dear soren

I just forgave Soren Kierkegaard today. For the last couple of years I haven't been able to hear his name spoken without a deep stirring of resentment for the way he ruined my life during my last year of college. Fear and Trembling hit me right when I was weakest from heartbreak and faltering faith, and as a result of the book's emo metaphors and intuitive writing style, my heart continued to break and my faith continued to falter for the rest of the calendar year and beyond.

As I remember it, Kierkegaard takes his well-warranted amazement at the story of Abraham and Isaac as an opportunity to construct an apology for faith, always with the caveat of "I don't know what it is, I only know what it is not." This seems like a holy transcendence until you realize, after bitter experience, that he's excusing himself from making any true statement worthy to provoke dispute or provide direction. But like I said, I've forgiven him. It's not his fault that I continually threw my heart at someone who didn't want it--picked it up off the ground and lobbed it again and again, until my throwing arm got tired. It wasn't Kierkegaard's advice to blame the failure of my game on God and to hold him hostage until he gave me, at the age of twenty-five, what I thought was the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle of my life. He didn't assign me the homework of obsessive circumstantial analysis which I told myself was prayer and submission of my requests to God. He just wrote a book about faith and illustrated it with a fairy tale about a knight and a princess and, cleverly, left out the end. He had a hard life, himself--that should have been a clue that his book is not an instruction manual. But we believe things that we hope are true--it is easier than believing some things that are true.

That's what I realized today, that helped me cut Kierkegaard some slack. Submitting our requests to God is not like submitting a list to our personal shopper. It's like submitting a manuscript to an editor--there will be changes made. He doesn't promise to grant our requests in return--he promises peace, that transcends all understanding. And I'd suggest that peace is at the bottom of all our requests, anyway. God, I need a job! (...so I won't have to worry about money anymore) God, I need a fulfilling job! (...so I won't have to worry about money or wasting my life away anymore) God, I need a boyfriend! (...so I won't have to be alone anymore) God, I need a cool thing I can't afford! (...so I won't have to be obsessed with thinking about it anymore) Ad nauseam.

My prayers are so often mere lists of my anxiety triggers, not actual submissions. I'm not seeking peace when I pray, I'm seeking service. From God. Wow.

Half the time, my anxiety triggers are desires for good things. Things like provision, relationships, friends' salvation from hell--things that we are supposed to pray for. But to fling them at God like he's my assistant undercuts the nature of prayer as a spiritual discipline. Prayer is really more about me knowing my place than about getting results. God will manufacture results whether I ask him to or not. (Back me up, Calvinists.)

And though it sounds harsh in my proud, American, educated, feminist ears, knowing my place is actually quite freeing, and staying in it is quite peaceful.

What I realized about Kierkegaard particularly is that he is really very devout. He doesn't advise doing anything against God's will to obtain that good thing I desire. Abraham knew God wanted him to have a son, but God told him to kill the son he had. Rather than argue the point, he believed what God had promised and he also proceeded to do what God had said to do. He was able to separate the knowledge of "God wants me to have a son" from the knowledge that "God said to sacrifice this son that I have."

Furthermore, Kierkegaard advocates silence. I wish I had paid a lot more attention to that feature of the book. He says that the greatest faith is, on the face of it, ironic, and that the greatest irony is inexpressible in words. You know what God said, and you know what God said to do--sometimes they are incompatible, a paradox. (The use of that word has returned to me.) You can't reconcile them, so you don't try--you just shut up.

There's a lot in the book that I ought to read again. There's a lot in the book that is still pretty emo and will find its primary audience in angsty post-teens high on unrequited love. But it's not Kierkegaard's fault if we take his writing as an excuse to stay there.

I just wanted to issue this public apology, and to endorse Fear and Trembling. Buy it for your friends for Christmas. It's a perfect read for Valentine's Day.

magic words, vol. 8

"It would be better to lose your life than to waste it."

according to my cell phone...

"hey. i heard 'bout u, and i wanted to say hi. Umm, i'm kinda unsure, so how about you come check me out online. I got a profile at date-shake.com"
CB#: UNKNOWN
11:43A Thu Oct 23

what it is

A plane took off today at 11.15, and I saw it leaving the runway as I headed north to pick up my new friend on the way to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. I surfaced from the music cracking through my stereo long enough to think, "How tiresome to be stuck inside an airplane on the morning of Thanksgiving." But if that's the quickest route to the ones you love, then wedged against a window in coach class probably feels like a great place to be.

It was a gathering of displaced persons at my folks' place that afternoon. Not only my new friend, who had never met my family before, but also my sister's friends, who are fresh off the boat from Gambia (which is in northern Africa, for those of you who secretly have no idea), had joined the party. Also, our friends J and L had brought with them J's nephew, who didn't talk except to his cell phone and who wore a blank and hunted expression all afternoon, like a deer caught in the headlights except more like a sheep, or a St. Bernard.

We listened to the little girls perform their Christmas choir numbers, and we went around the table and told occurrences of the past year that made us thankful, and the boys played hacky-sack outside, and inside people talked about things that they mostly agreed upon. It was pleasant and warm and mild, like our climate. Then I left to go to my work party. The owner of the restaurant had invited everyone to his home for a Thanksgiving meal cooked by our chefs--I was eager to see what they would prepare on their off hours. They live in a Craftsman bungalow just up the hill from my apartment, a house with beautiful bones and lots of paintings from local artists and, as I discovered later while helping to clean up, no garbage disposal. The kitchen staff was better represented than the front of house staff--Leo and Javi and Ana had brought their spouses and children. The chefs had brought their girlfriends. I was the only server and the only singleton who attended--both facts I only just realized. There were also several friends who don't work at the restaurant but are familiar customers. As people milled around the kitchen, where the appetizers were arrayed, and the backyard, where the turkey was deep-frying, I recognized much of the food and drink as coming from the restaurant--cans of Modelo, Sunburst clams, baby radishes, fried oysters. By twos and threes, people shuffled into the back garage to get high, and I felt a little bit high myself as I sat in the kitchen with my glass of well-watered whiskey. I was grounded, my feet hooked firmly around the legs of the chair, but light-headed and disoriented, unsure of where I stood in this well-established chain of acquaintance. Were they mostly people who had nowhere else to go? Had they been looking forward to this gathering since last year? Did they only come for the free food and booze? Were they tipsy because of high holiday spirit, the glee of friendship, or out of desperation and boredom? I settled into my chair and focused with what I hope was Zen-like intensity on A, the girlfriend of one of the chefs who spends most of her evenings after work at the restaurant. Every segue in the conversation felt like a blind leap from one stepping stone to another; I never lost my footing, though. In fact, by the time we all sat down to dinner, I felt almost comfortable. The owner was red-faced and laughingly imperious, like a Fezziwig at the head of the table; the chefs were gabbling drunken rhetoric as they passed the plates; the kitchen staff were jovially sober, probably on account of the children who were beginning to fall apart at that late hour. G sank into the seat beside me with red eyes and confessions of her affection for me; M was tired and bloated, having already eaten a big Thanksgiving dinner that she herself cooked for her boyfriend's family. I listened to people talk around me. I chewed very slowly. I felt the weight of myself in my seat. I wondered what time it was but did not want to ask. I thought, "Whatever I am right now, it isn't unhappy. It isn't unhappy, at all."

I thought about people that I wished were there with me, but I didn't feel alone. That was perhaps the most alien experience of the night. Surrounded by people I know very little, who I share almost nothing with, who are neither family nor even truly friends yet, unable to make myself heard in the crossfire of conversation and with nothing much to say, anyway, nevertheless I felt assured, small but solid. I felt my own unassertive worth.

I suppose it came from being prepared to be uncomfortable, attending the party as an exercise in neither receiving, nor giving, but simply reaching out. It was a lovely freedom to ride through moments of discomfort without surprise--to drink with others and not get drunk, to smoke with them but not get high, to mention my church experience, to sit in quietness and solitude among a company of loud cohabitators. I felt like I'd been handed the key to the city.

A said, "It was great getting to talk with you." G gave me her scarf and a long embrace. People hugged me and laughed at my parting jokes, and I remembered that they were unlikely to remember any of it much, and I decided to love them nonetheless.

We can't all be family. Family can't all be friends. We can't all be Christians, at least not all at the same time. I don't know if anything is possible for "we all"--there are so many reasons and valid excuses and heartbreaks and hangups. But I can be grateful. I recognize it now. It's that deep, unemotional, spoon-fed sense of settledness in my gut, like a warm meal. It's a beautiful gift to be passed an overflowing platter and, asking "What is this? This looks good," to be told, "This is enough."

sundays were free

"Sundays were free! They were days of tranquillity and general bliss. Perhaps we slept later on rainy winter Sundays, but usually we got up early and eagerly. Breakfast was special, with waffles now and then, and no school, and no piano practice. We talked and laughed." (M.F.K. Fisher, "Hellfire and All That")

The pause afforded by a Sunday afternoon has, historically, been a dangerous thing for me. The manic nature of a busy week leads to a proportionate depression when, with the dying of the car engine in the driveway upon returning from church, everything stops. Time, it seems, falls into a rut and doesn't feel like dragging itself out again.

I used to get ravenously hungry when we walked in the door, at about 12.30pm. My church clothes would be digging creases into my waist, and my feet hurt. I would run upstairs to my room to change clothes. Then, no matter how hungry I was, or how urgently my help was needed in the kitchen, I felt influenced by the torpid warmth of my room, freshened by a little breath of breeze through the door I had just opened for the first time in three hours, and the suggestively wilting sun glowing behind the slats of the blinds, to fall face-forward onto the bed and sleep like the dead.

There was always somebody sleeping on Sunday. When lunch was over, my mom went up to bed. My dad would fall asleep in front of a game on the TV. I would go upstairs and start to listen to the rebroadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, and wake up in the middle of This American Life. When I went downstairs, I had to be quiet, since someone else was usually asleep by then. Until around five in the evening, it was highly inconsiderate to talk in a normal tone of voice.

When I went away to college, Sunday afternoons were the worst times for my chronic nostalgia. Or, maybe, they were the best. Nostalgia is like the pain of getting rid of a hangnail, or what I imagine trichotillomania to be--as much a pleasure as it is a pain. I know I never tried hard to get past the overwhelmingly heavy sweetness that crept upon me while I sang the final hymn at church, engulfing me when I came in the door of one of my series of lonely apartments (on Maryland Avenue, on Spa Road, on Prince George Street, in Pinkney Hall). I never tried to fend it off. Sometimes I would call home, to hear a voice, but more often I just took off my shoes and my coat and fell into the warmth of my bed and pulled the covers over my head and sighed. Sometimes I cried a little, but that was more the tremors of tiredness than of real heartsickness, like the weakness that comes the day after having the twenty-four-hour flu.

