There was a change in the grammar style here at Frankly Curious on the first day of this year: I changed how the neuter is used. What I mean by this is how indeterminate third person pronouns are handled. For over four months now, I’ve been using “they” and “them” for the neuter. And I expect to do so for the rest of my life, because I’ve given up.

Traditionally, English has used the masculine. So you would get sentences like, “We don’t know who the next prime minister will be, but he will inherit a difficult situation.” But through most of my life, anyway, there has been pushback against this. And there’s a very good reason: it shapes the way people think. If a physics text book constantly refers to “he” and “him,” it creates the image that physicists are men.

This is an issue that I’ve grappled with for a long time. Being the analytical type that I am, I’ve long believed that we should just use “it,” which is totally neutral. But I have found that people hate this idea. It doesn’t make much sense to me. Most people love their cats and dogs more than they do other people, but no one gets upset about cats and dogs being referred to as “it.” Still, I understand that it would be jarring to hear, “We don’t know who the next prime minister will be, but it will inherit a difficult situation.” And if George Bernard Shaw couldn’t get spelling reformed, I’m definitely not going to work this into a popular cause.

Last year, I used “she” and “her” for the neuter with the idea that this year I would use “he” and “him.” Thus I would alternate years, as I explained in the prematurely celebratory article, Gender-Neutral Pronouns Solved! But I found it awkward. Maybe in a global sense, I was equalizing gender roles, but in any given instance, things did not read as neutral. Consider, for example, “After the serial killer finished, she apparently had sex with the corpse.”

The same problem exists in the common approach to use the masculine or feminine randomly. In addition, I just find such an approach maddening. I’m not a random number generator. I can’t be depended upon to get the proportions right over time. (One could, I suppose, create a WordPress plugin that would alert the reader as to which gender should be used in any given article.) Similarly, people have tried to make up new words, but that works as well as getting everyone to use “it.” In fact, it’s worse, because at least no one is confused by using “it” to refer to human beings.

Neuter: Accepting Plurals

So I’ve given up — or at least let go of a past prejudice. I’ve always believed that using “they” and “them” for the neuter seemed lazy — too much like spoken English. And it was technically incorrect in as much as these words have traditionally been plural. But they’ve been used as singular for long enough that I don’t see a problem. They still sound wrong to me, but I’ll get over that.

There are other aspects of this choice as well. For one thing, my approach to grammar is to make things as easy as possible. And this is something I don’t have to think about. But the major force behind this change is being an editor at a big money-making website. There I can’t depend upon people knowing what I’m doing (or just trying to do). The worst the readers will think of using the plurals is that the website has some sloppy writing. And anyone who thinks that, will have thought it anyway. We aren’t publishing Virginia Woolf there.

So my (hopefully) final decision on the neuter is the old plural standbys. “We don’t know who the next prime minister will be, but they will inherit a difficult situation.” It doesn’t thrill me, but it’s okay.

This is the first post that I’m going to write about Jared Bernstein’s article, A Graphical Assault on Supply-Side Tax Cuts. Tomorrow, I will discuss the economics of it, because it’s great and important. But today, I want to talk about writing. In particular, I want to look at a single sentence that he wrote. It really is terrible.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean to beat up on Bernstein. All of us who write a lot write a lot that is bad. And generally, people don’t have editors to improve their work. And when they do, the editors don’t have enough time. And that’s on top of the writer not having enough time. This is the age of content creation — it’s all about quantity. Quality matters only so much as it needs to be good enough. But I didn’t create this age; I’m just living through it. And if you want to look at things from a positive standpoint, given the lack of resources (time most especially), the level of writing is amazingly good.

But this sentence made my stomach clench:

This is a paragraph badly disguised as a sentence.

I run into this kind of sentence from otherwise good writers all the time. I run into this kind of sentence in my own writing. Generally, first drafts of writing are like speech. And so you often find a first draft riddled with these highly circuitous sentences. It’s because the writer is trying to find what they want to say. After several tries, I figured out that all Bernstein is trying to say is, “I fully admit: sometimes tax cuts partially pay for themselves.” But he gets lost with phrases and clauses so complex that people are confused before he gets to his main point.

Note that this isn’t just confusing because he’s talking about an arcane subject. Let’s rework the sentence with my favorite non-technical subject:

It’s still a mess, even though it’s easy to figure out that the writer is arguing that while mint ice cream isn’t very good, it might be all right under certain circumstances.

I was quite accurate when I wrote above that it was a paragraph disguised as a sentence. And this is a critical issue in writing. You can get as complicated as you want, but people need to be fed one idea after another. This is why sentences need to be relatively short. And this is why they need to be linked.

Here’s my rewrite of Bernstein’s monstrosity:

Note that I couldn’t save “reasonable people make the reasonable argument.” Unless you are being poetic or funny, you have no business writing a clause like that. Note also that I had to do a lot of rewriting at the end. The sentence falls apart — appearing to be a list of three things but really being just two things that Bernstein thinks are “critical variables.” I’m sure he will be embarrassed if he ever rereads that article. Because I like him, I hope he never does.

As I’ll discuss tomorrow, the disclaimer really isn’t even necessary.

Last night, I wrote a really long article about the problems that I’m having with my publisher and “editor.” But I ran it past a good writer friend of mine and she suggested that I not run it. The problem is that it might be used out of context to label me as a difficult writer — a difficult person. I’m not so much worried about that. I have so many editors and publishers to back me up. What’s more, the publisher is so well known for being a truly awful person, that it is unlikely to hurt me.

But there is another issue here: I like to take the high road. And the truth is that this publisher is a very sad person with almost nothing in her life. I don’t actually want to proclaim to the world just how horrible she is and why it is that she literally does not have a single friend in the world. It’s a funny thing when you think about it.

In the past, I’ve done a number of things that I feel very bad about. But I’m generally liked. I have the reputation of being very easy to get along with. Past misbehavior doesn’t much matter, because it is in the past. I used to think that there was something special about me. If a person is not actively annoying me, I have no problem with them. I find it almost impossible to hang onto anger. But what I’ve found is that I’m actually quite normal in this way.

Most people don’t want to be angry. If others turn their lives around, people are very forgiving. They care about what’s happening now. So the fact that this publisher is widely considered an awful person speaks not to past wrongs but to the fact that she continues to be an awful person — day in and day out. You can’t really have a conversation with her; you can only sit and listen to her lecture. This does not go over well with people who are her peers.

The current state of things is that the book will be published. She’s just going to hire an “editor” to do the things that I, as “writer,” will not do. That’s ironic, right? If an editor is doing the work, then how is it the work of a writer? The point of this is to hire this editor and then charge me for it. This shows the mentality of the publisher. I didn’t agree to re-publish this book for the money; I did it because she begged me to. I didn’t want the book published at all.

As it is, the advance for this 200 page, 60,000 word book is $750. And it isn’t even paid all at once. A third is paid on contract signing; a third is paid on book acceptance; and a third is paid on publication. For a first time writer, that makes a certain amount of sense. But for a writer who has already published two books with this publisher? And for a book that is already written? What can I say: this publisher hates books and writers and most other things as well.

But I feel free! I have submitted all the material for the book. She will steal money from me. Eventually, I will have to take her to arbitration, where she will lose badly. Meanwhile, I will have a life with friends and family, and she will be alone with nothing to keep her company but the melodious sounds of Michael Savage’s bigotry wafting through the air.

Well, this is it. Now I’m going to have to get back to work. This is a good place to end, because it really does end the first act. The stuff about the answering machine establishes that something bad has happened. As I recall, chapter 10 ended similarly with a cryptic note that leads to the denouement. If anyone is interested, I’ll tell you “what happened.” But it doesn’t much matter. What most comes across in my fiction is the fact that I really do find women deeply mysterious. The central plot element of both my first and second novels are abortions. That wasn’t intentional. I only realized it later.

Chapter 5: Too Many Pets

Lenny had cultivated, over years of what he considered abuse at the hands of the loves of his life, an outward emotional detachment that had worked well for him recently. Indeed, as fond as he was of Andrea, he felt he had maintained a proper aloofness to keep her always hungry for his presence. But that appeared not to be the case or perhaps it was imply too much to ask of an abandoned wife to forget her husband.

