EDIT>>Insomniac1

Dr. Phil’s Top 10 Tips for Sleeping Through the Night

Madeleine’s brother, Jeremy Weeks, was a mess after his wife left him on their sixth anniversary- this happened in Lansing, in 2003. Just days before, in the converted rec room / basement of a friend, Jeremy paused to take a deep breath in between gulps of beer. It was an elusive, profoundly happy moment- one of the few he had stopped long enough to notice since college.
He actually convinced himself that he had outlasted the curse of the Weeks family- no marriage made it to ten years. In fact, few got beyond five.
“Just another statistic,” he moaned afterward.

In Michigan, he moved three times, each time imposing on a different friend, every time finding something unbearable about the places or the people. He was restless. He fantasized her return to him in extravagant detail:
There was candlelight. Barry White. Everyone’s shoes were off. The curtains billowed, yet the room remained quite warm. He held a woman- a beautiful, curvaceous woman. Behind them, she pleaded, begging him to take her back. "Remy," she whispered, falling into his arms as woman number one faded away.
He worked in international finance. At cocktail parties, Remy joked he was a headless horseman in the rush to spread capitalism abroad. “We provide the funds that make you a more efficient dictator.” For some reason, no one ever laughed. And it was in those awkward pauses- couples clustered, silently searching the area for alcohol- that he felt his wife’s disdain shower over him, crowding out the old surer parts.
Sheila’s mother died when she was twelve. When she was sixteen, her father went to jail for a string of liquor store hold-ups. Working two jobs for nearly ten years, she put herself through college and became the Eastern U.S. buyer for a major department store chain. On their second date- this happened 5 months before their wedding under a waterfall in Hawaii- she asked Remy what he wanted in a woman. Remy gave the standard response: passion, intelligence, humor. When he turned the question around on her, Sheila responded, “Perfection. I won’t settle for less. You shouldn’t either.”
Remy’s dad, a sometimes-alcoholic, had a saying. “One of the pitfalls of marriage is that it requires two.”~

She sat beside him on the flowered comforter he had hated silently each night. “This a long way from happiness. This is barely getting by.”
Downstairs, dishes and wine glasses littered the fireplace mantle, the dinner table. Cigarette smoke hung in the air alongside empty chatter. And a big pile of anniversary gifts- useless junk good for god knows what.
Her hand was on his knee. She had already removed her wedding band in a fit of annoyance earlier that evening. He shoved her away. “Does it bother you that this is a complete shock to me?”
She looked toward the door. The lab puppies yipped excitedly, pleading to be let outside. “What bothers me is that you would tell yourself this is all my fault.” Swathes of evening light poured in their room. She continued, “Don’t you see? You never once made me feel nice. Nice was all I wanted. So what I need to know is, when did you decide I wasn’t worth it? Or did you always think so?”
“This is happening and you’re doing it. You’re playing the card women have played for years. It’s too easy just to call the man the emotional cripple. Sign the divorce papers-” he started to yell. The urge to drown out her voice, her presence even, nearly floored him. “Sign the divorce papers and you throw away a life!” Stalking back and forth, he made half-circles around the bed. “What does an emotionally mature man look like, anyway? Dr. Phil?”
One of their Labrador puppies made his way across the room. In the dusk shadows, the dog mimicked Remy’s circles, trying to find a comfortable place to sleep.
“It’s funny,” his wife went on. “I feel like you could have been with any woman for all this time. Like it wouldn’t have made any difference. And if I’m totally honest, I guess I was happy with you most of the time. I didn’t need romance every night. For years I don’t think I needed it at all. You made me content, even if the reverse was never true. And I know you would never admit it. I know you would never admit things weren’t perfect. You should realize that was one of the things I loved. Called you my eternal optimist.” She kneeled beside the pup, stroking its fur in the twilight.
“Clueless is more like it.” In a low voice, he strung together expletives.
Another deep breath. Sheila said, “What I started to wonder was… is there such a thing as knowing yourself too well? Are there people so self-aware, people cursed with such self-knowledge, that they discover early on what their greatest happiness consists of? That might have been me. You might have been it, for a while.”~

Now, in what Dr. Phil would call “the post-divorce phase of life,” now, finally sick of his childishness, Remy resolved he would not move again. He was single- that was that. All this closure crap took place before the supermarket checkout girl came along.
In the express lane, Remy grouped his can foods from his perishables, separating out the coupons. After gathering the credit receipts, the girl handed him his bags and drawled, “Enjoy your day, now.”
His hands shaking, he carried the bags to his car. Didn’t she look like Sheila? Was it her voice, the shape of her body- what? He sat in the backseat of his Acura until dark, trying to figure it out. The food beside him began to stink, and he felt a nausea well up inside. Overhead, the lot lights flicked on, one by one. He floated on the neon whirr.
Outside, a silver balloon breezed past attached to the arm of a blond child. The girl—pony-tailed and wearing lace—the girl reminded him of Olivia, his twin sister’s daughter. He missed her giggles. It had been ages since he last visited Madeleine in Pennsylvania.
I’ll go, he thought. “I’m going,” he said. Key in the ignition. “Where the hell is Pennsylvania?” Remy asked himself groggily. He struggled through the glove compartment in the darkness, rustling for a map. That little light had burned out ages ago. He kept forgetting to replace it…
For those unfamiliar with the territory, I-70something covers the expanse between Michigan and Pennsylvania in an unassuming bluish haze. Out in the world, on the graveyard shift anyway, there is a sublime calm attached to most everything. Newspaper delivery people go about their business with deep sleep crinkling the edges of their faces, refrigerated grocery trucks form a procession on the road- at times weaving slightly before correction occurs.
Now, map in hand, Remy set aside his almost overwhelming fatigue and tried to focus on his need for his twin. Consequently- or perhaps it rose up in opposition to these thoughts- he felt a dull dread bubble inside his saggy, yellowed abdomen. For him, it was a feeling, an inheritance more familiar than any Weeks family thing- he hated the uncertainty that accompanied setting out on any long trip. As a child, he had despised vacations to the family ranch in New Mexico. And as a spouse, he had hated the church Sheila insisted on attending because it was more than 50 minutes from their house. “You’re talking about Sunday morning traffic.” This is what he would say. “You’ve got to remember that.”
Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez. A voice from the radio insisted this was “good music to not fall asleep to.” Hearing that bit of Southern something in his voice, Remy braked hard and punched the radio until sound died. His right hand was a tangle of blood and skin so he pulled to the side of the road. As he tore a strip from the frayed edge of his undershirt, Remy had a sudden vision of the yellow dress.
They had known each other little more than a week. Sheila said she wanted to take him to her favorite place in the world. After milling in an all-night restaurant for an hour, they wound up at the door of a little bookshop in East Lansing.
“It’s closed.” He stared at her in the fine, misting rain. Her yellow dress lit like a soft halo from a car’s headlight somewhere down the block.
She leaned, whispered in his ear. “Look again.”
A glow floated in a barely visible back doorway of the shop. “What is it?” Remy asked, unsure if he cared yet, or not. All he knew was the smell of her perfume, the soft fabric of her dress as a damp breeze brushed it against his trembling hand.
“Come with me,” she said, disappearing around the corner of the shop.
He followed her into the wet hedges that grew along the side of the building. They both flattened their bodies against the wall. “Are we breaking in?” he asked.
A window in front of them, shade only partly drawn. They peered through it and into the backroom of the shop. On tiptoe, they watched a man write furiously in a ledger, his left hand all the time pulling at his shaggy graying hair. “He’s not dying it anymore.” Sheila giggled.
“Oh god.” Remy hated superficial men.
“That’s Tom Mackey,” she said. “He used to teach high-school English. He was a frustrated writer.”
“Aren’t they all?” He wanted to say that, of all people, he thought writers should at least go out of their way to avoid stereotyping themselves. Instead, he asked whether Mackey had taught her.
“Everyone said he kept dozens of unfinished novels in his desk drawers. He became more and more irate that he wasn’t able to see one of his plotlines through. Eventually, he couldn’t bear to be around books or teach classes anymore. There was some kind of incident… a manuscript bonfire in the gym one day. The school asked him to leave.”
The scent of her perfume in the night began to pull on him. His face only inches from hers, Remy imagined her taste.
Sheila stared through the tiny opening in the shade. Mackey stopped playing with his hair. He put away the ledger and the day’s receipts. The former teacher went across the room to his bookcase. Slowly, with much thoughtfulness, he scoured the titles, his back to the voyeurs at his window. Then, armed with the one that suited, he retreated to an over-stuffed recliner in the furtherest corner of the room. From this angle, only a length of arm and a right elbow was visible.
“I think he lives here.” Sheila turned away from the window. “Sometimes, I stay for more than an hour after he closes. He never leaves.”
“I don’t understand. You said he hated books.”
“An old friend of mine, her name was Darlene. We both had Mackey. Darlene’s younger sister said she’d heard rumors. For a few years he spent time in Belize, on the expat scene. No one knew what to make of it. But he came back and opened a bookstore. Now he spends some nights reading. Other nights, he has people over. They look like a poetry group of some kind. I think they critique each other’s work. It’s really quite amazing. It’s amazing what time can do.”
He shook his head. Sentimentality… schmaltz- these were things right up there on his list with superficiality. “Expat scene you say?” As they spoke, Remy gently took her elbow and led her away from the window. “I’ll tell you what really happened. Down in Belize, Mr. English 101 got involved in the drug trade. That’s what enlightened his search for personal growth. Back here, these ‘writers’ you see him with are fellow criminals.” He grinned at her in the darkness. “They’re plotting the perfect crime. They plan to knock over the local library and steal two thousand dollars in dimes. And hundreds of tiny pencils with no erasers.”
“I wonder what book he picked to read tonight,” she murmured.
Remy asked, “Have you spoken to him?”
The many folds of her dress had crumpled against the moisture in the wall, and the wetness in the overall air. She tugged at it, making his whole body ache.
“You haven’t, have you?” he said, after a moment. “You haven’t talked to the man since 10th grade.” He chuckled. Grabbing both her hands, he pulled her into a hug.
“I called the store once, but I hung up…”
Still laughing, his face buried in her hair, Remy finally let go of the breath had been holding. This imperfection of hers- this strangeness- it so relieved him because before she had felt unreachable. ~

