Lee set the kitchen up for breakfast, brewed the coffee, set a cup on the counter for Twain and sat on a stool. He took a deep breath and looked out the window. A dented metallic-green 1972 Impala drove up. Lee could feel his palms getting cold and damp. He had never suspected that there were such active sweat glands in one's palms until he arrived in River Bend. He started to rub his hands on the sides of his trouser legs, stopped, then pulled napkins out of the well stocked napkin holder and tried in vain to dry them. Paper stuck to the right one. He went back around behind the counter to find a towel. As he was rubbing the paper off his palm with the towel, the front door opened. He looked up.

Twain walked in and sat at his spot, looking at Lee. He sensed that Lee was uneasy about something. It might have been conveyed by the vein throbbing on the edge of Lee's left eye. Or the unsightly dampness at his underarms. Or the smell of napalm in the morning.

"What?" he said, and Lee poured him coffee.

Twain picked up the cup of coffee and was about to sip from it but stopped.

"Lot of toasters," he said, and set the cup back down, unsipped.

All the work drying his palms was wasted. Fuck it, he thought, about to dry them on the sides of his pant legs, but realized mid-movement that he would actually rather have wet palms than palm stains on the sides of his pants.

"I...," he said. "Um. Broke it. The toaster." He didn't look but was sure his palms were now dripping. "I broke the toaster."

He cringed slightly, sure the weight of Twain's wrath was about to descend on his throbbing head. Twain looked at the plethora of toasters.

"Dualit," he said, noticing Matt's mom's gleaming wonder. "Rolls Royce of toasters." Then he noticed the one from upstairs with Snoopy etched into it and laughed. Lee had never heard him laugh. He was quite shocked to hear it. It had never occurred to him that Twain could laugh. And it was not a pleasant sound. It was oddly scratchy, yet somehow musical. A cross between Mel Torme and Edith Bunker.

Twain got off his stool and went around behind the counter. Here it comes, Lee thought. He's going to beat me silly. Instead of beating him, Twain bent down and opened the bottom drawer under where all the toasters now sat. Lee raised his eyebrows in complete surprise. It was full of Bakelite toaster handles in various shapes and sizes. Twain rummaged around in the drawer, pulled one out, and fit it on the lever.

"And it sparked," Lee said, expecting those to be his final words.

Twain pulled the drawer out more, and pulled out a strange flat piece of wire.

"Element," he said. "It'll take me ten minutes to fix."

He happened to glance down at the Snoopy toaster as he picked up the broken one.

"Where's the Pop Tart?" he asked.

When Lee said he threw it out, fully expecting that to be the final insult, Twain shook his head and took the toaster back into the kitchen. Lee felt a sense of relief that overcame him in a wave of warmth from his hair, through his chest and groin all the way to his toes. He turned, ready to get to the rest of the morning tasks, ready to put the creamers out onto the tables, and straighten and arrange the salt and pepper shakers, when Twain came back out front holding the cigar box. Lee froze like Nicole Kidman® (good one, Steve. Sorry. Oh, I mean thanks) and stared at the cigar box while Twain stared at him.

"Did you make anything?" Twain asked after the requisite amount of staring had been achieved.

Lee paused a bit before saying, "Chili."

Twain paused a bit before saying, "Uncle Hubert's?"

Lee nodded, and Twain paused, then said, "I told you not to serve a different special. You promised me you wouldn't. I trusted you."

"I didn't," Lee said, his heart dropping down his chest cavity a few inches. "I just made it for my dinner."

"Did any of the customers have any?"

Lee nodded in a very small way. "Agnes," he said, then on reflection added, "and that young guy she was with." Then on further reflection added, "and Bear. And, um, the guy in the John Deere hat. And...," he tried to make it sound small, insignificant, "pretty much everybody."

"You know there has to be consequences, don't you?" Twain said, and Lee looked at the ground, his heart sinking a few more inches toward his sacroiliac.

Lee nodded, not looking up. He waited for the final sentencing. He expected nothing less than life in servitude to Twain without the possibility of parole. Or enchiladas. He kept waiting. He glanced up to see if Twain was still there. He was, so Lee looked down again.

