LIFE in IMPERFECT FORMS a Thesis Submitted to Kent State University

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LIFE IN IMPERFECT FORMS

A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts

Alexander Todd Cox

May, 2011

Thesis written by Alexander Todd Cox B.A., The College of Wooster, 2003 M.F.A., Kent State University, 2011

Approved by

____Varley O’Connor______, Advisor

____Ron Corthell______, Chair, Department of English

____John R. D. Stalvey______, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………..iv

STORIES

Life in Imperfect Forms……………………………………..…….1 Singularity…………………………………………………..……26 Fiercely Luminous Beings…………………………………….....43 You Too Shall Be King…………………………………………..56 The Getaway…………………………………………………..…68 Aunt Theodora……………………………………………..…….90

THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH (novel excerpt)

Prologue: The Dog……………...……………………………....116 Chapter I: Conceivable, Sure…………….…………...………...124 Chapter II: Sharing the Womb…………..……………………...129 Chapter III: A Speck, and then the Terror…………..……...…...146 Chapter IV: The Taste…………..……...…………………...... 151

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Varley O’Connor, for her thoughtful guidance. Her commitment and enthusiasm was invaluable. Thanks also to my committee members, Eric Wasserman and Imad Rahman.

Many of the stories in this collection have been read and critiqued in class by dozens of my fellow graduate students, yet there are a small number of generous friends who took time outside of class to offer additional insight and encouragement. Thanks to Tara Kaloz, Megan Erwin, and Bobbi Maiers.

Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Ed and Linda Cox, for their unconditional love and support, and for the endless supply of baked goods they sent home with me on weekends.

LIFE IN IMPERFECT FORMS

Things were going okay until Ruby Robinson clubbed her husband with a baseball bat.

She waited for him in the bedroom closet, crouched under the wire hangers. He knew that she would be home but she waited in the closet anyway, perhaps to add some panache to the occasion.

The husband walked into the bedroom at nine in the morning, after spending the night who-knows-where, and she leaped out, screaming something about God and

Revelations. It was the neighbors three doors down who called the police. There had been smaller fights before this one, mostly involving openhanded slaps and the occasional throwing of silverware. But this time there was a baseball bat. Ruby clubbed her husband right in the shoulder, breaking his clavicle, then she clubbed him on the left knee, then she went outside and clubbed the hood of his truck.

When the cops arrived, Ruby held out her arms for the inevitable handcuffs and said, “Justice has been served.” They took her to the station and they took her husband to the hospital and that was that. The house was empty. No one would be there when the kids got home from school. So of course Jan, the case worker, called Barb in one of her manufactured panics and told her what happened and begged us to take the kids again— just for a little while. She knew how challenging it was when we had them last, but this

was an emergency. Barb sobbed and nodded at the phone, as if Jan could see her nodding.

Then she hung up and ran her palms down her soggy cheeks and gave me that half- pleading, half-wild look of hers and I said, “Barbara, I love you, sweetheart. This is a terrible idea.” And she didn't even reply. She acted like I had said something else entirely and walked over and gripped me with an earnest, lingering hug while I stood holding the piece of toast that I was about to butter and now the toast was at arm's length, cooling in my hand, rapidly approaching the point where butter would no longer melt on its surface.

All I wanted was to butter that damn toast but the world, it seemed, had careened off course, off into the realm of hysteria.

I took the day off work and we spent the rest of the morning kid-proofing our home. It felt like we were moving. Loose household items disappeared one by one; everything that could be broken or weaponized had to go. I packed up the tools in the garage and locked them away. When all the wrenches, pliers, and hacksaws were safely stowed, the pegboard behind my workbench looked like a piece of modern art with all of its empty tool-outline decals.

Barb scoured the dining room, the den, the bedrooms collecting vases, lamps, candles, and potted plants. The plants went behind the shed. Everything else went to the attic. We debated the status of the kitchen knives and eventually stashed them in the cupboard above the fridge where they would be out of sight and out of mind but still accessible for cooking purposes. We emptied the medicine cabinet just in case. The boys

had yet to express an interest in tampering with pills or cough syrup, but there was no point in tempting fate.

The sleeping arrangements would be the same as before. The older two would stay in the basement, where their destructive energies could be localized. The youngest would stay in the guest room. In all likelihood, he still had night terrors and bed-wetting tendencies. We had a strategy for this too: a fitted sheet went down first, then a sheet of plastic, then another fitted sheet, then another sheet of plastic, then another fitted sheet.

When the screaming started, we could stumble into his room, give the kid a hug, peel off the top sheet-plastic layer, change his pajamas, and then stumble back to bed. Normally

I'd take the first round, Barb would take the second, and if there was a third, well, we rotated on that one.

Jan picked up the kids from school and took them home to pack. She pulled into our place around five. Barb and I walked out the front door and held hands as Jan's boat of a station-wagon crawled up the gravel driveway. Barb elbowed me in the ribs and said,

“Smile. We need to smile for them. They need to feel welcome here.” So I grinned like a damn fool as I watched those three little moon faces peering at me from the backseat of the car.

Jan parked at an angle and turned in her seat and said something sharp to the kids, something non-negotiable that was accompanied by severe finger wagging. Then she got out and the kids stayed put. Barb and Jan had been friends for years. We used to go to the same church, back when Barb and I still did that sort of thing. Our kids went to high

school together. When Kyle and then Caroline sailed off to university, we drifted out of contact with Jan.

But then Barb was struck with her fit of empty-nest lunacy. She signed us up for foster parenting classes and since Jan worked for the County Department of Human

Services, she suddenly fell back into our lives. I had always regarded Jan as humorless and aggressively pious, but as soon as she found out that we were going to be foster parents, she was suddenly thrilled and ever so proud of us. She reacted with such warmth that I felt compelled to look upon her more charitably.

Jan was a single mother and when she talked to Barb and me, she addressed us as if we were some kind of hive mind. She even crushed our names into a single unit:

Barbandgary. It sounded like a fancy dessert wine, like, I'll have the '87 Barbandgary. I'm told that that was an excellent year.

So, of course, she walked over and hugged us both at the same time, one arm around each of our necks, and said, “Thank you so much for doing this, Barbandgary. I know these kids aren't easy to handle but they have nowhere else to go.”

“Of course, of course,” said Barb, “we're so happy to help,” and she sniffled a little and I did my part by continuing to grin like a nutcase.

“This will only be temporary,” said Jan, “I promise.” She filled us in on all the pertinent details. Ruby Robinson's arraignment would be next week. The husband was threatening litigation, but he might reconsider. The two were undoubtedly getting a divorce, which was for the best. He wasn't particularly nice to her or the kids. When the divorce was finalized and the charges were settled, Ruby could start another round of

mandatory parenting and anger management classes. If those went well, then the kids could start hourly visitations, and then weekends, and then, and then...

“Then?” I said.

“Then we'll take things from there,” said Jan. She leveled us with a hard, sober stare. “Look, you know how they are. Don't try to change them. They won't ever change.

You just have to love them as best as you can.” She turned to the boys and this was the signal for them to get out of the car. They were startlingly thin and pallid. If anything, they looked smaller than when I saw them last, even though it had been more than four months. Michael, the oldest, the lispy motormouth, was wearing the New York Jets t-shirt

I got him at a consignment store. Gabriel, the psychopath, looked calm, bored even.

Raphael—little Ralphy—was sucking his thumb.

All of their clothes and toys were stuffed into garbage bags, which Jan heaved out of the trunk. She hugged Barb and me again and then hugged the boys and when all the hugging was finished, she jumped in her car and drove away.

We took the boys inside.

Dinner was still in the oven so Barb shepherded the older two downstairs to unpack and I put my hand on Ralphy's shoulder and guided him to the guest room. He had curly brown hair and doe-like eyes. I suspected that he had a different father from the older two, who were blond, but I would have to check my history as to which husband came when.

Ralphy was the easiest of the three to handle. He wasn't exactly a good kid but he was malleable. He'd be good for Barb and me and he'd be rotten to the core for Michael and Gabriel.

I plopped Ralphy down on the bed and he sat there looking mildly dazed. I felt that I should say something. I should definitely say something but Hi! How are you? I hope you're happy to be here! sounded enormously stupid and embarrassing.

Instead, I unpacked his belongings and narrated each step of the way, even though he could see exactly what I was doing. I pulled faded, frayed clothing from the garbage bag, folded his rumpled socks and sweatshirts, tucked them in the dresser and said, “Look how neat and tidy everything is when we fold our clothes!” Then I stacked his toys in the chest in the corner. They were all busted and mangled. I ignored this fact and now and then I'd pull out an action figure missing limbs or a truck missing wheels and I'd grin at the kid and say, “Wow, this thing sure looks fun!” I did this until I realized that I sounded like some kind of hobo Santa Claus.

Then I stopped.

We walked back to the kitchen where the older two were sitting at the table and

Barb was pulling dinner out of the oven and, dear God, she'd made meatloaf. Even good children have a troubled relationship with meatloaf. I flashed Barb a look and she flashed me a look and this is the silent exchange that passed between us:

Me: Meatloaf? What the hell?

Barb: The boys need healthy food. Just look at them!

Me: They won't touch it. You'll see.

Barb: Then we'll show them who's in charge.

Me: Fine.

Barb: Fine.

None of this was said out loud. It was important that we presented a unified front.

It was important that we were Barbandgary. We all sat down at the table and just as I reached for the potatoes, Barb said “Gary, why don't you say grace?”

The word “Jesus,” slipped out of my mouth. Barb had never sprung anything like this on me. But I folded my hands, lowered my head, and repeated in a more sober tone,

“Jesus: bless this food. Bless this house and bless these boys during their time here.

Amen.” Then we ate.

Miraculously, the boys devoured everything that was placed before them. They talked very little. Even Michael kept his cluttered, barely intelligible disquisitions to a minimum. In the past, family dinners with the boys were an exhausting ordeal. Barb felt that this pillar of familial interaction was good for them, but herding all three boys to the table each night proved so draining that we relegated family dinners to Sundays. For the rest of the week, Barb cooked, and people ate when and where they pleased. But maybe, just maybe, things would be different this time.

This chime of foolish hope danced in my chest for the rest of the evening. The boys agreed to watch a movie and after it ended they agreed to get ready for bed. They brushed their teeth in an orderly fashion and while they betrayed no interest in bedtime stories, being tucked in, or reciprocating our displays of affection, they didn't cause a ruckus either.

After the basement lights go out, Barb and I stood halfway up the stairs, backs bent, watching. The older two lay bundled in thick comforters. They breathed rhythmically, washed in the pale glow of the nightlight. Gabriel was the closer of the two.

He was curled on his side with a folded wrist pressed into his forehead. He looked like every other child that had ever found rest at the end of a long day. He could have been our own child and once again the tinkling hope fluttered in my chest. From the very beginning, Jan never minced words about Gabriel. She said that it was too late for him, that he had no soul, no essential humanity. At some point, amidst the beatings, amidst the filth and the abuse, his soul packed up shop; all that was left was wild, unchecked emotions.

Eventually, Barb and I tiptoed back to the kitchen, where we whispered low and fast.

“That went well.”

“That went really well.”

“That went great!”

It felt like we'd pulled off a daring heist, a bank robbery or maybe a high-stakes con job. We rewarded ourselves by sitting in bed eating ice cream and watching

Letterman. After finishing the butterscotch nut swirl, we prepared for bed. Barb kissed me on the cheek and we were about to turn off the lights when a keening wail shocked us back to our senses. The wail was followed by some low blubbering.

“Well,” said Barb, “off you go.”

After three weeks, it occurred to me that I was basically Doctor Frankenstein.

Here I was, replenishing and nourishing these little monsters and as they gained strength, so too did they gain the ability to challenge us and to menace the hapless villagers.

To celebrate his return to form, Gabriel found a box of nails. He sprinkled them around my next door neighbor's driveway, paying particular attention to the space behind the wheels of the brand new Range Rover. My neighbor caught Gabriel in the act and chased the little shit off his property with a leaf rake. Then he called our house and yelled at Barb who called me at work and cried and said, “What should I do?”

I told her to make sure he didn't sprinkle nails in our driveway too. So Barb went outside and, sure enough, there was Gabriel sprinkling nails in our driveway. Barb yelled at him and he ran off, whooping and hollering like a wild animal. Our neighbor was able to sweep the nails off his concrete easily enough, but we have a gravel driveway and I knew I'd be picking up nails for weeks to come.

Anyway, Gabriel wasn't allowed to have dinner that night. We told him to go straight to bed and he said he didn't care. He wasn't hungry and Barb's cooking tasted like

“poop-shit” anyway. I wanted to throttle Gabriel right there but Barb took him by the shoulder and marched him downstairs. Later, after the other boys were in bed, I said, “We should have spanked that kid.”

And Barb said, “No. That's not how we're going to do this.” She reminded me of our agreement that there would be no corporal punishment. We needed to show these kids that violence was never the answer.

“I'm not so sure about that,” I said. But she stuck to her guns, so to speak, even though there were two wet rings gathering at the edge of her eyes like tiny moats. This made me feel bad so I rubbed her back and said, “Well, at any rate, I don't think your cooking tastes like poop-shit.” Then she laughed and I laughed but we were both still pretty shaken.

The next morning, Barb left to spend the day with her mother so she could let off a little steam. This meant I would have to leave work early again to pick up the kids from school. I told my partner this when I passed his desk and he said, “Sure Gary, why not? In fact, how about I just run the entire firm from now on?”

“Good idea!” I said and trotted down the hall to my office. I had been leaving early or taking off entire days quite frequently since the boys returned. I told myself and everyone else that this was their “adjustment period,” but deep inside I knew that it was only going to get worse.

The principal at our elementary school was mortified when he learned that we'd taken the boys back. They didn't mix well with the local children. The school called us constantly—mostly about Gabriel, although Michael had the unique ability to coax otherwise civilized classmates into pummeling him senseless. But Gabriel was still the worst. His list of offenses included selling my own children's baseball cards and jewelry in the hallways (this stopped happening after I padlocked my kids' bedroom doors), throwing corn dogs and tater tots at the lunch ladies, repeatedly lifting a girl's skirt on the playground, and stabbing a younger boy's neck with a pencil. So at one-thirty, when my secretary told me that the school was on line two and they sounded desperate, I wasn't

particularly surprised. I lifted the phone from its cradle and a hoarse voice said, “Mr.

Clegg, you need to come here immediately to collect Gabriel.”

“What has he done this time?” I asked.

“Well let's see,” and there was a pregnant pause, “he is disrupting his classroom.”

Whatever that means.

“I'll be right down,” I said with a sigh. I donned my jacket, gave my partner the jauntiest wave I could muster, and walked out the door.

The elementary school was only five minutes from my office. It had an impressive glass facade that proudly declared, “Look! Look at the wonders your property taxes have wrought!” and I admit, it was a very nice school. It had a computer lab and a fully equipped gymnasium. It even had yoga classes—kiddie yoga classes—for God's sake. The halls were lined with colorful board displays of the students' various achievements. The first one was full of exuberant renderings of what appeared to be moose or elk, only with fat legs and broad smiles. Other displays included illustrations of the process of photosynthesis, and a diagram of the word “hello” in various languages. It was all bright and brimming with the joys of learning.

I walked to the principal's office and several of the staff escorted me to the fourth grade art room. This was a shame because art was the only subject in which Gabriel displayed even a modicum of interest. We walked inside and there he was, wrecking the entire world, literally.

The other children had already been evacuated. But there stood Mrs. What's-her- face, the art teacher, looking shell-shocked. In the corner of the room sat a giant papier-

mâché globe with plastic palm trees, fish, bison, and other toys glued to geographically appropriate locations. The globe was at least seven feet tall and there was Gabriel, like some terrible space-god, standing atop the globe, holding the edge of a curtain for balance. When I entered, he knelt down and plucked a polar bear from Greenland and hurled it at his dumbfounded teacher. Polar bears are not very aerodynamic and he missed by a wide margin. Nevertheless, this shook Mrs. What's-her-face from her awestruck stupor and she grabbed my arm and said, “Please! You have to get him out of here!”

“How did he get up there?” I asked, not that it really mattered. I walked over to the globe and ordered Gabriel to come down at once. He'd created a giant depression over the North Pole and sooner or later, that wimpy papier-mâché would give and he'd shoot straight down into the center of the earth. How symbolically appropriate that would be.

The janitor brought a folding ladder which we placed next to the globe. Gabriel rocked back and forth, singing a song about ecosystems and interdependence that he must have learned in his Living Science class. An isolated corner of my brain saluted his mastery of the large words, but this hardly distracted from the task at hand. I climbed the first three rungs of the ladder and held out my arms and said, “Come here, Gabriel. It's time to come down.” Naturally, he ignored me and continued to sing.

“An ecosystem is a system that shows how things relaaaaaate!” The expression on his face was startling. It was a look of hysterical joy, of truly spiritual rapture. I had never seen him, nor anyone, looking so happy.

I called out to him again, and again he ignored me. So I climbed the next rung and reached out my arms to grab his torso. This got his attention. As I shifted my weight to

lift Gabriel off the globe, he squirmed in my arms and when that failed, he raised his forearm and bit down hard on his own hand. “Ahhh!” he wailed, “he bit me, he bit me!

Get this guy away from me, he bit me!” It was a trick I'd seen him use on more than one occasion. He loved to play the victim, although on this particular occasion I don't think anyone was buying the notion that I had climbed up a ladder and bitten my own foster child.

I hoisted Gabriel down to earth, thus ending his reign of terror. Once he saw that the game was up he dialed down the theatrics. His wails dwindled to sulky, halfhearted mutterings of, “He bit me, he really did.”

This stunt earned him three days of suspension, plus another strike on his record; one more and he would be expelled. The school day ended in less than an hour so I pulled

Michael and Raphael out early and we drove home listening to Michael's lispy rendition of “America the Beautiful.” Up front, I did my best to radiate towering fury. I wanted to be seen as an agent of unspeakable retribution, as justice personified. But in the rear-view mirror I could see Gabriel contemplating the back of my head. He honed in on my pink little bald patch and his mouth was twisted in a lazy sneer. He knew that there was nothing I could do to him, that he was somehow impenetrable. Locked in his withering gaze, I felt limp, sallow. I wanted to stoke my anger but it collapsed under its own weight. I wanted to feel vital, to regard myself as a force to be reckoned with. Instead, I drove home under the speed limit, gripping the steering wheel tightly, so that my hands would not shake.

I knew that Barb wouldn't get back until after four. So as soon as we parked I send the boys downstairs to play video games while I took a short walk to clear my head. The weather had been good the last few days. Last week's rains had dissolved into cold, pale blue skies and the red and yellow leaves were crisp and dry again. They blew around the streets and caught on the still green grass. It was the sort of day that elbowed you in the ribs and said, Smile buddy. Come on and smile. I shoved my fists deep into my pockets and shuffled down the street, struggling to decipher the nameless, ancient emotions that heaved and tugged at my nerves like electrical wires in a storm.

The houses on this street were tall and self-assured, like crown roasts garnished with neatly manicured yards. It seemed ridiculous that three little cavemen were lurking in a basement nearby. It seemed ridiculous that they could remain so unconstrained by civilization, so immune to reason, and yet look so perfectly ordinary. They could smile at any moment, apple-cheeked, mouths full of clumsy adult teeth, and I'd be half-tempted to believe that they were regular children. My heart would swell with pride like it swelled with pride at the thought of my own kids, who I suddenly remembered as being good, ceaselessly and uniformly good, marching towards maturity with heads held high. I longed for Kyle and Caroline who were so far away and had recently expressed reservations about coming home for Christmas since they would be around again.

This thought only served to deepen my confusion and sadness. At times like these,

I tried to remind myself of the terrible histories that these boys carried on their thin shoulders, of the abundant explanations for why they behaved as they did.

It was against county policy, but Jan had slipped us a horrifying manila envelope stuffed with brutal descriptions. Aside from the standard slaps, cuffs, and shoves, there were some truly bizarre incidents. On one occasion, one of the step-fathers made them urinate on an electric fence. When their efforts didn't provide the desired shock, the step- father took matters into his own hands and pulled out a Taser. He zapped them one at a time and then gave them orange Popsicles for being such good sports. Other step-fathers weren't much better and Ruby herself had her own unique brand of motherhood. When the boys disappointed her, she was fond of making them crawl in circles around the living room, begging for forgiveness. She would stand in the center, flicking them with a switch, as if they were cattle.

“Are you sorry for what you did?” she’d say.

“We’re sorry!” they wailed.

“You ain’t sorry yet.” And she’d swat and swat.

I shook the image from my head. At the bottom of the hill, the houses were smaller and the yards were squat and modest, yet tidy. The people who lived here took pride in what they owned. I'd been walking this rout for years, since long before the boys arrived.

It was trash day tomorrow and people had placed all manner of oddities alongside their rubber trashcans: a sound-system with wires hanging out like spilled entrails, a warped particle-board side table, a mason jar filled with crumbling seashells, the empty casing for a—slam! Something crashed into the center board of a latched screen door and shattered the suburban calm with vicious snarls and barks that sent my heart leaping into

my throat. Behind the screen door, a quivering muzzle curled upward, brandishing glistening canines. Every time I walked this street, I reminded myself to be prepared for this dog, and every time I forgot and it startled me anew.

I'd spoken with the batty Bulgarian lady who lived here. I'd suggested that an animal this ferocious and territorial was, perhaps, inappropriate for our particular neighborhood. After all, there were children about. At the very least, it would be in everyone's best interest if she didn't leave her front door open so that the dog could ram itself into the flimsy screen door and potentially break free. Naturally, my reasonable suggestions fell on deaf ears. The Bulgarian lady warbled something about safety and freedom and the American way in her thick-tongued English. Then she returned to watering her gardenias.

Normally I could shrug off this minor unpleasantry after my heart slipped back into its normal rhythm, but today I was already feeling sour, so I abandoned the rest of my circuit and headed for home. Besides, who knows what the boys were up to. It was never a good idea to leave them unsupervised for any length of time.

I trudged back up the hill towards home, half expecting to find the place on fire, or flooded from within, or gone altogether. Instead, everything was as I left it. I poked my head into the basement to find the three boys peering up at the television screen, furiously tapping video game controllers with their little thumbs. Barb and I had an entire list of defunct video game policies. We'd tried controlling the time and circumstances under which video games were played, we'd restricted the type of games played (some of them could be terrifically violent), we'd taken the system away from time to time as

punishment for various infractions, etc. Ultimately, we reached the shamefaced conclusion that some battles are not worth fighting. For better or worse, television and video games sucked up a lot of time and thus made our lives easier.

I sneaked upstairs without ever pulling their attention from the all-commanding white glow and spent the rest of the afternoon hazily shuffling through blueprints and paperwork. Barb returned flushed and energized after a day at the spa with her mother, and even the news of Gabriel's world crushing exploits failed to dampen her spirits. She decides that even though it was Thursday we would have family dinner and she hurried together a casserole. When the food was ready I padded back down to the basement and delivered the bad news to the boys that they could not go on playing video games forever, alas, and must hightail it to the kitchen to wash their hands and sit down for dinner. They ignored my commands and it was only after I knelt and reached for the power button that they sprang to life, snarling in protest at my unfathomable cruelty. They saved their game and trudged upstairs into the light of day.

After mopping up a spilled glass of orange juice, pulling Raphael from under the table, and convincing Gabriel to stop wearing the bread basket as a hat, we all sat at the table, hungry and irritable. I bowed my head to offer a terse prayer and Barb heaped casserole onto the boys’ plates. They recoiled in disgust, gagging, swooning, crossing their eyes. Everything tasted like poop-shit.

I tried directing their attention away from the casserole by orchestrating a little dinnertime conversation. “You know that crazy Bulgarian lady down the street? The one with the dog?”

“Yes, dear,” said Barb, “I know you don't like that dog.”

“One of these days that dog is going to get out and it's going to attack an innocent child.”

“Like one of us?” said Raphael.

“No, not like one of you,” I said.

Barb raised her eyebrows at me.

“Do you know what I can do?” said Michael. “I can bark like a dog.” He demonstrated this for us and yes, he could indeed bark like a dog. Amazing. “Do you know what else I can do? I can run like a dog. I can run on all fours.”

“Can you poop like a dog?” said Raphael. All three of the boys found this to be uproarious. They laughed and laughed. None of them had taken a bite of casserole yet but now they were prodding and stirring their dinners with less overt hatred and disgust.

Sooner or later, one of them would take a tentative first bite.

“I've seen that dog,” said Gabriel. His voice was calm, casual. He had flattened his casserole into a goopy pancake and was plowing furrows into it with his fork. “I've seen that dog,” he said again. “If you want, I'll find a knife. I'll go down the hill and I'll kill it for you.”

“Gabriel!” snapped Barb. “That is not how we talk at the dinner table!” The other two boys tittered and squirmed. They knew when the invisible line was crossed; they knew when Gabriel was joking and when he was serious. “I don't know what's gotten into you today, young man. But we are not going to stand for this, isn't that right, Gary?”

“Yes, that's right,” I said. In my mind's eye, I could see the boy and the dog: two violent, chaotic forces entwined in a perfect circle, folded in upon one another, complete.

They stabbed, bit, and clawed until one of them walked away and the other lay bleeding and the world was a slightly better place.

“And, Gary, please set a good example for these boys and stop playing with your food.”

“Yes, dear.”

After dinner, Barb rinsed the plates and I loaded them into the dishwasher. Barb apologized for telling me off in front of the boys. After all, we needed to present a unified front.

“That's right, we need to be Barbandgary.”

“Say what?” said Barb.

“Nothing,” I said, and stuffed two bowls so close together on the upper rack that the glass squealed. After the dishes were finished, Barb scurried around the house, cleaning up as best as she could. Jan was coming in the morning and Barb wanted to give the impression that we were having a greater influence on the boys than they were having on us. Jan came by whenever there was a major blowup. It's county policy.

