“Yes,” Lana said simply. She lay her hands in her lap. The red bathrobe folded around her waist, her wet uncurled hair drooping to her collarbone.

“Yes,” Lana said plainly. The bathroom door was open and steam was rising in wisps to the ceiling of the well-appointed mansion. Out in the rose garden mockingbirds were splashing in the birdbath, their wet feathers gleaming.

“Yes,” Lana said unassumingly. In the distance, a rural California horizon smudged by thunderclouds rested atop the branches of weeping willows that lined the windy dirt road back to town. She regarded the willows and her mind flew back to her toddler years in Tucson. It had been a pleasant child’s existence until that fateful day when, outside her preschool, she had been taken by gypsies.

“Yes,” Lana said morosely. At the meager age of five, Lana had found herself in a shantytown in Rio De Janeiro. Miraculously, her parents found her two years later, and the family had lived a blissful three weeks in Winnipeg before her mother and father unexpectedly divorced. In the confusion Lana was misplaced, and she was institutionalized, only to escape, be captured, escape again, live in solitary confinement for a year, escape again, and finally and unexpectedly win the lottery.

“Yes,” Lana said frantically. She’d splurged her lottery winnings on a global jet-setting adventure, taking in Dunkirk, Istanbul, Lagos, Cape Town, Madrid, Karachi, St. Petersburg, Glasgow, Wichita Falls and Seoul. Then one evening at a Hong Kong supper club she’d met Craig Wolstenholme, charming son of the Novelty Foods magnate, and a whirlwind romance had led to marriage. But when his father died and Craig assumed the chairmanship, the company had gone downhill. One bad decision followed another and when, in a last-ditch effort, Craig introduced a line of chocolate-flavored beer, his company stormily folded overnight.

“Yes,” Lana said unobtrusively. Today Lana lived in the Unfashionable district of Beverly Hills, her ten-year lease paid in full thanks to a prenuptial that had allowed her to walk away with half of Craig’s valuable collection of pre-Columbian breakfast cereal. Life was serene, but she was haunted – haunted by her lack of an anchor, a lover who’d be there through fair and foul, a rock to stay her foundering life. She was also haunted by a mysterious old lady who would come by her office and shriek at her for no apparent reason from down on the sidewalk: “Beware! Bewaaaaare the occipital looooooobe!”

She took a drag on her cigarette.

“Yes,” Lana said finally.

Her companion lit one of his own. “If something is wrong,” the man said, “I want you to tell me.” He exhaled, then held the cigarette at waist-level, never turning to face her.

Lana scowled. “I think that what’s wrong may be that I’ve been here for half an hour and this is the first time you’ve asked me if anything’s wrong.”

He puffed on his cig. “You had a blowout, you said.”

“A blowout. That’s right.”

“On the freeway.” More exhaled clouds of smoke.

She didn’t need this today. She turned away. “Why don’t you start by asking me how fast I was going?” she said.

“Have you got any more cigarettes? I’m out.”

She dug in her purse for the pack, then held out two for him, not moving. He walked over and took them, lit one up and returned to the window. He admired the mockingbirds. They were black, black and shiny like… A dark memory prodded him, and he pushed it away.

She took a long drag and stared at him, in the vain hope that he would remember to ask her more. Giving up, she rolled her eyes and focused her contemptuous stare on his ridiculous miniature pool table. She exhaled a long thin jet of cancerous fumes. A minute of silence passed before she decided magnanimously to cheer him up. “Hey,” she said, “How many Westside yuppies does it take to screw in a light bulb?….Three! One to…no, wait…four. One to screw in the light bulb, and the other three to be as boring as possible while wearing $200 shirts and eating fat-free pretzels.”

“Look, honey…” he said.

“That wasn’t a very good one. Sorry.” She watched him sadly. “That bad, huh?”

“Skirball Coldpepper closed down seventeen and three quarters today,” he said, “and I had a million and a half invested in them.”

