SEX WITH DEAD PEOPLE

by David Allan Barker

ISBN: 978-0-9869412-3-8

© David Allan Barker, 2011

Sex With Dead People is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

http://nouspique.com

Acknowledgments

First I wish to express my gratitude to Tim Berners-Lee who is reputed to have invented the internet. Without him, this collection would not have been possible. That's not to say I wouldn't have written these stories in any event, but they might have moldered at the bottom of a drawer instead of winging their way to your PDA or ereader or tablet or some other as-yet-undreamt-of device. Thank you, Mr. Berners-Lee.

My wife, Tamiko, also deserves recognition. Where once the West wrestled with existential angst, and before that, the passions of Romanticism, now it wallows in banality. The challenge of skewering banality in one's writing (as I do in this collection) is that the writer himself risks a descent into that very cesspool. Tamiko daily pulls me back from the brink. She does this in any number of subtle ways. e.g. she doesn't sit all day doing her nails, chewing gum, bitching about the neighbours, and wishing she could get a spot on American's Next Top Anorexic. Instead, she sings. And she allows room for my lunacy. And, most importantly, she cares; she cares deeply for everybody. In her caring, she keeps me far away from the cesspool.

A final thank you to Jack Cooper, an old friend who advised that my working title, Terrors of the 21st Century: Tales of Suburban Banality, might not be as effective as Sex With Dead People. However, I have omitted his suggested subtitle: Subversive fiction with a controversial title worthy of scamming money from unsuspecting government agencies and milking tax dollars from honest, hard-working and law-abiding Canadian citizens. I scrapped the subtitle because I didn't want Americans (or anyone else for that matter) to feel left out.

My stories include a zombie psychiatrist, a vengeful tree, alien rednecks, a horny sasquatch, an aphasic priest in a whorehouse, and a block party for suburban cannibals, and so it seems absurd to point out that these are works of fiction. Nevertheless, my lawyer has advised that I should include the usual boilerplate disclaimer. And so:

The 28 stories in this collection are works of fiction, and the characters portrayed herein are entirely a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or undead is purely coincidental.

Finally, I have chosen to offer these stories for free. If you were expecting to pay for them, I apologize for your inconvenience. In the meantime, if you enjoy what you read, I encourage you to tell others about it. Tweet. Blog. Link. The world of indie writing depends on you to give it space to breathe. Thank you.

1. THE GREEN CAPSULE

THEY GIVE ME a green capsule and tell me it contains a radioactive isotope. I swallow it and wait in the reception area until they call my name and lead me to a special room. They leave me alone to put on a gown. I don't understand the concern for privacy given a) the gown has a single tie in the back and the rest hangs open and gives the world a clear view of my ass, and b) they'll be using a machine that can see through bone, so a few articles of clothing aren't going to make a difference. Doesn't matter to me though. I'm not much of one to get all bashful about things. They lie me down on a table beneath a big scanner. A technician explains that the isotope binds itself in a special way to uric acid so the images of my kidney will show up bright green. They do a couple passes with me lying on my back then a couple more with me lying on my stomach. When they're done, they tell me the doctor will be in touch. After I get dressed, I check my watch and see it's nearly rush hour. No point going back to work so I ride a bus to the subway station.

The passengers flow like lava from the bus station to the subway platform, streaming down steps and through tunneled corridors. It's in the converging of two streams that I find my nose in the back of a blond bob. Could it be? I jostle a bit so I can get a look at the woman's profile. It looks like Samantha—but the Samantha I remember from high school never wore red lipstick. It's striking the way her red lips are set off against her pale complexion. And she looks smart in her business suit.

Sam?

Context is everything—and in this unexpected context Sam is slow to recognize me. And besides, in high school my face was clean; I couldn't have grown a beard if I tried, but now a full thatch covers my face.

Rob? Is that you?

Dave.

Dave? Ya Dave. From home form.

She does remember me after all.

We pass the bathroom and I need to go but I really want to talk to Sam. It seems ultra dorky to ask her to wait for me while I take a leak, so I walk past the bathroom door. Things are tightly packed in the subway train and we find ourselves smushed together at one end of the car, pressed against the glass and smiling at strangers who are smushed together in the next car, pressed against the glass and smiling back at us. We talk easily and it's as if the years melt away. Fun times. Saturday nights. Teachers we hated. Friends in rehab. I ask about her sisters and her mom and she asks about my brother Gordy and whether he got the mole on his face fixed. But as the train lurches from the station, it reminds me of my bladder and I start to do an awkward dance from one leg to the other.

We're deep into the tunnel and Sam is deep into a story about her best friend Augusta who married a guy who turned out to be bi-polar and treated her tenderly whenever he was depressed but beat her and tore off with other women whenever he was manic. And now Augusta is living with Sam until she can get back on her feet. And just as she says the word feet, the train screeches to a halt. The motor dies and there's a stunning silence and the lights go out and there's a blackness blacker than the deepest night. But after a few seconds the emergency lights flicker on and cast everything in a dim yellow.

Sam lets out a sigh. Thank god. I thought we'd be stuck here in the dark.

But in light or in dark, we're still stuck and that worries me. I'd been hoping it would only be a couple minutes to the next station. Then I could lie and tell Sam this was my stop and duck through the crowd and hunt for a bathroom. It's starting to get painful. There's a pressure on my kidney like somebody's grinding his fist into my lower back. And the pressure is working its way forward and down—a kind of burning pain. I look at the ads overhead and try to distract myself from the mounting pressure between my legs. The motors whirr on again and there's a general sigh of relief—except the motors send a vibration through the floor and up my leg and it makes things worse for me. The driver comes on the speaker and announces that there's an emergency at the next station—an ill patron on the platform. Emergency crews have been dispatched to the scene and service is expected to whatever—I don't hear the end of the announcement because I'm squeezing my thighs together and focusing all my energies on keeping my sphincters closed.

I hate when this happens, Sam says.

Mmmmm, I whimper.

I bet it's a suicide. I think that's so incredibly selfish. Jumping at rush hour. Inconveniencing thousands of people like that.

Sam sloshes her water bottle in my face and asks if I want a drink.

The motors go dead again and everything is black. But this time the emergency lights don't flicker on.

Things are getting hot in here. A hundred sweating passengers squeeze in around me and breathe their heavy breath on me and brush their tired clothes against mine.

I feel a dribble.

Shit, Sam says. This isn't exactly how I planned to spend my suppertime.

If it's just a dribble I can manage. When we get to the next station I can back away and hold my newspaper discreetly in place. At least it's dark so nobody can see anything.

I hope Augusta goes ahead and eats something without me.

The dribble has found a way through my underwear and is running warm down my leg. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Hey! Samantha shouts. What's happening?

Everything in our corner of the subway car is bathed in an iridescent green. It gives Sam's face an alien tinge, dark around the eyes and bright across the cheekbones. I see my own face reflected in the window and washed in the same eerie glow. Then looking down I see how the light is coming from my pants. Some of the piss has soaked through my pants and it's glowing a radioactive green. It's like fucking Chernobyl in my boxers.

2. THE BOOK

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL summer's day, so I go to the park with a book tucked under my arm. There's a mature shade tree—a willow—standing near a bend in the creek. Its branches arch high overhead in a broad canopy and their ends swing low, almost sweeping the ground. I sit close to the trunk and press my back against the bark which is rough and etched with deep lines like the skin of an old man. The air is hot and still. Clouds hang motionless in the sky as if someone has pinned paper cutouts to blue Bristol board. I doze for a while but I can't say for how long because, when I next open my eyes, the clouds haven't changed. I could have dozed for a minute. I could have dozed for an hour. Nothing is moving.

I open my book and begin to read. It's a non-descript book—a thriller with a dash of romance—or a romance with a dash of thriller. It makes no difference. I'm pleased with the book itself. Not the genre or the plot, but the physical book. I don't usually care about the physical properties of a book but in this case I was intentional and bought a trade paperback printed on 100% post-consumer recycled acid-free paper using biodegradable vegetable-based inks. It means I can read my thriller-romance (or romance-thriller) with an easy conscience.

By the second chapter I have figured out that the main character has spun a web of lies so complicated his house of cards will inevitably fall. It's an age-old morality tale re-packaged and re-sold. I like to reflect on the circularity of life. The nutrients of the soil feed the tree; the tree produces leaves; the leaves fall and become soil. So it goes. Nothing is moving—only turning in circles to produce the illusion of movement. Just like all new stories are really old. I smile to myself at the Zen nature of my thinking. I must make a point of sitting more often under this willow tree.

I detect what I believe is the twitch of a branch. Odd! I think. I don't feel a breeze. Everything remains hot and still. Maybe it was a stray hair in the periphery of my vision. Or maybe my imagination. Maybe I'm projecting the motion I read onto the still landscape I inhabit.

I return to the book, sliding my fingertips across the sheen of the pages—100% post-consumer recycled acid-free paper printed with biodegradable vegetable-based inks. The main character pursues a woman who doesn't care for him. She believes in causes and isn't interested in any man who doesn't share her concerns. But this man is disingenuous; he displays an interest in her causes, but his display is no different than the strutting of a peacock. She wants authenticity, not bright plumage. Sunlight spackles down on me through the minnow-shaped leaves and there's something about its warmth that sets my mind adrift. It's hard to tell the difference between an afternoon reverie and a full-fledged dream but I suspect my mind floats somewhere in between.

The taste of dirt starts me from my dozing. I'm wide awake now, face down and pinned to the ground. I struggle to get up but can't move my limbs. Something has taken hold of my wrists and ankles, fastening them securely and stretching them outward from my body in opposing directions as if I'm being stretched on a medieval instrument of torture. I can't see my assailant but he holds me firmly in place with what feels like a fat knee pressed to the small of the back. I try to yell out but as I open my mouth I feel a lash against my face and something hard across my mouth like a bit between the teeth. It's a thick stick and it jams my tongue to the back of my mouth. It draws tighter and pulls my head back so my neck is almost at the snapping point. I can wriggle my head a little to one side and I see that my arm is held in place by a U-shaped willow branch. Even as I watch, the branch constricts like a snake and I begin to lose the feeling in my hands.

Then the lashings begin. Sharp strips of willow tear across the flesh of my back. I would scream out if I could but with the bit in my mouth the most I can manage is a terrified groan. I can't see my back, but I can feel it. I can feel how my shirt has been torn to shreds. And I can feel the trickle of blood running off my back and down my sides and dripping onto the ground. The pain mounts. With each lash there is an instant of acute pain that is followed by a release, but just as I begin to think I might be able to bear the pain, another lash stings my back. The ground beneath me feels like it's whirling. I think I might be sick. Salt stings my eyes and sweat runs across my lips. It's not the sweat of a moist heat; it's the chilly sweat of shock. Flies have begun to buzz around the open wounds and some are bold enough they settle on my shoulder blades.

I can't say for certain how long the willow torture continues. It seems relentless. Every time I think there might be a break I hear the swish of a switch slicing through the air then the crack against my skin—a distinctive snap that reaches my ears even before I feel it. My head is swimming and I have only a tenuous hold on consciousness now. The sky is black and the whole earth seems to throb beneath me. I struggle against my restraints but it's useless. I try to cry out but my tongue is caught in the back of my throat. One last sight fills my eyes as I slip below the threshold of consciousness: I see on the ground before me, and spattered by droplets of blood and sweat, the book I had been reading—100% post-consumer recycled acid-free paper printed with biodegradable vegetable-based inks.

3. THE BEETLES

THE COP MOTIONS me over to the curb in front of number twenty-two. He's a funny-looking creature in a Kevlar shell whose precise movements give the impression he's still doing drills at the police academy. He skitters to the car as I roll down the window.

Sorry sir but you have to turn back.

But this is my street.

There's been an incident.

A TV news van rolls up and the cop smiles and waves it along. I watch the bulging-eye logo brush past the cop, and looking further up the street, I see that my yard has been cordoned off by yellow tape.

Wait a sec'. I open my door and step onto the pavement. That's my house. What's going on?

The cop raises his hands in a placating gesture but I've pushed past him and am breaking into a trot. The cop pulls out a big radio and, while the antenna is still bobbing back and forth, he calls his sergeant. Uh … we've gotta man comin' t'wardsya … Static. Then more talk. But it's indistinct and fades as I approach my house and leave the cop standing by the open door of my car.

There are five police cruisers scattered at crazy angles in front of my house and their lights are flashing and their radios are blaring. They've strung yellow tape around my yard using trees and shrubs and the fire hydrant and a couple of my kids' hockey sticks as supports. Neighbours have gathered just beyond the tape and they're speculating amongst themselves the way neighbours are inclined to do and it reminds me that Mister Rogers didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. Standing in the middle of this group is the Brandt kid from two streets over, a greasy worm of a thing who looks as if his camcorder is glued to his eyeball. The house seems fine—no broken windows or forced doors, no smoke billowing into the sky, no trampled flowers or spilled pots of earth.

Then I notice two CSI types grubbing around on the front lawn taking pictures with their expensive DSLR's and then using long pincers to drop evidence into clear plastic baggies. When I look closer, I nearly heave. The evidence they're pulling from the front lawn is bloodied bone fragments and tufts of hair. Because it's evening and the light is low, I didn't notice at first, but now, as my eyes adjust, I see that the yard is also littered with shreds of fabric—like what happens to Kleenex when it goes through the wash. Some of the fabric comes from socks and some of it comes from underwear and some from jeans and jackets and T-shirts.

Another cop approaches me. He looks more senior because he has a bushier mustache. You live here?

Ya.

We don't really know yet what happened. Alls we know is that something happened. One of your neighbours heard some noises and phoned it in—some whirring, then some screaming, then—The sergeant refers to notes in a black notebook he holds flipped open in his left hand—uh, and I quote: "a ripping, tearing, shredding sound—some chomping and belching—then silence for a second and then more whirring." When your neighbour came out there was nothing much to see—just some stuff scattered across your front lawn. Tell me, Mr. … uh …

Barker

Mr. Barker. Do you know where your children are?

I shrug. I guess I do. Usually they're home from school by now. But the sergeant wants to be sure so he holds up the tape for me. I duck under it and we walk together to the front door. Behind us, the Brandt kid sneaks underneath too and follows us up the walkway yelling Mister Mister and tugging at the police sergeant's sleeve.

The sergeant turns to him with a scowl. Not now kid. I'm busy with important police stuff. And we leave the kid standing on the front porch.

Things look normal inside the house. The fridge door is wide open and I explain to the sergeant that both my boys have ADD; they're pretty scatter-brained. In the living room the TV is on, and while normally I expect the sergeant would be walking from room to room carrying a flashlight, there's no need because the kids have left the lights on in every room. I'll have to give them yet another lecture on energy conservation as soon as I find them. We go downstairs to the rec' room. I don't understand why but the sergeant checks under the sofa cushions and peers inside the bar fridge. We go into the work room where the sergeant whips out his notebook and writes detailed notes about all the different brands of pesticides I keep above my work bench. There's chlordane and Raid and Off and flypaper and roach motels and ant traps and aphid dust for the rose bushes and a special soap you can spray on houseplants. Upstairs we go into each of the bedrooms and I remember too late that I've left something embarrassing in the master bedroom. Oh, well. The sergeant is a mature adult and he'll understand. Finally we go into each bathroom and the sergeant checks under each toilet seat. This puzzles me since it's unlikely we'll find either of my boys hiding under a toilet seat. So I ask why the sergeant did this and he's straight with me: it has nothing to do with the investigation; he's got OCD and feels compelled to look underneath sofa cushions and toilet seats. It's just one of those things.

In the front hall, the sergeant says that clearly the boys aren't in the house so we'll have to start canvassing the neighbours. When we step outside, the Brandt kid is waiting for us with his Mister Mister and his insistent tugging at our sleeves. Leave us alone kid. We got work to do. 'Sides which you're supposed to be on the other side of that tape.

Kids these days!

Mister Mister I know what happened to the Barker boys.

The sergeant kneels and asks for more.

Got it all here. And the boy holds the camcorder above his head.

The sarge and I (we're on more familiar terms now) we take the camcorder back inside the house so we can watch the tape on my big-screen TV. The sound will be mono but my audio system has some fancy software that can simulate surround sound so it shouldn't be too disappointing. We rewind the tape and hit play then sit back on the sofa (after the sarge has looked underneath the cushions once again) and devour the half-bowl of popcorn the boys left behind. At first there isn't much to see because the Brandt kid's hand is about as steady as a grand mal seizure, but the whirring noise comes through nicely. Finally he steadies himself (probably against the fire hydrant) and points the camera above the roof line. At first he's got the zoom on all the way so we get a wobbling close-up of the chimney bricks. You can hear the boys taking slap shots against the garage and yelling insults at the Brandt kid who tells them both they're fucking idiots who're going straight to hell. His comment about how they're both sons of a whore comes through real clear and I'm thinking I should've bought a Sony instead of the JVC. The autofocus clicks in and you can see what's making all the whirring. It's Asian longhorn beetles, the kind that come from Korea or Honduras or another of those goddam middle eastern countries and have infested the north shore of Lake Ontario. I had always thought there were laws against foreign infestment.

These aren't your average Asian long-horn beetles. These ones are big. Real big. There are three of them and each one has a wingspan probably the width of the roof. And they're fast. Real fast. The one swoops down with its big ugly mandibles wide apart and in a single quick motion nabs my oldest and slices off his head. The other two fight over my younger guy, one pulling away at a leg and the other with a firm clutch on the head. More swoop down and there's a frenzied blur of wings and limbs and multi-faceted eyes and mandibles and exoskeletal plates. And the sound effects are nasty: flesh ripping, bones snapping, screaming, grunting and tearing, and high-pitched whining and burping. When the bugs are finished, the boys are gone. The beetles spring into the air and whirr their way into the bright afternoon sky.

Well I'll be damned. The sarge picks flecks of popcorn from the sofa. This ain't a police matter after all.

4. MY NAME IS URL

FRANK LIKED HIS new computer. His son Jimmy bought it for his 65th birthday. It came fully loaded—and with all the peripherals to boot. It had a fast CPU and a big flatscreen monitor. You could listen to music or watch a movie on it, scan pictures, run them off on a nice colour printer, record your voice, chat on the webcam. It was a real beauty. Frank was having fun learning how to use it. And of course the most important thing was the fast internet connection. Jimmy had said there was no point in having a good computer if you don't have a fast internet connection. They had an argument about which way to go—coax or dsl. Jimmy was all for dsl. But Frank's buddy named Sam (who lived next door) had signed up for coax and said there was no comparison. The clincher came when Jimmy admitted he had shares in the phone company. There's nothing like a conflict of interest to settle an argument. So there Frank was with his beauty of a computer and his fast internet connection spending all his spare time sitting in front of the glowing screen and clicking his way to a repetitive strain injury.

On Thursday evenings Frank and Sam went out for pints at the Cheshire Cat Pub. They'd been doing this for years and lately Frank had been using the evenings out to quiz Sam about the finer points of computing. Sam had bought a computer three years ago and really knew what he was doing. He taught Frank how to send emails so the recipient didn't know who sent them, and how to empty the browser's cache so your wife couldn't figure out what web sites you'd been visiting, and how to post comments to blogs so they couldn't be traced to your IP address. He was a real whiz.

Thursday after supper, Frank went next door to Sam's to see if his friend was ready for an evening out. Delilah answered the door. She had her brows pulled close together. It might have been one of those facial treatments gone wrong—but more likely it was just worry. She said she hadn't seen Sam all day. Normally he was downstairs at the computer long before she came down for breakfast. But his morning while the coffee was dripping she stepped into the den to say good morning but found no Sam. Only a glowing monitor displaying the last frame of a video about quarks. She shrugged and figured he'd gone for a stroll. When she came back a couple hours later there was still no Sam. But the monitor was on—this time displaying a web page that gave instructions on how to post a video to your blog.

Frank smiled at Delilah and told her not to worry. He'd been chatting online with Sam in the mid-afternoon. Obviously he was around. It was a simple matter of ships passing in the night. He told her she should make Sam get a cell phone and carry it with him wherever he went. He took pleasure in the fact that there was one piece of technology he had before Sam did. Again Frank told Delilah not to worry. He'd check in on her later, but he was sure Sam would turn up soon enough.

Back home, Frank sat at his computer and started to work up another post for his blog. Sam had been blogging for about a year now—www.tanksfordamemories.net—a blog about caring for tropical fish. The .net was a nice touch and Sam liked to laugh about it. Frank felt compelled to start his own blog so he registered www.frankswithfrank.net. Sam asked if he was going to blog about wieners but Frank scowled and said it was about stamp collecting. He wanted to do his bit to help promote a fading art. Problem was: it was fading so fast most people wouldn't see the humour in his domain name. His mission was to educate people in the nefarious ways of philately so they would see the humour. He had written a little "About Me" piece and uploaded a picture of himself and included Sam's site on his blogroll even though tropical fish have nothing to do with stamp collecting (except stamps with tropical fish on them). While he was waiting for Sam to get back, he would scan four or five sweet covers with military censorship markings on them. He wanted to write a post about keeping your eyes open. He had found the covers at a garage sale two blocks over. Some old lady had died and the family was trying to make as much stuff disappear as possible. Frank paid two dollars for a shoebox of old covers worth three or four hundred. Always keep your eyes open.

The evening whizzed by and once Frank had finished his post he realized he was tired and fading fast. He checked his watch. Damn! Almost eleven. He had forgotten to check in on Delilah. On a whim he turned on his IM client and sure enough Sam was there.

hey

hey

where u ben?

cant u type complete wrdz anymore?

Sam was always teasing Frank for trying to type the way Jimmy showed him—the way the younger crowd does—as if years of education r pointless.

but where u ben?

ben here all day—where u ben? thot we were goin out 4 drinks?

dropt by but del sed u out

no way! ben here whole time—wat the ??!!??!!

mebe she chkt wen u were in can? anyways glad u r there—so wat u ben doin?

on fb & set up myspace acct & uploading fish pix to flickr

oh

did u no fb got startup cap from cia operatives?

dont shit me

seriusly—posted all my real info then fnd this out—now im worried bout identity theft

u worry too much—dont let it eat away at u

Back and forth it went. Sam was a fast typer but Frank had thick fingers and the pads of his fingertips barely fit on the keys. When he typed "a" it usually came out "as" and when he typed "e" it came out "er". "Thast's as grerast ideras." Which is why he preferred to chat via webcam. He turned it on and sent a message for Sam to do the same.

At first Frank thought Sam was joking. All he could see was the far wall with the TV and the shelves that displayed bowling trophies and aquarium club awards.

Where you at, buddy? Frank asked.

Right in front of you. What the hell's the matter with you?

Frank rubbed his eyes and stuck his face closer to the screen. There was a faint line of distortion running through the image. When he traced it he saw that it followed the shape of his friend's skinny profile. This time Sam had outdone himself.

How'd you do that?

Do what?

The webcam effect. What is it? Some kind of special effects software?

What're you talking about?

Is it green screening? Is that it?

Talk sense to me Frank.

Sense? Take a look at the image. It's a beauty.

There was a ripple through the image of Sam's den and Frank saw the outlines of arms rising to shoulder height and fingers pointing in accusation. Then the arms stopped. What the … with hands splaying, first with palms toward the webcam, then with backs of the hands. Frank … Sam's voice was quiet now and it held the slightest trace of a quaver. Frank …

What is it buddy?

I can see the goddam webcam right through my hands.

Very cute, Sam.

I'm serious, Frank. His tone had risen to panic. What the hell's happening to me?

Frank heard the click of Sam's mouse. Then: phhhhhhht. The distortion disappeared. All he could see was the far wall of Sam's den.

Sam?

There was no answer.

Sam?

Everything was silent on the other end. Then Delilah stepped into the room. Her flabby midriff passed the webcam as she settled herself into Sam's chair. She yawned then squinted at the screen.

Facebook! Always wasting his time on that damned facebook.

She reached to the power button and everything disappeared.

Phhhhhhht.

5. THE OBITUARY

WHEN I ANSWERED the phone, a non-descript male voice asked for mister Winter. I said he was out and asked if the caller cared to leave a message. The non-descript male voice gave a name and said he was calling from Factory Casket Wholesalers. He understood a need had arisen in mister Winter's household. A need. I assured him no need for a casket had arisen in mister Winter's household. But he was insistent. I was about to dress down the caller (for what I considered to be an annoying persistence) when he gave my husband's full name. There aren't many Archibald Peter Masterson Winters (only one that I know of) so I paused.

That is mister Winter's full name is it not? (The caller sounded like Perry Mason.) I have the right household do I not?

I agreed that it did seem he had the right household.

Well now look here then. (As if he were doing me a favour!) Let me read you something.

He read quickly so I couldn't make out everything he said, but the gist was that Mrs. Anne Annabel (don't ask) Winter nee Summer, late of—, loving wife (ha!) of Archibald Peter Masterson Winter, mother of etc., died suddenly on (today's date).

What are you reading? (I have to confess there was a teensy bit of hysteria creeping into my voice.)

It's from today's obits.

Don't shit me! (I screamed.)

Madam. His voice was suddenly sober (as opposed to non-descript). I assure you. Those of us who work in the casket industry do not, as you so genteelly put it, shit other people.

At first, I felt I should apologize, but when I considered how he had just advised me of my own death, that seemed to even things out. I promised I would pass along the message then I hung up.

I slammed down my coffee mug and threw off my terry cloth bath robe. Jumping into a pair of jeans and sweat shirt, I tore to the corner to buy a newspaper. Even before I had made it back home, I was thumbing through the paper with pages flapping in the breeze and unthumbed sections tucked under my left arm. There it was: Mrs. Anne Annabel (don't ask) Winter nee Summer. I was officially deceased.

I was looking for the number of the newspaper's Obituary Department when the phone rang again. It was my best friend, Monica, who lived a couple streets over. Speaking through choked sobs, she made a slurred request to speak with Archie. Poor Archie. I told her Archie wasn't in but if she cared to leave a message …

Just tell him I saw the obituary and—I had no idea!—I am so, so sorry. Tell him I'm sorry and if there's anything I can do—you know—don't hesitate. Just call me. Got a pen to take down my number?

Monica.

Ya?

It's me.

Huh? What's that supposed to mean? "It's me"?

It's me. Annie. Your friend.

But Annie's dead.

No she's not. I'm right here.

But I was reading the society column this morning and noticed right next to it the obit that says how Annie's dead.

If Annie's dead then how can I be talking to you on the phone?

I dunno. Are you sure it's you?

Oh for chrissake!

