It was almost nine o'clock. Molly was sitting with her mother in the family room. It was an addition to the house, built when Molly was maybe seven or eight. She still remembered it vividly as her dad's big project. She could remember him studying the plans for what seemed like months, and once the work had actually begun, Molly remembered how every day he inspected what had been accomplished. Together they looked at beams and drywall. He took photographs. Molly loved the smell of lumber. Though not a handyman at all, her dad did some painting and last-minute finishing. It was just a room, carpeting and a couch and television, a sliding patio door and a fuel-efficient fireplace, but he was so proud of it. To her father, it wasn't just a room, it was an idea. He would never spell it out, but Molly understood that the idea involved bowls of popcorn and cups of hot chocolate, lounging on the couch, the Sunday newspaper. It was a place where you could wear pajamas and not worry about spills. It was where they decorated the Christmas tree and hung their stockings. It was where they watched sappy movies and baseball games together.

His own father, Molly gathered from bits and pieces over the years, was the man who wasn't there, a brief case and martini and newspaper. He had died when her dad was in high school. He never talked about him. There were no warm stories. Molly somehow understood that his own father was the man her dad didn't want to be. The family room must have contained his own idea of fatherhood.

The family room. That's what they'd always called it, but now Molly thought of it in quotation marks, the "family room." So-called family room. The two of them, Molly and her mother, didn't seem to constitute much of a family these days. Two people at Celia's would be considered an empty house, nobody home. Two people—if they were a club, they wouldn't have a quorum. If they were a team, they'd have to forfeit. 

Molly's mother had established a position on the couch. She was a woman who needed gear—equipment, accessories—in order to watch television. Herbal tea, magazines and catalogs, telephone, daily planner, hand lotion. Not to mention her purse, in size and shape exactly resembling a horse's feedbag, that big, that deep, virtually bottomless, from which she might extract almost anything: lip balm, reading glasses, cell phone, restaurant leftovers, office supplies—paper clips, post-its, a mini-stapler, you name it.

They were watching—not watching, that was way too focused—they were absorbing a cable news program, angry middle-aged men in red power ties hollering at each other from studios in different cities. One guy was making dire predictions about dirty bombs and subway smallpox, smiling a little bit with self-satisfaction, looking pretty pleased that terrorism was so good for his career. Molly was looking over her science notes, and her mother was writing something in her planner, but they were taking it in, both of them, second-hand, current-events anxiety. Molly thought about making a comment to her mother, attempting a joke—what are the ill effects of 24-hour cable news? Hasn't it been shown to cause nausea in laboratory animals? But there was something about her mother's demeanor. She had that do-not-disturb look. Molly let it pass, the urge to banter. She decided not to bother.

Her mother was busy now sorting through a big pile of what looked like store receipts, yellow and pink duplicate something-or-others. Her stuff was spread out all over the place. It filled the couch; it spilled into little satellite piles next to her on the floor. If her dad was present, Molly wondered, where would he even sit?

It had always been her mother's nature, Molly believed, to expand—to get bigger, louder, bolder, to fill up more shelves, spread out, invade new territory. Her father's personality was just the opposite. Under pressure, he contracted, hunkered down, shrank back, grew silent. Because of that, to some kind of neutral observer, the woman who came once a month to clean, say, he wouldn't have seemed all that present. You couldn't miss her mother's stuff, acres of clothes and miles of shoes, her file-folder and magazine mountains, all the decorative doodads—woodcarvings, wire sculpture thingies, baskets and vases, ceramics, framed prints—that came and went and moved around constantly, and that Molly, taking her cue from her dad, never commented on and certainly never complained about.

Her mother even smelled big: if she walked into a room, her scent lingered long afterwards. Evidence of her father's existence had always been real but more subtle. You'd have to know what you were looking for to spot the signs of him. A folded newspaper, pencil, and completed crossword puzzle. His keys hanging on a hook by the back door. A couple of cans of Coke in the back of the fridge.

And now, after just six months, Molly was afraid that little by little, bit by bit, the last traces of him were in danger of disappearing altogether. Some of her father's effects—that's what they call your stuff after you die—were gone now. They'd disappeared from the house. Molly had looked for them. She knew where they belonged, where they'd always been. She knew every nook and cranny in the house, where her mother hid presents. Molly searched on the top shelves and in the low drawers, behind the furnace. Things had gone missing. His golf clubs with their tassel covers. The grass-stained sneakers he wore when he mowed the lawn. Molly knew that her mother was responsible, but she never caught her in the act. Never saw her packing a box or dragging a bag to the curb, never saw her with tears in her eyes.

So it was a gradual, invisible but profound disappearance, like erosion. The surface of the earth being transformed. But this was worse, really—it was intentional. It was thievery. Her mother was, if not a suspect, then what the police would call "a person of interest." In this case, the only one.

Molly stood and stretched. She wandered into the kitchen and drew herself a glass of water from the tap. She looked back in on her mother—crossing something off one of her to-do lists from the looks of it, still achieving at this hour—and headed upstairs.

At the top of the stairs, she made a hard right into her parents' bedroom. It was neat in a generic sort of way, inspired, Molly assumed, by a magazine, some designer's idea of simple luxury, or luxurious simplicity. It cost a bundle to look Amish. The bed, dressers, and bedside tables were light wood and clean lines. On the bed there was an eggplant-colored quilt her mother paid a fortune for in Pennsylvania.

On her dad's side of the bed, there was no book, which was wrong. Back in November, he'd been reading a fat biography of Lincoln, and Molly was curious how far he'd gotten, but it had disappeared. His little digital alarm clock was still there, but probably not for long. It seemed somehow not right to Molly that it was still keeping time, still clicking off the minutes.

Alone in her parents' bedroom, Molly felt sneaky and weird, like a burglar or a sleepwalker. But she couldn't help herself. Now she felt drawn inexplicably to her dad's closet. She'd visited a couple of times before, when she had a moment alone in the house, just to think about him, to feel him maybe, to breathe him.

She stepped in the closet and inhaled. He was a flannel-shirt, cotton-sweater, and jeans guy. For her dad, every day basically was casual Friday.

When she was little, she used to make him take off anything made of wool, anything scratchy, so she could snuggle into his vast, warm softness. She used to slip into his big shoes and shlup around the house. He used to put a shapeless canvas hat on her head, some kind of fishing hat, his yard-work hat, and Molly would wear it happily, despite her mother's protests ("That thing is filthy!") because her dad had told her that the hat possessed magic powers. While she wore that hat, he told her, "No harm can come to you." She loved to hear him say those words.

Her dad's favorite brown corduroy jacket was still hanging in the closet. He'd had it as long as she could remember. If he needed to look semi-dressy, that's what he'd put on—for a band concert or an open house at school, for a Christmas party. Sometimes he wore it to work over jeans. Molly's mother bought him new jackets from time to time, preppie gold-buttoned blazers and tweed herringbones. He'd thank her, admire it and try it on, and then the next time he needed a jacket, he'd be wearing the brown corduroy.

Molly took it off the hanger and slipped it on. It was way too big, of course, she was swimming in it. But she pushed up the sleeves. It was probably a look that Celia could pull off. With the right attitude, baggy could be hip. If Celia wore it, it might become a fashion trend, the Next Big Thing. Molly knew that she looked exactly like a girl wearing her dad's sport coat. No matter. The lining was smooth, and Molly liked the sensation of being encased once again in her dad's bigness.

There was something stiff inside the jacket's breast pocket. Molly reached in and pulled it out—a reporter's notebook, spiral-bound, tall and thin. There was a pencil jammed into the wire. Molly flipped it open, feeling a flutter of excitement. There might be something in it from her dad: a note, a message, directions, advice, a map, something, anything. She would have been glad to find a grocery list, minutes from a boring meeting, some doodles. Seeing his handwriting would be like hearing his voice. But no. Every page was blank.

Molly took the pencil, touched it to her tongue, and held it poised over the pad expectantly, the way reporters do, waiting for a quote. She stared into the rack of his shirts and chinos. On television, reporters were fearless. They could intimidate people with questions. They threw them like knives. Reporters shouted out what was on their minds and then demanded follow-ups. They played hardball. That was the name of the game.

Mr. Williams. I'd like to ask you about that night.

She'd been thinking about it for six months, and it still didn't make sense. He was not a reckless man. He was not like one of those drug- and booze-addled middle-aged rockers who wrapped a sports car around a tree every other month. He didn't drink. He signaled his turns, and as far as Molly knew, observed the speed limit. And yet, one night in November, driving the same highway he had many, many times before, hundreds, many thousands of times, he'd lost control, crashed through a guard rail and rolled down an embankment. Obviously Molly knew less than she thought she did.

If I may. With all due respect. There's some things we're still not clear about. Isn't it true, Mr. Williams, that again and again you were known to tell your daughter to 'be careful?' Isn't it true that you would tell her this under the most ordinary circumstances? If she picked up a pair of scissors or sliced a bagel, if she was climbing a step ladder, getting on her bicycle, walking to school, lifting any object larger than a loaf of bread, isn't that what you would say? Be careful?

Downstairs, Molly could hear her mother moving around. It was a commercial break. Probably her tea was cold. Any minute, she would notice Molly was gone and investigate. Solitude was suspicious.

So let's cut to the chase. On that night in November, Mr. Williams, when you drove home, as you had many, many nights before, with your wife and daughter at home—your daughter who needed you, Mr. Williams, who needs you—were you careful? Did you take care?

"Molly? Molly?" Her mother was at the bottom of the stairs, shouting up at her. "What are you doing up there? Are you all right?"

After the first letter Doug Prince began checking every item in his mail very carefully. That envelope puzzled him the moment he saw it, small and mauve amid solicitations for gym memberships, restaurant menus, packets of discount coupons, and a delinquent dentist bill. His name and address were written in what he felt sure was a feminine hand, the "D" and the "P" much larger than the other letters, the twist of the final "e" like a slash across the paper.

Doug balanced the envelope in his palm, then brought it up to his nose and sniffed a faint perfume, or perhaps just the scent of the paper. He hesitated before opening, lifting an edge of the seal with a fingernail and pulling slowly as if it were important that he not tear it.

The sheet inside was the same color as the envelope, folded into a square. Doug placed it on a table with the apprehension that opening it would release a poison. But he sat back in the chair, the letter at arm's length, and unfolded. He found just one line written in the middle of the sheet: "Douglas, I hate you!  You deserve to suffer!" and a signature that might have been "Martha."

The words stunned him. He knew no Martha. Never in his life had he known any woman called Martha. And he couldn't think of anything he had ever done to make someone hate him. Usually, others—men and women—just ignored him.

He looked closely at the envelope. It was addressed to Douglas Prince on Sixth Street, but then he realized the number was 16 not 6. He lived at 6—had for the ten years after finding a job in the city.

Sorting through the small pile of junk mail, he discovered a flyer for a new Thai restaurant and one offer of a reduced-rate gym membership also addressed to 16. He opened the phone book and saw that he was the only Douglas Prince listed on Sixth Street, at number 6. Next, he turned on his computer to search the list of Princes in the city, he the only Douglas.

He crossed the room to gaze out to the sidewalk below, as if he might see the person he sought, a mirror image staring back up at him. The twilight was fading, lights appearing in apartment windows up and down the street. On an impulse, he changed from slippers to shoes and took a jacket from the closet. He would go to number 16.

Outside, chilled by the wind, Doug almost turned back, saying aloud, "What am I doing?"  But he couldn't make himself stop. For all his time on Sixth Street, he'd never looked closely at 16, now realized it was several stories higher than the other buildings, its stone front the only one free of grime, the front steps swept clean. It belonged in a much better neighborhood.

The door to the vestibule opened easily. Two rows of nameplates were set into marble on the left side, alphabetical. There was D. Prince at 7D. His finger paused over the buzzer, Doug saw the lens of a video camera pointing at his face and stopped. What would he have to say to a stranger who did no more than share his name? Then he thought of Martha's words, the hatred on the page. Why would he want to know a man like that? Doug returned to his apartment and locked the door, fixing the chain, something he had never done before.

The misdirected mail kept arriving. At first, Doug just wrote across the envelopes in large red letters "FORWARD TO 16 SIXTH STREET." Then he left a note for the mailman, asking him to check the address of any Douglas Prince mail very carefully. But with the carriers changing almost daily, none paid attention. Eventually, he took to saving up mail—magazines, catalogues, junk solicitations—for a week at a time and delivering the bundle to the marbled entranceway of number 16. But first class mail—bills, letters, anything that seemed personal—he forwarded immediately.

Each day Doug awaited another letter from Martha, but none came. Telling himself he couldn't send on an opened envelope, he put it in a drawer in his night table, trying to imagine what the other man could have done, what suffering he deserved, what woman had written those words.