She sighed. “Coldpepper… Coldpepper… Bryce-Allen Coleman keeps trying to sell me them. That weasel. Calls me every week. Then whenever we have lunch he waits for me to order a salad and then gets the same thing with one less item. GOD I am sick of the Beautiful people. What was it Prince sang? ‘The Beautiful Ones always smash the picture….’ He was wrong of course. They never smash – sudden movements would ruin their pose. I had a dream last week that the whole gang, me and Mory and Frank and Gwenny and everyone, we were sitting at the Utrecht café, pretending not to stare at the celebrities, and all of a sudden, just like that, Sotheby’s was demolished. Whoom! Down it went,” she said, gesturing upward with both hands. “Dust and splinters flying everywhere. We pretended not to notice, of course.”

He turned to her, aghast. “They demolished Sotheby’s?!” he cried.

“No dear. It was a dream.”

“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “Too bad. Terrific location. I’d’ve put in an offer. Cunnilingus?” he said, pouring her a drink.

“No thank you, dear,” she said, and eyed the cuticle of her left index finger like it had plans of which she didn’t approve.

He glowered, then downed the shot of Peach Schnapps in a single gulp. His cell phone rang. “Hello…Frank? You’re calling for FRANK? Well, there’s no one here of THAT name!” he said, and switched it off with a satisfied fluorish.

Her annoyance mounted. “I was quite terrified, thanks for asking,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“The blowout. I was shared shitless.”

“Oh, darling, must we live in the past?” he said, rinsing out his shot glass.

“Live in the past? This happened thirty-five minutes ago!”

He poured himself a jigger of scotch. The mockingbirds caught his eye again. It was the prospectus, he realized. They were black and shiny just like the prospectus, the new one he’d had printed up in a special black embossed vinyl cover. This was the one. This was the moneymaker, and it would work. It HAD to work, or else his company… Depressed, he could barely find the strength to answer her. “How fast were you going?” he said finally.

She smiled approvingly. “Thirty-five. Now ask me if I was hurt.”

“Were you hurt.”

“No. Now ask me if my spare tire was fully pressurized.”

“Was your spare fully – ”

“No. Now act shocked.”

“Oh, honey, a flat spare tire. I don’t believe it,” he said flatly.

“Neither did I. Guess what I did next? I called emergency road service. Was I upset that a burly tow truck driver had to pull me out of a cornfield?”

“Heaven forbid.”

“Was I chagrined that my spare had gone flat?”

“Perish the thought.”

“Was I traumatized from losing control of my car and generally flying off the road and thinking about how close I came to hitting that white van that just passed me in the left lane?” she said.

“Of course not.”

“No, you asshole. I WAS traumatized. I WAS upset. Very very goddamn upset!” she shouted.

“Sorry.”

“Oh honey,” she said sarcastically. “That’s sweet of you.”

He turned stoically to face her. “Sorry if I seem distracted, darling. I’ll feel better when I get that phone call.”

“You just got a phone call.”

“Wrong number,” he said quickly.

She missed his panicked look, tilting her head down to light another cigarette. She raised her head and smiled sweetly at him. “You have a strong company. It’ll be fine.”

“Business is bad.”

“You have a strong company, run by capable people.”

“I have a barely-breathing company run by imbeciles.”

She stood up and offered him a sympathetic coffin nail. “What you need is to take your mind off it.”

He snatched it from her. “You mean, like you’ve taken your mind off the accident?” he snapped. “You know what I was doing thirty-five minutes ago? Watching my company’s mission statement go up in flames!”

She waved her free hand in weary disdain and returned to the sofa. “Oh forget it,” she said.

“Feh,” he said, and turned back to the window. He struck a melancholy pose, staking out a width and breadth of gravitas for what he was about to say. “I was just thinking,” he said solemnly, “about the set of all positive integers.” He waited a beat before stealing a furtive glance at her reaction. She wasn’t looking at him. He turned back to the window.

They simultaneously stubbed out their cigarettes and relit. Mentally, he had never been accused of having the most crayons in his box. A light sprinkle of aphorisms in his conversation, he knew, would help obscure the fact. Though he abhorred the word “dumb” he’d had to admit that he owed his success to just such luck. He’d originally made his millions in Malibu, having found it all stuffed in an orange tweed hide-a-bed he’d bought from the estate of a beautiful and tragically absent-minded Hollywood starlet. He’d taken two million and restored an old Pomona movie palace, and for the premiere he’d rented a print of Towering Inferno, promoting the affair by trailing gasoline from Main Street all the way to the front door of the theater, into the lobby and down the aisle to the screen. The theater burned to the ground in twelve minutes. The next twenty-three million went into founding an investment securities brokerage in Beverly Hills. It had started out all right, the staff was competent, but the company motto was distressingly vague and things had gone downhill from there. As a precaution he had blown the last of his cash buying the Bunsen Group, a medical research foundation, and had tasked them to find a cure for all known skin rashes. He’d have a financial success if it killed him.