His life had changed so radically almost in an instant. He was living alone, then living with Andrea, and then alone again–in a day. Actually, he was more pissed off than hurt. How dare she? Bill was such a twit. Lenny had know him since they were kids in Junior High. They were already close when they played opposite each other in The Zoo Story. Lenny played Peter–the respectable middle class family man. Bill was Jerry–the alienated person desperate for any kind of human contact. Lenny was perhaps a better choice in terms of alienation, but Bill was bigger and looked the part. Junior high school casting.

Bill came from a good family–at least it was a lot more sedate than the explosions of rage that typified Lenny’s childhood home. Not that Lenny didn’t feel loved, and there was an austere aspect to Bill’s parents, like if he died it would have been a minor blip in their lives. But the trappings were all there–nice house, pleasant parties, concern for the children’s education. At Lenny’s trailer, parties often ended in drunken brawls, and at school–well, the police never showed up at the trailer.

In high school, Bill because an Intellectual. He started reading books he disliked and keeping notes: number of pages, how long it took him to read it, and anything noteworthy about the book. He read a lot of good books this way but it was hard to escape thinking that he was going through the motions. It looked like he shared in the plight of the family in “The Grapes of Wrath.” But he was aloof to real suffering around him as long as his father let him borrow the car and his mother had dinner prepared at six each night.

Their friendship had always been strained, the way boy’s relationships usually are. They had met halfway through the 7th grade when Lenny’s parents had moved to Greenboro. Bill was the nerdy tall kid with the wild strawberry blond hair. He was hard to miss, even without his blue Start Trek shirt–the one Spock wore. But what was most notable was his continual critique of all thoughts within earshot. Whales were not fish–they were mammals–warm-blooded. Electricity only moves at about two-thirds the speed of light inside copper wire–of course, it doesn’t move inside the write at all but on the surface and this is why wire need to be insulated. Monkeys with steel mothers grow up less well adjusted than those with terry-cloth mothers. He was the breathing version of Discover Magazine. You had to love him, Lenny thought, but you could help hating him too.

When they first met, Bill was using the library typewriter to type a script to A Charlie Brown Christmas which he had transcribed from a cassette recording he had made when it played on TV over the Christmas break. It was his plan to put on a play version of this masterpiece with funds to benefit blind people or something. Mostly though, it seemed like a way for him to get to perform Linus’ eloquent second act speech in front of a bunch of people. Lenny, easily excited about such projects, became intimately involved. He couldn’t be Charlie Brown–too scrawny. Snoopy, it was decided. This was not much of a part–but given Lenny would be responsible for almost every aspect of the play, it didn’t really matter.

Recruiting actors? Bill was collecting cardboard for set manufacture. Reserving theater space? Bill was collecting more cardboard. Rehearsing the half of the cast that managed to show up for rehearsal? More cardboard! The performance was six days away and they still had no sets. They were over-flowing in cardboard. Bill’s father had begun to complain. But today, Bill had accomplished something else: an interview with the Press Herald–publicity for the play. That was something, Lenny thought. But he was unprepared for Monday’s paper. It was not the smiling picture of Bill or even the incendiary caption: “Junior high producer, director, and actor Bill Edwards.” That bothered him, but who could control captions. The text, however, indicated a kind of hoax or “bait and switch” had been perpetrated on Lenny:

Greenboro Junior High Student Bill Edwards does it all! He has adapted, produced, directed, and starred in a theatrical version of A Charlie Brown Christmas, showing this Friday and Saturday at the junior high auditorium at 7:00 p.m. Also in the play are Dean Whitmore as Charlie Brown and Dennis Morris as Snoopy.

Lenny Morris as Snoop! Lenny was outraged, despite Bill’s assurance that he had told the reporter they were co-directing it. Co-directing! “Let’s see, I’m responsible for staging the play and you are responsible for cardboard,” was Lenny’s response though he never had the courage to say so to Bill. Dean pointed out that Lenny would be glad to be forgotten if the play was a flop. But one brief mention of the play in the Herald, Lenny knew, would not attract a single person–especially since it was just an ad for Bill. Publicity was Bill’s job and he hadn’t even managed fliers at school. The only people attending this opus would be parents of the cast members. So stardom was the newspaper article. This fact pissed off Lenny and it made him feel bad that he cared.

After the $12.50 proceeds from the two performances of the play had been properly donated to the Optimist Club (followed by another news ad for Bill: “Junior high super-kid makes $12.50 for local charity”), Bill and Lenny avoided one another until they were both thrown together for the official junior high play. With just the acting to deal with–and set parts–they got on well and remembered why they had liked each other in the first place. As the “star” of the play, with another long speech, Bill was inclined to be amiable. Even when the school newspaper called Lenny’s performance “subtle, complex” and Bill’s “over-blown, arrogant” it only served to sooth the wounds of the Christmas play.

When he thought about it, Lenny was glad that he had managed to bag Bill’s wife. He loved Andrea, but that was another issue. He liked being able to stick it to Bill. Of course, now that they were back together, she would tell Bill (would she tell Bill?) that he was a better lover than Lenny. Just what she had told Lenny about Bill. Women were so duplicitous when it came to sex. Lenny had never asked but every woman he’d slept with had told him he was the best and the biggest. He wondered if it was meant as encouragement–like he was inferior and inadequate. He couldn’t say about the quality issue, but he checked Masters and Johnson on the quantity issue: he was average–painfully average. That meant Bill was below average. Lenny smiled at that thought–hating the fact that it delighted him so.

He was dreading speaking to Andrea, but it was driving him crazy not doing so. This was not from lack of trying. He had called at many different times over the past two days but he hadn’t managed to hook up with her. Maybe she was screening her calls. Normally, if she wasn’t at home she was at work. He never did figure out exactly what her work schedule was. If she was avoid (ah, the guilt served her right!) he didn’t want to just show up and cause a scene. Nor did he want to drive to her apartment and find Bill’s truck.

Even if she didn’t want to speak to him, Andrea had a bunch of his stuff. In particular, she had his 27-inch Quasar Stereo TV–made by Panasonic for half the price–and his Sony Stereo VCR. Plus there was his collection of letterboxed videos: To Kill a Mockingbird, Chinatown, even Jaws. Lenny had engaged in bitter arguments with Bill over the issues of letterboxing and dubbing–Bill would not watch a dubbed film.

“And yet you will watch a non-letterboxed video which destroys the visual integrity of the film?”

“I’m not saying I like it–I would prefer letterboxed. But I can’t take their lips not sinking up to the words. And the actors always sound so stupid.”

“What about Italian films?” Lenny asked as Bill stared blankly. “Those are almost all dubbed.”

“They are not! I just watched Amacord and it had subtitles.”

“Felini! It’s all dubbed. All his films are shot silent and then they go back and dub in the Italian afterwards. And when they dub it into English, Felini uses the original actors.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Fine, but any film you watch is going to be at least 10% dubbed because they can’t control the sound that well on location.”

“It’s different when they dub in the same language. Anyway, I like hearing the other languages.”

“Then buy a language cassette. Film is a visual art form. I want to watch it, not read it.”

“I can’t believe an intellectual like you would make such a low-brow argument.”

“I’m not an intellectual. You’re the intellectual. I’m just smarter than you.”

“Dork.”

“Pud.”

Lenny decided to stop by Sabrina’s and ask a few questions. The tavern was on the first floor of a three story apartment building–the upper stories jutting out ten feet toward the street from Sabrina’s front door, acting as a canopy covering the sidewalk below. It would not be open for a half-hour when he drove by the front that was decorated with black outlines of large-breasted women on a red background. There wasn’t a car on the street. He pulled his Opel around the corner of the building and into the gravel parking lot in back. There were two cars in back, neither of which was Andrea’s: a Subaru Outback which he thought belonged to Mikhail–the new owner of Sabrian’s–and a late model burgundy Escort. He parked across from the two cars.

