

### Almost Love

Copyright 2000-2015 Steven Jon Halasz

Published by Steven Jon Halasz at Smashwords

### Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Almost Love

Skunk Runs Away

The Best Night of My Life

The Woman Who Came to Dinner

Letter to Prosecutor

The Lonely Princess

Tunnel of Love

Soul Kitchen

The Breakup

Lil Darlin

About the Author

Connect with Steven Jon Halasz

Acknowledgments

To those I have loved or who have loved me.

Almost Love

It's busy at the station first thing in the morning. Cops, lawyers, victims and perps are buzzing in and out of the beehive. A short stack of papers stares at me from my desk. On top, a yellow notice titled "Charlotte-Mecklinburg Police Department Motor Fuel Emergency Over-Budget Notice." It's been a busy month for the old Mustang. Under that, an ad for a Hyundai Elantra. Under that, a subpoena addressed to myself, Detective Robert Montgomery, to appear on August 14, which is today, in the trial of Cary Rimes, a citizen of Charlotte, North Carolina on trial for the capital murder of Wayne Lugs, a young Charlotte police officer and a personal friend who was brutally and senselessly murdered last year by one of Rimes' thugs.

"Going straight to Hell," observes the chief, standing at my back and reading over my shoulder.

"I don't believe in it, Henry."

"You will, when the time comes. When will you accept Jesus as your lord and savior? It's not too late for you, not yet anyway."

"Timing is everything."

He walks away, practicing his slow, meaningful North Carolina shake of the head. I actually prefer other people to be religious. They're so much easier to get along with than atheists, so long as they don't make you wallow in it yourself.

Cary Rimes was a gangster, or anyway such of that cockroach as you find here in the "Hornet's Nest"—the nickname given to Charlotte by the English General Cornwallis while skirmishing with the city's ill-tempered American revolutionaries. After CMPD helped bust a Hezbollah terrorist ring in 2002 that smuggled cigarettes from North Carolina, where cigarette taxes are low, to states in the north where they are high, Rimes took over that business. At least he's not a terrorist but he's the next thing to it. He killed a good cop, a friend. Wayne Lugs made us look good. Whatever cops are in reality, Wayne seemed to put the lie to it. We loved him and sometimes didn't love him, but mostly we loved him. He was squeaky clean.

The crime itself was freaky. We had been trying to get to Rimes for years but he was hermetically sealed. Then one day Wayne makes a routine traffic stop on Fatty "The Pipe" Fondo, Rimes' enforcer, and the guy, he must have been on something, goes berserk and whips Wayne's face into ground beef with an eight inch piece of rebar, then knifes him in the throat.

Fatty is very much at home in prison, but lethal injection, he wasn't for that. He's Catholic and he's sure about where he's going after and wants to put it off as long as possible, North Carolina prisons these days being a far sight better than the tortures of the damned. So he sang like, well, he sang like a canary. He was on his way to do some "enforcing" for Rimes, some Russian who didn't pay for his cigarettes and needed a facial. It's just like when you have a traffic accident when you're on company business and your company has to pay the damages, the same thing goes for crimes committed while on your "employer's" business. He was doing a job for Rimes and amateur cosmetic rearrangement was part of the job description. Rimes was just as guilty as Fondo and Rimes was the guy we most wanted to shoot up with a chemical cocktail.

That's how we do it here now, lethal injection. It seems too nice for these guys. I was there when we executed David Lawson in the gas chamber in 1994. He screamed "I'm human!" while slowly suffocating in a state of utter panic for a full five minutes. I thought it really made a statement and I wish they had let it be shown on Phil Donahue like they wanted to, but it was too much for the nice people of North Carolina and that was the end of the gas chamber. They just don't understand. If they were cops and saw their friends shot down, they would relish it as much as we do.

Lethal injection might be just as bad or worse, except that the guy is paralyzed and can't scream and you can't see the panic, the writhing body and the horror on his face. I hope it's that bad. I hope it's the worst torture ever invented, and that Rimes screams and gags and suffocates silently to himself for five or ten or twenty minutes and suffers a thousand times what Fatty gave to Wayne Lugs.

I look up. Henry Fannel is out of sight but there's a woman standing in front of my desk. She's wearing a dark purplish silk dress and though she's heavily made up, her skin is as white as only Southern women know how to make it. I think of blue blood poured over fresh snow. Long, straight, jet black hair gives her the vampire look but there's a sad, peaceful expression that tells me she's not here to suck my blood.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm here about Cary." She has an Eastern European accent.

"Cary Rimes."

"Yes."

"Sit down."

She ignores my order. I look at her with some intensity but it's almost like she's not looking at me though she's not looking at anyone else either.

"Please sit down," I repeat.

"He's not guilty."

"He is. He's very guilty. He's about as guilty as it gets."

"Not guilty of that, I mean."

"The murder."

"Yes."

There's something cold about the woman. A woman in a silk dress, I want to think "hot", but the woman is icy.

She notices the chair beside my desk for the first time and sits herself down like a frosty autumn leaf settling onto a mushroom cap.

I take out a pad and pen. "What's your name?"

She thinks for a moment. I don't trust people who have to think before giving their name.

"Charlotte," she decides. Not much imagination, and not a name that goes with whatever accent she's got.

"Like the city."

"What?"

"Like the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, where we are now."

She hesitates. "Yes."

"Charlotte what?"

She thinks a bit more before replying, "Lee. Charlotte Lee."

I write it, however improbable it may be. "Do you have an ID?"

She looks in her sequin purse but it's empty. She rummages around for a few moments, then closes it, puzzled. "I must have taken the wrong purse this morning. I'm sorry, I don't have it."

"Ms. Lee..."

"Fatty was insane," she announces. "If Fatty was insane, Cary's innocent, isn't that right?"

"Yes, that's right. Are you a lawyer?" I ask her.

"No, but I talked to one."

"Fatty is not exactly what you call 'well adjusted', but he wasn't legally insane. To be legally insane, you have to be, you know, 'bye-bye', 'gone-gone'." I make a motion with my hand to indicate the mind taking a vacation.

"He was, at the time."

"Were you there?"

She thinks some more and doesn't reply. "Can't you do something?" she asks. She seems tearful except there are no tears.

"I'm doing everything I can to make sure that Cary Rimes receives everything the State of North Carolina is authorized and eager to provide him."

"He doesn't deserve this. He doesn't deserve to die. Not now, not like this."

The woman is getting to me. Gangster women disgust me. They give aid and comfort to the enemy when they should be giving it to decent people, like me, for example.

"Yes he does deserve it. Here, let me show you why."

It's not according to Hoyle, but I feel it's my sacred duty to let the bimbos and bozos of the world know what their "heroes" are really like. I reach into the box sitting at my feet marked "Rimes" and pull out the 8x10 color glossy of Wayne Lugs taken at the scene. I hand it to her. She holds it for a moment and looks at it sadly, but it doesn't have the effect I'm expecting.

"I'm sorry about this," she says sincerely as she hands it back to me.

"You're sorry?"

"Yes."

"Did you do it?"

There's no reply. She's thinking again. I hate women who think.

"What if I did? Would you believe me if I said I did?"

"No. How do you know Rimes?"

She's apparently not sure of that either. "We were together."

"How long?"

"Not long."

The sadness in her is deep, very deep. I think about someone I knew too many years ago who had that same sadness, the same dreamy, desperate eyes, someone from when I was 14 years old that I didn't know I needed until she was somewhere else.

"He helped me. I was working in a bar. It was very bad. I was using and it was like I was dead. He found me there and made me alive. He treated me like I, I don't know, like I wasn't dead."

"He was a great humanitarian," I remark sarcastically, "except for smashing people's faces."

She sighs. "He had a bad childhood. His father... Nobody's perfect."

"He is perfect. He's a perfect scumbag. So you were there when it happened, when Lugs was killed, isn't that right." Still no answer. "If you saw what happened, you need to tell me."

"I don't know."

"Don't know if you were there or don't know if you saw what happened?"

"I don't know. I think I have amnesia."

"If you saw what's in this photograph, and you saw it happen, I don't think you would forget it."

"I don't think you want to help me."

Fannel walks up and drops a one-inch case file on my desk. It's not like him to interrupt an interview.

"Pick up on this. Lawson is out for a week with appendicitis."

"Chief!" I plead, nodding my head towards the woman in the chair.

"What?" he asks. I look. She's gone. I scan the crowded station but I can't catch sight of her.

"I was doing an interview," I tell him, "but now thanks to you she's run off."

"Sorry, didn't notice her."

"Didn't notice her?" I bark. "A babe in a purple silk dress? Get a clue! Even Jesus would have noticed her!"

He walks away, offended and a little befuddled but unrepentant.

I call the D.A.

"Rimes had a foreign girl friend," I tell him.

"Hungarian. Jola Szabo. His lawyer says he sent her back after the murder. Didn't want her called as a witness I guess, not that we needed her. We tried to find her through the State Department but they say she never left."

"Apparently not. She was just here. She's calling herself Charlotte Lee. No ID. Loves Rimes and wants to help him. She might have been at the scene. She says Fatty was nuts."

"Of course he's nuts, not insane though. If you know you're nuts you're not insane. If she was there she could be a problem, though. I don't want any surprises. Run her down. Just be in court by 2:00."

"I'm over my gas budget."

"Screw the gas budget."

"Can I quote you on that? Do you have a photo? Send it to me."

I say that the Mustang is acting up and the chief loans me his Kia Rio for the day.

So where to begin. Say she was at the scene with Fondo. He didn't say anything about that. If she's going to testify and say Fondo was insane, we need something on her. Fondo himself is the only connection though.

We planted a squealer as Fondo's cell mate the day he was arrested but he was only able to get one lead, something about a guy who goes to a book store on North Tryon Street—the kind of "book store" that doesn't sell books. We never made him but I go back and try again and I watch the place for a while and get lucky. A guy shows up who meets the description and I follow him in. I smile nicely and pretend to be interested and we start up a conversation and go into a booth. When I'm standing with my back to the door, I show the badge.

"Fatty Fondo", I tell him. "Start talking."

"Fatty's mean," he whines. "He'll do things to me."

"Only if you're going to prison," I counsel him. "That's where Fatty's going. Are you going to prison? Would you like to go to prison? I can help."

He runs his hands over his face and through his hair. "You can't do anything to me."

"Yes I can."

"What."

"I'll think of something. The last guy who wouldn't talk to me turned out to have terrorist connections he didn't even know about. Do you have terrorist connections?"

"No! Of course not!"

"Are you sure? Do any cash transactions lately? What do you know about money laundering? It's a very broad subject. You can sneeze and be guilty of money laundering. Do you know any Arabs? I can make just about anybody I want to. You'd be easy, nobody cares about you."

The guy is nervous. It's getting hot in the booth and the guy is sweating buckets. He nods. He swears that it's what Fondo told him but what he tells me, it's just some Grimm's fairy tale, something Fatty told this pussy to impress him and maybe get him hot. I believe it's what Fatty told him though because I don't think the twink has enough imagination to think it up on his own.

I'm back in plenty of time to get to court. The Rio is easy to park. It's starting to grow on me. I find the D.A.

"The bookstore guy was no real help but I need a couple minutes with Fondo."

He's in a private holding room with his lawyer. Both of them are serenely confident that Fondo is going down easy and that it will just be a happy homecoming for him at Marion.

"I talked to a friend of yours," I tell him, "from the book store. You've been telling him things."

His mood turns sour and very dark. "I don't know what you're talking about." He's supposed to be cooperating and if he lies he could lose the deal and end up injected after all. The lawyer is giving him a funny look. It's a problem for Fondo that he lied about Jola, if he did.

"Who else was there when you did Lugs?"

"No one. Just me and Lugs."

"Jola? Was she there?"

Fondo is highly agitated and the lawyer is getting nervous along with him.

"No."

He's lying and he's a very bad liar. The word "lie" is flashing bright red on his forehead. I don't need a polygraph to see he's blowing a fuse.

Why does he need to lie? If Jola was there, so what? He's already pled guilty to the murder and he's going up for life. I'm not thinking that the story he told the fag is anything but a fable, but Jola was there, I'm sure of it now. Her testimony helps Rimes but could send Fatty to the gurney.

In the courtroom, my testimony goes easy. I had just a small part in the investigation at the scene. His lawyer isn't making much out of anything, but even so, Rimes sits there like a sunburned walrus, round and happy and supremely self-satisfied in his coral-colored business suit. He doesn't look like a man with a 99% probability of making it to the death chamber. He looks like a man with a card up his sleeve. We've all but got the needle up his arm though and if he thinks he's going to wriggle out of it, he's sadly mistaken. Let him have his delusions. He won't have them long.

Court finishes for the day but I can't get Fatty off my mind. Why he doesn't want Jola at the scene, I can't figure it. The book store guy's story keeps coming back and I keep chasing it away. Good police work says I should talk to the widow. Besides, I'm ready for a code six and she makes the best cup of coffee in Charlotte, and a pineapple cake with wickedly sexual overtones. For a cop, it's easy to confuse carbohydrates and testosterone.

Fiona Lugs is at home packing up. She's moving out of Charlotte and back to Nashville to be with her people. There were no kids and there's nothing to keep her here with Wayne gone. It was never her place.

"Hi Monty," she says cheerfully. She likes me but I'm not chasing after her even though she's nice enough. I can't think of going after her even though Wayne's been gone for over a year, and she's not my type anyway.

"Fee, how are things?"

"Well, you know."

"You don't have to go, you know. We're your people too."

Her eyes light up. "Are you talking me out of it?"

"No."

"Too bad," she sighs, then smiles sadly.

"I need to ask you some unpleasant questions."

"It's OK. It's not so bad any more."

"You know I don't mean anything by it. It's just police work."

"Yeah, I know what 'police work' is. Ask already."

"Tell me what you know about Wayne and Jola Szabo."

She seems puzzled. "Who?"

"Jola Szabo. She's Hungarian, a friend of Rimes."

Her face turns somber. She's searching. Then I can see that something clicks but she clams up.

"Nothing, nothing."

Now she's lying to me. What is it with everybody lying to me today, I wonder.

"Not even a little something?"

She looks down at her hands.

"I know he was special to you guys, like some kind of super hero, but Wayne wasn't perfect like everyone thinks, you know."

"No one's perfect. Wayne was a sweet guy though."

"I don't really know anything, not really."

"But you suspect something."

"Yes. There was something."

"So tell me. It might be important."

"At the beauty salon a few months before it happened, Eleanor Partis makes a comment. She says, 'Wayne better watch out messing around Cary Rimes'. I'm trying to figure out what she's talking about. Is Wayne investigating Rimes? But that's all she says: tell him to 'watch out'. When Wayne gets home I tell him about it. He's real strange and he won't say anything. He just says it's 'police business'. It's not like him. He always talked about 'police business'. You couldn't shut him up about it."

I try not to show how upset I am with what she's telling me. I just smile and finish my coffee and cake, trying not to rush, trying to have a conversation but all I'm thinking about is that Fondo's fairy tale is moving up the ladder from extremely improbable to just a shade under unlikely.

I have to put the story out of its misery once and for all. I've never had hallucinations, never in my life, nothing at all like that. Cops aren't supposed to have hallucinations. You get on the witness stand and the defense lawyer asks, "Officer Montgomery, have you ever had hallucinations?" You need to be able to answer a nice, clean, "no, never". You're not supposed to answer "not lately" or "hardly ever". And how do you have hallucinations about someone you never met? Of course "my" Jola Szabo, who doesn't even call herself that but uses the name "Charlotte Lee", may be a completely different person anyway. Rimes may have had more than one foreign babe, probably did in fact. Mine might be nothing like the real Jola Szabo. Probably the real Jola has blond hair and a tan and wears nylon slacks.

Back at the station, I take the 8x10 out of the box and dust it. All the prints are mine. Three hours later, after sifting through every scrap of security video between the front door and my office, it's clear that no one who looks like my Jola Szabo came to the station this morning. No one at all came to see me this morning. Yet on my desk is the surveillance photo from the D.A. marked "Jola Szabo". It's her, not so pasty and not so well-dressed, but it's her. I must have seen her before somewhere, but I'm a cop and a good cop, and if I've seen someone, I remember it. I never forget a face. It's like a thing with me. But when you hallucinate things, they're not supposed to be backed up with hard evidence, unless you're hallucinating that too.

I don't want to think about it. I go home.

I'm half drunk when she comes to the apartment that night. She doesn't ring but I know she's there so I open the door. She smiles weakly. She's still wearing the purple dress.

"Come in, Jola."

She takes over my Stevenson leather arm chair like she owns it and crosses her legs, then gives me a coy smile. "Is that my name? Nice place. Why aren't you married or something?" she asks.

"I was. She wasn't happy."

"Were you?"

"No."

"How can anyone be," she states.

"For starts, don't be a cop."

"You should quit it if you hate it so much."

"That's the thing, I don't hate it, I love it."

"You can't love it if it makes you unhappy."

"It's what I do, that's all."

She looks around the room. I was expecting her and I've tried to straighten it up a little but her x-ray vision sees through all that. "You need a woman," she tells me.

"Someone like you?"

"No."

Maybe someone "like her" could be happy with a cop, someone who's just a product of your imagination, or... Maybe it's time to find out just what sort of someone "someone like her" really is. I need a theory that doesn't include my losing my mind, but I only have one hypothesis.

"I found out some things. You don't have amnesia."

"I can't remember."

"Yes I know. It's not amnesia."

"So what is it then, detective?"

I hesitate. It's Fondo's fairy's fable, but I've got to try it even though it's just nuts. It's a shot in the dark.

"You're deceased."

She smiles, then lets out a snort, a high, short burst of laughter that ends abruptly.

"So, Sherlock Holmes! I'm sitting here talking to you, but I'm dead!"

"That's my theory. You died over a year ago."

She's more serious now. "OK, if I'm dead, how is it that I don't seem dead?"

I don't answer. I just look at her and let her figure it out for herself.

"A ghost?" she asks finally. "A ghost? Wouldn't I know if I were a ghost?"

"I don't know, would you? I don't know what ghosts know and don't know."

"I'm alive. I don't feel like a ghost." She touches herself.

"Where do you live?"

"Heatherwood." It's where Rimes lived.

"When were you there last."

She thinks about it for a few seconds. "This morning."

"You don't remember that, do you. You're just making it up. You think you must have been there in the morning so you're just saying that."

"I have amnesia."

"No, I don't think you do."

"OK. If I'm dead, how did I die?"

"Fatty."

"OK I remember that he was taking care of me. Why would he kill me?"

"He took care of you all right."

"Why?"

"It seems you had something to do with Wayne Lugs. You knew him, didn't you."

"I don't remember..."

"He loved you. He wanted you."

"A lot of men want me..."

"And you messed around with him."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Maybe you don't remember."

"No. I wasn't with him. I remember him now. He was goofy."

"Cary thought you were with him."

"Why would he think that?"

"Wayne was talking all over town."

"His type, they just don't do anything for me."

"A Boy Scout."

"Yes, a Boy Scout."

"Cary has a temper. He accused you."

"All the time. It was his usual act. He never hit me too hard though."

"Fondo did."

She looks down at her lap with her forehead resting in the palm of her hand.

"I don't know anything. I don't know where I live. I don't know if I'm alive or dead."

