

Stories to Entertain You ...If You Get Bored on Your Wedding Night

By Pat Muir

Stories to Entertain You .....If You Get Bored on Your Wedding Night

Copyright 81999, by Pat Muir

First Printing 1999

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author or publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious and are products solely of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover by Seamus Heffernan

Published by PMBOOK, 2240 Encinitas Boulevard, Suite D, Encinitas, CA 92024.

### ISBN 9780967606004

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Little Noise Won't Hurt You

Mario's Visitor

Atonement

How the Dallas Cowboys Kick

Goldenboy is Missing

Leaving Gwen

"What About Father?"

The Most Wanted Vehicle in America

Estrangement

Brahms is Singing To Me

Have I been Lucky

I Don't Cheat Them Anymore

A Father's Pride

Plum Was Here

An Old Acquaintance

"Jimmy", You Whisper

In Her Mother's Image

Dudley

Your Attention Please

Handsome Harold

A Bride for Bernard

TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued)

The Mother He Never Knew

The Lady With The Mustache

The Lincoln Letter

Video Togetherness Meets its Match

Main Woman

My Selfish Husband

A Snitch Like Tripp

Father McArdle On Sunday

The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes."

Sir Thomas Beecham

A LITTLE NOISE WON'T HURT YOU

"You know, Susan, your ears are marvelous instruments. They tell the direction of noise mostly by the difference in the intensity and arrival time of sound heard by each ear. That's why, for instance, people who are deaf in one ear have a poorer sense of sound direction than people with two good ears."

How I wished Bogsy were referring to my ears in particular, instead of ears in general. It all started when Blooper dared me to attend Bogsy's class on aerodynamics. Fancy, a social sciences major in a class like that. But, when I heard Bogsy--sorry, Professor David Boggs--speak on "the dispersion of vorticity from a Kaman airfoil," I just drooled. I saw the glazed look come over the faces of those women attendees, who come to engineering classes and wiggle their you-know-whats to get good grades or a man. I could see the thought running through their heads; no man, no grade was worth the pain.

"That's the man I want," I told myself, listening to Bogsy expound enthusiastically on science. Of course, it seemed like a pipe dream at the time. I was a sophomore, and he had just started teaching at Fulsom State College, after graduating from Cornell University. When I saw his high forehead and tall slender build, when I heard his precise erudition, when I saw how he ignored good-looking coeds, my heart was taken. Of course, I'm just the opposite. Good-looking hunks ignore me. As my Dad took off with his last piece of fluff, my mom asked him why. He said: "Because you're sturdy and your daughter is sturdier." I never forgave him.

By the time I entered college, I was sixty nine inches tall and weighed one hundred and eighty nine pounds. The only man I ever attracted was Blooper in social sciences. He was obese and I was chunky, and he thought that made us soul mates. After listening to Bogsy, I promptly changed my major to engineering sciences. That left my Blooper behind.

Campus jobs for robust maidens at rural colleges are hard to find. When a good looking girl wiggles her you-know what, it helps greatly in the job hunt, despite those male counselors saying aid is given on the basis of need. My you-know-what was too big to wiggle, yet I still needed a job to support myself at college. Fortunately, sturdiness is a virtue in janitors, and I began part time in my freshman year. After switching majors, I started taking the required mathematics and science courses, one of which Bogsy taught. How I loved it. When Bogsy started to explain the intricacies of Fourier analysis, I paid close and rapt attention. Strange what will motivate one to learn.

One day near the end of my sophomore year, I was assigned to clean my precious Bogsy's office. On his desk sat a copy of a proposal he had written to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for acoustical research. I read enough of the proposal to realize he was requesting money to build an acoustics laboratory. No kidding, I thought. You've no chance of getting the NSF to build a research lab at a minor teaching school like Fulsom State. Poor Bogsy. He wanted to do research so badly, and his chances were next to zero. But it gave me an opportunity. I asked Bogsy if part of a janitorial supply hut would be suitable for his research, provided the dean agreed to let me move some supplies to another storage room. The dean agreed and Bogsy was delighted, so much so that he bought two digitized acoustic generators and an oscilloscope with his own money the very next day. I wish he'd bought me dinner instead of showing me how to tweak the oscilloscope.

It followed naturally that I became Bogsy's unpaid research assistant. Over the summer I helped him construct an anechoic chamber in the janitorial hut, while he propounded his ideas to me: "Susan, I believe that if we send sound to one ear and sound of equal amplitude and frequency, but completely opposite phase, to the other, we can cause confusion to the portion of the brain that processes the sound signals. I want to research this possible confusion. Do you think you could get me some volunteers to help in this research?"

Of course I could. The problem was how to pay such student volunteers. Bogsy didn't even appreciate the problem, and he had no money. And if he did, he would have spent it on equipment. However, scavenging the trash dumpsters is a perk for janitors, and, with diligence, I had gathered a cache of musical cassette tapes thrown away by students. I got Bogsy his volunteers by promising them a cassette tape for each research session. Of course, some of our volunteers had impaired hearing from listening to too much Ba-Boom-Ba-Boom music. Blooper was one such volunteer. He put his hand up my you-know-where and didn't seem to hear me when I told him to stop. Still, his hearing did improve after I gave him a sharp belt to the ear.

Bogsy transmitted the sound from the two digitally coupled acoustic generators to matched earphones worn by the volunteer. He tuned the generators with the oscilloscope to generate sounds of the same frequency and amplitude but completely out of phase with each other. Then he varied the frequency and the intensity of the transmitted signal to determine the disorientation point of the volunteer. A discarded, near-new mattress, obtained from my janitorial travails, acted as floor padding so that volunteers would not hurt themselves when they fell down. Sure enough, most students fell down except those with hearing rendered defective by too much Ba-Boom-Ba-Boom music. How I enjoyed seeing those hunky men sprawled helpless on the mattress, to say nothing of those coeds flat on their you-know-whats. Never had I swept so many men off their feet! It was sweet indeed that they needed yours chunky truly to help them stand up.

We tested about a hundred students before we ran out of cassette tapes. The research went on throughout most of my junior year. By that time, Bogsy had determined the parameters to cause the imbalance sensation. He found that a range of frequencies was required to produce the disorientation, that it varied from males to females and depended on the age of the subject. It would take about a minute for the volunteers to recover from the tumble. Some of them would take a little longer, and the dean came over to investigate why these students were staggering away from the janitorial hut. I think he thought there was a little hooch or hash going on.

"What is this mattress doing in the middle of the hut?" he asked Bogsy very suspiciously. Bogsy explained and put the earphones on the dean. I thought he meant to test the dean as well, so I switched on the acoustic system. Sure enough, the dean fell down. I couldn't stop myself from laughing at his surprise. Dean Werner had no sense of humor. He snarled at my precious Bogsy, telling him to end that type of research, then limped off, muttering under his breath. I was so glad Bogsy wasn't angry with me. Indeed, I caught the glimmer of a small smile.

Blooper propositioned me again. Oh, those ubiquitous fleshy hands. It made me think of an application for this research. I buttonholed Bogsy in his "laboratory."

"Professor Boggs, do you think that a weapon could be made using this principle?"

Bogsy looked at me through his thick glasses with his darling myopic eyes and said it was a good idea. A week later, I came into the laboratory and found he had made an acoustic gun. He had put a battery-powered acoustic generator at the focus of each of two near-parabolic acoustic reflectors. The reflectors could be adjusted in unison to focus the sound on an object, ten to fifty feet away. The reflectors were mounted on either side of a pointing tube, on which he had placed a focusing eyesight coupled to the reflectors. Each generator produced a frequency-amplitude spectrum of sound that maximized the typical subject's imbalance. Bogsy had me stand about forty feet away, then pointed the gun at me and switched it on. I heard this funny sound, became dizzy a few seconds later and fell down. Bogsy helped me to my feet. He was so apologetic. I had to lean against him for nearly three minutes before I said I was ready to stand on my own.

"That's strange, Susan," remarked Bogsy. "You seem to be outside the normal range of parameters for recovery from disorientation. I would study this further except the dean wants this type of research curtailed."

That damn dean, I thought. After a few more tests, the device worked very well. Blooper came over to the hut one day when Bogsy wasn't there. I couldn't help myself; I zapped him with the acoustic gun. I got in three more shots before Blooper cried "Uncle." I walked over to him, lying helpless on the ground:

"That'll teach you to keep your hands to yourself." I confess I had a lot of pleasure in pinning that roly-poly on the mattress. However, revenge turned out later to be less sweet than I thought. I showed Blooper the gun after he had recovered. It fascinated him, and he reminded me that it would not exist without him daring me to go to Bogsy's aerodynamics class two years earlier. Meanwhile, Bogsy set up appointments during spring break to visit law enforcement agencies on the West Coast and obtain their interest in the acoustic gun. "I hope they buy production rights, Susan, then I'll have money to build a proper laboratory." Dear man, research on his mind all the time.

Bogsy returned from his trip two weeks later and called me on the phone. He was so disconsolate that I invited him over to dinner. He even accepted. "Susan," he said, oblivious to my candlelight gourmet dinner, "you would have thought there would have been a keen interest in a weapon like this. It painlessly disables somebody from afar. It is almost silent outside the acoustic field generated. It costs nothing to operate. But, none of the police or sheriffs' departments I visited were interested. They told me the acoustic gun would cost about ten times more than a regular gun. It would be much more expensive than Mace or pepper spray and have a smaller disabling duration. They said it would be less effective than a Taser gun. They also said the recovery time of around a minute was not long enough for them to reliably secure the criminal and protect the arresting officer, especially in cases where PCP was involved."

Poor Bogsy looked so sad. I wanted to hug him so much and tell him to keep trying, but my exams were due soon and I didn't want Bogsy to think that I was trying to influence him to get good grades. He stored the gun in a locked cabinet in the storage hut and began to plan other areas of acoustic research. I had to stop helping in the laboratory for a few weeks while I studied for my final exams. I should have been reading the newspapers instead of my course books. I would have read about a rash of robberies in the Los Angeles area. The victims were standing at automatic teller machines (ATM) when they fell down just before entering their transactional data, but after they had inserted their ATM card and personal identification number. They reported becoming disoriented. After they fell down, the robber withdrew money from their account, took their wallets, their purses, their car keys and jewelry. Most of the thefts took place at night, so the victims did not see their attacker. They could not remember being hit or being sprayed with a disabling gas. However, some witnesses to the robbery recalled a person pointing a device at the victims.

Just after my final exams, the dean called me into a meeting with Bogsy and a detective from Los Angeles. The detective remembered Bogsy trying to interest his police agency in the acoustic gun and questioned our whereabouts on the days of the robberies. The detective wanted to see the gun. Only then did we find that somebody had replaced the storage cabinet lock with another and stolen the acoustic gun. Who could have taken it?

It didn't take much to discover that Blooper had stolen the gun and committed the robberies. Bogsy and I were mortified. The dean was furious and for good reason. The victims gathered together, hired themselves a fancy Los Angeles lawyer, and sued the college, Blooper, the dean, Bogsy and me, in a class action suit. The suit alleged that we had failed to take proper custodial care of an offensive weapon constructed by the college. The lawsuit distracted Bogsy terribly. It didn't bother me because I had no money or reputation to defend. Blooper was in jail and had no money to recompense the victims. I cudgeled my brain on how to rescue my man. After some thought, I wrote two letters, one to the Center for Gun Control (CGC) and one to the Association of Small Arms Manufacturers (ASAM) as follows:

Dear President of CGC/ASAM:

Fulsom State College, the Dean, Professor Boggs and myself, are being sued by persons who were robbed in the Los Angeles area. The robberies were accomplished by firing an acoustic gun at the victims. This particular gun was designed and constructed at Fulsom State College. It operated by generating sound that disoriented the victim. The gun was stolen by a former college student who is now in custody and has been charged with armed robbery. You can see that in this suit lies a strong probability that the owner of a gun or even the manufacturer of the gun may be civilly charged if the gun is used for felonious purposes, despite the owner or manufacturer playing no direct role in the robbery other than the loss of possession. I am inviting you to indemnify/defend us in this suit so that a precedent may/may not be set against the owner or manufacturer of the gun employed.

Yours sincerely,

Susan Riley (Student)

My letter lit a short fuse in those two organizations. Attorneys for ASAM and CGC arrived on campus within four days. ASAM wanted no responsibility to fall upon the owner or manufacturer of a gun used feloniously by another. CGC wanted a court precedent to be set with the exactly opposite result. Each told the college attorney they would fully indemnify us if they could take over our civil liability in this lawsuit. ASAM wanted to settle with the victims, and CGC wanted to go to trial. I made sure they knew they were competing with each other. ASAM had more money and offered a financial incentive to align with them rather than CGC. They settled with the dean and the college first and merely indemnified Bogsy. Then they came to see me. I guess they thought I would be a pushover. ASAM soon realized I had a lot less to lose than they.

"I'm not interested in letting you take my place in this law suit unless you are prepared to build an acoustics research laboratory at this college," I told them flatly. Were those ASAM attorneys ticked off! You should have seen their faces. So they told the dean their defense agreement was off unless I reduced my demand. The dean visited me and hinted that I might be expelled and Bogsy fired for the trouble we had caused the college. Now that got my Irish.

"Dean Werner, you have a marvelous teacher and an excellent researcher in Professor Boggs. You should support him more. Further, I hope you realize that, if this case goes to trial and the plaintiffs win, you will be apportioned more responsibility and higher damages. Remember, you also participated in the acoustic research that led to the development of this weapon."

The dean's face reddened. He started to speak, but merely spluttered. I thought he would have apoplexy. Finally, he went off swearing under his breath, just like the time he got off the mattress. My Irish was still up. I told the ASAM attorneys that now they would not only have to build a laboratory for Bogsy, they would also have to provide him with annual research contracts. I worked out the cost and technical details of the facility and equipment with Bogsy, and gave the data to the ASAM attorneys. A week later, they capitulated.

Bogsy came over to see me after he had read and signed the settlement agreement.

"I don't know how you did it, Susan, but it's marvelous what you've accomplished." He gave me a big hug, and I simply put my face up to his so that he couldn't really avoid kissing me. I saw that he liked it, thus I didn't let go too quickly. However, I didn't want to sweep him off his feet, which I could have done from a literal point of view.

"My darling Bogsy," I murmured.

"What did you call me?" he asked.

"Nothing, David." That broke the ice. He invited me out to dinner finally and the rest is history. Bogsy directed and I assisted in the construction and equipping of the research facility during my senior year. I graduated with my engineering science degree and got married to Bogsy the day afterwards. I didn't ask my father to the wedding.

I just love how Bogsy bounces out of the house in the morning and returns garrulously describing his students and the research in his new, improved, anechoic chamber. I smile. I am working in a chamber in my tummy on another project for Bogsy.

"Our Polly is a sad slut! nor heeds what we have taught her.

I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter."

John Gay - The Beggar's Opera

MARIO'S VISITOR

Mario Vinzetti limped painfully from the couch to the window, each step a shudder throughout his slight sixty-three-year-old frame. He looked out. Yes, it was his daughter, Julia, knocking at the door. He had not looked forward to her visit. Last time--was it already ten months ago?--she had asked him for money, and he had turned her down. She knew he had a very small retirement income and lived at this residential motel for its convenience and low cost. Yet, she had flounced off in a tantrum. He didn't want to go through that again. It didn't seem to matter to her that he had been ill for ten years and no doctor could discover what was wrong with him.

He opened the front door and was surprised when his daughter put her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. They had never been close. She and her younger brother had been brought up with constant animosity towards him after he divorced their mother twenty years ago. He kissed her back and invited her in.

"How's your mother and your brother?" he asked.

Julia responded with a few details of the family and Mario listened politely, but with little interest. He was too estranged from them and too sick to care about his son and former wife. He opened the can of gourmet coffee he had bought especially for this visit, and started the automatic coffee maker. He studied his daughter while she talked. Julia, at twenty-eight, was not pretty. She had the worst features of her parents, sallow complexion, stringy and greasy black hair, and short sightedness. She was about his height, but chubby and sloppy. Mario thought of the trim firm figure of her mother at that age. Julia wore blue jeans with a hole in one leg and a purple Tee shirt bearing a picture of a motorcycle and the words "My True Love" underneath. Her eyeglasses were plain; she wore a pin in her nose and had no make-up. The word "grunge" flashed through his mind as he looked at her. If she was going to ask him for something, why couldn't she have made herself more presentable? Did she actually go to work dressed like this?

"I guess you want to know why I'm here?"

Mario nodded as he took down coffee cups from the kitchen cabinet. The aroma of the percolating coffee filled the motel apartment.

"I wanted to ask if you and I could live together for a while. You see I'm pregnant and need a place to stay until the baby's born."

Mario was touched. So he was to be a grandfather at last. An opportunity to overcome an estrangement with his only daughter. Somebody to rescue him from his loneliness. Somebody to help him during his bouts of weakness. His questions came out in a rush. "Where's the baby's father? Are you married to him? When is the baby due? Why do you want to stay with me instead of your mother?"

Julia smiled, obviously pleased with the impact her announcement had made. "Dad, you don't know the father. His name is Chuck Edwards. No, I'm not married to him. The baby's due in twenty weeks. As for staying with Mom, that's impossible. Henry won't go for it."

Irritation flashed through Mario at the mention of his wife's second husband. "Why doesn't he want you?"

Julia shrugged. "He disapproves of the crowd I go with. He's terribly old-fashioned."

"What makes you think I'm not old-fashioned?" In truth, Mario knew he was old-fashioned. He liked the institution of marriage, not surprising since he had tried it three times, marriages that had each ended in painful divorces.

"Mom is not going to go against Henry. He looks after her well. She has plenty of money, she goes lots of places, she wears nice clothes. She's not going to do anything to spoil all that."

Mario flashed with anger, anger that his former wife could be made obedient by money, money which he never could muster, a matter which she had never forgiven him. The anger passed as quickly as it came.

"Why don't you marry Chuck?"

"Dad, Chuck's in jail. Besides, it wouldn't pay me. Social Services pays me $634 each month while I'm pregnant, unmarried and not working. I also get free prenatal care. There's no point in getting married. I need a place to stay until the baby's born and until Chuck gets out."

"Why is Chuck in jail?"

"It was a mistake, Dad. He borrowed someone's car and was pulled over. The police found drugs in the car belonging to the owner of the car, but the owner said the car was stolen and said the drugs weren't his. Chuck didn't have a chance."

"Julia, what happened to your job at hospital records?"

"I gave it up. Too much sexual harassment."

Mario sighed as he poured out the coffee. He handed a cup to his daughter, noticing the tiny blisters on the fingertips of her right hand. "I don't think I could get along with the crowd you go with either."

"But Dad, you don't know the crowd I go with. How can you possibly say that? Don't you want to help me?"

"Ah, Julia. I do want to help, but living with me isn't going to solve your problems. It'll merely postpone their solution. Please don't tell me lies. I see you're smoking crack. Do you think I'd let you do that living with me? Do you think I'd let you do that to your baby? You think I believe that story about losing your job because of sexual harassment, considering how you look? You lost it because you did drugs. Do you really think I believe Chuck isn't doing drugs also? If you want me to help you, then take my advice. Check yourself into a drug rehab center. You should ask yourself whether you ought to give the baby up to somebody who can afford to raise it decently. In the state you're in, that'll never happen."

Julia got up from the armchair, her coffee undrunk. "Well, I thought I'd give you a chance," she said and moved to the door.

Mario opened the door and gave her his hand. "Stay in touch," he said, knowing it was unlikely. He returned to the kitchen table and sat down painfully. He wondered which one of them had been more selfish as he sipped his coffee. At least, that tasted good.

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of our adversities."

Sophocles

ATONEMENT

I hear my wife at the front door and clamber from the couch onto my feet, where, full of guilt, I promptly trip on the carpet. The heavy thud of my fall reverberates throughout the apartment. This has happened before. I tell myself the fall is due to my bad leg, but know that the whiskey has taken its toll.

"Michael, are you alright?" says Jean. My wife is sitting on the floor, my head cradled in her lap. I feel nauseous. The desire to throw up forces me to put my hands to the floor and laboriously push myself to my feet. Jean helps me rise.

"I'm sorry, Dear," I say as I stumble toward the bathroom, Jean supporting me. I kneel before the toilet and heave a few times, hating the sour taste of vomit. Jean asks if I want coffee and I nod my assent. She closes the bathroom door and walks to the kitchen, her manner of leaving seemingly an expression of regret, regret that I am not the man I used to be, regret that my disabilities bring us both grief. I rinse my mouth and sit on the toilet seat, staring at the pitted glass of the shower doors. I was not always like this, and my mind wanders to those happier times.

*****

I am sitting in the warm bathtub of my split-level house, watching my three-year-old son play with Boatie in the deep end. We have a bathing ritual satisfactory to both David and Jean. David hates having his head washed. He cries when water gets in his eyes especially when the water contains the soap residues from his blond hair. Jean cannot bear to hear him cry and has passed the hair-washing task to me. I find that if I am in the tub with David, there is less water spilled over the side and I can get David to hold a folded face towel over his eyes when I rinse his hair. He still cries when his hair is washed but less from within the tub. His whimpering, muffled by the glass doors of the tub and the door of the bathroom, no longer disturbs Jean's serenity. Jean is forty-five years old and has begun an early menopause that makes her occasionally irritable. She accepts me bathing with and washing our son as completely natural.

David plays happily with Boatie, a painted wooden toy boat that I carved for him. He pushes Boatie up the inlet formed by my legs and thighs making "umph, umph" sounds that I think are his idea of a marine engine or a destroyer cannon. I hold my hand over my genitals to avoid Boatie grounding itself there, a painful prior occurrence. David accepts that my body is like his and different from his mother's. He explores the differences between me and himself by occasionally pulling the hair on my wet legs. His other bath toys include Duckie, a yellow rubber duck that he pushes around the tub making quacking sounds. He also has Truckie, a green polystyrene toy truck that travels in our private warm pond accompanied by his "vroom, vroom" sounds.

This tub ritual is one of enormous pleasure to me. My back and arms often ache from my daily construction activity in building custom homes. Here in the tub, my muscles relax in the warm water and I share the pleasure of this therapeutic warmth with my babbling son. I look at his active pink body and marvel that he could be created so perfectly, the image of his mother. I am so grateful to Jean, who stoically suffered many miscarriages before bringing to term this single lovely child. He is so precious to both of us. Soon, I will begin to wash myself and then David, so that we will leave the tub together where I will towel him in front of Hottie, as David calls it, a portable heater that dries residual moisture off his soft skin. When I dry him, he stands up, his little arms around my neck, and I feel so blessed that my child accepts my love as a natural right. In this tub, we are body and soul together.

When I wash David, I marvel at the silkiness his body feels under my soap-laden calloused hands. As long as the soap is below his neck, he submits to the washing readily. It is only when I begin to soap his neck, ears and head, that his alarm rises. He knows that I will then pour saucepans of fresh water from the tub faucet over his head. Boatie has passed the islands of my toes to collide with the sheer wall of the tub. David repeats the collision with an emphatic "umph." He sits on my right leg and raises his toy to ask me a question. I think he is saying that Boatie has sunk and he is going to get Duckie instead. But I decide it is time to wash his hair, since I have cleaned myself, and the water is turning cool. I open the glass shower doors of the tub at my end to reach out for the saucepan and dry face towel that I have placed within hand's reach. I lean back into the tub to find David has opened the other end of the shower doors and is leaning to pull Duckie off the toilet seat.

But, Oh God! It's not Duckie. David is holding Hottie. I realize the danger and frantically push myself to my knees to grab the heater. My rapid motion startles and unbalances David, who slips still holding Hottie.

*****

My recollection of past events is stilled by Jean's knock on the bathroom door. She enters and finds me moaning in a maudlin fashion: "Oh, how I miss David."

I do indeed miss my son, but I also know that when I say this, Jean will cry, and sure enough she does. I want her to cry --to share my misery. The doctor told me David was electrocuted instantaneously and that I was spared because I was standing in the water instead of sitting in it. But I was not spared whole. My heart fibrillated much of the time until the paramedics arrived, and the weak fluttering of my heart provided insufficient blood to my brain. I awoke in hospital three days later, immobilized and breathing with a ventilator. I couldn't go to David's funeral. I couldn't comfort my grieving wife. After four months of extensive physical therapy, I was able to walk, but my left arm and my left leg respond only weakly, so I use a cane when I go outside.

My wife asks through her tears if I'm feeling better and helps me to the kitchen table, on which sit two cups of coffee. We live in a rented one-bedroom apartment now that I am disabled. I miss my work and the companionship of fellow construction workers. My income has been reduced to a modest social security disability payment. Jean has gone to work as a teaching aide, in part to earn more money and obtain insurance benefits for us both, but also, I suspect, because I'm poor company.

After a few sips of coffee, my wife says: "How I miss having a child in my life. I wish I could have had another. I know how much you loved our son."

We have never talked much about the accident. Recounting the details usually brings Jean to a sobbing frenzy, so painful to me that I avoid mentioning the subject. This time, the alcohol makes me seek catharsis. "I'm sorry that I couldn't go to his funeral. I wanted to be there. But I grieved in that hospital bed," I reply as an acknowledgment. We sip the coffee silently. I hate myself for being found drunk again. I think of David and recall carrying his squirming pajamaed body into the living room and the arms of his loving mother, there to watch television until sleep closed his blue eyes.

"I should have been in there washing David's hair," Jean says.

I cringe. She is saying a truth, that David died while under my supervision. It would not have happened under her watch. Moisture comes to my eyes and anger to my heart. I drink more coffee and take time to avoid making a petulant reply. "I should have been more careful."

Jean now actually defends me. "It was an accident. It could have happened to you or me."

But I cannot let her release me from blame. "I should never have plugged in the portable heater until we got out of the tub," I groan. "I should have installed a ground fault interrupter in place of the electric outlet. That would have saved him."

Tears flow in both our eyes as we drink more coffee. I remember how I would lift my sleeping child from his mother's arms and hold my lips against his soft cheek as I carried him gently to his crib. My neighbor, Jake, told me that Jean did not hear my reflexive yell from the bathtub. But when the lights and television went off, she looked out the window to see that her neighbor's lights were on and then came to the bathroom to tell me that the power was out. When neither husband nor son replied, she realized that dark bathroom was the source of the power failure. She grabbed David in a panic and ran to Jake, who began to administer CPR. Fortunately, the circuit breaker had released, so she suffered no shock in pulling out our son. The paramedics arrived ten minutes later.

"I would have been washing him if I hadn't been so grouchy and easily upset by his crying," Jean says.

The coffee is beginning to clear my head and I realize that Jean is also seeking catharsis. I think carefully before replying: "Jean, you couldn't help it. I loved bathing David. I wanted to help you, but I was careless. I should have left the heater on the vanity instead of putting it on the toilet seat."

Again I remember the pleasure of toweling up my sweet son's body as he warmed himself standing on the bath mat in front of the electric heater. Naked, David would coo to Hottie as I fumbled on the vanity for his diaper and pajamas.

"Michael, I wish for you that I could have given my life for David's."

This is a recurrent theme. "Jean, you're alive. It's David who's dead. I wish David could have been spared. I wish I could have taken the shock instead of him. He was such a beautiful boy."

Our tears flow further. I wipe eyes on my shirtsleeve while Jean rises to get a tissue from the kitchen counter. She pours more coffee into my cup and asks me if a frozen TV dinner will be okay this night. I nod. She busies herself between the refrigerator and the microwave oven and laying cutlery on the kitchen table.

"I miss Jake," I tell her as an aside from this painful conversation. "I know he was so helpful to us both after the accident. You couldn't think straight and I couldn't help you. He was a wonderful neighbor, an enormous help in our time of trouble."

"Yes he was. He still lives next door to our old house.

How I miss that house, one I had built myself and owed very little on it. But my hospital bills and lack of income forced us to sell it. I take two deep breaths. "Jean, I'm sorry I screwed up. Not only did I cause the death of our child, I made myself into a cripple that can't work and I've begun to drink because I can't bear your grief and can't seem to give you solace."

My wife stares at me and begins to cry again, then comes round the table to put her arms around my neck. I put my right arm, my good one, around her waist and hold tightly. Finally, she pulls back.

"Michael. If I'd known how to give CPR, I might have been able to help Mary and Tina."

Jake's wife and teenage daughter dragged me out of the tub and administered CPR to the best of their ability until the paramedics came. "Jean, neither of us knew CPR. I couldn't have helped even if I'd avoided the shock. Please don't blame yourself for that." I pause for a minute to pluck up my courage: "Jean, every time you go out to work, I feel it's my fault that I have brought you so low. I have been a terrible father and am now a useless husband. I love you dearly, but your tired face each night reminds me constantly of my failure and I can't forgive myself. I hate to face you, because you mirror my failure."

Jean says nothing but has stopped crying. She moves to the refrigerator and pulls out bottled water for our meal. I sense that she is taking these steps as an interlude before responding to my confession. She turns and looks directly at me. "Michael, I never understood why you seemed so mad at me. I thought it was because you believed I held you responsible for David's death. Don't you understand that whenever I look at your face and your limbs, I am reminded of my own mistake? I was so concerned with David that I forgot about you. I failed to tell Jake and Mary promptly that you were also in the tub. I gave my full attention to my son, who was already dead, when I should have been concerned about you. Had I done so, you might not have been injured. You might be well and fit. I think of that each time I go to work, hoping my efforts will be penance for my failure."

I put my right arm out to hold my wife tight again, my eyes full of tears. We stay like this for several minutes as though to release the pain within ourselves and each other. Finally, I'm able to speak: "Sweetheart, we spend too much time holding ourselves to blame. We mustn't dwell on the past. We must think of the three lovely years that David gave us with pleasure and not with regret. We must think of his life, not his death."

The microwave oven buzzer sounds, and my wife extricates herself from my arm. I dry my eyes on my shirtsleeve again while Jean dabs at hers with the soaked tissue. Then she says: "Dinner's ready. I think we should eat."

We sit at the table, and as she picks up her fork and knife, she asks: "Should we consider adopting a child someday?"

"You can trust all Englishmen except those who speak French."

Prince Otto von Bismark

HOW THE DALLAS COWBOYS KICK

The stench of hot humanity surrounded me at the Dallas airport terminal. Temperature and humidity had finally overloaded the air-conditioning system and made us moody aliens. In the discomfort of the moment, I bought a blue five-gallon cowboy hat from a concessionaire. I felt I was buying escape. With the cowboy hat on my head, the heat seemed unbearable. I took off my tie, unbuttoned my shirt and tossed off my jacket. My! Did that feel better! Two hours to kill, and I was going to beat the heat or strike me down. I moseyed into the oh-so-cool cocktail lounge, full of fellow travelers and bonhomie, to see what was cooking. And what was cooking was some sweet young thing with cleavage down to here and black skirt up to there who asked me in a Texas twangy voice:

"What y'all having to drink tonight, Cowboy?"

"Well. What's good besides you, Dahling?"

Did she just giggle, a real nice girlish giggle, one that would make you want to buy the whole bar from this sweet young thing, especially if she bent over a little lower.

"The best drink in the house is `The Dallas Cowboy.' It's got rum, Tequila, Grenadine syrup, mango juice and Sarsaparilla and it's got a lot of kick." The last said with a wiggle of her cute behind that made me want to say: "Play it again Sam."

"Dahling. You've convinced me. Bring me one of those Dallas Cowboys." And as an afterthought, "bring me a cheerleader for a chaser."

I watched that cute behind wiggle its way to the bar and waltz back amidst a wave of wolfish stares bearing a tray, on which was a huge iced glass containing a full measure of liquor, a beer glass and a can of beer which she poured into the glass.

"There you are, Dahling." She beamed. "That'll be seven-fifty. Why thank y'all," as she retrieved the ten-dollar bill from my outstretched hand, which I constrained mightily from stroking those sprongy spandex thighs. Then, with a pert smile and a cute wiggle, she sashayed off to another patron.

"Well, I'll be doggoned. It says Cheerleader Beer on the can."

I took a sip of the mighty receptacle. I guess the Dallas Cowboys know how to kick. I swigged down some Cheerleader. Yes, she was pretty cool too. I began to feel good. I began to forget the hot sticky weather. I began to forget the ten-hour flight home. I looked around to see Miss Wiggly now serving another patron, also wearing a five-gallon hat, one of bright burgundy. He too was having difficulty letting his money be retrieved by the bent over waitress, who looked as good in the side view as she had in the rear and front. I watched the performance, a repeat of mine, and he saw me watching. We gazed with pleasure at those departing buns and our eyes returned to stare at each other with the look of males at rut. We raised our glasses, each took a drink and he nodded, a nod that acknowledged our common interest and invited me to converse. Now we English do not readily enter into conversation with a foreigner who wears a five-gallon cowboy hat of bright burgundy. But somehow, that my head was likewise coiffed encouraged me to follow up this stranger's kindly nod. What then transpired still boggles me. Perhaps the Dallas Cowboy had started to kick. Perhaps the Cheerleader had brought on the rutting season. I cruised over to the stranger's table and spoke my mind: "Howdee, Stranger. How are y'all doing this hot day."

Now this fellow was very courteous--I had been told how friendly Texans were--and he replied: "Howdee, Partner," which must be the custom in these parts. Having started down this path I saw no reason to stop; certainly, the Dallas Cowboy urged me on to say more.

"Y'all from around these parts, Stranger?" I asked politely.

"Nah. I'm from Texarkana," he said, sipping on his drink.

"Must be pretty hot down there today," I said, thinking I was on safe ground.

"And dry too," he replied. "Where are y'all from?"

"Ostin," I responded with a smile and a slurp. Throwing caution to the wind, I added: "That's where we have the Al-a-mo, Friend."

"Is that so? Tell your buddy here all about it."

This is easier than expected, I mused. "That's where Davy Crockett, Pancho Villa and John Wayne all fought it out and the Spanish won."

"Re-a-lly," he yawled. "I thought John Wayne came later."

"Nah! It were his grandson that were in the pictures."

We sipped our drinks and swigged our chasers and called Miss Wiggly for refills. "You cowboys havin a good time?" she asked as she took our orders, hips swiveling and bust quivering under our riveted gaze.

"A mighty nice woman that," remarked Bud.

"Mighty nice. Mighty nice. A Texas gal for sure. Now tell me about Texarkana."

"Well. It's in the belly of the panhandle, the shovel of the state. We shovel the she-it so it grows the best corn and the steers can graze on the corn shucks. That's where we get the best Texas beef. That's where the men are the biggest and bestest, and women are the bustiest. That gal who brung us our drinks must be from Texarkana. Nothing finer than Texarkana."

Miss Wiggly returned with our drinks and beamed at us, her hips swaying smartly as we fumbled for payment. Then expertly gathering the sawbucks from our frantic hands, she yawled away with a: "Have a good time, boys. See y'all later."

Bud was beginning to grow on me; he was a good listener. I discussed the Alamo in detail. I told him how the cruel Spanish led by the villainous Pancho Villa raided Ostin in 1812 and burnt down the Citadel. We Texans were mighty ticked off about this here raid so we asked President Teddy Roosevelt to help, and he brought down his night raiders. He ambushed those Spanish so badly that they gave up and went back to Spain and gave us Puerto Rico for our trouble.

I sipped some more drink and Bud then began to tell me how great the Texans from Texarkana were. He told me how a bartender in that part of the country highly impressed a visitor on the large size of local men and women, the magnitude of their automobiles, the generosity of their drinks and the enormity of their ranches, ones that extended as far as the eye could see. The visitor drank too much and was directed to the men's room by the bartender who realized later he had sent the patron to the swimming pool entrance. A splash was heard and the drunken guest yelled loudly: "Don't flush it. Don't flush it."

Things were going swimmingly. I told Bud more about Ostin, my hometown. The beaches were wide and sandy. The fish were huge, numerous and just waiting to be caught. I said I caught at least three twenty-pounders every time I fished, but I had to watch out in case an alligator caught one of them first. Bud lapped it up if you see what I mean. Miss Wiggly returned and recharged us. We swapped stories about the presidents, especially Ronald Reagan. We both thought he was a mighty fine actor. Amidst the noise in the lounge, a voice penetrated through to my consciousness.

"Passengers for American Airlines flight 51 to London, now boarding at Gate 24."

"Bud, I have to go to the john. I'll see you around."

He nodded with a gracious unsteadiness while I headed off to the place, my eyes swimming and my feet responding vaporously to my commands. Those Dallas Cowboys knew how to kick and those cheerleaders knew how to swing. I staggered through the stale-beer malodor of the men's room and drained my bladder for an eternity. Then with a raucous release of intestinal gas, a belch for good measure, and a final, "Don't flush it," I stumbled out remarking to a startled incomer:

"The damn john is full of Cheerleaders."

Off then to Gate 24, where a kindly stewardess helped me to my seat, upon which I fell asleep or was it unconscious?

*****

My head hurting, my tongue coated with feathers and my stomach aching, I exited the customs hall into the main passenger-terminal to be hugged by my wife: "Hope you had a good flight, Dear. I don't think that hat really suits you. Maybe Allen would like it?" She looked at my haggard face. "Blue isn't your color, you know."

"Howdee, Partner. Howdee, Partner."

I looked over her shoulder through reddened eyes to see a cherub whooping it up. On his head sat a five-gallon Burgundy hat.

"Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long."

William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice

GOLDEN BOY IS MISSING

Mary Notfarg stared at her reflection diffusing from the layered, stainless steel drawers of the morgue. It showed a plump, fifty-year-old woman, dressed in a burgundy pantsuit, standing next to a burly, uniformed officer. "Private investigators come in all sizes, shapes and sexes," she thought.

"Mrs. Notfarg, we are satisfied these are the remains of Bert Chambers," said Deputy Wiggins. He pulled out the drawer in the frigid morgue to reveal a partial skeleton. It comprised a skull, neck and back vertebrae, portions of the rib cage, a complete pelvis, the connecting femur and only one fibula and tibia. "The remains were discovered buried in a remote bank of the Trout River, about three miles from the fishing camp, where Chambers was last seen, before he disappeared over five years ago."

Mary studied the skeleton closely as Wiggins went on: "Animals must have discovered exposed portions of the corpse before or after its decomposition; that's why there are no arms. The soil where the body was buried was acidic and hastened the decomposition. Even parts of the remaining bones are eaten away. Fortunately, there's enough of the skeleton left for the medical examiner to determine that it belongs to a man, approximately seventy one inches tall, about sixty years old with false teeth. That matched the description we had on our missing person files of Bert Chambers. The clincher was that although his clothes had disintegrated, his plastic wallet had not, and low and behold, there it was in his grave containing his California driving license."

"And the cause of death?"

Wiggins lifted the skull and turned it sideways. "See the hole in the rear of the skull and the splintered bone shards protruding into the skull? Chambers was hit with something like a hammer or an ice pick; I suspect he was murdered in his tent on the night of his arrival. His body was probably put into the trunk of his car and driven to the remote riverbank and buried. The murderer stole the car, Chamber's fishing gear, his cash and credit cards and drove to Compton where he abandoned the car."

"Why didn't the murderer take the drivers' license? It would have made it much easier for Bert's credit cards to be fenced or used," asked Mary.

"Well, the murder looks to me impulsive, done in a hurry by somebody who didn't think things through and who didn't know Chambers. Perhaps the murderer was a transient with roots in the Compton area. The murderer didn't get much of value in this robbery."

"Except Bert's life." Mary paused. "There are no teeth in the skull. Is that why you said this victim had false teeth?"

"No. Because, we actually found Chambers' set of false teeth in the skull cavity. The Bakelite had not rotted at all."

"Did you contact Chamber's dentist to confirm that these were his false teeth?"

Wiggins scowled. "Mrs. Notfarg, this is a rural county in Northern California with a very limited budget. There are only eleven deputies to serve the entire county. We have to share the cost of the medical examiner with the neighboring county. We simply don't have funds to check further when the remains match the description of the missing man. We have his wallet, false teeth and a skeleton that matches the missing man's height and age. Further, the decomposed state is consistent with the time of his disappearance."

"I'm sure you're right, Mr. Wiggins," said Mary in a soothing voice, "but National Insurance Adjusters has sent me to ensure that the underwriter is paying out for the death of Chambers and not of a shill. The policy payout to his former wife is five-hundred thousand dollars and we need to be certain. Couldn't you do a DNA test?"

Wiggins' scowl darkened. "Mrs. Notfarg, a DNA test on one sample costs at least $2000. We might have to take two or three samples from this skeleton to get a decent DNA sample. Then, who do we test it against? We have to find relatives of Chambers, whom you've told me was originally from Maine. We would have to test his parents, if alive, or his siblings if any, since I understand he had no children. If we could track down all the people necessary and get them to give samples, we could probably eliminate all possible doubt on whether this is Chambers. But the cost of doing so, likely in excess of $10,000, is more than this County can justify based upon the evidence we already have. We are at this point ready to release the remains to Mr. Chamber's ex-wife. If your insurance company wants to pay for DNA testing, I think we can arrange a delay in the release."

"That's a lot of money, Officer Wiggins. I'll need to check whether the insurance company will pay for such testing. Let me call them and I will get back to you."

"I can't hold up the release more than a few days. Pictures of the remains have been taken, including the damage to the skull. Bone samples have been taken and will be preserved in the event a suspect is arrested and charged."

"Do you have any leads or suspects for the murder?" asked Mary.

"Mrs. Notfarg, these days if you don't identify and question any murderer within twenty-four hours of his committing the crime, the chances of solving the killing are remote. This trail is so cold, we can't do anything about it. Chambers' car was found abandoned in Compton. Have you seen the Compton police report?"

Yes. Mary had seen the report. Bert's car, a 1988 Chrysler New Yorker, was found in a Compton side street. The engine and transmission had been removed, the seats were gone, and all wheels and tires taken. Thieves had stripped the car of its battery, wiring harness, floor mats, jack, radio. The Compton police had searched the shell and taken fingerprints. But there were too many unmatched prints to be useful to determine who to question. The police report mentioned finding in the trunk a dried tooth and a black stain, determined later to be blood. Mary had called the Compton police to see if they still had the blood samples and the tooth in their evidence room. They had responded three days later that, since these items were over five years old and no criminal complaint had been made pertaining to the owner of the car, they had recently discarded that material. Mary pondered. Even if that material were available, it would prove at best that the skeleton and the blood belonged together, not that they belonged to Bert Chambers.

Mary asked to see Chambers' wallet and false teeth. Wiggins obliged. Mary inspected the driving license. The picture on the license, although faded, matched the larger one given her by the mobile home sales office in Escondido where Chambers had worked. He had been a handsome man, six feet tall, with a sunburned face and curly golden hair, nearly fifty five years old, yet looked ten years younger. His former boss said Bert was a superb salesman and had a terrific personality. That's why he was called "Golden Boy" at the office.

Mary gave the wallet back to Wiggins. "Let me talk to my boss to see if he wants to pay for further tests."

She called her boss, David Johnson, from the local motel that afternoon. "All the evidence points to Chambers being murdered by a transient who stole the victim's car and then drove to Compton where the vehicle was subsequently stripped. The problem, David, is that it will cost the underwriter at least $10,000 to try to show that the remains are not Chambers when it is almost certain that they are. After all, there have been no reports of him anywhere. His credit cards were never used after he disappeared. It might be better instead to spend money to check whether any of the insurance beneficiaries had anything to do with his murder. That seems the only possibility for the underwriter to avoid the payout."

"Mary, do you think there is any chance that this skeleton might not be Chambers'?"

"It's unlikely, but I think we have a duty to the underwriter to provide a more positive identification, given the size of the insurance payout. It bothers me why the murderer didn't take the entire wallet. It also bothers me that the murdered man was wearing his false teeth while sleeping. But these concerns don't justify the expenditure of ten grand for DNA testing."

"So what do you propose?"

"Let's call in an anthropological artist to reconstruct Chambers head, take some pictures of it, and have his work associates and friends and neighbors identify him from the reconstruction. That will probably not cost more than $1000 plus expenses."