The next morning, before the boys scrambled down the hill to board the yellow school bus like marauding pirates, Jan swung by. As soon as we heard her tires chewing their way up the gravel drive, Barb and I scurried outside to debrief her in private. She hugged us and we breathlessly listed the boys' latest transgressions: the mystery bruise on

Michael's sternum that he insisted had manifested in his sleep, the messes he left in the

bathroom, his failure to complete homework, Raphael's newly developed habit of hiding before bath-time (in closets, under the bed, behind curtains, even in the clothes hamper) and of course his relentless bed-wetting, and of course Gabriel's cold savagery, his violence toward the other two, his violence toward us, the broken glass, the nails, the holes in the wall, yesterday's art class, and his offer to stab the neighbor's dog.

“In all fairness,” I noted, “this is the first time that he's volunteered to do us any kind of favor.” Perhaps this was progress?

Jan looked grim. “I've said it before and I'll say it again, that boy has no soul. I know I'm not supposed to talk like that but the truth is the truth.” She hugged us a second time and then we walked inside to confront the boys.

“Listen up!” she said with caustic authority, “I hear that you boys aren't behaving yourselves. I hear that you aren't respecting Barbandgary, who've been kind enough to watch you these last few weeks. I hear all of this and more and I do not want to be hearing these things.”

“When is Mommy coming home?” asked Raphael.

Jan considered these words with a hard glint in her eye. Then she pulled her cell phone out of her purse as if it was a magic wand. “Listen up!” she said. “I've spoken with your mother. We've agreed that you can see each other again soon. But you'll have to be good. You won't be allowed to see her unless you are good. In the meantime, I'm going to let you speak with her for a few minutes; she's waiting for us to call.” Jan punched in the numbers and the boys clambered around the cell phone like hatchling sparrows before a worm. After their mother picked up, Jan switched to speakerphone and Ruby's voice rang

out flat and metallic. All three boys began speaking at once, babbling, bellowing, pleading, and Ruby's digitalized voice rose to meet them. She shouted and cursed and the boys clambered all the more. Jan stood at the center of the commotion, placid, unmoved, with hand outstretched like a benevolent Madonna offering balms to a weary world. The voices rose to a fevered pitch; they rose and converged in a ragged wail of fury, longing, and despair. It was like glossolalia. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

Abruptly, Jan concluded the interchange and snapped the phone shut. “That's it,” she said. “Now be good and you'll get to see your mother again soon.”

It was time for school. Barb and I shoved textbooks and pencils into backpacks.

We shoved peanut-butter sandwiches, baby carrots, and mini-yogurts into brown paper sacks. We hustled Michael and Raphael outside where they—dumbfounded and shivering—staggered downhill toward the rapidly approaching yellow bus.

Gabriel was banished to the basement to serve out the term of his suspension.

Once the boys were gone, Jan leveled with us. “Look,” she said, “I didn't want to say this in front of the boys, but things are not going as planned. Ruby is not cooperating.”

Apparently, she had verbally assaulted both the prosecuting attorney and her own court appointed lawyer during a pretrial hearing. In addition, she had made a series of threatening phone calls to her soon to be ex-husband and now faced additional charges as a result. Even if the case didn't go to trial, even if she served no jail time, the local magistrate was fed up and would almost certainly strip her of her remaining parental rights. The boys would become wards of the state and Barb and I would be first in line to take permanent custody. Obviously, we didn't have to. The boys could go to a home, or

the county could find other foster parents to take them in. “But the point is,” said Jan,

“you're first in line, that's all.”

Before any of this could sink in, Jan hugged us again. She hugged us tightly, her head pressed between our two heads and I could smell the must of old leather, cigarette smoke, and shampoo. Then she was gone and Barb and I were left standing in the middle of the kitchen. Barb walked to the counter and lifted a single baby carrot from the bag by the sink. She stared at it as if she had never seen such a peculiar object, then she placed it back in the bag and turned to me. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she said.

“No. I need to get going. I need to get to the office,” I said. I shrugged into my coat, gave Barb a peck on the cheek and left her alone to contemplate the mess she'd gotten us into.

But once I was outside I couldn't bring myself to go to the office. Not yet. It was cold this morning and the whole world seemed torpid, stiff, sluggish on its axis. Instead of getting in my car, I pushed my hands into my pockets and meandered down the hill in the hope that a single loop around my circuit would shake the oppressive weight leaning against the back of my skull.

The low sky was an anemic white, spread over an invisible table like an exhausted blanket. The other houses in the neighborhood looked grim and indifferent, consumed by their own private troubles. As preoccupied as I should have been at this moment, I was instead hyper-aware of the very next obstacle ahead of me. It was concrete, manageable: be ready for that fucking dog. The Bulgarian lady's bungalow was coming up on the left and I could see that she'd left the front door open again, despite the cold. I continued to

move forward and, as expected, the dog slammed itself against the screen, issuing furious snarls and barks.

I was ready. I paused on the sidewalk for the briefest moment, placid, victorious.

My heartbeat was measured and steady. But then the dog backed up and rammed the screen door again, and then a third time. The flimsy door shuddered and the latch popped.

Time slowed to a crawl as the door swung wide and the vicious mound of fur and teeth exploded from the dark interior. It came right at me, going entirely airborne while I stood rooted to sidewalk. The floodgates of my sensory perception burst and the chattering stimuli that were typically held at bay rose as one: the low wind; the dampness of wool socks against my feet; numb, cold fingers; dry tongue; the smell of leaves. And through this dense, informational soup hurtled an agent of pitiless destruction.

The dog landed right at the edge of the lawn, right where grass became pavement.

It strafed left and right, protecting every inch of its territory. Yet it did not attack. The

Bulgarian lady came to her door and yelled something foreign, either at me or at the dog.

I continued to stand dumbly in place.

She waddled outside, draped in a vast, pink nightgown that descended all the way to her stubby toes, and yelled, “Kooche! Losho kooche! Bad doggy! Hyda! Hydabe!” She grasped at the dog, which had no intention of being dragged inside until this local threat was eliminated. All I needed to do was walk away and the situation would resolve itself.

But I didn't. My stricken brain remained powerless. The dog, mid-sized and wiry, part spaniel, perhaps, part Labrador, leaped in effortless circles around the woman who followed it with her head bent forward, her arms rigid and outstretched. She clumsily

lunged and kicked at the dog until all at once she stiffened and contorted. A tremor rose from some hidden fault-line in her body and she sank down to her knees. Then she lay flat on her back in the middle of the yard, flopping, twitching, gulping air. The dog continued to bark.

I raised my arm and said, “Excuse me, ma'am?” My voice sounded polite and solicitous, as if I were notifying her of an untied shoelace or a ringing phone that she had failed to notice. The Bulgarian lady spasmed and gagged. “Excuse me?” I repeated. I stepped onto the grass to lend what little assistance I could offer but the dog would have none of this. It charged forward until my feet were back on the sidewalk. I pivoted to the left but it matched my every move and now the Bulgarian lady lay quite still.

“Don't you see that I'm trying to help her?” I pleaded. I looked wildly about at the other houses and then back at the dog which continued to bark and snap at the air and its eyes were so full of hatred and stupidity that something inside me shifted and loosened.

Some elemental portion of Gary Clegg untethered itself and, for a brief span, my soul left my body and all that was left was wild, unchecked emotion.

I walked home.

The front door was unlocked, just as I left it, and I could hear Barb showering upstairs. The basement door was open and I walked down to find Gabriel lurking amidst the mess he had created. Clothes and toys lay strewn about. Purple grape juice stains mottled the beige carpet. The beds were unmade, stuffing leaked from rips in the couches.

Gabriel stood in the corner, writing something obscene on the wall in black permanent

marker. I approached him and as he turned to face me it was as if a screen was pulled back and we met each other for the first time.

“Listen up, you little shit,” I said. My voice was thick and there were tears in my eyes. “You are mine. By God, do you hear me? Now get over here and take what's coming to you.”

SINGULARITY

Jane Lipsy fell in love right before the world fell apart. In the quantum moment before the closure, she asked Nelson Ramamurthy, “Is this good timing or is this bad timing?”

Nelson never even had the chance to answer.

Two days before, Jane and Nelson had met at Bill's Grill and discovered that they both liked pistachio ice cream. “It doesn't really even taste like pistachios,” said Jane as she twisted the spoon around in her mouth. “It's just kind of green and soft and refreshing. It's delicious!”

Nelson nodded emphatically. Then he blurted,“It's like how zucchini bread doesn't taste like zucchini.” Jane could tell that Nelson wished that he hadn't asked the waitress for separate checks. He wished that he could reach across the table and touch Jane's long, pale fingers. “Do you enjoy badminton?” asked Nelson.

“I love badminton!” said Jane. “I used to play badminton every summer with

Grandpa Lipsy at the cabin in Ontario. He's too old for that now, so he's showing me how to play the accordion instead.”

“I also am learning to play the accordion,” said Nelson.

“No way!”

Jane and Nelson took stock of all that they had in common. The list was impressive. They both broke their left arm at the age of nine. Jane's accident involved a pink bicycle and a Labrador retriever named Benjamin. Nelson fell into a ditch while attempting to fly a kite. Both Jane and Nelson liked steamed carrots but not raw carrots.

They both visited France during high school but neither of them had been west of the

Mississippi. Jane cheated in high school algebra. Nelson cheated in high school algebra.

They both preferred baths to showers and hair conditioner was for the birds. Everything you needed was in that bottle of shampoo. For the last few years, both Jane and Nelson had defiantly put away their heavy winter coats by late February, regardless of the temperature. After all, it was high time for spring.

Jane and Nelson smiled at one another; they both had a slight gap between their front teeth. The clock struck one and their smiles disappeared. “Darn,” said Jane, “I'm late. I need to get back to work.”

“I also must return to my work,” said Nelson. Jane beamed as she gathered her belongings. She loved the way he spoke. Each word that came out of Nelson's mouth was crisp and full. He formed words as if each one was precious and unique; as if they were polished little gems.

“It was very nice meeting you.”

“Will I, um, see you again?”

“I would like very much to see you again.”

“Let's go dancing! I've never been dancing before!”

“I have never danced before either,” said Nelson as they slid out from the booth.

His voice was almost a whisper. He faltered, then bashfully extended his hand to shake

Jane's. Jane noted this, then rather impulsively wrapped her arms around Nelson. Even though she wasn't wearing heels, Nelson's head lay squarely against Jane’s small chest.

“Goodbye, Nelson,” said Jane, then she loped out the door.

On her way back to work, Jane passed Gus's news stand. Gus waved at Jane and held up a copy of the Daily Star Sun News Bugle. “Did you see today's headlines, Jane?” said Gus. Angry block-letters proclaimed “TAXES RAISED AGAIN!” Lower down on the page, in much smaller letters, a different headline stated, “Scientists Agree: The

World Is Shrinking; The End Is Nigh.” Jane frowned.

“There sure is a lot of bad news these days.”

“Tell me about it,” said Gus. “I can hardly pay my taxes as is. I also hear that the city is canceling next month's parade. What do you think about that?”

“I'm sorry Gus. I need to get back to work. I'm already late.”

“At Feynman's Fine Furniture, We Combine Fashion and Fun!”

“Freaking sign,” hissed Jane, as she pushed through the glass doorway. Mr.

Cupman lowered his clipboard just long enough to give Jane the stink-eye. “Don't even think about it, Cupman. I sold a coat tree earlier this morning, and a credenza.” Mr.

Cupman returned to his clipboard and Jane walked back to the bedroom sets. She found

Margie smoothing the wrinkles out of a duvet.

“I met a man.”

“What?”

“I met a man, Margie. He's so small and so perfect. He has beautiful brown eyes,” said Jane.

Margie blinked and then sat down on the freshly-smoothed duvet. “That's great,

Jane.”

“We'll probably get married. He's taking me dancing, you know? Tomorrow, probably. Or maybe Saturday. We didn't decide on a date. But it will be that, you know, a date I mean. It will be a date. He'll probably take me dancing tomorrow night. I'll see him at lunch tomorrow and we'll make plans for sure.” Jane sat down next to Margie. She crossed one leg over the other and then bobbed her foot in time with the music playing inside her head. She imagined Nelson in a sleek black tuxedo and white gloves. He pressed a hand into the small of her back and they twirled and twirled. She wore a fiery red little number, spangled at the hem. Nelson dipped her low to the ground. The crowd cheered as the couple tangoed with magnificent form and skill. Jane held the stem of a red rose firmly between her teeth. Perfect. So very perfect.

“I sold a coat tree today,” said Margie, “and a credenza.” Jane's foot stopped bobbing. She gave Margie a quizzical look.

“That's weird. I also sold a coat tree and a credenza today.”

“Oh my, well it's been quite a week for coincidences. Did I tell you what happened to me at the Book Barn on Tuesday?” Margie began regaling Jane with her

Book Barn adventure. Apparently, she'd run into an old friend from Junior College in

Wisconsin. They hadn't seen one another in decades. Then Margie ran into a completely different friend from Junior College not ten minutes later. This friend didn't even know the first friend. This friend's name was Casper Whitley. Casper was now a dermatologist.

The two of them shared some black coffee together in the bookstore café. They discussed soup recipes and macramé and how the world was apparently shrinking so fast that it would inevitably collapse upon itself, ending all known forms of life. Then they discussed gardening.

While talking, they both noticed that the book on flower arrangement that Margie was about to purchase was written by a man whose name was also Casper Whitley.

Apparently, he was of no relation to dermatologist Casper. “It's so strange,” said Margie,

“it's not like Casper is even a common name.” Jane found this story to be interminably boring. She looked up in the air and her foot began to bob in time once again.

That night, Jane fumbled through the dark to get to her apartment. The lights in the hallway were out again. One at a time, she ran her thumb along the teeth of her various keys. The deadbolt key had an extra large tooth right in the middle. She found it, and just as she was about to slide the key into the keyhole, the door opened. “Hello

Janey!”

“Mom, what are you doing here?”

“I was just leaving. I made you a quiche. It's in the oven. How are you, sunshine?” Jane's mother stroked Jane's cheek and fixed her with a look of sad, motherly indulgence. “You look so thin.”

“I've always been thin, mother.”

“How are you getting along on your own?”

“I'm fine, mom. I can take care of myself.” Jane's mother knit her eyebrows and pressed her lips together. Her face looked suddenly smaller.

“Well, call me if you need anything. You know how I worry. Now give your mother a hug. Oh, and I left you pistachio ice cream in the freezer.” Jane's mother squeezed her daughter; then she faded into the darkness down the hall. Jane stood still for a moment, framed in the yellow square of light flooding through her doorway. Then she walked inside and shut the door. The apartment was very quiet and still. Jane walked from room to room. Small objects had been moved slightly; a slender vase was now closer to the center of her dresser, a picture that Jane knew to be tilted was now straight, the jar of hand soap at the kitchen sink had been refilled. Jane didn't want to touch anything. The house felt oddly like a crime scene—a curious, inconsequential, perhaps whimsical crime, yet a crime nonetheless.

Eventually, Jane opened the oven and pulled out the quiche. She cut out a slender slice and placed it in the center of a large, white plate. Then she pulled a fork from the dish rack, kicked off her shoes and padded into the middle of her living room. The floors were hardwood and her socked feet slid quietly along the smooth surface. “So,” Jane said aloud, “how does one dance?” Plate and fork in hand, she began to rock her hips from side to side. She adjusted up and down between various speeds. She twisted her hips back and forth for a moment, then from side to side again. She shuffled her feet a little, then kicked once or twice. “Hmmmm.” said Jane. Then she took a bite of quiche.

Where would Nelson take Jane dancing? There was a club downtown called Club

Helix that Jane’s more fashionable friends went to on weekends. They never invited Jane to tag along. Not that she cared. Sometimes Jane’s fashionable friends would tell Jane about the men they met at Club Helix. Sometimes these men would buy drinks for Jane’s fashionable friends. These drinks always had splendid and fantastical names: Sex on the

Beach, Kamikaze, Long Island Ice Tea. Jane imagined that they must glow or bubble somehow. They must be terribly exciting.

Jane took another bite of quiche while spinning in slow circles. If she didn’t think about the movement of her feet, then it was like she was standing still and the room was spinning around her. There goes the couch. There goes the wall clock. There goes the television. There goes the bookcase. There goes the couch again. There goes the wall clock again.

Jane stopped spinning. “I have to look beautiful,” she said to the wall clock.

“What will I wear?” Jane put her plate down on the coffee table and dashed into the bedroom. She opened her closet. A row of shirts and dresses hung neatly on their hangers.

It was like a row of headless Janes, only cruel and exaggerated, her slender features made cartoonishly skinny and angular. Jane wrinkled her nose. She’d never realized how similar all of her clothes were. There weren't more than three colors in the entire closet.

I’ll have to buy something new, she thought, something daring and modern.

The next morning, Jane sold two more coat trees, two more credenzas, and a futon. Mr. Cupman made several notes on his clipboard, but he kept his distance from

Jane. Jane didn’t even notice Mr. Cupman. She hardly noticed her customers. They knew what they wanted. Jane left them to fend for themselves. She was fidgety and anxious, her palms kept sweating and she kept wiping them on her hips. At one point, she bowed to a coat tree. She placed her hands around the frame and then danced in a slow circle around the coat tree. Then she dipped the coat tree, because it couldn’t dip her.

“That’s a nice coat tree,” said a voice behind her.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Jane.

“No problem at all,” said the man. “You’re a lovely dancer, and that’s a lovely coat tree. I think I’d like to buy it.”

“Oh, well certainly sir. I mean Mr., uh.”

“Whitley. Casper Whitley, of Whitley Auto. We’re just down the street. We’ve got the best deals in town. Do you need a used car? Let me give you my card here. I’m telling you miss, if you just come on down, we can set you up with an unbeatable deal, I’m talking thousands less than you’d pay at the other guys.” Jane thanked Whitley for the card and then directed him towards the register.

At noon, Jane ran all the way to Bill’s Grill. She stood outside the door for a moment to catch her breath and compose herself. She almost wished that she was one of those girls who carried little round mirrors in their purses.

“Oh well, here goes nothing,” she said. Jane pushed the door open and there was

Nelson, sitting in the same seat at the same booth with the same hopeful expression on his round little face.

“Hello Nelson.”

“Hello Jane.” Nelson scooted to the edge of the booth, then stood while Jane walked over and took her seat. When Nelson was seated again, he pointed to the menu.

“They don’t have as many items here as they used to,” he said, “but the grilled chicken salad has always been very good.”

“Nelson, I love the grilled chicken salad. That’s what I almost always get.”

“You must have very good taste,” said Nelson, then he blushed. The waitress came by and they both ordered the grilled chicken salad. After she had taken their orders and left, the two of them sat in silence for a moment. Nelson’s hands rested on the edge of the table and Jane noticed his red, slightly shredded cuticles. She looked down at the tattered borders of her own fingernails and felt the urge to pick at the loose skin, just like she always did when she was nervous.

“How are you today?” she asked.

“I am good.”

“That’s good. I mean, I’m good too. Sometimes I also order the fish.”

“The fish is also good, yes.”

“So are we going dancing?” Jane didn’t mean to blurt this out so quickly.

Somehow, it just happened. She quickly backpedaled. “I mean we don’t have to. We can wait. Or we can not go. Or we can wait. We don’t have to go dancing if you don’t want to.”

Nelson raised his hands in protest. “No no no,” he said. “I want to go dancing.

Let’s go. Let’s go tonight. Are you free?”

“Yes!”

The waitress brought their salads. Both Jane and Nelson had ordered a side of

Caesar dressing. The waitress accidentally brought them both ranch instead.

On her way back to work Jane passed Gus's news stand again. Gus looked glum.

“How's business, Gus?” said Jane.

“Slow today,” said Gus. “There aren't many papers to sell. Only the local ones came in and they all say the same thing. There just isn't that much to talk about anymore.” Jane glanced over the meager selection. There were three local papers: The

Daily Star Sun News Bugle, The Daily Express Beacon Dispatch Gazette, and The Daily

Record Chronicle Post Telegraph Guardian Reporter Register. All three of them had exactly the same headline: “The World is Shrinking. Facts and Figures are Dwindling.

Time is Running Out.”

Back at Feynman's Fine Furniture, Margie was smoothing wrinkles out of a duvet.

“How was lunch with your man?” she asked.

“It was very nice, thank you. We're going dancing tonight!”

“Well, you kids will certainly have fun. I remember those days. I hope you enjoy them. I'll go home tonight and find old Sam snoozing in his recliner. I'll turn the TV on and there will be nothing but reruns. That's how it is anymore, nothing but reruns.”

“Oh Margie,” said Jane, and patted her on the shoulder.

“But that reminds me, did I tell you what happened to me last night? Old Sam was snoozing in his recliner and I was watching an old badminton tournament on TV and going through the mail. It's all the same stuff you know, bills and bills and credit card offers and credit card offers. But then I came to a letter from the phone company. They're canceling my long distance. They say they're not even offering long distance anymore.

The world is shrinking so fast. There's nothing out there anymore. Can you imagine?”

“That's terrible, Margie.”

“I should think so. I'm paying the same price for only half the services I used to get.”

“Do you know of a good store where I can buy a new dress?”

Margie's advice was not very helpful. Jane wandered around the shopping district for two hours after work. She tried on several dresses but none of them sparked her imagination. Everything was boring. Everything looked the same. Eventually, Jane threw her hands up in frustration and went home. She reached gingerly into her closet and pulled out a sky-blue sun dress.

“You'll have to do, sun dress,” said Jane. She laid the dress on her bed and went into the bathroom to take a bath. She sat on the edge of the tub and watched the water rise above her feet, then her ankles, and then crawl up her legs. The phone rang. Jane pulled her feet out of the tub, snatched her bathrobe, and ran out the door.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hello Jane, it's your mother.”

“I can't speak right now mother. I have stuff to do. I'm going out before long. I'll talk to you in the morning. Goodnight!” Jane placed the receiver down on its cradle. She stood up, walked back to her bathroom, and eased herself into the tub.

Nelson had agreed to meet Jane outside of Club Helix. She found him wandering back and forth near the line of people waiting to get in. A sign near the entrance announced, “Tonight only, DJ Casper is in the house!” Nelson wore a button down shirt and a tie. Jane decided that he looked adorable. “You look very handsome, Nelson,” she said. “Shall we get in line?” The line for Club Helix was incredibly long.

“All the other clubs in the area must be closing down,” said Nelson. “Everybody is coming here.” The line snaked around the side of the building. But the time went quickly. Jane and Nelson compared the zigzagging patterns on each other’s palms. They matched perfectly. Jane and Nelson discussed how they both used to sleep walk when they were younger. They also knew the words to all the same songs.

Eventually, they worked their way to the front of the line and entered Club Helix.

It was a sight to behold. Waves of strobe light rippled through a dark, cavernous hall. A thousand bodies swayed and undulated to the throbbing beat of music so thick and loud that Jane thought she felt it on her skin and in her teeth. She took Nelson’s hand and pulled him into the crush of arms and legs and torsos. She looked around for some hint, some example of quality dancing. But everyone else in the crowd just blended together.

“Oh well,” said Jane, even though nobody could possibly hear her. “Here goes nothing.”

And so they danced. They danced and danced. Jane danced like a willow tree being attacked by gale-force winds. She leapt and flailed. Yet somehow, her movement always remained in tune with Nelson’s cautious swaying.

Jane didn’t know how long they danced. It felt like minutes. It felt like hours. It felt like time was spiraling circles around them. The music always had that rhythmic, heavy beat. It all sounded the same. Jane wondered if the DJ was playing the same song over and over again. Perhaps he’d fallen asleep?

After a time, Jane stopped dancing. She could feel the heat radiating between her skin and her clothes. “Let’s go get a drink,” she shouted in Nelson’s ear. The two of them pushed and squeezed their way towards the bar. The bartender was drying a glass out with a towel. He looked fashionably disinterested. Jane giggled. “Can I have a Sex on the

Beach?” she asked.

“We don’t serve those anymore,” said the bartender.

“Oh, well then, can I have a Kamikaze?”

“We don’t serve those anymore either.”

“How about a Long Island Ice Tea?”

“No.”

“Well, what do you have?” The bartender looked around the bar. He scratched his chin.

“We have some Zima,” he said. Jane turned to Nelson, who shrugged.

“Do you want to get out of here?” she said.

Jane and Nelson climbed to the top of Matchwood Hill. At the crest, they sat on the grass and watched the city lights below. A warm summer breeze touched Jane’s bare arms and shoulders. She shifted her seat, moving closer to Nelson. Nelson put his arm around her shoulder. Together, they sat and watched the vibrant glow. The city looked as if all the stars in the sky had descended upon one patch of ground to swarm and congregate. “It’s very beautiful,” said Jane.

“Beautiful,” Nelson repeated. He looked at Jane. His eyes were deep, black pools of liquid. Jane was afraid to stare into them. She closed her eyes and leaned forwards.

The crickets, hidden under leaves and blades of grass, slowed their chirping. The breeze died down. Jane continued to lean and then her lips touched Nelson’s lips. Jane and

Nelson folded into one another’s embrace as they kissed on the grassy hillside. High up above in the sky, pin pricks of light snuffed themselves out as all the stars in the universe collapsed in upon themselves and vanished forever.

The next morning, Jane felt stiff and very out of sorts. Her brain felt too big for her head. Her body felt too big for her apartment. She stumbled out of bed and crashed into her dresser. Too much dancing. Too little sleep. But oh! Oh, how it was all so very worth it. She wanted to call Nelson, she wanted to see him again. Jane felt as if she could stretch out her arm and be able to reach the phone all the way in the living room. But that was silly thinking. Instead she padded into the kitchen and poured herself a bowl of bran flakes. The flakes were gray and unappealing but none of the other cereal boxes promised

anything more exciting. Jane dropped the entire bowl into the trash can. Her head was buzzing.

Jane slipped into the same faded blue sun dress from the night before and stumbled out the door without breakfast. She hadn't looked at her wall clock, but Jane assumed that she was dreadfully late for work. Why did Mr. Cupman always stick her with Saturday shifts?

Jane walked the four blocks to Feynman's Fine Furniture. The sun was already high in the sky and the air was very still. It felt close and heavy on her skin. By the time she reached the front door, Jane could feel a glistening film of sweat on her forehead. She hurried inside and nearly collided with a strange man holding a clipboard. “Are you Jane

Lipsy?” asked the man.

“Yes,” said Jane.

