One Fish at a Time

ONE FISH AT A TIME

CHAPT. FOUR AND FIVE

CHAPTER FOUR

It was a dance with large steps. Allen Rigby choreographed with pages and pages on his clipboard of storyboards. Every predictable shot was dovetailed to the movements of the fishing craft and her two camera escorts. Step ladders had been lashed securely in the chase boats, improvised crows' nests of the videographers, and they alternated pulling along side the port or starboard side of the fishing boat, adroitly stepping out of each other's backgrounds. Demonstrations of tackle and procedures took place adjacent Allen's barge, with its jib camera for cooking-show angles Both the still camera and Nancy's Hi-8 video were in frequent use, and, while the plentitude of media wouldn't reduce the time needed in the editing suite, it did mean a lushly textured and dynamic final product, technically ready for prime time.

The prisoner hardly can be said to have languished in his cell. Yes, his arms were tied behind him, no cheating, he was to keep his hands off himself, as, wacky as Christians had been in history, no one wanted to chance the cleric blunting his natural desires when nobody was looking, but otherwise he was well and even cheerfully tended by his goalers. The Very Reverend Jacob Carter was even allowed frequent visits to play chess with Judge Harold Ketchum, tenant of the adjoining cell. If they preferred pineapple fritters to banana, pineapple it was. Shrimp to crayfish? Then, of course, shrimp. If their daughters wished for a particular game, video, or CD, the child had it within twenty-four hours.

Talk about a chapter that a, doesn't need to be written, or, b, one that writes itself. Tell you what, I'll take a few days off and just type it out before I shut down the machine.

The prisoners were from Denver. A judge or clergyman, from, say Peoria, might be so discouraged and downtrodden by their daily surroundings spiriting them off to the Caribbean could skew any reaction they'd have to the conditions of their captivity. Less risk of distorted data from the Mile High City. Even so, the data would be inherently flawed, because, for the sake of cast and crew, only an attractive, youthful, athletic male from the twin forks of the opposition had been selected. It was an example of loyalty being a bad thing, i.e., Rick's loyalty to his crew, down to the last detail, undermined the scientific validity of his tampering with nature. The other side of the coin was that the handsome judge and cute young minister would make superb propaganda tools, so, if the science kind of sucked, its paucity could be disguised in the traditional American way, with sex.

A big bell must be hit hard, but once it's been bonged, it tends to bong on and on. The shock of four Anglos, two of them sprightly school girls, going missing on an otherwise peaceful Friday, within sight of Boulder, was enough to knock Israel off the cable for three minutes at a time in spite of the vehement protests of the ACLU and personal appeals to Simon Wiesenthal, promulgator of promulgators. But to no avail. Four were missing and it made the news, which, if it didn't grant immortality to their mortal souls, at least gave every memorable and uncompromising appearance of doing so. In other words, it seemed to have been going on for weeks the second day out. The Civil Liberties Union brought suit, pointing out with clarity that since none of the missing four had any known contact with the holocaust, their story was valueless and without merit at anything over a regional level, and, indeed took time and attention from those more poignantly aggrieved. A backlash of the ninety-eight percent non-Jewish minority kept the airways open, and the missing preacher, the missing judge, and their daughters, Julie, eleven, and Rachel, also eleven, made it drive-time to drive-time. Prodigiously they had smote the mighty gong, and this is where our story really begins.

"Hi, Rick!" the two sweet voices rang out.

"Hi Julie, hi Rachel," Rick replied, approaching the chain link. Julie had scratched her R. Kelly CD; Rick had the same disc, so he'd returned to his palapa to fetch it. He smiled at the girl's warm reception after his being away less than five minutes; after having visited with them, less than five minutes. Denver must be losing its appeal. The guard opened the pedestrian gate, and the young star smiled good morning as he re-entered the camp.

"We borrowed something from each other," Julie said. She was a hesitant leader, looking for approval in her friend's eyes before speaking, but, if something needed to be said, saying it. Once a topic was opened, Rachel joined in gladly enough, so she was actually the first to modestly open a single button on her white blouse and spread the collar with her fingers. Why he should know one child's training bra from the other's was lost on him, but he took their shenanigans in good stride, realizing it was probably the thought that counted.

"Did you like trading with each other?" he asked, since they'd raised far more than the subject.

"Yes," the girls giggled softly, reddening prettily.

"Nancy and Angela like doing that, too," the actor allowed, and the girls looked at him as if he'd said they could date Shady and baby sit Haley. It was lousy science; the star, the Caribbean, the primo quality of the young fathers; how did that relate to the average Smith and Jones? The rationalization was quite easy. Everyone was always snooping around the best side of god; sunsets, mountain prospects, cumming off; and ignoring the monumental nuisance the ridiculous son-of-a-bitch had been to the general welfare of the human community. God and democracy. Dead heat for dumb. Priest and judge. How nice of them to come.

"Do you want us to change back?" Julie asked.

"We have to, before we can borrow them again." Rachel said. Rick simply nodded, seating himself on the bed of Julie's cell, an eleven year old at each elbow.

"Were you scared?" the producer asked his prisoners.

"No," Julie said.

"Ed McMahon's very nice," Rachel added. We really thought we'd won the prize until they cuffed us. By that time we had heard the story and seen the video you made for us, so clicking us was just a legal formality so we could testify that we had been forcibly restrained."

Julie's eyes brightened. She looked at Rachel for a happy nod. "They let us keep the snapperoos, that's our pet name for the handcuffs, in case restraint issues came up while we were visiting," the brown eyed sweetie explained, "wasn't that nice of them?"

"Milk and honey all the way," Rick agreed.

"We have a question," Rachel said, "but it's kind of personal. Do you think we should ask it?" She glanced at Julie, who nodded. "It's probably a technicality," she went on, "but can we rape each other, Julie and I?"

"They never mentioned it at school," the judge's daughter said, "you know, they just told us about bad touching, and that molester raped kids, but they never said anything about if Rachel and I wanted to touch each other, if that would be getting molested."

"Girls," Rick said, "the entire -- nothing but -- object of our project and our show is to tear down the existing system fast and completely. Under these circumstances it is disingenuous, to use a polite word, for you to ask me to explain it. If Rachel said No to you, and you used force or coercion, that would be rape if she was a sixty year old and you were six. You're both way under age, so if either of you touches the other, it's some kind of sexual assault. If an adult touches you, even if you walk a hundred miles to be in his arms, that's another kind. It goes on and on, very similar to marijuana, with a hodgepodge of this and that and ritualistic screw turning off this emotional situation or that hyped up sob story. Relationships should be sanctioned with the desires of the participants counting heavily and almost always being honored. Age, gender, and familial considerations mean nothing, and should rarely enter the picture.

"So, all I can say," Rick concluded, "is that if you raped each other while I was gone, you liked it."

"We were too nervous to even look," Rachel said, "we turned our backs to each other and handed the bras over our shoulders."

"I'll bet," Rick said, a glint of fire in his eyes, "that you raped each other more by doing it that way than you would have if you'd ended up naked on the bed together."

"That's kind of how we felt," Julie said. "We're just glad you came back really quickly."

"But it was exciting?" Rick queried.

"I got all big," Julie blushed.

"Me, too," Rachel agreed, "plus, I think it made me get really ready to be with a boy."

"Maybe that will happen to me, this time, too," Julie allowed.

There was one way to find out. The girls were a pair, alright. He'd have to compensate the detective agency for duty above and beyond the call; premium specimens delivered in premium condition. What was wrong with the place? American girls could be so excellent; so slim, pretty, charming, witty, friendly and just freaking nice; so unconsciously sexy, it just compounded the tragedy of disagreeable lummoxes so rapidly becoming middle mainstream. Then again, under the insidious, grossly subhuman, tree-hugging savagery of liberalism, perhaps it was a miracle even a single pair like Julie and Rachel could still be found. How long did it take the talent agency to come up with the three girls-next-door who bring cakes and cookies to the new boy on the street? Most had but a single pride, coming across as rockin' oddities: had no rubber in their souls, much less iron: were rude, crude, and looked like they'd been stewed until they bloated to twice their proper size. Too fat, foul, and freakish to get screwed, what was the first thing they did to celebrate the dawning of independence and empowerment? Went out and got themselves tattooed. It was simply-mother-fucking-absolutely-unbelievable; so many, so huge. Hunger's a gnawing little pet, and don't I just know it. Getting people to live with it was going to take a strong arm and a long whip. Mandatory this, arbitrary that, including mega death for the unresponsive. Diet or die. Try it, or fry. Nah, no one was going to fry. Society wasn't out for vengeance, just reacting to an unintentional threat of an immediate and severe nature, millions would have to be put to sleep, or all would die soon and in horrific misery, most so ignorant they'd have no appreciation for the opportunity to have lived at the peak of the WASP experience. It was what they deserved, what they'd brought, one election at a time, down upon themselves over two hundred years. Still, did it have to be? Hate them as one might, wouldn't it be an interesting test of one's stuff, intellectual and otherwise, to take the reins, jerk the head around, and whip the beast off on a new trail with cut after cut of the whip to be sure the new trail was taken with alacrity and good will? What else was he to do with the rest of his life? Play more characters for money? Been there, done that. Own five ranches, four jets, and a turtledove aviary? What was there that could be positive about ending up as a big frog in a stinking pond? Or, how could one be a happy dilettante or pissed-off recluse while everything sort of melted away as the Jewry dominated? Of and by itself, the place was not worth the effort. The bland and the bearded would not even be a loss to themselves, much less the world. The simple fact of the matter was that there was no reason, other than the doing, for its own sake. The testing of a big brain against a woebegone mountain. Bill Gates had not saved the world, though, in all imperial innocence, he had given it fifteen more years. He hadn't killed anybody, and tens of millions needed to be killed. The garden weeded, the sheep dipped, the greenhouse gassed (oh, Daddy, can we?), the rust wire brushed, the milk pasteurized, the laundry ironed, as the ad campaign suggested: just do it. It was disingenuous thinking. How had he started? By waylaying a pair of young beauties and their cute, if misguided, fathers. Feathering his own nest at infinitesimal personal risk. Looking out for number one. He was too excited by the girls sitting beside him to indulge in a bout of self-flagellation, but he knew it was an issue that wasn't going anywhere, real soon. It would be there, however pleasing the divergences of paradise, when he got back. Mmm. Herding fat cats. On the set of "Lonesome Dove", Allen and he had ferreted out cliffs and ravines, precipices and lovers' leaps. Cats were hard to herd. The terrain could hardly be more dangerous. You'd have to be certifiable to even try. Wasn't that the truth. On the other hand, one wouldn't have to count losses, like a doctor who takes on the sickest patients; failure would not be an option simply because the failure of the status quo was palpable, as obvious as the nose on an elephant or the hooters on a bimbo. It would not be humanly possible to do worse. The situation was so extreme that success would be saving ten percent. As the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, Rick turned to Julie.

"I could tell you about each other," he said, actually addressing both the pre-teen princesses..

"Would you?" the pretty child asked, her neatly brushed schoolgirl hair soft and light-brown, framing huge brown eyes.

"Oh, please," Rachel chimed in, a wide smile crossing her boyish face with its freckles and shock of half-wild auburn hair. "That would be so much less embarrassing."

What a guy!

"We sure don't want to be raped again," Julie added, Rachel nodding alertly in agreement.

"Which of you is the eldest?" Rick asked.

"I am," Julie said, "by four months."

"Do you want to be unbuttoned first?" he asked, adding: "usually the older partner is the first to submit so he or she can act as a guide to the younger partner and be sure they're really sick with lust before they get touched."

"Is that okay, Rachel?" Julie asked.

"Unless Rick has an identical twin within fifty feet," the younger girl said, giggling with a nervous eroticism doubling the prurience of a decade of men's magazines.

"You like fantasies, too?" Julie said, "that's cool. Maybe Rick will let me stay in your cell tonight, so we can talk."

"Girls' night in," Rachel responded.

"Maybe he'll join us," the judge's sparkler said, "you know, boy's night in."

"Wouldn't that be in-decent?" Rachel wanted to know.

"What if he sends us to our dads," Julie said, "what kind if `in' would that be?"

"Best," Rachel punned, just to be sure the bonding was bone deep and absolutely forever.

"C'est true," her indomitable new friend added.

"Wouldn't the country be worth saving for just two such as these?" Rick mused to himself. Like American men, American girls could be world-class. The best. British charm, without the class brutality of Blighty; Asian grace, but enduring past the mid-twenties; African stature, but with more magazines; Hispanic pride, without the ludicrous, showboat dogmatism of Catholicism; Semitic presence, without the pathetic, tin-pot arrogance, giant eyewear, hairsplitting, nitpicking, and obsession with tacky glitz; and, finally, mermaid athleticism, without the scuba lessons. Instead of an answer to aging, science, in Rick's world, would prevent growing up, in the first place. He looked to his left, then to his right, to remind himself why. If any kind of god existed he'd keep Julie and Rachel eleven years old for a hundred years. What a guy that would be.

Meantime, Julie was staring up at him, her brown eyes glowing. Rachel turned her back, moving slightly away on the prison cot. "Don't leave out anything," she instructed.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" Rick asked as his fingers found the delicate throat.

"There's Paws," the girl replied, "but he's underage."

"Is he cute?" Rick wanted to know.

"I believe he thinks he is," Julie said.

"Has he done anything like this with you?" the producer queried as he found her first button.

"I don't know," Julie replied, "he steams up my glasses with his panting. If he found anything, I think he'd eat it."

"Yes, puppy love," Rick sighed, "I remember it well."

"How did you feel about, you know, ahem, uh, cats?" the younger and perhaps the more precocious of the females asked, and wasn't she just a puss-and-a-half to phrase the question with such delicacy?

"I greatly prefer kittens," Rick said.

"How a-mew-sing," Julie quoth, not to be completely outdone by her vivacious friend. Neither added anything about purrfect, thus deepening the bonds of friendship, which added so to depraved carnality and salacious excess.

"Surely, a noble purrsuit," Rachel said (I might have known.), only because her back was turned and so she couldn't see that Rick was now down to Julie's third button, the girl quiet as a (sorry) mouse, her eyes wide as she stared first into the eyes of the handsome actor, then down at his slow, hesitant, gentle fingers.

"He's starting to touch me," Julie whispered, loud enough to share.

"How many buttons?" came the response.

"One more until he gets to my belt," the girl said.

"Is he touching you on top, or up underneath?"

"Just on top," Julie said.

"Is he being really gentle?"

"His fingers feel like someone was massaging me with rose petals," came the whisper.

"Man or god?" Rachel asked.

"Two angels and a fairy," Julie said.

"Is anything happening?" Rachel wanted to know.

"Same thing as before, but more, I think; how about you?"

"More, too," Rachel replied, no `thinking' about it.

"Do you hurt?"

"Yes," Rachel said, "do you suppose it's part of growing up?"

"Growing out," Julie replied.

"Wonder if it hurts boys to grow up?" the sprite asked.

"Paws did pant a lot," Julie recalled.

"How about Rick?" the lesser child asked.

"Cat's got his tongue," Julie noted.

"I shouldn't think it would matter at this stage," Rachel said.

"It goes to motive," Julie said. "If he'd shanghaied us to teach us, to broaden our understanding, to provide context and imbue us with insight, that would be one thing, but to just fondle us like rubber dolls, use our bodies, sin against our souls, tamper with out development, pick the fruit before it's ripe, molest us, and wise himself up with carnal knowledge while satisfying his lusts and baser instincts, why... that's just exactly what he's doing."

"I take it he's underneath my bra," Rachel said.

"Guilt by association. That makes two counts. Note it for the prosecutor, Julie Stalwart said, trouper she that was to be able to speak at all as Rick stared into her eyes from six inches away, his right index finger and thumb just finding the hard, strawberry-size nipple jutting from her left, half-muffin breast.

"My bra and your breast," Rachel whispered, "and, from the sound of your voice, I'd bet he's about to double up on his felonies against your underage body."

"He's using both hands," the judge's daughter acknowledged.

"Do you suppose we'll visit him in jail, like he visits us?" Rachel wondered out loud.

"It would beat hanging out with Paws," Julie said, finding extreme eroticism in the duality of maintaining her end of the conversation while being more than half electrocuted by the beautiful male sexually molesting her.

"How about when your dad starts doing what Rick is," Rachel asked.

"I hope you won't be so shy," the more mature child said, "so I'll have an eyewitness..."

"To testify to the hot, hard facts..."

I exert all but no control over my characters, but when they start finishing each other's sentences, I do step in.

"He's getting my blouse all the way off," Julie whispered.

"I'll bet you look really beautiful," came the whispered response.

"Thanks," said the schoolgirl. "I'm going to put my hands behind my neck to encourage him, if you want to look."

"I'm Imagineering," the young Disney victim said, "you know, structures, forms, angles, protrusions, solid geometry, transformed planes; there's a lot to keep my mind occupied; wouldn't want to confuse it with facts."

"As long as you don't try to use algebra and go around squaring things, " Julie said.

"Are you arching your back?" Rachel asked.

"Yes," her friend whispered.

"I'll bet Rick really likes seeing you that way."

"He hasn't said a word," Julie concurred.

"What's he doing, then?" Rachel needed to know.

"Looking into my eyes and reaching around behind me."

"Yeah," the younger female responded, "I can feel the cot moving."

"He must get his sister bare chested a lot," Julie whispered, "he knows how to work the part in back."

"Has he gotten it undone?" an inquiring mind wanted to know.

"Yes," Julie whispered.

"Tell me more," her friend replied.

"He's getting the straps off my shoulders."

"I hope you lowered you arms," the little nitwit contributed.

"I'm kind of bent over, now," the judicial protégée whispered, "looking down at his hands. This is the really embarrassing part."

"You must be hurting a lot," her friend comforted.

"Just..."

There was no more from her for a long minute. Rachel was conscious of a developing ragged note to her near twin's breathing. Again, the cot shifted, and, wordlessly, Rick reached behind him, returning the training bra to its owner. The younger girl reached back and took the silk garment, held it in her lap, and fantasized about what the mature male was doing with her pretty friend. She envisioned the handsome, rugged face against Julie's heart-shaped perfection, against her soft, brown hair brushed neatly to her now naked shoulders. She saw in her mind his hands gently on her neck, on her shoulders, and ever so tenderly and sweetly, sharing her development, his eyes hot on her, his breathing shallow and rapid, which she could actually hear, and perhaps his lips starting at her neck and taking their very sweet time over her bare chest before he found her. The last part of the dream was easy to interpret as Julie was unable to restrain panting gurgles and ragged mews, violating her own privacy. (Hardly an issue, what with four cameras and a pair of microphones tightly focused on the cot.)

Instinct, for she'd had no experience, made Rachel move off the end of the cot and sit on the floor at it's end, still looking away from the couple. There was near silence and a gentle shifting of weight which the younger girl interpreted at Julie exposing Rick's bare chest. This went on, which probably meant Rick was taking of Julie's shorts, and on, which undoubtedly was Julie taking off Rick's shorts. Rachel tried to form a picture of how the strapping male looked lying beside the delicate, slim body of her little friend, but found the effort hazy and unfulfilling, at best.

There was more movement, more shifting, and the feathery sound of light garments being dropped to the floor of the lightly constructed prison cell.

"We're naked," Julie whispered. "Completely. Both of us."

"Is he beautiful?" Rachel whispered.

"Yes," came the hoarse response, "more than. Like a silky tiger. And wait `till you see how big his penis is."

"What does it feel like?" Rachel whispered.

