Morning dew seeped through the knees of Sylvia's slacks as she crept under a rhododendron looking for Stephanie. She hadn't been up this early in years, awake most of the night for fear she'd miss the alarm. Maybe it was too early. Most mornings when she went down to turn on the coffeemaker Stephanie was meowing at the sun porch door, rubbing the frame when Sylvia opened it, yawning with hunger. But that was at seven. Now it was just six, the sun barely rising. But she had been nervous about not finding the cat on this day ever since the shelter finally called with news of an opening.

Alan had been sympathetic, knowing she would have loved to keep the cat, make a pet of it. But his allergy was terrible. The one time she forgot and touched him after stroking Stephanie, his face swelled and his eyes reddened with a sneezing fit. No way could they have a cat, and Sylvie decided it wasn't right to make the poor creature live outside even though she fed her twice a day. For the month after it appeared in their yard, the cat had fled every time Sylvia stepped outside and called, "Here, kitty, kitty."  Eventually, the food did it, the certainty of regular meals. It even reached a point where Sylvia could pick her up, the cat almost weightless, purring loudly, desperate for affection. It deserved an indoors home with a family, pampered by children. But first she had to catch it and get it to the no-kill shelter.

If he had been here, not in Denver on a business trip, Alan would have helped her, wearing gloves, taking an antihistamine. But he couldn't pick the timing of his job.

"Stephanie," she whispered, made kissing sounds.  "Please, Stephanie."

A noise made her look up, the slamming of a car door.  Sylvia stared into the sunrise and saw a shape in the golden glow, large and square in the driveway. She scooted back around the bush to change her angle, touched a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. It was Benny's van, the rusting gash the length of the passenger's side, the plastic sheet still taped up where the missing back window should be. But Benny was supposed to be seven hundred miles away, working. Why hadn't he called?  Why was he there?  On this day when she had to catch a cat.

Instead of Benny, standing in the driveway was a tiny thing that looked like a child. The sun dazzling her, making her dizzy, Sylvia stood up and stepped closer. It wasn't a child but a very small woman in shorts and a sleeveless sweatshirt, her legs thick, her pale face like a flexed muscle, cheeks bloated, two small eyes peering out directly at Sylvia.

Before Sylvia could ask her who she was, Benny came running around the front of the van and swooped Sylvia off her feet, spinning her and planting wet kisses on her cheek. "Mom! Mom!"

He was stoned. She knew it immediately. When he got manic like this, he was stoned, sputtering meaningless sounds of excitement.  What had happened to his therapy, the doses of Paxil and Wellbutrin?  He'd been doing so well, promoted at work, engaged to Vicki. Benny was laughing as he hugged her, Sylvia moaning in despair as he clutched her.

"Mom! Guess what!" Benny stepped back and seized her hands in his, turning a circle as he danced around her. "Guess what!" The way one shirt tail hung at his side, the way his pants dragged the dirt, she could tell he was getting fat again.

"I can't guess," she told him, her voice flat with an old weariness.

"I'm fucking married!"

"Married?  Where's Vicki?"

"Not fucking Vicki. Daphne." He repeated it more loudly, with a sudden anger that she did not understand.

Benny rushed back to the girl in the driveway and dragged her toward Sylvia, pushed her against his mother. The girl just came up to her chest, hands at her side, looking out with glazed eyes. Although Benny had forced them tight against each other, they were not really touching.

Sylvia looked down on Daphne's head, the purple streak in the cropped brown hair. "Are you really married to my son?"

"Benny woke up the justice of the peace. Banged on the door. The man wasn't happy, but he did it." The girl spoke in a monotone, barely audible.

Sylvia pushed her away and clamped Benny's face in her hands. "What's going on here?  What about Vicki?  We've been planning a wedding. Her mother and I talk all the time."

"The fucker's cancelled."

She wanted to hit him but held herself still. "Benny, when did you stop taking your pills?" It had to have been abrupt. People couldn't just stop. They had to taper off. Stopping would make then crazy.  Benny was crazy. Her first thought was to call Alan, then decided it wasn't fair. He had his meetings. What could he do so far away?  He wasn't Benny's father, and he had done more than enough to help her through her son's episodes for the fifteen years of their marriage. He had been so happy about Vicki. He would be crying right now if he knew.

"We both stopped." He wrapped an arm around Daphne.  "That shit's no good for you. Daphne read about it. We walked out of group therapy one night and threw those fucking pills into the sewer.  And we haven't been apart ever since. I said, 'Let's get fucking married, and we fucking did.'"

Benny threw his head back in laughter, rubbing wide circles on Daphne's back. The girl barely moved, almost comatose Sylvia thought. But she was the one who raised her arm and pointed toward the shrubs —"What's that?"—startled as if she had never seen a cat before.

It was Stephanie, black and white against the green bushes, meowing, looking at Sylvia with what Sylvia knew was longing. She wanted to be picked up and cradled. Sylvia reached down and spread her hands under the cat's soft middle, lifting it to her chest, bringing her chin down to the silken fur of its back, swaying back and forth. The cat purred and Sylvia's tears beaded on the top of its head.

"What the fuck is that?" Benny was laughing, shaking a finger as he pointed.

Sylvia saw a thick ring on his fourth finger, but it wasn't a wedding band. "This is Stephanie." She hugged the cat tighter as if her son was about to rip it away.

"So you're trying to kill Alan. Have him choke on an allergy attack." Benny forced gagging sounds, staggered in a swoon.

"I wish I could keep her." Sylvia's voice trembled with sorrow. But if she didn't deliver the cat to the shelter this morning, she would lose her place on the waiting list. She broke into sobs.

"Mom. It's just a fucking cat."

Tear-blinded, Sylvia saw that Daphne was staring at her.  She expected the girl to say something too, words that would echo her son's.  But all she did was stare.

When Sylvia stopped crying, she carried the cat to the shelter's cardboard carrier by the sun porch, knowing how much she would miss the little face waiting outside the glass door every morning, head cocked, tail straight up.  She brushed her lips to the small head and felt a sinking within. 

She couldn't blame Alan. The allergies weren't his fault, and he had cared for her enough to marry a woman with a troubled teenager, shared in the counseling sessions and the disciplining. Finally, they both believed they had succeeded, Benny clean, doing well in a good job, engaged to Vicki. But now. She wished there were a shelter that would take her.

With the cat in her arms, she couldn't unhook the tabs to open the box. "Help me," she called to Benny. He shook his head, still laughing. Daphne was the one, approaching slowly as if sleepwalking, saying something to Benny when she passed. Next to Sylvia, she dropped to her knees and spread the box top. Sylvia hesitated, not wanting to let go, but knelt to set Stephanie inside, surprised how docile the cat was, how it immediately curled and closed its eyes.

"Is it sick?" Daphne asked.

"Of course not. She's fine. She trusts me. That I won't let anything happen to her."

"That's nice." The girl rose and drifted back into the yard near Benny. He wrapped arms around her and lifted her off the grass, planting kisses on the top of her head.

Who was this girl?  What was she doing here?  Sylvia wanted her to vanish. Benny too. Both of them go back where they came from and let her think about the cat.

Without her realizing it, the day had become bright with morning light, lovely weather, a soft breeze, the scent of lilacs from the bush in the yard. When she looked toward the garage, she saw that Benny's van was blocking her in. She called to him and asked that he please move it.

"I'll drive you," he told her. "You're too upset. In no shape." That seemed to please him.

"And what kind of shape are you in?"

His face darkened. "I can fucking drive."

He put a hand against her back and guided her toward the van and slid open the gashed side door with a metallic creak. "Get inside."  It was an order. He gave an abrupt wave to Daphne. "You too."

The girl opened the front passenger door and strained to reach a foot up to the frame and pull herself up. She was that short. Benny took the carrier from Sylvia and placed it on the back seat. "Do you want a boost?" Sylvia shook her head and climbed inside. He slammed the door shut.

He started the van with a roar, tromping on the gas pedal. Dark exhaust clouded the rear window, crackling though a hole in the muffler.  He burned rubber backing out the drive, but Sylvia wouldn't tell him to slow down. That would make it even worse. She knew Benny. Oh God, did she know Benny.

"So where's this fucking shelter?"

She gave him directions. He knew the town, had lived there for years. He was speeding, swerving around corners, sending Sylvia and the carrier sliding across the seat. Her belt clamp was broken.  She held the carrier, but the cat didn't make a sound. Sylvia tried to peek through one of the air holes but saw only a swatch of dark fur.

Sylvia's heart was pounding by the time they reached the shelter.  Benny slammed brakes in the parking area, cinders beating against the bottom of the van. She took deep breaths before speaking.

"You two can wait here. I want to do this myself."

"No fucking way. I want to see what this place is all about. Come on, Daph."

Would they turn her away after one look at her son and this dwarfish girl?  She'd beg. Please find a family for this cat.

The young woman at the reception desk had a pretty face but several layers of chin fat and loose flesh swaying on her arms. She checked a computer screen and smiled at Sylvia. "There you are. On our schedule for today." She pointed to the carrier in Sylvia's hand. "And I'll bet that's Stephanie. Can't wait to meet her."

Sylvia sighed. Everything was going to be all right.

"Did someone explain the procedure?" the young woman asked, and went on even though Sylvia nodded. "One of our vets will examine Stephanie's vitals, give her rabies and distemper shots, and that'll be it. We'll check her in. Home sweet home."

They had to wait for the vet. Sylvia and Daphne took seats in plastic chairs, but Benny leaned over the counter watching the young woman's fingers on the keyboard with a wide grin. "You're sure some typist."

She didn't smile back. "That's why they hired me."

"Benny, sit down," Sylvia told him, and to her surprise he did, flipping though pet magazines, waving covers in front of Daphne's face.  "Here's one called fucking Cat Fancier. Can you believe this shit?"

Sylvia felt an urge to slap him, something she hadn't done since he was a toddler though she had wanted to many times. One more word out of him, and someday she might actually do it. She opened the carrier to look down at Stephanie. The cat lay in the same curled position, the eyes closed. She had expected agitation at being taken to a new and strange place.

When the vet, a stooped man with thinning hair and a gray goatee, came down a hallway to call for her, Sylvia hoped Benny and Daphne would stay seated. But they followed at her heels, Benny pointing at the drawings of dogs and cats and rabbits that lined the walls as if he were seeing something very strange.

All of them crowded into the small treatment room, the vet spoke only to Sylvia, his tone businesslike. "Please put Stephanie on the table." She lifted the cat from the carrier. It lay limp in her arms, barely moved when she set it down on the stainless steel.

"You can see she's very docile. She'll be a wonderful pet."

The vet just pressed his lips tight and touched gloved fingers into the cat's abdomen, brought his stethoscope down to the rib cage, then examined each of the four limbs. The cat lifted its head and gave a soft meow. The vet touched his goatee with the back of his wrist and wouldn't look at Sylvia.

"I'm afraid you have a very sick animal here."

"Sick?  I've been feeding her for weeks. She had a great appetite."

"Look here." He spread the fur on the right hind hip to expose two small red scabs. "Those are bite marks. She must have gotten into a fight."

"With another cat?"

"With some wild animal. A cat. A raccoon. An opossum.  Hard to tell."

"But you can give her a shot. Antibiotics."

The vet shook his head. "Whatever bit her could be rabid."

"Then give her a test."

"It doesn't work that way. State law says the cat has to be quarantined for six months."

"Six fucking months!" Benny blurted what Sylvia was thinking.

"I'm afraid that's the law."

"Can she stay here?" Sylvia asked.

"Afraid not. We don't have the facility. And we can't risk exposing the other animals."

"Then where."

"You could board the animal at a special place. But that would get very expensive. Or you could keep her at your home."

"In that fucking box!" Benny threw up his hands, shouting. Sylvia saw how agitated he was, on the verge of a real outburst.  She held his arm, afraid he would throw her off. But he didn't. She knew it wasn't the cat that bothered him. It was rules, the threat of confinement.  She looked back at Daphne with a pleading in her eyes. The girl stepped forward and stroked Benny's other arm.

"That's impossible," Sylvia said. "It would be so cruel."

The vet nodded. "I agree."

"Then what?"

"Euthanasia."

"Oh, my God." Her knees gave way, but Daphne held her up, surprisingly strong for someone so small.

"Can you do it?" the girl asked the vet, the first time she had spoken in that room, her voice soft and quiet.

"Yes. That's something we do."

"It's not right. It's not fair." Benny slapped the steel top of the treatment table, the sound ringing, but the vet ignored him and spoke to Sylvia.

"Some people like to be in the room. You have that choice."

Sylvia stood helpless. The day wasn't supposed to be this way.  In bed, alone, too anxious to sleep, she had imagined Stephanie surrounded by children, stroked and purring, amid a family that truly cared.

It was Daphne who spoke again. "I don't think that's such a good idea."

The cat lay limp in the vet's arms as the man carried it out of the treatment room. When he was gone, Benny slammed the door.

Sylvia fell back against a wall, her face quivering. "I loved that cat. I've never loved anything so much." Daphne wrapped arms around her waist, pressed her head against Sylvia's chest, sighing, "Her poor little life." Sylvia clutched the girl and wept.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

          Federico Garcia Lorca

He sat, blindfolded, in the corridor outside of the bathroom doorway. A dirty, shapeless blob on the wet cement floor. His beard grew longer by the day and his body smelled as if it was decomposing. The pajama-like uniform hung loose on his sharp bones. A thin man—a thinning man —wearing a fat man's uniform. The end of the sleeves dropped down to the middle of his fingers. The shoulders sagged. The bottom of the pants folded underneath his feet, soiled.

Inside the fat man uniform, Arash was falling into pieces. Little by little. Like old paint sloughing off a wall.

It was hard to breathe. There were no windows and the air was heavy with moisture. Everyday, the guards in gray plastic slippers dragged in new prisoners. Who staggered down the corridor, leaving scattered traces of blood in the shape of deformed footprints behind. The thick black water spilling out of the gutter, gagged with torn pieces of clothes, hair, bread crumbles, and despair blended with the blood, further deforming it. The bodies were then dumped next to each other like damp bags of flour.

The sounds of groaning, weeping, a leaking tap, and labored breathing, lingered in the air like drops of mist.

Forty-five days had passed.

In forty-five days, Arash was made to know what the smell of rotting meat was like. Day after day, filth upon filth, interrogation after interrogation, where the same accusations, questions and threats were repeated like a nightmare without a beginning and an end, he was being taught to feel like an animal. A wretched smelly blind animal with nothing to look forward to except for each eight hours to pass, be given some food, and be taken to the bathroom to relieve himself.

Gradually, he found himself losing grasp of the outside world: Maryam, the blurry Damavand mountain peak seen from their living room window, the busy Tehran streets at twilight. It all felt like a dream. A sweet irreplaceable dream. Maryam's laughter had slowly lapsed into a hazy echo in the alleys of his mind. Her laughter, her declamatory voice when reading poetry aloud, sitting on the carpet, leaning against the foot of the sofa.

Arash could not remember any of those poems. His mind had been wiped clean by attentive, capable hands and instead of poems, it was now filled with screams, howls, bones breaking.

Even Maryam's face was slowly disappearing from his memory.

In his dreams, Maryam was always headless.

She would come near him, put her hands on his cheeks, but from her shoulders up, there was nothing, emptiness; she had been beheaded. Arash would wake up by the sound of his own stifled cries, soaked in cold sweat. Maryam would vanish, and the only thing that remained was the sound of the leaking tap echoing in his ears.

A young man called Ali was sitting next to him, murmuring a folklore song. His legs were stretched out in front of him and from underneath the bottom of his gray pants, a scar could be seen close to his ankle.

"What happened to your ankle?" asked Arash, who all he knew about Ali were his scar and his songs.

Ali stopped murmuring. "I fell from my bike when I was a kid. I kept fiddling with the wound to make sure it leaves a scar."

"Why did you want a scar?"

A moment passed in silence, during which Arash imagined Ali shrugging his shoulders.

"As a memory."

From underneath the blindfold, Arash saw Ali's dirty fingers creeping down to his memory.

Wound. Pain. Memory.

Arash knew that soon he would be so sick with memories that even taking the smallest step would be an impossible task. Memories were like snake poison, spreading across the body, paralyzing one limb at the time.

One of his memories that smelled of fresh blood and acidic breath, was being called a revolutionary. His interrogators seemed to take special pleasure in calling him a revolutionary. Or a spy. Different threats were accompanied with different nicknames. It was as though only through labelling him were the interrogators able to trust their own existence. By blindfolding the prisoners, they had reduced themselves to invisible beings, neither men nor shadows, merely a voice and a pair of hands that needed a victim, a prey, to survive.

Ali started singing again. His voice mingled with the sound of a cough from the other side of the corridor. Arash gave a nervous laugh, pressing his hands on top of his knees. A drop of sweat slid down his back.

And just when he thought they would let him be to contemplate his animal instincts, they took the lesson of humiliation a step further. They decided to show him off, their work of art, their installation of agony, to eyes that were not supposed to see.

They decided to break him.

The door screeched open and from the end of the corridor came the indifferent slip-slap of disembodied feet in slippers. Slip. Slap. Slip. Slap. Until they finally fell silent in front of Arash.

A pair of gray plastic slippers.

Arash could see the thick, black hair on the toes sticking out from where the slippers opened their maws. No words were uttered. One of the disembodied feet was lifted and landed against Arash's leg.

"Get up," the voice belonging to the slippers and the hairy toes commanded.

Grabbing on the head of a pen that the guard held out to him, Arash was led through a series of labyrinthine corridors. Next, he heard a door opening. They walked in. The air here smelled differently. It was still a bit musty, but nothing compared to the stench of the gutter Arash was getting used to. He felt the hands of the guard behind his dirty, oily hair, untying the blindfold. And at last, for the first time after forty-five days, the blindfold came off.

A naked bulb hanging from a long wire coughed out sickly white light around the room. Arash covered his squinting eyes and tried to look through his dirty fingers at the liquid images and shadows around him. He felt lightheaded. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the light. Slowly, the shadows began to take shape as if pushing through a cloud of smoke. And there emerged Maryam, pale like the day moon, gaping at him through the hole of her black scarf. Her eyes wide with horror.

