THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

THE LOST COMMODORE By WILLIAM LEE BELFORD JR

A dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2006

The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of William Lee Belford Jr defended on March 21, 2006.

Mark Winegardner Professor Directing Dissertation

Roberto Fernndez Outside Committee Member

Julianna Baggott Committee Member

Barry Faulk Committee Member

Approved:

Hunt Hawkins, Chair, English Department

Joseph Travis, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

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This book is dedicated to my loving parents for all of their support.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract v 1. AT THE HOUR WHEN THE BLACKGUARD MEETS THE SULTAN.... 1 2. THE VERY LAST WOMAN IN THE WORLD.......................................... 18 3. THE FOURTH TENOR, VINCENT NOSERELLI...................................... 32 4. BACKDOOR TO ADVENTURE................................................................ 49 5. THE LOST COMMODORE ...................................................................... 68 6. THE THIN WHITE DUKE ......................................................................... 92 7. THE LAST DETAIL .................................................................................. 110 8. THE PLAYBOY PRESIDENT.................................................................... 130 9. THREE CHEERS FOR THE MULLIGAN ................................................. 145 10. NO MORE ROSES FOR THE MATADOR .............................................. 166 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ........................................................................... 192

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation is a collection of ten short stories. Each story is a work of fiction composed by the author during the years 2004-2006 as a student in the Creative Writing PhD program at Florida State University.

AT THE HOUR WHEN THE BLACKGUARD MEETS THE SULTAN

Wigs. The south wall of the drawing room was lined with three shelves of faceless cedar dummy heads wearing powdered wigs. Some were long and plaited like Louis XIVs, others more masculine, with severe widows peaks, like George Washingtons or a Romanian blood-drinking counts. One was woven with tightly rolled bills, foreign currency, pink and blue pastels, and might have been the headdress of some psychedelic barrister. Bachman Lachlan Macalister was the kind of man who collected wigs and, strangely, pulled it off. He was a creature endowed with a peculiar grace. He was also the brother and only surviving family of my fiance Virginia. Reclined on a Chippendale divan upholstered in vermilion damask and wearing a smoking jacket of the same hue, he refilled both his and my highballs with scotch from a Waterford decanter. His feet, shod in black velvet slippers embroidered in gold thread with the Macalister coat of arms, were small, delicate, girlish things propped up on the damask ottoman. Bachman had asked me to accept a commission in his War of Independence reenactment regiment, an enterprise I had always regarded as childish and ridiculous. Youre sure to enjoy yourself, he said. Therell be plenty of gunplay. We hardly knew each other, he went on, and if I was to marry his little sister then he insisted we become better acquainted. Of course, Id known Bachman my whole life; only he had never deigned to know me. Off and on he was in my class at Country Day, a few years at a time until he was kicked out for good our freshman year and finished out at Woodberry, then St. Andrews, and finally at Georgia Military. Listen, Duncan, Bachman continued, I could promote from within the ranks, but those guys are just sodclass. Its one thing to give a cracker an order, but to invite him into your tent for a drink of whisky or game of chance is another thing entirely. I need an aide-de-camp with whom I can spend some quality time. He sat up and looked me in the eyes. One of us. Know what I mean? One of us. Id grown up in the right neighborhood, gone to the right schools, worn the right clothes. My childhood was not one spent in penury. But the money that had groomed and fed me and given me raiment was new money, brand spanking new

merchants money. What status I enjoyed had been purchased. Bachman was the wellbred, landed gentry bugbear in my dreams whose acceptance I craved and whose scorn, when I arrived underdressed at dream-weddings and dream-receptions, I dreaded. I lurked at the periphery of society, at best a guest, never a member. I was not one of them. I rose from my seat on the chesterfield and walked to the south wall where I took down a bulbous, pale lavender peruke and donned it at a rakish angle, feeling like a Viennese fop. Okay, Bachman, Ill give it a whirl. Youve got to be kidding, my fiance said. Virginia stood before the carcass of an eleven-point buck hanging upside down by its hind legs from a cleaning rack, her arms elbow deep in the gaping abdominal cavity. Her canvas coveralls were foul with offal. I kissed her on the forehead. A lock of nutbrown hair had come loose from its bun and was stuck to her cheek by a dollop of crusted blood. Virginia had sharp features, high cheek bones and a pointy nose, and brilliantine blue eyes, very much the spitting image of her older brother, even the same fullness of the lips. The flecks of blood in her crows feet became her. From inside the animal she pulled the stomach, a greenish sack that looked near to bursting, and dropped it in the gut bucket where it made a loud splat. She sheathed her skinning knife and brushed her gory hands on the bib of her coveralls and took the beer I handed her. Youre going to play dress-up with Little Lord Fauntleroy? Thats one way of putting it. Hes gone crazy, you know, Virginia said. Ape-shit, I added. Exactly. He wasnt always like this. Hes the one who taught me to hunt. Bachman never did go in for any of those role-playing games or make-believe in general. He was an athlete. You remember. Football. Lacrosse. Crew. An expert fisherman. Used to tie his own flies, I said. Hed bring them to school. Thats what Im talking about, Virginia said. I think it all began with the fencing class he took in college.

I remembered the fencing team at my university. Team Hobbit, we used to call them. This reenactment stuff, she continued. Its just so weird. Grown men putting on costumes and playing army like a bunch of little boys. You know, she paused to drain her beer. The whole enterprise strikes me as a tad bit gay. She looked me deadon and raised an eyebrow. Listen, honey, I said. Dont worry about me. I only said yes because hes your brother. But this was not entirely true. For one thing, I didnt have anything better to do. I didnt work, thats for sure. After my parents died I sold the family business and had been able to live comfortably, albeit frugally, off of the interest. Mostly I sailed. Or puttered around in Virginias garden, keeping it pruned and weeded. It was winter, which meant that when Virginia wasnt shooting deer, she was shooting ducks. Occasionally Id go duck hunting with her. You didnt have to sit still and be quiet like you did hunting deer. You could have yourself a little social behind the blind, sardines, whisky, dirty jokes. I loved those mornings, the creak of good leather, the glint of the early sun off the double barrels of my FoxSterlingworth side-by-side, my nose numb and my feet cold to the bone, the musty smell of wool and oilskin, the rose-water smell of Virginias hair, the way the fog of our breath commingled. The way she out-shot me two to one. For another thing, as odd as he had become, I felt myself drawn to Bachman. His hair was just thick enough, curled in the right places, no ungainly cowlicks, his skin smooth and evenly tanned, his dress both impeccable and careless (with the exception of the smoking jacket and velvet slippersthose were affectations)rumpled khakis and duck boots at a Turners Rock oyster roast, Barbour coat over herringbone tweed en route to the club in the rain. Country squire, landed gentryat parties hed stick his left hand in the hip pocket of his double-breasted blazer like some exiled son of the House of Windsor (I may have had the right clothes, but Bachman knew how to wear them with a sort of studied negligence). The people on their mothers side were Yankees who came

over on the Mayflower, which is as close as you can get to royalty over here in the colonies. Bachman Macalister was everything I was not, not yet, that is. These boots, I said, theyre both the same. I was sitting on a wooden footlocker inside a white canvas tent, Bachmans Brigadier General Augustine Prevosts, ratherquarters, which he had appointed with Persian rugs and tasseled throw pillows. It might have been some sultans vacant harem, save for the watercolor fox hunting scene, gilt-framed and propped on an easel in the corner. I held one of a pair of black leather cavalry boots that came up over the knee and were polished to a high gloss with squared-off toes and hobnailed soles. They were by far the most imposing boots I had ever seen, and I very much wanted them to fit me. Bachman the brigadier was lounging on a rug, leaning against an overstuffed pillow and smoking a long-stemmed meerschaum pipe, legs crossed. He was coatless and was wearing a white lace jabot, a white waistcoat with gilt buttons, white breeches, and black riding boots with a brick red band at the top of the upper. Yes, he said. Theyre a matching pair. Youre an officer, so thats not unusual. Whats your point? No. I mean, I held up one boot and then I held up the other. Theres no right foot or left foot. Theyre both justfeet. As they should be, Colonel, said the brigadier. I had assumed the role of Colonel Archibald Campbell. Your eighteenth-century cobbler did not trifle with such niceties as right or left. Wet the boots and then wear them the rest of the day. Theyll conform to your feet. The regulations for His Majestys Regiments required a soldier to alternate his boot from one foot to the other, but I dont recommend that. And what about the rest of mykit? I asked. I could wax martial when I wanted. I never did give you my measurements. With a riding crop the brigadier indicated a large parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied off with a string at the foot of his cot. I slit open the parcel with a long bayonet. It contained a red serge frock coat with blue facings and cuffs, gold epaulettes, and goldlaced button holes. Oh, my, I said. Would you look at that. So you already bought it? What if it doesnt fit? Or is it not supposed to fit, so as to conform to actual battlefield conditions?

The brigadier filled two cannikins with spiced rum and handed one to me. Youre my aide-de-camp. Of course it fits. Youre every inch of a 38 short. The coat fit perfectly. Try on the rest, he said. The brigadier seemed to be enjoying this, as if he took a certain pride in a well-turned-out subordinate. There was a linen blouse, white buff waistcoat and breeches much like the generals, a crimson waist sash and a cocked hat with a blue and gold cockade. I slipped out of my clothes and tried on the uniform. The breeches are a bit snug in the crotch, I said. And the rear. You look perfect, Colonel. The brigadier drained his cup of rum and smiled. We had pitched camp on the parade ground of old Fort Jackson and our mission was to repel the assault of the American General Benjamin Lincoln. The assault took place after a six-week siege laid by the rebel forces. Accordingly, our men were on a strict ration for the duration of the engagement. Twelve ounces of hardtack, sixteen ounces of water a day. Absolutely no rum. Plus a dismal shortage of powder. All in the spirit of faithful, historic reenactment. I could understand the sacrifice that the men of the 4th Battalion Royal Artillery were makingto a point. That rationing business gave me pause; its one thing to be cold and wet on a weekend, but its another thing entirely to starve when you dont have to. Ultimately, what the men ate was of little concern to me; I was an officer so I dined on mince pie and mutton. Nor was there a shortage of strong spirits at the officers mess. That night I bore witness to as much spiced rum, Scotch whisky, and cognac, not to mention Madeira, that our fearless leader could stomach and more. Too much more; the amount he drank was downright collegiate. After the bugler blew reverie an hour before dawn I shaved and dressed and reported for duty at the generals tent but the general was not stirring. After calling General Prevost several times and then Bachman to no avail I shook him by the shoulders. God damn it, Bachman, you dragged me into this, now up and at em. I yanked off the bedclothes. Under the coarse wool blanket and quilt he was fully dressed, not just in his coat but his riding boots and spurs as well, and he snored like some beast from a fable. From outside the tent I grabbed a pewter dish from a mess kit, freezing to

the touch, and held it against his cheek and the way he shot up you would have thought I had stuck him with a needle full of epinephrine. His hair was everywhere and his eyes were bright and wild. You, he said and lay back down. Sir, the men await your orders. My head, said the brigadier. Ive been poisoned. Should I call for the surgeon, sir? No, you idiot. The brigadier stuck his head under his pillow and groaned. But sir, I continued. We have colonists to repel. Your officers await their orders. You deal with it, the brigadier said. Outside the tent waited Colonel Magnus von Lossberga.k.a. Newt Pritchard, my late fathers attorneycommanding officer of 2nd Battalion, von Trmbachs Musketeer Regiment of the Hesse-Cassel principality. A gentleman of some girth, the gilt buttons of his blue frock coat were in no small amount of distress as was his crimson neck-last. With his freshly waxed moustache and heavy jowls and the rising sun refracting in the silver gorget hanging around his neck he was a fine figure of a Prussian mercenary. His eyes were still bloodshot from the previous nights whisky and euchre debauch in the brigadiers tent and he was leaning on his pike for support. Wheres our fearless leader? he asked. The general is incapacitated, I said. Come on, Newt. Well eat breakfast with the men today. In high school I had dabbled in ROTCat the time, incidentally, my uniform was the source of much amusement to Bachman and the rest of his setso I knew the rudiments of drill, manual of arms and such. His Britannic Majestys troops or no, this unit was one sorry lot. Perhaps they were playing to the hilt their role as soldiers long under siege, underfed and suffering the rigors of compulsory sobriety and therefore on the threshold of mutiny. From my view on the review stand what I saw on the parade ground was pure, unadulterated rabble. They had fallen in formation, more or less, but for every man standing at attention, three were leaning on their muskets. Inattention to uniform in some ranks was egregious; for every tricorn or tasseled grenadier helmet there was a watch cap or ski mask. I even saw one fusilier wearing an Atlanta Braves ball cap

and ear muffs. Several wore sunglasses. Insults and jeers from the men in columns and lines behind the junior officers and NCOs were general, and few, if any, of them were authentic eighteenth-century epithets. One Hessian musketeer had broken ranks and was making water loudly. It had fallen upon me to restore order in this enterprise in which I heretofore had had very little vested interest. But surrounded by the two-hundred-year-old brick parapets, the eroded embattlements, the lacquered seven-inch cannon pointed toward the Savannah River, I felt a certain surge of pride, a sense of duty that appealed to a higher aesthetic that demanded that I take advantage of this scenic opportunitythe centuriesold fort, the ancient uniforms and heraldry, the blustering wind off of the riverand make this re-enactment work. I unsheathed my saber and called, Present arms, to which most of the men begrudgingly responded. For an instant Virginias face appeared in my mind, in her eyes disapproval and shame flashing like ice at my new found esprit de corps. After calling the men to order arms and parade rest, I hoped against hope that I would remember some kind of rousing martial speech from my days as an English major and gave something of an address which went something like this: Men, you have endured privations beyond the call of duty to reenactment, king, and country. Its Saturday and youre wet and cold, hungry and sober; indeed, you must be crazy. Why else would a man forego a case of beer and cable TV, or a gin and tonic at the helm, or a girlie magazine and a tube of jelly, and spend his weekend here instead? Because hes a man. And God put man on earth to play and play. And today the biggest game is afoot. Weve got history to preserve. So, men who Bachman has often led, welcome to your gory bed, or to victory. Nows the day and nows the hour, yall who have gone without a shower, see approach the rebel rabble, scum and villainy. For he today who pretends to shed his blood with me shall be my brother. And gentlemen in Ardsley Park, in Windsor Forest, in Yacht Club Estates, in Historic Downtown Savannah now in bed, shall think themselves limp of wrist and panty-waisted that they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap when any speaks that pretended to fight with us upon this wet, cold Saturday. I sheathed my saber and with a handkerchief mopped my brow.

Plagiarist, came the cry from one man in a platoon at the rear. But Cry God for Bachman, England, and St. George, came the cry from another platoon, and then another and another until the whole regiment was cheering and I looked at those doctors and brokers and sub-contractors and firemen and school teachers and restaurateurs in frock coats and breeches brandishing their cutlasses and fusils and muskets on that muddy morass of a parade ground and I felt something swelling inside me and I realized that I was having a damn good time and that even Virginia would be proud of the way I had roused these men. I could feel my cheeks glowing and I was about to draw my saber again when I felt a hand on my shoulder and I heard a voice say, As you were, Colonel Campbell. Ill take over from here. I turned around and what elation I had felt from stirring the crowd had deflated. Bachman had risen from his sick bed. He meant to steal my thunder and lead the troops into battle after I had done the dirty work of mustering them. Are you sure, sir, I asked. You look a little weak, still. The general said, That will do for now, Colonel Campbell. I began to reexamine what it was I saw in Bachman Macalister. He was spoiled and had never had to work a day in his life and in this respect he was no different than me. Why was it that I craved his acceptance? High school was long over. The issue of invites to parties was no longer on the table. If my social calendar was that with which I was concerned I could accept the countless invitations that included me (albeit by default) that Virginia regretted every month. But I was quite content to stay home and play house with my girl. Besides, Bachman was no longer the social creature he once was, having become a bit of a recluse, retreating into his world of eclectic collecting and reenacting. None of his old set participated in this reenactment business, and he no longer spoke to any of them, not the Wyndham boys, not Dickie Trosdale or Telfair Hogdson or Heyward Maybank or Robert Logan. Not even Mank Wormsloe. I never knew if it had been a gradual or sudden falling out. The long and short of it is that the clique whose acceptance I had craved in high school had long ago disbanded. So why was I drawn to Bachman, and why had not that craving dissipated? I guess to me he was the embodiment of Old

Savannah, an odd bird well-heeled and above reproach. He was still that which I could never be, at least until I married into it. That being said, he was still a son of a bitch for resuming command just as I was getting warmed up. The engagement proceeded as ordained by history. The revolutionaries were thwarted. The forces under General Benjamin Lincoln were a battalion shy of their full compliment due to inept guides getting them lost in the marsh. Our men performed splendidly. The British strategy had been to shock and awe the opposition with an overwhelming cannonade, which is exactly what the 4th Battalion Royal Artillery did; they loaded their pieces with the last of the powder and wadding no shot, of courseand bombarded the colonists who had marched from their encampment up river. It was a massacre. Scores of rebels pretended to be dead, their bodies littering the riverbank, and the sulfur tang of cordite hung heavy in the foggy air. Several pleasure yachts had just rounded the bend and were due to pass the fort fairly soon. They looked to be in a close race. I wondered what exactly they would think when they came across our little mock pogrom. They were all sailing under the United States ensign: the brigadier pointed this out and said, How deliciously ironic. We were standing on the north bastion overlooking the river and listening to the colonists drummer beat the retreat. In single file the designated survivors marched along the bank back upriver. If only they knew we were out of powder, said Colonel von Lossberg. I said, They do, Herr Colonel and we laughed. Our brigadier was a good bit unsteady on his feet, still red-eyed and reeling from the previous night, his powdered wig askew. Still, he managed to pop the cork off a magnum of Mot & Chandon and was filling champagne flutes, humming God Save the Queen. Gentlemen, he said, I propose a toast to history. I then watched him drain four glasses in ten minutes as he outlined the plan for routing the survivors from their marshy hideout the following day. And then a curious thing happened. At this point the sailing yachts had drawn parallel to the fort. I noticed a man in a greatcoat on the deck of the lead ketch striking the American colors. Then the other four boats followed suit. Then all five vessels hoisted Le Tricolore, the French national flag. When the lead ketch began blaring Berliozs orchestral version of La Marseillaise from a loudspeaker mounted on the bow, the brigadier dropped both flute and magnum and turned a sickly pale.

This cannot be, Bachman said. Its supposed to be 1779. La Marseillaise wouldnt be written for another thirteen years. And that flagnot for another ten. On the decks of all five ships men in the garb of the eighteenth-century French Royal Navy were scrambling, yanking tarpaulins off of six-inch naval guns mounted amidships and igniting them with linstocks. After the relative post-engagement calm, the first volley was deafening, a pall of smoke covered the river, and, when it began to clear, you could see that the recoil of the cannons had propelled the boats some twenty feet closer to the opposite bank. The crews scrambled to reload the guns. Ill go muster the troops, von Lossberg said and ran down the stairs. I was on his heels, but I stopped midway down the staircase, my brain nagging me to stay in character. Like a well-trained aide-de-camp I ran back up the stairs to ask my commanding officer what were his orders for his men. Bachman was still at the edge of the bastion, holding his fusil between his knees and withdrawing the ram rod from its barrel. Then from the cartouche pouch on his belt he took a ball and dropped it in the barrel and rammed it home with the rod. I couldnt believe my eyes as he brought the flintlock to his shoulder and took aim at the boats down below. I ran across the bastion and tackled him at the waist. The fusil discharged in the air as we hit the turf. I got to my feet, breathing heavily. You were going to shoot them, I said. Of course I was going to shoot them. Theyre French, Bachman said, rising to his knees. No, I said. You were really going to shoot them. I saw you load a ball into that thing. You did not, he said, adjusting his wig. I did. Well, Bachman said, standing now and brushing the grass from his breeches. Youll never know. A cruel little smile crept across Bachmans lips. What was this thing that looked so much like the woman I loved. I felt dizzy. This man deserved a real beating, if not some time behind bars or in a padded room. But its a touchy thing calling the authorities on your future brother-in-law.

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Theres something wrong with you, I said and descended the staircase. Vice-Amiral Charles Henri Theodat, the Comte dEstaing, played by Freddy Southerland, came bearing gifts. Our forces were virtually without powder resulting from that mornings cannonade of the colonists, but that was only one factor in their failure to put up any resistance. They were tired and hungry and had had enough of make-believe. These men wanted a drink and the Count intended to serve them. The crews from his flotilla were running errands in their ships launches, little fifteen foot Boston Whalers, back and forth from ship to fort. The snarl of the outboard engines greatly vexed Bachman much to my delight. The Whalers were laden with stores. Good god, Newt, I said. Southerland actually has casks of rum. I dont think Ive ever seen a cask of rum. Whats this all about? Southerland is what we on the reenactor circuit call a spoiler, Newt said. Spoilers catch wind of engagements and arrive uninvited. They tend to be the party dogs among reenactment societies, always looking to stir things up. They do come in costume, to their credit. Ooh, that looks like bratwurst. Soon cook fires were burning all over the parade ground. Make-believe British commingled with make-believe French. There were fowl turning on spits and suckling pigs a roasting. The Members of the Corps Royal de lInfanterie de la Marine had brought ashore their stereo system and played some Jimmy Buffet. A subaltern brought me a cannikin of rum and cut an odd caper on his way back to the party. Morale was very high for all, with the exception of the brigadier. Our drummer was beating the parley and Southerland, flanked by his standard bearer, was having speaks with Bachman. Strike your colors, Macalister, Southerland said. Its Prevost. Brigadier General Augustine Prevost, said Bachman. Whatever, said Southerland. Strike your colors, Prevost. Southerland, Bachman said, gesturing with his hand the shindig that was taking shape on the parade grounds. This anachronism will not stand. Have it your way, bubba, Southerland said and saluted. Excuse me, General, but I have rum to drink and songs to sing. Maybe you ought to take you a little nap.

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Bachman held another evening of strong drink and euchre in his tent that night. He was drunk, but it was a mean, nasty, calculating sort of drunk. I had decided to join them, thinking that my absence might indicate that something had passed between Bachman and me and invite troublesome questions. I still didnt know exactly what to do about what I had witnessed on the bastion that afternoon. I thought it best to handle the matter privately, if at all. I was half-inclined to ignore it. He was very drunk at the time, and half-mad when sober. The last thing I wanted was some imbroglio that would force Virginia to choose between her brother and me. So I played some euchre. We were joined by Newt and Southerland, who played as partners against Bachman and me. We played poorly, winning virtually no tricks. On several occasions I went it alone, which would force Bachman to put his cards face-down and take no part in the play. Bachman was an energy sink; he just drank and looked sour. The atmosphere degenerated from convivial to awkward and before midnight both Southerland and Newt had taken their leave, Southerland leaving behind his pike. When I rose from my chair to retire Bachman bade me to sit and join him for a nightcap. Thank you, Bachman said. He got up and brought the decanter from the sideboard to the card table and sat in the seat beside me. Today was just so awful and Im not quite ready to face the night alone. Sure, I said, taking a sip of scotch. Listen, Bachman said. I really appreciate you participating in this whole affair. This reenactment society, its really the only interest I have left in life. He sipped his drink and remained silent for a spell before speaking again. You know, Im very pleased youll be joining our family. AndId hate for that nasty business this afternoon to spoil anything. II was not myself. I had never witnessed anyone so pathetic, and I couldnt believe I was actually having this conversation. Half of me wanted to knock him down and rub his nose in the dirt. The other halfI dont know, but I was also overwhelmed by a kind of tenderness. His wet eyes glistened in the light of the oil lamp and when they met mine I swear he was the image of Virginia. No, I said. Of course not.

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Oh, thank you, Bachman said and flung his arms around my neck, burying his face in my chest where he heaved and sobbed for a spell while I surprised myself and patted him on the back and told him not to worry. Then he looked me in my eyes and again I saw Virginia and thats when his lips found mine. I lingered there for a moment; despite the acrid miasma of strong drink, his kiss was not unlike Virginias, soft, but insistent. Then I pulled away abruptly. Please, Bachman said. I dont want to be alone tonight, a line I myself had used as an undergraduate. Then he moved in for another kiss. Again I pulled away, but Bachman persisted, breathing in hurried sharp breaths and pinning my arms to my sides. With one foot I pulled his chair out from underneath him and we came crashing down where we wrestled until I gained the advantage and pinned him to the ground. At this point Freddy Southerland parted the flaps of the tent and stopped in his tracks as he beheld the scene. Excuse me, boys. Forgot my espontoon, he said as he picked up his pike. Sorry to interrupt. I rose to my feet, though not very steadily. I felt like I was taking my first steps on land after a very long passage. Youve got problems, I said to Bachman, who was crumpled there on the Persian rug, laughing hysterically as I left the tent. When I woke the following morning there was an envelope with a red waxen seal on the flap stuck to my tent pole with a dirk. The envelope contained a note written in India ink on linen parchment. It read: I, Bachman Lachlan Macalister, hold Duncan Hunter Gordon to be a scoundrel not fit to carry offal to a bear, a poltroon and, above all else, a sodomite and do hereby issue a challenge so as to honorably settle this affair on Potato Island, one week hence, with pistols at noon. I had to read the note again to make sure I had read it correctly. Im the sodomite? I said aloud. I experienced a sinking feeling, realizing that this was not part of the reenactment script, that this man, the brother of the woman I loved, planned to kill me. Not waiting for reverie, I made straight for home, having had enough of make-believe.

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The air in our row house was redolent with the maple-sweet smell of bacon frying in the skillet. Virginia had greeted me at the door wearing her tartan bathrobe and her hair loose and when I opened my mouth to speak she shushed me and said, All is well, come to bed. After spending two nights in a damp tent on a lumpy pallet under cheap wool, our dry, cool sheets felt like therapy. Virginia hooked one of her legs around mine and stroked my brow. For a woodswoman she kept her fingers supple. She caressed me with her firm, smooth calf, and I felt my pulse slow and my eyelids grow heavy. I was home, light years away from her murderous misfit brother. Eggs over-easy and side meat sat untouched on a silver tray on the bedside table, and a skin had formed across the surface of the cream in the pitcher on the coffee service. Virginia blew lightly in my ear; even her breath was cool as we lay there entangled and glowing. Lets get married now, she said. I didnt want to ruin this moment. I had a week. I decided to leave off discussing the duel. Which was stupid. We had made a day of it, planned an elaborate dinner, Venison Wellington, using the tenderloin from the buck shed shot earlier that week. It was on that halcyon day laced with mimosas and garlic and onion that I saw our future together in broad panorama and it was a lovely vision replete with melted butter bubbling in the pan, roasted meat hissing on the spit, the clink of ice cubes in fine crystal, sun spots dappling the nape of her elegant neck like the patina on the barrel of a well-loved rifle, the graying of her chestnut tresses, those clear blue eyes lighting up the room like a beacon, her laugh lines stretching into arabesques when she smiled, the snow white flash of her teeth. I was greedy. I wanted one last taste of unmitigated bliss before I had to make her choose between her brother and me, before that day, before our life was fraught with complication. I should have said something in the kitchen, in the garden, in our bed, but I didnt. She was sauting chopped mushrooms and green onions for the Duxelles while I was rolling out the pastry dough when in the other room her mobile phone rang and she left the kitchen to take the call. I knew that instant it was Bachman, and that he would be giving her his side of the story, which would be far from the truth. It was. When Virginia returned to the kitchen she untied her apron, wadded it up, and flung it in the

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corner. Her face was drained of all its color as she told me to get out, to quit pretending to love her and just get out and find myself a man, any man, only not her brother. Are you serious? I asked. I didnt try to seduce him. Youve got to believe me. Why should I believe you, she said, her chin dimpling, forecasting tears. If youre telling the truth then why didnt you tell me already? Why wasnt it the first thing out of your mouth when you walked in through the door? Well I began. Damn it, Duncan. How could you? After all weve built, you just throw it away, and with, of all people, my brother. Virginia pitched the contents of the skillet into the sink where they spat and sputtered. Youre not right. Youreyoure some kind of monster; youre trash, worse than trash. Youre not like me. I wasnt raised to be treated like this. Damn you, Duncan. Get out. For the next week I slept in my sailboat, my only communication with Virginia conveyed through lawyers concerned with the splitting up of our property, my dreams plagued with images of a man in a cape and powdered wig who had taken all I held dear. Sunday and Potato Island was ablaze with the noonday sun, but cold all the same. The air coming up from the marsh grass was crisp and bit at my nose and cheeks. Bachman had brought a bottle of port and proposed a toast to Dame Fortuna but I declined. At this duel there were no seconds, just him and I standing in the marsh in the state wetlands preserve, me in canvas and oilskin, him in a tweed shooting coat and silk tartan ascot. He presented me a mahogany box, open and lined with indigo velvet and containing two single shot percussion pistols, French made, with stocks of burnished walnut and inlayed with German silver. We agreed to ten paces and shook hands. As I was walking off my ten paces I caught a whiff of my wet oilskin coat and my thoughts turned to Virginia, in her camouflage at the cabin, in her ball gown at cotillion, in my arms in the shower, her hair slicked back from her forehead, on the other side of our door in her Macalister tartan bathrobethe same pattern as the ascot round her brothers neckthe deadbolt and the chain. Despite the striking resemblance between them, it was unfathomable to me that they were brother and sister. Bachman

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was sick, very sick, and their blood tie was a cruel, cosmic accident. He was the monster, not me. The whole reenactment business, tad bit gay or no, meant much too much to Bachman. I had the image of him on the bastion with his ram rod driving home a round in his musket. Bachman was a man capable of killing another when the stakes were no higher than a boys game of dress-up, and I had no doubt that he would try to kill me, too, that at the end of our ten paces in the sucking mud flat he would not shoot up in the air but at me. The real question was whether I would shoot at him. I knew that if I killed Bachman, Id never win Virginia back. I also knew the same would hold true if he killed me. Potato Island would be a sorry place to die. I had taken five paces so far, the dried reeds crunching beneath my boot heels with each one. I wondered if Bachman would wait until the tenth pace to fire. Why should he? He had, after all, challenged me on the grounds of a false accusation. What did it mean to be one of them anyway? The vaunted landed gentry ideal of honor clearly meant nothing to him. Was to be one of them to be half-drunk, well-armed, and completely insane? Morally deviantI was engaged to his sister when he made his clumsy passbut willing to kill in order to conceal it? At ten I spun and aimed my pistol straight at the sky and fired. Twenty paces away Bachman smiled, as if he knew I would abstain, leveled his pistol, closed one eye and with the other drew a bead on me. The report of a gunshot rent the air, but it was an odd report, not the resonant crack of a large caliber black powder piece, but a tinny, spitting noise, on a higher register, and I noticed that no smoke emitted from Bachmans pistol barrel as he crumpled to the ground, clutching his rear. I dropped my pistol and, as I was running up to him, Virginia appeared from behind a live oak and ran up as well. She was holding a .22 rifle and smoke was seeping from its barrel. Bachman looked up from the ground and snarled. Meddlesome bitch, he said. Youve shot me in the ass. I picked up Bachmans piece from where he dropped it and flung it in the woods. What are you doing here? I asked Virginia. Thanks for not killing my brother, she said. Thanks for saving my life. Does this mean

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Duncan, you simple fool. Dont you see? Hes my brother. I cant.This is all soimpossible. She wiped her tears on the back of her coat sleeve. God damn you both. Then she kissed my cheek and slipped her hand in mine, and I was left with her engagement ring pressed into my palm. I reached for her but she turned away and knelt next to her brother as he held his ass and moaned, begging first for his pistol, then his port, and I realized I would never be one of them.

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THE VERY LAST WOMAN IN THE WORLD: A TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE JOURNEY OF THE USCGS GRAVY BOAT, FROM TYBEE TO THE ISLE OF SAINT CATHERINE, AS TOLD BY HER HONEST AND INTREPID CAPTAIN, WM. POMEROY WORMSLOE, CAPTAIN, USCGA.

This plank-walking business was a sorry affair; not even a proper plank at all, but a fiberglass diving board salvaged from the fire-bombed yacht club. Was it springy? Yes. Was it dreadful? No. Boatswain Ramsays hands I tied with a slip knot, and Mr. Macintosh, under my orders, tossed over an inflatable dinghy and a dry bag containing fishing tackle, straw boater, fresh water, and sardines. Jump, you dog, I cried, and when the erstwhile boatswain said, You know, youre ape-shit crazy, and fumbled with his binds, we shook the diving boardplank, that isuntil he lost footing and fell into the sound, the Tybee Island lighthouse faint on the horizon, wreathed in yellow fog. God forgive you your transgressions, I called down as Ramsay surfaced, sputtering sea water and shaking his fist, saying, Youll never have her, Wormsloe. And you wouldnt know what to do with her if you did. South by southwest, Mr. Macintosh, I said, and we set sail for Saint Catherines Island, where there was rumored to be a cache of classic rock and, possibly, mayonnaise, which we needed desperately for pimento cheese, a staple aboard the U.S.C.G.S. Gravy Boat. And then there was the fair keeper of the isle, Priscilla, the very last woman in the world. I climbed below and squeezed by Big Webb, a short fireplug of a man in a tanktop and a stiff apron cut from oilskin, who with a wooden spoon was stirring a pot of something hot and brown in the galley. What will it be tonight, Big Webb? I asked. Hot brown, Big Webb said. My favorite. I ducked under gunny sacks of grits and flour hanging from the overhead. Below decks was redolent of salted amberjack and meat fat, gun oil and wood rot, and old cheese. Through the saloon I made my way aft. The engine room was a travesty; I sloshed through water up to my calves. The close and briny staleness down there never failed to stun me, no matter how many shifts I pulled at the pump. If the water were only ankle deep, wed still make decent time if the wind was right. But this was too much water no matter how the wind blew. I waded

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between the twin diesel V-8s, shiny like giant blue lozenges, over to the starboard and inspected the hull, the slats of Philippine mahogany swollen tight against each other, splotches of pitch here and there like foul blemishes on that honey-stained timber. She was taking in water at one spot just six inches above the water line where the wood was splintered, victim of the gaff, and just that afternoon freshly smothered with our homemade sealant, melted tarmacadam collected by landing parties from the cracks in the highway baking under noonday sun. Webb would cook up the stuff, and it usually held, but this breach was the most severe compromise the Gravy Boat had ever sustained. This clumsy sabotage was the work of Boatswain Ramsay, who for days had been petitioning me to turn about and head for shore. But if he reckoned that a compromised hull was going to keep me from the fair Priscilla he reckoned wrong. Pumping the bilge I wondered what would it be like, biblical love with the maiden of Saint Catherines. Was she well groomed down below? Was it a tangled Amazon basin, or close-cropped Serengeti plain? And would I be planting my seed in an oft-tilled fallow field or fresh and fecund delta? Was she still an undiscovered country, I had to know. But what did it matter? Could I afford to be so picky concerning the very last woman in the world? The more I pumped the more I sweated. I could almost smell the musky whang of her hot, hairy mound, could almost feel it jump. I foresaw a theatre of sweaty madness in what would certainly be a vermilion damask boudoir. God grant mercy to my heat-oppressed loins. Would that the doctor could mix me some paregoric, maybe a tincture of laudanum and quinine. I pumped. I sweated. I faltered. Webb, I cried. Take that brown off the fire and come down and spell me. I craved a wee dram of spirits, and a song. Ship life is hard on a man; youve got to put it somewhere. When you grow weary of the right hand, you switch to the left, the grip sinister, and when that wont satisfy you rest your weight on the right until it falls asleep and then, all numb, you pleasure yourselfa maneuver we call The Strangerand when youve exhausted this novelty and learn that no amount of yoga will permit auto-felatio, you look for other outlets, or inlets, as it were. Oh, oh, to crank a load.

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As such I have sought comfort in the arms of other men, in port given myself freely to broad-chested stevedores; fueled by spiced rum I have slurred hot blandishments of the fouler sex into the downy ears of young swains. And on board the Gravy Boat I had taken Boatswain Ramsay as a lover, initiating him into the mysteries of the brown arts. He proved an eager apprentice. Once, in a moment of weakness after lying with him, I confessed that to the charms of the fairer sex I was a stranger and that, as such, unfit to be a leader of men. I also confided in him my true motivation in making for Saint Catherines. I realize now just how foolhardy this disclosure was, but at the time I was basking, coming down from climax, feeling both vulnerable and omnipotent. With me he remonstrated, extolling my virtues as skippermy prodigious appetites, my sartorial excellence (these were not his words exactly)and insisting that, though he was no lady, I had, time and again, proven my manhood during our private moments. He professed his eternal devotionoh, the poor lambto his captain, claiming I had unlocked chambers in his heart and mind and shown him such pleasures he thought impossible. I smiled, kissed his cheek, thanked him for his service to our country and reminded him that, despite his love, never could he give me a son, unlike Priscilla. Since then a chill had descended upon our relations, Ramsay insisting on remaining at attention when called to my cabin, and then the sabotage and subsequent drumming out from the service via makeshift plank. Buggery of boys, men with men: unnatural, yet inevitable. But congress with livestock I will not countenance and it was this brand of lechery that brought us to the quarterdeck at dawn the next morning. The accused was the ships doctor, Weismuller. He had an owlish aspect with that shock of white hair and his rimless spectacles, wearing the herringbone tweed coat with the suede elbows that without fail he slept in; the man had no regard for regulations. The previous night during the dog watch I had caught him in flagrante delicto, his patched gabardine trousers around his ankles, his pale shanks luminescent on the afterdeck under the gibbous moon. The little lamb, tied to the taffrail, had been bleating over the din of the twin diesels. I arrived just in time to see the doctor shudder then slump over his concubine which was at that point thoroughly befouled. Then it was dawn

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and he stood before me, trousers cinched up around his waist by a rope, his hands bound in front of him (slipknot, of course) and resting on his distended belly. I am an old man, Wormsloe, he said. You are too cruel. You have debauched the last of our stock, Dr. Weismuller. You know the law. What law? he cried. Youre mad. Mr. Macintosh, produce the yearling. From the forward deck, Mr. Macintosh came aft, lamb in tow. Macintosh was a ruddy Adonis in khaki, curly flaxen locks and a drooping moustache, the kind of man you would see in an advertisement lighting a cigarette with a coal from the fire hed built in his bivouac in the bushveld, back in the day when we had such things as magazines. The lamb would have none of it, so Macintosh was dragging it and its little black hooves scraped two trails through the varnish of the mahogany deck. Big Webb blew a sorry taps through a tarnished bugle before I bid him stop. He looked down at the lamb and his bottom lip quivered. Mr. Macintosh, your sword if you please, I said. He handed me a bowie knife with beads and Indian silver hanging from the hilt. With one stroke across its throat like the Puritans of yore I slaughtered the beast before the eyes of its defiler and pitched the carcass overboard, its meat no longer fit for human consumption. Big Webb fell to blubbering. Webb, please, I said, and turned to the doctor. Dr. Weismuller, the laws of the jungle stop at the gangway. We will miss you for your home-cooked speed; moonshine and ginseng, the shadetree speedball. Mr. Macintosh, the dinghy if you please. Fresh out of rubber dinghies, sir. Oh, damn it all. Have we no life ring, no water noodle, no wet banana? No, sir. And the wet banana is a slide, sir, a front lawn diversion, not a flotation device. Very well, then. Empty the doctors sea chest and give him a paddle. And an umbrella. Finish this business. Ill be down below. I handed Macintosh his bowie knife and retired to my quarters. Aye, aye, sir, I heard as I descended the companionway. My stateroom, my sanctum sanctorum. Unlike the rest of the ships bulkheads which were paneled in teak, mine I had papered in toile, not the quaint pastoral toile of a

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ladys dressing room, but toile with a difference. Pornographic toile. A yeoman farmer surprising from behind a wench in gingham bending over her laundry by the brook; a blacksmith sitting on his anvil, scullery girl in his lap riding cowboy-style; a landlord dressed for the fox hunt wielding a riding crop over the bare rump of his ersatz mount. Blushing brides a bathing and husbandry most foul. Hearing an oath and a splash I said to myself, Godspeed, good doctor, sat down at the chart table and did some calculating. One advantage to this Puritanical method of justice was that it lightened our burden, which allowed the Gravy Boat to draw less water. If we jettisoned enough cargo we would raise the trim just a hair and we might actually make it to the isle and I might actually make it with the mistress of the isle. If we didnt raise the trim, wed have to scuttle herthe Gravy Boat, that isand that I could not bear. The circumstances under which I assumed command of the Gravy Boat were born of a lust of a more natural variety. As a skipper in the Coast Guard Auxiliary Fifth Flotilla, First Division, I had been pilot of a Chris Craft Catalina, a fine vessel, nothing to sneeze at in her prime, but ultimately unseaworthy, leaky as a sieve, good for the back rivers and tidal creeks at best. Indeed, only one vessel in the flotilla of ten could make it out of the sound, and it, too, was a vintage Chris Craft, but much larger, a sixty-eight foot Constellation. So I scuttled my boat, U.S.C.G.S. Old College Try, that I might secure service aboard the flagship, the Gravy Boat, who had recently lost her first mate to cholera, and therewith make it past the three mile marker and someday make landfall on Saint Catherines Island, fabled home of the very last woman in the world. Our orders had us headed north, in the opposite direction, to provide logistic support to the Wrightsville Irregulars, but those orders went the way of the dodo along with Captain Gravy, who, according to the report I filled out, died by his own hand in an untimely and most mysterious fashion. Since I had assumed command I had forged orders that put us on a course due south to commandeer a supply of diesel from the old federal endangered wildlife sanctuary, the Island of Saint Catherine. So as to avoid unwanted questions from the crew I sweetened the pot with tales of a bomb shelter laden with food stores, in addition to an L.P. collection. Of the music I was certain. Back in the days before the crisis, the

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systematic gynocide and ensuing atomic havoc, I had a scientist friend who was an intern on the isle. He told me he played half-rubber by day and tagged alligators by night which he would follow with brandy and backgammon and records in the library. I looked up from my calculations at the old hand-crank Victrola on my bookshelf, its great speaker like the bell of a trombone or some sooty orchid, and thought it would be nice to once again hear the sweet strains of the British Invasion. There was a rap at my door. Permission to enter? It was Mr. Macintosh. I bid him to join me at the table but he said he would prefer standing so I left him there at parade rest. His trousers were dark from mid-thigh downward; I suspected he had just returned from the engine room. Sir, the cask of salt beef has rotted. The biscuits infested with the weevil. Gribble has bored into the ribs of the ship. Half the fresh water stores are spoiled with seawater. The sheep, of course And the bilge? I asked. Two feet and still taking in water. Nothing will hold, neither pitch nor oakum. Well, get another pump going, I said and with my pencil set to revising my calculations. Ive already jury rigged two, sir. Jettison the ruined stores, I said, but I knew he would say he had already done this as well and so he did. I looked up from my figures. The rings under his eyes were a deep blue. I poured him a dram from my brandy decanter. This, too, he refused. Whats wrong with you, Macintosh? Permission to speak freely, sir? Speak, man, I said and drained the brandy from the tumbler. We should turn about, sir, and make for Ossabaw. The ship needs refitting, badly. Well refit at Saint Catherines. Weve sailed much too far to quit now. Morale is low, sir. Big Webbs pretty shook up about the lamb. Damn it, I will not have my crew dine on polluted meat. Sir, the men are growing restless, theyre grumbling

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I narrowed my eyes. What men, Mr. Macintosh? Big Webb and you are all thats left. Are you questioning my judgment, Lieutenant? Sir, Im only reporting the prevailing opinion, which is that we should turn about. Prevailing opinion be hanged, man. Do you realize whats at stake here? The very future of . I stopped myself before I revealed too much. If the crew were to find out my true objective behind this detour south thered be mutiny, chaos, fisticuffs at the very least over who would lay first with Priscilla. The privilege of rank would be cast to the four winds. The very future of what, sir? We will stay the course and thats an order. Are we clear? Aye, aye, sir. You are dismissed. From the drawer in the chart table I pulled my service pistol to make sure it was still loaded from that morning when I had snuck it from the gun locker. I drew back the slide and loaded a cartridge into the chamber, removed the lanyard and slipped the sidearm inside my peacoat. I had also palmed two extra clips and these I put in my hip pocket. The crew was growing restless, eh? I had nothing to fear. Macintosh as XO had a key to every cabin, every locker on board, save one and that was the key to the gun locker which I wore around my neck. I patted it and then I patted the sidearm and I felt a warm glow envelop me, a glow born only partly from good brandy. I rubbed the tips of my forefinger and thumb under my nose and savored the tang of gun oil and lit my second-to-last cheroot. In two days time I would be the one man in all creation sleeping in a womans arms. Before dawn the next morning I woke with a violent start. The pitch of the Gravy Boat had shifted. I jumped from my hammock and looked out the portal. Someone was turning her about. I dressed once again in my Service As as I would in moments be meting out more of my brand of dread justice. After switching the safety off on my .45 I stole up the companionway to the bridge.