"I'll tell you pretty soon," the older girl said, "right now we're lying on our backs with our arms down at our sides, looking down at each other."

"Is he on your right or left." Rachel asked.

"He's on my left."

"Would you, you know, touch him if I asked you to?"

Children are game oriented. It's one way they learn.

"Where?" Julie asked.

"Do it where you want," the younger beauty said, "then maybe I can guess if you answer my questions."

"Is this a long game?" Julie wanted to know, for pretty obvious reasons.

"Why?" the preacher's daughter asked, "are there anxiety issues?"

"Nothing permanent," Julie assured her friend, "but he's rolling his eyes a little."

"Do you think he wishes I wasn't here?" Rachel queried.

"That wouldn't be very gentlemanly, since he's the one who brought you," Julie observed, "plus, he's shaking his head.

"What does it mean, Rick?

"You want her to go?

"You don't want her to go.

"Okay, you don't want her to go.

"He doesn't want you to go, Rachel," Julie said, the issue finally clarified through body language, the only kind left to the young television producer.

"Are you touching him yet?"

"Just a sec... okay; yes."

There was an awkward moment of silence. The first question in the game, "Twenty-Questions," usually has to do with whether or not the subject article is bigger than a breadbox. It's part of our cultural tradition, so thinking up an alternative opening query took Rachel a few moments.

"Is it warmer than toast?" she asked, doing pretty well for herself.

"About the same," Julie said.

"Is it smooth or rough?"

"Ever so smooth."

"Is it white or pink?"

"White."

"Is it bony or muscular?"

"Bony."

"Is it flat or three-dimensional?"

"Three dimensional."

On the tenth question, Rachel guessed kneecap, correctly. Game over.

"I'm really touching him, now," Julie whispered.

"You mean, there?" Rachel asked.

"I have to," the older girl said, "he may of hijacked us out of our homes and away from most of our families, but he hasn't mistreated us, and it would be mistreating him to keep playing games."

Rachel understood.

"Is he teaching you how?" she asked. Her back was against the foot of the cot, but it's movements were subtle and indecisive

"No," Julie said, "I think he thinks I'm old enough to learn on my own."

"Way cool," Rachel replied, "men always think they know everything; it's nice to find one who's different."

"'Nice', isn't the word; it's totally awesome."

"Hell," said the younger miss, "it's awesome just thinking about what you're doing, picturing your pretty hand on him as you experiment to find out what he likes."

"He likes being a male," Julie observed, "I can tell you that much."

"How big is he?" Rachel asked.

"Like a big ear of corn," Julie said.

"With the husk on or off?"

"Just a second... off."

"Can you put it back on?"

"Sure."

Children are game oriented. It's one way they learn.

"Maybe we could have a shucking contest," Rachel said, "you know, for either speed or endurance."

"What would the winner get?" Julie asked.

"If what the girls at my school say is true," the redheaded pixie replied: "wet."

Irrepressible as they were, no contest took place. Julie rolled on top of the panting male, rising to her knees, her legs spread so she could mount Rick's right thigh. She used her left hand to fondle him, and thoroughly wet her right hand at his swollen glans, before beginning to take him with ever firmer and faster strokes. Her beautiful hair cascaded over her naked shoulders, and Rick reached to her to hold it free of her face so he could look at her slim neck and watch the muscles ripple in her slender, childish shoulders as she began to lash him up and down, mewing and panting for she wasn't quite sure what, but something she knew would be very obvious and totally conclusive and satisfying. .

"It sounds like Paws is going to be in for the experience of all eleven-year-old experiences, if you ever get back to Denver," Rachel remarked.

"This is me not leaving for anywhere," the older girl panted.

"Maybe he could come here," the lesser pixie said.

"He is kind of cute," Julie admitted, "and I think I'm beginning to understand he isn't some kind of creepy perv, at least not totally."

"It would be nice to have someone our own age and from Denver," Rachel said.

"One more kid goes missing, they'll be sending out the army," Julie said.

"Great, soldiers!" Rachel responded.

"They used to advertise `cast of thousands' for the old war movies," Julie said, "so maybe we'll really luck out."

"I think we've already done that," the younger girl observed. "I mean if it's this hot just listening to what you're doing, you must be ready to melt into a pool of quivering jelly."

"Glub, glub, gurgle, glub," quoth Julie, half giggling, half glorying in the tingling magic she felt really having at her first man, watching him lie to her, watching his chest heave, watching his lead loll, and feeling him tense and ease as her hands changes pressure and rhythm while she stroked him fully in the act of masturbation.

"Why's the bed moving?" Rachel whispered.

"He's rolling me underneath his body," Julie said.

"Oh, babe, wow!" her little friend exclaimed, "are you spreading your legs for him?"

"Yes," came the muffled whisper.

"Are you pretending he's your dad?" Rachel queried.

"Either than, or he's pretending I'm Nancy," Julie gasped.

"It must be so beautiful, looking up at him," the younger girl sighed.

"It is," the shaken voice responded, "but it's just a beautiful looking down."

"Is he high on his arms?"

"He was when you asked," Julie said, "but now he's against me, kissing my neck."

"Does his chest feel good against your breasts?" Pixie II wanted to know.

"You'll find out, you'll have to, I can't describe it," the girl breathed to her friend, "it feels like I'm growing inside him; giving him something, so he'll grow inside me, and leave a million gifts."

"Are your legs up around his waist?" Rachel whispered.

"No yet," Julie said, "just spread really wide because I think he likes looking down at me this way."

"You must seem really mature to him, after Nancy," Rachel observed.

"That's how he's behaving," the older female gasped.

"Really maturely, like with a capital `M'?"

"Massive, Masterful, Man, Molesting Me; Making Me More, More, More!"

"Capital F," breathed the girl at the foot of the cot.

"Oh, finding, finding, FINDING, Rachel!, he Found me, we didn't use our hands, at all, his arms are beside my shoulders, my hands are on his flanks, just under his ribs, but he found me, completely."

"Is he being gentle or willful?" Rachel said.

"I think he's trying to decide," came the panting response.

"Tell me," Rachel urged.

"It must be gentle," the older female said, "otherwise, there'd be something TO tell."

"He's very experienced with children," Rachel said, "so you can trust him."

"It is beautiful, the way he's mounting me," Julie acknowledged in a ragged whisper, "his big powerful male body over my slim, childish one; his sweating, heaving male chest, against my budding nipples; his huge penis against where I just have a little beginning peach fuzz; the way he falls to kiss me, then rises up on his arms so I can look into his eyes and down between our bodies, the way he puts the two of us above the law, the way he'll put you and him above the law, the way he's teaching me so I can be a thrill to my dad, someday my husband, it's all beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."

"Are you're legs up around him yet?" Rachel whispered.

"No," the judge's daughter answered, "my knees are still flat on the cot. It will probably be a few minutes."

"Do you think you'll still be able to talks when he really starts getting inside you?" Rachel wanted to know.

"No," Julie replied, "but I may be able to answer a few questions. Most of it you'll have to imagine."

"Try," Rachel pleaded with her older friend, "because it's like Mozart; beautiful, even if I can't see it."

"I will," her friend promised. "Right now, I've got my hips bucked up, for a perfect view.

"I don't know how much biology and physiology you get at your school; how far you've gone in anatomy, but he's using the tip of him; it's all purplish because he's aroused, in little strokes against me, to be sure I'm wet and ready."

"Pretty fast, too," Rachel said, "I can feel the bed shaking."

"Are you sitting with your back against it?" Julie asked.

"Yes," Rachel said.

"Cool," her older friend remarked, adding: "if you want, you could sit at my left shoulder, that way I could take my left hand from Rick, once in awhile, and we could hold hands. Do you want to ?"

"Yes," Rachel said, skidding herself quickly into the new position, and being rewarded by a shaking hand against her shoulder.

"You've still got your blouse on," Julie said, "why don't you get naked. Rick's being super tender and gentle, you'll have time, and it means we'll share more."

"Awesome!" Rachel hissed, and immediately began at the buttons of her blouse, adding: "you can borrow my bra any time as long as you take it back."

"Let me feel you up, like a boy would, just a little before you undo the strap," Julie suggested.

"Just a sec," said the younger child, "there." She moved slightly and Julie found her shoulder, then her panting belly, then slowly went up under the silk to her friend's left breast with its immature but swollen grape-size nipple.

"Oh, you're beautiful, Rache," Julie whispered, gently massaging the lovely redheaded juvenile's pubescent bud with her left index finger and thumb, "are you imagining what it will feel like when Rick or your dad's against you?"

"Yes," the younger child whispered.

"And that's just a preview of how it feels when they get really masculine with you," Julie said.

"Is that happening with you?"

"Rick's beginning to really take me," Julie whispered, "can you feel it where you're sitting?"

"It seems slower and more intense; less experimental, more like the real action of a male trying to get a young female pregnant."

"That's because both of us are trying," the now panting girl said.

"Use your left hand," Rachel whispered, "hold him in both your arms, be sure he knows how you feel about what's happening."

"Thanks, baby," Julie said, "and I absolutely loved touching you."

"It feels like he likes being in your arms," Rachel whispered.

"Yes," the older girl half chocked, "it's really beginning to happen, he's past the stinging part, so I'm technically a woman."

"Is there blood?"

"Yes," Julie mewed, "on him."

"Do you wish he was wearing a condom?" Rachel asked.

"No," the older girl managed to gasp, her voice starting to whinny in response to the powerful young stallion now fully mounted and openly taking his will with the pretty schoolgirl.."

"It feels so amazing, sounds so amazing," Julie said, "why something so beautiful is against the law and morality is the most amazing inequity and cruel exercise of mass psycho-trash, imaginable."

Fear not, our engaging threesome is not about to go off on some vitriolic tangent railing up against an unjust, unfair, and dog-sick world, like someone we all know, but Rachel did insert a brief comment wondering aloud who'd benefit from the advice and council of huge, round gamblers, drinkers, and various and sundry credit junkies, and sex, Net, and dope addicts. In a word, voters. It was rhetorical musing, different-strokes stuff. If they obeyed, they were as insane as the scribbling beard-muterers, and deserved every sleepless night and every salty tear. Fuck with thyself in the name of the salesman's lord, and fucked thee would surely be, and remain for all the days of thy selfish, stunted half-baked, ignorant, judgmental, hypocritical, prayerful, holy, and wholly-wasted little life. You are the problem, and, verily, have nothing to offer toward any solution. Amen.

Of course, by now, Rick and Julie were murmuring "Oh, god, oh god," hoarsely and fervently, one to the other, then the other hissing back. Go figure.

"Oh, Julie!" Rachel moaned, "he's going to cum off, sperm up inside you. Are you ready for him?"

"Oh, baby, yes," Julie mewed.

"Tell me," her friend hissed back.

"I think it will be when what we're doing now, stops," Julie was able to moan, thrilled at being able to share the coming event with her wildly sexy little friend, whose soft, ripening breast with its excited pink nipple she was already missing.

Julie was right. The cot bucked, shook and squeaked hard and fast, then was still as death. "I knew he'd make me cum this way," Julie whispered, "oh, lord, just -- knew -..."

The cot trembled for a long minute. Julie's left hand found Rachel's shoulder. "Hi," she whispered.

"Hi," the younger girl said, reaching across with her right hand for Julie, and guiding her friend to her right breast.

In the tech hut, the engineer switched off the high-definition surveillance cameras. The tapes were evidence; as evidence would be open to public review, and, for very sure, the world would never be the same. Was it better to die, trying to be better? It was not a question. There was no choice. When total and absolute disaster lies unmistakably and immediately ahead, one jumps from the train; the adage, do something, even if it's wrong, comes into play.

"Daddy," Rachel said, "guess who the two most curious girls in Denver are?", adding that of course they weren't actually in Colorado, but to go ahead and pretend, anyway.

"Are you girls okay?" both young fathers wanted to know. Each assumed a mile high pulpit, though Scatterseed Island never exceeded ten feet in elevation.

"'The cloud of church ran into the cloud of court, and choked the earth with a grit so fine, the only cloud left to that was fit to ride, was good old number nine,' Julie answered, Rachel squeezing her hand until it almost hurt. "That's so, so awesomely cool it's bad," she'd whispered to her fabulous new friend, on the latter's presentation of the doggerel. It need hardly be stated that her father had a more mature opinion.

"Did they drug you?" his honor, Jacob Carter asked Julie.

"I received an ambrosial suppository," the girl responded, adding: "Dad, it was Rick Schroeder. Do you, in your wildest imagining, think he'd do anything to hurt anyone?"

"He may not have beaten you, or drugged you," Harold Ketchum, of the collar, said, perhaps missing a beat when it came to semantics, "but tampering with your immortal soul is every bit as bad, even as great a sin, ever an abomination, ever unholy."

"You're right, Dad," Rachel said, looking for a second at her totally best friend, and drooping one eyelid for a split second, "we just got carried away. Julie picked the shadow of a wink up in a as short a time, and addressed her own father.

"We borrowed from each other," she said. "Rev. Ketchum is right; it was immoral to exchange garments in the name of vanity, so we'll trade back."

I've already said this chapter was going to write itself. No time to belabor the point, because I have more typing to do.

. The visitor's cell had a pair of cots and the girls opposite their fathers, separated by no more than a foot. The two sprites began unbuttoning their blouses, and before the men on the opposite cot could gather a head of steam, had shrugged off their shirts, unclipped their training bras, and handed them to each other. To be sure they were not misunderstood -- the travail of children over ten -- they linked their fingers behind their necks and arched their backs, bare-chested and so beautiful that any and all gods took a moment to look in. One of them, in particular, a modern deity of surveillance, keyed up four more cameras, opened the mic pots, and another quart of Gatorade.

"Don't you want to know what we're curious about?" Julie asked. Her dad's coloring was all wrong, and she thought the sound of a nearby voice might sooth him.

Since neither of the men replied, Rachel chimed in. "Something very special and intimate happened inside Julie," she explained. "I was there, too, but, you know, neither of us saw anything, so, naturally, we're super curious about males and what it looks like when they're trying to fertilize a girl so she can have a baby."

Hmm. As far as coloring went, they were, so far, having little effect. They just needed time, that's all, so maybe the silent treatment would work better. They remained as they were, their nipples swollen at the presence of the athletic males so near but so far.

"We should have painted ourselves green, like a traffic light," Rachel thought to herself, but held the comment as unlikely to be necessary in light of the heat rapidly rising in the staring eyes of Jacob and Harold.

"I'm still a complete virgin, Dad," Rachel said. "No one's even seen me like this before."

Julie had her own statement: "My original sin was so intimate and sweet," she said, looking across at Jacob, "I want to compound it with incest."

"Daddy," Rachel added: "I want to wake up tomorrow morning with incestuous seed swimming inside me, too."

Is it any wonder the girls were doing all the talking? The truth sings, the lie whimpers, and oft' lies agrave. (Except, be it noted, in politics, religion, academia, and some advertising.)

Sometimes it's hard to find a place to break into a story. Assuming an author's intrusion is unwelcome, in any work of fiction, I have to square the assumption in my own highly tuned work. And that's only half the bad news. "The Samanthian" is going the way of thousands of little home-brew efforts in the world of publishing. R.I.P. The girl showed up at six yesterday morning, after I'd been with you-all until four, solely and exclusively to grind on me for batteries for her boom box. I explained thirty or forty times that we were down to the dollar to feed everyone until the eighteenth, when my next transfer will be credited. At some point some major truths hit home and I grabbed her by the collar, ripped the lock of the door, and threw her out. Her brother lay abed until eleven or so, and when he deigned to join the wakened world, I threw him and Melissa out, too. I always loved the boy, but, while he'd jump in my lap for money, he never showed up to do his homework. Too handsome for his own good, and that's the truth. His classmate, Toro, who Bev helped get back to the States, was a plain boy, and is now doing well in San Francisco. He liked to read and couldn't trade a fair form and fair face for anything. What's a boy to do? Anyway, the danger lurking in love does not discriminate on account of age. For a few days it was a joy having him, and Melissa was as inoffensive as they come. Just a few sinks full of dirty dishes, sandy floors, loose caps on everything, erratic hours, roll-a-day toilet paper consumption, endless showers, sleeping `till noon, and an eight-year (non sexual) love turned, if not to hate, something even colder; indifference. The bulldozer-through-the-wall joke is that if I'd hooked him, age twelve, on cigarettes, pot, and twenty-minute blow-jobs, I could have focused him, no pain, no strain. He had the wonderful grace to steal my new camera as he was getting his CDs out of the machine, so there is a bridge cleanly burned, beyond rebuilding. The sum lesson is you can't, certainly, expect anything for your altruism, nor, equally certainly, should you; however, what you can, and probably must, expect, is that if the beneficiaries don't do well by you, there should be some observable progress in doing for themselves. It is this lack that brings out the black paint of hopelessness; that tells us if we'd doubled our gifts, the expectations would be twice as high, and that's all there is, there is no more.

Daisy's been away, duh'uh, all day (Sunday), leaving the dogs to get into more and more vicious confrontations. They're sloppy in feeding the animals, so, lo and behold, there were eight of them on my veranda. I've been proud to have numerous ten-thousand word days while my team played hardball, but must say I look forward to adding ten or twenty percent once solitary splendor is once again mine to savor and exploit. Also proud to have turned every stone, exhausted every resource, been knocked flatter than Rocky, more times, and kept coming back for more. As an artist, this forged me into the best who ever lived, but as a man it just made a fool of me. The huge increase in disposable income is frightening. I like being poor. I like the value of each of a few dollars more than the luxury of wealth. In the final analysis, the man who buys a new BMW, and works like a coolie to make the payments, half impoverished by the machine, is a better man than I am. Didn't you just know it; that the very diligence I preach, applied to reading me, would finally yield some good news? That you can buy the product of skilled engineers and dedicated (or at least functioning) craftsmen, and thus do more for the betterment of society than I did giving away an equal value to those the liberals prattle over? (I have a trailing note that reads: "Words omitted in the heat of prattle." Obviously it does not apply to me, words' and omitted' being the very definition of `oxymoronic' in my copy, but it might be useful to someone.)

That's pretty much it for gossip and tidbits from Dangriga, with a final note. I can't remember if I mentioned the big new building a stone's throw from my house in published copy, or in a letter. Anyway, it's the biggest, fanciest thing around except for the ludicrous Miami Beach Texaco station, a quarter mile away. I've been praying it wasn't a church, but this morning, my prayers went unanswered and choral singing issued from the half-built, but not half-grandiose (by local standards), edifice. I try to estimate how many pairs of tennis shoes the building represents, how many books, how many school uniforms, how many meals, how many bus trips so the children aren't caught in the slashing white squalls than smash through at frequent intervals, and I come up numb to the bone. By all gods, I've done a hundred times my share, by all gods I have failed, and by all gods, I shall do no more, but at least I do not steal from the downtrodden (so downtrodden, as a matter of fact, that on Halloween not a single one of the hundreds of kids within a mile came by trick-or-treating), while the big, shiny new church steals what they don't even have. Every time I look at it I say to myself, "Praise god, and pass the ammunition." Nah. Not my style. Besides, I have three million downloads, and counting, fast, so I've got to keep my powder dry for you guys.

Jacob and Harold stared for a moment at each other, then back at the females. Neither girl pouted, hootchy-kootchied, bumped, nor ground. They just sat, displaying, eyes wide with love.

The judge said, "Jesus." The preacher, "We should notify the authorities." Neither was realistic. They were just too beautiful. Too happy. Too sure of themselves and what they wanted. Too, and they had to face this reality, female.

"Oh, Rache," Julie whispered, looking to her left, "you are so beautiful."