Arash stood rooted to the ground. He could feel the thick layer of filth coming to life upon his body, his long itchy beard, upon his putrid pajama-like uniform. He felt it crawling all over him, claiming him, leaving him no escape.

He did not want Maryam to see him like this. Nibbled away by his own damp, growing filth.

He took a few steps back, shaken, bringing his hands to his face as if in pain. In Maryam's eyes, he could see the misty reflection of the humiliated animal that stood before her.

Maryam took a step forward. Her arms wide open. A quavering smile on her lips. A new sudden wrinkle around the corner of her eyes. 

"Where are you going?" the guard yelled out angrily as he pushed Arash into another chair. "Sit down!"

As the words spurted out of his mouth, his gaze paused with unexpected slowness on Maryams' protruding stomach. In his eyes, there was the curious twinkle of someone who had never seen a pregnant woman before. Maryam covered her stomach with a protective hand. The guard immediately turned his gaze away. He had committed a sin through his gaze. He walked to the corner of the room and stood there as the imposing shadow of authority.

Maryam and Arash sat on the edge of their chairs. Their breathing uneven, their hands tremulous, hesitant, folded like toppled nests on the table. They did not know what to do with their hands, or their eyes. Or the sobs knotted in the thick of their throats.

In that semi-lit room, with its pale tiles, its damp walls, and its neon light buzzing interminably like a fly, touches were prohibited. Touches belonged to the outside world, where bodies maintained integrity, not here where they had been reduced to shapeless caricature of themselves.

And when touches are absent, words fill their emptiness.

"I'm fine."

"The child is growing."

"Forty-five days."

"The child is kicking."

"I'm fine."

Thus precious time passed. The 10 minutes were over. And back in the hall, Arash's knees almost gave way.

•

They were forty garnered in a tiny cell with the strips of paint hanging from its walls. The prisoners were squeezed together like bees in a hive, at time sidestepping, at times crawling on top of each other. The situation got worse at night when each body sought to claim its sleeping space. At times, arguments broke out. At times, mouths twitched in nervous restrain. Finally, to put an end to the tensions, they decided to draw lines on the thin, foul smelling carpet to divide the boundaries of each body.

They slept head to foot, without moving a muscle, huddled against each other like children frightened by thunder.

It was a little bit before dawn break when Arash opened his eyes. He had made it a matter of principle to wake up every day before the sound of the azan spouted into the cell calling the prisoners to prayer. He wanted at least for the act of waking to be his choice. He wanted his days to begin when he and only he decided to open his eyes.

Praying was part of their education in the new prison. They had been transferred here in order to be formed into God-fearing men. But in that world of violence and madness, God was not what Arash feared most.

Ehsan, his right-side sleeping mate, snored softly like a percolator. Arash remained motionless, looking at Ehsan's toe nails that tipped upwards at the end.

After a few moments, the cry of the azan, which Arash used to find beautiful as a free man and now found smothering as a man in a cage, shook the cell out of its slumber. But the signs of awakening were slow. The sounds of a cough, a yawn, a foot gliding down rough blankets came from the other side where the cell ended into the door. Arash slowly curled up and wrapped his arms around his bent knees.

Forty disheveled men rolled up their bedding rolls and piled them against the wall. One by one, they were taken to the bathroom and brought back. One by one, they stood next to each other in straight lines. Ready to speak to God.

Surrounded by divine words, Arash bent and genuflected automatically, like a despaired puppet.

Heavy whispers bounced off the walls.

Once they finished praying, they all sat on top of their piled bedding rolls, waiting for breakfast: a cup of tea, two sugar cubes, a piece of bread, and some feta cheese. Today, the holy Friday, they were also given a spoon of powdered milk, another of jam, a few figs and dates. The sugar cubes were denied when jam or dates were given.

Arash was sipping his tea when the heavy door of the cell was squeaked open and a guard with the barely noticeable shadow of hair above his upper lip, appeared at the doorway.

"Arash Ramezanzadeh," he called out, trying in vain to control the hormonal slipperiness of his voice.

Arash heard his name roll out of the boy's mouth and then crack open at the "za" of the "zadeh", and felt his heart sink. Whenever anyone's name was called, it meant long hours of disappearance and then the exhausted, crushed body returning from the interrogation room.

Where not even God mattered as much as the body did.

Where no confession, no denial, no apology was worth anything. The interrogators were not interested in words; they were interested in bodies.

It was only the body that mattered in those hot, dark, airless rooms, the body, broken ribs, and the endless, incomprehensible shouting in the ears.

Arash had thought his interrogations were over. He was obviously mistaken. He walked hesitantly toward the guard who kept the door open to the feeble light of the corridor. He stood still as the guard covered his eyes with the black blindfold.

There, once again darkness and vulnerability. Once again, realizing how out of his control his life had become. Arash was not living his life anymore. He was living someone else's life: blindfolded, led from the cell to the interrogation room, holding on to a pen.

However, this time, Arash was taken not to the interrogation room, but to the courtyard. The "courtyard" was a room that been stripped of its roof and left with glaring naked iron bars in its place. And where once a week the prisoners milled about for ten minutes, filling their lungs with fresh air. The prison was close to the mountains. The same mountains whose peak Arash was once able to see from the living room window.

"Sit down," the guard ordered as he untied the blindfold.

Arash squatted on the ground. It was raining. The smell of rain blended with the bitter smell of asphalt reminded him of his childhood and the first day of school. When lost, his cheeks wet with hot tears and cool rain drops, he ran from one street to another, looking for the big iron door of his school. This was one of his most vivid childhood memories: the first day of school and not being at school.

A few moments passed. There was no sign of the guard. It was raining harder now. Arash looked around him. The more time passed, the more jittery he got. Why had they brought him here? Why was alone? Was this the end of the line? Was he living the last moments of his life without knowing it? Sitting on the wet ground, in a roof-less room, waiting for a teenager in a guard's uniform who held his life in his hands like a crumpled packet of cigarettes?

He took a deep breath. Another deep breath. As if taking deep breaths could keep one alive.

At last, the guard reappeared, holding something wrapped in blankets in his arms. He walked slowly up to Arash, while trying hard to not meet his eyes. He bent slightly forward and placed the thing down on Arash's lap.

"Here's your kid," he said, "they've called her Sepideh."

Arash was never again to feel so conscious of his own heartbeats and the rush of blood in his veins, not even when a few months later he was to be hanged from a crane along with six other men he could not see.

He pulled the blanket aside and saw two big brown eyes looking at him and the soft black hair grazing her forehead. Few drops of rain fell on her face and she blinked quickly, opening her mouth. Arash stared at her, dumbfounded. He held her, without making the slightest movement, as if he was suddenly paralyzed.

Three minutes later, the guard came and pulled her out of his embrace. Arash was led back to the cell. Trembling.

•

He stood, his feet planted on the two blackened white platforms on either side of the hole in the ground with the bodies of dead cockroaches floating in it. His back was to the door with a broken lock. The locks on all the bathroom doors were broken. It was to make it easier for the guards to break in when necessary: someone fainting, another breaking down, another killing himself. The locks were broken so that no breaking in would be needed. They could just walk in, the guards, and put an end to whatever it was they needed to put an end to.

Arash stood, straddled, and urinated when he was supposed to urinate.

He turned to leave, nauseous with the thick smell of old urine, when he saw a small wooden box on the ground. It was unusual to see a box there. Nothing from the outside world ever found its way into the prison. Not even empty abandoned wooden boxes. Arash picked it up and began examining it as if it was a piece of precious antique. His fingers grazing past the rough wooden texture, felt the head of a protruding nail. He wrapped the tips of his fingers around it and twisted it. The nail was looser than it seemed and easily came off. Arash put the nail in his pocket and left the bathroom.

Starting from the weekly ten-minute-fresh-mountain-air-time, Arash began his new project of eliminating the head of the nail by rubbing it against the cement floor. He sat there, unshakable in his pursuit, as if he could rub the whole prison away if he was persistent enough. His body gradually warming up as a few timid autumnal sunbeams reached the crown of his head through the iron bars of the naked roof.

It was Friday. The holy day of dates.

"Don't throw away your date stones," he told his cell-mates as he went around the cell, holding an empty jar of powdered milk in his hand, "Put them in here."

Hands reached out. Fingers let go. Date stones clapped down into the jar. The jar was now half full. At bathroom time, he filled it with water.

Several times a day for the next week, Arash would hold a stiff neck over the jar and test the stones with the tips of his fingers, as if they were cocoons he was waiting for to turn into butterflies. They had to be soft to be drilled. Soft like damp branches, like the soul on the verge of slipping away.

When they were soft enough, he stuck the now headless nail into the semi-melted handle of his tooth brush—he had melted it with a match fire before Ehsan lit up his last cigarette of the week—and drilled tiny holes into the thick side of the stones.

Drilling. He felt the throttling fingers of the cramped cell begin to loosen up around his neck. The nerves on his forehead to unwind. The tight muscles of his shoulders to relax.

Arash was making something now. His life had a shape and a size.

In every date stone he held between his fingers, he felt the haunting sense of vertigo begin to diminish. As if the earth was finding its old stability again. In every date stone he held between his fingers, he felt to be one step away from the edge of the world. The precipice. Where the earth came undone under his feet.

Some of the date stones broke. In others, the hole was not straight enough. Without showing the slightest sign of impatience, Arash took out another stone from the jar and began drilling again. One by one. Drilling. Drilling. Slowly. Lovingly. Flickers of hope, timid, self-effacing in his eyes.

Like he was being re-given life.

When all the stones were ready with a perfect little hole from one side to the other, Arash unraveled several brown threads from his own socks and those of other prisoners. He spun them around a toothpaste tube filled with hardened dough, using it as a spindle to weave the threads into each other.

Once to the left.

Once to the right.

His forehead wrinkled with concentration, his lips pressed tightly upon each other, his chin went up and down with every left and right movement of the spindle. At last, when the string was thick enough, he unwound it, throwing the toothpaste tube to the side. He shivered with excitement, like a marathon runner who could see the finish line for the first time.

He began stringing the date stones. Every stone danced a little dance as it glided down the string. The last stone slipped down with a slight tremble. A warm breath slipped out through his half-open lips.

It was almost dinner time when Arash tied the finishing knots at both ends of the string. Outside the wind groaned as it blew in between the naked bars of the courtyard. Arash laid the bracelet of date stones carefully on the carpet. He had injected his entire urge for life in it, and now felt he had no strength left. He heard the doors of adjacent cells opening. The guards were getting closer. He quickly picked up the bracelet and hid it in his pocket.

The door of the cell squeaked open. A bucket of rice went from hand to hand until it reached Arash. He was in charge of dividing dinner tonight.

Starting from that night, Arash waited weeks before he could pass the bracelet on to his daughter. Weeks of impatience, of solitude, of despair. Weeks when he constantly carried the bracelet, hidden in his pocket. Like an endearing memory upon which his entire being depended. An endearing memory that the guards were sure to tear into pieces if they had discovered it.

At last, he was granted a visit. This time, the visiting room was a long, narrow hall with glass screens marking the frontier where one life stopped and another began.

Maryam sat in front of him, behind the glass, holding Sepideh on her lap. Sepideh had already grown. She bore little resemblance to the child Arash had held in his arms on that rainy afternoon. Now, even the color of her eyes had changed. They were darker. Almost black. Like the night. Her gaze constantly fluttered around the hall, then settled on Arash's face for a few moments as if she recognized him. But as soon as Arash would begin warming up to the idea of his daughter's recognition, her eyes would begin flitting again, all around the hall, the naked hospital green walls, and the rectangular glass screen.

Smiling, Maryam picked Sepideh up and headed towards the door that led to the prisoners on the other side of the glass screens. Standing by the door was the guard whom she had seen during the first visit with Arash.

The smile vanished from Maryam's face.

Her steps took on certain heaviness. Like she had forgotten how to walk.  

The guard looked at her with a blank stare as she told him Arash's name and number, tightening her arms around Sepideh's tiny body. He nodded and grabbed Sepideh.

His hands looked surprisingly old.

Maryam tried to smile and wave to her daughter as she disappeared behind the door in the arms of the guard.

On the other side of the glass screen, Arash was waiting with his hands strong but unsteady in the air. His face twisted with bullets of emotions darting across it. The bulging vein on his forehead throbbed violently.

And Sepideh came to his arms, crossing the frontier between life and death, time and purgatory, her baby feet dangling in the air, her eyes dancing like butterflies. Arash held her so tightly that she let out a scream. Maryam laughed. And wiped a tear hanging from her new wrinkle. Sepideh struggled to get up. Arash looked around him and stealthily hid the bracelet inside Sepideh's jacket.

The guard reappeared. He took Sepideh, with her secret bracelet of date stones warm against her heart beats, back to where life awaited her.

Three weeks later, some time before dawn, rapid footfalls were heard echoing in the corridor, the door shrieked open, Arash was seized along with a few others, the blindfold once again covered shocked, confused, sleepy eyes, handcuffs were fastened around shaky wrists, bodies were dragged out, pushed left and right down the corridor, a door was unlocked, cold pre-dawn air pierced the skin, hurried incomprehensible murmurs were heard all around, hearts hammered violently, blindfolded heads constantly writhed and wriggled.

Mouths were dry.

Darkness inescapable.

Death imminent.

The last thing that was ever felt was the rough texture of the rope around the neck. Next, for just a moment time froze, and then as sudden as an avalanche, it was over.   

Bodies hanging in the air like the branches of a weeping willow. Bodies hanging in the air in all their solitude. Bodies hanging.

On the other side of the city, night struggled to stretch its thinning skin over the streets and the gray and white buildings craning their necks to the sky. A dry leaf hanging from a tree branch sailed down to the ground in a sad somersault. The tree heaved a sigh of fatigue. And a little girl, listening to her mother's soft breathing, watched the few stars still blinking, veiled behind the lace curtains like a bride.

Red had wasted himself on the pipe all night and was rummaging the fibers of the carpet for little imagined crumbs of crack, his fingers fidgeting with hope and need, while a man in the kitchen was telling his brother about a woman so perfect it made his balls tighten just thinking of her. He told his brother that if he could lasso a winged heart like hers, he'd walk a straight path the rest of his life and become the man he was intended to be. He maintained that he was a philosopher first and a poet second, that without the lift of idea, beautiful words were as stupid as daisies growing on unmade graves. His brother grunted agreement, slumped heavily against the sink, eyes wandering in and out, lower lip dripping saliva and beer. He'd heard all this before, knew its majesty and circumstance by heart.

"Lonely Tylenol, lonely Tylenol, lonely Tylenol," a bright-faced boy maybe nine was saying down the hallway for someone who might care. "Forwards and backwards, it spells the same. Lonely Tylenol," he instructed, proud scientist of words, and gave the bottle a little musical shake.

The Kitchen Philosopher was explaining how this woman had made him feel like the Jack of fucking Hearts, like King of the World, and how all he needed to be a happy man was to bring her the slightest pleasure. And he meant that with a lowercase and capital P.

Red's sister, Wanda, came into the living room and was yelling at him to get out of her house, that she didn't want that shit he was on around her son, that she'd call the goddamn police if he didn't get out the door right then and there. Red focused on her, fear on his face, stood, and walked out of the house, muttering whipped-dog whines on his shuffling way. The door clicked behind him without conviction, and Wanda waited some time before locking it. Her head shook absently, unbelieving of the blue-gray streaks of paint on the glass of the door where the painters had slopped the job they weren't paid much to do.

"That sonuvabitch," she said, back in the kitchen, pouring a too-strong, bottom-shelf gin and tonic. She sipped at her drink, swearing to never speak to her brother again.

The Kitchen Philosopher stopped talking of his lofty and unattained love, felt sympathy for aging Wanda, the crow's feet, the thickness of her waist, her job in Kroger's meat department, the poverty her life had always been. He thought he could have loved her once as well. All that unmoored heft.

"Lonely Tylenol," the boy said.

"It's time for bed now. Let mommy and her friends be."

She patted the boy on the back and watched as he walked to the far end of the hallway—where his room gaped, glowing yellow from a bedside lamp—a rattle of pills in his hand.

I was returning to my home in New Jersey from a college in northern Maine, where I had recently been a guest lecturer. On a friend's recommendation, I decided to stop off in Boston, at the Back Bay district, where they serve the finest seafood in America–or so he claimed.

Since I was alone, I shared my table with an elderly couple named Doopet (pronounced as one syllable, they said, the e being silent). They had come to visit the shrine of the founder of their church. Being a student of mythology, I found their conversation interesting, if not charming.

It seemed that their sect was one which relied rather strongly on faith healing; hence, they eschewed all forms of medicine—as well as a host of other social involvements which most Protestant denominations gladly partake of: gambling, dancing, drinking, et cetera. Once a year they made their pilgrimage, at this same time, to pay homage. Having long ago read their founder's Magnum Opus, I followed their reasoning processes easily, if somewhat astoundingly.

"Did you know," said the matronly wife, "that there is a telephone in the crypt, and that it is connected to her grave?  You can even dial her—direct!"

My first thought was to ask, Whatever for? but I smothered that impulse. Her husband continued with an elaborate description of the memorabilia strewn throughout the house where their founder was born, raised, and buried—and, as he put it, raised again. He asked me whether I believed in miracles.

"Whenever I see them happen," I exclaimed.

No doubt his hearing-aid failed to detect the cynicism in my voice, since he promptly rolled up his shirt sleeve and pointed to his left forearm. "Ten years ago last month, I lost this in a mill accident."  He paused to let my amazement simmer. "It grew back, just as you see it now, only two years ago—the day after I first visited her shrine."

"That very night, Martin," corrected the wife. "It was there the next morning!"

"Excuse me," I asked, "but were there any objective witnesses to this eight-year-loss of said forearm?  I mean, you could have worn long-sleeved shirts, and no one would've noticed." I paused, allowing their quizzical expressions to grow. "What I'm implying is that anyone could say he lost his forearm. But if he continued to wear long-sleeved shirts or coats in public, then it seems obvious that nobody would be likely to guess that your hand was no longer connected to anything.