I'm not sure if the mirror trick will work or not, but I take the one out that I put beside my chair before she came and I hold it up to her.

"What's that?" she asks.

"It's a mirror. You should be able to see yourself in it."

She stares at it intently, then in a moment, she sees something. Her jet black hair turns pure white, as white as her skin, and her face contorts into a terrified look of panic and despair. She is screaming but no sound is coming from her mouth. I put the mirror down quickly. I don't know what she saw. I thought she would see nothing, but she saw something. Something horrid.

She puts her hands to her face and sobs dry tears. I let her cry it out. Finally she's finished. Her hair turns jet black again and her face is perfectly made up, as if nothing has happened.

"Your name is Jola Szabo," I tell her. "Rimes brought you here from Hungary as his mistress. He thought you and Wayne were messing around and he had Fatty kill Wayne and then you. You're buried somewhere at Crowders Mountain."

"Where?"

"Crowders Mountain. Nobody knows where exactly. Well, Fatty knows, if he remembers."

"It wasn't Cary," she pleads. "He loved me."

"He has funny ways of showing his love for people."

"It was Wayne. He was such a fool. Cary gets angry sometimes, that's all. It's just his way. He had a lot of problems but he was a very loving man."

"Most people in this city wouldn't use the 'L' word when talking about Cary Rimes."

"I would."

"You're a special woman, or just stupid."

"No, just dead. Let's say I'm dead. So now what? I don't know how to be dead."

"Go where you're supposed to go. Didn't you see a white light or something?"

"No. I don't remember. Maybe."

"You said you talked to a lawyer."

"Yes."

"Was the lawyer alive or dead?"

She closes her eyes and ponders the question. "Dead," she decides.

"Maybe he can help you."

"I don't know how to find him."

There's a knock on the door. I open it and he presents his card, "Wharton L. Sheepshorne, Deceased, Attorney at Law".

"Are you representing Ms. Charlotte Lee?" I ask him.

"That depends," he replies, "on Ms. Lee." I look at her and she nods. I invite him in and he sits down with his briefcase in his lap.

"I need to advise you," I begin, "that Ms. Lee is under suspicion of accessory to criminal activities."

"Dead people can't be accessories," he counsels. "They can't commit any crime or be sued. It's one of the good things about being dead."

"Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Then I don't need to read her her rights."

"Totally unnecessary. She has no rights."

"Not much need for a lawyer then."

"Great need," he replies. "Great need. It all depends on the trial. Everything depends on the trial."

"Rimes?"

"No!" he laughs.

She seems uneasy.

"What trial?" I ask her.

"He told me something about a trial. I got this paper." She pulls a large yellowed parchment out of her empty purse. It's in Latin.

"Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas," recites the lawyer. "She's going on trial for her life, of course."

"Of course," I reply patronizingly, but then I wonder why I'm still able to be cynical about that even though I'm able to imagine that I'm sitting talking to not one but two dead people.

"Don't worry," he oozes. "Everyone thinks like that when they're alive. It's not so bad. You just need to have good representation."

"Am I a ghost?" asks Jola.

"Well, Ms. Lee, your exact legal status is a little ambiguous. Let's just say you are 'in transit'".

"Like at the airport," I add helpfully.

"Yes, like the airport transit lounge."

"People 'in transit', they can still do things, can't they," she asks.

"Yes, obviously. We're here now talking to this police officer."

"They can cause trouble, yes? If they want to?"

The lawyer appears deeply concerned. "Best not to, though. Your status is very unsettled. You wouldn't cause problems at the airport, would you? It's the same."

I can see that she's itching to see what she can pull off. She closes her eyes and squints. In a few moments she turns into a vision of horror so shocking that it stops my heart, sucks my breath and contorts my face into a painfully extreme expression. It only lasts a moment and she's back to herself. The lawyer remains calmly unruffled but I have to catch my breath, restart my heart and massage my face back to normal.

"You're a natural," says the lawyer, meaning it as a compliment, "but I strongly advise against it. You will compromise your case."

"I don't know what good you think it's going to do you," I add. "It's not going to help Rimes. There's no way he's getting out of this. No way. He's going down hard."

"Actually," interjects the lawyer, "he's planning an escape."

Jola gives him a look that could kill, if he weren't already dead.

"Not likely," I reply.

"He might get away with it. He's going to fake his own death."

"It's been tried. We're not stupid, you know."

"He's got to everybody—deputies, the ambulance crew, people in the coroner's office. It's a complete setup. It's going to go down while he's in court tomorrow. He takes nitro for angina and they're going to change the drug. It will look convincing enough and in fact he'll be lucky if it doesn't send him over for real. They've got a 'volunteer' to take his place and they're going to make the switch in the ambulance. They don't have to take DOAs to the hospital any more, you know. They'll go straight to the morgue. There's a private jet waiting and by the time anyone knows what happened, he'll be out of the country. He has friends in Myanmar. He'll be beyond reach."

"Thanks for the tip. I'll make sure it doesn't happen."

"No!" She's half out of the seat. "Why did you tell him? I thought you were supposed to be my lawyer!"

"Professional responsibility. I'm sorry but you're deceased. The deceased don't have rights, as I said before. And I advise you to think carefully about your actions. Anything you do while in transit can make all the difference in this world, and in the next one as well. It won't be regarded favorably."

He takes his leave, in fact, he just evaporates. Jola is seething. She screams at me.

"Why don't you just let him go? What is it to you?"

"It's my job. It's all I have that means anything."

"There's more to life, you know. You're probably all job and no you."

"That's the way it is."

"It doesn't have to be."

There's a long silence. I pour myself another Jack Daniels and offer her one.

"Do you drink?"

"I don't think so."

I take a long sip. I'm looking at her and she's looking at me. The color is coming to her cheeks and her eyes are getting darker. The ice is melting.

"You're not so bad, you know," she tells me. "You're still sexy."

It's hard to tell how old a dead person is. She could be anything from about 20 to 35 or 40. Whatever she is, she thinks I'm old.

"I'm supposed to believe you're interested in me." I say. "You've made it plain enough that you're in love with Rimes."

"A girl can change her mind."

"I'm a police officer. I'm a born skeptic. And when a woman has a reason to confuse me, it makes me very skeptical."

She smiles. It's a soft, open, puppy-dog look she's giving me. She is a natural.

"In Hungary, I knew someone like you. He was with the police. He was killed. It's what sent me down. He was tough but kind."

"I'm kind. I can be kind. I'm kind to kids and dogs. With adults it doesn't usually do any good."

"Women need kindness."

"Dead women?"

"Even dead women."

I take another sip. Her eyes are infinite, or empty, I'm not sure which, but they pull me in. I'm trying to hold back but I'm taking the bait. "So what do you think is possible, Charlotte, between a recently deceased young woman and an older man?"

"I have no idea."

"It could be very weird."

"It's always very weird."

She's on her knees on the leather arm chair with her bare elbows draped over the back, her legs turned to the side in what seems like a very awkward position, but I suppose the word "comfortable" or "uncomfortable" doesn't mean anything to a ghost. I wonder what her skin feels like or if it's even possible to feel her. She reaches behind her with a contortion that might just be possible for a real woman and in a moment the dress falls to her legs. She's like a child, with small, round breasts and tiny pink buds for nipples. She rises from the chair and comes to me. It's like I'm passing out or falling asleep but still awake or on drugs. I don't know if I can feel anything or not, but the waves of pleasure come over me like a warm bath. There are lights and colors and the sensation of a silken womb wrapped around my skin. Time stops, and the infinite feeling envelops me like the universe itself. I'm suspended forever between yearning and satisfaction in glorious god-like supremacy.

It's 10:30 in the morning when I come to. She's back in her chair, as if nothing has happened. I'm naked from the waist down. I shake the sleep from my head.

"You're right," I tell her.

"What."

"I do need a woman."

"Told you."

She wants to go to court. I tell her to leave it alone but she wants to see him, she wants to see what happens. I'm thinking that she's still thinking of doing something if there's any way to help him. I don't like it that she's thinking about him like that. I want her to forget about him. I want her for myself.

I get dressed and she's with me every minute. She's going to make sure that I don't tip them off to Rimes' getaway plan. I'm wondering whether, after last night's opium-like sex, I care any more what happens to the guy. I'm trying to put together the words in my mind. Who am I supposed to say tipped me off? A deceased lawyer? I wouldn't believe it myself except I don't want to accept the diagnosis of psychosis. "If you know you're nuts, you're not insane." That's what the D.A. said anyway.

We go together to court. She doesn't like the Rio, it's too bumpy. I'm thinking she'll like the Mustang when I pick it up later from the station. Probably she's a Mustang kind of woman.

We sit in the back of the courtroom, as far away from Rimes as I can get and more or less concealed by the people sitting in front. She's trying to look at him. She has a look in her eyes that I don't like, a longing, a desire. What, at my age, makes me think that this woman can have any feelings for me? And besides, she's dead. I'm a fool. I wonder if she even felt anything. I wonder if she even did anything.

Can anyone see her? It's hard to be sure. No one's looking at me though. If they could see her, I think they would be looking. I would be.

I can see the bottle of medicine sitting on the table in front of Rimes. I didn't know he took medicine, so how did I hallucinate the lawyer telling me that if I didn't know it in the first place? Maybe I did know, somehow, or maybe I'm hallucinating the bottle now. Maybe it isn't really there. If I'm imagining a beautiful woman sitting next to me who doesn't exist, it's not much of a stretch to think that I could be dreaming up a medicine bottle. I think of asking someone if they see the bottle too but decide that I might just as well be imagining them also. The only thing that gets me out of this trap is if someone or something contradicts things but so far everything fits.

As if on cue, Rimes reaches for the bottle. He holds it in his hand and looks around the courtroom, ignoring the small argument going on at the bench between his lawyer and the prosecutor. Jola is looking at him, her small eyes straining to become larger. There's love in them, deep, liquid, generous love like a glass of Cointreau.

She's trying as hard as she can to look at him. Suddenly he sees her. His eyes grow large, then he begins to shake and the pills scatter across the table and onto the floor. His jaw drops, his face contorts, he stands up halfway, unable to balance himself completely and he begins to stumble and fall. The deputies leap at him and take hold of him and he begins to scream, a long, low, wailing scream like an air raid siren that freezes me in place. It goes on and on, then he gasps for breath and it goes on some more. He's looking straight at her but he doesn't see what I see. He sees the horror. She's confused at first, then she understands and tries to turn her face away from him, but it's too late.

He's gone bonkers. He flies into a rage. He's a big man and in that furious state he has the strength of 10 men. He's too much for the deputies and he flings them around like rag dolls. They draw on him but he hardly seems to notice. He leaps on to a chair, flailing his head from side to side, then grabs another chair and thrashes it at the crowd that has by now retreated to a safe distance. The deputies shout at him to drop the chair but he doesn't hear. He raises it over his head and is about to throw it in our direction when two cracks ring out, then a third. A red spot appears on his breast and then grows. He's frozen for a moment, his mouth open and drool pouring out, then he crashes to the table like a felled tree.

It's over. There's silence, except Jola sees what the rest of us cannot. No one else can see her or hear her but she begins to scream, holding her hands over her face, staring at something going on in the courtroom that's invisible to mortals. It chills and terrifies me. It goes on for ten minutes and I can hardly stand it. I'm like a stone. The terrible, shrill scream seems like it will break me in two.

Finally she collapses. I don't feel the need to come to her aid. I know that in a few minutes she'll be as she was, as if nothing had happened. The dead don't need our help.

When she recovers, it's the same as the first moment I saw her, immaculate white makeup, perfectly brushed straight black hair, the purple silk dress and sequined purse, as put together as if she's ready for a night out, with maybe a hint of French perfume. There's just the calm sadness, the deep, infinite sadness that draws you in and makes you want to step out of this world and into hers.

"It was too good for him," I say. "Too easy. I wanted him to get injected."

She looks at me sympathetically. "If you had seen what I saw, you wouldn't think that."

She walks up to the lifeless body sprawled on the defense table and places a hand on his brow. I blink and she's gone.

I go to Rimes' funeral with the late Mr. Sheepshorne, Esquire. We're sure she'll be there and she is. I'm thinking that with Rimes gone maybe I have one last chance with her. Maybe that's the only kind of woman that's right for a cop—a narcotic lover that doesn't need you but gives you what you want and never suffers too much.

"No trial for Rimes?" I ask him.

"Summary judgment," he replies. "Like I said, dead people don't have rights."

"And you? Will you be going?"

"Lawyers don't usually get in. I'm lucky I have this job. Gandhi is the only one I know of who's there."

"So, God is Hindu?"

"No, not exactly."

"Catholic then."

"No. All that kind of talk, it just annoys Him. Everything here is finite but He isn't."

They lower Rimes into the ground and Jola walks towards us. I wait for her but she doesn't look at me. She looks straight ahead and walks by like I'm not even there and I think I know what it feels like to be a ghost. We watch her walk across the grass in no particular direction. When she gets near an oak tree, there's a gust of wind and she's gone.

"Her case, how will it go?"

"No problems, I think. She hasn't done anything so bad."

"I wonder if I'll see her again."

"That," replies the lawyer, "depends on you. And your lawyer." He hands me another card.

After the funeral I go to see Fiona. They're loading the last boxes onto the truck but she shares her Starbucks with me and there's one last slightly stale piece of pineapple cake.

"Fee," I tell her, "maybe I am trying to talk you out of leaving."

"Don't wait 'til the last minute or anything."

"There were some things I had to work out."

"All my stuff is on the truck. The house is sold."

"I have an apartment. Put the stuff in storage for now."

"I'm not sure I want another cop."

"Yes you do. I've got a Mustang you know." Fee is a Mustang kind of woman. The Mustang seals the deal.

We go to my apartment and she goes straight for the leather arm chair. I'm either going to have to drop two grand on another one or learn to sit on something else.

"This place needs a woman," she announces.

"So I've been told. Are you religious Fee? Go to church?"

"Yes, of course."

"That's good."

"I didn't think you were much for it," she says.

"I'm not, but a man can change."

"You definitely should."

I take a long look at her. This has been a very casual start, and I think that maybe I've outgrown the craziness.

"Do you think you'll love me?" I ask.

"I don't know. Does it matter?"

"No."

"I can make you happy, though, Monty."

"Yes I guess you can."

"It's a kind of love. It's almost love." She wants to be reassuring. I want to be reassured.

"Yes, it is. It's good enough."

The lovemaking is great if not narcotic. Afterwards, I'm lying in bed and she's in my bathrobe and going through the things in my desk. "What's this?" she asks suddenly. "Wharton L. Sheepshorne, Deceased, Attorney at Law. Is it a joke?"

That's it for me. I may be completely psychotic but there's not a damn thing I can do about it but go along for the ride. It's the only reality I've got.

"Yes, darling," I tell her. "A joke. When you fall in love with me, I'll tell you all about it."

"That bad?"

"Worse."

"I'd better not fall in love with you then."

"Better not."

She gives me that look. I've seen it before, so many years ago that I can hardly remember. It's happening. She comes up to me and gives me a kiss like she means it, then rests her head on my shoulder and sighs deeply.

"Sorry," she says. "I can't help it."

"There are worse things," I reply.

Skunk Runs Away

A long time ago, about 1810 or 1840, a farm boy in some part of North Carolina was named Arle McManty. Probably his name was really Carl, but back then people didn't worry too much about names like they do now, especially not the first names of farm boys. Being as the "kh" sound requires a certain amount of energy when calling it out, and considering how people from these parts dedicate themselves to conserving energy, the boy ended up just Arle, which sounds a little like "owl", so mostly people called him Owl.

Arle was 20 or maybe 30 when his parents died and he decided he needed a wife. He tried the usual ways for some time with the help of his father's old Negro, Cab, who had more experience with wives than anyone he knew of, having had five that he could recall. He was without one at the time but was just giving it a rest. In the meantime he was counseling Arle, I mean Owl, in the matrimonial arts.

Courtship in those days was more elaborate and subtle, though probably it was the same as now, so I will leave to your imagination all the strategies that Cab aimed at the young ladies of that region, and the loss of time and fortune that Owl suffered when his advances bounced off those creatures like bird shot off granite. It's enough to say that these plans followed the conceits that men typically hold as to their understanding of that other sex.

Cab put it down to lack of sincerity on Owl's part. "I think you're the kind of man whose capacity for subjecting himself to the redeeming influence of a woman falls somewhat short of the absolute", he explained. "A woman can tell that kind of man in an instant and won't have nothing to do with him, except he's the sulky, dangerous type, and you're not that." Cab had a backup plan though. "Indian woman," said Cab. "That's for you, 'cause no white woman's goin' to have you, that's clear."

"Not legal, white man marrying an Indian woman," said Owl. "You know that."

"It's not like getting up all in church and writing papers and everything. You do it the Indian way. If it gets to not be so amenable as you like, it's easy to get out of it besides."

"Any particular one you have in mind or does it matter?"

"There's one I know of. She's a sweet young thing for an Indian. A lot of them have white in them, you know."

"I might think about that. Those Indian women they have interesting names, don't they, like Squirrel In Water, or Sparrow on Rock, and like that."

"Well, this one's got a pretty interesting name."

"So what is it?"

"She's called Skunk Runs Away."

Owl thought about the name and took a drink of whiskey. "I don't want to be married to a woman named Skunk Runs Away. That doesn't sound so sweet. How'd she get a name like that?"

"Well you know, the Indians they get a name when something happens to them. When she was maybe 4 or 8 years old, an old skunk comes around one night and starts to parading around the fire, and this little girl, she walks right up to it and makes a hissy yell like a drowning bobcat and the skunk just runs off, doesn't even wait around to spray its juice, just takes right off. And so they call her by that, Skunk Runs Away."

"How old is she?"

"About 15 or 25. It's hard to tell with Indians."

"And she's a good looker?"

"Well from all I can tell. Like I say, if anything don't work out just the way you like, it's no problem."

A meeting was arranged. Cab and Owl came to the Indians at about the time they were supposed to or maybe the next day. Skunk Runs Away was there with her family. To Owl she looked very young, though it was true that with Indians you couldn't really tell. She stood beside her father, a little behind him, as Cab and Owl walked up to her being careful to be very respectful. Owl smiled at her but it must have been the wrong sort of smile because faster than you can say "gut a possum", a six inch knife appeared with the pointy end an inch from Owl's belly. He jumped back a yard before his brain knew anything had happened. Then he put his hands up in front of him, palms towards the girl and shouted, "Whoa!" as he backed off a few more steps.

"I told you to take that away from her," Cab said to the father.

"You may take it away from her if you want," he replied. Cab did not want.

The father whispered a few words in the girl's ear. She put her head down and sheathed the knife. The father put his hands on her shoulders and marched her towards the two men.

"She's afraid," he said. "She wants to marry this man, but she's afraid."

He spoke to her in low tones and she slowly looked up at Owl. "I am sorry," she said. "I want to be your wife. I won't kill you."

Owl thought that was a good start and so they sat together, Owl and Cab and the father, with the girl sitting off by herself a little ways, and they worked out the other things that were needed. When it was all agreed, the ceremony went forward, and finally Cab and the newlyweds started back towards Owl's farm.

At first, Skunk Runs Away rode behind, her head bowed down as if she were a captive, but Owl had her come up and ride beside him. "What do you want to be called," he asked.

