A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

Chapter 8

There's a saloon called Hurley's on Sixth Avenue, diagonally across the street from the glass and steel tower where Five Borough Cable Sportscasts had a suite of offices. People from NBC have gone there for years, and Johnny Carson made the place famous back when he did his show live from New York; it was the site of all of his Ed McMahon drinking jokes. Hurley's is still in its original location, housed in one of the only older buildings still standing on that stretch of Sixth. Television people still patronize the place, to kill an hour or an afternoon, and one fairly frequent visitor was Richard Thurman. He often came in at the end of the workday and stayed long enough to have one drink, sometimes two, before heading on home.

I didn't have to be the world's greatest detective to learn this, because it was in the file Joe Durkin had let me read. I got to Hurley's around four-thirty and stood at the bar with a glass of club soda. I'd had the thought of trying to pump the bartender but the place was crowded and he was far too busy for that sort of exploratory conversation. Besides, we'd have had to shout at each other in order to be heard.

The fellow next to me wanted to talk about the Super Bowl, which had taken place the preceding Sunday. It was too one-sided to sustain a conversation for long, and it turned out we'd both turned it off at halftime. That common bond moved him to buy me a drink, but his enthusiasm dimmed when he found out I was drinking soda water and winked out altogether when I tried to turn the conversation to boxing. "That's no sport," he said. "A couple of ghetto kids trying to beat each other to death. Why not pull the stops out, give 'em both guns and let 'em shoot each other."

A little after five I saw Thurman come in. He was with another man about his age and they found standing room down at the far end of the bar from me. They ordered drinks, and after ten or fifteen minutes Thurman left by himself.

A few minutes later so did I.

THE restaurant on the ground floor of Thurman's building on West Fifty-second was called Radicchio's. I stood across the street and established that there were no lights on in the top-floor apartment. The one a flight below, the Gottschalk place, was also dark, with Ruth and Alfred in West Palm Beach for the season.

I had skipped lunch, so I had an early dinner at Radicchio's. There were only two other tables occupied, both by young couples deep in earnest conversation. I felt like calling Elaine and telling her to hop in a cab and join me, but I wasn't sure that would be a good idea.

I had some veal and a half-portion of farfalle, I think it's called, a bowtie-shaped pasta which they served with a spicy red sauce. The small salad that came with the meal held plenty of the bitter leaf that had given the restaurant its name. A line on the menu advised me that a dinner without wine was like a day without sunshine. I drank water with my meal, and espresso afterward. The waiter brought an unrequested bottle of anisette to my table. I motioned for him to take it away.

"Is no charge," he assured me. "You put a drop in your 'spresso, makes it taste good."

"I wouldn't want it to taste that good."

"Scusi?"

I motioned again for him to take the bottle and he shrugged and carried it back to the bar. I drank my espresso and tried not to imagine it tasting of anisette. Because it wasn't the taste that something in me yearned for, any more than it was the taste that prompted them to bring the bottle to the table. If anise improved the flavor of coffee people would add a spoonful of seeds to the coffee grounds, and nobody does.

It was the alcohol, that's what called to me, and I suppose it had been crooning to me all day long, but its siren song had grown stronger in the past hour or two. I wasn't going to drink, I didn't want to drink, but some stimulus had triggered a cellular response and awakened something deep within me, something that would always be there.

If I do go out, if I go and pick up a drink one of these days, it'll be a quart of bourbon in my room, or maybe a bottle of Mick's twelve-year-old Irish. It won't be a demitasse of espresso with a spoonful of fucking anisette floating on the top.

I looked at my watch. It was barely past seven, and the meeting at St. Paul 's doesn't get under way until eight-thirty. But they open the doors an hour before the meeting starts, and it wouldn't hurt me to get there early. I could help set up chairs, put out the literature and the cookies. On Friday nights we have a step meeting, with the discussion centering on one of the Twelve Steps that comprise AA's spiritual program. This week we'd be back on the First Step. "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable."

I caught the waiter's eye and signaled for the check.

AT the end of the meeting Jim Faber came up to me and confirmed our dinner date for Sunday. He's my sponsor and we have a standing date for Sunday dinner, unless one of us has to cancel.

"I think I'll stop at the Flame," he said. "I'm in no rush to get home."

"Something the matter?"

"It'll keep until Sunday. How about you, you want to get some coffee?"

