Borrowed Lives
by
Laramie Dunaway

Warner Books;

ISBN: 0446365300

Copyright 1995

When I finally arrived at the police station, Wren was standing on the
front steps under a bright light, a pair of blue panties balled up in
her right fist.  She was waving her fist around as if she was about to
do some sort of magic trick with her panties, turn them into a dove or
something.  At the same time, her flushed face was leaning into some
young uniformed cop's pale face, yelling at him.  The top to my Rabbit
was down, so I could hear each word as crisp as snapping carrots.

"This is total bullshit!"  Wren hollered.

The skinny young cop was leaning as far back as he could without
flipping backward over the railing.  His eyes were wide and unfocused,
as if he'd just been told he was the offspring of incest.  Like most
men who've come face-to-face with Wren's temper, he looked both a
little murderous and a little in love.

I quickly swung the Rabbit to the curb and honked twice.

Wren didn't take her fierce eyes off the young cop.  She continued to
glare at him as she backed down the steps toward my car without
actually looking where she was going.  As if she were guided by some
psychic homing device.  Anyone else I'd have been worried would trip
and fall.  But not Wren.  She had never done one ungraceful thing in
her entire life.  She'd probably pirouelled out of her mother's womb
and did the Maypole dance with the umbilical cord.  Finally, Wren
turned toward me.  This is when I noticed the huge tan bandage the size
of a business card angled across her forehead, partially covering her
left eyebrow.  A moist rusty spot soaked through the center of the
bandage.  Three drops of blood formed a teardrop constellation on her
white T-shirt.

Wren had only descended two steps when she stopped abruptly and pivoted
back around toward the cop.  Her tennis shoes 							squealed against
the smooth cement.  The startled young cop flinched.  His hand dropped
to his gun.

"And you are an asshole!"  Wren proclaimed, pointing her panties at
him.  "You hear what I'm saying, Officer?  Do you?"

She marched toward my car, climbed in, and slammed the door.  "Let's
get the fuck out of here before I kill someone else."

"Stop that," Wren said, slapping my hand.

I have this nasty habit when I'm nervous of reaching inside my collar
and rubbing my thumbnails back and forth against my bra strap.  I do it
in class, I do it at work, I do it before and after sex.

During sex I rub them along the seam of the mattress edge.  Both my
thumbnails have deep, ugly grooves in them as if they'd been crushed
under very thin bicycle tires.  Fingernail polish only makes them look
worse.  A student once asked if I'd had them amputated N and sewn back
on again.  !  usually try to hide them in public.

"Loony, goddamn it," she said, slapping my hand again, harder.

"Ow," I said, slapping her hand back.  But I stopped.

She lifted her butt off the seat and pulled out some papers she'd been
sitting on.  "What's this?"

"A petition.  Sign it."

She picked up the pen that had been rolling annoyingly across the
dashboard and signed the line under my name.  "What's this for?"

"A new law."

"Oh."  She opened the glove compartment and stuffed the petition
inside.  She smiled and picked up my purse tucked next to her seat.

"Got anything interesting in here?"  She started digging through it
looking for a joint.  She wasn't going to find one.  I'd given up on
that stuff after I split up with Robby two months ago.

He was the one who liked to get high anyway.  I never really did, not
really.  Not in my teens, not in my twenties, and especially after I
turned thirty last year.  Marijuana seemed like such a sixties thing to
do, a nostalgic act, like teatime for American Anglophiles.  But I'd
been in diapers for a lot of the sixties and felt no nostalgia for its
return.  I was relieved now I didn't have to fake being hip anymore.

The only good part of smoking dope was that when Robby got the munchies
afterward, he'd cook us a tencourse gourmet meal.  His dad was a real
chef in a fancy Beverly Hills restaurant.  At home, his dad had dozens
of black-framed photographs on the wall of himself in his white chef's
hat and white tunic that buttons up one side like a military uniform.

in these photos, Robby's dad is leaning over the table between some
celebrity and his or her dining companion, smiling directly at the
camera.  His arm is usually resting on the celebrity's shoulder.

My favorite is of Jay Leno, who has a straw up his nose and is
pretending to snort the freshly grated Parmesan cheese from his
plate.

He signed it, "I could eat your food by the kilo."  I loved watching
Robby putter around the kitchenette, naked except for his dad's white
chef's apron framing his boxy buns.

"You going to tell me what happened?"  I asked Wren, taking one hand
off the steering wheel to tug at her tattered panties.

Wren only wore one kind of panty, plain cotton, no lacy designs, cut
French style, high on the hips with only a small pouch to cover the
crotch and skinny string up the behind.  What I called her "butt-floss
panties."

"These old things?"  Wren unfurled the panties and stretched them out
between her two hands.  They had a hundred tear marks in them, like
some hungry dog had been chewing them.

"Jesus, Wren," I said.  "What happened?"

Wren tossed the panties up into the night air.  The draft around us
sucked them into the dark.  She craned around to see where they
landed.

"Tomorrow some bicycle seat-sniffing brat will find them and be in
homdog heaven."

"It must be gratif'ing to know you've done your part to relieve his
adolescent anxiety and clear up his skin to boot."

"What can I say, I'm a humanitarian."

"Meantime, Dr. Schweitzer, you mind telling me what the hell happened
with the cops?"

Wren returned to my purse, digging until she found a lone ratgnawed
cigarette at the bottom.  Smoking is another habit I no longer had
since I no longer had Robby, all part of my new purification program.

Like my volunteering to gather signatures for Amnesty international
petitions.  I said, "So what crime did you commit?"

Wren stuck the cigarette in her mouth, punched the car lighter, and
waited.  I knew she wouldn't answer until the cigarette was lit.  She
was very theatrical that way.

""Wren, it's after midnight," I reminded her.  "I just got home from
the library twenty minutes ago after twelve butt-numbing hours studying
a dozen of the ninety-some doctoral dissertations that have been
written about Thomas Pynchon.  I got your message on my machine.  I'm
here.  I haven't eaten since breakfast and I'm close to killing you for
the food stuck between your teeth.

So just tell me what the hell happened."

"Pull over!  Pull over!"  She gestured frantically.

""What?"

"Pull over."  Wren grabbed the steering wheel and jerked.  The Rabbit
squealed across two lanes and I braked to a stop in the bicycle lane in
front of the A&W fast-food place.  They were closed.  Even though
Langston, Oregon, was a small university town, almost everything in it
closed down at six o'clock.  It was as if the residents didn't want to
admit that most of their livelihood depended on the students who
comprised half the town's population.  Luckily, there was no traffic
after six either.

"Jesus, Wren," I said, clutching my pounding chest.

But Wren wasn't listening.  She tossed her just-lit cigarette into the
gutter and started ransacking my glove compartment.  "Paper," she
demanded.  "Paper, paper!"  Then she mauled my purse again.

She found an envelope and started scribbling on the back.

"Not that," I protested, reaching for it.  "That's the letter from
Robby's lawyer about our divorce."

"I'm writing on the envelope, not the fucking letter."

"But the letter's inside.  I have to, you know, file it or
something."

Wren yanked the letter from the envelope and shoved it at me.  "Here.

File it."  Then she returned to her scribbling.  It was pointless to
interrupt her now.

I unfolded the letter and looked at it again.  Brief.  Polite.  Two
paragraphs.  Divorce proceedings were in effect.  Blah, blah.  No
fault.  Blah, blah.  Sincerely yours.  Blah.

The law firm's name was longer than the letter.

I looked over at Wren writing furiously in the dim glow of the
streetlight.  Her shoulders were hunched, her eyes squinted in
concentration less than eight inches from the envelope.  She appeared
to be conjuring dark forces.

"Let me pull up to the streetlight," I said.  "You could ruin your
eyes.

"Hmmm," she muttered to herself.  "Yes, yes.

Like a woman enjoying sex.

I refolded my letter and placed it on the dashboard.  Down the street,
a couple of rugged boys from the university came out of the 7Eleven
convenience store.  They laughed in that raunchy way males laugh when
they've just said something derogatory about women or the other guy's
penis.

I yawned until I could feel my ears pop and the bones in my jaw
click.

I took off my glasses and rubbed my tired eyes.  I'd been reading small
print on the fourth floor of the library for twelve hours.

At some point while I was reading about Pynchon's v, I nodded off and
dreamed I was in hell.  I was surprised to discover hell was a lot like
Dante described it, complete with various rings depending on the nature
of the condemned's sins, only the rings were marked by round cardboard
fences like at a circus.  There was no fire, it wasn't even
particularly warm.  I had this big heavy sword I could hardly drag
behind me and for some reason I was expected to battle all these
hellish demons that kept rising up out of the ground.  The demons had
the thick scaly bodies of sea serpents and two heads.

The heads had the faces of Willie Nelson and Julio iglesias.

"Let's just pull up to that 7Eleven," I said to Wren.  "There's more
light for you and more food for me.  I'm starving."

"Shush," she responded.

I shushed.  I didn't know what she was writing.  it could be
anything.

She wrote poetry, plays, stories, screenplays, scholarly articles on
literature, art, sculpture, philosophy.  She already had master's
degrees in art history, philosophy, and English literature.

Wren was a genius.  This had been documented by test scores since she
was a toddler.  She was also stunningly beautiful.  This could be
documented by observing men pretzel their necks to watch her walk by.

I was neither a genius nor a beauty.  I was a worker bee.  Everything I
did required strenuous work and long hours.  in high school, I had been
a B + student who had earned A's by doing extra-credit reports on
Guatemala (major export coffee, sugar, bananas, corn).  My look was
milk-fed Wholesom, poster girl for the Council of American Churches.

For Wrer gathering knowledge and boyfriends was like walking through a
apple orchard where all the ripe apples are within easy reac[ She
merely needed to stretch out and pluck them.  In my orchaff all the
branches were high, out of reach.  I had to jump up an down, whack at
them with a stick.  By the time I actually got a apple, there was
nothing left but pulp.

I'd been slaving over my master's degree for four years, She had earned
her latest degree-the English lit-in cightee months.  Her dissertation
was already finished, two months ahea of the due date.  It was a
comparison of the metaphysics in the lyrics of Paul Simon and the
poetry of William Blake.  Some New Age publisher in New York bought the
thesis last week an, intended to bring it out in time for Christmas.

Last Chnstma.

the same publisher had a bestseller with Mother Knows Best Mother
Teresa's Teachings Applied to MBA Strategies.

My stomach gurgled.  I reached across Wren and rootec through the glove
compartment.  I found half a roll of wintermini Breathsavers.  I popped
all of them into my mouth.

"Loony!"  she said, annoyed.  "Sit still."

I spit a wet Breathsaver at her.  It plopped onto the envelope she was
writing on.  Without looking up, she picked the white ring up and
sucked it into her mouth.  She kept writing.

My name is Luna.  It means moon.  My father was a physicist with NASA
since it was established way back in 1958, the year before I was
born.

Actually I was born exactly nine months after he started at NASA, so I
imagine he and Mom had quite a celebration the night he found out he
got the job.  After I was born, Dad had some security clearance trouble
over my name because the Soviets had a whole bunch of space shots
called the Luna series.  Luna 3 was the first space vehicle to
photograph the far side of the moon in 1959.  Anyway, they grilled poor
Dad for months about the significance of naming his daughter after the
Soviet lunar space program.  They interviewed his college sweetheart
and asked her if Dad had ever read Karl Marx to her.  I suppose I was
lucky to be named Luna, Mom tells me Dad's first choice was a
combination name, Abby Baker, after the two monkeys, Abel and Baker,
they sent 300 miles up into space in 1959.

Suddenly Wren looked up from her writing.  She was smiling.

"So I'm sitting in my cell.  There are two other women in there with
me."

"Hookers?"

"No, not hookers.  You watch too much television."

This was true.  I never used to watch, but then Robby bought his
homemade decoder box from one of his students so we wouldn't have to
pay the cable company.  He made it sound like screwing the cable
company was a political act, but mostly I think he got off on the
prankishness of it.  So he hooks the box up and something in the TV
explodes so that the only channel we got clearly after that was ESPN.

At first, we couldn't afford to fix the TV, then Robby left me.  By
then I'd gotten in the habit of watching sports.  Sometimes I'd
breakfast over a billiard game or grade papers during a rugby match.

Once I set my alarm for 2

A.M. so I could watch a rodeo.  I'm not sure what it is I like, maybe
the variety of rules and terminology.  In trapshooting if they launch
the target before the shooter's call, that's a "no bird."

A face-off in field hockey is called a "bully."  It's a little like
traveling to a foreign country, only cheaper.

"So the three of us are in this cell," Wren continued.  "This one girl
is young, maybe twenty.  A business major.  She and her boyfriend had
been stealing typewriters and computers from the secretaries'
offices.

They've been puffing themselves through school for two years doing
this.  Campus cops caught her tonight but her boyfriend managed to get
away.

"So, what about her?"

"Her?  Nothing about her.  I was just giving you the general
ambience."

The two boys c6ming down the street from the 7Eleven were drinking beer
from paper bags, punching each other in the shoulder, laughing.

I looked over at Wren.  "So what happened?  What are you writing that
was worth almost getting us killed?"

"I'm sitting in this prison, mentally listing famous peop)e who have
also done time.  Thoreau, Cervantes, Joan Baez "Wren, a couple hours in
a local jail is not having "done time."

"Gandhi, the Berrigan brothers, Galileo, Robert Mitchum-" "Hitler," I
added.

The boys were getting closer.  I could make out their features now.  We
were all sharing the same umbrella of weary light from the same dim
streetlamp.  One of the boys noticed Wren.  He couldn't take his eyes
off of her.

"Martin Sheen, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King" "Uncle Martin from My
Favorite Martian.  Wren, get to the point."

That's when Wren lunged across the seat at me and began to tickle me.

Her strong fingers teased my underarms, my waist, my neck.  She plowed
my pelvic bones, weeded my rib cage.  She was relentless.  I flailed my
arms, laughing and choking, pushing at her.  My glasses fell off.  My
elbow cracked her forehead.  The rusty spot on her bandage turned
bright red with fresh bleeding.

She didn't seem to care.

"Stop it," I cackled.  "Stop.  I'm going to wet myself."

Wren stopped, leaned back in her seat.  "Okay, now tickle yourself."

I gasped for air, retrieved my glasses from my lap.  "Okay, now fuck
yourself."

"I'm serious, Loon.  Tickle yourself."

"You can't tickle yourself."

"Try.

I tried.  I fluttered my fingers in the same spots, but nothing
happened.  "Goochy goochy goo.  Satisfied?"

Did you know that the ancient Chinese used to tickle people to death?

Thousands of years ago, they used it as a form of torture."

"Hey, girls," one of the boys said with a smirk.  They stood a few feet
from the car.  "Looks like fun."

"Need any help?"  the other boy asked.  This was the one who couldn't
stop staring at Wren.  They were both big, athletic looking.

Teammates.

"Let's go, Loony," Wren said.  Shewasn'tafraid, only annoyed.

I, however, was afraid.  I quickly started the car.

"Come on, girls.  Don't be that way."  Wren's boy came up and leaned on
Wren's side of the car.  He had blond hair mildly spiked.  He looked a
lot like Tom Cruise and seemed to be aware of the resemblance.  His
friend didn't look like anybody.  Tom C.

smiled at Wren and winked.  "I could get interested."  Wren laughed.

"Yeah?  Well, come back when you can get interesting."

I"Oh, I'm pretty interesting right now.  Once you get to know me."  He
put some extra English on "know me.

Wren turned toward him, smiling now in an interested way.

"You mean "know' in the biblical sense?"

"Sure.  Whatever."

"Lady," the other boy said, "if dicks could talk, his would spout
poetry."  Both of them laughed at that.  So did Wren.  I twisted the
flexible wire earpiece of my glasses, not looking directly at them.

"Really?"  Wren said.  "Poetry?"

"With some encouragement," Wren's boy said.

"Okay," Wren said.  "Whip it on out.

"What?"

"Whip your dick out and come here.  I'm a poetry lover."

"What?"

"I'm going to suck you off."

"Really?

"That's what you want, isn't it?"

"Well, sure.  Yeah.  I guess."

"Okay.  Just flop it right here on the car door."  She patted the ledge
of the door.  "Careful of the paint job."

The boys frowned.  "Here?"  her boy said.

"Sure."  She pointed at the other boy.  "You too, Jack.  I want both of
you at once.

"Both of us?"  Wren's boy made a face.

"Don't worry, you'll fit."  She opened her mouth wide.  "See?

Lots of room.

"What about her?"  Pointing at me.

"She likes to watch."  I put my glassesback on and wheezed at them.

"Asthma."

"Let's go, man, Tom C. "s pal said, pulling his arm.  "She's just
yanking your chain.

Wren laughed.  "Maybe you two boys should go home and yank each other's
chains.

Wren's boy, seriously angry now, massive shoulders hunched, remembering
all the tough guys he's mowed down on all those muddy football fields
across the state, clamped his huge hands on the car door and leaned
menacingly toward Wren.The car tilted toward him.  "I could fuck you
right now, sweetheart.  Fuck you in the mouth, in the ass, any place I
fucking want."

"Then fuck this," Wren said and stabbed my pen into the back of his
hand.  He hollered and jumped back, holding his hand and staring at the
welling blood.  Wren turned calmly toward me.

"Drive."

I pulled the car away from the curb and drove off.

"Fucking bitches!"  the boy who didn't look like anybody hollered.  He
threw his beer can at us and it bounced off my rear bumper and
clattered across the pavement.

"Lesbos!"  they shouted.  "Fucking dykes!"

"Fuzz bumpers to you, boys," Wren shouted back.

My heart was thumping from the confrontation.  I slipped my thumb under
my bra strap and felt relief when the strap snuggled into the groove of
my thumbnail.  I swallowed, took a couple of deep breaths, pretended to
be as calm as Wren.

"So, the point is," Wren said, resuming our former conversation as if
nothing had happened, "you can't tickle yourself.  We know that.  Yet,
we can be tickled by others, tickled until we hurt, even die.  But if
we can't tickle ourselves, then tickling is obviously not merely a
physical reaction."

"Freud already said all that."

"Exactly.  It has psychosexual overtones, a manifestation of repressed
emotions."

"How many people in this car are bored?  Raise your hands."

I raised my hand.

Wren ignored me.  "So those ancient Chinese, when they tickled a man to
death, were basically helping a person kill himself.  I wonder if the
suicidal implications of tickling have been researched.  The thanatos
aspects.  Suicidal tendencies as displayed by ticklishness.  If we
could map the tickle zones and see which repressions they represent,
then gauge the intensities, we could recognize people who were
predisposed toward suicide.  I think there might be an article in
this."  I knew that by the end of the week, Wren would be showing me
such an article.  By the end of the month some psychology journal would
have sent her a check for it.  She would use the check to take me out
to dinner and I would have to act thrilled for her.  It was an annoying
cycle.

"Wren, that's all very interesting," I said, my voice suddenly tight.

"But why were you in the goddamn jail and why were you waving your
goddamn panties around and what,happened to your goddamn forehead?

That's all I want to know.

"Byron," she said with a sigh.

I waited.  Byron Caldwell was her husband.  The details are a little
sketchy because Wren didn't like to talk about him.  When she did talk
about him, it was the only time I ever saw her act uncertain, clumsy.

Like he was kryptonite, sapping her strength.

Then she could have tripped over anything.  This much I knew, Byron and
Wren were still married, although she had walked out on him one week
after the wedding for some unspecified reason, Wren hadn't seen Byron
in almost two years, Byron was in a federal prison somewhere.

Wren twisted the radio knob.  "Crying" came on.

"Is that Roy Orbison or Don McLean?"  she asked, like it was a quiz.

"Roy Orbison," I said.  "Wren, what about Byron?"

"Okay, so I'm out to dinner with Geoffrey.  We drive all the way into
Portland to celebrate, which in his crummy car is" "Whoa.  Slow down.

Celebrate what?"

"Oh, right, I haven't told you yet.  I've got a job interview at Orange
Coast Today.  They called this morning.  Want me to fly down to
California in two weeks."

"Really?  An interview?  To be what, a reporter?"

"It's a magazine, Loony, not a newspaper.  One of those thick, glitzy
regionals with lots of health club and plastic surgery ads.

But, yeah, I'd do some writing, some editing.  Mostly I want to learn
the business end.  You know, the technical side of running a
magazine.

I'm not talking First Amendment, I'm talking layout and payroll and
whose palm to grease and ass to kiss to make deadline.  Nuts and bolts
shit."

"You didn't tell me you were applying to magazines."

She shrugged.  "No big secret.  I didn't want to get my hopes up."

"Wren, that's great.  Really great."  A long, rickety sigh whooshed
from deep inside of me, like escaping locusts knocking into each other
in midflight.  "Did I sound sincere?"

"Not very.

"Good."

"Don't be petty."

"Petty is my main character trait.  Without petty, I might not have any
personality at all."  I drove without looking at her.  Sure, I felt
happy about Wren's good fortune, but mostly I felt jealous.

Wren had sent out only five resume's, this was her third interview.

As of yesterday, I had sent out 116 resumes to various universities,
colleges, high schools, and military schools and had so far been
offered one lousy interview.  Somewhere in Kansas.  A city with the
word wheat in it.  Wheatfield.  Wheatvale.  Wheatville.

Wren's dream was to study as many different disciplines as interested
her and then start her own magazine, a kind of upscale down-to-earth
woman's magazine that featured articles combining the esoteric and the
everyday.  Articles like, "Sartre in the Workplace," "Dating the
Compulsive-Obsessive Anal Retentive Executive," "How Would Emily
Dickinson Throw That Baby Shower?"  Stuff like that.  Okay, maybe I was
being petty again.

Here's how she described it to me, "You know what the nineties woman
needs?  Something that doesn't pander to her vanity or ignore her
social responsibility.  Something that shows her how to incorporate art
and philosophy and psychology into everyday living.  Vanity Fair
without the gossip and perfume inserts, Whole Earth Catalogue without
the granola, Mother Jones without kneelerk Latin American politics, Ms.
without the simplistic slogans.

Can you see what I'm saying, Loony?"

Kind of.  Well, Wren had the degrees, she had the publications.

All she needed now was some hands-on magazine experience, which is why
she'd applied for this job.  The differences between us often
discouraged me.  Wren wanted to write, to create, to fill a cultural
void in the lives of women all over the country.  I just wanted a nice
cozy teaching job somewhere where I could expose the thrills of English
composition to sleepy freshmen and have a good dental plan.

My thumbnail was skating back and forth under my bra strap again.  As
if I were trying to generate some enthusiasm for my life.

"So, we went to dinner," Wren said.

"What?"

"Dinner.  Geoffrey and I. To celebrate."

"Oh, yeah."  I'd forgotten about the story, about the arrest, the
tattered blue panties.  I realized I no longer cared.  I just wanted to
go home and watch television, it didn't matter what was on.

But Wren continued, "We drive to Portland to eat.  Geoffrey's going on
and on about some gorgeous guy he met at a tennis tournament."

"Another gorgeous guy?"

"He's lonely."

Geoffley's real name is Jeffley, but he had it legally changed so it
would be the same as Chaucer's.  I'm not sure why, since he didn't seem
to have any particular affinity with or affection for the dead poet.

Also, Geoffrey is gay.  He confided this to Wren and me in very hushed
tones one afternoon after his short story had been shredded by our
Fiction Workshop.  He thinks his gayness is a secret, even though all
of the characters in all of his stories are gay.

Nevertheless, we swore ourselves to secrecy.  "I don't want any
homophobic bias to affect the others' critiquing of my work," he'd
explained seriously.  "I want their complete honesty."

Fat chance.

Wren grabbed my hand and pulled it away from my bra strap.

"Stop that, you little mutant."

"I'm listening."

"Anyway, we're having dinner and Geoffrey is going on about" "Cut to
the chase, Wren.  How does Byron fit in?"

Wren reached over and started honking the horn, shouting out the car
with each honk, "PMS alert!  PMS alert!"  A big orange cat dove under a
parked car.

I stopped the car in the middle of the street.  We were still the only
traffic on the street.  Wren was laughing, her head back, her mouth
open.  Her teeth were large, something like Carly Simon's.

Here's the thing, She had just returned from some sleezy adventure
involving arrest, jail, a convict husband, and tattered blue panties.

And she was laughing.  I had done nothing more adventurous all day than
turn pages and I was the emotional wreck.

I couldn't help but stare at her.  I tried to see her the way men see
her.  As a woman who could change their lives around.  That was what
they all saw.  I'd heard men say this about her.  They confided this to
me.  God, they'd say, Wren is the kind of woman who can change my whole
life around.  At thirty, I still looked pretty much the same as I did
in high school, straight wheatblond hair that without the miracle of
perms would always look like the matted hairs on the hind leg of an
English sheepdog, thin body with arms and legs straight as toilet-paper
tubes, thick glasses because I was allergic to contact lenses, a
semipretty face that was often referred to by adults as lovely and by
my peers as sweet.  I didn't turn men's lives around.  I adorned their
lives, enhanced them somewhat, like Sweet'n Low in bitter coffee.  But
I didn't actually change anything.

"I'm going home," I said quietly.  "I'll drop you off."  I shifted into
first and began driving.

Wren leaned back in her seat and wedged her knees up against the
dashboard.  "After dinner we came back to Geoffrey's apartment.  He
invited me to take a dip in the Jacuzzi with him, but I didn't have my
bathing suit so I just went along to sit with him.

There were a few other people already soaking, so we all sat around and
talked and drank a few beers.  Geoffrey left to call his tennis
friend.

I stayed.  Well, I got tired of sitting at the side and watching
everybody else enjoying the water, so I took off my skirt and T-shirt
and climbed in.  It's not like I was nude or anything.

I had my bra and panties on.  But some asshole in one of the apartments
called the cops and they came over.

"And they arrested you for that?"

"Not exactly.  One of the guys in the Jacuzzi, big brawny type from
Sweden, grad student in comp lit, started to give the cop a hard
time.

He was a little buzzed from the beer and hot water so I admit he did
use a few harsh terms.  So the cop runs my name through his computer
and comes up with Byron's name, which is excuse enough to start
hassling me, asking questions, you know, being a cop.  Then the Swede
lumps in to protect me and there's some shoving.  I get knocked to the
ground and scrape my head on the lip of the Jacuzzi.  The Swede knocks
the cop into the hot water.  Next thing I know we're both arrested."

"You could have talhd your way out of that, Wren.  No one's better at
that than you.

"I could have," she said.  But she didn't continue.

"What about the panties?"

"Yeah.  The smart-ass cop makes me give them over when they throw me in
jail.  Says he doesn't want me to hang myself with them.

They gave them back when they released me, only they're all shredded.

He and his pals were probably gnawing on them for dinner."

"Christ, you could sue them."

"Probably."  She studied her notes on tickling, no longer interested in
the incident.

I drove in silence for a couple miles until we were at her apartment
complex.  I hit the turn signal.

"I don't want to go home yet," Wren said, sitting up with sudden
fidgety energy.

"Then don't," I said.  "But I'm dropping you off.  I'm tired."

"One more stop," she said.  "Come on.  There'll be food there, I
swear.

"Where?"  But I already knew.

"BeeGee's."

"Damn it, Wren, it's late."

"Come on, don't be such a rag.

"Right now I'd eat a rag.

"BeeGee always has food, you know that."

I turned the car around and headed for BeeGee's house.

BeeGee was Wren's abbreviation for Bat-Faced Girl.

It was after midnight and we were on our way to see the BatFaced
Girl.

The Bat-Faced Girl was cleaning her gun.

"Smith & Wesson Shofield .45," she said.  "Like the one Jesse James
used."  She thumbed a cartridge into the dark chamber.

"The same one my dad used to blow his brains out.  Hungry?

Help yourself."

We were standing in the kitchen.  The Bat-Faced Girl sat at the table
polishing the black gun barrel with some sweet-smelling oil.  The
refrigerator door was wide open, but the refrigerator was empty except
for the television set on the metal rack.  The David Letterman Show was
on.  It was disconcerting to see David Letterman's head where a head of
cabbage should be, but I was almost used to it by now.  If I'd opened
the oven door, I'd have found her stereo system.  The records and
compact discs were stored in the dishwasher.

BeeGee, real name Esther, worried about thieves.

She even had a letter she wrote to herself from the County Health
Department on official-looking stationery she designed on her
computer.

The letter was sad to inform her that her test results reveal that she
has AIDS.  She kept this letter in her car and when she left the car,
she displayed it openly on the driver's seat.  She hoped this would
scare away car thieves.

"Don't you think that gun is clean enough by now?"  Wren said.

"It's an antique," BeeGee said.  "I clean it twice a week, just like my
father did.  I don't want someone breaking in here in the middle of the
night and have the thing misfire."

"You really think you could use that on someone?"  I asked.

"A thief gets what he deserves," she said.

Wren opened the cupboard under the sink.  A mini-refrigerator squatted
there next to the garbage disposal pipes.  "What do you want, Loony?"

She leaned over, poked through the shelves.

"What are my choices?"

"We've got your standard two slices of Domino's pepperoni pizza, the
traditional half a breast of Kentucky fried fat, a tub of macaroni
salad, three Chicken McNuggets, a strawberry yogurt, and unsweetened
applesauce.

"Yogurt," I said.

"Check the date," BeeGee warned.

Wren looked at the bottom of the container.  "Just under the wire."

She tossed it to me.  I grabbed a spoon out of the drawer and sat at
the wooden table across from BeeGee.  David Letterman had dozens of
Ping-Pong paddles fastened to his body, up and down each leg, across
his chest and back.  He was wearing a motorcycle helmet with a paddle
stuck to the top like an alien antenna.  He gave the signal and Paul
Shaffer turned on a machine that fired Ping-Pong balls at David.  They
bounced off at crazy angles.  They played the whole thing back in slow
motion.

"There's plenty of food in the cupboards," BeeGee said.

BeeGee favored those freeze-dried meals in a pouch that Dick Cavett
touted on television.  You microwaved them and they were supposed to
taste like a regular TV dinner.  But I couldn't eat them because they
reminded me too much of disaster food, the , kind of stuff you store
for an emergency, a nuclear war or something.  I thought of the bomb
shelter my dad had built in our backyard when I was a child.  We spent
Labor Day weekend in it once as a test of endurance and family
strength.  Mom beat Dad about a hundred times in gin rummy and we never
did that again.

Occasionally I saw them sneak down there together, giggling, and come
out disheveled and flushed.  When we sold the house, the new owners
thought it was a marvelous place for a wine cellar.  I BeeGee snapped
open the pistol's cylinder and thumbed another cartridge into the
chamber.  I saw this out of the corner of my eye as I watched Ping-Pong
balls pummel David Letterman.

Wren hopped up onto the counter across from me and began spooning
applesauce into her mouth.  She sat crosslegged, her denim skirt
stretched tight against her thighs.  With her short skirt and no
panties, she was pretty well exposed.

"You mind?"  I said, pointing with my spoon.  "I'm trying to eat."

Wren laughed and flicked her tongue in a lewd way.

I laughed too.

BeeGee thumbed another cartridge into the chamber.

"What'd your new doctors say?"  I asked BeeGee.

BeeGee shrugged.  "The usual crap.  Mine is the most unusual case
they've ever seen.  They practically played patty cake at the thought
of the medical papers they would write about me.  They gave me more
benzodiazepines and talked about stimulus control procedures.  Same old
bullshit."

BeeGee had insomnia.  Not just stay-awake-late-cranky-in-themorning
insomnia, but never-sleeps-a-goddamn-wink insomnia.

She did not sleep.  Ever.  Hence the nickname Bat Girl.  Which Wren
changed into Bat-Faced Girl because that's a phrase from a Paul Simon
song.

BeeGee, by the way, did not look like a bat.  She had a round, but
pretty face, though the features did seem a little squished together.

The overall effect was that of a small pumpkin carved by a talented but
untutored artist.

Because she never slept, BeeGee made her house available to grad
students from all disciplines.  Twenty-four hours a day you would find
biochemistry lab rats drinking beer with lawbots.

Psych nerds watching TV while journalism scabs waited for the campus
newspaper to be delivered.  Even a few professors dropped by to relive
their old college days by pretending they didn't need sleep.  BeeGee
always had plenty of food and drink, though it was not unusual for a
group of students to arrive with half a dozen bags of groceries to show
gratitude.

-I looked over at BeeGee.  "What's stimulus, uh .

"Stimulus control procedures.  That's when they give you a set of rules
to make the bedroom associated with only good feelings of sleep.  For
example, if I get into bed and can't fall asleep within ten minutes, I
have to leave the bedroom and return only when I'm sleepy enough to go
to sleep.  I've been through that stuff before with the other
doctors.

It doesn't work."  She looked at me very intently.  "I miss the
dreaming, Luna.  I never get to dream."

I thought about my dream earlier at the library, the circles of hell,
the horrible two-headed demons with the faces of Willie Nelson and
Julio Iglesias.  Not much to miss there.

Wren hopped down from the counter and tossed the empty applesauce jar
into the trash.  She went to another cupboard and grabbed a jar of
unsalted peanuts, funneling them into her mouth with her hand.  "I had
this idea about tickling," Wren said to BeeGee while munching.  "I want
to run it by you."

"Hypergargalesthesia," BeeGee said.  "That's extreme sensitivity to
tickling."

Wren smiled.  She had come to the right person.  Running it by me had
been okay for a start, the way a businessman might practice his speech
in front of his dog before trying it out on a colleague.  I didn't
blame Wren.  BeeGee was the only other person around who knew as much
as she.  Of course, BeeGee had the unfair advantage of never
sleeping.

David Letterman was her one weakness.  The rest of the time she read.

When she wasn't home reading, she worked at the campus library.  She
knew something about everything.  The difference between her and Wren
was that though BeeGee knew more information, had more facts stored in
her brain, Wren knew how to use information, how to make connections
between things and translate all that into articles that anyone could
understand.

Wren and BeeGee discussed Wren's theory of tickling.  BeeGee cited
scientific research in the area.  I watched them out of the corner of
my eye because I didn't want them to feel as if they had to include me
in the conversation, which would have only made me feel dumber.  I'd
done a pretty fair job as a teaching assistant this year, goading
students into cranking out literate essays.  I thought I'd probably
make a good teacher somewhere.  But a few minutes with these two made
me feel criminally incompetent, an underachiever.

David Letterman turned on his bubble maker and everyone applauded.

BeeGee's calico cat jumped onto my lap.  Her left hindquarters were
shaved down to the skin.  Three red scabs pocked the skin.

"Hey, Sphinx," I said.  "What happened to you?"

"Cat fight," BeeGee said.  "Cost me $174."  She held out her arms and I
handed Sphinx to her.  "I have to give her antibiotics twice a day.

Make her swallow these pills, same as me."  BeeGee began picking at the
cat's biggest scab.  Part of the crust broke away from the skin.  She
dug out the rest of it.

-"Yeech," I said, making a face.  "What are you doing?"

"You have to keep the wound open," Wren explained.  "So it doesn't get
infected."

I took off my wire-rimmed glasses and cleaned them with the tail of my
Oxford shirt.  One of the wire earpieces was all chewed up.  Last week
I'd been studying outside the library, actually leaning up against a
tree the way you see in college catalogues, my glasses lying in my lap
while I rested my eyes, when some gnarled black mutt with a red
bandanna tied around his neck comes running by, snatches my glasses up
in his yellow teeth, and lopes off across the quad.  I climbed on my
bike and chased after him, but by the time I caught up and wrestled the
glasses away from him, the end of the earpiece was gnawed off.  The
stump that was left was all jagged, which I tried to bury under a
hundred layers of clear fingernail polish, but which wore away leaving
the jagged metal to rub against the top of my ear.  I could even feel a
callus starting to form up there.  I put my glasses back on and turned
back to watch David Letterman.  "I have to get home pretty soon, Wren,"
I said.  I didn't want BeeGee to think it was because I was sleepy, so
I added, "I have a lot of studying to do."

"Right," Wren said.  "A few minutes more.

"Excuse me," BeeGee said.  She laid the gun down on the wooden table.

It thumped heavily, like a bowling ball.  She stood up and walked into
the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Wren and I exchanged grins.  I clamped my hand to my mouth to smother a
laugh.

Finally, we heard it.  The low hum of the vibrator.

BeeGee was well known for her habit of getting up suddenly in the
middle of a conversation and disappearing into the bathroom to use her
vibrator.  I think it was therapeutic more than sexual.  A woman who
could never sleep tended not to attract men.  It made men nervous to
think of her awake, walking about while they slept.  One guy who had
dated her briefly told me it got so he couldn't sleep either.  "How can
I sleep, knowing she's in the next room doing things?"  What things?

I'd asked.  I don't know, he'd said, things.

BeeGee returned a few minutes later, her face as expressionless as when
she'd left.  Her cheeks were a little redder.  "So, what'd I miss?"

Wren pointed at me.  "Loony wants to know the best brand of vibrator.

She's in the market."

"Well," BeeGee said with a serious expression.  "It depends upon what
kind of features you're interested in."  And she began a discussion of
the merits of various types, styles, attachments, voltage.  She sounded
like a professor discussing species of plankton.

Wren grinned at me from over BeeGee's shoulder.

"You can go in and try mine, if you like," BeeGee offered.

"A test drive," Wren said.

"Thanks," I said to BeeGee.  "Some other time."

BeeGee shrugged, picked up her gun, and took a rag to the walnut
grips.

Sphinx curled up on the tabletop next to her.

"We should go," Wren said, standing.

BeeGee nodded.

I stood up.

BeeGee cocked the hammer of her gun, placed the tip of the barrel
against Sphinx's head, and pulled the trigger.  The explosion made me
jump.  Sphinx's limp body flew off the table.  A bloody clump of fur
stuck to my cheek.

"Jesus, BeeG-" I screamed.

She turned the gun toward me and fired.  The explosion and bullet hit
me at the same time.  A hot wind pulled at my face.

My legs went numb and I collapsed against the table, knocking over a
chair.  My chest burned.  I was afraid to look, afraid I'd see a hole
straight into my heart.  See the bullet stuck in it.  Funny, when I
thought about it, I didn't imagine a real heart, a fist-sized muscle, I
saw one of those Valentine Day hearts, plump and red.

I saw BeeGee cock the hammer again, the gun aimed at my face.

Wren leapt at her like some hero cop on television.  BeeGee didn't
flinch, she calmly swung the gun around and fired into Wren's chest.

Wren dropped to the kitchen floor.

I tried to crawl toward Wren, but nothing worked.  The only thing
moving was my heart pumping gurgling blood through the hole in my
chest.

BeeGee spoke to no one in particular.  "The mistake many people make is
putting the gun to their head.  It is too easy to miss the vital parts
of the brain, which often results in leaving the victim paralyzed, not
dead.  This is the proper method of disposal."  BeeGee opened her
mouth, slowly lowered her head over the barrel, and pulled the
trigger.

"I need to urinate," I said.

-"Go right ahead," she said.

"But I'm in bed."  My eyes were closed.  I had the feeling that I could
open them if I really wanted, but I wasn't confident enough to test my
theory.  What if I was wrong?  I decided instead to impress everyone
with my patience.

"Go right ahead and pee, dear," she said.

I did.  I didn't feel the urine, just the relaxing of my bladder, like
a fist gone slack.  The sheets around me stayed dry.  Stiff and dry.

"Who are you?"  I asked.

"Your mother."

"My mother is dead."

"Sorry to hear that," she said.

"How is Wren?"  I asked.

This was sometime later, after one of my naps.  I still didn't open my
eyes.  After all, what if she really was my mother?  I had thought my
mother was dead.  Killed in an auto wreck when I was eighteen.  They'd
used the jaws of life to cut her out.  I read that in the newspaper
account.  The jaws of life.  Silly phrase.  An oxymoron.  I'd pictured
a fat shark chomping open the stationwagon door.  I thought I'd
attended Mother's funeral, wearing a new black dress because I hadn't
owned anything black.  I'd settled on a velvet dress because it was
summer and it was the only black dress I could find that didn't have
huge white polka dots.

My shoes were navy blue but no one seemed to notice.  Dad gave me Mom's
pearls to wear.  They broke in the limo on the drive to the cemetery.

I'd been rubbing my thumbnail against them.  We were on our knees
gathering the pearls into his linen handkerchief.  He twisted the
corners and tied them in a knot.

For a moment he looked like a little kid holding a prized bag of
marbles.  That was the only time I ever remember Dad looking young.

They buried Mom in the morning, the grass still wet from the lawn
sprinklers.

Or maybe they didn't bury her.  Maybe I dreamed all that in some
etherized haze.  If she were alive it must have hurt her deeply for me
to pronounce her dead.  Some Freudian slip, she must wonder, wishful
thinking?  I didn't want to see the hurt in her eyes.  I kept my eyes
pressed closed.  "Is Wren okay?"

"Who, dear?"

"Wren Caldwell.  She was shot too."

_"I don't know her.  Pretty name, though.  Wren."  My chest hurt.  As
if a starving rodent had gnawed through the skin and muscle and now was
crunching through the bones of my rib cage.  Each breath felt like
another bite.

"Can you cheek on Wren, please?"

"Sure, dear.  Now get some sleep."

"Is it okay if I urinate again?"

"Of course, dear.  Fire away.

"What day is it?"

"Saturday."

"Thank you."  I counted days.  Three.  Three days since the Bat I Faced
Girl shot her cat and Wren and me.  I was unaccountably cheerful.

"Saturday.  I've always relied on the kindness of Saturdays."

"That's very funny," she said.

Encouraged, I opened my eyes.  They worked.  I couldn't remember why
I'd thought I'd be better off with them closed.  I looked at the woman
standing next to my bed.  "You're not my mother.

"Of course I'm not.  You said your mother was dead."

"You said you were my mother."

"Glover," she said.  "Nurse Glover."

Your mother.  Nurse Glover.  They did sound similar.

I stared up at her as she made the empty bed next to mine.

She was a chubby woman in a rumpled white uniform.  She wore a nubby
blue sweater over her uniform.  She had clumsily bleached hair and the
vacant look of someone who'd graduated at the bottom percentage of her
nursing class.  But she moved around that bed like a pool hustler
lining up a money shot.

"I'm sorry about the misunderstanding," I said.

"It's the drugs, dear.  You had a lot of drugs.  You'll snap out of
it."

"How's Wren?  Did you check?"

Her face snapped taut as the fitted sheet she was smoothing.

"I'm not allowed to discuss other patients."

I sighed with relief.  "If she's a patient, then she's okay."

"I can neither confirm nor deny that."

"That doesn't make any sense.  She's my friend."

"This is a hospital," she said by way of explanation.  She turned her
back and fluffed a pillow.  The back of her sweater was matted with
long white cat hair.

"Who can tell me about Wren?"  I asked.  "You'll have to speak to your
doctor.  Dr.  Granger."  "Where is he?"

"She.  Dr.  Jennifer Granger."

"Goddamn it, Wren's my best friend."  I tried to sit up.  The hungry
rodent bit into my plump heart.  Sparks sizzled in my brain.  I dropped
back onto my pillow.  "Just tell me if she's alive."

"I'm sorry," she said and hurried out of the room.

"Hello, Mrs.  Devon, I'm Officer Simmons."

I opened my eyes.  "You're the one Wren yelled at the other night.  At
the police station."

He grinned and nodded.  His cheeks flushed.  "She was quite a woman.

"Was?"

His baby face drained white.  "Well, I mean, she's, uh, dead."

My body sort of collapsed in on itself.  Like time-lapse photography of
a rotting grape shriveling into a raisin.  "No," I said, the calmness
in my voice surprising me.  It was my teacher voice.

"There is obviously a mistake.  Wren couldn't be dead.  You must have
looked at the wrong charts or something."  Isn't that what people on TV
always said?

"No mistake, Mrs.  Devon.  I was at the scene that night."

He cut himself off but I could tell he'd been about to relate
convincing details to me about the size of the hole in her chest, the
amount of blood, how he had closed her vacant eyes.  He didn't
understand.  Those things didn't matter with Wren.  She couldn't die.

"I need to ask you a few questions," he said.

"Esther shot her cat," I said.  "How's the cat?"

"Dead."

I nodded.  My sinuses filled with fluid and stung my nose and eyes.

I wanted to cry but somehow I couldn't.  Crying seemed too easy, a
melodramatic cliche'.  Wren deserved better.

"Miss Kleinman is dead also," Officer Simmons reported.

"Yes.  Of course."  I sat up.  My chest clenched in protest, but I
ignored it.  "This is what happened.  Wren and I went over to see
BeeGee-" "Who?"  He stopped writing.

"Esther Kleinman.  We ate, watched David Letterman in her refrigerator,
Esther shot the cat, then me, then Wren, then herself.  End of
story."

"Why did she do it?"

"What do you mean?"  I asked.

"Well, she was your friend.  Why would she shoot you?"  He tried to
look innocent and boyish, but his eyes were tense and suspicious.

"I don't know.  Maybe because she was a severe insomniac and had gone
nuts from not being able to sleep.  Maybe because she couldn't
dream."

"Drugs were found on the premises."

"Shouldn't a detective be asking me these questions, Officer?

Aren't you supposed to advise me of my rights?"

He looked hurt.  "We are a very small department, Mrs.  Devon.

As to your rights, I'm just asking a few questions.  However, if you
wish to have an attorney present, that is your right."

"Listen, you found what, a couple joints?"

"I can't confirm or deny what we found, Mrs.  Devon."

"You find a couple joints and you think you've walked into the
Colombian Connection?  You think this was a drug deal gone bad, that
BeeGee was running a crack house?"

"I'm just investigating all possibilities."

"Then why'd she shoot the cat, Kojak?"

"Pardon?"

"If this was about drugs, why shoot the cat?  He shortchanged her on a
delivery of cocaine?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny anything to do with the investigation,
Mrs.  Devon."

"Bullshit," I said.  "Do you hear what I'm saying, Officer?  Do you?"

He leaned backward, the way he had that night, and for an instant, in
his startled face, Wren was still alive.

I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

The doctor drew a picture of my left breast.  She made it look larger
than it was.  I wondered if that was meant to cheer me up.

"This is your breast," she said.

"Before or after the implant," I said.

She smiled, but she didn't look up.  She drew a small circle on the
breast and scribbled it in with her pen.  "This is where you were
shot."

I wondered why we didn't just use my real breast, since it was already
naked and I could see exactly where I'd been shot.  A white gauze pad
covered the hole, but I'd seen the hole too.  Dark moist crater, like a
tar pit hiding the tiny bones of extinct species.

She dotted the paper breast a few times.  "These are the powder
burns."

I looked at my breast, saw the tiny scabs on my skin where the powder
had burned through my skin where my blouse had been unbuttoned.  A
V-shaped pattern.  Ducks flying south toward my navel.

"Actually," the doctor continued, "it's good that you were so close.

The bullet punched right through your chest and out your back.  The
police call it a "through and through."  In one hole and out the back
door.  Less damage.  The bullet doesn't have a chance to expand or
fragment.  If you had been farther away, the same bullet might have
killed you."

"Like Wren."  "Yes, like Ms.  Caldwell."

Dr. Jennifer Granger was at most twenty-seven.  Naturally I hated
her.

Three years younger and she was diagramming my personal organs as if
she'd known them all her life.  I thought of snatching up her pen and
drawing her face, short no-nonsense hair, brown as a melted candy bar,
snub nose the size of a nipple, thin lips that if it weren't for
lipstick you wouldn't even know were there.  Here's the part I liked,
she had a small rash of acne splashed across her chin.  You could tell
she'd tried to cover it with makeup, but clumsily, so she only managed
to call more attention to it.

"This is your heart, Luna," she said.  She drew a heart under the
breast.  It looked very official.  A real heart, like in cancer
commercials.  It looked like my father's knotted handkerchief i swollen
with my mother's loose pearls.  "This is where the bullet nicked you.

The left ventricle."  She drew an arrow that pierced the heart
Cupid-like.  "This is the bullet's trajectory.  Shaved a little of the
papillary muscle, but missed the arteries and valves.

You were very lucky."

"I keep hearing that."

She clicked her ballpoint pen, retracting the ink cartridge.  She
looked up at me, an expression of concern wrinkling her features.

That is how she would look fifteen years from now.  "Depression in
these circumstances is to be expected, Luna.  An act like this, so
violent, so"she looked around the room as if searching for the right
word"random.  So random.  It shakes our sense of stability.  Rattles
primordial fears.  That's to be expected."  She placed a hand on my
bare shoulder.  Her flesh was cool and soft.

"If you'd like, I can have a therapist talk with you.  Your insurance
will cover it, so don't worry about the cost."

I didn't want to see a shrink or a wannabe shrink.  I had papers to
write and a class to teach.  My thesis on the reclusive Thomas Pynchon
still wasn't finished.

"When can I get out of here?"  I asked.

"What about the therapist?"  she asked.

"I'll think it over."

She shook her head and rubbed the bridge of her nose the , people who
wear glasses do, though she wore contacts.  Old ha, die hard.  I rubbed
my thumbnail along the seam of the hospital mattress.

"When can I get out?"  I repeated.

She gathered up her clipboard and pen and started for the do' "I'll see
what I can do.  No promises, though."  Like she was lawyer negotiating
a plea bargain.  "And think about the therapi There's no stigma in
asking for help."

"Help me get out of here," I said, pulling my gown back c "There, I
asked."

She chuckled and walked out of the room.

"Don't open your eyes," he said.

I didn't.

"Hold out your hand."

I did.

"Keep your eyes closed.  Don't cheat now, keep them close, "They're
closed," I said.

"Okay, don't move.  Don't move.  Do.  Not.  Move."

My open palm filled with an unmistakable and familiar pr, ence.  My
fingers curled around it.

"Can I open my eyes now?"

"Open, Sesame."

I opened my eyes.  I looked right at it and laughed.  Laughing twanged
the stitches in my chest.  My left boob ached as if someone were
tightening long brass screws through my nipple direci into my heart.

But I kept laughing anyway.  I couldn't help it Robby's penis was lying
in my hand like a small flashlight.

was only semierect, but that was plenty large enough.  On the head,
he'd drawn eyes with a black mask around them, and in liner around the
pee hole made it look like a mouth.  He even had a tiny cowboy hat
strapped to it with a rubber band.  TI entire shaft of the penis was
drawn with a web of fish scales around it.  "Return with us now," he
intoned in his deep rad announcer's voice, "to those exciting days of
yesteryear and The Lone Flounder."  He wagged his dick against my palm
as if were swimming.  "Great idea for a TV series, huh?  The Lone
Flounder swims up into the toilets of evildoers and bites them on III
the ass.  He'll have a girlfriend known only as His Koi Mistress.

What do you think?  Am I a fuckin' genius or what?"  tit "I think you'd
better put it away before a nurse walks in."

"It'll give her a thrill.  You wanna bet?"  He skipped around the room
wagging his dick and humming the "1812 Overture."

"Da dum da dum da dum dum dum.  Hi Ho, Scrotum."

I laughed again.  "You're going to get Thumper thrown out of here."

His penis was Thumper.  My vagina was Bambi.  At first, in those early
lustful years, we'd called his penis Godzilla because of that short
film Godzilla Meets Bambi.  The one where Bambi is playing sweetly in
the woods and suddenly a huge prehistoric foot stomps her into a
tortilla.  We saw that film on one of our first dates back in college,
so giving our sexual organs names seemed pretty funny at the time.  But
I didn't like calling his dick Godzilla because he'd sometimes call it
God for short.  At first, that was funny too.  "Come and worship your
God, Luna."  Or "God requires another sacrifice, Luna."  That kind of
joking.  It cracked us up quite a bit.  But after a while, it just made
me uncomfortable.  Not that I'm religious, which I'm not.  It's just
that I felt like we were ridiculing other people and I didn't want
every time we made love to be an act of ridicule.  So I changed its
name to Thumper.

Robby removed the tiny cowboy hat and stuffed the Lone Flounder back
into his pants.  He sat on the edge of the bed and squeezed my thigh
through the blanket.  His eyes turned watery and I thought he might
cry.  "Jesus, Loon.  Jesus."

"I know.  Weird, huh?"

He just shook his head in wonderment.

"Wren's dead," I said.

"I know.  I can't believe it.  I thought she was too tough to die."

Did he ever think if I was too tough to die?  Or was he surprised that
I was alive instead of Wren?  Was my being alive proof of a
naturalistic world without moral order?  Wren's death proof that the
good die young?  Robby had had a crush on Wren since I first brought
her home.  He couldn't take his eyes off her, stop talking to her.  I
never held that against him since it seemed that every guy felt that
way about her.  He never did anything about it, probably because he
knew Wren would tell me.

"Robby likes you," I'd told Wren once.  We shared the same tiny office
on the top floor of the English Department, where all teaching
assistants were sentenced to serve their time.  We were grading
freshman compositions at our respective gray metal desks.

The walls were a faded lime-green, which gave the whole building the
drab air of an abandoned post office.

"You hear me?"  I asked.

She looked up from the composition, herdrugstore reading glasses
resting on the tip of her nose.  "What?

"My husband, Robby, who is my husband, likes you.  Did I mention that
he was my husband?"  I expected her to say something like well, I like
him too, pretending that she didn't know what I meant.

"Yes, I know," she said, returning to her grading.

"How do you know?"

She slapped her ,pen down and frowned at me.  "Give me a break here,
Loony.

"I'm serious.  How the hell do you know?"

"How the hell do you know?"

"I'm his goddamn wife.  He talks about you in that way men have, you
know, when they're so infatuated they need to talk about a woman, but
they couch it in seemingly innocent observations.  "Doesn't that Wren
have an interesting insight into Martin Heidegger's philosophy?"  When
what they mean is "Doesn't Wren have an ass to die for?"

Wren laughed.  "Don't worry, he hasn't touched my ass."

"And if he did?"

"Would you want to know?"

I hesitated.  "Yes."

"Then I'd tell you."

"Would you turn him down?"

She picked up her pen and tapped it absently, against the composition
on her desk.  I wondered how the student would interpret those
pockmarks.

"1 can't answer that," she said.  "I don't know what I'd do."

That night I'd told Robby about my conversation with Wren about him and
he'd stormed around the apartment waving his copy of Virginia Woolf's
To the Lighthouse, which he'd been reading in the bathtub.  He had a
towel knotted around his waist but he was dripping all over the
carpet.

He protested that he had no sexual interest in Wren, merely
intellectual appreciation.  He did not want to sleep with her.  He was
very disappointed in me IL for even suggesting such a thing.  Then he
went on to list her faults, punctuating each flaw with a slap to the
cover of Virginia Woolf's novel.  Wren was self-centered.  Wren was
pushy.  Wren was a snob.  Wren laughed too easily.  Wren smoked too
much.

Wren used too much biographical background in interpreting
literature.

Wren's hair was too frizzy.

As the list went on, I realized I'd only instigated another disguised
declaration of love.  Standing there listening to him was like having
your husband rehearse his seduction speech for another woman.  When I
mentioned this to him, his face grew red and he slammed his book on the
table and said, "Women don't know shit about men!"

Now in the hospital, he seemed concerned about me but some how
remote.

A few months ago he would have been camped out in my room, spending all
his time with me, grading his papers, doing his Ph.  D. work, watching
television with me.  He'd be talking about how he would take care of me
once we got home.

Make soup with oyster crackers, bring me People magazine.  But now his
backpack was leaning against the wall, ready to be grabbed on the way
out.  This was just a visit, an obligation.  Lending support to the
soon-to-be-ex.  Doing the Decent Thing.

"You made the television news," he said.  "Local anyway."

"I saw.  They weren't very kind to Esther."

He shrugged.  "She doesn't care anymore.

"They all carried the same photo of Wren.  That one she did as a joke,
where she looks like she's posing for the cover of Cosmo."

"I saw.

"It's like no event is really a tragedy unless someone pretty dies."

"This stuff is starting to itch."  Robby scratched his crotch.

"What?"

"This body paint on my dick.  It's starting to itch."

I gestured to the bathroom.  "Go wash it off."

He went in and ran the water.  While he was there he took a leak.  He
left the door open so he could keep talking to me.  I listened to the
drumming of his urine against water.

"How's class?"  I asked.

"We're finished with poetry.  They're writing short stories now.

"Are they any good?"

"One giit shows some potential.  The others are all into the
twist-ending syndrome.  You know, someone wakes up at the end and it's
all been a bad dream.  Shit like that."

"How's it going at the station?"

"Bunch of assholes.  Nobody wants me to play jazz anymore.

It's rock "n' roll or nothing.  Radio is dead."  He was scrubbing his
penis with soap.

"How's the novel coming?"

"Novels are dead.  I'm doing something different.  A non-novel.

It's like a time-warp thing where all these yuppies are on this Love
Boat cruise and the ship sinks.  A small group of them wash up on this
island where all these famous people from history keep appearing
through this rip in time.  Like Socrates and Shakespeare and Teddy
Roosevelt.  It's so cool, you get this tight-assed stock broker type
face-to-face with Mussolini and they end up discussing their daughters'
braces.  Fascism on Elm Street."

Robby was in his last quarter of finishing his Ph.D. in English.  When
we were both undergraduates together ten years ago, he was one of the
star writers in the department.  His teachers expected great things
from him.  He'd published a few poems and stories in prestigious
literary magazines.  After graduation, he went right into graduate
school for his master's and I went to work at an employment placement
service, headhunting for executives.

I had been an English major too, but I didn't write.  My poems were
sappy and my stories were about people who woke up at the end and the
whole thing was a dream.

One of Robby's professors helped him get a New York agent and for about
a year we were giddy with anticipation that Robby's first novel would
be bought for big bucks, like those other young writers we kept hearing
about.  Then we would go to Hollywood so he could write the screenplay
for even bigger bucks, only we wouldn't get corrupted like everyone
else.  But it never happened.

Editors liked his style but lamented a lack of plot.  Robby's second
novel didn't fare much better.

After receiving his master's, Robby decided he didn't care about
writing that much and preferred to have a family.  He was very excited
about this new direction we were going to take.  He got a steady job at
a radio station playing jazz records that I couldn't bear listening
to.

We worked at getting me pregnant, which was a peculiar feeling after
the years of elaborate precautions and silent tension if my period was
even a few days late.  Finally I became pregnant and we celebrated as
jubilantly as if he'd sold his novel.  A month later I miscarried and
the expression of relief on Robby's face was so plain that without even
discussing it we returned to our cautious sex.  Robby applied to return
to graduate school for his doctorate.

I applied too, not out of any dedication to a new career, but mostly, I
think, because I didn't want Robby to start looking at me with the same
contempt he sometimes looked at his students.

-I didn't want to live through those after-movie sessions where he
would patiently explain some literary allusion to me.  It wasn't that
he was snobby, it's just that he had a great mind and a true love of
literature and couldn't understand why everyone else wasn't as obsessed
as he.

Robby came out of the bathroom with a smoking joint between his lips.

He inhaled deeply and offered it to me.

"This is a hospital," I said brusquely.  I don't know why I said that,
I didn't care that he was smoking.

"Right, a hospital.  You holding out for bigger and better drugs?"

"Robby, don't be an asshole."

"You called me an asshole.  That must mean you're feeling better."

"I'm not feeling anything."  He pinched out the tip of the joint and
stuck it back in his pocket.  He sat back on the edge of the bed.  "You
don't mean physically, that you're paralyzed or anything."

"No, Robby, I'm not paralyzed.  I'm just tired, I guess."

Robby looked at me and for a moment it was the old look, the look of
genuine love and concern.  His long blond hair curled in a hundred
directions at once.  I wanted to reach out and touch his hair.  Seeing
his hair made me miss him more than holding his penis had.

His eyes flickered, just a little, and I could tell he'd just
remembered who we were now.  He looked over at his backpack near the
door.  When he looked back at me I could see what was in his mind, his
classes, his non-novel, his new woman.  He was dating Dr. Helen
Jaspers, the dean of the English Department, eight years older but
still trim and energetic.  She was an expert on Milton.

"Tell me, Luna," he said, his voice rich with sincerity, but his eyes
blank as Milton's, "tell me how you feel."  He reached out and held my
hand, his fingers in their natural grooves just like my thumbnail in my
bra strap.  There was a time, back in the Thumper and Bambi days, when
that look, that hand wrapped around mine, that radio announcer's voice,
would have made me pour out everything inside of me.  But I wasn't sure
if there was anything inside of me.  I felt the bulky bandage on my
back where the bullet had exited.  It was as if that bullet hole had
allowed whatever I felt about anything to leak out.

Like there was no more of me left inside.  Just the empty husk of
Luna.

"Robby," I said, squeezing his hand.  "I hate jazz."

My father phoned the day I was being released.  Nurse Glover had just
handed me the plastic bag with my hospital toothbrush, shampoo, soap,
and dental floss.  You get to keep those.

"Hello?"  I said into the phone.

"Luna, my God, I just heard.  How are you, honey?"

"Fine, Dad.  They're just releasing me today."

"I'd been following the Tijamuchi River.  I just heard."

I'd called Dad the first day I was able to open my eyes.  His phone
machine in Houston had a recorded message informing the caller that Ben
Masters was out of the country and wouldn't be back for four months,
leave a message and maybe, if he had the time, he'd call you back.

id predictable in people or in nature irritated him.  NASA tried to
keep him, offering him more money and a significant promotion.

Alan Shepard and John Glenn both called, asking him to reconsider.

But he refused.  Dad was looking for something special and he suddenly
realized he wouldn't find it in outer space.

One day he gathered Mom and me into the kitchen.  On the kitchen table
was my old metal globe, the one with the dent in Spain where I threw my
shoe when I got grounded back in third grade for beating up Kathy
Hodges, the wimpy little bitch from next door.  Dad reached over and
spun the globe.  It squeaked and wobbled and I remember wondering if
the planet squeaked and wobbled that much when it turned.  Maybe that's
what thunder is was.  I got very excited thinking I may have discovered
some new scientific theory, but then Dad started talking and I forgot
my t idea.

d "This is my new job, ladies," he said.

"Repairing globes?"  Mom said with a smile.

Dad grinned back.  He was in an exceptionally good mood and that made
me happy too.  Since I didn't really have a clue to what he did at
NASA, the fact that he'd quit didn't really mean much to me.  Mom
didn't give any indication that she was worried either, so I looked at
this whole thing as if Dad were just changing schools.

"This is the plan," Dad said.  "I've decided to become an
anthropologist."  He looked at me with a big smile.  "That means I
study people, Luna.  People from all over the world."

"Not that again, Ben," Mom said, not really annoyed.

"You know I've always been interested.  The timing is perfect."

Mom gave the globe a little spin.  "Anybody going to pay you to do
this?"

Dad winked at me.  "As a matter of fact Somehow Dad had gotten an
assignment to go to someplace in Africa where a warrior tribe from the
mountains was working on a crude pair of wings made from water buffalo
hide stretched over elephant bones, hoping to use them to swoop down
and kill their enemy across the river.  Some magazine thought it would
be ironic to have Dad go there and give his space-age perspective.

He went and the article was successful.  Other assignments followed.

Dad studied on his own, reading everything from Darwin to Thomas Henry
Huxley to Ashley Montagu, always with a book in his hand and an amazed
expression on his face.

He became his own astronaut, launching himself into the remote corners
of the planet, doing his own moonwalk along the Amazon.  I think Mom
played along because she thought he would burn himself out after a
short while.  Or maybe she really thought it was a good idea and was as
excited as he was about changing our lives.  I was only ten at the time
and the only real difference to my life was that now Daddy went off to
work in jungles and deserts instead of Houston.  When he'd worked for
NASA he'd taken a lot of trips, so it wasn't as if he was really gone
any longer than before.  But now when he returned he was tanner and his
presents were something carved out of foulsmelling roots by barefoot
natives instead of something with batteries bought in an airport gift
shop.

That was twenty years ago.  He'd been an anthropologist longer than
he'd been a rocket scientist, but I still thought of him as the space
physicist on a leave of absence, like a defrocked priest or
something.

"What does the doctor say?"  he asked.

"That I still have a heart."

"Then you're going to be fine?"

"Yes, Dad.  Good as new."

"Robby knows what to do, right?  How to take care of you?"

Nurse Glover steered a wheelchair through the door and parked it next
to me.  I made a face at it.  She mouthed, regulations.  I nodded.

"Dad," I said, "Robby and I are getting a divorce."

"Because of this?  That son of a bitch!"

"No, Dad, not because of this.  We've been working out the details for
a few months now."

"Jesus, Luna."  He was silent for a while.  "You want me to come there,
honey?  I could be there by tonight or tomorrow morning."

He would come if I asked.  But I didn't want to have to ask.

And, to be fair, I didn't know what I'd do with him if he did come.

We were neither close nor distant, more like people who'd survived some
great natural disaster who hold annual reunions.

"I'm okay, Dad.  I just want to get back into the swing of things.

Get back to teaching.  Finish my degree.

-"How goes the hunt for the elusive job?"  he asked.

"The job has gone from elusive to endangered.  I'm sending out another
fifty resumes before I declare it extinct."

"Don't give up, honey.  You can't give ,p, Sure, I can, I wanted to
say.  It's easy.  Just ask the Bat-Faced Girl.

"Um, sweetheart," he said, his voice hesitant.  "One thing.

"What?"

"Uh, well, this isn't the best time, but it never is, we talk so "What,
Dad?"

"I got married."

"What?"  Dad never talked about women, never seemed to be interested in
them after Mom died.  Widows and divowees called for him incessantly.

On occasion I'd even tried to arrange a date for him.  But he always
refused.  This had to be one hell of a woman.  "Jesus, Dad, "Yeah, I
know.  I want you to meet her."

"Sure.  Is she in Houston?"

"No.  She's down here with me."

Great, another globe-spinning anthropologist putting a microscope to
the natives.  "When are you two coming back so I can meet dear ole
stepmum?"

"I'm not sure, honey."

Pause.

"You see, I still have to teach her English."

Throat clearing.

"I'm the first white man she's ever seen."

"Jesus, Dad."

"She has a very important job in her tribe.  Very important."

His voice became animated again, the voice of Thomas Edison when the
damn light bulb finally worked.  Or Wren when she made me pull over
that last night.  "The tribal elders believe that a little viper venom
mixed with the semen of the tayra-that's a huge, extremely vicious
weasel-produces a potion that keeps them forever virile.  It's her job
to milk the semen from the weasel and the venom from the viper.

Extraordinary stuff, really."

"Excuse me, Dad, you mean she jacks off weasels to make a sperm
milkshake for these old farts so they can keep their withered peckers
up?"

"In essence.  Of course, it's easy to make fun from the comfort of the
land where everyone thinks what the Nielsen families think.  These
people take this very seriously.  Hers is a very important position in
the tribe.  Very respected.  She has three servants of her own.

"Hey, I'm not making fun.  At least she has a job, that's more than I
have.  I can't wait to see the home movies of stepmum hard at work."

Nurse Glover tapped her watch in a friendly way and nodded at the
wheelchair.  I held up a finger to indicate one minute.  I didn't
really have anything more to say anyway.  I was just goading him now
and there wasn't really any satisfaction in it.  Dad was being as
predictable as the moon.  Before Mom had died we'd been a fairly close
family, even with Dad gone for months at a time.  When he was home, we
did everything together.  Mom's exuberance held us together.  When she
died, he stayed with me for a year, but we hardly spoke.  Finally he
left me with his sister, Aunt Lydia.  After that, he was gone for
longer and longer periods of time.  What did I expect from him now?  To
jet home to be by my side, watch TV with me at night while I graded
freshman compositions on the pros and cons of the death penalty?

Dad was looking for answers as far away as he could get from his own
past.  "Actually," Dad explained, "I'm not permitted to photograph her
until she goes through the Ceremony of the River next month.

After that, it will be okay because her soul will be known by the river
and can no longer be stolen by the camera.

"Ceremony of the River?  Sounds impressive.  She becomes chief of the
tribe or something?"

"No, it's the same ceremony all tribal men and women go through."  More
throat clearing.  "When they turn fifteen."

"Come in.  Come in.  Come in.  Come in."

I entered his office.  "Relax, Theo, I'm in already."

"Sit, sit, sitsitsitsit."  Theo gestured grandly at the red leather
wing chair across from his desk.  The brass studs lining the chair
glinted in the fluorescent light like an airport runway at night.  I
shuffled toward the chair.  Even after a week out of the hospital, a
samba shuffle was the best I could manage.

"It's you," he said with a boisterous tone.  "Really you."  He paced
behind his desk until I had gingerly lowered myself into the chair.  He
watched me with barely concealed alarm, tugging at his gray, manicured
beard.  When I was finally seated, he dropped into his own chair.  "For
God's sake, Luna, sit back and relax.  Relax already."

"Actually, Theo, I can'tsit back.  I have a bullet hole in my ack."

"My God, really?"  He bounced forward in his chair, yanking on his
beard so frantically I thought he might tear chunks out.

"I'd heard it was just the one wound."  He touched his own chest.

"How insensitive.  I'm frighffully sorry.  Sit any way you want,
Luna.

I'm serious.  Relax however suits you."

"You relax, Theo.  I'm fine.  Really.  In fact, if I stand naked in a
stiff breeze, the hole through my chest can whistle a perfect C
sharp.

Theo shook his head.  "How do you do it, Luna?  How do you?

How?"

"Just keep turning until the wind hits the opening like a Coke
bottle."

"You know what I mean.  How do you keep your spirits up like this?

You're so brave.  Most most men-would "Phlegm, Theo?"  I laughed.

"You know what I mean.  I mean, I would have expected this 1 kind of
bravado from Wren, she was He gestured, indicating Wren was something
unexplainable.  "But you, you re so My I God, how,do you do it?"

"Drugs help."  you're kidding, Luna.  But around here, a university and
all, we have to be careful about even joking about drugs.  Even the
offhand remark, the casual hon mot, can be misunderstood,
misinterpreted."  He webbed his fingers I together and wiggled them
back and forth, I think to show how I remarks get misinterpreted."

"I'm talking about prescription drugs, Theo."  11

"Of course you are.  I understand that.  But someone passing by, a
young student maybe, they overhear a fragment, they don't I know the
whole story.  They tell their parents.  Pretty soon I'm ass-deep in
religious fundamentalists and undercover nares.

Theo wasn't just being paranoid.  Three tenured members of the faculty
had been arrested this year for drug possession.  Two of them had been
turned in by their own students.  The third drove his car through his
ex-wife's backyard Halloween party.

The publicity had hurt campus enrollment.  "I'm sorry, Theo."

He nodded relief.  He stood up and paced around his office as if to
measure what he had to lose in the event of a narcotics bust, hundreds
of books about composition (one of which he wrote and we were required
to use in all the composition courses), a facsimile edition of T. 5.

Eliot's The Waste Land with notes by Ezra Pound, etchings by Balding
Grien, a brass-studded red leather chair.

Dr. Theodore Benfley, fifty-eight, had been Dean of Instruction for
the English Departu,ent Composition Program for cigh- teen years.  He
was a fussy little man who seemed to agonize over everything.  He ran
the thirty-three sections of freshman composition, all taught by
graduate students, with efficiency if not imagination.  To him, the
teaching of composition was merely a matter of following routine,
similar to filling in a crossword puzzle.  Although he was born in
Sioux City, Iowa, he had cultivated a sophisticated European look, dark
suits with vests, cuff links, even affecting a slight British accent at
times.  When he got drunk or flustered, he quoted T. 5. Eliot a lot.

Thursday through Sunday evenings he moonlighted as headwaiter at a
fancy French restaurant.  He claimed it relaxed him and helped keep his
ego in perspective.  Plus, he made more money than as a full
professor.

His wife, Casey, was a boxy little woman with giant breasts who worked
for campus security.  She wore a snappy uniform and drove one of those
golf carts, handing out parking tickets.

I watched Theo pace and tried to imagine him making love to his wife.

I pictured him in his waiter's tuxedo, her in her starched blue
uniform.  That's as far as I could get without laughing.

He sat back down and looked at me.  His gray eyes drifted to my
breast.

Beneath my sweater, I was wearing a regular bra with a hole scissored
in so as not to rub against the bandage.  Still, everyone who knew
about the shooting couldn't help but stare at my wounded breast the way
people are compelled to pat a pregnant woman's belly.  Perhaps they
thought my breast should be smaller, as if part of it had been shot
away.  It made me selfconscious.

"They're still there, Theo," I said.

"What?"  He looked up.  "What?  Of course they are.  Of course."  He
shuffled some papers on his desk, absently transferred a few file
folders from basket to basket.  "Of course they are.  I didn't mean
anything.  Was I staring?  I didn't mean to stare."

"I know you didn't, Theo."  I shifted in the chair.  It was very
uncomfortable to sit this straight.  "Look, I just d,rnpped by to let
you know I'm ready to pick up my class again.  "So soon?"

"The sooner the better.  I just want to get back to my class, finish
the semester out.  The doctor says I can start back on Monday."

"Monday?"  He frowned.

"Sure, what's wrong with Monday?"

"Monday."  He stood up and paced again, twisting a hunk of beard into a
point.

"What's the problem, Theo?  It is my class.  I've only missed two
weeks.  Christ, my students miss more than that during ski season."

"Monday," he said, straightening an etching on the wall.  "I don't
know.  Monday."

"Yes, Monday."

He stopped pacing and sat back down in his chair.  The walk seemed to
have exhausted him.  His face was gray and stern, like a
headwaiter's.

"Can't do it, Luna.  I'm sorry.

"What are you talking about?  It's my class."

"Well, technically, it's the university's class.  You are assigned to
teach it.  Now we have someone else teaching it.  I can't see that the
students would benefit any to have their classroom dynamics disrupted
again.  We're almost at the end of the semester anyway.

"What are you talking about?"  My breathing became labored.

Each inhaled breath felt as ifthe air were leaking out ofmy bullet
holes before it had a chance to reach my heart.  I tried to breathe
deeper.

"Are you all right, Luna?"  Theo asked.

"Yes, I'm fine.  Just tell me what the hell is going on?"

"Of course, you will be encouraged to complete your degree.

If you need an extension of time to complete your thesis, I've been
assured there will be no problem in getting one.  And don't worry about
the money.  You will remain on the payroll as a teaching assistant
until the end of the semester.  So money is no problem."

"I want to teach, Theo.  That's what I do.  That's what I'm applying to
do after I leave here.  It's why I came here."  The last part wasn't
strictly true, but I didn't care about truth anymore.

"And you'll make a wonderful teacher, Luna.  Wonderful."  He leaned
back in his chair with a sigh.  His headwaiter's expression I was
gone.

Now he looked like an old man with financial worries.  I -"Luna, the
circumstances of your accident are such that the university has to
weather a whole new storm of controversy.  A university employee shoots
two university students, who are also employees.  You can imagine the
public-relations nightmare.  If you were a parent, would you risk
sending your child here?"

"I'm the victim here, Theo, not the criminal."

"I know, I know.  But just your appearance in the classroom is
unnerving to some.  And we know that drugs were found on the
premises."

"A couple joints, Theo.  And I wasn't smoking any.  Ask the cops, they
did tests."

"I know you weren't.  But you were there.  We're talking about
appearances.  The university has to appear as if they are taking things
under control.  Bottom line, we think it's better if you stay away from
the classroom, except as a student."

I wondered how Wren would have handled this.  Because I knew that by
the time Wren left this office she would not only have gotten her class
back, she would have had Theo apologizing.

She would have used logic, she would have used emotion, she would have
used threats.  I could do that.  But it wasn't just what she would have
said, it was how.  It was how she did things.  That's what made her
Wren.

"Relax, Luna.  Go home and rest.  Concentrate on completing your
degree."

I slowly stood.  My lower back hurt from sitting so upright.  My butt
was numb.  My breast ached as if I were nursing a sharptoothed
ferret.

I probably looked like an old lady walking stiffly toward the door.  I
could see the pity on Theo's face and that made me even sadder.

"T.S. said something once," Theo said.  "T.S. said, "Teach us to care
and not to care/Teach us to sit still."  Remember that, Luna."

Now I was angry.  I wished I could make my head spin like the little
girl in The Exorcist and say what she said, "Your mother sucks cocks in
hell."  But I merely straightened myself into an erect pose of
indignant pride and marched out of his office.  I hoped I looked
impressive, because inside, inside where Esther's bullet had tunneled
through my organs, somewhere inside there I was curling up into a
quivering ball of phlegm.

I poured a second helping of Cheerios and my wedding ring tumbled out
of the box along with the toasted 0's and clanked into the bowl.  I
poured milk over the cereal and the ring was lifted afloat by the
Cheerios like tiny brown inner tubes.  The ring was just a band of
gold.  No inscription.  No family heirloom.  The II only distinguishing
mark was a deep scratch from the time Robby IL had tried to teach me to
skateboard on a steep hill and I fell, _ scraping all the skin off my
palms and gouging the ring."ate around the ring.  It I was standing at
the ironing board, eating cereal for lunch It while scissoring another
bra.  I'd had cereal for breakfast too, and I it looked like I had just
enough to get through dinner if I didn't II get sloppy with the milk.

I'd ouilined the prospective hole in the bra cup with a black pen, then
started cutting.  The bra I'd been II wearing for the past few days had
bloodstains around the edges 11 of the cutout.  All the frayed threads
were red and it looked like somebody's bleeding scalp hanging from my
boob.  There was nothing medically wrong, my doctor assured me, spot
bleeding I was perfectly normal.  But it unnerved me to see blood on my
bra.

The television was on and I listened to Green Acres.  Occasionally,
when the laugh track swelled, I'd look up from my surgical procedure to
see what was so funny, but by then I'd missed it and all I'd see was
Eddie Arnold looking perplexed at Eva Gabor in a nightgown.

I was wearing neon green shorts but nothing else.  My bare breasts had
enormous goose bumps from the fan on the table and the way they were
all bunched together in a circle around my nipple kind of reminded me
of the Bolivian natives my father was studying.

imagined them all gathered around to worship at the sacred altar of the
Great River Nipple.  I searched through the crowd of goose bumps for
Dad's wife, but I couldn't find one that looked like a
fourteen-year-old girl jerking off a weasel.

I did find one that looked a little like Eva Gabor, though.

The bandage on my breast was smaller now, the size of four postage
stamps, but there was a yellowish crust on the gauze that the doctor
explained meant it was healing.  Perfectly normal.  The wound on my
back itched like crazy.  At times I would back up to the refrigerator
door and ,cratch it on the handle like a dog.  The doorbell chimed.

I spooned up another glob of cereal, careful not to touch the wedding
ring.  The Cheerios were starting to get soggy.

Robby had given me the ring ten years ago.  We'd been living together
off campus then.  I'd come home late one night from my waitressing job
at the Haus of Pies.  We'd been pushing rhubarb all night because Mr.
Braun, the owner, had gotten a good deal on rhubarb and made three
times as many pies as usual.  He and Mrs. Braun snapped at each other
all evening in German because no one wanted rhubarb.  Finally Mr. 
Braun blasted his wife with a tirade of German gargling and stormed
out, leaving us shorthanded to clean up.  Mrs. Braun, in tears, gave
Tina and me each a rhubarb pie to take home.

Robby met me at the door, naked except for his father's white apron.

He'd had a scraggly little beard then that made him look like a failed
poet with Marxist sympathies.  We hugged and my hand slid down the
small of his back to that crevice at the top of his buttocks, which, as
always, was a little moist from sweat.

With a courtly flourish, he guided me to the kitchen where he
announced, "Dinner is served."  I expected another one of his gourmet
feasts, delicate sauces over tender slices of exotically spiced fowl.

Certainly our tiny table was set for something special, white
tablecloth that used to be one of our bedsheets, fancy silverware he'd
borrowed from a neighbor, candles stuck in beer bottles.

He seated me, snapped open a cloth napkin (once our pillowcase), and
fluttered it onto my lap.

He handed me the box of Trix.

"What's this?"  I said.

_"Dinner, madam.  Enjoy."  I laughed, playing along.  As long as it
wasn't rhubarb.  The I, box was new, so I tore open the top flap and
poured the cereal.

The colored balls clattered festively into the bowl.  Then the clunk of
the ring.  The gold winked candlelight.  II Robby proposed a toast,
"Let's get married and fuck until we II can't walk and then get good
jobs that make money but show a social conscience and then have
children and raise them to be perfect and then buy a house that will
become a gathering place I for all the best and brightest of our
generation who will sit in our living room and discuss theories of art
while we're in the kitchen II doing some gourmet fucking on the
countertop making the world safe for democracy and prose poetry."  It
"Why not?"  I said, slipping on the ring.  t So for the past two
months, every time I opened a new box of cereal I tossed my wedding
ring back inside, shook the box, and II waited to discover it again and
again.  Like the precious prize it had been that first time.  Back when
I'd thought of the ring as a round key to a thick hand-carved door
behind which was our bright and shining future.  Sometimes I'd thought
of it as a homing device, if I ever got lost somewhere or even felt a
little lost inside, I could show my ring and say, "Look, this is where
I belong.

Take me there.  I'm expected there."  11 Not now.  Now I belonged in
front of a wobbly imning board, II wolfing Cheerios and cuffing up
bras.  I hoped the repetition of this ring-in-the-box ritual would
eventually de-romanticize Robby's gesture and help me miss him less.

So far it hadn't II orked.

My friends all gave me mathematical formulas for when I'd feel
better.

Wren had said it took one month per each year that you were together.

Esther had put it at one year for every six II years you were
together.

Others had more elaborate equations, factoring in causes for the
split-up or averaging the age of the couple, how much stuff you had
accumulated, were there pets, venereal disease, pension funds.  Cosmo
said falling in love again immediately reduced "down time"
significantly.  Self said to take up low-impact aerobics or dog
breeding.  The physicists of heartbreak.  I imagined the experts in
their white lab coats, scribbling twenty-digit numbers on a blackboard,
trying to figure out why my stomach always felt as if I'd swallowed a
cocktail of Dra,no and thurubtacks.  And tell me, Professor, why do I
still smell Robby on my skin?

The doorbell chimed again, followed by heavy knocking.

I chewed another mouthful of soggy cereal and continued cutting the
perfect hole in my bra.  I hadn't noticed before, but I was making
scalloped edges.  I wondered if this was how Fredrick's of Hollywood
got started.

Wren had discovered my wedding-ring ceremony once when she'd come over
after an all-night paper-writing session and eaten the whole damn box
of cereal, nearly chipping a tooth on my ring.  I'd expected some sort
of big-sister speech, some condemning look.  A lecture about sisterhood
or womanhood or wimphood.  About standing on our own feet, codependent
no more.

Instead she'd just shuffleboarded the ring across the kitchen table to
me and sighed, "With love, dear Luna, whatever works."

I ate the cereal around the ring until the Cheerios were all gone.  The
ring lay at the bottom of the bowl in a shallow puddle of milk.  I
spooned the ring up and put it in my mouth.  I had never done that
before.  It had no flavor.  That surprised me.  I'd expected some
metallic taste, like blood or pennies.  I thought about swallowing it,
letting it travel through my colon for a couple days to see the sights
and pop out the other end.  That should deromanticize the little fucker
forever.

The doorbell rang in an impatient code.  "Ms. Devon?  Hey, Ms.
Devon."

I plucked the ring from my mouth and tossed it back into the Cheerios
box.  I shook the box and stashed it in the cupboard next to the potato
chips.  My movements were slow and deliberate, as if I had all day to
do the simplest task.  I wasn't in shock or any physical pain, it was
ust that my life had been reduced to only one goal now, to finish my
Thomas Pynchon paper, thereby securing my master's degree.  I had
plenty of free time now.  I had no composition class to teach, so I had
no papers to grade, no office to go to.  I'd returned my petitions to
Amnesty International with only two signatures, mine and Nurse
Clover's.  There were No more teaching jobs to apply for, all I could
do now was sit back and wait to see where my life would go, like
shooting down burning rapids holding on to a sponge.

The two people I knew best were Wren and Esther, so I wasn't "urdened
with a lot of friends coming by trying to cheer me up.

robby and I had been pretty much a selfcontained unit.  We'd pent most
of our free time alone.  Occasionally we would double \ate with another
couple, but that would be the last I'd see of them until the next time
Robby arranged another outing.  I didn't aind this lack of socializing,
I didn't really want people to know how much harder than everyone else
I had to work just to keep ip.  My thesis on Thomas Pynchon was taking
longer than it hould, most of the other students were almost
finished.

Why ad I picked a reclusive cult writer who never appeared in public nd
who some thought didn't even really exist?  Still, there were "ver
ninety doctoral dissertations and thirty books about the guy.

They did exist, so did the novels, so did my deadline.  Standing \"ere
now, I couldn't remember one literary thing about the man.

Vhat were his themes, his world vision?  All I could remember vas a
rumor about the day Norman Mailer had somehow bullied "ynchon's secret
address from someone and gone over to visit the ermit writer.  The
story has it that Pynchon saw Mailer coming town the street and leapt
out of a two-story window and ran away ather than meet his fellow
author.

"Come on, Ms. Devon," the voice outside my door called.  "I now you're
in there.  It's me.  It's Mark, Ms.  Devon."

Since the shooting, I'd followed the strict regimen of a novijate.  I
attended my three graduate classes, took notes, and read hick novels no
one but students read anymore.  My classmates kept a cheerful
remoteness, as if they feared my bad luck might ub off on them, maybe
affect their grades.  Robby called someimes, but usually our words were
out of sync with our feelings, like badly dubbed kung fu movies.  Once
he brought by a bag of ",oceries.  We smoked a joint and discussed
Emily Bronte,.  He issed me on the cheek and left.  All the air in the
room seemed 0 leave with him.

"I'm not going away, Ms.  Devon," the voice outside my door ontinued.

Having no secondstory window to leap from, I slipped into my customized
bra and pulled on a baggy gray sweatshirt.  There was no witty saying
or clever drawing on my sweatshirt.  All my sweatshirts and T-shirts
were blank.

More thumping on the door.  "I'm totally serious.  I'm not leaving till
you see me, Ms.  Devon."

I opened the door.  "I see you, Mark.  Happy?"

Mark smiled and leaned his bicycle against the building.  He looked
down at my bare legs.  "I've never seen you in shorts before."

"I don't usually wear them to teach."

"You should.  It would motivate us more.  The guys, anyway.

He edged past me into my apartment.  I stayed in the doorway, holding
the door open.  He was wearing some kind of pine-scented cologne that
stung my eyes.  As he passed, I sniffed the sweet scent of breath mints
too.  His curly black hair was damp from biking.  "I've been knocking
here for twenty minutes.  Did that shooting affect your hearing or
something?"

"What'd you say?"

He snorted.  "Very funny.

I didn't mind seeing Mark.  He was the smartest student in my comp
class.  Smart enough not to need me and cocky enough to know it.  I had
a feeling most teachers would feel that way about Mark.  College was a
formality for someone like him, a place to pick up a diploma for what
he already knew or would learn on his own.  He reminded me of Wren.

Also, I think a part of me was glad he was here.  I wanted him to do a
Goodbye, Ms. Chips routine that would bring me back some of my lost
enthusiasm.

If anyone could, it would be a perfect student like Mark.

"This is nice," he said, looking around.  He walked about the living
room, touching things briefly.  He had a worn leather backpack slung
over one shoulder.  A silver bicycle clip pinned the right cuff of his
jeans.  "It's not how I pictured your place, though.  I figured you
more for, I don't know, a cactus in every corner and Navaho blankets on
the walls.  That whole Southwest thing."

"Why are you here, Mark?"

"To bring you your mail."  He reached into his backpack and handed me
three envelopes.  One was another bill from the Modern Language
Association, which I'd only joined to get their job list, two were from
schools I had applied to for a teaching position.

"1 saw them in your mailbox at school and thought I'd save you a
trip.

"Thanks," I said.  I put the envelopes behind my back.  I didn't want
him here when I opened them.

"Go ahead, open them," he said, smoothing down a cowlick at the crown
of his head.

"It can wait," I said.

He picked up the glass unicorn Robby gave me when I'd acted in The
Glass Menagerie in our junior year.  Robby had stolen it from the set
after the last performance.  Mark pointed the unicorn's horn at my
letters.  "Open them.  I know you're dying to."

"Fine," I said.  I went through my usual ritual, hefting the envelopes,
trying to figure out if an acceptance weighed more than a rejection.

As if they used more words, more ink, thicker paper.  While Mark
wandered about stroking my furniture, I tore open the envelopes.

Dear Ms. Devon .  . . Thank you .  . . impressive application sorry to
say .  . . keep on file .  . . sincerely.

They read very much like my divorce letter.

"I could've told you," Mark said, plopping down on the sofa.

"They don't write when they're interested.  They call."

"I know that," I said.  I did, too, but I figured that maybe they tried
to call but somehow couldn't reach me, so they sent a letter.

That could happen.

"My dad's a dean," Mark said.  "Chemistry Department back in Ohio.  He
sends out a lot of those letters."

I looked over at Mark.  He was staring at my legs again.

"What do you want, Mark?  I have to get ready for class soon."

"No, you don't," he said with annoying confidence.  "Your Brit Lit
class isn't until three.  And, your Conrad class and the Fiction
Workshop meet tomorrow.

"Quite the little spy, aren t you?"

"You got anything to drink?  I'm dying."

I went into the kitchen and brought back a can of Diet Dr Pepper.  I
handed it to him and he smiled up at me.  He was a charming kid,
eighteen going on forty.  His body was as lanky and hard as knotted
rope.  His face was angular, reminding me of home plate in a baseball
diamond.  In about ten years, when he had grown into his features, he
would be quite handsome.

Women would talk about him longingly.

I ignored his flirting.  I didn't have the energy to deal with the
moral and physical complexities of hopping into bed with him.

He had a hard-on bulging at the crotch of his jeans, which he tried to
cover by tugging his leather jacket down.  Back when I was still living
with Robby, I'd had an erotic dream about Mark, I can't remember
what.

I'd awakened slick with sweat and discovered I'd been rubbing myself
against Robby's leg.  I'd looked up at him and was embarrassed to see
he was awake, watching.  He rolled me onto my back and we made love.

That was the last time we did it.  Since the split-up, I'd stopped
having erotic dreams, the same way I stopped having periods when I went
on the pill.  Now I could hardly remember why I'd liked sex so much
before.

"You think my bike's okay out there?"  Mark asked.

"No," I said.

He laughed.  "You're funny, Ms.  Devon."

"I crack me up.  Now, what can I do for you?"

He wedged the Dr Pepper can between his thighs.  He leaned forward,
screwing his face into a serious expression.  "When you coming back,
Ms.  Devon?"

"I'm not, Mark.  I'm convalescing.  Didn't your new teacher tell you
that?"

He shrugged, as if nothing the new teacher said could be trusted.

"How's your wound?"

"Better."

He stared at my breast as if he could see through my sweatshirt and
bandage and was staring at the crusted hole itself.  "Can I see it?

I've never seen a gunshot wound."

I laughed.  "I don't think so, Mark.  You'll just have to wait until
you're old enough for a gunshot wound of your own.

He nodded and sat back, pressing into the sofa.  "I've seen knife
wounds," he said.  "They don't look like much.  Some guy at AA had
one.

Right here, across the gut."

"You're in AA, Mark?"

"Sure.  Me, my dad, my stepmom.  It's a family affair.  Even my little
sister.  She's fifteen.  At least she's smart enough to get, drunk on
the cheap stuff.  I guess we all got that boozer 5 gene.

"I didn't know about that.  About your family."

"You don't know shit, Ms. Devon."  This was the first time Mark had
ever said anything harsh to me.  He hunched over a little and looked
away from me.

I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything.  My back wound was
itching.  I rubbed it against the back of the chair.

Mark picked up the heavy glass stein from the end table.  My name was
engraved across the glass.  I had won the stein in a twelfth grade
tri-state track meet.  For three years my fiercest rivalry had been
with Stephanie Cutter.  She'd beaten me in the long jump at every
meet.

She always took first place, I always took second place.  Finally, at
the last meet of our final season, she got sick fifteen minutes before
the jump.  We watched her on hands and knees in the middle of the field
puking some foul goop.  Turned out she had food poisoning.  I won
easily.  I didn't keep the trophy around as a reminder of my triumph,
but rather to remember that the only time I ever took first place in
anything was because someone else foffeited.  These life lessons help
you keep a healthy perspective.

After a minute Mark put the engraved stein back and looked at me with a
sly smile.  "I'm writing this paper," he said, "for Mr. Conner's
Shakespeare class.  He's such a fucking weasel, this paper's gonna blow
his weasel brain away."

Jack Conner was a fucking weasel.  He was up for tenure this year and
had begun a shameless campaign of glad-handing, partythrowing, and all
around ass-kissing.  He also spied on members of the tenure
committee.

Once I saw him in the faculty mail room, sneaking peeks at Dr. Loeb's
mail.  Sitting here now in my cutaway bra, the taste of Cheerios and
sour milk in my mouth, it was hard to imagine that I'd been part of
that department.  It seemed as remote as my old summer camp days.  I
tried to remember what my shabby office looked like, the view through
the grimy window.  I couldn't.

"Listen, Ms.  Devon," Mark said with his usual enthusiasm.

"Listen to this.  This is what I'm doing my paper on, you'll flip
out.

You know Guam, right.  The island."

"I've heard of it."

He swigged his Dr Pepper.  "Well, just a few years ago there were six
endemic species of birds on Guam.  Endemic means these birds are found
only on Guam."

"I know what endemic means, Mark."  j "Right, sorry.  Anyway, now the
bridled white-eye and the Guam broadbill are extinct.  Probably so is
the rufous-fronted fantail.  That leaves only three species left."

"This all has something to do with Shakespeare?"

"Yeah, we're doing King Lear."

"The rufous-fronted fantail plays Lear?"

"Trust me, this will all make sense.  Meanwhile, back on Guam, These
other three species are hanging on to existence by the tips of their
beaks.  Everyone's walking around scratching their heads, but nobody
could figure out why this sudden decline in the bird population.  Then
in 1982, this graduate student named Julie Savidge goes there and finds
the answer."  He clapped his hands together, startling me.  "Boiga
irregularis."

"Sounds like jungle constipation."

"It's a snake.  She cut a bunch of them open and kept finding birds and
birds' eggs.  Thing is, this snake is not native to Guam.

They figure it arrived on the island during World War II, probably
imported to eat rodents.  For a long time they called it the
"Philippine rat snake," which made people think it was benevolent.  But
it's not a rat snake, it's a bird-eating tree snake and it's
practically wiped out the whole fucking bird population."

I was losing concentration, still trying to conjure the view from my
office window.  Was it the student bookstore that I stared at every day
or the infirmary?  How many mountains sliced the western horizon of
Oregon?  Didn't Wren and I used to feed sunflower seeds to pigeons on
that sooty window ledge?

"Ms.  Devon?"

I refocused on Mark.  "What do birds and snakes have to do with King
Lear?"

"I'm getting to it."  Mark finished the rest of his Dr Pepper and
balanced the can on the sofa arm.  "This snake was introduced into an
environment where it had no natural predators and in which its prey had
never learned to defend itself against it.  I mean, the livin' was
easy, man.  Birds were jumpin' and the cotton was high.  Fat City for
the Boiga irregularis."

-"God, you can be annoying, Mark.  Did you know that?  Are you aware of
this irritating trait?"

-"Yeah."  He smiled and I had to smile too.  I suppose it was kind of
flattering that of all the truly brilliant people around the department
he could be telling this stuff to, he chose instead me.

It was working, I was starting to feel something again, a positive
attitude toward my career.  Sure, why not me.

"I'm listening," I said.

"They got something like three million of these snakes on this I tiny
island.  They get in the electrical wiring and cause outages all the
time.  Anyway, they started this program to airlift the birds somewhere
else, raise them, then bring them back when they've lowered the snake
population."

"Sounds like a lot of trouble," I said.  But I was encouraged to know
that people somewhere were willing to bother.  I probably wouldn't
have.

-"Thing is, Ms.  Devon.  Even if they succeed, they still lose.

Islands are where species become extinct.  That's why all those
evolutionary biologist guys like Darwin and Wallace and Dammerman all
go to these dinky islands to study life.  Listen to this, I got this
great quote."  He dug into his leather backpack, rifling the papers and
notebooks, finally pulling out a book called The Flight of the
Iguana.

He opened it to a marked page and began reading," "Small islands
especially are the black holes to oblivion.

Speciation proceeds more rapidly .  . . The luckiest of the pioneers
adapt to their new habitats.  They colonize.  They specialize.

They succeed.  They become more sedentary than they were when they
arrived-because the most restless individuals among them are constantly
taking their genes elsewhere, flying off to escape or else to die
trying.  The others stay and stay."

" He closed the book with a thump and whacked it against his thigh.

"Get it?"

I didn't get it.  What's more, I suddenly realized I didn't care.

I didn't care about Mark's paper, about King Lear or the fair
Cordelia.

