Professor Portman swirled what little was left of the warm beer in a circular motion before tossing the liquid down his throat. "I asked myself, 'What would Turgenev have done with such an unwieldy plot? How would the master construct a suitable denouement?'"

Frankie sensed that his friend's thoughts had suddenly drifted elsewhere and they were no longer discussing the de Maupassant story. The waitress approached, but Professor Portman waved her off. "In the end, when all is lost, the fictional Akim Semyonitch realizes a blessing in disguise. He has lost everything... his wife, fortune, property, but only in the conventional sense."

The professor winked at his former student. "Misfortune offers a new beginning, an opportunity to reinvent oneself."

back to Table of Contents

The Willy-nilly Hedonist

A week before the wedding, Benjamin Brannigan visited his grandmother. He found the older woman in the sun room crouched over a tray of black Simpson lettuce seedlings. The plants were arranged in two-inch peat pots. "What's with the blue powder?" He indicated a plastic container with a granular substance.

"Water-soluble plant food," she replied," with equal parts nitrogen, phosphate and potash."

Benjamin surveyed the wilted greenery. "None of the plants seem to be benefiting from your overindulgence."

Granny Brannigan scowled. "It seems that April is still too early to grow plants indoors." She rubbed her lantern jaw thoughtfully and adjusted the wire-rimmed glasses higher up on a beaky nose. "Not nearly enough sunlight or warmth." "How's my favorite grandson?" Granny Brannigan said, shifting gears.

"Not much better than your plants." Benjamin sat down heavily in a wicker chair. "The wedding's off. Angela's been having an affair... cheating on me with a co-worker, since as far back as our engagement."

Granny Brannigan, who had been sprinkling topsoil mixed with worm casings, humus and perlite into an empty container, gawked at the young man. "Ouch!" When there was no immediate response, she added, "Did you tell your parents?"

"Not yet. I only found out last night." The dark-haired boy with the pale complexion and hazel eyes looked haggard, emotionally unhinged. "I'll call all the guests to cancel the wedding and return gifts, of course." He delivered the grotesque news in a numbed monotone and after an awkward pause noted, "Angela claims that she's a hedonist at heart and our engagement was a mistake." His features dissolved in a weak smile. "I looked the word up in the dictionary."

"And?"

"Hedonism is the ethical theory that pleasure and the satisfaction of desire is the highest good and proper aim of human life."

Granny Brannigan massaged her massive jaw a second time. "Your fiancée is a birdbrain." She spoke softly in a dispassionate manner. The observation wasn't so much a reprimand as statement of unassailable apriori truth.

"Former fiancée," Benjamin corrected. "Our marriage is a distant memory... caput, finito, defunct, dead on arrival."

Granny Brannigan held a peat pot up to the light. On the verge of collapsing, the stringy, transparent stalk was much too thin to support even a single green leaf. In addition to the lettuce, there were heirloom beefsteak tomatoes, dill, oregano, basil, chive and cilantro in various stages of failing health. All was lost.

"Like a baby born prematurely," Benjamin noted.

"Yes, a good analogy, but unfortunately there's nothing I can do to correct the defect." The woman pinched the stalk with a fingernail and tossed the withered growth aside.

Pointing at the ruined seedling, Benjamin cracked a sick smile. "That's pretty much what Angela did to me last night."

His grandmother reached out and patted his hand sympathetically.

If anyone had asked Benjamin, who among his closest friends and relatives loved him most, the answer would have been a no-brainer. With Granny Brannigan there were never any hugs, kisses or mawkish terms of endearment. Nothing of the sort. Language was a trap. Far too much tenderness got frittered away in emotional excesses. She portioned her affection discretely. A gently pat of the wrist following infidelity and a failed engagement would suffice.

Benjamin scanned the hickory table which resembled a horticultural battle zone. All was lost. Two dozen tiny pots had been upended, the scraggily, brittle plants thrown in a heap. "Doesn't seem like your vegetable garden is in any better shape than my wedding plans."

The older woman's features dissolved in a cagey grin. Throwing a fistful of tarragon sprouts aside she rose "Come with me." Granny Brannigan led the way downstairs into the basement, where a collection of spruce two-by-fours cut into four-foot lengths were stacked in the far corner. "I need to rip these boards on the table saw."

"For what purpose?"

"A cold frame... I'm gonna build a miniature greenhouse," Granny Brannigan replied, "so I can plants these seeds outside without risk of late-night frost or insufficient sunlight damaging the tender plants. But that's a project for another day." Flicking the light switch, she led the way back upstairs.