She let the sentiment echo for a long moment, then added: "Don't you think so, Rev. Ketchum? Dad?"

It was a crystalline moment, as wondrous as any in history. Both germane and pivotal. Seemingly endless, though all four video recorders were indexing every hundredth of a second. Two minutes. Three. Movement. Sounds of clearing of a masculine throat. Several attempts at speech. Speech.

"My friends call me Oldie," Harold allowed. Quick as that, he made two new ones.

"You're a very beautiful animal, Daddy," Rachel whispered, to Julie's vigorous nod.

"We want to see you both naked, just to be sure," Julie added.

"And be homosexual together, while we watch," Rachel said, "because homophobes have no place here, if they ever had anyplace, anytime."

So saying, the barefoot females stood and dropped their shorts; turned to each other, and stripped one another naked. "Julie has sperm on hers, Your Honor," Rachel said, holding the smeared garment to Jacob, and, if it wouldn't be deemed tampering with evidence, she'd like to lave your glans with semen before my dad starts masturbating you."

Jacob's right hand actually trembled and spasmed. Both girls realized he was fisting an absent gavel, and they chorused in a happier whisper than was ever likely to be heard in a court of law: "Case closed."

They were a magnificent pair. Jacob was circumcised, seven-and-a-half thick inches, bent sharply to his left. Oldie was his equal, almost his twin. They males looked down at each other, as aware as the pubescent females staring from two feet away.

Julie immediately made good her promise, taking her sopped panties to first her father, then the young preacher, wetting them thoroughly, then guiding, with Rachel, their hands, one to the other. "You're back in Greece," the older daughter whispered, "Socrates just left with a twelve year old boy. Try to imagine what they're doing to each other, and show us what you see."

The girls sat back on their cot. The males found each other, and looking hotly into each-other's eyes, began tentative foreplay.

"They are so beautiful," Julie whispered to Rachel.

"And how!" enthused her slightly younger friend.

"Would you care which one fathered your child?" the judge's daughter whispered.

"Not in the least," Rachel replied; "how about you?"

"Ditto," Julie affirmed, "not in the least."

"If we weren't in love," Julie remarked, "we could have a race to see who gets pregnant the first."

"I guess the race will be to see who does, last, then," Rachel giggled.

The girls let the boys jerk each other off for just a minute. Both males rose very quickly to their toes. The confusion of their kidnapping, transport, and incarceration had left them at low ebb for two days, so there was no dilution of the effect they were having on each other. The females intervened, reaching for their fathers, and taking them, cupping with their left hands, and masturbating firmly with their right hands. The men emulated their first positions, spreading their legs widely, arching their backs, and placing their hands behind their necks.

They were about to become the least curious girls in (or from) Denver. Their fathers rose higher on their toes, they half-linked their legs to support and feel each other, and totally yielded to their eleven year olds.

"Cum off on my breasts first, Daddy," Rachel coaxed, "so Jacob can watch while he's still excited." Since the girl was a leading expert on vicarious thrills, her father obeyed her whispering. He ejaculated fast and hard, again and again swathing his little girl's swollen nipples and nascent breasts with long streamers of hot, white sperm. Rachel bent to him, licking him wildly. "Oh, Julie," she moaned, glad at least in a small way to share a first with her friend, "it's primal, like the sea, like a storm, like a torrent; we'll never get pregnant, this way."

Wildly stimulated by fucking everything, Jacob groaned just as the white drool from Rachel's lips vanished beneath her greedily lapping, pink tongue. "I'm cumming, Julie," he managed to whisper. Julie took his semen in her face, knowing she would soon share the hot, heavy smear on her young friend's breasts. She nuzzled and cooed wantonly as gush after gush sprayed hot and heavy from the shaking, sweating athlete in front of her. She took much in her mouth, letting some drool to her thighs. At the end, she milked the half-collapsing adult hard and fast against her own pubescent nipples, making him cry out and ejaculate feverishly.

The males were spent, but managed to support each other as they watched their naked daughters fall gently on each other in an almost savage bout of licking, french kissing, and whimpering. Julie was on top. Jacob rested, ogling the lesbians, then plucked his daughter bodily from her lover and swung her to the male's cot. Oldie lowered himself to his knees, and groaned as the child spread her legs, grabbing her knees, and whispered, "Daddy."

The females were mounted simultaneously, Rachel shrieking at her father's masterful surge between her long, coltish legs. Neither felt their father's cum, because the men took them hard and fast. They crashed so hard into nearly mutual climaxes, their arms, grasping for and finding each other, slid the heavy cots together. They shrieked and cried, babbled and moaned, thrashed, shook, sweated, and clawed at their fathers, pounding hard and fast with their heels. The men howled over them, egging each other one, like wolves, and bellowing so they buried their faces in their children's hot, sweating necks so as not to rouse the very dead.

Defrocked and disbarred. Accosted, waylaid, kidnapped, smuggled, chained, taped, confined, and sequestered. Kids. They'll do it every time.

CHAPTER FIVE

There was an air of tension on the set. Yes, the smiles were warm, the various alpha group touches gentle and lingering in appropriate places, at appropriate times. Yes, there'd be unexpected grins, practically bolts from the blue, so unexpected they sometimes almost hurt, yes, manners were never better, more thoughtful, more co-operative and accommodating, and yes, they slept from midnight to six like a cord of proverbial logs, but, yes, also, they realized they were living an epoch in the making. Yes, they realized the stakes were the very future of civilized humanity. Their defiance was utter and colossal. Yes, they had the evidence; enough to slam the judicial system, rabbit punch it, and pin it on the line to dry, adding to grotesque malfeasance and pandering to religious fanatics on the issue of marijuana, clear and present stories of real and breathing people who reduced the one-size-fits-all lines in the books to just plain nothing at all. Worthless. It was the most gigantic first step of any political movement in history, with sizzling clear high definition discs actually, for a few days, surpassing distribution of those of AOL.

Jay Leno, ever the striving humorist, went ahead and played one. By this time, the country was so numb with joy it merely made the papers (so the archives would be consistent).

There it was, two stalwart citizens, not a traffic ticket between them, boldly inseminating their grossly under-age daughters. There were the daughters' heels, shouting welcome more clearly than the whimpering mews audible on the soundtrack. There were the close-ups of the girls, wet, so their could be no doubt about fakery, as they rolled gently off the tender, young bodies, their penises naked. It had happened. It had been total and complete. And the cuddling, snuggling, whispering, and giggling could have been any happy girls thanking their slim, handsome daddyos for new bikes, skates, or ponies.

Did serendipity rule? Nirvana, found, Eden, regained? For the most part. Rick, Allen, Rob and company did a fair number of interviews. Invariably, the lion's share of credit was given to Nifty. Not for activism, and that was much the point. Never didactic, never hustling, just there. Fifty thousand stories. Some were professionally written (it's hard to tell); a huge number, one-offs; true. This happened to me with this person, and this is how I feel about it. Aged father with divorced daughters. One, a seven year old who leaves her dad's bed on reaching the age of ten. One who offers her ten year old daughter (refused) to the same adult male who spent in her ten-year-old body. By the hundred, thousand, and tens of thousands. Negative stories included. The Asian girl who seduced her vivacious sister, and now has to live with the sister stepping in front of a bus (very likely by a pro). Very likely true, the father of the drunk fifteen year old boy who, while washing him off in the shower, masturbates him, to the detriment of an already bad relationship. Some ugly. Some by men who I'd vote to execute, if I were on the jury. A high percentage, perhaps twenty or thirty, by women. Journalist, pundit, philosopher, commentator, editorialist, you could not go in, stay even a relatively short while, and emerge the same as you were, or wanting to be the same as you were. Lacking is a cohesive moral thread. A common denominator stressing, a, physical discipline, a mocking nag that repeats, like a dirge, ha-ha, fatty, look what you're missing, and, b, reading as the substance to any relationship. The third factor, as stated elsewhere, is as a palliative to the social boredom inevitable at the conclusion of two hundred years of the dramatically new under every sun. In the vast majority of manuscripts, sensitivity to the wants and desires of any juvenile partner is paramount. "Sex with minors should be left to minors," read the subject line of one reader letter. I was too ignorant in the ways of the Net to open the attached file, and I regret that (all emails are now gone, as I mentioned), but the opening was so eloquent I make do with it. And say the opposite. Whenever possible, an attractive, caring, long-term adult should guide young boys and girls. Nothing is worse than learning through an extreme of crude verbalizing on the school bus, or a la Dorothy and Stan (of "The Golden Girls"), a little nervous squirting in the back seat, Terror's iron hook found in the door handle on arrival at the girl's house, it's owner her companion on many trips to the toilet. I happened to have learned both ways. With an adult male, when I was eight, and with the prototypical redheaded girlfriend, nineteen, when I was twenty, in the back seat of a Plymouth. I value the first and regret the second (but was lucky enough not to get her pregnant, and really regret it). She shared this regret, although, years later, I got a letter asking me back. (She wasn't as educated as Anne; hadn't learn about closure; to turn the page utterly and irrevocably.) Since I like to laugh at myself as much as anyone, I should point out that Linden has beautiful Melissa, when he couldn't support a kitten, and Jose Schmosey is probably, at this moment, sweating bullets over little Karen, while I, for pressing on toward twenty-four years, have slept and still sleep, alone; even Nifty has "evaporated; pussy and all, just up and vacated,." do to the singular lack of a telephone line. I tease my readers as much as I judge they can handle it, and Belize Telephone Limited is taking the same liberties with your truly. Yes, I like being the butt of my own jokes, but, when I look at my flat-belly profile in the mirror, the joke's pretty much on everyone else, especially those over fifty. Seven out of ten rich eighteen year olds would trade and throw in an unrestored Stingray with a four-fifty-six rear end.

The show must got on, and, indeed, much of the show was devoted to fishing. The single opening shot dropped the audiences' collective jaw, and the critics weren't going out in that storm. Angela was in final battle with a thirty pound kingfish. As she got the savage fish within gaffing distance the point of view changed to a sweeping overhead pan, the camera approaching, looking straight down from twenty feet in the air. At the crucial moment the camera dropped, plummeting within inches of the fish's head and the girl's muscular arm. For a second, nothing but bubbles, then the camera tilts to the sun-dappled surface and the fish is hooked forcefully from the water. The camera then tilts to the horizontal plane, where big fish are tearing at a small one thrown into the water from the boat; the message plain: fishing is a violent and explosive sport, closely matching what fish do to each other, and, since the "One Fish" crew never deliberately released their catch, but rather donated it to the market, for the same reason.

Allen tried not to walk around grinning as the thirty seconds of stunning tape swept all cinema-related awards, but it was not hard to catch him out. Indeed, he was very likely, when questioned, to give credit to the Japanese engineers who made a high definition camera light enough to string from pylons mounted in the camera dories, as well as the technicians who'd perfected the complicated release and tilting sequence.

Nor was Allen the only one in a state of grace. Rob had shown Rick a new feature-length script, and the young producer had read it at a sitting, even Nancy shooed away until the bright young older brother came up with the idea of having her sit in his lap and read it with him. (To an extent, this story appears in "Blissy's Song". To an extent, because when I was a hundred and fifty pages into the story, the calendar turned to September 11, 2001. As you'll know if you've read the novel, I turned to a long series of essays, posted on a daily basis through the following week. I mention it here by way of self-promotion, yes, but also because the essays contained two jokes, one of which is simultaneously the funniest, dumbest, and cruelest ever told. The first joke is: Osama bin Laden, the man who put the sky back in skyline. You think that's a ten? Oh, just you wait. Do I have a joke for you. I wrote it on Sept. 12th. Believe it or not, it consists of three words, granted they are intensified by the fury of the Muslim attack. If you have stitches or any serious medical condition, saints preserve you. The joke goes like this: "Has Seinfeld enlisted?")

Rob's opening gambit was admittedly a little weak; a vague derivative of King's "The Stand". A well funded and sophisticated group of terrorists use time release of a delayed-action toxin to eliminate all urban and most suburban populations. Conveniently, enough warning is given in the right places to launch an all-out nuclear and thermonuclear retaliation, so the possibility of invasion, a pretty big ha-ha in the first place, for the camel crowd would have to be able to find us, i.e., read a map, to do much invading, and some plotlines really do stretch credibility, is moot..

Approximately one million people survive. To divide among themselves, they each have the assets of nearly three hundred people, from plastic toy bulldozers, to thousand-horsepower Cats. Yet -- many things still need to be done. Water, power, sewage, garbage; in a few years, farming, mining, forestry and some not-small number of someone's-gotta-do-it jobs.

The central conflict becomes enormous. How to get reliable workers for monotonous and ever onerous jobs, when Ned the Neighbor owns three houses and four Porsches.

"Daddy," Jenny Kirk asked, "why do I have to be eight?" The scene is Baltimore, picked as a good survival city. I've taken the liberty of novelizing Rob's screenplay, because it's easier reading.

"The law says so, hon," twenty-six year-old Cassidy Kirk said to his seven years and eight months old daughter, "plus," he added, "it's a physical thing. To be sure you're physically, you know, big enough not to get hurt. Like rides at `Wunderfunder'."

Jenny was a pig-tailed blond, blue-eyed bit of a wunder, herself; broad, intelligent brow, dew-and-cream skin, all silk, ribbons, pink, and soft.

"It should be different for athletes," she said, "not that I'm any superstar, but I'm no pansy, and," she added, "it should be different for girls and boys who read a lot. Who know what happened, and about various things, and as much about what the future will be as anybody."

"Sweetheart," Cassidy said, "it's not like in your history books. The laws are different today. There is appeal before conviction; sanctioning; the rules are bent and twisted a certain amount, based on merit, while they're kept on the books, both as a deterrent, and as a vengeance weapon against those who would hurt or exploit others in any way beyond the give and take of romance and relationships that falls under the heading of normal."

"Is that true?" the girl asked, not doubting, but suddenly puzzled. "They don't say word-one about it in school. They just say you have to wait, until you're eight"

"It is true," the young father said, "and they don't, because it's one hundred percent up to the juvenile both to bring the subject up, and persist in it. Those children may be told, and those children may submit their case to the courts."

"Do they ever win?" Jenny asked.

"They always win," her father said. "It's prima fascia law. The fact that a child appeals, says it all. The courts stay involved and keep tabs on things, because just because there are no reefs behind, doesn't mean there may not be one ahead. Eyes wide open."

"I wish you'd told me sooner," Jenny said, faking a pout.

"That would violate the law," her father explained, "any inveigling, or coercion; anything other than the natural, unencumbered, freely expressed wishes of the child is exploitation, and the super polygraph would catch it in two seconds."

"So the law actually serves as well as protects," Jenny whispered, half to herself. Her eyes seemed to add: "Will wonders never cease?"

"The law, in the end, stipulates only that a child be able to speak and, or, act clearly. Focus, to use a bit of a fuzzy word."

"Then what?" the adorable blue eyes wanted to know.

"Then, it's your choice. If you want, and I can tell you about this, you can join the S.S. Specially Selected children. It's so secret I can tell you, also, that out of the four hundred at your school, ten boys and ten girls are S. S. members, and I'll bet you four ranches of a hundred ponies, each, you've never heard a word."

"You're right, Daddy," the girl acknowledged..

"Well," Cassidy said, "you still get the ranches, or at least one, one of these days; for sure by the time you're twelve."

"Meantime?" the girl asked.

"Meantime, as I said," the father repeated, "it's up to you. If you want to belong, you get to do the same things the eight year olds do. You get to choose who teaches you the secrets, who guides you through your first experiences; when you go to the Centers, how long you stay; what you do while you're there, who you choose to do things with; in short, everything but whether or not you brush your teeth in the morning, which, as a parent, I get to say."

"Free, white, and eight years old," the girl giggled, her eyes sparkling with excitement. Her father was a living dream in her eyes; tall nearly Olympic swimmers build, short brown hair; fox faced with big, also, blue eyes.

"That's a big girl in these new times," her father acknowledged, and you're a lucky girl to get a head-start."

"I'm a lucky girl to have you as a teacher," the girl replied.

"You think carefully about that," Cassidy said. "You've got some nice teachers at school, and there are nice young men closer to your age at the swim club. There's no stricture on fathers' teaching their daughters, but it's entirely the juvenile's choice."

"I like Jim Fort," the pixie said, "but there's only one you, even if there are a hundred girls who'd like to be me."

"As there are some few hundreds of thousands of fathers who'd like to be me," her dad smiled.

"How do you teach me?" Jenny said, that issue safely taken care of.

"That's up to you, Miss Eight," Cassidy said.

"Since I'm all dressed up from Melanie's party," the girl said, "I think it would be aesthetic to take me deep in Old Grove. If I was in my overalls and a t-shirt, I'd want you to date me at some exotic honeymoon suite, all pink hearts and frills."

"In a way, that would make sense," the young father noted. "If you were dressed in work clothes, you'd need a bath, and there a bath would be; on the other hand, if you're fresh as summer's first rose, Old Grove doesn't have the tub you don't need."

"Be that is it may," Jenny lilted, "I like the picture of the little princess walking hand in hand with her naked father deeper and deeper into the primal stands of oak."

"Ferns, mosses, jutting roots, stumps, toadstools, lichen, rocks, streams, squirrels, rabbits..."

"And one big wolf," the girl concluded for her nervous father.

"Who hopes someday soon it will be overalls and a heart-shaped hot tub."

"In lurid pink," the pixie added.

The matter decided, they pulled into a McSkeleton's for tissue, bones, and blood. How long ago had they been known as a burger, fries and Coke? Almost three years. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Fifty years earlier it had been possible to order medium rare, even on the rare side, and lose one's self in the glory of a hamburger; no different, today. Lacking sophisticated inspection networks, all food handlers were expected to eat random samples of their product, and the meat was extremely, if not perfectly safe, if eaten raw. (A similar dog-sense regimen applied on the remaining air routes. Everyone was issued a long, plastic knife on the stunningly innovative theory that it was unlikely an entire plane would be filled with troublemakers, and any such would have to take on the whole plane. I can reference, here, serving in combat where thousands of teens, living in stress and frustration at not being able to kill Jane, were armed to the teeth, bombs, included, and nobody shot nobody.)

I guess this pot can stand another minute of simmering while I try to get back up to speed. Louise woke me yesterday, at eight a.m., after I'd gone to sleep at four a.m. This put me in the twilight zone for a full day; too awake to get more sleep, too tired to turn on the computer. I stopped drinking because I was losing a day a week to this condition, which can go on and on. Fortunately, it's night complete downtime, as the thinking process goes on, but it's far more strain than spending a day at the keyboard. I think the solution is to leave the box on all the time. I'm lucky to have an older model, with a single fan; if I'm tired, I can sleep over the noise, and if in the twilight zone, can at least pick away at the manuscript, piecemeal.

I deem myself, though it's not strictly accurate, to have been born in the Year of the Porsche. Lucky thing, with a girlfriend like Samantha. Hairpin turns, big potholes? No problem. Yes, folks, she's back, on her own two hoofs, perhaps a little more wary, but no less devastating when it comes to unconscious charm. There is a high level of frustration, because she's likely to inherit a hell of a lot of money, which could support herself and her children, whether mine, or not, for generations, or, be lost to flummery in a matter of months. Getting her to take money seriously is a real challenge. I tried reason and dialogue with my wife and got dumped like a disappointing second date, so now it's raw-edged, my way or the highway. Tough love, as they say. On the very bright side, our magnetic field seems to be growing noticeably stronger, and that helps with the potholes. What it is, oddly enough, and, believe me, this is odd, is a classic case of what's known to marital therapists, and the occasional screenwriter, as The Seven Year Itch -- without benefit of clergy. That it applies as equally to a girl, eight to fifteen, and a man, forty-nine to fifty-six, as to the conventional married couple, should lend validity to the basic premise that seven years of togetherness traditionally results in a rainy day or two. And the truth of the matter is, we've fit together in a far more enjoyable and seamless manner than I would have believed possible. Money is our only area of conflict, and that's because there's too much, with more coming, not too little. We can work it out, as the old Beatles tune goes. Meantime, my fifteen year old gets sexier every day; she is the beauty of beauties and doll of dolls; very aggressive in going as far as we go, with her hand guiding me places most girls don't know exist.