Toward the second half of my second year, the nostalgia started to wear off my memories of home, because home started to change. J and W had become my new home in almost every way--I didn't live with them under any formal agreement, but theirs had become the safe place, the unassailable sanctuary of nourishment and comfort and hope and rest. Sunday afternoons I went to their house, whenever I could make the excuse, and I chatted with J while she alchemized in the kitchen. Usually she was baking something on Sunday afternoons--blondies for her kids, or cinnamon rolls for no reason, or gingerbread for Christmas. One time I came over and she was sculpting mushrooms out of cinnamon-dusted meringue, for a buche Noël. We played with her birds, and knitted, and watched her kids come in and out of the kitchen, and made fun of people we knew, and griped about our mothers, and quoted movie lines, and I wished that Sunday afternoon would last for freaking ever. The pain was glorious. She usually went to take a nap at some point within all of this, and I would clean up the kitchen and talk with whoever was around. If no one was around, I would do homework or read books while lying on the couch, or fall asleep while listening to A Prairie Home Companion and wake up in the middle of This American Life.

When I moved to New York last year, Sundays were a push and pull of longing and distaste. On one hand, church didn't start until afternoon, which gave me the freedom of Sunday morning, with tea and the radio, that I had long coveted. On the other hand, the imperative sleepiness of Sunday afternoon must, in that case, give way to the project of helping set up for the church service in the cathedral we rented on West 22nd Street. And by the time church was over, there was no time for the ensuing nostalgia with its anticlimactic nap--I had to get ready for work the next day. It resulted in the break-up of the entire rhythm of the week. My nostalgia was not cured, only stifled.

When I decided to leave New York and move back to California, one of the things I most eagerly awaited was resumption of the Sunday afternoons of my childhood. The foggy morning drive to church, followed by the impatient return home to divest myself of the uncomfortable church clothes, the urgent preparation of Sunday lunch, the ensuing lethargy with my dad falling asleep on the couch in front of the game, and my mom staggering upstairs to nap, and myself sprawled on the floor, half-listening to the radio and steeping in the fulfillment of ten years' longing.

I really thought that.

A few complications, naturally, ensued. This year has been the hottest I have ever known in southern California--foggy mornings and honeyed noontime warmth were unavailable. More to the point, my church, and my family, and I have changed dramatically in character and behavioral patterns since I lived there. Specifically, I don't live at "home" now. The elements are out of their old order, and the resulting composition is unfamiliar. The worn-in ways I longed after were discarded so long ago that nobody knows what I'm missing.

Can you imagine the rude awakening?
Can you conceive of the glorious freedom?

It's really laughable to see how long it has taken me, since moving back here, to realize that Things Are Different. For eight months, I have been going to the family's house and trying to fit what now happens on a Sunday into the frame of my expectations. Trying to remember according to the present. It has been more frustrating, more distressing, than you might guess. Have you tried switching to green tea when you are used to coffee? It's been like that. The heavy, sweet addiction requires much to feed it.

I started to be nostalgic for J's house, then, but it wouldn't suffice, for two reasons. One has been discussed in an earlier post--I visited her last spring and came to terms with the inevitability of change there. The other reason is that I had begun to feed my nostalgia with the hope of fulfillment. That is strong stuff. Mere indulgence of memory was no longer enough.

Last Sunday, I was bone tired, from a busy week and several early mornings in a row. Instead of making my dutiful pilgrimage to the family house, I went to my lonely apartment and shucked off my shoes and fell into bed and pulled the covers over my head. Then I reached out and turned on the radio. Prairie Home Companion was on. I fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of This American Life. I looked around my darkened room, badly in need of tidying, insulated by the hum of the air conditioner, feeling my bones slowly reform after their melting repose. I thought, here it is. This is all I needed. The Sunday afternoon of the past has become the Sunday afternoon of the future.

our epic screenplay

FADE IN

SCENE: a comfortable house in a pastoral setting, more country than suburban. Crepe paper and decorations float from the porch railing and the trees in the front garden. As the camera pans in closer, we see little children running around with Easter baskets, hunting for eggs. Tracking shot brings us to the back of the house, a wide green lawn that slopes down toward a pond. About a dozen adults of various ages are standing together. It's a family party, obviously.

EMILY (or insert your character name of choice) is standing next to a card table that has food and party ephemera strewn all over it. She is filling up more plastic eggs with candy. An OLDER WOMAN, an aunt or somebody of that ilk, comes up to her.

OLDER WOMAN: It wasn't that long ago that you were hunting for eggs like them.

EMILY: (laughs) Almost twenty years. Not that long?

OLDER WOMAN: No! How old are you now?

EMILY: Twenty-three.

OLDER WOMAN: Really? My! I always see you as younger, somehow.

EMILY: Well, that's fine with...

OLDER WOMAN: Let's see, when I was twenty-three, I had just had Lucy and was pregnant with George.

EMILY: Yeah, that would make me feel old, too.

OLDER WOMAN: So, any men in your life yet?

EMILY: (with a good sense of humor, but a little annoyed) None. Ever.

OLDER WOMAN: None at all? Goodness, honey, what are you doing?

EMILY: (holds up the plastic eggs) Hiding my eggs.

(She heads toward a group of little children; CATHERINE, the cute little one whom we meet later, runs to meet her.)

SCENE: The family has gathered in. The children are opening their eggs and comparing results. The adults are half playing with them, half talking together.

OLDER WOMAN: But really, Emily, don't you think it's time to face real life? You're going to have to sometime.

EMILY: (playing with CATHERINE, who sits in her lap) I know. It's just so easy to hide in the shelter of going to college, working full time and paying bills, you know?

CATHERINE: Look, I found a ring! (She tries it on her finger.) Emily, where's your ring?

EMILY: What ring?

CATHERINE: Your wedding ring.

EMILY: Um. I lost it.

CATHERINE: Well where's your husband?

EMILY: (laughs, but notices the aunt staring at her) He's parking the car, Catherine.

CATHERINE: That's what you said before. It's taking a long time.

EMILY: Well, I guess he must be lost, then.

CATHERINE: Well, did you look all around the car? Did you look under it? Did you look over it?

EMILY: (looking straight at OLDER AUNT) You know what? I'll go look right now, Catherine, okay? I'm just going to go look right now. (She gets up and walks around the side of the house.

...TO BE CONTINUED...

where are you now?

I don't remember how I met Annick. I think it was between the first two years of college--my first first year and my second first year. At any rate, I was about nineteen and bored, and I had begun to study French from a book-and-tape series I found at the library. "Le Francais est Facile" or something like that, produced for tourists and business trippers. I loved it. I did pushups in my room as I chanted with the dry British host of the program, "Je suis alle, tu es alle, il est alle..." (I was also trying to condition myself for surfing, another wished-for skill.)

That was why my mother pointed me toward Annick. Her family started coming to our church after theirs broke up. Her husband had been a pastor there, and as I learned much later on, he had come to our pastors almost upon arrival and asked when he could start preaching at our church. Maybe this doesn't seem so out of order to some people. To us, it seemed something like the former president of one country approaching the president of another country and suggesting that they begin to share duties.

Somebody must have mediated the introduction--it might have been my mother, but I can't remember that she was particularly friendly with Annick. It seems so unlikely, as I look back on it. I was nineteen, restless, lazy except for a few chosen projects, with no immediate goals beyond making an hourly wage at Starbucks and practicing French and push-ups. She was in her mid-thirties, with three little girls and an out-of-work husband. She was tall, with black hair improbably long for a woman her age, that stayed shiny and smooth though she wore it loose. She had ice-blue eyes and a classic profile and graceful arms. She carried herself like the curator of an art museum. She spoke with a southern California accent. I can't even remember how she came by her French pedigree.

Somehow I ended up at her house for dinner one night, on the purpose of practicing French together while she made dinner. We conversed innocuously in French, but here and there she broke into English when she confessed the difficulties of her life. She was afraid for how they were going to pay the rent--they had just lost their house and had to move to a condo community in the northern wilds of Escondido. Their neighbor was a drug addict, or a pervert, or both--he had come over once or twice, in the beginning, and one day had sneaked in the open window of the house and surprised her while she was in the shower. Most of her friends had deserted her, now that her husband's former church had split up. And her husband...there she paused. No one understood him, and she allowed that he was sometimes hard to understand.

Her little girls were drawing pictures at the kitchen table. The oldest one, who was probably seven, drew a boy and a girl wearing striped middy blouses and berets with pompoms. The middle one scribbled. The baby I remember best--she was not a chubby American-style baby, but long-limbed, almost lanky, with a mature face and solemn eyes as big as puddles. Her reddish hair tendriled over her forehead in a china doll curlicue, as if it was her concession to infancy.

Annick wore a long dress with no sleeves. She opened plastic freezer bags and somehow constructed something that looked like Provencal chicken in her frying pan. I remember that it smelled delicious and that there were mushrooms. I asked her how to make it, and she gave an unexpected laugh--there wasn't any recipe, it was just something you throw together. Most French cooking is like that, she told me. She pulled out a couple of old textbooks and a dictionary, and gave them to me, saying that sometime I should give her back the textbooks but I could keep the dictionary.

Then her husband came home. He slammed the door and looked at me with an aggression that was almost lewd. He seemed to be sizing me up, whether I was worth challenging or not. He never smiled, even when he kissed his daughters hello. We sat around the table and he threw some French phrases at me--grammatically correct, atrociously pronounced. He asked if I spoke any other languages, and I told him that I spoke Spanish. Then he assailed me with a barrage of questions, straight out of Spanish 4. I didn't want to fight, so I gave simple answers and tried to indicate my willingness to be the beta dog. He gave up on me and looked at his middle daughter, saying, "Eat. Mangez." I smiled at them all, in turn.

Annick gave me a ride to the church, where her daughters did Awana club that night, and where my mom was going to pick me up. We chatted some more in the car, but a somber resignation seemed to have come over her. We stood in the parking lot and watched the kids mill around in front of the entrance to the church. I wish that I could remember what she told me then, because it was probably the key to much of her mystery. It had to do with her husband's pugilistic nature, the circumstances of their church rupture, and the uncertainties that plagued her more than ever. All I can remember is thinking, "I'm nineteen. She shouldn't be telling me this." She finished it by saying, "And there, now you know it. Our histoire triste." Then I realized that I should have been paying much more attention. Why didn't I, I wonder now? Was I bored?