If you lived inside Sabrina’s, you would not know the time of day without a clock. Like most strip clubs, it hadn’t a single window. Lenny walked through the front door. When the tavern was open, most of the illumination came from the black-lights that colored the strippers smooth and tan and removed any hint of cellulite or stretch marks. But off-hours saw the house lights up so the bartender could stock the reefer and count the register. When he came around the corner into the bar area, Lenny saw a woman he didn’t recognize adjusting one of the beer keg taps. When she looked up, he saw she was in her mid-forties with long early gray hair.

“We’re not open yet. Another half-hour,” she said.

“I’m not a customer,” Lenny said a little defensively. “Have you seen Andrea?”

“Andrea?” She looked puzzled for a second. “I’m new here. I don’t know any of the dancers.”

“No. She’s a bartender.”

“Oh! That girl. I guess she’s sick or quit or something. That’s why Mikhail hired me. I’m Dana.”

Lenny hardly had time to consider this thought when the reefer door swung open and Mikhail backed out yelling syllable by syllable: “Mother fucker!” He slammed the door and began ranting. “That cock sucker Bud driver! We have one case of Bud! I kill that knobby-kneed son-of-a-bitch. I rip off his testicles and shove them up his nose. Mother fucker!” He stopped abruptly when he saw Lenny, and scowled.

“Where the fuck is Andrea?” he yelled.

“You haven’t seen her?”

“Sure I have! She’s in back! That’s why I ask where she is. She don’t come in Thursday night. I call. Nothing. Friday afternoon. She’s nowhere.”

“Her husband came back. Maybe she’s with him.”

“Husband? I thought you was her husband. How many husband she have?”

“I’m not her husband.” Lenny said sternly. “Look. Her husband…” He trailed off. He was not going to give Mikhail Andrea’s life story if she hadn’t given it to him already.

“Did she tell you anything?” Mikhail demanded.

The new bartender was slowly wiping down the bar several feet away. She was intent on her task but quiet so as not to miss a word Lenny said–Mikhail’s words were hard to miss. This was definitely the most interesting start to a job she’d ever had.

“I took her home Wednesday night,” Lenny answered.

“To her husband?” Mikhail smiled arrogantly at this jab.

“Her husband’s been gone. I mean. He left her. He just showed up Thursday morning. I know they met at least.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. To me. I haven’t talked to her since he got here.”

“What about him? Or you too guilty?”

“Hey, I’m worried. Why are you flicking all this shit at me?”

“I got one case of Bud. One! She always keeps that Bud guy–piece of shit–in line. I got one case. And I’m here all day Thursday, all day Friday. She’s never missed a day or even been late. Now she just disappears. Mother fucker!”

Dana smiled as Mikhail went ballistic again and kicked a barstool–sending it flying. “Easy there, big boy,” she said.

“I’ll let you know if I find her,” Lenny added hoping to calm the situation.

“It’s too late now. I hired another girl,” he said pointing down the bar. “I have no beer to sell!”

“I’ll let you know if I find her,” he repeated thinking there was real concern beneath his rage. As he walked out of the bar, he heard Mikhail yell, “Push the Pabst!”

Lenny decided to drive the several blocks to Andrea’s apartment. Her car wasn’t there, nor was Bills’ truck. He parked and walked up the front steps. Andrea lived in a converted Victorian. The downstairs was rented by Juanito, a gay man whose compulsive nature produced a gorgeous backyard garden but also much aggravation to Andrea. Lenny unlocked Andrea’s front door with his key. As soon as the door was cracked open, Psycho–Andrea’s orange tabby burst out onto the landing and around the side of the house.

Psycho was the best cat Lenny had ever known. A co-worker had brought him into her work at the State Building. Someone had thrown him into a dumpster and he was almost dead from any number of things when he was found. She brought him home even though she knew Bill would complain–he hated cats. It cost her $300 to get Psycho back to good health. After that, they made an agreement: she would have no little box and the cat would be free to come and go as he pleased. This had worked well in the suburbs but her new landlord had vetoed her cat door idea so she had to let Psycho in and out as necessary.

Andrea’s front door opened onto two staircases: one heading up to her apartment and one heading down into the shared basement. Lenny shut the door behind him and climbed up to the apartment. The place had not been kept up and there was a lot of dry rot. In the winter, it was incredibly drafty so Andrea had installed thick velvet curtains at almost every entry to cut down on the heating bill which could be sizable. He passed through her living room–past her Victorian sofa and his TV and into the dining room, which Andrea used primarily as a workroom. Everything looked fine–there was no disturbance. He walked into the bathroom. It looked fine except Psycho had apparently defecated a few times in the bathtub drain. This disturbed Lenny. He could imagine Andrea forgetting him–but Psycho? She was fanatical about that cat.

The answering machine was blinking. Even under the circumstances, he felt very strange as he pushed the play button. There were three messages.

“Andrea. Mikhail. I have you scheduled tonight. You forget? Call right away.”

“Mikhail. Where are you? I got no one to work. You get home come right over!”

“Where the fuck are you? You work this afternoon. You have to deal with this cocksucker Bud man! Get here!”

The machine beeped and stopped. Lenny took the cassette out of it and put it in Andrea’s boom box beside her bed. He pressed play and sat on the edge of the bed. No sound came from the player even though he could see the wheels of the cassette spinning. He turned the volume up to half maximum. Still nothing, or at least nothing discernible–just hiss and an occasional pop like someone had erased it and that wouldn’t be Andrea.

About a month earlier, they had spent the weekend in Oceanside. When they got back, there had been a power outage and her answering machine was all screwed up. They couldn’t find the messages they had played them on the boom box. It was like archaeology. There were messages from a year earlier–some quite amusing that Andrea had tried to save–others that just never got recorded over.

Lenny fast-forwarded a ways through the tape. Still silence. Forward some more. Silence. He checked the flip side with the same results. He rewound the tape and put it back into the answering machine. After looking around for a note, he headed downstairs and locked the front door behind him.

He walked down the front steps just as Psycho was trotting up. They stopped midway and Psycho rubbed against Lenny’s leg. He picked the cat up and held him as he purred.

“I’m getting too many pets,” he thought.

After so much implied drug use, the novel finally comes right out with it. These two character have been secondary in the first and third chapters. These two are also the primary characters in my follow-up unfinished novel. But in that one, I kill off Rachel on the first page. So the whole novel is about why that happened. That novel is totally different. It’s told in the first person by Jason. I have to admit that one of the problems with this novel was falling in love with these characters. They were so much fun to write for. Actually, writing this whole novel was fun. I learned a lot.

Chapter 4: Not Nearly Enough

On the 15th of each month, Rachel stood in line at the prescription counter of the Walgreen’s on 15th and Martin for their monthly supply of morphine. Today was the first, so it was Jason who stood in line, and at the Rite Aide on Division. It was all part of a little scan that David, the junkie doctor, had going. Jason and Rachel were supposedly AIDS patients of Dr. D who, along with some usual AIDS meds, received injectable morphine. So on the 1st and the 15th of each month, Rachel and Jason scored their legal opiates and went to David’s for a night, or two, of frivolity.

They previously had been living out of Jason’s Peugeot, 1989 505 DX. But times had gotten hard, or maybe they just got lazy. They had no money and they were going to be sick. Rachel’s skin had already begun to crawl and Jason had only ever kicked in jail, it was almost a point of honor with him. The beginning of a kick always makes a junkie more creative. Jason and Rachel hit upon a great idea: sell the car, buy a tent, and use the rest for dope. They only used the car to live in at the KOA anyway. Of course, the dope only lasted a week, but it was nice, like being on vacation. And then it was back to work.

This morning, waking from a fine night’s nod in their tent discreetly pitched behind a thicket of shrubs and a row of oaks in the field adjacent to the KOA, the couple found they had been robbed. Making matters worse, it was probably a “friend” who absconded with their cash, drugs, flashlight, and Jason’s unregistered Browning High Powered.

Truly, any other day they would have hustled, sold the tent maybe. But this was the 1st, vacation from their high pressure, busy life. So they walked to Ernie’s bar four blocks away because at the back next to the sagging plywood bathroom doors was a callback phone–a payphone that would accept incoming calls. They used it almost daily to contact Jorge and “the boys” but today it was to alert Dr. D to their medical emergency.

He was quick to call back, recognizing the number. Rachel answered. “What’s up” he queried, “is something wrong?”