"What are you going to do?" Lee said in a voice that sounded so unlike his own, he quickly looked around to see who else might be there.

"I'll have to think about it. You did make a special." Twain said, then cocked his head. "Any left?"

The theater was warm and full of activity. Lee didn't remember having decided to take the part. He apparently hadn't needed to audition. He couldn't remember saying yes or no, but he must have said something because he found himself standing in the aisle next to row "K" being introduced to the director by Peter. The director looked a bit like an ex-marine. He had a white crew cut, a powerful chest and a stomach that looked like it was relieved to no longer suffer hundreds of sit-ups each morning. He looked like he should be smoking a cigar, but smelled like a mixture of Fels Naphtha soap, Aqua Velva and pipe tobacco. Lee was sure Peter told him the director's name, but the tapioca in his brain must have blocked it out.

He was handed a script which was open to page eighteen. He somehow got the idea that the role he was to play was called Tarkinton. It all happened through the pudding.

"Ever acted before?" the director asked, and it penetrated the custard. He shook his head. "It's okay. You only have three lines. Two of them are one line cut in half, but technically, it's three lines."

Lines? He would have lines? Didn't that mean he would be expected to talk? On the stage? In front of people? He sat down hard, hoping there was a seat under him somewhere. Thankfully, there was. He concentrated on his breath. He wasn't sure why, but it seemed the thing to do. The Jello seemed to thin a bit. Peter was sitting on a seat next to him. He could smell perfume in the air. It was familiar. It was Stella's. He looked around for her, but the smell was coming from Peter. That's odd, he thought.

"You smell like Stella," Lee said.

Peter pulled back a little and sniffed around himself. He smelled his hand and wrist, then pointed his nose in the general direction of his underarm, then shrugged, uncertain. The energy in the room was sparking like a toaster with no handle. An elderly gentleman put his hand out. Instinctively, Lee shook it.

"I'm Andrew," the man said.

Lee nodded, and Peter said, "This is Lee, Andrew. He's going to play your drinking buddy."

Lee turned hard toward Peter.

"Drinking buddy?" he said. "Why did you think I would be perfect for that?"

"I didn't."

"You said so," Lee insisted. "In installment eight."

Peter shrugged. That seemed like six weeks ago.

The stage was bare except for a few folding chairs and long lines made from masking tape on the floor which, someone told him, perhaps the director, perhaps Peter, were the outlines of the actual set that would be loaded in sometime later that week. They started with the scene Lee would be in. They showed him where he would be at each moment. Blocking, they called it. The ambrosia salad thickened a bit, but Lee retained enough hold on his brain to know that he was to come in drunk and, with another actor who was playing a doctor, help Andrew, whose character's name was W.O. Gant, stagger in. Then he was supposed to sit on a step and sing a drunken song with Andrew, say something, and leave. Maybe if he really drank, he could do this. When they had gone through his scene several times, they moved on, and Lee went to the back of the theater and sat in the last row on the side. The one just behind where he had sat when his life had been altered by art. The worst seat in the house. He repeated his lines over and over in his head. (What are they? We can't say, Steve. Why not? We can't afford the royalties. Oh.)

The next morning, when Lee was getting the diner ready for breakfast, he opened the freezer to pull out a loaf of bread and noticed that the corsage was back in place. It actually looked like it had never moved. Maybe he had just imagined it had been gone. No. It had been gone. And now it was back. And this had been an "annual" trip. Twain is weird, he thought. I wonder what he's going to do to me. Lee nervously sang along to the radio on the shelf by the stove until he realized that it was Pat Boone's cover of "Sympathy for the Devil". He nervously went over and turned it off.

Twain still hadn't decided on appropriate punishment by Thursday. He seemed pleased that Lee was going to be in the play, and gave him extra leeway in the schedule at the diner for rehearsals. Lee felt like he was the mouse being toyed with by the analogy.

At the theater, he was still working in the office with Stella, doing odd accounting jobs. The third time he pointed out an irregularity in the way things were set up, Stella stared at him, her eyes burning two pinpoint holes in his forehead.

"It has always worked my way, and it will continue to," she said. "I do the best that it can be done."