Her gaze returned to his shoulder, and she found something there she liked. “Do you want to make love or not?” she said.

He awoke from his reverie. “Hm?”

“Because if you do, there’s something you should know.” She stood.

“What? What is it, darling?” He went to her, taking her hand.

She looked down. “It’s…back again, Brad,” she said finally.

He lowered his head as well. “You mean…” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“…Peter.” He patted the back of her hand, and gave her a little forgiving smile. How charming, he thought. And I thought I was the one with word problems.

“What?” she sniffed.

He sighed. “Hm?” he said, miles away.

“Who?”

Very slowly he went over their last exchange, and on finding his mistake his eyes widened and his smile evaporated. “Oh! Nothing! Heh. Sorry.” He laughed heartily, then turned away from her. Shit, Peter thought. Wrong house.

His cell phone rang again, and he answered it briskly. “Hello?….Nope, no one here by that name. I don’t know who this DONALD fellow is, but my name’s…BRAD!” Peter hung up.

Nice recovery! He congratulated himself. He tried to steal another secret glance at her expression. She was staring at him blankly. He turned quickly away. He’d have to hurry this along – there were six other women in six other mansions down the road waiting for their man, and they all knew him by a different name. It was expensive, buying a new mansion every time he seduced someone, but all this sex was a novelty and he was determined to live it up. Besides – what if he’d only had the one mansion, and Cyndi happened to leave her toothbrush behind, and Helen found it?

Peter laughed again, harder this time. “Yeah,” he started to gush at her, “that’s the trouble with banking. Life’s so goddam unpredictable. The market’s up, and then it’s down…real estate values are up, and then they’re…up, and then interest rates go down – and I think: Why invest at all? Why bother!…Dad was right. Nobody knows anything. Except Smith Barney – and they’re closed Sundays!” He laughed at his usual joke.

She sat down impatiently. When he was like this it could take him half an hour to order pizza. “I’m talking about my rash, dear,” she said.

“Your rash? What about it?”

She regarded his shoulder, then sighed with resignation and pushed back her wet hair. “There’s no way I’m going to bed with you with an inflammation all down my left side. It hurts like hell. I was going to pick up some aloe or something on my way in but then my tire blew, and it was raining, and I really didn’t feel like making the extra trip. So, sorry honey. Changing a tire in the rain kinda took me out of the mood anyway.”

Peter ran a hand over his stubble. “Well, I’ll say one thing…you sure taught THAT tire a lesson! Ha ha!” He tried to lean casually on the mantel but missed. Off-balance, he twisted, lunged, knocked over the birdcage, recovered, caught it in mid-fall, righted it, and finally stood still. The parakeet squawked indignantly. Lana stared at him in alarm.

He smiled in a way he hoped would be confident, suave and sexy all at once, then looked away and tried to keep calm by spelling the word endocrinology over and over in his head.

He patted his pockets. “Have you…” he began, then looked at Lana. She was crumpling an empty pack of cigarettes and tossing it in the garbage as she lit up. Peter’s eyes darted around the room. He walked briskly to the dresser, opened the top drawer and fumbled around inside. The parakeet continued to screech. Finally Peter found an unopened cigar, unwrapped it and bit off the end. But even after lighting it and taking several deep pulls, his nerves still burned. He tried spelling endocrinology again, but he hadn’t played the game long before the phrase picnic basket suddenly tackled him from the side; then pecuniary joined the dogpile, vas deferens stripped the ball away, and all was lost.

“Come on,” she said invitingly. “Let’s do something else physical. Let’s play charades.”

Peter sighed. “Oh, Lana…”

“No, really!” Lana cried. She started to move chairs and clear a space. “There’s something sexy about charades.”

He folded his arms. “All right.”

She locked both her arms, rotated them ninety degrees, and half-squatted while rolling her eyes back in her head. “What am I?”

