Abby woke up before Lee and stumbled into the living room. The blankets she'd used to cover Peter were rumpled, but he was no longer under them. She thought fleetingly about his inebriation level and wondered distantly if he had been all right going home. She also wondered how she was going to get through a work day. She wasn't in the habit of drinking on a work night, but Lee had just gotten his final settlement check and wanted to celebrate, and Peter had needed a night away from his thoughts, so she had joined them both. The pine tar in her brain told her that next time she would just wish them both well and watch Rhoda reruns by herself in the relative safety of her own apartment. The Risk game was still where she and Lee had left it. She vaguely remembered finally talking him into letting the game be by promising to finish it the next night. If she hurried, she could put it all away and he probably wouldn't even remember. She could even tell him he'd won. No, it would be far more satisfying to tell him she had. She picked up the box to start dismantling the board when Lee came in behind her.

"What are you doing?" he asked in a surly tone.

"Nothing," she said, surprised that her tone was almost as surly as his, and consciously toned it down before adding, "How are you feeling? Dickhead."

"Awful."

"You drank a lot," she said.

"Who cares about that?" he said. "I didn't get a wink of sleep. I kept thinking about buying a theater."

"Oh, that," Abby said. "So buy one."

"I thought you thought my acting was silly."

"Yeah," Abby said as she put the Risk box down and kissed him on the cheek, "but you don't."

She was halfway down the hall to the bathroom when he shouted behind her that he couldn't buy a fucking theater, that it was insane, and that he had to go kill Peter.

"Who'll take care of Cliche if you do that?" she shouted through the closed bathroom door.

She didn't hear what he answered because she was busy splashing her face with cold water to see if that made her feel less like wanting to violently remove her brain, stomach and nervous system and curl up in a ball on some soft, fur covered surface. It didn't. It just made her face wet.

Bear hadn't gotten much sleep either, but for entirely different reasons. He had spent the entire time since Saturday morning thinking about Friday night. It was Thursday, now, and he had to focus because the run through was that evening. He didn't have to be at the theater until early afternoon, though, so he built a fire and sat on the floor of his little bungalow in front of it. The fireplace was something of an anomaly in the old house. Some previous owner had probably put it in to add either class, warmth or both. It barely added either, it was obviously a do-it-yourself job, was barely up to code, or, perhaps barely below code, and Bear was fairly certain that the carbon monoxide levels in the house increased with the smokey air that fell off the fire. He didn't really care much, he didn't require a lot of oxygen.

He picked up his guitar and cradled the bulk of it under his right arm. The psychedelic decal of the Monkees just off the sound hole, which was half covered by the psychedelic decal of Orson Bean, was chipped and faded and Peter Tork's face was completely removed by years of repeated pick scratches. The rounded edges of the cold wood pressed into his bare arm, chest and legs. He was only wearing a pair of plaid boxer shorts and the flat vibrating back warmed from the heat of his body. His fingers absently plucked at the strings and something like [Four Dead in] Ohio rang out of body. It would have been more like [Four Dead in] Ohio if he had actually been thinking about what he was playing. Someone had once said he played okay, but all he knew was white boy music. He never knew why they'd had a problem with that. He was a white boy. With freckles. Under the hair. He scratched at the hair on his chest as a metallic, smokey-wood chord hung in the air then faded toward the Formica tabletop in the next room, and his mind once again replayed the strange events of opening night.

After the review had been read and the party had begun to wind down, he'd given Dee Dee a ride back to her car which she'd left at the theater. On the way there they had begun to talk, and it had been nice. Easy. Unstrained. They'd both avoided dangerous subjects, of course, like family and what had gone wrong with their marriage and cutlery, but when he'd pulled into the parking lot they sat talking in the van with the engine running, and we abruptly changed out of the past perfect tense to indicate that we were now going into a full-fledged flashback. Strunk and White be damned. Dee Dee shivered and Bear said he had an extra coat in back and started to get up.

"I can get it," Dee Dee said.

Under the coat and on top of all the old boxes and clutter of old tools and rusty guy stuff was a new red and yellow box covered in cellophane.

"What the heck is this?"

He looked back, then turned a little red.

"It's... Um... An earthquake survival kit," he said defensively. "You never know."

"In River Bend?" she said with a laugh.

"When there is one, I'll be the only one prepared," he said. He would have added "Me and Lee" but decided to change the subject instead.

They continued talking until Dee Dee pointed out that the sun was coming up. There was a beautiful pink edge to the horizon threatening to turn tangerine and Bear realized that he was really cold even though he had a coat on and the heater had been running the entire time. He really wanted to ask her over but couldn't, somehow. The evening had been really pleasant and he didn't want to do or say the wrong thing. She said she had to go, opened the door, then stopped, turned and kissed him on the cheek. Then she sat looking forward for a moment.

"It's been nice talking," she said. "We never did that."

He nodded. That was safe and he had done really well so far and didn't want to blow it by some errant guy utterance. His mid-section was talking very loudly, though, and he had to concentrate very hard on her mouth in case she said something else. Which made his mid-section talk even louder. She looked at him for another moment before she spoke again. The door was still slightly open and the cold air in the van got colder. The heater gave up and decided to call it a night.

"I'd really like to keep talking, but it's getting really cold here," she said, and Bear stopped breathing while he waited for her to finish. Or to start. Or to say something else. "Is it okay if we go to your place for a little while? You can bring me back to my car later."

He nodded because he was sure his mouth wouldn't work if he tried to say anything, then put the van in gear. He had to be really careful driving because his instinct was to go really fast and it had been a long night after a long day, and he was very tired and there was snow and ice on the street and he'd had one or two beers at the party. Concentrating on driving slowly and carefully also distracted his mid-section some. When they pulled into his drive, the beautiful colors in the sky had turned to a uniform early morning pale gray and the trees were yawning and looking for their cigarettes.

Dee Dee surveyed his bungalow. It was really a small, faded, off-green box with a roof. It had asbestos siding which had been popular on cheap houses back in the late forties when the house had been put up. The yard was just frozen dirt and patches of dirty snow. In the spring it would be damp dirt and weeds. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence with an open gate at the driveway which made the whole fence moot. The rest of the houses in the neighborhood were also boxes with roofs. There were lots of vans and big cars from the eighties parked in the driveways and frozen Big Wheels with cracked and faded plastic, broken swing sets and a few van parts and big eighties engines in the yards. Directly across the street was the one house that tried with all its might and energy to bring the property values up, but that was like putting a BandAid on a severed limb or hanging an air freshener from the rear view mirror of Howard Stern's car or putting a dress on Margaret Thatcher. Bear had never been ashamed of his place, it was perfectly functional and perfectly reasonable and close enough to the theater that he could get there in only a few minutes if something went wrong, and that included splashing water on his face and dressing, but the look on Dee Dee's face made him miss a stride as he walked her toward the door. He had never noticed the line of straggly, frozen weeds peeking up along the cracked walkway, left over from last year's crop.

