The worst thing that could have happened had happened. Well, perhaps not the worst, but it was pretty bad, all things considered. Lee's worst fears had been realized. Well, he had some fears that were worse than this, but he couldn't think of any right at the moment. Kim was on the other end of the line waiting for him to tell her if he would be able to do the part or not. His back felt like hell and he could barely walk. It had taken him a good fifteen minutes to get up, pee and shamble to the couch that morning, which was an improvement over the previous day when most of the afternoon had been taken up in an unsuccessful attempt not to soil himself, but didn't bode well for rehearsing and performing in a play. But he had fought with Abby about this very thing when she had implied that he would be easily replaceable, so not doing the play wasn't an option as far as he was concerned. But if he showed up to rehearsal, if he could actually make it all the way to rehearsal, and wasn't able to move across the stage, or even stand to do his scenes, he'd be holding the whole thing back. But it was his role, damn it. He had a hundred and three lines. Besides, if he didn't do it, that would be the second time Jim would be in a play he wasn't in. Even listening to himself waffle made him feel like a high school girl trying to decide if the taffeta would work for the prom. I mean a high school jock wondering if he should go out for hockey or basketball. It made him feel really immature. He was badly hurt, and logic dictated that he give the role up to someone who could actually walk. Kim was waiting for his answer, and he finally had one.

"Of course I can do it," he said into the phone.

"You sure?" Kim said. "We have to know now if we need to find someone else."

"I'll see you at rehearsal Tuesday night," he said.

She thanked him, called him Daddy and hung up. Now he wondered what the hell he was going to do.

Roz woke up late that morning. She didn't have to go in to work until the afternoon and had needed to catch up on sleep after the weekend. She sat slumped on the end of her couch feeling odd. She liked her life for the most part. The television was on in the background, which wasn't unusual, but it didn't seem to be keeping her much company. She absent-mindedly flipped channels, almost unaware she was doing so. Her living room was very comfortable. She had a fire going, which was odd, since she didn't have a fireplace. The old horsehair couch, which perfectly matched the old horsehair chair, had an Afghan over the back and functional cloth antimacassars on the arms. It was firm and familiar, and smelled like dog, which was odd since she didn't have any pets. There were four different sized candles on her coffee table that didn't have any scent. There was an oil painting on her wall, framed in thick dark wood, of a violent wave crashing over the jagged rocks in a remote cove. The smoothly painted sky was dark and angry and the water was sea-foam green with light shining through the crested, frothy swells.

(Steve? Yes? No fire and no dog. Wow, I thought I had gotten away with it. Not likely. I let you get away with antimacassars.)

Then a big, big, big, really big bomb blew up and everyone and their dogs vaporized. Her stereo was one of those all-in-one pseudo-modular ones you could get at a warehouse store for under a hundred dollars. Anyone who listened to Bread didn't need a good stereo. The place was comfortable and functional and a little funky and a lot lonely. Like an English kitchen. Or a Dutch date. The ivory colored Princess phone was where it always was on the end table next to the lamp, taunting her. She looked at it wondering who she could call. Not Peter, of course, although she couldn't come up with an exact reason why not. She didn't know many people in the "just calling to say hi" sense, which is how she thought she liked it, but she had really enjoyed spending the night with Peter and joking with him and cuddling with him and waking up with him. And having sex with him.

That stupid Vincent had implied no one had ever asked her to marry them, the idiot. Well, no one had, but that was her choice. And what's with him being a "Bear" for God's sake? I mean, he's hairy and all, but he's so wiry. And she didn't buy the whole spelling thing. She had thought her life was orderly and consistent and fine, but spending the night with a man, even if it had been a gay one, was making her feel lonely. What was even worse was that she was beginning to realize, looking around the room, that lonely was how she usually felt. She had just never called it that. She had called it Bob. (Geoff, we had a perfectly good scene going, there, and you had to ruin it. You were going to do it, anyway! You always do! I was just heading you off! You certainly are an angry person. Ermine, damn it!)

The phone rang and Roz jumped, startled that it really was beckoning her. Then she got over herself and answered it.

"Hi, it's Peter," Peter said.

"Oh," Roz said. "Hi. How's your jaw?"

"Fine. Bruised, a little. The swelling's gone down. Hey, Roz?"

"Yeah?"

"I was just wondering what... I mean do we... are we... after Friday night, I mean Saturday morning... I mean... are we..."

"Oh, for Christ sake, Peter. We had a romp. I'm not interested in marrying and settling down. And I'm pretty sure you're not either. Especially with me."

"Well, um... I've never... Um... I had fun."

"So did I, but get over it. Jesus."

"Okay," Peter said. "I'll talk to you soon. Maybe I can fix you dinner sometime."

"Peter. I don't want to date you. You're gay. Find a nice man."

When they hung up, she looked around her comfortable place with the wave painting and throw rugs and antimacassars and Afghans and big cushions and was surprised when she started crying. (Well, it serves her right. She shouldn't have been so mean to Peter. He's sensitive. Why, because he's gay? Don't be so sensitive.)