The conversation rambled, but by the end of it I had persuaded Monica that if she cared to have a coffee with me in the afternoon, she could drop in without having to dress all in black, which came to her as a relief because all her black outfits were at the drycleaners and she didn't know how she could have faced a grieving widower without wearing a black outfit. But a little later I had to cancel, which was fine with Monica because, to be honest, she wasn't yet comfortable leaving the children alone with her latest nanny.

The reason for my cancellation was a phone call to the newspaper's Obituary Department. I spoke to a gruff-sounding man named Ken Yakamoto who was more intent upon telling me that Ken was short for Kenji and not for Kenneth than upon helping me to bring about my resurrection. I said I wanted a retraction and apology and didn't understand how the paper could have printed my Obituary.

Well … He shrugged his shoulders. I couldn't see him shrug his shoulders since I was talking to him via telephone but I could sense a shoulder shrug in the tone of his voice. We never print these things until we've got a notarial copy of the funeral director's certificate in our hands so I don't know how we could have made a mistake.

I expected him to ask: are you sure you aren't dead? But he proved to be a man of restraint. Instead, he had a practical suggestion. While technically what he needed was a notarized letter from a solicitor confirming my existential status, that might take a while and put me to some expense; why not come down in person with a piece of photo-ID? If I hurried I could have the retraction and apology in tomorrow's paper. So I cancelled my date with Monica and raced downtown instead.

Ken was a middle-aged man though quite fit (certainly moreso than Archie) who sat with perfect posture and wore a simple white cotton jacket over a black T-shirt. As I pulled my driver's license from my bag Ken rose and shut the door. For privacy (he said). When Ken returned to the desk he apologized for the error. He didn't know how it could have happened. It was absolutely unacceptable. Unforgivable in fact. He was so ashamed. Things had not been going well at work lately. Little slip-ups here and there. He didn't know why. HR had spoken to him a couple times and he was afraid this might be it. They might fire him for this one. He had a wife and two young children to support. He needed his job. He needed to fix this latest slip-up. Make it all right.

I assured him it was a minor thing—kind of funny when you thought about it—

No. (The force of his objection nearly knocked me off my chair.) It is not the least bit funny. It is a matter of deep shame to me.

But it can be fixed. No worries.

No. Not fixed. Many worries. There it is. My mistake in print. Do you know what this paper's circulation is? Millions. And there's my error. For millions and millions of people to see.

He rose from his chair and for the first time I noticed that what I had taken to be a white cotton jacket was in fact a gi; Ken was dressed for the dojo. He stood formally as if he were about to execute a kata.

I must make this right.

Yes (I agreed).

The truth is important.

Of course it is.

I was held transfixed by the man's intensity.

That's why the obituary must be true.

What?

Kenji Yakamoto produced a knife from behind his back and held it high above his head. And in the instant before he lunged, the oddest thought passed through my head: Screw the truth, I thought; why couldn't this have been the National Enquirer?

Mrs. Anne Annabel Winter nee Summer, late of—, loving wife of Archibald Peter Masterson Winter, mother of etc., died suddenly—.

6. ALIEN REDNECKS

I KIN HEAH Jeb comin' from a million miles away—or at least I kin heah his ATV. I'm standin' jus' in from the road when he come out from the cornstalks agrinnin' 'n' awavin' like a fool, him with his dawg, Gopher, runnin' behind. He pulls up in fronna me and gits hisself off real stiff 'n' slow 'n' you kin tell he's really feelin' the arthritis today—maybe cuz it's bin cooler'n usual these past few days. It ain't like the ol' days when we was doin' this—way back in the fifties. We was teenagers then but now we're in what they call the autumn years. Er sunset years. Er whatever years.

So Jeb comes up to me with that dumb ol' grin of his. "How ya doin' Jeb?" I sez.

"Pretty damn fine Jed," he sez. "How 'bout yerself?"

"Pretty damn fine myself, Jeb," I sez.

Then he tells me that joke—the one I know he's gonna tell me—I know cuz of the dumb ol' grin on his face. He sez: "So I was tellin' Marge this mornin' 'bout Gopher here, an' hows I've learnt him to speak. I git 'im to sit in front of Marge an' I sez: 'Gopher, now you tell Marge here what's on top of a house." 'N' Gopher sez: 'Roof!' 'N' then I sez: 'Gopher, now you tell Marge here what 80 grade garnet sandpaper feels like when ya lick it.' 'N Gopher sez: 'Rough!' 'N' Marge rolls her eyes 'n' sez that's jus' plain ignorant. So I sez to Gopher: 'Gopher,' I sez, 'You got anythin' more complicated you cud say to Marge heah that'd convince Marge that you know how to talk?' 'N' Gopher sez: "Now lookey here, Jeb, I sed fuckin' Roof! 'n' I said fuckin' Rough! What the fuckity-fuck more do you want me to fuckin' say?' So I sez to Marge: 'Marge,' I sez, 'Gopher here kin talk all right, but I forgot to mention how he's got that Tourette's Syndrome thang."

At which point Jeb is bent over an' slappin' hisself on the knee. 'N' I does my best to smile 'n' make like I never heerd the damn joke afore. But the fact is: Jeb's memory is slippin' a li'l bit 'n' he tells me the same damn joke every damn time he sees me.

Now you may be wonderin' what a stupid joke 'bout a dog with that Tourette's Syndrome thang has got to do with the price of corn. Which is a fair question. But bear with me. It's got everythang to do with the story I'm fixin' to tell y'all. Fer one thang, tellin' this joke to certain people helped clear up a—ahem—lemme jus' say it solved a li'l mystery fer Jeb 'n' me. But more'n'at, it's Jeb's twisted humor got us into this fix in the first place. Humor 'n' good ol' fashioned American enterprise. So you jus' take a load off fer a while, sit back here on my porch, set yer eyes out across the corn fields there 'n' lemme tell y'all how it started.

Now y'all may have noticed, settin' here—lemonade cool enough? More ice? Normally I like a cool beer round 'bout ten in the mornin'. Helps me think clearer fer the rest of the day. But we sold all our beer by yesterday afternoon—so like I was sayin', y'all may have noticed, settin' heah, how I have a real good view of Jeb's fields. Well … back in the day, when we was beanpole teens, we didn't actually own these farms. They belonged to our daddies like they belonged to theirs afore 'em. But all the same we had the run of the place so it come as no great surprise one fine mornin' not much different 'n' this one (only practickly sixty years ago) that I steps out onto the front porch heah then sits myself down the way we is now 'n' I lookey out yonder. There's a slope to the land heah so's I have a real nice view of Jeb's place. 'N' whadya thank I sees Jeb doin' that fine mornin' but he's up on a li'l tractor—not the big one mind, but the li'l guy—out in the back forty drivin' round and round in circles knockin' down a swath of corn. 'N' I'm thankin': OOO lordy, lordy but that Jeb's gonna git the hidin' of his life when his daddy finds out. So I sets heah neah hafanour er more watchin' him drive round 'n' round makin' big circles in the corn—one, two, three. So I ambles on down the road to his place. When he's done, I ask: "Whachya doin' that fer?" 'N' he sez it come to him in a dream. Why not make big circles in the corn then phone NASA er the Department of Defense er both 'n' tell 'em aliens made the circles where their flyin' saucers landed? He thought it'd be a hoot. 'N' that's where my bright idea takes hold. Why not bring Jimmy Durante in on the deal? Jimmy Durante's this buddy of ours, see? Couple years ahead 'n' just started in at the county newspaper. Still'd be there today if it weren't fer gittin' run down by that hearse. Hasn't bin right in the head since. Anyhoo he prints a story 'bout it in his paper with a real good picture he took from up on my roof here. Roof! 'N' pretty soon we git not just scientists 'n' real smart folks from NASA comin' down here fer a look see. But we gits reguler folks too, 'n' whadya thank they needs but a drink 'n' a bite t'eat seein' as most of 'em is comin' from some distance. So there I gets myself a stand sellin' beer 'n' juice 'n' corn dogs 'n' burgers. 'N' soon we're gittin' a fair bit of traffic so we're sellin' souveneers—see?—'n' bits of corn husk we sez the saucers landed on 'n' bits of caked dirt in li'l baggies we sez is alien poop 'n' we git this ol' feller named—oh, now what was his name—oh, no matter. But we pays him to set in a lawn chair 'n' tell a story 'bout how the aliens tried to abduct 'im 'n' how he jus' barely excaped gittin' the anal probe 'n' all.

Well we took in a fair haul that summer—enough fer Jeb to git hisself a real beauty of a motorbike with a chrome fender, 'n' I gets me a nice used red Chevy pickup truck. 'N' we was all set to make this a reguler biz niz only Jimmy Durante said we should thank twice 'bout that on account of two thangs, one bein' some notion of market satur- satur-somethang-er-t'other saturation—there's only so much people kin take of a tall tale even if'n it gits a credibility boost from bein' picked up by the National Enquirer, 'n' t'other bein'it just don't seem so terribly believable that a flyin' saucer should keep landin' in the same field year after year. Er we'd haft'invent some fancy story why our field was specially tractive to the aliens. So we hung back. We only did it when we was real strapped fer cash. So we done the crop circle thang once more in the seventies when I needed a down payment fer a new tractor after the engine in t'other burnt out 'n' Jeb's Marge needed a boob job. Then we done it agin in the nineties, when Jeb needs a new set of teeth and my li'l Martha took a notion she'd set herself up a biz niz sellin' mail order knick knacks 'n' poh porrie 'n' such but needed startup cash fer invintorry. 'N' then there's now. We don't really need any cash now at this point in our lives. It's more a senteemental thang. There's Jeb with his arthritis and his brain turnin' to rot. And there's me with Martha gone now and my boy fixin' to marry 'n' movin' to the coast so there's no real call to hang onto the farm not much longer. So this is probably the last year the two of us have left to pull everybody's leg one more time. 'N' that pretty well sums up why Jeb did his crop circle thang with his fancy new ATV 'n' why I ordered a gross of dogs 'n' burgers 'n' buns 'n' kegs of beer 'n' even some hoity-toity European beers what come in bottles what taste like molasses stirred into the hooch we make in the off season. 'N' we got a young fella down at the paper to do a story fer us (out of respect fer Jimmy Durante). 'N' it was just like ol' times. Buzz from NASA 'n' scientists from the pentagon 'n' all kinds of folks drivin' through fer a peek. 'N' we was movin' lots of food, barely keepin' up. 'N' we've gotten fancy-schmancy now with our merchandise thanx to all Martha learnt herself 'bout marketin'. So we put our bits of corn husk in cloth baggies with 'ficial certificates of authentickity 'n' we put our alien poop in li'l wooden boxes what makes 'em look like from a museum—though we still had the same ol' problem of uppity mother's complainin' 'bout how junior thot it was chocklate 'n' tried to eat it.

So everything was goin' just tickity-licious until last night when the competition shows up. We've started doin' a special thang at night with glow-in-the-dark effects 'n' black lights 'n' eerie atmospheric stuff I don't unnerstan' how it all works. But these two characters shows up 'n' I see's right off how fishy-lookin' they are. No manners at all. Just pull up in that weird pickup of theirs—a brand I've never seen afore—not even on the TV commercials—'n' they're haulin' a grill on wheels rig behind 'n' just a flick of a switch heah and just a push of a button there 'n' shazaam we've got ourselves some real competition—sides which their food smells real good. 'N I'm thankin' these folks must be European cuz they're cookin' schnitzels 'n' sellin' warm pretzels 'n' all sorts of thangs I ain't ever seen afore. I dunno. There's just somethang 'bout 'em. Like their overalls are just too clean, 'n' their faces are shaved just too smooth, 'n' their talk is just too …

Well when biz niz dies down a bit so's there ain't nobody 'round when we confront these characters, Jeb 'cides to sidle up to their grill-on-wheels outfit 'n' strikes up a conversation with 'em. So he begins the way he always does—with a joke. Same joke he always tells. Gopher runs up aside 'im so he introduces his dawg. Then he gits into his story 'bout how he's learnt his dawg to talk. Well now, you gotta unnerstan', Jeb kin git some sensitive 'bout his joke-telling. See, he's got this notion he's the greatest joke-teller in the tri-county area. Truth be known—sometimes he's on—sometimes he's off. But tonight he's on. Even I'm havin' a hard time keepin' myself from bustin' my gut. But these two characters are stony-faced. When Jeb finishes tellin' the part 'bout how his dawg has that Tourette's Syndrome thang, 'n' when he finishes slappin' his leg 'n' hootin' 'n' howlin', one of 'em looks straight at Jeb an sez: "That was real interesting."

Jeb looks back a minute then sez: "Whatsa matter? You guys git yourselfs a humorectomy when you was younger?"

One of 'em cocks his head sideways, then the other one of 'em cocks his head sideways, like they're listening to the sound of the ocean in a shell, only without the shell, then the first one sez: "I'm afeard I don' unnerstan'. Is a humorectomy some kinda surgical thang?"

Well Jeb's gittin' a bit antsy 'n' sez: "Lookey heah, whyn't the two of you high-tail it on back to Harvard er wherever the hell it is you come from, cuz you sure ain't from around heah, now is ya?

So the second one speaks up. 'N' I'm thinkin' I can't really tell this second one from the first, 'n' I wonder if maybe they's twins. He sez: "We'll git right to biz niz. You two is hornin' in on our franchise."

Well Jeb's about to explode boilin' blood. "Franchise? Franchise?" He's practickly screamin' 'n' I have to remind him of his blood pressure. "This here's my land 'n' I'll do whatever the hell I please on my land. Lemme remind you two fellers that it's the other way around—you're horning in on my franchise."

"No." They speak together, pretty matter-of-fact 'bout it. Then they both reach behind. It's amazing to see how flexible their arms are—real bendy, like that feller in the comic books. We both heah this zippin' sound 'n' next thang we know their faces come apart in the middle and slide away 'n' unnerneath is this smooth green glow-in-the-dark kinda skin 'n' one big eyeball right in the middle of their foreheads 'n' these thin slits fer mouths only without any lips as far as I kin see and nothing that looks anythang like a nose fer breathin'. So one of 'em speaks 'n' sez: 'I am Jethro, son of Gork.' 'N' the other one of 'em speaks 'n' sez: 'I am Jimbo, son of Glurp.' 'N' then the one what calls hisself Jethro sez: 'Ya'll need to know we come in peace. But ya'll really need to know another thang or two. Fer one thang, crop circling is a patented procedure 'n' we've come to deliver an invoice. You folks owe us compen—compen—damn, Jimbo but I sure do hate how humans manage t'invent such big words.' So the one what calls hisself Jimbo takes over 'n' sez: 'What y'all need to know that my brother Jethro was tryna say is that y'all owe us money fer all of yer crop circles you've made without our say-so."

"But it's our land," I shout.

"But it's our crop circle procedure thang—'n' I'm citin' the Inter-Galactic Protocol on Intellectual Property which is IGPIP fer short."

Well that jus' gits Jeb goin' somethang awful with words that make 'im sound like a dawg with that Tourette's Syndrome thang 'n' I even git the feelin' maybe his talk turns Jethro 'n' Jimbo's green skin a few shades of pink. But they take thangs real cool like, 'n' when Jeb is done his rant, they sez: "Now lookey heah. Jeb. Jed. We all are bein' ultra-reasonable heah. Yer lucky we ain't goin' after you two fer defamation of character."

"What?" sez Jeb.

"That's right. You've been tellin' a story 'bout anal probes. That really hurt. We have a real bad image problem as it is without you two makin' up some lame-ass story 'bout abductions. Now we've got damage control to do. Why, there's at least twenty different systems where the anal probe thang's spread like wild fire. How d'y'all thank that makes us feel? Huh? Ever thank a minute 'bout how we feel?"

"You mean y'all don't use no anal probes?" sez I.

"Shit no. Why, I can't thank of the last time any of us used an anal probe—cept maybe Billy-Bob, son of Plish, 'n' even then it was only cuz the ol' geezer had hemorrhoids."

Anyhoo, the conversation went a li'l better after that. We sez we're sorry. We had no idea 'bout IGPIP 'n' we sure as heck had no idea we was hurtin' any alien's feelin's. So everythang seemed to go real smooth. We tol' 'em how's we're ol' men 'n' can't be doin' this sort of thang ever agin anyways. They really did turn out to be a righteous pair once ya git to known 'em. In the end (so to speak), they gits back into their pickup up thang which was really somethang to see. Some kinda plasma drive 'n' super a/c 'n' a real thumpin' stereo system that they cud use fer playin' their hurtin' songs. So they took off 'n' circled round a couple times, 'n' hooted 'n' laughed 'n' yelled, 'n' Jethro, son of Gork let out a real loud burp, 'n' Jimbo, son of Glurp, threw an empty out the window, then they floored it 'n' tore off into the night sky, 'n' I guess you'd say we parted on real good terms.

7. COUCH SURFING

IF YOU'RE GONNA rat me out to my boss then you can just go fuck yourself. And besides … there's no way on god's green earth I'll ever tell you what I'm doin' home on a weekday watchin' the Maury show. Oh ya, there's Springer too. And I'm praisin' the lord god almighty for inventin' the remote so's I can flip from one t'other. I've got this beauty of a flatscreen I've mounted on the wall in my den with a bar fridge in the corner and my favourite sofa plunked square in front of everything so's I can just lie there and watch and when I get thirsty I can reach over to the fridge and pull me out a can of somethin' cold. Today's the perfect day for this—warm enough so's you can leave the window open and even enjoy a cool one now and then, but not so warm as you'd work up a sweat. Don't want my sweat to mess up my favourite sofa. Funny how's you can get attached to somethin' like a piece of furniture. There's nothin' fancy about the sofa; in fact, I bet you'd never find anythin' like it at the Art Shoppe—though I'll never be absolutely sure seein' as I pulled it from the garbage two streets over. They could've bought it from the Art Shoppe and just decided to change their decoratin' scheme. Doesn't matter where it come from anyhows. It's mine now.

Beth an' me, we had a real good argument when I first brought home the sofa. She said it was too big. Well then I managed to squeeze it into the den. So she said it was ugly. Well that's just plain untrue. I've got a thousand or more years of Scotland to back me up on that one. Besides which plaid is soothin'—'cept maybe to look at when you've got a hangover. But otherwise it's about as nice a thing to rest your eyes on as you could ever hope to see if you're not countin' Budweiser cans.

A couple weeks later she's talkin' to Nancy O'Neill from two streets over and Nancy's talking about how they're havin' some renos done, how they had to move some furniture out onto the front lawn while they were doing some work, and how later that same day they turned around and found someone'd up and pinched their sofa. Well, I had a laugh 'bout that one too. Beth went on 'bout how I should be 'fessin' up, just tell them I thought it was out for the garbage pickup (which is the truth) and would never've taken the damn thing if I thought they'd still wanted it. But like someone or t'other says: possession is nine tenths of the law. Seems I can snooze easy enough on the sofa, so it must be true. I'd never be able to sleep easy on a sofa that wasn't really mine. Beth—god bless her—she'll never rat me out. Says it's my responsibility. Says it's up to me whether or not I sleep nights with an easy conscience. Still, as big-hearted as she makes herself out to be, she scowls at me whenever she passes the door to the den and sees me stretched out on the sofa clickin' my remote.

So there I am, togglin' between Maury and Springer when I find myself driftin' off. Can't say as I recollect quite what passed through my head as I slipped into la la land. Probably some combination of Jerry Springer and tartans because I dreamed I was standin' there in a kilt while some piece of white trash accused me of fatherin' her baby. A fight broke out an' I guess I must've given the studio audience a view of somethin' precious under my kilt because I wake up with a start, feelin' a rush of wind up my crotch. Sunlight's blarin' down on my face, which is odd seein' as I can't remember it ever bein' so bright in the den. An' there's the roar of traffic all around me. I sit bolt straight an' look all around me. Holy cripes! There's a transport truck bearin' down on me with horns blarin' an' a big ugly bulldog grinnin' at me from the grill.

Here I am sittin' on my sofa in the middle of twelve lanes of highway traffic. I have barely enough time to get my bearings, then I roll off the sofa and scrabble my way to the median. As soon as I reach the concrete barrier, I hear a whump. I turn around in time to see the transport truck smash the sofa into a million little bits, with stuffin' flyin' up practically as high as the light standards, an' springs sproingin', an' fabric shredded. I can't believe what's happened. Even when I try to explain it to the cops when they show up in their cruisers, I'm still havin' trouble believin' I coulda lost such a fine sofa when it seems like only minutes before, me an' my sofa were mindin' our own business back in my den plunked in fronta the TV set. I have no notion how I ended up in the middle of twelve lanes of traffic. Maybe it was a prank or a hoax or revenge, or maybe some weird sleep thing, or another dimension, or an alien abduction, or an alternate universe where everything looks the same 'cept for transport trucks runnin' through your livin' room.

But I don't suppose losin' my sofa's the worst of it. There I am, sittin' on the median, watchin' my sofa get hammered to bits, when I see a glint on the pavement just off to the side. I look over and see that it's the plastic casing of my TV remote. So I hop off the median when there's a break in the traffic and step out to get back at least somethin' of mine. But just as I lean down to pick up the remote, I hear a horn blarin' an' I hear tires squealin' an' I look up just as a car swerves towards me. So I jump outta the way just in time. The car runs over my remote and smashes it into another million bits.

So now, not only can't I lie down on my sofa, but I can't change the channel no more neither.

8. A MODEL ABUSER

IT'S AMAZING HOW different a bus ride can be depending on the time of day and the day of week. Ride the bus in the morning on a week day and it's full of tired students on their way to high school and sober-looking grownups on their way to work. Ride the bus on a Saturday night and you end up sharing your seat with people like the pair sitting next to me in the back. They snuck a six-pack onto the bus and each has finished his first and has fitzed open his second. They have goofy laughs and they try to carry a conversation with two girls sitting across from them. The girls are dressed suburban hoe style and you know just by looking at them they're the sort who never learn anything except the hard way. One of the boys is showing off by demonstrating his ability to fart at will. The other announces that he's a poet who can come up with poems on the spot. He asks one of the girls her name. "Judy?"

"Trudy."

"Trudy?"

He stares at the ceiling then squeezes his eyes together tight like he's sitting on a toilet. "There once was a girl named Trudy/Who was reedy and trudy a cutie/She looks hot in her pants …" The poet stalls. "She looks hot in her pants …"

Trudy's friend lets out a short nervous laugh.

Trudy blushes.

The poet's friend laughs and sez: "Cuz she farts all the time."

The poet whacks his friend on the head and tells him not to be so crude. "We're in the presence of ladies. We have to act with dignity. With honour."

Trudy's eyes grow milky and you can tell she's impressed.

The poet looks up to the loftier reaches of the bus like Saint Sebastian in a moment of ecstatic revelation. Maybe he's hoping for inspiration. Then he returns his eyes to the level of regular people and fixes them on me. He looks up, then back to me. He whacks his friend on the shoulder.

"Wha'd ya do that for?"

"Look at this guy."

The friend leans forward to peer around the poet and stares at me. The friend smiles at me and nods. Then he sits back in his seat. The two teen-aged suburban hoes smile at me too. "Ya? So? Some dork guy on a bus."

"But lookit." He points at me. Then he points to an ad above the two suburban hoes.

Shit. I've been made. The poet's pointing at the new Metro Social Services ad. You see, I'm a model. Now don't get all excited. Usually when I tell people I'm a model they lean in close to take a good look at me, then say something like: "But I thought models were supposed to be good-looking." I have a few answers to that. One is makeup. Another is Photoshop. And the all-important answer: there's a huge market for ordinary-looking people. If ads weren't full of ordinary-looking people, then super-models wouldn't look so super. And sometimes—as with the Metro Social Services ad—you're targeting ordinary people, so you need ordinary-looking models.

The Metro Social Services ad is for victims of abuse. In the ad, I'm a mean-looking guy, unshaven, unkempt, slumped on a couch. Cowering in the corner is a woman with her arms around two young children. The ad says it doesn't have to be like this; there are shelters for women living in fear. And there's a phone number you can call for help.

The poet whacks me on the shoulder with one hand and points to the ad with the other. "So you're the abuser."

The suburban hoes lean back and stare at the upside down foreshortened image of me above their heads.

The friend stands and, clinging monkey-like to a pole, leans in close for a good look. "Shit, man, you're right. We've got the abuser right here on our bus."

I smile at him and hope he goes away. He has bad breath.

"So you think you're tough shit, doncha?"

"Let's teach 'im a lesson."

"Betcha don't know nothin' 'bout honour." He stands and steps around me, blocking my way to the exit. "Ladies," he says, "I think it's time we taught a wife beater a lesson in honour."

"It's just an ad," I say. "I'm just posing."

"Oh, so you like to pose as a wife beater."

"You've been drinking. Why don't you sit down?"

"So you like to be a role model for wife beaters. Is that it?"

The poet takes a swipe at me, but he's way wide of the mark and it throws him off-balance so as he swings past me I give him a shove that sends him to his knees.

"Don't do something stupid," I shout. "I'm not a wife beater. I don't even have a wife. It's an ad. It's make believe. It's like acting."

The poet stands and turns to face me. "Just the fact you'd be willing to pose as one tells me what kinda person you are."

"Get the abuser," the friend shouts.

"I'm not an abuser."

The poet lunges at me, but he's easy to dodge and I return with a left jab right hook combo that sends a tooth ricocheting off a window. The poet hits the ground with blood on his lips.

His friend shouts: "The abuser's beating my friend. The abuser's beating my friend."

I shout back: "I'm not a fucking abuser!" And I kick him in the stomach.

The bus has rolled to a stop, so I force my way out the rear exit and onto the sidewalk where I shout back at the punks on the bus. "I'm not an abuser!" And then I run away into the darkness.

9. LETTER FROM NIGERIA

IT'S NOT LIKE Otis Garvey is snooty. I don't think he's snooty at all. But he wears a plastic optimism that reminds me of an evangelist who smiles and grins and says it's a lovely day even when the hailstones are chipping the paint off his car. So it gave me a secret satisfaction to watch Garvey open the letter from Nigeria and read it with a serious look on his face.

"Oh the poor woman," he said.

Although the letter was addressed to Otis Garvey, the mailman had delivered it to me by mistake. So I kept watch. And when Otis came outside to edge his front flower bed I stepped onto my porch and waved the envelope. Garvey is a recently retired teacher who taught at a second-rate private school and who accumulated a great paunch during his career. As he came over to me for the letter, he huffed and wheezed and hitched up his pants and smiled amiably at me from the front walk.

"Lovely day, though, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"What've you got there for me?"

And I handed him the envelope. He mumbled something I couldn't make out as he used a grass- and dirt-stained thumbnail to slit open the envelope. He flattened the letter on his fat thigh, but when he held it up to read, he couldn't see anything even when he stretched out his arms and leaned way back. Fumbling with a pair of glasses in his breast pocket, he drew the letter in to a reasonable distance and started mouthing the words.