I begged off and walked up to Sixty-first and over to Broadway. The video store was open, and looked unchanged since six months ago. It had more of a crowd this time, though, with people looking to insure themselves against an empty weekend. There was a short line at the counter and I joined it. The woman in front of me took home three movies and three packages of microwave popcorn.

The owner still needed a shave. I said, "You must sell a lot of popcorn."

"It's a good item for us," he agreed. "Most of the shops carry it. I know you, don't I?"

I gave him a card. It had my name and phone number and nothing else. Jim Faber had printed up a whole box of them for me. He looked at it and at me, and I said, "Back in July. A friend of mine rented a copy of The Dirty Dozen, and I-"

"I remember. What's the matter now? Don't tell me it happened again."

"Nothing like that. But something's come up that makes it important for me to trace the source of that cassette."

"I think I told you. An old woman brought it in along with a whole batch of others."

"You told me."

"And did I tell you I never saw her before or since? Well, it's been six months and I still haven't seen her. I'd love to help you, but-"

"You're busy now."

"That's for sure. It's always like this on Friday nights."

"I'd like to come back when it's quieter."

"That'd be better," he said, "but I don't know what I'd be able to tell you. I didn't have any more complaints, so I think that one tape must have been the only one with a dirty movie dubbed on top of it. As far as locating the woman, the source of it, you know everything I know."

"You may know more than you realize. What's a good time tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow? Tomorrow's Saturday. We open at ten in the morning and it's pretty quiet before noon."

"I'll come at ten."

"You know what? Make it nine-thirty. I generally get here early to catch up on the paperwork. I'll let you in and we can have a half hour before I open up."

THE next morning I read the Daily News with my eggs and coffee. An elderly Washington Heights woman had been killed watching television, struck in the head by a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting on the street outside her apartment. The intended victim had undergone emergency surgery at Columbia Presbyterian and was in critical condition. He was sixteen years old, and police believed the shooting was drug-related.

The woman was the fourth bystander killed so far this year. Last year the city had set a record, with thirty-four bystanders gunned down. If present trends continued, the News announced, that record could fall in mid-September.

On Park Avenue, a handful of blocks from Chance's gallery, a man had leaned out the window of an unmarked white van to snatch the handbag of a middle-aged woman who was waiting for the light to change. She'd had the bag's strap looped around her neck, presumably to make it harder to steal, and when the van sped off she was dragged and strangled. A sidebar to the main article advised women to carry their bags in a manner that would minimize physical risk if the bag were stolen. "Or don't carry a purse at all," one expert suggested.

In Queens, a group of teenagers walking across the Forest Park golf course had come upon the body of a young woman who had been abducted several days earlier in Woodhaven. She'd been doing her grocery shopping on Jamaica Avenue when another van, a light blue one, pulled up at the curb. Two men jumped out of the back, grabbed her, hustled her into the van, and climbed in after her. The van was gone before anyone could think to get the number. A preliminary medical examination disclosed evidence of sexual assault and multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen.

Don't watch television, don't carry a purse, don't walk down the street. Jesus.

I got to the video store at nine-thirty. The owner, freshly shaved and wearing a clean shirt, led me to his office in the back. He remembered my name and introduced himself as Phil Fielding. We shook hands, and he said, "Your business card didn't say, but are you some kind of investigator? Something like that?"

"Something like that."

"Just like in the movies," he said. "I'd like to help if there was anything I could do, but I didn't know anything the last time I saw you and that was six months ago. I stayed around last night after we closed and checked the books on the chance that I might have the woman's name somewhere, but it was no go. Unless you've got an idea, something I haven't thought of-"

"The tenant," I said.

"You mean her tenant? The one who owned the tapes?"

"That's right."

"She said he died. Or did he skip out on the rent? My memory's a little vague, it wasn't a high-priority thing for me to remember. I'm pretty sure she said she was selling his things to recoup back rent that he owed."

"That's what you said in July."

"So if he died or just left town-"

"I'd still like to know who he was," I said. "Do many people own that many films on videocassette? I had the impression that most people rented them."

"You'd be surprised," he said. "We sell a lot. Children's classics, especially, even in this neighborhood where not that many people have kids. Snow White, The Wizard of Oz. We sold a ton of E.T. and we're selling Batman now, but it's not as strong as I would have predicted. A lot of people will buy the occasional favorite film. And of course there's a big market for exercise videos and instructional stuff, but that's a whole other area, that's not movies."

