Sweat

April 21, a Friday, marks the beginning of this story, set in Bowmount, and a few introductory words are necessary about this setting. Many of its loyal citizens are adamant about the importance of their City (as they write it) and its status as entrepôt for the entire province, situated as it is on Bowmount River. Tremendous quantities of goods are shipped through here up and down the river, or across the railway lines crisscrossing the land, and any one of her many proud citizens would quickly tell a stranger how vital the River, the Port, and the Railway have been in Bowmount's brief, glorious life. Without much provocation a Bowmountian would further relate the adventures, mercantile and otherwise, of the country's pioneers who from the first attached more importance to the deep, sluggish River than to the land, leaving the hills beyond to the labourers, who always trail the entrepreneurs. The only acreage the first men were concerned with surrounded the waterfront, and this quarter was meant for shipping and commercial purposes, with a handful of grand houses installed at its outskirts. If the stranger, by now unwilling or unable to withdraw from the firm grip of his host's monologue, listened further he would be told that Old Bowmount was born on that land, and New Bowmount is everything else - the hills and valleys east and west of the River. Rattling through a short yet overfilled history the narrator might not notice that very little of what he was saying meant much to the visitor, who had only inquired of a passing individual of a certain address in the twisting streets which made up most of the city, or else had wondered aloud where the hotel, advertised as within walking distance of the railway station, actually was located. At some point civic pride would relax long enough for the resident to pay stricter attention to the stranger, and in the most helpful manner treat him or her with the province's fabled hospitality. This initial encounter, added to subsequent ones during the tourist's stay, would reaffirm what Bowmount and its sister cities Carlyle and Crescent City were known for throughout the nation: affability, pride and garrulousness.

Yet the City Fathers, as some people referred to the City Council (at the time of this story a male environment), knew that not every taxpayer was sensitive to the commercial aspect of constant amiability. Reluctantly, they concluded, there were always going to be some people - an element, really - who besmirched Bowmount's name and obstinately refused to provide what Bowmount required to maintain its friendly reputation. None of these people were truly loyal to the spirit of the place, embodied best in boards of trade and commerce, Rotarians, and other socially-minded citizens. This element, an ugly word, the Fathers knew, but accurate, comprised the apathetic, the pathetic, the atheistic, and a lot of them were not Christians or originally from here. Criminals formed a part of this other society, as one sociologically-minded councillor phrased it, but did not comprise the most part.

No, the troublemakers, the poisoners of public initiative, were those who never gave Bowmount anything but a passing thought, whose contribution ended with their taxes. In an address to the banking and investment community, the Mayor made it plain that he felt such an attitude was especially selfish in these mean economic times, and that all hands were needed on the deck of the ship of state for success to be assured. Clearly, for those alleged troublemakers Bowmount was not a community but a point on a map, not a City rich in varied history but a town with a grandiose self-conception. At the deepest level, then, the real charge laid against these idlers by the Fathers was that they took no part in the fight for City greatness. All these inhabitants cared about was saving money and getting by, never showing confidence in Bowmount by starting up factories, running for school boards or other political positions, nor beating a drum about the wholesomeness of life in the City, the province generally, to entice investors. That such a motley collection of men and women from all strains, ages and affiliations could show such contempt for this wonderful, glorious metropolis of nearly 200,000 souls (when Inner Bowmount, which is to say Old and New Bowmount, was added to Greater Bowmount and environs) was an unforgivable insult to those who possessed confidence and faith in industry, financial houses, government, public service, proper religious conduct - or, to use an overarching description, in the going concern called the City of Bowmount. If those people had been employees they would have been fired.

It is mainly with that despised group of non-believers that this narrative is concerned. Not being boosters, they do not appear at rallies for the city, or vote much of the time; not rich, they do not press their viewpoint on anyone through newsletters, and have no guild or association looking out for their interests; not aware of the importance of faith, they do not respond to public calls for their support, concentrating instead on making it through a day and a night without losing too much hope that tomorrow might not be as bad, all the while praying, sometimes consciously, for a different future if a better one is not possible.

One of these people not susceptible to re-education was a twenty-three year old named Loyola Holden. On the morning of this warm April day, snow melting from the hills in the freakish weather, he ascended Elephant Hill, his face damp with sweat and his mind centred on amorous adventures. The gods smiled on me last night, that girl Jennie was ready for it, like she hadn't had sex in years. Barely kept back till I wanted to come, she had me so hot. Those beads, where'd she come up with that? Loyola wiped his forehead as the sun radiated with unseasonable intensity, making the road, buildings, vehicles shimmer. Never heard of that before, beads, jelly on them, putting them up my ass. Didn't know what she was up to. When she pulled them just as I was ready to come I felt like my ass was going out of me, but so sweet, so.... His face darkened while passing through the shadow cast by the immense white cross dominating Elephant Hill and the graves arranged around its base. Sunlight glinted off the Crucifix on the Hill, off split, whitened headstones, numerous Madonnas, angels and urns, shattered marble and uprooted final markers of the lower- and middle-classes. Often he stopped at this precise point to observe the city below and around him. Prominent in this landscape if he faced south were the churches of St. Adamnan, St. Lawrence, and most notable, St. Finnian. Its two bell towers, obscured by scaffolding and rough fabric while workmen cleaned their exteriors, made Loyola think, They look like some homeless guy's trouser legs. Dreary memories surfaced of his mother forcing him year after year into that dank, drafty place during Lent for confession and prayers. Loyola shook his head, dull anger rising in him at the wasted time spent on teaching what he determined later was false. He stood back on to the cemetery, drawn by the view again, simultaneously going over last night's details to prolong his ecstasy, and this may be why he failed to notice that in the graveyard the white cross stood purer than a day ago, scrubbed diligently last evening to remove stains left by the most recent vandalism. His mind fixed on Jennie crying out as one after another orgasm uncoiled inside her, and his left hand in his trouser pocket felt thickening against his fingers. He refrained from touching himself, thinking, under the influence of the gentle pulsing, and the early morning sun, its warmth tempered slightly by the breeze, Jennie sure knows what to do.

Popping and rippling sounds accompanied by delighted squeals diverted his attention. Across the street lay a parking lot in front of an apartment building where welfare families lived. Avoiding potholes and jagged chunks of asphalt in the tiny lot skipped a blond girl of ten or eleven enjoying the Easter break, a plastic supermarket bag held open in the air over her head as though it were a balloon. A third party viewing this scene perhaps would have first remarked on the little girl's delight as she frolicked, then observed the young man's intense stare. Over these two figures on this momentarily quiet street towered the Crucifix, or more accurately its shadow, its arms spanning the length of the parking area, while its thick vertical shadow absorbed Loyola's meagre one. Shopping bag, what, no toys? A car horn cut the peaceful air as without thinking Loyola advanced to the edge of the sidewalk for a better look. He jerked back, something blurting out of him in the vehicle's wake, then saw the girl regarding him, a hand above her eyes, the shopping bag hanging to one side. He suddenly felt too afraid to even nod. As he hurried to work past the graveyard he heard the child running on the lot, free from the embrace of his look.

In the workroom of the Moscati-Mann Clothing International warehouse Loyola removed his thin coat, and after pulling a gray, stained sweater over his head not a trace of last night's jubilation remained on his features. Pity for the child, as well as an irrational fear she would alert her family about his attention, sank to a dim corner of his mind and rooted, spreading tendrils and blossoming. What if she'd called her folks and the old man had come out? Called the cops? Way it is you can't look at a kid playing but they say, what is it? as he picked up a two-day old Bowmount Courier with the headline LEWIS HAD EYES OF RAPIST SAYS JUROR. Just looking at him, what the hell does the juror know? There I was thinking of Jennie and... an erection, suppose she saw that, could she, suppose she could tell? Then they'd say, where, here, LUSTFUL INTENT OF CHILD ABUSER CELAR. What? Clear, they must mean. That could be me, if that kid.... Get a hold of yourself. Holt, as Bart says, get a holt of myself, oh, and he's the guy who should know, what with him getting arrested for - why'd I think of him? Starlene Barker's New Zealand twang reached him from the stockroom. Loyola! Loyola! Where were you? Asleep? You've got to do -

I'm here, it's not even 9:00, what's, what's the matter -

better than that, didn't I tell you. Don't argue, I don't need an argument this morning with my headache. A delivery, I told you yesterday, it could have come in any time after 8:30 and I come out here and find you reading the paper. Look at you, a mess, can't even comb your hair! You could wash that sweater too. A bell rang in the loading area adjacent to the workroom. See? Get going, none of your excuses, I know what you're going to say, you get all defensive and I'm not interested, all right? Come on, help me get the garments in. Hurry up! Mike's waiting out there. Loyola followed, experiencing the familiar fear of losing this job because he would one day snap and say You dumb kiwi bitch, you don't know anything about me, you never talk to me, so stop telling me what I am! One of his father's phrases came to mind, The stuffing knocked out of you, usually uttered after a hard day at work, but already the morning's walk, usually relaxing, had dimmed the previous evening's glowing memory and set this day in its relentless groove. He scratched his chafed backside discreetly and began hoisting clothes out of the Quigley Myers Trans-Shipping truck and onto racks. Starlene's barbed comments accompanied his every action, broadcast down the length of the back street, amusing Mike the driver. Apart from her shit it's a great fucking day.

Alone on the street rolling the last of the men's mohair suits towards the loading doors he swore at Shits parking their cars right in front of NO PARKING - DOORS IN USE, what do they need to understand? Ought to smash their windows in, get the idea across. His attention switching from the cars to the street, he noticed once more the filth of Prospect Avenue, which served as the loading route for other wholesalers beside Moscati-Mann, such as Pierce, Frisk and Coughlan, Zeppelin! Dressware, H.S. Mauberley Dry Goods, a computer company and a mongrel assortment of small businesses. Garbage and bird dung on the road and sidewalk when mixed with the sewer's emanations on humid days produced an overpowering stench. Not as bad as it could be, but another great morning ruined by this smell, and he inhaled to verify it and disgust himself as he lifted the heavy rack over the sidewalk prior to wheeling it inside. Sunshine and that rotten smell, like some, the simile throttled by the rack tipping onto him, cracking a thick metal pipe against his neck. Loyola staggered under the impact and the gross weight, yellow plastic wrappers over the suits covering his face, getting inside his mouth, the smell of polyethylene obscuring faeces, guano, discarded food, paint cans left for the garbagemen. Got to save the suits, they'll kill me, and he struggled upwards blindly holding pipes which might keep the rack perched on his reddening neck until he set the wheels on the sidewalk, making sure no clothes touched the ground. When he entered the loading area he heard What's the matter with you, you're so slow, we'll never get this done and Mike's waiting. There, roll it over there, I'm not counting those yet. Get counting. Not that one, those ones. Where was I?

Rubbing his neck, Loyola enviously regarded the driver's role in the monotonous procedure of accounting for every piece of clothing. He just has to wait it out until the number of garments counted match the delivery slips, then he's free to bugger off from this four-man nuthouse. While Mike stood drinking Moscati-Mann coffee with a grin on his face Loyola's fingers raced along the hangers, his neck beginning to ache. All the time he's standing there that kiwi keeps on and on about making sure I counted this and that, interrupting me when I count, but me interrupt her? No way, and he's getting a great laugh like he always does, doesn't pay any attention to her, why the hell can't I be like that? There were to be six suits in each yellow bag, six jackets in each yellow bag, eight bags per rack; with trousers there were to be ten in each yellow bag, sixty on a rack, all in good condition. However, there were often times when the trousers of suits, despite the opaque plastic clips which kept them on the black hangers, were found at the bottom of a bag. One hundred and eleven, one hundred and twelve, one look at the pants there, what happened Mike did you spill all this in the - one hundred and twelve, one hundred and thirteen. What's this? For crying out loud Mike, what speed were you doing? The driver smiled and kept drinking. Pants everywhere, bottoms of - that's why the count, Loyola did you notice this, were they like this when you took them out of the truck, are you sure, is so slow, that and - Loyola! Are you finished? Then don't stand there, unwrap them, you know what to do, bring the mohairs into the stockroom, wools next, jackets, then trousers, put them on the rack out there are you listening next to the cotton ones do you understand, not above them, next to, her voice escorting him as he trundled out of the loading room, Honestly! flung at his retreating figure.

The stockroom was a dim place, long, wide and high, decorated in the mid-1980s in chocolate and cream, containing two wooden desks with matching chairs, two telephones, an electronic typewriter on a table, and a small vinyl couch with split cushions. The rest of the space was occupied by long racks, four rows across, each with three levels, the highest rack twenty feet from the floor. There were also two short rows with double levels, reserved for white dinner jackets, sport jackets and returned goods. On days like this, as he stood sweating under the naked fluorescent lights on the slender, swaying aluminum ladder, heavy-weight suits hanging on the side of one hand while with the other he pushed aside old stock to make space for the new arrivals, Loyola thought of quitting, walking out as easily as he had walked into this position. I should have stayed in college, was how the fantasies began, or resumed, but then he shook his head, knowing he would have done no better in geography, science, mathematics, whatever he had eventually decided to devote himself to, than he had in English and folklore courses. Never able to stay interested in any topic he had remained as mediocre a student when he abruptly left last year as when he entered. All college had done for him was reveal his defects and weaken his resumé, declaring him a quitter as well as undereducated. Employers now wanted computer or communication skills. He caught himself as the ladder started to wobble, noticing the dull pain in his chest and side muscles where they had become inflamed again. Groaning he thrust the last of the suits onto the rack, wiped his forehead, and descended to the stockroom floor.

What were you doing, talking to yourself? Now, there's suits out there that have to be boxed and shipped, why you didn't do it yesterday I don't know, you were here till 5:30, and I suppose you think - well?

We get off at 5:30.

No. You get off when the last garments are boxed. Understood? I'll have more ready for you in a few minutes, we got a lot to get out, those mohairs you just put up, for instance, so I hope you've done them like I said you had to. Oh, Julius, can you spare Doug, we've got a lot of suits to sort -Starlene, I've Mr. Bodrik on the line, Bodrik Fashions For Men, he says we didn't send him the suit he requested, a 50R. Do you know anything about a 50R?

Number?

50R.

Suit number.

Yes, 51226/03, last week, he spoke -Did you take that call, Loyola?

to you he said, the woman.

My name is Starlene, I'm not some woman. I'll check my book, and Loyola, check your posting books, was it regular post, did he want it, why are you standing here check it out, by regular post or special delivery?

Regular. Julius' left loafer dropped to the floor as he bent one leg up to the other repeatedly, one gray sock with a faint pattern slipping in and out of the shoe. He's not very happy it hasn't arrived, hee-hee. Particularly since he's got the bill already.

Put Bodrik through here, will you?

Certainly. I told him it had probably been sent. Flipping through postal books Loyola waited to be told he was taking too long, or to find out he had not sent the parcel. Look, there it was, mailed Monday, number such-and-such, that bitch got me rattled. Starlene? We sent it out Monday.

You sure? Are you - damn it, I know he can hear me. Cripes, what - Mr. Bodrik, hello, Starlene Barker here, stock service manager, good morning to you. It's a beautiful day, isn't it? Shame to be working, hope it'll be a great summer. Now I understand from Mr. Coish you haven't received a 50 reg pinstripe? We sent it the day you called, Monday. We're quite sure, our stockroom boy's checked his records, it was mailed that afternoon about 1:00. I'll hold. Fingernails drummed on the smoke-stained desk next to day-old tea in a mug where the drawing of a plain-faced woman asked WHY DOES THE RIGHT MAN ALWAYS COME ALONG - ON THE ARMS OF THE WRONG WOMAN!? Past the narrow window which opened out on a well a pigeon clucked and swaggered in mating dance to another pigeon, the male's swollen neck and amorous cooing wasted on a corpse. Yes, I'm here, what was that? The suit arrived just now. Well, that's fine, you see, so.... Yes, I'll hold. Of course the suit arrived, twitchy bastard. Doug, hi, sorry to take you away from the accounts, it won't take long.