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In the nineteenth-century navy of Secretary Paul Hamilton, skippers sentenced mutineers to a myriad of punishments: floggingseventy stripes from the lash at the very leastbefore an audience of his shipmates; hard labor tethered to a cannonball; the left side of the head and one eyebrow shaven bare. The most egregious offenders who escaped hanging until dead from the yardarm were branded in the forehead with the label MUTINY. And here I was, standing next to Mr. Macintosh who stood at the helm, first sun bloody as a grapefruit cresting the waters to the east, the barrel of my automatic pressed at his temple. Such an expedient punitive measure, so uninspired, I thought. Truly these are benighted times, Mr. Macintosh, I said as I pulled the trigger. Nothing. A squib cartridge, perhaps. I slid back the action, ejected the round, and squeezed the trigger again. Still nothing. Then I felt the cold edge of a blade at my throat and I noticed that I had been flanked by Big Webb. Macintosh took my pistol and I watched him slide back the action and I thought, This is the end; who ever heard of three misfires in a row? I took the liberty of removing the firing pin, sir, to ensure your safety, Macintosh said as he drew from his shirt a leather thong from which hung a keythe key to my stateroomas well as the pin itself, with which he picked his teeth. Big Webb, clap Captain Wormsloe in irons and secure him in the brig. This is preposterous. Unhand me. I am your captain, I said, but Big Webb wasnt having any of that, his stout arms holding me in a full nelson. Please go quietly, sir. Webb, if he makes trouble, fetch Dr. Weismuller and hell administer a sedative. Weismuller? I said as the cook shoved me down the hatch. But Weismullers Asleep in my berth, Captain. But I heard You heard the splash of me dropping anchor. Please cooperate, sir. We dont want to hurt you. I wasnt entirely sure about that, but, as theres precious little satisfaction in arguing with an armed mutineer, for the moment I kept to myself. And Macintosh told me we were fresh out of rubber dinghies.

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The rubber dinghy is a nautical aberration, of an octagonal shape with a flat bottom and no rudder. In such a craft a skipper never achieves proper locomotion, unless spinning constitutes locomotion. To his credit, my former first mate, the swine, did outfit me with a paddle, but maintaining any kind of vector became a comedy of errors. Comic, I suppose, to anyone who might have been watching. All I could see were the waves one after another that pooped and pooped this travesty of a vessel. My cap served as a passable bailer, but dry rot and salt water finally split it through. Indeed, my face was leprous with sunburn just as my hands and feet were all ate up with chilblains. This was not comedy; this was horror. The Germans have a word for it, walpurgisnacht, the eve of May Day on which witches ride to some dark rendezvous. In modern English usage, walpurgisnacht is any event or situation that has a nightmarish quality. God bless the Teuton, hes got a polysyllable for everything. Never had the sulfur-rich black pluff mud smelled so fine. I had landed, thanks be to God, on Saint Catherines Island (we really were not that far from landfall, and yet those fools turned about all the same). Bloated to surfeit on raw oysters I slept for some twelve hours in an abandoned boathouse rotting into the bank of an inlet. High noon the next day I was busy weaving a makeshift headcover from blades of marsh grass and having no small amount of trouble shaping the crown. My uniform was a wreck, white-ringed with salt and as stiff as rawhide. A foul miasma welled up from my shoes and when the wind was right, the musk that wafted from my arm pits was absolutely rotten. I was in no condition to go a maying. Oh, I had had such grand designs; I was to court her decked out in my finest regalia, a cocked hat and a frogged frock coat with gold braided epaulettes, and a cutlass with an ivory hilt. In my locker I had accumulated a host of womens fancy things: a sterling silver hand mirror; from a daring hand of euchre some hard-won Joy eau de toiletthe little black bottle with the red stopper; silk stockings and garters; a whalebone wasp-waisted corset and a chartreuse polonaise saved from the rubble of the Historical Society and, of course, Belgian chocolates. But now in the white-washed stone ruins of what looked to be slave quarters where I studied my reflection in a shattered looking-glass, I saw that I cut quite a sorry

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figure; blistered nose, peeling forehead, browned-over collar and ragged four-in-hand. Thanks to dehydration and an embarrassment of oysters I had breath from the tombs. In a word, I was a mess. With my jack knife I took to task my four-day growth of beard. Oyster shucking had not been kind to the blade. Save for a spot of water from my canteen, this was a dry shave and afterwards my cheeks felt raw and pinched. None of these discomforts, however, pained me more than my sun-baked nose. But I had no more worries in that department. I had blocked myself a hat, such as it was. Such as it was, indeed. When I made to walk out the ruins, my hat was no longer hanging on a peg sticking from the door frame but was moving away at quite a clip, clutched in the hand of a rhesus macaque whose hideous rump had a waxy sheen under the noonday sun. The old growth canopy under which I pursued the creature was composed of water oaks bent half-way over by the leeward wind from the sound. The groundcover was getting pretty thick; Spanish bayonets were tearing at my trousers. No matter. I had worked all morning on that hat and no filthy little monkey was going to take it away. A wilderness of monkeys, however, was more than welcome to it. As I emerged from a thicket of red oleander into a circle of oak trees I was greeted by a score of macaques, some dropping from their perches, others brachiating from limb to limb, the one with my hat taking refuge behind the largest member of the group and hopping up and down and all of them hooting and howling, youve never heard such a din. The large one hissed and bared its teeth and then those in the trees proceeded to pelt me with scat. I understand now that I should not have taken this personally, that this is just what monkeys do; they steal and they fling their leavings with impunity, the filthy little beasts. It was a highly demoralizing affair and I fled, sans hat, to safer ground. I trekked through the swale of marsh grass until I found myself at the edge of a salt flat. The sun was still high and I had made a sort of rude balaclava from my rancid undershirt, which afforded my roasted face some protection. That being said, I looked like the Elephant Man and I smelled like a zoo. Whatever element of surprise I may have had the monkeys had since rendered forfeit. Maid Priscilla for sure had been alerted to my presence. I only hoped to have the opportunity to tidy up before our first meeting. Surely she would have some measure of mercy on a sailor recently marooned, I hoped,

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wondering if Id find her before my next wild encounter with an endangered species, among whom I now numbered myself. At the other side of the salt flat I found a narrow trail trodden through the marsh grass; finally, a path out of this impossible situation. This was an old trail, flat, looked like it saw regular use. Did she have many suitors, I asked myself, and, if so, how many held a commission in the Coast Guard Auxiliary? Then I heard two long blasts from a ships whistle. Not the Gravy Boat, damn it to hell, I thought, not now, after the high cost paid; having jilted my lover, lost all worldly goods and my command, cooked to a crisp in an open boat, menaced by monkeys. Not after all this was I going to lose Priscilla to another man, and especially not to a gang of mutineers. Scanning the horizon I saw smoke, could it be a cook fire? Perhaps Priscilla and her demesne were just around the bend. I started running. I smelled it long before I walked up on it, the acrid sweet scent of carrion. I pulled my balaclava tighter and covered my mouth and nose with my hand. As I came up on the dead whitetail doe a snarl of flies buzzed around for a moment and then lit back on the carcass. The head, legs, and backbone were all that remained and the trail of offal and gore gradually dissipated as I kept running. The work of wild dogs, no doubt. Or not. I found myself in a copse of willows in the center of which a lion was feeding on the belly of her kill. She looked up from her meal, a foul gobbet dripping from her chin, and she opened her mouth wide. I remember the bloody maw and I swear I felt her roar but I could not hear it or anything, I just turned on my heels and started to run but it was not but two seconds, though it felt like an hour, before I was down, my right calf in the great cats gory jaws. Then a crack rent the air, the report of a rifle, and nothing but blackness thereafter. When I came to I was being lifted from the back of a roan quarter horse by a pair of meaty forearms and carried across the porch of a large and rotting antebellum manor, through the threshold like a bride and laid on a long mahogany table. Huge flakes of plaster hung from the ceiling like the wings of bats. The room was spinning. I turned my head to the side and vomited in great torrents. When I looked back up my eyes met two

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small black eyes like raisins set too far apart in a wide ruddy face; there was something half-baked to that expanse of forehead, crowned by a nimbus of dun-colored kinky hair. Those two stout arms that carried me in were hers and they were holding me down against the table and over her shoulder I saw Dr. Weismuller, hacksaw in hand, and I tasted the salt from the leather strop someone had shoved between my teeth. Her name was not Priscilla, it was Drusilla, and there was good reason why she was the very last woman in the world. A buxom lass for sure, she stood over six feet tall and one day I saw her by herself bear ten one-gallon pails of goat milk hanging on a pole across her broad shoulders like a cross, spilling nary a drop. And though her face was soft, bland and doughy, the rest of her was hard. She was a tower of a woman, ripped like a cobblestone keep. She had legs stout as oak trees and the thick ankles of a peasant. It was Drusilla who had shot the lion with a massive Holland and Holland .416 trimmed in sterling. A troop of ring-tailed lemurs attended her constantly. Macintosh, you can have her, I told my first mate as he measured with a tape the diameter of my right stump, cut just below the knee and swathed in gauze bandages. And though the man had stripped me of my own ship, my heart warmed to see him again. No, Skipper, shes all yours, Macintosh said. Rather, I was all hers. One night she lifted me from my cot and carried me over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. There was no damask in her chambers, and the bed, though vast, was hard, as I learned when she parted the mosquito netting and dropped me there with all the ceremony of a woman home from market. You can call me Drew, she said, Or Andy. Undress. She sat on the edge of the bed with her back to me, kicked off her brogans, crossed her legs, and rolled a woolen knee-high down her sturdy calf. I thought some kind of romantic overture might be in order, so I placed one hand on her shoulder and kissed the back of her neck as I reached around her with my other hand and unfastened a button on her homespun dress. I told you to take off your clothes, she said. Ill see to myself. She stood, her back still to me, and pulled the dress over her head. She wore nothing underneath. Under the light of candles in brass sconces, her broad back was rippled like an Olympic swimmers, and her buttocks were

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compactsurprisingly so, given her size. A draught blew though the windows, and in the sputtering candlelight the chiaroscuro of her muscles gave her the aspect of sculpted marble. Nothing was soft, not her cracked hands or calloused feet, and her kisses were few and brusque. And yet I did not find it odd that this giant aroused me so. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that I craved her even more after I had spent myself again and again. I did not tire of her as I had of other lovers. Nestled between her cockeyed breastsmuch too hard to nurture any living thing, or so it seemedand fighting to catch my breath, I felt like a castaway washed ashore. There, atop her and exhausted, I could feel my grasp of duty slip away; command, which had heretofore guided my whole existence, was meaningless. I was no longer a sailor. I was simply hers. My god, she was the dread goddess of the bower, the very matron of fuck. When she took me she roared like the jungle itself. She was Serengeti, Amazon, Low Country, and Mekong in one. Drusilla was a confluence of terrible rivers, a concordance of many beasts. Soon she colonized us all, even Weismuller. When we left the isle we had refitted the Gravy Boat, patched her hull and replenished her stores. Drusilla, having had much of us sent us off with wheels of cheese and gallons of mayonnaise, fresh eggs, goats milk, our very own chicken that we kept in a coop on the deck in the open, athwart ship from the good Dr. Weismuller who, it is said, positively relished sawing off my leg. Weeks prior, when Mr. Macintosh had turned the ship about, they read my log which told them about the lone woman of Saint Catherines Island, and they said they have me and the example set by my perseverance, however irrational, to thank for what may very well have been their last romp in the hay. They even swore a blood oath that none would tell another soul about Drusilla. Mr. Macintosh presented me with my bicornered hat and cutlass and at my behest we set out on a search for Boatswain Ramsay. Then, God willing, we would set course for Wrightsville to lend a hand to the guerrillas. Our hostess had given us as well the islands music collection, all of which was too warped to play save the nine-record Steely Dan discography, a classic rock/A.O.R. hybrid to which the men were slowly adjusting. I was growing accustomed

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to my new prosthetic, the femur of the lion set in a mahogany housing crafted by Big Webb, the peg leg for which I had waited my whole life.

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THE FOURTH TENOR, VINCENT NOSERELLI

Got this gig at CBS next Saturday, six in the morning, Jesus Mary and Joseph, so I send Alphonse out for a new suit on account of me outgrowing all but my warm-ups and one pair of Sansabelts in the closet and Alphonse, the schmuck, he brings back this farkatke pinstripe not even a junglebunny would wear and I ask him where south of heaven did he find it? S&K, he says. S&K? You got to be kidding me. He makes to take it off the hanger and I tell him, No, dont touch it, you might catch something, and wouldnt you know it now I feel a cold coming on. This celebrity cookbook is going to be the death of me. It started out simple. I get stars to send Italian recipes and little stories about them, and I put it all in a book. Now my publicist tells me CBS wants me to cook one of the recipes, on the air. Seriously. They want me to cook for them? I say. Dont they have their own cooks? She, yeah, she, shes a sweetheart, a little petite for the Nose, but a sweetheart, she says, Mr. Noserelli, havent you ever seen a cooking show, as if the Nose lives on fucking Saturn and Saturn basic cable dont carry the Food Network. Look, I say, Im no cook, I just wrote the thing, I cant stay on my feet that long. Jesus. But I got bigger problems than CBS. Theres this kid whohe kind ofwell, he helped out with the writing some. Sort of like an editor, an assistant. A proofreader, but more than that. This kid, Ari Rabinovitch, sneaky little Jew if ever there was one, he gets his name on the cover. Rabinovitch. Whos going to buy a cookbook called Our Lady of Perpetual Bellisimo with a name like Rabinovitch on the cover? Puts the 86 on the books street cred, know what I mean. My little publicist keeps saying hes a co-author, not a ghost writer, she says, Read the contract, Vincent. And I say, Well, hes about to be a ghost writer, all right. I really wish people would just call me the Nose. I hate Patsys. Too fucking dark in there. Cant see to eat. And too many god damned kids. But thats Francesco for you. Fancy Franny. Always has to be where its at, always making the scene. And Im not talking about Patsys on West 56th in the city. No, this is Patsy Grimaldis, in Brooklyn, down under the Brooklyn Bridge, and it takes Alphonse an eternity to drive us there. And once you get there, the roads are an

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abomination, I tell you, all those freaking cobblestones, and Alphones Towncar doesnt have shocks for shit, somebody ought to do something about that road. And Alphonse ought to take that jalopy to Coney and charge people for rides. The Wild Ride with Fonzie DiBenedetto. Jesus Christ. Patsys is in fact not crowded, just a pasty couple wearing horn-rimmed glasses in the corner, eating a pie. Fancy Frannymy handler, my agent, if a producer wants a cameo appearance by the Nose, he calls FancyFancy is sitting at a table along the wall, under a picture of Ed Koch in an apron. Lots of gingham in Patsys. Red, red, red, like some kind of comic book trattoria, like some kind of joke. Fucking Patsys. I order a calzone and a Pepsi. Whats the matter, Fancy says, You dont want a pie? No, I say. I dont like sharing. Fancy is a peacock. He wears it. French cuffs and a hundred dollar haircut. Tucks a napkin in his collar before he tucks into his dinner. I hate that. Fancy says, Quick service, no crowd. Thank god for Yom Kippur. I say, What the fucks that supposed to mean, and he says, High holy days, you know, the Feast of Immediate Seating. I tell him its Rosh Hashanah, jackass, and then Alphonse, he says, Happy Newish Jew Year. Thanks for weighing in there, Alphonse, I say, Now can we get down to business? What are we going to do about this kid Rabinovitch? He aint budging, Fancy says. And the publisher says its pretty late in the game to be making changes. Says you should have said something when you saw the galleys. The what? I say. The galley proofs. The paperback copy, Vincent. With the red cover, said Uncorrected. Remember? I never saw any galley proof, I say, What Im talking about isuhthat version with the pages that look like negatives, like when you develop a roll of film, eh? The blues, Fancy says. They call those the blues, and theyre saying taking his name off now, at this stage in the game, this close to publication, would require not only the moving of heaven and earth, but the express permission of young Rabinovitch himself, and, like I said, he aint budging. Slippery little fuck, I say. Look, you know and I know that theres no book without me, without myanecdotes, without my Hollywood connections

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Rabinovitch got Randolfini, Fancy says. And Russo. And Lance Longwater. He got Damone, he got Rabinovitch aint got shit, I say. He can shit in his hand. Hes going to shit in his pants when were through with him. Hear me now, Francesco, the Jew is going to budge. Francesco sits back and smiles. He likes to see me in this mode. Reminds him of being in short pants and watching the Nose as Stu Cazzo on Horn of Plenty roughing up some jamook who owes him money, giving the gaming commissioner the what-for, sending back the ziti to the chef. The salad days. Francesco tugs the waitresss apron string and orders a bottle of Chianti. We going to shake him down? Fancy asks. Yeah, we going to shake him down. These publishing Ivy Leaguers got their heads so far up their asses they never see opportunity. My publicist, god bless her, she tells me, No, we are not going to send you to Philadelphia, as if I had asked her to send me all expenses paid to Atlantis, the Marshall Islands, I dont know. People read books in Philadelphia. I should know. I got people in Philadelphia. People just waiting on a good cookbook there. We could sell a lot of books, have a party at Sals on Liberty, lots of people would come. She just doesnt get it. Take today, for example. I call her on Alphonses mobile phone. Its the Nose, I say. The Nose, you know. Vincent Noserelli. Yeah, how you doing, hon? Listen, you got a pencil? Okay, I want you to take this down. 310-3684964. Thats Montels home number, in Santa Monica. Montel who? What do you mean Montel who? Yeah, that Montel. Sure, hes still on the air. Look, I want you to tell him the Nose is calling in his favors. Tell him to get me on. What do you mean? All kinds of people watch Montel. Okay, okay. Just think about it, alright? Oh, yeah, dont forget All Things Jersey. Like I said, she just doesnt get it. Its a sad day when a distinguished actor of the screen, not to mention the genius behind Fabrizio The Breeze del Romero on the hit series The Three Tenors, has to be the brains behind the promotion for his own cookbook.

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Got this deactivated Colt, a prop from the ABC lot, a .38 special. Its welded shut so the cylinder wont swing out, but it looks mean as hell. When used in conjunction with a starting pistol the effect is stunning. Most important lesson I ever learned in show business was that when you do a job, always take something home. I started out small, pocketed a pair of cuff links here, a cigarette case there. Then I got ballsy. Brought home a Neiman Marcus blazer. Golf clubs, silk pajamas, top hat from Dobbs on 5th Avenue. One time I backed up a truck to the loading dock and made off with a dentists chair, complete with the footrest and motorized recliner. Thats my reading chair to this day. Anyhow, hence the piece. Fancy gets here and, per my request, he is wearing black. A leather Armani blazer and wing tips, but black all the same. He tells me Rabinovitch lives in Park Slope. Of course. You cant take a princely piss without splattering some writers shoes in Park Slope. I remember when those brownstones were hopping with mooleys hot to sell a chunk of hash or a piece of ass, and the crack of gunfire pealed through the night like church bells. Now all the soul has been priced out of the Slope. Now its all strollers and nannies. Breaks the heart. I ask Fancy if Rabinovitch is married and he says, Married? That little fanook? Not likely. Look, I say, I dont care what hes banging, man, woman, or reindeer. I just want to know if he lives alone. Fancy says, Yeah, I cased the joint, just like you asked. Unless you count the Pomeranian, he lives alone. Wait a second, I say. He has a dog? A Pomeranian. Hes like, twelve inches long, Fancy says. He aint no Rottweiler. I dont care if hes a Chihuahua, I say. Hes gonna make some noise. Not as much noise as this phony roscoe Im toting, Fancy says, patting the starting pistol in his pocket. You should have told me there was a dog, I say. Forget about it. Ill take care of the dog. Christ, Francesco, dont kill the dog. What am I going to kill him with, your starter pistol? These .22 blanks? Relax. Nobodys killing anybody. Were just going to scare him. Shake him down, just like you said.

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Scare the living shit out of him, I say. Now were talking, Fancy says. I have Alphonse drop us off a block away on 4th Street with instructions to pick us up in front of the targets home fifteen minutes later. The kid lives on 3rd, between 8th Avenue and Prospect Park West. Man, has this place gotten toney. Look at the stained glass, and the fucking window boxes, chock full of flowers. Audis and Volvos everywhere. This Rabinovitch kid has arrived, I say. Fancy says, Nah, I dont know. A little too Laura Ashley for me, and I say, What? but, thats Fancy for you, never understand what the hell hes saying. Fancy knows the Turk who runs the bodega on the corner of 3rd and 8th, a few brownstones down the row from the kid, gives the man a couple C-notes and we take the stairs in the store room up to the roof. 3rd Street, like all these streets, is row houses, so theyre all connected, no gaps between. Fancy and I walk across a few roofs until we get to the kids. Masks on, I say. Its unseasonably warm, so his windows should be open. All these Park Slopers making a mint and yet none of them have a window unit. I just dont get it. We climb down the fire escape, and the landing before his window is a pretty tight fit. Im winded from the roof walk, huffing and puffing, and Fancy tries to shush me, but, of course, clomping down that wrought-iron staircase has alerted young Rabinovitch to our presence. I see him spring up from his sofa where hed been reading Esquireclearly a homoand make for another room. But FancyI got to hand it to him, Fancy is fast has already kicked through the screen, crossed the living room in three strides, and is dragging the kid by his collar across the parquet floor. Meanwhile Im wheezing on the fire escape. My bones creak as I lift a leg to climb through the window. You all right? Fancy asks me. Just give me a minute, I say. You go ahead. Ill be in in a second. Rabinovitch, now cowering on the rug, had apparently gone not for the door, but for a baseball bat in his bedroom, the baseball bat that Fancy, looking pretty god damn menacing in his ski mask, is now pointing at him. You were going to hit me with this, Fancy says, the kid saying, Dont dont dont dont, and Fancy saying, You dont do the

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hitting around here, and he takes a swing and shatters a bottle, spraying the wall with whisky. Who are you guys? Rabinovitch asks, stealing a glance at me on the fire escape, coughing into my glove. Were friends of a friend, Fancy says. Its at this point I notice that the kid is wearing a cast on his leg, from the knee down. Tell him we got a message from the Nose, I say from the fire escape. We got a message from the Nose, Fancy says, tapping Rabinovitch on his nose with the baseball bat, a nice touch, really. He ought to have been an actor. Whats the message? Fancy asks me. Well, maybe not an actor. Jesus Christ. Tell him to quit horning in on the Noses territory, I say. Tell him hes got a choice. He can be a ghost writer, or a ghost. You heard the man, Fancy says. You can be a ghost, or a ghost writer. Message from the Nose. The Nose? Rabinovitch says. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Yeah, the Nose, Fancy says. You know, Vincent Noserelli. Im beginning to reconsider my lease on immortality when it hits me: no Pomeranian. Wheres the dog? I ask. The dog? says the kid. You heard him, Fancy says, tapping him on the head with the bat. Hes out for a walk, the kid says. Huh? says Fancy. By himself? No, heshes with my friend, Rabinovitch says. Your friend? Fancy says, lifting Rabinovitch up from the floor by his shirt. Whens your friend coming back? Then the doorbell buzzes. Fuck, says Fancy, and I am in agreement. Get in here, Fancy says to me. Lets finish this. The buzzer buzzes again, and then again, longer this last time, and Fancy leaves the room to take a look out the front window. Holy shit is that spade huge, I hear him say. The coup de grce of this routine, of course, is me sticking the barrel of the revolver up the kids nose. So I make to get in the apartment. And I make it in, three quarters of me at least, all but my right foot which catches on the window sill, and as I

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spill, my .38 falls out of my coat and clatters across the floor, stopping right at Rabinovitchs feet. Should have used the shoulder holster, I say. Rabinovitch picks up the gun and points it at me. Get up, he says, and with a little difficulty, I do. Hands up, he sayswhat a pro, who would have thunk itand I reach for the sky. He thumbs back the hammer. Take off your mask, he says, and right before I do, Fancy turns the corner, sees Rabinovitch with the gun and says to me, What the fuck, why are your hands up, and then makes for the kid to disarm him, but not before the kid pulls the trigger, to no effect, and then pulls the trigger again. I remember myself and say, A misfire, Saints be praised. Fancy disarms Rabinovitch and shoves him down on the sofa. The kid looks a little puzzled. Thats not a real gun, the kid says. Yeah it is, Fancy says, tucking it in his waistband. I put my hands up, I add. The buzzer goes off again, long this time. Who are you guys? the kid asks again. Really. Some kind of make-believe mobsters? Some kind of joke? The buzzer rings again, and I can tell Fancys nerves are getting a little jangled, as are mine. Fancy takes the bat and taps the kid on his cast. He doubles over in pain. Ghost or ghost writer, kid, Fancy says, and we make our escape through the window. We never really met, the kid and I, in person. We talked a little over the phone. Usually Id just mail him my manuscriptswell, not manuscripts as such. Id mail him my notes. Very detailed notes. The other actors who contributed a recipe or two would do the same. And hed mail back a sort of elaboration of those notes. A detailed elaboration. Just polish, really, nothing more. The raw material is all mine. A genius doesnt have the time to dot the is, know what I mean? Like Einstein, the guy couldnt be troubled with picking out what to wear, so he just had a whole closet full of khaki pants and white shirts. Same with me, except for the wardrobe bit. I cant be troubled with details. Thats grunt work. Anyhow, I am the oil well, and Rabinovitch is the refinery. So where he gets off sneaking his Hebrew name on the cover of my Italian-American cookbook, same size as my name, I might add, beats the hell out of me. I hope me and Fancy

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cleared up that little misunderstanding. I also hope the little fink didnt recognize me. But shit, my press photo is twenty years old anyway, so Id probably be in the clear even if I had removed my mask. Im not trying to rip anybody off here; the kid will still get his cut. I just dont want his name staining my dust jacket, know what Im saying. Reminds me of the time when I was a bouncer at Copacabana and Bobby Michaels got all bent out of shape because Tony Storms name was before his on the marquis. Of course, we all know what happened to Tonyas well as what didnt happen to Bobbybut I understand now where Bobby was coming from. I didnt then, I was just a loser from Boro Park. If Rabinovitch knew what he was doing and wanted to get somewhere in the ItalianAmerican entertainment business hed have changed his name like the Nose did from Noskowski to something a little sexier. I tell you, being a Polish Jew never got me laid. Or hired, for that matter. I was a big boy before my stint in the army, and when I got back from Korea, I knew a thing or two about busting balls. I also knew I had a taste for the nightlife. So I looked for work as a doorman at all kinds of nightclubs. I set my sights pretty high, the USO had given me a noseif youll pardon the expressionfor glamour and glitz, so I went to all the famous spots, Starlight, Wild Palms, The Raj. And each place, as soon as they heard that last name, told me to beat it. Didnt matter that half the patrons were Jews, that all the talents management was Jewish, that Hollywood was the new Canaan. These clubs would take the Jews money, or watch him sing and dance, but they sure as shit werent hiring anyone stained with a stroke from a brush dipped in that particular can of tar. I doubt they would have let me wash the dishes. But you know what, your Hebrew looks a lot like your Italian, that olive skin, that aquiline nose. Those Mediterranean instincts for finding the gold and keeping it. And a Brooklyn Accent is a Brooklyn accent, I dont care where you pray. Im a vulturebeaked, swarthy son-of-a-bitch no matter how thin you slice it. So I came to the Copa in a second-hand charcoal pinstripe under the name Noserelli. That was the first big break. And Ill be damned if the three tribes of Israel are going to hold me back now. Finally my publicist has done something right. I told her we needed an event set in our element, you know. She said, What, like the Fulton Fish Market? Sing Sing, maybe? I

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said, Cute, hon, real cute. No, I mean like Lombardis, or Fratelli Enzo, or, yeah, The Low-Key Corral. She said, Vincent, those are two restaurants and a bar. Those places dont sell books. I said, Well, you guys could give us the books, and we would sell them, and give you your cut. She said, It doesnt work that way. I said, Well, thats a hell of a business model. What ever happened to bringing the product to the market? She said, Books arent like a consignment of cigarettes, Vincent. They dont just fall off trucks. But today she calls me and says, Vincent, if you can get me stars big stars then the Crazy Horse Casino will host a media event and put everyone up in the hotel for two nights. Food, drink, itll all be taken care of, spa, massage Massage? I say. You going to be doing that, honey? No sir. Limos? I say. No, Vincent. Just the regular car service. Just cars? I dont know if theyre going to go for that. Lorenzo, he likes to stretch out. Vincent, dont worry about the cars right now. Heres what the Crazy Horse wants. Youll need to sign a hundred copies, maybe more, that they will give to the high rollers. And there will be a book-signing at the gift shop. They said theyd order a thousand copies. Provided you bring along some heavy hitters. Well wrap it up with a panel on stage in the Wounded Knee Theatre. Listen, when you guys pitched this project you said you could get talent. Its time to come through. Call in those favors, Mr. Noserelli. The Crazy Horse Casino, just north of Yonkers. Jesus H. Christ. Its actually two casinos, two huge casinos, the Casino of the Plain has twenty craps tables alone, and the Casino of the Moon has a dozen for Baccarat. Not to mention all the blackjack and poker and keno. Texas-mother-of-god-Hold em. This is what I was talking about. The ricochet of the tokens in the troughs of one-armed bandits, the clack of the ball in the roulette wheel, the click of chips and the shuffling of cards, two-inch steaks and booze on the house. Cocktail waitresses wearing paint-on short-shorts, and ash trays everywhere. Piano bars. High-rolling. This is it. This is our element.

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So I call my agent. Francesco, for the next week I dont want to see you without that phone on your ear. Be the phone. You are the phone. I want Randolfini, Russo, DiMeola. I want Art and Melmo and Lup. The Twisted Sisters for color, they were always sweet on the Nose. I want the two Joeys, and the Brothers San Marcos. Do you dig? Capiche? But the Twisted Sisters dont have a recipe in the book, Fancy says. No shit, I say. The Twisted Sisters would boil a pop-tart. Youre missing the point. We need faces, Italian-American faces Lups from Madrid, and youre Spaniard, wop, any dago will do, I say. Youre the boss, Fancy says. And you are the phone. A casino is the life. Youve got the laughter, the cheers, people at the baccarat tables screaming Monkey, the sparkle of the indoor waterfall, the shimmering of the Crystal Palace and the gold elevator running up the center of it like some kind of vein. Its a beautiful thing, I tell you. Id stand it up against any national park, any wonder of the world. What ambiance. Be that as it may, over the hustle and glamour of the Casinos of the Plain and Moon, I prefer the bingo parlor off to the side, and that was where I was, watching this broad with legs what go to Wednesday drawing the balls from the cage and handing them to some old coot in a gold dinner jacket to call out the numbers. Im on the verge of getting a kite and tail when my publicist interrupts me, taps me on the shoulder and says, Vincent, nobodys here. First, a word about my publicist. She works hard, God bless the little thing. Over-educated WASP what could use a session or two in the tanning bed, but otherwise easy on the eyes, in that bookish way, corduroy and tweed, a little black every now and again but not every god damn day like your average Manhattanite, my God, youd think they were Hassids. She puts up with a lot from the Nose. What do you mean, nobody? I say. Art and Melmo checked in just after I did, and I saw Laney and Frizzo shooting craps.

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Who? she asks. Laney and Frizzo. The Twisted Sisters, I tell her. Who are they? she asks. Theyre the Dog Act from Three Tenors. You know, the dancers, I tell her. Them, and Art and Melmo are here, so dont come over here busting my chops saying nobodys here. Listen, Vincent. I dont know the Dog Act. And if I dont know them, theyre nobody. You and youryourmanager, whatever that Francesco is, get on the phone and get some names here. No more of this B-actor cockamamaie. If therere just nobodies on that stage for the panel tomorrow, you dont get paid. Capiche? she says, and does an about face on her little heels. No getting around it, that girls got moxie. B-actor cockamamie. Thats tough. That hurts. Fact of the matter is, I tried to get the A-list. I begged Randolfini. Its not like it would be any sweat off his back. Hes just over the river in Hackensack. Told him theyd send a car, I even said limousine, though that was an exaggeration, that everything was comped, even a line of credit at the casino, another exaggeration. I told him it would be good for the show, his show. And you know what he said? He said, I dont know, Vincent. Breeze Romero died in the first episode of last season. Youre off the radar. Look, I gave you two recipes for the book. I did my part. I wish you the best of luck. I go up to Fancys room. Hes on the bed in his shorts, sipping Orange Julius, watching the Mets. Francesco, I say. Get me Rabinovitch. Thats one shrewd son of a bitch. The kid says his name stays on the cover, very forceful-like, as if he was saying something without saying it. He also demands a bigger piece of the action, types up an agreement, faxes it to the hotel, makes me sign it and fax it back. Jesus. His father was that Randolfinis agent, they were close, and when he died, Randolfini sort of took the kid under his wing. Its that connection how the kid got this writing gig to begin with. Long and short of it is that we got Randolfini, my publicist has got her star, and Im going to get paid, and I feel about as low as I have ever felt, like I have played for my last supper.

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Casinos these days got everything. You never need to leave. Not only do you have the amenities of the four-star hotel and restaurants to suit all palates, Krispy-God-damnKreme even, youve got a freaking shopping mall on the premises. Chocolate shop, jeweler, perfume parlor, clothes for the gentleman, ladies boutiques. You dont even need to pack when you come up to Crazy Horse. Just put your toothbrush in your pocket and Chief Crazy Horse will meet all your needs. They got gift shops, they even have a book store, where I signed books and made nice with the customers. But thats not all. As if gambling isnt enough, they got entertainment. Live music, of course, thats no surprise. But they even put on plays. Pretty classy, eh? Hence the Wounded Knee Theatre. But heres the problem. Im a sound-stage kind of guy. I dont do live performances. My immediate audience usually consists of a couple other actors, a director and a camera man or two, maybe a gaffer or a stray key grip laying track, and an assistant to Mr. Noserelli with a cup of coffee and a Zippo. So let me tell you, the view from the stage in the Wounded Knee Theatre is breathtaking, in that it knocked the wind out of me. Im staring at an audience of two hundred pleasure seekers, all big-eyed and smiling, expecting me to do something, and what that something is I have no idea, because I aint got no script. I aint some wind-up monkey; I dont do improv. And neither do Art and Melmo. They look more uncomfortable than me, in their too-big suits and shellacked comb-overs glistening under the lights. Its so bright I put on my shades. Where are the Twisted Sisters when you need them? Laney and Frizzo are, at the very least, distracting. But those two have gone AWOL, probably doing the Dog Act for some fat cat, and Randolfini has yet to show, the fat fuck, so here I am sitting on a stool and I dont know what to do with my hands. I remember cigarettes and I light one and watch the audience as they start to shift in their seats and whisper to each other. What in the hell is a panel anyway, I ask myself. What the hell is this, a funeral parlor? I say into the mike, and my voice sounds hoarse and thin over the P.A. I clear my throat, and give it another try. Somebody say something, I say. Ask some questions, all ready. Come on, lets have some fun.

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I cross my arms and remain silent and soon everyone in the whole room is uncomfortable. Finally, some old gal raises her hand and asks me, Whats your favorite restaurant in Brooklyn? I tell her, The Two Toms, on 3rd Avenue, hands down. Whered you learn to cook? another asks, and I tell her, In the army. Then this real old bird, wearing a hat and gloves, she asks, who are the other two goons on stage, and I say, Other two goons? Everyone laughs and I follow up with, Hired goons, of course, Madame. Next question, and I begin to get my rhythm. Between questions I say, Miss Prissthats what I call my publicistMiss Priss, get a mike down in the audience sos I can hear the questions, will you? Dont you know how to run a panel? Jesus. More laughter, people will laugh at just about anything. I have definitely got my groove, as they say, when I hear some commotion behind me backstage. Then the audience, the whole audience jumps to its feet and starts clapping and Im saying, Whoa, take it easy, we just got started, but then I realize its not me theyre clapping for at all. Its Giuseppe, or Joe, Randolfini. He blows a few kisses, comes over and shakes my hand. I force a smile and say, Youre late. He says, I know. Thanks for getting them warmed up for me, and he takes the empty stool next to me, and all of that good feeling I had swelling up in my chest with the audience laughing and all that is gone. Prima donna Randolfini doesnt just own a stage, he devours it. I guess thats why hes the lead Tenor. If I didnt know any better, Id say he gave a shit about this book, the way hes carrying on. He doesnt. Its the limelight that gets him off, the pompous son of a bitch. Like the whole project was his idea. This is an important book, he says, Ive always considered it my sacred duty to preserve Italian culture. Someone in the audience asks him how he got involved in Our Lady of Perpetual Bellisimo, and he says, Just doing a good turn by Mr. Noserelli, one of my mentors in this scary world we call show business. This from Joe Randolfini, who wouldnt give me a pot to piss in if I had to go. The fat fucking liar, wearing a hand-cut suit and a linen handkerchief in his jacket pocket like hes some kind of socialite just down from Hyannisport. I know where you come from, Giuseppe Randolfini, you son of a fish-monger. You dont fool me. I see you. I see right through you.

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Someone asks Mr. Randolfini where he got the idea for Our Lady, and he defers to me. How gracious, how demur of you, Giuseppe. Well, I was thinking about my mother, I say, on the anniversary of her death, God be with her, last year, and how she used to tend to her little vegetable garden behind our apartment where I grew up. Pretty small, but it seemed huge back then, to a kid, you know. She would pick the vegetables, put them in a basket, put the basket on her head, and walk back to the kitchen, the basket perfectly balanced on her head, no hands Whered you grow up, Vincent? Randolfini says, Africa? This brings the house down. Even Art and Melmo are laughing, the finks. Then Randolfini says, What makes this book so special is that these are never before published, secret recipes, handed down from generation to generation. Theres a real sense of heritage to this book. Its all about tradition. Its all about getting together with your family and loved ones on a Sunday afternoon and eating till you cant eat anymore. Food passed from great great grandmothers in Palermo all the way down to pregnant wives in an Arthur Avenue walkup. Fucking Randolfinfi. Whats he know about heritage? His two recipes werent even his own, werent even from his family, but from Raos. And yet, the man is right. I couldnt say it any better. I didnt say it any better. I say, Theres time for one last question. Its yet another little old lady. They got a moratorium on young trim in this place or what? She says she has a question for Mr. Noserelli. Finally. She asks, When will the Breeze be back on The Three Tenors? God bless her, the old thing. I take a sip of water and a deep breath and I say, Never, honey. Never. The Breeze got whacked a long time ago. That fat bastard Randolfini took my limousine back to Montclair, meaning I got to ride back with Fancy in his stupid little Mini-Cooper. Its dark and Fancy and me are in the parking lot when we hear someone behind us yell, Hey, its the Nose. Can we get your autograph? I turn to Fancy and say, See? The Nose. Thats what Im talking about. Finally some respect. I turn around and see two young men, but not as young as I had expected. They sounded soI dont know, enthusiastic, like kids, but these werent kids. One was kind of scrawny, wearing a ball-cap and sunglasses, and the other was a black fellow built like a house. The little guy holds out a glossy black-and-white still of me as

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Matteo di Matteo, the hit man with a heart of gold in The Old Ball Game. Matteo di Matteo, the little guy says. This is so cool. I point both hands like six-shooters and wink, that was Matteos trademark, and I say, Sure, Ill sign that, and as I take the photograph and pen the black guy slugs Fancy in the gut and Fancy crumples to the ground. Then the black guy takes me by the lapels and throws me up against the side of a parked Suburban. I feel this tic I would get in my cheek when I would get into fights back in the army. But this is no fight for me. I take another look at this spade pressing me against the car, must be six foot seven, and I see the light brown scar running the length of his black cheek and I realize, Jesus Christ, this is Jo-Jo Ramirez, used to be the catcher for the Sox, lead-off hitter for three seasons in a row, and I realize that Jo-Jo is going to hurt me, and I feel my bladder go. The little guy gets in my face and takes off his sunglasses. Its Rabinovitch, and my mouth goes dry and my knees get weak, and I know I deserve all that hurt Jo-Jo is going to dole out. Then I remember the baseball bat and the huge brother ringing the buzzer and something clicks. I look at Rabinovitch and I look at Ramirez and I say the only thing that comes to mind. Jo-Jo, you mean youre a homo? He smiles and says, All day long, old man. All day long. I hear Francesco groaning on the asphalt and I start thinking about saving my own hide. Dont be a fool. You know who I am, kid. You know you cant do this. I cant? the kid says. Why not? What are you going to do? Put a make-believe hit on me? You going to mow me down with a water-Uzi? Look at you. Youre pathetic. Youre not even Italian. Thats right, kid, I say, seeing the entry. Im a Jew, just like you. Fellow member of the tribe. Come on. No, youre nothing like me, the kid says. Youre just a bitter old fool who never made the grade. Im the man here. Filled with vim and vigor and I got real muscle behind me. You are nobody. Youre not even B-list. No ones going to remember you. But me? People will be reading me a hundred years from now. He grinds the photo of me into the asphalt with his heel Dont you ever, ever fuck with me again.

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Jo-Jo releases me, smiles, smoothes my lapels, turns around, and walks away with Rabinovitch. I take a knee next to Francesco as he tries to catch his breath. That was JoJo Ramirez? he asks me. Yeah, that was Jo-Jo. That was Jo-Jo and the kid.

In the winter Coney Island is a ghost town. The sky is gray, Neptune Avenue is quiet, just little pieces of trash blowing around, and the salt air is laced with the scent of dogs on the grill at Nathans, the only place on the beach thats open in the winter. The boardwalk is wide and empty, and without the distraction of screaming kids and their screaming mothers you see just how creepy that ancient amusement park really is, the amusement park that time forgot. The Cyclone is like some wooden skeleton you might find in a museum dedicated to the origins of the roller coaster, and that in the summer people still ride that thing scares me, quite frankly. They pay to ride it. Somebody ought to be paying them, at least give them a helmet and a shot of rye before they go. To those who are about to fall, we salute you, something like that. The minor attractions along the boardwalk are disturbing in their own ways. Theres Shoot the Freak, a shooting gallery of sorts where the target is this little midget meshuggener in a frightwig running back and forth, and you pay money to shoot at him with a paint-ball gun. One time I came down here just before the close of the season, and Shoot the Freak was still up and running. Well, not running per se. The freak was clearly drunk, not wearing his clown suit or his protective goggles even, and tottering back and forth, making himself a very easy target. Those paint-ball guns put a serious wallop on the guy, knocked him off his feet with every hit, and he was getting hit left and right. Wasnt no challenge to it, and the kids who were playing were beginning to get the idea that something was wrong with the freak. At one point the freak screamed, Its my birthday, you little shits. Shoot me, god damn you. This scared some of the kids, and their parents led them away, shaking their heads, trying to explain that the freak didnt mean it, that he was sick that day. One father made a stink about wanting his money back. I knew it was wrong, but I just couldnt help but to keep watching. The freak, his clothes just covered in red paint, would regain his footing, stumble around a little bit until

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hed get hit and then hed fall over again and scream something nasty. There were a couple of teenagers who werent scared, who were having a big time shooting this freak. Without his make-up you could see just how old the little guy really was. Bothered the hell out of me, still does. I dont come to Coney for the foodthough there is this great little pizzeria called Totonnosor for the amusement park. I wait until the off-season when the place is empty so I can bring my metal detector and comb the beach. I dont find much, but that doesnt matter. Its relaxing. Its numbing. Sometimes Ill find an old subway token. Usually I find needles. People ask me, Why you go to Coney, no battles ever fought there. You ought to drive up to Kingston, or, hell, check out Prospect Park. Theyre wrong, of course, about there not being any battles fought here. I find shell casings all the time, nine millimeter mostly. You got the projects right there, surethats a hell of a way to develop beachfront property, never could figure that outbut you also got the Russian Mafia. They own this island. Stillwell and Surf may be the last of the mean streets, in the Scorcese sense of the expression. I dont call what the kids in the Bronx do with the drugs and the drive-bys organized crime. Aint nothing organized about it, far as Im concerned. But thats all beside the point. I dont come here to sweep the beach looking for anything in particular. I come here to look for anything. Anything can be a relic. Its nice. Its quiet. Like a library, or a museum. I dont see anyone I know here and I feel like I fit in. Sweeping the beach looking for anything makes me feel like I got a reason to be. The air and all the space, I think, is good for me. An island, even a crummy one, is a great place to retire. So I come here in the winter and I sweep the beach, you got a problem with that?