Note to mariners. Dangriga's water tower has been taken down. The town sits on a small delta, some few square miles, forming a rough point protruding into the sound. Finding the one bar mouth leading into the river was dead tricky, with the water tower aligned four inches south of the radio tower. Without the second structure, it's just a confusing row of nondescript buildings and random sand bars for two miles, and the river may be identified only by catching a glimpse of the bridge -- you must be standing -- from just the proper angle. It will be interesting to see if anyone puts out a buoy. On bets, I let two of my local crew try to find it, day and night, and it took each of them well over an hour, and even then I intervened, not wanting to run out of gas. There goes the price of fish. In addition, the big tank held emergency water, gravity flow, which seemed like a good idea, but, admittedly, the pump system, now in use, gives city pressure; a luxury in a land where such things are few and far between, but is entirely dependent on electricity, itself a hit-or-miss proposition. If the U.S. exists on a wing and a prayer, Belize lacks the wing, and, since it would not be worth rebuilding after a major hurricane (or earthquake), probably doesn't have a prayer. That it is nirvana for a writer, in the meantime, is my good fortune (not good luck, for I'd read dozens of books on the Caribbean by the time I was twenty).

We're eating tortillas, this week, instead of macaroni and cheese dinners with hot dogs. Possibly the perfect diet system, not just food, because you have to mix and knead them, in the first place, then roll out the individual pancakes before you cook and eat them. If you have one lazy bone in your body, you're bound to lose weight. Apparently I have the touch because everyone, who've been eating them for years, says mine are the best. Weird. But cheap. I've also nailed tea, and that's my latest addiction. First, heat the mug with near boiling water, then listen to the kettle when you put it back on the fire. Turn off the heat at the first indication the water is about to boil. Pour the water from as high as you can, in a thin stream, over the teabag -- this restores oxygen to the heated water. Cover the mug with a lid and cloth to keep in the heat while the tea steeps. Two heaping tablespoons of sugar, plus one of soy creamer. Even the inexpensive Red Rose brand is absolutely delicious if these slight pains are taking in brewing up'. The weird in this story is that, although everyone here talks about drinking tea' as the evening meal, should they by lucky enough to have one, no one has actually had tea. Queenie, Lin, Melissa, and a couple of others became addicted on their first cup (prepared as above). Hmm. I'm getting thirsty again, so it might be an idea to get ourselves back to where we were and leave further household hints to Heloise.

As they left the hamburger restaurant, many eyes probably wondering what that couple was up to, Jenny squeezed her father's hand. "Are you allowed to take me to the center?" she asked.

"Yes," Cassidy said, "they have a special tour for S.S. kids."

The girls bit her lip, looking up as her dad opened her door of the car. "The forest has been there a long time, hasn't it, Daddy?" she asked.

"Hundreds of years," her dad acknowledged.

"So it will still be there on Sunday, right?"

"You guessed it," the twenty six year old acknowledged.

"In other words, if we went to the Center, this afternoon," the girl said, "we could go play wolf and lost child tomorrow."

"Either way, darling," Cassidy said.

"It's just that I'm totally curious," Jenny responded.

"I don't blame you," her dad allowed, "it's an exciting place." To an extent, he felt he'd picked a lucky lottery number. Jenny's attitude was prime, grade-A. Girls and boys who liked the Centers, tended to love them... made life a lot easier for everyone, because each child had to serve, love it or hate it, as men had, for centuries, served in armed forces. (If, on the one hand, that eight-year-old kids didn't usually serve in uniform, it was also true that those who served in Centers remained safely at home, and were no more than trivially inconvenienced by their duties.)

"To the Center," the girl said, breaking her last lard-fried french fry in half and offering it to her father. He toasted her back and they drove off, Cassidy on the phone to notify the facility of their pending arrival.

Jenny was full of questions. Unless selecting themselves for the S.S., the morning of a child's eight birthday was spent in an indoctrination session before they were turned to their tasks in the afternoon. Since they'd already had lunch, it was the young father's duty to provide orientation for the early bloomer. He had to do this, and drive.

"Why, Daddy?" Jenny asked, innocent at the lid of Pandora's box. Luckily, Cassidy had lived with the girl for years and was able to respond at the right level, otherwise, they'd have been much safer on the Greyhound.

"You know how you like to pet a colt or a kitten, don't you, darling?" the father said, adding: "well, in a small way, it's the same. Adults often like to touch the bodies of attractive children because they're soft, smooth, and kind of fresh and shiny and new; almost like you'd rub the fender of a new car, or handle a silk scarf."

"I think my body just feels ordinary," the girl remarked.

"I'm sure a day-old foal thinks the same thing, if he or she thinks, at all," Cassidy observed, "but you'd still like to pet it, right?"

"Sure," the girl said, "and hug it and kiss it."

"Good," the man said, "the more of your own questions you answer, the safer the trip."

"It's a Bentley, Dad," the girl said, and, yes, he felt a little foolish. If she weren't so awesomely beautiful. How things had changed. Three years ago, he'd have been driving her in a Ford to scouts, worried about the trip, comfortable with the destination. Now he was surrounded by eight premium airbags, in a car that weighed five thousand pounds, and worried about the objective.

"Then fire away," he said.

"Just same question: `why'," she replied. His ears caught nothing plaintive in her wondering; only straight curiosity, right out of the bottle.

"Some of it a mystery, as are aspects of human nature like addiction and talent," he replied, "why males would prefer being with an undeveloped child rather than a mature, big-breasted woman. Part of it may be a subliminal desire to teach, some of it, to treasure something new and fresh, and the physical aspect plays a role, because an immature female is,. to be frank about it, smaller and tighter and that is stimulating. Whatever these factors amount to, the simple fact is a very large number of males are strongly attracted by girls and boys, your age; always have been, always will be."

"How many?" Jenny wanted to know.

"Probably twenty percent are never attracted," Cassidy said, "other than that it varies according to circumstances, but my guess is at least half harbor strong, secret desires for at least the occasional child."

"So it's about like having one color of eyes, lots do, lots don't."

"In many cultures," Cassidy said, "all did. All children engaged in mature behavior with adults. It was the norm; probably still is, here and there."

"And now it is, here?" she wanted to know.

"It's moe complicated than that," the man said, "because of circumstances. If the system was willy-nilly, every man, and a lesser number of women, would have their own pet kid, and not have to get out of bed to enjoy the ultimate reward. For this reason, there are arbitrary strictures against any activity outside the auspices of the Centers. It is a bit one-size-fits-all, but there are no other options that anyone has been able to think of, and, if the size is standardized, it's also a pretty nice cut of cloth."

"Have you been to a center?" the girl asked.

"No, darling," Cassidy answered, "I was happy with your mom, when they came into being, and lucky to be educated enough not to have to do the kind of work that gains access."

"But you know all about them?" she said.

"I've seen a video," Cassidy explained. "The S.S. committee at your school picked you as likely to be precocious, so I saw the disc they show the eight year olds, plus other stuff geared to grampuses."

"The old and feeble minded," she teased, "the stuff must have been really shocking."

"It totally was," the girl's dad admitted, "I mean they had a girl younger and smaller than you being mounted by a man half again the size of a normal man, and she was able to accept him is if he'd been a boy."

"Well, we do have babies, you know," the cutie observed.

"It's still shocking to watch it," the father said, "and other things. A girl a little older than you, perhaps, with a dozen young men. A girl with a seventy year old man. No dogs, no ponies, but most everything else. Costumes, like leather halters. Toys, I think they call them. Chains, whips, and collars. Boys with men. Something for everyone; I guess that's the point, and in the introduction, the narrator says much of the imagery is to wise you up to things you might NOT like, while showing you that other kids do like them."

"Does everything have a name?" Jenny asked.

"Nothing does," her dad replied, "you're meant to learn those on the job, so you can really understand them, you know, explained to you by someone who's actually done them, or watching them happen with others before you decide if you want to try, yourself. Choice of the language you use with your partner turns out to be more important than your looks, and a beauty with a rough tongue, as her natural way of speaking, is far less appealing than a plainer child who uses more Victorian English."

Jenny nodded with an Oh; adding: "Why the whips?"

"So you can play games," Cassidy said. "Regular prostitutes sometimes dress up like little girls for their johns; that's not an option with eight year olds." The girl giggled at just how absurd her dad could be if he put his mind to it. "So," Cassidy went on, thoroughly enjoying the interruption, "the kids use whips and restraints to play at being big girls; costumes, wigs, masks, makeup... most of the girls do like to play slut once in awhile; use potty language; act bold and aggressive, the brassy hussy routine, if you will. But it's just play; the whips wouldn't bruise a marshmallow, and a little fake wrestling would be a rape scene."

"But can't men, you know, like get out of control?" she asked.

"They use the super polygraph to eliminate men with violent tendencies," Cassidy said, "or, if they're especially productive, they allow them to attend under close supervision; plus, there's a small number of children who actually like a rough relationship, and they allow this choice to the point of serous bruising or, naturally, broken bones or any kind of clinical damage."

"How about fat people?"

"The Centers are know, colloquially, as Diet Centers," Cassidy replied, "because as you weigh, so you play. The slimmer and fitter a client is, the more attractive the children who will choose him."

"Old pictures have a lot of fat people," the girl observed.

"They had no motivation," her father explained, "they weren't allowed to do secret things with children -- you could go to jail for twenty years for it -- so they got fat in frustration and discouragement. Now there is sanctioned access to willing kids, so the motivation went from nil to extreme. Employers now say they'd fund the centers, if the government didn't, because of the quantum increase in the health of their work forces."

"Buff enough for the rough stuff," quoth the pixie, and the Bentley surged ahead.

"Will we have to take polygraphs?" Jenny asked.

"We've been pre-cleared," Cassidy explained, "due to our stable lifestyle. I'll have to take one to eliminate any chance I might have a disease, but they actually run the Centers with a degree of common sense, so we'll be through that part of it in a minute or two. You won't have to take any, but you can be there to hold my hand and comfort me, if you want."

"Dad," Jenny asked, "are you glad I spoke up on the subject; you know, got the ball rolling?"

"Yes, darling," Cassidy said, completely unaware of any trap..

"I thought so," the girl responded, "the car's going a hundred and thirty."

Even on the delightfully open roads of Emersonia, (named for an obscure humorist, as America was name for an obscure cartographer), this was excessive and Cassidy slowed.

"How about girls who serve involuntarily?" the seven year old asked.

"It's considered unpatriotic," Cassidy said, "not to respond to the obvious need of our new society, so there's a degree of prejudice that attaches itself to attitude. Some kids are freed from the obligation due to mental defect, though, on the whole, retarded boys and girls usually respond very positively. It can come to a case of the marginal children being assigned to the marginal clients, as a last resort, but this is theoretical. The system works; almost everyone willingly does at least their part, and most look forward to it and volunteer beyond their stints. "

"Do children fall in love with clients?" she asked.

"It happens," Cassidy replied, "almost anything is possible. It's fairly common for families with several daughters to farm one or two out to chosen clients on a guardian/ward basis, as long as the client lives at a convenient distance for frequent visits. In fact," Cassidy continued, "that's the gold at the end of the motivational rainbow. Keep very fit, do you job exceptionally well, and Jenny Kirk could be your housemate."

"Jenny Kirk loves the housemate she has," Jenny Kirk said.

"Jenny Kirk's loving father," Cassidy intoned, "will take said Miss Kirk to the Center in the logging community, and, when the party of the second part, to wit, Miss Kirk, has been with a few lumberjacks, the party of the first part, to wit, Cassidy Kirk, will know the party of the second part knows her own mind on the subject, and, henceforth and verily, accept the party of the second part, should she so choose, as his ever-lovin'-live-in-sexy-sensation of a living doll."

"Can I trade lumberjacks for ponies?" the eight year old wanted to know.

"How `bout a trail ride deep into the forest primeval with a pony and a woodsman?" her father countered.

"Just be sure to bring a horse, too," Jenny said, "otherwise you might fall behind and who knows what might happen to me."

"Seriously," Cassidy said, "if you want, you can be matched with clients of similar interests. You come from a reading-class background, so there's a category of clients to match -- beaurocrats, technicians, teachers and the like. If you came from a blue collar background, there'd be clients interested in mechanics, hunting, and various sports. There's a Frasier class for clients and kids who like opera and the more esoteric arts."

"Like the card catalog at the library," Jenny observed.

"I think you'd look in vain under Psychos' and Sadists'," her father answered, "but it's not a half-bad analogy."

"Do kids see the same man again and again, or a different one, each time?"

"Usually it starts as a variety of partners, because, in the end, all have to be served, " Cassidy explained, "but, as you go along, preferences are honored more or less in accordance to your attitude and performance

"So it's homogenized at first, then the cream is allowed to rise," the girl mused, demonstrating why she'd been selected as potential S.S. meat.

"Ye nail on ye head," her father said, smiling until his daughter's frown made him glance once again at the car's speedometer. Wasn't she just a little miss? He half expected Beverly D'Angelo's famous SLOW DOWN from "Vacation". Something to anticipate on a future journey.

"I'm probably too young to know," Jenny said, the car again cruising at a satisfying speed, "but isn't it an extreme of Darwinism? You know, extreme motivation resulting in extremes of performance, with a direct link to natural selection?"

"You read a lot, you tell me," her dad replied.

"I can't see how it wouldn't be," the girl continued with her assessment, "and run it forward a hundred years, you'd have something pretty close to a utopian community where the lowest were greatly rewarded, so they wouldn't have much to grouse about, yet also the option of greatly enhancing the one true outlet they are permitted."

She could be awesome when she chose. Simply awesome.

"SLOW DOWN!"

What had he just told himself?

"What actually happens?" the pixie asked.

"Such as?" he temporized.

"Such as, the physical side," Jenny said. "Okay, I can hang out with library mutts, maybe I'll even try it after awhile, but when Billy Books and I are alone together, how now, brown cow?"

"How much do you know, already?" the young father whispered.

"For narrative," she answered, "the usual boy talk by girls under eight, nothing from girls eight and over. Not even sister to sister. As far as graphics go, a male shepherd and a female collie, once, all the way through, with a prayer that the part where they stick together at the end doesn't apply to homo sapian."

"One prayer, duly answered," her dad assured her, half wondering to himself, as he looked over at her sweet little self, if he told the truth. That was the good news. The bad was the encyclopedia opened by the overall question. Physical stuff. It wasn't a Who Knew? it was a Who Knew even where to begin.

"Part of it," he began, haltingly, "I've already explained; the desire to smother and posses beauty by fondling and touching. After that, it gets more rabid. Feral and instinctive. The male's need to replicate, the female's, to reproduce. Heavy handed stuff in its rawer forms, and a what-it's-all-about basis to the psychology of us modernoids. A strong psychological facet, often enhanced by playacting, results in a far higher level of physical accomplishment by male and female. Correspondingly, the absence of a psychic attraction reduces encounters to the twenty dollar range."

"Okay, twenty bucks then," the bright eyes announced, "whatta girl get?"

Would he be defeated by her ricocheting charm? Not if he could help it. "Picture," he said, "eight hot dogs. Is that clear in your mind?"

"Yes," Jenny said.

"Okay," Cassidy elaborated, "now, include in your mental picture four common rubber bands. Got it?"

"Yes, Daddy," the sweetie pie said.

"Now," he went on, "what I want you to do is put four hot dogs, side-by-side, in two of the rubber bands, and the other four, side-by-side, in the last two rubber bands. Got it?"

"Yes," she said.

"Now, lay the two columns of four hot dogs, each, end-to-end, and draw the sharpest mental picture you can of the result."

"I've got it," Jenny said.

"That would be the biggest male allowed at a normal Center," the young man explained. "Something like nine inches long, and as big around as four franks."

"That's pretty physical," the girl admitted, apparently satisfied with her hors d'euvre. Or, was she? "What happens when a man like that gets an erection, Daddy?" she asked.

"At one time, they called for Liz Taylor," Cassidy remarked, winking, and he gently straightened the child out on certain basic realities.

"How many seeds are there?" was the irrepressible girl's next question.

"They're called sperm, singular and plural, like `fish'," the male said, "and they live an a fluid called semen. They're microscopic, and there are big-time millions of them."

"That part I know about," Jenny said, "they crash into the girl's egg, and bust a move inside it, much to the discouragement of the Tampax company."

"They'd be in a bind for new customers if it didn't happen," the wise father observed, "just as I'd be in a bind for a ravishing, deep-dish, cream-filled, strawberry-shortcake, sweetie pie."

"Don't forget the eggs," the girl reminded him, not archly, but with a hint of spice.

"Just seems to have a mind of it's own today," Cassidy mused aloud, pretending dismay at seeing the speedometer on the high side of one-forty. Jenny looked up at him from the passenger seat. "Daddy," she said, "I know what my friend, Christine Jones, would say. Do you want to hear, it's kind of naughty."

"I'll chance it, I guess," Cassidy allowed.

"She'd say you were in a hurry because of the cream filling."

"And what do you say?" he wanted to know.

"That that kind of language is pretty gross, that's a, and for b, won't this chariot go any faster?" It would, it did, and lo it made three miles a minute on the fair highways of a craven new land.

If the regional Centers were legendary for being easy to find, so Cassidy and Jenny's destination, the home office, was easier yet. A swarm of light aircraft, like slow motion hawks, descended from a spiraling cloud of dots, one at a time, in rapid succession. They were not landing at a farm stand giving away free pumpkins. Day or night, blind or sighted, it was not hard to tell where the action was, not in an era when most folk had at least one plane. >From twenty miles off, the navigation was a reverse of topographical reference, one simply looked to the sky, or, in cloudy whether, listened for the coming-and-going drones of airborne engines. It was a matter of some conjecture in amateur philosophical circles whether, if a mid air crash occurred, it would be better to be an arriving or departing victim. (Hope versus Contentment; optimism as it aligns with complacency; other fine points revealed at the rate of one per every two drinks.)

"Belt Free Zone", the sign read. Thoughtful touch. Perhaps one child in a hundred would be in the mode for restraint as the sprawling grounds of the Center hove into view. "Do we have to wait until we pass it?" Jenny asked, unbuckling the while. It was a moot point, for, by the time he could venture an opinion, the girl was free, white, and in his lap. A certain degree of natural order was restored when once again single-engine aircraft began passing the big touring car. They slowed further, negotiated the driveway, and parked under the front portico of the former tradeunion headquarters.

"I'm afraid she's a five," the matron said to Cassidy Kirk.

"Only half on a ten scale?" the girl's father said in surprise.

"Heavens! I'm sorry!" the nice lady said, "not that kind of five. `Five', here, means a five timer. Her partners will need to be with her five times before it is safe to clear them for release.