The house was barely furnished. The only piece of furniture in the living room was a ratty couch that smelled like dog, which was odd because he didn't have a dog. He did, however, have a vicuna. (No, he didn't, Steve. A stoat? A badger? An ermine? We've already done that. A yak? Sure. Why not. It's fiction. Say it ain't so! Steady, old man.) The kitchen table had tubular aluminum legs and a ribbed band of aluminum around the top which had rounded corners and was covered with faded, scratched, sky blue Formica with overlapping pink and green boomerangs on it. The vinyl on the backs and seats of the two chairs with tubular aluminum legs matched it perfectly but were split with dark yellow, degrading foam and vicuna fur showing through. The table and counter top, which was pale pink Formica with brown and gray spots, were both clean and empty except for a small pile of mail on the table and a small can of Chock full o'Nuts® coffee with that heavenly flavor and a glass sided toaster on the counter. The stove was small with only two burners. It was turquoise and had an aluminum percolating coffee pot on it. On the back ledge thingy where the clock, stuck at 8:59, and oven vent were, was a box of Ohio Blue Tip matches used to light the burners.

Dee Dee didn't have a lot of time to make a judgement about it all, though, because they found themselves, somehow, undressed and in his bed, engaging in the completely physical, unthinking, full-on, total body coupling of the entirely exhausted who hadn't done it with anyone for a very long time.

Bear woke the next day in the early afternoon and turned to look at Dee Dee. He had planned on staring fondly at her sleeping face, but there was no sleeping face there to stare at, fondly or otherwise. Only Buddy Hackett's bare bottom. (Steve! Ew! An erm... No! Sorry. Wow, you haven't apologized since installment four. Sorry.) Maybe she had gotten up to go to the bathroom. He checked. She was no where in the place. He would have looked in all the nooks and crannies, but the house was too small to have any. He went back into the bedroom to see if she had left a note on the bedside table, which was actually a packing crate with a lamp on it. No note. There was no indication anywhere in the house that she'd been there at all except the strange, empty, pulling energy running from his groin to his abdomen and back. There wasn't even a stray wisp of her perfume hanging in the air. His knees buckled and he sat down hard on the floor of the living room. Nothing looked right in the room, nothing looked familiar. Eventually some impulse of professionalism triggered the muscles in his legs and he got up, showered, dressed and went to the theater to run tech for the second night, but his mind never quite caught up.

Her car was gone from the theater parking lot, so she must have gotten a ride there from his house. He considered calling her to find out what had happened, but that kind of complete disappearance was incomprehensible and felt like a strong communication of some sort if he could just decode it, and he had no idea what to do but calling her didn't seem possible. The pull in his mid-section intensified as the day continued and it took every bit of mental energy he could summon to get the stage ready for the show that night. During the second act, he even missed a light cue. It wasn't very late, but all the actors noticed and Agnes stormed up to the light booth and glared at him through the entire rest of the play, which didn't help his focus much.

He thought of calling Dee Dee all day Sunday, but he didn't know where he stood and was completely afraid to pick up the phone. Every thought he had was filtered through the visceral, muscular memory of their mindless, transcendental physical encounter followed by the complete emptiness of her being gone with no explanation. Sunday night he didn't make any real mistakes, but the timing of every light and sound cue was slightly, almost imperceptibly off.

The rest of the week had been fog and smoke, and we had returned to the past perfect tense to show that we were back to Bear's recollections as he sat semi-naked in front of the fire, plucking absent-mindedly on acoustic guitar strings. When he realized Fire and Rain was pouring from the guitar (his guitar is pouring fire and rain? That's cool. Special effects. No, Steve. It's a James Taylor song. A sad one. Now shut up and eat your chum), he realized he had to call her or he'd never be able to move again. He'd be sitting alone in his faded off-green asbestos-sided bungalow with his hairy, freckled body in his plaid boxers playing white boy music for himself and himself only for the rest of his life. He put the guitar down and crawled to the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi," he said weakly. "It's Vincent."

Cold silence rattled the earpiece. Finally her voice came through, but it was even colder than the silence.

"You go too fast," she said.

Bear didn't know how to respond to that. It had been her idea to come to the show. It had been her idea to go to the party. It had been her idea to go to his place. He couldn't even remember how they had ended up in bed, and he hadn't objected to it at all, but he was fairly certain that had been her idea, also. He couldn't say any of that, of course, because he knew it would trigger some sort of torrent from her. He couldn't tell her that he had thought of nothing but her since then because that would trigger some sort of deluge from him. He couldn't say how much he had enjoyed seeing her because he was no longer sure "enjoy" would adequately capture the overwhelming drain in his body.

"Oh," he said. "Uh... I'm... Sorry."

There was another silence, but it didn't seem as cold.

"I'll call you sometime, okay?" Dee Dee said.

"Sure," he said, hoping that the word conveyed the complete range of disparate emotions stampeding through his beleaguered carcass, but afraid it probably only sounded weak.

"Bye," she said and hung up.

Dee Dee sat staring at her phone. She had been in a perpetual state of embarrassment since she'd woken up Saturday afternoon in his bed and didn't know if she could ever look directly at her own reflection again. And she really, really, really wanted to sleep with him again.

That night at the run through of The Odd Couple, no one could tell if Bear made any tech mistakes because the whole cast was slightly off balance. Oscar missed several entrances, Felix missed several cues and both of the Pigeon Sisters tripped - one over the couch and the other over Oscar. During scenes that they weren't in, the poker playing group gathered in the auditorium to watch. Once, Lee leaned in toward the guy who played Murray the Cop and whispered a suggestion on a different way he could deliver one of his lines. The guy who played Murray the Cop stiffened, then slowly turned toward him and stared at him with a look of shock and disbelief.

"What?" Lee whispered.

The guy slowly shook his head then turned back around. A wall seemed to emanate from his back. He turned to one of the other actors and whispered something. The other actor looked past him at Lee with wide eyes, then scowled and added to the wall. None of the actors said another word to him the entire night. Except Jim, who blithely chittered on about something inconsequential all the way out of the theater and through the parking lot. Something about something or other; about this or that; about whosits and whatsies; something Jiministic. (Did we just coin a word? I hope not.)

By the end of the performance on Friday night, the wall the cast had thrust out between them and Lee was so dense there was barely room for him on the stage. He couldn't figure out what was wrong. He sat at his place at the makeup table idly toying with his pot of foundation, staring through his reflection in the cracked mirror covered with the thin patina of face powder and angst. In the small room there wasn't enough space to make a wide berth around him, but his fellow cast members somehow managed the effect of a berth anyway. Even Jim seemed to be eyeing him strangely. Well, more strangely than he usually did. Lee couldn't believe he was actually wishing Jim would talk to him until he did, then Lee wished he could be in some safe accounting office blithely wasting his life, blissfully ignorant of his God-given talent as an actor. Well, maybe god-given, but it was real talent. R. Pendleton Smythe had said so. And he should know. He wrote for the Bee. Lee put the pot of foundation down, picked up the theatrical tissue and cleaned the makeup off his face.

He was still confused and depressed the next morning as he shuffled around Twain's, starting the coffee and setting the kitchen up for breakfast. Lee picked up the phone and dialed Peter's number. Twain wasn't there, yet, but Lee looked around to make sure, anyway.

"Huh?" Peter answered.

"Hi, Peter," Lee said. "It's Lee."

"Time is it?" Peter asked.