Just filing, nothing important.

Don't let Julius hear you say that. Take this list, see, where it says 51112/01? Pull out the sizes indicated, the suits are on that lowest rack if he put them where he should, and put them on this portable rack. Thanks a lot, it's appreciated. Hello again, Mr. Bodrik. What? Yes, the price is 10% more because the suit is a large size. Didn't write it down? You don't want to pay, I see, because it wasn't written down. What delivery note number - just a sec. Yes, okay, I got our copy. No, I didn't write it down. Yes, I do sometimes, not always, sometimes. You won't pay because - well, look at the box at the bottom of the delivery note, see the tiny print where it says suit sizes over 48 reg, add 10%? Yes, that's it. What? Of course we expect our customer to read the invoice, it's - certainly, contact your sales rep, Mr. Delaney's there to help. Hello? Hello? She slammed down the handset. The delivery note says it, and the post got it to you after all you rotten bastard!, taking up my time. She flew out of the stockroom calling Julius, Bodrik doesn't want to pay the 10% because it wasn't written in ink, can you believe that, we're not going to let him get away with that are we? The telephone on his desk rang.

Moscati-Mann, Julius Coish speaking. Hello, Mr. Bodrik sir, how are you? The invoice, 10%? It is the custom, hee-hee, and if Starlene didn't write it by hand, it is written down there. Yes sir. That's understandable. Contact head office, very well, I shall be speaking to them shortly myself. Good-day. Julius' hand touched his moustache and came down to grip a fountain pen. I want you to call Mr. Simpkins to tell him Mr. Bodrik is annoyed he has to pay the full price, and explain why.

He's going to pay it though, you aren't going to let him -I do what I'm told to do, and you know, or ought to know, head office likes him. He buys there when he visits, and he buys big, big, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, for all his stores, and if he wants it he'll get it.

We can't let someone tell us what they'll pay -It wouldn't have happened if you hadn't started writing it down for them, would it? I told you, I said -You said what? No such thing -that it would lead to - and what do you call this? Hello, Julius Coish speaking. Good morning, Mr. Simpkins. Yes, she's in the stockroom, I'll transfer you.

Already?

It must be something else. Fix this up, Starlene, right hand stroking the left side of his moustache, figure out a way to make sure this doesn't happen again. Head office doesn't want unhappy clients, they don't buy enough as it is.

Thanks, Julius. Loyola, why aren't those suits boxed? How's it going, Doug?

Fine, Miss -Starlene, call me that, Doug, her hand stabbing at the telephone.

It's going all right. Can Loyola give me a hand if he's not -If he knows where one is, Mr. Simpkins? Yes the clothes arrived this morning, that's what you called about? And something has come up, here. I'll hold. She looked absently through the glass separating the stockroom from the packing room, fingers tapping the mug where, on the other side, a vulgarly painted and attired woman advised, FORGET WHAT MOM TOLD YOU - BE A WRONG WOMAN TOO! The object of her blank stare in his workroom was softly saying aloud That bitch, that bitch, as he jammed paper into the arms of jackets, folded pants, sealed boxes with tape before addressing them with labels written in his manager's solid hand, stamped AMoscati-Mann@ in the top left-hand corner, lastly adhered a postal identification sticker in the right-hand corner prior to tossing the boxes, which mounted as morning slid into afternoon, in a corner from where the postman picked them up at 1:15, freeing Loyola for lunch.

In some ways afternoons were easier, though Fridays meant customers' last-minute demands and consequently rushed postings. This day, however, time afforded Loyola a few minutes outdoors after sweeping the loading area and folding the yellow clothing bags, putting them in a large cardboard box for later use in garbage bins. Opposite the loading doors was a small green area, which some local residents considered a garden, others a park, with flowers growing along its far side. In the middle, surrounded by grass reviving after the brutal winter, stood a tree, which Loyola did not know was a copper beech. Underneath it, needing a fresh coat of paint and new slats, was a sea-green bench upon which Loyola carefully settled, positioned between splintered wood and bird droppings. He took off his sweater and squinted at the sun. You're what I need, nothing else. Maybe after work I'll sit out and get some rays. He considered the small balcony attached to his apartment. I've got sun, even if I don't have money like most people. Or freedom. He tried to calm down. This hidden square of greenery at times helped Loyola escape from thoughts of work. In the approaching summer he would eat lunch surrounded by the essence of flowers and rich earth, free from the cramped, airless packing room and what he considered Starlene's double-hinged tongue. Once more he wondered what made her tick, why she talked normally to the surveyors in the nearby office building, or the people who worked in the computer software firm. What's that red-headed slag got against me, ever since I came here, because I took the place of that idiot she liked? Always talking about how smart he is and how he should have gone to law school, but he didn't have any organization, the packing room was a mess, I cleaned it up myself, think she notices? She missed talking to him, so took it out on me, at the start, and by now... Not fair, not fair.

Occasionally when Loyola sat in this square of nature he brooded on work and the future, unable to reroute his emotions off of some troubling pathway onto a more cheerful course. Even last night's memories proved weak erections against today's unrelenting impulse to quit, for by now he was unable to recall clearly what he had truly felt after leaving the girl. Happy, blown away, numbed, sickened? Why was it so difficult to be sure how you were feeling? Even her face is getting hard to describe. What she did to me, was that normal? Could that hurt me, or make me some pervert? Is she laughing with those stupid friends of hers she was with, saying, He's a fag? If she tells anyone I'll, I'll... Shifting on the bench he scrutinized his hands. They look like Dad's right before he hurt his back. Raising his head he took in the blue sky dotted with white clouds, letting his gaze follow a formation of ducks soaring away. Dad always said any job you hate takes the heart's blood out of you, unless you got dreams. He's always saying nobody at the railway had anything in them after a while, after doing the same thing day in and day out, worried about money and your health all the time. Bills, job, family, house, food. Jennie, or Krysta or Merilee, the same, everything's the same shit when you got no way out. All Mom's prayers and talk about a soul and God, pure Catholic shit, didn't keep her from burning to death, keep Dad from hurting himself. Heart's blood, like Dad said. Maybe now I see what Dad meant. This revelation squeezed from misery silenced him for a few minutes.

Doug stepped out of the loading area, squinting in the bright light as he looked around. There's a bright little prick, business school, younger, makes more than me and hasn't worked here three weeks. Doug called out too loudly for this quiet street, Miss Barker's looking for you. Nodding, Loyola turned his head, waiting for the accounts clerk to withdraw. Can't get a break without her after me, surprised she lets me piss on company time. His watch read 3:00 and he slowly stood up, concentrating one last time on the garden. What a paradise it seemed especially on summer days, the tang of newly-mown grass mingling with the beech and the perfume of colourful flowers whose names he did not need to know in order to admire them. Sometimes he picked a wild rose or lilac, guiltily, crushing the flower against his nose, inhaling deeply and losing himself in its moist softness. At unpredictable moments this action made him recall the half-dozen English courses he had done, and the scraps of poetry that had stayed in his mind which sometimes were helpful with getting women to talk further with him. He hated leaving this spot for Moscati-Mann where no breeze stirred the dusty air or relieved the closeness, and all one could look at were men's outfits of mohair, polyester, wool, cotton, linen, satin finishes, overlaid with plastic. I could tell them I hate this and walk out, came whispering through a grimace. What bothered him most was the possibility that there existed in the world a better situation he would never experience, because in the end, no matter how insufferable this work was, he could not utter a bold proclamation and leave. To clear his head he closed his eyes, drawing in long breaths, the beech and flowers, the grass, their distinct scents forming a thin poultice which acted like a balm on his heart's wound, but underneath this fragile dressing like blood under skin lay mildew, fungus, rotting fruit, sour milk, decaying carcasses. Excuse me, but Starlene sent me. Doug's voice woke Loyola from his daze, the magical garden swiftly transforming into a plot of land that deceived him with a false promise of ease.
Where were you, we've got work to do, Loyola!

I've packed everything there -Don't interrupt, we got to do a stock list. You know what to do. And listen, if Bodrik calls don't speak to him, hand him to me all right? Not a word to Julius. More to herself, If that glorified accountant meddles in my business I'll give him an earful, thinks he knows something about the stock well he doesn't, and he won't so far as I can help it are you still standing there?

—I thought you were talking to me.

No, go on, get to it, her hand raised in vague dismissal revealing next to stagnant coffee completed crossword puzzles from today's papers. That hand remained poised in a position resembling those of sophisticated ladies, seen exclusively in magazines, waiting for a suitor's firm grip to lead them to a dance floor, a table in a restaurant, a secluded room in a private resort where the hand could finally drop to etch hieroglyphics in carmine across a hirsute back, re-enacting its brief elation the next morning in a paroxysm of identical satisfaction, before landing on a phone to order.

That shipment to be sent to Robinson & Robbin, the Wicker Street store, Tuesday, not sent here, all right Tammy? No they'll be expecting it, I've called them. The morning? Fine. Listen, Mike was saying Quigley Myers might be moving, is that right? Who knows, you guys might get a better office out of it. See you. These friendly words reached Loyola as he checked how many navy and black pinstripes were in stock, his hands blackening from their transparent covers. She thinks she's going to get this done and in the mail by 4:30, she's crazy, she's just making me sweat, do something, while she sits there. The telephone rang, and rang, and rang, finally prompting Loyola, get out here, Cranford Clothing, three suits, all 44 reg, 51110/01, 51210/04, 51870/02, bring them up, they'll go registered post, you've got time haven't you. Then there are these other suits just called in, I'm doing the slips, hurry up, make sure they go out special delivery, the stock list can wait.

At his workbench Loyola regarded the suits and jackets, measuring labour against time. Snapping on the radio he buried himself in the work, wrenching a flat piece of cardboard into the shape of a box, layering it with tissue paper which he also used to protect trousers, filling out forms to be photocopied, scrawling details in postage books, whipping the tape gun across, over, down the box, stamping them, then throwing each into a corner where six boxes of various sizes would eventually rest. Goddamn her, she knew this, had those suits from the first phone call, but she didn't tell me, and why not? Bitch, they're all bitches, even what's her name with her fancy screwing games. They're out to suck everything out of me. The rest of Loyola's thoughts were smothered by a red mist inside his head and the final blaring of horns and voices in AMy Little Town@ emanating from Bowmount's top-rated radio station. Bright moog music cut off Simon and Garfunkel, the news fanfare's stinger fading under an earnest voice betraying excitement.

Good afternoon, it's 4:30, the temperature is 22, and I'm Brad Dombrowski with the Tuckman Motors Mid-Afternoon News Bulletin, only on CCII-AM. These are the headlines we're following, with more details at 5:30. Police free seven hostages held by a radical animal rights' group at a local pet shop but, tragically, lose three of their finest. The officers, whose identities have not yet been released, had volunteered to swap themselves for the captives. The hostage takers agreed. There was then an explosion in the shop, possibly caused by an explosive device, killing the officers and the activists. Investigators are on the scene. As for the pets, most were killed in the blast, but some are thought to have escaped from their cages. Residents of the area are advised to be on the lookout for snakes, turtles, lizards and spiders, many dangerous to children. In other news, it seems no one is eager to claim responsibility for an underground publication called Medic Alert: Who's Good and Who's Bad. In brief remarks the anonymous writer ranks Bowmount doctors according to how many drugs they dispense, how they treat patients, and their level of expertise, based, so the book's introduction says, on overheard and unsolicited anecdotes collected from many unnamed patients. The book has been found throughout the City in public places such as telephone booths, washrooms, clinics and bars. Some City physicians have issued a statement criticizing the publication as a wanton act of libel, slander and malicious damage to physicians in the community, and not the work of a philanthropist, as some letters to local papers claim. Today, Olive Bancroft is $270,000 richer thanks to a lucky lotto ticket she almost lost. Seems last night she mistook a ticket which won in Monday's draw, but which she thought she'd lost, for a napkin, wiped her mouth with it, and tossed it in the garbage. Only because her son upended the kitchen trash this morning because his school was on a bottle drive did she find the ticket, which, despite its stains, clearly showed the six winning numbers. Good thing the boy found it, as Olive says she's been saving for his college education. Maybe he'll be a sanitation inspector. In sports, the local sensation, T'Keitha Lynne Shugge, a whirlwind on the track and a favourite with fans, has been found dead from a heroin overdose. She was sixteen. At this hour details are sketchy. In Tuckman Motors' weather, sun will persist, with temperatures reaching 25 tomorrow, as a high pressure system covers the region. We'll have the extended forecast on our major newscast at 5:30, as well as more news and sports, with the CCII-AM news team. For all of us here, I'm Brad Dombrowski. Good afternoon.

What, heroin?

What? and the headset slipped on again. Kevin?

Brad, you say heroin?

So?

Saw her last night on t.v., looked fine. When'd she die?

Taped broadcast. Don't know, maybe two days, she'd holed herself away from her family, a deserted apartment building. Her mother looks like a dragon. She left a note, can't read it because they can't make out her words.

Bitch about those cops, hey? Not a good-news day.

What do you mean, it's great. See you at 5:30, Kevin, the news booth door closing as Brad pushed through the door of Production Room 1. Harvey, hi, you free?

Come in, Uncle Lou.

It's Brad.

How many days?

This is the end of my first week. I came to -Think you'll like it? Newsroom, not the week. Different from where you were before, isn't it? Hold it, hold it. A finger depressed a button. Mitch, good to see you, I got spots, you free? In the recording room opposite a sullen, unshaved young man in jeans and a t-shirt regarded the glass separating the two rooms as he absently pressed down a corresponding button.
That's why I'm here. What you got?

Nickel-and-dime stuff, big sales, promotions, the whole scoop. All new in boxes.

I'll get it from Continuity.

Harvey, if you -Hold on now, I gotta get this together and in the slot. Mitch's a nice guy but not patient, you met him yet? Course you have, what am I saying, everybody meets everybody. You're looking for carts. Brad eyed the semi-transparent plastic tape containers next to a degausser.

Yeah, the newsroom -Check with Frank, the supply manager, he's got some. I can't give any away, got all these spots. He'll help you out. Newsroom always sends the new guys asking for carts when they know I need 'em for commercials. They don't grow on trees, you know. Would be kind of freaky if they did, a - hold on. Mare! Harvey called through a slot in the wall separating Production from Copy and Continuity.

What? came the response from an attractive woman in her mid-twenties whose hand held white sheets and yellow sheets with numbered tags clipped to them. Brad looked sideways at her figure through the glass that made up most of that wall. Crouching, Harvey addressed Mare's right hand, the only part of her to be seen through the slot in the wall separating the rooms. Ask Mitch to read Formal Wear for Informal People first, then the beer tag, okay?

Mitch is doing these? Since when?

What do you mean?

He's allowed to do both FM and AM spots?

Isn't he?

He's not on our list.

I got a list today from the Nose, he gave it to me direct. Didn't you get one? Course not. Stupid question, right Lou?

Name is Brad, and those carts -I'll check, Harvey, you probably know more than we do, and stepping away from the window Mare let the slot door close and picked up the telephone. What now? asked Megan, sitting behind a second desk, her computer's amber screen turning her glasses into surfaces of shifting light. No one tells us anything, hello? Denice, Mare. Listen, Mitch, is he bi? No, no, now - that's right, sorry, funny, no, I mean can he go on both AM and FM. Listen, stop laughing. Can you hear her? Megan nodded absentmindedly. He can, since when? Well I'd like to be told that, you know, get a memo like you and Harvey. What? Where? Oh, wait a minute, sorry, yes, it got buried under copy, okay, thanks. You know, a Friday mind. See ya. Well, okay.