In the car, on the road from Michigan to Pennsylvania, Remy referred to himself as version 2.0 “Divorce upgrades and all,” he joked tiredly. After driving most of the night- after cutting his hand on the radio- at 11 a.m., craving sleep, he pulled into a roadside motel.
“Where the hell am I?” he yelled to the only other person in the parking lot.
A massive, trunk-like body spilled from the open hood of an old Mustang. Tools ran across the perimeter. “Earth,” the headless mass called out.
Sarcasm- that Remy understood.
Inside the Paradise Motel, the smell of urine floated in the air between fits of peeling wallpaper and shrunken rugs. The desk clerk- a pockmarked, heavy girl- gave him the last vacancy. He darted up the steps and down the corridor to his room. Twirling the key ring in his hand, he resolved to sleep on his coat, wanting never to touch so much as a thread of the sheets at the Paradise Motel.
“Maybe in my next life,” he mumbled.
Near the end of the hall, he passed an opened door. Room 311. A man and a woman were fighting. Undeterred, Remy kept going, wanting to ignore it. The fight, the voices in Room 311 seemed to magnify within his hearing. At the vending machine he stopped, teeth gritted.
“You’re impossibly naive. How could you ever think I’d leave my wife?”
Counting his change. Ten, twenty, twenty-five, thirty… His eyes were fixed on the pretzels.
“Why would you lie to me?” she pleaded through booming tears.
Remy frowned, without knowing it.
The man who thundered past looked like any other, save for an exceptionally red face. Right behind him was the woman. Long, dark hair. Short, some extra pounds, she was an exotic outcropping in the pale yellow corridor.
The man stopped at the steps. “Why on earth did you believe me?” He turned, and was gone before she could think of an answer.
Humming loudly, the vending machine surrendered its last bag of pretzels. Tearful woman spun round, and she saw Remy for the first time.
Keys, snack in hand, he disappeared into his room.~

Sunday mornings before they were married, Remy cooked breakfast. Each time, he tried to finish before Sheila awoke. He wanted to serve her in bed just once, but always, she was too quick for him.
Somewhere between garnishing the omelets and squeezing the orange juice, she materialized and slid into a chair at the table, wearing nothing but his black Ralph Lauren sweater. It was a game they played, and every week she found it- no matter where he hid it. (Already, Remy imagined tucking an engagement ring into the sweater sleeve…)
Eggs in Spanish sauce, buttermilk biscuits, pecan waffles—every week he tried a new recipe, thirsting for her hunger, eager to see her satisfied. Every week it made him crazy when she only ate a quarter or half of what he put in front of her.
“This is good?” he asked. It was late fall.
Across the table, she licked her fingers and stared at him. Silence. After several seconds she nodded, a lock of dark blonde hair falling across her face.
“Why don’t you ever finish?”
“Hmm.” Rolling an avocado crepe, she drenched it in sauce and wrapped her lips around it. She cradled the food in her mouth and smiled sloppily, wickedly. “It dalicious. Evryhing. Ahways.”
“Okay. I appreciate that,” he chuckled. “So how come you never finish?”
Sheila threw her napkin at him.
He got up, started clearing the table. “We don’t have to… I mean, if-” He hoped she somehow knew what he wanted to say.
“Why must you men always confuse quantity and quality? What about enjoyment?”
“You’re right, you’re right.” He tossed the plates into the sink and began filling it with water. “Why do people wear watches, for that matter? All it does it help them keep track of hours they’ve wasted.”
Standing, she pulled at the sweater and enveloped herself in his aroma. “You can be such a girl sometimes.” Then, from behind, she wrapped her arms around his waist and whispered, “I want to say… thank you. All this is unnecessary, you know. I don’t need to be catered to. I’d come over here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I was starving and there wasn’t any food for a hundred miles.” She rested her cheek on his neck. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“I think I forgot some work I should take a look at today.” Turning, Remy kissed her firmly on the lips. “Why don’t you go upstairs?” He dried his hands on the dishtowel. “I’ll be there in a little while.”
“Hey, hey it’s Sunday.” Walking backward, moving slowly out of the room, she jutted her lower lip.
“I like my job,” he mumbled.
An hour later, he found her asleep in his bed. On TV, a news show featured the latest group of talking heads.
Her hair was a mess. Her body faced the doorway, bare legs beckoned him. Inside the sheet covers, next to her, Remy found a little bag of pretzels, the snack she never went anywhere without.
He knew she never ate them. Sheila just rolled them around in her mouth, using her tongue to extricate every last piece of salt.~

In the dream, he spins her on the dance floor. Faster and faster, their bodies move ahead of the sounds surrounding them. First, it is only a few seconds. Soon, however, they are strangely out of sync with the music. But he’s not worried about what others are thinking or feeling or saying. All he knows is this—like a child on some theme park ride for the very first time, the thought of letting go even for a moment terrifies him.
She is a specter. Her body is there, in his arms, moving along with him to the sluggish pace of the music. Her face- she smiles delicately at those around them. (Where are the other people? Who are they?)
He tugs her on the waist and offers her a smile. He whispers some loving comment, but even now—in the dream, experiencing it—it is as if he is watching it happen from some far off place. He cannot feel his feet moving. He cannot hear himself talk. Come to think of it, he cannot hear the song that is playing. He only sees the effect of the music on himself. Shuddering, he tugs on her again and pulls her close. She stumbles a bit in response and scowls at him. He’s messed up her footing.
As they slow down to regain themselves, he determines to make eye contact with another partygoer, someone who can explain what’s happening to him. A wolf is manning the first drink tray they pass. A British soldier in a black high-top hat guards the exit, expressionless…
His door at the Paradise Motel is shaking. The knob rattling. Remy rouses himself from sleep. Still curled in bed, after a few seconds, he props himself up with his elbows. “What is it?”
“Let me in.” The small, female voice drowned out the remainder of his dream. In the dissipating haze, he stumbled to the door and flung it open, expecting Sheila. In front of him stood the woman who earlier had been fighting with her married lover.
“What do you want?” Remy asked.
“Can I come in?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
He stepped backward.
Sweeping past him into the room, she reached up to brush a lock of dark hair out of his eyes. “You need a trim,” she said.
“So what, do you make house calls?”
“I saw you watching us earlier.” Inside, she surveyed the room. Said her name was Celeste.
“You don’t look like a ‘Celeste.’”
“What do I look like?” she crossed her arms.
“A woman standing in a strange man’s hotel room? You look like someone who’d lie about her name. Why did you do that, anyway? Why did you tell me when I didn’t even ask your name?”
“I’ll have to watch that in the future. Normal people would have gotten around to asking names at some point.”
“This is what normal people do?” Remy sat down. This time in a chair next to the door.
“I saw you watching us today,” she repeated, leaning against the countertop.
“And you thought… what? That I needed, or deserved, or wanted an explanation?”
“I thought you seemed interested. I thought you seemed interesting.”
He pursed his lips, suddenly aware of his unmade bed. “You’re attractive. And I know you’ve had a rough day. But anymore, this just isn’t my speed.”
“I didn’t want to be alone tonight.”
He was silent as he considered the offer. The thought of spending another night by himself disgusted him. She stood there, crooked, looking more alone than he felt. “Did you love him?” Remy asked suddenly.
Celeste bit her lip. “What does that matter?”
“Would it make sense to you if I said there are about a hundred other people in this room with us right now?”
Fidgeting, she tugged at the edge of her skirt the same way Sheila used to. “How long ago did your marriage end?”
“She did that,” Remy said. “She always pulled at her clothing. Like nothing fit right or something. Like she wished she was somewhere else wearing anything else. I used to think it was sexy as hell like… like she couldn’t wait to jump in bed with me. Male ego- what can I say? Later, later it just became-”
“Discomfort,” Celeste said. “That’s what it always was. Discomfort.”
His cell phone was on the table. Picking it up, he began to turn it over and over in his hand.
“Sometimes I miss her voice,” he said. “I can’t call, because she would recognize the number. When I dial from someone else’s phone, when she picks up, when she says hello, she only ever says it once. Then, she waits and just breathes. I always hang up before she says-”
“She knows it’s you. I’m… I do that too, I mean.”
“A long time ago, I swore never to psychoanalyze anyone. At least not to their faces. The only time I ever broke that promise was with my wife, and you see where that got me. Before that, everything was golden. But I guess how we console ourselves isn’t anybody’s business, is it?”
“No, I don’t suppose so,” said Celeste.
Crossing the room, Remy crouched down in front of her. She smelled strongly of burned coffee and faint cigarettes. “Why did you come here?” he asked her again. Then, without waiting for an answer, he pressed his mouth against hers.
It was a wholly unromantic moment. Neither touched the other with anything but pursed lips. Hers were chapped, his, strangely cold. When they separated, Remy felt the sudden urge for a drink.
“Not up to your usual standards then?” she asked in a loud whisper.
“I wanted to see what it was like. Men are curious creatures.”
She tapped her fingers on the table as she licked her lips.
“We’re a pair, aren’t we? Dr. Phil was my wife’s other lover. So I know this- if a woman gravitates toward attached or vulnerable men, she has some serious psychological issues to sort out.” He made his way back to his side of the room.
“Enlighten me. I can’t stand that man.”
“Something must have been wrong with your daddy.”
“I never knew my father. There are a lot of people in that situation and they grow up fine. I hate diagnosis. No one has the same body, the same mind, the same soul. How can a guy with a white lab coat think he knows what’s going on inside of someone else?”
Remy laughed. “Why take any medicine at all?”
“Maybe I don’t have time for relationships. Maybe I prefer working, or reading, or writing, or drawing. Maybe I like my time to be my own.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.” Remy opened the small, bedside refrigerator and pulled out a six-pack. “Beer?” Celeste nodded, so he took a step closer and tossed it to her.
He flicked the aluminum pull-tab and opened his over the trashcan. He watched it fizz onto the lid before he lifted it to his lips, to suck the carbonation off. And the taste of her. After a moment, he said, “I don’t think I’m ready for a woman.”
“I can see that. So what was it? Why did she kick you out? I have to know. It may help with my little drama that you saw play out in the hallway, earlier.”
“I said I wouldn’t analyze you. And I can promise that I won’t… again.” Remy smiled and sat in a chair on the other side of the window. Both stared ahead at the door. “Don’t wait by the phone for this guy to call. Don’t do that. He wasn’t even yours to begin with.”
“That doesn’t sound very enlightened. He wasn’t ‘mine’—by whose standards? Look, I enjoyed the sex, occasionally. Sure, I cried. I think a lot of women cried when they were with him.”
Remy rested his elbows on his knees. Leaning forward, he massaged his face with his hands. “All kidding aside- you really shouldn’t.”
“The married guy? Thank you for your concern. You probably shouldn’t have done whatever it was you did. So? We can’t help who we are.”
“These past few weeks, it has become the defining hope of my life that we can.”
“You want her back,” Celeste said.
“I’m warning you not to be pathetic. I’m telling you to have some dignity. Am I ignoring my own advice?”
“I don’t care about your warnings. If he ever called me, if he said he loved me and he was finished with his wife, if I didn’t think that her money was pretty damn important to him- I would be with him.”
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“The love… where it’s real… where it’s unashamed… the love is not the bad part. The love is not what I should be sorry for. He was married. Maybe that meant it was doomed from the start- that I should have known better. But I will never be ashamed of love. Or that I told him. His reaction doesn’t make my feelings any less good or less pure. I’m still me and I’ll still wake up tomorrow morning and have to live with myself.”
“There are single men out there.”
“Why do you think they’re single?” Finishing the beer, Celeste broke off the tab and dropped it inside the can. When Remy looked at her curiously, she shrugged and said, “I remember my father doing that.”
“Nothing is as easy as they tell us it will be. Hell, I’ve stopped sleeping at night.”
“That’s nothing. That’s normal. Earlier, I had no tissues, no compact, no nothing. I was a wreck, covered in tears. I couldn’t find anything else, so I actually cried into a maxi pad. Talk about your pathetic displays… And the sicker thing is that I haven’t thrown it out, yet.”
“A token of your undying affection?” Remy joked. He thought of his own father, a man who trafficked joyously in hackneyed turns of phrase. That explains a lot- that explains everything- there’s the final chapter- the end is in sight!
Love. Love explains a lot.
Her eyes were misshapen pools of blue. “I’ve been through this before. What’s going to get you,” she said, “I mean really get you, is that no matter what you expect, no matter how in control you feel- even well past the time when all goodbyes are said- the loss of this person will just keep flooring you.”
Remy started to cry. Almost as quickly, he pictured his mother. A formidable woman, Jane Weeks had a braid of steel gray hair that was never askew. As a child, when he wrapped his small arms around her neck in an attempted embrace, he was always overwhelmed by her earthen scent.
Taking deep breaths now, Remy tried to compose himself by focusing on the stretches he learned from her long ago. (She hated weak men and had told him this over and over again on their many walks at the New Mexico ranch). The control stretches were: fingers, arms, back, and legs. He willed himself to concentrate on these movements- all the while digging at furious tears.
A few seconds passed. Celeste hugged him. He clutched her shoulders in his palms and lost himself.
Later, Remy said, “On the day of our anniversary party, she told me that it died. That we died.”
“And I bet you were worried about your guests.”
“No, it happened after. What do you mean?”
“Love is constant.” She took a deep breath.
“It goes on? What are you saying? It’ll survive, and we’ll wind up together in the end?” He rolled his eyes.
“No, nothing like that. I’m saying love is constant.”
Outside, someone was banging on a nearby door. Celeste rushed across the room and ran into the hallway of the Paradise Motel. It was her mystery man, from earlier.
She turned, smiled at Remy, and she was gone.~