"Do you think many people would own as many as thirty films?"

"No," he said. "I'm guessing, but I'd say it'd be rare to own more than half a dozen. That's not counting exercise videos and football-highlight films. Or pornography, which I don't carry."

"What I'm getting at is that the tenant, the owner of these thirty cassettes, was probably a film buff."

"Oh, no question," he said. "This guy had all three versions of The Maltese Falcon. The original 1931 version with Ricardo Cortez-"

"You told me."

"Did I? I'm not surprised, it was fairly remarkable. I don't know where he got that stuff on video, I've never been able to find it in the catalogs. Yeah, he was a buff."

"So he probably rented films besides the ones he owned."

"Oh, I see what you're getting at. Yeah, I think that'd be a sure bet. A lot of people buy an occasional film, but everybody rents them."

"And he lived in the neighborhood."

"How do you know that?"

"If his landlady lived around here-"

"Oh, right."

"So he could have been a customer of yours."

He thought about it. "Sure," he said, "it's possible. It's even possible we had conversations about film noir, but I can't remember anything."

"You've got all your members programmed into your computer system, haven't you?"

"Yeah, it makes life a whole lot simpler."

"You said she brought in the bag of cassettes the first week in June. So if he was a customer, his account would have been inactive for the past seven or eight months."

"I could have a lot of accounts like that," he said. "People move, they die, some kid on crack breaks in and steals their VCR. Or they start doing business with somebody down the block and stop coming here. I've had people, I don't see them for months, and then they start coming in again."

"How many accounts do you figure you have that have been inactive since June?"

"I have no idea whatsoever," he said. "But I can certainly find out. Why don't you have a seat? Or browse around, maybe you'll find a movie you want to see."

It was past ten by the time he was finished, but no one had come knocking on the door. "I told you the mornings were slow," he said. "I came up with twenty-six names. These are people whose accounts have been inactive since the fourth of June, but who did rent at least one tape from us during the first five months of the year. Of course if he was sick a long time, stuck in the hospital-"

"Let me start with what you've got."

"All right. I copied the names and addresses for you, and phone numbers when they gave them. A lot of people won't give out phone numbers, especially women, and I can't say I blame them. I also have credit-card numbers, but I didn't copy those down because I'm supposed to keep that information confidential, although I suppose I could stretch a point if there's someone you can't trace any other way."

"I don't think I'll need it." He had copied the names on two sheets of lined notebook paper. I scanned them and asked if any of the names had struck a chord.

"Not really," he said. "I see so many people all day every day that I only remember the regulars, and I don't always recognize them or remember their names. With these twenty-six people I looked up what they'd checked out during the last year, that's what took me so long. I thought maybe one person would shape up very definitely as a film buff, with rental choices that made sense in terms of what he owned, but I couldn't find anything that looked like a buff profile."

"It was worth a try."

"That's what I thought. I'm pretty sure it was a man, that the landlady referred to her tenant as him, and some of the twenty-six are women, but I put everybody down."

"Good." I folded the sheets of paper, tucked them into my breast pocket. "I'm sorry to have put you to so much trouble," I said. "I appreciate it."

"Hey," he said, "when I think of all the pleasure you guys have brought me on the screen, how could I turn you down?" He grinned, then turned serious. "Are you trying to bust a porn ring? Is that what this is all about?" When I hesitated he assured me that he understood if I couldn't talk about it. But would I at least drop by when it was all over and tell him how it had turned out?

I said I would.

I had twenty-six names, only eleven with phone numbers. I tried the phone numbers first, because it's so much easier when you can do this sort of thing without walking all over the city. It was frustrating, though, because I couldn't seem to complete a call, and when I did I succeeded only in getting a recording. I got three answering machines, one with a cute message, the others simply repeating the last four digits of the number and inviting me to leave a message. Four times I got the NYNEX computer-generated voice telling me that the number I had reached was no longer in service. On one occasion it supplied a new number; I wrote it down and called it, and nobody answered.

When I finally got a human voice I barely knew how to respond. I looked quickly at my list and said, "Uh, Mr. Accardo? Joseph Accardo?"

"Speaking."

"You're a member of the video-rental club"- what was its name?- "at Broadway and Sixty-first."