What is it, dearie?

We can use Mitch for both, they just change it without telling you. I'll make copies of this for you and Hilary, motioning to the momentarily unoccupied desk. Meg, where's -At the feed. Look, we need another computer in here, Mare. You and I got them, why doesn't Hilary, instead of a typewriter? The door swung open with

Where the hell's the, hi, Meg, where's the copy? Thanks, Mare.

Do the Formal Wear first, Mitch, then the beer one. Must be a rush on -Yeah, but I need the beer one to do the beer one, I mean the tag line for this, this beer thing, yellow paper fluttering at the end of nicotine-stained fingers. I've got to drop it in about 6,000 places, don't have it, what the fuck good is it? You guys got it around here some place, can you find it while I'm here, the formal one's only thirty seconds, I'm not going to sit on my ass doing nothing in that room. What's this, a death notice? A white sheet of paper landed on Megan's desk. Sorry babe, I don't do death notices, is the tag line in there?, gesturing to a typewriter. Mare saw a sheet of yellow paper with Seamus Distillery and Brewery written on it. Good eyes, Mitch, removing the paper from the typewriter and handing it to Mitch. Which one is it? as he shuffled two sheets of paper.

What? Oh, sorry, forget the backing sheet.

We've got, Black Dog Beer: What fresh hell is this?, and Be satisfied. There's two?

You can see which one, the one that says Seamus.

What'll they think of next, jerks, trying to sell a beer like this? Desperate, man.

Got to do what the sponsor says. They know best.

Sure. This other sheet, throw it away?

A backing sheet, so the top sheet won't slip.

Why isn't Hilary on computer?

No money for it. Mitch mumbled as he left, the second sheet now in Mare's hand.

Like Braille, came out of her to no one, her fingers running over the pockmarks, the brief line of black ink surrounded by the fierce yellow of the paper, as though the sun were raging down on a troop of helpless figures in a desert, wondering Be satisfied, Megan? What does that mean?, as she replaced the sheet.

Who knows. You going for a beer after work?

No, tonight I think I'll just - hi, Tyrone, getting back into it?

Sweetly and tenderly, Mare. Is Hilary -Doing the feed in Production Room 3. Megan regarded him coolly, adding Don't you remember, Friday is the day for sending out the religious programs, Lutherans, The Living Voice of God, Second Fundamentalist Church. You can hang out there.

Outreach ministries, God's hand stretching throughout His domain via

-Something you want? Megan's brown eyes flickered. Since I got back, Megan, you've been a bit prickly. What's with -I tried to help, Tyrone, that's all. Maybe you're the one needs the attitude adjustment. The telephone on Mare's desk rang.

Hello? Oh yes, Mr. Lewis, yes? The Hamilton spot, yes, we did that this morning like Bob wanted, her fingers twisting strands of hair. The copy, yes, I've got it, sure, I'll bring it right - no, we didn't change it at all. No, Mr. Lewis, I'm positive. Well, no, I didn't hear it, but I don't think the announcer, unless he may have read it wrong, yes sir. Harvey didn't - just, yes, Mr. Lewis. Yes. Yes. Yes, I under - yes, I'll hold. Christ! I'm in for it, Megan, where's that copy, did you see it?

Calm down.

Yellow paper, did you see it? Where -Under your -What?

Your -Hello, Mr. Lewis? Harvey probably has it. Yes, I'll bring it right over sir, yes, right away. The handset rattled down. Where'd it go? That's not it, Megan.

Trouble in the Emerald Forest? Tyrone sat on the third desk. Lewis' office is done up in red, didn't you know? I guess he hasn't asked you in since you came back. Mare, calm down.

Calm down, sure, when I find that - Lewis wants me in his office like five minutes ago with that spot, Megan. Where the hell is it? A problem with it, he doesn't want it on air yet.

Lewis or Hamilton?

Lewis! Harvey! came Mare's voice through the opened hatch, repeated twice more, but his attention was divided between Mitch and a visitor. You here for carts again, Uncle Lou? Told you I don't have any, it's Frank you need. Can't go giving carts away, I don't come out to the newsroom looking for anything from you guys, do I?

Harvey, over here!

How many more of these bitching drop-ins do I have to do, Harv? I say brought to you by Ukobach Advanced Kitchens again I'll throw up.

The name's Brad and it's not about -One calamity at a time. Stay there, Mitch, we won't be much longer with those.

Harvey! His face greeted hers from the other side of the slot. Yes, my child. How long has it been since your last confession?

Harvey, listen. The Hamilton spot, you got it?

Hamilton? Which one?

You did it this morning -That's history. Flynn's got it, copy too.

Shit. Thanks.

In nominae Patri, cut off by the slamming of the hatch. Mare dialled 427. Come on, Keith, answer.

Mare, relax.

You weren't the one talking to him Megan, and Bob and the Nose are there. They're all sitting in the office waiting on, her words interrupted by another telephone. Megan here. No, she's on another line, Bob. Yes, certainly. He wants you to call him.

I'm in it now.

What's so special about this thirty-second miracle? Does it -It's just a commercial. Don't you have somewhere else to be?

I'm getting reacquainted with everyone, Megan. Meg.

Don't start, Ty.

Coming back here is like coming back into the arms of -Keith, it's Mare, hi, I thought you weren't going to answer. Do you have that Hamilton spot? It's in the control room? The script, you got that? Can you get it down to me, now? I'll explain later. Mr. Lewis wants to see it. No, I don't have a copy, can you get it down to me like pronto? Thanks, bye. Did you hear that? Tyrone, open the door. From the speakers in the corridor ceiling they heard Mare Montgomery being paged to call 401. This must be some commercial. If you play it backwards does it have a satanic message?

Hold that door, please! Thank you. A rotund man, fleshy and pale in the face, stood in the doorway. Ms Montgomery, Mr. Lewis sent me for the Hamilton advertisement.

Keith's bringing it down now.

How long?

Right away.

Mr. Lewis is most insistent -Hi, how are you, I'm Tyrone Vann, and you're...?

What? Oh, yes, I've heard of you. Pleasure. Perry Hornocker. You're back with us again, I understand, but in a slightly different capacity than before.

Good to meet you. I was telling the - yes, swing shift. Telling the ladies this is like being back in a family, don't you think?

An interesting perspective. Of course, as it's my first time with CCII -How is it going, then, Perry? I thought you were new. You're the -Personal assistant to Mr. Lewis. Being a family is probably what makes CCII number one in AM and number two in FM. The team spirit, you know.

Just like it was three years ago. Good things never stop working. Course, neither do bad things. But I guess business has picked up, Perry, Mr. Lewis never had a dogsbody, I mean p.a., before. The telephone on Mare's desk rang once again.

Hello? Yes, Mr. Lewis.

Speak of the devil, Perry.

Yes, when Keith Flynn comes - well, no, I didn't. It's not on computer. Hilary, that's right. Keith, yes, and Perry's here -And Tyrone, who can leave any time.

Tell me, Mr. Vann, what did you do for your three years in the wilderness? So to speak. Another radio station, under a different name?

Under my real name I learned about human nature again. Starving helps you do that. It wasn't so bad. In fact, I shouldn't complain, because down teaches you about up, if you see what I mean. For every adversity -Tyrone, leave that stuff alone.

you get used - Megan, I'm talking to Perry here. Tomato soup every day for weeks on end. I couldn't have been more than a year and a half unemployed. Persistence paid off, and not letting the economic climate and people's grimness get to me. We have to keep our wits about us, right Perry?

On your own, how very admir -Aren't we always on our own, even in a relationship? Seriously.

I suppose there's... something in that.

Why don't you quit it?

Megan's unimpressed with my story, Perry.

But you've come back to a family now. CCII is a good family, I can see why you
applied again.

Applied? No, no, I didn't. I went to see your boss' nephew, not Phil but Otis is the one I mean, and he said -A very capable administrator.

no job for me at all, but I rang Bob, or Mr. Henderson, as you probably call him, a few dayys later and I was hired. You look surprised.

No job one day, a job the next? What happened?

Otis still has his nose out of joint over something I said years ago, if you ask me. His true talent was for wiping the windows of the company cars on wash day, most people think he peaked at fifteen. Ask around. In the silence they heard through the still open door a call for Keith Flynn to contact 401. What did you say? Perry brought out through splayed yellow teeth. You came back here, to this family you called it, and you insult Mr. Lewis -I was talking about his nephew Otis. Philip's a fine boy, don't you think? Newsroom should be winning awards again in a few years.

They're both called Mr. Lewis!

Three of them, Perry. Alfred, the third nephew, he doesn't like commercial radio, thinks it's sleazy. He'd make four Lewises then.

Yes, he's not in the business. What kind of -Told me it was immoral at the only Christmas party he ever came to. Course he was drunk, I disagreed, said amoral

-You said his uncle, who took those three boys into his bosom, into his family as his own sons, when their father died, leaving nothing -His uncle was amoral? No, you misheard, Perry, and you must be getting tired propping the door open, come inside, that's better.

Tyrone, why don't you take Perry outside so he can listen to your fascinating take on things, leave Mare and me to do our work, okay?

You said family, Mr. Vann, I swear -Thought we finished with that, but since you want to talk about it, yes, a family, the kind, you know, where the father is a drunk or a gambler, hides his pay cheque, beats the wife and kids, only they love him despite all that. A battered child's love's the most consistent, isn't it? The kids and the wife always come back, and that's radio. You see deejays, newsmen, salesmen shuffle out the front door and a year, five, ten years later they're strolling in the back way as if they hadn't suffered a minute at the old man's hands. But a family's a family, and you can't choose them. I'd rather be a favourite of CCII than adopted by some strangers.

How did you get your job here?

Like I told you. The contract's good for two years, by the way. So I guess we'll be chatting a lot -Don't touch me! The door was pushed open carelessly against Perry's back, moving him further into the room. Tyrone, you old dick head, how are you?

Keith!

Jesus, you son-of-a-bitch. They told me you were coming back, I said that cunt'll never show his ugly face. How's it going?

Getting acquainted with Perry.

Keith, have you got it?

Mare, I always got it. When do you need it, and how often?

Lay off, Keith, she just wants the copy. We've had everybody in here today and I'm trying to write a spot.

What the fuck's wrong with Princess Megan today, Mare? And why's everybody been after me? Whose shorts are up their crack?

Keith, the Hamilton copy.

Right here -Let me take that -Hold it, Hornocker. Mare asked for it, okay, not you. Brought the cart too. What's up?

I don't know. Her eyes raced over the copy. Looks fine. Mr. Lewis wants it, and Bob and the - Mr. Bennett.

I was saying, Keith, that must be one hell of an advertisement. I always thought radio was only entertainment, not life-and-death.

Fuck, you know the score. We do the soliciting, these guys sweat under it, and thirty seconds later we gotta hump again.

Would you mind, Ms Montgomery, handing that over to me now? Why you didn't have another copy.... It's very sloppy. You should fix your procedures. Keith's hand kept the door shut. Listen, Polly, I'll tell you something.

It's Perry, and please let go of the door.

Keith, come on.

You've been bothering the sales assistants, now the copy people, but you didn't call me. Sloppy? You're sloppy, pal. If you were on the ball you'd have gotten in touch with me, and you'd know what this yellow sheet means.

Keith, come on, let Perry - Christ! Hello, Mare here. Yes, sir, he's on the way with it now. Yes, the script, and - hello? Hello? Christ.

If you'd excuse me, Mr. Flynn, I have work to do. Perry tried the door again but the salesman blocked it. Tell me, Perry, what does a yellow sheet mean?

Let me through, I said.

Don't push me, you fucking asslick! I'll take this sheet and shove it down your goddamn throat, you try this again! And nobody here heard me say that, right? You don't know what the yellow sheet means, I'll tell you what it means. Hilary typed it. Why? There's only two computers here, in case you didn't know, because they can't afford another one what with hiring a stupid know-nothing ex-civil servant like you, okay? Hilary uses a typewriter and that paper. Now you know a few more things than when you walked in here.

Let him out, Keith, I think you made your point.

Just so he knows, Tyrone.

He knows, he's not dumb.

Thank you for nothing, Mr. Vann. With the door open Hornocker stepped into the corridor, turning back to the room. You think you're smart, Mr. Vann. Lipping off about Mr. Lewis and Mr. Lewis. And you, Mr. Flynn, pushing me around, I won't forget that. I'm not going to put up with that treatment. I could have gotten this commercial from Mr. Flynn myself, Ms Montgomery.

If you'd thought of it, shithead.

I've heard enough out of you. And Mr. Vann, this... talk about families and abuse, let me tell you something. You're lucky to have a contract, you're all very lucky to have jobs at all! Who else would take you in? You should be grateful to be able to come to work in the morning and get a day's wages for it. Be thankful for everything, and don't complain, that's what I say. Hornocker gripped the knob to slam the door but its hydraulics worked against him. He let go and headed away.

What a scuzzy prick. Lewis is really scraping the barrel to hire a guy like that.

Would you just stop it? Megan shouted, standing up. Would you just take this male shit and get out of here?

Come on, Tyrone, let's grab a coffee.

Megan, Mare, Perry's nothing. Don't let yourselves get upset by anybody who just happens to come by. Bob knows what goes on. Even the Nose does, or he did. Lewis'll listen to them before anyone.

Just leave, okay? Now? With the door closed Mare stopped fidgeting. Megan, what's the matter with you? He was trying to help.

I hate people I slept with coming back. Don't look like that, it was over a year ago. So I didn't tell you, so what. Tyrone, he so loves being Tyrone. Talks one way and behaves another. But look at you, you're -I hate this job, I hate it when - Lewis keeps calling me, there's something wrong with the script or the cart or the announcer or Hilary and you, there was almost a fight. How am I?

But every Friday's like this.

You think Perry'll forget what happened?

Honestly?

Christ. You still going for that drink?

All right, Mare! I need you with me anyway, you've got to help me pick out a man for tonight.

Don't you get tired of that?

Hey, it's only twice a week. The way the men are in this crummy town I might end up sleeping with a dyke just to see if that's any better.

Don't say that, it makes me - I'm sick enough as it is without thinking of that. I got to go to the bathroom after all this. I'm in such a sweat. Look at me.

Look, forty-five minutes from now we'll be out of here, away from Perry and Tyrone, bastard, and all the Lewises. We'll have a drink, have a good time.

We're here for an hour yet. By 5:30 Hilary, Mare and Megan had assured themselves there were no loose ends left to cause trouble on the weekend. Commercials, public service announcements, contest promos and taped programming had been delivered to both AM and FM control rooms, lodged in the Saturday, Sunday and Monday bunks. All the copy for that day had been filed. Along with deejays, salespeople, accountants, newspeople and general staff, the three copywriters gratefully escaped from CCII into the warm evening to start recovering from an ordinary, gruelling week. In another part of Bowmount, Loyola dragged a grimy sweater over his head and deposited it in a chair, feeling muscles ache in his neck and along his left side, sweating as he stepped out of Moscati-Mann. Jammed in a breathless bus he fought to stay awake until his stop near The Great Pan Restaurant, not far from Johnny's Bar on International Street. Somewhere between sleep and wakefulness he wondered why he had not quit after all. Now and then the sun struck his pale features as the bus crawled through traffic. Perspiration soaked his t-shirt and trickled into his eyes and mouth. At least in the bar he would be among others like him, the ones who successfully made it through another day and could not bear speculating about the endless tomorrows.