“Broke, sick, didn’t think you’d want us to show up with the script that way.” They were both on the Oregon Health Plan so money wasn’t the issue.

“You two should plan better,” he sighed with exasperation.

“No!” Rachel protested. “We were ripped off, burgled you might say.”

Dr. D chucked. “Your tend?”

“Yeah. Last night while we were there.”

“Come over to my house and I’ll get you well. About twenty minutes? I don’t have much time.”

They practically sprinted and beat Dr. D by about five minutes. He was the best dealer around. First, he pretty much always gave drugs away. But also he was on time, neurotically so. Sometimes they’d wait an hour, or more, for a dealer in the freezing rain. He let them inside and went down to his basement refrigerator for a small ampule of morphine. Then he ripped open a new package of ten syringes, removed three, and returned upstairs.
He inserted a needle into the ampule and extracted a half cc into the syringe. “Here,” he said, handing it to Rachel. As he prepared the second syringe he added, “I’ll do Jason.”

“What?” Jason protested.

“You have trouble hitting your ass, Jason.”

“He’s right honey, let him hit you.”

David had been a junkie for ten years, shooting up at least twice a day but he had almost no tracks or scars and pretty much all of his veins were usable. He tied off Jason’s right forearm but nothing looked particularly promising. “Let’s try your hand, it doesn’t look that used.”

“No, I try it sometimes, looks like it would be easy, but they roll. I never manage.”

They moved the tie, a hollow yellow cord, to the middle of his forearm. Jason clinched his fist and the veins rose slowly. “There we are,” David said as he pressed various veins looking for the best.

Jason turned his head toward Rachel who was happily nodding on the couch, the empty syringe on the coffee table. She just had better veins. He’d always known he’d had bad veins. David decided upon the metacarpal that runs up the side of the thumb to the first finger. In a few seconds the needle was in, the tie removed, and morphine was coursing through his veins.

He immediately felt better. All the body aches, churning stomach, runny nose: gone. But he didn’t nod. He was high, a little. It felt good. Rachel, on the other hand, was Queen of the Nod. Jason sometimes thought she’d nod after injecting water.

“You kids better?” David asked. Rachel opened her eyes and smiled. “I’ve got to get back to work.” Clearly, David wanted to shoot up alone, the third syringe confirmed that. So they left to take care of their business and to let him take care of his.

Life is harder for the male junkie than the female. People just don’t think of women as junkies, not unless they’re prostitutes. And even for prostitutes, life is easier than the minute by minute existence of the male junkie, unless he’s a pimp.

As Jason approached the pharmacy trying to look gay or dying from ADIS, and not like a junkie, his heart sank. Rite Aide had such a high employee turnover! A new pharmacist and counter woman. It wasn’t that big a deal but they always asked questions, made phone calls.

Soon, Karen, Dr. D’s secretary would get a call. It was usually come pretense at a clarification, so as not to obviously insult the patient. “Did you want 50 mg/ml or 100?” Or the telling, “This is injectable?” The real reason was to check that the script was real and that this tall young man with his Jack Lord haircut was not a junkie. Karen was used to soothing the minds of concerned pharmacists. She was “on board” as David always said–a depressive who was addicted to 50 mg of Valium each day. “100 mg/ml, that’s right. Oh yes, injectable, his stomach is too sensitive for oral.”

But when Jason presented the script, the gray curly-haired woman just smiled and told him it would be about ten minutes if he wanted to have a seat. Rachel was in the parking lot, smoking. He was sure the cigarettes were going to kill her before the heroin. Him, it’d be the cocaine–at least that’s what Rachel was always saying. He could join her for a smoke but better to browse the store, maybe boost something, get a start on tomorrow’s work.

Jason had been to county three times. The first two just for holding after shoplifting. Once the charges were dropped. Next, it was court probation. That was nothing, but he was still on probation when he was picked up for a residential burglary. He got a year for that. But there was no easy way to support his, and Rachel’s habit. It’s not like he could work at Taco Bell, although he did once know a dealer who worked out of a McDonald’s.

Jason was surprised at the products Rite Aide had when he first checked it out. But they had a strict return policy, nothing without a receipt. But Jorge was a veritable clearing house for electronics, a separate business from junk distribution, to his fellow Latinos instead of the almost entirely white clientele for heroin.

He passed down the film aisle, past the photocopy machine and a young female clerk looking through processed film for an edgy mother with a small child. Peering intently at the CD players and boom boxes that lined the wall behind the counter, Jason took a quick look at the clerk, still engrossed. Without looking down, he shot his hand over and behind the counter, grabbing the first small box his hand touched. Still looking at the clerk, he shoved the box, some instant 35 mm camera, under his sweater and half way down his pants.

The clerk turned quickly toward him, but much too late.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said accusingly.

“No problem.” When she had gone back to searching, he went to the pharmacy to pick up his meds. They were ready, crammed into the tiny white Rite Aide bag.

“All I need now is a signature,” the old woman smiled and handed him a pen and an OHP form with the medications listed. As he bent down to sign, he heard a door open in back. He looked. It was the storeroom and standing in front of it were the photo clerk and a tall thin man with wire framed glasses, probably the store manager. They acknowledged Jason as he turned back to sign the form.

“Have a nice day,” the woman offered as Jason walked away toward the exit. The clerk must have spotted him. He walked down the automotive aisle and before they turned the corner, following him, he slipped the camera on a shelf next to the motor oil, all without losing his pace.

As he made his way to the exit, he could feel them closing in just before he hit the door.

“Excuse me, sir,” he heard the man say. Jason turned.

The man lowered his voice, “A customer reported seeing you stick something down your pants… and…” He trailed off. This was bullshit, of course. It was that teeny-bopper clerk standing by his side. “Would you mind following us back to the office?”

“I’m in a bit of a rush.”

“I’m sure,” he said pretentiously. “But it will only take a moment. Jason walked back with them–the clerk leading the way and the manager staring holes in his back. He was taken to what looked like a break room with a refrigerator and a couple of sagging shelves.

“Will you allow me to search you?”

Jason exhaled firmly. “Jesus,” he said, “Do I have a choice?”

“No, not really. We have a police officer coming, we can have him do it.”

“If you are going to do it anyway, go ahead.” The prospect seemed to concern the manager–certainly it did more than Jason who had been through this before. It helped that this time Jason know he was clean.

“Why don’t you raise your hands up?” The manager proposed. Jason did so and the manager started to pat his chest, very lightly. He moved down to his stomach, and then split his hands and worked down his legs. On finding nothing, he padded down Jason’s back. He wanted to check his groin–Jason wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t been certain they’d find something. But the manager was afraid. Sure, there was the potential lawsuit but more it was just one man’s hesitance to grab another man’s crotch, regardless of sexual orientation. He couldn’t do it. “Let’s just wait a minute for the officer.”

They sat around the table staring at one another. The clerk looked glum. The manager smiled meekly at Jason, thinking perhaps he’d been wrong. Jason’s face was unaltered: a scowl designed to communicate hostility. After a few minutes of this, there was a knock at the door and an underage cop entered, at least he seemed underage to Jason with his slick black hair and high school mustache. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

“We thought we had a shoplifter but I searched him and didn’t find anything.”

The cop looked at Jason contemptuously and then spotted the pharmacy bag. “What’s in the bag?”

“Medicine,” Jason said. “But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Do you mind if I look at it?” the officer asked as he searched through the bag.

“Yeah,” Jason sighed. “But it seems I have no choice.”

Officer Young, as Jason thought of him, poured the contents out onto the table. He looked briefly at the pill bottles as his attention was drawn to the three bags of syringes and the morphine. “You have a prescription for this?”

“Of course.”

He looked at the manager. “Would you check on that?”

The manager said sure and left the room.

“I think I better pat you down. Stand up and face the wall.”

Jason did so, putting his hands against the wall. The cop searched him thoroughly, showing no concern about invading his groin with gusto. Finding nothing, he removed Jason’s wallet. Looking at his driver’s license, the cop said, “Well, Mr. Thiel…”

“It’s not ‘theel’,” Jason interrupted. “It’s pronounced like the color: ‘teal’.”