But I also look back with wonder on the way she concluded. It seems so melodramatic, so uncharacteristic of her, at least according to how I had learned her that evening. It was a mystery then how a woman like her ended up with a man like him, but that precipitate confession with its final phrase--"our histoire triste"--might be just what would resolve it all.

Somehow, that last phrase embarrassed me so that I hardly spoke to her again at church. They did not stay long, whether because of her husband's insufferability or because no one but a nineteen-year-old would befriend her, and even that for only an evening.

magic words, vol. 7

"All we have to do is live long enough and we will suffer."

urgent care

It's cold in here. ...What? Nothing--I wasn't really laughing. It was just...saying I'm cold seems a little unimportant.

...Right now, I don't feel very much. Maybe I'm trying to keep it that way.

I live at one-sixty-three Stater Road. Not with my family--with some friends. I'm on good terms with my family. I spend a lot of time with them. It's just better not to live there, trying to share food and stuff like that. It was the same in college--I shared an apartment with a friend, one year. We're still friends, it's just not a good thing for us to live together, we found out. Sometimes I used to eat her peanut butter. She noticed and asked me not to, but I still did it--I always thought maybe she wouldn't notice the next time. And she always did. She was really nice about it. She said, "Why don't you just buy your own?" But--I don't know--peanut butter seems like a stupid thing to buy. A whole jar. Who needs a whole jar to themselves? I don't. Just a little bit, here and there. I bought her a jar one time, to apologize. It made her mad. I don't know.

Well, currently, I'm working as a server. It's a terrible place. I'd never recommend it. I've done really good places, classy places, during college and the couple of years after. But this was the first thing I could find here. Plus it's close to my house, so it's convenient. But that's just my job at the moment. That's not what I do. I'm a filmmaker. I went to film school. Yes. I've made several short films. It's a hard field to squeeze into. If you're rich and connected, sure, you've got it in the bag. The film industry is no meritocracy, I can tell you that right now.

I'm sorry. I'm totally straying from the...from the subject.

What else do you need to know?

Yes, I know the Allans. Sorry--I can smoke, right? They're friends of my family's, from church. Probably a couple of years back. Well, probably more like four. Because Albie wasn't born yet, and Hallie...

No, I'm fine. Hallie was only about two, I think. My point is, I wasn't there when they all met. I heard about them while I was away, at college. All of a sudden it was "the Allans just left" or "Hallie said the cutest thing." Or "Tracy needs to clean up her house a little better." It took a while to realize they were all the same family. They came over for dinner after church one Sunday, I guess, and my family just adopted them. That's nice, isn't it? They'd recently moved from out of town. They didn't have any family or friends nearby. My family just took them in. My sisters started watching Hallie all the...time.

No, I'm fine. It's just...how is Tracy? Do you know? Is she here? Are my parents here? Thanks, I'm really fine. I just need to...

I guess it's lucky they had Albie last year. ...God!

Tonight? Yeah, okay. Tonight I was at my parents' house, having dinner. Unusual? I don't know. Sometimes I go over a lot, to their house, but then there are weeks where I keep my distance. It's not always any specific reason. I just feel like they're watching me, looking for something, and that they're constantly disappointed that they don't see it. When I can find a reason to not go, then I don't. It...it feels pretty good, you know? To call up and say, "Sorry, I can't come. I know you were expecting me, but..." Whatever. You know? It's like...it feels like a way to show them that I have other claims on my time. Other people think I'm valuable. But if I don't have anything going on... I don't want to stay away completely. I mean, they're my family. I want to have a good relationship. I kind of always hope that, if I keep my distance for a while, they'll be so glad to see me they'll forget what they were looking for. But to them, it's like no time has passed at all. They talk to me about things that happened in the last week like I should remember, and I have to remind them that I wasn't there.

Which is funny, because that's exactly what would happen while I was in college, you know? I'd talk to them on the phone, and they'd be like "Remember the time that...?" Whatever. And I would have to say, "No, I don't remember. I wasn't there." And they'd argue! They'd be like, "Yes, it was the night before Easter, when..." Blah blah blah. And I'd say, "Got it. That night, I was at my friend Anna's apartment making s'mores, and wondering why Giancarlo wouldn't talk to me." Well, usually I didn't tell them that part. The last part. I don't talk about guys around my family, usually. They're just funny about marriage. Everything is leading up to marriage, and if I express interest in anybody, they immediately want to know his background. And then if I don't know it, they look at me like, "Why are we having this conversation?" You know?

Yeah, I was at their house having dinner. But something came up, and I left early. No, it wasn't like that. I was upset--well, frustrated--so I decided to leave early. I was in a hurry, yeah. I'm not sure I told anyone goodbye. It occurred to me to leave, while everyone was getting up from the table and taking in the dishes, so I kind of edged over and grabbed my coat. Then I booked to the door. I heard someone calling after me as I went out to my car. I think someone must have run to the door and stood there while I was backing out. Because they were all right there when...it happened, yeah.

What? No. I'm fine, actually. Maybe it's, like, shock. Do you think? I shouldn't be fine, should I? But... I guess it's just shock.

Jesus.

I don't remember what it was about. It doesn't really matter. It could come out of anything. They just have to look at me with that sort of disappointment on their faces. It's a really quiet kind of reaction. We're just talking and someone asks a question that is, like, out of left field. I mean, I'm sure it makes perfect sense to them, but I'm usually weirded out by it. Like, I'll be talking about a funny thing that happened with a customer at work, and my mom will say, "How did your manager take it when you told her?" And I'll be like, "I didn't tell her." And she'll say, "Why not? It sounds like a big problem." I mean, my mother has never waitressed, so she has no idea. But you'd think she might respect the fact that I know something about this that she doesn't. That it doesn't necessarily follow that every problem has to be reported to a manager. I mean, I've never worked for a restaurant manager that even wanted to know about problems with customers. And when I try to explain this, she'll counter with a big argument for why I should report incidents like that, in order to get constructive feedback and show that I want to improve. In order to show leadership. And I'll just be like, "Mom! Leadership is something that corporations look for. In the food service industry, there is the captain, the...whatever, vice-captain...and then there are the slaves in the galley. That's all. There's no upward movement, except for a pecking order." And she said, "Pecking order?" She said, "Aren't we talking about the same thing?"

But you don't want all this. No, we didn't really fight. I was just sick of it and I wanted to get out. Especially because I knew the Allans were coming over for dessert. Yes, I knew that. That is, I didn't know until I got to my parents' house. If I'd known before, I probably wouldn't have come.

...But! I know what you're thinking. I don't dislike the Allans, really. I don't. They're great people, and I'm glad that they have my family, and my family has them. They really need my family to help them out--two little kids like that... Oh, God.

No, it's okay, I'm fine. I'm just trying to say that I don't dislike them at all. I mean, I don't get along great with Tracy, but I think that's just because our personalities don't mesh. She's really out there with her opinions, you know? And she kind of puts the responsibility for her emotional maintenance on everyone else. I mean, my sister has had to apologize so many times to her for misunderstandings, it juts kills me. Misunderstandings on Tracy's part, you see. Where she got offended and wouldn't bring it up but acted sort of distant, until my sister got the message and had to come crawling and apologize. I just hate that. Have you talked to my sister? Well, when you do, you'll understand. My sister is the least offensive person you could imagine. You'd have to be a sociopath not to get along with her.

But the thing is, I sort of get Tracy. And I can tell she needs my mom, my family. She probably is the type who had kids before she knew what to do with them. I think she expects everyone to take care of her and doesn't even realize it. So it's cool. And it's great that my parents can have the experience of having grandchildren, you know, when Tracy and Bryan bring the kids over. My dad loves little kids so much. It's adorable, watching him play with Hallie. The way he teases her a little and then puts her up on his shoulders, and asks her questions like she's a grown-up. I totally remember all of that from when I was a kid. That's the great thing about being the oldest. You get that one-on-one stuff. Not like I remember every minute of it, but it puts this special thing between you and your parents--you're the only one who knows what your parents are like without other kids. The only one! Think about that.

Growing up sucks, you know? Didn't somebody write a song about that? I just mean that sometimes, I used to get sort of...really...jealous. Of Hallie. Watching her and my dad. Like I'd been replaced. Which is crazy. Isn't it crazy, to be jealous of a three-year-old? Especially one as bad-behaved as her... I guess I shouldn't say that, except it's true. Not like it matters that much, now. But you know, she was really kind of a brat. I'd have these crazy thoughts, watching my dad play with her, thinking, "I was way better behaved at her age."

And then Tracy talking with my mom, and my mom listening to her go on and on about stupid problems. The guy who painted her house left a footprint on her back porch! The internet connection is so slow at her house! She hasn't found a decent hairstylist in this whole town! I mean, okay, problems--if they're stupid or not, friends listen to them. Right? Fine. But when I tell my mom about real problems--can't pay my rent type of problems, what's my direction in life problems--she just glazes over and goes "Mmm," and moves on to another topic of conversation with someone else. So...I guess I'm just explaining why I wasn't thrilled that the Allans were coming over, that night, on top of everything else.

I was really hoping to get out of the driveway before they showed up. But they had just pulled up, I guess. They were coming toward the house. It was dark. I was a little bit panicked, I didn't want to make a scene, but I also didn't want to be forced to come back inside and act like everything was fine. My mom doesn't like to show inside problems to anyone outside. I didn't want to have to sit there and act like they were part of my family. I mean, if they want to act like that, and my family wants to act like that, that's fine. Their business. But I'm not close with them, and I don't feel like pretending it's a big family togetherness night when I hardly know the Allans and I'm pissed at my own family for making me feel like an outsider.

So I was in a hurry. I just didn't see anything. I kind of went blind, I was in such a hurry to get in my car and get out of there, before they knew that I knew they'd arrived. And...yeah. I felt a bump. I didn't hear anything. I'm sure somebody must have screamed or shouted, but I didn't hear anything. My music volume was turned way up, and it came on when I turned on the car, and I was in such a hurry. I started backing out, pretty fast, and I felt this bump...

God...I need something. Can you...something...

So, yeah. That's everything.

What happens now?