"I don't know, seven thirteen? I'm sorry, are you with someone?"

"No," Peter said. "Who the hell would I be with?"

"Roz?" Lee offered. "Jim? Buddy Hackett?"

"No," Peter said peevishly. "I'm not with someone. I was just asleep. What's up?"

"Everybody hates me."

"Then don't call them at seven thirteen on a Saturday morning," Peter said, then felt instantly guilty about it. "Okay, what's wrong?"

"I don't know. You know. I don't know."

"Lee, come on. It's seven thirteen. My teeth hurt."

"I'm sorry. I'll call you back."

"No, damnit, I'm awake, now. What's wrong?"

Lee didn't say anything for a very long time. Then he actually heard the peevishness all the way across the phone line. Show business was really making him sensitive, it seemed.

"Ever since the review, no one in the cast will talk to me," he said. As it came out it even sounded to him like a fifteen year old girl, but he didn't care. People talked to fifteen year old girls even when they whined. "I even tried to start a conversation with one of them Thursday night, and he just turned away from me."

"Well," Peter said reasonably, or as reasonably as he could at seven fourteen on a Saturday morning. "What did you say?"

"I don't know, you know. I just offered him a suggestion."

"About what?" Peter said, beginning to worry.

"I don't know. About how to say one of his lines. Something like that."

"You gave him a line-reading?" Peter shouted, and Lee had to pull the phone from his head. "Actors don't give other actors line-readings! Directors don't even give actors line-readings unless the actor is so incompetent nothing else will work or the director is so incompetent he doesn't know any better! Or he's Fellini. And he's Fellini, for God's sake. You don't give line-readings! It just isn't done, man. Sheesh."

"Oh," Lee said, sort of stupidly. "But I have a hundred and three."

There was a long, peevish silence.

"Um... " Lee said. "Well... There's something I want to talk to you about, anyway. Can I come by this afternoon before the show?"

Peter said sure and Lee told him to go back to sleep, then turned and tripped when he saw Twain sitting on his stool at the counter staring at him. Lee poured him his morning coffee, trying to pretend he hadn't tried to sneak in a phone call. Twain looked at him like you would look at someone who was acting entirely unlike himself, and hoping it was just a phase. Like Scientology.

"You're being Jiministic," Twain said.

Good grief, another Twainism, Lee thought, and poured himself some coffee.

The first thing Lee said when he got to Peter's that afternoon was, "Were you really serious about buying a theater?"

"I...," Peter said,"What... ? Um... No. Whadaya mean? No. What?"

"Come on," Lee said as he moved a pile of Newsweeks from the couch and sat, "you hate your job, and no one at the Willow Lane appreciates me."

"I don't hate my job," Peter said. "What makes you think I hate my job? Do you want a snack?"

"Okay, so what would it take to start a theater?"

"Wait," Peter said. "Slow down."

"What would it take?"

"I don't know."

Peter went into the kitchen to gather his thoughts. When he came out he had a platter of water crackers with cheese, salami and smoked salmon slices and a much clearer mind. Lee looked at him like you would look at someone you wanted to make think you were waiting patiently when you weren't being patient at all and just wished they would stop making snacks and answer your fucking question.

"Okay," Peter said, understanding the look all too well.

He moved the slightly scorched Spirograph box aside and set the platter down, then began to detail what would be needed to start a theater, trying the entire time to make it sound even more complicated and difficult than it would actually be, and it would actually be very complicated and difficult. Halfway through the smoked salmon, Lee had several steno pad pages of notes filled with numbers and ideas and a couple of bad drawings of airplanes and trees and what looked like little boxes with circles and triangles in them. He'd found the steno pad under a pile of Time magazines on the floor by the coffee table. The top page on the pad had a list of bills to be paid and the date "October 13, 1986" on it. Lee had wondered briefly if those bills had ever been gotten to as he'd turned to a blank sheet.

"Okay," Lee said. "Look. You know everything about theaters. I know numbers. I have money from the house. Damn Beverly. You run the day to day stuff. I'll take care of the books. And the acting. How hard can it be?"

Peter's head was swimming in Jello Instant Pudding™. Chocolate™. He tried again to make it clear to Lee just how complicated, difficult and hard it could actually be. And at the same time he was trying to figure out how long he would have to wait until he gave notice. And chastising himself for even thinking that he could ever leave the Willow Lane Theatre. It was his life. And thinking that if that was his life, he was a very sad man, indeed. And trying to tell his heart to stop beating so hard, there, in his chest. And thinking about the phone call he had to make on Monday to Dramatists Guild about the rights to Man of La Mancha. Or was that Tams-Witmark? And that he would have to take a real pay cut to start his own theater, and he had just been complaining about not having gotten a raise. And reminding himself that he had always said he wanted his own theater, and that now was his chance. Probably the only chance he would ever have in his life. And reminding himself that he had always said that only because people had to have things they always said, but he couldn't really ever see it happening, and Lee was just talking about it because he was angry and had getting too big for his britches. And if he let Lee convince him and he put in his notice, what would he have to do to Lee if Lee tried to back out of it? And what the hell was he thinking, even imagining he could have his own theater. And wondering if he had enough cheese to last the weekend. Or even the afternoon.

"We'd be partners," Lee said. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Peter had to admit to himself that he would, but instead asked how much he'd have to put up.

"Well," Lee said, "I have thirty-nine thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars I could put in. How much do you have?"

"Well, with what you have," Peter said, embarrassed, "And with what I have, we'd still be shy of forty thousand."

"How shy?"

"Um... ," Peter said. "About five hundred dollars."

Lee's face fell a little, then he brightened.

"Don't worry about that right now," he said.

He did seem determined, which was a look Peter wasn't used to seeing on his face, and he liked it. A lot. And wanted to encourage it. A lot.

"I have my coins," Peter said.

"I don't want you to sell your coin collection," Lee said.

"No," Peter said. "Not a collection. I have a couple of jars of coins. It could bring us closer to forty thousand. A little. Wanna see them?"

"Sure," Lee said, and Peter stood and led them to his bedroom.

He stopped for a moment, remembering what his bedroom looked like, then shrugged. Lee couldn't be too put off by it, he'd seen the living room and kitchen. Lee stopped short when he saw the bedroom, but stifled the shudder that rose reflexively up his spine upon remembering the smell of socks he had noticed on his last peek into that room. He steeled his body and bravely entered. He was a good friend and wouldn't make any rude comments. He also wouldn't touch anything. Peter climbed over a few piles of clothes and one of books and pulled the light cord in the closet. There were clothes packed in very tightly on hangers, which puzzled Lee because he only remembered Peter wearing a few different things, and there were piles of clothes, both clean and dirty, and piles of papers and books on the closet floor. Peter pointed at a large, light tan can with dark brown speckles. It had a dark brown, almost paisley shaped logo that said "Charles Chips" on it. There was a star instead of a dot over the "i". It didn't have a lid and was almost filled to the brim with coins.

Lee almost forgot the smell in the room.

"Oh, my God," he said. "I thought you meant a little mayonnaise jar."

"No," Peter said. "There's a couple more."

He pushed some of the clothes out of the way and revealed another can. That one had a lid.

"Wow," Lee said. "Is that full?"