“Well, Mr. Teal, if you don’t have a prescription for these drugs, we’re going to take a little ride.”

“Can I sit down?” Jason asked.

“Sure, I’m not an ogre.”

“All evidence to the contrary,” Jason said.

Just as Jason sat, the manager came in the door with a prescription. He said, “It’s to a Jason Thiel.”

The cop handed Jason his wallet and looked at the manager. “Let me talk to you outside.” They exited, leaving Jason alone with the clerk.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked her.

She blushed, “I’m sorry, I just thought I saw…”

“What do you care anyway?”

She just stared at the floor until the cop came back in. “You can go.”

Jason gather up his meds and put them back into the bag. As he strode out the three stood by the door watching him until he turned down the automotive row. He turned and looked over the row and saw them going back into the break room. When he came to the motor oil, he grabbed the camera and stuck it down his pants. Then he walked confidently out the front door.

Rachel was leaning against a light pole in the middle of the parking lot with half a pack of cigarette butts at her feet. Her eyes were focused on the front door and she smiled enormously upon seeing Jason.

“I thought they arrested you when I saw the cop pull up and you were in there so long.”

“I almost was arrested. Fucking teeny-bopper!”

“What?”

“I’ll explain, but let’s get out of here.”

The great thing about Dr. D’s scam was that it worked on so many levels. All the AIDS meds went to real patients without insurance at 10% the cost; $50 to Jason today. David didn’t care, he was just trying to help his patients and it was a little perk for Jason and Rachel which made their lives easier.
There was way too much time before meeting at David’s house at eight. So they caught Tri-Met back to Greenboro and their tent. Once there, they partook again and passed out in each other’s arms.

“Fuck,” Jason said as he covered his face with his hand to cut out the spot light flooding the tent. He had obviously been asleep a while. He looked at Rachel who was rubbing her eyes.

“I hope you haven’t used the whole bottle.” It was David.

“Turn off that fucking light, David!”

“Come on sleepyheads, I’ll drive you over to my place. Leanne is there and I scored some really good coke.”

“Coke?” Jason said eagerly as he sat up.

“He doesn’t need any coke,’ Rachel said drowsily. “Let’s just meet tomorrow night.”

“Come on, Rachel,” Jason said standing up. “You like a speedball as much as anyone, you’re just lazy.”

“All right, all right.”

Leanne was a piece of work but it was clear why Dr. D liked her: she was gorgeous, in a skinny kind of way, Rachel though. But Rachel was jealous, to some extent. Every time she got off smack, she put on thirty pounds and her face broke out in acne. In all other ways she was superior, she though, and so did most others. Leanne was a dancer at Sabrina’s, a strip club his friend Lenny had brought him to because he was dating, and living with, practically, the bartender. Lenny was pretty straight, so he didn’t notice but David knew immediately that Leanne was a junkie.

Of course, Leanne wasn’t just a body. She had traveled extensively, especially for being only thirty. In fact, it had been in Thailand where she had discovered opiates at the prime age of twenty. She met the bass player of some famous punk band at the time who took her to an opium den. They spent all night there smoking and nodding. She was instantly in love, with opium, not the musician.
When they entered the house, Leanne had a clear coke-filled syringe in her arm. “This is some great coke guys.”

“I told them,” David said watching her hand tremble. “How much have you done?”

“Not that much; not nearly enough.”

The third chapter takes us back to the family in the car. Actually, the first name for this novel was “Life in a Car,” based upon a cartoon that a friend of mine had drawn. Looking at it now, it’s interesting that with the Lenny narrative, I manage to transition seamlessly, whereas with the family, it’s clunky and episodic. About the only thing I like in this one is the description of the accident. And that is something that I seem to be alone in. But it strikes me as crystal clear. This chapter is also precious — I have such a problem with sentimentality in my fiction! Also: the broken English bothers me somewhat. But it was just something I was around a lot at that time. Regardless, it’s Rick’s story here.

Chapter 3: Grandma

It is hard to say what makes a man attracted to a particular kind of woman. The conventional wisdom was that it was Madison Avenue and that every man most desired Twiggy or her current supermodel equivalent. Certainly, there were few men who would shove the Cosmo cover girl out of his bed but this really had much more to do with impressing friends than with their own desires. It’s like that old joke about the guy who is marooned on an island with Cindy Crawford (at her prime, of course) but is dissatisfied until she pretends to be his best friend Bob. Then the guy perks up and says, “Bob! You’re never gonna believe who I’m fucking!”

Rick never had this problem as he really didn’t have any friends. Sure, there were guys from work and sometimes they’d watch a ballgame and drink a couple of beers. But mostly his life was focused on his family and it had been that way long before he had his own. Sure, he was gruff. He bellowed at the kids and he patiently endured the badgering of Lucinda. But he loved them all, dearly.

Sexually, Lucinda was it. She had light brown skin like a perfect California tan. But Rick hated tans, they made the skin tight and crusted, and after a while, old. Then the tan lines! What man would want strange geometric white areas on his woman’s breast or groin? No, Lucinda was just perfect.

And he liked that she was from Mexico. Truthfully, native born Americans were a bunch of lazy, overpaid whiners. They were always on about how little they made and how the company was raking it in and if only they had the tools… if only. If only they’d stop jabbering and get to work. The Mexicans were always hard working and pleasant. He never did get the idea of the loafing, welfare recipient Mexican. Those must have been second generation, poisoned by the public school exposure to third generation Irish and fourth generation Italians.

The best friend he ever had was Antonio, a foreman at the dump who was a permanent resident but still a citizen of Mexico. They used to get together and watch Mariner games at Rick’s apartment. Antonio would always bring over some kind of weird Mexican beer. He couldn’t just stick with Corona; Rick had grown used to that. No. It had to be Negra Modela or some other beer he couldn’t pronounce.

“What don’t you just buy Bud, Antonio? You’re in America for Christ’s sake.”

“Yeah, Bud’s good. But this, very good.” And he would smile wryly in his self-effacing way. “Why you don’t have a wife, family?”

Antonio was married with a kid on the way within a year of coming over. She was American, Mexican American. Second generation, but Rick didn’t hold this against her. “I don’t meet many women,” Rick replied but he could tell Antonio had something more on his mind.

The whole family stood at gate C6; Rick, Lucinda, and the twins, waiting for Lucinda’s mom flying in from Veracruz. Rick was very worried about this. “We live in a goddamned car! Does she know that? Why doesn’t she get a motel room? That would be okay.”

“It’s fine honey,” she had told him. “She lives in Mexico!”

He guessed that she was trying to be funny, but it just made him more worried. To begin with, this was the first he’d seen of his mother-in-law since the wedding and he did not like the idea of her seeing how well he was providing for her daughter and grandchildren. And then where would they put her? In the trunk?

Lucinda insisted that it would be fine. Her mother too, as much as she understood the situation. The kids, they’d never even seen their grandma. She could have been Bugs Bunny for all they knew. But they were excited to be at the airport.

“Can we have a quarter?” Becky asked, pulling at his pant leg.

“Why?”

“For the phone!” as though it were obvious.

He reached in his pocket and handed her a quarter. “You can’t make a call with that.” The twins scurried away to the row of payphones. Rick looked over at Lucinda who smiled weakly and then looked at the twins. Danny lifted Becky up around the waist so she could insert the quarter. She came down and put the receiver back in place causing the quarter to fall down the inside of the phone. They both giggled as Danny took the quarter out of the return slot.

If only happiness were always that easy, Rick though.

Normally, Rick spent Thanksgiving with his parents in Corvallis. But that year, for some reason they had decided to spend it in Las Vegas as part of some old folk’s tour or whatever. When Antonio heard him talking about this strange turn of events he immediately, eagerly asked Rick to spend the holiday with his family.

“I don’t know. You’ll probably serve burritos or something.”

Antonio assured him that they loved turkey in Mexico and after two days of concentrated assault, Rick agreed. He made it a point to bring a twelve pack of Budweiser in cans to the event.

