by Jon Fussell

I first met Pedro when he rented the shack behind the Manchilds mother's house. Met perhaps is the wrong word, since my greeting was received by nothing more than the leery uninviting motion of his head, which, not so aloof as it was annoyed, held that initial intent of mistrust, a broken shady gesture; the cliched look which typifies suspiciousness.

Although these days you would just love to say otherwise, I really do believe a good proportion of it can be contributed to my skin color: a freckly white, a pocked bleach color; the same that has been known to oppress many of a different culture, and perhaps more so of late-at least in my town-to the Hispanic culture. This is no secret. I know this. He knows this. Even the Mayor, Richard Fargrine, knows this: for he was elected last summer mostly impart to his moving speeches about migrants taking over "American Jobs!"

So, it didn't strike me as that out of the ordinary when Pedro, the taker of unknown American Jobs, leered at my obvious hello. And although I silently cursed him for it, I could not escape the fact that there was a major part of me that wished I had done the same. For I know better than anyone that sometimes my hello's can be a little too obvious, too extending, a trifle too courteous, a heap too forced. But I am not to blame. Against me again was my ancestry, since a product of my father's Anglo business mind: when greeting another man, I know to look him in the eye attentively, shake his hand firmly and offer any word at all so as he does not feel uncomfortable.

Pedro did not exist anywhere near this attentive courteousness which the Anglo business tribe and I subscribe. This is what instantly drew me to him. Why is it humans are attracted to that which they are least of? Why is it when one man feels something, he thinks the rest of the world feels it too?

Regardless, I feel no discomfit in saying that I longed to have Pedro's bitterness. I desired his mute, perfectly executed, condemn, his leery hatred-like the villain depicted on my street's Neighborhood Watch sign-a jagged, sinister and punishing creature.

As proof, I often played the role out in my mind. The usual was a Marine addressing me as if to fight, and I would imagine myself as Pedro: only looking him in the eye to exude my hate, shaking my head at him to profess my strength, and offering my words only at the strict transgression of pointing out his intimate discomfort. (I hate Marine's, couldn't really explain why, just hate them; perhaps a small portion of it is because my contemn for them often won me respect as a strict pacifist). Quite a pathetic fantasy really, but something about it made it more real than all the other fantasies I was continuing at the time, for this was actually tangible, I had a teacher next door.

It was not until latter on that I realized the quality, which seemed so desirable and considerably distance from me, was perhaps what others might simply call: real.

The Manchild was a big brawny full-grown man with the intellect of a child—hence, Manchild. He lived with his mother in the house one down from mine. Though, modesty aside, we lived like kings compared to the two. His mother was a sketchy woman. She was short, wrinkled and round, and of a rather cloudy color-a silky gray lime type of color. But from what I gathered, she also seemed to be incredibly strong. She had a rough gristly voice which hollered and yowled at her life, her son and even innate objects like a stubborn and overloaded mule; though not tragic enough to take away any of its commanding zeal, which always matched by the perpetual gray fervidness of her face, made hearing her voice a grim retch. She had a somewhat unfriendly legacy on the block, and with it came the unquestioning of her authority-more so for her son. For he was at her every disposal. But as a sure sign of some intelligence, he always answered these disposals with that freestanding exalt common of children: "I know, I know," or "yeah, yeah," or "I am, I am."

She had also survived without a husband; dead I suspect, though no one really knows (Jimbo, the tenant in the house up from mine, rather viciously remarked that He probably left because of shame. But Jimbo was a cruel drunk that beat his kids and his wife and didn't hide the fact, nor himself, from anyone because the whole neighborhood treated him as if they didn't know.)

Plastic: neither colored nor non-CA Cash Refundable plastic.

Glass: no hard-alcohol bottles, nor thick juice bottles, nor window glass.

Aluminum: no tin.