Primitives and moderns
The bicyclists came all in gray. There's the first ones, from Newtown. Aren't they fast? Vic snorted. Jack, where's your eyes? Here's the next team, look at 'em, all together, like birds or something, now that's discipline. Like sharks, maybe. Alistair did not want to appear contradictory, especially to Victor, his only black acquaintance, but felt fairly strongly this comparison was not very apt. However, he kept silent. They're good, continued Vic, and the best ones haven't come by yet. Jack? Paper says 7:15, it's just 7:00 now, practically. Jack folded The Bowmount Telegram along the sketch of the bicycle course. That second team's colours stand out. Purple, Vic? Didn't seem like it, Jack. We'll ask Sam, he knows that stuff. Alistair could have offered an opinion, but no one asked for it.

The cycling enthusiasts re-entered Johnny's Bar, accompanied by a small clutch of fellow patrons enjoying the warm Saturday night. Resuming their places on stools or at tables, the dozen or so men declared their opinions about the favourites to win the August tournament. One or two viewed the television at the far end of the bar, where a newscast showed footage of the Atlantic. Over the footage a newscaster declared Sea, and a daring rescue this morning by the Coast Guard. Saving the crew of the Margaret Beane, which had been hunting seals in heavy ice, unusual conditions for this time of year. Unwelcome at any time. Described by hunters as a state-of-the-art floating abattoir, by animal rights' activists as a ship of slaughter, the Margaret Beane was taken over yesterday by the militant Society for the Preservation of Animal Life. Fifteen gun-carrying men and women dropped to the deck from a helicopter, which then landed. The crew, many of whom were asleep at the time, were held prisoner while the contents of the ship's freezers, mainly seal meat and pelts, were dumped overboard or burned. Then the engine was disabled, leaving the Margaret Beane powerless in ice. Early this morning, several hours after it all began, the captain was permitted to radio the vessel's owners. The activists fled by the helicopter they came in before the Coast Guard arrived, leaving behind a bomb which detonated fifteen minutes after the last crew member was safely away. One side of the ship split open, and it soon filled with water. Most of it is below ice now, and there is no word on if it can be salvaged. The members of the Society for the Preservation of Animal Life, a new organization, are little known to the police. Authorities say that after today, that will change. It is not known if today's attack on the Margaret Beane is linked to the deaths last week of three policemen in another part of the country, the city of Bowmount, when -Hey, Johnny! We were watching that.

What d'ya want to watch that crap for? Nothing but death and higher taxes and - and for God's sake, you got t.v. at home, don't ya?

You got cable.

It's my bar. Now, who's for another drink? One old man, who had not watched either the news or the bicyclists, a rum-and-Coke before him, asked for Some music please, Jonathan.

Jonathan? Vic looked around. Pops, who you talking to?

Who you call Johnny I've always known as Jonathan. Being friends of his parents, God rest their souls, I -Okay, Pops, sure, I'll put in a tape.

We won't miss the next team, will we?

Jack?

We got enough time for a drink. No worry. These guys got it all timed out and monitored, pretty scientifically too, I must say, you know, practically, if you know what I'm saying. Victor, Jack, Alistair and the others, excluding Pops, were keenly interested in the imminent and fleeting appearance of the fabled Carlyle bicycling team, the winner four years running of the Bowmount Three-Day Bicycle Race. The thoughts of every person who dropped a bill or two in Johnny's Hav-A-Tampa Jewels cigar box cannot be known, but it is safe to generalize that the fame of Carlyle's team was a sore point with these Bowmountians. In chorus with the richer merchants, the municipal government harshly criticized the likes of Jack and Victor for not enhancing the prosperity of the City, and it must be said that here a certain ignorance on the part of the City Fathers prevented intelligent coercion of the will and energy these negative-minded taxpayers possessed. That is to say, if the City of Bowmount had been marketed like a sports franchise rather than run like a public corporation, the habitués of Johnny's Bar, representative of many citizens in this respect, would have stationed themselves in the vanguard of community pride. Gladly would they have traded their names on a taxation list, which is nothing more than an infernal ledger of debt with very little credit, for a place on the roster, or a prime seat for the season from which to cheer on the home team. If beer and hot dogs were provided, that would be gravy, in a manner of speaking. Perhaps for these once-a-week gamblers, or those who were interested spectators, their moral nature might have improved. While those who wager and those who speculate are cut from the same cloth, in the tailoring lies the difference, and everyone is taken with a handsome suit. Gamblers who lose their house, their savings and their families are outcasts, but businessmen who squander vast sums of money, usually not their own, wind up vice-presidents on the boards of insurance companies or foundations, or turn to shaping public opinion and mores, never forced to bear directly the responsibilities of being charlatans, failures. For the men gathered in Johnny's Bar this late April night, or any night throughout the year, who lived in a poorly lit present and who did not want to think of the dimming future, the City of Bowmount PLC was a jacket which never suited their frames as well as one emblazoned Bowmount All-Stars might have. This entity they would have supported. For them, the sentiment was certainly true that a victory medal outshines all pride of wealth. As things were, these fellows remained aloof from misguided petitions to their civic natures, and resented any changes which benefitted the City over themselves, such as the proposed tax increases.

Higher taxes for what? For junk, Johnny put it to Sam. For snot-nosed Mayor Runciman to waste on buildings nobody wants, or re-zoning, or whatever strikes his mind? Used-car salesman, they never should have elected him. And you see that wife of his? A Carlylian. Sage heads nodded at the implications. No wonder he's getting behind their bicyclists. Bernadette Holloway, who was she? Some two-bit sports star, a figure skater. If you can call that a sport. Running that ritzy members-only club where the rich snuggle up to each other, eat, dance, make deals, who knows what else in those big rooms. Do I get in there? No, I'm not part of the well-to-do, I'm just one of the working poor. I can't even get a permit looked at in decent time at City Hall. Rats, all of them. She's the worst -Practically.

Nothing half-way about that trollop, Jack. Got the Mayor where she wants him. What's today's headline? MAYOR A NAVY MAN FIRST. Who's that but Carlyle? This line of talk illustrated the frustration felt by some present over a variety of issues that, in a more energetic or rabid citizenry, would have provoked a riot. Taxes were too high and always going up, and for what? Yet one could see a kind of logic in the rise of a season ticket's price, and agree that to keep good players one must pay them their worth, for without them you'd be in the bush leagues. To most, though, the City Council, in heavy-handed fashion, rejected all thought of moderate increases, and in the words of Harry Prestwick, one-time union leader, who that minute entered the bar, You can't tell a Heinz pickle nothin'. The Race, at one time a celebration of Bowmount skill and virility, with the ascension of the Carlyle team had degenerated into an occasion of sin for the senior commentators intimate with its long history, who were upset that the athletic orthodoxy had been challenged by heretics from across the river and over the plains. Without a doubt the course struck many as more challenging than in recent years, skirting or tackling the seven valleys in the north and the four valleys in the west, but the plotting of this route, which apparently favoured Bowmount's team, occasioned mistrust. They set it up that way to get everyone thinking it's fair. No one argued with Stan, a long-time follower of the noble event, a competitor in it years ago. Some of those who had done miserably in chemistry or Euclidean geometry were fiends at discerning elaborate schemes behind the most legitimate procedures. You say Grand Design, I say conspiracy theory. People nodded once more at this well-worn saying of Harry Prestwick, regarded as a thinker in this milieu.

Look at this. Slapping The Carlyle-Bowmount Despatch on the bar to gain attention, Harry continued. Something else. Paul Sherringham wants - say, where's Frank?

Not in town, someone replied, and a sigh of relief went through the assembled as though from one set of lungs. Paul Sherringham, I was saying. He's buying up half the town to give to immigrants, the poor, guys just out of prison, to house them in all sorts of neighbourhoods. See this? Here. No, there. You'll apply, and if he likes you, no, his organization, the Enhancement of People Fund, accepts you, why then you go live in some swanky place. Think you or I'll ever get in there? Some nice big house in Dockside, or on Outerwall? Not me, not you either, or you, but Igor Piddleski and Saddam Saddami and She Who Spits In Your Face could, no problem. Years of shouting over union members had converted Harry's diaphragm into an amphitheatre, and glasses behind the bar chimed in accord with his rumblings. Look at this guy, where's he from? Ontario? What's he going to do, sell a mansion to beggars from Bangladesh?

Harry.

Here I am trying to start a business with my own two hands and some guy wants to give away our land to foreigners -Harry!

Johnny?

What does it read above you? For the hundredth time Harry read the motto intricately worked into wood over the bar, only this time aloud. A man is only happy when he is drunk. S. Johnson.

Take the hint, and relax. You always come in like this. You'll wind up in hospital again, and you give me a headache. And don't forget, when you're talking about foreigners, I'm Italian.

But Johnny, I know you. It's newcomers I'm talking about. One of these years when everything - a Manhattan, that'll straighten me up. But brother, let me tell you, Sherringham isn't going to let you buy a three-storey house with a pool and a two-car garage when he can sell it to any joe from anywhere, or rent it as a flop-house to someone named Sabidanolok. Now, I'm not a racist, Johnny, despite what you might think -Did I say anything? I told you where my family's from, that's all.

but nobody just in here should get something for nothing. When the Manhattan appeared Harry quickly downed it. Another, Johnny, and get Sam a drink too. Sam! What'll you

-Would you stop shouting? Pops rapped his blackthorn cane repeatedly on the wooden floor. Okay, old-timer, sorry. Sylvie, hi, can you bring those drinks over there? Sam, come on, we'll let Pops - what's his problem anyway?

Listening to the music. Bing Crosby had replaced Anne Shelton, singing about how friendly everyone was in his home town. Victor nabbed Sam as he was steered to a table by Harry.
That first team, St. Cornelius, their uniform. Purple?

They call it that. I see it as plum myself. Paint-stained hands absently twisted at a loosening overall button. Ask Fred, he's got a good eye.

He's too weird. I know he paints too, but that's just houses. I mean, you really paint. Jack let Victor know, It's 7:14, they're due any time. Almost everyone convened outside to get a good look at the Mayor and his wife's favourites, distinguished by their long hair flowing from under helmets and in crisp navy racing outfits, followed a quarter hour later later by Bowmount's bicyclists garbed in jade, a new colour decidedly not as sharp as their chief competitor's. The cheers for this team matched the sullen silence that greeted the Carlyle team. Few people went outside half an hour later to see the yellows of Crescent City and the browns of Ripton go by. Heck, Jack had muttered on seeing Bowmount's team struggle to maintain formation, there goes my money again. Practically.

—Betting is a tax on the stupid, Harry whispered to Sam as he led him to a corner table away from the bar. They talked about small matters, but Sam eventually came out with a question that had been bothering him. That was your book, wasn't it? It's really - what were you thinking?

Listen. Listen to me. After what happened, those idiots at the hospital giving me a scare years ago, and my g.p. missing what I had in January, I wanted to get back at them.

With this? Why not just a lawsuit like - if they find you, and you're not even getting any money for it, so I don't know - it's like a folly, you know?

You're a good one to talk about money. A painter, an artist, lecturing me about money. No, there isn't any in that, none. But there's plenty of satisfaction. Didn't you ever want to get some poison out of your system? Did you see the news? Wasn't it something? A book review, of all things, in the Courier. A book review! Hahahaha.

How could I miss it? Wiping the brushes I saw it, right next to Niles W.K. Gidmery's Men Who Lope With the Does.

You smeared paint all over the Medic Alert story? My moment of fame and you just blot it out. I'll remember that when you have your big show.

Harry, you need a real job, something less aggravating. I don't understand you. You get involved with these... if there can be a perverse do-gooder, you're it. A negative image of one. What are you looking for? Wasn't being president of a local enough of a - didn't you always say to George that it was draining? Don't you want some peace in your life? Harry drained his glass and Sylvie appeared with another. Bless you, you're an angel. Johnny doesn't pay you enough.

If people left bigger tips...

That's what I like, spunk.

Don't listen to this guy, Sam. He was your brother's torment too. They waited for Sylvie to serve someone else. I take exception to what you just said. Everyone asked, Harry, what was it you had going? A non-union, a bunch of professional scabs. I called them Prestwick's Irregulars. Cute, hey? We were a group who knew about thirty trades. Out-sourcing, double-breasting, means lots of money, especially in construction. I had these fellas who were well down on the union lists to get hired for anything, because it's all seniority, right? I stole them right out from under their unions' noses. Whenever scabs were needed I'd have this hand-picked crew go in, do it, and get out, pronto. You think some manager cares how the union's going to feel about it? Not till negotiation time, when they each make trade-offs and you hear them both say, We worked together in a frank spirit of cooperation and mutually resolved the contentious issues. Yeah, right. Now mind you, this business could only have lasted about five years, but that would have been enough to make me a pile, and the workers, they would've gotten money and experience. But what do they go and do?

You didn't know they'd unionize on you?

No! If I did, you think I'd be out of work again? First I get dumped as president, then my own business - anyway. Dumb guys thought: We'll squeeze Prestwick and Harmon and North, they'll have to pay us more. Union Brotherhood of Scabs, Local No. 1, we called them. So they made life miserable for us, wouldn't get to work, threatened to go to the police. Mind you, they were as dirty as us. Sam, let them try to take me to court and I'll damage every one of them. I kept a book on it, a secret history, sort of, and it's safe inside a bank vault. I won't bore you with what it says, you're falling asleep already, look at you.

Not you, just haven't eaten all day, and the beer....

Heck, is that it? Sylvie! Sylvie! A couple of sandwiches. Ham? Ham, cheese, and some pickles. Make it three sandwiches. You have two, Sam. A painter needs his strength, and if George, could ever know I wasn't helping you out -Hey, guys, how are you? Phil Horne sat down between the two, and shortly a group comprising him, Harry, Sam, Stan Miloz, Camilla Lonegin, Pops, who had removed himself from the vicinity of the bar's doors, and Bartholomew Constantine plunged into talk about business, activists, dead policemen, and from there to yoga, aura massage, herbal remedies, and painting, once Sam's strength returned. What's it about, what you're working on? You never talk about it.

Stan, it's - well, what's there to talk about.

He's too modest, Stan. You've got something in mind. Look at you, greasy clothes, turpentine smell, hands covered in - I was going to say blood, course it's just paint. You didn't eat all day, if it wasn't for me you'd probably never eat. How much money you got on you?

Five, maybe.

Dollars? Camilla thought it ridiculous to guess at anything lower, but when Sam answered with Five cents, she flushed angrily, poverty having this effect on her. How do you pay for food, light, heat?

Oh, it's been warmer lately, and if I keep moving then -Jeez, Sammy, what's the big secret? What you got to do is trust us more, see? Like, is it something dirty, naked people we know, or boring like, fuck, I don't know, fruit on a table?

It's a triptych, or at least now it may be, if it works. No one said anything, though Pops nodded. Harry broke the silence with You'd better explain that, these boys wouldn't know a triptych if they fell into one. Sam vainly tried to straighten his hunched back, avoiding Camilla's narrowed eyes. Three paintings, one of the Virgin Mary with Child, one of Jesus consoling the sinners, Mary Magdalene's in there, and the third is the Crucifixion, with the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, one or two apostles around him. Can't paint too many apostles, like Goethe said, one apostle's much like another. Trouble is doing it right, the figures, the paints, the style. Even finding the models...

Having recollected the one art history course she took as an elective at Bowmount University,

Camilla seemed to speak for the whole table. I guess successful painters have the same problems.

She's right, Sammy. You go into any Catholic church here, or St. Telesphorus', you see Christs and Marys hanging everywhere. Must be hard doing something different from everybody else.

Boys, you don't understand. Brother Sam, and I call him that because his brother George was a dear friend of mine, he works with his hands to fashion something immortal.

Only God creates immortal things, and Pops wondered later at the braveness of his words, since they were practically inviting an attack from any modern man or woman around.

Another citizen heard from. Look, Sam -No, what I said is true, it's in Scripture somewhere, isn't it? Sam? God touches all of us, He's omniscient, which means He can tell what every person is thinking. Not like any of us can do that, is it? God isn't some baby. He's been at this a long time. Immortality, He knows what it is. Pops hurried through the Sign of the Cross. He gave Michelangelo and Da Vinci their powers, like He's given them to Sam.