"Yeah," Peter said, a little frightened by the look on Lee's face. "They all are. Except that one."

"All?" Lee whispered, breathlessly.

Peter pushed more clothes and papers aside.

"Oh, that's where that was," he said as he took out a little, hand held Dust Buster, covered in dust. He tried to turn it on, but it wouldn't cooperate, so he tossed it on the growing pile behind him. Peter with a Dust Buster was about as useful as Margaret Thatcher with a teddy. All tolled, there were nine cans. Some were dark brown with light brown logos that said "Charles Pretzels", but they were all the same size. Lee's pants tented. He had to sit down on the edge of the bed to catch his breath. He didn't even notice the pan of oatmeal and eggs he had to push aside to sit.

"I've been throwing coins in them since college," Peter said nervously. "Every day. The Charles Chip guy used to come by the theater all the time. I used to buy the chips and pretzels and sometimes the white chocolate covered pretzels, but they came in bags. And sometimes I bought the red candy licorice whips, but they're not really licorice, are they, if they're red? They're cherry. I think. I don't think they're strawberry. Maybe they're just red. Once I got the chocolate turtles. I think they came in a bag, too. They were good. He hasn't come in a long time. I don't know what happened to him. I don't even know if the company is still around. I'm on my last can. I don't know what I'm going to do when this one is full."

Peter wound down a little and stood looking at Lee's strange face.

"How much do you think it is?" he asked. "A couple of hundred?"

"Um... " Lee said, after clearing his throat. "More like a couple of thousand. More than a couple of thousand."

Now, Peter had to sit. He landed on one of the piles he had created from pulling piles out of the closet. He didn't even move the Dust Buster.

"How... ," Peter said, then had to start again because it came out more a funny squeak than a word. "How much more than a couple of thousand?"

Lee looked at the nine cans sitting on the floor of Peter's closet for a long time, considering. He breathed in sharply once, let it out slowly and said, "I don't know. I'd say about five thousand, four hundred seventy-five dollars. And seventy-five cents. Roughly."

Peter looked at him for a very long time. His mind was trying to comprehend having five thousand dollars sitting in his closet under his dirty clothes. There was something very surreal about that and part of him was arguing that if it were surreal, it was dreamlike, ipso facto, and if it were dreamlike, it wasn't real. So it couldn't be true. The other part of him was telling that part to just shut up so he could get around to comprehending having five thousand dollars sitting in his closet. A third part was longing for cheese, which it knew would shut up all the other parts.

"Peter?" Lee said, and all the parts of him jumped. "Um... Anything else you have just lying around that I should know about?"

"Just my butt plug."

(Steve! What? My dad reads this. Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry Geoff's dad. Your mom reads this. Oh. Yeah. Sorry, Mom. Happy Mother's Day. Sheesh. Peter does NOT have one of those. Why not? I'm not even going to answer that. Sheesh. Butt plug. Man. Now I have to go wash all my senses. How did you ever get like this? Jarts.)

"Okay," Lee said. "Wether or not we go in on a theater, you should roll up these coins and get them in a bank. You can get two percent a year for them. That's about a hundred and nine fifty. Not much, but it's a hundred and nine fifty more than you're getting with it in your bedroom. Besides the room in your closet that you could use for... Um... Whatever."

"More stuff," Peter said.

"Whatever."

"Okay," Peter said. "Should we take it to the coin thingy at the grocery store?"

"No, CoinStar? Are you kidding? They take eight percent. That's like four hundred thirty-eight thirty."

"Like?"

"Well, based on the previous figures," Lee said offhandedly. "Of course, the time it would take you to roll it all would have to be figured in."

"Well, we could make a night of it."

"You keep saying 'we'," Lee said.

"Oh," Peter said. "I thought... I'm sorry. No, I can do it. I just thought you... Um... would you be willing to... I mean maybe you and Abby could... Never mind."

"Abby would not want to roll coins," Lee said. "Maybe you could get Matt. You could order him a pizza."

"Child labor. Isn't it great?"

Lee relented and they decided to count coins on Tuesday night. He was correct about Abby, who didn't want to roll coins, and was afraid even coming over would do to her head what she'd had to deal with after last Wednesday evening and didn't want to risk it twice in one month. Matt, on the other hand, was really excited to have been asked and called his mother right away to find out if it was okay. He sheepishly told Lee he'd have to be home by ten thirty, but added that he could probably fudge that to eleven or so.

Lee stopped by his bank on Tuesday afternoon. When he asked for five hundred each of quarter, dime, nickle and penny wrappers, the young teller with the blue dress shirt with the straight-out-of-the-package creases on it and the plastic name tag that said "Mike" looked at him really funny for a very long time.

"They come in cases of a thousand each," Mike said and cocked his head the other way to look at Lee funny from that angle.

"Oh," Lee said, trying hard to ignore the look and trying even harder to sound like it was a reasonable request that he made on a daily, or at least weekly basis. "Can I have half a case of each?"

The teller looked at him funny again from the first angle, then went to talk to the bank manager, who was standing by a desk behind the teller windows talking to another bank employee. Lee wondered why managers of banks were always standing by desks behind the teller windows talking. Didn't managing banks require other talents? While Mike was talking to the manager, a tall woman with really high, fragile looking hair and spectacles hanging from a chain around her neck, she glanced over his shoulder several times as they talked. Finally, Mike nodded and came back to Lee.

"They're five dollars a case," he said.

"I just deposited almost forty thousand dollars," Lee said indignantly.

The teller went back to talk to the manager again, who glanced over his shoulder at Lee several more times.

"Well," he said when he returned, "then you should be able to afford to pay for the wrappers."

Lee sighed and gave him ten dollars and Mike the teller sighed even more loudly and went in back where they must have kept their coin wrapper cases. He was gone for a long time, then came out with four medium sized boxes and gave them to Lee with what could only be described as an attitude.

"Oh," Mike said, just as Lee was about to decide to hate him for the rest of his life, "I liked you in The Odd Couple."

"Um... ," Lee said. "Thanks."

Matt worked extra fast closing the diner. He was really thrilled he'd been invited to help Mr. Principal and Mr. Harris. He'd been feeling frustrated for two weeks; Jan's parents had gotten her a car and he wasn't allowed to even learn to drive until he was a senior. Well, he may only be a junior, but the grownups were including him. He couldn't wait. He'd have something to tell Jan. While she drove him to school. Darn her. He and Lee arrived at Peter's house at eight fifteen. Peter had tried to drag one of the cans into the living room, but had only gotten it as far as halfway down the hallway, where he had to leave it because his arms felt like they would fall off, and his back was beginning to make strange creaking noises. Charles Chip cans full of coins were really heavy.

"Hi, Mr. Principal," Matt said when Peter opened the door.

Peter welcomed him into his house and apologized for the mess. Cliche was sauntering into the living room. He saw Lee and continued sauntering. Then he saw Matt and turned around and ran. Matt was about to ask what that cat-like streak was, but was too busy noticing that the room was, indeed, a mess. Lee set his boxes half full of wrappers on the couch, then the three of them stood looking at the can on the hallway floor. Matt did the strong man Popeye thing and Lee smiled. Matt laughed, pleased at having gotten a smile out of Mr. Harris, then bent to pick up the can. He was almost able to stand all the way up before he had to put it back down again. Lee did the Popeye thing and didn't try to pick up the can.