It is the rule of thumb for all whom set out to make money by way of recycling. But you'd never believe how far the system stems from that. There are contests, tests of weakness, established masteries, respects one must rigidly practice for. There is a science behind it all: formulas for efficiency, equations to counter or defend weight versus strength versus weather versus mood. A thorough American microcosm, with all the markings of territory, kings and heroes, bullies and lunatics, thieves and martyrs, small and large triumphs and travails-which all, like all lattices of life, exists solely for those who lived by it. The rest of the world sees it only as extensive chaos.

I know about this way of life not because I have experienced it for myself, but because every morning at five A.M. the Manchild's mother would repeat these things to her son; thoroughly describing the exhausting rules and intricacies of this way of life-as if her son were actually compatible for taking such things down. And I am not the only one who knows this either, I am quite sure the whole block has heard the intricacies of their world, for that gristly voice of the mother carries itself like a parrot-which to those who ever been close to a parrot know they gripe at ear-piercing volume.

Trashcans banging and aluminum cans being crunched and glass breaking: "I told'cha a million times, no glass, no bottle glass, where did ya get them ears? I told'cha a million times."

"I know, I know, I knooow."

"Son, are you putting—Okay good."

"Pat said we make a good team."

"Pat got a head full of racket-did you just put colored- . . . .Pat, Pat, Pat, that's all you been saying all the time; gonna give me a flu with all them Pats: Pat said this, Pat said that, Pat protected you from the ghosts. Pat, Pat, Pat. .. .Pat's father is the Delbert's manager. . . and you heard what he called us. He's part of Smith's union anyway and he don't give people like us a right chance-Yes Pat, I just know that's her father-they look alike. Pat, Pat, Pat. . . .Boy, get the Green Mesh, this is spilling all over me."

"I've got a tight hold on her."

"What? What did you just- Who told you that?"

"Pat."

"Oh, well if that isn't the Dickens. Pat, Pat ...Pat got so many words she don't know what to do. Well let me tell you- You hear me son? Hay listen here!"

"Green Meosh?"

"Dammit, you know I just told you no thick glass! What is this? If your gonna keep acting like this- How about I never let you see this Pat again, huh? It's what I should do anyway, makin up something like that, you and your prevertin' little mind, you think I don't know she can't talk? "

"Whuuu uuut?"

"Look, I know you like her but she's handicapped. Nothing wrong with it. You just can't be together like that, son. You can't do that, you just can't have kids, they just won't make it in the world, you see? Now don't go whimpering like that. I'll let you see her, but just don't you come telling me your gonna have a baby with her. Hell, I'll be stuck taking care of it, if the court doesn't-member how hard they were on me just to let me keep you?"

"Phssew, I can't have a baby, dudes can't have a baby, ma. I got a tight hold on her, ya know ma?"

"Dudes? Tight hold? Where are you getting this? Does that one have a CA rate on it? I know yeah, yeah, tight hold. . . protects you from ghosts, yeah, yeah."

"Whu uuut?"

Pat was a woman who suffered from cerebral palsy and epilepsy, but smiled and delighted in things like a biblical deity. She had once dated the Manchild, purely under the eye of the two's parents-or so was thought-but that was fine, so I gathered, they seemed to be utterly content just holding each others hand; they also seemed to be rather secretive about it, as when the guardians looked away they embraced hands, then would drop them mischievously with each turn around.

Pat and the Manchild dated for six consecutive weekends. And on the last weekend before their split, all four (the Manchild, Pat and both their mothers) had a picnic in the Manchild's front yard. It was a little breezy and cold but the time was carried pleasantly. There was a good feeling had by all when the Manchild said he was going built Pat a castle made of cans. They ate salami and crackers, then ham sandwiches and white-grape juice. Affectionately the Manchild offered the rest of his sandwich to Pat, she accepted with a notch of gratitude that seemed of the rather adult verisimilitude. There was a fine cloud layer in the sky, and a small onshore surge played in the women's dresses and sunbonnets, as both arose mid the big oak, opposite the lawn, swaying gently in a dull hiss. Sunlight angled off the clouds with those inviolate rays all good paintings of heaven have and hinted in the distance, upon old and parched Jules Mountain, that the clouds would soon be gone. And through this furtive light and the waning clouds, the far commotion of the city seemed of a very moral and simple consistency. The mothers chatted over their favorite movies (among other things I couldn't hear,) while holding down both a dress and bonnet; as Pat and the Manchild laughed together over Mr. Fur clawing at the screen-door. Mr. Fur was the Manchild's cat, and it became apparent that Pat inquired about it because the Manchild went to retrieve it. He eased his big frame over and came jogging back to Pat with Mr. Fur in his arms-its tiny limbs stuck in the air like a furry newborn. Pat squealed with joy.