"Dear Mr. Garvey … widow of the late General Mbambo … assets worth $US 40,000,000 … locked in an account … building an orphanage … need funds to commence estate administration …"

"Oh the poor woman," he said.

"Otis!" I said.

"Yes?" and he looked up at me with a childlike glow around his face.

"You know this is an old scam, don't you?"

"Don't be ridiculous. She's opening an orphanage."

These men! No matter what strengths they claim to have, they still need our protection.

"You know …" and a faraway look settled across his face. "I grew up in Nigeria. My parents were missionaries there. I still have a few contacts. Not many, mind. Not after so many years. But there are still a few people who remember the old days." He folded his glasses and stuck them back in his breast pocket. "I'd really like to help out this Mrs. Mbambo. Give something back if you know what I mean."

I shook my head as I watched Garvey shuffle back to his own front lawn. The letter waved and flapped from his back pocket as he stepped on his hoe and lifted a fresh clod. There's no helping some people.

The summer was long and hot. Garvey pottered around in his front yard, dead-heading petunias and pulling up weeds. In the evening he turned on the sprinkler and watered the east half of the lawn, then moved the hose over and watered the west half of the lawn. Once a week he ran the mower in a precise checkerboard pattern across the lawn then back and forth with the fertilizer. And part way through the summer he introduced his pièce de resistance—little lights on either side of the driveway that turned on at dusk and turned off at dawn.

Then, at the end of the summer, something strange happened. A silver Mercedes pulled up in front of Garvey's house and a slick-looking man in business suit and dark glasses hopped out and rummaged through his trunk. He pulled out a sign and pounded it into the front lawn: "For Sale."

I didn't wait for Garvey to potter around in his flower beds; I went straight over and rapped on his front door. When he answered, it seemed to me his expression was a little too smug.

"You're selling!?" I tried not to sound upset. It was only Garvey after all.

"Yes. Yes." He was twirling a pinky around in his ear. "Had to."

"Oh?" I tried to sound interested without seeming nosey.

"You remember that letter from Nigeria?"

"Yes."

"Well I sent Mrs. Mbambo $10,000."

"Oh dear."

"Turns out I know somebody in Nigeria who knows somebody who was a Colonel serving under general Mbambo. So it all seemed to check out."

"So you lost —"

"Yes. Lost track of Mrs. Mbambo after our family came back home. Of course, I didn't know her as Mrs. Mbambo. Back then she was Irene Taylor. We went to the mission school together. Anyhow I was glad I could help her out and sorry that her husband died. So we've carried on quite a correspondence since she contacted me. We're getting married you know. I'm selling everything and moving back to Nigeria."

I backed out through the doorway and stumbled back home in a daze. Damn! I kicked one of Garvey's stupid lights then climbed the steps of my front porch and slammed the door behind me.

10. JOHN HENRY

BEING THE ENVIRONMENTALLY conscientious sort that I am, I went out to WalFart and bought myself a new push mower. Besides helping to reduce gas emissions, it's good exercise running up and down the lawn with a push mower. Plus it doesn't do a half bad job of cutting the grass. But the biggest bonus is that I get to smile and wave at John across the road and rub his nose in it. John's the competitive type and likes to buy the biggest of everything. He has the biggest home on the street, the biggest car, the biggest dog and—of course—the biggest lawn mower—a Henry 2000.

There I am in the heat of a summer's day pushing my push mower back and forth and John smiles his smarmy smile and waves his wavey wave and asks how I like working up a sweat.

It always goes the same—I wave back and say I enjoy it just fine thank you.

Then he says something like: Well I've got this here Henry 2000. It can chew through a lawn in no time at all. Why the grass practically cuts itself. Then he laughs his har har laugh and stands and waits for me to take up my huffing and puffing again before he walks away with that beer in his hand and that gut hanging out over his belt—the biggest gut in the neighbourhood.

If I'm feeling a little courage, I might say something like: Well you may have the biggest lawn mower, John, but bigger isn't always better—especially when it comes to your carbon footprint—and your beer gut (I sometimes quietly add).

But there was one day when we were having our usual parlay and John suddenly got a pained look on his face and I began to wonder if maybe I'd said something to hurt his feelings.

You know, he said, you go on all high and mighty about your push mower and how virtuous you are, but I'm a decent person too.

Sheesh, I thought. Wonder where that's coming from? But out loud: John, using a push mower isn't about judging anybody. Of course you're a decent person.

Maggie was standing in the front window watching the whole exchange, and afterwards, when I went inside, she quizzed me on what we'd been talking about for so long.

I shook my head. I can't believe what I've just got myself sucked into.

What?

Big John across the road wants him and me to have a lawn mowing competition. Next week. We'll do all the front lawns on the street. Him with his Henry 2000 on the north side and me with my push mower on the south side. Get the whole neighbourhood involved. Have a barbeque afterwards. Stick posters on the telephone poles.

Oh, Rich, that's twenty lawns you'd have to mow. That'd kill you.

I don't think it'll kill me, Maggie. But it'll sure wear me out.

I don't think you should do it.

Well, it's too late for that. We shook on it.

But Rick, don't you realize what's going on here? John across the road is John Henry. He invented the Henry 2000. This is just a publicity stunt. He's using you.

Using me or no, I had shaken on it and a man's shake is his word. Actually his word is his word, but a shake is just as good.

That week was busy for both of us. John had somebody in his art department do up a nice poster and he stuck it to all the telephone poles in the neighbourhood. I canvassed everybody on the street and asked them not to mow their lawns—we wanted a healthy blade of grass to show off our mowers. Everybody thought the competition was a fine idea except old Mrs. Trotsky down on the corner who thought it was some kind of capitalist plot and threatened to shoot anybody who set foot on her property.

All week John had his Henry 2000 dismantled on the driveway surrounded by oil cans and wrenches and fresh spark plugs. For my part, I jogged an extra 2 km each day and started bench pressing in the garage. John ordered a gross of hot dogs, which he wrote off as a business expense and I scrounged up lots of charcoal for the barbeques.

The day we'd set for the competition was sunny and clear. Mrs. Trotsky's daughter was a horticulturalist and she agreed to be the judge of our lawn-cutting competition. Josh from two doors down was a track and field coach at the local high school and he was able to lay his hands on a starter pistol.

So at ten in the morning Josh fired the pistol and we were off. John turned his key in the ignition and my blades went whirling around with a swish swish swish. There were shouts and cheers and laughter and jeers. A good crowd had gathered and Maggie moved amongst the people with a stack of paper cups and a cooler full of lemonade while John's wife Thelma (who is bigger than Maggie) went around with a digital camera asking if anyone wanted their picture taken with the winner's wife.

John's first lawn had a couple of trees and a garden with big rocks jutting along the edge. The Henry 2000 isn't so maneuverable and the trees and rocks slowed John down. On the other hand, my first lawn was flat and clear so I was well into the second before John could move on. It wasn't until lawn five that John caught up to me. Then disaster struck. A nut popped off my handle and the mower went all wonky. It would be impossible to finish the race without the nut, but I couldn't see it anywhere in the grass. A crowd of neighbours (the "green guys," as they called themselves) gathered around to help. It took a few minutes. A kid I'd never seen before noticed a chrome glint from the petunia bed. I tightened things up again and then was off. But John was already on lawn six and motoring along with confidence.

The sun beat fierce down upon my head. A river of sweat poured off my back. My triceps burned and my quads ached as I thrust the mower out in front. The crowd thinned during the lunch hour but people returned by mid-afternoon as we approached the home stretch. I could feel a throbbing in my head and my mouth was parched. Kids stood by the curbside and handed us cups of water just like they do in marathon races.

John! I shouted. But he couldn't hear me over the roar of his engine.

I was trying to tell him that I had seen sparks fly from his Henry 2000. On lawn nineteen the engine backfired and a thick smoke began to pour from the exhaust vent, but John pressed on.

John! I shouted again. I was starting to worry. Even though I was on the other side of the street, I could smell an acrid mix of burning rubber and oil and gasoline.

Mrs. Trotsky's daughter threw down the flag. John Henry had won. He turned the key and the engine sputtered into silence, never to be heard again. A minute later I huffed and puffed my last pass across lawn twenty, then ran across the road to offer my congratulations. Neighbours were cheering and crowding in on John Henry. He beamed through the smoky soot and grime that was smeared across his face.

But John Henry started to wheeze. It was a rasping wheeze that came from deep within his lungs and had a wet spluttering finish. With a worried voice Thelma called her husband's name and thrust her way into the crowd, knocking people aside with her hips which were bigger than anybody else's. John! she called. She had poured cold water over a rag and was pressing it to John's forehead. Beads of water trickled down his face and cut channels through the dark grime. John crumpled onto the top of the Henry 2000, doubled over so his big beer gut blubbered out in every direction, beefy palms planted on his fat thighs, gasping for air.

Thelma! he called. We did it, Thelma. We did it.

Thelma drew her husband's head into her ample breasts. Yes, John, we did it.

We showed them how a Henry 2000 can beat the crap out of a push mower any day.

We sure did, John. We beat the crap out of it.

Then John Henry looked to the sky as if he saw something far off and descending from a cloud. A little puff of breath issued from his lips and he fell down dead on the edge of Mrs. Trotsky's lawn. And that's the story of how John Henry gave his life to show that a Henry 2000 could beat me and my push mower. No doubt the neighbours will be singing his praises for years to come and cutting the hell out of their lawns.

11. SEX WITH DEAD PEOPLE

EGYPTOLOGISTS GIVE ONE another special names. It's one of those things we've always done. So John calls me Ikky (which is short for Ikhnaten) and I call him Akky (which is short for Akhenaten) and when people see the two of us together they say: "Hey! There goes Ikky and Akky." When people find out we're Egyptologists, they say things like: "So you guys are into all that King Tut shit, are ya?" We used to go into a long drawn out explanation about how we're experts in the Late Egyptian period and handle a geographic region way south of Thebes and the Valley of the Kings almost on the border of the Sudan—500 years later and 500 clicks upriver from King Tut. But nobody really cares, so now we smile and nod and say: "Ya, ya, the King Tut shit."

I'm a specialist in temple art and Akky is doing post doc work in linguistics. He can read hieroglyphs, Demotic, Coptic, Sumerian, Ugarit, Greek, Latin, German, and I joke that he can sometimes write English if he has spell-check. I tell him he's a cunning linguist. Sometimes the women on staff hear us talking like that and assume we're a pair of dweebs who haven't got a life outside the museum. When we first started, I guess their assumption would have been correct. But when I met Nancy from paleontology, things turned around for me. Even Clara, the blond in charge of admissions, started complimenting me on the new clothes I was wearing and the fact that I had started shaving. As for Akky, well let's say he still has some work to do—although, since his translation of early Demotic ledgers was featured in the museum newsletter, Lulu Ping from Victorian textiles has been giving him the eye. Not the evil eye either.

And then we got the crate from Aswan.

Akky and I were so excited we couldn't sleep the night before and stayed up poring over photos from the dig. We met at the loading dock early the next morning. Nancy had brought along coffees, so we stood on the concrete shipping bay and sipped our coffees and stamped our feet to stay awake. Nancy was happy for us. She squeezed my hand and gave me a kiss on the cheek and said I'd have to tell her all about it over dinner that evening. Then she ran off to her dinosaurs. She was helping to prepare a partial Allosaurus skeleton for exhibit and the department was on a tight schedule.

The shipment arrived at nine—an hour late. By that time our bladders were ready to burst. Neither of us wanted to be away when the truck arrived, so we crossed our legs and grimaced through the hour it took for the driver to locate the receiving door. The crate sat in the back of a cube truck, though it could easily have fit into a van. It rested on a skid and the people from Cairo bound it tightly round and round in plastic wrap. (Wrapping things up like that must come naturally to them.) It could just as easily have been a shipment of toilet paper as a crate full of 3000-year-old artifacts. The forklift operator treated it as if it were a shipment of toilet paper. Akky was so upset he even swore at the operator—the first time I'd ever heard him use a swear word in a living language.

We opened the crate in the room opposite our office. Although we were the project leads (the first time we'd ever been put in charge of anything) nevertheless everybody gathered around to watch, from the janitor and Clara right on up to the CEO and some old geezer who had just donated a wad of cash to our capital fund. Once the plastic wrap came off the crate, the first thing I noticed was the dust—it was a greyish blond colour like the dirt you find at most of the digs near the Nile. But when we split open the boards of the crate, the dust inside and covering the artifacts was a red colour like you find further into the desert. With a crowbar I lifted the first board and a plume of the red dust clouded around my head and I spluttered and asked for a glass of water. "Funny," I thought. "Greyish/blond dust on the outside; reddish dust on the inside." Already I was formulating theories about the origins of the artifacts.

What we were supposed to have was a selection of funerary objects from the tomb of Queen Nefertiti. We placed each one at a separate station for photographing and an initial description before we undertook a more intensive study. I was so excited I kept slapping Akky on the back and telling him to pinch me. The whole day went by in a blur, like a dream. I couldn't remember much about the individual objects except for a ceramic vessel of some sort, probably a container for one of the Queen's organs—brain maybe—with a lid in the shape of a jackal's head and hieroglyph inscriptions around the base. I remember leaning in close and even brushing my finger lightly over its surface—technically a no-no but my excitement got the better of me. Only Akky saw what I did. He cast a private frown in my direction but was good enough not to draw anybody's attention to my slip.

Nancy and I had talked about going out for dinner, but I was exhausted so we picked up some Thai take-out and went back to her place instead. A funny thing happened while we were waiting for them to call my name. Nancy saw some red on my collar and pointed to it with a pouting pretend jealousy on her face. "Is that lipstick?"

"Yeah," I said. "From Egypt."

She made light of it and pretended that she had been feigning jealousy, but you could tell there was at least a small piece of her jealousy that was real. When I saw the trace of hurt in her eyes, I smiled then told her about the funerary piece I'd examined, how I had leaned in close and got some of the dust on my collar, how clearly the artifacts had come from a location further inland than we had first supposed, how the soil further inland was rich in iron and so had a reddish tinge to it. What she took for lipstick must be some of that dust.

"There's only one way to be sure." She scraped some of the dust from my collar with a fingernail, then set it to her tongue. She screwed up her face and said "Eeuw! Definitely not lipstick."

"Bitter?"

"Ya. A weird taste. Not sure what. Definitely dirt, but something else besides. Maybe wormwood."

"Ikky!" The cashier called my name. I paid for dinner and we went back to Nancy's.

I wolfed down my food and found myself feeling impatient with the way Nancy poked her chopsticks at the bits of shrimp and swirled the noodles in circles around her plate. The fact was: I wanted to get her into bed. There was something about her pouting and her jealousy that was a turn-on. There was something too about the way she wore her eye-liner, and the white diaphanous robe she wore around the apartment. I couldn't help myself. I had to have her.

It was good. We'd been seeing each other for several months now and things were starting to click. Sometimes playful, sometimes intense, sometimes desperate, sometimes spiritual. Sometimes it even felt like we were transported beyond our bodies. But this evening I felt all these things and something more. I don't know how to describe it. We were communing in a way we'd never felt before. And as the climax approached, a guttural sound issued from Nancy's throat. At first it was low and indistinct, but she said it again. It almost sounded like a word, but nothing I understood.

"What's that, Nan?" and I pushed myself back so I could see her face. Oooo! Her eyes were rolled way back in her head so you could only see the whites. She bared her teeth then drew back her lips into a snarl and howled like a wolf or a dog or something.

The next day I did something I had promised myself I'd never do—I talked to another guy about the sex I'd had with a girl.

Akky had a goofy grin on his face. "So you made Nancy howl?"

"Uh-huh."

"Like a wolf?"

"Or something."

He smiled. "Were you doing it doggy style?"

I smacked him on the head. "Don't be such a twit."

"And this word—"

"At least I think it was a word."

"What'd it sound like?"

"I think what I heard was thepjdow."

"Thepjdow?"

"Shhhhh. Not so loud."

"Hmmm." Akky scratched his head. "You know … I think I hear a basic phoneme that could be the root for "mountain." It reminds me of something, but I just can't place it. Something recent I've seen. Let me think about it for a while."

All day we continued with our photographing—setting up timelines for describing and cleaning and authenticating each item. It wasn't until late in the afternoon that Akky pulled me aside. He remembered where he'd come across the word. Thepjdow. He dragged me along to the funerary container with the jackal head. "There!" He pointed to the hieroglyphs at the base of the container. "Thepjdow." He spoke with confidence. "It means 'the one who is on his mountain'."

"The one who is on his mountain." I let the words roll around on my tongue as I pondered their meaning.

"It was an epithet of the jackal god, Anubis."

"An epithet?"

"Ya. Like a royal title, say—a show of honour."

"You mean to tell me my Nancy was summoning Anubis?"

"Ya. Ain't it cool? I guess some people say 'Oh God, Oh God' and other people say 'Anubis, Anubis.'"

"But that's crazy. She doesn't even know Egyptian."

That night I didn't even have to hint; Nan wanted it in the worst way. She wore the same white robe as on the night before, only this time she wore it cinched with a golden braid. She'd done the same thing with the eye-liner—only moreso, with exaggerated lines extending from the corners of her eyes. And that afternoon she'd gone out to have her hair dyed black and cut with bangs. After supper, she took my hand and said: "Come. Come into my chamber." Which struck me as an odd way to put things. Normally we say things like: "Hey, wanna go to bed?" or "Hey, wanna fool around?" but "Come into my chamber?" I wasn't sure whether it was creepy or charming.

This night was as passionate as the night before and, as on the night before, there was the low guttural "Thepjdow." But this time there was no howling—only a yammering on and on that sounded like gibberish to me. But I had come prepared. I was carrying a small digital recorder in my pocket and before I took off my pants I reached in and switched it on.

The next morning over coffee, Akky and I listened to Nancy's yammering.

"Definitely Late Egyptian."

"But what's she saying?" I asked.

"Dunno."

"I thought you were the expert."

"Egyptian is a dead language."

"The cunning linguist."

"I'll be able to decipher it, but it'll take a few minutes. And listen to her. She's fluent."

"But that's impossible. Late Egyptian is a dead language."

"I know, I know."

"And besides which she's a paleontologist."

"I know, I know."

"So where'd she learn to speak a dead language?"

"Dunno."

And I drained my coffee.

As we stepped from our office and into the room with all the artifacts, I had an odd thought—more a theory than a thought. I remembered how I had run my finger through the dust on the funerary vase, how some of the dust had gotten onto my collar, how Nancy had scooped some of it off and set it to her tongue. I told Akky.

"What are you saying?" He gave me a look as if to say that he thought Scarabs were eating away at my brain. "You think Nancy picked up some Late Egyptian because she swallowed a mouthful of dirt?"

Even now I'm not sure what I was thinking. Maybe she was channeling Nefertiti or one of the queen's maids-in-waiting. Maybe the dirt unlocked a deeply embedded genetic memory. Who knows? I'm an art historian; not a scientist.

That evening I confronted Nancy. I told her about Thepjdow and how she had been talking fluent Late Egyptian (though I held back the fact that I'd recorded us in bed and had shared it with Akky). If I didn't know Nancy better, I'd say there was note of ridicule in her voice. She thought it was absurd. She'd flunked high school French; she wasn't likely to do any better with Late Egyptian. And channeling? What a lot of rubbish!

"But don't you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"Thepjdow. Don't you remember saying Thepjdow—and all those other words?"

Nancy smiled. Things had threatened to devolve into an argument, but her smile lightened the mood. "Besides. I'm a paleontologist. I'm your Allosaurus girl, remember?" She leapt up. "Close your eyes."

"What?"

"Close your eyes. I have a surprise for you."

I did as I was told. I could hear bare feet padding across the kitchen floor and into the hall, then a rustling noise in amongst the coats and bags and umbrellas, then the bare feet returning until I could feel Nan's warm presence in front of me at the kitchen table. She pressed her moist lips to mine, and when she drew back, she told me again to keep my eyes shut. I felt a finger against my lips, rubbing back and forth, rubbing something coarse and grainy. Some of it even got onto my tongue.

"Pwa, pwa." I spat it out.

Nancy laughed.

"That's disgusting."

"It's dirt."

"What the hell?"

"I wanted to show you how ridiculous your theory is, so I rubbed dino dirt on your lips."

"Dino dirt?"

"I brought home my lab coat to wash—the one I've been wearing while I prep the Allo skull. Thought you might like a taste of early Jurassic dino dirt. See what we can get you to channel." She laughed and clasped her hands behind my head and drew me to my feet. Soon we were in her bedroom and we embarked on another evening of amazing sex.

I don't remember much of it. Only that a powerful feeling came over me—an urgent ravenous feeling that drove me on and on. There was also a dreamlike quality to it all, as if I was transported beyond myself or vested with heightened physical powers. And all my senses became acute—but most especially my sense of smell, as if I had descended from the tame pines of an arboreal forest into the dangerous wilds of a primeval swamp. And after I was sated, I slept.

Which is all very well except that when Nan's alarm went off the next morning and I leapt from the bed worried that I might be late for work, I found myself confronted by unanswered questions. Like: why were the sheets drenched in blood? And where the hell was Nan?

12. EVERLASTING GOBSTOPPERS

WILLY WONKA LOVES the Oompa-Loompas and they love him back. You see, they're funny looking: they're short and have orange skin, with rotten teeth and bad breath, and they sing the damnedest song. The first time he ever saw them, Willy's heart brimmed with compassion. It was a sordid business, off-loading kegs from the local brewery and finding themselves (there in the alley behind the Detroit Eatery) the unwilling participants in an impromptu dwarf-throwing contest. We're Oompa-Loompas! Not dwarfs! they cried. But the brewery truck drivers saw no difference (orange skin notwithstanding). It was Willy to the rescue, bribing the truck drivers with everlasting gobstoppers. And the rest, as they say, is history. Which is a stupid expression, suggesting that history has a defined ending or, what's worse, a pre-ordained end. The truth is: it's just an isolated episode in a long and sordid affair. Maybe you've already detected in Willy what we've known all along: there's a darker side to his nature. Oh sure, there's the smiling face. He puts it on whenever a special group (like the people from Eli Lilly or Pfizer) takes a tour of the factory floor. What a wonderful philanthropic man! With his charitable Oompa-Loompa foundation, and his newsletter, and peer-led support group, and baseball team, and community outreach, and medical research funding, and public awareness education, and heart-warming TV ads. But let's take a closer look. Oompa-Loompas are non-union wage labour, with further wage discounts because they live on-site. They get no benefits (the rotten teeth) and suffer toxic exposure (the orange skin). But that's not the worst of it. Sometimes late at night, long after the lollipop machines have fallen silent, Willy hand-picks two or three of the prettier ones and takes them up to his office which overlooks the shop floor. There, he samples their candy.

13. JACK THE GIANT KILLER

DOCTOR HORVATH MOTIONED for Jack to take a seat by the round, low coffee table while he settled himself in a swiveling chair in front of the bare desk, and then he turned to face Jack while resting his right elbow on the desk. He tore a marked page from his pad (with the logo of a pharmaceutical company in the lower right corner) and dated a fresh page. Jack's file lay close at hand.

"How've you been feeling this week, Jack?"

"Fine, thanks."

"Stop being so polite. This isn't a social call; it's a therapy session."

"Hmmm." Jack picked at the cuticles of his left hand. "Okay. Some things good. Some things bad."

"All right. Let's start with the good things."

Jack sat silently.

"Come on, Jack. We've been through this a hundred times. I know for a fact that something's going through your mind. Let's spit it out."

Doctor Horvath's manner struck Jack more as tired than concerned. Jack was aware in himself of his need to please people, and was wary that he was reading too much into Horvath's manner: the gruff harumph as he set one leg over the other and twisted in his seat, the rumpled frown that swept like a cloud across his face, the gaze that dropped from Jack's eyes to the dingy running shoes. Were these signs of disapproval? Or impatience? Or indifference? Or maybe they were signs of nothing at all. Whenever he started overinterpreting Horvath's expression and posture, he began to worry that maybe he was narcissistic. Jack was terrified that one day his therapist might diagnose him with a narcissistic personality disorder. If that ever happened, Jack wouldn't be able to live with himself.

"Jack?"

"Huh?"

Horvath made a motion like a theatre prompter. "Time to talk."

"Well, on the good side, I've been back at work—part time. I've decided to make some rules about work—take only the work I like and only four hours a day—for now. And something else that's new. I'm starting to get enthused about something—it's been a long time."

"How do you mean?"

"I'm talking about passion. I'm writing some music—part symphonic, part choral. I'm really pleased with the way it's coming along. It's assuming a structure, an integrity all its own, kind of a feeling like it's writing itself. What I mean by that is that I'm not writing this work as a kind of therapy, not to satisfy my own needs—it's an expression that can stand in spite of—or without—me."

"Good. Good."

"So I write music in the morning and go into the office in the afternoon. The other good thing is that I've started practising the harp again."

"Are we talking about that singing harp?"

"Yeah. I was mechanical at first. I plucked the strings like I was, say, washing the dishes. But every day I force myself to sit down at the harp and play, and gradually things are beginning to thaw."

"Do you enjoy playing the harp now?"

"I don't know."

"Do you dislike it?"

"No. Definitely not."

"Then you should be pleased with yourself. Even a month ago, you hated your harp and wouldn't touch it."

"Yeah. But I still don't have that .... It's hard to describe. When I was younger—in my teens—no, not even then. There was a time until my mid-teens when playing the harp was a—I'm not sure what to call it—maybe a transforming experience. Every time I sat down to play the harp ... I'm just looking for a way to describe it. A metaphor. I know. There was a time when—for me—playing the harp was like, say, having sex."

Doctor Horvath laughed aloud. "I hope you practised safe sex."

"I've never heard of anyone ever catching anything from a singing harp."

"Do you want to get back that feeling? The feeling you had when you played your harp?"

"Uh-huh. I guess I have this vague sense of loss. Some people can tell you exactly why they have a sense of loss. They can say: oh, my wife died or I was injured in a car accident or I lost my job after twenty-five years at the same company. But that's not me. There hasn't been anything recent with me ... you know ... to explain this feeling of loss."

"Maybe we shouldn't be looking at recent events. Maybe some of your answers lie in your early childhood."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, for example, last week you told me a story of something that happened to you when you were nine or ten. Your mother gave you her only cow and asked you to sell it. Remember?"

"Yeah."

"We ran out of time last week and so we never really explored all the issues coming out of that incident. What's wrong, Jack?"

"Nothing."

"You look upset."

"No. Really, I'm fine."

"Jack."

"Well, I was just thinking back to that day and what a fiasco it was."

"Why was it a fiasco?"