Peter got to the theater before everyone else Monday morning and set about opening up. He was back at his desk looking over the reports from the weekend's receipts for Of Mice and Men, which had done pretty well for a January weekend, when he heard Stella come toward the office. At least it should have been Stella, but whoever it was seemed to be humming a jaunty ditty, and if he had ever heard Stella hum, he was sure it had never been any kind of ditty, and if it had been one, it would never have been jaunty. Something about the jauntiness of the ditty really bothered something in the lower half of Peter's stomach. When she came into the office, she flung her coat on the hook on the back of the door, threw her purse onto her desk and flounced into chair.

"Good morning," she said cheerily.

"You're awfully peppy today," Peter said with a trace of bitterness that he didn't even try to hide.

"Oh," Stella said. She flipped her hair, but instead of it being superior, the move seemed soft and sensual, almost girlishly innocent. "Am I?"

Peter couldn't help himself, he pictured her and Jim together. The discomfort in the lower half of his stomach moved up to his chest and fluttered around his heart for a while, snickering.

"You messed up on last week's deposit," he said maliciously, knowing the worst thing he could do to her was impugn her abilities. Especially when there was cause.

"Oh," she said. "I'll go over them again."

She smiled, began humming again, and opened her books. Was it possible, Peter thought, that Stella had never been intimate with a gentleman in the entire time he had known her? No, she had dated Bear for over a year and he couldn't imagine Bear not dallying with someone he was dating for that long. Was Jim really that good? Sad, simple Jim? Or had Agnes taught Jim things that made him be that good? Peter had never thought that the phrase "all she needs is to get laid" had any credence, but here, right in front of him seemed to be irrefutable proof that a good intimate dalliance with someone could change an entire personality over the course of one weekend. And to think he had made Jim sleep on the couch last Wednesday. He had to get out of the room. Her ease was making him feel decidedly uneasy, and he was sure, if he stayed, he'd say more bitchy things to her. And they would simply glide by her like spent shells, impotent and unimpressive.

"I'm going to go check on the progress of the Odd Couple set," he said.

"It's capital 'T'," she said.

"What?"

"It's 'The Odd Couple'."

"No," he said with more than an edge of snottiness, "I'm going to go check on the set for Odd Couple. No capital 't'."

"But the play is actually 'The Odd Couple'."

"I was truncating it. It's what real theater people do with play titles."

"Say 'hi' to Bear," she said, not even taking that bait, and started whistling the jaunty ditty and nodding her head in a disturbingly perky way.

Peter put his coat and mittens on and went back to the shed where Bear was working with a few volunteers. One of which was Jim. Who looked different, somehow. Older. Wiser. Less perky. He was actually a man, now. It was too much for Peter. He stormed back to the office and started speaking before he even got his coat off.

"If you had the cue for passion I had, you would drown the stage in tears!" he said.

"Huh?" Stella said.

"How dare you come in here all..."

"All what?" Stella said, and flipped her hair.

This time it was the old flip, which should have calmed Peter with its familiarity, but each dark strand floating by her face in sensual precision irked him in ways he wasn't aware he could be irked. When her hair made its final bounce and settled back into its job of the soft framing of her head, Peter was ready to pounce.

"Nothing," he said, petulantly.

He wanted to say she was being entirely too pleased with herself. That she wasn't even gloating about having gotten Jim in the sack, she was just being happy about it and that she should be gloating so he would have a reason to be so angry with her. He wanted to rail about how she should be ashamed about how happy she was being all over the place. He wanted to make her feel small and alone and unhappy. He felt awful that he wanted all that and he was angry that she was making him feel awful and he wanted her to feel awful, too. Actually, he wanted her to be her miserable self so he could have someone to talk to about how confused he was about the whole weekend with Roz and Lee and the cars and Bear and Vincent and everything.

"Fine," she said, then smiled pleasantly to herself and set to work on the books.

Peter flounced down into his chair. He had meant to sit down in a heavy huff that made the whole room take notice, but all he achieved was a flounce. Stella looked up from her work.

"Is everything all right, Peter?" she asked. She seemed to really be concerned, which really frosted Peter over.

"No, I'm not all right, Stella, I'm a mess. The last person I dated used me to confirm his straightness then came over to my house last week crying on my shoulder about his affair with a sixty year old sex pot ending and wanted to stay over again just to drive me insane and two days later is happily sleeping with you and making you both into these angelic serene beings and I spent the whole weekend trying to find a friend who wasn't straight or taken and liked fat middle-aged men with scruffy beards and then I had my first wom..." Peter said before he could stop himself, then put his hands on his mouth in case it wanted to say more and make him want to staple it shut and slam his head in a drawer repeatedly until he forgot who he was and could spend the rest of his life happily drooling into his gruel.

"You had what?" Stella said, pointedly glossing over everything he had said all the way up to the "... had my first wom..." part. Damn her.

Peter kept his hands over his mouth.

"You slept with a woman?" Stella asked. "How was it? Who was it? Do I know her? How did you do? How did she do? Did you like it? Was it different than men? Come on, don't stop there, damn it. Be fair."