“Well, I'm the new manager here. My name is Casper Whitley, and guess what, honey, I'm the harbinger of doom.”

“Doom?”

“That's right, Lipsy. I don't know what kind of pushover that Cupman fellow was.

But I run a tight ship. They tell me that you've got attitude and that you are always late.

And now I see that they were right. So guess what, Lipsy. You're finished here. You're fired.” Jane was shocked. She was shocked and then she was angry.

“Well, nuts to you,” said Jane. She set her jaw, spun on her heels and marched right out the door. “Stupid stupid stupid,” spat Jane. “I hated that job anyway.” She turned as she left and raised her middle finger to Feynman's Fine Furniture. Only then did Jane

notice the large, hand painted sign in the window. It read, “End Of The World Blowout

Sale! Prices Slashed! Pay No Interest For A Full Year!!!”

Out of habit, and with nothing better to do, Jane began walking down to Bill's

Grill. When she passed Gus's news stand, Gus was nowhere in sight. All the papers at the stand had the same headline as the day before, “The World is Shrinking. Facts and

Figures are Dwindling. Time is Running Out.”

The buzzing in Jane's head was getting worse. She pressed a palm into the right side of her head and frowned. The air was too thick. She kept walking towards Bill's

Grill. Then she started to run. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Jane reached Bill's Grill but the place looked abandoned. She pounded on the door but it wouldn’t open. A note taped to the front window read “Bill’s Grill closed for renovation by new management. Sorry for the inconvenience.” The note was signed, Casper Whitley.

“Jane!” It was Nelson. He came running from the other direction.

“Nelson! Oh thank god it’s you. What is going on?”

“I just got fired from my job at Sofa Empire,” said Nelson.

“Oh, I'm sorry Nelson,” said Jane. Then she winced in pain. The buzzing noise in her ears was getting louder. “Why is this happening?”

“I don’t know Jane. I don’t know.”

“Nelson, I have to tell you something.”

“What is it Jane?”

“Nelson, I’m in love with you.”

“I’m in love with you too.” The buzzing noise continued to get louder. It was outside of her head. It was everywhere.

“Is this good timing or is this bad timing?” said Jane. Nelson never even had the chance to answer. Space and time folded in upon themselves. Creation played in reverse.

The fourth dimension folded into the third dimension. The third dimension folded into the second dimension. The second dimension folded into the first dimension, one after another after another in the quickening path of collapse. Then the last moment held, constant and rigid, like a note from a tuning fork, one moment left, one point of space and time. That single point remained. It was small, yet heavy with the weight of finality, like the period at the end of a story.

FIERCELY LUMINOUS BEINGS

The offer was twelve million, six hundred and forty-two thousand, nine hundred and fifteen dollars. This was a very specific number. Amir and I had expected something a little more rounded, a little more domesticated and ho-hum. But twelve million, six hundred and forty-two thousand, nine hundred and fifteen was splashy and sexy.

Moreover, it was our professional assessment that twelve million, six hundred and forty- two thousand, nine hundred and fifteen dollars was an atomic shitload of cash, an Old

Testament, angry-god deluge of capital.

At the Mirabelle Cafe at the Park Hilton, Amir and I fumbled with our chilled dessert forks. We dumped Perrier down our speechless throats while intermittently gasping for the air of blasé nonchalance that we had agreed to exhibit no matter what. It was futile. There was nothing that we could do to suggest that we expected such an grandiose sum to come tumbling out of Mr. Lasky's mouth.

“It's all done with computers these days” said Lasky. “Risk, benefit factors are punched in. Numbers are spit out. You boys are computer people. You should know how it works.” We nodded emphatically. Of course, of course. We are computer people.

Absolutely. Naturally we understand one hundred percent of whatever you expect us to understand.

Mr. Lasky stabbed a purple grape and regarded it with a kind of lazy disdain, as if the grape was unworthy of being his presence. It was unworthy of his Brooks Brothers suit, his full Windsor, his calf-skin attaché. Mr. Lasky placed the grape between his back left molars and crushed it. Then he produced a series of documents detailing our various limited partners. Our investors included corporate pension funds, insurance companies, high-net worth individuals, endowments, foundations, funds-of-funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc. It didn't matter. For all I cared, our money came from a consortium of leprechauns whose pot of gold sat beneath a rainbow shining out of Mr. Lasky's ass. We were being handed a check for twelve million, six hundred and forty-two thousand, nine hundred and fifteen dollars. Holy. Fuck.

Mr. Lasky explained that the check he was holding was not actually a check. It was something called a promissory certificate. Apparently, most banks don't like it when you waltz in with a check for millions of dollars. But the certificate looked very much like a check. It had our fancy number writ large upon its face and it was legal notice that the real cash was on its way. Moreover, if all went well, there would be even more to come. The brass at Morris Ventures were enthusiastic about our robust growth model.

They were impressed by the clever algorithms that Amir and I had written. With our search engine and distribution matrix, we would locate and deliver common household goods with unprecedented convenience and affordability. Everything was going digital these days. The internet was the new frontier and we stood prepared to claim mastery over this bold new world. Amir and I would become the kings of cheap detergent, the lords of discount paper towels. Ours was a glamorous destiny. Together we would harness

the awesome power of human laziness and frugality and focus it towards a common good, a common good that would be uncommonly good to us and our investors. We would grow fat and wealthy as the hoi polloi discovered how easy it was to click twice and watch as Saran Wrap, Nivia facial scrubs, and Kleenex were delivered lovingly into their very hands.

It was understood that we would have to relocate our operation. The virtual frontier still had its real world parallels, and so it was westward ho for Amir and me.

Silicon Valley awaited. Morris Ventures would select our CFO from amongst their ranks.

The three of us would then build a team of dedicated and capable individuals from northern California's swarming talent pool. That's it. These were our marching orders. Mr.

Lasky gathered his papers and the meeting was over. He shook our hands and offered us a perfunctory nod. Then he strode out of the room.

So, our dot com start-up had been born. Clearly, celebration was in order.

Amir and I stood and regarded one another. There was a short, thoughtful exchange between us.

Me: You are the man!

Amir: Yes. I am the man! And you are the man also, Occam!

Me: I am the fucking man!

High-fives were in order. We high-fived each other. We high-fived the waiter as he attempted to remove our mangled, largely unconsumed fruit-salads. We high-fived the hostess. She raised a hand as if to defend herself, yet with a quick, sharp crack we shared with her a split second of our overwhelming joy. She'd probably remember that moment

and never be the same again. We high-fived a shabby ficus in the lobby. We high-fived a

Doric pillar. We were generous with our euphoria. We spread it far and wide. To the untrained eye, it would seem that the denizens of the Park Hilton accepted our whooping jubilation with little more than bland indulgence. It would seem that they were no fun whatsoever. But we knew for a fact that their hearts were warmed by our presence. Each and every one of them.

It was time to move on to greater haunts. Heavy drinking was in order. I clutched

Amir's arm and said, “We need to get drunk immediately!” Amir's eyes were already glassy but he slowed his capering for a moment and laughed.

“Occam, you are funny.”

“I'm serious.”

“Yes, well perhaps,” his voice trailed off and he gestured to the gold trimmed clock above our heads that smugly declared it to be 9:43 in the morning.

“This is not up for debate, Amir. Follow me.” We left the city. Traffic leading home was smooth and light while across the highway the mid morning commuters slavishly pushed their way up through the arteries of metropolitan viscera. Once back in

Laurencetown, we cut a trail to the Sud Tub, which now pedaled artisan bread and a soup de jour in a gambit to attract the lunch crowd. Amir and I did not order any sandwiches.

We sidled up to the bar and called out for Andi, who was frustratingly absent and had been replaced by a bald and dour faced man who yanked glasses from a dish rack and crammed a drying towel into their mouths so forcefully that it seemed as if he was trying to shut them up.

“Andi's sick,” said the bald man.

“Andi's too beautiful to be sick. Where is she?” I asked. The bald man rolled his eyes.

“You fellas want some lunch?”

“No, my good sir. We will take two shots of your finest scotch. And then two more shortly thereafter.” The bald man paused just long enough to quietly convey that he was weary of suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Then he pulled a bottle from the shelf and poured two shots.

Down the hatch they went.

Our glasses were refilled but it is already apparent that Amir was not a scotch man. His chin pressed downwards, as close to his neck as it would go. His posture, the way his hands touched the bar, was increasingly delicate and uncertain. It was time to share with him the good news. “Don't worry, Amir. Each new shot goes down easier than the last. It's like walking downhill.” Amir smiled weakly and then raised his glass. We drank. Then, as round followed round, we sat and gazed into the glorious future. This was it. This was 1997, the golden moment in history when men of vision built empires overnight. Fearsome new technology bloomed out of the very ground and Amir and I were now poised to reap the fat of the land. “Someday, Amir,” I said, “we will have a corporate jet.”

“We will?”

“Yes. Yes we will. And we will name that jet the Fuck Yeah. Air traffic controllers all over the world will know when we are coming into town and they will make way for the Fuck Yeah to land.”

“Will we have a corporate yacht?”

“Of course we will. We will name it the Fuck Yeah II. Or perhaps the Holy Shit We

Are Rich. Well, perhaps that might be a little overboard.”

“Overboard on the yacht?” Amir started to giggle.

“This is no laughing matter, Amir. We are going to have mansions in every state, every state except Kansas and Nebraska. There's nothing there.”

“Nothing there.”

“Maybe we will have mansions in every state after all. Some of them we just won't ever visit. It's the thought that counts.” The bottle of scotch was looking shockingly low and the bartender was saying something but his words no longer made a great deal of sense. Perhaps he was foreign? I gestured to him that it was time to close out our tab and after receiving back my credit card I signed the receipt with a rakish new signature that I just invented. From now on, everything about me would be more showy and ostentatious.

Suddenly, perhaps inexplicably, we were at the Hillview Mall. We stood in front of a multilayer and highly geometric fountain. As lords of all creation we were justified— nay—obligated to urinate into the fountain. The relief was profound, almost spiritual in nature. It was a long and arduous walk between here and the Sud Tub. It was worth it though. I couldn't remember ever feeling this good.

Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with our generous interpretation of how public a public restroom should be. Mall security had sallied forth so it was time to beat a shambling, slapdash retreat. We barged our way up a crowded escalator and then slipped around a corner. Amir, poor drunken Amir, landed upon the idea of hiding by wrapping his arms over his head and crouching next to a skin moisturizer kiosk. I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him towards a nearby hair salon. Nobody would think to follow us in there. I opened the door and nearly plowed right into a petite blond.

“Do you have an appointment? Oh, hi Occam.”

“Wendy Williams!” Wendy Williams, I hadn't seen you in a hundred years. I'd had a crush on you ever since freshman economics. But you were beautiful and I was the strange kid with the strange name who everyone accused of smelling like cabbage.

“How's it going, Occam? It's good to see you.”

“Yeah, yeah. It's fantastic to see you, Wendy. I mean, it's great. I mean it's going great. How are you?” Wendy tilted her head and knits her eyebrows. She was onto us.

“Are you guys drunk?”

“No, we are gods.”

“Occam, you are drunk. What is going on?” There was no point in skirting the issue. It was time to lay everything on the line.

“Look, Wendy, I'm going to lay everything on the line here. Amir and I are moving to California. This is Amir, by the way. He's going to put down that hairdryer in just a moment. Amir and I are moving to California to launch an Internet start-up

company. We've just been financed. We've just come into a lot of money. Seriously, a lot of money. I should show you the check.”

“It's not a real check,” said Amir.

“It's practically a real check,” I said. “It represents real money. I know this sounds strange, Wendy. I know that this is happening fast, but I've kind of always been in love with you. You should come to California with us. It would be an adventure. It's the start of something really big.” I paused for effect. “Wendy, I am absolutely serious.”

Wendy frowned. “Occam, you are drunk. I think you should go.”

“Aw, come on Wendy.”

“Occam, this is not cool. I think that you should go right now.” Wendy folded her arms. Then, as if to second her request, a fat lady in curlers swiveled around in her barber's chair and gave us the stink-eye. Fine. It was clear that we were not wanted here.

With our heads held high, we turned and stoically marched out of the hair salon. Then we pushed our way back down the same escalator we had so recently clambered up.

My radiant elation had, for the moment, been eclipsed by black, festering wrath.

Fuck all of you small people. All of my old friends were busy finishing school, getting jobs, getting married, buying houses, living responsible and organized lives. In my opinion, these people were welcome to their humble slice of American mediocrity. Amir and I wanted nothing to do with them. We shall set a blaze beneath our feet that will rocket us to glory on high. We shall sweep through the ether, massive, imbued with silent, all commanding gravity. We shall be fiercely luminous beings.

“I kept the hairdryer,” said Amir.

“Good job, Amir. That was good thinking. Fucking Wendy Williams.” Mall security must have charged right past us and kept on going in the other direction. We exited through the food court without incident. Outside, there was a line of cars squeezed into the nearest four or five rows of parking spaces. Beyond this cluster, the vast parking lot was relatively empty. We marched on out to the concrete wilderness, passing scattered pyramids of brown, hardened snow. Salt cubes cracked beneath our feet. A band of sunlight broke through the matte gray sky and shone down upon us with bland beneficence.

“What was that girl's problem?” asked Amir.

“What's her problem? Her problem is that she's just like everyone else. Think about all the people we knew in college, Amir. Do you remember Ronny Stone?”

“Yes.”

“Ronny goes by Ronald now. He is going to be a CPA. He's going to work in his dad's office. Someday it will be Ronald's office and he will work there his entire life. He will die with a spreadsheet in his hand. Do you remember Dave Meerzwick?”

“Yeah.”

“High school gym teacher. Do you remember Kevin Beef?”

“The Beef? Sure.”

“The Beef is in police academy. He's going to be a fucking cop. Do you remember

Carrie Fishelson?”

“I don't see where you are going with this.”

“Where am I going with this? Where am I going? I am going somewhere, Amir. I am doing something with my life. All those other guys are drones. They don't care, they are just going through the motions. It's pathetic. Look at Wendy Williams. She got her degree in anthropology. Do you think she's doing a lot of anthropological research in that hair salon?”

“Occam, that's a little bit unfair, I think.” Amir stared up at me from his diminutive stature. His big brown eyes were like guilt-emitting laser beams. I looked away and shrugged. What does he know anyway? Nothing. For one last moment, I indulged the rattling vibrations of the old rage as it pounded on my mental cellar door, scrambling to get out.

Then it was over.

I smiled and clapped Amir on the back. “Let's get out of here.” We crossed the street dividing mall parking from Meridian Park. As I thought about it, that whole Wendy

Williams fiasco was actually pretty funny. A hair salon? Jesus Christ. That's quite a career move, especially since all of the hair care establishments in this town were owned by individuals who couldn't resist bad puns. If you wanted your hair cut around here, you needed to wince your way into Hair To The Throne, or A Cut Above, or Sure Locks. Even through my drunken haze, I didn't fail to notice that Wendy's salon was named Shear

Madness! What kind of marketing genius came up with that one? It pretty much implied that your head would be attacked by scissor wielding maniacs. On the other hand, they did invest in some nice hairdryers. I'll admit that I'm no expert on the subject, but the hairdryer in Amir's hand was large, bright red, and aesthetically pleasing. I took the shiny

device from him and pointed it like a gun at the line of sparrows hugging one another on a nearby telephone wire. Bang!

We decided to barter the hairdryer. This task turned out to be more difficult than expected. I'm guessing that this is either because we were still moderately drunk or because we drastically misjudged the street value of the average hairdryer. Possibly both.

Regardless, the girl with the over-sized sunglasses was pretty damn hostile when we suggested that she trade in her Yorkshire Terrier. Next we tried hitting up a sandwich joint. After displaying the goods we had to offer, we requested one of those giant sub sandwiches, the type used in catering events. The pimpled freak behind the cash register wouldn't budge—even when we lowered our price to a regular twelve inch Italian sub.

Oh well. His loss, I guess.

Ultimately, we were forced to donate the hairdryer to a man playing the saxophone on the corner of Fifth and Almond Street. I was certain that he would put it to good use. From Fifth Street we headed down to Amir's apartment. On this short February day, the afternoon sun was attempting to rally. As we opened the front door, thin, golden light soaked through Amir's lopsided blinds, casting a sheen of delicate splendor upon his drab living room. Motes of dust caught the light as they floated like asteroids through a miniature and whimsical solar system. I collapsed down onto a futon. For the first time that day, I could feel a stillness and a silence inside of myself. All of the heady madness had boiled away. The elation, the bravado, the fury: all of the emotions blended together and tempered themselves. My metabolism had chewed through the alcohol and there I

was, sitting on a futon, feeling as if I had coasted to a halt after attempting to break one of those rocket fueled, land speed records.

Amir pattered around in the kitchen. He placed a kettle of water on the stove to make tea, then busied himself with the rounding up of plates and glasses to be balanced atop an already full sink. I found myself scrutinizing the raised, swirling patterns in his wallpaper. It was all beginning to feel real. This strange twist of fortune was gathering mass and dimension. The weight of its existence settled into the grain of reality. I was going to move to California. I was going to use the money from those venture capitalists to turn my pitiful internet pipe dream into a genuine dot com start-up. Mr. Lasky's number curled around in my mouth one more time. Twelve million, six hundred and forty-two thousand, nine hundred and fifteen dollars. Hopefully with more to come.

That was more money than Ronny or Dave Meerzwick or Kevin Beef would ever have to deal with, and I was pretty sure that that made me better than them.

Back in college, they were always more popular than me. But I had still fretted that I would end up like them. I had flashes of panic where I looked into the future and saw myself working at McCreager Tech or Bosner or some other white collar holding pen. I married a woman whose age and social class were roughly comparable to my own.

We had 2.2 children, a dog, a cat, and some goldfish. Then I died.

“Tea?” said Amir.

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” I said. He handed me a cup of one of his pungent, spiced teas.

“You're gritting your teeth,” said Amir as he settled into his threadbare recliner,

“are you thinking about Wendy Williams again?”

“No. Well, yes. But no, not any more. There is no Wendy Williams where we're heading.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” said Amir.

“I am happy,” I said, and pulled out the check. It was crumpled and torn in one corner. I'd done a poor job of folding it into my pocket. “I messed up the check,” I said.

“It doesn't matter. It isn't even a real check,” he said. Then we sat together in joint contemplation, stirring our cups of tea, watching the steam rise up, up, up to the ceiling.

YOU TOO SHALL BE KING

King Arthur has gas. “Sweet Jesus, I have gas,” says the king, “I am so bloated. No more chalupas for His Majesty.”

“Yes, sire!” says Lancelot. Lancelot never breaks character, not even here in the woods where no one can see us. He is a purist amongst Philistines. Everyone else is hung over, stiff and irritable in their baldrics, tabards, and leather boots. We stand and grumble and shudder away the last of the morning chill.

In a few minutes Arthur will march out to the front gate and confront Mordred.

There used to be a script for the opening gate show. Somewhere along the way it fell out of favor and now Arthur and Mordred simply hurl insults at one another. Arthur is a knavish coxcomb. Mordred is a whoresom vassal. Arthur is a tottering, rough-hewn pignut. Mordred is a lout.

The crowd jeers. They are restless, they just want the gates to open so that they can enter the faire. But there's still more show to come. Back in the woods, I'm flanked by Sir Bedivere, Sir Galahad, Friar Tuck, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, knights, warriors, and a pirate or two. The climax of the opening gate show is a rough and tumble brawl between these men and Mordred's sinister minions. The combatants swing heavy, clumsy swords at one another. They dive and tumble. All across the field of battle, knights and

minions bite squibs and squeeze hidden balloons full of corn syrup, grenadine, ketchup or whatever crimson edibles the prop crew managed to scrounge the night before.

The actors hack at one another until I dance into the scene. I'm covered in mud and dressed in nothing but ragged, burlap shorts. I'm a common, impoverished fool, ridiculous and innocent enough to slow the violent madness. The warriors laugh at my high-jinks with bellowing, hands-on-hips laughter. Then they forge an uneasy truce that will last until the final joust at 4:00pm. With that, the gates swing wide and another day at the Great Lakes Medieval Faire begins.

Sir Bedivere chews with his mouth open. He's eating one of Rustic Ruben's

Reubens and weighing in on my master plan. “You can't go to Hollywood,” he says. “You need to know somebody. Or you need to know somebody that knows somebody. Or you need to be rich.”

“None of that matters,” I tell him, “I'm going to beat the odds.”

“You can't beat the odds,” he says. Bedivere pours a pint of beer from its

Styrofoam cup into the leather mug he keeps strapped to his belt. We're supposed to avoid anachronisms in public, not that it could possibly matter in a place like this. Here we are, sitting at a picnic bench by the Dragon's Pub, sharing a summer afternoon with crowds of lords, ladies, knights, elves, fairies, pirates, vampires, and gypsies. Half the time I can't tell who works here and who's a patron. The patrons love to dress up. They come here with their homemade baldrics and bodices, with the fish-bone corsets they ordered on- line. “Come visit Camelot, where you can be king for a day!” That's our official slogan.

And so they come, abandoning their pantsuits and wingtips for the temporary bliss of this wooded, make-believe village, this enclave of unbridled weirdness.

“So, how is your hand?” says Myrtle the Milkmaid, as she steps into view. I wave my bandaged fingers at Myrtle, who does not sell milk, but is actually one of the rose girls. She sings antique ballads while peddling her basket of thorny wares. Myrtle has daring tattoos, crooked teeth, and a nipple ring that she displays at the slightest provocation. Sometimes we find each other at one of the murky local bars. She buys me a drink and I'll sit and listen to her describe how emotionally constipated her family is becoming.

Myrtle winks as she passes. I flex my right hand, which still hurts after a week of questionable medical care. “Burns can easily get infected,” the lady at the village clinic had said. Then she added, “Did you know that most Renaissance Fairs are owned by disbarred lawyers?” This little sprig of trivia is bandied about all over Camelot. I can't speak to its veracity, but it echoes the general recklessness with which we conduct ourselves. “Try not to get these burns dirty,” the lady at the clinic said.

“But I have a show in less than an hour. I have to go jump in the mud pit.”

“Well, try your best.” Then she gave me a latex glove and surgical tape to wrap around my wrist as a kind of slapdash prophylactic. “Okay, you're good to go,” she said.

Bedivere swallows the last of his Reuben and grins. “You crack me up, man,” he says, “I mean, who burns themselves with a flaming turkey leg?”

In less than a year, I will pack my entire life into the back of my car and drive out west. I will purchase a road atlas on the way out of town. In the margin of that atlas, I will

write myself a romantic, melodramatic little note. It will say, “Somewhere across that horizon lies happiness.” At the time, I will consider this note to be very lofty and inspiring. I will drive for six days, stopping periodically at roadside attractions, tourist traps, towns and cities of marginal interest. I will stop and change a woman's tire in

Arkansas. I will steal a candy bar from a 7-11 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I will scramble down a red rock precipice and then trip head first into a cactus near Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Finally, like a leaf swept up by the warm Santa Ana's, I will float all the way down to the

Los Angeles basin, down into the glut of concrete superhighways, gleaming skyscrapers, and endless rows of palm trees that line the boulevards. These palm trees, all of them in perfect unison, will sway in the evening breeze as the sun ignites the sky into a fiery red blaze before dipping beneath the Pacific.

Sir Bedivere frowns. “Traffic is terrible in Los Angeles. It will take you hours to get anywhere. And your car is not nearly as awesome as mine.”

Bedivere's car is a piece of trash.

“I know what you are thinking,” says Bedivere, “my car is awesome. It runs on pure awesomeness.” Bedivere loves his 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit. He brags about it to everyone. “There's no antenna anymore, which doesn't matter since the radio is shot anyway. There's no gas cap either. I have to stuff a rag in there.”

“I know.”

Bedivere fills his tank with my money. He has only the vaguest intentions of paying me back. I'm not going to push the matter because I make a lot more money than him. I make a lot more money than most of the actors here in Camelot. The Artistic

Director of the Medieval Faire is one of my fellow mud beggars. He makes sure that our performances receive ample publicity. The crowds swell before Shakespeare in the Mud,

Mud Olympics, and Mudshow: Impossible. The tips are generous and at the end of every weekend I head to the bank. The tellers smile indulgently as I hand them stacks of dirt- encrusted bills and I smile too, because I am suddenly a little bit closer to hitting my reserve, my buffer of cash that I need for moving to California.

“There's no back seat,” says Bedivere, “so I've got these huge beanbag chairs stuffed in there instead. Hey, do you want a beer?” Sir Bedivere hands me a beer.

Officially, I am working right now. I am slated to spend my free time wandering the streets of Camelot, bantering with the faire goers, instigating hilarious improvisations with fellow actors, and generally promoting an “authentic and captivating medieval environment.” This is a tough sell with all the fairies and vampires walking about, so in between shows I can be found chatting with the actors who congregate behind our inexplicably purple castle, or drinking at the pub with Bedivere.

If management spies me drinking then I'm in trouble. They can be wonderfully creative when exacting punishment. I might find myself performing mud statues or serenading the crowds at pub-sing. Occasionally, I get thrown in jail. This can be unnerving because the jail keeper has a condition. He is young and healthy and utterly hairless. The jail keeper doesn't even have eyebrows. Nobody ever asks why he is the way he is. The jail is a rectangular wooden cage near the center of town. It has been painted a respectable gray and then repainted a somewhat less respectable lime green.

The jail keeper is a salty, saucy fellow. He charges one dollar to put patrons in jail.

Parents have discovered that the jail is a convenient location to park their children while they shop. The jail keeper loves children. He makes a great show of launching young rapscallions into their gated cell. Then he imparts unto the captive audience his vast and terrifying knowledge of the history of torture.

“Consider the Culius,” says the jail keeper. “It is a Roman execution that plays to their love of theatricality. The condemned man is placed inside a large sack, along with a dog, a venomous snake, and a chimpanzee. The sack is then tied shut and thrown into a body of water. You can imagine the rest.” The children stand and stare. “Consider the

Brazen Bull,” says the jail keeper. “It is a Greek invention. It is a hollow, cast iron bull. A man is placed inside the contraption and a fire is lit underneath. The mouth is shaped in such a way that the man's screams come out sounding like the braying of a bull.” The children are bug-eyed. They hold one another's hands until mom returns with scented candles and a bootlegged copy of Songs of the Irish Whistle.