Worst of all, I didn't care about teaching.  I'd been moping around for
days because of my lost class, but right now it was clear to me that I
didn't really care if I ever went back into another classroom again.  I
tried to remember the faces of the students in my class, picture them
all staring up at me as I explained how to write a footnote.  Nothing
came.  I closed my eyes.  I tried to picture Mark's face.  I
couldn't.

My chest started to ache and churn, as if there were something foreign
inside.  I knew the bullet had passed through me, but for that moment I
swore I could feel it inside, feel its smooth head twisting toward the
surface.  There was thick scab beneath the bandage, but it seemed to be
disintegrating now.  It felt as if it would erupt and spew out the
bullet.  I tried to imagine the look on Mark's face when the bloody
bullet spit through my sweatshirt and plopped onto the carpet.  Work
that into your next paper, buddy boy, I'd say with a wink.

"You okay, Ms. Devon?"  Mark asked, leaning forward with a look of
concern.  "You need some medicine or something?"

"I'm fine, Mark," I said.  "Go on, go on.  Tell me how Sheriff Lear
cleans up Guam City."

"It's that whole tragedy thing.  The tragic hero striving to become
godlike by avoiding his fate.  That's King Lear's arrogance.

But it's the same with us and those birds.  We try to save them only to
return them to an island.  It's the island that dooms them to
extinction, just as we are all living on this planet, an island in
space.  And just as we are all doomed to extinction.  But we strive to
fight it anyway, despite knowing it is futile.  Those birds will become
extinct eventually, why not now?  That's what I'm getting at.  You
see?"

I stood up.  The activity in my chest seemed to have calmed down.  I
didn't feel the phantom bullet anymore.  I walked toward the front door
and opened it.  "Thanks for dropping by to cheer me up.

"1 know it's still a little rough," he said, also standing.  "But what
do you think of the thesis, the general concept?"

"It's good.  Write it.  I'm sure you'll get an A."

He shook his head impatiently.  "I know I'll get an A. That's not what
I'm asking."

I looked over at the TV.  People's Court was on.  An old woman stood at
the defendant's table gripping a walker.  She had a green and red
parrot perched on the walker.  Judge Wapner asked her peevishly why she
had brought the bird to court.  She snapped right back at him that the
lady who called her to be on the show had told her to bring the bird,
that's why.  I turned back to Mark.

"I don't know what you want to hear, Mark.  Just do it.  It sounds good
to me.  Very insightful."

"Yeah."  He made a face and I could see he was disappointed.

"Hey, you see my new tattoo yet?"

"Jesus, Mark, not a tattoo."

He took off his leather jacket and pushed up his T-shirt sleeve.

He flexed his arm muscle.  High up near his shoulder was a blue outline
of a little girl, barefoot, peeking into a dark window.  She had an
oldfashioned dress on and a flower in her hair.  The flower was colored
with red ink.  Above this picture were the words, in red ink, VI0LENT
ENNUI, arched over the girl like a rainbow.  Beneath the picture were
the words, in quotes, "The dead are only gathering strength .

"Very nice," I said.  "I can see why you'd want that permanently carved
into your body."

"You don't get it, Ms.  Devon.  You ever listen to the Violent Ennui?

"While you are sleeping, I am standing at your window .  .."  You know
that song?"

Suddenly I knew how Esther must have felt, people coming by, spilling
their lives on her kitchen table, then taking off again.

Leaving the residue of their plans and hopes and triumphs and defeats
to hang in the air, cling to dust particles there.  And Esther sitting
there, waiting for sleep, her valuables hidden in the appliances,
camouflaged against burglars.  Yet, she was being invaded hourly by
people who stole her sleep.  Well, she was sleeping now.  Slice open
the belly of the Boiga irregularis and you'd find Esther there, softly
snoring, dreaming.

"I don't know the group, Mark."

"See?  That's the point.  You probably thought you were cool once, back
when you were my age.  Smoking dope and listening to the Rolling
Stones.  You probably thought you had it all figured out.  I guess
young people always think that.  But then something happens, right?

Somewhere along the line they slip into comas or something.  Not me.  I
got this tattoo of their CD jacket so I'd never forget my values,
what's really important.  If I ever start to dweeb out, I just look at
this He held up his arm closer to me.  "Then I remember what it's all
about.  Who I am."

"Gee, Mark, you're right.  If only I'd gotten that tattoo of Glen
Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy album jacket when I had the chance."

Mark's face tightened into anger.  I had seen him tense and frustrated
in class before, but never this angry countenance.  He stepped toward
me and I felt a twinge of fear.  "I read something else in this book,
Ms.  Devon.  Something very interesting about rape.

I took a step backward.  "You'd better go now, Mark.  I'm tired."

"Not yet," he said.  "I want to tell you about bedbugs.  How they
fuck.

It's very interesting."

I looked around the room for a convenient weapon.  Something, if need
be, to bludgeon my best student's head into a bloody pulp.  Funny how
different your possessions look when you're judging them for their
value as a weapon.  Beauty loses its impact, everything is heft.

Pynchon's thick novel, V, was lying on the coffee table.  A couple
sharp raps across the temple with that might be enough to curb his
sexual appetite.  I took a step toward it, he cut me off.

"Here's how it works," Mark said.  "This particular type of bedbug has
a penis shaped like a dagger.  He doesn't insert it into any vaginal
opening.  Instead, he just stabs her in the abdomen with it.  I mean
that literally.  He punctures her with his dick.

That's how they have sex.  In fact, sometimes when one male is fucking
another female like that, his dick stuck in her gut, another male will
come up and stab the male doing the humping.  Then his sperm replaces
the first guy's and he can impregnate the female.  Interesting, huh?"

"You should go, Mark."

"They call it traumatic insemination.  Neat phrase.  Traumatic
insemination.  It's like the weirdest fucking thing I've ever heard
of.

I'm trying to work it into my Lear paper, but I don't know.

They think the whole thing came about because the males used to secrete
some kind of glue from their dicks after sex.  They'd use this glue to
seal up the female's vagina so no other guys could screw her after
him.

Like one of those, you know, chastity belts.

Ground squirrels still do that, glue their female's twats shut.

Anyway, that's why they figure the bedbugs evolved their dagger
dicks."

I didn't say anything.  He stared at my face, looking for some thing.

I guess he found it, because he smiled and backed away from me,
satisfied.

He slipped into his jacket and backpack as he walked out the front
door.  I followed him.  He straddled his bike and looked at me.  I
realized then that I would probably never see him again, that this
might be the last time I ever saw someone who was my student.

"I'm glad you came by, Mark," I said.  "Take care with" "Did you
believe me?"  he interrupted.  He looked at me with a morose
expression.

"What?"

"Did you believe me?  Before."

"When?  About the bedbugs?"

"About being in AA.  That stuff I told you about my family.

My little sister and stuff."

"Yes, I believed you.  Of course I believed you."

He shook his head sadly.  "You really don't know shit, Ms.  Devon.

From now on you'd better be real careful."

He swung his bike around and pedaled off.  He turned as he jumped the
curb and waved a big smile on his face.  Like we were best friends.

I closed the door and walked to the bathroom for some Tylenol.

I wrestled the cap off and swallowed three little tablets, washing them
down with warm water from the faucet.  I was still bent over drinking
from the faucet when another knock at the door startled me.  I jerked a
little, banging my lip against the faucet.  I tasted blood.

The doorbell rang this time.

"Fuck you, Mark," I growled.  "Fuck you and fuck King Lear and fuck
dagger-dicked bedbugs."  The mirror over the sink revealed a little
nick out of my lip, a tiny flap of skin bent upward.

I pressed the washcloth against it and the bleeding stopped
immediately.

I marched back to the front door, the washcloth still pressed to my
lip.  It tasted faintly of soap and mildew.  I yanked open the door
ready to blast Mark.  But, of course, it wasn't Mark.

"Ms. Devon?"  the elegant woman asked.  Her manners were as impeccable
as her makeup.  Her clothes were expensive but not exclusive.  Her
white gold bracelet would have supported me for six months.  The only
crack in this perfect picture was the redness of her eyes and the faint
smell of brandy on her breath.

"Yes"-I nodded"I'm Ms.  Devon."

She smiled with such relief in her eyes, as if admitting who I was had
been a great act of human kindness.  She held out her small pale
hand.

"I'm Kate Lansing.  Wren's mother.  Have I' come at a bad time?"

-"You two are goddamn lucky.  I'm serious.  You don't know, you were
this close to being arrested!"  The manager shook her finger at us,
wheezing as she entered the front door of Wren's r apartment.  She was
a short woman with a thin face and skinny swizzle-stick legs, but
carrying about 200 steel-belted pounds around her chest, stomach, and
hips.  A big brass ring of keys jangled in her hand.

"Hi, Mrs.  Naughton," I said.  "We're just cleaning up a little."

Wren's mother and I were standing at the sink of the kitchenette in
Wren's apartment washing the dishes from Wren's last meal so we could
pack them.  I was washing, Wren's mother was drying.

Even though there were only a few dishes, Wren's mother had a dish
towel tucked into her skirt as an apron.  It made her look somehow
scientific, like an archaeologist or a coroner.

From the crusted remains on the pot, the single blue ceramic bowl, the
small salad plate, and the soup spoon, fork, and knife, I guessed
Wren's final meal at home had been her favorite, tomato soup,
grilled-cheese-with-tomato sandwich, and barbecue potato chips.  For a
moment, I felt like a clever detective having this knowledge, being
able to piece together this information from the few crumbs that were
left behind.  Then I realized these were useless clues, they told us
nothing valuable.  Nothing we really needed to know.

"I'm telling you, I was about to call the goddamn cops," Mrs. Naughton
continued.  "I hear something up here, I know no body's home, I figure,
Sally, don't be an idiot, call the goddamn cops, that's what you pay
taxes for.  I had the phone in my hand 4 and I was actually dialing."

She cupped her left hand as if it held a phone.  "I'd punched nine and
then one before I hung up and decided to come up here first, have a
look-see.  Lucky for you two I did.  I mean, who knows what a nervous
cop with a loaded gun might do.  Jesus."  She held her hand to her
ample bosom as if stilling a wildly thwacking heart.  "Of course, what
would I have done if you'd really been burglars?  I shoulda called the
goddamn cops, not taken any chances.  That's what they're paid for,
right?

Sometimes I'm so goddamn stupid."  She laughed and the sound caught me
by surprise.  It was so young and delicate coming out of that hefty
middle-aged body.

"I should have told you we were coming, Mrs. Naughton," I said,
rinsing the last dish, a chipped soup bowl.  "I should've called.  I'm
sorry.

Mrs. Naughton walked deeper into the apartment and looked around,
shaking her head sadly.  "Best unit in the whole complex.

Lots of sunlight.  You could grow a goddamn jungle in here."

She yanked open the drapes and sunlight flashbulbed into the room to
prove her point.  "I wish I had a hundred like her.  My life would be
perfect then."

I wasn't sure if she was talking about Wren or the unit.

"Mrs. Naughton, this is Wren's mother, Mrs. Lansing."  I didn't know
whether Kate wanted to be called Mrs. or Ms., but this didn't seem
like the right time to wave any flags.

"Kate," Wren's mom said, putting down the dish towel to shake Mrs.
Naughton's hand.

"Kate?  That's my name too.  Well, my second middle name.

Sally Mary Kate Naughton.  Not Katherine, mind you, just Kate.

My mother insisted on it.  You a Katherine?"

"Caitlin, actually," Kate said.  "Somewhere along the line it just
became Kate."

"I like Caitlin," I said, mostly to be saying something.  We were
standing in Wren's apartment chattering away like scared kids in a
graveyard.  The more mundane the conversation, the better we should
feel.

Wren's apartment.  I had been here a couple hundred times.

I'd slept over on occasion, chopped vegetables, scoured the toilet,
studied Chaucer, listened to Wren play Paul Simon's Graceland over and
over and over while she took elaborate notes on the lyrics for her
thesis.  I'd fed her grilled cheese and soup last month for two days
when she had the flu.  I had my own key, just as Wren had one to my
place.  I looked over at the white sofa and winced, remembering that
bizarre night last month.  I felt a flush spreading across my face just
thinking about it and I turned away so Kate and Mrs. Naughton couldn't
see my embarrassment.

I'd been separated from Robby for six weeks then, still in a near
comatose depression, bitching about how I'd probably never have sex
again, how I didn't even remember how to have sex, what sex felt
like.

Wren comforted me without babying me.  We played gin rummy, listened to
more Paul Simon (until Wren threw an M&M at the CD player and said,
"For Christ's sake, Paul, go to fucking Graceland already"), ate frozen
pizza and chunky applesauce.  She made me stay the night.  I slept in
her bed, she'd insisted on taking the sofa.  In the middle of the
night, something woke me.  Faint sounds.  Like Saran Wrap being
unrolled.  I looked at the clock, almost three in the morning.  I
zombied out to the living room to check on Wren, thinking maybe she'd
fallen asleep with the TV on.

And there she was.  Naked.

She was standing, bent over at the waist, her hands gripping the arm of
the white sofa like the handlebars of a motorcycle.

Behind her was some guy, his face a scribbled blotch of black hair and
dark shadow.  I couldn't see his face and I didn't recognize his
body.

His hands were folded around her hips, pulling and pushing, the two of
them hammering into each other like it was bull wrestling at the
rodeo.

I watched his buttocks flex and lapse, flex and lapse, as he pummeled
her.  At one point, he jerked back and forth so frantically that his
penis slipped out of her.  They both groaned with disappointment.  He
quickly readjusted his I.-' condom, pulling it tighter the way a woman
tugs her panty hose, then worked his semierect penis back into Wren.

She reached down between her legs and cupped his balls in her hand.  Oh
yeah, he said, oh yeah oh yeah.  He attacked her with renewed vigor.

Watching their bodies grind, listening to the slap of his hips against
her buttocks, smelling their thick aroma all made me a little weak.  I
felt like saying something rude to them, something like "Is that sofa
Scotchguarded?"  But the way they were going they wouldn't have stopped
for me or anything, then I would be there watching and they would know
it and it would all be too perverse.

Right now it was just an accident, an erotic accident.  I shouldn't
have kept watching, I guess, but I did, rubbing my grooved thumbnails
against the hem of my T-shirt.  Wren came first, Oh God, God, God
yes.

Then he came, Jesus, please, please, fuck yes.

When he pulled out of Wren, I saw his oily sweat dripping down her
buttocks and the backs of her legs.  Dozens of droplets sparkled up and
down her legs and I thought of Paul Simon's "Diamonds on the Soles of
Her Shoes."  The man dropped to his knees and started licking the sweat
from the backs of her thighs, moving higher.  She laughed and wiggled
her butt playfully.

I ducked back into the bedroom and quietly climbed into bed, trying not
to disturb a single bed spring.  I wanted very much to masturbate then,
even slipping my fingers inside my panties and touching my clitoris
tentatively.  But I was afraid of making the bed squeak, then they
would know what I was doing.  I pulled my hand out of my panties and
tucked it under my pillow.  After a few minutes I heard the front door
close and the bedroom door open.  Wren walked into the bedroom.  I
pretended to be asleep, my eyes pressed closed.  She ignored my
pretense and sat on the edge of the bed.  I could smell the scent of
sweat and semen and vaginal juices.  This is how I imagined the Amazon
jungle to smell after a tropical storm has uprooted a few trees.

"You said you forgot how to do it, forgot how it feels," she said.

"Well, that's how to do it.  And"she paused and I knew she was
smiling"it feels good."  She stood up and walked out.

We never spoke about it.  The next morning we had breakfast and talked
more about her plans to start her own magazine.  She slurped coffee and
ate two English muffins smeared with jam.  But a few days later when
Aaron Franzen asked me again to go to the poetry reading put on by the
English Department every Wednesday at noon, I accepted.  Nothing much
came of it, a couple movies, some sloppy kissing, a little massaging of
my breasts under my blouse but over my bra, and long talks afterward
about his thesis on Philip Roth's use of Israel as a symbol for the
eros part of the libido.  Still, it was a step in the right direction,
thanks to Wren's unorthodox teaching methods.  Hell, now she was even a
better teacher than I.

"This place is so clean," Mrs. Naughton marveled, clapping her hands
together.  "If my daughter were half this clean I'd consider God's work
on earth done.

Kate smiled and nodded.  That's pretty much all she'd been doing since
she'd arrived at my apartment.  Smiling and nodding.

It was getting on my nerves.  I kept waiting for some burst of emotion,
accusation even.  None came.  She'd flown in this morning from Omaha to
claim the body.  She didn't like to fly, she'd told me.

Her husband loved to fly, so had Wren.  She'd already been by the
morgue to identify Wren for the record.  The body was being shipped
back to Omaha.  Now she wanted to pack up her daughter's belongings and
ship them back too.

"Where's your husband?"  I'd asked on the drive over.

"Oh, Jim couldn't come.

"He couldn't come?"

"No.  Something came up.

Wren had rarely spoken of her parents, but when she had it had been
with affection.  Unlike the other students in the department, Wren
scorned what she referred to as "trips down Evil Parent Lane."  In the
Fiction Workshop we both attended (I was only in it because it was
required), the stories were mostly about an alienated son or daughter
fighting against the awful life they have because of a parent's
incompetent or malevolent style of parenting.  The ending was usually
some melodramatic confrontation in which said child faces up to said
parent and verbally rakes them over the coals.  Something symbolic
always happens after the big cathartic scene, like the cat leaps off
the garage roof and breaks a leg or the kid walks off into the blinding
snow, dropping a mitten, which is quickly buried by the falling snow.

To which Wren would shake her head and say, "Another "Fuck You, Daddy'
story."  Professor O"Keefe always laughed at that.

Mrs. Naughton shoved her hands into the jacket of her sweatsuit.  Her
keys jangled.  She looked at Kate with sad eyes.

"It's a tragedy, Kate.  No other way to look at it.  The worst kind of
tragedy."

"Thank you," Kate said, folding Wren's fisherman's sweater.

I'd given it to Wren for her birthday.  It had been hanging over the
dining-room chair, waiting for Wren to grab it on her way out the door,
late to meet somebody smart, somewhere nice, about something
important.

"Tragedy, tragedy, all is tragedy," Mrs. Naughton mumbled to herself,
her eyes staring at nothing now, as if she were thinking about her own
daughter, the possibilities for tragedy that awaited her.

I couldn't decide whether she'd deliberately misquoted the Bible or she
was just being clever.  Either way, the word tragedy struck me as
funny, maybe because of Mark's recent lecture on King Lear.  I thought
of Lear now, seeing his dead daughter brought on stage.  I thought of
the birds of Guam being gobbled up by those intruder snakes.  Bedbug
erections.  Esther the Bat Faced Girl hiding her television set in the
refrigerator.  Tragedy.

What's that?

On the way here, Kate and I had stopped by a discount office supply
warehouse and bought a bunch of cardboard boxes you have to assemble
yourself.  Somehow driving behind supermarkets and pirating their old
orange boxes seemed disrespectful to Wren.

Kate would have unpacked those clothes later in Omaha and Wren's memory
would have smelled of sweetly rotten oranges.

That's tragedy.

"Well, hell," Mrs. Naughton said, eyeing the pile of unassembled
boxes, "if it's packing you want, I can pack with the best of "em.

I've moved so often that I can pack a three-bedroom house faster than a
box boy bags a cart of groceries."  She pushed up her sleeves and
grabbed the top hunk of cardboard and had the thing folded and tucked
and looking like a serious box in about ten seconds.

I picked up a couple of Mrs. Naughton's folded boxes and went into
Wren's bathroom to pack.  I thought maybe this room would be especially
painful for Kate.  The things we keep in the bathroom are morbidly
intimate.  This is where we watch the toilet for signs of blood in our
stool, examine the darkening moles, the falling hair, the receding
gums, the hidden lumps.  Tylenol, toothpaste, and tampons, all the
things we use to shore up our mortality while we cozy up to the idea of
death.  And also a pretty good place to take a pee, which I did as
quickly as possible.  Somehow it seemed impolite to come over and whiz
in Wren's bathroom, so I tried to flush the toilet quietly.

Although Wren was meticulously neat in every other room in the bathroom
she was a slob.  Clumps of blue toothpaste sculpture pocked the sink.

The mirror was spotted and smeared.  Fingernail I, clippings crouched
in the corners of the countertop.  Strands of dental floss draped the
edge of the wastebasket and curled on the carpet where Wren had
carelessly tossed them after use.  They looked like long white hairs,
as if Edgar Winter had spent a few bad nights on the floor here.

I picked up Wren's wire hairbrush and started pulling out the hairs
that were packed into it.  I imagined Kate unpacking the brush in her
Omaha kitchen, seeing Wren's hairs and starting to sob, collapsing
against the immaculate countertop.  As I plucked the clumps of hair
from between the bristles of the brush, I thought of Robby, how when we
kissed a few wild strands of my long hair would always somehow end up
in our mouths.  We'd still be kissing as I pulled them out and we could
feel each hair slicing across our lips and tongues like thin wires and
we'd go right on mashing our faces together as if nothing could be more
important to our lives, our continued existence, than that endless
kiss.

"How's it going?"  Kate asked, startling me.

"Fine."  I tossed the hairbrush into the box and started stacking the
tissue box and tissue roll.

"I could really use some aspirin," Kate said.

I opened the medicine cabinet and handed her Wren's Tylenol.  She
tapped a couple out and swallowed them dry.

I stooped down and opened the cupboard under the sink.  I'd never
looked there before.  An ancient curling iron I'd never seen Wren use
was wrapped in its cord.  The rest of the stuff was scattered about, an
empty box from a disposable douche, spilled Q-Tips, three bars of
strawberry-scented glycerin soap.  A silver chain bracelet.  A pewter
earring shaped like a panda bear.  And way in the back corner past the
pipes and the Comet and the petrified sponge, a box of some kind of
denture adhesive.  I pulled it out and read the label.  I must have
been staring at it for a while, because Kate finally touched me on the
shoulder.

"She didn't tell you?"

"What?  Tell me what?"

Kate sat on the toilet lid.  "That girl, she loved to have secrets."

"What secrets?"

"Wren wore dentures.  Up here."  Kate curled back her upper lip and
tapped her front teeth.  "Just a partial.  Four teeth."

I stared at the package.  DenturKleen.  "Wren never told me."  "I'm not
surprised," Kate said.  "She never told anyone any thing important."

"I don't understand," I said slowly, stupidly.  "Her teeth came out?

All the way out of her mouth?

"Just those four.  Had them knocked right out of her mouth.

She almost choked on one of them.  Lodged down her throat."

She picked up a stiff washcloth from the floor and began neatly folding
it.

"How'd it happen?"  I asked.  "A car accident?"  "That husband of
hers."  Kate shook her head.  "The things he got her into."

- I expected her to say more, but she didn't.  She just shook her head
again, as if remembering Wren's mysterious husband, the questionable
things he got her into.  Oddly, she didn't seem angry at him.  I was
about to ask for details, when Mrs. Naughton appeared, an empty box in
each hand and one under each arm.

"We move the party in here?"  she asked.

"I was looking for aspirin," Kate explained.  "I'm afraid I had one too
many drinks on the airplane.  I hope you don't mind, but I feel a
little drunk."

"Damn right I mind," Mrs. Naughton said, dropping her load of boxes
right there in the hallway.  "A little drunk is no good.

You need to feel a lot drunk.  Now that's something I do even better
than folding boxes."  And she took off, kicking aside the boxes on her
way out of the apartment.

I picked up two of the boxes and Kate grabbed the other two.

We went into Wren's bedroom.  This room was more like an office with a
bed.  Most of the room was dominated by the desk, four-drawer filing
cabinet, the Apple computer, the bookshelves a crammed with thick
volumes.  Wherever there was floor space against a wall, a stack of
books grew three feet high like a well tended garden.

On top of Wren's desk was a large open book.  It was one of Wren's many
art books and the page was open to a photograph of a bronze
sculpture.

Small yellow Post-it notes were stuck to the page all around the photo,
almost obscuring it.  Each note was crammed with Wren's tiny erratic
handwriting, which if you squinted looked like barbed wire.  I peeled a
few sticky notes away v to better see the photo.

The sculpture was of a nude seated woman, she looked old, with saggy
breasts and a thick waist.  Her head was bent down at an awkward angle,
as if she were ashamed, yet her one arm was behind her back as if she
weren't ashamed I.at all.  It was hard to tell because of the angle of
the photo, but it looked as if she might even be smiling.

The sculpture was by y Auguste Rodin and was entitled, "She Who Was the
Helmet Maker's Beautiful Wife."  The sticky yellow note beside her
breast said "see "The Gates of Hell."

"I closed the book and tossed it on the bed.  I pulled open the top
drawer of the file cabinet, grabbed a handful of hanging files, and
laid them into one of the boxes.

Each file folder was neatly labeled.  She had one for each course v-she
had ever taken, all the handouts for the course, her papers, her
notes.

"You know," Kate said, opening Wren's underwear drawer, "I didn't plan
on roping you into this.  I thought I could do it myself.

Come here, pack everything."

"Don't be silly, Kate.  I'm glad to help."

"Wren had spoken of you often."

- "You too," I lied.  When Wren did speak of her parents, it was in
positive terms, but now that I thought of it, she rarely spoke of them
as individuals, always as "my parents," never as "my mom'' or "my
dad.

"Jim would have been here," Kate said.  "If he could have."  11 "Of
course he would," I said.  But I couldn't help but wonder what kind of
creep would let his wife do this heart-wrenching duty alone.  I emptied
another file drawer.  This one contained bills to be paid, receipts,
bank statements.  The last two drawers were filled with essays and
articles Wren had written about any thing that popped into her head.

Some had been published and there were copies of the magazines or tear
sheets with the printed article.  But most of the articles were in red
folders with tabs that designated them as being for her magazine, the
one she planned to start in a couple of years.  She'd been stockpiling
articles the way enemy nations hoard weapons.  I packed them neatly
into the cardboard box, thinking what a shame it was no one would ever
read them.  They were to be entombed in a dark attic in Omaha.  Maybe
in a few months or a year I'd write to Kate and suggest she send the
articles out.  Maybe knowing her daughter's words and thoughts still
lived would comfort her.  Maybe it would sadden her more.  I probably
wouldn't write anyway.

Kate made a noise, like a stifled whimper.

"Kate?"  I asked, turning toward her.  "You okay?"

She was staring at the bedstand that held the alarm clock/radio, the
reading lamp, a glass of water with air bubbles in it from sitting
there for a few days, and the combination telephone!  answering
machine.  The red light on the answering machine was blinking.

"Should I play it?"  she asked.  I was the only other person in the
room, but she didn't seem to be talking to me.  So I didn't say
anything.

She sat on the edge of the bed, absently pushing the Rodin book
aside.

She stabbed one of the buttons.  A faint whir sounded as the tape
rewound.  I'd heard Wren play her messages often enough to know that
this machine didn't play the prerecorded message, so I was grateful we
weren't going to hear Wren's chipper voice announcing, "If you don't
know what this is or what to do, I don't want to talk to you anyway.

Bye."

The first voice caught me by surprise.  It was mine.  "Wren, it's
Luna.

I got your message about being in jail.  I hope this is a joke because
I'm too damn tired to fuck around tonight.  Wren?  Pick up, damn it."

Then I heard myself sigh.  "Okay, I'm going over to the police
station.

You'd better be there."

I was embarrassed.  I shrugged at Kate, "I don't know if you heard
about that, I mean, it was all a misunderstanding," Beep.

Kate waved me to silence.  The next voice was an unfamiliar woman with
a very business ii like but friendly tone, "Ms. Caldwell, this is
Linda Marley at Orange Coast Today.  I just want to confirm your
interview appointment with the magazine for next week.  We have all
read your sample articles and are most impressed.  Please call me back
at area code 714-555A200, extension 356.  Airline reservations have
already been made in your name.  I look forward to hearing from you and
especially to meeting you.  Goodbye."

"She had a job offer?"  Kate asked.

"Well, an interview.  "It sounded like they'd already made up their
minds."  Kate I stood up with renewed energy, as if she expected Wren
to come walking into the room and we would all go out for lunch and II
celebrate the new job.  She picked up a pair of Wren's butt-floss ii
panties and folded them twice like a doily.

I kept emptying the file drawers, packing folders against folders.

There was more output in these folders than I imagined possible for one
person.  Wren had already accomplished more than I ever would in my
whole life.  She had a family and friends and a job ii interview.  Even
dead her future looked brighter than mine."

I realized my jealousy was irrational, so I tried to focus on some
other aspect of Wren.  I visualized her without her front I teeth.

When she spoke, her tongue would flap helplessly against her gum,
making her sound like Elmer Fudd.  This visualization was a technique
I'd learned from one of those self-help books.

Okay, I know that they're ridiculous and that people who read I them
are pathetic and deserve both our pity and contempt and maybe a sharp
wrap against the skull with a brick.  Yet, for a while I after Robby
and I broke up, I couldn't read enough of them.  They're addictive.  As
long as you're reading one, you have this overwhelming sense of power,
as if you really can overcome I billions of years of cosmic determinism
and change your life.

They made you feel powerful, like you could crush a lump of coal into a
diamond.  My first book was, of course, on breaking up.  It had the
sensitive title of Splitsville, A Bad Place to Visit, ii How Not to
Live There.  Some of the advice was pretty standard," like don't listen
to sad songs about people being dumped on.  Ill Until my divorce I
never realized how many songs there were about splitting up.

It's weird how lyrics that used to sound so unbearably cornball
suddenly seem keenly insightful.  Here's an other helpful hint from the
book, Change the color of your toilet paper, the brand of your
toothpaste, even the flavor of ice cream you buy.  These are emotional
time bombs constructed from shrapnel of selective memories of good
times that will explode and shred you into weeping, writhing
depression.  After I finished all the breaking-up books I could find, I
started in on self-esteem.

Eventually I was reading books on problems I didn't have, male
menopause, manic-depression, personal hygiene disorders, fear of the
number 3. They were all filled with such hope that they made me hopeful
too.

I stuffed another batch of folders into the box.  Kate was folding
skimpy panties, one at a time.  I wondered if anyone was over at
Esther's place, washing her dishes, folding her underwear.

"Kate," I said, "what happened with Wren's husband?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know, him being in jail and all.  Did it have something to do with
Wren losing her teeth?  Is that what happened?"

"Now that's a story."

"It is?"  I encouraged her.

"Byron."  She shook her head again.  "That Byron."  I leaned forward
anxiously.  "What about Byron?"

"Okay, ladies," Mrs. Naughton shouted as she huffed down the
hallway.

"Prepare for some serious guzzling."  She held up two bottles, vodka
and Kahlua, by their necks, one in each hand like a proud hunter who'd
just bagged an especially elusive prey.

"As my daughter says, let's party till we puke.  Follow me.  I got �a
nose for this kind of thing.

I was more interested in hearing about Wren's mysterious husband and
her missing teeth.  But Kate closed the dresser drawer with a polite
smile and followed Mrs.  Naughton down the hall.

I sat on the edge of Wren's bed, just where she'd sat that night she'd
put on the sex show for me.  Where did she ever come up with ideas like
that?  Where did she get the guts to do them?

Compared to Wren what had I done with my life?  I'd married a man I'd
loved, then spent the next ten years imitating his life.

He'd gone to graduate school, so I went.  He studied English, so did
I.

He taught, so would I. Sometimes I'd take a class that Robby had
already taken and the professor would ask about Robby.  I'd feel like I
was a little sister following her big brother through high school.

Robby had never pushed me into any of these decisions, I'd made them
freely.  It's just that I'd never been as self-motivated as Robby.

When I'd see how excited he was about what he did, I figured maybe if I
did it too I'd get excited about doing something.

Maybe it had worked too, it was hard to judge sitting here with a
bullet tunnel il,rough my chest, on the bed of my dead best friend, her
mother and her landlady getting smashed in the next room.

Mrs. Naughton was mixing Black Russians when I entered the living
room.  She wasn't using any kind of measuring glass.  "Here you go,
Kate," she said, pouring vodka with one hand and Kahlua with the
other.

She swirled the mixture with her finger and handed it to Kate.

"Pardon the ham hocks."

We each had four of those Black Russians.  Kate didn't seem any the
worse for them, though she spoke a little more slowly.

�Mrs. Naughton kept up a never-ending stream of chatter about the
tenants from the various buildings she'd managed, their sexual
perversions, the criminal activities.  She'd been writing a book, an
autobiography about all these places.  "I talked to Wren once about it,
shot some ideas past her.  I tried to get her to help me write it but,
hell, she had so much work to do.  She did give me some pointers
though, you know, on how to structure the story and stuff."  She gulped
down the rest of her drink.  "I'm calling the book Roomers Flying.  Get
it?  Like that old saying about rumors flying, only I have the rumors
spelled like a room in a house, you know, roomers.  What do you
think?

Catchy or what?"

"I'd buy it," Kate said.

"Me too," I said.  My tongue tingled as if it were asleep and it �I
hurt to talk, to have my tongue touch my teeth.  A practical reason to
be able to take out your front teeth.  I curled my lip over my top
teeth to simulate having no teeth."  "You lushes could use some music,"
Mrs.  Naughton said.

"Luna, why don't you do the honors."

� � "Sure."  I walked over to Wren's CD player and pressed the Play
button.  Wren always had something on the player.  I expected Paul
Simon's music to start, but that's not what she had on.  A woman's
voice twanged out "Walkin' After Midnight."

"Oh, I know her," Kate said.  "I can't remember her name.  I "Patsy
Cline," Mrs.  Naughton said.

"Yes.  Yes.  I saw that movie about her."

"Sweet Dreams," I said.

"That's right," Kate said.  "With that girl, that blond girl from King
Kong.  What's her name?"

Now, I knew the actress's name as well as I knew my own, I'd seen every
movie she'd ever been in.  But for some reason I couldn't remember it
either.  I pictured her face on the screen, trying to see the
credits.

"Damn it," Mrs. Naughton said, tearing the seal from a fresh 11bottle
of vodka.  "I know her name.  She was in Tootsie, remember?"

"And Frances," I said.  "It's Jessica.  Jessica something."

"That's it," Kate said.  "Jessica."

"Jessica what?"

"Goddamn it," Mrs. Naughton spat.  "Not remembering is driving me
crazy.  I mean, I probably know more about her than I do my own
daughter.  She's the one who used to live with that Shepard guy."

"The playwright," I added.

"The hunk," Mrs. Naughton said.  "You see him in The Right Stuff
Jesus, I rent that movie every so often, then just fast forward to the
parts he's in.  Even those crooked teeth get me going."

"Jessica.  Jessica."  Kate sipped her drink and concentrated.  "Jessica
something."

"Hahn?"  Mrs.  Naughton said.

"No," I said.  "That's the girl Jim Bakkcr seduced.  The one who got
her breasts enlarged and stayed at the Playboy mansion."

"Jessica Savitch?"  Kate said.

I shook my head.  "Anchor woman who took cocaine and drowned in a car
"I can't think of any more Jessicas," Kate said.

"Jessica Walters," Mrs.  Naughton said, but immediately dismissed it.

"Nah, she's the one who comes after Clint Eastwood in Play Misty for
Me."  Mrs. Naughton slapped herself briskly "Goddamn it, she was also
in that Nazi thing, The Music Box.

I went over to the CD player and picked up the empty plastic case.

It wasn't the soundtrack.  The cover photo was of Patsy Cline, a
round-faced woman with short permed hair wearing a blue scarf tied
around her neck cowgirl style.  She wore a cowgirl outfit, black with
long yellow fringes and what seemed like embroidered roses on either
lapel.  She looked like somebody's mother all dressed up for the weekly
square dance.

"Doesn't say anything about the movie," I said.

"Let me see that," Mrs.  Naughton said.

I carried the case over to her.  She stared at it awhile.  "The thing
about the movie, the thing that got me, "she said.  She � stopped, just
staring at the photo of Patsy Cline.  I thought she would either slap
herself again or start crying.

"What about the movie?"  I asked.  "What got you?"  Mrs. Naughton
looked up.  "Well, just look at this photo, I mean the way Patsy Cline
really looked.  Now listen to her songs.

She paused so we could listen to a few lines from "I Fall to Pieces."

"I mean, these are all songs about getting dumped, right?

-And you look at this photo and you know this woman knows a lot about
getting dumped.  She's pleasant enough, but that hair alone, Jesus.

But in the movie, that woman who played Patsy, that Jessica
something.

Can you imagine any guy leaving her?  I mean, she's the one you'd leave
Patsy Cline for.  You see my � point?  I'm watching this movie
thinking, give me a fucking break here.  She was a good actress and
all, this Jessica woman, but I don't buy this little twerpy Ed Harris
guy leaving her.  I think he'd 111 kiss her ass every night, happy to
have her.  See what I'm saying?"  II "Lange," Kate said.  "Her name's
Jessica Lange."

"Yes!"  I said, feeling a sudden relief.  "Jessica Lange."

"Bless you, woman."  Mrs. Naughton took Kate's glass.  "You just won
yourself another Black Russian.

"I think I've had enough.  I still have a flight to catch this
afternoon.  We have so much to do yet."

Mrs. Naughton ignored Kate's protest and handed her the drink.  "First
thing we need to do is kick Patsy's sad ass out of this room."  She
stood up and marched to the CD player, fingered through the CDs, found
one, ejected Patsy, and injected her selection.  She cranked up the
volume knob.  The speakers boomed with a chorus of women's voices.

Mrs. Naughton threw her hands up into the air and did a dance-shuffle
across the carpet that looked like Topol singing "If I Were a Rich Man"
in Fiddler on the Roof "It's Melanie," she said.  "You remember
Melanie, don't you?"

I recognized the song.  Something about "candles in the rain."

Melanie was one of those folk-rock singers with a trembling urgency in
her voice as if she had to get this song out with her last ounce of
life, after which she would throw herself off a cliff.  This song was
very upbeat, though, about people coming together to love each other
and fight the darkness.  I asked, "Is this about the Kent State
shootings or the Chicago Democratic Convention?"

"Woodstock," Mrs.  Naughton said.

"You sure?"

"I was there."  She smiled.  "Yeah, I know it's hard to believe.

I wasn't always me, you know."

That struck me as a funny thing to say.  I wasn't always me, you
know.

I looked at her, trying to imagine her at Woodstock.

� Maybe she was one of those naked women with painted peace symbols on
her breasts and buttocks.  Maybe she looked like that Rodin statue.

Suddenly Mrs. Naughton started to sing along with the song and do her
Fiddler dance again.  She made us sing along too.

When the song was over she played it again and she stood in 4 front of
us like a conductor and we sang along again.

If this had been a movie or something, this part would come at the end,
the part where we all bonded together, one of those Women Across
Generations things, Sisters Under the Skin.  But that's not how it
really felt.  There was no real camaraderie here, no sisterhood.  It
was just three lonely women getting drunk, singing off-key, each locked
in a bubble with her own desperate thoughts.

When we were done singing, we heard a knock at the open front door.  A
skinny boy about twenty slouched nervously in the d doorway.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Naughton," he said.  "I need to sign out the vacuum
cleaner.  They said you had the key."

.5 She tossed him the big brass ring of keys.  He stuck his hand I vout
to catch them, but when he saw how many there were and how fast they
were flying at him, he pulled his hand away and let the keys fall at
his feet.  He stooped over and picked them up.

"Thanks, Mrs. Naughton."  He looked at each of us as if he'd just I
interrupted a witch's coven, then left.  "Good kid," Mrs. Naughton
said.  "Wish I had a hundred just like him."  Kate stood up and brushed
the lap of her skirt.  "I think I'd better be going now," she said.  "I
don't want to miss my flight.  I What's the address here so I can call
a taxi."

"What about I didn't know what to call it.  Wren's stuff?  Wren's
belongings?  Wren's life?  "What do you want to do about all this?"  I
gestured around the room.

She smiled.  "You were such good friends, Luna.  You should keep it.

I know that's what Wren would have liked."

-"No, I couldn't.  I mean it, Kate."  I did mean it too.  I didn't want
these mementos of my own failure.  The thought of her leaving it with
me made me physically ill.

Kate walked over to me and cupped my hands between hers.

The sweet scent of Black Russians cloycd the air between us.  I felt
somehow imprisoned and wanted to pull away from her.

"Luna," Kate said.  "The reason my husband didn't come with II me is
because he's in the hospital.  Nothing too serious, not a heart
attack.

Something with his nerves.  It happened the day we heard about Wren.

We were just getting out of bed when the police called.

I was in the shower so Jim took the call.  When I got out of the shower
he was sitting on the bed weeping.  He told me about Wren.  We both
cried together.  Then I stopped crying.

Jim didn't.  He cried all day.  He couldn't stop.  I don't mean he
couldn't stop feeling the pain or even having tears, I'm talking about
huge chest-wrenching sobs.  He could not stop crying."  She took a deep
breath and calmed herself.  "He cracked three ribs just from crying.

I had to admit him into the hospital."

Mrs.  Naughton shook her head.  "Poor man.  Tragedy."

"Yes," Kate said, looking at Mrs. Naughton, then back at me again, her
face leaning even closer.  "So you see, despite my devastation at
Wren's death, I still have Jim to take care of.  I have to think about
him now.  Looking around this apartment, I see Wren everywhere and it's
breaking my heart.  Right now, I don't think that's what Jim needs to
see.  I didn't realize that until now, until standing in these rooms
myself."  She released my hands.

My knuckles, all the joints hurt.  She hadn't held me that tight, yet
still each joint ached, as if she'd transferred some bad karma or
something.  "That's why I want you to keep everything that's here.

I've made arrangements with her bank and insurance company but other
than that everything here has nothing to do with the Wren that Jim and
I shared."

I didn't know what to say to that.  What point was there in arguing?

"If that's what you want, Kate," I said.  "I appreciate the gesture."

She turned away as if she hadn't heard me and picked up her purse.  "I
need to call a taxi."

"No, of course you won't," I said.  "I'll drive you to the airport.

It's not that far."

Mrs.  Naughton rose from her chair and elbowed me aside.

"Don't be stupid, girl.  You're too damn drunk to drive.  I'm not."

She was right about me being drunk.  I felt hot and wobbly, my mouth
seemed sticky, as if I'd been licking stamps for a few hours.  Mrs.
Naughton looked as fresh as if she'd been drinking nothing but Kool-Aid
for the past two hours.  "One quick piss and we're outta here," she
said, trotting off to the bathroom.

Kate and I hardly spoke while we waited for Mrs. Naughton's return.  I
felt too drunk, too burdened by the legacy of Wren's possessions.  I
tried to think of some gracious way to give it all back.  But I
couldn't.

When Kate and Mrs. Naughton left I went into the bedroom and lay down
on the bed.  I placed my hands across my chest in � the pose of a
corpse ready for viewing.  This was a very relaxing position, wasted on
the dead.  I looked around the room and saw all of the things I'd just
inherited, clothes, computer, furniture.

A lot of loot.  I watched the front door for about twenty minutes, half
expecting Wren to walk in, explain how she pulled this hoax off.

When she didn't come in, I opened the Rodin book and looked at the same
photograph of "She Who Was the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife."  I
wasn't good at interpreting art, that was Wren's 4 specialty.  To me it
just looked like a somewhat grotesque woman, maybe something they'd
find in the attic of a beautiful dead woman, her personal version of
The Picture of Dorian Gray."closed the book and closed my eyes.  I
thought about the birds of Guam being airlifted away from home so they
could avoid I extinction.  I must have nodded off because when I opened
my ii eyes, an hour had passed.  But my mind was remarkably clear.

41

Without thinking, I reached over, punched the button on the 4 answering
machine, and listened to Wren's two messages again.  4 � When they were
over, I dialed the phone.

"Extension 356," I said to the receptionist.  I listened to the II
recording of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" while waiting.  When it Linda
Marley announced herself, I said, "Ms. Marley, this is Wren
Caldwell.

J'm so looking forward to interviewing with you.

When exactly is my airline reservation?"

I was on my first date since taking over Wren s name and so far it
wasn't going too well.  We were standing in the All-Nite Mini-Mart and
my date, Ethan, was arguing with the Asian kid behind the counter.

"Just check in the back, man," Ethan said.

"There is no need to check in the back, sir."  The kid was J straining
to be polite.  He had dark skin and a slight accent, but I couldn't
decide what it was, Korean or Vietnamese, something 41exotic like
that.

At the first sound of conflict, I'd drifted to the back of the store,
behind the metal greeting-card rack, positioned like an accomplice in a
robbery.  A fat teenage girl all in denim stood behind me, smoking a
cigarette and playing a video game.

"Just check, okay?"  Ethan insisted.  He showed the kid his little
pocket camera.  "I need the 200speed film.  It's dark out, the flash on
these cheapies isn't worth shit."

"Sir, we are out.  Look, the hook is empty."

The boy pointed at the silver hook sticking out of the blue pegboard
behind him.  All around that empty hook were other 4- hooks that had
little yellow boxes of film.  But not the kind Eilan wanted.  He wanted
special film so he could take snapshots of our date, though he hadn't
told me yet where we were going.

I immersed myself in the dusty greeting cards, pretending I was here on
important business, a last-minute card for a terminally sick friend.

Slowly I turned the wobbly rack, studying each colorful drawing, each
sentiment or joke.  Anything to isolate myself from the turmoil up
front.  Perhaps I could find a nice card for � my new stepmom, though
Hallmark seemed woefully lacking anything that started, "On the
occasion of your becoming tribal weasel whacker .  .

"Look, man, just check for me, okay?"  Ethan slid a five-dollar bill
across the counter.  "Okay?"

The boy frowned at the bill with contempt.  His thin face tightened,
somehow got thinner.  "Sir, there is no film in the back.  Please try
another store."

"That's bullshit, man.  Okay?  I used to work in one of these stores.

We kept lots of stuff in the back.  All kinds of shit.  You're just too
fucking lazy, man.  "Ethan crumpled his five dollars in his fist and I
flashed on Wren's blue panties in her fist.  The fat girl behind me
looked around from her video game at the fuss, lighting a fresh
cigarette, sizing the situation up like a veteran street cop.

"Asshole," she muttered and returned to the game.

The Asian boy kept a stiff but serene stare.  He said nothing.  I �
admired his composure in the face of Ethan's older, much larger
presence.  Ethan had to be at least twenty-eight, six feet two inches,
and 190 pounds.  The kid was six inches shorter and half the weight.

Maybe his serenity came from generations of zen devotees.

Maybe he had his hand on a shotgun under the counter.

Double-barreled zen.

Ethan wouldn't accept the kid's attitude.  "So, what're you saying,
man?  You're not even going to look, to fucking look, for
-chrissake?"

"No, sir, there is nothing to look for."

"You dumb fuck.  You lazy dumb fuck."

"Fuck you too, sir," the kid said.

In the car, Ethan was in a good mood.  He seemed to admire the kid too,
held no grudge.  "Kid had a mouth on him, didn't he?"

"Yours wasn't exactly idle."

He chuckled.  "Yeah, well, that's my job.  Occupational hazard."

Ethan was a comedian, a standup comic who worked the local clubs,
sometimes traveled to Los Angeles or San Francisco to do his act.  I
found all this out the first half hour I met him, which was two days
ago when I'd moved into my new apartment.  He lived in the apartment
above me and had offered to help me unload the U-Haul trailer that
contained all of Wren's stuff.

Since then he'd dropped by a few times to help me arrange furniture,
hang prints, draw maps to grocery stores.  He talked a lot and didn't
seem to mind that I didn't, which made him pretty good company at
times.

"Wren," he said.  "Hey, Wren."

I looked over at him and he snapped my picture.  The tiny flash iimade
me blink.  I rubbed my eyes.  He wedged the wallet-sized camera next to
the handbrake between us.  "Something to show our grandkids," he
chuckled.

It's much easier than you think becoming someone else.  First of all,
you get used to the name right away.  It's not like in the movies or on
TV when someone is undercover or pretending to be someone else and a
guy calls them by their pretend name and they don't answer at first
because they forgot that's who they now are.  Someone calls me Wren, I
respond immediately.  Maybe I4 even faster than I did when people used
to call me Luna.  II The mundane details of life swapping were pretty
simple.  I Iifound Wren's birth certificate when I was packing up her
files.  I 14took it down to the DMV, told them I'd lost my driver's
license, t4 and had them reissue a new one, this one with Wren's name
and my photo.  After that I was able to get a passport, credit cards,
14 and anything else I needed.  Once I saw how easy it was, I was
surprised more people, when their lives got too complex or
disappointing, didn't just up and become someone else.

In the movies when someone wants to disappear, they fake their death in
a flaming car crash or something.  I didn't have to go that far.

As far as I could tell, I'd disappeared the day Robby and I split up.

Now all I had to do was fake my life.

A couple of weeks ago, I'd flown down to Orange County for the job
interview.  Wren's mother was right, it was just a formality.  They'd
already made up their minds they wanted to hire Wren.

They took me to lunch and dinner and put me up at the fancy
�Ritz-Carlton Hotel.  They told me the magazine had a rich new owner
and he had great plans for Orange Coast Today.  He wanted a whole new
look, a whole new tone.  He'd fired half of the old staffthc day after
he bought it.  Apparently I was the first personnel step in achieving
this new image, though what the new look and image were to be was never
explained to me.  The day I interviewed, the new owner, Jonathan Krieg,
still hadn't moved from New York, so I never did meet him.  Everyone
spoke about him with a certain fearful reverence, as if they weren't
sure what he was up to, how to please him.  No one there had actually
met him yet, though we'd all read about him before in newspapers and
magazines.  I tried to look interested, though I didn't much care about
any of that.  I cared that my starting salary was $35,000, � eight
grand more than I would have made as a teacher, even if I'd been able
to be hired as one.

"Did I embarrass you back there?"  Ethan asked.

"I don't know.  A little."  My palms were still sweating.  I had the
inky tattoo of a cartoon Snoopy across my fingers where I'd clutched a
birthday card too tightly.

- "Sorry.  That's one of my pet peeves.  No one seems to want to do
their jobs anymore.  The whole world has turned into one big
self-service pump.  There's no pride.  That's why we're getting fucked
by the Japanese.  It's not just the lower wages, it's pride in what
they do.  They just make better quality stuff.  Everybody over there,
no matter how shitty the job, does it like his life depended on it.  I
saw this thing on 60 Minutes about how expensive every thing was in
Japan.  You ever been to Japan?"  "No."

"Me neither, but coffee costs like five bucks a cup.  Anyway, they
interview this one guy who owns a little sushi bar or some thing on
some prime real estate in Tokyo.  The place is like as big as my
kitchen, seats maybe eight people if two of them are amputees.  The guy
barely scrapes by.  They offer the poor schlub a couple million bucks
to sell his location.

What do you think happens?  The guy turns them down.  He's like the
seventh generation of sushi makers in his family and he likes what he
does.  He'd rather slice squid than ride around in a limo yakking on
his cellular phone.  That's what I'm talking about.  Pride."

Ethan was a very handsome man.  He was trim and his face was both
boyish and rugged.  He had a gunslinger's mustache, which didn't go
with his face.  It made him look as if he were playing grownup.  The
blond hairs hung over his upper lip and I felt an overpowering urge to
trim them back.  Even though he had acted like a jerk with that kid, I
liked that he didn't stay mad.  His cheerfulness made me feel
optimistic.  I couldn't decide whether or not I was attracted to him.

"So, Wren," he said, "what exactly do you do at the magazine?"

�1, "I haven't started yet," I told him.  "I start tomorrow."

"Are you nervous?"  ii, "No.  I figure there's plenty of time for a
breakdown once they tell me what my duties are."  I really wasn't
nervous.  I had dozens "i- ofarticles already written by Wren.  I
figured I could feed some of it to the magazine until I learned how to
do the job properly.

it all my own material, my act.  But I'd like to write, you know,
something bigger."

11 "A novel?"

He shrugged.  "Yeah.  Or a screenplay."

"With you as the star, right?"

He looked over at me and grinned.  "Sure.  Why the hell not?

It Who else?"

I didn't say anything.  I watched the traffic slow for the red light.

The driver of the car in front of us tossed a cigarette out ii his
window.  It bounced off the fender of the car beside him.

11 The other driver honked angrily, but the guy who'd thrown the
cigarette just rolled up his window and ignored him.

14 Ethan began fidgeting during the silence.  Quiet seemed to upset
him.  "What will you be doing when you aren't working at the
magazine?"

"You mean like hobbies?"

� "Hobbies, sports, extracurricular activities.  Saving the whales, �
preventing fluoridation, assassinating a major political figure, "
stuff like that."

� I had to think for a moment.  Should I tell him my interests or
Wren's?  Just how far in-character should I go?  Wren liked to ski, �
I'd never been skiing in my life.  Wren knew how to make pottery, work
a loom, had parachuted from an airplane.  I knew how to shop for
bargains, how to love Robby.

"Jeez, I didn't mean to ask such a toughie.  Would the contes taut like
another minute to think over her answer?"  He started humming the theme
to the !eopardy!  game show.

"I'm sorry.  I'm still a little disoriented from moving."

"Believe me, whatever you enjoyed doing up in Oregon, you'll enjoy it
even more down here.  This is a great place."

"I like it so far."

"You'll like it even more after tonight."  He didn't say it in a
suggestive way, but suddenly I realized that he thought we might have
sex tonight.  Not that he expected I it but he hoped.  That meant at
some point tonight he would make his move.  Except for one brief
infidelity five years ago, I hadn't had sex with anyone but Robby in
ten years.  My dating sensors were weak, but now they started kicking
in, beeping at certain phrases, looks.  Later, he would try to kiss me,
then he would want to go from there.  I had no idea yet what I would
say or do.

He pulled into a parking lot and I saw the place we were going, the
Laff Stop.  A comedy nightclub.

- "I thought you might enjoy some laughs.  They have three comics each
show.  I've played here a few times.

The parking lot was full so we parked on the street.  The nearby
residences were a little rundown, the yards brown and patchy, the
windows protected by black bars.  This looked like a high crime area.

We stood in line at the ticket booth outside.  I expected to hear
-large dogs barking in the distance, but all I heard was traffic
whooshing by and some kind of bird half crying, half whistling.

Its call was very regular, like a heartbeat.

"I did a gig with one of the guys we're seeing tonight.  He's funny."

He said this in a grudging way that suggested he was so so funny, not
as funny as Ethan.

I was trying to figure out what kind of bird would make that kind of
sound when Ethan spun around and flashed another photo.  My eyes bled
white and I blinked furiously.

"Just one more, Zsa Zsa, please," Ethan joked.  The people in line
behind us laughed.  [1

My blinking slowed down until I was now blinking in rhythm with that
bird's cries.  I tried to break the rhythm but it was hard to do.  I
got the feeling that the bird was mimicking me now, purposely crying
out whenever I blinked.  Ethan said something but I was still
concentrating on stopping myself from blinking in time with the bird's
piercing shrieks.  Finally the bird stopped and I felt an enormous
relief.

I clutched Ethan's arm.  "You promise not to take any more photos and I
promise not to chew your face off.  Deal?"

S4I,i "Deal, Monty."  He grinned and pocketed his camera.  "I'm out of
film anyway.

So this is dating, I thought.

"You want to come in?"  I asked after unlocking my apartment door.

-"Sure," he said, following me inside.

It- The apartment was larger than I needed.  It had two master
bedrooms, one of which I would have to rent out within the 14 month if
I were going to be able to keep paying the rent.  I'd looked for a
one-bedroom place, but the rents in Orange County 4 were so high that I
would have had to live someplace where �4- everyone parked their cars
on the lawn and the streetlamps were always shot out.  Linda Marley,
the associate editor at the maga zinc, suggested I find a roommate,
that's what a lot of young divorced women did.  There were roommate
services or I could just advertise in the paper, she'd said.

After calculating my monthly budget, I saw the wisdom of her advice.

But the idea bothered me, to be thirty years old and still living with
a nonro mantic roommate.  It seemed too much like I was backsliding
into adolescence rather than evolving into adulthood where one was
1supposed to be in charge of one's life.

"What do you do, Ethan?"  I called from the kitchen while I poured a
couple of glasses of wine.

He followed me into the kitchen.  "You mean hobbies?"

"No, I mean occupation.  Job security, dental insurance, that IFsort of
thing."  He gave me a hurt look.  "Oh, you mean what do I do in real
Lilife."

I hadn't meant to insult him, but I couldn't imagine him making enough
money doing his comedy act to support himself.

"Look, I don't know much about the comedy business.  I didn't mean
anything."

"I buy textbooks."

I handed him a glass of white wine.  "Sounds interesting."

"Does it?  Does it sound interesting to travel around to all the
colleges and universities and buy back all the textbooks from t snooty
teachers who got the books free from the publisher anyway?

A lot of them order every free copy they can so they can sell them to
me at the end of the semester.  Does it really sound all that fucking
interesting?"

"You do make it sound pretty glamorous.

He laughed.  "Hey, it pays the rent.  That's what a job's supposed to
do, right?  Plus, I make some pretty good change from doing my act.

That's where my ffiture is, the real money.  That's my career.

He had performed some of his act for me that first night.  His
specialty was impressions of famous rock stars.  He'd go up on stage
with his guitar and sing their songs, only he'd substitute his own
verses.  Like, he did the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Iii Devil,"
only his version was "Sympathy for the Ycntl."  He had a nice voice and
he was moderately funny.

"I'm obsessed," he said, finishing his wine quickly.  "I'm obsessed
with Johnny Carson."

I poured more wine into his glass.  He didn't seem drunk, although
along with the cover charge at the Laff Stop, they enforced a two-drink
minimum.  I was feeling a little lightheaded myself.

"Obsessed with Johnny Carson," I said.  "Sounds like a headline in the
National Enquirer.

"My whole life sounds like a headline in the National Enquirer
"One-Headed Boy Graduates College, With C Average!

Gets Lousy Job!  Parents Say, "We Told Him So."  "But Johnny Carson,
man.  I watch his show every night, even the reruns.  I tape them and
watch them again.  I'm determined to get on his show.  That's all I
need, all it would take.  One shot.  You know how frustrating it is to
see guys who aren't nearly as funny get all that exposure.  I mean,
Johnny Carson is the ticket.  He's the end of the rainbow."

I didn't know how to respond.  I said, "There's always David
Letterman."

"No, no, no."  He shook his head vigorously, like a dog just out of
water.  "David Letterman dominates his show too much.

Even if you are funny people think it's because of Dave.  He steps on
your lines, then gets all the credit for any laughs.  With Johnny,
you're out there on your own.  If you're funny there, man, he gives you
that okay sign, then you know you're on your way."  He circled his
thumb and finger into an okay sign.

"Do you have an agent or something?  Can't you get an audition "You
don't audition for Johnny Carson.  His scouts find you.

"4 They go out to all the clubs and look for talent to book.  They're
14 like talent ninjas, man.  That's why I keep playing all the local
joints.  I figure one day they'll be there on the same night I am."

I didn't ask the obvious, what if they already had been?

it "I've changed my act so many times.  I used to do the straight kind,
you know, where you go up and talk about your crummy childhood and what
well-meaning jerks your folks were.  I mean, Jay Leno made a fortune
doing that kinda crap.  But then it seemed like all the hot acts were
doing some crazy persona, II screaming at the audience and shit like
Sam Kinison, so I switched and did that for a while.  I must've
scrapped my act a dozen times.  I mean, I follow the trends and when
something is hot, I do it.  And I'm just as funny as the other guys.  I
just don't understand what I'm doing wrong.

A fragile silence enveloped us.  The intimacy of his frustration made
me uncomfortable.  I had no answers.

"Just be yourself," I advised.

We were naked.  I'm not sure how it happened.  The usual way, I guess,
a button here, a kiss, another button.  All along I was thinking that
this wasn't such a wise decision.

I tasted the wine on his lips.  He licked my teeth.

Where had this started?  That first kiss, the one in the kitchen.

I'd gone back for another bottle of wine but there wasn't one.  He said
he had some in his apartment.  That's when I remembered that the wine
we'd just finished had been his too.  He'd brought it up that first day
after we'd moved everything in.  I guess I felt guilty for forgetting,
so when he leaned across the counter to kiss 4 me, I let him.

It "Excuse me," I'd said after the kiss.

"Too much tongue?"  he joked.

I smiled.  "No, it was fine.  I just have to go tothe bathroom."

"My kisses often have that effect on women.

"I'll be right back."  I hurried off into my bedroom and closed the
door.  I grabbed the phone and carried it into the bathroom.

Seeing the toilet, I realized I really did have to go after all, so I
pulled up my skirt and pulled down my panties and peed while I
dialed.

"Hello?"  A woman's voice, throaty with a hint of Louisiana bayou still
clinging to the vowels.  "Hi, Dr.  Jaspers, this is Luna."

This was the first time I'd actually talked to her since Robby moved in
with her.  I wasn't sure what to call her.  The last time I'd seen her
she had been my professor, and unlike some of the other faculty, she
preferred her full title.  Still, it seemed ludicrous to call a woman
who shared your husband's penis Dr. Jaspers.  "Hello, Luna, how are
you?"  She sounded honestly concerned "Fine.

"Your health back to normal?"  "Just a couple scars.  I've had to
postpone swimming the English 4 Channel this year, but otherwise I'm
fine."

"Good."  She said it in a solid, final way, like she meant to say "Good
for you, Luna, we're all proud of you."  I could see her small face
pinched with concentration.  She was barely five feet tall with thick,
kinky black hair that hung past her shoulders iI and made her look more
like an Israeli freedom fighter than a i professor.

"Is Robby there?"  I sounded like I was in high school talking to
someone's mother.  Can Robby come out and play?

"Hang on," she said, "I'll get him."  Why was I calling him?  What
would I say?  I wanted to hang ii up, but it was too late.  I had to
try to save as much face as possible.  At least he didn't know where I
was.  I'd turned in forwarding address cards to the post office for
both Wren's mail and mine.  Then I'd phoned Robby and given him my
dad's address in Dallas so he could send me the final divorce papers.

I never did finish my Thomas Pynchon thesis, never did collect my
master's degree.  That was okay, because now I had Wren's three
master's degrees.  The last thing I did as Luna Devon was to visit
Esther's grave.

I'd heard that her mother had been too ill with cancer to travel, so
one of her brothers, an architect from Phoenix, had flown in, buried
her, and put the house up for sale.  Her headstone was small but
somehow loving.  Her name was at the top, under which was the date of
her birth and the date of her death.  Then there was a long passage in
Hebrew, which I couldn't read.  I kneeled down and touched the
elaborate grooved letters, ran my fingertips along the rough
crevices.

I liked the way they felt.

"Hey, Luna, where are you?"  Robby asked.  He sounded sleepy, as if
he'd just woken up.  I looked at my watch, 11:37P.M. Not that late for
a Saturday night.

"Did I wake you?"

"No, I was just reading Tom Robbins's new novel."

"I thought the novel was dead."

"This one's driving the final nail in the coffin."  I blew a loud
raspberry into the phone.  That's what I always It- did when he made
those superior pronouncements about things.

It He laughed.  "I've always appreciated your articulateness."

II,I didn't know what else to say.  I didn't want to tell him what I
was up to, how I'd taken over Wren's life.  I diduTwant to tell him
there was a man in the next room waiting to jam his tongue into my
mouth.  I didn't want advice or absolution, I was listening j4 for
something in his tone, the way I imagined a medicine man it would look
to the wind for signs.  I too was looking for some sign.

it-I just didn't know what it was.  If this were junior high school,
I'd 1have played a sentimental song over the phone for him, some thing
like the Eagles' "I Can't Tell You Why."  Then, when the itsong was
over, I'd hang up and wait for him to call me back and say sweet
things.

"You in Dallas?"  he asked.

"Yes.  Visiting Dad."

"How's he doing?"

I told him about stcpmom.

"Jesus," he said, laughing.  "And to think I've been doing it all these
years for free."

I heard Dr. Jaspers's husky voice in the background.  "She sounded
worried, Robby.  Ask her if she's okay."  If "You okay, Luna?"  Robby
asked.

I realized there was more concern in Dr. Jaspers's whispered 14 voice
than in Robby's.  It was too humiliating to have your ex-husband's new
lover be so caring.  "Gotta go," I said quickly, choking up.

"No, wait, Luna.  Wait."  "Gotta go I hung up.  There was no fucking
sign.  Just me being pathetic.  I swallowed whatever emotion had
bubbled up, washed my face with cold water, and returned to the living
room and Ethan.  4 Which led to more kissing, unbuttoning, the lights
off, and the two of us naked in my bed.

"Ow!"  I hollered.  41 "Jesus!"  he hollered back.

He lunged over and snapped on the lamp.

Until now he'd been doing all his foreplay on my right breast, the
usual massaging and nipple pinching.  Then when we were naked he'd
started to suck on my left breast and his nose hit my bullet wound.  I
don't know how, but I'd forgotten about it.  Until his nose probe.

"What happened here?"  he asked, looking at my wounded breast, trying
not to look too shocked.  "What the hell happened?"

"Hunting accident."

"You hunt?"  "It was my first time.  Now that he knew it was a bullet
wound, he seemed less repulsed and more fascinated.

He leaned closer, touched the edges.  "Does that hurt?"

"No."  It didn't.  Actually, it hadn't hurt that much when he'd nosed
it, I was more surprised than anything.  I'd forgotten about it and now
I was naked with some man who would see it.  For the first time it
occurred to me that every man I ever slept with would see this and ask
what happened.

The wound didn't look too bad, just a small crater in the skin and some
shiny scar tissue like a glob of melted plastic.  Ethan switched off
the lamp and lowered his lips to my wound.  He kissed the skin all
around it, then he kissed the scar.  I suppose he was trying to be nice
but his actions seemed so studied, like this was something he saw in a
movie.  Hero slobbers on poor girl's scar.

"Wren," he whispered.  "Wren."

"What?"  I said.

"Nothing.  I just like saying your name.  It's poetic."  That's the
kind of guy he was.  And maybe he was being sincere.

I probably wasn't in a moral position to be judging anyone's He kissed
a trail down across my ribs and stomach into my thicket of pubic
hairs.

He nudged my thighs apart.  Suddenly he stopped and looked up at me.

"When's the last time you had sex, Wren?"

"Jesus," I said.  "What kind of question is that?"

He nodded sagely.  "That long, huh?"

I clamped my legs shut.  "Well, if I've waited this long I can wait a
little longer.

He laughed.  "I didn't mean anything by that.  It's just that you're so
preoccupied, like your head is somewhere else, doing your taxes,
cleaning the hair out of your drains.  You act like I'm a cop who
picked you up for questioning.  Relax."  He straightened his back.

Looming over me in the dark this way I couldn't see his face clearly.

I thought of that man I'd seen with Wren, the two of them hunched over
the sofa, his hands clasped to her hips, pushing and pulling.  Ethan's
hand touched my cheek.  "I mean, if if you want me to stop, I'll
stop."

Now I wasn't so sure I wanted to go through with this.  He lived in the
apartment above me.  No matter how things went tonight, location would
force us to see a lot of each other.  I didn't want to have to start
peeking out of my curtain every day to make sure he wasn't around
before making a crazy dash for my car.

He leaned over and kissed my lips.  His hand slid across my thigh.  He
whispered, "Just tell me what you want.  Tell me."

The next morning I peeked through the curtains, didn't see Ethan.  I
made a crazy dash for my car.

I'd had my eye on the rearview mirror, looking for the car that had
been following me all morning.  That's how I thumped into the truck in
front of me.

"I just hope you've got insurance, lady," the man barked, climbing out
of his pickup truck and slamming the door.

"I don't think there's any damage," I said.

Six lanes of cars whooshed by us less than three feet away.

The man tugged his Dodgers cap low on his forehead as if he thought I
might try to snatch it.  He wore his hat backward, with it' the bill
shading his neck and the little plastic adjustment strip puckering a
swatch of skin on his forehead.  He walked toward I, me muttering, "I
need this shit" under his breath.  His red hair was long and his bushy
beard completely hid his mouth, except for the cigarette that bobbed
when he spoke.  He wore heavy work boots with rawhide laces and mud
caked around the soles.  His jeans were faded at the knees, thighs, and
crotch.  His white T shirt looked new, though the sleeves had been torn
off.  Under neath the shrubbery of facial hair, he looked to be about
twenty seven, but there was a rigidness and hostility in his walk that
announced to the world that this was how he would be for the rest of
his life, take it or leave it.  it He ran his hand along the metal rim
of the side of the truck bed as he walked toward me.  The blue truck
was a dented, rusting It heap, but that's how it had been long before
I'd bumped into it.

"Could be all kinds of damage you can't see," he said.  "Tension damage
to the axle, the frame might be bent.  Could be anything."  This was my
first day of work and I was already twenty minutes late.  I'd turned
the wrong way on Harbor Boulevard and passed a mile's worth of No
U-turn signs before being able to swing around again in the right
direction.  That's when I got distracted by the car in my rearview
mirror, the one that had been following me all morning.  It had also
U-turned.  Right now, I couldn't see it anywhere.

"I don't think it could be that serious," I said.  "It was just a
tap."

"Do you have insurance or not, lady?"

I reached into my purse and pulled out my wallet.  I removed the
insurance card, which was in Wren's name.  "Right here."

He reached for it but I stepped back.  "I showed you mine, now you show
me yours.

He gave me a sharp look.  I held out my hand palm up, waiting.

He plucked his cigarette from his mouth and for a moment I � thought he
was going to stub it out in my hand.  Instead he threw it hard against
the pavement.  Red sparks bounced up.  He didn't � step on the butt,
just left it lying there, bitter smoke curling up between us.

"You rcarended me, lady.  That makes the accident your fault.

- I don't have to show you squat."  He pointed at my Oregon plates.

"In California, the person who caused the accident has to have
insurance."

"Actually, that's not true.  Both parties must have insurance and must
show their cards.  Now, we can exchange this information on our own, or
we can call the police and get a legal ruling."  I looked at his muddy
plates.  "Your choice, Mr.  2HJY761."

He gave me a slow-crawl look, his eyes starting at my ankles and
slithering up my thighs to my chest and finally my face.  This ritual
seemed to relax him.  He'd checked me out, figured me for just another
tight-assed, sexless bitch in a suit who, even if he t did somehow get
into bed, wouldn't do what he wanted anyway.

Now that he could dismiss me as a possible sexual partner, he v- got
down to business.  He kneeled down and studied the rear bumper of his
truck.  The only visible mark was a three-inch line where I'd scraped
off a little rust.  Right next to the scratch was a partially shredded
bumper sticker that said, SSDD (Same Shit, Different Day).  He
straightened up and used his baseball cap to swat the road dust off the
knees of his jeans.  "Doesn't look like anything too serious.  Guess I
could fix it myself."

I smiled.  I never won this kind of argument with men in pickup trucks
or tool belts, so I felt a little cocky.  I remembered those two
university boys who'd tossed their beer cans at Wren and me, called us
lesbos.  How nervous I'd been.  Now I was standing here with a man who,
as a fashion statement, had deliberately torn the sleeves off his
T-shirt.  And I wasn't nervous at all.  Was this how Wren had always
felt?

Two young men on bicycles pedaled toward us.  Our cars were hugging the
right curb, blocking their path.  They were clean cut, with short hair,
white shirts, skinny black ties, dark trousers, and dark shoes.

They passed us single file.  One of them said, "Good morning" as they
coasted by.

The bearded man shook his head in disgust.  "Fucking Mormons.

"Jehovah's Witnesses," I said.

He shot me a dirty look.  "Same difference."  He readjusted his
baseball cap and climbed back into his truck.  He slammed the door and
drove away.

1 I got in my Rabbit and started the engine.  I took out some lipstick
and pretended to be applying it while I checked my rear view mirror for
any signs of the car that had been following me.

So far I'd seen it three times this morning, a white Subarn with a bent
radio antenna.  The first time, it had pulled out of the apartment
complex behind me and I only noticed it because it was clean and
reminded me I should get my car washed soon.

The second time I saw the car was when it exited off the freeway with
me.  Coincidence, I'd thought.  But then, following me down Harbor
Boulevard and making the same U-turn, that couldn't be coincidence.

Could it?

In my rearview mirror I watched a red Accord U-turn at the same
intersection.  A black Nissan did the same.  Were they following me
too?  I looked all around, but still no sign of the white Subaru.

I shook my head.  "Duhhhh," I said to myself and drove off.

Okay, maybe becoming Wren had made me a little skittish.

-I No one around here knew who I really was, and if they did, 1 they
would just bust me, not follow me around.  There was no international
intrigue here, no mystery.  As Wren had often said, I watched too much
television.

Could be I was still a little shaken after last night's sexual
interlude with Ethan.  I even thought that it might be him in the white
Subaru, so intoxicated with passion for me that even following me from
several car lengths was better than not seeing me at all.  Not that I
wanted that.  Mostly I wanted to forget last night.

"Candles," Ethan had asked.  "Got any candles?"

"Why?

"Candlelight would be neat."  He'd sat up in bed, grinning.

"Candles and maybe some music.  Very romantic.  You got something
against romance?"

"My stereo isn't hooked up yet," I told him.

He frowned.  I was frustrating his timing.  The stage wasn't properly
set for sex.

"You got cable?"

"Cable?"

"Cable TV.  You've got cable, right?"

I gestured at the decoder box on top of the TV on my dresser.

"Great!"  He leapt out of bed and padded to the TV.  His butt was
muscular, fuller than Robby's.  Hairier too.  He turned on the TV,
flipped through the stations.  "MTV," he said, looking smug.

"A little music for me lady."

The video was old and grainy, Jim Morrison singing "Don't You Love Her
Madly."  Jim's eyes were squinting but expressionless, as if he were
thinking about lunch, not love.

"This guy is so cool," Ethan said, then started singing along with
Morrison.  Suddenly he jumped onto the bed, catapulting me a few inches
into the air.  The covers fell away, revealing me in my naked
splendor.

He shook his head and grinned.  "And me without my camera.

By now I'd pretty much lost interest in Ethan but still was intent on
the sex part.  Somehow it seemed like a good initiation into my new
life.  Not that I wanted a new life of serial meaningless casual
affairs.  But it was nice to know that I could if I wanted.

That my memories of sex wouldn't always be limited to picturing
Robby.

Besides, I hadn't had sex in so long, I'd invested too much importance
in the act.  I didn't want to be one of these bruised women who hoards
her sexuality like a precious prize, a jewel to offer up to Mr.
Right.

When I did meet a guy I really liked, I didn't want to ruin it by
putting too much expectation into the sex.  I folded my glasses and
placed them on Wren's clock/radio.

Ethan was a good lover.  He did a variety of things and he did them
well.  But it all felt too rehearsed, as if he were going down a
checklist, let's see, we nibbled on the nipple, now let's give her a
little finger action.  As if this were his comedy act and he had to
remember the right order of actions the way he'd remember 1 the order
of jokes.  The goal for him wasn't to have sex with me, but for me to
admire his sexual technique.  I was less an object of desire than an
audience with a convenient vagina.  To him, my moans were applause, my
orgasm a standing ovation.  Iitt I was surprised by his body.  All
evening I'd imagined us being the same physical size, even though I
knew he was bigger.  But "-i' in bed, I felt his shoulders, his hips,
his legs.  They made me feel smaller.  He was gentle, but the thought
kept coming back to me, He could hurt me.  If he wanted to, he could
hurt me.  I'd never had that thought with Robby.

After Ethan ejaculated, he pushed himself up and grinned at, me.  "That
was so0o0 good.  I thought I was going to pass out.

Then he laughed.  "Something else to tell our grandkids."

I closed my eyes and pulled the pillow against my face.

"Wren?"

"Hmmm."

"What're you thinking?"

"I don't know.  Nothing."

"Me too."  I opened my eyes and lifted my head from the pillow.  He was
staring at me with doe eyes.  I could tell he was about to say
something mushy.  , I excused myself and went to the bathroom again.

He called after me, "Some guys make women weak in the knees, I make
them weak in the bladder."

I sat on the edge of the tub and laid my head on my knees.

I am not a mushy person.  Declarations of love or friendship usually
come from me couched in a joke or said in such ambiguous terms that I
might be referring to something else entirely, the bean dip or a cold
front from Canada.  I know all the psychobabble buzzwords about such
behavior, the unconscious fears of rejection and all that crap that
college guys who want to go to bed with you use.  And it isn't as if I
didn't like hearing a little gushing directed toward me, I'd sop it up
like most people.  It's just that I don't think people know what
they're saying sometimes.  They think of words as disposable diapers,
once used better not to be examined again.  As if words "were ethereal,
airborne spores that can't be seen and therefore demand no
allegiance.

They don't understand how mere words can embed themselves so deeply.  I
mean, how was it possible for Robby to assure me that he loved me every
day for ten years, to have said things like "I want to live my whole
life with you" or "I'd die without you" or "I'm happy - only when I'm
with you," and then to dump me for a midget Milton scholar who tawks
lawk thayat?  One day he's gallantly telling me how if we were
shipwrecked with a limited supply of food and water, he'd gladly drown
himself to save my life, the next day he's waving farewell from someone
else's bed.  On Mon day he'd have sacrificed his life for mine.  On
Tuesday, it's Hey, babe, you're on your own.  Good luck.

What had changed?  How had the atoms of our lives come to realign
themselves?

This was Robby's explanation, "It's not that I love her more than you,
Luna, it's just different.  It's like .  . . it's those fish, those
anglerfish.  In one species the male is about an inch and a half long,
the female is ten inches.  The male attaches himself to the female's
body and hangs on until eventually his internal � organs disintegrate
and her system replaces his.  He literally can't live without her.  He
never swims away because his body and hers are one, the tissue is
fused.  She can even cause him to discharge sperm when she wants.  I'm
not saying that's what happened with us.  Sometimes I think I'm
attached to you, sometimes you're attached to me.  But I don't think we
should be "attached' at all."  Here he wiggled his hands in front of
him like two fish swimming parallel.  "Two people should be separate,
swimming side by side perhaps.  But not attached."

					 When I pulled into the parking lot there was no sign of a white
Subaru with a bent antenna.  But I was still a nervous wreck.  I hated
being late for anything and I was thirty-five minutes late on the very
first day of my new job.  My stomach churned noisily as I ran into the
building, heels popping against the floor like a cap gun.  Apparently
my Wren-like calm states were only temporary.

"Hi," I puffed to the receptionist.  "I'm late."

"Oh, hi."  She stood up and shook my hand.  We'd met when I'd
interviewed but I couldn't remember her name.  "I guess I'm your
official welcoming party."

-"I'm sorry, I don't remember your name.

"Billie.  Billie Meyers."  Her hair was short and combed straight down,
like the early Beatles.  Her skin was pale, her lipstick radioactively
bright.  She wore black jersey pants and a white pirate blouse with
ornate silver buttons, none of which were the same size or pattern.

She also wore red suspenders,- but backward, so the part where they
usually cross at the back now crossed across her chest, separating her
breasts.  She was twenty-one, tops.

"Hi, Billie, I'm Wren."  I looked around the office.  All the cubicles
were empty.  A couple of Styrofoam cups of coffee sat half-full at
desks.  Suit jackets were draped around desk chairs.

It looked spooky, like a science fiction movie where the population is
wiped out and the survivors get to go through the shopping mall and
take anything they want for free.  "Where is everybody?"

"Meeting Mr.  Krieg."

"He's here?"

"Just arrived this morning.  Caught everyone by surprise.  You should
have seen their faces."  She laughed.

"Of all the days to be late."

"Don't worry.  People from out of town are always late the first few
times.  They can't figure out our weird traffic."

I felt a little relieved.  "I couldn't make a U-turn on Harbor
Boulevard."

The phone rang and Billie snatched it up.

"Orange Coast Today.  May I help you?"

She sounded like a cheery waitress, Welcome to Arby's, may I take your
order?  I liked that about her.  When she hung up, she turned back to
me with a big smile.  "I'm so glad you're working here.  I read some of
those articles you submitted.  You're so smart.

i'm totally jealous."

I looked away, embarrassed.  "Thanks.  Did they want me to join them in
the meeting or what?"

"Linda said you should go see Debra in personnel, get the paperwork out
of the way."

"Where's that?"

"Down the hall.  Suite 308."

A sudden rumble of muffled laughter sounded.  It came from the
conference room at the back of the office.

The door to the room was closed.

"Sounds like they're having a good time," I said.

The phone rang again and Billie answered it.

"Orange Coast Today.  May I help you?"  She winked at me for no reason
I could think of.  "She's in a meeting.  May I take a message?"

I started down the hall.

"You skipped one," she said.

"Where?"  I leaned closer to her desk.

"Here.  Married or single."  Debra slid the form back across the desk
and handed me her pen.  "Most people skip weight.  I remember one time,
not here but the last place I worked, this woman argued and ranted,
saying how this whole thing was unconstitutional, an invasion of
privacy.  Like I really gave a flying fudge how much she weighed.  I
told her, hey, it's just for insurance purposes, but she was livid.

Finally she scribbled in 120 pounds.  I'm talking about a broad who
tipped in at 185 after a two-week fast."

My pen hovered over the two tiny boxes.  Married.

Single.

Which should I check?  How much had Wren told them about her past when
she'd applied?  Linda Marley hadn't asked about my husband, so maybe
Wren hadn't mentioned Byron.

I checked single.

Debra looked at my check mark and sighed.  "Good luck," she said
without enthusiasm.  She looked to be a few years older than I and wore
no wedding ring.  She also had a heavy hand with the blush.  Her cheeks
were an unusual shade, if it were a shoe polish it would be called
oxblood.  She dressed a little young, as if she were trying to look
like Billie the receptionist, despite their fifteen year and
twenty-pound difference.

"What happened there?"  Debra asked, pointing a paper clip at my
grooved thumbnail.

"Nothing.  Nervous habit."

She nodded.  "Me, I gnaw the cuticles.  Look."  She held out her
hands.

They were perfectly manicured, but the skin around the nails looked raw
and sore.  I could see the various layers of skin peeled back.  "We all
have our little flaws, I guess.  I went out with this psychologist for
a while, his office is up on twenty eight."  She pointed toward the
ceiling.  "He said chewing nails is a sign of self-loathing, that I
wanted to consume myself."  She shrugged.  "I almost married him.  Talk
about self-loathing."

I signed the bottom of the form and slid it back to her.

"Welcome welcome," Debra said, smiling as she handed me a large manila
envelope.  "These are your benefits.

Medical, dental, et cetera.  We have an excellent plan here.  You bust
it, we cover it."

- "I'll try not to bust anything."

"That's good too.

The door behind me opened and Linda Marley, my new boss, stuck her head
in.  "There you are.  Hurry, we've got something for you."  To Debra,
"She can finish up here later.  Okay, Deb?"

"She's done now," Debra said.

"Great."  Linda opened the door for me and I went out into the hall
with her.  She set a brisk pace down the hall back toward the editorial
offices.  Our heels chattered chaotically, then mine seemed to fall
into rhythm with hers with no effort from me.  It was like that bird
last night, the one cawing in time with my MI blinking.  "Not much time
to explain, Wren.

Something happened this morning, Mr. Krieg wants you on it right
away.

"Me?  I don't even know where the bathrooms are yet."

"He thinks you're the only one who can handle it.," The coolness in her
voice indicated she disagreed with Mr.  Krieg.

-"Look, Linda, I'm still a virgin around here.

on my first day.

What's going on?"

She stopped our forced march and looked at me.

The frustration that had hardened her face eased a little and she
smiled slightly.  "It's nothing, Wren.  Really.  Mr. Krieg has some
new ideas, new directions he wants this magazine to go in.  I have to
get used to it, that's all.  He's the one worth a few hundred million
dollars, I'm the one with $438.45 in her checking account.  He must
know something, right?"

I opened the glass door for her.  She entered, I followed.  Linda
Marley was about forty, I guessed from the fine lines around her eyes
and mouth.  She didn't bother covering them with makeup, which I
dmired.  She wore a blue pinstriped pantsuit with wide lapels.  A
bronze woman swimmer frozen in midcrawl was pinned to her lapel.  Her
hair was blonder than mine and pulled tight into a Swedish braid that
made her look businesslike but not manly.  I suspected that when her
hair was down, she looked like Faye Dunaway.

"What's Jonathan ICrieg like?"  I asked.

"Anything like the newspapers say?"

"He's just a man.

I recoiled in mock horror.  "Not one of those."

Linda smiled and I said, "What kind of man?"

"The worst kind.  Rich.  Powerful.  A man who demands to get what he
wants, even when he doesn't know what he wants."

I screwed up my face.  "I don't follow, but it sounds damn profound."

Linda laughed.  "I don't know what I mean either.  It's easier to be
profound that way."  She stopped at a wooden door with no name on it,
knocked.  "Hello?"  she said to the closed door.

"Yez, comb in, pleez," the accented voice inside said.

I knew from television and People magazine that Jonathan Krieg was New
York City born and raised, friends with movie stars and rock musicians,
a snappy dresser and dashing playboy who once dated Maria Shriver and
Caroline Kennedy.  He did not speak with an accent.

-"Comb in, comb in," the voice insisted.

-I gave a puzzled look at Linda.

She smiled."  "Beware the Jabberwock, my son."

She pushed open the door.

The man behind the desk was dressed in a rumpled black suit and plain
black hat.  His craggy face was consumed by a long black beard with two
gray stripes.  His sideburns were long springy curls.  He smiled at us
like Santa Claus.  "Shalom," he said, waving us into the room.

"Shalom, ladeez."

"Shalom," Linda said.

"Sit, pleez," he said.  He gestured at the leather chairs across from
the desk.

"Thanks, but I've got to run," Linda said.  She nudged me forward and
said to the bearded man, "You take care of my girl, okay.  She's gonna
be a star around here."

He nodded enthusiastically.  "Of courz."

-"Uh, Linda," I said.

"You'll be fine," she said.  She left, closing the door behind her.

The office was huge, the size of an airline lobby.  The desk was an
unpolished slab of dark gray stone the size of a door balanced on two
stone pillars.  The only things on the slab were a black telephone,
some typed pages clipped together, and a worn blue book with gold
Hebrew lettering on the cover.  The Hebrew lettering reminded me of
Esther's gravestone.  I recognized the typed pages as one of Wren's
articles.  They seemed to glow unnaturally white against the cold gray
stone.  Suddenly the whole desk reminded me of a gravestone, as if the
stone had been unearthed at some archaeological site, the lid of some
dead pharaoh's sarcophagus.

"Hello," I said to the elderly man, "I'm Wren Caldwell."

"Ya," he said.  "Nize meeting you."

"That's Rabbi Weiss," the voice behind me said.

I turned.  The Jonathan Krieg from People magazine came out of the
bathroom drying his hands on a towel.  He dried each hand separately,
like wineglasses.  His black hair was slicked back.  He wore a black
shirt buttoned to the throat and a thick white cable knit cardigan
sweater with pockets, which made him look natty and much younger than
the fiftyish that I'd read he was.  He was trim, his gaunt face making
him look as if he were leaning toward you all the time, ready to
pounce.  He reminded me of a corporate Dennis H,per.  He held out his
hand to me.  "Hi, Wren, I'm Jonathan.

"Hello," I said, shaking his hand.  The skin was warm despite the
recent washing.  "I understand I have you to thank for my job."

"Yes, you do."

"Well then thanks."

He didn't seem to hear me.  He crossed the room and stood behind the
old rabbi, resting his hands on the older man's shoulders.

"Rabbi Weiss is from Israel.  He lives on a kibbutz outside Tel Aviv.

He walks with a limp because a terrorist grenade shattered his right
knee.  Show her your tattoo, Rabbi.

Rabbi Weiss held up his hands in protest.

"Jona,than, pleez."

"It's okay, Rabbi.  She is an educated woman.

This is also part of her education.  She's a journalist now."

Rabbi Weiss sighed as if indulging a favorite grandson, though the
rabbi was probably only ten years older than Jonathan.  He pushed up
his sleeve and revealed a faded tattooed number on his forearm.  The
seven had a line through it in European fashion.

"Dachan," Jonathan said.  "He was just a,boy."

"That was a long time ago," Rabbi Weiss said, tugging his sleeve back
down.

"His father was killed in the camps, not by Nazis, but by a fellow Jew
who tried to rape his mother.  The other man choked his father to death
and then raped his mother anyway.  How does that make you feel,
Wren?"

My mouth was dry.  The way he was looking at me I thought he was about
to present evidence that it was one of my relatives who'd done it.  I
remembered something about being told my father's mother was half
Jewish, though she'd never practiced the faith that I know of.

ii "How does it make you feel?"  he repeated firmly.

"I don't know.  Guilty, mostly.  Also outraged."

"Exactly!"  He clapped his hands together and chuckled.

"That's exactly what we're looking for in the new Orange Coast Today.

A new tone of outrage tempered with a hopeful sense of renewed
purpose.

We make our readers feel a little guilty, then tell them how to feel
better.  See what I'm getting at?"

"Not exactly."

"Okay."  He thrust his hands into the pockets of his cardigan sweater
and paced behind the rabbi.  "Rabbi, tell Wren why I flew you here from
Israel.  Why I am putting you up at the Four Seasons for the next three
months.  Why we are meeting every afternoon."

Rabbi Weiss smiled.  "Bar mitzvah."

"Oh, how nice," I said.  "Whose?"

"Mine," Jonathan Krieg said.

"I thought that happened when you were thirteen."

- "Traditionally, yes.  But I was too busy when I was thirteen, too
busy hustling a buck.  I worked in a newsroom for a guy, a reporter
name of Manuheim.  Taught me a lot.  He went on to Hollywood, burned
out after three mediocre screenplays.

Ended up doing celebrity interviews for one of the tabloids.

Meantime, I bought the newspaper, sold it, bought a computer software
company, sold it, bought a few more companies, sold them.  I made my
fortune, just like in the movies, just like the insipid movies Mannheim
used to write.  Sit, Wren, sit."

I sat in the leather chair across from his desk.  I had no idea what he
was talking about.  Rabbi Weiss didn't seem to follow either, or at
least wasn't interested, because he opened the book in front of him and
began to read.  His lips moved, though he made no sound, and his body
rocked slightly in a rhythm with his reading.

"Maybe this will help," Jonathan Krieg said, coming around the desk and
standing next to me.  "Feel this."  He crooked his arm to make a
muscle.

I looked over at the rabbi, but he was lost in his silent chanting.

"Go ahead," Jonathan urged.  "Don't be shy.  Squeeze it."

I squeezed it.  It didn't feel too solid, not like Robby's.

"Well?"  he asked.

"I'm not very good at this," I hedged.  "I'm not much of a
bodybuilder."

"Hone, softly, tell me what you think.  Is that one hell of a muscle or
what?"

I thought of saying something halffiearted like, For your age #11.  .

.

But that seemed an even worse insult.

Wren would know what to say.  I tried to imagine her here, answering.

She'd make some joke, something like, That's not the muscle that
counts, and everyone would laugh and forget the original point because
she'd be on to something else, something she read about a recent study
concerning muscle memory and a group of track and field athletes at
some midwestern college.

"I don't know, Jonathan," I said.  "Feels a little soft to me."

"Exactly!"  he said triumphantly.  "I'm in my fifties and I'm way out
of shape.  I look fit, but I'm not.  That's why I hired personal
fitness trainers.  A husband-and-wife team, they moonlight as stunt
people in the movies.  Starting tomorrow, they will come over every day
and beat me into shape.  You know what else?  I never finished
college.

Took two semesters and that's it.  Hell, you want to know the truth, I
didn't even finish high school.  So I enrolled in Pacific West
University, to whom I donated a medical wing last year.  They're
letting me finish my degree by doing independent studies.  I hired a
couple of tutors to help me through my first semester.  See what I'm
getting at here?"

"Jonathan," the rabbi said, tapping his watch crystal.  "Mach sch
nell.

" "Yes, Rabbi."  Jonathan Krieg sat on the edge of the stone desk,
facing me.  "It's never too late, Wren.  That's my point.  I can still
go through my bar mitzvah.  I can still get into good physical shape.

I can still earn my degree.  Human potential is limitless.

It's never too late for people to become who they want to be.  But a
lot of people don't know what they want to be.

That's where II we come in.  What we're going to be doing here at the
magazine is helping them see what kind of people they want to
become."

I exhaled a deep breath that I didn't even know I'd inhaled.

- "That's a tall order for a little regional magazine."

"That's why I bought it.  I could have purchased a more popular
magazine, or even a daily newspaper.  I could have gone to Los Angeles,
Miami, stayed in New York.  But this place"he spread his arms out and
turned slowly, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music"this place is
perfect.  Orange County is one of the most expensive places in the
country to live.  Median house prices are over $200,000.  You have
desperately poor areas, openly gay communities, conspicuous wealth,
Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral one of the largest concentrations
of Vietnamese refugees.

We're going to double our circulation in less than a year.  I guarantee
it."

"That's great," I said.  The force of his personality was so over
whelming, instead of being nervous, I felt good to be in his
presence.

He seemed so sure of himself, so clear about the nature of the world
and his ability to make it do what he wanted, I was suddenly very
relaxed.

-I crossed my legs and my skirt slid up a few inches above my knee.

The rabbi looked up from his reading and glanced at my legs.  He smiled
appreciatively and returned to his reading.  I tugged my hem down over
my knees.

Jonathan looked at his watch.  "We don't have much time.  I have an
assignment for you, part of the new direction of the magazine."

"Yes?"

-"You ever hear of Season Dougherty?"

"The name's familiar."

"She accused her ex-husband of sexually molesting their daughter during
his custody, so she sent the kid into hiding with her sister."

"Right, I remember.  The judge ordered her to produce the child but she
wouldn't, so he jailed her.  She's been in prison for the past few
months."

"Eight months," Jonathan corrected.  "She got out yesterday after the
state legislature passed that special bill limiting jail time in these
cases.  Same as that Washington, D.C., case."

"That's good."

"Except that I just got a call from a friend of mine at City Hall that
she's been arrested again.  Half an hour ago they found her ex-husband
dead of a shotgun blast."

The rabbi looked up and shook his head.

"Terrible ting."  Then he glanced at my legs and returned to his
book.

"Are they sure she did it?"  I asked.

"She confessed."

I no longer felt that warm basking feeling.  My stomach started to
tighten.  I had to pin my hand under my thigh to keep it from rubbing
my bra strap.  "I don't see where I fit in here."

"We have a window of opportunity here.  I've arranged for you [ to
visit the crime scene and then to have access to interview Season.

You'll have a goddamn exclusive."

"Me?"

-"4Yes."

"I don't have any experience with this kind of thing.  This is crime.

You want a reporter.  I do think pieces."  I opened my purse and pulled
out a sheaf of papers.  I'd come prepared with one of Wren's recent
articles I'd printed out from her floppy disk.

-I thrust the papers toward him.  "This is what I write."

Jonathan held up his hands and retreated behind his desk, behind the
rabbi.  "I understand this is a little different for you.

But so what?  I hired you because I could see something special Iii'in
your writing, a certain tone, an eye for just the right detail.

Let's face it, our readership is eighty-seven percent women.  You have
the voice of the woman.  You are the nineties contemporary woman.  You
see the right slant on things, the slant that our readers want to
see.

"I just write about issues, Mr.  Krieg."

He shook his head dismissively.  "It's not about issues anymore,
Wren.

There is no more Women's Lib.  Now it's just Women's Glib, the same
issues but with a snappy, more ironic attitude.

Right now we have a reputation as a glossy rag for pampered
housewives.

Our articles are puff pieces mostly designed to keep 11 the ads
apart.

I want to change all that.  Make this the magazine for the contemporary
woman in Orange County.  To do that I need to have someone who can talk
to them, knows what they are thinking.  Knows their language, the
language of their hearts and souls."  He tapped his own chest over his
heart.  "That's you, squirmed in my chair.  That's Wren, not me.

"You know what a sob sister is, Wren?"

- "It's a newspaper term.  Used to have something to do with women
reporters or something."  I couldn't think.  My chest was constricting
around my bullet hole.

"In the old days, it referred to a reporter, usually a woman, who wrote
sentimental feature stories, you know, children orphaned by train
wreck, that sort of thing.  Well, we're going to be doing a variation
of that.  You're going to be a New Age sob sister."

I stood up, anxious to leave.  "I appreciate your confidence in me,but
I don't see how this murder ties in to that whole improve their-lives
attitude you just told me about.  This just sounds like oldfashioned
sensationalism."

"It's part of the harsh reality of the way things work.  Remember,
we're striving for impact here."  He slammed his hand on the slab
desk.

The rabbi didn't even look up.  "Outrage!  Guilt!

Outrage at what was done to this poor woman and her child, that we as a
community let it come to this.  Guilt that we didn't help her."

- He softened his voice.  "Then healing as we explain how things got
this bad, how to prevent them in your own homes and families.  See?"

"No, sir, I don't see."  I waved my papers at him.

"Just read this.  Did you know it's the Year of the Horse in Korea?"