Peter could feel his entire body flushing. He felt like an old, bearded Charlie Brown. (Except that Charlie Brown was bald. And he wasn't gay, he liked the Little Red Haired Girl. She was just a beard. Charlie Brown should be off limits. Okay. Sorry, Mr. Schultz. May you rest in peace.) The blood drained from every extremity including his head, then realized it had no place to drain to if it were draining from everywhere and rushed back, making him dark red from head to toe. He gave up and took his hands from his mouth.

"My friend Roz," Peter said with sad resignation. "She took me home after knocking into me at the hill. We started out just watching movies. I'm not really sure even how what happened happened."

"Do I know Roz?"

"I don't know," Peter said. The blood was beginning to go back to its normal circulation pattern. "She works at the grocery store."

"How was it?"

"I don't know!" Peter said. "That's the problem. Fine, I guess. I was tired. My jaw hurt."

"Your jaw hurt?" Stella asked, punctuating it with a strange glint.

"No, you idiot, she kicked me."

"Really?"

"That's where she knocked into me at the hill. Her foot knocked into my jaw. My jaw hurt. Stop thinking that! I'm gay, not kinky, and now I'm very confused."

As soon as he said that he realized that he had never actually said that word to Stella. He knew she knew, they had hinted about Lee and talked about Jim and she called him "bitch" all the time, which isn't something you go around doing to a straight man, but he had never said it out loud to her.

"So you didn't like it," Stella said kindly.

"I guess I liked it fine," he said. "Obviously I liked it better than Jim liked it. I mean... I'm... I..."

"I know what you mean," she said.

Just then, the office door flew open and Jim thrust his young, blond head into the room. It had a huge, silly, endearing grin on it and it stared fondly and longingly at Stella. He was about to say something, probably something insufferably cute, then caught a little movement from the other side of the room and turned his eyes just enough to notice Peter. His pants tented. (No they didn't. Why are pants plural? Singular would be a sock. Now shut up and create.) The grin on his face froze into a strange parody of itself and he withdrew and closed the door, then tip-toed quietly away. Probably tip-toed all the way back to the shed. Both Peter and Stella stared after him. Stella's face softened with a small smile. Peter sighed.

"He has a really good body," Stella said.

"Yeah," Peter agreed. His sock tented.

Lee sat on his couch. He had been doing very little else for the last two and a half days, and was very bored with it. He wanted to go down into the basement and build something, but walking to and from the bathroom was hard enough. Contemplating going down the stairs gave him shivers, even with the thought of power tools at the end of the trek. He had occupied the last forty-seven minutes looking at his watch, counting down the moments when he would have to leave to go to rehearsal. He still didn't know how he was going to get to Agnes's house. He couldn't drive. He briefly thought about asking Abby to take him, but, although they were talking to each other, and she had even stayed over Monday night, he couldn't ask her that. He was afraid to start up the whole argument about the play again. He could call Peter, but he always imposed on Peter, and he didn't want Peter to be only a foul weather friend. In fact, he determined that he would invite Peter over for dinner as soon as he thought he could stand up long enough to cook something. Bear. But Bear had already gone above and beyond getting his car. And Twain and Matt were out because they were already taking up the slack of him not working, and how do you call your boss and say "I know I haven't been at work, but can you take me to rehearsal tonight? Oh, and I won't be at work again tomorrow."

What do other people do? They ride the bus. He knew nothing about buses. And he liked it that way. He could take a cab. It couldn't be that expensive. He lived in town and Agnes was in town. The ride from the police station had only cost him twenty bucks including tip, and that was way over on the edge of town. He picked up the phone book and turned to Taxi Cabs. He expected to see maybe two or three companies. There were thirty-six, starting with AAA Cab Company and ending with Zion Taxi and Condom Emporium. He never used the first name in the book, so he started with Aaron's Livery. The line was disconnected. Well, a livery company in a town like River Bend was doomed to failure. The second company had a recording with the voice of a woman who sounded like she had been drinking Jack and smoking cigars. He didn't leave a message.

On the twenty-third call an actual person answered. He was so surprised he didn't know what to say.

"Oh," he said. "I didn't expect a person."

"What did you expect?"

"Is this a cab company?"

"Yes," the guy said very patiently. "Do you need a cab?"

"Yes, yes I do," Lee said.

There was a pause that sounded expectant, then the guy said, "Where do you live? Where are you going? When do you need to be there?"

Lee told him where he lived, where Agnes lived and that rehearsal started at seven. The guy said he'd be there by six thirty and hung up. At six twenty-eight there was a knock at the door. Lee had spent the last half hour getting dressed. The shoes had taken most of that time. He hadn't put shoes on since he'd gotten back from the hospital. He could get them on, but couldn't bend to tie them. He had always hated loafers, but was beginning to see their point. He was able to slip the shoes on, finally, but tying them was impossible. After trying everything he could think of, including trying to bend his legs backwards on the bed and tying them behind himself, he resigned himself to going out with untied shoes, and tucked the laces in with a yardstick. (He just has a yardstick laying around, huh? He's Lee, Steve. He would. Okay. How about a meterstick? No, Steve, he's from Chicago. Oh, yeah.)