"The whole thing was stupid. Somehow selling the cow was supposed to make everything right. You've gotta understand. We were really poor back then. I really screwed up bad that time."

"But you didn't."

"Sure I did. My mother specifically told me to sell the cow for money. And what did I do? I decided—"

"Jack. Jack. Just stop. What I hear you saying is that you screwed up because you ignored you mother's instructions."

"Yeah."

"Was your mother angry at you?"

"Yeah."

"What did she do?"

"She yelled at me. I traded the cow for beans—magic beans—and she threw them on the ground and sent me to bed without any supper—which didn't matter because we didn't have anything to eat."

"But why did you trade the cow for beans instead of money?"

"I don't know."

"Jack."

"Really, I don't."

"Jack, whenever you say: "I don't know," I hear something else. I hear: "I know, but the reason is something I'd rather die than admit." Well, let me tell you something I've learned with experience. Sometimes admitting something can be liberating. Now. Why did you trade the cow for beans instead of money?"

Jack sat, head bowed, gazing at his feet.

"Let me get you started. What did the beans represent, for you?"

Jack looked up. "A lot of things, I guess. Opportunity. Risk. Foolishness. You see, my mother .... " Tears welled up in the young man's eyes. "God love her, she was doing her best."

"Let's leave God out of this for the time being. God may love her, but do you?"

Jack sat puzzled. "It was such a stupid thing to do. Just because you're poor doesn't mean you should get rid of your only means of livelihood. It was so shortsighted."

"But you never answered my question."

"Love? I don't know."

"So why did you sell the cow for beans?"

"Because money was the short-sighted option. Even if the beans weren't magic beans, we could get enough beans in the next year to sow a whole field. But the money would be gone next year and we'd have no way of earning any more. And besides. What if they really were magic beans?"

"And they were, if I recall."

"They were extraordinary beans."

"So let's get back to my question. Do you love your mother?"

"I guess. In some ways."

"Jack, love is not a half-hearted proposition. Either you do or you don't."

"When you put it that way, then ... " Tears formed in the corners of the young man's eyes. "I just don't know. I just don't know what to think. Maybe I don't love her."

"Never mind what you think," Horvath said. "Tell me what you feel."

"What do I feel?" Jack wiped the tears from his cheeks and stuffed the tissue into his breast pocket. "I guess maybe I'm angry."

"There you go again," Horvath said. "You guess you're angry."

"Okay. I was angry. I saw things differently, but I wasn't allowed to think for myself."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, to me, the beanstalk was an opportunity. I climbed up and found a hen that laid golden eggs. It was the chance of a lifetime. A chance to solve all our money problems. When I show the hen to my mother, what does she do? She says, "God I'm hungry!" and starts plucking the damned thing. Always looking to the immediate solution. She's never really believed I could do anything worthwhile on my own. Everyone looks at me and says: "Oh what a talented young man." "See all his accomplishments." "You must be so proud." And my mother gloats, but still, she can't seem to see anything through my eyes."

Jack went on with his story of his treasure from the castle in the clouds. Jack saved the hen from his mother's cauldron, saved it just long enough for it to lay a golden egg. In fact, it was his mother who found the egg, nestled in amongst the hay where the cow used to feed, and because the woman was alone when she made the discovery, any wonderment, any thrill at the thought of riches, any pleasure in caressing the glinting oval, she enjoyed privately. And so when Jack's mother returned to the hut carrying the egg in her apron, there was nothing in her manner that showed pride in her son's achievement, not the slightest hint in her eyes that her boy had done something wonderful. It was this utter absence of acknowledgment—and not boredom as he once had thought—that drove Jack back up the beanstalk once again to risk everything for the sake of achieving something that, by the standards of the world below, was beyond comparison. And so he stole the singing harp from the giant.

The question that continued to gnaw at Jack's brain was this: did he really need to chop down the beanstalk? Without question, the giant who chased him was a great threat. But there are other ways to subdue a giant. He could have shot the giant with a poisoned arrow; or he could have called all the villagers to come running with their pitch-forks and muskets. Why, instead, did he cut down the beanstalk? Ever since that day, he had carried with him a vague and inexplicable sense of loss.

14. PUBLIC WORKS

I'VE LIVED IN this neighbourhood for nearly ten years now. Not alone, of course; I have the requisite wife with her weekly manicure appointments, and the requisite dog with her poufy tail, and the requisite two point four children. Two of the children are easy to find. They each have a bedroom on either side of our bedroom, one pink, one blue, in day-glo shades that would burn out your eyes if you stared too long at the walls. As for the other four tenths, he's not so easy to find—at least not if you're looking for him. But he pops up in odd ways. He's there in the vestiges of a teenaged immaturity. He's there in a spate of disappointed hopes, the sense, as we survey the lovely homes above and below us, that it will never get any better than this. He's there, too, in the pressure to strut, to buy bigger toys, to program our kids with lessons and play groups and sports teams until our days are one long breathless sprint. Point four.

It isn't a bad neighbourhood. It's a cul-de-sac with five two-story houses facing another five two-story houses, and seven more in the sac part of the cul-de. It's genteel. It's polite. We all find gracious ways to ignore one another. We all find civil ways to hide the fact that we couldn't give a shit about one another. We chat amiably about one another's cars, and the latest losing streak on the sports channel, and we all laugh har har about the way our guts are beginning to spill over our belts. We all walk up and down the street carrying ourselves like bowls of rice that have been steamed too long in pots too small. And we pick up dog shit in plastic baggies that we swing in circlets until they're wound around our index fingers. Then we point our fingers at one another—you know that hokey gesture—with thumb up, like the sights on a pistol—and we fire it off. "How ya doin' old buddy?" "Great to see ya." Bang. Off goes the shot. Only we don't shoot imaginary bullets. We shoot shit. Always shooting the shit. When we were married, this is what Madge and I had dreamt of; this is what we had hoped for. And now we've got it. Or it's got us. But it isn't a bad neighbourhood.

There's a funny thing about the neighbourhood: it all slopes down to the Jeffries' house at the farthest point of the sac. When you enter the street, you're at the top, looking down, steep enough that you're standing at the same level as the highest branches of the Jeffries' tallest trees. It almost has a European feel to it, except that it sucks for the kids who want to play street hockey. The other thing that's funny about the neighbourhood is the unmistakable progression from top to bottom. At the top of the cul-de-sac, the lawns are always pocked with brownish patches; the flowers always wilt and by the end of the summer, they're wizened and crinkly; the leaves on the maple trees are splotchy and drop early. The Orsens, who live on the right as you enter the street, shrug it off. Something about the soil, they say. Doesn't matter what they do, it makes no difference. Still the same brown patches and wilted petals and rotten leaves. They've even hired a professional landscaping company to take care of things for a year. I remember seeing a mustachioed, dark-tanned, sombrero-wearing impresario strutting around the Orsen place ordering his underlings to weed this and water that. But even by mid-summer it was obvious to all the neighbours that no measure of skill could rehabilitate the Orsen yard.

Then there's the Jeffries. Down at the bottom of the slope, they have immaculate lawns that are always lush and greener than green with that fine close-cropped grass you find on putting greens. There are terraced flower beds and roses and ornamental shrubs. There are spring flowers like hyacinths and daffodils and tulips, and there are late-bloomers too like sedum and black-eyed Susan, and twenty other varieties for the times in between. Always an explosion of colour and always well-tended. Next door, on either side of the Jeffries, the yards are almost as nice. Still the same explosion of colour and immaculate landscaping, but they fall short in little ways. On the north side, the Wilson's always have trouble with tent caterpillars in their purple sand cherry. And on the south side, the Singh's have a wasp problem in their juniper; once, it even cost them a case of scotch to keep the mailman from suing after a particularly vicious swarming incident.

A little further along, closer to our yard, there's the odd dandelion in the lawn and sometimes even a dried-up petunia, but still a presentable yard. Further up the slope past us, the gardening goes downhill—in a manner of speaking. To be fair, I've seen Milt out in the springtime, busting his ass with an aerator and a push fertilizer, and Milly across the road from him has always been conscientious about her watering, giving the grass an evening soak, but not so much that it would weaken the roots. Despite their best efforts, their yard care is abysmal, an embarrassment, a landscaping atrocity. And then there's the Orsen's. I grant they're nice folks. But nice is no substitute for lawn-savvy. I've been tempted on more than one occasion to organize a neighbourhood drive to apply for a court order compelling them to sell to people who can take proper care of a yard. But I keep my mouth shut and smile.

The problem can go too far in the other direction. The Jefferies sometimes carry themselves with a hoity-toity air that doesn't smell quite as sweet as the rose blossoms in their yard. It carries more a whiff of the sanctimonious. They try their best to hide it. They try their best to be just another neighbourly couple. But in every smile and in every passing wave you can sense it just below the surface: we're the ones who can grow lawns that are greener than an Irish park; we're the ones who grow roses for the toreadors to hold between their shining teeth.

"Mornin' Dave." It's Sam Jeffries, the husband, walking his strutting standard poodle with a baggie of dog shit in one hand and his wife's hand in the other.

I nod and smile from my front porch as I take up the paper.

"Lovely day, though, isn't it?" That's Emily, the wife, the woman who clips all the roses and dead heads all the petunias. She pours out her sickly-sweet greeting like syrup from a thin-necked bottle.

"Indeedy-do," I say, then wonder what the hell I meant by such a folksy comment.

Sam is saying something else, but the words get lost in the roar of a truck that's just rounded the corner and is braking all the way to the bottom of the slope. It's a big flatbed hauling a backhoe. Trailing it is a cube van with the words "Coring and Concrete" stenciled on the side. When the trucks halt at the bottom of the slope out in front of the Jeffries' place, I find I can hear Sam again. I swear, the guy must've been talking the whole time and didn't care that nobody could hear him.

"…municipal notice to start on … well whoever heard of starting on a Saturday for Christ sake. I mean, can't a guy get some peace. Been traveling … with work of course. Just one day. That's all I ask. Just one fricken day. Know what I mean?"

I grin and jack my head up and down, and even though I haven't a clue what the man is saying, I'm sure he figures me for a good guy, straight-up, an ally against whatever bureaucratic forces have proclaimed Saturday the proper day to start sawing asphalt and chewing it up with a backhoe.

"What they up to anyways?" I ask.

"Replacing the water mains."

And almost as if the words are a cue, another flatbed truck starts down the road with a load of blue pipes. And so it begins: the piercing whine of an asphalt saw, a backhoe cracking three-foot slabs of asphalt and dropping them into idling dump trucks, the roar of trucks fighting their way up the slope, the excavation of mud and dirt. Over the next couple days, the subcontractors for the city sink a trench along the length of the road from the Jeffries' front lawn all the way up to the Olsen's, and in front of each house they dig a smaller trench perpendicular to the main trench. Late on the third morning, I pull up with a load of coffees for all the guys, hoping I'm not being too obvious with my bribery. I just want to smooth things over. I just want to make sure they don't block my driveway for more than an hour here and there, persuade them to drop all their big concrete tubes across the road instead of leaving giant tube-shaped impressions deep in my lawn.

When I approach with trays of coffee in hand, everything falls silent. They've already switched off the machinery, even the backhoe. The operator has stepped down from the cab so he can join the others lined up on either side of the trench. They're staring intently at the gravel and the dirt and the old pipes that still have to be hauled up and carted away. There are fingers pointing and whistles under the breath and "whoo-whee's" and broad grins and looks of puzzlement and shaking heads. One man—the one I'd taken for the foreman—has pulled off his hard hat and is holding it cupped over his stomach like a man at a funeral, only it can't be that grave a situation because some of the men are smiling and joking around. I dole out coffees and ask what's up. Nobody drinks their coffee. They just stare into the trench.

The foreman points with a stubby finger. "Lookit."

I lookit, but I'm not sure what's so special about whatever I'm supposed to be lookiting. "What?"

The foreman kneels and dangles an arm into the trench. He points at big concrete tubes that run up the hill to the Orsen's place, and down the hill to the Jeffries' place. Then he points to smaller tubes that connect with the big tube. "See these."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, twenty years ago—or however long ago it was—they hooked everything up all wrong. See, there's you're water." He points to half inch copper piping that juts out from the main. "That's the feed for your water. But that …" He points to a wider pipe, maybe the width of an average man's arm. "See that? That's the sewage hookup. Only nobody ever hooked it up."

"You mean the waste went straight into the ground?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, then, what?"

The workers look up at one another across the trench, uneasy, grinning. The foreman hefts himself to his feet and wipes a swath of dirt from his hard hat. "They hooked waste water to the main. Mister, you all have been drinkin' one another's piss." Ceremoniously, he holds his coffee in front of him and pours it into the trench. "I wouldn't drink your coffee if you paid me."

Just then, just as the foreman is dumping his pisswater coffee into the trench, Sam Jeffries breezes past, power walking his poodle with a huff and a puff. "Mornin' gentlemen." He pauses to catch his breath and follows everybody's gaze to the trench. "What's so interesting?"

"Nothing," I say.

"Oh." Sam straightens up, getting ready to resume his power walk.

"Only, Sam, from now on I think you're gonna need fertilizer on your lawn just like the rest of us."

15. THE DESSICATOR

NORM AND I had been on vacation when Ed across the road from us took his spell or whatever it was he took that ended up killing him and left poor Thelma all alone in that big old house of hers. So, on account of us being in Wichita Falls at the time, Norm and I never had a chance to console Thelma or even bring her a casserole until three weeks after the fact. We didn't know a thing about it until after we got home. Ray next door said there was quite a ruckus the night Ed died what with the sirens and flashing lights and police and ambulance people and even a big red fire truck parked a little down the road. And there was poor Thelma in her housecoat wandering after the police, following them down the front walk and floating around like she was in a fog.

"Absolutely the most pathetic sight you ever saw," says Ray, and I can well imagine it seein' as Thelma always looks a little bewildered even at the best of times. "Funny thing, too," Ray said, "how she didn't shed a tear." Some people will practically drown themselves in a river of tears, but not our Thelma. Her eyes just kept as dry as dry can be.

It came as a surprise, then, to see Thelma start cleaning out the house so soon afterwards. In fact, I'm feeling a little guilty about it, pulling into our driveway after being on the road all day and well into the evening, and even as tired as we were, noticing how there was a D27 dehumidifier (the Desiccator) sitting at the end of Thelma's drive waiting for the garbage collection, and thinking what a shame to throw out something practically brand new, and taking it inside even before we unpacked all our other things. It was only afterwards Ray came over and told us how Ed had died while we were away, and so we were feeling a bit peevish for having taken Thelma's D27 Desiccator. It kind of felt like we were taking advantage of another person's misfortunes.

Well it makes you stop and really have yourself a think when you hear how someone practically your own age has gone and died all of a sudden. For a while there, Norm and I wondered what it might've been that Ed died of, but seein' as we didn't really know, Norm moved on to talking about the D27 Desiccator. According to Norm, it was a top of the line model, just the very thing we needed to suck the moisture out of stuff. It's always been so damp and mildewy in the basement. You can't ever really store old clothes or books down there on account of the spots that grow on the fabric and the paper, and it sure is useless tryna dry clothes on a rack down there. Come back even a week later and they're still damp, only now they smell. So Norm was just raving about the machine, calling it a marvel of modern engineering, so efficient it'd suck water from a chunk of granite.

Norm plugged in the dehumidifier and got it going. "Works just tickety-boo," he said, and we wondered why Thelma'd want to get rid of a perfectly good D27 Desiccator. We felt guilty for a bit, then got to work washing dirty laundry from the trip. While the laundry was going, Norm did the lawn and I went across the road to pay my respects and to drop off a bunch of single serving lasagnas I'd thrown together.

Poor Thelma! She didn't talk much, and none at all about her Ed, how he was dead, or even the circumstances of his dying. I tried to get her to talk about how Ed died, partly because I was curious but partly too because they say it's good to talk things through. But all Thelma could say about it was that it was too horrible to tell. Mostly she just sat there in the front room staring out the window sometimes muttering something about needing to wash dishes or sometimes humming a snatch from a favourite song that maybe she and Ed had once heard on the radio years before. I'm not always patient about such things. I tried my best to bide the silences between her random comments and old songs, but pretty soon my patience had all dried up and I was itching to get back across the road to finish cleaning after our vacation.

When I'd left for Thelma's, Norm had been cutting the lawn, but when I came back, Norm wasn't outside anymore. Going inside, I called his name again and again but there was no answer. Norm's funny that way, getting preoccupied with one thing and another and wandering off. I've always suspected he's a little bit ADHD—always starting something, then getting distracted when he's halfway through. Well, I couldn't find Norm anywhere, so I went downstairs to hang up another load of laundry. I filled up the basket with Norm's old underwear and work shirts, then set out another clothes rack by the new dehumidifier. That's when I noticed—there on the floor by the D27 Desiccator—a mound of dust or ashes or grit or something—just a dried up old heap of dirt. "Damn!" I thought to myself, "but it's well nigh impossible to keep a house clean with Norm living in it. He's been here tinkering with the dehumidifier again and left himself a pile of dirt."

I went and pulled out the broom and dustpan and set to cleaning up Norm's little mess. I had to kneel to get at all the bits of grit, and there, closer to the concrete floor, light from the window well came in at just the right angle and caught the glint of something nestled in the dirt. I brushed away some of the flecks, maybe the way an archeologist might clean up around an excavation, and plopped in the middle of the mound was Norm's wedding ring. "Damn it, Norm!" I muttered. The man would lose his own head if it weren't firmly attached to his neck. I picked up the ring and stuffed it in my pocket for safekeeping, but when I did that, the motion shuffled around some of the dirt. There, underneath the first layer, was another glint of gold, something maybe the same size as the end of my pinky. I held it to the light for a closer look. Why, it was Norm's gold tooth. "Norm!" I shouted. "What have you gone and done?" I scattered the dust some more and found other bits of metal—the rims of his reading glasses, his silver belt buckle, a few coins that he liked to clink around in his left pocket, the car keys. "Norm!" I screamed.

After that and for the next few days things went by in a blur, just the way Ray said they would. There was the police and the ambulance and the fire truck. There was making arrangements and phoning family and friends. There was making sure bills kept getting paid. So when I finally stopped to take stock of things, it seemed like everything had whizzed by in a dream. With a moment to reflect, the very first thing it struck me to do was to throw out the D27 Desiccator. So I called up Ray and had him help me carry it to the end of the driveway, which we did a couple days before garbage pick up. No sooner had I stepped back inside than I noticed how a neighbour in the next block over had pulled up with his van and was loading the dehumidifier into the back. I wanted to cry, but I just couldn't. There was nothing left for tears.

16. SEVENTY-TWO

MOHAMMED HAD BEEN sitting outside on a rock for about a thousand years when Youssef pushed his way from the tent to join his brother. For nearly a hundred years, Mohammed had been waiting on the rock while Youssef deflowered virgin number seventy-two, taking her every-which-way his imagination would allow. In the sand at his feet, Mohammed was using a stick to draw letters and figures, while he listened to the grunting and groaning, screaming and moaning, biting and panting. Sometimes, while watching a passing caravan or grinning at the vulture who hunched and returned his grin, Mohammed would lean back and yell: "Youssef! Youssef! Have you not had enough of her?" In a way, he didn't mind Youssef's nonsense. Without the sound of bombs detonating in the distance, or the burst of machine gun spray, the silence sometimes drove Mohammed to the brink of madness, so it was a relief to hear his brother's noisy exertions.

When Youssef was done, he emerged naked from the tent carrying a clay pitcher of water in one hand and his robe draped over the opposite arm. He took a long draught from the pitcher, letting the water spill from the sides of his mouth and down his neck and chest and legs, and dribbling it in pools around his feet where it disappeared into the sand. He let out a satisfied "Ahhh" and threw himself onto the ground beneath the rock's shade.

"Mohammed," he said. He snatched the stick from his brother and snapped it in two, then threw both halves at the vulture. The vulture hopped back two paces, then inched forward to its original perch.

"Mohammed, how long has it been since you deflowered your seventy-second?"

Mohammed did some reckoning in his head, and then he did some more with his fingers. "At least fifteen hundred years."

"Don't you miss it?"

Mohammed yawned.

Youssef laughed and poked at his brother with a dirty finger. "Do you still remember that day long ago when you achieved your immortality?"

Sometimes it was a pleasure to while away a year or two reminiscing about the old days. They remembered how they had given their lives for the faith. Youssef had boarded a bus in Haifa with C-4 strapped to his chest and a dead-man's switch in his left hand. He hadn't shaved for days just so he could sport the wild-eyed fanatical look that seemed to be part of the job description. In fact, he wasn't much of a wild-eyed fanatic; he was more of a mamma's boy who was enrolled at a good university and liked to play RPG's with all his online friends. For his part Mohammed had worn a knapsack into a marketplace on a Friday morning where he detonated a nail bomb.

Youssef laughed. "I remember, brother, when your head flew off. It landed in a stack of watermelons." He slapped his thigh and wiped a tear from his eye. "And your testicles! Why, they were lost in a bin of peaches."

"But this virgin business!" said Mohammed.

"Yes?"

"This virgin business. It's not everything I would have expected."

"You speak the truth, my brother."

"After a few thousand years, it gets tiresome."

Youssef said nothing in return. Instead, they listened to the warm breeze sweeping across the sand.

"They start out knowing nothing, and they're more afraid than eager. With the first two or three, you think: 'What an opportunity! I can teach them to please me in just the way I want.' But it's no good."

"No." And Youssef shook his head in agreement.

"Because sometimes I want inventiveness, spontaneity. Sometimes I wish we'd gotten seventy-two old whores instead."

"Mohammed! You're treading close to blasphemy."

But Mohammed was animated and didn't hear his brother. "And then they get ideas!"

"Ideas." Youssef knew exactly what his brother meant.

If you spent a century or two deflowering one of your virgins, it gave the other seventy-one time to talk amongst themselves and to read authors like Gloria Steinem and Nadine Gordimer. They started to make demands. They started to say things like: "I'm a person too, and my pleasure counts for something." If one of the virgins spoke to you in that way, and if you raised a hand to strike her so that she would know her proper place, then the other seventy-one would rise up to defend her and they would tear you to shreds. There is nothing more pernicious, either in this world or in the one before, than seventy-two angry virgins.

"It would be better to pay them and be done with it."

Youssef nodded. "I'm inclined to agree with you my brother."

A man was approaching, still far off on the desert road. Mohammed noticed first. He squinted and pointed to the horizon. "It's reverend Jerry!" he shouted.

At first, just a shimmering speck on the hot sand, the man's features grew more distinct as he approached. On Earth, he had been a portly man with fat pinkish cheeks and perfect hair, but all that had changed in the afterlife. With so much time at his disposal, the reverend Jerry had undertaken a vigorous exercise program. He liked to go on long walks. One of his more legendary strolls had taken almost a millennium. And because he loved to walk in the full glare of the heavenly light, his hair was bleached and his face was a leathery brown, with crow's feet around the eyes that came from squinting down desert roads.

Youssef poked at his brother. "It could be worse. We could have suffered his reward."

Mohammed grinned and nodded.

For the reverend Jerry, the afterlife had demanded many adjustments. He had risen to the challenge of a porcine build in a desert clime, but he had struggled with the more troublesome fact that the "Sons of Righteousness" (as the club was called) included men with names like Mohamed and Youssef. But most difficult of all was a little revelation delivered by an Angel of the Lord. It was in the early days when the reverend Jerry had first arrived. He had set out on a desert road, trying to get his bearings, and an Angel of the Lord had offered to show him a good time. With the light high overhead and beating down on Jerry's still pinky flesh, the Angel had said unto him:

"Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. We really need to have a talk about your sexuality."

That was when the Angel of the Lord revealed to the reverend Jerry that, right from the get-go, right from the moment his daddy's sperm fertilized his mommy's ovum, the Lord God Almighty of Heaven and Earth had ordained that the reverend Jerry should have a preference for men. But Jerry had turned his back on the Lord's divine plan by sublimating his desires through an aggressive pursuit of religion and an unnatural love of food. Even in the afterlife, Jerry had continued his sublimating ways. The Lord had rewarded him with seventy-two virgins all his own (since, in his own way, he had been a terrorist of the first rank). They were fresh-faced young men who were eager to please. But Jerry would have none of it. Instead, he poured himself into his exercise regime, and as aeons passed, he developed rippling abs and a tight ass, but that seemed only to make things worse. He had tried to raid Mohammed's and Youssef's stables, but the women had only twittered and sent him on his way.

So the reverend Jerry had consigned himself to wander the desert sands. He had become hard and lean. And so it had gone on for nearly a thousand thousand years, and still he hadn't managed to get laid.

17. BEAUTIFUL LOSERS

YOU KNOW HOW the song goes: "When you're in love with a beautiful woman, it's hard…." That's how I've always felt with Suzanne. I try to hide it, but there are times when my insecurities emerge low in my viscera and refuse to go away. We'll be at a dinner party and I'll glance across the table at her and catch her talking with another man. She'll be bright and animated and wholly engaged. She'll be that sparkling jewel I fell in love with, but she'll be that sparkling jewel with everyone she meets. When my insecurities are at their worst, I wonder to myself: what if she meets another man who wants to hoard that jewel for himself? I tell myself that, as a matter of prudence, I should assume all men are as ill-intentioned as me.

Please don't laugh. I entertain a fantasy. It's not a fantasy really. One thinks of fantasy as an expression of hope or desire, whereas the scenario which plays itself out in my brain is an expression of fear. Please don't laugh, I worry that one day Leonard Cohen will seduce my wife. He'll speak to her with that golden voice and call her his sister of mercy and set his hands between her thighs and move on from there. Suzanne will find herself overwhelmed by his larger-than-life persona, and will surrender her perfect body to his wandering tongue. In my fantasy, I'm looking on the scene from the other side of a window and I am helpless to do anything about it. I feel insignificant and powerless. For her part, Suzanne grows and grows so that by the time she achieves orgasm she's as big as a house and I'm no more than an ant scrabbling at her foundation.

You can imagine my consternation then, when on a Friday afternoon I called Suzanne on my way home from work to ask if there were any groceries I should pick up and she advised me that Leonard Cohen was sitting in our living room. I tried to keep my voice steady as I said: "That's nice, honey," but I'm sure she could hear the quaver.

I've never been able to get from Suzanne the precise details of how Leonard Cohen ended up in our living room. It's not as if we move in the same circles. There he is, a man of international reputation, who has devoted his life to filling the hole in our culture. And there I am, a guy nobody's ever heard of, who trades in secured instruments for a bank. I even look like I trade in secured instruments for a bank—with my blue blazers and striped ties and male pattern baldness. I don't have a poetic bone in my body, though I secretly play the guitar, but only when the house is empty. Suzanne doesn't even know.