Pops, I respect you, but Sam isn't Da Vinci. Sorry Sam, but -No, you're right.

Never mind this unbeliever, Sam. You'll do fine. Christian painting is always worthwhile, and balms your soul in peace with the Lord Saviour.

Would you listen to this guy? Pops, jeez, you haven't been to church - when was the last time you found yourself mumbling in St. Adamnan's?

Those heretics are going against Rome, but the day will come when - if the Pope knew what they were doing he'd excommunicate them! Someone has to tell him what's going on! It took a minute or so for the table to calm Pops down. Regaining the thread of the conversation he turned to Sam. Your Virgin, she should have red hair.

What?

Green eyes, too. There was never any woman so beautiful, she had red hair and green eyes, as green as the sea. Stan could not resist. Pops, green eyes just means she's horny. The blackthorn cane with its solid ebony handle clattered against the table. I'm not staying here and listening to such foul - that's the Mother of God you're talking about! Blasphemer! And in the presence of a lady. Pops hurried away to seek more congenial company. Bart suggested that from what he knew, the description matched Pops' long-dead wife. Jeez, I didn't mean to upset the old guy. I'll go apologize -Maybe wait a few minutes till he cools down.

Good thinking, Bart. So, Sammy, you can't find a model. Camilla here, she'd be great. I mean, look at -Stan!

Thanks, but I haven't got the figures in my mind, the colouring, the form, the expression. Thought I had. I started with just a Christ, a pale, weak Christ, but that doesn't fit with the Bible, as I understand it. He was strong, so I'm looking at something more virile, humane, dignified, but sorrowful for mankind.

You're reading the Bible, Sam? News - thanks, Sylvie, keep those drinks coming.

Anything else for the rest of you? She took their orders, and they resumed the conversation. By now Sam was resentful at having talked so much, but could find no way to stop Harry from resuming the discussion. As I was about to say, it's a funny thing to be reading, isn't it? And painting the Mother of Christ too. Where's the profit in that? Angels, there's the trick. There's money in that. You could do a bang-up job of angels. Not those little fat boys or girls, but the sort of pear-shaped ones women love. Did I ever tell you guys, I was visiting a - this'll only take a second. I went round with some of my guys one time, the drive was on to get a union into a place, and we were visiting every employee's home, every apartment, every hovel, making sure names on the lists showed up to the meeting. This was five years ago. I went into this one house, a small neat home, six kids peering round doorways, and the lady left me in the living room to wait while her husband got ready. You could tell they didn't have much money, but they kept things up out of self-respect. I see a sticker on the window. Eventually I make out what it says, it said This House Protected By Angels. Right, I say to myself, don't start laughing, you need the son-of-a-gun's signature and you need to get him there tonight. To take my mind off that sticker I start looking at the paintings they got hung up, and this might let in a little light, Sam, on a particular aspect of the art world. There was something funny about the things, couldn't quite get a grip on it, but then it hit me. There was this one of a shepherd looking at his bunch of sheep, and a sheepdog there too, blue sky, green grass —Morning, Ralph. Right? Anyone -Stan!

remember that cartoon?

fleecy clouds. Lots of white. The thing was a jigsaw puzzle.

Harry, come on.

Seriously, Phil. They'd taken this 1,000-piece jigsaw, matted it, put it behind some plexiglass and in a wood frame, and made a painting out of it!

It wasn't a painting, though.

Stan, it was, and why? Because those people hung it up. They thought it looked as pretty as, well, as a picture, and hung it up so they could say, Isn't this a nice painting? They don't mean print, they mean painting.

I don't believe it.

It happened! Would I make up something like that? Never would have noticed it if I hadn't had to take my mind off that sticker. So I get a jigsaw painting, and on each wall there's one, four in all, some big, some small. I'm about to bust out and the guy isn't down yet. I notice a birdcage in one corner with two, three canaries in it. Thought it was funny they hadn't cheeped once, but it was cause they were stuffed. She figured they were colourful, I suppose. Maybe they'd had a real one and she didn't have the heart to throw out the cage, thinking of the kids. I was almost splitting my sides by this time.

You saw this here?

In Bowmount? No, in Scanlon Ridge, Porterville it was, small place, poor as dirt. But this lady, and I guess the guy I'd come to get, though it didn't seem to fit a forklift operator, she made that parlour, as she called it, a showpiece. A showpiece of what? Jigsaw paintings and stuffed birds. There and then I said to myself, good thing there's an angel watching over this place, because it'd be a waste of a good burglar alarm. When that guy got in the union and started earning union wages, out went that junk and in came things worth something. And out went that angel, you can bet on that. But you see, Sam, angels, that's where the money is. God? He's too difficult nowadays, and the Pope's a has-been, with all respect to Pops over there. Everybody relates to angels, cause they're like us only better, the good side of us. Presuming you got a good side. Them and the Dalai Lama. But angels and God didn't get that family off a crappy minimum wage and into the middle class so they could afford to send their six kids to school dressed decent. Unionism did.

But that's not what I want to do, Harry. I'm talking about religion, not superstition.

Same thing, brother. Now, I'm all for artwork, don't get me wrong, but religion, that's dicey, which is why angels are safe, cause that's only, what, what?

Mysticism?

Thanks, Phil. No wasting that education of yours. In fact, take Phil here, going out with a good Catholic girl, and he's miserable.

Not any more. Phil smiled wanly as he regarded Sam, whose palpable fatigue went unnoticed by Harry. Sandra and I broke up last week. You know, we had different friends, and she kind of liked hanging around with people who believed what she believed. She wasn't multi-cultural. Just had her nose out of joint about anybody who wasn't a Catholic. Most at the table agreed such behaviour in this era of angels, prophecies that inspired seminars, and courses in miracles was a manifestation of medieval thinking, Typical bigoted Catholic, you ask me.

Stan!

So, you seeing anyone now?

Phil sees more women than Morgenthaler's clinics, hahahaha.

Funny you mention him. Sandra said he does abortions to get back at white people for the Holocaust. General condemnation of this kind of thinking carried on until Harry, slopping a fresh Manhattan over the sticky table, advised Phil to Forget her, you'll be with somebody else in no time. You always come up with the winners, though. What was that girl, you know, the one who put on airs, a beauty, an Arab?

From Yemen. That was a long time -There's probably only one of them in the whole country, and he finds her. Not to be funny, but she sure acted like the Queen of Sheba, didn't she?

The who?

Stan, try reading history on your lunch breaks, no offence. Get away from the pipefitting world for awhile. I can't remember half the gals you saw. There was Julia, Sandra, Elaine, that cross-eyed Hindu -You're exaggerating, she wasn't -and that California Buddhist, and didn't you come in smelling like smoky fruit. Incense and crystals, Sam, do a few artsy posters of them you'd be in clover. Unicorns too, and mood rings. That United Stateser was a crackpot, Phil, pardon my saying.

That what?

What I'm calling Americans now. After all, they're the United States of America, right? Not the United States is America. Before her there was that Jewess, now there was a pip, forget her name, strong, just my kind. If only I wasn't married, hahahaha.

That last one, before Sandra, she was a Zorro-something or other, what was it?

Stan, she -So finally Phil's with a Catholic, we said, someone from this side of the world. What's left, Chinese? Hope you use protection, with these exotic types you never know what you'll catch.

You make it sound like I saw them all in one week. You're going back six years.

Six? When are you going to settle down? Here's poor Sam, can't get a model for Mary, and you're out with every woman around. Stan then made the offer of posing as Christ if that would help. If you want strong, muscles, The Terminator-meets-the-Saviour, I'm him, at which point Camilla, threatening in an undisclosed but understood way that Stan would pay for every one of his stupid remarks, led her boyfriend away from the table, out of Johnny's Bar, through the streets and back to their apartment, where punishment commenced immediately. What a couple, said Victor to Jack. Talk about henpecked. He can't say a word without her snapping at him.

Basically, that's the case. Alistair ventured to modify that judgement, but as it was known he held an overly sympathetic view of women no one paid any attention.

You know, Sam, Sandra said once that religion is for everyone or no one. Do you feel that way? I never heard you talk about painting Christ before, so I just wonder.

Religion! Heck, Sam's only doing what comes naturally, painting. Last thing he needs to paint well is to be religious. Inspired, that's what he needs, and a good time with a lady wouldn't hurt, hahahaha. Loosen the clogs. Cogs, I mean. How many times do I have to tell you, religion is old-time thinking, caveman days. Sam, you said you're reading the Bible, well that's why you're having trouble, see, it's getting in the way of your eyes. Now, I'm no artist, but when you start mixing the blues and greens with Christianity, you're doomed to fail. It's like a wildcat strike, everything inside you throws down its tools and walks off, no discipline, management and labour aren't talking, and the union executive and the workers squabble about strategy. In your case it's a riot between your head, your eyes and your heart. Get rid of these anities and isms, clear the junk out of the attic -Like syndicalism, Harry?

Victor, you creeping shadow, how are you? Just kidding. Have a seat and help me convince Sam to forget the Bible and work on painting what he sees.

When's your show opening, Harry?

You think every critic painted? Most stopped at finger painting, Sam'll tell you. Where was I? You heard about Phil and that witch he went out with. Good riddance to a woman like her. Now, look at Bart here. He gets into trouble cause he jerks off in church and got caught by another harridan. A turmoil erupted and Sam, Phil and Victor carried Harry away, though his shouts could be heard from out on the street. Bartholomew Constantine sat abandoned, red-faced, trembling not in anger but in the deepest state of shame imaginable, crudely reminded of his brief period of incarceration for masturbating in one of St. Finnian's confessionals. Discovered by an elderly woman, in trying to flee he had tripped near the offertory candles, bringing about a personal scandal, and nearly a conflagration. The result was an overnight stay in jail, publicity, and his being barred from the church for an unspecified time. Such a sudden and brutal reminder of this recent humiliation plunged him into sodden misery. None of his companions returned, and he imagined they were escorting poor, drunken Harry home. Who'll help me? The answer was discouraging. No one, not even Loyola, who promised to meet me earlier tonight, but where is he? At least Camilla left before Harry said that. A woman like her would despise a man who did certain things with his body.

Over at another table, while Bart sank further into thought, two bicycle race gamblers, Wes Ferguson and Jimmy Squires, were involved in a conversation so fascinating to Jimmy that he hardly paid attention to the fuss over Harry, or noticed the grisly footage on the television showing the figure of a murder victim discovered that night in some part of Bowmount, allegedly killed by his son with hot fat while lying in a drug-induced state. Buildings toppled, freak weather shattered homes and lives, but Jimmy and Wes, while in the bar's world, were not of it.

Role play? What d'you mean? Like, you're the chauffeur and she's the -No, Jimmy, no, no, past that, that's just sex. We pretend we're like invalids or something.

Like you get turned on by pretending you lost an arm or what?

No, no, no. Rebecca pretends - sex ain't got nothing to do with it, I tell you.

Another beer, Johnny. None for this guy, he's flying. So... what? You do... what?

Last week, remember I couldn't lift those packages at work, my arms, I said they were real sore.

Yeah, nearly sprained myself doing your - thanks, keep the -and tender -change. I got the point, Wes.

The real reason is I was lifting Rebecca around the room like she was a cripple or something.

When'd this happen?

What?

She hurt herself?

No, no, no, she pretended she couldn't walk, a watchamacallit, physically disabled, one of those people with two legs gone, or two arms, not all four.

Blue parking spots.

That's them.

Everywhere you go they're taking up -Anyway, Rebecca acts like she couldn't walk and I had to carry her everywhere, cause her legs wouldn't work.

Wes, these guys got electric chairs and everything you can think of, not like us, we gotta walk, and you're lifting her around -No, see, if we got the chair it'd cost money, right? And they're way too heavy to lift. This way, it's only us, no money, and what if the chair broke down anyway? I seen guys trying to get into a store only the door wasn't wide enough.

When? Not -Years ago, Jimmy, not now. He was stuck on the sidewalk and screaming at the clerk saying I'm gonna call the cops.

No blue parking -Came later. So that's how I did it.

Did what?

Strained my arms.

What did she do for you?

I made out like I lost my leg to frostbite, hobbling around everywhere.
So what's the kinky part?

The what?

The sex, Wes, where was the sex? Did you do it like disabled people?

Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, there ain't no - look, sex ain't part of it.

Disabled people don't have sex? Then what the hell'd you do it for?

When one of us gets old, you think we want this sprung on us? At least if we do this now, we get some practice in.

No shit.

Yeah. Next weekend I get to be incontinent.

Which one?

Just drink up, Jimmy. They sat in silence for a moment, Jimmy glancing over at Bart.

See him over there? Went to jail, you know.

He can't help it. Heard he got hit pretty bad by his old man when he was young. Or maybe that was some other guy, and he fell out of a tree. Can't remember. What about him?

Jail must be a scary place.

Ask Frank, he knows all about it. There's a guy who's sick. Sure glad when he's not around. Jimmy nodded. Let me ask you something, Wes. You were talking about getting ready for being old. What would you do if you knew you were going to prison? Would you sort of make sure somehow it didn't hurt so much when... those guys did what they do?

I think you've had enough, Jimmy.

No, listen. If you knew, would you, like....

What?

I'm thinkin'. Say, get a carrot and -What are you, sick?

Well?

No.

Why not? Wes whispered in Jimmy's ear so Johnny could not hear, his hand clenching into a fist and making a rapid motion.

No, they wouldn't. Wes nodded. How'd you know about that? You ever been...?

What.

You know, what you just said.

I said me and Rebecca were getting ready for when we're old, or in case there's an accident or something. We're not playing sick games!

I was just asking because you -Makes me sick thinking about it.

Okay, okay. You gonna finish your beer?

You have it, suddenly I ain't thirsty.

Thanks. In continent, huh?

Just finish up so we can get out of here. Johnny's giving us funny looks.

Brood

Duncan Lonegin checked his watch, saw it was noon, and parted the heavy curtains of the top-floor library overlooking the backyard. Crows and a few gulls tore at the wet grass.
Vermin, driving out honest-to-God birds, yellowhammers, blue tits, jays, even sparrows are too afraid to come round. Beasts, scavengers. Given a chance, Mr. Lonegin would have stated that the era of avian excellence had passed, that the birds were more songful and cheering when he was a young man, compared with these rapacious species and their grasping ways. There's more garbage now that the City's so big. The River stinks, I'm surprised the gulls eat what fish are in it. These reasons for the increasing numbers and escalating boldness of the crows and seagulls were cold comfort when he would step gingerly through the grass in the wake of the marauders. There were also the plain facts that gulls sitting on people's lawns made for an unnatural sight, obscene from a certain point of view, and that a parliament of crows was an unwelcome portent. Wasn't life unseemly enough thanks to newspapers and television without the help of such low and common scavengers? It's as if our world has been left defenseless, set in motion and then forgotten, to be picked apart and then swallowed by these voracious gullets.

Dunc! Dunc!

Yes, what, yes, here!