He opened the door. The guy standing there looked strangely familiar, but everyone in River Bend looked familiar, it seemed.

"The transient jail-bird," the cabby said. "I never forget a fare."

"Please," Lee said, miserably, wondering if he would ever live down his first week in River Bend. "Call me Lee."

"Do you have money this time?" the cabby said. "Lee?"

"Of course I do," Lee said. "Oh, fuck."

"Don't tell me," the cabby said.

Lee pulled out his wallet. If it had been a cartoon, a moth would have flown out of it. Since it wasn't a cartoon, it was a bat. (Steve, you can't fit a bat in your wallet. You can if you fold them properly. Go get bent.) Abby had used his last twenty of ready cash to get provisions. And never gave him the change. Damn kids.

"There's an ATM right around the corner," Lee said sheepishly.

"I'm a cabby," the cabby said. "I know where they all are. Do you have more then nineteen ninety-nine in there?"

"Yes," Lee said indignantly and started out the door.

The cabby caught him by the arm just in time and helped him. Lee felt like an eighty year old invalid and didn't like it. A thirty-seven year old invalid was bad enough. They got to the bank and the cabby helped Lee out and up to the ATM. Lee got his card from his wallet and was about to insert it into the slot when he noticed the little screen.

"Temporarily out of service," it said. It didn't even have the decency to apologize. Or even beep. He started to hyperventilate. Cabbies carried guns, he was sure of it. He never believed the signs in the windows that said "Driver carries less than twenty dollars in cash." How could they give change with only twenty in cash? Do they deposit the money at the cabby place after each fare? That would just be silly. So they carried more than twenty. Probably much more. Which is why they carried guns. He's going to shoot me dead. Lee had a few moments to figure out what to do. The cabby was standing the appropriate ATM distance away, so he hadn't yet seen the out of order sign screaming its out of orderness. I could just make a run for it, Lee thought. Well, I could make a hobble for it.

"What's the matter?" the cabby said when he realized there had been no appreciable movement for far too many seconds.

Lee shakily pointed to the readout. He was going to die right here. With untied shoes. At least he was wearing clean underwear. He would have shouted "It's not my fault" but even in his mind it sounded too much like what the coward would say in the black and white movie while the hero stood there stoically, taking his medicine like a man.

"It's not my fault," he said quietly.

The cabby sighed.

"We'll go to the grocery store," he said.

Lee was confused.

"Where you can buy something and get cash over," the cabby said slowly as if talking to a child. "Come on, Lee."

Lee bowed his head, humbled in the presence of a superior mind. He didn't know why this man was driving a cab. He was probably going to be canonized. The patron saint of cash machines. Or just of cash. The impossible was already taken by Jude.

When they got to the grocery store, they were just locking the doors. (Steve! That's contrived suspense. No it isn't, it's just cruel. Well stop it. The grocery store is open later than six- forty-seven.) The cabby helped Lee out of the cab and into the store.

"I don't need anything," Lee said. He was used to feeling helpless around this man.

"Get a pack of Necco Wafers™."

"Who are you?" Lee asked. "You get something."

"Really?" the cabby said.

"Yeah. Just don't go crazy."

Four to six minutes later they were standing in front of the deli counter.

"Salami," the cabby said to Roz. "Thinly sliced. About six or seven pounds. He's buying."

He winked and Roz laughed. The cabby said just make it a quarter pound, and Lee started breathing again and laughed with them. Roz said hi to Lee and set the slicer. Lee remembered that he hadn't given the cabby a tip the last time and told her to make it a half pound. She got sixty-three slices out of it. Lee noticed that she didn't give the cabby an extra slice. It made him feel special, somehow. Which made him feel really pitiful because the only way he could feel special was that he was once given an extra slice of very, very thinly sliced salami because he had obviously been so poor. What a pathetic man I'm turning out to be, he thought. I'm sure glad my mom's dead. (Steve! Sorry. That goes way over the line. Sorry. His mother's not dead. You apologize this minute. Sorry, Mrs. Lee's mom. That's better. She's in a coma.)

With the side trips to the bank and the store, the fare came to nineteen dollars. Lee gave the cabby the twenty he had gotten from cash back. The cabby called him a hussy, and Lee called him a tart. The side trips also made him late to rehearsal.

"You're late, Mr. Harris," Agnes said when he came into her living room.

"I'm sorry," Lee said. "I had to take a cab. And we had to stop for cash. Twice. Oh."

"Oh, what?" Agnes said. She didn't like late comers and this absurd conversation was taking even more time.

"I didn't get enough money for a ride back."

"You can deal with that later," she said.

"I'll take you home," Jim said with a smile. "No problem."

"You can deal with that later," Agnes said with a tone of finality that everyone took note of.