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BACKDOOR TO ADVENTURE

Time was I would do anything for Wade, who was everything that I was not: poet, aristocrat, visionary, mercenary. It was I, the merchant-prince, of blemished pedigree, who with my filthy lucre had many times covered the action for this manicured, impecunious gambling man, who, over-tanned in rumpled linen, was now beaming at me from across the rattan table outside the sooty mock-French Khmer bistro Le Marmite. My bankrolling days had since passed; even this remoulade travesty alfresco was outside my budget. But this time it was not money, not mine at least, that Wade wanted. He needed a right-hand man in some nasty business in the Hanuman Islands to which he had already committed himself. You wont even have to touch a gun, he said. He smiled and the crows feet crept from the corners of his eyes, the way they used to in the locker room after he had beaten me at tennis. Why me? I asked. Im no mercenary. Youre an actor, Wade said. You can be whatever you want. And, youre here. I can trust you. When again I declined he looked me dead on with those iridescent blue eyes and said Aubrey. I need you. So I said, Ill think about it, because I had always needed Wade. I left some bills on the table, rose from my seat, and Wade rose, too, shook my hand warmly and embraced me in a bear hug. Phnom Penh was much too steamy for bear hugs. I could feel my oxford sticking to my skin. Wade, really. Im late for my shoot. Please. You wont regret it, Wade said softly in my ear and kissed me on the cheek. I nodded to one of the moto boys loitering at the curb who flashed a grin, doffed his ball cap, and kick-started his bike. The little four-stroke engine coughed and spat. I climbed on behind the driver and we puttered off down the septic, pockmarked Sisowath Quay, alongside the Tonle Sap, the reek of the living and the dead wafting up from her green and murky waters, that spot on my cheek still feverish despite the breeze. Why, oh why must it always be a monkey?

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Monkeys have menaced me all of my days. For my tenth birthday my father hired a clown with a monkey, a chimpanzee, I believe, on a leash from which he managed to free himself upon seeing my new puppy, a French poodle, which he swept up in the crook of his arm, took up in the oak tree and sodomized with loud, almost human cries to the party down below. I was just old enough to know that this was unnatural. On location I have contracted lice from a vervet, mange from a gibbon, and rabies from a ring-tailed lemur, which I realize is not a monkey at all, but rabid I was all the same. In Botswana a baboon gave me a black eye. You never said anything about a monkey, Dave. Dave was director, editor, writer, and producer of Passport to Adventure. He was the only director I ever knew who actually wore a beret. Aubrey, baby. Dont be a flat tire, man. Dave shook out a cigarette from a pack of Dunhills which I accepted and he lit. Thats a bona fide duoc langur. Theyre endangered. His names Whatley. Hes got papers, man. Monkeys dont have papers, Dave. I eyed my new co-star. A thick white mane surrounded his little black face and he was quietly chewing a turd. I had to admit, Whatley did complement the set: a mock-up old English study under amber light, the simulated oak-paneled walls bedecked with taxidermy from the four corners of the world: hartebeest, wildebeest, leopard, mule deer, jaguar, kudu, polar bear, Siberian tiger Daves stock of stage properties seemed endless. A bookshelf hosted musty volumes and colonial knickknackerybone flutes, powder horns, lodestone amulet, human teeth, a shako. It was from this set that Lord Malory St. John Hogg-Smythe, played by Aubrey Woodall affecting an Oxonian accent, opened and closed every episode of Passport to Adventure with some pompous anecdote. After the opening, the picture would fade into footage of a younger Lord Hogg-Smythe, played by a younger actor, bronzed in trunks, posing with a telescope on a catamaran in the Dead Sea, or playing chess at a meat camp in the Congo in short-shorts and puttees, maybe barefoot in a Mesopotamian ziggurat. Oh, the glory days of empire. A chubby Khmer in a New York Yankees cap and blue jeans entered stage left and tended to the langur. Whos this? I asked.

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This, Dave said through a cloud of smoke as he passed me a small marble pipe, this is Mr. Perfect, monkey wrangler and hash slinger to the stars. Mr. Perfect nodded and said Bonjour, Monsieur Malory. Perfect. I slipped into the velvet smoking jacket and adjusted the ascot and sat in the leather club chair. Dave tied a large bib around my neck, glued on the salt-andpepper dragoons moustache, the latex gin-blossomed nose, and told me to close my eyes as he sprayed gray hair dye about my temples. Half an hour later Dave cried Action, and Lord Malory St. John Hogg-Smythe entered the study from stage right, sipped brandy from a snifter, and stood before the cozy flagstone fireplace. The heat on the set was impossible. Above the mantel Dave had mounted a male lions head. Whatley the Monkey was perched next to it, picking nits with its long, black fingers and eating them. Sir Hogg-Smythe then lifted this massive gilt and leather-bound tome, his expedition log from which he presumably read that weeks adventure. Under the thick jungle canopy in the dappled shadows cast by the banyan trees, Temple Ta Prohm reminds us that Angkor Wat, too, was one of the darker places of this I stopped reading my lines mid-sentence as I, all of the sudden and quite literally, had a monkey on my back. I dropped the book and reached for the creature with my right hand but he climbed down to my left arm and hung there. Dave was still behind the camera, keeping it rolling, and Mr. Perfect, squatting on his haunches, laughed behind him. Monkey wrangler, I called, but in vain. I then reached for the nape of the langurs neck but he hissed and then he sank his teeth into my forearm. I howled. I shook my arm, I punched his little head but he would not disengage. Dave, for Gods sake, how do I get it off? Dave and Mr. Perfect conferred in pidgin French. Then Dave said, He says stick your thumb up his ass. Youve got to be kidding. I could feel blood running down my arm under my sleeve.

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Thats what he said. He said its the only thing that will get him off, Dave said, and behind him Mr. Perfect was standing, nodding his head, making motions with his thumb. I was beginning to lose feeling in my left arm. I looked about for a viable weapon but found nothing. With my free hand I made a fist with my thumb sticking out, looked at the monkeys garish hindquarters, looked back at my thumb, moaned, and in one fluid motion I shoved my thumb up the rectum of the beast. His eyes grew large and he clamped down even harder, this time hitting bone. I withdrew my thumb from Whatley and looked up. Mr. Perfect was convulsing with laughter, and so was Dave. I cant help it, man, Dave said. You just buggered that monkey with your finger. This is serious, Dave, I said, looking all around for some kind of tool when I remembered the hearth behind me. I turned around and swung the monkey into the flame. Whatley disengaged, screamed and scampered off, his back smoking and the air polluted with his burning pelt. Wade, I said later that day, the receiver cradled between my head and shoulder as I sat on my bed and daubed the puncture wounds with iodine, count me in. Since the Royal Navy, Wade Ashley-Cooper Shaftesbury had made a career of traveling in strange circles, oftentimes lying down with dogs, slumming it, oftentimes rubbing elbows at embassy galas, seducing dowagers, pissing away his allowance all the while. He remained on the family dole, living off monthly increments, the fruits of the Shaftesbury holdings. He was in fact a peer of the realm, and apparently a seat in the House of Lords remained open for him. I met Wade aboard the frigate U.S.S. Winthrop where I served as a naval intelligence officer. Wade was our liaison with the Brits in the Gulf of Aden. Of a sunny day, some of the other junior officers and I would check out twelve-gauges from the armory, commandeer one of the ratings, equip him with our hand-held skeet thrower, and shoot clay pigeons from the quarterdeck. One afternoon Wade joined us, produced a side arm, and shot nine out of ten clays. Shortly after, we fell to drinking. He was already a published poet and I, being a closet aesthete myself, had been longing for refined company. Whereas I was staff supportI analyzed

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intelligence, I produced documents, I pushed paperWade was a field operative, spoke six languages, jumped out of airplanes. Wade was the real thing. For my part, sometimes I think I joined the navy for the uniform. My aesthetic sensibility was not the only thing I kept in the closet. For some time after the service Wade and I would rendezvous, sometimes twice a year. My parents had died and I had liquidated the family business so I was traveling like mad Christmas. Wade was fickle, Wade was coysome reunions he would surprise me in the shower, others he locked the door to his bedroom, and it was on those latter occasions that his foot-play under the dinner table would lead me to expect a different outcome to the evening. He was also a great lover of women, as indicated by his selection of destinationsAmsterdam, Marseilles, Las Vegas (perish the thought), Monte Carlo, and Bangkok, always Bangkok, and if not Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh; my god, he was over-fond of the East and her fleshpots. On one occasion he mentioned a wife, on another a divorce. Whether or not he made love to me, he always made me laugh. This time, however, I was sure that it would be different, that he wasnt seeking merely a drinking buddy, or a mere accomplice, for that matter; something in his mien at lunch the day before, the droop in the left corner of his mouth when he smiled, suggested not only desperation, but exhaustion, the exhaustion of one who had spent his youth and was ready to settle down. The Hanuman Archipelago is a former French colony in the Bay of Bengal and was only beginning to register on the radar of Western European holiday makers. During the Cold War the Soviets had installed a puppet socialist dictator, acting on the intelligence that there was oil in the archipelagos territorial waters. But the reservoir dried up six months after the coup, and Russia abandoned the islands shortly thereafter. The Hanumans had no standing army, only a national defense force four hundred strong spread out over the six islands, and had no need for more, as there were virtually no firearms on the island other than the defense force arsenalsome twelve score WWI-era rifles cast off by the Britishby decree of the dictator Remi Franois, who was not only a pacifist, but a staunch socialist who refused to do business with any mining interest that came knocking, looking to strip his pristine dominion of her mineral resources, specifically gold, of which

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the Soviets had not been aware. It was one of these interests that Wade was representing. His job was to take control of Hanuman Island, the capital of the archipelago and, overnight, the European mining interest would spirit in Henri Leclerc, the erstwhile sovereign who the Russians had deposed and exiled, and with an armed cohort some twohundred strong re-install him as head of state, said measure returning autonomy and selfdetermination to the heretofore oppressed citizenry of the Hanumans. A pursuit noble enough by my reckoning, said Wade, munching on dried prawns, no fouler smelling bar snack will you ever find, and the Number 9 Guesthouse served pounds of them a day. Someones going to do it someday. Besides, itll be a lark. Those raggedy-ass golliwogs with their bolt-action Enfields arent going to put up a fight against a force of forty white men armed with automatic weapons. The Glorious Revolution all over again, bloodless coup, you know. What are we doing in this ridiculous place? I asked. The entire establishment, front desk, guest rooms, and caf, was on catawampus wooden planking situated over a sluggish, shallow lake called Boeng Kak, was roofed with rotten thatch, and was swarming with college-age Western backpackers, vagabonding in sarongs and dreadlocks with pretensions of going native, eating eggs and bacon, drinking ice-cold beer and milk shakes and openly smoking low-grade marijuana purchased in the dusty alley leading up to this hostel and four others exactly like it, Numbers 8 and 7, Lakeside, and Same-Same but Different. Waiting for the man, Wade said. The sun shone off the lake and framed his features. He was still stunning, high cheek bones, chiseled jaw line, dimpled chin, pointed nose, that thick forelock blond as a Nazis. He smiled, his crows feet crinkled, and he patted the leather valise at his side. Yes. Ive been wondering. What manner of ordnance are we buying? I asked. You will be buying one hundred Kalashnikovs. Carbines, with folding stocks. He turned to our waitress, a slender, sloe-eyed beauty, they were in no short supply, and said, Tuhk dawh kow tai, sohm. Yes, Mister, she said and left our table. Show off, I said. What do you mean, Im buying the guns? You said I wouldnt even have to touch one.

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And you wont. My man will load them up for you. In the lorry hes throwing in. Wade patted the valise again. I have to leave. Now, actually. Im meeting Leclerc at Le Royal. Weve got a chartered flight waiting. Must make sure he makes it to Rangoon. Leclercs here? What else havent you told me? Nothing, old bean. My man will be here to fetch you in an hour. Wade stood and smoothed his shirt front. He was developing a bit of a belly. How will he know me? Trust me, hell know you. But just in case, Wade said, handing me a paper sack, be sure to wear this, Lord St. John Hogg-Smythe. From the paper sack I drew a massive white pith helmet. I suppose you find this funny, I said. Ta ta. See you in the Hanumans. Mr. Perfect seemed to have his finger in every pie served up in Phnom Penh. Heroin, simians, humans, firearms. For a capital city, Phnom Penh was an extraordinary backwater. Smallville, Kampuchea. In an ancient Peugeot we wove through the maelstrom of motos laden with families of five, three-wheeled lorries buckling with their payloads from the fields, towering with sacks of rice and crates of eggs, cycloswobbly three-wheeled bicyclespiled high with woven mats, and battered rust-bucket hatchbacks that looked more like the toys abandoned by a race of giants than automobiles. We pulled up on the curb in front of a carbon-scored French colonial town house, the Bermuda shutters warped and missing slats and the wrought-iron balcony crumbling with rust. Inside was dark and cold, and the walls hummed with the pulsing of the mammoth a.c. unit mounted in the window, the wainscoting beneath blanched from years of condensation. The flaking plaster walls were barren save for tarnished brass sconces and a poster of Dolf Lundgren as Ivan Drago hanging above the mantel. Other than a stack of soiled mattresses in the corner there was no furniture. Perfect peeled back a rotten Persian area rug and set to prying up the scuffed oaken planks, a filthy enterprise. Beams of sunlight that made it through the shutters missing slats sliced through clouds

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that were positively cumulus with dust. When this cleared, I looked down into this hole and saw stacks of pine crates, each bearing a smudged coat of arms framed by a horse and lion rampant wearing a crown, the great seal of Her Majesty the Queen, or King, perhaps, these boxes looked old. Perfect stepped down into the pit and with a groan lifted one of the crates and dropped it at my feet. Since when did the Crown issue AKs? I asked, but Perfect said nothing. He just climbed out of the pit and with his pry bar opened the crate, then from it handed me a bulky parcel wrapped in oily butcher paper. I unwrapped it. Youve got to be kidding, I said. Still in thick packing grease was a 1941 Sten Gun Mark II, the cheap, practically disposable submachine gun manufactured by the resource-poor British for their paratroopers in the European theatre. It fired a pistol round, 9 mm, with an effective range of maybe one hundred fifty yards that loaded via a magazine that stuck in the receiver at an angle perpendicular to the breech block, such as it was. A most awkward weapon, and ugly to boot. There was no wood, no gutta-percha, no forestock, no grip. It was all metal and it looked more like an implement one would find in a plumbers tool chest than a firearm. If I was kidding, this would not be a funny joke, no? Perfect said, mopping the sweat from his brow with his Yankees cap. You speak English? Perfect. Son of a bitch, I said, shaking my head, recalling the ridiculous pantomime with the monkey on the set the day before. And now I was cutting a shady deal gone south with this perfect asshole. The valise began to feel heavy in my left hand, and I could feel my right one trembling. I shoved it in my hip pocket. Wherere the AK-47s? This is Cambodia, for Christs sake, there must be tunnels full of them. Forget it. The deals off. Please to be patient, Monsieur Hogg-Smythe. My names not Hogg-Smythe. Of course. You are right, this is Cambodia. And we have many tunnels. If you wait, I have rifles in one week, maybe two.

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I need those rifles today. I thought of the rendezvous in five days at the Hanuman Sports Club, and I thought of Wade, carefree and out-of-pocket until then. Wade, the spoiled bastard, he should have been there to haggle with this little gangster. But no, he left me to do it alone. Who the hell makes an arms deal alone? I cant wait. Of course you cannot wait, Mr. Perfect said, pulling short, squat cartridges out of his jeans pocket and inserting them one by one into an oblong, spring loaded clip. Always it is now-now with you people. Like you say, this is Cambodia, this is not he paused and looked upward at the high ceiling, along the moldering cornice, as if to find the mot juste up there. This is not Wal-Mart. You want old-timey British submachine gun, we have. You want kick-ass Russian assault rifle, no have. You wait. What is the hurry, Monsieur Hogg-Smythe? Enjoy our beautiful capital, he pronounced it boo-tee-fool. Our beautiful girls, he paused again and looked me up and down. Or boys. I can get for you. This was not my decision to make. But there was no way to contact Wade. If I waited, would he abort? Would the mining company still pay up? Would they get cold feet? I doubted they had any more patience than I did for the capricious schedules of banana republic commerce. And what about the men, the intrepid liberators, were they willing to wait? And did I want to schlep a briefcase full of fifteen thousand dollars for a week, maybe two, around Phnom Penh? I certainly couldnt deposit it. Mr. Perfect loaded the clip into one of the Sten guns. I dont know, I said. These things are antiques. How do I know that they even work? They work, said Mr. Perfect, who, from his pocket, pulled a silencer and screwed it on the barrel and fired from the hip, emptying the magazine into the stack of soiled mattresses in the corner, the empty shells clattering across the floor. It had been a long time since I had heard gunfire, and I breathed in the sulfur tang of cordite through my nose. He handed me the gunthe barrel was hot to the touchand jumped back into the pit. He came back out with a much smaller crate. Inside were a dozen Webley Mark VI revolvers, huge, the kind that broke at the breech. He handed me one. It had some heft. From the late nineteenth century through the Second World War this, or its earlier variants, was the standard side arm of British officers and NCOs, and they called it The

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Biggie. It was chambered for the .455 Mark II round and fully loaded it must have weighed three, maybe four pounds. This was the side arm carried by Peter OToole as T.E. Lawrence, this was the sidearm of Anthony Quinn, Richard Burton. With this revolver Michael Caine kept the Zulus at bay, anachronistically, decades before its invention. This was a famous gun. I throw in one dozen revolvers, no charge, Mr. Perfect said as he wrapped up the Sten in the greasy paper and nestled it in the rotten straw lining the crate. On the balcony of Wades rented house, in a chaise lounge, under a ceiling fan, sipping a gin and tonic, half-listening to the rugby songs coming from the dining room downstairs where the force of white men, forty strong, had assembled to drink the house dry and sleep where they fell, I felt that, finally, I had arrived. Of course, there were still hurdles to overcome, not to mention the junta itself: getting that rabble down below to the airport on time, keeping them reasonably sober, making sure all the luggage got on board the airliner. The luggage . . . the luggage . . . I sat bolt upright. The guns! Now, how in the hell were we going to get that arsenal to the Hanuman Islands? The Sten gun was not a sporting rifle. And, small though they were, we couldnt just stuff them in our duffle bags; forty some-odd hardy and hale white men, who would, no doubt, be half-drunk, arriving en masse in a third world country on holiday were bound to be searched. There was no getting around that. I felt my stomach knot up and my head began to pound. Glass broke somewhere outside. Then I heard more, followed by raucous laughter from downstairs. I looked out from the balcony. Glass broke again and I looked in the direction from where the sound was coming. It was the shattering of window panes in the house over the fence and across the street, shattered by golf balls one of the ruggers was hitting with a nine iron in the courtyard below. I slammed down my drink and hurried inside to put an end to thiswe didnt need any trouble with the Royal Cambodian Policebut stopped at the top landing of the staircase. Golf balls. Golf bags, I said out loud to no one. Golf bags. False bottoms in the golf bags. Bags filled with metal-shafted golf clubs, and a little metal pea-shooter hidden below. False bottoms. Damn, was I brilliant. Wade was going to be so impressed.

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It was always worse when I knew he had been with a woman. Another man, that was painful, yes; however, another man had nothing that I did not. But how could I compete with the comforts and charms of a woman? I had no claim on him upon which to demand fidelity. Nonetheless, all his peccadilloes left me feeling low, and his trysts with the fair sex hurt me in my very bones. My body would seize up with an icy chill, my eyes on fire and my throat raw and swollen from the sobbing so that I could not eat. Food made me feel pathetic, with my cheeks streaked with tears and I slowly chewing like a boy at the dinner table after a severe and well-deserved rebuke from his mother, eating through the tears. A man could get in a lot of trouble in Rangoon, but this time was different, I told myself. Wade would hurt me no more. I thought of our lunch at Le Marmite, and how tired he had looked. I had no doubt that Wade at last was weary of whoredom. He had come to me not only for help with this little adventure, but for stability as well. And I would grant him that safe harbor. I became stupid with visions of our future together, beginning to set up house in my imagination, making modest use of the nest egg with which this operation would leave us. I saw hammocks and a rattan suite on a balcony with a view of the Gulf of Siam on undiscovered Ko Tao, or, better, if we could afford it, something much the same in the South Carolina low country, somewhere shy of Beaufort, perhaps, shrouded by oaks and palmettos overlooking an inlet off the Intercoastal Waterway. So it was that I was walking on air as I disembarked from the plane and made my way across the tarmac toward the Hanumanian International Airport, surrounded by mangroves and banyans and coconut trees. Every detail was stark and beautiful, even the two other planes on the airstrip, awkward by any standard of design, snub-nosed and bulbous; the fact that either could ever be airborne was testimony of the miracle of mans mastery over the elements. But at the time I found them graceful and sublime, like young women round with child. That being said, no amount of optimism concerning mine and Wades future home could conceal that my men were drunk. Careening off-kilter in their shorts and aloha shirts, they lacked any measure of military bearing, which was part of our cover, just a few dozen holiday makers in-country for a bender, a couple rugby balls that theyd

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pitch every now and then thrown in for good measure. I just wished they had not drunk so much. Although good-natured, they proved to be difficult charges, and I was, at best, a tipsy shepherd. Maxwell, a burly Scot whod served in the Royal Marines, had slung one of the more soused over his shoulder like a sack of loot. He was acting sergeantmajor of this rabble and he gave me a hand getting them to immigration. Bloody wankers pissed himself, Maxwell said, indicating with a nod his passed-out comrade. I shouldve worn a fucking mac. Cover or no, we definitely were not coming in under the radar. I looked over my shoulder for stragglers and noticed a member of the ground crew slinging one of our golf bags onto a luggage trailer. My heart stopped for a moment, as if I expected a discharge from the bottom of the bag but none came, of course; I double-checked that all the guns were unloaded as I secured them in the secret compartments. Secret compartments. Just the notion of subterfuge put a small spring in my step. This was the real thing. The gate to immigration bore a large bronze plaque, the state seal of the Hanuman Islands, a bare-chested man with the face of a monkey wearing a dome-shaped crown and a loin cloth, supplicant on one knee. This was Hanuman, the Hindu helpful monkey god, who came to the aid of Rama and defeated Rawana and rescued Sita and later was charged with obtaining a medicinal herb from a mountain in the Himalayas. Hanuman got distracted on the way, as monkeys will do, and so once he got there, he had forgotten exactly where on the mountain he could find this plant. So he uprooted the entire mountain and brought it back to Rama, thinking that the herb had to be somewhere on that rock. What a helpful monkey. The Hindu has a fondness for half-man, half-beast demigods in his pantheon, and who wouldnt? The Greeks have Pan, and the Egyptian has the Sphinx. And a monster god is a proper god before whom one trembles and sweats, not some namby-pamby longhair who wont punch back or pay his taxes. Perhaps as a civilizing force in the world the West still had much to learn. Be that as it may, there was no such thing as a helpful monkey, and the image of the monkey-man unsettled me. The wait at the baggage carousel was interminable, but all golf bags were accounted for. I was beginning to think that I had overcompensated with the false bottom ploy, which was not my ploy at all but was the brainchild of Colonel Michael Hoare as

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played by Alec Guiness in The Playboy President. Indeed, there were no x-ray machines or metal detectors at customs, and I must say I was a bit disappointed. I did note a handful of security guards, chewing betel nut and spitting red juice on the floor. When we reached customs is when I noticed Wade on the other side. He was wearing madras trousers and his white shirt was open at the collar, his blond hair tousled; I looked down at my limp seersucker suit damp with sweat and club tie loose at the neck and I felt like an overdressed rubeWade had that way of making me feel uncomfortable no matter what the setting. He flashed a broad grin and as disappointed as I was with his conduct, I felt a thrill at the sight of him and my cheeks grew warm. Damn you, Wade Ashley-Cooper, you absolute rake. I set my jaw and did not return his carefree, cockeyed salute, palm-out like the British do. Also at the arrival gate were soldiers, rather well turned out in starched olive drab fatigues and red berets and matching scarves, looked to be a whole company, one hundred or so, and armed. My heart sank. The jig was up, it seemed, and the only time in my life that I would use that turn of phrase was with regard to my own jig, and not some small-screen villains. Wade was there, still smiling, and that was just like him to be smiling like a jackass in the face of unbeatable odds. Damn you, damn you. Then I noticed that he was making a show of winking at me, not a lurid wink but the grossest sort of vaudevillian stage wink. Perhaps we were still in the game. Perhaps; I mean, they hadnt thrown Wade in the brig, not yet. I was the first of our group in the line leading to the customs checkpoint, armed with a ruse to explain the presence of forty drunkards should an explanation become necessary: we had settled on the Rotary International Leadership Retreat and it was under that name that I had reserved a block of rooms at the Royal Hanuman Hotel. The customs officer wore a clipped moustache, and his small frame was dwarfed by his broad epaulettes, each bearing three pips. His peaked cap as well was out-sized and lavishly embroidered with gold laurel branches. Lots of pomp for a customs officer. He made a great show of studying my passport, which was unnerving so I asked him a question. Why are all the soldiers here? He looked up from my passport photo, then back down, then up again. Lord Malory St. John Hogg-Smythe? You are American?

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Good god, no one had ever recognized me without the nose and moustache. Yes, I said, and then in a stage whisper and my Oxonian accent. But dont tell a soul. He smiled. Of course, he said, and put a finger to his lips. Destination Danger. I am a big fan. I couldnt believe it. Destination Danger was the name under which they ran the show abroad. But in the Bay of Bengal? At this point he had the rubber stamp in his hand. God, I wanted this over with. I looked over at Wade and he was still watching, laughing now. So, why are all the soldiers here? Palace guard, the customs officer said. The president is leaving on state business. Today? What a stroke of luck, I thought. With the presidential guard occupied at the airport, there might be no more than a skeleton crew at the palace. We could go ahead and take it that evening, drunk or no, and depose Franois in abstentia. Maybe this would be a bloodless coup. Wade must have known this all along. Wade, you slyboots, you. The officer had his hand raised, poised to stamp my passport, when his glance caught my golf bag. He suddenly stood erect. What is this? he asked, pointing at the bag. I lugged the thing from behind me and I was looking forward to ditching the clubs as soon as possible. I knew there was a reason I didnt play. Golf clubs, I said. Leisure, not business, remember? I winked. But sir, there are no golf courses in the Hanuman Islands. My heart sank. The officers face blackened. Please to come with me, sir, he said and blew his whistle. Four of the betel chewing guards advanced. I looked over at Wade and I watched the smile fade from his face. At that point my vision seemed to broaden, to take in everything, the rugby players, the palace cohort, two young women bearing cloth bundles atop their heads, the skylight clouded with grime, a portly matriarch in a saffron sari, the puffed cheeks of the customs officer blowing his whistle in short staccato bursts, the advancing guards operating their bolt-action rifles, driving home rounds in their chambers, one of the guards raising his

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rifle to his shoulder and drawing a bead on me, moving ahead of the other guards, not heeding orders to fall back, the red stains on his wrinkled khaki blouse, ten yards away, taking a knee, one eye squeezed shut, the other wide open behind the rear sight of his rifle, his NCO now shouting and running to catch up with the renegade. Great god in heaven this man was going to shoot me. He looked like it, at least. Wait, I thought for sure . . . I began saying as I bent down and reached into my golf bag. Here, Ill show you the brochure. It says . . . . I drew my Webley from the bag and with both hands fired, hitting the guard square in the chest, a fine red mist spraying the NCO behind him. The renegade toppled backward and his rifle clattered on the floor. The remaining guards turned on their heels and ran. I stood up and turned to the customs officer. His face had drained to an ashy white. I punched him in the mouth, snatched up my passport, and yelled to the men to run back to the airfield. They were dumping the clubs from their bags and scrabbling for their arms and those that had loaded them were spraying the ceiling with gunfire. Some of the civilians in the airport had hit the deck and others were running and shrieking. Maxwell had come up from the rear and was urging the men back to the tarmac. By this time the palace guard had mustered and was firing wildly in our direction. The man who, up until quite recently, Maxwell had been carrying, took a hit. He spun around like a dancer cutting a pirouette and fell to the floor. Maxwell threw him back over his shoulder and with his Webley fired at the soldiers. Screaming and hysteria, the wailing of womenfolk, the screeching of children was general. My feet felt like two lead ingots beneath me but I managed to run just the same. When I turned around to fire I saw the matriarch in saffron lying motionless, her right arm bent at an impossible angle. One of the younger women who had been bearing parcels on their heads was kneeling and keening and holding the other bloody in her arms. Other fallen tourists littered the concourse and I did not know if it was our fire or the soldiers that had claimed them and my mind froze on this question, but my legs kept pumping. It really didnt matter, I suppose, it had all been our doing. My doing. And Wade? Wade had vanished. We regrouped and hunkered down at the departure gates. Two of our men were dead, four were injured. Fortunately, the palace guard was fairly inept and none, it

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seemed, had detached from the company to flank us. Instead they continued to fire their bolt-action Enfields, shattering the back row of plastic chairs at the arrival gate. The air was alive with shards of pink and blue plastic. We were laying down pretty even fire for a few minutes but then one submachine gun jammed. Then another, and another. Some of the Stens, Maxwell told me, had never worked from the start. Theyll cut us to pieces for sure, he said in that thick brogue over the crack and whine of gunfire and ricochet. To the airfield, I said. And I thought I was going to shed this mortal coil before having the opportunity to utter such dreck off stage. Back out on the tarmac I had three planes from which to choose and maybe three seconds in which to choose one. Lao Aviation had a fuel truck parked next to it so I had us double-time over there. It was a relic of an airship, an aging Russian twin-turbo-prop. As we drew close we were again under fire. I kept five men back and we hit the deck to lay some cover fire while the rest boarded. Said cover fire we were laying down with the Webley revolvers and we met with poor results. Yes, they shot, revolvers as a rule dont jam, but they shot a slow, fat bullet, and they didnt shoot it far. On board I found many of the men collapsed in the seats, the wounded lying in the aisle being tended to by their comrades with first aid kits from the overhead compartments. The cabin was remarkably quiet. I was not, as I had expected, greeted with the screams of recently abducted passengers, mewling infants, keening mothers. Indeed, we were the only passengers. I groaned. No hostages. There went our leverage. Maxwell emerged from the cockpit, his head wrapped in a bandage fashioned from a white tee-shirt, one ear crusted over with dried blood. Three dead, five wounded, he said. Three AWOL. Adrian says he saw them dash for the tree line. The pilot is cooperating. We await your orders, sir. I felt my bottom lip quiver as the full weight of the ordeal came crashing down. Men were dead and soon more would join them unless I did something. And of the three planes to hijack I chose the one devoid of hostages. We had no collateral with which to bargain for our lives. I looked down at the heavy revolver smoking in my hand and let it drop to the floor. I had never felt gravity so heavy. And though I was surrounded by thirty comrades, I had never felt so alone in my life. I looked out a window and saw the

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soldiers spilling out onto the runway, some taking a knee, others falling prone, all aiming their weapons. Did they know as well that the plane had been empty? This was no lark, this was no role play. I was accountable, and alone. I heard the ragged breathing of a man with a chest wound lying at my feet. Pink, frothy blood bubbled from the hole just to the right of his sternumhe was some mothers son, and maybe some sons father and I felt the tears well in my eyes. Sir? This was not acting, I thought, staring at the smoking Webley, recalling the shower of gore erupting from the back of that betel-nut chewing guard. The cuffs of my seersucker jacketseersucker, of course, what else would the gentleman of fortune wear to a tropical coup detatwere black with gun powder. My hands were shaking. This was not Passport to Adventure, I was not some English lord out on a lark; I was no spy, no mercenary. All my life I had wanted a piece of the action, I had wanted to be a part of the real thing, but I had, until that day, only posed and pretended, in dress whites behind a desk in my youth and in make-up on sound stages before blue screens ever since. Now I was in command of a desperate affair and I didnt want any of it. I had tried so hard only to fail so miserably. I was the worst kind of poseur, I was a construct, and I was here for love, or so I had told myself. And yet how could this be love if my whole life had been an act? I felt a tear roll down my cheek and I did not wipe it away. Sir, Maxwell said again and I came to. Your orders. Please, he said and handed me my revolver butt first. We need you. Wade had needed me. No, Wade needed an actor, I said aloud, and wiped my nose on the sleeve of my jacket. I broke open the revolver, ejected the spent cartridges, fed in six more and closed it and looked up at Maxwell. Tell that pilot to taxi to the runway and get us airborne. Set a course for the Andaman Islands. I had no idea from whence this inspiration came, nor did I have any idea what clemency or sanctuary the Indian government would grant us if they deigned to let us land. But it sounded decisive enough for me, and for Maxwell as well. Right away, sir, he said and returned to the cockpit. Outside the soldiers resumed their shooting. I wondered if they had learned that the plane had no passengers, or perhaps they had only been waiting for us to get moving

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away from the refueling truck. I looked out the window to see that the fire was not directed at us at all but at a lone figure running across the tarmac as if to cut us off, a lone figure in madras. Wade, the devil himself, my undoing, my savior. I threw open the passenger door and yelled over my shoulder for the men in the rear to do the same. Thats our man. Lay down some cover fire. I fired shots into the company of soldiers and even managed to hit one rifleman and I couldnt help but to yell a raucous cheer of the war movie variety. The boys in the back had managed to get a few of the Sten guns functioning again and were laying down an impressive barrage. I extended my hand and pulled Wade into the taxiing aircraft. In all the time Id known Wade I dont think I had ever seen him discomposed, or even disheveled, for that matter. But there he was, a sweaty heap of overheated linen, red in the face and gasping for air. I am, I must confess, I said, surprised to see you. I handed him a water bottle from which he drank greedily. What, and let you take all the credit? Wade said. This is a new experience for me. What, failing? I asked. His blond hair was damp and matted. I swept it off his forehead with my hand. No, Wade said. Hijacking an airplane. Cant say I would have settled for Lao Aviation, though. I hope this Slavic apple crate holds together. Cant say that I do, I said. If she does hold together, were going to rot in prison. Im sorry, Wade. Im sorry I made such a mess of things. Wade took my face in his hand. Dear boy, dont be sorry. Youve done splendidly. Were just getting started, he said with that smile that drooped at the corner. Dont worry, old sport. Itll be just like Papillion. You and I against the world, and all that, right? Chin up. Long ago, when Wade was in intelligence, he made his first shady connections, which led to shadier enterprises after the service, about which he was fairly laconic. Once at a caf in Florence he let slip some reference to gun running, which out loud at the table I dismissed as so much rot but in my heart I knew he was not lying, and I became insanely, painfully jealous. Now, facing an older, disheveled Wade with that impossible smile, I was no longer jealous. I stood up and looked out the window at the

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landscape below, the swale of elephant grass, the blinding white sand, the Bay of Bengal the color of slate, and I knew that the fool was right, that our future would be like Papillion, not a sun-dappled veranda, but prison, real prison, the real thing, and that we would be together.

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THE LOST COMMODORE

I trusted Silk Menzies. Id be coming in for a crash landing after a snowbird bender when Id call him at three, four in the morning, and hed set me up with some pharmaceutical grade, inevitably cleaner than whatever Id been tooting, to ease me back to the flight deck and buffer the impact of sunrise; Silk Menzies feathered the prop, as it were. So I trusted him. Maybe it was because hed been a Navy Corpsman. I had been a Marine, and to a Marine, all sailors are squids. Except for Corpsmen. They patch up Marines, on the field, under fire. So it was that I drove over to Silks after Id come home to an empty, rumpled bower that smelled of chlorine with a hint of cumin and bore on its bedside table two sweaty tumblers of melted bourbon on the rocks. My wife Peg had always called me a carpetbagger for drinking scotch instead of bourbon. And though it was not uncommon for her to be drinking in the early afternoon, the sight of that second glass in a puddle on my bedside table knocked the wind out of me. I sat on the edge of our bed only to spring back up at the thought of someone elses seed spent somewhere in those sheets, some other pair of hands parting her legs, someone elses hot breath tickling the hairs on the back of her neck. I felt my cheeks burning, and when I caught sight of her panties in a wad on the rug in front of her vanity, my reflection in the mirror there blurred as my eyes filled to the brim. I was not up to waiting for her return, so instead I settled upon the quick fix of my next fix, and that I could find at the good Doctor Menzies bachelor bungalow. So sloppy. Its like she wanted me to know, I said, my feet propped on his glass coffee table. Silk stood in front of his fireplace wearing only a towel; he had been in the shower when I let myself in. He was lean, sleek like an otter, except that there was not a hair to his tawny, rippled torso. He had a navel that poked out, and that had always bothered me, that incongruity on the otherwise flawless plane a portent of some degeneracy, no matter how latent. That was Dr. Half-Caste, an epithet he embraced, his pedigree being one-half SyrianSilk was short for Khalid Al Souk, descended on the distaff from Damascus merchantsand one-half Scots, a dentist who moved outside of social circles, all-around an ideal confidante for a local scion with a cocaine hobby.

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Jesus, man. Thats tough, Silk said. He pointed at a japanned pillbox next to an issue of Road and Track. Help yourself. I already did. Thank you. My nostrils were numb and I could feel the alkaline trickle down the back of my throat. Everything in the room, the Tiffany-blue leather of the knock-off Phillipe Starck sofa, that damn Jasper Johns Flag Above White print, Silks slender, brown shanks, it all seemed crisp and brighter, a picture in high resolution. This was strong medicine, and for the moment I was the Jesus of Cool. No low blow, no matter how cruel and humiliating, was going to ruffle the Jesus. I was collected, and I had a plan called separation. If I gave her the boot there would be a scene, and the Jesus of Cool was above brutish confrontation. Better that I should pull up my stakes, immediately, like a thief in the afternoon, while she was off playing tennis or, who knows, balling some moustachioed golf pro. I was in a state of pragmatic disconnect. There was no time for maudlin reflection; Jesus had a plan. Listen, brother, Silk said, pouring himself a scotch. You can stay here as long as you want. Go pack your kit and come back. That sofa sleeps real nice. He moved to refill my glass, but I waved him off with my hand. No thanks, man. I got to move. But I will take another line of that marching powder before I go. Silk pitched me the pill box and told me to keep it. It was good to know he had my back. What a man. When you have an hour, maybe less, to pack for the surprise exodus you make curious decisions concerning that with which you can and cannot live. Apparently, I could live without socks, I discovered upon emptying the contents of my seabag on the thin mattress in the forward berth of my ketch, the good ship Margaret. Apparently, I could not live without my framed photograph of Aristotle Onassis in an ascot with an Uzi, and this I hung above the sink in the galley. Escape had not been kind to my blazer or my dinner jacket; both were wrinkled parodies of garments, having been stuffed in the bottom of the duffel. I hung these out on the boom so that they might regain their shape. I couldnt fit the television through the hatch so I left it on the dock, ran an extension cord, fixed a drink, took a seat behind the helm, and watched a big-haired lady sing a duet with a handpuppet.

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This, I supposed, was freedom. All of my immediate needs the yacht club could meet, meals and cocktails. And the good doctor had refilled my script, so there was no need to leave the club grounds for a while. I found that the more cocaine I sniffed the less I wanted Peg; a world of wisdom there. Would that I had made that finding one year earlier when I first experienced equipment malfunction. And on the occasions when I did wake up with the morning stiffness, I just hadnt been interested. But even after a couple of grams that first night on the boat there was still a gnawing, sometimes in my chest, sometimes in the back of my brain, and if I thought hard enough I could smell her, not just the Joy, not just the Vidal, and not just her; even the memory of her morning breath produced a longing. All these sensations I had not bothered to value until they had been stolen from me. But when I asked myself what was more important, my wife or my hobby, I could not in good faith answer, which to me at the time indicated the latter. I was not going to beg her to call off her affair. I was not without my pride. But I was not going to just sit in my boat and nurse my wounds, either. I will throw myself into my work, I declared to the night sky. Of course, I had never worked. There was the Marines, which was no vacation, but that had been years ago. I had been living off the interest of my inheritance ever since Id gotten out of the Corps. I was neither painter nor writer. I did not even own a camera. For a time I had just sat around and looked pretty, but the drugs had taken their toll that past year, having bronzed my teeth and slackened my gut. So, of work there was little in which I could immerse myself, except for my post as commodore of the yacht club. The club is the thing, I said aloud. I would be the first commodore-inresidence, the most thorough in club history, I would be yachtsman-on-the-spot. I would work hand-in-glove with the steward and the purser to make that backwater drinking club into an organization par excellence. A chance to be in command, once again. I would get exceeding drunk, and I would stay that way for the weeks to come. As commodore I needed flag officers, and, in name, at least, I had some, a vice commodore, a rear commodore, and the aforementioned purser and steward, all elected, like me, back when I was charming, by the membership. I would have to settle, however,

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for a staff CPO, someone who was both valet and errand boy, and someone who was here everyday. And so I promoted Manuel, the dishwasher, to Yacht Club Chief Petty Officer, or YCCPO, a position I created by the rarely invoked executive order. Manuel, smelling of hot grease and mackerel, needed polish. We began with a uniform: club tie, khakis, and an old club blazer with the clubs coat of arms embroidered on the breast pocket. The blazer was double knit with four-inch wide lapels, but it was the first blazer Manuel had ever owned and he wore it with pride. From now on, you will be addressed as Chief, I said, and Manuel liked that just fine. Manuel was my great enabler. No matter how ludicrous the order, Manuel executed it with lan. Chief, this car looks too generic, I said, pointing to my Olds. Make it look official. When I came back to the parking lot that afternoon, Manuel had affixed club burgees to both corners of the grill like something from a despots motorcade. When I asked not to be waked until noon, he obliged, and he did so with a plate of eggs and a pitcher of Bloody Mary. When I said the club needed simulated fog for the post-regatta soiree and dispatched him with a signed check, he did not rent one smoke machine but returned with three he had purchased, in addition to one hundred pounds of dry-ice. Never do things half-ass, sir, Manuel said. I do everything fullass. I installed him in my uncles cabin cruiser and at sunset hed report to the Margaret with a fifth of scotch and a bowl of boiled shrimp, and wed peel shrimp and watch a quiz show or Nova until the crickets got too loud and then wed just listen to them and sip our drinks. One day Manuel came looking for me in the locker room where I was taking a hot, prickly shower; the water pressure in the Margarets head just wasnt up to snuff. Your wife. She is here, playing tennis. I hadnt shaven in a week, and I hadnt had a haircut for two months. Whats that stuff you use in your hair, Chief? Brylcreem, sir. Fetch me some of that and my razor. Jesus Christ. She never played tennis at the yacht club, always at the golf club. When I finished shaving I was bleeding in four places. I got dressed and looked in the mirror. My blazer was rumpled, stiff and salty from hanging on the Margarets boom.