•

There was black silence for a few moments. I took a bite of lobster. They continued to pick at their plates of scrod. Then the wife asked what my profession was.

"Why, I'm a doctor," I said, neglecting to say of philosophy.  A look of pure disgust passed between them. As they left, the wife reached into her purse and drew forth a pamphlet which she flung in my direction, as though paying an account at a store where she had been cheated. If I hadn't been wearing a sweater under my coat, I'm certain I'd have been chilled to the bone by her frigid glare.

I wasn't due home until the day after tomorrow, so I decided to visit that shrine. The pamphlet Mrs. Doopet had tossed my way promised I'd see many fascinating objets d'art there—and more. The next day I took a taxi to the premises.

The house was a 1920's imitation Victorian mansion, which Easterners proudly refer to as New England Colonial architecture. I prefer the label American Gothic. I entered and saw glass cases everywhere. Some held bibles, others letters to various notables, and one contained the very first copy of The Great Book, with her notes scribbled in the margins. Still other cases displayed crucifixes and religious pictures, with one devoted entirely to the founder's personal effects. It contained a brooch, several rings, a comb, spectacles, a hairbrush, and a small box of what appeared to be fingernail parings.

Displayed on a long wall were snapshots of persons before and after—that is, those with missing arms, legs, and fingers on the left, and on the right photos of the same people with the amputated parts fully restored. I looked at each until I saw, near the bottom row, Mr. Doopet's photos. The left one showed  the stub of his left arm, clearly visible beneath a rolled-up sleeve. The missing hand was not in sight. When no one was looking, I switched Doopet's photos around.

After a half-hour of meandering about the dreary building, I joined a line which was waiting to make phone calls to that revered madam, who lay in state, Egyptian-like, in her sarcophagus. As I queued up, I was wondering how much Ma Bell charged for a long-distance call to the Next World, when I felt a tap on the shoulder. I turned, and was confronted with an even more grotesque sight than that of Mr. Doopet's missing forearm.

The man was at least eight feet tall. He was wearing a white turban with green emeralds in a T-shape—or perhaps a cross—in its center. His robe was red velvet and floor-length, its folds trailing behind like the train of a wedding gown. That garb was cinched at the waist by a piece of rope. He was incredibly well-built and looked like a torso atop a five-foot pyramid. I stared. The Chimera itself couldn't have surprised me more. "No doubt you are wondering about my odd form," he said, with an obvious East Indian accent. "I was in an accident some years back, and am an amputee from the waist down."  He paused, allowing time for that fact to sink in. I have to say that it couldn't have sunk in deeper with the help of a pile driver. I was beyond astonishment.

•

He raised an arm. It was covered with a caftan sleeve that hung loosely down, a control box attached to his wrist. Deftly he took his other hand and touched a button. I heard a soft whirring noise, and he rolled forward. "Of course, I cannot climb stairs or move more than three miles per hour, but I manage."  I gawked.  "Your name?"  He spoke in that usual rising sing-song tone of his dialect.

"B-Bellerophon," I stammered. "And yours?"

"My name does not particularly matter. However, you may call me Half-Man."

My throat was so dry I could hardly respond. After a few more formalities, Half-Man invited me to join him for coffee in the tourist snack bar. He raised his right arm and pushed other buttons. The machine he was mounted on turned left and moved off, humming quietly. I followed, mouth open, my head buzzing louder than the sound of Half-Man's machine.

Since he could not sit, I stood with him near a window, where we sipped our beverages. Half-Man launched into a conversation about re-grown limbs, faith-healing, and a plethora of related subjects—all occultish. Though not a member of this sect, he had heard of the shrine on his many travels. He was, he said, a bit of a mystic. "Before my accident, I was apprenticed to a Sufi-Zen dervish."

I formed a mental picture of Half-Man spinning wildly to the left, robes flowing, powered by his contraption. I laughed out loud, then managed to stifle myself, covering up that rudeness by pretending to choke on my drink.

"Naturally, I had to discontinue my studies, though I intend to resume them one day."  His tone was that of a man certain all will be well—eventually. I'd met his kind many times before. He went on to explain that he hoped for rehabilitation and was here for that very reason. I wished him luck, and we re-entered the line for the 'call' to the tomb.

"And your business here—what might that be?" he asked.

"Actually," I replied, "I have many interests, but at the moment I am in the employ of a certain company which investigates otherworldly phenomena."  I was amazed at how glibly I had lied, considering the situation. The past day's events having been too much to deal with rationally, I found myself entering into the spirit of the moment—as it were—with far more than gleeful enjoyment.

"You have surely come to the right place," he replied. "I fully expect to experience amazing things myself—the spirits move restlessly about in this place."

"I hope they prove friendly," I replied.

"To be sure, to be sure—to those, that is, who are friendly towards them."  A note of warning crept into his voice. "Might, ah, your company be connected to the publishing industry?" he said, changing the subject.

"I rather doubt it," I answered.

•

"Too bad," he said, clearly disappointed. "I am one of those whom you might call a 'budding author'."  I pictured him suddenly budding—sprouting legs which grew feet, like a plant. I choked again.

"You don't say," I said. "And what kind of writing might you do?"

"Gospels," he replied, matter-of-factly.

"I can't imagine there's much demand for gospels these days," I said.

"Ah, one never knows," he answered in a mysterious voice.

Changing the topic, I said, "I marvel at how well you get around. You certainly must be applauded for perseverance in the face of your calamities."

"It is difficult," he said. "However, I do have—how do you Americans put it?—an 'ace in the hole'."

"And that might be?" I queried.

"Astral projection," he replied, with no hesitation.

"I would certainly love to see a demonstration of that," I exclaimed.

"Oh, one cannot see such an event."  I looked up and noted a most benevolent expression on his face—like a father trying to explain the Easter Bunny to his three-year-old.

"All the same," I persisted, "I would like to see it done."

The line had been moving forward, and as I turned to the front, I saw we were inside the room that housed the sarcophagus, only three visitors from the phone. Then a familiar figure lifted the receiver:  Mr. Doopet, he of the restored forearm. He saw me and I nodded. Turning quickly away, he punched nine numbers into the touch-tone pad.

Since I was now a few feet from him, I could see that he had entered 126-153-414. I asked Half-Man if he had paper and pencil so that I could jot down the number. I told him that I wished to appear to be one of the cognoscente when my turn came.

"Of course, that particular number is essentially correct," Half-Man replied, "but any combination of numbers totaling three nines is acceptable."

I nodded, and thought to myself, I should have realized that:  mystical numerology would be a part of such a cabalistic process. "No doubt you intend to, ah, petition for your missing lower body," I said.

"Yes—and no," he replied.

"But you stated earlier that is the reason you came."

"I am having doubts, the closer I come to communing with her spirit," he answered. "I am thinking that if I have my lower half restored, I may lose the effects of spiritual strengthening which have devolved from my accident. You can see how I would be loath to part with such hard-to-acquire assets."

"But think of the advantage—you could resume your studies with the dervishes."

•

"True, but perhaps my destiny lies in another direction now."

"Well," I said, "I can hardly presume to advise you on such a personal matter, but if I were you, I would only be interested in becoming physically whole once more."

"Your argument is persuasive," he replied, "but do not forget that it is the spirit which is paramount."

"Yes," I answered, "though it seems you may be overlooking an important point."

"Oh, and what might that point be?"

Feeling my most devilish, I delivered the coup de grace. "As everyone knows—according to the greatest medieval seers—the soul, or spirit, resides in the liver. Thus, I would advise you to waste no time in asking for the return of your missing parts. You do realize," I continued, thrusting the sword of Damocles deeper, "that your liver was lost the instant you became separated from your lower half."

A look of demonic horror passed across Half-Man's countenance. As if my revelation had been the goad to his purpose, Half-Man raised his right arm, threw a switch, and whirred at full speed toward the phone, knocking an old woman off her feet. He let out a howl, like a dog seized in the jaws of a puma, and rammed into Mr. Doopet, who was still on the phone. Doopet dropped the handset, staggered backwards, and fell, his restored forearm unable to support his weight. Half-Man seized the phone in mid-air and began screaming into it in a language I had never before heard.

The ensuing commotion was so great that several attendants dressed in white suits came running and attempted to subdue the raving giant. But with Half-Man towering over them, holding the phone in a death-grip, they had no success.

The place was in an uproar. I backed up safely against the wall, near where the fallen Mr. Doopet had crawled, and watched the proceedings. I burst into laughter when, as the attendants tried to gain a hold, Half-Man pressed a button and set his contraption to whirling violently, the revolving base sending the white coats flying in a tangle of arms and legs. The red robe, which they managed to tear off, revealed what looked like a dressmaker's wire frame, with Half-Man's torso attached to a metal platform. He stood there whirling like an upside-down helicopter, his upper body fully five feet off the ground, and stationary—still shouting into the telephone in  that  strange tongue.

•

Old ladies were fainting all along the queue of bodies awaiting their turn while their husbands viewed the mêlée with bulging eyes and slack jaws. Then six more attendants joined their fallen comrades, and all—forming a human battering ram—rushed Half-Man's spinning lower form. In front of them they held what appeared to be a medieval jouster's lance.

As that rod penetrated Half-Man's spinning platform, I heard a loud popping sound. Metal crunched against metal, wires snapped, and sparks shot forth. Soon smoke billowed up, and burning rubber spread its nauseous odor across the room, as the machine ground to a halt. When the smoke cleared, the men tilted Half-Man horizontally and dragged him away. He looked like a knight from the Crusades, toppled unceremoniously from his steed, unable to rise again under the weight of that armor. In truth, I was a little moved by the spectacle—but not so moved that I neglected to yell after him, "Half-Man, don't forget about your astral body!"

Walking away, I heard a voice sobbing weakly. I turned to see Mrs. Doopet bending over her husband, who was evidently in the midst of a seizure. Upon hearing my voice, he thrust a waxy-looking middle digit in my direction.

Outside, I was glad for a breath of fresh air. "Rather like an Edgar Allan Poe story," I told myself.  Since I hadn't gotten a chance to make my "call" to the crypt, I resolved to return some day and do so. On the train home, I jotted down a certain phone number before I ordered a vodka martini no olive.

Do you really want to know why La Palette left you? 

My ex-wife's wet body glistened in the late afternoon sunlight that flooded her bathroom. Lauren's guests had begun gathering around a buffet table near the swimming pool. Desirable young theater-arts majors manned bains-marie or circulated with trays of carbon-neutral canapés and glasses of Santa Barbara chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, their fixed smiles as unavoidable as point-blank RPG rounds.

It might be nothing more than a ploy, Lauren said. She knows how lonely you become.

Lauren had a glossy magazine propped open above the sink. A series of illustrations demonstrated the proper way of drying one's body after bathing. Local beauty experts felt that rubbing a towel against the flow of the sub-epidermal energy field caused premature aging of the skin. Skin was considered to have aged prematurely here if it occurred before death although there were also those among us who held that skin-failure shortly before dying was not wholly unacceptable: arrival at the departure gate followed by an abrupt acceleration down the jetway and a final flinging—face-first, mouth agape, flaccid cheeks windrowing—into the economy seating of the finality of organic processes. 

And since I never expected you to be able to give her what you couldn't give me, I'm not surprised she still makes those odd whimpering noises when she eats. 

I thought I recognized someone I knew by the pool, a minor celebrity whose career had been rejuvenated by a willingness to eat live insects on TV. I was about to ask Lauren if I might step out for a moment and say hello when I realized that although the resemblance was striking, the person was a stranger.

And why do you always try to prolong failed relationships? Have you ever asked yourself that?

Condensation coated the mirror. I could have written my name in it. Or perhaps some pithy phrase which would be appreciated later as having been evocative of a time and place now lost. Lauren wiped the mirror clear then leaned forward to examine her face.

You still see everyone you're ever known, don't you? You like to say people are important to you, and you position yourself in that unmoving way you have and say how things are getting better, how you're starting to make progress at last… There, you see? I'm becoming annoyed already. My friends are right. You really do bring out the worst in me.

My ex-wife began dabbing the towel in careful little circles against wet sections of her face, pausing occasionally to refer to the diagrams in All Mine. I apologized for annoying her. Lauren continued to observe herself in the mirror with satisfaction. She said that I had never understood the mechanisms of marriage. It was thus hardly surprising that my sense of divorce was so poorly developed. Her lovely gray eyes studied me briefly. Although it was possible I might get used to living separately from La Palette, she herself doubted it.

I picked up the damp bath towel and began drying her back. One was to work outward from the spine, following along the curve of each rib. Lauren turned to view herself in the full-length mirror, confirming that her breasts did not sag.

I glanced at the magazine. The patterns used when drying the buttocks were dauntingly complex. One began in the upper outer quadrants, working down two-thirds of the way at which point one abruptly began thrusting inward and upward, maneuvering with the towel-clad fingertips in what All Mine called a modified "lifting and tucking" motion.

And relationships evolve, Lauren said. Clinging to any stage is pointless.

I finished the upper half of one side and began the other, carefully reversing the angles of incidence. My ex-wife's skin glowed pink with heat. Every speck of hair on her body had been eradicated leaving a smooth, glossy, impermeable surface.

All life has a rhythm, Lauren said. When you find your rhythm, you have to obey it. 

There aren't any other considerations? The instructions for drying the lower portion of the gluteal quadrants—terminating inter-medially at the dorsal vent—seemed ambiguous.

There are always lots of other considerations.

I told her I didn't understand. A sudden burst of laughter erupted from her guests poolside, like the rattle of gunfire shredding palm fronds.

No. You don't. Lauren asked me to hand her the body talc. A rosy constellation of minute pimples indicated where irredentist pubic follicles had circled the wagons against the final onslaught of cosmetic depilation. You miss a great deal of what happens around you. And no, Lauren said, releasing a fragrant cloud of dust particles into the moist air as she talcked favorite parts of her body, I don't think that such a condition is actually an idiosyncratic form of self-honesty.

I trailed my ex-wife back into the master bedroom. So had she invited her?

La Palette? Lauren selected a summer frock fragile as the unfolding gossamer of a newborn dragonfly's wings. But why would I? she said and slipped into it. She knows she's always welcome here.

•

A growing number of lonely women responded to their solitude by killing, or attempting to kill, fellow motorists by forcing them into head-on collisions with freeway overpass support pillars. TV pundits wondered if such assaults weren't actually cries for help rooted in hormonal imbalance perhaps caused by the degradation of the environment.

My therapist agreed that this new trend was disturbing. Yet I knew anxiety had become a signature condition of life here. She wondered why I brought it up.

There was another one last night. I heard it on the radio driving over.

Had that added to my feelings of hopelessness?

I guess there's nothing much we can do about it.

Ms. Bismark leaned back in her heavy leather chair. The wall behind her was hung with framed diplomas and various civic awards, prominent among them a photograph of a banquet given in honor of one of her accomplishments. She was shown delivering a serious address with wide-ranging implications. An ex-President of the United States—now dead—smiled up at her with faux-avuncular geniality, his eyes on a level with her breasts.

Maybe trying to explain what's gone wrong is the problem. Maybe just recording occurrences in an organized manner is the best we can hope for.

Ms. Bismark gazed out her window at the undulating surface of the Pacific Ocean. A line of pelicans sailed above wave swells and when one flapped the others flapped. Ms. Bismark wound and unwound a lock of hair around her index finger. You're talking about yourself again, she said. Oil-drilling platforms shimmered in the offing, flare-off flames too pale to be visible other than as a slight crease in the air, a barely perceptible rictus on the horizon, a tiny shivering of death's ambition.

But what I meant is that maybe what you do is you don't even try to arrive at an answer? You just try to define the question? So that even if no progress is made, the attempt itself seems reassuring?

One of my therapist's bikinis whipped in the windy sunlight where she'd hung it out to dry, a few wispy orange strings dancing against the vast blue emptiness of the sky.

•

Once I saw La Palette walking by herself on one of our favorite beaches. She wore an immense straw hat with an attached scarf that concealed the blaze of her flaming red hair. Her eyes were shielded by sunglasses that, like all sunglasses, were much too large for her tiny face. She strolled along the water line, and as she passed, people stopped whatever they were doing and stared at her.

Sylvie La Palette was perfectly proportioned but very, very small. People agreed she was one the most beautiful women they had ever seen. The fact that she was so unusually small didn't detract from her beauty. It was only a matter of context, of adjusting one's sense of scale, of managing expectations.

La Palette spotted me and stopped. She remained motionless, the expanse of hard wet sand around her flawless little feet puckering with the escape burrows of sand crabs.

•

I'm curious about just one thing. Have you ever asked yourself what I want? Have you? Because it's not just money.

No, not just money. Besides, there seems to be enough. Although I suppose there is never really enough. And even if there were, it probably wouldn't seem like enough. No matter how much it was. So let's not talk about money.

Lauren had kept our house and our best car and all our furniture and friends. Her reasoning was that she should not be inconvenienced by our divorce since the marriage had failed due to pre-existing flaws in my character.

But what do I want? Have you asked yourself that? "Love," you might conclude, "is what Lauren wants." And in that you would be wrong in a very characteristic manner.

I suggested that neither of us had known how to ask for what we wanted.

Come up with what you want. Try me.

I pointed out how desire in the individual could be described as an indication that his or her personal isolation had been underestimated and that therefore the—

Right! Sorry I asked.

We sat in the warm twilight looking at each other in what was now Lauren's garden, the muffled roar of the city breathing around us.

There used to be bats, Lauren said wistfully. Mexican fruit bats. I wonder what ever happened to them?

•

As a child, I had been encouraged to be quiet. I was not to be rowdy, particularly when my father came home exhausted by a long day's effort at tearing a new one out of the bond market.

Ms. Bismark had removed and disassembled the carburetor on her Fat Boy and was rinsing the parts in solvent. Had I believed that my behavior resulted in my parent's separation?

I was about three or four when my parents concluded that they were ill-suited. Everything done was to be for my benefit. It was also my fault.

My therapist tugged up the bottom of her bikini then squatted to unscrew the throttle-stop spring from the throttle-stop assembly.

One of my problems was that standards appropriate for inanimate objects had been applied to me as a child.