Eventually Doug began to find garbage bags on the entranceway floor of number 6, several days of his unimportant mail tossed inside. The bills protruded from the grill of the mailbox, stuffed halfway in, the envelopes torn. Doug knew the man he thought of as Doug 16 had done it, begrudging the effort, considering him a nuisance.

He kept expecting to run into his counterpart one day, most likely in the entrance of one of their buildings, a stranger carrying a black plastic bag. But he never did. He tried to imagine Doug 16, only conjured up a picture of himself, as if a lost twin had turned up in his neighborhood.

For a time, he could not bring himself to tell people about the other man, though he had no idea why he should feel embarrassed about the coincidence. But the notion of a person called Doug Prince on the same block troubled him, the possibility that Doug was the man he should have been. He even dreamed of arriving home late one evening to find another man sitting in his chair, wearing his pajamas, crumpling Martha's letter in his hand and touching a match to it, the paper flaring and then scattered ashes.

Doug tried to make of joke of it, revealing the story to coworkers."Talk about a small world," he would laugh as he reported the situation. People in the office were amused, playing along. Laura suggested that he bring the other Doug in to share his workload. But Art said that could be a problem because they would have to split Doug's salary. At lunch Tom asked what the other man looked like. "I wouldn't know if I stepped on him," he said."Are you sure that isn't what you want to do?" Tom said. For a few weeks Doug received teasing email messages signed "The Other Doug." But then the office jokesters went on to something new.

Doug began to think about moving. Sixth Street wasn't in an affluent neighborhood, the shops in the area dreary, cluttered little holes-in-the-wall that sold food and staples. The apartments themselves were small, the rooms cramped, the ceilings low. For years he had told himself he would relocate as soon as he could afford it, but he never received a promotion and never actually got around to applying for a new job as much as he read the employment ads. He wondered what Doug 16 did for a living, why he had moved to a much more elegant building on that street. The rent must have been high, Doug 16 a much more successful man.

Soon the phone calls began. The first came from telemarketers, men and woman reading haltingly from prepared scripts, some with accents, asking if he were Mr. D. Prince. At first, he tried to explain the confusion, then, when the calls kept coming, just hung up.

One evening, it was a woman on the line. "Douglas? Is that you, Doug?" Doug immediately liked the voice—soft, musical, almost pleading. He pictured an attractive woman with gray eyes, the phone held in long, tapered fingers. And he knew she hadn't called for him. No woman spoke his name that way.

"This is Doug Prince," he said, sure his own voice would make her aware that she had the wrong man.

But it didn't. "Doug, I've been trying to reach you for so long."

"Who is this?"

"It's Martha."  She seemed hurt that he had to ask, on the edge of tears.

He almost cried out, It couldn't be. You hate Doug Prince, but instead spoke slowly. "I think you have the wrong Doug Prince. There are two of us on Sixth Street. We get each other's mail."

"Douglas, I know who you are." 

 "I'm another person. Someone else."

"Please don't lie to me."

"The Doug Prince you want is at number 16. I'm at 6."

"Doug. Please."  Now she was crying

He sat frozen until he heard only silence and whispered, "I'm sorry."  His hand trembled as he hung up.

Alone in the silent room, he wished he could have found words to speak to her. She sounded so lovely, so vulnerable. But what would he have said? What difference would that have made? He was the wrong man.

He believed she must have loved him, loved the other Doug. But why didn't she have his phone number? What kind of man would deny a woman like her?

Very late two nights later, a ringing woke Doug from his dozing. He fumbled with the receiver, dropped it on the night table, groped to find the right button. By the time he put it to his ear, the woman was cursing: "Goddamn you, Doug! Damn you, damn you, damn you!"

"Who is this?"

But the woman ignored him. "I can't take this any more. You've got to stop. You've got to leave me alone!"

"Martha? Is this Martha?" Doug said.

"Bastard!"  The woman cut him off.

It couldn't have been Martha. This woman was shrill. But perhaps it was—Martha distraught, desperate. Or it could have been a rival, outraged at the sound of Martha's name. Yes, the more he thought about it, he was sure it wasn't Martha.

Saturday morning, Doug slept late, still exhausted after nine hours, though he had spent a slow week at the office. This time when the phone rang, even before he said "Yes," he knew who it was, and she identified herself at once:  "Doug, this is Martha."

"Truly, I'm not the Doug you want," he told.

"I wish I could believe that."

"What am I supposed to look like?" he asked.

"Stop it! What is it you want me to do? Tell you how handsome you are? Your dark wavy hair. Your dark eyes."  She spat the words.

Doug shook his head. "I'm nothing like that. I'm certainly not handsome."

"Please don't do this."

"Martha, why do you hate Doug Prince?"

He could hear her gasp. "You know, you know, you know . . ."

"Martha, did you call the other night and tell him to stop?"

"That wasn't me." And she was gone.

Doug dreamt about her, imagining her tap on the door, the joy in her smile when he opened to let her in.

For the next week she did not call again, though the phone did ring several times with no one replying when he answered. "Martha?" he said to the silence, "Martha?" But there was nothing.

Doug decided what he had to do—confront the other man about her. He took to lingering in the sidewalk after his return from work, rushing home to walk up and down the block, waiting for a dark, handsome man to approach number 16. Yet it wasn't until the next Sunday morning that he discovered him, coming out of a tiny bakery dressed in a blue blazer and red tie, taking long strides, as if he were in a hurry to be somewhere.

Doug blocked his path. "Are you Doug Prince?"

The man stared at him as if he might knock him off the sidewalk with a swipe of his hand. "Who the hell are you?" 

Doug could not tell him, could not bring himself to speak his own name. Instead he said, "I have a message from Martha. She wants you to call her. Very badly."

The other Doug, Doug 16, gave out a harsh sound. "Martha? Martha hates me. She'd like to kill me."

"You're wrong. It's not like that."

Doug 16 gave him a quizzical look. "How do you know Martha?"

"I don't know her at all." Doug turned and ran around a corner to the avenue, not looking behind, unable to go back to Sixth Street, not wanting the man to see him enter number 6, to know he was the other Doug Prince.

He returned to his apartment after dark, unlocking the door as the phone rang, With a rush he picked it up, eager to tell what he had done. But it was the other one, the shouter: "You bastard!  Bastard!  Stay out of my life!"

"You're not Martha," he insisted, saying it again even after the woman was no longer on the line.

Unwilling to meet Doug 16 on the street again, Doug stayed inside as much as possible, shopping near his office, carrying the packages on the bus.

One evening, he had to work late to finish a project with Laura. "Whatever happened to your namesake?" Laura asked him during a break for coffee. "That's all over," he told her and wondered if she believed him.

On the way home, he saw in the streetlight that shone directly on number 16 the other Doug in running clothes at the top of the stone steps. Doug shrank into a shadow. Then he heard a woman call, "Doug, Doug," footsteps hurrying on the sidewalk. "Oh, Doug." It had to be Martha's voice.

Doug 16 came down the stairway, slowly, hands held out as if for protection. For a second, Doug hoped she would kill him, suddenly draw a knife and plunge it into the man's heart. Instead she fell into his arms, and his hands closed around her. Illuminated by the light, she was lovely, the Martha he had imagined. And they kissed, Martha and Doug 16, a passionate kiss so intense it made Doug shudder.

He turned away, not looking back, refusing to see more. Inside his apartment he sat in the dark, hat and coat still on, sat unmoving for hours. The next morning, he was the one to stand over the sink and burn Martha's letter, as if he were the man she hated, the man who deserved to suffer.

For several weeks mail still came for Douglas Prince at number 16. But Doug destroyed it all, tearing each one in half and half again, shoving the scraps into a garbage can. But he found nothing for him in his hallway, finally deciding to climb to the vestibule of number 16. The nameplate for D Prince was gone, just an empty space beside  7D. Eventually, all mail for the Douglas Prince at 16 stopped. Whatever came for Doug Prince at 6 he stacked unopened on a table. It did not matter. Now he was alone, the only Prince on Sixth Street.

The Jamaica subway stop in Queens was the very last stop on the F train. Michael Weitz—actually it was Dr. Michael Weitz, having only just received his doctorate in psychology from NYU three months ago, he still wasn't used to thinking of himself with that title—trudged up the steep incline that led from the subway stop on Jamaica Avenue to the somewhat shoddy mental health clinic where he had been working since acquiring his degree. The frigid February wind, flecked with icy bits of snow, stung his eyes and cheeks. He squinted with a painful grimace, trying to keep his unwieldy shoulder bag from perpetually sliding off, whilst clutching a hot Styrofoam cup of coffee which was dribbling down from under the lid and running down the back of his hand. He wished he hadn't had that last tequila shot the previous night when he went out with his buddy. At thirty-three, he was starting to feel the consequences more than he used to in years past. The intermittent throbbing of the wind accentuated the throbbing in his head. Christ, I hope my first patient doesn't show up today.  

The young Hispanic woman at the front desk buzzed him in right away, seeing from the security monitor that it was he. There were two unarmed security guards in the waiting room, who just stood around all day, greeting people in an amicable fashion and waiting to see if anything happened. It generally didn't, but being a low income area in the inner city, it was deemed necessary by the director of the institution to have such precautions. Michael admitted to himself that he was grateful for such vigilance. Some of the clientele seemed a little rough around the edges, to put it euphemistically. And since most of the therapists were white and most of the clientele were Black or Hispanic, Michael felt a bit odd about things. He wondered if there wasn't some kind of seething resentment towards all these white faces with their so called higher learning, who were supposed to be able to descend upon the ghetto and miraculously solve everyone's problems for them, before they left again for the night, back to their nice, genteel neighborhoods. But he wrote this off as mostly paranoia. Overall, most everyone he met was rather congenial towards him. And he was glad for this because although he loathed the nearly one hour commute from lower Manhattan into Jamaica, he had a sincere desire to help people. That was the primary reason he went into the field. Of course on par with this was his independence. He would eventually start a private practice, and he would be his own boss. Even at the clinic, although he had a supervisor, he was pretty much entrusted to handle things as he saw fit. And after all, when he was working, it was just him and the patient in the room. No one could intercede. It was freeing, but also gave him a sense of power. People called  him Dr. Weitz and looked to him for the answers. This fanned the flames of his ego and made him feel important. He liked the feeling of wielding his intelligence in a way that not only impressed even him sometimes but certainly seemed to impress and help his patients. That's not to say he wasn't humble about it all, but he couldn't deny he liked the feeling.

Much to his relief, his first patient did cancel. That gave him forty-five minutes to relax in his small office, while he sipped his coffee and doodled in his notebook. He was feeling quite at ease when he suddenly remembered that today he was seeing Irvin Coates. Irvin Coates was a 45 year old ex-con who had been in and out of jail his whole life. He was suffering from post-traumatic-stress-disorder over his violent past. However, as Coates had put it, "It ain't 'cuz the harm other people done me but the harm I done them." Coates was having recurrent nightmares about these events but was never willing to discuss any of the details. He had however implied that murder was involved. Michael was quite nervous around him. Although Coates always presented with a placid demeanor, he perpetually hid behind sunglasses and gave the impression of having a very short fuse. Whenever any details about his horrors came up, which Michael knew were necessary to treatment, Coates would abruptly end the conversation and say he was done for the night. The average session therefore only lasted for twenty minutes at most. Michael always felt relieved when Coates left. The therapy rooms were so small that one practically knocked knees with the patient. It was only by knowing that each room had a panic button, like a doorbell under the desk, which when set off, notified security immediately which room to run to, that Michael was able to feel at ease with Coates in the room. What made the situation all the more trying was that he knew the only reason Coates was coming in at all was because he had to in order to be eligible for disability. He had no interest in therapy whatsoever. He just wanted the money. Michael resented that his time and his anxiety level were being exploited by a guy who wasn't even interested in his services in the first place.

As he brooded over all of this, the time had flown, and the reception desk was calling to tell him that Richard Lavelle was here to see him. He really liked Lavelle, a shy, twenty year old kid, who lived with his single mother and suffered from panic attacks with agoraphobia. There was a time when he couldn't even leave the apartment at all, but the medication had really helped with that issue. At least he always made it to therapy with astounding punctuality, often showing up sometimes an hour early because he was afraid he'd miss his session. Richard was still working to try to get his GED, but despite his educational delay, he was highly intelligent. He was addicted to video games and went on tireless disquisitions about them, but he also read philosophy and could discuss Zen koans. Moreover, he could play Bach or Stravinsky by ear on the piano. He couldn't be professional, but his facility with music was quite impressive.