Lee shuffled to a chair and carefully sat. Once he was settled, he realized the room was very quiet. Agnes was watching him with a very cold look on her face, and everyone else was watching her, waiting for the drama. Actors were such pains in the butt, Lee thought.

"I'm fine," he said, and to prove it stood and almost fell over, so he sat back down again. "I'm fine."

Agnes shook her head skeptically, but continued with her interrupted rehearsal. Lee was grateful that at least some of the scenes were spent sitting down. Thank goodness he wasn't still doing Look Homeward Angel where he had to almost carry Andrew on to the stage. Maybe he could figure out a way where someone here could help him across the stage. Except it would probably have to be Jim.

With the difficulty moving, Lee found it easy to be sarcastic to everyone, which is mostly what Roy did in The Odd Couple. Of course, it was easy to be sarcastic to Vinnie because Vinnie was being played by Jim. Every time he spoke a sarcastic line to Jim, though, Jim looked at him sort of confused and hurt, which made him want to be sarcastic all over again. Lee had to concentrate hard simply on moving, and the unpleasant thought of being driven home by Jim kept getting in his way, so he wasn't really thinking much about acting, anyway. Jim was watching him even more than usual during the whole rehearsal, though, which made it really hard to concentrate on moving. Of course, tonight everyone seemed to be watching him more than usual, so he couldn't be too annoyed with Jim. But he was, anyway. Especially when he noticed that Jim was wearing the same style of pants he usually wore. Which just felt creepy.

There was a moment where the stage directions required Lee to make a "mad dash" back to his chair. Any dash Lee attempted to make would be mad, so he just did the best he could. There was a lot more running around and back and forth, trying to make sure Felix didn't kill himself all over the place than Lee remembered, and he felt a little like the Keystone Cop who was always three steps behind the rest of the pack. The one whose coccyx really throbbed. The one moment that worried everyone, but that no one was willing to admit they were worried about, was the moment when Felix disappears into the bathroom, and when he comes out Roy is hanging on to him, then a few seconds later he collapses into Roy's arms. When they got to that moment, everyone stopped and Agnes stood still, deep in thought for a very long time. All the actors watched her, expectantly. Except Lee who watched her in muted terror. Almost nothing that came out of that long a contemplation could be good for his back. He was about to be fired, he was sure of it. From a little part in a community theatre production of a Neil Simon play in fucking River Bend. Damn Abby.

When Agnes looked up, she muttered to herself a little then spoke out loud in her best "I'm the director, damn it, listen to me" voice.

"Shit," she said. "It's easy. We'll just have Vinnie do it. Jim, darling, could you hang on to Felix as he comes out of the bathroom? Good. Let's try it. Places everyone."

Lee was right. Nothing good at all came from that contemplation.

During the first break, Jim came up to Lee and started talking about Stella. It seemed to Lee from the words coming out of Jim's mouth that Jim was sleeping with Stella, which confused him a little. Of course, Peter had said that Jim was straight. But wasn't he sleeping with Agnes? Jim also seemed, when talking about Stella, to have less of the annoying puppy dog demeanor. He seemed strangely adult. Lee listened as politely as it was possible to listen to a man wearing matching pants, hoping Jim wouldn't get too personal or descriptive. When it looked like it might go in that direction, he excused himself and hobbled over to Kim to start a conversation with her.

"I spent the afternoon with Abby on Saturday," Kim said. "She was really mad at you."

"Oh," Lee said. "Yeah."

That wasn't what he had wanted to talk about. Actually any subject would have been better than finding out his girlfriend was spreading details of their life together to everyone. Of course, he had told Peter about the fight, but he had a reason. He'd needed a ride to get his car. That was very different. He hadn't picked up the phone just to gossip. Gossip had just happened all on its own, unbidden. He turned to find someone else to talk with, but Kim spoke again.

"And I guess she's not pregnant, either."

"When did you find that out?" Lee heard coming out of his mouth before his brain had time to tell it to shut the fuck up.

"Sunday morning," Kim said with a smile. "She called me, you know, right after. Good news."

Lee turned and found a chair to sit in and spent the rest of the break practicing looking unapproachable. It was easy when he started staring at his shoes and remembered they weren't tied.

When they were done going through all the card playing scenes several times and were all sitting in a circle for notes, Lee was surprised when Agnes told him he was doing a fine job and to keep it up. It made the pounding throb in his butt from all the rushing around almost worth it. When they all got ready to leave, Jim tried to help Lee with his coat.

"I can do it," Lee said sharply, then felt a little ashamed and added, "Thanks."

When they opened the front door and Lee saw the distance they had to go over snow and ice at a dangerous incline to get to Jim's car, he froze. Jim, who had simply bound out the door toward his car, stopped when he realized Lee wasn't right there beside him. He came back and took Lee by the arm. Lee really wanted to tell him he was fine, but he also really needed the help. Having been led around by the cabby was one thing. Being led by Jim was entirely too humiliating. They looked like the Bobbsey Twins with the same color and style Dockers walking arm-in-arm. And if he were going to look like a twin, he didn't want it to be turn of the century, blond, curly-haired cute little urchin detective ones. It was a relief when he was finally in the car and the door was finally shut. He had a brief moment of respite while Jim bound around the car to climb into the driver's seat.