"Awww, look at that. He's got a baby," said Pat's mother, while puffing on a long white cigarette.

"Is that right," returned the Manchild's mother, "don't look like Mr. Fur wants to be someone's baby."

Pat's mother smiled knavishly, then glanced over. "Mr. Fur?"

"Yes, he named him." She pointed to her son with a flick of her wrist.

"Does too, Mr. Fur likes being baby." The Manchild explained rather dolefully.

"Is there something wrong with that?" His mother replied.

"I want mine and Pat's baby to like being a baby."

"Excuse me," Pat's mother reeled.

"No, now just hold on, don't worry, he's just pretending. Your not having any real babies, right?"

Pat turned and summoned the Manchild without a real definitive gesture. He obliged wordlessly. Then in a secret exchange of looks and squeals, he went back to petting Mr. Fur as if nothing was happening at all.

"What that's all about?" Pat's mom asked, sounding already discouraged.

The Manchild's mother just shook her head. "Yeah, want's the story with that, son?"

"I'm not tellin."

Mr. Fur mewled loudly then escaped his thick grasp.

The Manchild's mother leaned to her guest: "He didn't do nothing. He can't, he's still a boy-if you know what I mean."

"What did you say to him, Patricia? Huh?" Her mother asked, coaxing in a tone one usually reserves for the senile.

"She's not gonna tell," said the Manchild proudly. "She want's er baby to be a surprise: in a littl' pink bow, like Christmas."

Out of the words, inaccessible joy ran through both Pat and the Manchild, where desperate incommodes of horror recoiled across the mothers'.

"Impossible, no way could it happen."

"Ou-hah," returned the Manchild, "Pedro told me."

" Pedro!"

"Fer the love of god," cried Pat's mother. "What did this man tell you?"

The Manchild paused for a moment. Then right as his mother rose her finger to command him, he went on to give a very crude reinterpretation of what many consider the regality, or the tantalizing schematics of sex-as it was horrendously simplified through the profane teachings of Pedro-all of which the Manchild had a very hard time pronouncing, but unmistakable was that which he was saying. Meanwhile, the mothers' had drawn up their incommodes into little balls of terror, which, further into the narrative, scourged of all color. Pat smiled gratuitously, during which the sun parted from behind the clouds casting a long finger of light on the lawn. Silence fell over the four. It was then that the Manchild's mother went to her son, erected herself on tiptoes, and smacked his head with the loud whooping sound of her flabby hand hitting his big neck, and proceeded by grabbing his ear and dragging him into the house. Pat's mother made no sign of following them and began grimacing, a strange automatonic expression that gave way to crying but seemed very much against her will. The sun hit her and she covered her face with her white and ringless left hand, as if to shun the unknown world from her tears (perhaps rightly so, since I was in fact watching her). She made a few weak steps and bent down to Pat whom rejoiced in the sudden sunlight and was beaming without a care inside the confines of her mother's terror.

"Pat," her mother sobbed. "Really? I mean really did you? Tell me not, please ...Really did you now, honest?" Pat looked over at her confused for a moment, then smiled immensely and took her eyes back to the sky as if it were new to her. And it wasn't until that moment that I noticed I was smiling too.

Later one that night I toasted the sowing of the Manchild's oats with a little of Earl Harper's Dutch Whiskey, which I keep for special occasions (such as this). My wife thought it immoral that I do so, but still joined me for the toast.