"I could stop by Saturday and help you resize the wood," Benjamin ventured.

"If you like."

In the foyer Benjamin noted, "I'll have to call Father Stan and tell him the wedding's off."

His grandmother grounds her teeth and an unintelligible sound gurgled up in her throat. "You've been through enough already. I can handle that insufferable blowhard!"

A devout Catholic who never missed a Sunday Mass or day of holy obligation, Granny Brannigan, despised the parish priest. She ridiculed Father Stan as a hellfire and brimstone fanatic, a brittle-minded cleric who trafficked in original sin and the moral unworthiness of his flock. Granny Brannigan once confided that she wouldn't be surprised to find Father Stan lurking in some dingy alley selling indulgences – leg bones of medieval saints, moldy scraps of sacred cloth or other holy relics of questionable origin.

* * * * *

Benjamin could tally the woman he dated prior to meeting Angela on the fingers of one hand with several digits to spare. Each was precious in her own way, each fatally flawed. None marriage material.

Rita Winetraub, a Jewish girl whose parents emigrated from Poland, epitomized Benjamin's romantic folly. Graduating college magna cum laude, top of her class, she was well read, spoke several languages fluidly and had once, in a philosophy class, debated A.J. Ayer's theory of logical positivism. Rita competed in a state-wide tennis league. She whipped up gourmet meals replete with fresh herbs and spices, tutored English as a second language at the learning center and loved her nieces and nephews to distraction. Serenely quiet with an adroit sense of humor, the young woman was sexually frigid.

Rita kissed and hugged in a perfunctory manner. Physical intimacy was a tedious chore to be endured rather than savored. In every other respect the young woman was normal, kind, considerate, decent. But Benjamin wanted the complete package and couldn't cope with her blasé indifference to what seldom if ever occurred in the bedroom.

At one point Benjamin confronted Rita with her aversion to intimacy. "It's just the way I am," she returned in an off-hand manner.

"Maybe you would feel differently... more passionate with someone else."

"I've been with other men."

"You never mentioned it."

"It's just the way I am," she repeated for good measure.

It's just the way I am. A cousin on his father's side of the family was born with cerebral palsy. The poor unfortunate walked with a spastic gait and chewed at a cockeyed, lopsided angle for the longest time before swallowing a mouthful of pasty food. Luck of the draw - no one was to blame for the cousin's birth defect. With Rita Winetraub physical intimacy was a nuisance, a distasteful ordeal to be shrugged off and forgotten as quickly as possible.

One muggy afternoon in mid-June three years earlier, Benjamin was lounging on a bench in Copley Square. Rita, who worked in downtown Boston, was meeting him for lunch. Trinity Church and the John Hancock Tower were clearly visible and within walking distance. He had only been waiting ten minutes, when a familiar face emerged from the blur of college students, shoppers and middle-aged urban professionals. Rita approached with a lilting gait, her hips rocking rhythmically from side to side. A print dress in pastel earth tones showed her fleshy arms to good advantage. Like something out of a Modigliani painting, the porcelain face, supple, elongated neck and chocolaty eyes were perfect in every respect.

Benjamin rose and went to kiss her, but at the last instant she pivoted so that his lips brushed her cheek. "You look beautiful!" he murmured. Reaching down he grabbed her hand. "Where would you like to eat?"

Rita gestured with her eyes. "There's an outdoor café two blocks down on Clarendon Street."

At the restaurant she laid both hands on the linen table cloth, palms down with the slender fingers resting inadvertently in a prayerful gesture. Benjamin reached across and cupped her hands in his own. "You are the loveliest creature on planet earth."

"And now you're repeating yourself, "she quipped, "having just said something of the sort only five minutes ago."

At that moment something in Benjamin's superheated brain went awry. Feasting his eyes on Rita, he saw two completely different women - the twenty-three year-old overflowing with elegant grace and her glacial doppelganger, who later that night would unearth any cockamamie excuse not to sleep with him. "I think I'll order a Cobb salad," Rita announced, pushing the menu away, "and maybe a slice of carrot cake for desert."

Marriage was a partnership, for better or worse. Nowhere in the ceremonial vows did it mention extenuating circumstances. After sixteen months of the drip, drip, drip of physical rejection, Benjamin broke off the relationship.