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Give me your blazer, I said, tossing mine to Manuel. It was snug. And tell Mrs. Tattersall that the commodore invites her to join him for lunch on the Quarterdeck at her leisure. Those were not the legs of a forty-four year-old woman. When I watched her walk across the Quarterdeck to my table I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. Peg had always been athletic but it seemed like years since I had studied the contour of those taut and well-tanned calves. She was fresh from the shower, I could smell the essence of lavender from her conditioner, and she had pulled her frosted hair back in a bun, but loosely, not as tight and severe as usual. She wore a grey cashmere cardigan that made her pale blue eyes even paler, washed-out yet sharp, like a huskys, and a string of pearls. Her tweed skirt hugged her hips and I tried to divine if she was wearing underwear; I very badly wanted to know. For the first time in a while I felt a stirring in my groin, and the effect of this unmanned me. I was incapable of speech at first, and when she reached my table I could only rise and pull out her chair for her. When I took my seat she winked and crossed her legs and I wanted to cry. What, what had I done? I heard you were living here. You certainly look like it, she said and smiled the smile of a tolerant, bemused aunt. What have you done with your hair? she asked as she tousled it. At this I felt the rent in my heart and I lost the remnants of my steely reserve, that reserve Id pep-talked myself into looking in the locker room mirror. You look absolutely lovely, I said. Thank you. You do not, she said as she took a handkerchief from her handbag and wiped Manuels pomade from her fingers. You need a haircut. And I need a gimlet. We both had gimlets, a few of them, and she entertained me with tales from home, the Siameses stashing of dead squirrels under the divan in the sun porch, the maids diverticulitis, the new fountain the queer neighbors installed, her new hairdresser. We laughed about the queers, the little wonderland they were slowly erecting next door, pergola by pergola. We laughed about Dr. Rosensthals recommendation that aspirin would suffice for her tennis elbow. I think I would have laughed at anything she said, I so desperately wanted again the pleasure of her company. But the thing was, I didnt have to try, the laughter came naturally.

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Her teeth were so damn white. I drained my glass and took the plunge. I want you back, I said. I want the television, she said. You what? You cant have me back, darling, she said. I have needs, needs that you cannot fulfill, have not fulfilled for some time. You made a choice. And I lost out to youryour recreational pursuits. But that choice has its consequences. Now Ive made my choice, and you have to live with that. And no, divorce is simply out of the question, dont bother asking. Im not about to part with anything, and I dont think your extracurricular activities would bear the light of the courts scrutiny anyway. So dont even mention divorce. Well just have an open marriage. Does that sound all right to you, honey? Who is he? I asked. Hes absolutely divine and thats all you need to know. Another jab in the gut. Listen, lets work this out, I said. Think about it; except for just now, weve had a wonderful time today, just lovely, really. Thats normal, she said, getting up from her chair and picking up her handbag. You know what they say about absence and the heart and all that. This warmth youre feeling right now? Its fleeting. Dont worry. Youd get over it in a week, maybe less. Maybe so, but at the time I would have given the world for just such a week, and the weeks that would follow, to own not only those haunches, those calves, but to daily taste the lash of that cruel wit once again. I was too worn out to do what I was about to do. Id been up until dawn that day, having made a night of it spotlighting amberjack with Silk aboard his boat the Dr. Feelgood and bringing back our illegal haul to the Margarets galley where the grease spat all night as we fried filet after filet. He told me I should get out of town for a while, to clear my head, maybe dry out a little, Though not completely, he said with a wink, tossing me a beer and sliding the mirror across the little teak table.

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People in town are talking. About the ill-shaven coot in the peaked cap watching professional wrestling on the dock and keeping some Latin chauffeur on retainer. Peg aint coming back. You sure as shit cant win her; youve had it. Forget her. Fly the coop, save some face. Shit, maybe even get some strange, a little piece will give you a whole new perspective. Youre going to seed out here, Teddy. Pass the tartar sauce. Silk was a hell of a guy but I wanted to pop him in the mouth all the same. I stopped short of that and backhanded him across the cheek. He followed suit and we shared a laugh, but mine rang hollow. At first light he left me with a bag of blow and a cabin that reeked of superheated cornmeal well into the next day, even with all of the hatches open. He had also left me with an invitation to a party with a difference. At the time, ground had been broken on a development just down the street from the gates to the yacht club, a subdivision called Admiralty Point, marketed to upscale buyers, especially members of the yacht club. The lots were not, for the most part, waterfront, but were, with few exceptions, cost-prohibitive to many. This ensured some exclusivity, and, more importantly to the handful of young couples who had built there, privacy. These couples belonged to a set with which I was only peripherally familiar, mainly through our shared membership in the yacht club and a few other clubs. Some were from some of the citys older families, others were transplants, all had moved from town to the island for proximity to the club and for the sake of their clique. They were a stock broker and a divorce lawyer, one seller of real estate and one developer of the same, a couple of doctors, a gynecologist and a podiatrist, I think, and their wives, most of whom did not work. I didnt know them well but I knew they lived fast. If they were friendly with Silk they had to. As a man who lives at the yacht club I heard lots of gossip, including whisperings of a club within the club, as it were, composed of trendy yuppiestrendy by Coastal Empire standards meant a European car and a subscription to Gourmetwho had a taste for license more at home in a villa in The Hamptons or a loft in San Francisco than in our fair and sleepy city. These folks were what the parlance of the times referred to as swingers. About nine I pulled up in front of a sprawling redbrick ranch house, flanked by two large lots, one on which the pines had been felled and was otherwise empty save a huge mound of sand, the other home to a concrete foundation and a front-end loader.

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These folks better get their ya-yas out fast, I thought, before the prying eyes of neighbors descend upon their sordid little commune. I had some ya-yas to get out myself. My lunch with the wife had me feeling all unnecessary, and if what Silk said was true, thered be some singles here, too. Always are, he told me. New talent spices up the pool. Hence my invitation, I suppose, though I always thought it was divorced women who were sexy, that it was married men who had sex appeal. Well, I was married, technically, and I was glad I was still wearing my ring. Ranch houses are like strip malls, tacky and evanescent and dated the moment theyre erected. The ranch house does not transcend. And yet architects insist on continuing to design them. The front door was unlockedno secret knock required, alasand the foyer floor was parquet. There was no well-coifed hostess to receive me, no host at all, not even a lap dog. One of those nasty bobtailed Manx catsIve no time for a house pet that brandishes his rectumarched its back and rubbed against my leg, but that was all. I toured the house. There was a living room with an incongruously vaulted ceiling whose floor was plushly and greenly carpeted from wall to wall. The room was appointed with twin chrome-plated tubular steel-framed sofas upholstered in white and hideous, reproduction Corbusiers, more than likely, ambiguous iron sculpture, and the walls were hung with watercolor prints of racing yachts sailing into the sunset, also framed in chrome. One corner of the room was given over to a totem to video technology, a widescreen television of the variety one would find in a bar, crowned with both a Betamax and a VCR. The Farrells, my hosts, clearly were not my people. Nor were they anywhere to be found in the house, despite the BMW, Saab, Benz and MG in the circular driveway out front. I slid open the sliding glass doors and went out on the back deck, which was expansive. There was a large structure out back, too large to be a cabana, and out of place to be a garage, and from this windowless place music and laughter issued. This, apparently, was the clubhouse. Welcome to The Nuthouse, said Hayes Farrell, red-faced with wispy sunbleached hair and capped teeth. He was drinking a martini. He shook my hand, patted me on the back and put his arm around my shoulder. You know why we call it The Nuthouse, dont you? he asked, quietly, mock-conspiratorially. I did not know why we called it that. Because so many nuts been in busted here, he said, and laughed heartily.

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I responded in kind, more or less. Then Hayes announced my arrival. This is the kind of thing I absolutely hate. Its why I have always entered parties by the back door whenever possible. Officer on the deck, ladies and gentlemen, Hayes said. The commodore has arrived. The men stood and saluted jauntily, if not sloppily. I returned their salute, forced a smile, and told them, At ease. They laughed, as if this was exactly the performance they expected. I felt like the entertainment, rising to their seamy occasion, playing to the crowd, and I began to doubt that I was going to enjoy myself. Hayess waistline was ample, as was Herman Gays. Ned Sloane was the only fit man in the house, slim in a turtleneck and faded Levis. The ladies were slender, more or less, not necessarily buxom underneath their sweater sets, Paige Farrell in a halfunbuttoned blouse showing a deeper neckline than the others, but nothing remarkable. In a blazer and pinpoint oxford, I was very overdressed. The men here were wearing denim and polo shirts under ski sweaters. I did not know how one dressed for the swinging sceneI merely wore what I always woreand I did not know what I would find once I arrived, but I certainly expected something sleeker, if not sexy. Had I expected merely garish then I would not have been disappointed. The Nuthouse had two stories, and the first story, where we were, was all one room, the party room. Big black and white tiles made a commodious dance floor, which was lit by red, blue, and green lighting rigs stationed in each corner of the room. An immense flagstone gas fireplace was installed in the east wall, opposite another just like it in the west wall, and each had throw cushions and zebra-hide rugs. Next to the entrance was a full bar underneath a thatched tiki hut, and on the wall facing it was another tiki hut that housed the DJ station, which was flanked by twin Jacuzzis. Yes, there was a motorized disco ball hanging from the ceiling in the center of the party room. I felt dirty already, and I hadnt even made it upstairs, where one would find several individual private party rooms. This was no casual affair, with the exception of dress. The evening was very carefully orchestrated. Each guest was assigned a dance partner, and these pairings were made in advance to insure not only that one did not simply dance with his or her escort, but also that no one was left standing alone. My hosts had also experimented with parties of three, but had met with limited success. The mnage--trois invariably left an odd manor womanout, according to Paige. These swingers left very little to chance,

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and the absence of spontaneity undermined whatever excitement such an enterprise would have to offer. One of the chances they did not take was the risk that a guest might pass out before phase two commenced. To guard against such a contingency there was a console table bearing a mirror laden with cocaine. As much as you like, Paige said. Theres your partner over there now. Shes been looking forward to meeting you. Then, in a whisper, Paige added, Shes got a thing for older men. So this is what it has come to, I thought. I am old, the letch in the corner at the party; that guy. Damn, Teddy, I didnt know you blew, said Herman Gay after I took a line from the mirror on the console. All day long, Herman, I said. Hey, Hayes, Herman called across the room. Look here, the commodore parties. Out of sight, Hayes Farrell answered as he danced very closely with Hermans wife Kate. Very unsettling. I had a vision of Hayes and Herman slapping high-fives over Kate Gays naked, writhing body, and I was sure my vision was not far off the mark. I was witnessing the dawn of a new age of jaded voluptuaries, and these were noticeably lacking in subtlety. I would have left quietly had it not been for the young lady to whom I had been assigned. Fresh-faced Lacey Sommerset in her turtleneck and pearls at first glance looked out of place at an entertainment billed as a swingers party, as if shed missed the turn to the ice-cream social on the lawn at the deans house, but with a razor she chalked up lines like an old hand. The pert little heiress had shoulder-length blonde hair, thick and curled under, and, poised with the glass straw in her hand, she asked me to be a dear and hold her hair back for her while she snorted a rail. Why dont you ask me to dance, she said. Being assigned a mate alleviated the pressures of casual courtship. Even so, I was at a loss when it came to even the most elementary of gestures. It had been a long time. Lacey took me by the hand and led me to the dance floor. We couldnt dance together. We tried. She could kind of shag, but when I broke out and did the monkey she just stood and curled her lip a little before she broke out laughing once she reckoned that I was joking. I was not. I have no idea what you called her dance steps. Id never danced to Elton John, and I think even he would raise an

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eyebrow at the way she was tossing her head. But to Billy Joels Just the Way You Are I managed something slow and close, and that closed the deal. She pressed her hand into the small of my back and then slipped it inside my waistband where she gave my left cheek a squeeze. Yes, it had been a long time, and the giddiness that had knotted my stomach throughout our brief acquaintance tangled itself even tighter with that squeeze. Over her shoulder I watched Ned Sloane take Paige Farrell by the hand and lead her up the staircase. This image remained indelible in my memory, the recall of it always accompanied by a sinking of the stomach, but at the time it only served as a beacon for a not-so-distant harbor. I was turgid down below, and Lacey noticed it. She smiled. I smiled back, cocked an eyebrow and nodded toward the staircase, and even though I felt like a sleaze I couldnt stop. Didnt want to. Lacey winked and accompanied me upstairs. I love these parties, she whispered in my ear. So illicit. So liberating. Our private party room was very simple, a queen size bed, two bedside tables, a couple of chairs, and a closet. There were no mirrors on the ceiling, the bed was not heart-shaped, nor did it appear to be coin-operated. Lacey asked me to give her a hand and I thought we were getting down to business. Not yet. She asked me to hold a small sheet of aluminum foil, on to the center of which she dumped a pile of cocaine. She then held a lighter underneath the foil, and the powder on top started to smoke and render. Ever base before, Teddy? Lacey asked. I had not. She laughed and flashed a smile before she produced from her hip pocket a glass tube though which she inhaled the fumes from the drug. And so I smoked some drugs, chased the dragon with Lacey, and learned a thing or two along the way, and I did not feel richer for the experience, no mater how relieving I found the release of pent-up frustration. Lacey allowed me everything, and later spoke at great length about how sweet I was and how outrageous was the scene and how liberated the people and how you never knew quite what to expect, and that she really got off on new talent. Shed heard that my marriage was troubled and when she said, Next time you should bring Peg. It might help things, you know, all I wanted to do was go home. Instead, I got out of bed and dressed and left for the Margaret with a curt farewell.

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When I woke up the next day on board the Margaret I was feeling depleted and shaky and I immediately went for Silks pill box. I was certain I had discovered a new, more virulent strain of headache. The pill box was not depleted, Silk had replenished my supply, but as I lifted the rolled-up bill to my nose I stopped myself. At the time, I thought I did so out of thrift. After all, the sun was still out. I couldnt stand it lying on my bunk so I went topside, propped up an umbrella over the television to act as a sort of biminy to shade the screen from the glare, and turned the dial. On Channel 3 some actor wearing an eye-patch and a lab-coat declaimed the cruelty of fate in his office at the hospital, while in the foreground a weepy jade in red wrung a handkerchief. Believe me, its better this way, Peg had said as I opened her car door the day beforemy car door, a navy blue Mercedes 300 TD station wagon that Manuel desperately needed for the cargo spaceand took a last gander at those legs. On the boat I closed my eyes and tried to savor that final glimpse, but found myself only pining for more. What was wrong with me? I should be fighting to win her back, I thought. What kind of a man was I? There I was, having not even bothered to determine who he was. The one-eyed surgeon flung his stethoscope across the office as the woman tried to rationalize their sad farewell. Probably for the best, spoke the jade, and at that I bristled. That canned drivel, Id be damned before the idiocy on that god damned appliance had any relevance to my life. I would have no more of it. No more lousy comedians wearing paper bags on their heads. No more airbrushed game-show hosts. No more Christforsaken talking dogs. And no more daytime drama slatterns cuckolding their hardworking oil baron husbands. I dashed below for the emergency kit and once back topside I shoved a flare in the chamber of the flare gun and shut the breech and, as the one-eyed surgeon put his mouth on the tramps and she lifted one stockinged leg to half-cock behind her, I fired, shattering the screen and setting the box alight. If you have never done this, you should, and you should do this while the target is still plugged in, so as to see the parting shot, as it were, and, with any luck, a look of manufactured despair in the actors eye before the dread reckoning.

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I watched the fire burn in the tangled guts behind the remaining glass shards of the picture tube until the planks of the dock on which it sat started to smoke. I yanked the cord from the outlet and made to kick the whole mess into the river but at the last moment I paused. Such a grand gesture as shooting ones television demanded that decisive action follow upon its heels. I felt as if I had not merely watched a television explode, but that I had basked in the glow of some profound illumination. This may very well have been a manufactured sensation, as contrived as anything on primetime, but I was caught up in the moment. I rushed back down below, took the bag of cocaine from the pillbox, dropped it in the head and flushed. Then I raised Manuel on the marine band radio, told him to pull the Olds to the gangway and report to the Margaret right away with a fire extinguisher, as mine had lost its charge. It had been a while since I had driven the Cutlass. I usually rode behind Manuel, nursing a headache with a mimosa. This time Manuel rode shotgun, his brown hand white-knuckling his armrest. As I took the cornersthe big old boat cornered like a refrigeratorand ran the red lights I felt fully in control, not like I did when I vetoed a motion to allow casual dress on Thursdays in the Poopdeck lounge, not like I did when I told Manuel, More wine, but like I did eighteen years earlier when my platoon was shipboard running PT beside me, like I did when I dispatched a sniper team to some numbered, defoliated hill where they would acquire and engage targets of opportunity, like I did when I led them on a LLRP beneath the banyan trees. Like I did when I told Peg we werent going to Kathmandu, we were going to the south of France. The gated subdivision that lined the Tybee road gave way to city streets shady and damp under a live oak canopy and to older, turn-of-the-century construction, grand houses in red brick and stucco, some elaborate Greek Revivals, at times overstated, with Corinthian columns, others Mediterranean villas with terraces and terracotta tile roofs. We pulled up to the curb in front of a rambling white-washed brick home with a wroughtiron fence the wrong side of rusty. The gate was open, as always, a little cockeyed on its hinges. Chief, deliver the package. Manuel removed from the trunk the charred hulk of what remained of the television, now frosted with fire retardant foam, and carried it up the brick path to the

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front porch of my old house, set it down and walked back toward the car, looking over both shoulders like some B-movie burglar. Then Peg appeared in the doorway, and Manuel quickened his pace. What is this? What is this? she asked, arms akimbo, shaking her head at the crusty heap of glass and simulated oak on her doorstep. Compliments of el Comodoro, Manuel shouted before breaking into a run and jumping into the Olds, slamming the door behind him. Drive, boss, drive. I tooted the horn two times, waved to my wife, floored it, and fishtailed out of there smoking and screeching, and with the cockpit reeking of burning tires and the twin burgees flapping in the wind, I felt like this was no ordinary Cutlass but a staff car in a war zone, and that I had won the first skirmish in a long, hard campaign. For malaise there is no better medication than cocaine. Take yourself a bump and youll find yourself waxing the floor, polishing the silver, sewing buttons, painting the house with absolute precision in the small hours of the night. Cocaine will motivate you, will make you overachieve, until you develop a tolerance, and then all it motivates you to do is more cocaine. In a twist of cosmic irony, malaise was one of the symptoms of cocaine withdrawal, and for a week I had unnatural cravings for the drug. I found myself above deck and below, on hands and knees with a flashlight doing what was known as ghost busting, combing the planks for any errant crystals or chunks of white powder. Busting made me feel bad, just low down, low rent, down right slavish, and it was just as well that my forays yielded no results. That first week vivid and unpleasant dreams haunted my sleep. I built impossible prisons on the moon. I assisted suicides. With a miniature brush, the kind preferred by hobbyists, I painted my sisters corpse with royal blue latex enamel. I shopped for brains at Builderama. Feral cats whispered hateful epithets as I lurked in lunar alleys, evading the Sisters of Mercy. I stuffed a Christmas goose with sand. I sold nuclear secrets to the Spanish, and I had rough sex with the tailpipe of an idling Volkswagen. Awake I was slow, beyond the lethargy that comes with the fatigue of sleep deprivation. Ten minutes would pass and Id still be sitting on the edge of my berth, my left foot still unshod, the deck shoe within easy reach. Juxtaposed with the lethargy was

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supreme restlessness; I wanted nothing more than to sit still but try as I might I could not, I was plagued by looking-over-both-shoulders anxiety, unlike any paranoia I had known while on the drug. Withdrawal was a trip all its own; in many ways I had completed my quest for the highest buzz. I did, however, experience a surge in my appetite at the beginning of the second week. I yearned for the complex carbohydrates absent from my dockside diet of shell fish and whisky. I ate bowls of pasta, plates of potatoes; one night I ate a whole pound cake, and on that night, admittedly, I went too far. I drank a quart of milk every morning and 4 quarts of water every day. I started exercising. When Id been in the Corps, I could pull 25 pull-ups, overhand. When on that morning I pulled ten, I knew there was hope, and when I ran a nine-minute mile I wept. My goal was to become the machine I was twenty years earlier. I could think of no other way to win back Peg. She married a functional, virile, and vibrant Teddy Tattersall, and I meant to restore him to his rightful place at her side, in our bower, from time to time behind her in her shower. In the meantime, I masturbated vigorously, because I could. She had only come to the yacht club that once. During the low points I reasoned that she did so only to make me jealous. During my surges in confidence, I also believed she did so to make me jealous, but with the intention of luring me back. More to the point, she had issued a challenge, dropping the gauntlet I should have dropped weeks, if not months, earlier. And I knew it would take more than flowers and fine words and a restored physique to win her. It would take something inspired, no mere diamond necklace presented in a cozy nook in a dimly lit French restaurant. Peg was not one for baubles. But she was one for melodrama. I needed a stage of which I was in complete control, an evening that I could orchestrate. So it was that I decided over a chalky glass of vitamin supplement that that years Commodores Ball would be a ball with a difference, a masque in honor of the dread lord Poseidon, as outrageous as any entertainment at Studio 54 and beyond the ken of any present-day swinger. After two months on my new regime and feeling fit, I decided to see who I was up against, take the measure of my rival, sound the depth of his talent. At dusk in a battered Corolla borrowed from Manuel and clad in a peacoat and watch cap, I, the cuckold

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incognito, drove away from the yacht club into town. The Corolla stank of vanilla even after I threw the air freshener out of the window. Still, it was a peppy little coupe, and before longit amazed me how fast time traveled when one was sober without even a radio in the carI was parked curbside, under the drooping boughs of a water oak, two doors down from our home, sipping wheatgrass juice from a thermos, peering over the edge of The Wall Street Journal. Wheatgrass, good god almighty. After an hour or so, I saw the reverse lamps of hermy300 TD burning as Peg backed it out the driveway. I snatched my field glasses from the passenger seat to see with whom my wife was traveling. She was alone; perhaps en route to a secret rendezvous, I thought as I shifted the four-speed into gear. Keeping about five car lengths behind her I began to imagine what shape her paramour would take. She turned north on Abercorn, so that ruled out the south side, thank god. I didnt want to tangle with some Windsor Forest motorhead, or worse, a Ranger in base housing at Hunter Airfield. Those guys were gorillas; twenty years earlier, I might have stood a chance, maybe. As I followed my Mercedes through the numbered streets, I envisioned a parade of possible rivals: at the Hilton a polo player from Valencia, maybe, mounting her from behind, coaxing her in his slurred Catalan; in the pro shop, a sandy-haired golf pro biting her earlobe; a young, pimpled buck still in his jersey furtively fumbling with her in a custom van behind the roller rink; Peg bent over a mahogany desk while some greedy, hairless banker plundered her fundament; or maybe simply ravished by some blas louche a lot like me. Thanks to her circuitous route, in the end a trip that should have taken five minutes took twenty. This was strange. I dont think she knew she was being followed. Maybe she was procrastinating. Maybe she wasnt looking forward to her rendezvous. Maybe there was hope, I was thinking. But I forgot all about hope as she pulled into the driveway of Silk Menzies bachelor bungalow. I kept going, my jaw clenched, my heart in my throat, and my gut bottomless as my vision once again blurred with tears, and I wondered why it hadnt occurred to me sooner, thinking back on the last time Id seen Silk, fishing for reds on the deck of Dr. Feelgood, this time legally.

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We had tried everything that day but met with no luck. So at the last half of the falling tide and with some reluctance, I told Silk to take us upriver to Lazaretto Creek, to the wreck of the Old Gray Mare, the sloop Id run aground on an oyster bed and abandoned years before. Hurricane David had buried her bow so that she stuck up sternwise from the creek bed at a 45 degree angle. Low tide revealed her transom, and if you got close you could still read her name. The wreck in and of itself was no secret, but the fact that it was my sweet spot was. We baited our lines and got down to the business of slow-trolling live menhaden over the wreck. So youre staying, Silk had said, behind the console where he was chopping lines of blow behind the windscreen. He gestured at me with the little glass straw but I declined, the third time that afternoon. He had seemed wounded at the news of my reform. A little more than two months had passed since the amberjack poaching party, the last time I had seen him. Under his sun visor he looked careworn, uncharacteristically so, that once pristine brow now creased, grayish pouches drooping below his eyes, the picture of a unrequited lover from the Renaissance, updated with Benson and Hedges and an eight ball. Theres nothing for you here, not really, he said. When I have time, we go fishing. What else is there? Youve got no job, no friends Ive got you, I said. Yeah, well. Sure. Okay. But what else? Peg is gone, man. You aint never getting her back. The string is run on your trade in this town. Look at you, living at the god damn yacht club, not even in a condo, making an ass of yourself, blacked out by sunset, keeping counsel with the dish washer. Children are scared to go in the locker room, afraid theyll find Commodore Shaky bleeding in the sink as he tries to shave. That must have been frightening, I said. But thats all over. What makes you so sure Im never getting her back? Look at you. Youre washed up, wasted. All the drinking and all that blow. Youve drifted, man. Shes still spry, a lot of life left in her. But you? Youve had it I havent touched the stuff in two months, and I dont miss it. I drink only after five, and never much. I run twenty five miles a week. Today I pulled fifteen pull-ups. Youre not paying attention. You must be thinking of some other guy.

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This fitness kick of yours, its a phase. I know you. You hear the high life calling and youll be back. The cocaine was really doing its work on Silk. He needed a good bitch-slapping, but I wasnt drunk, it would only make me feel mean and low. The man was holding court with or without an audience, so I turned my back to him, and not too soon; there was a twitch in one of the lines. I tugged back just a little, and then there was another twitch. This time I yanked back to set the hook, and the rod bent toward the water like a parabola and the reel started whizzing. We had a runner. This was going to be a fight. Dont let him go deep. Dont let him go deep, Silk said. Relax, I said, and then I noticed I had picked up Silks rod, not mine. Hey, you want this one? I asked. Nah. Ill let you have this one. She doesnt look to be a keeper, he said and popped the cap off a beer. She wasnt a keeper. She was a 30 pound barracuda, and down there thats 30 pounds of poison. I released her and had a beer as I stared at the splintered, sun-and-salt-bleached hulk of my Old Gray Mare and the spartina grass beyond her and I asked myself what, now that we were out of the service and I was off the drugs, if anything, did I have in common with Silk. It did not cross my mind that the answer to that question was my wife. There was a tire iron, no doubt, in the trunk of Manuels Corolla. Would I even need it? I asked myself. Would not righteous indignation combined with the silent killing techniques Id learned at The Basic School be armament a plenty? Silk owned a revolver, was my next thought. I wondered if it was loaded. Surely he must have foreseen this contingency. Surely I must have considered this beforehand. The tire iron, as field expedient a weapon there is, remained in the trunk, and, after doing two more drive-bys to confirm she wasnt just dropping in, I drove back to the club through the dense mist that had settled on the highway, fighting with clenched jaws and grinding teeth and ice cold sweat the urge to pull over into the projects and play Hey you until I had a bag of blow. Slim and William, the dock manager and the groundskeeper, were smoking cigarettes outside the French doors through which members and their escorts were entering the club

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for the Commodores Ball. This, in and of itself, was a violation of staff protocol; they were to be standing at attention at the doors, at the ready to open them for the party, not lounging beside them until the last second when a guest mounted the stairs. But what really ruffled my feathers as I approached was the anachronism inherent in two men wearing Regency livery taking drags from filter-tipped Kools. Of course they did not snap-to when I appeared; to them I was just another gentleman in white tie and mask. When, with a total absence of alacrity, they opened the door for me, I addressed them by name. Shit, its the commodore, William hissed to Slim, and they both flung their cigarettes into the shrubbery. I told them to stand upright, And straighten that wig, Slim. Cornuto that I was, I had selected a mask with horns, a raven-feathered mask crested with the antlers of a steenbok. To be sure, I was feeling sinister even before I put on the mask, but the combination of tails and the mask was very much the bitter frosting on my cake of salt. The ballroom was alive with ostrich plumes, and the tail feathers of countless peacocks, garish as the painted whores of Babylon, but mine was the only mask of its kind. No doubt the party was teeming with cuckolds, and even a battered wife or two, but no one embraced his shame, not like the commodore. For the bars and buffet tables, I had commissioned ice sculptures of fabled cheated men, Troilus, Arthur, king of the Britons, Chaucers miller, Sylvester Stallone, even Othello, though he was neither technically a cuckold, nor recognized by any of the party, not to my knowledge, at least. In the 18th and early 19th century England such entertainments, held in the Haymarket, in court, and elsewhere, were considered by some to be yet another pestilence blown across the channel from the continent. Forums for license, adultery, drunkenness, undercover buggery: anything could happen at the masquerade. The Commodores Ball would be no exception, at least for the commodore. I had engaged a string quartet as well as a pianist and harpsichord player, and to the soundtrack of their waltzes and polonaisesat one time scandalous, but hopelessly tame music by contemporary standards to which many guests were dancing hybrid steps recalled from ballroom dance classes taken long agoI would engage in intrigues, the first of which involved my successor.

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In the bar I found Silk in a mask expertly crafted from the plumage of a pheasant. I knew him by his pinky ring, a detail that should have tipped me off as to his true nature a long, long time ago. I asked him if he was holding and he smiled widely. Where to? he asked, and I told him the tower. This was on the main dock, affording an exquisite vista of the Wilmington River, by day and night, when you could watch the boats motor past with their running lights burning, and was where the kids climbed to smoke joints, and probably still do. It was bracing up there, the wind whistling through the steel bars. Silk had a bullet, a little glass tube with two chambers, one for individual servings and one for the stash and a valve separating the two. Welcome back, Silk said, thumping the bullet with his forefinger and then handing the contraption to me. I shook my head and handed it back. Are you sure? he asked, but I think the surprise was feigned. Once I refused, he knew what was coming, thought he did, anyway. Silk, I said. What kind of name is Silk, anyway? Some kind of made-up pimp name. Only a blind fool would trust a man named Silk. I told him I knew. By the light of the full moon I could see his shoulders tense and I imagined he was bracing himself for an attack, and, unless he had it in the back of his waistband, I knew hed left his service revolver at home. But trash like you keeps a razor in its shoe, I said out loud. Listen, Teddy. Dont do anything crazy. Im sorry, he said, his eyes darting from left to right, as if to confirm we were still one hundred feet in the air. Well stop. Weve already stopped. How gracious, even in defeat. What a smoothie, that Dr. Menzies. Relax, Im not going to kill you. Im not even going to hit you. Give me a cigarette, I said, and when he did so, you could see his shoulders relax. Look, man, Silk said. It was a mistake. Shut up, I said. Im not going to hit you. I refuse to be the jealous husband. You dont need to be, Teddy. She loves you, she never stopped loving I told you to shut up. Give me your mask. Stay away from my wife, and get the hell out of my club. He did so, and I wondered if Id be able to forget him, forget that it was he who looted the treasury of my wifes charms.

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Back at the party, identifying my wife was no large task. Not all ladies present were wearing ball gowns; Peg was, a black one. She was drinking a champagne cocktail and was regaling with a throaty anecdote three young members who had come stag. When she took her leave of them I followed her at a distance to the corridor. When she went into the powder room I stopped and lurked just inside the doorway of the business office, took off my mask and replaced it with Silks and waited. Minutes passed and she headed back toward the party, but I stopped her with a Psst. Skirts in hand she turned and smiled and approached, mistaking me in the pheasant mask under the dim light for her lover. I pulled her by her kid gloved forearm into the office. She looked at me and, sensing that something was off, gave a light yelp, then said, Youre not but before she could finish I said, Margaret and took off the mask. Edward, she responded in kind. I locked the door behind us, and pulled the chain on a green shaded desk lamp. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light. Her glance landed on my horned mask lying on the desk Clever, she said. I thought youd appreciate it, I said. She studied me from head to toe, studying me as if I was a castaway much changed and finally come home. He eyes lingered on my shoulders and then lit on my face. She smiled. Been working out? You look good, Teddy. You look better, I said, and put on my steenbok mask. Now turn around. Come again? she asked. Exactly, I said. I turned her around and put my mouth on the nape of that long neck and swept the desk clean of its paperwork. Soon her skirts were gathered up around her waist, her stockings a wad on the rug. As I possessed her from behind I uttered terse and bitter rebukes. Vile. Dirty. You jade, I repeated, and she said, Yes, I am awful, yes, yes. She moaned so loudly I had to stuff the heel of my hand in her mouth. Shameless, youre shameless, I hissed. I had originally intended this act to be a punitive recrimination. But I felt awash with tenderness. My cheeks were warm and I was excited at the prospect of a new life with this woman. I was as giddy as Id been during our courtship fifteen years earlier. I stopped scolding her; even though she had enjoyed the rebukes, my heart felt cleansed of

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bitterness. I was no longer the jealous husband, but an explorer on a bluff, appreciating the vista of a new frontier We restored our dress to order, Peg donned her mask, and I led her by her hand out the service entrance and to the top of the tower. The wind had really whipped up since Id been out earlier. I took off my tails and draped them over Pegs shoulders. We shared one of her long cigarettes. Im glad youre back, Teddy. Lets work things out. Come home. My heart lept at this, and I had to catch myself before blundering into unconditional surrender. I looked down to the dock below at the schooners and racing yachts with their rigging strung with Christmas lights and I looked back to the club, to the dancing, the masked revelry, the husbands and wives only half of whom loved each other and yet refused to miss attending a party together. Yes, lets work things out, I said. But not home. Not here. Leave with me, Peg. You mean move away? she asked, looking hurt. Yes, away from all of this, this bullshit scene, these cheats, this club, this town. Just you and me, Peg. She took a deep pull on her cigarette and flung the butt to the wind. I cant do that, she said and turned to me. Her eyes shone wetly in the moonlight. All of this, this is our life. I cant. Im sorry. I looked back down at the party, at all the people pretending to love each other. At least Peg had been no pretender. She had been frank regarding her infidelity. I thought then of Peg in the kitchen in blue jeans, cooking pork chops, frying flounder in the skillet, grilling steaks on the patio. She was a fine cook, but she never failed to reserve the choicest cuts for herself. Not our life, I said. Your life, Peg. Im sorry, too. At lunch on Wednesdays, the yacht club gave the Quarterdeck over to ladies bridge. Lacey Sommerset was playing with Paige Farrell, Kate Gay, and Jackie Sloane. Lacey was having trouble concentrating on the game, distracted by events she was witnessing

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through the window. Her principle distraction was an antique British sports car dangling from a massive crane that had pulled it from the clubs pool. Shed never seen such a car before, but the three other ladies knew all about it, from their husbands, she supposed. It was a Lotus Super Seven II, painted British Racing green. It had yellow fenders and the top was down. It was, she had to say, a very sexy car, dripping wet or not. The sports coupe, as they called it, was apparently the property of that swarthy dentist Menzies that Lacey had met at one of Paiges parties. No, Paige said. Of course he didnt call the police. Now get this. Silky comes home from work Monday and finds his garage door hanging wide open. His cars gone, and hes starting to freak out, until he sees this note stuck on the wall with a hunting knife. Weird, Kate said. And the note reads, Paige continued, Thanks for the ride. So weird, said Jackie Sloane. Of course its clear that Teddy stole it, Kate said. Poor Teddy, Lacey said. He was so sweet. Whats going to happen to him? Who knows? Paige said. Manuel the waiter took their empties and replaced them with fresh mimosas. Lacey flashed him a smile. She liked Manuel, such a dear, so much nicer looking than the other wait staff, so trim with good teeth, and always on the spot with a drink. She didnt normally go for moustaches, but Manuel kept his so neat, and on him, it didnt look skuzzy at all, but sophisticated, like some European diplomat. No ones seen him, Paige continued. And his sailboats gone. Its likely hes halfway to Bermuda by now. Hes sailed the transatlantic twice before. I wouldnt be surprised. Its just as well, said Jackie. After putting on that hideous party, he ought to leave town for a while. I dont know, Paige said. Something tells me hes gone for good. Poor Peg, said Kate. Yeah, she must be so lonely, Paige said. You know, we ought to give her a call.

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Screw Peg, Lacey said, catching Manuels eye from across the room and winking. She leaned in to the table and continued in a whisper. Lets call Manuel. I really get off on balling the help.

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THE THIN WHITE DUKE

Space makes my face look fat. Its true. In the absence of gravity, bodily fluids shift from the lower to upper extremities. Once flat, I now have cleavage. Im taller, too, one inch, my vertebrae having stretched in the zero-g. And its not just me; the other two crew members have outgrown their government-issued flame-retardant utilities as well. Commander Spicer has been admiring his new biceps. Sometimes he calls them guns, sometimes he calls them pythons. Whatever. Im just happy with my newfound d-cups and a little worried about my puffy face. Surely it wont stay this way. Spicer likes the cleavage, too. When we conducted yesterdays sexperiment he hefted one, and winked, before putting his mouth on me. Sad but true that the cosmic coitus requires a third party, even with the harness, at least until a new center of gravity is established and, even then, that center is precarious. The slightest variation in rhythm can cast both parties floating toward the opposite bulkheads of the workshop, jumpsuits around their ankles. So, First Science Officer Markowitz is our designated third-wheel. He does not relish the job. God bless you, Marty Markowitz, you unwilling Pandarus, you reluctant pimp. Well have you back at your microscope soon enough, the space race doesnt have half the stamina of the earthly marathon, its only a matter of a few minutes, but you have noted this, havent you, Marty; I know you only affect clinical indifference, that you only pretend to gaze out the porthole at the brilliant bleak panoply of the cosmos, because I see the sidelong glances you throw at me from hooded eyes. I know youre counting the days, but toward what you count them I do not know. I catch you staring at my undulating hips and I hazard a wink, but your cheeks flush and you flinch as if youve been splashed with a drink. Do you turn away in disgust, or is it something else? Today the minnows died. They were Mummichog minnows, from Beaufort, South Carolina, now nothing more than an aborted inquiry into micro-gravity biology. Seeing them floating at the waters surface in their sealed aquarium was strangely disorienting. I had difficulty getting my head around the notion of something abiding by the laws of Earth some 270 miles above it. But, there you have it: dead fish float, even in space. I half-considered eating them, the first fresh food Id seen since Houston two

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months ago, reheated, raw, I didnt care. But Markowitz would write me up for sure, and then Id be grounded. There was no shortage of colleagues who wanted to witness my failure, all of Houston and Huntsville champing at the bit to watch Lady Stardust fall. The spiders, Alma and Albert, however, are flourishing. Their first webs were feeble, amateurish endeavors, but they got their stride and started spinning proper after a week and now their gossamer network is a multifaceted Byzantine creation, feats of geometry worthy of M.C. Escher, occupying impossible angles in the corner of my lab station. Ill unseal a pouch of drinking water and shake out droplets just to see them float and hang on the silken fibers like beads of dew, and when I dim all but the red light at my station the effect is not unlike the break of day in the rose garden back home. Alma and Albert, the prize arachnids of some junior high school contest winner in Wichita, are my charges, one of the only three experiments with which Mission Control has entrusted me, one other being the minnows, which I consigned to the biologically active trash bin, which isnt a bin at all but a bag that we vacuum-seal and stow in a chamber aft of the workshop, the poop chute, as it were. The third experiment is, of course, the ongoing sexperiment. Still, they are at least experiments. Our first day on board Skylab, before the male competitiveness thats bound to set in under such confinement had divided them into rivals, Markowitz and Spicer presented me with a gingham apron and dust pan and proposed that I cook and clean for them. These items I attempted to hurl to the deck but was thwarted by anti-gravity and so the gesture lost its punch, the apron just floating in mid-air like a plastic wrapper on the street caught up in a breeze. All the same, I made my point. I was their equal and I expected them to treat me with professional courtesy. There had been other high jinks those first days. One of the two had gotten into my kit while I was in the observatory. I was recording the coordinates of Comet SLPDT-1883. I love this comet. It seems frozen in time yet is moving faster than we will ever comprehend. The perpetual fade of its long white tail reminds me of the afterglow that follows real lovemaking, a sort of all-enveloping warmth that I wonder if Ill ever feel again, after all this professional sex. As always when watching PDT-1883 I slipped into a sort of pleasant reverie. It was at this point that I noticed a pair of my panties floating through the hatch. I made my way to the workshop where other pairs were stuck

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to the air ducts and the guys were performing cartwheels in midair, wearing my brassieres on their heads. Mission Control has seen smoother missions than Skylab 5. Yes, the spiders spin their silky webs, the comet PDT-1883 continues to orbit unchecked, and the Crab Nebula continues to emit its x-ray emissions; but there have been wrinkles since the get-go. During lift-off, vibrations compromised the meteor shroud. I thought for sure it would have shaken from its moorings, but it didnt, thank god; without the protection the shroud affords, any little bit of space junk, be it asteroid or renegade panel from a Soviet television satellite, would pierce this tin can and then we, too, would become space junk. A week after we got into orbit, we learned that the quartermaster had made a mistake when stocking the stations food supply. Instead of giving us one weeks worth of Autumnal Cornucopia rations (consisting of reconstituted turkey, dehydrated gravy, potato flakes, corn spread, and cranberry gelatin) to be distributed evenly over the course of the twelve week mission, the station was stocked with twelve weeks worth of Autumnal Cornucopia to the exclusion of all other ration varieties, with the exception of some desserts. And the minnows died, as noted earlier. The most notable wrinkle, however, is the presence of me, a woman, on board, not only the first woman on board any US space mission, but a woman whose primary mission is to conduct experiments in zero-gravity sexual intercourse (rumor has it that our Cosmonaut counterparts beat us to the mark). Sex, an untidy enough affair on Earth, in zero-grav becomes an altogether messy business. At least under earthly conditions the attendant fluids are more or less contained, or confined to a stain on the sheets. Here they float around haphazardly until they make contact with some other surface, be it porthole, bulkhead or safety goggles, and that, believe me, is a humbling experience, removing once and for all the mystery from love-making, one man holding two pale bodies in place illuminated from all angles by fluorescent lights. Not that this is love. Spicers cute, a hunk, even, and not without talent in the sack, such as it (the sack) is. But this is work. This is scientific inquiry, in which there is no room for mystery. But even if space sex were a tidy endeavor, one that did not require the assistance of a third party, that third party, though elsewhere on the station, would know exactly what was going on. Think of it in the simplest of terms: two men are on board, one

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(selected for his height and musculature) is getting some, and one is not. Such a scenario, even among scientists, is bound to breed, at the very least, tension, not to mention contempt, loathing, envy, and worse. Even without the sexperiments, I, a woman, am a new variable in the equation, and variables are not always welcome in scientific endeavors. With the sexperiments, I am a catalyst. I feel like dynamite. In a bad way. Like a stick of TNT to which someone else is holding the match. Markowitz has been sulking for weeks. But today Im sensing a vibe much darker, something more primal than mere brooding as he straps me into the Upper and Lower Body Negative Pressure Apparatus (DSO 0478-A1 ULBNP) to monitor the effect of external decompression on the human body in addition to charting orthostatic intolerance and cardiovascular function. The apparatus is a cylindrical chamber in which the subject lies down and is enclosed. It looks not unlike an iron lung. Some joker in Houston dubbed it the aqualung; I think iron maiden is more appropriate, given both its appearancedark-age apocalypticand its potential to injureedema, temporary blindness, the bends. You look ready for a soak in the aqualung, Markowitz says. With his staticcling hair and gold-rimmed spectacles he has the look of a flummoxed academic, and would actually be attractive if he didnt say the creepiest things. I do look ready for a dip, goose-pimpled in a GI bikini top and shorts. The various nodes for measuring my blood pressure, pulse, respiratory excursions from the lower thorax, as well as the phonocardiogram and the carotid pulse transducer all require exposed skin. Despite having been the subject of an identical experiment some dozen times back in Houston, I am still not comfortable with participating. But participate I must. Im a scientist, not some frail magnolia, and vectorcardiograms must be taken, Korotkoff sounds must be monitored, at all costs, et cetera. But when Markowitz tightens the capacitive plethysmographic bands encircling my legs (to measure the percentage change in calf volume), he does so a bit toonot efficiently, but zealouslya little roughly, truth be told. His movements are brusque, his bedside manner rotten, and I could use a little comfort right now, shivering in this stainless steel tube.