He started to say something but I kept talking.  "When the Buddha knew
he was about to die, he invited all the animals to attend.

Only a few showed up and out of gratitude he named a year after each
animal.  Many people think that a person receives some of the
characteristics of the animal into whose year he or she is born."

The rabbi lifted his head, his finger marking where he'd stopped
reading.  He watched me with interest.

"The problem in Korea this year is that women who are born during the
year of the horse are considered skittish, a little wild.

They are not considered good marriage material, therefore they are
often shunned by the men.  And now, with modern medical techniques, the
parents can know what the child's sex is within a few months.  The
thing is, because it's the Year of the Horse, many Korean women, if
they find out they are pregnant with a girl, are having their babies
aborted.  Can you imagine the implications?  This policy has caused a
severe shortage of women.  1i There are half a million men within a
certain age group who have no hope of marrying.  That's what this
article is all about.

This has everything you wanted, Outrage!  Guilt!

Healing!"  My cheeks were hot with passion.  For a moment, I felt as if
I actually had written this article myself.  "This is the same kind of
New Age sob sister stuff that you want.  The voice of the nineties
woman.

"Perfect," Jonathan said, applauding.  "I love it.  Really.  It's "So
sad," the rabbi said, shaking his head.

I sat back down, exhausted.

"Trouble is, Wren," Jonathan said, "4that's in Korea, half a world
away.  Season Dougherty is right here in Orange County in the Irvine
jail.  Her husband's body is in a Turtle Rock house right here in
Orange County.  And the name of our magazine is Orange Coast Today.

You see a pattern?"  He pushed up the sleeves of his sweater.  "I've
managed to use a little leverage with an old friend to make sure you're
the first journalist on the scene of the crime and the first with
access to Mrs. Dougherty."  He tapped his watch the same way the rabbi
had earlier.  "And our window of opportunity is slowly closing on our
collective fingers."

"Erne ziemliche Mddchen," the rabbi said to Jonathan.

- "He says you're a pretty woman."

"Very pretty," the rabbi nodded.

I stood up.  "Thank you.

"Linda has the background information you need.

But you'd better hurry."

"What about this article?"  I said, brandishing the pages.

"Maybe you can work it into the Dougherty piece.  Better yet, use it
when we do something about the violence at abortion clinics in Orange
County.  That'll work."

I held my hand out to the rabbi.  He shook it and said, Shalom.

"Shalom," I said.

"Good luck, Wren," Jonathan said.  "This is the start of great things
for both of us.  It's great to be back in the swing of publishing
again.  Makes me feel like a kid still running around that news I
room.

Was that what all this was about?  I was hired so Jonathan Krieg could
relive his youth.  I was just part of the package, the team of human
time machines gathered to help him recapture the youth he squandered
amassing his fortune.  The rabbi, the tutors, the husband-wife stunt
team.  And now me.

I closed the door behind me and stood, gathering my thoughts.

What did I have to be angry about?  I had a good job, the respect of my
coworkers, even of my boss.  Maybe it wasn't anger at all.  Just
fear.

I didn't know how to interview a murderer.

The only crime scene I'd been at was the one where I was the victim.  I
didn't want to get that close to other people's problems, didn't want
to become intimate with their despair.

Through the door I heard the rabbi begin to sing in Hebrew.  He stopped
and Jonathan Krieg sang the same refrain, but haltingly, stumbling over
the words.  Then the rabbi sang again, even more beautifully than
before.  It was somehow mournful and cheerful at the same time.

Jonathan tried again, his voice a monotone of determination.

"Wren?"  Billie the receptionist called.  "Telephone.

I walked to my desk, passing a few of my fellow journalists.

Each stopped what he or she was doing to look up and say hello or
welcome.  I remembered a couple of names but not most.

Everyone was extremely friendly, but there was something in their
voices, a tone they all shared, of grudging good humor and nagging
jealousy.  It's not my fault, I wanted to shout, I didn't ask Jonathan
Krieg to make me the New Age sob sister.

My office was in a cubicle surrounded by those low temporary partitions
that are covered with mauve cloth.  The desk itself was a standard gray
metal, not unlike the one in my office at school.

Except this one had rubber bumpers trimming the edges.

Also, the desktop was some sort of phony wood veneer.  A flat ivory
telephone with a row of clear plastic buttons sat next to a cluster of
tape dispenser, stapler, and electric pencil sharpener.  The button
marked #3 was flashing.

In the middle of the desk was a blue file folder with a typed label on
the tab, DOUGHERTY, SEASON.  A typed note was clipped to the front with
two addresses, Lester Dougherty's and the Irvine Police Department's.

Detailed directions to each location were included.  At the bottom, in
florid handwriting, Happy motoring, Billie.

I sat down and pushed the folder aside.

Attached to the desk was a floating platform on which was 4- bolted a
Macintosh SE computer.  I could see my face in the dark screen.  My
hair was down, which I had hoped would make me look a little more
glamorous, like Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday.  My glasses
reflected pinpoints of light.  I took them off I, and placed them on
the file folder.  The right earpiece was still I chewed off.

4I picked up the phone and pushed #3.  "Hello, this is Wren
Caldwell."

-"Thank God, thank God," the man said.  "We've been looking for you
everywhere."

"Who is this?"

"Phil Sanchez over at Valley College.  I've been trying to reach you
for a week.  Why didn't you tell us you'd moved here already?"  I felt
panicky.  Who was this guy?  He seemed to know Wren, but how much did
he know?  An old friend/lover/colleague who she'd contacted when she
applied for this job?

Would he come rushing over now and expose me to everyone?

"Uh, I'm sorry"Phil or Mr. Sanchez?  How close were they?-"everything
was so hectic with the move and everything."  I understand," he said,
but his voice was stern, a little put out.

What had Wren done to him?  "However, you made a commitment to teach
that course and classes start Monday.  I called your old number up in
Oregon but it had been disconnected.  Information says your local
number is unlisted."

4That was deliberate.  I didn't want any of Wren's old friends leafing
through the phone book to accidentally come across her name.

I"I'd have replaced you, but the other person who teaches art history
got a grant from the NEA and she took off for Mazallan to paint.  We
really need you to live up to your commitment, Ms.  Caldwell.

Wren had applied to teach art history?  "You got the section you asked
for, Monday nights six to ten PM.  Your class meets in Art 110.

The textbook is in the bookstore, they'll give you a free copy.  Your
section is packed, so don't take any petitioners.  Drop by the
administration building and fill out the paperwork.  You'll have a
mailbox there in the Adjunct Faculty section."  There was a pause.

"You sound funny."

Damn, he'd spoken to her before.  "Funny?"

"Different.  I don't know, it's been a month.  It's just, I don't know,
I remembered your voice as being very .  . . Hell, stop me before I
make a complete ass of myself."  He laughed.

-I laughed as best I could.  I watched myself laugh in the computer
screen.  I looked like someone choking.

"Any questions?"  he asked.

"4Nope.  Monday sounds good."

"Okay then, if you have any problems, give me a call or drop in my
office.  Drop in anyway, I'd like to meet you.

Your resume' impressed the hell out of all of us."

"Thanks."

"Well, good luck."  He hung up.

I hung up too.  My hand was trembling.  I picked up my file i folder on
Season Dougherty, put my glasses back on, strapped my purse on, and
wandered toward the exit.  I had to go to a crime scene to view a
corpse, then to jail to interview a murderer, then home to prepare to
teach an art history course, abotit which I knew nothing.  I could have
backed out of the teaching, but Phil Sanchez seemed angry enough that
he'd call the university in Oregon to complain about Wren Caldwell.  I
didn't want that.  "Good luck," Billie said cheerfully as I left.

Around the corner was the floor's elevator foyer.  I pressed the button
and waited.  I looked out the window at the parking lot below.  There
was my Rabbit, still needing a wash.

And there, parked next to my car, was a white Subaru with a bent
antenna.

I jabbed the elevator button repeatedly.  This time I was going to
catch the son of a bitch.  The elevator doors yawned open and I jumped
in and punched my floor button.  I watched the lighted floor numbers
above the door flicker by like a countdown at NASA.  My stomach was
tight with excitement.  Was this how my 1-father felt waiting for his
rockets to blast off?  When we hit the ground floor, I ran out before
the doors had completely opened, bumping my shoulder hard on the
door.

I pushed ahead of an elderly man to beat him through the glass door
leading to the Itparking lot.  I ran along the rows of parked cars
until I found my Rabbit.

The white Subaru was gone.

It "It ain't like the movies," Detective Diesel said, snapping on a
pair of surgical gloves.  "First of all, we don't stand around over the
body and trade wisecracks."

He squatted next to the body and stared at it for a couple of
minutes.

The body was dressed in gray jogging pants and a shirt that said Nike,
Just Do It.  It was sitting on the dining-room floor, back slumped
against the wall, legs splayed apart like a wishbone.  Someone had
draped a red-checkered dish towel over the head.  Dark blood had soaked
through the cloth, forming some strange Rorschach pattern that reminded
me of sumo wrestlers colliding.  Detective Diesel looked over the
entire body head to toe without touching anything, as if he were about
to give an estimate for the cost of hauling the corpse to the dump.

He stopped to stare at the man's crotch.  The shotgun blast had
shredded the cloth and skin and muscle, leaving the lap nothing more
than a chunky stew.  The left leg's thigh bone was exposed, sticking
straight up like a pink and white twig.  The detective shook his head
and looked up at me.  My pen was poised for his insight into this kind
of violence.  "If anything, "he said, "television has ruined more
cops.

Especially the young ones.  They all think they have to act like Miami
Vice.

I wrote that down in my notebook.

Detective Diesel reached for the dish towel covering the head.

"You sure you want to see this?  I can always give you a peek at the
police photographs later."

"I'm fine," I said.  Actually, I really was fine.  Maybe it was morbid,
but I felt somehow comfortable, more at ease right then than I'd felt
since my own shooting.  From the moment I'd regained consciousness in
the hospital, way before I'd decided to slip into Wren's life, nothing
around me had seemed familiar.

Everywhere I went, whoever I spoke to, I felt like an imposter, someone
masquerading as a living person.  I didn't even belong Her didn't me,
were walking around in a pair of too-big shoes.  Every step further
blistered me.  Maybe that's what made it so easy to become Wren.

But here, walking around this fresh dead body, amid the sour smell of
sweat and urine and feces, I could relax.  Be myself.  I felt like a
mini support group for the poor guy, Don't worry, pal, being dead's not
so bad, I could tell him.

"Okay then," Detective Diesel said.  "4Let's see what we got here He
pinched the two bottom corners of the dish towel and hesitated, like a
magician about to snap a tablecloth out from under a fancy dinner
setting.  Then he delicately peeled back the dish towel.  As Detective
Diesel exposed more and more of the head, his own craggy, middle-aged
face began to smooth out, the deep lines disappear.  His jaw tightened,
causing his small ears to flatten against his skull.  He tossed the
sticky towel aside.

The corpse had no face.  It looked like lumpy chili or boiling tomato
soup.  A fat black fly landed on the face, about where a nose used to
be.  Detective Diesel brushed it away with the back of his hand.

The youngest uniformed cop walked up and wagged a finger at the
corpse.

"See, I told you not to pick your zits."  He chuckled and winked at
me.

"Donaldson!"  Detective Diesel snapped.

"Yes, sir," the officer said with some fear.

"Get me the fingerprinting gear.  And keep your asinine comments to
yourself.  You understand me, son?"

"Yes, sir."  Officer Donaldson looked sheepishly at me, then back at
Detective Diesel.

"Then move, goddamn it!"

"Yes, sir."  He ran off.

Detective Diesel shrugged at me.  "What can you do?"

"Miami Vice," I nodded.

"Exactly."

I took a couple of steps closer to the body, stared at the damage.

All that had happened here was that a load of pellets had collided with
flesh and bone.  On a molecular level it was just particles bumping
into other particles, lostled electrons, atoms spinning into new
orbits.  Nothing had been destroyed.  Only the configuration was
altered, little more than a subatomic rearrangement of furniture.  In
the cosmic picture, what then had really changed?

"Have you done this a lot?"  Detective Diesel asked.

"First time."

- He arched an eyebrow.  "You handle it well."

"Thank you."  I was in a surprisingly good mood.  The closer I got to
the body, the happier I felt.  I almost started humming.  It was like
coming out of a freezing snowstorm and huddling up to a warm fire.

When I leaned over the corpse's face, my own bullet scar twinged.

Maybe it was some sort of sympathetic vibration, I don't know, but my
heart seemed suddenly closer to the surface now.  If I scratched away
the scar-tissue plug, I'd look straight down that dark tunnel and see
my slippery heart fussing and squirming like a new baby.  I rubbed the
scar on my breast and one of the uniformed cops going through the hall
closet nudged his partner and grinned at me.

Officer Donaldson returned with the fingerprinting equipment.

Detective Diesel took the corpse's right index finger, rolled it across
the ink pad, then rolled the inky fingertip onto a piece of
cardboard.

"Is that necessary?"  I asked.  "You already know who it is."

"We think we know."  He held up the middle finger of the dead hand,
offering it to me.  "You wanna try?"  t "Sure."  I tucked my notebook
and pen into my purse and knelt down next to him.  "What do I do?"

"Grasp it firmly.  It's starting to stiffen up.

One of the officers snickered and mumbled to another cop.

They laughed.  Detective Diesel's face flushed a deep red.  "I mean,
you know, rigor mortis."

"I know."I pried the middle finger apart from the rest of his hand and
dipped it against the pad that Detective Diesel held for me.

"Roll it from side to side.  We want the whole print."

I rolled the dead finger from side to side.

Detective Diesel put down the pad and pushed the cardboard across the
carpet close to my knees.

"Now do the same thing you did on the pad, roll it from one side to the
other side.  Firmly, but not too hard."

I did so.  The fingerprint appeared like a stenciled design.  It was
kind of pretty.  Not unlike the art my friends with children have
hanging on their refrigerators.

"Good job, Ms.  Caldwell.  You're a natural."

"Thanks."  I stood up.  A small smudge of ink marked the back of my
hand.  "Is there really any reason to doubt that this is Philip
Dougherty?"

"He fits the same physical description.  We found his wallet with ID in
his pocket.  This is his house.  We have a confession from the murderer
who says this is Philip Dougherty.  But with I no face, it could be
anybody."

"You mean like on TV, whenever they find a body with no face, it's
never who the cops think it is?"

"Exactly.  As soon as they say, "The body's been burned beyond
recognition," you know it's someone else."

"4But they always find a convenient watch or a necklace or something
that indicates who they think it is."

"Exactly," he nodded, inking the thumb.  "Only this isn't television.

Fingerprints don't lie.  There are no two sets alike.  Just like
snowflakes."

"Actually," I said, "I read recently where scientists discovered that
all snowflakes aren't different.  That the patterns are repeated
"Yeah?"  He slipped a plastic bag over the corpse's hand and snapped a
rubber band around the wrist to keep it in place.  "I hadn't heard
that."

"That's kind of interesting, though, isn't it?

imagine, there could be somebody out there with your fingerprints and
he could be doing all kinds of nasty things that you could get blamed
for."

"It wouldn't surprise me."  Detective Diesel stood up, walked off a
stiffness in his right leg.  "I guess that's why we now have DNA
fingerprinting.  Believe me, Ms. Caldwell, we're always one step ahead
of the bad guys.

"Just like Miami Vice?"

He smiled beautifully.  "Just like Miami Vice."

- "She's waiting to see Season Dougherty," Detective Diesel said to the
woman cop behind the desk.  "The chief said it was okay."

"I gotta check with Dougherty's P.D. first, Bob," she said.

Detective Diesel turned to me.  "P.  D.,that's public defender."

"Thanks," I said.  I wrote that down in my notebook to make him feel
good.

"I mean, you're getting the jump on the story, but the lady still has
rights."  He seemed a little annoyed that strings had been pulled by
Jonathan Krieg.  "She doesn't have to see you if she doesn't want
to."

"I understand."

He nodded, turned back to the desk sergeant.

She hung up the phone.  "The P.D."s in the building.  We're still
trying to find her."

"4Who is it?"  Detective Diesel asked.

"Rebba Mallard."

Detective Diesel nodded appreciatively.  "She's good."

The desk sergeant shrugged.  "We're all good."  She looked him in the
eye for some reaction, but Detective Diesel just nodded and turned
toward me.

He guided me over to an orange molded-plastic bench.  "You can wait
here until they clear it.  Meantime, I've got a living to earn.  Nice
working with you, Ms.  Caldwell."

"Now that we've fingerprinted a corpse together, you can call me
Wren."

"Okay, Wren.  See ya around the scene of the crime some time."  He
started to walk away.

"Can I ask you a quick question?"

He smiled.  "That's what you have been doing, isn't it?"

"This has nothing to do with the murder.  It's hypothetical."

"Oh," he nodded knowingly.  "You have a friend."

"What?"

"That's how hypothetical questions to cops always begin.  "I have this
friend who "Okay, I have this friend who hacked up her in-laws and is
going to ship parts of the bodies to Johnny Carson and Joan Rivers in
an effort to make them friends again.  She wants to know if she should
turn herself in."

He laughed.  "Okay, I deserved that.  What's the problem?"

"What do you do if you think someone s following you?"

"Do you know him?"

"No.  I don't know.  I haven't seen his face.  I don't even know if it
is a him.  Just the same car.

"There are a lot of cars in southern California, you're bound to see
some repeats."

"4This is definitely the same car."

"You want to file a report, be on the safe side?"

I shook my head.  I couldn't afford any kind of investigation into my
past.  "It's probably nothing."

"Get the license number, give me a call.  I'll run a check."

"Thank you."

"Meantime, stay out of dark parking garages.

"I will," I said, shaking his hand.  "Thanks for all your help."

He seemed embarrassed by my gratitude, lowering his head as he walked
away through the doors marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

I sat on the hard orange bench and reviewed my notes.  They were neat
notes, numbered and lettered the same as if I were in a literature
class.  I hadn't lost the knack.  Still, I had no idea how to turn them
into an actual article that anybody but a paid professor would want to
read.  I could whip up a theme paper maybe, with footnotes and a
bibliography.  I closed my notebook and tried to think of an opening
line, one that would grab the reader.

Nothing came.  Maybe I could call Robby, have him help me without
telling him what it was about.  I began concocting elaborate stories to
convince him.  That made me even more depressed.

Why, at every moment of crisis, did I still think of Robby?

Before, when Robby and I were together and happy, some couple we knew
would be splitting up and they would weep and look desperate.  I would
be sympathetic.  Months later I'd see one of them and he or she would
still be unhappy and ragged-looking and I'd think, Snap out of it, get
on with your life.  I wanted to go back in time and take that old, smug
me and shake her by the shoulders, tell her to have some compassion,
damn it.  Now it seemed to me that breaking up was less an event and
more like a nasty virus that lodges in your spine and reappears at
every moment of weakness and doubt.

I noticed the ink smudge on my hand again.  I licked my fingertips and
rubbed the spot off.

I tried to imagine what Season Dougherty was doing right now.

What did a woman do all day in prison?  Was it like those women
behind-bars movies that guys like so much, did she have to fend off
lesbian advances from thick-necked women carrying broom handles?  Was
she in there right now sharpening the edges of a spoon she smuggled out
of the cafeteria to fight off raging dykes?

Or was she at this moment poring over dusty law books, rubbing her
weary eyes, adjusting her reading glasses in the dim light, as she
searched in vain for some legal precedent that would win her freedom
and reunite her with her daughter?  Was she a monster, a crazed bitch
with a shotgun, who coldly smiled as she blasted her ex-husband's
genitals into oatmeal?  Or was she the self-sacrificing Ultimate
Mother, willing to give up her own life to protect her innocent
daughter?  I tried to adopt an attitude toward her, but it was
difficult.  I wasn't in any position to take the moral high road
here.

The glass door banged open and a little girl about seven ran into the
lobby from the parking lot.  She wore a denim skirt bleached almost
white, white socks, sneakers, and a lime-green T shirt.  She was
carrying a man's wallet in both hands and laughing giddily.

A man about thirty-five followed her into the building, holding the
hand of a little boy, about eight or nine.  "4Whoa, there, Judy," he
called to the little girl.  "Can I have my wallet back?"

- She giggled, held up his wallet, then put it behind her back.

"Jud-ec, Jud-ce, Jud-ee," the man said, imitating Cary Grant.

"Judy, Judy, Judy," she repeated, imitating him.

"Okay, Nurse Judy.  This is important surgery.  We must save the
patient.  The fate of the free world rests in the balance.  Scalpel
"


He held out his hand, palm up.

"Scalpel," she said, placing an imaginary instrument in his palm.

"You have to slap it in.  Smack, like this."  He slapped his own
palm.

"Again.  Scalpel."

-"Scalpel."  She slapped his hand hard.

"Screwdriver," he said.

"Screwdriver."  She slapped his hand again.

"I'et me," the little boy begged, twisting out of the man's grip.  The
man turned to the boy with his palm open.  "Chain saw.

"Chain saw," the boy said gleefully, and slapped the hand as hard as he
could.

"Wallet," the man said to the girl.

"Wallet?"  she asked.

"Sure.  The patient's wallet to pay our bill."

She laughed and slapped the wallet into his palm.  He put the wallet
into his back pocket.

"Good job, guys.  Looks like the operation was a success.  The patient
has two heads so now he has someone to laugh at his knock-knock
jokes.

Now, wait for Daddy over there."  He pointed to the blue bench next to
my orange one.  They ran over and sat down.  The man talked to the desk
sergeant in a low voice I 11couldn't hear.  She looked directly at me,
then whispered something to him.  He whispered something back.  She
laughed, then the man laughed too.

"Hang on," the desk sergeant said in a friendly tone.  "I'll see what I
can do."  She picked up the phone.

The man thanked her and sat down with his children.  He wasn t very
tall, I noticed, only a couple of inches taller than I. And he was a
few pounds overweight, giving his face a smooth, slightly puffy look.

His blond hair was short and neat.  His clothes were casual and baggy,
but expensive.

The little girl took out a flat plastic case the size of a deck of
cards.  The case was filled with water and had a plastic frog inside.

A bunch of colored little balls floated around the water.

Apparently when you pressed a button, air shot into the water and
swirled the balls around.  The object was to have the floating balls go
into the frog's mouth.  After Judy played with it a minute, the little
boy started to grab for it.

"You can't do it," he said.

"Yes, I can," she screamed.  "I can too."

The man snatched the case from both their hands and said, "Let's see
how fast Daddy can do it.  If I can get them all in Kermit in under
three minutes, I'll take you guys out to lunch at Bullwinkle's."

- "That's not Kermit," the boy said.

"Ready, set, go," the man said and started working the game.

The kids cheered and hollered, shoved at him to make him go faster.

For no particular reason, I checked my watch when he started.

When he maneuvered the final colored ball into the frog's t, mouth, he
held up his hands and shouted, "Time."  He looked at his watch, which
was thin and gold.

"How long, Daddy," Judy asked.  "Did you make it?"

I looked at my watch.  Five and a half minutes.

"A hundred and seventy-three seconds," he said.

"How many minutes is that?"  the boy asked.

-"Less than three!"  he said.

"Yea!"  the kids yelled.  "All right!  We're going to Bullwinkle's."

The desk sergeant put her hand over the receiver and said to the man,
"Still checking, Mr.  Richard."

-"Thanks," he smiled.  His little boy whispered to him.

They both stood up and walked over to me.  "I've gotta make a pit stop
with Mark.  You mind keeping an eye on Judy for me?"

"Well," I gestured toward the desk sergeant to indicate I had
business.

"Should be just a minute or two.  We won't even wash our hands."

I laughed.  "Please, wash your hands."

"Thanks."  He turned back to Judy.  "Judy, come sit over here " with
the nice FBI lady."

"I'm not FBI."

"Really?  You look sort of undercover sitting here."

I must have looked startled because he quickly added, "I'm kidding.

Actually, you look like a girl I used to date in high school.  She
broke my heart and kept my letter sweater.  That wasn't you, was it?"

"Could be.  Was the letter for band?"

"Ouch," he said, wincing and clutching his heart.

I couldn't help smiling.  "Don't you have some hands to wash?"

"4Right."

Judy sat next to me on the bench.  She didn't look at me, though, just
kept playing with her frog game.

"Be right back, sweetheart," he told her and led Mark down the hall to
the rest rooms.

Judy and I sat on the orange bench, neither of us speaking.

The silence seemed somehow heavy with accusation.  I should speak to
the child, but I didn't know what to say.  To me, children were like
the primitive natives my father studied, mysterious creatures with
rituals and customs I couldn't begin to understand.

"Hi, Judy," I said.

"Hi," she said, without looking up.  Colored balls swirling around a
plastic frog mouth riveted her more than I could.

"My name is Wren."

"Huh?"

"Wren.  Like the bird."

"What kind of bird?"

"The wren.  Haven't you ever heard of a wren?"

She shrugged.

I opened my purse.  Maybe I had something in there that would be of
interest to a little girl.  Some makeup, wallet, checkbook with
temporary checks, keys.  Grownup stuff that didn't even interest me.

Then I found the earring.  It was hooked through my key ring.

A long gold dragonfly with one red ruby for an eyeball.  I'd found it
while cleaning out Wren's nightstand, sitting at the bottom of the
drawer.  There was no other jewelry in that drawer, just this lone
earring, so I figured it might be special to her.  I'd searched
everywhere for the matching companion, but never found it.

There was something about it, I don't know, like a talisman or
something.  I decided to keep it in my purse as a good-luck charm.

I'd stolen Wren's life, maybe I could have her luck too.  I'd carried
it with me ever since.

I held it up to Judy.  "See?  A dragonfly.  Neat, huh?"

She looked up, unimpressed.  "It's just a bug.  Mark eats bigger bugs
than that."

-"Oh."  I put the earring away.

My stomach started to cramp.  I rubbed my thumb against my ii bra
strap.  I should know what to say, I was a woman, a potential mother.

I owned a womb, for chrissake.  It was like an empty garage inside me,
waiting to house a new car.  What kind of mother would I be if I
couldn't even talk to this child?

Even if I didn't want to become a mother, it should be because I chose
- not to, not because I was unqualified for the job.

I realized that I hadn't much thought about that option since breaking
up with Robby.  I'd thought about how I would bluff my way through my
job.  I'd thought about meeting men, maybe even one man I could love.

But those thoughts about my future usually ended with that big
passionate kiss after which he tells me for the first time, I love
you.

Waves might be crashing in the background, I'm not sure.  But after
that, what?

Motherhood?

-This is what I remember most about my mother, I had come home from
school almost crying because there had been talk at school about
eliminating sex education classes and my friend Julia said that those
classes taught girls how to have periods.  Suddenly I was terrified we
wouldn't get the class and I wouldn't know how to get my period.  When
I asked Mom about it, she smiled and said I didn't have to worry, it
would come without me doing anything.  I was skeptical, after all,
Julia had known about French kissing causing pregnancy.  Mom stubbed
out her cigarette and grabbed a tangerine from the refrigerator.

Using one of our many dull knives, she slit the skin about two
inches.

She squeezed.  Thick syrupy juice beaded along the slit.

"Taste it," she said.  I was afraid, this wasn't how you were supposed
to eat a tangerine.  "Go on," she said, making it sound like a dare, an
adventure.  I ran my finger along the cut and licked my finger.

"Good?"  she asked.  I nodded.  "Sweet."

"That's what happens to us," she explained, "to women.  We ripen and
turn sweet, just like fruit.  And when we are at our sweetest, we over
flow a little.  We're luckier than this fruit, though.  We ripen every
single month."  She grinned as if we were sharing the most delicious
secret.  "Don't boys ripen?"  I asked.  "Sure," she said, "but then
they just rot."  She laughed and poked my ribs and called me Loony
Tunes, her pet name for me.

I tried to imagine myself someday slicing open a fruit to explain
menstruation to my own daughter.  I couldn't picture it.  I'd probably
shove an encyclopedia at her, with the pages marked where they
illustrate the looping tunnels of a woman's insides so that it looks
like a crowded freeway interchange.  Had Mom always had that tangerine
demonstration in her head, just waiting to spring 0I it on me?  Had her
mother sliced open a fruit for her?  Or do some at, women just know
what to say to children?  I had nothing to say, ) no wisdom to pass
along to the next generation.

"Who's punishing whom?"  he said.

a!"Pardon?"  I said.

I'"Well, I'm gone two minutes and you two look like one of you stole
the other's boyfriend.  Judy, did this lady steal Jimmy Dolenz from
you?"

Judy giggled and shook her head.  "Jimmy Dolenz is dumb."

"You love him," Mark taunted.  "You told me so."

"I did not.  I hate Jimmy Dolenz."

"Whew, another week in which I don't have to worry about boys."  He
wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.  The gesture reminded me
of Detective Diesel brushing the fly from the corpse's stewed face.

"Hey, thanks for watching her for me."

"That's okay.  No trouble."

"Look."  He held out his hands, turned them over.  "We washed .1them.

Show her, Mark."  Mark thrust his hands at me and flipped them back and
forth.

"Very good, boys," I said, which made me feel like a mother.

Not the good kind who slits open tangerines and explains the world, but
the other kind, the spoilsport who spot-checks for washed hands.

I looked over to the desk sergeant, hoping for some word about Season
Dougherty's public defender.  But the desk sergeant was still on the
phone.

"My name's Davis Richard," the man said.

"He has two first names," Mark said, as if this were a regular
routine.

"We all do," Judy added.

"Congratulations," I told her.

"She's named after a bird, Daddy," Judy said.

"Robin, I think."

-"Wren," I said.  I held out my hand to him.  "Wren Caldwell."

He shook my hand.  All the men I was meeting today either washed their
hands before shaking mine, or put on surgical gloves shortly
afterward.

"People are always getting my name confused," he said, sitting next to
me on my now crowded orange bench.  "Sometimes they call me Davis,
sometimes Richard.  Sometimes Dick.  I'm hoping the latter is just
because of the Richard."

I looked at the children, wondering ifthat last comment wasn't i a bit
risque' for them.  They just sat there playing with the water frog, not
really listening to us.

"What are you doing here?"  he asked.  "Bailing out your mother for too
many speeding tickets?"

"My mother's dead," I said flatly.  I don't know why I did it.

Yes, I do.  I resented how comfortable he was with me, how funny and
glib he could be, how spontaneous.  I didn't like the fact that I liked
him.  I didn't like that the desk sergeant liked him.  And I was
jealous that he could speak to kids better than I could.

If I expected my news to embarrass him, it didn't work.

"So's theirs," he said, nodding at the children.  "Died in labor with
Judy.  You wouldn't think that would be possible in this day and age,
would you?"

My throat tightened.  "II'm sorry," I said.

He shrugged.  "That's okay.  I lied.  We're divorced, she lives in
Encino with her new husband, an orthodontist."

I started to say something like "You bastard" or worse, but I swallowed
it back for the kids' sake.  I stood up.  "Nice to meet you, Mark and
Judy."  Then to him, cold and steely, "I have some notes to make.  I
need to be alone."  I started for the blue bench.

He got up and followed me.  "I know you think it was a terrible thing
to say, but you deserved it.  I wasn't hitting on you or anything, just
talking.  You tried to zap me, right?"

I turned to face him.  "Look, I'm just here doing a job.  You took your
son to the rest room, I watched your daughter.

That concludes our business."  I sat on the bench trying to look as
cold t as Barbara Stanwyck.

He sat next to me.  "We're going to do some fancy dining at
Bullwinkle's when we're done here.  Care to join us?  The place is loud
but at least the food's lousy."

"I don't think so, thanks."

"Mr. Richard?"  A woman appeared from behind the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL
ONLY door.  She was a homely woman with a hatchet face and a severe
suit that might have fit her once when she was fifteen pounds
lighter.

Now the seams stretched into II sutures, like long, sloppy scars over
her hips.

It!  "Yes."  He quickly ushered her across the lobby, talking
animatedly to her as they walked.  He pulled out some papers from his
jacket and handed them to her.  She put on reading glasses and t1 read
them.  They spoke a little more, shook hands, then split up.

ill She came over to the desk sergeant, spoke briefly, then hurried out
the glass doors into the parking lot.  She was practically running.

Davis returned to the bench and took each child by the hand.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Caldwell," the desk sergeant said.  "But Ms. Mallard
left specific instructions on behalf of her client.  Mrs. Dougherty
will not be speaking to any reporters."

I bolted up.  "When?  When did she say this?"

"Just now.  That was Rebba Mallard."  She pointed to the parking lot.

I ran over to the glass doors and looked out.  The hatchet faced woman
was driving away in a black Isuzu.

"What the hell's going on?"  I said to the desk sergeant.

II- "I told her who you were," she said.  "She chose not to speak to
you.

It I spun around to face Davis Richard.  My anger was great, all the
more so because I was afraid I'd blown my first assignment and would
lose the job I'd done so much to get.

"What did you say to her?"  His children cowered a little, holding his
hand tighter and snuggling up to his legs.  Jesus, now I was
frightening little kids.

"It's a long story," Davis said with a smile.

"I can explain it all at dinner tonight.  I promise it won't be at
Bullwinkle's.  Deal?"

I spoke softly into the phone so no one could overhear me, "Here's the
thing with breaking up.  Forget whatever I said before.  This is the
real scoop, what it all comes down to.  What I you must never forget.

When you're with someone for a long time, your bodies change.

I've read studies about women friends who, just because they spend time
together, start to menstruate at the same time.  Their cycles become
sympathetic.  That's what I'm talking about here.  Only with a man,
it's something else, something even stranger.  You develop this special
vision.

As if that other person causes you to mutate, boosts you up another
step on the evolutionary ladder.  You get this third eye or some
thing.

With this eye you can actually glimpse the future.

It's like the door to your future has been left open, just a crack, and
you can peek through.  In that sliver of light you can see the two of
you sitting there years from now, a little grayer, a little crankier,
but there's still two of you sitting on that ratty sofa watching TV
sitcoms and reading movie reviews in Newsweek.  He tosses you a pretzel
from a bowl without looking, you sip from his beer without asking, you
both still laugh when your cat licks her butt.

God, that's a comforting glimpse.  You think, I can live with that.

But when you break up or divorce, whatever, it's as if that door has
suddenly been slammed in your face.  You can no longer even imagine
what your future will be like.  Wait, I take that back, you can
imagine, you start imagining, and what you imagine is horrible, like
being on the Sahara set of Lawrence of Arabia and no one else is
around, just windy desert stretching to the ends of the universe, and
you close your eyes against the peppering sand and start walking in no
particular direction, your footprints dusted clean as soon as you make
them."

"Wren," Linda Marley called from across the room, "can I see you in my
office?"

I hung up the phone.  "Sure, Linda."

I turned, saw Linda march into her office.  She left the door open for
me and I saw my future through that crack, You're fired, imposter!

I pushed the phone across the desk so everything was in its place.  You
couldn't even tell that anyone had ever actually sat at 11 this desk.

Which was true, I guess.  I hadn't done any real work Il, here, just
this last phone call to my own answering machine.  I thought about what
I had just done, called my own machine and discussed the meaning of
breaking up.  Tonight I would go home and play back my messages and I'd
have to hear it.  If my life were a self-help book, how would what I'd
just done be interpreted?

II Either it was an example of a proactive healing step one could take
to come to grips with the addictions of one's life, or it was a Mil
path-the symptom of a deeper neurosis.  Some choice.

"So, how's the story coming?"  Linda asked as I entered her 1i,
office.

A little thought-fora-day calendar stood next to her phone.

I! Today's thought was IN A FIGHT BETWEEN YOU AND THE WORLD, BACK THE
WORLD.  KAFKA.

II!  "I've hit a snag," I said.

She leaned back in her chair, her expression one of concern not
gloating, which I appreciated.  "What kind of snag?"

"One named Davis Richard."

"Christ, what's he up to now?"

"You know him?"

"Sure.  Onetime video whiz kid, started in the waterbed business, ended
up producing some of those early celebrity exercise videos.

Made a fortune by the time he was twenty-five.  What's he got to do
with a murder case?"

I told her what had happened at the police station.  She didn't look at
me while I spoke.  Instead, she glanced around her office, studying the
Victorian motif-flowered wallpaper, wainscoting, antique desk-as if she
were contemplating a new decor.  When I finished my story she looked at
me and shook her head.  "What's your next step?

- "I was hoping you would tell me."

"It's your story, Wren.  Jonathan gave it to you.

"Yes, I understand that.  But if Season Dougherty's lawyer won't let me
speak to her, then what can I do?  I guess I could interview everyone
else involved with the case, piece a story together that way.

"Yes, you could do that," she said without enthusiasm.

"But that's what everybody else is doing, right?"

"Probably."

I sighed.  I felt frantic, like I was in the middle of a quiz I hadn't
studied for.  "I could speak to Mr. Krieg, see if he has any other
-connections he might rattle."

"4Jonathan is out of town.

"What?  He can't be."

"I drove him to John Wayne Airport myself."

"But a couple of hours ago he was outlining his daily schedule of
rabbis, fitness freaks, and tutors.  He came here to fulfill his dream
of running a magazine.  Christ, he was so evangelical about it all."

Linda laughed.  "Yes, well, real business intruded.  He has an empire
to run.  He got wind of a hotel up for sale and he's on his way to
Miami.  He took the rabbi with him, though, if that makes you feel any
better.

"He could still make a few calls.  From Miami."

Linda yanked a long strip of tape from her dispenser and wrapped it
around her two fingers, sticky side out.  She leaned across the desk
and brushed the sleeve of my jacket.  The tape clogged with lint.

"Wren, what have you got that no one else has?"  I shrugged.

"Stringy hair?"

"Concerning this story.  What lead do you have?"

I thought.  "A dinner invitahon."

She pulled the tape from her fingers, wadded it up, and tossed it into
her waste can.  "Well then?"

I climbed out of the car and stared at the sign above the door.  it
-"I'm not going in there," I announced.

Davis pressed a button and the door locks in his car thudded closed.

It reminded me of those movies in which kidnapped heiresses are always
being locked into the backs of their limousines while knockout gas
seeps in through the ventilators.  Except I was no heiress and this was
a Ford Taurus station wagon.  Although it did have a car phone, it also
had coloring books and broken crayons on the floor.

"Be brave," Davis said, taking my hand.

"I didn't much like the experience the first time around.  Why would I
want to do it again?"

"That's the point.  This time it's just for fun.

Now we don't It, have to be so geeky."

"II looked him over.  The easy smile, the same casual clothes as
earlier, only with the addition of a sports jacket with patches on �the
elbows.  "I can't imagine you ever felt geeky anywhere.  You "1were
born a lifetime member of every club."  al, He laughed.

"That's the nicest thing you've said to me since 111, we met.  I'm
encouraged."

"Let's go in."

The restaurant was called Prom Nite.  They stamped the backs of our
hands as we went in, a little red pineapple.  It had been a lot of
years since I'd had my hand stamped.  I stared at it, flashing back on
some of the places Robby and I used to go back in college that did
this.  Robby had always balked at the process, I'd enjoyed it, as if it
were some form of validation.  You're Okay, move on in here with the
others who are Okay.  We'd formed a community ofTheOkay.

"Relax," Davis said, misinterpreting my stare.

"It's just part of the ambience.  It's just food dye."  He licked the
back of my hand and the pineapple was gone.  "See?"

The back of my hand tingled coolly as his saliva evaporated.  A light
shiver shinnied up my spine.  I brushed my hand against my wrist but it
was already dry.

Davis held the door open for me and I entered.

The interior of the restaurant was a replica of a school gymnasium that
had been decorated tackily for a prom.

There were even basketball hoops strewn with twisted crepe paper and
balloons.

The wood floors were glossy with various painted lines for basket ball
and volleyball.  Bleachers lined both sides of the room.  A mirrored
ball hung in the middle of the room, rotating slowly as red and green
and yellow lights bounced off and sprayed the room with colored-light
shrapnel.  The waitresses wandered about I- dressed in sixties-style
prom queen outfits, complete with crinoline slips and plastic tiaras.

Music from the fifties and sixties .. played over a scratchy
loudspeaker system for authenticity.  When the Everly Brothers'
"Cathy's Clown" was over, a man's voice came over the PA system.

"Attention, students," he said, "there will be no meeting of the chess
club next week because club , president Herman Glimpshir will be in
Baltimore at the science fair.  Thank you."

What do you think?"  Davis asked.

"Reminds me of Carrie.  Minus the blood."

A balding man in a white suit and red bow tie cut through the crowds
and headed straight for us.  His close-cropped beard and heavy eyebrows
reminded me of John Ehrlichman, after Watergate when he was a writer.

"Davis, good to see you again."

The bald guy used both his hands to shake Davis's hand.

"Don, business looks good."

Don looked around the bustling room as if noticing the people for the
first time.  "Making a living, man.  You know."

They both nodded as if there were some deeper meaning.

I'm not a male basher, but I hate when guys do that.  One of them says
something inane and they both pay respect to it with a moment of
thoughtful silence accompanied by world-weary head nodding.  Maybe Mom
was right.  Boys just rot.

"Don, this is Wren Caldwell.  She's a writer with Orange Coast Today.

Wren, this is Don Hamilton.  He owns the joint."

Don shook my hand.  "Now I'll be sure to renew my subscription."

"Thank you," I said.

"So, what's it like to work for Jonathan Krieg?  Is he as strange as
the Wall Street Journal says?"

"What does the Wall Street Journal say?"

Don looked surprised.  "You know, that he's very .  . .

well, strange.  You know."

"I guess I'll have to read that article," I said.

Don looked disappointed that I hadn't revealed any juicy Jonathan Krieg
anecdotes.

- "What're our chances of getting a table?"  Davis asked.

He escorted us to a table, whispered something to a passing waitress,
and seated us.

"Enjoy, enjoy.  No making out behind the bleachers and no smoking in
the lavatories."

"Thanks, Don," Davis waved.

- "Nice meeting you," I said.

I "Same here," he said and walked away.

- When Don Hamilton had disappeared, I asked, "Have you known him
long?"

"Since high school."

I!, "Band practice together?"

He smiled.  "Football."

"Seems like a nice guy," I said.  "And successful."

It "Couldn't get a date at his own prom.  That's probably what It, gave
him the idea for this place."

There was something about his tone that surprised me.  He wasn't saying
it in a harsh or bitter way, rather in a dismissing way, as if Don's
whole existence could be summed up by that one statement.  It was what
a popular kid might say about an unpopular kid.

lit "Founately for most of us," I said, "there is life after the "it
prom.

It "I don't know about that.  High school is where your potential "Ais
measured, catalogued, and put on display, After graduation it's a'.

just a matter of living up to that potential, coloring the numbers.

Alfred Hitchcock used to plan out his movies, figure out every single
shot before he ever got near a camera.  He once said that after he'd
planned it, the actual making of the film was boring.

See what I mean?"

"The fun part of our lives is high school?

That's a bit depressing, don't you think?  Christ, if that's true I'd
have nothing "Didn't you like high school?  I bet you hung with the
popular crowd.  You have that look."

What look?  I wanted to ask.  I remember mostly driving a carload of
girlfriends between places.  I could see me behind the 1- wheel of my
dad's Fairlane trying to collect gas money, though I hardly remembered
where it was we were always going.

But I didn't want to go in that direction with Davis.  "Can we talk
about Season Dougherty?  She hung with a pretty popular crowd too.

Until this morning.

A waitress arrived at our table.  Her blond hair was clamped down with
one of those plastic tiaras, but a couple of the fake diamonds had
fallen out, leaving black eyeless holes.

She wore a fresh corsage on her wrist.  The smell of lilacs choked off
my appetite.  "Mr. Hamilton says to take special care of you two," she
said.  "Can I start you off with some drinks?"

We both ordered beers.  She left, her crinoline crackling like radio
static.

Davis took a deep breath and laid his hands flat on the table cloth.

"Okay, Wren, let me explain what happened today.

I've been in the home video business for about eight years.

I'm very good at producing videos so I've managed to make a few bucks
at it."

I pulled out my steno pad from my purse, flipped open the cover, and
read from my notes.  "You've made over five million dollars so far and
counting."

"You've done your homework."

"You're good at videos, I'm very good at homework."

He looked across the table at me with a troubled expression.

He avoided my eyes.  "What you don't know is I've been having serious
tax problems."

"How serious?"

"Well, whatever bread and butter we don't eat tonight, I'm taking
home."  He smiled.  "Okay, maybe not that bad, but bad enough.  When I
got into this business, there was no competition to speak of.

Now every kid with a Minicam is producing videos.

You can't make a killing anymore, not like when I started.  Also, I've
never been a very good businessman, not when it comes to squeezing
figures into those narrow columns."

The waitress returned with our beers and a complimentary basket of
french fries smothered in chili.  Davis ordered shrimp and I ordered
chicken.

"Anyway, for the past few years I've been trying to get into the
legitimate end of the movie-producing business.  You know made-for-TV
movies, theatrical releases, that sort of thing.  Because of who I am,
the fact that I've made some money in this end of the business, people
in Hollywood will see me, take me to lunch, listen to my ideas, tell
some jokes, and then brush me off like a poor second cousin.  If I want
to invest money in one of their films, then they're interested.

If I want them to invest, they're not.  Hollywood mathematics.  So, I
decided I needed some hot properties that would force them to deal with
me."

Sit "That's what this is about?"  I must have spoken loudly because
several nearby diners looked over at me.  I lowered my voice.

ai,t "You made a movie deal with Season Dougherty?

Jesus, she just killed her husband and you were already thinking about
a god1 damn movie?"

He shook his head.  "It wasn't like that.  I'd signed the papers with
her a month ago, while she was still in prison.  I saw a good TV movie
in it, something starring Bonnie Franklin maybe or Elizabeth
Montgomery.  For the past month I've been trying to cut a deal with the
networks on her story.  One of those heroicit
woman-triumphs,over,the,system kind of movies, with a last scene of her
and her daughter walking off together hand in hand, freeze frame on
their smiling faces.  No one knew she was going to go after the poor
bastard with a shotgun."

I watched his finger bat a crumb across the tablecloth as if he were
playing hockey.  "Now that she has shotgun ned the poor bastard, where
does that put your project?"

"I closed a deal late this afternoon.  The studios were bidding against
each other for the project all day."  He couldn't help but smile.

"So now you're a movie mogul."

"Well, I'm making a movie."

"Then why not let me interview Season Dougherty.

The publicity is only going to help your movie project."

He shook his head.  "No can do, Wren.  We're still hoping to get her
acquitted.  We don't want your magazine screwing with the outcome of
this story."  His finger chased the crumb across the tablecloth to
within inches of my hand.  He stopped and for a moment I thought he was
going to touch me.  He didn't, but my skin still heated up fast as if
he had.  I didn't move my hand away.

"So where does that leave us?"  I asked.

-"Having dinner.  Enjoying each other's company.

"You could have told me all this at the police station.  Or over the
phone when I called you back."

"Do you not want to be here?  If not, I'll take you home right now.

I looked at him.  His blue eyes glistened a little, his jaw was
clenched tight.  Maybe that's what sincerity looked like, maybe that
was his negotiating face.  I couldn't tell.  "Pass me the fries," I
said.  "I still have one unclogged artery somewhere."

-He smiled.  "So, tell me about yourself, Wren.  Tell me every thing
that you wouldn't want the National Enquirer to find out."

"I sometimes sleep in flannel pajamas with feet on them.  I guess
that's my darkest secret.  That and the clump of hair clogging my
bathroom sink."

This time he did reach over and touch my hand.  Just briefly, a little
squeeze of my knuckles and then gone.  "Really," he said, his voice
soft and low.  "I'm interested."

Me too, I thought.  But what do I tell him, Wren's life story or
mine?

Last night with Ethan it was easy, he wasn't all that interested in my
past.  And the few times he did ask about me for the sake of keeping
the conversation going, I didn't mind feeding him chunks of Wren's
life.  After all, the entire evening was more like being in a stage
play anyway.

This was different.  Not that I had any genuine feelings for Davis
Richard.  Too early for anything like that.  But something was going
on.  Atoms were smashing into each other, colliding all over the place
like a slam dance.  That produced heat.  Yet, who was he attracted to,
me or Wren?  At that moment I didn't want to be Wren anymore, trouble
was, I didn't want to be Luna either.  Luna had such bad luck.

So I told him about my degrees in art and philosophy and English.  I
told him about my writing, my plans for a magazine.

I sounded enthusiastic, the way Wren always did, the way she'd always
known what she wanted.

"I've read some of your stuff," he said.  "Very impressive."

"My stuff?  Where?"

"You submitted some articles when you applied over at the magazine.

A friend made copies for me and messengered them over to me this
afternoon, after we met."

"A friend?  You have a spy at the magazine?"

- "Spy might be too romantic a word.  I have a friend who keeps 5-an
eyeopen for anything interesting that might make a good movie.

"A paid free, "Those are the best kind."

"How did you get to be such an expert in cynicism?"

"Divorce."

"So you're one of those guys for whom divorce is an excuse to tt1i be a
bastard."

I "I didn't need an excuse."

"Oh, really?  What's next, you mash a grapefruit half in my face?"  He
held up his hands in surrender.  "Let's stop right here.

I .1 enjoy this bantering with you, but this isn't who I am.  Maybe I'm
trying too hard with you, I don't know.  But I'm not really lIt that
cynical, unless you consider someone cynical who suspects "ii
professional wrestling may not be all on the up and up.  And that
politicians aren't all altruistic.  Other than that, I coach my kids'
I! t-ball and soccer teams.  Believe me, you can't do that with a
cynical attitude."  We ate our meals, talked about the world in
general.  Davis "it was witty without making a point ofproving it.

He was surprisingly "it informed about world politics, knew which South
American country was doing what and how to pronounce all those tricky
names of the leaders who were always shaking their fists when they made
speeches.

After dinner he drove me back to the office, where I had left my car.

"I'll follow you home," he said.

"No need.  I can find it."

"Just to be safe."

I thought about the white Subaru, but it was nowhere in sight.

Just my Rabbit in the parking lot and his Taurus station wagon with the
Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtle coloring book in the back seat and a broken
burnt umber crayon.  "Okay," I said.

"Sure."

I drove onto the freeway and he stayed close behind me.  I decided to
change lanes for no particular reason, to see what he would do.  He
changed too.  I changed lanes again.  So did he.  I slid into the
center lane and cradled my car between two huge diesel trucks.  He
dropped behind the second truck.  I darted into the left lane and sped
up, passing half a dozen cars.  He sped up and passed them too.  I
drifted into the far right lane behind two Asian women in an old
Corvette.  We crawled along.  He crawled behind us.  I was encouraged,
almost happy.

When I pulled into my assigned parking space, Davis kept circling the
lot until he found a place to park.  I hadn't really counted on that.

I had expected him to just pull up, say good night, and keep going.

Now he was walking toward me, hitching his pants, looking like nothing
in the world bothered him, a man you couldn't insult or intimidate.  He
even kicked a stone across the lot and I' stopped to see how far it
went.

I "You're the weirdest driver I've ever seen," he said, smiling."

"Thanks for seeing me home."

"I'll walk you to the door.  I'm a full-service date."  j "This isn't a
date."

He looked over his shoulder at a black Jeep that was pulling into a
space across the lot.  When he looked back at me some of that former
confidence was strained.  "What do you want to call it?"

He leaned forward then and took both my arms in his hands.

I knew he was going to kiss me and I wanted him to.  For the first I
time since breaking up with Robby, I wanted a man to kiss me for some
reason other than breaking the monotony of not being kissed.

We leaned into each other, I guess, because I was suddenly off-balance,
kept from falling to the pavement by the weight of his body against
mine.  I could feel his body heat through his clothes.  My skin went
tropical.  His hands slid to the small of my back and dug into the
skin, two fingers pressing my buttocks.

His chin had a little afternoon stubble and I could feel the skin on my
chin and cheek being scraped raw.  It burned a little, but I didn't
mind.

We broke apart and started walking up the walkway toward my front
door.

A few plump snails spotted the sidewalk like raisins in white bread.

I looked up at Ethan's apartment above mine and saw the curtain move as
if someone had just ducked back.  I didn't know what I would do when we
reached my door.

Should I invite Davis inside?  What would that lead to?  I couldn't
sleep with him tonight, not after having slept with Ethan last night.

It didn't matter that this was different, that I really wanted this man
who made celebrity exercise videotapes and who could speak to
children.

If I slept with him so soon after Ethan, I would feel too much like a
prom-night slut.  Okay, maybe that was a little outIll dated, but that
was me.  Me, not Wren.

We stopped in front of my apartment door and kissed again.

He pulled me tighter to him, until I could smell the faint tang of his
morning aftershave, something musky.  His hand slid farther down my
back and grabbed a fistful of buttock.  His thigh bumped "It up against
my pubic mound like a tree stump.  I opened my legs a little and
pressed closer.

II Music from the apartment filtered out around us.

Amazing ii grace, how sweet the sound/To save a wretch like me .  . .

"Judy Collins's sorrowful voice was perfect for this.  I felt
completely "It1 engulfed by Davis, the music, his cologne, the cool
night.

"This is the kind of movie you should make," I whispered.  As nit I
spoke, my lips moved against his.  He nodded and kissed me harder.

I ground myself against his thigh and he rubbed his crotch against my
hip.  We gyrated to the music.  Perhaps I would ask him to stay after
all.

"I once was lost, but now I'm found "I had that same record.  It used
to be Robby's from his folk period, but he'd overlooked it when he'd
taken his half of our collection.  I think he'd left it because of that
scratch toward the end "Was blind but-was blind but-was blind but" I
pulled my lips away from Davis just as the door to my apartment
opened.

Now the music blared loudly, the needle finally hopping the scratch as
usual.

"Hey, Wren, you're finally home," the strange man in the doorway said
cheerfully.

Davis's hands fell away from my back, his thigh retreated from between
my legs.

"You don't think that's too loud, do you?"  the strange man asked,
nodding at the record player.

-I looked at him, my face frozen in shock.  He was in his early
thirties and tall, a couple of inches over six feet.  He was wearing
only a pair of beach shorts, so I could see he was lean and muscled.

His long brown hair was pulled back and tied into a ponytail with a
white athletic sock.  His bushy mustache hung over his upper lip like a
grass awning.  In his right earlobe was an earring, a gold dragonfly
with a red ruby eye.  The same as the one I carried in my purse.

He was smiling in a bright, happy way, leaning against the II
doorjamb.

My 1st Place Long Jump stein filled with beer was gripped in one hand
and a half-eaten chocolate donut in the other.  "We're a lillle low on
groceries, hon.  But we'll fix that, now that your beloved Byron is
back in town."  He kissed me on the cheek and looked at Davis with a
friendly grin.  "So, who's your friend?"

	 .  . . and then the stranger was kissing me.

His hand, cold from my trophy glass, cupped the back of my neck and
pulled me forward as he leaned over.  I strained my head against his
hand and crowbarred my elbow against his chest.  But his lips swooped
down and brushed against mine quick as a raindrop.

"Ow!"  he hollered as if stung.  His scream vibrated against my lips.

I smelled the beer on his breath.  He jerked away.  "Owowow, Jesus,
ow!"  He hopped around on one foot, accidentally splashing beer onto
his shorts and down the front of my skirt.  "Damn, that hurts!

Damn!"

"What hurts?"  I said.  My elbow is pretty bony so I guess I could've,
if not bruised a rib, maybe pinched a nerve or some thing.  Or maybe
I'd bit him without knowing it.  I licked my lips for blood.  I tasted
shrimp dinner, leftovers from Davis's kiss.

1" "Cramp," Byron gasped.  He took long limping strides, marching in
choppy circles around Davis and me.  The sidewalk "I was polka-dolled
with the brown snails, which, despite his apparent agony, he
hopscotched around.  Every other step he hammer ed his fist hard
against his right thigh, as if driving in a I- stubborn nail.  After a
couple of orbits around us he slowed down to a steady hobbling gait.

"Jesus, that smarts.  Wow."  His eyes shone with tears.  He was
knuckling them when he stepped blindly forward and we heard a loud
crunching sound that at first I a'thought might be his toe cracking
against the sidewalk.  He lifted iK,- his bare foot.  The gooey remains
of a crushed snail clung to his ill sole like a flallened potato
chip.

He put his foot back down without scraping off the snail, as if it
weren't there.  If it had been me, I'd have been under a steaming
shower by now, wire scrub brush in one hand and pumice stone in the
other.  But Byron just stood there gulping beer with one hand and
rubbing his tenderized thigh with the other.  "B-I2," he said.  "I've
got this intestinal thing so I don't absorb vitamin B-12 right and I
get these godawful cramps.  He leaned up against the doorjamb, out of
breath.

He moved his glass of beer back and forth between Davis and me as if he
were toasting each of us.  "So," he said, "you guys fucking each other
or what?"

"What?"  I asked, shocked.

"Hey, Wren, nature is nature, right?  I've got nothing to bitch
about.

I've been away and you've got needs."  He winked at me.

"Boy, have you got needs."

I started to protest, but all that came out was "Oh, shut up" in a
peevish little girlish voice I didn't even have when I was a little
girl.

He sat down in the open doorway and stuck his feet straight out.  With
one hand he unknotted the white athletic sock that bound his
ponytail.

He shook his head from side to side.  The ponytail disappeared in a
flurry of whipping hair that now hung down to his shoulders in thick
corkscrew curls.  He mopped the crushed snail remains from his foot
with his sock, then snapped the sock like a whip.  Snail fragments
flung off and scattered across the sidewalk like bits of a soft-boiled
egg.  The sock had a wet snail-guts stain on the sole.  He pulled the
sock onto his foot anyway.  He dug into his pocket for the matching
sock and crossed his leg to put that one on too.  As he lifted his leg,
I could look straight down his pant leg and see he wasn't wearing
anything under his shorts.  His bald penis lay curled in a nest of dark
pubic hair like a baby condor they'd recently hatched at the zoo.  I
looked away.

"Like I said, I've been away.  Whatever happened, happened.

None of my business.  You two could have humped and pumped your way
across this entire state, it don't bother me.  The past is past.  "He
dug his fingers into his thigh muscle, massaging until the skin turned
bright red.  He looked up at Davis and smiled.

"Thing is, guys, now I'm back."

The sprinklers suddenly came on, hissing water onto the thick green
foliage that the Pine Stream Apartments prided itself on.

The air smelled wet and tropical.  The sidewalks were quickly crowded
with more snails.  Brown clumps like inflated mush rooms dragged
themselves across the concrete leaving shiny fluorescent trails dotted
behind them.  Oddly, the snails didn't move in a straight line, the
trails were winding like Arabic writing, even though they seemed to be
merely crossing the sidewalk.  For some reason, that bothered me.

Even a snail must know what a straight line is.  I was angry with the
snails for their inefficiency.  Half a dozen of them were swarming the
remains of the snail Byron had crushed, munching silently on the body
parts.

Byron stood up, wiggled his toes inside the socks.  He lassoed the
three of us with a circular finger motion.  "I guess we've got some
figuring to do here, mathematically speaking.  The way I see it, two
into three just won't go.  At the very least, it wouldn't be
sanitary.

One of us will always be stuck with sloppy seconds."

What had Wren seen in this guy?  I admit, he had a certain manic energy
and dreamy bad-boy look.  But there was a dangerous aura about him.  It
was like standing too close to a peffor mance artist who has soaked
himself in gasoline and is now jumping back and forth over a lighted
candle.

"Did you know there were no bricks in your toilets?  Don't you know
there's a water shortage down here?  I filled up a couple of , your
Baggies with flour and wedged them into the tanks until we can pick up
a few bricks."

I wanted to say something, take control right here and now.

Tell him to take his snail-slimed socks and clear out, or else.  .1

But I had secrets now.  People with secrets must step carefully.

I composed myself, softened my voice.  "Listen, Byron, I think "i,
we.1

-"Ssshh, ssshh He turned around and lightly kicked the I door open the
rest of the way.  The doorknob banged into the foyer wall.  "I love
this song.  This guy is so clever.  Listen .  .

I listened.  Sometime in the past few minutes, Judy Collins had been
replaced by some guy with a low, morose voice.  He sang slowly, like a
man with a sink full of dirty dishes and last week's TV Guide, "I saw a
stranger with your hair Tried to make her give it back So I could send
it off to you Maybe Federal Express .

Byron snorted laughter.  "Those lines always crack me up.  Kid -sitting
next to me on the Greyhound ride down here, econ major at USC, played
that on his portable CD player.  Kept playing it over and over.  He had
his headphones on but he kept singing along with it in this horrendous
voice that sounded like a lawn mower stuck in a clump of foot-high
weeds.  People kept giving him the evil eye, but he just read his
textbook, made notes in the margins, and kept right on singing.  Turns
out he'd just gone all the way up to Oregon to visit his high school
girlfriend, the former Miss Pine Cone Festival, and she dumped him the
day he arrived.  She'd fallen in love with the manager of the toy
department of the local Kmart.  Who would guess the Pine Cone Queen
could be so cruel?"

"And you stole his disk," I said.

He looked surprised.  "Stole it?  Why would I do that?"  "You mean he
just gave it to you?  A perfect stranger just gave you a CD because you
liked a song you hadn't even heard properly?"

"He didn't give it to me, sweetcakes.  I won it."

"You won it?  How did you win it?"  4 "A bet."  He didn't say anything
more.

I imagined him shuffling a deck of cards he'd marked in prison, the
backs a sleazy pornographic photograph, probably two women, both a
little too fleshy, long flat tongues exposed like thirsty spaniels.

"I don't get it," I said.  "Why didn't you "win' the CD player too?"

"I didn't want it.  I'm not greedy, Wren.  You of all people know
that.

Remember New Orleans?"

I moved closer to Davis, was comforted by his cologne.

Byron grinned and reached up and pinched his dragonfly ear ring as if
he were activating some hidden switch, secretly photo graphing Davis
and me with our stunned and dopey expressions.

I noticed for the first time that the tip of his left little finger was
missing down to the first knuckle.  The top of the stump was white and
waxy like cake icing.  The sight of it made my stomach clench.  I
started to reach for my bra strap for some serious nail rubbing but
caught myself and clutched my purse instead.  I slid my thumbnail up
and down against the shoulder strap.  Byron smiled at me as if I'd just
done something he'd psychically made me do.  Even though I knew he
hadn't, my face flushed with hot blood.  I dropped my hand to my
side.

1!"Hey, hey, hey, guys!"  Byron clapped his hands festively.  "This
isn't going to be much of a homecoming party if I'm the one doing all
the talking.  I've been starving for conversation with nonfelons.

Tell Uncle Byron everything."  He nudged Davis with p his elbow.

"She still do that water spout trick in the bathtub?"

Davis ignored him and stared straight at me.  "You're married, Byron
slipped a bare arm around my shoulder, his hand with the glass of beer
resting heavily on my collarbone.  "For almost 11two years now.

Didn't she tell you?"

"Your paperwork at the magazine said you were single."

I ducked and twisted away from Byron's arm.  "We've been separated."

"Two years," Byron nodded.  "But I'm out of prison now and we can start
over.  Make up for lost time."  He grinned at me lewdly.

"Prison?"  Davis looked at Byron, acknowledging his presence for the
first time.  "That sounds interesting."

"Yeah?  In what way?"

"I don't know.  I guess the challenge.  See if you can take it.

Guys always wonder, I think."

"Yeah, well, the challenge.  There is that, I suppose.  You don't look
for any big meaning in the experience.  You just want to do your time
and get out."

"I guess it's only interesting if you're watching it in the movies.

"Oh, you want interesting?  Prison lore.  Inside information.

How's this, You know what the most popular book in prison is?

Guess."

Davis looked at me, then back at Byron.  "A law book?"

"The Bible."

"Oh, right.  Everyone turns to Jesus because it looks good to the
parole board.  Is that it?"

Byron laughed.  "Some, sure.  But that's not the reason.  It's the
paper, man.  They use a high quality paper that's opaque and very, very
thin."  Byron pinched his finger against his thumb and pretended to
take a long drag on a cigarette.  "Very uplifting, very spiritual."

Davis shook his head in amazement.  "You mean they tear out the pages
and use them to roll cigarettes?"

"That interesting enough for you?"

Davis laughed, so did Byron.  They seemed like old buddies.

"What were you in for?"  Davis asked.  "If you don't mind my asking.

Byron's grin cinched tighter.  Gone was any sign of being bud dies.

Just that fast.  "I do mind, yes."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to pry.

"If you want to know if I got cornholed, fucked in the asshole, just
ask.  We're practically family here.  You wanna inspect the evidence?

C'mon, don't be shy.  Here, take a peek."  Byron dug his thumb into his
waistband as if to yank down his shorts.

Davis looked at me.  So did Byron.  As if they expected me to say
something or do something, change the course of events that suddenly
seemed to be rushing toward violence.

"I have to go to the bathroom," I said.  I had no idea what to say to
either of them.  I didn't want Davis to think I'd been leading him on,
but I couldn't afford to have Byron tell who I really was.

I went inside the doorway.  I needed to settle this thing with Byron,
alone.  "Davis, thank you for dinner.  I'll talk to you later."

"You going to be all right?"

I looked at Bryon.  I searched for some sign that would answer Davis's
question.  But Byron was merely staring up into the night sky, his face
now childlike with concentration.  Would I be all right with a guy who
smoked the Bible?

"Where's Orion?"  Byron suddenly asked.  "I can never find Orion.  I
know about the belt thing, the three little stars, but I kee,p seeing
those three stars everywhere."

There," Davis said, pointing.  "That's Orion."

The three of us looked up.

"That's the belt, there's the sword."  Davis wagged his finger as I-if
sketching in the details, connecting the dots.

-a"Yeah," Byron said.  "That's it all right.  Amazing.  Makes you
Mthink, doesn't it?"

"About what?"  I asked, an edge to my voice.

I"What do you mean?"

"What exactly does it make you think about?  The vastness of I the
universe?  The insignificance of man?  The origins of superstitions?

What?"

Byron nodded.  "No wonder I can never find it, I don't know what it
means.

IiOkay, I knew I was being a born-again bitch, but what other weapon
did I have at that point?  With a man like Byron, there was only so
much bluffing a woman could get away with.  It's like arguing with a
cop, you can only push so far before your eye starts dropping to the
gun on his hip.  Men always have the unspoken threat of physical
violence.  Even if the last time they threw a punch was on the
playground in third grade, they still have that knowledge that they
could throw another one if they had to.  They possess the logic of
knuckles.  And Byron, with his long, ragged hair and missing finger and
dragonfly earring , was particularly threatening.  Was I in any danger
from him?  I knew he'd had something to do with Wren's missing teeth.

He'd just been in prison.  How had he lost that knuckle?  I imagined a
prison fight over cigarettes in the machine shop while the paid-off
guards looked the other way.  Certainly keeping Wren's identity wasn't
worth my life, or my teeth.  I had options, I could leave.  I could
always go back to being Luna.

Jobless.

Homeless.

Loverless.

That Luna.

I made a face at the prospect.

Davis looked over and caught me screwing up my face.  "Are you going to
be all right?"  he asked again.  He enunciated each word slowly, like
someone from a crisis hotline.  I loved his soothing voice.  Byron's
scratchy voice sounded like a plastic shovel repeatedly stabbed into a
dune of coarse sand.

"I'll be fine," I said.

He touched my arm briefly, just grazed the hairs of my forearm.

Byron was still staring up at the stars, so I didn't think he
noticed.

Suddenly Byron, without looking, reached back and took my hand.  He
pulled me to his side.  His hand felt moist and slippery.  I sniffed.

His skin smelled like my obscenely expensive skin lotion the French
stuff Robby had given me last year for our anniversary and that I had
doled out drop by precious drop like a youth elixir.  He reeked of its
herbal scent.  First my trophy glass, now my lotion.  I pulled my hand
free.  He didn't seem to notice.

Byron pointed heavenward again.  "You guys remember when they used to
pronounce Uranus, Your Anus?"

"What?"  Davis said.

"Who do you think decided we should change pronunciation?

I don't think it was the scientists.  I think they probably got a kick
out of it the old way.  Can't you just picture a bunch of them silling
around in white lab coats surmunded by billions of dollars of
sophisticated equipment, and one of them saying, "I think we should
send a probe up to Your Anus, Doctor."  And all of them cracking up,
doing variations.  "Can we find boosters big enough to get all the way
up to Your Anus?"  "We have to see if there's intelligent life on Your
Anus."  And they're all laughing and spitting up their coffee and
donuts at this.  What do you guys think?"

Davis and I stared at him.

"I'll call you tomorrow," I said to Davis.

Davis nodded, hesitated a moment, then shoved his hands into his
pockets and ambled casually away as if he'd just spent an evening
playing miniature golf.

Once we were inside, Byron closed the front door and locked it.

"Boy, did you think that guy would ever leave?"

"I was about to say the same thing about you."

"Me?  I'm the last person you want to be throwing out of here.

I give your whole masquerade veracity."

"Veracity?  Where'd that word come from?  Prison course in power
vocabulary?"

He smiled.  "Chacun a son gout.  It means, "each to his own taste."

"You speak French?"

"I wasn't born in prison.

"Just to serve time in one."

He sighed.  "Homo lupus homm.

"Stop showing off.  Hitler spoke French too."  I didn't know if that
was true.

"That was Latin, not French.  It means, "man is a wolf to man."

Get it?"  He gulped down the last of the beer.  "Remember that line
from The Adventures ofRobin Hood?  Errol Flynn says something insulting
to the evil prince and one of the prince's toadies bellows, "You speak
treason!"  And Flynn grins and says, "Fluently."  That was the
coolest."

I thought of Wren's missing teeth.  "You're no Robin Hood."

"And you're no Wren Caldwell.  So fucking what?"  The anger in his
voice startled me, it was as if he'd just yanked barbed wire through my
closed fists.

"Do you drive a white Subarn?"  I demanded.

"If I had a car, why would I have taken a Greyhound down from Oregon?

You ever use the rest room in one of those things?"

That surprised me.  I had assumed that the person following me today
had been Byron.  I'd even been relieved to have that mystery finally
solved.  Jesus.  Who else was poking around in my life?  I needed to
think, to get away from Byron and figure out what I would do now.

"I'm going to the bathroom," I said, taking off down the hallway.  In
the bathroom I could think things through.  Maybe I could sneak the
phone in and call someone for advice, even r Robby if I had to.  This
was an emergency.  Robby would help.

"Careful," Byron hollered after me.  "I've left a few of my things
out."  a didn'tstop.  "You can repack them when Igetback."

As I walked into the bathroom, I reached over to flip on the p light
switch.  But before my fingers found it, my foot stepped into gravel
and started to skate out from under me.  I fell backward, blindly
catching myself on the sink with my elbow before hitting the floor.

"What the hell .  . .?"  I stood up and groped the light on.

I was standing with one foot in a lifter box.

Byron stood in the doorway.  "That's Hector's."  He walked into tbe
bathroom and swept aside the shower curtain.  A longhaired gray cat was
lying in the tub, his head resting on a small sample bottle of
shampoo.

He 2pened one eye, then closed it.  Byron pointed, "That's Hector.

"You're just out of prison, for God's sake.  When did you have time to
get a cat?"

"I won him."

"You win a lot, don't you?"

"I'm very lucky."

I shook green cat litter from my shoe.  "I don't care how you got him,
get him out of my bathroom."

"Well, the other bathroom didn't have a window, just that little
overhead fan.  Let me tell you, no matter what they advertise on TV,
soiled cat litter stinks.  So I switched bathrooms with you.

Believe me, you're better off."

I looked around the bathroom.  My hair dryer was gone, so was my
jewelry box and my soap dish in the shape of a porcelain hand.

Everything was gone except the sample bottle of Prell shampoo under
Hector's furry head.

"And," Byron continued, "since this bathroom goes with this bedroom, I
switched them too."  He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

"You're down the hall now.

- I ran into my bedroom.  My covers and sheets were gone.  The mattress
was bare.  A pair of men's torn jeans and white underpants were strewn
next to the Scaly Posturepedic label.  I slid open the mirrored closet
door.  My shoes and dresses were gone.  His three white shirts and two
black pants hung pathetically in the huge double closet.  On the floor
was a pair of battered running shoes and a pair of new black loafers
polished to a scaly gloss.  I stomped over to the dresser and yanked
open the top drawer.  My under pants, bras, garter belt, stockings, and
panty hose were gone.

"I already moved your stuff for you.  Figured it's the least I could
do."  He smiled at me as if waiting for thanks.

"This is my room, my dresser, my clothes, you bastard.  How dare you
touch my stuff!"

"Well, actually this dresser was Wren's.  I know because we bought it
the week after we were married.  It's only fair I get some use of it
now.

"You don't really think I'm going to let you stay here, do you?"

He threw himself on the bare mattress, hands webbed behind his head.

"I don't see what choice you have."

"I can throw you out, that's what choice I have."

"You mean physically?  You mean you're going to come over here and
physically throw me out?"  He smiled, but not in a threatening way.

More like he was curious how I'd do it.

"Not me personally," I said.  "That's what police are for."

He sat up, crossing his legs Buddha style.  "I suppose so.  Of course,
when they ask who's making the complaint, what name will you give
them?"

I thought for a moment, leaning against the empty dresser.

"Whatever name I give them, they'll still kick your ass out of here.

And if you're on parole, they'll toss you right back into jail.

Are you on parole?"

"Nope.  I'm free and clear.  More than I can say for you.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He shook his head.  "Never mind.  I'm not your therapist.  Aren't you
going to call the cops?"

I sat on the opposite edge of the bed.  I was exhausted, drained.

"You can't just bust into my home and blackmail me into letting you
stay."

"Who's blackmailing anybody?  I'm just looking for a place to stay
while I get my life in order.  Isn't that what you're doing?"

"You have no right to talk about what I'm doing.  You don't know
anything about me.  You don't have a clue to what I'm "And I don't much
care.  I'll just be here long enough to take care of some business."

"What kind of business?"

"Being lucky."

"What about Wren?"

He gave me a cold stare, like we were passing on the cell block.

"Wren's dead."

"Yeah.  You don't act too broken up.

"You aren't exactly anointing the room with tears, babe."  He gestured
to include the contents of the apartment.  "You made 1out okay."

- I stood up, walked to the window.  I looked out and saw Ethan
1walking across the dark parking lot in his bathing suit.  He had a
Spuds McKenzie towel slung over his shoulder and two cans of beer he
was holding by their plastic cuffs.  He was heading in the r -direction
of the Jacuzzi.

I had not cried since Wren's death.  I hadn't shed a single tear.

I had felt awful, devastated, wrung out, all those things people say
they feel at a great personal loss.  Yet, I had not cried once.

f What awful things did that say about me?  More than anything else I'd
ever done or not done in my life, I felt most guilty about that.

I changed the subject.  "How did you find me?"  f "I talked to Kate.

She told me about giving you Wren's things."  I thought of Kate.  She
had cried.  "How is Kate?"

"Tough.  One of the last of that breed.  Pioneer stock."  , I nodded.

"Anyway, I wanted some of Wren's papers, letters mostly, and t some
photo albums.  So I started tracking you down.  It wasn't hard.

The tricky part was figuring out why you'd purposely tried I to
disappear with that dead-end address in Texas.  That got me 7curious.

A few phone calls placed after Wren's death from her phone were down to
this area.  I checked that against where her transcripts were sent.

The rest was easy.

"For a criminal maybe.  What were you in prison for?"

"Trespassing."

""I don't want jokes, I want some straight answers.

"Relax, you're safe.  I'm not after your money or your body."

"What happened to Wren?  How did she lose her teeth?"

He smiled.  "Wren told you about her teeth?  I'm surprised.  She didn't
want people to know."

"What happened?"

"An accident."  He held up his left hand and wiggled the stump of his
little finger.  "Accidents happen."

The phone next to the bed rang and I jumped.

He reached for it.  "I'm expecting a call.  Do you mind?"  "Yes, I
mind," I said.  I marched to the phone and snatched it up.  "Hello?"

"Are you okay?"  Davis asked.

"Yes, fine.  How'd you get to a phone so fast?"  "Car phone."

"Oh, right."  I looked over at Byron, who kept grinning at me, as if he
were my big brother about to tease me about some boy calling to ask me
to the dance.  I picked up the phone set and walked as far away from
him as the cord would allow.  I turned my back.

"Can you talk?"  Davis asked.

"Sure."

"You're not in any danger, are you?"

"No, I'm fine."

There was a long silence and I thought we got cut off, maybe he was
passing under some electrical wires or something.

"I don't know what to say," he said.  "I like you, Wren.  I just want
to know what's going on."

"It's complicated."

"Just tell me this.  Am I out of the picture?"

I hesitated.  Things were complex enough right now without adding a
romance.  But then I remembered that kiss, how I'd wanted to drag him
inside.

"Are you sure you're okay?  There's something about that guy.

I don't know.  He's your husband, you know him better than I do.

There's something about him, though."

"Let me call you back tomorrow, Davis, okay?"

"You didn't answer my question.  Am I out of the picture?

What was going on between us tonight?"

I sighed.  He wanted an answer.  He deserved an answer.  God knows, I
didn't want him out of the picture.  I wanted him very much in the
picture.  I turned around and looked Byron straight in the eyes as I
spoke into the phone.  "You're not out of the picture, Davis.  Things
may be a little out of focus right now, but I can make you out just
fine."

"Good.  That's good."  He sounded very happy.  1The Call Waiting tone
sounded.

"Hold on a second, Davis, I have another call.  "I pressed the button
and said hello.  As always, for the first second I expected "Where is
he?"  the brusque voice demanded.

"You deaf or just stupid?  Where the fuck is he?"

"Who do you want?  Byron?"  d "Yes, I want Byron.  Put Byron on the
line.  I would very much appreciate talking to Byron."

"I'm on the other line, he'll have to call you back."

"I don't give a fuck about your other fucking line.  Put him the fuck
on or I'll wrap the other fucking line around your fucking throat, you
fucking moron.

One phone call and I can have you fucking killed within the hour."  e I
?,ressed the button.  "Davis, I'll call you tomorrow.  Good bye.

t I handed the phone to Byron.  "Your father, I think."

"Did he threaten to have you killed?"

Byron took the phone.  "Hey, Grudge, what's up?  Right How much?  .

.

. Okay, an hour."  He hung up the phone.

"I've got to go."

-"I'll help you pack."

"Just for a while.  I'll be back."

"Nice friends you've got.  He threatened to make a phone call and have
me killed within the hour.  Like he was ordering a goddamn Domino's
pizza or something.  Can he do that?"

Byron stooped down beside the bed and pulled out a black leather
attache' case.  He opened it with the lid facing me so I couldn't see
inside.  He reached in, checked the contents, closed the lid.  "I'll be
back later."

"You can't stay here," I said.  "I've got to rent the other room out.

I don't make enough to pay for this apartment."

Byron turned his back, pulled his shorts down, and kicked them off.

Naked, he grabbed his underpants from the bed and stepped into them.

Then he pulled on his jeans.  "How much?"

"What?"  I said.

"How much rent will you need to charge?"

"I don't know.  Four hundred, I guess.

He dug into his jeans and pulled out a thick roll of bills.  He peeled
off five hundred-dollar bills and handed them to me.  "First month plus
utilities."

I fanned out the bills.  A large red stain blotted the corner of the
top bill and got progressively smaller with each subsequent bill until
the bottom hundred, which was spotless.  "What's this?"

-I asked.  "It looks like blood."

He pulled on a blue Nike sweatshirt and came over and examined the
bills.  "Yeah, that's blood all right."

"What's blood doing on your money?"

"Don't worry," he said, slipping into his loafers, grabbing his case,
and running for the door.  "It's only dog blood."

Two days later Byron still had not returned.  , Four of the five $100
bills were sealed in a plastic Baggie and taped to the underside of my
desk drawer at the office.  The fifth bill I gave to Detective Diesel
and asked him to do me a personal favor and have the bill tested.

He raised an eyebrow, thick as a root.  "Tested for what?"

"This."I showed him the reddish-brown blotch.

"Looks like blood."

"Probably animal blood," I said.  "Dog."  "What would dog's blood be
doing on a hundred-dollar bill?"

I shrugged.  "Might be somebody mugged a blind person who had a Seeing
Eye dog.

"Might be or already happened?"

"I don't know, I'm just guessing."  That was the only explanation I
could come up with.  That is, if it really was dog's blood.  I "Believe
me, as soon as I know anything definite, I'll let you know."  "You
don't strike me as the kind of irresponsible reporter who would risk
letting a violent criminal go free just for a byline."

- "I'm not.  I'm not even a reporter, I'm just a writer.  A magazine
writer."

"I'd hate to be wrong about you.  I don't like being wrong about
people.  Makes me nervous.  You start misjudging people in this !

business, you'd better retire fast."

I patted Detective Diesel's arm assuredly.  "You're not wrong.  I'm no
Lois Lane.  This is only a personal matter."

"This have anything to do with that car that's been following you?"

"I don't know yet."  I hadn't seen the white Subaru all day.

He waved the bill between us.  "This turns out to be human blood, you
and I are gonna have a sit-down.  A long one."

"Absolutely.

He gave me a stern look, like a man in pajama pants and sports jacket
picking up his teenage daughter from the police station after
midnight.

"Do you know what you're doing, Wren?"

"Don't worry, Detective, everything's under control."  I slapped on a
confident smile and held that pose for a few seconds until he nodded
and walked off down the corridor toward the forensics lab.  He held the
$ lOO bill pinched between thumb and forefinger, away from his body, as
if it were a poisonous multilegged insect.

When he turned the corridor, I deflated my smile and walked on wobbly
legs back to my car.

The first day after Bryon left, a bunch of people at the office took me
out for a welcoming lunch.  I'd just arrived at the office, twenty
minutes late because of my visit with Detective Diesel.

I'd covered by saying that I'd made another attempt to visit Season
Dougherty, but no one seemed to care that I was late anyway.

Billie Meyers, the young receptionist, had organized the whole lunch,
including reservations at an Indian restaurant called Sitar by the
Sea.

"Don't get your hopes up," Billie explained.  "There's no sea.

Apparently there was an original Sitar by the Sea in Redondo Beach that
did in fact have an ocean view.  That was too far away.

The one we were going to was in Anaheim, near Disneyland.

Linda Marley, my boss, begged out at the last minute after she got a
phone call.  With the receiver wedged between neck and shoulder, she
peeled off her cardigan sweater and waved us on, mouthing, "I'll catch
up to you later."  I saw her slip her American Express card to
Billie.

In the elevator Billie said, "I like your hair."

"Me?"  I said.  People rarely complimented me on my hair.  I 1have that
look, I don't know what you'd call it, but whenever I'm shopping in a
bookstore, other customers think I work there and ask me where Jean
Anel's new novel is.  That look.

Billie touched my hair.  Her nail polish was French style, robin's-egg
blue around the base, tipped with white half moons.

n She stroked my hair once.  "It's so natural, like you don't have to
do anything to it."

"I've done everything to it but set it on fire."

She nodded seriously.  "Now that you mention it, it is a little When I
returned from lunch there were three yellow While 1You Were Out
messages from Davis.  They all said, "Call me!"

5 The last one, which had come in just ten minutes earlier, sai& "Don't
make me stomp your snails."  Kirstie, who took themes I ages, wrinkled
her nose and frowned when she gave them to me.

"What's that mean?  Is that sexual?"

I was sitting at my desk reaching for the phone to call Davis when
Linda Marley tapped me on the shoulder.  I turned.  "Hey, boss."

"Sorry I couldn't make lunch," she said.

"That's okay.  Thanks for picking up the tab."

"Any progress on the Season Dougherty interview?"

"Some.  I had dinner last night with Davis Richard."I fanned out his
three yellow messages.

She made an approving face.  "Very impressive.  Did you sleep "Is that
everybody's favorite question?"  I asked.  If she would have asked me
that yesterday I'd have been shocked and stuttered out some lame
answer.  But after half an hpur's exposure to Byron, I was
battle-hardened.  "No, I didn't sleep with him.  I'm working a story,
not a street corner.

She touched my shoulder.  "Take it easy, Wren.  I have to ask these
questions."

"Because you're worried about the ethical position of the magazine?"

"No, because I'm nosy."  She laughed so hard she started coughing.

"Yuckety yuckety yuck," I said, deadpan.

She kept laughing.  Just when she'd slow down and seem about to stop,
she'd start up again, laughing louder than ever.  It was like a child
playing with the volume control on a radio.  When she laughed, the skin
around her eyes accordioned into a dozen folds.  This was the first
time I was conscious of her age, which someone at lunch had placed at
forty-four.

Finally she stopped laughing, dabbed her eyes dry, and tugged on the
back of my chair.  "Let's go," she said.

"Go?  Where?"

"Meeting.  Jonathan Krieg is back in town and waiting to see you for an
update on the Season Dougherty interview."

"He's back already?  He just left yesterday."

"He finished his business.  Today he's ten million dollars smarter.

Now he's back, checking his list to see who's been naughty or nice.

""Which list am I on?"

"Let's find out."  She gestured toward Jonathan's office and I
followed.  I had the feeling that she knew something but wasn't telling
me.  Linda was a friendly woman, but she could be very mysterious.  At
lunch Clive Remick, the magazine's restaurant critic, had toasted her
with, "She's the best managing editor we've ever had.  Unfortunately,
we're the best fuck she's ever had."

Everyone had laughed.  I didn't ask what he meant because I didn't want
to get involved in any office politics.  I just wanted to get by.

Besides, she seemed to like me, though we weren't exactly chummy.

We walked to Jonathan Krieg's office door.  The day before the door had
been bare, today his name was painted on in plain black lettering.

Under his name, the single word, PUBLISHER.  I popped in a Breathsaver
to kill the tandoori lamb taste in my mouth.

Linda rapped on the door like a cop.  "Jonathan?"

"Uuunnnh came the muffled grunt.

Linda opened the door.

Jonathan was bent over, his hands grasping the seat of a straight back
chair.  Straddling his hips was a muscular blond woman in a two-piece
workout outfit.  Her black bottoms were cut high over her hips, cinched
at the waist with a wide yellow belt.  Thick, ropy veins stemmed out
from under the cloth covering her vagina.

The strip of cloth was so narrow she had to have shaved her entire
Ipubic area.  Her midriffwas bare, exposing square muscle platelets up
and down her abdomen, which reminded me of a turtle shell.

"Uuuunnh Jonathan said.  He was wearing shorts, a T shirt, and new
Reeboks.  He had a starbust varicose vein at the back of one of his
knees.

Standing next to the chair was the male counterpart to the woman riding
Jonathan's back.  He was equally blond and equally muscular, though his
skin was chalk pale.  A small Band-Aid covered his left nostril where
it looked as if he'd had a skin cancer removed.

Her muscles were crowded like a city skyline, his were great slabs like
rocky mesas.  His were so large the rest of the room suddenly seemed
small and airless.  ill, .  . . six .  .."  he counted.

"Uuuunnnh.  .."  Jonathan said, lowering his hips and raising them
again.  His face was slick with sweat.  His varicose vein looked
bloated with blood.  His mouth hung open as he gulped air.

seven .  . .," The muscular woman smiled at me.  "These are called
donkey I raises.  Want to climb on with me?  What are you, a hundred
and fifteen?"

-"Hundred and eighteen," I said.

"Uuuunnnnh .  .."  Jonathan huffed.  He looked over at me with panic in
his eyes.

"I think he can take it," she encouraged.

I shook my head.  "I'm not sure I could.  I just ate."

nine...

Jonathan's last effort was shaky.  He lowered himself okay, but he
couldn't seem to push himself up again.  His arms wobbled, his legs
started to buckle.  Three drops of sweat slid off his nose into the
carpet.  He was stuck at half mast.

The muscular woman surreptitiously angled her toes down ward to touch
the ground, taking some of her weight off Jonathan's back.  With a
mighty grunt, he hoisted her the rest of the way up.  She quickly
dismounted, slapping his butt playfully.

"Not bad, masked man.  Same time tomorrow?"

Jonathan nodded, too out of breath to speak.  He collapsed into the
chair.

"Remember, only the tough get buff.  Maybe that should be boffed."  She
laughed.

Her blond companion laughed too.

"Hi, I'm Vicky," the muscular woman said to me, offering her
Reluctantly, I extended mine.  I expected a bone-crunching grip to send
me to my knees.  But she shook with only a moderate firmness.

"Vicky, this is Wren Caldwell," Linda said.

"Hi, Wren.  This is my husband, Karl."

Karl waved as he packed their gear into a duffel bag.  "Hey, "he
said.

"Hi."

Vicky reached into the side of her shoe and pulled out a card.

She handed it to me.  It said, Vicky and Karl Mueller.  Executive
Fitness.  Your Place.  Your Convenience.  (213) 55,A328.

I backed up a couple of steps.  For some reason, I felt nervous having
such a muscular woman standing so close to me.  I wasn't homophobic, it
just made me feel inadequate, like watching Davis with his kids.

"I didn't know I looked that bad," I joked.

"Looks are nothing," Karl said mysteriously.  I had the feeling Karl
wanted to be someone's guru.

"Karl means, a person can look good on the outside, but still be
weak.

Everyone worries about their weight, but they should worry about their
muscle tone, the fat content, that sort of thing.

We do a lot of work in this building, no problem to fit you in."

"Thanks," I said.  "I'll think about it."

She shrugged, looke,d, disappointed.  "That's okay.  This intensity
isn't for everyone.

I hadn't really intended to think about it, but now I felt bad, as if
I'd not only hurt her feelings but proven myself to be a wimp.

"I just started here," I explained.  "I have to wait until my schedule
settles down."

"Sure," she said.

Jonathan Krieg came to life.  "Great idea, Vicky.  A kind of corporate
fitness program.  I'm sure we'd get a break on rates from the insurance
company, plus it would be a business writeoff.

What do you think, Wren?"

I nodded, forcing enthusiasm.  "Great idea."

- i, "Whatever," Vicky said.  She hoisted one of the duffel bags.

Metal clanged against metal at the motion.  The muscles across t her
chest wrenched.  Her top was cut low enough that I could see her
breasts were just nipples on the end of another slab of muscle.

ii, I was impressed.

When they left, Jonathan motioned for Linda and me to sit.  1

He pulled a small white towel over his face and inhaled, the towel
conforming to his face like plastic wrap.  I thought of Season iW
Dougherty's husband, the dish towel over his chowdery face to keep the
flies off.  Jonathan sat with the towel over his face without moving
for so long I feared iriaybe he'd passed out or had a heart attack or
something.  I looked at Linda but she kept her gaze on Jonathan, her
expression cool and professional.

After a couple of minutes had passed, Jonathan exhaled loudly and the
towel billowed like a sail and fell from his face.  When he spoke, it
wasn't to either of us, but to an imaginary audience in general, as if
he thought documentary cameras were always waiting in the wings.

Recording.

"I've been around," he said.  "I've done some things.  I've I learned
from my mistakes.  Guy gets to be my age, has had my successes, he
might get a bit cocky, think he's"here he made finger quotes"
"arrived."  But I have found there is no such "I thing as arrival.  "
Linda said, ""Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be
experienced."  He pointed at her excitedly.  "Exactly.

That's exactly what I meant.  "Kierkegaard said it."

He looked uncertain.  "Of course.  The point is, I've never stopped
experiencing.  I'm the type of guy' I cringed.  Wren and I once made up
a list of the Ten Commandments of Dating.  Commandment number six was
"Never shall ye date anyone who starts a sentence, "I'm the type of guy
(They II were usually the type of guys whose main goal in life was to
be I!  able to unhook a bra strap with one hand.) "who lives for the
climb, not the actual getting there.  I don't care about sticking my
flag at the top of the mountain, I care about the next ridge to
climb.

See what I mean?"

Neither Linda nor I said anything.

"The point is, I don't do anything half-assed.  I've decided to do this
magazine.  I've set some goals for the kind of circulation I want and
the kinds of stories I think will get me that circulation."

He looked at me with a frown.  "This Season Dougherty thing.

Linda tells me you haven't interviewed her as planned."

"No, sir.  I went to the jail but she wouldn't see me.  She'd already
signedaway the rights to her story to Davis Richard."

"Who's he?

Linda said, "Local entrepreneur.  Did celebrity exercise videos.

"He's looking to break into feature films with this deal," I said.

Jonathan twirled his towel and snapped it at a nearby potted plant.  A
chunk of leaf flew off in shreds.  "I've already negotiated with a
studio for the rights to our exclusive articles on this case.

But none of that will work without an interview.  That's the key."

"I'll probably be seeing Davis later today.  I'll talk to him about
it."

Jonathan twirled his towel forward, then backward, then for ward
again.

The whole time he was twirling, he stared at me, directly at me without
flinching.  This continued for a full minute, maybe longer.

Linda stared at him, he stared at me.  I rubbed my thumbnail against
the edge of the chair leg behind me.

"Wren," he finally said, "Linda and I have been discussing the
situation.  Perhaps we were overzealous in sending you out on such a
complex assignment right out of the dugout, so to speak.

Maybe you need some seasoning first.  You need to get to know your way
around town first.  See who's who, what's what.  , "I can get the
interview, "I said.  "I just need a little more time.

"That's what I'm saying.  Take your time.  I'm blaming me here, not
you.  I rushed you into something without giving you I?enough time."

Linda said, ""Time is the longest distance between two places."

I hadn't heard that before," he said.

"Tennessee Williams."

"Oh.  I like it."

Linda didn't smile, didn't look at me.  She stared straight ahead.

Whose side was she on?

"Anyway, the point I'm making here is that we'll be assigning someone
else to the story for now, maybe have them do the legwork and bring you
in for a rewrite.  Mb when you said this isn't your kind of story.  ye
you were right And I'd meant it too.  Then.  But now something else was
involved.  Luna would have expected this, would have even welcomed the
relief from pressure.  But I was Wren now.

Wren's life had gotten me the job, but after one day Luna's personality
had me close to getting fired.  I had a job I would never otherwise !

have gotten, I'd met a man like Davis, who I would never other wise
have met.  Thanks to Wren's life, I had a chance to change mine.

Biology is not destiny.  If I failed here, midnight would strike and
Cinderella would be back to her old ragged self.  I had to get that
interview.  7' I stood up.  "I can get the interview.  Trust me.

Linda turned toward me.  "Actually, Wren, Jonathan and I have been
talking about another new area for the magazine to explore.

Something we've never done before.  I think you'd be especially suited
for it.  It's challenging.  ""What about the interview?"

"I'll be taking care of that personally."  She looked at Jonathan.

He rocked back in the chair and folded his towel into triangles like a
small flag.  He smiled at me.  "You'll thank us, Wren.  Wait and see.

You'll love this new assignment.  It has everything the public wants.

I've already set up a meeting.  You have twenty minutes to get there.

Il-i' Twenty-five minutes later, "Hello," I said, offering my hand.

"I'm Wren Caldwell."

"First things first," he said to me.  "Did you bring the money?"

"Yes," I said.

"Cash?  This is a cash kind of business.  They told you that, didn't
they?"

"Yes, they told me.  I brought cash."

"When I say cash, I'm talking about, you know, the actual green
stuff.

Real money.  Not a voucher, not a purchase order, not a check.  Not
like in department stores when they ask if you're paying cash or
charge, you say check, they say that's the same as cash.  It's not.

Nothing's the same as cash.  Cash is cash."

"I understand what cash is," I said.  "Can I sit down now?"

"Okay, sit."  He gestured to the chair across the table.  I sat.

The chair was ladder-backed and black, lacquered to a high gloss with a
pink pillow on the seat.  The table was the same black, except for the
middle, which was thick turquoise tile.  The luncheon menu was written
with pink and turquoise chalk on a small chalkboard in front of me.

There were five items, four of them fish.  The place was called Sante
Fe Depot and the cuisine was supposed to be southwestern, though I
didn't think fish was a big southwestern specialty.  "I already
ordered," he said.  "I don't have much time."

He was smoking a smelly cigarette, something French I think, that was
black and twisted like licorice.  There was no ashtray on the table so
he flicked the ashes into the vase with the fresh-cut pink carnation.

A few of the patrons from nearby tables were I giving him hostile
looks.  Since he ignored them, a lot of those looks were then directed
at me.  I squirmed under their glares.

"Isn't this a nonsmoking section?"  I asked.

He shrugged.  "I'm not smoking."  He spread the pink linen napkin out
on the table in front of him.  He smoothed it, ironing it flat with the
heel of his hand, then with the edge of the chalkboard menu.

Slowly he lowered the burning tip of the black cigarette to the napkin,
just enough to make a charred brown circle, but not enough to burn a
hole or catch the napkin on fire.  His concentration was intense, he
never looked up at me.  I could tell this was not just a pyromaniac
episode, he seemed to be making some sort of pattern.

But it was one I couldn't yet recognize.  He spoke without looking up,
"I don't know you, you don't know me, we don't know each other.

You're new at this, I know that and you know that I know.  So maybe you
think, "Well, the little bastard is going to try to take advantage of
me."  Right?  You thinking that, Wren?"