"But dear, you most know by now that `the penis is a wicked snake', did you not read the Gertane book I gave you." I asked her this on our sixth or seventh toast. My wife thought this was also immoral and promptly trotted off to bed in her silent dispraise, that little primp, prissy sneer, which I didn't need to see to know she was carrying. For her body language is now as navigable and unmingled and regular as the hours in a day for me-but it is likewise that she could say that about me.

When the season yielded little by way of recyclable income, the Manchild household would rent out an old half pine and half tarpaulin shack in their backyard. It was a rotten twelve by fifteen-foot box that looked very much like a child's tree-fort; on top of which slanted to the left and was built up from the very worst rickshaw foundation. There was an old shell of a Dodge, which sat next to the shack, tended the same abuse, and was a crucial factor in why the shack was upright. Where all around the shack and around the backyard, there was various trinkets and toys and things of absolutely no use in the world, old hermitic junk, pilled up like a yard owned by pack-rats; surrounded completely by a prison of old decrepit bamboo.

But the shack served its purpose, as many a migrant worker and street dweller took residence in it: for it was only ten dollars a night-where the cheapest motels in the vicinity ran near forty; but these renters usually only stayed for a day or so, but Pedro that molder of the Manchild's life, stayed for an entire month; as he had been employed, under the table of course, to do the landscaping for the house across the street. The home of ex-police sergeant, James J. Anders, an enigma onto himself, whom Pedro again utterly detested-but Sarg' did pay him and he didn't care.

And payment was what he most definitely deserved, for Pedro worked like a madman. He took no breaks, ate circus peanuts for lunch (a shame he didn't come in the summer when the Anders' apple trees were ripe), drank water from the hose, riddled himself with thorns-for he had no gloves-and generally roved in the irrigated earth like a mole; where by the end of the day-ten hours later-his clothes where so soiled and spent that they resembled those of the early miner; worn running shoes so speckled and stiff with dirt cleaves they looked like the clay bandages of mummies-all of which Pedro could careless.

"Es el colmo. . . rosas basta!" He hate the roses, though they were absolutely beautiful: the best and brightest out of the whole neighborhood. That is to say the best and brightest for the month that Pedro nursed them anyway; where, despite this, Mr. and Mrs. Anders took full responsibility for their month-long transcendence.

Chopping wood, hoeing gardens, planting seeds, trimming leaves, digging trenches, raking things, shoveling things; all not glamorous jobs to say the least. But he was not a glamorous man; so in a rather twisted way, these jobs fit his semblance. But his semblance was not one to be anchored by generalities. For Pedro was a token of independence. He was too thin to acclaim his Chicano heredity, too pale to lament suffering and too dark for the requiem of the border's blood; as well as being completely vogue inside a hairless physique. His arms bent at great binding angles, where thick Spartan veins covered these slants. His thighs filled his jeans as if with sand-therein cloaking any two visible calves. With the resolve of a board, his midsection stood toned from the fettle of hard labor. Yet aside all his brawn attributes, his very short frame, near five foot five, presented him with both the crowd-favored-look of an underdog and the careless abandon of a dwarf. Where during the month that I knew him (vicariously from a window and through the Manchild's backyard) his clothes switched from two sets: two jeans, one pair blue one pair black, a frayed Mazatlan T-shirt with a faded blue ringer, a black sleeveless muscle-shirt, a leather jacket and one thick gas station jacket that wore the color black and the name: Bert. Though he always stayed true to the same belt, a blazon of sorts: a thick 1/8-inch cowhide strap with tan stitching and a white scorpion etched in the copper of the buckle. And now as I remember him, that is the way I will always remember him, for he did rather live out that scorpion sentiment: inducing venom if provoked, yet squashable as the bug itself. He also stayed true to his shoes but they held nothing of external insight to his character, they were worn thin, spangled in an earlier year and very small, probably five or six in size.

Shoes held nothing on him, but perhaps his foot size might be worth mentioning. There is an old Roman fallacy that a man's virility-which somehow, through the passing of mouths and years and continents, was replaced by a man's penile endowment-lie in the size of his foot. But I suppose the Roman's could never have accounted for a man like Pedro; I don't know this for a fact, but from the way he pleasured a great many whores in the Manchild's shack, he was the very proof that is was just a fallacy, dispelling the legend without even knowing it. (I regard these women as whores because of their inclement slipshod look, a little more obviously from the sounds of a cab, and most obviously because of the exchange of currency that I had seen follow these intimacies.) Pleasured is perhaps the wrong word since, from the sound of things, all were very close to ecstasy.