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Maybe Im being silly. I remind myself that I am not a shrinking violet, that I never was a wall-flower. I can take it. Im ready to dance. Once I am securely in place, Markowitz brings his face close to mine and I think hes going to kiss me, and I think, that wouldnt be so bad, even bound in the aqualung I could use a good kiss, anything right now. His breath smells like an apple. Did he smuggle apples aboard? Id love an apple. Instead, he says, You know, when you think about this mission, two men, one woman, all in a confined space for an extended period of time with no contact with anyone else, not even any fresh air, you realize that all the conditions for murder are met. He smiles, and adds, Dont hold your breath. Youll rupture your lungs. Then he shuts the lid. I hear the hydraulic hinges, the hiss of the rubber seals inflating until Im as hermetic as a sardine, and I am no longer ready to dance. I want out, but to cry out now would mean not only grounding, but a Section 8, and Im not going to let some creep get me drummed out of the service. I fight the urge to hold my breath; they dont call it explosive decompression for nothing. I find myself compiling a list of all the things that can go wrong. Either through gross negligenceor through no accident at allthe machine could decompress too much and create a vacuum. After five seconds in a vacuum my extremities will become painful and useless. This alone will break my spirit. After ten I will lose consciousness, so I wont be aware of the paralysis and ensuing convulsions. I wont be able to watch the edema, the swelling of my body to twice its normal volume; the sprouting of fissures, the lesions of my stretched epidermis will be lost on me. After 60 seconds blood circulation will slow to a virtual standstill. My body temperature will drop drastically, gas and water vapor will continue to flow out through my airways and freeze my nose and mouth. I am not sure at what point during this process I will actually be considered legally or clinically dead. A far as Im concerned, as soon as I cant use my hands, thats the end. The rest is all technicality. I think of the minnows, how at first they swam in tight loops, then looser, then looser, then not at all. Its very cold in the aqualung, theres a thin mat between me and the stainless steel but my back is icy all the same. I want out, out, and I wonder if I do scream if Markowitz will hear me because I cant hear him. I cant hear anything. Why did he

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have to say those creepy, nasty, awful things? I dont care if the space program has no room for a claustrophobe, I want out, out, out, out I hear the release of compressed air as the seal is broken and the hatch is opened and I am blinded by the light of the workshop. All done, Markowitz says. By the way, did you say something just then? Mission Control SOP dictates that we take our meals together so as to foster camaraderie and preserve esprit de corps. Personally, I think better food would go a lot further toward maintaining morale than this compulsory small-talk session in the ward roomgod, a can of Vienna sausages would do the trickbut no, we suffer the calorically engineered dehydrated reconstituted Thanksgiving fare that resembles in texture hard candy made soft. The nutritional experts tried, sure enough, bless their hearts, to engineer treats so as to relieve the monotony of our diet, but the ice cream is a disaster. Onboard Skylab the decks and ceilings are wire grids. We, the crew, wear these shoes with specially designed cleats that we wedge into the grid and so anchor ourselves. The table in the ward room also has restraining bars on the underside that you lower over your lap to keep your seat. This arrangement makes for an awkward mess, keeping everyones posture just a little too erect. Spicer still mixes condensed milk with his meal in a vain effort to make the food palatable, and still hasnt learned that the elastic properties of the packaging catapult condensed milk across the ward room. Maybe he has learned, maybe he likes it. At least hes no slob. Oops, I did it again, Spicer says today as he releases the restraining bar and propels himself, armed with a Sani-wipe, after the errant dollop. He catches it, and in doing so, notices his watch. Uh-oh, time to adjust the attitude, he says, then winks at me. Be right back. Dont go changing on me. With that, our commander propels himself through the forward hatch to the orbital workshop, where he will fire the attitude control thrusters. Markowitz, unlike our commander, is not a meticulous diner. He mixes the turkey crystals with the powdered gravy and the potato flakes into one pile so as to expedite the procedure and minimize the misery. Markowitz never eats his cranberry jello. He is always the first to finish and leave the table. Except for today.

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Everything okay in the aqualung today? he asks. Yeah, just fine, I tell him. Are you sure? he asks, that queer smile from earlier back on his face. Positive. Because it can get a littleclose in there, he says. I said everything was fine. Of course it was, Markowitz says, and resumes shoveling down the mess he has made. I cant figure out if hes calling my bluff or flirting with me, however misguided this method of wooing may be. Then the creak of something heavy and metal wrenching from the exterior of the hull interrupts. Markowitz looks up from his plate, his mouth half-open, his spoon in hand arrested in mid-air. His eyes are wide open, not squinty, like usual, and they are bright, as if a lamp has been switched on behind them. I notice for the first time that one of his eyes is blue and the other is green. That sounded bad, Markowitz says, and I find myself lamenting the inadequacy of language in a crisis. What do you mean, bad? I ask. As in, we-cant-fix-that-up-here bad? Marty doesnt answer. He lifts up his restraining bar and propels himself forward through the hatch. I lift my restraining bar and follow. The lights brown out. How to rush to action in zero gravity? No way around it: youre going to look silly. Movement in the cabin is not quite like swimming because you dont really displace air like you do water. So, unless you want to float aimlessly, you have to either a) climb along the bulkhead like a blind man feeling his way down a hallway, or b) propel yourself by pushing off of a fixed object and hope your aim is true. My aim is not. I shove off from the table but I miss the hatch by just half a foot and jam my forefinger in the process. When I do get to the orbital workshop, Spicer and Markowitz are glued to the bank of monitors that provide views of the stations exterior. Something appears to be missing from the dorsal view. They are red under the emergency lights. I ask them whats going on. Well, Spicer says, it seems that the meteor shroudahdeployed prematurely.

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Seems my ass, Markowitz says. Deployed my ass. The commander here didnt adjust the thrusters before he fired them. The impact of the exhaust plume was enough to shear off the meteor shroud from what was left of its moorings. Brilliant, Commander. Fucking brilliant. Easy, Markowitz, Spicer says. Whats up with the power? I ask. We lost Solar Array Wing Number One, Markowitz says. How? I ask, and put my hand on Spicers shoulder. What happened? Talk to me, Jeb, please. I screwed up, Spicer says. He pauses, then continues. When the shroud went, it took Number One with it. Okay, I say, and take a deep breath. What about Array Number Two? Well, debris from Number One is caught up in Number Two. So, Number Two is frozen in a slightly open position and can generate no power. I keep trying, but it doesnt respond to the deployment signal. So what happens now? I ask. Well, we cant survive without electricity. The auxiliary power cells were designed to last twenty-four hours, but they degrade over time. They werent designed for this long of a mission. Id say we have six, maybe eight hours of auxiliary power left. So we have got to get Array Number Two back on line. Its fixing to get really hot in here, Markowitz says. He unzips his jumpsuit, wrenches free one foot from the deck grid, then another and steps out of the suit, which floats limply at his side like a sad, orange, wrinkled spectre of a man. Markowitz is still in his shorts, but I dont know what to expect next. Jeb, I say. Make him stop. Take it to the airlock, Markowitz, Spicer says, and in his skivvies Markowitz swims away. Weve got to fix Number Two. Without power for the cooling loop, the sun will make it unbearable in here. You know that. So weve got to take an EVA. Good, I say, glad to hear some decisiveness in Spicers voice. Then Im going. No. Youve got to stay inside, to monitor the stations systems. And ours.

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Then tell Markowitz to stay, I say. I think of what he told me this morning before sealing me into the aqualung. Please, Jeb. Thats a negative. Now, listen up. Markowitz and I are going out to manually deploy Solar Array Wing Number Two because if we dont, the temperature inside here is going to hit about 150 Fahrenheit in twelve hours, maybe sooner. This aint a finesse job out there, Spicer says as he pulls a hammer from a stowage locker. I need brute strength, and you dont have it. You are going to stay inside glued to these monitors. Is that clear, Second Science Officer Harlowe? Yes, sir, Commander. Im sorry, I say. Should I contact Houston? Yes, you should, but you cant. The shroud, or the solar array, I dont know which, took out the antennae and the dish. All we have left is the automated distress signal. Dont you even think of touching that. Look, he says. His glare softens and he touches my cheek. We can fix this. You just sit tight, sweet thing. Keep the home fires burning. He kisses me. I do not reciprocate. Ive got to go get into my suit. Dont you fret. Ill be back in two shakes. Dont you fret, he says. I am not a shrinking violet. The human body looks more ungainly in space than in water. Just as we were not designed to swim, we were not designed to negotiate the great void. Against the black backdrop of space, in their bulky, wrinkled white vinyl suits, the chubby gloves, the boxy ELSS chest packs with the oxygen umbilicals stretching out, each movement they make looks fat and cumbersome. They look out of place. The helmets have these gold-plated visorsto shield the unfiltered rays from the sunso Spicer and Markowitz look like plump, one-eyed larvae that need batting off of Skylabs surface. Their work with hammer and crowbar is clumsy and slow. Talk to me, Jeb. I need to hear another voice right now, and the Neil Sedaka on the eight-track just aint doing it. Talk to me, Jeb. But I follow orders. I maintain radio silence. I have stripped down to a tee shirt and gym shorts. The temperature gauge on the thermostat reads 103. I am happy that my fate is not in Markowitzs hands alone. Yet I am also grateful that it is not in Spicers hands all by himself either. Maybe he is just a good looking jock all-star from Annapolis,

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detoured first by the navy, then by flight school, and then by Houston. I am beginning to think that he does not make the cut, that this is a ship of fools. Markowitz is really going at it with the hammer. I feel the reverberations, I hear the echoes resound off the round bulkheads of this tube. I would not have suspected him capable of such gusto, not until today. When we started the mission, I thought he was just a scrawny academic. Then I regarded him as a threat. And earlier today, when he stripped out of his jumpsuit, I saw that he was not just some scrawny 98-pound lab rat, but lean and wiry and even graceful, like a whippet, especially with that long thin snout of his. Watching him on the monitor pounding with that hammer I find strangely comforting, like maybe he might save us. At the same time I find it very frightening that its him who is banging away at our lifeline; I keep replaying what he told me this morning, that all the conditions were met. That man with the hammer out there has come unhinged, I can hear it with every stroke. What this tin can needs is a small-caliber side arm, one that wont blow a hole through the hull but one that will stop a man. If there was such a sidearm, I would have it stuck in the waistband of my panties right now, nestled snugly against my belly. Id feel a whole lot better about everything. When youre watching a man in a gold visor prying at space-junk with a crowbar, its hard to tell if hes putting all hes got into it. You cant see his face. You cant see him grit his teeth, nor can you see the veins in his temples throb. I assume Spicer is giving it everything hes got, and thats too bad, because it doesnt look like much. It is hard to believe that the grunting dynamo from the sexperiments is the same awkward dolt in an out-sized spacesuit limp-wristing with a pry-bar. Maybe Im being unfair. Im sure its not easy work disengaging that tangled mess. The heat of the thrusters exhaust must have soldered the debris to the array arm. Or maybe Commander All-American is all bluster. My face is slick with sweat. It looks like theyll be at it for a while so I think Ill take a little constitutional, get some moving air on me. I disengage my feet from the grid and shove off from the monitor bank and make my way forward. On the other side of the airlock the Apollo capsule is docked. Thats how we got here and I imagine if things go further south, thats how well get out of here. I know how to fly it. Its easier than a

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plane, except for re-entry, or so I hear. If you stay sharp you dont need a co-pilot. You can do it by yourself. I look out the porthole of the airlock. Theyre still at it, and from here I dont see much in the way of progress. I wonder if it was me and Spicer out there if Markowitz would have taken off in the capsule by now. The sweat stings my eyes. I dry my face with a hand-wipe and decide to return to my station. Why the hell Mission Control cant give us enough auxiliary power to run the cooling loop is beyond me. The automated distress signal is activated by a red button under a Plexiglas cover. A bright, glossy, candy-apple red button. I imagine the spring beneath it is just tense enough, like a firm acrylic pillow, or well-toned calf, to be very, very satisfying in the pressing of it. I bet it lights up upon depression. I dont know. We never actually pressed it during training. Something like this ought to be locked up, accessed only by code cylinders or something. It shouldnt be just out, under a hinged cover. I want to eat it. Instead I open another bag of distilled water. Something in one of the monitors catches my eye. Movement. It looks like theyve got the leverage they need. They do. Fantastic. Its free. Space-junk no more. I have to fight the temptation to activate Solar Array Number Two. But what the hell is Spicer doing with the debris? Why doesnt he just let it go? This is not the time or place for Greenpeace. Do you see any green out here? And where in here are we going to put it? Or does the boy scout intend to lash it to the hull. I think he does. No, hes actually going to bring it inside. Jesus Christ. Just let it go, Commander. Is this a specimen, or a trophy? Its not doing a damn thing to keep me cooler, this mangled hunk of tin youve salvaged. Just like a man, the fool has to mount it above the mantle. There is also need for strong drink aboard Skylab. The Cosmonauts apparently are allowed a ration of vodka. How Old World of them. I dont know how much in the long term Id relish the idea of sharing a space station with two over-sexed and liquoredup Slavsyou know, the Soviets keep those guys up here a year at the time. That cant be good for you. A case of Stoli is small compensation for a lifetime in a diaper in a wheelchair. Right now, though, I could use a stout one. I bet that Markowitz could distill us some kind of liquor. Hes a chemist, and he may very well have some contraband produce up here. How it survived so long I dont know. Maybe he froze it.

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Somethings wrong. Spicers drifting away. His tether floats limply at his side, as does his broken oxygen umbilical, oh my god. Markowitz do something, god damnit. I raise him on the radio. Help him, Marty, Jesus Christ, dont you see him? and he says, Take it easy, hon. Take it easy, hon? He is mad. Im beginning to think that Ground Control did a lousy job of foreseeing doomsday contingencies and worst-case scenariosinsufficient battery power, absence of auxiliary radio, procedure to follow when astronauts tether breaks and he sets to floating off into the great black beyond. Im beginning to think that Ground Control lacks imagination, but thank god Markowitz doesnt. Hes saying something over the radio, something about the nitrogen dump on the ELSS chest pack. Apparently Spicer, though without oxygen (I guess he held his breath), copies, twists the nitrogen release valve on his chest pack which sends him hurtling back with some force into Markowitzs waiting arms. God bless you, Marty. We have power again. The cooling loop is up and running. So why are Spicer and Marty wearing only their shoes and skivvies? More importantly, why am I stripped down to my bikini top? Because its hot, apocalypse hot and I think Ive about had it with the space program. I was on my way back from the headlets talk about the head for a second, theres only one (without even a curtain for privacy because whats a curtain going to do in zero-g), and its mounted not on the deck but on the bulkhead so you dont sit on it per se, but instead you strap yourself so that your rear is perpendicular to the bulkhead and youre facing the deck while you do your business, which is collected in these sacks which you then must seal and tote aft to the biologically active waste chamber, unless its your turn to save it for testing, either way its damn humiliating and I try to restrict my visits to the head to meal time or the small hours when the others are asleep, but right now its just too god damn hot to sleepand Spicer stops me in the corridor and starts kissing my neck and suggests that a session might relieve some of the stress underneath which we are operating, and I am thoroughly repelled, its much to hot for touching, and I give him the Heisman and make my way back to the orbital workshop. We have power but we still dont have a meteor shroud, which will be more or less fatal should we cross orbits with either a meteor shower or an abandoned Soyuz. These are real dangers, but they are remote, they are not clear and present like the tropical

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heat that currently prevails and shows no signs of abating. Our own little horse latitude, how quaint. The problem is that not only did the meteor shroud protect us from space waste, it provided shade from the Sun. Were still 93 million miles away from it, but we dont have the benefit of an atmosphere or ozone to filter its rays. We will, at this rate, stew in our own sweat. So why are we still here on Skylab? Permission to speak freely, Commander, when we have a perfectly good Apollo capsule docked at our airlock, gassed up and ready to roll, with a radio and Neapolitan Astronaut Ice Cream to boot, why are we roasting in our undies? The freezers are defrosting and the water is seeping from the doors as I ask this. Negative, Second Science Officer Harlowe, thus speaks the commander. We are not abandoning our posts. Speaking freely, Markowitz says, with or without your permission, this is not a dreadnought in Her Majestys Service. Its a laboratory, and a shoddy one at that. And its hot, Gaza Strip hot. No, Spicer says. Youre a civilian. You never did serve. You wouldnt understand the concept of dereliction of duty. Harlowe, however, does, dont you? But you might, Marty Markowitz, in that little bean-counting snake-brain of yours, understand career. This is a landmark mission. The longest manned space flight our country has ever attempted. And the first one with a woman, I might add, he says, leveling a stare at me. We have the opportunity to make history here. Bullshit, Markowitz says. We have the opportunity to make bacon here. No ones going anywhere, Spicer says. We are going to sit here together, for as long as it takes, and come up with a plan to save our hides. Im a good pilot. I could get us out of here. Maybe Marty and I could overpower Spicer. Or sneak up on him with that crowbar. But, as awful as the conditions are, thats the last thing I want to do. Spicer is a fool, a fool with whom, I regret, I have shared my charms. But hes right. This is history. I am history. So thank god Ive got an idea. How about a parasol? I say. A what? Spicer asks.

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You know, Markowitz says. An umbrella. Like what comes with a daiquiri. You do understand daiquiri, dont you, Commander? Watch it, poindexter, Spicer says. Cool it, both of you, I say. Listen. Weve got those telescopic rods. Think of those as tent poles, or the spokes in the underside of an umbrella. We lash those together to make a frame. And we cover that frame. With what? Spicer asks. With emergency blankets. Theyll be perfect, with their reflective surface. And the lining of the sleeping bags, also reflective. With that locker full of American flags. We sew it all together with sutures from sick bay. I dont sew, Spicer says. Well, you do now, I say. Ill teach you. Amen, sister, Marty says, slapping me on the back. Curiously enough, I am not repelled by his touch. You aim to save our lives with a giant umbrella? Spicer says, hands on his hips. His face is sweaty, and his scowl makes him look much older, like some harried school marm. Absolutely insane. I should Section 8 both of you. Right now I dont have the time. Im going to save our lives. Oh, yeah? Marty says. With what? With the wreckage we brought in from the EVA, the panels from Solar Array Wing Number One. Well split the panels and lay the layers side by side and weld them together. To the workshop, says Commander All-American as he propels himself through the hatch, only to float back through it once he realizes that neither Marty nor I are following him. What part of to the workshop dont you two understand? We shrug our shoulders and the commander continues. Markowitz, youre a born goldbricker, thats no mystery. But Harlowe, what about you? I gave you an order. Now step lively. With all due respect sir, yours is the inferior plan. I mean to survive. He asks me if thats my final answer and I say it is.

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This isnt just insubordination, this is mutiny, Harlowe. Do you hear me? Youll answer for this in Houston, Spicer says. He scowls at Marty and then leaves through the hatch. Space mutiny, Marty says. Now youve gone and done it. Come on, Marty. Im going to make a seamstress out of you, I say, and I start ransacking the locker in sick bay for emergency blankets and sutures. My father was a tailor, Marty says. Like his father before him. They wanted me to take up the trade. I gave it a whirl, but it just wasnt my bag. Still, Im handy with a needle. I imagine youre handy with many things, I say as I rip out the linings of our sleeping bags. Are you flirting with me, Second Science Officer Harlowe? he asks. Marty is handy with needle and thread. He is also handy with an arc welder. Handier than Spicer, to be sure, who has made a smoky, molten mess in the workshop, and already his creation, though only half-complete, is too wide to fit through the airlock. What we have woven and welded is not pretty, but it is collapsible. We float past the commander with our shroud folded and the rods bound together and advise him that were going on an EVA to install our makeshift shroud, with his permission, of course. He lifts up his welding mask, looks at us both, then down at the wreckage lashed to the grid-work deck of the workshop and sighs. Permission granted, he says without looking up. Ill man the monitors. EVA. Extra Vehicular Activity. I never liked the exercises in the dive tank back in Huntsville, and something tells me Im not going to like the real thing. And yet Im strangely giddy, both attracted and repelled, perhaps attracted because of the repulsion. Space is total nothing, the absolute zero, and only now in the airlock, staring through the porthole, the last barrier between me and that vast nothing do I realize that were not meant to be out here. An environment that requires so much equipment we should simply leave alone, view from afar, grace with speculation, invest with mystery. Theres nothing out there for us. And yet I yearn to go out there, to the point Im afraid Ill wet my blivet if we dont go out there soon; I feel like I did as a kid watching slasher movies, my hands only half-covering my eyes. Every nerve is jumping and I have to calm

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myself, recall my training. Marty tells me to put on my helmet. Inside the spacesuit its clammy. Rip-stop vinyl doesnt breathe, per se (of course, you dont want a breathable fabric in a space suit). Inside the suit feels like a locker room would if there was a window unit in every locker: cold, dank, and recycled. There are both heating and cooling loops running through the umbilicals but I couldnt ever quite calibrate them in Huntsville and I cant now. Its either hot and musty or stale and chilly, and Ill take the latter. Marty unseals the hatch and were out in the middle of nowhere, secured only by a tether. The vista of our water planet almost 300 miles below us is glorious and terrible and I suddenly ache to be back there, my feet firmly planted on a strip of asphalt in the Midwest, far from any ocean or mountain. Martys voice crackles over the speaker in my helmet, Come on, Harlowe, weve got work to do, but I cant tear my gaze from the earth. My arms and legs go numb and I can hear myself hyperventilate. There is nothing for me out here, up here, I know this now, and when Martys voice comes back over the speaker asking whats wrong, I can only say, Im too close to God, Im much too much close to God out here, and my view of the earth diminishes as my tunnel vision contracts. At some point I must have let go of the rail because now Im floating, and now my tether stops me from floating further, and the stopping is sickening to me as I feel my stomach lurch. I feel pressure on my hand. I look down. Its Marty, holding my hand in his, and through the chubby glove I can feel him massaging me. Easy, its okay, he says. My breath catches and my vision clears. Tears roll down my cheeks. Im glad for my visor, glad that Marty has not seen me cry, but, at the same time, disappointed that he cant see me smile. Im going to be okay. Our parasol is a motley, clownish quilt emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes set in the tin foil sheen of emergency blankets, stretched over a frame fashioned from steel and aluminum rods. Overall, its garish, an appropriate setting for such flashy and bombastic heraldry. Good Ol Glory, I hear Marty say over the speaker as we admire our handiwork, hanging onto the rails on the space-side of the airlock like two chummy colleagues leaning on a water-cooler. We shake hands, and through the clumsy gloves I

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think I detect a lingering pressure in his grasp, and I feel the heat rising in my cheeks. Thank god for the gilded visor. Spicer wanted my plan to fail. He made no effort to conceal this, and has been sullen ever since the erection of the parti-colored solar parasol. Nevermind that its a great deal cooler now in Skylab; weve got it down to 88 Fahrenheit, which, although warm and sticky, is inhabitable. And with the restored power and manageable temperature weve been able to preserve most of the rations, a mixed blessing; freezer burn or no, its Thanksgiving Day everyday. To some meals Marty wears war paint, to others he wears dark trousers cut off at the knee with white socks pulled up over his calves and a pilgrim hat hes crafted from exposed sheets of film from the observatory, and in these get-ups he has taken to preparing all of our meals. Martys levity is one of two antidotes for the monotony on board our crippled station. The other antidote is the cache of freeze-dried apples he managed to smuggle in his kit. Since our EVA he has been very generous on the sly, and yesterday, while Spicer was making a head call, Marty showed me a makeshift distillery he had assembled in his lab station. Space Brandy, he said with a wink. Ive got a baggie full of apple rotting in the biologically active waste chamber. Just you wait. I cant wait. Spicers melancholy has pervaded his professional life to such a degree that he is no longer capable of conducting the sexperiments. He is no longer up to the challenge, as it were. As he is incapable of rising to the occasion, he is unwilling to participate as Designated Third Wheel. His stubbornness on the issue presents quite a problem. Hence today Marty is teaching me to weld. With strips of steel picked from the solar array wreckage we have fashioned an elaborate system of stirrups which we are welding to the deck and bulkhead of the workshop. When he guides my hand with his my skin tingles, and again, I am thankful for my visor, this time a welding visor, to conceal my blush. I have a confession, Marty says. Oh god, please oh please dont say youre gay. I know why Spicer cant get it up, he continues. I wasnt expecting this. How does he know? Are they gay together? My stomach feels hollow. For the past two weeks Ive been lacing his Tang with bromide, Marty says.

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With bromide? I ask. Trust me, Marty says. Im a chemist. He lifts up my visor and takes off his goggles and in his eyes there is the gleam of the schoolboy as he moves in and kisses me. Yes, I trust you, of course, with your mismatched eyes, one blue, one green. You are both coarse and tender and always calculating. Youre a knight in the rough, you need polish, Marty Markowitz, you need a tan, you lab rat, you alien, and I need you and our comet needs a worthy name, its a thin white duke like you.

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THE LAST DETAIL (TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN DIE LETZTE PFLICHT)

We were not ragged cadavers catching vermin for our dinner. We were round-cheeked cherubim with good teeth, we were well-fed burghers with the manes of lions. In captivity we flourished. Chilblains we had none. We even got the mail: Reuben, the young oberfhnrich with the downy upper-lip took a subscription to erotic plates from Bangalore, bless his soul. In Camp Colquitt, all was permitted. On Sundays the Kriegsmarines played football with Afrika Korps. We were paid according to our rank per Title III, Section II, Chapter 7, Article 23 of the Geneva Convention, and there was good, blonde pilsner beer for sale in our canteen. I was aide du campe to a ruined Hessian viscount, Helmut Von Helmut, Graf du Stolberg, Order of the Knights Cross, Unterseebootkommodore, Kriegsmarine. At Camp Colquitt, each general and flag officer was quartered in his own bungalow, and each was allotted his own stabsoffiziere, which was a far cry from the retinue attending Herr Kommodore on the bridge of his frigate, but at least was a vestige of the prestige of flusher days. As staff officer it was my duty to brief the kommodore every morning at breakfast, which typically was lighttoasted bread and preserves, real coffee, fresh milk and cold cereal. From a Negro driver I learned the recipe for gritsground hominy with the germ removedand one morning I had made an exceptional batch in the officers mess, and was bringing it to the kommodore, that he might enjoy it during my report. You can imagine my disappointment, bearing the steaming cast-iron Dutch oven in my hands, when I found his bungalow empty, and on the table a note reminding me that it is the duty of every officer in captivity to attempt escape. I had a vision of him, at table in his small clothes and braces, his iron-grey hair cropped close in the American fashion, breakfasting while I briefed him on the disposition of the troops, which I would exaggerate for his benefit, reporting that their morale was high (which was no exaggeration; we were sleek and stout with good clean food and exercise), as high as could be expected given the circumstances i.e. their captivity (a minor equivocation), and that they were restless to return to the fatherland. This last was outright perjury, as many of us, including me, were of Russian birth, 110

captured in Polanddrunk in Danzig on libertyand impressed into German service. Repatriation would place us not in the Rhineland, but in Siberia for taking up arms against Mother Russia. We did not pine for home. Colquitt was our home. Our captors sympathized with our plight. The commandant of the camp, Brigadier General Caldwell McVey, brother of the famous Senator Ellerbee McVey, just last week had granted me an interview at the end of which he promised to write a petition on the Russian prisoners behalf to the chief of staff for President Truman, knowing as well as we did just what kind of nightmare Stalin would have in store for us. It was the generals hope that one of the allied nations would grant us asylum as political refugees, possibly even the United States. He said he could make no promises, but that we had been model prisoners and that our good behavior alone merited some measure of clemency. Long shot or no, the mere notion of staying in America made my head light and my spine tingle. For a moment I feared that the kommodores escape would jeopardize this, but only for a moment; he was but one man, and group punishment struck me as very un-American. I took my duties as an officer seriously, first as an ensign in the Russian Navy, then as lieutenant in the Kriegsmarine; despite the flag underneath which I sailed, I was a father to my ratings and a brother to my officers. I was no communist, and certainly no Nazi. Just a man confronted with sometimes twenty-five, sometimes ten, pairs of eyes asking me, as the depth charges shook our pitiful little boat, What do we do now? What we do now is bide our time and pray we dont return home. For a week we heard nothing of Herr Kommodore. In the canteen we praised the intrepid old salt, who had shone the crew of U-908 nothing but respect and kindness, no matter that we were a Russian crew (under a German captain, of course). He was also a poet, with several books, was widely read in the salons of St. Petersburg. Before the war I had fancied myself a poet after university, had even published an embarrassing, paltry collection of French verse, but when the kommodore asked me at dinner on board the flagship about it, you would have thought he was asking an Oxford don about his chef douvre, when in fact I was the most junior officer at table, and a barbarian from the Orient at that. After asking me about my fondness for opening with a spondee, he

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screwed his monocle into his eye, studied me, the breast of his white mess coat gleaming with medals, and he said, Leutnant zur See Nikolai Durmanov, I expect an inscribed copy by reveille tomorrow. From that evening on I loved that man without shame. All of the men did. So in the canteen we raised our glasses in honor of Herr Kommodore, but inside I am certain that to a man we prayed for his speedy recapture, for fear that his escape might adversely affect our lot. Of course, what did we have to fear? How could a German in the American South evade the wide dragnet cast by the United States Army and Federal Bureau of Investigations. The kommodore would be delivered, and he would once again grace us with his august presence. It was Sunday and Reuben had just received a new parcel from the subcontinent. We crowded around a rough-hewn table in the canteen to peruse its contents. This was a particularly lurid installment. The first plate was a riot of flesh, one dusky whorelet beset by nine naked suitors. Another featured two nymphs suckling, seated on the vast lap of a wet-nurse. Our favorite was a pastoral tryst in which a Sikh in his turban takes possession of a hobbled ram. We howled, we slapped each other on the back, we fouled the plates with lager. We took evening tea, ate pumpernickel bread (which was not unlike the black bread of our homeland) and green apples, cheddar cheese, and a fried mlange called scrapple. Alyoshka played violin, and with the dancing, the curdled milk and strawberries, the strong black tea and mild blonde tobacco, and the near-presence of filles de joie in the form of Reubens raunchy photographs we felt at home, or at least on liberty, until two guards wearing side arms, not merely the customary truncheons, on their white belts escorted me to General McVeys quarters to discuss again, this time in detail, the whereabouts of the Viscount of Stolberg. How can a prisoner be of intelligence value now that the war is over? I asked General McVey. Under the fluorescent lights, seated at the desk opposite the haggard brigadier this once robust and ruddy man stared at me from red eyes set in deep purple cavernsit came to light that the FBI was not in pursuit of the kommodore; the bureau was not even aware that he had gone missing, nor was Central Command of the 3rd Army. McVey had dispatched his staff officers and MPs throughout the Southeast to find him. He had

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contacted depots and airports and seaports and, unless the viscount had stowed away, he was still in the country, or so the general hoped. He was desperate to keep the affair quiet. Ill be honest with you, Lieutenant, the general said. I didnt know he was of any intelligence value either. Just some half-mad grand duke stripped of his command. But it looks like theyre going to want him to testify at The Hague. We had heard rumors of the war-crimes trials to be held in the Netherlands. A whos-who of the party elite, Gring, von Ribbentrop, Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, and many more were to be charged with genocide, a nasty, brutish, sickening business. Nonsense, General, I said. The kommodores no Nazi. Indeed, all Nazis, the fanatic party members, were vetted from the ranks of the Wermacht prisoners and held at a facility in Oklahoma. I know that. But the court wants depositions from the admiralty about the mining of the shipping lanes, the sinking of merchant vessels. And they want the kommodore in Holland in two months. You have one month to find him. I have one month? I told the general I did not understand, that Id looked all throughout the bungalow, even in the crawlspace below, and that the kommodore was, most certainly, long gone from the camp. Okay, Lieutenant, its like this, the general said, massaging his temples with one hand, while with the other filling two glasses with bourbon whiskey, one of which he passed to me. This, the kommodores escape, is an embarrassment. A huge black-eye on my otherwise impeccable record. It will mean the end of my career. So I care. Big time. Either you find him in one month, or I see to it that you and your men spend the rest of your lives, which may be very short, in a gulag. Now, I am a man of some means. You will have unlimited resources, and one of my best men at your disposal. You know the kommodore better than anyone. And I am at the end of my tether. Think about your sailors, son. Think about that Mongol son-of-a-bitch Stalin. Find the kommodore. Consider it your last detail.

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The merchant and farmers bank on the towns square, with its marble Doric columns and granite slab steps, reminded me of a Presbyterian church or Masonic temple, severe, austere, blunt and thrifty. It was the closest bank to Camp Colquitt, and my predecessors in this investigation had only thought to inquire into recent wire-transfers from Germany, and only Germany. Does nobody know no nobleman is without a numbered account in Zurich, and another in Bern? Yes, the bank manager said, there had been a transfer from Switzerland, yes, to some admiral with an accent. So Herr Kommodore had lined his pockets with Swiss Francs, having exchanged a great many for greenbacks, simoleons, salad, and snaps, denominations unknown to me before my partnership with the stockade commander Major Tuck, McVeys janissary and my chaperone, my driver, my right-hand man, and jailor. Stout Major Tuck was a swarthy Greek, and his terse, laconic speech was laced with hepcat slang. The major did not look too deeply into things. Follow the bread, Major Tuck said, and suggested we visit the citys hotels, of which there were four. No, I think much more efficient would be to check with that bottle store across the square, I said. No doubt he placed an order to be delivered to his rooms. Well find out where those rooms are from the liquor seller. Roger, Tuck said. Schnapps, actually, and apple brandy, and a case of Tattinger, delivered to the Hotel Heidelberg, where else. Where, in the baronial suite, admittance to which was gained with the greasing of a greasy valets palm, we found four whores recumbent, and one in the bath. We had just missed the kaiser, according to the brunette carving a joint of lamb a la carte, but that he had left a note on the writing table for anyone who might seek his audience: To my erstwhile captors, I am without shame enamored of the American South and I mean to savor all of her charms. Godspeed in your pursuit. Your once obedient servant, Stolberg

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There it was, in the Hessians bold hand, an impossibly vague clue. Outside of my experiences of Camp Colquitt, I knew nothing of the South. And Tuck was from Queens. Either way, all we had to work with were Tucks impressions of the South gleaned through motion pictures and his comrades anecdotes. What, then, I asked him as we got back into the dusty staff car, a Buick Century shaped like a green giant scarab, were the charms of the South, other than ground hominy and side-meat? Barbeque. Football. Colored people, just about everything colored people do. Deer hunting. And church. They get hepped up on Jesus down here like you wouldnt believe. With Tucks deadpan delivery, it was hard to tell if he was being frank or droll. Hed be in need of new kit, no doubt, I said. Lets visit the local tailor, or maybe the haberdasher. What he purchased to wear will be telling. Negative on the haberdasher. Department store, McRaes, like as not, Tuck said. A man on the lam is going to buy off the rack, count or no count. Very true. Barney of McRaes told us of a Dutchman who bought shirts, a suit, gabardine trousers, a blazer, a dinner jacket, and pumps, which he packed in a large leather valise. And, he almost forgot, a Tyrolean hat. I asked him where in town would a gentleman be in need of a dinner jacket. There were private clubs and dinner parties, of course. Then theres Martin Jackals Make-Believe Ballroom. Classy joint, said Tuck. I was very curious to see what sort of entertainment Mr. Jackal purveyed. Very good, then, I said. We, too, will be in need of dinner jackets. The Make-Believe Ballroom was more or less what is known as a steakhouse with a dance floor encircled by booths. In the center was a rotating bandstand mounted by a jazz ensemble bristling with brass and contrabassoon. I believe they even had a gong. For a number called Shuffle off to Buffalo, a red-dressed painted strumpet crooned about a shotgun honeymoon. The star-lit dome ceiling was an aberration of astronomy. I noted Ursas Major and Minor in pursuit of one Virgo; two Aurora Boreali; three Milky Ways. The establishment was teeming with GIs in service dress. We were escorted to a

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booth under the Crab Nebula, a cozy place, paneled in oak with a curtain you could draw for privacy. The table linen was cotton, the silver was stainless steel, and the Chianti came in a basket. If one excluded the soldiers and sailors, we were not overdressed, though I still dont understand why such a low-brow eatery would insist upon eveningwear protocol. That being said, it was nice to dress for dinner after so long. It was also nice of the brigadier to be so liberal with his allowance. Tuck selected a double-breasted jacket one size too large so as to accommodate his shoulder holster, but otherwise it fit well. He was thoroughly charmed with the Make-Believe Ballroom, beaming under the false starlight, cheeks flushed from the scotch whisky and wine, singing along with the band about a place called 42nd Street, telephone exchange Pennsylvania 6-5000, and getting caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. But where was the kommodore? We had not seen him all night. When I was almost finished with my fillet (rare), and Tuck with his t-bone (well-done, with catsup), our waiter arrived at our table bearing a bottle of Mot, compliments of the gentleman in the corner. I looked across the make-believe ballroom and there sat Helmut von Helmut, Graf du Stolberg, Herr Kommodore, wearing a ridiculous handle-bar moustache, smiling at us and raising his glass. I nudged Tuck and indicated the viscount, and Tuck immediately reached into his coat for his automatic, but I hissed at him to stop, then turned to the waiter and said, Garon, would you be so good as to invite the gentleman to join us? Hes splitsville, Tuck said, once the waiter had poured the champagne. No, I know the man. He will join us. It is simply too delicious for him not to. The viscount made his way to us across the ballroom, champagne flute in hand, and in his monocle and drooping moustaches and his Order of the Knights Cross in his buttonhole he looked to be the baron of all license, der kronprinz aus nachtleben. Tuck stood, his hand still inside his jacket, the kommodore bowed and slid into the booth, Tuck getting in after him, like the parody of an inspector accompanying a crook in the back of his prowl car. Youll forgive me if I dont salute, Herr Kommodore, I said.

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Ach, Leutnant, not to worry, the kommodore said. We are out of uniform. Indeed, you two are quite under the covers, yes? Thats undercover, Tuck said. The jig is, how you say, up, no? the kommodore said. Will you come quietly? Tuck asked. Of course, I am beaten, the kommodore said, filling his flute with champagne. That would not be very sporting of me, to attempt escape now, would it, Herr Major? Roger that, Tuck said. Roger that, sir, the kommodore said. Now, you must tell me, where are all the MPs? Incognito as well? No, sir, I said. Its just us. Tuck shushed me but I continued. General McVey wants to keep your escape as quiet as possible. He says you are of high intelligence value, and that news of your escape would ruin him. The kommodore sighed and said, The general is a good man. I do not want to ruin him. I just wanted, how you say, a bit of fresh air. So youll cooperate, sir? Tuck asked. Of course, of course. But let us at least be civilized. Let us finish first this excellent wine, the kommodore said, adjusting his monocle and lifting his glass, eyeing it quite deliberately. To the generals health. As we toasted, the chanteuse in red sidled up, put her hand on Tucks shoulder and asked him for a light. He lit her cigarette which she smoked in a long ivory holder, and she told him that shed noticed him singing, that he seemed to know every word, and did he not think that her singing was fine, and that surely she had seen him there before. She wondered if she might join the major for a drink and the major filled her glass. She pulled up a chair next to Tuck and looked to have her hand on his thigh but I could not see for sure. During this exchange the kommodore asked if the major was armed, and I nodded my head. Then he spoke in German. Is there really nobody outside? No sir, just the major and myself. Why you? the kommodore asked. His eyes were shining. He looked hurt. The general said hed send my men back to Russia.

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Ach! Brilliant. But dont you know hell do that anyway? He gave me his word, Herr Kommodore, I said. At this point the singer was whispering in Tucks ear. His word? And you believed him? Alles erlogen. This is war, Leutnant. The war is over, Herr Kommodore. Maybe for you. Ring the bell. Lets have one more bottle of champagne. Look, you must help me. We can make it look like an accident, like it was not your fault I got away. Please, one last detail for your commanding officer. I have a responsibility to my men. Your primary responsibility to your men is to faithfully discharge your duties as an officer. And as an officer in captivity, your duty is to escape. Would you cheapen all for which they have fought and suffered? My thoughts were a storm. What if it did look like an accident, surely the general would not punish my men for that. That would be inhuman. You know what will happen to my men if they are repatriated, I said. I cannot have that on my conscience. Your men will go to Siberia no matter what and you know that. It is lunacy to believe otherwise. If you return to Colquitt, you, too, will go to Siberia. Dont be a fool. Yes, our American captors have shown us excellent hospitality. But dont be taken in by that. They are a humanitarian people. But they are merely following the dictates of an international agreement. Expect no mercy beyond that. Do you really think they want their former enemies loose on the streets of their fair nation? No. They want to wash their hands of us. General McVey is an officer and a gentleman, I said. If I believe in anything, I believe in the sanctity of honor among officers. I must believe that he will keep his word. Dont lecture me on honor, the kommodore said, his visage firm. As a commissioned officer you took an oath. Schme dich. How can you expect honor in your enemies if you yourself are not a man of honor? Then his expression softened, and he continued. I have a daughter, my only child. You have seen her photograph. She is very lovely, and unmarried, living in exile. If you come with me, I promise you her hand.

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I have no male heir. No one to take the title Stolberg when I die. You could ensure the perpetuation of this great line. Come, be the son I never had. Stolberg, I whispered, and repeated again in my head. For the favor of this great man, what would I not do? He was only asking that I discharge faithfully my sworn duty. An officers first duty is to his mission, then to his men. And the kommodore was right, the mission of an officer in captivity is escape. If I was a petty officer, or a mere rating, then things would be the other way around. But as an officer it was my sworn duty to place the mission above all else. The kommodore smiled at me, little wrinkles gathering at the corners of his eyes. His teeth were as white as the starched pleats of his shirt and I wondered how he kept them so. I could take you with me, the kommodore said softly. As my prisoner. McVey wont punish your men for that. We could even stage your death. Please, dear boy. The waiter filled our glasses with what remained in the original bottle, and he began to take the foil off of the new one. In the corner of my eye I saw another waiter doing the same, and the report of the shot cork inspired me. The heat had rushed to my cheeks with the kommodores offer. No, no. I will open it, I said. Of course, sir, the waiter said, and left our table. I nodded gravely to the kommodore. I had an idea. I made idle conversation with the kommodore, slowly segueing back into English. We laughed, though my legs were numb and every nerve from my waist up was electric. After kissing Tuck on the cheek, the singer slinked off to her stage, and the band struck up another number. Let us have one more glass, I said, taking the bottle in my hands. Negative, Tuck said. But then the singer pointed at Tuck and said, This next number is dedicated to a very special gentleman, and she started to sing in her affected smoky baritone. Tuck blushed and turned his attention toward his admirer. I took the bottle, pointed it at Tuck, and with my thumb pushed off the cork, which shot off with amazing velocity and hit Tuck squarely in the nose, which spat blood as if on cue. Instinctively, Tucks hands

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went to his face, and the kommodore reached in Tucks coat and drew his automatic with one hand and pulled the booths curtains shut with the other. Oh, dear, I said. Ugh, my fucking nose. You idiot. Tuck, I think we have more pressing concerns than your nose, I said. The kommodore winked at me. I know, I know. Hes got my side arm. Jesus Christ. Is it broken? Let me see it, I said. Yes, its broken. You numbskull. Were toast. How on earth Im sorry, I said. I was only trying to. Here I began, taking my napkin and making to rise until the kommodore pointed the pistol at me. May I interrupt this lovers spat, the kommodore said, cutting me to the bone, he seemed to mean it, and pointing that gun at me was absolutely chilling. At that moment it didnt seem like he was acting. Sit down. I sat. In me, the giddiness of collaboration had evaporated. And though I was relieved when he jabbed the barrel of the gun back into Tucks ribs, I still was unsure of my standing with the kommodore. Listen very carefully. Durmanov, you are going to leave money on the table. And then you are going to help me convey the major to his motorcar, as he is clearly drunk. Let us not make a scene. It would be a great pity to embarrass the brigadier in front of all these American soldiers. The kommodore handed a napkin to Tuck. Please see to yourself, Herr Major. You are a mess. Back at our suite in the Heidelberg, the kommodore ordered me at gun-point to bind and gag Tuck and situate him in the bathtub so as to keep him from soiling the rug overnight. The major looked pitiful stuffed in the bath, his belly overlapping the waistband of his drawers. He was serene, never once moaning through the stockings stuffed in his mouth. I closed the door on him, and the kommodore, still pressing the pistol in the small of my back, said, I am taking with me your accomplice, this Russian sleuth, who has proven so adept at betraying the flag underneath which he sailed. For him I have special plans, most wondrous strange. Gute nacht, Herr Major.

