“When we bought this cottage, 35 years ago, I never expected to spend time gardening. All that digging and mucking about was Hildy’s job. Always getting her hands dirty, making a mess. See that ole stump down there, near the path. Yeah, that was Hildy’s first experiment, some skinny maple that she’d recovered from those woods. She said it needed room to grow. Heh, well it sure did grow. Grew so big that when we had that storm in’75, the whole shebang came crashing down onto the back porch. She was a pistol.

“Man that girl always had ideas. Look at that boat launch, if you can call it that. She had me build that in the summer of ’83. Some fool idea of hers that we would have a canoe or a raft or if there were grandchildren about, they could go diving off it. Spent the whole summer up to my ass in muddy water, for what? Nothing. Damn Hildy went and decided that the lake was fine to look at but too dangerous to be in. Some fool up Filmore way went and drown himself. They never found the body either. So, all that work went to waste. Damn that girl.

“When I finally said goodbye to the steel plant, or rather they said “don’t let the door hit you in the ass,” we settled up here, in our little getaway, and I’ll be honest with ya, the first two years were sweet. It was like we were newlyweds. Hildy gave up her crafty concoctions and settled on just being a person for a change, instead of a master chef (heh) or a gardener (double heh) and I was finally starting to think that this was the best idea she’d ever had. Even those first two winters, as harsh as they were, didn’t dampen our spirits.

“In ’86 she turned on me. I don’t know if was the ‘change of life’ or the town women she was hanging out with, but she reared on me like an angry bear. She started accusing me of suffocating her, keeping her away from her friends and her children. She was a crazy woman. I got the doc to get some of those hormones for her, thinking she’d be back to her sweet self, but she just got worse. I ain’t ashamed to say it, but I got damned depressed, sitting up here alone with that witch. And that witch ruled me for five years.

“That night I’d been drinking. I’d been drinking a lot. I’m telling you now, since my time is almost up. But she came home after an evening with “the girls” and she started in on me. Calling me worthless and using words that I didn’t even know my Hildy knew. Like I said, I was drunk and depressed and well, I just snapped. I grabbed the nearest thing, the fireplace poker and I brained that witch until she shut her foul mouth. I immediately knew what I’d done, I knew I’d killed her. But in my heart, I swear to this day, I feel like I released my sweet Hildy from the witch she’d become. I buried my wife out back, told family, police and those crazy women friends of hers that she’d drown.

“And what did those old bitties do but bring me a damn apple tree. What the hell did I want another damn tree for, the forest is full of them. But they were all sympathetic (and scheming after the new widower, I’d bet) and they said that they thought the tree would be a nice memorial to Hildy, for how much she loved gardening. Well, I thanked the old bats and you know what I did with that tree, I planted that thing right out back, right over the spot where I buried that witch and I’ll tell you them apples are the sweetest apples in the entire county.

“Hey, Hildy, looks like you finally grew something right!”

***

She laid a hand gently on her father’s arm as he rocked on the porch swing. She looked where he looked, out past the old boat launch into the gentle ripples of the lake. “You want me to get the afghan for him?” her husband asked, climbing the porch steps. She smiled, “yeah, it’s getting chilly.”

“You think he’s happy up here?”

“Definitely, he’s been chattering for about an hour now. I haven’t seen him this animated since long before the stroke. I can’t really understand him, though,” she whispered, looking up at him.

He reached for the screen door. “Oh, I picked a bunch of apples from that tree out back, thought you could make one of your famous pies.”

“That would be perfect.” She smiled and turned back to the lake.

An unseen piano player in some other part of the restaurant was tinkling away a familiar tune. ‘What song is that?’ Sarah wondered. It sounded like it might be a Beatles song, maybe one written by George Harrison. He was always her favorite Beatle…

Sarah silently scolded herself for her moment of distraction. Gus was leaning across the table towards her, one arm outstretched as if waiting for her to place her hand in his. He was obviously saying something important. She could tell because he kept breaking eye contact to stare at the tablecloth. Sarah tried to pull her attention back to Gus when it hit her.

Here, There, Everywhere! She knew it was a Beatles song! Sarah tried to recall if she had ever heard this particular song played by a piano soloist before. She shoveled another forkful of chocolate silk pie into her mouth and concluded that no, she had never heard the song played quite like this before. This pianist was pretty good.

“…so as I was saying, these past six months with you have been wonderful. That’s why I brought you here tonight.” Gus was looking at her with eyes the size of dinner plates. Sarah realized he was waiting for her to say something.