"My name is Skunk Runs Away," she replied.

"I mean, isn't there some short name, like a nickname, that people call you?"

"No. They call me Skunk Runs Away."

"That's quite a mouthful for me to have to say all the time."

"It's easier to say in Cherokee."

"Well for you maybe. How about if I just call you Skunk?"

The girl sighed. "You are my husband," she said. "You may call me what you want."

He liked this attitude in a woman and marveled at how sensible she was. "OK, then," he said. "It's Skunk, just Skunk."

She didn't seem too pleased but appeared resigned to her new life, whatever it might be. She fell silent for a while.

They were back at Owl's farm before dark and Cab took his leave of the new couple. Skunk made a good meal of what was there and they ate silently and then went to the bedroom. The girl looked at Owl and could see that he was restless and eager. She said to him, "Now is not the time."

Owl was disappointed, of course, but he understood. "When will be the time?" he asked. "About a week?"

She thought. "Yes, a week."

So they went to bed but didn't sleep, Owl fidgety with the presence of a female in his bed and Skunk wide-eyed with anxiety, turned away from him and clutching her knife to her breast. They finally fell asleep and when they woke, the sun was already high.

Skunk said very little but set about doing every work chore she could find to do. She worked with such an excessive expenditure of effort that it made Owl tired, so he sat on the porch and rocked for a while. It seemed that her idea of being a wife was to keep herself as busy as possible.

When there wasn't anything more she could find to do, she played with the knife, though "played" probably isn't the word to describe the seriousness that she took with that business. She sharpened it so carefully that it glinted in the sunlight and it made Owl shudder to see it. And, she knew how to use it. In the late afternoon a brazen raccoon came by that had the habit of rummaging around in the compost. She landed the blade in its eye from ten yards and served it for the night's meal.

It was not how Owl had imagined married life but he determined to be patient, as Cab had counseled him, while they adjusted to each other and the new situation. If it took a week, so be it, though he hoped it wouldn't take longer than that.

The week passed, and Owl came to realize that the reason that he had thought made it not the right time in the beginning was not the reason then, but was the reason now, so he was patient another week, at the end of which Skunk took a bath. She sent Owl outside and had Cab bring her water for a tub in the kitchen. Owl was most anxious to have a look at her, so he sneaked around to a place where you could see in the kitchen from outside. She did a good job of shielding herself from the Negro but had neglected her flank. Owl was startled to see that she was so young, very young, too young. Thirteen, maybe even less.

This troubled him. He now realized that it might be quite a bit more than a matter of weeks for it to "be the time" so he consulted with Cab.

"Well, you know," said Cab. "For Indians, that's all growed up. They don't wait too much more than that."

"She's hardly more than a child!" complained Owl.

"Now like I said, it's all the same, be patient, take your time, you got all the time in the world."

Cab spoke from a more distant perspective on the subject than the younger man. "That's not how it seems to me," said Owl.

"Well, best not to hurry things, take it just a little at a time. You're a young man, you got time in the bank."

That's what Owl did. He took it a little at a time. When they went to bed that night, he turned toward her and gently put his hand on her shoulder, then kissed her on the neck. She shuddered and was as rigid and cold as a steel rod. He continued again the next night with the same idea, and with the same result. Another week went by but he never got any farther than that.

He had been anxious, even desperate to find marital bliss, but was now faced with the prospect that he was going to have to wait for her to grow up. One day after supper she spoke to him in a very serious tone that showed she understood his predicament. "I think you will send me back," she said. Her mood was dark and fearful. For whatever reason, it seemed she didn't want to go. He didn't know exactly what would be in store if she did, but probably it wasn't good.

"No," he replied. He was getting used to her. He liked having her around. He wasn't thinking of her so much as a wife now but more as a child. The marriage now seemed to him more like an adoption. It was a troubling and unsettling ambiguity. He asked himself if this might not be all right, the way things were turning out, and decided that it wasn't. But he wasn't going to do anything about, not now.

The marriage had taken place in the spring. Before long it was late summer with no appreciable change in the state of things. Then trouble came.

It so happened that Owl, or more exactly Owl's father, had some enemies. If you own land, the enemies come with it, just like the worms and the weeds. Owl's father disputed with one of his neighbors, Elb Capshun, going back many years. Someone owed someone for something and it never quite got worked out right. A little war had broken out and the upshot of it was that the man's two sons, Amos and Lim, had gone to prison for a while over the killing of Owl's father. Owl saw it all and testified against them in court and now they were let out, they were mad as Hell and headed straight for Owl's farm.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon when the brothers rode up. Owl saw them coming and ordered Skunk into the house, then got his shotgun. He was standing in front of the porch as they dismounted and marched in his direction.

"You can get one of us but you can't get both of us," shouted Lim. It was true. Owl was aimed at Lim but the two brothers spaced themselves apart and Amos was about to draw. If Owl pointed at Amos, Lim would draw.

Amos went for his gun. It looked to Owl like the end of the road, but at just that moment, a scream like from another world, like an animal scream, with rising and falling yelps of terror and rage merging into a single bone-chilling chord, filled the air and rattled the brains of the men standing in deadly confrontation.

"Skunk!" shouted Owl, "Get back!" The brothers, taken for a start, not the least by the utterance of the word "skunk", hesitated a fatal second or two. Owl pulled the trigger on Lim. Amos drew on what seemed the most immediate threat, the charging animal, and fired, just as the flashing blade cut loose into the air on a path for his Adam's apple. A moment of stunned silence hung in the dust and then the two brothers collapsed.

Skunk lay in a heap on the ground, blood oozing from her, and Owl rushed to her side. "Skunk," he said as he gently turned her over to inspect her wound. "You shouldn't have done that."

"You are my husband," she said. "I will stand with you."

He knelt with her and tried to stop the bleeding but couldn't. Finally she said, "Call me by my real name."

"Skunk Runs Away," he said.

"In Cherokee, it's dee-la ah chu sss tee."

"Dee-la ah chu sss tee."

She smiled, then died.

They buried her beside his parents, with her full name in the Cherokee syllabary written on the stone. Owl said a few words, as best he could, reciting something about the Great Spirit out of respect for her Indian religion. He said that he had lost not a wife, but a child, the bravest and most loyal that any man could ever know.

Soon after, Owl and Cab noticed that skunks started coming around, as if they could read their name advertised on the grave marker. Owl fed them because they reminded him of her and they never squirted around the farm, not once. "They don't run away from her any more," said Cab.

Some months passed and Cab asked Owl if he was going to try again, with an Indian woman or maybe a white one.

"No," said Owl. "This woman business, I need some time." A tear traced the corner of his smile as he remembered her words to him that first night together. "Not the time," he said, wiping away the salty drop. "Now is not the time."

The Best Night of My Life

My name is Orson Rayton. It may seem like it's a sad thing to say, but I'm 70 years old and the best night of my life was my high school prom.

I'm not saying that my wedding night wasn't lovely, it was. The birth of our children, their graduations and weddings, all wonderful. But if you put a gun to my head and make me swear what was the best, the absolute best night of my life, then it has to be the night I took Hannah Betzweiner to the Wilton Patterson High School Senior Prom.

At the time, I never could have imagined how that night would stand out in such stark contrast to what came after, but then I never imagined that I would spend my life working as a pension fund accountant in the same southern Ohio town where I was born. That one night ended up being enough excitement to last me a lifetime, I suppose. I never went looking for more.

The first thing you need to know about this story is that Hannah Betzweiner was the most popular and desirable girl in school and in fact the most popular and desirable girl ever to attend Wilton Patterson High School in its entire 79 year history. I know, because I still live in the district and all my children went to school there.

The second thing you need to know is that I wasn't the most popular and desirable guy in school and far from it. Before going to university, where I decided to become an accountant when I found that I really liked adding up numbers and making them come out right, I was something of a prodigy in ballroom dance and ballet and I dreamed of having my own beauty salon. Consequently everyone in school was certain that I was a homosexual. I denied it but everyone just said that I hadn't figured it out yet, that I was "slow". I was slow, but not homosexual.

How Hannah Betzweiner and I ended up going to the prom together is a whole story in itself. There was only one guy in school who was at the same level of importance as Hannah and that was Larry Fazioso, but he and Hannah didn't get along. Fazioso was a maniac and everything he said or did was totally outrageous. He was the only person to ever streak a WPHS homecoming game. Instead of running across the field and out of sight as fast as he could, like any normal person would, he stopped in the middle of the field and did handsprings until the police came and dragged him off. He would have been expelled except he was wearing a flesh-colored jock strap that was just painted to look like a penis and testicles and besides his uncle was on the school board and argued that someone had spiked his Coca-Cola. No one thought that Larry needed to be drunk to act inane, and if his Coca-Cola was spiked it was Larry that did it and nobody else. Anyway he managed to keep from being thrown out of school.

Hannah was exactly the opposite. If Hannah had ever appeared in school in clothes that were not coordinated, it would have caused a buzz, but she never did. In fact, she never did anything the least bit unexpected. Predictability was the guiding principle of her life and she so hated the idea of spontaneity of any kind that once, when her drama teacher tried to make her participate in an improv session on threat of receiving a failing grade, she went to the principal and accused the poor woman of being a Communist.

It so happened that Larry Fazioso invited Hannah to the prom, which was the most unexpected thing he could have done and so naturally was the thing he did. He seemed truly bent out of shape when she turned him down flat. He told everyone he didn't really like her but he wanted to take her to the prom because she needed a real man in her life and going out with her would probably be "intense". Larry lusted for intense experiences, for the sense of feeling alive as he said, which led him eventually to enlist for Vietnam where he became dead but where, one assumes, he experienced a lot of intensity up until that point and probably in the beyond as well, being as he was a Catholic who cursed God at every opportunity just to see what would happen.

For someone like Hannah, who worshiped normalcy, the problem of who to accept for the senior prom was a serious one. Not too many guys in our high school were what you would call normal. There weren't that many guys to begin with. The whole class was only 47 students, 25 girls and 22 guys. And "normal" guys usually did the normal thing and had steady girlfriends. Hannah would have had a steady, I suppose, but no one was up to her standards. She really would have been better off in a large city, Los Angeles for example, where the odds of meeting the perfect male specimen would have been better than what you find in a small factory town nestled on the backwaters of the Ohio River.

Her father worked for a bank and taught her that the way to make important decisions was to use a "decision matrix". You put all the possibilities down in a list on the left side of the paper and then you make columns for each factor that goes into making the decision. Hannah listed "looks", "grooming", "good dancer", "reliable", "non-drinker" and "gentleman". There was no category for "conversation" and presumably a deaf mute would have been acceptable and perhaps ideal, but there were none in our class. In truth, there were no guys in my senior class who could carry a civilized conversation, including me, so it would have been pointless to include that category even if it had been something that mattered to her.

On the left she listed the 12 boys in the senior class who did not have steadies. She scored them in each category from 1 to 5, then added up the scores. I beat out Wallace Minkson by 5 points, gaining 3 points on him under "gentleman" and 3 points under "good dancer" and losing only 1 point to him on "looks". The category "gentleman" to Hannah meant "would not rip her dress off in the back seat of the car" and I scored 5 in that category. Larry Fazioso scored 5 on looks but 1 on "grooming", 0 on "good dancer", 0 on "reliable", 0 on "non-drinker" and 0 on "gentleman" for a total of 6, the lowest score by 10 points, lower even than Salvo "The Slob" Sobrino.

Hannah swore her girlfriends to secrecy and then showed them the results of her decision matrix, which they dutifully spread around the school. This was necessary because otherwise I wouldn't have even thought of asking Hannah. People came up to me in school with congratulations and gave me slaps on the shoulder.

I had spoken to her only once before. I was standing in line at the cafeteria one time and I asked her if she liked orange juice and she said that she did, sometimes, but not too much. I said that was nice.

She understood that us getting together for the purpose of me asking her to the prom was a problem and so she had her friends tell me that she would be in the library at 3:15 one afternoon. I rehearsed several different ways of asking her before finally deciding on, "Will you go to the prom with me?" She said yes and I nodded and walked away.

As I said, Larry had already asked her and had been turned down but he was miffed that he scored so low on the decision matrix. He insisted that he should have got a 2 on "grooming" and that he didn't drink that much, though it still wouldn't have got him even into eleventh place. When he found out that she was going with me, a "homosexual", it, well, it would have made him nuts if he weren't already nuts. It made him perhaps just a bit more nuts than he already was.

In response to this insult, he did the unexpected, of course. He asked Alaine Montrose, the class lesbian. Alaine had no sexual experience at the time but she was sure she was a lesbian because she didn't like boys. It was not difficult to imagine her as a lesbian because she had short dark hair, was plump, worked in the library and liked to read books. She used to ask me sometimes how I knew I was homosexual, which I had difficulty answering because I didn't think I was and in fact I was quite sure I wasn't. I used to tell her something like, "Well, gee, you know, I don't know, I'm not sure, you know, I know everyone thinks so, but I'm pretty sure that, you know, it's something that someone should know, should find out, and, well, I don't know how you find out, except, well, but you know, I think there's really only one way, but I suppose, you know, that, well, that's just not, you know, the thing to do, is it, unless..." I was a little tongue-tied around women in those days. I still am though I have no trouble talking about accounting issues with the women I work with.

When I asked Alaine years later why she agreed to go to the prom with Larry, she said that she wanted to go and no one else would ask her, and also that she wanted to find out for sure if she was lesbian or not by seeing if she could get turned on by the most good-looking and sexy guy in school. She said she was hoping to lose her virginity that night and see if she could be normal.

I guess you can see by now that things were bound to get complicated. This is how it happened. I had to find a car to take us to the prom and according to Hannah it had to be a "normal" car with no rust or body damage. My father had a station wagon which was not a "normal" car for going to the prom and anyway it had a piece of loose molding on the left side that was slightly bent and too expensive to repair just for the sake of appearances. That left only one option. My cousin Feldman was 26 years old and worked for a car dealer. He said he could borrow anything on the lot for the night, except he had already promised to drive Fazioso who hadn't passed the test for his driver's license yet after three tries and didn't have the family car anyway because his father was a traveling book salesman and would be in Toledo the night of the prom. That's how we ended up double dating, the four of us, me and Hannah Betzweiner together with Larry Fazioso and Alaine Montrose. At first Hannah was against it, but when I showed her the station wagon and we went to the car lot and Feldman showed us the pristine white four-door '62 Lincoln Continental he was going to drive us in, she agreed, so long as we sat in the front and so long as "the animal", as she called him, stayed in the back.

It all started well enough. Hannah had written out a schedule and a budget for me to follow. At 3:30 I went to the flower shop to pick up the corsage she had chosen, a wrist orchid that went perfectly with her powder blue empire dress. It had a lace bodice and chiffon skirt, and a bow that tied in the back and a sash. And there was a boutonniere that matched the gown but made me look like what everyone said I was but wasn't. At 4:00 I went for my tuxedo, which had a white jacket and black pants. It didn't go with Hannah's gown but in those days boys didn't wear blue tuxedos.

When Feldman came for me, Larry and Alaine were already in the back and then we went to Hannah's. There were photographs in the living room and afterwards we got back in the car and headed for the dance. I sat perfectly still in the front like a stone, trying not to touch Hannah accidentally when the car took the corners too fast and swayed. We weren't three minutes in the car, though, when Larry started on Hannah. "Gonna get some tonight, Hannah, from the homo?"

Hannah shot back, "You're a brain-damaged retard, Larry Fazioso. They should put you in a cage and show you in the zoo but it would be an insult to the animals."

"That's OK," he replied. "I've got a real woman. Ain't that right, Alaine? Or maybe you'd like to go up front with Hannah and let Orson come back here with me."

"I'm not..." I started to say, but Hannah cut me off.

"There are monkeys in the zoo with more intelligence than you, Fazioso."

"Oh, so you like monkeys! Well we got a few of them in the city, I'll bet you'd like one them."

Hannah swung around and stared daggers at Larry. "If I had to choose between you and a Negro person, it would not be an easy choice, not an easy choice at all. I might have to become a nun."

"What about you, Alaine, are you going to become a nun? Nothing but women around all the time, sounds pretty good to me."

Alaine was sitting in the corner of the back seat with her arms folded, as far away from Larry as she could get. He wasn't showing any interest in her and seemed to be only interested in Hannah.

"Hannie," he said, "why did you turn me down for this dope? We could have had a real good time tonight!"

"I am going to have a good time," she replied. "As soon as I don't have to be around you any more, I'm sure to have a real good time. If you want to have a good time, you're going to have make do with Alaine." She gave him a smug smile.

Alaine was furious. She was hoping that Larry would pay her some attention and maybe even come on to her so she could find out if she liked men, but he only seemed interested in Hannah and Hannah was putting her down besides, which would turn out to be a very serious mistake.

When we got to the dance, Larry and Alaine went their way and Hannah and I went ours. We had some nice dances. I was a very good dancer in those days and Hannah had taken dance lessons too so we cut quite a figure. It was slow dancing mostly and we stood apart in proper ballroom dance position, touching as little as possible and flowing gracefully around the room, bumping into people only when necessary to make room for ourselves.

Larry and Alaine weren't doing so well, though. Larry tried to get her to dance with him but it was a wrestling match. He squeezed her and pawed her and she wriggled and shoved him away. Finally she sat down and sulked. When they played "Rock Around the Clock", Larry got up and danced by himself, his trademark version of rock 'n roll dancing that involved twisting down as low as he could get and touching the floor first with one hand and then the other, then leaping up in the air and twisting around 360 degrees, his long black hair flying around his face like a mop. He took up a fourth of the dance floor and people stood around clapping in time to the music. It was quite a spectacle.

Larry started ignoring Alaine completely and just sat and stared at Hannah in a very creepy way. I noticed Alaine go into the ladies room looking fit to kill. Hannah complained about her makeup and went there herself soon after. When the girls came out, Alaine went back to Larry and had a conversation with him. It was many years later that she told me what she had said.

Larry had been following Hannah like radar and noticed that she and Alaine had been in the lady's room together. "What did you girls talk about in there," he asked her.

Alaine saw her chance to take revenge on the both of them and told a wicked lie. "Hannah told me that she wants you. She said she thinks you're a stallion and she wants you between her legs."

"Don't be stupid!" he replied. "I asked her to the prom but she turned me down! She doesn't like me one bit."

"She was talking about that. She said that she was disappointed that you weren't man enough to insist on taking her to the prom. She said that she wanted you to sweep her off her feet and not take 'no' for an answer, like in some book she was reading or something. She said she didn't want a man who wasn't interested enough to keep coming after her when she said 'no' at first. She wishes she was with you if you would only have the guts to not give up so easily and she was hoping to lose her virginity tonight but now that didn't seem like it was going to happen."

The unlikely story would have been dismissed by anyone but Larry, who was sure that all women, including Hannah, found him irresistible. To him, this concoction was nothing less than the confirmation of what he believed in his heart of hearts to be the truth.

He came up to us and told Hannah, "You're the woman for me, Hannah. You're all woman and I'm all man. We're made for each other. I'm not taking 'no' for an answer."

Her reply was sharp. "You're crazy, Lawrence Fazioso. Go away before I call the police."

"Call them, then," he said. "If I can't have you, then they can throw me in a cell if they want. I'm going to have you tonight. I'm going to give you what you want."