Is my family out there? Shit. Do I have to go out there now? I just don't know what to say to them. What they're going to think... See, that's the thing. I know what they're going to think. You know? No, I'm fine. Please, don't bother. I'm fine. I'm not hysterical. It's just funny. I mean, it's fantastically perfect. Can you imagine what they're going to say? I mean, what are you thinking, now that I've told you? And her parents--Tracy, and Bryan--what everyone's going to think. It's not about whether I did it on purpose or or not. I wish to God it was that black and white. Then you could say, "Yes, I did it," or "No, I didn't." It's the whole thing. Everything I told you goes into it. That I would never have intentionally backed my car over their daughter? Sure. But that I might have wanted to? I don't know. They don't know. They don't know, I don't know. I never would have wanted to kill anybody. But now that I have? Do you think they're going to comfort me when I walk out there? It's just another piece in the puzzle. If I had died, it would be just the same. I'm the ongoing mistake.

No, I'm fine now. Thanks for getting the bag...sorry about... Yeah, I'm really fine. It's kind of weird, I don't know. Maybe it's normal. Just that I don't feel anything. I feel, like, nothing. But in a good way? I don't know. I guess, it just feels so much better, now that I've told you everything.

conditions were perfect

Here is what is odd: I did not trust him at first, though I am a trusting person. His hair was so long and there was a hole in his shirt, on the inside of his arm, just above his elbow, a place where it seems unlikely to come by a hole honestly. He helped me off the street and we sat down on a park bench together, and he held my hand and patted my shoulder while I breathed heavily. I was not hurt, only frightened.

Though he smiled and murmured comfortingly, I did not trust him. Still less did I want him to accompany me back to the hostel. Least of all, though, did I want him to leave me. Being alone when you cannot breathe is a terrible thing. I've lived through it and hope never to live through it again.

We got into the taxi and he said, "Where is it, dear?"

I still could not quite speak. "It's all right," he said. "Do you know what street it's on?"

"Bloomsbury," I said. My voice was quite hoarse. I wondered if I might begin to sound like Lauren Bacall.

The driver took to the road and Marcus said, "Never mind, we'll find it." He went on patting my shoulder. "Relax."

When I could speak again, I was disappointed to find my voice had returned in its natural form. "I can't thank you enough."

"Yes, yes," he smiled. "You'll be all right. Would you like to tell me your name?"

The modern city is a thing of wonder, especially considering its indeterminate origins. The conventional view holds that changes in climate, along with initial forays into the domestication of plant life, converted the egalitarian gangs of hunter-gatherers to the advantages an agrarian society. Naturally this society made strides forward in production and storage technology, which in turn led to greater population density. Just as people living in proximity tend to breed more people, so do a few commingled ideas tend to proliferate, and in their wake come economic activity, closely followed by politics, culture, religion and arts. Confronted with others, people find themselves, and are instinctively bonded more strongly than ever to the city, not only as a place of provision and refuge, but as a means of personal identity. When the early cities are threatened by famine, disease and the onslaught of marauders, the fledgling citizens evince the virtue known in Roman times as civitas, the spirit of loyalty to a collective entity that transcends their own personal good by making it possible in the first place.

From these early days of embattled civilization, there have been sacrifices that were deemed worthy in exchange for communal security. A lone farmer never had to worry that his sterling plot of land might be corrupted by an unhygienic neighbor's vermin infestation. His view of the bordering mountains was safe from obstruction by the enterprise of a deluxe-model hut. Neither he nor his herds lost their position at the local watering hole to the neighborhood's gentrification or decay. But these nuisances he considered a fair trade for the exchange of goods, services, and ideas, the solace of companionship, and the electricity of possibility that result from life lived cheek-by-jowl. The proponents of metropolis so far outweighed the advocates for isolated independence as to expand not only their real property but also their sphere of ideological influence, with the result that most of us today consider city life to be an unequivocal good, and that its liabilities to be hot, expensive and overcrowded are considerations not worthy to be compared to its advantages. It never occurred to me to question the traffic jam we encountered, Marcus and I in the taxi--it was as natural a part of life as trees with cages around them and noise from the main street on Friday nights--and I was accustomed to finding some way to tune out its annoyance. Thus, as I might never have done if history had not dovetailed to create such opportune circumstances, I told Marcus my name.

"Beth Maysle," I said.

"Lovely!" he said, and I smiled, because we all like to be told that something about us is lovely.

Marcus was a person of very agreeable looks--I expect that he still is. His eyes were a sharp grey-blue color, a very pure color, like steel used in an art sculpture. His hair was pushed up on either side into one of those sort of ridges that men were wearing at the time down the middle of their heads, sharpened to a point that extruded over their foreheads. His clothes were, as I said before, in lamentable condition, but the unexpected brilliance of his smile allayed the unease that his clothes occasioned. I suppose that was the reason for my instinctive distrust of him. The crinkle of a man's eyelids and the boyish curl of his mouth ought not to excuse him so thoroughly from commonplace presentability. Also, he was quite tall, probably six feet and a half, and I expect that, unless he has sustained severe injuries or undergone drastic amputation, he still is.

The lady at the front desk looked desperately relieved to see us. My sister had apprised her of my several conditions, and was paying her to keep an eye on me. I was not supposed to know about it but the blood rushing back to her face when we walked in settled any doubts I might have entertained.

She trilled, "Ooh, hellooo, Miss Mayfield!" and looked askance at Marcus. I took off my coat and dropped it on her desk as we passed, saying, "Send this out with the cleaning, would you?" We went to the common room at the back of the hostel and I offered to fix Marcus a drink. A number of unwashed students were gathered around the pool table; I began to wonder whether Marcus would rather be among their number than sipping poor vodka with me.

"Are you staying here?" he asked.

"Only temporarily," I said. "My apartment is being sprayed."

"Oh," he said. "Where do you live?"

"Vicker Street," I answered. "And you?"

"Oh, I live just on the other side of the street where you..."

"Oh, dear!" I said. "I've taken you terribly out of your way."

"No, it's all right," he assured me, putting his hand on my arm. I suppose he was afraid I might fling myself out the window or something.

"Look," I said to him, setting down my glass. "I want you to understand. It was only an accident..."

"Of course," he murmured.

"No! I hadn't eaten anything all day and I've been worrying about things--I'm just a nervous person. But the point is, I just fell down. I wasn't trying to..."

He waited for me to finish, and when I didn't, he patted my arm again.

"It doesn't matter," he smiled. "Really. I'm just glad you're all right. But it's a shame you have to stay here while your apartment is getting sprayed." He looked at the unwashed students as he said this, and the grimace on his face filled my heart with song.

"Well," I said cheerfully, "it really isn't that bad. And it's only for a little while. I just try to stay out as often as possible."

"What will you do later today?" he asked.

"Hm. Maybe I'll go to the zoo."

I waited for him to offer a comment on this proposal, and when he didn't, I shifted in my seat. Then I cried out in pain.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know," I said. "I think I've cut myself."

Marcus took hold of my ankle and lifted it up gently, and slowly he drew up the hem of my skirt until my knee showed. There was a small gash there--it had reopened and was bleeding again.

"Damn!" he said. "Do you suppose there's any disinfectant around?"

One of the unwashed shrieked, "Holy crap! She's bleeding!", and bounded over to where we sat. She bent over beside Marcus.

"Can you find us some disinfectant?" he asked her brusquely, and she bounded away with the upward and forward motion of a springbok.

"Wouldn't you rather stay in a hotel while your apartment is sprayed?" he asked me.

"I never stayed in a hostel before," I told him--the first truthful thing I had told him since we left the taxi.

"Really? Not even during a gap year or something?"

"A gap year?"

"A wild excursion abroad with the girls?" The disinfectant arrived and he kept talking as he applied it, hoping, I suppose, to distract me. "A last romantic fling across the continent before settling down? Surely there must have been something of the kind in your past."

"Mmm," I murmured, "once."

He looked up and smiled brilliantly, again, saying nothing.

He straightened up, and looked about him. Then he tore the lower border off the back of his shirt and brandished it before me. "It's clean," he said, "and it will do you until you can get a proper bandage."

It seemed he thought it was time for me to walk him out, so I began to.

"How did you know?" I asked him.

"Know?"

"About the past," I said.

"Your wild romantic getaway past, you mean? It's obvious." He tucked my arm into the crook of his elbow. "You don't bear any trace of the frustrated woman who put off the opportunity for free expression."

I found myself laughing--and you ought to understand that I had not laughed for a very long time prior to that. I was caught by surprise.

"Well," he said, "thank you for a lovely afternoon."

We stepped into the threshold of the hostel. The sky was evening grey and purple, and the street was quiet in the interim lull between the market hour and the nightlife hour.

"What will you do now?" I asked Marcus.

"I work nights," he said.

"Really? Doing what?"

"I tend bar at the Rose and Crown," he said.

"Every night?"

"Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays," he said.

"Do you like it?"

He gave a short laugh. "It's a job," he said. "I don't mind it." He lifted my hand up and kissed it like a courtier.

"Thank you," I said.

"Take care of your knee," he said. "I hope for your sake that the apartment spraying is taken care of soon."

"A day or two, they told me," I said.

"Good," he said. As he left, I saw something leave the third-floor window of the building adjacent to the hostel. It looked as though it might be the head of a flower borne out by the wind. A great mass of the unwashed students eked out from behind me, then, and trundled chattering away into the dusk. When I looked again for Marcus, he was just disappearing around the corner.

The hostel foyer was quite empty by that time. The lady at the front desk was painting her fingernails, and looked up at me when I came in.

"Hello!" she said, her face and her voice as bright as metal. "All right?"

"Has my sister called?" I asked.

In answer, she lifted up the telephone receiver and offered it to me.

"Beth!" said Molly. "How are you? Mrs. Foster told me you came in with a younger man."

"Did she?" I sighed. "Younger than what?"

"When are you going home?" asked Molly.

"I don't know yet," I told her. "Maybe I'll go tomorrow."

"I think you should," said Molly.

I was silent until she spoke again.

"Who was the boy?"

"He wasn't a boy."

"The young man, then."

"The younger man," I said testily. "Didn't Mrs. Foster tell you?" I sighed. "I fell down in the street and he helped me get home."

"You fell down in the street!" I heard her breathing heavily. "Oh my God!"

I handed the receiver back to Mrs. Foster and walked down the empty hall to my room.

a love of the sport

My name is Pierre. I'm ten years old, and I'm going to be greater than Muhammad Ali. Watch.