Notwithstanding my lack of ties to the arts community, there sat Leonard Cohen in my living room, sipping on a G & T with my Suzanne and talking to her in that gravelly voice of his. Suzanne greeted me at the front door with a peck on the cheek. I whispered: "What the hell is he doing here?" But she shushed me and led me by the hand into the living room. She felt my raw jealousy and met it with a look of annoyance—a subtle twist from the corner of her mouth. "Leonard," she said, "I'd like you to meet my husband, David. David, this is Leonard."

He rose from his seat to shake my hand. No. That makes it sound too smooth, as if his movements were invested with a natural grace. In fact, he heaved himself forward and thrust with his arms; he grunted and wheezed and groaned; and when at last he took hold of my hand, he let a grimace fall across his face. He gave a contorted smile and made a comment about aching in the places where he used to play. From the photos I had seen, I assumed Leonard ("Can I call you Leonard? Lenny?") was a tall man with lanky limbs, and he may well have been such a man in his younger days, but the man before me now was older and stooped and worn out. He had a two or three day growth of grizzle on his face that was grey and seedy, and a trace of spittle had dried in the crease of skin where his jowl began. I noticed, too, that he smelled. It was the smell of somebody who hasn't bathed or changed his clothes in several days—not as pungent as the smell of riding on a subway car with a street person in mid-July—but it was a smell of the same order.

"Leonard was just telling me how he was in Vermont and drove up to Montreal for a reading last night, but had to be in T.O. this morning, so after closing time, he started to drive but couldn't keep his eyes open, so he pulled off the highway and slept in his car 'til dawn, then finished the trip this morning."

By the time she was done with Leonard's triptych, Suzanne was breathless and beautiful. When she drew in a fresh lungful of air, her breasts rose like the swell of a rising tide. She wore a low-cut V-neck sweater, and a strand of her hair had fallen into the cleavage. I watched her breasts rise and fall. I wanted to touch them. I wanted to kiss them. Suzanne sometimes accuses me of having a breast fetish. I laugh and answer that I'm no different than any other straight man on the planet (which raises an interesting semantic question: if everybody does it, is it really a fetish?) Leonard looked up at her and smiled. He was sitting in a wide armchair and Suzanne had settled herself on the left arm so that her buttock brushed against his elbow and her nipples hovered at the level of his eyes. I wanted to pull her sweater up and over her head and lay her down on the Persian carpet and take her there on the living room floor while Leonard watched.

Something must have shown on my face because Suzanne caught it and asked what I was thinking.

"Nothing," but I wasn't convincing.

"Oh, come on."

I would have to improvise. "I was wondering if you've invited our guest to stay for dinner."

Leonard raised his hands in a defensive posture, saying "No, no, no" and inadvertently(?) brushing the back of his left hand past Suzanne's right nipple. "I couldn't possibly impose."

You already have, I thought to myself, but said aloud: "Not at all. Not at all."

Suzanne slid from the arm of the chair and crossed the living room to the door that led to the kitchen. There, she paused and turned and called me to join her. I excused myself and hoped Leonard would overlook the erection that was beginning to press itself against the cloth of my grey trousers. If Leonard had overlooked it, Suzanne certainly hadn't. She nestled up to me and pressed against the bulge in my trousers and wondered if that was for her.

"Well, it sure as hell isn't for him. That much I know."

Suzanne screwed her face into a wry smile and asked how I could be so certain of my desires.

"Jesus!" and I rolled my eyes.

While Suzanne got the wok heated and slid all the ingredients for a stir fry into the hot bowl, I set out three plates on the dining room table along with chop sticks and wine glasses. Leonard had finished his G & T and was floating amiably above his chair now, so I opened a passable bottle of pinot noir, but not our best, since I wasn't yet certain I cared for our guest. I felt myself suspended somewhere amongst all the sounds: the sizzle of hot vegetables and the pop of a cork and the unabashed bubbles of Leonard's farts.

Leonard cleared his throat and when I turned to face him, he smiled and said, almost as if he had written his words somewhere before and had memorized them for just such an occasion: "Women have been exceptionally kind in my old age."

I tried to swallow my jealousy and speak in a magnanimous tone: "Suzanne has a generous heart."

Leonard held his glass of wine by the stem and twirled it ineptly. His hands shook and a drop spilled on the lapel of his jacket. It was then that I saw, for the first time, that this man, this seducer of women, this troubadour without a bed of his own, this gypsy lover, was now a frail old man, with cataracts and shaking hands. I was suddenly ashamed of my insecurity. Maybe Leonard sensed the change in my heart.

"Did your wife tell you how I ended up here?"

"You'd been driving from Montreal?

He smiled. "I had to pee."

"You had to pee? That's how you ended up here? I don't quite see the connection."

"It's a prostate thing." He shifted in the arm chair. "I knew I wasn't gonna make it and happened to be driving through your neighbourhood, so I chose a house at random."

"A house at random," I said in an abstract way. "That's funny. A house at random."

"We're almost ready," Suzanne called from the kitchen.

I pointed to the table in the dinning room. "Why don't we sit down with our glasses and …"

Leonard sloshed a few more drams of his wine on the toe of his left shoe as he hoisted himself to his feet. He stretched and yawned and it was obvious he had shrunk since the days when he first bought his jacket. I expect there was once a time when he could almost have touched the ceiling, but now his shoulders were hunched and drawn up around his ears. The jacket hung loose from his shoulders like the stole of an apostate priest. He slunked into the dining room and struggled to pull out the chair I had shown him. It was even more of a struggle for him to slide the chair in close to the table. Throughout the meal, bits of zucchini and snow pea slid from between his chop sticks and either fell into his lap or slopped onto the floor by his feet.

Suzanne took her place across from me and smiled a brilliant smile that warmed me almost as much as the wine. I don't remember much of the conversation, though I suspect it was smart and snappy. What I do remember is that Suzanne was sparkling and attentive, beaming across the table and passing me secret looks and grinning furtively whenever Leonard had bowed his head to examine the food on his plate. So it didn't really come as a surprise when I felt a foot in my crotch. I started, of course; I've always found it difficult to relax at first when someone else is playing in the parts where I'm afraid to ache. But the toes moved with an exquisite gentleness and I had grown relaxed enough to be anything but relaxed. Suzanne gave me a sly smile and I knew that later in the evening the two of us would have a wonderful time on the Persian carpet in the living room.

By the time we had emptied our plates, I was boasting a painful erection that threatened to poke a hole through my trousers. I was worried Suzanne might ask me to clear the plates, so I prepared myself to deliver a long list of excuses. But my concern never came up. Suzanne pushed back her chair and gathered up the plates and carted them off to the kitchen. For a minute, I thought nothing of the fact that there was still a foot in my crotch gentling drawing me on to dessert. I looked at Leonard who was wiping a few grains of sticky rice from the corner of his mouth. He smiled at me but said nothing. I looked down to my lap and saw there a large foot in a black dress sock. There was a hole in the sock and a big toe sticking through it, and a tuft of hair growing from just above the first joint. Although I knew the foot could belong to only one person, nevertheless, I stared at it as if it was a disembodied foot with a will all its own. I was certain that if I looked under the table, I'd see both of Leonard's legs folded genteelly beneath his chair, one whole, the other, footless.

By the time Suzanne had returned, the foot was back where it belonged. Leonard and I exchanged glances once, then we continued as if nothing had happened. After dinner and a dessert wine, Leonard took his leave. He had never intended to be such an imposition, he said. All he had ever hoped for when he pulled into our driveway was the chance to relieve his ever-shrinking bladder in a washroom that was clean. He was grateful for our hospitality. "The world's a little colder than the one that I was born into," he said. "It's good to know that not everyone has hardened on me."

"Ahhhh," Suzanne said in her most sentimental voice, and she gave him a peck on his rough cheek.

As Leonard Cohen stepped down the front walk to the driveway, Suzanne called after him: "Look at me, Leonard. Look at me one last time."

Leonard turned and waved, and precisely at that instant, a flash went off and blinded him. Suzanne had snapped a photo of him. Later that evening, she printed it off and trimmed it to a nice size and tucked it in the corner of the mirror above our mantel in the living room. Still later that evening, after we each had finished another glass of the pinot noir, we found ourselves naked on the Persian carpet, playing in the places where Leonard ached, while he looked down on us through jealous eyes.

18. LESSONS FROM AN APHASIC PRIEST

THE GAVEL CAME down with a crack, which surprised me, because I thought that courts didn't use real gavels anymore. I thought gavels were symbols of office, for decoration only, like a captain's sextant or a priest's bible. But there it was—a sharp stroke against the wooden desk that sounded in my head like a gunshot. Bang. My first criminal conviction. I had a record.

It was all a set-up of course. Anybody could see it. The judge was as much a part of the system as the rest of them. There were the cops who arrested me. There was the clerk who processed me when I went to the holding cell. There was the Justice of the Peace who set my bail. There was the Legal Aid clerk who handled my application for counsel. She was like all the others—working for the government and wheedling me for more information. And then there was my lawyer—collecting his fee from Legal Aid—in effect, working for the government too, even though he said he worked for me. They were all in it together. It was just a big set-up.

I got arrested for throwing egg bombs at the American consulate. Never heard of an egg bomb? I guess not, seeing as I invented it. When I was a kid, my mom would sit me and my brothers down at the kitchen table to make Easter eggs and we'd start by blowing out the eggs. That was how I'd start to make my egg bombs too. Blow them out. Then I'd seal up the hole in the bottom and pour in my ingredients—ammonium nitrate for one thing—and some other stuff that's none of your business—nothing you couldn't figure out from reading the Antichrist's Cookbook. Then stick in a fuse and pack twelve of them up in a carton like a real dozen eggs and stuff them in the bottom of my knap sack.

What was I protesting? No. No. Not the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. And not the war in Iraq. It was something simpler, something personal. The CIA had hacked into my desktop computer and commandeered my web cam to spy on me. Even though my computer sits on the kitchen table, they were able to use my web cam to take video of me in my bedroom. Doing things. You know. Things of a personal nature. Yeah, I thought you'd ask that—how they could use a web cam to take video of something down the hall, around the corner and through another doorway. It's all very complicated. Involves photon telemetry theory and light difractals. But it's possible. I have a file—a dossier—of all the research. The people from Langley can do it.

Well I wasn't going to stand for it. The CIA was violating my right to privacy and I wanted to send a clear message to those arrogant imperialists that they weren't ever going to subject me to the humiliation of publicly showing video of me in my bedroom … You know. Doing what people do. In bedrooms.

With a woman? You think I should have a co-complainant? A second egg-lobber? A partner in crime? She—

Hand job? What? Throwing an egg? Oh! Oh. I see. You think all they caught me doing in my bedroom was—

You don't think they caught me doing anything? Well now that's just insulting. Of course they hacked into my computer. They leave digital traces you know. I have the proof. Well … I had the proof. Except my external hard drive failed the day before yesterday, which should come as no surprise, since they probably engineered that to happen too.

So there I was, down at the American consulate, lobbing my egg bombs at the windows. Didn't work, as you can see from the fact that I wasn't charged with detonating dangerous explosives, only leaving a black goo running down a couple windows and pooling on the sills, and gumming up the toes of a few pigeons. Bang! A criminal record, and a sentence too.

When it came time to make submissions for sentencing, the lawyer did his best to present me in a good light. He stood there in his thousand dollar suit and waved in my direction and smiled and told the judge how I'm really a nice guy, with a steady job as a clerk in a bookstore, who lives alone in a one bedroom apartment, who keeps mostly to himself and has never done anything like this before in his life. Yup. That's me. A model citizen. Doing my best to stand up for the rights of the little guy.

When my lawyer was done talking, the judge announced that he had made up his mind. He told me to stand up, which I did. Then he glared down at me from that raised up desk of his and gave me a lecture about the importance of social order and respect for the law, how my intent (blowing things up) was grave and reprehensible, but my method (egg bombs) was innocuous enough that it mitigated the circumstances, as did the fact that I didn't have a criminal record, not even a parking ticket. So the judge told me he wasn't going to send me to prison. Instead, I'd have to do two hundred hours of community service. "You have a choice," he said in that venerable voice of his. "You can either help out in an inner-city soup kitchen, or you can read to victims of aphasia."

"What's aphasia?" I asked.

"How the hell should I know? I'm just reading off a list."

That's how I ended up doing volunteer work at the Centre for Incurable Aphasia. On my first day, a middle-aged social worker named Glenda gave me a tour of the place and told me all about aphasia. She hobbled around on stumpy legs, introducing me to their in-house nurse and another social worker and some of the volunteers and a whole raft of gibbering yammering aphasics. She explained to me that aphasia has something to do with the language centres of the brain. Sometimes, when a person has a stroke or an accident or when a person gets Alzheimer's disease, they lose the ability to understand speech or read text. Or they might lose the ability to speak coherently. For some of them, the things they say make sense within their own little world, but make complete nonsense to the rest of us. The other problem with aphasics is that they sometimes don't know where they are, and even for those who do know where they are, things can sometimes get snipey. Suppose you're an aphasic and you get lost? How are you gonna ask for directions? And even if you do get directions, what's to say you'll understand them? I could see right away that this could be a real problem for some people.

At the end of the tour, Glenda introduced me to Robert, only she pronounced it with a funny accent, like she was ordering a bear to row a boat: Row, bear! She said Robert was once a priest who, in addition to speaking his native tongue (which was French) and the language that normal people speak (which is English), he had once been a scholar of dead languages like Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Glenda sighed and raised her hands to the gods and said it was a shame to have lost all that talent. But that's what you get for riding a bicycle along a city street without a helmet. I shook hands with Robert and smiled and said hi, and he took my hand and pumped it like a lumberjack yanking an axe out of a stump. He said he was studious of my knowing and ratcheted fifty as per my domain. I told him that it was all well and good, but I was doubtful, which seemed to make him happy because he broke out in a big grin and slapped me on the back. Glenda was delighted and said she thought the two of us would get on famously. So there you have it. As punishment for throwing egg bombs at the American consulate, I had to go twice a week to the CIA and read to a priest named Robert and take him for walks around the block when the weather was good.

I had no idea what to read to Robert, so Glenda suggested that, because he was a priest, maybe I should start with the bible. I've never been much of one for the bible because mostly it's a big set of coded protocols designed to get inside your head and control your thoughts, so I had to go to the store and buy a brand new one. Turns out the bible is pretty long, so I cheated and started in from the second part of it. I sat myself down with Robert beside a big picture window that looked out onto the street, and there I started to read from the Gospel according to John, whoever he was: "In the beginning was the Word."

Well I couldn't even get out the first sentence without realizing I was reading a load of gibberish. Whoever heard of capitalizing something mid-sentence like that? Big "W". Robert must have thought it was gibberish too because he slapped the open book on my knee and shouted: "Log! Log!" At first, I didn't know what he was getting at. But, even though Glenda had said there was nothing of sense in his speech, I still got the feeling he was telling me something. And sure enough, when I thought about it a little more, I knew exactly what he was saying. The bible was made of paper. It was, when you really think about it, a log, just like a table or a toothpick or a framing stud. He was telling me the bible had come from a log.

Then I thought about it more closely. Thinking closely has always been my downfall. That's what my mother used to tell me, and even the judge got after me for thinking myself into knots over America's web cam hacking capabilities. Still, I can't help myself. It's part of who I am. So I thought about how I was reading from the bible and how it seemed to me like gibberish. But I know it isn't gibberish. Northrop Frye got famous for calling it the great code. And it is. There are all sorts of hidden messages in it. Six six six is only the beginning. It even predicts things like wiretapping and web cams. It's in there. Just read the book of revelation. Well then it occurs to me that maybe the same principle applies to my friend Robert. Maybe it sounds like he's talking gibberish, but he's really giving us a coded message. After all, Robert was a priest, so he'd know all about that way of communicating. Maybe my job is just to listen a little more carefully than all the others. Maybe Robert's been trying to tell us things. Maybe higher powers, like aliens or colophons, have been using Robert as a tool for communicating with us—only they're getting frustrated because most of us are too dull to notice.

I went in twice a week to read to Robert, and sometimes, after I'd read for a bit, we'd have ourselves a walk and talk about religion or politics or national security or mind control. I could tell by the look on his face that he enjoyed our conversations and had deep thoughts all his own. He told me the intractability of gastro-enteritis was more necessity than a truck can hovel—which is a remarkable insight if you look at it in just the right light. Another time he told me that clouds have the inclination of putrefaction unless the carrying agent has formidable constancy—which is absolutely true! And I told him so. Of course, after that remark, the gristle was improbable and so I had no choice but to bring in new reading materials. It's sad to see how a priest can lose his faith, especially when nobody else really understands his situation, so I took it upon myself to show him that at least one person in the world knew where he was coming from.

I started with the Antichrist's Cookbook. I worried that Robert might find it too controversial. I worried that he might get whiplash going from one kind of reading to the other. But he didn't seem to mind. Together, we read about how to make pipe bombs and he smiled and nodded with every new instruction. We went on to a chapter about how to bring down even a big server farm by mounting a denial of service campaign, and that got him excited, especially the part about the host, though I got the impression he took a lot of things too literally. Then we went on to an almost art book called Graffiti as a Record of Social Change that I'd borrowed from the library using a stolen library card (so the government couldn't track my reading habits). It was a coffee table style book with big glossy pictures. Once, Glenda poked her head into the room and was delighted to see how animated our conversations had gotten. I'd talk about how wrapping a nude figure around the corner of a building was a symbolic statement about the submission of the human form to the brutalizing effect of modern architecture. And Robert would come back with an observation about the servile comeuppance of the breast in the remonstrance of the intaglio procedure. Our chats were an inspiration, and when we were done for the day, I couldn't wait for my next visit.

I don't want to give the impression that it was all inspirational. For example, there was one day when Robert had a cold and I found myself utterly disgusted by his sneezing and slobbering. But the most difficult day—for me—came when I looked at Robert and realized how sad his life had become. Here was a man—a priest—who had renounced the priesthood. I know. I know. You could say that falling off a bicycle and getting a brain injury doesn't exactly count as a renunciation of your vows. But that's just the point. Even if it wasn't a conscious renunciation, it could still be an unconscious renunciation. There could have been an unconscious influence that pushed him off his bicycle. Improbable, you say? But consider what he said to me one sunny afternoon in the middle of July: "The compass of our being fastens to the unsettled comforts that trivial reports to the more decided types of our mind." What could be clearer! In those spare but incisive words, I knew that Robert had renounced his vows and that the CIA was conspiring with the Vatican to keep him from breaking his vow of chastity.

"Let's go for our walk," I said, pretending to be casual so I wouldn't attract attention.

"The trees have garbled foil when the poetry gets depended from a blissful toque."

"Don't joke with me," I told him. "It's pretty unequivocal. You need to get laid, and I'm the answer to your prayers." I spoke that last bit in whispers because Glenda was down the hall and was probably in on the plot.

We went to the park across the road, like we usually did, but this time we went clear through the park and out the other side where we caught a cab and rode downtown. Actually, we didn't ride directly downtown. We rode to the west end, got out, caught another cab, rode to the east end, got out, caught another cab, and took that cab downtown. You can never be too careful. It's impossible to tell how organized they are when it comes to keeping an ex-priest from breaking his vow.

Now let's be clear about this. I expect when you picture Robert, you have in mind some stooped-over, grey-haired old geezer of a prune running around in a black robe with a cross dangling from his neck. Nothing could be further from the truth. Robert was a young guy, not much older than me, with nice-looking features notwithstanding a bicycle accident that had played mush with his head. He was slender, with an athletic build, and when we went for our walks, I had trouble keeping up with him. If he had taken the notion, he could have torn away from me and run off in any direction he pleased, and there'd be nothing I could do to prevent him. He was that spry. But he never caused trouble because he was an amiable sort who loved to smile and talk and bask in the company of other people. He had longish blond hair with just a hint of grey at the temples, and when he looked out from beneath the bangs that fell across his eyes, there was kind of a—well, I dunno—some of the lady volunteers had taken a shine to him. So running off to get Robert a bit of action wasn't as outlandish as it sounds.

We found ourselves sitting on a pair of bar stools in a dive of a pub and carrying on a conversation with a pair of lovely ladies named Cyndi and Cindy who seemed to think I was quite the radical intellectual with a friend who was quite the looker. I smiled and raised my pint of bitters while Robert told them he was amiably recused to the disposition of offal sustenanced through our mutual commerce. That was the first time I ever thought maybe Robert was out of his depth. He had insisted on ordering a double of Johnny Walker Red Label, but I was beginning to think he wasn't as experienced a drinker as he let on. I didn't want to be stuck in the position of having to cover for him. If this was to be a lasting friendship, then he'd have to hold his own in situations like this.

It turns out Cyndi and Cindy had an apartment just upstairs from the bar. I thought that was an extraordinary coincidence, but Robert just waved it off, which set me to thinking maybe this priestly friend of mine was a little more worldly than he had first let on. We followed the two lovely ladies upstairs and found that the apartment was mostly a glorified bedroom with an extra closet and a Jacuzzi tub. The bed was enormous. You could have landed a commercial jet liner on it. Just as things were starting to get interesting, there was a sharp rap on the door and loud voices sounded in the hallway. Cyndi was wearing more clothes than the rest of us, so she answered the door. Two police officers burst into the room, big burly guys, probably lovers (I know how these things work). Robert was sitting naked in the middle of the bed, and though he has difficulty talking, he had no difficulty making his wants be known.

One of the police officers referred to some scribbles on an index card that he held in his right hand, then he looked around the room. "We're lookin' for a guy named Robert Ludlum. 'Zat either of you two clowns?"

He stared into my eyes. "'Zat you?"

I shook my head.

Then he stared at Robert. "How 'bout you?"

Robert made wild motions above his head while his equipment wobbled around in circles. "Bazookas rip the tartan off a pleck and plith!"

"Right."

Well, as you can imagine, things got worse before they got better. Turns out the CIA doesn't like it when you take their patients out to get laid. Turns out they're tight with the police, too. The upshot was: I couldn't spend any more time with Robert—which is upsetting because he had so many important things to tell me. And the other thing, of course, was that I got arrested again. When it came up for trial, they weren't as lenient with the so-called kidnapping as they'd been with my egg-bombing episode. I got public service again, only this time I had to work with seniors at an Alzheimer's unit. They don't have so much to say—not like the aphasic priests.

19. THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING ZOMBIE

I HAD FORGOTTEN to take my meds again. I had an "Oh shit" sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach when I found a full bottle of pills on the window sill above the kitchen sink and realized a whole month had passed me by and still I hadn't opened it, not even once. That explains why I found myself back in the hospital doing the old drill: morning exercises in floppy slippers, group therapy with sobbing anorexic girls, pleasant one-on-ones with nurses who tried to look interested in all my boring crap even though I'd caught them checking their watches, and the arts and crafts time where I used child-safe scissors to cut out pictures of emaciated models while I drifted off into my mid-afternoon stupor, and then, to round out another lovely day, a chat with my psychiatrist, Dr. Melvin, a gaunt man with pale complexion and black hair whose invitation to join him in his office never failed to fill me with a weird foreboding calm, the way I imagined it feels for death row inmates who've gotten the first injection—the one that relaxes them—and even though they know the next injection will kill them, can't help but relax. I figured it'd be a big mistake to let down my guard while I was having a session with Dr. M., although I couldn't say for sure what would happen if I dozed or daydreamed or gave him any other excuse to step out from behind that big pretentious desk of his and come closer to me. It was just a gut feeling I had, a dark knot that twisted low in my bowels and left me feeling like I might dump everything into my underwear.

I wasn't the only one who felt this way. There was j.d., too, the bi-polar chick from two rooms down who got admitted by her boyfriend because she thought she belonged on "Dancing With The Stars" and so stayed outside dancing all night every night hoping aliens would whisk her up and away into the night sky. (Nobody told her the show title wasn't literal.) She had the same sense of Dr. M., although I didn't need her opinion to back me up; all I had to do was compare the way j.d. looked from one session to the next. Every day she left his office looking a little more flat, with eyes a little more sunken and back a little more stooped, folding in on herself like a doll that's lost all its stuffing. She'd flop like a Raggedy Anne over a chair, then bitch about how she couldn't smoke in her own room and how the food tastes like mud with little chunks of dog turd stirred in to add spice and how her sessions with Dr. M. were making her feel worse instead of better. We'd walk together up and down the hallways of the ward, though walk may be an exaggeration, more like a shuffle, the kind of back and forth you'd expect from a couple of sleepwalkers. And we'd talk as we went, though talk may be an exaggeration too, more like a grunt or a nod, the kind of slo-mo jibber jabber you'd expect from people halfway to the funeral parlour.

The next day j.d. was gone—no good-bye, no nothing. I asked at the nursing station where she'd gone, but it was a new girl on duty and she looked at me like I had rocks in my head, or nothing there at all, and shrugged and said she'd never heard of anybody named j.d.

"The girl in room 1313," I shouted.

The nurse didn't have a clue. There was no file out for a j.d. It's like she never existed. The nurse said housekeeping was cleaning things up in 1313 to make space for a woman who tried to kill herself by swallowing a pound of table salt. "You'd be amazed how much damage a pound of table salt can do," she said. "Sucks the life right outta you."

I shuffled my way down to room 1313 to see for myself, moping along, head bowed, muttering absently as I went. I hovered near the entrance to the room while the woman from housekeeping—a stout girl with big hips—breezed around the room singing a song and waving her duster like it was a magic wand and she was the housekeeping fairy. She had a big metal cart with separate places to stuff dirty laundry and garbage, and underneath was a stash of cleaning products. I was standing just outside the room when she left, pushing the cart in front of her as she moved on to room 1315 where John the wolf man slept. John wasn't really a wolf man; he had a schizoid personality disorder and liked to howl at the moon and lick his own genitals. Everybody admired his flexibility but wanted to help him channel it into something more sanitary like yoga. As the housekeeper trundled by me in her cloud of antiseptic smells, I glimpsed the bed sheets stuffed into the receptacle and noticed a large red stain, still wet and glistening beneath the fluorescent lights. Was it juice? Or nail polish? Blood?

My brain went wild with speculations, like piranhas around a floating carcass. Dr. M.'s been after me about that one—the habit of catastrophizing is what he calls it—where I take some insignificant event in my life and then explode it into an apocalyptic end-of-the-world scenario, or take something random and interpret it as if it carries special meaning—like when I sometimes see a look in somebody's eye and wonder what it was for. Was it a look of disgust or annoyance? Did I do something to deserve the look? Was there something I did by accident that ended up offending them? Will they ever speak to me again? Will I be able to keep them from suing me? Afterward, when I sort it all out, I discover that they had a speck of dust in their eye, and far from giving me a look, didn't even know I was there. But this was different. There was most definitely a red stain on the sheet and I was pretty sure it was a clue something bad had happened to j.d. There was nothing for me to do but to follow the housekeeping fairy around and look for a chance to steal the stained bed sheet from her cart when she wasn't looking. I'd need it as evidence.