My wife turned over to me one night, being unable to occlude the pants and pangs of the business in the rickshaw shack. "He's some lover, ain't he? Phew . . . .Every night. Honey, go over and tell him he better cool down those loins of his, before there's none left."

"Before he catches Aids, if he hasn't already." I suggested.

She snorted aptly, then returned to her drowsy scattered breathe, as the noise in the shack reached zenith then slowly edged down to silence.

In college, psychology was my main interest. That is to say, I enjoyed those classes the most. That is to say, I always passed my psychology classes. That is to say, everyone, including myself, deemed psychology my future because while enjoying it I also passed the classes. Dr. Mike Riflin was the first to really excite me enough to do research, to really try and develop my own ideas about pressing psychological issues, though I always relied on his opinion to stage my research. But the conflict was that as a classified professor of the college and a man of strong ethics, he didn't allow himself to interject his personal opinion, where likewise school law decrees that it should never enter the playing field, but such as the type of the man, Dr. Riflin would present things in class where his personal opinion was more than evident. As a matter of fact, it extended so far that there was a sort of idiocy which you felt if you agreed otherwise, and it was simply because Dr. Riflin had a way of laughing at all theories contradicting the ones he had deemed right. For example, with Freud, it was hit and miss, some theories he grew very serious over, almost grave even, and then there were the others in which he just laughed gallantly to.

Then one day Dr. Riflin went too far.

It was a study conducted by Dr. Rudolph Gertane. The hypothesis was that humans experience a natural depression immediately following intercourse. Being college academicians, my fellow classmates and I didn't laugh when Dr. Riflin stated the earlier theories of Gertane, which I agree are reasonably insane, where he quoted him as saying the penis was a wicked snake. No, laughs though. We shook our heads like professionals, taking note of how ridiculous early Gertane was. But a year prior I had read, The Animal of Man, by Dr. Gertane, and the reality for me was that he was right on the money-with the exception of his earlier work, which really isn't that insane but when I think of it all I see is Dr. Riflin laughing at them- Even to this day do I completely agree with most theories Gertane presented in his books.

Dr. Riflin began laughing hysterically when he presented Gertane's, Six Canonic Optatives of Sex: Lust, Pride, Ecstasy (orgasm), Hate (the second after), Fear and then Guilt. I had, and have, experienced this for myself-I had even underlined it in the copy I owned-so to hear Dr. Riflin dismissing what I knew to be true with that deplorable, and horribly convincing, laugh of his, you can imagine how infuriated I was. And when class ended, I packed my things and rose out of my seat knowing full well that I would never be back. Something about it had stolen something from me. It was all too much a struggle. Perhaps I contributed my life to forging new paths of psychology, perhaps I wrote forty books or lectured the world over, then have Dr.'s and students observe it as something to show how wrong someone can be. So, in short, I gave-up. And to this day I wish I never would have, since perhaps if I hadn't, I wouldn't have gone and graduated with a degree in Advertising Technology. Then perhaps I wouldn't be stuck in this worsening life-sucking routine of mine. I am a Diginational, IPIO and BRT certified, Advertising Technician at the Helix and Stanton Co. .We sell and stock the bristles of toothbrushes, combs, paintbrushes, postage machine brushes, etc ....My job consists of meetings with buyers, executives and various men of the business tribe, to relate our newest slogans and ridiculous (though ludicrously tedious) pitches. Then, after a weeklong discussion and finally a vote, we either send it to the fiscal desk or to the drawing board, depending on how the tribe thought it could hold against the Hargrove Company's, or any of the other competitors, pitches.