“Alright kids, who wants ice-cream?”

The jail keeper is a true Rennie. That's what we call them, we who leave this world at the end of summer; we who move on to jobs that don't involve swords and armor. Rennies follow the circuit and exist in their own under-culture. When the season ends at one Renaissance Fair, they move on to another. They tend to be unkempt, roguish folk who eschew such pedestrian niceties as bathing, formal education, property ownership, western medicine, and paying taxes. They've fallen almost entirely off the grid and float in an ironically timeless state.

Some of the Rennies are pleasant enough, but I never get to know any of them well. Instead, I spend my time with people like Bedivere, who is earning a degree in

Business Administration from Baldwin-Wallace. Bedivere leans forward on the bench with growing excitement.

“I think something is wrong with my alternator. The battery won't charge. So I've hooked up this ingenious system where I plug the battery in at night with an extension cord. Also, I was driving earlier this year, I think it was in January, and all of a sudden I heard this shoonk. The driver's side window just fell down. This was in January. I had to drive for at least an hour like this. Then I taped the window back up with duct tape.”

In less than a year, I will stand on the set of a major motion picture. My collar will be popped and I will be holding a plastic cup full of beer. In an official capacity, I will be known as Drunken Frat Boy No. 3. Next to me, Drunken Frat Boy No. 4 will sniff his beer, frown, and offer a pointed observation. “This beer is fucked up.”

“ It's nonalcoholic,” I will say.

“It tastes like shit. Why would anyone drink nonalcoholic beer?”

“I doubt they want the actors getting drunk on set.”

We will stand and sip our nonalcoholic beer and watch Keira Knightley attempt to wrap nun-chucks around some guy's neck in take after take after take. Tony Scott, the director, will chew on a fat cigar and parade about in alarmingly short shorts. He will yell at us frat boys for being too unruly. Then Mickey Rourke will punch me in the chest.

Later, when the movie comes out on video, I will regale my friends with tales of

Rourke's friendliness, his down-to-earth nature. I will show them how the editors

thoughtlessly cut the scene where he punches me. All that's left is a flash of my face.

“Did you see me,” I will say, “I'm right there in the back.”

“No, I missed it. Play it again.”

“Right there. Look. I'm right there.”

“No, I'm sorry. I missed it again.”

I thank Bedivere for the beer and rise from the table. Then I loudly wish his lordship an excellent good morrow and take my leave. I'm off to walk in slow, aimless circles around the faire. Vendors call out to patrons who poke curious heads into booths laden with swords, crossbows, axes, chainmail, leather goods, crystals, jewelry, paintings, and crafts of every description. Many booths display signs announcing “Master Card and

Lady Visa accepted here.”

I wave when I pass the other stage shows: Johnny Phoenix, The Tortuga Twins,

The Washing Well Wenches, Axle the Sot. I wave when I pass Esmeralda the Gypsy, who sits in her tent and posts her discount fortune hour (The future for less!). On warm, lazy days like today I sit in her tent and she coaxes visions from her crystal ball. “Dark days lie ahead,” she mutters, “darkness and dark days.”

“No,” I say, “there is only light.” Then I nod to the barefoot piper as he shares his vision of world peace, harmony, brotherly love, hand-holding, and legal marijuana with a chubby man in a pink kilt and blue face-paint. Further on, teenage volunteers lead children around on ponies, and somewhere in the distance the elephant trumpets.

The Rennies whisper darkly about the elephant. “That elephant killed a man once,” they say. “Pushed him down, stepped right on his head. His brains popped out.

The owner won’t talk to you about it, but it’s true.” I generally feel bad whenever I see the elephant. She lolls her head and looks embarrassed by her own elephant-ness in this supposedly medieval English village.

“Only darkness,” says Esmeralda.

“All hail to the King, baby,” says Arthur, as he approaches with his entourage.

Actors are supposed to bow to other actors who play characters of a higher station.

Naturally, everyone must bow to King Arthur. As a common beggar, I must grovel in the dirt. For his part, Arthur has been advised by the verisimilitude instructor to bow or at least nod to the patrons in a generally congenial fashion. Arthur does not bow. Instead, he glad-hands one and all like a slick politician.

“Greetings, greetings, salutations,” he says, “greetings to thee.”

Esmeralda frowns and shakes her head.

Arthur catches my eye, “You! Common wastrel, come hither. Come dance for your king.” A family wearing Robin Hood hats and pushing a stroller stops and raises their cameras. “Come here and dance,” Arthur says, and claps his hands, “The Volta!”

The Volta is a couples’ dance. But these finicky details don't seem to matter so I begin shuffling and circling around in a sort of mopish jig. A pair of barbarians join the Robin

Hood family and pull out their own cameras. The small crowd is then joined by a consortium of wizards, who are followed by some folks wearing Cleveland Indians t- shirts. Arthur grins and shakes everybody's hand. “Greetings, greetings,” he says.

“Welcome to Camelot!” I continue to dance and dance.

In less than a year, I will find myself standing in line next to a man who looks frighteningly similar to me. Together, we will stand in single file amidst the other tall, brown-haired, blue-eyed men who have been instructed by their agents to attend this particular audition on this particular day. I'll look at my doppelganger and one of us will offer the other a cigarette. At the end of the day, neither of us will receive a callback. He will return to Brentwood and I will drive home up the winding Pasadena freeway. This particular section of the 110 is the oldest limited-access highway in California. It was built in a plodding, forgotten age and it twists and snakes its way through the dry brown hills, hugging the earthen contours at angles never intended for modern speed limits. The hills are patched with a prickly rasp of yucca, sagebrush, and Spanish broom. At the top, they are crowned with gleaming white, stucco mansions. In the fading light, the mansions glow, forming splendid constellations. I will wonder what kind of people live in these mansions and what kind of lives they lead. I will think about the movie stars who have conquered the American dream so thoroughly that they have turned their very lifestyles into marketable products. I will think about the promise that is made to every thirsty dreamer who falls down into this valley. “Come to Hollywood, where perhaps one day, you too can be King!”

Sooner or later, the dance has to end. I look to Arthur who finally claps his hands.

I collapse into a pile of feigned exhaustion and the crowd of patrons quickly dissipates.

Arthur tosses me a plastic coin and moves on, his entourage of knights and attendants following closely behind.

It's almost time for the Final Joust. The joust is the most popular event at the faire.

The jousters are professional jousters and their horses are professional horses. One of them used to be on TV. “This one horse we've got used to be on Xena: Warrior Princess!” say the jousters.

I don't trust the jousters one bit.

The jousting field is at the far end of the Medieval Faire. It is large and oval and generally muddy. The horses kick up great clods of dirt as they gallop back and forth. The field is surrounded on three sides by rickety bleachers where the patrons gather to watch and cheer. On the fourth side is a wooden dais where Arthur sits and officiates the tournament. He waves to the crowd and yawns. Arthur's retinue of knights and attendants mill around behind him. Bedivere has joined the group and is frantically whispering something to Alexander the Great, who looks baffled.

These days, I stand at the outskirts and watch. I have been released from my official Final Joust duties. In the past, I ran through the field between volleys. I carried a flaming torch and shamelessly plugged the Mud Olympics, which begin right after the joust. One day, management decided that it would be a clever gimmick to replace the torch with a flaming turkey leg. The only way that the prop crew could get the turkey leg to stay lit was to dip it in gasoline.

Now, the mounted knights thunder towards one another. They tilt their lances in an attempt to bull’s-eye their opponent’s shield. When aimed just right, the lance will explode in a confetti of wooden shrapnel. The crowd loves this; they scream and cheer.

The gallant knights wave to their adoring fans and thunder forth once again.

At the end of the joust, Mordred and his fiendish minions take the field and challenge Arthur and his knights to open combat. There is yet another skirmish. The actors swing heavy, blunt swords at one another. They dodge and tumble and bleed their fake blood. Ultimately, Mordred and his forces are routed. But many lie dead on the battlefield. They laid spread eagle, heaving from the exertion of combat, staring up at the clear blue sky. The patrons stand and filter out of the bleachers. They saunter off to shop or take in another show. Only when the bleachers are empty do the dead warriors stand, brush themselves off, and march to their next performance.

In less than a year, I will walk down Hollywood Boulevard. I will step over golden stars tamped into the sidewalk. The stars are emblazoned with the names of legends. I will pass Grauman's Chinese theater, turn down North Highland Avenue and head on to West Sunset Boulevard. The dream will be so palpable here, so close around that corner, so ready to be touched and made real. Endless rows of palm trees line the

Boulevard. These palm trees, all of them in perfect unison, will sway in the evening breeze as the sun ignites the sky into a fiery red blaze before dipping beneath the Pacific.

THE GETAWAY

The lake was created with dynamite; that's what Uncle Bruno said. As a child, Paul had envisioned a level field stuffed with explosives and blasted into a scenic weekend getaway. But that's probably not how it happened.

The lake stretched for nearly a mile, although a series of twists and turns prevented one from looking end to end. The shoreline bristled with sycamores, maples, and long-leaf pine, lending the appearance of an honest and natural lake, a true product of nature.

The house stood thirty feet from the water in a small clearing. Uncle Bruno rarely used it anymore. His paving business had swollen to appallingly successful proportions and he could never get away. When Paul sheepishly asked to use the lake-house for an extended weekend, his uncle slapped him on the back and winked. “Sure, sure,” he said,

“someone should visit the old dump.”

The lake-house was not exactly a dump. The lakeside wall was entirely glass and tilted inward at a whimsical angle. Uncle Bruno bought the place back in the eighties from an alcoholic architect whose structural signature was retro-futuristic extravagance.

Some of the rooms and corners didn't make a great deal of sense, but were very pretty.

Uncle Bruno had leaned in close and asked, “Are you bringing that lady friend of yours?”

“Of course,” said Paul. He and Erin had been together for three years. Since they weren't married, Erin was still his “lady friend.” Paul hoped that after a romantic weekend, their status might finally change.

The couple arrived at the lake-house late in the afternoon on a Thursday. Paul heaved their suitcases out of the trunk while Erin walked down to the thin strand of beach and stared across the water. Paul was not a large man and a rare genetic hiccup had caused him to be born with only one lung. By the time he reached the front door with the luggage, Paul's heart was pounding. He placed the suitcases on the porch and fished around in his pockets for the key, taking care to regulate his breathing. Outwardly, he did not look tired, which was important. After Paul opened the door and disappeared inside,

Erin jogged back from the shore and followed him. She knew better than to offer to help.

Inside, the air was stuffy and bore the close hush of a house long unused.

Afternoon sunlight flooded through the great glass wall. The light caught motes of dust as they drifted on slow, invisible currents. The furniture was plump and expensive, but faded. A few protected nooks in the chairs and couches retained their original hues and accented the sunlight's relentless wash on the upholstery.

“So, what do you think?” said Paul.

Erin nodded. “It's a beautiful view. It's so beautiful. Where is the bathroom?”

Paul gestured to a door down the hall and Erin trotted away. “Make sure that the water is on before you do anything,” he called after her, but she did not answer. Alone in

the silent room, Paul walked over to the window-wall. Time and the elements had deposited a filmy residue on the outside of the window, but there were marks on the inside too. Paul knelt down and inspected a moon shaped smudge, a partial thumb print.

Conceivably, this print was his own, the remnant of a younger, simpler Paul, a teenage

Paul, mucking about during a family reunion, perhaps even the child Paul, dreamily exploring the great big world.

Paul refocused his eyes on the lake beyond the glass. He used to pretend that there were sea-monsters in the lake and that the edge of the living room was the bow of a ship.

Time and again, Captain Paul stood and scanned the water, ready for signs of danger.

“Hey,” said Erin. Paul hadn't even heard her approach. “Quit hiding down there in the corner. Let's go swimming.”

The sun was sinking toward the far side of the lake. After walking outside in their swimsuits, Paul watched Erin launch into a sprint down to the water. She had long, toned legs—runner's legs—and she moved with powerful grace. Erin kept going even as she hit the water and was several feet out before the increasing depth finally dampened her momentum and balance. Peals of laughter mingled with whoops and splashes, coaxing

Paul to quicken his step after her. The sight of Erin's free-wheeling body could still conjure a visceral reaction in Paul, a grip in his chest, heady dizziness. Paul alternately celebrated this sensation as the strength of his love and cursed it as the weakness of his body.

Paul waded after Erin but she was already swimming out into deeper water. “Hey, where are you going?” he called after her. He could sense his voice rushing across the surface but she did not answer. “Hey, hey!” he called again.

Erin stopped and turned. She raised her arm in a friendly wave and shouted, “I'm swimming to the other side. I'll be back soon.” She continued onward.

Waist deep, Paul faltered and stood still. A prickle of anger and fear ran up his spine. The lake was wider than it looked, and already the sharpening angle of the light was turning each ripple into a blinding flash. Within moments, Paul could no longer see

Erin.

Not wanting to simply stand and wait, Paul left the water and unlocked the boathouse. A heavy, mossy rowboat leaned against the wall. He left it where it sat and grabbed a large black inner-tube and a bicycle pump. He inflated the inner-tube, but rather than launching out after Erin, Paul sat on the beach and squinted out into the golden kaleidoscope of light.

Eventually, the sun dropped behind the adjacent trees and the intense glare rose like the flash of a bomb and was gone. Erin was swimming back toward shore, no more than one-hundred feet away. Her confident strokes pulled her quickly through the water and she was soon standing and walking toward Paul, flushed and heaving. Paul had rehearsed a series of terse indictments against her little stunt. But when Erin wrapped her dripping arms around him and planted a cold, wet kiss on his lips, all was forgiven.

“Did you reach the other side?” he asked.

“You know it,” she said, and kissed him again.

“That's pretty impressive.”

Erin grinned and stepped backward, then pulled Paul down into the water. The two laughed and wrestled about, then devised a game wherein Paul sat in the inner tube and Erin tried to push him out. It was a fun game, and amidst the laughter and tussling,

Paul thought to himself, we're having fun, and a weight lifted from his shoulders. But then, like an actor stumbling over his lines, Paul felt angry with himself for analyzing their level of fun-ness rather than simply existing in the moment. But it was too late now.

Now Paul felt worried about having felt relieved about having felt that they were having fun. What did that mean?

“Throw the ball, dummy.”

“Huh?” said Paul. He'd forgotten that they were now tossing a beach ball.

“Are you okay, Paul?” said Erin. “Are you getting tired?”

“Maybe it's time to go in,” said Paul. He touched the wet, empty pocket of his swimming trunks. If he had brought the ring down to the water, this might have been the moment. He could have lowered himself onto one knee and raised the ring up like treasure from the deep. It could have been perfect. But the sun was gone now and the evanescent glow of twilight was fading. No matter. More opportunities would present themselves.

“Yeah, I'm hungry anyway,” said Erin. The couple made their way inside and as the stars winked into view, a gentle wind picked up and lasted deep into the night.

The next morning it was raining. Paul lay in bed listening to the mumbling patter on the windowsill. Erin was face down next to him, asleep. Her right arm was curled under her torso and her left was balled in a loose fist and draped in the direction of Paul's chin, a dramatic punch frozen in time.

Paul eased himself out of bed, taking care not to wake Erin. He padded downstairs where, to his surprise, the sound of rain became louder rather than quieter. He walked into the living room and stared at the window-wall as it took the brunt of the weather. The wall was fully eighteen feet high and nearly as wide. If Paul stood close enough, it enveloped his entire line of sight. The rain impacted on the glass and for a moment Paul had the sensation of lying submerged in a cauldron of boiling water and staring up at the frothing surface.

Paul walked to the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee. He tended to wake early but was slow in the morning. He liked to bide his time, gathering momentum through rote, tactile activities. Paul had packed carefully, planning in advance each meal that he and Erin would eat until they left on Monday. This morning he would make blueberry pancakes for breakfast. The necessary ingredients were stowed neatly. All the same, Paul opened the kitchen cupboards one by one, exploring the secrets behind each door. His eyes were met by a spartan selection of goods: baking soda, canola oil, salt and pepper, vinegar, a suspicious jar of peanut-butter with a faded expiration date. In the silverware drawer, Paul found an unused tin of pomade.

Footfalls creaked upstairs. Erin was up. Paul heard the dull roar of the toilet flush and then Erin's bare legs appeared at the top of the stairs. She liked to sleep in large men's tee-shirts, which she found at used clothing stores. Paul's shirts weren't large enough.

“Morning sweet-stuff,” said Paul.

“Mmmmh, morning.”

“You're up early.”

“I was having these dreams,” Erin said, and then trailed off. She walked out into the living room and stared. “Jesus, look at that rain.”

“I know,” said Paul. He began mixing pancake batter.

“Did you check the forecast before we left?” said Erin.

Paul paused in mid-stir. Of course he had checked the forecast. The paper suggested that there might be a few scattered showers, but nothing like this. This was a freak incident. Paul leaned forward and worked up a large wad of spit. It dangled for a moment at the edge of his lip and then dropped into the batter. Paul quickly stirred the bowl. Erin continued to stare at the rain.

Lately, Paul had taken to performing sudden, small acts of spite. Once, he flushed a pair of Erin's earrings down the toilet. On another occasion, he tore the edge of one of her prized old photographs. These were puzzling instances. They did not make sense in the larger context of Paul: the human being. After all, people liked Paul. They frequently described him as a really nice guy, a gentleman. Moreover, Erin never traced these anti- social lapses back to the source. She rarely even noticed them.

The stove in the kitchen was enormous and ancient, with a cast iron griddle between the gas burners. Paul cooked the pancakes and then he and Erin sat and ate breakfast. They talked idly of small things and both agreed that the pancakes were delicious. When they were finished, Erin offered to wash the dishes but Paul shooed her out of the kitchen. She shrugged and walked back to the living room to read while Paul dumped plates and bowls in the sink and ran the tap until the water was as hot as he could bear. Then he scrubbed and scrubbed, his mind locked in a domestic fugue.

Paul finished the dishes and joined Erin in the living room. She was curled up in the recliner, reading her comfort book. That's what she called it. It was a trashy romance novel. The cover had fallen off long ago, but Paul knew the type: some buxom maiden swooning in the arms of a chiseled and conveniently shirtless hero. Normally, Erin was a sophisticated reader. This book was her guilty pleasure, her singular act of literary slumming. She'd read it a hundred times, eyebrows knit in concentration, as if looking beyond the sultry prose to hunt down a code, a cipher with which to unlock the mathematical secrets of... what? Relationships?

Paul stretched out on the couch. “Do you mind if I turn on the T.V.?” he said. Erin shook her head. The remote control was comically large and heavy, matching the television itself. It harkened back to an age when household electronics were bulky and clumsy and made to last. Paul flipped through the dozen or so channels in quick succession. They all boiled in the same fuzzy soup. Men, women, and cars—reduced in clarity to mere abstractions—wandered the screen like ghosts. Harsh fragments of words erupted from the busy crackle, which hissed and blended eerily with the rain outside. Paul

hit the red button and the screen went dark. He sighed. There was a VCR below the television but no videos to speak of. He slid off the couch and meandered out of the room.

The house had five bedrooms, two downstairs and three up. Paul walked from room to room and stood in each doorway, resting his eyes on beds, dressers, and nightstands. He opened closet doors and peeked under beds, looking for nothing in particular. Paul liked exploring other people's houses. He liked the way personalities radiated outward, seeding dumb objects with temper and soul. But the lake-house felt less like a breathing home than a hotel that had drifted south of its prime. There were towels and spare sheets and all the polite necessities, but no pictures on the walls, no bobbles or nicknacks, as if the house itself had amnesia.

Paul wandered into the master bedroom. His and Erin's suitcases were lumped in the corner. The bed was unmade, lending shabbiness to a room that was trying not to be shabby. Paul opened the closet, upsetting a clutch of wire hangers. They swung and danced off their railing like startled bats. Several of them landed on the floor. Paul closed the door and then reopened it, bowing to the ache of his meticulous nature. He knelt down to gather the fallen hangers and in doing so noticed that the left side of the closet was deeper than expected. There was a large cardboard box pushed against the back corner, obscured in shadows. Paul sank down on all-fours and crawled inside to extract the box. It was heavy. He dragged it out into the light of the bedroom and lifted its folded lid.

The box was full of pornographic videos. They were stacked neatly, filling the box to its brim. The videos were old, made in an era when they might still have been referred to as stag flicks. They had titles like Daisy's Big Adventure, Passion Masters, and

The Rod, tame by modern standards, yet unmistakable as anything but porn.

Paul sat and stared. Something under his ribs slid and shifted. For most of his adult life, he had been acutely conscious of his missing lung. He saw each organ as a vital component in a rigid system. If one disappeared, then the others would no longer be locked in place. They would drift. When Paul moved quickly or was gripped by sudden emotion, he imagined his innards stirring themselves up. He imagined organs sloshing against one another like fruit in a punch bowl.

Paul closed the box, pushed it back into the closet, and walked down to the living room where he sat on the couch. Erin was still reading her book and the rain was still falling outside. Nothing had changed. Paul wet his lips and leaned forward, considering how best to announce his juicy discovery.

He thought about Uncle Bruno, and the first time that the three of them were in the same room together. It was a family Christmas party, and Paul brought Erin to prove that he had indeed found himself a woman. Uncle Bruno sidled up to Paul on the couch and assumed the pose of a playful boxer. He buffeted Paul with light swipes and said,

“Look at you, you old sinner. She's at least a nine and a half.” Erin was well out of earshot during this interchange but she glanced across the crowded room and leveled

Uncle Bruno with a look suggesting that she knew full well that she had just been subjected to the international ten-point scale of sexual desirability. Paul raised his hands

to shush Uncle Bruno, who ignored his protests. His eyes were watery and he wore a loose, sloppy grin. “I'll bet you do terrible things to her, Pauli boy. Terrible, dirty things.”

The fact that Uncle Bruno had a stash of porn at the lake house didn't surprise

Paul in the least. It probably wouldn't surprise Erin either. There was no reason not to tell her. It would be a worthy chuckle. It would bring them together. Most importantly, it would rupture this terrible stasis. Something interesting needed to happen. There needed to be interaction, momentum, furtive glances and cheeks flushing and sunshine and the perfect moment.

Paul dumbly blurted, “Is there sex in that book?”

For a moment, Erin did not respond. Her face remained lowered, finishing a paragraph or quietly considering her answer. When she closed the book she kept her thumb stuck in the middle to save her page. She looked at him and said, “Yes, Paul.

There's sex in this book.”

“Oh,” said Paul. He couldn't tell if she was amused or annoyed. Her eyebrows were slightly raised and her voice was flat.

“Do you want me to read you a passage?” she said.

“Uh, no. That's okay.”

“Okay then,” she said and went back to reading.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure.”

“Do you want to do something?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.”

“I have Scrabble in my bag upstairs,” said Erin.

“Okay.”

Paul and Erin played Scrabble at the kitchen table. Toward the end of the game,

Paul played the word “craziest” in the upper left corner, landing a triple triple word score with Z on a double letter score. He beat Erin by more than five hundred points. When the game was over, Erin went back to the living room to continue reading and Paul sat and stared at the jumble of letters on the table.

The next morning it was still raining. Paul walked downstairs and stood in front of the window-wall. The rain was softer now. It ran down the glass in gentle, rippling waves. The lake and the trees beyond were still obscured. Paul wondered if the rain had caused the lake to rise, if it would reach the house, and what would happen if it did. He imagined torrents of water shattering the window-wall, sweeping through every room and dragging him and Erin out into the violent swell. When the authorities finally showed up, all they would find was a floating copy of Passion Masters.

Paul walked to the kitchen and pulled out a carton of eggs and a slab of bacon. He stood and spun one of the eggs on the counter top. There was no sound of movement upstairs. Erin had napped much of the previous afternoon and still managed to go to bed early. She said that rain made her sleepy. Paul placed the egg back in the carton and walked into the living room. Erin's comfort book was still sitting on the recliner. Paul

opened the book to page one hundred and seventy three, an arbitrary number, and tore out the page. He walked back to the kitchen to inspect his dirty work. The words read

cupped the nape of her neck with a firm hand, his broad

shoulders casting a shadow upon her supine figure, like a

thundercloud darkening the countryside before a storm.

“Yes, I shall have you as my own.” Lord Ashby's husky

whisper sent undulations of warmth all the way down to

Penelope's toes, yet she placed trembling fingers against

his chest to stay his advance. “Lord Ashby, I cannot. I am

pledged to be married to Lord Chesterworth, master of this

very castle. He is a powerful and dangerous man who

Paul stopped reading and crumpled the page into a ball. This was a mistake. He shouldn't have broken off in the middle of a sentence. His brain would never let him get away with such an egregious breach of symmetry. He fumbled with the page, unfolded it, crumpled it again, and then finished the sentence in his own head. He is a powerful and dangerous man who, despite his short stature, is not to be trifled with; we shall marry and that is all.

The diamond ring was in Paul's suitcase upstairs. It was never far away. It waited in the wings of his day-to-day life, ready in case that perfect moment should present itself, ready for round two. Seven months, twelve days, and fifteen hours after their first

date, Paul had pulled a velvet lump out of his pocket, opened the tiny box, and gotten down on one knee in that old fashioned way. Erin gawked at the fat, sparkling rock and

Paul assumed that they were about to start the rest of their lives together; the deal was sealed. But Erin looked from side to side in a frightened, nervous kind of way, as if Paul had offered to sell her drugs or exposed himself, or had managed some obscene combination of the two.

He tucked the ring back into his pocket and apologized. It was too soon. Of course it was too soon. Then Paul laughed hoarsely and Erin also laughed hoarsely in a cooperative yet worthless attempt to drain significance from the moment.

Paul assumed that Erin would leave him after that. She didn't, at least not literally.

Her spirit drifted. Sometimes she was there, sometimes she wasn't. Meanwhile, the ring sat and waited. It waited in desk drawers and overcoat pockets. It waited for the stars to align themselves, for that perfect moment when, yes, the only possible answer was yes, yes, and yes.

That day had not come.