She threw her glass of Seven-Up in his face. He scowled and then laughed.

"I'm on to you, Hannie. I'm not giving up, you can't fool me."

He went away to clean himself up but kept looking back at Hannah and smiling at her and giving her nods of his head to let her know that she could count on him to keep coming on to her until he broke down her resistance.

The rest of the night he just sat and watched her, fortifying his Cokes from time to time with a small bottle of rum he kept in his pocket. Alaine sat like a statue but with a self-satisfied look on her face.

Fazioso wasn't the only one drinking that night. Feldman had talked his way into the prom and was in a dark corner of the gymnasium with Sally "The Slut" Fallasen who had come with Salvo but told him when they got there that she only came with him so she could find someone else when they got there and that he should go away and leave her alone. Feldman was loosening her up with nips from his flask and they were starting to get into some heavy petting. The chaperons were honed in on Fazioso and his antics and apparently didn't notice what was going on in the corner.

Finally it was the last dance. Hannah and I did our box step waltz in a most elegant fashion, except for when Larry tried to cut in. To "cut in" during a dance, you're supposed to tap the man on the shoulder, but he tapped Hannah on the butt instead. The chaperons, who were the football coach and the women's volleyball coach, swooped on him like a pair of angry boars and the next thing he knew he was outside the gymnasium waiting for us to come out. We saw him pacing around and went out the side door and managed to get to the car without his noticing us.

Feldman was already in the front seat of the car with Sally, who had her dress hiked up to her waist but was still wearing her girdle and hose. Feldman was stroking her between the legs. Hannah was disgusted and wouldn't get into the front with them so we got into the back seat and told Feldman to "drive", but he just kept telling us, "just a minute, just a minute". Meanwhile Fazioso spotted us and came trotting towards the car dragging Alaine along behind him. We yelled at Feldman to get going and he did, but the parking lot was jammed with cars leaving the dance and we were stuck in traffic. We locked the doors when Fazioso caught up with us but he started pounding on the car and then took out his keys and screamed that he was going to "key" the car if we didn't let him in, which scared Feldman into unlocking the passenger-side front door. Fazioso opened it and shoved Alaine inside, then reached in and unlocked the back door and plopped himself into the back next to Hannah. "Get going!" he barked.

At first he sat there, drunk and fuming, staring, his gangly body taking up half the back seat. Hannah was pressed up against me as hard as she could trying to stay as far away from him as possible.

My flesh was on fire. I had never been pressed up against a girl like that and Hannah was a voluptuous woman. Between that and the action going on in the front seat I had a major hard-on. Sally was moaning softly as Feldman pulled out into the street, driving with his left hand only. Fazioso must have been getting bothered too because he started looking at Hannah and started moving closer to her, slowly at first, to see how she would react. Suddenly, with one abrupt motion, he was pressed up against her. Hannah had quietly reached into her purse and grasped a pair of nail scissors which she clutched firmly in her left hand, so that when Larry made his move, she thrust the point of them within an inch of his right eye and shouted "Back!", and he backed off. Meanwhile Alaine was curled up against the door in the front seat looking out the window, trying to ignore Sally's noisy writhing and looking like she was about to open the door any minute and jump out.

We were headed for the Riverside Bar and Grill for our after-prom dinner, which was out in the country. Actually the high school and everything else where we lived was "out in the country", but the Riverside was even more so. The two-lane road was dark and narrow and went up and down hills as it wound along the Ohio River. Despite being drunk and having one hand occupied with Sally, Feldman was doing a surprisingly good job of navigating the Lincoln around the curves that sprang up suddenly in the dark.

Fazioso was biding his time, waiting for the right moment to launch another attack. It came when Feldman swerved hard around a sharp curve that caught him a little by surprise and sent Hannah halfway across the seat in Larry's direction. He lurched at her, and when she struck out at him with the scissors he was ready for it and caught her hand, and the scissors fell under the seat. She screamed and they wrestled. Larry managed to get on top of her but she squirmed out from under him. I threw my arms around his neck. He yelled "get off me homo!" but I held on tight. He twisted and I threw my leg over him but then landed on the floor. Hannah used me as a human shield and I ended up between Hannah on the right and Larry on the left. Hannah found her scissors and squeezed them in her fist with the points sticking out menacingly between her fingers.

"I'm doing everything I can!" he shouted. "If you want it, you're going to have to give in sooner or later. I'll keep it up as long as you want, but somebody is going to get hurt this way!"

"You're insane!" she shouted. "I don't want anything from you, you swine! I want you to die! I want worms and flies to eat you! God have mercy on me, Larry Fazioso, I will cut out your eyeballs if you touch me again!"

"To Hell with God", he replied. "You're the woman for me and you know it and I know it and God knows it!"

Just then Sally started to come and made loud moaning sounds. The road curved to the left but Feldman didn't notice it because straight ahead was the driveway to an old abandoned quarry. Hannah screamed and Fazioso reached over me, grabbed her arms and pulled her to him. She started kicking wildly and I pressed myself up against the car door to keep from being gashed by her spiked heels. The Lincoln tore up the driveway, smashed through a thin chain and slammed into a steep gravel ramp. Sally let out a roar of pleasure like a lioness in the throes of ecstasy and squeezed her legs up to her chest. The car went airborne, landing 50 feet below at the bottom of the quarry where it smashed into a heap of twisted metal. Fortunately for me the '62 Lincoln did not have seat belts and door locks were not so reliable in those days, so the doors popped open when we hit the ramp and Alaine and I were thrown clear and landed mostly unharmed in a mat of grapevines growing wild over the top of some small apple trees, while Hannah and Larry were thrown out the other side into a pit of mud. Feldman and Sally, still in the car, died when it smashed into the rocks below.

Alain and I untangled ourselves from the vines and crawled towards each other. It was a clear but moonless night. We decided not to try to get down from the trees until daylight. We could hear Hannah and Larry splashing around in the mud.

"I saved your life!" he cried.

"I'll kill you!" she screamed.

"I'm going to take your virginity," he announced. "I know you want me to."

"What are you talking about, my virginity? I lost my virginity two years ago with my cousin from New Jersey!"

There was quiet after that for a while, then we heard the sounds of lovemaking, like hogs wallowing in slop. Alaine and I did it too, in the grapevines, then fell asleep until morning.

Hannah got pregnant and she married Fazioso, but as I said, she was widowed two years later when he died in Vietnam. For a while after the prom, Alaine and I were together, but she couldn't be with a guy who couldn't keep up a conversation so we split up. After she got her law degree and her MBA, she married a nice guy and settled down in White Plains, New York and had a boy and a girl.

Everyone thought it was just as well that Feldman had been killed rather than face whatever was in store for him for having wrecked the Lincoln, given that he had not exactly had permission to take it off the lot that night like he claimed. As for Sally, we decided that she had had the best orgasm she was ever going to have as long as she lived and so there was nothing left for her to live for anyway.

As I said, I became a pension fund accountant and a family man. In fact, I married Hannah Betzweiner and we had three beautiful children of our own who are now grown and who, together with Larry's boy, have given us seven grandchildren. People have asked me from time to time to talk about what happened that night but I always declined. Now that Hannah is gone, though, it seems like it's time to set the record straight and satisfy everyone's curiosity. People say that when you're young you need to "get it out of your system". I guess I did that night, with a little help from Larry, Alaine, Feldman, Sally, and of course, my lovely Hannah.

The Woman Who Came to Dinner

Elaine Benchville was nothing if not chic. Saturday at Jimmy'z at The Forge she stood out nicely in a silk chiffon polka-dot tuxedo blouse by Jane Doe, and at Lola Bar the week before it was a nude slip dress with a circle-stitch overlay by BCBG. Her mother liked to tease her about it, saying that if fashion were in the Olympics she would take the gold. Elaine countered that her sense of style was an asset in her job as a charity fundraiser.

She rose a little before 10:30 AM on a rainy Thursday morning in February. It promised to be a day that would send her life racing off in a new direction, for better or for worse. Her mother had arranged an invitation for her to a dinner party where the very eligible Robert Zan Vinche, visiting from Newport, was expected to attend. The dinner at the elderly Woodwrights' Palm Beach condo was not an attractive prospect and would have to be endured, but afterwards, if Robert seemed interested, she would offer to drive him back to his hotel. A newspaper photo sitting on the letter from her mother pictured a striking, unattached, heterosexual male in comfortable circumstances. Find a good man, her mother had told her, and you can stop worrying about it. "You mean, you can stop worrying about it," she replied. But after all her mother was right. Elaine was 26 years old and she found herself lonely and unfulfilled much of the time.

She walked her Yorkies, Johnny and Cash. At noon she ate a large black olive and a chicken leg, then watched The Bold and the Beautiful and As the World Turns. An afternoon nap and by 5 PM she was ready to pull herself together. Makeup: deep sullen eyes like Gia Carangi with heavy mascara that stood out boldly against her white cheeks. A long soak in the bath with Oil of Olay Daily Renewal Body Wash and a glass of Santenay Blanc 1998 Château De La Charrière, then another. No Fences on the CD: "She runs back down the hallway to the bedroom door. She reaches for the pistol kept in the dresser drawer..." Vivienne Westwood Boudoir Satin Dusting Powder, applied liberally, and a fuss-up of the all-over braids that bound her thick blond hair.

A few weeks ago, her mother, while visiting from LA, had gone with her to pick out a black Hugo Boss backless evening dress for the dinner. For afterwards, though, should things evolve in that direction, Elaine sought the advice of her gay friend Michael, who waxed poetic over a pair of periwinkle crochet knit cami pajamas from Victoria Secret that struck Elaine as something her great-grandmother might have taken on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls. Michael swore it was magical, though. "You want to be the mother of his children, I suppose." It shocked her to hear that kind of talk. The idea of motherhood was alien to her and she shuddered. She wondered, what did Michael know about marriage. "Lots," he told her. "I was once, to a woman!" But she trusted him on the subject of men. He had been right before.

She tried on the Hugo Boss. It oozed sexiness, 1932 Jean Harlow, but wasn't as clever as she liked to think of herself. Even so, it went well with the Stephen Webster bracelet her mother had given her for her birthday. She took it off and tried on a Diane von Furstenberg print but thought it looked too "goddess" for the occasion. A puff skirt by Philosophy di Aberta Ferretti looked great but it didn't show off of her well-sculpted behind.

Naked to her panties, she poured herself another glass of wine and watched her body in the mirror, turning to the left, to the right, trying out this walk and that pose, slumping, standing straight, flashing a limpid smile. She put down the wine glass and tried on the periwinkle pajamas. Men are strange, she thought. She winced at the old-fashioned blue pastel color and smoothed her hand over the fussy knit bodice, then tugged on the draw string cord, studied the crochet pant cuffs, adjusted the lay of the fabric, and struck a pose.

It's always a problem, when exactly to arrive for a dinner party you'd really rather not go to. It's good to arrive just before the first course, more than fashionably late, perhaps even unfashionably late. No reason to put yourself through a lot of tiresome dry-mouthed socializing with the nearly-departed any more than absolutely necessary. When they were sure she was in the hospital, or had fallen in love or was dead, she would show up and they could like it or not.

Guests were invited for 7, dinner at 7:30 and an 80 mile drive to get there. She looked at the clock and was a little surprised to see it read 6:30. She had almost decided for the Hugo Boss after all when the phone rang. It was Margaret broken up over breaking up again. Not a good time to get into that, but Margaret was a childhood friend from back home and Elaine felt a sense of sisterly responsibility towards her. It was getting old, though. She wished that the girl would get a new life, or at least a new patter.

"Elaine, he's done it again," she sobbed. She knew what "it" was.

"Margaret, listen, he's like that. He was like that when you met him, he was like that six months ago and he's like that now."

"I love him, Elaine. I love him. I want his children."

"And you'll have them, and him, just like he is. I suppose you think he's going to change."

"He just needs to see..."

"Yes," said Elaine. "He needs to see."

"I went too fast. I can see that now. You never do."

Elaine took a sip of wine. "I don't want to go fast. I'm not sure I want to go at all. Where should I go, Margaret? Where are you going?"

Silence, then a reply: "I'm going to call him."

"OK, call him. I have to go out."

"Where?"

"Mother arranged something. I'm seeing Robert Zan Vinche. I told you about him last year, the guy from Newport."

"The rich guy. A pill."

"I don't know. I met him just once. He was OK."

"Your mother arranged it?"

"She wants me to get married."

More silence.

"Elaine, I'm going to make my call. You think about that. I don't want my mother picking my husband. She did a crappy job of picking one for herself."

"My mother's different. And anyway, you might give it a try. You can't do any worse."

"You don't know what love is, Elaine. I don't think you've ever been in love."

The conversation was getting uncomfortable and it was getting late. "Look Margaret, I don't know what you call 'love'. If getting goofy over some guy who... Well, I don't think I need that."

"You're an ice cube, Elaine, you always have been."

"No, not always."

"Oh, that's right, Jerry. Have you heard from him?"

"He's married. He has kids."

"Oh."

"Margaret, think about it. I don't think you should call him. I think you should try again with someone else. Do what you want. I'm late, I have to go."

It took Elaine another 10 minutes to get Margaret off the phone. She didn't want to be reminded about Jerry just now. Was she still in love with him? Riding on the back of his Harley to Memphis had been just this side of heaven and the thought of him still made her sad. She drank the last of the Santenay, felt a little dizzy, slipped into a pair of Kate Spade kitten heel sandals, threw on her black Marilyn raincoat, grabbed her Bottega Veneta handbag and trotted for the garage.

I-95 was thick with trucks and she had to weave her overheated Miata within inches to get around them. Her cell phone rang. It was Margaret again.

"It's raining and I'm in traffic. There are trucks and I'm late."

"Don't do it, Elaine. You used to say how Jerry was totally Rhett. Is this guy totally Rhett?"

"No, nothing like that."

"So turn around."

"Jerry walked out on me, Mag. In the end, he didn't give a damn."

"Find someone who does!"

"I don't need a man who can't decide if he loves me more than his motorcycle."

"You're spooked, Elaine. Fight for it!."

"Why, Mag? Why does it have to be such a struggle?"

"You're 100% woman! Don't be a putz. Don't give up."

"I'm not giving up. Maybe I want someone nice."

"Nice as in nice? What about nice as in nice."

"Nice nice. I'm tired of being a punching bag."

"Punch back!"

"I do, I do!"

A near miss with a car carrier gave her a scare and she hung up and didn't pick up again when Margaret rang her two more times. Forty minutes later she turned into the gate of the Woodwrights' Palm Beach condo. At the door of the apartment, a butler asked for her raincoat with practiced disinterest, but his hard, chalky face rouged a little when he took it.

She was late, certainly. Dinner was over and the party had retired to the living room for after-dinner drinks. Old Mr. Woodwright smiled broadly with eyes that still retained their supple expression though his mouth had long since frozen into a permanent semi-frown. Mrs. Woodwright tilted her powdery head up slightly, eyes popping, and pronounced, "Do say, Elaine." Another couple, the Inderforts, sat frozen to a First Empire divan. And the beautiful, architectural Robert, standing by an end table, drew a long slow breath, his drooping eyelids opening to nearly full height and his neck flushing uncomfortably warm under his collar.

Good entrance, she thought.

"Do come in," continued Mrs. Woodwright. "We were quite concerned about you, dear, have you had a mishap?"

Elaine thought for a moment about the word "mishap". "Certainly not, Mrs. Woodwright," she said emphatically.

"Well, then," said Mr. Woodwright, "please join us. We're sorry that you've missed dinner. May we fix you something?"

"No..." she replied politely. "Thank you very much, but I'm not really hungry." She thought about that. Maybe she was. She sat down on a puffy side chair and flashed an intelligent smile. When offered a drink she took soda water only, explaining that she had a long drive back.

Mr. Woodwright continued. "We were just discussing the new President, Elaine. Mr. Zan Vinche is quite pleased with George Bush's first days in office, and I must say so am I, though I reserve my judgment until he's done more than just take the oath."

Elaine recalled watching the drama of the 2000 Presidential election unfold in the television news. The macho album photo of Chad Brock in his black cowboy hat flashed in her mind. "Yes," she replied. "Of course. The hanging chads."

Something felt wrong, but she didn't know what exactly. She didn't feel connected somehow. "Don't bore the woman with politics," said Mrs. Woodwright forcefully. "Elaine, we went to the polo field on Sunday to witness Robert's triumph at Royal Palm. Polo is such a thrilling sport. So much more to it than you imagine."

And so there was talk of polo, but Elaine said very little. She really was hungry and she felt light-headed. Lulled by the drone of octogenarian conversation, an unhealthy pallor came over her face and her eyes drifted lazily around the room. She had nothing in particular to say but it didn't seem to matter. Robert stared in her direction and adjusted himself from one foot to the other at intervals. Olympics, opera, Oprah, galas, and gardens drifted around the room like papers in the breeze. An hour passed and it was time to leave, but she had to pee. She made her way into the large, elegant guest powder room.

She looked in the mirror. It was like being in a dream, or perhaps a nightmare, as she noticed the totally unexpected thing about her appearance, the thing altogether odd even for Elaine Benchville. The last thing she had tried on before leaving was the periwinkle crochet knit cami pajamas and that was what she was wearing now. The points of her small, firm breasts stood out convincingly from behind the soft pale-blue knit, and the round, exquisitely shaped contours of her buttocks lay perfectly delineated under the clingy fabric. She felt a hot flush of embarrassment begin at the back of her shoulders, travel around her neck to her chest, and then creep up her face until her entire upper body was very pink.

"Elaine," she said to herself sternly, "you're wearing pajamas." She sobered instantly. The urge to panic rose in her like a volcano, then subsided. "Compose," she said to herself. It was her mother's word. She studied the outfit for any trace of credibility. There was none. It was for the boudoir, not the salon, and no amount of pretense could make it otherwise.

How could this happen, she wondered. Was she losing her mind? She hadn't drunk that much but she hadn't eaten much either. Mother had warned her about that, but too late now. Nothing to be done but make an exit.

She found the others in the hallway. Everything seemed to pass in slow motion. The butler appeared with her raincoat just a few steps away but Elaine could only stare at it. It was Robert who stepped up, lifted the coat from the butler's frozen arm and took two long strides in her direction, like a scene from a Tennessee Williams play. Elaine's body shivered from the embarrassment that simmered inside her. Like a music conductor directing a dirge, Robert offered her first one arm of the coat and then the other. She left it hanging open even though every instinct cried out to snatch it closed.

"I wonder if I could trouble you," said Robert, "for a lift? Mrs. Inderfort was kind enough to fetch me here, but it's out of the way for her and on the way for you, I believe."

This was the execution of mother's plan, but Elaine hesitated and an involuntary look of distress caught hold of her. She tried to form the words but could only get out, "Oh..."

"No, Robert," said Mrs. Inderfort, finally, after the awkward moment had gone on too long, "don't trouble Elaine. I'm more than happy to have my driver take you."

But then her mother's voice came to her. It was a voice that said nothing, just the music of a mother's voice, wordless but reassuring, and it brought Elaine back to herself. "It will be all right," she said quickly. "I'll take Robert."