I beat up a twelve-year-old when I was nine, after I'd only been training for four months. Now I bet I could probably beat up a fourteen-year-old. I haven't even hit my growth spurt yet.

My stepfather, Ted, works at the Italian restaurant. I hate it when he gets home early.

My mom drinks a lot.

I'm going to be greater than Muhammad Ali. I'm going to fight in Vegas and Europe and win all the cups and money. I'm going to have a house in California.

I'm in the fifth grade.

I'm not a stupid fighter, like Ernie Toledo is. He's punch drunk. That happens when you get hit too many times. I'll never have that problem because I won't let them hit me more than a couple times, so I never will be punch drunk, not even when I'm old and close to retirement.

And when I retire, I'll live in California and have some dogs and a big car.

My teacher is Mrs. Reilly. She's pretty. She's really pretty, I guess. She has yellow hair and earrings, kind of long ones with pearls, and she has green eyes. If I was older, like sixteen or eighteen, I'd fight her husband.

But I guess that wouldn't probably be any good, because she's not the type. Probably I'd have to save her husband in a fight outside a bar or something. And then she'd be like that lady in the movie with the priest. Then we'd have to wait for her husband to get sick, or have an accident or something, and die.

Mrs. Reilly gave me this old book. I wouldn't have read it, but I did because she gave it to me. And anyway, I didn't read it until the school year was almost over. It was the Easter holidays, so I read it because the gym was closed for a couple of days, because Leo goes to church and thinks everybody should go like he does.

I kind of liked the book. I don't read books almost ever, so I don't know if it was really any good, and I didn't really like it, but I guess I kind of thought about it for a while, since I didn't have much to do and I couldn't go to the gym and I wanted to stay out of Ted's way.

Mrs. Reilly asked me what I thought about the book, when I gave it back to her. I didn't know what to say, so I made something up to tell her. Her eyes got real big and she said I should come with her to the teachers' lounge after school. Aw shit, is what I thought.

When we went to the teachers' lounge, she sat down with me next to this old fellow who had glasses and a bald head and probably couldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight, and she said I should tell this fellow what I thought about the book she gave me to read. So I told him, just the same as what I told her, and while I told him I thought, go ahead and expel me or whatever you want, old man, I'll just go to the gym some more, and I thought some things about Mrs. Reilly that I guess I shouldn't have.

I shouldn't have thought that way at all, because the old man's eyes got really big, like Mrs. Reilly's had, and he looked at her and he looked at me and I was thinking, aw shit, and then he asked if I read any other books. I didn't say for a minute, then I said, no, because if they were going to expel me anyway, why should I lie? And then he and Mrs. Reilly excused themselves for a minute and talked, and then they came back and that was when the real mess started. Because they talked to me for about an hour, and I was thinking how I was going to be late for work, and the end of it all was that they made me a proposition that I should read some more books they would pick out, and I should talk with them about the books after I read them, and they would get me places in the end that I never could go otherwise; they would see to it, the old fellow and Mrs. Reilly.

I just looked at them and then I saw the clock and saw I was late for work, so I said yes to their proposition and I ran out of there. I didn't finish my route until late, and by the time I got home, Ted and my mom had eaten all the spaghetti he brought home from the restaurant, and there wasn't any left for me.



When I went to the gym the next week, there was a kid I didn't know. He was sitting on the bench by the window, where the mothers or the girlfriends usually sit when they're waiting for a fighter to finish his workout. This kid had a hat in his hands that he was practically tearing apart. He was even working at it with his teeth.

Leo came over to me and he pushed me in the head, and he said, "Hey, Peerless. What's the good word? Been keepin' in shape?" He puffed out his stomach so I could punch it. I put up my dukes and I threw a left jab, to show him my left was as good as my right cross. He said, "That's good, that's good. Not too much, now. Make me lose my lunch. Did you have a good Easter? Did you go to church?"

I went with my mom. We sat in the back and she fell asleep, and I could hardly understand anything the priest said.

"Yes, Leo," I said.

"That's fine. Did you have a good Easter supper?"

"Sure." We ate cold manicotti and green beans. I hate both of those, especially manicotti.

"Me, I ate enough to qualify as a heavyweight." Leo rubbed his belly. "Got to work off a few pounds--so what do you say, Peerless? Ready to give the old man what for?"

"Sure!" I threw a combination in the air while Leo went to get the pads. I danced in a circle, keeping the line straight all the way up my backbone to the top of my neck, like you're supposed to, and I kept my hands up. I saw the kid again. He saw me and jammed the hat onto his head, where it covered his eyes.

Leo came back with the pads. "Whatcha say? Whatcha say? Keep those feet dancin', Peerless! Keep those butterfly wings movin'!"

I worked the bag as he walked slowly backward toward the floor mats. After we worked the pads for a while, we went to the heavy bag and he called out combinations for me. Then we worked the speed bag for a while. In between, when I wiped sweat out of my eyes, I saw the kid. He wasn't watching me; he was watching the two guys fighting in the ring.

"Say, Peerless," said Leo. We were on the side of the ring, too, watching the guys, the side farthest from the kid. "See that little squirt over there?"

"What squirt, Leo?"

"What'sa matter, you blind? The pipsqueak warmin' the bench, right across from us, there." He jerked his chin toward the kid.

"Sure, Leo. I see him."

"Does he look familiar to you? You know him or something?"

"No. I never saw him before."

"You never saw him?"

"No."

"You don't go to school with him or nothin'?"

"Jesus, Leo, he looks two, three years younger than me."

"Hey." Leo cuffed my chin, but it didn't hurt. "What's that you said? Kid, don't you profane God's name in my gym, hear me?"

I rubbed my chin to show him I was sorry. "I just mean I wouldn't know him even I did go to school with him. He's younger than me. He's not in my grade."

"Hm." Leo rubbed his own chin.

"What's he doing here?"

"Hell if I know. He's been here since I got in this morning."

"You don't know him, either?"

"I never saw him." Leo shrugged. "Maybe you can go see what he's up to."

I looked at Leo.

"Sure." He took me by the shoulders, turned me around and gave me a push toward the wall. "While the boys finish up in the ring. Go see what he wants, go on."

I didn't like having to go talk to the kid. He was squirming around on the bench. His eyes were fascinated by the fighters in the ring. I stood right by him and he didn't see me until I said to him,

"Hey."

He looked at me for a second. Then he looked back at the fighters.

"Hey!" I said again.

He looked at me again.

"What's your name?" I said.

"Stewart Everett Thomson," he told me. He looked at me for a minute, but I didn't tell him my name. Then he looked away.

"You been here all day," I told him.

He kept staring at the guys in the ring. His mouth hung open a little. He nodded.

"What do you think you're doing here?" I asked him, and I stepped to him. But he didn't look at me, he kept looking at the fighters.

"Hey, Stewart. Kid. I'm talking to you." I stepped right up to him and I poked him on the shoulder, like Leo says to do when you want to make a point without actually picking a fight--like you're hitting a typewriter key. Up and down.

The kid, Stewart, still didn't look at me. He scratched his shoulder like a fly had landed on it.

"Stewpot!" I poked him again, harder. This time he did look at me. "I'm talkin' to you, Stewpot. Don't you hear me talkin' to you?" I was starting to feel really good. I felt like I was Leo, in a bar, where somebody had said something about my mother or my sister, if I had one. Leo told me that one time, in a bar, some guy said something about his sister. They had to take the guy to the hospital, because Leo put a brick through the hood of the guy's car after he'd finished the guy off. And it all started just like this, like hitting a typewriter key.

The kid looked at me. His eyes got real big.

"I said," I said, moving right up into his face, "What are you doing in my gym, kid?"

And you know what he did? He said,

"My mother's gorgeous and my father's Jewish!"

He practically shouted it, almost before I had said my whole sentence to him. A vein popped out in his neck.

I jumped back. I turned around and saw the guys in the ring had stopped fighting and were looking at us. One of them was chuckling, scratching his face. I heard him ask the other guy, "What did that kid say?"

I looked at the kid. He was slumped over on the bench, and playing with that hat again. His head was down, but he was looking up at me from under his eyebrows. I backed up from him.

Leo was in the ring, coaching the fighters. One of them looked over and pointed at us. Leo looked down.

"Say, kid," he said, "you box?"

The kid's nose wiggled like a rabbit's.

"Yeah, you. You know how to fight? Huh? A little one-two?" Leo feinted in the air, showing the kid what he meant.

"Sure," said the kid. He stood up.

"Fine. Fine." Leo told me to come with his finger. "The Peerless here can work you out a little, while I work with the guys."

I jumped up between the ropes. "Leo!" I whispered. "What the hell?"

"Ssh!" Leo swatted my nose.

"Why you gotta make me fight with that kid? He couldn't beat up a wet noodle."

"Say, what's your problem? Did you find out what he's here for?"

"No. I was asking him but he wouldn't tell me, and then he shouted some crazy thing about his mother and his father..."

"Yeah? What'd he say?"

"That his father's Jewish."

"Hm. And you don't know him from school, you say?"

The kid had taken off his shoes and his coat, and clumsily got himself up into the ring. Leo hopped back down and found some gloves his size. They looked like they were made for a baby, or a midget. And he got him a mask.

"Okay, kid. What'd you say your name was?"

"Stewpot," I told Leo. I was angry.

"Stewpot. Stewpot. That's fine. Okay, Stewpot. Let's have him, huh? Aim for the head and the chest. Head and the chest. That's fine. That's fine." Leo got back down out of the ring. Stewpot was windmilling his arms like a wind-up toy.

"No," I said, while he swiped at me. "No. No. You're not throwing a fucking baseball, lame brain. It's like this." I threw a cross and tapped him on the chest. He looked down at his chest, then he looked up at me.

I was this close to just clobbering him. "I said, it's like this."

The side of his glove connected with my cheek, like my face was carved out for the occasion. I saw stars for the first time ever in the ring. I fell against the ropes and down on the ground. I couldn't get up, not because I was hurt so bad or anything, but because Stewpot had completely taken it out of me. I stared at the mat, not wanting to look up again. I thought of Leo and the other fighters looking down at me, and I wished I could sink into the floor.

When I did finally look up, Stewpot was standing with his gloves clutched in front of him, like a little girl with hands folded.

"What the hell, Stewpot?" I spat at him. I started to get up. "What the..."

"Why should I care about posterity?" he shouted. "What's posterity ever done for me?"