For a moment, Lee almost considered that she may be right, that he was mistaken about how the accounting should work, but all his training and experience shouted loudly to the cave in his brain where the Stella-pated energy lived. No, it shouted. She doesn't know what she's talking about, it said to the cave. You have the training and experience. She's just digging herself deeper into a corner. Painting the theater further into a hole.

"No," he said and Stella's head went up, her back straightening like Michael Jackson's hair. "You're just painting yourself deeper into a hole."

Her perfume poured out, intensified by the heat of her anger, but, although it made the soles of his feet sweat, the bellowing training and experience kept shaking him back to truth.

"I do have the training and experience," he said, his voice gaining a quiet confidence as each word came out of his mouth. He did know about this. He had the training. And the experience. Stella was wrong. He crossed his arms in satisfied defiance. The perfume whimpered and returned to Stella with its tail between its legs.

He said this to Stella just as Bear walked in, followed closely by Peter. There was a bizarre moment when time slowed. Lee watched the one stray hair on Stella's head slowly curve up, around and down, back into its perfect spot, as a fly flew past his face. It seemed to take an hour for the fly to go by, and the anger in Stella's eyes burned white-hot as she slowly lowered her head, setting herself for the attack. As her head came back up, the attack forming on her moistened lips, her hair beginning to flip, each strand following the last like Rockettes' legs, the fly went past his left cheek. Midway up, Stella's eyes caught sight of Bear and Peter, and her head stopped, the strands of hair colliding with each other like a million-car pile-up. The fly moved past Lee's nose. Bear looked amused, and Peter looked positively radiant, his eyes burning with glee at having witnessed Stella be told she didn't know something, his neck pulsing in anticipation of the climax of the battle. Stella's head froze in position as the fly moved past Lee's right cheek, and, just as it moved beyond the sphere of his face, her pursed, moist lips faded into a smile, and her colliding hair stilled and found its proper shape.

"I know how behind you are on the set," she said to Bear, and the fly suddenly moved at proper speed and disappeared somewhere into the room. "Lee has been a huge asset here, but I know how much help you need."

Lee tried to decide if Stella had just regained control. He looked at Bear. Bear nodded, then shook his head, a smile still on his face, and turned to leave. He looked at Peter. Peter just glowed. He looked at Stella and smiled, his arms still crossed. Stella chose not to notice any of this, turned her chair away from them and opened an envelope from the day's mail.

The scene shop was actually a pre-fabricated tin shed behind the theater that could be reached by going out either of the dressing room doors. They went through the women's dressing room, so Lee didn't see the angel that, he assumed, was still hanging from the men's room ceiling, laughing at him. During the short walk outside, Lee noticed that it was unusually warm, and the sky was sky blue and divided into smoking and non-smoking sections. Inside, the shop smelled like a combination of rotten cheese and burning hair, and Lee's nose instantly scrunched back in an attempt to disappear into the flesh of his face. Bear laughed.

"Horse glue," Bear said, pointing to a pot filled with bubbling, sickly yellow stuff that was cooking on a hot plate. "We use it as a bonding medium for the scene paint."

"Horse glue? You mean they really do send old horses to the glue factory?" (See Steve's page. Steve, there's nothing about horse glue on your page. But you had a link to your page in installment seven. Sheesh. Okay, go to Steve's page. Then come back.)

Bear laughed again. It was amazing that his slim frame could produce such a deep sound. It sounded like a cross between Mel Torme and Kermit™ the™ Frog™.

"No, no, no. They just use the hoof clippings," Bear explained. "They use the whole horse for dog food." (They do not, Steve. They used to. They also used to write with charcoal on bark. And dogs bark. And eat horse meat. See? Kevin Bacon.) "You melt the mucilage, mix the paint pigment with water, put some mucilage in it, and it sticks to what you're painting."

"Powdered paint pigments," Lee said, trying to sound knowledgeable. "I brought a big box of them to Roger's Room once. They smelled bad enough without this. It smells like rotten hair and burning cheese."

"I like it," Bear said, and dipped his finger in the glue and dabbed it behind his ears. (Editor's note: We will now join our regularly scheduled story, already in progress.)

... handed him a screwdriver. (Oh, I saw this one already. Shut up, Steve.)