The morning of Remy’s birthday—he and Sheila have been married five years…
“I miss you. Our bed is so empty. At least until my girlfriends get back in. Seriously, I’m 35 today and I’ve realized how damn lucky I am. A promotion on the horizon. And what about you? Work’s going so well that they’ve got you out there courting new accounts. I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow to see you. Call me when you get this.”
One o’clock…
“Alan arranged for us to take the clients on a tour of the bay area. I loved your message, by the way. The part about missing me, I mean… I’m glad to hear that the rumors about your promotion are proving true. Wouldn’t it be an unbelievable present if they offered you the job today? Think of how hard you’ve worked. No one deserves it more than you, baby.”
Three-fifty p.m.…
“Sheila, he’s on a conference call with Asia. He’s asked me to tell you that he’ll call you back as soon as he can. Looks as though he’ll be tied up for awhile. Did you know Mr. O’Malley gave him the news at lunch today? I’m thrilled for him… We all are. It honestly could not have happened to a better guy.”
Seven-ten p.m.…
“Baby, Grace gave you my message, right? I realize it’s been a hectic day for you. I got in from San Fran about forty minutes ago. Alan said it was fine that I fly out early. I’m here at The Dancing Fish, right by the airport. It’s mobbed. I’m starving. I’ve missed you. Please call.”
Seven fifty-eight …
“The last meeting ran late, now traffic is crazy. There must be an accident backing up the expressway because I’m sitting here in bumper-to-bumper. Sorry, but I can’t move any faster than I am.”
Eight thirty-two…
“Surprise,” she whispered softly. “Didn’t really work out the way I’d hoped it would.”
He chuckled. “A sushi bar? You’ve got some sense of humor to think that I would want to spend my birthday here.”
She dipped an egg roll in sauce. Took a bite.
“It’s good you’re back,” he said.~

When Jeremy and Madeleine were young, people said it was impossible to tell them apart. Dark-haired, dark-skinned, similar builds. For fraternal twins of opposite sex, this comment caused the two children endless consternation. Remy worked hard at his job and Madeleine, in turn, worked even harder at her appearance.
Their parents had believed in little to no delineation between the genders, instead, they hoped to endow their kids with sensitivities foreign among their counterparts. And, as Madeleine mocked Mother, “Our girl can grow up to be a scientist, a doctor, even a lawyer (god forbid!) never feeling undue pressure because of her breasts in an all-penis all-the-time world.”
When Madeleine married Ted- a conservative banker from Georgia- she became a homemaker. Mother’s disgust was a constant topic of conversation. Soon after, she stopped asking her to visit. And from the day of their daughter’s birth, Madeleine and Ted kept young Olivia knee deep in frilly, curly, girlie things.
Remy barely made it onto their well-lit Pennsylvania porch before the child threw open the door in excitement. “You’re here, you’re here!” The five-year old jumped into her uncle’s arms.
“Calm down.” Madeleine appeared and took her daughter gently by the shoulders. She guided her back into the house. “Your uncle has plenty of time for that. You should go to bed now.”
Panicked, she pleaded, “Can I stay up? Please?”
Her father scooped her into his arms. Slowly, he carted the excited child up the steps. Olivia chattered the entire time, Ted responded with murmured “yeses” and tired “we’ll see’s.”
Madeleine smoothed the fabric of her skirt as she watched her husband and daughter disappear. “He’ll have a terrible time getting her down.” Hugging Remy, she said, “We’re so glad to see you.”
Remy motioned upstairs. “Who usually puts her to bed?”
“He works a lot. Phone calls with clients that last all weekend. Tax season is unbearable… Mind you, caring for Olivia is no cakewalk. He can take a turn while you are here.”
Remy frowned. “Her therapies cost a lot, don’t they?” The child had a form of retardation that mirrored Downs Syndrome in layers of severity, though her cognitive functions tested higher than normal. Doctors expressed constant uncertainty as to what they were dealing with. A new recommendation always on the horizon, new therapists and tutors always invading the home.
In the kitchen, Madeleine dug through the cupboards for her stash of instant coffee. “He says he cannot sleep with the smell when I brew late.”
“It’s only nine-thirty.”
“Is the couch adequate?” his sister asked. “If you can give me a few minutes, I’ll make up the guest bedroom.”
Remy said, “I’ve gotten used to going to bed with Charlie Rose. Is that all right? I’ll keep the volume low.”
Madeleine stared at him. She asked about Sheila. “Honestly, are you all right?”
He avoided her eyes and started pacing around the kitchen. “She had an overbite. It was subtle, but it was there. She was a prude in bed. Completely unaffectionate in public. She had too many freckles on her body and not enough on her face. Her skin was way too pale. Either that, or she washed herself out with all the makeup. I don’t know which it was.” He sighed. “I don’t know.”
“I always thought that what you two needed to take care of Olivia for a weekend. You had planned on kids at some point?”
“Are you saying I wouldn’t be sitting here if we’d done that? You know I was never over-confident on the subject of marriage.”
Madeleine shook her head. “You did not want this. A child would have made it more difficult for Sheila to walk away.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m a bad person because I didn’t want to bring a kid into an unhappy marriage?”
“I think that you were selfish. Most women want kids.”
“Tell me something. Is it a wedding band… or a disease?”~

Remy sat next to Olivia on the carpet. “How do you stop an elephant from charging?”
The girl muted the television. “How?” she asked, looking up at him even as Big Bird pranced around a garbage can with his hairy cohorts.
“You buy his shoes a size too small.”
Olivia giggled, rocking back and forth. Her breath escaped in short gasps of air. Watching her made him ache for a child of his own.
On TV, the big, yellow creature started talking about dental hygiene. The irony seemed lost on the little girl so, after a few more seconds, Remy quietly exited the room.
In the kitchen, his sister sorted recipes. “How are you feeling today?” Madeleine put on some water for tea and turned down the oven temperature. “Veal. This is his favorite.”
In his bathrobe- his uniform, really- Remy studied her. He realized she had lightened her hair. The dress, too, looked new. “What’s the occasion?” he asked.
Madeleine kicked her heels off and slid them under the kitchen table. “Would you dress for dinner tonight?”
“If it’s Teddy’s birthday, just give me the word. O-liv and I will disappear.”
She shook her head and said they would all eat together at six.
“I’ve got you scared, haven’t I?” Remy thumbed through a pile of recipes. “This Donna Reed act of yours is for Ted. So he’ll be more eager to leave his 20 year-old assistant and get home to you on time.”
“I am fine. Ted and I are fine. What about you? You still don’t sleep,” she said. “You cannot keep moping around. You have all this extra time. What are your plans for forever, Remy?”
"Do you remember when we were kids? Midnight thunderstorms scared us and we stayed up until it was time for school, fighting about stupid things."
(A few feet away, Olivia howled at the puppet antics of Public TV dollars.)
"Do something constructive with your time, would you? Clean my house. Teach my daughter to recite Shakespeare. It would be a welcome change from Barney.”
"Maybe I should write a one-man-show. I could be Dr. Stu, a justice seeking marriage counselor who travels the countryside in search of hacks. I’ll call it ‘Jagged little Phil.’"
"Dr. Phil is not your problem, Remy, you are.” Madeleine turned off the burner and poured their tea.