"Yes," I said.  "I'm thinking that."

� "Okay, good.  Very good.  I'm glad you said that.  That means you're
sensible.  I can do business with someone sensible."  He glanced up at
me and smiled, then returned to touching his cigarette to the napkin.

The burn marks were beginning to cluster like brown pearls.  "The fact
is, I will try to take advantage of you.

Every single chance I get.  I'm here for the money, strictly the
money.

As long as we both know that going in, then we can do business."

"Then let's do business."

He nodded, but didn't look up.  He leaned closer to the napkin, his
face only inches away from the tabletop.  He lowered his cigarette tip
so slowly it was excruciating to watch.  He looked so damn intense, as
if he were defusing a terrorist's bomb.  My stomach began to knot up
with anticipation.  He eased the glowing tip a molecule lower, until it
didn't exactly touch the napkin, but the heat singed a few of the pink
threads.  The result was an unusual shade of rust-brown.

Whatever he was making, it began to take on a certain beauty.

"What's your last name again?"  he asked.

"Caldwell.  Wren Caldwell."

He stuck the brown cigarette between his lips and offered me his
hand.

"James Smith.  And that's my real name.  Spelled just the way you
think, no y instead of i, no e at the end."

I shook his hand.  "Nice to meet you, James."

James was about twenty.  His face was smooth, still a few years from
shaving daily.  Three small blemishes clustered on his neck under his
left ear.

"James," I said, "why doesn't one of the waiters come over and make you
stop smoking?  Isn't there a fire law or something?"

"Is there?"  He dabbed the burning end rapidly against the napkin like
a sewing machine needle.  I could see now he was creating a face, a
woman's profile.  The rapid spotting was the hair.  The effect was
startlingly real, the hair seemed to thicken with texture.  He cocked
his head and studied his work, frowned, and shook his head with
displeasure.  He took a deep drag that brought the tip of the cigarette
into a bright flare, and once again began dabbing the napkin.

An elderly couple two tables away scowled at us.  I gave them back a
weak smile but that didn't seem to carry much weight with them.  The
man threw his credit card down on the check and waved at a waiter.

"I thought this was supposed to be a sort of clandestine meeting,
James.  We shouldn't draw any attention to ourselves."

"Why?  We're not doing anything wrong.

"For starters, smoking in a nonsmoking section is illegal."

"Illegal, but not wrong.  Big difference, Wren.  Besides, I'm not
really smoking.  I'm creating."

I looked around at the waiters as they glided swiftly around the
tables.  They all wore black pants, white shirts, and those corny
square dance string ties with a hunk of turquoise embedded in the
silver slide.  None of them even looked our way.  "I don't understand
why someone doesn't come over here and tell you to stop.  My God,
you're burning a napkin.  Their napkin."  "They know me."

"You eat here a lot?"

He shook his head.  "First time."

"First time?  And they know you?"

He looked up.  "You're not from around here, are you?"

"You mean Orange County?  No, I'm from up north."

"San Francisco?"

-"Oregon."

"Oh, you mean really up north."  He studied me a second, actually
looking at me for the first time.  His eyes were pale blue, almost
white.  The rest of his face was an odd mixture of nonmatching parts.

None of his features went with the rest of his face, as if the nose,
the lips, the ears, everything had been borrowed from various other
bodies and slapped together to make his face.  The resulting effect
made him seem sickly.  "My dad's a producer.  He makes TV movies.

"Anything I've heard of?"

"How would I know what you've heard of?"  He grinned.  "Sorry, that's
my dad's line.  He always says that when people ask him that
question.

He picked it up from some novelist buddy of his who, I think, got it
from William Faulkner or Raymond Chandler, which gives you a
perspective on the amount of originality around here."  He flicked an
ash into the vase.  "My dad's movies all have the word confession in
them or diary, as in Confessions of a Mistress or Diary of a Groupie.

You know."

"And he eats here a lot.  That's how they know you.7

"They know me because they know me."  He shook his head.

"Let me show you."  He gestured at a waiter, a young man in his early
twenties with tinted glasses.

"Yes, sir," the waiter said.

"Hey, man, how's your screenplay coming along?"  James asked.

The waiter looked startled a moment.  "Pardon?"

"How's the script going?  I heard you were almost done."

The waiter's formal demeanor thawed slightly, his face sagging into
artistic turmoil.  "Yeah, well, I'm having a little trouble with the
third act.  The third act is a bitch."

"You'll crack it," James said.  "Could we get some wine for the lady?

Wine, Wren?"

Diet Coke will be fine."

The waiter, dazed, a little confused, nodded and left.  "See what I
mean," he said.  "I never saw that guy before in my life.  In Los
Angeles everyone you meet is an wannabee actor or director.  But in
Ornnge County everyone's a fucking script writer.  Cuts down on the
commuting into the city.  There aren't many producers living down here
yet, so my dad is pretty well 1known.  I can't tell you how many places
I go, someone manages to slip me their script to give to my dad."

"And do you?"

II"Depends.  Like I said, I'm in business to make money.  They pay me a
few bucks, I'll see Dad gets it."

"What's a few bucks?"

"You have to gauge the person, figure what they can afford.

No less than fifty, that's for sure.  I've gotten as much as five
hundred though."  I couldn't help smiling at his wise-guy routine.

"If everyone else is an aspiring writer, what are you?  An
entrepreneur?"

"An artist."  He smiled and returned to barbecuing his napkin.

The waiter brought me a diet Coke.  He hesitated, staring at James,
waiting for him to look up.  I got the feeling that now that he'd
thought about it, he was ready to pitch his script much better than
before.  Only James refused to look up.  Finally the waiter drifted
away.

"Okay, here's the thing," James said, looking up now.  "Here's how we
work it.  I call you whenever I've got something, we meet, I give you
what I've got.  You pay me.  Simple enough?"

"Depends.  What have you got today?"

He reached inside his sports jacket and pulled out a folded piece of
paper.  I read it.

"Jesus," I said.

"You can keep it.  It's a photocopy."

I read it again.  Legal stationery, with a design that incorporated the
lawyers' initials.  Much more impressive than Robby's lawyers'
stationery.  The letter was addressed to a famous TV actor who played a
surgeon-turned,private detective who specializes in locating missing
children.  The attorney who wrote the letter was not one of the
partners mentioned in the firm's logo.  Nevertheless, he made it clear
that his client was only twenty and pregnant with the actor's child.

Naturally, if some financial settlement could be reached, none of this
need go public.

I folded the letter and looked at James.  "How old are you?"

"Eighteen.  But I seem older, right?"

"Yes, you do."

He nodded, returned to torching the napkin.  This was my new
assignment.  Gossip gathering in Orange County.  I would be given my
own column, though I would use a pseudonym, Missy Carver.  Jonathan
told me that was to protect the integrity of my real name, which they
still had great hopes for on more legitimate articles.  Afterward, in
the hallway outside Jonathan's office, Linda confided that the
pseudonym was to protect the magazine, Once I'd established Missy
Carver as a valuable name, I couldn't hold up the magazine for more
money by threatening to walk.

"The name is copyrighted," she'd said.

"What went on in there?"  I'd asked.  "With Jonathan."

"What do you mean?"

- "You could have backed me.  You saw the messages from Davis
Richard.

That's a solid lead."

Linda had looked off then, not at anything in particular unless it was
the Sparklets water cooler.  She looked as if she were trying to
remember my name.  My backing you would have done no �good for you,
he'd already made up his mind.  But it would have hurt me because he
would have had to overrule my suggestion, which would have given him
more a sense that he would be better off running this magazine without
me.  He already has his doubts about you.

"Why?  There wasn't anything I could do."

"That's not the point.  He set up an exclusive interview and it didn't
happen.  That makes Jonathan look bad, weak.  But not if he has someone
to blame."

"Me."

"Exactly."  She had turned and looked me in the eyes, smiling
slightly.

"You don't trust me now, do you?  You can't be sure whether what I just
told you is the truth or a cover for some secret agenda of my own.

Right?"

"Right.

"Welcome to the Hotel California," she'd said and walked off.

I laid the attorney's letter on the table between James and me.

The famous actor in question had a hilltop home in Laguna and could be
seen walking his wife and Doberman along the beach on weekends.

Definitely Orange County gossip, the kind guaranteed to be picked up by
the wire services.  Missy Carver would hit the scene in a big way.

"How do you do it, James?"

"Concentration," he said, burning an eyebrow on the portrait.

"Not your art.  This stuff.  The gossip."

"Oh, that."  He leaned closer to the napkin, executing a tricky arch to
the eyebrow.  Satisfied, he looked up.  "Friends in low places.  I
operate a babysitting service made up of high school and iiijunior high
school kids.  Because of my dad's contacts, I get a lot of the wealthy
clientele.  Once you're inside somebody's home, you're bound to find
something incriminating.  Hell, if I showed you some of the photographs
and videotapes alone.  Man, the stuff people like to tape themselves
doing.  I mean, why bother?  It's not like you need a record, like
you'd forget how or anything.

"Why don't you sell those?  The tapes and photos, I mean."

He gave me an angry grimace.  "That wouldn't be right."

I didn't bother arguing.  I didn't want the photos or tapes any way.  I
didn't even want this letter.  I wanted that damn interview with Season
Dougherty.

� "So your babysitting brigade rummages through these famous people's
houses until they find something juicy?  Then you sell the goods to
some tabloid?"

"That about covers it.  Except now I'm selling it to you.

"How did Mr.  Krieg get in touch with you?"

I-James laughed.  "He didn't do squat, man.  One of my girls baby-sat
for the guy who used to own this magazine.  She f9und out about the
sale.  I figured new broom and all that, this would be a good time to
approach Mr. Krieg abo,u,t my services.  I practically doubled my
price with that move.

"Why do you do this, James?  It can't just be the money, not if your
father is as well-off as you say.

He grinned.  "God bless the child who's got his own, you know what I
mean?"

"But don't you find this kind of sleazy?"

"Man, people who want to be famous deserve everything they get.  They
did it out of greed and ego in the first place.  Now, are you gonna pay
me or lecture me on morality?  I mean, you don't have to buy my goodies
if you think it's so wrong.

I looked around, made sure no one was looking, then quickly slid an
envelope with $800 across the table.  I whispered, "That's the amount
Mr.  Krieg agreed upon."

He blew on the tip of the cigarette just as he dabbed it to the
napkin.

An eye seared into the napkin below the eyebrow.  He clamped the
cigarette between his teeth, took the money out of the envelope, and
counted the bills.

"Isn't this supposed to be a little more secretive?"  I asked.

"What for?  Cash changes hands all the time around here.

They'll think I'm either your dealer or your love slave."  He
�grinned.

"All here.  The letter's yours.  I'll have more for you over the
weekend.  That's our busiest time."  He stood up, held up the napkin
like a matador cape.  It was magnificent.  Each feature was finely
shaded, the eyes slightly frightened but steady.  The lips puffy yet
tense.  Hair oddly permed, the owner desperate to give it some life,
the way paramedics try to shock heart attack victims back to life.

The profile was of a woman struggling to hold still, not to bolt for
the nearest exit.  The profile was of me.

"That's very good," I said.  "Can I have it?"

"No."  He smiled.  "You can buy it."

"Sure."  I opened my purse for a twenty.

"A hundred."

I tossed the twenty down and took the napkin.  He let me.

"Unusual medium," I said.  "Cigarette and linen."

"I like fire.  Usually I do blowtorch and copper.  Or firecrackers and
papier-mache'.  I'm thinking about something now, a new piece using
glass and a shotgun.  I like to use things that destroy to create.

Nothing is ever destroyed, it just changes shape.  You know what I
mean?"

�"Any work that means all that is worth more than twenty dollars."  I
handed him another ten-dollar bill.

�He looked confused a moment, then stuffed the bill in his shirt
pocket.

"What happens when you become a rich and famous artist?"

"Then you can start going through my underwear drawer and selling my
secrets."  He smiled and handed me the restaurant bill.

"4Meanwhile .  . .7' I paid the bill.

I was crawling beneath the telephone tree.  That's what it looked
I,like, a stainless-steel cactus tree with three telephones branching 1
off a metal post.  Each station was separated for privacy by small
squares of clear plastic the size of cafeteria trays.  The phone tree
was planted in concrete between the student bookstore and the snack
stand among the aluminum picnic tables and benches, also sunk into the
cement.  Students still registering for summer school were walking back
and forth, laughing and talking.  Some just sat on the benches or lawn
with heads tilted back toward the hot sun.  Some smoked cigarettes in
that careless and confident manner that made me wish I still smoked
too.

Instead, I was on my knees hunting for the quarter I'd just dropped.

While I was down there among the cigarette butts and nuggets of chewing
gum, a barefoot boy skateboarded up to one of the other phones and made
a call.  All I could see were his skinny legs, clothed in baggy shorts
that hung past his knees with a Vision Street Wear patch at the hem of
one knee.  Both shins had scabs where it looked like he'd skidded
across pavement.  He stood on the skateboard and rocked side to side
while he talked to someone named Durango about last night's date with
Brooke.  of course I went down on her, dude.  I mowed box till my
fucking lips went numb."  He listened.  "No way, man, never again.  It
was awful.  Her pussy should have a warning label like on those
medicine bottles, Danger!  If swallowed, induce vomiting."  He
laughed.

I found my quarter and stood up, angling a little so the boy on the
phone could see me through his plastic tray.  Maybe I thought I could
embarrass him or something.  I don't know why I bothered.  I guess
because it was something Wren would have done and I was still in
character.  In high school when I played Laura in The Glass Menagerie,
I'd limped around school for a week after the play was over.

The boy was bare-chested, his T-shirt tucked into his waistband and
draping down over his butt.  At most, sixteen.  The receiver was
clamped between his head and shoulder, freeing his hands to scratch at
the phone with his keys.  He looked over at me.  Then he smiled in a
flirtatious way and winked.

Suddenly I was angry.  The tips of my ears were burning.  I wanted to
tear off the plastic tray between us and smash his face like some
avenging Bionic Woman, watch him slow-mo backward over a few steel
picnic tables.  I didn't know why.  I � wasn't a raging feminist
slapping on THIS EXPLOITS WOMEN stickers everywhere.  And he was just a
kid, he'd either grow out of his stupidity or he wouldn't.  My world
didn't hang in the balance.

What did it matter to me?  Except .

Except he hadn't even been embarrassed.  He'd seen me glaring at him
and it hadn't mattered.  He'd felt no shame.  If he had seen Wren, the
real Wren, he'd have blushed, looked down, hung up, and skated away.  I
knew that.  I wasn't mad because he'd insulted women, I was mad because
he had insulted me.  I was still a ghost of a person, as hollow as a
dried bone.  Children and animals could see through my charade the way
they could recognize a vampire.

I removed my glasses and a strand of hair that had been pinched in the
hinge was yanked out of my head.  I winced and cursed my glasses for
the thousandth time.  They always did this.  By the time I was forty,
I'd be plucked bald.  The pain drowned my anger and I returned to the
phone, thumbing my quarter into the slot.

Ghost or not, I still had mortal pressures, a job killing me, a
possible new boyfriend calling me, an ex-convict living with me, a
white Subaru following me, an interview with a murderess eluding me, a
teaching job haunting me.

I called the magazine.  Billie answered.

"You got a message from a Detective Diesel, Irvine PD," she reported.

"What'd he say?"  I braced myself.

"He says, "Aff, aff."

"Aff, aff."" "Yup.  That's all.  That make any sense to you?"

"Some.

"It's not sexual, is it?"

"Photos will follow," I said.

She laughed.

ntSo, the blood on the money was dog blood after all.  Byron had told
the truth.  I should have felt better, but I didn't.  What was dog
blood doing on the money in the first place?  I started imagin Iiiing
some satanic ritual, pentagrams, ancient ornate daggers, scratchy wool
robes.  Puppies whimpering in iron cages.

"Any other messages?"  I asked.

I"Another one from Davis Richard.  And I quote, "I took you to { the
now it's your turn to put out.  Call me."  That's got to I laughed.

"If it is, you can read about it in my column."

"Oh, yeah, I heard you're doing a gossip column now.  Congratulations
That is so neat."

"It's something I always wanted to do.  That and cure cancer.

I "I think it's a great idea."  She sounded genuinely excited.  She I
paused, lowering her voice to a whisper.  "We've been a little too If
stuffy around here.  Most of our articles are just puff pieces, booster
crap meant not to offend any potential advertisers.

But I figure, advertisers don't care what you say as long as you
deliver , the subscribers.  Right?"

"Mr.  Krieg would certainly agree."

I"He's wonderful, isn't he?  Guess what he's doing this morning?"

"Skydiving from the top of the building?"

"He's putting chalkboards in all the toilet stalls.  Men's and
women's.

He said having a bowel movement is subconsciously destructive and puts
people in a destructive mood.  That's why they scratch graffiti in the
stalls.  This way they can still do their graffiti and not destroy the
stalls.  Good for morale, good for maintenance costs.  It's like, no
detail is too small for this guy.

Cool, huh?  Maybe you could write an article about the chalk boards for
the mag?"

"Actually, Freud said that defecating was a creative act, not
destructive."

"Well, the idea's the same, right?  Keep the stalls from getting all
marked up.  We could have this cool photo layout of various stalls and
their graffiti.  That would be the "before' picture.  Then we'd show
how neat and clean the stalls are after the chalkboards are
installed.

Show how the graffiti changes, from limericks to poetry.  Something
like that.  Think I should pitch the idea to Linda?"

"With you writing it?"

"You bet.  It's my idea."  Her voice was loud now, with a bitter
edge.

"I started working here so I could learn the business.  I've got my
degree in English, you know."

"I didn't know."

"Two years at a JC and two at Cal State Long Beach.  I worked on the
school newspaper.

The boy next to me hung up his phone, checked the coin return for
change, then skated away.  His T-shirt flapped like a cape behind his
butt.  By tonight he'd probably be back in Brooke's "arms.

Where would I be?

On the phone, Billie explained how she would pitch her idea to Linda.

She told me about her term papers in her English classes.

She got all A's and B's.  All things considered, Billie was probably
more qualified to be writing for the magazine than I was.  She had more
practical experience than I just by answering phones at the magazine.

I had a little more education, but none that really was applicable
here.  I'd worked on the high school yearbook writing snappy captions
to go with our candid photos.

Like, we'd have this photo of Tom Novinger coming out of the boy's
bathroom, the smoke still evident over his shoulder, and I'd add the
caption, Tommy continues to conduct private experiments to verify the
Surgeon General's warning against cigarette smoking.  That was the
extent of my journalistic experience.  But now I wore the blessed Coat
ofWren, magically transforming me into a valuable commodity.

t I felt doubly guilty now for failing to get the interview.  First,
for damaging Wren's perfect reputation and, second, for having a job
Billie was working hard for but which I'd basically stolen.

�I had to try harder, justif, my good fortune.  Maybe if I could
persuade Linda to give me another crack at Season Dougherty, she'd back
me with Jonathan.

"Billie, transfer me to Linda's phone."

"No can do, Wren.  Linda's down at the Irvine Police Depart My hand
tightened around the phone.  "She got the interview?"

"Not with Season Dougherty.  Your prom pal Davis Richard has a
stranglehold on that.  Even Mr. Krieg hasn't been able to budge him
yet.  But she did manage to get an interview with Season's cell
neighbor."  Damn, that was a good idea.  One I should have thought
of.

Wren would have.

I told Billie I'd be back in the office in an hour.  I hung up.

"Do you have change for the phone?"  a hefty girl with volley ball
kneepads loose around her ankles asked me.  She held out a dollar
bill.

"Sorry," I said.  I dug in my change purse and found another quarter,
which I offered to her.

"No, thanks.  I'll just get a Coke from the snack stand.  They'll give
me change.  "I watched her walk away.  Her legs were stocky with muscle
"I- already losing ground to fat.  For some unknown reason I felt my
sinuses flood as if I might cry.  There was nothing significant about
my exchange with the girl, no parallels with my life.  I never played
volleyball.  A stranger never offered me a quarter.

I'd never been hefty.  But somehow everything on this campus seemed so
familiar, as if I were back in college again waiting at the student
union building for Robby to get out of Bible as 1Literature so we could
go up to his dorm room and screw before his roommate got back from
water polo practice.  If I checked my purse would I find my old
diaphragm?

I quickly sat on the closest aluminum bench.  Across the table a young
boy wearing Walkman headphones looked over at me and nodded.

"Smog," he said.  "Stage two alert."  Then he closed his eyes and
turned his face back toward the sun.

I just sat there, concentrating on breathing.  I was shivering, my
mouth dry, the part of my throat that never sees light scratchy.

It's what druggies call "thirsty."  When would this kind of thing
end?

You go along in your life, you're not thinking about the past, then
Whack!  you get nailed on the back of the head with a two-by-four of
lethal memory.  It's like a wormhole opens up � beneath your feet and
you're sucked down, like those people in the old Invaders from Mars.

And as you fall, your chest and stomach are turned into a clothes dryer
and all your organs are tumbling against each other, rearranging
themselves inside you.

Suddenly there's Robby.  The two of you are naked on his narrow dorm
bed.  Cat Stevens's voice is muffled from the room next door.  Robby
suctions his mouth around your breast and blows, making a wet farting
sound.  You both laugh hysterically, partially for the joke, but mostly
because you can see how happy your lives together will always be.

I pressed my hands to my eyes.  They were dry.  No tears.  That was
important.  I could live without Robby, I'd already established that.

I mean, hell, I was doing it.  Then where did these flashes of profound
heartbreak come from?  A girl asks for change and I go to pieces.

Where was the safety in that?

I stood up and walked into the Valley College bookstore.  I needed the
textbook my art history class would be using.  On Monday, six short
days from today, I would be teaching a subject I never even took.

The back room had all the textbooks arranged alphabetically by
subject.

Art 110 was easy to find, bottom shelf between Art I0 Art for Teachers
and Art 112, Application ofColor Theory.

Each course had a card taped to the shelf telling who the instructor
was and when and where the class m6t.  Under Instructor's Name for my
class they had neatly typed STAFF.  That's me.  4

I knelt down and examined the textbook.  It was the same book that I'd
found on Wren's desk the day I went to clean her apartment with her
mother.  The one with all the notations in the margins around that
strange Rodin sculpture, "She Who Was the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful
Wife."  I was relieved.  At least now I'd have Wren's notes to work
from.  Maybe, like everything else I'd been doing, I'd be able to fake
my way through.

"Can you tell me where the diaries are?"  a woman asked.

I looked up.  She was asking me, that bookstore curse I have.

She held a dull-eyed bowling ball of a baby straddling her hip.

Her T-shirt barely contained her huge breasts.  The legs that stuck out
of her shorts were pale and bruised.  A rash of pimples reddened her
cheek.  She was about twenty-three with a very enthusiastic
expression.

"I'm sorry," I said.  "I don't work here."

"Oh."  She looked confused and a little hurt, as if I'd just tried to
dampen her enthusiasm.  "I'm looking for diaries."

I looked around the room.  "These are all textbooks.  I would think the
diaries would be in the front room."

She nodded but didn't leave.  She hiked her sliding baby higher on her
hip.  "I want to get one of those nice diaries, you know, the kind that
have padded covers and stuff.  I'm going to write in it every day to
tell my baby what it's like to be a mother.  That way she'll know when
she's grown up.  I think that will make us closer.

I looked at the baby.  She was cramming her fist into her mouth.  I
thought about those diaries, stacks of padded covers with cute ducks or
bunnies on them.  Inside the chronicle of her mother's daily joys and
sacrifices.  Every diaper changed cheer fully, every burp translated
into a first word, every gaseous squint tortured into a sign of
profound thought.  Each page of the diary would be crammed with the
unbearable burden of hope.  Those volumes will surely drive her
daughter out of the house, with only an occasional phone call on
holidays while her naked lover makes obscene faces at her from the
bed.

"I'd check the other room."  I pointed.  "By the cash registers."

"Thanks," she said and walked off humming.

That night Davis and I cruised Harbor Boulevard in search of a suitable
motel to have sex.  He took the occasion to explain how he got
divorced.

"Beirut," he said.  "4That's what caused it."

"Beirut?"

"That whole terrorist thing."

"Terrorists caused your divorce?"

He nodded.  He drove the Taurus station wagon without changing lanes.

Cars sped up behind him, their headlights brightening the inside of the
car like a flare.  Impatient, they'd whip around him and rumble off.

Usually we'd catch up to them at the light and they'd avoid looking
over at us.  I felt uncomfortable having all these irate emotions fired
in our direction.

"4Am I driving too slowly?"  he asked.

"No, why?"

"You're fidgeting with your purse strap."

"Nasty habit.  It's a substitute for my old heroin habit."

He laughed.  I liked that he laughed at my jokes, especially the stupid
ones.  It made me want to say something nice to him.  "You drive like a
man who is happy."

"Huh?"

"Cautious, like you have something to lose."  He smiled.  "I drive like
a father."

The radio was on, but the volume was so low I couldn't actually
recognize any of the songs.  Occasionally I'd make out "baby" or "love"
or something easy.  It made all the songs seem the same,
interchangeable.

"Meanwhile, back in Beirut I prompted.

He sighed.  "You know how something across the world, an comes crashing
into your life?  Like Rube Goldberg contraptions.

"Those drawings of machines where a bird pecks at a feeder and that
causes a chain reaction that eventually lights a match."

"Exactly my point.  He fills the whole page with these elaborate chain
reactions that take all the ingenuity and intellect of millions of
years of evolution and in the end it does something simple, like light
a match.  It's overkill.  That's what I'm talking about.  It's like all
the forces of nature and world politics conspired to wreck my
marriage."  He was silent while we waited at a light.  Since I didn't
know what to say, I kept quiet too.  I wanted to tell him I understood
some of his pain, tell him about this afternoon at Valley College when
a girl in volleyball kneepads almost caused me to cry.

But that was Luna's life, not Wren's.  He wouldn't be interested in
Luna.

After leaving campus, I'd returned to the office.  Linda was out, still
interviewing Season Dougherty's cell neighbor.  Jonathan Krieg, having
solved the bathroom graffiti problem, left for a celebrity
fundraiser.

I'd finally reached Davis by phone and we'd arranged for another
dinner, someplace without any ambience.

After my lunch with James Smith and his flambeau napkin art, I wanted
someplace that served hamburgers and fries and paper napkins.

He took me to Bob's Big Boy.  Halfivay through the meal we both knew we
were going to end up in the sack that night.

The only question was where to find a sack.  He had kids and a
babysitter at his place.  I had the looming prospect of Byron
returning.  As we walked through the parking lot toward his car, I
said, "Let's find a motel."

Motels whizzed past us.  Capri Motel, Surf Motel, Sandy Inn.

I didn't point them out because I didn't want to interrupt his story.

Not because I wanted to hear about his divorce right then.

Apparently, he needed to talk this through, like a man dutifully
informing you of a past sexually transmitted disease.  So I listened.

I didn't want to be rude before sex.

I turned off the radio to indicate my interest.  He looked over at me
gratefully, but he didn't speak.  I tried to change the subject.

"What's all this?"  I asked, pointing at the stacks of newspapers in
the back seat.  "Recycling?"

"Nope, they're all today's papers.

I angled around in my seat for a better look.  There were at least a
dozen newspapers, all from different cities, Akron, Ohio's Beacon
Journal, the Atlantic City Press, Greensboro, North Carolina's News &
Record.  "What are you, a news lunkie?"

He laughed.  "Strictly business, believe me.  I just scan them for some
interesting human interest story, something local, that might make a
good movie.  Lots of producers do this.  Helps them get a jump on the
studios."

"Like with Season Dougherty?"

"Yes, like with Season Dougherty.  As a crusading mother, she was of
minor interest to the guys with the big bucks.  That's how I was able
to get her rights so easily.  If I'd waited until after she shot her
husband, I wouldn't even be in the bidding."

I let the subject drop.  This would be bad timing.

"Do you have a particular motel in mind?"  I asked.  "An old
favorite?"

"Why?"

"We've passed half a dozen already."

He pointed out the window at a seedy motel with a raunchy tropical
motif next to a bowling alley.  "Patty Hearst stayed there when she was
on the run with the SLA."

"Perhaps we can get their Che Guevara suite."

He chuckled.  "You're very funny, you know that?"

I started to say something about how easily amused he was, but for the
first time that I could remember I just accepted the compliment.  When
you're cruising for a motel to have sex for the first time with a guy,
pointing out your own flaws isn't a good idea.  I smiled at my joke,
laughed lightly.

He reached over and laid his hand on my thigh.  High on my thigh, maybe
six inches from ground zero.  I liked the feel of his 1W hand there,
the weight of it on my skin.

"Those Lebanese."  He shook his head and squeezed my leg at the same
time, like the two movements were related.  "Remember how Danny Thomas
used to talk about being Lebanese on his old show?  Let me tell you,
Beirut is not filled with a bunch of Danny Thomases."

"I never watched him.  He's before my time."

"I'm two years older than you.  Remember, I read your application.  I
know all about you."  Davis looked over at me.  "Besides, with cable
TV, nothing's before anyone 5 time anymore.  There are 187 million
televisions in this country.  That's almost one television set per
person.  No show ever dies.  Today when your old man says when I was
your age we used to Mab blah blah, his kids tune in and see what he's
talking about."

"Except they aren't watching what really happened, just what people
idealized."

"Isn't that what memory is anyway?  Just what your subeon scious has
selected to remember, and even alter when it suits.

There is no such thing as an accurate memory because any incident you
see is corrupted by your senses, which aren't accurate recording
devices.  They interpret what they perceive."

- "I didn't realize you were such a philosopher."

"I'm a producer, which makes me a media apologist."

"Is that another phrase for bullshit artist?"

He started laughing hard, though not hard enough to take his hand from
my thigh.  If anything, it slid even higher up.  "Quit teasing me," he
said.

"What?"

"That whole speech I just made.  I got it from you."

"From me?"

"Come on.  I had my secretary at UCLA all morning hunting down every
article you ever published.  Boy, you've been in some obscure
publications.  That whole television and memory deal I just babbled, I
read it in The Journal of Popular Culture.  Very highbrow title,
"Test-Pattern Babies, the New Immortality."  I'm quoting you almost
directly."

"Someone should have washed my mouth out with soap.

He laughed.  "You're probably the smartest woman I've ever known.  I
couldn't understand half of what you wrote about."

"So I'm smart because you couldn't understand it?"

"Oops."

"And why would you think it's a compliment to say the smartest woman,
which has a certain superior connotation, like saying I'm the tallest
dwarf you've ever known?"

I don't know what prompted me to start saying all this, except that I
was so unnerved by his catching me not knowing Wren's article that I
decided to launch a counterattack to keep him from wondering why I
didn't remember my own opinions.  Along with everything else, now I had
to read the dozens of articles Wren had published.  I doubted I would
understand them any better than Davis.

"So, now that you've discovered my latent chauvinism, Doctor "he said,
"can you recommend a cure?"  The thing that most impressed me about him
right at that moment was that despite what I'd said, he hadn't
withdrawn his hand from my thigh.

"Yeah," I said.  "Pull in there."  I pointed to a motel down the
street.  Quixote Inn.  Two plaster Don Quixotes crossed lances over the
entrance.

We waited at the light, again in silence.  Only now his hand slid up
against my crotch and two of his fingers began massaging my clitoris.

I'm usually a slow builder but this time I felt the heat right away.

My hips rocked against his fingers.  By the time he pulled into the
Quixote Inn, I'd come in a muffled moan.  My panties were wet and my
thighs sticky.  I flopped back against the seat.  I said in a chipper
voice, "4Well,I guess we can go home now.

"And miss the best part?"

"What's the best part?"

"When I get undressed and tell you all the reasons why I'm not in
better shape."

I laughed.  "4Go, get us a room with a TV.  We're making imperfect
memories.

He climbed out of the car and walked into the office.  I watched him
talk to the man at the desk, a large Chicano in a Hawaiian shirt and
smoking a pipe.  Davis filled out the form and paid cash.

I could see their lips moving during the entire transaction.  The
Chicano laughed heartily.  Davis smiled at him and said some thing else
and the man laughed again.  Then he returned to the car.  I got out
when I saw him coming because the inside of the car smelled extremely
musky.  I flapped my skirt to circulate some air before he came around
the car.

"Ready?"  he asked.

"The night man didn't say something like "Nice to see you again, Mr.
Jones," did he?"

"Turns out his father used to live in the same Mexican village where my
family used to go camping during the summers.

"Did he recognize you?"

"No.  It just came up in conversation."

"How does something like that come up in conversation?"

He shrugged.  "I don't know.  People like me, I guess.

Getting naked is the hard part.

Remaining sexy while rolling panty hose down your legs requires a
certain flair.  There is no dignified position.  Even Kim Basinger must
look as if she's in a Lucille Ball skit while trying to squirm out of
them.  There's something about the amount of effort it takes removing
panty hose that, according to Robby, makes a woman look like she has
something to hide.  He said that the first time he'd watched a woman
(not me) take them off was like seeing a lizard shed its skin, both
wondrous and repulsive.

Davis removed his clothes quickly and efficiently and was standing
naked just in time to see me fling the wadded nest of panty hose from
my toes.  I yanked off my panties and reached around between my
shoulder blades to unfasten my bra.  Most of my bras fasten in the
front, but Robby once told me that though that is more practical, men
liked to see a woman reach around her back.  Very erotic, he'd said.

We both stood up and peeled back the blankets.  The sheets were bright
white and stiff as we crawled in.  We pulled only the top sheet over
us.  He reached over and turned off the light.  All of our actions
seemed so practical, goal-oriented.

"What happened?"  he said, touching my bullet wound.

"Appendix.  I had a bad doctor."

He let it drop.

We scooted together and hugged.  Davis's penis poked me in the stomach,
then slid flat between our stomachs like a folding blade in a
pocketknife.

"I'm sorry," I said suddenly, sitting up.  The sheets fell to my
waist.

Even in the dark I could see my nipples.  They seemed absurdly long.

I pulled the sheet up over them.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm sorry, but I have to talk business first.  I should have said
something earlier.  I don't know why I didn't."

He laughed.  "Business?  You really are funny."

I looked over at him.  "Not that kind of business.  Season Dougherty
business."

He sat up.  His chest was matted with curly blond hair.  "I need to
interview Season Dougherty.  What we're doing here, being naked and
all, has nothing to do with her.  This is going to happen no matter
what you decide.  But if I wait until afterward to ask you, then I will
feel like a whore.  If you say yes, I'll feel like you paid me, and if
you say no, I'll feel somehow bad, I don't know, like the sex wasn't
good enough or something.

There's a chance I'm not being completely rational right now but it's
important I get all this out in the open."

"Okay.  Business first."

"Well, that may have been an unfortunate choice of words on my part."

He smiled.  "You got heat at work, right?  Jonathan Krieg turning up
the burners?"

"He's stuck me on a gossip column.  Two days ago I'd have been
g,7rateful for that.  But now I've got something to prove, I guess.

"I can't make multimillion-dollar decisions in a bed at a place called
the Quixote Inn.  Despite what you've heard, Hollywood doe"sn't operate
like that."

Oh."

"Now, if we were in a Jacuzzi, that would be different."  He laughed.

I tried to laugh too, but it came out more like a sigh.

"This is awkward," he said.

"I shouldn't have said anything.  Jesus, I'm stupid.  Forget it."

I put my arm around him and tried to pull him back down.  "No, I'm glad
you brought it up.  I was going to say something later because I didn't
want you to think this was a ploy to get you into bed.  Anyway, I need
someone to write the book about Season Dougherty's case.  The studio
thinks a book will promote movie sales.  Besides, there's every reason
to believe this thing will be come a bestseller on its own.

I've already had a few informal chats today with some publishers.  With
the national publicity this case has been getting, we're talking about
an advance of a hundred thousand.  Of course, you split that in half
with me and the studio.  Still, fifty grand ain't bad."

"What makes you think I can write such a book?"

"Hey, I read all your articles, remember?  You think I sent my
secretary to the library all morning out of lust?  Well, okay,
partially lust."

I ran my thumbnail along the seam of the sheet.  Ten minutes ago I was
a failure, demoted on my second day of work.  Now I was being offered
fifty thousand dollars to write a book.  I guess even dead, Wren's
charmed life continued.

"4There would be a conflict of interest with the magazine," I said.

"If I did the book, I'd either have to quit my job or allow them to
excerpt the book."

"4Excerpts could be arranged.  For a fee."

"Even so, Jonathan wanted to make the movie deal himself.

1He may just fire me anyway."

"Fifty thousand is good severance pay.  Besides, I expect to have more
books coming my way.  This is only the start."

I thought about it a few minutes.  A television from some other "room
was cranked up pretty loud and some brassy theme music that was vaguely
familiar as belonging to a cop show echoed around the room.  I didn't
know what to do.  With fifty thousand I could disappear again.

Of course, first I had to write a book, something I had no idea how to
do unless Thomas Pynchon figured in it somehow.  What should I do?

"Can we just fuck now?"  I said.

"Sure.

We started the usual way, I guess.  Stroking each other.  Touching
lightly here and there, then darting to some other place like fugitive
fingers.  Basic Foreplay 101.  A couple of nights ago Ethan had
performed his foreplay as if it had been something he'd read out of a
manual.  Like doing the Heimlich Maneuver or � something.  Davis was
different.  He was gentle, slightly awkward, but confident.  He knew
where we were going and that sooner or later we'd get there.  He was a
lot like Robby.  Though there was something reserved about Robby's
sex.

He did everything as if it might be documented later in some scholar's
biography of him, so he'd better not screw up posterity now.  I'd not
ever thought of that until just then, but I knew instantly it was
true.

Davis had his finger up inside me.  I ground myself against his hand
and he decided to slip another finger inside.  That was nice too.  I
lay back with my eyes closed, smelling the antiseptic bleach of the dry
sheets.  I wished I'd had more experience so I could say that this was
the best time or the second best time or something.

But I'd only had sex with four men in my life, two of them during the
past two days.

When Davis was ready to enter me, he was very considerate.

He positioned the head of his penis against my vagina but didn't !I
push it in.  He kind of rubbed it around a little, like a drug-sniffing
dog checking out a package at customs.

Dog.  Blood.  Money.  Byron.

Could that be the explanation?  Byron was involved in drugs and had
killed some cop's dog eluding a dragnet.  I opened my eyes.  Davis
smiled and thrust into me.  My legs angled even farther apart to
accommodate him.  I reached around and grabbed his buttocks, urging him
forward.  He pumped harder, then stopped suddenly.  I opened my eyes
again and saw his eyes clenched, his teeth grit.  He held perfectly
still, trying not to come.  I held still too.  I felt like a teenager
in my parents' living room hearing a noise from their bedroom.

A minute later Davis started to move again.  He didn't talk.

Neither did I. Robby liked to talk during sex.  He said things like
"Beg me to fuck you" and "Fuck me till my eyeballs pop."  And
sometimes, in a more playful mood, he'd sing the music from Disneyland
rides, "Yo ho, yo ho, it's the pirate's life for me," and I'd point to
his penis and sing, "It's a small world after all .  . .7' Davis came
before I did, but he politely continued thrusting until a few minutes
later I came too.

"So," I said, rolling over, "now that you've had your way with me, you
still want me to write the book about Season Dougherty?"

He kissed me.  Then he lay back against the headboard and cupped his
hands behind his head.  "This is the only time I wished I smoked.  It
gives you something to do with your hands while you talk."  "I
I-"Tryorigami."  .

He laughed.  "God, that would make a funny scene in a movie, wouldn't
it?  This couple just finishes making love in some seedy dive with the
neon sign sizzling outside their window.

"Hot summer night.  No air conditioning."

"Right.  Just a fan blowing across a bowl of ice.  She gets up, naked,
takes one of the ice cubes and runs it along her neck and lips.  Then
she picks up a couple of sheets of paper and hands him one and says,
"Origami, Nick?"

"And he says, "No, thanks, I'm trying to quit."

He laughed again.  When he laughed he made me feel somehow smarter and
trinnier than I really was.

"The American hostages in Beirut," he said.

"What?"

"My divorce.  It started when the Lebanese terrorists released one of
the American hostages a couple of years ago."

"That professor."

"Right.  We're sitting at home watching the news.  My wife and I.

Actually she's in bed.  I'd just come back from checking on Judy, who'd
had a stomachache."  He looked at me again, his face serious.  "She had
checked on her earlier, I'm not trying to make myself out as a better
parent.  Lila is a fine mother."

"Lila's your wife?"

He nodded solemnly.  "Anyway, I'm climbing back into bed and Lila's
watching the news.  She's got the newspaper spread out in front of her
and a bowl of double-fudge ice cream in her hands.

She eats a bowl every night.  Not that she's fat, she's thin as a broom
handle.  She just likes ice cream.77

"Just tell the damn story, Davis," I said with a laugh.  "I'm not
judging anyone.

"You're right.  I don't know why I do that.  Apologize for
everything.

Before the divorce I never did that.  I think it's just that my divorce
was my first failure at anything.  I've always succeeded, always got
what I wanted.  Breaking up with Lila kind of shook my confidence."  He
shook his head.  "Okay, so Lila's watching wished the TV all
serious-looking like there's going to be a quiz on it while later.  I
ask her what's on the news.  She shushes me and says, "Listen."  I
listen.  One of the American hostages has just been released by the
terrorists.  He's been held captive for three years.

novie, He's walking toward a plane, waving at reporters, looking pale
seedy and frail, like he'd been locked up with Dracula for three
years.

When the segment about the hostage is done, Lila taps her spoon against
an article she's reading in the newspaper.  She's very am,is up,
mated.

Ice cream drips onto the article.  "You know what it says k and here?

This expert on hostages says that they have to be retrained hands
before they can enter society again.  They have been isolated so long
that they have to be taught how to speak.  That's why they have to wait
before letting them have a news conference.  Also, one- they can't make
decisions.  They can't decide what clothes to wear, what food to
eat."

She's talking a mile a minute.  I'm looking at her and she's got tears
in her eyes and I'm thinking, What a compassionate woman to feel so
much for these poor hostages.

leased Then she says, "Davis, those are all the same symptoms I have.

I have all the symptoms of a Beirut hostage."  Next thing I know, we're
divorced."  e and Another TV show theme filtered up through the motel
court,g on yard.  I lay perfectly still and didn't say anything.  I was
trying hard his to come up with something comforting.

lng to "Hell of a story, huh?"  he said.

I opened my mouth, hoping something compassionate would spring out on
its own.  When it didn't, I pulled the sheet off his , bed waist and
lowered my mouth onto his penis.

He pulled out ands.

"Shouldn't we talk?"  he asked.

"About what?"

"About what just happened.  Don't you watch TV?  This is where we
discuss, in muted voices and sensitive terms, how we feel about having
had sex."

I muted my voice.  "What would we say?"

He shrugged, looked around the Bob's Big Boy parking lot where we'd
returned for my car.  We were standing on a white line in the
three-foot alley between his car and mine.  My key was inserted in the
car door, my fingers grasping it, ready to turn.

He was leaning against his car, arms folded casually as if he'd just
stepped out of a crowded bar for a smoke and a look at the stars.  He
stepped up behind me and wrapped his arms around Iimine.  My breasts
squeezed together and looked bigger.  I leaned back into him.  He
pressed his nose to my neck and breathed deeply.  "1 thought I'd say
something sensitive like, "You fill up my senses, like a night in the
forest."

"Ah, poetry."

"4Well, John Denver."

I laughed.  "The classics, huh.  What would I say in response?"

"Something equally sensitive.  Like, "Life could be a dream .

"If you would take me up to paradise up above .

"Sh-boom sh-boom.  See, men can open up just as well as women.

I twisted around and faced him.  We kissed.  He smelled like Ivory soap
from our motel shower.

"Babysitter," I reminded him, tapping his watch crystal.

"Right."  He looked at his watch.  "Right."  He pecked me on the lips
and ran around to the driver's side and jumped iii.  The passenger
window hummed as it electronically lowered.  He scrunched down so he
could see me.  I bent over.  His face was soft and gentle, like a
slept-on pillow.  "Call you tomorrow.  Mean time, think about the book
deal.  I'm serious about it."

"Sh-boom, sh-boom."

"I mean it, Wren.  This has nothing to do with that."  On "that" he
hooked his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the
Quixote Inn.  "Just think about it."

"I will."

He drove off, waving at me into his rearview mirror.  I waved back
until his twin red taillights merged with the rest of the traffic.

5 I was still waving after I was sure he couldn't see me.  I looked at
e myself waving, observed the absurdity of the gesture.  A hand
flopping up and down.  Or wiggling side to side.  I tried both.  A
couple of teenage boys honked and waved back as they drove by.

t I laughed and got in my car.

On the freeway drive home I remembered something important.  After
Davis and I had made love a second time, I'd dozed off for just a few
minutes.  Instantly I'd started dreaming.

I was black.  I wore my hair in a modest afro like Angela Davis, the
seventies radical professor.  Sammy Davis, Jr., was trying to persuade
me to teach Greek to Jewish kids in the ghetto for I$10,000 a year.  "I
can't do it for that little," I told him.  "I'd Istarve."  He said, "Do
it for our people."

"But I'm not Jewish," I told him.  "And I don't know Greek."  He shook
his head angrily, "So?  You're not black either."  When he said that I
cried.  He put his hand on my shoulder and said they'd throw in a condo
along with the ten grand.  Then I woke up.  Tears were in my eyes but
I'd wiped them on the pillow before Davis had noticed.

I arrived home a few minutes before ten o'clock.  I couldn't believe it
was so early, considering all that had happened today.

A month ago my day would have consisted of two hours in class, two
hours teaching, followed by ten hours at the library.  The monotony of
the days blurre4 them into a swampy sameness.

Like the taste of oatmeal.  I'd had to constantly consult a calendar to
know what specific day it was.  Before that, when I was with Robby,
there was always something to distinguish the days, give them
identity.

Later, Wren did the same thing for me.  This was the first time I
experienced such variety of experience on my own.

But variety takes it toll.  I was exhausted and dying for bed.  The
insides of my thighs were a little sore from where they'd gripped
Davis's hips.

I followed the trail of snails up the sidewalk to my front door.

For some reason, they reminded me of communism.  I thought of them with
those little fur hats.  That made me laugh.  A couple of snails were
suctioned to my door.  What could they hope to find on my door?

I noticed the lights weren't on inside, which I hoped meant Byron
wasn't home yet.  On the drive over I'd practiced my FareIiwell to
Byron Speech, in which I would emphatically inform him that this living
arrangement was not going to work out.  He would have to find another
place.  I'd even help him pay for it if Iihe was short on cash, maybe I
could scrape up a couple hundred "Ia month.  Okay, that was like paying
blackmail, but I was in the middle of a $50,000 deal and I couldn't
afford to have him blabbering about Luna Devon.

As I unlocked my front door, I could hear Ethan upstairs iistrumming
his guitar, working on a new gag song for his comedy routine.  He kept
playing the same three chords over and over from the Bee Gees' "I
Started a Joke."  Each time he'd sing a variation of the title.  "I
started to poop .  . .7' Pause.  "I startled the Pope Pause.  "I
strangled the Pope .  . .7, When I opened the door the stench from
inside thwacked me in the face like a thrown pie.  "Ohhh, Jeeceesus," I
winced, cupping my hand over my nose.

I left the door open and quickly unlocked and slid open a couple of
windows.

"Christ!"  I pulled my blouse up over my nose like a surgical mask and
began hunting for what I assumed was a dead and rotting body.

"Hector!

Hector!"

As I neared the bathroom, the stench cranked up a couple of notches.  I
flipped the light switch.  The cat litter box looked as if it had been
bombed by chunks of mud the size of ice cubes.

Each little chunk was coated in green litter.  They looked almost
decorative.

A little yellow plastic shovel the same color as the litter box rested
against the toilet.  I grabbed it and began sifting.  I flushed the
bombs down the toilet.  The window was barely open an inch, I flipped
the lock and shoved it the rest of the way open.  I stuck my head out
and took a deep breath of fresh air.

Whatever satisfaction I had in disposing of the problem ended as I
walked back toward the living room and was again hit by the le foul
smell, stronger than ever.  And fresh.  I heard a muffled noise.

to Rhythmic.  I looked across the room and saw the top leaves of my
ficus tree rustling.  I circled the sofa, stepped over a small coffee
nt table, and marched straight for the plant.  Standing inside the
sixteen-inch pot, Hector was digging the dirt, pawing it behind [n him
to cover up several more moist nuggets.

I grabbed him by the scruff and hoisted him out of the plant.

if "You little shit," I scolded.  He just hung limply, the skin at his
neck pulling his eyes almost shut.

ic I carried him into the kitchen and dropped him on the floor.

n He landed on all fours, crouched defensively, looked around, then sat
down and began licking his paws.

rs "I hate you," I told him.  "I just wanted you to know."  ly A stack
of 9Lives cat food cans sat on the counter.  They had not been here
this morning when I'd left.  Also, next to the lidded a trash pail
stood a brown Lucky's grocery bag.  Inside were a couple d of open cat
food cans and all the soda and fruit cocktail and soup cans from the
trash.  Byron had rooted through my trash and e dumped all the cans in
the bag.  Written in thick black Magic I, Marker on the front of the
bag was CANS (recycle!).

Next to the bag were two new porcelain bowls shaped like a sleeping
cats.  One contained water, the other was empty except for a few pasty
smears where the food had been.

il Apparently Byron had been able to interrupt his mysterious d travels
long enough to pop home, feed the cat, and sort my garbage.  How did he
get in?  I hadn't given him a key.  But then If again, he was an ex-con
and he knew people named Grudge.  So, anything was possible.

I opened a can of sliced veal and dumped it into Hector's bowl.

He sauntered over, sniffed, licked at the sauce a little, then sat down
and began licking his butt.

"Hey, I didn't buy it for you.  Save the food reviews for your
master."

After I cleaned out my ficus, I started running the bathwater.

I dumped in a packet of lilac bath salts hoping they would mask the
heavier odor still apparent throughout the apartment.  I undressed in
my new bedroom, the smaller bedroom where Byron had stuck me.  My
panties were wet from leaking on the drive home.  I tossed them into
the laundry.

That's when I noticed the blinking light on my phone answering
machine.

I hadn't had a message on it since moving here, so I'd stopped checking
it.  Probably a wrong number, but I pressed the button anyway.

The tape kept whirring and rewinding as if I' the entire tape had been
used.  I grabbed a pen and opened the � People magazine to a page with
a tampon ad that had a lot of white space for notes.

First message, "Okay, man, I spoke to the rocket king like you asked.

He says, and I'm reading directly from the paper he gave me, so there
ain't no fuckin' screwups.  Okay, he says, "Seven eight six six."  Got
that?  Seventy-eight sixty-six.  He's waitin' to hear from you, man.

Second message, "Byron!  You're out!  Living proof that the judicial
system doesn't work.  Listen, I got this number from T Bone.  I hear
you're still in the game.  Anyway, if that's true, I know where there's
some money if you want me to broker.  I sure as shit am not leaving my
name on this thing, so if you don't recognize my voice, well, then fuck
you anyway.  If you do, give my sister a call.  She knows how to reach
me."

There were six more messages, all for Byron, all equally cryptic.  No
one left their names or numbers where they could be reached.  There
were a lot of hints about large sums of money, but n o specifics as to
how much or where this money would come from.

I sat naked on the edge of the bed.  I hadn't written any of the
messages down.  What was I in the middle of here?  The rocket king?

Was this some kind of espionage thing?  The Jet Propulsion Lab was
nearby.

I pulled on some sweatpants and a T-shirt and cranked off the tub
faucet.  I popped the tape cassette out of Wren's machine and took it
to the stereo in the living room.  Wren's stereo system included a
high-speed tape-to-tape dubbing deck.  I copied Byron's messages onto a
blank tape.  I needed a place to hide it until I'd decided which
authorities I should send this to.  FBI?  CIA?

� Detective Diesel?  There was no place in the apartment he considered
private.  He'd already gone through my belongings once.

Hiding it at the office would be tricky.  My job was already in
jeopardy.  I could show up one day with my desk drawers empty.

Hide in plain sight.  Poe's purloined letter trick.  All I needed was a
tape he was sure not to listen to.  I ran my finger across the plastic
spines of the cassette cases trying to decide the extent of Byron's
musical taste.  Most of the cassettes Robby had bootlegged from
friends' albums.  When we'd split, he'd given them all to me, which I'd
thought was a generous gesture until Wren in formed me that the albums
he'd been copying belonged to Dr.  Helen Jaspers.

"Yes," I said, tilting one case forward.  The Carpenters.  I labeled
the copy of Byron's messages Karen Carpenter Sings Songs of Love and
Devotion and tucked it into the case, back between Kate Bush and Tracy
Chapman.

The original tape I tossed onto Byron's bed.  After removing the label,
I stuck the actual Carpenters tape back into the answering machine for
future messages.

I closed and locked all the doors and windows, stripped, and climbed
into my tub.  The hot water burned the insides of my chafed thighs.  I
closed my eyes and sank down until the water touched my chin.  I tried
to think constructively, formulate some kind of plan of action.  Take
Davis's offer to write the book.  Quit my job at the magazine.  Kick
Byron out.  But every plan had holes.  Could I trust Davis to deliver
on the contract?

I looked down at my pubic hairs waving in the water like seaweed.  Was
that clump of skin, hair, and crevices the reason he was doing this?

Or was it because he admired Wren's credentials?

Which answer would be less insulting to me?

Now the questioning wouldn't stop.  Would Jonathan Krieg be so mad that
he would try to blackball me?  He could probably do that if he
wanted.

And that might cause people to look into my past a little too
closely.

Was I even capable of writing such a book, did I have any of the skills
necessary?  Also, if I did write the book, I'd have to publish under a
pseudonym.  Wren's name II couldn't suddenly appear nationwide without
somebody figuring out the truth.  Perhaps I could use Luna Devon as my
pseudonym?

smiled thought water my I sensed a presence in the room, staring at
me.

Thinking it was I,Byron, I quickly opened my eyes, ready to grab for a
towel.  Hector stood on the edge of the tub looking at the water.  He
lowered his paw tentatively until it touched the water, then he jerked
it back.

"It's water," I informed him.  "Cats hate water."

He leaned farther over and dipped his head until he could sniff the
water.  Then he stuck his tongue in and started drinking.

"That's hot water," I said.  "You have fresh cold water in your bowl.

God, you're stupid."

He kept slurping away.

I watched him drink.  His gray tail kept flipping back and forth,
shoulder.  It tickled and I had to keep my brushing scratching my
Iishoulder.  Finally, I grabbed his tail and held it a few seconds and
he stopped swishing it.  Instead, it drifted over the side of the tub
and floated on top of the water.

"Hey, I want to wash my face in here."

He sat back and started licking his butt again.

"You're disgusting," I said.  I kicked the drain lever with my foot and
felt the water start to suck out of the tub.  I lay there and let it.

Hector didn't move.  I thought of BeeGee's cat, Sphinx, a moment before
she'd shoved the cocked gun against his head.

The blood, the clumps of wet fur stuck to my face.  BeeGee had loved
that cat.  Once, she had taken a week off work without pay to stay home
and care for him when he was sick.  I remember making a joke about it
at the time and Wren saying BeeGee was lucky because she was loving in
the way people were genetically programmed to love, before romance
fucked it all up.  I was still with Robby at the time, so I told her
she was full of shit and went back to grading compositions about why we
have a drug problem in this country.

But this was the question Wren had asked, Do people have a greater need
to give love or receive love?  She'd said we needed more to give
love.

A child with his teddy bear.  He makes that bear real, gives it
personality, and kisses and hugs it and weeps hysterically if it rips
along a seam.  The bear gives no love back except that which the child
imagines.  "People with pets are no different," she'd said.  "People
train the pet to respond a way that they then interpret as love because
it makes them feel all squishy inside.  But it ain't really love, just
the reflection of that person's need."

"What about people loving people?"  I'd asked.  She'd smiled.  "Same
thing.  And not just in romantic relationships.

Look at mothers and daughters.  Same ole same ole.  We don't resent
others not loving us as much as we hate them for taking away our
opportunity to love them.  It's loving that gives us identity, not
being loved.  Once we come to accept that about our selves, we'll all
be a lot happier."

The last of the water swirled down the drain.  Hector and I watched it
go together.  I looked at him.  He lowered his head as if expecting me
to scratch it.  "Forget it," I said, getting up.

I stepped over him and out of the tub, dried off, and dressed back in
my sweats and T-shirt.  Dressing for bed was new for me, but with Byron
lurking about somewhere, I wanted to be prepared for anything.

I went to the kitchen for a ginger ale.  On my way back past the front
door, I peeked out between the shades down the front walk.  I didn't
see Byron.  Just more snails.  A clump of about ten of them were
knotted together atop something.  I could go out there right now, I
thought, and bring one back and give it a name and keep it in an
aquarium and feed it and put little colored rocks in with it and talk
to it at night and maybe grow to love it.  Seeing it every day, talking
to it, watching it slither-after a while, I probably would love it.  Is
that the best we can do after millions of years of evolution?  Love a
snail.

I started to turn from the window when something gleamed out of the
corner of my eye.  White.

� Subaru.

� Across the small parking lot, parked against the red curb.  A bent
clothes hanger for a radio antenna.

I flung open the front door and hit the pavement running.  I don't know
why I had this sudden burst of courage or outrage or something.  I just
knew that I was pissed.  My bare feet smacked the sidewalk twice before
I felt the fragile crunch of snail shell under my heel.  That could
have been the one, I thought, the one I brought in to love.  Too late
now.  I kept running.

The dnver saw me.  A bearded man about fortyfive.  He'd been drinking
coffee from a Styrofoam cup and reading the newspaper.

He quickly crumpled the paper and batted it aside.  He clamped the
coffee cup between his teeth and started the car.

"Hey!"  I hollered, racing toward him.

He shifted into first, but he must have bitten through the cup, because
suddenly it dropped from his mouth except for a half moon of Styrofoam
still between his teeth like a wafer.  His window was up, but I could
hear the muffled yowl of pain as the coffee spilled into his lap.

Behind me were heavier footsteps.  I glanced over my shoulder.

Ethan, barefoot and bare-chested, wearing only his Jockey shorts, ran
full speed with a hammer in his hand.  He reminded me of Thor.  I
didn't stop or say anything.  I kept racing for the Subaru.

But the driver managed to screech out while I was still ten feet
away.

"Hey!"  I called after him.  I slowed, feeling the gravel and ground
snail shell digging into my foot.

Ethan kept running after the car.  When it was clear he wouldn't catch
it, he hurled his hammer.  It somersaulted through the air and,
surprising both of us, struck the Subaru's trunk before bouncing to the
ground.  Encouraged by his marksmanship, he began shaking his fist and
shouting.  "Get out of here, you fuck!

You son of a bitch!  I see you again, I'll rip you a new asshole!

You hear me, motherfucker?  I'll kill you!"  When the Subaru had shot
out of the apartment complex, Ethan bent over, his hands on his knees,
catching his breath.  Still panting, he turned and looked up at me.

"So, who the hell was that?"

"What's wrong with this?"  Jonathan Krieg asked, smacking a folded copy
of last month's Orange Coast Today on his desk and sliding it across to
me.

Somewhere in the room an insect, a fly or mosquito or something
desperate, was buzzing.  It made that sound, like when they batter
their wings against glass, that sound like sizzling neon.  I looked
around the room anxiously.

"A quick scan's all you'll need," he said.

I picked up the magazine and started reading the article circled in red
ink.

"Just read the first paragraph," he said.  "The first paragraph is
plenty."

I read.  It was a book review of a novel I had never heard of let alone
read.  For someone holding a master's degree in English, I was
surprisingly dumb about current writers.  I knew some names-Ann
Beattie, Yannick Murphy, Richard Ford, Frederick Barthelme-enough to
fake intimacy if their names ever came up.  At a party, I had once
referred to Amy Hempel as a "staggering talent," though I hadn't read a
single word she'd written.  My own studies, which had mostly consisted
of catching up to what all my younger peers had already read, had kept
me firmly rooted in pre-twentieth-century writers.  The only living
author whose complete works I'd actually read was Thomas Pynchon.  And
he was a recluse, nobody knew who or where he was.

"I want your opinion," Jonathan said, pacing behind his desk.

He had his corporate raider outfit on today, light gray doublebreasted
suit with red paisley power tie overlapping his belt like a crotch bib
and pointing straight down at his penis as if it were a Red Tag Sale
item.  "I want to know what you think of this piece of writing, Wren.

Your expert opinion."  He held up a cautionary finger, "This is
important."

The review was by our freelance columnist, Judiil, DwyerHorowitz.  She
taught comparative literature at the University of California at Irvine
and had once reviewed books for the prestigious New York Review of
Books.  I hadn't met her yet, but word around the office was that she
had been fired from that job after a bit of a scandal.  Apparently, she
received free copies of books from publishers to review, but since she
received many more than she could possibly read, she sold them to
bookstores.  This was some sort of ethical breach and the New York
Review ofBooks printed an apology about her conduct when they announced
they'd fired her.  She rarely came to the office, Her reviews arrived
by FAX.  She had a better scam going than I.

"Just the first paragraph," Jonathan prodded.  He looked over his
shoulder at the window.  The buzzing was starting to get to him too.

While I read, I crossed my legs and scratched vigorously at my
ankles.

For some reason they itched like crazy.

Jonathan hit his intercom.  "Billie, come in here please."  He clicked
it off without waiting for an answer from her.

I concentrated on the review.  I could sense from Jonathan's agitation
that something was up.  This review thing was some kind of test.  I
wasn't sure what was being tested.  My stomach was already being
tag-team body-slammed by the rest of my internal organs because I'd
made up my mind to tell Jonathan this morning all about Davis's book
offer and be fired or quit.  But before I'd had a chance, he'd called
me in and shoved this review at me.

I had to tell him about Davis.  I'd reached my personal best for
sneaking around and wanted to at least have this one thing out in the
open.  Do one right thing today, Luna.  Just one.  The lines between
right and wrong used to be as clear to me as black telephone wires
against a blue sky, now ethics were cellular.

Voices were somehow sent, somehow they arrived.  There were no means,
nothing to judge.  Just results.

Billie entered the office looking like a rock singer posing as a nun.

She was wearing a black knit skirt, matching black cardigan sweater,
adobe white blouse, and a black bow tie.  Her thin legs were sheathed
in textured black hose, capped with black patent leather shoes that
came to a lethal point.  Her expression was of nervous anticipation
acid-washed by raw ambition.  She'd never looked more beautiful.

"Yes, Mr.  Krieg?"  she said.  He gestured at the chair next to mine.

She sat on the edge of it, her narrow bottom perched like a gull on the
railing of a boat.

"Tell Wren here what you told me this morning.  About Judith's
reviews.

This one for example."

Billie smiled guiltily at me.  She needn't have.  I admired her
ambition, coming in early, ambushing Jonathan before the rabbi or
bodybuilders got to him.  I wanted her to succeed.  I just didn't want
to look like a fool in the process.

"Well, Wren," she said, her voice deeper, more professionalsounding
than she'd ever been as a receptionist.  She reminded me of Robby's
radio deejay voice.  "I was telling Mr. Krieg that I thought we've
indulged Judith's peculiarities long enough.  If the magazine is going
to take a new direction, I think all aspects of it should also be
redesigned."

I nodded encouragement, having given up reading the first paragraph
after a few sentences.

"Be specific," Jonathan said.  "What's wrong with Judith?  This review
specifically."  Billie shrugged as if it was all too obvious.  "Well,
in the first place, her selection of books to review.  She chooses
novels that are too esoteric, too literary for the kind of audience
we're pursuing.  This isn't New York City.  We're a coastal community,
more leisure-oriented.  Very few people will go out and buy this book
and even fewer will actually read it, even if she gives it a rave."

"I've read this book," Jonathan Krieg said.  "I loved it.

Billie wilted a little, but the tumblers in her brain clicked into
place almost instantly, inflating her posture.  "But you're not our
target audience, Mr.  Krieg.  I am.  Me and my mother."

He smiled, pleased.  "Go on."

If it was the job of book reviewer she was after, I thought she'd just
snagged it.  She looked over at me and I smiled for her.  I reached
down and raked my ankles again.

"But what else is wrong with this review?"  Jonathan continued frowning
now.  "Something else .

"Well, the prose style is a little too dense, too many elaborate
metaphors, too many references to other writers and books.  On the
whole, it's too academic.  Mainly, our readers want to know what the
book's about and whether or not to plunk down twenty bucks for it."

"That makes sense."  He glanced back at the window.  The buzzing had
taken on a furious high pitch.  He walked over to the window, searched
it from top to bottom.  Nothing.  The buzzing stopped.  "Does that make
sense to you, Wren?"

I looked down at the review again, rereading the first few sentences.

I'd read Judith's reviews when I was studying the magazine before
coming down here.  I didn't like her reviews, though not for the same
reasons Billie just mentioned.  But I didn't want to torpedo Billie's
chances by disagreeing.  After all, she'd gone after her success, I'd
merely stolen mine.

"Wren?"  Jonathan repeated.  His voice suggested he enjoyed watching
these little gladiatorial confrontations.

"I haven't read this book," I admitted.  "So maybe this isn't a fair
assessment."

"You've read Judith's other reviews.  You're familiar with her
style."

"Yes."

"Well, one needn't have read the book being reviewed to know whether or
not one likes the reviewer.  I mean, you don't have to see the movie to
know Siskel and Ebert are dickheads.  Right?"

I glanced at Billie.  Her posture was erect and tense, as if expecting
a spinal tap.  Her hands were folded piously on her lap.

She was absently picking at a cuticle on her thumb.

"I agree with Billie," I said.  "I don't like Judith's reviews
either."

"For the same reasons as Billie?"

"Somewhat."

"She's too academic, prose too dense?  Her selections are too
literary?

Her attitude too New York City?"

I shrugged.  "Not exactly.  I kind of like a dense prose style in the
reviews.  And I don't mind that she picks books that are more literary
and less popular.  I don't think the readers of our magazine who bother
to read the reviews care about anyone's opinion about the new Danielle
Steele or Robert Ludlum.  They're going to read those books anyway.

What they would like is a conversational knowledge of current
literature so they can talk about these books without ever having to
read them.  Cultural literacy today is merely recognizing a name, not
having any intimacy with it."

Jonathan laughed.  "Keen insight.  You sound like one of your own
articles."

This "keen insight" came from my own experiences trying to keep up with
the likes of Robby and Wren.  I was the prototype of the cultural
"illidiot" (Wren's term), saved from being excluded from party
conversations about post-structuralist semiotics by a quick scan of
reviews in the library.  I was barely able to pass for intelligent that
way.  I knew the names, I knew the buzzwords.  I guess long before I
faked being Wren, I'd faked being Luna.

"Let me get this straight," Jonathan said.  "Are you saying to keep
Judith's reviews?"

Billie looked at me with a strangled expression, as if her black bow
tie had suddenly tightened around her throat on its own.

Cuticle flakes from all her fingers confettied her black skirt.

"No, Jonathan," I said.  "I don't like Judith either.  But for a
different reason.  Well, here's an example."  I stabbed my finger at
one of the sentences and read aloud, ""This author has a rare
intelligence and almost psychic ability to read people.  How else can
one explain her unerring insights into characters of every social class
and age group.  These characters are unflinchingly accurate."  I shook
my head.  "How the hell does Judith know these are accurate
portrayals?

She should say that the characters are written so they are believable,
that we care what happens to them.  But what she says here is that
because she herself is such a goddamned genius, with the ability to
know what people of all ages and social statuses are thinking, she can
recognize this same genius in others.  That's what I don't like about
her reviews.

They're all about how smart Judith is."

Jonathan's face was expressionless.  He quietly sat down behind his
desk.  He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a white yarmulke and
placed it on the back of his head.  He dragged his Hebrew book across
the desk and flipped it open.  Then he started reading aloud in
stuttering broken Hebrew, his finger running from right to left under
each word.

Billie looked at me.  She contorted her lips to signified' her
confusion.

I shrugged.  We sat there and waited for him to finish.  I'd known
Jonathan Krieg long enough now to know he never did anything without a
lesson.  Like a lot of successful people, he equated success with
wisdom.  It wasn't enough to be rich and famous, he wanted people to
think he deserved it because of his higher plane of thinking.  Every
knucklehead with a car phone thinks he's Yoda.

The obnoxious insect must have changed locations, because the timbre of
its buzzing was different now, a faint sputtering, as if it were
running out of gas.

When Jonathan finished a couple minutes of tortured reading, he closed
his book and looked at us with a huge smile.  "Not bad, huh?  Two weeks
ago I couldn't read any Hebrew."

"That's amazing, Mr.  Krieg," Billie said.

He looked at me for a reaction.

"Two weeks?"  I said.  "Only two weeks?"

He nodded modestly.  "What's amazing is that I still don't understand a
word I'm reading.  But to be bar mitzvahed, I don't have to.  I've just
got to read the words and give my speech."

"Oh?"  Billie said.  She wasn't getting it.  The Big Message.  I wasn't
getting it either, but at least I knew there was one to get.

I also knew that, like most would-be teachers, he would tell us exactly
what he meant, then he'd grin moronically at his own wisdom.  Since, as
a teacher, I never thought of myself as having any wisdom, I never fell
into that trap.

"My point is, Billie," he said, "Wren is right.  I don't have to
understand what I'm saying.  I'm performing a ritual to be accepted
into the fold.  That's all people ever do.  They spend their lives
performing elaborate rituals to be accepted by this group or that.

Family, school, job, romance, it's all the same.  From plucking your
eyebrows to saving your soul.  It's all ritual.  Now, how does that
apply here?  We print book, movie, and theater reviews.

Do you think we do that because our readers are hungry for the arts?

No, they just want to be able to have an opinion, even if it's someone
else's.  Our subscribers read book reviews because they don't have the
time or patience to read the book.  But they still want to be accepted
into the fold of the well read, the intelligent, the best and
brightest."

"I see," she said uncertainly.

He took his yarmulke off and tossed it back in its drawer, probably
next to his vitamins and exercise shorts.  "Billie, you are now this
magazine's book reviewer."

Billie's rump hopped in her chair.  "Thank you, Mr.  Krieg."

"I believe in wwarding ambition."  He held up a finger and wagged it
like an old rabbi.  "People who only do what they're told have to be
told what to do.  But go-getters, they get on the go.  See what I'm
saying?  You understand what I'm telling you here?  You have the proper
education and I've read a couple of your writing samples.  I think you
can do the job."

"Thank you, Mr.  Krieg.  I really can."

"However, until I'm sure you've got the right slant on what we're
looking for, I want you to clear your book selections with Wren
first.

Also, Wren, you are responsible for editing Billie's work.  This is
going to be a team effort.  Any questions?"

"No, sir," Billie said and stood up.  A few cuticles flaked to the
floor.  The rest stuck to her black skirt in a crazy mosaic pattern.

I stood up.  This didn't seem like the best time to tell Jonathan about
Davis's book contract offer.  If I quit or was fired now, as part of
his Samurai-art-of-war style of management, he might take back his
offer to Billie.  I couldn't bear to see that.  Fifteen minutes ago,
telling Jonathan the truth about the book contract would have been
right, now doing so seemed hurtful, wrong.

More cellular ethics.

Billie and I walked to the door.  I wouldn't be able to hold off
telling him for long, maybe a day or two.  If he found out about it on
his own, it could be disastrous.  Once my honesty was questioned, who
knows what kinds of checking he might do on me.

As Billie opened the door for me I said quietly, "Billie, I'm going to
need your review by tomorrow morning."  I was about to offer some
complicated explanation for such haste, but before I could she chirped
in "Okay!"

"Wren," Jonathan called as I was exiting.

I turned.  "Yes?"

"When you get a chance, give that Judith what's-her-fuck a call and
tell her she's fired."

"You want me to tell her?"

"Yes, I do.  You are now in charge of book reviews, so it follows you
should weed out the old before planting the new."  He made a pulling
motion, I guess representing pulling weeds, though it resembled
masturbation.

I knew enough about editing as a teacher to recognize the importance of
the job.  But I'd been hired for my writing, now I was babysitting
someone else's.  Jonathan wasn't testing me, he was punishing me for
blowing the Season Dougherty interview.

Ordering me to fire this woman was a way of letting me know how
disposable I was.  Sending me down to the minors to coach a young
comer.  But I had a secret, a fifty-grand-stick-it-up-your
ass-book-contract-offer secret.

"Yes, sir," I said to him.  "I'll call her right away."

He nodded.

I returned to my desk and called Davis's office.  Before I got too
cocky, I wanted to be sure that the book offer was still good, not just
a postcoital expression of endearment, his way of saying "that felt
good."

His secretary said he was out.

"When do you expect him back?"  I asked.

"He's out of town, Ms.  Caldwell."

"What?"

"Hawaii.  He flew to Maui this morning.  However, he did leave a
message for me to tell you that he would contact you as soon as he was
able."

"Anything else?"

"Uh"-I heard the sound of rustling papers"no, that seems to be all."

Suddenly I didn't feel so confident.

"And he didn't say when he'd be back?  Give a time?  A day?"

"No, ma'am, be didn't.  This was an unexpected business trip.

He called me from the airport an hour ago just as they were
boarding."

"What kind of unexpected business pops up in Maui?"

She laughed This is a crazy business Ms Caldwell Mr Richard can
disappear for days at a time.  But he gets things done."

You know those commercials where some guy is sitting in a chair and
suddenly a bunch of money (or tires or cereal boxes) erupts under him
and lifts his chair straight up as high as a skyscraper?  That's how I
felt.  Like I was teetering.

I decided to take advantage of my darkening mood.  I called Judith
Dwyer-Horowitz and, struggling to keep my voice from cracking, told her
in the kindest terms possible that due to a change in the magazine's
ownership and direction we would no longer be needing her book
reviews.

"Oh," she said, unconcerned.  As if I'd just told her tomorrow would be
balmy.

I wondered if maybe, in my efforts to spare her feelings, I hadn't made
myself clear.

"You're fired," I clarified.

I heard a chewing sound.  "Well, that's that, then.  Thanks for
calling."  As she was hanging up I heard her say to someone, "Not so
much salt, you'll kill the ginger root taste."  To which a young man
replied, "I've got your root taste, right here."  And they both laughed
like lovers.  Click.

I slowly lowered the receiver toward the cradle.  My hand shook a
little from the trauma of having just fired a woman.  My throat was
clogged with cement, my colon was spasming like poking a hot copper
wire against an earthworm.  As if I'd been the one fired.  Meantime,
Judith what's-her-fuck was cooking ginger roots and laughing
seductively.  I hated her.

I scooted my chair back past my partition.  "Gordon."

Gordon Saunders, the magazine's most prolific article writer, was
two-finger typing on his Macintosh.  He would sometimes have two
articles in the same issue, one on FBI manhunts in Orange County, the
other on fingerpainting competitions among preschools.

"Gordon," I repeated.

"Hmmm He didn't look over.

"Who runs UCI?  The head enchilada."

"Chancellor Cummings."

"Thanks."  I scooted back to my desk.  I stabbed Judith's number
again.

"Hello?"  she said pleasantly, still chewing something.

I pinched my voice into an officious whine.  "Ms.  DwyerHorowitz?"

"Yes?"

"This is Chancellor Cummings's office.  We've had a very serious
complaint from a student about repeated acts of sexual harassment from
you.  The chancellor would like to see you in his office first thing in
the morning.  You may want to bring your attorney."

"W-what?"  she choked.  "What are you talking about?"

"The police will explain everything.  Good day."  I hung up.

After a minute or so she'd call the chancellor's office and discover my
call was a prank.  But for that minute she'd suffer some of the anguish
I had when I'd first called her.  There, I thought, staring at the
phone, I'd done one good thing today after all.

The telephone rang and I jumped.  Had they traced my call back to me
already?  "Hello?"

"Hey, Wren.  It's James."

"James?"

"James Smith.  Your pipeline to the stars."

I refocused my thoughts.  Gossip column.  Oh, yeah, my job.

"What's up, James?"

"Time for more of that cash.  Five hundred baby C's."

I ,a,ughed.  "For five hundred dollars, this gossip better be about
me.

"Give me twenty-four hours and I could dig up something on you.

I let that drop.  "What have you got?"

"The name of a certain famous muscular movie star who is on the cover
of every major magazine because he has a hot summer release."

"What's he done to merit our attention?"

"Actingwise, not much.  But last night he had a secret emergency visit
by a prominent physician, whose daughter happens to go with a guy who
works for me.  Seems our musclebound megastar got his dick caught in a
Dusthuster.  Suffered some lacerations around the head, and I'm not
talking about the one on top of his thick neck."

I wanted to laugh.  It was fiJuny.  But I couldn't.  I couldn't help
but wonder how it was I brought Wren from writing about the nature of
human relationships and art and philosophy to quick blurbs about some
poor shlub humping his Dusthuster.

"I need to check on something first," I said.  "Let me call you
back."

I saw Linda push through the glass doors, say hi to Billie, and march
straight back to Jonathan's office.  I absently scratched my ankles.

I called the business department to find out what my budget was on
gathering gossip.  Unlimited, I was told.  Jonathan was serious about
this column.  I told them I'd be by later for.$500 in cash.  They said
the paperwork would be done in twenty minutes.

I sat at my desk and drew a series of circles.  Some of them I gave
eyes, some ears, some noses, but never any combination.

One I gave hair and feet, but that didn't seem to give it any advantage
over the others.

And I thought about Davis in Maui.  Robby in Oregon.  Dad in the
Amazon.  Byron, who knows where.  And me at my desk, drawing circles
with appendages.  I drew a penis on one circle.

I couldn't be sure about Davis and the book contract.  In fact, I
couldn't be sure that even if it was a genuine offer, I could do it
properly.  What if he discovered I was incapable after a chapter or
two?  Then he'd fire me and I'd be out the money and my job.

I needed to get focused here.  I had a well-paying job.  I needed to
rededicate myself to it.  Forget pie-in-the-sky schemes of big money.

Work hard and store your nuts, that's the lesson of the ant and the
grasshopper.  I drew a pair of walnuts beneath the penis.

I smiled.  I was sorry I'd called poor Judith with that immature
prank.

I drew Judith's surprised eyes on a circle.  I chuckled.  I felt much
better now.  I knew what to do, how to act.  Who to be.

I reached for the telephone to set up an appointment with James
Smith.

Just as my fingers touched the phone, it rang.  I pulled away as if
stung.  Then answered it.  "Hello?"

"Wren, could you step into my office a moment, please?"

"Sure, Jonathan."

I walked down the hallway, knocked, and entered.  Jonathan was standing
at the other window, looking up into the corners, as if searching for
that same insect.  Linda sat on the sofa.  One low-heeled pump was off
and she was rubbing her arch.

"Hi, Linda," I said.

She smiled stiffly.

"Wren," Jonathan said, turning toward me.  He was frowning.

"When were you going to tell us about your book deal?"

My insides freeze-dried.  I looked down.  "There is no deal."

"Davis Richard didn't offer you $50,000 to write the Season Dougherty
bio?"

"He offered.  I didn't take it."

Linda stopped rubbing her foot.  "Did you turn it down?"

"Not yet."

Jonathan came around the front of his desk and stood less than two feet
from me.  And you didn't think you owed it to us to tell us about this
offer?"

"I haven't taken it."

"But you're considering it."

"No, I'm not.  I'd decided not to take it."

He shook his head.  "Maybe.  Maybe you weren't.  You know the bastard
already made the film deal?  My goddamn film deal."

I nodded.

"He thinks he pulled something.  But I'm not done with him.

Tell your boyfriend I'm not done with him."

"He's not my boyfriend."

Jonathan made an exasperated face.  "Whatever."  He walked back to his
desk.  "In the meantime, you're fired.  Clear out your desk and
leave."

He turned his attention back to the window and continued his hunt for
the defiant bug.

Part 2

HOW TO COPE WITH DESIRE, BOTH NATURA[ AND UNNATURA[ "That is so
flattering!"

I shook my head.

"Really," she said, nodding enthusiastically.  "Very flattering."

"You think so?"  I said.

"Absolutely."

I turned to look in the three-sided mirror.  I was thin as a paper cut,
with no stomach, no butt, and fist-sized breasts.  What was there to be
flattered?  I'd picked this bland one-piece suit because it was cut
high enough over my chest to hide my bullet scar.  Red lightning bolts
zigzagged down the shiny black material over my breasts and along my
ribs until they stopped at the top of my crotch.  It was like having
two fingers pointing, saying, "Look here, boys, hot snatch!"

When I gazed at my image doubtfully, the plump salesgirl pointed at a
circular rack at the back of the store.  "We have some very lovely
suits on sale back there.  I just stocked them this morning.  Thirty
percent off."

"Thanks," I said and retreated back into the dressing room.

I sat on the wooden stool.  In the narrow dusty mirror of the tiny room
I looked pale and bookish.  Even my red lightning bolts didn't help.

My white panties peeked out where I'd tried to tuck them up under the
high French-cut hips of the swimsuit.  Was anything more pathetic than
cotton panties sticking out of the leg of a sexy swimsuit?  I took off
my round steel-rimmed glasses and knuckled my eyes.  If they ever
remade the movie Carrie, I would play the simpleton lead.

Getting fired is like having your wisdom teeth pulled.  You keep
rubbing your tongue over the gum where the tooth used to be.  Maybe
you're fascinated with such a radical change in so familiar and inhmate
a place as your mouth.  You can't keep yourself from prodding.  Once
this fleshy curbside had a hefty tooth parked there, now it's just a
cavernous void.  Once I had a loving husband, now I have someone else's
ex-convict husband.

Once I had a terrific job, now I had lightning bolts pointing at my
vagina.  As if my crotch needed to be jump-started or something.

My pubic hairs poked out of the elastic leg like wires to a burglar
alarm hastily snipped.  I hadn't shaved the area in a while, avoiding
the red chicken skin look that my irritated skin takes on for a week
afterward.  With my fingertips, I pushed the stray hairs under the legs
of the swimming suit and panties.  How had I come to this place in my
life, sitting in a small room auanging my pubic hairs?  When I was
about five, my mother and I were taking a bath when I reached out and
touched her thick tuft of pubic hair.  "Does it hurt to have hairs grow
there?"  I'd asked.  Mom had laughed, climbed out of the tub, and
returned a minute later with a can of Reddi Wip whipped cream.  I still
can picture her shaking that red and white can as she stepped back into
the tub and made me stand up.  She lifted my arms and whooshed a white
foam mound in each armpit and a foam donut around my belly button.

"That's what it feels like," she'd said.  We'd laughed and washed
off.

I wished she were here now to answer my questions.

But what would I ask, "Mom, how come I screwed up my life so badly that
I've got to pretend to be my dead friend?"  What answer could she
possibly give me, what playful demonstration using tangerines or
whipped cream?

I took off the bathing suit.  The crinkling of the plastic crotch
protector made me feel even worse.  It seemed so accusing.  As if it
had been put there especially for sleazy people like me, who used their
dead friend's reputation to get a job, then dirtied that reputation by
bungling the job.  Just as I might dirty the crotch of this bathing
suit if they hadn't anticipated sluts like me and taken these extreme
precautions.  I imagined myself in a police lineup with other women,
all of us naked, lying back on gynecological examination tables, our
legs up and apart, our feet strapped into the stirrups.  Number three,
could you scoot forward please.

I'd gone from Jonathan Krieg's office out the door and straight to the
mall, wandering around South Coast Plaza as if I had a purpose.  Trying
to look like a busy executive with only twenty minutes to buy an
expensive gift for the boss's dinner party that night.  I'd stopped in
the swimsuit store because they'd had a window display of bathing suits
in a tropical setting that reminded me of Hawaii.  Tanned mannequins,
cardboard palm trees, gray sand, and a couple of rubber starfish.  A
hand-painted sign that read MAUI W0WE SALE!  It made me think of
Davis.

If his word was any good, I'd be writing the Season Dougherty book as
soon as he returned from Maui.  That book was all I had now as a
career.  I guess trying on swimsuits was some sort of good-faith
gesture, as if I were showing Davis I trusted him.  It allowed me to
think of myself as hopeful rather than gullible.

In the meantime, I still had that part-time job teaching Wren's art
history class.  Maybe I could kill a few classes by lining up visits to
museums and getting guest lecturers from local art galleries.  With any
luck, I'd never have to actually talk about art myself.

Just to be safe, though, I needed to be getting home to make some
lecture notes.  Right now' that class was my only sure source of
income.

I lifted my foot up onto the wooden bench and scratched my itchy
ankle.

Tiny red bumps circled my ankle like a rash of measles.  The skin was
swollen and raw from my scratching all morning.  A few bled.  My other
ankle was identically afflicted.  I leaned closer to inspect.  Flea
bites!  Another gift from Hector.

When I got home, Hector was going to adopt the identity of an outdoor
cat.

But I didn't go straight home.  I didn't feel up to confronting Hector
or, worse, Byron and his bloodstained money.  Instead, I went to a
movie, a bargain matinee at the four-plex across the street from the
mall.  The elderly white-haired man who tore my ticket wore a faded
black tuxedo and white gloves with snaps at the wrist.  He called me
young lady and made a grand sweeping gesture toward the theater door
number four.  The pimply kids who worked behind the concession stand
snickered at him behind his back as they shoveled popcorn.  That made
me feel even sadder, so I hurried into the dark theater.  The film had
already started.  It was a comedy.  The main character was a beautiful
young prostitute.  She'd been hired to corrupt a crusading lawyer who
was running for governor.  His wealthy ex-wife was running against
him.

The ex-wife had hired the prostitute, but the prostitute and lawyer
fell in love.  The prostitute wore garter belts a lot.

The ex-wife carried a small poofr dog that yelped and tried to bite
people.  I was the only one in the theater, so I didn't feel bad about
laughing a lot, even at the dumb parts.  When the movie was over I
bought a tub of popcorn and a diet Coke and sat through it again.

During the second show a few more people joined me, scattered
throughout the theater like spies not wanting to be recognized.  A
couple of giggly girls about sixteen sat two rows in front of me and
started talking adoringly about a boy in their class named Todd.  Then
another one of their friends ran down the aisle with an excited
expression.  "Kristy!  Guess what?"  she said, plopping down next to
them.  "My cousin will take the rabbit."

"She will!"  Kristy squealed with delight.  She and the new girl gave
each other a high-five.  "That is so cool."

"Yeah, she'll pick it up next week when they've finished building the
cage.

"That is so great!  Oh, wow!"  Kristy squirmed happily in her seat.

The theater darkened.  As the previews for coming attractions ran, I
couldn't get over how thrilled Kristy had been at this news.

It was as if someone had told her she'd won a million dollars, or she
would never die or feel pain or sadness again.  But all that had
happened was someone taking a rabbit off her hands.

I shook my head and stuffed my mouth with dry popcorn.

What makes people happy?  Can you experience the same level of joy from
winning an Olympic gold medal as you can from winning a game of
Monopoly?  A person is starving, they find half a bag of soggy potato
chips, aren't they as happy as the stockbroker who closes a big deal on
his car phone on the drive home to his mansion?  Perhaps the human body
is just an organism that endures only so much unhappiness, it adjusts
to the circumstances and must find its quota of pleasure the way it
must demand a certain amount of food and sleep.  If so, everybody in
the world is really the same amount of happy.  Mini-evolution, kind of
like Emotional Darwinism.  Like those South American bedbugs Mark had
told me about, developing dagger penises because the vagina was plugged
up.  Same principle here.  The organism will be happy, even if it means
reassigning values to achieve it, even reversing values completely.

I'd read in a self-help book that you could force yourself into being
happy by clenching a pencil between your teeth for a few seconds,
tricking the body into thinking you were smiling.  But that was just
first aid for the blues.

This was very different, perhaps even profound.  I perked up, thinking
I could be on to something profound.  I'd come in here depressed, but
I'd laughed at the dumb movie and felt better.  If the rest of my life
had been better, would I have laughed at the movie?  Was I just as
happy now sitting jobless in a dark theater behind Kristy with rings of
bleeding flea bites around my ankles as I had been married to Robby
with a ring of gold around my finger?

I wriggled in my seat excitedly.  This must be how Wren felt when she
had one of her ideas, like when we were driving along that last night
and she'd forced me to pull over.  What if my idea was right?  What if
researchers somewhere discovered that the human organism is generally
always the same amount of happy.

They find some scientific way to measure it, like brain waves or
cholesterol level.  So, it doesn't matter what you do or buy or who you
marry, your brain will adjust and find other things to fill its
happiness quota.  If this were true, would they even reveal the results
to us?  What would happen to our economy?  Our whole society is built
on the concept that we can be happier if we buy this or that item.  Or
find someone new and improved to love.

Suddenly we discover that it isn't so.  What would happen then?

We'd stop buying clothes and makeup and let our memberships to health
clubs lapse.  We'd stay married to the same people.  My mind sizzled
and crackled as if charged with electricity.  Maybe I could write this
idea up myself, just as Wren would have.  Maybe sell it to some
magazine.

But the more I sat there watching the young prostitute in a garter belt
and the ex-wife with her snarling little dog, the less I felt the idea
had any merit.  After a while, the idea seemed to have leaked out of my
body and run down the theater's sticky concrete floor along with the
spilled Cokes and flattened popcorn.

When the movie was over for the second time, I left the theater and
drove back to the office.  It was almost dark now.  I'd left work
earlier without cleaning out my desk because I'd been too dazed, too
upset.  Not that there was much of importance, I'd only been there a
few days.  But I did leave Davis's unlisted home number on a paper in
my desk.  Not to mention Byron's bloodstained $400 taped to the bottom
of my drawer.  Right now, that money might come in handy.  Which
reminded me, I would have to swing by Detective Diesel's office
sometime and pick up the other hundred-dollar bill.  Without a job, I
no longer cared about evidence against Byron or the mysterious dog
blood.  I cared about rent.

Everyone was supposed to be gone from the office by now, but I knew
Steve Hawkins, the layout designer, often stayed late to work on his
freelance jobs illustrating children's books.  He had a brood of
eighteen-month-old triplet girls at home, so he found it difficult to
do any work there.  He would let me in.

But when I arrived at the office, Steve was gone.  However, the glass
door was unlocked, so I walked in.  Cautiously, I sneaked across the
room toward my desk.  I had no idea who was still here this late.  By
now everyone would have known about my being fired and I didn't want to
run into anyone to explain.

My desk drawers were already empty.  The pens and yellow legal pads
were gone.  The stapler, tape dispenser, ruler.  So were the notes I
had taken on the phone.  James Smith's phone number.  My doodles of the
circle people with single appendages.

Everything.  I had ceased to exist.  Again.  Well, that was their
stuff, they had a right to it.  But the money and Davis's phone number
were mine, damn it, and I wanted them.  I reached under the desk drawer
and peeled off the $400.  I counted the four bills twice before
stuffing them into my purse.  But where was Davis's phone number?

I patrolled the desktops of my colleagues like a Coast Guard cruiser
searching ship wreckage for survivors.  Maybe someone thought Davis's
unlisted number might come in handy someday, maybe some closet
screenwriter here wanted to send his completed screenplay to him.

Desktops were for the most part bare.

Reporters locked their Rolodexes in their desks at night, some even
took theirs home.  Not that we could honestly be called reporters, but
some here had been at one time or fancied themselves as ones now.

Finally I made my way to Linda Marley's office.  The light was on, her
open briefcase was next to the desk.  I quickly looked over my
shoulder.  She was the last person I wanted to run into here.

Still, I was here, she was nowhere in sight.  She owed me.  I ducked
into her office and started searching her desk.  I could feel my pulse
like snapping fingers in my throat.  Sweat slicked the backs of my
knees.  My left eye throbbed.  I fingered through the While You Were
Out slips, the galleys of upcoming articles, memos from Jonathan
Krieg.

"Hello, Wren," Linda said behind me.

I turned and smiled pleasantly.  "I left a phone number in my desk.

It's gone.

She nodded sympathetically.  "Right here."  She walked past me and
rummaged through some papers I hadn't yet gotten to.  I smelled a
strong scent of booze as she breezed by.  I noticed her movements
seemed awkward as she sloppily groped papers aside.

She wasn't wearing shoes.  "It's here 50me,where," Suddenly I felt too
uncomfortable to stay.  As if I'd walked in and caught her masturbating
or something.  "I'll call you tomorrow," I said.  "1 shouldn't have
come back."

"You shouldn't have gotten fired.  You shouldn't have taken Davis's
deal."

I didn't want to get into all that with her, so I just kept walking.

"I'll call you tomorrow."

She followed me, staying right up to my shoulder, though I noticed she
was wobbling a bit.  "I was counting on you, Wren.

I picked you out myself, brought you to Krieg's attention.  I'm good at
spotting talent and you've got it.  God knows we could have used some
of it around here."

"I did my best."

"Bullshit!"  The word came out kind of wet and slurred.  Her saliva
misted my arm.

"I don't want to talk about this now," I said.

"I don't care what you want.  We're not talking about you here, we're
talking about me.  I was counting on you, goddamn it."

"Then why didn't you talk Jonathan out of firing me?"

"Talk him out?"  She laughed.  "Hell, I had to convince him to fire
you."

I stopped and faced her, not hiding the shock on my face.  "I don't get
it."

"You don't, really?"  Now she seemed surprised.  She licked her lips
with an uncooperative tongue.  "This is my magazine, Wren.

I've worked on it since it was started.  From the first fucking issue
eight years ago.  We had Susan Anton on the cover.  Remember her?  She
was famous for being tall and dating Dudley Moore.

And tan, she had a helluva tan."  She paused, swallowed dryly, her
tongue making loud smacking sounds.  "The previous owners didn't care
about the contents of the magazine.  They just wanted to build
advertising revenues to a certain level, then sell.  That was their
plan from the beginning.  To make that happep they wanted fluff.  I
gave them fluff.  I can write 5,000 words about anything from shopping
for jelly to Flag Day parades.  Words are like ether, you know what I
mean.  Evaporate faster than a fart.

Poof."  She gestured with her hands to show an explosion.  "You know
what I mean?"

I nodded.

"Then along comes Jonathan Krieg, self-made asshole, and he wants to
play Ben fucking Bradlee for a few months, maybe a year.  Run around
shouting "Stop the presses!"  or some goddamn thing.  Use the magazine
as a legit springboard into movies.  Oh, yes, he wants to make
movies.

Everybody wants to make movies.

No matter how rich they are, how much money they've made at something
else, they all eventually come to Hollywood.  Why?

Glitz and tits.  They want to be high priests at the only real religion
this country has.  Movies."  She stopped, took a deep breath, adjusted
her tongue, which flopped along her lower lip.  "Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's an old story.  I should know, I wrote it a hundred times for this
magazine.  You know what Jonathan will do next year or the year
after?

He'll dump us on someone else.  But you know what?  You know what?"

She grabbed my forearm tightly.

I felt nervous, as if I were being accosted by a bag woman.  I tried to
pull away, but she held tight.  Her eyes were red and the stale odor of
alcohol she breafl,ed into my face made my stomach clench.  "You know
what?"

"No, what?"

"I'm still here.  I was here when I got remauied.  I was here when I
got divorced.  I was here when I had a lumpectomy.  And I'll still be
here no matter who owns this rag or what kind of crap they want to
print in it."  Her fingernails were digging into my arm and I thought I
might have to hit her hand to break free.  I tried to twist away, but
she hung on as if il,is were a rodeo.  "If, like every actress over
thirty ever interviewed in People or on Entertainment Tonight.  You
know how they describe themselves?  As survivors.  "I'm a survivor'
they like to say to the camera.

"I'm no flavor of the mouth.  I'm a survivor."  You know what I say?

Fuck you, bitches.  You don't know what survival is.  If you're still
around when you're forty or, God forbid, nearing fifty, then talk to me
about your goddamn survival.  But most of them marry some other actor
or director who's got a hit show or movie or music video and then they
can afford to be goddamn survivors.

You know?  You know what I mean?"

The way she glared at me, her eyes fogged over with liquor, but with a
dark pinpoint of rage lasering ffirnugh-I don't know, I had the
uncomfortable feeling she was talking about me, that she knew who I
was, what I was doing.  I almost expected her to call me Luna.  Her
ingernails, short and blunt, sliced through my skin.  But I didn't feel
like pulling away anymore.  I pushed the arm toward her as if it were a
life preserver.  She deserved it.

Dig in, I thought.  You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

I wanted to tell her I understood.  But words snared on the clump of
barbed wire lodged in my throat.  My mouth was open, but nothing came
out.

"Mom," a female voice behind us said softly.

Linda and I turned to the glass door at the front of the office.