Ms. Bismark tucked two golden wings of hair behind her ears. She had thought we'd agreed I would avoid puerile ironies. 

I looked at my feet, chastened. Nevertheless, my fundamental emotional experiences had grown out of the friendship bonds that I had formed with pieces of furniture. There may have been other children in my neighborhood. If so, I never met them. Once my mother had departed, I had no choice but to fall back on the kind of relationships I had learned were not vulnerable to betrayal. This led to unfortunate incidents. Occasionally I disgraced myself. On the first day of primary school, for example, we were told to select work partners and line up hand in hand, two by two. I chose a low wooden stool, perhaps recognizing in its mute solidity the only defense I had as yet discovered against the mute disregard of the universe.

Ms. Bismark continued to gaze up at me. The curve of dry brown hills behind her rippled in the heat rising from the coast highway. She said my distortions of childhood traumas often seemed manipulative; then using her fingertips to adjust the two triangles of mauve nylon that partially restrained her breasts, she bent to release the needle clip so that the jet needle could be removed from the throttle slide.

•

La Palette took an ice cream cone stacked precariously with three scoops of double dark chocolate-decadence fudge marble swirl and, wearing only a thin white silk wrapper, strolled the length of Rodeo Drive in the heat of the day, methodically and faultlessly consuming it.

Her photographer, a powerfully-built woman much given to a personal style of asymmetry, told her that the shots had come out even more erotic than she had hoped.

Poor little La Palette wept bitterly that night.

What's wrong, Sylvie?

Why don't you ever help me! she cried, her lower lip quivering, eyes filling with salty tears. 

I had expressed surprise on being told that her photographer had also once been her primary emotional care giver. La Palette had lived with the woman for several years, much of it spent with a lens between them. And although their parting had not been amicable, she still worked with her.

Dee-dee knows how to light me, La Palette explained, knotting her tiny fingers together. And also how to position me during shoots. Her eyes fixed me forlornly. How far from things.

•

The night La Palette left began well enough. A stylist she trusted had given her two dark red lipsticks a shade apart. They were both her, but which of the two was more so? One honed one's distinctions to the thread of a gnat's leg. La Palette also worried that a shade might exist half-way between the two, and if so, would it be better? She trusted her stylist. But she wasn't convinced that she regarded her needs as seriously as she herself did.

We drifted into our bedroom. I had been wondering whether to try to get her to eat or not but didn't quite feel the risk was worth it. La Palette had accused me of not wanting to talk about lipsticks, and I had defended myself as best I could. On TV a woman who had brutally killed an abusive stranger was shown in front of the courtroom weeping in gratitude at having all charges dropped. Look how big she is, La Palette said with a mixture of envy and revulsion. She had paused in the process of undressing, her blouse unbuttoned but still hanging off her tiny shoulders. I helped her finish what she'd begun. Can I get you anything?

La Palette's head lifted as her anger became lit. If I didn't care about what she cared about, then why did I want to be with her? Why didn't I stop bothering her?

I said I wasn't bothering her. She insisted that I was. All she'd asked was which one did I prefer and did I think the pursuit of a possible compromise shade between the two would be worth the effort that finding such a thing would require?

I took the darker of the two lipsticks and knelt before her then touched it against her left nipple, coloring in first the tip then the aureole.

I later asked Ms. Bismark if my disinterest in the question of the two lipsticks might suggested a similar, perhaps subconscious, lack of interest in the experience of La Palette herself?

My therapist glanced up from the translations of poems written in exile by T'ang politicians she was proofreading for a friend. You think?

La Palette observed me reaching for the other lipstick. She shifted her shoulders so that I could do the right nipple.

Nevertheless, mightn't honesty have been best? Wouldn't the time I had spent trying to be less negative regarding matters in which I myself had no interest increase my own sense of futility?

Regarding?

My life?

Ms. Bismark nodded, noting "wrong font" in the margin of a footnote and circling the line of Chinese characters that was in error. But my tendency was to sink into stasis, she said. I had to make every effort to act.

But wouldn't participation in the damage prolong the pain? Wouldn't approbation of the symptoms abet the disease?

You read that somewhere? My therapist looked up from her manuscript, amused. Perhaps I could think of it as a kind of "emotional placebo?"

But I was trying to clarify our situation. That would just add to the uncertainty.

Ms. Bismark riffled through the papers on her desk. She suggested that I fake it.

La Palette's neck had arched gracefully as she watched what I was doing. Late afternoon light softened the room, turned drifting particles of dust into golden specks. La Palette steadied herself by reaching forward and taking me by one ear, gripping it gently in her tiny fist. The fronds of a nearby palm tree rustled in the dry wind. She gripped my other ear then leaned forward so that she was looking down with her head resting on mine, and together we made our inspection, first one nipple then the other.

The left is best, La Palette said at last. I kept my hands on my thighs and did not touch her. The moment as it was—the scent of her body in the calm light, the slight heat from her skin, the sharper pressure of where her little pointed fingernails pressed into the back curves of my ears—would be one of my most poignant memories. Had I begun to understand how paying attention would be sufficient in itself? It seemed conceivable.

La Palette sank down, kneeling on my upper thighs with her back straight so that her face was on a level with mine. Her eyes were dilated with need. Don't you think so? she asked after another delay. Her cheekbones were high and shadowed naturally; her complexion was perfect. I agreed with her, moved by the emotions I had experienced yet also relieved that now we could move on to safer topics.

La Palette found herself in every reflection. She intuitively accepted the promise of polished surfaces. Glass, chrome, steel, still water, hard shiny plastics, stretched polypropylene sheeting—La Palette came to them all eagerly. In the mirror, her gaze would hold her own wide blue eyes with the unwavering certainty of a summer day. There was never any sense of forced concentration. Her lips were full. She pouted. Her lips parted. The tip of her tongue would tour the inner edges. Did she wonder if her lips were meant to be kissed? One never felt so. It happened to her. But it happened like a letter from a stranger, retained but unrequested. Opened but unread.

La Palette spoke with a slight lisp. Her singing voice was sweet but weak. The only time she ever lost her composure before a mirror was when she realized that the small brown mole on her chin had once again produced a single tiny golden hair.

Or is the right better? she asked. Two hours later she was gone.

•

An unfamiliar Jimmy Choo was in the hall. Its mate dangled by a strap from a doorknob. An unfamiliar Armani blouse had been tossed on the bathroom floor, and a pair of black satin pants I'd never seen before lay crumpled nearby like a sloughed skin.

Lauren stretched luxuriously, arching her back and lifting the elegant silk sheet. Why don't you have a swim or something? I'll be up in an hour or two and fix us some breakfast. 

Is she here?

I have no idea, Lauren said. Feel free to look.

I wandered back through the house. All the bedroom doors were shut. The mourning sun burned in a harsh brown smear above the back garden. It was going to be another hot, dry, windless day.

A nude man lay asleep on his stomach beside the swimming pool. His hair, his face, everything about him reminded me of myself. Trickles of sweat glistened in folds of his skin. There was no motion on the surface of pool water, and the only sound was the steady ratcheting of lawn sprinklers perfecting a lawn somewhere in the distance. The two of us were alone. His breathing came easily. Despite the fact that he was lying on concrete in the morning heat, he slept so peacefully that I decided not to wake him.

"Homer is dead, Dante is dead, Shakespeare is dead
and I'm not feeling too well myself."

          -Artemus Ward

When I died at the age of 81 it was, as the living are fond of saying, a blessing. I suffered the standard catalog of elderly aches and embarrassments: bunions, boils, a prostate the size of a pomegranate, and two replaced knees that sounded like horror movie doors when I climbed stairs. My poor brain that I nurtured all those years with the best books, the best hats and haircuts, and nearly the best champagne had begun to fail as well.

My literary career had been like a promising ship that when launched, immediately began to list to starboard. It never sank, never got towed into port. It just listed, or, more accurately, mid-listed. There was one collection of poetry called, "Wings Over the Dunes." Ouch. Then I reeled off five novels in ten years, one of which was optioned for film and actually got made. I had imagined Harrison Ford in the lead; the producers were able to secure Gary Busey. It went straight to video, or whatever they call it, so at least my friends got to see it pretty quickly. The final contribution to my oeuvre was an unfortunate collection of essays which turned into more of a whiny sort of memoir.

Back to my death, which I realize is more interesting.

I was chasing a baseball my seven year old grandson, Agamemnon (his name thanks to my hippie daughter and her bong-toting Greek husband; at least we were allowed to call him Aggie), had heaved over my head. It caromed off the pavement in front of our yard, shot right by the Elvis bust in the garden, and skidded lazily out into the street. I decided I would set an example for the boy, who was already bored by anything that didn't require at least one electrical strip, and show him a little hustle. I raced for the ball—enough creaking of the knees for a Wes Craven retrospective—and ran right in front of a shiny blue Pontiac doing 40.

And so, instead of hustle, young Aggie learned about looking both ways before entering the street. A harsh lesson for both of us, to be sure, but costlier for his Pop-Pop whose head met the pavement and shattered like a piece of Pre-Columbian pottery.

I remember catching up to the ball when suddenly I was blinded by a great white light. I figured it was just a few blood vessels giving out, but soon realized it was too metaphysical for that. Then, incredibly, I was back on my feet: swift, young fleet feet with silent well-oiled knees pounding into the deep green grass and reaching for a skidding ground ball. I stabbed it on a bad hop, whirled around and pegged a throw toward home plate as though propelled from a grenade launcher. It was a singular moment of pure athleticism from the honed body of a young man.

"Nice throw, Rookie," a voice next to me said. "Way to hustle."

Despite my confusion, I looked over and nodded my thanks—reflex baseball courtesy. It must have been the end of the inning because we were both running toward a dugout. There was something familiar about this man but that mystery paled in comparison to the basic question of where I was. I ran into the dugout and sat at the far end of the bench, hoping that an enforced calm might give me my bearings. My legs rippled with strength and energy beneath the bright uniform and my hands, minced in a fist on either knee, were rid of their blotchy spots. I felt 19 again.

Then a man sauntered over to me. He was older than anyone else in the dugout and had a refined and important walk, as though on his way to collect a pre-approved loan. The bald pate, the beard, the fine nose and piercing eyes; that frilly collar around his neck. He spoke to me in a soft but sturdy voice.

"Good throw, Rookie."

He turned and walked down the end of the bench, the other players silent as he passed them. And why not?  Hadn't William Shakespeare just walked by? What are you going to say to him, for God's sake? Nice plays yourself? I turned, hoping for a sign from another player, but instead got shoved out of the dugout.

I stumbled to the on-deck circle and picked up a bat. Our guy at the plate popped out to the shortstop, and in the blink of an eye and the flash of a blue Pontiac, I'd gone from chasing down an errant throw from my grandson, to digging into the batter's box with two outs and facing the pitcher, a tall wiry man with glasses thicker than ice cubes who was, unmistakably, James Joyce.

I stepped out of the batter's box in shock. The umpire gave a time out signal, then hollered, "Time! Interim! Interruption! Intermittence! Pause! Break!"

The catcher sighed. "I hate when Roget umpires the game. It always takes twice as long."

I stared at the catcher. Ordinarily I would have been astonished having Roget call time for me, but I was too mesmerized staring through the grates of the catcher's mask into the fierce eyes of Ernest Hemingway.

"You're a first draft and the first draft of anything is shit," he said to me, "Stand in there. They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him."

I was clueless what the hell he was talking about, but had more pressing matters at hand. Joyce wound up and threw the ball. It looked like a small white pea zipping toward me, then it pretzel'd in mid air and landed—THWOK! —into Hemingway's mitt.

"Strike!" Roget bellowed, "In there! Acceptable! Adequate! Within the parameters!"

"It looked like a ball to me," I complained meekly.

Hemingway's eyes blazed through the mask. "It was a clean ball, a good ball," he said. "He knew when he threw it that it was true and right and meant to be a strike."

Joyce was jawing at me from the mound as well. "Twas a noble curve; nobly, curvedly, wobbly, thrown, curving past your bat, that still bat, that splintery, woodly, straightly bat," he said.

I dug in again. This time the ball sailed over my head by twenty feet.

"Ball! Deficient! No good! Bogus!"

On the next pitch, I began to swing practically before it left Joyce's hand. I made contact, but the pitch was so quick, so cruel, all I got out of it was a limp foul ball.

Then one of the outfielders started razzing me. "Nah-nah, no bat-hur, no bat-uhr," he squeaked. It was little Marcel Proust chirping from the outfield. He bunched his tiny fist and plunked it weakly into the pocket of his glove, then began coughing.

Joyce kicked his long thin leg high and brought the ball down on me with a fearful velocity. It started as a grain of sand, then grew like an approaching dart headed for my skull, which I vaguely remembered had already been run over by a Pontiac.

I stepped back and stuck my bat over the plate. The ball jumped listlessly off the end and zig-zagged toward William Faulkner at second base. "Ahh, your sweet muddy drawers," he cursed, sprinting for the trickling grounder.

I was legging it for first as Faulkner danced toward the ball and plucked it out of the dirt with his bare hand. The bag was in my line of vision now, looming white and safe. I saw first baseman Herman Melville go into his stretch, leaning his body out to snare the ball. My right foot was a nanosecond away from contact. The ball rocketed into Melville's glove as my foot exploded onto the bag.

"Out" the first base umpire croaked, a strange and strangled sound. It was Truman Capote, with his thumb jerked into the air. "Go on! I said you were out! Shoo!"

Melville came over and got in my face, his deep voice rumbling, "That was no tie, Pilgrim. Thou were out by a league," he said, like he was impersonating Gregory Peck.

Well, who's going to argue with Melville unless it's maybe Hawthorne, but he was busy celebrating over at third base. I headed back to the bench where Scott Fitzgerald patted me on the backside.

"The hitters are different from you and me," he said.

And then the game was over. Evidently I had made the last out. There was some milling around afterward—a couple of beers, a few jokes—but everyone seemed preoccupied. Hemingway disappeared right away, with Tolstoy and Chekov not far behind. Gertrude Stein winked at me and said, "A rookie is a rookie is a rookie."   

Samuel Johnson joined us. Then Gustave Flaubert showed Mark Twain this neat card trick. I looked around and saw other groups beginning to disperse. Albert Camus and Katherine Anne Porter were astride a Harley Fat Boy. Henry Miller and Vladimir Nabokov piled into Jack Kerouac's car along with Eddie Poe who had a creepy black bird digging into his shoulder. They all drove away with Guy De Maupassant hanging on the running board, his red scarf flapping in the breeze.

Soon I was standing there alone when a blue Pontiac drove up. As you can imagine, Pontiacs made me jumpy and I lurched back a few feet.

The Driver laughed, a deep and rumbling sound that made Melville's voice seem prepubescent.

"Get in," he sayeth unto me.

I eased myself into the passenger's seat and took a tentative glance to my left.  Of course, you know I cannot describe what I saw just then because in this ballpark the Indescribable is also the Unutterable. Even Dante, whom I later came to understand can lay down a decent bunt, found that out.

I was driven to a small but pleasant one room cottage that contained a desk, a chair, a pencil, and paper. Lots and lots of paper. It reminded me of a cottage at the McDowell Colony but without any sexual tension from the oil painters.

"Ball game next Sunday," it was said unto me, "Meanwhile, work hard."

And that's what I do now. I work hard. Every Sunday I take a break and get to play ball with the masters. Most of the time I strike out or hit a weak fly ball to Proust, which is okay because everyone loves to watch him run. But you never know. Just last week I lined a base hit off Jean-Paul Sartre who later couldn't explain it.

That's about it. But I want to mention something Sam Beckett said to me one time when I got thrown out trying to steal second. "Kid," he said, "No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail again better."

Now I never actually start a piece and I never really finish; I just work it. If my writing survives failure I get to work it more. Get to work it to infinity.

Oh, the marvel of it all. The wonders of this place!  To pen couplets with Shakespeare or simply ask Einstein, "Hey, what's up, Al?" and then stand there for an hour while he gives you his answer. Courbet is working on my portrait and depending on my mood, I go over to Mozart's or Coltrane's to listen to tunes. Princess Di tries to teach me charm, Fred Astaire shows me the Samba, Euripides looks at my plays.

So this is the afterlife for writers and you can take a clue from my experience or not. But I'll tell you the truth, you have to be in awfully good shape to last here so you might want to get to work now. And then just keep grinding away. You never know when you'll be called on to pinch hit.

-for Jo-Anne

I was the first to spot the Ramskis' impressive automobile. I was in our front yard, looking through binoculars, when I fixed my sights on an approaching red Land of Lincoln license plate, attached to the longest car I had ever seen. The car—flanked with tailfins, dissolving into exotically slanted headlights—looked like something from a Soviet military parade.

I called to my parents to come out, and, as they did, the Ramskis' car rolled into our driveway and settled next to our dusty-beige 1952 Chevy coupe. After excessively joyous exchanges between my parents and their guests from Chicago, I asked Mr. Ramski what kind of car he was driving.

"You mean our spaceship?  Well ... it's about two years old—a '59 Buick Electra 225. Glacier Green—they call the paint-job."  He stood aside from the driver's door.  "Climb aboard, young man. Everything's electric—the windows, the air-conditioning, the seats, the radio tuning knobs. Try 'em out."

I slid into the huge cockpit, but when I turned to look at the back seat, I saw two identical faces: gazing impassively at me. The creatures' heads appeared too large for their squat bodies, and their faces seemed bloated, as if they were peering through a goldfish bowl. I was about to leap out from the car, when Mrs. Ramski opened the rear door and said, "Come on out girls."

"Oh, the twins," my mother said, as if they had floated down from heaven.

Mrs. Ramski said, "These are our little bookends: Irene and Eileen. They turn seven next week."

The girls stood motionless—their puffy little faces shut tight against expression—and then without any visible or audible signal, they curtsied, in unison, like vaudevillian zombies. They were four years younger than me. They gave me the creeps.

"Come on in and have a Bivo," my dad said to the Ramskis. "It's hot out here."

We had moved to Southern California when I was too young to retain any memory of the land of my birth, but out of pure necessity, I had picked up some of the Chicago lingo. When my dad said Bivo, he meant beer. The brand-name Olio translated to any kind of margarine. A refrigerator was called the icebox.