That night, he joined her in the backyard. She had a sunset ritual of re-filling all the bird feeders.
"Tell me why," she asked him.
"I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t fun anymore.”
Madeleine shifted the bag of birdseed from one hip to the other. "There is something you’re meant to do now.” She surveyed her yard in the fading light.
"Like what?" he asked. "Don't tell me to clean your house.”
She grinned, tossed some seed at him.~


Monday the 8th, he woke her at 3:37 a.m. Asked her where she kept the ‘Smores. Madeleine growled. Ted rolled over in the bed and lightly shoved her out. Remy was a force of nature.
They dug into the stash of junk food in a back corner of the kitchen. Sitting on the floor in front of the sink, a garbage can between them, they gossiped about old classmates until the newspaper slammed loudly against the front door.
Tuesday the 9th, Madeleine got the wake-up call just after two. On all fours on the kitchen floor, Remy showed his sister how he had completely cleaned the space under and around the refrigerator. She gave him the plunger and told him to get started on the toilets.
On the 10th, in the middle of an especially bad week, Remy insisted it was his destiny to save the world through science. His sister reminded him that he flunked freshmen biology.
The 11th, 12th, and 13th he tried singing. No one slept, and Olivia took to covering both ears with her hands whenever her uncle walked into a room.
By Sunday, he considered seminary, saying it would be great to only work one day a week.
The following Monday, brother and sister sat toe-to-toe on the living room sofa, a Humphrey Bogart movie muted on the television in front of them.
"What is it you think of at night?” Madeleine, who was two minutes older, asked her baby brother. “Is it the grandiose, or is it General Hospital?"
"When it’s cold, I go outside and smoke. And I listen."
"Listen to what? Birds?”
Remy took off his slippers (Ted’s). "I don’t know.”
“I think you are lucky, do you know that?” Madeleine asked. “I have no idea where I stand half the time because he will not even talk to me. He is always tired. He works so damn hard. There are people… there are people who go their entire lives without ever finding the type of passion that you and Sheila had for a while. God, you skulk around here like these emotions you are feeling are some banner of shame for a man. It is just the opposite, Remy. So many people spend their lives afraid of feeling. You were like that. Dad was. Everyone in our family, more or less. But you woke up.”
“Post-divorce, Version 2.0. Dr. Phil Seal of Approval?” he grinned.
She twisted her silver watch around and around. The skin on her arm was like a moist leaf. “Maybe the real problem is that we measure time wrong.”
“What?” He touched her hand.
“Everyone speaks of units of measurement, quantity. Hours and minutes until the next appointment. Quality of life is lost in the equation.”
“I think you may be right,” Remy said. “Something ends—that doesn’t make it a mistake. That doesn’t mean it never should have begun.”~

The next day, as Remy tossed his bag into the trunk of his Acura, another fine, misting rain began to fall. The neighborhood was quiet. A school day, a regular weekday. Parents and children alike wedged into their desks, hidden away in their cubicles, suckling workbooks and computer screens until the glorious bell.
Olivia and the tutor had gone to the aquarium. As there was a dinner party coming on the weekend, Madeleine was at the store buying bulk doilies and coasters.
Locking his car, Remy walked back around the side of the house. As he approached the porch, he stopped and ducked into a row of high shrubs.
There, on Olivia’s swing set, a young woman helped a small boy onto the sliding board. Remy did not recognize either of them. H continued watching, unsure of what to do. Was he a special needs child- a friend of Olivia’s from some playgroup?
The boy looked tired. Although the day was cool, and a light rain continued to fall, he wore only a long-sleeved, bright blue shirt and gray shorts. As the woman picked him up from the grass in front of the slide, his head drooped several times.
Carrying him to the swing, she strapped him in the seat and brushed the hair out of his face. Leaning down, the woman gently roused him and he perked right up. She began to speak louder, telling jokes in Spanish—one-liners Remy could only discern bits and pieces of. The boy giggled and threw his hands in the air. She pushed him higher on the swing. Delighted shrieks perforated the stillness.
Remy glanced over his shoulder, then across the yard. In the back, near the alleyway where Madeleine and Ted parked their cars, a child’s large toy car was laying on its side. In the grass next to it, two garbage bags.
The young woman plucked the boy off the swing. The garden fountain caught their attention and they ran to it.
It was then Remy noticed she had a cut down her lower lip and a bruise that spanned the right side of her face. She had two shirts tied around her waist. Remy fought the urge to tell her to wrap one around her son for the day, and its promise to come, was still cool.
He glanced up, at least… at last thankful that the rain had stopped.

It's All in the Technique

Junior wore the smile of a prankster angel on the day of his baptism. Later, everyone discovered he poured bubblebath into the baptismal pool. Moment in time. Interviewer asks a now famous comedian to tell some of the jokes he used at his stage debut, aged sixteen. His expression brings to mind in the reporter a Christmas tree being lit that first second of the holiday season. Moment in time. There's an old woman, walking off the job into retirement after forty five years at the textile mill. She's staring at her gold plated watch, wondering how much it'll fetch toward her grandkid's college education. Moment in time. Movies, books, and paintings are one thing, but there is no art so fiercely immediate or honest as photography.
Now if you're looking to pour some quick innovation into everyday shutterbugging, allow me to pass along a few tips. Get comfortable with quirky angles, go for the too close closeup. Try black and white in lieu of color to capture wrinkles and character lines on a subject's face. And then there's the negative image, superimposed over a positive one, that offers some interesting possibilities for graphic abstractions. In other words, a new way to look at the same old bowl of fruit.