“Dabney Coleman in WarGames,” he said impatiently.

“Yeah, but which scene?”

“The one where he tells Matthew Broderick what DefCon One means.”

She looked surprised. “That’s…that’s right,” she said, deflating.

He stepped forward. “Now, what am I?” He did a brief soft-shoe routine, then jutted his head and hands forward and back doing The Egyptian, and finally dropped his pants.

“Oh, honey, that’s the WOPR computer plotting to nuke Russia. You always do that.”

“Yes. I always do that. We know all the different things we do because we’ve done them all!”

“Do something else.”

“There’s nothing else! We’ve done everything!”

“Think of something new. Something you’ve never done before.”

He bristled. At last he said “All right,” and started to pace. Then he put both hands on his cheeks and stuck out his tongue. With one free foot he activated the vacuum cleaner, which whirred across the rug toward him and began to eat his shoe. As it ground the leather into fluff, Peter’s dog entered the room. The Golden Retriever was bright and outgoing, first to join the fun and last to leave well enough alone, and he instantly recognized there was an outstanding game afoot. He pounced on the vacuum cleaner, barked, ran away, hid behind the sofa, attacked the bag, yelped as the engine caught fire and threw sparks, and finally lay down by the patio door looking forlorn.

Peter was breathing hard. In addition to the tan loafer, the vacuum had shredded one of his pant legs up to his shin. He grinned maniacally through the smoke. “So! What am I?” he challenged her.

“Ummm…Ally Sheedy asking Matt Broderick to change her grade back to an A,” Lana said.

He looked stunned.

“Oh, you’re kidding,” she said. “I guessed it?”

As calmly as possible, he pulled a fire extinguisher from the wall, put out the fire, sat in his easy chair and sulked. “I told you.”

She walked over and put a sympathetic arm on his shoulder. “We could watch it if you want.”

“Didn’t bring the video.”

“I did.”

“It is a classic,” he admitted.

“Yes.”

He sighed.

“Darling…” Lana began.

He looked away. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to pay for the tow truck, dear,” he said.

She dropped her arms to her sides. Infuriated, she shook her head and moved back to the sofa. But he went to her, and standing at her side, tenderly took her chin in his hand. He tilted her head up to his. She smiled amusedly at his obvious ploy, then found herself returning his gaze. She closed her eyes, tipped her chin, and kissed him gently.

“Darling…” she said at last, “why did you mention Peter earlier? I didn’t think you two had met.”

Peter broke from their embrace and walked back to the window. He took a solar calculator and a small notepad from his pocket. He flipped open the calculator and held it up to the sunlight. A number appeared on the display, which he wrote down on the pad. He flipped it shut, then flipped it open again and wrote down the next number.

“He’s such a menace,” Lana continued. “Always sticking his fat face in my office door. When I want the office accountant I’ll call for him. He’s going with Evadne now. That witch must weigh eighty pounds. You can bet she works out…must be all those hours on the VomitMaster. Ha ha! Joke.”

Peter tired of his research and set down the calculator, picking up his still-lit cigar from a nearby ashtray. He puffed on it in silent distress. What a pain…In the “David” mansion I had everything monogrammed. No way would I forget my name in there. If only I’d monogrammed the other mansions! Why in hell didn’t I monogram ALL the mansions?

“Mom was thin as a rail last month,” she went on. “On the phone she sounded as good as dead so of course I flew out to see her. I got the bereavement discount on the ticket. They never check those things, do they? It’s so awful. All her friends from the bridge club are call-blocking her now. She always was the black sheep. Dad never helped. Always on the road, never home in time for dinner – I used to cry, ‘Daddy! You’re an Episcopal Deacon! You belong here in Colorado! Don’t go to Utah and study marimba repair! Stay here, Daddy! Stay!’…” Her eyes glistened, and she wiped away tears. “We finally put him in the Old Bigamists Home, the bastard.”

He suddenly inhaled plain air. With a rising ebb of panic he realized he’d smoked the entire stogie in less than two minutes. He patted his pockets uselessly. Again his eyes searched the room’s ashtrays, all of them full of cigar and cigarette butts. Finally he spotted a pipe. He lit it and popped it in his mouth, enjoying one lungful of choice cherry blend before the bowl broke off in his hand.