The Ramskis were taller and healthier-looking than my parents. They had thick bodies, like people in a WPA mural, and they didn't smell of cigarettes.

 "Where's your luggage?" my mother asked our visitors.

"We already checked in to the motel," said Mr. Ramski. "Oh, I almost forgot."  He fumbled in his pocket for his keys then handed them to one of the twins.  "Girls: go get the ice chest and the paper bag, please."

The girls skipped out then quickly returned, carrying—like elfin pallbearers—a dark green ice chest, topped with a large brown paper bag. Mr. Ramski set aside the bag and opened the ice chest. He pulled out something wrapped in brown butcher's paper and handed it to my father.

Mrs. Ramski said to my mother, "We loved those California oranges you'd sent us at Christmas. We thought you might like a little taste of Chicago."

My father unwrapped the paper, revealing something that looked like a coiled speckled snake.

"Polska kielbasa!"  my mother cried.

"The Real McCoy," said Mr. Ramski.

"You can't get good meat in California," my father said. He turned to me and added: "Chicago's got the best meat in the world."

"What was it Frost said?" Mr. Ramski wondered aloud.

"Sandburg," Mrs. Ramski corrected. She smiled at my mother.

"'Hog Butcher for the World'," the two women suddenly chorused, as if they had rehearsed the recitation. They giggled like school girls.

"That's it," said Mr. Ramski. He picked up the brown paper bag. "Did your parents tell you who I work for?"

"Ah . . ." I said, looking at my parents, who were returning foolish faces, as if I would somehow guess what they had forgotten to tell me.

"Mars Candy," said Mr. Ramski. "I'm the Man from Mars."  He handed me the bag, which was filled with M&Ms and MARS BARS.

"Gee-whiz!" I said.

•

After a round of Bivos and lemonades, the adult conversation drifted under the gravitational influence of reminiscence: the trading of then-and-now comparisons of old high school chums and the sad fates of disappearing landmarks and other irreplacables. Having been assigned the traditional role of visible silence, I focused my attention on the twins, who were snooping around our house like Siamese cat-burglars.

"They're just looking for a piano, dear," Mrs. Ramski said to me, as if she had been reading my mind.

My father invited Mr. Ramski out to the backyard to see his barbecue and to keep him company while he started the charcoals. I would have normally accompanied the men-folk, but with the twins out of my field of vision, I became concerned for the safety of my model collection. I was, in fact, about to look in on my Northrop Snark (newly assembled) and The Wolfman (in progress), when the tortured strains of "Heart and Soul" came dribbling from the piano in our den. My models were safe, for now.

•

At five o'clock my father started the hamburgers, and all of us, except the twins, went out on the patio. Our patio's covering was decorated with the standard residue from South Pacific: the drooping fishnet filled with glass floats, starfish, and conch and abalone shells. Those of us on the patio ate hors d'oeuvres (potato chips, olives, and sweet pickles), while the piano in the den churned continuous and unvarying servings of "Heart and Soul."

"Another Bivo?" my father cheerfully suggested.

"No, thanks," said Mr. Ramski. "We'll wait for the hamburgers."

My parents were model hosts, so they offered no protest. But I could read disappointment in both their faces. It was, after all, the legitimate cocktail hour, and they had already compromised in serving beer instead of Highballs. They filled their uncomfortable dry spells with cigarettes.   

After supper, the twins went back inside to resume their piano treadmill and my father brought out to the patio his old Martin guitar, to play chords behind the songs the grownups wanted to sing. They all had good voices, and "Heart and Soul" only occasionally bled through the patio door.

I waited patiently for the inevitable invitation to fetch my mandolin: my official moment in the limelight, when I could be both seen and heard. When that moment came, I performed my usual instrumental travelogue: "Arrivederci Roma," segueing to "Theme from the Third Man," and rounding out, in modulation, with "Danny Boy."  I hit most of the right notes, and my stage fright only enhanced my tremolo. Between the applause and praise, however, I heard the patio door slide open and felt the presence of something behind me that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The twins started singing:

One dark night, when we were all in bed

Mrs. O'Leary lit a lantern in the shed

The cow kicked it over and winked one eye and said:

There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight.

They sang in eerily precise harmony. Then they sang it in Polish! 

"Aren't they adorable?" my mother beamed.

At around ten-thirty, the Ramskis' returned to their motel and I went to bed. My parents allowed the Ramskis' cheerful energy to remain in the house, giving me a rare sense of peace and security. But when my head hit the pillow, a phantom repetition of "Heart and Soul"—which had been drilled into my subconscious all day—kept me awake until a little past midnight. Then sometime later, out of a pattern of habit, I awoke with a start: listening for something dreadful. But there was only the ornate song of a mockingbird. It seemed miraculous: to hear a bird singing into the night.

In the morning, as prearranged, the Ramskis came to our house to drive us all to the ocean. My father, appointing himself navigator and tour guide, suggested that we first go to Corona del Mar, then travel south to Laguna—so the Ramskis could get a load of The Greeter. The seating arrangements were by gender: females in the backseat, males in the front. I had never before ridden in an air-conditioned vehicle.  Better still: my parents (self-consciously) curtailed their smoking.

When we arrived in Corona del Mar, the twins immediately set to digging in the sand, the grownups stood at the shoreline, and I went to explore the alien world of tide pools. As I was making my way to the tide pools, my mother's shouted warning not to climb on the cliffs was overheard by an approaching group of older boys. I feigned deafness to both my mother's command and the older boys' taunts, and marched on, watching my feet sink then rise from the sand.

At the tide pools, I picked up fancy snail shells and held them in my cupped palm, waiting to feel the tickly feet of hermit crabs. I put my face close to the water, and, while observing the strange life beneath the surface, recalled a familiar passage from Genesis. As I ran my fingers lightly over the horns of a sea urchin, my thoughts shifted to Word War II submarine mines. A wave broke nearby, alerting me to the presence of the twins, and I abandoned the tide pools and went to join the grownups on the shore.

When I reached the grownups, Mrs. Ramski was pointing toward the horizon.

"That's Catalina Island," my mother said.

Mr. Ramski began singing: "Twenty-six miles across the sea/ Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me ... ."

The melody had an unfortunate resemblance to an obbligato for "Heart and Soul," and sure enough, as if conjured, the twins appeared: one of them carrying what looked to be a clump of seaweed. The seaweed, however, turned out to be a half-dead octopus—its tentacles pathetically groping to crawl back to its own world. Seeing the tentacles writhing under the bizarre little girl's half-smile, I realized the main reason the twins had given me such a severe case of the Heebie-jeebies. It was because of a movie—Invaders from Mars. I had just seen it on television.  The twins reminded me of the movie's Martian leader: a supreme intelligence, whose physical appearance had evolved into the utilitarian mechanism of a large head, supported by a gumdrop body, with trident-like tentacles protruding from what should have been arm sockets. The Martian leader was encased in a glass sphere and attended by giant zombie-like goons: controlled telepathically by their fish-bowled master.

The movie was both fascinating and disturbing. I was about the same age as the main character: a boy who witnesses a flying saucer landing in a sand pit near his home. The flying saucer somehow buries itself in the sand and then swallows unwary earthlings, like the final dregs of an hourglass. The captured earthlings are then altered by controlling devices implanted in their brains, making them obedient slaves of the Martian leader. The boy's parents are among the first victims. Their personalities are radically changed by the implants—from kind and loving parents, to sullen and vicious strangers—the father even backhands the boy, for no good reason. All of the Martian encounters are accompanied by the weird music of choir vocalizations.

"Go put that octopus back where he belongs," said Mrs. Ramski. "I'm not getting into our car with an octopus."

•

Later, we drove down the coast to Laguna Beach, where the Greeter—from his celebrated corner—greeted us as he greeted every arrival: with a joyous and bellowing HELLO. Mr. Ramski, with the help of my navigating father, eventually found a parking spot, and the twins jumped quivering from the automobile, anxious to meet the Greeter.

I had been about their age when I first made contact with the Greeter. I remember having been frightened. Because in those days, there weren't any "normal" men sporting full beards and shoulder-length hair—the ones who fit that description were usually feeding from trashcans and had madness in their eyes. The Greeter had the eyes of a saint. There was no madness in him. His hair and fingernails were clean and his clothes—though somewhat out of time and place—were washed and untattered. My father, who became childlike when he saw the Greeter, had spurred me on to shake the strange fellow's hand. I remember being reluctant, trying to comprehend the confusing image before me, but after shaking his large yet gentle hand and looking deeply into his eyes, I felt as if he had imparted to me something sacred.

The twins weren't the least bit afraid of the Greeter. They ran to him and took turns shaking his hand, as if they were being reunited with one of their own kind. I was a little jealous.

That evening we all went to have supper at Belisle's—a family restaurant in Garden Grove, known for its large portions and strawberry pies. After the meal, when the bill was presented, my father and Mr. Ramski locked antlers in ritual combat over the privilege to pay. When their horns finally unlocked, it was my father who came up with the prize. I stayed with him after he had waved the rest of the party out to the parking lot. As he shuffled toward the cashier, I noticed him taking more than one furtive glance inside his wallet, as if hoping to find a secret compartment or an error in his previous count. I never knew the exact reasons, but my father worried a lot about money. Mr. Ramski must have sensed this, which was why, I believe, he opted the next day to go to Knott's Berry Farm—which at the time had free admission—instead of the costly gates of Disneyland.

Even though I would have loved to have gone to Disneyland, with its Mr. Toad and Rocket to the Moon, I was actually more intrigued by the rough-hewn and ambiguous entertainments offered at Knott's Berry Farm. Soon after entering the grounds, I stood transfixed by one of my favorite exhibits: a twelve foot volcano. I almost believed the handwritten sign, claiming the mound as the only active volcano in California. I had seen movies in which volcanoes would pop up like mushrooms, violently spewing lava, consuming everything from dinosaurs to Pompeians to sacrificial Polynesians. I had an unnatural fear of volcanoes. I also fretted considerably over the H-bomb. But my morbid curiosity wasn't focused entirely on the Knott's volcano: there was also a small automatous devil, enclosed in a glass case in front of the volcano, endlessly cranking a cog connected to the action of a single felt piano hammer—striking the mesh of a framed screen, at sluggish but regular intervals. The sound of the hammer striking was magnified greatly by a small tube amplifier, producing a low volcanic rumble, as if emanating from deep below the surface.

My father called me away from my volcanic musing, and I joined our tourist gamut of Ghost Town, standing in long lines for stagecoach and train rides; breathing the soothing odors of eucalyptus, popcorn, and horse. We also panned for gold and drank boysenberry juice. At the Penny Arcade, I watched the twins drop coins in the slot of a marvelous nickelodeon: releasing the music of a ghostly orchestra of banjos, glockenspiel, and other assorted percussion. I listened for awhile, held by the irrational thought that the twins might somehow hex the machine into playing "Heart and Soul," and then freed from that thought, moved on to my other favorite automaton: a Gypsy Fortune Teller, who after a series of head-nods and card fanning, issued from a bottom slot a little card containing a prediction of the Future I was too afraid to read.

Near the end of the day, Mr. Ramski and my father sat posing on a bench, each with his arm around a garish statue of a seated "showgirl," while Mrs. Ramski and my mother took turns snapping Kodiak Brownies. The twins, who were in solemn consultation with a real Indian Chief, ignored the photo session. We had an early supper at Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant, and this time, Mr. Ramski won the right to pick up the tab.

We ended the day at our house, with the Ramskis and my parents enjoying their waning time together (sans nightcap), and the twins hammering-out at least three dozen identical renditions of THE TUNE.

Early next morning the Ramskis returned to our house for a breakfast of scrambled eggs, potato pancakes, bacon, toast, cantaloupe, orange juice, and coffee. The twins had toast and orange juice, then scurried to the piano. After breakfast, we went out to the patio and Mr. Ramski unfurled a road map to narrate the final legs of their travels.

"We promised the girls Disneyland, so we'll go there first," said Mr. Ramski. "We won't stay the whole day, though, because I want to get to Santa Barbara before dark."

"And I want to drive through Hollywood and see some movie stars," Mrs. Ramski said.    

Mr. Ramski put his hand on my shoulder. "So what do you think, young man?  Will we get to see some real movie stars?"

I could have told them that in all my eleven years, the closest thing to a movie star I had ever seen was Little Oscar, waving from his Weiner Mobile. But I couldn't dash the hopes of such nice people.

"It's very possible," I said.

•

When the time came for the Ramskis to leave, we gathered in the driveway while the twins ran a circle race around the Buick. My mother and Mrs. Ramski alternated between tears and uncontrollable laughter. My father and Mr. Ramski did the stoic routine with handshakes and boxing stances, but their voices caught in their throats a few times. Then something strange happened. One of the twins tripped and scrapped her knee and the other twin cried. I didn't know what to make of it. The twin who was bleeding was comforting her uninjured sister.  Mrs. Ramski applied Bactine and a swath of gauze to the scrapped knee and the twins climbed in the backseat of their air-conditioned automobile. They tapped their window and smiled at me and waved. I envied them, and was ashamed for having despised them during their stay.

I felt an uneasy sadness as I watched the metal wings of the Ramski's grandiose Buick fade from view. I would miss Mr. and Mrs. Ramski and their twins. I would even begin to miss the insipid strains of "Heart and Soul."

The Ramkis had initiated a positive change in my parents' behavior, and without the Ramskis, I had my doubts whether that change would take hold. In the days following the Ramskis' departure, my doubts were given form in the ballooning silence between my parents. I would have sometimes prayed a complete rosary for silence, but this silence I feared. It was a silence charged with alcohol, disappointment, postponed anger; a prelude to an inevitable loud and frightening argument: late at night, when children should be allowed to sleep.

For my 13th birthday, my father gets me a paper route.

A Daily News delivery van backs up our driveway that first scorching day of July. The driver, hocking a loogy onto the grass, yanks open the rusted rear doors and tosses out a wire-wrapped bundle. I turn to my father. He's standing beside me in the warm shade of our porch.

"It's time," he says. "Time you made some money."

Making money is my father's fixation.

Driven to purge himself of the pain of recent widowhood, he leaves the house each morning at six, then turns his attention to his ninety-seven vending machines—an underground flock in office building basements scattered across Los Angeles. He stocks them up with chips and chocolates, soda pops and sandwiches. Come night, behind the shuttered windows of our dining room, he empties out a huge canvas sack, a cornucopia of coins spilling across the table.

"It's time you went to work," he says.

And off to work I go.

Every afternoon that hot dry July, I snip the wires off the bundled Daily News, fold the papers over into thirds, stretch on the rubber bands, then stuff them into the handlebar sacks—twenty-six to a sack.

Then off I ride to tend my flock.

•

A paper route is not an easy job. There's balance to maintain, centrifugal force to consider, cats and dogs darting out from cars. Eventually, though, every last paperboy learns to toss the News from the seat of a Schwinn. The trick is all in the elbow, to point the elbow directly toward the target, then snap the arm and pop the wrist—perfect!—right on the porch.

The toughest part of a paper route is remembering the route itself. Memorizing addresses is no easy feat, especially a list of fifty-two, particularly for someone as forgetful as me. Every afternoon, I deliver papers to run-down apartments, to deep-driveway lush-lawn homes. I even deliver to an old folks' home, where wheelchair women reach out to grab me, their long bony fingers like boiled chicken feet.

Three weeks a paperboy, I'm riding my bike up Bonnie Drive, where a moving van is parked in the driveway of a lush-lawn home. Movers manhandle boxes. Sitting on the porch in a pair of cut-off jeans is a girl my age with her chin on her knees, her freckled forearms wrapped around her shins. Her red hair spills past her shoulders. I only catch a glimpse of her as I ride by her house, but right away I know:

It's love.

All that night, I toss and turn. I think about her con­stantly. The following morning, I can barely eat breakfast. I can barely decide what clothes to wear. All I do is watch the clock. I count the minutes till half past two, till the Daily News delivery van drops another bundle. Then I'm folding papers like a high-powered press, elbows and wrists like pistons blowing steam. Once on my bike, I race through my route like a jockey on a jet, tossing the News haphazardly.

When I reach Bonnie Drive, I pause for a moment to catch my breath, to wipe the sweat from my forehead. Resuming my ride, I casually cruise up the street, where I spot the redhead out on her lawn playing catch with her bushy-haired brother, both of them barefoot in the thick green grass. Her brother is older, taller, thin as a carrot. He throws her the ball at the moment she spots me, her eyes squinting into slits. The ball buzzes by her, a smear veering past her ear, bouncing into the street.

Her brother turns and glares at me—pissed.

To save the day, I stand up tall on my bicycle pedals and, handlebars gripped, race like crazy across the asphalt, chasing down the ball as it rolls to a stop in the gutter.  I hop off the bike, let it fall to the ground, then grab the ball, cock my arm, and launch a toss toward the redhead.

It's a terrible toss.

It soars high over her head, sailing past her brother. As her brother's bushy head bounds off after it, chasing it down past the neighbor's lawn, the redhead stands there squinting at me, her baseball mitt shielding the sunlight from her eyes.  Sharing with me her empathy, her lips pucker up and mouth the word Ooops.

•

Each day that week, I ride my bike up Bonnie Drive. Each day, I cross my inky fingers, hoping for a glimpse of freckles. But the redhead never appears. Each night, I lie in bed and wonder. I wonder what her name might be, what her voice sounds like, how her teeth line up across her mouth. For the first time in months, I feel more alive than a wire snapping sparks. I whirl like a pinwheel spinning in the sun.

Then I get a call from the Daily News dispatch office:

I'm fired.

Apparently, in my rush to reach the redhead's house, I've flubbed too many tosses, missed too many porches. Some homes, I'm told, never got a paper all month. My father, thank heavens, takes the news in stride.

"Well," he says, biting his lip. "The good Lord giveth and taketh away."

•

Now without a paper route, in order to see the red­head, I'd have to saddle my bike and ride on over jobless, naked without my canvas sacks.

I look at myself in the hallway mirror.

My cheeks are flushed. My complexion's clear.

Batter up!  I tell myself.