Outside, I heard Pedro laugh a few times with a whore in the shack, and I thought of Dr. Riflin and Gertane and the Jemirkto buyers and admitted to myself that I was consecutively wrong on all my life decisions, and perhaps I was only so caught up with refusing to look at it like that that I had in fact vanquished that which was propelling me originally: the struggle, the joyous hit and miss confusion of the world, which seems like more a personal error when your young.

Then I heard the cab pull up outside. And I could very well imagine Pedro laughing at me amid paying this whore for a job well done: a job that lacked fear and guilt and psychology, a job that beheld struggle and imprudence as rewarding-and in a strange, ultimately intangible way, I envied them both for it.

It's a mysterious fact to swallow that often people resemble animals, or perhaps domestic pets. But it's a fact nonetheless. And if there was ever a perfect example of it, it found its home upon both the ex-sergeant, Mr. Anders, and his Mrs., as they both looked implausibly akin to lizards, both of them, to the tee. Stranger still, they did not take on their equal plebeian roles, they apparently did not see their similarity, and instead of reptile accordance, they looked to each other as husband and wife-with a son no less. A little hellion for a son, who looked like what he was: a crossbreed of two lizards. The same lizard boy who once lit his neighbor's (to the right) home of fire; once vandalized my wives car; once shot my daughters dog; twice spray-painted the "Neighborhood Watch" sign in front of the Manchild's house; and twice crashed his fathers car into their garage.

The same little boy who turned sixteen, or a year in either direction, just one week ago (I suspect it was his birthday because of the teen's singing the unmistakable birthday song, despite which, arose in one sonorous howl from the hoard of young drunken tongues) to the likes of a band which, although constant in vibrato, carried the sounds of dying elephants-which follows yet another mysterious fact: the fact that good, regardless of its sense-faculty, is something relative solely to an individual. I know this, people at all trots of life know this and, despite extreme hints otherwise from my wife, I did not go over there and flex my adult deputation over them. For the noise, I knew, was someone's symphony.

Let me say first that I am a full-fledged adult. I am married, have been that way for fifteen years now, have a daughter, been that way for seven, and I have a job, which you are aware of. But highest to me is the idea that the entire world is forced to look at me as a man. They must be aware that I am to be respected, as any man who does not look feeble, flamboyant, timid or otherwise substandard, does. And according to the law of the land, I should receive respect and authority by way of judgement because of this adult man fact; also, in my benefit, I have a beard, perhaps a bit too groomed but a beard nonetheless, I have a half-moon scar running the course of my face (from an accident I had fishing, as a child) and I have let myself go a little-weight wise. But somehow, against the Land's order, I rarely receive authority on matters and even more rarely am I given respect. I am not flamboyant, feeble or of those others monikers, but I suppose I am fairly shy at moments and can sympathize too greatly with others. This is true, I cannot hide it, though I can rest assured that the Land Laws have written men like me a gift of two exceptions: the immediate family and young people. As the same voice which can do nothing to another man, can effect an entire crowd of young people. And my wife naturally lionizes the effect because of the way our daughter listens to me; but there are other factors involved with my daughter listening to me: one is the threat that I will step in if she does not listen and another, to be perfectly honest, is for scolding her a bit harder when my wife is not around.

But the Law on my effect over young people is tricky, because once this young person has reached teenhood he/she has a tendency to push the reality on the matter, which is if there were more than two of them, they could easily kill or torture or do whatever they wanted to a man like me. And from the noise of the lizard kid and his friends across the street, they did not seem the type that would listen to a verbal threat from a bearded, scarred, fat, sympathetic and slightly timid forty-year-old man. Not to mention, they were just kids doing like I did at that age. So with little regard, I was still shunning my wife's hints at one A.M.

Then three A.M. struck and the lizard kid's party had not receded but flourished with life, and two encores of the birthday song; the whereabouts of his parents were completely unknown to us. My wife had gradually raised her hints into what I knew to be the presage of a qualm, and I also felt that it was beginning to directly challenge this Law of my manhood, so I agreed I would go over and put a stop to it. She handed me a flashlight and a kiss as if I was to go and make her proud. I heard her lock the door as I exited it.