As she was pulling away from the condo parking lot, Robert asked if she might want to go somewhere. She said she knew some places in South Beach. They headed in that direction but ended up at her condo. With Zan Vinche waiting over a glass of sherry in the living room, she stood naked before the bedroom mirror eating cold ravioli. Having already paraded herself in the Victoria Secret pajamas, she wondered, what sort of fashion statement did she want to make now? Happily, Elaine was a woman born to answer the riddle of female reproductive success.

A few minutes later, as she walked into the living room and Robert raised his eyes to greet her, it was like he had been struck on the head with one of his polo mallets. Immobile and speechless, he stared at her with the empty gaze of a man confronting his fate. On her shoulders hung the Hugo Boss backless evening dress meant for the dinner party. On her tongue she had only the phrase, "Why don't you take off that tie."

Elaine Benchville and Robert Zan Vinche enjoyed a six month courtship followed by a one year engagement, during which Robert learned to accessorize and Elaine learned that there really is more to polo than you imagine. At the wedding she wore Vera Wang, but with a thin strip of periwinkle knit fabric sewn into a seam of the all-white gown for "something blue".

The gray stone Saint John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in Newport gleamed with a profusion of white calla lilies, gardenias, orchids and stephanotis that competed for attention with the well-dressed women of New England society.

The Woodwrights were seated up front near the groom's family. "That woman has quite a lot of nerve," said Mrs. Woodwright to her husband as the first organ notes sounded and the bride appeared at the back of the church. "Imagine! Pajamas to a dinner party! It was just a little bit direct, don't you think?"

"Well, maybe, but she's a good one for Robert," he answered. "Nothing 'off the rack' would do for a Zan Vinche."

"She's a character, I give her that," replied Mrs. Woodwright as the bride started down the aisle.

"One-off," said Mr. Woodwright, his eyes sparkling as he recalled the night she came to dinner dressed for bed. "No doubt about it. One-off."

Letter to Prosecutor

Letter to Prosecutor

Seattle, Washington

Dear Prosecutor,

My name is Irina Rauldner and I am wife of Mark Rauldner. You have trial against Mark because he hited me. I write to say I don't want that Mark go to prison! I love Mark! I want only him! He hited me but I will tell you why.

I am Russian woman and met with Mark in Moscow at party for men who come for Russian girls. I looked for American man because I wanted find man for love and come to America. I love Russia but is hard to live in my country now because no money and men are not good. They drink much and many men don't have job and don't take care about their women. In Russia pretty woman can easy find job but she must give sex to men to keep job or can work in porno business. Mark want take care about me and he have good job in the army. You must stop trial because Mark must not lose job! Mark likes work in American army. His work is find young men for the army who will go to Iraq and fight with terrorists. If Mark lose this job, it will be like in Russia. I don't want welfare and I don't want other man, only Mark.  
When I met Mark in Moscow he was not like other at party. This other men wanted have sex and then leave woman but I wanted find man to be his wife. During party Mark talked with me very much about when he was child and parents and what was his dream about life. I didn't understand all but I listened his nice voice. His voice was strong and kind and I saw his feelings. He told that he had wife before but they didn't have children and she went away. I told that I want have children. He is not young man but he also want have children. He was lonely man and he wanted find woman who will stay with him and not go away. I will stay with man if I love him! I will not ever go away! Then we went to restaurant and we ate nice food, not cheap. He smiled to me and we drinked champane and laughed because I don't talk good English and I said stupid things. He buyed nice desert for me and then we went to his hotel for drink. He told that I don't need have sex with him but I wanted have sex because he was good man and I wanted him very much. He was in Moscow 3 days then went back to America. I was very sad that he went but he must go for work and for my visa. I did everything that he told for visa and I waited six months! So long! I cryed because I wanted be with Mark in America. I thinked he find other woman and forget me and I was worry, but he called to me and told: everything is OK, don't worry. I don't want other woman. I want only you. Then I got visa and it was like my dream! He sended me ticket and I came to Seattle. He met me at airport and holded me and kissed me and I was happy be in America with Mark. He drived with me in his car to his house and told that he cleaned house for me because when he is alone he don't clean it usually. I liked this house very much and I cleaned it more and cooked good food for him and I liked to see how he eat so much. He buyed big bed for us. He had small bed but he buyed big bed made from strong wood. He is big man and in Moscow hotel bed was almost break! I feel safe and happy in this bed with Mark and I don't worry, I sleep quiet. Every morning when he wake up I already in kitchen make breakfast for him and he kiss me and I know that he love me this day.

When Mark hited me it was not his fault. If man is angry sometimes it is usual for man. I need man like man not like woman. In Russia women say: if man beat you it mean he love you. Police woman told that I am nice woman and other men will like me. I don't need this other men because I have Mark! He sometimes go with friends to drink but he go to work next day and everything is OK. He need this work for me and for baby that we want. We tryed have baby but not yet. I went to doctor and she told: nothing is wrong about you, just wait. We tryed 4 months when police took him to jail. I want baby with Mark, boy like Mark and his name will be Mark too. He will grow big and go to the army like Mark.

This is how happened when he hited me. He came home late after midnight and I knowed he was with woman. I got angry and shouted and called him bad things. I told him I will leave house and he shouted on me and called me bad things. He told that I must not leave but I told: yes, I am leaving your house. He shouted that he will kill me and I tryed call to police and he pulled telephone from wall. I told: you are bad and I don't want you more, and he kicked chair. I opened window and screamed and tryed jump from window but he holded me and hited me with telephone and I falled on floor. Then I was in hospital and they told Mark was put in jail. It was not his fault that this happened with us. It was my fault. I don't like talk about this private thing but I need explain. I thinked that I don't get baby because we have too much sex and that make problem for get pregnant. I wanted that we have not so much sex for our organs work better to make baby. I lied Mark that I have little problem in my body and can't have sex now. And he didn't do 3 days. And he went to other woman. I beg you, please don't keep Mark in jail for my fault. This all is because I told lie. I love him and need that he come home and we be together!

Mark hited me but he love me very much! I know that he love me! One day we went in car to mountain Rainer and I was happy to go to this mountain because it is very beautiful! We went very high on mountain. Mark is army man and like go for walk and we leaved car and walked on small road. Trees were very beautiful like in Russia. I thinked about Russia and little cryed because I was happy and sad. I wanted that Mark don't see my crying but he saw and he asked: why are you crying? You are not happy? I told: I am happy and I am crying from happiness. He told: no, you are not happy, you are sad. I told: I think about Russia. He got angry and he told: if you want go back I will send you back but I told: no! I love you! I love America! I want have American baby with you! I don't want go back! Then he walked very fast but I can't walk very fast because I am woman and I didn't do sport and worked only as secretary. I told: Mark, you go too fast I can't go with you, wait me! He was angry and he walked more fast and I didn't see him soon. I shouted: Mark! Mark! I tryed go faster but it was hard to walk on rocks and my shoes not for walking on rocks. I was alone on road in trees and afraid. I tryed go fast and I stepped wrong on rock and my foot was turned. I thinked my foot was breaked but was not breaked only turned but I can't walk. I sited on big rock and cryed. I didn't see Mark and Mark didn't come back long time and little rain started and wind and I was very cold. I thinked: night will come and I will die on mountain. But then I was not afraid about dying because I thinked: I am near god and he can take me easy from this place. I told god: I wanted come to America and I came and I want baby but this is too much what I asked. Then Mark came and he was running. He shouted: Irina! Irina! He cryed and his face was wet from crying. He told: I am sorry! I am sorry! I told: it's OK, I am OK but I hurt my foot. He told: no, I leaved you alone and it's not right for man to leave woman alone on mountain. I told: I maked you angry. He told: I was wrong to be angry on you. He holded me and bringed me down to car from mountain. I saw many tears on his face and they falled on me. I was very happy because he came back to me and I knew that he loved me this day.

This is not man for prison! This is good man! This is man who take care about me! I need Mark to protect me! In Seattle some black man want rape me. I was in shopping store and black man came and told: hay, you are nice woman, you come with me I have big coke. I told: you go away I have husband. I showed my ring. I told: my husband is big man in the army and he will beat you. Black man laughed and told: army man can't beat me. I told: my husband have gun for shoot you in head. He laughed more and told that he have gun in pants. I went to woman in store and she told black man that she will call police and he went but told he will look for me because he like my ass. When Mark came home I cryed and told him about black man and he was angry and walked and beat walls and then took his gun and wanted find that man. We drived in car and looked where lived black men and he told: look from window for man who want rape you. I looked and some man was like that man and Mark stopped car and shouted: are you man who want rape my wife? Man came close to car and told: no, I don't want rape your wife. His voice was not like voice of that man and I told: no, that is not man in store. We drived more and I looked but many men looked like man who want rape me. Again Mark shouted from car: who is nigar who want rape my wife? I will kill him. Other black man was angry and called police. Police came and asked me about black man and I told about shopping store. We went there with police and talked to woman who saw that man and police writed about it in book. Police told: we know who is that man, don't worry, he will not hurt you. Then we went home and I was proud that Mark is strong and take care about me. I made dinner that he like and he huged me and kissed me. I was very, very happy because he loved me this day also.

Old wife of Mark came to me and told that you want that she go to trial against Mark. She told: I will help put Mark in prison. She told that Mark beated her and she showed where Mark hited her on leg with wire. I asked: what did you do that Mark hited you? She told that she didn't do anything but I don't believe her! Mark don't hit woman if she don't do wrong thing. She told that Mark is crazy and like hit woman but I told: he is very good man and don't hit woman for nothing. I told: one day we went to shopping store and I went to toilet but when I came out I didn't see Mark by toilet. I went look for him everywhere in shopping store but didn't find him and I cryed. Then loud voice told: Irina Rauldner, your husband wait for you at information desk. I asked people where is information desk and Mark was there and he was angry. He took me and pulled me to car and drived to our house very fast. When we came home he told: always stay near me in shopping place! I told: I didn't go away from you! You went away from me and you didn't wait by toilet! He was more angry and hited me but then he came and holded me and told: I am sorry, I am sorry, you went away and I worryed about you very much. Then I told: you're right, I did mistake, I am sorry. I told old wife: Mark don't like hit woman, only if woman do mistake. Old wife told: my mistake was marry Mark! I told: it's good you leaved Mark because he marryed me and she told: you are stupid and I told that she is stupid for leave good man like Mark.

Now you know from my write to you how Mark love me very much and it's not his fault that he hited me but it's my fault. You must not have trial against him or he will lose job in the army!

_You must not keep Mark in jail because I need Mark to take care about me and protect me! God will be with you because that is for best.

Thank you for help me,  
Irina Rauldner_

* * *

Irina Rauldner

Seattle, Washington

Dear Mrs. Rauldner,

We have received information that the U.S. Army has reassigned your husband Mark Rauldner to duty in Iraq. Because of this and also because you do not support the criminal charges against him, we have decided to request a conditional dismissal of the charge of domestic battery. So long as he does not commit any further crimes within the next 3 years, there will be no further criminal proceedings against him at this time.

We will proceed against the man who is stalking you in the shopping center by obtaining a restraining order against him. He will not be allowed to knowingly come within 100 feet of you or your home and he will not be permitted to contact you in any way without permission of the court. If he violates this restraining order he will be arrested. If you are threatened by anyone in the future, you should immediately contact the police for assistance.

Included with this letter is a list I have prepared for you of the agencies in the Seattle area that provide support services to abused spouses, families of alcoholics, immigrant spouses and families of military personnel overseas. You should contact one or more of these agencies to obtain counseling and services that will help you cope with your situation.

Very truly yours,

Patricia Feldspar

Assistant Prosecutor

King County

The Lonely Princess

Once upon a time there was a princess. She lived with her father the king in a large castle. Her mother had died when she was very young.

In those days there was a rule that a princess could only be friends with other princes and princesses. Unfortunately, there weren't any where the princess lived, so the princess had no friends.

Sometimes young men who lived in her father's kingdom would see her, and stop and ask, "Are you a princess?"

"Yes," she would reply.

"How very interesting. I would like to be your friend."

"Are you a prince?" she would ask.

"No," they would reply.

"Well then," she would say, "I'm sorry, because as much as I would like to, I can't be your friend. There's a rule, you see, that a princess can only be friends with princes and princesses."

"Oh," the young man would reply, "that's too bad. Well, nice to meet you all the same. Have a nice day."

As a result, the princess was very sad and lonely. This made her father sad, so when it came time for her birthday, he decided that he would give her something that would make her happy and keep her busy. He went to his servants and said, "What can I give my daughter the princess that will keep her busy and happy even though she doesn't have any friends?"

The servants looked at each other and then nodded their heads in agreement. One of them spoke up. "A golden ball," he said. "It's what all princesses love to have more than anything else. A nice, bright, shiny gold ball to look at, and hold in her hand, and roll around on the table and play games with. It's certain to make her happy and keep her from being lonely."

The king thought this a very good idea and so he ordered a gold ball to be made for the princess' birthday.

When the day came, the king presented the gold ball to his daughter in a beautiful carved wooden box. When the princess opened the box, her eyes lit up with joy. "Oh father!" she shouted. "What a beautiful gold ball!"

The ball was just the right size for her and fit just perfectly in the palm of her hand. She held it up and looked at how it shone in the light. She was fascinated by it and her face beamed with delight. The king was glad that he had found something that would finally make his daughter happy.

At first the princess kept the gold ball in it's box, and only took it out from time to time to admire it in the sunlight. But soon she found that whenever she was away from it, she only wanted to go get it again and look at it some more. Finally she kept it with her wherever she went, and put it back in its box only when she slept at night.

As the servants had predicted, she soon began to invent games to play with the gold ball. She would spin it on the floor or the table, or hide it and pretend it was lost just so she could find it again. She set up little sticks of wood on the floor and rolled the ball at them to see how many she could knock over. She took it outside to the large meadows of grass and rolling hills that surrounded her father's castle and invented a game of throwing the gold ball onto the grass a little ways and then pretending it was lost so she could find it again. At first she threw it only a small distance, because she was afraid of losing it for real, but then she became more brave and threw it farther and farther. The gold ball was very shiny and was easy to find in the sunlight. No matter how far she threw it, she could always find it again easily.

She threw it so much and so far, though, that her little arm soon became tired and sore. She went to the servants and asked them to make a stick for her to hit it with. They made her a beautiful stick of oak with a curved end that was just perfect for hitting the gold ball. All day long she knocked the gold ball around the lawn with the stick. And so it was that the princess invented the game of golf, though she didn't think of digging holes in the ground to hit the ball into.

The princess played this new game all day long, day after day, and she was no longer lonely and didn't care that she didn't have any friends.

One day she decided to see just how far she could hit the gold ball. "I'll bet I can hit it 100 yards!" she boasted to herself. By then she had been hitting the ball for a long time, and so her arms had become stronger and she had developed quite a good back swing. She wound up with all her might and hit the gold ball perfectly. She watched as the ball sailed high into the air. It seemed like it would never come down. But then finally, as she watched in horror, it did come down—kerplop! Right in the middle of a pond.

She ran as fast as she could to the edge of the pond. She ran back and forth in front of it trying to see the gold ball, but the water was dark and muddy and she couldn't see anything.

Of course, all she needed to do was to go running to her father the king crying, "Father, father, I've hit my gold ball into the pond and I can't get it out!", and he would have sent his army of 100 soldiers to search the pond night and day until they found it. But this princess was a little excitable. All she could think to do was to sit and sob, "My gold ball! My gold ball! My beautiful gold ball!"

As she was sobbing, she suddenly heard a noise—kerplop! She looked up and said, "What was that?" She listened and she heard it again—kerplop! After a third kerplop, she looked down beside her and saw what was making that noise—a big, green, dirty, slimy, ugly frog!

"Eeeuuuu!" she shouted. "Get away from me."

The frog looked up at her, smiled, and said, "Rrrrrrggggg".

"Go away!", shouted the princess. "Leave me alone!"

"Rrrrrrggggg", said the frog with its gravely, froggy voice. "Why are you crying?"

The princess looked at the frog in astonishment. She had never heard a frog speak before.

"I don't normally speak to frogs," she began, "but if you must know, I've lost my beautiful gold ball in the pond."

"Rrrrrrrggggg", said the frog. "I can go get it for you, if you like."

"Oh!" shouted the princess. "Can you? Would you? If you could get my ball, I would be ever so grateful!"

"Rrrrrrrggggg", said the frog. "How grateful?"

"Why," replied the princess, "very grateful, very very grateful indeed."

"Rrrrrrrggggg", said the frog. "It's lonely here in this pond. There are no other frogs here, I'm the only one. It would be so nice to have someone to talk to sometimes. If I get your gold ball for you, will you be my friend?"

"Your friend?" shouted the princess. "How can I be your friend? You're a frog, and I'm a princess. I'm only allowed to be friends with other princes and princesses!"

"Rrrrrrrggggg", said the frog. "Getting a gold ball from the bottom of this pond is not any easy thing for a frog. A gold ball, even a small one, is very heavy. I will have to bring it up in my mouth, and if I swallow it by mistake, I will drown!"

The princess sighed. She thought about her gold ball and how much she wanted to have it with her again. "OK," she said at last. "If you get my gold ball for me, I will be your friend." But as she spoke these words, she had her fingers crossed, which means that she didn't really mean to keep her promise.

The frog was happy, but he felt that he was on a roll and that he might be able to do a little better in the bargain.

"Rrrrrrrggggg", said the frog. "Since we will be friends," he began, "I wonder if it might not be possible to be invited to dinner with you and your father."

"What?" shouted the princess. "Come to dinner? A frog? Such impudence! I've never heard anything so preposterous in all my life! Of course you can't come to dinner. What an awful thought!"

"Rrrrrrrggggg", said the frog. "You know, princess, I'm thinking about that gold ball of yours sitting at the bottom of the pond, where the mud is very soft, sinking deeper and deeper into the muck as we speak. Any moment now it's likely to sink so deep that no one will be able to find it ever again."

"That's blackmail!" shouted the princess. "You're an evil, terrible, bad thing to make such a demand!"

"I don't think of it as blackmail, really," said the frog. "It's just good business."

"Oh, all right," said the princess. "If you get my gold ball, you can come to dinner." But once again, as she spoke these words, she had her fingers crossed.

The frog was most pleased, and he decided to see just how far he could go.

"Rrrrrrrggggg", said the frog. "You're most kind. But as you know, it's a long way from the pond to the castle. In fact, it will take me most of the day to get there for dinner. I will be too exhausted to return to the pond after a large meal. Since we are going to be such good friends, would you mind terribly if I spent the night sleeping next to you on your pillow?"

"NO!" shouted the princess, "NEVER! Just who do you think you are? You're a reptile! I do not share my pillow with reptiles, thank you very much. In fact, I do not share my pillow with anyone or anything whatsoever! It is my pillow, my own personal pillow, for me only, and not for anyone else. Is that clear?"

The frog sighed. "Rrrrrrrrggggg," he said. "That's too bad, because I thought we were going to be such good friends. I would have enjoyed leaping about with you as you played with your gold ball, but I suppose that now you will never see it again."

The princess thought again about her gold ball sitting at the bottom of the pond, sinking deeper and deeper, descending into the bowels of the earth. She began to panic. She was desperate. She crossed her fingers again and said, "OK! OK! You can sleep on my pillow! I'll do anything you want! Anything! Just go get my gold ball! Go get it now! Right this minute!"

"Rrrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog. "OK, I'll go get it."