My chance didn't come right away because John the wolf man's room was too close to the nursing station where the new girl sat and watched every move I made. I had to wait until the housekeeper was around the other side of the nursing station and half way down the far hall before I made my move. She had parked her cart outside the room of Alison Spendalotte, a bipolar mother of seven who had maxed out her credit cards trying to buy mosquito netting for every child in the world. When the housekeeper went into the bathroom to scrub the toilet, I reached in for the stained sheet, but it was gone. Nothing. Just pillow cases and towels. With all the sheets missing, there must've been a cover up somewhere.

Later in the afternoon, I met with Dr. M. He stood tall behind his desk and motioned me to enter and take a chair. The pale complexion, the dark hair, the ruddy cheeks and lips, all of it had a disturbing effect on my imagination. Notwithstanding the warning sirens that went off inside my head, I found myself sharing with him my concerns, but more in a general way. I said how I was going to miss j.d. because we'd gotten along well together, and how it bothered me that she left without saying good-bye, but I held back when it came to the more suspicious things I'd seen, what with the housekeeping lady and the bloodied sheet and the new nurse who'd never heard of j.d. After all, I didn't want Dr. M. to think I was paranoid or anything. Even so, Dr. M. screwed up his face in a cloudy look that made me feel uncomfortable, and he asked who I was talking about.

"j.d.," I said.

"Who's j.d.?" he said.

"You know. The girl in 1313."

"Right. Right." And he started scribbling in his notebook.

Along one of the walls is a couch, more like one of those low tables that physiotherapists use—only cushier. Dr. M. had me stretch out on the couch with my back pressed to the cold vinyl and my gut exposed to the tiled ceiling. He said he wanted to hypnotize me. I was worried about what I'd say to him while I was under. I didn't want Dr. M. to know what I was really thinking, especially about the housekeeper with that satisfied smile of hers and those well-fed hips that went wobble wobble behind her cart. But I couldn't come up with a good excuse not to go under, so pretty soon I found myself drifting off to the mellifluous tone of Dr. M.'s voice as it described a sandy beach with water licking my toes and a breeze whispering through my hair.

Of course I can't remember what I said or where I went while I was hypnotized. That's part of the deal. I woke up to the sound of Dr. M. clapping his hand. As I swung around to sit upright, I asked if he'd gotten anything out of me, but he only smiled and nodded and kept his mouth shut. Then something strange happened. He kind of coughed on something—maybe choked a bit or puked inside his mouth. There was a chuff chuff sound that he muffled by whipping out a white handkerchief and clamping it over his mouth. When he drew the handkerchief away from his mouth, I saw that his lips were ruddy and bright—too ruddy, too bright. He crumpled the handkerchief into a ball and threw it to one side of his desk and there, in amongst the folds of the white cloth, I thought I could see spatters of red. I thought it meant something, like a clue in a mystery novel. All I had to do was stick it together with all the other clues and they would coalesce into some overarching explanation, but I was feeling light-headed and nothing came to mind.

By then, the session was over and it was time for me to go back to my room. As I shuffled down the hall, I could feel it in my back, that feeling like a thousand pounds of rocks was bearing down on me, bending me over, stooping me low, grinding me down. And there was another feeling too, a feeling in my face, like all the skin was drooping off my cheek bones and sagging into bulldog jowls. It seemed to take the rest of the afternoon for me to make it to my room, that's how slow everything was moving, and when the new nurse waved from the nursing station and said hi, all I could manage in return was a guttural grunt, like a sleepwalking pig. That was when I realized they'd finally gotten to me. Soon I'd be like all the rest of them: wandering around in a fog, one foot in front of the other, moaning and groaning under my breath, not caring whether I was alive or dead.

20. GRIEFBOT INC.

PROJECT: HUGHES, EDWARD

Interview: 0031957 (Calibration)

Interviewer: Ginsberg, Alan

So ya, man. Name? Hughes. Ya. Ted. So ya, man, I worked on the GB20 design team. You owe me. You owe me big time. In fact, you guys should be on your knees kissing the ground we walk on. We hit a veracity factor—nine point seven—unheard of. Most people—even the pros—most of them couldn't tell the difference. The new bot could lie, it could laugh at a private joke, break out in a sweat under pressure. We made a bot with Asperger's Syndrome, another one with social anxiety disorder that would fall down and have a panic attack. We even did a bot that would tic under stress. Annoying as all hell, but that's what the loved one wanted.

Sorry. What? I'm talking too fast? Whatchya watchin'? Some video of me. Oh, you're doing a voice calibration. How do I sound? You know, it might be easier if you filtered the audio. There's a lot of ambient noise in that clip. I once had a client—widow of a NASCAR driver who'd been killed in a pile-up.

Interruptive speech pattern? Ya. Didn't they tell you? I'm ADHD. When I was a kid, my mother used to—

The NASCAR driver? Oh ya, sorry. In the beta version of his griefbot, they forgot to filter the audio when they were seeding the voice module—they used sampled sounds back then instead of independent voice generators. Problem was: all our sampled clips came from interviews he'd given to the sports networks or clips from his pit crew. All of it was from the race track, so it had the sound of cars in the background. No matter what he said, you could hear it there just on the threshold.

When we did the beta testing, we used the Romantic Dinner B scenario—no, no—the one with the candles—the violinist? —ya—and the guy who comes to the table with roses. So we invite the widow in for a test drive and there she is, sitting across from her griefbot, holding its hand, looking first into the candlelight, then into its optics. Then it tells her how beautiful she looks. Well she just about cancelled the contract on the spot. She had pretty good hearing and when it spoke, she could pick up the ambient engine sounds underneath the words.

Ya. Ya. I was there from the beginning, back when Microserf was diversifying and ended up in the funeral business. For a while, our product was too good. Our veracity factor got so high we were freaking out some of the love ones. Either that or sometimes it kept them from grieving properly. There was one time we got sued for misrepresentation because our product was so realistic the loved one didn't want to believe the deceased was really gone. Can't call it a griefbot if keeps the client from grieving. Kind of undermines the whole project. You've been in the business a while, so you know how it is.

After that, we lowered the veracity factor on purpose. Kept it hovering around nine point five. Made the hair a little too coarse. Didn't apply the final softening agent to the epidermis; that way, under full light, the griefbots had a kind of plasticky sheen to them. By skimping on a few of the finishing touches, the loved ones would never be under any illusions. They'd get all the comfort of a full-featured griefbot without the problem of denial. Plus we added another precaution: at appropriate intervals, the griefbot was programmed to remind the loved one that it was only a machine—a complex and intelligent machine—but a machine just the same.

Me? I was in calibration too. Just like you. Only I handled cognition. I was a coordinator, so I drew together all the programming for movement, speech, auditory and written comprehension, spatial-temporal perception, emotion simulation, self-awareness, the whole bucket of bolts. It was something to be proud of, all that pioneering work I was involved with.

Mind passing me that glass of water there? Flapping the mouth like this makes a guy thirsty. You like that, eh? We were the one's developed that idea. It's called the human response factor (HRF). Do they still call it that? Or is it like everything else nowadays—changing its name every other year so people will want to buy the latest even though it's no different than what they were selling a decade ago? Ah geez but I'm showing my age.

You've got what? A beta test to do? Which one? Ah … Romantic Dinner C. Dinner served in a hotel suite and a segue to sex. That's just what you'd expect from Sylvia. For her, it was never about the sex—more about the physicality of it all. She was a real touchy-feely kind of woman. Me? I was more of a talker.

You do? You mean it's set up right now? Lead the way. Hey, you've really got things done up nice. A lot nicer than when I was working here. In through those doors? She's waiting for me just through those doors? Okay. Guess I'll see you for the debriefing. Dinner and sex? Debriefing? Get it? Geez. I see they aren't hiring for sense of humour.

Sylvia!

You look lovely tonight.

It's me—Ted—and I'm still dead. Don't, Sylvia. Ah, geez. Don't get angry. Of course I'm still an idiot. I was programmed for insensitivity. Please don't throw the dinner rolls at me. Why? Why? Because if they didn't program for insensitivity, it wouldn't be me, now would it? No. Not the wine. Don't throw wine in my face. I'm a beta version. They haven't put the sealant on yet. I might short out. Ah, geez. You never listen. You just never—Don't! Don't storm out! It's me should be angry at you. Sit down! Don't! Don't! Ah, geez. There she goes. Just like old times.

So now what do I do? Alan? You there? Alan? There's a steak getting cold here. May as well have yourself a good meal while we do our debriefing. Whaddya mean I should wait and see what happens? You think this'll turn into a makeup sex scenario. Oh really? Well I've got some news for you that may come as a surprise. I've been running my internal diagnostics while I'm sitting here and guess what? Somebody forgot to initialize the sexual response. That's right. I'm impotent! Sylvia and me, we couldn't have makeup sex tonight if we wanted to.

21. BOUNDARIES

I SET OUT on my morning walk with the dog—the same routine as always (what other kind of routine is there?)—pee on the front lawn by the road (the dog, not me), first by the granite boulder on the east side of the lot, then by the pole that supports the basketball hoop on the west side of the lot. Up went the hind leg, then out came a stream of deep yellow fluid. The dog is a standard poodle, the runt of the litter and smaller than you'd expect for a standard poodle. I call him a substandard. When we brought him home last year, the kids named him Brutus. In fact it was James who named him. Jessica was barely talking then. The most she could manage was a slurred "Bus, Bus."

As Brutus was finishing his second whiz, Mrs. Karsh rounded the corner in her power-walking, hip-swiveling strut, while Goldie, her half blind retriever, drew out the retractable lead to its full twenty-five feet. Ah … the resplendent Mrs. Karsh. Our paths often cross as we take our dogs for their morning strolls. She has a perfect hour glass figure, full firm breasts, and a perpetually burnished skin, the sort of skin you can only get from a basement tanning bed. I give her ten years to her first round of chemo, but in the meantime, she's a pleasure to behold.

Yes, I confess I have a wandering eye, and Monica knows it. There are times when she challenges me, says that thinking about it is no different than doing it. I challenge her right back and ask where the hell she ever got such a crazy idea. She says it's in the Bible, which I guess is true, but that's no excuse. What the hell good does it do to make us feel guilty about the things we do when it's in our nature to do them? We might as well tell zookeepers to put down tigers because they eat meat. There are certain animal impulses at the core of our being and that's the end of it. The fact is: I'm happy being married to Monica. We have a fine life here with our home and our two children and our dog named Brutus. Besides which, things in the bedroom are pretty spicy if you know what I mean. And as lovely as Mrs. Karsh might seem when she's wiggling and bouncing her way towards me, the instant she opens her mouth, it spoils the effect. The woman's voice sounds like her name: Karsh, a shrill nasal screech, sucked way back into her head like a duck quacking in an echo chamber while an eagle tears it to shreds. I could stumble upon her reclined on a mound of cushions dressed in a diaphanous nightie surrounded by scented candles bathed in soft music and all it would take is a single syllable from her lips. The effect would be instantaneous. A cold shower wouldn't have half the shrivel quotient. I'd shrink to the size of a cold noodle. Quite apart from the tone of her voice, there's the quality of the content—yokel gossip that she tries to pass off as urbane chatter. It's always speculative and specious, wondering what the neighbours are doing, then drawing conclusions even though she has no more grasp of the facts than her dog.

While Goldie and Brutus sniffed each other up the anus like a sixty-nine on a carousel, Mrs. Karsh yakked about the neighbours three doors down, how they were going on a trip to Cozumel even though he had just been laid off and she was supporting a sister in London who was … well … you know (and she twirled a finger around her temple), not all there, plus they had a son, Jeffrey, who was about to leave for university, going through for computer science or urban geography or something like that. She was yakking about all this, and I was trying my best not to wince, when Grayson pulled up in a new BMW, pulled up right beside the two of us, pulled up close to the curb but facing the wrong way around like he was a rebel or a teenager. As Grayson climbed out and stepped just shy of an ancient turd that Brutus had laid on the lawn weeks ago, Mrs. Karsh stepped backwards, taking her leave, saying she and Goldie had a schedule to keep, but she never withdrew beyond earshot, hoping to mine enough nuggets to fuel her next conversation.

Grayson said he'd brought Helga. He stepped to the passenger side and, with a gallant flourish, pulled open the door to a dark-haired woman who eased her way out of the car. Grayson spoke as if I should know all about Helga, but until that minute, I had never gotten the faintest whiff of her existence. The woman stepped up onto the curb and smiled and offered a hand. She was a squat Filipino, young, but not so young she couldn't be a mother with five or ten kids. Her hair was dark and she wore it long, and she had the habit of cocking her head to one side so the hair fell across one of her eyes.

"This is Helga," Grayson said.

"Oh."

From the terse response and what was probably a puzzled expression, Grayon saw that I had no idea who Helga was. "Irene said you'd be expecting her."

I shrugged.

"Maybe she only spoke to Monica."

I motioned them to follow me across the front lawn. Monica was in the kitchen cleaning the cappuccino machine. If they were lucky, Monica might be done enough they could each have one—a cappuccino that is.

"Helga's our nanny," Grayson explained. "I thought you knew."

I shook my head.

"Well, our kids are older now and don't really need a nanny any more, but Helga's been such a good worker. You know how it is. We don't wanna just throw her out, two weeks' notice, so long, good luck, piss off. Seems kinda harsh. We were hoping we could find a good employer for her. I guess it came up in conversation between Irene and Monica and, well, here we are."

It took me off my guard because Monica and I had never talked about getting a nanny for the children. It seemed too Peter Pannish or Mary Poppinsy. But lots of other neighbours had a nanny. Monica had exhausted her parental leave and so we'd have to think of something to do with the children.

Helga seemed nice enough, and when we brought the children into the kitchen where she was sitting with her cappuccino, they took to her right away. She had a magnetic appeal that drew the two of them straight into her arms.

Later in the evening, after we'd tucked the children into their beds and sang them good-night songs, we talked about it. Reviewing our finances, it seemed we had enough money for a nanny. We had the space, too, with a guest room on the main floor that would do nicely for her apartment. There wasn't a bathroom on the main floor, but we could install one. We'd been planning to do a bathroom addition for a couple years anyways and this would give us just the push we needed to get the job done. In the meantime, Helga could use the upstairs bathroom with everyone else. It would be great! It would save us time since we wouldn't need to make a twice daily run to the daycare centre. When the kids were napping, she could do some cleaning, maybe even some laundry. Those were reasons that appealed to Monica, and I nodded. Secretly, though, I found another reason to hire a nanny: I could rub Mrs. Karsh's nose in it; she was always holding herself out as oh-so-superior in her ways and manners and whenever we met on our dog walks, she managed one way or another to remind me that the Karsh's had a nanny and the Hamblyn's didn't. It would give me boundless satisfaction to tell her that we did, in fact, have a nanny, and not from an agency either. A personal recommendation."

The only thing that remained was the paperwork, which turned out to be more complicated than I had expected. In the first place, Helga was Filipino and not a landed immigrant. The only way she could stay in the country was on a work visa, and if she was losing her job with Grayson and Irene, then I had to go down to the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration to fill out forms and swear affidavits assuring the powers that be that we would guarantee Helga's employment, otherwise they'd put her on a slow boat to Manila and that would be the end of it. In the second place, Monica and I had to register as employers so we could do source deductions and remittances to the government. Calculating taxes taxed my brain. Fortunately Monica has a head for numbers and she kept everything straight on the fancy schmancy spreadsheets she kept at work.

After two weeks, Helga was living in the downstairs guest room and we were having discussions with an interior designer about the new bathroom. Monica had clear ideas about what she didn't want, but not so clear ideas about what she did want. That meant the renovations went slowly. Drawings went back and forth and back again. Paint chips became the subject of heated discussions at the dinner table. Monica was forever emailing links to web sites showing bright photos of fluffy towels and brushed nickel taps and gleaming white toilet bowls. Contractors dropped by in the early evening with heavy metal tape measures clipped to their belts, tapping walls and rubbing chins, then scribbling quotes on the back of grimy business cards.

Meanwhile, we told Helga that she was to use our bathroom upstairs. After all, she was now part of the family and should feel free to come and go as she pleased. We didn't want to be rich white asshole employers like some of the neighbours we'd heard about who forced their nannies to double up as unpaid baby sitters on the weekend, or made them buy their own food and cook it on a hotplate, or made them sleep in an unheated garret above the garage. Helga was a serious woman who didn't show much emotion and kept to herself, but she worked hard; and if the children didn't warm up to her in a fuzzy cuddly way, at least they respected her and did as they were told.

Helga woke up every day at five o'clock and had the kitchen ready for breakfast. We didn't need an alarm clock anymore. We woke up to the sound of pots and pans clattering in the kitchen, then the pop and sizzle of bacon grease; there was the smell of the bacon mixed with eggs and toast rising up the stairwell and under our bedroom door. We'd go to the bathroom then and throw on our housecoats and trundle downstairs where we'd find Helga already feeding the children. It was such a pleasure—and such a change from the frantic scramble that had typified our lives. After we had left for work, Helga would clean up the kitchen while the children played, then she'd take them out in the stroller for a long walk with Brutus.

After a couple months, we found ourselves settling into a pleasant routine. The children seemed happy. Helga had made the guest room her own. And we had found a contractor to do the new bathroom for us. It was about then that I had my first intimation that something might be a little off. Late one evening, as we were getting ready for bed, Monica raised a new issue: "Have you noticed about Helga?"

"Noticed what?"

"I've been keeping track."

"She's not stealing, is she?"

"No. Nothing like that." Monica had pulled on a flannel nightgown. It was officially autumn now and nights were getting colder. "I've been tracking her bathroom usage."

"Is she using too much toilet paper?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Monica started to brush her hair at the night table. "The opposite in fact."

"She's not using enough toilet paper? I don't think we're supposed to get that involved in her life."

"No. What I'm trying to say is: I don't think she's using the bathroom."

"Well then where the hell is she doing her business?"

James had come to Monica earlier in the evening, curled up in her lap for a bedtime story, and when the story was done, he leaned in close to Monica's ear and whispered that he had a secret. He was awkward and halting, and even when Monica coaxed him to speak, she couldn't understand half of what he said. It was something to do with Helga. James had seen her do something, but he didn't want to say what. It was almost as if he felt guilty, as if sharing his secret was an act of betrayal. It had happened in the kitchen. That's where he'd seen it. He was supposed to be in his room having his afternoon nap, but he was a big boy now—almost four years old—and didn't feel like taking naps much anymore. Most of the time now, he just lay there with his eyes open, looking around the room and having conversations with all the things he saw. He'd gotten out of bed and padded downstairs, walking on tiptoe in sock feet, gliding across the smooth tiles without making a sound. He'd walked into the kitchen and found Helga standing on a chair with her jeans around her ankles. In fact, she wasn't standing. James had demonstrated to his mother how he had found Helga when he stepped into the kitchen that afternoon. It was more of a squat so that she hovered above the kitchen sink.

As we settled onto the bed, Monica said: "Alan, our nanny is using our kitchen sink for a toilet."

"Oh, come on. You're not going to believe that from James, are you? He's only three. He still has imaginary friends. And you couldn't understand most of what he was saying anyways."

"I think you should confront her."

"What?"

"Point blank. Just ask her. Have you been using the kitchen sink to uh … you know?"

"I'm not going to ask her that."

It's one thing to say you're not going to do something, but quite another thing to actually go ahead and not do it. That's how it is when dealing with Monica. She has this stern way of looking at me and there's always the implied threat of withholding: if I'm going to not do something, then she's going to not do something too. It was an impossible situation, so I relented and promised to confront Helga the following evening as soon as I got home from work.

It turns out that confronting somebody about her habits of elimination is harder than it sounds. I stood in the kitchen doorway, watching as she fed Jessica spoonfuls of a yellow-green mush, and hoping for an opening. Helga made cooing sounds and smiling baby talk, and even mimicked an airplane as she dropped her payload on Jessica's tongue.

"Helga?"

She looked up at me from her crouched position by the high chair.

"Helga, I was wondering if I could have a word with you."

She stood. There was a worried expression on her face. I cleared my throat and hemmed and hawed and made a few incoherent comments about how the children seemed to have taken to her. As I stumbled along, I saw how her expression shifted from worry to fear. Shit! That's not what I wanted. I trashed my planned talk and, instead, told her how pleased we were and wanted her to know that if there were any concerns—anything at all—she should feel free to come speak to either one of us. Helga nodded—yes, yes—then crouched again and shoveled another spoonful of mush into Jessica's mouth.

It was the weekend, so I took Brutus for a walk and let Helga go off with her nanny friends to whatever place nannies go when they're not tending to children and walking dogs. Brutus followed the same routine as always (what other kind is there?), peeing on the granite boulder on the east side of the lot, then drifting to the west side of the lot and peeing on the pole that holds up the basketball hoop. He'd already killed most of the grass around the base of the pole, but I don't suppose that matters; no amount of grass is going to hide the fact that a basketball hoop on the lawn by a driveway is an act of aesthetic sabotage. The smell of piss gives it credibility. Just as the last dribble fell to the grass, the redoubtable Mrs. Karsh swept into view. I tried to pretend I hadn't noticed her, but our eyes had already met, so it was too late. I eased Brutus to the end of the driveway and waited for Mrs. Karsh to wiggle and bounce her way up to us.

"I need to have a word with you." She spoke in a loud nasal voice that people could hear from one end of the street to the other.

Brutus and Goldie did their usual dance, sniffing each other up the ass and getting their leashes tied in a knot. Once we had them untangled, Goldie crumpled in a heap on the grass not far from the pole and the puddle of piss.

"I hafta tell you," she said. She assumed an officious manner which reminded me of a civil servant. "The other day—was it Tuesday or Wednesday?—I forget—been meaning to tell you—I saw something. I thought you should know. Something of concern. I was in the park with Goldie. You know the one? Hedgerow Place? Near the community centre? So I was in the park with Goldie. You know how they have that stand of trees in the middle with all the bushes and overgrown weeds? You know the clump I'm talkin' about? The one the kids like to play hide and seek in? Yeah, you know the one I'm talkin' about. Well on Tuesday or Wednesday Goldie and I were walking there between the clump of trees and all those swing sets, and I look over and there, in the bushes so you could hardly see, there was your nanny. Whatsername? Olga?"

"Helga."

"Helga. Yeah, Helga. There she is in the bushes with her pants down, squatting against a tree."

It was hard to know how to read Mrs. Karsh. She behaved like all she wanted was to help, but I knew her better than that and suspected that she was secretly gloating. We hadn't used an agency, so we were getting what we deserved. "Huh!" I said, pretending that nannies pee in bushes all the time. "Wonder why she'd do that?"

"She's a pervert. That's why."

"Well … let's not jump to conclusions."

"Pardon me?" Her righteousness made me feel feeble. "I thought your children would come first."

"Yes, of course."

"You should fire her."

I think, in her mind, I was keeping a house for degenerates, a safe haven for deviant foreigners, and if I didn't act in a decisive and immediate way, then I was as much a degenerate as my nanny. I could be wrong; Mrs. Karsh could have been thinking about the weather. But that was the impression I got as I watched Goldie sniff at the piss on the grass, then raise a hind leg and lick his own penis.

22. MEAT

EVERY YEAR, OUR street hosts a neighbourhood barbeque. We close off the cul-de-sac end of the street—down by the Jeffries—and set up two or three big grills for the meat. There's a clown and games and face-painting for the kids, and there's beer and fifty-fifty draws and Alice Kramden's craft table for the grown-ups. At the very top of the street, before you go down into the cul-de-sac, we set up a pair of big outdoor speakers and we blast oldies music into the cool evening air. Later on, when things get dark, we light a bunch of fireworks and give the kids sparklers, and they buzz around the street pretending they're fireflies. By then, all the grownups have drunk enough beer and mojitos that the fireworks look twice as brilliant as they did the year before and people who wouldn't look sideways at you in the full light of day are hugging you and slapping you on the back and reminiscing about the good old days and even—in one or two surprising instances—wiping a tear from the corner of a wistful eye.

I was kind of hoping Lenny and Laverne would come back for this year's party. Until a few weeks ago, Lenny and Laverne were my next door neighbours on the cul-de-sac side of my house. Then, without warning, they moved away. I never did get the full story. Even at that, I probably know more than I should. In a bold moment, I mentioned it to Squiggy who was Lenny's neighbour on the other side. Squiggy was supervising the grills because he had scored a gross of ground chuck which his wife, Shirley, had hand-rolled into oversized hamburger patties. As Squiggy slapped an oozing slab of meat onto my bun, he said, "Yeah, dunno where Lenny'd be. But you know Lenny. Always somethin' eatin' away at 'im." I moved on to the condiments while Squiggy served the woman in line behind me, Dr. Tyson-Holyfield, Ph.D, the women's studies professor who hooked on weekends to pay for her quarterly junket to the Riviera.

I thought about what Squiggy said, and he was dead right. Sometimes Lenny let things get to him in ways that were unhealthy. I'll never forget that evening when I stumbled on my son, James, sitting at our computer laughing away to himself. Whenever we hear that kind of laughter, Monica and I worry that James has found a new porn site, but in this case that wasn't it at all. James had found www.lennyssmellymeatsite.com. At some point, Squiggy must have done something to piss off Lenny. According to the web site, Squiggy had the nasty habit of operating his weed whacker while under the influence (WWWUI), and more than once he had inflicted life-threatening injuries on poor Lenny's prize-winning rose bushes. In frustration, Lenny cast about for a way to punish his next door neighbour. The answer came to him—so the web site claimed—as he was sitting down to a 16 oz. sirloin at Smitty's Giant Steak House. Why not drop a raw flank steak between the slats in Squiggy's deck, then track the steak's decomposition online? He could post daily updates about discolouration and maggots. If he was lucky, he might even capture video of Squiggy standing on his deck sniffing, then calling inside to Shirley to ask if she smelled anything funny. Lenny had posted everything online—from buying the meat, to rigging up his webcam, to the arrival of maggots. Lenny didn't post Squiggy's name, but I could tell it was Squiggy's place by the hose rack beside the deck; Squiggy always left his garden hose in a heap because he was too hammered to wind it up in a proper roll.