“Oh, Gus. Yeah, things have been great. You’re a lot of fun to hang out with. Still, I can’t believe you took me to Farro’s. It’s way to pricey.”

Gus’s eyes went back to the tablecloth. Apparently her response wasn’t quite the one he was looking for. “You’re worth it, you know,” he muttered between spoonfuls of champagne sorbet. “It’s our six-month anniversary. I wanted it to be special.”

His arm lingered on the table, flat and still like an unused salad fork. She reached out and gave his hand a quick squeeze. “Everything is great, Gus, just great.”

They finished their desserts in silence. The music had stopped. Sarah decided the pianist must have gone on a break or something. As the silence between she and Gus grew longer and more awkward, she began to pick up fragments of conversation from the nearby tables.

The couple in the corner were engaged in a debate over sending their child to public or private school. At another table, an Asian family loudly chattered in a rapid language that Sarah thought might be Mandarin, but she couldn’t say for sure. Laughter from a number of tables fluttered around the restaurant and seemed to hover all around her. As a busboy hurried past with a basket of bread, Sarah distinctly heard the swish-swish of his pants as they brushed against his apron.

Gus was focused on his sorbet. His head was lowered so closely to the dessert dish, Sarah thought he could lose the spoon and just shove his whole face in there. She swore she could even hear him slurping away at the sorbet. She couldn’t bear to look at him again until he was finished with it.

Silverware clattered to the floor as the busboy dropped a tray. The laughter in the room changed from the kind shared privately between couples to a slightly more mocking kind. All the sounds seemed to rise in volume. Swish-Cackle-Slurp. A knife scraped across a plate like nails on a blackboard. Swish-Cackle-Slurp.

Sarah could stand it no longer. Where in the world was the piano player? She started to get up from her chair. She was going to find the manager and…and…

Suddenly all was quiet. Sarah turned to Gus and found him next to the table, kneeling in the aisle on one knee. He held a hinged velvet box out to her as he looked up with watery eyes.

The conversations at all the other tables stopped. All the eyes in the room were on the two of them, on her! Sarah fell back into her seat and raised a hand to her face to conceal the shock that she was experiencing.

“Sarah, I have something I want to ask you.”

This can’t be happening! Not here! Not now! Not…Gus! Sarah closed her eyes tight in the hopes that when she opened them, Gus would be just sitting there, slurping up his sorbet.

But Gus was still on one knee, still reaching out to her, still wanting to ask her a question. Sarah could feel the expectant eyes of those around her. This was too much to take.

“I’m sorry, Gus.”

The words came out of her mouth before Sarah even knew she had said them. She leapt from her chair and started running. Everything was moving in slow motion.

Just then, the unseen pianist began to play. Finding her way to the door, Sarah paused, thinking, ‘What song is that? It sounds so familiar.’

She opened the door and never looked back.

I hate Paris.

It had started out so easy. I should’ve known it then – jobs like this never turn out easy. On the contrary. They tend to be tough as nails, the variety carpenters use in high-pressure nail guns to attach wood panels to uncooperating surfaces. Little, small black nails, that always tend to drop to the floor, get stuck in the crack between your shoes and socks and then generally irritate the heck out of you when you try to clean them away.

I don’t normally tend to morbid thoughts, but when you’re driving through the traffic-congested streets of Paris with a suicidical maniac called Jacques (if that really is his name), even a well-adjusted personality tends to get a little pissed off.

The little art gallery in the Rue Etienne Marcel tried to lull you with that mix of avant garde artist place and hush-hush collector’s exchange. This also made their security set-up a bit of a nightmare for them. After three days of posing like an interested connoisseur and checking the place out, I decided that a hit and run would be the best option. Looking back now, I got at least fifty percent right.

On the fourth day I had augmented the usual paraphernalia of a collector of fine arts with a riot-control size can of teargas and a carpet knife. After four slashes with the knife and a couple of splashes with the gas, a vintage Manet painting parted with it’s former owner and was on it’s way to the next. No, that’s Manet, you cretin, not Monet! Just like money, which I seemed ever further away from collecting.

The big mistake came in trusting my employer’s choice in accomplices.
“Thees ees Jacques,” he said, “you trust him, he knows theese streets vell.”

Right.

So here I was, my fingers digging into the black plastic dashboard of a cheap Fiat. To my left, Jacques, idiot extraordinaire, who not only hit a bloody poodle during our frantic escape, but also managed to sideswipe a Gendarmerie squad car directly afterwards. I had briefly nurtured the dim hope that the ensuing chaos would let us slip away, but to no avail.