When Jim started the car, Lee started to give him directions, but he said he remembered where Lee lived. This information didn't please Lee at all. Lee tried to ride in silence, but Jim kept talking about Stella. Then he mentioned how different it was than with Peter. Then he asked if Lee knew he had been with Peter. Then he talked about Stella some more. The only thing that kept Lee from squirming during the whole ride home was the throbbing pain in his rear. In fact, the only thing that kept him from just shouting for Jim to be quiet about his sexual life was the pain in his rear. He wanted to shout that they weren't friends and Jim shouldn't be talking about that stuff with him. Or anyone, for that matter. He wanted to shout that he didn't even talk about that stuff with his closest friends. He wanted to shout that he didn't even talk about that stuff with his girlfriend, but that would be too close to talking about that kind of stuff. He also couldn't shout that stuff because the man was giving him a ride home. He concentrated on not squirming.

The ride itself was surprisingly smooth, though. Even while talking about things no civil person would talk to a relative stranger about, Jim seemed to be driving especially cautiously, very careful not to jostle Lee. When Lee realized this, he felt a little guilty for being so annoyed at Jim. Until Jim described a particularly exotic move that Agnes had taught him. Then Lee wondered how much damage he would do if he just opened the door and flung himself into the next snow drift.

When they got to Lee's house, Jim shut the engine off, which worried Lee, then came around the car and opened Lee's door. Lee really wished he could walk over snow by himself, but let Jim help him out of the car and escort him by the arm up the steps. During the endless walk, Lee determined that the next time he would take a cab both ways. He would buy a cab. He would open one of the many defunct companies he had called that afternoon and have his own cab pick him up and take him home. He would simply walk the whole way. Both ways. He would fly. He would get over himself and have Abby take him. When they got to the front door, Lee took out his keys. Jim stood there expectantly. He looked disturbingly like a young man on a first date waiting for a sign that he could get a good-night kiss. Lee felt an almost uncontrollable urge to shake Jim's hand. He shuddered and unlocked the door.

"I'd invite you in, but," Lee said. "Um... Thanks."

He opened the door, and with the quickest move he had been able to manage in several days, stepped in and closed the door, then leaned up against it. He could feel Jim hesitate all the way through the heavy door, then heard him turn and walk down the steps and walkway, crunching in the snow and frost with a disappointed gait. Lee waited until he heard the car start and drive off, which seemed to take an unusually long time, as if Jim were sitting in his car waiting for him to change his mind and invite him in. When Lee finally pushed away from the door and moved toward the couch, he realized he was going to pay for the Baryshnikovian move into the house. He sat on the couch with his coat still on and took a pill. He kicked off his shoes and was glad for the first time that night that he hadn't been able to tie them. It took another pill before he could get the image of Jim and Agnes and that exotic move out of his head.

The following Wednesday afternoon, the tin shed was cold. The rotten cheese and burning hair smell of the paint wasn't nearly as overpowering in the cold air, it sort of just stayed underneath the chill, insinuating itself into your nostrils, sidling past the frozen nose hairs and hinting at something dead or evil or both. The only heat in the uninsulated building came from the old, battered, paint splattered wood burning stove in the corner which had an old fashioned, battered, paint splattered, tin, percolating coffee pot sitting on it. The air around the stove was unbearably hot, but chilled exponentially the further you moved away from it. Bear usually didn't notice the cold, he was usually working too hard to notice, but at that moment he was sitting on a stool, leaning against a workbench staring at a window flat that he had just spattered with texture. Normally, he wouldn't be staring at a recently spattered window flat, he would know it was fine and would move on to the next task, but he was distracted. So distracted that he forgot he was still holding the paintbrush that he had used to spatter the texture onto the flat. Paint dripped off the brush and hit the floor of the shed with an audible bleup. Bear looked toward the sound, then shivered with the cold. He looked around the shed. The only volunteer that was working that day had just left to get some lunch. Bear put the brush down and picked up the phone, which had, at one time, been a black Trimline®. It was still a Trimline®, of course, built solid in the days when the phone company still owned all the phones, but now it was smudged with every color imaginable except for a curious lack of umber. He dialed long distance information.

"In Smith's Creek. Dee Dee Pugh, please."

He waited for a moment.

"Oh. Um... Try her maiden name," he said. "Um... Pitality. Oh, gosh, I don't know. Um. P - I - T - I - no, wait a minute, P - I - no, A - um... P - O - T - no, it is I. P - I - T - T - um... Damn..." (Geoff! What? He's not you, he can spell. We already said he couldn't. Anyway, it's right up there, two sentences ago. Sheesh.)

"P - I - T - A - L - I - T - Y," he blurted really fast. (Happey? Sure.) "Okay, thanks."

He dialed the number and waited while it rang.

"Hi, Dee Dee?" he said. "Dee Dee, it's Bear. Vincent."