By comparison, sex with Angela was consummated in a fiery flash, a rapacious burst of lust followed by drugged sleep. The sylphlike girl with the squat nose splattered with coffee colored freckles and perpetual sloe-eyed grin was an instinctual, primordial creature. Angela didn't think things through. Emotional urges surged and ebbed away with kaleidoscopic whimsy. One night when they were getting ready for bed, Benjamin said, "I found this clever book of poems at the library."

"Poetry... it's not my cup of tea," Angela muttered. "Not interested!"

"Just wait a minute." Reaching for a well-thumbed paperback on the bedside table, he flipped through the pages in search of a particular passage. Locating the verse, he began reading in a singsong cadence:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you;

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you truly want;

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth

Cross the doorsill

Where the two worlds touch.

The door is...

Angela groaned. Reaching out, she splayed her fingers over the page and roughly pushed the book away. "Enough already!"

"Rumi was one of the greatest Persian poets, but perhaps this particular verse is too esoteric for your tastes?"

"Silly... dim-witted." She rejected his rationalization. "That business about the doorsill where the two worlds touch is just dopey drivel."

"I won't force you to listen if you don't want to." Returning the book to the night table, he glanced at her uncertainly. Angela was staring at the stucco pattern on the bedroom ceiling. "Let's go to Maine this weekend."

"Boothbay Harbor or Old Orchard Beach are nice this time of year."

"No. I had something else in mind," she parried his suggestion. "The shopping mall at Kittery... they've got designer fashions at wholesale prices."

Several of Benjamin's friends from high school had already married and abruptly divorced. They chose poorly, impulsively, or not at all. Over the four-dimensional continuum of time, devotion was little more than an emotional crap shoot. One encountered romantic bliss between the covers of a Harlequin paperback; everything else was Russian roulette.

Don't turn your back on happiness in pursuit of perfection!

Benjamin fell back on this saccharine adage, when deciding that Angela should be his soul mate. In the new world order, what worked for his parents, who were celebrating their silver wedding anniversary in October, was no longer salient. He loved Angela and they would make a life together. He wasn't settling, selling himself short. No, nothing of the sort!

* * * * *

Around the middle of the week Granny Brannigan called. "Are you coming by Saturday morning?"

"Yes, of course."

"I need a few things from the hardware store," she said. "A box of inch-and-a-quarter deck screws plus a heavy-duty plastic drop cloth.

"Okay."

"I spoke to Father Stan yesterday morning and told him the wedding was off." The older woman began chuckling – more like a spastic, dry cough than bona fide expression of mirth. "The priest became rather indignant and acted as though he had been terribly inconvenienced... even demanded to know what went wrong."

"And?"

"I told him that the bride-to-be morphed into the town slut."

"By the way," Granny Brannigan blurted before Benjamin could collect his thoughts, "I also need a carton of heavy-duty staples and a pair of small brass hinges." Without waiting for a reply, she hung up the phone.

Many of Benjamin's relatives viewed Granny Brannigan as a crackpot or, at best, an embarrassment. A case in point: in recent years, she had begun wearing a black baseball cap with the National Rifle Association, NRA, logo featured prominently across the brim in bright gold lettering. "You don't even own a can of mace much less a handgun," Benjamin noted. "What's with the hat?"

"You got a problem with the second amendment?" she countered resolutely. "When you reach my delicate age, you've earned the right to speak your mind without worrying about the consequences."

Later that month at a family gathering, an irascible uncle, who could never hold his tongue, muttered under his breath, "The old coot looks ridiculous! Someone should tell her to ditch the moronic hat."

Granny Brannigan, who was standing just close enough to overhear the snide remark, balled her right hand into a tight fist then extended the index finger to form an impromptu gun. Raising her arm, she pointed the imaginary weapon at the offending party and squeezed off a round. Her frail wrist kicked back with the explosive force of the make believe bullet. Lifting the barrel to her lips, she blew a whiff of fictional smoke from the barrel of the gun.

"Shoot first, ask questions later," she called out to the offending party.

Benjamin hadn't a solitary clue what his grandmother meant by the goofy remark. Perhaps she was simply trying to goad the belligerent uncle. Granny Brannigan was like that weird eccentric who sprinkles pitted olives over a bowl of vanilla ice cream, not because she wants to cause controversy or draw attention to herself but because she genuinely enjoys the taste.