A young girl, maybe seventeen, stood there, dressed in a hooded
sweatshirt, long shorts, and suede hiking boots.  She was thin, as thin
as I, with straight red hair.  She had a kind face, with full lips that
curved into a smile even when she wasn't smiling.  She looked like the
kind of kid who always brought home damaged birds and shivenug animals
and nursed them back to health or gave them elaborate funerals, the
kind of kid everyone assumed would grow up to be a veterinarian or a
nun.

"Hi, honey," Linda said cheerfully.  "What are you doing here?"

"You're late.  I called, but the answering service picked up.

They wouldn't ring me through."

Linda released my arm to look at her watch.  "Late?"

Linda's daughter sighed and shook her head parentally.  "Jesus, Mom.

Have a heart."

I looked at my forearm.  Four bluish halfmoon bruises tattooed the
skin.  I rubbed them.

"Hi, I'm Sara Marley."  She walked toward me, limping slightly.  I
noticed a long white scar curving around her knee.  She held out her
hand and I shook it.

"Wren Caldwell."

Sara's face brightened.  "Oh, yes.  I've heard all about you.  I read a
couple of your articles Mom had lying around.  They were great.  I
didn't understand some of it, but I could tell it was smart.

Deep."

"Thanks," I said.  I looked over at Linda.  She stood swaying slightly,
her eyes unfocused.  She looked frail in her stocking feet.

"Could you give me a hand?"  Sara asked me.

"Sure."  I lifted my hands as if to carry something, then let them
drop.  "What do you want me to do?"

"Get her downstairs to the car.  I'll drive her home."

"I'm perfectly fit to drive," Linda announced.

"Don't fuss, Mom."

"I don't need this shit from you, Sara
Couldn't-Walk-UntilYou-Were-Two-and-a-HalfWetted-Your-Bed-Until-You,Wer
, Eight-Sucked-Your-Thumb-Until-You-Were,Twelve Marley!"

Linda jerked away from us with such violence that she stumbled forward
a few steps and bumped into a desk.  A six-inch run in her stocking
splayed upward between two toes.  "Remember who the mother is around
here, okay?"

"You're the mother, Mother."

They both looked at each other and laughed a kind of giggly
mother-daughter laugh.

Sara nodded at me and we both slid arms around Linda's waist and guided
her toward the door.

"I'd better lock up first," Sara said.  She went back into Linda's
office and grabbed her purse, shoes, and briefcase.  After digging
through the purse a few seconds, she came up with a crowded key chain
with a silver rape whistle attached.  She locked Linda's office, then
followed Linda and me out the front door and locked that too.

In the elevator, Sara and I held Linda upright.

"This isn't necessary, guys," Linda kept saying, but she made no move
to pull away.  In fact, she slumped a little in our arms, as if
relieved of a great burden.

"Don't worry about her," Sara said.  "This isn't chronic.  She's not an
alcoholic or anything."

"No, no," I rushed to agree.  "Of course not."

"She only does this when she has a new date."

"A new date?"

"A date with someone new.  She's supposed to go over to the Performing
Arts Center tonight for some opera thing.  I haven't met him yet.  A
lawyer, I think.  Real estate law."

"Did you pick up my dress from the cleaner?"  Linda asked in a moment
of alertness that passed as quickly as a sneeze.

"Got it, Mom.  Everything's set.  All we gotta do is sober you up
within the next hour and a half.  I think a couple laps in the pool
ought to do it, don't you?"

Linda nodded.

Date.  It sounded so odd.  Linda Marley was at least fifteen years
older than I. With a teenage daughter.  Is it still called a date
then?

That word doesn't seem dignified enough somehow for her age.  Was this
what I would be doing fifteen years from now?

Getting drunk because I had to face another new man, another evening of
revealed backgrounds, old regrets, war wounds?  Like legless veterans
slapping our stumps and describing how we felt the moment we stepped on
that buried mine that pulverized our limbs into a fireworks burst of
hot blood and charred bone?

"Date," Linda said, as if reading my mind.  "Date sounds like a swear
word, doesn't it?"  She didn't look at either of us so we didn't
answer.  She made a face and started talking with a kind of 								
Broohyn swagger in her voice.  "Don't date with me, pal.  I'll date you
up bad, motherdater.  Oh, yeah, well date you, buddy The rest was
mumMed.

Linda lifted her head in another flash of alertness.  She turned her
head toward me.  "I'm going to still be running this fucking magazine
when Jonathan New-Age Krieg is serving time for insider trading or
whatever they finally catch him for.  Believe it, Wren."

"I believe it."  I did.

"That's why I had him fire you.  Season's cell neighbor told me about
your deal with Davis.  I knew Jonathan would blow his colon.  If I
didn't suggest he fire you, eventually he'd end up blaming me for
everything.  After all, I was the one who'd championed hiring you.  See
my problem?"

"I see," I said.  "You were saving your ass.

"Surviving."

The elevator door opened at the lobby and Sara and I struggled to pull
Linda out.  Her last speech seemed to have drained her energy and she
slumped against us with all her weight.  I lurched under the sudden
burden.

"I can take her from here," Sara said, limping a few steps away from me
with her mother.

"I don't mind."

"That's okay."  She seemed protective now, I guess because she knew her
mom had fired me.  "We're fine.  It's just that she hates the opera as
much as she hates first dates.  She'll be fine, though.

A laps in the pool.  That always works."

"Good luck, then.  Nice meeting you."  I started to walk away.

I didn't hear any footsteps behind me so I knew they weren't moving.  I
stopped and looked back.  Sara was staring at me.

"What?"  I asked.

"You're smart, Wren.  My mom's smart too.  But she never answers my
question."

"What question?"

"If she hates the opera and hates first dates, why does she go?"

The fact flat flat question had never occurred to me struck me as more
depressing than any answer I could give.

I stopped at the 7Eleven market on the way home and bought a large
bottle of kahlua and t'vo of vodka.  At home I placed the three bottles
on the coffee table in front of me like small pets I was about to
groom.  I turned on FSPN and watched beach volleyball while I got drunk
on Black Russians.

Being drunk felt good.  For one thing, my lips tingled.  As if a line
of chorus girls in spiked heels were can-canning back and forth across
them.  My lips became extraordinarily sensitive.

Bright lights or loud noises made them wince.  All my other senses
seemed dimmer, I could hardly hear the TV or smell Hector.

Suddenly I could feel eve,thing through the outer membranes of my
lips.

Changes in temperature or movement registered there first.  I had the
dish net impression that if I pressed someone's fingertips against m,
lips, I'd be able to distinguish individual fingerprints.  Feel the
bunched swirls of skin like icing that distinguishes corpses and
criminals.  I picked up a TV Guide and closed my eyes.  I opened it
randomly, pressed the page against my lips, 11:00 PM.  Cheers.  Sam
proposes to Diane for the second time.

Amazing!

I imagined myself as some comic-book heroine.  Lip Woman!

It made me more decisive.  I jumped up from the sofa humming loudly
what I thought might be Lip Woman's brassy theme song, which sounded a
lot like the theme to Bonanza.  I grabbed Hector's cat litter box and
food and water bowls and carried them into Byron's bedroom.  I also
deposited Hector in there, closing the door after him.  Let him spread
his fleas and stench in there for a while.

After that I didn't feel much like Lip Woman anymore so I went into the
kitchen and poured vinegar on my flea bites and that helped the itching
some.

Having left the world better than I found it, I sat at the kitchen
table and drank more Black Russians.  Once I stuck my tongue into the
glass and started lapping it up the way I saw Hector drink.

That was fun for a while.  My chin was cool from the vodka and sticky
from the syrupy Kahliia.  Then I decided I should stop drinking like
Hector and take more advantage of my decisive mood.  I started jotting
down numbers, trying to figure out how much it might cost to start my
own magazine.  The more I thought about the idea, the more excited I
got.  I'd screwed up Wren's reputation, but it was possible to salvage
it again.  I'd name the magazine after her, like Lear's or Mirabella,
and I'd print all her articles to get started.

I had no idea if the figures I was fooling around with were even close
to accurate.  Mostly I guessed.  I started with the $50,000 I would
earn from Davis, and created a budget from that.  I wrote very neatly,
which made it all look even more official and possible.  I liked the
idea of someday telling a talk-show audience that I'd worked out the
details of the magazine at my kitchen table while drunk on Black
Russians and holding a cat hostage in a convict's room.

The phone rang while I was sketching possible magazine names over
Arsenio Hall's face on the cover of TV Guide, but I didn't pick up.  I
listened as the answering machine informed the caller that no one could
come to the phone.  Then the beep.  Then, "Hey, Byron, pick up the
fucking phone, man, the familiar caller said.  "It's Grudge, man."

Pause.  "Okay, here it is.  I'm just passing this one along, so I got
no fucking stake in it whatsoever, okay?  This is all I know, Meintire
told me that Landry is looking for you.  Landry's fucking crazy, man.

I wouldn't fuck with him if I were you.  Okay, I delivered the
message.

You make up your own fucking mind, okay?"  Click.

I sighed, sipped my Black Russian.  How had a man named Grudge become
part of my life?  Why was his voice with threats and veiled violence
allowed to fill up my kitchen like the smell of burnt toast?  Ever
since Byron showed up it was as if some rip in another world, an
alternate dimension, had opened into my world and now gruesome
creatures were worming through that hole into my life.

I went to the living room and turned off the TV.  I put a Rickie Lee
Jones CD on.  I turned it up louder than usual because I thought the
musical notes could kill the harsh notes of Grudge's voice, like
antibodies or enzymes or something.  I wanted to purify even the sound
integrity of the apartment.  Sterilize the karma.  It was, after all,
my apartment.  Only the sounds I invited in should live here.

I couldn't find the song I wanted.  Maybe it was on a different
album.

I couldn't remember the title, just that it was a love song.

Her love songs always sound like threats.  Love me or else.

Finally I gave up and stuck in Joan Baez instead.  She sang, "Don't
sing love songs, you'll wake my mother, She's sleeping here, right by
my side.

And in her right hand, a silver dagger.

She says that I can't be your bride That was better, not just threats,
but action.  Music to work by.

I hauled Wren's art book to the kitchen and started making notes on the
art works she'd marked.  My handwriting was less precise now, barely
legible, but I figured it wasn't the fault of the writing, just that my
eyes were bleary from drinking, it would be more readable in the
morning when I was sober.

I turned to a page that showed a greenish statue of a halfwoman,
half-man figure.  The caption said it was made of copper alloy with
semiprecious stones.  Crafted in Nepal about the year 1000, it was
called "Androgynous Form of Siva and Uma."  The book said this was a
representation of Ardhanarisvara, The Lord Whose Half Is Woman, devised
by theologians to emphasize the nonduality of the divine principle
uniting masculinity and femininity.  I underlined that, figuring I'd
try to understand it later.  The figure had four am,s, though one of
the male arms was broken off as was one of the male legs.

Wren's bold printing crowded the margins, Influence ofindian Gupta art,
compare with Matisse's Indian period-his search for constant light,
feminine principle ofllindus, the god Siva, consort Uma.  An arrow was
drawn indicating the figure's garment with the word dhoti at the other
end of the arrow.  A crooked arrow pointed at the upraised arms with
Wren's note, cosmic unity.  And angled in the narrow left margin, her
handwriting slanted in a hurried scrawl, Religious art as objects, not
of worship, but of focal points to review fundamental principles.

Compare with Siva dancing figure.  No lesson is ever learned but must
be relearned.

Function of art to reteach the same moral lesson by evoking passion.

A circle was drawn around the figure's single female breast.  A line
led to the margin where, in larger, more ragged handwriting than Wren's
someone had written, 38C!  Cosmic Implants!

I laughed.  Who had written that?  Someone Wren had sat next to in art
class?  I wished he or she were here sitting next to me now.  How else
would I understand all I needed to by Monday?

I didn't see all this stuff that she'd noted and I didn't know all
about Hinduism the way she did.  I needed a third eye that could view
the world the way Wren had.  That could see what lurked behind the
foliage of the obvious.  I picked up my pen and drew an eye on the
page, right in the middle of the forehead of the copper figure.  Then I
drew one on his/her single female breast.

That made me laugh.

I had a great idea.  I pulled off my blouse over my head, popping a
button in my clumsiness.  The white button skittered across the kitchen
floor and pinged against the cupboard, where I left it for Hector to
ingest and perhaps choke on.  I unclasped and shrugged off my bra.  I
picked up the pen and began drawing a large eye around the bullet scar
on my breast.  The pen against my skin tickled and I chuckled as I
outlined the eye as if I were using eyeliner.  Then I drew the eyeball,
using the scar tissue as the actual retina.  I colored it in with blue
ink.

"Suddenly Lip Woman becomes Tit Woman!"  I announced with a flourish
and a few bars from Bonanza.  "The allseeing, all-dancing, all-talking
eye of Modern Woman."  I walked around the kitchen holding my breast
with both hands, pointing the inky eye like a camera at things, saying,
"Ahhh.  Yup.  Everything is so much clearer now.  Symbolism, hidden
meaning, we laugh at your puny disguises."

I drank another Black Russian and decided that I would use my new super
vision to look through Byron's stuff.  He knew all about me.  Now I
would know all his secrets too.  I wouldn't have to be afraid of him.

I ran down the hallway, still cupping my left breast, as if I were
steering my body with it.

Byron's room was neat as a monk's cell.  Hector was sitting on the bed
licking his tail with long strokes.  I went around the room opening
drawers and closets, pointing my breast like a Geiger counter.  Hector
ignored me, concentrating on his tail.  His attitude seemed very
professional and it occurred to me that perhaps "v I'd judged him too
harshly.  I petted him and a flea leapt onto my wrist and then onto my
super breast.  I trapped the flea between my two thumbnails and
squeezed until the body popped, leaving a tiny drop of blood on my
thumbnail.  The blood, I realized, was Hector's.

I wiped my thumbnails with the blood and on Byron's pillow and
continued my search.  I hauled his battered suitcase out from under the
bed and noticed for the first time that the tartan design on the cloth
was the same as on Wren's luggage, which I'd used when I'd moved
here.

This case was part of her set.  I flipped it open.  It was empty except
for the old photo album I'd given him that first night.  When I'd first
found the album in Wren's apartment, I'd been surprised to see that
many of the photographs had been removed.  The only ones in it were of
Wren or Wren's family and friends.  A couple of me and Robby.

Now as I paged through the album, I saw that the missing photos had
been restored.  They were all photos of Wren and Byron.  One showed
them each wearing a dragonfly earring.  Byron still had all of his
fingers.  In every one they were both laughing.  They looked like the
happiest couple in the world.  In Robby s and my albums, we're usually
grinning.  This was the first time I noticed how different grinning and
laughing really were.  In one photo, Byron was bare-chested, holding a
bottle of beer in one hand and shooting a squirt gun with the other.

Only he was shooting right at Wren's crotch.  The front of her shorts
was soaked but she was bent over laughing.  Someone had written
Hemingway Goes aCourting at the bottom of the photo.  It was the same
handwriting as Cosmic Implant.  Another photo showed them in bed
surrounded by open cartons of Chinese food.  Wren is straddling him,
wearing a T-shirt and panties.  She's holding up a cross formed with
two chopsticks to Byron's face and threatening to plunge a third
chopstick through his heart.  Written across the bottom, Sylvia Plath's
Honeymoon.

I put the album back in the suitcase.  My breast was not impressed.

The bathroom wasn't any more rewarding.  Byron used kid's formula Aim
toothpaste, the shiny red stripe swirling through the toothpaste like a
candy cane.  He shaved with the same brand of safety razor as I, then I
realized it wasn't just the same brand, it was in fact my damn razor he
was shaving with.  I removed the blade and scraped it along the edge of
the wooden cabinet, nicking and warping the edge as much as I could.

Then I replaced the razor and laid it neatly on the sink, waiting for
his next shave.

The rest of my search uncovered only one unusual item.  Under the
bathroom sink were ten rolls of Xtra-Soft toilet paper stacked so
tightly that the cupboard door didn't close all the way.  I started
pulling each roll out, examining them for some clues.  I held them up
to my breast "eye" as if consulting a Onija board.  Were these used to
smuggle drugs, perhaps into or from prison?  Was that what those
mysterious phone calls were about?  The guy named Landry who was after
Byron?  My breast was perplexed.

"Running low?"  Byron said.  "Or just expecting the runs?"

I looked up from my place on the bathroom floor where I sat
crosslegged, surrounded by scattered rolls of toilet paper, holding one
such roll up to my naked breast like a silencer to a pistol.

Byron was dressed in an expensive three-piece blue silk suit he hadn't
had when he'd first moved in.  His white shirt was starched and glowing
like a TV screen in a dark room.  The shirt was buttoned up to his
throat, he wore no tie.  His dark hair was slicked back and tied in a
modest ponytail with a rubber band.  His eyes were hidden behind
sunglasses, which had a yellow Carl Jr."s star on the fluorescent green
temple frame, part of the fast-food restaurant s current promotion
($1.99 with a Western Burger and small fries).

I grabbed a damp bath towel from his shower door and draped it over my
chest.  I dropped the toilet paper roll on the floor with the others,
not bothering to restack them.  "Close the door," I said, looking his
outfit over.  "An ill wind must be blowing."

"That's something Wren might have said.  You're getting better."

"Help me up," I said, holding out my hand.

"God helps those who help themselves," he said.  "Look it up."

He leaned back against the doorjamb and crossed his arms.

"At least now I know who you think you are."

"I yam what I yam."  He did a pretty good Popeye chuckle.

"Yeah, the God of Ass Wipes."  I threw a roll of toilet paper at him.

He let it bounce off his chest.

He laughed and removed his sunglasses.  His hand absently drifted up to
his dragonfly earring, which he fondled while he stared at me.  His
half-size little finger looked fake in this light, like a rubber
prop.

Actually, except for his new clothing, he didn't look so hot right
then.  His face was sallow, with dark blue bibs under each eye.  His
eyes looked loose and watery, as if he'd been in a brisk unrelenting
wind.  Dark stubble peppered his jaw.

He looked exhausted.

"You look like shit.  Here, clean yourself up."  I tossed another roll
of toilet paper at him.  He didn't flinch this time either, as if he
was used to having things hurled at him.  The roll grazed his shoulder
and continued out into his bedroom.  It bounced under his bed.  Hector
dove after it.

"What, you don't like my new duds?"

"So the emperor has new clothes."

He just laughed again and offered me his hand.  "You crack me up.

"I wish your skull could say the same thing."  I ignored his hand and
grabbed the sink, pulling myself up to a sitting position on the toilet
seat.  From there it was fairly easy to get to my feet, though once I
stood the carpet seemed to be rolling forward faster than I was
walking, like one of those airport people movers.  I knotted the towel
around my chest and held on to the sink as I walked toward the door.

Byron stepped aside for me to pass.  He grabbed a roll of the toilet
paper from the floor and followed me.

"Tough day at the Wren biz?"  he asked, walking beside me.

He kept tossing up a roll of toilet paper with one hand and catching it
with the other., back and forth, like a juggler with one ball.  "By the
way, who are you supposed to be now?  Luna being drunk or Luna
pretending to be Wren being drunk?  "Cause this isn't how Wren acted
when she was drunk.  Although the eyeball tattoo on your boob is a nice
touch."

"Fuck you.

"That's more like it.  More theatrical flair.  That's my little
Wren."

He applauded.

Slowly I navigated the hallway by keeping my hands firmly suctioned to
the wall like a lizard.  Byron juggled the toilet roll and kept pace
beside me.

"What do you think the first thing a guy just out of prison would buy?"
 he asked.

"I don't know."

"Guess."

"A woman or two."

"Yeah, some would.  Or drugs.  Booze.  I've known some to blow it all
on toys for their kids.  Some on a gun, looking to get even with
somebody or other they imagined did them wrong."

He hefted the toilet paper, bounced it off the wall and caught it.

"Me, I went straight to the grocery store and cleaned them out of
toilet paper.  The softest, sweetest smelling brand they had.  I mean,
I was squeezing and sniffing toilet paper for about an hour."  He shook
his head and made a face.  "The kind they use in prison .  . . man,
they must make it out of ground glass and barbed wire."

I kept walking, hand over hand along the wall.  Easy does it.

Avoid barfing in front of this man at all costs.

"Forget the electrified fences and snarling dogs.  Just string that
prison toilet paper around the place, and no one could break out."

"Maybe it's a subtle form of rehabilitation," I said.  "Negative
stimulation.  Every time you wipe your ass you'll remember why you
don't want to go back to jail.  Usually they work on the brain, but I
guess they picked the part you guys use most to do your thinking."

Byron didn't say anyffling for a minute, just followed along, not even
tossing his roll now.  Like he was chewing on a tough problem.  Then,
just as we entered the kitchen, he said, "I think I'm starting to see
why you don't like being you."

I swung my hand at his face.  He saw it coming and had plenty of time,
but he made no move to stop me or dodge the blow.  He watched my hand
smack his cheek and he kept walking as if nothing had happened.  That
made me angrier.  I'd had my ineffectualness ground in my face all
day.

I wanted to hurt him, show him what Lip Woman and Tit Woman were
capable of.

Something had to get to him.  Some blows had to be worth fending off.

"You get your phone message?"  I asked, nodding toward the answering
machine.  "Some guy Landry is hot for you in a bad way.  Sounded
pissed.  Very pissed."

I looked over at his face for a reaction.  I was rewarded.  Landry's
name was like splashing onion juice in his eyes.  He tried not to show
any expression, let the name bounce off him like the toilet paper roll,
like my slap, but fear squeezed his eyeballs.  Fear and weariness.  Now
I was kind of sorry I'd sprung it on him like that.

I walked into the kitchen.

"Stooop, in the naaame of looove "Awkk."  Standing in the middle of the
kitchen was a black iron floor-stand cage with a brightly colored bird
over a foot tall walking erectly along a perch.

"Good God, now what?"  I said.

"My world is empty without you, babe "He's an Amazona parrot," Byron
explained.  "His name's Motown."

"His name's Dinner in about two minutes.  That's how long it'll take me
to reach the oven."

Byron laughed, but when I started toward the oven, he stepped between
me and the cage.

"I want him out," I told him.  "I mean it."

"You can't hurry love "Awk."

"Jesus."  I shook my head.  His voice sounded small and tinny, as if
coming out of a cheap transistor radio.  His tail was green but his
chest was a brilliant red.  He had a blue comb of spiked feathers on
his head.  These were colors unseen outside a Grayola box.

"The guy who used to own him is an ex-con named Berkshire.

He has a hard-on for Diana Ross.  He taught the bird all her song
titles.  He dances a little to "Baby Love."

" He turned to the bird.

"Mo, do "Baby Love."  C'mon, "Baby love, my baby love Byron did a dance
shuffle by way of encouragement.

"Give him back to the owner."

"I said used to own.  He's all mine now."  Pause.  "I won him."

"You won him?  Just who the hell are you gambling with that you always
win such junk?  Can't you at least win cash and valuable prizes like
every schmuck on a game show?  A goddamn Toyota maybe.  On leo pa
rdy!

they win cash, did you know that?

You come home with a fucking bird that thinks it's a Supreme."

Byron stared at me with a hard expression, a prison-yard expression.

"You don't get it, lady.  You know how long Berkshire had this bird,
how many years it took him to teach it to memorize all these stupid
titles?  You have any idea how much he loved this clump of bird shit
and feathers?  I didn't just win a bird.  I won a man's most valuable
possession.  I took what he cared about most in this whole fucking
world, except maybe his pecker."

"Congratulations.  You make it sound so noble."

"Touch me in the morning I leaned my face against its cage.  "If you're
still here then, I'll touch you all right."  I opened the silverware
drawer and showed the bird a steak knife.  He angled on his perch with
one black eye staring at me.  I tilted the knife so the overhead light
glinted off the blade into the bird's eye.  He blinked once and turned
his back to me.

Byron took off his fancy blue jacket and draped it over the cage.

Motown immediately was quiet.  Byron sat wearily at the kitchen table
and rubbed his eyes.  "Okay, forget appealing to your nobler senses.

Think about this, These birds are brought up at great expense from
Mexico and South America.  They don't breed well in captivity, which
makes them even more valuable.  Vocabulary aside, you're looking at
over two thousand dollars' worth of bird."

"Two thousand dollars?"  I whistled.  "He's growing on me."

I opened the refrigerator and found a can of Byron's beer.  I walked it
over to the table and dropped it in front of him.  It fell on its side
and started rolling toward the edge of the table.  llet it.  I wondered
if that meant the table was slanted or the whole apartment complex
was.

Byron didn't seem to notice and the can kept rolling until it plunged
over the edge like a barrel shooting Niagara Falls.  Barely looking,
Byron reached out and lazily snagged the beer in midair.  He pressed
the cold can against his forehead and mumbled thanks to me.

"Baseball?"  I asked.

"What?"  He looked at me blankly.

"The way you shagged that beer can.  I used to watch a lot of baseball
on ESPN."

He yawned loudly.  "I played some.  College scholarship."

I stared at him a long moment, still trying to figure him out.

What had happened between him and Wren?  What about the beatings?  I
sat in the chair across from him, determined to get some truth out of
him.  "What happened to your finger?"  I asked him.

"What finger?"

"C'mon."

"She crossed her legs too fast."

"Yeah, fine," I said.  I walked back to the refrigerator, grabbed a
diet Coke, and slammed the refrigerator door.  The ketchup bottle
rattled against the salad dressings.

"What?  You toss me a beer and you think that's a front-row ticket to
five acts of my life?"

"You dumped your life on me the moment you came in here blackmailing
me.

"I'm not blackmailing you.  I'm just renting a room.  A stuffy, dusty
room I might add."

"And if I don't want to rent you this stuffy, dusty room?"

He shrugged.  "Life is full of choices.  That would be one choice."

"Then my choice is for you to take your fleabag cat and Diana Ross here
and find other accommodations."

"And it would be my choice then to tell everyone you know that you're
impersonating my dead wife and see which of them has you arrested for
fraud first."

"If that's not blackmail, what is it?"

He looked up through sleepy eyes and smiled.  "Negotiating.

Getting to yes.  Isn't that all life is?  Everybody trying to get what
they want, figuring out what they're willing to trade for it.  Same
thing in love or business.  Like kids trading baseball cards.  The only
worthwhile question anymore is "how much?"  o hear right now, more
prison philosophy.

What were you, the jailhouse Buddha?"

"Am I wrong?"

I sat down and sipped my soda.  "What is it you want?  What are you
doing here?"

"That's not open for discussion."

"Oh, right.  I forgot.  Big, tough mystery man.  He has secrets.

A Past.  All you need now is a theme song and you can have your own TV
series."  I hummed a little of my "Bonanza/Lip Woman" theme for him.

Byron stood up, drawing himself upright like an athlete about to
compete against his arch rival.  I thought he was going to hit me.  But
I didn't duck or flinch.  I just waited for the blow with grit teeth,
just as he had done with my slap.  But it didn't come.

He just walked off into the living room.  When he returned he was
carrying what was left of the Kahliia and vodka.  He poured some Kahlua
into my diet Coke can.

"Any other astute observations about me you want to share?"  he
asked.

I shook my head.  "I think that pretty much covers it.  Except you're
probably the type of guy who begins sentences with "I'm the type of guy
. .."  Am I right?"

He looked at the scrawled figures on the paper I'd written on earlier,
then at the doodles on the TV Guide.  "Wren's Nest.  The Wren Report.

Wren's-Eye View.  What the hell is all this?"

"Nothing!"  I grabbed the TV Guide away, ripping Arsenio's face in
half.

"Jesus," Byron said, shaking his head.  "It's too pathetic.  Now you
want to start the magazine she always talked about.  Jesus, lady, get a
life."

"I have a life."

"Your own life."

"Mind your own business, okay?  You have no idea what I'm doing.  Just
butt out."

"Right."  He slid the torn magazine across the table to me.  He studied
my figures for a moment before tossing them over at me too.  "Where are
you going to get fifty grand?"

Like I was going to tell this ex-con compulsive gambler anything about
my money.  "I dunno.  Save it, I guess."

"Save $50,000?  How?  You don't even have a job anymore."

I spun around and glared at him.

"Relax," he said.  "I wasn't spying.  I just phoned you at work today
to warn you about the bird and they said you weren't working there
anymore.  What happened?  They finally ask you to write something?"

Here's the funny part, I wanted to tell him everything that had
happened.  There was something freeing about talking to him, I guess
because he knew the truth about me.  I could be me, not Wren.  I didn't
have to dazzle, be smart, be witty, be insightful.

I could paint an eye on my boob and get drunk and it didn't matter.

But then again, I had to be wary of him too.  This could be part of his
whole routine to get at the $50,000 he thought I had.  Stay sharp,
Luna, I prodded myself.  Constant vigilance is the price of.  . .

something.  Churchill said that.  He smoked fat cigars.  Sometimes a
cigar is just a cigar.  Freud said that.

What had I been thinking of again?

"Savingfifty grand," Byron said.

"What?

"You asked what you'd been thinking of."

Jesus, I was speaking aloud without knowing it.  I pushed the spiked
diet Coke away from me.  "Since I've lost my job, Byron, there's
nothing left for you to threaten me about."

"Sure there is.  If there weren't, you'd have tossed my stuff on the
front lawn by now.  That means the game is still afoot, as Sherlock
Holmes would say.  Let's see, who is left who would be interested in
your little charade?  Probably that bland-looking boyfriend of
yours."

"He's not my boyfriend.  He's a business associate."

"Oh?  You guys were doing some fancy dry-humping business the other
night."

"Go ahead and tell him," I bluffed.  "I don't care."

"Okay, just as soon as he gets back from Maui."

I slapped my palm onto the table.  "How?"

"That time I was spying."  He made a telephone sign with his
outstretched thumb and little finger.  "One thing you learn in prison
is how to get information ,b, phone.  Inside those walls, the telephone
is a lethal weapon.

"Is that why you're afraid of Landry?  Tell me about Landry."

He looked at me with sad eyes.  "You're not drunk enough."

"We can fix that."

Byron leaned his head back against the cement lip of the Jacuzzi and
sang, "It's the story of a dork named Brady Who got tired of pounding
his pud in the shower So he married this hagged-out bitch with three
nubije, daughters And sniffed their panties while doing the laundry.

I made a face.  "Pounding his pud?"

"You prefer whipping his lizard?  Stroking his dolphin?  Paddling his
canoe?"

"None of the above."  I sipped more Kahlua and diet Coke and
shrugged.

"Why are guys so raunchy?"

He belched.  "Is that a rhetorical question?"

I tried to belch back, but nothing came out.

"Your turn," he said.

"1 never watched The Brady Bunch."

"Bullshit.  Everybody watched.  It was like a satanic cult or
something.  You watched, wondered if the brothers and sisters ever
tried to peek at each other naked."

"God, you're gross."

"I can get grosser.  Unless you admit having watched the show."

"Okay, I watched a few times.  In reruns.  When I was sick in bed and
unable to change the channel.  Between news broadcasts and specials
about the Middle East."

"Yeah, right.  Let's hear your verse."

I shifted on the tile seat, letting the jet of warm water thuttathutta
against my lower back.  Thick bubbles boiled up along my ribs, tickling
me a little.  We'd been sitting in the Jacuzzi for about half an hour,
drinking and rearranging the words to some of our favorite TV shows.

Byron got the idea after I told him about Ethan's comedy act.  We'd
already done the themes to Gilligan's Island and All in the Family.  I
don't know why I was doing this with him.  I didn't even like him, and
I certainly didn't trust him.  After all, he was blackmailing me, and
who knows what violence he'd done to Wren to drive her away.

I looked down at my breast.  A light bluish smudge stained my skin
where I had drawn my eye.  "My eye is gone," I said sadly.

Words felt as thick and heavy as the bubbles stumbling along my rib
cage.

"Sing," he said.

I looked at him.  His face was still tired-looking, but he was smiling
the way he had in those photos in Wren's album.  His dragonfly earring
dripped chlorinated water.

"Tell me about your earring.  Wren saved the matching one, so it must
have meant something to her.  There's got to be a story behind them."

"Sing."

"What about Landry?  Why are you afraid of him?"

He looked down in the lighted water and spread his fingers like a bride
staring at her new wedding ring.  Only he was looking at his stubby
little finger.  "Sing," he said softly without looking at me.  "Just
sing."

I tilted my head back and took a deep breath and sang, "It's the story
of a slutty lady Whose husband died under suspicious circumstances He
was pretty young to have an insulin-induced heart attack Especially
since he wasn't even diabetic.

So she married a geek named Brady, And spanked him with a wire brush
almost every night, And made him bark like a dog and beg for sex, Which
he was used to from his first wife Before she ran off with a tattoo
artist named Chowder Head."

Byron splashed water across the Jacuzzi at me, laughing heartily.  "I
feel like I just desecrated a church or something."

"You started it."  I splashed water back at him.

I heard the sound of metal scraping against cement.  Byron and I both
turned and saw Ethan dragging a pool chair across the cement from the
pool area to the Jacuzzi.  He had a sixpack of beer dangling from one
finger and a hammer gripped in his other hand.  He eyed Byron with
suspicion.  "What's going on?"  he asked me.

"Hi, Ethan."  I tried to rub off the ink splotch from my breast by
pretending to splash water around me.  "Ethan, this is Byron."

Byron held out his hand to Ethan.  But Ethan didn't move, he just
stared grimly, tapping his hammer against his leg.  Byron dropped his
hand.  "What's the hammer for?  Mosquitoes?"

"Wren here had some trouble the other night, some creep in the parking
lot.  Didn't she tell you?"

"No."  He looked at me.  "What happened, Wren?"

"Nothing.  Some guy following me.  Probably a mistake."

"Yeah, well, we did some damage to his car with this baby, didn't we,
Wren?"

I nodded.

Ethan hefted the hammer in his right hand as if he were just itching to
use it again.  "The bastard took off like a Mormon at a wet T-shirt
contest."

Byron gestured at Ethan.  "Come on in and join us, Ethan.

You can bring your hammer if you want."

Ethan didn't move, he was still assessing the situation.

"Byron's renting the extra bedroom," I explained.  "We're roommates.

"Roomies."  Byron smiled.

"Roommates?  I didn't know you were looking."

"Sure you did.  I told you I couldn't afford this place."

"Yeah, but I thought you meant female roommate.  I mean, if I'd known,
I could've recommended someone."

I could tell by the way he looked at me that he meant himself.

"My last roommate pissed in the sink," Byron frowned.  "I hate that."

"I'll try to cut down," I said.

"I had a roommate that did that," Ethan said.  "Got drunk, pissed in
thekitchen sink.  I pissed in his cologne bottle to get back at him.

"Did he stop?"

"No.  He just pissed in my Kool-Aid, then I pissed in his salad
dressing, and he pissed in my car wax .

"It's nice to know men can work out their disputes," I said.

Byron and Ethan both looked at me, then at each other, then shrugged at
the same instant.  It was like watching synchronized swimming.  That
made them both laugh like old pals.  Ethan tossed his hammer on the
chair, stripped off his T-shirt, and hopped into the Jacuzzi.  He
offered Byron a beer, which Byron took.

"Beer, Wren?"  Ethan asked.

I shook my head and showed him my diet Coke.  Another two unopened cans
sat behind me, along with my bottle of Kahlua hidden under my towel.

"What were you guys singing?"  Ethan asked.

"You heard us?"  I asked, embarrassed.

"Yeah, me and half the complex.  The words were a little garbled, but
it was definitely some species of singing."

"You ever watch The Brady Bunch?"  Byron asked.

"Sure.  You see A Very Brady Christmas a couple years ago, where they
brought them all back together for a reunion?  That was so weird, I
mean, the girls had actually had sex by then.  Can you imagine them
giving head?  Jesus."

With some encouragement from Ethan, Byron and I reprised our verses.

Ethan joined in with a pretty funny verse or two of his own.  We
laughed and drank.  I got a little overheated and stretched out along
the edge of the Jacuzzi while Byron and Ethan had a contest who could
stay underwater the longest.  Ethan gave me his watch to time them
because it had a stopwatch in it.  They started breathing deeply,
gulping air.

"Maybe we should make a little bet," Byron said.  "Just to keep it
interesting."

"Sure," Ethan said.  "How much."

Byron smiled, looked at me as if to say, See how easy it is.  I scowled
at him, which made him laugh.  "A buck."

"A buck?  That's all?  Shit."  Ethan signaled me.  "Tell us when to
go.

"Go," I said unenthusiastically.

They both dunked their heads under the water.  Ethan spread his arms
and legs and did a dead man's float around the Jacuzzi.

The jets pushed him around the small pool into walls, but he didn't
react.  Byron just sat on the underwater bench with his head tilted
forward like a devout man lost in prayer.

One minute thirty seconds.

Ethan was leaking bubbles around his head, but otherwise was still
floating.

Byron hadn't budged.

Two minutes twelve seconds.

-i Ethan was standing now, both hands clasped at the back of his neck
as if he were shoving his own head underwater, drowning a stubborn
puppy.

Byron hadn't budged.

Two minutes thirty-two seconds.

Ethan expelled all his air and whipped his head out of the water,
gasping for air.

Byron hadn't budged.

"Shit," Ethan said.  He waded over to me and looked at his watch.  "I
thought the bastard was already up.  I couldn't see him underwater
because of the bubbles.  I thought he was already up.

Shit."

Three minutes.

Three minutes ten seconds.

"Maybe we should do something," I said.

"Let's wait a little," Ethan said, but I could hear the nervousness in
his voice.  He took a few steps toward Byron, his hands ready to yank
him up.

"Three minutes thirty seconds!"  I announced.

Ethan plunged his hands in and pulled Byron's head up.  Byron opened
his eyes.  "What?"

"That's three and a half fucking minutes, man."  Ethan couldn't hide
the mixture of panic and admiration in his voice.

Byron's expression was oddly calm.  I had the feeling that while he'd
been under he hadn't really cared whether he came up for air again or
not.  If he did decide to come up, it would be because he was bored,
not because he needed air.

Byron pointed at Ethan.  "You owe me a buck."

"Absolutely.  It's just that I couldn't see you.  I thought you'd come
up before me.  I coulda stayed down longer.  Next time I'll wear
goggles or something."

We drank some more, chatting on and off about nothing in particular.

Once I nodded off for a few minutes.  When I awoke, Ethan and Byron
were discussing baseball batting averages.  Ethan was very drunk but
Byron didn't seem affected by his drinking.

I swatted at a fat mosquito that flicked around my leg.  I noticed
several red welts that hadn't been there before I'd fallen asleep.

"I'm going in.  The mosquitoes are turning me into a buffet."

"You gotta fight back," Ethan said.  He took some of my diet Coke and
poured it on the crook of his arm.  "Wait."

We waited.

After a few minutes I said, "What are we waiting for?"

"Be patient.  This is neat."

About five minutes later a mosquito landed on the sticky diet Coke on
his arm.  It fussed there a moment until it settled in and started
drinking blood.  We watched it drink for a minute.

"Aren't you going to swat it away?"  I asked.

"Ssshh.

Suddenly Ethan flexed his arm and the mosquito exploded in a wet puff
of blood and ragged body parts, like a small plane in a midair
collision.

"Jesus!"  I said, wincing.

Ethan looked over at Byron expectantly, as if he were trying to make up
for his underwater failure.  "Weird, huh?"

Byron stared without comment or expression.

"Thing is, you gotta wait until they're slurping your blood, then when
you flex, you shoot so much blood into them they just pop.  Like
killing a vampire, right?"

I flashed on the photo in Wren's album, the one where she's pretending
to be Sylvia Plath driving a chopstick stake through Byron's heart.  I
looked at Byron, wondering if he was thinking the same thing.  I
couldn't tell, he had on his blank prisonyard look.  "Actually," Byron
said, "you just killed an expectant mother."

"Right," Ethan chuckled.  "Like you could tell.  What did she have,
swollen ankles and hemorrhoids?"

"What makes you think it was a she?"  I asked, somehow feeling my role
of defender of all female species was being usurped.  As a woman, isn't
this the kind of thing I should know?

"Only the females bite."

"What do the males do?"  I asked.  "Order takeout?"

"They sip nectar from flowers."

"Jesus," Ethan said with disgust.  "Faggots."

Byron looked at Ethan with a cold stare.  "I don't like that word."

Ethan froze, started to say something, thought better of it.  He
shrugged in some sort of apology.

Byron continued, his voice soft and professorial.  "And the females
only drink blood because they need protein for their eggs, which they
lay in batches of about 200."

"Great, then I just killed 201 mosquitoes with one flex."

"More like 2,00I, since they lay about ten separate batches in their
lifetime.

"What's the big deal?"  Ethan said, squirming a little, as if Byron
were judging him.  "They're just mosquitoes.  They spread diseases and
stuff.  They kill hundreds of people a year."

"Millions.  That's why they're so valuable.  They're responsible for
the air you breathe."

"Let me guess, they eat plants and fart oxygen."  Ethan was turning
petulant, feeling picked on.

"You've heard of the rain forests, right?  The ones in the Amazon, the
Congo basin, Southeast Asia?"  Byron looked at me.

"Make your point," I said.  "I have another class in fifteen minutes
and the prof hates it when I'm late."

Byron laughed.  "Okay, here's the short of it, The rain forests account
for half of the world's oxygen, yet we're cutting them down at a steady
rate.  Since we've been talking about it, another ten acres have been
cleared.  One of the main defenses against clearing them any faster are
the 2,000 species of mosquitoes that attack the workers and settlers,
spreading yellow fever, malaria, dengue, filariasis, and o'nyong-nyong
fever.  These little suckers are keeping the rest of the world
alive."

Our former mood of drunken good cheer now shattered, we sat there in
mournful silence a few minutes.  At least Ethan and I did.  Byron,
cheerful as ever, hummed the theme to Green Acres, finally singing the
entire song, including peffeetly mimicking Eva Gabor's Hungarian
accent.

"I'm going in," I announced again.  I gathered my diet Coke cans and
empty bottle of Kahlua.

"Come on, guys," Ethan said.  "Let's make up something to go with The
Partridge Family theme."

"I don't remember how it goes," I said.

II Neither did Ethan or Byron.  We each tried to hum some of it, but no
one could remember enough to trigger anything.  We did The Addams
Family instead, snapping our fingers and getting grosser and grosser in
our lyrics.

"That guy who played on that show," Ethan said.  "Uh, John Astin, he
was Mr.  Addams-" "Gomez Addams," Byron offered.

"Right.  Gomez.  He was married to Patty Duke in real life.

Remember her?"

"You kidding?  The Patty Duke Show.  She was always running around in
skintight pedal pushers.  Our generation's first wet dream."

"Yeah!"  Ethan laughed.  "She played identical cousins.  Jesus, I had
the hots for her."  Ethan shook his head at some wistftil memory and
popped open another beer can.  He pointed his can at Byron.

"I like your earring.  I had my ear pierced a few years ago, but I
don't wear an earring "cause of my job.  The damn hole's grown shut
now.  But it looks good on you.  What is it, a moth?"

"Dragonfly.  It was a gift from my wife.  Instead of rings, during the
wedding ceremony we exchanged earrings.  She had one just like this."

He reached up and touched his.

"Earrings instead of wedding rings.  That's very cool."  Ethan nodded
enthusiastically.  "But why dragonflies?  You some kind of bug expert
or something?  I mean, if it were my wedding, I'd of picked something
more romantic, like moons or unicorns or something."

Byron smiled.  He hoisted himself up onto the lip of the Jacuzzi so
only his feet and shins dangled in the water.  He gestured with one
hand like a magician about to cast a spell.  "Dragonflies, when they
are about to mate, fly to some pond or river where the eggs will
eventually be laid.  The males arrive some time earlier than the
females.  Then they space themselves out along the banks, each holding
and defending his territory while awaiting the females."

"Shit, that sounds like a Club Med trip,I took once.  Every guy sitting
along the pool waiting for chicks.

"When a female dragonfly approaches the male, he sometimes does some
courtship dancing and buzzing and she lets him know whether or not she
likes it.  Then they copulate."

"I don't think fucking should be that complicated.  I think you should
just be able to walk up to someone and say, "Hey, let's fuck' and then
the two of you go at it.  That's what I think.  And if more people were
honest, they'd agree.  That's what I think."

Byron continued his story as if Ethan hadn't spoken.  "Sometimes the
dragonflies start screwing while still flying, then they land and
finish off.  It can take a few seconds"he looked at me"or a couple
hours.  The female then goes off to lay her eggs, sometimes with the
male still attached to her."

Ethan laughed.  "Jesus.  The La Bug Method of delivery.  "Keep buzzing,
dear, don't forget to buzz deeply now."

" He laughed some more.

Byron smiled, his story apparently finished.

I stared at him.  Why hadn't he told me that story when I'd asked him
about his earring?

"I don't get it," Ethan said.  "Which part inspired the dragonfly
earring?  The screwing for a couple hours?"

Byron shook his head.  "The flying together.  When we were together, it
was like we were flying.  When we were apart, I felt like I was
standing on the muddy bank of some swamp waiting for her."  He closed
his eyes and the weariness I'd seen in his face earlier seemed to rush
back all at once.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Ethan said.  "To me love is like handing
someone else a sharp butcher knife and hoping they don't stab you with
it.  That's how I feel all the time when I'm in love.  I don't think
that's healthy, do you?"

"I'm not sure love is healthy."  Byron kicked some water at me.

"What do you think, Wren?  What does love feel like?"

I guess I could've ignored the question, or made something up.  Or used
what Wren had once told me, "When I'm in love," she'd said, "it's like
one of those appliances that runs either on batteries or you can plug
in.  Like a portable cassette player.  When I'm in love and away from
that person, I feel like I'm running on batteries, like I can feel them
draining, running lower with each movement.  When I'm with that person,
I'm plugged in, the 							 current is constant, miraculous."  I could
have said that.  But for some reason I decided to answer straight.

"When I'm in love I rolled over onto my back and stared up into the
sky.  I couldn't see any stars, just a faint fingernail sliver of moon
crowded out of the sky by black clouds.  I thought of Robby and
suddenly horses started stampeding across my stomach.  Tears drowned my
eyes the way Byron had submerged his head in the spa so long.  "When
I'm in love I have the feeling that I'm suddenly a different person.

That I can see more now, like I just took a giant leap up the
evolutionary ladder.  I start to think that I should go back and reread
every book, re-see every movie I've ever known, because I'm so
different now, so much more, that I'd feel differently about everything
I experienced before.  What I loved I might now hate, what I hated, I
might now love."  I shook my head and tears spilled out along both
sides of my eyes.  "I don't know what I'm saying."

"Me neither," Ethan said.  He turned back to Byron.  "I like your
dragonfly story better.  It's weird how everybody seems to know some
bizarre Wild Kingdom story that they relate to their own lives.  My mom
used to always tell me and my sister about all the different species
that are monogamous, you know, mate for life.  Like crows, they mate
for life.  But I think that was more for my dad's benefit than ours.

Me, I saw this documentary once about the three-toed sloth, you know,
that big bearlike thing, lives in South America I think.  Anyway, what
I heard was, the sloth goes up into a tree and does nothing but eat and
sleep for a whole month.  Then at the end of the month, he climbs down
the tree and takes a shit.  It's got to be a world-class shit if he
waited a month to do it.  Anyway, as soon as he starts laying cable,
hundreds of insects that have been living in his fur come running out
to lay their eggs in his shit."  Ethan stopped and drank from his beer
can.  His face was serious and sad.  "I mean, that's how I feel
sometimes.  Like Johnny Carson is the sloth and I'm some insect waiting
for him to take a shit so I can jump into it and lay my eggs.  "He
looked confused a moment.  "I guess the eggs must be my comedy
routine.

But when they hatch, man, then everything will be right.  I'll be
okay."

There was a long minute of silence while Byron and I stared at Ethan.

Ethan stared down at the bubbling water like a man perched on a bridge
deciding whether or not to jump.

"You have any animal stories, Wren?"  Byron asked me.  "Any that
pertain to your life?"

I thought of the dagger-dick bedbug a moment.  I shook my head.  "I
guess I need to watch more documentaries."

I stood up and picked up my towel.  Byron stood up too, handing me my
empty cans of diet Coke and the empty bottle of kahlua.  "Why didn't
you tell me about your earring when I asked?"  I said.

"You didn't ask for the right reasons.

"Fuck you."  I wrapped the towel around my waist and walked back to my
apartment.  As I strolled along the bushes, I saw a white car pulling
into the parking lot.  "Not again!"  I growled.

"Get out of my life!"  I stopped and hurled an empty diet Coke can at
it.  The can dinked off the rear fender.  I expected this to send the
car screeching out of the lot as it had before, instead the car
screeched to a halt and I could see now that the car wasn't a Subaru,
it wasn't even white, more like a pale yellow.  The driver, a young man
with a shaggy mustache, jumped out of the car and started yelling at
me.  "What the fuck's wrong with you?  You nuts, you stupid bitch!"

I ducked around the bushes and ran into my apartment.  I locked the
door but kept my ear pressed against it.  The bushes kept him from
seeing which apartment I'd entered, but he was outside looking at all
the doors.  He knocked on one of my neighbor's doors.

"It's three o'clock in the morning, asshole!"  someone yelled from one
of the apartments.

"Fuck you," the guy said.

"I'm calling the cops," the voice responded.

"Good!"  the guy from the yellow Jetta shouted back.  But a few seconds
later he stomped off, got in his car, parked it, and disappeared into
his apartment.

I was shaken, my heart pounding, my legs wobbly.  I was vaguely ashamed
of having gotten drunk.  Now that fear had sobered me up, I started to
wonder about Byron, about the shiny blue suit, the bird, his insect
lore, his interest in my money.  I went to the kitchen and got the
serrated steak knife out of the drawer and carried it back to my
bedroom.  I placed it under my pillow.

I went to bed.  Faintly, mixing with the sound of the apartment
complex's running streams, I could hear Byron and Ethan singing new
lyrics to the theme from The Facts of Life.

I woke up sometime later, out of a dream I couldn't remember but still
felt.  I was thick with melancholy.  The doorknob jiggled.

I thought of Byron, drunk, fingering his dragonfly earring.

"Go away," I said.

No answer.

"I've got a knife."

Giggling.  Two people, one female.

"I've got a knife," I said louder.  My hand groped under the pillow for
the knife, but I couldn't find it.

"She's got a knife," the female whispered.  I swore it sounded like
Wren.

"A what?"  Byron said.

"A knife.  A fucking knife."

They laughed.

"Wren?"  I said.  I tried to climb out of bed.  But I couldn't find the
knife and no way was I opening the door without a knife.  I closed my
eyes and waited until the voices disappeared.

A When the doorbell rang, I lifted my head from the toilet seat where
I'd fallen asleep.  My left cheek was numb where the curved edge of the
seat had pressed against my face.  I remembered it being about 5,30

A.M. when I'd stumbled out of bed, fallen to my knees with nausea, and
crawled into the bathroom.  I started heaving for about forty
minutes.

At first it gushed out like in The Exorcist, then it settled down to
sporadic spasms.  Sweat slicked my skin and pasted my hair to my
face.

Exhausted, I'd just laid my head on the seat and finished off the night
there.

The doorbell chimed again.

I didn't move, hoping Byron would answer it and send whoever it was
away.  Probably Grudge or one of his mysterious gambling buddies, ready
for another day of scavenging.  Bottom suckers, Wren would have called
them.

The doorbell rang repeatedly, an insistent Morse code.

I hugged the toilet bowl, the porcelain cool against my naked chest.

The small room smelled like vinegar and coffee.  Slowly I pulled myself
upright, knowing now how difficult it was for our ancestral missing
link to first learn how to walk.  I wobbled slightly, hands grabbing at
the walls for balance.  As I passed the bathroom mirror, I noticed a
curving indentation along my cheekbone, a line deep as a saber cut from
the edge of the toilet seat.  Charming.

Like a movie Nazi with a dueling scar from Heidelberg.  I yanked open
the medicine cabinet and dry swallowed four Advil.

I pulled on running shorts and a T-shirt and sang softly."  "The Brady
Bunch, the Brady Bunch I unlocked my bedroom door and moved the chair
I'd wedged against the doorknob last night, I guess to keep Byron
out.

Then I remembered hearing Wren's voice, and Byron's, the doorknob
jiggling, their laughter.  An alcohol-induced dream, I decided.

On the bed, the serrated blade of the steak knife was sticking out from
under a thrown-back sheet.  I was lucky not to have cut myself on it in
my sleep.

The doorbell was still chiming intermittently.  Why hadn't Byron
answered it?  Had he been killed in his sleep by one of his ex-con
cronies over a gambling debt?  His throat slit and his money stolen?  I
just hoped they took the damn cat and bird too.

I staggered my way to the front door and pulled it open, shielding my
eyes against the bright morning sun.  An impossibly cheerful Davis
stood there holding a fresh pineapple.

"Good morning, sunshine," he said, shoving the pineapple at me.

"Maui's finest.  Brought back at great expense and inconvenience.  Ever
try to store one of these under your airplane seat?"

He kissed me on the cheek, right on my toilet seat crease.  He probably
thought it was from a pillowcase seam.

He grabbed the pineapple back and marched straight for the kitchen.

"Pineapple is also great for hangovers.  Follow me.

I did, shuffling after him like a frail convalescent.  "How'd you know
I wouldn't be at work?"  My voice sounded coarse, as if it was passing
through a cheese grater.

"My spies are everywhere."

"Then how'd you know about my hangover?  You got any spies in here?"

He smiled, tapped his nose, and sniffed.  "Kahlua.  I had a little
problem with booze once.  Nothing a couple weeks in an expensive clinic
and a few hundred AA meetings hasn't cured."

We went into the kitchen.  The iron birdcage was still in the middle of
the mom, Byron's jacket still covering it.  "What have we got here?"

Davis asked, peeling back Byron's jacket.  Again I flashed on the dead
body of Philip Dougherty as Detective Diesel peeled back the kitchen
towel from his butchered face.  The hungry fly diving in .

"Stop in the name of love.  .

Davis laughed.  "Now you're talking," he said to the bird.  The bird
repeated the song title a few more times, shifting its head to keep an
eye on us.  Davis threw the jacket back over the cage.

"Some kind of South American parrot," I said.  "Byron won him.

"Raffle?"

I shrugged.  "Poker, I think."

"I play a little poker," Davis said.  "I wonder what the stakes are.

Can't be too high if they're paying off in birds."

"You don't want to play with him," I warned.

"Does he cheat?"

"I don't know.  I just know he wins.

"So do I."  He went through a few drawers before he found the right
knife.  Then he started hacking off the outer skin of the pineapple.

"Byron "I said.  I glanced toward his bedroom.

"He's gone.  Left about five minutes before I knocked.  He walked down
the street and caught a bus."

"Coincidence?"  Every word cost me great energy, so I used them
sparingly.

"Not really.  I've been waiting outside for an hour."

"Really?  An hour?"  I smiled.  That was romantic.  I looked more
fondly at the pineapple, whose inedible core Davis was now carving
away.

"I take it," Davis said, concentrating on his cutting, "that since you
didn't know he was gone, you were either passed out or you sleep in
separate bedrooms."

I considered my answer.  Admitting separate bedrooms was risky.  Why
would husband and wife sleep in separate rooms, especially when the
husband is just out of jail?  I massaged the toilet seat crease in my
face and shrugged.  What the hell.  The man waited outside my apartment
for an hour, brought me pineapple from Maui.  "Separate bedrooms."

"Good.  I know it's childish and sexist and probably a sign of latent
something or other, but the thought of him having sex with you rode me
with spurs the whole time I was gone."  He looked at me with a tender
expression.  "I missed you."

"Me too."

He turned, knife still in hand, the blade slick with pineappl( juice.

I thought of Ethan's definition of love last night, lik( handing
someone else a sharp knife and hoping they don't plunge it into your
heart.  I thought of the knife under my pillow.  Of my mother slicing a
tangerine to teach me about periods.

"If this were a movie," he said softly, "I'd say something clever
here."

I stepped toward him and he dropped the knife on the counter.

It spun on the countertop like a compass needle.  Davis opened his arms
and I stepped into them.  His arms tightened and we kissed.  I kept my
lips pressed together because my mouth tasted like coffee sludge.  But
he drove his tongue between my lips parted my teeth, and swabbed the
inside of my mouth.  I relaxed in his arms and let it happen.  Let it
all happen.

His hand slipped under my T-shirt and massaged my breast, the unscarred
one.  He tweaked my nipple a couple of times and it popped up like a
jack-in-the-box.  His hips fastened against mine and began to grind.  I
could feel his stiff penis mashing against my pubic hair.  I reached
down to his waistband, wedging my fingers inside.  Davis sucked in his
stomach a little and my hand plunged inside his pants.  I found his
penis, hard but bent at an awkward angle.  I pulled it free like a
trapped animal and it straightened along his stomach.  A few drops of
sticky semen glazed my fingers.

We yanked each other's pants down to our ankles.  I stepped out of mine
since I didn't have any shoes or underpants.  Davis's pants puddled
around his ankles like shed skin, his polo shirt bibbed modestly over
his crotch.  He gestured at the kitchen table, which I didn't
understand.  He turned me around so I was facing away from him and
placed his hands on my hips.  He walked me to the table, his steps
shuffling like a chain-gang prisoner in leg irons.  When we reached the
table, he bent me forward so my chest was across the tabletop.  A
couple of stale crumbs of cereal from breakfasts gone by knuckled into
my skin.  Davis stepped between my legs, his hips wedging apart my
thighs.  Then he was in me.

One leg of the table was slightly shorter, so it wobbled when he did,
but that seemed to add to the whole naughty ambience.

Davis gripped my hips, his fingers biting into my skin as he thrust
forward, easing as he rocked backward.  I was a little worried that he
might notice some of the mottled cellulite at the backs of my thighs,
spotlighted by the bright morning sunlight illuminating the kitchen.

But when I looked back over my shoulder, his eyes were closed tight,
his tongue wedged in the corner of his mouth like a little boy
concentrating on hitting his first baseball.  I felt a warm tingle of
tenderness for him right then, though I wasn't in a good physical
position to demonstrate it.  So I just moved my hips with even more
enthusiasm.  His hips slammed into my buttocks with a wet slapping
noise as his movements became more intense.  His hands gripped the tops
of my shoulders, pulling me down on him as he thrust forward.  He was
grunting softly.

He slipped one of his hands under my hips so his finger could press my
clitoris.  With each thrust I felt an extra sensation as I slid along
his finger shaft.  Just picturing him behind me, knowing he was staring
down at me now, looking at my most intimate and private parts as he
slid in and out of me, heated my skin all the way to my scalp.  I came,
arching my hips up, then slamming them down on the table, crushing his
hand.  If it hurt him, he didn't let on.  Maybe this was how Byron had
lost his little finger, I thought, then forced the thought away as some
sort of betrayal of Davis.

When Davis came, it lasted for a long time.  His hips convulsed, he
rested, then another spasm as he squeezed more semen into me.  Finally,
he collapsed on my back, hugging me and kissing me between the shoulder
blades.  His hips were cool on my spine.

"Aloha," he said.  "Ready for a big surprise?"

The jail was pretty modern, I guess.  Bright paint everywhere and the
smell of new carpet.

Season Dougherty, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, sat on the other
side of the Plexiglas partition speaking through a battered black
telephone.  There were deep gouges scarring the Plexiglas between us,
as if someone had banged their receiver in frustration.

I had my tape recorder running, a suction cup microphone attached to my
receiver.  A young uniformed officer sat at a gray desk filling out a
questionnaire for Scientology.  We were otherwise alone.

The last and only time I'd been to a jail was when I'd picked up Wren
the night we were shot.  What would she think of me here, interviewing
a murderer, having had sex on the kitchen table only an hour ago,
sleeping with a knife under my pillow, getting drunk with her
husband?

"Better get dressed," Davis had suggested after our kitchentable
romp.

"We only have an hour until your appointment with Season."

We'd showered together, lathering each other and laughing as our hands
lingered here and there.

"Tell me ahout Maui," I'd asked him while shampooing his hair.

"I ate a pig that had been buried in the ground all day."

"Was it good?"

He made a face.  "I couldn't tell.  I was too busy feeling like a grave
robber."

"Is that why you went, for the cuisine?"

"Ow, you got some in my eye."  He squinted his right eye.

I tilted my head under the shower and filled up my mouth with water.  I
spit the water in his right eye.

"Thank you, Florence Nightingale," he said, rubbing his eye.

"Why'd you go so suddenly?"  I left off the important part of the
question, "without calling me first."

He got a serious expression on his face.  "Let me tell you a little
something about the movie business.  It's not like anything else you're
familiar with.  It doesn't run on logic.  In other businesses, the
product is the goal of the business.  You make a product, you sell it,
you make money.

"Thank you, Karl Marx."

He laughed.  "In Hollywood, movies are a byproduct of business, like
toxic waste.  The goal is power, every individual trying to prove to
others that they have power.  Sometimes to prove that, you actually
have to make a movie, which most people consider an annoyance.  Think
of it as a big pissing contest.  Movies are merely the liquid you drink
so you can piss.  Pissing is the goal, not nourishment.  And when you
stop to drink, that means you're not pissing.  Someone else is pissing
in your place.  But they stop to drink, that is make a movie, because
once it's done, they can go about the real business again."

"Pissing."

"Right.  Getting power.

"To do what?"

He looked surprised.  "Nothing.  It's the end in itself.  Okay, here,
this'll make it clear.  It's like bodybuilding.  These guys build up
their muscles, pumping weights every day of their lives, hours at a
time, dieting constantly, shaving the hair off their bodies, practicing
posing routines in front of mirrors.  What for?  To look good.  They
don't do anything with their strength.  In fact, strength isn't the
issue, that's never measured.  Looking strong is the point.

Their muscles aren't used to do anything except make bigger muscles.

It's all about flexing.  Same in Hollywood.  Making a movie is how we
pump up, but the muscle is basically useless, for show.  See?"

"I don't think I care enough to see.  Besides, what's this got tc do
with you going to Maui?"

"I heard about some woman over there, a lawyer.  She'd jusi gotten a
divorce and she took her two young boys sailing in Maui A whole
unite-the-family recovery thing.  Anyway, big storrr comes up and sinks
the boat.  She rescues her boys, who are trapped in the sinking ship.

Very dramatic stuff, underwater diving, attacked by jellyfish or some
such thing.  I thought it might make a good MOW.

"A what?"

"Movie of the Week.  You know, true story family drama, woman in peril,
lots of adventure, and a happy ending."

"So the kids are all right?"

"They will be in the movie version.  Remember, "based on a true
incident' covers a multitude of sins."

"What happened to the real kids?"

"One lost his leg, the other's in critical condition.  The mother's in
therapy.  The ex-husband is suing to get the kids back claiming she was
negligent."

"But in your version one kid will just have a limp, the other a
sunburn, and the mother will wisecrack as she walks bravely down the
beach with her sons.

Davis pointed a finger at me.  "Now you're thinking like a producer."

He shut off the shower and grabbed a towel.  Quickly he began to pat me
dry.  "I flew to Maui to wrap up the rights before anyone else got wind
of the story.  I'd like to get lucky again, like I was with Season,
signing her up before she killed her husband.  If I'd waited one more
week, I wouldn't even have been in the top five bidders."

"It's an ill wind that doesn't blow some good."

He looked at me as if wondering if I was being sarcastic or not.

"You up to writing this book?"

I stepped out of the shower and stared at myself in the foggy mirror.

Blurred by the mist, I looked like a ghost.  Davis wiped the towel
across the mirror and I could see myself more clearly.

There was still a tiny spot of ink on the scar tissue on my breast.

I thought about Season Dougherty, what had gone through her mind when
she'd pulled the trigger and blasted her ex-husband in the crotch and
face.  Like some B-movie cliche' of a rape victim getting revenge.  I
tried to see her action from a positive angle.

Not as destruction, but creation.  She hadn't torn a hole in the fabric
of the universe by murdering a human being, she'd mended it by
protecting her daughter.  She had seen a need and filled it.

Like an inventor.  She had invented protection for her daughter.

Or maybe she was just a murderer.

"Where did you shoot him first?  Face or genital area?"

"You get right to it, don't you?"

"I'm curious."

"The autopsy report will tell you.

"Yes, it will."

She looked at me, studying my face.  A faint smile curled her lips.

"You mean, did I want to punish him or kill him?  If I shot him in the
crotch first, then maybe I was out to punish him and killed him as some
sort of afterthought.  If I killed him first, the crotch shot was just
a mother's sexual outrage.  The former's murder, the latter is
diminished capacity.  Right?"

"Something like that."

She didn't say anything for a while.  We just looked at each other
through the thick Plexiglas, our phones pressed to our faces.

I wondered who was the last person talking into this phone and if they
ever cleaned the mouthpieces.  Season Dougherty had , wholesome
scrubbed look to her face, pretty in an outdoorsy way.

She was about forty, her dark hair straight and thin, but shin, and
rich-looking.  It was cut a couple of inches above the shoulder."  but
bounced whenever she moved her head.  She kept it tucked, behind her
ears like Gloria Vanderbilt.  I pictured her squaffin, in jeans next to
a campfire, pouring coffee into a metal cup, guy in chaps and rawhide
gloves hopping off a horse and saying "Whattaya want me to do next,
ma'am?"

Suddenly Season "stood up and peered down through the Plexiglas to get
a better look at me.  "Stand up," she said.  "I want to see who I'm
dealing with."

"I don't see how that matters "Come on, you've been checking me out
since you got here.

"That's my job.  I'm writing a book about you."

"And I'm supposed to confide in you.  Why?  Just because David sends
you over?"

"I think because you signed a contract with him."

She sat down.  "Right.  I did that.  You know why?"

I knew this was tricky ground.  As tough and self-confident as she
seemed, there was something shaky about her.  I said, "To let people
know what happened to ,your daughter, try to keep it from happening to
other little girls?"

She laughed outright at this.  "How noble I would have been.

How wonderfully good."  She leaned back in her chair and looked around
the room.  Her eyes glistened.  "I need the money, Ms. Caldwell.  I
haven't worked in eight months, I haven't a single patient left.  My
equipment has been repossessed, my office leased to a veterinarian.

You think my lawyers are working just f6r the publicity?  Maybe if I
were the first case like this.  But I'm just some woman dentist from
Newport Beach who defied a court order allowing my child-molesting
husband visitation with the object of his perversion, my daughter.  For
a while I had some celebrity status.  I photograph well and everyone
loves a mystery.

"Where is her daughter?"  But now my case is as common as mud.

And believe me all this costs money.  It costs money for lawyers and it
costs money to keep my daughter and sister in hiding.  I am like a
one-woman Witness Protection Program."

"There are organizations, underground railroads to help women in your
situation."

"I'm not a woman in any fucking situation!"

The young guard looked up from his Scientology questionnaire and made a
stern face.  He pointed to a sign over his shoulder that said NO FOUL
LANGUAGE.  She shrugged at him to indicate she would be more careful.

"Look, I didn't kill Philip to make a statement for women everywhere.

I killed him because I'd lost too often in the court system and that
meant my daughter and sister were going to have to stay in hiding for I
don't know how many more years.  I knew Philip had hired detectives to
find her and kidnap her.  It was only a matter of time before they
succeeded.  What would you have done?"

"How do you know your husband was guilty?  A judge acquitted him."

"Are you a mother, Ms.  Caldwell?"

"No."

She just shrugged, as if nothing she could say to me would matter since
I didn't have a child.  I resented that maternal smugness.  "Your
daughter's testimony was ambiguous at best, that's what the judge
said."

"It wasn't ambiguous to me.  It wasn't ambiguous when my five-year-old
daughter told me how her daddy took her into the shower with him and
how he washed her and washed her an, stuck his finger into her vagina
and said, "We have to make sure every place is nice and clean,
honey."

But he kept his finger iF her and made her soap his erection and rub it
and rub it until h( came on her."  She lowered the phone and for a
moment I though she would hang up, the interview was over.  She looked
aroun, the room again, as if she kept forgetting where she was and hac
to remind herself.  Her right index finger flexed several times, a if
she were pulling that trigger again and again.

My own bullet wound ached with sympathy for her and he daughter.  Yet,
it was not my job to merely chronicle her accoun of events.  I couldn't
take her word for things.  I'd read the new accounts on the way over
here this morning, Davis had the whole file in his car for me.  Her
daughter, Jamie, testified that she ha' taken a shower with her father,
he had washed her off, but nothing else had happened.  Season Dougherty
had testified that the child had come home crying and told her about
the sex, bt that now she was too frightened by her father to tell the
truth The judge had no choice but to dismiss the charges.

I had no doubt that Season Dougherty was convinced the events were
real.  But were they?  A doctor's examination showed there had been
physical penetration, some minor irritation, disturbed hymen.  But
Philip Dougherty's doctors had testific that this could have happened a
number of ways.  Should a ma be prosecuted because he showered with his
young daughter because he wasn't ashamed of casual nudity and didn't
want h daughter to be?

"He had names for my breasts," she said.  "Ethel and Freida You know,
like Lucy and Ricky's neighbors on I Love Lucy."

"Why did you divorce?"

She sighed a deep, rattling sigh.  "Why do people divorce?"

"Other lovers."

"We didn't have any.  I know I didn't.  I'm pretty sure he didn't, at
least no longterm mistresses."

"Then what?"

She shook her head.  "Erosion.  I don't know.  I thought I knew then.

Then it was so clear.  I told all my friends the reasons."

She laughed.  "Maybe you should ask them.  Maybe they remember."

Why had Robby and I split up?  Okay, he'd been fucking his professor.

But what led to that?  What hadn't I given him that he needed, that he
now had?  Was it just for a change and that's all?

A different accent, a different smell, a different taste, to hear
different stories from the past?  Nothing more?

"How's yourdaughter taking this?  Does she know?"

"She knows.

I waited for more.  None came.  "Will you bring her out of hiding
now?"

Season Dougherty looked distracted, as if she was thinking of something
else.  For a moment she reminded me of Wren during one of her
inspirational flashes.  She sat up, leaned forward, her eyes wide with
anticipation.  "What are you wearing?

"What?"

"You're wearing makeup, aren't you?"

"Some.  A little lipstick."

"And foundation.  Eyeliner.  I can see it from here.  What else?"

"What do you mean?"

"Stand up, let me look."  She smiled.  "What's it going to cost you?"

I stood up, turned slightly.  I was wearing a drab brown skirt and a
plain white blouse.  I dressed more like a prisoner than she did.

"Panty hose, right!"  She said it with an accusing bark.

I looked over at the guard, but he didn't look up.  "Yes, panty
hose."

"And heels.  You're wearing heels."

"Short heels.  One inch at most."

"And a tight skirt."

"A straight skirt.  It's not exactly revealing."

"But it is, Ms. CaIdwell.  It's extremely revealing.  It reveals the
kind of mindset women in this society have.  You're a professional
woman.  Davis tells me you hold several master's degrees."

I shrugged.

"You are among the elite of women, the educated professionals.  Yet you
still dress like a slave girl.  What exactly is the function of panty
hose?"

I studied her eyes, but she wasn't being crazy.  Just intense.

"To make your legs look better, I guess."

"By better you mean sexier?"

"I suppose so.

"And high heels?"

"I don't know, it's expected.  Like bankers wearing a tie."

"But what's the effect of making you walk tiptoe in heels?"

I didn't want to play this game.  "What's your point?"

"Humor me, Wren.  Just answer.

"The point of heels is to make your calves bulge, I guess."

"To make them look sexier."

"Okay, yes.  To make them look sexier."

"Now, why would a professional woman want to make her legs look
sexier?

You aren't looking to fu__" She glanced over at the guard.  "To screw
guys when you're out doing your job.  Guys don't show their legs, do
they?  You shave your legs too, right?

And your armpits."

I nodded.

"Why?  Why would shaving your body look sexier?  Why would putting you
in shoes and skirts that inhibit your movement make you sexier?

Because it makes you more like a helpless little gifi That's the sexual
fantasy we're promoting to the men in this society.  We cover our
facial lines, shave our bodies, and outfit ourselves' in restrictive
clothing, all to feed this male desire for young girls.  Then when
there's an epidemic of child molestatior and incest, women start
yelling at how this could come about They accuse pornographers, want
restrictions.  Hell, we helped come about.  It's our fault for dressing
like that, for buying in, what we've been told is sexy.  If a
full-grown woman with hair on her body and wrinkles on her face isn't
sexy, then what does that say about our men?  You and I are
responsible.

We're the reaso our own children are getting raped."

"Don't you think that's overstating it a bit?"

She looked at me with a hard gaze, the same look I saw in Byron at
times.  As if they've seen something I can't even imagine.

"I read this article," she said, her voice quiet, but intense as a
humming power line.  "There're whole parts of Africa where they perform
a clitoridectomy on women.  You know what that is?"

I didn't know, but my throat constricted at the word.

"They slice off the little girl's clitoris to prevent her from having
sexual pleasure, therefore removing her motivation to cheat.

Then they sew her up so she can pee and have very painful
intercourse."

"Well," I said, shifting uncomfortably.  I thought of my stepmother
beating off weasels.  "Primitive tribes have strange customs .

"I'm not talking about some lost tribe in the jungle.  I'm talking
about eighty million women that have this done.  And you know who
performs the surgery usually, who talks the girl into this
mutilation?

Her mother.  Her mother and grandmother actually cut it off.  You see
my point now?"  She leaned back in her chair.

"In fact, I can't talk to you anymore until you take off those fucking
panty hose.

"Pardon?"

"Take them off.  Right now."

"I can't do that."

"The guard can't see you through the partition."

"I don't care.  I'm not stripping down in public."

"Then I can't talk to you.  I have to talk to someone who isn't helping
get our children raped."  She got up and walked away.

The hell with her, I thought.  Go on and walk, you hairy, flatfooted
bitch.  I don't need this crap from a shotgun-wielding dentist.  I
don't need fashion advice from a woman in an orange jumpsuit.

But I did need her, I needed this job.  It was my last chance at making
something of my life while I still had Wren's identity.  If I blew this
and went back to being just plain Luna Devon, I had no hope.

"Hey," I called.

She stopped, looked back.  I waved her to return.  She didn't.

I looked around the room, no one was on this side of the partition.  I
reached under my skirt and quickly yanked my panty hose down as fast as
I could.  My shoes popped off as I pulled them over my feet.  I pressed
the balled-up panty hose against the Plexiglas partition.

She returned and sat down.  "And please don't wear makeup next time."

"Tell me about the first time you had sex."

I shook my head.

"Oh, come on.  Don't be selfish.  What's the big deal?"

"No big deal," I said.  "I just I shrugged.

"Just tell me.  Jump in, like swimming in the ocean."

I laughed.  "The very first time?"

"Yes, the very first time.  Your first naked penis, long may it wave.

I thought it over.

"You have had sex, haven't you?"

"Ho, ho," I said.  "By "first time' do you mean actual intercourse or
just sex in general, like just touching it?"

She waved impatiently.  "Whichever is more interesting.  Just make it
good."

I thought for a moment.  Season sat on the other side of the Plexiglas
fidgeting with a yellow pencil stub while waiting for my answer.  The
phone receiver was pinned between her shoulder and ear.  A deep white
scratch zagged across the Plexiglas between us as if someone had tried
to claw their way through.  The scratch hadn't been here yesterday.

She licked her thumb and tried to rub out the scratch, but it didn't
come off.  Out of politeness, I did the same thing on my side of the
glass.  The scratch remained.

"I'm waiting," she prodded.

"Shouldn't I be asking you these kinds of questions?"  I said.

"I'm the interviewer here.  The book's about you."

"I'm bored with me," she said.  "My lawyers talk about me, the shrink
they hired talks about me, the news media talk about me, you talk about
me.  .."  She shrugged.  "I've talked so much about me that I've kind
of lost sense of me.  I feel like I'm talking about an old friend now,
someone I used to be close to but haven't seen for a long time.  It's
weird.  This morning I woke up and couldn't remember what my favorite
color was."

"What is your favorite color?"

"Green, I think.  Or blue.  I guess I'll have to wait and read your
book to find out who I am again."  She smiled crookedly and deep lines
that I hadn't noticed before tugged at her eyes.

Her body seemed slightly smaller than last time I'd seen her, slightly
older.  Her orange prison jumpsuit was puffed up around her like an
astronaut 5 space suit.  This was my third straight day of interviewing
her, and each time we spoke, it was as if, in telling me her story, she
were disappearing.  As if every word she spoke were organic, a living
part of her body.  To speak was like tearing off tiny pieces of her
flesh and tossing them into the air.

"I look awful, right?"  she said suddenly.  She tucked a few strands of
hair behind her ear.

"No, not at all.  You're beautiful."

She made a sarcastic face.  "Yeah, beautiful in my soul, and I can
cook.  Shit, I don't want to date you, I just want some truth."

"You look tired."

"Tired?  Christ, I look like I'm going through chemotherapy.

She gestured around the room.  "This place isn't so bad.  They'r,
transferring me to county soon.  Now that place is supposed to be a
real stalag.  You may have to smuggle me in an iron chastity belt."

"I'm not taking mine off for anyone.

She laughed.  The laughter shook some hair loose from behind her ear.

She stopped abruptly to tuck it back.  She studied me , few seconds.

"Come on, Wren, tell me something juicy abon yourself.  Something
nasty.  A little tit for tat here.  Girl talk.  Jus so I don't feel so
damn exposed all the time."

"First sex, huh?"

"That's a good place to start.  And feel free to embellish the truth to
make it more interesting.  I know I have."

I laughed.  "Don't let Davis hear that."

"Don't worry, Davis would be the last to care."

That was probably true.  Davis was busy riding a tidal wave 0 success
through Hollywood.  He'd made his deal for Season's stor to be filmed,
and now he'd closed the deal on the woman in Hawaii.  A fortyish TV
actress who'd once had a hit sitcom bought it for her own production
company.  Now Davis was in demand, lunching every day with a different
studio mogul.  Yesterday he'd met Bette Midler about playing Season.

Everything was going his way.  He claimed that I was his lucky charm,
that since he'd met me, great things had happened.  He was so happy
that he would occasionally burst into song, usually a selection from
The King and I. He was very proud of his Yul Brynner impression.

But while he sang "Is a Puzzlement" and lunched at fancy restaurants in
Los Angeles, the woman who was the real charm for his success sat in a
prison awaiting trial.  Of course, Wren, the woman who was my lucky
charm, was decomposing in a coffin.  Now Season was my new charm.  I
visited her every day and asked her endless questions about her life.

How had a woman who'd accomplished so much come to lose faith in
everything she'd believed in, the very values she'd taught her
daughter?  What brought her to her ex-husband's house with a loaded
shotgun?

What gave her the courage to pull the trigger?  Was it a mother's
self-sacrifice for an abused daughter?  Or just an embittered ex with a
grudge?  Sometimes I even forgot I was writing a book and my questions
were just the natural curiosity I felt.  I was fascinated with how the
mundane and the fantastic in our lives merge.  How had someone as
ordinary as I come to have a gunshot scar on her boob?  In some ways, I
was like a novitiate studying at the feet of a Zen monk, looking for
some truth in the smallest details, What did she wear that day?  How
did she decide what to wear to her husband's execution?  Did she put on
her favorite underwear knowing she'd be arrested and strip-searched?

Did she wear shoes she didn't mind getting blood and brain goop on?

Davis, on the other hand, rarely asked me personal questions about
Season.  He cared about her physical welfare, providing her with
whatever comforts she was allowed to have in prison.  He was like an
attentive son.  But he wasn't curious about her actions the way I
was.

He just took them for granted.  When I asked him why he wasn't so
curious, he said he'd find out everything when he read my book.

1.

Season seemed open with me, answering all my clumsy queries
thoughtfully, sometimes even humorously.  But I could see she was
starting to wane.  She'd been under enormous pressure, with bail
hearings, media coverage, constant questions from everyone about where
her daughter was hiding.  Davis coordinated the media interviews and
was always present during them, riding shotgun along with Season's
lawyer.  Some questions, Davis warned the press, were taboo, the
answers being reserved exclusively for me and my book.  And the
trial.

I never wore makeup or panty hose or heels when visiting Season.  We
debated her "little girl" theory of fashion a couple of times, but she
didn't get rabid about it or anything.  She explained it all very
rationally and I found her uncomfortably convincing.

"Are you an active feminist?"  I once asked her.

She'd laughed.  "I'm not a feminist, I'm a mother."

"What's the difference?"

"Feminist is just a word people use to dismiss the truth.  I've never
marched or sued or written a political letter.  All I did was pull a
trigger."

"You've lost me.  I'm just trying to figure out how you expect women to
live practically in this world, how can they compete in a
male-dominated work force without conforming to some of those male
expectations?"

"That's like me tossing a black slave some shackles and saying, "Here,
go lock yourself up for the night."

"She'd yawned, bored.

"It doesn't matter.  Women know they're wrong, that's why they argue so
hard.  Every time you take a razor to yourself, you're slicing off a
part of who you are, the same as if you were binding your feet, the way
Chinese did with their women.  It crippled them, you know."  She'd
paused, studied her hands.  "Like I said, I was never a political
person.  I'm just a mother who doesn't want her daughter to end up a
prisoner, whether it's inside or outside the bars."

I continued to shave my legs and armpits, though I always wore slacks
and long-sleeved blouses so Season wouldn't know this.  Maybe she was
right in the long run, but I was no tragic hero willing to sacrifice
myself for a cause.  Besides, I liked the feel of my skin, smooth and
soft.  Did that make me a bad person?

The thing is, I'd grown fond of Season, even admired her.  Not for
killing her husband.  I still considered that a little excessive.

But at least she had done something, she had acted.  Even if the action
was brutal, even if it was wrong, it was still an attempt to make
things right.  Even if her reasons were self-delusion, she had acted on
her version of reality.  What would most women have done in her
place?

Shrugged, sent their daughters off to their husbands, and hoped for the
best.  Is that any less a selfdelusion?

"Come on, Wren," Season coaxed.  "Don't be a prig.  Spill your guts."

I shut off the recorder and removed the suction cup from the phone
receiver.  "Okay.  First sex.  Here goes."  I leaned forward toward the
Plexiglas.  So did Season.  Not that we could hear each other any
better that way, we still had to speak through the phones.  But I
appreciated the gesture of intimacy.  I hadn't told this story to
anyone except Robby and Wren.  I don't know why I was telling Season.

I mean, I could have told her about Wren's first time with her handsome
water polo champion cousin, or Mom's first time with her screenwriter
on the set of the giant scorpion movie.  After all, what did it matter
whose first time it really was I told about.  Except that I felt as if
I owed Season some little truth.

"I was fifteen.  In the ninth grade.  My school had a poetry contest"
"And you won.

I shook my head.  "Third place.  I wrote something about the plight of
illegal aliens or something.  I just took a Bob Dylan song and replaced
all the lyrics with my own.  You could ve sung my poem to "Mr.
Tambourine Man."

"How'd it go?"

"No.  That's where I draw the line.  Sex, okay, adolescent poetry no.

Leave me some shred of dignity."

C'mon.  I love Bob Dylan."

I laughed.  "It went, "Hey, you bracero, with the mud between "I your
toes/Hardly anybody knows what you've been going through' "You're not
going to be this long-winded in our book, are you?"

"Lay off.  I'm sharing a moment here."

She snorted.  "Just get to the good stuff.  Naked body parts."

"Anyway, the three winners from our school got to go to some conference
for junior high school poets all over the state.  We stayed in a hotel
and everything."

"You boffed one of the other poets when he read his romantic poem.

"Are you going to let me tell my story or what?"

"Go, go."

"Right.  So, Mr. Bilford, our English teacher who took us to the
conference, calls me to his room.

"Oh, shit, not the teacher."  She laughed.  "I've seen this "He starts
talking about my poetry and all that stuff, how good I am.  Then,
suddenly, he's kneeling on the floor with his arms wrapped around my
knees telling me how much he likes me, how he's been watching me for a
couple years, waiting until I was old enough to tell me his true
feelings."

"Was he cute, at least?"

"He looked like Peter Tork of the Monkees.  You remember them?"

She nodded.  "Not my type.  Then what?"

"I don't know.  I was stunned.  I didn't know what to do.  Then he
starts kissing me and hugging me.  I was so scared I didn't know
whether to run or what.  I didn't kiss him back, but I didn't run
either.  I gtiess he considered that encouragement, because then he
grabs my hand and places it on his crotch.  I'm sitting there with a
handful of my English teacher."  I laughed.  "I didn't know what he
wanted me to do with it.  So he unzips his pants and shoves my hand
inside, he wraps my fingers around his penis and holds my hand there,
and starts pumping.  He came in a couple strokes.  Then he gets a
washcloth and wipes my fingers like I was a little girl playing in
mud.

Afterward he cries and begs forgiveness."

"Christ, could you ask for anything more perfect your first time than a
guy who cries and begs you to forgive him?"

"A week later he calls me at home and begs me to start up again with
him, he wants to leave his wife, quit his job if he has to.  Whatever
it takes.  I tell him no, I don't want to see him again in that way.

He cries and hangs up.

"What happened to him?"

"He and his wife moved to Florida during the summer.

"Not bad," Season said.  "I'll give it an 8. 5. Diverting yet with a
touch of pathos."

"Thanks a heap.  You got a better one?"

She tapped her front teeth.  "Today I have perfect straight teeth with
not one cavity, thanks to the mass of grillwork I wore for most of my
puberty.  Believe me, the Wonder Years are a little less wonderful
smiling through barbed wire."

I fastened the suction cup back onto the receiver and pressed the
Record button.

Season continued, "I don't think I can blame the braces for any lack of
sexual experience.  After all, plenty of other girls wore braces and
they were sleeping with plenty of cool guys.  But I was painfully shy
and dating made me physically nauseous.  I actually used to throw up
before every date.  Puke breath doesn't exactly make you popular with
the hot hormone crowd.  Finally, by eleventh grade, I had a steady
boyfriend, Joey Gregson, who did the 400meter breaststroke for the swim
team.  We'd been dating for over a year.  Mostly we'd done our petting
with all our clothes on, though often fully unbuttoned.

Usually we finished off these evenings with my no-pregnancy specialty,
a one-minute blow job.  But he was so afraid of my braces slicing his
precious weeny that he made me wax them first.  He even gave me
something called Sex Wax, which is really for waxing surfboards, but
which he'd brought back with him after he'd gone to Los Angeles for a
week to visit his uncle.  When he'd come back he was crazy to become a
suffer, even though there's not much surfing in Flagstaff, Arizona,
where we lived.  So, I'd wax my braces and do it."

She made a tight circle of her mouth to indicate the act.  We both
laughed.

"This went on for about six months.  Then, during the summer before our
senior year, Joey breaks off with me because he's decided to go to L.A.
and stay with his uncle for the summer and become a real suffer.  He
doesn't want any ties, he tells me, he just wants to concentrate on his
surfing, not worry about me back here where he can't do anything about
it.  Here's the part I like, He flies to L.A., goes out surfing the
first day, and gets his arm broken by a bunch of surf nazis because
he's not a local and he's surfing their waves.  He coiTies back to
Flagstaff the next week with his arm in a twenty-pound cast.  He calls
me up and I end up with Sex Wax permanently embedded in my braces all
summer.  She shrugged helplessly.  "Is it any wonder I became a
dentist?"

I laughed.  "Why do people talk about sex so much?  The amount of talk
about it is disproportionate to the amount of time actually doing
it."

"I know.  It's kind of like you spend so much time fantasizing and
analyzing that it's a bit of a disappointment to actually do it."  She
tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear again.  "Sex is too
complicated.  I mean, when do you know if you're doing it enough to
satisfy your partner?  Aren't you always wondering if he wants more
than you're giving him?  Or if he doesn't seem to want it as much,
isn't it becarise you aren't as desirable?  Or if you are doing it a
lot, won't it just get boring that much faster?

Like each couple has a specific number of times they can have sex
before it starts to get stale.  Then you start wondering if while he's
pumping away on you if he's not picturing that young beauty he saw in
the movie you both attended earlier that night.  How are you supposed
to feel knowing that he's imagining her body and face while he's
gripping your hips?"

"I don't know.  I guess you do your own fantasizing."

"That just seems so pathetic, two people making love, each thinking
about someone else.  I mean, I know all the sex doctors tell you it's
healthy and all.  I don't know.  I'm probably in no position to talk
ethics here."  She crooked her thumb at the barred windows.  "I haven't
had sex since my divorce over a year ago.  I dated, I never had trouble
with men asking me out.  I just couldn't get enthused about it.  I
tried just doing it to myself for a while.

I bought a huge ole vibrator with more gears than a Porsche.  But that
only made me feel lonelier.  I kept imagining ghosts of my dead
grandmothers floating around and watching me, feeling sorry for me."  I
noticed tears brimming at the corners of her eyes.

I didn't know what to tell her.  That I'd gone through the same thing
after my marriage broke up.  But all that was behind me now.  Now that
I'd met Davis.  Wouldn't that just make matters worse for her?  After
all, prospects for getting out of prison within the next fifteen years
didn't look promising.

"Here's the worst part, Wren," she said.  The tears were flowing freely
now.  Her mouth was contorting to fight the sobs that had started.

There was an urgency in her voice, as if she had to tell me now before
she chickened out.  When she spoke, her voice was a hoarse whisper.  "I
miss him, Wren.  I miss Philip.  I know it's crazy, but I do.?"  A loud
gasping sob exploded from her as if she'd been punched in the
stomach.

The guard looked up from his reading, stared menacingly.  I smiled at
him to indicate all was well.  He kept staring for a few seconds
longer, then dipped his head back into his book like a cow returning to
grazing.

"God help me, Wren.  We really were happy once.  Philip and I cuddled
on Sunday mornings, had lazy sex, read the Sunday Times.  Jamie would
lie on the bed between us, coloring dinosaurs with her fluorescent
crayons.  Philip would then take us all out to brunch and a movie.  I
would feel sorry for the rest of the world, that they weren't as
happy."  She looked directly at me, her eyes sagging from the weight of
tears.  "And the craziest part, Wren, the part that makes me not care
what happens to me now, that makes me know I deserve whatever
punishment I get, is that I sometimes miss Philip more than I miss
Jamie.  How am I supposed to live with that?"

I sat there for a moment, watching her sob.  She let the phone fall
from her hand.  I wanted to help her, touch her, comfort her somehow.

But the guard was already up and marching toward us.

I turned off the tape recorder.  I rewound a little way.  I erased.

Davis picked me up outside the jail.  "Get in, babe.  I'm breaking ya
outta dis crummy joint."

I got into his station wagon.  Davis leaned over and kissed me.

I hugged him hard, the way I'd wanted to hug Season.

"How'd it go?"  he asked.

"Grim."

He nodded, as if he already knew what Season had said.  He pulled away
from the curb.  "Well, forget it for a couple hours.

Right now, get in the mood to celebrate."

"Celebrate what?  You sell another project?"

"No, you did."  He reached over and stroked my leg.  "Your book about
Season Dougherty has been bought.  I finished negotiating the deal a
couple hours ago."

"Really?"  I said, excited.  "It's really going to happen then.

Jesus, this book is actually going to be published."

He smiled at my enthusiasm.  "Damn right it is.  And it's going to sell
a lot of copies."

"How'd you do it?  The publishers don't even know me.  I mean, they
don't know that I'll do a good job."

"I sent them some of the tapes of you and Season.  They like your
interviewing style.  Very unorthodox, they said, but effective.

Season obviously likes you a hell of a lot more than she likes me.

"She likes you," I said.

"Don't bullshit a bullshitter.  She tolerates me.  I serve a purpose.

That's okay."

I changed the subject.  "You didn't send the publishers some of my
other writing, articles or something?  Any of my published works?"

"Nope.  Just the tapes.

I leaned back against the car seat and sighed.  That meant the
publishers weren't hiring me based on Wren's writing, just my own
interviews with Season.  My own work.

"They liked the way the two of you interacted.  They especially liked
the panty hose story I told them, when she made you strip them off
before she'd talk to you.  Make sure that's in the book.

That's the kind of stuff they like."

Suddenly I wished I hadn't erased Season's confession about missing
Philip.  That would have made a dynamic passage in the book.  Instantly
I felt guilty for thinking that.  Still, would I do it again, given the
choice?

"Based on what they heard so far, they feel confident this will be a
major seller."

"It's nice they have such faith in me.

"There are lots of writers around, but not everybody can talk to a
murderer, get them to open up."

Murderer.  The word startled me.  I didn't think of Season as a
murderer.  She had killed someone, so technically I guess she was
one.

I just didn't like hearing it.  A splinter of anger pulsed behind my
right eye.

"It sounds funny hearing you call her a murderer, "I said.

"Cold."

He looked over at me, frowning.  "You're right.  I've been spending too
much time in Hollywood.  Calling Season a murderer there makes her more
valuable to those guys.  Sorry, honey."

It was the first time he called me honey.  I liked the sound, I'd
missed being called honey and sweetheart and babyface and cuddlebug.  I
wanted to hear it all again.  Yet, I also felt oddly anxious.  Season
was a murderer, but I was a honey.

"Which brings me to this."  Davis reached over and opened the glove
compartment.  He pulled out a white legal-sized envelope and handed it
to me.  "Wren Caldwell" was typed neatly on the outside.  In the upper
left-hand corner was a fancy embossed logo and address in red ink, DR
Productions.  I opened the envelope and pulled out some folded pages.

The top page was titled WRITING CONTRACT BETWEEN DR PRODUCTIONS AND
WREN CALDWELL.  Paper-clipped to the top of the page was a check for
$2()OO.  Made out to Wren Caldwell!

"Jesus," I said.  "Jesus."

"I'd have a lawyer look over that contract first.  I'm not talking as
DR Productions right now, so don't tell that slippery bastard Davis
Richard what I'm saying.  Have a good lawyer read it.  If you think
it's fair, sign it and cash the check.  Don't cash the check until you
see a lawyer, because cashing it constitutes acceptance of the
contract.  I only included it now because I thought you might need the
money and I didn't want any delays later."

"A lawyer."  I scanned the contract.  It was very official.  By the
second paragraph I was lost in the whereases.  "I don't know any
lawyers.  You wouldn't try to cheat me, would you?"  He took his hand
from the steering wheel and laid it in my lap.  He squeezed my thigh
affechonately.  "We're into something here, you and I. Dating, lovers,
a relationship, whatever we want to call it.  I just don't want
business to screw us up.  Money can do that sometimes."

"Okay, "I said, folding up the contract and stuffing it back into the
envelope, then into my purse.

We pulled up to the curb in front of my apartment.  I leaned over and
kissed him.  "Thanks for the ride, the contract, the check.  The new
life.  Meaning to the universe."  I looked at my watch.  "Now all I've
got to do is get some notes together and go teach my art history
class."

"Want me to pick you up after class tonight?  We can continue our
celebration."

I was feeling pretty nervous about class.  Just envisioning a roomftil
of students made my stomach shred itself apart.  I shook my head.  "I'd
better just wait and see how it goes in class first."

Davis looked over my shoulder at the apartment.  "Is your husband
home?"

"I don't know," I said.  Byron hadn't been home since I got bombed
three nights ago.  I would come home every day after interviewing
Season and find Hector had been fed and his litter box cleaned.  The
phone answering machine had been played, my messages neatly written
with time and date.  But no Byron.

"Let's check, shall we?"  Davis said with a sort of little-boy
naughtiness.  He swung his station wagon into a parking slot and
followed me to the front door.  A quick search of the apartment turned
up a sleeping Hector but no Byron.  Hector's litter box had been
cleaned and he was wearing a new white flea collar that made him look a
little like a priest.

"All clear," Davis said, coining down the hall.

"The bird's gone," I said, coming out of the kitchen.

"What?"

"The parrot.  Motown.  He's gone.  The cage and everything."

"Do you miss him?"

I shrugged.  "No, I guess not."

Davis put his arms around me and kissed me hard.  His fingers dug into
my buttocks, lifting me onto my toes.  He started unbuttoning my
blouse.  I nervously looked at the front door.

"1 don't know I said.  "He could come in anytime."

"He won't."  Another button popped free.

"We don't have time.  I have to get ready for class."

"A quickie.  Fast and furious, like in the movies."  He gnnned.

"Trust me."  He started singing in his Yul Brynner accent, ""But unless
someday somebody trusts somebody/There'll be nothing left on earth
excepting fishes."

"Oh, yes, take me, bald stud.  Take me now!"

We ran down the hall laughing.

Somehow we ended up in the ball,room.  The tiny counter around the sink
was covered with colorful cans and tubes and boxes.  Deodorant.

Tooil,paste.  Q-tips.  Nivea cream.  Davis brushed them all aside and
hoisted me up onto the counter next to the sink.  The porcelain was
cool on my skin and I could feel the faint crust of dried toothpaste.

The strip of wall behind the sink was all mirror.  But it was back so
far that I couldn't comfortably lean against it, so I sat there feeling
like a little girl at the doctor's office sitting on the table, legs
dangling and nothing to lean against.