There was a long pause (How long, Geoff? It doesn't matter. Yes it does. Every detail is important.) There was a two minute, forty-six second pause before Dee Dee said anything, then all she said was "Oh."

"Yeah. I ran into Roz the other day. I got to thinking about everything," he said, not really knowing at all where he was headed with this phone call. In fact he now wished he had just gone and spattered another flat and resisted the whole distraction thing. "I... um... I'm really sorry for everything I put you through."

He could feel the ends of his moustache hairs quiver. He hadn't shaved, and he rubbed his chin, leaving a long streak of paint that counterpointed nicely with the other long streaks of paint in his stubble. Dee Dee was a little flummoxed, obviously, not having expected him to call, and not ever having expected him to apologize if he did happen to call.

"Thank you," she said, finally.

"Sure," he said.

He was about to hang up and pretend for the rest of his life that he had never made this strange and humiliating phone call, when she suggested they might get together for coffee sometime.

"Oh," he said. "Sure. Um... When?"

"I don't know, this week is kind of bad for me. How about sometime next week?"

There was a two minute fifty-two second pause.

"Um, no," he said, and cringed. "There's a play opening next week."

The phone suddenly got colder than that side of the room.

"Thanks for calling," Dee Dee said and hung up.

Bear still sat on the stool, still leaned against the work bench, still held the phone against his ear until it started squealing its piercing, pulsing warning tone, at which point he hung it up very fast and left the shed to go reestablish his masculine stoicism in the men's room.

After his experience with the first rehearsal after the accident, Lee had pointedly arranged rides to and from rehearsals well in advance so that he had an honest excuse every time Jim offered him another ride. His rehearsals had only been twice a week thus far, though, so he had little else to do all day. And doing nothing all day was never something Lee could stand for very long. And doing it sitting down was even worse, so every few days he tried going out, getting in his car, starting it up and driving. There were days when he could drive almost a whole block before the leg movement required to step on the brake became excruciating, and he had to park and wait for the pain to subside so he could get back to his house. There were also days when just stepping down the steps was more than he could manage.

Peter did come by for dinner that Saturday, but it was a boring evening where nothing untoward happened, so we won't impose it on you. By the next Tuesday, Lee found that he could stand for long periods of time, so he figured that he could probably go back to work on a somewhat limited basis. Twain had been very patient, but enough was enough. He would have to find a way there and a way back, of course. Abby said she would take him there in the mornings on her way in to her job, which, of course, would give her more of an excuse to stay over more often, which, of course, they both thought was a good idea. And he could take a cab back.

Abby dropped him off at six thirty the next morning, about a block from Twain's. (She's not that mean, Steve. Hey, he made her get up early, it serves him right. She's not you. I know. I have perkier breasts. I'm gay and that even scares me. Wait, you're gay?) Lee could stand to wash dishes for about twenty minutes, then he would have to sit, so he would slowly make his way out to the corner booth to clean and fill salt and pepper shakers, napkin holders, sugar dispensers and ketchup bottles. Then he'd get up and wash more dishes. The first day, he lasted three hours, after which Twain sent him home because he was starting to get testy.

The next day, he lasted almost four hours. Just as he was ready to leave, Andrew came in for the Champagne brunch. Twain was out of mimosas, though, so he just had sausages and eggs and a virgin Sex on the Beach . Lee came out from the back, taking his apron off. It was bloody. Today was slaughter day at Twain's. Every day was slaughter day at Twain's. (Steve. Yes? Twain buys his beef already slaughtered just like you. Nobody mentioned beef. No wonder you never invite me over to your place. I will after we get that $2,060,000 we keep asking for.) Andrew motioned for him and he hobbled over.

"Any word from Chicago?" Lee asked after he gingerly lowered himself onto the stool next to Andrew.

"Escrow went through," Andrew said. "It was a clean escrow. There should be no problems. You should be getting your check any day unless something drastic happens."

Lee was flabbergasted. (Does "flabbergasted" have two "b"s or not two "b"s? I'm sorry, what was the question?) His mind bounced around the inside of his head, trying to land on an appropriate response to that.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he finally said, after his eyes stopped fluttering around in their sockets.

"I just did," Andrew said.

"When?" Lee asked, hoping it was a more intelligent response. "I mean when did you find out? And when did it go through? And when will the check come? And what drastic could happen?"

"Calm down, Lee," Andrew said around a choice bite of sausage. "Can you drive, yet? How are you getting home?"

"Um...," Lee said. "A cab I guess. I want to know about the escrow."

"I'll drive you. It's not out of my way. Very much. And what are you worried about? You've got to still have a little of your settlement from the antiques left. And even if you don't, the check will get here soon. Sooner than either of us thought. The postal service isn't going to go on strike this very minute. The bank will honor the check when it comes. It'll all work out. This isn't fiction."

"Well, I know it's not," Lee said, sort of petulantly, annoyed at being talked to like a child.

"You sound like you think you're living in some satirical soap opera or something where bad things just always happen to you. The Trials and Tribulations of Lee Harris. Get a grip."

The ride home was even more boring than the dinner with Peter.