The next morning, I had stomped over to Lenny's house and barged in on him while he was working his way through a big package of back bacon that he'd bought from Wal-Fart. He asked if I wanted any, but I shook my head. I was furious and hadn't felt like eating any breakfast. All I wanted to do was to say my piece. I smile now as I think of how passionate I'd been. I'd planted my feet on the linoleum and squared my shoulders and stared Lenny straight in the eyes and I told him I'd found his web site and I thought he was an idiot. It was cruel to stink up Squiggy's deck. They were supposed to be best friends. If they couldn't make it work, what hope was there for the rest of us? I remember now the look of sorrow that had passed across Lenny's face. He agreed that it wasn't the most neighbourly thing he'd ever done and promised to go next door and make things right just as soon as he'd finished his sausages.

It was turning into a lovely evening. The day had been a scorcher, but cooler air was moving through, and smoke from Squiggy's grill was keeping the mosquitoes at a safe distance. Monica bought a necklace from Alice Kramden's jewelry table and the two of them were having a friendly debate about whether or not the CAS would take away your kids if you hog tied them while you took a nap in the afternoon. Meanwhile, James and Jessica (not hog tied) were playing well past their bed time in one of those inflatable jumping castles down on the Jeffries' front lawn. I did my best to watch the two of them, but the women's studies professor who hooked on weekends was quizzing me about Ricardo Pimento, who lived two doors down. Ricardo was a hard luck case. Just to look at them, you'd think the Pimentos had it all—new house, new car, new boobs. You'd think Ricardo was a man at the top of his game, the pinnacle of his career, the height of success. And yet for all the trappings, Ricardo had grown sullen. A gloom had settled over his house. I could be outside mowing my lawn, whistling in the sunshine, and there he'd be with his umbrella open, standing to his ankles in mud puddles. As you'd expect in such a case, Ricardo lost most of his friends, he lost his job, and his wife started an affair with Dr. Tyson-Holyfield (the husband), the professor of social psychology who had written a book about the mating rituals of guinea fowl. Me and some of the other boys on the block took Ricardo out for drinks and tried to talk some sense into him. We suggested he start an affair of his own, kind of even the score. We suggested he have an affair with Tyson-Holyfield's wife, the women's studies professor who hooked on weekends, but that only got him moaning worse than ever. "How's that supposed to even the score?" he asked. "My wife's gettin' hers for free and I'd have to pay." The man had a point, so we all drank in silence and Ricardo got more and more despondent. Then, last month, he hit bottom and decided to end it all. His wife, Olive, found him in the garage, sitting in his new car, with one end of the vacuum cleaner hose duct taped to the tail pipe and the other end stuck through the rear window. There was a problem though: his new car was a Toyota Prius. The twit had tried to give himself carbon monoxide poisoning in hybrid car. Every time the CO levels rose, the engine shut off. He woke up to the sound of his wife screaming at him, calling him a fucking idiot, and ordering him never again to set foot in the house. Since then, he'd been camping out in the ravine, living off the plates of leftovers that me and some of the other boys took turns setting out on our back porches. We felt an obligation; it could've happened to any one of us.

Mrs. Dr. Tyson-Holyfield, Ph.D, listened sympathetically as I gave her the low-down on Ricardo Pimento, though I left out the part about how me and the boys had suggested Ricardo have an affair with her. She said she hadn't realized how bad things had gotten for Ricardo. I tore another chunk from my hamburger. Damn, but this was good meat! I held the burger high overhead with my right hand and pointed at it with my left hand and shouted to Squiggy. But just then the speakers started blaring the purple people eater song and there was a flare from the grill, so Squiggy couldn't hear my compliment.

I sidled up to Squiggy and helped him flip burgers and warm buns. He held a flipper in his right hand and a Corona in his left hand. There were two empty bottles on the ground between the grills, but he insisted that most of the beer had ended up on the burgers for extra flavour. He wore one of those stupid chef hats flopped over to one side of his head and he wore one of those stupid chef aprons draped over his neck and hanging loose down the front with stupid writing on it ("How would you like me to do your wiener?") and an obscene drawing down around the crotch. He opened his throat and emptied the third bottle, then asked if I'd go crack him open another cold one, which I did, which he took from me, which he held like a celebrity with a wireless mic.

By then I'd put back a couple beers too. What with the music and the chatter and the kids laughing and screaming and crying all at once the way kids do when they're tired, what with all that noise, my head started to spin. I got bold: "Uh, Squiggy, I never did hear why Lenny and Laverne sold the place. I mean—"

Squiggy slammed down the lid of the grill and it made a sound like a shotgun in duck season.

"I know you guys had a falling out …" Come to think of it, I couldn't remember anything about Lenny after that chat we'd had in his kitchen. He'd eaten the last bits of his breakfast sausage, wiped his face clean with a paper cocktail napkin, and excused himself to go next door. That was it. That was the last time I saw the man.

"Lenny never handled conflict well."

"But geez, Squiggy, you kept getting drunk and weed-whacking his roses."

"I was NEVER DRUNK." Still holding the Corona, he thumped a finger against my chest. Twice. NEVER. DRUNK.

"Sure, Squiggy."

"He had no right."

"Okay. Putting meat under your deck was immature."

"Immature? Immature?" He belched. "It was vin— vin— It was vinDICKtive. He was a Dick. With a capital "D" and an "ick." Know what I'm sayin'?"

"Sure, Squiggy, it was a dumb thing to do. But you two go way back."

Squiggy opened the grill again and shoveled burgers onto buns.

"So, Squiggy, why'd they sell?"

"Like I said: Lenny never handled conflict well."

"So you two have an argument?"

"You might say that."

"You two have a fight?"

Squiggy tightened the grip on his Corona. I could tell I was hitting a raw spot because the veins in his neck were bulging and his face was turning a pinky shade like the insides of a half-cooked burger.

"Geez, can't you leave it alone?"

The way he stood there, with his Corona in one hand and flipper in the other hand, he looked like a French aristocrat preparing for a duel. I was afraid he might parry and thrust with the flipper, then beat me over the head with the bottle. But his demeanor suddenly changed. The music had gotten soft—one of those Joni Mitchell songs about how she could eat a case of you—and the angry look vanished from Squiggy's face. In the time it takes to twist off a bottle cap, he had morphed into a blubbering drunk. He collapsed onto the curb, fetal, arms wrapped around his legs and crying into his knees.

"I'm sorry, Lenny," he cried. "I didn't mean to."

I wasn't sure what to do. Part of me felt I should stay by the grill so none of the burgers got overcooked, but another part of me—okay, I admit it—I felt awkward watching a grown man cry like that. It was unnatural. Dr. Tyson-Holyfield, Ph.D solved my dilemma. She sat on the curb beside him, and in her own maternal whorish way, she put an arm around him and said: "Of course you didn't, dear."

People were lined up waiting for the next round of burgers, and as I served them, a few nodded towards Squiggy on the curb behind me and wondered what was wrong with him. I shrugged and smiled and mumbled something about having "a few too many" and dumped a juicy patty onto each of their buns. After I'd doled out that round of burgers, I sat on the other side of Squiggy. Dr. Tyson-Holyfield stood to straighten out her skirt and, stepping to the garbage can, tossed her plate along with a half-eaten burger. Squiggy's eyes flared and he leapt to his feet.

"What did you do?" His nose had been running and he wiped it on his sleeve.

"Pardon me?" You could tell that Dr. Tyson-Holyfield, Ph.D was offended by Squiggy's demanding tone.

"I said: 'What did you do?'"

"I'm full. I threw out the rest of my burger."

"Don't you know? There are starving people, like, everywhere. Don't you know?"

"Yes, of course I know."

"Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot."

"You're not an idiot."

"You were talking to me like I'm an idiot."

"But you're not an idiot."

"Don't you know?"

"About the starving people?"

"Yeah, about the starving people." Squiggy held the flipper high over his head. "Didn't your mother ever tell you?"

"I guess not."

"See? You see?" Squiggy looked at me while pointing to the woman. It was almost as if he was a teacher. He was treating me like his pupil, and using the professor as his object lesson. "That's just the problem with parents these days. Never teaching their kids the important stuff." And looking again at Dr. Tyson-Holyfield, Ph.D: "So your mother never told you to eat everything on your plate?"

The woman shook her head. From the look in her eyes, it was hard to tell whether she was angry or afraid.

"You mean she never said: 'Squiggy, you eat up all your food; there are starving people in Africa, you know'?" He stopped to see if she would say anything, but she just stood there glaring at him. "Huh. And there you go, throwing out a perfectly good burger. You fucking bitch."

Squiggy lunged at the woman. With his left arm, he pinned her against the inside of his thigh and with his right arm, he brought down the flipper: three sound thwacks to her bottom. "NEVER. WASTE. MEAT." Before he could land a fourth stroke, I grabbed his arm and pried the flipper from his greasy fingers. I can't be sure, but with skirts wrenched one way and another, I'm almost prepared to swear under oath that the professor was wearing a merry widow underneath.

We were lucky. Most of the action happened behind the grills near an empty porto-potti, so hardly anybody witnessed the scene. I shooed Squiggy up the hill to his house and told him to cool off. I was stunned at how calm Dr. Tyson-Holyfield, Ph.D was. She straightened her skirts and fixed her hair and mumbled something about how most men had to pay for that privilege.

As for me, I threw the last of the meat on the grill and found myself thinking what a shame it was that Lenny and Laverne couldn't make it to our barbeque. These were the best damn burgers we'd ever had.

23. MORTY THE JUICE CAT

SOMETIMES JEB TAKES a notion. Been that way all his life. Don't matter how hare-brained or loonie-goonie, it's his notion 'n' there ain't no changing his mind. Well this time he went too far 'n' it durned near kilt him.

The other day I calls him up on the phone. I cain't remember what fer. Maybe to talk about all the construction that's been going on. They've been grading the old farmsteads 'n' laying out stakes to mark the streets where they're gonna build houses 'n' stores 'n' such. Makes an unholy racket from sunup to sundown. So maybe that's what I wants to talk about when I calls Jeb on the phone.

The point is: when he finally answers, he's pure gibberish. All blabdy-blabdy-blab. I haven't got me a friggin clue what he's tryna tell me. My first thought is: "My God, Jeb's gone 'n' took hisself a stroke." I tells him not to worry, to sit hisself down on the floor if need be. I'll be right there.

It's more'n two, maybe three hundred yards up to his place. Considering the suspenders trailing 'n' the shirt tails flapping behind, 'n' considering the grubby work boots on my feet, I make the run in pretty good time. Good fer an old geezer like me.

I bang on the door then barge right on in. Jeb's standing there, clean shaven, dressed fer spit. I grab him by the shoulders, panic in my eyes 'n' a quaver in my voice: "You okay, Jeb? You okay?"

He just smiles 'n' says: "Bonjour, Jed, mon ami."

What the frig? I haven't heard Jeb try to parlez-vous le ding dong since we was in high school. By my reckoning that was sixty years ago or more. Hell, the man can barely speak English 'n' not half so good as me. But there he is, being all "Bonjour, Jed, mon ami."

I says to him: "You must be sick. Sicker'n I thought." I make him sit on the bottom step of the stairs that come down into the front hall. "You wait here whiles I getchya some water." But he just ups 'n' follows me into the kitchen.

"Ah Jed." He's got this gravelly sound to his voice 'n' a wistful look in his eyes, like he's smoking Moroccan cigarettes 'n' staring off the Pont Neuf. I don't know if there's such a thing as Moroccan cigarettes; I just figure that's where Camels must come from. The point is—screw the point. I just wish Jeb would act like his old self.

"Je veux parler français—jusqu'à la mort."

"Juice cat what?"

I have no idea what he's tryna tell me. Besides which I'm losin' my patience. This stunt of his has cost me a mighty good sweat running up the hill, huffing 'n' wheezing, 'n' my heart going like a sump pump. I pour myself a cold glass of water. Jeb's 'n' mine's the only homes left in the whole region what draws their water from wells. Two hundred 'n' fifty feet deep. Cold like ice. Clear as crystal.

"Hier, j'ai lu quelque chose d'intéressant."

"Speak English ya twit."

But he refuses. So we carry on our conversation in a mix of charades, twenty questions, 'n' a high school French that's lain stale for sixty-five years.

"Je veux understandey what tu is tryna dites à moi," I says to him. "Tu ne veux pas speak the English?"

He nods.

"Ever again?"

"Oui. C'est ça."

"Until the day you die?"

"Jusqu'à la mort."

"Why, pray tell, oh great 'n' wise nincompoop of a friend?"

Jeb steps to the kitchen table (which is French for table) where magazines, once stacked, have fallen this way 'n' that so's half the friggin table is hid. He flips through one, then another, 'til he finds what he's lookin' fer 'n' shoves the open magazine into my hands. It's Psychology Tomorrow or one of them other goddam pop magazines with quick-fix answers to all life's problems. Jeb's opened it to an article about—what's it say?—"the cognitive benefits of speaking another language." Well now, I'll be the first to admit that Jeb 'n' me, we ain't getting any younger, 'n' both of us lately, well we've been getting' a little slow on the uptake when it comes to jokes 'n' such, 'n', well, we both have been losing more'n our fair share of keys 'n' odds 'n' ends. But we both do pretty durned good for our age. It's one thing to say yer gonna learn another language; it's quite another thing to say yer gonna stop using the one you was bornt with, eh?

That sends Jeb diving into all those magazines of his 'n' he comes up this time with an article on how the brain learns a language and how it's important to be immersed in it proper like.

"Hell, Jeb," I says. "There ain't another frenchie within a ten mile radius of this here farm. Look it yer pond fer crissake. There ain't been a frog on that water fer coming on four years. Now if that ain't a sign, I don't know what is."

Jeb tells me to ne pas être such a bone tête.

Ain't that just Jeb to go on like he's so much better'n the rest of the world. "Fine," I says. "You wanna act all hoity toity like yer some goddam frenchie, then fine, but just fer the record: I think you'd end up learnin' more French livin' with Marcel Marceau than you would doin' it this way. I betchya don't even last a week."

Well, that gets Jeb all indignant. He calls me all kinds of names like cochon 'n' turd d'oiseau 'n' bête midler. I stomp out of his place 'n' back home. I'll be watchin' him, that's fer sure. I'll tell everyone I know and we'll keep our eyes on him. See how long he goes before he has to use English like a normal person.

That afternoon, I get a call from Ned at Ned's Groceries 'n' Fertilizer Depot. Seems Jeb dropped by to pick up his weekly fix of ham 'n' cheese fer all his sandwiches 'n' Western omelets 'n' whatnot. Walks in all snootier-than-thou 'n' asks fer jambon et du frommage like Ned's gonna ever know what that's all about. Well, I've already called Ned to warn him about Jeb's latest notion, so Ned's prepared fer this nonsense. Soon as Jeb asks fer his jambon et du frommage, Ned says: "Why can't you speak English like everybody else around here, ya goddam foreigner?"

Jeb just puts his paws over his ears and says: "No Engleesh. No Engleesh. Je ne peux pas vous comprendre."

Well that just gets Ned as riled as a porcupine in heat. There he is, yellin' at Jeb 'n' there Jeb is, yellin' at Ned. Wouldn't you know it but a police officer walks into the store, some new fella Ned's never seen before.

He says: "Well now, what seems to be the problem?" I mean what the hell else does police officers ever say?

Ned says: "Officer, this man is impersonating a foreigner."

"No law against that I s'pose."

"Well then he's harassing me. Askin' me fer stuff when I don't know what the hell he's talking about."

"Monsieur, je m'appelle Jeb et j'ai voulu seulement—"

"Oh for crissake, it's Jeb who lives up the road on the second concession."

"Is that true?"

"Je veux acheter … comment dites-on en anglais … uh … how you say … ham. Only he didn't say "ham." He stuck an "eh" on the end of it so's it come out: "hameh."

"Fine. You want some hameh. But is it true? What he says? 'Bout you bein' local 'n' everything?"

"No, no, no, no, no. Je m'appelle Marcel. Je suis … how you say en anglais … I am de twin brudder of Jeb … from France."

"Oh fer crissake," says Ned.

Well after the incident in Ned's Groceries 'n' Fertilizer Depot, word gets out that Jeb's gone as soft in the head as ice cream in mid-July. He goes to Lou's diner and orders "un burger du jambon" 'n' the waitress can't make out what the hell he's askin' fer. 'N' pretty soon the cook's out of the kitchen 'n' other customers are complainin' 'n' there's an unholy row that spills out onto the street. Jeb is standing there blinkin' in the midday sun and yellin' about what a horrid horrid place dis is where de foreigner is treated no better den a dog.

But the worst comes later in the afternoon—à l'aprés midi as Jeb would say. There he is, walkin' down Main Street sayin' "Bonjour" to everybody he knows when he takes one of those spells of his. He's had 'em before. I don't know if they're serious or not, but they sure do look dramatic. He clutches at his chest and stumbles around, then keels over into the flower bed out in front of the community centre. He shouts "Mon coeur, mon Coeur!" Then, when he's on his back in front of the community centre: "Oh des fleures si belles."

Someone calls the paramedics. There are these two hulking guys kneeling in the flowers on either side of Jeb, speaking to him in low voices 'n' tryna figure out what's wrong with him. One of them stands 'n' shouts to all the onlookers: "Anyone who can translate for us? It's a foreigner here and he don't speak no English."

There's some snickers from the crowd, but no one steps forward. The paramedics shrug their shoulders 'n' cart Jeb away on a gurney.

Turns out this stunt of his nearly kilt him because he don't tell the paramedics about his heart medication—or he tells them but in that stupid French of his—so they give him something that reacts with his heart meds and sends his blood pressure into outer space. Later in the day, I visit him in the ER where they've got him stuck with an IV 'n' hooked up to all kinds of monitors 'n' stuff. I sets myself in a chair beside his bed 'n' he looks at me 'n' smiles with those faded out eyes of his.

"How ya doin', Jeb?" I says.

He nods 'n' sets his hand on mine.

"You learn yerself anything from all this nonsense?"

He nods again.

"What'd you learn?"

"Oh, I dunno."

I'm expectin' him to say somethin' about how it's a dumb idea to refuse to speak the only language you know how to speak.

But he says, "No, no that's not it. There was something else. I ferget. Doesn't matter anyways."

That's how it goes fer us. Between the two of us, we should be learnin' some pretty good lessons. We just can't remember them is all.

24. BURNING IN STOCKHOLM

WHEN VINCE WOKE up on Saturday morning, he didn't think much of the fact that the space beside him in the bed was empty. With eyes still shut, he stretched out his left arm and found the pillow cold and the sheets thrown back. Emily was probably up and running errands or digging in the garden or chatting with the neighbours.

Vince drifted in and out of sleep. He didn't know how much time had passed before he swung himself sideways throwing his legs over the edge of the bed and pressing his feet to the hardwood floor. After his morning routines—minus the shave—Vince stepped into the kitchen, wondering what he should make himself for breakfast. That was when he had his first intimation that something was wrong. He couldn't say what. Just a feeling that things were off.

He put bread in the toaster. He set a plate on the table. He pulled a jar of marmalade from the fridge. He reached to the top shelf for a coffee mug. Wait. Now he knew why things felt off. Emily always had the coffee maker going early on a Saturday morning. Vince was used to waking with that wonderful pungent aroma playing in his nostrils. But this morning the coffee maker was empty.

Vince called for Emily. Munching on a slice of toast, he went from room to room. He checked the back yard, then the front yard. The car was still in the garage. Her purse was on the low table by the front door. Vince called Emily on her cell phone and heard a ringing from the bedroom where she had plugged it in the night before to recharge the battery. Maybe she had taken Goldie for a walk. He called for the dog but there was no answer. That must be it. Emily had taken the dog for a walk.

Vince settled into his favourite chair with the morning paper and a fresh cup of coffee. Emily would probably be back by the time he had caught up with the news of the world. On the international front, things were as insane as ever: desperate men launching home-made rockets and planting IED's; gunships retaliating by slaughtering pregnant women and babes in arms. On the local scene, banality was the order of the day: a city councilor caught with his pants around his ankles, an auditor's report filled with tales of waste and corruption. As Vince was leafing through to the crossword puzzle on the back page, a small item caught his attention: since the Vancouver Winter Olympics, there'd been an increase in Sasquatch sightings. Vince shook his head. What people weren't willing to believe!

By lunch, there was still no sign of Emily and Vince was starting to worry. He called her sister. Maybe she'd gone over there. He called her best friend who lived two streets over. He went next door and asked if maybe she had dropped by for a chat. But nobody had seen Emily. There was a dark black feeling gathering in Vince's gut.

After lunch, Vince phoned the police. He didn't know what else to do. He sat in the living room, staring at the wedding photo on the mantel, twiddling his thumbs, standing to pace the floor, waiting for the police to arrive. After an hour, he got tired of waiting. He fixed himself another cup of coffee even though he knew it would only make his feelings of anxiety more acute. As he was pouring cream into his coffee, a knock came at the door—a firm, authoritative knock that made him leap up and splash coffee on his hand. He answered the door while sucking a red patch of skin between his thumb and forefinger. There were two of them standing there, a man and a women dressed in their night-blue uniforms, clean-edged and efficient.

The woman did all the talking: "We had a missing persons call?"

"Mmmmph."

"You Vincent Karsh?"

"Mmmmph."

"Mind if we come in?"

While the woman spoke, the man looked all around the entrance way and living room. She asked when Vince had last seen his wife. What was her normal routine? Had they been arguing lately? How had they been getting along? How was the marriage? Because … and she looked Vince straight in the eye as she spoke … almost all missing persons reports turn out to be domestic dispute issues.

Meanwhile, the quiet one—the man—noted the precisely arranged furniture, the well-polished hardwood floors, the careful arrangement of figurines and crystal on display in a cabinet. Without speaking, he took the wedding photo from its place on the mantel and inspected it closely.

"You been married long?"

"Seven years."

And the police officers looked at one another as if Vince's answer was somehow significant.

"Is that coffee I smell?"

Vince invited the officers into the kitchen and as the woman followed him to the percolator, the man said he was going outside to poke around the yard for a minute. The woman kept up with her questions—about Vince's job, Emily's job, his son off at university, money issues, pressures from in-laws, relations with neighbours, any skeletons in the closet, affairs with old flames, addictions. All the while, she looked around the kitchen: the spotless countertop, the wrought iron table with its sparkling glass tabletop, the hand-sewn placemats, the shelf of antique lamps, the old pine buffet.

The man came back inside: "I see you live on a ravine lot. Ever been broken into?"

"Once. But that was maybe four years ago."

"Mmm." And he nodded. He raised a hand as if to show Vince something. "I found some of these on a branch out back."

Vince leaned in close to see what the police officer was talking about. It was a strand of hair, thick like wire and brown.

"Emily's hair is blond."

By the end of the afternoon, the police officers agreed to file a missing persons report. They went back to the station with a recent photo which they scanned and distributed online—an APB which soon became a news story, hitting the local TV news by eleven o'clock. By seven o'clock the next morning, there was a gathering of neighbours in the Karsh's back yard, all of them blowing on their hands and stamping their feet and downing gallons of hot coffee. They were going to do a search of the ravine. The police said this was premature, but when they saw how the neighbours were bent on doing their search, they brought in some experts to coordinate it. "Might as well do it right," they said as they let two police dogs sniff at some of Emily's old underwear. So, by eight in the morning, the woods behind the Karsh's house were crackling with the sounds of radios and dogs barking and people calling out "Emily" and the crunch of leaves and twigs underfoot.

Nobody found anything until after eleven when Norm, the next door neighbour, stepped in a big plat of poop. Nobody was sure what kind of animal would have left behind such a turd. Some of the neighbours were experienced outdoorsmen and they said the turd was too big to have come from a deer—even a big buck. And there was no way a farm animal like a cow could have strayed into a bush that thick. The men stood there, staring at the big heap of shit, scratching their heads and swatting at flies, and finally confessing that they didn't rightly know what kind of an animal would have made such a mess. Whatever it was, they knew it was big, and so everybody should use caution. Although everybody was thinking it, nobody asked aloud the obvious question: could this animal—whatever it was—could it have harmed Emily?

Pushing further downstream another hundred meters, the dogs found an article of clothing. But something was wrong. In searches like these, what the police usually found were little scraps of cloth torn on jagged rocks or the bark of trees. Instead what they found was an entire top, untorn, neatly folded and laid out on a log.

"Mr. Karsh," said one of the officers from the K-9 unit. "Can you confirm for us that this here article of clothing belonged—er, belongs—to your wife?"

Vince's hand trembled as he took up the top. "I … I … Maybe … I don't know … looks like something she'd wear."

"But you can't say for sure?"

"I don't know. I guess maybe it is."

They followed the trail downstream. The dogs had picked up a scent and were barking and yipping around the entrance to a big culvert that tunneled into the face of a long ridge. It was a concrete pipe almost the height of a man and it was blocked by a gate of iron bars like the bars you'd see on a prison window. Except that two of the bars had been pried apart to create a space that even a police officer with a Kevlar vest could squeeze through. There was a trickle of water coming from the culvert and draining into an algae-rimmed pool of muck. Looking into the pipe was like looking into a cave: it was pitch black and the air blew back damp and cool. Vince shouted Emily's name and it echoed from the darkness. Standing in silence, the searchers shuffled their feet and tried to avoid the wet pool of muck. Vince called again. This time the sound that returned to them was a grunt or a low growl.

"Emily," he shouted.

He tried to crawl between the iron bars but a police officer pulled him back. "Let someone else go. Someone with protective clothing. We have no idea what we're dealing with here."

It was the officer who first answered Vince's call. He's the one who climbed through the bars and into the culvert. In one hand he held a flashlight; in the other, a can of pepper spray. The commanding officer reached through the iron bars and patted him on the back, reminding him to stay in constant communication. As the officer set off into the darkness, everyone else gathered around the entrance to the culvert to listen to the radio:

"Okay, so now I'm proceeding into the … ah, tunnel … I guess that's what you'd call it, and, well, there's a little water underfoot though not much and, well, a bit of a smell gets a little stronger as I move further in actually quite strong now kind of a what? What's it like? Maybe a mix of BO and shit, only like it's been multiplied or like you've had your head jammed up a cow's anus. And … what the fuck? Holy Jesus?"

There was a roar like a lion and an ape combined. And there was a high-pitched scream too high to have come from the police officer. And there was the police officer, swearing and shouting.

Everyone heard a thud and the radio died.

Footsteps approached splashing through the water, kind of a limp, drag … limp, drag … The police officer came into view and threw himself at the iron bars. He was still clutching them as he fainted. There were three parallel gashes across his cheek, almost shredding the skin so it hung from his face. There were similar gashes on his thigh that went clear to the bone. Another police officer had to step through the bars to help the fallen officer out of the culvert.

The officer started awake, flailing as if he was in the middle of a fight.