Michael thought he seemed mentally sound for the most part, and if his anxiety could be quelled and his confidence built, he might have a decent shot at a life of his own. Richard came into Michael's office with his regular somewhat tremulous zeal. He had told Michael that he really liked seeing him every week, and that he was one of the only people next to his mother with whom he could converse with any comfort. The session began in its perfunctory manner, with Michael rehashing much of the same about video games, his trouble with the math part of the GED exam and his apprehensions about going to a local college. Then, out of nowhere it seemed, things turned very strange. He leaned very close to Michael's face and told him that he finally felt it was time for him to reveal his big secret. He promised that this secret would unlock the door to the root of all his problems and enlighten Michael as to what was really going on with him. Richard had never been this somber and intimate before.

"You see Dr. Weitz," he said, his countenance transforming from its usual wide eyed enthusiasm to one of stillness and gravity, "It all began when I was a little boy. Maybe nine or ten. I would get these terrible headaches suddenly, like flashes of light in my head, and then a kind of panic would come over me. I didn't know what was going on. It was like something had come over me. Something I couldn't escape. And there was like this surge of electricity in my body pulsing into my head, and I would hide under my bed until it passed. But one time, I don't know why, when my mother was sleeping and this was happening, I went to the bathroom. And I was looking at the vanity mirror. My eyes looked weird. Just really weird. And something told me to open the vanity. And I did."  He stared at Michael with inscrutable eyes.

"You opened the vanity and what?" asked Michael.

"I mean I opened it with my mind. Like a hand reaching out of my forehead reached out and opened it."

"You're talking about telekinesis."

"Yes. On and off from when I was little I was able to move things. Eventually the headaches went away, and I could do it with just focusing the energy in my head and directing my eyes, kind of like this."  Using the middle and index fingers on either hand, Richard pressed against his temples and stared at Michael. Michael pulled his head back slightly as if expecting that he might feel something. Then Richard put down his hands.

"So you claim you can do this now?" inquired Michael.

"Well I used to. Especially when it was something important, like that one time when I was watching from my bedroom window and the car was coming for that little kid on the bicycle. It suddenly happened, and I guess I saved the kid."

"You mean you stopped an actual car with your mind, Richard?"

"Well, I made it swerve out of the way."

"Don't you think that maybe it swerved out of the way on its own when the driver saw the kid on the bicycle?"

"Oh no. No, it was going to hit him. I'm sure."

"So that seems like a great ability to have Richard. What's the problem now?"

"Well, you know, I was always a nervous kid, but when the panic attacks really started was when I started to lose my power. When I was about eighteen, I started not being able to do it, and I got worried. I always thought for sure that my future, you know my destiny or whatever you want to call it, had to do with my power. And when I stopped being able to, I started to panic. Like I no longer had a purpose."

"Does your mother know about your power?"

"I was always afraid to show her. I thought she wouldn't understand. She's always so worried about me."

"So you no longer have the power at all?"

"Well, I don't know. I mean I've been trying to get it. I feel something, in my head, that electricity, but I don't know it just ... "

"Richard, do you think you can move my coffee cup?"

It was sitting on his desk, three-quarters empty.

"Now? Move it now?" asked Richard somewhat flustered.

"Yes. Now."

"I don't know. I ... I mean I could try." An awkward smile spread across his mouth.

"Go head Richard. Give it a shot."

Richard focused on the cup, pressing his fingers to his temples, his eyes narrowing. Ten seconds passed and nothing. Richard took a breath and looked nervously at Michael then back at the cup. He tried again. Nothing.

"Well," said Michael, "good try. Maybe it'll take some time to get your power back."

"Yeah, maybe. I hope so. I mean, it's my purpose. Or ... or it was."

Their session ended, and it was with great perplexity and concern that Michael went to group supervision later that day. It was once a week, when five other therapists and the head psychiatrist got together to discuss difficult cases. Michael mentioned the surprising turn of events that occurred with Richard Lavelle. Everyone, especially the head psychiatrist, Dr. Vinandu, a very resolute and intelligent doctor from India, who conveyed absolute certitude in all he said, was convinced it was a psychotic break and that schizophrenia was now the correct diagnosis.  He admonished Michael to have him hospitalized at once so that he could be evaluated and put on the right anti-psychotic medications. Michael's intellect and training told him that was the correct diagnosis and plan of treatment, yet in his gut somewhere he had the subtlest shadow of a doubt. He had been seeing Richard for months, and he never revealed the slightest hint of having any kind of delusions or hallucinations.

"Is it not possible," asked Michael somewhat hesitantly, "that he, I mean, on some level, may have, maybe, at some time experienced something that was, you know, I mean regarding parapsychology ... "

"You mean move an object with his mind?" interrupted Dr. Vinandu with a hint of derision.  The rest of the therapists emitted subdued chuckles. "No Michael," he continued, "this young man is suffering from a psychosis and needs to be hospitalized as soon as possible or it is surely to worsen."

"Yes. Yes. You're right Dr. Vinandu. I ... I will call him and his mother in to discuss it." 

After that, Michael had a sinking, anxious feeling in his stomach. Richard had never spent a night away from his mother. He was such a sensitive kid, he thought, how is he going to handle being pent up in some sterile hospital room. The thought of his being the one to set all this in motion made him feel almost like a traitor towards Richard, who had put such confidence and trust in him. He felt a bit silly having even brought up the notion of parapsychology in group. After all, they were all trained psychotherapists and to entertain such ideas showed a lack of professional acumen. Nevertheless, something in the way Richard spoke about it gave him pause. But he wrote it off as naiveté due to his inexperience.

The day was winding down. There was one last patient. The one he dreaded. Irvin Coates. He still had a few minutes, so he called up Richard's mother and set up a meeting for them to come in the next day. He didn't give her details, figuring a delicate matter such as hospitalization was best discussed in person. Coates came into his office, looking more grim than usual. Aside from his dark sunglasses, he had a hooded sweatshirt under his coat which was pulled up menacingly over his head. He was more monosyllabic than ever. The session was going nowhere as usual. Then, Michael remembered, how in their first session, Coates had mentioned that he had become quite close to his mother just before she died of cancer.

"I remember your telling me that you had gotten very close to your mother just before she died," said Michael delicately.

"Yeah. We was real close."

"But what was it like before you got close? What was your relationship like when you were younger?" He thought that if Coates wouldn't discuss the accounts of his violent acts which haunted him, maybe this would open a door.

"I don't wanna get into that," interjected Coates in a low, gruff voice.

"I'm just wondering, was she hard on you? I get the impression based on how you talked about finally getting on good terms with her, that there was something troubling going on before that time?"

"What you saying?" asked Coates menacingly.

Michael felt a twinge of terror in his guts. He tried to maintain his composure.

"Irvin, I'm just saying that maybe when things were rough between you and your mother, when you were younger, it had an effect on you that might be healthy to discuss."

Coates suddenly sat up threateningly in his chair. "You saying my mother was the reason I got fucked up?"

Michael's whole body tensed up as the fight or flight adrenal glands started really coursing through his body.  "No, I ah ... "

"Then what the fuck you sayin'?" blurted Coates, the chords in his neck pushing through the skin.  Then he swiped off his sunglasses. Michael saw his eyes for the first time. They appeared almost grey. There was something cadaverous and brutal in them. He leaned forward, putting them right in Michael's face. "Then what the fuck you saying, I asked you."  Michael's mind froze up. He was afraid that anything he said would be wrong. He tried to visualize exactly where the panic button was fixed under the desk.

"I just ... "

"I'm so sick of you motherfuckers making claims on my life," Coates boomed alarmingly. Then he abruptly stood up, looking down on Michael. "Saying shit 'bout me and my family. What you trying to say!? Huh motherfucker! What you got to say to me 'bout my mother now!?" Michael could feel every muscle in his body trembling.

Then Coates grabbed his throat with both hands and began throttling him. Michael tried to yell, but nothing but a choking sound emitted from his vocal chords. He reached under the desk and hit the panic button. In a matter of seconds, the two security guards had burst into the room, each one grabbing one of Coates' arms. At first Coates resisted and the strength of the two men could not overcome his access of rage. However, as Michael, desperately struggling for air, assisted their effort by grabbing hold of Coates' wrists, Coates began to ease his resistance, as if he realized the futility of his present situation, and they managed to pull him off of Michael's throat.

"Let the fuck go of me motherfuckers," yelled Coates.

The security guards held on with all their might. "We've got to escort you off the premises," said one of the guards. The high pitched whining of a police siren could be heard outside the clinic. When they got outside the building, the police had already arrived. The receptionist, as was the procedure, called as soon as the panic button was sounded. He was summarily handcuffed and shoved into a squad car. Michael explained to the police what had happened, stressing that he did not want to press charges because Coates was a troubled man who needed help rather than incarceration. In truth, Michael would have been happy, or at least felt safest, knowing that Coates were to be locked up for life, but being aware that even if he were locked up, he would probably be out in a matter of months, he thought it most beneficial to his bodily well being to not anger Coates any more by pressing charges.

The police said they would have to book him anyway since he was an ex-con who had been on parole as recently as six months prior, but at most he would only spend the night in jail. They also urged Michael to pursue an order of protection for his own well being. Then and there, he considered quitting the clinic altogether and just laying low in his anonymity back in Manhattan. He took a car service home that night, as he was feeling particularly shaken and confused as to how to proceed with the matter.

The next day, he thought about canceling all his appointments and staying in bed, but he remembered the meeting with Richard Lavelle and his mother. She worked slavishly as a secretary at an insurance company to provide for herself and Richard, and had specifically requested that she get to leave work early to meet with Michael, despite the fact that she hardly ever missed a day of work, and even with a temperature she was loathe to call in sick. So, still feeling substantially ill at ease and anxious, he got on the F train and headed into Jamaica. When he got off the train and was walking to the clinic, he was jumpy, imagining that he saw Irvin Coates around every corner. However, as the day wore on, and things proceeded as usual, he began to relax, convincing himself that Coates certainly wouldn't want to risk any more jail time by bothering with him. Later that afternoon, Richard and his mother arrived. Earlier that day, Dr. Vinandu had checked in with Michael to make sure he was proceeding with the patient per his earlier recommendation. Michael told him about his meeting with the patient and his mother, and Dr. Vinandu was very pleased. Despite his apprehension over the whole matter, it felt good having the head psychiatrist give him a nod of approval. As the Lavelles sat down in his office, Richard was very excited to get to see Dr. Weitz again so soon. Michael's good feelings about Vinandu's approval quickly dissipated as he looked upon Richard's smiling face. He felt certain that this would ruin once and for all the bond of trust that he had established with Richard. But, he thought to himself, Richard's had a psychotic break, and he needs help. Right?  He struggled with his doubts. But of course, he was new to this and all his more seasoned colleagues and Dr. Vinandu couldn't be wrong about such a thing. Surely, he was just being silly. He proceeded to delicately explain to Richard and his mother the situation.

"Psychotic? Like schizophrenia?" inquired Ms. Lavelle astonished.

"Well, Ms. Lavelle, nothing is absolutely certain at this time, until Richard is put into a hospital and carefully evaluated."

"But, he ... he's never been ... I mean he was always a nervous child, but ... "

"I'm not going to the hospital!" interjected Richard, as he bolted upright in a defensive posture.

"Richard, darling, at least listen to what Dr. Weitz has to say. He only wants to help you."

"Richard, it's true. You know I want what's best for you."

"It's 'cuz of what I said. What I told you about my mind. My power. That was between us. It was between us, Dr. Weitz!"

"Power? What power?" asked Ms. Lavelle, looking more and more confused.

"Ms. Lavelle, Richard claims ... "

"I'm not going to a hospital!"

"Calm down Richard." urged Michael, "He claims he can move things with his mind. Telekinesis."

"Telekinesis?" blurted Ms. Lavelle, looking at Michael then at Richard with wide, questioning eyes.

"You see, that was the clue to what I was referring to as the psychotic break. He believes that he has, or used to have ... you see now he claims that, when I asked him to show me with a coffee cup, he couldn't ... "

"It's not true!" shouted Richard. "I can! I'm not crazy. I'm not going to any hospital. I'm not going. You can't make me." Richard lurched for the door, jerked it open and fled.

"Richard! Wait! Where are you going?" exclaimed his mother.

"Richard, hold on," shouted Michael as he darted from his office in pursuit of Richard. But Richard was gone. The security guard told him that he just took off towards Jamaica Avenue.   

"Oh, Lord," said Ms. Lavelle, "that child. We live nearby, he'll come back home after he broods for a while. I'll talk to him. I just can't believe these things he's been telling you. I mean I've never heard such things from Richard. Will he be okay doctor?"

"With the right medication and therapy, he can still lead a good life."

"I pray so. Thank you, Dr. Weitz. I'll call you once I've talked to Richard."