Footfalls overhead. Paul saw Erin's naked legs descending the stairs. She stopped on the third to last step and sat hugging her knees with her legs inside of her tee-shirt.

“Paul, make the rain stop,” she said. She was joking, of course, but there was no hint of joke in her voice.

“How about some eggs and bacon instead?” he said.

“I hate it when you smile like that,” said Erin, “it looks so fake. This isn't a restaurant and I'm not going to tip you.”

Paul continued to smile. The edge of his lip quivered slightly. “Well I can't really do more than that right now,” he said.

“I know,” said Erin, and shrank further into her tee-shirt.

“Come on, eggs and bacon.”

“Maybe later,” she said. And walked back upstairs.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to bed.”

“Don't you want breakfast?”

“No.” Her voice was further away now.

“Do you want to do something else?”

“No.” The bedroom door closed.

Paul breathed in and out ten times. Then ten more times. Then he walked into the living room, picked up Erin's comfort book, took it to the front door, and threw it out into the rain. It landed in the center of the driveway and, in a matter of seconds, turned a darker shade of tan. Paul stood in the doorway, watching the book. It looked as if it had aged a hundred years right before his eyes. Of course, it would not continue to age in this frantic way, it would not crumble into dust. Erin would find the pulpy mess on her way back out to the car.

Paul walked out into the rain. The raindrops were fat and warm. It was not an unpleasant sensation. He sauntered over to the book, picked it up, and chucked it into the woods. Then Paul turned west and saw that the lake was indeed rising. It had crept more

than halfway up the embankment. The beach was gone and at the water's new edge, tufts of high grass poked above the surface. Perhaps it was the end of the world.

Inside, there were plenty of towels in the hall closet but Paul walked straight to the master bedroom and delicately eased open the door. Erin was curled up on her half of the bed. She looked like a pile of laundry with a sheet draped over it. She breathed in a shallow, uneven way, asleep but just barely. Paul stood and watched. He thought about the way shared time and memories tangled and strung people together, trapping them, turning them in circles. A cold weight settled inside him like drying cement. After a moment, some animal part of Erin's brain sensed eyes watching her and she turned and sat upright.

“Paul?” she said.

“There's a box of porn in the closet. Look at this.” Paul opened the closet door and dragged out the big box. He drew back the lid in a “ta-da” kind of way.

Erin pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked between the box of pornography and her dripping-wet boyfriend. She pursed her lips and, for the briefest of moments, something like fear and guilt flashed across her face, as if her restless dream had spread and infected the real world.

“Oh my god,” she said and crawled to the edge of the bed to get a closer look.

“Look at those mustaches.” Erin reached down and plucked one of the videos out. She turned it over in her hands and gave Paul a sly look. “We should check one of these out.”

They took the video downstairs and placed it in the VCR. Paul turned the T.V. on and for the first time that weekend, a clear, unscrambled image showed on the screen. A

boat-like Chevrolet Caprice Classic pulled into a leafy roundabout in front of a white stucco mansion. The soft light tinted the world with yellow and orange hues. A man sporting sideburns and a leisure suit exited the car and rang the mansion's doorbell. The door was opened by a woman in a bathrobe and the two began a conversation pertaining to a handful of legal documents in the man's hand. Their individual words and gestures made sense. The scene had all the trappings of a real conversation, yet the discrete parts never came anywhere close to a coherent whole.

After reaching some invisible common understanding, the woman invited the man inside and the two began passionately kissing. Then, like a curtain rising for the real show to begin, the woman's robe dropped to the floor.

Erin threw her head back in mirthful laughter. “Ewww, this is disgusting!” she said. She took the heavy remote and hit the fast-forward button. The two actors gyrated in a suddenly lurching, frantic kind of way. The man's clothes flew from his body one item at a time, as if he were caught in a centrifuge. Abruptly, they were in bed, squirming and writhing like insects. Flashing closeups exploded the screen with flesh-toned tumult. And then the scene ended. The man stood in an office.

Erin hit the play button and the world returned to normal speed. The man leaned casually against the corner of a desk, surrounded by four laughing colleagues. Once again, there was a conversation that seemed like it should have made sense and yet did not.

As they watched, Erin ran her fingers down the back of Paul's neck in a heartbreaking way. Whenever she did this, he thought of the first night they spent

together. Erin had scurried back and forth, snatching at camisoles and boy-shorts, gathering bowls and plates, mumbling apologies about her apartment not usually being so messy. Paul sat on her beige sectional and smiled and lifted his feet whenever Erin's cat rubbed up against him. He was uncertain about dealing with small animals. Moreover, the cat's meow did not sound like a cat's meow; it sounded like a person making a feeble cat impression. Whenever it eeped or pipped at him, Paul bit his lip to avoid giggling.

On the mantle above the fake fireplace, there was a framed print of Bouguereau's

Psyche et L'Amour. Winged Cupid grasped a naked and swooning Psyche in his arms as he flew up and up to heights unknown. Paul quietly devoured the painting with his eyes whenever Erin walked into the kitchen or bedroom. He looked down with hot shame when she returned. Once the apartment was sufficiently clean, Erin landed on the cushion next to Paul, touched the back of his neck, and said, “how about a glass of wine? You look like you could use one.”

The scene shifted again and a different man sat in a smaller office with two women dressed in business suits. As expected, the three began fondling one another.

Their behavior was matter-of-fact. Perfunctory. Sex, in this particular universe, was as pedestrian as a handshake.

Erin hit the fast-forward button and the scene zoomed by. They went through the entire movie in this way. It was over in less than half an hour and as the credits rolled,

Erin laughed again and said, “That was hilarious.” This was the happiest that Paul had seen her all weekend.

They got up from the couch and Paul made breakfast. They ate, ravenously it seemed, and then Paul washed the dishes while Erin went upstairs. When she returned, she was showered and dressed and holding a stack of videos. “We should watch more of these,” she said.

“The plot of that last one didn't make any sense,” said Paul.

“I know. It was like abstract art. I think the director might be some kind of secret genius.”

“That's a generous theory.”

“Oh, moany-groany Paul,” she sang and fed one of the cassettes into the VCR.

“Come here and sit on the couch with me.”

Paul obeyed and the two watched as the television flickered to life. The film involved a summer camp. All of the girls at camp were mouthy and disrespectful until the strapping camp counselors decided to employ some highly unconventional methods of punishment. Paul and Erin blazed through the film in the previously established fashion.

Then they watched three more. After an hour of frantic sex and muddled dialog, Erin's enthusiasm was visibly flagging. The novelty had dissipated.

“I'm surprised,” she said, “I expected more plumbers and pizza delivery guys.”

“I know. That's just unfortunate,” said Paul. For one wretched and absurd moment, he imagined dressing up like a porn-star pizza delivery boy. He would knock at the front door wearing a fake mustache and a sock stuffed in his pants. When Erin opened the door, Paul would act jokey and smarmy and make Erin laugh; then he would open the

pizza box and Erin would see the wedding ring inside. What a withering gag that would be.

It continued to rain for the rest of the day. Paul and Erin played Scrabble again.

Paul won. After the game, he went and locked himself in the bathroom while Erin lifted cushions and peered under furniture in search of her comfort book. In the bathroom, Paul looked in the mirror. It was one of those three-part mirrors where the outer two sides click open to access the medicine cabinet. The cabinet was empty but when Paul angled the mirrors in just the right way, he created an infinite series of himself. He grimaced at the simultaneously grimacing multitude and pushed the mirrors away.

Back downstairs, Erin was scribbling on a piece of paper.

“What are you writing?” said Paul.

“A song.”

“What's it about?”

“It's about fucking Noah's Ark,” she said and crumpled the paper into a wad. “It wasn't very good.”

“Try again,” said Paul, then he went into the kitchen and made lunch. A few hours later, he made dinner. Later still, he and Erin went to bed at the same time. Erin wore one of her tee-shirts and Paul wore cotton pajamas that Erin had once described as adorable.

They lay in bed, eyes open, adjusting to the darkness. Paul counted his breaths for a while, but when that grew tiresome he turned to Erin and said, “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate me?”

Erin stirred. “What are you talking about?” she said.

“What am I? A seven? A nine and a half? A three?”

“Oh Paul,” she said and rubbed her hand across his chest in a solicitous way. She leaned forward and kissed him. Paul's shoulders stiffened. In his mind, this advance reeked of charity.

“I'm not in the mood tonight,” he said. And just like that, Erin's hand floated away. She turned over on her side and fell asleep with insulting speed.

Paul continued to lie awake. Time passed, perhaps an hour, perhaps more.

Eventually, he got out of bed and went downstairs. Black rain punched the window-wall with a million tiny fists. The world beyond was a chaotic void, an echo of the primordial spume that ruled before time and space gave order to the universe.

Paul looked down and, to his own confusion and bewilderment, found that he was holding the dark velvet ring box. The ring itself was light, no more than a few ounces. Yet

Paul could feel it hidden inside—ponderous, massive as a black hole. It had felt like this on the day he first carried it to Erin's apartment. She was still a student then, living near campus. He drove down streets populated by outdoor couches and lukewarm porch-beer.

He passed a bra hanging from a tree. He passed a rent-a-hot-tub in the Sigma Chi's front yard. The hot-tub had sprung a leak and the nourishing flow watered the dandelions. The whole world ran rough-shod, living and fucking with a kind of glorious abandon, a muscular indifference he could never experience. In that moment, Paul felt meek and tired and destined for failure. He looked inward and imagined the wet collision of heart against liver, liver against pancreas, pancreas against gall-bladder, and an acrid whisper told him to throw the ring out the window, to give up and go home.

Yet he had persisted. He gripped the wheel and gritted his teeth and drove to

Erin's apartment, where humiliation awaited. Afterward, he was struck by the urge to rid himself of the ring again and again. Yet still he persisted. Now, he turned his back on the looming mouth of the window-wall and walked to the front door, grabbing his jacket on the way. He pulled the jacket on over his pajamas and stuffed the ring into the zipper pocket, grating his fingers against the dull teeth of the car keys. Now there was only one option left.

Paul walked outside into the rain. The lake was black, and swollen, and lapping ever closer to the house. Paul gave it the briefest of glances and then got in the car. His bare foot felt every ridge and contour of the gas pedal. He turned the keys in the ignition and drove off down the road. Overhead, the angry heavens gave and gave.

AUNT THEODORA

God dammit. God dammit, I need more money. The company is going down and I'm going to have to fire everyone. I'm going to have to fire myself.

I can't sleep. The air conditioner is broken, Amir is snoring, and my pillow has engaged in subtle rebellion. Out of nowhere, it has grown lumpy and uncomfortable.

Every few minutes, I pummel it with impotent fury, flip it over, then lie back down. The ceiling fan has also conspired against me. One of the blades must be slightly out of alignment because the fan rocks back and forth in a nervous pendulum swing, like the propeller of a diving Spitfire. The World War Two fighter careens towards me in the darkness, sputtering and stalling, never quite reaching the moment of impact.

Maybe I should commit ritual suicide. I could do it publicly, right after I fire everyone. Maybe I could hire an airplane to crash into me right at the moment I fire everyone. That would be perfect. Do airplanes perform such services? Probably not.

Maybe I should just smother myself with this pillow. God dammit, I hate this pillow. I would smother this pillow with a different pillow if I thought it would do any good.

Instead, I sit up again and tear at the lumpy, doughy little fucker. My legs have become tangled in the sheets and I kick at them to free myself. God dammit, god dammit, god dammit. I curse and flail and Amir snores his way through my bedside tantrum.

The next morning I stand in the shower until the water runs cold. I squeeze a vast, mint green lake of shampoo into my hand. I squeeze until the lake pours over my wrist and runs between my fingers. Here in California, I measure time in shampoo bottles. I switch brands regularly to avoid confusion. And so it goes: the age of Pantene, the Fructis era, the Neutrogena epoch. The bottles last and last. Each morning I step into the shower and squeeze a slick pool into my cupped palm and soap up my head. In the early days, I held the shampoo bottles, measured their heft, calculated their lifespans, and mouthed to myself, under the sputtering jets of water, “By the time this bottle is empty—things will be different.”

It could have happened at any moment, the spark that ignited my firestorm. These were dizzying times, so volatile, so hopeful, glittering with overnight millionaires and expedited American Dreams. I was so tired and so alone and so full of potential. Back east, Amir and I devised a particularly clever algorithm. It felt like sorcery, almost too easy to be true. Even then, the brazen venture capitalists were throwing money at anything wearing a pocket protector. We typed out a few lines of code from our book of spells and suddenly information transmuted itself into raw capital. With fear and exhilaration, we watched as strangers pressed money into our hands and importuned us to go, take this, and go make us all rich. Thus our dot-com start-up was born. ISP's, viral marketing, everyone was doing it. But we would do it better.

The virtual frontier still had its real world parallels, and so it was westward ho for

Amir and me. We left separately. Amir flew. I piled all of my worldly belongings into my ailing Datsun and crawled out onto the highway. Off I went, cruising past field and

mountain, a thousand thousand inspirational calendars crammed into sprawling, pastoral flip-books of Americana beauty, sunshine raining down upon my white knuckles as I gripped the wheel and grinned and laughed. Lucky, I am so fucking lucky. This is going to be great. For four days I chased the sun as it fell and fell and fell into the distant horizon, all the time thinking about that luminous world of promise awaiting me.

But now that dream is slipping away. Time itself is slipping away: Herbal

Essence, Pert, Dove, Tresemme. The company has grown like a cancer, but we've never come close to turning a profit. Instead, we've burned through the cavalier investments of all those old suites back east with ever increasing fury. Everything was expensive and we always needed more: more servers, more Cisco switches, more office space, more shampoo. Everything went towards the greater good. My own salary is a pittance and

Amir and I share a tiny studio apartment to save on rent.

And now we are in the twilight days of Selsun Blue. Just as we are at our hungriest, our creditors have begun rising against us, tearing at our dreams, and threatening to ruin everything. Amir is eying the white flag, the rest of the staff grumbles, and I—the brave captain—will probably go down with the ship.

The last wisp of heat runs out of the shower and the icy blast of water slaps me out of my daze. I scramble for the faucet and then tumble out of the bathtub. shivering and waterlogged.

When I leave the bathroom, I find Amir sitting up in bed. His finger is in his navel. He isn’t picking lint out, his finger is just sitting there. Amir lifts his head to offer

me a dreamy, distracted grin and then moves his hand from his navel to the back of his head. “Let’s go Amir, we need to get moving,” I say.

“Daniel, do you ever dream in Java?”

“No, Amir. I can’t say that I do.”

“Do you ever dream in PHP?”

“No.”

“Do you dream in Perl?”

“No, Amir. I don’t dream in any scripting language. I don’t dream in code. I don’t even code any more. You know that. I don’t have time. I’m too busy running Slyptech into the ground. So let’s move.” Amir blinks and rubs the back of his head.

“What do you dream about, Daniel?”

“Me? Jesus, I don’t know. I dream about getting to work on time. How about that?

I dream about the day when you finally stop sleeping naked.” Amir nods his head and reaches for the yellow t-shirt that he’d peeled off and thrown in the corner the night before.

When we finally leave the apartment and pull out into traffic, Amir is holding a bowl of Coco Puffs. “Why are you eating those here?” I ask. “We have a free breakfast bar at the office.”

“I was hungry.”

“Well, please don’t spill that stuff,” I say, “I don’t want chocolaty milk all over the upholstery.”

“I won’t spill if you don’t drive like an insane man.”

“Well, we’re late. So I’m going to. Don’t spill anyway.” My threats are completely empty. The highway looks like a parking lot. After creeping up the on-ramp and nudging our way into the right lane we find ourselves sitting behind a green minivan with a bumper sticker that says “Ever stop to think… and forget to start again?!?” We sit and stare.

“What percentage of our lives do you think we spend in the car?” Amir asks.

“I don’t know, Amir. Probably a lot because I’m not planning on living very long.”

“You need to stop your mumble-grumbling,” says Amir. Then he tips back his bowl and drinks the last of the chocolate milk.

“I’m missing a meeting right now. I’m supposed to be meeting with Tim and Tim.

And that fucking lawyer is in town. What is his name? Tagoshigi? Tashigogi? How is this going to look if I’m not there? No wonder everybody wants to kill us. We are starting to look like completely incompetent fuckheads.” The green minivan has inched a good thirty feet ahead of us. I mash the gas and then mash the breaks and lay on the horn as soon as we’re right on top of the van again.

“Daniel, that isn’t going to help.”

“God dammit, Amir. We need more money.”

“What?”

“You heard me. We need more money.”

“I don’t think that van has any.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“I do. And I don’t know what to do. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be,” says Amir.

I give him the stink-eye.

“I can’t believe you say stuff like that.” Amir is a fucking quitter. Ahead of us, the green van is inching forward once again.

The meeting does not go well. I spend the rest of the day walking around the office. I play coach, cheerleader, negotiator. I play motivational speaker. My employees are wary and cynical. They peek out of their cubicals with mounting suspicion, hostility even. Walter, the sysadmin, has a lazy eye. But he fixes me with his best glare. Jenny in customer services tries to smile and then bursts out in tears.

The gloom emanating from my employees stands in sharp relief against the physical office geography. The decor is aggressively cheerful and fun. It is all soft edges, primary colors, and whimsy. We have a foosball table, we have air hockey and ping pong.

There are Nerf guns scattered about the office. There are oversized bean bag chairs. There is even a hammock. The gem, of course, is the breakfast bar. We have seventeen different types of cereal on hand, plus oatmeal, plus fresh fruit every day. Wednesday is bagel day.

I've found the breakfast bar to be an invaluable tool for coaxing my army of programmers into showing up for work in a timely fashion. But it is also expensive.

At two o'clock I call a general meeting. The crowd jostle and push one another like skittish sheep. “Don't worry, everyone,” I say “we'll weather this storm. We'll get through this. But in the meantime we may have to make a few sacrifices.” I avoid looking at Tim and Tim. As the accountants, they know how bad things really are.

“Sacrifices?” everyone asks.

“Yes, sacrifices,” I say. I imagine throwing myself onto a burning pyre to appease the furious gods of business and capitalism.

“Are we going to lose the foosball table?”

“It's already paid for, so no.”

“Are we going to lose the breakfast bar?”

“Probably.”

“The free gym memberships?”

“Almost certainly,” I say. Oh you people. You sweet, innocent people. I have showered you with such ridiculous frivolities. I have stuffed this obese ship of commerce so full of lard that it's practically begging to turn belly-up. I just wanted you to be happy.

Happy employees are productive employees. And this is the brave new world of business.

The old suits are dead, right?

“I can't believe we're losing the breakfast bar,” says Walter. I shrug. That's not the half of it, Walter. You'll probably be out on the streets in a matter of months. You'll live in a cardboard box. You'll be forced to peddle your body on some street corner. One day I will drive by and see you. I will see you pouting, flouncing, shaking your ass, doing anything to turn a trick and I will be consumed with guilt. What a terrible situation.

“Look, we're just going to have to make the best of things. Keep your heads up,” I say, and then I tell them a whopper of a lie, “I'm working on a new investor, a big one. If this goes through then we'll be back on our feet. So for now, everybody cross your fingers and get to work.” With only minor reticence, the crowd dissipates. My employees flash

me conflicted parting glances. Once again they are torn between hope and despair. I beam at them. I radiate confidence and fortitude. I smile and smile and holy shit I have to get out of here.

I lock myself in my office and page my secretary to say that I won't be taking any more calls. Then I sit and stare and suddenly I am intensely fascinated by paper. I have stacks of it everywhere. My desk is like a leafy forest floor. Most of these documents are important. People's lives and well-being are wrapped up in the jumbled words and numbers blooming out of each page. In this sick world that I have created for myself, this abstract clutter represents dozens of employees, thousands of man-hours, millions of dollars.

I reach for a large yellow pad and construct an elaborate paper airplane. I launch it into the center of my office. Then I build several more airplanes, hungry for the comfort of dumb, repetitive motion. My paper airplanes lack competent engineering and few of them have the aerodynamic wherewithal to reach the corner wastebasket. Like everything else in my world, their fancy bulk negates the possibility of sustained flight.

Moments later, my office is littered with areal detritus. The floor is a retired war zone, the smoldering aftermath of a spectacular dogfight. The Spitfires, the

Messerschmitts, P-51 Mustangs, they all hit their targets at once, and since I've exhausted my yellow notepad, the battle has definitively ended. It is peace in our time.

Later tonight, a confused janitor will sweep all of this up. Perhaps he will curse the rich fools whose waste he must collect. Perhaps he'll marvel at this arcane corporate

ritual, so far beyond his blue-collar intellect. Perhaps he'll just assume that it was take- your-kid-to-work-day.

The phone rings. Why is my phone ringing? I pick up the receiver. “Karen, why is my phone ringing?”

“I'm sorry Mr. D., I know you said no calls. And I've turned away lots of calls. But this guy says he's your uncle. He says it's a family thing. You want me to take a message?”

I haven't spoken to any of my uncles in months. Somebody must have died. “No,

Karen, that's okay. Put him through.” The line clicks over. “Hello?” I say.

What follows is one of those moments that turns everything in life on its head.

The man on the line is my uncle Carl. Uncle Carl is a lawyer; he handles various and assorted legal issues for our extended family. He explains that my great-aunt Theodora, who is splendidly wealthy, has suddenly and generously decided to change her will. She has no living children and her considerable fortune was long slated for donation to charity. Now, due to unexplained changes of heart, Aunt Theodora has torn up her old will and left everything to her sister's grandchildren, in other words, two cousins—and me. Uncle Carl notes that her nursing home is up in Fremont, hardly an hour's drive away. I should probably visit her to say thank you.

Aunt Theodora you blessed creature! You have always been so close, yet so thoroughly out of mind. You are my deus ex machina! This is the moment where I should stand up and dance, where my personal tale of woe should end and I cartwheel through aisles, high-fiving my baffled employees. Sorry to hear that you're losing your jobs,

fellas, but as of right now I am filthy rich! Isn't that fantastic!Isn't dumb luck such a splendid means of resolution?

I refrain from cartwheeling and look out the window instead. From our lofty perch on floor seven, I can stare out across the entire city. Rigid zoning laws have kept San Jose low to the ground. There are no skyscrapers here, even though we're larger than San

Francisco. In lieu of building upward, the city has pushed away from its center, rolling out and out across the vast expanse of the Santa Clara valley like a mottled carpet, hemmed in only by the bay and the distant hills.

Silicon Valley looks brand new. Gleaming office buildings are practically erupting out of the ground from Los Gatos up through Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and the entire corridor of the south bay. Here in San Jose, these gleaming cubes of steel and glass march right up to the very edge of the endless blocks of luxury apartment complexes. Scattered here and there, well preserved houses and storefronts give testament to an older, quieter city. But that's about it. That's all there is to this town. All day long we work shoulder to shoulder, breathing recycled air, never more than glancing outside at the sunny skies and seventy degree weather that graces San Jose in perpetuity.

Then we go home. There isn't time to do much else. We're all working frantically just to keep up with one another.

When I first arrived in Silicon Valley, it was like crawling into the sea. I stepped into the water and suddenly I was floating amidst countless millions of other flailing dreamers. We all wanted the same thing and only a few were going to get it. The rest would oil the gears. But I jumped in with both fists swinging. In college I typed up other

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students' term papers for spare change. Out here I was holding job interviews, flipping judiciously through resumes, wearing ironic ties and Converse All Stars because the stiff old suits were a dying breed. I hired men and women who were older than me, sometimes decades older, with MBA's and Ph.D's. I romanced a small army of college suckers into working for peanuts late at night, after classes and regular jobs, with the titillating promise of stock. We've all come so far that it seems like a shame to cash the chips in now. I built this company out of nothing. I achieved the impossible. Maybe I'll achieve it again.

I tell Karen that I'm off to meet with our new investor, which isn't exactly a lie anymore. I tell Amir to catch the bus home.

Traffic on the highway is thick, but not as bad as it was this morning. It’s early afternoon still. The crushing miasma of white collar commuters won’t bring everything to a standstill for at least another hour, enough time to shoot north on highway 880 to

Freemont and the east bay. Nevertheless, I stick to the speed limit. I need time to think, to compose a battle plan. I only ever spoke with my great-aunt Theodora a handful of times while growing up. She is a full twelve years older than my grandmother, which means that by now she must be pushing a hundred. She's not long for the world, although if her money is going to be of much use to the company, then it had better materialize fast. I suppose I could casually slip into conversation a question about how much longer she is planning to live. Or, assuming it’s longer than a week or two, I could dazzle her with some of our Slyptech brochures and literature. I could show her graphs and charts detailing our impressive growth and our projected future profitability. Surely Aunt

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Theodora is a keen investor with an eye for a hot deal. How could she resist? How could she resist my charm, my esprit, my joie de vivre? How could she resist a pillow pressing down upon her face? No! That's a horrible thought. I am ashamed of myself. Horrible and ashamed.

I pull into Aunt Theodora's retirement village, The Aegis, shorty after 3:30. This place is swank. The Aegis community is a series of low, adobe structures. Clean and earth toned, the squat, self-satisfied buildings nestle amidst lush foliage. There are probably parrots hiding in those bushes. I find my way to the front office, primitive chic on the outside, ultramodern on the inside. The receptionist is younger and thinner than any nursing home receptionist I've ever seen. She wears red glasses and a spicy, seductive perfume. “May I help you?”

“Theodora Hostetler, please.” The name is full of vowels and runs thickly off my tongue. I'm directed to “Thoughtful Care,” the cheerfully named building for those folks who've surrendered every last semblance of personal independence.

Aunt Theodora is in room 123. The door is slightly ajar. I could knock at the door but what I really should have done was brought flowers. Flowers would have been an appropriate gesture. Or would they? Flowers might be over the top. Thank you for leaving me your money, Aunt Theodora, here's some carnations. Tacky. Besides, it's not like I'm trying to win her over. The will has already been signed. I'm not trying to speed things up.

Here, Aunt Theodora, I brought this workout tape, let's do some cardio, let me feed you this lard, let me smother you with this pillow. Jesus. Why am I thinking thoughts like these? I am a sick, sick fucker.