Are you rapping on the window again? They don't pay any attention. Dunc? Well, see that you're not. Put your hand through today of all days and ruin.... Mr. Lonegin let the curtains close out the unwelcome fowl and gray skies. Settling in an armchair he wondered when their child would arrive, for it was near dinner. Like her mother, Camilla never came on time. In this darkening world she was a brilliant candle, and he waited for her visits more eagerly as time trimmed his own wick. Camilla rarely gave her parents much to be concerned about. However, in Mr. Lonegin's opinion, her female friends such as Mare Montgomery and Krysta Jordan, whom she'd met while working at CCII, though good people, weren't fine enough examples of rectitude for Camilla. Friends outlined who you were, what you thought of yourself. Camilla's father regarded some of her female friends as vulnerable women, the kind who, for example, ten years after the fact would accuse someone of sexual misconduct, and wasn't this due to their failure to do something in the beginning, certainly sooner than in ten years' time, therefore bringing down a hundredfold portion of shame and misery on themselves, their families, and the accused? It happened at St. Ita's in Kissling and St. Cassian's in Franklin Plains, where priests and brothers had taken young boys and one or two girls - but this topic Mr. Lonegin refused to dwell on today. Instead of waiting for Camilla impatiently, he would calm himself with the classical radio station while reading his favourite British paper, The Independent, a week old but what does that matter when you're sixty and newly retired? He snapped the broadsheet open, stopping to read about a borzoi. For two weeks it has waited opposite Gower Street Hospital in London. It is presumed the dog is owned by a patient, for it approaches people tentatively, barking as though in greeting, retreating hurriedly when approached to resume its former position. Enquiries within the hospital have so far not identified the owner, who may be very ill or have died. The dog is becoming a familiar sight, and students, pedestrians, and nurses are leaving it food and a few toys. Only some of the food has been eaten, and the rubber bones and coloured balls go ignored as the dog maintains its vigil.
What rarities, loyalty and devotion. Look at my situation. Forced into retirement, albeit with a good package, because the government's cutting back, when I've more good years in me. Now I'm home with Marian, I'm a useless thing. We were loyal to something once, our country, our family, something. No trust, no faith, no promises kept by those who swore oaths, and so no better future. Mr. Lonegin tiredly tried to find an item that would cheer him up, and from a letter a phrase leaped out containing an unfamiliar word. Niddering? Letting the newspaper slip, he contemplated this strange word. As it spun round in his head the music seemed to rise in greeting, or else niddering slowly sank onto a bed made of violins and cellos, such a British word, he concluded lazily, as it changed shape and meaning, dwindling in significance until it vanished.

Dad? Dad?

Yes, what, yes? Camilla? The library door opened as Mr. Lonegin stood to embrace his daughter. He could hear Stan's buoyant voice below. You've been sleeping?

What time - one o'clock?

Dunc! Camilla! Dinner's - Stan's putting the plates put. Mr. Lonegin touched his daughter's hand. You look very pretty in that dress. Reminds me of your mother, in a way. She's not - today, you know, she's thinking about Grandma. Otherwise she wouldn't be how she is. They exchanged diplomatic smiles. Mr. and Mrs. Lonegin, Camilla and Stan, and Ursula Nelson, Marian Lonegin's widowed sister, were soon seated at the dining room table enjoying, or trying to, a meal of roast beef and vegetables, with chocolate cake, apple pie and ice cream for dessert. The nap disrupted Mr. Lonegin's mood entirely, and he responded sharply to his wife's quiet nature, objecting silently to her third glass of red wine. Ursula, a thin, inordinately tall woman of fifty-three, physically like her slightly older sister but temperamentally less vivacious, struck Mr. Lonegin as exceptionally waspish this Sunday. As for Stan, who Camilla liked for obscure reasons, he bumbled through dinner, interrupting entertaining stories just when Mr. Lonegin had the main point in sight, dinging his knife or fork against a glass, saying Time's up!, with a foolish smirk as if this was the greatest joke he and the ladies could share. Mrs. Lonegin certainly got a kick out of it, Stan offered in his defense when Camilla criticized him, and she couldn't reply as she wanted to, that her mother drank too much and her parents had been silently fighting for years, as once said it might diminish the love she felt for them. Ursula would chuckle delightedly sometimes when Stan threw out a faintly titillating conversational item as an impediment to one of Mr. Lonegin's anecdotes, partly because, in recent years, she enjoyed seeing her brother-in-law baited and defeated by a young man with little breeding but some good sense.
After dessert, Mother's Day gifts were opened in the living room, Mrs. Lonegin exclaiming at bathing lotions, hand cream, boxes of chocolate, a pair of miniature vases for her collection from her husband, and from Ursula a bottle of wine. Marian's sister did not drink anything stronger than coffee, favouring soft drinks, and she could, quietly, empty two-litre bottles quite quickly. Mr. Lonegin contemplated this gift of blueberry wine with hidden disgust, wondering what the hell Urs had in mind. As quickly as possible he corralled the gifts on a table against the far wall where they could be seen by anyone entering the room. Conversation about topical matters began, such as the goings-on in Queer Town, a fairly notorious section of Bowmount where illegal and seamy practices went on Without the City doing a blessed thing to stop them, tut-tutted Ursula. Plus there's that investigation into the pet store killing of those three policemen whom you know, they say, and a lot do, Marian, that they were part of some... brigade! or force within the police force. Makes you wonder.

Yes, Ursula, it does. Sometimes you don't know who to trust when - Stan, if you're having one, a little sherry would be nice. Sherry for anyone else?

Way I heard it, guys who'd know the score say the -Who, Stan? What guys?

Harry, Phil, you know.

Them, and Camilla made it sound as though she rolled her eyes.

Quidnuncs.

What's that, Mr. Lonegin?

Nothing, Stan. Go on.

Anyway, there's talk the three were gay, or they'd been hazed or something, and pow, lost it when they went in there.

Is that so? I didn't think gays would be in the police force, you know. What with so many men with guns around. There was a collective shrug after Ursula's comment. Stan helpfully warded off silence. They said that about the priests.

I feel very sorry for them, and between sips Mrs. Lonegin looked regretful.

One thing about homosexuality, it certainly makes normal conversations hard to come by. It's always... there! when you don't want it or expect it. The least people could do is keep it private.

You know, Ursula - look, he's asleep. Dunc. Dunc.

Mom, let him rest. I woke him when I got here.

So you should. He's been sleeping at an alarming rate lately. I'm worn out by it.

You were saying, Mrs. Lonegin? As much as Stan infuriated Camilla, when he cut off one of her mother's criticism about her father it revealed a side of him she almost wished he would cultivate. But if he was sensitive she would not be able to order him around as she wanted.

Thank you, yes. Not being Catholic I can't say anything about the priests. But look at Mr. and Mrs. Fanning, they're in their seventies, and how sad they are.

What do you mean, Marian?

They talk about the incidents so much. I think, and Camilla, correct me on this, you're practically the only Catholic here as your father hasn't been to church for a while. What was it? They've gone and joined some revitalizing movement, they called it, that's trying to inform the Church and get things ship-shape.

Sorry, Mrs. Lonegin, inform the Church?

Reform the Church, yes. There's about twenty-five of them, I gather, and probably

-What are they called?

I don't know, Ursula. I don't know! They wouldn't tell me. I tried to see if Dunc might be interested, considering how - but no, he told me they were, what was it, misguided and....

Inauthentic? Having no husband to keep track of any more, Ursula paid particular attention to her brother-in-law.

Thank you. How he knew what they were I don't know, as he barely heard me out. Unless you knew something about them already. Dunc?

Mom.

All right, Camilla. As I was saying, he categorically refused to have anything to do with schismatics, he said. Imagine, calling Bob and Sheila Fanning such a thing, and they in their seventies.

Marian, it might be said we're not ones to talk. We've enough problems with women ministers and gay ministers and the rest of it. Honestly, some people think the United Church exists solely for their convenience. They come in only because no one else wants them. Like it's a sanctuary! I wish they'd go start their own church, if that's the way they feel.

But Camilla, could you tell me your father's objections? I was trying - not so much, Stan, I don't want to spill - where was I? Trying to get your father interested in something. If only to give him a way to occupy his time, and have him get outside the house now and then. For his sake, you know.

I'm not sure I can help. Dad took those incidents pretty hard, and seeing the priests were people he'd known for years, grew up with, it hurt more. You think you know somebody's character.... But Mr. and Mrs. Fanning, I don't know what they're in. It could be anything from a charismatic movement to a Bible study group.

The last thing you'd call Bob Fanning is charismatic. Most colourless man I ever knew. Honestly, Marian, I don't know how he hooked up with such a wonderful girl as Sheila. It always seemed odd, you know.

The only thing your father said was that despite what some might say, there can be schisms within the Church. I could have told him that, mind you.

Of course, that's part of history. That's where we come from. The sisters nodded at each other and Mrs. Lonegin continued. He calls the Fannings and their friends schismatics because, and I hope I have this right, they want the Mass in Latin, and don't like the modern way of doing things generally. Then they talk about Vatican II and it's all I can do to keep my head level with my shoulders when they get into these... very technical things! The sherry glass tipped up and back. Can you explain this to me?

No. I don't think any of it is important to Dad. It's like he's in shock.

Doesn't affect his snoozing, ha-ha! Stan grinned in approval of Ursula's remark.

I see. Well no, I don't. A lot of Catholics seem very upset, but nobody will tell me exactly why! It's only the older ones, not even all of them. You never mention it, Camilla. You weren't in shock, were you?

I grew up in a different time. I went to your Church sometimes, and to St. Finnian's a lot. Dad comes from a Catholic family, it means more to him. When those priests and brothers were arrested he couldn't accept that they were doing what they'd been doing. Now he's acknowledging it, maybe that's what's the matter. And you know he loved his work, and he doesn't have that any more either.

It's those pederasts who did this, Marian. They're the real ones to blame for Bob and Sheila's turning to something. Charismatics, ha-ha! I'd like to see Bob Fanning with the slightest life in him. Why, he wouldn't even dance with you, and we had some of the loveliest girls in school with us. Really classy young women.

I say pederasts are gays in a hurry.

Stan! The two aren't even the same, you know that. How can you say that? They're people too, you know, just because you hate them.... I swear -Stan, what do you mean? Ursula was curious about this, as the wedding ceremony of one of her late husband's nephews had been carried out by a gay Episcopalian on a Mississippi riverboat last year, and not a few relatives were concerned that the marriage might not be strictly legal due to the proclivities of the minister.

Instead of waiting, you know, for the kids to grow up to date them, if that's what they call it, they get them when they're young. I mean, jeez, isn't that the only difference, timing? No wonder your father's sick about it. If one of those guys came up to me - faint fellows, somebody at work calls them, they're not really men. There's worse things they've been called, you can't say them now, got to come up with new words all the time.

Stan, I don't comprehend you.

Camilla, it's true. Let me tell you. Apparently asleep, Mr. Lonegin had listened to the whole conversation, tuning out now before the boor unveiled sexual mysteries to the room. He mimicked an unconscious state so perfectly that he enjoyed much of what went on around him without contributing anything. Today's symposium on Duncan's delicate condition, as Marian might have termed it if it didn't suit her more, disturbed him primarily due to the almost cavalier broaching of the topic. As ever, Camilla stood apart from her mother and Ursula's snipes, for she was loyal, at least caring enough to try and understand his dilemma, though groundlessly optimistic concerning his well being. For three years he had grown used to an ever more menacing silence, and regrettably, retirement provided time to dwell on his abrupt loss of religious certainty, tantamount to hearing the infinite reaches being eaten up by voracious termites.

Not long ago, Mr. Lonegin possessed a first-class faith in a worldwide religion, an unshakeable set of beliefs which in fair and foul weather supported him. When murmurs about sexual and physical abuse were first heard, they did not sway him. Every man, no matter what his office, can err, but more importantly, the Church as a beautiful, living organism, directed by God, cannot err. These were sincere convictions. Trial after trial weakened them, not through the fall of this or that mere mass of weak human flesh, but by the absolute determination of the Vatican to refuse to accept a substantial degree of moral responsibility for the actions of its perverse members. How could this abdication of duty be reconciled within himself, and allow Mr. Lonegin to receive communion from the hands of an unrepentant clergy, his parish priests? These were only the first steps of his retreat from the Church. As the province's diocese allowed morality to be suppressed in favour of legality, he came to regard himself as unworthy of this Church, and this Church unworthy of its founder. Wasn't he sinning by adhering to the rules of this corrupting body, in a sense - along with many others - helping it cohere from outside, as algae forms on the shattered skin of a sunken ship, knitting its broken hull with their own fragile lives? In short, was it true to God's purpose that the Catholic Church should live on at any cost?
In the minds of some of Mr. Lonegin's acquaintances such questions, if they had occurred at all, would have been seen as the product of needless self-examination. Faith is faith, and you either have it or you don't. Faith in what? would be his response. Faith in a dying thing? Living things are generous, with a warm heart beating inside, while dead things are acquisitive, have no heartbeat, and want your heart to stop beating too. Three years ago while taking up the collection Mr. Lonegin experienced the sensation of his heart struggling to turn over. Sweat made his hands greasy, his skin cooled, and he retreated to a spot in the back of the church to catch his breath. Fr. Jerome Ryan's homily that day on forgiveness had ended with him asking the congregation to remember in its prayers a recently deceased priest, Fr. Michael Doyle, imprisoned for physical abuse. After the service Mr. Lonegin left and never returned. There followed a miserable time when shock would have been an appropriate word.

Trained as an architect, Mr. Lonegin did well at it, and in some of his spare time took the opportunity to become an autodidact, estimating his education deficient in the humanities. He mulled over what he read, and as literature and Catholicism meant much to him, he could often be seen with books by Nobel-winning authors, by historians and by the Church Fathers, as well as current journals and Catholic papers. With his relationship to the Church of his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents sundered, it was inevitable for such a man that education would be called in to repair the break. Perhaps if he lived long enough he would come to see the irony of how his self-teaching rendered his faith weaker than ever. In his misery St. Cyprian's words reached him, not as a poultice for his wounds but as a summons to be obeyed or disobeyed. Unable to condone the arrogant behaviour and questionable policies of Archbishop Mason - recently brought in from outside to clean the Augean stables of immorality, and equally to purge the local churches of their old-fashioned ways - Mr. Lonegin knew a decision must be made that would in one way or another ruin him forever.

Cyprian's words were that anyone not with the bishop is not in the Church, and furthermore, if the Church is not the believer's Mother, then God cannot be his Father. Believing these words at once upon reading them, unable and unwilling to deny this knowledge, or argue by pitting theologian against theologian, Mr. Lonegin questioned how he could continue as a reverent churchgoer when the Church denied its role as protector of the innocent and sinful alike. Try as he may, through intense reading, discussions with priests, and increasingly in prayer, which took the form of a dialogue with God, if one allowed silence as a response, Mr. Lonegin could see no alternative to a solitary spiritual existence, which meant that in time he would have no belief left at all, for without a community how can faith remain vibrant? Watching your faith die, feeling the fabric of your soul tear, undoubtedly formed the prelude to an existence in hell.

Camilla would never understand this even if her father had tried explaining. As for Marian and her suggestion to join with the Fannings, she did not realize her offer of help brought only pain. Try as they did to dress in the uniform of a militant reactionary Catholicism, the Fannings were nothing more than a ragged splinter group agitating for a swift return to the purity of pre-Vatican II. Yet Mr. Lonegin pitied them and their friends as the new order installed thirty years ago increasingly pushed many towards the margin of history and, most definitely, outside the Church, when once they proudly occupied the front pews. Now at an advanced age in a volatile world where little could be relied on, where men and women were never as good as they appeared, the long-time faithful wished to be wrapped in the comforting embrace of Mother Church. Instead, seventy years of faith were regarded with cold disdain by those now in power.