For his last two patients of the day, Michael could not focus at all. He kept thinking about Richard running off and wondering if somehow he had made a big mistake in how he handled the whole affair. He wanted Richard's forgiveness. He truly liked him, unlike many patients who were just patients. The feeling of betrayal was painful to Michael.

At last, the work day was over. It was now nearing 7:00 and a bleak, starless night had settled upon Jamaica, Queens. Only the street lamps, with their nimbuses of gauzy white light offered any relief. With his bag perpetually slipping off his shoulder, he hurried down the clinic's lonely street towards Jamaica Avenue and the subway.

Suddenly, in his peripheral vision, he saw a murky figure standing in the recess of a gated up parking garage. An icy sensation darted up his spinal column, as he pumped his legs as fast as they could go without running. He turned quickly to look behind him, and there was a man in sunglasses, his face partially obscured in a sweatshirt hood, coming rapidly towards him. In his hand was a knife, held low by his side. He was sure that it was Coates, but he couldn't quite make it out for certain. Panicked, he turned to face the assailant and shouted, "Coates!" In the next instant, the knife was heading for his stomach. Then, about an inch from his body, the assailant froze in mid stabbing motion. Clutching the knife, his whole arm began to shake violently. Michael just stared in astonishment as the assailant then turned the knife towards himself, his whole body now shaking, as if wrestling with some unseen force. In a strained, hoarse voice, the assailant said, "Dr ... Weitz" and his sunglasses fell to the ground. It was Coates. Then he plunged, or rather the blade itself plunged its pointy blade deep into his own stomach. Coates collapsed to the ground, the knife handle sticking out of him. Michael looked up, befuddled with shock and saw Richard Lavelle across the street, staring fixedly at Coates with his fingers pressed to his temples. In a moment, Richard relaxed his gaze and looked innocently into Michael's eyes. Michael opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out as Richard dashed off down a side street into the darkness. He knelt down to check on Coates. He was dead. Michael called 911 and explained that he had fended off and accidentally stabbed his attacker in a fit of violent panic. The police, being fully aware of Coates' background, had no doubts about the account which Michael described, although they counted him as miraculous case of good fortune.

The next day at work, he desperately wanted to speak to Richard about what had happened. His intellect still couldn't grasp or make sense of what he had witnessed, but he knew that he must say something to Richard. To apologize. To thank him. He knew not what. He reached Ms. Lavelle. She told him that Richard seemed like a new person today. In fact, she said, he seemed better than ever. But, she continued, Richard had decided that he doesn't want to see Dr. Weitz for a little while, but to make sure and tell him he wasn't mad and that maybe next time he would move his coffee cup. "Whatever that means," she chuckled gaily.

Around lunch, Michael ran into Dr. Vinandu.

"So Michael," said Vinandu with an authoritative air, "did you get that patient into the hospital as I told you?"

Michael just looked at him blankly for a moment. "Umm ... no."

"No? What? Why not?" replied Vinandu rapidly.

"His mind ... it's ... not what we thought."

"So you are saying it is normal then?" queried Vinandu dismissively.

"No," said Michael, still with a blank, abstracted expression on his face. "Not normal at all."

Then, he calmly walked right past Dr. Vinandu, into his office and gently closed the door behind him.

Odd. First the phone call, now this letter.

Since it had—at least apparently—been addressed to him, he slit the flap and removed the folded sheet of letterhead. It was from the English Department at NYU, a writing program apparently, from ... Douglas's eyes flicked down to the signature block—the director, someone named Bryce Linklater, Ph.D. It began, "Dear Douglas ... " Which seemed inappropriate, over-familiar—calling him by his first name.

Douglas was neither old nor old-fashioned, but it did seem a sign of disrespect that secretaries, receptionists, barbers, dentists, just about anyone who had access to his name felt free to address him as Douglas. Whatever happened to Mr. and Sir?  Was it something about him that made them feel free to condescend?  And here the director of a university department was doing it, too. A Ph.D. Probably expect me to call him Dr. !

Still standing in the little foyer of his apartment, he began to read the body of the letter:

"I am pleased to inform you that your application for a tenure track position in the NYU Master of Fine Arts in Writing program (poetry) has now successfully  passed the second level of screening, and you have been short-listed for the position ... "

Perplexed, he looked again at the address block and the front of the envelope. His name was there, both places, Douglas Prince—with the addition, he now saw, of "Ph.D. "  Finally, he noticed that the address was not quite right. Doug lived at 6 East Sixth Street, not 16 East Sixth. Could it really be that another Douglas Prince moved in just a few houses down?

Then he thought about the phone call again. This could explain that, as well. The night before last, a woman phoned—nice voice, soft—who identified herself as Melanie, called him honey, apologized for "last time" and implored him to come over so she could make it up to him. Doug, who hadn't even dated a woman since his wife left him three years before, said that he would be pleased to do so, but explained carefully that he was not quite certain who he was speaking to.

"Not quite certain ... "  Her voice hardened. "Say, are you all right?  Your voice sounds funny. Wait a minute—you're not Doug at all!".

"Well I certainly am Doug. For the love of pete, you're the one who called me!"

"You've got some nerve!" she snapped, "Stringing me along!" and the line went dead.

Now this letter. He sat in his overstuffed armchair, shifting to avoid the sprung spring and gazed at the neatly typed letter, the logo, read it again. It seemed that the Douglas Prince to whom it had been addressed was a poet, had a Ph.D. from Boston University, was said to have been active in their literary journal and had also published a collection of poetry with something called  Graywolf Press—which Doug had never heard of, but did sound  like the name of a place that would be publishing poetry.

Doug had been good at English in high school and used to enjoy the literature classes. He could still recite "Richard Corey" by Edward Arlington Robinson, thought it a brilliant piece of literature, such a shocking ending. He had halfway planned to major in English at Fordham, but he quickly saw how impractical that would be. To do what?  Be a high school teacher?  He switched to business, got an accounting degree, and had been with the Transit Authority for nearly twenty-five years now, his first job. Pay was better in the private sector, but this was secure, with full benefits.

Now he gazed out the dusty window of his first floor apartment at the indistinct figures scurrying through the rain and thought vaguely about the drift of circumstance that is a life, floating like dust particles that finally settle somewhere or other, and that's what you do, where you stay.

Some of us anyway. This other guy, this other Douglas Prince, had chosen his own road. He vaguely remembered Mr. Hardwick in senior year reading a poem about that, too. By someone ... Frost ... David Frost. "A Road Avoided," something like that. But this other Doug Prince had not avoided that road, was making a go of it, succeeding apparently.

Doug wondered how old the other guy was. Doug could Google him at work on Monday, maybe buy his book. Maybe he could talk to him a little, ask him about poetry. After all (ha ha) we're name brothers. Could offer to do his taxes in exchange for poetry lessons. Why not?

Then he heard Linda's voice at his ear, telling him why not: Because you never would, Doug. Because you never do. Because you never do a damn thing about anything.

Well what more do we need than this?  This is a great apartment, it's so cheap.

I'm sick of the city. Let's move upstate. Or we could buy a place out on the island. You always used to love the beach. And we're still young enough—we could adopt ...

And give up this place?

It's no place to raise children, Doug.

We don't have children.

We're still young enough to adopt.

Anybody would give their left arm for a rent-controlled place like this.

Three rooms is not enough. And you have so much money put away. You could ...

I have money put away because I am not a spendthrift. I earned that money. And it is doing very nicely where it is.

It's doing nothing!  Just like you, Doug!

Doug turned his eyes around the room, at the overstuffed sofa and chairs he'd inherited from his parents, the round dining table that had been his grandmother's. The pictures too—all in the family. His eyes moved toward his hand, still holding the letter from NYU. The director who had sent the letter—this Dr. Bryce Linklater—had concluded by asking the other Douglas Prince (Ph.D. !) to phone him as a matter of urgency to schedule an interview.

Doug refolded the letter and put it back into the envelope, smoothed down the torn flap and propped it in the inside pocket of the Harris Tweed which had been his father's—a good sturdy jacket, last a lifetime, two liftetimes.

Apparently the other Douglas Prince (Ph.D. !) lived up the street at number 16. When the rain had stopped, he took a walk along the sidewalk to discover that the man had an entire brownstone to himself. An entire brownstone. The guy must have been loaded. He looked again at the name over the bell—on a makeshift piece of white card, printed in inked block letters—PRINCE. Maybe he was renting. Or borrowing—from some smart-ass rich friend. Then he thought again about his plan, the possibility of maybe broaching the subject of exchanging tax help for poetry lessons. After all, Doug was helping him out by returning the letter. Maybe he could just ask him, Listen, I see that you're a poet, and you know, I used to be pretty good at poetry, but I've gotten so far away from it. If I wanted to get back into it, what should I be reading now?   I don't have a clue.

But he imagined the guy sneering, looking him up and down, You can say that again, bud. Clearly clueless.

Why the hell am I thinking this way? Doug wondered. Just give the guy his letter and let that be an end to it. On the top step of the brownstone stoop, he rang the bell, feeling a kind of nervousness he thought he had left behind in adolescence. What's wrong with me?

The door was opened by a handsome fellow a decade younger than himself. Doug glimpsed behind him an expensive looking hall runner—Persian maybe—and pictures lining the wall, even a sculpture of some sort. He looked into the man's face and saw there the skeptical expression of someone who is not impressed by what he is seeing, openly skeptical. The man was wearing an expensive-looking shirt—looked like black silk—open at the throat so a tuft of chest hair was visible. He tipped his head—arrogantly Doug thought—and wrinkling his nostrils a bit asked, "Yes?"

"I'm sorry," Doug said quickly. "Wrong house!  Sorry, sorry ... "

"No problem," the man said with what sounded to Doug like an edge of superiority.

"Whatever," Doug replied, duplicating as best he could the man's tone, and retreated.

At home, he shoved the letter into the drawer of the hall stand in which his parents always saved odds and ends of that sort. He sat on the sofa and thought about the man's face. Snotty. Snooty. His breath went shallow.

He took the envelope out again, stared at it. Then he watched his hands tear it in half. Then in half again. He tried to tear it once more but could not quite manage so he crumpled it in his fist, carried it out to the kitchen and sprinkled it into the plastic garbage bag beneath the sink, letting the ragged scraps of paper mingle with coffee grounds and the residue of spaghetti Bolognese he'd thrown out.

Three days later, Doug's telephone rang.

"Dr. Prince?" enquired a man's voice, an annoyingly confident voice, annoying in that the man was clearly tempering the tone of his confidence, masking it with a chord of friendly warmth, but Doug instantly understood who it was and who he was really calling for. He had halfway been waiting for this. He had a right to expect that when his telephone rang, it was ringing for him, that letters in his mailbox with his name written on the front were meant for him. But no, some young pup with his name who lived on his street was being offered a job which—if he himself had ever had half a goddamned chance—might have been his.

"This is Douglas Prince," he said into the telephone, mimicking the tone that the other Prince had used with him when he had taken the time out of the goodness of his heart to try to return his letter to him. Some people it does not pay to be nice to.

"Ah, Mr. Prince!" the annoying voice exclaimed. "This is Bryce Linklater at NYU. I'm so glad I caught you. The tenure line position you applied for here?  You've been short-listed for it, and frankly—I shouldn't really say this, but all things being equal, you are my choice. We wrote you a ... "

"Well, surely," Douglas interrupted. "You don't imagine yours was the only spot I applied for?"

"Well ... "

"Or the only spot I was offered?"

"Ahhh ... "

"Or, my friend, the one I would accept?"

"I see," said the voice, no longer masked with friendly warmth, now chilled over with the business of getting off and away quickly and efficiently. "No point then in pursuing this further ... "

"No indeed," said Douglas. "No point at all. "

Not without surprise—and not without a certain measure of gratification—a month later when Douglas happened past the brownstone at number 16, he caught a glimpse of the bell and saw that the hand-lettered tag with the name PRINCE on it had disappeared. It had been replaced with another name.

Doug snorted: East Sixth Street was his again.

Somewhere on the edge of the Great Plains, James finally saw the hitchhiker he'd been waiting for since Denver. Giving rides to people went along with eating local, organic food and letting his mall-bought clothes wear to rags and eventually be replaced with thrift-store finds, other people's castoffs. It was part of who he was now. Two years ago he'd started college as an eighteen-year old kid who went by Jim, was on the track team, and couldn't imagine a lifestyle without cars and feedlot beef. Now, he couldn't remember what it felt like to be that person. This both frightened him and gave him a feeling of liberation as dizzying and intoxicating as the first time he'd reached the summit of a mountain: awe that the world could look so different from a new perspective, wonder at finding himself there.