"Broadway and Sixty-first," he said. "Which one's that?"

"Next to Martin's."

"Oh, right, sure. What did I do, not bring something back?"

"Oh, no," I said. "I just noticed there's been no activity in your account in months, Mr. Accardo, and I wanted to invite you to come in and check out our selection."

"Oh," he said, surprised. "Well, that's very nice of you. I'll be sure and do that. I got in the habit, going to this place near where I work, but I'll stop by one of these nights."

I hung up the phone and crossed Accardo off the list. I had twenty-five names left and it looked as though I was going to have to do them on foot.

I called it a day around four-thirty, by which time I'd managed to cross off ten more names. It was a slow process, slower than I might have expected. The addresses were all pretty much within walking distance, so I could get around without too much trouble, but that didn't mean I could establish whether or not a particular person still lived at a particular address.

I was back in my hotel room by five. I showered and shaved and sat in front of the TV. At seven I met Elaine at a Moroccan place on Cornelia Street in the Village. We both ordered the couscous. She said, "If the food tastes as good as the room smells, we're in for a treat. What's the best place in the world to get couscous?"

"I don't know. Casablanca?"

" Walla Walla."

"Oh."

"Get it? Couscous, Walla Walla. Or, if you wanted couscous in Germany, you'd go to Baden-Baden."

"I think I get the premise."

"I knew you would, you've got that kind of mind. Where would you get couscous in Samoa?"

" Pago Pago. Excuse me, will you? I'll be back in a minute, I have to make peepee."

The couscous was terrific and the portions were large. While we ate, I told her how I'd spent the day. "It was frustrating," I said, "because I couldn't just check the doorbells to determine whether or not the person I was looking for lived there."

"Not in New York."

"Of course not. A lot of people leave the slot next to their bell blank on general principles. I suppose I should understand that, I'm in a program that places a premium on anonymity, but some people might find it a little strange. Other people have names on the doorbell but the names aren't theirs, because they're living in an illegal sublet and they don't want anybody to find out. So if I'm looking for Bill Williams, say-"

"That's William Williams," she said. "The couscous king of Walla Walla."

"That's the guy. If his name's not on the bell, that doesn't mean he's not there. And if his name is on the bell, that doesn't mean anything either."

"Poor baby. So what do you do, call the super?"

"If there's a resident super, but in most of the smaller buildings there isn't. And the super's no more likely to be home than anybody else. And a superintendent doesn't necessarily know the names of the tenants, as far as that goes. You wind up ringing bells and knocking on doors and talking to people, most of whom don't know much about their neighbors and are very cautious about disclosing what they do know."

"Hard way to make a living."

"Some days it certainly seems that way."

"It's a good thing you love it."

"Do I? I suppose so."

"Of course you do."

"I guess. It's satisfying when you can keep hammering away at something until it starts to make sense. But not everything does." We were on dessert now, some kind of gooey honey cake, too sweet for me to finish. The waitress had brought us Moroccan coffee, which was the same idea as Turkish coffee, very thick and bitter, with powdery grounds filling the bottom third of the cup.

I said, "I put in a good day's work. That's satisfying. But I'm working on the wrong case."

"Can't you work on two things at once?"

"Probably, but nobody's paying me to investigate a snuff film. I'm supposed to be determining whether or not Richard Thurman killed his wife."

"You're working on it."

"Am I? Thursday night I went to the fights, with the excuse that he was producing the telecast. I established several things. I established that he's the kind of guy who will take off his tie and jacket when he's working. And he's spry, he can climb up onto the ring apron and then drop down again without breaking a sweat. I got to watch him give the placard girl a pat on the ass, and-"

"Well, that's something."

"It was something for him. I don't know that it was anything much for me."

"Are you kidding? It says something if he can play grab-ass with a tootsie two months after his wife's death."

"Two and a half months," I said.

"Same difference."

"A tootsie, huh?"

"A tootsie, a floozie, a bimbo. What's wrong with tootsie?"

"Nothing. He wasn't exactly playing grab-ass. He just gave her a pat."

"In front of millions of people."

"They should be so lucky. A couple hundred people."

"Plus the audience at home."

"They were watching a commercial. Anyway, what would it prove? That he's a coldhearted son of a bitch who puts his hands on other women while his wife's body has barely had time to settle in the grave? Or that he doesn't have to put on an act because he's genuinely innocent? You could see it either way."