My sprint to the curb outside the art gallery ended in a disbelieving, head-shaking full stop when I saw that Jacques had neatly parked our get-away car in a parking slot which left about half a foot in front and back. I ripped open the door and slammed myself into the passenger’s seat. Jacques was panting excitedly and now (now!) started the engine which turned over once, twice, then finally caught. Revving the motor up into the supersonic, he smiled at me.

“Eh, nice little parking space, non? Is impossible to get good parking like this, non?”

I was too busy rolling up the canvas and stuffing it into a cardboard tube to give him the smack on the head he so rightly deserved. From the corner of my eye I saw that the commotion I had caused in the gallery was spilling into the street.

“Go!”, I screamed at Jacques, who was still grinning like the pope on dope.
“Go, go, go!”

Gears moved slowly, both in Jacques head and in the badly serviced manual shift engine. Slamming first into the front, then the rear car, he pulled out into traffic, which tried to avoid him by turning with screeching tires onto the opposite lane. Milliseconds later, the first crash of many ensured that our subtle little get-away was going to be anything but.

After the poodle incident in the Rue Saint-Lazare, we had the Gendarmerie on our tails with a vengeance.
Now, in France, you got yourself the ordinary traffic-cop variety which they call “la police”. Easy, huh? But they also have a paramilitary-like cadre of high-testosterone, no-nonsense, Boot Stompers. The Gendarmerie.
I got slammed into the door as Jacques took a hard left turn into the Rue Beaubourg, and one look at the white-eyed frenzy in his face told me that even Jacques had noticed who was following us.
“Turn left!”, I screamed, looking through the rear window. “Right!”
It was no use, they were still following.
“Right, left, go, go!”

Suddenly I saw my chance. Like a sign from the Almighty, there was the Metro station of the Arts et Metiers District.
Reaching for the cardboard tube, I slammed into the side of the door, wrenching it open. I hit the ground, rolled and came up running. Leaping down the stairs, I quickly jumped the turnstile, and was about to turn toward the arriving subway train when an attendant grabbed me by my right arm.

“Sir, your ticket?” His eyes glinted with a predatory smile.
“You do have a ticket, don’t you?” My exasperation told him otherwise.

God, I hate Paris.

I’m sitting in my driveway on a Tuesday. It’s pitch dark. The motor is running. It’s 5:45 AM. I live in a nice neighborhood, nothing fancy, just a mid-starter type of subdivision. We’re all young here. The men are young lions looking to climb the ladders of life. The women are young and attractive.

I have a wife and two small children. Somehow, I’m actually growing up. I’m gaining a sense of responsibility in life. I look at the clock in my car. It’s 5:46 AM and my heart is pounding so hard that I can feel in my brain. I feel guilty to the bone and sick to my stomach.

I’m the average guy. Average height, weight, eye color, and average life. People mistake me for an employee in Wal-Mart. They ask me for directions when I shop there. I don’t smoke. I drink very little, yet I have an addiction that has grabbed hold of me like a hot pulsating hand on my heart. Right now it’s squeezing me. I can feel it pulling me to this secret place. It’s 5:47 AM. What am I going to do? God, what am I going to do this morning?

As I told you, I’m trying to grow up. I’m not in college any more. Stupid things I did back then, really seem stupid now as I look on them. Somehow, and I’m not sure how, I actually think things through to their conclusion now. I think about the end result and how it affects not only me, but now my wife and my two boys.

At night, I sit down and read the newspaper. My boys sit next to me and look at their books. They do everything that I do. I have come to realize that they watch me and copy everything that I do. God, I feel so guilty. It’s 5:49 AM. I am addicted. My addiction is throbbing throughout me. This wicked addiction guides my thoughts and my feet. I find myself going to a place where I know I should not be going.

Perspiration is on my forehead. My armpits are wet. I see Pastor, in my mind, preaching his sermon. We started going to church three months ago. It’s the right thing to do. We’ve made friends there. They have a different perspective. I look at the clock. 5:51 AM.

One of the deacons asked me to meet him on Tuesday mornings for prayer. That was three weeks ago. I haven’t made it yet. I’ve tried, but this addiction has a hold of my heart, my very soul.

Three weeks ago, I left my house to meet him. I live on a street that is a loop. I can go either left or right. Either way takes me to the same road that takes me out of my neighborhood. I always turn left. It’s shorter. That Tuesday morning, in the dark, I left to meet him.