His suburban Republican parents would no doubt be appalled when he told them he'd given someone a ride on the way to their home in Missouri. More likely than not, though, he'd have a story to tell that would get a reaction from them in some sense, and might even go so far as to broaden their perception of the world. The hitchhiker would be working under the table on ranches to move his family here from Colombia so his wife could get a proper prosthetic leg instead of the metal monstrosity she'd been sporting since the land mine accident. Or he would be a homeless alcoholic taking the hard step of sobering up, and going to live with his daughter in Kentucky. Or he could be an artistic hippie, a street kid, or any one of millions of people down on their luck and needing a lift. He wondered what this guy's story would be.

Before James had rolled to a stop, gravel dinging the underside of the car, in the rearview he saw the man trotting to catch up, and wished he wouldn't. He thinks I might leave, James thought. He's been burned so many times before that he doesn't trust anyone. He reached over and opened the passenger door.

"Hey man, hey, thanks a lot," the hitchhiker grinned showily at James before sliding into the passenger seat. "Seriously, thanks a lot. I've got to get to my mom's in Kansas and Greyhound doesn't even stop in this shithole." 

"No problem," James said, and by the time the words were out of his mouth the man was already in the car and slammed the door. He scooted his rear and shoulders side-to-side, forward and back to get comfortable in the seat.

"Does this thing— where's the handle?  I need to move it back."

"There's a knob on the side next to the door, you turn that." 

"I can't find it."

James was back on the highway already; there was next to no traffic. It felt surreal to have another person in the car after an hour and a half of solitary space, and even stranger to have an unknown man fumbling for the seat adjustment knob.

"It's the big round one. No, not there—down a little."

The man was a few inches shorter than James, who wasn't tall himself, but probably only a few pounds lighter. Well-used sinews, old muscle slightly gone to fat and a small, round paunch fit into a compact frame, though he seemed to take up more space than he actually did. His moustache was overgrown and he hadn't shaved in a few days. He wore in earnest the same kind of trucker hat sported ironically by Denver hipsters.

"All right, that's right."  He'd found the knob and gave it a few wrenching twists to get the seat back. Again he shifted and reshifted, grimacing, testing the seat for comfort, before assaulting the adjustment knob one more time and finally coming to rest. "That's better. Last person sitting in this seat have a pole up their ass or something?"

James opened his mouth to reply but the man had started talking again.

"It's these little Japanese piece of shit cars. I had an '83 Oldsmobile once, now those were some comfortable seats. Good car too, until the transmission went out. I was going to fix it but my rat bastard landlord had it towed, so I said, fuck it, let them keep it, I don't have the money to fix it anyway with all the Mexicans coming over here and taking our jobs. They want to build a fence?  Well I say let them build a fence, or better yet hire more Americans to go down there and take care of things. I'd go shoot some wetbacks, if they hired me. Ha ha! What's your name, kid?"

"Um ... James," said James, rather thrown. He had to remind himself that the man's parents and peers were probably just as bigoted and he probably hadn't encountered anything in his life that would challenge the stereotypes he'd grown up with. He was where James himself had been, a couple of years ago.

"I'm Les. Great to meet you, and thanks again. There's not many people nowadays who'll stop to give a guy a ride. I was standing there for two hours before you came along! Sons of bitches wouldn't stop for nobody. I'd offer to buy you a beer, but I haven't had a steady job for three years. And I used to own my own company, would you believe that! Ha ha! Construction and framing. I have enough experience to supervise all the jobs I've been on lately, and could've done them better and faster. In fact if I still had my company, I could've put them all out of business and been retired by now, living in a five-bedroom house with acreage and a swimming pool. It'd be like the Playboy mansion! Ha ha!"

At "Playboy," a minor blizzard of spittle flew from the man's mouth and the flecks landed on the dashboard, glistening. Les did not seem to notice and continued talking, sometimes glancing at James but mostly looking dead ahead as if an invisible audience somewhere in front of the car was hanging on his words. This guy, James thought with amusement (and maybe a twinge of irritation), could talk all day. He'd try some questions.

"So where are you headed?" James broke in, after he had waited a moment and the man did not pause in his speech.

"What?"

"Where are you going?"

"Going back to my hometown. Eustace, in Kansas. You know where that is, kid?"

"No."

"How far down 70 are you going?"  

"Hamilton. In Missouri."

"Well, your road's the same as mine; I'll go as far as you can take me. Eustace's only half an hour off the road, though, which I don't want to inconvenience you, but I'm just saying. But you know where Eustace, Kansas is?  It's the middle of nowhere, that's where it is, ha ha! If you do go by there, you don't want to blink, because you'd miss it for sure. There's a post office, a church and two diners, which one of them, I worked for the guy back when I was probably about your age, and if I stuck around I could've owned the place by now. Made it someplace that people would drive an hour to just to taste the barbecue. I could make the best barbecue in the state, in fact the guy that owned the place, he said to me—"

"So what'd you do when you left Eustace?" James broke in.

Les's glance at James was a thinly veiled glare, as if he was irritated at the interruption. "What?  Oh, this and that, this and that."  He waved his hand dismissively, as if at a buzzing fly.

"Why are you going there now?"

"I told you, to see my mother," the man said sulkily, then for the first time became silent for longer than a breath. James didn't think the man was crazy, though he couldn't be sure—his only experience with mental illness was that a few of his friends and classmates had ADD or depression, always mostly under control—but he certainly had some issues. To be honest James didn't mind the silence; he preferred it to Les's braggadocio speech.

After some long minutes Les sighed pointedly. "You gonna stop anytime soon?  I need a smoke."

"I guess I could top off the tank. Sure." 

"This is one of those cars that gets, what, thirty miles to the gallon?"

"Something like—"

"That's the problem with these foreign cars, everyone gets them because of the gas mileage, but believe me, it's gonna give out on you sometime soon. I used to sell cars. Can you believe I used to be the top salesman in the state, ha ha! I was worth a million dollars at one point. A million! But you get no commission for selling something like this. I could tell you some stories."  And he was off again.

James had imagined he'd meet a stranger on the highway and they would share life experiences and ideas. The way it turned out was appallingly different. For one thing, he was pretty sure that ninety percent of what Les said was either mostly or completely bullshit. For another, James had imagined a conversation, but this was a series of monologues. It had the feeling of rehearsal behind it, as if these were the same stories and same delivery that had served Les through many unbidden tellings. And thirdly, wherever Eustace was, it would be a very long drive. The few exit ramps yielded empty roads leading ruler-straight north and south to nowhere. James had not even been in the car with this man for an hour, and already he was getting exhausted.

Les had been told once that he should run for County Council because he was a man of the people. Heck, people were practically forcing him into it! But then the threats started coming, and when the fat cat bureaucrats threatened his business—his very livelihood—he had to abandon his plans for greater leadership. This led him to a rant about how the whole government was corrupt, from the lowest to the highest levels. James himself could spit venom about misuse of funds, cronyism, nepotism, and slimy special interests, but he hoped he didn't sound as ignorant as this guy in doing so. Les had meanwhile returned to one of his favorite points, that his present joblessness was directly inflicted upon him by the government and the Mexicans.

The man led a hard life, James reminded himself, and probably a lot of suffering—it had to suck, being out of work, broke, and having to hitch rides on I-70. James would normally feel compassion and sympathy at the plight of the marginalized and poor, and had expected to feel that for his hitchhiker. Those altruistic feelings, however, were fading unsettlingly fast, leaving annoyance and disdain in their wake. Also unsettling was the relief he felt at the presence of a multinational oil corporation that would buy him a few minutes' reprieve: up ahead, a Shell sign perched on a tall silver pole above a cluster of truck-stop buildings.

Les interrupted his own ramblings as James pulled onto the exit ramp. "Hey, are we stopping?  Thanks a lot, man. Do you think you could spare some cash for a pack of cigarettes?"

"No," said James. "I actually don't have any cash, I'm just using debit."  That was a complete lie: he'd gotten cash from the ATM specifically for coffee and food on the drive. "There are a lot of people here, I'm sure someone can bum you one."  That much was true: a dozen cars and even more semis had converged on what may have been the only proper truck stop in a sixty-mile stretch.

Back in Denver James would give cash to anyone who asked. They needed money, he had some, why not?  Yet here he was, lying (like his father did when he dropped James off at college and they went downtown to the 16th Street Mall, "sorry, no change") just because the guy annoyed him. He had pulled up to a free pump and was thinking that maybe he should make it right and just get the guy a pack of cigarettes, who was he to begrudge him a smoke? 

Les opened the door and turned to face James. "All right kid, I'll be back after I find someone to give me a smoke. If you're thinking of leaving without me, remember, I've memorized your plate number and I can find out where you live, ha ha! Just kidding."

His smile was overwide, his upper lip partially hidden in the sandy whiskers. He closed the door hard and walked off briskly, looking this way and that. That wasn't a real threat, if only because logistically it'd be hard to trace someone's plates without knowing someone working for the police or government who owed you a favor (and Les probably would claim he was tight with NSA secret agents or something). Still, this joke was way off-color, and didn't sit right.

James pumped the gas, turning his back to the bright, chilly October wind that seeped through his hoodie, then went inside to use the bathroom. Les was off by the side of the building, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the weedy lot that separated the truck stop from dozens of miles of flat farmland.

Maybe he should leave the guy, James thought as he peed. He just couldn't handle Les. Les would find another ride, hopefully with someone who was hard of hearing; that would work out better. But what would that make James?  A hypocrite, that's what, who talked a big game about how we should all be real with one another and social and economic systems screwed over the poor and marginalized, while he himself refused concrete help to one of those people. He steeled himself and zipped his fly. It would only be a few more hours. He could deal.

Les was standing by the car when James returned. "City boy, aren't you?"  Les's near-constant smile was starting to unnerve him. "Locking your car whenever you walk away from it. I don't blame you, I lived in Denver a while myself and I can tell you, those people ... "

•

As James and his passenger got into the car, James glanced over and noticed the slightly battered, red and white top of a pack of Marlboros peeking from Les's hip pocket. It looked at least half full. He hadn't needed money for the smokes; he'd had them already. He was just after a little something extra, on top of the ride and the warm body to sit through his bigoted, pompous rants. In his peripheral vision James noticed Les's hand move swiftly to his pocket to tuck the cigarettes out of sight. I should've left him, James thought, then immediately felt queasy.

Miles passed and the landscape remained unyielding despite a small sign that told James he had made it to Kansas. All the while Les talked, now waxing on the unfairness of life, how "they" make it almost impossible for a decent, hardworking guy to make a living, and how he'd be better off if he'd been born black or handicapped, since the government loved to hand out money to people with nothing better to do than sit there with their thumbs up their asses.

Theoretically at this point, James would've shared what he knew about welfare reform, the cutbacks in needed aid and the hoops people had to jump through for those paltry sums of cash, and the hitchhiker would've shared his own life experience. At the end they'd each leave the car with a mutual respect for the other and some new thing learned.

"But it's not like—" James began. Les did not notice, or pretended not to notice, but his litanies of indictment and complaint kept streaming from his mouth, inexhaustible as the landscape around them.

His sister was a witch who refused to help him out. People with drug addictions deserved all the trouble they got, and more. If he were in charge, he'd clean it up. People should be allowed to own as many guns as they want; they paid for them, didn't they?  It was too expensive for him to see movies in theaters because Hollywood was greedy just like the government.

James turned on the radio. Ninety-nine percent of the music today was shit. That's because James's generation ("no offense, man,") doesn't know how to make good music. Kids today are being raised as pussies because everyone's so concerned about being "politically correct." 

In this way a hundred miles passed.

"You're a college kid, right? Hey! Kid!"

"What? Oh. Yeah." James had been allowing himself to zone out as best he could, so it took him a moment to realize that Les was speaking to him.

"What's your degree in?"

"Economics."

"Economics," Les repeated, drawing the word out in a nasal, falsetto pitch, as if imitating a whiny toddler's voice. "You'll be lucky if there's an economy left by the time you graduate! Unless you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer or something college degrees are going to be worthless. You should be doing something at this point in your life. But then all these schools would miss out on the hundreds of thousands of dollars they're getting to give out pieces of fancy paper with letters on ‘em to kids like you."

Les's grin made James feel like punching him in the face and he imagined pulling the car over and telling him to get out. He should do it, the guy was an asshole: who insults someone who's trying to help them out?  But James checked himself, smothered the anger down, and kept driving: he still had some reserve of will left, and he would not be shown up as a hypocrite.

They were somewhere in the middle of Kansas. The "amber waves of grain" had been chopped to dingy stubble beneath the now overcast sky. Again Les interrupted himself, this time to ask if James would drive him south off the highway to Eustace.

"No, it's out of my way." 