Davis started kissing me, but he was impatient and left my mouth
quickly and trailed down to my breasts, sucking and kissing them while
his hand slid between my legs.  I was naked except for my panties,
which I've always been reluctant to shed during sex until the last
possible second.  He just slid his hand under the elastic leg and dug
in.  He bit my nipple firmly, hard enough to cause me to jerk a little,
but not hard enough to want him to stop.  I pulled his head harder
against my breast and scooted my hips forward against his probing
hand.

He slipped one finger into me, then another, and finally a third.  It
felt good, but I felt a little like a turkey being stuffed by a hungry
chef.

Maybe I just don't relax enough during sex.  I think too much about
what every action means, its ramifications.  Sex makes me feel like the
worst softball player on the playground, the last to be picked, the
first to drop the game-losing catch.  Wren used to tell me of her
sexual escapades, the impossible positions, the household objects she
used, vegetables and fruits that she and her partners incorporated into
their sex.  I would gape, which only delighted and encouraged her to
tell me more details.  Robby and I also had our moments of passion and
inventiveness.  He liked it when I wore my white socks and hiking boots
to bed.  We had a modest vibrator that we used on each other
sometimes.

Once he wore my underwear to bed and I wore his and we pretended to be
each other and make love the way the other usually did.  There was
something exciting about that, though mostly I felt as if we were
conducting a psychological experiment rather than making love.

My only real sexual experience other than with Robby was my one
adulterous affair.  Robby and I were going through the usual three-year
doldrums that I have since read about in several selfhelp books.  He
was studying late all the time and we rarely saw each other and even
more rarely had sex.  No excuses, I just got lonely and scared and
ended up in the sack with a guy who lived in the same apartment
complex.  He was a Zen Buddhist, though he'd been raised Jewish on Long
Island, New York.  His father was a copyright lawyer for a record
company so he knew a lot of rock "n' roll stars.  He was the calmest
guy I'd ever known.  His apartment was filled with thick white candles,
which he lit every morning at sunrise and every evening at sunset.

Sometimes Immediately after sex he'd sit on the edge of the bed, his
legs crossed, his hands cupping each other, his eyes partially open but
unfocused, meditating.  He'd practice breathing out.  Breathing out was
the key, he said, though a lot of people thought breathing in was.  You
can kill somebody when they're breathing in, that's when we're most
vulnerable.  He told me about another Buddhist sect in which sex was a
symbolic act, very spiritual, having to do with erasing the concept of
duality and such.  Even though he wasn't a member of that sect, sex
with him always seemed kind of spiritual.  Also, kind of colorless,
odorless, and tasteless, like something that was good for you, though
it wasn't especially enjoyable.  Like talking to a phone answering
machine.  After a few times I got to feeling too guilty and I broke it
off.  He called me a cunt, threw a couple of candles at the wall, and
threw me out of his apartment.

I guess that's the point, really, sex has always felt like practice for
something better.  I read once in a novel where the woman was making
love and she felt as if the man were pulling her underwater, dragging
her to the bottom of a swimming pool.  Sex was never like that for
me.

I sort of sat on the edge of the pool and dangled my toes in the
water.

And here I was again, Davis lifted my legs up and pulled my panhes
off.

He put his "hands on my knees, pushed my legs apart, and knelt in front
of me.  His tongue lapped at me eagerly.  I felt his hand wedge under
my buttocks and crawl across my skin until he was at my anus.

His fingers were already damp from penetrating me, so he just slid his
index finger into me.  I yelped from the sudden assault.

This was not an area that had much experience.  Robby was a little too
fastidious perhaps to be much interested there.  I tried to squirm away
from Davis's finger, mostly out of embarrassment, I guess.  It didn't
really feel that bad, just a little uncomfortable.

Davis stood up, folded my legs over his hips, and entered me.

He thrust hard, fast and furious, as promised.  I leaned back until
Iiny shoulders were pressed against the mirror.  He pounded into me and
I wanted him to keep pounding.  The skin on my shoulder blades squeaked
against the mirror with each fl,rust like a squeegee against a
windshield.  He was breathing hard, panting, pumpIng.  His breathing
became labored and I opened my eyes to make sure he was all right.  His
eyes were pressed close with concentration, his face in a pained
grimace.  For a moment I was concerned he was having a heart attack.

But he came and his face relaxed.

After a minute he pulled out of me and turned on the faucet.

His penis dripped onto the carpet as he splashed cold water on his
face.  "Do you really need to do this teaching?"  he asked.

"Can't we just stay home tonight and do that a few more times?"

"They're expecting me."  I hopped down from the counter.  My thighs
were streaked with his come.  My legs were shaky.

He pulled a handful of toilet paper off the roll and wiped my thighs.

"You don't need the money now.  Plus, it could interfere with your work
on the book."

"If it does, we'll talk about it then."

He held up his hands innocently.  "This isn't a male-female Issue,
Wren.  I'm not trying to dominate you here, I'm just showing concern.

I can do that, can't I?"

I patted his butt.  "I don't want to go tonight, believe me.  But I've
made a commitment and it's important that I keep it."  Be sides, I
didn't want an irate administrator phoning Wren's old unIversity to
complain about her and finding out the,teacher they hired has been dead
over a month.

I started my shower and Davis stretched out on the bed with the
newspaper.  He looked funny lying there, his naked body pink from
exertion, like a pudgy teenager.  Yet his face was so adult,
concentrating on the articles, scanning for a story to option.  I
leaned over and kissed his white hip.

"Thanks," he said.

"How come you're so pale," I said.  "Where's that Maui tan?"

"I was there for business.  For all the outdoors I saw, it might as
well have been Kansas.  When you and I go, that's when I'll get a
tan."

I walked down the hall to the shower.

The phone rang while I was shampooing my hair.

"I'll get it," Davis called.

"No!"  I shouted.  I turned off the faucet, pulled my hair back to keep
the soap out of my eyes, and ran to the bedroom for the phone.

"Hello?"

Silence.

"Hello?"  I repeated.

Again, silence, though I could hear someone faintly breathing.

I took a wild shot.  "Byron's not here.  You want to leave a
message?"

"Sure, thanks," came the pleasant voice.  "Tell him tomorrow's fine.

If he's still up to it.  I mean, we can postpone if he's not healed by
then."

"Healed?  What do you mean?"

"Just tell him, okay?  If he doesn't call, I'll be there with the
money.  Bye."  He hung up.

"Who was that?"  Davis asked as I walked back into the bedroom.

"Friend of Byron 5.

"Oh."  Davis returned to his newspaper.  I returned to the shower.

When I finished, I wrapped a towel around me and one around my hair.

Davis was dressed, except for one shoe, which he was tying.

"That was fast," I said.

"Fast and furious, as advertised."

"No, I meant getting dressed."

"I have some work I should do."

"Find any potential movies?"

He shook his head and looked at the paper, which he'd left on the
bed.

"Nothing I can sell."

"I've got an idea," I said.  "I got sick once and they took out my
appendix because the doctor thought it had burst.  Turned out it
hadn't.  They charged me for the operation anyway.  That's when I got
this idea.  A doctor, maybe some guy who's lost his license because he
did something good, but went against the medical establishment.

Anyway, the guy hires himself out now as a medical bodyguard.  People
pay him to go into the operating room as their representative to make
sure everything is done correctly.  Like a medical gunslinger or
something.  People would feel a lot better with someone like that in
there.

Davis shook his head as he slipped on his cardigan sweater.

I'd just said it as a lark, not expecting anything.  But I was a little
disappointed to get no response at all.

"Of course, it needs fleshing out and stuff," I said.  "But the idea, I
mean, you can have him hired by some mobster who's getting a bypass.

Something like that."

Davis turned his back, pulled something out of his pocket, and started
writing.  He turned back around and tore a check out of his book.  He
handed it to me.  "This one you can cash."

It was for $2,000.  "What's this?"

"An option of your idea.  I like it.  Possible series, certainly an MOW
or even a theatrical.  We'll have to spice it up somehow.

Something goes wrong during the operation, guy dies.  Our hero tries to
save him.  Turns out he was assassinated and now the mobster's people
are after the doe.  I dunno, something like that.

But I love the idea.  It's great."

I stared at the check.  It amazed me how quickly money changed hands,
especially for amounts that were more than I'd ever seen before.

"That's my standard option advance," Davis said.  "I'll have a contract
drawn up.  If I sell the idea, you stand to make a lot more.

"How much more?"

"A hundred grand at least."

Davis left.  I watched him drive away, still clutching the check in my
hand.  First a check for $2000 and now another one for $2,000.  At this
rate, I could publish Wren's magazine within the year.

I taped the two checks to the back of the bathroom sink bowl, the last
place I thought Byron might look.  I wondered what the guy on the phone
meant about Byron healing, but decided to ignore it.  I scribbled the
message down on a scrap of newspaper corner, tore it off, and carried
it to Byron's room.

When I opened the door, I was shocked.  The bed looked like it had been
wrestled into place after a great struggle.  The sheets were pulled out
of place and tangled in ropy knots.  The pillows were scattered across
the floor, beaten into unconsciousness.  Everything else in the room
was in its usual prison neatness.  But the bed.  The mattress lay
askew, a corner flopping off the frame.

I inched closer, noticing red smears on the white sheets.

I leaned over the bed.  I could smell the sexual activity that had
taken place.  A few beige stains confirmed that this chaos was the
result of some wild coupling.  The red smears were mostly lipstick, a
tacky shade of reddish orange favored by college freshmen trying to
look sophisticated.  The other red stains were blood.

I went to his bathroom.  The sink counter had a balled-up plastic bag
from Thrifty's drugstore.  The receipt listed the objects that were
lined up next to the sink, peroxide, Band-Aids, cotton swabs.  A
washcloth, twisted into its wrung-out formahon, lay in the sink, still
damp, still a little bloody.

I rubbed the blood between my fingertips and sniffed it.  As if it were
a salad dressing and I were trying to figure out the ingredients.  I
didn't figure anything out.  I had no theory.  One of them had been
bleeding.  This could have happened either before or during sex.  That
they brought a bag of medical supplies suggests the wound had already
occurred, otherwise he would have taken these things from her bathroom
and used them.  So at least the blood wasn't the result of their sex.

I walked back to my bedroom and finished dressing.  Despite Season's
philosophy, I applied some makeup.  A little foundation, eyeliner.  I
fluffed my hair trying to make it look bigger.  I'd read that elephants
held their ears straight out from their heads when charging to make
themselves look more formidable to their enemy.  I hoped this would
work with students.

As I ran the lipstick across my mouth, I noticed tiny spit wads of
something on the mirror.  The glass was smeared from where I'd rubbed
against it during sex with Davis.  I plucked one of the balls from the
glass and inspected it.  Skin.  My skin.  I felt like a detective at a
crime scene.  Blood, skin, lipstick, twisted sheets.

Definitely a crime scene.  All I had to do now was figure out the crime
and find the victim.

I grabbed Wren's art book and my notes and drove to school.

In the car I noticed I still had some blood on my fingertips.  I spit
on them and wiped them on the car seat.  For no particular reason, I
began to wonder what had happened to the parrot.

"It doesn't make any fucking sense," he said vaugnly.  ",I mean, I just
don't get it.  He splits the arrow, right?  Correct me if I'm wrong
here.  He shoots his bow and then his arrow splits the other guy's
arrow, right?"

His friend sailed his stiffened index finger through the air like an
arrow.  He whistled sound effects.  ","hunk," he said.

"Just answer yes or no, okay?  He split the fucking arrow, right?"

"Smack down the middle, Perry Mason."

"Well, that means Robin Hood put his arrow in the exact same spot as
the other guy, right?"

"Technically, yeah."

"So, technically, Robin Hood didn't really shoot any better than the
first guy.  So why did he win?  Doesn't make any sense.

His shot was exactly the same.  Explain that to me."

His friend shrugged.  "Hollywood, man.

"Great fucking answer.  Thanks for the insight, Joseph Camp "I'm
serious, man.  It's all part of the master plan.  If Robin Hood didn't
win, there couldn't have been a Big Speech scene from the evil prince,
followed by the Big Capture scene, followed by the Big Chase scene
during which Robin Hood escapes.  That's the whole point.  Everything
in movies is directly related to how it affects the chase scene.  Like
divine intervention."

"Christ, you make one sixteen-millimeter film for class and you think
you're Kubrick.  My films aren't going to have any chase scenes,
ever.

Not one.  People won't even walk fast.  If you ever see me filming one,
you have my permission to pound a stake through my heart.

"Sure, but where you gonn,a, get the heart?"

He didn't laugh.  "Eat shit.

"Now, that you've got plenty of."  He curled his finger into a snail
circle and peered at his friend through it as if it were a camera.

"You don't get it, man.  Just because something is done a lot in the
movies doesn't mean it's bad.  I mean, look at sex."

"You're a moron.

"At least I'm not trying to be the next Woody Allen.  Don't be so
pretentious, dude.  The chase scene is basically a cool concept.

We all dream of having a chase scene in our drab little lives.  One
sinister moment when all the evil forces that have been secretly
fucking up our lives since that first day in preschool reveal
themselves for one final showdown.  Only then, after years of
stamplicking, stain-removing, toilet-scrubbing existence, does our
pathetic life take on any real meaning."

"And you actually believe that shit or are you rehearsing a scene?

"The chase puts our lives in focus.  Finally we have a purpose in which
the outcome of something we do actually makes a fucking difference.

We're no longer just an average asshole with a million excuses why our
life is a failure, we're the Only Hope In some cosmic conspiracy.  It's
a glimpse of total clarity, maybe the only time in our life when the
sides are clear.  That's why audiences love it, man.  We a11live in
hope of one day experiencing a climactic chase scene.

Tlie first guy, who really did look likeWoody Allen, made an annoyed
face.  "You are hopeless, man.

"What do you mean?"

The first guy threw up his hands and walked away.  His friend followed,
repeating, "What do you mean?"

The two boys discussing Robin Hood had been standing outside my
classroom waiting for the Intermediate Freehand Drawing class already
in there to finish.  Now they sat on a bench and continued their
animated discussion.  Overhearing their conversation made me even more
nervous.  I wasn't sure I had the nerve to do my Wren act in front of
such a large audience.  One on one I was okay, but this was the
difference between playing Beach Boys tunes on the family upright piano
at parties and appearing in concert at Carnegie Hall.  Students could
be ruthless.  My hands were damp with sweat.  Some of the ink on the
art history textbook I was clutching rubbed off on my fingers.

Other students were beginning to gather around the door now, many of
them older than the two filmmakers.  Some of the men and women wore
business suits and carried briefcases, having come straight from their
day jobs.  They sat stiffly on the benches provided, smoked cigarettes,
or sipped from the Styrofoam cups they'd bought at the campus snack
stand.  Except for the two boys, the others didn't talk to each other
except to make sure this was the right classroom.  I'd forgotten that
night classes drew an older crowd, people who worked during the day and
therefore took their classes more seriously.

My stomach lurched suddenly and I tasted a couple of creamy drops of
vomit at the back of my throat.  I looked at my watch.

Still eighteen minutes before class would begin.  I turned and fled
down the sidewalk along a row of faculty offices.  If I could find a
rest room, splash some cold water on my face, hang my head over a
toilet, maybe take up meditation, or start smoking again .

I ran past an open door, caught a glimpse of a neat row of white
toilets, and backtracked.  I walked in, but this was definitely not the
women's room.  I knew a faculty office when I was in one, stacks of art
books crammed into the bookshelves, posters on the wall of past student
art exhibitions, a Year-at-a-Glance wall calendar with all the school
holidays circled in red Magic Marker.

I rubbed my nose, which burned a little from the harsh scent of
turpentine and paint.

Five toilet bowls were crowded against the wall of the small room.

They weren't connected to anything, no plumbing pipes.

The lids were off so I walked over and peeked inside.

The inside of the bowls were painted.  Not just painted, but each was
covered with a replica of a famous masterpiece.  I recognized a couple
of them by name, the others I'd seen in books somewhere but couldn't
recall details.  Each toilet contained a completely different artistic
style, from Romantic to Impressionist to Cubist.  The accuracy was
remarkable.  I leaned over even farther, holding on to my glasses so
they wouldn't fall in.

"Don't squat, the voice behind me said in a pleasant tone.

"A couple are still wet."

I turned.  She was barely five feet tall, with white-blond hair that
had gone too long between bleachings.  The brown roots were starting to
gain lost ground.  She wore it combed straight down all around,
including her bangs, like a vampy imitation of Cleopatra.  Her jeans
were straight-legged and faded to a pale blue.

Her sandals were rubber flipflops, the heel of one had a small bite out
of it, the outline of teeth marks still clear.  Her sweatshirt said
UCLA.  Her hair, her jeans, her sandals, her sweatshirt, were all
dolled with constellations of different colors of paint.  I figured her
for about forty, with the distracted look of a woman whose independent
lifestyle has brought her to the verge of eifl,er great success, or
buying that fourfl, cat that tips her over the edge from being a cat
lover into becoming a cat woman.

She looked at the roll sheet in my hand.  "Adjunct faculty?"

I nodded.  "One course.  Art 110" "Ohhh, so you're Wren Caldwell."  She
smiled mysteriously.

"I thought you'd have bigger tits."

I nodded.  "So did I."

She went to her desk and rummaged among loose papers and art magazines
until she found a flat can.  She opened the lid, pinched some loose
tobacco between her fingers, and tucked the wad into her mouth.  The
skin next to her lip bulged tumorously, as if she'd just been stung by
a bee.  "A tragedy in the making, I know," she said, tossing the can
back onto the desk.  "No excuses.

I just like chewing it more than gum.  Sue me.

"Nice meeting you, Sue," I said.  "Me Wren."

She laughed.  "Christ, don't make me like you, okay?  If I like you,
I'll want to spend time with you, if I spend time with you we'll talk,
I'll tell you my personal problems, and then you'll pity me and won't
like me anymore and we won't spend time together and I'll be terribly
hurt.  So, just act bitchy and save me the heartache.  Deal?"

"Fuck you, slufface," I said.  "How's that?"

She laughed again and shook her head.  "Too late, I think.

Come on, I'll give you the grand tour of my toilets."

"There's an invitation that's hard to resist."

 BORROWED LIVES , 293

She walked over to the toilet bowls.  She picked up a dirty rag and
wiped her paint-splattered hands.  "I heard about you from Phil
Sanchez, our illustrious department chair.  I'll tell you before
everyone else does, Phil and I date on occasion, the occasion being
when his wife is out of town on business.  See, it's started.

I'm telling you my personal secrets."

"I've heard worse."  I thought of Season Dougherty weeping in jail,
confessing her love for her child's rapist.

"Anyway, everyone on the Hiring Committee was very impressed with your
credentials, ,t,hough your disappearing act gave Phil another cluster
of ulcers.

"Circumstances beyond my control."

She snorted.  "That's gonna be the title of my autobiography."

I didn't say anything.  I didn't want to encourage any more personal
revelations.  I was already overburdened with what I'd heard today from
Season.

"I read your article on Ogata Kenzan and his pottery work," she said.

"Very insightful stuff."

I had no idea who Ogata Kenzan was.  "Thanks."

"But I think you underestimate his brother's influence.  It wasn't
until Korin returned to Kyoto in 1709 that Keuzan really developed his
own style.  They formed a symbiotic relationship that inspired both of
them to go beyond what they were individually capable of.  Don't you
think so?"

"I think you're confusing inspiration with invention."  I had even less
idea what that meant, but I remember Wren saying that to someone at a
party who was arguing with her about Tom Wolfe.  No, wait, she'd said
they were confusing imagination with invention.

"Perhaps," she said.  Apparently she was as baffled by my statement as
I was.  She held out her hand and we shook.  "I'm Carol Hill.  "She
pointed to the plastic nameplate on her desk.  "Dreadful name, I
know.

A young girl with the name Hill and no chest to speak of takes a lot of
teasing.  "Where are your Hills, Carol?"

That sort of thing.  I started a rock band when I was in high school.

I thought it would make me more popular.  I couldn't play an
instrument, so I sang.  Actually, I couldn't sing either, so I sang
like Janis Joplin.  I had a sore throat for three years.  Anyway, 
294

, LARAMIE DUNAWAY we used to practice every day in the basement, which
prompted my father to announce to every guest we ever had that "The
Hills are alive with the sound of Carol."

" She shook her head.  "Any wonder I'm so screwed up?"

"Did it work?  Were you more popular?"

She looked off, as if picturing herself back then, amid the popular
crowd.  "Oh, yes, it worked.  I was very popular.  Disappointing, isn't
it?  My first lesson in hollow victories, I guess."

"This is amazing stuff," I said, gesturing at the toilets.

"Yeah, well."  She pointed to the first bowl, stirring the air with her
finger as if cleaning the bowl.  "This one's La Tour's "Magdalen with
the Smoking Flame."

A comely young woman sat in a plain wooden chair.  Her hand rested
affectionately on a human skull, while she contemplated the flame
rising brightly from a jar of what looked like oil.  Beside the flame
were the Scriptures.  A warm glow of candlelight surrounded her
protectively like a full-body halo.  She looked content, the dark skull
of Death cradled in her hand held no fear for her, now that she'd
renounced mortality and found the light.

I had seen this painting before in books and always appreciated its
simple power.  As far as I could tell, this was an exact replication.

Subtle and powerful, even clinging to the curved throat of a toilet
bowl.

The second bowl's art I also recognized.  I couldn't remember the
title.  A woman sat, head tilted, her enormous rosy-checked child
propped up on her lap.  Impressionist school.  The colors soft, muted,
but the whole picture somehow bright, clean, and hopeful.  Again, the
duplicahon was eerily accurate.

"Mary Cassatt," I said.  "Right?"

"Right," Carol said."  "Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child."  The
size of that kid scared me off from having any for years.  But with my
thirty-sixth birthday marching toward me, I've reconsidered.  For my
birthday, I've decided to give myself a pregnancy.

I glanced at her finger for a wedding ring, saw none.  That could be
practical though, not wanting to get paint on it.

"No husband," she said, fanning out her naked fingers.  "I'm still
screening candidates."

 BORROWED LIVES , 295

"What do you do with them?"

"The candidates?  I fuck them."

"The toilets.  Do you show them in exhibits?"

She went over to the door, walked outside, and spit an enormous gob of
brown juice into the lawn.  She came back in grinning.  "That's the
part I like best."

"Its charm is alluring."

She laughed again.  "No, I don't exhibit them.  Copying someone else's
work isn't really art to me.  This is more of a craft.  Like making
bird houses out of Popsicle sticks."  I, "What do you do with them?"

"Sell them.  They've got an arts festival every year down in Laguna
Beach.  I work on these all year and sell them down there during the
summer.  I make a little more from selling toilets in the summer than I
do from teaching full-time the rest of the year.

It's a wonderful life, ain't it?"

I studied the toilets again.  One of them was a replica of Winslow
Homer's "The Cotton Pickers."  Two young black women wander through an
enormous field of cotton, both wearing large bonnets.  One woman has a
basket of cotton under one arm, the other has a bag of cotton slung
over her shoulder.  One looks forlornly at the cotton, the other looks
hopelessly across the field at her wasted future.

"You pick interesting subjects," I said.

She shrugged.  "I pick whatever I can forge easiest.  It's not that
simple to treat the porcelain to hold the paint, then treat the paint
so that thousands of flushings don't wash it away with the rest of the
shit."

"Forging.  That doesn't sound respeefful enough for what you do.

You're really good."

Carol smiled.  "You're mistaking cleverness for talent.  I'm a forger,
pure and simple.  I don't even imitate life, I imitate imitations.  I
copy other people's work, people who really knew what they were doing
and why they were doing it.  I take their greatness and magically
transform them into kitsch, a curved replica staring up at urinating
twats and straining assholes."

I didn't want to leave on that graphic image.  I liked her too much.

"You must have your own work tucked away somewhere."

She went to the door, waited for a couple of students to pass, then
spit another gob of tobacco juice across the sidewalk.  She wiped her
chin with the back of her sleeve.  When she returned, her hands were
dug deep into her pocket.  She looked so tiny then, like a penitent
child.  "If I could, Wren, then I would.  If it's original art you're
looking for, talk to Phil Sanchez.  He's got showings all the time.  Or
Tina Lipschutz.  She's our performance artist.  Terrific gal.  Or Zack
DuBois, our potter.  He's probably just a couple years shy of world
famous.  Those are true artists.

But you want decorated toilets, you come to me."  She leaned over the
trash can and spit out the clump of tobacco.  She took a swig of diet
Coke from a can on her desk.  "Don't get me wrong, Wren.  I'm not
having an artistic crisis.  Being an artist was never my goal.

Teaching was.  I love it.  But if you want to buy a house and go on
vacations, you need another income.  That's all there is to it."

I looked at my watch.  "Cotta go.  Class."

"Have fun.  If I haven't scared you off, come see me sometime.

We'll have lunch.  You're buying."  I started out of the office.  As I
reached the door, Carol said, "Hey, you wouldn't be needing a nifty new
toilet, would you?  I can make you a deal.  You pick your favorite
masterpiece, I'll slap it into your toilet."

I thought about sitting down on a toilet, having someone's face
iistaring up at me.  I doubted I'd be able to go.  "I'll think about
it."

I was already ten feet down the sidewalk when I heard her call after
me, "1 do bidets too."

By the time I walked into the classroom, all the desks were full.  A
few people stood around the door with green slips of paper.

"I'd like to petition," one hefty older woman said.  She wore a tilted
black beret as if she thought this were some Left Bank art hangout.

"Do you accept petitioners?"

"I would also like to petition," a man in an expensive suit and silk
tie said.  He had a slight British accent.

"Let me do the paperwork here first," I said, showing them my roster.

"Then we'll see."

I went to the podium at the front of the class.  The room was large and
stufty.  The windows and door were open, but that didn't help much.

I had the sense that people were breathing the same cubic foot of fresh
air, passing it from row to row like a relay race baton.  I swallowed
dryly.

My roll sheet showed the maximum of forty students had enrolled.  At
the university in Oregon, English classes never exceeded twenty-five.

This was a bit overwhelming.  All the desks were taken and there were
half a dozen deskless people standing around looking defeated.  One
wall was all windows, looking out on the sidewalk, which fed three
other buildings.  Students walked back and forth outside and many of my
students looked out the windows at them.  Keeping their attention was
going to be a challenge.

"My name is Wren Caldwell," I said.  "And this is Art 110, for those of
you who have wandered into the wrong classroom.

"One-ten?"  someone said.

"Yes."

A teen in a white T-shirt and sweatpants that said Ripcurl down the
side got up and walked out of the classroom.  The old woman in the
beret bustled to capture his desk.  She smiled triumphantly at those
next to her as she sat down.

The rest was administrative stuff, taking roll, signing petition cards
to match the number of students who hadn't shown up.

Because I had more petitioners than available seats, I did a lottery,
pulling names out of a bag.  Those whose names weren t drawn were
dismissed.

One man whose name had not been selected would not leave.

"I buy lottery tickets every week, the money's supposed to go to
education in this state.  I've never won a goddamn dime.  Now I have to
do a lottery to take a stupid art class.  This is no way to practice
education."

"I agree completely, sir," I said.  "However, we are limited by fire
laws as to the number of students allowed in each classroom.

You'll have to leave."

"Like hell I do."  He went over to the wall next to the door and sat
down on the floor.  He wasn't a very big man, under six feet and not
especially muscular, but he looked angry enough to start trouble.  He
was in his fifties, hair longish and streaked with gray.

Perhaps an ex-hippie reliving the glory days of sit-ins and taking over
the administration building, shaving with the dean's razor, urinating
in file cabinets.  Actually, I kind of admired him for what he was
doing.

The two aspiring filmmakers I'd overheard outside the classroom
whispered to each other and gestured at the man.  They were probably
thinking of ways to film this.

"You do understand, sir, that you will not receive credit for fl,is
class?"  I told him.

He grumbled something and waved me off.

"Want me to get security?"  the man with the British accent offered.

He'd been one of the lottery winners.  So had the older woman with the
beret.

"No, thank you.  Let's just get on with class."  I talked about the
structure of the class, the number of museum trips required, a diary of
all the art works they would see and their critical impressions, the
papers due, the number of footnotes, etc. I rattled off due dates as
if I knew exactly what I was doing.  The attitude I exuded was that
there would hardly be enough time in a single semester to cram even a
fraction of my vast knowledge of art history into them.  I was starting
to feel prett," good, in control and confident.

I had them open their textbooks to an abstract work by Wi llem de
Kooning called "Woman."  It was one of his series on women he did in
the early I9,0s.  I'd picked this one because Wren had tons of notes in
the margins about it and I was able to dazzle them with history and
interpretation, thanks to Wren's knowledge.

"Notice how the figure seems crammed into a confining space by the
placement of the geometric shapes.  Yet, despite this confinement, she
seems capable of overcoming these limitations by sheer force of will
and physical being."  I glanced down at Wren's scrawl.  "This
reenforces de Kooning's preoccupation with woman as
mother-goddess-fury."

And so it went until break time.  "Take fifteen minutes," I said,
checking the wall clock.

The man who had lost the lottery didn't move.  He sat hugging his legs,
scowling slightly.  People filed out past him, some giggling, others
ignoring him.

A student blocked my path as I went for the door.  She was about
twenty, very pretty, wearing bib overalls.  "Wasn't there some concern
at the time," she said, "that de Kooning might be hurting the abstract
movement with these works?  I mean, abstract art was only just
beginning to gain acceptance in the U.S."

I remembered one of Wren's notes to that effect.  "That's true," I
said, hurrying past her.  I walked quickly down the sidewalk away from
the classroom.  I felt exhilarated.  The class had gone well so far.

No one had stood up and denounced me as an imposter.  Actual learning
had taken place, students knew more now than they had before.

I was practically skipping.  I'd never felt so elated.  If I'd had any
kind of voice I'd have burst into song.  It was as if everything in my
life had suddenly come together at once.  I was writing a book and
getting paid.  I'd come up with a script idea and picked up anoil,er
$2,000.  I had a boyfriend who was kind, generous, and good in bed.  I
was teaching, actually teaching a subject I knew little about, yet
doing a good job of it.  I could do anything.

It was as if I suddenly had the golden touch.  I was lucky.  The way
Wren had been lucky.  So this was what it was like to get what you
want, to feel safe within your good fortune, not to worry about what
might happen because it was usually good.  I laughed aloud and a couple
of students passing me gave me strange looks.

I was surprised they couldn't see the magic aura surrounding me, like
the one around Mary Magdalen in Carol Hill's toilet.

I didn't know what to do.  This kind of manic energy shouldn't be
wasted prancing around campus.  If Davis had been there I'd have pulled
him into the bushes and jumped him.  It would have been the best sex
either of us had ever had, I just knew it.  But he wasn't here.

Still, I had to do something.

Which gave me an idea.

I rounded the corner of the building and saw Carol's office light was
still on.  Her radio was on and an old Beatles' tune was playing,
"Across the Universe."

"Carol?"  I said, entering.

She was bent over a toilet, spraying an aerosol can.  When she heard
me, she looked around.  She had goggles on and a small mask over her
mouth and nose.  She lowered the can and pulled down the mask.  "They
chase you out already?"

"We're on break.  Can I use your phone?"

"Will this involve heavy breathing or the use of cutsy pet names like
Bedbug or Cuddles?"

I laughed.  "Not from this end."

"Okay, you can use it.  I've got to go to the bathroom anyway.

One of the side effects of chewing tobacco."  She wiped her hands with
a colorful rag and tossed it on the desk.  "Punch nine for an outside
line."  She walked out.

I dialed Robby's number.

This wasn't going to be like the other times I called him or wanted
to.

This was totally different.  I wasn't feeling lonely or desperate or
bitter.  I didn't need his help or assurance.  I didn't need
anything.

I was on top of the world.  I closed my eyes and I saw the room as if I
were floating fifty feet above it, the way people who have had
near-death experiences say they saw the world.  Maybe that's what was
happening.  I was dead.  I'd died when BeeGee shot me.  Oh, they'd
patched and wired me back together, but I was still dead.  Or maybe I'd
been dead until BeeCee shot me.  Maybe she'd saved my life.

I opened my eyes and suddenly I was sucked back down into my body like
a cartoon ghost into a vacuum cleaner.  I listened anxiously as his
phone rang.  I rocked back and forth, tapping my hand impatiently on
the desk.  I noticed the paint-spattered clofl the globs of red.  I
thought of Byron's bathroom, the blood, the bandages.  What new
violence was he involved in?  It didn't matter.  I could even deal with
him now, I had the power.

"Hello?"  Helen's genteel drawl.

"Hi, Dr.  Jaspers.  It's Luna."

"Luna, how are you?"  Solemn concern.  Like a shrink.

"Top of the world, Ma.  Top of the world."

" I laughed.

She didn't laugh.  "How's Dallas?  I have relatives there."

"They send their love.  They miss you."  I chuckled giddily.

"I'm kidding.  Look, sorry to call so late.  I only have a few
minutes.

My boyfriend just ran down to the drugstore for condoms and KY jelly.

He'll be back any second.  Can I talk to Robby?"

"Sure.  Let me get him.  You take care, Luna."

She was gone.  I'd passed the first test, getting past the beast that
guarded the sacred cavern.  I hadn't folded when she'd shown all flat
concern.

"Hey, Luna, what's up?"  Robby said cheerfully.  But it was his false
cheerfulness, the one he pulled on like a ski mask when he felt
nervous.

"Lotsa stuff is up," I said.  My cheerfulness was real.  Could he hear
it?  "What've you been up to?"

"Same ole shit.  I'm doing a paper on architecture symbolism in
Chaucer."

I stifled a laugh.  Big deal, I wanted to tell him, I'm interviewing a
woman who shotgunned her husband who was raping their daughter.

Architectural symbolism in Chaucer?  Get real.

"What have you been doing?"  he asked.  "How's your dad?"

"Dad's his usual self, traveling.  In search of the perfect society,
where wives don't die and daughters grow up perfect."

"Has he tried Vegas?"

I laughed.  So did he.  I guess that's when we were the most intimate,
when we laughed at the same thing together, the rhythm of our laughter
falling into sync as if we were harmonizing in choir.  It was
uncanny.

I felt that same feeling now.  But I also sensed something else, a
sadness in him.  "Are you okay?"  I asked.

"Me?  Fine.

"No, really.  Are you okay?"

"Really, I'm fine.  Well, I've still got that problem of having to
strap my dick to my thigh because it's so long, but otherwise.  .

He laughed.

I didn't want to fall into our old Robby and Luna Divorce Show routine
where after we split up all serious personal discussions wound up with
us joking instead of talking.  "Just talk to me, Robby.  Are you
happy?"

He sighed.  "Don't ask inc those kinds of questions, Luna.

What kind of answer could I possibly give?"

"1 don't know?  The truth, I guess.  You left me for someone else, I
have to assume because she makes you happier.  So does she?"

There was a long silence.  I heard some noises in the background coming
from Robby's end.  Dishes slamming?  Then silence.

"Is she gone?"  I asked.

"Yes."

"Then tell me.  Are you happier with her than you were with me?"

"Luna, Jesus .

"Don't wuss out on me here, Robby.  I'm not the same person you
remember.  I can take it.  Just tell me the truth.  You owe me that
much."

"Luna," he said softly.  There was a tone in his voice, that quiet tone
he got in moments of intense honesty.  Suddenly we were husband and
wife again, curled up in our bed at night, talking in the dark.  I
could smell him through the phone, the scent of warm licorice.

"Tell me," I said.

"It's different, Luna.  My life is different now.  It's not better,
it's not worse.  Fuck!"  He was silent for a long time.  I didn't rush
him.  "I'm happy, but not necessarily happier than I was with you.

Like I said, it's different.  But then it's not that different
either.

Not like I thought it would be.  It's weird.  I mean, I didn't expect
to be running around clicking my heels or anything.  I don't know what
I expected.  It's just.  . . I don't know."

My heart pumped faster.  "Do you miss me?"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Do you?"  I insisted.

"Yes, of course.  I miss you every day.  Everything I look at reminds
me of you, of something we did."

I could actually feel the blood washing through my veins like a
rain-swollen stream.  I looked at my arms, wondenug if I'd see the skin
rippling from the rush of blood.  My bullet wound thumped as if it were
a second heart.

"Maybe you made a mistake," I said quietly.

"Luna, please .  .

"Maybe you made a mistake.  Maybe you could fix it."

He was quiet for a long time.  When he spoke, his voice was barely
audible.  "It's not like that, Luna.  I love Helen.  True, it's not the
same as it was with you, and yes, I do miss you.  I can't tell you how
much.  But I miss you the way I miss high school.

I'm happy, Luna.  I didn't mean to imply anything else."

"The way you miss high school?"  I said.  "What the hell does that
mean?"

Another long pause.

"Luna, Helen's pregnant."

I sagged.  BeeGee's bullet probably had less affect on me than Robby's
announcement.  "You bastard," I whispered.

"Luna, listen, I'm sorry."  He started to sob, his voice choked with
mucus.  "Luna, Jesus, Luna" I hung up.

The class stared at me.  They wanted something.

"Open your books to page forty-seven, "I said.

"What page?"  someone asked.

I looked up.  "Forty-seven."

"What'd she say?"  I heard someone whisper.

My head felt hot, feverish.  I touched my forehead, but it was cool.

Still, the heat inside me was building, like a dentist's drill held too
long against the same tooth.  I started to talk, but something doughy
at the back of my throat caught all the words before they became
airborne.  I swallowed hard over and over, but it didn't matter.  My
eyes burned and I could feel tears trying to squeeze through the
pinprick ducts.  I blinked them back.  I knew I would not cry.  All my
tears had been spent on my dissolved marriage.  Three months of
constant crying had dried me out.  I hadn't cried once since then, not
at being shot, not at Wren's death, not at being suspended from grad
school or being fired by the magazine.  And I sure as hell was not
going to cry now.

If nothing else, crying over this crap would be disrespeefful to
everything I hadn't cried over.  Especially to Wren and Esther.

I stared at the David Hockney painting pictured in the book,
"Mulholland Drive, The Road to the Studio."  Wren's notes were lengthy
and precise, Hockney influenced by Picasso's spontaneity, van Gogh's
textured brush strokes, Matisse's dominant colors.  I could kill an
hour on this painting and then assign some reading from the text and
send everyone home early.

b But when I tried to speak, a throttled sob burst out.  I clamped my
mouth down quickly to smother it, but the class had already heard me.

I looked out at them, their puzzled faces frozen between concern and
fear.  I forced out a few hacking coughs, pretending that my sob had
merely been a throat irritation.  I opened my mouth to speak again, but
another sob rushed up my throat and trumpeted several sad notes.

"You okay, Ms. Caldwell?"  one of the filmmakers asked, the one who
liked chase scenes.

I nodded.  "Swallowed down the wrong tube."

A few people laughed nervously.

Now my eyes were blind with tears.  My glasses magnified the tears and
suddenly I was looking up at everyone from the bottom of a murky
aquarium.  Their faces were wavy and bovine, as if they couldn't decide
whether or not to reach in and pull me to the surface.  I coughed as
hard as I could, doubling over a little so I could turn away and blink
the tears out of my eyes.  I felt a few splash onto my forearm.

I turned my back to the class and went to the blackboard.

Maybe if I wrote a question or something on the board, kept my back to
them, they wouldn't notice.  I could stall until I was back under
control.  I picked up the yellow chalk and started writing, WHAT
ARTiSTS' INFLUENCES CAN You IDENTIFY IN HCCKNEY"S WoRK?  I'd ask them
to write a list, maybe break into small discussion groups.  That should
do it.

God, what was I doing here?  While my husband was living my life with
another woman.  My life had been stolen!  Now I was nothing but a
forger with no life of my own.  At least Carol Hill had no illusions,
no ambitions.  I thought about Mom, her thin Polish skin smooth and
pale as icing.  Except for one mole on her neck, which she monitored
the way SAC watches Soviet airspace.

She feared that mole, certain it would turn into a fatal melanoma
without her noticing.  To live in fear that your own body would betray
you.  What would she think if she knew I was abandoning who she'd
brought me up to be because I'd rather be someone else, someone
better.

She hadn't raised me to become someone else's child.  Isn't that the
worst betrayal of all to a mother?  Dad, Ion the other hand, would find
the whole thing interesting, maybe want to tag along with me through a
typical day, take notes for an article.  But Mom, she would have
cried.

I was only halfway through the sentence on the blackboard when my
shoulders started spasming and my hand began shaking.

My handwriting turned spiky, like a heart monitor graph.  My nose was
running.  Tears, unstoppable now, streamed wildly down my face.  I
tried to wrestle myself under control.  I pressed my lips together,
tightened my shoulders, I even stopped breathing, hoping that would
stop the gasping sobs.  But nothing worked.

By the time I finished wrihug this sentence, I would have to turn
around and face the class.  When I did, there was no way they wouldn't
know I was crying.

I wrote the last word, hooked a giant question mark at the end of the
sentence, and dotted it so hard that the chalk snapped in half and
bounced back against my glasses.  I took the opportunity as an excuse
to lift my glasses and quickly wipe my eyes with the back of my
sleeve.

But the tears were instantly replaced by others.

My lips began shivering uncontrollably.  They felt numb and rubbery.

Fuck it, I finally decided, they've seen people cry before.

Now I let the tears stampede down my cheeks as much as il,ey wanted.

My face felt sticky, webbed by crisscrossing streams of tears.  Plump
tears hung from my chin like icicles.

Fuck it, I thought.  Fuck it.  Fuck them.  Fuck me.

I started to turn toward the class.

And suddenly all the lights went out.

.1

The room was dark.

"Hey!"  someone yelled.

"What the fuck?"  someone else yelled.

I looked over at the doorway for the man who'd lost the lottery and had
refused to leave.  I couldn't really see anything, just a hazy outline
of yellow against black where I remembered the door was.  The dim
yellow lights from outside gave it that spooky contrast.  Now I
recalled that the lottery man hadn't been there after our break.  I
started slowly for the doorway.  Once outside, I could find security or
maintenance.

"Everyone stay calm," I said, my own voice suddenly calm.

"It's just a fuse or something."

The darkness was jungle thick.  I couldn't really see anyone as I
groped with my hands ahead of me.  A little light filtered in through
the windows and I could see the other classrooms were still lighted.

"Oh, stop it, stop it, you brute," one of the filmmakers joked in a
falsetto.  "Oh, oh, baby, do me, do me!"

Several others laughed.

"This is not funny," an older woman said.

-I took a couple of experimental steps and bumped into someone.

"Please take your seat," I said, sounding like a flight attendant.

"I'll find some he!y.  Shouldn't take more than a few minutes to
restore power.

Cool hands came up to my face and wiped away the latest batch of
tears.

"Excuse me," I snapped, pulling back.  But the hands followed.

How could this person see?

"Go outside for acouple minutes," the voice whispered.  "It's okay,
I'll take over.

I couldn't recognize the voice.  Husky.  The hands were rough and heavy
against my face.  A man 5.

"Phil Sanchez?"  I asked.  Who else but the department head would be so
bold as to take charge.

"Just step outside a few minutes to collect yourself.  It's okay."

This was ridiculous.  I couldn't turn my class over to a voice in the
dark.  He could be a maniac with an automatic rifle slung over his
shoulder and a couple of army surplus grenades in his pocket.

"It's okay," he repeated.  His hands fell from my face and I instantly
felt cut loose, like an astronaut taking a space walk whose lifeline is
severed.  I reached out, but he was gone.

His voice got to me.  Not just that it was soothing or sounded kind.

There was something else.  An understanding that wasn't just
intellectual, like someone who only imagines what you're feeling and
coos sympathy.  It was more intimate than that, as if he had
experienced my same humiliation a dozen times before.

Maybe it was Phil Sanchez, maybe it was one of the other art
instructors who'd wandered by and watched what was happening.

I'd felt a kind of presence outside the door the whole time I was
writing on the blackboard.  But to turn my classroom over to him?

That was a hell of a leap of faith.

I was in a leaping mood, I guess, because I said, "Okay."  I groped my
way out the classroom and I stood outside, pressed flat against the
wall so I could peek in and see what was happening.

My faith had a short leaping span.

Instantly the lights went back on.

"Let there be light," Byron said.  His hand was on the four light
switches, the stub of his missing finger touching one of the
switches.

"What the fuck?"  someone said.  Same guy.

"Must you use profanity?"  the woman with the beret asked him,
scowling.

"One man's profanity," Byron said, wagging a finger at her, "is another
man's profundity."  He smiled at her and she smiled back, lapping up
his charm.

I was hidden by the door so that none of the students could see inc.

Only Byron could, if he chose.  Which he didn't.  He began moving
confidently around the classroom like a prosecuting attorney with a
conviction in the bag.

I noticed for the first time that his face was battered and bruised.

His jaw had two small Band-Aids.  His nose was swollen, maybe even a
little crooked under the swelling.  A small cut angled down from his
eyebrow.  A longer cut near his ear had five or six stitches.

The dragonfly earring was still there, though.

"Art, ladies and gentlemen, is illusion.  Artificial The history of art
is like the history of magicians or politicians or just about anything
else.  In its history is revealed the technique for capturing the minds
and hearts of the people, manipulahug them so they see what the artist,
magician, or politician wants them to see.

That's the art part."

"Where's Ms. Caldwell?"  a no-nonsense man in a blue business suit
asked.

"Who?"

"Our teacher."

"What makes you think she's your teacher?"

The man looked confused by the question.  "She had the roster."

"So every kid wearing a Superman cape can fly?"  Byron picked up the
roster from the podium where I'd left it.  "Besides, I have the roster
now.  Doesn't that make me your teacher?"

"That's ridiculous," the man said.  "She's been teaching this class for
over an hour."

Byron pulled a rolled-up pamphlet out of his back pocket and waved it
at the students.  "This schedule of classes says Staff under name of
instructor.  Perhaps I'm the instructor and she was merely filling in
for me."

"Why?"  one of the filmmakers asked.

"Because I asked her to?  Because she gets paid to?  Maybe I had a car
accident that made me late."  He gestured at the cuts and bruises on
his face.  "Lots of possibilities, aren't there?"

"This is ridiculous," the businessman said again and stood up.

He grabbed his briefcase.  "I'm going to see someone about this."

I started to reenter the room.  I didn't want to get fired, have any
kind of investigation.

"Relax, sir," Byron told him.  "Ms. Caldwell is fine.  This was all
part of a little demonstration she and I cooked up.  Performance art,
you might say, to help you understand the history of art better."  The
man didn't sit down, but he didn't walk away, either.

Byron swept past him and addressed the rest of the class.  "The history
of art isn't just in studying works and memorizing artists.

Art movements shouldn't be merely noted, like bowel movements.  Art
history is understanding the anguish of expression.

What social and psychological forces lead to a new movement.

Okay, everybody take out a blank piece of paper and draw a geometric
design.  Something of your own devising.  Not too complex, not too
simple.  Come on.  And don't take too long, I'm not collecting them."

People started taking out paper and drawing.  Even the business It.

man sat back down, removed a single sheet from his briefcase, and began
drawing in earnest.  His strokes were short and precise, like an
accountant's.

"Hurry up," Byron prodded.  "Just doodle, don't think.  Remember, I'm
not collecting them."

I watched Byron pace around the room, looking over their shoulders,
chuckling goodnaturedly at some of the drawings.

Receiving back a grateful smile from a student.  I'd never seen this
side of him before, the unleashed charm.  He hadn't taught them a damn
thing, yet in five minutes he was closer to them than I was after an
hour of actual learning.  But I knew him for what he was, a convict.

With emphasis on con.

I took off my glasses.  Tears had smudged the lenses, which I wiped on
the hem of my blouse.  I wasn't crying anymore, I wasn't shaking.  I
could go in and take over the class again.  But I didn't.

I was too fascinated watching him gleefully work the crowd, like a
pickpocket in a crowded mall.  I felt voyeuristic.

He clapped his hands.  "Okay, now fold the papers in half so no one
else can see them."

As they did so, he went around the room and collected them.

"Hey," the pretty girl in the bib overalls protested.  "You said you
weren t going to collect them."

"I lied," Byron said.  "Lesson number one.  Art is lying.

Whether it's a movie or a poem or a painting, it's a lie.  That is, the
artist uses lies as if they were colors to create something that forms
a greater truth.  Facts may be true, but they don't reveal the Truth.

That's what an artist does.  He or she doesn't paint an exact
duplication of the subject because that's physically impossible.

Instead, the artist presents a likeness.  A likeness is what the artist
sees influenced by his or her own unique memories and experiences."

"I don't get it" a woman said.  "We all see the same objects, no matter
what our memories.  A chair's a chair."  peeked in.  She was in her
early thirties and about six months "Come up to the blackboard and I'll
show you.  He smiled encouragingly at her.

"That's what art is, right?  Showing, not telling."

She smiled back and stood up boldly.  She went to the blackboard.  "How
about you, young lady," he said to the woman in the beret.

"Oh, no," she said.  "I can't draw.  I just like to watch."

Byron made a leering face.  "Oh, you like to watch, do you?

Already we have something in common.

The class laughed.  The beret woman shook her head in mock
embarrassment, chuckling the whole time.

"Come on," Byron said.  "It won't hurt a bit."  The beret woman went to
the blackboard and picked up a piece of chalk with trepidation, as if
it were a loaded gun.

Byron quickly looked through the first few sketches he'd collected,
selected one, and handed it to the businessman who'd threatened to
leave.  "What's your name?"

"Ed Waldman."

"Okay, Ed, this is what you do.  I want you to give them verbal
instructions on how to draw the design on this paper.  They must follow
every direction you give them.  Only two stipulations, The artists
can't ask questions and you can't use hand gestures, like drawing in
the air.  Simple enough?"

"Yes," Ed said.

"Just be precise and clear.  It's like you're going to talk down some
nonpilot in an airplane after the pilot died of a heart attack."

Byron faced the blackboard.  "Artists, are you ready?"  They nodded.

Byron clapped his hands.  "Let the art begin."

Ed studied the sheet.  A little grin crept across his face.  He looked
confident that he would prove himself.

Ed gave directions.  They were precise and clear.  But by the time he
spoke his second sentence, the pregnant woman and the beret woman were
already drawing two different objects.  Ed tried to guide them back
with more complex directions, but that only made things worse.  Boxes
and triangles sprang up in a jumbled mess.  Desperate, Ed started to
draw in the air, which Byron quickly reminded him was against the
rules.  Sweat beaded along Ed's forehead as he continued explaining
what was clearly hopeless.

"Okay," Byron finally said.  "I think that's enough.  Artists, thank
you, you may be seated."  They returned to their desks.

Byron took the sheet from Ed and went to the blackboard.  With a few
strokes he duplicated the drawing on the paper.  Neither of the
students' sketches remotely resembled either each other or Byron's
sketch.  Byron made a diving gesture with his hand, accompanied by an
exploding sound.  "Crash and burn, Ed.  Those planes are permanently
grounded."

The filmmaker who liked chase scenes laughed loudly.

Byron scratched his head.  "What the heck went wrong?  Both artists
heard the same instructions."

A man with a bushy mustache raised his hand.  "They didn't hear what he
was saying.  They didn't follow his directions."

"His directions weren't clear," a woman at the back said.  "I tried to
draw along and my picture doesn't match any of them.

A few more opinions were shouted out, mixed with mumbled debate.  Then
Byron held up his hands.  "This is the artist's dilemma.  To have
something to say, but never be sure the audience hears what he says,
sees what he sees.  Ed is the typical artist, the women at the
blackboard are the typical audience.  Now, all these historic art
movements tried to make themselves heard using different techniques.

You'll learn all about that later.  For now, it's enough that you
understand the problem artists face."

I walked back into the classroom as if we'd planned my cue.

"With that in mind, I want you to read chapters one through four for
next week.  I want to see a diary entry on each of the works shown in
those pages.

"Are we going to have two teachers from now on?"  someone asked.

"No," I said.  "This was a guest appearance.  One night only."

Some disappointed groans were heard as they filed out of the room.  I
didn't look at Byron until they were all gone.

"What happened to your face?"  I asked.

"What happened to yours?"

"I asked first."

He shrugged.  "I lost."

"You lost?  What the hell is it that you play, nude rugby?"

"Their season doesn't start for another month.  You want tickets

"Do you really know anything about art or was that all bullshit and
bluff?"

"Did it make sense?"

"Yeah, some," I said.  "But then I don't know anything about art.

Except for what's in Wren's notes and what I just got out of the
library the past couple of days."

"I know.  I was listening.  Bullshit and bluff."

II pointed at his face.  "What really happened to your face?"

"Well, actually He touched the two Band-Aids on his jaw.  "These two
are nicks from shaving.  Someone must've run my razor blade through the
washing machine."

I looked away, embarrassed.  "I was drunk.  I'm sorry."

"It's okay.  They have company now.

I didn't know what else to say to him.  I wasn't sure what I was
feeling.  Robby still perched heavily on my shoulders.  "This is weird,
what you did.  Turning out the lights and all.  Very theatri Ical."  I
shook my head.  "What were you doing here?"

"I was in a couple of Wren's art classes in college.  That's how we
met.  At first, I was just meeting my general cd requirements with an
took more art classes just to be near her.  That little blackboard
exercise was one our professor used.  He'd been doing it for sixteen
years and it always turned out that way."  He sighed, looked around the
classroom nostalgically.  "I don't know, I guess I thought seeing you
impersonating Wren would remind me of her.  Something sentimental like
that.  I was in an odd mood."

"Did I remind you of her?"

His face shffened a little.  He seemed angry.  "Did you want to?"

"Look, Byron, I'm just trying to get by here.  I don't want to fight
right now."  I backed away from him a couple of steps.

"Thank you for helping me out.  Thank you for not pressing me about why
I was crying.  I'm fine now.  I got my mind straight, boss.  Won't
happen again, I swear."  I gave him a Girl Scout salute.

He stared at me a long time.  I couldn't read his expression, it was
that prison-yard one he lapsed into every so often.  Anger maybe.  Or
disappointment.

- I didn't care.  I wanted him to know I didn't care.  "I won't behome
tonight," I said.  "I'm going to see Davis."

He nodded and walked toward the door, turning to tip an imaginary hat
and say, "Goodbye, Wren."  .  II Then he was gone.

I rang the bell twice.  The chimes sounded the first few notes of "I
Whistle a Happy Tune" from The King and I.

Davis opened the door.  He had a script folded back in one hand and his
reading glasses on.  His son Mark was standing next to him holding a
Nintendo Gameboy.  They looked oddly comic, unmistakably father and
son.  The mixture of bright light and loud sound of the TV emanating
from behind them was warm and comforting.  A place of families.  More
than anything else in the world, I wanted to be inside that house.

"Hi, Mark," I said from the front stoop.

"Hi, Wren," he said.  "You wanna play with my Gameboy?"

"You bet.  But not right now, okay?"

"Okay."  He ran ba&k inside and plopped down three feet from the giant
TV screen.

"I thought you didn't want to see me tonight?"  Davis said.

"I changed my mind," I said.  "Is that allowed?"

"Is this the first Monday of a month with a full moon?"

"I have no idea."  He smiled and kissed my cheek.  �It's allowed."

We walked into the living room.  Mark offered me a bowl of stubby
pretzel sticks.  �No, thanks," I said.

"They're filled with peanut butter.  They taste great."

I took a handful, saw his face gloom over, released half of il,em back
in the bowl.  He smiled and pulled the bowl away before I took any
more.

Davis sat on the sofa beside me.  "Mark's mother has a date tonight.

Since I didn't have plans, I said I'd watch him."

"Where's Judy?"

"Gififriend's house."

"I don't have any friends," Mark said casuallyhis eyes on the Gameboy
that he was playing with.  �Sure you do, Mark," Davis said.  "What
about Aaron Bloom?"

"He's a jerk."

Davis shrugged at me.  "Last week they were best friends.  They wanted
me to show them how to become blood brothers.  They were going to cut
themselves with a fish scaling knife Aaron found in his dad's tackle
box."  �He's a jerk," Mark repeated.

"Why is he a jerk?"  I asked Mark.

Mark shrugged without looking up from his game.

I looked at Davis.  He shrugged too.

I helped Davis put Mark to bed.  As we were all walking up the stairs,
Mark said to me, "Mom lets me stay up later."  He wasn't complaining,
merely pointing out an interesting fact, as if he had recently figured
out that the world's rules weren't all the same, they changed from
household to household.  And if they weren't all the same, maybe they
weren't automatically good rules.

Once Mark was tucked under the covers, Davis took the Gameboy.  "You
need your sleep, pal.  You've got soccer practice tomorrow.

"Big deal.  I stink at soccer.

"All the more reason to practice."

"Dad, if I practice and practice and practice, will I be the best
soccer player in the world?"

"Depends how much you practice."

"Dad, you've seen me play."

Davis laughed.  "Okay, you won't be the best in the world, but you'll
be better than you are now.

"Well, if I'll never be the best, what's the point?"

Davis looked at me.  "Got an answer I could borrow?  Preferably
something wise and witty.  Something he'll remember fondly years from
now."

"I'm tapped out in the wise and witty department."

"Sorry, Mark," Davis said.  "Guess you're just going to have to trust
me on this one."

"You always say that."

"Have I ever been wrong?"

"About a billion trillion times."

"Hey, anybody can make a billion trillion mistakes once in a while."

Mark giggled.  Davis kissed his cheek.  I patted his chest.  I didn't
feel comfortable doing anything more maternal.  I wasn't yet sure where
I fit in the familial structure and I didn't want to confuse the boy.

Davis closed the door to Mark's bedroom.  He led me to his own
bedroom.

I knew the way.

"We have the Gameboy!"  he said, cackling like a mad scientist.

"It's all ours, they can't stop us now!  Ha, ha, ha!"

Nothing stopped us.  We made love with Davis behind me again.  I was on
my knees, rump in the air, head down on a pillow as if I were praying
to Mecca.  He had his fingers hooked around my hip bones as he pummeled
me, our slapping skin making rude noises.  At one point he took my hand
and placed it on my vagina, guiding my middle finger to my clitoris.  I
rubbed it vigorously and we both got so excited we came together
shortly thereafter.

"How did class go?"  he asked, lying beside me, one leg thrown .1over
my legs.

"Fine."

I was lying on my back, he was lying on his side.  �Fine?"  he
repeated.  "Nothing unusual?"

"Nothing to make a movie out of."  �Low blow," he laughed.  "Of course,
if you're going to blow, low is the place to do it."

I told him a little about class, the students, the confrontation with
the guy who refused to leave, Carol Hill's toilets, some of what I'd
taught in class because I knew it made me seem smarter than I was.  I
didn't mention Robby.  Or Byron.  Those incidents didn't fit into the
image I had created for Davis.  My forgery of Wren Caldwell.

Davis reached over and pressed a button on the remote control and the
TV clicked on.  My head was hanging backward off the edge of the bed,
so I watched the screen upside down.  A male news announcer was talking
about gang violence in Los Angeles.

A stray bullet had killed a ten-year-old innocent bystander playing in
her yard.  Then the female newscaster discussed AIDS testing in local
high schools.  I flopped over to watch the rest.  Davis began
scratching my back.

"Don't you get the sports channel?"  I said.  He didn't answer.

I pulled the fluffy down quilt around me like a nest and propped my
head up on both hands.  Davis's fingernails raked lazily over my
back.

I started to nod off.  What would it be like to wake up in this bed
every morning, I wondered.

"Jesus!"  Davis said, sitting up in bed.

Startled, I sat up too.  I forced my eyes open, but I felt groggy,
disoriented.  �What?  What's the matter?"

Davis didn't answer.  He was watching the television screen.  I turned
and watched too.  A newswoman was standing outside a suburban home.

Her face was clenched in a serious expression.

A breeze kept whipping a lock of her dark hair across her chin.

In the background, yellow police tape could be seen and milling men in
uniforms.  The words LYDIA R0SS and LIVE flashed across the bottom of
the screen.

family and friends were shocked I looked at the clock.  I thought I'd
just closed my eyes but I'd been asleep for fifteen minutes.

Denver authorities say the suspect has offered a full confession."  A
Denver Police Department spokesperson came on the screen.  The name
Sgt. Wanda Fueher was on the screen beneath her.  "We have the
suspect, Roger Clinton, in custody.

He has offered a full confession in the shooting of Ms. Christine
Palmer.  Apparently, he'd been stalking her for six months, ever since
the operation.  Ms. Palmer had gone to court last week and gotten a
restraining order against Roger Clinton, preventing him from coming
within 1,000 yards of her."

"Did you know her?"  I asked Davis.

"Sshh."  His eyes were fixed on the screen.

A psychiatrist was being interviewed.  Dr. Philip Rardin.  He was
balding and his forehead was knotted in three deep furrows.

"It is not unusual sometimes for a young man to become obsessed with
the sister or cousin of a loved one when she dies.  He feels such
unbearable grief that he must transfer his passion somewhere or
explode."  Cut to a reaction shot of reporter Lydia Ross, looking
serious again.  Back to the shrink.  �In Mr. Clinton's case, his wife
was killed in a car accident.  They both had agreed to be donors and
her heart was transplanted into Christine Palmer.  Usually the
recipient of such a heart would be an older person, but in this case
Ms. Palmer was a young woman about the same age as the dead wife.  So
it was easier for him to obsess on her."

Cut back to Lydia Ross.  She was walking now, slowly strolling I.down
the sidewalk as if, now that the event was over, we should consider it
from a philosophical position.  "And obsess he did.

Following his wife's funeral and Christine Palmer's release from the
hospital, Roger Clinton began following Christine Palmer.

He called her at,home, sometimes a dozen times a day.  He sent her
letters, cards, gifts.  He offered to take her to Jamaica for two
weeks.  Apparently that was where he and his wife had honeymooned.

Finally, Christine, still weak as she struggled to adjust to her new
heart, petitioned the court to keep her unwanted suitor at an arm's
distance.  Today, that arm's distance proved not to be far enough.  Not
when there's a gun at the end of il,at arm."  She arched an eyebrow as
if to say, Get it?

"Thank you, Lydia," the anchorwoman said and introduced the
sportscaster.

Davis swung his legs off the bed and picked up the phone.  "I'm sorry,
Wren.  I have to be going.  I'm terribly sorry."

"Did you know her?"

"No.  This is just business.  I have to go to Denver."  He started
dialing.

"Christ, Davis.  You're not going after her family for their story.

Jesus."

"Not their story.  His.  Roger Clinton."  He held up his hand to
indicate he had someone on the line.  He spoke into the phone.

"What's the next flight you have to Denver No, it doesn't have to be
direct .  . That's too late.  What about through LAX?  .  . . Okay,
that's good."  He made a reservation, giving his MasterCard number and
expiration date.

When he hung up I said, �I've never known anyone who knew their credit
card number by heart."

"It's a gift.

We looked at each other.  I squeezed the down comforter.  I would not
be waking up here in the morning.  The bathroom had a skylight.  When
you showered, the sunlight spotlighted you.  I would not be showering
here in the morning.  The sun would not be spotlighting me.

"I have to call my sister," he said.  He dialed again.  His sister
agreed to watch Mark for the night and take him back to his mother in
the morning.  Her voice was very loud and agitated.

Before hanging up, I heard her say, "I wish we were married sometimes
so I could divorce you too."

"See you soon, sis."  Davis hung up and stared at me again.

"I'm terribly sorry.  You don't know how sorry.  But I have to go.

It's business."  He shook his head.  "I know that sounds lame."

"Do you really think people want to see a movie about a woman who's
stalked by the widower of the woman whose heart she received in a
trnnsplant?"

"Absolutely.  We'll get some too-handsome actor in a series who's
looking to break his nice-guy image and prove he has depth.

I expect it will be a big hit."  He stood up and pulled on his
underpants.  "The only question now is who will produce this hit, me or
some other guy?"

"Doesn't it bother you, flitting from personal tragedy to personal
tragedy, like a bee flying from flowers somebody stepped on, trying to
suck out the last drop?"  �That's good," he chuckled.  "Now I remember
why I hired you.

"This kind of thing isn't entertainment, it's tragedy."

"Shakespeare wrote tragedies, right?"

"Yes, but he gave us some insight into the nature of people.

These movies aren't tragedy, they're gossip."  Davis didn't respond.

His jaw was clenched as he busied himself looking for shoes.  He looked
hurt.  I felt bad.  I softened my tone.  "I don't know, Davis, it all
seems so ghoulish."

"It is ghoulish.  It's ghoulish, morbid, twisted, and a few other words
we could come up with if we put our heads to it.  Don't you think I
know that?  But I do it now so that in a couple of years I can see this
kind of thing on the news and send some other schmuck to Bumfuck,
Egypt, in the middle of the night.  Then I "I can go to sleep with my
wife and watch my kid play soccer the next day.  What's wrong with
that?"

"Nothing," I admitted.  Besides, who was I to be pointing fingers?

Talk about ghoulish, I stole my dead friend's identity and now was
interviewing a murderer for money.  If it weren't for dead people, I
wouldn't have a life.

While Davis hurriedly got dressed and packed, I went into the bathroom,
closed the door, and sat on the toilet.  I had to pee, but sometimes
right after sex it takes me a while to get the tap flowing.  I picked
up a magazine from the stack in the wall rack.

An airline magazine.  A piece of paper, an old airline ticket receipt,
marked one of the articles.  I opened it on my lap and started
reading.

It was about Mark Spitz trying to make a swimming comeback at the next
Olympics.  He trained very hard every day, swam laps, watched what he
ate.  I got very excited thinking about training, what it would be like
to work out hard every day how good you must feel about yourself.  I
decided then I would take up swimming, buy a pair of goggles, and swim
laps in the pool at my apartment complex.

I ended up not peeing.  I flushed anyway because what would he think I
was doing in here all this time if I didn't?

When I went back into the bedroom, Davis was dressed and ready.  He
wore a blue Polo shirt, khaki pants, and a tweedish sports jacket.  His
leather overnight bag was slung over his shoulder.  "You almost
ready?"

"Take me one minute.

"Okay, I'll see how Mark's coming along."  He dashed down the
hallway.

I was dressed in less than a minute.  I made the bed, tugging the
fluffy down quilt into place.  Then I sat on the edge of the bed and
waited, reading the article.  I noticed notations in the margins in
Davis's handwriting.  Ken Olin as Mark Spitz?  Jamie Lee Curtis as
wife?

"Ready?"  Davis leaned in the doorway.  "We're ready.  �Can I borrow
this magazine?"  I asked.  "I want to finish an article."

"You have two forms of ID?"

I.

We dropped Mark off at Davis's sister's house in Newport Beach, then we
drove to LAX, which took about forty minutes.

"You don't have to wait," he said.  "You can just drop me off at the
curb."

"I'll wait.  ", He smiled.  "Good."  We had coffee and donuts in the
airport cafeteria.  We held hands across the table.  Granules of salt
or sugar from previous customers ground under our wrists.  We talked
about actresses who'd had breast implants, then we talked about Denver,
where he'd never been.  �All I know about Denver is what John Denver
sings," he said.

"Did you know John Denver's real name is John Deutschendorf?"  I
said.

"Someone gave him some good advice to change it."

"You don't mind someone changing his name?"

"Hey, that's show business.  Who's going to take him seriously if his
name is Deutschendoff?  Makes him sound like a Nazi collaborntor.."

"It means "German village."

"He gave me an impressed expression.  "I had two years of German in
high school."

When we got to his gate, he hugged me close.  His breath smelled like
coffee.  "I'll be back in a day or so."

"I'll be here."

"I'll call.  God, I don't want to leave you.

"Don't."

He sighed.  "Thanks for making it easy on me.

"I'm sorry, I'm being selfish.  Have a good flight.  Get everybody's
life story while you're there so you won't have to go back every time
somebody commits a crime.  Say hi to Mr. Deutschendorf.  Have a Rocky
Mountain high."

He started to say something, then stopped.  He shook his head and said,
"I'm afraid to say anything.  I mean anything real.  Like you'll have a
clever comeback and I'll feel stupid."

I started to say something like "If you think what I'm saying is
clever, you've been in Hollywood too long."  But I stopped myself.

Instead I just leaned against him.  He wrapped his arms around me and
squeezed hard.  It was like being back in that down quilt again, or
standing in the shower under the skylight, the hot morning sun warming
your face, water washing you clean.

The drive back to my apartment went quickly.  I listened to a talk
radio station where they discussed the water shortage in Lourdes.  Five
million pilgrims visit the city each year to drink from the holy waters
or bathe in them.  For the first time, Lourdes is rationing the water
to protect its $400million annual income.

"Try the shower at Davis's house," I said aloud.  "Same effect."

Then I started thinking about Byron and how he'd marched into my
classroom and taken over.  That goofy drawing exercise of his had
actually been a good idea.  I thought of his face, battered and
scarred, my own contributions on his chin.  Jesus, what a life.  What
had he and Wren had in common?  What had gone wrong?

I checked my realview mirror for the white Subaru.  Nothing.

Still, what Byron had done had helped me at the time.  I had been
falling apart.  Robby was going to be a father.  How many hours had he
and I discussed that very issue?  When we would have a child, what
conditions were necessary for us to do a good job.  How often we'd
debated as to who would be the better parent.

I'd voted for Robby.  So he had.

Suddenly, while changing lanes on the 40, Freeway, I realized I wanted
a baby.  I wanted one right way, right that moment, or at least the
inevitability of one.  if an all-night insemination clinic had been
open, I'd have driven right in, spread my legs, and said, "Okay, shoot
me up with a kid."

I pulled into an all-night drugstore instead.  The store was brightly
lighted and the aisles were packed with plastic-wrapped goodies.  I
found a pair of swim goggles in the sports department.

I,They only had one kind, with blue lenses, so I bought it.  Then I
went to the jewelry counter and looked at the watches.  I picked I.a
man's Casio with all kinds of functions and dials.  It cost eighty
dollars, which I charged.  It was a gift for Byron.

I was kind of excited now as I drove into the complex and parked the
car.  Byron had lost everything, including his watch, gambling.  This
would show him how much I appreciated what he'd done for me.

As I approached the front door I could hear Ethan's guitar upstairs.

His windows were all closed, though, so I couldn't hear what he was
singing.  I couldn't even make out the melody clearly.

I entered the front door, quietly tiptoeing across the living room.

The alarm clock/radio next to Byron's bed was playing some tinny music,
jazz, I thought.  Good, he was still awake.  I could surprise him with
my gift.

I sneaked into the kitchen to put down my purse, maybe grab a couple of
beers to set the spirit.  But when I walked into the kitchen I saw the
birdcage back in the middle of the floor, one of Wren's designer sheets
thrown over it.  I hoisted up the sheet and discovered Motown nodding
off on his perch.  What the hell was he doing back?

Footsteps.

I backed up behind the swinging door just as it eased open.

The room was dark, so it was hard for me to recognize anything more
than a human form moving toward the refrigerator.  Then the door opened
and the refrigerator light snapped a beam of light on the figure.

She was tall, over six feet, slender through the waist and narrow at
her hips.  Her skin was dark, her thick braided hair hanging down her
back to her waist like a black eel.  She looked Native American.

Also, she was buck naked.

II "Who the hell are you?"  I said.

She didn't look up from the refrigerator.  She studied the contents a
few seconds, reached in for a couple of cans of beer, and closed the
door with her hip.

"I asked who you are?"  I was shouting, I don't why.  I mean, what
difference did it make who she was, I had a pretty good idea what she
was doing and with whom.  Even so, what did I care?

She still didn't answer me.  When she turned toward the kitchen door
with her beers, she noticed me and jumped back, startled.

But she didn't say anything.

The kitchen door swung open and Byron entewd, wearing those ratty
volleyball shorts I'd first seen him in the day he ambushed Davis and
me.  The day he stepped on that snail.  His shorts were on backward,
which indicated the haste with which he'd dressed.  His long hair was
disheveled, no longer pulled into his ponytail.  His dragonfly earring
was not dangling from his lobe.  He looked at me.  "Oh, hi," he said.

The woman, more beautiful than I'd realized before, smiled at me.  She
handed a beer to Byron and offered the other one to me with a
gesture.

"No, I don't want a goddamn beer," I snapped.  "Christ!"

The woman didn't say anything.  She shrugged, popped the tab, and
sipped some beer.  Her dark nipples seemed enormous, like brown
thumbs.

I."No point in yelling at Shawna," Byron said.  �She's deaf."

"And mute, I suppose."

Shawna put her beer can on the counter and made some rapid hand
gestures at Byron.  He made some back.  Shawna laughed.

Her laugh was like a dry cough.

"You know sign language?"  I said to Byron.

A.S.L. American Sign Language."

I don't know why, but this angered me even more.  He had so many
secrets.  I only had one and he knew it.

"I took it in college as my second language, he said.  "I thought it
would be easier than Spanish."

"Seems like your whole life has been seeking the path of least
resistance.

"Works for water, doesn't it?"

"How zen of you."  I looked over at Shawna.  She drank from her beer
can without any display of modesty.  Not that she had anything to be
modest about.  Her body was perfect in ways you never thought existed
outside airbrushed magazines.  It made me want to put on more
clothes.

"Doesn't she want to get dressed or something?"

He gestured at Shawna.  She responded.

"What did she say?"

"She wants to know what you're doing in my apartment.

"Your apartment, huh?"

"I thought I'd explained everything to her.  Guess my sign language is
a little rusty."

I looked at Shawna and she smiled again.  Her teeth were perfect slabs
of light, white marble doors to some exotic palace.  A drop of
condensation dripped from her beer can, bounced onto her stomach, and
rolled into the thicket of black pubic hairs.  She caught me looking
and her smile widened.  I looked away, embanassed.

"What's the bird doing back?"  I said.  "I thought you lost it."

"I did.  To Shawna."

"Then who beat you up?  Shawna?"

"Someone else.  It's complicated."

That was it.  I was standing in my own home being treated like a child
too stupid to understand the big bad world.  No more.  I grabbed his
shorts by the waistband, pulled them open, and stuffed the
Save-on-Drugs paper bag with the watch and goggles down the front.

"For you," I said.  "Thanks."

"Owww," he jerked away from me.  He reached down and pulled the bag
out.

I straight-armed the door open and marched out of the kitchen and down
the hall toward Byron s room.  I've had it with all this mystery
bullshit.  It's complicated?  Let me help you simplify it."

I stormed into his bedroom, grabbed a handful of clothing from the
closet, and carried it to the front door.  I opened the door and tossed
everything onto the sidewalk.  "There, does that make things
simpler?"

Byron was strapping on the watch to his wrist.  "Hey, a new watch.

Thanks."

"That's okay," I said.  I returned to the bedroom, opened a drawer,
scooped up an armful of underwear and socks, and carried them back to
the front door.  Heave ho.  Onto the sidewalk.

"It's got a stopwatch too," he said with delight.  "Cool."

"I'm glad you like it."  Back to the bedroom.  Shawna was in there now,
pulling on her jeans without any underwear.  When she hiked the jeans
over her hips, her buttocks didn't bunch up around her spine like with
most women.  The jeans just slid over the dark, solid muscle.  She
slipped into a sweatshirt, not bothering with a bra.  I dug into the
next drawer and came up with an armful of T-shirts.  She came over,
pulled open a third drawer, and picked up a couple of new sweaters.

We formed a miniparade out to the living room.  Byron was sitting on
the front stoop reading the directions for his watch.  His clothes lay
scattered across the sidewalk five feet away.  "It's got three alarms
and counts laps when you swim.  Are the goggles for me too?"

I tossed my armload onto the sidewalk.  Shawna did the same thing.  On
the way back in I snatched the goggles from his hand.

Shawna laughed her hoarse laugh and gestured at Byron.  He gestured
back.

"What?"  I said.

"She says you must know me pretty well to dislike me this much."

"Did you tell her who I am?"

"Who's that?"

"Don't play zen master with me, okay?  Did you tell her I was your wife
Wren or your roommate Luna?"

"What's the difference?"  he said.  "You afraid she'll talk?"

"You're sick."  I was suddenly exhausted from throwing his stuff out.

I went into the living room and flopped onto the sofa.

Shawna went to the kitchen and brought me a beer.  "Thanks," I said.

"This is thanks in ASL," Byron said, coming in and sitting on the floor
across from me.  He brought his hand up to his lips as if to stifle a
yawn, then pushed his hand away and down.  "See?"

I repeated the gesture to Shawna.  She extended her hand palm up out to
the side and sliced it inward toward her waist.

"That's welcome," "Byron said.

I sipped the beer and closed my eyes.  What was I doing here?

I had been carefully creating a perfect life for myself, sketching in a
proper profession, painting a rich background.  Okay, so I was
borrowing a bit from Wren, not unlike an artist imitating a better
artist's style.  A homage really.  Truffaut imitating Hitchcock.  The
only problem was my work was being populated with characters from
someone else's weird imagination.  Byron, the battered gambler.

Shawna, the deaf and mute beauty.  Motown, the soul-singing bird.  And,
of course, Hector.  The cat.

Byron stood up and closed the front door.  He'd made no effort to
retrieve his clothing.  That made me edgy, as if I'd somehow littered
and everyone passing by would know.

"Don't you want your stuff?"  I said.

He looked up f\0w his watch, which he was still toying with.

"I know where it is.

"Someone might take it."

He shrugged.  �They'd have to be pretty hard up."

"These are hard-up times."

He laughed heartily, made some gestures at Shawna.  They both laughed
together.

"What?"  I said.  �What's so funny?"

"What you said.  "These are haM-on times."

"I said hard-up not hard-on."

He shrugged again.  "Oh.  I thought you said hard-on."

"Aren't you going to tell her?"  I pointed to Shawna.  I didn't want
her thinking I'd said what I hadn't.  �Why ruin the joke?"  he said and
sat down on the floor next to Shawna.

There's a strange helplessness in having someone in the room with whom
you can't communicate.  It makes you feel as if you need to be on your
best behavior because if they can't understand your words, they would
try to figure you out by observation.  I caught myself gnawing my
cuticles and lowered my hand.

The other thing that bothered me was that Shawna and I were both women,
but the only way we could communicate was through a man.  There was
something sinister in that.  Something wrong.

"You mustn't think very much of me to have her over and not even close
your bedroom door," I said to Byron.

"You told me you wouldn't be home tonight, remember?  What happened to
Davis?"

I didn't answer.  Hector slinked into the room, walked around rubbing
against everyone's leg, then left.

Shawna stood up, gestured, and followed Hector into the kitchen.  I
heard her opening a can of cat food.

"What is she, some kind of Indian?"  �Italian.  But she likes to
cultivate the whole Native American image.

It's cooler to be Apache than Italian."

"Where'd you meet her?"

"She's a player."

I made a skeptical face.  �Why is it so hard to believe anything you
say?"

"No one else has a problem believing me."

"Maybe they don't know you."

He laughed harshly.  "You don't know me."

"I know you didn't learn sign language in college.  You're too good,
too fast for someone just looking for easy credits.  That takes years
of constant practice, like playing the piano."

"That's very good.  Okay, you caught me.  You wanted some truth, okay,
here's some truth, My father was deaf.  He wasn't born that way, it
happened to him in high school.  Got an ear infection and that was
that.  He was an art director for an advertising agency.  He died in a
hotel fire at a convention because he couldn't hear the fire alarm.

Smoke inhalation."  He smiled.  "But I really did take ASL in
college.

I pretended I didn't know any so I could get the easy language
credits."

"Why didn't you just tell me that in the first place?  Why this
constant Man o' Mystery act?"

His face got serious.  "You want to know why I don't tell you
anything?

I'll tell you why.  Because my life isn't just background for your
impersonation.  I'm not just a prop so you can be more and more like
Wren.  What you're doing is sick."

"Gee, moral lectures from you really carry a lot of weight.  I'm sure
your pals at the prison appreciated it as much as I do.  Did you hold
sermons in the showers?"

"Don't feel so fucking superior to them.  One call to the cops and you
could be in a cell yourself."

I jumped up and started screaming.  "Don't threaten me in my own
home!

You want to make a call?"  I marched over to the phone, picked it up,
and threw it at him.  The receiver flew off and clipped him on the
shoulder.  "Then just fucking do it!  Do it!  Do it!"

I was trembling, knees shaking, eyes burning.  I was scaring myself.

He looked at me for a long time.  Then a slow grin spread across his
face.  "I didn't know you were such a screamer.  From what I heard of
you and your boyfriend this afternoon, you're more of a moaner.

I froze, my face flushed.  My voice went small.  "You were here?"

"Just for a quick nap.  I'd been up all night playing.  But how could I
sleep with the two of you in the same house.  Don't you know that
bathrooms magnify sound?"  He laughed.

"You're a pig," I said.  "It's no wonder Wren dumped you."

His face tightened.  I'd hurt him.  Good.  "You don't know shit about
what happened between Wren and me.  You think you do, but you don't.

"I know she never wanted to see you again.  If you're so fucking wise,
Confucius, how come you couldn't hold on to her?"

His jaw clenched the way Davis's had earlier when I'd hurt him.  Only
this time I didn't feel sorry.

Byron unstrapped the watch from his wrist and tossed it to me. 
�Here.

I didn't come into your classroom to help you.  I just didn't want you
to ruin Wren's name any more with your pathetic performance."

My mouth tasted like a toxic waste dump.  I was dizzy with anger.

"You don't want this watch?"  I said calmly.  I put the watch on the
floor and started stomping on it.  I looked down but I could see it was
still working.  I jumped on it with all my might, but the shockproof
cover wouldn't break.  I picked it up by the strap and started whacking
it against the edge of the coffee table.

Finally the cover shattered.  I tossed the broken watch back at him.

"Check your warranty."

Shawna came back in carrying Hector.  Hector was licking his lips.

I put my hands together as if to pray and pressed them against my cheek
to indicate sleep.  Shawna laughed and nodded understanding.  She
waved.  I went to my room and closed the door.

I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and peed.  I undressed to my
panties and climbed into bed.  My body was still trembling with
emotion.  I pulled the covers tight around me, using the edge of my
hand to tuck the bJanket along the outline of my body.  I smoothed out
every wrinkle.

I was scared.  This wasn't me.  I wasn't sure it was Wren either.

I had never acted with such manic passion before, not even when Robby
left me.  It was as if I'd tapped some underground oil well and my bile
was gushing all over the wildcatters.  Or like a science fiction
film.

I was the nice scientist trying to create something good for humanity,
only to have my creation turn into something horrible, half human/half
fly, half human/half wolf, half human," half Luna.

I tried to sleep.  But every time I'd nod off some horrible nightmare
would jolt me awake.  At 3:18 A.M. I was still staring at the Down the
hall I heard noises.  Bedboards creaking.  Mattress bouncing.

Grunting.  Strangled cries.  I listened, watched the clock.  3,23.

3,3,.  3,42.  The noises didn't stop.

At 3,4, I reached down under the covers and slipped my panties off.  I
slid my fingers between my legs.  I was a little sore from having had
sex with Davis twice today.  But I didn't stop.  I couldn't have
stopped.

I.

I.

- ,f In my dream, I was walking down a long hospital corridor.  But
there were no doctors or patients.  At first I thought I was alone, but
then I felt the pressure of a pair of strong hands holding on to my
waist and I knew somehow that Davis was behind me and that Byron was
holding his waist behind him and that Robby was behind him.  I didn't
know who else was back there, but I was certain they went on for
several miles like an enormous cha-cha line.

I turned quickly to try to see Davis, but as soon as I moved, they all
swung behind me so I couldn't see any of them.  I took another couple
of steps, pretending to ignore them, then I suddenly whirled around to
catch them off guard.  But they must have whirled too, because no one
was there.  I was like the head of a long fat caterpillar, I could
never see my body.  I looked down at the hands gripping my waist.  One
was female, the other male.

"Oh, I get it,"I said aloud.  "This is some sort of yin-yang thing,
right?  Some male/female conflict, right side of the brain battling
with the left side?  Right?"

"One, two, cha cha cha someone in line behind me answered.  It sounded
like Paul Simon.

But then I walked into a hospital room.  It was a birthing room, one of
the new kind made to look like a bedroom.  Wren was there.

And Esther.  Esther's cat, Sphinx, was on the white bed.  They all
looked happy to see me.

"Get in," Wren said, gestunug at the bed.

"Will we all fit?"  I asked, hooking a thumb over my shoulder at my
entourage.

She laughed and helped me into the bed.  The cat curled up on my lap.

Esther expertly injected me with a shot in the arm and Wren began
attaching ftibes to my arms, legs, and nose.

"This is just like the dream sequences on St.  Elsewhere," I said.

"Remember that show?"

"I could never stay awake that late," Esther said.  She stifled a
yawn.

, "What's going on?"  I said.

"You want to be just like us," Wren said.  "The doctor will help."

"I don't want to be like BeeGee," I said.  "No offense, Esther."

Esther had nodded off.  She snored to the melody of "I Whistle a Happy
Tune."

I started scratching the cat's neck.  I felt so happy to be there, like
I could relax for the first time.  No secrets.

"You guys look good," I said.  �Think so?"  Wren said.  She grinned and
nodded at my hand that was scratching the cat.  I looked down.  My
fingers were covered fit with blood and matted fur.  I'd scratched the
cat's fur off his head as if it were a mask.  Sphinx turned and looked
at me, his face a bloody clump of muscle and bone.  A bullet was lodged
in his cheek.

Wren reached up and pulled off her own face.  She nudged Esther awake
with an elbow and Esther also began yanking her face off.  Beneath
their rubbery masks were the same wide-eyed bloody messes of bone and
sinew, like in an anatomy book.

"The doctor's here, Luna," Wren said.  "Now you can be just like us.

For real."

Season Dougherty walked into the room wearing a doctor's green
operating uniform, only hers had big prison stripes on them.  She
carried a shotgun.

"Hi, Wren," she said to me.  She aimed the shotgun at my crotch.  "You
may feel a little discomfort."

She fired.

That's pretty much how the rest of the night went.  I couldn't sleep
most of it, and when I did manage to drift off for a few minutes, I'd
get sucked into another nightmarish horror that shocked me awake with
cold sweats.

I tried reading once, finishing that article about Mark Spitz I'd
borrowed from Davis.  Afterward I managed to kill twenty minutes
wondering how my life might have been different if I'd won a gold medal
in something at the Olympics.

I.

About five in the morning I actually got up and put on my swimsuit.  I
figured that if I couldn't sleep, this was as good a time as any to
begin my new swimming program.  I even tried on my goggles and looked
at myself in the mirror.  The blue lens made everything seem as if I
were already underwater.  Anyway, I never made it out of the bedroom.

I stripped down and went back to bed.

At 6,34 A.M. I was working on a plan to murder Byron and hack up the
body into cat food, which I would feed to Hector.

Maybe when he was gone I could rent the room to Shawna.

When she wasn't fucking like an Amazon warrior-queen, she was pretty
quiet.  I could learn sign language and she and I could go to lunch and
gossip about people at the next table without them knowing.  We could
"talk" in the movies and no one would tell us to shut up.  We'd be like
secret agents, living undercover among the unsuspecting suburbanites,
acting like them, eating the same foods, wearing the same clothes.

Until our government activated us.

God, is this how BeeGee had lived for so long?  All those years without
proper sleep, night after night, her mind rambling on and on.  I was
nuts after only one night.  I guess the quesilon isn't what caused
Esther to finally snap, but what took her so damn long,i saw a stranger
with your hair/Tried to make her give it back I opened my eyes.  The
music was faint, but distinct.

So I could send it off to you/Maybe Federal Express .

I looked at my clock.  7:12 A.M. I must have dozed for a few minutes.

I dragged myself to the edge of the bed and sat there, unable to get up
or even focus my gritty eyes.

The phone rang.  I reached for my nightstand, only to remember that I
was no longer living in the bedroom with the pl,one.

Didn't matter.  Ringing stopped.

"Hey, Wren," Byron hollered from down the hall.  "For you.

It's the Academy Award people.  I think you've been nominated."

I pulled on some sweatpants and a T-shirt and pattered off to the
kitchen phone.  When I opened the kitchen door, Motown, Iii whose cage
was no longer covered by a sheet, started squawking, "Baby love baby
love .  . . "Awwwk."

I picked up the phone.  "Hello?"

"Tell me you miss me more than anything in the world or I'll kill
myself with a rusty razor.  �Who is this?"  I said.

"Very funny."  Davis chuckled.  "You're not very romantic in the
morning."

"Rough night.  I didn't get any sleep."

"At least lie and tell me it was because you were missing me."

"It's because I was missing you."

"You're lying."

I laughed.  "Not entirely.  I do miss you.  The only time my life has
any sanity to it is when I'm with you."

"If that ain't love, what is?"

"You know what I mean.  You run off in the middle of the night, but at
least you're honest about it.  There are no secrets.

I'm tired of secrets."

There was a pause.  "You okay, sweetheart?  You don't sound so hot."

"I'm just tired.  I didn't sleep all night.  Did I alread,y say
that?"

"Yes.  Maybe you should stay in bed today, rest.

"No can do.  I've got Season Dougherty sitting in a cell waiting for me
to come over and rip her guts out with some of my insightful yet subtle
questions."

"You can take a day off," he said.  "Lie to your boss."

"My boss would know.  He knows everything."  I was touched by the
compassion in his voice.  "When you coming home, Red Ryder?"

"I don't know yet.  Negotiations are tricky right now.  Lots of lawyers
smelling money.  State laws prohibiting criminals to profit from their
crimes.  Et cetera, et cetera.  Probably won't be back till
tomorrow."

"Oh."  I let my disappointment come through.  He would appreciate it.

-I Byron walked into the kitchen.  He was wearing nothing but those
same stupid shorts.  As he passed me I could smell the moist scent of
sex.  A couple of the stitches next to his ear had come out.  He
stopped at the birdcage, reached a finger in, and started scratching
behind Motown's neck.  Motown bent his head forward and snuggled up to
Byron's finger.

"Say something romantic to keep me going," Davis said.  "If you can't
be romantic, dirty will do."

II turned my back on Byron so he couldn't overhear me.  I lowered my
voice.  "Hurry home, okay?  I miss you.

"I miss you too."  He paused again as if to say something.  He sighed. 
�I miss you.  I really do."

We repeated ourselves a few more times and then hung up.

Byron was still scratching the bird's neck.  Just looking at Byron made
me angry again.  Certainly he was to blame for my not sleeping.  Still,
this was no way to act.  One of us had to be mature.

"I didn't know you could do that," I said.  "Scratch them like that."

�They love it."

"I figured they'd bite your finger off."

-"Only if you do it wrong."  He held up his right hand and wiggled his
stump.

"Is that how you lost your finger?"  I was just trying to make
conversation, be friendly.  I didn't even care anymore how he lost his
stupid finger.

He ignored my question anyway and started singing to Motown.  "Love
child, love child .

"You really are an asshole," I shouted.  "Why can't you just act like a
normal human being for five fucking minutes?  Would it kill you, you
obnoxious piece of shit?"

Motown croaked, "Love child love child Byron opened the refrigerator,
took out a carton of orange juice, and walked out of the kitchen
without responding to me.

-I was so furious that I looked around for something to throw at him, a
knife or a hammer.  All I could see at that instant was the folded
sheet that had covered cage overnight.  I grabbed it from the table and
burst through kitchen door in a rage.

He was walking down the hall drinking from the juice carton.  I hurled
the folded sheet at him, but it blossomed open like a parachute and
fluttered harmlessly to the ground before reaching him.

He stopped, looked over his shoulder at the sheet, at me.  He snorted
and went in the bedroom.

I had never in my life wanted to kill anybody.  Until that moment.  If
there'd been a shotgun in my room, within twenty minutes I'd have been
in the cell next to Season Dougherty.

I looked around for something to break, but I didn't see anything that
I wouldn't later regret having smashed.  I went back to my room.  It
was later than I'd realized so I had to skip my shower and get dressed
as quickly as I could.  I didn't want to be late for my meeting with
Season.  I had a feeling that she looked forward to our
conversations.

I don't know if we were friends exactly, but I think we trusted each
other somehow.  Maybe because I didn't judge her, maybe because she
sensed I wasn't in a position to judge her.  I actually felt good
sitting there with her, the way I used to feel sitting with Wren and
BeeGee, munching microwave popcorn, watching David Letterman on the TV
in the refrigerator.

On my way out of the apartment I heard the familiar creaking of
bedboards and the muffled throat spasms of Shawna's orgasms.  I Hector
was waiting for me at the door.  I noticed that the smashed Casio watch
I'd bought Byron was fastened around Hector's neck along with the flea
collar.  He sat next to the door as if he couldn't wait for me to go so
the real fun could begin.  I, I opened the front door.

Byron's clothing was still strewn across the sidewalk.  I walked on top
of them, grinding my heels into the fabrics with each step.  That felt
good.

When I arrived at the police station, I realized that in my hurry to
get out of the apartment I'd pulled on a sleeveless sweater.  My
clean-shaven underarms, freshly sealed with Arid roll-on, were
exposed.

Season might balk at them, refuse to see me, demand I drop my pants so
she could check the stubble on my legs.  That wouldn't do.

I searched the car for another sweater or sweatshirt, something I might
have crumpled into a corner unknowingly.  I found a muddy white sock
and half a pack of Life Savers, a balled-up pair of panty hose from my
first meeting with Season.  But no shirt.

A red Honda pulled into the space next to mine.  A cop in his twenties
got out wearing his uniform.  He leaned into his car and brought out a
hanger draped with freshly pressed civilian clothes still in the
dry-cleaning plastic wrapper.

"Hi," I said to him.  "I know this may sound stupid, but I wonder if
you have a T-shirt or something I could borrow for a couple hours while
I'm visiting someone.  I get so cold in there and I forgot my
sweater.

I'll give it back.  I promise.

He looked me over.  "You the one who visits that woman who shot her
husband?  You're writing the book."

"Yes."  I offered my hand.  He shook it.  "I'm Wren Caldwell."

He nodded.  He looked at me as if trying to decide whether or not to
make me walk a straight line, touch my fingers to my nose.

"You can hold on to my driver's license," I said.  "Or a credit
card."

"No need," he said, laying his clothes carefully across the roof of my
car.  Let's see what I've got."  He popped his trunk and rummaged
through some golf clubs, a tennis racket, a stack of Newsweek magazines
that were bound with twine.  He finally dug out his nylon sports bag
and pulled out some wadded clothing, socks, jock strap, shorts,
T-shirt.  He sniffed the shirt.  "Still a little ripe.  I wore it a
couple days ago to play basketball."

"That's fine," I said, reaching for it.  It was damp in a couple of
places and smelled like the produce drawer in my refrigerator.

Season wouldn't notice through the glass.  "It smells like you won.

"Yeah, we played hard."  He picked up his pressed clothes and pointed
at the building.  "You can just drop it off at the desk when you're
done.  Tell them it's for Hirsh."

"Thanks, Hirsh," I said.

"Gary."  He waved and trotted off.

I pulled on the moist shirt and noticed the front said in bold black
letters, "WERE IT LEFT To ME To DECIDE WHETHER WE should HAVE A
G0VERNMENT without NEWSPAPERS, or NEWSPAPERS without A GoVERNMENT, I
should N0T HESITATE A M0MENT To PREFER THE LATTER."  Beneath the quote
it said, TH0MAS JEFFERSoN, 1787.  Beneath that it said, SUPPorT THE
FIRST AMENDMENT.  ACLU.

A cop with an ACLU flshirt?  Was he kidding or what?  As I walked into
the police station wearing this T-shirt, I felt as if I had a huge red
target painted on my chest.  I forced a big smile on my face and walked
up to the guard, Officer Cooper, who usually brought Season out and sat
in attendance while we visited.  He sat behind his desk with his
Scientology pamphlets open.

-I asked him which he'd rather live without, his wife or the carpet.

He decided it was petty after all.

"Hello, Officer Cooper," I said.  I nodded toward the door that led to
the cells where Season was waiting.  "Once more into the breach."

He gave me a nervous look.  "Uh, could you have a seat please, Ms.
Caldwell?  My captain wants to speak to you."

"Sure," I said, trying to sound calm, even cheerful.

He turned and disappeared through the door.  My stomach felt as if
someone were doing heavy spadework inside.  What was wrong?  My
T-shirt?  Or maybe they had found out about me.

They ran some kind of fingerprint check on me, discovered who I was,
and were coming out to arrest me.  I should run, jump in the car, and
keep driving.  I knew what I was doing was illegal.

Last week I saw on the news they'd arrested some twenty-fiveyear-old
guy in Los Angeles who'd dressed as a girl and enrolled in high
school.

He even joined the cheerleading squad as a girl.

They'd interviewed students at the school.  They all said he was very
popular and funny.  A couple were more surprised that he was
twenty-five than that he was a guy.  The police charged him with
criminal impersonation.