"NOW!" shouted the princess.

"I'm going, I'm going," said the frog.

The frog leapt into the water—kerplop! The princess waited by the side of the pond, watching anxiously. The frog was under the water for a very long time. The princess began to worry that the frog might not find her gold ball, that it was too late, or that the frog might indeed swallow the gold ball and drown. The thought of her gold ball lost in the belly of a dead frog was too awful to contemplate.

Finally, after a very long time, she heard a sound—kerplop! It was the frog! He came out of the water with the gold ball in his mouth. He was exhausted and was huffing and puffing, trying to catch his breath. He spit out the gold ball by the side of the pond.

"Rrrgggrrgggrrrrgg," gasped the frog. "Here is your gold ball. I nearly drowned!"

"Oh!" shouted the princess. "Thank you so much! But look at how dirty it is! Won't you clean it for me? I can't stand to touch the filthy thing!"

The frog was very tired and could hardly stand up, but he managed to roll the gold ball in the water to clean it as best he could and then rolled it in the grass to clean it some more. Finally it was clean enough that the princess would touch it with just the tips of her fingers. She took out a cloth which she kept just for cleaning her gold ball and polished it until it was clean and shiny.

"Well," said the princess, "I thank you so much for your kind help in getting my ball for me." She looked at her watch, then said, "My, look at the time! It's past ten! Everyone will be wondering what's happened to me! I really must be going. It's been very nice to meet you frog. Have a nice day."

She turned and started to walk away, but the frog said, "Rrrrrrrrggggg, princess, aren't you forgetting your promise? You promised to be my friend."

The princess stopped and looked back. "Did I?" she said. "Oh, I suppose I did. Well, it's too late in the morning for me to be your friend today. We'll have to get together some other day. Bye for now."

The princess started once again to walk away.

"Rrrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog. "What about dinner? You promised to invite me to dinner if I got your gold ball for you."

The princess stopped for a moment and looked over her shoulder at the frog. "Well, you see, I don't think we can arrange that for today, because, well, the cook doesn't like it when we have guests to dinner without warning him, and anyway, I don't think we're having anything particularly special for dinner tonight, nothing you would like, anyway. What do you normally eat?"

"Flies," replied the frog. "Mostly I eat flies. I do like them."

"Yech!" shouted the princess. "Well I can tell you most definitely, without any doubt, that we are most certainly not having flies for dinner tonight! I will arrange something for you on a future date. Perhaps you will come and eat in the gutter. There are lots of flies there." She started once again to walk away.

"Rrrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog. "Princess, I got your gold ball for you today, and nearly drowned doing it, and I want to be your friend today, if you please."

The princess stopped, and without looking back, said, "Look, frog, I'm a princess. Maybe you don't understand what that means. Princesses don't have frogs for friends. It's simply not done. Get it? I don't care what I said, I can't be your friend, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. It's simply impossible. I thank you very much for getting my gold ball and I hope you have a nice life there in your pond, but I'm afraid we won't be seeing each other any more. Goodbye."

The princess walked quickly away without looking back.

The frog sighed. "Rrrrrrrrrggggg," he said to himself. "We'll see about that." With that, he started hopping towards the castle—kerplop, kerplop, kerplop, kerplop, kerplop..."

It was getting dark when the frog finally reached the castle. He was tired and hungry. He jumped up on a window ledge to look inside. He could see the princess and her father just sitting down to dinner.

"Did you have a nice day today with your gold ball?" asked the king.

"Oh," said the princess, "it was terrible! I almost lost it! I got it back, but it gave me a terrible scare!"

The king chuckled. "Of course," he said, "if you ever lose your gold ball, just come and tell me and I'll send my army of 100 soldiers to look for it."

The princess felt foolish. "Yes, of course," she said. "You could just send your soldiers to look for it. I should have thought of that."

"But don't lose it very often," said the king, "or my soldiers will be angry at me for sending them to look for it all the time."

"Yes father," said the princess, "I'll be more careful." And she meant it.

Just then there was a noise. "What's that?" asked the king.

The princess recognized the familiar sound but was afraid to say anything. "What noise?" she asked.

It happened again. "There!" shouted the king. "That noise. It sounded like—kerplop!"

"You must be imagining things, father, replied the princess. "I didn't hear a thing."

There was another kerplop, and the frog landed on the empty chair next to the princess.

"Rrrrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog. "Hello princess, I've come for dinner, like you promised."

The princess looked at the frog from the corner of her eye and made a motion with her hand. "Shoo!" she said. "Go away! Go away!"

"Rrrrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog. "Not until I've had something to eat. I'm very hungry."

The king looked strangely at his daughter. "My dear, are you talking to a frog?" he asked.

The princess sighed. "Get this disgusting thing away from me, someone, please!"

The servants started to come to remove the frog, but before they could get to him, the frog said, "Rrrrrrrrrggggg, your majesty, I beg your pardon for imposing myself on you in this manner, but your lovely daughter has made certain promises to me that she now chooses to ignore."

The king stopped the servants with a motion of his hand. "Daughter, my dear," he said, "is this true? Have you made promises to this frog?"

The princess sighed. "My gold ball went into the pond and sank to the bottom and I couldn't get it. This dirty frog refused to get it for me unless I promised to be his friend and invite him to dinner and other awful things. I had my fingers crossed so I don't have to keep my promises."

Her father looked sternly at her. "Could the frog see that your fingers were crossed? Or did you have your hands behind your back? Unless the frog could see that your fingers were crossed, it doesn't work to keep you from being bound to your promise."

The princess pouted, because she had indeed hidden her fingers from the frog when she crossed them. "But," she continued, "he's a frog and I'm a princess! I don't have to keep promises to a frog!"

"Normally," said the king, "that would be true. But as we can see, this is a talking frog. I do think that you are bound to keep your promises made to a talking frog."

The princess folded her arms in front of her and pouted some more.

The king called to the cook. "Prepare something for our guest," he said. Then he looked at the frog and asked, "What would you like?"

"Rrrrrrrrrrgggggg," said the frog. "Why, there's only one thing that I really enjoy eating, and that's flies!"

"Very well," said the king. "Cook, can you prepare some flies for our guest?"

"There are some lovely dead ones on the window sill in the attic," said the cook.

"Actually," said the frog, "I only eat live ones. Dead ones, I never touch them."

"Very well," said the cook. "No problem, no problem at all." He left and a few moments later he returned with a beautiful dish full of thick, sweet pudding. The heavy aroma of it filled the room. He placed it in front of the frog.

"Excuse me," said the frog, "but this isn't flies at all. It looks like pudding."

"And so it is," said the cook, "but if you will indulge me for just one moment longer..."

The cook went to the window and pulled the drape to one side. In less than a minute the room was buzzing with flies, and they all went straight for the sweet pudding and began buzzing around it.

"OH, lovely," said the frog. He began zapping the flies with his tongue as they buzzed over the pudding. Bzzzzzzzz-splft! Bzzzzzzzzzz-splft! Bzzzzzzzzzz-splft! "Delicious!" he shouted as he licked his lips.

"Eeeeeuuuuuuugggggg!" shouted the princess as she swatted at the flies buzzing around her head. "Disgusting!" She jumped up from the table and ran sobbing to her room without dinner. She didn't go to bed hungry, though, because the servants prepared some lovely sweet cakes and warm milk for her and she had all that she could eat.

After she had gone to bed, she lay awake for a while by candle light looking at her gold ball that she had set out on her table where she could see it. "Oh," she thought to herself, "you are such a lovely gold ball. You make me so happy. And to think that I almost lost you today! I'll take better care of you from now on, don't you worry about that."

Just then she heard the dreaded sound again in the hall outside her room—kerplop, kerplop, kerplop! "Oh no!" she thought to herself, "it's that terrible, disgusting frog again! Why won't he leave me alone?"

Just then she heard knocking on the door. She pulled the bed cover up to her nose and said nothing. The knocking continued, but she still said nothing. She pretended to be asleep and made little snoring noises to try to fool the frog. Still the knocking continued.

Finally the frog spoke. "Rrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog, "I know you're not sleeping, princess. Let me in. I want to sleep next to you on your pillow like you promised."

The princess said nothing but only made louder and, as she imagined, more convincing snoring noises, hoping the frog would give up and go away.

"Rrrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog. "Princess, I will not be ignored. A promise is a promise. Let me in, or I will go wake up your father the king and tell him of the promise you made to me to let me sleep next to you on your pillow!"

The princess was afraid that her father would be angry if he were awakened. Whenever he was awakened at night, he was always very angry and shouted at everyone and it made her very afraid. Besides, she was embarrassed to admit to him that she had promised to let a frog sleep on her pillow. It was just the kind of thing that, if word of it got out, could ruin the reputation of a princess. She was afraid that her father, who liked to tell stories, might tell about how she had promised a frog that he could sleep on her pillow, and she would never be able to show her face in the kingdom again without everyone laughing at her.

"Frog!" she shouted. "You are an awful, disgraceful beast to impose yourself on a princess in this manner! I will allow you to sleep beside me on my pillow, but first you must let my maids give you a thorough cleaning!"

"Very well," replied the frog. "A good bath is just the thing I need before retiring. I thank you very much."

The maids took the frog and gave him a good but gentle scrubbing until they had removed every last speck of mud and slime. They patted him dry with little towels and sprayed him with the exotic perfume of the ylang ylang tree. Fortunately, the princess had a very, very large bed, with a very, very, very long pillow. She moved all the way to one side of the bed and the maids placed the frog on the other side, as far away as possible.

"Just you be sure that you stay on your side of the pillow!" shouted the princess. Then she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but she could not, because the thought that there was a frog on her pillow, sweet smelling though it may be, made her very uneasy.

The frog, for his part, was in no mood for sleep either. He looked at the beautiful princess and sighed. Finally, he decided to go for broke. "Rrrrrrrrrggggg," he said. "Princess, are you awake?"

"Yes," she replied, "of course I'm awake. I can't sleep a wink knowing there's a disgusting frog on my pillow."

"Rrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog. "Princess, I wonder if I could ask you for just one more favor, if you don't mind."

The princess turned her head to look at the frog. "What is it this time," she asked.

"I wonder," said the frog, "if you wouldn't mind just giving me a little kiss good night."

"Ugh!" shouted the princess. "How revolting! Kiss a frog! Me, a princess! That is quite it, my good friend. That is the living end. I'm calling my maids and I'm going to have you put out in the gutter where you belong. You are a disgusting, ungrateful, intolerable creature, and I've had all of you I'm going to take."

"Rrrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog. "You promised that you would do anything for me if I got your gold ball for you. If you don't kiss me good night, I'll make very loud croaking noises that will bring everyone in the castle running to your room, and they'll see that you have a clean and sweet-smelling but nonetheless very green and very fat frog sleeping with you on your pillow, and how will that be, then."

The princess began to sob. "Why can't you leave me alone? I'm sorry I made all those promises that I didn't mean to keep. But you've gone too far. I can't kiss a frog. It's too awful. I will surely get warts or something. It's just impossible. Do what you want. You can sleep there on your side of the bed if you want, but I will NEVER kiss you."

The frog sighed, then began making small croaking sounds, very quiet at first so you could hardly hear them, but then they got a little louder, then a little louder, then louder and louder.

"STOP!" cried the princess. "STOP!"

She began sobbing more and more. Finally she wiped her tears and said, "Frog, if I kiss you, will that be the end of it? Will you go away and leave me alone and never bother me again for anything? This has to end, or I'm sure I will go completely CRAZY."

"Rrrrrrrrggggg," said the frog. "I promise that if you kiss me just once, I will do whatever you say. If you want me to go away, I will leave you and never return, ever."

The princess looked to see if the frog was crossing its fingers, and seeing that it was not, she believed it.

"OK," said the princess. "One kiss, just one. And keep that tongue of yours inside our mouth!"

"Yes," replied the frog. "Just one, no tongue."

The princess crawled over to the other side of the bed where the frog was lying. She bent over it, closed her eyes, and pressed her lips together as tight as she could. The frog, for its part, wet its lips until they were nice and juicy, then smacked the princess with a kiss right on the lips.

"Aaaaaaaaaagggggggh!" cried the princess when she felt the cold, wet lips sucking on her face. She jumped up in disgust and buried her face in her pillow, trying to wipe off the thick, gooey frog slime. But just then, she heard a different voice, not the coarse, ugly voice of the frog, but the kind and gentle voice of a young man.

"Princess," said the voice, "thank you so much."

The princess peeked out from the pillow to where the voice was coming from. To her amazement, lying there beside her where the frog had been was a handsome young man dressed in a green leotard with brown spots on it. She couldn't see the frog anywhere.

"Who are you?" she asked. "And what are you doing in my bed! And where's that frog? If you've gotten rid of that disgusting frog, I thank you very much, but you must leave my bed immediately!"

"I'm a prince," said the young man. "A wicked witch cast a spell on me. She turned me into a frog and the spell could only be broken when I was kissed by a beautiful princess. You have broken the spell, and so here I am."

The princess could hardly believe such a fantastic story. She leaned over towards the young man and sniffed. Sure enough, the young man smelled of the very same exotic perfume that the maids had sprayed on the frog.

"Most amazing," said the princess. "But prince though you may be, you still can't sleep in my bed!" The princess called for the maids and shielded her eyes from embarrassment as they took the young man away to another room. Then she settled into her bed to begin a peaceful night's sleep at last.

"This has been a most unusual day," she said to herself as she drifted off to sleep. "Most unusual."

In the morning she went down to breakfast and greeted her father. "Father," she said, "there's someone I'd like you to meet."

The princess introduced the prince and invited him to join them for breakfast.

"A fine young man!" said the king. "But where did he come from?"

"It's me," said the prince. "I'm the frog that you so graciously hosted at your dinner table last night."

"You're the Frog Prince!" shouted the king. "I've heard about you, but I never believed it was true."

"It's true," replied the prince, "and here I am."

The king, the princess and the prince enjoyed each others' company the rest of the day. They talked about many things, and the prince proved himself to be intelligent and gentle and wise, and surprisingly knowledgeable about the world, considering he had spent some years living as a frog.

Finally, as they were having dinner, the king offered a proposal. "Young prince," he said, "I think it would be most suitable if you found it in your heart to marry my daughter, the princess."

"Father!" shouted the princess. "How dare you! I agree that he's very nice looking, and that he's intelligent and knowledgeable and kind and gentle, but until quite recently, he was a dirty, slimy frog who lived in a scummy pond! Why, he sat last night at this very table catching flies with his tongue!"

"Well, as you know, there aren't any other princes around here for you to be friends with let alone to marry, so I don't think you can afford to be too picky," replied the king. "And, I don't suppose he'll be eating any more flies, will you, son."

"No," replied the prince. "That was just something I did when I was a frog. I no longer have the taste for them."

So the princess consented and they married and the princess taught the prince to play golf. The princess won most of the time, so they lived happily ever after.

Tunnel of Love

A hospital is a place of hope and a place of dread, a place where life begins and where it ends. When you are there for someone you have loved, and the issue is in doubt, the mundane features take on surreal proportions that saturate your consciousness:

The elevator door, brushed stainless steel, opening and closing too slowly.

The raised metal buttons you touch to select the floor.

The mirrors on the walls separated by panels of faux walnut.

The soft, soothing tone announcing the arrival at her floor.

The corridor smells of disinfectant. I walk up to the over-wide oak door and knock gently. There's no sound, so I open it a crack and peek in.

She's in bed, her eyes closed, the bed linens tucked neatly around her up to her chin. She has an IV and her head is bald. She wakes from her nap and recognizes me and beams her toothy smile that has captivated me ever since we were children.

I speak first. "Rebecca."

"Thomas."

I give her a kind of hug as best I can, pressing my cheek against hers and giving her a soft kiss on the ear. She whispers to me. "I'm so glad you came."

It's been, ten years? How could I have passed ten years without sight of her? It seems inconceivable. At our age, the years flip by like the the cards on an antique Mutoscope movie drum. I sigh. "I only travel now for concerts. It's the only reason I go anywhere any more." I sit on the edge of the bed and find her hand, resting mine on hers through the cover. "Where's the family?" I ask.

"I chased them away but they'll be back. We have a half hour, maybe."

I don't want to talk about the surgery she's having tomorrow and I'm sure she doesn't want to waste our precious few moments talking about it either, but it's preying on my mind and I'm having trouble finding what else to say. There's an awkward silence, but she rescues me. "I listened to your broadcast on Tuesday. I hardly ever miss them if I can help it. I love listening to you."

"I play for you, you know. I always have."

"So you say. I believe you. I always thought I would hear you in person, at least once."

"You could... you still can."

"No, it's OK. I have this daydream about it that I play in my mind like a movie—you on the stage in your tuxedo, the orchestra behind you, the audience enthralled. I don't really need to be there."

"You are there, in the first row, front and center, every time."

She smiles.

We have a ritual that we've followed all these years. We send cards at birthdays and New Year's, exactly two a year, with a letter that's as long as we dare to write, talking about ordinary things but letting the other know that the feelings are still there. I only read them once but I keep them because I can't bear to throw them out. So as not to be too obvious about it, I keep all the cards and letters I receive from my fans. My wife thinks I have a compulsive disorder or at least an uncontrollable ego.

"I thought we would go back to the mountains again," I tell her.

"Well, it didn't work out. We spend our vacations in Israel these days."

"Just that one trip. We had just that one trip together. It was so sweet to be with you like that, even if the others were there too. I took that time for granted. I thought it would be a regular thing. I never imagined..."

"It was a sweet time, but Jacob didn't like the mountains, you know. It was hard to talk him into it in the first place. He's not much of an outdoors person. When you sprained your foot and Caroline made him take her fishing... He talked about the bugs like it was a plague. He talked about it for years. He still talks about it."

I look into her eyes. They are smiling back at me. They left us alone. It was like a miracle. I see her again as she was that day when we were alone together. Her eyes are dulled by illness and medicines now, but I see the sparkle in them from that day. Her voice is weak and breathy, but I hear the dancing laughter in her voice from that one brief moment we stole in a cabin in the mountains, just the two of us. We had been living an unspoken conspiracy, shy about falling into something reckless, tawdry, hurtful and dishonest, but sure we would be together if heaven would ever open the door to us. I'm trying to be restrained, but the words are bubbling out of me. "I thought we were going make love that day," I say.

"I thought so too but you just kept talking."

Talking has always been my one great weakness. Maybe the whole reason we love each other so much is that she seems to like listening to me as much as I like carrying on. "What did I talk about?"

"The concerts. Berlin. Rome. I asked you about them and you just started talking."

I feel the pangs of disappointment as sharp as I did that day. "You should have stopped me."

"No! I loved listening to you. When you start on one of your soliloquies, it takes me right out of myself. It's like a magic carpet ride. All the cares and disappointments of life evaporate and I'm transported someplace far away from everything."

"And then they came back too soon."

"It wasn't so soon, but it's just as well we didn't."

She closes her eyes and takes a breath, then opens them again and smiles. "Why don't you tell me about the Concertgebouw?"