"Aw, c'mon. Only by twenty minutes." 

"Nope. Can't, sorry. I have to get to Missouri before eight." 

Les drew breath as if to speak but held it in for once. He'd probably been about to mock me again, thought James, but thought better of it. Good.

Les lapsed into silence. A few minutes later the rain began, a few drops quickening into a steady fall that might last for hours and miles around.

"Well kid," Les said as James switched his wipers to high, "you'd be a real asshole to leave someone by the side of the road in this, I'll tell you that."

Eustace was not twenty or thirty but forty-five minutes off the highway, and Les refrained from speaking all the way. James was grateful for the drumming rain that covered the tense silence. Eustace 5 miles, said a sign, but there was still no town in sight when Les said abruptly, "Pull over. Thanks for the ride, you're a good kid, you know that?  There should be more people like you. But I'll walk from here."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah, my aunt's is just up the road a little. You've taken me far enough and I thank you for your time."

This polite little exchange put James on guard: red flags all around. James wondered if Les was up to something shady, and as he thought about the way he was behaving, it seemed more and more likely. James could easily imagine that he'd come here to settle an old score or break into a home or business where he knew the defenses were weak. Asking to be dropped off outside of town might be just eccentricity, sure, but it might also be because he didn't want witnesses.

The asshole, James thought, with a pang of outrage. It wasn't right that after making James's life miserable for a few hours, Les was planning to go do worse to someone else. James should've left him at the rest stop—then he wouldn't be James's problem.

"But if it's not that much farther, then I might as well drive you," James said in what he hoped was a calm and nonchalant voice. James had brought Les here, but he wouldn't be an accessory to crime. If he could stop Les, then no harm, no foul. He sped up the car, charged with simple, obstinate contrariness: he would not let this jerk get his way.

"No, really, I'll walk. Let me out."  The strident tone convinced James even more that he was thwarting Les's plan. Good.

"I'll drop you off. It's pouring."

"Let me out now, you son of a bitch! Who the hell do you think you are?"

He wouldn't let him out to do whatever asshole thing he wanted to do. Then dimly James thought perhaps that was a stupid idea. He wondered—now he wondered—if Les were armed. Les could take him, he thought with a growing queasiness. James had never been in a fight in his life. Still refusing, now against his better judgment, to give in, James set his face like one of the Easter Island stone heads and kept driving, his eyes focused straight ahead, braced for a blow.

"You fucking little prick! Pull over! You act like you're going to help a guy out, well I want to get out of the car when I want to fucking get out of the car!" Spit was flying and the man's face was reddening.

If he's armed and he attacks me, I might die in my car, thought James. Yet some strange autopilot had taken over. James was stupefied by panic now but kept on driving, accelerating, and noticing how the roadside weeds, weighted down by rain, arced and drooped their heads over the asphalt. La de da, isn't it a lovely day?  Yes, some rain would be good for the soil. He dared not look to his right where Les was shouting incoherently. He focused on the feel of the textured plastic of the steering wheel under his sweat-cold fingers and wished with every particle of his being that this wasn't happening.

There was a ringing in his head like after leaving a long loud concert with no earplugs. But Les hadn't made a move. A white pickup truck with its headlights on approached and sped past, trailing a cloud of mist. Now there was silence.

He didn't dare turn his head or make eye contact, but after a moment there was movement in his peripheral vision: Les was slumping down into his seat, and exhaled a deep and angry breath. James was still waiting for an oncoming punch.

"You know what?  Never mind. Screw it, I don't want to go there anymore."

"You don't?"  James's voice sounded detached and far away. He hoped he wasn't going to black out.

"No I don't. Take me wherever."

•

James turned the car around and headed north back to I-70. He was relieved, but knew he wasn't out of the woods yet, and his fear-induced trance was replaced with a humming, heightened awareness. He was keeping an eye on his passenger. Not exactly a paragon of consistency, Les might very well change his mind and decide he wanted to go through with his plan after all. He might still attack James, or just make nice, get out, and wait for another ride back down the road. James resolved to call the police as soon as he got clear of Les, and warn them of a man with possible criminal intent trying to get to Eustace. Sure that was vague, but the small-town cops, having not a lot to do, might be on the lookout and prevent anything from happening.

Les stayed slouched down in the seat, unmoving, looking out into the rain and fields of dead wheat and muttering. "I didn't want to go there anyway," he said. "Fucking shithole." He'd been planning something, James was sure, and the only reason he'd abandoned his plan was because he'd been called out on it. After a few minutes Les closed his eyes, put his head back and began to feign sleep, badly, with a body as stiff as rigor mortis. He was going to let James drop him off at I-70, James realized.

James himself was out of danger; he was no longer terrified of that. It was a different fear that now gave him internal goose bumps at the sound of his passenger's fake snores. The man was deeply messed up. Perhaps this was mostly through his own fault, perhaps mostly not. Regardless, every day of his life he walked around with his mind a whirling and grotesque mess of blame, anger, and loneliness. It overflowed from his mouth like drool as he indicted the government and proclaimed his rights to the title of best car salesman in Colorado, best barbecue cook in Eustace, persecuted man of the people. James had issues himself, like everyone did, but he couldn't even imagine what it was like to live with one's head that much of a hell.

And James still absolutely planned on calling the police.

Les conveniently "woke up" when James pulled off to the shoulder beneath the overpass. That way the guy could at least stand out of the rain.

"Well kid, thanks for dropping me off here. Didn't want to go there anyway. Let me tell you, there should be more guys like you, who're willing to help someone out who's down on their luck."

A truck thundered overhead on the sodden highway. James still couldn't read Les's intent. Perhaps he was already planning to go back to Eustace. Maybe on some level he had been glad or relieved that James stopped him. Perhaps he only lacked the courage to beat James unconscious right now, and take his car.

Les shook James's hand with the grasp of one hanging on for dear life—he had learned in his youth that successful men had firm handshakes, James guessed, and had been working on a vise grip ever since. Les was grinning again, trying to project as much goodwill as possible, but all James could read in his eyes was a monstrous yearning. It was a clown's grimace, but more than that, it was the look of a man eating his own flesh to keep from starving to death. For years Les's famished eyes and cannibal smile would emerge on the gray screen of James's mind once in a while, while he was thinking of nothing in particular, or something else entirely.

James left the hitchhiker and probable would-be criminal waving theatrically in the rearview as he turned the car around to take the on-ramp. James, for the first time, wished him peace. After he had merged back onto the highway and was up to speed he took out his cell phone to call 411 and talk to the county police.

My wife surprises me. The girl doesn't even pretend to be a serious applicant. Not with a top cut low and a size too small. No such luck. But if she's calling me in here, there's something I need to see and it's not cleavage. Turns out it's not about seeing either. The girl opens her mouth and out pours the sweetest, roundest o's you ever heard in your life. She practically sings opera.

"Hello."  (She has my full attention.)  "I'm Po."

The whole time my wife is nodding her head like she's struck gold. "Bingo," I tell her with the secret eye language we've got. "The customers are gonna eat her alive!"

It's official. My wife shows her an apron with Sweet Dreams printed above a cup of espresso and a slice of cake. She's pretty sharp, my wife, and not just about connecting a highly caffeinated drink to a good night's sleep. My eyes would have popped their sockets if she hadn't slipped the apron over the girl's long neck and tied it up in back.

The girl still doesn't get it. She runs her fingers over her covered breasts and sounds out each letter like it's a tiny nibble of something sweet. I'm trying not to picture the chocolate truffle we sell or the hard, black espresso bean on top. The wife, besides brilliant business sense, can read my mind.

•

The new place sits smack in the middle of "Little Italy."  Trouble is change takes forever in this town. By the time they raised the flags and posted the official landmarks, the real Italians were long gone. Nowadays the sidewalks are crawling with Vietnamese, Russians, and Africans. I try to remember the walk to St. Mary's, stopping at Nino's afterwards for gelato, but there's not much there. My mind can't get beyond smelly import shops and dark tea rooms. My grandfather says, "It's like we never went to war with these people." He won't come into the city anymore.

"But the dollar's still green, huh Pops?"  That's my old man's philosophy and mine too, I guess.

The reality is more complicated. Although the overhead is pretty low, we can't count on immigrants to fill the tables. "To each his own," you might say, except try telling that to my mother after we brought samples over to Catholic Charities. Imagine people, grown men and women, children, spitting good cannoli into garbage pails. Father Dante said there'd been rumors of pork fat, but he wasted his breath excusing the Muslims. For my mother, who's always been prejudiced, that information was fuel on the fire.

My wife, on the other hand, who can turn a food disaster into a tax write-off, didn't blink. She'd already made plans for our "ethnic problem."  She's got an associate degree in these things and says we need the right wait staff to draw in the downtown office people and weekend crowds. Cross-over types, she's calls them, with vague origins like those kids in the old Benetton ads. (I call them mongrels, but only around Pops.) 

So far she's found a mute Asian girl named Ho (not kidding) who refills water glasses for ladies who tip with loose change, and a Slavic bus boy with a head the size of a fruit basket. Go figure how someone that ugly can make the old biddies pat their hair, push out their breasts, and leave something closer to 15%. Maybe they like his knack at finding a cornball expression for every occasion. It's raining cats and dogs, he tells them as they come in from the wet streets. Take a load off. Your wish is my command.   My wife and I call him "Grandpa." 

Everyone else on staff is somebody's kid looking for experience and a little cash. Among that bunch you'll find some of the laziest second and third generation Americans on the planet.

The older members of my family were nervous about the chichi menu. My wife was right about that too. Apparently, plenty of well paid people are looking for coffee, sandwich, and dessert in an ethnic-style setting with convenient off-street parking.

Po is a lucky charm. If my mother says she fills cannoli like a cement mixer, so what?  As she's reciting the daily specials, the ladies lick their lips like she's a glazed confection. And unlike the African-American we tried out, Po has zero attitude. When they admire her little braids, she doesn't roll her head like a snake ready to strike. She doesn't snicker at their crooked wigs or the pink scalp showing through their parts. She actually offers to get a comb right then and there and weave the same amazing designs. Boy!   By the laughter, you know how much the ladies love that idea.

Within days she has Ho chiming, "More water?" "Nice day." "Welcome." "Thank you." "Please come again." (Chi-ching, chi-ching.)  I overhear her warning Vanya to watch his hands and laugh to myself, knowing he'll return his wandering affections to the paying females. (Chi-ching, chi-ching.) 

Our tri-color flag announces solid Italian credentials, but the staff, complete now with Po, says we're young, hip, and, best of all, safe.

•

The second weekend doesn't go so well. Po comes in hysterical. Her mother has died. Naturally we offer to bring over a tray of our best cookies. To be honest, I offer; my mother sucks her teeth like she's raised an idiot. "Over my dead body," she says. My wife gives me the look. Po says the family is already packed for New York City and insists on picking them up herself.

Jesus and Mary! I suppose she'll change into something appropriate when they reach the city. For Christ's sake. Yellow for a dead mother?  And tits?!  As soon as my mother hisses these observations in Italian, I feel ashamed for thinking the same thing. I envy my wife and Ho who can hug Po and touch her braids and say the nice little things people say when someone's died. I'm impressed by the fat envelope Vanya slips into her hand.

A week later Po returns. We assure her she can take all the time she needs, but truth is we're relieved for the extra pair of hands. Luckily my mother is already here, helping out, because halfway through the shift, disaster strikes again. Someone calls to say Po's apartment building has burned to the ground. Yeah, right, Mom says. And the Pope's secretly Jewish.

When Vanya hears the news, he immediately organizes the wait staff to donate another night's tip jar. I wonder if he's heard this one: A sucker born every minute.

Another week goes by. She doesn't drop by. She doesn't call. One morning, a shifty African appears just as we're opening up. He's toting a stack of papers like he expects us to buy one, and I stick out a dollar to make him go away. He pulls his chin back, pretending to be surprised, maybe even insulted, and asks if there's a paycheck for Po's half-day of work. Now it's our turn. My mother, her head poking through the kitchen door where she's doing more pounding than kneading, follows every word. I watch my wife's eyes grow bigger and bigger as he stutters out a story of Po in the hospital. How the bills won't wait.

His English is a torture to hear. Finally, he spreads his long arms and lets them fall like a crippled old man. "Can you believe?" he asks. His final announcement, clear as a bell, sounds almost practiced: "Seventeen years old with high blood pressure!" When his eyes slide towards the display case, my mother slams the ball of ruined dough into the counter and charges up to his face.

"No more cookies!  You understand English?" He pulls back to avoid a floured finger jabbed into his chest. "No more cookies to spit in the garbage." 