“You didn’t need to bring beer, I have a case a Tecate!” Antonio said as Rick entered his house for the first time. Antonio led him into the kitchen. “This is my wife Corrina,” he said pointing to the slightly plump dark woman basting the turkey. She looked up and smiled brightly. “This is Rick, and…” he said referring to the petite young Mexican woman standing aside eating salsa with a carrot stick, “this is my youngest sister Lucinda.”

Somehow, Rick and Antonio managed to find themselves in the backyard, each with a Tecate in hand. As Rick remembers, he never did have a Bud that day. “You’ve set me up, Antonio.

“What?” Antonio said bewildered. And then, as if changing the subject, “What you think of Lucinda? She’s no married, you know.”

“That’s a surprise.”

“You no like her?”

“No, no,” Rick took a swig of Tecate. “She’s very pretty, beautiful.”

“Good! I make sure you sit next to her at dinner.”

“No!” But of course he did and privately Rick was glad even if the situation was awkward. She was pretty and she had an open, positive demeanor that contrasted nicely with his calm discontent.

The skyway tunnel gate opened and passengers began trickling out with their brief cases and carry-ons which they tugged along like reluctant dogs. “Danny! Becky!” Lucinda called and pointed to her side. They dutifully obliged just as Rick saw his mother-in-law coming up the tunnel. Actually, “saw” was incorrect; at four foot eleven, she was invisible in the increased flow of departing passengers. But he could hear her.

With the food they serve, Santa Lucinda! You’d be loco to eat it. She always brings her own, or starve. Better to starve a little than die a lot.

Rick knew there was another reason he was dreading this. At best, she was a chatterbox in only one language, a language he didn’t understand. At worst, a chatterbox in two languages like now. When the crowd broke she saw them and yelled, “Lucinda!” Lucinda ran to her and they embraced while the passengers moved aside and past, irritatedly. Suddenly, her mother burst apart from her and widened toward the twins, “El nino! La nina!” And she ran to embrace them almost as quickly as they ran for cover behind their father’s legs. Stymied, she looked up at Rick and laughed, “Senora loca!” she said, “Senora loca!” and hugged him.

Antonio’s whole family was from Veracruz, a gulf port town in the south of Mexico. Lucinda was visiting for a week but he made sure that she stayed long enough to ensnare Rick. He was always talking about her. A couple days later, he came over for the Mariners vs. the Giants, a six pack of Bohemia in hand. “Hey! What you think of my sister?”

“Don’t push, Antonio.”

“You no like her? I think you like her.”

“She’s fine. I like her.” He stumbled. “Really, I don’t even know her.”

“Then know her. I think she like you.”

And it went on that way until Rick asked her to a movie. Before he could blink, he was in a Catholic Church in Veracruz. Now he was in a car, his home, God help him, with his wife and kids and exuberant mother-in-law in the middle of the back seat as they pulled out of PDX.

Lucinda and her mother had been speaking almost hysterically together in Spanish. This presented a problem for Rick. On the one hand, he didn’t know what they were talking about and so could pretend that they were just birds twittering in the background. On the other, forced to speak in English they might say less. He opted for the latter given that he was somewhat interested in knowing what they were saying, at least as long as he didn’t know.

“Mama said we should go out tonight and she’d take care of the kids.”

“No money,” he grunted.

“I give you,” the mother-in-law chimed in eagerly.

“Where would we go? We can’t take the car.”

“We could go to that motel, we haven’t been alone in a month.”

The highway Motel 6 next door to Mel’s Tavern. Sadly, that was a very appealing thought to him. But he hated the idea of begging for money. He already hated having Lucinda’s mom stay with them. “Welcome, Mrs. Valencia, to our wonderful ’65 Bel Air, I mean home.” This was the standard kicker: he wanted to accept the offer but he wanted everyone to think that he was against it, that he was just going along to keep the peace. “What about the kids?” he asked.

“Mama will watch them.”

“But they just met her!”

Rick looked in the read-view mirror. The twins were sleeping on either side of her with their heads resting on each shoulder. “I guess,” he said. “If you really want to.” Lucinda snuggled up next to him and kissed him on the cheek as they drove home down the highway.

They walked across the parking lot, passed the clubhouse and out onto the street, hand in hand like high schoolers in love. They thought they would stop at Mel’s for a drink or two and then check into the motel. This was not exactly a night on the town, even by Greenboro standards, but it was nonetheless a major treat.

It was late afternoon, and a Thursday, so Mel’s was slow, just a couple hard-core old-timers at the bar and a young couple talking slowly, earnestly, quietly at a booth in back. The woman looked up as they entered, she’d been crying. Rick and Lucinda took a booth two up from the young couple.
“Of course I still love you. I always loved you. But God, you’ve really mucked things up.” The woman said.

The bartender called from behind the bar, “We don’t have a waitress, you’ll have to come up here.”

Rick pushed himself up and looked at Lucinda, “What do you want?” She shrugged, whatever was fine.

Rick looked over the bar–there wasn’t much. “Do you have Corona?” The old man closest to him glanced up uninspired.

“In a bottle,” the bartender replied.

“Okay, I’ll have that and a pint of Bud.”

When he returned, the couple’s argument had accelerated. She said, “It’s out of the question.” He said something unintelligible and took her hand gently. She jerked it away. “No,” she said curtly.

“Maybe this isn’t the place for a romantic drink,” Rick whispered and set the Corona bottle in front of Lucinda.

She bent towards him, “He wants her back and she don’t know. I think she’s hiding something.”

“I’m sorry,” Rick said. She looked back puzzled, so he continued. “That I’m out of work, that we’re homeless, that I’m not providing for my family like I should.”

She grabbed his hand and put it to her face. “Things will get better. I love you.”

The front door burst open and the setting sun filled the room, as two skinny kids practically ran inside. They were maybe 23 but the bartender seemed to know them. The boy went up to the bar and slammed a bill down. The girl kept walking straight back like she was in a hurry for the bathroom.
“Two Henry’s, Ken,” Jason said. Ken started pouring and looked back.

“You’re in a good mood today,” he said.

“Business has been going well.”

The old man turned to him. “Show me that card trick again.”

Jason pulled a deck of cards out of his pants and said, “I’ll show you two.”

Rick turned to look at the back of the bar. The girl wasn’t inside the bathroom but on the phone. She punched a number in and hung up. Then she walked briskly to the bar and kissed the boy on the cheek. The couple in the booth got up, walked gravely to the door, and left.

Lucinda smiled at Rick. “You worry too much,” and then lifted the Corona bottle to her thick red lips and drank.

The payphone at the back of the bar rang startling everyone except the old times who continued their methodical alcohol ingestion. The girl shot up and ran to the phone. “Hi… Rachel… Yeah… Forty minutes! Mel’s… okay, okay.” She slammed the phone back into the cradle and walked dejected back to the bar.

“This shouldn’t be so unusual,” Rick said. “Having a drink, spending a few minutes to ourselves. I’ve got to get a job, any job. Working at Taco Bell would be better than this.”

“It would improve your Spanish,” she smiled. “No. That wouldn’t pay what unemployment does.”

He took a long drink of beer and felt its relaxing charms like a back rub or a hot bath. “I just feel like a failure.”

“You’re no failure.” She reached over and kissed him on the lips. And then again and parting his lips with her tongue, caressing, tender, passionate.
When at last, they separated, Rick blinked his eyes and smiled at Lucinda who smiled angelically back at him. “Maybe we should leave,” he said and finished the last drops of his pint.

Rick waited out front while Lucinda visited the ladies room. Mel’s was on the corner of 12th, a very busy street, almost a highway connecting the southern Portland suburbs, and Macdonald, a minor street but large enough to require a stoplight. The speed limit was 35 but most of the cars speeding down 12th were doing 55. A Datsun pulled up from behind Mel’s on Macdonald and idled at the red light–the young man inside singing along with some unheard song on the radio. A line of cars passed by, a mixture of the rural, suburban, and urban influences: a pearl white Lexus, a red Chevy pickup, line green Tempo, and an old tan AMC Gremlin rattling along. The light turned yellow and the young man in the Datsun put the car into gear. A block away a brand-new white Toyota truck, jacked up high sped along 12th. Behind the wheel, a young white boy, maybe 18, maybe not. Next to him, a young Mexican, probably the same age. They were screaming along but the light just clicked red. They’ll try out those virgin brakes, Rick thought.