As I turned left, I followed the street to the Stop sign. It’s dark and no one is around. As I look to the left, there is a light on in her house. It wasn’t planned, but there she is in her shower. The window is tall and there is no curtain or shade. She is naked. She is beautiful. She is washing herself with intimate innocence. Her hair is dark. She is no more than 26 years old and her breasts are young. I find myself absorbed. It’s as though there is an invisible thread pulling her nipples heavenward. I watch her wash herself. She has a habit of pulling her dark nipples when she washes them. They become hard as the end of my little finger. I missed prayer meeting that morning.

I’ve watched her eleven days in the early morning from my car. God, I feel guilty. I watched her yesterday morning. They way she touches herself. It’s innocent, but unbelievable. 5:53 AM.

Last Sunday, Pastor preached from the book of 2 Samuel. That’s where King David watched Bathsheba bathe. ”From the roof he saw a woman bathing.” I don’t know how Pastor did it. It felt as though he had been watching me all that week when he preached.

I feel sick to my stomach but I want to go there again. Heroin is nothing compared to this. This addicts the soul. 5:55 AM. She bathes at 6:00 AM.

I pull out of the driveway and stop in the middle of the street. I look both ways. I am being seduced to go and turn left with a compulsion that I can not explain. I lower my head.

“God, help me.”

I turn, and go to the right. For the first time, I made it.

That was twenty years ago. I never turned left again.

“Look left, look right, look left, look right.” He chanted, fingers slipping on the steering wheel.

Left… a young family turned the corner onto Milton Place. Right… three kids were grinding their boards on the benches in the park on Vine.

Jimmy’s eyes darted to the clock on the dash. Only three minutes since they’d gone in. His heart beat louder, in time with his glances. ‘Look left’ – thud, ‘look right’ – thump. With each second the action on the streets in front of him lost focus. His mind swam in the flood of stimuli. He saw only the blinking of the digital clock, heard only the quickened pace of his shallow breathing and felt only the sharp angles of the pistol concealed under his right thigh. His head started bobbing with each second.

“Everything’s cool. No problems,” he mumbled under his breath. He looked back and forth, struggling to focus. An old woman entered the corner market after tying her little dog to the lamp post. A mailman stopped at the box on Milton. “Just sitting here,” Jimmy hummed quietly. “Just sitting here, waiting for some friends.”

Four minutes. Still on schedule, Ray’s “master plan” as he’d called it. In and out, nice clean exit, everyone is happy, everyone is calm. “Eight minutes, tops,” he’d told them. “I’ve timed it, gone over it. Eight minutes and that’s if we’re all leisurely about it.” He’d brought Jimmy in first thing. “Opportunity is the key here, Jimmy. And we’ve got it by the truckload. You’re my wheel man, if you’re in.” That speech had come with several rounds of drinks and the unusual attention of Ray’s sister, Sharon. You could say what you want about a girl like that, but she sealed the deal.

Five minutes. Jimmy smiled, lost in the memory of her smell. She’d done things to him that he’d only read about. Where one second you think “where the hell did you learn that?” and the next second you didn’t care. He gripped the steering wheel tightly. “Oh man, oh man,” he whispered, shuddering when he thought of the moment she…

WHOOP! WHOOP!

The siren knocked Jimmy out of his daydream. His eyes widened and he straightened in the seat, the barrel of the pistol feeling harder than ever. A police cruiser stopped near the park entrance. Jimmy checked the time, six minutes. The cop in the passenger seat rolled down his window and yelled at the skaters. They milled about near the entrance. The cop raised his voice and opened the door. ‘Come on, come on, just clear out, dammit,’ Jimmy thought, rocking back and forth. The tallest boy pleaded his case. The first cop shouted, “you hear what I’m telling you, son?” while his partner exited the vehicle.

Jimmy glanced at the bank entrance. The alcove was clear. He shook his head. “Don’t come out now,” he mumbled. “Stay in there Ray, dammit, don’t come out now.” He turned back to the park in time to watch the trio skate off. Jimmy held his breath as the officers slowly walked back to the car. They stood, doors ajar, talking to each other over the roof. “Come on, mooove! Come on!” Seven minutes, now, and the black and white finally roared to life and the cops drove on, down Milton. He exhaled, but only after he could no longer hear that cop-engine whine.

“Alright, Ray, let’s get this the hell over with.”