* * * * *

Grandpa Brannigan, who passed away the previous spring, was an amateur woodworker, equally skilled in both rough and finished carpentry. He built the backyard shed, the arbor smothered with deep magenta clematis near the rock garden, an elaborately routed, cherry bookcase in the den and assortment of custom-designed birdhouses. Over several decades, Granny Brannigan assisted her husband in many of these projects and learned her woodworking skills by trial and error.

In her mid-seventies, she was equally comfortable with a Ryobi table saw fitted with a ten-inch, carbide tipped blade as she was flipping fluffy sourdough pancakes on a griddle. Granny Brannigan understood the danger. She used a push stick to negotiate tight cuts and took inventory of all ten fingers before reaching for the switch. "Table saws are like feral animals," she once counseled Benjamin. "Lick your loving face one minute and rip your freakin' hand off the next."

She always took her cues from the sound of the blade. Certain noises were perfectly agreeable, familiar and even pleasant to the skilled ear. On the other hand, a piece of maple binding up in the middle of a rip cut produced a shrill, keening sound that spelled trouble with a capitol 'T'.

When he arrived Saturday morning, Benjamin's grandmother was already in the basement setting the fence on the table saw. "Are those your plans?" Benjamin indicated a hodge-podge of pages scattered about the workbench.

"See for yourself," she handed him the drawing.

The cold frame would be four feet long with a plastic-covered lid that sloped gently toward the front of the project. Lap joints held the rectangular lid together with plastic sheeting stretched across the inner surface and stapled firmly on all sides. A miniature greenhouse for less than five dollars! Benjamin pointed at a piece of wood resting nearby. "You're gonna rip that stud in one pass?"

"Too dangerous!" His grandmother rotated the crank on the front of the saw, lowering the blade until it was almost flush with the table's surface. "We'll do it in tiny increments."

Reaching for the switch, the tool came alive with a brutal, metallic whine. Positioning the first board firmly up against the fence, she eased the fir into the saw. The shallow kerf cut like butter. When the rear portion of the board was a foot from the whirring blade, Granny Brannigan released her grip and Benjamin pulled the board the rest of the way. Flipping the wood end-over-end, the twosome repeated the tedious process.

A minute later the thick board came apart in two equal sections. "Three more cuts and we're done!" The woman repositioned her wire-rimmed glasses back on the bridge of her nose.

"You'll want to drill pilot holes," Benjamin cautioned, when the rest of the lumber was cut, "so the wood doesn't crack, when you fasten the sides together.

"I won't forget." Granny Brannigan raised the bladed and wedged a piece of scrap wood firmly against the miter gauge. She made a pass for the lap joint, measured the depth then adjusted the cut accordingly.

* * * * *

Later that afternoon the phone rang. Benjamin?" Angela's voice was composed, friendly enough in a distant sort of way.

"Yes?"

"How're you doing?"

How was he doing? The woman had just upended his universe, turned his guts inside out. "What do you want?"

"I'd like to stop by and collect the rest of my belongings."

Benjamin's brain went blank. In a fit of sadistic rage following the breakup, he toyed with the idea of doing something sadistic like piling all her personal effects in the back yard, dousing them with gasoline and lighting a bonfire. But the mayor's office just passed legislation the previous year, and outside burning required a municipal permit from the fire department.

He also considered carting Angela's clothing and accoutrements - the frilly, push-up bras from Victoria's Secret, French-cut bikini underwear and hundred-dollar, Michael Kors shoes - to the Salvation Army where refugees from an assortment of third world banana republics could indulge themselves in a stylish feeding frenzy. "When did you want to come," Benjamin stammered.

"Now if it's not too inconvenient." Her voice was remote, bordering on impersonal. Scarcely a week had passed and Angela had moved on, given Benjamin the bum's rush. The wedding that never happened and idyllic life they meticulously planned together were little more than an historical artifact.

"When did you realize that you were a hedonist?"

"Excuse me?"

"You can come now to collect your stuff. I'll leave the front door ajar. Just lock it behind you when you leave."

"You won't be there?"

"No. It's less awkward this way."

Benjamin drove to a sports bar a mile from his apartment and watched the Boston Celtics battle the Cleveland Cavaliers with LeBron James in the first game of the NBA playoffs. With Boston up by twenty points at halftime, the game was a complete rout. Returning home, Angela was long gone. He showered and went to bed but not before remembering a curious incident.