Lana was digging in her purse and laughing ruefully. “Damn,” she said, “now I really wish I’d made that convenience store stop….Uh,” she said nervously, “got anything to smoke around here?”

Peter’s cell phone rang. “Yes?…no, wrong number I’m afra – no! Wait! Derek? Derek! What’s the news? Do they like the portfolio?…what do you mean, the Japanese are bailing…what about the French…oh, God, not the Russians too…okay, who’s left?” His face fell. “Well, you’d better draft a letter,” he whispered. “Tell the Hot Dog Vendors Union we appreciate their support, and thank them for sticking with us through this difficult time.” He hung up.

“Bad news?” Lana said. Peter nodded. She smiled nervously. “Boy, guess we could both use a smoke right now.” He gestured towards the dresser, and Lana opened the top drawer and rummaged. She produced two stogies wrapped in cellophane. “Last pair,” she said, giving him one. They quickly opened them and lit up. Lana returned to the sofa and began filing her nails. “Well, at least you’ve still got your medical research foundation,” she said idly.

Brad returned to his window and smoked furiously. He simmered. No sex would be necessary, but he’d have to keep up the conversation for at least another hour so she wouldn’t suspect when he rushed off to mansion number four. He dug around his brain for a topic. He was running out of anecdotes. He turned to her, his face suddenly sad. “You know – yesterday Daisy asked me if I listened to the Beatles.” He chuckled in disbelief. “Can you believe it? My secretary prying into my personal life like that! I told her I used to have a copy of the White Album, and she said she did too, only her boyfriend had run away with half of it. Imagine that! What buffoon would want half a record? It would fly off the turntable, for one thing. And the needle would jump – ”

“Darling…” she interrupted him. “I was wondering if we might talk about…the lab.”

“The lab?”

“Your rash research. You called Tuesday from the lab,” she said apprehensively. “You told me you were near a breakthrough. Is there any news?”

He looked perturbed. “Well, I may have spoken a little too soon.”

“Oh.”

“Dear, you know you mustn’t pry into my laboratory work. When we make a major breakthrough, of course I’ll tell you, but you mustn’t keep coming to me like a broken record saying 'What news from the lab? What news from the lab?’ If I had news from the lab I’d tell you.”

“I only – ”

“The renoberation of the potassium permanganate still yields only moderate results!” he exploded. “And the yttrium keeps crystallizing into a plagal cadence! It’s too unstable! I’m doing the best I can, dammit!”

She was crestfallen. “But I…I only…I mean, wouldn’t it be wonderful if humanity could finally have a cure for all skin rashes?…if people…never had to have rashes ever again…” She slumped on the sofa. “Oh, Brad, you know father needs that cure.”

“I want you to stop this, Lana,” he said coldly.

She wilted and looked away. “I’m sorry. I only…” she murmured.

An almost subconscious rumble of thunder pressed up from under their feet. “I said if I…had news I’d tell you,” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry. How many times do I have to say it?”

He folded his hands and looked down. “I have news from the lab.”

She froze. “What is it?”

“It’s your father’s rash.”

She turned to him, trembling. “What’s happened?”

“It’s stabilized.”

She rushed to him. “Oh, Peter, thank God!” She was about to embrace him when he stepped away from her.

“That’s the good news,” he said.

She steadied herself. “And the bad news?”

He took a deep pull on the cigar. “He told me who he got it from.” He turned and looked at her evenly. The wind rattled the windows.

She laughed. “You must be kidding!”

He exhaled a thin blue stream of carcinogenic smoke.

“Why that’s absurd!” she cried. “Honey, don’t be ridiculous. I could never give Daddy a rash. I don’t have one. Well, minor itching and burning, yes, of course, but it’s nothing communicable, it’s just poison ivy! I picked it up in the park on Saturday. I mean, who knew they’d cultivate poison ivy in a city park? Ha ha! And they didn’t, really, it was growing wild – but anyway, there we are. What a pain.” She laughed forcedly, and her smile faded.

Peter whirled around. “That’s a damned lie and you know it!” he yelled.

Lana’s eyes blossomed into raging flame. “A lie? The hell you say!….Feh! You sound just like my mother!”