"Most girls are threes, over perhaps two hours. There are a number of fours, usually three hours, and I think we have twenty or so fives at the moment, out of about one thousand. That means at least four hours. It can be an inconvenience if you maintain a tight personal schedule." The woman went on to assure them that their regional Center was a ten minute drive from their home, thus reducing the hour-and-a-half journey of two hundred miles. Good news, though they hadn't minded the drive. "If you like," Miss Cody, their counselor, said, "you can come here to headquarters on a monthly or semi-weekly schedule." "We want," both father and daughter responded, to the happy smile of their hostess.

"She'll be able to bear a child when she's eleven years and three months old," the data technician said, reading from his screen. "That will give you a five-pound, ten-ounce baby, at insignificant statistical risk over her having an eight pound child when she's eighteen. Additionally, your saliva samples show the two of you could conceive with an equally insignificant risk over Jenny having an outsider's child. It's multiple generations of close cousins, not a one-off event, that causes most incest related physical and mental deformities, plus, between your two gene pools, there's a statistically sound chance you might produce a savant; a serendipitous maximizing of chromosomes and DNA that produces a genius of one kind or another."

The new government was so full of intelligent, helpful, beaurocrats, sometimes the urge to hurl did creep in. "Morning sickness when I'm eleven, I can't wait!" his little mind reader exclaimed, "and I don't care if she's dumb as a do-do, as long as it's a g-i-r-l for y-o-u."

"We're very good at that," the technician replied. Duh'uh.

"You're beautifully dressed," Miss Cody said as they left the techno swamp, wherein dwelt clinicians and polygraph operators, and entered the comfortably busy lobby of the resort. "You're free to learn as you go, or I can stay with you and pretend I'm selling you nirvana on a stick." Cassidy looked down at Jenny who looked back up with big, blue eyes. "She's cool," the pixie said. "Thanks," replied Miss Cody, who introduced herself as Eileen, "I'm in my first week as a guide, so it's new to me, too."

"You weren't a girl here, too?" Jenny asked.

"No, hon," Eileen said, "I'm twenty two years old. I had to live nineteen years in a way they'll tell you about when you're old enough to know."

"She's an alpha reader," Cassidy noted.

"Oh, sorry," Eileen responded, "then you're smart enough never to want to know." Good, they had that behind them. As Cassidy spoke, their guide made an abrupt coarse change, and after a two minute walk through classical campus surroundings, they arrived at the library. "We can see the pool, later," she said, escorting her charges through the door.

It was a wow or a place. The newbies couldn't help whistling in unison. Sure, along each wall of the long, narrow structure were shelves of quality mainstream fiction and non-fiction, but the heart and soul of the institution was a seemingly endless column of work stations. It was the banner at the head of the hundred work stations stretching off nearly a hundred yards that riveted the newcomer's eyes and which had elicited their appreciative whistles of enthusiasm. "Welcome," it read, in large but not ostentatious letters, "From Nifty.org".

"I'd almost forgotten," Jenny whispered, holding her dad's hand, tightly. "Imagine, almost forgetting."

"Take a closer look," Eileen suggested, as the couple gazed at the dozens of men (a few women), boys, and girls.

"Do you see it?" Cassidy asked the little girl.

"Yes," Jenny answered, "but I don't believe it."

It's been awhile since I threw down an over challenge to dear reader. Great time would be now. Can you guess? A hundred workstations, most dedicated to Nifty, with a number, each, for ASSGM, ASSTR, and other sites. Most occupied by couples. What had Eileen pointed out, that both father and daughter immediately picked up on? That there was sex going on at the machines? No, overt displays were not viewed with friendly eyes at any Center. Something far simpler. If I was more of a tease I'd bust a little contest, with an original copy of this ms as a prize. No telephone line, plus, I wouldn't pull a stunt like that, even if I had DSL. No, the answer's simplicity in itself. They weren't reading, they were writing.

"It's making my fingers itch," Jenny said. (She'd had the keyboard down cold at age six, and was a skilled typist.) "To look at it," their guide said, "you'd think everyone was hanging out on a rainy day, but it's always like this."

"The next time I enter this building," the cutie pie enunciated in resonating, sepulchral tones, "I, too, shall have a story to write." That made Cassidy's fingers itch.

Next stop was the commissary. They ordered tea. "Look!" Eileen said, "they're the new sewer boys." A group of twenty or so boys looking to be between the ages of twelve and sixteen entered the dining room, escorted by an athletic looking twenty year old.

"Young, indeed," Cassidy said.

"As young as ten, in some cases," Eileen said, "you don't see much of it where you live, but there are lots of kids that don't get a promising start in school, so off they go to the sewers, or they apprentice to the power company, or the phone company. Wherever they are needed, and needed they are. And the elite are the sewer kids, boys and girls; next come the garbage crews."

It was all such a neat twist on socialism. Union extortion exchanged for penniless compensation; prestige and stature not occasional tipped hats in the media, but about as tangible as they could get. "Just look at them," Jenny breathed half to herself. And cute, they were. "Were awesome leaves off, they start," the waif added, her father following her eyes and nodding in agreement.

"I sense my work here is over," Eileen smiled.

"No way!" Jenny yelped, her hand shooting out to the older girl. Cassidy again nodded, unmistakable in his sincerity, and their guide relaxed back in her chair and smiled happily as the tea arrived.

Great minds think alike. Cassidy excused himself and carried off his tea to take a seat with the new arrivals, while Jenny and Eileen pulled their chairs close together.

"I've got your printout, Jenny," the guide said, "but I haven't read it. Is there anything exciting?"

"Soloing an F-16 when I was six, the grail was a challenge, last year, and my two trips up Everest this past summer," the girl said.

"We can help girls like you," Eileen promised, "you know, kids who are clueless as to what real excitement is all about."

"If you can beat asking my dad embarrassing questions at a-hundred-eighty-three miles-an-hour," Jenny said, "then carve me a stone pedestal and bolt me down."

"It's not going to take the smallest rubber band on the market," Eileen said, "not an inch of the cheapest thread, not the restraint of a single overcooked strand of vermicelli, to keep you here and keep you happy."

"How do you get me to leave, that's what I'm wondering," the younger girl asked.

"We have a spool of Tyne Daley clips," the hostess replied; "mandatory after your shift is over; either return to your home, or pull up a chair in the television lounge."

The place was well run, even unto the pleasure of departure.

"How long is my shift?" Jenny wanted to know.

"No limits, during your orientation," Eileen said, "you can make it us as you go along. At your regional Center, you'll do ten hours, overnight, three times a week. A lot of that is usually spent sleeping, so it's not so much of a burden as you might think."

"Is it tiring?" the younger girl asked.

"At first," Eileen admitted, "but you'll build up stamina and endurance, just like any dancer or athlete."

"I've noticed girls a month past their eighth birthdays are a different breed of cat than girls one month shy of the same birthday."

"Look all you want for a gym," Eileen suggested, "you won't find one. Calculate that in with what you just said."

"The pool?" Jenny asked with a silly wink. Eileen eyed Cassidy and the group of young boys now gathered around him. "Do you think any of them are headed there?" she asked, winking back.

"Can I order something like my own personal cow for breakfast?" the cutie wanted to know.

"We've got someone with a chainsaw headed out into the pasture right now," Eileen prattled.

:"How long will Dad be with the sewer boys?" Jenny asked.

"Jenny," Eileen replied, her beautiful boyish face taking on a matter-of-fact look, "we're not big on privacy at the Centers -- we equate it with secrecy. We talk a lot. Never anything phony, or even slightly exaggerated, but everything that isn't. There are the Silent Sinner, a subgroup, who don't like the motif, and there as popular as any group, personal preference, end quote; you're welcome to join them, if you like."

"No way," the seven year old replied, "but, just out of curiosity, how many are there."

"About twenty percent. They have a high turnover, because sooner or later they come to realize that telling true stories of things that really happen is simply contributing, with no down side except residual taboo. Since taboo also makes relationships exciting, it's a complex issue, so, guess what."

"What?" Jenny said.

"They don't try to study it. Isn't that amazing? At you're age, forget it; you're an alpha reader, so you know. Think of your history. They knew, as a clinical certainty, in the Fifties, men could not long endure in a weightless environment. Anyone who's worn a cast for six weeks knows how muscles atrophy. Yet, they spent a major part of a trillion dollars on manned space, always with the mantra: it's a terrific problem, and it will take terrific resources to solve it. Now that we're one in three hundred of what we used to be, we recognize a lot of questions and problems are totally and completely, forever, un-solvable, un-answerable, and unknowable. The roles of taboo, superstition, morality, and various aspects and facets of sin and depravity cannot be known, and a history full of diametric contradictions proves it. Despots who build enduring wonderlands; indoctrinated fanatics like's Spain's Philip, who lost history's greatest treasure, by ten times, in the English Channel. Gold in, garbage out, or, more accurately, all the timber on his dramatically beautiful peninsula, out."

"England is pretty nice," Jenny said.

"It was a prize," Eileen agreed, and that's how those two fell in love.

Speaking of love, try this on for size. It's nine-thirty at night, and all at once you have a super model kneading tortillas in your kitchen. And you're not in love with her. Like her, very much, but not an ounce of lust, love, or any of its kith or kin. And Louise is a super model, make no mistake. She is tall, slim, and subtly curved to points right of the decimal. Very long legs, very more than very sculpted rear, and breasts, long neck, ridiculously beautiful face, and overwhelming smile. And what do I like best about the entire, awesome package? The fact she's kneading, not me. (Just kidding, I love it. And pig tail. How cool is that; born a prince to the most astounding family in human history, scion of the oldest, largest, and most secret fortune, and whiling away his morning cooking pig tails. I did my first beans, today, too, and even Samantha had to admit they were good.

I'm trying to have recriminations about tossing Lin and Melissa, but I can't. In the first place, they had a choice of other housing, and, in the second, there is a limit. I asked him three times not to carry a deadly little combat knife, but he still carried it. It wasn't the accumulation of nuisance factors, nor the gross consumption of everything from water to toilet paper, it was a baseline attitude. Story after story of how much ganja this one smoked, or what that one had pulled off, probably something like fighting or stealing. His interest in the boat extended to sitting in a chair and listening to me talk about it, politely enough, but not to rustling up the cardboard we needed to start making forms for the mold. Even minor things like fixing a burner on the stove, or cleaning the fan, simply didn't get done, day after day. Meantime, he was out and about pretty much constantly, repeatedly leaving Melissa with nothing to do and no one to do it with for four to six hours at a time, while he's hanging out with his burnin' buds. I try to make the leap to regarding him as a son, but can't get off the ground. I did dishes, mowed lawns, painted, cleared brush, and mowed more lawns, ceaselessly, at his age (and down to age seven, or so), and then guess what? It snowed. This led to mud, an actual season in Maine, and lots of cars needing lots of washing. Three pounds of water pressure (with an ice cold product) from a basement well compounded this particular challenge. I don't think he did one hour of work in ten days, and he certainly added fifty percent to mine. Most of all, when it came to any paternal aspect to the relationship, he was non-responsive. Ask him three times in a row not to wear sandy sandals in the house, he'd wear them a fourth time. He knows all the words to Notorious BIG, and there's some filth on a platter. He's a classic example of the adage that goes: the easier to raise, the harder to save. He was a great ten, eleven, and twelve year old, and a tolerable early teen, but then he stopped dropping by much at all, dropped his grades, and, final straw, started getting in trouble and stressing out his teachers, who took a special interest because of Bev, and because he was and is a strikingly handsome boy. I tried to caution him that there's always a cuter, younger boy right behind, so don't trade on the mirror stuff, but it went in one ear and out the other, if indeed it made it in the first one, at all. Typically, he's highly artistic and can hold his own harmonizing with Pavarotti, but he took no interest in having a god-given opportunity to kick back and practice, without a care in the world. In the end, he's a product of American television, and that can't be a good thing. Nonetheless, I'm glad I tried; one of those things I'd hate to croak having not done, a, and, b, when they left, I had the identical feeling to a twenty-one year old suddenly free in his first apartment. Mi casa est MI casa, and I will never be lonely in it again (not that I was, in the first place, but there's a new shine to the solitary status, until Samantha moves in, that is. She I could live with.).

Housekeeping note. "Blissy's Song" is filed with "Creative Camp", on Nifty. I think they're under Bi Adults/young friends, or Bi Camping. You writers may be interested in seeing two variations on the same theme.

It's interesting how thievery can affect one's life. I've had three major events in the last eight years. My poltroon brother left my skiff, fully loaded with gear, much of it brand new, unattended overnight, and lost everything but the hull. That got me one hundred percent out of the fishing/lobstering business, right then and there. That led directly to once again taking up writing, full time. Second was Samantha and friend copping Jessica's necklace, effectively moving them out, making room for Daisy's kids, an enduring pleasure, and, now, Lin stealing the camera, which provides all the closure I need on that defective relationship. Equally intriguing, to me, at least, is my long-term reaction to losing, first, most of my documents, and, second, all my e-mail files, to viruses. It's so good having them gone, leaving me to focus entirely on new work, and not feel guilty about not re-writing "Play Cop" and trying to sell it, or any of a half-dozen other projects, for the most part complete, or well developed. I am a better writer than I was, and there's no room for the second-rate at this level.

The diet. At the moment I can't push my stomach out as far as I used to be able to hold it in. Try it. Another housekeeping note, a real one. The perfect cup of tea, served in a mug, I think I mentioned that, but I'm too lazy to go back and see, has two heaping tablespoons of sugar, plus one fifth of a tablespoon, which couldn't very well be heaping. Actually, I think most spoons today are half way between the classic tea and tablespoons of my tangentially upper, upper class childhood. (There should be several more `uppers', if the Kennedys are upper-upper, maybe six more.)

Life is having a supermodel arriving at nine o'clock at night to cook herself dinner, and looking down on Kennedys, all part of a lazy, five-thousand-word day.

At some point along the way, faithful readers will likely cotton onto the fact that I wonder the highways and byways of autobiography because, well, in the words of the popular adage: someone has to do it. What these readers will have discovered is that my life is so bland and ordinary, you know, compared with the great drinking wolfmen of literary history, with their scores of mistresses and misadventures, that no one else would find me a worthy subject for a five-page monograph. To earn one's place as Greatest Artist of All Time, one stays home and practices all day, every day. Perhaps one reader in a thousand would be interested in the fact that I've worn the letters off the keys of my computer. The oddity in all this is if I ran along sans any reference to His Holiness in His Own Mind, I'd end up a great mystery figure, like Mr. Shakespeare, or Michael Scott, author of "Tom Cringle's Log", my vote for the greatest novel of all time; a sort of literary Christopher Columbus, or Lone Ranger. I write of myself out of altruism, out of a need to save historians the tedium and frustration of a pointless search for this document and that reference, while imbuing said historians with the knowledge that if they found a ton of stuff, it wouldn't add up to a compelling page. I'm Oscar Tame, and if I kiss a boy, I'm damn sure he wants to be kissed. My greatest claim to temporal fame is that from time to time I was the northernmost G.I. in South Vietnam. Fifteen minutes? I haven't earned fifteen seconds. Sure, I think I'm great; who wouldn't in the middle of a novel like this? but to anyone else I'm not only a snore, but virtually motionless. If I do leave my screen, it's to make a cup of tea or let in a cat. Think of a day in the life of Brad Pitt or Sean Penn, a single evening of Tom Cruise, and what do I offer? A potato sandwich. Bland, colorless, cloistered; my most vivid activity is a daily wallow in the feline latrine under my bed -- and we don't want to go there.

So, it's all up to me. If I'm not to be read because I'm Tom the Obscure, the mystery man of contemporary literature, one day to be the mystery artist of classical literature, I must set the record straight by assuring everyone that there is no record. This, in turn, breeds confidence because it's nice to be read because one is a writer, not some massive bull of a persona. The real deal, as it's known it the States. My only prayer is of thanksgiving for good health, my only hope, that I have ten years with my Samantha, my only fear, that it's unnatural to have no fears, and my only wish is to think of something, someday, to wish for. Hell, if it's slim pickin's for me, think how the outsider will fare when it comes to any unmasking, insightful probing, thoughtful review, contemplative analysis, or abstract interpretation. Sure, others will criticize me for this fault and that defect, but to what avail? I knew them all when I was four; that I was somehow responsible for the very curvature of the earth. Mother knows best. Nor will my massive family be of much use to the biographer. They aren't much use to anybody else, either, except as potential fodder for any author in the mood to ridicule Harvard University. (Form a line; please, folks, form a line.) In summary, there would be more excitement in watching Ted Kennedy, on being advised the caterer delivered two dozen extra shrimp cocktails, than there is in my average year. And on that well-rounded note, it's back to where we belong.

"How do you feel about your dad?" Jenny asked, changing the subject.

"He was lost, of course," Eileen replied, "but we were very close, way back when."

"Like my dad and I are going to be tonight?" the girl wanted to know.

"Yes," Eileen smiled, "very much so."

"Were you scared?" Jenny said.

"Also, very much so," the counselor said, "especially, because back then he could have gone to jail, big-time, if anyone caught us."

"The Legend of the Forbidden Fruit," Jenny noted.

"Finally, where it belongs, in the history books. A girl, and I was nine, is not a piece of fruit, if she reads she has a spirit and a soul, very much her own. Simple clerics use simple analogies to warp simple minds out of ten percent of all they have."

"Simple maths," Jenny observed, "but how come you waited until you were nine?"

"Phobia, I suppose," the older girl said. They were holding hands now, eyes avidly on each other except for intervals where they'd look across the dining room, and blush at Cassidy's assemblage, then squeeze their hands, trying not to let fantasies of the evening ahead distract their attention to each other.

"Cloisterphobia," the bright eight year old said, "the fear of being alone with someone too special."

"I know," Eileen smiled, "it seems ridiculous now. The super polygraph, combined with the Centers, take the issue off the table. Yes and no. Black and white. You get, but you don't touch. Back then, it was secretive, insidious, creepy, and indecent. Those were the words. The actuality was that for girls like me it was heaven, and paradise; better than Eden on Adam's bar mitzvah."

"How did it start?" Jenny asked. Wouldn't you know it, Cassidy had a dead-cute fourteen year old in one-on-one conversation, as the others listened with rapt attention. Noting this, Eileen began her story.

"I admit it, Daddy," nine-year-old Eileen Hanson said through a smattering of tears, "I siphoned out the gas. Two gallons."

"But why, darling," her bemused father asked, his anger subsiding to puzzlement.

"So we'd run out," the third grader said.

"Mission accomplished," Reg Hanson noted. A Minnesota grain farmer, his Viking heritage was plain in his Jon Voight good looks.

"If you're really mad, the cans are in the trunk," the girl said.

"I might have known," the twenty-nine year old father said. "So, what gives?"

"Me, a lung, to be alone with you," Eileen said.

"Keep `em both, the market's down," Reg responded.

"No market and no gas," the girl said, "but this is me being happy."

"Then I guess this is me not being unhappy," the handsome man said with a soft smile, adding: "So now that we're prince and princess of all the isolation of inner Patagonia, what gives?"

"I want to make out with you," Eileen said. "I didn't wear any lipstick, so no one will know; and, speaking of knowing, I know about no fathers getting fresh with no daughters, and you're only half my father, because Mom's half my mother, and it's the other half I'm interested in, just like, guess what, Mom."

"You're not even chewing gum," Reg noted, letting a note of dramatic awe creep into his voice.

"I've given it up for `rent," Eileen explained, her parent wincing at not only the precious wit of the pun, but the offhand speed of its delivery.