She's prompting me to launch into one of my speeches. Others find them tiresome but they fascinate her it seems. I can never resist the invitation. "The Concertgebouw. It's among the best in the world. The acoustics are lively but not overpowering and it's ideal for the Sibelius. When you arrive, you feel like you're coming to a concert, not like the newer ones that are like going to work in an office building. The front is gingerbread—brown brick outlined in white cornices that make you think of wedding cake. The Victorian 'widow's walks' on the roof are so out of character with the bas-relief and columns over the entranceway. It's insanely overdone but I love it. Inside, you're transported back to the Nineteenth Century, scarlet fabrics and golden carved panels. The hall is big enough but not too big, about 2,000 people. The concerto was a stretch for Jansons. He's more at home with Shostakovich but he rose to the occasion. The cadenza in the first movement is unusual. Cadenzas don't usually take on that much importance."

"Yes, I noticed that."

"It's a difficult one."

"Not for you, I wouldn't think."

"Yes, actually, it is, even for me." The truth is, I missed a note.

"The third movement is like a carnival ride." Her head nods gently back and forth as she plays the music in her head. "It's like a waltz. I felt like dancing."

"It's quite a piece. It was recorded. I'll send you the recording."

Immediately I remember that there's every chance that she won't be here to listen to it and my face turns sad.

"Yes," she says quickly, "please do. Jacob will enjoy it. I don't need it, though. It's in my head."

I know she doesn't want to talk about the surgery, but I can't get past it. "There must be a chance or they wouldn't be doing it," I blurt out.

"There is, but not much. You probably won't see me again, not here, anyway."

The thought of it is more than I can bear. Before, there was always a chance for us, however unlikely, but this would close the door on it. "I was sure we would be together some day," I tell her, "maybe when we were old and no one cared about a couple of silly old people in love. Maybe they would just laugh at us and leave us alone."

"Life never leaves you alone. It's always there. It's just not like me to turn my back on the people who need me."

"Yes, I know. I couldn't do it either. Caroline worships me and I could never have left her, or the boys. It's bad enough that I was away so much."

There's a long silence. I stand up and look out the window. The leaves are changing. They are burning scarlet and gold in the brilliant sunshine. Soon they will turn brown and fall to the ground, waiting to be buried under ice and snow. I leave the window and go back to her.

"You were a good surgeon," I tell her finally. I know it means a lot to her. I'm aware of using the past tense, but either way, I know she's giving it up.

"Thank you, but you only have my word for it. I never operated on you."

"And you should have. I didn't trust that doctor who took out my spleen."

"I won't pretend any false modesty." Her career was so very important to her. I can hear the fierce pride in her voice. "I was glad you gave up motorcycles after that. I worried about your hands."

In a flash, the terror of that moment returns to me. "When the truck came around that corner... It was a miracle I survived with just a ruptured spleen. I wore heavy gloves when I rode but you're right, it wasn't a sensible pastime for a violinist."

"The angels were watching you."

"I think they were. I hope they'll take care of you."

"They will."

I surprise myself that I'm talking in a religious vein, but it comforts me and I want to continue. "I'm supposed to be a Christian but I never really believed in life after death, you know. Sitting with you now, I want to believe it. I want to believe that we'll have time together in some other life that we didn't have in this one. Jews believe in life after death, don't they?"

"Yes, of course."

"Do you?"

"We'll see. I'm sure they don't need surgeons, but there must be something for me to do. They need violinists, I know that."

"One hopes."

I stroke her hand. I haven't held it in such a long time. Now I can only touch it through the fabric. The pain and frustration surge up in me. I told myself that I would come here for her and leave my own issues out of it, but after all, it seems I'm useless when it comes to putting other people's needs ahead of my own, even hers.

"How did we end up like this?" I ask her. "How did this happen? We should have been together! We were meant to be together!"

She's dismayed. It's not where she wants our brief time together to go. "I don't know that," she corrects.

"We might have been," I complain, "after Linda died."

She sighs. "You were in Cleveland at least, for a while."

"I took it bad. Michael was just a baby and I was looking into the abyss, but if you had told me then that Jacob was having an affair..."

She's speaking firmly now. "It wasn't anything important. I knew it wouldn't last and he would be back. I'd been neglecting him. I didn't even go with him to Israel that year. I had just become head of the department and you and Jacob were almost the last things on my mind."

I feel ashamed for dragging all this up now, but something in me needs for it to come out. "I felt sorry for myself and I was drinking. I never drank before, you know. I wanted you to save me but you were busy and you didn't seem interested."

"I wasn't interested. It was all I could do to take care of myself. I wouldn't have left Jacob. Do you think that I could have handled a divorce on top of everything else? I was the first woman head of surgery and the pressure was suffocating. They wanted me to fail and I had to be better than better. It exhausted me. Every night when I went to bed it was like the end of a marathon and it all started again the next morning. I couldn't be there for anyone but myself and you had nothing to give me. You were needy and Caroline was what you needed."

"Well then, before that, when you first came back to Cleveland, my senior year in high school..."

"You were with Linda by then."

"You didn't pay any attention to me."

"I was interested, maybe, but you were with Linda. You needed to make the first move and if you had, my first thought would have been, what about Linda? If you could dump Linda, maybe you would get tired of me too."

"I could never leave you! I wish you hadn't moved away. It was me, wasn't it, the reason your father moved away from Cleveland."

"He had a good appointment at Yale, but yes, I don't think we would have left except for you. His grandparents died because of people who were supposed to be Christian and it affected him his whole life."

My head is verging on neurosis, swimming with images dredged from the deepest caverns of my memories. "I took it real bad when you left. Do you remember that day at Euclid Beach Park?"

"Yes of course. You were fourteen and I was twelve. We were hardly more than children."

"My mother took us there, do you remember? I don't know why, it was strange, she never invited you before. Do you know why she asked you? I don't."

"No. My mother just told me that morning that I was invited and I went. My father was furious."

"Euclid Beach! My mother and father fell in love there and my grandfather ran the 'Flying Turns'. It's so clear to me, even now, like a photograph. At the entrance there were two stone towers with an arch between them. My mother sat on a park bench under the shade trees and let us do as we pleased. We went on the 'Over the Falls', over and over again. Do you remember? It had large boats, three benches for six people, but it was the middle of the week on a school day—why weren't we in school?—and there was hardly anyone there. We had the whole boat to ourselves and we sat in the back. It lurched along through the tunnel, twisting and turning for two or three minutes, then the chain hauled it up the track and it came straight down into the water, a good 25 feet. The ticket booth was yellow with a red roof and a black stripe around it with a window shaped like a keyhole, and the girl who sold tickets had long black hair and was bored. You were dressed in white, white jeans and a white cotton shirt. How many times did we go on that ride? I couldn't begin to count. I put my arm around you in the dark and kissed you and you kissed me back. We kissed the whole ride until the boat came over the top and crashed down into the water. Then we went back and did it again."

"Yes of course I remember."

"It was delicious kissing you that day, sweet and simple and beautiful. There has never been anything like it."

"Don't be silly."

"I wanted you so much. They never let us get together after that and then you moved away. It tore me up real bad."

"I missed you too. I cried when we left Cleveland."

Emotions are churning in me like the cauldron of a volcano. "I hate your father for that," I tell her harshly. It's me at my worst. For once in my life, for this woman I care so much about, I should be generous and understanding, but my ego is raging out of control.

She's patient with me, as always. "You have to understand. You're not Jewish, you have no idea."

"If you hadn't moved away, we would have been lovers, I'm sure of it."

She gives me a stern look. "When did you do it with Linda?"

"Sixteen."

"I don't think I would have when I was sixteen."

"When was the first time?"

"Jacob."

"Jacob!?"

"Yes."

"You were..."

"I know, 22, absurd isn't it, but it was a good thing because it mattered to him. If it was going to end up like it did, it's just as well that we didn't."

"It wouldn't have ended up that way!"

"You can't know."

"How can you say that! We would have been together."

"I don't know that and you don't know that. Things happen the way they happen."

"We never did it, not even once. I was sure we would sooner or later. Let's do it now! Let's make love right now!"

Her eyes are wide and a little alarmed. "No. Don't be ridiculous. I have an IV. I'm sick and I'm awful."

"I don't care."

"Maybe you don't but I do." A sad, painful look comes over her. "Maybe it's better we never did. What if it wasn't good? What if all these years we thought it would be so wonderful and it wasn't after all. What if it was just... ordinary?"

"It wouldn't be."

"It might be. Maybe some things are better left to the imagination. I imagine you on the stage and it's wonderful, but maybe if I was really there the people sitting next to me would be annoying and my feet would hurt and maybe Jacob would be with me and he'd be restless."

Tears are coming down her face now. I've exhausted her and she looks tired. I feel awful that I've done this to her. It's not what I wanted this to be. I feel like a perfect idiot. Then it strikes me. Suddenly the fog in me lifts and it all seems perfectly clear. "Then let me kiss you. Let me kiss you like we kissed that day at Euclid Beach."

She says nothing, but her eyes answer for her.

I bend to her slowly and put my lips on hers and we kiss, a long, slow, liquid kiss that goes on and on. I'm fourteen again and she's twelve. We're in love the way you can only be when things are that uncomplicated, before the proms and the careers and the spouses and the children, when there's nothing in the world but the two of you.

Finally the ride comes to the top of the hill and we pull apart. The boat is about to come crashing to the water. My cheeks are covered in tears and I look at her for the last time.

"They'll be coming soon, Jacob and the girls," she says. "Do you want to see them?"

"No."

I get up and walk to the door.

"I'll always play for you, Becky."

"I'll always be there, Tom."

She smiles at me, her toothy smile that never darkens, not even now. I realize suddenly that I've never said the words, but I feel them at last, more than the kiss, more than the letters, more than the playing, more than the talk, more even than the sex that never happened.

"I love you," I tell her.

"I know."

I turn and walk out.

I will keep playing for her as long as she comes to hear me, and she always does.

Soul Kitchen

Most people would call us liberals. My wife Susan works as a lawyer helping illegal immigrants get welfare and I work in a homeless center. The truth is, though, that I'm more of a neocon. I have been, for as long as I can remember, a zombie, and my work at the homeless shelter creates opportunities for me to find people to feed on who will not be missed. I can't help being who I am, but unlike many of the zombies you may have heard about, I try to practice the lifestyle as humanely and responsibly as I can.

I can't remember when or how I became a zombie or anything about my life before I died. As far as I know, I have always been married to Susan. We don't have any kids that I can remember. In fact we don't have sex at all.

It was at the homeless shelter that I met Angela. She wasn't there for the same reasons as me. She was from a rich family and her father was a bank president who cheated people out of their money. She felt embarrassed about that and felt that she needed to do something for the less fortunate. One day she says to me, "Doesn't it make you feel good that you're doing something for someone?" I say, no, not particularly. She says, "Why do you work here then?" I say, it's just my way. She can't understand that. "Why don't you get a job where you can make more money then?" I make something up. I don't have the skills, I tell her. Maybe I do and maybe I don't, I don't really know.

From then on she sees me as her new project. "Your problem is you need to get some soul," she tells me. She doesn't know how right she is. She's black and black people all have "soul" and she decides she's the one to help me get some. She wants me to go to lunch with her. She wants to know where do I usually go for lunch. I make up something. She says I should go with her to a place called "Soul Kitchen". I resist but then give in. One thing about zombies that you probably don't know is that we're extremely passive and submissive, so long as we've had enough to eat.

I go with her to "Soul Kitchen" but of course I don't eat anything. She thinks it's just that I'm not used to soul food. She apologizes but we have a good time, except that I'm hungry. All afternoon my stomach is growling and after work I have to stop for something so I'm late getting home.

Susan doesn't seem to care. She doesn't say anything. It goes on like this for some time. I go to "Soul Kitchen" with Angela and then eat after work. I'm getting home later and later every night but Susan says nothing. Finally I stay out all night one night and don't get home until after she's up and getting ready for work. Still, she doesn't seem to care at all. She just smiles and says for me to have a satisfying day. I figure she must be "doing it" with some lawyer guy. It's probably why we don't have sex.

I don't care if she's having sex with some guy. Like I said, zombies don't care about anything except their stomachs. We're just really, really passive except when we don't get enough to eat. In fact, now that I think of it, I can't ever remember having sex. Except for the knowledge that it's something that living humans get all worked up about, I have only the vaguest notions of what it involves.

Pretty soon Angela starts asking me about sex. She says she's never had really good sex and she thinks it's because the guys she has known are always so aggressive and egotistical. She says that I'm different, that I'm not like those other guys. I guess that's true. She says that I'm the first guy she's ever known that she didn't end up arguing with 20 minutes after they met. I've never had an argument with anyone that I can remember and although I've seen them take place between living people I don't really understand what it's all about.

Angela decides that she wants us to have sex and wants to know how I feel about that and what about my wife. I tell her that I don't know how I feel about that, which is true, and that I don't have sex with my wife, and that I think she's doing it with some other guy. It's just what Angela is wanting to hear and she tells me to come to her place and gives me the address.

I come to her place and she's made a nice meal, pot roast and green beans, that she thinks a white guy like me will like, but of course I can't touch it. I tell her I ate before coming over, which is true, and I'm not hungry. She's disappointed but we get right down to business and get naked and get into bed.

It's an amazing experience. Angela is a sex machine. She gets me pumped up in no time and then climbs up on top of me and starts grinding away and before you know it she's shouting "yes, yes, yes!" and groaning and grunting.

For someone like me, it's a complete transformation, like waking up for the first time. I'm seeing the room we're in like it's the first room I've ever seen in my life and Angela is the first woman. We fall asleep and in the morning I tell her I need to go home and get my stuff and I'm going to move in with her. She's happy. She says I'm the only guy she's ever been with who made her feel like a woman. Before I go I eat some of the cold pot roast. It's strange, but now I seem to have an appetite for it and the thought of eating human flesh doesn't appeal to me.

I go home and Susan is just getting out of bed. She can see the change in me. I'm not worried about how she'll react to the news that I'm leaving her. I can't imagine she'll care. When I come into the bedroom though she sniffs the air. "You smell different," she says. I confess to her that I've been with a woman and that I'm moving out and starting a new life. She doesn't seem upset. In fact she seems excited about the change in me. She smiles and says, "You smell good!" I don't think I do. In fact I think I smell quite bad, but she comes to me anyway, her eyes wide with a hunger that I've never seen in her before. As her mouth opens wide, her large, flat, oversized molars hang in the air for a moment, then she takes a bite out of my left arm.

I should have known, I tell myself. I should have known.

I go to work but Angela sees that there's something wrong. "She did it with you, didn't she," she says. Yeah, I say, kind of something like that. "I was afraid of that. It's always going to be like that. You'll never leave her." I agree. I won't ever leave her.

Angela quits the homeless shelter and takes a job as a loan officer in her father's bank. Her replacement at the homeless shelter is Charlene from Atlanta and she takes an immediate interest in me.

"Are you married?" she asks.

"Yeah," I tell her. "I'm married."

Something like that.

The Breakup

I'm home, reviewing the failed merger of an Italian investment bank, when my "friend", as we call each other (I call him Jim but he's actually South Asian) phones me from work and says he isn't coming home. My questions bounce back at me like ping pong balls off a temple wall. He hangs up.

I'm not prepared. A year after hooking up, we're... a couple. He's my Jim. I'm his Priya. My birthday is in two weeks and he's been as jumpy as a pyromaniac in a fireworks factory. He's at turns excited, frightened, regal, subdued or exhausted.

Now he hangs up on me.

I look around. It's my apartment but he's everywhere. Too many tennis rackets mounted on the living room wall. Free weights. Beatles posters, Maharishi period. The unread books I've bought him. Men's magazines. Versace sweatsuit.

Rage, like hot lava, rushes through my rocky veins, while grief, a silken nightgown ripped to shreds, fills my eyes.

This will not stand. I circle the apartment, cries bursting out of me at every compass point. Things rise up from my hands and fly about the room.

After twenty minutes, the storm breaks and the skies clear. I clean myself up and go out.

The quants are dribbling out of Goldman for afternoon break when I get to Jersey City. Bob is sucking his way through an energy drink at the juice bar across the street.

"It's just talk. It's all talk," he tells me. "You know him. It doesn't mean anything."

"Try me."

Bob is uncomfortable. He shifts his weight and won't look at me. He opens his mouth but stops and smiles stupidly. I think he has designs on me. He might be glad if Jim is out of the way. "He mentioned Santorini once."

"Is there someone else?"

"No, not really."

"That trader I kept hearing about."

"She's gone."

"Where."

"I don't know, back to Singapore I guess."

"Not Santorini."

"No, not Santorini."

His pants are too tight. He tries to adjust them but then gets up. "I've got to get back," he says finally. "I'll ask around."

I get out my cell and call June who knew him before. "Asshole. All of them are over there. You need a nice tradesman. More muscles, less brains, easy to break in and not so likely to go off pasture." Her new guy is a carpenter. She used to keep horses in Westchester.

"I need to find him. I have a few things to say to him."

"He talked about London the last time I saw him."

"Maybe I need to call Interpol."

"He's not missing. He told you he was going. There's no crime."

"That's one person's opinion."

I give her the silent phone stare for a few long moments and it jogs her memory.

"There was this barista. He paid too much attention to her and it annoyed me. He gave her a big tip once."

She agrees to meet me at the Starbucks. It's only half full and the woman is still there. A little too old, straight black hair with streaks of gray, olive skin, dark gray lipstick, enormous eyes, big hips, small tits, tall and lean. She takes a break and the three of us sit down.

"He still comes in once, twice a month. A couple weeks ago he asks me if I want to get out of town. I say yes. It's the last time I saw him."

"Out of town where?"

"I don't know. He talked about Cape Town a lot."

The woman remembers the tip. She used it to buy weed.

Back at the apartment, June steps gingerly around the scattered junk, then sits and stares at her glass of merlot. "Do you think he does drugs? A lot of them do."

"No. He's such a tightass. I tried to soften him up but he's 'man of steel'."

"Well, if you just wait, something will happen."

"Something will happen now. I'm not the waiting kind." I look at his stuff scattered on the floor like Christmas morning. "I need to do something with this."

"You could have a sale."

A light bulb goes on. "A sale. Yes."

"I'll help you with it."

"No, I think I need to do this by myself, June, thank you but I need some time."

If you strike a match I catch fire. My frenzied yet highly organized inventory of the detritus yields a cache of precious artifacts, items from a shipwreck washed up on shore. His sick compulsion for everything expensive and narcissistic inspires my disgust, but I was the Martha Stewart of my sorority and I still have my glue gun. I work feverishly through the night and it's ten in the morning before I'm interrupted.

"How is it going with Enzo Isotta," says the voice on the phone.

"How the hell should I know," I bark, then realize it's the office. "Wait, I need a minute."

"Yes I guess you do," says the voice. "You're going to have it by the 23rd, right?"

"Yes of course."

I can't quite get my head around whatever it is the voice is talking about. I'm sure it doesn't matter.

By four in the afternoon I'm pretty much done and pretty much dead. I sleep in my clothes until late the next morning, then strip, shower, make strong coffee and survey the opus.

It's amazing, truly amazing. I phone my sorority sister Nicole who lives in the city now. "Is your space available?" I ask her.

"Yes, for now. There's a show next month though."

"How fast can you arrange something for me?"

"I can tweet it. What have you got?"

An hour later she's at the apartment snapping photos and muttering. "Oh, wow. Oh, wow." We decide to call the show "Things Left Behind".