Peter’s eyes narrowed. “This isn’t about your mother,” he said, “it’s about – your BROTHER!”

Lana gasped.

“Yes – Roger!” Peter said. “We never talked this through! Not like Roger wished we would!”

“But he’s not my brother. Not to ME!”

“Oh, the hell with it! To hell with your denials! And this isn’t about your brother anyway…it’s about – your SISTER, the botanist!”

Lana gasped again.

“Yes – Sally!” Peter said. “Ever since Sally retreated into the nursery you’ve been obsessed with burning sensations! Just let it alone, will you!”

“It’s not as simple as that!” Lana cried. “I admit it. She gave me the rash. She forced the ivy on me, I tell you! She’s out of control – she’ll breed anything!”

“We sometimes don’t appreciate the poisonous plants of nature,” Peter said icily. “Maybe you just need to open your mind like Sally has. Maybe then you wouldn’t feel the need to make up stories about poison ivy in the park, when you know damn well you gave YOURSELF the rash in order to alienate SALLY!”

“That’s preposterous!” Lana cried, shooting to her feet. “Flowers are my life! They’re Sally’s life! And they may be the only thing that saves father from a life of painful skin irritation!…oh, how can you throw it all away, Peter? How can you throw away the hope for a cure by continuing to study geraniums?”

“I am doing an important job for science!” Peter bellowed. “I’ll study them for decades if I have to! Geraniums may one day reveal the secret to science, to art, to life itself!”

“But at what cost? Roger is my brother!”

“I know. I know!”

“But when will it end?”

“I want you to stop this.”

“My BROTHER I said!”

“I love your brother!” Peter shouted.

“Oh, Brad,” Lana cried. “I love him too.”

“But I don’t,” Peter said gravely.

Outside, the thunder was getting closer. “I know you gave your father the rash…” Peter said. “Sally videotaped the whole thing!”

Lana’s tear-stained visage was twisted with rage. “You’re pathetic! This whole thing was just a setup!” She snatched up her blouse and skirt and withdrew into the bathroom. “You knew all along, didn’t you? Of course you did!” she called out, throwing the wet bathrobe back after her. “This has just been another one of your little games!”

“I’m only doing it for Sally. Unlike you, I happen to care about her!” Again, he had smoked the cigar down to nothing and so he desperately began to search for the pieces of broken pipe.

“I care deeply about Sally!” Lana shouted, turning on the hairdryer.

“You don’t give a damn!” he countered.

“A what? I don’t give a what?”

“Damn!” he shouted. “Damn!…Dan, no. Go lie down,” he told the dog, who slunk away and lay down by the patio door again. Peter’s cell phone rang. “Hello?….Yes it is. Who is this?….Right. I’m sorry, I can’t talk to salesmen just now.”

“What a fool I’ve been!” Lana shouted over the hairdryer.

“Yes, well that’s very interesting,” Peter told the telemarketer, “but I can’t talk right now. Why don’t you put it in writing and…”

“I always gave you the benefit of the doubt!”

Peter ignored her. “…uh huh…”

“Every benefit! Every doubt!

“…uh huh…”

“From doubt A to doubt Z!”

“…really?…”

“I give and I give and I give and this is the thanks I get!”

“You’re kidding – twenty percent in two YEARS?”

“It’s like Borneo all over again! BORNEO, I tell you!” The hairdryer switched off.

“Right, Thurber Avenue, number 5080.” He spoke as quickly as possible. “I’ll be expecting your brochure. Sounds like a real moneymaker. Okay, thanks for calling, gotta go, bye,” he said, hanging up.

“I’ve half a mind to call my attorney right now!” Lana shouted, rushing from the bathroom fully dressed. “What if I called Bernard and told him about Borneo? He’d really have something to work with then, wouldn’t he!” The dog continued to ignore them, watching the birds in the garden with a look of barely controlled ecstasy.

“You’re so wrong!” Peter said indignantly. He had found both the bowl and stem of the broken pipe, and was now trying to reattach them. “One day you’ll…uh…know how wrong you are!”

“And then what?”

He dropped his voice dramatically. “And then you’ll be SORRY.” Hot ashes from the bowl spilled on his hand, and in a rage he threw the pipe out the window into the rose garden. Dan immediately bounded out the window to fetch it. The flying bits of pipe flew past the mockingbirds in the birdbath, who as one jumped aside to avoid it. The water sloshed dangerously. Then in horror they saw Dan racing towards them and they all jumped back to the other side, and the birdbath fell over.