I bike up Bonnie Drive and stop at the curb in front of the redhead's house. She's sitting on the porch in her cut-off jeans, sipping juice through a straw. We stare at each other across the lush lawn. When she starts slurping air, she puts down the glass and gets to her feet. She wipes her hands on the back of her shorts and starts walking toward me, her sandals sinking into the green.

"Hi," she says, her voice the color of cantaloupe.

"Hi," I clear my throat. "Your brother around?"

"He's in back," she points her thumb. "Watering. Where's your papers?"

I tell her I got fired, but I don't tell her why. I tell her I had only been a temporary paperboy, that I was only filling in while the real paperboy was away on vacation.

"Oh," she says.  "That's too bad."

She's not exactly as I've imagined all week. She's bonier, with long thin calves covered with freckles, with scrapes and scabs on her knees. Her eyes are smaller, brown not green, and braces line her teeth. I suddenly forget about my previous attrac­tion.  I regret having biked a half mile to see her. I feel like turning my Schwinn around and pedaling back home. But then I open my mouth and ask:

"You wanna go for a ride?"

"Okay!" she smiles, her teeth full of tinsel. "Lemme get my bike!"

She spins around and skips up the lawn, her long arms flapping like the wings of a flightless bird.  Then she stops and turns around. "Hey—What's your name?"  She pulls some strands of hair from her face.

"Terez," I tell her.

"I'm Lena," she says.

Then she spins around again and skips up the concrete drive.

II

We ride our bikes up Bonnie Drive, talking about the neighborhood. I tell her about last summer's earthquake, about the fire in Mr Osgood's garage, about Mrs MacDougal shooting down her husband on their weed-infested lawn. We ride all the way to my street, past my house, then over to the junior high where, come fall, Lena will join me in the eighth grade.

"Let's hop the fence," she says.

"Yeah?" I ask, impressed

"You can show me around."

We hide our bikes behind some bushes, then start to scale the chain-link fence. I'm almost at the top when Lena, behind me, gives my butt a squeeze.

"Ooops," she says. "Sorry."

Once on the other side, I give her the campus tour. I show her the science and the admin buildings, the student store, the boys-and-girls' gymnasium. As we come around the corner of the school cafeteria, we spot a campus custodian watering some hedges with a long green hose.

"Shhh," says Lena, grabbing my elbow, pulling me back behind the corner. "Let's not let him see us."  She pushes me up against the wall and presses herself against me, her knee against my knee, her thigh against my groin, her small breasts like eggs against my chest. My embarrassment rises between us. When her eyes drop shut and her lips lean forward, I push her aside and dart away, rushing off for the chain-link fence.

"Terez!" she shouts.

But I don't turn back. Instead, I keep running, fast as I can, then hop the fence and hop on my bike and pedal off like a coward, a coward unable to speak.

•

All that night, again, I can't sleep. I toss and turn like a paper tumbling toward a porch.  At ten a.m., the doorbell rings. I get out of bed and look through the living room window. It's Lena. She's standing in her cut-offs outside our front door, looking equally awkward, equally ashamed. I open the door, slowly, pillowhead and all.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi," she says.  "Sorry for stopping by like this, but, well, I told my mom what happened with your paper route, and, well, she wants to know if you'd like a job watering our lawn while we're gone for the next few weeks."

"Gone? You just moved in."

"My mom's gotta go back east. She's got some stuff to do. Me and my brother are gonna stay with our cousins."

"Oh."

"Yeah. So my mom asked me to ask you about the lawn."

"Oh, well, yeah," I say. "I dunno."

"She said she'd pay you. Whatever you thought was fair. So, if you want the job, just stop by before we leave at noon. We're going to my uncle's fiftieth birthday. They're having a barbeque down at the beach."

"Okay," I tell her.  "Thanks."

"Okay," she says.  "See ya."

Then she steps off the porch, picks up her bike, and pedals off without turning back.

"Who was that?" my father asks a few minutes later.

I tell him who it was and what she wanted.

"Did you tell her yes?" he asks.

"She wants me to talk to her mom," I say.

"Well," says my father. "A job's a job."

•

I pedal up Bonnie Drive, slowly, watching the neighbors in their wide-brim hats with their long green hoses, spraying wide fans of water. Eventually, I steer my bike into Lena's driveway, drop the kickstand, then walk up the red brick path and knock on Lena's front door.

Her brother answers.

"Hi—" I start to say.

Before I can introduce myself, he turns his head and shouts back into the house.

"Mom! It's Lena's boyfriend."

He then turns back and sneers at me.

"Wait here," he says, then shuts the door.

For a moment, while I'm out on the porch alone, I think about taking off. I think about getting back on my bike, pedaling away, forgetting all about their stupid job and whatever money I might make. The truth is, I don't care about the money. I'm glad I lost my paper route. I'd rather not be bothered biking out here every day and hanging out in the heat. I'd rather stay home and watch TV. Then, right as I'm ready to turn around and leave, the front door opens.

It's Lena's mom.

She stands there in a pair of flat beaded sandals, her pedicured toes painted blood-drop red. She wears loose-fitting white linen slacks, a low-cut white linen top, and a puka-shell necklace that falls just above the freckles on her chest. Her eyes are shiny chocolate drops, her teeth as clean as minty breath. Her long brown hair falls thick and full from a long straight part.

"You must be Terez," she smiles.

She invites me inside and leads me into the living room, where she motions for me to sit on the couch. She sits across the coffee table in the big leather chair, her back straight, her hands on her knees.

"I'm sorry," she says, standing up again. "Would you like something cold to drink?"

"No," I say, standing as well. "No, thank you."

"Soda? Juice?  Water?"

"No," I say, my mouth as dry as a desert. "Thanks."

Lena's mom sits down again, smoothing her white linen lap. I sit down as well, my underwear caught in the crack of my butt.

"Lena told us about your paper route, and I'm so, so sorry. But I'm pleased to hear you've agreed to water our lawn while we're away. Thank you so much. We're all very appreciative."

Of course, I haven't agreed to anything yet. But Lena's mom is so regal, her posture and poise so elegant, the tone of her voice is so soft, so gentle, I feel as if I'm bathed in light. I can hardly disappoint her. I can hardly turn her down

"That's okay," I shrug.

"Good," she beams.  "Now because it's been so hot, you'll need to water the lawn and the flowers at least once a day. It shouldn't take more than twenty minutes every morning.  Would you be able to manage that?"

"I guess," I shrug.

"It will take some grown-up responsibility, but a boy who's had a paper route must know all about responsibility."

"I guess."

"Good. Now, about your fee:  How much shall we pay you?"

My fee? I really have no idea.  I've never been paid a fee before. She said it would take only twenty minutes a day. That's easy enough. My mother, were she still alive, would've told me to do it for free, to be a good neighbor. My father, however, would insist I get paid. Fifty cents a day sounds fair:  seven dollars over two weeks. But when I open my mouth to tell her my price, "Twenty-seven dollars" slips out.

"Twenty-seven dollars?" she asks, tilting her head, raising a brow. She seems to think that's high, but she makes no counter offer. Instead, she sits and looks at me, her long slender hands folded neatly in her lap.

"How's twenty dollars?" I ask.

"Okay," she says, reaching out to shake my hand. "Twenty dollars."

When Lena's mother calls him, Lena's brother comes into the living room, then leads me out front and shows me how to turn on the sprinklers. "Let them run for a full twenty minutes. Let them soak the lawn. You got that? This is dichondra," he tells me. "It's hot out here and dichondra needs water, lots of water. You got that?"

"Yeah. I got that."

I know all about watering lawns. We got a lawn of our own at home. It's not as big as Lena's lawn, but it still needs water. My father waters it twice a day, every morning and afternoon. He lets the sprinklers run at will, flooding the  worms and weeds.  We got a lawn out back as well, but since no one sees it, my father never gives it any water. It's all brown now, scruffy as a brush.

"A waste of water is a waste of money," says my father.

"Follow me," says Lena's brother, leading me up the driveway into their backyard. He shows me the shrubs and the flower beds and the long green garden hose and how to use its nozzle. "Lay it in the flower bed—here, here, here, and here—all four spots. You got that?  Let it soak for five minutes. Each spot five minutes. You got a watch?"

I show him my watch.

"Don't fuck up," he says, sneering down his long freckled nose. "My mother loves this yard. It's why we bought the house. So don't fuck up or I swear I'll kill you. You got that?"

"I got that."

Pedaling off down the driveway, proud to be leaving with my head intact, I glance back at the house and catch a corner of curtain moving behind the big front window. I catch a fleeting glimpse of long red hair.

III

I start the following day.

I bike to the house at half past ten, then crank on the sprinklers and watch them bloom like a dozen diamond fountains. In the backyard, I lay the hose among the plump red roses, then climb into the hammock strung between the two persimmon trees.  Every five minutes, I get up and move the hose, letting the water pool, swirling in eddies like chocolate pudding in a pot on a stove. After twenty minutes, I coil the hose and crank off the sprinklers. Then I'm back on my bike pedaling home.

I follow the same routine every day—at least, I do the following day and the next day after that. But then, with the heat wave hovering above a hundred, I decide to take a day off. I stay at home and sit beside the fan, watching cartoons on TV. I do the same the following day, and the day after, and after that as the temperature keeps rising. It was hot like this last summer, too. But then I had my mom around to squeeze me glasses of lemonade or bring me chocolate brownies with ice-cold milk. We watched TV together, chased one another through the sprinklers on the lawn. We sat on the porch at night, daylight fading, moths coming out as the evening cooled.

"Terez!" my father calls from the kitchen. "Telephone!"

Another week's gone by.

"It's Max!"

Max is my friend from school. For the past couple months, ever since summer vacation started, he's been up north at his grandmother's house. His own mother sent him away, said she couldn't keep working two full jobs while also watching Max all summer. Max is a crazy kid, a single parent's nightmare—hyperactive, always in trouble. He's been arrested twice for shoplifting and once for forging his mother's name on a check. But he means no harm. He only wants to play. If Max were a dog, the whole backyard would be dug up with holes. He'd be barking all night at the moon. Mostly though, he's a north-blown wind on a hot summer day, luring me out away from the fan, into the breeze of his cool charismatic shadow.

"Surf's up!" he says.

By half past ten, we're locking our bikes on Ventura Boulevard and catching the bus to the beach. It's a fifty-minute ride over the hill to Santa Monica. On the way, Max goes over and flirts with some girls sitting in the back of the bus.  They're older than us, sixteen or seventeen, with long hair and T-shirts and faded cut-off jeans. Of course, they find Max amusing. Everyone does. They giggle and titter as he shows off, flexing his scrawny muscles. One of them squeezes his bicep and squeals, acting impressed by its size. The other one musses up Max's scruffy hair. He comes back over with a telephone number scribbled on a Juicy Fruit chewing-gum wrapper.

Once at the beach, we kick off our sneakers, strip off our shirts, then race each other barefoot across the peppery sand. Max is the first to get wet. He runs like a Labrador chasing a Frisbee and, arching his long narrow back, dives into the ocean.  Popping right up, he shakes his wet head. Pearls of water string off his hair.

I want nothing more than to be like Max.

I, too, run down the strand and dive into the surf, only more like a spaniel, tentative and slow.  Still, to demonstrate my courage, I refuse to pop up right away. Instead, I hold my breath and swim underwater, legs kicking, arms stroking me farther out from shore. When I feel the current begin to tug, I pop right up and spin around, wiping the brine from my eyes. Twenty yards away, between me and the beach, Max is shouting and waving his arms.

"Behind you!" he barks.

I turn as a wall of water collapses, as the sea snags my ankles, yanking me into the undertow. Submerged, I'm knocked around like an old tin can, bounced around like a basketball, forced to swallow salt. Flipped around like flotsam, I wash up on shore, gasping, gagging, crawling to where I collapse on the strand. 

"Terez!" I hear Max shouting.

His feet splash through the surf, slap across the strand. His knees fall into the sand by my shoulder, where I'm lying face-down on the beach, coughing.

"Dude!"  He shakes my shoulder. "You okay? Can you hear me?"  Yes, I can hear him. I hear him fine, along with the others now assembling around me, their voices abuzz with questions and concern. "Terez! Terez!"  Max rolls me over. His fingers slap my face. "Talk to me, man!  Say something."

I wish I could, but I can't say a word.

"Terez?" asks a voice in the crowd. "Is that you?"  The voice sounds familiar:  wet, sweet, refreshingly orange. I raise a wrist to shield my eyes. The sun silhouettes the shape of a girl, a girl my age, thin as a bean in a knit-green bikini. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, long red hair spilling past her shoulders. "Shouldn't you be watering our lawn?"

I am seized by an ocean of guilt. My guts tighten up like a knot under water. Before I can breathe, I'm up on my knees, racing across the sand, grabbing my shirt, snatching my shoes, rushing to catch the bus. I chew on all my fingernails the whole trip back to the valley. At least a week has gone by, maybe more, probably even two. I unlock my bike on Ventura Boulevard, speed down Sepulveda, then make a right onto Bonnie Drive. By now, I'm exhausted. I can barely push the pedals, afraid of what I might find.

I imagine all sorts of disasters:  a front lawn dry as shredded wheat, flowers stiff as cinnamon sticks. When I reach their house, their once-lush lawn has only a dozen small green spots, mostly around the twelve sprinkler heads:  twelve green oases amid a scorched, scruffy rug. I drop my bike in the driveway and crank on the sprinklers. I go out back and run the hose, letting the water swamp the flowers. 

It's no use, though: I've blown it.

Sitting helpless on the front porch steps, I watch the sprinklers sparkle, their crowns catching colors in the sun. I watch as the runoff streams down the gutter, flowing down the street toward the storm drain on the corner, then eventually out to sea.

IV

Next morning, I'm back to survey the damage. Nothing has changed. The grass is still stiff, brown as fried rice. The plants are like chopsticks stuck in the mud. The water runs for an hour, but it's water down the drain. Lena and her family are due back home tomorrow. I'm nauseous. I shut my eyes and imagine her brother punching my face with his freckled fist. Lena's going to hate me. My father will disown me. I wish that I could shrivel up like a blade of grass on their big brown lawn.

All night, I can't fall asleep. I lie in bed, sweating, twisting and turning. I can't stop thinking. I dream of newspaper headlines shaming my dead mother's name. At breakfast, I can barely eat. I butter a bagel but leave it on the sink. I put on my clothes but think of staying home. There's no point going back. They already know I failed. I don't deserve their money. But I'm afraid if I don't go, if don't go back and beg their forgiveness, they may come here and complain to my father. That would be torture I could not bear.

So I get on my bike and pedal off to face my fate.

•

As I drop my bike in their driveway, a curtain corner drops behind their big front window. Up on the porch, I ring the bell, then take a step back in case the door swings open and Lena's brother steps out swinging, raging with revenge. When the door does open, it's not Lena's brother, but Lena's mom who greets me.

"Hello, Terez," she says, smiling, her long hair falling like water.

"Hi," I manage, my throat dry as doom.

"Please come in," she says, stepping aside, inviting me into their air-conditioned foyer.  Shutting the door behind us, she motions me into the living room. "Sit down," she says. "Would you like a cold drink? It's only ten o'clock, but it must be ninety degrees already."

"Thank you, no," I tell her, hardly feeling worthy of something from their fridge. All I want is for her to do it quickly, to tell me off, to scold me, berate me for my immaturity.  I only hope she does it fast, as quick and as painless as possible. Inside my T-shirt, a tiny bead of sweat spiders down my skin.

"Sit, sit," she says, seating herself in the chair across the coffee table. I sit down on the very edge of a cushion, my back straight as a razor, shoulders leaning forward, angled toward the door.

"Well," she starts, smoothing her skirt. "I'm sure you must imagine how shocked we were when we arrived home. The yard and the plants were all brown. We couldn't believe it. We were so disappointed."

"I know, I know—" I start to say. I want to confess, to own up to my error, to take responsibility for my inappropriate actions. I want to absolve my sins. I hate the fact that I've disappointed her. I'm beset with guilt and grief. I feel as though in some strange way I've sullied my own mother's memory, as if I've broken some sacred filial bond. But before I can utter my anguished apology, Lena's mother interrupts.

"We know about the pipes," she says.

"The pipes?"  My voice cracks like an egg.

"The water pipes up and down the street. They burst underground. Of course, there was no way for you to know. One of the neighbors told us this morning. That's why the hoses and the sprinklers wouldn't work. We're so, so sorry, Terez. You must have felt terribly helpless. Please accept our apology. It wasn't your fault. It was the pipes."

"Oh," I nod. "The pipes."

"Now," she says, reaching forward for the checkbook lying shut on the coffee table.

"No, no," I tell her. "That's okay. Really."

"Nonsense," she says, uncapping a pen and writing my name on the check. "A deal's a deal, isn't it? You still looked after the yard. We've all got to keep our agreements, right?"

All I can do is shrug.

"Don't pay him!" Lena's brother shouts from the back of the house. "Don't do it!"

"Quiet, Kurt!" Lena's mother shouts back, then turns back to me, smiling. "I'm sorry, Terez. Please ignore him. Now what did we agree on?"

For a moment, I think I'm being tested, that now's the time I'm supposed to come clean, to admit that—faulty pipes aside—the fault was primarily mine. Or maybe I should slash my price, to ask for only a couple dollars, since it's clear she's determined to pay me something.

"Twenty dollars was it?" she asks.

"Mmm," I murmur, unable to speak, stunned by my good fortune.

She scribbles out the check, then signs her name and tears it from the booklet, handing it over across the coffee table. Her fingernails are perfectly trimmed, polished clear as big drops of rain. She thanks me again and, again, apologizes. "I hope you weren't too worried."

"Thanks," I say, taking the check.  

•

Once outside, I pick up my bike and start riding off, then turn for one last look at their lawn.  It's all brown. It'll never recover. They'll have to reseed or replant or whatever they do to resurrect a yard. Again, through the big front window, I see a corner of the curtain drop against the glass. A shock of red hair disappears into the air-conditioned dark. 

Pedaling home, slowly, wondering what to do with the twenty-dollar check, I'm surprised by the number of neighbors I see, most of them middle-aged men in shorts, their heads protected by wide-brimmed hats, all of them standing in the center of their yards, spraying streams of crisp cool water across their lush green lawns.