Saturday comes quickly. I wear the scarlet V-neck backless evening dress with silver sash that I bought for I don't know what, but which now seems to answer the call of duty. The small Chelsea gallery fills quickly with the usual mish-mash of glitter and grub. I clear two grand after commissions.

"I was at Burning Man," he says. It's Monday and suddenly he just turns up at the door and says, "I was at Burning Man".

Oh, of course. He tried to get me to go to that last year. It was when we first got together. We went shopping in Toronto instead.

"I needed to be sure I was ready," he says.

"Ready?"

He takes a look inside the apartment. "Where's my stuff?"

I let him in. I show him the check from Nicole.

"It cost four times that," he says.

"I don't care," I tell him.

He reaches in his jacket, pulls out the little box and flips it open.

It's magnificent. "Oh, I know exactly what to do with that," I tell him.

He snaps it shut again.

Our first night together after the breakup is fierce and exhausting. He's asleep, or half asleep, as I bring my head close to his. Men, I think, what is it with them? Why do they have to be like this? Why can't they just get with the program? My voice is soft and breathy. I address his subconscious. "Sweet man, listen to me and listen good. Never, ever do to me like that." He stirs slightly and then sighs, his eyes still closed. I move in and whisper, "Think about what you need and what you don't. You don't need Burning Man. You have Burning Woman."

Lil Darlin

West Texas is just about the last place on earth. To be honest, it is the last place on earth, the last place to be created, that is. When God created the earth, he started, so it is believed, by creating Niagara Falls, with its magnificent sense of proportion and its scale and beauty. He moved on from there to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and on across the sea to Paris and the Alps, each one a great leap in his infinite power to impress. By the time time he got to Siberia, he was running out of ideas, but still in a frame of mind to show off what he could do, and when creating Japan and China he surely caught his second wind. Later he finally got around to creating Australia, and even that shows the mark of a considerable master. It wasn't until the very end that he realized he still needed to create a somewhat large patch of North America, that being the territory of West Texas. He didn't need to rest until the seventh day, but he must have been just a little pooped because he sort of just filled it in without much feature to it.

He regretted that he hadn't planned a little more judicious use of his time, not to get stuck with a pretty big swatch of work to do all at the very last moment and then not apply the fullness of his faculties to it, but to make up for it, he decided to create hard liquor, because if anyone was going to have to live there, at least they could be drunk.

This story is about a man named Martin Felt, who lived in West Texas in a town called Orfal. Don't go looking for it on a map, you won't find it. If you know where Orfal, Texas is, it's because you're from there. The only evidence that the place exists is the Orfal Café and Gas, and even the people from the nearby towns, the closest of which is 25 miles away, and who may have passed or even stopped at the place at some time in their lives, would never have guessed that Orfal was the name of a place rather than the name of some person who perhaps might have owned the establishment at one time. It's not the sort of place that you would think anyone would ever bother to give a name to. But someone had, though no one knows where the name comes from any more. Orfal, Texas never had an historical society.

If you've been following closely, you have probably made the correct inference by now that Martin Felt, being from Orfal, was born and raised at that aforesaid Orfal Café and Gas and was now occupied in that place as its proprietor. He lived with the love of his life, Lil Darlin, who was not his lawful wife, only because he didn't want to be with any married woman and certainly not with anyone married to him, and anyway she didn't seem interested in matrimonial affairs either.

It was one of those magical moments that people write about in stories, the day that Lil ended up in Orfal and Martin was bitten by the love bug. She came out of nowhere, which is how everyone comes to Orfal, and alighted in the café. Studded jeans with red embroidery that she must have done herself. A buckskin jacket new-bought from some tourist store with fresh, unwilted fringe busting out all over. A brand spanking new cowboy hat and high carved and painted cow-girl boots, more girl than cow. Generous curves, not the centerfold kind but more the backyard barbecue kind, that filled the outfit to slightly overflowing. Bronzed, leathery face made up with Texas dirt, and long, bright red hair down to her shoulder blades, coarse, kinky and snarled. She sat herself down in the middle of the Formica-topped bar that stretched along the back of the café and ordered Jack Daniels straight up, leave the bottle.

I'm sure you can see how Martin would go ga-ga for a woman like that, but how Lil came to have the same sort of feeling for him requires some explication. It turns out that Martin had once read a book, under threat of beating by his father, after the new school teacher, unfamiliar with the practices of West Texas pedagogy, expressed her suspicions that Martin had not read it all the way through as he claimed, a book called Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. So now, whenever he met a woman, which happened only every other year or so, he talked to her about that book. He would recite the story from beginning to end. If the woman was not drunk when he started, she surely was by the time he finished and so the rest was easy. The next morning, the woman, whoever she was, would let him know that whatever happened the night before was not to be taken seriously, which was fine with Martin. He would always take a Polaroid of the two of them together so he could remember. This practice stood him in good stead for a long while, until Lil came along.

When she came in, he started right off, in the usual way, talking about Jane as a ten year old orphan abused by her foster mother. Usually people think it's going to be the story of Cinderella but he always let them know that it's a lot different from that. Lil, though, didn't think that way at all. She listened with great attention, seemed intoxicated with the sound of his voice and even slowed down her drinking a bit, which is the opposite of the effect it usually had on ladies. She asked him what he thought about children being abused. He said he was against it. "You ever been abused?" she asked. Some people might think the whippings he took as a child were abuse, he replied, adding however that he couldn't imagine what sort of person he might have turned out to be if he hadn't been been provided with direction in life. He returned the question and she answered, "The living hell beat out of me, and thank God for it, or I never would have found my way to drink."

This seemed logical to Martin. He was beginning to think that he had never in his life met such a sensible woman. "What's your name, lil' darlin'," he asked.

"That's it," she replied.

"That's what?"

"That's my name. Lil. Lil Darlin."

"You're name's Darlin?"

"Yes, Lily Darlin. Lil for short."

They were happy for a while. Lily got some cash money every month in the mail, which was a little mysterious but Martin wasn't one to poke a gift horse in the eye. Happy people enjoy moderation in all the tempers of life, but especially in the avoidance of knowing things, given that almost everything you might know is mostly designed to make you unhappy. With Lil's money and what they made from the café and gas, they had everything they needed, which is to say they didn't starve and managed to keep themselves drunk most of the time. And all the while, Martin talked about Jane Eyre. He talked about how Jane was locked up in the "red room" by her evil foster mother, how she was then sent to a terrible school where you were supposed to be sick and miserable, but then things got better and she met Rochester who was wonderful but complicated. Lily never seemed to tire of Martin talking about Jane Eyre, even though he always said the same things. It seemed like every time she was hearing it for the first time, and maybe she was after all, in a way, because she didn't seem to remember much of anything from before she came to Orfal or much about the day before yesterday for that matter.

You've heard stories like this before, I'm sure. A woman comes to town, nobody knows where she came from, nothing about her past life, nobody asks anything and she doesn't tell. There's always some dark secret that she's running away from and that no one could ever suspect. A secret that, once revealed, will turn the woman's new life upside down and inside out. Such was the case of course with Lil.

It all happened on a fine Saturday afternoon in September, just as Lil and Martin were cracking open their second bottle. A rented late model Chevy Malibu pulled up in front of the café and a tall, thin man got out, dressed in a gray business suit and blue tie and sporting well-maintained Florsheim wingtips dulled with a thin coat of red West Texas dust. He pushed open the screen door, looked straight at Lil and said, "Janice, your mother is worried about you."

"Yeah, well I'm not worried about me," was the reply, "or about her either."

"Janice?" asked Martin, startled.

"That's my old name."

"When did you come by Lil?"

"When I walked in here the first time and you called me that."

"I have a court order," said the man. "You have to go into rehab. If you don't come with me, I can have you taken by force."

In West Texas, in case you don't know, people don't let fancy-dressed Yankees from New York or wherever he was from waltz into a bar and start ordering people around. Martin marched straight up to the guy, nose to nose, and said, "Now just a minute here mister," but the man gave him a good shove that landed Martin on his butt.

"It's OK," said Lil. "I'll go."

And she left.

For some time after that, Martin tried to get back to the way things were before Lil showed up. There was even a pretty nice woman who came into the café and gas and got good and drunk real fast, even before he had got to chapter seven, but he found he couldn't get interested in taking her to bed because he could only think about Lil.

If you're a guy, you know that this is a pretty bad disease to have. Finally he realized there was nothing to do but go find Lil and get her back. That was going to be a problem though because he didn't know anything about her, except her name was Janice not Lil. She hadn't come with anything and had taken everything with her when she left. The money came in the mail with no return address on the envelopes. He managed to find one still in the trash and saw that it was postmarked Norwood, MA 02062. Rummaging some more he found a receipt with a telephone number from area code 508 written on the back. The receipt was from the "Vineyard Vines" shop in Dedham, Massachusetts and was for a cashmere plaid scarf that cost $98 plus tax.

Martin called the number and a man answered. "Are you the one who sends money to the Orfal Café and Gas?"

After a long pause, the man asked, "Who is this?"

"Martin Felt."

Another long pause, and then, "Who are you?"

Martin thought as hard as he could, then said, "I'm Janice's husband."

"That can't be," said the man, "because I'm Janice's husband."

Getting from Orfal, Texas to Boston, Massachusetts is easier than it was in 1850, but not much. Martin closed the café and gas, took all his money from the drawer, and waited for someone to drive by. Five days later he was having lunch in the Wicked Fire-Kissed Pizza at the Legacy Mall near I-95 and US-1, having made a two-day detour to East Patchogue, Long Island when the pothead he hitched a ride from and who claimed to be going to Boston made a wrong turn, then decided to stay in Long Island once he got there mostly because he was out of gas money.

The man across from him was the man who claimed to be Janice's husband.

"When did you marry Janice," asked Martin.

"When did you marry Janice," replied the man.

"I can't remember," said Martin.

"Me either," said the man.

It was a Mexican standoff. "She doesn't exactly strike me as the marrying kind," said Martin, finally, "so it seems unlikely that she'd be married to even one of us, let alone two."

The man smiled. "I guess that's true."

"So where is she?"

The man looked suspicious. "Why do you want to know?"

"I want to go get her."

"How do you know she wants to get got?"

Martin didn't know. He thought she seemed pretty casual about taking off with the man in the wing tips. "I'm going to go get her," he said, "whether she wants to get got or not"

The man chuckled. "A long way from Texas," he said. "We have police here, Irish police, big and stupid, and they don't take so nice to people from out of town going to get Massachusetts people who may not want to get gotten."

"I'm not afraid of police," said Martin. It was a fact that he was not, because he had only seen one police officer, just once, and as the officer was not interested in him, the man didn't seem so troublesome. "Anyway, I know she wants me to get her."

"How do you know that?"

"Well I sure as Hell know she doesn't want to be in a God-awful place like this," he replied, scanning the mall with his best Texas scowl.

"It's her favorite mall," replied the man.

"I don't think we're talking about the same woman," said Martin. "Are you sure you've got the right Janice? Maybe you were sending money to the wrong woman."

"You called me," he replied. "How did you get my number?"

The man had logic and reason on his side, but still, it didn't add up. How could someone as sweet and good as his Lil Darlin come from a shit-hole place like this? Still, he knew that there was once a physics professor that came from Texas that he'd read about in the newspaper, so he figured that anything was possible.

"She's at Spring Hill," said the man. "But don't think of going there. You can't get near the place."

He was right about that. Martin couldn't find a hitch that could get him any closer than Fitchburg. He was out of money so he got a job at the Great Wolf Lodge cleaning sugary drinks and candy off the amusements at the Howlin' Timbers Play Park. It paid for a room over a dentist's office where he could share a ride to work, and for enough Benchmark Old No. 8 to keep the creepy crawlers away.

He told Janice's other "husband" to let him know when she got out. Finally the call came. She wanted him to come see her at the sanitarium. He offered a co-worker thirty dollars to take him up there, and he agreed, reluctantly. "That place gives me the creeps," he said.

The guy was right. The place was far out in the woods. It was fall and the leaves were turning brown and swirling in the chill November winds. "I wish it wasn't so close after Halloween," said his ride. "This is just the sort of place you could run into the headless horseman."

"There ain't no such thing," said Martin.

"Yeah I know, but you never know."

When they got there, the guy refused to get out of the car so Martin had to go it alone. The entrance was over a dark wooden bridge that made Martin think of the drawbridge over a castle moat. Old wooden timbers covered the bridge and a metal fence lined the way like from chicken cages. Inside, the walls were covered with yellowish boards filled with knot holes and the furniture was old and made of spindly wood. Blinding bright lights added to the horror of it. He had to sit and wait, and when they brought her out and he first set eyes on her, the sight of it shocked him. It broke his heart to see the wretched woman who stood before him.

Her hair was dirty blond, shiny, smooth and straight, cut short, hardly even touching her neck, and held back with a brown head band. Her skin was so light and clear she looked like a ghost. Her eyes were bright and she was smiling, like from some science fiction movie he'd seen once where people's bodies were taken over by aliens. She wore a thick fuzzy blue shirt with a zipper collar and another shirt underneath, and tight flowery pink and blue pants that were too short on her. She wasn't wearing socks, and the thin, flat, dull gray shoes she wore barely came up over her toes. Sparkly bracelets glittered from around one wrist. She was a pathetic sight, and Martin could hardly look at her without crying.

"What have they done to you?" he wailed.

"They've turned me back into Janice," she replied.

He shook his head. "I want my Lil back," he said, the dismay showing painfully across his face.

She offered for them to sit down .

"I need to get you out of here," he said. "You need to come back to Texas with me."

"I don't think my mother will let me go," she replied. "Anyway, maybe this is better after all."

"How can you say that? Don't you remember? Don't you remember that day you walked into the café and gas?"

"No, not really."

"Well, then, let me remind you. You were beautiful, a vision of Texas loveliness. You sat down and ordered a bottle and I told you about Jane Eyre."

"I remember about Jane Eyre. Before I went down there, I was a college professor and I taught English literature, so I already knew about Jane Eyre, but not the way you talked about it. When we were drinking and you told me the story, it seemed real to me for the first time."

This was almost more than he could stand. "This can't be! My Lil! A college professor? Why would you ever do such a thing?" he demanded. "I thought you had more sense than that."

She sighed. "Well, you know, when you grow up in a certain environment, it's hard to escape it. My parents were both college professors. There didn't seem to be any other way. I didn't know anything else."

"And the beatings when you were a child?"

"Not physical... intellectual. It's worse."

It was understandable, he thought, to turn out that way if that's the way you grew up. "But what now?" he asked. "Do you want to go back to it?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe that's all there is for me," she said. "I don't really know. Maybe it's where I belong."

"What about that guy who says he's your husband?"

"His name is Randolph. He is my husband, in a way. We got married a few years ago. We didn't stay together very long."

That's something, thought Martin. Maybe there was hope for her yet. "I know you don't remember," he said, "but we had a much better life together than you can possibly have in a place like Massachusetts." He reached in his pocket and pulled out the Polaroid he had of them together from shortly after she first arrived in Orfal. He looked at it longingly, like he had so many times before, and then turned it towards her so she could see. "This is what it was like for us back then, back in Texas," he said.

She stared at it, slightly bewildered at first, but slowly a certain recognition began to dawn in her. She tilted her head at it and squinted, then said, "Is that me?"

"That is you," he replied.

She took the picture from him and held it in her lap, studying it.

"That was you once," he said, "and it can be again."

"I don't think I know how," she replied.

"I can show you."

She sat silently for a long time, but something was stirring in her. "Tell me about Jane Eyre," she said.

"Long version or short?"

"Short."

Martin felt encouraged. This was progress. "Jane Eyre was an orphan who lived with her aunt," he began. "She was poor, plain and little. Her aunt treated her bad. She was unhappy and only liked her doll and her books. Then she goes to a school for poor orphans where the children get sick and don't have enough to eat, but then some good people came along and made it better. Jane grows up and works as a teacher at the school, then goes to be a teacher for a French girl at a rich guy's house."

He paused, gauging her reaction. Her eyes had a far away look, like she was seeing something that wasn't there. "Are you OK?" he asked her.

"Just thirsty," she replied.

"This is where it gets interesting," he continued. "The rich guy's name is Rochester. She doesn't meet him right away, but one night while Jane is out walking somewhere, a man's horse slips on some ice and he falls off and she helps him back up even though he talks to her rude. It turns out that this is the rich guy that she works for."

He paused to recollect the continuation of the story.

"It's all very simple when you tell it," she said.

"It is simple. Everything's simple, unless you make it complicated."

"Yes, maybe so," she replied. "Go on."

"So Jane and Rochester like each other, but strange things happen in the house. Rochester catches fire, someone is laughing all the time, and someone bites Mr. Mason who lives there too. Rochester is going to marry some other woman, but Jane says she loves him so he wants to marry her, except it turns out that he's already married to a crazy woman that lives in the attic and causes all the trouble."

"Yes," said Janice. "That's what it's about, isn't it?"

"Yes of course it is, what else would it be about?"

"Well, feminism, or..."

"What...?"

"No no, go on."

"So Jane runs away in the night, loses her stuff, sleeps in a field, almost dies, and then gets a job teaching. She inherits a million dollars from her uncle and shares it with her kindly relatives. An Indian guy wants to marry her and take her to India if she'll learn Hindustani, and she thinks about it, but then she hears Rochester calling to her. She goes back to Rochester's place, but the crazy wife has burned it down and killed herself and Rochester is crippled and blind and disgusting but Jane wants to marry him anyway so they do."

"Yes," she said. "Yes, that's it exactly. Martin, do you think I'm disgusting?"

Martin looked at her, not knowing whether to tell the truth or save her feelings. "You don't need to be," he said at last.

"No, you're right, I don't need to be. Where can we get a drink?"

"I've got two bottles of bourbon in my room that won't kill you. My driver's waitin' outside."

"Your driver?"

"I gave him thirty dollars."

"Oh."

The first night back together again after a separation like that is always special for lovers. They woke up the next morning lying on the floor together, still wearing their clothes from the day before. She went to her "husband" and got some money from him and in no time at all they were back in Orfal running the café and gas. Lil let her hair grow out and dyed it red again and the West Texas dust soon put some color back in her cheeks.

Martin was so happy that he felt inspired to write a song about her, which he sang to the tune of "You Are My Sunshine", and it went like this:

You are my Lil, dear,

My darlin' Lil, dear,

And in my dreams you always will

Be all my pride, Lil,

Be by my side, Lil,

As we share a glass o' Texas swill.

You ran away Lil

And left my heart still

And I could never live no more.

So I went to there

And brought ya back here

And no more will you roam away no more.

I tell ya stories

That you are likin'

About that girl that's named Jane Eyre.

She was unhappy,

Then she got happy,

Though the guy she's with is queer.

So now it's time dear

To say goodnight dear

And put to right all cares and fears.

We'll wear our flannels

And drink Jack Daniels

And be happy all our years.
About the Author

Steven Jon Halasz was born in 1948, grew up in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, and attended Mayfield High School, Hiram College, and Case Western Reserve University Law School. He has worked as an attorney and a computer software developer and has made various attempts at writing both fiction and non-fiction off and on since the age of sixteen. He has a delightful sister, a brilliant son, a lovely daughter-in-law and two precocious grandchildren. He currently lives in Sarasota, Florida with his darling wife Elena.

He has loved and been loved in return.

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