Johnson agreed this approach sounded reasonable and said he would send Sophie Poulais to do the reconstruction. Mary explained the process to Wiggins. "Sophie will add clay to the skull and shoulders using standard anatomical formulas that set common tissue depths at certain points close to bone. She will add false eyes and a wig and then take photographs. Then she will remove the clay and return the skeletal remains to their original condition. Your office will be given copies of the photographs. It will take Sophie about three days to do the work."

Wiggins agreed to provide a worktable for Sophie to do the reconstruction. Then Mary visited the fishing-camp manager. He had managed the camp for twenty years and remembered Bert as a regular annual visitor. Did he remember the night Bert disappeared? Yes, but he had not seen any strangers that evening. No, Bert did not arrive with anybody. Did the manager know of any reason why Bert was killed? Did Bert mention any enemies? No, only that he liked gambling and said it might someday be the death of him. The manager added:

"The place where Bert was found is not easy to get to. It's tricky to drive down there at night, especially with the ground as soggy as it was. You have to be knowledgeable to drive a car down to the riverbank without getting stuck. I think the murderer forced Bert, who knew the area, to drive there and killed him at the burial spot, not at the fishing camp like the police believe."

Mary thought that sounded plausible. Maybe Bert struggled with his murderer and knocked out one of his teeth out before being killed. Mary thanked the manager and returned to her motel where she checked out and then drove to the local airport for her return flight home to San Diego.

Ten days later, Federal Express delivered three glossy photos of the reconstructed face together with the sales-office photograph of Bert Chambers. Sophie wrote in a cover letter, attached to her invoice, that there was a reasonable resemblance between the two pictures. The skull, being damaged, might be a factor in the less than perfect reconstruction. However, it seemed to her that the skeletal jaw was narrower and the eyes closer together than Bert's. Sophie suspected the damaged jaw was narrower than at death. This hypothesis was confirmed by the fact that the false teeth discovered in the grave seemed slightly large for the skeletal jaw.

"What a pain!" thought Mary. "Fifteen hundred dollars spent to get pictures that are not definitive in ensuring the body is Bert Chambers'." She drove to Escondido and talked to the manager of the mobile home sales office where Bert had worked. He was not the same manager extant at the time of Bert's death. He suggested Mary check at the Escondido Superior Mobile Home Park where Bert lived. Mary drove to the park and stopped at the office. Yes, the manager, Charlie Thorpe, remembered Bert Chambers. Thorpe, a thin wiry man of sixty five, grimaced at the mention of Chambers.

"You know he was not fifty five when he came into this senior citizen's park. He just wanted to live here so he could fool the widows who live here into listing their mobile homes for sale with him. Yes, that looks like Bert Chambers," as Mary showed him the reconstruction photograph.

"Is there anybody else who would confirm his identity from these pictures?"

"Try Lucy Peters. She's in charge of social events. She knows everybody in the park. Watch out! She's a notorious gossip."

Mary was directed to a doublewide mobile home close to the clubhouse and found Lucy Peters knitting on the porch, which overlooked the entire park. A pair of binoculars rested on adjacent knitting material. Mary introduced herself to the small white-haired woman, who clearly welcomed the visit.

"Why was Charlie Thorpe so surly about Bert Chambers?"

"Well, managers have positions of trust in mobile home parks like these. People often ask them to sell their mobile homes when they leave. And managers earn substantial commissions when sales are made. When Bert Chambers moved into the park, he provided competition to Charlie Thorpe. Also, Bert Chambers was a very handsome and charming man and very fit too. He really enjoyed using the park golf course, tennis courts and swimming pool. Like Charlie Thorpe, he liked to squire these lonely women here. You know, seventy five percent of the residents of this park are women, mostly widows. Charlie Thorpe didn't like that competition either."

"Enough to have anything to do with Bert Chamber's murder?"

"Not likely. Thorpe isn't aggressive enough for that. Besides, Chambers was a much bigger man than Thorpe and five years younger. Thorpe wouldn't have dared tackle him. If I were looking for Chambers' murderer, I would check with his ex-wife. She remarried...to Bert's bookie." Lucy paused as Mary took in the significance of this last statement. "Now let's see those photographs of yours."

Mary pulled out the portfolio and handed the pictures to Lucy. The woman stared at the pictures intently for several minutes. Then she got up, went inside the home and returned with a small case, which she opened displaying an array of felt coloring pens.

"I used to be a commercial artist when I was young. Would you mind if I mess up one of these photographs?"

Mary nodded her assent. Lucy then darkened the background on the reconstruction photo to reduce the mass of hair to a nearly bald scalp. She changed the remaining golden hair to grey and white. She added more wrinkles to the forehead and cheeks and turned the eyes from blue to brown. She added glasses, then a straggly white beard. The transformed picture looked nothing like Bert Chambers.

"Amazing," said Lucy. "That looks like Jack Watson, Bert Chambers' next door neighbor. I think I have a group photo of us from seven years ago. Let me get it."

The two women compared the modified picture with that of Jack Watson. Mary gasped. It was indeed a close match. "You realize, Lucy, your photo suggests that Bert killed his neighbor. Why would he want to do a thing like that?"

"Perhaps because Jack Watson had a good-looking forty-year-old wife."

"It makes no sense for Bert to kill his neighbor just to have his wife."

"Maybe Bert decided to take his place? It was common knowledge that Bert gambled heavily."

"Where is Betty Watson now?"

"She left the park with her husband six weeks after Bert disappeared."

"Did anybody see her husband after Bert disappeared?"

"Not exactly. He was so sick, he never left the home, but you could hear him coughing constantly throughout the day. Betty said she was taking him back to New York to be near his son by a previous marriage, since he didn't have long to live."

"So nobody actually saw Mr. Watson leave the park?"

"I didn't."

Mary visited the Escondido police department and discussed her findings with a homicide detective, Philip Murdoch. She explained to Murdoch that her business was to determine whether Bert Chambers was alive, not to solve the murder. Murdoch said he would make inquiries and get back to her.

Three weeks later, Murdoch asked Mary to the police station. "You were right," he said. "Chambers is alive. We found him and Mrs. Watson living together in a mobile home park in Gainsville, Florida. They even have a child together, a really cute, golden haired boy."

"Then why did Chambers murder Jack Watson?"

"He says he didn't. He says Watson's heart gave out after a coughing fit one night. Watson had put all of his estate into a trust fund for his son, and Betty found that she was going to be left with only the mobile home, burdened with a monthly rent of $500."

"But California is a community property state. Couldn't she have gone to court to claim her fair share?"

"Possibly, but Jack Watson was already retired when he married Betty, so his estate didn't increase during their marriage. Betty thought that her chances would be poor in getting funds released from the trust fund, especially when that trust was funded before they were married."

"Is that the only reason that Bert Chambers took Watson's place?"

"No. You were right there again. Chambers had accumulated nearly fifty thousand dollars in gambling debts, mostly by playing the point spread on football games. Mobile home sales had begun to decline in 1990, so he was under pressure to pay off his debts. And those guys play rough when they aren't paid."

"So how did he take Watson's place?"

"Chambers had a freezer where he used to keep the fish he caught. It was nearly empty at the time. He just put Watson's body in it and then took the body in his car to Fishpoint two days later. In the middle of the first night there, he drove his car to the burial spot. He pulled out all of Watson's teeth from the thawed corpse and put his own false teeth into its mouth. He put his own clothes onto the body and hit the back of its skull with a hammer to simulate a murder. Chambers then put his wallet into the jacket pocket and buried the body. He took his credit cards, so nobody could use them if the body were discovered later. Next, he drove the car to Compton and abandoned the vehicle, whereupon locals stripped it. Finally, he traveled by bus to Oceanside and was picked up at night by Betty in the wheelchair-van used to transport her sick husband."

"So that's why the tooth was found in the trunk of the car?"

"Yes. And the stain in the trunk came from leaking body fluids, including blood, from the corpse. Chambers made a tape of coughing and played it continuously during the day. He hid in the Watson home for the next six weeks while he and Betty forged Jack Watson's name and transferred funds from the trust fund into an account held by Betty. Then she announced to the park she was selling the mobile home, and they left unseen one night."

"So, how did you track him down?"

"It wasn't easy. Betty's bank could no longer trace the cashier's check that Betty got when she closed her account, since it was more than five years old. But, if you were a vigorous man and liked to work, what would you do?" Murdoch looked quizzically at Mary who did not reply. "Why, you go back to doing the things you are good at. So Chambers, using Watson's identity, applied for a mobile home salesperson's license in Florida and began selling mobile homes again. We checked the names of licensees and social security numbers in various states and found gold in Florida."

"Do you believe Chamber's story?"

"Well, I think it could have happened that way. In any event, it would be hard to disprove Chambers' version of what happened in court."

"So, what's next?"

"The district attorney has prepared a warrant for his arrest and a request to Florida for the extradition of both Chambers and Betty Watson. I expect they will be charged with forgery, grand larceny, mutilation of a corpse and improper disposal of a corpse. I have called the sheriff at Fishpoint to tell him what has happened and ask him to issue a new report on the identification of the remains. I expect the DA will cut a deal for Chambers to take the full blame and for Mrs. Watson to plead guilty to lesser charges and be put on probation so she can continue to raise their child."

"Thank you, Mr. Murdoch." Mary smiled warmly. "My boss and the underwriter will be pleased. I guess sometimes a loose tooth will reveal the truth."

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear."

Edmund Burke

LEAVING GWEN

Bill appears on time. A fifty-year-old businessman with thinning gray hair, his suit fits him perfectly. I cannot imagine him without a jacket and a matching tie that always hangs straight. His very clothes say "motivated, direct, analytical," totally unlike me, although we both attended the same university, him to graduate with honors and me to drop out after two years. That same university connection has led to his becoming my payee for my Social Security Disability income.

"Are you ready, Pete?" he says, looking unfavorably, I fear, on my green tee-shirt, red baseball hat and baggy blue jeans, belted so my forty-five-year-old belly droops below my waist. These are not the clothes suitable for an interview, but they are the only semi-clean ones I have. I tell him I'm ready, but in truth I'm not. My morning medication is wearing off; I'm tired and nervous. I ask if I can have a cigarette before we leave. Bill nods his okay. We have met outside my apartment. I don't want Gwen, sleeping inside, to know what I am doing. She will find out sooner or later, but I would rather it be later so as to avoid one of her hallucinatory tirades. I make a point of waving the empty cigarette pack in front of Bill before I toss it in a trash bin. I hope he will buy me another pack before the day is over; he is smart enough to recognize my signal. But he says nothing, most likely because he knows I will send him other signals later.

As I smoke, I tell Bill how the medicine I take for paranoid schizophrenia inhibits my perspiration and yet makes me extremely thirsty. It also makes me sensitive to sunlight, so I always wear a hat and try to do outside chores in early morning. He listens with interest. His manner is soothing, but my envy of him and the power he has over me make it hard to truly like him. The cigarette calms me and I tell Bill I'm ready. We drive off.

"Did anything happen this morning to make you nervous?" he asks.

I don't like to bother him with all my problems. I'm grateful that he now manages my money. God knows things were bad when Gwen managed my money. Bill lives in such a different world from me, I wonder if he can comprehend how small problems, easily solvable for him, are mountains I cannot scale. "Gwen took meth last night," I mumble.

Bill does not hear me and makes me repeat my answer.

"So she was up all night?" asks Bill.

This is my opening to unload. "Oh God, yes," I tell him. "She was so high; it was awful. She played the stereo very loud and woke all the neighbors. The manager came over, and she swore at him. Somebody called the police, but she came down off her high before they arrived. They left when they found Gwen was quiet, but hassled me since I had been shouting at Gwen to shut up. I didn't get to bed until 3:00 a.m."

"Pete, you can't stay there."

"I know, but I just can't let Gwen be put onto the streets. I owe her."

I've lived with Gwen for five years, beginning just as she gave birth. The poor baby, deformed likely by the poisons she had taken, died a year later. She has been using crystal steadily since, as though to forget, and has become a shrieking termagant, impossible to love or even understand. But I hate myself, knowing that unless I leave her, she will drag me down. Gwen takes my money. She borrows from friends and tells them: "Pete will pay it." I like to please her but hate the chaos she causes. Her friends, dysfunctional as she--and me--, include petty thieves, drug users and alcoholics. It is so painful to lose my partner in bed and life. When I recovered from ten years of alcoholism, and, absent the camaraderie of fellow drunks, she comforted my loneliness.

"Where are we going today?" I ask.

"We are going to investigate a shared housing arrangement for you in Escondido," he replies.

"Escondido!" I yell. I feel numb. I don't know anybody there. Horror grips me at being alone in a strange place. All my friends live near my present apartment in San Diego. I cannot imagine life without them. Yet I know I cannot handle life with them, especially Gwen. Oh, was she awful last night! The contrast between that woman of last night and the sweet comforter of five years ago is unbelievable. She was so good to me then, and she needed me. Now, she is so mean, the pain is unbearable. I feel myself shaking. Fear grips me at the prospect of meeting strangers, especially ones who may later have some control over my life.

I plead with Bill: "I don't know anybody in Escondido. Please don't make me go there. Do we really have to go today? Can't it wait until another time?"

"We've been over this before, Pete. You're being evicted from your apartment. Largely due to Gwen, I might add. So we need to find a shared housing situation for you, one where Gwen can't bother you. Today, the Escondido Housing Agency will screen you."

The pain increases. My voice rises with anxiety and the emotions I feel. I put my hand on his shoulder. "Please Bill, don't make me go there. You're making me very upset. Please stop the car."

I start to cry, and Bill pulls the car off the freeway and drives to a nearby strip-shopping center. He opens the power windows of the car, and the fresh air blows in my face. Fear still grips me, and I scheme to stall Bill. "Can you buy me a soda so I can take my medicine?" I ask him in a piteous tone. Bill knows me well enough not to argue and moves the car in front of a 7-11 store. The light outside the car is terribly bright and exacerbates my feeling of lack of control and tranquility. I stumble into the dark interior of the store and head for the soda fountain where I pour a quart-sized drink. I ask Bill if he will let me have a pack of cigarettes. He nods and pays the clerk. Outside the store, I head for a wall that offers shade. I take my two capsules, a five-mg capsule of Navane and a one-mg capsule of Cogentin, and gulp a quarter of my soda. Then I light up. I am practically dancing with nervousness, and I appreciate that Bill lets me drink and smoke without saying anything.

I move from foot to foot and shake. "Bill, I don't know anybody in Escondido. I've no friends there. Please take me back. I can't live there."

"You really had a bad time last night, " says Bill avoiding my pleas.

I nod. "Gwen gets so mean when she gets strung out. I can't help her straighten out. But she needs me. I wish I could do more for her, but she won't see a doctor, and she won't enter any rehab program. She has no family to look after her, and she can't live on her SSI income."

"Pete, you know that her yelling at you worsens your clinical paranoia. She takes your money; she doesn't leave you enough for medication. That's why the last time you had no medication you finished up in a hospital two hundred miles away, and you didn't remember how you got there. Gwen used to spend your rent money before I became your payee. This is the third apartment you've been kicked out of in less than a year. You can't go on like this."

Bill is right, but it doesn't make it any easier. Gwen is the only love I've had in my life. I hate to leave her. How I wish there were some way to save her, but I know if I continue we will both drown. Bill has thrown me a lifeline, but only for me. But the change will be hard. I don't know if I can handle it. I used alcohol to face changes before, and if I do that again, I'll be put in an institution. I beg some more.

"Bill, please don't make me live in Escondido."

"Pete, you need to be away from Gwen. If she knows where you are, she will either take your money or move in with you and the cycle will start again."

"But I don't know anybody there."

"Pete, most of the people you know are losers; they do you no good. You need fresh friends."

"It's hard for me to make friends. I hate crowds of people. I can't handle it, Bill."

"Pete, you don't have to live in Escondido, but you should go through the screening process to see if you can qualify for that or any other city's shared housing program. Please go through this interview as a stepping stone to a new future. At least do it as a favor to me."

The medicine is beginning to take hold and I feel calmer. I don't want to offend Bill--he has power over me. He could put me in a board and care facility for disabled people. I was in one for a few months before I met Gwen. It was terrible. Other residents and the staff bullied me; I couldn't get enough cigarettes, and my medication often came late. I know I need to leave Gwen. I wish I could just move away from her but stay near people I know. But I know she will then come to me for support. It's so hard for me to make a decision. How I envy Bill's ability to push aside obstacles! I know he means well, and I should be grateful to him. I see he has softened his demand on me. Maybe it would be best to humor him after his efforts. I drink some more soda and take more puffs of my cigarette.

"Will you sit with me during the interview?" I ask.

Bill nods.

"You won't put me with anybody, I don't like?"

Bill nods again.

"Okay, then," I say warily.

"Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them."

Oscar Wilde - A Woman of No Importance

"WHAT ABOUT FATHER?"

"Darling, I'm so glad you've set a date to get married," said Ruth Schmidt to her daughter, Kate. "After the ceremony--you'll have Rabbi Kersh presiding I presume--we could have the reception at the University Great Hall. It would be a lovely setting for all our guests and our friends. I think I can swing it. I've had tenure now for ten years and should be able to persuade Provost Johnson to let me use the hall, especially since we're talking about a year away. Such a lovely idea to combine it with Michael's graduation. I'll be so proud, him with a doctorate in biophysics."

"It sounds nice, Mom. Won't that be expensive to rent the hall? Do we really need a ceremony that big? Michael has a small family and most of them live in New Jersey. I don't think there will be more than ten of them come out for the wedding. A hall that can handle five hundred people will dwarf the number of guests."

Don't be silly, darling," replied Ruth. "You have all your friends from the university and high school. They will bring their boy friends or husbands. Michael has his university friends. I still have a dozen cousins back East and their families; they might well come for your wedding and the opportunity to visit your grandmother. I have all of my friends, perhaps a hundred; that includes their spouses. Benjamin will likely have much of his family. There's another forty. Then, of course, there will be many faculty members from my department and Benjamin's department who would like to come. And don't forget our neighbors. I think we already have a guest list of three hundred just for starters. And don't worry about the cost. Benjamin and I can afford to give you a lovely wedding. We would be hurt if you wouldn't let us do this for you and Michael."

Kate knew her mother would not be dissuaded. She looked out of the large bay windows of their La Jolla home. Her eyes scanned the long grass lawn leading to the cliff and the sea beyond. Yes, her mother and stepfather could afford a handsome wedding. What harm would there be she thought? Her mother would get a great deal of pleasure from a showy wedding. Hopefully, Michael wouldn't mind or feel obligated to her mother.

"What about Father?" she asked.

Ruth looked startled. "Now, Darling, we've been over that before. Your father ran off with another woman and started a new family with her. I don't want to see him or his floozy at the wedding. I can't forgive him for being traded in for a younger model. I hope you haven't tried to get in touch with him. I won't have you doing anything with him after the way he treated me--and you."

Kate said nothing. It wasn't easy to argue with her mother, who went on with more planning details; the reception, the type of food, the bar service, the flowers, Kate's selection of the bridesmaids—"you won't ask that awful Kristina will you, Darling?"--, the bridesmaids' dresses, type and color, the photographer, the caterer, the limousine service. How her mother looked forward to planning this wedding!

Kate thought of her father, David Goldstein. He had disappeared from her life when she was four years old. Her mother had told her he had gone away. As a small girl, Kate wondered if she had done anything to make her dear papa leave. But, her mother's animosity toward her father drove that notion from her mind. Only later did her mother tell her that he had run off with another woman. It must have hurt sorely, since her mother long refused to talk about her ex-husband, or allow Kate to visit him, despite his living in the area. Still, her stepfather had been a good substitute; he had treated Kate as though she were his own daughter.

Kate put aside marriage plans as she studied to complete her last undergraduate degree courses. During the last quarter of her senior year at the university, she volunteered to tutor students at a Chula Vista high school. At the end of instructing a sophomore class on American history, a sixteen-year-old boy approached her.

"Your name is Kate Goldstein?" he asked.

Kate nodded: "Uh Huh."

"Is your father perhaps David Goldstein?"

Kate eyed him warily. She had been told to avoid personal relationships with easily impressed male students. She replied: "Yes. How does that affect you?"

"I think you might be my half-sister since my dad is David Goldstein," he replied. "He told me he had a daughter, called Kate, who lived in La Jolla."

Kate pondered on her response. Did she want to open up a relationship with him and his parents, especially since her mother had strictly forbidden her to do so? As an adult, she was free to make her own choices, but was it worth opening old wounds? Jacob, a clean-cut, slender, dark-skinned youth, with thick curly black hair like her own, seemed harmless.

"Let's discuss this over a cup of coffee," she said.

They found a quiet corner in the local McDonald's restaurant. Kate looked across the table at Jacob's smiling face, crowned with thick glasses. His eagerness showed. She asked him his birthday. "May 17, 1983," he replied. "I was sixteen three days ago. And yours?"

"Happy birthday. Mine's June 15, 1977. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"No. My mother couldn't have any more children after me. And you?"

"I'm an only child also," said Kate. "I only just remember my father, and I keep wondering why he didn't stay in touch with me."

Jacob spoke carefully: "My dad said he'd been married before and had a daughter. I asked him why we didn't see her, and he said because his former wife wouldn't allow it. Is that true?"

Surprised, Kate responded after a pause: "I don't know. My mom was very unhappy with your father. Said that he was unfaithful. That's why she divorced him. That's why she wouldn't let me visit him. But she said he didn't want to visit me."

"Sounds strange," said Jacob. "Dad always said how much he missed his daughter. Would you like to meet him?"

Kate didn't know what to say. She found it hard to believe her mother had prevented her father from seeing her. The thought delayed her reply. "Let me think about this for a few days, Jacob. You know, it's hard to start a father-daughter relationship this late, especially since my mother feels so badly about your dad. Please don't tell him you've met me. Let's give it a little time. Bring me some pictures of your--our--father. Also, let me see a picture of your mother."

"You'll have to let me see a picture of yours," said Jacob, grinning.

That evening, Kate called to arrange a visit with her grandmother, Ruth Schmidt's mother. And on Saturday, Kate knocked on the door of Room 121 at the San Diego retirement home of Grandma Schwartsky. All smiles, her eighty-four-year old grandmother greeted Kate: "Boobee, it's lovely to see you. You should come more often. People here think I'm a nebbish because I get so few visitors. I wish to God I'd never left Bronsville. There I knew everybody. It's a shame to grow old and be an oysvurf in one's own land. Now come in and talk to me. Tell me about yourself and the university. Tell me about Michael, about your mother, about Benjamin. I'm a yenteh, with nothing to tell."

Kate sat on the couch beside her neatly dressed and coiffured grandmother. The furniture in the clean and orderly room glowed. The knick-knacks shone. Grandma Schwartsky liked things spic-and-span.

"What can you tell me about my father?" Kate asked.

"David? You want to know about David? You take me for a chunchen? Did you tell your mother you were going to ask me this?"

"No, Grandma. I didn't discuss this with Mom. It is a sore subject she refuses to talk about. I've set the date with Michael and wondered whether my father should be there."

"My Boobee. You will be happy. That Michael is a nice boy. Praise to heaven he is not goy. You ask me such a question. If I tell you, I will be bakakt with your mother."

"I only know what Mom tells me."

"And she says your father was nishgutnick."

"But, why is that, Grandma."

My child, your mother was thirty-five and not married. Yet her juice flowed. She wanted a man, a nice bocher. But, here she was, a professor at Columbia University, and the women at the synagogue looked down their noses at her. Why could she not attract a man? Now you know your mother and you can guess why. She was no zaftik. But she made us so proud. Her father, a butcher at Feinberg's Market all his life. Me, a sometime clerk at the five and dime, and she a Ph.D in history from StoneyBrook. No men in her life while she studied; she did not charm. She knew not how to please a man. So I talked to Mrs. Blaum, David Goldstein's aunt, a zeeskait, if ever one there was. She was the shadchen for your father and your mother."

Kate stared at her grandmother. "My mother married my father in an arranged marriage? You're kidding?"

"My boobee. I'm not a chaim yankel. Your mother wanted children. She wanted to be married so she could have children. But, she didn't want her shidech known."

"Why was that Grandma? Was there anything wrong with him?"

"No, indeed. David was truly haymish. But, he worked with his hands; your mother worked with her head. She sometimes told me he was a zhlubb. But I find him fraylech. I told her she was a tsatskele. She should count her blessings to have a good man, not a buhmeker. She thought to move away and applied to the university in San Diego. She told David they would be moving to California. He liked that. Poor mensch, he had the colds so bad in New York. California to him was warm heaven. And he gets work right away in the rocket program. Testing work, he tells me. I liked him very much. He called me his sweet machitayniste."

"Do you know why they got divorced?@

"Boobee, that I do not know. I visit you when you are a baby, just walking. Your mother is very busy at the university. Your father is very happy. You giggle as he tosses you. I think everything is wonderful. I do not believe when your mother telephones to say divorce two years later. I ask why. She tells me David is schlekht. That I do not believe. I tell Mrs. Blaum. She cries. She feels she is at fault. Mrs. Goldstein tells her that David says your mother is tired of him, that she has become farbisn. What do I know? Later your mother tells me David was a nebish. He chased after a nafke. Next year, Mrs. Goldstein tells me David has met another woman and is getting married. But, she speaks to me no more. I miss her company, especially after Grandpa and Mrs. Blaum die. I heard Mrs. Goldstein, God rest her soul, passed away last year."

"Mrs. Goldstein never came to visit me either, Grandma. Why was that?"

"Boobee. I do not know. Your mother and father brought you to New York when you were but two. So cute, so pretty. But why should I talk? You are now a shaineh maidel, and I still a yenteh. David got yiches when he married your mother, but that was not all he got. You know your mother. Who knows what happened here in California?"

"I remember Papa. I remembered loving him and missing him. I still feel hurt that he could leave me as well as Mom."

"Boobee, I remember it well. Your father called me just before Passover to say he had been kicked out of the house. He asked me to speak to your mother. But, no, she would not discuss with me except to say David was schlekht. So sad was I when your mother called on Labor Day to say the divorce was final that week, the same week, Feinberg's market closes. Your grandpa then has no more work. 1981, and him only sixty-six. No other job could he find, and small pension we had. Your mother brought me out here after grandpa died, God rest his soul. Comfortable it is, but I wish I were back in Bronsville."

Kate and Jacob swapped photographs a few days later.

"I'm sorry, Kate. I couldn't help myself. I had to tell my parents about meeting you. They were delighted to hear I'd made contact. Dad told me to tell you that he would love to meet you and start again where he left off eighteen years ago," said Jacob.

Kate examined the photographs Jacob had given her. Yes, that would be her father, the same black curls as herself, though now heavily streaked with grey. A kindly face, she thought. Amazing that somebody, so unfaithful, could look so pleasant.

"Does your father still work in the testing field?" she asked.

"Yes indeed. He's a field technician for Solar Turbines in downtown San Diego. He loves the job, a much better one than he had with General Dynamics. Solar sends him all around the world to install and test turbines. He just left for Venezuela on an oil pipeline project and won't be back for six weeks. Would you like to meet my mother in the meantime?"

Kate looked at a picture of Sarah, Jacob's mother, a dark complexioned, forty-year-old woman, her mouth open in laughter, her eyes sparkling. The homewrecker that destroyed her parent's marriage. "You take more after your mother than your father," she said cautiously.

"I do," said Jacob. "Mom was actually born in Haifa. Her father was an American and her mother a native Sephardim. So Mom has both US and Israeli citizenship. She came to the USA and met Dad in San Diego. They're very happy together."

"I'm glad to hear that," said Kate. "What work does your mother do?"

"Mom doesn't work, at least not at a regular job. She and Dad are quite religious, almost orthodox. They both believe her place is at the home and in taking part in the spiritual and humanitarian work of the synagogue."

Makes it harder to think of Sarah as a home-wrecker, thought Kate. If she were to start a relationship with her father, it would mean interacting with his wife, the woman he left her mother for. Better to do that now and see if she could handle it. She agreed to meet the following Sunday.

"Come in, Kate," said Sarah, her dark face glowing with pleasure, showing her into the living room of the modest two bedroom house. Kate looked at the old couch, the worn easy chairs and the ten-year-old carpet. What a contrast to the opulent house she lived in with her mother and stepfather. Not surprising though. Her mother and stepfather between them would earn a great deal more than her father. Sarah first asked questions about Kate, the high school she had attended, university, career goals and social and cultural interests, and finally her fiancé. Only then was Kate able to ask Sarah about her family. Sarah had taken religious studies at Yeshiva University in Israel and had been invited to San Diego by a local synagogue under a visitor exchange program in November of 1981. "That's where I met your father, one month after I got off the plane. He was very lonely after the divorce from your mother. I knew a good man when I saw him and grabbed him quick. We got married three months later and have been blessed with Jacob and a happy life."

Astonished, Kate asked: "You didn't meet my father until after his divorce from my mother? My mother said that Dad was fooling around with another woman. That's why she divorced him."

Sarah's face showed her surprise. "I met your father after his divorce. If you want, I could show you the stamp in my passport when I entered the US. I just can't believe David was going with any woman before or after he and your mother split up. He is too honest to be unfaithful."

Puzzled, Kate wondered who the other woman could be? Maybe she was named in the divorce proceedings. She'd check that out.

The records of the family court were on the third floor of the downtown County Court house. A clerk directed Kate to the microfiche, where divorce records were filed by case number, by plaintiff and defendant. It did not take long to find the pertinent record. Divorce proceedings were filed In December 1980, and the divorce finalized in September 1981. She read her mother's complaint, which comprised charges of mental cruelty with details of specific incidents. There was no charge of infidelity; no woman was named. Her mother was represented by Attorney James Rogers. And her father by Pro Per. "What does that mean?" she asked a court clerk.

"It means he represented himself," replied the clerk.

"Why would anybody do without a lawyer, especially in a case involving of custody of children?" asked Kate.

The clerk smiled. "I can't give you legal advice. You would need to talk to the parties involved to find out more details. Usually, Pro Per representation occurs when that party is an attorney, or can't afford an attorney, or doesn't believe an attorney is necessary."

Kate paid the fee to have the file printed out, then went to the courthouse cafeteria and perused the document further. The court awarded sole custody to Ruth Goldstein and visitation rights on weekends to David Goldstein. There was no record of the proceedings; evidently no transcript was prepared. The judge had recommended counseling. A summary of the counselor's report was in the file, stating there were irreconcilable differences between Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein that would not likely be resolved. Kate put the document away, then pulled it out again. She stared. The judge was Julius Roth. "How odd," she thought. "The judge was Benjamin Schmidt's uncle, now dead. I remember him visiting our home when I was about eight. What a remarkable coincidence! Did her mother know Benjamin before the divorce?"

That afternoon, Kate dialed the university web site from her computer and looked at faculty resources. Her heart sank. There it was. Benjamin Schmidt, formerly of the University of New Mexico, hired as Head of the Department of Music in September 1980, four months before her mother initiated the divorce.

Kate visited Sarah again before the return of her father. "Tell me, do you know why my father represented himself in court at the divorce proceedings?" she asked.

"He knew it was important. But he had been laid off from his work and had no money for an attorney. He was still out of work when I met him and was very depressed. That's why he attended the synagogue so regularly."

"Why didn't my father call me or visit me? Why didn't he exercise his visitation rights?"

Sarah sighed. "He tried. But your mother made it difficult. She would say you were sick, you were at school, you were at a religious function, you were visiting your grandmother, you were visiting friends. Your mother would tell your father he could visit you when she knew he was being sent out of town for his test work. When your father protested, she fought him in court. She would claim he did not utilize properly the rights he had. She would say he did not have a proper home for you to visit. She would say he was not providing her with child support, although your mother did not need it. Your father had little income, while he was unemployed. Your mother could afford powerful lawyers."

"Why didn't he write to me?"

"He did."

"I never got anything."

Sarah got up and left the room and returned with a cardboard box containing a stack of envelopes. "Here, Kate. Read these letters that were returned and learn the truth about your father. He loved you dearly. He was badly hurt when your mother cut you out of his life. Many times he cried on my shoulder because he could not get to love you."

Her graduation ceremony over, and with Michael at her side, Kate approached her mother and said nervously, but firmly: "Mom, Michael and I have decided to have a small wedding next year, not the big wedding you talked about. You might prefer it to be private since I intend to have my father give me away, not Benjamin. Also, I plan to invite my stepmother to the ceremony."

"The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it is intolerable."

Sir John Vanbrugh

THE MOST WANTED VEHICLE IN AMERICA

Early last year I purchased a Ford Explorer, a black, finely polished vehicle, with a large V-8 engine and four-wheel drive. I knew it would serve me well in towing my boat and impressing my neighbors, who drive mostly Chevy trucks. How strange it is in this exclusive suburb of San Diego, where the average estate sprawls over five acres of oranges, avocados or horse corrals, that most families have a four wheel drive vehicle in their three- or four-stall garage, and that vehicle is most likely a Chevy truck. I strove to be different. After my Ford Explorer was delivered to my home, my family and immediate neighbors none of whom drive Chevy trucks- gathered to admire this beautiful vehicle, parked in the front yard, and commented on the soundness of my judgment, my talent for recognizing quality and my perspicacity in getting a good deal. When my neighbors had departed, my lovely wife and I had dinner and enjoyed looking out across from the dining table to see the house lights glinting back from the shiny polish of this Ford Explorer. We discussed how beautiful were its grey leather seats, its six-speaker stereo with cassette and CD features, and its fully adjustable driver and passenger seats. My dear companion agreed fully with my purchase, knowing full well that we dared to be different from our Chevy neighbors.

The next morning when I came down for breakfast and looked out to inspect my good deal, I discovered somebody else had also thought it a good deal and had removed it. In high dudgeon, I called the police to report the missing vehicle. When the duty officer heard it was a Ford Explorer, he began to chuckle.

"Didn't you know it is the most-wanted-vehicle-in- America?"

"Yes, I do understand it to be a popular vehicle," I replied, irritated by his aside.

"No, it is the vehicle in America most preferred by thieves."

I thanked him for his enlightenment and asked when I might get my vehicle back. He chuckled louder. He asked me if the Ford Explorer had any anti theft devices and chuckled further when I replied I did not know. Again, I asked him what he was going to do about returning my vehicle, and his chuckling turned into raucous laughter. "The only way to get your vehicle back is to buy another and hope that the thief will try again," he said. "However, be sure to purchase one with an auto-theft alarm." He also told me to file a report at the police station.

I did indeed visit the police station to register my loss, only to be disturbed at the officer's lack of sympathy. I put it down to envy since most police vehicles here become covered in grime from chasing fruit thieves or from chasing off inquisitive journalists crashing parties hosted for avaricious politicians. After I had calmed down, I telephoned my insurance agent-- inappropriately named Joy--, a lady I have known for more than twenty years, during which time she has received no auto claim from my household that comprises only conservative drivers. She immediately ravished my calm by telling me that the stolen vehicle was secondhand; it was already used and was worth 30 percent less than what I had paid for it just twenty four hours earlier. I could not believe my ears; why, that vehicle had been driven less than twenty miles since it left the dealer. I remonstrated with her vigorously the good woman defended the insurance company's inane policy with an absurd conviction but to no avail. Joy suggested I bargain harder with the dealer or buy a less expensive vehicle than the original. But my mind was set on the Ford Explorer. Like the thief, I too wanted to possess and drive the most wanted vehicle in America.

I visited the dealer again and explained my loss and insurance payoff to the salesman who served me earlier, a young man with a bushy mustache and a thin patronizing smile. I asked him if he would let me have a new Ford Explorer for the money the insurance company would be giving me. The salesman lost his thin smile momentarily as his eyes and mouth formed an astonished "Oh.". When he saw I was in earnest, he coughed and hiccupped, a most curious sound, before he recovered his thin smile and replied that it was not possible. I argued with him, and finally he took me to the sales manager, saying I was a good customer and he hoped for my repeat business. The sales manager, an older gentleman with a proper air of respect and dignity, expressed sympathy with my predicament but said he could not sell me a new Ford Explorer for just the insurance proceeds. However, if I would pay the same amount of money that I had paid the first time, he would throw in a factory-installed theft alarm. I debated his proposition in my mind and decided that, since I needed a theft-alarm to catch the person who took my first Ford Explorer, and since I did not know the cost of a theft alarm system, perhaps paying 30 percent of the auto value for a quality system might be a good investment.

In ten days time, I took delivery of my new Ford Explorer. It too glistened in black like its stolen predecessor. It too had the exquisite grey leather seats and advanced audio features. My immediate neighbors and family jostled around the new vehicle to examine it and comment on my wisdom for purchasing the most wanted vehicle in America. Those neighbors of mine who drive Chevy trucks did not visit to either congratulate me on my new purchase or console me on my earlier loss. It is indeed painful to be different in this world. One visiting neighbor noted that the thief, who had taken the first Ford Explorer, already had one most wanted vehicle in America and would unlikely want another.

I explained to my family and neighbors that this vehicle was equipped with a theft alarm, and they expressed a keen interest in its workings, which the salesman had neglected to show me in my rush to take possession. I told the assembled crowd that I would set the theft alarm after I had studied the alarm-manual, which I would have no problem understanding since I possessed an advanced engineering degree. However, the manual had not been written for graduates of the engineering school I attended, and I had to ask my teenage son to set up the device, which seemed to have some similarity to the settings on the remote control of our video recorder, which I have not yet had need to use. I then approached the most wanted vehicle in America to see how it would greet me.

"Stand back," it yelled cantankerously. "Keep away." It whistled, beeped and gurgled strange sounds until I removed myself to an adequate distance. I was quite disappointed that it could not distinguish me from a thief. I approached again just in case it had failed in the first recognition. I had heard of something called artificial intelligence in which microcomputers obviously involved in this alarm system could be trained to recognize their master. However, this alarm system proved unwilling to learn and rejected me with the same disgust and vehemence as before. The crowd seemed to appreciate the system's rejection of me and reveled in being rejected themselves. I looked at the manual to see what needed to be done to silence this system, but its strange terminology baffled me. I gave the manual to my son who quickly pressed a few buttons on the remote control to return the vehicle to total silence. I then persuaded my boy, who was reluctant to instruct his father in the presence of a crowd but whose allowance was due the next day, to show me which buttons to push to activate or deactivate the alarm.

Now that the most-wanted-vehicle-in-America was under my control and I had been fully trained in the theft-alarm system, I reset the unit and retired to bed, comfortable in the knowledge that my Ford Explorer was safe. Perhaps the vehicle was secure, but my wife and I were not. At two o'clock in the morning, a thunderous noise from the outside awoke us and requested that we:

"Stand back! Keep away!"

I went to my rifle cabinet to retrieve a weapon suitable for confronting any potential thief, but my good wife persuaded me instead to use a flashlight whose forthright beam transfixed a young couple next to the Ford Explorer clasping each other. I pushed the button on the alarm system to make it cease its racket.

"Daddy, why didn't you tell me that your new vehicle has an alarm?" said my daughter, retrieving herself from the arms of her swain.

"Why weren't you home at midnight as you promised me?" retorted my wife in an unusually strident voice. My gentle wife of twenty two years is a treasure of sweet reasonableness. I had to attribute her excessive concern to an adrenaline rush from thinking we were to encounter an auto-thief.

"Because we were stuck in the parking lot after the rock show of Hannibal and the Cannibals."

"You were in the parking lot three hours after the show ended?" asked my wife loudly. "Albert, you should know better."

"Albert had nothing to do with it, Mother. It was my idea to go to this show."

By now, the entire neighborhood had awakened, initially to the noise of the alarm and now to this domestic dispute. Although I begged my wife to continue this discussion at a more seemly hour, she continued despite neighbors from distant windows hurling hostile comments about their peace being disturbed. Only when neighbors, assembling in our garden began to shout invectives, did she cease. Eventually, we all retired to fall soundly asleep.

Next morning, I went down to breakfast and looked outside to see the second most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. I could not believe my eyes. It too was gone. In the confusion of the previous night, I had failed to reactivate the alarm, and my glistening black Ford Explorer no longer stood where I had parked it. I rushed outside just to check that no joke had been played on me. Perhaps my neighbors had pushed the vehicle a few yards out of my sight to repay me for their lost sleep. But this sly, unworthy thought of mine had no basis in truth. Somebody had indeed stolen my Ford Explorer.

I called the police to report the missing vehicle and talked to the same duty officer as before. He laughed at length to hear that my second most-wanted-vehicle-in-America was stolen. I could hear him telling others in the office, and I imagined them at the police station, a hand in one pocket, the other slapping a thigh, as they cackled upon hearing a repeat of the story of the man who bought and lost the most-wanted-vehicle-in-America.

"Didn't you have a theft-alarm on it?" he gasped between fits of laughter. I replied coldly that indeed I did, but it had inadvertently been shut off in the middle of the night. He chortled further; I could hear him wheezing as he told me to come to the police station to file a report. In a rage, I slammed down the phone and called my insurance agent. Joy was out and her assistant, Patience, answered. But I had no patience with Patience and firmly instructed her to have Joy call me. Joy groaned when I recounted the details of my second loss and reproached me for failing to reactivate the theft-alarm. My rage increased when Joy told me the best she could do would be seventy cents on the dollar since the second most-wanted-vehicle-in-America was secondhand. She said this further claim might cause my insurance premium to be increased, although she would try to get me a discount if the replacement Ford Explorer were equipped with a working (her emphasis) theft-alarm. I retorted it was unfair that I be punished for the fault of others, but my arguments did not sway her. I pointed out this was becoming a very expensive business, and Joy gave me no joy when she stated it was foolish to keep buying the most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. Again she suggested I try to get an even better buy from the auto dealer or purchase a different vehicle.

I returned to the auto dealer and discussed my predicament first with the salesman to whom I recounted how I had lost my second Ford Explorer, despite it having a factory installed theft alarm. The salesman could not control his mirth when I told him what had happened. How I loathed his bushy mustache bobbling above his flapping lips. I offered to buy a new vehicle with the money I was to receive from the insurance company, but he looked at me as though I were a vaudeville clown. I left him gasping with mirth at my proposition and went to the sales manager. That solid gentleman seemed to have a problem with facial tics as I explained what had happened and when I told him I still wanted to buy a Ford Explorer. He put his hand over his mouth until the twitches in his cheeks subsided and was able to say how much he admired my dedication in desiring the most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. The sales manager commiserated with me and my ill fortune and said he would give me a better deal than before. He would give me the Ford Explorer at the same price I originally paid; he would throw in another factory-installed theft alarm and include a professionally installed fuel-cutoff valve so that any burglar stealing the vehicle would shortly find the fuel cut off. He also added an Eight-speaker stereo system with a compact disk (CD) player and a free golden oldies CD. He declined to give me any discount for the remote control of the first theft alarm that had come from the second most-wanted-vehicle-in-America.

Some ten days later, I drove home in the third Ford Explorer, a sleek black glistening vehicle that exhibited the pride and amenities of its predecessors. How I enjoyed sitting on its plush grey leather seats and playing I get a Kick Out of You on its superlative stereo. Its theft alarm worked like the first and I was informed that a button on the alarm control would close a fuel-valve so no auto-thief could drive far, even if he could hot-wire the vehicle or bypass the alarm. I set the theft-alarm and the interlocking fuel valve on my shiny Ford Explorer that evening, attached the remote control (a very small device) to the ring of vehicle keys, and then retired to bed with my wife, secure in the knowledge that nobody could successfully steal the vehicle that night. At one in the morning, I was aroused by the familiar commands:

"Stand back! Keep away!"

I jumped out of bed and grabbed my robe, my vehicle key rings and attached theft alarm control, also taking my flashlight in case my adult daughter had just returned again from Cannibal and the Hannibals. I approached the loudly screeching vehicle and beheld a tall man with his hand against the third most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. I opened my mouth to speak, but he forestalled me.

"Give me your alarm control so that I can turn this racket off," he demanded firmly.