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Only when we were back at the staff car did the kommodore end the charade. He is both poet and actor, he said, jostling my shoulder. You are a true artist. Now, where shall we go? Charleston? Memphis? You decide. What a fabulous machine. Such an engine. Straight eight cylinder, 165 horsepower. High gear ratio. So huge. Would Herr Kommodore care to drive? I asked. I would love, to, but, alas, I cannot. I never learned how, the kommodore said as he got in the passenger side door. I closed the door after him and he resumed speaking once I had gotten behind the wheel. I never needed to; I always had a driver. But that doesnt stop me from reading everything I can find about these marvelous conveyances. Look how we own the road, he said. We were driving down the middle of a two-lane highway under a canopy of oak trees that occasionally thinned out enough to offer a glimpse of the indigo skyscape occasionally streaked with the falling Leonids. The kommodore insisted that we drive in the middle as opposed to in our lane. He had not gotten where he was by yielding right-of-way to others, he told me. From time to time an approaching car would be obliged to veer onto the shoulder, sounding its horn the horns on American automobiles are deep, virile, throaty trumpets that bellow with gusto, not like the tinny chirp of a Volkswagen or Citronand flashing its high-beams. So huge, he continued, like a boat. I would very much like to be buried in a Buick, the kommodore said. I would not, I said, and I steered the car into the right lane. The kommodore did not protest. So, where will it be, Leutnant? Raleigh, North Carolina? Colonial Williamsburg? May I speak freely, sir? I asked. My life for the past nine years, it seemed, had been a sequence of events in which I sought permission. His Erlaucht, and his obedient servant Unwilling hostage, the kommodore corrected. and his unwilling hostage will soon be the subjects of a vast and fearsome manhunt, what our captor nation refers to as a dragnet, from which there will be no escape. I predict we have until just before noon tomorrow when the maid comes to clean my suite and finds Major Tuck in the bath.

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Not much time, hmm? he said. No, Herr Kommodore. Then Virginia is out of the question. Sir, still speaking freely, is that what this is all about? Holiday making? A motor-tour of the American South? You must flee this country, and you must do so now. You could still secure passage on a cargo lighter. Im afraid its too late, and too conspicuous, to book a stateroom on the Queen Mab. But on a cargo ship you could sail to Lisbon, and make your way from there. Make our way where? Germany? Hesse-Cassel? There is nothing for me there. My estates are razed, the fields are salted. My only family is my daughter, and, as I told you, she is in exile. I am the last of the Stolberg line. All I have is my money, and not much of it in American currency. The slattern in red I should not have tipped so lavishly. Did the general give you cash, or a checkbook? Cash. Gut. Sehr gut. Passage will be expensive. What about Brazil? I asked. Anyplace was better than the highway, which would soon be roadblocked by the end of the day tomorrow. From New Orleans, or even Savannah you could secure passage to Brazil. I noticed flashing red lights in the mirror and my heart stopped. The kommodore noticed them too but he was unflappable. The police car switched to the left lane and passed us, disappearing into the deep blue meridian. Brazil, the kommodore said. Brazil is for Nazis. Im not going to Brazil. No, no, I know all about your dragnet. In truth, I harbor no intentions of staying here, as much as the South ravishes me. No. We will head for the coast, and we will sail for Deutsch-Sdwestafrika. The Great Namib. My family has a compound there. Rather, I have a compound there. With a full staff. A charming family of Boers, hunters, guides, has looked after the place for the Stolbergs for generations. My daughter will be there waiting for us. I can only hope that lout Westphalia has vacated the villa in Windhoek. Every time the kommodore said we or our, I felt a sharp pang in my chest, and I didnt know if the source of the feeling was the welfare of my men or the affection of this man I had admired for so long. Or was it the prospect of marrying into nobility? I

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know I would never be the Viscount of Stolberg, but I could one day be his father. Meanwhile, I would be the consort to the Viscountess. The photo of her that the kommodore carried was a professionally shot portrait, and the girl was graceful; her face lacked the hardened, angular quality that marks the Slavic beauty. She had dark curls, round eyes, and dimples, sweet and exquisite. She was pretty, but did not strike me as silly. Her slightly pursed lips betrayed wit, sophistication. She had schooled at the Sorbonne, according to her father, and was a voracious reader of poetry. My heart was a dreadful confusion. If I fled to Africa with the kommodore, then my men would be sent to Siberia, where they would languish and die. If I returned to Colquitt empty-handed, my men might have a chance, there would be hope. By all appearances, I had been taken hostage, perhaps for my (the generals) money, perhaps because the kommodore could not drive. Both would be plausible enough as explanations. In my life I had never been presented with two mutually exclusive things I wanted to do more than protect my men and escape to an exotic locale and join the ranks of the nobility. Though I had initially been caught up in the excitement of a new life at the Make-Believe Ballroom, in my heart I had not fully committed to either abandoning my men or abandoning my commanding officer. His Erlaucht continues to say we, I said. I cannot accompany you, Herr Kommodore, to Africa. I have the fate of my sailors to consider. Pretty words, but my heart was not in them. Indeed, I had no idea where my heart was, though it felt like it was in my throat. Come now, Leutnant, I thought we had been through that. You know that the brigadier lies. No, sir. All I know is that the general is an officer and a gentleman. You are nave, he said. And you are treading dangerously close to dereliction of duty. Do not forget that I am armed, Leutnant. But I pray it doesnt come to that. You are confused, of course. I see the tension in you. I see the struggle. You need time. A precious commodity, time. But let us use what we have. Drive us toward the closest port. On the way well make a night of it. If, once we reach this port, you have decided that you cannot accompany me, then we will bid farewell. I will bind you and leave you on the wharf where you will be found sooner than later. Until then, let us enjoy

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ourselves, for old times sake, in this lovely land that has been so good to us. You owe me at least this. One last night on liberty. Besides, you have no choice. And so, the deal, such as it was, was struck. We stopped in a nearby well-treed university town called Sparta and drove around the campus. Greek Revival was the prevailing architectural aesthetic in this hamlet known as the Classic City. It was not quite midnight and I wasnt sure exactly what the kommodore expected to find until we turned down a boulevard lined with rambling mansions, some colonnaded, others gingerbreaded in the Victorian style, all with flood lights and vast, trimmed yards, and wrap-around porches, all bearing letters from the Greek alphabet, and this last feature, combined with the classical architecture, made me feel, not exactly at home, but at least not so alien. I rolled down my window and heard a cacophony of music; it seemed each house was vying for sonic supremacy over the other, screeching horns of the big band variety, and peals of raucous laughter. For all that I had heard of collegiate licentiousness in the States, I do not recall seeing any young ladies, coeds they called them. Damned nuisance that would be, imagine trying to learn anything among the chatter and prattle and swishing of skirts. The kommodore parked at the curb in front of a moldering Georgian house bearded in ivy. They call it the Greek system but to my eyes it was absolutely Roman. In the dining room, long and high-ceilinged with exposed rafters like a mead hall, the table and chairs had been cleared out and the hardwood floor was awash with beer. At one end of the room young men clad only in their underwear stood in two lines. Others, wearing coats and ties in various states of disarray, egged them on. The two half-nude boys at the head of each line would, on command, run ten paces and then dive head first, landing on the floor with a wet, smacking sound and slide through the beer towards the other end of the room. The boy who slid furthest won the race, and both would return to the ends of their respective lines. Then a fellow manning a keg would hose down the floor to prepare it for the next two contestants. Wagers were made by the older, clothed boys, and the races invariably degenerated into half-nude wrestling matches. An unshaven, thicknecked wretch wearing around his neck a heavy steel chain with a padlock was perched on the wrought-iron chandelier, swinging to and fro, bare-chested and brandishing the half-eaten ham bone of some large game animal they had cooked in a pit earlier that day.

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Occasionally he chanted, Yes, yes, and more. Where was Nero with his fiddle? This was the famous GI Bill at work. How could we ever hope to defeat a nation so great, so powerful, with resources so vast as to permit the government subsidizing of such organized mayhem. And yet, I believe, if given the opportunity, my sailors would have done exactly the same, only they would have sung while they did so. Our hosts seemed to take little notice of us, other than dispatching one of the barechested athletes to take our drink orders. The kommodore asked for schnapps and I for vodka and the boy returned with two glasses of beer. Oh, my men, my men, what would they think of me, in evening dress drinking beer on a college campus with my quarry and their salvation the kommodore, watching the enemy placing bets on each other while they lay wagers on how many days they have left until sentenced to the death camps. Would they understand the temptation of Frau Stolbergs ingenuous yet knowing gaze, would they empathize with my opportunism, or the fealty I had sworn to the oath I took when commissioned an officer? Would they believe what I was trying so stridently to believe, that they were doomed, viscount or no viscount? A resident of the house, natty in glen plaid and a bow tie, stuck up a conversation with us. He thought we were professors, from the modern languages department, and we did not disabuse him of the notion. His favorite part of university was not merely the dissemination of ideas, but the opportunities to establish a rapport with great scholars, to engage in high-minded discourse with ones elders over a drink, in this case beer, which my kommodore wanted to trade in for something harder. Have you no strong spirits, lad? he asked. No, sir, Im afraid weve drunk the house dry. But I know where to get some. Lead the way, young man. We will drive, said the kommodore. The Subway Lounge was two towns away, across the county line, and at two in the morning, it was just warming up. True to its namesake the establishment was underground, a long, low-ceilinged narrow basement with a dingy bar and few stools and several deal tables. At the far end of the lounge was a small stage on which played a four-piece Negro combo, saxophone, piano, double-bass and drums. The music ranged from low and plaintive melancholia to high tension sturm und drang, syncopated blitzkriegs that threatened to split the seams of the squalid little bistro. Here there was

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no Glen Miller, no Gloria Van, no Lindy hop. This place was dark, and though none of the Negro patrons batted an eye at the white boy buying bottles of bonded gin, the middle-aged viscount and his prisoner were pilgrims in unholy territory. Or so it seemed to me. Our young charge brought us frankfurters and a pail filled with ice and bottles of beer. There would be a slight delay in the procuring of all the requisite spirits. As I ate my frank and watched the band I noticed the kommodore and the boy conferring quietly. The boy indicated with a nod a buxom young Negress in a floral print dress sitting at the end of the bar. At this point, time ceased to progress fluidly, as it normally did. For me it began to move in slow staccato steps, in freeze-frames, in snaps of the shutter aperture. The boy and the kommodore negotiate with the young woman at the bar; the boy brokers a deal; the kommodore disappears with the woman behind a beaded curtain in the back. The bassist spins his double-bass on its spindle with a flourish and the saxophonist removes his sunglasses and mops his brow. I had not been with a woman for a very long time. In captivity we heard rumors of a prison camp in San Francisco that allowed its Italian inmates to wander the streets on their own recognizance, and that, naturally, they always found their way to the citys red light district. Camp Colquitt permitted much, but was never quite that indulgent. The notion of lying with a woman seemed so far out of the realm of possibility that I had stopped thinking I might ever do so again. That day, however, had been a red letter day; first the prospect of marrying a Hessian noblewoman, and then love for sale in the jazz club. When the kommodore returned to the table, I could smell the tang of his illicit interlude wafting off his starched white collar. He smiled that tired, avuncular smile and pecked me on the cheek. The girl in the floral print had returned to her station at the bar. Without a word, I got up from our table and approached her without the intercession of our young pimp. She looked me up and down and laughed, saying all these Dutchmen were going to wear Momma out. She finished her beer and led me by the hand behind the beaded curtain and up a narrow flight of stairs that smelled like people slept there, and our bower was a small, drafty room that reeked of creosote. There was a thin mattress on a metal frame. The bedclothes had been made, and were turned back, and

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this touch gave an incongruous air of hospitality to this shabby, meagerly appointed, dingy rendezvous. It wasnt the shabbiness that robbed me of my virility that night. At many portsof-call I had frequented the filthiest bordellos wartime had to offer. Nor was it my courtesan; she was not only shapely, she was most accommodating. She left no technique untried. But no matter how much she coaxed, I could not respond. My mind was flooded with images of my comrades, swabbing the decks of U-908, beating to quarters, welcoming aboard rescued pilots, taking photos with the colors of captured ships. Then there were the images of us in captivity: the football in the muddy parade ground, Sundays in the canteen, the crew presenting me with a rude cake on my name day every year, and the dancing, oh, the dancing, the kadril naya, the squat dance, and the men blacking their worn boots for the rowdy kor boushka. Those were halcyon days. No more fighting, no more depth charges, all the sunlight and fresh air and fresh food a man could take. Russia seemed so very far away then. Not anymore. I saw them in their cots, awake long past lights out, whispering to each other the privations, the horrors that awaited them in the gulag. And there I was, laying with a woman, my tuxedo hanging on a nail, as my commanding officer sat in the basement, watching a jazz combo and waiting for me to drive us to freedom. No, I could not perform, and, if I continued on my present course, I doubted that I ever would; countess or no countess, I would always see the faces of the men I had betrayed. The war was still on for the kommodore, at least with respect to the obligations of an officer during the time of war. But the war was over. It ended for us when we were taken captive. My obligation was not to Stolberg, not to my oath, but to the men who had bled and sweated under me, who at one time depended on me to get them to the surface again, and now who depended on me to keep them safely far away from home. I looked at the girl. She smiled sweetly. I think she could tell that my thoughts were elsewhere. I was embarrassed. I gave her twice the fee upon which we had agreed, hurriedly dressed, and went back to the basement to retrieve the kommodore. Our young guide had passed out. We frog-marched him to the car, and then we frog-marched him to his sleeping brothers. Then we continued east, toward the port of Savannah. I was feeling tired; dawn had just broken, and we had indulged deeply that

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night. But if the kommodore was weary, he was showing no signs of it. If only he would fall asleep I could disarm him. Otherwise, all was lost. I would drop him off at the port, he would escape and I would be held accountable. I was beginning to doubt that General McVey would not punish my men for my failure, officer or no. A man so desperate to conceal this affair that he blackmails one prisoner to find another rather than alert the authorities might be capable of any kind of skullduggery. In the meantime, there would be neither escape nor capture if I did not keep myself awake. Herr Kommodore, I must have some coffee, or we will never make it. Yes, and I must visit the head, he said. Pull over somewhere in the next town. The next town was Daisy, which was hardly a town at all, little more than a feed store and a diner, where we pulled in. Bacon crackled and spat on the grill. Our entrance had initially drawn stares from the patrons, middle-aged, red-faced men clad mainly in flannel and canvas and brogans; two Dutchmen in dinner jackets and patent leather pumps must have made quite an impression. We walked up to the aluminum and Formica counter and I ordered two take-away coffees. This was very un-European, and not at all Russian. But the kommodore insisted. He was, understandably, in a hurry, in such a hurry that, when we were once again in the parking lot, the kommodore said, Ach! I forgot the head, and went back inside the diner. Other than my brief and unproductive tryst with the girl at the jazz club, this was the first moment Id had to myself since leaving Camp Colquitt, and my mind raced. I could drive away now, but that would accomplish nothing; I would no longer be the kommodores hostage, but the kommodore would be at large. I could plead my case to one of the agrarian patrons inside, but by the time they penetrated my accent, the kommodore would have finished his business. I was lost in thought, and only when a tow truck had to drive around me, did I realize I was standing in the middle of the parking lot. The tow truck put in my mind the notion of car trouble. If only we experienced engine failure, then maybe we wouldnt make it to Savannah before being caught. I would still secure my mens safety by having detained the kommodore. But we did not have engine trouble.

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However, that did not mean that I could not feign engine trouble. I was not in possession of the kommodores vast knowledge of the automobile, but I did know what a spark plug was and what an engine would not do without one (or 8, as was the case with the Buick), namely, ignite. I propped open the bonnet of the staff car and loosened the distributor cap, and sat back behind the wheel where I turned the key to no avail. I was wondering if this ruse would buy me enough time to execute the next phase of my plan when the kommodore had returned. Ach! Not now, we are too close, he said. What is the problem? No ignition, I said. She will not start? he asked. That does not sound too complicated. Perhaps I should take a look. The kommodore walked to the front of the car and stuck his head under the bonnet. Yes, I said. Your expert knowledge of the automobile may yet save the day. The kommodore tinkered under the bonnet and said, Try now. But I was in no position to try the key as I had slipped out of the car and was standing behind him. I thought one more time of the fairy tale awaiting me across the Atlantic in a castle in the desert, and I thought again of the frozen wasteland in the armpit of the northern hemisphere. When the kommodore again said, Try again, I slammed down the bonnet, breaking the rod that propped it up, and knocking the kommodore unconscious. I lifted the bonnet, removed Tucks pistol from the kommodores waistband and slipped it into my own, and wondered if I would have to use it on the sun-baked farmers spilling out of the diner and advancing on me, having witnessed the entire performance, and whether they could tell a good Dutchman from a bad one.

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THE PLAYBOY PRESIDENT: THE JOURNAL OF A FALLEN LORD OF BEASTS AND MEN

Never a Nehru man, my sartorial tastes were more in line with those of the banana republic generalissimo: white tunic, gold epaulettes, outsized aviators with the mirror lenses. But when I looked in my closet that daythe one closet in my third-floor walkupI saw then that the tunic had yellowed. Perhaps this is for the best, I thought. Age had lent a sort of ivoried dignity to the garment, refined it, given it something more like the creamy patina of a dinner jacket than the industrial Dacron sheen of some junior naval officers mess coat. At any rate, I hadnt the time to have another one cut, as the gentleman sitting in my parlor needed my answer directly. He was a strapping young thing in a beige poplin suit, and would have looked right fetching in some dress whites himself, I daresay. His name was Hunt and he had made me quite a proposition. He said I was to have my old job back, if I still wanted it. Life in exile suited me just fine, I must admitthe bracciole at the Italian butcher on 7th Avenue, fresh baguettes just next door, the pop and hiss of shallots sauting in my kitchenette (the exigencies of life without a staff had demanded that I master the kettle and the skillet), free concerts in Prospect Park, the occasional Yankees game. Those simple pleasures. But then there was the rush, the electric charge of command that one felt when giving the order, Assemble the army, especially when confronted with a superior force, which was not unlike putting ones last chip on 36 and watching the wheel spin. No, I decided, the wielding of power was not a sensation that one could obtain down the street at the Korean deli. So I slipped off my cardigan and slipped on my faded tunic, the ribbons and the gold braided cord and aiguillette still intact. I could still squeeze into the neck but the waist simply would not button. Nevertheless, when I returned to the parlor Hunt rose to his feet and said, Monsieur President, you look like a million dollars. And thats all I needed to hear. That was the day I fell in love. Hunt and I were escorted to an idling Continental by two guards in sunglasses and mufti who spoke clipped, cryptic sentences into miniature microphones stitched into their lapels. Their suitsboth charcoal pinstripe, despite the beastly weatherwere positively bulging with firepower. That, too, that armed escort, was a rush. No one had fawned 130

over me, much less spirited me away sincewell, since I had lost my job, some ten years prior. Two other practically identical security officerssame thick necks, same worsted woolremained in my apartment to pack my effects, which they would send on later. Meanwhile, I was to be installed in an undisclosed location where I was hoping to find a competent masseuse, or, with any luck, a masseur. At breakfast later that week, Hunt was red-eyed and reticent and walking with the shambling, bandylegged gait of the recently roughly buggered, or so it seemed, and I imagined that his night was more like my Laotian paramours than mine. This slender Ivy Leaguer should stay away from the rough trade, I thought, Yes, Hunts a tender lad who needs caressing, cuddling, fondling, lubrication. A romantic, to be sure. We were dining in my rooms at the undisclosed hotel. As he buttered his scone his hands tremored as if struck with the palsy and I noticed my own hands, steadyno thanks to the champagne orgy of the previous eveningbut spotted, mottled with pinks and reds. Nothing white gloves wouldnt conceal but they reminded me all the same that years had passed since I had been called on to do anything save tip a doorman and I wondered if I was up for the challenge. There would be decisions to be made, taxes to be levied, ministers to be appointed, dissenters to be dismissed. You cant run up this sort of tab every night, Hunt said, the receipt from that weeks room service trembling between his thumb and forefinger. He was put out with me, my handsome handler, and all the more handsome for it, his thick, blonde hair with its Robert Kennedy cowlick tousled from running his hands through it, his brow furrowed with care. I have to answer for these charges, you know. Five magnums of Mumms? Five jeroboams, I said. One case of Veuve Cliquot, four beef Wellingtons, oysters Rockefeller, truffles, truffles, trufflesthirty dollars for a hamburger? Hunt dropped the receipt. It was topped with Roquefort, I said. My rationalizations were of no use. Hunt was red-faced and fed up, and so soon into our acquaintance. He rubbed his temples. Youre going to have to cut back. Were going to have to work something out, he said. Yes we will, darling, I thought. Yes we will.

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The company had tried once before to reinstall me, years ago, an aborted attempt in which I never made it any farther than Rangoon. A shame, really, that my only trip abroad since being ousted was to filthy old Rangoon. This time, however, they succeeded. There I was, in the presidential villa overlooking the capital NamasteLamah, pacing in the peristyle, the clicking of my heels on the marble tiles reverberating among the columns, waiting for my egg cream, my intestines a war zone for tropical protozoa. I realized I was a million miles away from my cozy little exile in Brooklyn. If I wasnt happy thereand why wouldnt I be, the little Turkish bath house, and high tea across the bridge in Chelseaat least I was at peace. But once Id met Hunt, I was as agitated as a schoolboy with a crush on his neighbor, and I hadnt even kissed him yet. God knew why the Hanuman Islands were of any strategic importance to the worlds superpower. Hunt told me that it had to do with clandestine trade with some embargoed sheikhs across the sea. The company meant to set up some shell corporations on Hanumanian soil. I was sure it was all terribly interesting but I had the heady responsibility of command to bear and simply could not be troubled with the tedium and minutiae of commerce. Besides, it was really none of my concern, as long as my benefactors preserved my job security, which Hunt had guaranteedprovided I did not stray from the companys policyin a communiqu composed a week after he took French leave, which was two months ago. Though I had made emphatically clear to my valet that the egg cream in fact contains no egg he returned to the peristyle with a Collins glass brimming with a viscous, sticky brew into which he had whipped three eggs, President-sahib, three. Wretched troglodyte, it wasnt his fault, I suppose, but I fetched him a swift kick to his scanty behind anyway. This did not make me feel better like it used to. Sex no longer thrilled me. I even tried on for size a serving girl, thinking that the novelty might arouse the bold fellow. It did not. When I was with her I could only think of my handler, and I even had the poor thing don white flannels and a navy blazer, like Hunt had worn to the Presidential Tea at my retreat in the hills, but this only made me feel fat and sad. In that last cable he had said that I was doing top notch work toeing the company line and he made clear, in the brevity peculiar to such missives, that he felt

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his job conducting me back to power was done, that I had acclimated, that someday we might see each other at an embassy party. What rot. Well, Hunt wouldnt wash his hands of me just yet. I set about devising ways to garner his attention, figuring that only through bad government would I entice him to visit, looking to scold me. First, I changed the curriculum in the primary and secondary schools: abolished all the maths, and declared any and all utterances of the English language a misdemeanor punishable by three years in labor camp. The students and faculty could read in English all they liked, but, within the school walls, none could speak it. As English and French were the official languages of the Hanumans, and only government officials and the intelligentsia spoke French, this measure rendered difficult the business of education and was ultimately enforced for only two weeks. During this period I had no word from Hunt or his embassy. Then there was the matter of the coin of our realm, the Hanumanian Rupee, the flimsy brown notes emblazoned in pink and violet with the beast gods of the republics benighted denizenry. I had rarely deigned to touch the filthy currencythe bills disintegrated rapidly and always looked as if theyd spent a month in some prisoners rectumand instead trafficked in pounds sterling, or the American dollar. So for me there was no love lost when I glutted the market with a new currency, the Obermark, which featured images of me. The Five Obermark note bore an engraving based on a photograph of me at Oxford swinging a cricket bat when I played for Kings College. In the center of the Twenty Im at the Savoy with a tousled brunette on my arm, and on the Ten Thousand Obermark, Im wearing sunglasses and blowing a saxophone. My advisors told me that no merchants honored the currency, choosing to accept only rupees, and I regret to this day not recalling those filthy old notes and declaring them obsolete. Still no word from Hunt. So, that day in the peristyle, I paced and paced and asked myself what sort of minor mischief might a smitten despot make? And, like a vision, it came to me. Remember your Suetonius, I said aloud. Look to the Caesars. And it was at that moment that I decided to imprison the army officers who were loyal to my predecessor during the coup that had ousted me. That got his attention.

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The next day my chamberlain announced Hunt who was looking wilted in damp linen. I received him in my billiards room. I had furnished the room with three tournament-size tables covered in purple baize, and the walls were papered in purple damask, trimmed in gold lame. Very regal, in an African bully-boy way. It was unapologetically tacky and I loved it. I challenged Hunt to a game of snooker. He declined. An army needs its officers, Henri, Hunt said. As does a navy, I said. Vermouth cassis? Pernod? Gin and tonic? Hunt declined again, and when he refused even a seat I realized that this meeting was not going to proceed as planned. I experienced that sinking sensation one feels when ones flirtations with last nights love-interest are not reciprocated the following day, a sort of barren dryness in the bowels. Those men I cannot trust, I said. What would you have me do? Harbor traitors on the government payroll? No, my friend. I choose to line with gold the pockets of sons of the nation, and sons of the nation only. With what, Henri? Hunt asked. He loosened his Harvard necktie and poured himself a whisky, neat, from a decanter on the sideboard, and for just a moment it seemed that my prospects had changed. Certainly not Obermarks. Youd do well to remember that at any given moment we know just what lines your national coffers, or, more to the point, what does not. What promises have you made your loyalists, your sons of the nation, so as to keep them loyal? What makes you think they wont stage a coup so as to stay out of jail? What, in a word, is wrong with you? Our first spat, I said, refreshing my own drink. How sweet. Listen, Hunt said. Corruption, graftwe understand these concepts. But the fact of the matter is that you stand to gain nothing from any of these highly unorthodox decisions. You are behaving like a madman. We want the Hanuman Archipelago to function on her own two feet. We want you to make your own decisions, to practice your sovereignty. But not at the expense of reason. Arresting half your armys officers? What sort of kangaroo court, what sort of gangster government are you running here? Have some dignity, man. Are you a leader, or just another wog with an entourage?

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I felt my cheeks burn white-hot at this last quip, beyond the pale of playful banter between intimates, and I was too stunned, if not too hurt, to return the volley. Release the prisoners, Hunt said. Release them and reinstate them. Compensate them for their time. Tell them it was a training exercise in resisting interrogation. Buy them. And dont make me come back here. He threw his jacket over his shoulder and I could see his white shirt sticking to the small of his back and, without an undershirt, I could see the ripple of his lateral muscles. When he slammed the door behind him my heart lept and, despiteor rather because ofhis epithet, I set to engineering our next encounter. To think he had no idea that I loved him. At Eton we played this board game in which the object was to achieve world domination through attacking opponents nations. A roll of the dice determined the outcome of these skirmishes. A player interested in winning sought to gain control of the world continent by continent. I was never interested in winning. When I played I assumed the role of the rogue nation, never leaving behind enough troops to sufficiently defend a territory, attacking all nations, cutting a swathe through that archaic landscape, taking Mesopotamia or Ceylon and never looking back, signing only pacts of full aggression. Sometimes my desperate antics amused my classmates, most times I frustrated them and soon enough they ceased to include me in their all-night campaigns. But for me the prospect of losing was as exciting as that of winning. These were the ups and downs of the gamblers life, and it was in this spirit that, in order to gain Hunts attention, I decided to invade Jumal al Wadi, my neighbor to the west. As my grand vetting of disloyal officers from the army reduced that institution to little more than a government-subsidized drinking club, I decided upon a naval incursion. The Armada Hanuman was on the smallish side, consisting of what we in the banana republic business call an aging Russian fleet: two Zhuk-class patrol boats, the Spanish Mackerel and the Yakov Sverdlov, one amphibious landing craft, and our flagship, the Albatros-class corvette Lakshmi Singh. Each of the patrol boats carried a complement of fifty and the Lakshmi Singh had a crew of 100. And whereas this may strike one as a small force with which to take another country, Jumal al Wadi, site of the long ago

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abandoned Soviet listening station, had no navy at all, just a coast guard comprised of inflatable pontoons and a mahogany motor launch that had been the pleasure craft of the whilom Portuguese governor-general. The island was of absolutely no strategic or economic value to the Hanumans, but it was sovereign, and, by god, it was there; I needed an island to take, not to keep. My first naval campaign. Well, your armchair commodore would tell you that coastal patrol boats simply are not built for the high seas and your armchair commodore would be correct. By some stroke of dumb luck we lost neither Spanish Mackerel nor the Yakov in the gale that raged between Jumal and the Hanumans, but when the time came for landing, both crews were so seasick we might as well have lost them. This left me with a party of one hundred men which was making for the shore in the landing craft. But standing in the bow of the launch, the air raunchy with diesel, one foot on the gunwale, the sea spray spattering my top boots and jodhpurs, wearing a bicorn and brandishing my cutlass, I might have had a regiment of marines ten-thousand strong. I saw the Jumal al Madi Home Defence Force scrambling down the sand dunes to meet our beachhead and I felt electric, my spine tingled and my breath was short and choppy as if I was twelve thousand meters above the sea. It is not every day a head of state storms the beach. I ordered my bugler to blow the charge, which over the din of the engine was inaudible, so I had the helmsman blow the klaxon as well. In my calculations of the enemys defenses I had not allowed for artillery. For a primitive people, the Jumalis were in possession of an excellent battery. They opened with a salvo from a trio of 107mm howitzers positioned on the berm, and a shell from one of these tore straight through the pilot house of the Yakov. And they kept the shells coming regularly, if not inaccurately, hitting the water all around us and sending great white columns of sea spume fifty meters into the sky. The Lakshmi Singh was returning fire with her 30mm and the quad .50s but I had in mind a more dramatic riposte. I raised Lakshmis captain on the radio and ordered him to lock on to the howitzer emplacements and fire the Seersuckers, a smallish sort of cruise missile a handful of which I won in a backroom game of baccarat in Monaco. At the time the Seersuckers represented the sum total of our cutting-edge defense system capabilities, but I was never one to pinch pennies in a tight spot. I also figured that, no matter in how much trouble this adventure would

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land me, Hunt would appreciate with a wry smile the sartorial cachet of the firepower with which I took the island. Besides, we were allies with the superpower so there would be no limits on the weapons systems available to us in the future. Well, the Seersuckers did the trick, but not before two of the howitzers sank the Spanish Mackerel with what I learned later were incendiary rounds, white phosphorous, to be precise. The detonation upon their simultaneous impactnow thats fire control for youwith the bow and stern was marvelous to behold. The explosion was just this white flash, soft, fluffy almost, not unlike a cumulonimbus cloud. And then the smoke practically vanished. I read later in Janes that white phosphorous burns at a temperature of 5000 Fahrenheit, and that it was this intense heatand it was intense, even at a distance of two hundred meters I felt my face scaldthat forced the smoke to rise and dissipate so rapidly. All that was left was the bubbling, melted hulk of the Spanish Mackerel, which sunk directly with nary a scream from the nauseated crew incinerated within. It was eerie. It was stunning. It was magnificent. With the Jumali battery out of commission, we took the beach right handily. I think the Seersuckers really knocked the fight out of the poor bastards. I did take a bullet in my bicorn, right through the cockade, but other than that my uniform was in good order when we seized the provincial governors mansion, a moldy stone heap of Dutch colonial surrounded by wattle-and-daub rondavels and whitewashed square bunkers roofed in thatch, all under a thick canopy of banyan trees, an excellent staging ground for guerilla warfare, but, as I said, those cruise missiles had drained them of their vigor. The governor, a bespectacled, harried little man in threadbare serge, was all too eager to concede victory. We struck their colors and flew the Hanumanian flag, a macaque in a fez clutching the book of knowledge in one hand and a telescope in the other. The first night passed and we received no word from the main island in the Jumal group so the next morning I collected my officers and the men for whom we had room in the Lakshmi, which was about half of the survivors of the raiding party, and left behind a garrison of thirty some-odd men. Every outpost needs a garrison, yes? Oh, but wasnt there a row upon my return. Hunt was waiting for me and he was not alone but with a fellow I gathered to be the chief of station, broad-shouldered, bald, and

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square of jowl. He took a dim view of my behavior. He did all the talking while Hunt just stood and avoided my glance. The chief of station not only reprimanded me for violating international law, he soundly thrashed me for my domestic policy as well. There is grace and subtlety to statecraft, even crooked statecraft, especially crooked statecraft, he said. Mind you remember that unless you want to find yourself relocated one day, and not to New York, either. As of now we are withdrawing all monetary support, he continued and my heart skipped a beat and I tried to get Hunt to look me in the eye but he would not. That includes military. All arms deals are off. We will protect you from your neighbors should they attack, which they would be well within their rights to do. As it stands you have no army, no navy. Your ass-backwards regime will need our help. Toe the line, and well let you stay in power. Just dont get any funny ideas, because, bubba, we will crush you like a bug. Again I tried to catch my handlers eye. I noticed he had sprouted a pimple, in the crevice between his nostril and his cheek. The flesh there was raw and agitated, and the round white head looked positively angry. This space, just between nostril and cheek, where the fingertips can find no purchase, is the absolute worst place to have a pimple, and this one was brought into high definition by the red chafed flesh surrounding it. I felt a pang of pity in my chest for the boy. Great stress had brought on this blemish, stress of my making, and this Neanderthal chief of station had no doubt dressed him down in the basest terms for his mishandling of me. My heart cracked at the sight of his departure, Hunt hang-dog at his superiors elbow, carrying both his and his chiefs attachs. Come the Golden Age of the Hanumans, the Great Aufklrung, the Autumnal Enlightenment, the age of good governance, wholesome as fish and mango pie. I began with the sale of the presidential yacht that I might bankroll my campaign against malaria which involved the distribution of mosquito nets to the population. December became Dung Poultice Awareness Month, during which we celebrated the wonders of modern medicine while we recognized the dangers of the medicine man. We inoculated whole villages against typhoid. With the clear-cut harvest of the hardwoods that had heretofore forested the presidential game preserve I not only bid adieu to the yak hunting parties of

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yore but with the proceeds from the sale of timber was able to establish the Hanumans first Education Trust. With this money I was able to lure secondary school teachers away from not only their posts in the United States, but from some of the finer public schools in England as well, and so began the Great Belated School Reform. At the taxi-stands of Namaste-Lamah I ordered the installation of parking meters, and before these were finally violently uprooted they had generated enough coin to finance the painting of a white line down the center of our highway. From my veranda I proclaimed that all milk would henceforth be pasteurized. I even decreed a speed limit. Well, you can imagine my delight at the invitation to the embassys garden fte. For me this typically would have been a cocked hat and gold braid affair, brand new tunic and jodhpurs, the tailoring for which would have exhausted a whole bolt of finest twill. But rather than cutting a ridiculous figure like some barbarous shah, I decided instead on simple black tie, affixing only a miniature order of the Lgion dHonneur des Hanumanaux to the lapel of my white dinner jacket. Indeed, as I slipped my feet into patent leather pumps rather than riding boots I found myself for the first time in quite a while dressed like any other mild mannered, restrained, and refined head of state. I only hoped that Hunt would take note. I knew for a fact from my agents that he had not been reassigned to some other station. The embassy was an aberration of design, a compound enclosed within reinforced concrete walls some ten meters high surrounded by a dry moat. At the gate there was a limestone barbican with a machinegun nest at the top and once the marine on watch cross-referenced my invitation with the guest list, which really was a bit muchwho else but the head of state of the hosting government pulls up to a foreign embassy in a brougham driven by a man in livery and drawn by a team of pure-bred Arab stallions and under mounted armed escort at thatI was allowed to cross the draw bridge. Within the walls was a vast lawn of close-cropped St. Augustine grass with a fountain in the middle and wickets set up for croquet on one side and a bandstand with a string quartet on the other presiding over a temporary dance floor comprised of movable marble tiles. A prefabricated ballroom: my, what resources this superpower had. I was anticipating an encounter with Hunt with both hope and dread, and my senses were in an acute state of

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awareness. I saw the flies hovering above the smoked salmon on the buffet, and over the concerto I heard the gravel of the walkway crunch under my slippers. At the center of the compound was a rambling gingerbread Victorian flanked by squat modular units walled in sheet metal. On the porch of the house I spotted Hunt, his cheeks rosy, possibly from drink, cornered by a female junior naval officer in an ill-tailored evening uniform. I made an immediate detour for the bar on the lawn where I downed one champagne, and then another. I caught his eye and I felt the heat rise to my cheeks. Could it be that he just winked at me? I downed one more champagne and made for the porch. Monsieur President, Hunt said with a bow. He shook my hand, pumping it twice, I do believe. My throat went dry. You look well. Really. He was as boyishly dashing as ever, the tips of his hair bleached by the sun, the careless angle of his bow tie. The carnation, the pink carnation, pinned to the shawl collar of his white dinner jacket. There are no carnations on the Hanuman Islands. There is, however, the diplomatic pouch. He was a delight, an absolute dish to behold, a sort of Lord Alfred Douglas after a Jane Fonda Workout, and those bright eyes of his just radiated mischief. Lets talk, he said. But not here. Come inside. My knees practically gave out from under me. This just could not be. Hunt led me to an oak-paneled study, the walls of which were decked with trophies, a menagerie of boar and antelope heads, tasseled spears, a wooden shield and a scimitar, a blunderbuss mounted above the mantle of the flagstone fireplace. Hunt gestured toward a leather sofa where I sat and he joined me. He seemed unusually animated and I thought he must have been as nervous as me, and with his rapid-fire conversation was compensating for this anxiety. The air was thick with all the tension of a first date. And here we were, on a sofa, in a back room at a soire. I drank a gin and tonic that Hunt had given me but I didnt know what to do with my other hand. It looked as out of place in my lap as it did stuck inside my coat like Napoleon, so I stretched my arm out along the back of the sofa, my hand resting behind Hunts neck.

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As Im sure you know, we have observed all of your reforms with great interest, he said. Particularly the anti-malaria initiative. Thats just the sort of forward thinking we like to see in our friends abroad. We are still friends, arent we, Monsieur President? Henri, I said, a lump rising in my throat. Of course. Well, Henri, in light of this progress Ive gone to bat on your behalf. I have managed to sweet-talk the chief into petitioning the home office for some loans, modest, but interest-free. We have also two decommissioned torpedo boats available for your navys purchase at terms Im sure youll find agreeable. We only need you to grant a small land concession on the north coast of Isle de Sahaddi. Land concession? I asked. For what? A garrison? Not a garrison, per se, Hunt said, uncrossing his legs as he did so, consciously, I was sure. More as a gesture of our continuing friendship, Henri. I felt the twitching in my calf that still comes upon me in the moments leading up to any sort of confrontation. In one fluid motion, a maneuver in and of itself of which I am still proud, I brought Hunts face to mine and pressed my lips to his, where I found the acrid spice of aftershave mingled with the evergreen bouquet of gin. Freshly shaven, his cheek was cool and soft and perhaps even powdered with talc. But his lips were unyielding so I withdrew. Hunts cheeks had drained of all color. What the, he began, standing up briskly, smoothing his trousers and straightening his jacket. Whats wrong with you? Wrong with me? I cried. Hunt, I love you. Madly. Dont you know? Couldnt you tell? Didnt you want President Leclerc, get a hold of yourself, please, Hunt said. This isthis is, ah, unorthodox. Highly unorthodox. AndImnot that way. Dont lie to me boy, I said, tossing off my drink and standing. Dont insult an old man. Youre just a tease. His brow blackened. President Leclerc, in the interest of diplomacy I will make no mention of this incident. But be advised that you have attempted an assault on sovereign soil not your own. Our interview is concluded. He left the study and Id never felt so fat, so clumsy, so unnecessary in my life.

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Not that way. Please. If that man hasnt had a steamy tryst with a fullback in the locker room then I have indeed misjudged the world. And addressing a head of state, his very host, in so free a manner. What cheek. To let such impudence pass unchecked would have compromised my honor. There was nothing else for it. All vestiges of the superpower I had to banish from the isle. I assembled the Hussars and ordered them to take American properties by force so as to give that brash youth a taste of my own brand of sweet talk, flavored with piss and vinegar. I had never known rejection. The Hussars were well turned out, as if on parade, with their bearskin shakos and ostrich plumes and handsomely mounted on Arabian geldings and chestnut mares bred in Shropshire and a team of polo ponies purchased from a rascally Lascar horse thief. When the Colonel of Hussars returned from their first strikethe Sheratonand reported to me at the palace I followed him in my armored car. Under the awning of the hotel the nonnative members of the staff sat bound and gagged and, in the case of the concierge, bloodied. I ordered the colonel to have them taken away by lorry and then to have his men raze the building. But Monsieur President, said the Colonel of Hussars. Shouldnt we at least let the men have a go at the hotel first, toerliberate the building of its valuables. They have performed valiantly today, sir, and, with all due respect, they have not been paid for some Silence, Colonel, I said. Absolutely not. These are hussars, not brigands, and this is not a looting party. Raze the hotel. Which they did, tying old rags to the ends of their lances and dipping them in diesel and riding around the perimeter, breaking the window panes and touching their burning wands to the draperies within; the maneuver had all the grace of the Russian ballet. Ultimately, this was a shame, the destruction of the old French customs house turned five-star poacher of the tourist dollar, the plaster of the columns hissing and spitting as the flames licked up their shafts. A shame, but no less necessary for it. I had not only been rejected, I had been dishonored, and I demanded satisfaction. The hussars met with light resistance from the security at the casino, but eventually took that building as well. For the nonce I spared the casino the fiery fate of

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the Sheraton and called up the 5th Auxiliary Regiment of Footnot much more than pensioners with shotgunsto guard it until I could have the cashiers vault properly breeched and its contents confiscated for the purposes of an executive audit. The offices of Habitat for Humanity were subsequently leveled by mortar attack. The Vanderbilt University Botanical Gardens the crop-duster sprayed with DDT. And though army and navy I virtually had none, I did have an air corps, two rusty Migs, relics from the cold war, and so I called in an air strike on the theme park still under construction. What a frenzy that night was. The colonel of Hussars had removed his shako and was patting dry his sweaty forehead, but he replaced his headcover as soon as my car pulled alongside his mount. I rolled down my window to address him. The air that wafted in was thick with the smell of smoke and I felt my blood rush. Warfare was the thrill of all thrills. To the embassy, I told the colonel. Which embassy, sir? Why, the American Embassy, you dolt. But sir, they are much too well fortified. Do you question the nobility, the superiority of Hanumanian arms? I asked the swine. We are armed with carbines and lances. That embassy is guarded by United States Marines. I dont care who is guarding the Americans. They are no longer welcome on this our sovereign soil. Honor demands that we expel them, I said, feeling a sting in my heart as I did so, the memory of Hunts protests, his feigning of shock at my overture. It was an insult that still smarted, one that was still clear and present, very much so. Cease your craven remonstrations. If you wont lead your men, step down and have your executive officer, whats his name, that chubby major, the one with the mole, assume command. War means fighting. Sir, I must protest. This attack is suicide. Colonel, you are hereby relieved of your command. Alas, that we were never to witness said Hanuman superiority on a field of honor. From atop the limestone barbican of the US Embassy, the marines rained on my parade,

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quite literally. Again, the Americans chose insult over injury and assaulted us not with ordnance but with water cannons, dismounting the hussars and knocking their horses to the ground screaming. There would have been more honor in a pot of boiling pitch tipped over the side of the tower. My driver and my security detail fled on foot, and before I could take the wheel, I, the President, the Commander-in-Chief, of the Hanuman Archipelago surrendered not to Hunt, not to the oafish chief of station, not even to that half-caste ambassador with the game leg, but to some slack-jawed lieutenant in sweaty fatigues. Confound their lack of etiquette, their ignorance of protocol, their New World swagger, damn their pride. In a way, since that long-ago coup that landed me in Brooklyn, I have never ceased being a guest under the protection of the superpower. My current undisclosed location of residence they call a brig, and by no means is it temporary. Thank the maker for the privilege of rank. In deference to my status as a former head of state they have given me my own cell and a small garden to till where, with a little help from egg shells and vitamin B added to the soil, I grow roses so red and lurid that even I blush when I behold them. The occasional aubergine, too, I have sown, in addition to the pedestrian tomato. Roses are an art, for sure. But if there is any pursuit more dclass than the vegetable garden then I do not know it. At night I write verse, and, of a Sunday, I revel in the rough love of the group shower. A Houston oil man with whom I made nice years ago in a chalet at Gstaad sends me care packages by post via the Hanumanian Consulate, chocolate from the Cote dIvoire, and foie gras harvested in Texas that tastes like soap. As for Hunt, sweet, confused Hunt, I at first wrote him weekly, now only monthly, to keep him abreast of my affairs. My first letters were long, elegiac missives in which I pined for the love we almost had. The naughty scamp has never written me back. But true love knows no end to persistence. Today Ive finished a watercolor for the little rogue, a study of my garden, tended by round-cheeked, bare-bottomed cherubim, one of which is a little browner than the others, staring down the viewer, with a rose clutched in his teeth, his sloe-eyed gaze haunting the edges of pillow talk.