Eight minutes. His ducked instinctively when he heard the first gunshot. He sat back up, staring at the entrance, half expecting to see Ray, and his cousin running out. There was nothing. Had anyone else heard that? It was recognizable enough to Jimmy, all keyed up and aware of the hidden proceedings inside the bank, but to anyone else… The few passers-by seemed oblivious, even the old lady’s dog hadn’t moved.

Who the hell was shooting anyway? “The guns are for intimidation purposes only,” Ray had reassured him that morning. “I probably won’t even load mine. It’s just to help the proceedings along.” The original plan was to just imply there were guns. But in this day and age, you needed to show the metal or they didn’t take you seriously. “I know this is hard for ya, Jimmy-boy. But all I’m asking for is ten minutes of your time. Ten minutes, to sit outside on a nice day. Can you give me that, just ten?” Jimmy agreed.

When the second gunshot came, clear and loud, Jimmy decided that nine was as good as ten, any day. He pulled slowly away from the curb, turning left onto Milton. He glanced back in time to see a bloody hand push open the glass door.

‘Opportunity is the key here,’ he thought and drove on.

Her husband grabbed the hood of her jacket as she ran for the back door.

Not quick enough, she thought as she pulled back her shoulders, and the coat slipped from her arms.

Flinging open the door, she ran down the porch stairs and up the driveway to the front of the house. As she turned the corner, she found her husband coming up from the other side of the house.

He jumped the fence!

Quickly she darted up the porch toward the front door. Please be unlocked, she prayed as she threw herself against it. It was. She slammed the door shut and slid the deadbolt. She was already running to lock the backdoor when she heard her husband banging on the door. Quickly she locked the back one.

Molly!

Sprinting up the stairs two at a time, she burst into her daughter Molly's room.

"Cheryl thinks Brad likes her, but Josh told--"

"Molly, get off the phone."

"In a minute, Mom."

Time...

"Get off the phone NOW!"

Molly looked as if she'd just been slapped.

"I have to go," she said and hung up the receiver.

Grabbing Molly's jacket in one hand and Molly in the other, she pulled her daughter from her room and down the stairs.

She could hear jars breaking in the basement.

He's coming in through the basement window!

Time...

"Mom, what's going--"

"Go to Amy's. Do not come home until I call you. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but--"

"GO! Don't come home until I call!" She shouted as she slammed the front door and locked it. She watched as Molly ran from the porch crying. When she turned around he was upon her.

"Think you're smart, don't ya?" He screamed in her face, enunciating every word with a poke to her chest. She backed away and he shoved her. She fell in between the coffee table and sofa. He straddled her and began choking her. She clawed at his face. She could feel his skin and blood under her nails, but he did not stop. She reached out toward the coffee table and grabbed the heavy clay tray Molly had made in art class. She struck at her husband's head. He stopped choking her.

Gasping, she pulled herself from underneath him. She crawled to the phone and punched in 911.

"911. What is your emergency?"

"My husband just tried to kill me," she rasped. Then she saw a movement and felt a sharp blow to the side of her head. Pretty colors, she thought as she fell over stunned.

She could hear her husband moving through the house. Stay with it, girl! She told herself. He'll be back.

She summoned her strength and looked for the phone. He had ripped it from the wall. Slowly she rose and found she could stand. The pain was immense. She began her way to the front door.

"Oh no you don't!" Her husband came running up to her, his face dripping blood. In his arms was a shotgun.

Time...

Suddenly there was no time. The future became the present. And the present was a vacuum. She could see the molecules in the air. She could hear Sparky barking in the backyard. She knew the cops were surrounding the house. She knew what her husband was planning. She knew dead calm.

As he moved toward her, she headed deeper into the living room.

He came up to her with the gun held across his body. He shoved her with it. She grabbed it, but instead of pulling back to take it from him, she went with it when he pulled back. Surprised, he lost his balance and fell back over the footstool, losing his grip on the gun. There was a sharp crack as his head hit the corner of the heavy glass and wrought iron coffee table. He stared up at her with unseeing eyes.

Time…Time to go.

Slowly she slid back the deadbolt and opened the door.

“I’m here!” She called out.

“I’m here.”

Cold rain travels down little gray rivers on the bookstore window. Inside the old bookstore it is neither warm, nor cozy, although it is certainly supposed to be that kind of place. I can hear the muffled sniffles and coughs of patrons with their winter colds that started in the early fall and last sometimes until the sun decides to stroll into June. Occasionally, a sniffler will ask me where such and such book is. I carefully and pointedly pull a directory from the stack of directories clearly displayed on the counter. Softly pointing to the section, I show the hapless customer where the book can be found.