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I knock at the door. I knock gently, but even so the force of my knuckles pushes the door open a few more inches. Hello? There is no answer. I weave my head back and forth over the crack in the doorway, trying to get a better view. Part of a bed, part of a couch, part of a table. Is anyone inside? I push the door open further. The room smells like defeat and old age. Some smells are like that. You can throw any amount of wealth and comfort at them and the smell still wins. I step inside and the room is broad, dorm- style, and charming in a “greatest generation” sort of way.

And there she is.

At the back wall, in a chair pushed up against the window sits a white-haired scarecrow in a floral dress. Aunt Theodora is ninety-eight years old. If she hangs on just a few more years then her life will span three centuries. Incredible. Right now she's staring intently out the window. Here in the entryway, I'm also right next to her bathroom. I kind of have to go and for one crazy second I consider using her toilet before walking over and introducing myself. She may not even notice. The bathroom has one of those round, walk in/sit down style bathtubs. I can't help but notice the bottle of Herbal Essence. I remember those days. Things were going pretty well back then.

There's another chair near Aunt Theodora and I cautiously make my way over to it. Hello? Should I touch you on the shoulder? Will that startle you? Will that give you a heart attack? I touch her shoulder.

“Oh my,” she starts, “they are bringing Jonathan back today, can you see him?”

“Hello, Aunt Theodora,” I say. I sit down in the chair next to her. Aunt Theodora smiles at me sweetly. She has deep wrinkles, the dark kind that you can't see the bottom

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of. They run like Mars aqueducts all across the landscape of her face. Her head is the size of a normal head, as most old people's are, so I can't help wondering where old folks get all that extra skin. “Do you remember me Aunt Theodora? It's Dan Tiegan, your great, uh, your grandnephew, Molly's kid.” Molly was my grandmother. I'm fucking this up.

“Why, hello.” She stares at me with the sweetest, kindest lack of recognition imaginable. “I'm ever so sorry.”

“Sorry?” I say. Aunt Theodora gestures vaguely towards her head and then waves at the air, as if bidding farewell to all the memories abandoning ship.

“There was a boy who ran around in his underwear and a blanket for a cape. Was that you?”

“I'm pretty sure that was my cousin Steve, Aunt Theodora.” It was me.

“Jonathan is coming back, perhaps he remembers.” This is rather awkward.

“I'm not so sure about that, Aunt Theodora. I think Jonathan might stay up in

Heaven.” Jonathan was Theodora's only child. He got a pretty raw deal in life. When

Jonathan was born, the doctor was out of the room and the nurse was new or young or just plain stupid. Jonathan started to crown and the nurse, panicking, pushed him back in as she screamed and screamed for the doctor.

Jonathan frightened me when I was a kid. He had a droopy lower lip and big ears.

He shuffled around with a dazed, hopeful expression and he really, really liked to shake people's hands at family reunions. God, I hated him. Jonathan lived with Aunt Theodora his entire life and died when I was thirteen. He was the first person in my sphere of social proximity to die. He existed on this earth, a person when he was present, a concept when

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he was not, and then suddenly he no longer existed. As a young teenager, this notion troubled me. But it seems that Aunt Theodora has found a workable solution.

“He'll be here any minute,” she says, eyes shining. I'd like to change the subject but good conversation starters are hard to come by with ninety-eight year old's. Everyone she knows is dead. My great-uncle, Frank, has been gone for years. I never even met him and only ever heard his name mentioned in the context of work. Uncle Frank made his fortune the old fashioned way: over several decades. He bought unprofitable businesses, made them profitable through sheer force of will, and then sold them. One day he had a stroke and crashed his Cadillac into a llama farm. Aunt Theodora sold the various warehouses they owned at the time, the chain of gas stations, and the convenience stores, and went touring around the country with Jonathan.

“Tell me about the time you drove your car into the Gulf of Mexico, Aunt

Theodora.”

“Oh my, what a silly day that was,” says Aunt Theodora, “Jonathan is normally such a good driver.” Grandma used to tell me this story, and so many others, as I sat at her feet, pajamaed and sock-footed, hugging knees to my chest. She's gone now too. Aunt

Theodora is the last of her generation. “He's such a good driver. He's always so careful. I don't know what happened that day,” she says. Now I feel guilty. I always thought it was a funny story. Nobody got hurt. But Aunt Theodora is suddenly much sadder. “Are you here because Jonathan is coming back?”

“No, Aunt Theodora. I'm here to see you.”

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“Oh my,” she says and folds her arms and looks away. “We drove so much. He needs to come back.” Now she's starting to cry and everything is falling apart. I could reach for a tissue. I could reach for that pillow over there. I need to stop thinking these ghastly, inhuman thoughts but she looks so miserable. Everything she ever cared about is gone. She is one of those gnarled, desert trees, beaten to shit by the elements but refusing to die. No, not refusing to die, incapable of death, stuck for a thousand years of windswept punishment. Maybe I'd be a hero, a heroic guy with a pillow and some inheritance money to boot. No, fuck that. Fuck me. God, I hate myself. I hate money. I need so much more of it to stop stressing like I do.

Aunt Theodora glances over at me with a vaguely quizzical expression.

“Isn't that you, Jonathan?”

“No, Aunt Theodora. It’s just me, Dan Tiegan. I’m here to visit you.” She turns her head away from me and stares off into the middle distance.

“Oh Jonathan,” she says. Her tone is flat. I notice that there are no books near her chair, no magazines, no newspapers. She doesn't sit here and read. There's a television in the room but it's facing her back. The remote control is perched on top of the T.V., arguably out of her reach. Aunt Theodora must sit here all day and just stare out the window.

“Do you ever like to go outside, Aunt Theodora?” I say. She has a nice enough view. There's a walking path beyond her window. It's lined with decorative stones and some shrubbery. The view terminates in another one of the Aegis's low adobe buildings.

Together, we sit and observe the world beyond the window. It's very still outside. There is

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no wind to sway the leaves. Nobody is on the walking path. The view looks very much like a picture. Somewhere behind us, a clock ticks. It tick-tick-ticks, dividing time into obscene, meaningless little packets. “Aunt Theodora?” I say again. She does not answer.

What a maddening existence you must live, Aunt Theodora. I hope for your sake that there isn't much going on inside that head of yours. Or better still, I hope you're far away.

I hope you're reliving some golden age when you were young and vibrant and surrounded by those you love.

“You've always been such a good boy,” Aunt Theodora says out of nowhere.

“Would you like to take me driving?”

“I'm not sure that that is such a good idea, Aunt Theodora.”

“Oh my,” she says, “I would like to go driving.”

Visions flash before my eyes: I could run out the door and come back wearing a baggy flannel shirt and a sweater vest and saying “I'm Jonathan! I'm Jonathan! I've come back.” That would be wild. Her face would be incredible. It would fill with rapture, or terror, or both. Light would shine out of those impossibly deep wrinkles. Pure white light.

She'd remember that moment. Aunt Theodora probably hasn't had a memory stick in years, in dozens of bottles of shampoo, in hundreds of bars of soap, rolls of toilet paper, loads of laundry, in meals served on trays and pills served in Dixie cups. I could take her driving, give her one more memory, one final hurrah.

I stand up and walk out to the hallway. It is empty. Where the hell is everyone in this place? Can I just walk out of here with Aunt Theodora? Or do I have to check her out, like she was a video rental or a book from the library? Does she have a due date? Is

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there a fee? I turn back to Aunt Theodora. She is so tiny and frail. I doubt that she could even muster the strength to walk to my car. I'd have to help her. She could take my arm and totter along inch by inch in the world's slowest prison break. Dammit, why do old people have to move so slowly? You'd think that it would be just the opposite. You'd think that as time ran out, people would move faster and faster. Quick! We have to go play shuffleboard right now! Let's fly!

I open Aunt Theodora's closet door. Perhaps she has a walker. I push through the rows of floral dresses to see if there is anything useful to be found. My hands push through the dresses, sheathed in their plastic dry-cleaning wrappings, And what's this?

I'm holding onto some kind of handle and there's a large wheel. It's one of those collapsible wheelchairs. I dislodge the contraption from its tightly wedged location. I fold out the cloth seat and back rest and there it is, a perfectly serviceable wheelchair. This is a really bad idea.

I picture Amir standing next to me with his hands on his hips. “Daniel, this is foolishness,” he would say.

“You've talked like that for years, Amir. Stop being so cautious.”

“Daniel, please.”

Aunt Theodora is still sitting and staring out the window. She probably doesn't even remember that she wanted to go driving. She probably didn't even understand what she was saying in the first place. “Aunt Theodora,” I say, “how about a little bit of fresh air?” She turns and inspects the wheelchair and my outstretched hand. Her eyes sharpen and it seems that Aunt Theodora's essence begins to gather and solidify. Something about

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her becomes grounded in the here and now. She raises a gnarled hand and places it in my palm. Her fingers are bent, almost zigzagging, from Rheumatoid arthritis. Her hand is spackled with liver spots and a tangle of blue veins snake back and forth beneath her soft and paper thin skin. I feel the pressure of Aunt Theodora's palm against mine as she prepares to raise herself, and I place my other hand under her elbow to guide her into standing. Once she is up, I help her to pivot and then sit down in the wheelchair. The whole process is shockingly slow and delicate. I picture myself playing football, only I'm wearing oven-mitts and catching crystal vases. I picture myself building a stack of teacups as high as I can go. The tower grows and sways back and forth.

Once Aunt Theodora is comfortably in the wheelchair, I cycle her out into the hallway. There is an old man walking towards us. His right hand is pressed against the wall to steady himself. His left is held by the nurse accompanying him. I casually wheel

Aunt Theodora past them and smile and nod when the nurse looks up to greet us. She does not speak. But as I continue on down the hallway I imagine her looking back and wondering who that strange young man was and if she should inquire as to his intentions.

The hallway splits. The short passage to the right leads out to the courtyard and walking path. The passage ahead leads out to the front of the complex and the parking lot.

There is no real deliberation at this point. I continue straight on ahead. The double doors at the end of the hall loom large. Light shines in through the windows and I prepare to burst out into the open air.

The doors don't open. When I first entered this building they swung wide, automatically. But now they remain firmly shut, even when I turn the handle. What's

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going on? I back Aunt Theodora up to look for a different way out, and as I draw distance between us and the door I hear a slight click. I leave the wheelchair in its place and walk back down the hall. The doors swing wide. I return to Aunt Theodora with this new-found information and observe for the first time the plastic bracelet on her wrist. The bracelet, clearly lacking in decorative value, has the Aegis logo stamped on its gray surface. Ah ha.

So that's how they keep the inmates from escaping. Seconds later, we are outside the building and there is a rock wedged in the doorway, keeping it from fully closing.

Not far now. I wheel Aunt Theodora down to the getaway car, half expecting nurses and armed guards to descend upon us en masse. They would beat me mercilessly.

They would kick and pummel me as I curled up on the ground to protect myself. Then the mob of nurses, orderlies, and guards would shepherd Aunt Theodora safely back into the waiting bosom of the Aegis, leaving me in the parking lot to bleed all over the pavement.

But no one is following us. No one is protesting this ruthless kidnapping.

We reach the car. “Can I help you, Aunt Theodora? Here, take my arm,” I say.

“This isn’t my car,” says Aunt Theodora.

“I know. Your car is, let’s see, your car is in the shop. They are putting in a new timing belt and, you know, a sun roof.”

“Oh my.”

“We’ll take this car instead. Now give me your hand.” I ease her into the musty passenger seat. Then, after fastening her seat-belt and stuffing the wheelchair in back, I jog around to the driver's side and hop in. “And we’re off,” I say. I start the car and drive out of the Aegis lot.

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Aunt Theodora smiles at me with some slight confusion. “Where are we going?” she asks.

“Where would you like to go?”

“The old house in Galveston.”

“Galveston? I think Texas might be a little far away.”

“Oh my, well that's too bad.”

“Okay, fine. We'll go to Galveston,” I say. We're not going to Galveston. The lunacy of this whole endeavor must have some kind of retentive parameters. Besides, I'm sure there is a stretch of the northern California coastline that could act as a serviceable replacement for the Gulf coast. Christ, I could probably drive to Seattle and she'd believe me if I told her we were in Galveston. I take the on-ramp for 880 north, towards

Hayward. I'll take the San Mateo bridge and we'll work our way down to Highway 1.

Aunt Theodora begins to sing. It's a mumbling, halting kind of tune. I can't make out the words as they flutter from her lips. But her eyes are full of dreamy contentment, so I let her be. I wonder what she sees right now. Is this car, this highway, this rapscallion great-nephew all a million miles away?

I'd like to think that, for Aunt Theodora, the whole spectrum of colors have distilled themselves into a warm sepia glow. This sputtering old Datsun is a roaring 1953

Cadillac Eldorado, the car that Uncle Frank bought to celebrate his family's achievement of the American Dream. Men drive by wearing suits and fedoras. Perry Como croons on the radio. And I am Jonathan, a young man in my early twenties; I am unable to read, unable to write; I am unable to shop for myself or to hold down a job; I cannot navigate

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my own way through life. Yet somehow I am a superlative driver. I operate the wheel, the stick, and the clutch with fluid confidence. Aunt Theodora continues to sing and she is, I imagine, proud of her son's small victories. Together we cross the San Mateo bridge. The bay water sparkles on this cloudless afternoon. I lazily muse over the past until a red

Corvette weaves through traffic, miscalculates, and then pulls right in front of us as traffic ahead slows down. Instantly, the modern world of color and noise comes snapping back as I slam on the break and barely avoid rear-ending the Corvette. Both Aunt

Theodora and I are pulled forward in a long, slow heave. Our safety belts press into our chests and shoulders and our heads bow forward. There is no impact. The flow of traffic stutters for a moment and then smooths out once more. I look over at Aunt Theodora who is now silent. She glances back at me, her eyes slightly wider than normal. Her brow, already densely stamped with wrinkles, is now furrowed with additional lines of concern.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“I'm sorry, Aunt Theodora,” I say.

“Where are we going? I would like to go home,” she says.

“Do you mean to the nursing home? Would you like to back to the Aegis? Or are you still talking about your home in Galveston?”

“I, uh,” she wavers, “I would like to go home, please. Jonathan is waiting for me.”

Mere seconds ago, I may have impishly told her about the new bridge from California to

Texas. But this sudden, literal jolt has placed a sour knot in my stomach. Most people can take some jostling around and think nothing of it, but there's really no telling how delicate Aunt Theodora might be. For all I know, a stiff breeze could make her expire.

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She's hanging on by a thread so tenuous that her corollary would never be found in nature; there are no tottering and forgetful moose or panda bears, there is no walrus dementia. It takes all kinds of modern amenities to keep this woman alive. What if she died on my watch? What would happen then? What if a cop pulled me over right after she gave up the ghost? Sorry Officer, I didn't realize I was speeding. Who this? Oh, this is my great-aunt. No no. She isn't dead. She's just had a few too many drinks. You know how these old folks get. But I'm taking her home right now. Yup, all the way home to

Galveston, Texas.

What would I do with her body? What about my soul? Is this murder? Has this been the goal all along? If it's not murder then it's my cowardly substitute for murder. But this is not the goal. Yes, it is the goal. No, it's not. Money!

I imagine Amir sitting in the back seat, eating a bowl of cereal, shaking his disappointed head. “Let the company go,” he says. “We can always start another one.”

“We'll go look at the beach and watch the sunset, Aunt Theodora. Then I'll take you back to the Aegis. How about that?” I ask. Aunt Theodora doesn't say a word. Agree, dammit. This will buy me time to figure things out. Aunt Theodora looks out the window.

Fine. I'll take her silence as tacit acceptance of my reasonable offer.

The San Mateo Bridge spills us out between Foster City and San Mateo. We continue down along highway 92, through Hayward Park and Baywood Park, passing ritzy golf courses and country clubs. The dense crush of the south bay megalopolis is somewhat thinner here. After crossing the Crystal Spring Reservoir, we begin winding up through the coastal hills that shelter Silicon Valley from the Pacific. These hills drink up

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the wet fog that rolls off the ocean. They are laden with dense pine forests and scattered groves of old-growth redwood trees. Many of the redwoods soar to well over three hundred feet in height.

On the other side of the hills is Half Moon Bay. In this small town, Route 92 merges with Highway 1, which runs along nearly the entire coast of California. We head south on Highway 1, towards Santa Cruz. It's later in the evening now and the sun hangs red and low in the sky. When I look to my right, Aunt Theodora is a darkened silhouette, back-lit by the smoldering remains of the day. In the failing light, she appears spectral and immaterial. She is so small, so insubstantial. It feels as if the setting of the sun would be enough to make her disappear entirely, to make her dissolve into thin air. Aunt

Theodora's head is slightly bowed. I inspect her more closely to make sure that she is still breathing. She is. Her chest rises and falls with shallow but regular rhythm. “How are you holding up, Aunt Theodora?” I ask. She stirs and looks my way.

“I know where we are going now,” she says.

“That's good.”

“We're going to Galveston. We're going out to the water. Jonathan is waiting for me there.”

“Oh, is he now?”

“Yes, he's not at the old house. He's out in the water. It is just lovely that I will see him again soon.”

There's a beach down past San Gregorio. I'll stop there. The light is failing and whatever is going to happen needs to happen soon. The Aegis staff must have noticed by

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now that Aunt Theodora is missing. They must be pitching a fit. The nurse who saw me is probably describing me to the police right this minute. They must be putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. What have I done? Why am I being such an idiot? Even if I return her intact, I'll be charged with kidnapping, or reckless stupidity, or with molesting a senior citizen. If I make one wrong move and Aunt Theodora turns belly up, then I am truly fucked. Why didn't this sink in before?

Highway 1 twists and curves as it hugs the contours of the coastline. Here in this narrow, fertile strip of land between the ocean and the hills, we pass fields of lettuce, pumpkins and strawberries. Finally, off to the right, I see a faded wooden sign for San

Gregorio Sate Beach. I pull off onto the bumpy dirt road that leads down to the beach. I drive slowly on the dirt road. But even so, the car rocks and shudders and Aunt

Theodora's head sways back and forth like a bobble.

The wind is picking up. The dark swell of the waves suck in and then collapse upon the narrow strand of beach. The tired sun is beginning to dip beneath the horizon.

Higher in the sky, the red glow fades into a deep, Maxwell Parrish blue. White stars resolve into focus one by one. My right hand is on the stick. Aunt Theodora rests her left hand on my knuckles. “Jonathan is waiting for me,” she says, “he's waiting out in the water.”

“Tell me about the time you drove your car into the Gulf of Mexico, Aunt

Theodora,” I say.

“We were driving in Galveston. Frank bought that big new car.”

“You were driving the Cadillac.”

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“Frank loved that car. He didn't want it to get even a smudge. But I took Jonathan out and we drove all over town. We went to the drive-in and I bought him ice cream.”

“And then you drove out to the beach.”

“We drove all along the beach. The car didn't sink in the sand at all. We drove right out by the waves.”

“Until the seagulls scared Jonathon.”

“That poor boy. Oh, was Frank ever sore about that car.”

“But it was quite a day, wasn't it?” I say. Aunt Theodora is silent. I hit the gas.

THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH

(novel excerpt)

PROLOGUE

THE DOG

Arkhangelsk, USSR: 1936

The breathing could easily have been human. It rose and fell with the gentle languor of dreamless oblivion. Most nights, the east-wind raged and howled, rattling the wooden shutters into spasmodic frenzy and pushing at the beams and rafters of the boarding house until they groaned and listed.

But tonight there was no wind, and in the upper-west room, heavy breathing filled the arctic silence. The room belonged to Doctor Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, who sat upright in bed as he struggled to glean the location of the slumbering intruder. The breathing was close, perhaps two meters away. A coal furnace across the room cast a feeble glow into

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the murk. The red light caught a handful of floating edges, real or imaginary. It described the contours of chairs and a desk and pictures on the wall. The rest was darkness.

Ilya was a temperamental sleeper, a trait that had come with his advancing years, and his heavy mind clutched at the fickle comfort of a retreating dream: the diffuse light, the echoing laughter, the cheer of fellowship and praise. The dream faded until the heavy breathing, real and constant, buffeted his senses. It rose and fell like the waves of the sea, the beat of a heart, the tangible pulse of some universal rhythm.

There was a candle next to the bed. Ilya groped at the night stand until his fingers touched the box of matches. He struck one, and in the quick, miniature blaze, he saw a shaggy mass curled in a ball on the painted rug.

So it’s you, my old friend, thought Ilya. The dog’s snout was tucked beneath its belly, but the jagged border of its severed left ear jutted like a pink archipelago in a mottled sea of fur.

When Ilya had first arrived in Archangelsk, he found himself wandering the streets with his hands in his pockets. His professorship at the university was a sham; the

Maritime Academy wanted nothing to do with him, nor he with them. And so he wandered. He frequented the Pizakov causeway that ran along the Dvina River towards the shipyard. Beyond the northern slope, the delta widened and the frozen marshes gave way to the empty face of the White Sea. In the early days, Ilya stood on the causeway and turned his back to the south and the east winds. He stared out into the polar abyss. It was here that the dog found him.

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The dog was large, with a thick coat and broad, bear-like muzzle. From the very start, it rarely looked at Ilya. Yet the dog was vigilant and displayed a keen sensitivity to location. When Ilya shifted, the dog responded in kind, like a satellite wobbling to his nervous gravity. It followed him home on that first day and then sauntered off. It returned two days later, disappeared, and then returned again three days after that.

Whenever the dog appeared, it followed Ilya with casual certainty, as if following was the natural way of things, as if the two of them shared some inscrutable link.

At first, Ilya was nonplussed by the dog’s precipitous loyalty. He remembered the words of Paul Poiret, the onetime governor of French Guinea. Poiret used to recline in his mansion in Conakry and expound upon the African psyche. The governor had proffered a great deal of advice upon Ilya. “If you choose to enter a native village, be careful,” said

Poiret. “Don’t trust the first villager to seek you out and offer friendship. The only reason for him to seek alliance with a stranger is if he is shunned by his own people. Don’t let this man take you to the village chief. If the chief sees you together, then you too will be shunned.”

Years later, when Ilya rode the train from Moscow to Arkhangelsk, his reputation preceded him. He could feel the poisonous hive of rumors along each leg of the journey, and when he disembarked at Russia’s ancient northern port, the local citizenry looked darkly upon him.

The dog was a curious exception, and for a time Ilya wondered if fate had conspired to trick him yet again. He treated the dog with brusque indifference; the dog

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offered nothing but unflappable devotion in return. Eventually, Ilya concluded that his suspicions were childish and he grew to relish the dog’s company.

It slept at the boarding house now, although animals were not allowed in the private quarters. Nobody knew why. But regulations were regulations and the facility manager would not budge. However, there were no regulations about animals in the common room. Ilya offered the manager a pouch of tobacco and half a kilo of Belgian chocolate. The dog was brought in from the cold and everyone was happy.

But now the dog was in Ilya’s room. This would not do. It seemed that the dog, with its miraculous grasp of human engineering, had learned to twist brass knobs and pull open doors.

Ilya swung his legs out of bed. The rusted springs in his thin mattress keened in protest and the dog paused in its rhythmic breathing.

The room was cold.

A draft curled along the floor. Ilya slept in his woolen socks, which were meticulously patched, yet his feet still felt hard and dull, as if carved from wood. Ilya said out loud, “It’s impolite not to close the door after yourself.” The dog raised its head and regarded its master, eyes glinting in the candlelight.

Ilya dressed slowly. The cold slowed everything down. Time itself felt torpid in this place, pressed to the ground, immobilized. Clock hands marched in grudging circles, and words like morning, noon, and evening lost all semblance of meaning. Every time the anemic February sun ducked out of sight, twenty hours of darkness ensued.

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Ilya tucked each new layer of clothing into the last, finishing with his valenki boots and gray military coat. He was awake now and there would be plenty of time for sleep later. The last two days had been unseasonably warm, a mere five or six degrees below freezing, and Ilya intended to venture beyond his standard walking route.

Outside, the raw night air sharpened light and sound to a razor's edge. The world reached out to Ilya as if magnified, unencumbered by distance. Everything shone with flawless resolution. The full moon cast crisp shadows that divided the world into a warped chessboard of light and darkness. Gas street lamps, expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, stood at infrequent intervals in the twisting alleyways between the birch clapboard huts. Most people had no cause to venture outside at this hour. In the darkest months, the delta froze and shipping came to a halt. Even the pulp mills and logging yards slowed their hardy enterprise.

Ice and grit crunched beneath Ilya’s boots as he trudged through streets pockmarked with old, brittle snowpack. The dog followed close behind. Occasionally, it nudged at Ilya’s thigh; he was not a fast walker and kept a measured pace while approaching the first landmark on his winter stroll, the Nikolsky Church. It had two golden onion domes jutting above the surrounding crush of huddled buildings.

From the beginning, Ilya had found himself perversely drawn to this church. The yawning oak doors were emblazoned with the image of the archangel Michael, the city’s namesake and mythic protector. It was a startling image. Michael led a cavalcade of angels across clouds and sunbeams. With wings spread wide, Michael held aloft a blazing sword. At his feet, the withered black form of a demon cowered in grimacing submission.

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The rest of the church shared the painting’s martial flair. The four corners jutted up and out like battlements, then bloomed into white onion domes. Ilya stood and observed the imposing structure for a moment, then slipped inside to warm himself. He nudged his way through the gloom, scuffing his feet on the marble, until he was inside the nave, where the air hung thick with stale incense. Despite the stuffiness, there was little warmth to be found. Ilya blew into his cupped hands and resisted the urge to clap and stamp his feet. The candelabrum sat dark and untended, its rings of flat, melted candles awaiting replacement. Ilya consider relighting a candle or perhaps a dozen or more. He had stowed the matches in his pocket. But something stayed his hand and he turned and walked back outside. The dark church remained dark.

The dog waited outside. It had sniffed the perfumed air with apparent skepticism and then planted itself beneath the eaves. Ilya tousled its head and marched out of the churchyard. The Nikolsky Church sat at the edge of the frozen Dvina. Ilya turned north on the causeway, towards the Gostinye Dvory, the Guest Yard. This was the old city center, a heavily fortified stone fortress. It was both low and hulking, like a crouched giant.