I stopped, pressing my hand against my head because it was starting to throb. His arms and legs were like twigs. I couldn't think where he got the force to hit me like that.

"Are you crazy or something?" I shouted at him. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

Leo came back over. "Say! Say! What's the matter here? Peer, what are you shouting for? What happened here?"

"Leo, I'm not playing with this crazy..." Leo won't let anybody swear in his gym, so I had to stop and think of what to say instead. "...this crazy schmuck and let him sucker-punch me and then babble at me. He's stark raving crazy, Leo! Listen to him! Say that stuff again, Stewpot."

Stewpot stared at us both, clutching his little baby boxing gloves together.

"Stewpot." Leo squatted down on the mat. "You got something to say? To me or to Peerless here?"

Stewpot looked at me, then back at Leo, then at the ceiling. Then he said,

"Well, Art is Art, isn't it?"

I folded my arms. Leo looked at him, just struck dumb. Stewpot kept talking.

"Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know."

Leo stood up slowly. He stared at the kid. Then he let out a yell. A laugh.

"Ha!" he bellowed. "Ha ha!" He pointed at Stewpot to the other guys, who were watching us all in the ring. "You fellows hear that? Did you hear what he said? You know what that is? That's Groucho Marx! Groucho Marx! Comin' out of this kid's mouth!" He slapped Stewpot on the back. "That's unbelievable. Unbelievable! Stewpot, kid, how old are you?"

I didn't hear because I was getting down from the ring, and I started toward the locker room. I took my gloves off and I threw them hard, one after the other, into the bin. I stripped the tape off my wrists and threw it in the corner. I didn't care if I left a mess. I put my street clothes on and I wet down my hair at the sink. I picked up my school bag and my sack with my gym clothes in it.

I was halfway to the door when Leo stopped raving to the other guys, who were crowded around Stewpot by now, too. Leo shouted at me, "Hey, Peerless! Where do you think you're going?"

"I got to work," I shouted back at him. "To hell with you," I said, under my breath.

"What? Is it already five?" Leo looked at his wrist for a watch, like he always does, though he hasn't got a watch and never has had one. Then he looked at the clock on the wall over the list of gym rules.

"Aw, shucks, Peerless. That's too bad." He jogged over to me. "Say, take this kid with you, huh? See if you can find out about him. Where does he come from? What's his game? See? It'll be a scream."

I hoisted my bag up on my shoulder. Leo stood back, and he put his hands on my shoulders.

"You're gettin' tall, Peerless. Did you know that? You are. Do me a favor and eat some extra dinner tonight, huh? We gotta make sure your bulk keeps up with your height." He slapped his hands on my shoulders. "Good workout today, kid."

I went out the door and I didn't look back. But after I'd gone a block, I could tell that Stewpot was following behind me. I could hear his little puffs of breath and his skipping footsteps. When I was a block away from the newspaper office, I turned around.

"Here's where you get off," I said.

He blinked at me. His stupid hat was covering his eyes again.

"I have a job," I said. "Don't you have somewhere else to go? Don't you have anything to do besides follow me around and ruin my life? Huh? Go home. Go take a long walk off a short pier."

He laughed. I couldn't believe it. He doubled over like someone had punched him and he cackled like an old woman, clutching his gut. He pointed at me.

"That's good!" he said. "I never heard that before."

I turned around and walked into the warehouse. The other guys, Joe and Eddie and Gus, were already there, folding up the late edition. Eddie whacked me on the shin with a rolled-up paper when I came in. I got my stack and dropped to my knees, down with the rest of them.

"You're late," said Eddie. "What happened? Bus hit you?"

"No. I was at the gym."

"Aw, right. The Greatest."

Eddie used to push me around, since I'm a little smaller than the rest of them. Leo says you never hit a guy unless a guy hits you first or insults your women relatives. But one time, Eddie stuck out his chin and said he could see I was mad, so why didn't I go ahead and pop him one? I looked at the other guys and they were saying, "Give it to him!", so I gave it to him, and he fell on the ground, and boy was he surprised. I told Leo about it and he said I was born lucky. He said a lot of guys ask for it but he's never seen a guy actually ask for it. Eddie doesn't ever push me around now, not even as a joke.

"Say," said Joe. "Who's that kid?"

"That's nobody," I said.

"What's he watching us for?" Eddie made a spitwad and chucked it at him. "Scram, son!"

Stewpot tried to dodge. He took off his hat and crushed it between his hands.

"He a friend of yours or something, Peerless?" Eddie asked me.

"No. I don't know him."

Mr. Berle came to where we were working and said he wanted to talk with me. The other guys kept their eyes down. I followed Mr. Berle to the back office.

"Pierre," said Mr. Berle, "something very serious has happened."

I looked at him. I waited for him to tell me.

"You know what the minimum age requirement is to work this job?"

"I think it's twelve, Mr. Berle," I said.

His eyebrows bunched around his nose. "That's correct," he said. He took a few steps closer. "Pierre," he said, "it's come to our attention that you are not twelve. That, in fact, you are ten years old."

I stared at him. "Who told you that?"

"One of our subscribers suggested it," said Mr. Berle. He sat down in his chair. "In fact, she brought us evidence."

"Evidence?"

"A school record," said Mr. Berle. Then he bit his lip, and stood up again. "Pierre, I cannot let this stand."

"Am I fired?" I whispered.

"Well." Mr. Berle opened his hands. "Yes."

It felt like someone had broken my neck. I said, "Jesus, don't fire me, Mr. Berle! I'm turning eleven in a couple of days and that's only a year off. I'm just as good at my job as the guys who are twelve, sir!"

"I know. I know that, Pierre. But the office could get in serious trouble if it were found out..." He looked at me as if he were making up his mind. "You can finish out the week, until we find someone to replace you." He smiled. "It won't be easy to find. I'm sorry, Pierre."

He stepped to the door and patted my shoulder. He walked out, leaving the door open. I stood there for a minute. I looked at his desk, covered with papers and wooden trays and pencils and who knows what all. I thought of what it would feel like to sweep it all over with my arms. It would make a big crash and things would fly everywhere. I could bust the leg off the chair and beat all his hanging pictures to the floor, and then throw the chair through the window.

I walked back out to the warehouse floor. Eddie was holding Stewpot in a headlock. Joe and Gus were laughing.

"What the hell's he saying?" Eddie was laughing, but his face was screwed up like he was pissed off.

"Girls are like pianos!" Stewpot squeaked. "When they're not upright, they're grand!"

The other guys screamed with laughter.

Eddie whirled Stewpot around, holding him by the shoulders. "Are you crazy or what?"

"No," said Stewpot. He was looking at Eddie as if they were having a heart-to-heart talk. "I'm not."

I stood back and watched them.

"Then what's the matter with you?" said Eddie. He slapped Stewpot on one side of his face, then he slapped him on the other. "What's the matter with you? If I ask you a question you give a straight answer, son. That's how it is, see? See?" He slapped Stewpot again.

"Ow!" Stewpot yelped. "Smartness runs in my family!"

Eddie stopped slapping and looked down at him, like he was a little lap dog that might bite. "Yeah? And?"

"Sure." Stewpot rubbed his face. "When I went to school, I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years."

Eddie grabbed his shirt front. I walked up and I pulled Stewpot away from him. I reached out and pushed Eddie so hard he hit the back wall.

"Just leave him alone," I said.

Eddie stared at me. "This kid," he shrieked, "is nuts!"

"Yeah?" I said. "Not half as nuts as I am, Eddie. You want to find out how nuts I am?"

I stepped at him and Eddie jumped. I picked up my sack of papers. I pulled Stewpot's crushed hat out of his hands and set it on his head.

"Don't do that to your hat, Stewpot," I said.

Stewpot pointed a finger at Eddie and bellowed, "Go, and never darken my towels again!"

I pushed past him and hit the road. I wasn't even surprised when he tagged along after me.

He was still following me when we got to Waverly Lane, the start of my route. I chucked the papers onto the porches without stopping to look first.

"Gee," said Stewpot. "You're a good throw."

I didn't say anything.

"What did that boss want with you?" Stewpot asked me.

"He wanted to give me a medal," I said.

"Really?" said Stewpot. "Where is it?"

"In my pocket."

"Can I see it?"

"No."

"Is it gold or what?"

I stopped walking and I faced Stewpot. "Why don't you get lost?" I said.

"I just want to know," said Stewpot.

"I should have let Eddie beat you up," I said.

Stewpot's head fell to the side, like he did back at the gym. He was smiling. "You sure showed him," he said.

I kept walking, and throwing the papers. I came to the corner of Glen and Maple. Mrs. Reilly lived on that corner. She wasn't a subscriber to the late edition, but I knew where she lived because I took the regular route during the summer, when one of the other guys went on vacation. I stood there, looking at her house for a minute.

"Where are we?" Stewpot asked.

I decided to go up and ring the bell. I heard somebody inside and then she came to the door. She was wearing a different dress from what she had on at school. She was wearing a yellow-flowered apron. The pearl earrings were like little white butterflies, dancing around her ears.

"Why, Pierre!" She opened the screen door. "What a surprise! How are you?" She looked at Stewpot. "Hello, there. What's your name?"

"Stewart Everett Thomson," he said.

"Pleased to meet you, Stewart Thomson," she said.

"Mrs. Reilly," I said.

"Yes?" she answered.

"Ma'am," I said.

She looked at me. Then she looked at my sack with the words "Evening Herald" printed on it.

"Mrs. Reilly," I said.

"Pierre." She squatted down. "You shouldn't be doing a job like this, at your age. It's against the law."

"But ma'am," I said. My throat was all clogged up.

"And that's not even the point." She sighed. "I don't mean to make it sound so frightening. But Pierre. You have so much intelligence and potential. You should be at home reading, and doing creative things, things with your mind. Your time is limited, you know. I know it must seem like a long time to be a child, but it's really only a few years. That's not very much time to prepare for the demands that will be made of you when you're a young man. We want you to be ready to work and succeed." She fingered the sack. "And this--this isn't a bad thing, but it's standing in the way of your preparation."

I looked at the ground. She stood up. I could tell she was waiting for me, for something.

"Pierre," she said. "Is there anything you want to say?"

We seemed to stand there for a long time. I wasn't going to say anything just because she thought I ought to. I wanted her to feel uneasy, like she might fall down and somebody might wipe the floor with her, like I felt in Mr. Berle's office.

Then I heard Stewpot whisper something. He startled Mrs. Reilly and me. I had forgotten he was there. We both looked at him.