"I was going to have them all out here when you got here," Peter apologized.

"Well," Lee said reasonably. "We better go in there and figure out how to move them."

Peter pushed opened his bedroom door. Cliche, who was just getting comfortable on the bed, saw Matt and ran very quickly past him, back out into the hallway. Matt was again going to ask about the cat, but, again, was too busy noticing the incredible mess. He had never seen a room in such disarray. Or smelled one.

"Wow," he said. "I can't wait to get my own place."

He looked around eagerly.

"You eat in bed," he added, astonished, when he noticed the plate with the dried mustard streaks and piece of wilted lettuce nestled in the folds of the rumpled bedspread. "That's so neat."

Matt thought that if the evening went well, and Mr. Harris and Mr. Principal liked him, they might invite him over more often. Maybe to watch a movie or talk politics or play poker. It would be so much better than what he and his friends did. Risk and Scrabble. How lame. He looked around the room, trying to imagine what it would be like to live like that. Like heaven, probably. Peter and Lee watched him and both felt old and a little sad. Then they all turned their attention to the nest of Charles Chip cans gathered on the closet floor.

"Okay," Lee said. "Do you have a hand truck?"

"My mom has one," Matt offered cheerfully.

"I've got a luggage dolly," Peter said.

"When do you travel?" Lee asked. "Barbara."

Peter just shrugged and started to dig in one of the piles in the corner of the closet behind the cans. It wasn't there, so he looked behind the closet door. It wasn't there, so he reached up and felt around on the shelf above the hanging clothes and found it. A stack of papers, an old coat, a full salt shaker and a sleeping bag fell down when he pulled it off the shelf. He pushed them aside, brushed salt from his hair and shoulders, then extracted the flimsy handle from the flimsy dolly frame and put the edge of the lip next to the open can. Lee and Matt tipped the can so he could get the lip under it, then carefully set it against the dolly and tipped it back as Peter eased the dolly to an angle. Peter started pulling it, walking backwards, and almost tripped over the sleeping bag. Lee moved that and went ahead of him to clear a route. The dolly wobbled ominously as the little baby-doll carriage wheels started to splay on the hollow axle. The dolly listed toward the bed, so Peter tipped it the other way, and it started to topple toward the dresser.

Matt grabbed the can, then followed, stooped over, holding it steady so it didn't spill and completely annihilate the poor luggage dolly, further grounding Peter to his cluttered life. Peter backed out of the bedroom, down the hall and into the living room. Matt couldn't wait to tell Jan about all this. She may have a car, but he was already helping grownups do grownup things. Anybody can get a car.

When they got to the living room, Cliche was warily watching them from behind the couch. He moved slyly around the back of the couch, then sneakily around the perimeter of the room so he could once again escape the treacherous Matt. He would have been completely unnoticed in his crafty maneuvers except that his chosen route forced him over several piles of papers, books and stuff, which he hurriedly scaled, causing them to fall as he jumped to the next pile. He finally gave up the pretense of cunning escape and dashed out of the room, almost knocking into Matt's legs.

"You have a cat," Matt said as he, Peter and Lee went back into the bedroom for the next can, then felt really stupid, and hoped Mr. Principal hadn't noticed. "I mean, what's her name?"

"His," Peter corrected automatically as they started getting the next can ready for transport. "Cliche."

(Geoff, can't we just have Bewitched blink the fucking things into the living room?) Then Samantha twitched her nose and all nine cans appeared, as if by magic, on the living room floor just to the side of the coffee table. (Happy? Wow. I should have asked for nice shoes.) Darren did not approve.

"Cliche is a strange name for a cat," Matt said as he settled down on the floor next to the cans. "My English teacher always writes that on my themes. It might be a good name for a yak, though. Or a stoat. Or a satirical serial writer."

"Are you done, Steve?" Peter asked.

Steve apologized for the interruption, and Lee pulled a strange thing out of one of the boxes of coin wrappers. It was black plastic, vaguely rectangular and had four rounded grooves in it that ran from the top to the bottom of the front, each a different size. When Peter looked at it, puzzled, Lee explained that you stack coins in the slots and when a slot was full, you had a the right amount for a roll.

"You just had one of those lying around?" Peter asked.

"Yeah," Lee said. "I like my coins rolled."

Peter shook his head and looked at Lee in awe, and Matt laughed.

"What?"

"I bet if I asked for a nuclear bomb, you could pull one out of the back of your SUV," Matt said with a grin, "Couldn't you, Mr. Harris?"

"He probably has a side of beef in there."

"No. Those things weigh about four hundred pounds," Lee said.

"How do you just know these things?" Peter asked.

Lee was just puzzled by the question.

"Mr. Harris, you should be on Jeopardy," Matt said. "Shouldn't he, Mr. Principal?"

He could feel a strange heat in his cheeks and he wished he could just shut up. He was trying to make these guys like him, but some strange energy had taken over his brain and was making him stupid. Everything that came out of his mouth sounded like something a high school junior would say.

"You can call me Peter, here, Matt," Peter said.

Matt got bright pink at the suggestion, and Peter decided he'd let him call him whatever he wanted to call him. Ah, to be young and eager, he thought. Matt clamped his teeth tight and pursed his lips so he wouldn't be able to say anything at all. So far, Mr. Principal must not have noticed him be stupid, and he wanted to keep it that way. He had to calm down so he could fit in. He couldn't very well tell Jan he'd spent the evening at Mr. Principal's being stupid. Lee was still trying to understand Peter's question about how he knew these things, so he didn't even notice that Matt insisted on calling him "Mr. Harris" or was being particularly high schoolish. Okay, he wouldn't have noticed even if he were paying attention. He was Lee, for God's sake.

They ordered pizza; pepperoni for Lee, extra cheese for Peter and shark fin for Matt. Peter found a copy of the Bee in one of the piles on the couch and opened it up on the floor next to the cans, then tipped the open can over onto it. The glorious, cascading sound of coins flowing out of the metal container onto the paper rang out into the room, an elongated shushing ching, and all three of them spontaneously grinned and stared at the wonderful pile of tarnished metal disks. A dusty, earthy, coppery metallic scent wafted up from the pile. (This is really exciting. Yeah, I know.)

Cliche, who had decided he was really a bold animal and that a bold animal wouldn't be quite so frightened of this new guy and that he was going to just boldly march right in and sit in the same room as the guy, darn it, had just slunk around the corner into the room when the ching rang out. He jumped straight up into the air and seemed to hover for several seconds directly above the spot he had been slinking on when the coins fell. When he landed, he stood, frozen, staring at Matt, hoping this crazy human being hadn't noticed him and wouldn't reach out and do something heinous. His fur tented. Then Peter grabbed a handful of coins and at the sound, Cliche sprang straight back up into the air, hovered momentarily and landed again. Matt laughed, and he sprung a third time, the exact same spring, then, upon landing, left the room as quickly as he could, not caring that he did it with absolutely no dignity at all. What was the point after three ignoble sproings.

"Okay," Lee said. "You guys separate them and I'll stack and roll."