Unquestionably, the Fannings and others were faintly ridiculous in attempting to overthrow the establishment, but their pariah status warranted some considerate treatment. Where could these ardent followers of Christ gather to voice grievances and insecurities concerning the direction of the Church? No forum existed, though counselling might illuminate for the recalcitrant the shadows of the new Church so they could, with a pacified conscience, do as instructed. Who wanted to listen compassionately to their opinions, and act upon reasonable suggestions? No one, since the Church was wiser than any individual. Edged out, treated contemptuously, or ignored altogether, a small number, uniting in a common aspiration, transformed themselves from compliant men and women into, as Mr. Lonegin saw it, spiritual recidivists. They imagined themselves the custodians of the true spirit of Christ, the rightful practitioners of His teachings, a cleansing force that, given time and energy, aided by the grace of God, would triumph over the derelict hierarchy that for three decades increasingly followed the lead of morally bankrupt radicals who had insinuated themselves into positions of power within Catholicism, using it as their personal podium while allying themselves with those who had no respect for tradition. Such an analysis of the terrible condition of the Church was central to the Fannings' circle, and Mr. Lonegin disagreed with it strongly, wondering if perhaps the Orthodox Church would be the most spiritually acceptable place for these old believers. In any event, did it matter which version of the Church he approved of? His interior collapse set him outside the Church as it existed, and he had no desire to nail a manifesto to its doors. How could he ever make his family see the terror behind these thoughts?

The doorbell rang, jerking Mr. Lonegin from his morbid gloom, and he sprang off the couch blinking and dazed, unwittingly supplying proof his daytime slumbers were deep indeed. The visitors, coincidentally appearing on the doorstep together, were Fr. Jerome Ryan and Dr. Ralph Davies, a boyhood friend of Camilla's. Drinks for everyone! Stan! Disappointingly, only tea and coffee were requested, but Mrs. Lonegin obliged. Soon the priest cornered his host. Duncan, you've not been round for a chat in such a while. How are you, are you all right? We miss you at -Here's your coffee, Father.

Thank you, ah....

This is Stan, Camilla's boyfriend, Father Jerome.

I see. Thank you. Now, Duncan - yes, sugar, please, no milk. Good. Everyone is asking, How is Duncan doing? Bill and Ted have a little joke that the collection isn't as much since - but you look well, fit and rested, doesn't he, Doctor?

Pardon? Excuse me, Ursula.

I was saying Duncan looks well. Retirement must be agreeable.

It's how you feel that determines things, I'd say. Ralph looked steadily at his patient.

Mood is everything. Camilla noticed Stan always became very quiet whenever her friend was around. Perhaps he's uncomfortable. Serves him right for pouring drinks down Mom's throat. He earns the punishment. Something made her turn her head. I'm sorry, Father, what was that?

I said to your father, you two make a lovely couple, you're so attentive to... Stan? Yes, one can see a - dare I say it? - a ring in the future. Camilla lowered her head, a blush creeping over her, and from the corner of her eyes she saw a faintly pink Stan. There's a ring in our present, and this arousing thought threatened to bring on laughter. To prevent this, she concentrated on the holes in the tops of the priest's tan socks.

A wedding? Well, Father Ryan, I believe you've pushed these two a little further down the matrimonial path than they've admitted - at least to us! Camilla? At times Ursula mischievously provided a trap-door disguised as an out. Looking at Camilla's face Ralph introduced a surprising subject, turning to her mother as he spoke. Mrs. Lonegin, did I ever tell you that in my practice I keep a genealogical chart, of sorts. A chart of diseases. This removed the spotlight from the couple, giving Stan a perverse reason to resent Ralph. Yes, yes, the doctor replied to sundry questions. It's habit now, but it started out when I began treating families. Each of them had conditions, and I wanted some visual method to see, at a glance, a patient's history.

And possibly her future?

Very sharp, Mrs. Lonegin. As a g.p., one sees people from the cradle to the grave, and if you know parents or grandparents had heart problems or cancer, allergies, you could keep these things in mind when examining patients.

Fascinating. Do you mean you have my, what, tree? A disease tree, ooh, how chilling.

You could say it was blasty, Marian.

I wouldn't call Mom blasty, Aunt Urs.

I didn't mean that, but I was just saying.

But what did you mean? Fr. Jerome suddenly said, Isn't it pleasant we're all together today, diseases or no? Duncan?

It is Mother's Day, and Camilla stressed the word mother, as the priest had not yet spoken to Mrs. Lonegin. Yes, so many of them at church this morning, you would have enjoyed it, Duncan. Everyone in their finery, the young and the seasoned mothers, many of them in dresses despite the weather, most unseasonable isn't it, very pretty ones with their children scrubbed clean. Even the husbands looked like they'd paid extra attention to themselves. I so remember those instances, Marian, when you graced St. Finnian's with your floral garments. You've passed that, ah, predilection on to Camilla here. Your mother's dresses stand out so in the mind.

Well, thank you, Father. I never knew you noticed.

Say, Ralph, tell me something. You say you got a tree on everybody. Is that, you know, ethical? I mean, supposing it fell into the wrong hands?

Stan, good point, and I supposed the same thing, which is why the charts are in locked filing cabinets. As for being ethical, it's no different from keeping a file on you, for instance, or anyone in your acquaintance who's been ill. I mean, your siblings, an aunt. What's good about it is something I worked out about two years ago. It's good to know family illnesses, as things can skip a generation. For instance, thanks to computers it's easy to track conditions in a place like Bowmount, and we can then build a profile -I'm proud to say Ryan was one of the founding families, Doctor, of this fair, ah, City.

Do you have brothers, Father? Camilla already knew the answer. No, alas, I was the only son. She did not resist. And so, with you the line ends.

Over the years people from everywhere, continued Ralph, have moved in, bringing different blood types and inherited genes.

Yes, and I'm delighted so many of them are good Catholics, but it took getting used to those happy brown and yellow faces among the formerly fleecy flock, if I may strain myself at a metaphor.

Do you mean TB or something like that, Ralph, cholera, plague, what? Say they're from Romania, or Russia. I read somewhere that in Moscow -Where'd you read it?

Okay, Camilla, Harry told me. That people there were used to this distyeria or whatever they got in the water over there, like we have chloride.

Interesting point, and it fits what I'm saying. The charts show the people who marry. Individual histories, that's a fairly simple tree, but when families interconnect it starts to become like a forest. My patients' records are printed on single sheets, and each sheet is glued to a piece of cardboard. What emerges is a... map, almost, of the health of my patients. It's in sections that could be joined together like a jigsaw puzzle. Once I put all the sheets together, just for myself, and sometimes I sit and look at it, it's so intricate. The information's in code, don't worry, only I can read it. What I want to do, and this is exciting, Ralph said to Stan, Camilla, Mrs. Lonegin and Ursula, as Fr. Jerome had drawn Mr. Lonegin outside the circle, is get every g.p., in time every doctor in Bowmount, to do the same thing, and we could have a genetic chart, for want of a better name, of the whole community, with the provincial medical board using it in a database. That's my goal, and I'm trying hard to get the other doctors in our practice to do the same thing. There were polite noises from his listeners, though one or two were privately dismayed when someone respectable declared they were pursuing what could be termed a Cause. And from so sensible a young man as Ralph, sighed Ursula inwardly, while Stan figured he'd sound out Phil or Harry or Sam about this map. He also wondered if Ralph's name appeared in that underground publication about doctors that was in the news lately, but afraid of what Camilla would do if he asked this of him, decided not to mention it.

While somewhat interested in Ralph's project, Camilla's sympathies were with her father who appeared trapped by the priest, much like Stan looked when lost inside the basilica of one of Mr. Lonegin's ornate stories. Priests have no idea what to do around normal women, they just have these nuns who slave over them. He'll never wish Mom a Happy Mother's Day. Dressed in black with that little white collar, holes in his socks, fat even though he's thin, sharp long nose, he's a magpie. At four o'clock the object of her scorn made motions to leave.
I must be off to St. Geneviève's Home. Mrs. Cranford, do you remember her? Poor lady, she's not been well recently. Ralph also had to leave to pick up Janie, his wife. She and Alice wanted to be together today, they both miss their mother. It's their way of coping.

Do you put that sort of thing on those charts too?

Stan!

Just asking.

Well, good-bye Camilla, Stan, Father Ryan..

Yes, yes, and good luck with your charts of pestilence, dear boy, yes.

Say hi to Janie for me, Ralph.

Ralph, thank you so much for coming. The wind had risen, blowing mists from the north, and Mrs. Lonegin wrapped herself in a shawl as they stood in the porch with the front door open. So sweet of you to remember.

Mrs. Lonegin, why, this was like a second home to me. Abruptly she seized his hand, catching him off-balance. Tell Janie I know what she's feeling. You never know when someone will die on you. I know! My mother, it seems like only yesterday even after all this, and I never, ever told her enough how much....

That's all right, Mrs. Lonegin -We never talked, do you see? The saddest thing for a child to do, no matter what age, is never to talk to their parents about important things. With her other hand she reached for Camilla's hair, stroking it, a consoling gesture from years ago.

She bossed everyone, and we resented it. Then when you're older you suddenly understand what you feel isn't hate, not in everyone's case, it's frustrated love. The tender things you wanted to say but couldn't because she wouldn't let you, and you wouldn't force yourself until you were older, and by then she's delirious. Mrs. Lonegin shook, her clear blue eyes firmly gazing into Ralph's face, not one tear evident. Too late, and you live on cursing yourself, knowing in your heart there's this poison, and this tonic, but the one never drains and the other never gets tasted. Janie didn't have that... hardship, but others do, and she and Alice were so lucky to have talked with her mother, to have tended her those last days. Bless her, bless Janie, how I envy her, Ralph! Mr. Lonegin hugged his wife, unexpectedly savouring her as she was at this moment, though he felt the domestic scene was more a blur than reality. One or two people might have wondered if drunkenness triggered this outburst, and if that had been the case they may have been less embarrassed. Some wondered later when Mrs. Lonegin had imbibed such a speech. Unable to leave, the group stood half in and half out of the gray, wet day. Fr. Jerome murmured something to the back of Mr. Lonegin's head, placing his hands carefully on the man's shoulders. With a nod he withdrew quietly. After a moment or two Camilla's mother composed herself, apologizing to everyone for such a tiresome display. Ursula gripped her sister's arm, and Camilla, wiping away tears, for a moment saw them as they were ten years ago when Grandma and Mr. Nelson were alive and her aunt enjoyed life. The two couples had had such fun. At some point Ralph left, though Camilla could not say when. For some days she carried around the sensation of her mother's hand in her hair, cherishing this unexpected tenderness.

The wrinkled homunculus
Isn't it nice to be in this bright coffeehouse, downing the labour of sweating Jamaican or Brazilian natives, sitting on European-design stools with our elbows on faux Italian marble, the middle class in full view as they contemplate spending their money on artificial flowers, dhurri rugs, vases, crafts, and at the same time be aware that vices percolate underneath the artificiality of everything, from the exploitation of illiterate farmers, who in turn exploit ignorant, poor slaves, to that woman with the bottle-blond hair whose child, named Terry or Paul, will shatter that dish against the hardwood floor in their renovated old house before three months are up, so she'll have to come back for a replacement, which means a special order as the pattern will have been discontinued? There lurks within this clean, swept café the potential for backroom assignations of the staff when closing time comes, a quick one on a table or more thrilling, with customers waiting to pay. Think about -I've only got an hour, Vinnie.

But look at that slattern behind the counter, the way she bumps into the brown-haired fellow. He barely sleeps, notice his eyes? That other girl's a tippler, look at her nose, and already she's got a double chin. Why, do you suppose? Why is she like that, at her age?

Boyfriend troubles.

The fourth one, the other guy. His beard gives it away.

Meaning what.

Like Trotsky's. Or a poet manqué, if he smiled. He's too grim, which makes him a commerce student, or political science, working here to pay for next year because his middle-class parents earn too much for him to afford a loan. An intellectual fascist in the making, see that?

What's gotten into you?

Loyola, observe the blank spaces in people, the things they don't show. Trotsky there, his face is dead, seized up. His eyes look like - like well-handled nickels. Look for the itch that can't be scratched, the black dog inside that whines but doesn't dare bark, or else he or she would be letting go. The suppression. Conjure up his life with your own sensitivities.

You mean imagine things.

What an overworked word. It's taken incredible abuse. They ate the chili and garlic bread brought over by Trotsky's look-alike whose badge said was named Blair. The reappearance of Vinnie Deeka after five years both pleased and depressed Loyola, for though it was good to see an old friend, there could be no denying two things: first, Vinnie Deeka had materially moved ahead in the world while Loyola had not, and second, the Romantic strains sounded by the forty-four year old were no longer the enchanting songs they had once been to Loyola. Had he been able to analyze the difference on that score, Loyola might have declared that the Romantic inadvertently exposed himself as a Sentimentalist. Vinnie was a few pounds heavier than before, and this enhanced his physical presence. His blue eyes burned with their familiar intensity, his shoulder-length black hair suited his swarthy skin colour, and he wore a brown leather jacket, creased and faded by age and use. As Vinnie manipulated the spoon and bread, Loyola observed that his friend's fingers now ended in manicured nails. At least there was something new about him. For Loyola, toenail clippers and soap were good enough, and Vinnie's soft hands said a lot. You haven't said what you're going to do now that you're back.

What am I going to do? I'll do - things, what does it matter what I do? What I am, that's more important. To be, not to do.

Saw graffiti in a toilet last week. First line said, To be is to do, Kant. Second, To do is to be, Nietzsche. Third, Do be do be do, Sinatra. Thought it was funny. Loyola chased a spoonful of chili down with a swallow of root beer. Seriously, what'll you do?

You never used to ask so many questions, you know that? About practical things, I mean. Look over there, who are they? I think I knew them. Covert glances were cast on a couple at a table. The woman looked to be in her mid-forties, though a permanent scowl wrinkling her face made estimation difficult. Perhaps the loss of her left leg caused the expression. As for the man, his physiognomy featured a scar which, starting under the hairline, went in a ragged diagonal from the brow and across the nose and cheek to the prominent jawbone on the right side of his face. Steel-framed glasses constrained his large head, like a trap set to burst. They ate waffles, bacon, eggs and toast in furious silence. Remember Xavier Perrigo? Sharie -That's them?

Got married two years ago, after going out for about three years. Car accident on their honeymoon, on a deserted piece of road. They were by themselves for hours. When they found them they had to cut her out of it, and she lost the leg. The car lost control in the wind, you know the Scanlon Pass.

Biggest natural wind tunnel around.

Harry told me, he keeps up with everybody, he said they started to tell each other things they wouldn't have spilled before, seeing they were dying.

Aren't they the embodiment of being pissed at the world? I barely recognized them. She was an okay gal, when she wasn't swearing like a soldier. Foulest mouth I ever kissed.

You...

When you were a chick in the shell. We hung around together. Xavier looks mean, as always. Loyola laughed, not always the nicest sound. Mean? Catch him when he's drunk. Starts bawling and telling everybody about the terrible calamity, that's what he calls it. That's when she loses it. See her cane? Vinnie looked again. Loyola wiped his mouth. She taps him on the foot, then the legs if he keeps going, and when he won't shut up she uses it like a baseball bat across his shoulders, till he's crawling around begging for mercy. And she doesn't say a word. Johnny's thrown them out of his place two or three times.

Not a word?

Catch him sober and he'd be happy to fight, but when he's drinking? Safe then.

Why are you hanging around there? Johnny's. I did a lot of drinking there once. The regulars still there? Harry, Sam, Stefan?

Yeah, but they call him Pops.

There was a Pops then too.

Another guy. Did you know Vic, black guy, studying accounting? Phil? Camilla? Frank? You'd remember him.

Frank, no. Vic doesn't ring a bell either. Phil, Phil Horne? Used to be a student, didn't he? There was something about him I never liked, always rubbed up against it, damned if I know what it was. Too serious about life. Gynolatry, that was something else about him.

What?

Too worshipful of women. Made me suspicious. I remember that Yemeni lady, boy, did I lust after her, let me tell you, me and everyone I knew.

He does good with women, the exotic types. Maybe it's this gyno thing you -Trouble is, Phil wants the wrong thing out of them. Does he still talk about the imponderables with them?

Don't know. He's gone out with a lot since you saw him..

What a waste. All those bodies and he's interested in their minds.