“Sorry? I’LL be sorry? You bastard!” she shouted.

“Bitch!” he shouted back.

“Bastard!”

“Bitch!”

“You’re a spineless toad!” she said.

“You’re a weak-kneed grasshopper!” he rejoined.

“Toad!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“Oh YEAH?” he raged.

“YEAH!” she blared.

There was a flash of lightning and a thunderclap. Rain began to spatter the windows. Lana, her face red, made like she was about to throw something but instead she simply collapsed on the edge of the sofa, tears flowing down her cheeks. “Damn it,” she breathed bitterly.

He went over to her, his fury also spent. “There, there,” he said. She cried quietly in his arms.

He rested his head on hers, rocking her back and forth. Outside, the weeping willows heaved to and fro as if to match them. “My mistake…my mistake…” she said quietly.

“It’s okay.”

She sighed. “I meant to save all that for the infidelity argument,” she said quietly. She pulled away and turned to face him. In her hand there was a very small gun. “Now, honey,” she said cordially, wiping her face with her free hand, “it’s become stupefyingly obvious to me that you’re not an investment genius. Or any other kind of genius. Frankly, dear, you’re dumb as paint. You couldn’t find your ass with a…actually, dear, I daresay if challenged you could not find your ass, full stop. You’re not the kind of man to inspire a team of scientists to find the cure for all skin rashes. I see now Daddy’s just going to have to keep taking the cream…so you’re useless. And it doesn’t help that you’ve been cheating on me,” she said, advancing on him. “Come on, honey. How many wrong numbers can one man get?”

“What? Oh, come on, darling!…You…you don’t know what you’re talking about!” He was backing into one piece of furniture after another. “You’re making a terrible mistake. Look, I’ve had enough of this – I’m leaving you!” he declared.

“Ha. Joke,” she observed. “Not very good though. No punch line, really. A joke should have a punch line. Oh! I remember my joke now. Mory told it to me. He said, ‘What do you get when you cross Evadne Mikassian and the cashier at the Panda Fresh? You get a girl so thin she needs a chaperone to open the door at Albertsons!’ Ha! See? Or you could use the one I told him. I said, ‘Mory, what do you get when you cross Evadne Mikassian and my Brad?’ He said, ‘I don’t know,’ and I said, ‘Why, just wait right here and I’ll bring you the pictures!’” She was fully dressed now, all but the last few buttons of her blouse fastened. “So I did. Oh, you two had a good time. I watched you through the window of the house on Oak Pond Terrace. Just a few miles up the road, isn’t it? She’s probably waiting for you right now.”

“No, she couldn’t get awa- – I mean – who?”

“Tsk. You still haven’t got it. Try again.”

“This has gone too far!” Peter’s back was against the fireplace.

“Can’t think of one?…C’mon, honey, last chance.” She put her finger on the last blouse button. He gulped. She buttoned it. “Oh well…” she said. “I admit, ‘I’m leaving you’ is a good one-liner. Could be the best I’ve heard all year, actually! ‘I’m leaving you’… Ha!… Now there’s one for the office bulletin board.”

“NO!”

There was a loud bang. He crumpled to the ground.

He saw a figure turning and sweeping from the room. Then from far away came the sound of a car’s ignition and gravel crackling in the driveway. His thoughts cried after her: Beverly! Beverly…I mean Lana! LANA!…Shit! But away she went, fleeing down the driveway, out of his life forever.

His head lolled on the carpet. His frame relaxed, his shoulders slumped. Out of his life. Forever. As he breathed what felt like his last gasp, he suddenly realized how much he’d really loved her. Ahhhhhhhhh… His last tear stained his cheek, seen by no one, and was dried in time by sunlight.

The red stain began to spread. The squall ended, and sunlight beat on the tall wet grass in the meadow. The afternoon brought with it clumps of rain and columns of sunlight.

The sun shone on his back and warmed it. It was quiet inside the house, he noticed. He suddenly noticed that he’d noticed.