From my front lawn, in a quick sizing up, I acknowledged that I was going to be outnumbered by a good thirty/one, or greater supposing they came more than just one for every one car. Kid's cars. Most of them were riddled with phallic, and generally pointless, stickers; the ones that weren't bore the emblems of their parents lives: my child is number one in this, my child received honors in that, child on board, those natured things. And completely incredibly to me, one kid had the gull to park his parent's car right in front of my driveway. I could imagine his logic: its late, they're old, they're not going anywhere, they've got nowhere to be; which all was true, but still angered me-as it should, I told myself.

But the car also gave me plan: if I went to this car and found some sort of information about the owner, I could use it against the mass, and thereby not have my superiority questioned; for the threat of the disclosed identity is always much more scary to a young person (It was late). So, I went to it before going across to crucify the party.

It was a pathetic parent's van, a tinted mesh of sleekness and emerald paint and little dents and scraps from letting their kid use it no doubt. I lit my flashlight upon the dash and across the fangled steering wheel and the modern exoticness of the dash. When a motion caught me off guard, I turned the light onto the front seats and suddenly two pair of petrified eyes met mine. A boy, around sixteen, had his hands locked on the steering wheel. His pocked face caught between shock and disappointment, as he was receiving some form of mild fellatio from a girl, blonde-haired, horrendously small and probably all of a whopping fifteen. There was a strange sort of aberrance in the air; things were slower than a second hand extension and yet quicker than being able to be mentally processed: a state of thorough shock (at least this is how I excuse myself for leaving the flashlight upon them). Then suddenly the cops erupted in their squawking sirens and familiar thrill trampling lights. The kid scrambled to his pants and the girl to her seatbelt, as both refused to look back at me. The car started and drove away slowly, like a sleek green ship parting anonymously on the sea.

I sunk back into my house before the cops thought me as a contributor. Then from a window's post, proceeded to watch the cops flush out the hoards of young teenage kids, like rats escaping from a burning barn. Some were too drunk to run and collapsed under the general weight of their kicking legs; these were the fallen comrades and the future heroes came to their aids, dragging them away from the cop's treachery. Where amid it all, the cops just smiled and joked and seemed so thoroughly amused. They caught a few and took them prisoner, but mostly just sat by with glaring spotlights and watched the show.

"Whatta looking at, honey?... What did you do?" My wife asked, as she swam the breadth of tenderness and horror inside her inquires.

I must of have looked back out the window. "I didn't do anything. The cops came before I could do anything. Look at them out its like a food chain, almost, you know, look at that one, the sharks came and look at them out their. Aw, just kids, remember dear?. . . Remember our days out there?"

"Come to bed." She insisted, as the follow of her voice told me she was already there. There was also certain briskness in her voice and distance that indicated she was perhaps upset with me.

Latter on, being unable to sleep, I awoke my wife and questioned her about her briskness: "Honey, why ...what's the deal with you?"

"Hum?" She slowly responded, in that choke-grog awoke tone. I nudged her again to the same response.

"What do you want?" She said, raising her head, which pointed away for me, in a rumpled ball of beauty stranded.

"Honey, earlier, what's your problem? What did I do?"

"Why did you-" She began falling back asleep.

"Honey, Honey, fer Christ's sake tell me what it is. .. come on. . . just for one little second. Come on." I nudged her harder than before and she instantly came to, switched her head of the pillow to face me, and starred at my eyes unusually forceful and bawdy and somewhat eerie, remarking sharply: "You just always wait until it's too late," then instantly drifted back to sleep.

An hour latter, the sun rose on a distinctly segregated horizon; a lavender like gray color scratched out above the old Jules mountain only to be met by the orange Greek-fire type of a sunrise, a standard and average sight, delineated by the cloudy pink region of the remaining sky; quite simple, clearly defined, as the world below seemed dangerously aloof. There were clear lines in the sky, pink and orange and gray. But on the sturdy earth there was chaos: birds and wives and horns and lights and all forms of things that did not follow the simple perpetuation of the sky. My wife looked so callow in her established sleeping arrangement of hooking her toes around the blankets, as so to keep the majority of it down there. Where this little habit struck me as rather greedy and upon thinking this, I wondered if it would be passed on to our daughter. And upon thinking of my daughter, I thought of that poor blond girl who treated the boy to her best idea of how affection was gained, and then to the boy asphyxiated on his own flesh and desire; it struck me so odd that the girl had mutually consented. But the real question behind it was this:

Would that be the fate of my daughter?