As he was leaving after his last visit to Granny Brannigan, the woman suddenly began snapping her arthritic fingers fitfully as thought trying to recall some fogbound memory from the primordial past. "There was this massive book in four volumes... twelve hundred pages in all." "Anthony Adverse... that's what the novel was called. Hervey Allen was the author. Anthony Adverse - they even made it into a movie in 1936 with Olivia de Havilland in the lead role."

"Why are you telling me this?" Benjamin pressed.

"One of the main characters, a middle-aged housekeeper was a hedonist." Granny Brannigan began to giggle uncontrollably, "an insatiable nymphomaniac as I remember." With a rickety, rheumatic gait, she shambled closer and thumped her grandson on the forearm. "Angela is selfish and crass. The young girl lacks common decency. Her sexual predilections are more a matter of convenience than personal conviction." "The housekeeper in Anthony Adverse was a hedonist in the truest sense of the word. Angela's just a spoiled brat."

* * * * *

Benjamin stopped by his grandmother's house a month later and found the woman in the back yard crouched over the newly-minted cold frame. The plastic window swung far back, she indicated a thermometer propped up in the corner next to a pot of red pepper seedlings. "Gotta be careful. With the lid down, temperatures can easily climb to well over a hundred degrees!"

Benjamin was studying a row of butter crunch lettuce. Each plant hugged the earth, the emerald green leaves unfolding in a profusion of succulent new growth. At the rear of the cold frame a half dozen beefsteak tomato plants swayed in a light breeze. The young vegetation already stood a foot high, the sturdy stalks coated with a gossamer, grayish film. All was right in the world. Granny Brannigan placed a package of cucumber seeds to one side. "I'm taking a break. Would you like a cup of hot chocolate?"

Since he was a young child, his grandmother regularly treated him to the recurring ritual of a plate of sugar cookies and hot chocolate. In the kitchen Granny Brannigan turned the stove on and poured milk into a copper pan. Adding several teaspoons of cocoa, she briskly stirred the liquid with a metal whisk.

"That's a lot of reading material." Benjamin indicated a stack of books on the nearby counter.

"I'm partial to the Victorian writers." She added a pinch of salt and continued stirring the milk. "Hardy, Austin, Elliot, Trollope and Collins."

"You didn't mention Dickens."

"I was never terribly fond of him." Granny Brannigan poured the cocoa into mugs, which she placed on the table and set out a plate of cookies.

Benjamin wandered over to the counter and lifted the topmost book from the pile. "Far from the Madding Crowd," After reading the title he replaced it on the pile.

She nudged the sugar cookies in her grandson's general direction. "A bittersweet story of unrequited love," she noted sardonically, "not unlike your current predicament."

The room fell silent. Sipping at her cocoa, Granny Brannigan said, "Mitzi Trahan's granddaughter, Elena, works in reference at the public library."

Mitzi Trahan had been his grandmother's best friend since high school. In recent years, she suffered a mild stroke and was confined to a nursing home. Granny Brannigan still visited the disabled woman every few months.

"I wasn't aware."

"Elena helped me locate these books and, afterwards, we had a nice chat."

"About literature?"

"About you," she replied rather abruptly and began stirring her cocoa. "I got a bit carried away and told her about your romantic debacle."

Benjamin squirmed and turned red in the face. "I wish you hadn't."

She raised a hand splaying the fingers in a placating gesture. "As I said, I got slightly carried away and one thing led to another." Averting her eyes, she ran a crooked finger around the rim of the mug. "I asked Elena if she wouldn't mind spending time with my favorite grandson."

"A date?"."

"Not exactly. Let's just call it..." Granny Brannigan never bothered finishing the sentence. Rather, she rose and began fishing bout in her handbag until she located a crumpled slip of paper, which she handed to Benjamin.

"What's this?"

"Elena Trahan's telephone number." She sat down, cracked a sugar cookie in half and raised the smaller portion in her lips. "The girl isn't in the habit of going out with men she hasn't been formally introduced to but said she would make an exception because of my relationship with her grandmother."

"I know nothing about the woman."

"What's there to know?" she shot back. "Elena works fulltime at the library. In her spare time she plays third base on a fast-pitch softball team. Since elementary school, she studied French horn and still performs regularly in the community orchestra. The fall concert is in December."

Benjamin glanced suspiciously at the older woman. "You never bothered to mention what the future mother of my unborn children looks like."

Granny Brannigan lowered her eyes and began to play with her wedding band, twirling the ring in endless, repetitive circles. "Elena is a handsome girl... no Marilyn Monroe, but reasonably attractive

"She's homely."