"Beer first," Peter said.

"Cool," Matt said.

"Coke for you."

"My mom lets me drink beer," Matt protested.

"No, she doesn't," Peter said.

Matt looked like he was going to argue, then shrugged and grinned. He'd have Coke, but he'd still be there while they had beer, that was something.

"Can I at least smoke a doobie?"

Peter pulled a big fatty out of his pocket at the same time that Lee produced a football sized spliff from his boot. (Come on, Steve, Lee doesn't wear boots. Sorry.)

Peter came back from the kitchen with two beers, a Coke, a bag of chips, two bowls of fresh dip, one garlic and one not, and a plate of stoat-on-a-stick. (No. Weasel kabobs? No. Fine. Chips. Boring chips. Dull, boring old chips. Stupid, dull, boring old...) Ruffles™. (You're really boring for a gay man. Dull and boring. Stupid, dull, old... Does muriatic acid remove writing partners? That's mean.)

Peter sat on the floor across the newspaper full of coins from Matt and leaned against the couch. Matt opened his Coke and lifted it, toasting to coins. He felt a glow when both adults saluted back.

"Mr. Harris," he said, "should I just make little piles of each kind for you?"

Lee told him sure and he lifted a handful of coins from the pile and started pulling the pennies out and stacking them neatly on the coffee table. Okay, this is cool, he thought, and pulled a little piece of blue-gray lint from the coins in his hand. He rolled the lint between his thumb and forefinger and was about to deposit it on the floor under the coffee table, but stopped mid-deposit; that probably wasn't the best place to put it. Even in Mr. Principal's house. Mr. Principal's cool, indescribably messy house.

"Do you have a trash can?"

"Just put it under the coffee table," Peter said.

Matt really wanted his own place. A place where his mother wouldn't make him pick up after himself. A place to park his car in front of. A place to call his own. A place in the sun. A place where he could go and tell his secrets to. In his room.

When the pizzas arrived, Lee stood and arched his back like a cat, then arced it back like a man arcing his back back. Matt stood and also stretched. Peter suggested they pay with coins, but Lee pulled out a five and told the guy to keep the change. Pizza was cheap in River Bend. Besides, it was Pizza Night. Hungry, yet? Peter cleared a space on the coffee table for the stack of Pizza boxes and opened the top one. Matt reached out toward a slice, but noticed his hands. It looked like he had been crumpling carbon paper for the last half hour, not sorting coins. Copper gunk was really messy. He wouldn't have minded a few years ago, but Lee had already gone in to the bathroom to wash his hands, so he followed. When Lee came out, Matt went in. He quickly lathered and rinsed. He was about to leave when he noticed that he had left black, finger shaped smudges on the towel. Then he noticed the darkly tinted lather bubbles on the soap bar and the unsightly black, watery residue splotched all over the sink and counter. Then he noticed how clean the rest of the bathroom was, and was suddenly very confused. Maybe he'd have to rethink the whole my own place thing. He hated cleaning bathrooms worst of all. Grownups were so baffling. He turned the towel around, splashed some water over the soap and sink, then wiped his hand on the other side of towel. He didn't notice the slightly fainter finger shaped smudges he left on that side of it.

Peter just picked up his piece of pizza with a napkin.

They fell into a rhythm fairly quickly; Matt and Peter piled separated coins on the table, then ate some pizza while Lee stacked the coins in the coin sorter, slid the wrappers over the stacks when they reached the appropriate height, then folded the ends of the wrapper, tapped both ends against the table and put the roll on the growing stack. By the time Matt was on his third Coke, it was a small mountain. The pile of stuff under the coffee table, full of lint and buttons and a couple of keys and paper clips, was the size of a small bundt cake. Lee and Peter seemed to be getting really smiley. Matt liked watching them. It was different from when his parents drank beer. They only had one or two, then fell asleep. Well, his dad. His mother would have a glass of wine. He felt light headed by proxy.

Lee looked at the growing pile of coin rolls skeptically. He placed a newly finished penny roll on it and the pile slid.

"Peter, do you have something we can put the rolls in?"

Matt suggested the empty Charles Chips cans, but Peter pointed out they'd never be able to carry them to the car and then into the bank. Peter suggested a suitcase, he knew he had one somewhere, which was why he had a luggage dolly, but when he suggested that, Lee just gave him a "how the hell are you going to carry a suitcase full of coins?" look, and Matt didn't feel so bad about the can suggestion.

"I have a bunch of grocery bags with the handles," Peter said. "And I always get paper and plastic both, so they're really sturdy."

Lee estimated that they'd need at least thirty, and that he couldn't possibly have that many. Peter got up clumsily, the final few inches an unsteady freeze that could have ended with success or humiliation, then went into the kitchen. He came out with a huge stack of neatly folded paper within plastic bags and dumped them on the floor in front of Lee. Lee looked at him oddly, then counted them. He couldn't help himself, he had to know how many bags Peter had collected. There were seventy-three.

"Who are you?"

"There are three more piles of them in the kitchen," Peter answered.

While he was up and moving, Peter decided to get another round of beer and Coke, then sat back down and scooped up a handful of coins. Lee opened four bags and Matt helped him separate the rolls of coins into different bags. Lee picked up the steno pad he had used the other night, turned to a clean sheet, drew four columns on it and put tick marks for each roll that was put in the bags. When a bag was about a third full they set it aside and started another. They checked them regularly, of course, to make sure they were liftable. Lee would have to be careful that he didn't fill any too much as the night went on. Whoever took these things to the bank was going to look really funny, Lee thought, and took a sip of beer. Matt sat back down and scooped up a handful of coins.

"Maybe you should get help carrying them," Lee suggested, then glanced at Matt, who was a kid, and kids always looked really funny, so it wouldn't matter. Then he looked at Peter, who was looking at him like a sad puppy, and he realized that it would probably be him helping. Damn it. Why the hell am I always so nice?

Matt noticed Peter put a dime in the penny pile, and moved it to the dime pile when Peter wasn't looking. Once he noticed the first one, he kept part of his concentration on what Peter was doing, just to make sure nothing got put in the wrong wrapper. He didn't want to show Mr. Principal up but he couldn't let it go by. Mr. Harris would think he wasn't paying attention. And the bank might arrest them for fraud. But he could keep them safe. What are friends for? He took a sip of Coke. This felt good. He felt like he understood grownups much better than he understood the kids he went to school with. He had always thought he was more mature than his friends. He realized, now, that he must have been right. He ought to be spending all of his time around adults. Then he could convince his dad to let him have a car and give Jan a ride to school.

He also realized he had to go to the bathroom, but Cliche had, somehow, completely unnoticed, come into the room, sidled up to Matt and fallen asleep with his head against Matt's left thigh, and Matt knew if he stood to go into the other room he would wake him up.

"I had a bunch of coins when I was a kid," Matt said, instead of thinking about waterfalls, "and I used to count them all the time. Grandpa used to give me some every time he was there, sometimes a whole handful. My mom said that once I heard on the radio that there was a robbery and I hid my coins under the bed. I was just a kid."

"Do you still have them?" Lee asked.

"No. I bought a bike with them. A ten-speed. It cost three hundred dollars. Dad gave me a little to make up the difference."