The radio softly plays 90’s grunge music which still sounds new to me, even though I know those songs are almost 20 years old now. My thoughts float over the floorboards and in between customers and around the shelves, overstuffed with attractive books from “acclaimed new writers”. I feel a cold, damp wind on my shoulders as the front door opens. I glance up as the second floorboard creaks and wet shoes squeak. A harried woman ushers in two children, both of whom are begging loudly to jump in the puddles.

“Shhhhh, “ she murmurs. “Remember to use your inside voice.” She looks up apologetically at me as the two of them run with loud feet to the children’s section and start to rough up the books on the shelves. I shoot her back an “I understand” kind of look. True enough, I do understand.

I’d had two babies too. Robust, healthy children. Smart and beautiful. Everyone envied me them, and for good reason. They were everything a mother could want.

If a mother wanted children.

I push my hair back and turn my thoughts away to ring up the next customer. A marketing book and two Penthouse Letters. Must be here on business. I barely acknowledge his presence during the transaction. That was one of the promises to myself that I kept. I promised that I would never again have to be nice if I didn’t want to be nice. When I worked in a bookstore in Seattle, I could be as rude as I felt like. When I worked at a bookstore in Seattle, I could do anything I wanted. I promised myself this over and over, in doctors’ office waiting rooms, and in the desperate and depressing search for day cares, and in the middle of the fights and the screaming.

I’ve kept all my new promises, the ones I made to myself. I walked everywhere in this town, walked and walked and walked until my feet were as numb as my heart. The pounds dropped off, and now I draw the men, even when I’m not trying. I’ve had them too. Their place, mostly. The walls of my sublet are too thin, and it’s not exactly the sexiest place, with my clothes on a rack and a bed on a metal frame and my computer precariously perched on some crates. The tricky bit though, is that now that I can have them all, I don’t want any of them. And who would want me if they knew?

I have no ambitions. I work in my bookstore, just like I planned. I make enough to pay my rent and support my DSL window to the world. I read. I take leisurely baths. I spend afternoons at public museums and paint in the park. I live in the silence I craved.

Back where I didn’t keep my promises, my children are still noisy.

Today is the last day I will be working for the Company. Not that they know – God forbid!

In retrospective, everything seemed so unreal, almost surrealistic. The recruitment approach was like a highly traditional, formalized dance. Cautious feelers were extended, testing the waters. How about working for a different company, hm? Higher pay, a better position and a nice bonus if it’s not only you that is transferred…

Standard procedures were to report such occurrences at once to upper management. Right. Like I was going to miss this chance to get out from under their thumb.

Now, three days later, I didn’t feel so confident anymore. Standing in the laboratory for the last time, something didn’t feel right. There was a cold, wet feeling under my armpits, and the last coffee I had (how many was it? - three, four?) seemed to slowly burn through my stomach lining. I felt like biting my nails, a habit I had kicked pretty quickly when I took up the lab work in the biohazard tract. When you work with mutagens and retroviral vector systems, you tend to keep your hands away from your mouth.

I looked around.

The lab was deserted at the moment, everyone else having left for their cosy little homes, going to their well-adjusted families. I moved over to the containment unit, since that was the only place not covered by the closed-circuit surveillance cameras.

There was no chance of getting at the locked cell cultures kept in the Bio-Safety Level 3 (BSL3) laboratory. But someone has to sterilize the germ-swamped sewer effluents and change the pathogen-saturated air filters on those containment units.

Yeah, that’s me. As the good little lab technician, I get to go through these bio-bug infested labs, fixing equipment, cleaning up, and generally making sure that their royal highnesses have optimal working conditions. Not a job that has people standing in line for it, but nevertheless an immensely lucrative opportunity for someone with upwardly mobile tendencies (well… in a different company, that is).

I got out the clear adhesive tape that I had deposited in my lab coat and started to wrap a thin strip around every finger, with the non-sticky side facing the skin. Going about my normal clean-up routine, I systematically used a different finger to unobtrusively wipe over the work surfaces, picking up stray micro-organisms which literally got stuck on me.

Any decent lab would be able to isolate the bugs from the adhesive and culture them… thus bringing my new employer up to the cutting edge of biotech research, at a fraction of the investment costs. Not years of research for two or three lucky success stories. No, instant hits at the price of paying off just on disgruntled employee. Bugs for bucks, as I would call it.