The Datsun pulled out across the intersection. The white boy looked at his Mexican friend and laughed, his left arm hanging out the window feeling the cooling evening air. The Datsun was accelerating through the middle of the road when Rick realized how fast the truck was approaching, 75, maybe 80 mph. And the white boy still laughing, his head turned toward his friend. The Datsun driver was oblivious, singing energetically. The Mexican looked forward and screamed, silent in the noise of the traffic. Rick stumbled back against the wall of Mel’s. The white boy looked up dumbly just as he entered the intersection. The truck smashed the back quarter panel of the Datsun; it sounded like thunder. The Datsun spun around, traveling diagonally down 12th. The truck plowed into the ground, flipping over the Datsun and turning sideways onto the driver’s side–grinding to a stop while the Datsun slid past and into a row of trees on the right side of the street.

Silence. The momentary silence before any reaction was possible. The first was the most anguished scream of terror and loss. “Mi amigo!” the Mexican cried from the truck. “Mi amigo!”

Rick ran to the truck, the bottom of the truck, and looked in through the passenger door window. He found the young brown man was sitting on the steering wheel, sobbing. He looked up at Rick pleading, “Mi amigo.” He friend was below him, half fallen out the window, only his waist down visible inside the cab. Rick offered the Mexican boy his hand and pulled him out.

The young man emerged from the Datsun, bleeding from the head, dazed, but otherwise okay. The bartender was the first to reach the door of the tavern. Rick was helping the Mexican, his breath saturated with alcohol, out of the street. He was sobbing and muttering, “Mi amigo.” Rick handed him to Ken, “Give him to my wife, she speaks Spanish.”

The young couple came out of the door. “What happened?” the guy asked.

“An accident,” Rick said heading into the street to rescue the Datsun driver.

“Should I call an ambulance?” Ken yelled.

Rick came to the young Datsun driver who was standing in the middle of the road, staring at the remains of the white boy. The head was a mangled red mess and the torso soaked in blood with tatters of intestine and stomach in a brief line along the asphalt. “No hurry,” Rick yelled back and grabbed the Datsun driver, guiding him across the street.

“Don’t look,” he said as they walked back to the sidewalk.

“Did I do that?” the young man asked.

“No, don’t worry. It wasn’t you.”

When Rick got to the sidewalk, Lucinda was talking to the Mexican boy. He didn’t understand much Spanish but he knew that the kid wasn’t making much sense. He still mostly said, “Mi amigo.” Ken was inside calling for help. The young couple was leaning against the wall smoking and watching. The old-timers were back inside drinking free doubles.

After the police came they took the Mexican and the Datsun driver away for questioning. Rick and Lucinda held each other and watched while the tow-trucks arrived and worked on up-turning the truck. Before long, the police had one lane open and traffic was squeezing past.

Ken came out. “Can I get you two a drink on the house?”

“No, thanks,” Rick said. “I think we’re just going to go home.”

“I understand,” he said. “I really appreciate how you handled the situation.”

“What else could I do?”

A Dodge Dart pulled up in front of Mel’s. The two Mexicans motioned to the young couple who got into the back and the car sped away.
Rick and Lucinda walked the four blocks back to the KOA. The sun had just tipped below the west hills but it was still light. Mrs. Valencia was setting on the hood of the car watching the twins play jacks. She looked up, “Back?”

Rick picked up Becky and Lucinda picked up Danny and they sat on either side of Lucinda’s mom on the hood.

“Yeah,” Rick said. “We’re back.”

Unlike the first chapter, most of my writer friends have rather liked this chapter. And this chapter is the core of the book. The funny thing is that I had no idea at the time. It’s funny how characters take on a life of their own. I certainly did not feel like I was in control while writing this book. Up until I was halfway through the book, I didn’t imagine it having a plot. I was thinking something more like Cannery Row where it was just a bunch of loosely linked vignettes. It was only later when the major arc of the novel became clear to me. Anyway, he’s chapter two.

Chapter 2: Lost and Found

It’s not that Lenny didn’t like animals — quite the contrary, in fact. But they terrified him like so much else in life. He was quite beside himself at the moment. Two months ago, renting this converted trailer on seven acres in the rural hills of southern Washington seemed a brilliant idea — local internet access and no one to bother him. He remembered reading, as a boy, that man was a social animal. But he didn’t know what it meant until a month’s isolation — often due to road closures — taught him. From then he spent almost each night with Andrea — but not this night.

He drove down his long steep gravel driveway up to his front door. As his headlights curved along the front of the trailer addition he became increasingly aware of an animal standing as though guarding his entry.

Nothing new here! Some wild animal was always disrupting his home from the constant mouse assault to his constant fear of being attacked by a cougar while putting out the garbage even though he always did so during daylight and he was pretty sure cougars were nocturnal hunters. He had previously been kept from his front door by a raccoon mother and her three cubs — but this was in downtown Portland.

And then there was the robin incident. He had been over at his best friends’ Bill and Andrea — a married couple with recent hopes of having a child — on the verge of “settling down.” After the end of Portland’s NBA Championship hopes, Andrea — a mischievous pixie at times — had made that suggestion that always sounds better before than after: “You guys want to do some acid?” A old college friend had sent them some and it had been sitting in the refrigerator. It was certainly a way to perk up a fading evening. Problem was, after the deed was done, Lenny had one of those hindsight realizations which seem so profoundly obvious. Bill and Andrea were close — married and soon there were two parties at the house: the couple in love and Lenny — alienated under the best of circumstances. The night dragged on like prison with Lenny wishing for anything as diverting as sleep.

With the break of dawn, he dressed warmly and braved the crisp April air — intent on a walk or anything to kill a bit more time — each second bringing sanity one step closer. Physical step — metaphorical step. Lenny liked that idea as he past house after house in this suburban subdivision. Soon he was on Market, a big street by local standards. No one was awake — it was that time of morning when the birds start to rustle and sing — that time when even a committed indoorsman like Lenny could muster an unaffected love of nature.

Down the road he stopped into a 7-11. He looked through the pre-made burgers and hot dogs. Acid always reminded Lenny just how thin and frail he was. But each item looked so old, dried, plastic. He got instead a Martinelli’s apple juice — the kind that comes in an apple shaped body. He figured if he couldn’t drink it — and consuming food did not sound particularly enjoyable — he could at least look at it.
It occurred to him only then that he had said nothing to his hosts about leaving and that he’d best go back before they had the fire department searching for him. As he wandered down the sidewalk swinging his bag with apply juice, he felt vaguely proud to have accomplished something; a purchase! He looked ahead and this is when he saw the robin.
Some thirty feet ahead, the robin seemed not to notice him — engrossed as it was in extricating something from a crack in the side walk. A few more steps and it stopped and looked at Lenny. He had the uneasy feeling this bird was sizing him up: what a scrawny excuse for a human being. Still, being a hundred times its size, he felt confident he knew how this confrontation would end. With each successive step he felt certain the robin would frighten and fly.
But it did not. It stood motionless as if to say, “keep you distance or I’ll peck you!” Certainly, he had watched The Birds too many times as a child, but Lenny was a man who feared paper edges as much as cougar teeth. Small pains can be torture and he had a certain brilliance for hypochondria. What if that paper had the hepatitis virus on it? What if this robin was rabid?
Several more steps brought him ten feet from this menacing rogue and that was close enough. Still it stared at him — taunting him. But Lenny was not without his whiles. He made a fake lunge for the bird — picturing in his mind revenge for all those years of pain the coyote had suffered at the hands of that other bird. But still the Robin remained still and, he thought, a bit smug.
Lenny looked behind him. The street was still barren. For all he knew this bird was rabid. He swallowed his pride, and walked out into the street — his sight still frozen on this bird. He made a half circle into the street, around the bird, and back to the walkway. The bird had not moved — damnable creature! As he walked away he looked back on the robin who had continued his excavation. If not rabid, its self-confidence must have sky-rocketed, Lenny thought.