"Well," she said.

"That was Thursday. Yesterday, relentless fellow that I am, I drank a glass of club soda in the same gin joint with him. It was a little like being at opposite ends of a crowded subway car, but we were both actually in the same room at the same time."

"That's something."

"And last night I had dinner at Radicchio's, on the ground floor of his apartment building."

"How was it?"

"Nothing special. The pasta was pretty good. We'll try it sometime."

"Was he in the restaurant?"

"I don't even think he was in the building. If he was home he was sitting in the dark. You know, I called his apartment this morning. I was making all those other calls so I called him."

"What did he have to say?"

"I got his machine. I didn't leave a message."

"I hope he'll find that as frustrating as I always do."

"One can only hope. You know what I ought to do? I ought to give Lyman Warriner his money back."

"No, don't do that."

"Why not? I can't keep it if I don't do anything to earn it, and I can't seem to think of a way to do that. I read the file the cops built on the case, and they already tried everything I could think of and more."

"Don't return the money," she said. "Honey, he doesn't give a damn about the money. His sister got killed and if he thinks he's doing something about it he'll have a chance to die in peace."

"What am I supposed to do, string him along?"

"If he asks, tell him these things take time. You won't be asking him for more money-"

"God, no."

"- so he'll have no reason to think that you're hustling him. You don't have to keep the money, if you don't feel you've done anything to earn it. Give it away. Give it to AIDS research, give it to God's Love We Deliver, there are plenty of places to give it to."

"I suppose."

"Knowing you," she said, "you'll find a way to earn it."

THERE was a movie she wanted to see at the Waverly but it was Saturday night and there was a long line that neither of us felt like standing in. We walked around for a while, had some cappuccino on Macdougal Street, and listened to a girl folksinger in a no-cover club on Bleecker.

"Long hair and granny glasses," Elaine said. "And a long gingham gown. Who said the sixties were over?"

"All her songs sound the same."

"Well, she only knows three chords."

Outside I asked her if she felt like listening to some jazz. She said, "Sure, where? Sweet Basil? The Vanguard? Pick a place."

"I was thinking maybe Mother Goose."

"Uh-huh."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. I like Mother Goose."

"So do you want to go?"

"Sure. Do we get to stay even if Danny Boy's not there?"

DANNY Boy wasn't there, but we hadn't been there long before he showed up. Mother Goose is at Amsterdam and Eighty-first, a jazz club that draws a salt-and-pepper crowd. They keep the lights low, and the drummer uses brushes and never takes a solo. It and Poogan's Pub are the two places where you can find Danny Boy Bell.

Wherever you find him, he tends to stand out. He's an albino Negro, his skin and eyes both extremely sensitive to sunlight, and he has arranged his life so he and the sun are never up at the same time. He is a small man who dresses with flair, favoring dark suits and flamboyant vests. He drinks a lot of Russian vodka, straight up and ice-cold, and he often has a woman with him, usually every bit as flashy as his vest. The one tonight had a mane of strawberry blond hair and absolutely enormous breasts.

The maître d' led them to the ringside table where he always sits. I didn't think he'd noticed us, but at the end of the set a waiter appeared at our table and said that Mr. Bell hoped we would join him. When we got there Danny Boy said, "Matthew, Elaine, it's so nice to see you both. This is Sascha, isn't she darling?"

Sascha giggled. We made conversation, and after a few minutes Sascha sashayed off to the ladies' room.

"To powder her nose," Danny Boy said. "As it were. The best argument for legalizing drugs is people wouldn't keep running to the lavatory all the time. When they figure out the man-hours cocaine is costing American industry, they really ought to factor in those rest-room trips."

I waited until Sascha's next trip to the ladies' room to bring up Richard Thurman. "I sort of assumed he killed her," Danny Boy said. "She was rich and he wasn't. If only the fellow was a doctor I'd say there was no doubt at all. Why do you suppose doctors are always killing their wives? Do they tend to marry bitches? How would you explain it?"

We kicked it around some. I said maybe they were used to playing God, making life-and-death decisions. Elaine had a more elaborate theory. She said people who went into the healing professions were frequently individuals who were trying to overcome a perception of themselves as hurting people. "They become doctors to prove they're not killers," she said, "and then when they experience stress they revert to what they think of as their basic nature, and they kill."