"Well, that's mighty big of ya, ma'am," the man drawled, "but see it's this here way, don't ya know, well, sure `nough, the grain needs of plantin', an', why it grows so, stands to reason it must need of a little harvestin' after a spell. Might difficult, an' I have to say this, ma'am, fer a feller to be reapin' while behind the bars he's a keepin'. I'd be hopin' you get my drift, young lady."

"That leaves me a victim of no crime," the nine year old said.

"Is that really how you feel?" the young father asked, tenderly.

"I ache all over," the girl wept. "A pat on the back is more than an hour of late-night Cinemax. That at least focuses a little. With you, it's will-o-the-wisp, and nothing. Itches and yearning that seem to mean nothing to anybody, except on television, and that's just glass and phosphorous If you were a fat, bald Willy Loman, I'd love you the way a daughter should, but you're not. At all. You make me break out in goose bumps, but, I'll say one thing, you taught me to siphon gas."

"That's better," the father said, wiping the tears on the now giggling face of the beautiful girl.

"I know it's how fathers are meant to be," Eileen continued, softly. "But once in awhile it's different. Something special exists. A lot of fathers try to make it exist, where it doesn't, and that is a crime, but when it does, when it's considered and deliberate, not just an explosion from watching a hot movie together, then it's a crime not to act; robbery with a fountain pen, rather than a knife, but with the same result on the treasury."

"It's nice to think that if my daughter has a problem, I'm the solution," Reg said, "after that, it's a walk barefoot through the porcupine hall of fame."

"If it leads to my cactus garden," the girl responded, "think how glad we'll be to see each other."

"I dunno," her father drawled, "seems a might bit to ask, askin' yer old pappy to piggyback you on footin' what would choke a goat."

"Hold that thought," Eileen suggested, "and picture what I'm after. One should be better than the other. See if you can choose."

"The real joke is," Reg said, "that I feel the same about you. I think you're a mature and magical young female, and, to use your analogy, only half my daughter. I ache, too, but with your mom, I've been able to handle it.

"I'm very glad, darling girl, you couldn't."

"Dad," Jenny whispered, her blue eyes huge in her darling, heart-shape face, "I want a real affair. I read once that the biggest problem with incest is a father coming between his daughter and her mother. That will never happen. But I want everything else to. Hot and messy. The stories you hear about what Cinemax doesn't show, even at two in the morning. They'd make a maiden blush, but I've done maiden for nine long years, and that, Daddy Dear, is enough; so if things don't go as smooth as silk, or as gentle as clouds on a sunny day, that's okay, I'm a big, big girl, and as long as it happens, here and now, I don't care if it's rough."

"Well rough it can be," her father answered, used to her doggerel and responding in kind: "when a man takes a she, but they tell me there's another way. So I'll be beggin' your pardon, if we visit a garden, and melt sweetly there, unto, and when you go out, in the big, crazy world, there'll be time enough, for the other stuff."

Not his best effort, but under the circumstances it would stand, at least in her eyes. Which were awfully close. "I could reach out and lick you," Reg whispered. "Why a lickin's just what I had in mind, feller," the pixie intoned, "only I was thinkin' to myself, why, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, so I was fixin' to do a little lickin' of my own."

"Well," Reg said, "when it comes to lickin', I'm a chicken, sitting here on the state-owned road, so what say we, you and I, gas the beast and shift the load."

They dumped in both cans and backtracked to their favorite picnic spot, then, sin lightly on their shoulders, by-passed it by accord, finding a love nest further into the wooded glade to spread the emergency blanket found in the cars of all sane northern-plains motorists. These same plains are, for the most part, plain, so isn't it nice to see a swatch of color, a red spread, a bed, a daughter, white as bread, pixie feet, angel head, graced by no thread, naked as her last day dead, gently led?

Reg was naked, too. It looked so much like Eden, who needed clothes? They'd stripped matter-of-factly, like absent-minded businessmen changing for an executive session, and forgetting to replace what they'd removed. "More beautiful than I imagined," was Eileen's only comment as they retrieved the blanket and pushed on ahead to a shady bower of ferns and moss. Her dad replied that he was in no way disappointed, either, and observed that the man who'd invented gasoline was a moron because if its power to separate fathers from their excellent daughters. Eileen held his left hand in her right, and, trembling but manly, walked at his side, giggling at his silly prattle, then quickly storing it away for future review. He was so absolute; so unquestionable, so surely what he was; hugely surely, it seemed to her, and it was nice to be positively positive when it came to a thing like that.

They spread the blanket and lay on their backs, holding hands and looking at the summer clouds, trying to picture them as mixtures of gases when it was no gas which was why they were where they were. Why they actually were where they were made about as much sense, and all either knew for sure was that being anywhere else, with anyone else, made less sense.

"Is this rough enough for you?" Reg asked.

"Compared to waiting, anything that happened with a forked stick would be tolerable," Eileen replied.

"The law says you should wait nine more years," the young father noted.

"We farmers have only ourselves to blame for that," Eileen said, "waiting makes people neurotic, and neurotic people eat three times as much as people in tune with the ordinary, so we set a precedent, when the country was young, of translating legislation into angst for the profit of the plow."

"Could a doctrine be measured simply by its success?" Reg wondered to himself, "or, more precisely, created by its success?" Could there be evidence of a crime, yet no crime? Could there, by the same token, be so many fat people, without Eileen's variant interpretation of history being true? Fortunately, food tasted good, and a plausible alternative was a handy thing to have around when it came to dropping a subject, even a playful one.

"If that were true, you'd have to wait even more years," Reg said, "maybe until you were twenty five."

"Then there'd be less babies to turn into neurotic hogs," the girl countered, and a point she did have. (Now can we drop it?)

"Dad," Eileen whispered, "did I go overboard, you know, waiting `till Mom's been gone three days, and pulling that trick with the gas?"

"I guess it would be kinda dumb to call it going the extra mile," Reg said, "but no, if something's going to happen between a little girl and her father, her father is going to want to know she's sure about what she wants."

"I just don't want it to change anything," Eileen mused aloud, "so I guess that means I want to have my cake and eat it. That's pretty selfish."

"From where I lie," the handsome man replied, "you're the most generous girl imaginable. Sensitive, smart, and generous. Then, of course, you happen to be beautiful, leaving us with sensitive, smart, generous, and lovely. Then of course, you happen to be friendly and nice, leaving..."

"A long, silly list," the girl said, "totally ignoring the attributes of a prison warden, to say nothing of the scheming, sly, underhanded characteristics of the every-day, ordinary-old bimbo."

"Bimbos are all show and no go," Reg observed, "tease a man in hopes of dough, then in the boat and away they row.

"You get an F in Bimbo 101"

"What if we were at the lake and I had a boat?" the girl chortled happily.

"I'd fly a flag as big and red as this blanket, ten feet in the air," Reg said, "and wave it as a warning, and hope you ignored it, and kept rowing until you ran aground on my island."

"I don't mean to be lascivious or even particularly foxy," the darling of his heart, and often his mind, said, "but it occurs to me there are a set of circumstances under which, well, to be a little bit on the tawdry side, a staff just might not even need a flag."

Once again with the point, and we won't quibble about the semantics of the flag, in context, intended as a warning: she's nine. Her father was equally generous.

"This is really different than it would be with a teenager, isn't it?" Eileen asked.

"Probably so," her father agreed..

"Tell me what would be typical," she suggested.

"Fast and furtive, would cover most situations," Reg said, "with plenty of shame and guilt to go along with the fear of pregnancy and disease. In most cases, these are transient; a child's fear of anything new, and the couple goes on to function well together -- it's often something they laugh over.

"I guess the point is, it doesn't really matter. The worst start can have a great ending, and years of paradise can end up in hell."

"So vague in reality, so absolute in church," the girl remarked. "No wonder that institution remains a peripheral, guilt-assuaging parasite."

"It's far worse than that," Reg said. "In huge parts of the world, the Catholic church castrates women; indoctrinates them as sexual paranoids, almost one-hundred percent, and, to rub lots of snotty noses in the wound, forbids birth control. It is a fiendish, horrific, money-grubbing empire, as loathsome in its history as any which has ever existed, and little better in the present day."

"They can't get priests and nuns anymore, so maybe it will die," Eileen said.

"All those tithes, and no one to spend them?" the father mused to his daughter. "They've still got enough clever Jesuits to think of something."

"The pope seems to live forever," the wry critter observed, "so maybe we shouldn't be so negative."

"A megaton or two on the dome of St. Paul's might change that, to the betterment of the entire globe," Reg said, cautioning his daughter not to go around promoting a thermonuclear way of life, however attractive certain ramifications might appear. Glad, as any child, to have another secret, the girl giggled and squeezed his hand. "Was there such thing as a dangerous non-lunatic?" he wondered to himself, filing the thought due to present circumstances.

[Louise just knocked on the door. "Tom," she said, in her most serious tone, "I really need a fix." There went Daisy down the tubes as mother of the year. But not so fast. On questioning, nosy me, it turned out my supermodel wanted a Vicks - for her sore foot. Kids.]

"Daddy?" Eileen asked, "how secret does this have to be?"

"On a ten scale, with ten a top secret," he replied, "about an eight. I'm going to tell your mother, and I doubt she'll want to give up me and the farm on a point of ethics, or morality, or whatever's involved.

"As to you," the handsome father continued, "if you have a special friend, you can tell her; the only thing I think is mandatory, is that you tell any serious future boyfriend. If he loves you he won't give two hoots in hell if you were the baby -- and babe -- in a family of six brothers."

"Would that make me more exciting?" she wanted to know.

"Spectacularly so," Reg said.

"I guess a boy who'd been with six sisters would be pretty exciting to me, too," the girl mused in a whisper, nodding to herself. She kept her counsel for a few moments, then asked her father if he was scared.

"Of what, on top of the usual list to do with weather, accidents, and the vagaries of life, in general?" he asked in return.

"Taking the place of six brothers," she answered.

Did it always pay to educate children? To read to them? Enrich their lives with travel, table talk, magazines, documentary television, and literate friends? Or, could it backfire? Could one end up with a child too bright for its own good? Where did the paving stones of good intention actually lead? Exhaustion came to mind. Looking on the bright side, his analogy could have alluded to eight brothers. He held the thought.

"What WOULD a cesspool of carnality amount to?" the pretty one asked, demonstrating an admiral persistence.

"'Little Eileen can't come out to play right now,'" quoth her father. "Interference with your larger life; sex instead of this, sex instead of that; being passed from one male to another, your one vote to their however many. Liquor. Force. Rutting-peasant language. Aberrations from whips to feces. Humility. Depredation. Obesity, and, probably about the time you were getting in the swing of things, celibacy; a return, unwanted, to chastity, unwanted, because the girl would end up unwanted."

"Well, I'll be daunted," Eileen quipped, her unfailing wit and good humor all but making her father cum as he lay beside her. Brains were the sexiest organs, and this particular tigress might have been mounted by a dozen strapping brothers, and half their friends, without their usage changing her from the precocious and gamin angel she was. And where was the difficulty? It was commonly said parenting was a difficult job. Compared to what, the young father wanted to know, lying in bed all day? A chamber maid completely remade thirty-two beds and cleaned sixteen rooms on an eight-hour shift. A mother might do three from dawn to dusk. A professional cook might turn out dozens, or even a hundred meals a day (waitress serve them, dishwasher clean up). A mother might do eight or ten, with everything at her fingertips. A laundress washed a ton of dirty clothes, a mother, less than a load a day. A teacher dealt with thirty-two children, most mothers, two or three. A nurse ministered to dozens of the sick on a shift; Dr. Mom might nurse from one from time to time. A prostitute serviced ten men a night, a wife, one man, ten times a month. A taxi driver spent twelve hours at the wheel, a mother would drive one tenth as much. A worker got two short breaks and a lunch hour. An organized mother could catch an extended nap any time during the day. A worker punched a time clock and labored under the eye of a supervisor. A housewife didn't. A worker commuted, running with the mob, a mother was right at home on the job. Raising six kids might, with a good deal of inefficiency and procrastination, amount to laboring part-time in a factory. Turning Eileen from a television husk to the girl she was had meant an hour-and-a-half of reading, seven nights a week, she reading for half an hour, a parent reading for an hour. What else were Rebecca and he meant to do with the time, bowl? Why on earth do that when they already had the trophy of trophies?

"What are you thinking about, Daddy," the little voice chirped.

"Having more kids," Reg said.

"I never thought you'd ask," the girl said.

"With your mother, bright eyes," the dad corrected, for all the good it did.

"That would be cool, too," she said, "but filling a house the size of ours, isn't that a bit much to ask of one female in this day and age?"

"Since one more like you would make us happy for ten ages," Reg replied, "it's a hard thing to quantify."

"But I could help in a couple of years," the girl said, "and the only thing bad they say about being a super-young mom, a kid having kids, has to do with the physical demands and social depravation of motherhood. We're big time enough to afford a daddy's little toy who speaks fluent French or Spanish and wouldn't mind taking a swipe at little yum-yum when her mom's off on a hot date that she can whisper about with her dad, the moment an opportunity arises." She did have a way with words.

"And what would such a mother whisper to her hot date?" he wanted to know.

"'Darling, I have, let's see, a six-year-old bundle of joy at home, and her handsome grandpa is playing doctor and teaching her where life comes from, and, bless the little tyke's heart, she wants a second opinion, if you wouldn't mind ending our date in our, my daughter's and my, bedroom."

"I think the emergency room's more likely," Reg observed, "assuming he's a marathoner, in the first place."

"I'll keep that in mind," Eileen responded, "because I don't want any dates, hot or not, and the smaller any potential field, the better."

"You're not meant to be bent or twisted by this," Reg reminded his daughter.

"I want to be a writer," the girl replied. "A power hitter. A big, sprawling, epic freaking novelist. Kids, yes, boyfriends, no.

"Figure it out, because it's not something I want to be, it's something I am, and nothing else, except a mother/sister. That means reading at home. Three thousand books, the master says. And I can't write fiction manuscript one until I'm forty, how do you like them apples?"

"I'll take a boxcar load, cash," the happy young man said, trying to imagine his gracious beauty safe and happy at home, at her beautiful mother's side, decade after decade;, her wits helping run the farm to its maximum, her kids to do the same, neither victims of isolation nor the madding crowd. In fact, not victims in any way he could think of; quite the opposite, victim-proof, at least to the degree such an ideal was possible.

"Dad?" the kitten asked, "do you suppose any girl in the world ever had a first date like this?"

"Well, missy," Reg drawled, "a gal what goes and gives up her chew for a varmint, why she should be accorded the best by such-and-such a varmint, wouldn't ya say?" As he continued, the pixie rolled on top of him, her back to his chest, and plucked his hands from the blanket to her belly. "Go on according," she whispered, wriggling to get comfortable against the big penis jutting between her tender, white thighs and now lying hard and flat along her immature stomach.

"Thar's times, charmin' young-un, when a varmint has to take a spell to rightly remember where he was..."

"First date, Daddy," the girl reminded him.

"Now hear what, young lady," her dad continued, "the mule's run off with a burrow, the dough's gone sour, and now you up an' tell me we run outta dates? Fellows get ornry when they have to pack for an animal, and they get cussed when the biscuits gone off, but that's nothing, hear me? not the blamedest little nothing to how lowdown a varmint can get, go he without his dates."

"Then a wise varmint would carry a calendar, wouldn't he just," Eileen replied.

"He might, at that," Reg allowed, adding: "and under just the right stimulation, and with just the right motivation, he might make up his own, starting at day one of week one of month one of year one of the rest of his life."

"And that would be the first date," the girl said, nodding as if a firm grasp of the obvious had come like an inspirational bolt from the blue.

Having solved the time/fruit continuum, with a nod to the almanac, the couple relaxed. Eileen reached her hands behind her neck, giving herself completely to the big, rough hands now openly exploring her belly. Bucking and wriggling slightly, with a few encouraging mews, she soon had her father's left hand on her freshly budding nipples and his right hand low on her stomach. She spread her legs wide, and retrieved her tiny right hand to guide her father's fingers to his jutting penis as the clouds floated overhead. "Jerk off on me," she coaxed.

That killed that varmint.

"Oh, babe," he whispered, "your mom's been gone three days, it's going to be so wet."

"Don't leave anything out," Jenny said. Sure, they'd all been good parts, but this was going to be the best. "As if," Eileen assured her seven-year-old friend with the lollipop eyes.

The Nordic god's phallus stood seven and a half bone-hard inches. He was circumcised and wet. His thick penis arced slightly to his left, nestling on the same side of his nine year old's soft, white belly. She guided his right hand all the way, then rejoined it with her left, behind her neck, as she stared down between her widely spread legs. "Clavell calls it `clouds and rain'," she whispered, as her father began slowly masturbating, "and rumors abound as to the interaction of hot sperm and innocent mouths." Whether she'd write her epic, or not, she was one; as much a giant as any prodigy; as much a woman, at nine, as Willa Cather at forty-nine; as much a child as Pee Wee Herman at nine months.

"That's accurate," Reg whispered, beginning to pant in her name. "More down home," he went on, "would be the liquid Ivory we use in the kitchen."

"How `bout pearl jam?" the kiddo asked.

"It will get thick, like jam, after it's been on your chest for a few minutes, so that's accurate, but kind of gross."

"You want to hear gross," the pixie giggled, "when you said Ivory liquid, I thought of bubbles."

"If you wait `till your forty to write," Reg said, "you'll be severely cheating a deserving public."

"That's only for fiction," Eileen explained, "I can keep an ever-so-exhaustive journal, two diaries, and a sketch book, plus, if anything else interesting ever happens, I can buy a notebook for it."

"Do you know what I thought of when you said `clouds and rain" Reg asked.

"What?" the girl said.

"The total end of the world," her father whispered, his voice hoarse and ragged, his chest sweating and heaving as he masturbated between his daughter's splayed legs.

"And I though bubbles were gross," she replied, trying to giggle but unable to because her father had her in an iron grip, his body tensing with corded muscles shocking her into a wanton twinning, identically passionate for his hot male display.

"Have incest with me, Daddy!" she hissed.

"I'm going to cum on you, baby," he groaned in response, then arched and froze, his hand rigid at his base, his swollen purple glans hard against the child's soft white belly, his left hand on her immature breasts as she coaxed him with excited whispers that ended in a moan of O Daddy, repeated in shocked surprise as it happened again and kept happening, freshing her, puddling her, teaching her, and thrilling her, making her wriggle and mew, making her role quickly over so her young chest was against her Nordic god, making him role on top of her, her legs still wide, making her guide him, still pulsing hotly in her hand, to her self; making her whip her legs around him, and arch, making her shriek his name as he stung her; making her lie panting for all of him as he mounted in a series of gentle thrusts, then making her buck hard and fast, matching him instantly; finally making her cum fully in his arms, under his powerful chest, her fingers raking his flanks, as she flailed and screeched wildly into an oblivion from which she'd never truly recover, nor wish to.

"Have you tried any fiction?" Jenny asked.

"Except for losing Dad and Mom, when everyone went," the counselor responded, "life's been good to me. I haven't had to."