It was a town celebration, 175 years old and worth every minute of it, and here, in the closed-down site of the old movie theater, a talent show was part of the festivities. As one contestant came on stage for his attempt at 15 minutes of acceptance and glory, in a plain dark suit, baggy knees, tie too loose to be ignored, he looked odd though vaguely familiar to some people in the audience. They had trouble pinning down the identity.  His glasses, in fact, were new, though the lenses were plain glass inserts, the innovative small mustache appeared trimmed, yet the beard frowned dark and untended. But the voice was hardly new to the town not far from Detroit, a tenor with magnificent reach. The echoes may still carry in the old building shut down as a theater for more than seven years in a small city breathing hard to survive.

The arguments, small undercurrents at first, started in the middle of the audience; "It's him. I know it's him. I've heard him a hundred times. It's him, it's Andrea Tonino. Andrea Tonino. That's his song, that's Blue Light Pearling." A girl neat as verse, in blue and white, almost a uniform, kept nodding, kept affirming her identification.

The buzz began to ripple past her, the way an element of surprise moves out of the corner of a dark room.

"You're crazy," added her boyfriend, he as neat, as trim. "What the hell would Andrea Tonino be doing in Clearfield? This is the back end of the musical world. This is too far from Mo-town to be Mo-town in a daydream. Besides, this cat doesn't even look like him."

"How would you know? You've never seen him before, have you? Maybe he's in disguise." He threw his head back, saying he'd question any answer, doubting any reply.

"I saw pictures of him not more than a year ago, from his concert at New York, at Madison Square Garden. It was a sellout." Her foot was tapping coded insistence.

Another voice chimed in, "I saw those pictures in the paper, too. It looks a little like him, but why is he here in the middle of nowhere? I'd never believe it if someone told me. No reason for him to be here. No reason at all. This is the end of the world these days, if you ask me. Outside it's like dead men walking the streets with all the plants and factories closed down. But we need the music, the lyrics, the good singers. It's time something good happened for us. Nothing good happens in this town anymore."

"Maybe that's why he came here," offered another slim girl, her eyes misty, a small tattoo showing above her low-slung jeans, just above a thong line. She appeared smaller than any of the audience, yet ready to believe.

"It's gotta be him," offered another standee, standing on his toes again and again. "I've heard that song a thousand times." He was still clapping, the tears on his cheeks. "Who the hell else has a voice like that?"

"Did they say what his name was?"

"No, they didn't."

•

That's a story of a whole different order, take it from me. I've been with it since the beginning, or almost. Parts of it have been delivered to me so that I could put them back together. You've got the beginning of one part right here, now I'll go back for the rest. It ran something like this:

Because of his musical ineptness, coupled with a formidable determination to make it otherwise, Josh Bannock had lost girlfriends, pals and teammates. Even some members of the family became so distant and strange he forgot what they looked like. But on his worst day, he affirmed, he remembered where and when it all started many years before. As if in sympathetic support of his stance, none of the recollection came back musically, not with a velvet flow the way it might have come to a tenor or a baritone or a violinist or even a lonely country fiddler twanging away on a mountainside. But it came noisy, cacophonous, and punctuated with disjointed pictures, hasty images, grievous ideas ... all centered on a tall lady, scowling more often than not when she should have been sweet as candied apples, black hair tied up high in the back, a harsh totem stuck in the mud in his mind; a music teacher, of all things, a music teacher.

Suddenly wealthy in his 20^th year, gifted from an uncle whom he resembled in face, physique and temperament, Josh Bannock, free-wheeling through what others had termed a minor frustration, hired a contractor to install two identical sound-proof rooms at the house he had  inherited from that good uncle. One room seemed perfect for a second floor bedroom at the far end of a large house, personally secluded for certain, and the other, in a large attached garage, for immediate access upon arrival, as if no time was to be wasted.

The installation contractor and his son, both humming as they erected special panels, happy at their work for the most part, carried on daily disjointed conversation that fed off completion of minor tasks, a corner panel swung easily into place, a joint made as tight as possible, a ceiling tile settled overhead with quick precision. Neither one perspired at their work, which flowed with each task completion.

"What's this dude like, Dad? He sociable at all? I haven't seen much of him, not even checking the looks of the job. You'd think he'd want to know how his money gets spent, what we're up to with it. I heard downtown, though,  he's a young rich one, got this place from an uncle left it to him with a big bite of money, 'magine that for starters, huh?" The younger man looked like he wouldn't mind standing in line for the next big hit, but he shook his head in quasi-belief of good fairy visitations. They had to scratch hard to get this job. Wonder set in on him about where the next job would come from.

The father smiled when he answered, like pre-punctuation, and nodded his head as though he was about to announce a proven fact. "He's got some hang up with music, from what I picked out of the pie when we were setting the contract, but I couldn't make it out clear as I'd want. Appears pretty darn smart at some things, but its best to hold back the whole impression until at least the job is done." He paused, letting his son know he was about to divulge inside information, nodded again, and said, "Inside he's got an ungodly huge collection of singers doing their stuff on records and tapes and those new discs got so popular. I mean really good stuff and lots of it, like he's a specialist of some sort. Shelves are loaded with the stuff. And more cabinets and files you couldn't take care of in months on top of months."

He nodded again and clarified a point, "But I didn't see one instrument around the place. Not a one. No piano in a corner. No set of drums waiting drumming or a trumpet or trombone waiting to be aired out. I don't know if he's a musician or a singer or just a collector. Can't really figure him out."

The facts, though, were known to many people who were related to or friendly with Josh Bannock; he couldn't sing, couldn't hold a tune, or read a note, never mind play an instrument. Everyone said so, right down the line. But he would have none of it; he'd show them all. One way or another, he'd show them all. When he gritted his teeth, enamel could have become a tasty powder smoother than talc and his jawbone might have ached. Down inside, though, where comfort found range, a believable sense of eventual success made itself known and made him feel good.

He would find perfection, at least in a song. One song.

Things can change. At times, in a second, at other times, over a long haul.

As a teenager, crooners haunted him, then, as music appreciation began to merge with his growth, Irish tenors and alto-tenors and operatic tenors and baritones made him sick to his stomach with envy. Dreams started, and daydreams, so rich and so appealing they upset him physically, stretched his days into long agonizing adventures where he was buffeted by nothing more than his own inability to be musical in any sense. There was no rhythm, no swing in him, no sweet echo of his voice. Nothing that worked its way towards simple ability, never mind perfection.

He had been found out early on.

And with that discovery, he had been challenged, and everybody knew it. Unsung and desired notes hung in mid-throat, as if lost for all eternity, no way out for his desire, and over the years his father kept saying, "You can't carry a note in a peach basket, a coal hod or a briefcase."  Of all the males in the family his father was the only pleasant tenor who made well of Christmas and birthdays and special holidays when the clan gathered, which also made a dent in the young man's feelings.

Singing in the shower was a horrible experiment, as was singing in a cave or a cellar or a lonely barn. He tried them all, thinking solitude would give him an edge. Distance and loneliness added nothing more than frustration to his plight.

But determination remained in place, taking over his life, sweeping him up. It showed in the collection of records and tapes and then discs where great or revered or grand singers left their marks.

Songs were played endlessly, days atop days filled with ambient lyrics at all hours. In his sleep, crooners and tenors carried on the way peepers and croakers and crickets accompany darkness, riverbanks and marshes and meadows alive with endless evening glee.

On his 20^th birthday, Josh Bannock, sole inheritor of the good uncle's wealth, made a statement:  "I am leaving college where I've learned nothing valuable, to do something of equal or less value, and that's to sing a song to its perfection, no matter how long it takes me. I have lived so long with a sense of imperfection, that I will make at least one thing in my life come to perfection, this one thing, to sing a perfect song, and get the wicked witch off my back."

It had come from long wondering, of posing options and possibilities upon himself, the final question being: If a non-singer listened endlessly to a singer's recording, could he eventually, though he could not carry a tune, read music, or identify a note, be able to sing as well as the singer of the recording, even if it took years upon years of listening to the recording? Be a mimic, an aper, the final imitator. If he put his money to work, let others handle its complications, might he find perfection? He had the wherewithal and it would be worth it. Perfection, he realized, came to so few, if at all.

There! And it all came back again, the way some things never go away and hang around forever waiting to be called upon: Miss Goodenow, the music teacher who had traveled from grammar school to grammar school in the town, six schools in all for over 30 years, was front and center in his classroom. He was in the second grade at the first upheaval, the music book opened on each desk, and the tall, dark-haired, totally-British Miss Goodenow about to start the first song of the day; this was their turn for the week, and the whole class had been looking forward to singing the holiday songs she had assigned on her previous visit.

She stood six feet tall, dark hair tied in a bun at the back of her head, the same snow white blouse tucked into the same long, navy blue skirt hanging like ballroom drapes, the uniform worn all her years as teacher. You could pick her out in the stands at a ball game or down the busy aisle of a department store at Christmas time, the skirt, the blouse, the hair-do black as Satan, and the six feet of her if an inch, witch of witches.

She raised her hand, thought of what she wanted to say, stressing what was going to come out of her mouth, and said, "Everybody sing but Josh. Josh, we know, does not carry a tune very well, so we will excuse him from such responsibility, though he bears promise elsewhere, but certainly not in the field of music." She added her haughty British judge's cough of punctuation. "Harrumph, yes. Harrumph, yes."

The nail was driven deeply, again.

He gritted his teeth until the pain came, until he tasted the talc.

It wasn't the first time Miss Goodenow had come out with that same salutation at the beginning of music class. Josh Bannock, Sr., enjoying the solitary distinction for one of his brood, turned his head aside at the slight, thinking little of it other than notice; music wasn't really important if you looked at groceries, heat, clothing, and how the current financial straits made people like him pay attention to other matters. Music was a joy, a passing of one moment to the next where worries did not get carried along with each note, no baggage with a C above high C.

His mother, however, saw it in another vein and was the only one who ever complained, made a point of letting her displeasure be known, had it marked down for later use, the way evidence is catalogued before someone is charged with a crime. She kept the slight alive, brought it around on special occasions, whispered asides to a circle of friends and relatives, made sure her son knew his place in the small drama.

On the fourth day of the sound-proof installations, young Sedge said to his father, "From what I've heard he's been playing songs for months on months. Maybe longer. The mailman said so. The gardener said he's been playing the same song forever. I guess he's found one he likes better than any other song. It's Blue Light Pearling by that Italian tenor Tonino who looks like Pavarotti. Just as big, and sings just as mean. It's almost opera, I'd guess, though I can't tell the difference. He's been humming along with the record or the tape or the disc, whatever it is, for a bunch of hours already today, like he's afraid of missing something, or maybe he's memorizing the whole tune, but it's strange I haven't heard one word out of him. I guess with all his money he can do what he wants to do for his own kicks.

On stage Josh Bannock, as he finished singing Blue Light Pearling, knew it had gone perfectly. What would the old witch think of him now? He did not feel like bowing his head to the audience, but he did. This is what being on top of the world felt like.

Suddenly someone in the crowd yelled out, "Hey, I know who he is. I know who he really is. He's the rich kid, the one on the hill, the one who got all his uncle's money. That's not Andrea Tonino, that's Josh Bannock. He mouthed the whole song. Can you believe that? The damned cheat mouthed it all, faked it! He had it all taped. Can you beat that? He faked it all. Every damned word."

A teenager threw a half eaten pear at Bannock from the crowd, hitting him in the chest. An apple core whizzed by his ear. A slice of pizza, topped with cheese and tomatoes, winged smooth as a Frisbee. Another half-eaten apple, from the rear of the old theater, made it all the way to the stage and landed at his feet. Half a clutch of grapes made an ugly arc and a banana boomeranged in a perfect flight from the first row of the balcony.

It was endless, the assault, the onslaught. Josh Bannock, the imitator, on the small stage of a closed-down theater in a dark and dreary town, gathering the fruits of his labors.

Originally Published in Pleiades

Vasiliy Osipovich Sokolov rises with an "ouf" from the pier. Behind the mountains near France a summer storm is banging as if it might leap across, unpredictable as a cat, and ravage his restful moment. The lake is already churning with whitecaps across sun-stippled indigo, and slashed air shows an opaque blue before the peaks. In the east, the sun is shining but that means as much as a false smile on a woman's face.

Vasiliy bends in half with his wide, flat rear in the air and his stomach cushioning his chest like some friendly beach ball, to roll down trousers cuffs already wet from waves. A second grunt signals his straightening, after which he places each splayed foot carefully forward, gazing down because he'd once stepped on a bee made silly by the sun. Reaching the rocky shore with a sigh, he slides into his sandals for the flop back to his room.

Vasiliy inhabits an ancient hotel hidden behind overgrown train tracks rarely used, even by the local line. Tall grass and several asthmatic pines, which seem to cough and wheeze in the wind, shield this residence from any peering eyes on occasional trains. The whole Swiss Riviera is being plastered with cement boxes lined by luxury apartments, but Vasiliy keeps his room in the same dilapidated pensione that his parents had found after fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1917. Though Vasiliy was born here, his French is fruity with the pulp of Slavic distortion, and his school-taught English is broken at best. Either is rarely solicited. Tourists prefer to leave the old man—with his belt around his middle and looking very much like an ambling egg—alone.

But now, new Russians are arriving on the shores of Vasiliy's huge, croissant-shaped lake.  Vasiliy has secretly crunched into morsels of their shared tongue—his own kept from wagging these thirty years since his parents' deaths—to savor them in stealth, as if he were one of those Soviet spies he now hears are out of jobs.  These new Russians are young, and consume magnums of the best champagne in the grandest hotels. Some buy apartments not yet finished with cash.

On the porch of Vasiliy's chalet-style hotel, built into a slope above the lake, Madame Liechti is disengaging a papery nest from the eaves with a broom handle. Wasps dot the ground, appendages reeling, fighting a ferocious death from a blast of insecticide. Vasiliy steps a slow dance around them, while also keeping clear of the rotting porch section where an indented roof descends like an abscess about to burst. When he looks up again, Madame Liechti has disappeared.

The hotel offers no services except for those supplied by Madame Liechti who, despite her arthritis, changes sheets and towels once a week. She accompanies this methodical process, which seemingly involves the unhinging of certain joints and the deblocking of vertebrae, with groans that harmonize with Vasiliy's own private pains.

"Monsieur Sokolov." Vasiliy hears her stern voice as he saunters into the hall's gloom.  "I was becoming concerned about you." Since her marriage forty-three years ago, he and Madame Liechti have used only surnames.

The din of outside sunlight has deposited Vasiliy into blackness and, though he knows the foyer better than his own face (its mirrored image in capricious collapse for some time now), he remains rigid, waiting until he can sense vague forms. Madame Liechti's head must be there, among the mounted ones; and soon Vasiliy can distinguish the tusked boar bristling its neck-fur and the chamois mooning glass eyes at him—all of which transport Vasiliy for an upside-down instant back into the dusty halls of the Natural History Museum, where he'd slept away his years as archivist.

"No need for concern," Vasiliy clips. But his pleased smile betrays him. Madame Liechti's shape emerges, standing behind the reception desk. A ruckus booms in the distance and the pines gasp.

She was a child when Vasiliy was born and then a young girl. He couldn't remember when his love for her hadn't exulted him while still slicing his insides to shreds.  Even as children, their mittens locked, hiding behind snowdrifts; or crouching in tall summer grass anchored by each other's sweaty palm (and always, always, Vasiliy's parents calling, first with the stern Vasiliy Osipovich but quickly evolving into the heart-rending Vasya, which took all his force to ignore), he'd loved her. She'd allowed his kisses to romp over the rosy hills of her cheeks but never to wander into the enticing concave where her bowed lips curved like sleeping kittens. Attempts to explore each other's nether regions had always been halted by Vasiliy, who was unmanned by his awe of her.

A flash through the windows is followed by a bang, which then detonates across the mountains.  Large drops begin to splatter. Vasiliy looks at Madame Liechti, impressed.

"I hope that porch roof holds," she says, and shakes her head.

As children, they'd watched storms sweep over peaks, to descend on large-animal paws and percolate the waters under blue lightning. He notes her distant gaze, and wonders if she's remembering, too.

When Monsieur Liechti first appeared, he was an apprentice in a grand hotel by the lake, and advancing well. Vasiliy's own living as an archivist was meager and required long hours. It wasn't until the ‘60s that an inheritance of some Danish stocks bore fruit for Vasiliy, but by then she had already been Madame Liechti for ten years. Though the Liechtis rarely spoke, Vasiliy had never heard them fight; but at some point, Monsieur Liechti stopped mentioning children.

Much later—when Monsieur Liechti was carried off by a mounting storm of dyspeptic alcoholism—Vasiliy might have spoken up. But after the funeral, he elected to give the widow a year of mourning, and after that, they'd both seemed too old.  Yet not as old as they were to become. Vasiliy still shakes his head at his own foolishness. If only he'd employed his fossils as timescale, rather than his and Madame Liechti's own meager life spans. Even now and in the present gloom, Vasiliy can still perceive the blond, dryadic slip of a girl embedded like a tree's core within Madame Liechti's abundant frame. And he wonders if she discerns in him the lad he'd once been, before he'd shrunk into an egg.

"No need for concern, I'm all right," he repeats.

"So you are. I hadn't noticed." She hands him his key dangling from its cumbersome metallic ball, adding: "No letter for you today, either." And she watches while he laughs, a small grimace pasted onto the side of her smile as outside the storm hits like a train.

Vasiliy carries his constellation of regrets up to his bed and, while charting them, drifts off despite the storm. Madame Liechti is below preparing dinner for the pensione.  There are only three of them left: Vasiliy, Madame Liechti, and a German who'd arrived with a rucksack and dubious passport just after the last European war.  He eats in his room and speaks to no one. At her husband's death, Madame Liechti had sold his family's farm for development. This transaction has allowed her to keep the hotel.