Flipping one of the air filters, I finished off by pressing the back of my last finger to the filter. I left it reversed. Maybe their royal highnesses would catch a nice flu, or maybe even diarrhoea. One can still hope.

I wrapped up my standard clean-up routine, neglecting however the ritual washing of the hands. Hanging up my lab coat in my locker, I changed to street clothes and headed for the security gate at ground level.
Twice I had to force myself to slow down. Panic, just barely subdued, was fighting it’s way to the surface of my mind. In the darkened entrance hall, the desk of the night watchman was sitting in a pool of light.

I squinted at his name badge, which was dangling from the left breast pocket of a very tight-fitting uniform.

”Good evening, Bob.”

My voice sounded a bit too raspy, and I felt like I was grinning like an idiot. Damn, he’s going to get suspicious. The guard looked up.

“Everything quiet today?”

Now why did I say that?

In the war, they used to shoot spies. I wonder if the rules of industrial espionage had similar policies – probably unwritten ones. I fought down the urge to lick my lips, which suddenly seemed to be parched.

The fat security guard gave me a cursory glimpse. He pressed a button, and a buzzer indicated that the main door was unlocked. I pushed against it, maybe a bit too enthusiastically, and stepped into the street; the fortunes of one company resting in the palms of my hands and travelling to the next at the tips of my fingers.

“Have a nice evening.”

Ray brought a hand up across his mouth and winced as it came back bloody. His lip was split. The hot, dry air had pulled the moisture out of him, forced his eyes to water and his scalp to peel away. He itched at his head absentmindedly, and glanced across the room at Philip. Poor Philip. “We’re in it together, you and me,” he’d said before they went in. “No man left behind.” His companion’s eyes were glazed now, soulless, staring, unresponsive. Ray felt his own consciousness ebbing, fading away, away…

SHA-TCHAK!

Ray snapped back to attention. The presenter, in an attempt to be cute, had inserted the sound of an old-style projector advancing slides every time he moved between frames of his presentation. Ray couldn’t remember what the meeting was about, but he sensed from the body language of his captor that it was somehow vitally important, and beginning to near its peak. He had to get out of here. He rolled his chair back a couple inches, using one of his portlier co-workers for cover, and began sliding down slowly in his chair. Lower, and lower. Wait for it, for the right moment. The jailkeeper at the front of the room gestured frantically, trying to drive home some obtuse point. Everyone nodded simultaneously, heads bobbing asynchronously like a Big Apple cabby’s collection of Rastafarian kewpie dolls. Then it happened. One of the suits at the front of the room scrunched up her brow in confusion. The presenter sighed, then turned around and began tapping out the slide’s content a third time. Ray took a deep breath and submerged himself. By the time the exec turned back around, the only indication that Ray was even there would be a neatly tucked in chair; just another absentee at another meeting. He could read the minutes later.

Ray found himself in a nearly invisible forest of black and blue. At the end of it, a sliver of fluorescent light peeked through the cracked boardroom doors, offering him a glimpse of freedom that waited. But reaching it still meant “running the gauntlet,” the tangles of shoes, laces, and slacks that lined the edge of the table. Brushing up against any of them, even lightly, would almost certainly result in dire consequences. Ray began cautiously picking his way towards the rear of the table. Inch by inch, he crept, moving slowly. These meetings were often hours long, if it took him a few more minutes to escape, that was acceptable. After all, soon he’d be home with Lindsay, and that held much more promise than just another day at the office. Maybe a nice matinee movie, to surprise her. And early dinner out. Who knows where that might lead? That sounds like a…

Ray froze as he absently planted his palm firmly into the toes of a shoe. He lifted his hand slowly, cursing under his breath. It was over. He would have to stay the whole meeting, and by the end of it he’d be another mindless zombie, just like the rest of them. He glanced down at the sneaker. Sneaker? Of course, the factory floor manager, whose feet were covered in a lifetime’s worth of calluses. He probably hadn’t even felt it. What luck! A brief pause to listen for disturbances confirmed it – nobody had noticed anything wrong. Ray shimmied a little further, then slowly covered the open distance between the end of the table and the door, slipping out.

Bright light enveloped him. He took a deep breath, and looked around. He was on his hands and knees in front of the boardroom doors. Behind him, the presentation continued unabated. All he had to do now was get out the front doors. An intern carrying a large stack of papers rounded the corner, and stopped in the hall, staring down at him. “Wha…” Ray jumped up quickly and clapped a hand over her mouth, to silence the complaint. He fiercely stared her down into silence, then slowly removed his hand.