He exhibited such authority and self assurance that I thought he was either a policeman, a fireman or a Chevy-driving neighbor. So I meekly gave him the remote alarm control, whereupon he promptly and expertly silenced the alarm. I asked him if he knew why it had gone off and he responded that he did indeed know. I asked him what his authority was. He replied "this," pointing a large pistol at me and asking me politely, but firmly, to leave while he opened the car door with the keys already attached to the alarm control. I could not believe my eyes as he started the vehicle. I asked him if he were the person who had taken the previous most-wanted-vehicles-in-America. He responded that he was not, that he was in a hurry, and that he had heard from others this was a good place to pick up a most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. I begged him never to return, but he did not reply as he drove the third Ford Explorer out of my driveway, the stereo playing I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.

I immediately called the police to report the theft. I gave the duty officer the description of my vehicle and its occupant, but he laughed and said I must be drunk because I had already reported the theft twice before. The police night shift must either have been inebriated or not as bright as the day shift, because he laughed heartily as I tried to explain to them that I was reporting the loss of the third most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. He said that it could not be a Ford Explorer, since it was the first most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. I asked him firmly to issue an all points bulletin for the Explorer and told him they should catch it soon since it had an interlocking fuel-valve that would prevent the vehicle going far. He said that since the thief exhibited a familiarity with the factory installed alarm control, he would be fully cognizant of the control button to disengage the interlocking fuel valve. Between his spells of laughing that a man could be so foolish as to let himself be robbed of the same vehicle no less than three times, he urged me to go to sleep, and in the morning visit the station to file a report and see my insurance agent.

I did not sleep very well the rest of the night, for I knew when I went downstairs for breakfast I would not look out to behold the third most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. But by now, my dander was up, I was determined to own and possess such a vehicle. I called Joy about the loss and told her curtly that I would accept seventy cents on the dollar, no ifs and no buts. She reproached me for continuing to buy a Ford Explorer and gave me her usual advice. I responded coldly that I did not regard her advice as germane. She said I might try to approach the dealer, mentioning the California Auto Lemon Law. I asked her to explain and she said that if a car had a persistent fault, which the dealer failed to correct, then, the dealer could be forced to provide me with a replacement vehicle or a refund.

I thanked her for this sage advice and went to visit my auto dealer where the salesman whom I usually deal with quickly lay prostrate on the floor from his fits of mirth upon hearing of the latest theft. I ignored him and marched into the sales manager's office where I stated testily that the vehicles he sold me were flawed. Since they suffered from extreme stealability, a pernicious and persistent fault, I was entitled to a free replacement under the California Lemon Law. The sales manager's face went through some remarkable contortions. Eventually after a few muffled snorts, he said that he had not heard of that particular flaw or even that word describing the flaw, but he would take my word for it. Then he added that though I might have some case under the Lemon Law, he, as dealer, was entitled to an opportunity to fix the flaw before he gave me a replacement vehicle. I pointed out I could hardly return the first, second or third most-wanted-vehicle-in-America since they were stolen. Gravely, he assured me that he understood and sympathized with my predicament, but, under the circumstance, if I could not give him the opportunity to repair the flaw, then I was not entitled to a free replacement. I could see no fault in his logic, and I appreciated his sympathy as he put his arm around my shoulders and showed me another most-wanted-vehicle-in- America, already in his show room, a sleek black glistening beauty, complete with grey leather seats, eight-speaker stereo, factory installed theft alarm and interlocking fuel valve. I expressed amazement that he had in his possession just the very vehicle I wanted. He said that it was a very popular model, that I was a good customer, and he thought I might be back. I marveled at his prescience. He offered me a good deal this time. He let me purchase the complete vehicle for the same price as the very first one and even gave me a modest discount for the remote alarm control from the second most-wanted-vehicle-in-America.

I drove that sleek, glistening black Ford Explorer with pride to my home where my family and neighbors jostled around to behold the fourth most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. They expressed their admiration of my determination to stay with the same type of vehicle. They assured me it displayed character and resilience in the face of adversity. Nevertheless, I felt it incumbent to take more extensive security measures. That night, I asked my wife to leave her car outside our garage, so I might place inside my fourth most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. My wife remonstrated against this plan and suggested that I clean out the junk that occupied the other two stalls in the garage. I pointed out that storing things other than vehicles in one's garage was typical Southern California practice and that parking cars outside was perfectly normal. In addition, I resented her calling my many treasures from graduate school stored in the garage as junk.

My wife and I argued at length, since she is very fond of her own vehicle, an ancient, gull-winged, Mercedes-Benz sports car, purchased thirty four years ago by her father whose departure from this world left her the car, an estate and a large portfolio of stocks and bonds, enough I might add to support a household without requiring its head, the possessor of an advanced engineering degree, to seek employment. I explained to my wife that my car was a most-wanted-vehicle-in-America three of its predecessors had been stolen and deserved more security than her venerable Mercedes Benz. The argument became quite heated, but I prevailed as I put my foot on her bosom and wrenched the car keys from her clasping hand, paid no attention to her entreaties and went outside to complete my plan. I parked the Ford Explorer inside the garage, shut the garage door and then parked the Mercedes Benz right outside touching the garage door. No thief that night would take my beautiful Ford Explorer, I thought, as I set the remote-controlled theft alarm and button on the interlocking fuel-control valve. I pulled my rifle out of its cabinet and loaded it, so I would be prepared for the thief should he come armed. That night, I knew I was going to retire in peace, knowing it would be nigh impossible to steal the fourth most-wanted-vehicle-in-America.

My wife was not happy that evening. Her extended grumbling kept us awake well past midnight, and it seemed that I had hardly put my head to the pillow before being awoken.

"Stand back! Keep away!" came the familiar imperatives.

I seized my rifle, my flashlight, my slippers, my robe, my vehicle keys and attached remote alarm control and put them on, though not in that order. I rushed down to the front yard to see the departing rear of the Mercedes Benz. Shocked as I was, I knew this time I had to act. I silenced the auto burglar alarm with a now practiced punch on the button. I quickly raised the garage door and started the fourth most-wanted-vehicle-in-America. The thief did not know that I could cross the field opposite my home in the four-wheel-drive Ford Explorer and cut off the thief before he could reach the main road exiting our rural suburban community. I saw myself reaching the main road ahead of the thief, pointing my rifle at him and commanding him to stop. I desperately desired to recover the Mercedes-Benz, seize the miscreant, become reconciled to my wife and continue to be the owner and possessor of the fourth most-wanted-vehicle-in-America.

I smiled with joy that I might catch the thief, but as I entered the short road that connected the other side of the field to the main road, the Ford Explorer sputtered and its engine died. I realized I had failed to reset the interlocking fuel valve. "Damn! What devilish combination of buttons was needed to disengage the interlock?" I pressed all the buttons on that alarm system and the car responded with: "Stand back! Keep away!" plus whistles and gurgles and beeps. But the engine would not start, and, as I wrestled the alarm control in frustration, I saw the gull-winged Mercedes Benz pass by on the exiting main road. I raged. The residents of houses adjacent to the stopped Ford Explorer began to share my rage, and said they would call the police if I did not stop my noise and that of the car. In nigh incoherence, I urged them to do so.

The police arrived and began to laugh when they recognized me from their previous encounters concerning the first, second and third most-wanted-vehicles-in-America. They told me then that my wife's car was also most wanted, though much rarer, and I should have left it in the garage rather than the Ford Explorer. Their advice, while well meant, did not console me. I asked them to see if they could get the interlocking valve disengaged so that I might drive home. They evidently did not have any teenaged sons at home to show them how to use such a remote control, and no amount of effort by them would solve the problem. The fourth most-wanted-vehicle-in-America refused to start. At length, the police drove me home, and I went upstairs to recount to my wife what had happened. I need hardly say she expressed her displeasure strongly and at such volume and length that I felt thoroughly chastened as I snuck into the guest-bedroom.

Next morning, I dressed early for breakfast so that I might get the attention of my daughter and my teenage son before they went to work and school respectively. I asked my daughter to drive me to the Ford Explorer and my son to press the correct button to disengage the interlocking fuel valve. My children agreed readily to help me and we drove around to the short connecting road where I had left the Ford Explorer. But, it was not there. I stared agape at the empty space where the vehicle had been the night before. My children asked me if my memory was working properly. I told them my mind was not displaced; their humor was. Silently, we returned home.

I telephoned the police. You would have thought from the duty officer's laughter that I was a clown escaped from a lunatic asylum. He did not believe me and said I was either inebriated or filing a false claim. I could not believe he would treat my loss so lightly. After an hour of discussion, he asked me to come to the police station and take a sobriety test. I called Joy to report the loss of my Ford Explorer. She moaned. She said she was not sure she could get me seventy cents on the dollar this time. I then told her the Mercedes Benz car was also stolen (my wife, it turned out, had it insured for two hundred thousand dollars). I think Joy fainted on hearing the news, since Patience picked up the phone and said she expected the insurance company to cancel my policy. She advised me to get another agent.

My wife did not speak to me for two weeks. However, she perked up when the check for two hundred thousand dollars, payable to her, came in the mail. She asked if she should buy me another Ford Explorer, and I looked at her gently smiling face and said no. I clasped her hand and told her I already had the most wanted woman in America and I did not need a vehicle to match. A Chevy truck, such as my neighbors had, would be fine.

"The child is the father of the Man.

William Wordsworth

HIS FATHER'S SON

Harry never expected to be interested in a book on how to write memoirs. Yet, here he was, reading one as part of this writing course, the first, truly intellectual stimulus since he retired a year ago. These authors knew how to write; their characters and background descriptions leapt from the pages. Harry wondered whom he would write about for the course assignment. Not himself--not enough bravado for that. But whom did he know? Any friend who made it big in the technical, business or political arena? None he knew well enough to write about. How about a relative? Not his siblings, too dull and too distant. His parents? Not his mother--too domesticated to have a personality of her own. His father? Yes, he would be good to write about, although Harry had disliked him.

Harry turned on the computer and loaded in the word processing program. Now, where to start? A background of his father, perhaps? No, that would be too dry. Not the essence of the man. Why did he dislike his father? No, the question was wrong. It was just that he didn't care for his father. On the other hand, he had cared deeply for his mother. As a child, he had feared his father, so quick to anger. Harry remembered the blows to the head, the kicks to the buttocks, the strokes of the cane. He would never forget the pain of them. Why didn't his father just rebuke him instead?

Harry hadn't been especially mischievous or malicious as a child. He remembered his terror when he got his Sunday-best clothes dirty on a family visit to farming friends. His furious father announced to all that he would beat Harry when they got home. He remembered crying and the friends begging his father to relent. No, he never really got over that childhood fear of his robust father. My, how strong the old man had been. Even on his deathbed at seventy years, his father still had broad, heavy shoulders and muscular arms, a physique that Harry never possessed.

Still, did he regard his father as a brutal man? No, he couldn't say that. The old man didn't get drunk. He didn't abuse his wife. Indeed, he was almost maudlin in his repetitious praises of Harry's mother. So maybe his father was too quick to raise his hand to his children if crossed. Was he really much worse than other parents of the day? Harry wasn't sure as his stored-up memories flowed onto the keyboard. His father didn't strike him after he was fourteen years old. Perhaps his father had mellowed or maybe Harry didn't do so many dumb things anymore. But they had so little in common. His father liked to go to baseball games and couldn't understand why Harry didn't want to go with him. Harry preferred to go to the movies or the public library. His father didn't bother to see him act in the high school annual play. Yet his mother and sister went. He worked hard in school and got good grades, but the old man never said anything about them. Harry's mother was effusive in her delight, especially when he won an academic scholarship.

That scholarship gave him his exit. Harry went away to college, away as far as he could, so he could cry poor when his mother asked him if he were coming home for Christmas. Yes, he managed to avoid his father almost completely after he was eighteen. The old man was so difficult to talk to. It was hard to have a dialogue with him without feeling frustrated. True, the old man had his problems. Every business he had went bad at one point or another, though it wasn't really his fault. A relative foreclosed on his first business. The second one folded when its manufacturing facility was shut down due to material shortages in World War II. The next business was a flop in the difficult post war years. So his father bought a farm. Jeez, how could the old man think that just reading the Western Farmers' Monthly for several years would qualify him to operate a farm? Yet, off he went, bought a farm and dragged the whole family along. The farm failed also, because his father ran out of cash trying to upgrade the place.

Harry thought about it. Why did his father rarely pay him a compliment? He must surely have cared if his children were smart or successful. Maybe it was just that he was self-centered and preoccupied with making a living. At college, Harry was accepted on his own terms. He didn't have to put up with sneers that what he said was stupid. He didn't have to swallow dogmatic or unreasoned statements. He was glad his first job after graduation was on the other side of the country. He couldn't have stood his father after the freedom and spirit of college. He used to write to his mother regularly to tell her all the news. His parents visited him when he got married to a local girl. When Peter and Lillian were born, his mother was there the next day. She loved to hear how he was progressing at work and what the children were doing. He never wrote to his father. He knew his mother would tell him all the news. She would write back regularly and tell Harry about the happenings of his brother and sister and other relatives and neighbors. And his father never wrote a single line to him.

Harry wished his own children were nearby. Peter and Lillian now lived in other states. He was so proud of them. They were such good kids, accomplished, successful and extremely busy with their lives. Fortunately, both of them kept in touch by telephone. The routine was set. They would talk to their mother at length, while Harry went to his bridge club each Saturday night. Phone rates were lowest then. When he returned, Cheryl would tell him all the news. Harry stored the first draft of the memoir on his father onto the hard drive and printed it out. He wondered if his children would be interested in reading it.

Harry poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it slowly, while he read the draft memoir. There was so much more he could add. The memories kept flooding back. How he wished he could have loved his father. He dwelled on this thought at length. Then he finished his coffee and returned to the computer where he started a new file beginning:

"My dear Peter..."

"No argument, no anger, no remorse,

No dividing of blame.

There was poison in the cup - why should

we ask

From whose hand it came?"

Robert Graves - Hedges freaked with snow

BRAHMS IS SINGING TO ME

"Professor Hutchens, we have been waiting here for twenty minutes. I think you should have made more effort to be here on time for this first class. May I ask if you are going to be this late regularly?"

Never in my thirty years of teaching this creative writing class had I been addressed with such assertiveness. What impertinence I thought. The class stared at the speaker, a thin young woman of average height, named Janet Voler, whose thick unfashionable glasses overshadowed her sharp features. The faces of the students expressed a combination of adulation and astonishment at her outspokenness for rebuking me, a senior member of the faculty no less. I too was agape. I had come from secondary tests of my prostate that took far longer than the scheduled one hour. When I returned to the university, I couldn't find a parking space in the faculty lot and had to park half a mile away. I arrived at class, hot, tired and in bad humor; thus my initial regrets to the students were more perfunctory than genuine.

I avoided looking at Janet as I replied that I was indeed sorry for being late, that it had been outside my control and that I did not intend to let it happen again. Without pausing, I issued handouts, and the class murmuring died down. I hoped I would have no more trouble from Janet Voler, but that hope lasted a mere fifteen minutes.

Using the handouts, I discussed the course objectives, the purpose of the exercises, the assignments to be undertaken and the various authors to be emphasized. Janet interrupted me: "I notice the passages, you ask us to read, illustrating emotive techniques, do not include authors of the feminine, black or Hispanic experience. Is there any reason why you excluded them?"

I pondered how to reply since I had no reason to exclude these other authors. I had just been too lazy to extract their examples of the same techniques. But, I should have considered my words more carefully before replying: "I did not intend to exclude them. Certainly, I will be glad to add to future course notes such emotive techniques from other authors who are not so mainstream."

Janet quickly responded over the students' coughs: "Are you saying authors of these other experiences are not mainstream?"

The class became noticeably more attentive. Realizing my political incorrectness, I responded jocularly: "They apparently didn't reach mainstream in my notes although such authors would be considered mainstream literature by today's readers."

"Well, Professor Hutchens, your course outline gives the appearance of not being current or of being insensitive to the experience of females and minorities."

"It was not intentional on my part. I will be happy to discuss examples from these other sources when we get to that part of the course," I said, hoping this conversation would end before Janet made me out a racist boor. Nevertheless, Janet managed to find fault with other elements in my outline and grill me over these too. The class rustled in their chairs with impatience as her interruptions stretched out the class to the very end, so that I had to give out the first assignment without discussing it, or giving an estimate of the time it should take. An unsatisfactory beginning.

The next class had begun for only ten minutes--a discussion of the point of view character--when Janet asked what I thought of the second person point of view. I replied that it was rarely used and that students should concentrate on the first person and third person points of view until they had mastered their craft.

"Are you saying that we should not try to experiment with other points of view?" asked Janet aggressively. Now I knew from experience, this being an introductory class, that most students would scarcely know how to handle other points of view or even be aware of examples, so I replied that I did not mean to stop students from experimenting, but felt that other elements of writing were more important to beginning writers. Janet was not satisfied with my answer and pressed me to detail all other points of views with examples. The class fidgeted as Janet cornered me on the arcane elements of the subject and put my program of instruction way behind schedule.

A senior, Janet appeared some four years older than the other students, comprised mostly of juniors and sophomores. She regularly dressed in a beige sweater and a long grey skirt that unfortunately emphasized her angularity. I came to think of her as the stereotype of a female, who, either unattractive to men or not attracted to them, consequently displayed an assertiveness to replace lack of sexuality. Thick dark hair surrounded her head and narrowed her face. She wore bright red lipstick so that her mouth, glasses and penetrating voice seemed to personify her. I would hear her voice and felt I was replying to just the mouth and glasses.

During the next six weeks, Janet interrupted my instruction and discussion of the writing exercises repeatedly. I could hear a chorus of soft groans from the class when she asked a leading question. In a predictable format, she would ask tough questions and then take issue with my replies. Occasionally, her questions were oddly irrelevant, a peculiarity I couldn't understand because she was clearly intelligent. I thought she just enjoyed keeping me on edge. Whenever she made an irrelevant interruption, I would silently welcome it because the class would express their disapproval with foot shuffling, side whispering and general inattentiveness. Her own writing was clever, demonstrated maturity and received the best grades in the class. I just wished she had been content with being the best; instead, she acted to make the class continuously aware of her acumen.

When we came to group review of some writing exercises, she had no scruples about expressing her unflattering opinion of others' work. I remember this one example that left its student author openly chagrined: "You say the hero is small when he is in fact thin, emotionally, physically and intellectually. You should make a man of him." In short, she skewered the work of others imperiously though skillfully, but with so little tact that she intimidated the class. Her efforts made a mockery of the course schedule and irritated me enormously. I am sure the other students thought her a royal pain in the neck. However, they avoided criticizing her in kind, a natural consequence of intimidation.

When I gave the first significant writing assignment, little did I expect its profound consequences. I asked each student to prepare a one-thousand word story based on an actual or fictitious trip. I wanted the story to be an exercise in scene setting and character description with minimal plot, given the brevity of words. The class turned in twenty such stories. I copied and distributed them to each student. I scheduled two sessions for group criticism with Janet's story in the second one. During the first group discussion, Janet was unmerciful, though remarkably precise, in criticizing others' work. The pertinent student had to remain silent (under my rules) until the very end of the review by class members and then reply to acknowledge the criticism and to issue clarification where appropriate. No author in that first session responded directly to Janet's incisive and caustic critique. Each appeared to accept what she said as meaningful as anything from me and treated her with equal deference. Janet's domination of the conversation and the implied recognition she received annoyed me. It made me feel less capable.

Janet's story, quite different from all the others, did not meet the requested format or intended objective. She had written her story in the present tense and first person about the emotions of a seeker, searching endlessly in an opaque and ephemeral world and finding, at last, one with power who could direct this seeker toward the goal. The seeker moved forward, eventually seeing light, then turned to find the person with power following. The story ended with a brief conversation between the two parties as follows:

Seeker: "Knowledge is power: I will soon be enlightened."

Power Person: "Only if the light does not fail you."

This sort of story was not to my taste and it irritated me to not know even the sex of the seeker and other protagonist. I viewed the story as an attempt to be sophisticated, to impress other students and myself. When it came time in the second session to criticize Janet's story, nobody in the class spoke up. So I decided to treat the story severely to equalize the relationship between herself and fellow students, and also to revenge for her disrupting the course and the orderliness of my teaching. I recall saying:

"Remember to write for the genre requested. Otherwise, your work will be wasted upon uninterested editors. Stories, which emphasize feelings, must be clear to the readers since there are few events and limited plot to provide guidance. In this case, you have not succeeded. What the seeker is looking for is unclear although it could be the truth; it could be knowledge or power. It is unsatisfying to the reader because it is uncertain. Wouldn't the story have more meaning if the seeker and the one with power were given names that would tell the reader what their sex was? That, itself, might help understand the action you are trying to describe. Finally, you often use long words when simple words will do. They irritate by drawing attention to themselves, thus distracting from the theme of the story, which I confess I do not understand. What, for instance, does the reader infer from the action of the one with power in following the seeker?"

I must have spent nearly six minutes denigrating the story. Janet's mouth was firm and pursed at the end. I then asked the class if they had anything to add; they did not. I asked Janet if she wanted to respond, but she shook her head. Later in the class, I saw her wipe a tear from one cheek and remembered my mild glee at her discomfiture. "Serves you right," I thought, "for being so difficult." She said absolutely nothing for the rest of the class, which then seemed curiously flat. I did hope my public criticism would bring her humility and more grace in dealing with me and her peers.

Janet was not at the next class. I asked if anybody knew why since, likeable or not, she had become a fixture. One student said he had heard that Janet had been in an accident. Well, I thought, at least the class will go more smoothly. Nevertheless, something gnawed inside me, perhaps the tear on her cheek. I did not want Janet to leave the course on a sour note despite the accident; I wanted her to return humble, compromising and constructive. I got her address and phone number from the registrar and called her home.

"I'm afraid Janet is in hospital," Mrs. Voler responded. "No calls or visitors are allowed."

"Mrs. Voler, this is Professor Hutchens from the University. Your daughter was taking a class in creative writing from me and I was concerned when I heard that she had been in an accident."

Mrs. Voler began to cry. "Janet so loved your course. She said you were the best instructor she ever had. Yours was the last class she had the day of the accident."

"How is she?"

Mrs. Voler sobbed louder. "Janet is a manic depressive and I didn't realize she had stopped taking her lithium medication. She came home that day and would say nothing to me except that she had a headache. I gave her a sedative and saw her go to bed. But, she woke up before morning and went into the guest bathroom. She got into the tub and slit her wrists."

"Oh God! How dreadful! Is she going to be all right?" Mrs. Voler's grief affected me. Tears filled my eyes; a giant hand squeezed my gut.

"No. She lost so much blood that she suffered brain damage. She is in a coma and the doctors say she is unlikely to recover."

The giant hand squeezed harder. I stammered profound regrets to Mrs. Voler and my prayers for the outcome to be favorable. The giant hand squeezed even tighter and I rushed to the toilet. Afterwards, I sat on the stool, tears flooding my cheeks. How long? I don't recall. I was overwhelmed that somebody I knew, irritating or not, was near death in which I had played a role. Had my criticism of Janet's work in class made her so distraught that she had taken her own life? Or, was lack of medication the predominant factor? My stomach and my heart ached; I could think of nothing else.

For the next two weeks, guilt burdened me from the time I woke to the end of the day. Guilt whispered to me: "It's your fault. You murdered the only person in your class with talent. You were jealous of her. You wished you were she. You envied her youth and vitality. You recognized she had the potential you never possessed. You were too stupid to nurture it. Instead, you killed it." I thought about my years of teaching this writing class, and how it usually attracted goof-offs, conscientious plodders and know-it-alls. During those thirty years, never did I have a student with genuine fictional flair, with the potential for greatness instead of mere adequacy. Why was that? Was it the quality of the student body coming from a generation of TV-watchers or did it reflect that my class was itself without distinction, taught by an instructor who was little published and was lucky to get tenure? I knew I was a living example of the maxim, "those that can, do; and those that can't, teach." Did I misjudge a potential genius? Was Janet like the brilliant Robert Schumann, who composed marvelous romantic music before mental illness incapacitated him?

I telephoned Mrs. Voler each day to ask about Janet. Each day the same answer--no change. I even visited Mrs. Voler, ostensibly to offer my sympathy and to share in her grief. But, I knew my reason to visit was to satiate guilt that would not leave. Janet died two weeks later, two weeks of nights where sleep was wrenched by dreams of Janet's tear-stained face. Mrs. Voler had the body cremated in a private ceremony, presumably to avoid publicizing her daughter's suicide. I would have liked to attend the ceremony to express my grief and to ask silently for forgiveness, but it was not to be. I just hoped I could forget.

The day after the cremation, the sole of my left foot began to itch. I looked at it in a mirror as best I could but saw no rash, no warts, no corns, no calluses. No wife had I to look for me. The itch grew worse and remained no matter what shoes I wore. I would find myself rubbing my left foot on top of my right foot to get relief. The itch distracted me in class. It would intrude when I ate. Its presence would remind me when I read reports and manuscripts. How this itch irritated me! How my consciousness became filled with this itch, which seemed to say: "I will never leave you."

I visited a podiatrist. He saw nothing wrong and spoke some mumbo jumbo about subcutaneous irritation. He gave me a prescription for cortisone cream, but the cream had no effect. The itch on my foot remained. Each day I lived with this itch and every time I felt it, I thought of Janet Voler. The itch and Janet began to fill my every moment. They consumed my mind and affected my work. Students noticed my continued irritation and lack of peace of mind and avoided any action that might provoke me to caustic response. I recalled Somerset Maugham's story about an upper class member of parliament who humiliated a junior MP from a working class neighborhood in the presence of the latter's family. The recollection seemed to trigger dreams in which Janet Voler hounded and embarrassed me. I found myself in class going through the motions of teaching rather than actually teaching.

Three weeks later, while driving from my apartment to the university, my foot began to itch and itch and itch. I took my left foot and began to rub it on my right foot, which was on the accelerator pedal; the car speed began to rise and fall as the pedal moved up and down with each rub. Alarmed by this lurching movement of the car, I returned my left foot to the brake pedal where the itch became so monstrous that I could not control my response. I stamped my right foot on top of the left to stop the itch and the car braked immediately. The rest was a blur. A vehicle hit the car from behind and knocked it into the dirt shoulder, where it skidded and turned over. I remember vaguely the rolling sensation before something hit my head.

*****

I awake painfully in a hospital bed, my head bandaged, my left leg in a cast raised with pulleys. Even through the pain, the sole of my left foot itches. I cannot reach to rub it. I press the call button and the duty nurse tells me that I have a broken leg, two cracked ribs and many bruises and scalp lacerations. She smiles at my concern over an itchy foot and my lack of concern at the injuries. She gives me an injection to kill the pain, and I ask her to scratch my left sole. She does and it soothes me briefly. She has hardly left before my foot begins to itch again. I call the nurse and she scratches my sole once more. But after she leaves, the itch returns to plague me incessantly. The nurse is visibly annoyed at being called a further time and fetches a doctor who examines my foot and prescribes a sedative. The itch deadens to semiconscious levels; my mind drifts and thinks of the events of the past six weeks, especially Janet's story. Am I the leader with power, and, if so, have I failed her? Is she the seeker? Is death the light she saw and is she now beckoning me to follow her? Is this itch to be with me for the rest of my life? I weep, sometimes silently, other times out loud. The itch and the guilt are unbearable and my sorrow is without embarrassment. I drift under the sedatives and painkillers and hear nurses and doctors talking about me and feel them examining my foot. I do not hear what they say and am too miserable to care.

I awake to find Connie Jenkins sitting by my bedside. She smiles: "How are you feeling, Charles?" I am overcome at her cheerful voice intruding on my lonely misery. Connie teaches psychology part time in the university social-sciences department and also plays violin in the college orchestra. Her husband, a colleague of mine, has taken over my classes, while I remain in hospital. They are both old friends from college days more than thirty years ago. Connie, a modern Pollyanna with enough good spirit and humor for a dozen women of her diminutive size, fusses over me and squeezes my hand. Her smile and her cheerful voice are solace indeed. She has brought papers for me to read and manuscripts from the class for me to review and comment. She adjusts the bed and adjacent table so that I may work and promises to be back in two days to pick up the material. I am very grateful for her coming and pushing me to return to normality. But, I cannot concentrate, because I feel so guilty about Janet's death and because of the pain and constant foot itch.

In the papers Connie brought, there is, fortuitously, a copy of Janet's story. I read it again--searching. I am not sure what I search for, but a sign, understanding, truth, purpose. I read it again and ask myself questions about the seeker. Was Janet alluding to herself? What was she seeking? Did she imply that I represented the one with power in her story? If so, why would I follow her? Is the light she saw in her story the death that would release her from an oppressive mental illness? Oh why, oh why did I have to be the cause of that release? Tears fall again silently and I drift into sleep.

A man is singing lustily and melodiously. I realize I am dreaming, but this image of a man singing is unexpectedly vivid as I wake up and focus my eyes on Connie Jenkins. She tells me she is playing a string sextet on a portable compact-disc (CD) player. What beautiful music! How lyrical! How tender! I ask her who wrote the music. "Brahms," she replies and gives me the cover of the CD to look at. It shows the composer, a bachelor, as a paunched, bearded and elderly man, and just like me, I think. Strange how such lovely music could come from someone, who looks so melancholy. The CD cover says he died in 1897 of cancer, and I wonder if he wrote the music in contemplation of death. I begin to weep, and when Connie asks me why, I relate everything. It pours out from me, Janet, her allegorical story, my harsh treatment of her in class, her suicide and the consequences.

Connie rubs my shoulder as she listens patiently. "Charles, how sad you are! How I feel for you! But, tell me why do you keep thinking of Janet's story? You know, manic-depressives are characterized with extreme self-centeredness. Isn't it more likely that she pictured herself as the one with knowledge and power? Her story likely has nothing to do with you."

I wipe my eyes with a tissue, but the tears continue to flow. "Connie, I just can't help thinking there is something in that story that is telling me about Janet or her suicide and until I know what it is, I believe my foot will continue to itch and I will continue to suffer unrelenting guilt. It sounds nonsensical, but I wonder if I will ever work again." My voice croaks as I grab the tissue box again.

She rubs my shoulder again. "Don't be silly. Of course you'll work again." Connie then adopts a psychologist's analytical demeanor. "Mrs. Voler told you that Janet had stopped taking her medication. How can you know your criticism made her do that irrational act?"

"But, suppose the story was in essence a disguised suicide note. Suppose the light Janet referred to was death. Many would-be suicides write a note, which they want found so they can be stopped. I am supposed to be knowledgeable in writing and the subtleties of expressing thoughts, and yet I failed to see it."

Connie asks to read Janet's story. I feel suddenly tired from unburdening my troubles with a friend. I have Connie play the Brahms sextet, and again his lovely music fills my hospital room. My foot begins to itch, and I press the call button for a nurse to give me a sedative and a painkiller. Seeing I am not fit to talk further, Connie leaves.

She visits the next day. "Charles, I have been thinking about Janet's story from a psychologist's viewpoint. The mood of the story is not somber. The words are positive rather than negative. You know, as well as I, that when somebody writes, they put on paper words that express their feelings. Suicide is not a joyful matter unless it expresses pleasure at passing from an unhappy life. There are no words in the story that relate to that thought. In my professional view, Janet was not thinking of suicide in her story so you should not blame yourself for missing a suicide note."

I am grateful at this solace, but upon reflection: "Connie, I must still blame myself for making her so upset that, in her unmedicated state, she took her life."

"Perhaps Charles, but you could not have foreseen it. Let me call Mrs. Voler and tell her about you. You should tell her what happened. Only by unburdening yourself will you begin to heal, both your foot and your heart."

She is right though I cringe at confessing my role to Janet's mother. Connie interrupts my protests, pointing out that Mrs. Voler can hardly remonstrate with me, lying injured in a hospital bed. And so three days later, Mrs. Voler visits me. She wears a grey business suit, a complete contrast to the distraught woman in a faded blue housedress I saw before. I somehow expected her to be in mourning black and am disconcerted by her bright appearance.

"Professor Hutchens, I was so sorry to hear what happened to you, and I hope you will recover soon."

I stammer my thanks at her coming and wave her to sit at the bedside chair.

"Mrs. Jenkins already told me what you said in class and how you feel you have a responsibility in my daughter's death. There might be some, but Janet relished your criticism. And not all you wrote on her work was kind. She thought it clever and witty and told me how much she was learning from you. I can assure you that she felt encouraged by your review of her work. I am grateful that you gave her much to enjoy the last two months of her life."

I grab the tissue box, and Mrs. Voler turns her head until I can speak coherently. I tell her how much I appreciate her kindness in conveying to me this side of the picture. I tell her how sorry I am that my criticism in class had brought Janet to tears.

Mrs. Voler pulls a tissue from her purse and wipes her own eyes. She touches my arm as though it might release my pain--and hers. "Professor Hutchens, I have lived with tears many times with that child of mine. She could swing wildly in moods when she was off her medication. You know she tried to commit suicide two years earlier and I had to put her in a psychiatric hospital for a year and a half. I ask myself whether I made the right choice to allow her to leave and return to the competitive pressure of a university. You might say that we are both responsible for her death, but then did we not both give her life?"

We chat briefly; I thank her for coming. Then she is gone. How gracious she has been. I am astonished at her generous spirit when she could so readily hold me to full blame. She has given me reasons to shuck my burden, yet I still feel guilty. I am acutely depressed and my itchy foot constantly reminds me of its presence. I review Connie's analysis of Janet's story--that it is a tale representing solely Janet's feelings and thoughts--. Nevertheless, I am convinced that if I understand what Janet was saying, my itch will go away and I will become well. The nurse brings me more painkiller and sedative and I doze again, trapped in my thoughts.

That night, I dream I am in the middle of a city, cold with tall concrete buildings that stretch upwards to eternity. I am struck with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. At first, I see nobody but then become terrified when Janet Voler appears. I fear she will beckon me to death. All I can do is to stammer: "What are you doing here?" feeling foolish that I haven't added that I think she has committed suicide--but then dreams are not logical, merely images of underlying thoughts.

"I was going to ask you the same question," she replies.

"I'm sorry I failed you in class," I tell her.

"I'm sorry you failed yourself," she responds. "I am trying to find the way out. Why don't you go in that direction," pointing with her thin sweater-covered arm, "and when you find the light--or was it truth she said? --let me know."

I stride forward in this cold lonely city, trying to find my way out, and eventually turn a corner where I behold a bright light, as bright as a night-lighted football field, shining upon an assemblage of my colleagues and acquaintances. Standing on a podium amidst them, Brahms is singing. I turn but can no longer see Janet or call to her. My terror dissipates as I rejoin my peers where I watch and hear Brahms singing to us all, celebrating life.
"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."

Henry David Thoreau

HAVE I BEEN LUCKY!

Stupid! How did I get trapped into this? I think, as I drive up Highway 8 with Charlie Sope in the passenger seat. Why am I taking this cocksure lech to his girlfriend's apartment? It's not as though I'm interested in him. I'm forty-two and content with my life as manager of the auto shop where Charlie works. He repairs transmissions in a bay, plastered with centerfolds from PLAYBOY and HUSTLER. He boasts constantly of his sexual conquests, a source of amusement to the other mechanics—men, of course and a source of disgust to me. It must have been the way he pleaded with me--his girlfriend lived near me, she had all his money, his car was gone--. Soft ought to be his first name, and softheaded is what I should call myself.

Charlie climbs out, using my ample thigh--without apologies--to extricate himself from my Mazda sports car. The young six-footer saunters over to an apartment patio. I turn the car around, ready to drive off, when I notice two suitcases sitting on the patio. So I wait and watch Charlie knock on the door, then converse animatedly through the mail slot. I smile; comeuppance has arrived. After ten minutes, Charlie walks back, carrying his suitcases.

"Marge, can I stay at your place until . . . "

"Absolutely not."

"I'll sleep on the couch."

"Absolutely not."

"I won't bother your boyfriend."

"I don't have a boyfriend," I snap, "and you wouldn't bother him if I did because you aren't staying."

Charlie puts his suitcases into the back seat of the car. "Then I'll have to sleep at the shop," he says climbing in, squeezing my thigh again.

Christ, I think. Eighteen miles back to the shop, lock him into the unheated bay, and then back home. Ridiculous! How did I let this happen?

Charlie cajoles: "Come on, Marge. I won't be a bother. I won't tell anybody."

I make him promise. Then he tells me he paid no rent to his girlfriend and fooled around with her cousin who lent his car to her brother. "No girl, no car, no money, no fun," he concludes.

Tough shit. Serves you right, I think. You deserve a cold sleep. But Charlie entertains me with humorous tales of his sexual inconstancy as I drive. For him, sex is a mere game of conquest.

"Didn't you love any of these women you had sex with?" I ask.

"They liked me to say it, but it didn't mean much to me. I never thought about it when I went with the next one."

I decide Charlie is incorrigible. I park the car and direct Charlie to remove his stained mechanic-overalls and shower before he sits on my furniture.

"I'll make dinner," I say, realizing uncomfortably that I have to cook for someone else, a man, no less. No TV dinner and no Jeopardy for me tonight. Charlie croons in the shower, a medley of country western tunes. His singing is pleasant and cheerful, an oddly welcome change to the sterility of my apartment. I listen to his singing instead of turning on the television. We eat dinner and chat. Charlie thanks me for the meal and talks--mostly about himself. Then: "Why don't you have a boyfriend, Marge? You're cheerful, decent, kindly, with a good job."

"I don't want a boyfriend," I answer with a forced snap in my voice. In truth, men found me unattractive. I'd had few dates when I was young--and slimmer--, and losing my virginity at college was no pleasure. I wanted a relationship, not just sex. I never managed to get a relationship started and eventually got used to being by myself.

I don't mouth these thoughts to Charlie who continues:

"Everybody needs somebody, Marge." He gets up and starts clearing off the empty dishes. "You go watch Jeopardy while I do the dishes."

My favorite show is just starting. I sit on the couch and put my feet on the coffee table. Halfway though the show, Charlie sits on the couch beside me and squeezes my right thigh. I slap his hand and tell him to cut it out. "It's just to say thank you, Marge. I'm better showing how I feel that saying it." A few minutes later, I realize Charlie is staring at my profile.

"Now what?"

"You know, Marge, your face has lots of character. I never realized what a good person you are. I don't believe you don't want a boyfriend. I think you just don't want a bad one."

"I certainly don't want an unreliable boyfriend. Definitely not one like yourself," I say.

Before I know it, he has put his arm around me and planted a heavy buss on my cheek.

"Stop that," I say, pulling away.

"I will if you say you never want to be kissed again by anyone."

"Charlie, I don't want to start a relationship at my age. I'm not going to say I dislike being kissed. But I'll like it better when I want to be kissed."

He grins. "Tell me, Marge, that you didn't like me kissing you."

"I don't want you to do it, and if you continue I will kick you out."

"You're not answering my question, Marge." Before I reply he has his arm around me and kisses me vigorously on the mouth. His lips taste pleasantly of my special brand of mouthwash. I am flustered, not knowing what to do or say except trying to prevent things from going further. But my mouth betrays me by responding to this unexpected attention. Charlie is an experienced man. He seizes and kisses me firmly and I confess to myself that I like it. The sod. Jeopardy be damned! He puts his hand on my breast and gives it a squeeze.

"Cut that out Charlie," I say, pushing him away.

He does for about ten seconds, but then kisses me once more and soon puts his hand on my breast again. I am so unused to this attention that I do not know how to respond. No man has made advances like this to me in years and I realize that I welcome it on one hand but deplore that it comes from a casual seducer like Charlie Sope on the other. Charlie proceeds with confidence murmuring kindly to me as I continue to protest with progressive feebleness. The events flow. He has me lying on the couch and returning his kisses with similar interest. He starts to remove my clothes even as I mutter weak protests. "Stupid!" I say to myself. "Deliciously stupid!" He brushes my hands away, and, finally, he is inside me, where I groan as he strokes me. He is a good lover. He works to make me respond and I am astonished to find that I do, that it comes easily and that I am hugely grateful at the pleasure he gives me.

We lie together watching TV shows and chat. It is so comfortable. Yet I know this cannot last. In the morning, he will see me again as his fat, ugly boss. I worry how to handle his recounting my seduction. Shall I lie or get him fired? Probably the latter. Charlie senses that all is not well with me and agrees to sleep on the couch while I go to bed and ponder. In the morning, he has made a big breakfast for me. I peck at it since I need to lose weight, but I am touched by his thoughtfulness. I tell him I will get him an advance so that he can stay at a motel until payday. He agrees, but we leave his suitcases to be picked up that evening to avoid garage staff discovering he stayed overnight with me.

The evening finds me in bed with him where we enjoy the fullness of each other. I am hooked. I don't want this to stop. I know it will sometime. I'm old enough to be his mother. Why would he want to stay with me, when his youthful virility will attract someone young and pretty?

Charlie reassures me: "I won't say anything about this at work, Marge. I don't want to embarrass you. You've been very kind to me and you're fabulous in bed."

I am touched that he could be so silent about me when he has been so vocal about his other conquests. I am also astonished that an experienced man like him could consider me, plain and overweight, to be an accomplished sexual partner. I decide to enjoy his attention until it stops, which it surely will. I prepare myself for the day when Charlie says he is not coming home with me, but I realize as time passes how I will anguish.

I enjoy his attention and affection so much. Yes indeed, Charlie treats me with affection and I glow under it. And I no longer care that my relationship with Charlie becomes known at the garage. Charlie is careful with condoms, but he likes au naturale when it seems timely. When I miss my monthly, I know the jig is up. I panic, since I know it will end the relationship, so I say nothing to Charlie. I want to enjoy him as long as I can. But he broaches the subject first, and I tell him the truth.

"I think we'd better get married," he says. I stare at him in astonishment. I cannot believe my ears. Charlie puts his arms around me, hugs me tight and kisses me fondly.

"You're a loving handful," he says. "You always make me comfortable. That's why I want to be the father of your baby."

*****

I sit at the auto office, making out invoices, ordering parts and scheduling customers. My beautiful daughter is sleeping in her playpen by the side of my desk. My husband, so proud of his daughter, works nearby on a Buick transmission. I have been blessed when I least expected or deserved it. My heart sings with joy and gratitude.

"At such an hour the sinners are still in bed resting up from their sinning of the night before, so they will be in good shape for more sinning a little later on."

Damon Runyon - The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown

I DON'T CHEAT THEM ANYMORE

My cellmate at Las Colinas prison for women was Lena Grant, one of the best looking black hookers I ever met. Great legs, voluptuous figure, cute nose, always smiling mouth and eyes. Man, she had them all. She was in for soliciting; I told her I was in for a bookkeeping scam.

"I wish I could've made that easy money," she said. "I'd loved your soft job if I was that smart. Working the streets is a real drag." Lena told me some juicy stories about her johns, how kinky and how rough some of them were, but one taught her a lesson she would never forget.

"What lesson was that?" I asked.

"Never screw your customers," she replied, laughing self-consciously.

We lit cigarettes. "It was like this," said Lena. "My man, Mike, brings me to the main boulevard where we hang out for johns. During the evening, I do a couple of tricks and then, around one in the morning, some middle-aged white guy in a nearly new Oldsmobile picks me up. When I get a guy driving a decent car, I jack up the price, but he doesn't blink even when I ask for a hundred. I should'a asked for fifty more. He glances a lot behind him as we drive; I know he's wondering if the police or my man is following him. He asks me questions like whether I ever had the clap, whether I've ever been busted, or whether I use drugs. I figure he's got no street smarts; this might even be his first paid time. Some of these newly divorced men are real suckers with no one servicing their dick. He asks me which motel to go to, and I point out one that looks better than the usual. He registers while I stay in the car. Then we go to the room, where we get down to business. He don't ask for any kinky stuff, just a straight lay, so I give him a good time and he goes to sleep, satisfied. I call Mike so's he can pick me up, but Mike says he's busy sorting out some mess with another girl and I should stay where I am. So I crash.