For a second, his expression of personal injury reminds me of my dad back in the bad old days and I almost feel sorry. He actually turns to me, like my dad used to, like he's asking for help, and I think of Vanya's envelope locked up, waiting in the safe, whether I should get it. "We fire your girlfriend, okay!" my mother screams. "She don't work here no more ever."  Straightening his back, so you can see how that pathetic face was an act after all, he leaves without a word.

For once, my mother and wife sound identical: bitter, finished with Africans forever, ready to go full-Asian. First, I'm with them, hundred percent, but of course everything quickly goes south. My mother starts moaning about an evil eye floating in water. She tells my wife if she never gets pregnant she can thank some guy off the street who tried to bamboozle us.

Just when I'm thinking I like my wife better rolling her eyes behind my mother's back, she drops the papers the African left behind and jumps like fish guts are wrapped inside.

It's not a stack of papers after all, only one issue of the Sunday New York Times. The three of us stare at the front page and the sad, unsmiling face of Po beside five smaller versions. There's sky behind them and a few beams where walls used to be. Above the photo, in big letters, are the words "Fire Ends American Dream."

It's my turn to snap when my mother bursts into tears and my wife makes a move to follow the boy. I grab her by the arm and in that brief second see relieve in her eyes that I'll go instead. Only I won't. You can't be in business as long as my father and grandfather or afford the rising cost of everything only to lose it all by going soft. Fires in general make me nervous. Fires and publicity give me agita. "Let him go," I say. "Basta."

•

When he regularly stops for coffee, the city inspector likes to remind me of my own family's history of fires: my father's, my brother Alberto's, my own at the small place before this one. You get the point: the kind of bad luck with a lucky side that makes people, even Italians, raise their eyebrows and immediately think Sopranos and The Godfather. The fact is you deal with food, you deal with fire.

"Isn't that what insurance is for?" I asked him. We were holding our noses in the scorched lobby of the first Sweet Dreams. I still had my head in the clouds, but you talk about an American dream, this guy lives it. Like he told me, they don't need signs or flags to fill the pubs on Tipperary Hill. The last two mayors came from his neighborhood, and so did the genius who installed the main traffic light upside down.

He always clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth like he has something permanently stuck there. "Trust me. I know you people are honest, but business is business." 

He's one of those elderly uncle-types who examines everything and has to personally approve the paint job and curtains and new lighting fixtures. They claim Italians look after their own, but this guy is a regular Johnny-on-the-spot with recommendations.

He has a brother in restaurant supplies. His first cousin's an electrician. His father-in-law's a friggin' plumber. For an Irish guy he can get you a great deal on portabella mushrooms or ricotta "so fresh it'll give you a hard on."  To avoid trouble, I always arrange for a large delivery of whatever he's selling.

He wore a suit to the reopening last year. "Sure, fires are good for renovations," he said with a haha. "But one more—even the waiter's house, for Christ's sake—it wouldn't look so hot."

Freddy Hodge had always been ahead of his time. The visionary painter was born two weeks premature, kicking his way down Wanda Hodge's uterus. The crib hadn't even been delivered yet, so the four-pound infant was forced to sleep between his eccentric mother and restless father on their tattered bed for the first few nights of his life.

At the age of seven, Freddy broke the nose of a boy who bullied the class nerd.

By the time he was twelve, Freddy had spent a night in jail for assault and battery after striking a bearded stranger who tried to maul his mother.  (He struck him with a baseball bat.)

At fifteen, the rebellious boy was convicted of knocking out a store clerk and stealing art supplies. Tried as a minor, he was sentenced to ten days behind bars.  

The volatile teenager was plagued with deep-seated anger issues, the bulk of his rage directed at his father who deserted the family shortly after the boy's sixth birthday. The small remainder of Freddy's rage was saved for his mother who had turned their tranquil home into a hangout for bikers, hookers, junkies and gypsies, all drawn to the tattoo parlor in the living room.

Specializing in Aztec, skull and snake tattoos, Wanda Hodge's artistic talent brought her celebrity status in the small town of Kennel, twenty miles from the Atlantic coast.  Money flowed into Wanda's tattoo parlor, and most of it was spent on the purchase of ink, needles and cocaine, much to the dismay of her only child who begrudgingly learned the family trade.

While Freddy considered himself cursed in many ways, he was blessed with extraordinary physical beauty: sparkling blue eyes, golden hair that covered his brows, olive skin that encased a tight, muscular frame. When he turned sixteen, the girls in the neighborhood began throwing themselves at him as did some of the mothers of the girls. None of this interested Freddy; he sought neither sex nor attention. It was painting that became the fractious boy's outlet. 

The moment Freddy's brush touched a canvas he felt a sublime rush. Painting quickly became knowledge, nourishment, security, sensuality. It was sight, smell, touch, and taste that transported him to a place of glorious, boundless freedom. When he wasn't painting in the hallowed basement (which he appointed as his private work space), he was in an unbreakable trance, thinking of his art.

Gradually, Freddy's work became bold, vivid and violent. One icy winter evening, after laboring for weeks, he completed his most ambitious piece: a street scene of six virgins clutching ears of corn as six mysterious men watched them, bleeding from their mouths. Desperate for reaction, he brought the painting into the living room which was buzzing with a cluster of his mother's friends and clients. "My boy is a genius," Wanda said with amazement. "And he's barely out of puberty."

"With that face and body, he'll go places," Astrid the drug dealer declared.  

"We're talking about his talent," Wanda barked. 

"I'm not crazy about the painting," Astrid remarked. "It's his sex appeal that'll get him noticed."  

"I agree," the heavily tattooed Sissy said. "The figures are deformed, but the painter is delicious."

"Ignore these idiots," Wanda said. "You got your looks from your son-of-a-bitch father, but your creative instinct comes from me, and it'll take you far."  

Just prior to turning twenty, Freddy, was discovered by the renowned patron of the arts Athena Easterling.

Devoting her life to sponsoring burgeoning talent who happened to be young, male and attractive, she explained to Kevin Sessums: "There's a certain sensual strength in the work of a man that I just haven't found in the work of any female."  With wild green eyes, mocha painted lips, alabaster skin, and a thick black braid cascading down her back, Athena was combination Irish peasant girl and Apache princess. Standing six feet tall in bare feet, every feature appeared enhanced or decorated. Even her unusually crooked teeth seemed that way on purpose, as if to exist as an avant-garde sculpture carved out of pearl.

It was Athena's modus operandi to invite a new protégé into her estate every six months.  (She admitted to having a long neck and a short attention span.) Her most recent discovery, Keegan Rhys Malone, a square-jawed painter whose work depicted sensual encounters in dimly lit breweries, was the first artist-in-residence who refused to walk away quietly. "You think you can snap your fingers and make me vanish?" he asked, gazing at her with unmistakable contempt.

"From the start this was a temporary arrangement, n'est ce pas?" Athena spoke in a British accent festooned with French phrases and inflections.   

"I'm not ready to be tossed into the recycling bin," he bellowed. "I feel used."

"Did you not use me too?" Athena asked. "Now please use the front door and depart with dignity."

"I'll paint one masterpiece after the next," Keegan shouted like a crazed revolutionary. "I'll be on a pedestal next to Picasso and Dali."

"Don't forget to take your toiletries," Athena reminded him.

Freddy Hodge came to Athena's attention through her personal assistant Bitsy Woo. While thumbing through a magazine in the reception area of her gynecologist's office, Bitsy came upon an article about Freddy and Wanda entitled The Art of Mother and Son. Accompanying the piece were photographs of Wanda's tattoo designs as well as Freddy's paintings. Bitsy was so struck by the boldness of Freddy's art, especially its riveting depiction of the relationship between food, sex and blood, that she took the magazine with her. Athena was impressed enough to request a meeting.

Freddy borrowed his mother's blue jalopy with its busted headlight and small hole in the floor on the passenger side. As gray and white clouds swirled above, he zoomed forty miles to the affluent community of Beaux Facade Beach. Freddy had never been this close to such opulence; the topiaries alone took his breath away. After the security guard opened the front gate, Freddy pounded on Athena's solid oak door and was greeted by a wavy haired Aboriginal housekeeper named Peg. She smiled coyly while ushering him into the grand foyer.  

The towering Athena breezed into the room followed by three adoring dachshunds.  With one bejeweled hand extended and the other waving an Hermes scarf, she introduced herself. Then she gestured for him to join her on a grand tour: eleven bedrooms, nine and a half baths, screening room, studio, reading room, spa, library, deck, wine cellar, and rock garden. Paintings of all sizes and styles dotted the walls. Finally, Athena beckoned her guest to the Victorian sofa in the living room and held his gaze as they descended simultaneously like a team of synchronized sitters.

"I take it you like my work," he said. From three feet away, he could smell the exotic perfume Athena had dabbed on her skin. It reminded him of mint curry, and it saturated the air like a mist.

"You're renegade and original," she responded, her legs in a lotus position. Despite their three inch height difference and twenty year age gap, there was a comfortable ease between them, a subtle recognition, as if they were members of some unique tribe.

"I've always been a renegade, I guess," he said.

"That's what makes you original."

Peg entered the room with a pot of steaming Australian coffee and a plate of chocolate ginger biscotti. She dawdled for a few seconds, grinning flirtatiously at Freddy before exiting with a petulant swing of her hips.

It took five minutes and four biscotti for Athena to extend Freddy an invitation to move into her home from August through January. Freddy stopped chewing. "What's the catch?" he asked.

"The catch is you have to paint for five hours every day," Athena explained. "And I own half the work you complete."

"I won't have to wash floors or haul heavy furniture?"  

"Would I ask a pianist to chop vegetables with a kitchen knife?" 

"I guess not," he said. There was an implicit understanding, made clear by Athena's gentle stroking of Freddy's silky blond hair, that he would share her canopy bed with its Tuscan sheets and frilly fuchsia pillows. He didn't mind this, despite despising the color of the pillows. In fact, the novelty and perverse nature of the arrangement intrigued him. "Can I ask why you do this?"

Athena's face lit up with a knowing smile as if she'd heard the question before. "Bien sur," she said. "I am a connoisseur of art, and the museums gobble up the good pieces. What I do is search for tomorrow's Matisse, next year's El Greco." 

"OK, cool," he said.

"My great disappointment is that I don't have the talent of an artist." Born in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, Athena Easterling spent her childhood in London, Perth, Lisbon, Paris, Moscow, Seoul, Las Vegas, Nome, Rome, Tel Aviv, Daytona Beach and Barcelona. The family owned a corporation that manufactured and distributed medical supplies, employing more than five thousand people worldwide. When a freak hot-air balloon accident in the French Pyrenees killed her parents and only sibling, Athena inherited the business. "And so I found myself an orphan and a billionaire all at once," she ruefully said. "Contrary to what people think, money does not prevent a girl from crying herself to sleep. Nor does it prevent a ten-year-old from the embarrassment of being six feet tall."

"Must've been tough."

"People gazed and gawked like I was a creature from another galaxy."

"Well," Freddy said, "the kids in my neighborhood thought I was weird, too. Painting all the time."

"Ah yes."  

"You still run the business?" Freddy asked.

"Oh no, I sold the company, made a killing." Athena placed both hands on her chest and took a long deep breath. "You didn't give me an answer," she said. "Do you accept my invitation to live and work under my roof?" Her words, bloated with nervousness, were as rickety as an old wooden bridge in a windstorm.  She knew she would be heartbroken if he turned her down.

"Who wouldn't want to hang in these digs?" he said with an incredulous grin.

Freddy moved into Athena's palatial home the following afternoon.

Shaved fennel salad with Macadamia nut-crusted sea bass replaced corndogs and fries as Freddy's typical dinner. Peach sorbet with chocolate truffles replaced chips and dip as a midnight snack. Meals were prepared by Athena's Cordon Bleu-trained chef Lucien, and served by a butler named German (though he was Russian) on large plates decorated with hand-painted Chinese letters. On their second evening together, while munching on honeydew melon, Athena suggested changing Freddy's name.

"What's wrong with my name?" he asked with terse defensiveness.

"Nothing," she said, "if you fix dented fenders. But for an artist it's obscenely plain."

"I'm good with Freddy Hodge," he stated, egregiously offended.

"Don't be so egregiously offended," she told him. "Consider my advice on this. We can keep your initials, if you like. How about Frederick Rhys Hart?"

Freddy took a moment to savor the sound of this name while enjoying the melon melting in his mouth. "Definitely has class," he admitted. "I'll sleep on it."

The following evening, Freddy agreed to the name change. Athena held up her champagne flute in celebration, and the couple toasted to Freddy's new moniker.