"What did you say, Stewart?" Mrs. Reilly asked.

Stewpot looked at me. Then he looked at her.

"I love to go to Washington," he said, "if only to be near my money."

I went blind for a second. I pulled the newspaper sack over my head and threw it down on her porch. I turned around and thudded down the steps. Mrs. Reilly was calling after me, but I didn't look back. I didn't see anything at all until I was on my street, almost in front of my house. Then I realized Stewpot was running after me, yelling, "Peerless! Peerless! Wait!" He was like a stray dog, only worse. I stopped and waited until he caught up with me. I was breathing so hard that I almost choked.

"What do you want?" I shouted at him. "What is your goddamn problem? Shit!" I pushed my arm across my eyes, because they were itching. "Do you know what's going to happen now? I'm going to go upstairs and there's going to be nothing left to eat. And maybe, if I'm real lucky, Ted will tell me all the things that are wrong with me, and he'll tell me all about how he got thrown out of college, and how his father beat him up, so I should be grateful. And then, if I try to read my books, he'll take them and say he's going to read them himself, and he'll spill wine all over them. What then, huh? Are you going to come to my classroom and tell jokes to Mrs. Reilly? Maybe you could just follow me around my entire life and tell jokes so people don't ever pay attention to me anymore. That would be great, Stewpot. I could just sit there and you could tell jokes, like we're on goddamn Shari Lewis!" I turned around toward my house. Then I turned back to him, and I pushed him into the street.

"Get out of here, Stewpot!" I bellowed at him. "Drop dead!"

He piped up, the vein popping out of his neck,

"I don't believe in dying!" He bellowed back at me, bent over at the waist, his fists clenched at his sides. "It's been done! I'm working on a new exit! Besides, I can't die now! I'm booked!"

I jumped into the street and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

"What the hell does that mean?" I screamed. I shook him. "What are you talking about? Do you even know? Damn it, Stewpot, I bet you don't! You just repeat all this comic stuff like a trained monkey. Why don't you say something you know?"

He beat at my face with his hands flapping like butterflies.

"You don't know anything!" I screamed at him. But my voice sounded like it was going to cry, so I toned it down. "I bet you live in a regular house, with a real dad and a regular mom. You probably get dessert every night. You probably go to ball games, don't you? And I bet"--goddamn, I thought, I'm already crying--"when you go to school, nobody tells you to read some big stupid book and tell them all the answers so they can help you out. You know why? Because you're normal." I threw him back from me. "But guess what, Stewpot? You're not normal. You're a freak. You're the real freak. You're the one who needs help, not me. You need a doctor to screw your head on straight. Look at you, with that stupid hat. What do you think is going to happen to you? You're just going to keep on with that old comic stuff your whole life? People are just going to laugh at you, all the time..."

I slowed down, and stopped talking, because suddenly I realized that he wasn't crying or running away from me, or doing much of anything. He was just standing there in the street in front of me, and listening. He was nodding. He was listening to everything I shouted at him, like we were having a heart-to-heart in somebody's living room.

I heard a dog bark. I looked behind me, down the street. Mr. Vincenzo was walking his bulldog back from the park. I wondered if anybody else had been around while I was shouting. I looked up at the house. I was wondering if Ted or my mom was inside, listening to us.

I looked back at Stewpot. He was holding his hat in his hands and pulling at it again.

"You like it when people laugh at you, or something?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Sure."

"Sure," I said. I looked around the street again, and I took a deep breath. I put my hands in my pockets.

"I like it," he said. "I got five brothers. They don't ever look at me or pay attention..."

I held up my hand. "No more jokes, Stewpot. All right?"

He sighed and stamped his foot. "This isn't a joke!" he said.

We looked at each other for a minute.

"Five brothers," I said. "That's a lot."

"Yeah." He rolled his eyes. "They're all older. Two of them are married."

"Wow."

"They were watching the fight on TV last night," said Stewpot. "I was already in bed but I could hear 'em. They were making a lot of noise. I was sitting on the stairs and I heard them."

"So you came down to the gym today?"

He shrugged. "I wanted to see what they were so excited about."

"Yeah? And what did you think?"

"It was okay."

"Just okay?" I put my hand up to my face. "Well, you clocked me okay, you know."

"Yeah?"

"I mean, you sucker-punched me. That's not really fair fighting."

"But I knocked you down."

He was grinning. Leo says that you have to look out for the guys you fight for two reasons. If you hate them, you'll make them your enemy worse than before. But if you just don't like them much, after you fight them, sometimes they become your best friends.

I looked at Stewpot. "Yeah. You sure did knock me down."

We stood there for a minute. Mr. Vincenzo walked past us with his bulldog. We all said hello. Stewpot looked a little nervous of the dog.

"So. You live around here, Stewpot?"

Stewpot looked around him like he'd just dropped out of the sky.

"I don't think so," he said.

"Where do you live?" I asked.

"Thirty-eight forty Chestnut Street."

"What? Where's that?"

"I don't know. It's close to the school."

"What school?"

"Jacob Klein Academy."

"What?" I pushed my hair back, off my forehead. "Where's that?"

"It's where I go to school."

I sighed. I looked up at my house. I couldn't tell if anybody was home or not. My mom could have been out with her friends. Ted could have been at his sister's house. They could both have been inside, watching television. I looked at Stewpot.

"I guess you better come inside," I said. "You know your phone number? You can use our phone."

We went up the steps.

"Can I stay for dinner?" he asked me.

I stared at him. "Stewpot, you've got a hell of a nerve."

He looked at me, waiting.

"Hell," I said. "Sure. Stay for dinner. That would be a scream." I bent down and found the key under the mat.

a pause in the getaway

Forsaken by the ideal man,
A heartbreak does the best it can.

Whatever it can,
It doesn't have Originality
(The thing foremost upon its mind).
If it does, then it was not that kind
Of heartbreak. Or that kind of man.

So a voyage
Doesn't come as a cliché.
The wound just itches
Till it gets away.
Away--to the desert,
to a hideout in a tree,
to a hole in the ground.
In my case, to Paris.

I never made a claim
to Originality.

Black and white, and bridges,
Metaphors fit to slap me in the face.
I used to find reminders in every unlikely place.
Now they find me--the lovers
Making public love
In every shaded,
in every sun-drenched,
In every unsecluded public space.

Paris will drive you on, and on,
Walking until you faint, and cry, and heave
With empty stomach and lonely-heart gangrene,

Will push you through a hideous, ignoring
Crowd of ugly summerers
Who talk like you,
Like you would, if you had someone
To talk to.

At the hour of communal accord
The street will suddenly
Evaporate, to leave you
Stranded in the blinding, blazing heat,
Alone, and thirsty--the unmoored
Foreigner completely obsolete.

The rain will come just when you feel at peace,
At last, and you will creep
Beneath an awning,
Watch the old men eat
And you will shiver, freeze,
And you may weep.

You'll spend your money
Till it's gone. That was the point
Of having it. You keep
On walking, since it's free.
What's more, you stay alive. Does not that
Tell you something? Something
You can think about in a month, a year, or two--
Make sense of, probably, in three.

Paris beats you in the head,
Paris goads you in the knees,
Drives you breathless to its highest point,
Then leaves.
The view from Sacre Coeur
Means nothing from the top,
But everything when you have come back down
And cannot see it anymore.

(summer of 2005)

sickness unto death

"You know what I want to do?" she says.

She's looking at me with her chin thrust forward, munching with her spoon poised midway from a bowl of her cereal. Her hair is down around her ears.

"What?" I ask her, though I don't want to.

"I want strawberries," she tells me.

"What, on your cereal?" I ask.

"No," she says, letting the spoon fall down into the bowl; milk splatters. "I don't mean on my cereal. I want to eat strawberries...I want my own bowl full of strawberries. I want to eat strawberries until I get sick on 'em."

Later the next day, she comes back from the grocery with a bag that holds four five-pound boxes of strawberries, the plastic boxes that snap open and closed and make a hell of a noise either way, so that when she is downstairs taking a shower and I try to open one to snag a berry for myself, she can hear it and comes shunting up the stairs, wrapped in a plush towel and her hair dripping, and says, "What the fuck? Those are for my column!" I've already eaten half of it and I hold out the other half to show her. She pushes me aside and takes the bag in her fist and parades back down the stairs with it. She probably took it in the shower with her just to be safe.

It's going to be hours, so I go out to take a walk. I meet Denny and we stop in at the Sunset and pretty soon it's four o'clock. Sometime in there, Denny asks me, "What's she on today?" I tell him, "Strawberries. She woke up out of a bowl of cereal last night and said it was strawberries. Until she got sick on 'em."

"She got sick on them?"

"No," I correct him, "she wants them until she gets sick on them."

"Hmm," says Denny.

When I go home, she's got maybe eighteen bowls crowded on the counter, and even though it's only her in the kitchen, I can't get in there, not even for a glass of water.

"How's the strawberries?" I ask. "Are you sick on them yet?" I see two empty boxes.

"Almost," she grins at me. "Want to try?" She holds out a spoon full of some kind of lavender pink soup. She dips it into my mouth. "Well?" she asks.

"It's all right," I say.

"Fuck that," she says, crashing the spoon into the kitchen. "It's dynamite. It's for my column."

I shrug. "It's dynamite," I say. "Can I get a glass of water?"

She swings back and forth from the cupboard to the sink and hands me a glass of water, not looking at me but absorbed in a stained notebook that has been waterlogged and crisped and lost and sat upon so many times that it's nearly a pulp. I drink my water and wish I could go out again. Maybe I will, I think, in a few minutes.

That night she grills some meat with cheese on top, for the pair of us, and chews her portion up as if she's working a sausage factory inside of her. While she eats, she's typing on a little computer at her left hand, with glances at a glossy magazine spread open at her right.

"What's that?" I ask her, turning the mag toward me when she's engaged with the computer. "S'that food pornography?"

I've never called it that to her face before; I've only thought it privately. She looks up at me indignantly, then down at the page.

"It's Moira Miller's column in Saveur!" She stabs her index finger at the page. "She's writing about zucchini!"

I swallow. "All right," I say. She goes back to typing and reading, one of each, and spooning her food in her mouth all the while, meat and cheese. One of each, mixing together in her meat-grinder mouth.

She stays up late. I go to bed, watch the television for a while, but I end up reading a book instead, even with the television on. It's just the way I am. When I wake up, she's flat on her back, her chin tilted up and her eyelids resting peacefully on her cheekbones. I get up and get myself ready to go, but as I'm about to leave I stand over her and just look for a moment. It might be a good while, actually. I don't know. I don't know why I do it.