Still, I didn't run.  Maybe it was nothing important.  They wanted to
know how I would portray their department in my book.  Maybe something
like that.  I sat next to Officer Cooper's desk and started browsing
through his Scientology stuff.  There was a pamphlet.  On the cover was
a cluster of photographs of smiling well-dressed people, most of them
shot through some filmy lens.  At the bottom was their motto, Improving
Life in a Troubled World.

I opened the questionnaire.  You could answer either (1) yes or mostly
yes, (2) maybe or uncertain, or (3) no or mostly no.  Do you make
thoughtless remarks or accusations that you later regret?

Mostly no.  Is it hard on you when you fail?  Mostly.  . . Hmmm.

Uncertain.  I skipped ahead.  Do you rarely suspect the actions of
others?

The door opened and Officer Cooper and another man came out.  The man
was in his forties, slightly paunchy.  His mustache was as thick as my
wrist.

"Ms.  Caldwell?"  he said politely.

"Yes."  I stood up.  I watched his hands, expecting handcuffs to come
flashing out.

"I'm Captain Hernandez."  His hand came out, but nothing was in it.

I shook it.  "Is there some problem?"

"Well, yes.  I'm afraid Mrs. Dougherty committed suicide early this
morning."

I stared at him stupidly.  "She's dead?"  yes, the suicide was
successful."

"I don't in not I couldn't think how to finish any sentence.

"Perhaps you'd like to sit down."  He nodded at Officer Cooper, who
quickly pushed a chair behind me.  I backed away from the chair, but
Officer Cooper followed behind me with it.  I spun away from both of
them.  "I'm fine, really.  I don't want to sit."

Captain Hernandez nodded at Officer Cooper.  Cooper put the chair back
where he got it.

"How did she do it?"  I asked.

"She hung herself," Officer Cooper said.

"Hanged," Captain Hernandez corrected.  "Pictures are hung, people are
hanged.  Am I right, Ms.  Caldwell?"

I didn't feel much like participating in a grnmmar lesson.  I nodded.

"Yes."

"Hanged herself," Officer Cooper said.

"She used her jumpsuit," Captain Hernandez said.  "Twisted it into a
rope and did it.  Very unusual."

"Aren't there people who watch her?  Other prisoners who could see
her?"

He shook his head.  "She did it while the others were asleep.

Or if they saw her, they didn't bother to stop her."

I didn't know what else to say.  I tried to force myself to think like
a reporter.  What would I do next?

"Do you want to see her cell?"  Captain Hernandez offered.  "I mean,
for your book."

"It's no problem.  We cooperate thoroughly with the press.  We have
nothing to hide here."

-"No.  I don't think so.  Not right now."  I started to leave.

"Just a moment, Ms. Caldwell.  Mrs. Dougherty left something for
you."

I turned around.  "She left something for me?"  I spoke in slow and
stupid tones.  I felt as if I were in the next room overhearing our
conversation.  Who is that idiot woman in the baggy T-shirt?

He opened the drawer to Officer Cooper's desk and took out a manila
envelope.  Wren Ca Id well was handwritten across it.

"She left a suicide note," he said.  "In it, she stated that she wanted
you to have this book."

I opened the manila envelope and slid the book out.  Modern Plaque
Removal Techniques.  I looked at Captain Hernandez with puzzlement.

He shrugged.  "She didn't say anything else, just to give that to
you.

I leafed through the pages, looking for a note she might have stuffed
in there, or maybe some writing in the margins.  Nothing.

The inside covers had been slit and clumsily taped back together.

"We gave it a thorough going-over," he said.  "We didn't find anything
either."

"Thanks," I said.

"Investigators will be in touch, Ms. Caldwell.  They'll just want a
brief statement from you about Mrs. Dougherty's state of mind, that
sort of thing."

I nodded and started to leave again.

"See you're wearing Hirsh's shirt," he said jovially.  "Hell of a
basketball player.  Can't shoot worth shit, but he's fearless on the
rebounds."  He acted as if he thought Hirsh and I were dating and he
needed to put in a few good words.  "Can't think of anybody I'd rather
have on my team.  Pound for pound, he's the best."

The car was hot.  I didn't roll down the windows.  I didn't start the
engine.  I sat there leafing through the pages of Modern Plaque Removal
Techniques for the fiftieth time.  I'd returned Officer Hirsh's T-shirt
to the cop at the front desk, but my sweater still retained some of the
pungent ammonia odor.  The heat inside the car made it worse.  Still, I
kept leafing.

I didn't know what I was looking for anymore.  There were drawings and
photographs of teeth in various stages of decomposition.  Some very
nasty-looking gums.  But no code words written on the teeth, no pleas
for understanding, justifications for suicide.

No nothing.

Then why give me this stupid book?

Maybe this was a professional message.  Something was wrong with my
teeth.  I adjusted the rearview mirror and bared my teeth.

I pulled back the lips and studied my gums.  They looked fine.

Or was that a speck of something cancerous near my incisor?  I held up
the book and looked back and forth between a drawing and my teeth.

A speck of light flickered through the page.

I pasted the page against the windshield where the sun was blasting
through.  A tiny pinprick of light flared next to the page number.

Page 61.

Again I thumbed through each page, holding each up to the light.  I
found more pages with pinpricks next to the page numbers.

Each page that was marked had a different number of pinpricks, which I
assumed indicated the order of the numbers.  Page 61 had one hole.

Page 9, had two.  Page 11, had three.  Page 182 had four.  Page 9 had
five.

619,1829.

A locker combination?  Swiss bank account?

A phone number.

Even the dead have secrets.

When I arrived back at my apartment, Byron's clothes no longer covered
the sidewalk entry.  The house was clean, the dishes done, the carpet
vacuumed.  I didn't see anybody, though, so I sneaked down the hallway
and suctioned my ear to Byron's bedroom door.  I could hear splashing
in the bathtub and his laughter, the kind caused by two people being
intimate.

I tiptoed to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialed the mystery
number.  It rang for quite a while, ten or fifteen rings.  I was about
to hang up when it stopped ringing and a little girl's voice said,
"Hello?"

Jesus.  Season's daughter.

"Jamie?"  I said.

She didn't answer.

-I heard rapid footsteps on the other end.  A woman whispering harshly,
". . . told you never to answer when I'm not here .

thought it might be Mommy the little girl whispered back.

"Hello?"  the woman said firmly.  "Who's this?"

I hung up.

I wandered into my bedroom and closed the door.  I dropped onto my
unmade bed and pulled a pillow over my face.  The pillow smelled like
Hector, dank and earthy.  I sat up and noticed muddy paw prints across
my sheet, a patch of shed hair on the pillowcase.

-I did the right thing hanging up, I thought.  What did I hope to gain
by talking to them?  There's nothing that they could say that would
make any difference.  Season was dead.  Why had she bothered going
through such an elaborate ruse to give me the phone number?  What did
she think I would do?  Did Season think I would try to figure out why
she killed herself?  I didn't really care about other people's
secrets.

I had my own to nurture.

I picked up another pillow, studied it for cat hair.  None.  I sniffed
it.  It smelled like Finesse shampoo.  I flopped back and smothered
myself under its dark softness.  I pulled it around my ears.

I tried to imagine Season hanging in her cell.  I pictured dangling
legs, like they show you on cop shows because it's TV and they can't
show you the strangled face, swollen tongue.  I read somewhere they
vacate their bowels.  If Season used her jumpsuit as a rope, what was
she wearing?  Did she dangle there in her prison-issue bra and panties,
her urine and shit dripping down her legs?  I pulled the pillow closer
against my face.  Breathing was very difficult.

Why had Season entrusted the phone number to me when she'd fought so
hard to keep it a secret?  Did she kill herself because she feared she
was cracking, that she might end up revealing her daughter's hiding
place?  Her husband was dead, why keep the girl hidden anyway?

"Fuuuuuuck!"  I screamed into the pillow.  The feathered stuffing
absorbed my holler like a silencer smothers a gunshot.

Fuck sounded like aaaaaawk.  I sounded like Motown.  Maybe I could take
over his life next, sit in a cage and sing Supremes titles all day.  It
was bad enough to be tightwire-walking through Wren's life, now I was
thrust into Season's.

This wasn't me.  I was no crusading reporter, the truth and I weren't
even on speaking terms.  Now that I thought about it, I never pursued
Esther's death, never looked into why she might have killed herself or
even why she shot Wren and me.  I just passed it off as an
insomnia-induced breakdown, visited her grave, and left it at that.

Did I even bother chasing down the reasons Robby and I broke up?  Not
really.  I focused on the effects.  What it did to me physically, as if
the shock were so great that I was actually taking another step in
evolution, the way cockroaches adjust to radiation.  I don't look for
meaning or insight, just clarity.

It's kind of like watching TV, I'm the one who keeps adjusting the
contrast, the color, the tint for a better picture, not really caring
about the quality of the show.  I just take things as they are.

The front door to the apartment opened.  I sprang out of bed and peeked
out the curtain.  Byron and Shawna were walking to her car in the
parking lot.  Byron was dressed in black jeans, a white shirt, and a
black knit tie.  His hair was combed and pulled back into his
ponytail.

He looked as if he was going to court.

Shawna wore cutoff jeans and a white T-shirt knotted at her belly.

IShawna was carrying the iron bird stand, Byron was carrying the
-birdcage.  Inside the cage, Motown kept pacing sideways along his
perch to compensate for the rough turbulence.  Hector followed them,
trotting like a show horse, his tail sticking straight up in the air.

Shawna kissed Byron on the cheek and got in the car.  The casualness of
that peck seemed somehow more intimate than if I'd stood next to their
bed and watched them screwing all night.

They exchanged hand gestures through the open window, then she drove
off.

Byron waved at her until she was out of sight.  I watched, waiting for
him to come back in.  I was going to have it out with him once and for
all, no punches pulled.

But he didn't come back.  He started across the parking lot toward the
street that ran parallel to the complex.  Hector didn't follow.  He sat
on the curb and watched.

I made a decision.  I would follow Byron.  Get in my car and follow him
to where this gambling thing took place.  I would find out what he was
up to, undoubtedly illegal, then I would have more leverage.  I could
kick him out and he couldn't talk to anybody lest I do some talking of
my own.  Maybe it wasn't a shotgun blast to the crotch, but it would be
the next best thing.

I grabbed my purse and hurried for the front door.  As I rounded the
corner into the living room, the phone mug.  I hesitated.  It rang a
few more times.  The machine answered, playing my announcement.

"Sweetheart, I just heard," Davis's voice said.  He sounded breathless,
as if he'd just run a couple of blocks.  "Are you there?

Pick up, Wren."  Pause.  I looked over at the phone.  My feet started
toward it, but slowly, too slowly to actually reach it.  I didn't want
to talk, I wanted to follow Byron.  I wanted to get the liars out of my
life.

"Okay, you must know about Season by now," Davis continued.  "Jesus,
that's terrible.  I wish I were there with you.  I just don't want you
to worry, everything will be okay.  The book deal is still on, so
you're okay there.  I know that sounds very Hollywood of me, but right
now I'm more interested in your wellbeing than anything else."  Another
long pause.  "I'll call you later, sweetheart.  I don't know what else
to say He hung up.

I walked out the door and jogged to my car.  If Byron had walked to the
main street, that meant he was taking the bus.  The bus stop was at the
end of the block.

I nosed my car as far out of the driveway as I could without actually
turning onto the street.  I saw Byron at the bus stop talking to a
Hispanic woman carrying a large shopping bag.  The only Hispanics I'd
seen so far in Irvine were domestics who came by bus in the morning,
cleaned the houses, condos, and townhouses, and left by bus in the
afternoon.  Some lived in permanently, but they usually wore
uniforms.

I waited in the driveway with my car idling.  Each time another car
came up behind me to exit, I waved it around me.  The drivers peered in
at me as if I were crazy.  Finally, Byron's bus came.  He helped the
Hispanic woman in, holding her bag for her.

"Count whatever you had inside your bag," I warned her.

Then Byron climbed aboard and the bus took off.

I followed it with ease for about two miles.  That's when I looked into
my rearview mirror and noticed that I too was being followed.  By a
white Subaru.

1 a The exhaust from the bus was bitter.  I pulled the front of my
sweater up over my nose to filter the air, but my sweater still smelled
of Officer Hirsh's sweaty T-shirt and last weekend's basketball game.

So I alternated between carbon monoxide and ammonia.

The Subaru dropped back a couple of cars, but I could still see him
back there, keeping pace, darting in and out of line to see what I was
doing.  My attitude was surprisingly calm.  I wasn't angry at him any
more than I was angry at Byron.  I simply had a job to do here, some
housecleaning in my life, and I looked on the Subarn and Byron as
stubborn stains in the middle of an otherwise spotless carpet.  My only
concern was removing those stains from the shag pile of my life.

In the case of the Subaru, a little elbow grease was required.

And I knew just how to apply it.

Byron's bus grumbled down Jamboree Street like a Rose Bowl float,
pulling over to suck up a couple of passengers or belch out a couple.

Whenever it stopped, I stopped, pulled my sweater up over my nose like
a bandit, and waited.  Other cars pulled around me and sped off,
shaking their heads at me or flipping me the bird, something editorial
like that.  The white Subaru, without the shield of cars, had no other
choice but to sit it out right behind me and wait too.

We were all idling there in the slow lane at the intersection of Campus
and Jamboree, the bus, me, the Subaru.  The car that had been between
me and the Subaru, a blue Mustang, had pulled out with a screech.  As
he passed me, the balding driver yelled, "The pedal on the right makes
your car go forward!"

I looked in the rearview mirror.  The Subaru didn't inch forward the
way cars do when someone leaves a lane.  Traffic abhors a vacuum.  But
not him.  So I shifted into reverse, eased off the clutch, and stomped
the gas pedal.  My car rocketed backward twenty-five feet until it
smashed into the front end of the Subaru.

An explosion of glass and the sound of crunching metal echoed dully
hrough my car.  My body snapped forward against my seat belt and
rebounded backward into my seat.

I checked the other driver in my mirror.  He looked stunned, his eyes
glazed and his expression disoriented.  Blood dripped down from his
mouth into his beard.

I unbuckled my seat belt and leapt out of the car.  I ran back to his
car.  It was the same man Ethan and I had chased away the other
night.

"Are you okay?"  I asked.

"I bih mah tug," he said, holding his striped tie against his mouth to
soak up the blood.

"You bit your tongue?  I'm sorry.  You shouldn't follow so "Closely.  I
wass twenty-five feet away!"

"Then I guess you shouldn't follow at all."

He groaned and rubbed his neck.  On the seat next to him were half a
dozen empty cans of diet Slice and a box of Vanilla Wafers.

-I.-The bus carrying Byron pulled away from the curb and lumbered down
the street.

"You can wait for the police if you want, maybe tell them why you're
following me.  Why are you following me?"

"I'd nah followin you.  You ewazy.

I slapped him hard on his sore mouth.  He hollered in pain, his eyes
tearing up instantly.  That's when I reached in and pulled his keys out
of the ignition.  I tossed them across the street, on the other side of
six lanes of steady traffic.  Not a bad throw, really.

I ran back to my car, jumped in, and took off after Byron's bus.

Something rattled at the back of the car now, but it was worth a little
body damage to see myself handle the situation so capably.  Just like
in the movies.  Sigourney Weaver blasting aliens left and right, all
the while standing around in her underwear.

But who was I now?  Wren?  Season?  BeeGee?  Wild sex, ramming cars,
slapping people, following convicts.  That wasn't Luna ii of the
lifeless hair and steel-rimmed glasses.  Whose life was I leading
now?

Eventually Byron transferred to another bus, which I followed down
Pacific Coast Highway to Laguna Beach.  He got out and walked a couple
of blocks to a small restaurant that had a few tables corralled
outside.  He walked up to a man about his age who was already seated
and sat down.  They immediately leaned close and began talking in a
hushed huddle.

I pulled my rattling car against a no parking red curb and spied on
them for a while.  The new guy wore slacks and an Oxford button-collar
shirt.  He kept pulling papers out of a battered suitcase and showing
them to Byron.  Byron studied them, nodded, pointed at various things
on the pages, and they talked.  What were they discussing?  Drug
deals?

Fencing stolen goods?  Blueprints for a house they intended to
burglarize?

"Hey," someone said next to my car.

I turned and looked up at a uniformed cop.  "Hi," I said.

"You can't park here.  It's a red zone."

"I'm just waiting for a friend I looked at the stores along the curb.

Hardware, bank, frozen yogurt.  "She's just making a deposit in the
bank."

-"Sorry, but you'll still have to move it."

"Okay," I said.  I started the engine and pulled away.  He stood in the
street and watched me until I was all the way down the block.  I
circled the block and returned down the same street.

Byron and his friend were no longer sitting at the table.

"Shit!"  I said.  "Goddamn it!"

But then I spotted them coming out of the bank.  Byron handed him a
thick envelope.  The man opened it and I could see that it was stuffed
with money.  He counted through it.  Byron said something and the man
shrugged, looking disappointed.  Byron said something else and
laughed.

The other guy, very studiouslooking, laughed too.  They shook hands and
left in opposite directions.

Now I wasn't sure who to follow.  In All the President's Men, when
Woodward and Bernstein were busting Watergate, Deep Throat told them to
"follow the money."  That seemed to work for them.  Maybe I should
follow the Oxford shirt and see what he did with the money.

But I stayed with Byron.  I had a hunch that he hadn't come all the way
down to Laguna Beach just to meet with this guy, not when there were
other restaurants and banks more convenient to our apartment.

Since there was no way I could follow him in a car without him spotting
me, I crawled along for a few blocks until I found a parking place to
tuck my car.  Now we were both on foot.  I stayed a block behind him,
sometimes more depending on the number of other pedestrians I could use
to shield myself.  I also hung close to the buildings, where I might
suddenly duck into a doorway or pretend to window-shop if he got
suspicious and turned around.  He didn't, though, so I started to feel
pretty confident with my shadowing technique.  I was surprised at how
much practical stuff I'd actually picked up from watching billions of
hours of cop shows over the years.  I'd disabled the Subaru and now I
was following someone on foot.

Byron was walking away from the beach toward the residential area up on
the cliffs.  The streets were winding higher and higher, with each
inclination offering bigger and more expensive houses.

The lawns became larger, the gardens more bountiful.  We passed several
Hispanic gardeners blowing leaves with their loud machines.

Finally, Byron found the house he was looking for, a twostory mansion
with white columns and a brick front, a bizarre architectural hybrid of
colonial farmhouse and gothic mansion.

Byron marched down the sidewalk to the front door and just walked in
the house without ringing the bell or knocking.  Apparently, he was
expected.

-I stood looking at the house for a while.  What should I do now?  Just
stand here all day in the hot sun until Byron came out again?  I
wouldn't really know anything more about him from the safety of this
sidewalk, nothing I could use as counterblackmail.

I needed to get closer.

I looked around the neighborhood.  These were million-dollar homes,
each with lots of trees and blooming flowers.  Fancy mailboxes with
iron-stenciled names attached.  Cars in driveways, Volvos, BMWs,
Acuras, Mercedes.  Safe cars.  Safe neighborhood.  What could happen to
me here?

I started down the cobblestone walk toward the house.  I found myself
straining to hear a bird chirping.  I knew I'd feel better about all
this if I could hear some birds chirping.  No one would hurt me in a
neighborhood where birds were chirping.  I heard something, but it
could have been a cricket.  Crickets didn't make me feel safe.

I raised a fist to knock on the front door.  No, that would be
stupid.

I was here to spy, not visit.  I tiptoed off the front porch and
sneaked around the side of the house, stooping next to the well-trimmed
bushes that surrounded the house like parsley around lamb chops.  I
guess the idea of bushes around the edges of a house make the building
look like it has no edges, as if it just blends in with nature.  But it
doesn't.  A house is just a mixture of cement and wood and plumbing
pipes and electrical wires and skylighted showers and down-quilted
beds.  I didn't know why I was thinking that as I crept around the huge
house.  Maybe because I was beginning to suspect I was never going to
live in such a house in such a neighborhood where cul-de-sacs were
plentiful and children let out from school could play unthreatened.

This wasn't a house where criminals like Byron should be allowed to
just walk in and run whatever illegal activity he was involved in.

It was a place for families.  Where little Bobby builds a fort out of
dirty laundry, or precious Amy traps a spider under a glass and studies
it there until it suffocates and she cries all night over the loss.

I felt a yank in the pit of my stomach, a longing to be at a mall
selecting wallpaper for the bedroom of my someday-to-be-born child.  I
made a fist and punched myself in the stomach twice and the longing
disappeared.

I heard voices.  Men.  I raised myself up enough to peek through the
window.

"Looking for something?"  the voice behind me said.  I felt something
hard and pointed pressed against my spine.  For lack of any other
response, I put my hands up.

"She's mine, man.  She's fucking mine!"

Byron shrugged.  "Fine with me.

"I'm serious.  I'm gonna take her.  I'm gonna do it, man.

"Then do it."

"You think I'm kidding?  You think I'm kidding here?"

Byron pointed to the clock next to him.  Two clocks, really attached to
each other in a wooden case.  "Time's running out.

The other guy sucked his lower lip between his teeth and started
gnawing.  I could see tiny white scars crisscrossing his lip from
decades of gnawing.  Byron started tapping his finger against the card
table like a metronome.  The guy watched Byron's tapping finger for a
couple of seconds, then exploded, "Fuck you, man.

-I'm not gonna be psyched out by your bullshit.  She's mine!"

Byron yawned.  "Your choice.

The other guy reached across the wooden chessboard between them, picked
up his white bishop, slid it diagonally across the board, snatched up
Byron's black queen between his last two fingers, and set his bishop
down on the vacated square.  Instantly he slapped the silver button at
the top of the two-faced clock beside the board.

"I just fucked your queen, pal.  Stew on that.  I humped and bumped and
pumped her and she loved every juicy minute, man.

Oooh, yes," she kept saying.  "Take me, Willie.  Take me."  Hey, what's
this?  Time running out?  You got twenty-two seconds and no fat-assed
queen.  You're as fucked as she is, man.  Bye, bye, Byron .

.

The man kept up his steady stream of patter while Byron stared at the
board with a calm gaze, as if this were a meal he was indifferent to
eating.  Captured chess pieces lined both sides of the board.  There
were only eight pieces left on the actual playing surface.

"How's this feel, your royal heiny?"  the man said, thrusting his hips
back and forth in his chair.  "You like a little more of this,
quceny?"

Byron reached over, airlifted his castle across the board, and snapped
it on a square with a loud smack.  "Check."  Byron tapped the silver
button on his clock.  He got up and stretched, not bothering to look at
the board.

His opponent glanced nervously at the clock and instantly retreated his
bishop back between the attacking castle and his defenseless king.  He
slapped his clock.

From his standing position, Byron jumped his black knight down two
spaces and over one into a position near the white king.

"Checkmate."

"Shit!  Where?"  The man with the scarred lip studied the board.

"Just a second.  Just a fucking second."  His eyes darted from piece to
piece, his hand hovered over one, then another, like a fussy
hummingbird selecting a flower.  Finally, he just tippe,d over his
king, jumped up, pulled a wad of twenty-dollar bills from his pocket,
and threw it down on the chessboard.  Some of the pieces flew onto the
floor.  He stomped out of the room toward the kitchen.  He stepped on a
king, snapping off the cross on its head.

Byron counted the money and slipped it into his pocket.  He showed no
sign of triumphant glee or proud accomplishment.  r He looked as
unmoved as someone who'd just bussed a dirty I-table.

"I found her outside," my beefy guardian said to Byron.  He gripped
myupper arm and shoved me forward.  "She says she 1knows you.

"Yeah," Byron said.  "She thinks she does."

IF "She was spying on us through the window."  He nodded to b ward the
window where he'd caught me.  "Want me to boot her out?  When I boot,
they stay booted."

Byron looked me over as if considering that alternative.  Finally, ir
he shook his head.  "Not yet.  Thanks, Leo."

Leo shrugged and came out from behind me.  He tossed up the "i sharp
object I'd assumed was a knife.  It was a pointy-headed bishop chess
piece he'd held against my back while he kept me in the foyer until
Byron finished his game.  He caught it in his palm and closed his fist
around it.  He laughed and walked off into the large living room.

There were about twenty men in the room, all playing chess.

"So, you followed me," Byron said.

-"It wasn't hard."

He gestured around the room.  "Was it worth it?  Did you discover
something to blackmail me over?  I mean, that is the point, right?  To
get some dirt on me to neutralize my dirt on you?"

-"That's the point."

"Help yourself.  Look around.  Talk to people.  Pry."

I looked around the room.  Men of all ages huddled over flimsy card
tables with chessboards and chess clocks.  Cigars, cigarettes, a few
joints.  A wispy layer of smoke clung to the ceiling.  Lots of beer
cans, a few coffee cups, one man chugging Evian water.

Some of the tables had little piles of money.  Over near the sofa was a
nineteen-inch Sony TV still in its box.  Next to it were a couple of
VCRs and CD players, also still in their boxes.

-"Well, for starters, I said, "there's illegal gambling going on
here.

That's something the cops might be interested in."

"So, call the cops," Byron said.  He turned to face the other men in
the room, clapping his hands loudly.  "Attention, please.

Attention, everyone.  Dozens of grizzled faces turned toward us.

"The lady wants to call the cops on you boys.  Turn you in for illegal
gambling."

There was some laughter, some guffawing, some annoyed looks.  A "fuck
you, lady" chorused with a "dumb bitch."  Someone jabbed his middle
finger in the air and said, "Turn this in, baby."

One of the men who was watching a chess game in progress, gray-haired
and overweight, sucking on a stubby cigar, reached into his baggy shirt
pocket and pulled out a small black wallet.

He opened it and showed me his gold badge.  He winked at me.

-"Don't worry, ma'am.  I'm working undercover."

Everyone laughed and returned to their games.

"What about those boxes," I said angrily, pointing at the appliances
.

"I bet they're stolen."

"They are," Byron said.  He pointed at a little man across the room.

The man was hunched over his chess game, slapping his pieces down, then
smacking the clock.  He looked as if he wanted to eat the pieces, the
board, the clocks, his opponent.  He had a tattoo on one arm that ran
all the way from his wrist, up the entire arm, disappearing under his
T-shirt sleeve.  "That's Grudge.  He stole the stuff from his brother's
warehouse.  You know his brother, Bonkers Bob, does those commercials
where he throws TVs out of windows, runs over stereos with his car
because they're priced too high.  This is Bonkers Bob's house."

- I gave an appreciative turn.  Despite the card tables and hunched men
and acrid smoke, this one room was larger than my entire apartment and
worth more than everything I owned or ever would own.  A white grand
piano dominated one corner.

Someone had pyramided a dozen C9ors cans on top of it.  A marble coffee
table separated two white leather sofas.  The table hosted two
different chess games, and a pile of wadded tissues from one of the
guys who kept sneezing.  I looked down at the carpet, an off-white
weave that one usually sees in model homes.

The walls were filled with various colorful and abstract art works, all
of them originals, all of them undoubtedly expensive.

"Where are the owners?"  I said.  "Mr.  and Mrs.  Bonkers."

"A cruise.  The Mediterranean, I think."

"How convenient for all of you."

"Doesn't matter.  When they come back, the game moves somewhere else.

Last week we were in a movie theater in Ana heim.  One of the guys is
an usher.  Before that we played for two days in a courtroom, I
showered in the judge's chambers."  He pointed to a black man slapping
his clock.  "He's a security guard at the courthouse.  Most of the guys
you see around here don't really even appreciate where they are.  They
don't notice that this place is worth a lot, not unless they're
professional burglars or something.  They're just here to play chess.

Sunny, rainy, doesn't matter.  Hot, cold, they don't care.

Everything's chess."

I looked around the room again, this time ignoring the furnishings and
concentrating on the men.  Byron was right, there was an odd fanatical
concentration about them, the same one you see on the faces of computer
nerds discussing software.  They stared at the boards and slapped
pieces down with feverish energy.

They all looked like patients at a tuberculosis sanatorium, pale and
hopeful.  Even when they talked it was only about chess, either
analyzing their own bad move or their opponent's.  There were so many
games going on that the room had an odd tribal melody to it, the
clacking of pieces snapped against the wooden boards, and the smacking
of the clocks next to their games.  Games kept ending, payoffs made,
new ones beginning, all within a brief time.

"They play so fast," I said.  "I haven't played much, but I remember it
always took us a long time to move.

"This isn't chess," Byron said.  "It's blitz, or speed chess.  Not the
kind you'll read about in the papers or see on TV.  Every game lasts
from between one and ten minutes, depending upon what the players agree
to beforehand.  After that, it's a race with the clock as well as
against the other player.  This is the game where all the big money is
made."

Neither player seemed to notice us watching.  They picked up pieces and
smacked them down with a crack and instantly slapped their clocks.

The pieces on the board were wonderfully ornate versions of cowboys on
one side and Indians on the other.  I glanced around the room and saw
other chess pieces, equally complex and intricate in design.

"The chess pieces are beautiful," I said.

"Something to show your art class?"  He led me to another table where
two men were setting up the pieces.  One side of the board was lined
with familiar biblical figures, each brightly painted, The king was a
carving of Moses with a staff in one hand and the Ten Commandments in
the other, his gray hair swept back from an imaginary wind, the knight
was a golden calf on a platform, the rook was the Tower of Babel, the
pawns were frogs and locusts, representing the ten plagues, I
guessed.

Across the board a modest Jesus Christ occupied the king's square, a
demure haloed Mary was the queen, the bishop was Peter, complete with a
fishing net across his shoulder, the pawns were robed beggars, each
leaning on a wooden crutch, carrying a Bible.

"Christians versus the Jews," one of the men announced.  "The way it's
always been."

"Karl here's a bit of an anti-Semite," Byron explained.  "Right,
Karl?"

"If that means do I hate the Jews, no, I do not.  I do not hate Jews or
any other religion.  I just think they are misguided."  Karl did not
look up at either Byron or me.  He kept his eyes down and chewed
frantically on a wad of gum.

"Did you make these?"  I asked him.

"Yes, ma'am, every last piece.  Made "em while serving my fifty-eight
months for armed robbery and I thank Jesus that he 4gave me that
opportunity.  Because it is while incarcerated that I discovered both
the Lord and chess."

"The pieces are very beautiful," I said.

"Thank you, ma'am.  Perhaps you'd appreciate this extra little feature,
the others only seem to find amusing."  Still without looking at me, he
reached over and touched a button at the back of his Christ figure.

The arms, which had been at Jesus' side, shot straight out into a
crucifixion pose.  "That's for when I lose."

Byron led me away, pointing out the other chess sets that each man had
carved while in prison, Civil War pieces, street gang pieces, movie
star sets.  One person had one side as the characters I-from The
Threepenny Opera versus the characters from My Fair Lady.  As I looked
around at the colorful imaginative pieces, they seemed like what little
boys would use as currency if they owned their own country.

"Hiya, Bud," Byron said, waving over my shoulder.

I turned and saw a red-haired spaniel winding his way under the card
tables, sniffing the carpet as he crawled through the room.  He had a
bandage wrapped around his hind leg and he walked with a limp.

-f"Hey, Bud," one of the men said.  "What's shaking?"

"Howya doin', Bud," another said.

- "C'mere and hump my leg for good luck."

Every person Bud came near stuck out a hand and gave him a scratch or a
pat as he passed by.  Bud licked up a broken pretzel from the carpet
and hobbled out another door.

"Come on," Byron said, taking my hand.  "I'll give you the ten-cent
tour."

I jerked my hand from his.  "I don't need a crossing guard."

"I didn't do it to be romantic.  I'm letting these guys know you're
with me so they don't start hitting on you.  Chess players are the most
sexually starved species on the planet."

"Present company excepted, of course."  I didn't give him my hand, but
I followed closely.  Where else would I go?  I suppose I could have
just walked out of there, driven home, called Davis, asked him to come
home and hold me, make me feel better.  But Byron's arrogance nettled
me.  He couldn't be touched and he knew it.  But wasn't this where the
bad guys in the movies always went wrong, showing the captured secret
agent around their domain like Dr. No and Goldfinger?  Maybe there was
something he'd overlooked, something illegal I could still nail him
for.  I still had Detective Diesel's number.

"You play chess?"  he asked as we walked down the sunlit hallway.

Overhead skylights let the bright sun spotlight our path to the
kitchen.

-"Some, like I said.  But not play play.  Robby taught me.  He liked to
sit there with Bach in the background, a pipe in his mouth, and take
two hours to move one piece.  I got so bored he finally took to bribing
me to play with him.  Thank goodness for those computerized chess
games.  He finally had the perfect partner.

"Computers are nice toys, but when it comes to blitz, there's not a
person in this house today who couldn't cream a computer nine out of
ten times."

"Why?  What's so special about blitz?"

-"The speed.  You don't have time to figure every variation of every
move.  And there are so many traps and pitfalls.  Your opponent is just
waiting for that rash move, that's when he crushes you.  It's kind of
like having a live grenade strapped to your chest that's going to
explode in one minute.  Now, if you can run across that field to that
toolbox, you can disarm the grenade.  Only I trouble is, the field is
loaded with hidden mines.  And, oh, yeah, someone's shooting at you the
whole time.  Ready, set, run.  That's blitz."

We entered the kitchen.  The appliances were heavy-duty stain less
steel, the kind you find in fancy restaurant kitchens.  The
refrigerator had a sliding glass door so you could see what was
inside.

Cold cuts, beer, a couple of buckets of fried chicken potato salad.

The kitchen was large enough to include a small family room with
complete electronic entertainment center.  A couple of guys were eating
sandwiches and watching the big screen TV, reruns of The Flints
tones.

A few other guys were playing chess while munching pretzels at the
cooking island with their chessboard over the butcher block.  The rear
wall of the kitchen was glass, which looked out onto a large pool and
bubbling spa.  Two pale guys with flabby guts sat in the spa playing
chess.  Several white wrought-iron patio tables with umbrellas dotted
the poolside area.  Every table but one had at least two chess games in
progress.  At that one table without chess, five men played poker.  One
chess game ended and the loser pushed his money across the table to the
winner.  The winner stood up, pocketed the money in his swimsuit, took
off his sunglasses, and dove into the pool.  He swam across, hoisted
himself up on the other side, tossed his soggy money on the table, and
started a new chess game with someone else.  �Who are all these
people?"  I asked.

"Ex-cons mostly.  A cop or two.  Leo, the guy who brought you in, he's
a retired guard from Chino prison.  Not a bad player, though he gets a
little cautious when you pressure his queen.  No bluff to his game.

Cops and guards are like that.  They play like they've got something to
lose.  Makes them easier to beat."

"Who did you have lunch with at the restaurant?"  I didn't care about
this chess crap.  I was after something tangible.  I looked in his eyes
for a reaction.

He didn't give me one.  "A friend."

IF"And the money you gave him?"

"What beady little eyes you have, Grandma."

"It's the company I keep."

He laughed.  "It was a loan."

"That was a big envelope."

"It was a big loan."  He grinned at me.  "You need a loan too?

Oh, that's right, you've got that $50,000 deal you're working on.

My skin chilled.  "What deal?"

-"I don't know the details, but from what I've been able to piece
together from listening to your phone messages and the tapes you bring
home every day from jail, you're doing some kind of article or series
of articles, though for that kind of money more like a book, about
Season Dougherty."

You've played my fucking tapes!"

"You figured to take the money, which I suppose your boyfriend Davis is
paying you since this is his kind of game, and start Wren's little ego
magazine."

"You went into my room and played my goddamn tapes, you pig!"

"Only Season went and hanged herself this morning and now you're
feeling sorry for yourself, so you figured you'd follow me and try to
take me out of the picture.  What happened, Lunaslash-Wren?  Now that
Season's dead you've decided to take on her identity and come at me
with a shotgun?"  He pointed at his crotch.  "Fire away, baby."

I gave him the cold stare, the one he'd been giving me on and off since
he'd arrived.  But it didn't seem to have any effect.

Finally, I just sighed heavily.  I felt so tired and heavy.

"How'd you know Season was dead?"

He made a sweeping gesture.  Look around.  We've got cops and lawyers
and cons.  This place goes twenty-four hours a day, just like a Vegas
casino.  The only thing these guys like more than chess is gossip.

Anything happens to do with prisons, we know about it first."  He slid
open the refrigerator door and pulled out a couple of cans of Pepsi.

He handed one to me.  "No diet, sorry.

I took it, popped the tab, and sipped.  "I'm living dangerously these
days."

A loud smacking thud nearby startled me.  I jumped back, my heart
pounding.  "What was that?"

"Jesus Christ," Byron cursed.  He left me and marched over to the
sliding glass door that led to the pool.  A wet smudge blotched the
glass at eye level.  He pulled open the door and bent over.

I followed.  I stepped outside behind him and watched him examine the
still bird.

"What you got there, great white hunter?"  one of the cons who wasn't
playing yelled from poolside.  Those who were playing didn't even look
up.

Byron picked up the bird, a sparrow, I think, and carried it over to
the plastic trash cans, lifted the lip of the lid, and shoved it in
with the beer cans and pizza boxes.  He looked at me as he returned to
the kitchen.  "This is not going to be one of those "What happened?"

"They don't see the glass sometimes."  He went over to the sink, opened
the cupboards, poked around, then closed them.

- Next, he tried the refrigerator.  He slid open the door, moved some
stuff around, and pulled out a can of whipped cream.  He shook the can
as he walked over to the large glass doors.  He began spraying the
doors with whipped cream, a zigzag pattern from top to bottom.

"Hey, whatta you nuts?"  Grudge said, walking into the kitchen.

One fist was filled with money, mostly fives and ones, not the twenties
that Byron had won.

"I told you to put some masking tape over the door."

"A fucking X out of masking tape.  You kidding me or what?

That stuff leaves sticky shit on the glass when you take it off.  My
brother's coming back soon.  You think I want to be jacking I around
here scraping sticky tape shit off the glass with my finger nails?"

Byron shrugged.  "One of these birds may eventually crack the glass.

You want to replace it?"

"I'll take my chances, okay?  Meantime, you shoot your wad on anything
else around here and I'll fucking kill you, okay?  Am I clear or
what?"

Byron aimed the whipped cream nozzle at Grudge's face and squirted a
small puff of cream onto the tip of Grudge's nose.  "Kill that."

Grudge wiped the cream off with one finger and deposited the white glob
on his tongue.  "That reminds me, bunch of gay guys sitting in a
Jacuzzi, somebody spills some whipped cream in the water.  "Nother guy
sees it and says, "Hey, who farted?"

Byron reached over and wiped the remaining dot of whipped cream from
Grudge's nose with his palm.  Neither man said anything, nor did they
laugh at Grudge's joke.

"Prison humor," Grudge said to me.

I nodded, not really anxious to engage him in conversation.

"Grudge, this is Wren."

"Yeah, your wife.  We talked before, right?  On the phone?"

I nodded.  He acted as if our conversation had been a pleasant
discussion of the weather rather than his onslaught of swearing and
threats against my life.  Again, I noticed the tattoo scribbled across
the entire length of his arm.  It wasn't the usual dragon or naked
woman.  It wasn't a picture at all.  Just words.  I looked closer.

They were names.  A single-column list of names that ran from his wrist
up under his sleeve.  Daryl Carson.  Stevie the Jinx.

Swingshift Jackson.  Homer Borden.

"Those are the names of the people Grudge has marked for death," Byron
said.  "Right, Grudge?"

Grudge nodded.  "Every single motherfucker guaranteed to die.

My word on it."

I didn't say anything.  What could I say?  How nice for you?

Byron laughed.  "See, Grudge's whole scam inside was telling people he
was mobbed up, connected with the Mafia.  Anybody does something he
doesn't like, he tells them he'll have them killed.  Of course, no one
but the new fish took him seriously" "Bullshit!  Lots of guys took me
serious.  Lots got outta my way, didn't fuck with me."  Grudge was a
head shorter than Byron, about my height.  But he had a compact
muscular look, as if hewere wound up real tight and one little nudge
would send him expanding to twice his size.

"Yeah, right," Byron said.  "Anyway, one day some guy Grudge threatened
actually died.  Autopsy doesn't reveal cause of death, but Grudge is
strutting around like he knows something.  After that, everybody gives
him a wide berth, just in case.

"Just in case, shit.  I know what I know."

-"So next, he starts tattooing names on his arm.  Names of everybody
who he thinks crosses him or who he wants to do him a favor.  He
tattoos your name on his arm, then you're dead.

That's the idea, right, Grudge?"

"Sooner or later," Grudge said.  He pushed up his sleeve past his
bicep.  Third down from the top of the list is BYR0N CALDWELL.

"That's you," I said.

"Yup.  Grudge claimed I bumped into him on the stairs."

"He wanted to kill you for that?"  I said.

Grudge took a step toward me.  He smelled of sweet cologne.

"Lady, inside you kill somebody if he stares at you too long.  Don't
matter the reason, you let somebody get away with something, anything,
then soon they got you down on the shower floor and twenty naked guys
are kneeling behind you, your asshole the size "Vividly," I said.  But
I was thinking about Mark, my old student who came to visit me after
I'd been shot.  His tattoo.

These men around me with their crude tattoos.  What were they trying to
mark, to measure?

Grudge looked me in the eyes, stared hard.  "You don't get it."

He looked at Byron and shook his head.  "She don't fucking get it."

"Give her time," Byron said.  "She learns quickly."

"What do I give a shit what she learns?"

I was fed up with this prison mystique bullshit.  "What do I give a
shit what you give a shit about?"

"How'd you like to wake up one morning andfind your fucking head in the
toilet?  Huh?  How'd that suit you?

"That's how I do my hair now, so what's your point?"

Byron laughed.  He returned the whipped cream to the refrigerator.

"Hungry?"  he asked me.

I shook my head.

"I could use a sandwich," Grudge said.

Leo the ex-prison guard came in and knocked on the counter.

"Hey, Byron, Shawna's here."

Byron's face changed.  He tensed up a little.  The smile was still on
his face, but it was a prop now, not genuine.  "Business, kids."

He walked out of the kitchen, following Leo, without waiting for me or
Grudge.  The guys over watching TV got up and followed.  Outside around
the pool, men were talking rapidly and those who finished games or were
just watching got up and came inside, walking past Grudge and me into
the living room.  The poker game broke up and the players also came
inside.

"What's going on?"  I asked Grudge.

"Rematch.  Shawna took Byron yesterday three out of five games.  She
cleaned him out.  First time he's lost in a straight-up match."

"Straight up?"

Grudge sighed impatiently.  "Jesus, straight up.  Where Byron don't
spot any pieces or time.  He's so good that usually to get anyone to
play him for money, he's got to take away a couple of his pieces, a
rook and a bishop maybe.  Or he's got to play with less time, like he's
only got two minutes on his clock, his opponent has five or ten."  He
scratched his tattooed arm, his fingers digging in around CLANCY
RoBBINS.  "But he played Shawna head to head and she kicked his ass."

�I'd like to see that," I said.

He grinned at me, his lips kind of crooked, like half his face was shot
up with Novocaine.  "Yeah, he said you would."

I walked behind Grudge into the living room.  Those who were in the
midst of a game c6ntinued, but once each game finished, the players got
up and moved over toward the grand piano, where II the crowd was
thickest.  I couldn't see Byron or Shawna.

Grudge scratched at his tattoo again, stopping suddenly so that II
stepped on his heel.

"Sorry," I said.

"You think my tattoo is stupid, right?"  He was angry.

"No," I said.

"Sure you do.  You think I disfigured myself like some asshole just to
sound tough.  Now I got the names of guys I don't like strapped to my
skin for the rest of my fucking life.  Am I right?

That's what you think."  �I don't think about it at all.

"The fuck you don't.  First time you saw me you had me pegged as some
turd at the bottom of the shit pile."  He shrugged and seemed to calm
down.  "Hey, that's okay.  What do I care what you think, right?"

I-"Right."

He gave me another hard look, eyeball to eyeball.  I thought he was
going to try to kiss me.  Then he took a step backward and just pointed
his finger at my face.  "When you're inside, you don't think about the
consequences your actions will have once you're outside.  You follow
me?  Inside is inside.  That's the whole world.

And you do whatever you have to to survive.  It ain't like the "movies,
no matter how bad they make it seem.  It's worse."  He rubbed his face
with his palms, as if his skin were cold.  "Hell, you know.

Your husband told you."

"Like what happened to his finger."

Grudge nodded enthusiastically.  "Exactly.  Jesus, man.  I ain't never
seen nothing like that.  Byron is cornered in the weight room by some
300pound brain-dead motherfucker named Connie.

I'm not using that description lightly, this guy really fucked his
mother-after he cut off her head, though.  Connie's suddenly decided he
wants an intellectual type for his fuckmate and he's got your hubby up
against a wall fumbling with his pants."

-I began rubbing my thumb along the seam of my sweater.

Grudge's eyes seemed glazed, trancelike as he told the tale.

"Good thing Byron was smart enough not to try to hurt Connie, because
then Connie would have killed him and then fucked him.  It wouldn't
have been the first time since he'd been inside."

"Where were the guards?  Didn't anybody see what was going on?"

Grudge laughed.  "I had a pretty good view, sure.  Frnnt row center.

Me and about twenty other guys."

"And you didn't do anything?"

-"Yeah, I watched."

"I mean you didn't help?  There were twenty of you."

Grudge looked annoyed.  "I thought Byron told you how it was inside."

-"He doesn't like to talk about it much."

"Yeah, that's true.  Me, I love talking about it.  I'm like one of
those old farts at a Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting.  Wear some funky
hat and talk about all my battles for the rest of my fucking life."

More people were huddling around by the piano.  For a moment I had a
vision of Shawna sitting down playing the white grand piano and
suddenly singing in a beautiful voice.  That whole sign language thing
was probably some practical joke they played on me.

"We better be getting over there," Grudge said, starting away.

I grabbed his tattooed arm and held it.  "Finish your story.

Please."

"Not much to add you don't know.  Byron sticks his own finger in his
mouth, bites the end clean off, and spits it out on the floor.

Then he looks down at Connie's crotch and grins that fucking grin of
his.  I mean he still has blood all over his teeth."  Grudge laughed.

"You shoulda seen the look on flicking Connie's big face.  He's looking
at your hubby like he can't fucking believe it.

"You're fucking nuts," Connie says and walks away."

"He bit his own finger off!"

"Sure, what'd he tell you?"

I started toward the crowd.  Grudge followed.

"Nobody bothered Byron after that.  I mean, nobody wants to fuck with
someone like that.  Me, I admired his balls.  If I'd have thought of it
instead ofthis fucking list, I'd have bit three fingertips off.

Shit."  He scratched his arm again.

The crowd was thick as dough around the piano.

"Coming through, assholes," Grudge said, elbowing ahead of me to break
through the men.  "This is Byron's wife.  Move it, man, before I have a
couple guys come over and chainsaw your flabby ass off, you fucking
moron.  What're you looking at, fuckhead?"

- No one seemed to take Grudge too seriously, but they moved aside just
the same.  When we got to the front of the circle, Byron and Shawna
were setting up their chess pieces on the board.  The pieces were
simple, carved from wood.

-Shawna leaned on the piano with one arm and used her free one to set
up her pieces.  She looked even more beautiful today than last night.

Her black hair dropped straight down the sheer face of a shale cliff.

Her expression was serene, as if she were mentally composing a song.

Byron's expression was more intense.  His hair, pulled back and tied at
the nape of his neck, seemed more severe than a couple of minutes
ago.

I watched his left hand, studied the stub of his little finger, tried
to imagine him biting off his own finger and spitting it out.  Was it
courage or desperation?  The act of a brave man or an animal gnawing
off his own foot to be free of a trap?

"What are the stakes?"  I whispered to Grudge.

"Whatever they want.  They play a series of five games.  The first one
is ten minutes.  Then seven, five, three, and finally a two-minute
game.

Byron reached into his pocket and pulled out the wad of twenties I'd
seen him win earlier.  Then he reached into his other pocket and pulled
out another wad, even larger.  He counted out all the bills.  Three
thousand dollars.

Shawna, not at all impressed, opened her tiny black purse and pulled
out thirty crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.  She placed them on top of
Byron's thicker but dirtier pile and patted them twice, as if assuring
them that they would soon all be safely back in her purse where they
belonged.

"What does she do to make all that money?"  I asked Grudge.

"Well, she wins a lot of it from dopes like us.  The rest she makes
running her dad's bail-bond business.  That's her dad over there."  He
pointed to a tall, chubby man with white hair and a kind face.  He wore
a plaid shirt that yesterday had been one of Byron's.  He winked at his
daughter and she smiled at him.

-"I don't get it," I said.  "If they want to bet, why not take it to
the track or Vegas and put it all on red?"

""Cause this ain't gambling.  Chess is one of the few games in the
world that doesn't have any element of luck.  No dice, no cards, no sun
or wind.  Life within your own control without chance to fuck you up.

No new alarm system you're not prepared for, no flat tire on the
getaway car, no snitch who rats you out.

Just thirty-two pieces, sixty-four squares, and your skill.  It's like
He brought his hands together and squeezed them until his fingers
turned white.  "It's like you can hear that clock ticking in your head,
like your fucking life is running out, but if you make the right move,
the exactly right move, you can win more time.

Like you've done something divinely good and you'll be rewarded.

That's how it feels to me and I don't even play half as good as
Byron.

I can't imagine what the fuck he feels like when he's running the
board.  Like he's a god or something, like he can flicking fly through
walls."  He shook his head with envy.  "I don't know.  Shit, I'm just a
guy who loads appliances in his brother's warehouse, did some time for
passing bad checks.  Don't ask me to explain nothing."  He scratched
his arm.

I noticed that at the same time he was scratching his arm I was rubbing
my thumbnail along the seam of my sweater again.  We were, in fact,
scratching and rubbing at the same pace, matching strokes.  He noticed
and looked at me, no hard stare this time, more like recognition.  He
turned away embarrassed at the intimacy.

"Give "em some room, assholes," Grudge said, stepping forward and
shooing the crowd back a few steps.  "They gotta breathe too."

Byron looked at Shawna and made some hand gestures.  She nodded.  They
each set the clocks to ten minutes.  They leaned across the white grand
piano, their butts sticking out, elbows propping up their heads, like
mirror images of each other.

Grudge took a light pawn, put both hands behind his back, and brought
them out again as closed fists.  Shawna tapped his left hand.  He
opened it and revealed the pawn.  She replaced it on the board and
turned the board around so the white pieces were in front of her.

The game was rapid, pieces cracking against the board, clocks spanked
into motion.  I noticed a tiny scar on her jawline, which she
occasionally touched when it wasn't her turn.  Bud came in again,
limped around the room, but gained no sympathy, no strokes.  He sniffed
the pile of tissues the man with the cold had left, found a half-eaten
bagel on one of the card tables, grabbed it, and trotted out, his limp
much less noticeable now.

"What happened to Bud?"  I whispered.  "That limp?"

"Ssshhh," Grudge said.  Everyone in the room was concentrating on the
game that clacked off before them.

Byron and Shawna seemed to exchange pieces evenly, so I didn't see that
anyone was winning.  Plus, they moved so quickly I never got a chance
to figure out what I might do.

Suddenly I saw Byron tip over his king.  He reached across the board
and shook Shawna's hand.

The crowd went into instant murmur mode, discussing mistakes that Byron
made, what they would have done, etc. Some ran for the kitchen and
returned with cans of beer they distributed to others.

"It's over?"  I said, staring at the board.  "But he's not in
checkmate."

"Checkmate in three," Grudge said.

I looked at the board, confused.  He walked over and started moving
pieces.  "He moves there, she moves here.  Check.  He moves there or
there, in which case she moves here or here.

Check.  That only leaves him here or there and she's there.  Check
mate.  Bam, bam, bam."

Shawna's father handed Shawna and Byron each a beer, which they began
to drink.  The three of them gestured to each other, laughing or
looking serious.  Shawna's father went to the board and arranged the
pieces a certain way, which I guess they were at during the game.  Then
he went through some options and they all gestured some more.

"Bud got in a fight," Grudge said.  "Got the shit clawed out of him
from some fucking cat.  Jesus, big dog like that let some weaselly
little cat fuck him up.  He's the biggest wuss I've ever seen.  Can't
fight worth shit."  He started setting the pieces up on the board for a
new game.  "Anyways, he comes in a week or so ago, limping like crazy,
bleeding all over the place.  Byron fixes him up.  He's good with
animals."

So that's the dog blood on the money he gave me.  At least now I could
spend the money and stop holding it as evidence.  My case against Byron
was slipping away.  His big illegal activity was � chess, the missing
finger was his own doing, the blood was a dog he administered first aid
to, the mysterious phone calls involved chess matches.  Compared to
him, I was the major criminal.

Wait, I still had his prison record.  He was in there for something,
something that involved Wren losing her teeth.  I still had hope.

The second game began with seven minutes on the clock.

They moved even more quickly this time, but after a while a little flag
on Shawna's clock popped up and the game was over.  She'd run out of
time and lost.  The usual postmortem went on around us and everyone
fell silent when the third game started.  The clocks were adjusted for
five minutes.  Pieces were moved with the same mechanical speed, same
clacking.  Before I even knew what was going on, Shawna tipped over her
king.

She made some hand gestures and Byron nodded.  Shawna disappeared down
the hall.

"Ten-minute break," Byron announced and everyone scattered Some went
back to their boards to replay the games they had just seen.  Others
threw money on the table and played a challenge game for real.

Everyone's intensity made the room swampy with tension.  I followed
Shawna.

She went into a bathroom and shut the door.  After a couple of minutes
I heard the toilet flush, the water in the sink run, then she came
out.

At the moment she opened the door, before she'd prepared for the world
outside, I caught a glimpse of her expression.  Tired eyes, rimmed with
red.  She may have been crying.

Mouth smeared with fresh lipstick, but the lips tense and frowning.

She came out, caught me staring, and smiled.  She laid a hand on my arm
and squeezed like we were old and dear friends.

Then she walked back toward the living room, shoulders high, head
back.

Confident.

The three-minute game was played in a flurry of blurred moves.

Captured pieces were tossed to the ground in the rush.

Pieces were moved so quickly it didn't look to me as if any thought at
all were put into the move.  Yet some moves brought oohs and aahs from
the crowd.

Suddenly Byron slapped a piece down, made a hand gesture, and pushed
himself up from the edge of the piano.  Shawna studied the board for a
few seconds, smiled, and nodded.  She curtsied to him and everyone
applauded.  Byron cut the money into two piles and shoved each pile
into a separate pocket.  Shawna came around the piano and kissed him on
the cheek.  He smiled for the first time since the match had started.

The crowd of onlookers rushed back to their games, looking newly
inspired.  Pieces were set up, clocks adjusted, and suddenly everyone
was playing chess.  I had to admit, I even felt like pulling up to a
board and slamming a few pieces around.  The atmosphere was exciting.

Byron walked toward Grudge and me.  As he walked, he took a couple of
Tylenols out of a bottle in his pocket and popped them in his mouth.

He snagged a beer can from one of the tables, Iishook it to see if
there was anything in it, and washed down the Tylenol with whatever was
left.

"Was it good for you?"  he asked me.

"From what Grudge says, you just conquered time and space, you were
Hying, and winning one for the Gipper all rolled into one.

Byron shrugged.  "It's just a game."

"Fuck you, man," Grudge said.  "Just a game.  Just a game my ass.

It's just a game when some of these patzers play.  Not when you and
Shawna play.  Not when I play neither.

"Patzer?"  I asked.

"A patzer's a hack," Byron said.

Grudge punched Byron in the arm.  "You can be such an asshole
sometimes.  If I had room, I'd scratch your name on my arm again."

"Just don't put a heart around it."

I looked past Byron and saw Shawna sitting at a card table playing
chess with her father.  She was plucking one of his pieces from the
board and replacing it with her own.  She smacked her clock button.

The doorbell rang.  No one seemed to notice.  Except Leo, who hauled
himself off the sofa where he'd been watching a game and marched off to
the front door.

-"I'm outta here," Grudge said.  "There's still some money to be
made."

He walked off and started talking loudly to some guy returning from the
kitchen with a sandwich.  "Don't take a bite, fatso.  I'll play you a
two-minute blitz for it.  What is that, ham and cheese?  You put
mustard on it, asshole?  If I win you go back and put some fucking
mustard on it."  They sat down at a table and started setting up the
pieces to play for the sandwich.

"Does that make you even with Shawna for beating you yesterday?"  I
asked Byron.

"No, that puts me ahead.  We had a little side bet.  She owes me a
couple grand for Motown, the parrot, and a grand for the clothes she
won."

I looked at his face.  One of his eyes was bloodshot, tiny lightning
bolts of red etched through the white.  "You look awful.  You okay?"

"Headache.  It'll go away.

"Do you get these headaches often?  I mean, are we talking tumor or
something?"

"Nothing so romantic.  I just get them when I play chess.  It's kind of
like blowing out your knee in basketball, only there's nothing you can
do about it.," "You can not play."

He didn't say anything.  He looked over at the entranceway to the foyer
where Leo stood with another man, an even bigger man than Leo.

"You must need the money pretty badly to play if it does this to you.

What do you do with all your winnings?  Other than make loans?"

"I don't give interviews," he said without looking at me.  His eyes
were fixed on the man Leo brought in, the man who was now walking
toward us, smiling sadly at Byron.  I didn't realize how big he was
until he walked by the other men in the room.

Their heads barely peeped above his shoulders.  It seemed to me that
the men in the way purposely moved a little quicker to get out of his
way, though no one looked directly at him or acknowledged his
presence.

Except Byron, who stared into the "Jesus, Byron," the man said as he
approached.  "Jesus.  Why are you making itso hard on yourself?  Fuck
that, why you making it so hard on me?"

They shook hands.  Byron turned the man's hand over to examine the
knuckles.  "I guess my face didn't do much damage."

"My wrist is a little sore.  You better not have fucked up my tennis
game.  Laura and I are in a doubles tournament next week.

She'll kill both of us."  They both laughed.

Byron turned to me.  "This is my old cellmateJerry Kim."  He paused,
smiled at me.  "Tell him who you are.

Jerry waited, Byron grinned.  What name did he think I'd give?

"Wren," I said.  "Nice meeting, you, Jerry."

"Aaah," Jerry said.  "The wife."

"My current cellmate," Byron said.

"Am I being dense here or something?"  I said to Jerry.  "Did you just
say you're the guy who beat Byron up yesterday?"

"That was me," he said in a chipper voice.  He reached out and clutched
Byron's jaw in a motherly way, turning it side to side.  "Not bad, not
bad at all.  Mostly for show stuff, bruises and cuts, but no real
damage."

-"I hate men," I said.

Jerry laughed.  He was the most good-natured man I'd ever met.  "We are
a dumb bunch of chromosomes, aren't we?"

"Jerry works for Landry," Byron explained.  "Landry told him to knock
me around until I agreed to play a blitz match with his boss."

"I'm surprised you didn't just chomp off another finger," I said.

Byron looked startled that I knew.  He fired a menacing look across
�the room at Grudge.

"Wouldn't work," Jerry said.  "Landry's seen the finger bit already.

Hey, "the finger bit," get it?"  He chuckled at his own joke.

"So you knocked Byron around and you're still pals, right?"

Jerry shrugged.  "That's my job.  Byron knows that.  Besides, I
could've made it worse.  This way it looks like he took a real beating
and all I did was throw a few well-placed shots."

"Jerry's an artist," Byron said without irony.

Jerry's face went serious.  "Of course, that only works once.

Landry was not happy about you refusing him again.  I think this time
you're gonna have to accept, Byron.  I mean it, man."

-Byron shook his head.  "Can't do it, Jerry.  The guy's a pig."

"I don't know.  Pig's a matter of perspective.  He pays me on time,
treats me like a professional.  I got no complaints."

"Can't do it, man.  You know that."

Jerry frowned, looked pained, as if he might cry.  "I gotta break
something this time, man.

"Like what?"

"I dunno, he just said not to touch the right arm or hand so you can
play."

Byron looked down at his own body.  "It would be hard to get to a bus
on crutches, so how about my left hand?  That sound good?"

I couldn't take it any longer.  "Are you two crazy?  You're discussing
which limb to break because he doesn't want to play a game of chess
with your boss.  What's the big deal?  Play the guy!"

"I think she's right, Byron.  It were me, hell, I'd just play him.

You know he's not gonna stop hounding you "till you do.  You know
why."

Byron looked at me.  I don't know what he thought he saw, but there was
a sadness and gentleness in his expression I'd never seen before.  For
a moment, I thought he was waiting for me to do something or say
something.  And, crazy enough, I wanted to, maybe touch his face,
smooth his hair, pat his hand.  Some gesture as simple and clear as the
sign language he spoke with � Shawna, the movement of a chess piece.  I
wanted to do some thing.

Then the moment passed and he said to Jerry, "Tell Landry I'll play
him."

I-"Don't dick me around, Byron.  That would only make things worse.

"Tell him I'll call with details."  Jerry looked both relieved and
disappointed, as if he had saved a friend but lost a hero.  "I'll tell
him."  He turned and walked away.

Before Jerry was out the front door, the room was loud with discussions
of what had been overheard.  There was excitement and awe and a kind of
nervous anticipation.

"Let's get out of here," Byron said.

Somehow I got the feeling that he'd taken the match because of me.

Somehow I got the feeling that was a big, big mistake.

"Where are we going?"  I asked.  I'd been driving about thirty minutes
,long the 91 Freeway toward Riverside.

Keep going.  I'll tell you when we get there."  I'm not the kind of
person who generally accepts that as an answer.  But this time I didn't
argue.  I drove.

Why is Landry so hot to play you?"

"There's a McDonald's.  Pull off."

"Sure you can afford it, big spender?"

He looked at me.  "Who said I'm buying?"

We coasted through the drive-thru lane and picked up our bag at the
second window.  The girl in the headphones said, "Four thirty-eight."

I refused to reach for any money.  So did Byron.

- "That'll be four dollars and thirty-eight cents," she repeated ncr
vously.  I didn't budge.  The car behind us nosed closer.  A car behind
them honked twice.  I stared out the windshield.  Finally, Byron dug
into his pocket and handed me a twenty, which I handed to the girl.

"Keep the change," I said to her and sped away.  I saw her puzzled look
in my rearview mirror as she hung out the window, the twenty-dollar
bill clutched in her hand.

"Guess they don't get tipped much here," I said.

He reached into the bag and handed me my iced tea.  He shoved a few
shoestring fries into his mouth.

-"Landry's a loan shark," Byron said.  "He was in prison the same time
Jerry and I were.  He fancies himself as something of an
intellectual.

A gentleman crook, like David Niven or Cary Grant."

-"He was part of your little chess club?"

Byron shrugged, popped a MeNugget into his mouth.

I laughed.  "Prison isn't what I imagined.  I mean, I envisioned sweaty
guys with bad teeth settling arguments with the sharpened end of a
toothbrush."

"Yeah, that's the rule generally.  Everything you've ever imagined it
to be.  Only worse.  The gangs, the murders, the rapes.

You tell a joke and somebody doesn't get the punebline, he may just
kill you for the insult.  But even within that there are little groups
of aficionados.  The weightlifting group is out there every day pumping
iron until their necks look like inner-tube mutations.  You know what
the Hillside Strangler and the Freeway Killer and those mass murderers
do every day?  They play bridge.

Swear to God, the bastards have a little bridge club, mass murderers
only need apply."

"Sounds cozy."

Byron slurped his root beer.  "It passes time.  More than that it gives
meaning to time, structure to what seems like an endless stream of
minutes passing you by.  They take their games very seriously."

"But you don't, right?  Like you said, it's just a game.

He looked over at me and smiled.  "That's right.  It's just a game.

For me, a way to pick up some money.

- A couple of cars coming the other way had their headlights on and I
noticed it was starting to get dark.  I switched on my head lights
too.

"Landry.  You were telling me about Landry."

"No big secret.  He's a loan shark looking to step up in the world.

Like I said, he fancies himself an intellectual, a master mind.  He's
very ambitious and something of a publicity nut.

He'd like to be planning major heists, the kind of stuff that makes
headlines, like the Brinks job, or the Lufthansa heist, or the Great
Train Robbery.  Naturally, only those in the very top positions would
know he's responsible, but that's enough for Landry.  Thing is, to do
something that size you need to get permission from the local organized
crime heads.  And that you can't get unless they think you've got a
hell of a good chance of pulling it off."

"Are we still talking about chess or did I take a wrong turn
somewhere?"

"Be patient, Luna."

When he said my name, I felt a strange tingle across my scalp.

I hadn't heard it in so long it felt kind of nice.  Luna.  Say it
again, I wanted to say.  Luna.  Luna.  Luna.

"For the crime bosses to give Landry permission, he needs to convince
them he can do the job and not bring any heat down on them.  To do
that, he needs top talent, the kind of professional talent that is hard
to come by.  Why would any of them hook up with a loan shark like
Landry?  Unless he can convince them he's a smart guy.  He thinks
beating me at chess will be favorable P.R. for him among the criminal
community.  First step on the thousand-mile journey."

"Is that as stupid as it sounds?"

"What, you think crooks are wise old men who spout proverbs and play
boccie ball?  They're criminals.  1f he were such a genius, why'd he go
to prison in the first place?"

Why'd you?"

He didn't answer.  He finished his root beer and started chewing his
ice.  So did I. For a couple of miles there was no sound in the car but
the crunching of ice.

"Pull over," he said, pointing to the side of the road.

"You sick?"

Yes."

I snapped on my turn signal and eased across two lanes until I was able
to safely pull off the freeway.  Cars whooshed beside us, the force of
their speed rocking the car a little.  Byron sat straight up staring
out the windshield.

"Don't you want to get out or something?  Hang your head out the
window?"

He turned' in the seat and flicked on the overhead light.  He reached
into his jacket pocket and pulled out a little wooden box, which he
unfolded, releasing tiny black and white chess pieces onto his seat
like bombs.

"What the hell are you doing?  I thought you were sick."

"I am sick of listening to you talk about things you don't know shit
about."  He quickly stuck the pegged chess pieces into their holes and
set the board between us.  I was white.  Then he snatched up from his
side a rook, a bishop, two pawns, a knight, and his queen.  "Fair
enough?"  he asked.

True, I didn't play chess that much with Robby, but I wasn't an idiot
either.  By the time we were divorced, I played well enough to beat
Robby a few times.  Head to head, I knew there was no way I could beat
Byron.  But with half of his pieces gone, especially his queen, I
figured I had a better than even chance.  "How about this?"  he said.

"You can have one full minute for each move, I'll move within three
seconds.  That better?"  w His arrogance dug into my chest, making my
bullet scar ache.  st "Yes," I said.  "That's better."

"Your move.  fe I did, playing a basically sound game, moving my
queen's pawn out, then developing my knights to control the center of
the board, then castling to protect my king.  I moved cautiously but
deliberately, showing him no lack of confidence.  He moved sa I- like a
robot, his eyes never leaving the board, but as if he knew all of his
moves ahead of time and that none of my moves interfered with his plan
the least bit.  I started to panic a little, watch the clock when it
was my move.  tr "Time," he said.  Ai "What?"  it "Your minute is up.

"No it isn't."  I looked over at the car clock but I couldn't La
remember when my time had started.  I moved a piece and he took my
rook.  My heart was pounding in an unnatural rhythm, an like reggae
steel drums.  My thumbnail was sore from being rubbed against the edge
of the seat.  I moved again and again he be took my piece, a knight.

- ar, "Check," he said.  "Mate in two."

I studied the board, tried to see the mate in two.  I put my hand on my
queen, then on my rook, back to the queen.

"Time," he said.  "Jesus, stop it."

"You want another minute?"

"Fuck you."  I moved my queen to cancel his check.

He unpegged his knight and pegged it so that it could take either my
king or queen.  "Check."

I had no choice but to move my king, which I did without t taking much
time.  He slid his rook across the board into the same file as my
king.

e "Checkmate."

I stared dumbly at the board, looking for his error.  Impossible that I
could be checkmated so rapidly by his crippled army.  Sweat r thickened
my skin.  My throat felt ashy, my teeth were coated with something
gritty that hadn't been there before the game started.

He sat back and stared straight ahead out the windshield.  "You feel
humiliated, right?  There's nothing you'd rather do right now 5 than
crush my skull with a hammer.  Except maybe play me f again.  That's
the only way you can get a little shred of self-respect back, isn't
it?

I mean, think about it.  I had no queen, for God's sake.  One rook, one
bishop, one knight, and only six pawns.  I moved in three seconds.

Three.  One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three.  Pow.

Checkmate, stupid."

"It's just a game," I said and started the car.  I pulled back into
traffic.  But the thing was, he was right.  I felt stupid,
humiliated.

And the fact that I knew it was stupid to feel that way only made it
worse.  I wanted to hurt him for putting me through this.

Byron swallowed another Tylenol.  "Now you know how Landry feels."

The sky was completely dark now.  Headlights crawled by in an ominous
procession.

"I came out here with you because I felt kind of sorry for you before,"
I said.  "I don't feel that way any longer, so I'm turning around."

"We're almost there," he said.

"Almost where?"

"You want to know where the money goes, right?  My winnings "I could
care less.  Why would I care?"

But I kept driving and we kept chewing ice.

The man was running toward us yelling before I'd even braked the car to
a stop, "What the hell are you doing here?  Who is she?

Were you followed?"

I recognized him from his lunch with Byron earlier that day, the guy to
whom Byron gave the envelope stuffed with money.

He was short and thin, with wire-rimmed glasses similar to mine.

He wore an orange T-shirt and baggy shorts that hung to his knees,
making him look a little like an average skateboarder.  My headlights
spotlighted him jumping up and down and waving at us so that he looked
as if he was doing a kind of crazy dance on a stage.  Byron laughed at
the sight.

I parked next to the dusty black Jeep in the gravel driveway.  A thick
cloud of road dust that the tires had kicked up rose up around the car
like smoke.  Byron got out and stretched.

"Byron.  Christ."  The man shook his head as he trotted toward us,
distraught.  He peered back down the deserted road that we'd just
driven on.  "Are you sure you weren't followed?"

"Relax," Byron said.

"I'll relax when I'm sure you weren't followed."

-"I don't see any headlights," I said.  I was just trying to calm him
down.

"Their headlights wouldn't be on if they were following you," he
snapped.  "That's the whole point.  Stealth."  he shook his head.

"Shit!"

"Gee," I said, "maybe we should sweep the car for hidden transmitters
that might be beaming back our location to a secret helicopter."

"I've already taken care of that.  I've planted four electronic
tumblers out there"he pointed in four compass directions at the vast
desert around us"that scramble any low-frequency signals for a
five-mile radius.  Kills bugs dead."

I looked at Byron for some explanation of what we were doing here and
how dangerous this guy might be, but Byron was walking toward the
ancient two-story white house next to the driveway.

"I have to use the john," he announced.  "Zeno, that's Luna.

Luna, Zeno.  He knows all about you, so relax."

Zeno and I watched him walk away, then we looked at each other like
children abandoned in a supermarket.  We quickly hurried after him.

"This is crazy, Byron," Zeno said.  "You shouldn't be here and she
especially shouldn't be here.  You're jeopardizing everything.

I want that to go on record right now."

"So recorded."  Byron went up the splintered, sun-dried stairs, across
the porch, and into the house.  The screen door clattered behind him.

Zeno held the screen door open and waved inc impatiently inside.  He
stared out into the darkness one last time for stealthy cars before
closing the door behind him.

Byron stood in the bathroom with the door open and pissed into the
toilet.  Zeno averted his eyes.  I didn't.  I could see the steady
stream shooting down.  The sound was loud and kind of soothing.  "I
brought some more money, Zeno."

This perked Zeno up.  "How much?"

"Not enough.  Six thousand."

"That's not enough.  Not nearly enough."

-"That's what I just said."  Byron finished, shook himself, zipped up,
washed his hands, and flushed.  I thought it odd that he flushed after
washing his hands.  I guess I even thought it odd that he washed his
hands at all.

"Where are we exactly?"  I asked.

"You don't need to know," Zeno said.

"Forty miles past Palm Springs," Byron said.  "Desert all around us for
hundreds of miles."

"Christ," Zeno slapped his hip.  "Why not take an ad out?"

"We can trust her."  There was something in the simple way he said it
that made me ashamed.  After all, I was here for dirt, not trust.  But
Byron knew that.  Why then did he bring me here, to the lair of his
secrets?

"So far there's not a whole lot to trust me with," I said.  "An old
house in the desert.  Did you guys find some gold or uranium or
something?"

"Better," Byron said.

"Much better," Zeno added.  His attitude seemed to change suddenly.

Now that he accepted my presence, he got excited and talkative.  "This
is bigger than precious metals, and potentially worth a lot more.

We're talking about something that will change the world for centuries
to come.  Nothing will ever be the same.

I sighed.  "Desert desert everywhere, but not a decent shrink."

"What's that supposed to mean?"  Zeno asked.

"It means you two need some professional help.  Byron's playing chess
every day, taking an occasional beating to his head.

You're holed up here in the thousand-degree heat working on some secret
formula or something.  Didn't I see this movie already?  Jeff Goldblum
plays both of you."

Byron laughed.  "Let's show her, Zeno."

Zeno looked petulant.  "Screw her.  Let her believe whatever she
wants.

Who cares what she thinks?"

"I care."  Byron led the way through the house and out the back door
where we stood in front of a large makeshift greenhouse covered with
clear plastic sheets.  The building was the size of a barn.

Oh, Christ, I thought, drugs.  They're growing some new potent
marijuana.  The feds probably have the place surrounded and now they
think I'm part of the gang.  Any second now guys wearing jackets with
DEA AGENT in big white letters on it will come rushing in waving heavy
rifles.

"Come on, don't be scared," Byron said.  "It's all very legitimate."

He held the door of the greenhouse open and I entered.  The air was
thick and moist, it smelled somehow tropical, the danksweet scent of
decaying leaves.  Warm flannel air clung to my skin like Velcro.  I
found myself breathing deeply to make sure I was getting enough
oxygen.

The room was laid out very simply.  Three rows of wooden troughs filled
with plants lined the greenhouse.  They didn't look like marijuana.

"Bamboo," Zeno said.

I walked up one aisle and down the next.  At the back of the
I.greenhouse was a laboratory bench with all kinds of chemicals and
tools and microscopes.  "Bamboo," I repeated, nodding.  "Just
bamboo."

"Yes," Zeno said sarcastically.  "Just bamboo."

"And this is what's going to change the world?  I hate to tell you
boys, but bamboo already grows in a lot of the world.  They've been
sticking bamboo splints up people's fingernails for centuries.

Accept no substitute."

"There are over 500 species," Zeno s)aid.  "Throughout southeastern
Asia, through India, all the way across to Korea and Japan.  Even
though it's technically a grass, it can grow over 135 feet tall.

Amazing, isn't it?"

"Stupefying,"!  said.  "What's the point?"

Zeno shook his head and looked at Byron.  "God, you were right about
her."

I looked at Byron too.  "Oh?  How so?"

-"I told him you sometimes confused being a smart-ass with being
smart."  I started to protest, but Byron waved at Zeno to continue.

"Anyway, bamboo isn't just a convenience, millions of people depend on
it to literally stay alive.  Bamboo hay has four times the protein
content of hay from fodder grasses, which means the entire livestock
population of most of those countries is dependent on bamboo.  No
bamboo, no food.  The paper made from bamboo in China is far superior
to newsprint.  Even more significant, bamboo is responsible for much of
the housing material in these countries.  They depend on it for food
and shelter."

Byron hopped up on a shaky wooden table stacked with bags of soil.

"Problem is, most bamboo has a very long period between flowerings15
years, 30 years, 60 years, even 120 years.  This makes it very
difficult to use consistently and can cause famine and homelessness in
some countries."

-"That's true," Zeno said, looking annoyed with Byron's interruption.

"Because you have whole stands of bamboo flowering at one time, they
also die at the same time.  This leads to the collapse of entire
forests at once, which often results in vast forest fires as well as
rat infestations as they gather to eat the seeds.  That means disease
and thousands of deaths."  Zeno began tucking his T-shirt into his
shorts, assuming a more professorial appearance.  He adjusted his
glasses.  "Scientists all over the world have been trying to quicken
the gestation period of bamboo to make it flower faster."  He looked at
Byron and grinned.  "I found a way."

"Not entirely on your own," Byron reminded him.

Zeno looked embarrassed.

Byron continued, "Zeno and I met in prison.  He was tutoring illiterate
prisoners, teaching them how to read in exchange for cigarettes and
whatever other prison currency he could get."

"Were you a part of the chess club too?"  I asked.

"Me?  No way.  Chess is a stupid game.  Waste of time."

Byron didn't seem to take any offense at that.  "Before prison, Zeno
was a lab assistant at a university, doing some key research in plant
genetics."  ii"The guy I was working for, Dr. Palomar, is one of the
big shots in plant genetics.  He pioneered acceleration of flowering of
the loblolly pine and day lily as a result of tissue culture.  Quite
fascinating methodology if you "Keep it simple, man," Byron said.

"What were you in for?"  I asked Zeno.

Zeno looked confused, as if he didn't remember being in prison.  "I
stole library books and sold them to collectors."

"You stole books?  You went to prison for stealing library books?"  I
laughed.

-"How much did you make a year stealing library books, Zeno?"

Byron asked, but he was looking at me.

-I"Depends.  I mean, I had to travel a bit to various university
libraries, so there were travel expenses to deduct."

"Net profit."

Zeno shrugged.  "Fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars a year.

"Impossible,"!  said.

"Not really," Zeno said.  "There's actually quite a market for
antiquarian books.  You'd be surprised."

"Surprised?  I'm dumbfounded.  Seventy-five thousand dollars a year for
used library books.  Christ."

"Not just any book.  They have to be rare, that's the challenge."

I sat down on a couple of burlap bags of soil.  "Why'd you do it?"

He looked surprised.  "Money, of course.  Dr. Palomar abandoned the
bamboo project because he was afraid he couldn't get another government
grant.  Everything is run on grants in the university.  So, always
sensing grant opportunities, Dr. Palomar applied for a grant to create
a smokeless, nicotineless, cancerless tobacco for cigarettes.  The
money poured in and the bamboo was scrapped."

"So, Zeno here saved what papers he could from the project, and stole
library books to finance his own experiments."

-I looked at Byron.  "And now that he has no more income, you play
chess to make enough money to finance this whole thing."  I gestured to
encompass the greenhouse.

"We're very close to success," Zeno said excitedly.  "The idea is
adding cytokinin and coconut milk to the tissue-cultured shoots.  The
coconut milk supplies the inositol and cytokinin oxidase inhibitors,
which then allows the cytokinin to promote the plant maturation.

"That's good?"

"Good?  Jesus, I've already gotten them to flower after only three
subcultures.  This is an innovation equal to the Salk vaccine,
discovering penicillin He waved his hands, his mouth open chewing air,
searching for an appropriate metaphor.

"Refrigerntion," Byron offered.

"Exactly!"  He pointed at Byron.  "Refrigerntion.  We're talking about
not only eliminating one of the world's greatest plagues but actually
increasing food and building supplies.  Within a couple of generations,
a heartier, faster flowering species of hamboo will be growing
everywhere."

I stood up, brushed the loose soil from my pants.  "Thanks for the
tour.  Your secret is safe with me.  I'd like to go home now."

Byron hopped off the table.  "Zeno, can we borrow your Jeep?"

"Sure, yeah.  What for?"  He tossed the keys to Byron.

"I want to show Luna something."

"I don't want to see anything else," I said.  "I've seen so much.

My eyeballs are on full.  Really."

"You want to know about Wren, don't you?  What happened to us?  About
my evil criminal life?  Her missing teeth?  I mean isn't that the
mystery piece of the puzzle, the information that will make your
performance, your impersonation of her all the fl more complete?"

I looked at him for a while.  His face didn't reveal anything, just
stared back with that blank-wall expression while he fingered his
dragonfly earring.  All around us mutated bamboo shoots were growing
unnaturally fast.  That made me nervous, as if!  expected them to
suddenly shoot a root thick as a cable out of the sod, wrap it around
my neck, and drag me back under the ground until I was mulch.

Did I really want to know what had happened between Byron and Wren?  If
Wren had wanted me to, she would have told me.

Besides, I was getting out of the Wren business.  Out of the Season
business.  Just as soon as Davis came back, I was telling him
everything.  I owed him the truth.  I owed someone some kind of
truth.

"Never mind," Byron said.  He tossed the keys back to Zeno and started
walking back to the house.  "She's just talked herself out of it."

I marched over to Zeno and grabbed the keys from his hand.

"Let's go, bucko.  Show me what you've got."

"Insects," he said.

-"Insects?  As in bugs?"  the same.  Technically, Insecta."

"Insecta?  Sounds like a Japanese movie.  Some giant mantis head
crushing a lot of cardboard buildings."

We were bouncing through the cool night air across a dirt path through
the desert.  Byron drove what seemed to be much faster than was safe,
given the low visibility and lack of clearly defined road.  He didn't
look worried.  He wrestled the steering wheel through turns and curves
like someone who knew this land by heart.  Every bounce cinched my seat
belt tighter against my bladder and I was wishing I'd gone to the
bathroom back at the house.

"Insecta is a class of the largest animal phylum, Anthropoda.

They used to be called Hexapoda because of the three pairs of legs at
the thorax.  There are over one million known species and they
constitute about eighty-three percent of known animal life on this
planet.  Impressed or should I babble on?"

"Impressed," I said.  "Okay, so your were a bug major in college."

"Entomology."

"Did you have a specialty, like an English major might specialize in
the nineteenth-century British novel?"

"You mean did I have a favorite bug?"

"Right."

I was partial to the Hymenoptera."

"Why, because it had hymen in it?"

He laughed.  "I hadn't thought about it, but you may be right."

If!  concentrated on staring up at the stars, the bouncing of the Jeep
didn't bother me as much.  Even though we were zipping around like a
drunken jackrabbit, the stars overhead stayed in one place and that
made me feel better.  "So what is the hymen bug?"

"Hymenoptera.  It's an ant.  I like ants."

Now I laughed.  I don't know why, it was especially funny.  But I felt
suddenly giddy, as if I had a secret pact with the stars to keep me
safe.  Or maybe it was the pressure on my bladder.

He must have interpreted my laugher as a response to his love of
ants.

"Ants are more complex than people realize," he said defensively.

"There are 8,804 species of the family Formicidac.

They do things we can't fully imagine.  For example, they build nests
that can go twenty feet deep and have over a thousand entrances.  The
weaver ants use silk thread from larvae to bind leaves together for
penthouse suites.  A species in Malaysia keeps I-livestock in the form
of mealybugs.  Get this, the mealybug eats sap rich in amino acids and
sugar, then passes it on to the ants in the form of excrement."

-i"Jesus."  I made a face and swallowed dryly.

"In exchange for this service, the ants protect them from other
Iipredators.  And when the sap dries up the ants use their jaws to
carry the mealybugs to new plants.  Kind of like being carried in a
shark's mouth."

"Fascinating, Bryon," I said, hoping that would end it.

I"It's more than fascinating, it's fucking cosmic.  You've got a
carpenter ant that has no reproductive organs.  You know what it has
instead?

"Cable TV?"

"That space holds poison-filled glands.  One of these ants gets into a
fight in order to protect the nest, it will purposely rupture this
gland, exploding its own body so it can spray the poison on the
enemy.

God, that's interesting."

I turned in my seat to look at him.  His face was boyish and happy.  "I
just realized," I said.  "You're the same type ofuerd as Zeno back
there.  His face looked just like yours when he was talking bamboo
sprouts and coconut milk.  I mean, you play chess and wear an earring
and bit off your fingers, but basically you lot alike."  guys are a "I
don't take that as an insult."

"It wasn't meant as one.  It's just an observation, that's all."

"Do you have any insight to go with your observation?"

"I don't do insight.  I'm not Wren, as you so often point out, just an
imposter."

We were silent for a while.  Except for the stars, there were no other
lights.  I had no idea even what direction the house was.

Hell, what direction Los Angeles was.  All around us was desert dirt
and wiry bushes and a crisp smell that was almost sharp enough to slice
your lungs.

"So how did you go from bugs to prison?"  I asked.

"1 was working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, developing a
program to match beneficial insects with specific crops as an
alternative to insecticides.  We were trying different breeding methods
to make enough insects to keep up with the demand."

"Like a bug bordello, huh?"

He ignored me.  "We were raising the green lacewing, the cryptolaemus,
certian predatory mites.  And with the pesticide scare going on, we
were in demand."

"Where does Wren fit into all this?"

"Wren," he said softly.  He shook his head as if he were having an
internal discussion.

"Wren," I repeated.

"I worked with the bugs during the day, but I worked with EarthWorth at
night.  Secretly, of course."

"EarthWorth?  You mean those guys who chain themselves to the redwoods
so the loggers don't cut them down, that sort of thing?"

He frowned at the reference.  "Yeah, that sort of thing.  We were a
monkey-wrench activist group, like Earth First or Greenpeace.  That
means we didn't just talk about the environment, we took some
corrective action."

"Like chaining yourself to a tree."

"I didn't chain myself to a fucking tree, okay?  I wasn't a tree
hugger, I was an environmental activist.  We did things like hammering
spikes into trees so the loggers would break their saws.

Once we dug a trench across a logging road, filled it with quickdrying
cement, and stepped into it to form a human severe-tiredamage line."

"Sounds like tree hugging to me."

He sighed.  "We sabotaged some heavy equipment when they, wanted to
build condos out here and ruin the ecosystem balance.

"None of this sounds like Wren."

He stopped the Jeep.  The headlights shone against a sheer rock wall of
mountain.  We'd been following the hills for a couple of miles but I
hadn't noticed us getting so close.  He jumped out of the Jeep and
started foraging in the back.  He found a blanket and some matches.

"Go over there," he said, pointing at some gnarled bushes.  "I'll build
a fire."

"Why do you want me to go over there?  So I won't learn the secret of
fire, Prometheus?"

"So you can take a leak.  You've been squirming in your seat for twenty
minutes."

I walked over behind the bushes, pulled down my pants and panties, and
squatted.

"Watch out for scorpions," he called.  "They're all over the place."

I looked down at my exposed opening only inches from the ground and
lifted myself a little higher.  When I finished, I dressed and returned
to the Jeep.  A few feet away Byron was tossing wood onto a pleasant
little campfire.

"Doesn't this destroy the ecosystem balance?"  I said, sitting on the
blanket next to him.

"Yeah, but I plan to sacrifice you to the god of },he desert and spill
your blood into the sand, so it all evens out.

We both stared into the fire the way people always do, as if they've
never seen one before, dumb expressions on their faces as if their life
forces were being extracted by the wiggling flames.

Sitting there, not knowing which direction was which, how far we were
from civilization, only twenty feet from a wet spot on the ground where
I'd just urinated, I felt relaxed.  I wasn't even anxious to hear about
Wren.

"Wren didn't like my nocturnal achvities.  Neither did the Ag
Department.  They fired my ass as soon as a photo of me appeared in
Time magazine with my feet stuck in cement.

I tried to imagine Wren with her feet stuck in cement.  Somehow !

couldn't.

"She thought our behavior too extreme.  We fought about it."

And you popped her one, right?  I thought.  Knocked her teeth out, then
fell to your knees begging forgiveness.

"Wren liked to watch, to observe.  To judge.  She was good at it.

Analyzing what people did, why they did it, what they meant by it.  But
she didn't really do anything.  Did you know she wasn't even registered
to vote?"

! shook my head.  That surprised me.  She always had very vocal
opinions about every political issue and candidate.

"For all her articulation, Wren didn't really want to participate.

She didn't live life in the fast lane or the slow lane, she lived in
the bus lane.  Safe and above the others, with someone else driving."

"That's bullshit," I said.  "Wren didn't let anyone drive her.

She did what she wanted, she was in complete control.  Everyone knew
that, everyone who really knew her."

He shrugged.  "She was a better actress than you."

I stood up angrily.  "You really piss me off.  You come out of the
woodwork without even seeing her for two years and you start telling me
what she was like.  Well, maybe you didn't know her as well as you
thought.  Maybe you didn't know her at all."

"Maybe," he said quietly.  He tossed a rock into the fire and some
sparks flew up.  "One evening I'd talked her into going on one of our
little raids."  He pointed out into the darkness.  "Just a few miles
over there where people came to drive their all-terrain vehicles,
chewing up the land and killing off a lot of necessary wildlife.  I
guess I shamed her into it, calling her a fence-sitter, a moral Peeping
Tom.  That sort of thing."

I sat back down and watched him.  He looked right at me, not with his
cold prison-yard face, but with lost eyes and a sad turn to his
mouth.

-"We went in at night to plant some big deep rocks in the paths where
they usually did their racing.  Wren and I were digging a hole when we
heard loud engines suddenly start up and bright flashlights were
trained on us.  Somehow they had found out about our plan and had come
down and hid out, waiting for us.

They started chasing us in their ATVs, armed with baseball bats.

I dragged Wren out of there.  We were running together when some yahoo
drove by us and swung his bat into Wren's face."

"Jesus."  his thumbnail and it me while I was waiting there.  I got two
years.

"For what?  Did you kill the bastard who hit her?"

He laughed wryly.  "We never found out who did it.  I was sent up for
destruction of property and trespassing.  I was an example."

I lay down on my side and propped up my head with my arm.

"That's it, huh?  You didn't smack her around?"

"Sorry to disappoint you.  Anyway, she wouldn't speak to inc after
that.  She blamed me for what happened, for talking her into going in
the first place."  He looked at me.  "I guess she was right."

Staring into the fire and listening to Byron's voice made me sleepy.

Now that I knew there was nothing sinister about him, I could relax
even more.  But part of me was disappointed.  I had set him up as my
adversary, the man I would defeat.  I guess it was a lot like having a
chase scene, the way my student described.

Having Byron as the villain gave some meaning to what I did.

Without him in the garden, what good was paradise?

"Why did you tell me all this now?"  I said.  "I asked you plenty of
times before."

"I told you.  I wasn't going to help you impersonate Wren.  And that's
the only reason you wanted the information, to add to your shrine.

"What's different now?"

He flicked another stone from his thumbnail.  It arced up high and
dropped into the fire.  "You're different."

I didn't see any difference.  As far as he knew I was still pre tending
to be Wren.  Nothing had really changed.  So I had to think of some
other reason he was telling me all this.  It didn't take me long.

Money.  I had some and he needed some.

"How long before your bamboo project is done?"  I asked.

"Hard to tell.  We're still running experiments.  That takes money.

So, as long as I keep winning, we're still in business.  But that's
going to get harder.  I'm going to have to give away too much from now
on just to get someone to bet money.  Too many pieces, too much time.

That will catch up to me.

"How much money do you need?"

He shook his head.  "Zeno figures another hundred grand.

But, considering we're going to make millions, it's worth the
investment."

I sat up.  "Is that what this is about?  Making millions?"

He laughed.  "You mean, am I in this for the bucks or to carry on the
altruistic spirit of tree hugging?"

"Yes, that's what I mean."

-"Can't I do both?  Save a tree and still make a few bucks?"

"A few million bucks."

He leaned forward and gently laid another piece of gray wood on the
fire.  "You're making $50,000 writing a book pretending to be Wren.

Does that mean you cared any less for Wren?"

"It's not the same."

"Sure it is.  I hugged trees, you hugged Wren.  We both got burned, now
we're both in it for the bucks.  I can accept that, why can't you?"

I had a mental image of Byron and me standing side by side in a
clearing.  He had his arms wrapped around a skinny sapling of a tree.

I had mine wrapped around a white pine coffin.  Inside I could feel
Wren's weight pulling the coffin toward the ground, but I wouldn't let
if fall.

"You sure must see things a lot different than you used to," I said.

"Two years in a small cell helps you see the big picture.  Two years of
looking at things through a snitch mirror you hold outside your bars
changes your perspective a little.  After you see things in reflection
long enough, when you see them without the mirror they look funny,
fake."  He whistled a couple of notes.  "Yeah, I see different.  More
clearly."

"What about Earth Worth?  Maybe they'd be glad to invest for such a
worthy cause?"

He looked up from the fire straight at me.  "What are you trying to
say?"

"I'm saying that I have no intention of giving you any of my money.

I'm saying that this whole trip to the desert to meet your wacky pal
and see your little greenhouse doesn't mean shit to me.

And this cozy chat around the campfire won't get you a cent."

I"That's what you think this was about?  Getting your money?

Jesus, you're worse than I thought."

"Right.  Like you don't want my money.  Were you after just part of it
or the whole fifty grand?  Did you really want the money for your
project or just to keep me from publishing Wren's magazine and making
it a success?"

"That magazine is a failure no matter how popular it becomes."

"Yeah, right.  More prison parables from the Monk of C Block."

He stood up and brushed the dirt from his pants.  "Forget it.  I don't
weep at the extinction of species,!  don't wince at dolphins in tuna
nets, I don't lecture passersby on smoking.  The whole world is dying
anyway, heading toward extinction.  That's as ineviI-table as the sun
flaming out."  He kicked dirt onto the campfire, smothering half the
flames.

"is that your big insight?  Two years of looking through a mirror and
that's it?  Maybe you should have Windexed your mirror, pal.

We already know the sun will nova.  In a few billion years.

Meantime, I still plan to keep up my subscription to People
magazine."

"Under whose name?  Or is Luna Devon an extinct species."

I don't know, something about the way he said it, phrased it maybe, I
don't know.  My skin tightened as if I'd just stepped inside a
freezer.

I threw a couple more pieces of wood on the fire and blew the flames
back to life.  I needed warmth.

"Let's go," Byron said.  "Now that you know I wouldn't take your
fucking money, there's nothing to stay for."

His moral tone bugged me, so I marched back to the Jeep, snagged my
purse, and returned to the campfire.  I dug out my checkbook and wrote
a check for $1,000.  I tore it off and handed it to him.  "Here.  For
your bamboo.  No strings.  Consider it payment for information received
about Wren.  For her sake, it was worth it."

He studied the check a moment, then smiled.  He folded it in half as if
he would stick it in his shirt pocket.  Then, still smiling, he reached
the check into the fire, let a flame jump to the edge of the paper, and
held it between us while it burned.  The flames ate across the paper to
his fingers, but he still held it.  Finally he just crushed out the
flames in his hand and tossed the scrap of check and black ash into the
fire.

"Not enough?"  I said.  I wrote another check for two thousand
dollars.

He tossed it into the fire without looking at it.  My face was burning
with anger as I scribbled another check, now for five thousand
dollars.

He balled it up without looking at the amount, put it on the end of a
stick like a marshmallow, and roasted it to ash in the flames.

Before he was even done roasting that check I was writing another one
for ten thousand dollars.  I was furious, my penpoint cut right through
the paper as I signed my name.  "You might want to look at this one
first."

He didn't.  He balled it up, stuck it on his stick, let it catch fire,
then flung the burning ball at me.  The flaming paper struck my breast
and bounced onto my lap.  I quickly brushed it away.

attacked my checkbook again.  I was practically choking with hate as I
scratched twenty-five thousand dollars into the amount line of the
check.  I knew this bastard could be bought, and I would buy him.  That
would prove something.  I tore the check from the book, crumpled it up,
and threw it in his face.  It caught him in the corner of the eye
because that eye teared up instantly.

He rubbed it, but didn't pick up the check.

"Go ahead!"  I shouted.  "Let's see you burn it.  Let's see you burn
$25,000."

He picked up the crumpled check, looked at the amount.  His smile
widened.  "This one I think I'll keep."  He smoothed it against his
thigh, folded it neatly in half, and stuck it into his shirt pocket.

"You lying cocksucking motherfucking son of a bitch,"!  said.

He nodded.  "But then, you knew that."

After he stamped the fire out and scattered the ashes, the darkness
seemed too loud.  Just standing there my ears seemed to pick up some
night melody from the darkness.  Or else I was going ii crazy.

Certainly sitting around with Byron could drive one over w the edge.

I could barely see him, just a shadowy gray ghost moving about.  From
the sound, he was shaking out the blanket, folding it.  I leaned
against the Jeep, let the cool metal anchor me.  In this kind of
darkness, one was liable to float away.

I"Here," he said, suddenly behind me.

I turned quickly, my head smacking his chin.

"Ow," he said.  "I didn't say I was sorry.  "What's here?"

"What?"  "You said "here."  What's here?"  ni "Here, take this."

His hand touched my arm, felt its way down to my hand, opened my
fingers, then stuck the folded piece of paper that must have been my
check in them.  He closed my fingers around the check.  "I wasn't
looking for your money."  He to paused.  "You're more like Wren than I
thought."  he "You don't sound like that's a compliment."