His cell phone rang. He harrumphed. He sat up and bent to look at his stomach. She’d got him in the abdomen, but it was a small-caliber bullet and there was only minor bleeding. “Hello?” He plugged the headset into a nearby speakerphone and went into the bathroom.

“Peter?” said the voice.

“Yeah, Derek.” He took off his shirt and started looking for a pair of tweezers.

“Bad news.”

“Go.”

“The Hot Dog Venders Union dumped. Went to Charles Schwab.”

“Damn.”

“That’s not all.”

“What?” He pulled the bullet out easily, wincing.

“Twenty minutes ago a team of Russian acrobats were spotted in the vicinity of the Bunsen Group laboratories. Apparently they prized the lab out of the ground and carried it off. I’m sorry, Peter. We’ve lost everything.”

Peter dropped the pea-sized bullet in the sink, exhaled, and grabbed the counter dejectedly. “I…” he began. There was a long silence. “Thank you, Derek,” he said finally. The line clicked off. He changed his shirt gloomily and went out into the living room to sit down. All his pipes were broken…no cigarette butts in sight…not even one cigar left. He dug under the bedclothes until he found it.

He didn’t miss her, he thought, lighting up the enormous spliff and taking a generous toke. There were more important things than monetary success and the love of a good woman. He still had his ranch estates. And there was more to life than Eleanor….Lana, he corrected himself. There was more to life than love and the collecting of material goods. That last thought sparked him and he began to search the room idly for his Sharper Image catalog. There was a new combination sewer-pipe-decalcifier and sheep-castrater he’d had his eye on. He found the article and read it through twice. Then he took the dust cover off the miniature pool table and played a few rounds of Eightball. Later, he imagined, he’d order a full catered lunch for twenty and send it back. Yes. The day was filling out quite nicely without her now. He picked up the phone, and was stuffing his crippled pipe with tobacco when he noticed the label on the bag.

“Happy Birthday from Lana. May you catch the cancer and die. Ha-ha. Joke.”

He put the receiver down gently, then crumpled fetally on the sofa and wept.

When at last he looked up, the beauty of the objects surrounding him soothed and buttressed his soul.

Enough was enough. He was a good person. Dumb, but good. And he wasn’t going to take any crap from some ornery woman who said he was a toad! Why should he? He was no toad! He was a man! A man with stuff!

He started to pack up the house. Now it was payback time. Now she’d get what was coming to her. She’d get it worse than anyone ever had before, and the shock wave would hit her and reverberate around the world as a warning to others! Their love had been a bright yellow tie, he decided. It had been a knotted yellow tie but she had pulled it too tight, and he had worn it too long anyway. No more ties. It was strictly polo shirts from now on. He smiled broadly. It’s casual day now, baby.

He gathered up her things. Her toothpaste wouldn’t burn, he realized, but her briefcase and photo would make a pleasant bonfire. He piled all of her effects in the middle of the room and doused them with lighter fluid. As the flames rose higher, Peter threw the doobie into the conflagration and took one final heave off the last smokeable substance in the house. He strode out the front door and gestured to his valet, waiting patiently in the driveway. “To the airstrip!” he called out. Fifteen minutes later, strapped into the seat of his private jet, he opened a bottle of Perrier and powered up his cell phone. After he’d called his real estate agent and told him to dump all the ranch properties, he pressed 3 on the speed-dial. “Oh yeah?” he told Lana’s answering machine sarcastically. He pressed “end”. Then speed-dial 3 again. “Oh – yeah?” he shouted. He was enjoying himself now. He hung up gleefully, then dialed her again. “OH…YEAH?!!!!” he screeched. His revenge complete, he smiled deeply, sat back, and settled in for the ride back to Los Angeles.

Outside the window opposite him, too low to see, the verdant greenery of the California valley began to shake and quiver. On a high promontory overlooking Peter’s estates, there was a mighty scream of cracking and buckling. Lava burst from the dormant volcano in an orange geyser, and flowed freely from new and expanding faults on the mountainside. As the pyroclastic flow tore down into the valley, the doors of six mansion estates swung wide and six screaming women ran out. Six women in nightgowns fled in terror down the lawns of six gothic estates, pausing only to turn their heads slightly, peering through flowing tufts of red, blond, and brunette hair as they regarded Peter’s burning estates over half-turned shoulders.