When I wake up, the john is gone. I jump out of bed to check my stuff, but it's all there. Even the room key is on the dresser! The john didn't stiff me. Mike would'a been mad as hell if the guy took his money back. I call Mike again at his motel, but he's gone so I hang around watching TV. The phone rings close to check out time. It's the desk clerk.

"Mrs. Gregor, are you staying over today or are you checking out?" his nasal voice grates.

So that was the john's name--Gregor. "I'm not sure. I need to ask my husband," I say, stalling for time. "How much is the room for another night?"

"It will be thirty five dollars and sixty two cents including tax, Mrs. Gregor. If you decide to stay, then we will add it to the charge card."

Well, am I surprised! Our Mr. Gregor has left an open charge card slip at the desk and me with the room key. I reach Mike on the phone and tell him the deal. Then I call the desk clerk and say we're staying over. Mike checks out of his motel and moves into my room.

The motel is much better than most of the fleabag places the johns take me to or where I normally stay off work. This one has a full size refrigerator, a two burner hot plate and a microwave oven. Very nice, I think; I can get some home cooking in--beats the fast food and restaurant slop any day. I call the desk clerk and find they have pots and pans to lend and, suddenly, it's all very domesticated. Mike is pleased with me, since we are saving the cost of the room each day. He treats me real good and makes my nose and my ass happy.

Each morning, the desk clerk calls me in his prissy Yankee voice: "Will you be staying over today, Mrs. Gregor?"

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Rogers," I reply, knowing the john and the motel are suckers. I like being called Mrs. too.

After ten days, Rogers calls and says could Mr. Gregor come down to revalidate his charge card slip. He would like to close out the present one and open up a new one. About time I think, but I tell him that my husband is a construction worker and leaves the room at 4 a.m.

"No problem," Rogers says. "Have him check with the night desk clerk who will set up the new credit charge slip."

I'm able to get my 'husband' to miss meeting Rogers, night-desk clerks and swing-shift clerks for almost two weeks. The motel is covered with an open charge card slip and the game will stop when the john's credit limit is reached, or when the motel smells a rat. These budget motels don't smell rats easily since they offer limited service and they need our business. We have it made. Mike and I live for free. I get to eat my own home cooking and it's nice to relax after a hearty meal for a couple of hours before going to work.

Mike messes up the game by being stupid: he accuses me of holding out on him. True, I hold back fifty dollars but reckon I've earned it with this motel gig. Well, Mike throws me against the wall, and punches me on the mouth loosening three of my teeth. I have to go to the emergency room of the local hospital to get stitches in both my gum and lips. Other guests who are woken up by the row must have called the front desk, and the police are brought in. Mike splits. I tell the police it's a simple domestic dispute. The police are the patrol car types, not from the vice division, and so don't recognize me. But in the morning, Rogers calls and tells me they need the room back and would Mr. Gregor stop at the desk to revalidate his charge card slip. This is their polite way of kicking us out. The taxi takes me out of the motel and away from Mr. Rogers' life altogether. Like me, he never gets to meet my 'husband'.

I'm sure Mr. Gregor gets a real surprise when he looks at his next charge card bill. I guess the total cost of the room and phone calls--Mike decided it was a good time to call his buddies in New York and Hawaii--would run close to eleven hundred dollars. The john would find that his night of fun cost a lot more than he bargained for. Serves the sucker right, I think.

About ten months later, Mr. Gregor picks me up again. He doesn't recognize me, which isn't surprising since white men don't recognize the faces of black whores easily. Also, I'm four months pregnant and have put on fifteen pounds. My hair is longer and braided, unlike the wig I wore the first time. Gregor is different too, since he has grown a mustache and a short beard, and is wearing rimless glasses. He's driving a late model Buick this time. I recognize him right away but act like I don't, since he doesn't know me. It's clear he thinks of me as just another body for a night's work. He's not nervous like last time; I think he must have had practice. We agree on the price. He doesn't balk at the one hundred and fifty dollars I ask. Two hundred next time, I think. I have him drive to the motel where Mike is staying. We go to the room and get down to business. And Gregor means business. He works me front and back and tears into me like it's the last sex he's ever going to have. We are both beat by the time he's finished. He excuses himself to go to the bathroom, and within, sixty seconds, I have put on my pants, shorts and halter, taken my pumps and his wallet and sneaked down to Mike's room.

Mike is real pleased with me and gives me some good stuff for my nose. We look at the wallet which contains credit cards and--would you believe it!—four-thousand dollars in cash! Gregor has eight, crisp, five-hundred dollar bills in his wallet plus a few small bills. Only, there's no driving license and the name on the credit cards is Gregory, not Gregor. Maybe the guy wrote his name on the registration card so badly the first time that Rogers thought it was Gregor. Mike goes down the next morning and asks the clerk on duty if there was any problems last night. We thought the guy would call the cops to tell them that his girlfriend stole his wallet. But the clerk says there was no problems. No police come out. Maybe the john is too embarrassed at being taken by a hooker. We don't think about it long, since we are too pleased at having four grand to spend.

Mike goes out with the credit cards and the big money leaving me with the wallet, the small bills and the hundred and fifty dollars Gregor paid me. I hang around doing my nails and preening myself. I figure Mike'll take me shopping with all this money to spend; I need a few new clothes and extras. A girl has to look good in this business. Well, I don't hear from him all day. The phone rings and his two other girls call in asking for him. I know something has gone wrong. I fear the worst and put down money at the front office so they will accept collect calls from Mike. Sure enough, Mike makes a collect call from the county jail.

"What happened, Baby?'"I ask.

"You stupid bitch," says Mike. "Those credit cards were stolen six weeks ago and I was stopped the first place I went. What's worse, the bills were phony. They've got me in here for receiving stolen property and for passing phony bills. The Feds are gonna question me tomorrow. I'm gonna have to tell them how we got that money so the police'll be talking to you soon. Some trick you got hold of this time. Now get your ass over to Joan and Concha and work with them to raise money for bail."

I decide it is splits time since, with his record, Mike will be inside for two or three years. I get myself another man in another town. An adoption agency takes care of my medical bills and places my baby five months later. I don't trust my new man to look after the kid, since it's not his, and I can't take care of it while I work. I miss the baby; I cry for days after I left the hospital. When I first get to the next town, I use up the small bills in Gregor's wallet and I find a sticky label inside it. It has `Semper Fidelis' typed on it. A john who is in the marines tells me it means: "Ever Faithful." He says it also means: "Always act faithfully." I think now that Gregor knew who I was and set me up. If I hadn't been greedy, I wouldn't have lost my man and my baby. I learned, even in this shitty business, it don't pay to cheat the customer."

I looked at Lena, now finishing her cigarette and thought of my ten-year old living with his grandma. Maybe, I ought to learn that lesson too.
"Pride is seldom delicate: it will please itself with very mean advantages."

Samuel Johnson

A FATHER'S PRIDE

"Hello Jane," I say to my former wife's daughter and stretch out my hand to shake hers. Jane's gloved hand grasps mine and I am relieved that she does not expect me to hug her as I did long ago. A black woolen coat trimmed with silver mink trim covers her lovely figure. A black silk kerchief keeps the misting rain from her brown curls. Her black knee-high boots keep the cold spring rain off from her shapely legs.

"Hello, Father," she says, and I wonder if the politeness in her voice disguises residual affection. Her calling me 'Father' bothers me. She used to call me 'Papa' when she was young. But that gradually changed to 'Father' after I divorced her mother. "I appreciate your visiting Mom at least once when she was in the hospice and your coming to the funeral."

Actually, I visited Esther twice during the last six weeks of her life. It was the least I could do to acknowledge twenty-two years of marriage. I look at Jane, whom I have seen just a few times since the divorce. She has grown into a beautiful young woman, the virtual image of her mother thirty years

ago. That image recalls how much I loved Esther and how much we wanted children. We had tried to have a child for several years before Jane was conceived. The doctor had told me that I had an extremely low sperm count and that Esther should consider artificial insemination. But then, after ten years of marriage, she suddenly became pregnant without medical interference. I was delighted; Esther was ecstatic. She seemed intensely physical during that term. Her skin glowed, her face bloomed, she was filled with energy. She gloried in the swelling of her belly and encouraged me to feel the movement of the growing life within. And I loved to do so, for here was a part of me forming, a product of my love, a child for the future. To Esther, pregnancy and giving birth represented a complete fulfillment of womanhood. I look at Jane again and recall how much I loved her mother then and the hurt her infidelity brought me. I wonder if her mother told her the story.

"How's Moira?" Jane asks. I tell her that Moira and I split up over three years ago. I had not mentioned this to Esther when I saw her. I wanted her to think that I was still living with the same woman I had met after the divorce. Jane makes no comment on this information. We stop talking as the ceremony gets underway.

"Glory be to the father, the son and the Holy Ghost," the priest intones to the mourners gathered around the burial plot. Most of us carry umbrellas and I huddle under mine to fend off the raw spring weather. I wish I had worn an overcoat; this raincoat lining is not thick enough. I feel sad, not so much at Esther's death, but that I could not enjoy the companionship of her last ten years. It could have been joyous for both of us. Instead, I turned away from her; I could not respect her, nor myself, had I stayed with her.

Esther's brother begins a eulogy, but I do not hear his soft-spoken voice from where I stand at the outer circle of mourners. Instead I watch the others, especially Jane, who has moved under the shelter of a white umbrella held by a young man who, I presume, is her fiancé. Esther had told me about him, a senior computer programmer with General Electric. She had remarked on his bright future, and the subject rankled. It was as though she were reminding me that I was unemployed when we split up and my lack of income was a cause of our separation.

I suspect Jane is surprised to see me at this funeral since I had ignored her mother ever since leaving her. But I felt I should come; it closes a chapter in my life, a chapter filled with both joy and grief. The grief figures prominently in my mind, sorrow for myself rather than for Esther who caused it. That particular day is still fresh in my mind, even though it happened twelve years ago. I had been laid off from my job as a geologist, and it took me several months before I found new employment. Esther operated an advertising agency whose bookings were much lower than normal. Money was tight during this layoff period. I did not enjoy having to ask Esther for funds for personal expenses, especially the unreimbursed travel expenses for employment interviews. Esther had little to spare. The friction about money was compounded by Esther's moodiness during menopause.

We had quarreled frequently about money during this period with Esther always having the final word, since the household income came from her efforts. One Friday evening came following my disappointing interview with West Coast Oil and Gas. We were alone--Jane had gone to a sleep-over with friends. Esther had suffered hot flashes all day and had lost a major client to boot. She had several drinks when she came home, and I had a few also. Then perhaps, in consolation for how she felt, she told me she was going to start ballet lessons for Jane. I protested that this was a foolish way to spend money when we could scarcely pay our bills with me out of work. Jane had been pressing for these lessons, ones enjoyed by her friends, and I suppose Esther thought that it would be one less irritant in her life, even though it would stretch our budget thinner. Our argument about the money spent on the ballet lessons grew more heated. Esther yelled at me: "If you had taken the first job you were offered after being laid off, we wouldn't be in this fix."

The job I had turned down was in a city eighty miles away at two thirds my previous salary. I would have had to commute daily or find a small apartment in that city and come home on weekends. I hated to lose so much time with my family, especially lovely young Jane, and have the permanence of a lower living standard. I preferred to take my chances that I could get a job at a salary commensurate with my previous one, a decision in which Esther had concurred. Therefore, her reproach seemed grossly unfair and I replied in kind.

"You lost a client today and you're taking it out on me. You probably lost him by being offensive like you are now."

The inference to her hormonal moodiness was not lost on Esther. "You blame everything on me," she screamed. "You don't pull your weight at all. You don't know how to be a husband and you weren't good enough to be a father."

"What do you mean by that crack?" I shouted, now as furious as she.

"You couldn't make me conceive after ten years of trying and one fling with Ron Barlow brought me Jane," hissed Esther.

I said nothing. I could not believe that little girl, the one I loved so much, was not mine. Even Esther, in her rage, could see the shock in me. It is hard to explain how I felt. I had spent ten years of my life giving my wholehearted love to a child I believed to be my own and then, suddenly, discovered the child was not mine. It is as though I have wasted the love. Of course, others would say that's nonsense. Love can be given to an adopted child with full wholeheartedness. But such a parent knows the child is not of his flesh and accepts it from the start. My fury mounted as the shock wore off. Esther said nothing to retract the information, nothing to express regrets, nothing to hope for my acceptance. I think she was startled that, in the heat of the moment she had made a monstrous confession.

I had been cuckolded, cuckolded for years. Who knows if she was intimate at further times with Barlow? I did not want to know. She had cast aside what I valued dearly, my relationship with her and my little girl's paternity. The fraudulence of the past twelve years overwhelmed me. I walked to the bedroom and sat, shaking, on the bed. My fury shrank slowly to disappointment, to sadness and to accompanying quiet tears. Esther did not come into the bedroom while I sat there, for perhaps half an hour. Then, I pulled out a suitcase, packed some clothes and personal effects and, without a word, walked past the kitchen where Esther was cooking dinner and into the garage. I drove off, never to return. My brother let me use a room in his house and helped me until I finally got a job and could rent my own place.

Esther called me several times, asking me when I would be coming home and saying she and Jane missed me. But she did not retract on Barlow and I was terse enough in our conversations to discourage her from calling. Does this sound harsh? It is hard to explain how I felt so used. I reacted like a male lion who kills off all the young when he takes over a pride of lionesses. If I could not make the young my own, I did not want the pride. I sued for divorce on the grounds of infidelity. Esther did not oppose the divorce, nor did she ask for alimony or child support. My lawyer told me that her business had picked up and she did not need any money from me. That she sought no child support confirmed in my eyes and those of my attorney that another man had fathered her daughter. Jane called me and asked me to see her many times, but I could not face her at her mother's home. I did see her occasionally when she visited her cousins, my brother's children. I chose to tell my brother and his wife only about Esther's admitted infidelity, not about Jane's paternity.

I think of all these things, wishing that Esther had been faithful. Life with Moira was much less satisfying. In life, one makes a choice of partners. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn't. I regretted the ending of my relationship with Esther far more than the one with Moira.

I look at Jane though the rain, which is changing from a cold mist to a steady trickle. The priest is abbreviating the funeral ceremony, and mourners without umbrellas have left. Jane is picture-perfect beautiful. It hurts to think that I could have been close to her. I could have been the grandfather to her children to come. It hurts to think that I could have been her father, but I am not.

The ceremony, now ended, I turn to leave, but Jane calls me to wait. She approaches me alone, carrying her boyfriend's umbrella. "Father, I didn't know why you left Mom until she told me in the hospital. Your leaving devastated me and Mom, though she hid her feelings from me for years." Jane's head bobs back and forward emphasizing her words in a tone of rebuke. "I would have thought I meant more to you than your being mad at Mom for a single act." She pauses, clearly expecting me to express regrets.

"Well, did Mom tell you that I'm not your father?"

Jane scoffs: "Yes. Mom did tell me about Ron Barlow, and she did tell me that he was my father, a secret she kept from him as well as me. Once I knew, I thought I would tell him to see if he wanted to act the father instead of you."

Jane grimaces as she goes on. "He laughed at me. He said he had had a one-night stand with Mom when she was lonely--and tipsy--just once when you were out of town. He couldn't have fathered me. He said he had mumps as a child and was sterile."

I stare at Jane. She continues: "I'm getting married in July. I won't be inviting you to the wedding."

"How right you are. One does so wish, does one not, to

avoid rannygazoo."

P. G. Wodehouse - The World of Mr. Mulliner

PLUM WAS HERE

Friday afternoon at four o'clock saw the creatures from the Exchange scampering from their pits to the watering hole known as Horners. In one of the quieter nooks of the hole, a double-chinned Double Bourbon talked of trading during the past week with a garrulous Gin and Tonic until interrupted by a loutish Lager.

"If the Feds hadn't increased the discount rate by fifty basis points on Wednesday, then Campbell Electronics would have soared. The increase in their loan costs to take over Hulton Co was soured by the Feds," said the Lager.

"Not at all," said the Gin and Tonic. "Hulton Co found out that Campbell had a vastly overvalued inventory at its plant in Malaysia. When it told the banks who were financing the merger, they withdrew."

"The story I heard," said the Double Bourbon, "was that the President of Campbell had the hots for the gorgeous female controller at Hulton Co, and when she made it clear that she was not merging with him, he canceled the company merger."

"Gentlemen," said the distinguished elder at the rear of the lounge, nursing his hot scotch and lemon, "I suspect you are unaware of the true details of the merger failure. Such mergers are often defeated by events quite unknown to the general public or even to brokers knowledgeable as yourselves working constantly in the field. I know of one instance where a merger was defeated due to a M & A broker suffering from autophobia."

"Autophobia. Never heard of it," said the Double Bourbon.

"Allow me to introduce myself," said the distinguished elder. "My name is Ponderouter, and I was a broker of stocks and bonds at your establishment for many years before you young gentlemen were born. I am retired now and enjoy the opportunity to share my experiences in the business with those currently in the field. Yes, thank you, I will have another hot scotch and lemon," he added as the Double Bourbon called the waitress to refortify himself.

"My niece, Josephine," said Ponderouter, "is a true member of our family. She was, at the time of which I speak, a handsome young lady of twenty-four summers, blessed with a fair complexion, a head of blazing auburn hair, and a figure that caused taxicab drivers to have accidents--additional to the ones they normally have--, and brains that came, of course, from the Ponderouter side of the family. Josie had passed the securities salesperson exam two years earlier, with honors of course, and had completed the training to be a saleslady at Providential Catch Company faster than any prior applicant. With her brains, charm and good looks, she could pick her mate from any of the males who droned into the Exchange. It was with some surprise when she came to my office after close of trading on one day with tears in her eyes and spoke: 'Uncle Harry, what shall I do? I am in love with a man whom I cannot marry.'

You may well ask me why Josie did not confide in her mother. However, her mother, unfortunately possessed good looks and not an ounce of sense. Josie's father, the source of her brains, had deceased in one of the normal accidents, typical of New York taxicabs. Thus, she had developed the habit of confiding in me, especially now we both worked together near the Exchange.

'Who is this man you cannot marry? If you cannot marry him, why do you continue to stay in love with him?'

'Uncle Harry, his name is Jack Plum, and he is delicious. He is good looking and loveable, and specializes in mergers at Providential Catch, where he makes a mint of money.'

'You have told me nothing that would make him unacceptable as a member of our family, Josie. Is he blind, decrepit, terminally ill or married still to someone else?'

'He is none of these things,' cried Josie, weeping furiously onto my portfolio-covered desk. 'He is twenty-eight years old, has never been married or engaged, is in excellent health and his great-grandparents are climbing mountains in Alaska. His eyesight is good also.'

I moved the portfolios to the dry side of the desk and asked: 'Then what is the matter with this man? Is he indifferent to you?'

'No. He says he loves me dearly and wants to marry me desperately.'

'Then what on earth can be the problem when this single, healthy, handsome young man, making a mint of money, desires to marry you, when you evidently him love too? What impediment to your union could there be?'

'He suffers from autophobia.'

'My child, I must confess my ignorance. What kind of disease is this autophobia and how does it affect him?'

'Uncle, he cannot drive an automobile. He has never learned, and he informs me that he has no intention of ever learning, because he is afraid of doing so. He tells me that when he sits behind the driving wheel of an automobile his entire body perspires, he is racked with terror, and he is unable to command his hands to turn on the ignition switch. I cannot marry a man who does not know how to drive a car. There will be no tin cans to announce the start of our honeymoon. I will be unable to send him to pick up some milk at the local supermarket. He will be unable to take our children to school in bad weather or take them to softball or little league. Never shall we rent a motorhome and go camping in the great American outdoors.'

'Surely, these are minor things. If he is as successful as you say, then you could hire a chauffeur. You could do the driving instead of your beloved.'

Josie gave me a withering look; I had failed to comprehend the seriousness of the situation. 'I simply cannot marry a man who is so unmanly as not to be able ever to drive an automobile. It is so un-American. I need to find a way to get rid of his autophobia.'

'Has he consulted with physicians or psychiatrists about his problem?'

'Yes. They have said the problem is deep rooted and suggest that it might be alleviated if he left New York City. However, it would be unwise to move from his place of profitable employment if there is so little chance of improvement in his condition. The physicians have said that possibly his phobia could be overcome if he were subjected to a stress greater than that he experiences when he sits behind a steering wheel. That is why I have come to you, Uncle Harry, for help.'

Now, I have had many strange requests in my life, and they of course are subjects of other stories, but this request was outside my purview. I asked Josie to let me think about the problem for a few days to see if I could provide a solution.

"Yes, thank you. I will have another hot scotch and lemon."

"Never heard of autophobia," said the Gin and Tonic, waiting for Mr. Ponderouter to take a sip at his freshly refilled glass and continue his story.

"I felt it better," said Mr. Ponderouter, "to meet the young man in question, so I invited him to have a drink with me after business hours at this same establishment. Indeed, gentlemen, I think Plum was here at this very nook where we discussed his profound problem. Now, Jack Plum was the epitome of a good merger specialist. He had an excellent grasp of business, magna cum laude from the Varhard School of Business, an earnest and cheerful demeanor and demonstrated sales techniques that would have put a used-car salesman in Lower East Side to shame. After the events of this story, he became quite famous in orchestrating very many mergers; indeed, his activities led to the issuance of bunk bonds. Perhaps you gentlemen have heard of them?"

"Bunk?" said the loutish Lager. "Never heard of it."

"Jack Plum confessed to me," continued Ponderouter, "that although he could look with calm and ease at a red-faced, furious and sputtering president of Chincy Cheese, eyeball to eyeball, and tell him that his balance sheet, like his cheese, was full of holes, he felt terror whenever he sat in an automobile-driver seat. He explained to me that the terror began when, as a precocious six-year-old, he climbed into his father's car and fiddled with the gear lever. This fiddling was second nature to him; he had a natural talent at taking things apart, a talent less matched by his reassembly skills. In his early life he had practiced fiddling on every toy he owned, on every toy the neighborhood children owned, and had begun to work on the major appliances at his home. His success at determining what made things operate or indeed cease to operate was notorious and well recognized in the local community. He said that, in retrospect, he credited this early ability to fiddle with his success in the merger market, where the work requires taking two companies apart and putting them back together again as a more efficient single entity.

This success in fiddling at six years of age was, however, a sore concern to his father who, at the time of this incident, was resting from trying to start a fiddled lawn mower. His father, a gentleman of the old school, never parked his car with the brakes on to avoid the brake shoes freezing to the drums in the cold winter nights characteristic of this city. When Jack moved the gear into neutral, the parked car slowly began to gather motion down the increasing grade. Young Jack had legs too short to reach the foot-brake so he stood on the driver's seat and did his best to steer the vehicle. Even at that young age, he was quick to see that the best way to slow the vehicle down was to brush it against every object in its path. With this in mind, he successfully brushed against every other car on the north and south sides of the street before finally bringing the automobile to a metal grinding halt. His regrets of the incident were greatly amplified by the many whacks on his behind administered to him by his father and by the accompanying chorus of applause from the angry owners of the brushed cars. The lesson greatly reduced his propensity to fiddle and his notoriety in the neighborhood.

'I have never driven an automobile thereafter,' said Jack, 'and have no intention of ever doing so. I love Josephine deeply and earnestly desire her to be my bride. Is it possible, Sir, that you could persuade her that it is not unmanly for me to not drive a vehicle? I am sure there are many happy marriages in which one partner does not drive. Indeed, I am led to believe that there are many non-driving couples in New York City, although they must be inclined to live dangerously due to their need to take taxicabs.'"

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Ponderouter, taking another sip of his hot scotch and lemon, "this was a peculiar situation. Both of these young people had expressed their deep love for each other, which was to be unrequited unless a solution was found. However, I could not discern whether the solution to their impediment to marriage lay in dissuading Josie that autophobic Jack was not unmanly or in curing Jack of this strange affliction. Now one of my former clients, a Dr. Dinkle Beanstalk, had made a good living by demonstrating hypnosis on the vaudeville stage and had successfully parlayed his earnings into a comfortable fortune by assiduously following my advice on selected stocks. He was now semi-retired and practicing hypnosis on patients, referred to him by disrespected New York psychiatrists. I phoned him the next day.

'Beanstalk, Old Boy, I have a patient for you. He is suffering from autophobia and his girl will not marry him unless he is cured. Can you do anything to help him?'

'Ponderouter, Old Man, great to hear from you and curious that you should call about autophobia. I am treating several patients with this problem right now. It seems to be going around. The common thread is that all of them have been involved in accidents with New York taxicabs. Has your young friend been impacted that way?'

I explained the circumstances of Jack Plum's affliction and arranged for him to have an appointment with Beanstalk a few days later. Now Josie lived outside the city and liked to drive her sports car to her employment at the Providential Catch Company. Josie was clearly a brave girl to drive in New York City but she did so with aplomb and verve. Indeed, she liked the challenge of driving in the city, especially the weaving in and out of the different traffic lanes, the gunning through orange lights, the contest of wills as to whether the pedestrian on the crosswalk truly had the right of way and of course the glorious cutting in front of taxicabs to leave cursing drivers in her speeding wake. Indeed, Josie was the true offspring of her famous great grandaunt, Roberta Wickham, about whom much has been written and who was the scourge of London (England) taxicab drivers some seventy years earlier.

It was Josie and her car that transported Jack from the Providential Catch Company to his appointment with Beanstalk. Jack climbed into her car with his usual apprehensive manner. He tightened his seatbelt with a tensile force of about two-hundred pounds and listened to Josie who chattered, oblivious to his silence and chalk-faced appearance, to his nervous, but firm, clutching of the seat, and to his startled yell as she went around the Fifty-Second Street corner at forty miles per hour, a yell matched by that of the anguished pedestrian leaping to avoid an otherwise imminent catastrophe. Targeting a convenient parking slot, she braked sharply to burrow in with the fervor of a ground hog for hibernation. 'Good luck, darling,' she cooed as faint Jack climbed out to see Beanstalk.

Josie was a practical girl who used her time efficiently, an admirable quality in one to be affianced to a merger specialist she thought. During the two hours in which Jack underwent treatment, she spent her time examining charts of some of the companies that she was following on behalf of her clients. She contacted several clients on her car telephone requesting buy and sell orders for the next day, and noted them in her order book. She turned on the radio to the business channel and listened to forecasts as well as the activity on stocks of interest on the Western Exchanges. Then she called on her telephone for a reservation at her favorite restaurant in Greenwich Village and listened to some popular music on her radio cassette player to prepare herself for a delightful dinner evening. Time flew for this busy niece of mine, as she wondered how the treatment of her beloved was proceeding. She looked up from her work to see him smiling at the passenger door which she opened to welcome him in with a short kiss.

'I feel much better,' he said as she switched on the engine and gunned her car out of the parking space causing a taxicab to brake violently, 'and much more relaxed.'

'Put on your seatbelt,' commanded Josie, 'and tell me what Beanstalk did to you?' braking viciously to allow the escape of a hapless pedestrian and, with a scarce microsecond delay, accelerating to cut into the next lane. Swaying naturally to the car motion, Jack turned the car radio to a station, playing modern jazz, which bleated out a tuneless cacophony that Josie found most unpleasing to her ear. Nevertheless, she decided that if her beloved liked that music, she would listen to it with him. She pressed down a little harder on the gas pedal.

Opening up the glove compartment and fiddling with its contents, Jack replied: 'Well, I think he must have hypnotized me because I remember very little until it was all over, and he said I was a very interesting case and that he would certainly take into consideration my concerns about the merger of Rancide and Garbaage.'

'I didn't know that Rancide and Garbaage were considering merging.'

'And I didn't know that I had said anything about it,' said Jack, dropping the contents of the glove compartment except for a set of miniature hand tools as the car hurtled over a large bump in the road. Without losing his composure, he casually extracted a Phillips-head screwdriver from the tool set.

Somewhat irritated by the rifling of her glove compartment, Josie pursed her lips and pressed a little harder on the accelerator pedal.

'Did he say anything else?'

'Well, he asked me to come for another appointment in two weeks time,' said Jack removing the car telephone from its cradle and examining it carefully before inserting the screwdriver into its back. Pressing the accelerator further so that Central Park seemed to be flying and pursing her lips a little tighter:

'Jack, dear, please don't take that telephone apart. I cannot do without it.'

But as the car skipped up and down over a succession of New York City's finest unrecorded potholes, the screws, screwdriver and disassembled telephone proceeded in randomly different directions from Jack's relaxed fingers.

'Don't worry about it, Darling; I will put it back together tonight,' replied Jack, nonchalantly opening Josie's brief case and perusing the papers inside.

'I would advise you against selling Baconmakers short,' he added, as he looked through her order book. There is very little more irritating than telling a professional saleslady that she is giving poor advice to her customers, and Josie began to feel uncomfortably irritated with Jack.

'Jack, please put the documents back in their files; I will be in real a fix if you get them out of sequence since....'

Her sharp braking to avoid an older couple wearing a dazed expression caused the briefcase and opened contents to slide from Jack's knees onto the floor in a jumbled heap.

'I'm so sorry, Dear, I can't seem to stop my hands from fiddling with things. I feel so relaxed and feel quite confident that I could drive a car. Beanstalk said that I was a good patient, and he expected some improvement right away. Do you think that you would let me take a turn at the wheel?' He leaned over kissing her on the cheek and sliding his arm around her back.

Now while Josie may be a fast driver, even by New York standards, she gave this calling its due by meticulous attention to precision in steering, braking and accelerating. This meticulous attention was being slowly perverted by Jack's actions, especially by being kissed while doing fifty miles per hour in a thirty mile-per-hour zone.

'Don't kiss me in the car,' she cried, 'or I will lose my concentration. No, of course you can't have a turn at the wheel. You have never learned to drive and you don't have some driver's license. It is against the law to drive without a license,' as she cut into the next lane, nearly colliding with a taxicab driven by an driver, suddenly stricken with a fit of apoplexy.

Jack's hand behind her back deftly undid the top of the zipper on her dress and was now exploring the fasteners on her upper undergarment.

'Don't do that,' Josephine cried, pressing the accelerator down even further.

'Say Josie, did you know that there are a couple of taxicabs following closely behind us? Their drivers appear to waving to us--with their fists.'

Josie glanced in the rear view mirror to see two pursuing taxicabs now joined by a police car with its siren wailing and lights flashing. In a maneuver, to be envied by a professional stock car driver, she swerved her car round the nearest corner to confront a one-way street opposing her. The swerving motion completed the action already initiated by Jack's fiddling left hand. My near topless niece sought immediate safety by a unique combination of braking and steering in a controlled slide into a parking spot on one side of the street. Her agile performance was not matched by the taxicabs that were unable to turn the corner. However, the police car had more time to react and joined her stationary state momentarily. Shortly thereafter, two New York taxicabs came down the one way street in the correct direction and double-parked by her vehicle. Their red-faced drivers dismounted and walked, breathing heavily, toward the policeman, now asking questions of Josie who was busily fastening up her garments.

My niece who had always been in command of herself and the road found herself with her outerwear and innerwear not in place and confronting two mortal enemies. One set of enemies reflected those noxious types she had scorned for years with her prowess at the wheel, while the other clearly stated his intentions to bring the full force of law upon her. Further disconcerting the poor girl was that her beloved, the cause of her dishabille, was carelessly fiddling with the police officer's baton while the latter was attempting to place handcuffs on her. At the same time Josie was being subjected to a withering barrage of insults from two of New York City's finest practitioners of the art. One could say in the jargon of the day that Josie was in a relatively stressed environment and responded to the stress with a vigorous: 'Jack Plum. You had damn well better go back to Beanstalk and made to be the way you were. I cannot put up with your fiddling. If you had not fiddled me I would not be where I am.'

With that, she burst into tears, to be placed later in the police car, and to be joined shortly by Jack, also in handcuffs. With further cries of retribution from the taxicab drivers, including best wishes for a long future in the pokey, and accompanied by Bronx cheers, she and Jack were driven to the police station. They were booked and charged with various violations of the law. Embarrassed relatives quickly bailed them out, there being no delay since they were not inebriated. My niece plea-bargained her charges of speeding and reckless driving down to misdemeanors for which she was quite heavily fined, including a one-year suspension of her driving license. Her pleasant demeanor and willingness to admit she had been in the wrong favorably impressed the young man from the city attorney's office. He may also have been impressed by her flaming red hair and figure, which as you know has caused many a New York taxi driver to turn his head. Jack Plum was initially charged with disturbing the peace but had the charge waived in return for providing free advice to New York City on how to merge the fire department with the police department. He did visit Beanstalk for a further session of hypnosis and was fully returned to his natural autophobic state. Josie, without driving privileges, and having seen a Jack, sans autophobia, then found herself willing to accept as her spouse a man who could not drive and did not fiddle voraciously. They were married and have lived happily since in New York City ever since. Josie is now, I believe, starting a school of safe driving and etiquette for New York taxi cab drivers."

"Well, what's any of that got to do with merger failures?"

said the double-chinned Double Bourbon. Replied Mr. Ponderouter: "Immediately after the events I described, the stock prices of Rancide and Garbaage were found to increase significantly. Indeed, I innocently processed orders for these stocks placed by my former friend Beanstalk and some disrespected New York psychiatrists. The officers of those corporations suspected that a leak had taken place and called off the merger."

John Anderson, my jo, John, John Anderson my jo, John,

When we were first aquent; We climb the hill the gither;

Your locks were like the raven, And mony a canty day, John,

Your bonny brow was bent; We've had wi'ane anither:

But now your brow is beld, John, Now we maun totter down, John,

Your locks are like the snaw; And hand in hand we'll go:

But blessings on your frosty pow, And sleep the gither at the foot;

John Anderson, my jo. John Anderson, my jo.

Robert Burns

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

Bob peeked into the restaurant lobby and immediately withdrew his head. He drew a few deep breaths. Had he been seen by the sole lobby occupant, a woman with a pink rose in her hat? Should he walk away? No. It wouldn't be fair to stand somebody up who had made an effort to meet him. He stared in the glass entry door at his reflection, a short, near bald, olive-complexioned man of sixty. How he hated those wattles in his neck that truly branded him a senior citizen. A few more deep breaths, then he adjusted the red carnation in his lapel, stepped inside and addressed his ex-wife.

"Madam, are you the pink Cadillac?"

She looked up from the fashion magazine. "Bob? Is it you? Did you really write that silly advertisement?"

"Typical of Lynn," he thought, on the defensive instantly. "Well, if it was silly, why did you answer it?"

With no loss of composure, Lynn replied: "I wanted to find out what kind of a kook would advertise in the personal section: `Antique, but smoking, red hot Ferrari would like to cruise with a pink Cadillac.' Besides, you got somebody else to talk on the phone for you. That voice sounded cheerful, pleasant and compromising, not like I remembered you."

"I got a modern electronic voice box from Sharper Edge. It's amazing how it disguises ones voice. I was talking. I didn't recognize you, though. You go by your middle name now?"

Lynn stood up. "Jack preferred to call me Eve and my friends use that name also. I guess you'll want to call this off."

"Lynn, or should I say Eve? Biting an apple and finding a worm in it isn't as bad as biting an apple and finding half a worm in it. Why don't you quit looking for worms? Then we can have a polite dinner together which I see, by the way, that you're dressed up for?"

In truth, his ex-wife looked very smart, a trim figure in a pink summer dress, burgundy pumps and belt, silver hair neatly coiffed and face made up immaculately. She nodded. "Dinner would be nice after the effort of getting here."

The waitress brought them cocktails. Cautiously, Bob raised his glass. "To renewed acquaintanceships."

Lynn took a sip. "Bob, I would have said I was more than an acquaintance having shared your bed for over a decade."

"It was just for openers, Lynn. We haven't talked for many years." He paused. "I heard that Jack died."

"Yes. It was totally unexpected," responded Lynn. "He was only sixty-two and was never sick in his life. He didn't know he had atherosclerosis. He had a heart attack two years ago and was dead before the paramedics arrived." She took another sip of her drink.

"Lynn, do you want to talk about it?"

"Sure. I had twenty-four good years with him. You learn to count your blessings in life. After two years, grief is almost gone. Life continues. Jack and I had no children either, so I decided a few months ago to look for a good man to spend time with. I didn't expect to see you."

"Was I really so bad, Lynn? I thought we had a decent life together. I didn't know you were that dissatisfied until you suddenly moved out from me and in with Jack. I was too hurt to ask you why you left." And thought Bob: too proud to ask you to return.

Lynn ignored the question. "Why didn't you get married again, Bob?"

He sighed. "I was busy with the printing business. I wanted to make the venture a success. I didn't have time to date women seriously." And he thought: "and I didn't want to be hurt again."

"So why are you looking around now after all these years?"

Bob paused. He hated answering this oft-repeated question. "Economic necessity, dear, although I hate to admit it. The printing business muddled along for twenty years but when personal computers came out, everybody could make their own flyers. Business declined. I finally folded two years ago. In fact, I had to declare bankruptcy."

"So, what do you live on now?"

Bob paused again. Another of the hated questions. "I'm sorry, Lynn. I am embarrassed to discuss that topic so early on a date. I'm not working and I'm broke. I have a social security income of $850 per month, derived largely from earnings, made before I started the printing business."

"So you're looking for an income from your future partner as well as companionship."

Lynn's directness eased his embarrassment. "Yes. Unfortunately you're right. I'll probably be eating beans for a week after I have paid for this dinner."

"Well, let's go Dutch; you'll enjoy the meal better."

"Thanks dear. I accept. I'm glad you're not too upset with me tonight." Bob smiled. He was genuinely touched by his former wife's gesture.

"Why should I be upset with you?"

"Well Lynn, you weren't expecting me for one thing. Also, our marriage deteriorated especially during the last year. I would come home and find you upset. It seemed I couldn't do anything to please you."

"Bob, you seemed more wedded to the business than to me. When we broke up, I was thirty five years old. I wanted a family and we couldn't seem to have any. You didn't seem to care that my biological clock was ticking. You wouldn't see a fertility specialist. You kept putting it off. You always had a business problem to be solved first. I was fed up at being second in your affections."

"You weren't. I wanted to be successful for your sake as well as mine. As it turned out, the business failed us both." Bob sighed as he remembered those years of poorly rewarded effort.

"So how did it work out with Jack?"

Lynn spoke cautiously. "Jack was a decent man, but things didn't turn out as I wanted. I had two miscarriages from ectopic pregnancies. By that time, my tubes were so scarred, I could no longer conceive." Lynn put a tissue quickly to her eyes; her voice betrayed her sadness. "Jack was not as disappointed as I, since he had two children by a previous marriage. He declined to adopt any, so I just had to accept that I was never going to have a family."

"I'm sorry, Lynn. You would have made a good Mom."

Lynn took several sips of her drink. "So how's it going--looking for somebody when your income is limited?"

Bob grimaced. "Not too good, actually. I started by writing advertisements such as `Lonely retired man on limited income to meet nice woman to share life and expenses.' But truth doesn't bring much response. Who wants to be involved with somebody lonely? A lonely person is usually so because he is not friendly, and who wants to be with an unfriendly person? You have to sell yourself just as though you were a consumer product, a little hype, a little exaggeration, a little come-on. You must have seen those advertisements, such as `Tall professional man to meet a sensual nonsmoking woman who likes classical music and jogging along the beach.' I wrote a few of those but the responders were drab in spirit and body."

"Funny, you should say that, Bob. I replied to advertisements like that. I thought most of the men were pathological misfits or sexual prowlers. And every one of them asked me what my income was at our first meeting."

"What makes you think I'm any different, Lynn?"

His ex-wife ducked the question. "Why did you write that crazy advertisement, Bob?"

"I remembered that the most important thing in advertising is to get attention. So I tried different copy, emphasizing my Italian-American background. My first such advertisement was `Classic Bugatti to meet Buick Regal for a comfortable ride in life.' The responders had spirit, but feistiness has its pains. Most passed when they found out how much money I had." Bob grinned as he recalled one woman telling him he was no Bugatti and his nickname ought to be Fix-It-Again-Tony. "So why did you reply to my latest ad?"

"It did get my attention, Bob. Have you met anybody you really liked yet?"

"A few possibles. The trouble is that the interesting ones don't respond to my calling them back, while the rest desperately call me again and again. That's why I use a second telephone line, an unlisted number connected to an answering machine."

"Isn't it the same number you had for your printing business, Bob?"

Bob stared at his ex-wife for a long time and she began to smile. He smiled back. "Tell me Lynn, how much is your income these days?"
"What man is there that does not laboriously, though all unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life."

Maurice Maeterlinck

"JIMMY," YOU WHISPER

"Jimmy," you whisper. "It must be the thousandth time you said that, Ma. It's the only word you've spoken since you became comatose two days ago. I keep wondering who you're thinking of--Jimmy, my younger brother, or Jimmy, my father, who left you forty-five years ago. I wonder why you say that name, over and over. There. You whispered it again, 'Jimmy.' Not my name, Fred. And I was always your favorite, not Jimmy.

You lie propped up in this hospital bed staring blankly at the silent television set. The room smells of urine and disinfectant, a sour odor that fits my mood. You don't know I'm here, and I wonder why I'm here myself when I know it can't matter to you. I guess it matters to me. That's why I keep wondering which Jimmy you're thinking of before you pass on. And that won't be long. The nurse says they're giving you steroids, though there isn't really anything they can do since your liver has failed. You never were the same after you got hepatitis eighteen months ago. And now the doctor tells me you've just a few days at most.

So I sit here with you, hoping that you might become lucid and coherent, but I know in my heart it's not going to happen. Maybe I'm trying to comfort myself that I'm making it easier for you, although it's harder for me. Perhaps I'm making it harder for me, so that when you go, I'll feel a sense of relief. But I just wish you'd call out my name. I did live with you for the past forty years.

'Jimmy,' you whisper. And again I wonder which Jimmy you're thinking of. How you hated Jimmy, your husband. I suppose you had good reason. He took off with a nineteen-year-old woman and you never heard from him again. He didn't call or send you child-support money or do anything to acknowledge me and little Jimmy. You said you had to move because of the embarrassment. I was three and Jimmy was two when he left, so we never knew him, and you discouraged us from asking questions about him. It took a while for you to get on with your life; that's when Grandma Stokes lived with us. But you went back to school and got a teaching credential and worked for the school district until you retired. So we never really starved or were deprived or anything like that.

'Jimmy,' you mutter again. Which one is it? We didn't know our father. We only knew what you told us about him--that he was irresponsible, that he was good for nothing, that he was worthless. I guess I could go on, but you never gave it a rest, Ma. Despising him consumed you. If we kids ever did anything wrong, it was always 'just like your father' or 'you're no better than your father.' How we hated that, little Jimmy especially. So I wonder, Ma, if you are thinking of the times you had before big Jimmy left, or are you now regretting all the nasty things you said about him afterwards. I don't know. You didn't mention him for the last two decades. But then you had nobody to yell at. Poor little Jimmy, dead in Vietnam. And me, grown up, making good money at Pacific Bell, living at home with you. No reason to call me irresponsible or bring up comparisons with big Jimmy.

So maybe you're thinking of little Jimmy. I know you'd say you loved him but you made him miserable when he was growing up. I never understood why until I saw your wedding photograph. Grandma Stokes gave it to me. I hid it so you'd never find it. Jimmy sure grew up to look like his father, didn't he, Ma? The same curly brown hair, the same slender build, the crooked smile. I guess that's why you took it out on him, not me, I suppose because I was stocky and fair-haired like you. Poor Jimmy. How many times did you tell him he was like his father? 'Father' became such a hated word. And little Jimmy didn't understand. For a time he disliked me, because you didn't yell at me so much. He played tricks on me, and when I told you about them, you just got after him more. I still remember when he put snails in my lunch box, and they slimed over my sandwich. Did you ever wade into him? He cried for an hour after the thrashing you gave him. And he was only eight years old. I put my arms around him to comfort him, and maybe then he realized I wasn't the enemy.