He didn't answer.  But he didn't move away either.  I could hear him.

his breathing, see a blotch of face, a glistening in the eyes.  His as
shirt smelled like the campfire.  His breath rhythmically puffed lik
into my hair.  So Then I saw the darkness around his face shift and
suddenly he was kissing me and I was letting him and I thought about
Davis and I thought about Robby and I thought about Wren, but I let it
happen anyway.  And then I was kissing him back and I didn't think
about anything else but how that kiss felt.  I imagined our lips
pressed against each other magnified a billion times.  The crevices and
lines were craters and gulches.  Then I saw our giant tongues leaping
over our lips into each other's mouth like thick pink whales at play.

Or plump dolphins bumping bellies.  And while I thought of this I felt
my blouse come undone and my bra open and strong fingers pulled at my
nipples like little mouths.

Then he was gone and I heard the snap of the blanket opening up like a
flag.  And somehow we were naked and on the ground, the rough texture
of the blanket scratching my skin.

Even without his clothes he smelled like the campfire and I liked
that.

I buried my face against his chest.  His skin was moist with sweat.  I
heard a noise in the distance.

"What if we're attacked by a p?ck of wild coyotes?"  I said.

"Maybe we'd better work fast.

"Not too fast," I said.

He laughed, his head thrown back looking a little like a coyote, I
thought.  Then his head disappeared and I felt the nuzzling between my
legs, the soft attention of his tongue.  I opened my eyes and looked
straight up into space.  The stars were so clear and sparkling, as if
they just came out of a dishwasher.  What I didn't understand was how I
could stare off into space and see things billions of miles away so
clearly but the man who was nibbling between my legs was only a dark
ink blot.  I couldn't even see my own hand, though I could still feel
the crumpled check in it.

He lifted my legs up over his shoulders so he could plunge his tongue
into me.  His hands slid up my side and I winced when he hit a ticklish
spot, but he went past that until he was cupping my breasts.  He
unsheathed his tongue from my vagina and licked his way up to my
clitoris.  His tongue swirled in circular motions as if he were trying
to keep an ice-cream cone from dripping.  I liked thinking of my
clitoris that way and smiled as he continued.

Soon I was gasping and bucking and I could feel myself being dragged
toward climaxing.  But I didn't want to come without seeing him.  I
grasped his head and pulled him up on top of me.

I reached down and planted his penis at my opening and he thrust
forward and into me.

I looked right at him, our faces not more than six inches apart, as he
rocked back and forth, first slowly, then gathering speed.  !

still couldn't see his face clearly, though having the stars behind him
at least made the outline of his head sharper.  He made love
differently than Davis or Ethan or Robby.  I hadn't realized this
before, but there had been something familiar about the others, as if
they'd all read the same sex manual.  It wasn't that Byron did anything
especially different, there was still only the obvious combinations of
tongues and vagina and penis.  Yet, it was differcut.  More personal.

Like someone making you a birthday card rather than buying one.

Then he was ramming into me hard and I wanted him to do it even
harder.

I dug my nails into his hard buttocks and pulled him into me.  Images
burst into my mind as I felt myself nearing climax.  The darkness
exploded into white, like an oldfashioned flash bulb that blinded me at
first, then the white drained away and I could see things.  Flash!

Me ramming that white Subaru, crunching his fender.  Flash!  Me
smashing Byron's watch against the table, jumping up and down on it.

Flash!  Me throwing checks at Byron.  All the moments of passion I'd
been accumulating.

And then the flashes stopped and I was moaning and my hands were
gripping Byron's hair.  He was grunting in my ear and he pumped against
me and I didn't give a shit about anything else in the past, present,
or future except what would happen in the next couple of seconds.

"Luna," he said.  "God, Luna."

I was so close, so close, so close, soclosesoclose.  I flung my hands
out to the side to arch myself better.  One hand hit the blanket, the
other hit the sand, and the one that hit the sand suddenly caught
fire.

"Aaaahh!!"  I screamed.  I looked over to see why my hand felt as if a
nail had been pounded through it.  But I couldn't see anything.

"Goddammmmmmn!"

And Byron, thinking I was coming, I guess, pumped even harder.

"No!"  I said, hitting him on the head with my good hand.  But I felt
him spasm and his come shooting into me.  "I'm hurt!"  I cried.

"Something bit me."

He pulled out of me instantly.  His penis was still leaking sperm,
because I felt the trail drip down my thigh all the way to my knee as
he sat up.  "Where?  Where are you hurt?"

"My hand.  Jesus, it feels like it's burning up."

"Don't move," he said.  He stood up and ran over to the Jeep.

He started up the engine, and for a moment I thought he was just going
to drive away and leave inc here, yelling something like "Hold on, I'm
going for help."

But all he did was turn the Jeep around so it faced us and switch on
the headlights.  The light bounced off my naked body, making it look
even paler than it actually was.  I didn't care.  My hand hurt too much
to care about anything else.  I sat tip and examined the hand.  There
was a red hole on the back of my hand and serious swelling around it.

The veins stood out and looked kind of bluish.  I looked around the
blanket I was on for what caused it.  I didn't see anything.

He stood up on the driver's side and leaned over the windshield.

His penis was mashed against the windshield.  "What's it look like?" 
he said "Like a flattened worm," I said, pointing.

He looked down and smiled.  "I'm talking about your hand."

-"Red and swollen."

"Teeth marks?"

"A little hole."

He nodded and sat down.  He switched off the engine and the
headlights.

I heard him rooting around in the back of the Jeep.

"What the hell was it?"  I asked.

"Scorpion."

"Scorpion?"  I pulled my legs tighter and hugged my knees.  !

let my wounded hand lie on the blanket as if it weren't a part of
inc.

It throbbed horribly.

-"Shouldn't we keep the lights on so we can see them?"  I suggested.

"Lights won't help," he said.  "At least not the regular kind."

Apparently he found what he'd been looking for, because he climbed out
of the Jeep, or at least that's what it sounded like.

"Shouldn't we be rushing me to the hospital or something?

Don't people die from scorpion bites?"

-I "By the hundreds," he said.  "The symptoms resemble strychnine
poisoning.  The tongue gets thick, muscles twitch, you start sneezing
and frothing.  Then convulsions and a bluishness in the extremities."

"What the fuck are you doing?  Get me to a hospital!"

"But those symptoms are rare and you would already be slurring your
speech if it was going to affect you that way.  Mostly people
experience a sharp burning sensation, followed by a needles-andpins
tingling like when your foot falls asleep.  At least that's how it
affected me when I was stung."!  heard his voice coming closer, but I
couldn't see him.

"Where are you?"  I asked.

"Here," he said.  "I'm shining a flashlight so I can see the scorpions
without stepping on one.

"Either one of us is crazy or you need some fresh batteries, because I
don't see any flashlight shining."

"It's a black light.  You can only spot them under an ultraviolet
beam."

"Look, my hand is doing the samba on hot coals and you're doing your
Dr.  Frankenstein number.  Let's just get out of here okay?"

"There!"  he said.  From his voice, I could tell he was standing right
next to me, but I still couldn't see him and I didn't know I-where
"there" was.

Then I felt his hand on my arm.  He was kneeling beside me, his arm
around my shoulder.  "There," he said softly and I turned.

"Jesus," I said.  "Jesus, what the hell is that?"

His ultraviolet flashlight was aimed at the cliff wall fifteen feet
away.  The entire face of the rock was covered with neon greenishblue
outlines of scorpions.  "It's just a photochemical reaction to the
black light," Byron said.  "Beautiful, isn't it?"

That struck me as off, because I expected him to say, Scary, isn't
it.

That's probably what I would have said.  But it wasn't what I was
thinking at that moment.!  was thinking, Beautiful, isn't it.  Though I
didn't know it until he said it.  Gazing at the cliff wall was like
seeing hundreds of zodiac signs.  In fact, they reminded me of stars,
so clear and precise.

He shifted the flashlight away from the cliff and shone it on the
ground around us.  Nothing.  He aimed it at our pile of clothes.

Nothing.

"They're very shy," he said, as if describing a pet.  "They like to
hide."  He picked up a stick and poked my panties.  A neon blue-green
scorpion scurried out from under them.

"That's sick," I said.

"Just be glad he wasn't in them when you put them back on."

We got dressed-carefully-and drove back to the house.  Byron took all
of Zeno's ice and packed my hand in it for the drive home to Orange
County.  We didn't speak much during the trip.

He asked how my hand was.  Better, I said.  Did I feel okay?  Fine, I
said.

I was busy thinking.  Thinking about Davis.  I had betrayed him.  What
did I know about Byron except what he told me?  How could I trust
that?

Even if it was true, so what?  I had feelings for Davis.  I knew who he
was, what he did, what he was about.

"What are you thinking about?"  Byron asked me after a long stretch of
silence.

-"Nothing."

-"Come on.

"Scorpions," I said.  "How we could be out in the middle of hundreds of
scorpions doing what we were doing without knowing they were there."

"I knew they were there."

-"Then you should have warned me."

-"I did, earlier.  I said watch out for scorpions."

"Yeah, but you said it like "Watch out for falling meteors."  Like it
was only a remote possibility."

He shrugged.  "If I'd have shone my black light around beforehand,
would you still have made love?"

"I don't know what I would have done."

He didn't say anything for a while.  "That's not what this is about.

The guilt's set in.  You're wondering if this has been a mistake.  You
followed me in the first place to get rid of me and now that you fucked
me, you're wishing you'd just gotten rid of me instead.  Right?"

"Don't tell me what I think, okay?"

He didn't speak the rest of the trip.  We arrived at the apartment and
he carried the dripping ice packs to the kitchen sink and tossed them
in.  There was an envelope under the front door mat addressed to Wren
and Byron.  I opened it.  Inside was a note from Ethan asking us to
call him.  The phone number was a Los Angeles area code.  I tossed the
envelope on the sofa and went to the refrigerator for a soda.  I was
dying of thirst.

"Drink water," he said.  "It'll flush your system out."

I popped a Dr Pepper and drank.

He just smiled sadly and sighed.  "Okay, I've been debating about
whether or not to tell you this.  Before I figured it was none of my
business.  Maybe it still isn't."

"What?"

"You know the bookmark you use in that flight magazine?"

I thought for a moment.  The magazine I brought home from Davis's.

"Yes.  What about it?"

"Nothing.  If you know, you know."  He turned and walked down the hall
to his room and shut the door.

I went to my room, holding the cold can of soda against the back of my
swollen hand.  I found the magazine on the back of the toilet where I'd
left it.  For Byron to have known about it, he must have searched my
room again.  Like I had done to his room, I reminded myself.

I opened the magazine and looked at the bookmark.  It was Davis's
boarding pass.  But I already knew that.  So what?  He'd just gone to
Hawaii last week.  But I looked at the boarding pass more closely.

Destination, Los Angeles.

Departure, Denver.

I sat on the toilet.  My hand throbbed and burned even more suddenly,
as if my heart had somehow been washed out of my chest and got snagged
inside my hand.  He hadn't gone to Hawaii, he'd gone to Denver.

And if he'd gone to Denver, he'd gone before this man had shot the
woman.  What if Davis had made a deal with the guy based just on his
hounding of the poor woman who'd received the transplant?  What if the
man, knowing he had a deal, decided to do something more dramatic,
something to make the story even better?  We're not talking about a
stable personality here, we're talking a disturbed man trying to get
back to his wife's body parts.  He views this woman as a surrogate, as
if his wife were growing inside of the other woman.  But he can't get
back to his wife until he kills the surrogate that's in the way.

I didn't really know what had gone through the man's mind.

Any more than I'd known what had gone through Davis's mind.

He'd signed a contract with Season Dougherty and she'd killed her
husband.  That had become his big break.  Did he now go searching for
people on the verge of exploding and sign them up before the violence
so he had exclusive rights?  Jesus, think about it.

I stood up and walked out of my room.  I didn't bother to switch on the
lights.  I knew my way through darkness by now.  I imagined scorpions
lining the walls, the floor.  I didn't care.  I knew one thing was for
sure, I was throwing Byron out.  He had always picked at my scabs,
tried to lift the corner of my mask, to shine his white and black
lights at me, to expose my neon self.  But now he had taken away the
one thing I had left in my life.  Davis.  I hadn't asked for the truth
and I wasn't grateful for it.  Byron was out of here.  Tonight.

I turned the knob on his bedroom door and flung it open.  The room was
empty.  I walked around it, opened doors, the closet.

Everything was gone.  I searched the apartment for Hector.  He was gone
too.

While waiting for Davis, I sat on the park bench next to the artificial
lake and watched an old man shoot baskets.  The old man was thin and
bony, his pale legs sticking out of his baggy shorts seemed wobbly and
coltish.  His hair was thin and white and lifted with each puff of
wind.  He stood at the free-throw line, made sure his toes were lined
up, bounced the ball once with both hands, and lofted it at the
basket.

I'd watched him toss at least twenty shots and he'd missed every one of
them.  The ball usually bounced off the rim and rolled into the grass
that surrounded the small cement court.  He walked in slow small steps
after it, picked it up, and carried it right back to the free-throw
line.  He didn't dribble the ball or spin it on the end of his
finger.

He carried it in front of him as if it were a fragile globe.  Bounce.

Toss.  Miss.  Retrieve.

"I'm not late, am I?"  Davis said.  He came up behind me and kissed me
on the neck.

"You're not late."  I was still watching the old man.  I knew that once
I took my eyes off him and faced Davis, everything would change.  "He
doesn't dribble."

"What?"

"Watch.  He never dribbles the ball."

Davis watched the old man for a minute.  "He's a lousy shot, that's for
sure."

"Yes, but he doesn't dribble.  Have you ever known anyone to walk
across a court with a basketball and not dribble it a couple times?

You can't help yourself."

"That's true.  I hadn't thought of it before."

We watched the old man shoot a couple more times, never I-making the
basket, never dribbling the ball.

"God, he's a bad shot."  Davis laughed.

I turned to face him.  "My name's Luna Devon, not Wren Caidwell.  Wren
and I were best friends.  She died."

"Pardon?"

I told him everything.  About Robby, the Bat-Faced Girl, my father,
Byron.  I didn't tell him about the bamboo.  When I was done, I leaned
back against the bench and sighed.  I'd expected to feel somehow
different.  Purer, maybe.  I didn't.  I looked around for a sign that
the world had changed because of my great revelailon.  Perhaps the old
man would now sink a basket.  But his shot ricocheted off the rim,
bounced over the top of the backboard, and rolled off until it hit a
water fountain.

Davis laughed.  "Is this a pitch for a script?  Because I love it.

Kind of a Jane Austen meets Twin Peaks."

It was funny to think of your life as a synthesis of two works.

As if your life isn't real unless it can be compared with two unreal
things.  I tried to think of what movies or novels I'd have picked.

Anna Karenina meets Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?

I flexed my hand, which was still sore from the scorpion sting.

"Not a pitch, Davis.  Just my life."

"Jesus," he said, slumping.  His face went as pale as the old man's
legs.  "Jesus, Wren."

"Luna."

"Luna."  He nodded.  "It may take me a little while to get used to."

"Davis, when you went to Denver this time, you'd already had a contract
with this guy who killed that woman, didn't you?"

"With Roger Clinton?"

"Yes, the murderer."

"Well, that hasn't been proven.  I mean, Roger did kill Christine
Palmer, but whether or not it's murder, that's going to be the tough
call.  Legally speaking."

"Davis, this isn't a press conference.  We're talking, that's all."

He chuckled.  "Right.  Sorry.  Yes, I had a contract with Roger.

When I read about the restraining order last week, I flew to Denver to
talk to him.  He was very lucid, very intelligent.  No blithering
madman.  He said, yes, he'd been trying to contact Christine Palmer, at
first, out of grief over his wife's death, but I, later, as he got to
know more about her, for Christine herself.  He made quite a convincing
case."

"So, you had no idea he was capable of anything like this.  Of
murder."

Davis shook his head.  "No, not really."

I stared at him for a minute.

"What?"  he said.

"I'm not sure whether you're lying to me or to yourself.  Either way,
it's a lie."

"What are you talking about?"

"You go to some guy who's emotionally unstable and you give him money
and tell him you're going to make a movie out of his life-" "Whoa.  I
didn't promise any movie.  I optioned the rights to t his life story,
but I made it clear that any movie was a long shot."

"And you think he heard that?  He's not in the business, for d
chrissake, and you know it.  Average guy has a movie producer h fly in
to make a contract and give him money, they expect a si goddamn
movie.

Real people don't expect to get paid money for nothing."

Davis held up his hands.  "I explained everything to him."

"Come on, Davis, at least play fair with me.  You know what I'm talking
about.  He was unstable, no matter how lucid he sounded.  You went to
this unstable man who was already over wrought about his wife's death
and you offered him immortality.  On the screen.  And you don't think
that affected him?  You don't lo think that somewhere in his confused
mind he didn't come up with a plan to ensure the movie would be made?

Hell, he decided to write the ending himsel� With a gun."  bill Davis
looked off at the old man for a couple of minutes.  "I've never seen
anyone miss so many shots.  It must be mathematically wI impossible to
miss that many, don't you think?"  do I didn't answer.

"So, what are you saying?  I'm to blame here?  I'm responsible for
Christine Palmer's death because I wanted to make a movie?  "Jesus,
Wren .  . . Luna .  . . He shook his head.  "Why'd you lie to me about
going to Hawaii?"  sto "Shit, we're not going to start comparing lies,
are we?  I mean, I'm a tadpole in the pond compared to you."

"I'm not bitching about you lying.  I only want to know why you did
it."

He looked off at the old man again, cupped his hands, and shouted,
"Bend your knees.  Bend your goddamn knees."

The old man stopped in midshot, looked back at us, waved, and shot
again.  He did not bend his knees.  He missed the shot.

"Jesus, is that guy stupid or what?"  Davis rubbed his hands together
and glanced over at me.  His face was sad and he looked tired.  "I have
tax troubles.  And I'm being sued by another video company I did
business with over some ridiculous crap."  He waved his hand,
dismissing it.  "I was a millionaire before I was twenty-eight, and I
did it legally, without selling drugs, junk bonds, or anything like
that.  I just worked hard.  Everything I dabbled in was a success.

Then things started going wrong, nobody's fault.  Lawsuits, tax
problems, depressed economy."  He smiled at inc.  "Baby, I need another
success.

I slid over and touched his hand.  He saw the bandage on the back of
mine.

"What happened?"  he asked.

"Scorpion bite."

He started laughing, laughing loudly.  The old man shooting baskets
turned around with an annoyed expression, as if we were throwing off
his game.  He threw the ball up, it missed, and he looked at me and
scowled as if it were my fault.

"I don't know, Luna," Davis said, still chuckling.  "I still say you
sell me your story and we both clean up.  Jesus, scorpion bite."

I didn't say anything.  I kept my hand over his.  I didn't know what I
was feeling then, I wasn't even sure what I was going to do.  I had no
plan, no ultimatums, no speeches.  I was winging it.

He sighed heavily.  "Gaaaaaawwd.  Shit.  I don't know.  I didn't think
he'd kill her.  I really didn't.  I figured he'd do something crazy, I
guess, and she'd have him locked up and I'd have my story."

The old man picked up his ball and started walking away, c around the
edge of the lake.  I expected him to do something dramatic, like throw
the ball into the water, but he didn't.  "I thought he was going to
chuck the ball into the lake," Davis I said.  "He didn't make one
basket the whole time we've been here."  I I was startled that we'd had
the same thought.  Y "You want to say something," Davis said.  "The
suspense is killing me."

"I don't know what to say.  I guess, I'm going to say something he high
schoolish, like we should stop seeing each other."  at "Something like
that or that exactly?"

I hesitated, uncertain.  I groped ahead through the darkness of dc my
feelings, looking for scorpions.  "That exactly."

"See, I don't think that makes sense.  Not really.  Not when you kn
think about it.  We still care for each other.  Okay, I didn't tell
Ca.

you because maybe I felt guilty and you didn't tell me because you felt
He stopped, unsure what I felt.  "What?  Inadequate?

I don't know."

"Inadequate sounds right."  for "Whatever the reason, that's past.

That's gone.  Isn't that what pre relationships are all about,
adjusting, making some mistakes, readjusting?  Right?"

I shrugged.  "You're asking the wrong person for definitions of lips
relationships."  star "Well, help me out here, Luna.  What would it
take to make things right?  Tell me, I'll do it."  She I took my hand
off his and leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, my head in my
hands.

I tried to imagine myself under Davis's warm quilt, showering under his
skylight, braiding his daughter's hair, teaching his son to clean his
room.  I looked good in that picture.  "Thing is, Davis," I said, "you
fell in love with me as Wren.  It's kind of like a kid falling in love
with an actress on the screen.  Wren's a1 role I play well and now that
I know how effective it is with you, may resort to it without even
trying.  I'm not sure I'd ever get out of it."

He didn t say anything.  He looked around for the old man, but he was
long gone.  He turned, saw some Asian kids playing on the swings, their
young mothers sitting nearby talking rapidly and laughing.  "People
from other countries, they laugh differently.  Did you ever notice
that?  Like laughter was part of their language and had to be
pronounced just so.  You wouldn't think there'd be a difference."  He
stood up.  "I talked to New York this morning.  Our deal is still good
on the Season Dougherty book.

You think you can handle it?"

I looked up at him, shielding my eyes from the sun.  "Yes."

"Okay, then.  You might want to interview the cops who found her, some
of the inmates who knew her, that sort of thing.  Her attorneys, maybe
the prosecuting attorneys.  You know what to do."

"Yes."

He stood there, hands in pocket, nodding.  He didn't seem to know what
to say or do.  "You need any help, any doors opened, call me.  Or call
me just because you want to.  I'm not convinced this identity crisis
thing won't just blow over."

"Yes."

He took a deep breath.  "Meantime, I got some writers to hire for the
Roger Clinton story.  Paramount has already offered me a preemptive
bid.  Looks like this one's going to the big screen.

"Congratulations."

"Thanks."  He leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, our lips barely
touching.  Then he walked off.  I didn't watch him.  I stared out at
the lake and listened to his shoes shoosh against the thick grass with
each step.  Shoosh, shoosh.  Shoosh, shoosh.

Shoosh.  .

"I shouldn't be talking to you," she said.

"You don't have to," I agreed.

She studied me from behind the crack in the door.  She started with my
face, my hair, then down to my clothes and my shoes.

I! was wearing jeans and black Keds, a blue jersey, my hair was
straight and limp, still a little damp from the shower I'd taken before
driving down here.  I didn't look too threatening.

"Okay," she said.  "Come in.  But when I say leave, I want you to
leave.  Got it?"

"Yes."

"I mean it.  I'm serious.

-"I'll leave."

She opened the door and I entered her apartment.  The name on the
mailbox said Wendy Clove, but her real name was Carla Lasher.  Season
Dougherty's missing sister.  I'd called her after my meeting with Davis
and she'd agreed to see me.

"I don't know why Season gave you this number," she said.

"But if she did, she must have trusted you.  I guess I owe it to her to
talk to you.

"How do you like Dcl Mar?"  I said.

"It's fine.  Nice beach community.  Jamie and I go for walks along the
ocean every evening after dinner."

"Does she go to school?"

"Every day."

"Aren't you afraid someone will recognize her?  Her photo's been on TV
a lot."

Carla shrugged.  "I cut her hair into a bob and dyed it brunette.

She wears those contact lenses that change the color of your eyes to
brown.  They're all looking for a blond, blue-eyed girl with
pigtails.

Anyway, now that Season's dead, they'll stop looking."

She sat on the sofa and I took the nearby armchair.  The apartment was
neat and very clean, but the furniture looked worn and the walls needed
paint.  The neighborhood had probably once been a lovely place with
cottages and bungalows for the inland wealthy to spend their summers
near the shore.  Now there were a lot of FOR RENT signs in dirty
windows and a general atmosphere of decay.

"Our neighbors are mostly surfers, five of them renting one apartment,
or stable hands working at the racetrack.  So don't mind the noise.

"Okay," I said, though there wasn't any noise.

"It's not bad now, but the moment the sun goes down .

She shook her head.  Carla was about five years younger than Season,
but not nearly as attractive.  Every feature that had made Season
beautiful seemed to have the opposite effect on Carla.

Her face looked somehow underbaked.

"Where's Jamie now?"  I asked.

Carla hesitated.  She looked out the window, thinking.  Finally, she
sighed.  "Well, Season's dead, isn't she?  I guess there's not much
left to be secretive about."  She turned and faced the hallway.

"Tanya, come here, sweetheart."

"Tanya?"

"We had to get used to calling each other our made-up names so we
didn't slip in public.  I guess I'm still used to it."

"Who picked Tanya?"

"Season.  Her little joke.  It was the name Patty Hearst used when she
was kidnapped and inducted into the SLA."

"I remember."

"Our last name, Clove, she got from clove oil, one of the main things
dentists use to take away pain.  She had a sense of humor, my sister.

Oh, here's my little angel."

Maybe because of the Tanya name and the image of Patty Hearst, I half
expected Jamie to come out dressed in army fatigues, a beret, and
brandishing an AK47.  She didn't.  She wore red shorts and a T-shirt
with a drawing of crayons arranged to spell out Kid's Club.

"Hi, Jamie," I said.

Jamie looked at Carla.

It's okay, Jamie," Carla said.  "This lady knew your mother."

"How are you, Jamie?"  I said.

"Fine."  She hopped onto the sofa next to her aunt and stared at me,
waiting for the questions to begin.  She was used to being asked
questions by adults.

"She knows her mother's dead," Carla said, hugging Jamie.

"She knows her mother's gone to a better place.  No more jail, no more
pain.  That her mom's,waiting there for her."

"In heaven," Jamie offered.

"Of course, "I said.  I rubbed my thumbnail along the cushion seat of
my chair.  "I'm writing a book about your mother.  About how she took
care of you."

"She sent us down here to live."  Jamie pointed out the window.

"The ocean is two blocks that way.  I can go there anytime I want."

"What will you do now?"  I asked Carla.

ii "Go home.  Believe it or not, I had a steady job and a house
mortgage.  I lost the job, but I still own a house in Mission Viejo.

My ex-husband still keeps making the payments on it since I went into
hiding, bless him.  He calls me almost every day to make sure we're
okay."

-"Maybe you two will get back together now that this ordeal is over."

I smiled encouragingly.

Carla laughed loudly and I could hear the echo of Season's voice in
that laugh.  "Why would I want to do that?  Larry's a great guy, but we
can't stand being married to each other.  That much hasn't changed."

I guess I'd been looking for some happy endings.  Fat chance.

"Jamie will come live with me, just as we've been doing.  I suppose the
district attorney could bring charges against me, but my attorney
doesn't think that will happen now."

Jamie pointed at my bandaged hand.  "What happened?"

"Scorpion bit me."

"Cool!"  She smiled.  "Did it hurt?"

"Lots.  Kind of like scraping your knee and squirting onion juice in
the wound."

"Yeeeech."

"That's what I said."

Carla kissed Jamie's cheek.  "Honey, why don't you go off to your room
and play for a little while.  I want to talk to the lady alone."

Jamie slid off the sofa and walked to her room.

"Bye, Jamie," I called after her.

"Bye."  A door closed behind her.

Carla faced me with a stern expression.  "Go ahead and ask what you
came here to ask.  Let's just get it over with."

I didn't know what I'd come there to ask.  I guess I was trying to
figure out why Season wanted me to come here.  Why she thought it was
so damn important.

-"You must have loved your sister very much to go through all this," I
said.  "Uproot your life, go into hiding."

"I was a legal secretary at a title search company.  Doesn't sound like
much, especially when compared to Season being a dentist.

A dentist, a mother, beautiful."

"That's a hell of a legacy to live up to."

"Actually, it was quite easy.  No one expected me to do as well.  I
mean, she was after all Season.  So whatever I did, no matter how lame,
it was celebrated as if I'd won the Nobel Prize.  Lots of parties when
I was a kid.  Plenty of encouragement.  And no expectations.  I think
my parents thought it unfair to expect much from me when God had given
them such a winner in Season."  She laughed.  "Some kind of Catholic
voodoo, I guess."

"Where are your parents now?"

"Arizona.  My mother has Alzheimer's.  She's in a home.  My father has
an apartment nearby.  He has his little routine.  Visits Mom once a
day, visits the church once a day to pray for her, and plays golf the
rest of the time.  He just won his club's championship for the second
year in a row."

I was thirsty, but since I hadn't been offered anything, I didn't want
to ask.  Carla was fidgeting with a loose thread on the sofa cushion.

She glanced at her wristwatch, holding the pose long enough for me to
see and take the hint.

"Look," she said, "you seem like a nice person.  I'm sure Season must
have trusted you or she wouldn't have given you this number.  She
didn't even give it to Dad.  So, go ahead and ask."

Ask what?  I wondered.  Why was I missing what was so obvious to her?

She sighed impatiently.  "Christ, maybe I'm not Season, but I'm not
made of glass.  You want to know about the molestation right?"

I nodded.

"Well, it never happened.  There wasn't any."  She'd said it quickly,
like a secret she'd been holding in too long.  Now that she'd said it,
her face relaxed in such a way I could see a resemblance to Season
again.

I guess I wasn't really surprised by what she said, because once she
said it, I just kept nodding.  "No sexual contact at all?"

"None.  Philip wasn't a bad guy.  He and Season had their problems, but
he adored Jamie and he was always very good to me.  I should be so
lucky to find a guy like Philip."  She looked up at me quickly, like
someone who'd just dribbled her soup down her blouse.  Then I knew.

The sexual contact hadn't been between Philip and Jamie, but between
Philip and Carla.  She continued, "Philip used to give Jamie baths when
he had custody.

They played volleyball on the beach and they'd come home sandy and hop
in the tub, take off their sandy bathing suits, and wash off.  Philip
wasn't embarrassed by nudity and he didn't want Jamie to be either.  It
was all harmless enough.

"And Jamie testified to that?"

"About a hundred times.  But Season was convinced she was lying because
she was afraid of her father.  I tried to talk her out of it, but she
got caught up in the whole martyr business and she just couldn't see
straight."

"So, out of loyalty to your sister, you followed her wishes and went
into hiding with Jamie."

Carla's mouth twisted into a bitter smile.  "Yeah, out of loyalty and
guilt."  She looked me in the eyes and knew that I knew about her and
Philip.  "And because there are millions of women who are fighting a
real battle for their children and if people knew the truth about
Season's case it might screw it up for a lot of authentically molested
children."

Why had Season sent me down here?  To find out the truth she wasn't
able to admit, even to herself?  What good did this truth do me?!

didn't need it or want it, except to write it down in a book that would
sell at grocery store checkout stands along with TV Guide and Soap
Opera Digest.

I left Carla's apartment and walked numbly down the sidewalk.

I had to be the worst journalist in the world, I hated truth.  I didn't
want to write a book that would make Season out to be a monster, Carla
an adulterer, Jamie molested more by her mother's delusions than her
father's innocent showers.  Shit, maybe I wasn't the right person for
this job after all.

A bearded man was leaning against my car, a big man in a foam neck
brace.  I looked around for his white Subarn but didn't see it.

"You follow me on foot?"  I asked as I nudged him away from the
driver's door.

"New car," he said proudly.  He swept his hand toward the car parked
behind inc, a white Honda Prelude.  "Subarn was a piece of shit.  But
this baby is luxury and speed."

"You like white."

"People don't notice it as much when you follow them."

-"Guess not, I didn't notice you.

"You probably would have on the way back.  You're more paranoid than
most, which usually means something to hide, but you're not who I'm
after.  That's why I'm approaching you like this.  I don't want any
more accidents like the last time."  He patted his neck brace.  "You
know how much these things cost?

Don't ask.  I'm still dicking around with my insurance company over
medical costs.  I'm thinking of suing the whole fucking bunch, make
enough to fish for the rest of my life."

I got into my car and closed the door.  He rapped on the window with
his knuckle.  I rolled it down an inch and locked the door.

"I'm not after you.  Like I said, I was just following you because
you're shacked up with Byron Caldwell.  And he's a known associate of
the guy I'm after, Zeno Harris.  You know Zeno?"

"If you're a cop, let me see your ID."

"Hey, lady, if I were a fucking cop, I'd have shot you by now, okay?  I
used to be a cop, but I'm retired.  Nerves."  He held out his hand to
show me how it shook a little.  He grinned like a man who'd put
something over on someone.  "Now I do some consultancy work.  Private
investigation stuff.  Like on TV."

"For whom?"

"Whom?  Whom, I like that.  For the University of California Library,
that's whom.  Seems our boy Zeno stole a few rare books since he's been
out and they want me to track him down and get the books back so other
patrons of the arts may also enjoy them.

That whom enough for you?"

II started the engine.

It "Hey, come on," he whined.  "Help me out.  It's not like you
wouldn't be doing a good deed in helping a library."

"Why not follow Byron?  He's the known associate."

He shook his head.  "I tried.  Half a dozen times.  You know how easy
it is to follow someone who takes a bus?  But the son of a bitch always
spots me and always shakes me.  He's just one of those guys you can't
follow unless you've got a team of three cars.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the headrest.

Why hadn't it occurred to me before?  Byron had let me follow him.

He'd wanted me to.  What for?  To show me his bamboo II sprouts so I'd
invest money?  To fuck me?  Both?

I could just tell this man where Zeno was and let him sort out the
ethics of who's doing what to whom.  What did I care?

"Just tell me where Zeno Harris is, okay?  Then you never see me
again."

I didn't say anything.  He waited, but when it became clear I wasn't
going to speak, he started back to his new Prelude.  I watched him in
my rearview mirror.  I beeped my horn.  He looked up, grinned, walked
back to my car.

"Yeah?"

"You work for the university, right?"

"Right.  The Board of Regents."

"I have their phone number.  Who's your boss, the guy who hired you?  I
want to call him first."

"Tanner.  Dr.  Felix Tanner."

I looked tip into his wide face.  His expression was serious and
honest.  "There is no Dr. Felix Tanner," I said.  "I just did a story
on the university and !  know every person on the Board of Regents and
the administrators."

He shrugged, looked confused.  "Maybe he's new or something."

I'd been bluffing, but now I knew he was lying.

He was undoubtedly with some corporation out to steal or destroy
Byron's bamboo experiments.  So what?  What did I owe to Byron,
really?

Nothing.

I shoved the shift into reverse, stomped the gas pedal, and popped the
clutch.

"Nooo!!!"  he hollered.

My little Rabbit flew backward into his Prelude and smashed the front
end with a chorus of shattering glass and crunching metal.

"You fucking cunt!"  he said.

I drove off.  Finally, I knew where I was going and what I was going to
do.

"I'm Luna Devon," I said.  !t was the first time in so long I'd
introduced myself by my real name, I felt as if I should follow it
with, "And I'm an alcoholic," or something equally confessional.

I"Yes?"  the woman said, meaning "so what?"

I looked over her shoulder, down the hallway.  I saw no one just Bud
sitting there with a fresh bandage.  I heard no snapping of chess
pieces, no rumble of men's voices.  The room behind her was clear of
hazy smoke.  A man came down the hallway carrying a bowl of ice
cream.

I recognized him from his TV commercials.  Bonkers Bob.

"I'm looking for Grudge," I said.

Bonkers Bob came to the door, spooning chocolate ice cream into his
mouth.  He was tall and good-looking, so was his wife.

They had deep tans.  They were both in their mid-forties, both dressed
in tennis outfits.

"Hi," he said.

"I'm looking for Grudge," I repeated.

They both seemed startled, looking me over as if searching for obscene
tattoos.  Mrs.  Bonkers slipped away without saying anything.

"Jimmy's at work today."  He stood in the doorway, ma king it clear I
was not going to be invited inside.

"Do you have a number where I can reach him?  It's important.

He held his bowl and stared at me.  "I don't know.  Jimmy's on parole,
you know."

"I'm not a convict, if that's what you're getting out.  He won't be
breaking parole talking to me.  I'm a reporter with Orange Coast Today
and I'm doing a story of the local chess scene.  I was told he knows
something."

Bob relaxed, spooned another glob of ice cream into his mouth.

"Hell, yes.  Jimmy's a chess whiz.  Plays all the time.  Belongs to
some chess club, bunch of retired folks, I guess.  Helps keep him away
from those punks he used to hang around with, keeps him out of
trouble.

Sports is our best defense against crime, I say."

He gave me the phone number of his warehouse and I drove to the nearest
gas station and called Grudge.

"I'm looking for Byron,"!  said.

"I'm not his keeper, babe."

"When I hang up, I'm going right to the parole office and telling them
everything I know about you.  Gambling is certainly a violation of your
parole, so is associating with known felons.

All cops can't all be chess players who are willing to turn their
backs."

"You go there," he growled, "and I'll have your fucking heart cut out
and stuffed in your cocksucking mouth, you bitch.  Then they'll fuck
the hole in your chest.  You hear me?  You're dead!"

"Is that a no?"

There was a long pause.

"Twelve-eighteen Baker Street.  Pick me up at midnight."

"Midnight?  Give me a break."

"Hey, that's when I finish my shift.  I can't just walk off, my brother
would fire my ass and then I'd be back in the joint."

"Why don't you just tell me where he is?"

"Because I don't know where he is.  But I do know where he'll be at one
A.M. "Where?"

"Playing chess with Landry for all the marbles.  I gotta go.  See you
at midnight."  He hung up.

"You sure this is the place?"  I said.

He gave me a disgusted look.  "Feel free to drop me off and look
somewhere else by yourself."

I turned off the engine and stared at the synagogue.  It was dark.

The entire neighborhood was dark, no lights anywhere except the outside
lights of the synagogue, which shone on the large stained glass
window.

"I didn't know synagogues had stained glass," Grudge said.

"Aren't Jews against that sort of thing?"

"Guess not,"I said.  Theological discussion seemed out of place right
now.  "I don't see anybody."

"Well, if you saw them, then this wouldn't be a good place, would
it?"

We got out of the car.  I found myself tiptoeing down the sidewalk.

"Don't be a jerk, okay?"  Grudge said.  "Just walk normal.  We're not
here to rob the place, for chrissake.  Just to watch some chess."

-"It's still illegal entry," I whispered.

"What're you, a fucking lawyer?  Don't sweat it so much.  It's Inot
that big of a deal.  The Jews probably wouldn't press charges even if
they found out.  They're a pretty sporting bunch, I hear."

The name of the synagogue was carved in the stone archway around the
front door.  Ohev Sholom.  Grudge knocked on the heavy wooden door.

The door opened a crack, a face studied us, then the door opened the
rest of the way.

The doorman was close to seven feet tall but couldn't have weighed more
than 150 pounds.  He wore coveralls and a khaki shirt underneath.  A
black skullcap sat on his head.

"Hey, Blinky," Grudge said.

"Don't start with that Blinky shit, you got me?"  The man quickly
closed the door behind us and locked it.  The foyer and hallway were
dark.  "I don't know you," he said to me.

"She's with Byron."

"Oh, she's the one."  He nodded and gave me an extra appreciative look
that stripped me naked, bent me over, and had me begging him for
more.

How's the eye, Blinky?"  Grudge said.

"Very funny."

"I once tossed a glass of 7Up in Blinky's face and told him it acid.

You should have seen him screaming and blinking."

"Very funny," Blinky repeated.  He handed Grudge a white skullcap from
tten, On the occasion ofthe bar mitzvah ofBarry H. Levinson, October
12, 1991.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"  Grudge said.

"You wear it, moron."  He pointed to the one on his own head.

"It's a yarmulke."

"I'm not Jewish, asshole."

"Neither am I. But these people think it's important that you wear one
and they gave me a job when no one else would, so I'm gonna make sure
everyone else wears one.  You don't put it on, you're not getting
in."

Grudge's face twitched at the challenge.  He didn't actually move, but
his body seemed to crouch under his clothes.  Blinky looked more than
happy to oblige and even an old score.

"You boys settle it," I said.  "Meantime, can you point me toward the
chess game?"

Mentioning chess seemed to remind them what they were here for.  Grudge
put the skullcap on his head and struck a model's pose.  "How do I
look?  Jewish enough for you?"

Blinky pointed down the hall.  "Go through those doors."

I walked off toward the doors with Grudge following.  "The guy's a
fucking janitor, right away he thinks he's Moses or something."

I pushed through the door into what looked to be a gymnasium.

The floors were hardwood with the painted stripes of a basketball
court.  But there were banquet tables set up in long rows, all facing
the far wall, where three long tables were elevated on a platform.  All
the tables had white tablecloths on them, though they were all dirty,
stained with various foods and wine.  Crumbs sprinkled the tops of many
tablecloths.  Men and women were sitting at the various tables, some
brushing the crumbs away, others just talking.  Most of the people were
still milling around, discussing intently.

"They had a bar mitzvah here Saturday," Blinky said behind us.  I
hadn't even heard him come up.  Next to me, Grudge jumped slightly,
also startled.  The grin on Blinky's face indicated that was why he'd
done it.

"Jesus, Blinky," Grudge barked.  "Nice way to get yourself killed."

Blinky ignored him and spoke to me.  "Name's Terry Dem," he said.

"This jerk's the only one who calls me Blinky."  of "Hi, Terry.  I'm
Luna."  Ki "Gotta go.  This is a conservative synagogue, which means st
they're kind of strict about all their religious mumbo jumbo.  Still a
use mostly Hebrew in their services and such.  Problem is, they've ri'
been losing a lot of customers to the looser reform bunch.  That means
less money for expenses.  That's why I'm the only janitor."

He smiled proudly at his knowledge of the intricacies of Judaism.

"You a chess enthusiast?"  I asked him, but I was scanning the crowd
for Byron.  "I Play every day with the rabbi here.  He hates blitz,
though.

Says it ruins your game, keeps you from becoming a grandmas theater.

"Like you really need to worry about becoming a grand master, the
Blinkmaster."  Grudge chortled.  "Yeah, I think I'm gonna have pi, you
killed by having chess pieces shoved up your ass until your ec( colon
explodes.  How's that sound to you?"  "Like your sexual fantasy,
jerkoff."  Grudge spun around with his fists clenched.  "Right now, ass
an hole!"  log Terry made fists and went into a crouch and I realized
these see two men were about to start swinging.  I was surprised at how
quickly they had escalated from insult to action.

"You guys start something," a calm voice said, "and I'll be forced to
finish it."

The three of us turned around.  Jerry Kirn, Byron's ex-cellmate not and
Landry's current strong-arm man, stood there smiling.  He was a
surprisingly handsome man, and dressed in his knit shirt wit with a
fashionable cardigan sweater blousing over his huge chest, I he looked
very much like a successful athlete-turned-entrepreIi neur.  He patted
Grudge on the shoulder in a friendly but firm way.  "Make it easy on
yourselves, boys."

Fists were relaxed into empty hands.  ho, "I'd better check on some
things," Terry said and drifted off.  "Nice seeing you again," Jerry
said, nodding at us and disappearing into the crowd.

Grudge watched him wend through the men and women, Do( staring but not
saying anything.  I'd expected a threat, a description of the death he
planned for Jerry Kirn.  But then, maybe Jerry Kirn wasn't the kind you
threatened without being able to instantly back it up.  His presence
here gave the whole atmosphere a dangerous tinge.  I felt as if I were
in an old speakeasy and a rival mob might come busting in at any second
and start shooting.

"Where's Byron?"  I asked.

"I don't see him."  Grudge pointed at the three tables on the
platform.

Two men were setting up chess pieces.  A third was sitting down,
cleaning his glasses and smoking a pipe.  "That's Landry.  Son of a
bitch just started smoking a pipe.  Thinks it makes him look smarter.

Same with the glasses.  Guy told me they're just regular window
glass."

I studied Landry.  He finished polishing his glasses and put them on.

They did make him look smarter.  He puffed on the pipe and waited
patiently, looking every bit the thoughtful fortyish economics
professor rather than the bone-busting ex-con loan shark.  He didn't
dress in the shiny suit I'd expected, or the dark shirt and darker tie
I'd envisioned.  He wore pleated khaki pants and a button-down cotton
shirt straight from a Land's End catalogue.  His hair was longish on
top, mussed strategically.  If I'd seen him sipping cappuccino at a
cafe, I might have found him attractive.  I asked Grudge, "How good is
he?"

-"He's good.  Not as good as me, maybe half as good as Byron."

- "Then Byron can beat him?

Grudge laughed.  "That's not the point.  The point is, Byron's not
going to beat him.  They'll play five games of blitz, all twominute
games.  Byron will win the first one, lose the second one, win the
third, and lose the next two."

I looked at him.  "You already know this?  Did Byron tell you?"

"He doesn't have to.  This whole thing isn't about fucking chess.  He
told you that much, didn't he?"

"Yes.  Landry wants to start moving up to big heists.  He's hoping to
prove himself the mastermind by beating Byron at chess, thereby
attracting more quality thieves.  That about it?"

He stared at me.  "Yeah, but you can drop the fucking sarcasm.

Sure, it sounds stupid to you.  You want a job, you just apply.

Doesn't work that way out in the organized crime world.  See, Byron has
a reputation, not as a criminal but as a bright guy.  I mean, let's
face it, all that monkey-wrench bullshit he pulled was fucking amateur
hour.  Cementing your feet in a ditch?"  He laughed.  "I crack up every
time I think about that.  Anyway.

Byron's a yutz when it comes to real crime, okay?  But he is the guy
who thought up all those raids where they broke into places and damaged
the logging equipment, stuff like that.  And no one from his group ever
got caught.  The guys respect that kind of you see?  Landry kicks
Byron's ass tonight and he "But don't people know it's fixed?"

-"Sure, but it doesn't matter how you win.  If you win through brains,
fine, if through intimidation, even better.  The fix part will be
forgotten anyway.  Crooks just remember who wins and who loses.  The
details don't fucking matter."

"So this is just a show, like professional wrestling."

"Basically.  More like a ceremony.

"Doesn't anyone remember that Byron got caught?  That's how he wound up
in jail."

Grudge waved a dismissing hand.  "Sure, but that's only because his old
lady needed help.  He could've made a clean getaway, instead he took
her to the hospital.  Even after he took her there he could've split,
but he just sat there and waited for her, waited with her, even though
he knew the cops were coming.

Yeah, it's stupid, but crooks got a romantic streak in them.  They
don't hold it against a guy if he does something like that."

II though of Wren lying in the hospital, her teeth knocked out by a
baseball bat.  Probably unconscious from sedatives.  Byron Iisitting
next to her while she slept.  I thought of myself in the hospital bed,
a bullet tunnel to my heart, waking up to the nurse I thought was my
mother.

What was I doing here?  Earlier, when I'd been driving home from
visiting Carla and Jamie, everything had seemed so clear.  I would find
Byron and .  . . And then what?  What had I been thinking would
happen?

I closed my eyes, felt my head throbbing.

I put my hand on my aching bullet wound and felt my heart beating.  My
head and heart were synchronized, pounding a message of sympathetic
pain to each other.  What was my plan again?

"There he is," Grudge said excitedly.  It was odd to hear the
excitement in his voice, as if he didn't already know the outcome.

I opened my eyes.  Byron walked up to the platform, shook Landry's
hand, and took a seat opposite him.  The chess clock was placed between
them so it faced outward.  Everyone began swarming toward the
platform.

"What does Byron get out of all this?"  I asked Grudge as we moved
forward with the crowd.  "Except not beaten up anymore?"

"He places a bet on the game, something nominal like five grnnd.  When
he loses, Landry keeps the money, but turns around and loans him,
interest free, a hundred grand.  Landry gets his reputation boosted and
Byron gets to finish whatever he and that asshole Zeno got cooking.

You know what it is?"

He asked in such an offlianded way I almost told him.  But I stopped
myself, remembering Zeno's hysterical face when he saw inc invade his
little nest.  "No, I don't know."

He turned and grinned at me.  "You're getting the hang of this, aren't
you?"

I saw Shawna at the front edge of the crowd.  She was gesturing to the
man next to her, her father.  Their gestures seemed more frantic than
usual.  I recognized others from the previous day at the Laguna Hills
house.  But there were a lot more people here tonight.  Some people
were standing on chairs, on tables, angling for a better look.  People
were genuinely excited, bouncing with anticipation.  Even Grudge seemed
edgy.  It was as if, even knowing there was probably a fix in, maybe
things would turn out differently than they knew it would.  Perhaps the
more certain the outcome, the more excited people get at the potential
for an upset.  Futility seems to fuel hope more than anything else.

With all the people surging around me, I could hardly see Byron or
Landry.  I pulled a folding metal chair out, brushed off some bread
crumbs, and climbed atop it.  Now I could see them clearly.  I also saw
a table at the front where people were betting money on the game.

Thousands of dollars were stacked up.

I stuck out my leg and tapped my toe against Grudge's shoulder.

He looked back and up, annoyed.  "What?"

I stooped down and whispered, "if it's common knowledge Landry's going
to win, why would anybody bet?"

-"They're giving good odds.  Thirty to one against Byron."

"But they know Byron's going to lose."

He shrugged.  "You never know.  Not really.  Besides, it's hard for
gamblers to pass up good odds, doesn't matter what they know."

I shook my head and stood back up.  The colors had been chosen and the
game was starting.  Byron had white.  He shoved his piece out.  The
game took less than a minute, with Byron handily crushing Landry.

Landry smiled, shook Byron's hand, and started polishing his glasses.

There was a break while more people made bets.

"God, he's good," Grudge said.  It sort of just popped out and he
looked around embarrassed to have said anything so envious.

He noticed me looking and slouched into his usual cynical attitude.

"Forget this next game, it'll be a snooze.  The only interesting thing
will be how Byron manages to lose without making it look too obvious.

He has to be careful not to humiliate Landry by lying down too easy.

Landry'll bust his legs for that too."

The second game started and lasted almost the entire two minutes.  They
seemed neck and neck, swapping pieces evenly all along.  For a moment I
thought Byron was going to win, but toward the end of the game he made
a bad move and allowed himself to get pinned.  Landry won.

"They'll make it go all the way to five games, Grudge said.

"Just to give the boobs their money's worth.  This game could go either
way, but I figure it's a better show if Byron wins.

Which is exactly what happened.  Byron rolled over Landry's pieces like
an avalanche, snatching pieces left and right while Landry faltered and
seemed confused.  The game was over and Landry just kept staring at the
board.  Byron got up and went to the bathroom.

"He'd better cool it," Grudge said.  "That's just the kind of thing
that'll get him a permanent limp."

Bets continued to be made at the table in front of the platform.

The white tablecloth on the table had a long purple stain splattered
across it where someone had probably knocked over a wineglass.

Byron returned, took his seat across from Landry.  Landry's face was no
longer the calm expression of professorial detachment.

He looked angry.

I climbed down from my chair and pushed my way to the front of the
crowd.  "Excuse me," I said, hacking my way with forearms and elbows
through the thicket of people.  Finally I made it to the betting
table.

"A thousand dollars on Landry," I said loudly and looked up at Byron.

He stared down at me, his face tight and grim.  He shook his head at me
in disappointment.

I took out my checkbook.

"This is a cash kind of business, lady," the guy behind the table
said.

"All I have are checks.  They're good."

"Right.  They always are.

"I don't have any cash."

"Sorry, honey."  The man taking bets shrugged.

"She's okay, Mike."  Jerry Kirn appeared out of the crowd, signaled
Mike, the bet taker, and floated away again.

Mike sighed heavily.  "Fine, fine.  Everybody knows my business.

Fine."  He waved me in impatiently.  "You got a credit card number we
can take your check."

I wrote the check for a thousand dollars and handed it to Mike.

"Kind of a stupid bet, lady," Mike said.  "You're risking a grand when
all you can win is $300 plus your grand back.  That's not smart.  You
bet Byron there you stand to win $30,000.  And he's already two games
to one ahead.  I mean, it's none of my business, I'm just trying to
help you out."

"Put it on Landry," I said.  I glanced up at Byron.  I didn't know what
was in his face or in his head.  He just stared at me.

I didn't know why I'd bet the money exactly.  I'd thought I had a
reason when I'd started for the table, but by the time I'd made my way
though the crowd, all I remembered was my goal, not the reasoning.

Still, it seemed like a good idea to go through with my plan.  At least
it was a plan, I was doing something.

Then the fourth game began.  Smack, smack, smack.  Pieces were flying
again.  Sometimes they didn't bother to pick up a captured piece, they
just knocked it off the board.  I had to admit, watching them attack
the board like that had my adrenaline I' thundering through my body.

My headache and heart pain were move pass through me like an earthquake
aftershock.

Then it was all over.

Landry won.

"Two games apiece," Mike announced.

There was a marked letdown in the crowd.  Few people bet now.  Most
looked disappointed, defeated themselves.  Anyone who had doubted the
outcome of the match before now knew what would happen.

"Come on, come on," Mike encouraged people.  "Thirty to one.  One more
game, one more game.  Thirty to fucking one."

Jerry Kirn swam up out of the crowd, whispered to Mike, then dove back
into the crowd and disappeared.

"Forty to one!  Jesus, forty to one odds, folks."  Mike acted as if he
couldn't believe what he was saying.

A few more people stepped up and placed some small wagers.

Landry looked more relaxed now, beneficent.  He puffed on his pipe,
looking down on the gathered throng as if they were here to pay their
respects to him.  I guess in a way they were.

They had come to acknowledge their role in the grand scheme of the food
chain.  Like that scene in Robin Hood my students had talked about.

Yes, I thought, just like that scene.

I stepped up to the betting table.  "Five thousand more on Landry,
Mike," I said.  I wrote a check and handed it to him.

He groaned.  "The odds have changed, lady.  You bet this on Byron and
you could win $200,000.  You have any idea how much money that is?

Better odds than the goddamn lottery.

"Five thousand.  On Landry."  to He took the money, handed me a
receipt.  Then he went back i-Byron glared at me, his look no longer
confusing.  I had touched him all right, touched him deep and hard.

Now that I thought of it, I guess that was my plan all along.

The final game began.

Smack, smack.

Smack, smack, smack, smack.

Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, smack.

Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, smack,
smack, smack, smack.

And it was over.

No one said anything at first.  They just watched the two men on the
platform stare at each other.  Watched Landry reach for his pipe, light
it, sucking the flames to life.  Watched Byron, face grim as a
gravedigger, rise, shake hands with Landry.  Watched Landry paste a
phony smile on his face and raise Byron's hand in the air.

The winner.

Then everyone spoke and moved at once.  The betting table was swarmed
by people waving receipts.  Others pulled out pocketsized chess games
and began replaying each game.  I could see the triumphant look on
everyone's face, as if they had all just come out of an uplifting
movie.

Byron took the money that was stacked in front of the board and quickly
shoved it into his pants pocket.  With his glum expression and bulging
pockets, he looked as if he'd just won the marbles championship but was
about to be scolded by his mother for coming home late.  Landry, still
smiling sharkishly, whispered something to him.  From the way Landry's
lips flexed, I could tell it was not something pleasant.  Byron
shrugged and walked away.  As he entered the crowd, people closed
around him, slapping his back, shaking his hand.  He nodded politely at
them, accepting their adulation without encouraging it.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Grudge said, sidling up beside me.  "I can't
believe he did something so stupid."  He was counilug a handful of
money.

"Where'd you get that?"

"I won it.," "But you knew it was fixed."

"Like I said, the odds were too good to pass up.

Byron broke through a ring of the loyal, their hands reaching out to
touch him as he brushed by them.  He snagged my arm without slowing
down and trawled me alongside him.

"What are you?"

"Do you have your car?"  he asked.  People talked to him, offered their
hands.  He ignored them now, picking up speed as we headed toward the
exit.  I was trotting to stay up with him.

"Let me go," I said, trying to pull away.  His grip was too strong.

I felt a pain shooting up my arm as he tightened his grip more.

"Do you have your car?"

"Yes, I have my goddamn car."

"Show me.

We shoved through the gymnasium doors and were hustling through the
lobby.  Blinky was polishing a glass showcase that displayed fancy
skulicaps candle holders, and such.  A little white sign said AVAiLABLE
AT B NAl B"RITH SHOP.  Blinky hooked the spray container of Glass-Plus
onto his waistband and reached for the large ring of keys clipped to
his belt.

"You were great, man," Blinky said.  "Great."

"Thanks," Byron said impatiently.  We stood in front of the exit door
waiting for Blinky to find the right key.

"I wish the rabbi could have seen you.  He's a pretty cool guy.

it I think he might give you a game.  Not in blitz, of course, but
Iilike a regular game.  You wouldn't think a guy that old, being so
religious and such, would have such an aggressive game."  He unlocked
the door and Byron pulled me through it.

"Where?"  he said.  "Where's your car?"

I pointed.

"Get your keys out.  Now."

As we jogged toward my car, I dug through my purse for my keys.  I
slowed down to rummage.

"Hurry up," Byron urged.  He was already standing at the car, pulling
on the locked door and looking nervously at the synagogue doors.

I stalled, pretending to not be able to find the keys.  Things were
going just as I had planned, I had to keep them that way.

Byron ran over, yanked my purse from my hands, and dumped it on the
hood of the car, emptying it completely.  The keys clattered out among
tissues and my wallet, a movie ticket stub, lipstick.  He snatched them
up and ran for the driver's side.

I took as long as possible shoveling my stuff back into my purse.

When I had everything in it, I slung my purse over my shoulder, marched
over to the driver's side, pulled open the door, and said, "I'm
driving."

"Just get in," he said, hooking a thumb at the other door.

"It's my goddamn car and I'm driving."

"Get in or I'm leaving you here."

I climbed into the driver's side on top of him and gripped the wheel as
hard as I could.  He tried to push me aside, but I hugged the wheel to
my chest and ground my butt into his lap.

"What the hell's wrong with you?"  he said.  "Are you crazy?"

"It's my car and I'll drive."

I had to drive if I was going to make this work.  And we couldn't leave
yet, not until the rest of the cast had assembled.

"Fine!"  he said.  "You fucking drive."  He wiggled out from under me
and scooted over to the passenger seat.  "Okay?  Happy?

Can we get the hell out of here now?"

"Whoa there, parduer," I heard.

My stalling had worked.  Jerry Kirn and another man ran up to the
car.

Byron sighed and swore under his breath.

"Byron, buddy, you weren't leaving already?"  Jerry asked.  "The
party's just starting.  You're the man of honor."

The man with Jerry was even larger, no more than twentythree, his round
face set in the permanent scowl of a football lineman trying to
intimidate his opponent.  Somehow the white skullcap still sitting on
his head looked like a dunce cap on him.

"Hell of a game you played in there, buddy," Jerry said.  "Hell of a
game."

Byron said nothing.

"You mind?"  I said.  "We want to celebrate alone."

Jerry looked at me with a curious expression.  "You lost some bucks
tonight betting against our boy here."  "The check's good.  I'm not
stopping payment or anything."

He laughed.  "No, I know you aren't."  A sharp threat was sheathed in
his tone.  "I'm just impressed with how well you take en losing that
kind of money.  Not only that, but then you go off ab with the guy who
you bet against.  I don't know, it just looks funny, I can't figure it
out."  be Byron angrily flung open his door and jumped out of the
car.

Jerry Kirn's partner tensed for action.  Jerry just stood there, hands
ah in pocket, completely calm.

"Look, Jerry," Byron said.  "It just happened.  I didn't plan it."  ne
"You double-crossed Mr. Landry," Jerry's partner grunted.  for In a
blur of motion, Jerry's hand snapped out and slapped his arr partner in
the mouth.  The calm, almost bored expression never left Jerry's
face.

"I do the talking, Trent."

Trent nodded, then touched his fingers to his lips.  When he took them
away he saw the blood on his fingertips.  an Jerry took a couple of
steps toward Byron.  Byron didn't flinch shrug or move.  Jerry put his
arm around Byron's shoulder and spoke pla quietly.  "Christ, Byron,
what do you have against me that you have to keep putting me in a
position where I've got to hurt you?"  "What are friends for?"  I Jerry
laughed.  "See?  That's what I mean.  I consider us friends."  up.

"I do too, Jerry."

"Yet you back out on your word and you stomp my boss to pulp in front
of all the people he's trying to impress."  He shook the his head.

"Tell me, at least, it's not because of her."  He pointed at me.  "It's
not because she goaded you by betting all that money I, against you.

Please tell me it's not that stupid."

Byron looked over at me.  "It wasn't because of her."  I'm Jerry
laughed.  "Shit, even Trent here doesn't believe that and he's stupider
than his own fist.  Aren't you, Trent?"  by "Yes, sir, I am."  pair
"Well, where does that leave us?  You know I'm going to have B to do
some damage this time."  Jerry looked up at the sky, his face star
suddenly angry.  "Jesus, you make me mad sometimes, Byron."  and "Go
ahead and do it, man," Byron said.  "What's it going to take to satisfy
him?"

"A broken limb, at least.  Maybe two.  Probably a concussion, though a
coma would be better.  You know, it's got to be visible enough that
people, the people who count, can spread the word about what happens
when you fuck with Mr. Landry.  I can leave your face alone, I
suppose, though a nice deep scar would sure be to my benefit.  You mind
a scar on your face?"

Byron shrugged.  "I'll leave it in your capable hands.  Go ahead."  He
braced himself.

"Not here, putz," Jerry said.  "Not now.  We got a nice quiet
neighborhood, we got a synagogue full of witnesses.  The potential for
getting snitched out is too great."  He patted Byron on the arm.  "But
it'll happen, don't worry.  I'll find you later."

"Excuse me," I said.  "Which is your car?"

Jerry looked confused.  "My car?"

"Yes, I'm curious what kind of car you drive."  Most men have an
instinctive reaction to that question.  If it's a clunker, they shrug
and talk about how sick and tired they are of a culture that places so
much value on something as shallow as a car.  If they have a hot car,
they can't wait to point it out, their chests all puffed up like an
adder.

He pointed across the street.  "That red Miata."  His chest puffed
up.

"You like it?"  I asked.

"What's not to like?  She handles great, is fast as a bullet.  It's the
perfect car.

"Get in," I said to Byron.

Byron didn't move.  He and Jerry exchanged sad looks.

"Go on," Jerry said.  "I'm getting stinking drunk tonight.  Then I'm
going home and catch hell from my wife.  But tomorrow, Byron He let the
threat hang.  "Don't make it harder on me by running, man.  You know
that's only going to cost you more pain."

Byron got into the car and closed the door.  Jerry and Trent started
walking slowly back to the synagogue.  Jerry reached over and
straightened Trent's skullcap.

"That was close," I said, starting the engine.

"What's the difference, tonight or tomorrow?  Same results."

"Well, if there's no difference, then there's no time like the
present."  I gunned the motor, popped the clutch, and squealed away
from the curb.  I shot across the street and sideswiped the red Miata
hugging the curb.  The metal collapsed in a dent that ran the entire
length of the car.

"What are you doing?"  Byron shouted, grabbing for the steering
wheel.

I pushed Byron's hands away and looked over at Jerry's incredulous
face.  His eyes studied his car, the dent, the scraped paint, then
swung over to fix on me.  I idled the car in the middle of the street,
waiting.  Jerry and Trent suddenly dashed for my car.

"Go, go, go!"  Byron yelled.  "This isn't the mood I want him in when
he catches me."  waited until Jerry and Trent were almost on us before
peeling out down the street.  I waited at the intersection.  In my
rearview mirror I could see them jumping into the Miata.  Byron was
twisted around, watching them.

"Either you're completely deranged or this is the most serious case of
PMS I've ever seen," Byron said.  "Let's get the hell out of here.

These guys aren't going to be so polite now.  And I wouldn't count on
your being a woman as any protection."

"It never has been," I said.

"Anyway, I'm just raising the stakes."

"What stakes?"

"For the chase, Byron.  We can't have a chase if there's nothing to
lose."

"Oh, God," he said, clutching his head.  "I knew better than to sleep
with a woman who pretends to be my dead wife.  I know the Golden Rule
of Males, never sleep with a woman who has more problems than you do.

I know it, I broke it.  But isn't this punishment worse than the
crime?"

The Miata was rocketing toward us.  I pulled away from the
intersection.

The chase was on.

Byron tapped his finger against my gas gauge.  Maybe next time you
engineer a car chase, you can remember to fill up the tank first."

We were empty.

"I didn't engineer it.  I was inspired, like an artist."

"Oh, come on.  You hunted Grudge down and blackmailed him into bringing
you, right?  I mean, that's the only reason he'd have done it unless
you had sex with him."

"I didn't have sex with him."

"Okay, then it was blackmail.  Then you bet against me in the chess
match, knowing it was fixed.  Grudge would have told you that much.

You goaded me into winning that last game.  Now, I don't blame you,
that's my own fault for letting you affect me.

"That's the part I still don't get myself.  That, and why it was worth
six grand to you to see me win.  Do you want me dead that much?"

"I don't want you dead."

"Well, you enraged Jerry back there, forced him into following us.

Tomorrow he would have found me, broken a limb or two, put me in the
hospital for a week.  Nothing worse.  Hell, he would even have driven
me to the hospital.  Now He turned in his seat, saw the Miata racing
behind us.  "Now he's going to do worse.  Much worse."

"We won't let him.  That's the point of a chase.  We outrun them."

-"Without gas?"

"An oversight.  I didn't exactly plan this ahead of time."

"No shit."

-I didn't tell him, but I was forming details to my plan as we drove.

Okay, maybe the chase stuff was a last-minute revelation, but
everything I'd done since leaving Carla and Jamie had been leading to
this.  A white whale hunt, only we were the whale.

Driving an empty Rabbit.

"What did you hope to accomplish?"  he said.  "You're fucking up my
life."

"I'm not fucking up your life.  I'm fixing it."

"Jesus.  If it's not broke, don't fix it.  Haven't you ever heard that
before?"

"Is that one of those guy sayings?"

"I'd like to give you a couple good guy sayings," he grumbled.

"Look, one of us has to be authentic.  One of us has to be the genuine
article, the person we really are.  I'm too far gone, but you
aren't."

He laughed.  "Luna, I've been a prisoner for two years.  A convict.

That's not who I really was, but I learned to adapt, to live like one,
be one.  Because, to everyone else, that's who I really was.  So I
became what they saw me as.  Same as you.

"You don't understand," I said.

"Yes, I do.  And you know it.  That's what bugs you.

I saw a gas station and pulled in.  The Miata pulled in behind us, then
veered into another slot beside a different pump.  Trent hopped out of
the Miata as I got out of my car.  I walked to the cashier inside the
glass booth.  He was a kid, maybe nineteen, with a series of moles on
his cheekbone.  A cigarette burned in a glass ashtray next to the cash
register, filling the interior of the booth with white smoke.  I could
smell the bitter scent seeping through the pay slot.

It made me want to smoke again.  I gave him a twenty and told him the
pump number.  He took the money and nodded, then looked up at me.

Something behind his eyes shifted, because he smiled slightly and said,
"Thank you."  I looked at my blouse to make sure it wasn't unbuttoned
or something.  It wasn't.  I guess he just liked my looks, the way guys
used to react to Wren.

Trent walked up behind me, stood there breathing like a bull.

I didn't look back at him, just walked back to my car.  I heard money
being slid into the pay slot, Trent saying, "Pump three."

When I got back to the car, Byron was already pumping the gas.

"Give me Zeno's phone number," I said.

-"Why?"

"Just give it to me.  We don't have time to argue, Ike and Tina are on
our butts."

He looked over at the Miata.  Trent pumped gas and glared at us.  Jerry
sat behind the wheel reading the newspaper in the dim yellow light of
the station, not even looking our way.

Byron gave me the number and I ran over to the phone booth and made a
call.  Zeno finally answered after the eighth ring.  He complained,
argued, grumbled, but in the end, he listened.

I ran back to the car and found Byron sitting in the driver's scat.  I
climbed in on the other side.  "Did you get the change?"

I asked.

"Sure," he said.  "I'm just waiting for our free Star Trek glasses and
Dick Tracy coloring book."  He shook his head and pulled out of the
station.

The Miata was right behind us.

"Okay, what's the plan?"  he asked.

"Drive, she said."

"Where?"  I gave him a look.  "Follow your heart."

He laughed, "God, if only you weren't crazy, you'd make a good
convict.

"If only you weren't stupid, you'd make a good man."

We looked at each other and did an exaggerated Laurel and Hardy nod.

"Head out to the desert," I told him.  "It's rime for a little nature
trip."

"That's your plan?  Head out to a desolate place and make it easier to
hide our bodies?"

"Pretty good plan, huh?"

He kept driving.  I didn't offer any more explanation because I didn't
want him to know how halfcocked all this was.- Even using the word plan
seemed to give too much credit to my idea, as if I'd thought it all
through or something.  I was improvising, adapting to the
circumstances, like some form of rapid evolution.  I had a notion that
we could lose these guys if we pulled a quick switch of cars with Zeno
down the road.  They'd end up following Zeno, eventually realize their
mistake, and just go back home.

If I told this to Byron, he'd find things wrong with it and probably
come up with a better plan and talk me into using it.  But this wasn't
his chase scene, it was mine.  He was just part of the cast, a featured
player, perhaps, but not the star.  That was me.

I found a tape in the glove compartment.  I thumbed it into the
cassette player.  The music started in the middle of a song.  It was
Paul Simon's "You're Kind."  A guy thanks a woman for helping him when
he was emotionally a wreck.  She'd nurtured him, got him back up on his
feet.  Gave him a life.  But he was leaving her because he liked to
sleep with the window open and she kept the window closed.

Byron stabbed the Eject button and yanked the tape out.  He opened the
window and tossed it out.  "I'm sick of Paul Simon.

You know how much Wren used to play him?"

"You know how long it takes for a plastic cassette like that to
decompose?  You know what it does to our environment?"

He rolled his window back up.  "You're right, I should go back for
it."

"That's not the point, Mr. EarthWorth, Mr. Monkey-Wrench Gang, Mr.
Tree Hugger, Mr.-" "I get the point, subtle as it is."  He drove
without speaking, though after a couple of miles he started humming the
Paul Simon song he'd thrown out.  He caught himself and started humming
something else, Crosby, Stills & Nash, I think.

"Don't you feel guilty?"  I asked.

"About what?"

"About throwing that tape out.  Forget that it was my private
property.

But what you did, littering like that.  I mean, you just spent two
years in jail for protecting the environment."

"Ecology is the new civil rights," he said.  "The earth as nigger.

It's the perfect middle-class cause, it can't resent us later for our
help."

"Well, it's effective.  I feel guilty about everything my body does.

If I eat I'm killing something, if I shit or piss I'm spoiling
something else.  I have a period, my tampons are adding to the
landfills.  I'm either consuming or polluting."

"Yup, that's the cycle all right.  And no way out of it.  Even dead,
your body feeds the undertaking industry, also polluters.

At least the corpse feeds insects."

"So I have to wait until then to do some good?"

He looked over at me with a strange expression, as if he'd noticed
something different he hadn't seen before.  It kind of reminded inc of
the gas station attendant's look and I thought once again maybe I
should check my blouse buttons.  "I haven't thrown anything out of a
car window since I was thirteen.  When I saw you betting that money
against me, I wanted you to lose it so bad I went against my survival
instinct, an instinct that I honed through two long flicking years in
prison.  Every day for 730 days I was scared shitless.  But I played it
cool.  No emotion.  I had guys three times your size, guys who carried
razor blades in their mouths try to get a rise out of me and fail."  He
shook his head.

"You bring something out in me, Luna, I'm not sure what.  It can't be
good.  Not if it means being chased by Jerry Kirn through the desert at
three in the morning."

"You give me too much credit."

"You know what I think?  I think people haven't given you enough
credit."

I had no idea what that meant.  I didn't want to pursue it either.

"Turn off that same road we took to where you have your greenhouse."

-"I'm not taking those guys near the house.  Forget it."

"We're not going there.  Just do it, okay?"

He did.  I directed him, giving him the same route Zeno had given me on
the phone.

"So tell me, Byron.  Once you and Captain Zeno perfect your flowering
bamboo, then what?  Sell it for millions and retire to a pollutant-free
biodegradable lifestyle on Maui?"

"This conversation is a little too predictable.  You looking to trap me
into confessing some hypocrisy?  Reveal me for a burntout radical who's
caved in to the system, trying to get my piece of the pie and split?

Or crap to that effect."

"Yup, that's the effect."

"Forget it.  That's some bullshit yuppie mantra, "What have you done
for the revolution lately?"  Hey, nature isn't all it's cracked up to
be, anyway.

"Here it comes, the speech of the disillusioned.  Dim the lights, dust
off the Judy Collins albums."

"You know me so fucking well.  As well as you knew Wren?"

He had me there.  I thought I'd known her as intimately as a sister,
but I hadn't at all.  Only what she'd revealed, not what was in her
heart.

"You ever hear of the cuckoo bird?"

"Like in those Swiss clocks, right?  They pop out all night and keep
you awake."

"You want to hear this?"

"Turn there."  I pointed.

He turned.  We were off the freeway and driving down a dark road.  In
the distance, a faint cluster of lights.  "Cuckoo birds lay their eggs
in other birds' nests.  The cuckoo hatchling is usually bigger and more
aggressive than the hatchling that actually belongs in the nest, so the
little cuckoo pushes the smaller bird out of the nest.  Then, when the
parents return, they feed the cuckoo and ignore their own child because
he isn't in the nest.  In essence, they're feeding their own children's
murderer."

"Bullshit," I said.  "You saying that these birds don't notice the
difference?"

"Or they don't care.  They have a set rule, Feed what's in the nest,
ignore what isn't.  Every creature marks its territory.  Like the booby
bird.  Sailors named it that because the birds were so tame you could
walk right up to one and catch it for dinner."

"It's straight ahead," I said.  "When we get there, we're going to have
to move fast, so just follow my lead."

"What lead?  What are we doing?"

"Just relax.  Tell me about the booby.  It's tame.  Sailors ate it."

"They have something called the guano ring."

"Guano," I said, thinking.  "That's birdshit."

"Exactly.  They use it to make a circle, then they hatch their young
inside the circle.  If there's plenty of food, the baby birds leave
each other alone.  If there isn't, the biggest chick pushes the other
chick out of the ring.  Once the chick is outside the ring, the mother
ignores it and won't feed it.  Her child can cry and cry only a foot
away, but she'll let it starve to death."

"Is there a point to all this, Bwana Jim?  Other than to depress me?"

"I'm saying, people make their own circles, they draw a circle in the
dirt and say, "This much I care about.  This is my family, my home,
these are my friends in here.  Anything outside is not my problem."  It
doesn't matter the type of dirt, the size of the circle, everybody does
it.  The rest of their lives is just keeping an eye on the
perimeter."

"Are you saying that's good or bad?"

-"Neither.  It just is.  A person has to recognize his own perimeter,
the edge of his own circle.  You try to extend that circle or step out
of it, there's no way back inside because the perimeter goes on
forever.  You're up to your eyeballs in birdshit."

"I think you've been looking at the world through a snitch mirror too
long, pal.  It's just as distorting as looking at it through mall store
windows."

He didn't say anything for a minute.  He looked over at me with an odd
expression.  "You miss my point.  I'm talking about love here too.

Two people get together, they draw their own circle in the dirt, say to
everyone, this is our life.  This is where we make a stand against the
world.  In here we combine our concerns our goals, our lives.

That's love.  A circle in the dirt."

I snorted.  "You're a hell of a romantic."

I"I'm not talking romantic love.  I'm talking reality.  Think of the
most repulsive man you can, both physically and spiritually.

His eating habits are gross, he has no personal hygiene, and he thinks
women are pigs.  We stick the two of you on a desert island for the
rest of your lives.  You and I both know that sooner or later you two
will learn to love each other as much as, if not �more than, you have
loved anyone before.  I've seen it in prison, two men who outside the
walls would have killed each other over a ball game, inside are living
like man and wife.  Love is circumstances, nothing more."

"Christ, I should've left you back there for Jerry and Trent.

You deserve each other."

"You think you did me a favor here?  Fuck, before they were just going
to bust me up a little.  Now they're going to bust me up a lot.

This whole thing wasn't working out as I'd planned it.  The
significance of the chase scene is to have the stakes high enough so
that it matters if you're caught.  I'd done that.  But you also need a
little cooperation from the co-chasec.  There has to be a feeling of
shared worth, like living actually is desirable.  After listening to
Byron, I'd lost some of my spirit for the adventure.

Maybe he'd just sobered me up, made me aware that this whole thing
wasn't a game, after all.  Those guys were serious.  For the first
time, I was scared.

"Up there," I said.

"That's a minimart gas station."

"Right.  It's open all night."

"We still have gas."

"We're not stopping for gas."

He sighed.  "Just trust the Force, Luke."

We could see Zeno standing in front of the minimart eating a donut.

As soon as he saw us, he jumped into the Jeep and started the engine.

He left his door open.

I turned to Byron.  "Okay, as soon as we pull in, you put on the
emergency brake and hop out.  Leave the motor running and the door
open.  You run into the Jeep and duck down out of sight."

"And what happens?  Zeno gets in this car and the two of you drive
away, hoping Jerry will follow?"

"It'll work," I said.  "You just turn down that street and circle
behind the station before turning into it.  While we're making the
switch, Jerry and Trent will be blocked by the building.  By the time
they clear it, Zeno and I will be driving away and they'll have to
follow.  It'll work."

He thought about it.  "Yeah, it probably will."

"Thanks."  I smiled, feeling some of that chase spirit returning.

"Except I'm not doing it.  When they catch up with you guys, and they
will catch up, they'll just take it out on you and Zeno.  You can take
it, but Zeno can't."

"You sweet talker, you."  I pointed.  "Okay, turn here, then circle
around the building as fast as you can.  This has to be done fast."  n
"I told you, I'm not doing it."

"I can take care of myself.  I'll take care of Zeno too."

"Goddamn it!"  he said and stomped the gas.  The car squealed around
the curb and shot the length of the quiet desert road, then he turned
to circle the gas station.  "I'm not going without you, Luna."

I looked at him.  He kept his eyes on the road, but I could see the
glint in them, the soft sadness.  "What are you saying, we're the two
most repulsive people on the planet and we've just been marooned on a
desert island?"

He yanked the steering wheel and we slid around another corner.  One
more corner and everything would happen fast.  Too fast to make any
mistakes.  No turning back.

"I'm saying this is my circle in the dirt, my guano ring, baby."

He glanced at me.  "And you're on the inside."

I laughed.  "See, you can be romantic after all."

He laughed too and I felt a sudden lightness about me.  A happiness, I
guess.  But not like any happiness I'd ever known before.  Maybe
because it didn't seem like a shared happiness as much as just my own,
like eating a whole pint of ice cream by myself.  Like I knew who I was
and where I was and what I was doing for the first time.  I mean, for
the first time ever.  I had always lived in someone else's house,
someone else's routine, someone else's life.  I thought of Robby then
and there was no longing, no sense that I was missing a part of me.  I
suppose I had always been missing a part of me, since way before
Robby.

The man by my side had seen me do some pretty crazy stunts, had lived
with me while I pretended to be his dead wife.  He had seen me smashing
watches.  He had made love to me while I'd been stung by a scorpion.

He had seen me at my most extreme.

I had no secrets left to hide from him.

I popped open the glove compartment and searched through the shreds of
old parking lot tickets and gas credit card receipts and broken
eyeliner pencils until I found a tattered book of matches from the days
when I used to smoke.  I stuffed them into my pocket.  I leaned over
the back seat and rummaged through the magazines, newspapers, empty
Butterfingers wrappers.  Finally I found what I'd been looking for, my
old balled-up panty hose that Season had made me strip off that first
day.  I crammed them into my other pocket.

"Okay," I said, plopping back in my seat.  "I'm in the circle.

Anyone else comes in, we peck the shit out of them.  That the deal?"

"That's the deal."  "A We screeched into the gas station and both of us
leapt from the car.  Zeno ran out from behind the idling Jeep and
jumped into the car.  "Hey," he said to me.  "I thought I was taking
you?"  ca "Change of plans,"I hollered over my shoulder.

"Drive on home, they won't follow."

He took off, missed the driveway, and shot over the curb, �bouncing my
car onto the street.  He disappeared into the dark soness.

Suddenly the red Miata was sweeping around the curb and shooting into
the gas station.  By now Byron and I were strapped into the Jeep.

Byron jammed the gas pedal and we swung around in front of the Miata
and blasted out of there, flying off the curb and blasting down the
street.  Jerry Kirn did a neat spin with his car and was right on our
tail the whole time.

"We're not going to lose them," Byron shouted because the we wind
whipped around us so loudly.  "And we sure as shit can't outrun
them."

"We're not going to try.  Just take us to that place where we had
sex.

Remember?"

"The place or the sex?"  the I swatted his arm.  He laughed.  His
laughter sounded different cot now, somehow richer.  Edgeless.  As if
before he'd always laughed eve in mono and now he laughed in stereo.

Hearing him laugh was like listening to a song that made you want to
sing along or drum against the steering wheel or do something to be
involved with that sound too, "Okay," I said.  "I guess we need aplan
now."  run "It's your chase.  I'm only the bait.  I hadn't thought
about that, but I guess he was right.  I had dn., wanted them to
follow, but if it hadn't been them, it would have my been someone
else.

Maybe I would have sped by a police car and given them the finger.  Or
sideswiped a car with six gangbangers the cruising around.  I don't
know, something.  I liked that he recog- like nized that and didn't try
to interfere or reshape what I was doing.

My art.

"How's this sound?"  I told him my plan, every crazy detail.

When I finished I smiled and said, "Simple and direct."

He looked over at me.  The wind was tugging at his hair, flipping his
ponytail around like a floundering fish.  His dragonfly earring twirled
like a weather vane.  I leaned over and kissed his cheek.  He leaned
into me.  It was the smallest of gestures, yet it felt so damned
complete, just that little kiss, his light nudge.  The sex had been
consuming and heated, but it had been missing something.  Whatever that
something was, I felt it then.

"Your plan doesn't call for us to pull over to the side of the road and
make love, does it?"

I shook my head.

"Then you need a new plan."

We drove through the dark desert, leaving a plume of dust to wag in the
Miata's face.  I looked behind us and saw only the dim headlights
surrounded by the gritty fog of brown dust.  Up ahead were the rocky
cliffs where Byron and I had made love.

"Ready?"  I asked.

"Are you?"

We exchanged looks.

"Go!"  he shouted.  I unfastened my seat belt and climbed into the back
of the Jeep.  I found the ultraviolet flashlight but I couldn't find a
container.  I emptied the small toolbox, dumping everything on the
floor.  I returned to my scat.

"Got it," I said.

Byron began zigzagging the Jeep, kicking up even more dust.

Then he slowed just enough for me to leap out with the empty toolbox
and ultraviolet flashlight in hand.  I hit the ground at a run and kept
running, veering away from the dirt cloud.  Then I dropped to the
ground, face first, and waited for the Miata to drive by.  Once it had,
I walked over to the cliff face and shone my black light on it.

The constellation of green-blue scorpions lit up the rock face the same
as it had the night before.  Some scuttled across the rock like
shooting stars arcing across the sky.  Most just sat there, clinging,
waiting for something.  Whatever they were waiting for, it wasn't me.

I wondered if one of them was the one that stung me.  I looked for a
guilty face.  They all looked sufficiently guilty, their eyes staring
blankly.

I opened the small silver toolbox and began scooping scorpions into the
box.  I scraped the lip along the cliff and brushed the reluctant ones
in with the tip of my flashlight.  When I had about thirty or so piled
three deep in the box, I closed the lid and waited.  I could feel them
moving around inside the box and that made me feel creepy.  While I
waited, I kept pointing the black light all around my feet, making sure
there was no scorpion rescue squad heading for me.

About five minutes later, I heard Byron's Jeep returning.  I ran out
and waved at him.  He pulled off the dirt road and hopped out of the
Jeep.

"Ready?"  he said.

I nodded.  But I was scared.  I hadn't felt scared up until now.

I'd felt excited, elated, nervous, depressed, all kinds of things.

I-But scared was new.

The Miata braked to a stop and Jerry and Trent got out.  They walked
slowly toward us.

Jerry's face was grim and menacing.  "You know, Byron, from everything
you ever told me about your wife, she was supposed to be smart.  A real
genius."  He gestured at the Jeep, the Miata, the desert itself.

"This was not genius.  This was dumb."

"This isn't my wife," Byron said.

"Thanks for that resounding defense," I said.

Jerry gave me a look that said I wasn't even there yet, but when he
decided I was there, I'd better watch out.  I had a feeling his wife
experienced that look a lot.  "Thing is, Byron, now I've got to make
things right, not just for Landry, but for me.  Christ, you know I
don't want to.  Why couldn't you just stick to the rules?

You know the goddamn rules."

"I figured we were out of prison.

Jerry shook his head.  "Unh-uh, I'm not getting suckered into one of
your fucking philosophical discussions.  Let's just get this k over
with, okay?  I'm pissed, I admit that.  That's why I'm going to let
Trent do this job."

Trent, face arranged into his most intimidating scowl, started toward
us.

"Don't you know karate or something?"  I said to Byron.

"I wrestled in high school until some guy dislocated my shoulder.  If I
take him down I can get two points."

Trent stomped closer.

"Do something, Byron," I said.  "Bite off a finger or something."

"Fine.  Give me your hand."

Now Trent was within a couple of yards.  Close enough.

I opened the toolbox and displayed the contents.  "Twut's liable to get
a face full of scorpions.  And they're pissed."

Trent halted, his scowl melting as he stared at the writhing tangle of
scorpions.  I shone the ultraviolet light on them to make them look
even scarier.  Trent blanched and took a step backward.

Jerry looked disappointed.  "You don't think that's going to stop us,
do you, Byron?  You've seen me cat worse shit than that in the prison
cafeteria.

"Then come and get "em," Byron said.  "They're the fresh catch of the
day."

Jerry started slowly toward us.  Trent, nervous but taking his boss's
cue, also started toward us.  It was like having a pair of pliers
closing on you.  Byron and I backed up a couple of steps until we were
pinned against the fender of the Jeep.

Jerry walked closer, rolling up his sleeves with each step.  Trent was
snorting again.

"I think they just entered our guano circle," I said.

"You do have a backup plan, right?"  Byron asked.

"Yup.  Dine and dash."  I heaved the toolbox's contents and half of my
scorpions became airborne.  Trent covered his face and backpedaled.  I
tossed the rest of the scorpions at Jerry.  He casually sidestepped the
flock.  They belly-flopped to the ground and scuttled away.

I dropped the light and the toolbox and ran like hell.  Byron jumped
into the Jeep and tried to start it, but they were on him before he
could escape.  I heard the crunch of knuckles against bone, the thump
of fist against body.  And still I ran.

I dashed around the big rocky cliff, circling all the way around the
thing until I came out next to the Miata.  I crouched down so they
couldn't sec me crawling up to the little red car.  The gas lid was
locked, but I managed to jimmy it open with my keys.  I tried not to
listen to the thumping and cracking of the two men beating on Byron.  I
had to concentrate on what I was doing.  I pulled the ball of panty
hose from my pocket, shook them loose, and sttiffcd them part of the
way down the gas tank.  Then I removed the matches and stood up.

-"Hey, boys," I called out.

Jerry and Trent turned and looked at me.  Byron, who was slumped over
the hood of the car, slid to the ground and lifted his head.  His mouth
was bloody, but otherwise not too bad.

"What kind of bullshit is this?"  Jerry said, annoyed.

I lit a match and waved it near the panty hose hanging out of his gas
tank.  "Now we see, why panty hose are a fire hazard."

"Don't be stupid.  You re even stupider than I thought.  You light that
and you'll get blown up with the car.  You'll die."

"I've been dead before.  It's not that bad."  The thing was, I meant it
too.  I mean, I wasn't trying to be dramatic or even threatening.  I
was actually being honest.  Dying wasn't part of my original plan, but
I didn't mind.  That's when it occurred to me that!  wasn't afraid
anymore.

Jerry appealed to Byron.  "Tell her, man.  This isn't a life-ordeath
thing we're doing here.  I don't carry a gun.  Trent doesn't carry a
gun.  We're not killers.  We're just going to bust you up a little so
people know how to do business with Landry.  We're not out to kill you,
either of you.

I thought about that a moment.  "Maybe you should."

Byron wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.  "The
opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the
management."

"I mean it, Byron," I said.  "These guys want to hurt you as a
lesson.

And you are willing to let them.  Some lesson.  Life and death.  Maybe
if more things were life and death, things would have more value.  I
don't know."

-Trent looked at Jerry with confusion.  Jerry stared at me, trying to
decide how far he was willing to go, how far he thought I'd go.  He
looked at my face, my matches, his car.  He shrugged, pushed his
rolled-up sleeves down.  "Fuck it.  It's not worth it."

-Trent whispered something to Jerry, his face puffed up with
deviousness.  Jerry shook his head.  "Forget it.  This isn't the right
time, that's all."

I stayed next to the panty hose, a match pressed against the sandpaper
stripe, ready to strike it to flame.  Jerry and Trent didn't even look
at me as they got in the car, started it up, and drove away.

Byron and I watched their red taillights fade into the night.

"Think they'll be back?"  I asked.

"Not tonight."

"Whew."  I sat down on the ground and breathed deeply.  Now that they
were gone, the old fear curdled my stomach.

Byron limped over to me, holding his side and wincing.  He stooped
beside me.  "You okay?"

"I feel as if someone had scraped his feet across three miles of thick
carpet and just touched my heart with his fingertip."

"Is that fear?  Or something else?"

I shook my head.  "I don't know."

Byron kissed me on the cheek and stood up.  He walked around to the
front of the Jeep and popped open the hood.  He lifted the hood up as
high as it would go.  "You meant that whole thing, didn't you?  About
life and death and stuff."

"At the time.  Don't ask me to repeat it."

"I was impressed," he said.

I"Really?"

"Yeah.  It sure wasn't Wren saying all that."

"I'm not sure it was me either."

"Must have been you.  Your lips were moving."

I laughed and looked over at him just as he gripped the edge of the
heavy metal hood of the Jeep and slammed it down as hard as he could on
his forearm.

The emergency room wasn't very busy.  When I brought Byron in, they
seemed relieved to finally have something to do.  Nurses and a woman
doctor fussed over him as they ushered him to a back room.  I waited in
the lobby, reading National Geographic and sipping diet Pepsi.  I
looked for familiar faces in the National Geographic, booby birds,
cuckoos, dragonflies, scorpions, bedbugs, any of the creatures great
and small that had scuttled through my life lately.

When they gave Byron back to me, his left arm was in an orange plaster
cast.  He was groggy from sedation.  The doctor handed me a
prescription.

"That was a bad break," she said.  She was about my age but her eyes
were so close together she seemed to be constantly staring at the tip
of her own nose.

"He was fixing the car," I explained.  "The hood came down."

"Hell of a hood," she said.  "Caught him in the mouth and eyes too.

And I think one of his ribs is cracked."

"You know,g,uys, they always think they're more mechanical than they
are.

She nodded.  "Handy is to men what sexy is to women."  I drove Byron to
Zeno's.  Zeno gave us his bedroom and he took the couch.  During the
next day, Zeno worked in the greenhouse.  Byron mostly dozed.  I made
some lunch for Zeno and me and we chatted while Byron slept.  Zeno was
a pretty funny guy actually, now that he wasn't afraid of me.  He
chattered enthusiastically about bamboo for over an hour, with
digressions to the art of stealing rare books from libraries.  He went
back to work in the greenhouse, and if I hadn't pulled him out for some
dinner, he probably would have just kept working through the night.

After dinner he went back to the greenhouse to "make a few notes."  I
went to bed at eleven o'clock and he was still in there.

Byron was awake when I went into the bedroom.  He was stretched out on
the bed in his underpants.  His broken arm lay at his side like a
club.

He was watching the news on the tiny black-and-white TV Zeno kept on a
chair near the bed.

"Feel better?"  I asked.

"A little drugged."

"The doctor might have gotten overzealous.  She thinks either you're
accident prone or I've been beating you up.

"I forget.  Which is it?"

I lay down next to him on the bed.  I could see his haMened penis
straining under the white underpants.  "Apparently she didn't sedate
you enough."

"I'm just excited, the weather forecast is about to come on.

I put my hand on his good arm and stroked him.  "I've been thinking
real hard since last night.  I mean, I know I'm no genius, but I'm not
an idiot either.  Still, I can't figure out what the hell you think you
were doing by breaking your own arm.  Some sort of delayed stress
syndrome?  What?  Tell me.

He watched the weatherman point at a projection of the California
coast, poke his finger at a cloud mass moving toward southern
California.  Expect rain, the weatherman said, but not enough to dent
the drought we've been having.

"I mean," I continued, since Byron wasn't answering.  "I mean, after
all we went through to keep you from taking a serious beating.  It's
like it was all for nothing."

He didn't take his eyes off the TV.  "It wasn't for nothing.  Don't
think that.  I probably have never been happier or more in love in my
whole life than the moment I saw you standing there next to Jerry's
Miata, your panty hose hanging out of his gas tank.  It was the most
perfect moment.  Everything you did, everything you said, was just
right."

"I was babbling."

-"No," he said, reaching over to hold my hand.  "You weren't."

"The panty hose in the gas tank, you knew about it.  That was part of
our plan."  He shrugged.  "I knew, but I didn't know how it would
feel.

You know, like sex with someone new.  You know how it's going to feel,
but sometimes it surprises you, it feels better than you'd ever
imagined."

II"Does it?"  I said.

"Sometimes," he said.  "If everything is just right."  He reached over
and pulled me on top of him.  We kissed.  The kiss lasted it awhile,
I'm not sure how long.  Long enough to make my skin ache to be rubbing
against his skin.  We broke apart.  He lifted his broken arm the way a
lobster with a pegged wrist might.  "This," he said, "this is the
payment for witnessing that perfect moment.

Jerry won't have told Landry anything about what happened.

Neither will Trent, he's too afraid of Jerry.  Jerry didn't have to
leave last night, he could've stayed.  He probably could have even
taken away those matches and yanked out the panty hose without any
damage to his car."

"You knew that going in?"

"Sure.  I've seen him take out three guys at once.  He's not afraid of
anything, certainly not us."

"Then why'd you go along with my plan?"

I"Because I didn't care if it worked.  That didn't matter."  He sat up
more, adjusted his pillow.  "Besides, I knew Jerry.  He wasn't going to
risk anything over us.  We're not worth it.  He knows he'll find me
later and finish then.  That's how it is.  By breaking my own arm, I
allow him to save face with his boss, because now everybody sees me
walking around in a cast, they know why.

Now Jerry doesn't have much reason to do anything more to me.

In that way, I've bbl makes sense all proay saved myself a lot worse
pain.  Just around.

We both stared at the TV screen.  Sometime during our conversation,
Johnny Carson had replaced the news team.  Johnny was sitting behind
his desk.  Loni Anderson was sitting next to him.

We watched them talk for a few minutes, then Loni left.  She wore a
tight dress that clung to her hips and her exit drew a lot of applause
and a few whistles.

"Here's a bright new comedian," Johnny said.  "Very funny guy.  Ethan
Brnnd."

"Jesus," I said.  "Look.  It's Ethan.  Our Ethan."

Indeed, it was Ethan emerging from the curtain, carrying his guitar and
smiling at the audience.

"It's Ethan," I repeated, sitting up.  I remembered the note he'd left
us to call him.  Probably about this.

Ethan began talking about the TV shows he grew up on and how the theme
songs weren't appropriate to the way he perceived the characters.

Which is why he'd written some more pertinent lyrics.  Like this, he
said, and began singing, "It's the story of a dork named Brady .

"That's your song," I said to Byron.  "Cleaned up a little, but
otherwise the same.

But Byron was laughing.  "He's very funny.  I didn't realize."

Ethan did a couple of other songs, takeoffs on the "Beverly
Hillbillies" theme and the "Love Boat" theme.  He was funnier than he'd
ever been the times I'd heard his other acts.  Byron and I laughed
until Zeno came in to see what was going on.  He sat on the bed,
watched Ethan, and laughed too.  When it was over, Zeno looked at us,
grinned, and returned to his greenhouse.

I shut off the TV.

Byron and I kissed.  He had a slight medicinal taste in his mouth,
probably from the sedatives.  I didn't mind.  During that kiss I could
suddenly see the future again, the way I had been able to when I was
with Robby.  Only it wasn't the same.  I didn't see me old, I didn't
see Byron old.  I didn't see a quiet house tucked safely away
somewhere.  I saw us making love in about jfive minutes.  I saw me
slipping his underpants over his hips and burying my head in his lap.

I saw me finishing my book on Season.  I would tell the truth about
her, because that was the truth about me, about many women.  I knew the
future, not because of Robby being there or Byron or anyone else.  I
knew it because I knew I would be there.  I couldn't be sure exactly
who I'd be in the morning, part Wren, part Season?  I couldn't remember
who the old Luna was, what she liked, how she felt.

It's not so wrong being someone else for a while.  We're always in the
state of becoming something or someone else.  Like shedding skin,
evolving into some other creature altogether.  Yesterday I was a fish,
today I suddenly have legs and scurry across the mud.  Tomorrow I may
walk upright.

I guess I'd just have to wait and see.

the end.