My little girl the one in the tinted van with a pimply kid raking her tenderness and spoiling her adolescence-despicable, truly revolting-though on the contrary, Dr. Riflin and Psychology has taught me that woman are just as thoughtful towards fornication as are men: than she was not a woman, I remember thinking; she was of flesh which would not be plagued by the whims of a dumb kid, her blood would never carry lust. But in the cruel and dissonant and natural world which we live, I knew there was a definite possibility that she could end up being just another of Pedro's whores .... It was then that I decided that I would do whatever it is I had to do to get her to be a hard-nosed vestal of chastity. And thereby I swore that all hell would beat down upon the man who looked at her otherwise. It was then that I decided I would buy a gun, not anything big, just a revolver perhaps.

Morning came with its littering heat. The day had thoroughly broken. I heard my daughter flip on cartoons from in the livingroom. And I could picture her there, just two feet from the screen, laughing and giggling inside all her pink and flaccid sovereignties. And I wanted her to stay like that; the gun, I figured, would ensure this.

My wife quaintly snorted, as the alarm rang though the house like a militarysalute in a graveyard.

I never went through with buying a gun. Much later in life, I found out my daughter lost her virginity at age sixteen to a convicted criminal twice her age.

Mr. Anders came over around nine that morning and apologized for his son's disturbance. Turned out he and the miss' were away at one of their folk's house when the police, his old buddies, called him and informed him of his son's behavior. Morning met Mr. Anders a bit hard, and I inspected him when his eyes went away from arresting mine: and despite that all-consuming lizard invocation, I noticed he was a rather silvery man. A man you might see nursing a slot machine with a bucket of quarters at a casino in the middle of nowhere, or barking orders at a team of confused kids as a pee-wee football coach. A sleek gray drunk, with that 2/2 haircut-which the army boys call grown-out and that face of a ribald aluminum glow, like an old silent-motion-picture-star resurrected from the vault of nameless artisans. And as he assured us again that his son had been properly punished, my wife said, "no trouble." And he retired down the walk.

A little wind made my wife rub her shoulders softly, and we sat watching the silvery Lizard move up to Jimbo's residence to repeat the apology.

"No trouble, uh?" I asked her.

" What?"

"Well, last night you said something different."

"And what was that we were doing?" She asked wryly, vaguely seductive.

"No, no, you said. . . aw, never mind that." For repeating it, I knew, would only point out its absurdity; the equally smote as it was absurdly perceptional qualm; the same which all couples know but at times play at the utmost ignorance to.

She closed the door quietly and then hitched it to its lock position. "You know I had a dream last night?" She said to me, looking for acknowledgement.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes..." she looked at me harder. I acknowledged that familiar look that meant she was waiting for more excitement on my part.

"And what was the dream about?" I asked trying to sound intrigued.

She instantly corrected her face and rose her hands as if to circle a fist-sized orb. "I dreamed you wanted to wait to buy tickets off the- Or we on a ferry, like the one we went on in Tahoe, and it was sinking and to get off you had to buy a ticket from these children (just a bunch of little kids), and the more the ferry sank the cheaper the tickets got, and you kept saying you were gonna get them cheaper than anyone and. . . it was just horrible ...we were up to are necks in water and you kept telling me to wait, `I'm gonna get them cheaper,' it was terrible." "Really, I'm sorry." "How can you be sorry it was a dream?" "I don't know. . . it sounds nice." "You smell like cigarettes, have you been smoking?" "No, I think it's just this shirt- It was smoking." She sneered aptly, then retreated to the kitchen table where her grapefruit awaited her, no doubt comforting her in this new distress.