“Help me,” he whispered to her.

“How?”

“Cover me.” He nodded down the hall. The intern shifted, uncomfortably. “Please?”

The intern pursed her lips, then continued down the hall, stopping in front of the receptionist at the front desk. Shouldering the stack of papers up onto the desk, the intern slipped a hand behind her back and signaled.

Ray moved quickly to the doors, staying below the level of the counter as the two of them chatted, and slipped out. No time to wait for the elevator, I’ll take the stairs. Lindsay, baby, here I come. As he burst out the door at the bottom of the stairs, and jogged through the crisp October air to his car, his mind dwelled on how much he resented working where he did.

My harpsichord repair business is in the tank. Harpsichords were a hot item while Domenico Scarlatti was playing, and everybody thought it was the instrument of the future. But when he died in 1757, the whole plucked instrument business started to slide. People just seemed to lose interest. I might have waited too long to get into the plectra field, I guess. Who ever would have thought that pianos were going to do nearly as well as they did? And who could have predicted a Mozart, or a George Gershwin, or even a Liberace for that matter? Meantime, the Koreans have just come out with a disposable string pairs cartridge that’s guaranteed for two hundred sonatas. First they sell you a jack retainer for $19.95 You slide it in to anchor the jacks, pull out the old strings, slide in this pre-packaged, pre-tuned string pair cartridge, take out the retainer and boom … you’re playing again. They also offer discounts for replacing string pairs that aren’t even worn out yet. Home harpsichord repairs. How do I compete with that? And get this ... the Koreans are using Delrin / Celcon amalgam quilling! Excuse me, but amalgam? Doesn’t anybody care about quality any more? I tell you, Korea is going to kill the harpsichord business, once and for all.

It doesn’t help that my spinet and lute referrals have dropped right off. They were just a sideline, but it’s almost as though nobody plays them any more. Anyway, the writing’s on the wall, so that’s it. I can take a hint. I’ve already moved all my strings, my pedals, my ivory naturals, my rosewood jacks, all the quilling, felt buffers, plectra, parts and tools into the spare bedroom at home, and this is my last trip. I’ve got room for a couple more oil lamps in the back seat of my Toyota, and maybe that big cuspidor in my office, but once that’s done, I’m finished. Josiah can keep whatever I don’t take. I need to be out of here before daylight. I hate to sneak out like a thief in the night, but a guy has to look out for himself in this world. I feel kind of bad for Josiah, because things haven’t exactly been brisk in the horseshoeing business, and he’ll be on the hook for the whole month’s rent for the shop and warehouse. Still, he has to take some of the responsibility for that, though. I mean, what was he thinking? Four years of Blacksmith school, two more years apprenticing, another year or two to open up his own business, and now nobody rides horses any more. He should have seen it coming. Haven’t you ever heard of a horseless carriage, Josiah? Wake up and smell the mead.

Right now, though, I’ve got to consider my next move. I'm working on a plan for all my parts stock, especially the ivory pieces and the rosewood jacks. Those two items in particular are really rare. I bought them years ago at an auction, and they must be worth a small fortune by now, so if I can find a market for them, I should be able to raise enough cash for my next venture. I’m thinking that Singapore is the way to go right now. Harpsichords are on the upswing there, and I won’t say this out loud, but their Cho harpsichords are every bit as good as Sorli or Herz. Maybe better.

Man, how am I so unlucky to be stuck in North America with not a customer in sight, when everybody and his dog in Asia owns a harpsichord? I’ve got to get busy and find a buyer in Singapore, before I get scooped by the Koreans. It shouldn’t take too long to track down a parts dealer, then I’m thinking four, five months to sell off the lot. I should be able to clear close to six figures, and then, finally, I can look to the future. I’ll be back in business. A friend of mine can get me an absolute goldmine of platens and carriage return bells. Ribbons are cheap enough, and once I track down a key and spring supplier, it shouldn’t be more than six or eight weeks before the grand opening of …

TypeSoft! Ta-daa! Typewriter repairs for home and business. Free bell tuning with every repair, and auto double-spacing upgrades available for most manual portables. Speed upgrades for all pre-war electrics, one hour ribbon rewinding, same-day service for all Smith Corona and Underwood models, manual or electric, and one-day turnaround on Olivettis and most other European models. On-the-spot tab resetting for first-time customers. And typewriters are way smaller than harpsichords, so I don’t even need a warehouse.

The future looks bright. Finally.