It's quite a shock to find her name in the newspapers the month after. She wrote a column that held some disparaging opinions about the cookbook of some super-chef, and suddenly everyone wants her number. The New York Times speaks with her over the telephone. She is asked to appear on a show where a gang of famous women argue about things. And she comes home after each engagement on a rant, going over who argued with her and how she answered them, sure that the audience--whoever it was--was on her side in their heart of hearts, though her opponents tried to pull them away and sometimes seemed to succeed. She doesn't make much food. We eat a lot of cereal together, as she pencils notes in her appointment book for her engagements and arguments on the day to follow. She chews cereal as if it were gristle, her jaws like pistons in an engine.

"Hammer and tongs," I say to myself.

"What?" she demands.

"Hamburger songs. Like that old Miracle Whip advertisement. You know the one. You should throw a bit of that in your speech. Loosen things up."

She doesn't look up at me. "That's a mad idea."

"It doesn't seem right to me, their making you work so hard just for one thing you said about a baker. Why have they got to keep after you so?"

"I want to work hard!" She looks exasperatedly at me. "I want them to keep after me!" She stares at me for a good while.

I shrug. "It's only food," I say, wondering if I ought to apologize.

She slams the covers of her book together. "That's where you're wrong, Nick," she says, standing up. "It's not 'only food.' It's life. It's sustenance. It's sin, and sensuality. It's comfort in times of loss and an anchor for memories and traditions. It's the centerpiece of celebration for every culture on earth. But never mind all that--it's also my passion!" As she strides back toward the bedroom, she throws up her hands. "I don't want it to loosen up!"

Her speech the next day sets them all on their ears. I read about it the day after, in the Dining section. They quote the same line she gave me at the table that night, right down to the "never mind all that, it's my passion" bit, which apparently brought a number of onlookers to their feet, clapping.

I meet up with Denny at the pub and show it to him. He holds his hands up to me, warding the paper away.

"Don't show me, already saw. She'll be moving from Dining to the front page, soon." He pushed toward me the g-&-t he'd ordered in advance of my arrival, and he signaled the bartender for a lager to follow it. "Quite a tempest in a teapot she's blown up, isn't it?"

"She said all this to me the other night," I said. "This bit, here--this line."

Denny read it over.

"Hm!" He grinned. "Wonder if she writ it up after she said it to you, or before."

I rubbed my chin and thought it over.

"Was she always like this?" Denny asked me.

"Like what?"

Denny held up his hands again. "Sorry. Never mind. Forget it."

"No. Like what?"

He looked at me, his chin propped on his fist.

"Passionate? Oh, yes," I said. "A go-getter, from the first time I knew her. No one like her."

"But, I mean...was she this crazy about food, Nick?"

"About..." I stared at him. "Food?"

"Yes, Nick. Food. This stuff, that's got her so riled up now that you can hardly talk to her." He stabbed his finger at the newspaper. "Was this always on her mind in the same way?"

"Well! I can't say." I thought hard on it.

"Oh, come, Nick. It can't be that hard. Did she or didn't she go a little mental about zucchinis and braising and such like when you first met her? When you were dating?"

I guess I was silent for quite a time.

"I don't remember," I said. He didn't believe me, I could tell. "I never thought about it. It was just... If she was, I suppose I'd have thought it was just a young girl with an appetite. Her mother couldn't cook, that's for damn sure. I don't know where she'd have got so crazy about it, as a girl. I just don't remember."

She's already in bed when I get home, sitting up, writing things in the margins of the day's paper. I don't mention anything about it; I start to take off my shoes.

"Mad, this," she says. "It's clear whose side this reporter's on."

"Were you always this crazy about food?" I ask her. She looks at me. "I mean, was it always your passion? All your life?"

A smile drifts across her face, and she looks at the wall dreamily.

"I don't know," she says. "I haven't thought about it. When it all came about. I think it must have always been there. I don't remember just when it became...what it is." She stared at the wall for a few more moments, then went back to working at her notes.

I leave off changing my clothes and went back downstairs, half in my pajamas. There was a plate of cookies on the table but I know better than to touch them. I pour a glass of milk, set it down there, and I sit at the kitchen table and I stare at the two of them for a bit. Then I drink down the milk, slowly, so that it won't bother my stomach. When I go back upstairs, the light is on but she has fallen asleep, half-propped against the headboard of the bed.

The next morning the cookies are gone, and so is she, since before I got up. There is a note on the table where the plate had been, reminding me that she is going to Westchester for a convention and will probably be back around eleven at night, and telling me not to take the cold chicken out of the refrigerator for my lunch. I pick up the note and hold it there, under the light that swings over the centre of the table, wondering that I didn't hear her as she got up and made ready to leave--I'm a light sleeper.

I lose track of time and arrive late for work. One of the fellows shouts, as I come in, "Rebecca's making quite the stir, isn't she, Nick?"

"She is that," I answer, taking off my coat.

"Ought to watch out for her. Those cooking persons can be brutal when crossed."

"Brutal?" I ask, not quite listening.

"Yeah! Haven't you ever watched 'Hell's Kitchen?' That fellow looks ready to pound anybody's head in with his fry pan, if they cross him. He says some godawful things to the cooks on that show."

"It's notorious," says another fellow standing nearby. "I worked as a waiter for years, and so did my brother. They'd tell stories I never believed as a kid, and then I saw for myself."

"Stories about what?" I ask him. "Manslaughter? With a fry pan?"

He shakes his head. "Kitchen knives. Threatening each other, you know. And sex! They did it in the bathrooms, in the pantry, in the freezer, on top of the bar when the place was closed for the night--but they'd do it in full view of the staff. Rails of cocaine off the counters..."

I walk up close to him. "How'd they get to have sex inside a freezer?"

He looks at me pityingly.

"It's a walk-in freezer, Nick. Like a closet, but cold."

All day I think about her up in Westchester, being threatened and pawed by avaricious men and women in their white double-breasted jackets and little ascot scarfs. It made me almost frantic. I desperately want to call but I don't know where she is likely to be, a hotel or a restaurant or a club. Who knew? I think of her going into this vicious, predatory world on the steam of her single-minded passion, and I think of them all trying to corrupt her and wonder how long she would last against them. I think of coming home to her suddenly preoccupied with something else, besides food. Perhaps she'd be nursing a wound from a meat cleaver or a potato masher. I think of her sitting there at the table, pressing a bandage to her shoulder. I would take it from her and help her with it, and I would say, "Who did this?" and she would say, "Gordon Ramsay." I would say, "He's a bloody maniac," and she would answer, "No, Nick. He's right enough. You just have to know how to handle his rages. He's taught me more in a month than most people learn in a year." And I would say, "I worry about you." And she would say, "I'm all right. It's a terrific chance to work with him. I don't mind the little scratches and things." I would say, "I mind."

I rather hope she will call me from the convention, but she doesn't. I go home and look around for something to eat, but all I can find is milk and cereal and a few potatoes. She likes to do the shopping as well, and only buys what she needs. I toy with the idea of making something from scratch--there is certainly no shortage of flour, sugar and baking powder. But I don't want at all to make myself a batch of cookies or anything of the sort. I want hers. I search again, now a bit desperate, for something she may have left behind; breadcrumbs she has frozen for future tempura, burned cookies she might use for crumbling into a cheesecake crust or on top of puddings, morsels that she might have saved for later analysis of what went wrong with the recipe. I rifle through the cupboards; I know how silly it is. But I can find nothing. She has grown too skilled. She no longer has accidents.

I sit at the table and drink one glass of milk after another. The swinging light reflects a lemon-hued ball on the surface of the liquid. I watch it quiver there, looking for minute after minute as if it is on the verge of melting. Something suddenly splashes into it and destroys the placid surface. I reach up to my face and find a wet, sticky trace reaching down the side of my cheek. I have wept; I am weeping.

Quickly, I stand up, seize the glass, and throw back the rest of the milk in one gulp. I charge out of the kitchen and into my car, forgetting to bring along my coat, as I realize when I am halfway into town. I only think of going back for a moment. I have to get to Westchester, and can't afford to lose a moment.

I'm not a cautious driver at the best of times. Now I am squealing in and out of lanes, dodging as best I can past the sluggish dregs of rush-hour traffic. Did everyone leave work late today?, I wonder. But I feel the fire in my belly, and I know I won't be stopped, that I will get to her, that I will keep her safe, even if she does not understand what I'm there for. Even if she doesn't want me there in spite of understanding. My only prayer is that the police are busy with things other than traffic monitoring, this evening. In a mood such as this, with such a mission in front of me, I might strike a cop.

People wail their car horns protestingly at me as I swerve into their lanes. I curse the day I chose an economical town car over something with a four-wheel drive. Traffic is locking up; I have no choice but to slow down, more than once. There must be an accident of some kind nearby. I wonder if that means policemen. I narrow my eyes to spot them before they spot me. God, what time is it? I glance toward the car's clock, but it is stuck at 2.28--it has been for months. I look for my watch but my sleeve is covering it. I flick my wrist impatiently to swing the watch's face toward me.

I hear a horn protesting me again, then several horns chorus in with it. I look up--perhaps we're approaching the accident. But there is only the deathly fast approach of a minivan bumper toward my windshield. I can see a child's face staring out at me with numb terror. I carve the steering wheel to the left and I feel my jaw lock into place, my face closing itself down in preparation for assault. The back end of my car fishtails against the minivan; the impact sends me thrashing like a fish as I careen through the road's flimsy guardrail and nosedive into whatever lies on the other side.

My eyes open on an expanse of dark blue poly-blend fabric, encompassing my whole field of vision, which seems to have narrowed alarmingly. A great pressure is against my head. It feels as though my jaw is gripped in a vise. There is a sound, only one sound, that comes and goes at regular intervals. It is like the ticking of a clock--has it begun working again?, I wonder. Something suddenly slides across my field of vision, narrowing it further. It spreads out underneath my cheek. After a moment, I can feel it slide down into my pants. I try to move my eyes to find my bearings; the movement hurts abominably. I hear a noise, an inchoate, muffled roar, but nothing happens. I leave my eyes where they are, but somehow they have found a point of contact, a source of light. There is a long, shiny slick extending from my face, and as my eyes adjust, I see that it is deep and assertive in color, like strawberries macerated in wine.