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THREE CHEERS FOR THE MULLIGAN

The problem with apocalypse is that all the charts are obsolete. I was in the control room, standing over the chart table with compass and T-square, when I heard first a thump resound throughout the hull, and then the groan of sheet metal compromised. The ship lurched to starboard, my implements slid off the table and clattered across the deck, and I collided with the attack periscope, its handle jabbing me in the kidney. I ran down the gangway, in my rush upsetting a casserole left to cool in the galley, and made my way past the forward battery to the torpedo room which was already filling, the rupture in the hull spewing seawater like a hydrant. The cook and the chief engineer were working the pump but to no avail. I apologized for the loss of the casserole. The cheese oosh? said the cook. Damn you, sir. A rivet popped from its hole with a report like that of a rifle and whizzed by my cheek. The water was now up to mid-calf. Forget it, boys, I said. The Number One bulkhead will keep the water at bay. So we sealed the water-tight hatch to the torpedo room, and I ran aft to give the captain a damage report, though I had heard no request for one through the voice pipe. Indeed, I had not seen the captain since evening mess the night before, during which he looked jaundiced againeven his eyes were yellow. I knocked twice on the bulkhead of his cabin, and then I called his name, Captain Mulligan. I heard only The Light Calvary Overture playing within. Fearing the worst, I parted the curtain a few inches and discovered the captain mounting the newly shipped hydrographer, Ensign Moultrie. Had the captain been doing so from behind, this incident would have been more or less unremarkable. However, the captain had mounted the ensign in the missionary position. They did not stop, seeming not to notice me; the captains eyes were squeezed shut, his meaty hands clutching the wadded sheets on his rack. I withdrew. Back in the control room my hands trembled. I had witnessed something wholly unnatural, not sodomy; at sea a man must dabble in such mysteries. No, what I had seen was not sodomy. What I had seen, our captain, inside another man, chest to chest, thrusting away hot as a satyr, was not anatomically possible.

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I collected the compass and T-square and forced myself to concentrate and determine our position. By my reckoning we were ten points north-northeast of the Gaskin Banks and so were clear of the shoals there. Be that as it may, we had struck something, some hitherto uncharted reef or who knows what. A hydrographer might have known, but our hydrographer was on his back, underneath our skipper. At Fort Pulaski where we had docked for refitting we took on Ensign Ashley Moultrie to assist us in our mission on board the USS Dude Ranch, which was to render current the chart of the shipping lanes from Georgia to the Carolinas. Apocalypse had left us with no National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, no Geological Survey, and not much of a navy. It had also shifted the Blake-Bahama Ridge, which in turn shifted the Blake Plateau. This series of events left the United States Navy Reserve Ship O-12, otherwise known as the Dude Ranch, of Flotilla Number 10, to rechart these most important waters. O-12 was an O-Class submarine, built in 1918, formerly known as the Bluffton, South Carolina Maritime Museum. For one of the last submarines in the American fleet this mission seemed to be an egregious misappropriation of resources, but, considering that we were absurdly undermanned, it beat sailing south and going toe to toe with the Spaniards, who had retaken Florida. Enter the hydrographer. I had never taken to Moultrie. He wore an ill-fitting uniform, the blouse much too large, and a full beard. It was one thing to grow a beard once underway, given the need to conserve the fresh water stores, but another thing entirely to report for duty hairy as an apostle. He also shipped with too much luggage, crates and crates of sensitive equipment, labeled ASDIC; SONAR; DEVICES, LISTENING, which he stowed in the lazaret. The equipment remained untouched, even by the hydrographer. There were two places on board where one was likely to find the ensign; in the head, where we kept a mirror (for a slob he was uncommonly vain, always pausing before any reflective surface to smooth his beard, which he kept impeccably groomed, albeit long), or in the captains cabin, where the ensign kept the captain blind with rum. Before we docked at Fort Pulaski I had the captain down to two tots a day, heavily diluted tots at that. Two tots is the allotted grog ration, and, as over two hundred years of tradition have demonstrated, no man is fit to sail without it. But I allowed him

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nothing more, and after a while his health returned; his face had lost that puffiness, the spider vessels had receded, and he no longer bruised as easily. But once we made landfall at Fort Pulaski the captain disappeared for two weeks and returned with Moultrie. Since then, they had been drinking a fifth a day. You could practically hear the crystallizing of the poor mans cirrhotic liver. This renewed drinking, coupled with the fact that I had seen Moultrie only once at the chart table when he stopped there to mix a pia colada, had prejudiced me against the hydrographer. And now, buggery most strange. I had half a mind to call Sugar, our cook and master-at-arms, from the galley and have him clap Moultrie in irons for lewd, lascivious, and downright impossible conduct unbecoming an officer, but I thought better of it. Instead, I decided to call a meeting that evening during chow when Moultrie was out on the bridge on watch, and the captain asleep on his rack. Watch was one duty that not even the captains consort could derelict. The wardroom was paneled in teak and dominated by a round mahogany table, one half of which was surrounded by a half-moon bench seat upholstered in maroon leather splitting at the seams. Above the bench was a shelf lined with bound volumes of Byron, Pope, Cervantes, and others, and in the center of the table was a dented silver tray on which sat a crystal ships decanter shaped like the bell of a trumpet. For me, the wardroom was a cramped surrogate for the reading room at The Edward, the gentlemans club where I had been a member, back in the day before the war that renewed all wars. I filled three chipped snifters with brandy, one for me, and one for Chief and Sugar. Sugar was a wrinkled mastiff of a man, shirtless in his foul-weather bibs. He had baked us a peach tart which he sat before us. Chief Petty Officer Maurice Moses, our engineer, was black with soot and slick with diesel. We reeked to a man, but none of us like Chief, who inhabited a funk of wet wool and spent fuel. If Sugar was the soul of the ship, then Chief was her heart. Our captain had ceased to be the brains of the Dude Ranch, and damned if I was going to let Ensign Moultrie take the conn. Sugar served us slices of tart and I called the meeting to order. The ensigns a woman? Sugar said. Well, Ill be damned. That explains everything. Yeah, Chief said. All that time in the head.

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Not only that, Sugar said. How about the bread? I make it every morning, but the dough wont rise. And the cask of salt beef that spoiled. That shit never spoils. Yeah, Chief added, his eyes wide. The fuel leak. And the busted oil cooler. And Chief paused and both he and Sugar looked at me and said in unison, The torpedo room. What are you talking about? I asked. We hit a reef, or something. LT, Sugar said. Were talking about an albatross. Every sailor knows its bad luck having a woman on board. I was about to scold them for their superstitionafter all, there used to be women on board virtually every vessel in the fleet, excluding submarines, of coursebut I stopped myself. If they wanted to believe that Moultrie was some kind of albatross or Jonah or curse by any other name, then let them. I just wanted Moultrie off the ship. Maybe so, I said. Well, theres only one thing to be done. Have our way with her? Chief asked. No, I said. We jettison the ensign. Wait, Sugar said. What if we have our way with her and then we jettison her? Thats a negative, I said. Lets not complicate matters. There will be no fraternization with Ensign Moultrie. Thats an order. Any behavior to the contrary I will prosecute as an act of mutiny. All the same, we will get rid of the ensign. But no one makes a move until I give the word. I wanted Moultrie off that ship, you see, because I was in love with Captain Mulligan. Jack Mulligan was the first and only skipper under whom I had served. Out of the academy my first billet was second officer on board the missile cruiser USS Main Event. I was at my berth, unpacking my seabag, trying to fit my peacoat in a locker I was to share with both the chaplain and the navigator when I felt a hand at first grip, then massage my shoulder, like a high school football coach might a player, but gentler. It chilled me. This was my introduction to Jack Mulligan, at the time a lieutenant commander, his brass brightly polished, his khaki service blouse tight across his chest. He wore his hair just a little too long, even for an officer, thick wavy black hair that had

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gone gray at the temples. He had a chin like an anvil, and his bronze brow was creased, matching the deep laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes. He was salty. He was dashing. He was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer poster child. Ensign Llewelyn, he said. His was a stentorian voice, rich and stout as if uttered from some great depth, his Rs hard, Irish, and Bostonian. You keep your kit in my cabin. Ill show you where after evening chow. Carry on. That post-chow meeting was the first of what became a nightly ritual for the next twelve years. The officers would dine in the wardroom and, after coffee, Mulligan would dismiss them all except for me, and we would retire back to his cabin for what he called private debriefing, with brandy and cigars and music. Mulligan had a compact phonograph and was a big fan of German music, particularly waltzes and marches. That first night we listened to Strauss, and he stroked the back of my hand and invited me back the following evening, telling me wed do some good things to each other if I liked. I had been with women before and have been with them since, but with a woman, once the act is over, once the moment of crisis has passed, there is nothing more for me. My work is done. I grow bored holding a woman. With Jack, in his arms, I felt protected. It was the shelter I craved from sex, not the release of climax. The shelter, I had to have it. Some nights we would only smoke cigars, nights in which he did not make his move, and I would return to my rack feeling sick and hollow, like an addict who failed to score his poison. Yes, I was hooked. Years passed and I turned down billets, billets that would have ensured quick promotion, so as to remain under his command. When wed finish making love and he was holding me, hed say I was throwing away my career. I didnt care; in his arms I felt contained in a small, safe world where I had everything I needed. When the war broke out, his touch was the only thing that comforted me. Then his face started yellowing, growing puffy, and though I still wanted him, he had me less and less. I thought at first he declined out of wounded vanity, that he was self conscious about the deterioration of his good looks. I was even flattered at the idea that perhaps he thought himself no longer worthy of me now that his beauty was fading, that his cooling-off was actually a way of saying, Youre young, you deserve better than me. Of course, in his weakness I loved him even more. It soon became clear that he had cirrhosis of the liver.

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I read ravenously everything I could find on the subject. The scar tissue wrought by years of hard drink kept building and building until the organ ceased to perform its functions, such as destroying surplus estrogen. What were once sculpted pectorals swelled into breasts and began to stretch his blouses near to bursting. In some cases the disease shrinks the testes, and I wondered if that was what lay behind his waning desire for my favors. But the liver is the one organ in the human body that has the power to regenerate itself. And so I weaned him off the cognac and the whiskey, and I held him the nights he shook and cried. His detoxification was ugly. At first he clawed the bulkheads. Seeking to abate phantom itches he scratched himself raw. Luckily, I never had to strap him to his rack. Though I felt like I was addressing a man lost in the wilderness a mile from where I stood, my voice still penetrated his delirium. In the midst of a fit I would speak and his eyes would light on me, and I could detect the recognition, as if someone had dimmed the flashing lights behind them. That was elation for me, when I connected and pulled him out from whatever fevered darkness had him in its clutches. He would listen to me, and only to me. Sugar prepared him separate meals, with no salt and very little meat. I gave him daily doses of diuretic and laxative. It was very unpleasant. But he got better. The florid flush of his face receded. Then one day when I noticed that his clubbed fingernails had turned from white back to pink I cried because I knew we had licked it, that he was in remission, that this man who loved the sea above all things would be able to stay there because of me. Then the night Moultrie shipped I followed the hydrographer and Jack down the gangway after chow until Jack turned around and said, Youre on watch, Llewelyn. This meetings between Ensign Moultrie and myself. Private debriefing. Carry on. I went to the weapons locker, and as I cradled a side arm I didnt know who Id shoot first, the captain, my rival, or me. I heard steps coming down the gangway which stirred me out of my morbid reverie. Sugar asked what was going on. I replaced the revolver on the shelf and told him I was just taking stock of things. After my discovery of Ensign Moultrie and the captain a curious thing happened. The ensign took an acute interest in manning the helm, and requested to do so at night. Every

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night. This was just fine with the rest of the crew. There were two helms, one down below and one topsides, on the bridge at the top of the conning tower, and it was this latter that she preferred. Sailing through the night wed make it to North Carolina in half the time. She even spent some time at the chart tableonly to plot our course, not to revise the charts; the equipment in the lazaret remained untouched. Seeing her in her outsized uniform pouring over the charts with a pencil behind her ear, the tip of her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth, reminded me of some awkward schoolboy, albeit bearded. Though we knew her secret I had decided that we should allow her to remain in the dark and carry on with her ruse. That way, when the time came for action, we would catch her by surprise. We were cruising along at 15 knots when from the bridge she hissedshe didnt yell, she hissed, like a real sailordown the conning tower hatch, Dive! Dive! and slid down the rails of the ladder, sealing the hatch behind her. Spaniards, she said to me, and I called through the voice pipe, Diving stations, to your diving stations. Dive, Dive. Chief and Sugar came running down the gangway and tumbled into the control room; with Chief manning the diving planes and Sugar manning the helm, we dove to periscope depth. Through the attack periscope I scanned the horizon, my palms sweating. Yet my anticipation for engagement was laced with a little skepticism; I was loath to believe the ensign, and I found two desires at war, the desire to see action and the desire to see my rival fail. Nonetheless, at two points north by northwest I spied a corvette, her colors, red and orange, flapping in the wind. The wretched Spaniard, I whispered. Her stern was facing us. My jealousy faded, overshadowed by the presence of the enemy. I looked up from the periscope and could not suppress a smile as my eyes met Moultries. She smiled back, gratefully, it seemed, and I thought I detected a flush rising in her cheeks. Then I felt my cheeks grow warm and I immediately turned back to the periscope. She was the steeliest woman Id ever seen, a cool one in a tight spot, and there I was pretending I thought she was a man. The situation was absurd. After a few minutes the Spanish ship had still not changed her bearing. By this time Mulligan had made it to the control room. A corvette, sir, I said. Serviola Class, two guns, a three-inch and a machine gun. Shes made no move to indicate that shes seen us.

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Good, the captain said as he looked through the periscope. Lets move in for the kill. But sir, I said. The torpedo rooms flooded. We cant load the tubes. Remember? Mulligan looked up from the periscope, crossed his arms across his broad chest, and paused, as if to digest this information. I could hear him grinding his teeth. It was hot, hot as the Tropic of Cancer, the sub had no air-conditioning, everyones khakis were sodden, and under the red light the sweat ran down Mulligans massive, craggy brow like lava rolling down the slope of a volcano. He spoke. You mean to tell me we have a viable target, a wretched, Spanish target out there, a God damned corvette, and we cant take her out because you sealed off the torpedo room? Yes, sir, I said. I had to. We were taking in water. We hit a reef, or something. It wasnt on the charts. Dont tell me it wasnt on the charts, the captain said. Our mission is to revise the charts. Well, consider them revised, I thought to myself; theres a reef ten points northnortheast of the Gaskin Banks. Sir, Im not a hydrographer, I said, fighting the impulse to shoot a glance at Moultrie, who at that moment became very interested in the bearing range indicator. My resentment of her reblossomed. The captain exhaled loudly through his nostrils as a bull might, turned on his heel, and walked out of the control room. Damn the torpedoes, I said, but my exhortation met with blank stares. I had always wanted to say that. Im not the hydrographer, I said to myself. The air in Captain Mulligans stateroom was close and rank like a locker room with no windows, only smaller, much smaller. It was a closet of a cabin, even by naval standards, but it was a cabin all the same. It was private space, the only private space on board, private space that I once shared, where I once felt not just welcome, but adored. The rack was made, hospital corners and all, but the smell of sex hung heavily in the room, musky, like wild eggs lately scrambled. The government issue desk at which he sat looked like furniture more appropriate for a childs tree house. He looked up from his papers and

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smiled when he saw me, like he was letting me in on a secret. I felt my heart rate jump at the prospect of being once again in his confidence. He patted the foot of his rack and asked me to sit down. I said I would prefer to remain standing, and I did so at attention. Permission to speak freely, sir? Of course, Peter. At ease, he said, and I stood at ease. You know you can tell me anything. Can I, sir? These days Im not so sure. The captains face clouded. Lieutenant, if youve got something in your craw, youd better but mid-sentence he was seized by a coughing fit. The wet cough had returned, the kind that rattled deep in his chest. When he pulled the handkerchief away from his mouth I could see there was blood in it. Sir, let me get you something, I said, my icy resolve melting away. Youre not well. Damn right Im not well. His voice was ragged and his face was crimson. State your business, Llewelyn. Its Moultrie, sir. With regard to our orders, sir, to rechart the waters above the Blake Plateauwell, the ensign is not much of a hydrographer, sir. Thats because the ensign is not a hydrographer, the captain said. Shes a concubine. His candor took me by surprise. Excuse me, sir. She? I know damn well you saw us together. The ensign is not a hydrographer. Shes a supply officer. Picked her up when we were in port. Sir, if shes not a hydrographer, then whats in all those crates labeled sonar? Whisky, rum, canned coconut milk, her luggage, womens things. What business is it of yours? Sir, I used to enjoy a certain confidence with you. It seems my status of late has diminished, very much so. Speak plainly, Lieutenant. You talk like a God damned Englishman. Always have. The captain paused, cleared his throat, and expectorated into a waste paper bin before continuing. Youre hurt. Very well. Ill give you that. Im sorry. Truly, I am

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sorry. Youve been very good to me over the years. Very good. But what we had? Thats over now. Why, sir? I asked. I have been good to you. And youre letting that woman kill you. Captain Mulligans ruddy face had grown placid. Im dying, Peter. Ive been dying. You gave me a little longer, God bless you. But Im dying, drink or no drink, and theres nothing you can do about that. And theres another thing you cannot do, and thats give me a son. So this was about procreation, not love. And that should have made it hurt less. But it didnt. It made me feel even more helpless. Love was something I could give. Birth was not. Peter, the Mulligan family has furnished this country with naval officers for four generations now, and I do not intend to let some pitiful little apocalypse get in the way of my bloodline. He looked at me, expecting some kind of nod or assent, or maybe even argument, but I said nothing. I need you to understand, he continued. I need to be able to count on my XO. This is my last tour. Im sure of that. I may not see it through to the end. I need you, Peter, to ensure the safety of the mother of my son. Now look. I have written here a letter recommending the promotion of you to lieutenant commander. Youll be eligible for your own command, your own ship. Youll be the officer you always wanted to become. Just see this mission through to the end. What mission, Jack? I asked. We have no hydrographer. What, is this some top secret experiment concerning the effects of underwater insemination? And how do you know its going to be a boy, anyway? The captain rose from his chair and drew back his hand as if to slap me but faltered as another fit of coughing set upon him. He collapsed on his rack and I was stepping forward to help him when I felt a hand grasp my arm. I turned around. It was Ensign Moultrie. Her eyes were gray and had a certain cold brightness to them. Of course, she was still wearing that beard. Sir, youre upsetting the captain, she said.

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Ill attend to him, please. She pushed me gently back into the gangway and pulled the curtain to. Its funny; when youre a jilted lover, and your former lover is dying, youd think your former lovers welfare would be the first, if not only thing on your mind; thats what love is, right? But this was not the case for me; the preeminent thought in my mind was not the health of my former lover, but the scam being perpetrated by my rival-successor. Later, I felt guilty at my self-absorption, my fixation on the woman who had supplanted me. Yet at the time I never questioned the actions I took, or the impulse that drove them. But it wasnt merely jealousy at work in my investigation of Moultrie. It was resentment laced with curiosity that motivated me to climb down the ladder to the lazaret. Sonar, eh? We would see about that. I had a crowbar with me which I used to pry open one of the crates. There was a layer of straw that I pushed away, revealing ancient bottles of rum, the screw caps bonded like they were when I was a child. I felt a sinking sensation in my gut. I did not want to find only rum and ladies things. I opened another crate: canned coconut milk, from concentrate, for their damned pia coladas. I pried open a third crate, pushed away the straw, and found a stack of oblong parcels wrapped in oily brown paper like beef loin from the butcher. They were heavy. I unwrapped one. Still packed in Cosmoline was a Springfield M-14 rifle with a parkerized finish and a walnut stock: a little obsolete by pre-apocalypse standards, but a spring chicken compared to the bolt-action M-1903s in the Dude Ranchs gun locker, and at the time worth twice its weight in gold. It fired a 7.62 mm round, the caliber favored by our enemies, and had fully automatic capability. It was a beautiful rifle, built on the frame of the M-1 Garand, but with a smaller forestock and chambered for the lighter cartridge. The M-14 saw service in Korea and Vietnam, but this rifle looked to have never been fired. There were 11 more like it in that crate, and eight other crates that bore similar payloads, all pristine, sticky with packing grease. Ensign Moultrie was no hydrographer. Nor was she a supply officer. My curiosity was aroused with even more intensity. Having relieved Chief at the helm some six hours earlier, I was getting a little stiff in the legs, and though the wind in my face up on the bridge was refreshing, and the air below

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hot and stale, I needed someone to spell me. I called down for Sugar. He was cooking pasta putanesca that night, a simple dish, but one of my favorites in his repertoire. I studied the lines of the ship while I waited. What an ungainly tub this submarine was, all one hundred sixty feet of her, bulbous like some giant bloated sprat; its a wonder she crested the waves rather than rolling over and capsizing. She was an antique, the Dude Ranch, built for harbor and coastal defense, with a minimum of torpedo tubes, her threeinch deck gun and .50 caliber mounted on the bridge; she was no U-boat, no raider, certainly no Nautilus. Still, she did manage to sneak us past that corvette. I called again down the voice pipe and, hearing no response, descended the ladder into the conning tower. Below decks was thick with the aroma of garlic, onions, and anchovy. The table in the wardroom was set, a bowl heaping with pasta in the center, but no one was there. I could hear the captain snoring in his cabin. No one else was sleeping; I pushed back the curtains on all the berths but they were empty. I walked back into the wardroom where the untouched pasta still steamed alone. I thought of Ensign Moultrie in the sickly yellow light of the gangway, her cheeks smooth and fresh above that ridiculous beard, and I thought of the cache of assault rifles in the lazaret and a chill seized my body; had Chief and Sugar also seen something they were not supposed to see? I went to the ships gun locker; a revolver was missing. I loaded another .38 and slipped on a shoulder rig before I proceeded aft. In the after battery I heard the pumping of the pistons from the engine room, but I also heard muffled voices. I gently opened the hatch just barely. Over the din of the twin diesels I heard laughter followed by voices. Arent you going to take her beard off? You know, I dont think I will. I kind of like the confusion. Its kinky. I drew the revolver from my shoulder holster, cocked the hammer, and peered over the edge of the hatch. In the gangway between the two pumping diesels, Ensign Moultrie was on her knees, and standing before her was Chief, his pants around his ankles, his grimy claves pink under the red light, and he was pointing the missing revolver at Moultries head. Sugar was watching, holding a bottle. Moultries face was flat of affect, as if she was in an open-eyed coma, or just some other place entirely. I had a brief flash of memory: I was sitting at the table in the wardroom with Jack and Chief

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and Sugar. In the center of the table was this big bowl full of lemons. We were in the horse latitudes, making for Bermuda. The going was slow and the heat was dry. None of us were wearing shirts. We all had knives, and we were cutting lemons in half and sucking them dry, and we were laughing and sweating. That was the day I finally felt accepted by the crew, by Chief and Sugar, that is. I showed them how to roll a cigarette with one hand, and it was that gesture, I think more so than serving next to them under a hail of fire, that gained me their respect. Then I remembered the captains orders, to ensure the life of the mother of his son, at all costs. There was what I had said about mutiny. And then there was the vision of Moultire, the blank stare of her gray eyes beatific, her mien suppliant before Chiefs swollen, wagging member, a thing altogether fiendish in that red light. For someone so young, at that moment she bore herself as one who had seen whole centuries, epochs of woe. I pushed the hatch all the way open and a yellow shaft of light from behind me fell across the three figures in the engine room whose faces all turned to me. I drew a bead on Chiefs forehead and pulled the trigger. The report of the revolver in that confined space was terrific. Chief fell, and blood poured from the hole in the back of his head. Sugar put his hands up, his foul weather bibs spattered with Chiefs blood. I warned you, Sugar, I said, and with the butt of my revolver I cracked him over the head. He hit the deck like a sack of wet laundry. I offered my hand to Moultrie and helped her to her feet. She still wore the same shell-shocked expression. Help me get Sugar to the brig. And take that beard off for Christs sake. I just killed our engineer, and you have one minute to convince me it was a good idea. We were in the brig, which was actually the ships larder. The shelves were stacked with canned goods and the girders above festooned with sacks of onions, flour, and meal. Sugar was in a heap in the corner, still unconscious, shackled to the bulkhead. Moultrie was sitting on a stool and she was in cuffs as well; I was pretty shaken up and I wasnt taking any chances. Wisps of false beard still clung to the corners of her mouth. He was going to, she began to articulate, but her nerve failed her. There was a catch in her voice. She paused, took a breath, and resumed. It was mutiny. An

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enlisted man holding an officer at gunpoint. You had to shoot him. The Uniform Code of Military Justice clearly Dont tell me about the Uniform Code. How does it apply to you, anyway? Youre impersonating an officer. Stealing and smuggling government property. By all rights I should shoot you, too. I am an officer. J-2. An intelligence officer. Moultrie said. Your times running out, I said, thinking, Dont call my bluff. Dont make me show you that I wouldnt, that I couldnt shoot you. Those rifles, she said. Theyre bound for North Carolina. I breathed easier; she didnt call my bluff. For the Wrightsville Irregulars. Theyre going to need them. The Spanish are planning a raid. Theyre after our tobacco. Thats an easy enough story, what with the corvette we saw yesterday. Come on, you can do better than then I fell to the deck, the back of my head tingling, having been hit with something heavy and metal. I touched the spot where I had been hit and when I pulled away my hand it was sticky with blood. I looked up. Captain Mulligan had his service revolver in one hand, butt first, and with the other was unlocking Moultries handcuffs. What the hell is going on here, Llewelyn? the captain said, looking pale and shaky, indicating first Sugar, then me with the butt of his revolver. Its okay, Jack, Moultrie said, rubbing her wrists. Jack, she called him, and it hurt me more than the pistol whipping, more than ten. We had eluded the Spaniards, until I shot Chief, that is. Even the greenest technician listening on the most primitive equipment would have heard that from up to five miles away. So the gunshot was my first blunder. My second was not immediately shutting down the screws. Though silent enough, the engines still provided enough of a signature for someone to hear if someone was really listening for us on the high frequency distribution frame, or Huff Duff as we called it. And so the corvette traced us after the gunshot to our general location. I had never had to execute a crew member before, so I was understandably distracted. Understandably, but not pardonably. For that alone I deserved the drubbing the captain had given me. Immediately after dealing me the blow,

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he shut them down, and gave me a proper tongue lashing, albeit a whispered one, in the control room, where the three officers of the ship stared up above, waiting for the worst. We didnt have to wait long. The first depth charges exploded about a quarter of a mile away by my reckoning. These first explosions, though distant, were loud and jarred the ship. But this was nothing. The corvette was apparently sailing in circles of decreasing circumference, not unlike a hunter cutting for sign, dropping charges at every pass. Soon the corvette closed in, and she was dropping the charges practically on top of us. The principle behind the depth charge is not necessarily to penetrate a target like a shell or torpedo does. Rather, the explosion of the depth charge usually does its damage through the shockwaves it produces. Its the shock that compromises the target more often than not as the shockwaves apply more pressure to the outside of a ship than she can handle. Now that the Spaniard had closed in, each explosion buckled the Dude Ranchs hull; below decks the bulkheads visibly vibrated. Pipes clanged and burst, spraying us with cascades of seawater until we reached the safety valves. Rivets shot across the control room and ricocheted. Those Spanish bastards had our ship quaking. I can liken it best to being inside a bass drum struck by a mallet over and over and over. The captains face was no longer ruddy. This was no sign of recovery. He was deathly pallid, as terrified as I was, as I imagine Moultrie was. We all knew that our ship could not sustain this, that we were doomed, unless the Spanish ran out of depth charges and that did not seem likely. Their supply seemed inexhaustible. There were lulls in the bombardment during which their HFDF technician no doubt was listening to see if he could hear our ship breaking up, and then the explosions would resume. This cycle would continue until they heard signs of our demise. Or see them, I thought in a flash, recalling the war movies on which I was raised. There were two torpedo tubes aft where, sadly, there were no torpedoes. We used these tubes to jettison rotten stores, table scraps, and waste in general. I told the captain I had an idea, and he gave me the green light. Help me get Chiefs body to the aft torpedo tube. Mr I mean Ms. Moultrie, collect as much debris as you can. Break up that chair, get those charts, head covers, extra clothing, bedding, anything that will float. We did not take the time to say any words over Chief, and I dont think he would have had it any other way. We stuffed him and the rest of the jetsam into the Number Three torpedo

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tube, the captain crossed himself, and we jettisoned the load and waited. No one said a word for an hour, nor did the Spaniard drop anymore charges. Ensign Moultrie listened on the headset the whole time, until she finally signaled to us that the Spanish ship was underway, sailing due north. The Spaniards, clearly, had not grown up on the same movies as we had. After a morning spent vomiting blood, and an afternoon of violent itching, Jack Mulligan, Captain, USNR, died quietly in his rack. Moultrie washed his body and dressed it in his blue service As, and together we wrapped him in the national ensign and left him on his rack. Night was soon to fall, and we would either perform the ceremony at first light, or, if we made landfall soon enough, which was likely, we would muster an honor guard from the forces on shore and bury him properly. Neither of us shed a tear, not in front of each other, at least. I was too tired for any sort of commiseration, I cant speak for Moultrie. I had a good cry in the head, and maybe she did, too, but it didnt show. That being said, she handled Jacks body with a certain tenderness as we prepared it, smoothing his curls, wiping the grime from the pouches that had formed under his eyes. We had a host of pollutants to thank for a bloody sunset. We had set a course due north and were sailing about twenty miles off-shore and the waters there were placid. I dont know if I could have handled rough seas, or any inclement weather. I needed a break as much as I needed answers to some unresolved questions. Actually, I picked him up, Moultrie said. I knew he was skipper of the submarine that had come in for refitting. I knew a sub was a faster, stealthier way to move those rifles than a patrol boat, which was all J-2 had at its disposal. The recharting business was a last minute inspiration, coupled with spray paint and a stencil. I told Jack Id ship with a load of crates disguised as sensitive equipment. I was never that confident about my disguise. I was just hoping it would last me to Wrightsville. And Jack had no interest in discretion. Many times I tried to spend time at the chart table, but he kept me pretty busy. I did grow fond of him, all in all. I should hope so, I said, my eyes on the compass.

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Its the nature of my MOS, sir, to gain the confidence of useful people through whatever means I have at my disposal. And people like me provide an invaluable service Indeed. How could one set a value on a roll in the hay? I said. Dont judge me, sir. Please. Its a low calling, intelligence, but it yields results. Another slice of mackerel, if you please, Ms. Moultrie. So my successor bore no real love for my beloved. All parties lost then, it seemed. How meaningless, I kept repeating to myself, watching the queer red light dissipate on the horizon. We would make landfall at Cape Fear in only a few hours. At which point I would have to decide what to do with Sugar. Our navy was in no position to spare sailors. That being said, I knew the right thing to do was to turn him over to the Shore Patrol, let them proceed with a court martial, if they saw fit, and thats what I thought Id probably do. He was party to a dark, savage enterprise, and in this he differed very little from other seamen. He would very well hang, all the same. What will you do when we reach the cape? Moultrie asked. Do you have any of that rum? I asked. She went down the ladder and climbed back up with a bottle and two tin cups. She filled both and gave me one. Im not sure, Ms. Moultrie. Captain Mulligan told me I was to ensure at all costs the safety of the mother of his future son, which does not necessarily countermand my previous orders, which were to rechart the shipping lanes, then proceed north to Virginia. Maybe Ill remain to repel that Spanish corvette should it turn back south after its raid. I imagine shes sailing for Morehead City. Shed find more tobacco at Havelock, but shed have to get past the batteries guarding Pamlico Sound, and that would be a fools gambit. I dont know. I do know that Im not doing a thing before I cobble together some kind of a crew. The mother of his future son? Moultrie asked. Yes. That would be you. Im not pregnant. How do you know? I know.

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The poor man, I said. Meaningless, meaningless. The notion of this once great man who had jilted me failing to achieve what I considered a fairly simple goal, especially given the apparent frequency of his couplings with his concubine, at first struck me as pathetic. But it wasnt just pathetic, it was sad, and though as the wounded, jilted lover I should have rejoiced in his failed enterprise with my successor, I did not rejoice. I did not feel smug or vindicated. I felt low. Jack was dead, and now there was nothing of him left in this world, and I realized he meant too much to me for me to let that stand. If Ms. Moultrie could not give Captain Mulligan an heir, I would give him some kind of legacy, something by which to honor his memory. He had died in bed, not a dishonorable death, but not a valorous one, either. Whats meaningless? What are you talking about? Moultrie asked. More rum, Ms. Moultrie. This changes everything. And fetch that chart. Were changing course. How long do you reckon we have until that corvette reaches Onslow Bay? This ruse is one that I had not seen in a movie. We changed course, but not without some spirited debate. Moultrie insisted that her mission to deliver the weapons to the Wrightsville Irregulars was of paramount importance, and that my proposed stunt greatly endangered the accomplishing of that mission, a mission, she pointed out, we were only hours from completing, being only ten miles away from Cape Fear. I pointed out that by persisting in this line of insubordination she would only find herself clapped in irons, that irregulars or no irregulars, this was my ship and I had had enough of mutiny for one mission. This brought the discussion to a close. My proposal required Sugars complicity, in exchange for which I would keep the engine room affair quiet and grant him his freedom, rather than turn him over to the SPs. Hed have to leave the serviceif theyd let himper my conditions, but he wouldnt face a court martial if he manned the dive planes for me one last time. I also demanded he humbly apologize to Ms. Moultrie, and accept whatever corporal punishment she decided to mete out. He was only too anxious to help us engage the Spaniards. Half-ass fascists. Royalist scum, he said as I unlocked his cuffs. I followed him out of the brig. He knew,

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I think, that what he did was beyond redemption, but he still yearned to restore some measure of honor to his record of service. Maybe Im reading too much into this. But he stopped at his berth for a fresh shirt and as I walked past toward the captains cabin, I could see he was crying. Jacks body was in his cabin, wrapped in the flag, which I pulled from him and refolded with Sugars help. Jack had not yet begun to stink, and his joints were still supple. These were good things, as his participation in this caper was essential. Sugar and I got his body to the bridge and got down to work. Modern submarines had a whole array of periscopes, for attack and navigation, with and without night vision, some equipped with cameras, others with heat sensors, in addition to radar masts. Not so with an O-Class diesel patrol sub circa 1918. The O-12 had two scopes, the attack periscope, and what they called a sky scope, which allowed a captain to determine whether or not he was going to collide with the ship floating above him when he surfaced. You can surface without a sky scope, but its a risky business, a risky business that we would be undertaking, as the sky scope was going to be otherwise engaged. I took off Jacks coat and made several incisions in the back of the garment with my knife. While the body was in this state of undress, I bound its upper torso with several lengths of rope, leaving the ends loose. With some effortJack was beginning to stiffenI got the coat back on the body, buttoned it up, and pulled the loose rope ends through the incisions in the back of the coat. Sugar and I propped the body upright and lashed it to the sky scope. I then extended Jacks right arm to its full length, and I closed his hand around the hilt of his officers cutlass, and for the next hour, I kept my hand closed around his that it might freeze in that position, holding the blade high. I dismissed Sugar, who went back down below, and I had my final moments with my first and only commanding officer, the man who had taught me everything I knew about love, only to cast it all to the wind in his pursuit of progeny. Only at that point, on the bridge holding his hand in place by the light of the dog star, when I had done everything I could to ensure that the name Mulligan would be remembered, immortalized, perhaps celebrated in song raucously yet reverentially in the wardroom of every warship remaining in the fleet, only at that point did I fully fathom the power of the desire to leave a legacy, and

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only at that point did I forgive him. I finally let go his hand. Rigor mortis had set in and the cutlass was firmly in place, pointing at the heavens. In my reverie I had not noticed that Jacks jaw had gone slack and then frozen in that position; I had been standing behind him. However unintentional, the effect was unsettling and, therefore, perfect, this giant mans mouth hanging wide open as if in perpetual harangue. I heard steps on the ladder below me. It was Sugar. He climbed back up on the bridge and said, One more thing, sir, if youll permit me. From his shirt pocket he pulled his sunglasses, which he slid over the captains lidded eyes and made fast with a boot lace. The shades were the crowning touch. Our dead captain looked scary as hell. At midnight we dove, and when a pale and limpid dawn crested the horizon we had closed the distance between us and the corvette. We were just east of Morehead City, and the Spaniards were already sailing for the port there. They reckoned us dead, and so werent listening for submarines. It was known to the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia that the Dude Ranch was the only American sub in the North Atlantic south of the Chesapeake. So when we surfaced amidships on her starboard side, the corvette and her crew did not know how at first to react to this ghost ship, her captain hatless on the bridge, streaming with brine, brandishing his cutlass and howling interminably. Id wager they took a knee and beseeched the mother of God; Ill never know, I was below decks. We surfaced too close to the corvette for her deck guns to be of any use, but when we heard small arms fire open we knew we, and he, had been spotted. The hatch to the bridge was open, and once I saw Jacks body take a bullet, I sealed the hatch, and gave the order to dive. With surprise and maneuverability on our side we managed to stay abreast of the corvette until we lured her in range of the batteries on Cape Lookout. The ensuing barrage did not sink, but certainly crippled her, and she withdrew from the fight. We surfaced about a mile from the cape. I climbed up to the bridge and cut down Captain Mulligan. His head was hoary with seaweed, his uniform disheveled from the undercurrent at ten knots. But he had taken a bullet in the service of our union, and his actions not only saved his crew and disabled a Spanish warship, but also safely conducted Ensign Moultrie and her precious cargo to the North Carolina shore. The admiralty

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would, no doubt, award him posthumously the Navy Cross, at the very least, possibly even promote him to rear admiral. But no matter what the admiralty decided, I had enshrined Jack Mulligan in the annals of naval lore as the skipper who, armed only with a saber, had challenged an enemy vessel with superior firepower and numbers with no thought given to himself. It was a heros death, not a cirrhotic invalids, a piece of revisionist history of my own engineering. Be that as it may, I felt emptier than I had ever felt before. My machinations, out of necessity, would never be revealed, and I would never enjoy any distinction or recognition from the affair other than having served beneath him, leaving me exactly where I was when he abandoned me, and it was then that I realized I never knew a thing about love, never. In my mind I had embellished what was really just a matter of convenience for the captain. Its an unfortunate business, damned unfortunate, a business that I in my future commands have done my best to perpetuate.