Casinos- full with lights and roaring colors- this is where the people come to lose money in Atlantic City. Most places bring in entertainment, magicians or singers to perform and dance and jump through hoops in the middle of a large lobby where the gamblers cry when the money is gone, but they won't let go of the ambiance yet. So the musician throws out there his tunes made of heartache, and David Copperfield becomes an ideal manifestation of how you had the cash and then the cash was gone. Big business, but not the only game in town. Trump draws a young executive who's just received his first substantial raise; the boardwalk pulls in vacationing families from suburbia anywhere, toting only enough extra green for tacky souvenirs. But the fire happened early Wednesday morning, and that effected everyone.
By ten, a rumor began circulating through area establishments that the fire trucks on the beach had arrived in response to a bomb threat by an extreme fundamentalist group. Actually that last part changed with each person who repeated the story. First, blame Middle Easterners. Then the lunatic fringe. Next, publicity stunt. Finally just about everybody settled on the explanation that yet another presidential indiscretion was in the process of being covered up. No one left, and no one ran home afraid. Fires, bombs? An entire situation that felt too TV movie and so much like whisper down the lane that it seemed logical to assume a well written hero would come along and clear the confusion up. So big spenders from Texas and yuppies from New York City kept hitting on nineteen or praying for lucky seven. The only further distraction to their game was a constant influx of frustrated tourists wandering across the room as their kids complained they wanted this, they needed that. The fire had taken no casinos or clubs. Rather, it burned a part of the boardwalk that catered strictly to travelers, sold souvenirs- salt water taffy, stuffed animals, anything with Atlantic City scrawled across the front. These people had nowhere to go, so they gawked at craps tables or gazed at flashing lights until mothers and fathers alike came to quiet agreement that their children might accidentally associate gambling with prosperity. Overheard on the street: "I'll have my kid stare all night long at the stars in the sky, until he sees opportunity in every one. No need for talk of insignificance. But passing by outside a business that relies on personal misfortune I say keep both hands on your wallet and one eye on the nearest cop." Folks made their way to the beach talking, speculating on the cause of the blaze. Before long, a group of gentlemen in colorful, wide brim hats began taking bets on what the fire marshal would say. Families crowded into the nearby game areas, or they went swimming. At least everybody still had their cameras.
People tried their hand at creativity, moving away from standard issue smiling pixie shots. A few took pictures of sunlight on water, or waves crashing into an inexperienced surfer. No doubt many futures were made, and we know what's in the lens on a Wednesday, 1998, isn't necessarily the same as what we'll see twenty years down the line. Hey, the tourists, who- if not them- so love the cameras? ...wearing two or three looped on the neck at a time; but it's an essential point of investigative work also, record the crime scene and all. So- with much flare, the center of attention now- a burly fellow who looked as if he enjoyed his job too much ruled the case an incidence of arson. Men in hats grinned no longer, too many people have suspicious spirits these days.
Wozniak, a middle aged guy who smelled like coffee and peaches, stood amid the clamor doing his best to appear official. On paper, he's a detective. In real life, he fell away from whatever that used to mean. Gets overwhelmed easily, circumstances like this, because he hasn't been a part of anything important in a long time. Fact, he was contemplating just going back to his dusty apartment that had no furniture. Play solitaire for a couple hours, catch the end of Rush Limbaugh on the radio, fall asleep with a bowl of tomato soup boiling over in the microwave. Before the cop could slip away, a pretty blonde being walked by a poodle gestured to him. So he canceled prior plans and ambled over.
"Did you catch the 'perp' yet?" her hair leaned into her face and she had an ex model's posture, pretended that made her taller than she was.
Wozniak studied the young woman. Mother always said to relate to a person, find them in you. Not a complex puzzle, he at once concluded. Looked like she just wanted someone to talk with for awhile. Had such an eager, friendly smile. He sighed. "Any idea who might've done this?"
"Can't say I know of firebugs in this area," she shrugged, her dog yipped. "So," going on as if the previous matter was closed. "What's it like to be among 'the few and the proud?'"
Glancing round at the day, he realised it's the kind of light where you walk in double or triple shadow. The blonde wasn't wearing any shoes- her pink toes wiggling, he felt okay. "Say, isn't that the army?" Scratched his balding head, wondered if the setup of this crime matched anything he'd seen on Matlock. Gotta start some place.
She seemed nice, probably a good listener. Wanting to stay right there with her, he gave up on pretending to work. Grinned a long, toothy grin and called her Sarah- Sarah's his ex wife. Wozniak said, "Listen, if you tell me God set this fire, I swear I won't act surprised."
As her face puckered, he realised she had different colored eyes. Right blue, left green. Made the girl quite striking actually.
"Pastor Kline was very thorough. Whenever he preached, he sang a little morality and a little more verse. Always went after complete meanings. Something about another lesson we hadn't seen in 'For God so loved...' But don't you remember everywhere in the Old Testament that it says the aroma of something burning is pleasing to the Lord?"
"That makes God an arsonist? Hey, I may not look real brilliant, but Sunday morning is the one time I shine. And you... you-" the anger spilled into her mismatched eyes, angry lips, and angrily defensive body language.
"Just a thought, potential topic for conversation." This shock...
What a lousy contradiction- beauty, masking an ugly side- lets down life. "I only assumed it might make today more reasonable. The fire, for insurance. Act of God, I mean." But Sarah stalked off, muttering about a luau. He let the comment slide, saw a firefighter heading fast in his direction.
"Are you interviewing? Did you find any suspects yet?" The fella's tall, still walking around in full uniform dress. Sweat made lines down his face, he was intent on assuring everybody of his authority.
Wozniak constantly finds himself intimidated by anyone possessed of a superior attitude. As a child, he drowned in the pool often, care of an older sister who held him underwater for the amusement of her friends. Felt something like that age again, right there in what would probably be a meaningless situation. The detective explained about his exhaustive search for witnesses. -When you lose yourself, people are always saying go back to when the loss occurred. But he can't remember anything beyond always being the odd man out.
The younger man tilted his head into a cool breeze coming off the ocean. He saw Sarah, she was strolling by again with that mongrel barking pet of hers. Then the moment passed and he said, "You'll find certain people stay out here morning till midnight. One of them must know who started the fire. Get a witness, arrest the suspect, and we can forget this mess."
The cop thought of Ada, who made it from groceries to rent check each month by selling knick knacks to tourists. She stocked a thousand statues and emblazoned containers picked up at hundreds of different yard or garage sales. Most famous had been the collection of wooden wreaths that adorned an area at the front of her store. It's all gone- everything. "What about the business owners? They won't forget."
Right there, right near where they stood, 'Joe loves Jane' was scrawled inside a misshapen and oblong heart. He stared at the discolored wood. Given name's one of the Biblical prophets, so he at times feels a certain responsibility. Like 'Isaiah speaks truth, Isaiah is wisdom.' That carving nudged a part of him and he realised Wozniak was torn by the aggravated emotion inherent to his job. Wanted to tell the dumb bastard he was headed down a long and lonely road. It's clear he's got no family, nor would one tolerate him. But Isaiah the firefighter just shook inwardly and sighed. It does no good to give anyone else your opinion on their life- even when you know you're right. Most folks figure things out in their own time, on their own terms. Finally, he said "Lookit brother, I've got kids. My job's finished, the fire's out. Now it's up to you to decide who's idea this was. I gotta go watch my son's ballteam lose."
Responding to the departure, the cop imagines his own homecoming later tonight. No children, his wife left him- let's see... five years ago, this August. Nothing besides Sam Pedro, his twelve year old goldfish that started turning white three weeks ago. That's beauty and the trappings of inspiration, it's fleeting. He'd be going to buy another fish, before too long. Wozniak's eyes closed, and he recalled the incredible face his father used to make when he played a Charlie Haden album. Free Jazz. Had no favorite song of his own like that.
When the brief flashback dissipated, he realised his partner Van Buren was close by. Could tell because he heard notebook pages rustle in a passing breeze. "How's this look to you?" VB motioned at the crowd gathered in a tight area past the firesite.
"Nothing better to do?" Might say the same of himself, but that would seem irresponsible. No- it wasn't disdain about the job, rather an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Been here already, done this too much. Watching his partner, the older cop recognized eager movements and anxious gestures.- Is youth bound to be sucked dry by age forty or fifty five; is there anything we can do to halt the slow descent? Magic, magicians seemed like half an answer, but the rest of the sentence never materialized.
Van Buren chewed his lip, a habit that forced him through two or three chapsticks a week. He's a deep thinker, but not overly emotional. Makes the best kind of cop actually. "Human nature. Disaster in another place causes a person to believe his own troubles aren't as insurmountable as was first presumed."
Fatherly laughter. There were cops he drank coffee with, most Sundays. Ones who'd been on the force as long as him. They know. They know that being a police officer has nothing to do with making the world safe for babies and old ladies; it's about control. A selfish job, Wozniak understood. Selflessness played little part anymore, because most guys he knew would do anything to avoid a confrontation. Not Van Buren, not right now, but wait a few years. There'll come a time when it's impossible to separate him from the job, when it's everything he thinks about. And then, overload. That's it, that's what a cop is. A stereotype all the way around.
A few seconds pass, the previous thought is not put into words. VB regains his partner's attention with another rambling monologue where the speaker thinks too fast and tends to get quite ahead of himself. "Hey, have you noticed the pretty girls with lipstick and painted fingers, the tourists, the inline skaters and everybody are all curious to see what we're doing? Maybe they hope the fire will flare up again, will ignite a fabulous evening sky around Caesar's Palace. And I wonder would these shop owners be offended if I smoke? But look out there- beyond us, on either side, there's no one. There's no life. Most of the businesses closed hours ago. People aren't shopping today, the mini event of disaster has yet to be resolved or sate their thirst for safe violence." He had this way of getting excited, used language to shout things at you most folks just said with their eyes, hands, or a whisper. Could've been like an old jazz tycoon if he just added 'yeah, Yeah, YEAH!' to the tail end of everything he said. Had a kind of strange, artistic energy.
Distraction, Wozniak realised this as he stepped out from beneath the overhang of Zelda's Psychic Center and Boutique. Specifically, the ravaged areas were every generic place given to selling coffee mugs with talking animals on one side. Above or below this section you have the theater, plus many larger chain and outlet stores. He swallowed without chewing the rest of a bagel Zelda gave him; he watched as Van Buren went off and running, collecting uniform cops and alerting them of his suspicions. "We want trucks, vans, guys who say they're with service companies." But the old man decided to check things for himself. He needed breathing room. Young people with big thoughts and plans tend to suck up all the air around them.
First, he saw a couple kneeling near and gazing sadly at the loss of their summer livelihood. "A seashell shop?" Strange days, in the words of Jim Morrison. But it's the tired places, every block or street in town, that reminds him of a job he held twenty five or thirty years ago. Clown at the opening of a chicken parts store, he was still wearing the wig and red nose the night his first girlfriend dumped him. For his brother. "You're better off without me," she'd insisted. Later, Wozniak worked as a gas station attendant on the edge of the city. Sometime after noon on a Friday, he finished full service for a blue Chevy, and watched his best friend died. Car accident. Happened exactly thirty feet from where he stood, holding two dollars of change in his left hand. Andy Keegan was this gawky twenty three year old kid who just wanted a wife and dreamt of the chance to play his plastic alto for a living. Ended up with neither a chance nor a lover. And it happened that the day Phil Wozniak married his future ex wife, he felt guilty about the non presence of his best friend and whatever woman who would've ended up as his best friend's wife. Guilt, to open a marriage, should've been a dead giveaway. But thank you, experience, that I should know so much diversity in my youth and come away from it yet as confused as anyone just going in- he's often thought this, and he's often wondered about the meaning of words like power. You decide stuff shouldn't get you down, and then you pretend like it doesn't because everyone will readily agree optimism is a soul sustaining force to the daily chore of keeping at it. But in his cynicism, he's sure it's faked more times than realised.
Once memory lane intersected back at the boardwalk, with the problems of today close at hand, the cop found himself infront of a giant playhouse. When Van Buren read through a rundown earlier, he said four brothers called Alderfer were in charge. The theater couldn't sustain itself but for the grace loans and grants- nobody paid for what they were selling. Cornerstone says 1989, which means not enough time for good atmosphere to develop, and the ornate architecture makes it one of those places trying too hard for yesterday. So he's a jaded purist. That just means he comes at everything a tad askew, and from a side angle. This would be no different. He went down an alley, toward the theater's back entrance. A steel door was wide open, and there were stacks of appliance boxes beside a grey van.
I'm not a cop, he says to himself.
Just a Pole from Pennsylvania.
My life starts here, now.
Least it could find a purpose, if I accidentally do something great.
Worth a shot? he wonders.
I hope so, he decides.
Exhaling roughly, he's shocked to realise he's alone.
Feels good, invigorating.
Gun drawn, he walked down a narrow, underlit hall. Stale air, muggy. At the end of the corridor came the stage, so Wozniak wandered out underneath white hot lights and gazed in awe at the set design. Magnificent backdrop, it struck something like familiarity in his memory. The house was white Victorian, complete with wrap around porch and swing. Silence, for a time, because he just stared. Then... certain girls he knew used to fantasize about the parties that went on, very Dickensian. Everyone else wanted the mysteriously sinister stories you see everywhere on foggy nights. The owner of the house, named Meredith, published a local newspaper. His son Charlie brought friends home from school every afternoon. In winter, they skated on the pond, once or twice before it had completely frozen over. He remembered the warnings, "Watch out for black ice!" Or was it white? Anyway, the willow trees poured down over children twirling around. There were flurries, mittens, and days that by each evening's end no one believed the next could ever top. But new and old interests continued to develop or evolve. He fell in love, he fell apart, he came back to his senses and ran away from them a thousand times on those afternoons. (pause) Embarrassed or ashamed to not've taken a nostalgia trip sooner, Wozniak chuckled under the influence of pictures from a long neglected past. As mother said, "It's always something." If not angst about what's yet to be accomplished, there's anxiety over past mistakes. But today, the memories call up something nice.
Deep "ahem."
He turned, expecting to see Van Buren. Instead, a smiley young woman and her shining red hair stood behind him- she burned in those brilliant stage lights. "It's funny, isn't it?" pointing to the backdrop. "Odd, how something simple can strike up something so great within you." Petite but not thin, this girl wasn't unlike the younger sister you'd die to protect. "Two people can interpret one thing very differently. Or a person may read a single thing two different ways at two different times. It's about getting where you need to go, knowing what you need to get there."
A few seconds pass. "I'm a detective."
Nod. "The suit gave you away. It is a beach, after all."
When he mentioned the fire, she averted his gaze. Told him she'd been upstairs the entire day, working on a mural. Heard the trucks very early this morning, but when no one told her to evacuate, all was assumed well and good.
"Okay," he said, and asked about the boxes outside.
She studied the floor and patterns on her paint spattered jeans for awhile. Finally said, "Can you come back tomorrow? Eddie will be here then."
"Eddie?"
"Alderfer. He kind of runs things, should be able to help you. I'm just a part timer."
"Hey, what's your name?" he called after her. She's about to pull a disappearing act, heading back into the wings.
"Alison" -and she was gone.