Stimulated by his new surroundings, inspiration descended on the young artist like lava from an Icelandic volcano. Freddy spent ten hours a day in a creative spell, on a virtual high, occasionally taking a break to enjoy the crashing waves on the beach or the cloud shadows that moved across the Athena's impressive rock garden. One particular rock, gold and football-shaped, actually shimmered in sunlight, and Freddy was so dazzled by it that he displayed it in the studio.

During his stay at the estate, Freddy created two influential pieces acclaimed by art aficionados in three continents. About Naked Laundress Flying Over Liverpool, the renowned critic Jackson Wise wrote: "Hart's golden orange sky, perhaps the world on fire, reflects a frightening, post-apocalyptic universe. His loosely thrusting strokes are the carriers of idealism, symbols of the mad, limitless possibilities of the creative mind at work."

About Prairie of the Wounded Prostitutes, the renowned critic Lance Phlug wrote: "Hart's new work is strangely reminiscent of Toulouse-Lautrec with the added influence of Degas, specifically the latter's deep psychological intimacy found in his early family portraits. But Hart's rebellious spirit looms large. Each painted prostitute nail, each braid of hooker hair, each fold of slut skin, shrieks of non-conformity thanks to either its bold color or magnified size. The artist uses more pink and black than ever before, and this color scheme suggests less heaven, more hell. Hart seems to have taken personal experience and turned it into myth."

Athena read this review to Freddy as they sipped pomegranate martinis and shared a large puff pastry. Nothing gave her more pleasure than to make Freddy smile. No previous protégé made her body ache with longing the way he did.  His affectionate glances embedded themselves in her soul, filling up spaces that had long been empty. This was more than lust, she realized, and nothing less than obsessive, progressive love. She truly respected him and welcomed his opinions on everything from art to politics to religion to scented lubricants.  

When it came to sharing Athena's bed, it turned out she longed for affection rather than fornication, though she occasionally begged for a fierce beating on the buttocks with her mouth gagged and hands cuffed above her head. Every night, in the half dark, Athena gazed at the body in her bed. He always slept on his side, the soft blanket draped over his hip. A narrow ribbon of light illuminated the roundness of his shoulder, the thickness of his thigh.  Sometimes she buried her face in the sturdy stone wall that was his back, held onto his torso like a life raft, breathed him instead of air. Sometimes she was moved to unexpected tears by his ravishing, dangerous beauty.

As for Freddy, he felt like he'd been rescued from an infested, polluted pit, and his gratefulness gradually grew into a kind of unexpected love. It was Athena who understood that they were both escaping from a life that was handed to them. "We are outcasts," she said. "Personae non gratae. The world does not want us to breathe the same air, eat the same food, swim in the same sea. But we need to breathe and eat and swim, you see." These two souls were fugitives running from the world, desperate outsiders who found refuge in one another's odd company.  

One of Athena's stranger habits was wiping her mouth on Freddy's underwear while he was wearing it. This only occurred after dinner. When the meal ended, Freddy would routinely unzip his trousers and allow Athena to wipe her lips on his boxers. Freddy chose to wipe his on a cloth napkin.

 "The time has come," Freddy said one night during his fifth month at the mansion.

"The time? For what?" she asked.

"For me to ink you." Before Athena had a chance to express her horror, Freddy raced out of the room to grab his tattoo materials. When he returned, he created an exquisite two-tone butterfly on Athena's left calf. She was so enamored with it that over the following few days she found herself gazing at the butterfly in a state of childlike glee, a little girl enthralled with her new toy.

One hundred miles west, Keegan Rhys Malone couldn't shake the humiliation of his banishment from Athena's palace, especially since he stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication. Adding insult to brutal injury, he found Freddy's work obvious and unoriginal.

In Keegan's first gallery showing since exiting Athena's estate, the esteemed critic Sander Dunn wrote: "There is not enough curiosity here to justify Mr. Malone's bizarre images. Still using the brewery as his backdrop, the artist is stuck in a world that has lost its luster. The young women in Ladies Bathing in Lager seem bored by their activity just as the scantily-clad servant girl does in Rubbing Brown Ale on the Albino. Because the artist chooses to work with a limited palette, there's a paucity of color and therefore very little zest in his oeuvre. Even in the striking Let's Scare Bonnie to the Brink of Death, Mr. Malone's spatial relations seem off. The startled Bonnie, with her round, frightened eyes, appears infinitely larger than the two men attempting to stuff her into the mash tun. A promising talent neglected to keep his promise." 

This scathing review pushed Keegan over the edge. The very day the critic's blistering words appeared in print, the artist filled up the gas tank of his red Corvette and headed east, armed with a box of granola bars, a six-pack of Guinness, and a desire to set things straight.

When he arrived at the security gate of Athena's manse, he faked a cheerful smile for Scutter, the jovial guard he had befriended (and gifted with bottles of brandy) during his six-month stay. "Scutter my man," Keegan said. "Would you believe I left one of my sketch pads on the front porch?"

"Not a problem," Scutter said, reaching for the phone.

"Don't bother Miss Easterling. I'm sure it's in a pile under the patio table. I don't even have to go into the house."

"All right then," Scutter said.

The electronic gate opened, and Keegan proceeded. He pulled up to the patio, but instead of heading to the table he entered the house through one of the side doors. Stealthily zipping down the long hallway, he searched for the thief who had taken his place. Freddy was exactly where Keegan expected him to be, in the studio, standing before his canvas, brush in hand. 

With a demonic shine in his eyes, the wronged artist pulled out a nylon rope from his pocket and entered the studio, approaching his rival from behind. In a sudden rush, he lunged at Freddy with maniacal force and tied the rope tightly around his neck. Freddy realized he had little chance of freeing his constricted airways, so he tried another tactic. With his left knee, he used every bit of available strength to kick his attacker in the groin. The move was so powerful and unexpected that Keegan wailed in pain like a wounded horse before falling to the terra cotta-tile floor. As Freddy grabbed his golden football-shaped rock, the thrill of the fight came rushing back to him. He bashed the boulder into Keegan's head, getting off on the joy of physical assault. The wild beast had been let out of its cage, and the sensation Freddy felt was as natural to him as hunger. As he prepared to strike the shrieking victim one more time, Keegan yelled, "Don't!"

"Why not?" Freddy asked with a believable simplicity that covered his rage. "You were about to choke me to death, right?"

"I was thinking about it."

"Can you think of any reason I shouldn't knock the living daylights out of you?" Without waiting for a response, the untamed human animal delivered the lethal blow just seconds before Athena rushed into the studio, her three dachshunds scurrying behind. "Mon Dieu!" she cried.

"Who the hell is this guy?" Freddy shouted. "He tried to kill me."

"Keegan Rhys Malone, an artist who lived here for a bit."

"What was his name before you changed it?"

"Kip Monk," Athena said, as the little dogs began to lop Keegan's blood. "No!" she shouted. "Avril, Mae, Georges, out!" 

"What was he doing here?" Freddy asked.

"Je ne sais pas," she muttered in a mild state of shock. "Je ne sais pas."  

"Did he have talent?" Freddy asked.

"He had potential."  

Freddy studied the blood, gushing from Keegan's head like water from an open hydrant. "Hey, doesn't it look darker than you'd imagine?"

Athena's eyes widened with surprise. "Absolutely. It's practically maroon."

"Or burgundy," Freddy said. "I would have expected more of a coral or crimson."

"Or Venetian red."

"You hit it on the nose."

"I love Venetian red," Athena exclaimed. "It just might be my favorite color." The blood, inching toward her bare feet, reminded her that the incident needed to be reported. "I should have Peg fetch the police."

When the authorities questioned Freddy, he pleaded self-defense, pointing to the severe abrasions on his neck caused by the assailant's nylon rope. But not everyone was convinced, most notably the media that descended like vultures on a fresh carcass. The incident made headlines and became fodder for tabloid magazines and cable news networks.

The ensuing trial was nothing less than a media circus with crowds of frenzied onlookers gathered outside the courthouse each morning, holding signs that read either Free Freddy! or Fry Freddy! There was no denying that Frederick Rhys Hart bludgeoned Keegan Rhys Malone; the only question was motive. Athena came to Freddy's defense, but her character was sullied by conservative activists who painted her as an immoral predator who purchased young men for her personal pleasure. Freddy was painted as a painter who connived his way to fame, fortune, and fine dining, a combination obsessed Wunderkind and streetwise thug.

Media savvy attorney Roz Weinkrantz-McClure, who agreed to take Freddy's case, told her client, "Never underestimate the power of the people."  She booked Freddy on a string of popular news programs and instructed him to focus on his unusual childhood: the abandonment by his father, the tawdry activities that took place in his mother's tattoo parlor. She also instructed him to wear a tight muscle T-shirt. Public sympathy quickly swayed to Freddy's camp.

It took the jury a mere half hour to reach a verdict. In the courtroom, hearts pounded. Pulses raced. Every nerve in Freddy's body was in a heightened, anticipatory state. Athena could barely breathe. The foreman, a lanky tree surgeon with grass stains on his rumpled shirt, solemnly announced: "We find the defendant, Frederick Rhys Hart, not guilty." 

Public outcry was immediate. Freddy's many supporters cheered; his few detractors chanted the name Keegan Rhys Malone as they marched in candlelight vigils.  Some in the media suspected the verdict was a result of Freddy's undeniable sex appeal. One of the jurors actually admitted (to the Associated Press) that she found Freddy "ferociously seductive."

Frederick Rhys Hart changed his name back to Freddy Hodge and declined Athena's offer to move back into the mansion, explaining that it was time to move on, free of entanglements and potential gossip. This stunning, mystifying news hit Athena like a meteor. It was as if a plug had been pulled from her body and her organs could no longer function properly. The no-end-in-sight agony began to saturate her spirit until it finally engulfed her.  

One month after this unsparing decision, Athena swallowed thirty sleeping pills along with a strong Algonquin martini. Then she grabbed a kitchen knife and stepped into a tub filled with deliciously warm water and freesia scented bubbles. As she luxuriated in the bath, she lifted her leg and deliberately slashed her ankle, making a sizeable cut into her one and only tattoo. She rested her leg on the side of the tub so that she could watch her two-tone butterfly bleed to death. After a vibrant and colorful life that had taken her from Stonehenge to Red Square to the Champs-Elysees to Las Ramblas to the Liberace Museum, the dazzling Athena Easterling reached an abrupt dead end.

Consumed with grief, Freddy couldn't wrap his head around this startling loss. The woman who had rescued him was now gone, leaving a gaping hole in his life.

The fact that she left the bulk of her estate to him only added to the debilitating guilt. At the same time, commercial success came at the artist with such mighty force that he barely had time to mourn. His paintings were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, he earned millions in product endorsements (Crayola, Montblanc, Abercrombie & Fitch twill shorts), People magazine named him one of their fifty most beautiful, and a major television network was negotiating with his mother (who closed her tattoo parlor to become her son's manager) about a reality show. Freddy's deadbeat father crawled out of the woodwork, claiming he wanted to become a family again. Freddy pummeled him in the stomach after spewing a series of obscenities. The following day, Wanda took out a restraining order.

Freddy purchased a house two miles north of Athena's mansion, a considerably smaller place but with a cozy guest house in which Wanda decided to live. He hired Athena's world-class chef Lucien as well as her Russian butler German.

On the outside, Freddy Hodge seemed to be thriving despite the premature gray that invaded his scalp like crabgrass. Inside, something was churning, a pesky sense of remorse that kept him awake at night and weakened his will to create.

He began painting less and less; six hours a day became four, then two. Then he stopped altogether and decided to spend a year abroad, visiting Greece, London, Perth, Lisbon, Paris, Moscow, Seoul, Las Vegas, Nome, Rome, Tel Aviv, Daytona Beach and Barcelona before being banned from three separate airlines for striking three male flight attendants in three separate incidents. It seemed as if Freddy was banished to his home forever.  It seemed to his mother that he lived with an intense desire for absolution, something he refused to discuss. Wanda wasn't sure if her son felt more guilty about the murder of the young artist or the abandonment of the older woman, but she undoubtedly leaned toward the latter. 

One overcast day in July, as gray and white clouds swirled above, Freddy picked up his brush. It felt foreign to him, unnatural, the way a right-handed person might feel using a pair of scissors with his left hand. Still, he pushed himself to paint. Hours passed like days until Freddy reconnected with his gift, and when he did, it felt as if he'd never taken a break.

This began a new era in the life and career of Freddy Hodge. Something was different, however. Every piece of work he completed, whether a simple sketch in black and white or an elaborate painting in vibrant color, featured a willowy, quirky creature sitting in a lotus position with a martini glass in one hand and an Hermes scarf in the other. Sometimes this intriguing figure was front and center; sometimes it was in the background camouflaged by color and light. But wherever it happened to be on the canvas, the eye of the beholder was undeniably, inexplicably drawn to it.