Little Jimmy. He's been dead now for thirty years and I still think of him, my skinny arms around his little body, his wet tears soaking my tee shirt. Poor kid. He felt he could never do anything right. Only when we became teenagers did he realize that you were taking your problem with his father out on him. It wasn't really that you favored me. When he understood that, we became closer. We became good friends, just like brothers are supposed to be. I don't think you noticed the change, Ma. That's why I missed Jimmy so much. We had each other. We shared ambitions; we shared what we knew about girls, about cars and about the teachers. We played softball together with the neighborhood kids. We rode our bikes together. I'll never forget the day we hiked up Cowles Mountain and looked down on the distant houses. 'I feel so free up here,' said Jimmy. I think he meant that his soul was unfettered which it could never be down below. I just wish, Ma, you could have got as close to Jimmy as I did.

'Jimmy,' you whisper again. I know you don't know what's going on, Ma, so it doesn't matter what I tell you here. You were so proud of me when I got into UCLA. But I got there by cheating. That's right--cheating. And you thought I'd become smart overnight. Once I got into college, all I had to do was to work steadily to get grades good enough to graduate. I was no genius. My grades at school were not that good. The best I could hope for was to go to the local community college. But the night before the SAT exam, Jimmy snuck into my room and showed me a copy of the test we were to take the next day.

'How did you get it?' I asked.

'I took Ma's key to the school administration office,' he replied. 'You wouldn't believe that they didn't have these exams in a safe. They just had them in a locker. All I had to do was remove the pins from the hinges and there they were. They were all numbered in sequence so I knew I couldn't take one away. I just turned on their copier and made this copy.'

I looked at Jimmy. He was so happy at doing me a favor. And I was only seventeen. I knew it could make a big difference. So even though I knew it was wrong, I just took the copy and crammed like crazy. I think I remembered enough of the answers to improve my score by more than a hundred points, enough to get me into the university. And you were so happy.

I didn't dare tell you the story. I went away to college, got a deferment from the draft while I was a full time student and was preoccupied with getting passing grades and earning enough money at campus jobs to stay in college. I'm sure Jimmy missed me. I know I missed him. I think that after the successful break-in, he decided he liked living on the risky side. He was caught stealing money from a kid's locker and expelled from high school, the same one you worked at. You must have hated that. Then he fell in with the hippy crowd, the antiwar group, the marijuana smoking group, the psychedelic drug group. No wonder you kicked him out of the house. And then the army drafted him. They shipped him out to Vietnam four months later and he didn't last a month. I remember coming home to see his body in the casket. You appeared sad; you cried a little. But you didn't see the hurt in me. What a sad life Jimmy had, I thought. Sometimes I think I was the only good thing in his life, the only thing that he knew he could love. And I wonder if things would have been different if I had torn up that test and told him never to do anything like that again.

'Jimmy,' you whisper. Ma, I guess I am praying it's your dead son you're thinking of. I don't think that Jimmy stole that exam just to please me. He did it to please you knowing that I was your favorite. But I could never tell you. You were too proud of me being at that great university to understand that theft got me there. Yet I think Jimmy wanted me to tell you sometime so that you could be grateful to him on my account. But with his body in that flag covered coffin, I didn't have the heart or the courage to tell you. So Ma, I still wonder who you're thinking of. Are you thinking of good times with big Jimmy before he left or are you thinking of little Jimmy whom you loved so little?

I know I must love you, Ma. I stayed with you for a long time. You needed me. And now you're not going to need me anymore. It's a sad thing not to be needed. That's why I feel a bit like little Jimmy now. I worry if I'll ever find anybody else who needs me. So I don't know whether these tears trickling down my cheeks are for you or for me. I don't know whether they're for little Jimmy who wanted to give you love but never found you willing. I grieve for all that hurt inside you, Ma. How I wish you could've let it go. And I sit here with my own burden. I just wish this sadness would leave me as certainly as life is soon to leave your body."

"Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents."

Carl Jung

IN HER MOTHER'S IMAGE

Joanne banged the verdigris-covered brass knocker on the entry door. Her father had to be in the house; she could see his blue, ten-year-old Buick parked in front of the garage at the rear. She noted the overgrown hedge and unkempt flowerbeds, especially the tall weeds among the rose bushes. Her mother would never have allowed the garden to get into that state. And the brass knocker would have been shiny.

Her father would be going out again; the car would be inside the garage if he planned to stay home. She knew the pattern of her father's behavior. How surprising to find him away from his small town pharmacy. Mack, his assistant, had told her that he had taken the afternoon off. "Is Dad sick?" Joanne wondered. "I hope not. It's been only two months since Mom died. I couldn't bear it if Dad were taken too." She stared at her reflection in the dark panel glass of the door. She admired herself--a good-looking woman--, twenty-nine years old, dressed in an olive-green wool-knit business suit wearing an olive vicuna winter coat and carrying a Gucci purse. No strands hung from her neatly curled blond hair. "Yes," she thought, "I look good, just like my mother used to."

Nobody came to the door, and Joanne banged the knocker again. Still no reply. Her concern mounted. She went to the rear side door, the one entered from the detached garage, and pressed the buzzer on this door. A little later, the window above her head opened and her father put his head out, his face showing surprise at seeing his daughter.

"I was taking a nap, Joanne" he said shakily, his breath steaming in the cold October air. "Come on in. The rear door's unlocked."

Joanne entered the kitchen, took off her coat and went to the downstairs toilet. Relief after that eighty-mile drive from Lincoln felt good. She took out the coffeepot from its place on the shelf, found the filters and put in coffee from the copper canister she had given to her mother long ago. Nothing seemed to have changed in the house. She looked forward to having coffee with her father and dinner at a local restaurant, before she drove back to Lincoln to be ready the next day for her sales presentation to LOROT Pharmaceuticals. She would enjoy a relaxing evening before her busy day tomorrow that would finish with her flying to Oakland for a sales meeting the day after at a LOROT affiliate. Only then would she return home to Los Angeles and her husband, Wayne.

Her father entered the kitchen in a bathrobe and embraced her saying: "It's nice to see you, Joanne. I wasn't expecting you." They both sat down at the kitchen table as the aroma of perking coffee filled the air.

"Are you okay?" asked Joanne with genuine concern. "You look tired."

"I'm fine, Joanne. I just find that a break from work is pleasant at my age. How's Wayne?"

Joanne explained her visit and answered her father's questions about her job and her husband. As they conversed, she studied her father, now fifty-five years old. His face had its usual smile. His voice was firm, he seemed about the same weight as always. A few more wrinkles in his face and neck and a few less hairs on his head, perhaps.

"When did you last see the doctor?"

"You shouldn't worry about me, dear. I saw old Jackson a month ago and he said I was in good shape."

"Did he run any tests on you?"

"No."

"Did he say anything to you?"

Her father laughed: "Well, he said I would live longer if I got married again."

Joanne frowned: "That's unprofessional of Jackson, so soon after the funeral."

Before her father replied, Joanne heard the upstairs toilet flush. She looked at her father, who hesitated, then let out his breath in a heavy sigh.

"Joanne, I'm fine. I've a guest here and I'm going upstairs to ask her to join us."

"Her?" said Joanne as her father rose from the table.

Thoughts raced through Joanne's mind as she watched her father's disappearing back. _Another woman, and so soon after Mom's death. How could Dad so disrespect Mom and her? Who could be interested in the old man? Probably some gold-digging tart who wants his money, not that he's rich. He's just a pharmacist in a small Midwest town. Why are men so sexually oriented? Really, it's ridiculous the way he's behaving, taking time off responsible work to have an afternoon fling in_ _her mother's bed!_ _What should she say to this woman? Should she be openly friendly? Or coldly neutral? What would her brother Robert say?_

The coffeepot spluttered to indicate brewing was complete. Joanne poured herself a cup to gather her thoughts, as she heard muffled conversation upstairs. She added sweetener and artificial creamer from containers in their usual place on the kitchen table. Strange, she thought, everything seems the same, but change has indeed occurred. How difficult it must have been for Dad, as Mom weakened from ovarian cancer into codeine-filled incoherence. How badly he must have felt to hire a live-in nursing aide and then finally to transfer Mom to a hospice, where she died two months later. Dad could well have unfilled urges. After all Joanne was a sensible, educated woman, who understood the needs of men. Her own man was quite demanding.

Joanne had drunk her coffee in the fifteen minutes that passed before she heard footsteps on the stairs. Her father entered the kitchen, now fully dressed, followed by the same homely nursing aide, who had attended her mother. Joanne stared. "You remember Ruth?" said her father motioning the woman to sit at the table.

"No, I don't think I'll stay, Frank. You need to spend the time with your daughter and we'll talk about things later...No, I'll walk home. I need the exercise."

Ruth said a polite goodbye to Joanne and left. Joanne watched her walking down the road as her father poured himself some coffee and refilled her cup. He sipped cautiously, waiting for Joanne to speak. Joanne gathered her thoughts as through the window she watched Ruth's disappearing figure. _How could her father be interested in a woman, so overweight and frumpy? Totally unlike Mom. Was this a one-time thing? If so, She ought to discourage it. Dad could do better than this ugly duckling. Why, Ruth was a mere nursing aide, who never finished high school._ _Mom_ _graduated from college with a degree in history and was a social force in the town. How could Dad be interested or satisfied with someone of such lesser stature?_

Joanne's father did not speak; his silence made it clear that he expected her to open the conversation. How should she begin?

"I didn't know, Dad," she said weakly.

"I never told you," he replied calmly. "You probably have a few questions to ask, so let me forestall you. Ruth is the widow of an army sergeant, killed on duty. We met first when she came to help your mother. We're good friends and we are intimate. We're not going to get married. Ruth likes the independence her widow's pension gives her. But she enjoys my company and I enjoy hers."

"Dad, I just didn't expect you to get involved so soon after Mom's death."

"I'm sure you didn't. But at my age, I prefer to seize happiness while I can."

Joanne paused before saying cautiously: "Dad, I'm glad Ruth makes you happy, but I thought you would have been interested in somebody younger, better looking and better educated."

"I'm surprised at you, Joanne. Do you really think that youth, good looks and education make a happy relationship?"

"Well, Dad, you had those with Mom. I thought you would have looked for the same qualities again if you were interested in another woman."

Joanne's father looked at her quizzically and drank two swallows of coffee before responding. "Joanne, do you really think I had a truly happy relationship with your mother?"

"Well, of course," she replied. "You and Mom raised Robert and me. We went places together. You never yelled Mom or vice versa. I never heard you complain."

"Joanne, that's not a very good reply to my question, and I don't want to alienate you by running down your mother. But think about it, and ask if you want the relationship between you and Wayne to be the same as me and your mother."

"Well, I think I'm more openly affectionate with Wayne than Mom was with you. Mom had a busy social life, and you were always busy at the pharmacy. I thought you were very comfortable with each other, although you didn't converse much. At least, not when I was around."

"We didn't converse much whether you were around or not. Your mother had a life of her own that largely excluded me. I found it very lonely after you and Robert went off to college."

oanne digested this statement before responding. "I thought your relationship was based on regard, need, civility and mutual respect. It seemed to me a normal result of an initial romantic love."

"Joanne, your assessment is correct, but what was missing was love, affection and esteem. Your mother wasn't a bad woman. She was devoted to you and Robert. But, after you grew up, she became devoted to her hospital volunteer work, to her bridge club and to her Rotarian Club activities. Your mother didn't have much time for me. My job had been to father you and your brother and then to provide support for the family. My affection and my feelings were treated lightly. Your mother brought a singular lack of enthusiasm to the bedroom. I thought I did very well not to seek solace elsewhere. But in a small conservative town like this, fooling around and being found out would have impacted my business. In addition, you two kids were the light of my life. I would never have done anything to disturb the stability and harmony of your upbringing."

Joanne gasped. "You're kidding, Dad. It's hard to believe you felt this way." She paused as she wondered what next to say. "I loved Mom very much. She was good to me, and I thought she was good to you also. But how did you start up with Ruth? Why her? Why not somebody with more class?"

"I can see you disapprove of Ruth. Well, let me tell you. She is decent, kindly, affectionate, and wonderful in bed. I never knew it could be so good, especially at my age. Ruth is grateful to me, grateful because she has somebody to share her feelings with, feelings with which I reciprocate. Of course it would be nice if she had finished high school and talked with more polish. She knows it. But I don't correct her, and she appreciates that I don't express superiority over her just because I went to college and have a successful business. She enjoys learning from me and has a genuine enthusiasm for life. It's refreshing after all these years to be in the company of somebody who genuinely needs me. I guess the bottom line is that I love Ruth and want to share the rest of my life with her."

Joanne's face expressed her astonishment. She finished her coffee and her father picked up her cup to refill it. Joanne stood up. "I don't know what to say at this time, Dad. I think I'd better leave."

"Listen, Joanne. You've driven out of your way to see me, and I'm grateful. I've wanted to tell you how I'm getting on with my life. Let me take you out for dinner before you return to your hotel. I'd like you to spend a little time with me and Ruth before you go." His eyes begged her to stay.

Joanne demurred, telling her father that she would do so on her next visit, when she was more prepared and had digested her father's changed situation. She bid him good-bye and exited the house into her car, her head filled with thoughts. _Fancy, she had thought her parents had a good relationship. What a shock to find Dad considered it unsatisfactory! Worse still, he prefers a poorly educated, frumpy woman to her elegant patrician mother. How smart Mom was. She was always at her side to help in school studies, at the softball league, at prom night, for driving lessons. She could always count on Mom. She never had to count on Dad. He was always there, just like a fire extinguisher, ready for an emergency, but never used. She depended on Mom to get her through the travails accompanying growing up. Strange, she took it for granted that Mom loved Dad, but she couldn't recall Mom ever complimenting or acknowledging him. Yes, she decided, if Ruth makes Dad happy, he should take the opportunity._

But why did she feel uneasy? No, it was clear Ruth wasn't after Dad's money. It was a shock to find Dad had taken up with another woman so soon after Mom's death. Was it because she wondered if they started their relationship before Mom died? But, why should that really matter? She could hardly blame Dad, now that she understood how lonely he was for much of his life. So what was still bothering her?

Was she like her mother? True, she had Mom's good looks and assertive manner. That's what made her a good saleswoman. She knew she had brains; that's why she got assigned a terrific sales territory. The time away from home selling pharmaceuticals earned her large commissions. They needed the money to buy a house in Santa Monica. But, was she taking Wayne for granted just like Dad said Mom was about him? That was the nub of it. Wayne was unhappy that she spent so much time away from home. She liked making money and being good at her job. It was a powerful source of self-satisfaction. Still, was she becoming too much like Mom?

She wished she'd had the resolve to tell Dad it was okay back there and that she loved him. She wondered what she should tell Wayne? And she wished she had gone to the bathroom before she left.

"'Are you the lost daddy?' I asked tenderly.

'Shut up,' he explained."

Ring Lardner - The Young Immigrants

DUDLEY

"My name is Mr. Salter, and I am your mathematics master," announces the man standing behind the table on the podium. I shield my eyes from the morning sun that streams through the schoolroom windows this autumn of 1943. I squint at the teacher, a man of sixty, of medium height with a tanned, wrinkled face. His voice has a slight Australian twang and sounds pleasant, not stern like other masters at this English boarding school. "You will learn fractions, highest common denominator and lowest common multiplier this term," he says. "But first the roll call."

"Andrews?"

"Here."

"Bradshaw?"

"Here, Sir."

The replies range from left to right, as we are seated alphabetically, beginning at the front on our left. This alphabetic seating, convenient for masters, inconveniences us boys by forcing us to move if a new boy enters the class in the middle of the term. Then many of us must leave the desk we had become accustomed to, the site of our surreptitiously carved initials and the graves of our nose boogers.

"Curzon?"

"Here."

"Davies?"

"Here, Sir."

"Are you from Wales?" asks Salter, upon hearing the singsong lilt in Davies' answer.

"Yes, Sir," says Davies while Salter stares at him.

"Dudley?" Salter shifts his gaze to me sitting to the right of Davies. His face changes as I respond: "Here." He continues to stare at me in puzzled deliberation. The other boys turn to look at me also and I wonder what I have done wrong.

Do I have a hole in my jacket? Are my trousers buttoned up? Is my face dirty? Is my tie undone? Salter continues the roll call and I am relieved that my fault, what ever it is, has not been remarked upon. He completes the roll call and then stares at me once more before commencing the class. As he turns to the chalkboard, I check myself. Nothing seems amiss. Why did Salter stare at me? Has another master told him that I am a troublemaker, or a slow learner, or worst of all that I'm bright when I know I'm merely average?

The class finishes and Salter motions me to stay behind. My heart sinks.

"When is your birthday?" he asks gently.

"November tenth."

"That would be 1933, then?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Do you have any brothers or sisters, Dudley?"

I am puzzled why Salter asks me these personal questions but am too fearful of his authority to challenge him. "No, Sir," I reply. Salter stares at me again and then tells me to go. I scurry to join my classmates who ask me what Salter wanted. "A few silly questions," I say.

The next day in the mathematics class, Salter stares at me noticeably. Again, he singles me out after class and addresses me in a kindly voice.

"Where were you born, Dudley?"

"In Bath, Sir." (This boarding school is also located in Bath).

"Do your parents live nearby?"

"No, Sir. They live in Southampton. My father works in the Ministry of Aircraft Production."

Salter dismisses me.

"You must be his favorite," says Forester.

The pattern of Salter asking me questions after class continues as the term progresses. I am puzzled at his curiosity about me, so unlike the other masters. One day he asks: "Are you adopted, Dudley?"

"No, Sir," I reply. Even as I speak, I realize that the issue of my birth has never been raised between me and my parents. Voices that said: "he looks like his uncle" or: "the spitting image of his grandfather," have been the security that I am my parent's natural child. But Salter's question causes me grave doubt. Does he know some secret about my birth?

After Salter's question I write plaintively to my mother during the mandated write-to-parents hour asking if I am adopted. Her letter comes shortly thereafter. She must have penned it as soon as she received mine and has clearly grasped my worry.

"Good gracious, no," she writes. "You are our own dear child. I will show you your birth certificate when you are next home."

I am relieved. I can face Salter with confidence. My mother says she is sending me a tin of biscuits, a real treasure, since butter, needed for the biscuits, is a prized rationed commodity.

Mathematics is the last class before half term when we will enjoy a week's holiday. Salter keeps me after class again. This time he says nothing. He bends down and puts his hand on my shoulder as though to hug me. I am frightened by this familiarity, especially since my classmates have departed to the dormitories. I draw back and Salter, recognizing my discomfiture, stands up, wishes me "happy holidays," and dismisses me with a wave of his hand.

My father picks me up in his car the next morning, a Saturday, and at my request drives three other boys to the railway station. They must find their way home by train. My father has a car and petrol due to his job at the Ministry. My three peers regard me with envy and express their gratitude profusely to my father. One of them, Forester, remarks that he had heard Mrs. Salter had been killed in an air raid in Portsmouth during the past summer. Has that something to do with how Salter treats me? I wonder.

My father chats with me as he drives, asking about my schoolwork, sports and the masters. I tell him about Salter, especially about the event of the preceding day. My father seems very interested and asks me if Salter has ever tried to kiss me or hug me or anything else. I do not grasp the significance of the "or anything else" and tell him no to all of the above. I ask my father if he is sure that I'm not adopted. He turns away from the steering wheel with a smile that warms and reassures me: "Quite sure, Brian."

The second day after the midterm holiday, I am summoned from the English class to the headmaster's office. I quake. What have I done wrong? Mr. Leach, the headmaster, is an imposing man. He towers over all the other teachers. His very height makes him a dominating figure, amplified by his deep powerful voice that can be readily heard from the back of the school auditorium. A summons from him is indeed feared. The school secretary sends me into Mr. Leach's inner office where, to my surprise, I find my father seated. I am relieved. No harm can come to me with my father present. We greet and I go to his chair where he puts his arms around me.

Mr. Leach speaks: "Dudley, your father has requested a meeting with me and Mr. Salter alleging that Mr. Salter may have behaved inappropriately toward you. What can you tell me about this?"

I look at my father who urges me to repeat what I told him during the drive home. Mr. Leach listens. He begins to frown. He goes out the door and says something to the secretary. My father and I look at each other but say nothing. A few minutes later Mr. Leach reenters the room followed by Salter. The mathematics master stares at me. Mr. Leach speaks to him but Salter says nothing and continues to stare at me. My father and Mr. Leach's faces display puzzlement at this extended silence. Then Salter's face begins to crumble. He comes over to me sitting next to my father and puts his arms around me and starts kissing my face and top of my head.

"My dear sweet boy, my own son, you've come back to me," croaks Salter. His voice cracks as he sobs. "Oh, why did you ever leave me and your mother?" My father and Mr. Leach gently pull Salter away from me. I am crying also. I do not understand Salter's grief but realize I'm its focus and somehow the cause. I do not hear what Mr. Leach is saying to Salter, but he leads the older man outside, his shoulders shaking with sobs. My father dries my tears and comforts me.

Mr. Leach returns to the room about ten minutes later and apologizes to my father and me for Salter's behavior. Mr. Leach asks me to wait outside and from the outer office I see the school secretary escorting Salter, shoulders still heaving, toward the infirmary. I never see him again.

Later, my father tells me that Mr. Salter has had a nervous breakdown due to the death of his wife and another factor. "What is that?" I ask, and he hands me a passport photograph. It is a picture of myself. I turn it over. It is stamped "Brisbane Photos, 4 April, 1922." Underneath is written in Mr. Salter's neat handwriting: "John Salter, born 14 June, 1912. Lost overboard, Indian Ocean, 22 July, 1922."

My father squeezes my shoulder and says: "I would weep too if I ever lost you."

"An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children."

Benjamin Disraeli

YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE

Letter to John Overtone, Publisher, Factual Fiction, Seattle, May 20, 1998

Dear Mr. Overtone:

My attempts to get your attention have failed. I have submitted fifty short stories to Factual Fiction over the past ten years. Not one of them has been accepted, even though my best were more entertaining than many you have published. Now, we might agree that whether a reader is entertained depends on the view of the reader. In other words, Mr. Overtone, assessing fiction is highly subjective. I am now convinced your editors are more subjective than others. Your editors and your judges in your so-called competitions are clearly biased against my material or are worthless hacks who could never write anything of their own or are fence-sitters who always pick stories written by established authors or are anti-establishmentarians who automatically consider wordy descriptions of hippies, aging rues, or pathological misfits to be literary art.

I believe your competitions are run for the mere revenue they produce and the befuddlement of the poor saps who enter the competitions thinking they have a genuine opportunity to win. Certainly by not telling the poor entrant how she ranked, you maintain the uncertainty causing her to enter your competition again and again.

I demand your attention and publication. I thought initially about offering to sleep with you, but that road, followed by so many young female film stars, such as Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly, seems risky in these days of sexually transmitted diseases. I have, therefore, decided to put you purported literary types to a test. I am planning to submit my fifty pieces of fiction to you but under the names of established authors--I may include a few dead ones for good measure--just to see if your hacks latch onto them. I also plan to submit fifty stories of acknowledged authors but under other random names to see if your so-called judges can pick them out. And just to even the score for rejecting me for so long, I have notified some journalists, who will be watching this competition with keen interest and may ask if they can monitor the judging. No longer will I accept rejection meekly.

Sincerely,

Pat Muir

P.S. I am thinking about changing my name to Danielle Steel

*****

Telephone Conversation between John Overtone and Warren Faust (Factual Fiction Legal Counsel), June 2, 1998.

Overtone: "You've read the letter that crazy woman, Muir, sent. Is there any way we can stop this woman making these submissions?"

Faust: "Probably not. She has done nothing illegal until we actually receive the submitted work. Then, she will have breached copyright law, but only the authors of work she submits as her own will have standing in court. And only those authors whose names are used for her own stories will be able to sue the woman for civil damages for that unauthorized use. It is unlikely such authors will do anything about it since we pay so little for accepted stories."

Overtone: "But she will have disobeyed the submission rules.

Her activity is fraudulent."

Faust: "So it is. But usually, nothing is done about fraud or misrepresentation until there is a significant cost or loss of potential profit to make it worthwhile to litigate."

Overtone: "You mean until it is worthwhile for you attorneys to get a piece of the pie!"

Faust: "Crude, but precise. But we do help to keep you folks out of trouble."

Overtone: "Couldn't we get a restraining order from a court in the jurisdiction where this woman lives to stop her making these stupid submissions?"

Faust: "I doubt it. The judge would want to see significant potential monetary consequences or loss of good name or goodwill before he would issue such a restraining order. Besides, it would look ridiculous in the press for our magazine to say that we could not tell the difference between a poor story allegedly written by a famous author and a famous story written by a non-entity."

Overtone: "In other words, you're saying that if this woman carries out her threat, we will have to recognize well-known authors' names and spot previously written stories to salvage our reputation?"

Faust: "That's what it looks like to me. Your judges should be capable of that."

Overtone: "Well, our judges are quite a mixture. They comprise local university professors, who are atrociously opinionated and notoriously left-wing. They comprise some of our own editors who could make a decent living elsewhere if they were not fixated on Seattle. And they comprise some well- known authors, now past their prime, who want to be treated like the celebrities they still consider themselves to be. I don't think our judges will like this challenge."

Faust: "Then don't tell them about it. If they don't recognize the good stories or they compliment Muir's bad stories, then you can tell them the test was your idea and brow beat them about it. Maybe you can use the results to lower their judging fees."

Overtone: "That's not possible. We pay them too little as it is and make it up with gratuitous and unwarranted compliments about their work."

Faust: "Then maybe you should negotiate with Muir. Find out what turns her on. Get her published or have an affair with her, depending on which frustration is most important to her."

Overtone: "So you can make some more money from the outcome."

Faust: "Well, let me remind you. You should have laid Wilma off, not laid her and then laid her off."

*****

Memorandum to John Overtone from Kathy Whitewater, Assistant Editor, Factual Fiction, June 10, 1998.

I am sorry that Ms Muir's letter was somehow included in your letter of invitation to judges at the next Factual Fiction fiction competition. We attribute its inclusion to disgruntlement by your former secretary, Wilma, after she contracted Herpes-2, and before her employment was terminated. Also unfortunate is the unanimous refusal by invitees to act as judges. They were unwilling to subject their professional reputation to the kind of test Ms Muir proposed. However, I consider it inappropriate punishment for you to make all editorial staff act as judges in the forthcoming competition, especially myself.

My expertise is in slush. I have been principal slush editor at Factual Fiction for over three years, and I am good at reading and recognizing rotten writing. I have successfully weeded out those stories with gutter grammar, with stupid syntax, with awful alliterations and with countless cliches. I know slush when I see it. This simply does not qualify me to recognize a good story, and I respectfully ask you to release me from the competition judging assignment.

*****

Memorandum to John Overtone from Becky Snow, Senior Editor, Factual Fiction, June 12, 1998.

I am greatly perturbed by Ms Muir's letter and your insistence that all editors of Factual Fiction act as judges in the forthcoming fiction competition. As you know, we rarely publish any work resulting from this competition since if we did so, it would become a real, instead of a de facto, competition. We usually publish stories in our magazine written by ourselves or our friends or any author we have published previously who has somehow gained national recognition. Turning our fiction competition into a real event means we will have to work hard at being judges, something that we do not usually do, preferring instead to dream of greatness, sip mineral water and contemplate the great rain-filled bleakness outside our office. Please consider negotiating with Ms Muir to prevent her quest from turning our lives upside down.

*****

Letter to Pat Muir, June 20, 1997.

Dear Ms. Muir:

Your letter has given me much food for thought. I understand your frustration at being rejected for so many years. Your idea of testing the judges has greatly intrigued me. I am willing to assist your goal of publication if you will enlist me in your proposed test.

The reading fee on the number of stories you propose to send will be one thousand dollars. If you will send me a check for that amount, I am sure I can get one or more of your stories published in Tall Tales, a small circulation magazine, edited by Diana Trope, a former editor of Factual Fiction. For that fee, Diana would edit at least one of your stories to make it acceptable for her publication.

I will therefore need you to send me the author and story-title key to the submissions you propose to send for our competition. In this way, I can tell how well the judges meet your challenge.

I look forward to your accepting this proposal.

Yours truly,

John Overtone

Publisher Factual Fiction

*****

Letter to John Overtone, July 6, 1998

Dear Mr. Overtone:

I wondered whether your reference to my being frustrated by rejection was a syntactical slip up or a sly inference that I was a sexually frustrated female, desperately trying to get attention. Let's say: "My love life is fine. Your syntax is terrible."

I was intrigued by your offer to co-opt my proposed test. It tells me that rejected authors like myself have some power, after all. I am anxious for publication and look forward to meeting the editor of Tall Tales.

Now it will not do for me to send you a check for $1000 and later my stories without the submission fees. The submissions must be sent in the manner required by the competition rules together with their reading fee. Otherwise the stories will be rejected at the start, or your judges will be able to spot them without reading effort.

I will also have difficulty explaining your offer to my journalist friends who are looking forward to monitoring your competition. I think I can avoid showing them your letter and convincing them that I have carried out my test if I submit the stories as originally proposed. However, I am prepared to send you under separate cover a list of these stories and authors if you pay me in advance for the cost of these submissions. Since your reading fee for each story is ten dollars, a check for one thousand dollars in advance will take care of the matter.

Sincerely,

Pat Muir

P.S. I am now thinking of changing my name to Sue Grafton.

*****

Letter to John Overtone, July 25, 1998.

Dear Mr. Overtone:

Thank you for the check. To me it represents the attention I have begged for over the past ten years. However, due to the failure of my hard drive and my nerve, one or the other--take your pick--I will not be submitting the one hundred stories after all. These excuses match those I have received countless times from you--"your work does not meet our current needs."

I appreciate the introduction to Diana Trope of Tall Tales and plan to meet with her as soon as she has recovered from a recent flare-up of Herpes-2. She tells me that judging fiction is indeed highly subjective, as subjective as judging men, and that she has made mistakes in both areas in the past. My recounting of our dialogue has greatly entertained her. Diana says she is starting a new magazine to compete with Factual Fiction, which she plans to call Gibber Rish, and has asked me to be an editor. I look forward to rejecting submissions from you and your staff.

Sincerely,

Pat Muir

P.S. I have decided to change my name to Toni Morrison.

"I remember thee in this solemn hour, my dear mother. I remember the days when thou didst dwell on earth, and thy tender love watched over me like a guardian angel. Thou has gone from me, but the bond which unites our souls can never be severed; thine image lives within my heart. May the merciful Father reward thee for the faithfulness and kindness thou has ever shown me; may he lift up the light of his countenance upon thee and grant thee eternal peace."

Jewish recitation in memory of mother on Yom Kippur

HANDSOME HAROLD

"How are you feeling today, Mom?"

My mother turns her head and smiles, but the smile from her faded blue eyes is through me and not at me. She turns her head back to the television set to watch a bare-chested, black-haired giant, called Handsome Harold, throw himself and his opponent in furious fake abandon around a wrestling ring. I know sadly that I do not compete with Handsome Harold, so I converse no longer and stare at my mother's profile.

Her face bears only slight resemblance to that firm loving character, who smiled at me constantly for two generations. It now sags to match the rest of her, which droops from cheek to chin to bust to belly, while stretched in front of her are two thin stockinged legs that no longer carry her unaided. She nervously strokes her hair, grayish white, like the color of her face, so that ungraceful wisps hang down. She is a caricature of someone who knew me intimately, was familiar with all parts of me, from my inner small thoughts to my outer extremities. Upon all these was her willing smile, a beacon to shine upon my entire world. Now she smiles at Handsome Harold, whose fierce forays entertain her.

My mother smiles at me. I am six years old and I am a character representing the State of Washington. I carry a basket with simulated products from the State. I tell the audience we have planes and apples and electricity and tourists in the State, but I forget, as I speak, to raise in turn the representative item from my basket. I see my teacher purse her lips at my mistake, while my mother beams her delight at me. What matchless pride, a millennium past. She says little after the show, but her smile says all. It conveys love, pride, regard, and pleasure at my prowess. Her smile, just for me, is more important than my teacher's small frown. I have earned that smile; I have pleased my mother.

Now I gaze at Handsome Harold whose skill earns my mother's smile.

My mother smiles at me. I am dressed uncomfortably in a rented black tuxedo to take a young lady to the school prom. My mother does not know the young lady, and even I know her but slightly. My attendance has been arranged by the young lady's good friends who know she desperately desires an escort. Since I know not how to dance and am uncertain about how to escort a young lady, this is a big adventure for me. I fear she may later tattletale to her friends about my inadequacies. I borrow the family car. My father grins at me, but my mother's smile is all encompassing. She tells me to make sure my date and I are photographed at the dance. My shyness is of no import to my mother. Her smile to me is the encouragement to step into this strange new adult field, a field she entered many years before.

Let us now smile at Handsome Harold who has no fear.

My mother smiles at me. I am in a long line of young men and women wearing black gowns and tasseled hats, all talking excitedly between themselves and waving to relatives and friends. I am too distant to talk to my mother, who sees me in the passing line and, smiling, waves vigorously. I am one of very many. I am no class valedictorian; I earned no honors; I won no prizes and received no scholarships. But I have gained her smile, a smile of pride at my--or is it her--achievement. Her smile sustains me through the speeches, the ceremonies and the honors bestowed upon the many victorious. But in my mother's eyes, I am the only victor in the line, and her smile is my prize and my honor.

Now is it time for Handsome Harold's valor to be rewarded.

My mother smiles at me. I am waiting at a church altar, one like that where once she stood, perhaps with the same trepidation where now I stand. The wedding march begins and I hear the rear doors of the church open as my bride moves down the aisle to join me. I do not look behind since I think it may appear as an expression of regret or apprehension. I look to the front almost stoically and then to the side where my mother smiles at me encouraging me to the future where she too has trod. Did she not fear as well as welcome that union, that responsibility, that obligation? I do not know, but my mother's smile urges me forward to the trial.

And so under my mother's smile does Handsome Harold move against his opponent.

My mother smiles at me. We are in a hospital nursery staring at this small infant, wrapped in blankets and nestling peacefully in a crib. Only a mere face is seen, a face, red, wrinkled and contorted, which I cannot recognize as one of my design, but whose name on the crib confirms this is my child and my mother's grandchild.

"He looks just like you," she says.

I stare at her. In truth, I recognize no resemblance to me or my wife, but if that is what my mother sees, so be it. I smile at her and she smiles back to me confidently. What future will there be for this tiny person? The infant yawns and my mother says: "Robert is smiling." Yes, she wants him named after me. And so does it happen.

Handsome Harold's face is contorted with effort, wrapped as he is under his opponent's muscular frame. My mother smiles as he tries to escape.

My mother smiles at me. We are at a little league baseball game and young Robert is the last batter at the bottom of the last inning. The opponents are ahead by one run and one man is on base. Robert swings but misses; the scoreboard shows two strikes and no balls. We hold our breath. The pitcher throws once more; Robert swings and misses again. The umpire waves his hand and the game is over. The parents of the opponents cheer lustily, and at our end we clap politely and shout "good game." We see my son wipe a tear from his face as he shakes hands with his opponents in the exiting lineup. My mother smiles at me as though to say he tried hard as did his father before him. Through the passage of time, her smile is constant, illuminating all with a glowing warmth that overlooks mistakes, embellishes accomplishments and encourages cautious steps to the future.

Now she smiles at Handsome Harold who rolls to loosen his opponent's grip.

My mother smiles at me. It is a going-away party for young Robert, who is wearing his army dress uniform. The attire is uncomfortable, but this he has done to please his parents and grandmother who are so proud and fond of him. Tomorrow, he leaves for some far off foreign land in Southeast Asia, a country we know little about or even cared until it involved one of our own. He is a handsome young soldier. Today, we hug him and pray for safe passage and victory over the enemy. Nevertheless, our smiles are full of trepidation. I do not know that when he leaves, he will never return to us. That sadness brings moisture now to my eyes.

Here, Handsome Harold has a firm hammerlock on his opponent who cries to the referee for relief. "Handsome Harold, the winner," yells the commentator excitedly.

My mother smiles. The nursing assistant turns off the television set and announces it is time for a snack. My mother mildly frowns to express her disappointment that her present hero will no longer entertain her. Her disappointment disappears as she and I are given cups of warm coffee and some sliced cake to eat. She is quite interested in the cake and manages to eat a goodly portion. After she has drunk half of her coffee, I ask her again: "How are you feeling today, Mom?"

She turns her head to me and smiles: "I'm fine. I'm fine."

Do you know who I am?"

"You're my handsome son, Harold."

M.W. Couple with unmarried employed thirty year-old son wish to meet similar couple with unmarried daughter in same age range. Call 555-461-0909.

A BRIDE FOR BERNARD

How was I to expect what happened from my advertisement?

My son, Bernard, is a gentle loving boy, utterly content to live at home. Excuse me if I call him a boy; even a thirty-year-old is a boy in his mother's heart, until he visibly takes on the trappings of manhood. His height is average, and his thinning reddish hair tops an always-smiling rounded face, crowned with thick rimmed glasses and a mildly distracted demeanor. His father is happy to have him around the house, watching baseball together on TV, discussing the game and political events, and consulting on the stock market.

Bernard has worked since he graduated from college as a computer systems analyst at a government research office, full of physicists and engineers, nearly all male. Bernard doesn't appear interested in young women, which is puzzling since his father was vigorous in the chase. Maybe Bernard wants to avoid the humiliation of failure in the pursuit. True, he is shy and self-centered; on the other hand, he talks freely and easily with his younger married sister and female cousins. There must surely be in this world some young woman who would like to share her life with him.

My husband is oblivious to Bernard's need for his own home and family. He tells me not to worry and not to meddle. My daughter says when Bernard decides to get interested in women, everything will fall into place. She says I can't make him interested; he has to do it for himself. She may be right, but I'm sure the interest is there, dormant, just waiting to be stimulated to overcome the fear of rejection. Maybe his biological clock doesn't tick like mine did, but tick it tocks, so meddle I must. Getting Bernard interested in women is like feeding vegetables, such as chopped spinach, to a baby. It is good for him, but he is never going to go after it himself. He will eat it if the spinach is spoon fed to him. My task has been to find a ripe tomato for my son.

I couldn't advertise for Bernard directly; he would be upset at me, and his shyness would get in the way. I would have to stage events to get him a girlfriend. So first I needed to contact like minded parents with a daughter, who for reasons such as shyness or plain appearance was unmarried, and would like not to be. I'm sure a plain woman would make my Bernard almost as happy as a good looking one. It's a shame most men seek good looks in a woman when other attributes such as kindliness, sensibility and bed worthiness contribute much more to a happy marriage. With this idea of staging meetings in mind, I placed my advertisement in the personal column of the local newspaper, the telephone number being a private line to my insurance office.

I was surprised at how many telephone calls I received. There must be a zillion parents trying to get rid of their live-in, unmarried daughter, especially when she has children. I passed these over. After a couple of weeks, I received a call from a Mrs. Boswell who seemed to fit my requirements. She said her daughter was twenty nine years old, petite, had brown hair and blue eyes, and was employed as a teacher at a private elementary school. And yes, she was nice looking. (But then, what mother could ever believe that her daughter was not nice looking?)

"Tell me, Mrs. Boswell, is there any reason I should know why your daughter has not married, when you have told me she is nice looking and pleasant?"

"No. She has been preoccupied with her work."

"Is she chubby or does she have a temper?"

"Sylvia is a sweet-mannered girl, who is much loved by her young pupils. Her weight is her business, not yours. Now you tell me about your son and why he is unmarried."

"Bernard is a good-looking young man, who doesn't date because he's very shy. His interests are mostly indoor ones. He's a computer programmer at a nearly all-male office."

"Then what is wrong with him if he doesn't date? Are you sure he isn't gay? I do not want my girl to be involved with a homosexual."

The nerve of her suggesting Bernard is queer! And she calls her twenty-nine-year-old daughter a girl.

"Bernard is not gay. He's just shyer than most men of his age, and he meets few women due to his lack of outside interests."

Mrs. Boswell said that she would meet me first, and we could swap pictures of our children to see if we thought it would work out. I hesitated. I didn't like her unpleasant directness or her taking the lead, but decided to proceed as a trial run. I asked if she'd told her daughter about responding to my advertisement. She said she hadn't, but would tell her before any event was staged. We agreed to meet at a local fast-food restaurant for lunch later that week.

Mrs. Boswell had waited at Carl's Junior fifteen minutes before I arrived and exuded an air of impatience. My late arrival was due in part to an extended customer call and in part to a sudden rainsquall. I recognized her from the description of herself she had given on the phone, sixty years old, nearly six feet tall, neatly coiffured, with rimless glasses attached to a decorative cord around her neck and wearing a beige woolen overcoat. I apologized to her for being late, while I wiped the moisture off my hair and face. Mrs. Boswell, dry, calm and collected, with angular figure and face, looked down and greeted me coolly.

We ordered our respective lunches and sat down with the trays at a table. While I was putting cream and sugar in my coffee, Mrs. Boswell sipped her iced tea and remarked affably:

"You don't use low calorie sweeteners?"

I was astonished at this oblique reference to my weight, which is admittedly more than I'd like, but since I'm active and not obese, I don't let it bother me, except when thoughtless strangers make uncalled-for remarks.

"I don't like their taste, and sugar gives me energy that I need for my work."

"How nice for you. What kind of work do you do?"

"I'm an insurance broker specializing in life insurance, a business I've been in for fifteen years. Incidentally, do you carry life insurance?" (Since I sell insurance, I pitch automatically.)

"My husband is an attorney and has a professional group policy that covers both of us. He is quite familiar with insurance, since he specializes in representing workers whose employer's insurance companies avoid paying them benefits for job-related injuries."

How I hate these type of lawyers! Why does she goad me by rationalizing her husband's work? I had to reply in kind: "I believe that injured workers should get all the benefits they're entitled to. Unfortunately, there's substantial fraud in claims submitted for workers' compensation insurance."

"My husband is convinced that many employers evade their responsibilities to the workers, either by not keeping their workplace adequately safe, or by conspiring with insurance companies to deny them benefits. He knows this to be the case, because he is quite successful in getting very many of his clients' claims settled."

Is this woman irritating? I wish she'd drop the subject.

"I'm glad you're covered with life insurance. Workers' compensation is certainly a contentious issue. Hopefully, the legislature will do something to improve the situation."

"I hope so too. The insurance companies must be made to live up to their contracts. If they did, they would not waste so much time and money defending themselves in court."

This woman is infuriating. I just had to respond to that remark.

"Insurance companies settle many claims, which I know from my own experience are without merit, because lawyers threaten to sue and the costs of going to trial are outrageous. These litigation costs are then passed on as higher premiums."

I don't think Mrs. Boswell was ever talked to in this way. Her face showed surprise at being challenged, but she recovered by responding less affably:

"My husband checks out these claims carefully. He verifies medical expenses and income losses with reputable doctors and accountants. Neither he, nor his colleagues, would ever handle a spurious claim."

"Well, your husband indeed benefits from the actual or threatened insurance litigation, isn't that right?"

Much less affably, "My husband feels he is protecting workers from exploitation and ensuring they receive what they are entitled to."

"Less thirty five percent."

Mrs. Boswell looked at me with a flash of anger but refrained from rebutting me. Serves her right for being so bloody argumentative. I certainly didn't want this lady to be Bernard's mother-in-law, and I needed to find a graceful way to exit. Nevertheless, the nincompoop proceeded, apparently impervious to the effect of her remarks and to my last retort.

"I am sure we could discuss this issue at length, and I can see that we are on opposite sides. Still, I think we should concentrate on my daughter and your son. Let me show you a picture of my daughter, and please show me a photo of your son."