All of the old buildings in Arkhangelsk had the same grim quality. Centuries of strife permeated the gray walls. The city had weathered Tatar raiders from the south. It fended off hungry Murmaners sailing from the north. It stood as one of the last bastions of the White army. Even now the city knelt and waited, as if steeling itself before the next blow.

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Normally Ilya would walk north along the causeway and then circle back through town. But under the sinking light of the moon, he turned instead to the frozen Dvina. The causeway was built up along a wall of rock. Periodic stairways carved into the wall led down to the water’s surface. During warmer months, rowboats bobbed along the thin wharfs found at the end of the stairs. The boats were gone now. Gnarled ice hugged and twisted the wharfs from waves lapping against the wooden structures and freezing.

Ilya pressed a hand against the inner wall for balance and walked down the stone steps, taking care not to slip on the ice. His tired bones couldn’t take such a fall. At the bottom, he sat at the wharf’s edge and eased down onto the frozen river. The entire delta, vast as it was, was locked under a heavy crust of ice. The icepack continued north to where fresh and salt water mingled and fused. A man could walk from here to the north pole—if he had the stamina.

The moon was setting, although night would linger for some hours still. The pale orb ducked under the hard, craggy horizon as blackness thickened behind a rich curtain of stars.

Ilya walked further out onto the river and then stopped. The world, the entire universe, hovered in perfect stillness. Perfect silence. And for a moment, Ilya could not bring himself to exhale, lest the billowing fog of his breath should disrupt the absolute calm. Even the dog seemed not to breathe. It sat watching Ilya, motionless, like a stone guardian.

In a distant, abstract sense, Ilya saw himself standing upon the frozen top of the world. He could not see it, but he knew that a green and busy Earth crawled beneath him.

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He knew about the quickening industry, the politics and inventions. The international machine was growing hot as it prepared for the next great war. Even Arkhangelsk, cold and distant, would eventually become swept into the fray. But not Ilya. His time was done. The only task left for him was live out his exile until the final hour, to stand in the delicate calm and to contemplate his many sins.

CHAPTER I

CONCIEVABLE, SURE

Picture this: you are a thirty-four year old man named Gilbert. Gilbert lives in a spacious

Queen Anne style house on the outskirts of Albany, New York. It is mid April, 1933. In the evening, after he returns home from his father's law firm, after his wife has cooked him a fine meal of broiled mutton-chops and mashed potatoes, he finds himself sitting on the covered porch with his tie loosened and his thumb resting in the pocket of his vest. He sips lemonade and watches Alice and Evelyn, his twin daughters, as they dance and cavort in the broad, sloping yard. The girls sing as they hold hands and spin each other in circles. Soon their grip falters and they fly apart, tumbling to the ground, laughing and reveling in the warm air and the newly greened earth. Gilbert smiles at their antics, trying admirably to disregard the tired ache that gnaws at his left thigh.

The house sits atop a gentle prominence, affording a view of fields, trees, and the lights from town. In the evanescent glow of dusk, Gilbert watches the girls trail further from the house. As the darkness thickens, their milky skin and white pigtails become ghostlike; their small, bare arms twirl and blend with the darkness. He can almost see

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them, and yet almost can't. Then the front door springs open and the maid, at his wife's behest, bellows at the girls to come inside, lest they earn themselves a whupping. The moment is broken. The girls, obedient to a fault, rush indoors to prepare for bed.

Normally, at this time, Gilbert would retire to his study to sit amongst his model ships, his sextants and compasses, and the faded sepia maps that surround his teak desk.

But not tonight.

Tonight Gilbert's wife wants to go to the pictures. So he straightens his tie once more. He dons his hat and escorts the Misses to his thirty-two McLaughlin Buick

Roadster, a truly ostentatious automobile. Gilbert would never have willfully made such a purchase, not when so many others are struggling to put food on the table. But his father, being his father, gifted this obscene vehicle to him and insisted that he keep it.

The couple drives into town and parks near the Royal City Theater. There is a new picture in town, one that's got everybody talking. Many are claiming that it is the greatest adventure film the world has yet seen. Entering the theater just as the screen flickers to life and the music swells, Gilbert sees the title appear in bold, block letters: King Kong.

In the beginning, the film is about a film. A director and his crew embark on a journey to a mysterious island to capture exotic footage of jungles, beaches, and wild animals. Naturally, their plans go awry and the film's beautiful young ingénue is kidnapped by the island's savage natives. They tie her up outside the village walls as an offering to their god. Then, before the heroes can rescue her, something extraordinary and terrifying happens. A colossal black gorilla hurtles out from the underbrush. It crushes full grown trees as if they are saplings. The towering beast is unlike anything Gilbert has

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ever seen. It looks so real. Its movement and bellowing roar are just how he imagines a real gorilla's to be. Then, as the film cuts to a closeup of the creature's face, he is chilled by its unquestionably human eyes.

Gilbert's wife grips his arm and swallows a terrified yelp. He would have cried out himself had his mouth not been so dry. But inside his chest, his heart takes wing, just like Maybell, the sensitive canary, who tears around in her cage whenever the neighbor's cat peeks its head through the window. It's a sensation Gilbert has not felt in nearly half a lifetime. Blood surges through his veins and for an accidental moment he is prepared to fight and to kill once more. The shards of iron frozen in the meat of his leg burn in earnest. Once again, the noise rings in his ears.

When Gilbert remembers the war, it is always the noise that comes back to him first: the grumbling moan of the Mark IV tanks, the desperate rattling of Schwarzlose

8mm machine guns, the Howitzer's tumescent boom, and the sharp report of his own

Springfield rifle. He crouches in the trenches of his own mind and the mechanized symphony wails and roils above him. The noise fills his teeth and his bones, and that is when he starts to see the man and the wire. But only for a second. In the darkened theater, he forces the memory of all that clattering lunacy back down inside, as if it is bile.

The movie continues.

King Kong is taken to America. He escapes. He causes havoc in the streets of

New York City. The film ends with his climactic fall from the Empire State Building. The credits roll and the audience claps and cheers. Gilbert claps and cheers with them, and as

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he stands to leave, he wipes the back of his hand across his forehead. It is covered in sweat.

On the way out of the theater, Gilbert witnesses another couple. They are young and clean and beautiful. The man is lolling his arms and grunting and bobbing his lower lip in a passable ape impression. He hoots and chases after his girl, who is nonplussed by such tomfoolery. “Quit monkeying around,” she chides. Gilbert considers these words before nodding in agreement.

One thing is certain: there has been plenty of monkeying around in this young century. After all the monkeying around in the Great War, Gilbert and his fellow servicemen came home to monkey around in speakeasies and private drinking parties.

Meanwhile, the brokers on Wall Street monkeyed around with the stock market until everything fell apart. Gilbert read in the papers that there was a court case in Dayton,

Tennessee to decide whether schools should teach that mankind descended from monkeys. There were even rumors of some crazy Russian scientist trying to breed humans and apes together. Gilbert thinks about King Kong again, about what it means to be an animal. He could see the whites of King Kong's eyes, and he remembers reading somewhere that human eyes are distinct. With every other animal, it's all pupil—no whites.

Gilbert and his wife drive home. The reassuring hum of the Buick's engine fills the air and yet he finds himself listening to the swell of battle once more. His wife talks idly about her favorite parts of the film, but all he hears is the noise. This time, when he sees the man and the wire, he cannot look away. The man was an Austro-Hungarian

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soldier. Gilbert watched as he struggled to free himself from a looping nest of barbed wire. The man was bleeding and the more he struggled, the more he bled. Gilbert aimed his rifle and shot the man right between the eyes. It was a magnificent shot. Gilbert told himself this. Then he told himself that he shot the man because he was Austro-Hungarian and he was the enemy. In the years that followed, Gilbert wondered again and again why he bothered to legitimize his actions in such an odd way.

After pulling into the driveway of his spacious Queen Anne, Gilbert parks the

McLaughlin Buick Roadster, and escorts his wife indoors. The maid is dozing over an issue of Collier's Weekly. Upstairs, the girls sleep like cherubs. Their slow, shallow breaths rise and fall in tandem.

Gilbert prepares for bed.

As his wife—as your wife—slides under the sheets next to you, you reach over and squeeze her thigh, if only for a moment of human contact. “Quit monkeying around,” she says. She kisses your cheek and turns out the light.

You are still sitting up in bed, staring into the sudden darkness. Wait for your eyes to adjust. You have a beautiful life. You have a beautiful, bucolic life that is ever so far away from the war and the noise. Wait for your eyes to adjust. Wait until you can almost see it, and yet almost can't. Hold onto that image. You will need it later.

CHAPTER II

SHARING THE WOMB

French Guinea, 1927

Doctor Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov watched his son open and close his mouth. “What are you doing?” he asked. “You look like a fish.”

“The air here is terrible,” replied Ilyochka. “It feels like we are inside of a mouth.”

The two men stood at the edge of a mud road. Above them, the tangled, steaming canopy buzzed and whistled with invisible life. Occasionally, a burst of frantic flapping and squawking pulled their eyes skyward towards a clutch of irritable parrots retreating from one tree to the next and then back again. The rest of the jungle was still. The thick, wet air hung in place, resting ponderously upon the leaves and branches and the world about them.

Ilya turned to walk back to the cars, pulling his feet up from the mud that sucked at his boots. He was met by the approaching figure of Mohammed, their guide. Ilyochka

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turned too, and by way of earnest conversation, called out, “The air here, it is like standing inside of a mouth.”

Mohammed stopped in front of the two Russians and placed a hand on Ilya's shoulder. Then he raised his other arm and pointed to a low pass carving its way through the densely forested hills. “The Maw,” he said.

Ilya could not stand being touched by their guide. The tall, grim African unnerved him. But it was a seemingly necessary precursor to their every communication.

Mohammed would place his long fingered hand upon Ilya's shoulder and utter the name of whatever object or activity he deemed worthy of bringing to Ilya's attention: the road, a Fulani village, mondak berries, a leopard, a flat tire, supper time, a tent, sleep now.

Even when they were driving in the car, Mohammed would reach his arm into the backseat and place his hand on Ilya's knee. Then, with his other hand on the wheel, he would point with his index finger.

“The Maw?” said Ilya. “Is that where we are going?”

Mohammed nodded. “Tomorrow we will pass the Maw. There we are deep in

Fuuta-Jaloo. There we will hunt un chimpanzé.” Then he turned and walked back to the cars. These were the most words that Ilya had heard Mohammed speak at one time.

There were eleven men in their party. Mohammed had selected four of his fellow

Fulani tribesmen. They were all hunters. For his part, Ilya had insisted that their expedition should be documented. In Conakry he had met and conscripted a small French film crew. The three Frenchmen had, in the past, worked closely with the Institut Pasteur

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in Paris and were personally acquainted with Albert Calmette. When Mohammed first saw the Frenchmen and their boxes of film equipment, he scowled and stalked away. One of the other tribesmen, grinning and fooling with a knife, stepped forward. He tapped one of the boxes with his knife and said, “When the white man travels, he travels with the world on his back.” Then he sat in the dirt and picked his teeth while the Frenchmen cursed and puzzled over how to arrange their equipment in the two available cars. Back in Conakry, Governor Poiret had promised them a truck. After Ilya exited the colonial statehouse, the governor promptly delivered a second car instead. He later telegraphed

Ilya and stated that in Africa, one must often make do with less.

In the end, the consortium was forced to beg the assistance of John Shipton, the

American freelance journalist who was visiting the primate station in Kindia. Shipton was writing a science article about the value of primates in medical research. He was also writing a novel about crazed apes escaping from zoos and attacking women in the night.

He frequently described the chapters of his novel to anyone who would listen. He went into great detail, speaking as if the stories were true. The French researchers at the Kindia station laughed at his tales. The local workers knit their eyebrows and rubbed their chins.

Ilya passionately hated Shipton. The man was a buffoon. Moreover, he was dangerous to the integrity of the journey. Even if his endeavors were successful—no— particularly if his endeavors were successful, Ilya wanted to maintain tight control of what the outside world knew of his efforts. But Shipton had his own car, and he would not lend it to the expedition unless he was permitted to accompany them. In the end, Ilya

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acquiesced and the three cars, heavily laden with men and supplies, left Kindia and drove north into the wilds of the Fouta Djalon.

By late morning of the second day, they had reached the Maw. Here the road ended. Mohammed placed his hand on Ilya's knee and pointed. “Road ends,” he said. It was an old French logging road. A thin network of roads veined out into the forest, spread by the colonial government. Teams of loggers had come to harvest mahogany and other precious hardwoods, hauling the felled trees out on mule carts, then more recently on trucks. Here at the end of the road, the muddy jungle track broadened out into a wide, flat field. The forest rose steeply to the left and right of the field as the land became rugged and hilly. The trees were larger here. Yet Ilya had seen no evidence of logging anywhere on the journey. As the team began to unpack the cars, he noted this to the grinning tribesman.

“All gone. The loggers are all gone. The spirits hide the old bonban trees and the loggers cannot find them. Soon the forest will eat the road and you and I will not come here again.” Ilya nodded thoughtfully.

“You are very clever, my friend. What is your name?”

“I am Mohammed.”

“You are also named Mohammed? Are you all named Mohammed?” asked Ilya.

The grinning man grinned even more widely.

“That would be good for you, yes? We are all the same to you. We are all the same name.”

“Very well,” said Ilya, “I will call you Teeth.”

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“And I will call you White Beard. I will shake your hand, White Beard.” Ilya shook hands with the man, slightly bemused by the transaction. In Conakry, the Africans were meek and subservient. He was not used to such boldness.

The other Fulani tribesmen unbound their stowed rifles. They sang quietly to one another while testing their weapons' actions before loading. Then Mohammed and the three other tribesmen turned and faded quietly into the brush. Teeth followed his departing compatriots for a dozen steps, made an odd flicking motion towards them, and sauntered back to the vehicles.

“Where are they going?” asked Ilya.

“They will find the chimpanzee. Then they will return and bring us to their home.”

“And why do you stay behind?”

“This is not Paris, White Beard. This is not Moscow. You are not safe in this land.” Teeth grinned brilliantly and motioned towards the jungle. “Do not worry, White

Beard. They will not be long.”

Ilya stared pensively into the lush undergrowth. He raised his fingers to his beard and twisted and worried the damp, white strands. Ilya had little concern for his own physical safety. In truth, all of his greatest moments of danger had occurred in the reputedly civilized nations between Paris and Moscow. Ilya was mostly concerned about the rifles. He had taken pains to explain in great detail that this would be no ordinary hunting trip.

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Fulani hunters had enjoyed a lucrative relationship with the primate station ever since it was founded in 1923. The station had already shipped several hundred chimpanzees off to the Institut Pasteur for laboratory research in microbiology and pathology. They were constantly requesting more specimens, and the Fulani were happy to provide them. They would locate a troop of chimpanzees, shoot the adults, and then deliver the infants and juveniles to the station in Kindia. The staff at the primate station did their best to raise the caged chimps but were continuously perplexed and frustrated by the high mortality rates. Fewer than half reached adulthood. Those that did were quickly shipped off to Paris.

Upon Ilya's first arrival in Kindia, he quickly surmised that the chimps at the primate station would be of no use to him. He needed robust, mature adults. He tendered this request to the staff who, agitated and dejected as they were, laughed bitterly at his requirements. “And how will you accomplish this?” they asked. “Will you negotiate with a chimpanzee? Will you woo her and take her by the hand and lead her from the forest?”

“No,” said Ilya. Instead, he gathered a collection of nets and modified an old

Mosin-Nagan grenade launcher. Then he quietly visited the storeroom to procure chloroethyl and other sleep inducing compounds.

After the tribesmen had been gone for three hours, Ilya awoke from a brief nap and walked one hundred paces up the road to join his son, who was crouched low and holding a stick. Ilyochka was scratching a series of jagged squares and swivels in the mud. Ilya observed these abstract hieroglyphs and sighed. “What are you doing,

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Ilyochka?” he asked. For a time, the young man ignored him. He finished a series of glyphs and then turned rather distractedly to his father.

“Would it matter,” he asked, “if a man was the first man to create art in any given corner of the world? Would that make his art more meaningful?” Ilya sighed again, this time with deliberate force. He was tired of these conversations about art. He'd arranged for the boy to study biochemistry at Moscow University, a prestigious honor. Yet

Ilyochka had squandered his time and his money on oil paints and great swaths of canvas.

He drew lacerated cuboid structures that careened about like the aftermath of some geometric explosion.

“What are you painting?” Ilya used to ask.

“Does there have to be a 'what'?” replied Ilyochka. Then he raved about

Kandinsky and Malevich and the Bauhaus. There was no reasoning with him. Ilya could not speak the language of inherent or imbued meaning in art. Indeed, Ilya cared little for art, at least Revolutionary art. He could not fathom the bombastic manifestos of the

Constructivists with their faktura and their tektonika. If Ilyochka wanted to be an artist, so be it. Ilya would be disappointed, yet so be it. There was a more important issue at hand; these were no times for strong emotions. A fevered display of passion might please the Party officials one day and then frighten them the next. When Ilyochka—paint spattered and wide eyed—had said, “I am tearing down the old rules and the old world so that I might build something new,” Ilya raised his fingers to his beard to twist and worry the strands. He'd heard words like these before.

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Now, on the jungle road, Ilya knelt slowly down next to his son to peer more closely at the mud scratchings. The heat had eased the stiffness in his knees. Yet it prompted occasional spells of lightheadedness as well. He touched the corner of a glyph and said, “One might think that you are leaving a message with these symbols. I wonder who will read it?”

“The cars will crush them when we leave. But the tire tracks will imprint a much purer pattern,” said Ilyochka.

Not knowing what to make of this, Ilya squeezed his son's arm and said, “Let's rejoin the others. There might be a leopard up in those trees, or a wild-man, or a snake, or some other such business.” Without fussing, Ilyochka tossed his stick into the brush and stood. The two men walked back to the semicircle of cars where John Shipton was telling an animated story in his ridiculous French. The three filmmakers ashed their cigarettes and nodded vigorously at his tale. Teeth sat cross-legged on the roof of the front car, gazing off into the trees. As Shipton described the carnal lust of an escaped gorilla, the

Frenchmen chuckled and goaded him onwards, slapping their knees at his story and his drawling American accent.

A shot rang through the air. The laughter and storytelling halted abruptly and the men turned first to the edge of the forest and then up to their Fulani bodyguard. Teeth remained motionless, his face impassive. He appeared to have not even noticed the gunshot.

“What was that?” demanded Ilya.

Teeth nodded to his right, “Less than a kilometer away. They are close.”

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“I told you that there was to be no shooting. I told you that's not how we are doing this.” Ilya could feel his face turning red. Yet Teeth remained unimpressed. He shrugged and picked at his teeth. His calmness infuriated Ilya all the more. He wanted to lash out, to blister that damn Fulani with insults and curses. Instead, he held his tongue and seethed in the already roiling heat.

There were no more shots from the forest. The men stood for a time, waiting.

Here in the open field, a tepid breeze pushed the wet, itching air into their eyes and foreheads. They squinted and stared and the blank face of the jungle offered them nothing. Soon, the men turned back to one another and John Shipton coughed, cleared his throat, and continued his story. He described a slavering gorilla as it delicately lifted the bedsheets of a sleeping librarian. The Frenchmen chuckled, only now with considerably less mirth.

Once he had sufficiently calmed himself, Ilya set about unloading his nets and pulleys. If further demonstration of his proposed methods was needed, so be it. Yet as he separated the light and heavy gauged nets, Teeth jumped to his feet and made a birdlike whoop. An answering call trilled from a shadowy cluster of branches just before

Mohammed and the other hunters stepped out into the light. Mohammed strode up to the cars and spoke rapid Pular with Teeth. Once again, Teeth made his odd flicking motion, then he slid down from the roof of the car.

“The Chimpanzee family is close. They have made their home under a proud bonban tree. Tomorrow, in the early morning, we will surprise them with your nets and your masks.”

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“Yes, but what about the gunshot?” said Ilya. “Did they shoot one of the chimpanzees?”

“No, White Beard.” Teeth gestured to the fourth tribesman. Slung over his shoulders was a small antelope, no larger than a spaniel.

As the sun lowered in the sky, the Fulani busied themselves gutting and skinning the antelope. Plenty of provisions had been packed beforehand. But if the Fulani wanted to eat their own fresh kill, there was no reason to stop them. A fire was built and the heavy canvas tents were unrolled and erected one by one. For a time, Ilya was silently impatient. There had been ample daylight when Mohammed first returned to camp. Why hadn't they gone right away to capture a chimpanzee? As he reflected, he quickly saw wisdom in their decision. The plan was to load a chimpanzee, bound and tranquilized, into the backseat of the third car. Ilya would accompany the chimpanzee, syringe in hand, ready to rough a needle into its thick hide should it start to wake. A holstered pistol would be at his side as a last resort. If they captured a chimp early, they could drive through the day and into the night, arriving back in Kindia well before dawn. This would be good. It meant more daylight for faster driving, and he had no wish to sedate the beast any longer than necessary, or to sit next to it. Certainly, it would be an interesting drive.

The scent of meat trailed through the air as the Fulani turned the antelope on its spit. As the flesh cooked through, the light waned and day surrendered to night. No stars appeared in the sky. Instead, a close darkness settled about the flickering campfire. The perpetual buzz of the forest now rose in pitch and urgency. Keening whistles and yells

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rang from all sides and as Ilya chewed on a crust of bread, he nearly gasped as a pair of round eyes flashed in the firelight, less than a stone's throw from the camp. “What is that?” he said, and gestured.

Mohammed looked over at the eyes, which floated in the darkness, unblinking.

“Mongba,” he said.

“What is mongba?”

“He says it is a spirit,” said Teeth. “It is either a leopard or a spirit. We will hope it is a leopard. In the morning we will look for tracks. If there are tracks, it is a leopard. If there are no tracks, it is a spirit.”

“Should we throw something at it?” asked John Shipton.

“There is no need for that, my friend,” said Teeth. Without listening, Shipton took a half burning branch from the edge of the fire and flung it into the air. The branch was light, it arced slowly into the darkness. By the time it reached the ground, the eyes were gone.

They broke camp early the next morning and set out into the bush. Mohammed and the Fulani led the way, followed by Ilya and Ilyochka, and finally John Shipton. The three Frenchmen lagged behind, burdened as they were by their heavy cameras, microphones, and long wooden tripods. Teeth brought up the rear, clucking and tutting at the Frenchmen, prodding them ever forward. Progress was slow and treacherous.

Mohammed had found what at times appeared to be a winding animal trail. At other times, as they crashed through ferns, broad-leaved fronds, and creeping vines, there

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appeared to be no trail at all, only walls of lush green flora. The hilly terrain dipped and then soared upward, then dipped again. Above them, sunlight trailed through holes in the canopy, igniting the moisture-laden air into a hazy, golden glow.

After an hour, the film crew refused to go on without resting. Mohammed chose a large outcropping of boulders to stop beside. Water sprang from cracks in the rock as if it were the ruptured hull of a ship. The men dipped their heads, already drenched with perspiration, into the cool spring and sighed with relief. Ilya pulled at his collar. He was the only one amongst the men who refused to part with his tie. He wore it still, a gray bow-tie, now somewhat wilted and grubby from scrambling through the jungle. Ilya adjusted the knot and then patted spring water onto his cheeks and forehead. The trek thus far had not been easy for him and the heavy net tucked into his pack only made matters worse.

When it was time to continue, the Frenchmen demanded a redistribution of weight. The Fulani, after all, carried nothing but their rifles. Yet when handed additional supplies to shoulder, the tribesmen refused. “We are hunters. We are not porters,” said

Teeth. Mohammed scowled silently and the other tribesmen spoke brusquely in Pular.

Eventually, John Shipton stepped in and attempted to resolve the impasse. “Gentlemen,” he said to the tribesmen, “if you will but help these poor, overburdened Frenchmen, I will give each of you a fine cigar.”

“What is a cigar?” asked Teeth.

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“Why, it is only the finest experience that you will ever have,” said Shipton, beaming. Teeth's eyes narrowed; he translated these words to the other tribesmen, who remained unmoved.

“You do not understand,” said Teeth, “we are hunters. Soon enough our backs will bend just as yours. If you do not want your burden, throw it into the forest, we will capture the chimpanzee just the same.” With that, the Fulani continued walking, and the others scrambled to hoist the packs and continue in the tribesmen's wake.

They did not have far to go. As the next hill crested and the expedition descended again into another valley, Mohammed stopped once more and motioned for Ilya to stand by his side. He placed a hand on Ilya's shoulder and pointed up into a tree. A series of low branches had been pulled and knotted into one another to form a hanging bower. In the center of the leafy nest, a hairy lump breathed in and out. As the men stood and watched, the lump raised an elbow to reveal a five fingered hand. It scratched its side and then folded back into a fetal ball. Some ways beyond the nest, three more chimpanzees sat on the ground, grooming one another. At the sight of the chimps, the men quietly sank themselves into jittery, businesslike preparation for the task at hand. The two cameras were hastily erected and loaded with film. Squinting into their viewfinders and chewing on cigarettes that they had been warned against lighting, the Frenchmen raised their fingers to count three, two, one, rolling.

Later, Ilya would watch the grainy footage and marvel at his cavalier orchestration of this entire hunting fiasco. He would see a small, black and white version of himself stringing nets between trees and mounting a stout canister onto the muzzle of a

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grenade launcher. The chloroethyl inside was highly pressurized and a forceful rupturing would cause the gas to expand rapidly. Of course, Ilya was not entirely certain what effect the chloroethyl would have on the chimpanzees. Ideally, it would precipitate a state of sluggish confusion, even sleep. At the very least, it should scare a few of them into the strategically placed nets. Once entangled, Ilya could then apply a more reliable sedative: chloroform, or a tincture of opium. He had both in his medical bag.

The Fulani hunters donned the gas-masks that Ilya had purchased from the old military depot in Conakry. These masks were the one aspect of the hunt that the Fulani had not protested against. Apparently, they felt that the masks made them look fearful, a worthy tradeoff to the loss of peripheral vision.