"Beauty is subjective... a matter of aesthetic predilection."

"She's ugly," Benjamin grumbled. "How long have you been planning to fix me up with Mitzi Trahan's daughter?"

"The thought originally occurred to me when you were in middle school."

Later that night, the phone rang. "Hello, Benjamin?" His grandmother was on the other end of the line. "I forgot to mention the most important thing!"

"It's almost midnight." Benjamin, whose brain was still in deep sleep mode, sat up in bed. "When people call this late, it's usually an emergency. You scared me half to death!"

"Elena's got a wonderful sense of humor... very droll. You'd never know it to look at her but the girl's a barrel of laughs."

"You called to tell me that?" Benjamin fumbled in the dark until he finally located the light switch, before he could organize his thoughts to mount a serious rebuttal, Granny Brannigan conveniently hung up the phone.

* * * * *

The following evening Benjamin drove to the public library. As he passed through the vestibule, he took the lay of the land. The check out counter was positioned the right of the front door, children's section and young adult fiction to the rear, adult fiction one flight up. The reference desk was also on the second level. A young man was shelving books close by the water cooler. "Is Elena Trahan working tonight?"

The boy gestured with his eyes. "Second floor, reference desk."

"Thanks." Benjamin gingerly climbed the stairs and took a seat at a table a short distance from where Elena Trahan was assisting a pregnant blonde. Grabbing an illustrated manual, Jazz Saxophone: Twenty-Five Transcribed Solos, that someone had abandoned, he cracked the cover and buried his nose in the pages.

"Yes, there are several books on breast feeding," Elena informed the soon-to-be-mother, "in the maternity section, and we can request others through both the La Leche League and inter-library loan system." Lifting his head surreptitiously, Benjamin glanced at the pudgy girl behind the desk. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses framed a sallow, unremarkable face. She was neither pretty not plain. As his grandmother had so aptly put it, Elena Trahan was 'reasonably attractive'.

The pregnant woman waddled away and was quickly replaced by a teenage boy with a pronounced Adam's apple and mild acne. A half hour passed. In the middle of the table sat a globe mounted on a decorative cherry wood stand. Benjamin placed his hand on the Hawaiian Islands and sent the globe whirling on its tilted axis. When the planet finally lost momentum and came to a halt, he rose and approached the reference desk.

Looking up with gracious ease, Elena asked, "Can I help you?"

Somewhere between the table where he had been hiding behind Jazz Saxophone: Twenty-Five Transcribed Solos and the reference desk, Benjamin became flustered, lost his nerve. Anticipatory fright whittled his courage away to nil. "Yes, I need help."

The librarian waited while he collected his thoughts. "I have it right here," he mumbled feebly and, scrounging about in his pocket produced a waddled slip of paper with seven digits.

The librarian indicated the slip he was robotically waving about in his right hand. "Is there a book you'd like me to locate?"

"Yes, a book... of course a book." Benjamin took a step closer and leaned over the counter. "Rumi, the thirteenth century Persian mystic. Would you have any of his writings?"

The woman, who had been studying him intently, turned her attention to the business at hand. As her fingers tap danced across the computer keyboard, a series of offerings scrolled down the screen. "Rumi... such a lovely poet!" She noted in a mellow undertone.

"You're familiar with the author?" Benjamin was recalling his failed attempt to engage Angela.

Elena removed her Coke-bottle glasses, rubbed her eyes and leaned back in the chair. Benjamin, who didn't think the girl could see two-inches beyond the tip of her nose without the thick lenses, seized the opportunity to stare fixedly at the visually compromised creature. She was a fleshy, big-boned woman with generous curves in all the proper places, the kind of generous and inviting body a spouse could put to good advantage in the middle of December during a dreary, New England nor'easter, when the thermometer had dipped into the lower teens and snow inched up to the rafters.

"I own two of the author's books." Elena settled the glasses back on her face. "If you like Rumi, you might also want to consider Farid ud-Din Attar."

"The name's not familiar."

"He wrote a novella: Conference of the Birds. It's every bit as lyrical as the Rumi." Reaching for a pencil, she jotted down the location in the stacks where Benjamin could locate the authors.

Suddenly he leaned far over the counter and whispered, "I'm here under false pretenses."

"I don't follow you."

A second time, he pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket and held the numbers up to her face. "My name is Benjamin Brannigan and my grandmother..."

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