His first though was, “cougar!” But further light showed it to be a dark Labrador snarling at him. Had it not been so scrawny, Lenny perhaps would have mistaken it for a wolf. It growled into the headlights.
The dog was hunched over, as if ready to pounce. Its teeth were bared at the headlights flooding the front porch. Lenny did not want to deal with this. He hadn’t been home in a week, preferring each night to snuggle up with Andrea in her warm queen sized eight-layer futon in her new apartment in the city.

Eight months earlier, Bill had left her. One morning he gets up, showers, shaves, leaves for work and she never sees him again. A week later she gets a postcard from Idaho — something terse like “I’m alive and I won’t be back.” Lenny had always liked her, like the wives and girlfriends of all his buddies. She was devastated when Bill left and so Lenny spent a lot of time with her, just friends. Then they started sleeping together — it was cold, still just friends. Until one day, not.

Lenny honked the horn of his car in several short bursts to no effect other than the dog trying to pull back without success. That was when the situation became clear. It had a choker chain on — a long one which had become entangled in Lenny’s porch decking. He exited the car cautiously but certain the dog’s entanglement was great enough to eliminate any risk.

He found a shovel at the side yard — forgotten by some past tenant — and approached the dog slowly with the rusted tip wielded four feet ahead of him. The Dog growled and barked, once Lenny was within striking distance. For the first time it seemed more frightened than angry. Not that this did a great deal for Lenny’s anxiety. It’s like the difference between being beaten because someone hates you and for just being in the way — the blood flows the same.

Slowly, gently, he placed the shovel against the chain and pushed hoping to get it to move against the wood planks in which it was stuck. It didn’t move but the pressure caused the growling dog to lunge forward slightly before falling back. Lenny was so afraid he dropped the shovel and fell backwards onto the gravel drive.

“Fuck this,” he thought, got back in his car and drove away down the mountain and back to Portland — not immune to animal problems but more immune. He drove the twenty-five plus miles back to Portland’s east side — to Sabrina’s Tavern, a strip club where Andrea tended bar. After Bill left, she quit her job working for the state testing babies for chlamydia for this job which paid twice as much.

Barry, the young doorman of the place let him in for free ostensibly because he was Andrea’s friend but also, he thought, because of his behavior. The naked women seemed more to embarrass him than anything. But even still, he noticed and even had his favorites. Like Leanne, on stage topless and swinging around the pole to Disco Inferno, always intrigued him. She was slim, even skinny, with small breasts. Lenny thought they were perfect. Most of the regulars like the girls with the big tits but to Lenny they always looked deformed.

“Lenny!” Andrea yelled as she saw him squeeze up to the bar. “What can I get you?” It was always the same these days, at least when limited to beer: McTarnahan’s. He watched her as she filled his order. He loved her, he thought — more than she loved him, if she even loved him. She didn’t quite have Leanne’s body, but she was close enough. Plus she was intelligent, well-read, witty, and playful. Leanne was just a neo-hippie and Lenny had no patience for the original model hippies; the new ones were just as bad, only stupider. He knew Andrea liked him — a lot — she even liked fucking him but her heart was still Bill’s.

When she came back with the pint she could tell all was not well. “What’s up?”

“I was not meant to live in the country.”

“It’s not like you do,” she said implying that he lived with her.

“Maybe we should formalize it?”

“You mean you move in?” He nodded. “Let me think about it.” She wrinkled her nose up for a second before bursting into a smile. “Okay!”

This thought cheered him and he stayed the evening, closing out the bar and driving Andrea home — only occasionally thinking of the dog.

The next morning he was back with it — snarling. As he stood beside his car looking at the dog, he knew he couldn’t do it alone. The dog was thin. He hadn’t been home for a week so it could have been there for days. He decided to talk to his near-by neighbors — perhaps one had lost a dog recently?
Nobody had, but most had heard a dog barking the last three days. His closest neighbor was an old toy maker who actually lived behind Lenny. He walked down the long steep but straight dirt roadway to his cottage in the woods. As soon as they could see him, Jim’s Dobermans went wild but Lenny knew from experience the dogs were chained — on purpose. Jim was in the yard, bending and flexing an iron rooster mobile.

“You got some dog food I can have, Jim.”

“Why? You hungry?”

Lenny explained the problem, hoping and hoping Jim would offer to help — anything so he didn’t have to face that dog. But minutes later he found himself alone with a frying pan full of dried dog food. On reaching his trailer, the dog seemed more used to him — growling less but maybe just out of exhaustion. He slid the old pan gingerly under the dog’s head. It began gobbling down the dried food with a gusto Lenny had never seen. He backed up and leaned against the front bumper of his car — enjoying the site.

Slowly, the dog’s tail began to twitch and finally wag. It seemed they were now friends though the feast continued. Lenny had often thought about that wagging tale and a dog’s almost complete inability to hide its glee. If humans did so would it make their relations easier or harder? He wondered.
Deciding to take a chance, he approached the dog. It hardly seemed to notice — intent on the food as it was. Around its neck he found a license, “Lucky.” An omen, perhaps. Now he got down to the stuck problem which was particularly easy just now since Lucky’s head was bent down. The chain had fallen between two planks of redwood but unlike how it previously appeared, the chain itself was not stuck — it moved easily up and down through the crack between the boards. The problem was the large attaching ring at the end — it was turned perpendicular to the slit not allowing the chain’s removal. “The joys of an opposable thumb,” he thought as he twisted the chain and removed it easily.

He allowed Lucky to continue to eat as he went inside to get something with which to tie her. His answering machine was blinking which was a surprise given everyone knew he was never there. He hit the playback and listened as he searched the kitchen doors for some kind of rope-like substance. The machine ended its whirling suddenly, beeped three times and began.

“Hey bud, it’s Bill — a blast from your past. I’ve moved back to town but I’m just staying at this KOA right now. I’d love to see you — catch up — find out what’s happening with Andrea. I’m kind of scared to call her. Anyway bud, stop by if you can.”

What a nightmare, he thought. In the bottom drawer, he found some clothes wire though he couldn’t imagine why he had any. Outside, Lucky was just finishing up so he tied her chain to the cord so she didn’t run off. He filled the pan with water but she lapped at it only a couple of times — if it hadn’t been raining she probably would have been long dead.

He could have just let her go but he had an odd curiosity from whence she had come. And now that she was freed, she seemed to have a profound wish to show him. She dragged him — a mile down his main road. And then perhaps up a half mile past three houses to a kind of rural cul-de-sac crowned with what was once a small house now burned to the ground save for a lone charred beam in the middle.

“Come on girl,” Lenny called to her. “I’m not done with you yet.”

Lenny did not like to put off unpleasant chores so he loaded Lucky into the passenger side of his Opel GT and headed for the KOA. He thought about calling Andrea and feeling her out on the subject. But what could she say — he knew her feelings for Bill: she had been unable to file any divorce papers, for example. But Bill’s feelings were unclear, though Lenny couldn’t think of any other reason he’d be back in town other than to rekindle their past relationship.

Pulling into the KOA parking lot, Lenny’s heart descended into his middle stomach. Lucky sat beside him wagging her tail — just happy to be out. He pulled next to Andrea’s green Honda. “I guess he changed his mind about calling her,” he thought aloud. He fought the impulse to just back out and go back home — to his old home. But he had to know; he couldn’t be left speculating. He let Lucky out and grabbed her leash.

They walked across the lot half shaded by ten mature walnut trees past the clubhouse into the resident area peppered with RVs and the occasional car. Lucky wagged and shimmied — quality time with her new best friend. Across the lot he could see Bill’s old red Toyota truck. It looked shut up — maybe they were at the clubhouse or the Lyon’s restaurant across the road.

He approached the truck slowly though Lucky seemed to want to run. Before long, he could see two figures in the front seat, their heads enmeshed in passion. He couldn’t make out their faces but his memory was clear enough. He turned and headed back.

“Hey mister!” a voice yelled from behind. He turned to look and saw a five year old girl, Becky, running toward him. “Is that your dog?”
He looked down and smiled, “Yeah. I guess it is.”

“Can I pet him?”

“Her,” he corrected. “Sure.”

She knelt and petted Lucky in long gentle strokes down her back. Lucky looked up with her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, smiling at him.

Lenny smiled back.