Once everything was in place, Ilya knelt down and aimed the grenade launcher at the thick tree trunk behind the three seated apes. Amidst their preparation, the sleeping chimp had risen from its bower and scampered off into the brush, hooting and howling.

Other chimps had bobbed in and out of view, knuckle-walking across the forest floor or scrambling about in the vines and branches. The troop seemed to be generally aware of the expedition's presence, yet they displayed no outward signs of concern. That will change quickly enough, thought Ilya.

He steadied the launcher against a branch jutting out of the ground and aimed at the tree, then fired. The canister sailed through the air, missing the tree entirely. It disappeared into the brush far beyond the trio of chimps. It did not rupture. Nevertheless, the whizzing canister spooked the three chimps, who began to scream and slap the ground.

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Cursing his poor aim, Ilya hastily reached into his bag for the second canister.

This was his only spare. He fitted it onto the launcher and aimed once more. The apes screamed with indignation. They crab-walked back and forth, tearing at stalks of grass.

One of them vaulted into the tree where it violently shook the branches it gripped with both hands and feet. Sweat dripped down Ilya's brow, obscuring his vision. He fruitlessly wiped at his forehead. The clinging arms of his shirt merely smeared the rivulets into a salty film. Ilyochka, John Shipton, everyone stared at him with rigid concern. For the second time, Ilya aimed and fired. The canister rocketed through the air, landing a glancing impact on the edge of the tree. The canister broke and as gas exploded from the hull, it shot straight up, disappearing in a silver flash. The chimpanzees scattered.

Everyone was moving now, running left and right, cursing loudly in their own tongue. The Fulani, naked but for their loincloths and gas-masks, charged after the galloping chimps. The Frenchmen, gesticulating wildly, gathered their cameras and shuffled after the hunters. Ilya clutched his medical bag and, with Ilyochka on his heels, curved around to the left to check the nets. Only John Shipton stood rooted in place, open mouthed and dumbfounded.

Ilya swatted leaves from his face as he hurried to the first net. All around him, the air rang with the outraged and terrified bellows of chimpanzees. Yet Ilya could see nothing. The first net was empty, as was the second and third. He ran on to the fourth which—fortunes be praised—was collapsed on the ground and writhing. Yet as Ilya approached the net he could see hooves protruding and the tusked snout of a bristly

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warthog. “Pizdetz,” he hissed through clenched teeth, and turned on his heels to run back to the large tree.

Even amidst the mayhem, Ilya was vigilant in his watchfulness for the sharp scent of chloroethyl. Only the Fulani had gas masks and Ilya had no wish to become the victim of his own sleep grenade. Yet the thick, wet air bore no hint of chemical agent. With

Ilyochka by his side, Ilya bound past the great tree towards the right wing of netting. He passed one of the cameras. It was smashed on the ground. Film had spewed out like a ragged tassel and the tripod legs were splintered and broken. Ahead, the yells of men joined the wild screeching of apes.

The right wing of nets were on lower ground. Ilya and Ilyochka scrambled downwards. There was movement ahead. They burst through the foliage to find two of the Fulani, all but indistinguishable in their gas masks, swinging the butts of their rifles up at one of the chimpanzees which was madly scrambling horizontally along a series of vines and thin limbed trees. There were no larger trees within jumping range of this particular grove, and as the chimp wheeled back and forth, the vines began to loosen and fall. “Grab the nets,” yelled Ilya.

Others were arriving now. Two of the French filmmakers staggered into view, one holding the remaining camera, the other holding his forehead, which trickled blood. Two other Fulani dragged over one of the large nets. They raised it up just as the chimpanzee came tumbling down amidst a snarl of collapsing vines. Immediately, one of the Fulani brought his rifle down, clubbing the ape right in the head. “Don't kill it,” shouted Ilya. It

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was a heavy blow, and a slender jet of blood and spittle flew from the ape's mouth as its head snapped to the left.

The others rushed to hurl the net on the stunned beast. Its resistance was minimal.

The tribesmen twisted the corners of the net, tightening the center, squeezing the chimp into place. Ilya got down on his knees and poured a solution of chloroform onto a cloth, them he placed the cloth above the chimp's mouth as it strained and gnawed against its bonds. Within moments, the tension and fight drained from the chimpanzee's muscles. It lay quietly. And as the chimp surrendered to oblivion, Ilya gave a shuddering sigh of fatigue. He was shaking and sweating profusely. He could feel the urgent thump of his own heart in his chest and in his ears. It blended with the screaming jungle like drums of war on a battlefield.

“Father, are you alright?”asked Ilyochka. His voice seemed to come from far away.

“Yes. Yes I am,” replied Ilya. Then he raised his hand and patted the chimpanzee on the shoulder.

CHAPTER III

A SPECK, AND THEN THE TERROR

You are no longer Gilbert. Now you are five year old Samantha Mink and the year is

1982. Samantha is standing in Great-Grandpa Gil's musty old living room. There are many secrets in this room, and a few of them are her own. Last summer, Samantha hid a picture of a horse with wings under the swirling Persian carpet. Unfortunately, there is no way to check if it is still there because the room is very crowded and hushed. The grown- ups stand close to one another, touching and mumbling. It is difficult to understand what any of them say.

But there are flowers.

There are flowers all over the room and there are lots of flowers in the corner next to the long wooden box. The wooden box is new. Samantha can tell that it is new because she has never seen it before and because it is very shiny and polished. The box has a line of inlaid brass running an inch below the beveled lip. The lid of the box is attached with hinges, just like the pink jewelry chest that houses her collection of secrets. Less than an

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hour ago, Samantha found a miniature silver teaspoon in the garden out front; it will be her new secret. She will add it to the collection as soon as her parents take her home.

The lid to the wooden box is open. The inside of the lid is lined with soft, creamy- white padding. A tufted layer of the same white cloth peeks above the edge. It all looks wonderfully inviting, and yet the grown-ups keep their distance. None of them are running their fingers along the shiny surface of the box or smelling the collection of beautiful flowers. Samantha would like to do these things. She would like to be the first person in the room to do these things, to show everyone else that it's okay. But a nameless trepidation keeps her feet anchored to the floor. Indeed, when her mother places her hand against Samantha's back and pushes her forward, Samantha struggles to remain in place.

Her mother coos and tells Samantha that everything will be okay, that there is no need to be afraid. Samantha's mother tells her that it is time to say goodbye to Great-Grandpa Gil.

This does not make any sense. During the long car ride from Philadelphia,

Samantha's father explained that Great-Grandpa had gone to be with Great-Grandma. He is much happier now and there will be no more arguments about selling the big old house. Samantha has never met Great-Grandma before, so she must live terribly far away.

Back home, Samantha has a picture-book full of coconut palms, sandy beaches, and splendid, cone-shaped volcanoes. The book is called Faraway Lands. There could be a connection.

What the wooden box has to do with any of this remains a mystery. It sits atop a pedestal that's wrapped in crushed velvet. When Samantha reaches the box, her mother leans down and lifts her into her arms. “Say goodbye to Great-Grandpa,” she says once

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again, only now there is something wrong with her voice. Samantha looks down and realizes that the box is not empty. There is an old man lying inside. He is wearing a dark suit and his eyes are closed.

This man is not Great-Grandpa Gil; Samantha can tell because she is sensitive to appearances. For instance, over by the bay windows, Aunt Clair is smoking a cigarette.

Aunt Clair looks almost exactly like Samantha's mother. Her hair is longer and her eyes are tired. But Aunt Clair's voice and face are identical. Sometimes when Aunt Clair calls

Samantha's name, she thinks it's her mother calling. When Samantha realizes it isn't, she wants to run away. The confusion frightens her.

It's the same with Grandma and Great-Aunt Evelyn. The world, it seems, is full of people who look the same, as if God ran out of faces somewhere along the way. Grandma and Great-Aunt Evelyn and Aunt Clair always talk about how Samantha should have been born with a sister. They say it's practically a family tradition. But Samantha's mother tells her that she is unique, and that being unique is special too.

The man in the box is similar to Great-Grandpa, yet impossibly different. His cheeks are puffier than Great-Grandpa's. They are almost rosy, like the muted blush on

Samantha's dolls. The man's lips are hard. Samantha thinks, for a moment, that this could be Great-Grandpa's brother, or one of the other ghostly doubles who undoubtedly wander the earth. The grown-ups have made a mistake and now there is a stranger sleeping in the middle of the living room in Great-Grandpa's house.

Then Samantha sees the speck. There is a dot of pollen or dust floating along the surface of the old man's cheek. It wobbles and touches off the invisible hairs above his

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cheekbone, then it comes to a quivering stop at the edge of an eyelash. Samantha watches the tiny speck as her mother holds her in a grip that is tighter and more rigid than normal.

The tiny speck does not move. Samantha watches as it vibrates in place, stuck to the corner of a lash, and a squirming desperation begins to well up from deep inside her chest. She wants the man to brush the speck from his cheek. The speck is so incredibly light. Reaching up and brushing it away would be the easiest thing in the world. And yet some ancient truth is whispering itself to her: this man, whoever he is, cannot lift his arm to touch his own cheek. No power in the world could make him reach up to pluck away that spot of dust.

Then, for the first time in her young life, Samantha realizes that there is something else. There is something other than kindergarten, children, Mom and Dad, and relatives. There is something other than Pennsylvania and New York. There is something else, and it is ever so much farther away than Faraway Lands. This man in the long wooden box is part of that something else. He isn't like the other people in the room. He isn't like one of Samantha's dolls at home. She looks with rising horror at the old man's dry, brittle hair and waxen skin. Then she pushes against her mother to escape.

“Say goodbye to Great-Grandpa,” she says again.

Samantha pushes and moans and as her palms press against her mother's blouse, she smells cigarettes. A sharp fear halts her like a slap in the face. This might not be her mother. This might be Aunt Clair. This might be someone else entirely, a stranger. This entire room might not be as it seems. All of life might not be as it seems. Now Samantha

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has one more secret, and in her mind this new secret unfurls its petals like a terrible flower.

This is when she begins to scream.

CHAPTER IV

THE TASTE

Leningrad, USSR: 1925

The gentlemen filed into the stately splendor of Yevgeni Hall. Between the twin colonnades, an oak table ran nearly the entire length of the room. To the rear, vast stucco panoplies melted into asymmetrical sweeps, flourishes, and broken curves in a blend of rococo and old Russian styles. Overhead, a crystal chandelier blazed like the sun. The room was warm, and the gentlemen, with their stiff black suits and their tumblers of vodka, were already warm. They nudged chairs aside and took their seats. Sergey

Oldenburg, the stooped and craggy Permanent Secretary of the Soviet Academy of

Sciences, took his rest at the head of the table. With a sweeping gesture, he waved his arm to Ilya, who sat directly to Oldenburg's right, in the place of honor. Across from Ilya,

Ivan Pavlov and Dmitri Nasonov eased into their stiff, wooden chairs. To Ilya's left sat

Aleksandr Karpinskiy and Vladimir Steklov, the president and vice-president of the academy. Beyond them, lecturers and scientists aligned themselves in order of diminishing rank and stature. Each man knew his place.

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The Academy had been celebrating its two-hundredth birthday for nearly the entire month of September. Ilya, who had only just arrived in Leningrad, could see that the extended merry-making had taken its toll on these staid old gentlemen. Their smiles, while congenial, were strained at the edges, and their thirst for vodka was middling at best. Yet it appeared that one more grand banquet was in order, and Oldenburg had announced that tonight's meal would hold a special surprise.

As he sat in the rich yellow glow of the banquet hall, Ilya felt the dazed gratitude of a convict pulled back and released from the ax-man's block. For the last five years, he had languished at the Central Experimental Station for the Reproduction of Domestic

Animals. He filled the role of glorified errand boy, traveling frequently to Germany and

France to beg for the most basic of research instruments. Then, in 1924, he was reacquainted with his old friend, Nikolay Gorbunov, who had once served as Lenin's secretary and chief of staff and was now the director of the government's Department of

Scientific Institutions. Gorbunov was fond of scientific excursions and had supported, among others, the worldwide collecting expeditions of Nikolay Vavilov, the rakish geographer, geneticist, and adventurer. Gorbunov enthusiastically concluded that Ilya must serve Russia in some bold new endeavor. Naturally, this brought him under the eye of the Politburo.

As a man who had once been the world's foremost expert on artificial insemination, Ilya's continued existence presented the high party officials with a philosophical conundrum. Ilya first came to prominence under Czar Nicholas II. This begged the question: should he be lionized or executed? There was some momentarily

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spirited debate on the matter, which quickly degraded into a bureaucratic mire.

Paperwork was submitted recommending Ilya's arrest and interrogation. Paperwork was submitted recommending that a statue should be erected in his honor. Paperwork was submitted recommending that previous paperwork should be disregarded.

During this time, Ilya frequently considered fleeing the country. Yet he maintained a cheerful demeanor in public as the pressure above him mounted. He lectured occasionally at Moscow University and maintained correspondence with his colleagues in

Leningrad and the West.

Finally, after nine months of gridlock, some invisible ligament in the system buckled and Ilya was summoned to the Kremlin. An armed lieutenant escorted him to a small anti-chamber where he was left alone with his thoughts. The room had a crooked table and three chairs. The walls had recently been whitewashed and remained barren.

There were no windows. It was possible, Ilya supposed, that another soldier would soon arrive to shoot or perhaps torture him. Perhaps tomorrow they would need to paint the walls yet again.

Yet no soldiers entered the room. Instead, a tottering babooshka pushed open the creaking door and padded inside with a tray of hot tea. She placed the tea on the table and then backed out without saying a word. Ilya stirred and blew on his tea until long after it ceased to be hot. It smelled of the herbs that thrive in the East, near the Ural Mountains.

After a time, he grew bored of stirring and drank the tea quickly. The teacup was cheap glass with a handle, rim, and base made of tin. In contrast, the miniature teaspoon was fine silver. He twirled it in his fingers until the door opened again. This time, Gorbunov

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entered. He was grinning and waving a letter in his hand. “Ilya Ivanovich,” he said, “I have everything you need right here. You are very lucky, my friend. We have found you an expedition worthy of your skills. Now you must depart for Leningrad immediately to present yourself and your mission before the Academy of Sciences.”

The letter was a note of commission signed by Anatoliy Lunacharskiy, the

People's Commissar of Enlightenment. It spoke of his duties in Africa and elsewhere. The envelope also contained a check for ten-thousand American dollars. Ilya thanked his old friend and went home to prepare for his travels. Three days later, he sat in the resplendent glow of Yevgeni Hall.

White gloved staff brought forth wave after wave of delicacy. The pungent odor of parsley and cucumber in chilled okroshka soup blended with the sharp zest of pickled beets and radishes. Trays were piled high with Minsky Salat, boiled beef tongue, and marinated herring on heavy, black bread. There were sterling silver bowls overflowing with caviar from the Caspian Sea, olives from Greece, and dates from Morocco.

The men wet their lips with vodka and wine and fed upon the immense banquette.

They talked idly of their barren laboratories and hampered efforts at research. War, revolution, and the ensuing famine had been hard on the city. Resources were slim. Out in the streets, the people were growing desperate. Yet the gentlemen nodded with mild and detached sympathy because there was little else they could do. Out in the streets, there were breadlines just as there had always been breadlines.

From behind his great white beard, Pavlov grilled Ilya with questions about old colleagues from Moscow and elsewhere. Ilya fielded his inquiries as best as he could:

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some were alive, some were dead, some could not be accounted for. Pavlov shook his head and sighed, “Such is the way of things,” he said.

Oldenburg spoke and ate little throughout this discourse. He gazed out across the crowded table, nodding his approval at the gathered assemblage of brilliant minds and sumptuous foodstuffs. Occasionally he admonished those nearest to him for eating too greedily. “Be slow, comrades,” he said, “the main course is yet to come.”

After an hour, the white gloved staff cleared the mess of half and wholly consumed dishes. Then, with little fanfare, they brought forth a new plate of food for each of the seated gentlemen. Ilya looked down at his meal with some curiosity. After the previous course, this was suspiciously humble fare. Each plate contained nothing more than pickled cabbage, a ladle of kasha, and a hock of dark meat.

“Eat, comrades, eat,” Oldenburg commanded, then he began vigorously sawing at the meat on his plate. Ilya touched his knife against the baked slab of flesh. It was dry and tough. He cut an edge from the strange dish and placed it in his mouth. After some considerable chewing, the fibers loosened and a gamey, earthy flavor ebbed forth. It was neither particularly good nor particularly bad. Ilya swallowed, shrugged, and turned to his right. Karpinskiy, whose teeth were weak, was sucking on his meat with visible displeasure. The other gentlemen were all addressing their plates with varying degrees of confusion and uncertainty. Only Oldenburg tore at his food with carnivorous lust. He hacked and chewed at his stubborn victual until there was but one bite left. He then stabbed the remaining chunk of meat with his fork and stood. “Comrades!” bellowed

Oldenburg, “I hope that you are enjoying this fine feast.” He thrust his arm out,

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displaying the meat covered fork for all to see. “This is a rare delicacy, indeed. It was brought to us from the tundra beyond Murmansk, and its like might never be tasted again.

Comrades, today you have eaten woolly mammoth!”

Startled murmuring broke out amongst the guests, followed by polite, yet restrained applause. Oldenburg beamed and continued his speech. “Yes comrades, I do not begrudge you your tepid enthusiasm. This beast wandered the arctic north many thousands of years ago. It has lain heavily under the weight of ice and time. When Lenin and the people rose up against czarist tyranny, this beast slumbered beneath the earth.

When Napoleon's army fled before the fury of our winter, they did not disturb this monster's rest. When Peter the Great built this very city, when Ivan III raved in his lonely halls after slaying his own son, even when Dmitri Donskoi crushed the Tatars and became

Grand Duke of Moscow, this mammoth slept. Comrades, the earth and the air of Russia have seeped into the veins of this creature. With each bite, you have tasted the grand history of our empire.”

Oldenburg paused and mused over the stick of meat in his hand. He turned the fork in two slow circles. “And what is that taste, comrades? It is hard and it is strong.”

Oldenburg placed the fork down on his plate and pushed the plate aside. “Comrades,

Russia of old is a great woolly mammoth. It is noble and it is mighty, but its time is now past.” Oldenburg pushed his plate over the edge of the table. The delicate china shattered into a hundred sliding shards. “Now it is nothing more than a curiosity.”

Two members of the waitstaff hurried forward to clean the broken plate.

Oldenburg absently waved them off without ever breaking stride. “My friends,” he said,

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“we are entering a new age. The old world of fear and ignorance shall soon fade into oblivion. It lies in smoldering ruin even as we speak. This ruin, which we have all witnessed, has meant hardship. Yet it is only through destruction that true rebirth can occur. We have weathered the machine war. We have weathered the tank and the airplane and the bomb. Now it is time for a new machine age. The gears of industry will turn, lighting our cities, swelling our roads and factories, feeding our multitudes. Yes comrades, the riches born of our sweat and labor will no longer be seized by the aristocrat and the oligarch. In the dawning world, man will share with his fellow man. Henceforth, we are all brothers!”

Once more, the room broke out into applause, only now it was thunderous and heartfelt. Men stood as they clapped. Some raised their glasses and cheered, “to

Oldenburg, to brotherhood, nasdrovia!”

Oldenburg raised his arms for calm. As the room fell to a hush, he stepped to his right and placed a hand on Ilya's shoulder. “Comrades, brothers, today we have a special guest. Were I to list all of his accomplishments we should be here all night. Suffice to say that under the patronage of the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine and the

Imperial Academy of Sciences, Doctor Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov made Russia the world's leader in the use of artificial insemination in farming. He has addressed the International

Zoology Congress in Graz and has worked closely with our own Ivan Pavlov at the

Experimental Veterinary Institute. He has also curated the Askania-Nova wildlife preserve, home to ostriches, zebras, kangaroos, camels and many other excellent and exotic species. At the zootechnical station in Askania, Doctor Ivanov used advanced

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methods of artificial insemination to create a multitude of new and intriguing hybrid animals. I have here in my breast pocket a photograph of the good doctor being drawn in a wooden cart by a horse that looks very much like a zebra. It is, in fact, a blending of the two species.

“It is this particular expertise that brings Doctor Ivanov before us today. Mark my words, comrades, he is no longer a mere scientist. Today, Doctor Ivanov comes to us as an agent of the state. The new age of wisdom and brotherhood is dawning, yet old strongholds of power still lurk in our midst. It is Doctor Ivanov's grave mission to deal a mortal blow to these propagators if ignorance and superstition. I will leave it to the good doctor to explain how this will be done.”

Ilya sat and stared at his plate. The hunk of mammoth meat remained largely untouched. He thought briefly about a time long past, a time deep in the murky predawn of human civilization. Wild-men wandered the earth, dressed in furs, hunting with slings and spears. Bands of these nomads traveled across the windy steppes of ancient Russia.

Surely there was a time when these wanderers cut into the hides of fallen mammoths and touched red flesh—flesh still warm with life. What were these men like? What if they saw this gathering today? Would they see anything more than old men eating old flesh and speaking of fanciful tomorrows?

Ilya tongued the inner ridge of his teeth. A strand of mammoth meat had wedged itself between two of his back, left molars. It was a vexing sensation, a malicious tickle that heightened the fear and irritation he now felt. The true nature of his mission was becoming clear. Here in the splendor of this great hall, surrounded and admired by his

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peers, Ilya was no more than a pawn on a great and fearful chessboard. The Bolsheviks still had their enemies, and their most powerful and firmly entrenched foe was the

Orthodox Church. It would seem that Ilya's ape-man project was conceived as a means of discrediting their views on man's divinity, or something to that affect. A weight settled upon his shoulders. He had no desire to engage himself in games of state; men like him tended to fare poorly no matter whom came out on top.

Ilya pushed his chair back from the table and stood. He had prepared a speech for the occasion. He knew that it was dry and pedantic and bore no likeness to Oldenburg's lofty rhetoric. Ilya began to recite in a deliberate and wooden fashion, “The proposed experiment may provide extraordinarily interesting evidence for a better understanding of the problem of the origin of man and a number of other problems from such fields of study as heredity, embryology, pathology, and comparative psychology.” He stopped for a moment to breath. “I will outline the program as consisting of two parts: obtaining hybrids between different species of anthropoid apes, which is very probable, and the birth of a hybrid between the human and anthropoid, which is less probable. However, the possibility cannot be ruled out.”

Ilya droned on, feeling Oldenburg's stiff and impatient glare on his back.

Nevertheless, he made no mention of the intended political and cultural ramifications of his experiment. He neither praised the Bolsheviks nor condemned the Church. After concluding his speech, he thanked those present and sat once again. The assembly clapped and the largely uneaten plates of mammoth steak were cleared from the table.

Not long afterward, dinner was adjourned.

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Later that evening, Ilya sat with Oldenburg in the private lounge of the senior faculty. The fireplace had been stacked high with cut pine. It hissed and snapped in the yellow fire, casting shadows that flickered and played upon the walls, paintings, and statuary. The two men drank sherry and stared into the licking flames.

The fiber of meat was still caught between Ilya's teeth and in the drowsy warmth, his thoughts returned once again to the ancient hunt. The pine logs became mammoths and the glowing tendrils became men who danced and leaped around their fallen prey.

The men yelled and their cries were savage and guttural. Perhaps they had no language.

Perhaps they had no names. Their minds were filled with the quick hunger, the fear and the fury of animals. The scent of blood in the air drove them to frenzy as they stripped flesh from the mammoth with knives of flint and bone.

Oldenburg stirred and coughed, pulling Ilya from his reverie. The stooped old man placed his glass of sherry down on the end table between them and spoke. “Tell me

Ilya,” he said, “what will your ape-man be like?”

“A phantom, I should think,” relied Ilya, “an idea that we will pursue without satisfaction.”

“Your behavior troubles me, Ilya. I was led to believe by Comrade Gorbunov that we would have your full cooperation in this vital effort.”

“And so you will, Comrade Secretary; I am prepared to launch a rigorous investigation into the feasibility of anthropoid hybridization.”

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“Don't play the fool, Ilya Ivanovich, you know why we are doing this. The peasantry is religious and ignorant. They are easily swayed by the Church.”

“I am aware of their ignorance. Yet I do not think that an ape-man paraded before them will make the peasants any less ignorant.”

“Then I will wire Moscow to inform them that you will be returning at once. The expedition is canceled.”

A chill passed over the nape of Ilya's neck. He had gone too far. He stood and spoke with renewed earnest. “There is no need for that, Comrade Secretary. I will go to

Africa and I will breed an ape-man. You have my word of honor. Then, when we return, whatever the Commissariat of Enlightenment wishes to do with this creature is their concern. Surely they can assess its cultural worth far better than I.” Ilya eased back down into his chair and said more softly, “I am merely a scientist.”

Oldenburg did not speak, so Ilya continued, “You ask what the ape-man will be like. Under ideal circumstances, he will have the size and intellect of a man paired with the strength of an ape. His legs will be short yet serviceable for extended bipedal locomotion. He shall be very hairy indeed, yet proper grooming and a tailored suit will render him acceptable in society.”

“He will look like a man?”

“Perhaps a very ugly one, yes. But you must understand, Comrade Secretary, this is no more than an educated guess.”

“He will be of no use to us if he looks too much like a man or too much like an ape.”

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“Have no fear, Comrade Secretary. Whatever form the creature take, he will undoubtedly be unique in his physiology. And if needs be, we will forgo the suit.”

Oldenburg did not laugh at the joke. Yet his features were no longer hardened and he said, “Very well, doctor. You will prepare for your departure to Africa. There you will begin your research, and the time for guessing will be at an end. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, Comrade Secretary.”

“Good. You must understand that these are pivotal times. Our devotion to the cause must always be above reproof. We do not yet have the luxury of doubt.”

“Yes, Comrade Secretary.”

“Now I must retire for the evening. I am afraid that our magnificent banquet has not agreed with my digestion. I will leave you here to enjoy the warmth of the hearth.”

Oldenburg stood and walked out of the room.

Ilya turned his eyes once more to the fire. He sat and watched the dancing flames as they gnawed at the chopped timbers. When there was nothing left but ash, the flames died and the room fell into darkness.