At least this was easier to handle and more productive. We swapped photos. The most recent one I had of Bernard by himself was taken a few years ago outside his place of employment. The photo of Mrs. Boswell's daughter, labeled Sylvia on the back, showed a short, unsmiling, somewhat-chubby woman, wearing glasses.

Mrs. Boswell said: "Your son looks rather young for his age. Does he dress this casually for work?"

"The picture is four years old; it is all I could find handy. It was a holiday when we took the picture; that's why he's in shorts and tee shirt. He dresses more formally when he goes to work. Your daughter is not smiling in the photo. Is that typical of her?"

"Of course not. It is just that she hates the light flash

and it puts her off. Sylvia did not like this picture and gave it to me. It is the only one I could conveniently find of her by herself and it does not do her justice."

"Well, it shows her to be on the heavy side when you told me that she wasn't that way."

"Sylvia's picture is over two years old and she has slimmed down since then. Besides, what does it matter if she is on the chubby side? You should hardly be concerned with that."

Does this woman know how to infuriate me!

"My weight has nothing to do with it. You are correct that a woman's weight should have nothing to do with her ability to be a good wife, but that's not how men perceive it. Bernard is normal. I see that he looks at the curvy young women featured in the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, and I feel it would be easier to get him interested in a young woman with obvious sex appeal, by today's standards. Your picture of Sylvia shows no sex appeal." (I would have used the word little, instead of no, if the woman hadn't annoyed me so much). "If I took the photograph of your daughter home to show Bernard, I doubt if he would be interested."

"I did not intend to offend you by talking about overweight, but you raised the subject in the first place. Now, your showing the picture of my daughter to your son was never intended, because he expresses little interest in women. The plan, you recall, was to stage an event where they might meet and let it go from there. I would like to know more details of why Bernard displays little interest in the opposite sex. How do you know that he is not interested in men instead? I do not want my daughter to become involved with a gay or bisexual man."

"I've never seen Bernard interested in other men. I am sure if he had any homosexual interest, I would have observed it by now. Why, Bernard believes homosexuals should not be in the military and I know he does not subscribe to or read any gay publications. He goes bowling with a team from work that includes some women players. He describes one younger married woman as especially good looking."

"Well, Mrs. Hansen, that is extremely slight evidence. It would be more convincing if he regularly dated women or went to places where he could meet them."

"Mrs. Boswell, I know my son. He's not queer. He's just shy. If he had been dating women regularly, then he would probably be married by now. Besides, I don't like those magazines. Now you tell me why your daughter's not married."

In a more steely voice: "Mrs. Hansen, I don't think you know your son. My husband frequently gets involved in representing gay employees who have been wrongfully discharged from work due to their sexual preference. I believe he has an information pamphlet for parents of homosexuals that includes ways for parents to recognize their child's sexual orientation. I will be glad to get you a copy of the pamphlet; you should find it helpful. As for my daughter, she is a dedicated professional teacher who has excelled in her work and has received official commendations for her efforts. She has so devoted herself to teaching young children that she has failed to look after her personal interests. She is now willing to accept some help from me to accomplish her goal of having a family of her own. Sylvia is a very nice girl who will make some man a good wife and mother. She does not have the sex appeal of the woman you might see in Playboy. But then she does not expect to attract a man whose literary fare is the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated or like magazines. What did you expect when you advertised?"

I disliked this woman more and more; fancy her nerve at calling Bernard a queer? I couldn't let that go unanswered.

"I'm not sure what I expected when I advertised. I was aware that parents might do their best to help an unattractive daughter, but . . . "

Mrs. Boswell interrupted: "Sylvia is not unattractive. You have never seen her. How could you know?"

Irritated, my voice rose: "You have never seen my Bernard either. Therefore, how could you suggest he's queer? Nor have I said anything about your daughter's sexual preference. You have the unmitigated gall to tell me that I am overweight when your daughter is also that way. You argue with me about insurance when you know it is my business. When I advertised, I never expected to meet a woman like you. I expected to meet somebody who wanted to get their daughter married and would not be abrasive in reaching that objective."

Mrs. Boswell's voice rose to a higher pitch: "Who are you calling abrasive? You're the one who first mentioned problems with lawyers to start with. I was expecting to meet a professional woman with an unambiguously heterosexual son. I am very disappointed to find that I have not met such a person."

"Are you calling me unprofessional?" I shouted, noticing people in the restaurant were staring at me. I was furious, I was embarrassed, and I'd had enough. I stood up, leaving my food essentially untouched. I bid the still unmoved Mrs. Boswell a curt "good day" and stalked out to my car, where I sat swearing at myself for at least two minutes. What an impossible woman! Was I glad the conversation was over! I would be at her throat if she were my son's mother-in-law. Still smarting from her offensive conversation, I backed out my car and drove off rapidly, the speed reflecting my temper.

Dammit! Some idiot backed out their car in the parking lot right in front of mine without nudging it out. I braked hard but still skidded on the wet lot into a green Buick crushing in the passenger side. Oh shit! The driver got out. Oh double shit! It was Mrs. Boswell, her glasses dangling from an ear on one side and hanging from the support cord on the other side, and her hair shaken out of its fastenings. She recognized me immediately, her poised demeanor now as askew as her glasses. I got out of my car whose radiator was steaming almost as much as I and faced the livid woman.

"You idiot," she shouted. "Why were you driving so fast in the parking lot?"

I screamed back at her: "You're calling me an idiot. You back out rapidly in a crowded parking lot and expect to survive. Where did you learn to drive? Look what you've done to my car!" And to the now assembling crowd, I yelled: "Would somebody please call the police?"

"Your car! Look at what you've done to mine! My neck hurts also. My husband is going to sue you for your incompetence. I need a doctor. What a stupid jerk you are!"

Things were getting out of hand. I pulled myself together; it took an effort to speak politely now to this hostile woman.

"We'd better swap details of our insurance companies, while we wait for the police to come. If we spend more time shouting at each other, then the police will charge us both for disturbing the peace."

My appeal had more than its intended effect. Mrs. Boswell relaxed, turned pale and slowly slid to a sitting position on the wet ground.

"I think you had better call somebody," she said as I knelt down beside her.

I pulled out my notebook and pen.

"My husband is out of town today, best to call Sylvia at work; her number is 555-270-6700."

A bystander in the watching crowd produced a car pillow for Mrs. Boswell to sit on. In the confusion, I'd completely forgotten I had a car phone. I climbed into my car and found the phone still working. I called 911; the police had been notified but the dispatcher was unwilling to send anybody since the accident had taken place on private property. The dispatcher's reluctance changed only when I reported there was an injury involved. Her unwillingness simply annoyed and irritated me further. I then telephoned Sylvia's school. The secretary fetched Sylvia, who arranged to leave her class with a teaching assistant, while she came to the aid of her mother. I told her only that I was the other party to the accident. I also called Bernard; I didn't dare call my husband, who would grill me on what happened and might find out what triggered the event, since in my nervous state I might blurt out the truth.

I climbed down to Mrs. Boswell, now faint and conveniently silent. The police arrived about fifteen minutes later and began to ask me questions about the accident in what seemed an accusatory and hostile manner. The ambulance and accompanying paramedics took a further five minutes to arrive, so I was in high dudgeon by then. I told the police I had met Mrs. Boswell before. I hoped to God that the police would not find out about the row in the restaurant and ask me questions about that. I watched the paramedics put a body brace on Mrs. Boswell, place her on a stretcher and slide it into the ambulance. Bernard showed up at this point. I was so glad to see him and so upset that I cried on his shoulder. Sylvia appeared moments later; I recognized her from the photograph, which had in truth not done her justice. She jumped into the ambulance to talk to the paramedics and her mother, while I explained to Bernard what had happened, though of course, without telling him the reason for meeting Mrs. Boswell. Tow trucks summoned by the police then arrived and began hooking up my lovely white BMW car and Mrs. Boswell's green Buick, both evidently undriveable. What an awful afternoon!

Sylvia emerged from the ambulance and walked over to us. "My mother says that she knows you through your insurance business. She would like me to ride in the ambulance with her to the hospital. Would you or your friend," she added, looking at Bernard, "drive my car to the hospital?"

She smiled as she made her request, such a sweet engaging smile. What a pleasant contrast to her mother! I nervously introduced my smiling Bernard and said we would be happy to do so.

I drove Bernard's car to the hospital and he drove Sylvia's. My head ached, my stomach felt rotten, my mind was racing with all the unpleasant possibilities I could foresee happening. My nervous state made me drive with unusual slowness and caution. Thus, I arrived at the hospital a full ten minutes after Bernard and Sylvia. I found that all the admittance paperwork had been done and Mrs. Boswell was already being treated in the emergency room. I sat, twiddling my fingers and cursing myself at how things had gone. All I needed was Mrs. Boswell to have a severe neck whiplash or other injury, and her husband to sue me. He could say I was reckless and my temper was bad as shown by my shouting in the restaurant. He might even suggest I caused the accident deliberately. On top of that, I would have to explain why I was meeting Mrs. Boswell in the first place. Then my son and husband would know what I was up to. And, Dammit! my new car was going to be in the shop. Since it was my second accident this year, my auto insurance might be canceled.

I was so engrossed in these unpleasant thoughts that I scarcely noticed Bernard and Sylvia cheerfully conversing with each other. I did perceive Sylvia to be pleasantly vivacious and that Bernard was responding in kind, although I've no idea what they were discussing. I was acutely aware that they were openly cheerful, while I was covertly miserable. Eventually, Mrs. Boswell was released wearing a neck brace for a simple neck sprain. She looked at me in her now-returned cool and unemotional manner and said she would call me the next day to refer the accident to our respective insurance companies. I was grateful that she didn't reproach me further on the accident or say anything to reveal the subject of our meeting to Bernard or Sylvia.

*****

I can't believe how well things turned out. The police decided not to issue a citation to either one of us. My insurance company settled with me promptly and didn't deny renewal of the policy, although they did increase the premium. Mrs. Boswell has fully recovered and is not evidently going to sue me. But, most important, Bernard and Sylvia have been going together steadily for two months. I am overjoyed.

So my meddling has born fruit, although not how I intended. Maybe Mrs. Boswell set this up when she had Sylvia ride in the ambulance with her. I suspect she never told Sylvia about my advertisement. But I don't need to know. If there's a moral in all this, it's that there's nothing like being lucky in love.

"Make it a rule of life never to regret and never look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in."

Katherine Mansfield

THE MOTHER HE NEVER KNEW

"Robert, do something about your father. It's ridiculous how he's behaving."

Surprised by her agitation, Robert stared at his wife, his focus then shifting from her face to the crumb on her black velvet dress. Even as she complained about his father, he could only think how beautiful a woman she was, how smooth the line from soft swelling bust through slim waist over curving hips past hints of firm rounded thighs down to her grey-stockinged shapely legs. Strange that, at this time of grieving, her dress, a symbol of mourning, should serve so much as a sign of sexual allure. Married two years, he still marveled at her beauty as he listened to her patiently.

"What's wrong, Kate?"

"I can't explain. You'll just have to see for yourself. He's in the basement and it's a disgrace."

The funeral-day had been long, busy and tiring, the sort of day where a thoughtless and unexpected action could raise anger, evidently the case for his wife. The guests, who had come to pay their respects to the living and to talk and be fed until sympathies and stomachs were satiated, had now departed. Kate and his sister, Joanne, were busy cleaning the dining room, the parlor and the patio, and storing leftover food in the kitchen. Soon the ancient dishwasher would churn noisily, making conversation in the kitchen impossible. And tomorrow, they would take the flight back to their hometowns; his father would remain alone.

Robert climbed down the basement stairs and beheld his rotund, balding and bespectacled father in his favorite lounge chair watching the television, its speakers uttering guttural yells:

"Whoo! Aah! Whoo! Oh!"

The screen showed a naked young man mounted in vigorous rear coitus with a naked young woman, both voicing screams of real or simulated orgasmic pleasure. Robert looked in astonishment at his father who returned the look, smiled and turned the television off with silent deliberateness. Robert recognized, in his father, qualities that he also possessed: patience, an analytical mind, and unflappable temperament. He also had similar physical characteristics, including already thinning hair and a problem controlling his weight. When Robert grew up, he surprised his father often with newfound knowledge, and it seemed unnatural that, after all these years, his father could now surprise him. What should he say? Should he upbraid or merely question his father? After a lengthy pause, he decided that curiosity had more to offer.

"I didn't know you liked this kind of film, Dad. I suppose you got it when Mom spent the last two months in the hospice?"

"Actually, Robert, I have a small collection of adult films, which I bought over the past decade, long before your mother came down with cancer."

Robert stared: "You mean Mom knew you had pornographic movies?"

"That's right. I made no attempt to hide them from your mother though, of course, she disliked them."

"Then, why did upset her by buying them?"

"I didn't plan to upset your mother. The films were my response to her withholding sex from me."

"I see. Is sex that important to you?"

"Yes. Sex is that important to me. I was acutely disappointed that your mother came to dislike sex. She said it only made her feel used, a mere repository, and it was pointless after you and your sister were born. I don't know why she became less interested--she was very sensual when we were first married--, but she made her preference clear. And she disliked these films because they represented her failure to make me neutral to sexuality."

"Dad, marriage isn't all just sex. Kate is upset, not only because of the type of film, but also because you played it right after the funeral and while she and Joanne were in the house. Why couldn't you wait until everybody had left?"

"Good question, Son. I suppose I just felt like it, but there's more to it than that. You see, I feel liberated. I'm freed from marriage vows that your mother and I could not or did not honor. You're right. There's more to marriage than sex, things like affection, esteem, encouragement, support, and mutual interests. Your mother and I shared little of these. She became less interested in me as a person and concerned mostly with me as economic support for you, your sister and herself. She would not reward me with affection, of which sex is part. I had to resign myself to a quite neutral existence in my own household, something I thought you would notice as you grew up."

"Well, I knew you and Mom had your differences, but you seemed to make it up afterwards. I would have said that you both were as happily married as anybody who stayed together for thirty years. Surely you aren't saying you're glad Mom is dead?"

"No, Robert. I'm not saying that. I regret that your mother died a week ago. I regret more that my wife was lost to me over two decades ago."

"So what's the point of playing dirty movies right after the funeral? It's so crass."

"Well, I knew Kate and Joanne were busy cleaning upstairs and that you had gone to visit some old school friends. Since there was nothing I wanted to watch on TV, I decided to play one of my films. I didn't expect Kate to come down to the basement, but now that my secret is out, it won't hurt to discuss it. I guess Kate sent you down here?"

"That's right, and she thinks it's disgusting. She asked me to speak to you."

"Well, do you think it disgusting, Robert?"

"Yes. I do. I can't figure out which is worse, your liking this type of film or your playing it right after the funeral. I think it is the playing of the film now that bothers me most, and it certainly bothers Kate."

"Son, you'd better get used to the idea that I'm not a vegetable. Your mother's life is over, and I'm sorry about the pain that cancer caused her. But I intend to get on with my life. I hope I'll find another woman who will share it with grace and kindness."

"Are you saying that you didn't care for Mom?"

"She made me sad. We missed out in life by not caring proactively for each other. Your mother bore me two children of whom I'm most proud and fond. She looked after me physically; she kept a clean house, cooked good food, washed my clothes and took care of the bills. In that sense I depended on her, but that doesn't make a wife. I grieve for her, not so much as the loss of a wife but at the loss of a good housekeeper and the loss of my children's mother."

"Dad, I'm ashamed of you. Mom loved you and looked after you just as much as she looked after us."

"No, she didn't, although she gave the impression that she did. She looked after me just as though I were a piece of machinery, to be kept in good condition, to be kept productive, to be there when needed, but not as an object of affection."

"I don't believe that, Dad."

"It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. Better for you to keep in mind the memory of a loving mother and not my image of her. Why don't you accept my contention that there's nothing wrong in watching adult movies and that I had good reasons to play them today, although I did not intend to embarrass Kate?"

"Dad, even if I accepted your contention, what you're doing is disrespectful of me, Kate and Joanne, and our memory of Mom."

"You would've known nothing about it if Kate hadn't decided to come down to the basement to look for dirty dishes. Now the important question is what you're going to tell your wife when you go upstairs. You should be asking yourself why didn't Kate turn around when she saw what I was doing and say nothing to you about it. Or why didn't she challenge me directly?"

"Well, she was both shocked and embarrassed."

"I don't understand why she should be shocked, especially in these modern times. There's enough simulation of sex on regular TV, and there's five hundred millions of these films rented in the USA every year; that's five for every grown male in the country."

"Really?"

"That's the number reported by movie rental trade journals. I don't have any embarrassment about watching them. Why should I be ashamed of watching, when it's such a common activity?"

"So is prostitution."

"So is good sex between loving married couples."

"Why didn't you turn the television off when Kate came into the basement? "

"Well, I didn't actually hear her coming down, but once I knew she'd seen it, I was curious to find out what she'd do. Even if Kate were embarrassed about this movie, by telling you, she forced you into making a value judgment."

"Well, you were pretty sure she'd tell me and ask me to come down to turn it off. Now I am going to have to explain to her what you told me and spend the plane flight back home defending you, when I don't particularly want to."

"Robert, I didn't turn the TV off for Kate, because I wanted to see what she'd do. I've turned it off now, because I want to hear what you have to say."

"You don't like Kate, do you, Dad?"

"I don't know her well enough, Robert. You met her in college and she's from the other side of the country so I've only visited with her a few times. We never quite got over the polite, friendly-to-strangers stage. But when I see you together, I think you're going to have the same kind of problems your mother and I had."

"What kind of problems do you mean?"

"They're multitudinous, Robert, but essentially amounted to your mother wanting to be the dominant instead of an equal partner in our marriage. She decided where we would live, when we would start our family, how many children we would have, what church we would go to, how we would decorate the house, where we would take vacations. Your mother demanded almost complete control over the family purse. To avoid arguments, I let her make the choices. But slowly, indeed almost imperceptibly, I found that, when I didn't stand up for what I thought was right at home, I would no longer stand up for it at work. And slowly I became less valuable in my job."

"Are you blaming Mom for your being laid off from Midwest Pharmaceuticals ten years ago?"

"No. I blame myself for not standing up to your mother's blustering early in our married life. It set the stage for later accepting the unoffending neutrality of my household and my take-no-risk attitudes at work."

"Dad, it isn't going to happen to me. I'm very happy. I have a great job and a wonderful wife."

"Well your wonderful wife has a father-in-law who watches adult movies of which she disapproves strongly enough to send you down to the basement to talk to me. The question for you is whether the problem is with the wife or her father-in-law. What do you think of movies like this?"

"I've never actually watched any. I think they're disgusting. They make me feel like a voyeur."

"That's probably your mother's heritage. It really doesn't matter whether you like them or not. What is really more important is whether you're going to treat me any differently now that you know I watch them."

Robert paused and thought before replying: "No. I guess not. But I really don't want to defend you to Kate."

"Why should you have to defend me to her? Why is any explanation necessary? I'm not hurting anybody, and as far as you're concerned, I can watch adult movies anytime I want to."

"Kate's not an easy person to tell that to."

"Now you're beginning to see why I said Kate and you may be following along the same path as your mother and me."

"I can certainly tell Kate there's nothing wrong in you're liking and watching dirty movies, but I know I can't convince her that it was okay for you to watch them at this time."

"Assuming that I didn't expect her to come down here to look for dirty dishes, then there was no intention on my part to embarrass her. Then why is it so insensitive?"

"My God, Dad, we buried Mom today."

"My dear boy, placing a body beneath the ground amidst a crowd of loved ones is a symbol of respect the living have for the soul of the deceased and a comfort for surviving relatives. You have to face the fact that I didn't have a great deal of respect or love for your mother. Though beautiful, she was cold, argumentative, impatient, and thoroughly convinced of her righteousness. So after this long illness of hers, I have a feeling of relief. Playing these movies is another way of expressing my relief. Try telling that to Kate."

"I don't think I can. It's too immoral and too specious.

"Then don't tell her. Stay down here and watch with me. That's as good as telling her."

"Dad, I don't want to offend Kate by staying down here and watching dirty movies that she clearly dislikes."

"That, my dear son, is the problem you have. You're letting your wife dominate you because she is so beautiful. You feel you have won a prize that you cannot lose. You have to be prepared to lose your prize; otherwise, you will not stand up for the things you believe in or do the things you want to do in order to avoid offending her. Slowly, you will then find her beauty no longer charms you or that it is not enough. Then you will have passed, as I did, into the regime of unoffending neutrality. Do you want that?"

*****

"Whoo! Aah! Whoo! Oh!

"Candy is dandy,

but liquor is quicker."

Ogden Nash

THE LADY WITH THE MUSTACHE

A publication for local authors contained a two-liner by Ogden Nash as follows:

"A girl who is bespectacled

seldom has her neck tickled."

I chuckled over this one as much as his more famous one. The publication also recommended a particular workshop for fiction-writers, and I arranged to attend soon after I began writing. Two days before the workshop, I found myself waiting at a bank, in an extended line behind an otherwise pretty girl, wearing spectacles, and having a substantial hair growth on her upper lip. To pass the time, I tried to think of something that would rhyme with "girls with mustaches" along the lines of Nash. But, Ogden I am not. I reached the head of the line without solving this word problem. However, the intellectual challenge remained, if you can call it intellectual. The puzzle of a Nash-type poem about women with mustaches was irresistible. That evening I worked on the challenge, and, to attain the right perspective, constructed a two liner about myself as follows:

"The difference between doggerel

and what I write is buggerall."

Then with a flash of sexist inspiration, and with apologies to Nash, I came up with:

"This mustache across my face

I wear with very little grace.

Although I do the best I can,

sometimes, I wish I were a man."

This furtive rhyming had consequences at the workshop. The organizer of the workshop, Ralph Wiggins, was an associate editor in a publishing company, which allowed him to use the company premises after hours. Ralph kept straightforward rules for the workshop--eight persons, each to bring in six pages of his or her work, plus copies for the others to peruse and mark up, while someone, other than the author, read the work. The charge was five dollars. A reasonable price, I thought, to find out about my writing. Ralph, an amiable middle-aged man, with a somewhat hangdog look, told me he arranged these meetings in the hope of discovering a literary giant at best and a moneymaking author at least. His wife, Faith, a tall assertive woman, with apparent literary aspirations of her own, participated in the workshop. She and Ralph greeted me and the other attendees, then ushered us into the publisher's internal library. This room had a large, central reading table, with a built in desk lamp at each seat, and walls lined with books. Since there were no windows, the library was quite dark with the overhead lights turned off; only the reading lamps provided light, so the faces of the seated meeting participants were hard to see. The arrangement focused, therefore, on the spoken words rather than the expressions of the readers or listeners. Faith brought us coffee for while Ralph spoke a few pleasantries and reminded us of the rules; criticism to be constructive, a ten minute period for verbal remarks, and to please write comments into the author-supplied copies of the manuscript. A couple of late comers arrived and then Ralph introduced me to the now fully assembled group as the newcomer. He asked me to give a brief background about myself and a summary of what genre I wished to write in.

I was nervous since I was a beginner and was concerned that I might be writing at levels well below the other participants. Perhaps, some were already established authors and used the workshop as a dry run before going to their agent or publisher. To cut the ice, I told them how the local publication had led me to the workshop and to my feeble attempts at poetry, which I detailed. The verses drew a couple of polite giggles, but no guffaws and I concluded, at least, my poetry writing days were over. It caused me no regrets. But, what followed did.

As a newcomer, and in view of my unsuccessful opening, I decided to say little at this first meeting. As the various works were read, a portly lady, one of the latecomers, offered frequent, and not especially constructive, criticism. Every time she did so, Faith would follow with parallel criticism. My work, an early attempt at humor, was read at the end, appropriately so for a newcomer, and since it gathered a few laughs when read, I was unprepared for the barrage of criticism that followed. The portly lady said that the humor in the work was crude and bordered on scatological. She compared my work unfavorably to early Thurber and Wodehouse, saying that my style was old fashioned, my character development poor and my plot unrealistic. She said I used several words that were not in her dictionary. Faith then spoke likewise. I felt like giving them both a few words back from my dictionary.

I bore the criticism stoically but was keenly disappointed that my hopes of early publication potential were so slight. Ralph gathered up the marked-up manuscripts and returned them to each author. With that, the meeting broke up. Ralph solaced me with: "I thought what you wrote had some humorous elements in it."

"Ralph," spoke Faith sharply, and I turned to see the portly lady waddling up to us. She looked at me disapprovingly. Only then did I notice she had a mustache.

"Let me introduce you to Mrs. Parkinson," said Ralph. "She is one of our regulars."

I realized I'd made a strategic error earlier, so I smiled at the lady's double chins, her thick neck, her huge bosom and abdomen, and garishly flowered dress, and offered her my hand. Mrs. Parkinson took my hand limply and said:

"Pat, isn't it? I don't find humorous stories at someone else's expense very funny. My remarks reflected that viewpoint. But, you should improve since you are a novice author. Your humor is, as yet, quite slight; in fact, it reminds me of the story about Winston Churchill when told that his political rival, Clement Atlee, was a modest man. Said Churchill: 'but then he has much to be modest about.'"

Mildly stung, I felt like telling her of another story about Churchill being rebuked at a dinner party by Bessie Braddock, an obese Member of Parliament.

"You are inebriated," she said to Churchill.

"Madam," he replied, "I am drunk and you are ugly. In the morning I will be sober."

Nevertheless, I held my tongue, thanked her politely for her comments, and expressed the intention to revise my work accordingly, while making a mental Bronx cheer. After everybody but Ralph had left, I asked him what he thought.

"Don't get discouraged," he said. "If you read P.G. Wodehouse stories, you will find characters less realistic than those you portrayed and situations that made less sense than the ones you described. Further, you will find he used words that are not in the dictionary. But he was a famous and popular author and could get away with it. Unlike him, you will have to avoid rannygazoo. So stick to the conventional at the start. Remember, you'll get better only with practice."

I remembered Ralph's last words particularly, because it seemed to me, in the next five workshop sessions, that Mrs. Parkinson and Faith were using me for literary practice. Their criticisms grew increasingly caustic and vehement. I read their comments on the marked up copies of my manuscript, and tried to incorporate what seemed useful into that particular work, as well as others I was working on. But it didn't seem to matter; both found fault with everything I did, and their criticism was far from counterbalanced by the few positive comments I received from other workshop members. By the end of the sixth week, I was fed up and contemplated going to a different workshop. But what if the answer was the same--that I was a fictional dud? I had to know if the proffered criticism was truly objective for, if it was, then I should stop writing what must be drivel. But how to tell? I decided to make a scientific test of the criticism.

A guide to the market for humorous fiction referred to several small circulation magazines, published distant from the workshop locale. I found in the local university library two of these magazines, which had published award-winning authors. One such author, Hubert Rumpsky, had written a humorous and bawdy story, published some three years earlier in the National Humoresque magazine. This was before he was acknowledged as notable. I borrowed the magazine issue and took it home, where I passed a portable scanner over the story print to capture the word images into my computer word processing file. I then checked to make the sure the story had been captured intact, changed a few names, and printed it for the next workshop session.

The experiment worked like a charm. Mrs. Parkinson tore the story to shreds. I was delighted. She must have been bemused by my encouraging her with:

"What do you think of the scene where my protagonist runs as a flasher across the White House lawn with secret servicemen in chase?"

"How realistic is it for the president to mistake the intercepted love message to his daughter as a memo from one of his aides?"

"What do you think of the remarks made by the hero when the cat jumps onto his back while he is making love to his girlfriend?"

The consistently negative responses pleased me no end. Faith joined in chorus saying the story had no merit, that its humor was grosser than anything I had previously shown, and that I was getting worse rather than better. I could not have been more pleased. A couple of other attendees said they thought the story was quite funny and I should be able to get it published. Mrs. Parkinson intimated these two were literary incogniscenti. As the meeting broke up, I smiled at Mrs. Parkinson, and told her she was on top of her form, that she had been more constructive than I could ever remember, and I would surely take her advice to heart.

I then copied the magazine story verbatim, including the

front page, so as to clearly identify the magazine and the author. I mailed this material, plus my version of the story, to Ralph and every workshop member. A day later, I called Ralph at his office, and asked for his reaction. There was a pause.

"I really can't tell you at this point," he said. "I'm still having to justify what you did with Faith."

"Do you want me to resign from the workshop?" I asked.

"You'd better write a letter to the workshop members telling why you played this hoax and I'll read the letter to them at the next meeting. I think you should stay away until I call you."

"Surely Mrs. Parkinson and Faith are going to blackball me after the trick I played on them?" I said.

"We'll see. We'll see." He sounded distracted.

I prepared the requested letter, but did not include any regrets at the hoax. Instead, I expressed the hope that workshop members would enjoy my little joke. Ralph telephoned me the day after that next meeting and asked me to meet him at his office. I was there within the hour.

"I read your letter and everyone, except Faith and Mrs. Parkinson, thought it an excellent joke. Faith and Mrs. Parkinson said they would never come to the workshop again if you were invited back. The other members said they thought it was fun and hoped you would soon return."

"I'm sorry, Ralph. I must have put you in quite a spot. I didn't intend to disrupt your membership this way. All I wanted to do was find out if my stuff was any good."

"Pat, Mrs. Parkinson is Faith's mother and has been a thorn in my side for years. A regular attendee at the workshop and my mother-in-law, how was I to get rid of her? Your exercise showed her to be a fraud as much as you've been. Of course, it made my wife look foolish, and we had an open conflict at the meeting. My future as a husband and as a professional editor was discussed openly."

Now, I really felt embarrassed. I had no idea about the relationship and I realized that I must have upset Ralph's household terribly. His calling me to invite me to return was a major decision for him. I began to apologize but he interrupted me.

"The workshop will work much better without Mrs. Parkinson. I won't have any trouble expanding the membership back to eight. I'm probably now without Faith, but then I still have hope and charity." He smiled at his pun. "You may have done us more good that you realize. So keep on writing."

Ralph's hangdog look seemed to have disappeared. I thanked him for his kindness under the circumstances and said I would look forward to the next meeting.

About four weeks later, I received a letter from the National Humoresque magazine. The editor said she had received a letter from a Mrs. Parkinson alleging I had reprinted a story from the magazine and violated copyright laws by making twenty copies. Further, Mrs. Parkinson alleged I had represented the authorship of one story as my own and had submitted it to a publisher. The editor wrote that if these allegations were true, she would view them seriously, especially the copyright breach. She asked me to reply to the allegations before she took any legal action. However, she would waive any legal claims if I purchased twenty subscriptions to the magazine at $25 per year each and if I would send a letter of apology for transmittal to Hubert Rumpsky. I wrote the editor a letter apologizing for what I had done, told her I'd made only ten copies, none for publication, and I included a check for $25 for one subscription. I also enclosed a separate, detailed account of the above events. To my surprise, she wrote me a couple of weeks later saying she liked the story I had enclosed with my letter of an apology, and would like to publish it, subject to some minor editing and name changing. And that is how my first story came to be published.

After publication, I sent a reprint from the magazine with a cover letter to Mrs. Parkinson, thanking her graciously for her help to get my first story published, and saying the work would not have been possible without her criticism. She never replied. To this day, I still wonder whether Ogden Nash ever wrote anything witty to rhyme with mustaches.

"We are often treacherous through weakness than through calculation."

Francois Duc de la Rocherfoucauld

THE LINCOLN LETTER

Mary Notfarg remembered what the attorney, Henry Blakely, had said as she drove along the curving tree-shaded driveway of the estate. "Be diplomatic. My client can be difficult." A huge L-shaped, two-story Spanish-style house suddenly came into sunlit view. A long brick patio connected the house to a cottage of matching style and pink stucco decor, servants' quarters evidently. At the side of the house was a six car garage, where a uniformed man stood washing a gleaming black Rolls-Royce car. Behind the house, Mary could see a tennis court and the blue-green glimmer of a swimming pool. As she got out of her car, she could hear the voice of a child splashing in the pool.

An expressionless, uniformed, Hispanic housekeeper took Mary's business card. Two minutes later she returned and, still without smiles, ushered Mary into a huge parquet-floored study. Bookcases lined two sides of the room. Mary could see a satellite antenna outside a bay window and beyond that, a huge expanse of bluegrass lawn. Two computers sat on a side table. Their color screens flickered with stock transaction data. A fifty-inch television screen, with attached video recorder, stood adjacent to a conference table in the middle of the room. Mary could see an enormous battle scene tapestry, mounted on the wall behind a desk at the end of the study. Two full-sized bronze Grecian statues, one nude male and one nude female, flanked the tapestry. Pungent cigar smoke rose from the man at the desk. His ashtray overflowed. The room smelled strongly of tobacco ash.

"Mary Notfarg of Lance Investigative Services to see you, Mr. Krone," said the housekeeper and left. Krone took out his cigar and blew a ring of smoke. He did not get up. He waived her to a chair in front of the desk and said:

"Please sit down, Mrs. Notfarg." Then after a pause: "I was expecting a man."

Mary wasted no time with such boorishness. "Mr. Krone, if you wanted a male private investigator, you should have asked for one. I doubt LIS would have responded. You asked for their lead investigator. That would be me. Now, if you want to discuss business with me, please put out that cigar or take me outside to talk."

Mary practiced her boss's advice. Always take command of a client. A subservient relationship never works. Nevertheless, she was aware she was far from a stereotypical private investigator. Fifty years old, matronly--she did not like to think of herself as plump--, she wore a sensible navy-blue pant suit with matching pumps and no jewelry except her wedding ring. Krone, a sallow faced, balding, overweight man in his fifties, frowned at Mary through rimless rimmed glasses for a few seconds, while she wondered if she had just blown a juicy assignment. Then he tapped out his cigar.

"I'm sorry my smoking offended you. I'll open the windows." He arose and returned to find Mary, note pad in hand, seated at the conference table, her micro-cassette recorder visible on top. He nodded his assent to the recorder as he sat opposite.

I'm George Krone. I want the murder and robbery of my father investigated."

"Surely that's a police matter?"

"That would normally be the case," replied Krone. "This murder took place twenty years ago, and I believe my brother, Bobby, was involved, directly or indirectly. I refrained raising my suspicions while Bobby was alive and traumatizing his minor children. He died five years ago. His daughter, Sally, is now grown and will have to sustain the truth of the matter. And Bobby's son, Junior, died in a motorcycle accident six years ago. I had my attorney--Blakely--relate my suspicions to the police, but they were not interested in investigating a crime where the alleged perpetrator was already dead. Limited resources, they said. Further, they told my attorney that, ten years after my father's death, Bobby had bought back the items taken in the robbery through a third party, based in the Cayman Islands. The ransom was done with the cognizance of both the police and Hobarton Insurance, which paid the original loss."

"What good would come from proving your brother was a murderer, Mr. Krone? Wouldn't that be a considerable embarrassment to you and your family, if your suspicions were found correct?"

"It might not have been my brother. It might have been his son and my brother simply covered up for him. However, my niece has the stolen property. I do not want that coke-snorting slut owning heirlooms that honor the family name and were inherited with the blood of my father. I hope you prove my brother committed or conspired in the murder. Since a murderer may not profit from his crime, then my brother and his children could not inherit the heirlooms. As the other heir to my father's estate, they would belong to me. If you develop evidence to prove that Bobby murdered my father or was involved in his death, I would have grounds for the police to reopen the case. Further, I would then sue my niece for return of the heirlooms and jewelry. I think she would release them to me to avoid the publicity of her father being branded a murderer."

"Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy them from your niece?"

"I have already offered for them. She dislikes me and refuses to sell the heirlooms to spite me."

"Give me the details of the murder," said Mary.

"Very well. My brother, Bobby--his full name was Robert Krone, Jr.--, went to a business breakfast meeting at my father's house on May 4, 1979. He called the police and paramedics around 7:00 a.m., saying my father had been robbed and killed. My father, Robert Krone, Sr., had been hit on the head with a strongbox, whose contents were stolen. I was also to meet my father for breakfast and arrived later. The medical examiner said my father was killed shortly before my brother arrived. The police thought the killer was a sneak thief, such as a neighborhood kid with a drug habit, or a transient. My father's house was in a semi rural area like my own. Neighboring ranches employ many migrant workers who might have committed the crime. The police questioned neighbors, but never found the murderer."

"Then, what makes you think your brother had something to do with the murder?"

"There was something strange about it. The thief went upstairs to my father's bedroom, where he took the strong box containing jewelry and heirlooms. But the murder took place in the family room on the ground floor, where my father had several glass-cased gun racks containing antique rifles and shotguns. The robber did not touch those or valuable silverware in a display cabinet. Nor did he take my father's expensive Hasselblad camera, which was in plain view above the bar in the family room. It's hard to believe a sneak thief would take the hidden instead of the open valuables, although the jewelry and heirlooms would have been more portable.

Further, my brother and I both worked in the business started by my father. After the murder, I went through my father's personnel files, and I found in them a letter he wrote to my brother. My father wrote that he detested Bobby's occasional use of cocaine. He wrote that if Bobby continued, he would be terminated. My father was a conservative person. He made a point of establishing a personnel file for both me and Bobby. And he made Bobby aware that the note on cocaine use was in his file. I also think that Bobby was heavily in debt and may have taken some money from the company. However, I think my father covered that up. I believe Bobby started cocaine use again after his son's death, and it was the source of complications when he had open heart surgery, an operation from which he never recovered."

"What else makes you suspect your brother?"

"The strongbox contained two heirlooms, which I want for my own son, named Robert. One is a letter written by Abraham Lincoln commending my great grandfather, also called Robert Krone, for saving General Sherman's life in an assassination attempt by an infiltrating rebel spy. The other heirloom is my father's Medal of Valor, earned as a navy pilot in World War II. The strong box also contained my grandmother's jewelry, including a sapphire pendant, diamond earrings, a lady's Cartier watch and an amethyst necklace. I saw Sally wearing the sapphire pendant not long ago, and she said her father gave it to her. She said it was among the heirlooms he paid to have returned to him. Now do you really believe a sneak thief would have kept jewelry like that for ten years? Of course not. It would have been promptly fenced. Only the two heirlooms would be worth holding onto for ransom because they were unique and recognizable. Holding the two heirlooms for ten years and then ransoming them is not the action of a sneak thief."

"Is there anything else that makes you suspect your brother?"

"Yes. After Bobby died, I reviewed his corporate charge card billings for the previous six years, which included the time when the supposed fence in the Cayman Islands ransomed the heirlooms. Now, Bobby had vacationed in Jamaica a year before the ransom, and I discovered that, while he was there, he used the corporate charge card to book a round trip flight to Grand Cayman. I believe Bobby had the strongbox contents already and was just trying to legitimize his possession of them."

"That's circumstantial, Mr. Krone. Do you really think your brother was capable of murder?"

Krone grimaced. "My brother seemed easy going on the surface, but he could be remarkably determined when he wanted to. Then he occasionally snorted cocaine, and I often wondered how that drug affected him. I did not come lightly to the belief he was involved."

"So you want me to check all sources of information on the murder and the recovery of the stolen items to confirm or deny your suspicions, and you want them documented in order to sue your niece?"

Krone nodded. He gave her a copy of his father's property insurance policy. Mary asked him for the letter about Bobby he had found in his father's personnel file and the corporate charge card slips. He referred her to Blakely on those items, explaining that Blakely had been attorney for the company and Krone, Sr. He now used Blakely for personal matters as well.

"Did Blakely act as attorney for Bobby Krone in the recovery of the stolen heirlooms?" asked Mary.

"No. That was handled by Tom Withers, who now represents Bobby's daughter, Sally. I don't like him and he doesn't like me."

Back at her office, Mary telephoned Hobarton Insurance, headquartered in Los Angeles, a hundred miles away. A records clerk told her the file was closed, and he would need to get the information from expired records. He would also need a release signed by the insured party, his heirs if deceased, or their attorney. There would be a charge for resurrecting the old records.

Next, Mary telephoned Tom Withers and asked him for the release of insurance information on the stolen items. After a pause, Withers replied he would give a release only with the consent of Sally Hoyt, Bobby Krone's daughter, or a subpoena. So Sally was married. Withers said he would contact Mrs. Hoyt, although he would recommend against the release. A few hours later, he called back to say that Mrs. Hoyt would like to talk privately to Mary before agreeing to any release, and he had taken the liberty of setting up a meeting at 8:00 p.m. three days later at Mrs. Hoyt's residence. He added that he would not be present at Mrs. Hoyt's request, despite his advising her otherwise.

Mary contacted Blakely to ask if he knew anybody who had worked with Robert Krone in the early days of the company. He thought for a moment and told Mary to try Beth Thompson in the accounts-payable section at the Krone Discount Warehouse headquarters. Mary called Beth and asked to meet her the next day for lunch. Beth demurred at meeting a private investigator until Mary told her she was looking into the murder of Robert Krone Sr.

Beth Thompson appeared next day in the headquarters lobby at the agreed time. A small woman, near retirement age, with white hair and glasses, she smiled affably. She suggested a nearby fast food restaurant. "What a lovely person Krone Senior was," remarked Beth, biting into her sandwich. "It was a real shock to us when he was killed. I do hope you catch his murderer after all these years. I wish he'd been alive when the company began to prosper."

"I thought it prospered right from the start?" queried Mary. She sipped her coffee. That was all she allowed herself for lunch if she was to stay within her daily calorie allowance.

Beth responded: "Well, it was growing rapidly and badly needed capital to construct more warehouses, to get fixtures and build inventory. Essentially all profits were being ploughed back into the business. The company had a tremendous cash flow problem in those early days. The banks loaned money to Krone, Sr., despite his bad heart. But they probably would not have lent it to his sons in view of their limited retailing experience and Bobby's own heart condition."

"Really! So what happened after Krone, Sr. was killed?"

"Well, fortunately, his insurance policy--paid for by the company and also his beneficiary--, covered accidental death. The insurance payout gave the company a breather in their cash flow problem. It provided enough time for Mr. Krone's two sons to show that they could operate the company profitably and create confidence at lending institutions. The two of them worked well together. Bobby--Robert Krone junior--ran the accounting department, facility management and acquisitions. George managed operations, purchasing, personnel and everything else. I am glad I worked in accounting. Bobby was a good person to work for. He used to invite us to lunch whenever one of us had a birthday. He stayed real close to his staff."

"Do you think he could have been involved in the death of his father?" asked Mary.

"Good gracious! What a question! Of course not!"

With probing, Beth gave Mary a history of the business, from its founding to its present corporate stature. Beth said it was ripe for a buyout.

"Is that imminent?" asked Mary.

"Well, we've been audited three times this year and only one of them was our regular auditor, so I'm sure George Krone has his feelers out. We expect a WALMART or a COSTCO to look at us."

Beth then gave background on Robert Krone amplifying details Mary already had obtained from newspaper records. Krone, Sr. returned from his usual early morning walk, only to encounter a thief who had entered by an open patio window. The robber hit Mr. Krone with a strongbox, later found outside the house. He died of his injuries just before Bobby arrived. The police never solved the case. Krone, Sr. earned his Medal of Valor during World War II. An avid nature photographer, several of his pictures were displayed in the local natural history museum. He had been a merchandising executive for various department store chains, including Federated and Amalgamated. He started the Krone Discount Warehouse four years before his death. His wife had died of cancer seven years earlier. He was sixty years old when he died.

Mary thanked Beth for the information and said she would get back to her if she had more questions. She returned to her office and called the Secretary of State's office in Sacramento. She asked the clerk in the Corporations section, who responded only after a twenty-minute wait on hold, about the ownership of Krone Discount Warehouses, Inc. The clerk called back later to say that the company was incorporated in July 1975, in the State of California. It was not a publicly traded corporation, but state records showed there were 20,000 shares outstanding, 10,100 registered to George Krone and 9,900 registered to the Robert Krone, Jr. Trust, with Sally Krone as beneficiary. So George Krone controlled the company, but his niece was a near half owner. A wealthy young woman, thought Mary. What kind of palace does she live in?"