"How much did he give you?"

"I don't know. Sixty bucks. You could buy a whole car with all this."

That stupid bike. He still had it. He rode it to school in the fall and spring. He used to be so proud of it. He started thinking about what car he would buy when his parents let him. He'd get a cool car. A sedan.

"Or a theater," Lee said and burped.

"I started a coin collection with the cool ones, though," Matt said, not having really heard what Lee had just said. "I have some really cool coins. I have three steel pennies, they're from the war, nineteen forty three, and a lot of real silver dimes and quarters that don't have the copper line in them. You know, the sandwich ones. They stopped making real silver ones in nineteen sixty-four. They aren't worth a whole lot, but I like them. And maybe when I'm really old, like forty or something, they probably will be."

"Yeah," Peter said. "If you live to be that old."

"No, my dad's already forty-three. And my mom is almost as old as he is."

"I used to put my pocket change into a jar on the dresser," Lee said. "But it never accumulated much because Beverly always spent it. Damn her. Sorry, Matt."

"It's okay," Matt said. He knew he had turned a little red. It had startled him a little, but he thought how cool it was to be around adults who swore. His mom never swore, and he his dad only said "shit" once. "My dad swears all the time."

Matt pulled a rumpled piece of paper from the pile of coins on the newspaper now almost completely black from the oxidized copper, and looked at it.

"Is this important?"

Peter took it from him. There was a name and phone number on it. He tried hard to remember who it was, and all of a sudden his eyes got really wide.

"Oh, my God," he said.

"What is it?" Lee asked.

"A phone number."

"Whose?"

"A guy I knew a long time ago. Fred Ogg. We went out once. Saw Last Tango in Paris. Never saw him again."

"You should call him," Lee said. "His name was 'Ogg'? Really? Was it short for anything?"

"I'm not going to call someone I haven't seen or talked to in a hundred years," Peter said, then he saw Matt looking at him oddly and turned bright pink. "Yeah, Oggg. It's a last name, stupid. You don't have a last name be short for something. We called him Og, though. That was short for Ogg."

"Call him," Lee insisted. "You're not seeing anyone."

Peter gave him a "what the hell are you doing, you've already said way too much in front of the kid, straight man, he's already starting to figure it out, he's not a stupid kid, and only you and Abby and Stella knows, and Andrew, and of course Jim, oh, and Roz, but Matt doesn't know and he's just a kid and he doesn't need to know and I don't want him to hate me, so just shut up, stupid straight man" look. Lee glanced back with a "huh? Oh. Sorry" look.

Wait, Matt thought. Mr. Principal's gay? Wow. I had no idea. That's so weird. I didn't know I knew anyone gay, and now I know a gay man, and he's a grown up. Of course, he'd have to be, wouldn't he, or he wouldn't be a gay MAN. I never thought there even were any gay men in River Bend. I never really even thought there were any real gay men anywhere. Not really. But it was kind of a cool thing to know. And no one else knew. He'd have to tell Jan.

He glanced up under his eyebrows to see what a real gay man really looked like and noticed Mr. Principal glance away. Matt unconsciously gave him a "I'm really uncomfortable now, maybe I should change the subject" look.

"So, do you have a butt plug?" he asked, and Geoff hit Steve really hard, but Steve figured it was worth it for the joke. Then Geoff hit him again.

Matt had pulled all but the pennies from the handful he held, so he deposited those on the table. He noticed a dime in the penny pile and a nickel in the quarter pile. When he picked up the nickel, he froze.

"Wow," he said quietly.

"What?" Peter asked.

"A nineteen thirty-seven- D," Matt said.

Lee cocked his head at Matt. He hadn't realized until that moment that everything Matt had said all night was filtered through some need, but that statement was completely unadorned, and the simplicity of it made everything else he'd said all night ring a little strange.

"Does the 'D' mean it was made in December?" Peter asked as he held his hand out to see the coin.

"It's a cup size," Lee said.

"Huh?"

"Nothing," Lee said. A kid and a gay man, he thought. Sheesh.

"No," Matt said, laughing a silly laugh. "It means it was minted in Denver."

"Is it worth anything?" Peter asked, looking really closely at a nickel. "Hey, the buffalo has only three legs."

Matt nodded and got really embarrassed. He wanted to have the coin for his collection, but he knew he could never ask. He knew it was worth a couple hundred dollars, and he could never afford that. Everyone who collected coins needed a nineteen thirty-seven-D three legged buffalo nickel. And Mr. Principal had one. And he didn't even collect coins. Well, he didn't collect them in that way. He briefly considered asking if he could buy it on an installment plan, but he wasn't sure if people did that and he didn't want to look really stupid if they didn't. He'd looked stupid enough already.

"Yeah," he said, finally with an off-hand shrug. "It's worth a couple of hundred. Dollars. An engraver in Denver noticed some burrs on the die and buffed them out too much. Yeah. Some people try to fake them by sanding the leg off of a good one from that year, but you can tell really easy."

"Wow," Peter said, and Matt nodded in agreement, trying not to look too eager. "Even Lee didn't know that."

Matt let that sink in for a moment, then realized he had just been compared to Lee and his smile broadened, his chest expanded and his face turned bright red. He had to look down quickly so Mr. Principal and Mr. Harris didn't see. He busied himself separating quarters from a handful of coins. He couldn't make his smile muscles calm down, though. He couldn't wait to tell Jan. Cliche yawned and stretched his front leg out and Matt thought he could finally get up to go pee, but Cliche set the paw gently down on his thigh and closed his eyes again, so Matt did a Kegel and concentrated on finding dimes.

Peter, completely unaware of Matt's current dilemma, or any previous dilemmas for that matter, brought beer from the second six-pack for himself and Lee and a fourth Coke for Matt. Lee opened his, took a healthy swig, then sighed deeply. Peter asked him what was wrong, and he shrugged.

"I don't know," he said. "I've never been a really social person, but it feels funny that everyone is ignoring me."

Matt wanted to tell him that he wasn't ignoring him, but kept it to himself.

"People are threatened by you," Peter said with a shrug.

"What?" Lee said. "Really?"

Matt could sort of see how people might be threatened by Lee. Lee was really cool. I mean, I'm not threatened by him, he thought, but I can see how people might be.

"Sure," Peter said. "Some of these guys have been doing this a long time and you breeze in with no experience at all and have natural talent and they resent that."

Matt really liked that they were having a really personal conversation with him in the room. He wanted to join in, but was afraid that if they noticed him and remembered he was there, they'd stop, so he tried to make himself really small and just separate his coins with as little movement as possible. And moving as little as possible also wouldn't disturb Cliche. And it wouldn't reawaken his bladder, which had finally stopped insisting on demanding release and had settled into a dull, throbbing ache. He put some quarters on the table, then reached out and plucked a penny from the dime pile.

Lee only heard one word in Peter's whole speech.

"You really think I'm talented?" he asked. His head was buzzing a little with the thought. And the beer. And the copper fumes.

Peter smiled and nodded kindly, then set the can they had been working from aside, opened another one and spilled it out on the paper. Cliche opened his eyes long enough to give Peter a "you can't get me with that, again" look, then licked his paw a little, stood, stretched and stumbled into the other room. Matt would have gotten up then to go pee, but he didn't want to miss any of the conversation he was being let in on.