Wozniak left the theater by the same dark hall he'd come in. Outside, he looked around momentarily for Van Buren, before deciding to wait and see who came for the boxes. He settled for a crouching space behind a rusty dumpster that smelled like Benjamin Williams.
When the quiet set in, when he calmed his nerves about the 'stakeout,' he thought of VB. His partner would be of no use here, the kid was happiest running around in circles, stopping people, questioning them and demanding answers. But youth and good intention cause the older cop to think back on his first days with a badge. Being a police officer is either all good or all bad, there is no in between. Solve the case and win, lose the fight and it's forgotten. Feels wrong to look at anything for only one of two extremes. Feels wrong, (silence)- but then again, maybe it's the only way.
And Alison. She reminded him of a daughter who might've been. Sarah wanted children, but he never did. They argued about it for months till at last, the insulting began. Marked the beginning of truth, and the end of a marriage. He pointed out every demand she ever made, the unrealistic requests that were levied to him and everybody else. One day, she just didn't come back for their customary fight. (a tear, he doesn't notice). Yet who was the one that would never compromise? Asking to be loved isn't a heavy demand, only too much for the one who can't make a way on his own, lest with somebody by his side. But he needed her- God, that second it was true- more feeling than in all the time since their divorce. He missed things he hadn't thought of in years, tried to ride the joy without choking on the melancholy. Then... oh, then you settle back into the cool shadows, done with wanting to conquer and define. Just enjoy, enjoy an unnamed sensation. Never before had he thought of her with anything but bitterness and regret. Profound emotion, thanks for all the smiles and love she gave him had to be a big leap up.
Two men emerged from the building then, betraying his thoughts. Both fifty five or so, they wore expressions of guilt or fear or sadness- all three. Each began, with much difficulty, loading the van. Wozniak saw while lost with his inner discussion, many more boxes had piled by the door.
"Levi Alderfer, I'll be damned." He recognized one of the men from a photograph, then knew he must've read seen an article about the theater at some point. Could the other be Eddie Alderfer? And, if memory serves, there was mention of a set designer, Levi's daughter Alison. Everything fit then, but he felt a strangeness working within him; questions of his worth. He didn't know whether to like it or not.
Leaving the alley quietly, Wozniak knew they were robbing themselves. He glanced back at the brothers, still huffing and puffing, still loading the van. An insurance scam to counteract a bad investment. On the one hand, dreams can inspire you. But the other side is, they may let you down. Hard. He felt their fear and guilt and sadness.
Out of the shadows, he was back in the sunlight with a good view of the beach. People swam, watched their kids, took pictures. Weather ideal. Kicking the heel of his shoe into the wood beneath him, he decided he should find out what the cornerstone of Atlantic City's center said. Everybody knows about the boardwalk.
VB caught up with him then. "I've got a lead. Folks round here have been whispering for awhile. Apparently, these past several weeks, the theater has been trying everything to draw customers in. If the hard reality came crashing yesterday, and tomorrow the creditors pull the roof off their heads, what better day than today for a little inferno? I'm about to put a call through to the insurance company and see what they can tell me about the Alderfer policy."
"Nice dramatics." He loved the happy excitement always there in his partner's words. You're flying then, you're flying. Sarah's face and the list of baby names she tried using to convince him were there, crystal clear in that second. And Charlie. And Andy Keegan, tooting on his plastic alto. And all the rest. Shaking his head, he said, "I just talked with them, they're not suspects."
"Oh? Really? Um, okay... It was just a thought."
"I've had them too." He mentioned, could God have set this fire? Ah, well. Laying a hand on Van Buren's shoulder, he felt very fatherly and said "I could use a cup of coffee, how 'bout you?" It was a statement, not a question. That's just how these cops are, with their undeniable moments in time.


















least pretend?" she mumbled.
"Onstage- when they pay me- I'll recite the

Mr. Mayor (unfinished)

"I sold handkerchiefs in a department store, which means I was real bored."- That's how Patrick Moffet likes to explain his beginnings in local government. When justifying a stance against any and all things the president campaigned for, the distinguished gentleman from Richland Pennsylvania would simply say "He's an idiot."

Moffet tended to be frustrated, arrogant, anxious, and kind of showy. Drove to work every morning in a car that was the envy of those who couldn't afford it, and the fantasy of those who liked to think they knew better. Now it's been said he was compensating for a childhood full of OCD, medication, and embarassment. Then again, obsessive compulsives tell you they have radar for the same deficiency in others, and politics seems like the ultimate twelve step group.

Anyway, Moffet flashed his charm for the State Supreme Court when he protested his constituents removal of their edgy mayor from office. The charges he fought were anything and everything- but mostly in between. Some claimed he backed the mob, others called him a closet communist. Said he was a liberal, said he was bitter, a few even said he was Canadien. No one wanted Moffet in charge, in Richland--more than that, none could agree on a reason why! Finally, they cornered him for employing an alien housekeeper- a story one weekly paper had a lot of fun with- and he was gone. Banished from Richland government, but in no way forgotten.

His home away from home has become the world of ham radio. 930-1230 every night, it's where you can find him. "I'm not bitter" Moffet says, of past experience. "I get more done, work less hours. What's to complain about?" And his overnight radio success is due to not being in a position to inflict any real harm. So the former mayor of Richland succeeded where only he could- getting people angry, but never angry enough to do something about it.

July 16, 1996- 'The Patrick W. Moffet radio show.'

"Word out of the D.C. today is peacekeeping efforts with the country of Franconia have gone terrifically wrong. They refuse the release of sixteen American hostages taken during last Thursday's deadly attack at... a circus? (mumbles) Is that right? (pause) Yeah, a touring circus. Wow I guess there really is nothing sacred anymore." Moffet talks slowly, carefully, he's the type A personality who always thinks ten steps ahead. Some call that the mark of an intelligent man, others say it's the surest sign he's hiding something.

"In other news, the presidential election is heating up folks. Media everywhere debate Walter Smalley's chances for a second term. Key issues- in this, and every other election- are family values, tax breaks, and the debt.

"If the past be indicative of the future, Smalley's outta here come November. But with the current crises in Franconia, our boy in Washington may have just what he needs to swing public favor back his way."

July 21, 1996 NBS Studios- Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Barb, Roxie's assistant, said he was an ex- boxer. "You really should've read the notes they gave you for the interview."

Grinning, she fired back, "That's why I have you sweetie."

"Alex Marrs, two Olympic titles, heavyweight champion of the world four years running up 'til May of '93. He lost to some young kid, lost the rematch two weeks later and the critics panned him. Forced him out of a twelve year career where he fought everyone from Sugar Ray to Foreman."

Poor Barb, thought Roxie. She could use a boyfriend. Then Roxie imagines her career without Barb by her side- massive chaos. Even now, there are some nights when 'Roxie Waters' barely comes together by air-time.

"Let me get this straight. He wants to go on tv and confront the people who pushed him out, right? He's trying for a comeback?"

"If that was true, he wouldn't wait ten months to do it." Barb chewed her lips religiously, and as such, she regularly slathered her mouth with a tube of lipstick she'd bought sometime during Jimmy Carter's administration. "No, he quit all right. Left without a harsh word to all the jokes. Even did a couple late night talk shows. He plays basketball every Saturday with Arsenio now."

Roxie isn't listening, her mind's still on the day's events. Chasing kids to and from school, picking up the laundary, cooking supper, walking the dogs, and now about to go on television with an interview they'd given her yesterday night. "I don't get it. Why does he want to be on the show?"

Barb shrugs, "Do that thing you do so well and find out."

Then Roxie's assistant wandered off- muttering into her headset- and the journalist winked at Bobby, the cute burly guy on camera two. Ah, well. Tomorrow's Friday, and that means yoga.

Marrs appeared about twenty minutes later wearing an aviator jacket and an uneasy smile. He was humming something by Paul Simon.

"'Silent Eyes?'" she asked, and he nodded in response.

Good conversationalist, that's a plus.

Marrs collapsed into one of the tiny interview chairs so they could prepare for the broadcast. "This is when we warm- up, right?"

She shuffled some yellow pages and took a deep breath. "Okay . . . this isn't like boxing, Mr. Marrs. No 'sparring', all right? Just give me clear- cut answers and we'll make sure the audience doesn't decide to flip to the infomercial on eight."

They prepared, the two talked, and she found him almost charming after awhile. He was rather unpretentious as celebrities went. Except that he seemed sort of ambivalent.

Cut to air- time 1130 pm.

Roxie's always afraid of losing her train of thought halfway through the interview. Her mind tends to wander when there are problems with the kids. Or there father. And lately, they don't really seem to have one.

In school, teachers had said over and over for every bad interview the one holding the questions, and not the answers is at fault. "Know where the subject is headed before they do. Stay a step ahead at all times," was the conventional wisdom.

Anticipate. "Anticipate! Anticipate! Anticipate!" She could still here her old German professor pounding on the desk with his ruler.

"So, Mr. Marrs, what now? Now that you've reached the pinnacle of your career and decided to step down, where will you go?" She looked at him, prepared to wait silently until he answered her satisfactorily.

"I'm staying right here--on television," he chuckled.

"What will you do next?"

"I'm going to Hollywood!"

"Acting?" she croaked.

"Like Rocky," he grinned confidently.

"Don't we already have one of him?"

"Eh," he mulled this over for a moment. "Stallone came to California, wrote that movie, and got all sortsa recognition. If he made it, I figure I can. I've already got connections in the biz."

"Who?"

"My uncle Ned. He's Tom Cruise's pool guy."

She just nodded, chewed her lower lip. "I see, so your future is movies?"

Marrs cocked his head. "I'll do it all. Give writing, directing, acting a try. I'm even up for a play, if anyone'll send me a script," he stared right into the camera over Roxie's left shoulder. "What can I say? I've got the bug."

"Indeed," the newswoman grinned, trying to sound like her idol- Connie Chung. She exhaled slowly. "Great. Well, umm . . . Since actors are very vocal with their opinions about everything, what do you think of abortion?"

"See, I never needed one so really, I don't care. I've got no experience to come from."

"Fine. How about Franconia?"

"What about it? Isn't that north of Philadelphia?"

"A little closer to Asia, actually."

His eyes lit up. "Oh! The hostage thing?"

She nods.

"I say let the people who know about that stuff decide. I really haven't got a right to say."

"Where you're going- Hollywood- shouldn't you at least pretend?" she mumbled.

"Onstage- when they pay me- I'll recite the horrors of the period just prior to women's suffrage. Offstage, my knowledge is confined to sports statistics, Dallas cheerleaders, and Mama's Family."

She was surprised to find herself grinning. "And Paul Simon?"