Mary kept her appointment at Sally Hoyt's home, which turned out to be an apartment in a serviceable complex of about sixty units. Mary looked over the building amenities. All she could see was a swimming pool and a Laundromat, no view, no tennis courts; certainly not a palace. Mary rang the bell. A woman in her late twenties, of medium height, with blonde hair and blotchy pink face, wearing a blue housecoat over her underwear, and smoking a cigarette, opened the door. "Are you George Krone's private investigator?" she asked in a less-than-friendly voice.

Mary wondered how to motivate this woman to cooperate, so she chose her words carefully. "Yes. My name is Mary Notfarg. I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mrs. Hoyt. I've been asked to look into the murder of your grandfather. I hope you can help me clear up this mystery."

The woman nodded, invited Mary in, and put out her cigarette when Mary asked her to. "Call me, Sally," she said. "You're not what I expected for a private investigator."

"What did you expect?"

Sally ducked the counter question. "I wouldn't even see you knowing Uncle George is involved. But I had to know what that bastard is up to."

"You don't like him?"

"No. And Uncle George doesn't like me, because I stand up to him. I don't roll over and play dead like he wants me to."

"Why does he want you to roll over and play dead?"

Sally hesitated before continuing. "It's a long story. My dad and Uncle George each inherited half of my grandfather's corporation. Dad gave me and my brother a hundred shares each so that we would feel part of the company. When I was college, I was on the party scene. I got pregnant and couldn't bear to tell my dad. So I asked Uncle George to lend me money for an abortion. What Uncle George did was to offer me $10,000 for those one hundred shares. For an nineteen-year-old kid, that money seemed like a fortune. I took the money and regretted it ever since. I had the abortion, but it was botched."

She sighed: "And now I can't have kids. Dad died just before I graduated from college. I expected Uncle George to give me a job, but he declined after I failed the drug test. I said I would clean up, but he said "No"; it was the company rules. He asked me if I wanted to sell the company shares I am to inherit from my father. You wouldn't believe that I'm almost half owner of Krone Discount Warehouses. He offered me a ridiculously low price, less that one percent of what Tom Withers says they're worth. Uncle George has run the business entirely since my dad died. It makes good money. The profits from the company have been used to steadily expand the business from the two warehouse stores when my grandfather died to the twelve unit chain it is today. Also, Uncle George, as company president, takes home a grand salary, probably a million dollars per year. And I see none of it. I make twenty-five thousand dollars a year as an editorial assistant in a local publication. Only when Uncle George sells out will I make any money. That's why I won't sell him either the shares or the heirlooms."

"I understand the shares are still in trust?" queried Mary.

"Yes. I guess Dad made out his will when junior and I were sewing our wild oats. He never got around to changing it. The trust assets are released to me when I turn twenty-seven which will be in five months."

"George claims you're still sewing wild oats."

"That damned hypocrite. I do a line of coke now and then. I like it better than booze. But, look at those cigars Uncle George smokes. Nicotine is a drug to him just as much as coke is to me."

"But nicotine is legal," Mary gently countered.

"Not so. He smokes Cuban cigars, illegally imported into this country. Let me tell you, Mary; don't trust Uncle George. I bet there's a hidden motive behind what he's asked you to do."

Mary decided to change the subject. "Tell me about your father."

"Dad was wonderful. He was the opposite of Uncle George. Where George is sly and devious, my father was open and decent. Everybody liked my father. I'll bet George's housekeeper didn't smile at you. You know she was Granddad's housekeeper also. I've often wondered if her son had anything to do with the murder. I think Uncle George has some kind of hold on her; that's why she works for him and never smiles. It's too bad my father had a heart condition like my grandfather. I guess it's in the genes. If my dad were alive today, my fortunes in life would be dramatically different. Poor Dad. He loved Junior so much. His heart was broken when Junior was killed. Of course, that's why he wanted to pay to get the heirlooms back. He wanted them for his namesake, Robert Krone III. That's exactly why Uncle George is so anxious to own the heirlooms, now that he has a young son called Robert."

"Could I see the heirlooms?" asked Mary.

"I can't show you the Lincoln letter or the medal. Those are the only two items Uncle George has asked me to sell. George is so devious, I think he might arrange to have them stolen if I had them here. So I've given them to Tom Withers for safekeeping. But I do have the jewelry, if you want to take a look." Mary did.

The amethyst necklace, strung with a thin rope of gold, had a gold clasp that dated it to the turn of the century. The earrings were of similar vintage; they were clip-on type and each contained a pear cut diamond of about a half carat. The sapphire pendant comprised a rectangular cut sapphire of about eight carats mounted on an ornamental gold clasp. Mary opined the jewelry was not special, not of great value, and would have been readily fenced.

"Did your father give you these?"

"Yes. He said he recovered them when he bought them from a fence in the Cayman Islands."

"So you've had them for nearly ten years?"

"That's right."

"Have you worn them much, particularly on occasions where George Krone would see them?"

"Uncle George saw me wear the amethyst necklace when I was at Junior's funeral and at Dad's funeral. I've worn the other jewelry frequently since then, but haven't seen too much of Uncle George since he refused to employ me."

"Did you ever think it strange that the jewelry would be ransomed some ten years after your grandfather died rather than be fenced?"

"It did seem odd at the time, but Dad was such a good man. If he played a covert role in the return of the mementos and jewelry, he would have had to be involved in the robbery and murder of my grandfather. My father loved my grandfather. He would never have hurt him. There is no way he could have been involved."

Mary asked: "What happened to Mr. Hoyt?"

"That high society SOB? When he found out I could produce neither money nor children, he went looking for a new model. We divorced two years ago. I'll bet Uncle George told you I was sleeping around. It would be just like him. I'm not celibate, but neither am I promiscuous."

Mary thanked Sally for her cooperation. Sally signed releases for both Withers and Hobarton Insurance. Mary promptly faxed the latter release to the insurance headquarters. The next morning, Mary called Tom Withers saying she had the signed release. Withers said he would assemble the recovery documentation and would meet her at 3:00 p.m. the following Monday.

Meanwhile, Mary visited Henry Blakely to discuss her progress on the case. She advised him she would need to look at police records, and for that he would need to prepare a motion for discovery. He said he could do that only after a civil suit had been filed against Sally Hoyt. He felt it would be better to hold off filing any such suit until Mary had gathered more information. Mary then asked Blakely a legal question. "Doesn't probate clear Bobby Krone's estate from any legal claim his brother might bring against it?"

"Probate does," came the response, "but Bobby Krone put all of his real and personal property into a trust, which has not yet been disbursed to his heir, Mrs. Hoyt. I believe a claim against this trust would be sustained."

"You're saying that if I prove Bobby killed his father, then George Krone could get not only the jewelry and the heirlooms, but also the shares to the Krone warehouse chain that he does not already own."

"That's correct. I see you have discovered the heart of the issue."

"Why didn't you tell me this at the start?"

Blakely smiled. "We felt that finding this out would be a good test of the mettle of any investigator sent by Lance Investigative Services. Also, we didn't want you to start out by sympathizing with Sally Hoyt. She doesn't do the Krone name much good with her behavior and the activist, anti business rubbish she writes. And now you know that the window of opportunity for attachment of the Krone Warehouse shares is a bare five months."

At 3:00 p.m. Monday, Mary was ushered into Withers' conference room. "Mrs. Notfarg, the events of interest to you pertain to when I was working for Bobby Krone, whom I met in Vietnam where he was a medical corpsman. I did his personal business until his death including the recovery of the stolen property and the divorce of his wife. When you told me you had been hired by George Krone, I felt that Mrs. Hoyt's interest might be impaired. That's why I needed her release. I gather you have by now had a discussion with Mrs. Hoyt and are aware of her estrangement with her uncle."

Mary nodded.

"Fine, now the details. Here's a copy of the letter Bobby brought me, asking if he were interested in buying the stolen items. I advised Bobby to take the letter to the police. He asked me to do that, yet affirm his desire, regardless, to buy back the heirlooms. In view of their sentimental value, he thought the price asked of $20,000 was reasonable. I took the letter to the police and they reopened the file on Robert Krone's death. The police kept the original letter and its envelope, postmarked the Cayman Islands.

The police wanted to call in Interpol, but Bobby said he wanted no interference in getting the property back. Further, I questioned the effectiveness of Interpol in the Cayman Islands. So the police agreed they would be first to examine each package we received. The writer asked for an acknowledgement of his letter and a commitment to sending him $5000 cash by wire transfer at 11:00 a.m. promptly on the first business day of every month. He would telephone us ten minutes earlier to let us know which bank in the Cayman Islands to send it to. In return, he would mail back some stolen items each month. I didn't like the arrangement; Bobby could be easily defrauded. But he said the loss would be limited to just one payment--he would not continue without receipt of the goods--and he could afford a $5000 loss for the chance of getting back the heirlooms. Well, I sent the money off on the prearranged schedule and, three weeks later, a package arrived.

The first one was the Medal of Valor. The police examined it and gave it back to Bobby ten days later. They asked him to hold onto it, since they would need it for the prosecution of the thief and murderer. Then came the amethyst necklace, then the other jewelry and finally the Lincoln letter, which Bobby wanted most of all. I notified the insurance company that we had received most of the stolen property back. Since it cost Bobby $20,000 to recover these items, he paid Hobarton Insurance $4200 to relinquish their claim to the recovered portion of the stolen goods. They were quite pleased to get that sum and reduce their net loss."

"Very complete, Mr. Withers, thank you. But one thing more. Do you think Bobby had anything to do with the robbery and the murder?"

Tom Withers scowled. "I thought that might be the purpose of your investigation, Mrs. Notfarg. You realize that Mr. Krone's interest is to show his brother murdered his father. If he can do so, he might then block Bobby's inheritance and have it returned to the estate and hence to George Krone. This would include the half ownership in the Krone Discount Warehouse chain in trust for my client, Mrs. Hoyt. I knew Bobby Krone as a client and a friend for twenty years, and I emphatically affirm that Bobby would never have done anything so heinous as to kill his father."

"Even if he snorted coke and his father threatened to fire him if he didn't stop," interjected Mary.

"Even that," responded Withers. "Bobby was a decent man, quite different from his brother. The Vietnam experience had a profound impact on Bobby and other participants in the war, including myself. He administered to some terribly wounded men in that war. Many of us took drugs to forget the constant emotional or physical pain in that theater. Bobby took longer to forget than most of us after the war finished. Now, I know George Krone is your client, but I have a low regard for him. He has treated Mrs. Hoyt very badly, and my duty and full sympathy are to assisting her and not your client."

"Could I ask you if Bobby Krone had any financial difficulties just prior to his father's death?" asked Mary.

Withers paused. Mary could almost see the questions

running through his mind. Should he reveal confidential information pertinent to a dead client? Would revealing the information be harmful to his old friend and client? Would revealing the information be helpful to Sally Hoyt, his old friend's daughter? Could this investigator get the information elsewhere? Mary held her breath. Withers finally responded: "Bobby Krone went through a messy and expensive divorce four years before his father died. His ex-wife then had custody of the children and looked after them miserably. Bobby had to sue for custody, proceedings that were time consuming and expensive. His salary was modest in those early days of the company, and I believe he was forced to borrow from his father."

"Could he have taken money from the company?"

Withers scowled again. "Mrs. Notfarg, Bobby was an honorable man, who would never have defrauded the company or his father. I can see your question comes from allegations George Krone has made. If any borrowing from the company were made, it would have been done by his father who fully owned the company at that time. I doubt if Bobby borrowed more than seventy-five thousand dollars, an amount too small to tempt any man of Bobby's stature and character to murder his father."

A message from Hobarton Insurance awaited Mary at the office. The file requested had been recovered from dead storage and Mary could view it at her convenience. Mary drove to Los Angeles to meet Brian Cobb, at the insurance headquarters. He reviewed the insurance file with her. Fortuitously, he was the adjuster for both the robbery and the recovery. Mary examined the list of personal property the murdered man had named on the policy. The list included furniture, clothes, rifles, shotguns and even a handgun. Also named were Chinaware, silverware and watches, both a Cartier and a Rolex. His cameras were listed, a Hasselblad single lens reflex, an older Nikon and an antique Bell and Howell. She compared the list of stolen items and their valuation below with the named personal property list:

1. Letter written by Lincoln $12,500

2. Medal of Valor $ 4,000

3. Amethyst necklace $ 1,500

4. Diamond earrings $ 3,700

5. Cartier watch $ 4,200

6. Sapphire pendant $ 2,500

7. Gold class ring $ 100

Total $28,500

"Hobarton paid Robert Krone's estate $28,500 for the stolen goods," said Cobb. "The theft was really quite minor when you consider that the personal property in the house and named in the policy totaled more than $200,000. And that included jewelry worth more than $70,000. But the bulk of that jewelry was in a safe at the house, together with bonds and property deeds. So the thief got slim pickings."

Mary dug further into the file. The Krone file included the life insurance policies on Robert, Bobby Krone and George Krone, probably because they were paid by the company and through the same insurance agent. She noted that Bobby had only a term life insurance policy and it was canceled when he could not pass a physical. The policy on Robert Krone was not a regular life policy. It was key man insurance with the corporation as the beneficiary. The policy specifically excluded payment, if the cause of death or disablement was due to certain listed heart conditions. The records showed a dispute arose between the executor for Robert Krone's estate, Henry Blakely, and the insurance company as to the legal cause of death. Eventually, the insurance attorney obtained evidence files from the police records. There was also a copy of the medical examiner's report. The medical examiner noted the contusion to the victim's head caused by the mahogany strong box. Splinters from the box were found in the dead man's scalp. However, while there was mild intercranial bleeding, the cause of death was myocardial infarction. A heart attack. Then, why did the insurance company pay off on the key man insurance policy, if death from heart disease was excluded? Mary noted that there had been a payout of two million dollars. The medical examiner went on to say that the evidence showed that Robert Krone had died from a stress-induced heart attack, probably from the assault. Therefore, he should be considered as murdered by whomsoever committed the assault.

Mary asked Brian Cobb about the payoff on the stolen jewelry and heirlooms. He said they had been advised of the return and agreed to accept the $4,200 since the property was recovered except for the watch and the class ring. Cobb said the Lincoln letter was worth more than it was insured for, but Krone, Sr., had not increased the insured amount.

"How do you know that?" asked Mary.

"Very simply. Krone Sr. had the letter appraised a month before his death. The appraisal letter, showing a value of $30,000, came together with the recovered Lincoln letter in a cellophane sleeve."

"Do you know anything more about the murder?"

Cobb replied. "Yes, I had a discussion with the detective in the case when we requested evidence on the cause of death. The police questioned neighbors. They thought there might be one with a drug habit, since the stolen items were mostly portable. They also checked local migrant camps. These efforts proved fruitless. The rough-hewn mahogany strongbox, found outside broken on a patio wall, yielded no fingerprints. The investigators took extensive fingerprints in the bedroom from where the strongbox had been stolen, but could find no match to any of the unknowns. They checked on the whereabouts at the time of the murder of Bobby Krone's son--he was surfing with friends--and of Raul Vaquero, the housekeeper's fifteen-year-old son--in Mexico City visiting relatives with his aunt.

The police were quite interested in the ransom note; it had a Dracony watermark. That type of notepaper, from a small Oregon paper mill, had been sold almost exclusively in California by Krone Discount Warehouses. The police were unable to obtain usable fingerprints from any of the recovery packages. They looked for hairs, chemicals, but found nothing to help them identify the murderer or the fence."

Mary looked at the list of returned goods, read them carefully and compared them with the list of originally stolen goods. How strange they were not fenced right away, she thought. It could be argued that the jewelry was worth more as antiques, but a fence could strip out the actual stones and melt down the gold. A sneak thief should get about five hundred dollars for the jewelry. Of course, the thief might realize that the jewelry could not be easily fenced, because the pieces were period pieces that might be identified. Still, how could they get into the hands of somebody who was sophisticated enough and patient enough to arrange their ransom ten years after the theft? Certainly, it suggested that more than a sneak thief was involved. Mary obtained copies of the insurance file documents including the appraisal letter and returned home to San Diego.

Mary then phoned the dealer in Chicago, who had authenticated the Lincoln letter. Luckily, he was still in business. She asked him about the marketability of stolen art and memorabilia. He told her that there was indeed a market for such stolen goods, but at a fraction of their true value. "Quite frequently, such goods are bought back by their original owners or the insurance companies," he told her. "The thieves make more money that way." Mary asked him to research his old appraisal files. Two days later, he called to say he had located his file on the Lincoln letter.

"Yes, based on the value of other Lincoln memorabilia, the letter would certainly have been worth $30,000 then and substantially more today. Very interesting piece of history. I sent a copy of it to the Lincoln library. They would love to have the original. I just hope Mr. Krone kept the letter separate in its cellophane wrapper."

"What's the significance of keeping the letter separate?" asked Mary.

"The Lincoln letter was written on paper made before the modern sulphite processing of paper and needed to be kept separate from any modern paper to ensure its preservation. I returned the Lincoln letter in the wrapper by registered mail. I sent my letter of authentication and appraisal together with my invoice under separate cover a little later. I also advised Mr. Krone to keep the authentication letter separate from the Lincoln letter to better preserve that document of antiquity."

Mary telephoned Henry Blakely. "Do you know anything about the invoice from the dealer who appraised the Lincoln letter?"

"Yes. I found it in Robert Krone's accounts payable files together with a copy of the appraiser's. As executor, I paid the bill from the estate. Since Krone, Sr.'s will bequeathed the heirlooms, although stolen, to Bobby, I gave him the appraisal plus the attached copy of the original document."

"You gave Bobby the original appraisal letter?" said Mary excitedly.

"That's right. Is that significant?" asked Blakely.

Mary did not reply. Her thoughts consumed her. There it was, the smoking gun. Bobby forgot the appraisal letter was separate from the original Lincoln letter. They were returned from the ransom together, so he must have put them together beforehand. That meant he had to have possession of the jewelry and the heirlooms. He had either committed the murder or had somebody else do it for him. Astonishment and disappointment grasped her. She didn't like George Krone and wanted him to be wrong. Bobby Krone, on the other hand, was esteemed by his coworkers, daughter and attorney. But the evidence was clear. George Krone had been right about his brother's involvement.

Mary started to write up her report listing the facts she had uncovered. The facts convinced her of Bobby's involvement in the murder of his father. But why did he do it? She didn't believe the allegations for his motive by George Krone. And his friends and co-workers thought so highly of him. Another thing that bothered her was why the thief didn't take the valuable Hasselblad camera, easily marketable and in plain sight. Bobby could have hidden that as well as the strongbox contents in the house for recovery later. Was there some other explanation?

Mary called Sally Hoyt and asked her what ever happened to her grandfather's and father's collection of photographs. Sally had given most of them to the local museum. What about the negatives? Well, she had those in boxes in her storage locker. Did Mary want to look at them? Yes, Mary did. Two hours later Mary was going through several, large, unorganized boxes of photographs, negatives and slides. And after eight hours of searching, Mary found what she was looking for. The negative showed a man lying on the floor. Mary sped to a one-hour photo store to get the picture developed. The three by five inch print showed what she had expected, a picture of Robert Krone, Sr. lying on the floor near the bar stool, his head bloodied. The room was completely undisturbed. The next picture in sequence showed the same scene, but with the room trashed.

Now she knew what had happened. But wait, there was more. The picture showed something, not quite discernable as a reflection in the glass of a rifle display cabinet. The black and white negative might reveal more with enhancement. Mary took the negative to a specialty photograph store. Next day, she called up Jack Lance and asked him to check the 1979 registration of cars belonging to the Krones, father and sons. Jack called back to tell her what cars each were driving. Now all was clear. It was time to see her client. Mary called for an appointment and told George Krone that she had all the information he wanted. He sounded pleased.

Friday morning, Mary presented herself to George Krone in his large study room. He was not smoking. Mary began.

"Mr. Krone, you were not honest with me when you asked me to accept this assignment. You really wanted somebody independent of yourself to develop information showing Bobby as the murderer of your father. And you nearly succeeded. What you wanted is Bobby to be declared a murderer so you could get the other half ownership of the company back from Sally Hoyt. There is no doubt that Bobby was involved. What is clear now is that you were involved too."

George Krone stood up violently, his sallow face flushed red. "That's a bald-faced lie. You're dismissed. If you repeat that again, you and Lance Investigative Services will be sued for libel. Get out of my house."

Mary ignored this furious outburst. "Not so fast, Mr. Krone. I never said you were involved in a murder. You see there never was a murder and you know it."

There was a ten second pause; then George Krone sat

down.

"Mr. Krone, what happened is that Bobby arrived earlier than you at your father's house and found him already dead but still warm. As a former medical corpsman, he knew that the death was recent. Robert Krone, Sr. had not been feeling well, so he went to the bar and took some Pepto Bismol, but he collapsed and fell off the bar stool onto the tiled floor. That's where Bobby found him. Bobby wasn't sure whether his father had died from a heart attack or from falling onto his head. But he could tell that he was dead. He also knew your father's death put the company into peril. Your father could get some credit in the discount merchandising business due to his name and experience in the field. However, the growing business needed large infusions of cash. Neither you nor Bobby had credibility to borrow the kind of cash the company needed. Bobby knew that if they did not get the insurance money on your father, then Krone Discount Warehouses would likely belly up. Both Bobby and you knew that the key-man insurance policy would not pay if your father died of a heart attack. So Bobby decided to simulate a robbery. He trashed the family room and bedroom and hit the corpse's head with the strongbox. He hid its contents somewhere in the house. He would have time to retrieve them before the police figured his possible involvement. But Bobby had to make sure that, if the police really believed there was a murder and suspected him, he would be able to prove he committed only lesser offenses. So he took a picture of your dead father lying in the undisturbed family room."

"Nice theory, but you can't prove it."

"Yes I can, because here is that picture of your dead father in the undisturbed room, Mr. Krone. It even shows the bottle of Pepto Bismol on the bar counter top."

George Krone examined the photograph briefly, then flipped his lighter onto the edge of the photograph which flared up quickly. And now you don't have it," he said.

"I'm surprised at you, Mr. Krone. You know of course that I have the negative of this photo in a secure place."

"Well, fat lot of good it's going to do you. You've failed in this assignment. I'll get somebody else to do it instead."

"Mr. Krone, I have an enlarged photo of the same shot. Let me show it to you. Mary pulled out an eight by ten inch picture in which the reflection in the cabinet had been enhanced at the expense of detail elsewhere. You see when Bobby took that picture, the reflection in the glass cabinet shows what vehicles were outside. One is your father's Lincoln. The next is your brother's Chevrolet. Then there is a third, your Jeep Cherokee. And that blur on the driver's side is you getting out of the car. You see you arrived before Bobby had completed the simulated robbery. He told you what had happened and you kept quiet about it. No, there was no murder. There was a conspiracy to defraud the insurance company in which you were co-conspirator. However, you didn't know that Bobby had taken that photograph. He probably had you take the strong box and break it on the patio wall, while he trashed the room. Then he took the picture of the trashed room to have a record of the sequence of events before you returned. That's why the Hasselblad camera wasn't taken. Bobby needed it after he went back upstairs to hide the heirlooms."

George Krone was silent for a moment, He then spoke in an even tone: "Then you've completed the assignment. Have your company send me the bill and I will pay it in full."

"It doesn't work that way, Mr. Krone. You were less than honest with me by far when you hired me to investigate. In addition, you have treated your niece and the memory of her dead father atrociously. I feel that I must turn this matter over to the insurance company, who will take whatever action they feel is necessary."

George Krone, his face flushed again, shot to his feet and yelled: "You can't do that. Any information you develop for me is confidential according to the terms of the contract."

"No contract binds me or my company to withhold information on a crime. However, I am willing to forgo passing on the information if you make restitution to those parties who have been damaged by your actions. You must instruct your attorney to contact the insurance company and pay the key man insurance policy settlement--including interest. Also, you must pay Sally Hoyt for the loss of benefits she should have enjoyed from her half ownership of the company. One million dollars should compensate her for the losses she has suffered at your hand. Further, you need to take steps that ensure she shares proportionately with you in the sale of the business to any outside purchaser."

"This is blackmail, Mrs. Notfarg."

"No, Mr. Krone. This is justice. You will note that I am not asking anything for myself except that the bill for my services be paid promptly. I will expect copies of letters from your attorney with specific details for implementation at my office within a week. Otherwise......"

George Krone sat down slowly, clearly trying to gather his thoughts. "You are very astute, Mrs. Notfarg. I did not expect this to happen when I hired you."

"Then, maybe you should have hired a man."

"I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out."

George Elliott - The Mill on the Floss

VIDEO TOGETHERNESS MEETS ITS MATCH

For years my mother has been trying to marry me off. The thought that her son could enjoy living at home and eschew the company of women disturbs her deeply. She schemes constantly to link me with females she deems worthy. But, I like living at home. My semi-retired father, known also as 'the old goat,' has lots in common with me--the stock-market, the local baseball team, politics, television events and so on. My mother, a cheerful and energetic insurance broker, cooks excellent meals, keeps the house immaculate, does my laundry and idolizes me. She is a role model in convincing me that women love their children more than their husbands. So why should I seek affection elsewhere? Don't get me wrong. I contribute substantially to the household expenses; I don't sponge off my parents. I love my mother dearly but must constantly resist her efforts to thrust me out. It is her obsession that a thirty-year-old man making a good living as a computer programmer should find himself a wife. Jane Austen could have modeled Mrs. Bennett after my mother.

You can see how anything unusual would make me suspect my mother was up to her matrimonial tricks. That notion crossed my mind when the postman delivered an unexpected package, which had no external markings, other than a return address, to identify its contents or sender. I toyed with returning it unopened thinking it might be an unsolicited book purchase, but curiosity got the better of me. I gingerly opened the plain brown wrapping to find inside a VCR tape and a seven hundred dollar, non-transferable gift-certificate from a company called Video Togetherness. The accompanying brochures bragged of the service's success in matching couples. They offered to video-record an interview of me by a professional interviewer and show the recording only to women their staff felt would best match my desires. Now, my desire was to have nothing to do with it. But, in the package was a cover letter, stating that somebody acquainted with me had paid for the certificate and wanted to become a much closer friend. Was it something that my mother had cooked up? Or, could there really be somebody wanting to make a play for me?

I walked into the kitchen where my mother was preparing strawberry pie, my favorite. "Mom, did you get Video Togetherness to send me this gift certificate?"

"Video who?" My roly-poly mother took the letter and certificate from my outstretched hand and read it. She grinned. "What a nice idea! Who she can be? Tell me, who in your office is good looking and unmarried?"

Oh, my mother can be so devious! She has asked this question many times before, oblivious to--or disbelieving of--my negative reply. I thought it likely she was involved. I remembered all the times she asked me to take her to the movies, only to find a worthy single female waiting to join us. And after the movie, a long stop at a restaurant. I remembered how my mother would take me shopping and run into an old friend accompanied by her unmarried daughter. Another long restaurant stop. I thought I knew all the tricks my mother played to get me dating, but this was a new one.

"Mom, did you buy this certificate?"

She waved her flour-covered hand. "Bernard, I did not. But I do think this is a great idea. Just what you need. Why don't you follow up and find out who sent it? Surely this means that you will see the video interviews of several women, including perhaps the one who sent you this certificate. She must like you a lot to pay so much for this service."

I shook the flour off the certificate, realizing it was useless to question my mother further. She asked me to play the VCR tape and called in my father to watch. The tape played conversations of couples, successfully paired by Video Togetherness. My mother lapped it up. She pointed out good-looking girls that I might have met before they were snatched and matched. The old goat said he preferred the movie, "When Harry Met Sally."

Now I didn't believe that somebody was seriously interested in me. It could well be a come-on by the dating service to get money from me for cosmetic and sartorial changes for the video session, for improving my ability to converse as a suitor and perhaps to have me purchase from the service flowers and gifts suitable for its female patrons. If it was not a come-on, then I wanted to discover the identity of the sender. You can see that the dating service made me quite curious, although I had no interest in accepting its offer. I didn't want to get dolled up and make an idiot of myself on camera. Still I'd better let my mother think I was using the certificate, before she started some other scheme to propel me into the married state. What I needed was a patsy to stand in for me. It didn't take me long to find a candidate.

At the office water-cooler, George Means was spouting off to other office Lotharios: "Well, I was pumping and squeezing and holding on tight when she squeals and says `Stop! My diaphragm has slipped.' Now that's a turnoff. So she slips into the bathroom and before she comes back, there's a knock on the door. Another turnoff. I open the door and it's her roommate. Only she's a he. Now that's a real turnoff."

I don't believe all that George says about his exploits, but he tells a good story to the other lover-wannabes. I explained the certificate to a reluctant George.

"But Bernard, I don't want to get married. I don't need to sign up with a dating service to meet girls."

"George, the girls you would meet there don't know that. They might appreciate your special talents better than the kind of girls you meet now. The girls you tell us about seem prepared to hop into bed with anybody who buys them a meal and a drink."

George smirked: "Well, I'm not just anyone, Bernard. They have a good time with me."

I pressed harder. "Yes. But I bet they have a good time with others. Heaven knows what you'll get yourself into if you aren't careful. Are you sure that was really her roommate last night?"

George gave me a sour look, and said he would think about it. Meanwhile at home, my mother started pestering me. "When are you going to do something about that certificate? Your true love may be just a video away!"

"Mom, I have no wish to meet my true love. I am quite content without a true love. I could be a blight on my true love's life. Besides, you might not like my true love."

"Bernard, I'm sure you'll meet somebody nice if you use that gift certificate."

I could see my mother had the marriage bit between her teeth and would give me no peace. I decided to circumvent her. I located a local bridge club that would accept single persons at their rubber match meeting every Friday evening. I joined. Hearts in my closed bridge hand suited me more than hearts in the open. And then George said he would take the certificate off my hands if I would pay him $100 with a $100 bonus if he found out who sent me the certificate. I quickly passed him the certificate and a C note.

"What about the non transferability of the certificate?" he asked.

"Pretend you're me to the administration and tell your dates that you use your middle name of George, "I responded without thinking much beyond "good riddance to the certificate."

I hadn't played bridge much since leaving college seven years ago, and I was rusty. But, there were some pleasant people at the club, though most were more than twenty years older than I. My mother would not have thought much of the club as a place to meet eligible women, and she would have been right. However, since I went to avoid meeting eligible women, it suited me fine.

Some weeks later at the office water-cooler, I overheard a junior Lothario describe his exploits--in a manner more graphic and less entertaining than George--and remark that he had run into George at a bowling alley. He said the gal accompanying George was very skinny with nothing to grab onto, not the type of girl George usually dated. I wondered if my patsy was taking Video Togetherness seriously. A few weeks later, my bridge had clearly improved. After dealing a lot of hearts, I telephoned George to see how he was doing in that department.

"Bernard, you were right. Video Togetherness has introduced me to some very nice girls. They don't expect you to jump on their bones immediately like the ones I regularly meet. There are some classy women using the service. They seem to like me, too."

"Did any of them know me?"

"Yes, Bernard. One of the girls I've been dating, called Joan Blakely, says her mom knows your mom from church. Her mom bought her the service, because Video Togetherness was offering a half price program for a limited period. Joan didn't send you the gift certificate. Perhaps her mother sent it. If she did, you owe me a hundred."

I remembered Mrs. Blakely and her slender, acne-prone daughter from church, which I occasionally attend with my mother. Could Mrs. Blakely have sent me the certificate? She hardly knew me. Or could my mother have paid for her daughter, while Mrs. Blakely paid for my certificate? Best way to find out was to telephone.

"Mrs. Blakely, I'm Bernard Hansen. Perhaps you remember me from the church my mother, Pat Hansen, goes to?"

She paused only briefly before recalling me.

"I understand your daughter started with the Video Togetherness eight weeks ago when they had a half price sale. I received anonymously such a gift certificate about the same time and wondered if you had anything to do with it?"

With no hesitation, she said: "Bernard, I wouldn't be so forward as to send a certificate to somebody I know so slightly. Actually, I paid for my daughter, Joan, and I mentioned I had done so at the half-price sale to your mother, because she so frequently mentions your wasted eligibility."

I ground my teeth. Mom was eligible for a lesson in wasted discretion. "Well, I wondered who sent it to me. I wouldn't want them to waste their money."

Mrs. Blakely continued. "I think you will find that the certificate was your mother's doing. It is charming that she would do so. If you don't want to use the certificate, I'll be happy to take it off your hands, since, now I'm divorced I would also like to meet some nice men. My daughter is going out with a young man, George Hansen, from your office, whom she met through the service. Is he related to you?"

"No, he is not." And then to elicit information on George's progress. "I hope you're pleased with the Video Togetherness purchase."

"Well, my daughter seems quite happy with the service. She would like to spend more time with George, who seems a very busy young man. Personally, I don't see what they have in common."

I did. Thin women like sex as much those of greater flesh. I had an idea. "Mrs. Blakely, I no longer have the gift certificate. However, if you play bridge, I'd be happy to take you to my club, where I need a regular partner, and the majority are considerably older than I."

Mrs. Blakely did play bridge and liked the idea. So I started taking her to the bridge club every Friday. Thelma turned out to be a cheerful pragmatist, fortunately so since her husband left her for his young secretary. She dressed well, kept herself fit and looked ten years younger than her true age of nearly fifty. She played bridge better than I and quickly made friends at the club. I began to call Thelma from home. My mother could scarcely contain herself.

"Are you going out with a nice girl?" she asked.

"Yes. Thelma is very nice. We sometimes talk about marriage." (That was a literal truth. Thelma looked forward to her daughter getting married).

My mother's eyes lit up. "Tell me about her. When can I meet her?"

Never I thought, but then realized that the advantages of introducing Thelma as my steady to my mother outweighed the advantages of keeping the true relationship secret. "I'll bring her home after our next date."

I explained my mother's ambition for me to Thelma and the scene that I wanted played. Thelma smiled. "So you want me to come home with you and act like your true love?"

I nodded. I had Thelma drive me to the bridge club that Friday. She picked me up further down the street from my home so my mother did not see her. After a successful evening at bridge, we arrived home. Both parents were in the living room engrossed in the PBS mini-series, Pride and Prejudice. How appropriate, I thought, as my mother turned the television set off.

"Mom, this is my date," I said with my arm around Thelma's waist. "I think you know her."

My mother gaped. I enjoyed the awkward pause to the hilt, but Thelma had too much heart to let it continue. "Hi, Pat. You have a charming son."

"You're going out with Bernard?" gasped my mother.

"That's right, Pat. We have a lot of fun together. We are thinking of going to Palm Springs next weekend."

My mother's eyes bulged. She fought for polite words to say but could find nothing better than a weak "Oh." I did not intend to tell her about the bridge tournament at Palm Springs. After some refreshments, Thelma bid my mother good night. I followed her out the front door and give her a long and heavy kiss that my mother would hear and also see from the crack in the curtains of the open living-room window.

Down the street and out of earshot. "Bernard, I'm not really happy about the trick I played on your mother. I went along with you to express my thanks for taking me to the club, where I met some very nice gentlemen in my age bracket. But, I'm going out with a new partner after tonight, and that includes the Palm Springs tournament."

My face in the street light glare would have showed my disappointment. I was looking forward to playing this scene on my mother a few more times. Besides, I enjoyed playing bridge with a partner as skilled as Thelma. "You're supposed to be my true love, yet you're dumping me," I whined.

Thelma grinned. "Bernard, Carl plays better bridge than you do and he has taken me out for dinner several times. He is a little more mature than you. I'm afraid that scene at your mother's house was our last togetherness."

Chastened, I returned to the house where my mother stood, if not actually with arms akimbo, but with an attitude clearly reflecting that stance. "Bernard, you can't be seriously interested in that woman. Why, she is almost my age. You can't marry somebody as old as your mother."

I had a role to play, and I played it fully. "Why not? She's a good-looking woman. She is college-educated, easy to talk to and is well paid as office manager for the County Democratic party."

My mother gave a good Republican snort. "But, you won't be able to have children. You will outlive her for twenty years just when you men need looking after." She glanced at my father who had joined the conversation.

"Mom, we can adopt children. I can always remarry if I'm widowed young. Thelma is my true love. You said you would most certainly like whomever I chose from taking advantage of that gift certificate. I am very grateful to whoever sent it to me. Without it, I would not be dating Thelma."

"I never expected this to happen," my mother said weakly sitting down.

"What do you mean by 'expected', Mom?"

"I thought that when I got you that certificate you would pick somebody of your own age."

"So you did buy that certificate. You told me a lie."

"Only a small one, Bernard. I got the old goat to write the check, especially since it was half price. You know how he loves bargains."

My father spoke. "Pat, I told you that meddling like this would get you into trouble. Now that you have got Bernard dating, you should leave well enough alone. If he wants to marry Thelma, it's his choice. She seems a very nice person and I look forward to her visiting with us again."

"Bernard, please promise me you won't marry Thelma Blakely."

My mother was near to tears, so I relented. "Well, Mom, I'm very fond of her, but I don't know if it will go any further. She might not have me."

"Of course she'll have you," my mother shrieked, rising to her feet. "She'll leap at the chance. A young goat is better than an old goat any day."

"Well, if I decided not to marry her, would you promise to quit scheming to get me married?"

My father started laughing, clearly aware of the joke. My mother glared at him. "Bernard, I want you to marry somebody of your generation that you truly love. I don't see how Thelma could satisfy you, and I will promise anything if you agree not to marry her. I don't want you to go away with her to Palm Springs."

My father laughed harder. The phone rang and my mother went over to answer. She listened at length, saying nothing except an occasional Yes, No or Uh Huh. Then she turned around to us with a look of puzzlement and dismay on her face. "Bernard, this call is from Helen Haake, the owner of Video Togetherness. She says I misrepresented you when I bought that certificate. I told her you were a shy, mature, thirty-year-old computer programmer. She says you are in fact a brash operator who has made crude, unwanted sexual advances to many of the women you have been introduced to. She says you treat the women with a capricious inconstancy. Even worse, you seduced one of her best professional interviewers. She can't afford to lose staff that way. She is adamant that you quit their service. What have you been up to besides Thelma?"

The old goat said: "Well, fancy that. I've sired a young goat."

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

New Testament: I Corinthians Ch.13

MAIN WOMAN

Desk clerk, DC, looks over the brightly-lit parking lot of the motel. It is seven p.m. He struggles with a calculus problem as the night routine begins. The door to No 27 opens. Out steps Main Woman, dressed for work in a breast hugging pink halter and burgundy shorts that are so tight, the labia lips are outlined as she strolls toward the office. She wears thigh high mauve leather boots with high heels. She towers over DC.

"Kool Kings," she says, placing a five-dollar bill on the desk and leaning forward so that DC can see the nipples of her breasts jutting through the thin halter. She takes the cigarettes and change and looks provocatively at DC as though to test him. In those few seconds of direct gaze, DC takes in the smooth regular features of her olive face, dark brown eyes accentuated by eye shadow and heavy cheek blush that still reveals the bruise on her cheekbone, the thick mauve lipstick on her ripe lips and the black hair swept to one side of her beautiful, but dispassionate face.

She saunters back through the open lobby door, her hips swaying, each movement of her buttocks evident under the tight shorts. She is the best-looking working woman DC has seen at the motel. Five minutes later, she reappears, purse in hand, at the door of No 27 followed by Main Man. He is black, over six feet tall, broad shouldered, wearing a cream suit, cream shoes and a cream mesh suit vest revealing a muscled hairy chest adorned with two heavy gold chains. Both are smoking a cigarette.

Without a word, Main Man opens the driver's door of the gleaming white Cadillac with his right hand, each finger bearing a sparkling gold ring, several with flashing stones. Main Woman climbs in the other side. He backs the car out of its stall and drives off the parking lot, nodding to DC as he leaves. The brake lights of the exiting car display the gold adorned trim at the rear of the Cadillac, emphasizing the two gold-plated silhouettes of ripe female figures.

Fifteen minutes later, a blue Cadillac arrives; its driver honks the horn. Jaguar steps out of the car when there is no response. Black, shorter than Main Man, he is also heavily muscled. His main girl is already in the car. She is white and heavyset. She has stayed at the motel before; DC believes she is pregnant.

"Lisa. Jodie. Get your asses over here," yells Jaguar.

The door to No 35 opens and a voice calls out saying something that DC cannot hear. Jaguar goes over to the room. Two minutes later he leaves with the rest of his string, two young women, one white, one black. Both are less than twenty years old. They are dressed in skimpy, revealing clothes, though DC notes that they reveal less than Main Woman. Jaguar is obviously impatient and they climb hurriedly into the rear of the car. The blue Cadillac speeds out of the lot; the driver does not acknowledge DC.

*****

It is now nearly midnight, almost the end of his shift. DC is tired, but pleased with himself at completing his mathematics assignment for tomorrow's class at eight a.m. DC's weariness is shaken by the screech of tires as the blue Cadillac barrels into the parking lot and brakes to a halt by the office. It is followed almost immediately by the white Cadillac, which brakes with screeching tires to block the first car. Main Man jumps out of the car and runs over to the other vehicle from which Jaguar has dismounted.

"You son of a bitch. Why you steal my lady? Get your mother fucking hands off her. I'll teach that bitch."

The back door of the blue Cadillac furthest from the furious Main Man opens and, fearfully, Jaguar's women exit and run for the safety of No 35. Also dismounting is Main Woman, who stands uncertainly, not knowing where to flee. Main Man runs around the blue Cadillac and grabs her by the arm, pushing her up against the car and slapping her face.

DC runs outside the lobby. "Knock it off or I'll call the police," he yells. Nobody pays any attention to him. His slight physique commands no respect. He runs back to the office and calls 911, as he has done on many prior occasions, knowing the issue will resolved and the participants gone before the police arrive. He returns to the outside scene to find Main Man and Jaguar in heated confrontation.

"It's just a piece of ass. Why get so racked over some ho?" says Jaguar evenly, in a manner designed to cool down Main Man.

"Cos she's my main woman. She's my best, and I'll teach her not to fuck me."

"She don't want you cos you mess her up too much."

"That don't matter. She's mine and I can fuck the bitch any way I want to."

"I'll give you twenty-five hundred for her," says Jaguar coolly.

"Hell, no. She's worth more than that," says Main Man. "I need at least four."

"That's all I got," says Jaguar. "Besides, my lady," nodding toward the blue, Cadillac, "don't want me to have another main woman."

"Then the bitch gets what she deserves," says Main Man moving round the car toward Main Woman who flees to the motel office. DC, trembling, puts himself between Main Man and the crying Main Woman. The tall black man shouts: "None your business, man. Out the way," as he furiously pushes on DC.

"Would you stop if I gave you four thousand?" says DC.

Main Man stops and stares down at him. "You don't have that kind of money," he sneers, "and wot cha you going to do with her?"

"I'll give you the pink slip to my truck," says DC, pointing to his five-year-old Toyota. Main Man looks at the truck and smirks at DC.

" 's a deal," he says. "You can't trust that bitch. She don't like to work. She takes all your money."

DC pulls the pink slip from his wallet and signs it. He gives it and the truck keys to Main Man who examines them quickly, smirks again at DC with a flash of gold-filled teeth, and mutters "you bitch" to the still cowering Main Woman. Main Man then wheels toward his white Cadillac. It disappears out the motel parking lot just as the police car pulls in. DC talks to the police officer telling him the incident is over and that nobody is hurt. The police car leaves.

Main Woman, eyes now dry, lights up a cigarette and comes over to DC. "You've just bought yourself a great piece of ass," she says. "Where are you going to keep me?"

DC ignores her while he considers whom he should call to take him to class next morning. Main Woman saunters back to her room, her hips swaying. She looks back as though inviting DC to accompany her. DC figures he will have to rent a room, since he can't get home tonight. He writes a note to the manager to kick out No. 27 tomorrow since she has been fighting with her pimp, causing the police to come. The manager will understand that, but not why DC has no transportation.

"If you cannot have your husband for a comfort and a delight, for a breadwinner and a crosspatch, for a sofa, chair or hot-water bottle, one can use him as a cross to be borne."