By next morning, the storm has laundered the landscape. It spreads, pristine, awaiting the sun's whims as Vasiliy begins his daily stroll. Hobbling down some wooden trestles pounded a century ago into the soil, he saunters along the quay to greet the swans with their five grizzled goslings. Black coots dapple the calm waters. It's already late summer, the seasons whirling by in what's become a vortex; and Vasiliy is shaking his head over them when a splash of Russian halts him. It's not the Russian Vasiliy knows but spittled with slang—though ancient intonations still throb through it like some Slavonic chant.

"Katuisha," the cloying female voice is saying, "not so deep ... Katya, come back."

A child no more than four has resolved, against her mother's edicts, to use a cement boat-launch as a beach and is splashing down its slope into the water. From behind, Vasiliy sights the child's fat cheek lifted with joy at this provocation.

"Ekaterina, stop.  You won't have ice cream."

At that instant the child slips on some algae and bangs first her rear and then her head on the cement. Her body begins to slide into the lake.

"Bozhe moi," the woman cries, running to the water but slipping herself. Vasiliy slides out of his sandals and takes practiced duck-steps forward, grunting over his belly as he reaches into the shallows to lift the child by her upper arm.

"Look at the little carp I've caught," he says in Russian. The child begins to giggle despite her wailing. "But you are a fish?" he asks. "Aren't you?"

"Nyet," she mumbles, wriggling free. She runs howling to her mother, who catches her up while staring at Vasiliy before examining head, limbs, feet. Vasiliy has registered the woman's green eyes over sharp cheekbones, above which a blond fringe can't hide dark brows elevated into apostrophes of distress. The child is chunky, with black curls and an Asiatic slant to her wet-slate eyes. "You see?  You see?" her mother sobs once the inspection is over. Vasiliy is offered only the standard "spaseba" before the woman scurries off, her child heavy in her arms and quiet now, head on her mother's shoulder and sucking her thumb, while her slate eyes say to Vasiliy, "Good-bye, good-bye, do svidánya, gentil Monsieur," as well as asking "Who are you, that you chatter words instead of those other noises?"

Vasiliy ruminates all day over the child and her mother until that night when, in bed and half asleep, his senses blend into a dream and a sudden scent like hearing a gunshot wakes him. He snaps upright in bed, wounding his back. He'd dreamt of his mother's languid odor—white-lilac soap mingling with cologne that evolves into a pungent musk all her own—as if she were there, smoothing back his sweaty hair at naptime. The next days he scans the quay for Katya and her mother but then gives up. Only on the evening of National Day does he see them again. This time, the father is with them.

The afternoon before, Vasiliy is seized by a breathtaking inspiration, and invites Madame Liechti to accompany him for National Day to the lakeside to view the fireworks. She looks up from her ledgers with intrigued eyes before shaking her head, citing ongoing accounts, kitchen work, the late hour. So Vasiliy determines to go by himself, leaving her alone for the first time on National Day, a childish revenge. He vows to mingle with families, adopting them on the sly, and share those silently expanding spiders that have dazzled him and Madame Liechti each year from their hotel's height—their lit forms scintillating red or gold through the night sky while an unrelated "pop" arrives just as their legs vanish.

When Vasiliy reaches the main square, an unseasonable cold is descending with the sun. He hears waves crashing against the steps that drop off into the water. Madame Liechti, he knows, would have savored these waves, the cool breeze, the low but solid bank of vascular clouds tinged bloodred at their bruised edges. Less so the adolescents gathered in conspiratorial groups, or the tourists taking digital camera potshots at random. But the vendors, whose trays feature wire-whisk swords that light up when shaken, would have amused her. Also, the bumper cars and whirling chairs. Loudspeakers blare French songs and beer sales are brisk. Both chansonnettes and beer are favorites of Madame Liechti.

An explosion of Russian grabs Vasiliy's ear, and he sights Katya with her father, who has the same determined stare. They're standing on the platform of the whirling-chair ride, its hub painted with exotic birds by a primitive hand. The chairs are mere ‘L' pipes with slats, attached by chains to the hub's carousel-style top.

"She's not big enough. Listen to the man," Katya's mother shouts from below.

The father's charcoal eyes dim as he sights down at her. "She understands she has to stay still. You won't wiggle, will you, Katuisha. Vídish?"  And Katya vehemently shakes her head.

"But this ride," protests a squat man as he shows a gapped grin, man-to-man, "it is only for childs this tall. The bambina, she not so big."

"She knows what to do," says Katya's father, and places the child in the slatted seat himself, tightening across her lap the narrow strip of nylon, her only protection against the centrifugal force that would hurl her outward. Vasiliy sees a folded red bill disappear into the Italian's fist while the mother is pleading: "Katya, no squirming, just sit."

"Shut up," says the father. "You only make her want to do it more."

The chairs lift away from the platform to face outward as the revolving hub gains speed. Katya remains still, each hand clutching a chain, her grim but determined face set towards the horizon. Her mother's face tilts, dull carnival lights tingeing it green and red. When Katya sweeps over her head the first time, the mother shouts something but then Katya is gone. Katya sweeps and sweeps. When it's over, she wants to go again. Another bill is exchanged, and the squat man grins now even during the ride. Katya rides four times before throwing up.

Her father supplies cotton candy to settle her stomach. Two swords—one for each hand—are purchased, and a lime-glow luau garland is hung around her neck. Its green radiates across her face as if in parody of her recent sickness. Katya's father now lets the mother fuss over the child as much as Katya can stand.

Vasiliy finds a dry place on the steps just above waterline and saves it. Lights on the opposite shore shine clear and hard, as if the dark has been shaved away from them by razors. Distant bonfires burn like orange pinpricks elevated into the night—mountain is signaling mountain, a kind of yodeling with light. The glow of the fireworks' barge rises and dips with the waves. Vasiliy forms these impressions for Madame Liechti as though she were beside him.

As everyone drifts towards the waterfront, Katya spots Vasiliy and runs forward. She lunges both swords into his belly, and he crumples, dying in mock horror. She squats to make a fish-mouth like a carp up at him and Vasiliy straightens, laughing. As Katya settles next to him, her parents appear. Vasiliy stands for the mother.

"Katya has strong character," notes Vasiliy, after the mother explains to the father who Vasiliy is.

"Yes, she's fighter," the father says. Katya is jumping down steps, daring the waves. "This is her nature." And he glances at his wife, as if to confirm the superiority of this nature by pointing out its opposite.

"Sergei had a German grandfather," states his wife dryly.

"You see, Vasiliy Osipovich—it is Vasiliy Osipovich, isn't it?  For wives, husbands will be forever Huns. You are married?"

"No. Never, unfortunately."

A specter of a smile haunts Vasiliy's lips, as he puzzles whether his lifelong devotion to Madame Liechti could now, with age, resemble marriage.

"Ah," says Sergei to that smile, "you know what they say about marriage. That it's a fortified city—those who are in want to get out, and those who are out want to get in. Is this not so, Liza?"

Elizaveta pretends to be looking out over the waves.

"The West has put such ideas into women's heads. In Russia, women were pleased if any man made them a kid and then stayed longer than six months. Now with money, our women think that shopping and romance are inalienable rights. If they decide to be like American women and run things, we've really got to take to the hills."

Vasiliy sees Elizaveta's green eyes dull as though with smoke, but then a shrill hissing yanks everyone's gaze toward the sky.  Bombs shatter the air. The booming thuds through Vasiliy as if he were hollow. The three adults sink to the steps, watching, while Katya scurries onto her mother's knees, thumb in mouth, eyes aimed upward. Blue circles expand, to break into arcing silver streams illuminating daddy-longlegs of smoke. Red fires spark and crackle like static electricity. Katya's childish profile with its upturned nose flashes in wonder. Three-dimensional green cubes explode into being. Two ruby hearts pierced by a golden arrow materialize but dissipate more quickly than the cubes.

"Ah-hah," Sergei shouts above it all. "Thus is love compared with facts."

The finale bursts, nearly overcoming Vasiliy with glare, noise and the acrid scent of gunpowder. Katya scans the sky afterwards, her mouth working hard at her thumb.

"That was good," laughs Sergei. "I think I like Mount Roux." He lays a congenial arm around Elizaveta, who's risen still holding Katya against her shoulder, the thumb calmer now.

Vasiliy gazes upon the family before him, and his chest expands, as if all the booming has cleared it of a lifelong congestion.  "Please," he asks, "please come to my house for tea. On Sunday, can you come Sunday?  We'll sit on the porch and watch the sunset. It's another kind of fireworks," he says to tempt Katya. "Less noisy and very pretty. We'll find every color in it together."

Sergei stiffens, but Elizaveta nods her head, smiling. They fix a time to meet by the lake. Katya, still in her mother's arms, arcs her head back, allowing Vasiliy to discreetly kiss her fat red cheek just before they saunter away.

Vasiliy has four days. In the derelict cellar he locates his parents' full-bellied copper samovar—once the hub of everyone's long summer nights in the garden—and polishes it. On market day, he buys jams, country milk to make curds, cheese, smoked ham and fish.

On Sunday, the samovar shines like a throne in the overgrown garden and simmers with black tea, a fire beneath. Vasiliy is forlorn about not finding black bread (chórny khléb) until he discovers that, while he was in the kitchen, Madame Liechti has spread the table with a white cloth upon whose corners are embroidered four young girls with yellow braids, each carrying a basket and followed by a goose. Vasiliy had forgotten this tablecloth; and he searches everywhere for Madame Liechti to share what now inhabits him, its resolution to join himself to her final for all time.  But she's disappeared. He stands, panting, wondering what to do with what's inside him, when the grandfather clock in the reception hall chimes the three-quarters. He has only fifteen minutes to reach the boat-launch, where he's arranged to meet his new family. Vasiliy puffs down the battered trestle-steps, tripping once but using his hands and side not to tumble.

Nearly an hour later—hip swelling and hands scraped—Vasiliy is still waiting at the boat-launch. Water laps like some indolent animal at the launch's incline, and he's about to limp back up his hill when he sights them. Sergei is ambling behind, but Katya surges ahead on the quay. Elizaveta's face seems bloated. When she sees Vasiliy she waves, but her smile is only a ghost.

Elizaveta tries to apologize for their being late, but then Sergei arrives.

"Vasiliy Osipovich." Sergei uses the patronymic like a practical joke. "Lovely day for a tea, don't you think?  Lizavetchka, you do so like to take tea. In a garden. Don't you. Like to take tea?  In a garden?"

Elizaveta's green gaze suffuses with a yellow like old bruises. Something is dying inside her, and Vasiliy wonders in distress what can be done.

"If today is not a good day ... " he says, just as Katya runs up to hug his shin; and, with sudden determination, Vasiliy resolves to turn the day around. He takes Katya by the hand, promising to show her a stairway into the clouds.

"Raz, dva, tri ... ," he counts as they climb the trestle steps. But when they reach the ‘six' and she doesn't know any higher, Vasiliy switches to the nursery rhyme: "Pif-pof, oy oy oy, umbegáet zaichik moi," a syllable for each step, beginning again until they reach the top.

During the ascent, Sergei and Elizaveta have lingered behind.

"Must you make these scenes?" Vasiliy hears.

Elizaveta hisses something.

"You're as crazy as your mother—we don't like it but it's true. And where would your mother be now, with the hospital shut down?  And who pays for her care?  Remember this."

After that Elizaveta is quiet.

"Here we are." Vasiliy parts the high weeds to offer his hotel-chalet. Wind shimmers through the overgrown garden, and the perfect sun strikes the samovar's copper chimney.

"This is where the goose with the golden key inside its egg lives," Vasiliy explains to Katya. "You'll see the goose on the tablecloth. It's only a picture, but I think we can find the real one. Then we can rescue the princess and have her ready for the prince when he arrives."

"No," Katya says, "that's no good. The prince has to unlock the princess' tower and kill the one-who-won't-die (bessmértnyi).  Otherwise the spell won't be broken."

"Ah, you're a wise girl, Ekaterina Sergeevna."

This fairytale has survived Soviet demolition, but turning to the parents, Vasiliy perceives for the first time the scope of real destruction. Sergei is scowling, his frown slicing off his chin, while Elizaveta stares down the hill and into the lake below as if searching for a place to jump. Vasiliy glances down into Katya's eyes, which suddenly seem adult and slitted in appraisal of possible gain.

Sergei turns to the lake once he's sure that Vasiliy has understood. "Nice view you have from up here," he allows.

The afternoon drags. Vasiliy sweats horribly while tending the samovar. He forces curds, jam, cut fruit onto Elizaveta, who only circles her spoon about listlessly in each. The jam and sandwiches attract wasps. When Sergei refuses anything but tea with jam, Vasiliy realizes that he was expecting vodka. Katya demands the McDonald's and Sergei promises it to her later. When Katya runs off, her mother merely observes her disappear into the tall grass. So Vasiliy, to escape, declares that he'll watch her.

Huffing, breath short and hip sore, Vasiliy feels he's running inside an eerie bubble. He can feel himself gripping Madame Liechti's hand as she tugs him into a crouch, while his parents scour the grounds calling: "Vasya, Vasya ... ," his old eyes now brimming with adult comprehension. He finds Katya swinging on chicken wire.

"Look," she says, pointing to a neighbor's gaggle of brown geese. "Which one has the golden key?"

Her sly grin lashes up at him, flipping the scene to flatten the bucolic trees, field, farmyard into mere stage props.

"These aren't the geese," Vasiliy snaps.

Katya's eyes become wet with his betrayal; and field and farmyard resume their life.

"Perhaps the goose is hiding amongst them," Vasiliy murmurs. "There! I see her."

A white goose much like the one embroidered into Madame Liechti's tablecloth squawks, waddling towards them and wagging its tail.

"You see?  (Ponimáesh?)  Now we can tell the prince where this goose is hiding."

Vasiliy and Katya hurry back to the samovar where the thirsty prince might be waiting but instead, find Madame Liechti. She's brought a bottle of schnapps, and is chatting with Sergei in a mixture of English and German, her large form overflowing the chair's seat.

"I thought your guests might like a digestif," she says, then surveys the uneaten food. "Or perhaps an aperitif?"

For Vasiliy, who sees her against the dying day, she's not gained a moment.

"I'll leave you then," she says, and bends to lift. 

"Please stay," Vasiliy begs.

"I have dinner to prepare."

"Bitte shoen, gnädige frau." It's Sergei, his benevolent smile washing over the glass of schnapps he's extending. "Stay. Have a little drink with us." He raises his glass. "To your health."

Madame Liechti reaches for the schnapps as if towards a duty; but the broad heft of her glass betrays her pleasure. "And to your health." Their eyes meet in friendly conspiracy but then she smiles at the wife. Elizaveta presents only vague eyes.

Madame Liechti pours another shot glass for everyone. "I have potatoes to peel," she announces but doesn't move.

In the dimming light, insect susurrations mix with the alcohol to inject into Vasiliy a serum of peace. He surveys them all as though they were his. Katya, her cheeks red from running, lies on her father's lap, her thumb slowing as her lids descend. Elizaveta is extending her glass while Madame Liechti pours. The summer day lingers, as the sun sets behind tar-black mountains. Below the waters smolder, reflecting the last of the red sun as if the lake were a vat of molten metal from which those mountains might fashion weapons. Vasiliy suddenly perceives these peaks as terrible wraiths, judging him. But for what?

A sudden thought bruises Vasiliy: what if it were all his fault?  Madame Liechti's difficult marriage, his loneliness. Unborn children. What if—because of indolence and a timorous, virginal fear—he'd imprisoned them both by pretending the key was in some goose's belly instead of his own?

Someone tips the bottle into Vasiliy's crystal glass and, as it fills, the world reflects through it but on its head, peaks pointing like arrows to the infinite sky that is now flat ground. Yes, the ground is where he belongs, he thinks, the schnapps making everything clear. An upside-down duck flaps by, rowing in staccato speed, to be suddenly chased by an imp on its head curving across the sky to shoot after it. Vasiliy drinks this world down with the conviction that he deserves it.

"Sergei is such a man," Elizaveta suddenly begins in Russian. She's smiling above her glass, looking from Vasiliy to Madame Liechti and back again. "He's taking care of my mother, you know, back in Moscow, while making a scum of money. To Sergei," she shouts in English, lifting her glass and looking at him for the first time since she's arrived.

"Little Elizaveta should not have more," says Sergei.

"But I want more. Give me more or I tell them how you make your money."

Sergei rises, appearing to Vasiliy like one of the mountains, when a sudden cry halts everyone. "Get that brat away from there—off! I said."

It's Madame Liechti. She's standing then running towards Katya, who's swinging from the porch, a rotting wooden pillar her axis.

"Katya, don't," says Elizaveta. "You'll get splinters."

"Look Papa, it's just like the whirling chairs."  And Katya spins herself around with one arm, her feet lifting for an instant.

Madame Liechti grabs Katya by her free arm and jerks her away just as the sagging roof opens its maw, vomiting a mass of tiles and accumulated filth. She begins shaking Katya, jerking her about like some marionette on a string. Sergei shoves between them.

"What do you think you're about, old woman," he says.

"You'll pay for this porch, Monsieur."

"Nonsense. It was about to collapse anyway, feel lucky I don't drag you to court for negligence." He turns to Vasiliy. "Thank you for the lovely afternoon," he sneers in Russian, putting an arm around his wife and lifting Katya to his chest. All three disappear through the weeds.

"Nice friends you have," Madame Liechti spits. "I hope you've stashed their address somewhere."

Vasiliy stands mute.

"You do know where they live, don't you?"

"N-n-no, I don't know where they live." Vasiliy is weaving on his duck-feet.

"But you have their family name."

"No. Neither."

"My god, what use are you, you never were of any use. A real half-wit. And you cost more than you bring in. Well, I suppose I was always too sentimental for my own good," she says, brushing filth off her skirt. "Anyway, no matter. The municipality will have their whereabouts."  And her cubic form trundles on rolled-stocking stumps to disappear into the hotel.

Vasiliy's open mouth clamps shut. He stares at the dark hotel for a while before a movement catches his eye. An ugly brown caterpillar with spongy, ivory stipples is emerging from the debris on the porch.  Blind, it begins measuring the damage in loops until it lifts to stretch, groping for a nonexistent leaf. Vasiliy raises his foot but can't bring himself to squash it.