Marrs nodded. "And absolutely Paul Simon."

July 28, 1996- Pat Moffet radio show.

"Marrs is right! Paul Simon would make a good president. (laughs- refreshed) God, I love this guy. The honesty is so refreshing. 'Show me your questions, folks, and where I can help I will!' It's time our legislators stood up with that kind of thinking- that kind of pure frankness- and admit their own ignorance when it becomes neccesary. Here we have Marrs- a man who was literally kicked when he was down. Someone moved the whole boxing profession without telling him and he had no way of getting back in, nowhere else to go. But he did have the grace not to make a scene- to go quietly- and to see this chance for what it was. An opportunity. A chance to pursue a different dream. A way to introduce another world to his brave ambivalence . . . Did you read it? Did you see it- front page, Philadelphia Inquirer? 'Ambivalence lands Marrs concrete movie deal with Warner.' They're thinking of calling it 'The man who knew certain things, but not others.' The nation loves him. And why shouldn't they? It's time the American public was introduced as a whole to this kind of invigorating honesty in a day when the political and social wells have all but dried up!"

He was silent for a moment. Then, his speech picked up again- even faster and more feverish. "That's it, folks! Maybe there's our answer. Maybe it's time for a change. Is it just me, or does anyone else see Marrs in office? Senate, maybe? Why not? Bono did it, Reagan did it, there are plenty more who wish they could . . . "

July 29, 1996- Marrs responds to increasing calls that he run for office.

"I don't want to be a senator. I want to be a movie star. Actors make good money. Granted, we're all just liars anyway, but I'll take the highest paycheck.

"I started my career at seventeen. Seventeen! I was so late entering the sport, I was lucky to get anywhere at all. You know how I did it? A heavy bag in the attic of my parents' little house outside Philly. A heavy bag and a dream. It got me to the Olympics- twice. That's only one goal. My other is to make it to the Oscars.

"And about Franconia, honestly, I don't know enough to care."

Later that night, at NBS studios.

Roxie smiled preenily at Willem Bradley, so- called new 'heartthrob of the daytime soaps.' The old nervousness was gone. Roxie felt more confident this past week, like she wasn't as scared anymore. Like it wasn't important to hide those fears from everyone and pretend to be something she's not. "So . . . you think Smalley shouldn't send troops to Franconia?"

"Well, no. I'm aware that they haven't listened to reason, but what's force gonna do? It'll make them play their hand and I bet anything they didn't come into this unprepared to go down fighting. Either that, or they would've given up when we sanctioned them over a week and a half ago." The young man twitched nervously in his seat. He had yet to do his trademark wink for the cameras and all the women watching at home.

"Really Mr. MIT? And what makes you such an authority? Didn't you go to community college?" She glanced down at her notes. "Says here you studied animal husbandry."

The actor turned bright red and averted his eyes from the camera, and from Roxie.

"You think the president should just ignore such a hostile act?" Her eyes narrowed. She feigned 'serious journalist' whenever the camera turned in her direction.

Bradley didn't answer her, swallowed several large gulps of air that reverbrated in the microphone on his lapel. He thought of his puppy back home, and the farm in Indiana.

"The truth of the matter is, how would you know? You weren't even alive when we went to Vietnam, were you?"

And . . . things continued in that fashion for the rest of the session.

Highest evening ratings in months.

August 2, 1996- Special News Bulletin

"Early this morning, a submarine registered with the Franconia National Guard sunk an American cruiser in waters just outside the Gulf of Dardanelles. Four seamen were reported killed. We are awaiting confirmation of this report.

"The president has been fearing this day for weeks. Advisors have warned him to tread carefully, for the entire election may hinge on how he handles the Franconia threat. And he's finally decided on indecision in the matter. No one wants to be remembered for sending the country into war, so Smalley will turn to the populous, in an effort to gauge public opinion about a military occupation of the small Asian country until a full investigation has been reached, and the hostages have been released.

"Tomorrow morning in Washington, President Smalley had arranged for a town meeting of sorts. At the Jaycee auditorium on Buickmuller circle he will open the topic for discussion among concerned citizens, media, tv cameras, the whole nine (yards). He needs our help folks. He needs our courage now, more than ever."

August 3, 1996. Jaycee auditorium in Washington, D.C.

Smalley cleared his throat, prayed to God again and for the third time that morning to give him the strength to end his addiction. Nicotine, devil's drug of choice. So far, he'd gone through one and a half cigars, his throat was achingly soar, and his hands trembled in disbelief of the entire situation.

He thought of Ziggy, thought of the cartoon where Ziggy approached the information desk and asked 'Why me?'. -- Recite the periodic table of elements, that's what mother would say could calm the nerves better than anything else. The first element escaped him. He leaned over to his press secretary and requested the answer.

"Hydrogen," Kneale whispered back.

He gulped. "Right, like in the bomb."

"Can you get me some water?" Smalley called out to no one in particular, and a few small guys in suits rushed out of the room. "All night, all night," he muttered to himself. The president had been in constant contact with both branches of government till early this morning. Each advised him, each succeeded only in disagreeing with the other. "Did we get an answer from them yet?" he asked Kneale something else that made the bum turn away from his Tetris.

"From the Franconians? No. From your mother? Yes. From Cokie Roberts, yes. From George Bush, yes."

"What did they say?" He couldn't believe he was asking his mother's advice on military strategems.

"And I quote, 'go with your gut.'"

"I wasn't even in the Boy Scouts for Pete's sake. What do I know about the army?!"

"Your the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Of all the forces. I hope you read some of the rule book they gave you."

Smalley loosened his tie, cleared his throat again, and vowed never to touch another cigar. Even the half of one still in his breast pocket. "Paul Simon would make a good president," he said beneath his breath.

"What?"

"I said I'm gonna set a precedent. Let them," he pointed out to the rows of people just beyond the curtain that hid him, "make the tough decisions for me."

"Well, go to it, then. You're on," the press secretary pushed him through the curtains and the room erupted in spontaneous questions. Flashbulbs flickered, the effect was dizzying.

As usual, the rumour mill in Washington had spent all night grinding away. By the time Smalley stumbled to the podium at Jaycee auditorium, the death toll on the sunken American cruiser had risen to the hundreds. Nobody could be sure what was truth and what was fiction. All they wanted were numbers, facts, solutions.

"That's what I came to you for," he began. "I'd hoped we might solve this thing together. Now people are talking war, bombs, casualties- I wanted my administration to be known for peace. And I wanted the public during that time to be known for not jumping to conclusions."

A reporter- a man named Jason- interrupted him calling out, "Will you really do as the people here, today, decide?"

"I've no other course of action . . . As I see you're anxious to begin, let's do that, shall we?" Smalley motioned to a woman wearing a blue and pink pantsuit who stood at the microphone far to the left in his field of vision.

"You've got to do something," Pantsuit exclaimed. Others cheered as she redefined her seat, sitting on the floor, in front of the stage where Smalley was.

He looked down at her. "What do you suggest?"

She was quiet for a long moment. Seemed to be weighing her options heavily. Pantsuit shifted her bulk form one foot to the other and glanced back at a row of boys seated a few feet away. They were dressed in army fatigues.

"I don't know," was- in the end- all she could afford.

"How about you?" Smalley pointed at a man wearing black and white.

He just shook his head. "How would I know boss?"

And another, Smalley turned toward a short, stocky lieutenant whom he recognized from several dinners at the White House. "What do you think about going to war? Would you have any reservations against fighting again? Against possibly killing Franconians, if it came down to that?"

The lieutenant- named Kareem Smith- shrugged. He considered the men on that sunken ship, remembered all the kind words said about them at a memorial held last evening at the base. Kareem did know. He hated the anger that killed his fellow enlistees but knew that revenge was all these quiet people thought of, all they were trying to express . . . Or maybe, maybe it was fear. He considered that the pregnant woman seated two rows down from him knew what she wanted to say, but couldn't. What would a young woman carrying a child know about the army? Anymore than Willem Bradley? Still, Kareem met the eyes of the officers seated around him.
"Sir? I don't care. I don't care either way, right or wrong. I don't care what happens to the Franconians. They started this. It's our turn to finish it."

Smalley nodded solemnly. He wore a peculiar expression. No one could be sure if it was because of his brother, who died in the Persian Gulf, or his own debilitating knee injury that prevented him from fighting, and ever knowing the stark realities of cold war. Either way, he left the Jaycee Auditorium right then, and didn't look anyone in the eye for weeks.

Child

Leaning forward in her chair, she closed her eyes. The sunlight felt delicious- winter was at last a memory. Several bees buzzed nearby. She opened her eyes and exhaled. “Charlie was a chemist but Charlie is no more. What Charlie thought was H2O was H2SO4.”

“A classic!”

With a few squirts of lemon into her iced tea, she said, “What did you come up with?” He handed her her sugar packets, and she began to rip each one open. She was continually amazed at the variety of sweeteners available in restaurants today. Pink packets, white and blue striped packets, yellow packets…

“Adam told God that he was lonely-”

“Is this joke going to disparage me in some way?”

“Wait and see,” Barry said. “Adam asked God to give him someone who would love him. God gave him a dog. Later, Adam asked God to give him someone to teach him humility. God gave him a cat. God was relieved. Adam felt much better. The dog wagged his tail. And the cat didn’t give a damn.”

If there is one thing that can be blamed for bringing Barry and Alicia together, if there is one thing that's kept them together throughout, it’s Tom Snyder. Legendary news anchorman, legendary sarcastic wit, legendary hair. His live, late-night, talk show always began the same: “Sit back, have a colortini, and relax. Thanks for catching our pictures as we fly ‘em through the air.” The show always ended with some joke Tom heard or found on the Internet. She and Barry were competing to see how many they remembered.

The waitress brought their food to the table then. Barry told her the “real” story of how the angel came to its place atop the Christmas tree.

Chuckling, Alicia said, “I’m glad you waited until after we got our food to do that.”

Across the street, a woman was pushing a caravan-like baby carriage. One of those two or three seaters- good for a couple of kids, the average ten pound diaper bag, purse, umbrella, et-cetra. An infant, a girl with a very round face and dark hair, kept lunging forward in the carriage. Her chubby arms strained to reach the child in the front compartment.

“Gracia!” the young woman said sharply.

Alicia looked at Barry. He was studying them too. His eyes wrinkled at the corners and his mouth stiffened.

“What about when Tom ended with, ‘always remember that the Ark was made by amateurs and the Titanic by professionals.’”