The two females, holding hands across the table, looked over to Cassidy. Predictably, he'd focused on the least prepossessing of the sewer boys, a shy, quiet looking child resembling the youngest son on "Home Improvement". "I never thought I was cute," Josh Benedict said, "but Pete kept saying he wanted to paint me, so finally he talked me into it." Sitting with the boys had almost immediately begun a fascinating game of balances. He'd come from Eileen's side, as pretty a party princess as it was possible to imagine, while he, himself, was dramatically attractive in a low-key, non-glossy way. So the eyes of the dozen boys had skittered back and forth, with the girlish Eileen getting a fair share of the ocular attention. Cassidy quickly learned this was, indeed, the first visit of any of the group to a Center. They'd opted to learn on their own, and, leaderless, had welcomed the mature male warmly, spontaneously accepting as their own, killer child companion -- daughter, wow -- notwithstanding. Seeing Eileen and Jenny in deep conversation, the twenty six year old had made himself comfortable amongst his suddenly dramatically expanded alpha group, and, to fill the time until his daughter was free, had asked if the boys wanted to be quizzed or tell any stories. Most were virgins living with one variety or another of foster parents and guardians. They'd spent their first week in the trenches as apprentices, relieved at getting out of school, and now, here they were, indoctrinated, polygraphed, inspected, certified and sanctioned. "Licensed to raise hell," as their group clown had put it, but, secretly, they felt not really up to the task. They'd lost their parents as nine and ten year olds, an age when the cage for sorrows is locked by some experience, but not unlocked by a wider and more worldly view. Raising hell was not an option, but Cassidy felt their hopes were not beyond hope. After some probing and a little kitten-paw teasing, Josh had admitted something had happened to him, and the group around the table had hushed, all ears.

"Do you think it was a palliative or therapeutic?" Cassidy asked. The Great Pill Drop, or GPD, as it was often referred to, no catchy name having come forth to delineate the quantum shift in all paradigms, had coincided, coincidentally, with both the end of the Industrial Revolution, exemplified by the ridiculous Segway scooter, and the wonderfully symbolic end of the democratic experiment, embodied by Boston's lunatic expenditure, in the name of the boldness of their forefathers, as the spokesman for The Big Dig had chortled on television, on thirty-dollar-an-hour tradeunionists hogging their way across the very route of Paul Revere. The past, bathwater, baby, and all had been shown as the hollow gourd it was, the glossy sheen of Jewry, notwithstanding, and had been thrown out, out, out. Now kids actually knew and used words like palliative' and therapeutic' It made them a lot more fun to talk to, duh'uh.

"If it had happened once, the former," the quiet boy with the black hair and big gray eyes said, "but Sid caught us, and that made three of us, so it was more exciting, and it happened again and again, so it became something to really look forward to. If it had happened a few weeks earlier, I would have been motivated to stay in school, but the wheels were already turning to get me here, and I didn't care, except for them, one way or the other. Mostly, I think I was glad to do my share to keep things going, and that was better than trying to add freaking fractions, so here I am." The boys clapped spontaneously, a gentle round of applause with those sitting near the boy patting his back. Josh's eyes filled with tears, but it was easy to tell he'd be having the very mother load of things to look forward to, starting immediately, so no one got all maudlin and soon the twelve year old was sniffling and smiling shyly.

"It was such a lucky break," Pete Anderson said, "it's no wonder some people think the president planned it, like they think Roosevelt tacitly allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor as the lesser evil. If the point was interesting, it would be worth debating, and maybe someday a smoking gun will be found, but, in the meantime, we can be pretty smug knowing we survived, and, but for the GPD, we'd be facing extinction with nearly three hundred million fat, selfish freaks and fools of enough hues and stripes to shame a freaking rainbow."

The plan had left some doubt in peoples' minds. Was it really possible that some one hundred government agencies had fallen for the ruse? It seems that word went out of a pending attack against water systems large and small. The antidote was widely distributed, and, in the sacred name, beloved of liberals, of public safety, had been aggressively applied. Yes, it was a hacking masterpiece, mind bending, but when all the orders had gone out, and all the pills had been dropped, it was impossible to tell where the initial orders had come from, nor the hundred thousand or so capsules of a designer toxin so sophisticated in its chemical makeup it had laid out over ninety percent of the population in a single weekend, and most of the final ten percent by the end of the week. Survivors, something under a million, had been the relative handful actually experiencing the wilderness. Imagine their surprise. The black death had triggered the renaissance because the wealth of many had gone to the few. That had been a fifty-fifty proposition. The America/Emersonia transition was more dramatic, still, focusing the wealth and property of some two hundred and more on each survivor. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams, on the one hand, but where was the fun unless an Irving appeared at your table to lisp, "Good evening folks, I'll be your server tonight," then on with the chutney?

"Nobody's ever cried," Josh replied. "We just went from then to now as if it was the most natural thing in the world."

"It usually takes people rescued from traumatic situations several days to thank their rescuers," Pete noted, "so, if someone left stranded by a flood experiences that degree of shock and numbness, it stands to reason a greater event will have a greater impact."

"I guess so," the twelve-year-old boy said, "and if we went around dwelling on it, that wouldn't do much good."

"It took years to make Vietnam movies," Pete recalled, "and no one even tried to do 9/11. We live on smallness, not bigness; burgers, not cows."

"It is sort of neat," the boy replied, "compact, trim, righteous, human in size, instead of the mega industrial and the institutionally grandiose paradigms of yesteryear "

They'd talked of then and now for an hour, sitting on the steps of an urban library. As often happened in the shaken weeks following the pill drop, a friendship was assumed without preamble or prologue. I'm okay, you're okay, was enough, and conventional protocol dropped to the point even sports and music became irrelevant. With reading left the only game in town, the cities had been re-entered in the main to access their libraries, and this tenuous network had spread the word to travel east, quarterbacked the logistics, and in a year the reshuffling of the deck had been largely completed, more smoothly and efficiently than anyone would have imagined in pre pill-drop days.

The arts. Someone quipped that now everyone ended up on the cutting room floor; especially ironic at a time when a billion dollars could have been spent on a film, if anyone could think of a subject. Since virtually all Jews had died with their urban brethren, television died, unmourned and quickly forgotten. There was little left to write about, and, as Harry Truman said, the only thing new in life is the history you don't know, and that had to be more fun than this, so, though personal libraries were often staggering, mainstream publishing never even began a recovery. This left painters, sculptors, and their related graphic artists as pliers with brush and chisel and hot glue gun, yes, and popular they were, but what was not left was a theme. The one was too huge, everything else, trivial; decorations people `bought' simply because the millionaire artists had made the effort to produce them.

"But there is a theme," Pete Anderson said to Josh, "the greatest of all time. So sweet it has always been deemed toxic, but that was back when there were new gadgets all the time, new procedures and services, new stuff; other stuff to think about; alternatives."

"MTV used to splatter so much art on the screen I'm afraid I got pretty sick of it," Josh said.

"Salesmen need product," the artist observed.

"It made me need aspirin," the boy rejoined with a grin. Both were suddenly hit with a feeling that present circumstances had little to do with what was happening between them, that it would have happened if they'd met on a bus or a beach, at any time.

"How old are you?" Pete asked.

"Just eleven," Josh replied. "Oh, I'm twenty-two."

"You look sixteen," the younger boy said.

"I won't say how you look," Pete said, "because once an artist gets going on that topic, he can get carried away."

"If dufus marries dork, beware the freaking stork," the boy said. "I mean nothing against my parents, they were great, but..."

"But nothing," Pete interjected, "take my word for it, you'll do and there doesn't even have to be a pinch."

"Thanks," the coltish sprig said.

"Baltimore, so this flyer says," the older male said, holding the mimeographed sheet to Josh.

"Think of the quibbling in the old days," the boy responded. "This nitpick, that split hair, it would have taken five years to agree on a region, then David Duke would show up, make a speech about Jews, and the whole process would start all over."

"They'll none of them be missed," the twenty-two year old quoted from Gilbert and Sullivan.

"It's about four hours," Josh said.

"Then I'm not driving with you," Pete said, I'll meet you there tomorrow. Afternoon."

"I'm not driving, either," the boy replied, "I've got a Mitsubishi Turbo."

"I don't care if it does zero to sixty in three seconds," Pete said.

"Turbo prop," the boy explained. "It cruises at three hundred."

"Oh," Pete said, having forgotten for a moment that the times, they had a changed. "Do you know how to fly it?" he asked the pre-teen.

"No," Josh said, "but I'm learning. The new tower people are really helpful with beginners."

"How many times have you landed?" Pete wanted to know.

"It's just a big, slow skateboard," the boy replied, "like a BMX but with controls that work in the air, big shocks, thick tires, and pretty good brakes."

"How many times?" Pete really wanted to know.

"Did you ever see "Flight of the Phoenix"? Josh said.

"'Strategic Air Command', with sand," the older male said.

"Sure, that's the one," Josh said.

"You're scaring me," Pete said. I wouldn't dream of giving away the plot of the film, if you've seen it, you'll get the joke, if you haven't, may I suggest...

"I've landed it on my computer," the boy allowed. "There's three at the airport, but we should hurry because they're the coolest plane without a delta wing, and you don't want to be flying a delta wing with a computer nerd."

Sounded as reasonable as anything in the new age. "Is there enough fuel to stop in New York?" Pete asked. "If there isn't, we'll find something that has enough," the boy replied.

Summer camp, for Josh, a wilderness trek, solo, to gather native American dyestuffs, for Pete. Their return to -- oops -- no civilization. The half-numbing, half-exciting gargantui of the situation. Weeks of not knowing whether to laugh or cry (that had been easier for the younger boy, he'd known to cry, at least all the way to the local Porsche dealership where he'd left his bicycle, apparently for all time). The kindness of strangers, in both their cases, no one quite knowing where to begin, because how do you begin as a multimillionaire? so compensating by putting their best feet forward in a waltz that was two beats macabre and two beats delirious. Each survivor was three hundred times what he or she had been; paradoxically, the whole place had become one little happy family because there was nothing to covet or steal even though one had the odd twenty or thirty houses to store their booty. One saving grace, and they were few and far between, of the end-play women's movement was a high percentage of female survivors, especially in the eight to twelve -- summer camp -- age group. If the average survivor rated several hundred assets, the young girls doubled that, and, since no other assets were meaningful, they were afforded both aggressive and passive protection, the latter through stringent vigilante action against anyone suspected of evil intentions. (Didn't need no witches for that hunt.)

No quibbling, no scuttling, Baltimore. Let's go. "Someday," a wag was heard to say, "we'll find us an urban socialist and let him write a big, fat book about what we did wrong." It was an idea.

Rick Schroeder always said is was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time (on location, in Mexico), but he was the surviving individual of national recognition, intelligent, likeable, pretty much anyone could do the job, what, with a population one eighth the size of Cuba, so why not? They gave him a twenty-year contract, placed no restrictions, and dissolved themselves, permanently. The shuffling went on for an opulent year, no hurry, rats and flies first, the great pill drop yielding to a great flesh drop (and man-o'-man was there ever a lot of it), with a final scouring by the lesser vermin and parasites, until all was spotless.

"You handle it well," Pete said, afraid the boy, new to twin seven hundred horsepower engines, might tend to overdo.

"I had a joystick that gave the feel, and it had brake pedals," Josh said.

"I'm glad," Pete assured his friend.

"You can steer it with the throttles, like a twin-engine boat," the boy enthused. "Isn't it totally weird? that's what I used to practice. "I'd pretend I got hit by ground fire, and had to get my crew home without using the rudder pedals."

"A special blessing, since you can't reach them," Pete remarked.

"I know," the boy enthused, "that's what makes it the positively weirdest of all weird things that ever happened to me." (And what might they have been?)

He slowed for their taxiway and with a few minor lurches made the turn. "It's so realistic," he chirped, quickly finding the yellow centerline with the nose wheel and making for the runway at ten miles an hour.

"About two-thirds of people who win major lotteries," Pete said as they leveled off and began the snore of cross-country flight, "keep their jobs. Unfortunately, these do not include people who do the meanest jobs. They tend to quit if they get a thousand dollar in the same place at the same time. Therefore, " he went on, "there are plenty of workers to keep many basic institutions functioning, but few or none for essential basic services.

"For awhile, this won't matter; throw your waste in the apartment next door, assuming water and power, of course, but those can be run, for while, by skeleton crews. After awhile, though, it gets dicey. Fresh food. Painting bridges. Everything in between, in small amounts, but, like salt in your diet, vital."

It was something to talk about as they passed the hours of their new friendship. Who'd want to do such and such? How would you get anyone to do so and so? And so many kids, it would be years before they could function at the journeyman level, what to do with them? They reflected well, not quite finishing each other's thoughts, but on the same page and paragraph. "You could get the alcoholics if the State took control of the liquor," Josh said. Both agreed there was so much in distribution, it would be impossible without just the draconian measures that would reprise judicial abuse of marijuana, and liquor, itself, in recent history. Other minds were obviously on the matter, so they let it ride, unaware that theirs were the best minds of all.

New York. Financial center or parasite? Perhaps no one would ever know. As a city, after a year, of thirty or forty thousand, it had a certain appeal. Enough retirees had come in from rural New England to supervise continuation of many services, and the city had become a popular weekend destination for residents of the new capital. It was true, the only divisive note of the new age had come from Manhattan thinking it should rule, but wiser heads pointed to the city's track record, and most had abandon the cause. Thirteen lynching, and, lo, all had abandon the cause. Of Mafioso, tradeunionists, socialists, malcontents, activists, and agitators, there were none. The lesson had been learned; hype was out, hanging was in. (A dead dissident was no dissident at all.)

"Needs airing," Pete said as he opened his studio door. Josh looked around, wide-eyed. "Needs nothing," he said.

"That must have been Sid," the older male said, pointing out a unsavory looking remnant of a stain under an oblong hole in the anteroom carpet. "He was great; I've got pictures of us together in my bedroom."

The battlefield callousness and graveyard levity, priceless antidotes that they were, could still be pierced, and Pete rolled the rug gently and Josh and he sort of buried it in an unused corner of the loft. "I got it from Picasso's father," Pete said as Josh wandered from painting to painting, all pigeons. "They're super beautiful," the boy whispered.

"It's like scales in music," the artist explained, "repetitions of a theme. Practice. Minor variations, because it's painting, not music drill, but, nonetheless, over and over again. "I want to be a writer," Josh responded, "maybe that's what I need; a certain basic scene, but write it again and again."

"It's surprising how we're birds of a feather," Pete said to his friend. "You're looking for a scene, me? a theme."

"We'll have to put our heads together," the boy agreed, and they went to the kitchen to make tea. On the flight in from the Midwest, they'd tacitly agreed to avoid personal subjects; no strain because there was so much to talk about relating to the mechanics of their survival, friends and dangers, hope and despair, frustration and the power of a new dawn unlike any they'd dreamed of. A quadrant system for linking up had been devised. "A" was twelve o'clock, then the alphabet was synchronized to the twelve hours ("M" coming at six o'clock), starting from a given point in either Baltimore or New York. Certain days were devoted to Associate Recovery. On even days, those over twenty stayed put at their designated hour, while those over twenty hunted friends and family. On odd days, the system was reversed, with those over twenty standing pat, while the younger survivors walked the alphabetized radials. (Children under eight always spent the designated Recovery times at their proper name hour.)

"Is there anyone you'd like to look for while we're in New York?" Pete asked as they sipped at their steaming mugs.

"I'm afraid I'd bump into Liberty," the boy replied, "and that's one dame I think we've all had enough of."

"It was a spectacular failure," Pete agreed. "In the end, not one good thing you could say about it. Everything we had came from stupendous natural wealth and rigorous capitalists who had little love for populism. They were a vat of adrenalin keeping the zombie alive through one poltroonish variation of ballot mutts after another."

"I never could figure out how it lasted as long as it did," Josh said.

"Much credit has to go to Master Charge," Pete responded, "they had it arranged so you could pay for your daughter's wedding until your great granddaughter's wedding."

"Fourth of July economics," Josh noted.

"Huge malls gulping fantastic quantities of resources for two weeks at Christmas," Pete said, shaking his head, "and they made movies like `Bridge on the Rive Kwi' saying war was insane."

"It's like when disagreeable houseguests leave," Josh said, "and you spend weeks walking around at night, hardly daring to believe you have your place back to yourself, only, instead of your kitchen and bathroom, it's the freaking whole country."

"And with the hundred percent kill west of the Rockies," Pete added, "it's like an end to bad guests, in the first place." They high-fived, not mean, just happy.

"And, by the way," Pete said as he stood in the door to Josh's bedroom, "you're a super houseguest, and I'd like to hang out with your if we stay here or go south."

"Thanks," the boy said, and he smiled shyly as the door closed.

The epiphany came all of a thunderclap, all of a bolt from the blue, all of blazing saddles, and three times Eureka! It came at seven forty-eight in the morning as Pete Anderson looked into the room of the sleeping Josh Benedict. KA-CHING. Theme, scene, motivational scheme, the whole magazine. The whole freaking library. Plain as the sweep of the barely eleven year old's shoulder to his right flank, his barely mobile ribs curving to his slim waist, where the bedsheet hinted at the future of the human race. No exaggeration, this was it. Either the country, what was left of it, fizzled for lack of a very-much lowest common denominator, or, at the depths of depravity, so those fat old hogs used to call it, there was a perfect answer. A Loman-free feasible scheme. A feast so munificent you wouldn't have to move the freaking thing a foot in a decade. All of it, that was the thing; a bonding of youth to the culture with substantive involvement from early years; the sacrifice of previous generations' soldiers, if a sacrifice it would be, in the first place, transferred to almost the youngest of the young, those so young they could easily be indoctrinated, plus, how cool would it be to have your commitment to national service complete by age fourteen?

Leaving the door ajar, Pete retrieved a sketch book and charcoal, even managed to dangle a plastic stool from his right pinky, so he could draw at least half seated. Draw? Josh drew himself, and very neatly, thank you. In twenty minutes he had his sketch and returned the book to the studio. "It's just after eight," he said, looking in again. "Cool," the boy said into his pillow.

"I drew you while you were sleeping," Pete noted.

"I heard there was a surplus of chalk," the kid replied.

"Even so, the waste was terrible," Pete said, "I promise to be more prudent in the future."

"Think globally and act locally," the boy giggled.

"That's what everybody did," Pete deadpanned, "acted loco-ily, and now look at the place." He nodded in the direction of the rug rolled in the corner, saying: "we're a pretty small silver lining in a very big cloud." It was a sobering thought, but also a beautiful morning. The city was silent and clean. A window was open. How much how many had missed, but, if there's only been a few, nobody would have missed anything because there wouldn't have been anything to miss, in the first place, so it was all inevitable, yet inconceivable; inconvertible into sense, only half convertible to poetry, and, most importantly, over.

"Are you old enough for coffee?" Pete asked.

"No," the boy said, "but thanks. Tea."

He came out in a minute and sliced oranges as Pete hovered over the kettle to be sure it wouldn't boil. They synched from the outset; no sing-song, no thoughtful observations, no words where words did not belong, which they interpreted as a lot of places and a lot of times.

"Can I see how much chalk you wasted?" Josh asked after they'd finished restoring the kitchen to order.

"Charcoal, not to put too fine a point on it," Pete corrected and produced his pad.

"Not a pigeon in sight," the boy noted, "other than that, it's very wow."

"One of my teachers said if you became something like a virtuoso in one field, you might have something interesting to say in others."

"He was right," Josh allowed, "this is something to dream about."

"Are you in the mood for a grade-A, premium, A-number-one talkathon, this morning, or would you like to go see what's in the shops."

"Eleven years of age means eight conscious years of malls, but maybe next year," the boy said.

"There are parks and museums; half that kind of thing still seems to be functioning."

"Why?" the boy asked, "is the talkathon like you're a drug dealer and want me to smuggle smack in my intestine?"

"More embarrassing but less dangerous, unless you're of a particularly delicate psychic makeup."

"Who won last year's fourth-grade fart-o-thon!" the boy exclaimed, "why didn't you say so? We knew the CIA would get wind of it and round us up for terrorism, but we lost, so go see Mr. Riley's class." Droll child.