"That's interesting," Danny Boy said. "Why would they have that perception in the first place?"

"A birth thought," she said. "The mother almost dies when they're born, or experiences a great deal of pain. So the child's thought is I hurt women or I kill women. He tries to compensate for this by becoming a doctor, and later on when push comes to shove-"

"He kills his wife," Danny Boy said. "I like it."

I asked what data she had to support the theory, and she said she didn't have any, but there were lots of studies on the effects of birth thoughts. Danny Boy said he didn't care about data, you could find data to prove anything, but the theory was the first one he'd ever heard that made sense to him, so screw the data. Sascha had returned to the table during the discussion but it went on without interruption, and she didn't seem to be paying any attention.

"About Thurman," Danny Boy said. "I haven't heard anything specific. I haven't listened all that hard. Should I?"

"Be good to keep an ear open."

He poured himself a few ounces of Stoly. At both of his places, Poogan's and Mother Goose, they bring him his vodka in a champagne bucket packed with ice. He looked down into the glass, then drank it down like water.

He said, "He's with a cable channel. A new sports channel."

"Five Borough."

"That's right. There's some talk going around about them."

"What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing very specific. Something shaky or shady about it, some dubious money backing it. I'll see what else I hear."

A few minutes later Sascha left the table again. When she was out of earshot Elaine leaned forward and said, "I can't stand it. That child has the biggest tits I've ever seen in my life."

"I know."

"Danny Boy, they're bigger than your head."

"I know. She's special, isn't she? But I think I'm going to have to give her up." He poured himself another drink. "I can't afford her," he said. "You wouldn't believe what it costs to keep that little nose happy."

"Enjoy her while you can."

"Oh, I shall," he said. "Like life itself."

BACK in her apartment, Elaine made a pot of coffee and we sat on the couch. She stacked some solo piano recordings on the turntable- Monk, Randy Weston, Cedar Walton. She said, "She was something, wasn't she? Sascha. I don't know where Danny Boy finds them."

"K Mart," I suggested.

"When you see something like that you have to figure silicone, but maybe they're like Topsy, maybe they just growed. What do you think?"

"I didn't really notice."

"Then you better start going to more meetings, because it must have been the vodka that was making you drool." She drew closer to me. "What do you think? Would you like me better if I had huge tits?"

"Sure."

"You would?"

I nodded. "Longer legs would be nice, too."

"Is that a fact? What about trimmer ankles?"

"Wouldn't hurt."

"Really? Tell me more."

"Cut it out," I said. "That tickles."

"Does it really? Tell me what else you've got on your wish list. How about a tight pussy?"

"That would be too much to hope for."

"Oh, boy," she said. "You're really asking for it, aren't you?"

"Am I?"

"Oh, I hope so," she said. "I certainly hope so."

AFTERWARD I lay in her bed while she turned the stack of records and brought back two cups of coffee. We sat up in bed and didn't say much.

After a while she said, "You were pissed yesterday."

"I was? When?"

"When you had to get out of here because I had somebody coming over."

"Oh."

"Weren't you? Pissed?"

"A little bit. I got over it."

"It bothers you, doesn't it? That I see clients."

"Sometimes it does. Most of the time it doesn't."

"I'll probably stop sooner or later," she said. "You can only keep on pitching for so long. Even Tommy John had to pack it in, and he had a bionic arm." She rolled onto her side to face me, put a hand on my leg. "If you asked me to stop, I probably would."

"And then resent me for it."

"You think so? Am I that neurotic?" She thought it over. "Yeah," she said, "I probably am."

"Anyway, I wouldn't ask you."

"No, you'd rather have the resentment." She rolled over and lay on her back, gazing up at the ceiling. After a moment she said, "I'd give it up if we got married."

There was silence, and then a cascade of descending notes and a surprising atonal chord from the stereo.

"If you pretend you didn't hear that," Elaine said, "I'll pretend I didn't say it. We never even say the L word and I went and said the M word."

"It's a dangerous place," I said, "out there in the middle of the alphabet."

"I know. I should learn to stay in the F's where I belong. I don't want to get married. I like things just the way they are. Can't they just stay that way?"

"Sure."

"I feel sad. That's crazy, what the hell have I got to feel sad about? All of a sudden I'm all weepy."

"That's okay."

"I'm not going to cry. But hold me for a minute, okay? You big old bear. Just hold me."