Stevie Smith

MY SELFISH HUSBAND

My husband is an ungrateful, heartless beast. I have cooked his meals and washed his clothes for thirty five years, born and raised his children and kept a clean house for him. How does he repay me? Well, he has run off to another woman. I don't understand why he could treat me so disgracefully. You've no idea how much work this man has been. Let me tell you how badly I've been used.

I met my husband in college, and we were married right after he graduated. He took a master's degree in geology while I studied nursing. We started our family right away and, since he was making good money working for an oil exploration company, I stayed home to look after the children. Our children, a boy and a girl, were thin and fragile when they were young. I worried about them and would not trust them with any baby sitter. However, they were very energetic and got into all kinds of mischief; they had me exhausted at the end of the day. Whenever my husband asked me to go out to dinner with him and leave these young children with a baby-sitter, I refused to do so. I preferred him to bring a take-home meal. He argued about it with me, which was foolish considering how tired I was, but he eventually accepted it.

My husband said the children might have been small and thin because I smoked when pregnant. I resented the suggestion that I was responsible for their physique and told him so in unequivocal terms. I knew he said that because he didn't like me smoking. I pointed out he knew I smoked before he married me, that I liked smoking and, therefore, he shouldn't expect me to change. It turned out that our children watched on television some anti-smoking cartoons of a forest bear literally coughing his cartoon head off from smoking. The sight scared them; they believed such a fate would happen to me if I continued. They objected so strongly whenever I smoked that I quit. Needless to say, both children grew up to be sturdy, healthy adults.

When the children were young, my husband wanted to have dinner with them at a regular time. He said he wanted to hear what they were doing and make dinner a family happening. But he didn't get home until 6:30 p.m., by which time the children had been screaming for food for more than an hour. I became fed up with their whining and started feeding them around 5 p.m. I decided it was easier to supervise them at their meal by eating with them. I told my husband why it was more practical for me to have the meal with the children earlier, and, after a while, he stopped arguing about it. So, it ended with him eating by himself, his head in the evening newspaper. What a waste of time his arguing with me proved to be. I let him read the paper while I watched my favorite TV shows and did the ironing in the coolness of the evening.

My husband wanted to be quixotic at Christmas many years ago. He was doing well at work; we owned our own house and had savings in the bank. He said he would like to invite three or four poor people to have dinner with us and share in our good fortune. I became quite upset at his foolishness. I asked him why he wanted to expose us, especially our young children, to the diseases, such as hepatitis or tuberculosis, that some of these people carry. I asked him why he wanted to show off our house and our many nice possessions which these people could return to steal when we were not at home. I told him that if he wanted to be generous at Christmas, he should do so by making a donation to the organization that feeds and houses these people. He gave in, finally. Honestly, how could he be so selfish to harbor such ideas that would have caused so much work on a holiday, important for relaxation and gift giving?

The oil exploration business slumped a few years ago, and my husband was laid off from his job of over twenty years. It was a terrible disappointment to me. He tried to get a job elsewhere but was unsuccessful. So what did he do? He used our savings to open a pet store. He liked pets, but, to me, it was ridiculous that a graduate geologist should be running a pet store. It was a waste of his talent and the skills he learned in his six years of college. But he seemed happy enough in what he was doing, and he quit looking for another geologist position, saying that he had become technically obsolete. Well, it did cause a big drop in our income at a time when our children needed money for their college education. I decided I would have to work. I had to study to qualify again as a nurse. It took quite an effort, but I was successful and obtained a position at a local hospital, a position I hold to this day. I worked three days per week and that gave me time to do the household chores. But, we found ourselves working harder for a smaller household income. I was disappointed that my husband was well satisfied with work that under-employed him and paid him so modestly for working six days a week. I asked him to take me out for dinner now that the children were grown, but he told me the pet grooming he did in the store exhausted him and that he felt his age. He said he was too tired to go out for dinner. I thought it very selfish of him and he ought to have made more effort.

Several of his college friends reached high paying positions; some have even retired. I pointed out to him what they have accomplished starting from the same point in life. My husband said it was a matter of luck of being in the right spot at the right time. But, I told him that you make luck, and he was certainly doing nothing to make luck come his way. I would never have married him, if I had known that he was going to be satisfied with such a modest career goal. When I told him that, he said it was unfortunate that he could not turn the clock back for me. Ridiculous! All I wanted him to do was make more use of his college training. If he made more money, then I would not have had to work, and I would have held him in higher esteem. I certainly did not expect to be working at my present age when I first married him.

My husband's first job was in an oil producing state, distant from both his home state and mine. Thus, we both lived a long way from relatives. I was glad not to be near his parents. His mother, a very pleasant woman, was totally dominated by his obnoxious self-centered father. On the other hand, I missed being close to my home where my mother and sisters would have been available to help me with my young children. I often asked my husband to find a job in my home state. He refused, saying that job opportunities were few there, and he could provide a better economic future for our family by staying where we were. I thought it selfish of him not to make a bigger effort to find equivalent work closer to my parents' home. When he used our savings to purchase the pet store, I was incensed. I pointed out we could have returned at that time to my home state, but he said we were settled where we were. Further, our children were going to state colleges at the reduced rate for resident status. Their friends were in this town and state also. I told him that he had made that decision unilaterally without consulting with me and I was most offended. I told him his action was typical of that of his father. His reply that he wished I were more like his mother simply infuriated me further. So I decided not go near his pet store. It was his decision to start the business, and he would have to live with it. I don't like dogs anyway.

Sex was more interesting to me when we were first married, but I lost interest after the children were born. My husband, on the other hand, never seemed satisfied. Like clockwork, he would get charged up. He wanted it every day when we were first married and every other day by the end of the first year. Even thirty years later, he would like sex at least once a week. But what's the point? I don't find it very satisfying anymore, and I have to keep making excuses to stretch out the frequency of his demands. It would suit me well enough if we had no further sex. It takes up too much energy and it's an intimacy that I don't enjoy. I wish he could see it the same way as I do, but he is selfish like all men. He demands sex as though he had a license to do so. I think he was getting the idea that I wanted him to request it less and less. He told me that it was difficult for him to climax without some encouragement from me. The solution—simple, I discouraged him and he asked less.

I liked the meals I made and so did my husband. It encouraged me to try new dishes. If he did not like any new dish, he would tell me indirectly by not eating all of it. A smart approach, since new dishes take time and effort. Unfortunately, I became plump. My husband asked me what I weighed, but I told him it was very rude to ask. What business was it of him to ask such a personal question? Being plump after age fifty runs in my family, so he should have expected it. As for my high blood pressure, that was my problem, not his. He, in turn, became a little rotund himself. He asked me to put less food on his plate, but how was I to know how much to give him? I told him to leave what he didn't want on his plate, but the addlebrain continued to eat everything I gave him. If he were ever to have accused me of being fat, I could point out that he was the same.

About a month ago, a large chain of pet stores bought out my husband's business. They paid a good price, and I reckoned it would give us a good retirement income. At least, I would be able to stop working. Well, my husband came home a day after the close of escrow on the business and told me that he had paid off the house loan. He gave me a notarized deed in which he quit claimed the house to me. And then, he said he was leaving me. I stared at him.

"Where are you going to?" I asked.

"I'm going to live with my sister," he said.

I asked him why and he said: "She makes me welcome."

Can you imagine that? What on earth does she offer that I don't?

"Sara could commit adultery at one end and weep for her sins at the other, and enjoy both operations at once."

Joyce Cary - The Horse's Mouth

A SNITCH LIKE TRIPP

"Harry, guess whom I had lunch with today?" said Tom, perching on the edge of my desk.

"I don't know," I replied. Tom's question reminded me I still had a portion of my sandwich left in my lunch bag, and I pulled it out.

"Come on," said Tom. I bit into my sandwich and began to speculate. Tom attracted women with his charm, good looks and self-confidence. By now, he must have gone out with all the pretty, unattached women in both our purchasing department and the accounting department that occupied the same floor. Tom sat there smirking. How he loved to regale me with the details of his romantic successes, from a lunch, to petting in a car, to seduction at his apartment. But I couldn't think of any new arrival on our floor. The question itself meant I knew the woman involved, or was it a woman? Had Tom lunched with Evans, our punctilious department head, or worse still, a more senior executive? If he did, it meant he was going to beat me in the race to replace the soon-to-retire Evans.

"A woman?" I asked as casually as I could.

"Of course," said Tom, impatience mixing with his glee.

His voice meant a different woman, one already on this floor, one who was good looking, and probably married or engaged. It couldn't be Rita, not gorgeous Rita with the bewitching Marilyn Monroe figure, not Rita with the sparkling brown eyes, lovely complexion and come-hither smile. I remembered when Evans introduced her to Tom and me. She stood up, smiled at us both, wiggled her hips, batted her eyes at us through her long eyelashes to acknowledge our admiration of her beauty, and then waived her left hand with a wedding band on its third finger. Surely not Rita?

"Rita Guerra in accounts payable?"

"Good guess!" He grinned with what I viewed as a conquering, self satisfied air.

"Well, lunch is lunch. She's married, so you shouldn't expect anything more."

"You know me. I negotiated a sweet cash-on-delivery deal for linens with Instant Textiles, and, when they invoiced us, they still gave us a one-percent discount for payment within ten days. Their accounting department screwed up. Rita asked me about it and I told her to take the discount before Instant Textiles discovered their error. This will be a feather in my cap, so I asked Rita for lunch to celebrate. And at lunch, I got the low down on Rita. Her husband, Bill, works the swing shift at Benton Aircraft, so she often spends evenings alone. She wouldn't have told me this, if she didn't expect me to follow up. I asked her if she'd like to see Star Wars with me after work next Monday. I got advance tickets from a friend of mine. And she said `Okay.' So there!"

Tom looked at me for my usual acknowledgement and congratulations on his romantic endeavors. It had been like this since our college days together. I had better grades than Tom and helped him with many of his assignments. He in turn introduced me to his circle of friends and made me his confidant. In discussing his affairs, Tom was saying to me: I may not be as smart as you, but I get along with people better, and that's more important in life. When I tell you about my interactions with women, I show you that I'm more successful than you.

I was jealous, resignedly so, but accepted the relationship. Through Tom I met some nice girls; it wasn't his fault that they were uninterested in me. Even now, my gnome-like face crowned with thick-rimmed glasses, my small scrawny body, my inability to make small talk and lack of social graces makes me unattractive to women. I had come to accept this, so I listened to Tom's recounting of his romances with a vicarious enjoyment even now in our late twenties. Our relationship had carried over from college directly to where we both worked in the purchasing department of Krone Discount Warehouses.

"Good luck. I bet you five bucks you don't make it to first base," I said.

Next Tuesday, Tom came into my cubicle, sat on my desk and leered at me: "Harry, you owe me five bucks."

"You're kidding?"

"Nope. I didn't expect it to be that easy. She loved Star Wars. She hadn't been out to the movies in a long time. Her husband is a reserved person, whose hobbies run to model airplane building, watching crime shows on TV--Rita has to tape them for him--and target practice with buddies from work on the weekend. She responded to me wonderfully. It was as though she hadn't had sex in years. I asked her about it and she said sex with her husband lacked spontaneity. She said she could scream at the constant routine of every Saturday evening, ironically right after her husband watches the PBS show `Are You Being Served.' I asked her why she didn't get a divorce, but she said they were both Catholics, and they have a young daughter as well."

"Where's the little girl while you and she are having fun?" I pulled a five-dollar bill out of my wallet and gave it to Tom.

"She goes to Rita's mother after school. Rita picks her up after she has been out with friends or finishing her evening classes."

"So now Rita has started a new evening class?"

"Yup! Keep you posted, Harry, and thanks for the five."

According to Tom, his romance with Rita went swimmingly. He would give me details, where they had eaten, what movie they saw, whether they had gone to a motel or his apartment, how many climaxes he or she'd had, and the special attributes of Rita's body.

"Doesn't her husband or her friends or her mother suspect something?" I asked.

"No. We're very discreet. We go to distant movie houses and restaurants and I always get Rita back home at a time consistent with her excuses for being late. She and her daughter are sleeping in bed well before her husband comes home."

"And what if her husband finds out?"

He's a mild sort of person. The worst he can do is file for divorce. That's Rita's problem, not mine. It's not as though she doesn't have a job and can't support herself."

"Where's this romance leading to?" I asked him. I suppose I always thought of Tom squiring single women until he became enamored of one sufficiently to marry her. At least, that was how I thought, or would have thought, if I were dating such a stream of women.

Tom stared at me. "That's the difference between you and me," he said. "You're hung up with details. You always consider the consequences of your actions before you undertake them. Your being so serious makes life less enjoyable for you. You wouldn't screw a woman unless you thought her a candidate for marriage. Me, I screw a woman so that she and I can enjoy ourselves. One day we'll be unable to enjoy an orgasm. So get it while you can. It doesn't necessarily lead to anything, but it gives pleasure to the participants."

"But women expect something from being intimate," I protested.

"You're right. Some do, especially those that want to get married. But Rita's already married. I'm giving her fun and company she didn't get before. It makes her a happier woman and gives me pleasure too." With that he left.

I typically worked late at the office. I did so to better position myself in the competition to become department head. I would use the time to write more precise purchase contracts with more exacting details on quality assurance and penalties for quality or delivery variances. Here I had established myself as the lead person in the department. I needed to do so, because Tom got deals for the company through charm and personality. Tom made you like to do things for him. You glowed in his approval. That's why he was the most popular man in our department and a tough competitor for the department head position. On one of these late evenings, Tom telephoned me:

"Could you fax the purchase request to Curtis Manufacturing for me, Harry?" he said, breathing heavily. I could hear a woman giggle in the background. I would hear a blow-by-blow account tomorrow. "It's in my computer in the PO file. Evans said he would okay the purchase, so check my E-mail to make sure his approval is on record. You'll need my password which is T-O-M-1-E-M," he added, spelling out the letters.

"Can't it wait until tomorrow?" I asked. I didn't want to do Tom's work for him. I resented his taking advantage of my working late to get ahead in this company, while he was out cavorting with Rita.

"Not really, Harry. I had to leave at 4:00 p.m. before Evans' approval came through and Curtis promised us a two percent discount if the order came through today."

"Okay," I said reluctantly and walked to Tom's office cubicle next to mine. I woke Tom's computer from its quiescent state and entered his password, which allowed me access to all his files. Evans' E-mail of approval was present, so I sent off the fax. But then I noticed another E-mail message of the same date:

"Meet you at same place, 5:15 p.m.. Love Rita."

The message added to my burn at doing Tom's work. After a little thought, I printed out Rita's message and stashed it in the file cabinet in my office cubicle.

Tom knew I regularly worked an hour past quitting time. I fumed that he knew beforehand he could take advantage of me. I admit I was jealous that women flocked to him and that his personality more than made up for his lack of detail in purchase contracts. So you can understand why I began to compile a record of Tom and Rita's E-mail to each other. It was easy now that I had Tom's password. I thought that the record might be useful, if a doubt were to arise in Evans' mind about Tom's character, or if some pressure were placed on me. The messages were discrete, but made it obvious who was going to meet who where, and the where indicated what was planned--eating, drinking or screwing.

And then that interoffice memo arrived via E-mail one morning. It announced the promotion of Tom O'Connell to assistant department manager and that staff in the soft goods buying section of the department would report to him. I felt sick. I had worked so hard to position myself for Evans's job and here was Tom, no more senior than me, far less diligent, clearly being groomed as Evans' replacement. I stared at the memo, reading and rereading it for fifteen minutes. My disappointment began to turn to anger. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that this lazy womanizer should be promoted over me. I needed to make an issue of it, especially since the department accorded Tom more respect than me. It wasn't fair, I raged. So I acted.

I gathered up all the E-mail messages I had stashed. I got Rita's address from the phone book and mailed the messages anonymously to her husband that same day. I thought that he might make a fuss with Rita and that fuss, perhaps a messy divorce resulting from an interoffice romance, would make management have second thoughts about promoting Tom instead of me.

The next afternoon, while in the middle of a telephone discussion with a Wholesale Drygoods salesman, I heard tremendous shouting on the other side of the floor. Our cubicles are only five feet high and shield out normal conversation but not standup shouting and screaming. "What's going on there?" asked my telephone correspondent. I dropped the phone and looked over the cubicle top to see intense activity in the accounting section of the floor. Two shots rang out. "My God! What's happening? Am I in danger?" I thought. I heard screaming and shouting and saw people running. A third shot came after the sounds an intense struggle. I saw Tom's curly blond head looking from the neighboring cubicle, but his calmer face assured me that we were in no danger. People exited from their cubicles into the hallway but somebody prevented us from moving toward the shooting locale. We started talking among ourselves, speculating on what had happened, but I could already guess. Evans and a security officer came by telling us all to leave the building.

I walked downstairs with Tom, he with a long face and me in very low spirits. In the parking lot, I learned that Bill Guerra had come into the lobby, demanding to see his wife, and, on being asked to wait, had bounded up the stairs to our floor with Joe Perkins, the security guard, in hot pursuit. Bill had found Rita in her cubicle and shot her twice, fatally. Perkins had struggled with Bill for the gun and in the struggle, Bill was shot in the head. I watched the police cordon off the building entrance and saw the ambulance taking Bill Guerra to hospital. A senior official of Krone Warehouses then told us to go home. The late evening news on television repeated these same details, stating the police were still investigating the motive for the shooting. The next morning news added that the shooter had died from his wounds.

My emotions were terribly mixed--thankfulness that Bill Guerra could not bear witness, modest pleasure at Tom's loss and discomfiture, acute dismay that my letter likely triggered the mayhem, and profound fear that my treachery might be discovered. Apparently, the office staff knew of Rita's affair with Tom. It surprised me how many people knew of it. I somehow thought that, as Tom's confidant, I had the exclusive knowledge. Evidently, he and Rita had not been sufficiently discreet and had become an item in the office gossip. That I didn't know showed how poorly connected I was to the gossip channel. The gloomy mood in the office pervaded until after the inquest. Tom talked very little to me; he did not ask me to say or deny anything about him and Rita. I admired him for it, and was grateful for his minimizing my involvement. Many of us, Tom and I included, attended Rita's funeral. Most of the mourners moved away from Tom. All he could do was stand with me.

Since Bill Guerra died from his wound and since the affair was common knowledge--Tom did not deny it at the inquest--my snitch letter never came to light. Two weeks later, Tom came into my cubicle.

"I'm leaving Krone Warehouses," he said. I stared at him in surprise.

"Actually, I've been asked to leave, and I don't plan to fight it. I've told Evans that they ought to consider you as my replacement, and he said that you were a good candidate."

"Thanks, Tom. But why do they want you to leave? After all, nobody could have foreseen your affair with Rita would lead to such a tragic outcome. Romancing somebody else in the company, even a married one, is not a crime, not even against company policy unless one is a superior to the other, and that wasn't the case with you and Rita."

"You're right, Harry. I raised all these points with Evans and old man Krone himself. What they said was that sometimes perception was as bad as the actuality. They felt that I had a major responsibility in the debacle. They used the analogy that I was like a fired gun. If I hadn't had the affair, there would have been no gun to fire. I told them it was Bill Guerra who pulled the trigger, not me. They said it didn't matter. They felt I would not enjoy the confidence of the staff or the company suppliers and wanted me to resign. They offered me a month's severance pay and pointed out that since I was an employee at will, they only need to give me two weeks. So I'm leaving, Old Buddy."

I stood up and hugged him. What else could I do? I pondered on my responsibility in the matter. I was less guilty than Tom. I had played a role, but then that role was going to get me a promotion I had worked hard for, a position in which I would work faithfully for my employer. The company was not going to suffer. But my worries about the letter I wrote to Bill Guerra increased, and I had to seek psychiatric counseling.

*****

In my heart, I know I'm a snitch, a snitch that cannot confess his snitchery. I have to compare myself with Linda Tripp, who recorded the confidences of a friend and passed them to the independent counsel, Ken Starr. At least, what I did was not illegal. But then, my actions triggered a tragedy in which two lives were lost. Is that a worse tragedy than the impeachment of a president? On a personal level, yes; on a national level, no. But then, others knew what was going on in both cases. The only real differences are that I was never found out and that I clearly profited from my act. But, I don't feel good about it. I guess I'm luckier than Linda Tripp; my snitching wasn't discovered, but that doesn't make it any better. I'd hate to have all her legal fees. Who would have thought that Bill Guerra would have reacted the way he did? But then, who would have thought that the House of Representatives would treat President Clinton's stupid behavior so seriously?

My psychiatrist tells me that the best way to get rid of guilt is to confess; it moves to make the participants whole. But my confessing will not bring Rita and Bill Guerra back. My confessing will lose me the friendship of Tom with whom I still correspond by E-mail. My confessing will lose me my job, which I do very well. Then I'd be as badly off as Tripp. No thanks! No confession for me. Sometimes, I kid myself that Bill Guerra might have discovered the affair before receiving my letter. A comforting thought, but I doubt it's true. I see I'll be burdened with guilt for a long time. Jealousy has brought me a heavy load.

"There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman's pulse."

Laurence Sterne

# FATHER MCARDLE ON SUNDAY

Rafferty beamed as he listened to loud cheers from the home crowd on his RCA console. The White Sox had beaten the St. Louis Browns in the thirteenth inning. What an exciting finish! But now he would have to deal with his wife.

Rafferty's smile faded as he returned to the reality that he had hit his wife heavily in the tenth inning. He had been peacefully sipping a beer on the porch, while listening to the radio inside the living room that hot Sunday summer afternoon, when she told him, in her aggressive whining voice, to turn the radio over to her.

"You said the game would finish by 4:00 p.m. after nine innings," she yelled from the living room.

"Don't change the station! The game's not over," he shouted back, his voice rising as he began to miss details of an action commentary.

"Nonsense," she retorted. "A game is only nine innings. I didn't agree to overtime. It's my turn at the radio now, and time for me to listen to Fibber McGee and Molly. When you get another radio, you can listen as long as you want. Meanwhile, it's all mine."

For a simple easygoing man like Rafferty who could never match words with his wife, action spoke louder. He raced from his porch seat into the living room and struck her a heavy backhanded blow as she reached for the console dial. She fell back. He did not wait for her response; he turned heel abruptly and went back to his warm chair and cold beer. She said nothing further or touched the radio dial for the rest of the game, which he enjoyed with unabated enthusiasm. Now he must answer to her.

Rafferty picked up his beer bottle and entered the living room to confront his wife. She lay prone on the floor where she had fallen in the tenth inning. Just like her, he thought, to pretend to be hurt more than she really was. Now he would have to work hard to beg her forgiveness and let her recite the litany of his sins against her. Why did she have to start this when she knew how he loved baseball?

"I'm sorry I lost my temper and hit you," he said poking her arm. She did not stir. Rafferty shook her; there was no response; he must truly have hurt her. Alarmed, he pressed her neck hard to feel the pulse of the carotid artery, but there was no beat. His alarm quickened as he observed the huge bruise on her face and the awkward angle of her neck. He unbuttoned the top of her blouse and pressed his ear to her thick chest. Not a sound. He rolled her body onto its side and blood oozed from her mouth onto the wooden floor.

Dear God! Her neck was broken. He had actually killed her. Panic began to beat drums in his head. His wife was dead. But it was an accident. He hadn't intended to kill her. She shouldn't have tried to change the station. But that was no defense against taking a life. He clapped his hands to his head as the drums beat louder and louder.

What was he to do? Should he call the police and say it was an accident? But they would see the bruise on her face from his heavy fist. Could he explain it away? No. If the police asked neighbors, they would discover his wife frequently argued with him. They would find out she was ashamed of him. The police would say that he murdered her in a fit of anger. Nobody would believe it was an accident. Rafferty's head ached as he thought of all the possibilities. Would they put him in the electric chair? He didn't know. After all, he was a simple rural butcher. He knew nothing of the law. Would they put him in jail for the rest of his life? Oh God! That would be like the awful years he spent in the orphanage under McArdle. Could he say that his wife just fell? No, the bruise on her face would show clearly that she was struck. If she died from falling, then was that murder? Or did she die from the initial blow itself? There was no avoiding it in Rafferty's mind. He had killed his wife and the law would hold him responsible, one way or another. The panic drums beat even louder. He was done for--unless he got rid of the body.

Rafferty sat down, sipped the last of his beer and began to think. Could he could get rid of the body and say his wife went to visit relatives and later say she never returned? Maybe that would work. After all, his wife had few relatives. Her brother had been killed during the Great War. Her mother was in a nursing home far away in Uniontown. Without thinking it all through, Rafferty pulled on the body's arms to place his broad shoulders under the heavy load of his dead wife. He grunted as he strained his legs from the kneeling position to stand upright. Her corpse must weigh around two hundred pounds. Panicked as he was, the thought came into his head that his wife would never tell him her weight. Now he could tell by comparing her dead weight to that of the quarter sides of beef that he carried in his modest slaughterhouse.

Rafferty climbed slowly down the stairs carrying the body on his shoulders, through the butcher shop darkened by shuttered blinds and into the cold slaughterhouse. Two sides of beef and a side of pork hung there for him to cut up for tomorrow's opening of the shop. He would transform them into steaks, cutlets, chops, ground beef and stew meat. He would usually do this Sunday evening while his wife listened to her favorite radio shows upstairs. Tonight, however, she would be in the slaughterhouse with him. He placed the body on the wooden carving table and removed clothing and a gold wedding ring. The familiar surroundings soothed him as he began to plan what to do. First, get rid of any mess upstairs. He returned to the living room and wiped off the blood on the floor with a towel. Thank God there was no blood on the patterned beige face of the area carpet. He rinsed the towel thoroughly and followed his trail downstairs carefully wiping any further stains.

Finished. Not a sign left of the killing. Now, what to do with the body? Rafferty helped himself to another beer and began to plan. From the telephone in the butcher shop, the only phone in the building, he called Van Brugen, a local farmer and arranged to pick up two steers for slaughter that evening. Returning to his slaughterhouse, he released the winch hoist, pulled down the sharp heavy hook and thrust it into the back of the corpse. He pulled on the winch to raise the body and positioned the assembly above a waste sump. With his razor sharp butcher knife, he cut into the lower belly of the corpse and disemboweled it. The intestines and other internal organs were neatly carved out to fall with other body fluid and waste into the offal sump. He cut open two arteries in each lower leg of the corpse and watched the blood run into the sump. As Rafferty methodically butchered the corpse to render it for later complete dismemberment, his panic lessened. The familiarity of the butchering steps took over and occupied his mind. Strange he thought; he should feel some sense of loss of his wife. Instead, his thoughts were dominated by how to hide the loss. After thirty minutes of intense work, he took off his butcher apron. The carcass would dress down to about one hundred and ten pounds he thought. He washed his face and hands, took another beer from the icebox and sat down to review his progress.

The beer finished, Rafferty hitched up a cattle trailer to his truck. Oh Damn! There was one person on the street this hot Sunday evening, Father McArdle taking his constitutional, his black gown flapping in the evening breeze from Lake Michigan. How he feared and loathed the short wizened priest, whose wrinkled face bore a constant frown. Never would Rafferty forget the harsh upbringing he had in the nearby orphanage run by the vitriolic McArdle. He would never understand why a church, which preached love and forgiveness, tolerated a priest who could discover sin so readily in young orphaned boys and whipped transgressors with such pleasure while invoking God's name. The beating McArdle had given him following discovery of French postcards in his possession was burned into both his soul and his buttocks. Normally, Rafferty would avoid the acerbic priest but better this night to greet him.

"I see your wife did not go to evening Mass. Is she sick?"

Oh God, thought Rafferty, can McArdle see my hands are shaking? Can he detect the nervousness in my voice and eyes?

"No Father. Her mother is very ill and she's getting ready to go to the bus station in Chicago. But, first I have to pick up some cattle to butcher for the orphanage feast next weekend."

"I see. Don't forget to ask Father Halloran for help at the feast, which I trust will be on time this year. My regards to your wife and I will pray for her mother; and remember not to drink so much. You are shaking with all that liquor in you," said the elderly McArdle, leaning forward to smell Rafferty's breath and eyeing him severely before turning to move on.

Rafferty returned to his truck, his heart thumping and his body sweating profusely. Could the priest have sensed his fear, the same kind of fear he had at the orphanage, whenever McArdle shouted angrily at him? He pulled himself together and slowly drove the five miles to Van Brugen's farm to arrive with reasonable composure. After initial greetings, he and the burly farmer pushed and pulled two waiting steer into the cattle trailer using a metal pole clamped to each frightened animal's nose. Rafferty tied a metal chain around the neck of each steer and fastened the chain to metal railings on the trailer walls. Despite the exertion, pushing on the animals relaxed Rafferty. The familiar routine of putting cattle into the trailer with Van Brugen dissipated the fear in his gut. As usual, Rafferty paid the farmer in cash, forty-five dollars for each steer, using the shop receipts of Friday and Saturday.

"How's your family?" asked Rafferty.

"Fine. How's yours?" replied the red-faced Van Brugen, whose jovial demeanor was distinctly soothing.

"Okay. My wife is leaving to see her mother who's ill. I have to take her to the bus station in Chicago this evening. I reckon she will be gone three or four weeks."

"Time to play the field," said Van Brugen smiling.

"I wouldn't dare. That old lady of mind would find out and there'd be hell to pay. At my age, I can't afford to be unfaithful."

It was true, thought Rafferty. His wife would never have forgiven him if he had been unfaithful. But then, it would have been just another item in her list of things she had never forgiven him. The list included no children--his fault she said--his consuming interest in baseball, and his easy contentment at being a butcher. A Catholic, as was his wife, he could never have divorced her and remained within the church. The church was important to him. God knows why. He had arrived at the Catholic-run, all-boy orphanage when he was only four years old and had hated it until he left at fifteen. The fear of God and the Devil had been thoroughly installed into Rafferty by Father McArdle. He would never stray from the teachings of the church. Yet here he was, an unintentional sinner.

He drove back home and unloaded the unwilling steers into a holding room adjacent to his miniature abattoir. He looked inside the slaughterhouse hoping his wife's body might magically have disappeared and tell him it was all just a wild nightmare. But, the blanched carcass assured him the problem was real indeed. He took out another bottle of beer, realizing he was less panicked now he had a plan of action. The beer relaxed him further. He wasn't an evil man; he enjoyed his customers, and he didn't drink to excess. The beers this day were an exception to what was clearly an exceptional day. He liked being a butcher and it was

unfortunate his wife had expected more of him. Perhaps the frustration of not having children changed her from the sturdy loving bride of early marriage. But the unchanging routine of their lives, and the unflattering thickening of her body soured her, and she became domineering and rude. In recent years she refused to help in the butcher shop, so he worked there by himself. It was tough, but stoicism was a quality he had developed from his years in the orphanage. How he wished his wife would be nice to him. At least now, he thought, she would no longer be unkind to him.

Around 10:00 p.m., Rafferty looked outside cautiously. It was dark and the main street deserted. Perfect! He unhitched the trailer and slipped into the truck and drove the thirty miles to the Chicago bus station, where he purchased a round trip ticket in his wife's name to her hometown of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He told the bus driver that his wife was in the rest room and would board the bus shortly. Rafferty then drove off to arrive home around midnight. Lots of work to do, he thought. He entered the holding room, and used the pole nose clamp to pull the first steer into the slaughterhouse. He tied its head to nose-high railings so that it could not get its neck down to bring its powerful shoulder muscles into play to thwart him. He pulled the steel slaughter pole from its rack, strode over to the snorting animal and with a measured swing from his broad shoulders hit the steer squarely on its head. It fell suddenly silent to the ground. Just as he had treated his wife a little earlier, he raised the steer on the hoist, and butchered it into a disemboweled carcass. He handled the other steer in the same way. In three hours, he had the steer carcasses hung and draining slowly. They would cut easier with even just one day of aging. He finished his work by butchering the quarter sides of beef and veal into finished goods for his morning customers. At 4:00 a.m., he finally locked the slaughterhouse door.

Next day, Rafferty was up early, his eyes red from little sleep, from the beers and the numbing fear of the day before. Nevertheless, he greeted his customers in his usual amiable manner. He mentioned to several that his wife had gone to visit her ailing mother in Uniontown and they responded sympathetically. It was convenient his wife's mother lived so far away. Most customers had all their close relatives within fifty miles of this small Illinois village and would be quick to discover a missing spouse. As for his wife not returning, he decided he would say that she had inherited some property from her mother and decided not to come back.

In the afternoon, Father Halloran dropped by to offer his best wishes for Rafferty's mother-in-law. What a contrast between Halloran and McArdle! Halloran was the same age as Rafferty; indeed, the two of them grew up in the same orphanage. Where Halloran was smart and slight, Rafferty was strong and simple. The two of them became friends since they filled mutual needs and had a common interest in baseball. Halloran helped Rafferty with school studies, while Rafferty protected Halloran from bullies and sexual predators. Their friendship continued even after they grew up. Halloran became a priest and was assigned to serve various parishes in the Midwest. Upon the retirement of Father McArdle, Halloran was sent to manage the very orphanage of his upbringing.

How Rafferty empathized with his old friend since their nemesis, McArdle, was still present, having been pensioned off at the local rectory. Perhaps the local bishop didn't wish to place McArdle in a Catholic retirement home because of his sharp tongue, or perhaps McArdle wanted to retain still some modicum of power in the adjacent orphanage. From the rectory, the old priest would strut through the orphanage finding young sinners, exhorting them into God's submissive silence, administering direct corporal punishment upon the least excuse, and reporting others to Halloran for punishment of minor transgressions. The gentler, kinder Halloran would ignore McArdle as much as possible but bore the thorn in his side with the same stoicism that Rafferty endured with his wife.

Halloran and Rafferty discussed the baseball game of the day earlier with enthusiastic pleasure. The priest then offered to send his housekeeper for half a day each week to his old friend, an offer that was gratefully accepted.

Monday evening, Rafferty went to work. He butchered all three drawn carcasses down to pound size quantities. He removed all bones from the human corpse and cut up that flesh into stewing grade samples. The brains, liver and kidneys were ground up with steer beef into a ground meat mixture. Then he fired up his abattoir furnace and, when hot, dumped into its capacious interior all the animal and human waste from the sump. He added the cattle and human bones to the furnace as well as his wife's clothes including the best ones from her dresser and her jewelry. Now there was nothing left of her but ground flesh and stewing lumps. He could have thrown the entire human carcass into the furnace, but the smell would have alerted the neighbors. He still remembered when neighbors inquired about roast pork after he had burnt an entire pig because of its extensive worming. Besides, the extra meat would useful in the July 4 feast that was Rafferty's homage to his orphanage upbringing. He knew he wasn't smart and so was delighted when McArdle arranged for him, at thirteen years old, to be apprenticed to a nearby butcher. The butcher and his wife, kindly souls with children long grown, treated Rafferty like one of their own, and he returned their love. They arranged for him to live with them two years later. When they retired, they left Rafferty to run the butcher shop and eventually to buy the business and property from them. Rafferty received no pay while he lived at the orphanage because McArdle arranged for the butcher to provide a free meal each forth of July in return for the free labor. Rafferty didn't mind. He was just too pleased to be outside the orphanage, away from the bullying McArdle and building his self esteem by working with his hands and interacting with customers who liked him. But the feast of July fourth became a tradition that transcended his indenture with the butcher. Rafferty continued the tradition because he reveled in the pleasure the sumptuous meal brought to young orphan eyes and because he wanted to honor his old friend, Halloran.

Each year, his wife helped him with the feast, directed to do so by Father McArdle as a penance for alleged unspecified sins. This year, thought Rafferty, his wife would be present and more penitent than usual. It had become a tradition as well as an ease of serving to prepare ten-pound meat pies that were brought to the orphanage and baked in its kitchen. Rafferty procured the flour, butter and leavening from the local baker, fresh vegetables from the local grocer and made dough for fifteen pies. He stewed the meat comprising the better cuts of human flesh plus beef in double quantity. He felt sure that the result would be close enough to the taste of beef that the difference would not be noticed. He added vegetables--onions, carrots, tomatoes, leeks--together with salt, pepper and other spices into four huge stew pots. He added beans, turnips and potatoes later, so they would not mush and stick to the bottom of the pots. Cooked slowly and stirred frequently, the stew smelled good and tasted sweet, a pleasing result after the anxious heavy exertion of the previous evenings. Rafferty kept a little human flesh aside to assuage his curiosity. A small cooked portion was found quite tender, a cross between chicken and veal. A long time since his wife was tender, he mused.

The fourth-of-July feast day, a Sunday, arrived and Rafferty delivered the pies on time at the orphanage kitchen. The kitchen staff took over and the smell of these wonderful meat pies spread throughout to wet the appetites of all inmates. Father Halloran blessed the meal with simple words:

"Lord, we thank thee for this wondrous meal. We thank thee as we feast to celebrate freedom and deliverance from our old enemies. We pray that this meal, offered by our dear friend and former student, will spur us all to similar acts of kindness and remembrance."

"Amen," responded the children.

"A feast to remember," said Halloran, smiling as he watched the boys consume the pies with gusto. Even the ever-present McArdle remarked after eating a small portion that the pies were tastier than usual. But the pleasure of this compliment dissipated as McArdle then walked around the tables, cuffing an eight-year old into tears for licking his knife, speaking sharply to one youth for having dirty hands, and castigating another for spilling food onto the floor. Nevertheless, Rafferty felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders as his wife disappeared--such an enthusiastic disposal. Halloran remarked it was unfortunate that Mrs. Rafferty missed such a fine meal. She really didn't miss it, thought her husband. Fireworks accompanied by young screams of delight completed the celebration of this national holiday. Rafferty sighed; his unhappy youth and his miserable wife were behind him. The pleasure of these orphans was his emancipation.

*****

A month later, Halloran stopped by at Rafferty's shop at the close of business. After chatting about baseball and other current events, Halloran inquired about Rafferty's wife.

"She's still away visiting her mother."

"Rafferty, that cannot be. My aunt lives in Uniontown, where she visits your wife's mother and tells me your wife has not been there."

Horrified, Rafferty stared at Halloran. The drums began to beat in his head again. How could he forget it was Halloran's aunt who had introduced him to his wife thirty years ago? He couldn't think of what to say. He stammered as fear overwhelmed him. Oh Damnation! Oh Hell! His story about his wife staying away was going to fall apart due to the unbelievable coincidence that somebody in the village was familiar with the Uniontown nursing home nearly a thousand miles away. The drums beat wildly. Rafferty's Catholic upbringing prevailed and he blurted out the truth to his priest.

"You killed your wife?" said Halloran in astonishment.

"It was an accident, Father. I didn't mean to."

Halloran probed the details. He blanched: "We ate your wife?"

"I had to get rid of the body quickly. There was too much for me to eat."

"You will have to tell the police what you have done, Rafferty. You have committed a mortal sin and must confess to the authorities."

"But it was an accident. I didn't mean to kill her. I just wanted to hear the end of the game."

"It is for the court to decide your culpability. I cannot do that for you."

"Father, I can't go to the police. They would execute me or lock me up for life."

"Rafferty, I cannot tell what penalties you would suffer under the law, but you will be in eternal damnation if you do not confess your deed. Will you now force me to turn over this information to the police?"

"But Father, you're my priest. I've confessed to you. How can you tell my confession to the police. Don't you have to keep silent?"

Now Halloran stared at Rafferty. "You did not tell me in the confessional booth or with my stole on. You cannot expect me to cover up such a heinous crime. You must confess to the police yourself."

"Father, I will not do it. You shouldn't tell the police either. My wife was a mean unpleasant person who made my life miserable. I didn't intend to commit a sin. It would be a greater sin to lock me up again, just like the orphanage, and a sin for you to tell on me. Besides, I didn't tell on you, when McArdle found me with your French postcards."

Halloran's mouth opened; he paused before speaking.

"Rafferty, I urge you to make amends by owning up. I will consult with the bishop and then decide whether I may tell the police if you do not. In the meanwhile, you must pray to God for strength to do the right thing, which is to confess to the authorities. Please do not abuse our friendship by requiring my silence on your crime."

Rafferty went upstairs, his clothes drenched with the sweat of fright, and agonized at what to do. Halloran had advised him to throw himself on the mercy of the court, but his upbringing had given him a deep distrust of authority. He could envisage the police interrogating him. "You couldn't stomach her. You were fed up with her. That's why you had her eaten." Rafferty's head whirled at these thoughts. But now he had a brief reprieve. He could leave the village and run away. But what could he do? All he knew about in the world was butchering. He was too old and too simple to disguise his identity and find a different type of work. What would happen to him if he stayed? He liked the where he lived; the villagers respected him. He enjoyed his work, his friends and his neighbors. He valued them and didn't want to leave. After a couple of sleepless nights, he decided he wasn't going to leave, and he wasn't going to turn himself in. Maybe his long friendship with Halloran and the confidentiality of his confession might persuade the priest not to report the matter. He prayed for God to help him and, for good measure, said the rosaries four times each day.

Ten days later, Halloran summoned Rafferty to the orphanage. Rafferty shut the office door and with great trepidation faced his old friend. In a stammering voice, querulous with fear, he told the priest he still would not confess to the police. A full minute of silence ensued. Halloran rose from his desk and strode back and forth about the room obviously struggling with his decision.

"My dear friend, you put me in a difficult position. I have searched my conscience and my soul deeply in deciding what to do if you do not go to the police. I did not consult Bishop Murphy, since I knew that if you did not confess, you would be making me a partner in your deed. It grieves me sorely to act as your accessory. Under the circumstances, could we have Father McArdle on Sunday?"

"What is a highbrow? He is a man who has found something more interesting than women."

Edgar Wallace

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

When I came to North America at age twenty-two, I suffered from a debilitating disease, which often afflicts young persons--that I thought I knew everything. It took several years and a marriage to rid me of this affliction. (Unfortunately, the disease appears hereditary; at least one of my sons suffers from it.) Some fifteen years ago, I had a relapse of this disease, and it afflicted me and my spouse to buy a motel. During the quiet evening hours of the motel with no good guests coming, I read many novels, and, while still suffering from this affliction, concluded that I could write as well as some of the authors of these novels. Now the motel was finally declared by the city fathers to be a public nuisance. I think their action finally cured me of this disease, but has left a stain on my reputation which this book may not dispel. For therapeutic reasons, I am publishing the foregoing short stories as evidence of what can happen when you think you know everything.

Such a background is hardly conducive to an acknowledgement that will be welcomed by the acknowledgees. I'm sure that, in their careers, Cesare Borgia and Niccolo Machiavelli acknowledged God, but I doubt that God appreciated their acknowledgement. For these reasons, I have put the acknowledgement at the end of this book rather than the beginning. Only if you have read the book will you get to the acknowledgement. Thusly, may I spare the acknowledgees any embarrassment from their association with this work.

Acknowledgements follow:

First to Jincy Kornhauser whose writing course I took at UCSD and who performed early--largely negative--reviews of my work. You readers are entitled to say her action was timely.

Second to Anke Kriske, instructor at the Long Ridge Writers Group. Her writing tips and criticisms of my work were helpful and inciting....sorry insightful.

Third to Writer's Digest magazine whose articles repeatedly encouraged beginning writers though tales of those few authors who ultimately achieved success--their work was bought by the public. Dare I think the tales are designed to keep you writing... and buying Writer's Digest?

Fourth to Julie DeGroat whose professional criticism and encouragement has been extremely helpful. Her review of my toxic mystery was caustic. The reader has been spared.

Her address is 42300 New Connecticut Rd., Theresa, NY 13691, for those who wish to utilize her services now that she has recovered from offering them to me.

Fifth to Seamus Heffernan who prepared the cartoon cover for this book to specifications given by someone whom he might well have suspected of suffering from a debilitating disease.

Sixth to those magazines that showcased my work.

Finally to my family whose lack of interest in my writing and whose general belief that what I wrote would never amount to anything motivated me to complete this manuscript.