"Easy there. Easy." And two people held him down while a third applied pressure to his thigh.

"Oh Christ."

"What'd you see in there?"

"Oh Christ. It was seven feet tall."

"Was the woman in there?"

"And covered in fur."

"The woman?"

"And claws like razors."

"Was Emily okay?"

"Who?"

"The woman we've been looking for. Was she there?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, laid out on, like a bed of straw or hay. She'd lost all her clothes but otherwise she looked fine."

"Emily?" Vince yelled.

Everyone stared into the silence.

"Emily?"

There was the sound of heavy breathing, a deep resonant chest cavity, then a high-pitched: "Why can't you all just fuck off."

"You recognize your wife's voice?"

"Yeah," said Vince. "That's Emily."

The officer in charge turned and shouted into the culvert: "Emily Karsh?"

"Fuck off."

"Mrs. Karsh, my name is Truman Capote. I'm—"

"I don't care if you're name is John Cheever. Just leave us the fuck alone."

"Us? Is there more than one of you?"

"What the fuck do you think?"

"Mrs. Karsh. We're here to help."

"Well I was doing just fine without you. So fuck off."

The commanding officer turned to Vince and asked if his wife was always so hostile. Without closing his mouth, Vince shook his head. Turning again to the culvert: "Mrs. Karsh, are you hurt?"

"Do I sound hurt? Fuck off."

"You're being held captive by a savage creature."

"Fuck off."

Officer Capote got on his radio and asked for Dr. Burgess to be escorted to his location. Dr. Burgess was a psychologist. Whenever there was a search, the police kept a grief counselor on call in case they should stumble on something unexpected like human remains. Even though grief didn't appear to be an issue here, Capote thought a psychologist would probably be useful. It took a long time for Dr. Burgess to move downstream from her trailer to the culvert's entrance. The problem was that she had shown up for work in heels and didn't have time to change before going out into the field. As she walked along the riverbed, her heels kept sinking into the mud. By the time she arrived at the culvert, her feet were soaked and her shoes were ruined.

Officer Capote explained the situation. After a brief chat with the husband and a reluctant look at the fallen officer's injuries, Dr. Burgess drew close to the bars covering the culvert. She tried to establish her own rapport and was met by the same hostility that everyone else had witnessed. There were guttural rumblings and high-pitched fuck-yous—the creature and the captive—the beast and the beauty.

Dr. Burgess turned to Vince: "Do you know what Stockholm Syndrome is?"

"You mean like what happened to Patty Hearst?"

"Exactly. It's where the captive starts to empathize with the captor."

"You mean to tell me my wife has a thing for that … that … thing?"

"It's too soon to say, but it's a possibility."

Vince paced in front of the culvert entrance, kicking at stones and branches, muttering under his breath and nearly breaking his hand when he slammed his fist into a tree. This wasn't possible. He and Emily were solid. Sure, they'd had their problems, like any other couple, but nothing serious. Well, there was the incident with the dog. But they had been drunk at the time. It didn't mean anything. All he wanted was for Emily to come home. He turned and gripped the iron bars. "Emily, I love you."

There was an angry roar that nearly knocked him off his feet, but no sound came from Emily.

The outcome of this situation has played itself out a thousand times before. The local farmers arrive with their torches and pitchforks. The beast may take a stand. But we all know the beast doesn't stand a chance. This is a collective ritual to reaffirm the natural order of things. The beast gets sacrificed to make this happen. The penitent wife goes home to her husband, secretly glad to have stirred a little excitement into their otherwise dull lives, but secretly relieved because the excitement demands more energy than she can sustain. She falls asleep in her husbands arms but her heart is somewhere else. He tries to persuade himself that she still loves him, that the return to the natural order of things has been a perfect return. The husband may even believe this.

To be frank, nobody cares what the husband thinks. The end of this story illustrates why:

A second police officer went into the culvert, and when his head came rolling back to the gate, the police entered in swarms, tasers drawn, determined to bring down the beast. A few officers sustained grave injuries, but soon the beast lay seizing in a trickle of water, shitting itself as it went down, then rolling in its own feces until at last it came to rest. They shackled it, and while the woman lay naked on the straw and screamed in terror, they dragged the beast out into the evening light and strung it from a tree. They called the zoo, thinking the people there might have some notion what to do with the creature, but they had to wait a long time for someone to arrive and they were still enraged that the beast had injured their friends and had even killed one of them. So they doused its fur in gasoline and lit it on fire. But not before they noted one remarkable feature. As the creature hanged upside down in the forest, everyone could see that it was endowed with a splendid penis.

While the police officers and volunteer searchers climbed out of the ravine, the beast screamed through the flames and the woman cried until she couldn't bear it anymore, and all the men agreed that it was perfectly obvious why the woman had fled into the forest with the beast: there was the reason, sticking straight out at them and burning orange, like a schnitzel on a bonfire.

25. THE SIDEWALKS OF KILIMANJARO

HARRY PRESSES HIS back to the post of the swing set and watches a light plane pass overhead. The plane trails a banner ad for something. Harry can't say what. A chill wind makes his eyes tear and that blurs his vision. Maybe it's an ad for cough syrup, or condoms. Most likely an ad for a wireless service provider.

Harry wouldn't be in such a bind now if he hadn't lost his smart phone this morning. It dropped from his hand as he stepped onto the bus. He stood on the top step and watched the smart phone clatter onto the pavement and slip through the grate that covers the catch basin. The bus driver gave a sadistic chortle until Harry glared at him. A plopping sound rose from the catch basin signaling that the smart phone was lost forever.

Helen's words return to him now: "These evils set upon us in threes." It calls to mind the image of wild dogs tearing apart a lost child. The first evil—the lost smart phone—would not have happened if Harry had not taken the bus, and he would not have taken the bus but for the second evil—a dead car battery. And the third evil? Harry traces a fingertip through the compact sand beside the swing set post. That came long after Harry got off the bus. He took a tumble down an embankment and into a thicket of barberry shrubs. At first, he thought nothing of it; he stood and brushed himself off and continued to his appointment. But as he walked first down one residential street, then down another, a throb took hold in his right thigh where a thorn had pierced the flesh. Now a pain has seized the whole leg and Harry can barely stand.

Harry came here on a lead from head office. In his mounting delirium, he gazes out from the playground to the rows of houses which front it. What a godforsaken place. And underinsured. Harry had ventured into this suburban desolation to deliver at least one ignorant family into the light of a total insurance package—home, life, auto. But after he turned the first corner, when the main arterial road disappeared from view, the houses began to blur one into another and all the streets appeared the same. Harry wished he had been more careful with his smart phone; it was GPS-equipped and he could have used it to get to his appointment. Without his smart phone, he was lost in a maze of pro-forma, slap-dash, two-story fully-detached brick dwellings.

Harry thought it would be easy to stop a local resident and ask for directions, but he saw no one. He walked for blocks without encountering a single person. Twice, a garage door rose and a car zoomed onto the street, but it wasn't until the car had passed that Harry thought to wave down the driver. It wouldn't have made a difference. The drivers stared straight ahead, stony-faced and wearing sunglasses, which made eye contact impossible. On one occasion, Harry thought he saw an elderly woman staring down upon him from a bedroom window, but when he blinked and looked again, the woman was gone. He took the walkway to the front door and clacked on the brass knocker, but no one answered. He pounded his fist on the door, but again no one answered.

Along another road, Harry saw a garden hose between two houses. As he drank, a black dog barked and lunged at the gate. Maybe this was one of the three evils that had set upon him. Further along the same road, Harry felt a need to relieve himself. This is when he fell down the embankment and punctured the flesh of his thigh with a barberry thorn.

The light is low and soon it will be night. A chill has taken hold of Harry and has set his bones to clattering. The swing set is hardly adequate shelter, but there is nothing better. Sodium lights flicker on and cast the whole landscape in an eerie orange, even Harry's hands, which look other-worldly. All the house lights are on automatic timers and come on at roughly the same instant. In his fever, Harry sees the houses springing to life, windows as eye sockets, glaring at him, judging him, finding him wanting. Harry wishes he could be home with Helen. There are so many things he wishes he could tell her. If he had the chance, now, he would share his dreams with her; he would tell her how he had hoped one day to underwrite whole neighbourhoods just like this, to throw big company barbeques in parks just like this, to light fireworks on holidays and with sparklers in the shape of the company logo. But now Harry worries that he will never have the chance to do these things. He wishes he could have spent more quality time with Helen, maybe chat on Facebook with her or play games on the Xbox. Life could have been so much more.

There is a whirr in the distance, the chop of rotors hashing the air. Maybe they will come and rescue him. Maybe they'll amputate his infected leg. Maybe they'll attach a robotic leg to the stump, a limb he can control with Bluetooth technology or Xbox Kinect. The whirr fades and in its place there echoes across the land the plaintiff howl of a backyard dog.

They find Harry's body the next morning. The first to discover him is a seasonal worker for the city's Department of Parks and Recreation. He operates a riding mower and is cutting the lawn when he spots the body propped against the swing set post. It is the body of a man, well-dressed except for a slit in the trousers, arm resting on a leather brief case. A dog has torn away a chunk of the left cheek and is chewing it by the foot of the slide.

When the police arrive, they say it's a shame the man didn't have a proper smart phone. How the hell can you expect to get anywhere these days without a GPS-enabled device?

26. URINE LOVE

WHEN CHUCK FELL in love with Camilla, it struck him at a visceral level. Maybe visceral is the wrong word. It suggests that Chuck felt his love in the gut whereas, when he examined his feelings, he discovered that he felt his love most keenly in the nose. Or (since Camilla would never allow Chuck to speak so crassly): Chuck's feelings for Camilla stirred up olfactory associations.

From snippets Chuck had read, he assembled a vague theory of why this was the case. It involved pheromones and the biochemistry of attraction. It involved the fast absorption rates of the nasal membrane. It also involved neuropsychiatry and the way our sense of smell is linked to our most primitive mind. Chuck never shared his theory with Camilla. Instead, when they were together, he would say, "You smell wonderful." When he breathed her in, he wanted to add: "It makes me horny." He never said this, of course, because that would have been crude and Camilla was a genteel person; she deserved better.

Once, when they were out at a local pub, when Chuck nestled close to Camilla and filled his lungs, when Chuck confessed that it sent his mind spinning (like he had just snorted a drug), Camilla smiled and pulled a slender vial from her purse. "This is my secret," she said. She set the vial on the table between their bottles of beer. Chuck lowered his head until his chin sat in a puddle of condensation. Eau de toilette.

"Très chic," he said, using his most sophisticated accent. He leaned in and kissed his love on the neck, then nibbled on her earlobe.

When the beer had worked its magic, Chuck excused himself and went to the men's room. It was in the basement at the end of a dank brick-walled corridor. There were two urinals, a sink, and a stall with a broken door. Chuck was glad he only had to pee. He stepped to the urinal on the left and stared at an ad for prophylactics. Chuck liked to think of his body as a machine. While his machine did its work down there, he occupied his mind with more erudite concerns up here. In this instance, he gave his mind a challenge. He had to come up with five euphemisms for the word condom before the last drop dribbled from his bladder. Rubber. That's a no-brainer. Cock frock. That makes two. The dong sarong is three.

Chuck never made it to four. As his whizz splashed on the urinal puck, it jarred loose some free-floating molecules that wafted into his nostrils where they quickly lodged themselves in his nasal cavity and travelled to the olfactory receptacle at the base of his brain, what neuroscientists describe as the limbic system. He recognized that odour. He poked his head into the hallway to be sure no one was coming, then returned to the urinal and got down onto his knees. Sticking his nose as close to the puck as he dared, he inhaled the strange combination of his own urine and commercial disinfectants. The similarity was uncanny.

Upstairs at their booth, Chuck smiled at his girlfriend as he slid in beside her. He put his nose as close to her as he dared and inhaled. It was unmistakable. Camilla's Eau de toilette was a distillation of bar urine and cleaning products. To be sure, Chuck waited until Camilla excused herself, then took up the vial of Eau de toilette, unscrewed the cap, and waved it under his nose. It was undeniable.

In situations like this, most men have the good sense to shut up and smile, but Chuck was not most men. He thought of himself as a scientist. He wasn't actually a scientist, but he believed in the power of reason and in the importance of speaking the truth, even if speaking the truth put him in conflict with popular opinion. So when Camilla returned from the bathroom, Chuck spoke the truth to her. Chuck learned the hard way (he would call it empiricism) that women don't always want to hear the truth, or at least not in a cold detached way that makes the truth sound like a chemistry lesson. And so that evening at the local pub, after a mild altercation, Chuck and Camilla agreed to cool things for a while. For Chuck, that meant he would send flowers and call her in a week. For Camilla, that meant she never wanted to see him again.

When Chuck called after the first week, Camilla was evasive. Being an optimist, Chuck interpreted her vague comments in a favourable way. He had hoped that their relationship could be restored. When Chuck called after the second week, Camilla was more direct. However, as with most grieving, Chuck's began in denial; he couldn't believe Camilla never wanted to see him again. It wasn't possible. Not after all the time they had spent together. Not after the powerful connection they had established. But by the third week, Chuck knew it was over. Acceptance was a long way off, but the grieving had begun.

There were whole afternoons that Chuck couldn't remember. He passed them wandering through the city streets. Sometimes he rented movies they had watched together, and sitting alone in front of his TV, he would cry himself to sleep. There on the couch, he would fall to dreaming of Camilla. Chuck was not a visual dreamer. What he recalled most from his dreams were conversations and, most powerfully, scents. He dreamt of moments when he had rested his head on Camilla's shoulder and breathed in her lovely scent. It reminded him of how he felt when he had first fallen in love with her.

Waking suddenly from one of his dreams, Chuck saw that it was only midnight. He threw on a jacket and rushed to the local pub. He took a place at the bar where he left his jacket draped over the back of a chair and ran downstairs to the bathroom. Standing at one of the urinals, he sprayed a torrent over the puck. Even before he was done, he could smell Camilla's scent rising into his nostrils. Without zipping up, he crouched before the urinal and pressed his nose against the plastic cover that held the puck in place.

When another patron burst into the bathroom, Chuck didn't have time to rise to his feet, or even to turn his head. The man saw Chuck kneeling with his face stuck in the urinal and assumed he was a pervert. He hated perverts. A couple years ago, a pervert had flashed his wife. He gave Chuck a going over. Not hard. But hard enough to leave him dazed and sprawled in a puddle beneath the leaking sink.

Chuck spent the rest of the night in the emergency ward of the local hospital. He had a broken rib and a chipped tooth. A police officer questioned him about the assault, but the interview didn't go well. For one thing, every time he used the letter "s" he made a whistling sound because of the chipped tooth. For another thing, the police officer wasn't terribly sympathetic, especially after Chuck explained why the man had assaulted him.

"What the hell were you doing with your head stuck in a urinal?"

"I was smelling something." Whistle, whistle. Smelling something.

It was late and they had given him Percocet for the pain in his gut. As soon as the police officer left, Chuck lay back in the hospital bed and drifted away like a boat on a river. No one ever really sleeps in an emergency ward. Not with the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead and the triage nurses barking orders and the gurneys with their squeaky wheels. Chuck dozed and woke, dozed and woke.

With eyes shut, the haunting scent visited him once again. Chuck smiled. "Camilla, you've come to see me." He reached to the figure beside his bed, then opening his eyes, saw that it was a squat man in hospital greens.

"I ain't no Camilla," the man said. "I'm the janitor."

The man had parked his trolley next to Chuck's bed so he could go next door to clean the toilet.

27. ST. THERESA OF THE DANDELIONS

MY DEAR FR Moynaghan,

Not being a particularly religious man, I don't know how one goes about nominating a person for a sainthood. For that reason, I ask in advance that you forgive me for what must seem to you a rather clumsy request. Nevertheless, please know that my intentions are pure and I don't write this letter with the least concern for myself. So how does it work? Is it like the Oscars? Maybe that comparison is too crass. The Nobel Peace Prize, then? Are there nominations and then deliberations? Does it begin with humble suggestions from ordinary parishioners like me? Then is it passed up the chain of command, so to speak, from priest to bishop to cardinal to pope? Administrative protocols elude me. I never understand the mechanical details of how the world works. And yet, there it goes, spinning on its axis, with or without my understanding.

Whatever it is that you people require to set in motion the wheels which ultimately deliver us to a pronouncement of sainthood, please accept this letter in satisfaction of that requirement. If a nomination, then I so nominate. If a suggestion, then take it from me. If a prod, then this is my elbow in the papal gut. We really need to get this woman done.

About the woman in question … Her name is Theresa, which itself is a matter of saintly precedent. She is a neighbour of mine. I see her every day when I walk home from the bus stop. Often, I see her kneeling, or even prostrate (or is it prostate? I get those words mixed up) on a stretch of lawn, in such an attitude of devotion, as if praying. Immediately, I am struck by the expression of peace. Or is it love? Though, really, who ever sees one without noting the other lurking in the bushes nearby? The other distinctive feature about her is that she rarely goes anywhere without a screwdriver in hand. Maybe you guys could use the screwdriver as her special symbol, you know, the thing that always appears in portraits, of which I'm sure there will be plenty in St. Peter's Basilica once the pope makes her a saint. Or do you guys call female saints saintesses? I've never been clear on that.

Anyhoo, the reason I mention the screwdriver is that she uses it to weed lawns. She gets down on her knees, then burrows into the ground with her screwdriver, working the soil to loosen the roots of dandelions. In our neighbourhood, those nasty little tubers spread like weeds. Beginning in '92, I would come home and find Theresa muddy-kneed on the lawn between a bird bath and a stone statue of the virgin, digging away at the noxious weeds and tossing them one by one into a recyclable yard waste bag. We would often exchange greetings and then I would stand at the curb, gazing awestruck at the tiny patch of grass, a green island in a sea of gold. There was her lawn, and beyond it, the neighbour's, and so on, lot after lot for as far as the eye could see. I would remark upon the seeming futility of the task. An ordinary person would give up and pop open a beer. But Theresa was not an ordinary person; she was blessed by a sense of holy purpose. On more than one occasion, I pointed out to her that no one person could possibly weed all the dandelions in our neighbourhood, for—as you may appreciate—by the time she got even halfway down the first block, a fresh patch of gold would be popping up where she had begun.

Year after year, I saw her working faithfully to rout the evil weeds and to reveal the blessed green of the lawn they tried to hide. To this day, she continues to weed, even though rheumatoid arthritis makes it difficult for her to kneel, especially if there's rain in the weather forecast.

I remember asking her once: "Theresa," I said, "why do you work so hard at weeding the dandelions when it seems so futile?"

She answered me something like this, although I don't remember the precise words: "Well, Dave," she said, "before I weeded dandelions, I did starfish. I lived by the Bay of Fundy, and after every high tide, the stretch of beach where I lived was littered with the poor buggers, so I'd go out and toss a few back into the water. Once, when I was hurling a big starfish, a blogger caught me in the act and asked why I bothered since it obviously made no difference. I looked him straight in the eye and said: 'To this one, it makes a difference.' And I threw the starfish into the water. Well that impressed him and he blogged about it, and soon the story—or his version of it—went viral and everybody was telling the lovely story of the woman and her starfish. The truth is: if I left the damn things on the beach, the stench would turn something terrible, and then there was the noise of the gulls, loud enough to drive you loopy. Not long after the story went viral, I sold the place by the sea and moved to the suburb of a landlocked city where I knew I'd never see a starfish again. But damned if there weren't these dandelions instead."

Theresa paused and stared at her statue of the virgin mother.

"And?"

"And what?"

"And how does that explain why you feel compelled to weed acres of dandelions."

My dear Fr Moynaghan, I must confess that, at first, I did not understand the woman's answer. Personally, I have always found it difficult to penetrate the mysticism of the deeply religious. When she said that one is the same as the other, I didn't understand. "How could that be?" I asked. "How could rescuing a vulnerable creature be the same as destroying a noxious weed?"

"No," she answered, "they aren't the same in that respect. They're the same in that they engage me in futile gestures and wasted efforts."

Now I ask you, Fr Moynaghan, what could be more a sign of religious devotion than the practice of futile gestures and wasted efforts? Surely there can be none so devout as our sister Theresa. And so I humbly place her before you for your consideration as a saint.

Yours, etc.

My Dear Mr. Barker,

Thank you for your letter recounting the virtues of sister Theresa who, if I am to understand correctly, is not the member of any order and so not properly called "sister" except, perhaps, as a term of affection. While the woman you write about does, indeed, sound remarkable, I must draw our exchange to a rather abrupt conclusion by pointing out the obvious technical detail that people cannot qualify for sainthood unless they are dead.

Your faithful servant in X, etc.

Dear Fr Moynaghan,

Pursuant to your suggestion, I have taken care of that detail. Theresa's screwdriver was helpful in this regard. Not only will she be remembered for her good works, but also for her martyrdom. Perhaps now you could expedite our cause in Rome?

Yours, etc.

28. VOLTAIRE'S GREAT GREAT GRAND-BASTARD

AT THE LETTERBOX, Roger pulled out a wad of flyers, most of them advertising local businesses—palm readers, tea leave readers, tarot card readers, and Madame Zignault, emergency consultations available on request.  Roger crumpled the wad and dropped it at his feet, but Mrs. Kim was standing in the doorway to her husband's convenience store and witnessed the act of vandalism in the reflection of the building across the street.  Roger smiled at the stony-faced image and picked up the flyers.

Two weeks earlier, the mail had brought a manila envelope from a genealogical society and in it, a letter that informed Roger he was a direct descendent of Voltaire.  Ever since, Roger had taken to giving his name a French accent, softening the "g" and shifting the emphasis to the second syllable.  But none of this mattered to Mrs. Kim.  She still called him Lodger, which was technically correct since he rented the room upstairs from the convenience store.

Dozing by the window of his apartment, Roger passed hours with a broken-spined copy of Candide splayed on his lap.  He was determined to become a man of reason.  He owed it to his heritage.  Sometimes he woke at two in the morning and watched the patterns of red and blue light play across the far wall.  Outside, Madame Zignault's neon sign flickered—a giant red hand with a blue eye in the palm.

Roger couldn't understand why anybody would want to kill trees and stuff the results into mailboxes, all for the sake of promoting superstition.  He waved the crumpled wad at Mrs. Kim.  "If they could see the future, they'd realize how this—this—tree slaughter—how it's going to wreck everything.  Ironic, don't you think?"

Mrs. Kim stared at him and said nothing.

"Ironic.  Do you know ironic?"

Mrs. Kim made no move to acknowledge Lodger.  For his part, Roger was tired of it all—tired of the flickering lights that kept him awake half the night, tired of the dead trees and toxic ink that spilled from his mailbox every day, tired of the credulous people who fed these charlatans.  "There oughtta be a law," he said, but Mrs. Kim had turned away from him to arrange fruit on the table by the front door.

Men of reason use laws to regulate.  They also write letters.  Voltaire wrote thousands of letters.  Roger went back upstairs, and sitting at the table by his front window, he wrote a letter to his member of parliament complaining about the proliferation of charlatans who took advantage of the elderly and the gullible, and who damaged public discourse by promoting superstition and nonsense. They were all foreigners.  He didn't mind foreigners, as such.  In fact, it was a damn shame they had to be raised in places where they didn't have access to a proper education.  But just because they were deprived of an enlightened education didn't mean they were free to run around giving people the evil eye and spitting three times whenever they saw a crow.

Roger could post the letter at the corner.  He heard that nowadays people use email when they want to tell a politician what they think.  Roger had no use for email.  It cheapened the value of a good word.  Almost no point anymore.  Might as well sit all in a row, dumb like monkeys, staring at nothing but our toes.

On the way back from the corner, Roger paused in front of Madame Zignault's and looked through the front window.  It was dark inside, so he crept closer, cupping his hands around his eyes and pressing against the glass.  An elderly woman's face lurched into view, pale as a ghost's, and Roger started backward, pricking his ass in a barberry shrub.  The woman's expression would have appeared neutral if it weren't for the great jowls which drew all the flesh into a severe frown.  It looked like Madame Tussaud had worked on the woman's face but left it sitting too close to an open flame.  She wore a musty turban with peacock feathers and a crystal stuck in the center above her forehead.  When Roger righted himself, he felt how his heart pounded and took a deep breath to settle it.

Mme Zignault motioned him to the front door, and for whatever reason, he complied.  She asked if he wanted to come inside.  "A reading perhaps?"  But he stood firm on the paving stones.

"It's people like you—"  Roger shook his fist in the air.

Mme Zignault didn't respond.  She stood in the open door and let the hem of her chasuble soak up water from a puddle.

"You think you can come here and spread your superstition?"

The woman fixed Roger with a look like no one had ever fixed him.  She watched him with her dark inscrutable eyes.  The look sent a shudder through his body.

That night, Roger woke with a start from a dream in which he was laid out on a wooden floor, naked, or mostly naked, or at least discretely covered where it mattered, candles, stars, hex signs scratched in chalk, blood poured from a golden chalice, incantations, a staff made from a gnarled branch, the head of a goat.  He looked out the window at the blue hand and red eye flashing in the night.  The bad dream was Mme Zignault's fault; he was certain of it.  He cursed the woman for ruining his sleep.  He tried to calm himself by reading one of the Meditationes by René Descartes, but that didn't work, so he decided to write another letter.  If he was going to be upset, he might as well use the energy of his distress to good advantage.  This time, instead of writing to his member of parliament, he wrote to the minister of immigration and citizenship.  He wrote that the government was in dereliction of its duty, opening the country's borders to people who practised Satanism and took money from hard-working citizens who were actually born here.  It defied reason.

In the morning, Roger walked to the corner with his letter and dropped it into the box.  He liked that it didn't cost anything to send letters to his elected representatives.  Inexplicably, that thought brought a smile to his face.  On the way back to his apartment, Roger noticed Mme Zignault standing in her doorway and watching him with that evil gaze of hers.  He stopped in front of her and squared his shoulders.  "I just posted a letter to the minister of immigration.  I hope they deport you."

The woman shrugged and smiled.  That was the first time Roger had seen her smile.  She had a large gap between her two top front teeth.

A car swerved too fast around the corner and struck the mailbox.  Roger didn't see the car but he heard the screeching tires and the metallic bang as the rear bumper clipped the mailbox and toppled it into the street.  The driver tried to right the car but overcompensated and sent it careening across the street and onto the far sidewalk.  Roger turned in time to see a table collapse and a load of exotic fruits and vegetables tumble into oncoming traffic.  Although he couldn't say why, Roger sensed that something terrible had happened.  He tore across road and found that Mrs. Kim had been pinned beneath the car.  Already, the light had passed from her eyes.

What?

Were you expecting a point to any of this?

Don't be unreasonable.