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NO MORE ROSES FOR THE MATADOR

A matador among men, the dandy does the dirty work. In those vulpine, kid-gloved days I felt like a lean, sleek bandit, shod in English leather and draped in gabardine, the morning air crisp on my freshly shaven cheeks. I reveled in a close shave, no matter how short-lived. It was what separated me from the other young men of my set who did not work. I was no sculptor in a loft, no hack in his study. I was the total equestrian, both rider and mount. I was the stallion. I was the matador. I woke at dawn like a doctor but my office was movable, always in flux. Ten oclock might have meant tennis with Khaki G, and high tea at three with Mrs. Prugh. A slave to the grind, I had no time and less inclination for lovea line of credit at Rourkes had always been helpmate enough. So why did I find myself thick of tongue and clumsy of speech when confronted by young Hattie Finch in her parents drawing room? I had just had her mother on the sun-porch upstairs. Hattie, home from boarding school, from where she had been sent down, set her violin on a mahogany credenza, looked me up and down like a slaver might have at market, and said, Teach me to shoot, in the country, tomorrow, and I, hearing the walls around me crumble, said, Okay. I had other appointments that day, so I made for home where I would bathe. Home was a carriage house in the historic district, whitewashed redbrick and bearded with ivy. I called it my pied--terre, a pretentious name as it implied not so much a second residence as much as a libertines retreat where he could conduct with discretion a liaison or three. I loved the cosmopolitan sensation I experienced, opening the door, which was painted red like an English telephone kiosk, walking up the narrow staircase with baguette and filet and Bordeaux in a brown paper sack, setting the needle on Tommy Dorsey, drawing a bath in my claw-footed tub, and lighting a Dunhill; as far as I was concerned I had arrived. But that day an incongruity in the faade marred the experience. Someone had impaled a note to my door with a rather long and cruel-looking skinning knife. For all my good standing with grocer, tailor, and package store operator, my credit with the underworld was short. For three months going I had lost my knack for

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three-card monte, and had henceforth been banned from the table due to the balance I owed the house. This was no ordinary casino; in the Coastal Empire such establishments were verboten, at least on dry land. This was a club of sorts, called The Continental, into which one bought his membership for a handsome initiation fee, and the standards for admission were stringent, if not a bit odd, both exclusive and egalitarian. The applicant could be no newer to the Coastal Empire than fifth generation, but his social standing was of no concern, provided he could pay the fee and maintain a minimum balance in his house account. As a result, the scions of planters rubbed elbows with stevedores in this moldy colonial row house on the east end of State Street, shaded by ancient water oaks and flanked by a wig shop and a day-old bread store. For my first year in The Continental I had enjoyed an unrivaled bounty of good fortune. My pride swelled and I grew cocksure and reckless and, consequently, impecunious. Hence the menacing message left by the pit boss Spanish Dan, a mustachioed Irishman and former professional rugger known to be handy with a garrote. The blade was a grand gesture, I have to admit; Spanish Dan really had some Old-World panache. I was short on time. In those days I drove a Buick Electra Estate Wagon, navy blue with simulated wood paneling on the doors and fenders, the conveyance of choice among carpool mothers, affording me some anonymity as I plied my trade. The wagon was blessed with a beast of an engine, a 5.0 litre V-8, and she owned the road like a man-of-war. The Coastal Empire is not so vast, consisting of downtowna grid of manicured squares shrouded by oaksand the neighborhoods of Ardsley Park and Gordonston to the south and east respectively. Occasionally, my work took me far east to the yacht club, the barrier islands, and the beach cottages. Officially, the city limits encompassed a wide sprawl of strip malls and developments bepopulate with ranch houses, but regions further south than Ardsley Park were out of my navigational ken. When I required an off-therack garment from Rourkes I engaged an Adam Cab. West lay the country, and I knew only the route to my dead fathers hunting camp. It was a good thing Hattie said she would drive to their farm, picking me up at nine oclock sharp the next morning, Hattie Finch, newly sixteen, that little russet-tressed complicatrix. I had been tight with her older brother, who had died in a hunting accident, and sometimes I wondered what he

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thought of my frolics in his fathers house, was he watching, did he care, in the hereafter would he kick me in the groin? Anyhow, this is all by way of saying that the commute from my coachmans lair to Mary Jane Teagues bower on 44th was brief. My hair had not had time to dry. Tennis handsome Mrs. Teague, bronze in her whites, received me at the service entrance to her bulky Tudor home. Mr. Teague was in London for the week. I have sent the maid home early, she said, bending over to light a candle on the console opposite her bed, revealing the outline of a round-enough rump under the short cotton skirt. For forty-nine, Mrs. Teague had kept it together quite nicely. She filled two glasses with scotch and branch water, and with a riding crop indicated the bed. Of my lovers I preferred the athletes, the ones who had managed to maintain some muscle tone. Mrs. Finch in a cocktail dress was a shapely dish, but once out of it one realized that clothes served for her the same purpose as the casing on a sausage; in the nude, Mrs. Finch was doughy. Not so Mary Jane Teague, with those toned calves and that taut brown belly. Her husband was the envy of his colleagues at his firm, but, according to Mary Jane, he didnt quite know how to manhandle a woman. One might call Jimmy Teague a fool, but then one might call Mary Jane a drunk. She certainly did have her appetites. Shortly after the riding crop unraveled (it was an antique and the leather no longer up to the challenge), I made to get dressedMary Jane was not one for snugglingbut she stopped me, saying, The swagger stick on the mantle in the library will do. This was my vocation. I had studied literature and had submitted little stories to small journals, was even referred to more than once as a writer of promise, but I lost my patience. Rather than pursue the chimera called publication, I instead carved out a niche administering writing workshops for ladies who fancied they had a flair for the pen. I did not have the discipline to be an artist. I no longer call it lack of ambition. I was just pure lazy, and, therefore, tailor-made for a trade that required me to spend most of the day in bed. What happened at Pomfret? I asked Hattie Finch as she shifted into third gear on the way to her familys farm. She picked me up in an old Chevrolet C-10, a 69 or 70,

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which was a three speed, with the shift stick on the steering column, and though I used to drive a standard, I could never master the low gear ratio of the three-on-the-tree. Hattie, however, was a pro. We didnt stall once. Nothing, she said. That was the problem. Connecticut is stupid. Well, it does have its flaws, I said, having myself had a brief stay at Choate. But I wouldnt pass judgment on the whole state. So, what kind of trouble did you get into up there? We were so bored we had to invent our own fun, know what I mean? Five hundred acres gets pretty small after a while. She paused to light a Marlboro. I said she shouldnt smoke and she said, Whatever. A couple of my girlfriends and I had already been in trouble, drinking, smoking, sneaking out of the dorm, you know how it goes. So I guess this stunt was the last straw. My friend Lane, well, she was taking Photography, so she had this really pro camera, tripod, range finder, telephoto lens, the whole rig. So, Lane, Molly, and I snuck out again one last night, went to the different landmarks on campus, the boat house, the first womens sculling shell, Jahn Rink, lots of places, and posed for nude photographs at each one. She paused and looked over at me, to make sure I was following her. It had been a mighty act of will power to not picture this nymphet in the nude; whenever the image arose the night before, I would make it vanish, replacing it with her mother and her unkempt delta. Now Hattie had ruined all of my hard work, in the space of one not-soribald anecdote. Yes, I was following her. We even got up on the headmasters front porch, sat at this wicker table and pretended we were all intellectual, having some kind of deep philosophical conversation, striking these super-pensive poses, holding our chins, cocking our heads, raising our eyebrows, all that. Totally naked. Pretty inspired stuff, I said, keeping my eyes on the road. Yeah, well, Lane developed the photos in the dark room, left a print behind, one thing led to another, negatives were confiscated, and there you have it. Now Im here in the country with you and a truck full of guns. Id say Ive traded up, wouldnt you? Christ on the cross. Well, that depends. Schools pretty important. All I can teach you to do is shoot.

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I dont know about that, Hattie said, flashing this wicked grin. She had a slight overbite, and I was to learn later that she herself had removed her braces with a pair of needle-nose pliers when she was twelve. I was in trouble. She was trouble. The Finches country place, Oaklyn, had been many things, a soybean plantation, a vineyard, a nursery, and always a hunting camp, where my old pal Gordon Finch managed to blow his head off as he slipped on the ladder to a tree stand with a round in the chamber of his rifle. Since that day, nine years prior, the Finches had all but abandoned Oaklyn, and all that grew there now were the windswept, gnarled examples of its namesake, festooned with Spanish moss and colonized by raccoons. What I remember mainly about that time was Dad throwing every single firearm in the house, pistols, rifles, shotguns, even this pair of dueling pistols in a case lined with velvet that I used to call the Treasure Island pistols, all in the trunk of his car, driving off, and returning home with none of them. No one ever knew what he did with them. Threw them in the river, the dump, no one ever asked. Must have been a fortune in guns, my grandfathers fowling pieces, and Colonel Finchs cavalry revolver, a Lemat, I believe. Daddy did, at least, keep his saber. She said this while she hefted my Colt New Service in her hand, opening the gate and spinning the empty cylinder, her eye on a box of cartridges. I took the revolver from her. Hold on for a second. Thats a lot of gun for a beginner. I closed the cylinder and stuck the Colt in my belt. Listen to you, fowling pieces, Lemat. How do you know so much about firearms, anyway? Research. Ive always loved guns. As long as I can remember. Im not much of a girly-girl, maybe youve noticed. Anyhow, I was writing my honors thesis Thesis? But youre, or, you were, in high school. So? You didnt have to write a thesis? Anyhow, mine was on the history of firearms, and how weapons technology determines supremacy on the world stage. My great, great, great grandfather would have, more than likely, used the French manufactured Lemat, or Lefaucheux, both were favorites among Confederate officers, over even the 51 Colt Navy Okay, I hear you. This girl was a piece of work, at times sophisticated and jaded beyond her age, other times a precocious font of information. I didnt know

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whether to be annoyed by her or enamored of her. Actually, I knew damn well to not be enamored of her, but its not always what one knows that guides ones decisions. We started with a shotgun, an old Parker Brothers side-by-side 12 gauge with the rabbit-ear hammers and Damascus barrels. Soon I was throwing skeet and she was hitting two out of three. She knew how to lead a clay. At the edge of the overgrown alfalfa plot there was the rusted shell of an old tractor and on this I hung some targets and schooled my charge in the principles of bolt-action riflery, first with a .22, then with a Winchester .270, and with this she was a dead-eye as well, and using just iron sights at that; I didnt hold with scopes. Archery, she said. At camp. And Nintendo at school. Built up my hand-eye coordination. Donkey Kong. How about that, I said. Huh? she said. Nevermind. Lets move up a little closer and see how you fare with a handgun. With me I had brought a Smith and Wesson Victory Model .38, Navy issue, and the Colt New Service .455 Eley which, with a five-and-a-half-inch barrel and a bore in which you stick your finger, was a hog-leg of a gun. When I presented the .38 butt-first to Hattie she scoffed and drew the Colt from my belt, her hand brushing my fly as she did so. To this day I do not know for sure if the brush was intentional, but I do know it was effective. I had been caressed a great deal, indeed, caresses were my bread and butter, but something about the freshness of this girl, her spirit, her wiliness, her untapped energy, just floored me. My nerves were jangling and I couldnt shoot straight for two reloads. Hattie, however, with this three-pound revolver almost as long as her forearm, just plinked away. Between reloads, shed pause to brush with her hand the errant strands of her russet mane back behind her ear, revealing a little patch of acne on her temple. It looked so angry on her otherwise unblemished alabaster brow, and I was seized with the impulse to kiss it that it might go away, an impulse I barely restrained. Francis, she said, ejecting the shell casings from the cylinder into her hand, putting the brass in her pocket, and presenting the piece to me, butt-first, like a pro. I really like this gun. I said, You know, Colts are made in Connecticut. Hartford. The place cant be all that stupid.

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I grasped the revolver by the butt. But the gun wouldnt budge. Hattie, still holding the barrel, pulled me close, swooped in and kissed me. Like a pro. That kiss. It was, no doubt, inevitable. The poor, bored thing, she would have ambushed me, sooner or later, laying in wait outside the half-bath under the staircase, under the pergola on the back porch, perhaps even in her randy mothers boudoir while the elder Finch performed some feminine ablution. The girl was reckless, a cluster bomb of estrogen and devilment; her fuse was short and she had me pegged for the cad I was. But that kiss, though delivered with the precision of an expert, was soft and ripe, so newly dropped from the tree that I liquefied. I thought my chest would pop. As she opened her mouth to put her tongue in mine I pushed her away. I pulled my Barbour coat shut to conceal the bulge in my khakis. Hattie, I am twice your age. Exactly twice your age. Dont play the prude with me, Francis, she said, arms akimbo. At that moment, and many more in the future, she looked deceivingly worldly, not in a brazen sense, not like a mouthy broad, as it were, but like some creature from an older continent, a court with different conventions, her galvanized stare shaming me for being the provincial, admonishing the interloping rube. How dare you refuse me in these halls? her expression seemed to say. I realized my eyes were darting from left to right, as if in search of witnesses. What would I do if I had found one? Threaten him? Bribe him? Ask him for help? Where does your mother think you are? I asked, slipping the shotgun in its case and zipping it up. Here, Hattie said, lighting a cigarette. But not with you. I think its time you took me home, I said, feeling like a glee-club dick-tease after the harvest dance, and the drive back to town was icy and silent. Except for one moment as we were just around the corner of my house. Walking out the door of Johnny Ganems was Spanish Dan, a six of tall-boys in each hand. I ducked and slid off the bench seat to the floorboard and Hattie asked me what I was doing. Nothing. Keep driving. I absolutely will not if you keep acting like a total freak, she said. Ill stop right here.

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That would never do. Okay. That guy, coming out of Ganems. Weahwe had a falling out. That guy? she said, The bald one? Shhh. Dont point. Yes, the bald one. Things were beginning to feel really wrong. Oh, him? I see him all the time, jogging around Forsyth, Hattie said. Thats where I run, too. Kind of cute, except for the teeth. And that stache. Like a lion tamer or something. When we pulled up to my carriage house the red door was hanging wide open. I jumped out the truck and ran inside, not even considering that someone might be in there waiting. Fortunately, there was not. All the same, I recoiled upon entry, first from the overwhelming smell of alcohol. Whoever (I knew damn well who) had paid me a visit had not left only his footprints. In my living room no book remained on its shelf but instead lay on the floor, every drawer of my secretary hung open, old manuscripts, bank statements, personal correspondence, legal pads, anything paper was in piles on the floor, and all had been doused with the full complement of spirits from my wide-open liquor cabinet. My bedroom was in shambles as well, the whole of my wardrobe heaped in the four corners of my room. In the bathroom the mirror on the medicine cabinet was smashed, and coiled on top of the lid to the toilet seat was a lengthy human stool. It was at this point I almost wept. Instead, I unhitched my trousers and made water in the bath tub. When I returned to the living room I found Hattie standing next to the threshold of the kitchen, her back against the wall, holding in both hands my Colt New Service upright at the ready. She swung around into the kitchen detective-style and then shouted over her shoulder, All clear. Is that loaded? I asked. It was. Jesus Christ, put that thing away. She placed it gingerly on an empty shelf, saying, Sorry. Then she waded through the paper and took it all in. Man, am I sorry. This is awful. Can I use the ladies room? No.

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I righted an upturned captains chair and offered it to her. She accepted, her face blank as if in shell-shock. I brushed some debris off my leather club chair. Aw, man. The cushion had been slit open, and from the rent white, wooly stuffing spilled like guts. I sat down anyway. I reached underneath the chair and, thank god, found the flask of scotch. I took a belt and pitched the flask to Hattie. She took one as well, though to my surprise she sputtered a little. What kind of trouble are you in? she asked me, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her sweater. Financial. Did they steal anything? I doubt it. The only things worth taking were the guns, and they were all with us. But he sure did make a mess. Well, that we can handle. Im helping you clean up. I refused, but she wasnt budging. Can I use the ladies room now? Not until I clean it. You start in the kitchen. Maybe it was through disaster that we bonded. Maybe I just needed a friend. I had not had one of those for a long time. The whole scene, my broken house, my outrageous debt, the thick miasma of commingled whisky and gin depressed me deeply, I could feel it stirring in my bones. If it hadnt been for Hattie, I dont know how much time would have passed before I set the place back to rights, or if I would have set it at all. When she stood with a bounce and a flourish and said, Ta-da, indicating with an open arm my club chair which she had mended with a strip of duct tape, I felt the tears gathering in my eyes and gave her a hug, a brothers hug, before she could see me cry. Her hair smelled softly of orange peel and tobacco and I wanted to nuzzle there for a week. I wanted both to burrow into her and contain her in my embrace, and I didnt want to keep it brotherly. I hazarded a look down at her, one cheek pressed to my chest, her eyes closed and her little rose-petal mouth open, smiling that crooked smile like she had found what she was looking for, and I felt my heart crack. I gently let her go. She looked up and made to kiss me, but I was ready this time and beat her to the mark, kissing her on the forehead instead.

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Just one? she asked, looking up at me. I had my hands on her shoulders but even so I still could not keep them from trembling, and I think she knew that, too; she was probably hoping to exploit it. You are very sweet, I said. Now run along. But she didnt run along and I had not let go of her shoulders. How much? she asked, her eyes wide open, green and flecked with flashes of yellow. A lot. How much a lot? she pressed. Five thousand, I said. That was a lie. I owed The Continental ten. Hmm, she said. Well, Im sure something will work out, she added, sounding to me like I did when I was her age, and even older, like there was always more money, that everything could be fixed. Not even one little one? she asked. No, I said, turning away, though I couldnt help smiling. Okay, she said, and pecked me on the cheek. See you soon. Yeah, I said, thinking to myself of her mother, her au natural nether weeds and her botched silicon. Yeah, on Monday, I thought to myself as I watched Hatties round little rear and long locust legs tucked into fading denim descend the staircase. Next Monday Hattie wasnt there. She went out for her run, Mrs. Finch said, but did not say what she should have said, which was, Strange that you should ask. Strange. All throughout the morning I studied the altered topography of the mothers figure, looking for antecedents of Hattie. Or at least as she existed in my vivid and irrepressible imagination. Hattie had become a problem for me, and I had not even kissed her, not really. You seem distracted, young lover, Mrs. Finch said, and I, thinking at first she had said My love, winced, and visibly so, judging from the change from solicitous to sullen in her expression. Oh, its nothing, I said. Financial trouble? she asked, wrapping her kimono around her. How did she know? Did I just radiate impecuniosity?

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No, no. Rejection, I said, stupidly. Rejection letters, from all three magazines. I hadnt submitted a story in four years. Oh. That, she said, and her face brightened and she let her kimono fall open. Well, dont you worry about that. Those fools dont know what theyre missing. Yeah, actually, they do, I said, getting caught up in the lie. They do read the submissions, you know. Well, maybe its your subject matter, she said. You surely do not want for talent. I can testify to that. Why dont you write a little story about a bored housewife with a gift for writing, a boor for a husband, and an absolute warrior for a lover? Thats a good idea, I said. Of course its a good idea. Now come back here where you belong. Later, I really knew I was far gone when I found myself parking in the lot at Forsyth Park, hoping to glimpse Hattie in her jogging togs. What would I say? Hi, just dropped by, fancy seeing you, or, Oh, I was just in the neighborhood, stalking you. Or, Where the hell were you this morning, I needed to see you, bad, if only just to see you, not to hold or touch you, just to steal a moment and bury my nose in your hair. I never had the chance to craft a proper greeting because, of course, Spanish Dan, in his jogging togssweaty, laced with Celtic muskopened my passenger-side door and made himself at home. Hello there, wanker, he said as he punched me in the shoulder. You used to call me guvnor, I said, fighting the temptation to rub the bruise that was rising. Yeah, I did, didnt I? he said. Well, that was before you started being a wanker, losing, welshing on your debts, taking good ol Daniels gracious good nature for granted. Yeah, about those debts I began, but Dan interrupted me. Five down and five to go, he said. Just ran into your factor. Who? You know, your factor, your agent, your broker. Your cousin, wanker, said Spanish Dan, hitting me again. And a pretty little factor, too. Be a sport and give Spanish Dan her phone number, what?

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I didnt have a cousin, not in town anyway. But that line of inquiry was a dead end and I knew it, because I knew exactly who had paid on my behalf, my only confidante in the whole affair. Cant do that, Dan. The pit boss backhanded me across the face. Spanish Dan to you, wanker, he said. Youve got one month to pay the rest, or youll have bigger worries than a steaming log of shite crowning your commode. Vile. Spanish Dan left my car, slamming the door behind him. My cheek smarted, and I cursed myself for letting him slap me unchecked, for not returning the gesture in kind. One hundred years ago that would have meant pistols at dawn. But if I knew Spanish Dan he had a stiletto, if not a snub-nose, on him, and my dropping of the gauntlet he would have taken poorly. His set was not familiar with the code duello. How had I gotten caught up in this sordid business? I was raised better than this. Where had I gone wrong? I guess if you pretend long enough that your father did not die a bankrupt you can fool yourself into living beyond your means easily enough. I was no longer the well-heeled prodigal, and the life to which I was accustomed in my twenties was no longer mine. No longer, indeed. With my prestigious education I now made a very modest income as a yacht club gigolo, an income much too modest to meet my gambling debts, but no worries on that score because my best janes daughter of whom I was enamored had covered my action. The lock on my front door was still broken. I needed to take care of that. As I ascended the stairs I heard sounds of movement, possibly in the bathroom, and I felt my bowels clinch. Not again. Surely he didnt beat me here, I thought, debating whether or not to take the stairs. I had a sizable arsenal. It was about time I purchased a shoulder holster and started carrying, I thought as I armed myself with a loafer. When I entered my living room, brandishing my shoe, I saw Hattie, toweling her hair. She saw me and laughed. What are you doing with that shoe? she asked Arming myself against cat burglars, I said, slipping on the loafer and hanging up my coat. More to the point, what are you doing?

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You dont have athletes foot, do you? she said. Because I used your shower. Her hair was still wet, a little tangled, and mercifully she was actually wearing clothes, a skirt and a cable-knit sweater. I dont want you dealing with that nasty Irish rogue ever again, do you understand me? She smiled and plopped into one of the captains chairs. So, hes concerned about the girls safety. I think maybe he loves me a little. Stop this nonsense. This is serious. Where did you get 5,000 dollars? Who says I paid him in cash? My heart skipped a beat. Surely she didnt come to some other arrangement with that thug. The thought of his crusty hands exploring at liberty those clean limbs sickened me. It was an effort to speak. Hattie, you didnt She laughed again. No, silly. With him? Not even for you. Dont you worry. I took it out of checking. Dad gives me just scads of cash. For weekend trips to New York, shopping, plane tickets home from school. Wont be needing those anytime soon. Dont you worry. Hattie, you are very, very kind, but you cant be paying my debts. I cant, huh? Well, I just did. And you havent even thanked me, she said, crossing her arms over her breasts and looking away, an understudy affecting a stagepout. Well, of course Im grateful. Thank you. You may have saved my life. But, itswellits not that simple. I dont want you caught up in this business. Its low. Dirty. Beneath you, and, at one time, beneath me. Well, too late, she said, perking up and turning back to me. Besides, your notions of whats low and dirty may differ from mine. The innuendo was too heavy, too much. I wondered if she knew what she was saying, what she was doing. I was pretty sure she did. She radiated pheromones like sound waves from a tower. I needed to do something to break the spell. I got up and made to go to the kitchen. Are you hungry? I asked. She stood up and blocked my path. Not yet, but I will be.

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My head grew light. Had she been practicing for this moment? Or did it come naturally? She brushed her hand across my fly, like she did in the country, as she pressed her body to mine. I felt myself swell and I pushed her away. Hattie. This has got to stop. You are sixteen years She put her finger to my lips. No. You listen to me. I know damn well what you and Mother do during workshop, and if you refuse me, Ill tell my father, just try. Hattie, you cant be serious. Serious as a heart attack. Cancel your appointments. Put the chain on the door. This afternoon you belong to me. Bought and paid for. Did I at the time reflect upon what this meant? Did I see what we did together next as a transaction? That was unavoidable, and thus doubly stained the affair. Did she see it as a transaction, or was she just bored, hormonally charged, and not half as sophisticated as she affected. She was not without experience in the romantic arts, and I found myself wanting to maim, to rip out the eyes from the sockets of her first love, and all the others who had known her. My mind again conjured the image of Spanish Dan, his torso puckered with scars, heaving above this porcelain, pristine frame and I saw the blood running from his ears. It was too late, I was too far gone, drowning deep in the most troubled of waters. Thus ensued the tender frenzy. Why not a boy her age, or closer, I asked. Oh, she was done with that. She was sick of their sticky fumbling, their amateurish attempts, their subsequent failures. Ever since her expulsion she had eavesdropped on her mothers and my workshops, her mother who had not the sense or decorum or maybe it was restraint to cease her assignations now that her daughter was home. She had listened and she had heard the evidence of the matadors stamina. She needed that stamina. She knew she was sick, that it was a disease, that she should control herself and go to meetings, but she couldnt. She guessed it ran in the family, Through the distaff, she said, and smiled. Other than her mother, I let my janes fall by the wayside. When after an Oaklyn romp I would return home, messages from Mary Jane, Khaki, and the widow Lawton congested my answering machine, then after a week they didnt. To Mother Finch I

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remained constant, especially constant for a gigolo, with the exception of regular trysts with her daughter. Hattie and I grew reckless, twice making love in the garage after I had done with her mother, on the bonnet of the Jaguar and in its backseat, and once in the powder room below the staircase. I had never, even when gambling, it seemed, thrown caution so far into the wind. Gambling. I still had to attend to my debt, toward which end jilting matrons was of little help. I was buying only where I had credit, charging to my account at the grocer and butcher, and availing myself of the bar at The Edward, a private club of which my great-great-great-grandfather had been a charter member, altogether different from the clandestine Continental; there certainly were no longshoremen on the roll. The Edward occupied an old Georgian mansion on the north side of Forsyth Park. Inside there were two bars, the one in the Flagstone room, adjacent to the main dining room, and a smaller bar upstairs adjacent to the reading room. It was this latter, much quieter bar I frequented. It had a tartan carpet, a chess table, and two backgammon tables. On one visit it struck me that success at backgammon could put me back in the black. I had not played since my father had died; it was one of those things we did together, something that didnt require much conversation, an activity, like hunting, in which silence was not awkward. These were activities well-suited to my father. He taught me backgammon at a very young age. Like the other kids, I had an Atari, but unlike the other kids, the only game cartridges I had were Chess and Backgammon. Dad did compromise once and bought me Space Chess. But most every afternoon when Dad came home from the office, hed turn on the oven to heat the meal Eugenia our maid left for us, take out his leather backgammon case and wed play on the porch or in the study until dinner was hot. When I was ten and receiving an allowance, he trained me in the use of the doubling die, fleecing me once a month (I was not paid enough to play for money more often than that) for a year, for which I swore Id never forgive him, and I didnt, until the second year, when I started winning the money back, and more. For that apprenticeship, I could never thank him enough. When money enters a contest the contestant cares. I learned the strategy of the forward game, the backward game, the subtleties of blotting, I made sure to make my bar points early on. I mastered probability: a roll of 5-3 is never the same as a roll of 3-5. It was not for sentimental reasons that I

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had not played since his death ten years prior. I no longer played because I had lost my partner. There wasnt a whole lot of action on the two backgammon tables in The Edwards gaming parlor. There was, however, one member who played regularly, and that was Charlie Finch, husband to my client, and father to my young lady-love. Tall and lean, a fox-hunter with a severe widows peak, hed amble in to the game room every weekday at about six oclock, pick up the Journal or Playboy from the library and read it while he sipped his one whiskey sour. Dad had always told me never go camping with a man who drinks whiskey sours. Maybe Charlies choice in cocktail explained his wifes starved libido. A couple days during the week Arthur Heyward would join him for a drink and a game of backgammon. They were both very good, and very reckless, playing for base values of twenty-five to fifty dollars and doubling wantonly. Once Arthur scored a gammon on Charlie in a game they had doubled to 64, and Charlie had to pay him $6400, and it was on that day I decided I would challenge Charlie when I saw him next, which was the following day, one during which Arthur did not show. So, when are you going to get my wife in The New Yorker? Charlie asked as he prepared the stones in his inner table. I had half a mind to suggest that Playboy was a better fit for her but I refrained. Well, these things take a while. For every magazine that accepts your work, there are twenty that dont. Lousy odds, Charlie said. And how about you? Whos publishing Francis Wormsloe these days? Well, Im taking a break on the short stories right now, trying to finish my novel. Lord, how many times had I said that. There ought to be a tax levied on writers, or dilettantes, or has-beens and failures every time they drop that line. Give it time, give it time. You know, my daughter is of a literary bent herself. Shes home from school this semester, as you may know. Spends all day out in the country writing poetry. Maybe you ought to tutor her. I about spat my scotch all over the game board. We played the first game for fun. I didnt let him score a gammon, but I neglected my bar points and I blotted not haphazardly, but not shrewdly either, so that I

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spent just enough time a la cloison to suggest that, though no rank amateur, I was no pro. I won the next game, not handily, but won it I did. So, flush with the confidence instilled by a victory, I, as journeyman gamer, suggested we sweeten the game. Charlie asked if I was sure and I assured him. We agreed on a base value of ten dollars, which at first isnt much, but if one and his opponent keep doubling and one scores a backgammon, or even a gammon, then he walks away with a tidy sum. There are two rows of twelve points on a backgammon board. Very symmetrical. Therefore, its fairly easy to determine where a roll of the dice will place your stones through calculating in your head. There is no need to count them out by tapping ones stone on each point until reaching the destination, like some child playing Chutes and Ladders. But thats exactly how Charlie Finch played, tapping with his stone each point, one at a time. The first and only time I tried that my father said hed cut off my fingers if I did it again. In my mind it was one thing that separated amateurs from professionals. And judging by Charlies play in that second game, I was correct. He lost by a gammon, and I won $1280. He wrote me an IOU that in the club was as good as currency. No cash ever changed hands in The Edward, that was a rule. I looked at my watch, said something about a previous engagement, but Charlie would hear none of it. No, no, that will never do, he said. Lets make it interesting. Lets set the base at 25. Come on, give an old man the chance to save some face. Im going to call my wife and tell her that Ill be late. Money so easy was a temptation I could not combat. I vowed to myself to not double beyond sixteen, so that, no matter how badly I played, at worst I would only have to tear up Mr. Finchs IOU. Anyone who has ever rolled the bones or spun the wheel or told a dealer hit me, knows just how hollow such promises ring. The doubling die was once again on 64 when Charlie Finch scored a gammon. After tearing up his IOU I still owed him $1920. As I was writing out my own promissory note, he stopped me and said, You know, if youre a little short on ready cash, you could just sign over that station wagon. Electra Estate Wagon, right? Just like my wifes. Theyd look nice parked next to each other, dont you think? Then he winked at me, and I felt a sudden chill. I thought better about suggesting that, instead of paying cash, I could tutor his wife for free.

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By the way, Mr. Finch said as he folded his newspaper, Dont you ever try to hustle me again. I rarely thought of the husbands whose carnal treasuries I plundered. I did not consider them weak or impotent. When I did think of them I considered myself less a conqueror and more of a corsair. No mere pinch hitter, but not a surrogate, either. As a freebooter in the marriage bower I performed a service. Yet, whereas I enjoyed discharging my duties, the rake does not play house. Occasionally, I would make jibes at the expense of the injured party, advising her to warn her spouse to watch the low clearances, to take care when debouching from his sports-coupe, because hes apt to tangle his horns in the seat belt if he doesnt know that theyve sprouted. Anyhow, I rarely viewed the cuckolds as men who I had beaten, so I rarely viewed them as threats. However, after that afternoon, I feared that Charlie Finch might gore me with his antlers. I told myself I was just going out there to inspect the property, to see just how saleable it was, but I knew that was not true, even before I packed not just my hunting and fishing gear, but my entire wardrobe: suits, evening wear (would it ever see the light of the moon again?), my favorite Persian rug, and as many books and records as I could stuff into the tailgate or lash to the luggage rack. I had just installed a new dead bolt on the carriage houses red door and I wondered how much of the Dan it could take. I had only been out to Hopeulikit once in the past year and that was with Hattie, two weeks prior to my exodus. She had actually spent the night, two nights to be exact, having woven some Byzantine yarn about a weekend reunion with the southern Pomfret contingent at a Cumberland Plateau cabin where there was no telephone. The latter part was true. The Wormsloe hunting camp had no telephone. It did have power and running water from a well and cedar planks that for the most part kept the mildew at bay. Snakes living under the tin roof fed on the rats who hoped to nest there. Over dinner we witnessed a chase along the top of one of the exposed rafters. The serpent lunged and grasped its quarry in its fangs, the momentum of the movement sending him swinging down from the rafter, back and forth before our eyes like a pendulum, the rat still clutched in its distended jaws. Then it swallowed and hung there between us, the rat-

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shaped lump behind its head making it look like some kind of sling. Finally, it retracted and withdrew along the rafter back into the wall. Snakes dont typically bother me. But watching this one unhinge its jaws and swallow whole its dinner while dangling above our dinner I found unsettling. Other than the initial yelp of surprise at seeing the snake swing down from the rafter, Hattie said only, Cool, but not in a dismissive way, not at all. She was rapt, as if I had taken her to a bush camp outside Kisangani on the banks of the Congo, seven thousand miles away from Hopeulikit on the Ogeechee, and the king snake was a mamba. It might as well have been the Congo. Love was an exotic locale for me, heretofore undiscovered country. That weekend we behaved without shame, without fear of discovery or accusation, and, for the first night at least, without fear of parting. She was demanding, and I was obliging, leaving some three hundred million nascent matadors swimming nowhere in her navel. In my most deluded moments, spent and aglow, with her snoring lightly, curled in the crook of my arm, I thought it just might work, that we could conceal our affair until she was of marriageable age, or maybe just sell all I owned and spirit her off to Mozambique. You may say, What foolish rot, what treacle, and you would be correct. But I was drunk on her, no longer simply on our forbidden behavior, but on her, her crooked smile, her pale and languid limbs, her self-tutored, raw-boned command of the classics and her savages ear for poetry, her zest for making trouble, and the joy she took in feeding flies to spiders. Without her, the cabin was stale and dry, as one would expect in a cedar chest. Proofed against moisture and moths, it was the new home for my books, records, and retired finery. At first I toured the acreage, looking for parcels I might sell, but soon grew dull with the tedium of settling my affairs. Who could touch me here? Instead, I settled in a routine. Before dawn I rose and stoked the stove, chose a rifle, and hiked to a stand. Some mornings I gave over to splitting wood. I set up my Underwood on the dining room table under the hog-bone chandelier and in the afternoons I began to hammer out in earnest the opening strains of a novel, tentatively titled Wife on Mars. Through the gloaming I would hunt again. Only through adhering to my tasks like clockwork was I able to endure her absence. One morning I dropped the axe on my toe and I cursed the

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moon and the stars in a voice that sounded strangely familiar yet alien, and I realized these were the first words I had spoken in a week. That was the same day Hattie appeared. She had had to leave her venerable pickup at the locked gate, and so made her way up the road with surprising stealth. I never once heard the crunch of gravel under her heels. I stopped in mid-chop, the axe raised above my head, when I saw her. She smiled and ran up to the cabin from the drive. I finished my strokeright down the middleand caught her in my embrace. She told me I smelled like a submarine sandwich, three weeks old and stashed under the bed, but she held me tight all the same and we laughed. Shouldnt you be in a nunnery by now? I asked. She answered only with a wink and a smile. Look at you, lusty gosling in your rubber duck boots, I said, pressing my face to hers. This gander is badly in need of a gonadectomy. She pulled away and, looking at the ground, said. Im having my flow, so Oh, okay, I said, thinking, thats probably for the bestnot that this monthly contingency ever gave me pause in the practice of the sweetest science, but this demurring of hers charmed me in its delicacythis madness must end sometime, today will be the day we discuss it, the end. She looked up and smiled. So, thats why I propose the Italian Solution, she said. The what? You know, in some communities, in order to preserve the integrity of the maidenhead, the unmarried lovers settle uponan alternate route. No birth control required. Very Catholic, all in all. The Italian Solution. Where on earth did you learn that? I said. Just when I was praising her for her delicacy. Something I read, she said. I asked her what and she said Norman Mailer. Pornography! I said. Such filth. Darling, you have the pedigree of a baroness and yet a mouth like some lousy jade. Really, Hattie, you make me blush. I doubt it, she said. Oh, please, please, lets try it.

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A little later we sat at the dining room table, drinking beer from the bottle. I sliced cold venison back-strap I had grilled the night before and served it with wedges of onion and goats cheese. She remarked that it was peasant fare, and wished we were in some stone cottage on the outskirts of Provence, with maybe a bottle of wine instead of lukewarm lager. We were ravenous, and when we had finished she said she had some bad news. Youre places been trashed, she said. Again. Im not surprised. Oh, Francis, why didnt you tell me you owed him more money? Please let me help. Absolutely not, I said. I told you I didnt want you involved in this business. Spanish Dan is an awful man. You stay away from him, you understand? I understand, she said, putting the dishes next to the sink. But what are you going to do? Ill think of something. I dont know. I might sell the milo field to the neighbor. Hes been wanting it, to turn it into pasture. But this is your familys land. Land is everything. Money is nothing. Let me give you the money. How much do you need? I was seized with the impulse to say something cruel and hurtful, that this was the time to drive the wedge between us, this was the time to send her away, for her own good as well as mine. I felt as if the rules of drama dictated some kind of vituperative, hateful outburst, a taste of the lash, at just that moment. What are you suggesting, that you buy me again? Is that what I am, a high-dollar boy-toy to you? Listen up, I am no womans kept man, not any more. You stay out of my affairs. Youre sticking your nose in things youre too young to understand. Youre just a child. This last part struck the blow. I again felt the sensation of walls crumbling as I watched her chin quiver. This idyll had to end someday, you know. Its a hard lesson. The sooner you learn it the better. Find someone your own age. The brave, brave girl, she shot for levity in the face of imminent crisis. But they dont have gray hair. They barely have chest hair.

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Ultimately, she kept it together, she did not shed a tear, her chin ceased to quiver, and that somehow made it worse. As she strode past me and through the door, leaving it open behind her, her erect posture, the concave small of her back, the haughty toss of her pony tail, her regal bearing, all conspired to crush me. I twice started to the door to stop her but stopped myself, the words caught in my throat, the dry hollow in my chest telling me to go after her, not to let her go, but I stood fast. I sold the parcel to the neighbor Jenkins, and with dispatch he bush-hogged it to bristle, even though the weather wouldnt permit him to seed it until spring. Hereford cattle would soon be grazing on my heretofore prized game plot. The morning after the closing I cranked up the station wagon and headed for town a little giddy at the prospect of actually paying my debts, at being beholden to no man, or woman. That last bit, though, was false bravado. I knew when I got to town that I would drive to Forsyth Park in hopes of catching her during her jog. I was also hoping to catch her father at the club, so I was wearing a blazer and tie for the first time in a month, and the crisp, sharp collar on my razor-burned neck felt reassuring in its sting. Hattie was not at Forsyth, a turn of events that both wounded me and strengthened my resolve. Thank the lord, neither was Spanish Dan out for his run, nor, for that matter, at the Continental. I was able to settle discreetly with the business manager, a crusty old pervert behind steel bars reading Boys Life and watching Shirley Temple on a black-andwhite television. When he asked if I would be paying my dues as well, without pause I said, No, and bade farewell to my affiliation with that seamy parlor. I did not have the gumption to see my carriage house, not yet. Id move back in soon enough, but whatever waste the Dan laid to my abode might incapacitate me to the point where I would not discharge the duties incumbent upon me. At The Edward in the Flagstone Room by the fireplace I dined sumptuously on oysters, the clubs famous shrimp bisque, and a rack of lamb accompanied by an excellent Burgundy. I had made good use of the clubs telephone, arranging to meet my fathers banker later in order to put the balance of my real estate profit to work. And I had contacted Dads old buddy Richmond who owned the Evening Press, and Richmond said there might be something for me on the Arts and Living beat, a food and drink column at the very least. The day had been a steady

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succession of hallmark moments, a graduated molting culminating in my dropping from the ranks of the idle privileged; so long, lotusland, farewell espiglerie. In the clubs library, I was seated in my favorite leather banquette, perusing the Arts and Living section of The Evening Press, when I heard a familiar clipped request for a whiskey sour issue from the game room bar. I folded the paper and joined Charlie Finch at his table. Wormsloe, not Francis, he said, like a scientist identifying a pathogen in a laboratory, and I felt myself recoil as if slapped, or, more to the point, caught. Mr. Finch, I wont take too much of your time. I only want to settle my debt with you, I said, sliding a letter-size envelope across the table. How dare you, he said, his face stricken, his head cocked. I know, I know, the club by-laws. But I mean to honor my debt, and I thought this method preferable to perhaps alerting Mrs. Finch regarding a gentlemans wager through mailing your payment to your home. My home? And this coming from someone who has so thoroughly fouled my home. He slid the envelope back across the table. Keep your money. Keep it, and listen close. He eased forward and rested his elbows on the table and spoke quietly. I stayed home from the office this morning, which placed me in a position to receive an unexpected and unusual caller, a rough-looking fellow with a thick Irish brogue, asking for my daughter. Here my heart stopped, the notion of Spanish Dan staking out the Finch house thoroughly unmanned me. As did the certain knowledge that I was in real trouble, not with some underworld henchman, but with one of my fathers contemporaries, with the father of the girl I loved, and the husband of the woman who lately had kept me. I wished I had ordered a drink but also recoiled at the idea of ordering one and protracting this exchange. This in and of itself was shocking, that my daughter might be in any way keeping company with aalow-life like this, that his kind should ever darken my threshold. He noticed my discomfort, and sought to assure me that he was not calling on my daughter, per se, that this was all relative to a matter of business involving my nephew, and that perhaps I could help. Of course you know I have no nephew. Taking

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this all for some kind of confidence scam, I ordered him off my property, immediately, and that as soon as I slammed the door in his face I would be calling the police. I have no doubt that the police are already well acquainted with this man. Mr. Finch ordered another whiskey, which I had never seen him do. He also ordered it neat, which was another first. He did not ask if I wanted anything. I did not, except to be gone, gone from here. I wondered if Id ever drink at The Edward again. Mr. Finch continued. Well, then I got to thinking. Hatties been acting strangely, spending all day out at Oaklyn where the house is boarded up and empty and the fields all overgrown. At dinner she stares off into space, barely bothering to eat even her lamb chops the other day, her favorite. And just last week I surprised her as she was trying to leave the house with her jewelry box. Very peculiar behavior, all in all. I felt the impulse to interject, agree at least with a nod, that this was indeed odd behavior, and so indicate that I was a man with whom he could commiserate, and try to perpetuate a charade most transparent. This was the instinct of the liar, the cheater, the blackguard, and I hated myself for having it, even if I didnt act on it. Finch went on. So today, after the curious visit, I called Pomfret, to see if the friends with whom she was meeting for the weekend weeks ago at some cabin had actually signed out. They had not, they had been present and accounted for. Something was going on. Oh, and what I didnt mention is that this morning Hattie was very agitated. She didnt plan on me being home; I didnt either, but a headcolds a headcold. Anyhow, she was clearly agitated that I was there. Once I had turned away the hooligan, she was very upset with me. How dare I pry into her affairs and decide who she could and could not see, and that this was very, very important and that I had no idea of the seriousness of the matter in which I was interfering. Well, I do now, Wormsloe. I know about you andand my daughter. You scum. Id have you arrested right now, but thered be a scandal, and I wont have my Hatties name dragged through the slime and the mud. Its only your fathers memory that keeps me from throttling you right here, you worm. I owe you at least a chance. I never did like you and Gordon being so close, I always knew there was something not quite right about you. If heif heif he were here youd be dead. Mr. Finch paused to recover himself. I so badly wanted to flee, but I knew I had an obligation to take whatever this man meted out. He continued. So heres what Im going to do for

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you. Leave this town. By sunrise. Never come back. If you do, and Ill know if you do, by God, I will kill you. His eyes were wet and bright and I knew this was not the liquor talking. What does one say to such a thing? This is the moment when I should have feigned umbrage at his outrageous charges, slapped him with my glove, asked him to choose swords or pistols. But denial would cheapen the one glimpse of love Id ever been proffered. I could never make him understand, I would never try, that I was neither robber nor rapist, that I adored the child and would gladly prove it with the point of a sword. But all that would be rubbish to his ears. I loved her, it was true, and because I loved her I knew I could not keep her, that to keep her would be to rob her of a life she had just begun to taste. So I did not drop the gauntlet. I simply rose and wished him good day, my hands at my sides, shaking. He never mentioned Mrs. Finch. Im sure he knew, and I daresay he didnt care. In the sorghum I cut for sign in search of the blood trail. A gut shot is the absolute worse shot, no matter what your target. A man shot in the gut, they say, dies slowly and painfully, a white-hot sort of passing, the bile, the spleen, the four humors in collaboration with the gastric acids, the enzymes, the urine and feces, all spilling from their pierced sacks and burning away the soft tissues within the belly. A deer shot in the gut runs at the speed of sound, powered by adrenaline until it finds the thickest, thorniest, nastiest cover there is to be found on the other side of the highest hill, buried in the deepest gulley. To add insult to inconvenience, the adrenaline coursing through the animal taints the meat almost as bad as the feces with which it comes into contact. I saw him enter the tree line but I cant remember exactly where and I mean to find this buck. Its simply what I do. Its all I do; the hunt is the surrogate chase of the old days, the kill a pale substitute for the catch of better times. Youd think by now that I had perfected it, that Id be shooting it in the heart and lungs through the brisket. But I have not. Who knows what force compels me to flinch at the moment of delivering the perfect shot, the cleanest kill, what force compels me to seek hardship and misery, suffer the beast an ignoble death, and suffer the hunter an arduous trek over hill and dale, through the briar patch, and the stagnant, fetid slough. I know what force. I know that if

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for a moment I allow myself passage on the easy path Ill have the leisure to think of Hattie and how I should have killed her father, quickly and cleanly, and spirited her off to the darkest corner of the globe, which to you may be so much purple prose, but to me is the way we all should live, by the pen under sperm oil lamp-light, on the ballroom floor to the three-four of the polonaise, by the long-stemmed rose clutched between the teeth, by the lash on the crowded afterdeck, and by the sword at the drop of a lavender kid glove. Oh well, I guess Ill never get it.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

William Lee Belford jr is a native of Savannah, Georgia. In 1997, he graduated from the University of the South with a Bachelor of Arts in English. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama in 2001, and is currently a candidate for a Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing at Florida State University.

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