Barry softly said, “She waitresses at John’s restaurant on the highway.”

“Which?”

“That girl…oh, John’s restaurant is the one right after the turnpike on-ramp. You always shoot too far beyond it and have to turn around in the pet store parking lot.”

“Ah.”

Barry continued watching her and Alicia watched him.

The young woman shaded her eyes and sat down on one of the many benches that lined the other side of the street, this area, the center square. The infant Gracia continued to swing at the child in front of her.

“You see, you see?” Barry said excitedly. “The town tries to revitalize downtown here, tries to do something uplifting with it, and everybody gets upset. ‘Why not turn it into a parking lot?’ you and your friends at the hospital complained. No. I vote with the good guys to put a few bushes, trees, and hedges in, keep half the square for parking, add a few benches for people to sit on. Everybody tells us we are throwing out tax dollars the borough should be using for other things. What things? Should it all be a parking lot? Should we develop more local industry? How about building even more housing developments where there's no room? When businesses and people start knocking down the township limits, you and your friends at the hospital will be the ones complaining about continual tax increases, pollution, and crime. We at the borough, we're on good terms with life, you know? We just try to make it nice for the people who are living here now. Give mothers and children a place to sit and relax.”

“Richland Park is two blocks away.”

Across the street, Gracia managed to get her leg over one side of the carriage. The young woman erupted in a stream of foreign curses. Smacking Gracia’s leg and dropping it back into the carriage, the woman picked up the child in the front compartment. She held the baby somewhat awkwardly. Very small, just enough to fill one arm. With her free hand, she stroked his fuzzy blond head. The baby wriggled a bit and continued crying, his cries coming out like strained gasps. She enveloped the baby in both arms now. Swaying on the sidewalk, standing beside the carriage and little Gracia, she shifted her weight from the heel of one foot to the heel of the other foot.

Alicia smiled thinly. “Sometimes, I think it’s not the rocking that matters. It’s the heartbeat that finally calms the baby. Did you see how when she held him in both arms, to her chest, he started to get quiet?”

“Both actions matter equally. The rocking and the heartbeat each bear significantly on the baby’s psychological mind-set, which is just now beginning to form.” Barry nodded. “I’m sure she works at John’s restaurant.”

“I never remember her waiting on us.”

“Thank goodness. She probably could not handle your intricately detailed orders.”

“Is that right?” Alicia told herself the sun was getting to him. In the winter, she blamed it on the cold. “So do you go there often without me?” Picking all the croutons from her salad, she cradled them in her hand, eating slowly, crunching loudly. He hated that. After a moment, she gave up. “I never remember her waiting on us.”

Still looking the other direction, Barry reached forAlicia's hand. When he found it full of croutons, he smiled. Then, he stood and moved his chair around the table, until he was very close to her. He sat down again and ate a mouthful of the crunchy substance from the palm of her hand. The sensation of his tongue on her skin tickled.

On his second mouthful of croutons, he didn’t bother swallowing before saying, “We sit in the smoking section. That girl waits on non-smoking customers.” All the crumbs fell into his lap.

“The Bible according to kids states: ‘Do one to others before they do one to you.’” Alicia looked at the other faces around them, determined to find some way to distract him so their entire conversation would not revolve around that woman. To the left, an elderly man was lecturing a ten-year old boy. The boy stared into his pasta.

Behind them, a couple was breaking up. From what Alicia could overhear, the woman wanted to and it and the man just talked about the weather. He was pretty distraught. She told him he had no ambition, no drive to improve himself and his life. Poor guy.

“She can’t be making much money,” Barry said suddenly. “Do you think she's okay?”

Alicia rolled her eyes. “You and this quest of yours to save the world. Waitresses make a good living. All tips, great tips.”

Barry bounced his leg up and down. He took a forkful of salad and munched on it intently.

“Olives look like Martian eyeballs.”Alicia scrunched her face in distaste.

Across the street, the young woman sat on the bench, still cradling the crying newborn in her arms. She began to breastfeed.

Barry said, “I think her name is Selma. Her attitude is always positive. I remember one night at John’s, some customers began to yell at her. They accused her of stealing something, I don’t know what.”

“Where was I? Was I there? I don’t remember that.”

“You were in the bathroom or something. I recall it all very distinctly because that was the day you received your promotion at work. Tom had James Caan on his show that night and they discussed graveyards and spirits.”

“What happened to Selma?”

Barry glanced across the street. “Wouldn’t that be an injustice if she got fired because of one incident?”

The young woman clasped the baby to her chest. Bundled in his blanket, the baby wriggled like a cocoon from which something struggled to emerge. Selma started to jostle the baby carriage with her foot. She pushed on the front wheel to move the carriage forward just a bit, then back, forward, then back again.

“During that whole confrontation with her customers, did her boss come out? Did any managerial type appear and tell her that she was fired? Did anyone yell at her besides the customers who thought they were ripped off?”

“Maybe I should speak to John about it. You think so?”

“What?”

“Selma.”

“You didn’t get her fired, did you Barry? Did you get some poor woman fired while I was in the bathroom that night?”

“Of course not,” he said. He picked up her salad plate and placed it inside of his.

“You know I can’t sleep at night without you, so don’t tell me your having an affair.”

The waitress arrived then with their food. Before Barry lunged into his eggplant, he said, “What makes you think that?”

“I think you should do it, Barry. Talk to John about Selma. We could certainly even put her name in with some of the other restauranteurs whom we know.”

Across the street, Selma stopped breast-feeding the squirmy little newborn. Now Gracia was whining, sitting fully upright again, her arms outstretched toward her mother.

Selma gazed at Alicia. The eyes were wooden, she was weary. Alicia could see her beauty, but it wasn’t easily seen by the world. No. It took a certain afternoon light, and a far away look, and a specific tilt of the head. But that was the magic time of transformation. Alicia wondered if that was what Barry noticed at the restaurant that night. Then she looked away, guilty as though she had been caught spying.

Across the street, Gracia exploded into tears. She began to bounce up and down in the carriage. It sudddenly reminded Alicia of her brother, for some odd reason, and the baby he chose to call Alfred. Alfred was the most laid-back child imaginable. Were it not for his name, such an attitude had him destined for a career as a surfer. When Al cried, it was because he was hungry, or needed a diaper change. Those instances were momentary, and then he grew quiet again, gone back to contemplating the wonders of the environment around him. One couldn't even say that Al cried because he shed no visible tears. It was a simple call, and as soon as someone entered the room, he got quiet, faithful that his needs were soon to be satisfied. Al didn’t even like to be held for very long. After the diaper changes or feedings, when he was put down again to rest in his crib, he always looked relieved. It seemed so strange to imagine a baby feeling an emotion like relief.

Gracia continued wailing, her arms raised in a needing salute to her mother.

By now, the break-up drama at the table behind them finally drew to a close. The woman sipped her drink uneasily, and Alicia heard her say to the man, “I don’t want to hurt you, but there’s no reason to continue this relationship. I know that it isn’t going anywhere.” She was tall, dressed in a pale pink business suit.

The man put his elbows on the table and moved so his nose was nearly touching hers. “Why is everything measured in progress?” He said this loudly enough that several people turned their heads.

“You’re not making sense. Listen, I didn’t say I don’t care about you. I want you to get well. You need to go someplace where they treat these depressive disorders. I can’t handle you in my life right now.”

He began to sputter nervous curses at her.

She shook her head, got up, and wandered off down the street.

Alicia cringed for the poor guy, even though witnessing the scene made her uneasy. You're lucky you found out now, Alicia wanted to say. Better now than a few years into a dead-end marriage, two miserable kids, an incontinent dog— the requisite happy family, trapped in a suburb of Somewhere, behind a mud-spattered picket fence.

The whimpering man stood up. He pulled several green bills from his wallet and dropped them into half a plate of spaghetti. Then, he walked off slowly, disappearing in the direction his girlfriend had gone.

“We’re different,” Alicia said suddenly.

“Hmm?”

“We love each other, but there’s something more to it. It sets us apart." She had almost forgotten how many different colors masqueraded in the seeming blue of Barry's eye. “We’re allies.”

“I think John may have fired Selma. I haven't seen her at the restaurant since that night I told you about.”

“Talk to him, call him tonight.” She shoveled her chicken across her plate with the fork, trying to quiet her thoughts.

Gazing down the street, Barry fingered the scalloped edge of the tablecloth. "I'm sorry," Barry softly said.

Alicia pushed the plate of chicken away. After a moment, he picked it up and placed it inside of his. Then, he moved them to the far side of the table.

Across the street, Selma picked Gracia up and the girl immediately stopped crying. A moment or so later, a woman in a white dress walked toward her. The woman smiled and sat down on the bench beside Selma. The two talked as if they were acquainted.

Shortly, after taking several deep breaths, Gracia hopped down from Selma’s lap and rested her head on her knee. She sucked her thumb and mumbled gibberish as if to be included in the two women’s conversation.

“Where’s the blond child?” Barry asked suddenly.

Gracia had toddled to the other side of the carriage, unnoticed by her mother and companion.
She began to kick the baby carriage.

Alicia didn’t answer him at first she didn’t look up. Finally: “Maybe he ran away.”

At that moment, the street light changed. More Sunday traffic rolled by.

Across the street, the little girl kicked more forcefully now because her mother made no effort to stop her. Suddenly, the carriage started rolling down an incline.

The woman in the white dress leapt up to intercept the carriage.

Barry was on his feet, still tangled in the chair legs.

A car revved its engine. Some teen who'd gotten his hands on his parents’ keys.

Screaming at her daughter in Spanish, Selma crouched and lurched toward the girl as if to pick her up and shake her. Scared, Gracia stepped backward and fell off the sidewalk into the street. In her confusion, after a second, she ran further into the street.

She looked at Alicia. Her legs wobbled like a fawn. Then, she screamed and fell.
Just like that.

The car made every effort to stop—that was what the police recorded in their final report, based on interviews with eye-witnesses. The driver was a distraught young man, already predisposed to fits of nervousness.

“He shouldn’t have been behind the wheel,” Barry would say later, over and over again. Sometimes, in his sleep he said it.

One day, several weeks after the accident, Alicia told him, “Go and see Selma. Make sure she’s okay.” The little girl Gracia had sounded just like her mother when she screamed that final time. The memory of it haunted her.

Barry's eyes were searching.

Alicia continued, “I just know she's okay. She will be, right?"