Sometimes he seems kind of odd.

You mean gay?

No. I mean -

Vinnie drained his coffee. There's nothing wrong with being gay, Loyola. Lots of good people are homogenic. But I don't agree with the lesbian poet who wrote, Man can only fuck what I love.

You think it's natural to get your kicks... there. Is it?

Natural? We train kids to put round pegs in round holes. If they didn't we'd worry they weren't going to be intellectually realized or whatever the jargon is these days. Years later we wonder why they're skinhounding for people named Teddy and Antoine. Natural curiosity. Who hasn't put his thing in a place he was told not to?

But enjoying it? With a man?

Before AIDS, when things were safer, you went in the back door with a woman, had a bit of anilingus.

What? Vinnie explained, finishing with A pungent meat, like game, make sure you wash before and after. The fundament is one of those places you get a lot of pleasure out of. Slapping, tickling, biting, kissing, enemas if you're into that, so why not anal intercourse? Greatest warriors in the world did that, the army, the navy, you name it. Natural. Not healthy, not now, but natural. You're looking pink. It isn't the chili, is it? Loyola nodded.

You've been eating at the wrong place. What is it you like about The Great Pan? Fried food's a killer, I don't care if they cook it in canola oil. Like AIDS, cholesterol intake is preventible. Every so often, once or twice a year, a bit of fried chicken isn't bad, but from the way you act, it's like you don't cook.

I do!

I mean different things, variety. Like sex, you need to try what's unfamiliar. So, God bless the gays, they opened up the world for the bisexuals, if nothing else, though I don't like them trying to take over the world as they like to think they're doing. You want my opinion? Gay sex acts are a side dish at best, not a main course. A few customers were listening to these remarks, delivered in Vinnie's characteristically self-assured manner, one Loyola found too public on occasion. They're saying everyone is gay, but that's as easy as saying everyone's straight. You have your masculine side and your feminine side, but for a man, as an example, to indulge the feminine side too much just courts disaster, see what I mean? A little dalliance, okay, but nothing else. Being experimental doesn't mean the same as being a little bit pregnant. It's not you're all one or all the other, all fly or all ointment as my father used to say. And as for setting up a world order on it, that's too stupid for words.

Do you mean you've done it with a guy?

I can barely hear you, but - never. The world's trying it now, and that, my friend, is one more reason I won't. You know I've never read National Geographic, and why? Because everyone reads it, and I never want to be like everybody. Same thing with things like gay sex, and yoga. Plus I love women's bodies, women's odours, essences, fluids, they're the best in the world. Lesbians are much more aesthetically pleasing than gays, and they're luckier too. You always see a rise in this sort of thing at the end-of-the-century, and here we are at the end-of-the-millennium when everything gets raised to the power of ten. Personally, gay sex strikes me as a matter of style, fashion, not honest-to-God instinctive urges, in nine out of ten situations. It's in vogue, then it's out of vogue, then it's subterranean, then back in vogue, then old hat. I'll give you a potted history.

It's okay, I -The nineties man is a confused guy, he's lost when it comes to how to treat women. It's not just me saying this. Nineties guys grew up when sex roles and gender stereotypes were being smashed, follow me? Consequently, men are trying to find out what to do with women today, except types like you and me who know what they're for. You go into a book store now, you see a wall of books on women's issues. Fine. Then there's this one shelf filled with tall, thin books on men's issues. We're in a pretty sad state as a gender when we need books to remind us who we are. A lot of men, they forgot their membrum virile and started thinking from the head alone. I disagree with a lot that Jerrod Manny Hotchkiss says in From Toy Boy to Coy Boy: The Feminization of the American Male, because one thing he doesn't talk about is Mexico where machismo is strong, but that doesn't mean maleness is, and I can come back to that. He does make a good point that in decadent societies - look around us. People don't care about the fact that bean pickers live on top of dung-heaps or in baked mud-and-straw houses, so long as espresso tastes fresh. Where was I? In decadent societies inner dignity - and he doesn't mean that inner child garbage - disappears, from within and partly due to the atmosphere. Like the damp, it gets into your skin and works its way through. Most people don't notice it's happening because they're too busy trying to survive. Who's got time to worry about the psyche when your neighbour has the stereo on at four in the morning, or your son or daughter needs to be warned about drug dealers at school? Hotchkiss, for all his academic pomposity, makes sense when he talks about the negative results of societal approval about gayness as a norm, which does get under my skin, or at least acceptance of same-sex love -But, excuse me, interrupted a woman in her early thirties, dressed in a maroon-and-green silk blouse, with a gray skirt that showed off her bare, brown, muscular legs, if I might, isn't it more to the point - I hope you don't think I'm rude for -Pull up your chair, no problem.

Thank you. More to the point to say that only the male-male ideal of noble love has been recognized by hierarchies, which is where I thought you were headed, whereas Sapphic love has never been so universally tolerated.

Mmm, that word, tolerated, said her companion, dressed in a plain white blouse under a navy blue jacket, matched with a long navy skirt, and pale stockings. I've such trouble with it. It's so close to intolerance, you see what I mean? There's no room at all to manoeuvre. Nadeen Sarkissian and Kate Shanahan then introduced themselves as a freelance photographer and a receptionist with a local publisher, respectively. The conversation spiralled among three of the four parties, Loyola admiring anew his friend's mesmeric power over women, despite his creased leathery skin and stocky frame. The tall, well-proportioned photographer who had invited herself into the conversation could only be considered devastatingly beautiful, but Kate's pale skin and long black hair were more to his taste. But still, if I may, Hotchkiss misses out on Mexico, as I was saying to Loyola earlier. You see, when the man-man relationship, when it isn't viewed as a degeneracy of health - which psychiatrists only recently treated it as - it's just an - invert's display of machismo! You see? Male homogenics -What?

Sorry, Nadeen, it's a word I picked up, an early alternative to homosexual. Homogenic means same sex, follow me? So this invert machismo is truly an example of pathological masculinity. And you ladies might - forgive me, but I'm old, so I do use that word, no offence intended.

None taken. You're not old, is he, Kate? Kate murmured something. Compared to the youth and virility of my trim and fit friend I feel only a little short of antique. We're not quite coetaneans, you see.

What's that? Thanks to Vinnie's tutelage Loyola could answer Kate. It means contemporaries.

Friends? We wondered... Nadeen made an expressive gesture.

No. And you two are -Straight, they answered. Kate eyed Loyola's short, thick black hair and gray eyes set in a firm asymmetrical face with less guarded interest. I was saying, pathological masculinity. I daresay the Amazons would be classified as pathological femininity, but that isn't Hotchkiss' topic. Greece in its halcyon days, the Romans at their strongest under Augustus, Persia during the rules of Cyrus and Darius, the Ottoman Empire, they were all conquerors, all empire-builders. And all flagrant sodomites. Look at the Egyptian pharaohs and, if you want a recent example, the British, with flagellation and buggery part of their education system. Everyone says the British don't have sex, yet they do.

But too often with little boys and girls.

Very good, Nadeen! Empire-builders extend themselves as far as possible, not simply geo-politically but sexio-culturally. Those are Hotchkiss' terms, and they're reductionist, ugly-sounding, crossing German word-crafting with Foucault's weakest ideas. Nadeen made a moue, saying Such a sick man, spreading AIDS to innocent people when he knew he had it. How immoral, and from a philosopher.

He couldn't hold a candle to any of the Greeks, my favourites, or even later fellows like Descartes, Spinoza. Philosophy isn't what it used to be. Anyway, these rulers, kings or tsars or caesars or princes or autocrats, they forced themselves everywhere. Vinnie took out a pen and slip of paper on which he wrote:
Empire-building (A) ' Pathological masculinity (B)
Pathological masculinity (B) ' Sodomy/paederasty (C)
If A'B and B'C, then A'C

But I think Hotchkiss makes a blunder when he equates pathological masculinity with patriarchy. One is an ongoing condition, the other is a vessel into which the pathology is poured. Subtle, essential distinction.

Are you, like, a sociology professor or something? Kate twisted the paper absent-mindedly.

Kate, bonny Kate, I'll never curse you for that. Not a professor. I simply had the opportunity during lulls in life to read, more when I was younger than now, but I dabble.

And you know Shakespeare too, I'm impressed. What about you, Loyola?

Ah, let's - a man may smile and smile and be a villain. Nadeen smiled. My friend works at Moscati-Mann, you know them, they dress the news anchors and businessmen and so on. Speaking of which, it's time I got you back to the salt mines. They can't get on without him, ladies, otherwise we'd tarry. Who else would do the packing and lifting? He's a put-upon workhorse, just look at those arms. Nadeen, and may I say that's a charming way of spelling it, and Kate, plainly spelt Kate, it's been a pleasure to speak to two such - charming, if you don't mind an old-fashioned word, women forthright in their opinions. Always refreshing. Do you need a ride? Nadeen shook her head. I have a car. I'm driving Kate back to work. I don't keep regular business hours. Her friend tapped her arm. Tell them. Go on.

Tell us what? Loyola asked as he quickly checked his watch. Nadeen, she's got a show coming up at the Brogan Civic Arts Centre. You should go, seeing how you read and all.

A show? Of what?

Oh Kate, now you've got me - photographs. If I tell you what about it'll sound goofy. You have to see it to grasp - if I tried to explain it would take a while and I don't want to make you late, and where it's my first show - installation, to be exact - I'm nervous. I really want to bounce the idea off somebody who can appreciate these things before the set-up's complete. Vinnie understood perfectly, suggesting the four of them meet some night, the coming Saturday perhaps, for drinks and a discussion. Throughout the conversation Kate's leg bumped Loyola's, and Nadeen had no hesitation about taking Vinnie's number, so the date seemed assured. The four were about to rise when two arms encircled Loyola's neck. He recognized the watch and bangles as the top of his head was kissed. Introducing Janet Campbell to the table he emphasized she was his cousin, and Kate's smile returned. The newcomer presented her lunch companion. Everyone, this is Tyrone Vann, Ty for short. He's in broadcasting. I'm with The Bowmount Courier, by the way. It's so good to see you, Loyola, we don't get together nearly enough. You should come by my new apartment, you have the address?

Yes, it's -Listen, have you people tried that new spot over there? It's too late now, of course, you've eaten, but -Where?

Look out the window, to your left. That new restaurant, Waist Not, Want Not. It's good. But we came here for the coffee, right Ty?

What kind of food?

Totally diet-conscious, cuz. Don't make a face. Their dishes are broken down into portions, like Weight Watchers but not close enough to be sued, and they have gluten- and lactose-free meals too. It's delicious. You should try it. Of a firmer build than Janet or Nadeen, Kate straightened up at what she took to be a suggestion directed at her. Not everyone wants to look -I don't care what I have if Janet's paying, contributed Tyrone. She's writing a review of the place for the paper and asked me to come along, otherwise... I think Slim Pickins' is a better name for it. But I ate tomato soup for years so food doesn't matter much to me. A great step towards independence is a good-humoured stomach, one willing to endure rough treatment.

That sounds very like a Stoic to me.

Huh? Why, yes, Seneca, do you -I thought so. It is not the man who has little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. I'm positive you felt that way while eating your soup. Vinnie and Tyrone eyed each other warily. How can you say such a thing, Ty? You loved it! He's just being contrary. Don't you hate it when men turn on you like that? Always in company. Right, cuz? Loyola smoothed his hair down where she ruffled it.

Your name brings back memories, Tyrone, and of course, your voice. I remember six, seven years ago you were the host of the afternoon show at that radio station, was it CCII?

The same. Times change. I'm there again.

You could look happier about it, Ty. It pays the rent. He shrugged. I'm not complaining, Janet, just looking at the facts square in the face. Bad times, good times, mediocre times, all that's important is keeping your chin up.

Then admit the meal wasn't bad.

I already said that. It's just food.

Myself and Loyola, we enjoy a good meal, meat, fowl, vegetables, fruit, from the back to the front of the Horn of Plenty. We're pagans when it comes to our appetites, you could say. But listen, Janet, if I may call you that so soon after meeting you, do you know my friend Nadeen here is having an exhibition at the Brogan? From what she's told me it's going to be something unforgettable. Normally I wouldn't step right up to a stranger and be bold enough to praise a friend, but you're in the media, and Nadeen here could use intelligent exposure prior to the big event. I think you could write a fascinating profile of a new, trend-setting artist, and everyone reads the Courier arts section. You two should talk. But Loyola, time to go. Your cousin works for a slave driver, Janet.

He'll survive. We've heard all about her.

Is she that nasty? She's probably going through something.

Kate, the stories he tells me - there's the Amazonian principle in action. My friend is the only man I know who works with his hands, and as an almost forgotten writer said, they're the only ones who can have a clear conscience in this bitter world. Vinnie looked at Tyrone, who had his head turned away, then bent to whisper a few words in Nadeen's ear after she took something from Kate. In the car Vinnie's first words were Your cousin, hey? She's attractive, in a brassy way. Wild nail polish. You and her get along, right?

I guess.

She hugs you, presses your hand, winks at you. Good thing Kate knew you were related.

What are you saying?

Don't you feel it, man? I did. Oh, my quickening humour jelled simply watching you and her. I felt like a voyeur.

You're disgusting. That's just sick, Vinnie. She's my cousin.

How close? Easy, easy, don't get excited. You can't deny the sexual message she was sending out.

Watch me.

If you so choose to deny it, well then. The two rode on for a time without saying anything.

That's incest, Vinnie. And creepy. Besides, she's always like that.

Then I'd have taken her up sooner on it. No need to get angry, I'll drop it. Sometimes I don't know who I'm talking to, you've changed so much. But Loyola, you've got to be more adventurous.

—What I've got to be is on time or Starlene'll go berserk, so can you move this thing?

See you Friday night, right?

Isn't it Saturday?

Nadeen told me when we were leaving, she and Kate, Friday night. And look, here's an origami thing Kate made out of my logic, Nadeen said she wanted you to have it but didn't want to give it to you with your cousin there. Sharp eyes on her. Can you tell what it is? Neither can I, note paper isn't made for origami. I said we'd meet them at Johnny's at ten. Look sharp, it'll do me good with Nadeen if she sees you took trouble over your appearance for her friend.

How come you didn't tell them you had a degree?

Who cares about degrees? Too many questions then, like you were asking earlier. Why aren't you this, where did all that get you, whatever made you take that?

A photographer. What type?

Artist, she said. Probably has a few nude shots of herself and Kate too, maybe uses her as a model sometimes. Puts people together with nature red in tooth and claw, throws in a few industrial scenes, bingo, late 20th century urban aesthetic expression. Hear how she dislikes painting, and sculpture? Bit narrow-minded there, but what do I care? She's tall, slender, dark, Greek, fiery, and - younger than me! I've still got it, haven't I? and lucky you, my charm extends to Kates with dexterous fingers. When you're coupling ferociously with her Friday night send a prayer to your household gods I was there to procure a woman for you. Here we are. It's a pretty dismal building you work in, isn't it? Don't let those idiots get you down. I've got to come up with a way to get you out of there, you've changed because of them, you're a little sour. Keep Friday night in mind, a candle in the window, a torch burning against the dank dungeon walls -I'm gonna be late.

I'll pick you up at nine thirty, your place, Friday. As Vinnie's car disappeared, Loyola felt a moment of exhilaration followed by one of intense calm. Flowers in the nearby garden exhaled their fragrances. Yes, he would keep the memory of Kate's firm red lips tucked away from harm, taking it out during the week when things were tough. Unexpectedly, thanks to Vinnie's lecture Loyola could forget the last traces of distress experienced over the pleasure those beads had given him. He smelled wild roses as a breeze played with the paper figure of either a bull or cow. Maybe I think it's a cow because of the black ink. No, it's a bull. That's what Kate was thinking about.