"All of the above," Pete responded, "but, seriously, I want to talk to you about some stuff that is, a, embarrassing, and, b, secret, which usually also means private. I don't want you to change how you feel about me because of what we talk about, because I'm an artist and we explore things far more deeply than the general public, so, if you feel uncomfortable, just say Let's go to the zoo, and I'll paint a giraffe. Okay?"

Josh nodded. "Is it about what we were talking about in the plane?" he wanted to know.

"Oddly enough, it is," Pete said, "precisely and exactly. Unfortunately, also exotically and erotically."

"You'll be havin' me leg off, won't you?" the boy said in a dead cert English accent.

"Steady on, mate," Pete responded, "time for foolin's most run out, and ye'll be needin' what legs you got, unless I miss my guess."

"Then you better start at the beginning," the boy said.

"In for a penny, in for a pound," Pete murmured to himself, then said: "I want to paint you. That's not exactly the beginning, but, since I haven't done it, it's not the end, either." He was babbling. Knew it.

"It's what we need to do. It's how we need to do it. It used to be wrong, but now it has to be right. It's always been right for lots of people, in lots of places, now it has to be, for everybody. You know how kids say bad for good? Well, don't bother with the second adjective. Then there's cool and hot. Ha, ha, those two will get you every time, won't they?"

"I don't think tattoos are that bad," Josh said. He did, actually, think they delineated a similar self-indulgent hedonism to beards and style-terrific clothes, but he lightened up in the name of finding out what his friend was talking about. His comment worked, stopping his friend. "Man," Pete said, "whatever happens, the best day of my life was yesterday. Meeting you. You are one totally amazing, dazzling kiddo."

"You see something in me I never saw, never imagined," Josh replied, pointing to the charcoal image, his whisper matching that of the young man across the breakfast table from him.

"How does it make you feel?" Pete asked.

"Grown up," Josh replied.

"Your mom must have opened too many coconuts on your head when you were an infant," Pete said, "you're meant to look boyish and cute."

"I was having an out-of-body experience," Josh said with a patent shy smile. "It makes me feel grown up, but I don't look like I'll ever get a day older."

"Well, it's a lucky artist who gets to guide his critic," Pete allowed.

"And it's a lucky boy who's guided by an artist," Josh responded. Both paused in embarrassment at the borderline sloppiness of their sentimentality, but it did no harm.

"Will you pose?" Pete asked.

"I still think I look like a gerbil crossed with an armadillo, or something," the boy said.

"When you catch someone in the corner of your eye, you know, like in a restaurant, do they tend to be looking to you or away from you."

"Usually at the menu," the boy said, but a glow of comprehension in his brown eyes gave him away. "Next you'll be telling me the sketch is true-to-life," he added.

"What the sketch is," Pete said, "is about half. And that rhymes with giraffe, so you've got both a hint and a bolt hole."

"You've got so many books here, if I get freaked out, I'll just lock myself in my room and read until you put the pins back in the grenades," the boy said.

"We could use a pin, or two, at that," Pete said, "especially at the outset, while I do your head and shoulders. Two pins and a sheet."

"And with these I'm meant to sky dive?" the boy asked, the urbanism very much a product of television.

"Follow me closely," Pete advised: "with these you are not meant to Lady Godive."

"Ah," quoth the child, "I think I'm beginning to follow."

"And how do you feel about that?" the older male wished to know.

"Like a giraffe," Josh whispered. Strange choice, if there ever was a tiger burning bright it sat across the table from him; oh, he got it. Unable to think straight at twenty-two? Had to be the atmosphere.

It's at this point, about ninety-five thousand words in, that the burden of writing a novel becomes intense. The workload has been extreme for weeks, and, in all likelihood, there are a hundred thousand words to go, so looking up for any light from above is wasting eyesight. At this point, I'm roping in scenes from "The Pirates of Rickety Pier', particularly, vis a vee, Emersonia. That massive is just over eleven hundred pages of double-spaced ten point, so, for the reader, too, no light from above. At this point I idle at five thousand words a day; have lots of time to feed the kids; four, now, what with a friend of Daisy's boys. Heard her voice yesterday, and someone said Ma. They are a great bunch, both mannerly and hugely self sufficient. Lindon is six, Ton-ton (Llewellyn) eleven, and Elston, I guess twelve or thirteen. I don't know their friend's name, but he's a ringer for Rhageedha; big eyes and ultra expressive face. We're down to tortillas only for the next week, but I can't bear keeping him from the table. Half the kids here live unspeakable lives sitting against a wall all day and grabbing at some remnant of some pot so they'll live to sit another day. Gambling and booze on my street.

Don't know whether to be worried about Louise. The sore she wanted the Vicks for is a rhino skin patch on top of her right foot. Very small, but one can't rule out either leprosy or elephantitis at this latitude, especially after a wet year on a delta. She said the doctors had said something awful about it, but talk about the girl who cried wolf. She's come to me a dozen or more times over eight years with an assortment of ailments that would stagger a major clinic, all of which could be cured for fifty dollars. It's cute, and when I catch her out she defends herself with twice the perfect smile, but, as Malcolm said the other day, "See, I told you I was sick," is the epithet on a hypochondriac's grave. Tomorrow I'll take a look at it in the sunlight, with my book reading (vs. screen reading) glasses, then paw into my medical books. It's probably just a fungal thing, and I've seen far worse clear up spontaneously on kid and cat. There are things my life as a novel can do without; big hurricanes, hard earthquakes, aggressive volcanoes, and two or three hundred tropic diseases, particularly those not treatable with rum.

Still celebrating Lin's being outta here. What a jerk. Bad manners on a stick. I oughtta write a rap about him. Samantha says her mother confiscated his knife and a fancy wind-proof lighter (quite a gadget, if I do say so), so Bev and I are on the same page, for once. Reining S. hard seems to have really helped. It's a week since she expedited my blowing my top at herself and her moronic brother, and she's been a kitten ever since. What a kitten. She varies between a non-moody silence and charm enough to bottle and sell.

So, a little editing on the home front. I was reviewing the number of people I've blown my stack at in my life, six or eight, something like that, and in no case do I regret it. A few I corrected, most I got rid of; in both cases, I was able to get back to work and not be diddled further by morons and gold diggers. Daisy's crew actually runs interference for me, and, what with the help of five dogs, some visits never get made in the first place and I type placidly on. I suppose I can further harness their labor to go-buy-in-shop, the most favorite of all Grigalizian activities. For over five years I never set foot inside any kind of store, but more recently I've come to enjoy my half an hour a week among the shelves of the modest supermarket at the bridge foot. It is wonderfully not stocked with ten thousand things I don't need, and I can find the baking powder after the Chinese cutie who runs it has shown me only twice. I had an experience there once. A lady behind me, in the once-or-twice-a-year line looked at me and said, "I work for a living." I'd just come off a thirty hour marathon on "Creative Camp", but I didn't know what to say. If someone would come up with a manuscript tee shirt, you know, with a clock and a tablet so we could display how much we've done in the last fucking hour, it would help the writer's status in his community. I'll have to admit being responsible for, if not deserving, my reputation. I used to go drinking at nine or ten in the morning, two or three times a week. The fact that these bouts, and pretty lame they were, came, invariably, after twenty-five to thirty hours at the keyboard was nothing I could explain to anyone; three questions, and there I am, telling the truth about being number one, and who's going to believe that in a backwater like Dangriga? I needs me a beard, and I needs me an Irish knit sweater, nor would a little surgery to square out the jaw hurt, then I can go back to drinking real respectable like. Never. Booze is so not worth it, and if being totally sober all of the time isn't a high, then there's a screw loose, somewhere. Speaking of which, I have a week coming up without cigarettes. Those are a thrill; back to white man's eight-hour days, and perhaps a slight densining of the manuscript, though I doubt most readers will credit that it can be more dense than it is. Ganja should last till Tuesday, then cold turkey until the eighteenth. I'd almost cuss Linden for stealing the camera, it would be nice to get to know it during the downtime from writing, but it doesn't pay to look gift horses in the mouth, and his removal is gift enough for years to come. (I'd be more resigned if I could call him a failure, but the frustration is similar to my disgust with Anne -- to have never even tried. If there is one spiritual thing amongst the layerings of claptrap and poobah, it's talent's responsibility, the gift's demand, the artist's imperative, for work. If, for no other reason than honoring those gifted souls not allowed, by the vagaries of existence, to practice, one owes him or her self, not to mention the world, a maximum and concerted effort, for an extended period of time, to accomplish what no one else in the world can. The haunting edict. If you can, you must, and if you don't, boy, do you get to die.

I guess this is a pretty tremendous book. The muses must be on Ovaltine, or something. If I trail a hand over the side of my bed, one or more cats finds it in a few minutes and the game is afoot. I don't need to trail anything anywhere for my literary buds, they camp on my pillow and run a Mardes Gras like Nevada runs slots. What's a poor typist to do? If Samantha was here, I have some ideas on the subject, but, meantime, it's this ten dollar keyboard that must be going on for seven million characters.

Sloggo is behaving massively well. Loves his new RAM. I do turn it off at night, even one fan is more than enough, but it's booting in a try or two, then running indefinitely, without a hitch. I'm trying to figure out when I'll post this. Probably November eighteenth. At this rate, that should be about one hundred fifty thousand words; maybe half done, but who knows? I've done a thousand pages before, and I kind of have that feeling. I'm pretty sure "Creative Camp", at 1,303 kilobytes, is the longest Web novel, but it's nice to be sure of a thing like that, bragging rights being all the fad, so we'll just mosey on with the show and see. (Be nice, hold your applause until the conclusion of the performance (and if you're waiting for any kind of fat lady, all the news from here on out is bad).)

"I guess I'm too nervous for any more jokes," Pete said.

"After what we've been through," Josh observed, "anything that makes you nervous is likely to make me about half witless."

"You see it in the sketch," Pete went on, "you just don't know it. It's not a sketch, it's a mural, it's thousands of images like yours, not in charcoal, on paper, but embodied, real, available.

"Do you see it?"

"I hate to say I don't," Josh replied, "because it means I must be infatuated with myself and looking only at the surface."

"And are you highly abnormal?" Pete said, "aside from your mom and the coconuts; are you slithering, backwards, arrested, deviant, or dysfunctional?

"You aren't. You're savagely bright, but with apple-pie brains, and you see something -- not because it's you -- in your image."

"Meaning other people will?" the boy asked.

"Meaning exactly that, and in spades," Pete said. "Meaning there's your answer. For me, it's a theme, an artistic matrix; I hope it is for you, too; but on the greater field, it's the answer like lightning is the answer to a dark night; vivid, sharp, but not something you carry in your pocket. Boys. Girls. Eight to twelve. Whores. Letting the lowest ranks of workers doing the most thankless jobs fulfill fantasies beyond the capability of most former millionaires to do the same. Young bodies as the carrot? You don't need any stick." And how many takers would there be? Lacking public censure, as if it had ever mattered all that much, in the first place, how many able younger men out of a hundred would go for the twinkie gold? How many tons of trash would an average workers collect in exchange for a Saturday evening's dalliance? In both cases, the answer was obviously a high enough number to be meaningful. The larger conundrum, equally obviously, concerned the aspect of parental participation. It was not the kind of thing one would sign a permission slip for, like a field trip, then go on with dishing out the corn flakes. In fact, the status quo would likely be something like zero out of a hundred; not with my Suzy you don't. But put those hundred necks on the block, not for the short, sharp, shock of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, but more like a hoard of gnawing rats as one facet after another of outright survival, never mind convenience and recreation, deteriorated until it no longer existed. On the other hand, there was still enough bottled water floating around to last past eternity. Just a silly thought. The toilets had to flush, or all was lost; we were that way, no going back to the Neanderthal with his vines, mosses, and sushi by the lakeside. Oops, another one. His mind was playing tricks on him, hardly a surprise considering the quantum leap it was pondering. It was not the light of an oncoming train, it was the light at the end of the tunnel, and all that was needed to reach it, and breathe free forevermore, was a psychic shift, not to some backside of the moon abstraction, but to mores and folkways common to human existence; to inspiration at a base and carnal level; to raw stimulation for raw work, and never mind the fine print.

"Do you think the attraction's really that strong?" Josh asked.

"I read a book once," Pete answered, "that proved it's one-hundred percent for the great majority of men."

"Did they do a test?" the boy wanted to know.

"The test marketed Iridium," the artist answered, "and the concept turned out not to be even one percent right. No. It was anecdotal. It was in a book called "What Cops Know". There was a prostitute who, although of legal age, happened to look extraordinarily young, like a ten year old. Every time she approached the curb, the first car would always stop and pick her up. All variety of men go to prostitutes, ergo, all variety of men like them young, younger, and youngest. Proof positive, you could repeat the experiment anywhere and always come up with the same result, and I'd like to see the catatonic moron who'd bet they wouldn't. Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, the first cruising car would always stop, and the joke is, nine out of ten of those men would take the girl home and treat her like an angel for fifty years, if they could."

"I guess it's kind of hard to understand at my age," Josh said.

"Maybe, maybe not," Pete responded. "Think of, say, going to a crowded swimming pool. Boys a little younger than you, maybe down to age seven; did you ever see one who looked especially cute, that, if the opportunity arose, you might like to take a shower with?"

"How about girls?" Josh asked.

"Fine," Pete said. "Kids is what I meant; bodies a third smaller than yours."

"Sometimes," the boy admitted.

"Which probably means once in awhile you see one you don't like," Pete laughed. Josh blushed his answer.

"Remember how weird you aren't?" the older male soothed. "Unless a boy's been brought up in an uptight macho environment, he'll like swimming and wrestling in the water with kids as young as three. At the same time, most of the kids, male and female, down to the age of five or so, would like, if a comfortable situation arose, and if they liked you, to take the wrestling in the pool into the shower, and the things that happened in the shower, into the bedroom, preferably all night long."

"It's like the song from South Pacific'," Josh said, "Lt. Cable sings it to Nurse Furbush; You've Got to be Carefully Taught'."

"The paradox is that you do," Pete said, "if things were all Polynesian, night fun, every night, for everybody, there'd be no more event involved than there is going through the reasonably pleasant routine of brushing your teeth."

"So we owe our forefathers?" the boy asked.

"Isn't that amazing?" Pete answered. "The trogs let Roosevelt lead them into a mass world war, then put him up as a hero; we had five percent of the world's population, and twenty-five percent of the global prison population. It's difficult to think what we could possibly owe them, especially when their paranoia over the due diligence demanded of others by our Jewish friends led to the mega (as it was often called, no capitalization needed), itself, so you've made my day by finding that one postage stamp of a silver lining."

"It's kinda funny in a way," Josh said, carrying the thought to its childish extreme, "because now we have everything in the world to pay them."

"Most got what they deserved without any help from us," Pete remarked, "but the price has been paid, the schmoes, Jew and gentile, with their fetish for dissension and adversarialism, are gone, the page should be turned, and that's where we do come in."

"I'm glad you said `we'," the child smiled.

"When you find out how much you is involved," Pete grinned, "you may not be so sanguine."

"Two pins and a sheet?" the boy replied, "how much can there be?"

"Ask Einstein," Pete said, "he was the expert on Infinity."

"Pretty hard to exaggerate a subject like that," the boy noted.

"Amen," Pete said, and, thanksgiving over, the artist set to work, preparing a canvas as Josh watched. They made conversation.

"So, let's see," Pete began, nervously, "a list of your exciting experiences to date would fit on, a, a Post-It note, b, a standard sheet of paper, or, c, a thousand-foot roll of Scott tissue."

"'C' would be a wish list, B' would be right for the stories I've heard, and A' for what's actually happened," the eleven year old said.

"What's at the top of your wish list?" Pete asked.

"Rick," Josh answered immediately. "Up until yesterday, he had that position all to himself, but you handled yourself well for being my first live passenger, and your studio is killer, and I like the fact you miss your friend, even with all the jokes, and if you want something you aren't about to hog-tie me to get it, so I trust you, and I'm totally happy to be here, and I hope we never act weird in public, but still manage to hang out together for a long time, all of which ties you for first place."

"I accept the position with the greatest humility," Pete said, "and I'm not kidding around, I accept the position with the greatest humility."

"It was offered with the greatest sincerity," an equally serious boy replied.

"So," Pete continued, "how about `B'? Do you want to talk about stuff and tell secrets, or are you into privacy?"

"I like to use the toilet in private," the boy responded, "but somehow I don't connect that with, you know, other things."

"Come for the body, stay for the brains," Pete said to himself, hardly shrugging the thought off, but rather considering him self, when you got right down to it, inconceivably lucky. It was a mutual good-vibrations society.

"Summer camp can be exciting," Pete offered as a way of exercising his clearance.

"That's the Post-It note," Josh said, again with the shy smile that contrasted so with the rapier wit. And how nice that was, Pete felt; a lack of effervescents; a quiet mouth, not a big one going all the time pushing for this and prodding for that. The psychological -- emotional -- facet was practically the whole gem. All Josh would have to do is sidle up to him, grope him, and say, "Glad to see me big fella?" and the relationship would come crashing down like a building in a Chinese earthquake, a hot one-night-stand, notwithstanding. On the other side of the coin, a dullard who acquiesced and did what he was taught -- exploitation -- would bind a relationship in a web of guilt, and be slack company between bouts of sick lusting off. Theme, scene, and scheme, delicate as gossamer, whatever it was, fragile as gossamer eggs, yet vividly essential to the future of any degree of civil society; anything outside the cave, and, and this was amazing, totally provable by its opposite, the huge body of evidence left behind supporting condemnation and conviction of Puritan ways with their built-in lying, secrecy, and hypocrisy, that, yes, made things more exciting than might otherwise be their wont, but at such terrific cost a sensitive lover could hardly indulge him or herself in the tang of illicit fulfillment without the flavor being spoiled by the salty tears of the victims, physical and psychological, of things the way they were. Well, they weren't that way anymore, for freakingly and positively sure.

His rectangular canvas ready for the easel, Pete stood back holding it horizontally and vertically, trying to make up his mind on the perspective of his painting to be. This little problem was solved in the most unlikely of ways, though it may take awhile for the answer to become apparent.

There was a key in the lock, the knob turned, and the entry door to the loft swung open. Pete looked up in surprise, then he whitened. Josh's eyes instinctively followed his friend's. "Well, hell," he thought to himself, using a little of his camp language, "anybody would be happy to see this tiger, but Pete looked liked he was about to drop in his tracks. I mean, sure, the guy had enough `it' factors in his eyes to put the fix on a rainy day, but..."

"Dude," Pete whispered, still looking like death warmed over.

"Dude," came the equally hesitant reply from the open door.

Whatever the initial shock, it appeared, to Josh, the two were young and healthy enough to survive it, for in moments their color returned, and then some, and their stifled whispers gave way to verbalizations so acute they made the walls ring. Like tigers, the young adults sprang on each other, crashing to the studio floor, grabbing, pinching, wrestling, and apparently engaged in a mortal contest to determine who could scream DUDE the loudest and survive to scream it again. It couldn't last, and it didn't, and in minutes the two were reduced to choking, sobbing husks lying still and panting as Josh looked down at them from behind the easel, wondering with all his eleven-year-old might. Nothing was said, no one moved, then it dawned, and when it dawned it shook Josh to his core, sending cold shivers through him and raising enough goose bumps to sell. Could he be sure? Absolutely. He knew Pete well enough to know more positively than anything in his young life that Sid Katz had returned.

Posted by Thomas C. Emerson, Dangriga, Nov, `02