In the new pile of coins was a little, white, metal button with a pin on the back. On the front was a black circle with a big black "A" in it. Peter was about to put it on the pile under the coffee table, but looked at it more closely, and started to laugh.

"It seems funny that the symbol for anarchy has stayed the same for the last fifty years," he said, and put the button on the pile and looked at Lee. "Yes, you are. Talented. And you're starting to be a bit of a pain in the ass about it, too, which might be putting people off a bit."

"I'm going to ignore that last comment," Lee said.

"What comment?" Peter said innocently.

"If we do start our own theater, are there any other actors who would act in it?" Lee asked, then took another swig of beer, then wiped his fingers very clean on a sheet of the paper towel roll Peter had gotten out for him, and picked up a piece of now very cold pizza.

"I don't want to think about that," Peter said and shivered. "It's too scary. Can we just count coins, please?"

"Isn't that why we're counting coins?" Lee asked around the cheese and pepperoni.

"No," Peter said and shook his head vigorously. "We're just getting them ready to put into the bank."

Matt held his breath. He suddenly realized he had just heard a really big secret. This was almost as good as having a car. Well, at least as good as knowing how to drive. He hoped his heart would stay quiet so it didn't make them notice him sitting there and stop talking.

"And anyway, what about Twain's?" Peter said.

At the mention of that name, Matt knew it was all over. Both adults suddenly looked over at him as if he had just burst through the front door.

"Um," Lee said. "Kind of keep this all under your hat, okay?"

"Sure," Matt said through the large obstruction in his throat that seemed to have grown there as soon as they looked at him. "Sure. I won't say anything."

"I mean," Lee said. "I like working at Twain's."

"Yeah," Matt said, his throat clearing a little. "He likes you, too."

Lee looked really surprised.

"He does?"

"Sure," Matt said. He had information that Lee didn't have. He liked it. A lot. "He lets you get away with murder."

Lee looked surprised again, but not in nearly as good a way.

"What," Lee asked quietly, "does he let me get away with?"

Matt had a whole list of things, but the obstruction had returned and he wouldn't have been able to say even one of them even if he wanted to, which he didn't. And wouldn't. Ever. And he suddenly really, really, really had to go pee. He excused himself and quickly ran down the hallway. He made it in time, but only barely.

Lee sat looking at the place on the floor where Matt had just been sitting. I've been doing Twain a huge favor, he thought. He barely pays me. What does the kid mean, letting me get away with murder? I hold that place together. Of course, Twain did let me stay there when I didn't have any place to go. And he fixed my car. And he lets me work around my theater schedule. And he let me run the place by myself that time. And I did serve chili. Of course, he also made me do his laundry.

Matt returned and settled back down on the floor. He felt better, but his bladder still hurt, just to remind him that he had made it wait so long. He picked up a pile of coins and started sorting so he wouldn't say any other incredibly stupid thing. He plucked a Rolaid®, still in its ratty foil wrapper with the torn end folded over and almost fused with the lozenge, the exposed part of which was pitted and dusty with lint, and tossed it on the pile under the table.

"Anyway," Lee said to him, "we don't even know if we are going to do this, so keep it to yourself, okay?"

"Sure," Matt said, nodding, but not looking up.

He wouldn't breath a word of it to anyone. Not even Jan. Not even if she let him kiss her. Not even if she let him drive her car. He pulled several dimes and put them on the dime pile on the coffee table, taking two nickels out of the quarter pile for Peter. Lee finished another stack of quarters, rolled it, pounded the ends and placed it carefully in the quarter bag. He lifted the bag experimentally and figured he could get another roll or two in it. It wouldn't be long before they had another one done.

Cliche came back into the room, sat, and watched the movement. He inched closer to the table and watched more closely. Then he slyly stretched one little arm up and bent one little paw and knocked over a pile of dimes. Peter swatted at him and he ran out of the room with his tail in the air. Lee watched him run, amazed. He had never seen him act so cat-like. And he didn't approve.

Matt jumped a little, then looked around for a clock.

"Oh," he said. "What time is it?"

"Oh, yeah," Lee said. "I should get you home."

He looked at his watch and realized it was already after ten thirty.

"Oops," he said.

"It's okay," Matt assured him. He had a little leeway, but he knew his mother was going to give him heck if he was very late. But he couldn't let them know that. Their mothers didn't give them heck if they were late. He almost cringed when he thought about what his mother would say. "Really. Not a problem." He hoped she wouldn't kill him. "Really."

They had only gone through three and a half cans, and all three of them looked at the other five and a half cans waiting to be opened, spilled, sorted, stacked, rolled and bagged, and their faces sagged. Matt felt like he had let Mr. Principal down. This whole evening had been an almost complete bust. He had said really stupid things, he couldn't tell Jan about the evening, they were never going to invite him back, his mother was going to really holler and they hadn't even finished the job. He didn't think he could feel any worse.

Peter realized he would have something to do while watching television for the next several years. At least it would put off the moment when he would have to confront the decision of wether or not to leave the Willow Lane Theatre. And maybe Lee would have forgotten all about it by then, so he wouldn't ever have to confront it. Before they left, though, he wanted to know how much they had so far. Lee counted up the tick marks and multiplied and added. And divided. And conquered.

"Two thousand, four hundred fifteen dollars and fifty cents," he said. "Not counting the buffalo nickel. Or the lint. Or the shirt buttons. Or the phone number."

Peter, who had gotten up to escort them out, sat back down again heavily.

"I should buy a Ferrari," he said.

"Or a Porsche," Lee agreed.

When they got to the door, Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out the nineteen thirty-seven-D three-legged buffalo nickel and handed it to Matt.

"Thanks for helping, Matt," he said. "'So shines a good deed in a naughty world.'"

"What? Oh. You're welcome. No, wait," Matt said when he realized what Peter was handing him. He was really confused, but really thrilled. The evening hadn't been a waste. Mr. Principal wanted him to have the coin. He had something he could tell Jan about. And they obviously didn't hate him or think he was just a kid. "I can't take this. Really."

"Sure you can. To me it's only worth five cents."

"But you could sell it for a lot more," Matt protested.

"Yeah, but I probably wouldn't."

"So you're saying Matt's help here is only worth five cents?" Lee said and tips of horns began to protrude past his hairline.

"No," Peter said. "No! No, I mean, he wanted to... I mean. No. Matt, I really, really appreciate..."

"Hey, Mr. Harris," Matt said. "Don't blow it for me."

Lee and Peter laughed and Matt joined in, feeling really included and really good. Lee put his arm around Matt's shoulder and they left, purring.

(Aaaand, cut! What are you doing? I'm ending it. But this isn't the end. Oh. Sorry. Roll 'em!)

Peter turned around and stood looking at the bags of coins. Then he sat on the couch and looked at the amount still left to do. He was trying to remember how much cheese he had. Well, he had enough money to buy more if he needed. Then he noticed the rumpled piece of paper that he had set aside, and picked it up. He looked at the number for a very long time, then picked up the phone and dialed before his rational mind could figure out what he was doing and slap some sense into his head.

"Hello?" a very sleepy voice said.