The third day after Lee came back to work, while he was filling salt shakers, Twain sat on the stool on his little platform in the corner of the dinner.

"The country is growing cold," he said into the microphone. "And in large places, a soft breeze wafts by, whispering doom. Listening to a radio at night will do, I said into my beer. And birds flew by because they can. I would fly, too. A blackbird sang in the dead of night on the wings of a snow white dove."

The whole place gave him a standing ovation. Of course, the only people there were the guy in the John Deere hat, the guy from Butte and a strange old woman in a fur coat with a Hungarian accent, who had ordered the cold borscht and a side of Tang. Lee figured that was his cue to call his cab.

When the cabby came into the diner to gather him up, Lee paid him in advance. It just seemed easier that way. On the way to his house Lee decided that, as he was riding with this guy so often, he should at least know what the guy's name was.

"Cab," the guy said.

"You're kidding," Lee said. "What's your last name, Driver?"

"No," Cab said.

Lee felt very odd not participating in the striking of the Of Mice and Men set the Sunday after closing. Partly because he was now used to being part of that process, and partly because it would erase Jim having gotten a part in it when he didn't. It felt even weirder not helping load the Odd Couple set into the theater. He was beginning to think of himself as a theater person. And it seemed that fractured coccyxs were not conducive to active participation as theater people. (Shouldn't that be "coccyxi"? I don't know, spell check doesn't like either one of them.)

Describing hell week would have taken entirely too many words and cut into their drinking time, so Steve and Geoff flashed forward to opening night.

The air was brisk with a chilly wind which blew snow up from the drifts in crystalline swirls that glinted and sparkled in the light from the street lamps and car headlights. Veronica Park walked up to the ticket booth, escorted by her roommate Ron, who was wearing a lot more than he had been the last time we saw him, and his date, who had blond hair with brown roots and looked like she might have more tattoos than Ron did under her old coat. Ron seemed like the type of guy who only dated women that looked like Courtney Love™. Veronica picked up their tickets and they went inside. The young woman who stood behind them in line, bundled in a thick, fuzzy coat, told the nice blue-haired lady who was manning the booth that she had ordered a ticket by phone that afternoon.

"And what's your name, Dear?" the blue-haired lady asked, vapidly.

It wasn't easy to make such a simple inquiry sound vapid, but she managed. It was a talent that should be studied by a scholarly group of scientists with a fat research grant, but, as she was completely unaware of her gift, it would always be hidden under its little bushel basket like an obscure biblical reference.

"Dee Dee. Dee Dee Pitality. That's P - I - T - O, no, P - I - T..."

(Stop. Now.)

Dee Dee got her ticket, paid for it and went into the lobby, which was wonderfully warm after the cold outside. She felt a little strange, out of place in the room that was beginning to fill with people waiting to see the play.

Headline came in wearing a coat that matched his black hair. The cold air that followed him in matched his ice blue eyes. He also looked a little out of place. He often served the theater crowd after a rehearsal or performance, but had never been to an actual play. Dating Agnes Livingstone, however, made it seem impossible not to show up to opening night. Dating Agnes Livingstone made it seem impossible not to do lots of things he had never considered doing. He looked around to see if he recognized anybody. He recognized that woman, what was her name, Abby, who came in to The Office lately with that guy who drinks Tanquerey and tonic and got really sloppy that first night when he sat next to Kim Anderson. Lee something. He recognized almost everybody in the lobby, actually, but the context was all wrong, so he kept to himself.

Abby took off her coat. Her sweatshirt said "A Bad Day Fishing Is Better than a Good Day Angling". She'd gotten it at the Everything Less than a Buck Unless Otherwise Marked™ store. It was on sale because it was irregular. Of course, so was she, so it worked out.

More people were gathering. It was going to be a full house. Stella came in, followed closely by Twain who was escorting a stunning woman in her mid forties with salt and pepper hair and mischievous green eyes. Someone opened the doors to the auditorium and a few people went in. Most, however, stayed in the lobby talking and laughing. The sound of people in a theater lobby was distinct from the sound of people in any other environment. It was a happy sound, chaotic and expectant. Bursts of bright laughter punctuated it, laughter that would have sounded too loud or enthusiastic elsewhere, but sounded just right in the light, expansive air there. Dee Dee didn't feel part of the crowd, so she went in and found her seat. It was the second worse seat in the theater.

Backstage, Lee sat in his chair at the makeup counter, looking at his reflection in the mirror, fiddling with a roll of theatrical tissue. His face stared back at him, pale and strained. It had been a bad day, and his back really, really hurt. Peter stepped into the dressing room to wish everyone a good show, then came over to Lee.

"How're you doing?" he asked, concerned, when he saw the expression on Lee's face.

"I don't know, Peter," Lee said. "I don't know how I'm going to get through this. My back really hurts."

Peter put his hand on Lee's shoulder reassuringly and told him he'd be fine.

A few minutes after Peter left, Kim poked her head in.

"Places, everyone," she said.

Lee's heart jumped, which made his back hurt more. Then he sneezed.