Because the sets were constructed in the shop, they had to be disassembled to be brought into the theater, then re-assembled on the stage. The back wall of the women's dressing room, door and all, swung open to allow the pieces to be carted in. Then they were brought through the curtain that led to the stage. The first things to be set on the stage were two huge wooden turntables that Lee helped Bear roll in. There were castors on each and a pipe in the middle of the bottom that fit into holes that had been drilled into the stage. The set pieces were then assembled on top and around these. Lee liked working with Bear. He was very laid back.

Peter sat working at his desk, humming. Greensleeves. Stella looked up at him, her head cocked slightly to the left. He looked up at her.

"What?" he asked.

After a moment, Stella answered, "I'm worried about you."

"You're worried about me? Why?"

"Come on, Peter. Lee."

Peter's chest sunk a bit, and he no longer felt like humming.

"What?"

"You've gone to rehearsal every night this week. You never go to rehearsal."

"I do too," Peter said. "Sometimes. And he's never acted before. He's nervous. He's my friend. He has to rely on the kindness of strangers. He doesn't know anybody else in town. I don't know. Leave me alone. Do you think he thinks that?"

"No," Stella said, kindly. "I don't think so."

On the way home from the theater after work, Peter stopped by the grocery store and bought a two pound brick of cheddar cheese. When he got home, he changed into a tee shirt. It was clean, but had oil stains on it and had "I have a short attention sp" printed on the front. He broke a hunk of the cheese off, found a relatively clean bowl to put it in, then set it into the microwave on half power for three minutes. He stared in through the grated window, watching the bowl of cheese travel in slow circles, listening to the buzz of the power go on and off. His cat, Cliche, rubbed up against him, and he opened a can of food for her. She sniffed at the food and walked away, and Peter returned to the microwave. The cheese started to melt from the edges in. The comforting aroma escaped the door sealing along with stray microwave radiation, and mingled with the cool air in the kitchen. When the center of the cheese started to bubble and the butterfat started to separate from it, Peter opened the door and took the bowl out. He got a spoon from the drawer, went into the living room, sat on the couch and ate a spoonful of the melted cheese.

Does he know, he wondered. The bite he was chewing slowly solidified, turned to the consistency of rubber and lost all flavor. He swallowed it, and took another bite, which was rich and buttery. If I tell him I like him, he thought as he chewed that bite to the consistency of wax teeth, I might lose a friend. He swallowed that bite, and leaned over to turn on the lava lamp on the end table, which glowed orange. He took another spoonful from the cheese, and through that, realized that he couldn't even blame Lee if he dropped him as a friend. He'd lied to him. And if I tell him, he'll think everything I'd done was because of that. The lava goo in the lamp started to bubble, and looked like melted colby. The cheddar was coagulating in the bowl. Maybe, he thought, everything I've done IS because of that. He took another bite. A drip of cheese oil fell. He looked down at the new Rorschach pattern on his tee shirt, and sighed. It looked like the second course of the Last Supper. But everything I've done is not because of that, he thought. He tried to remember if he had ever touched Lee, inadvertently or not. On the arm or back. Or leg, heaven forbid. He didn't think he had. There was that time when Lee had fallen in the puddle, he thought, but I would have been a real heel not to have helped him up. Did I ever brush up against him? Accidentally? It would have been accidentally, he thought as he scooped the last of the cheese from the bowl, scraping the hardened bits from the side. Wouldn't it have been? He picked up the ink-stained Spirograph wheel from the coffee table and wondered why he hadn't thrown it out. The rest of the Spirograph was long gone. He set it back down. I would never have touched him inappropriately, but if I had even simply touched him it could be inappropriate. I wonder if he remembers every time I brushed up against him. And if I tell him I like him, he'll suspect my motives. I even suspect my motives. God, I'm pitiful, Peter thought. I need more cheese.

Cliche seemed to be completely unaware of Peter's torment, and heartlessly slept, curled up on the couch cushion on the other end of the couch, dreaming of Patrick Duffy.

That night at rehearsal, Lee felt oddly proud when he walked in and the boarding house porch that he had helped put together was in place. When he sat down on the step in his scene, there was an actual step to sit down on. Somehow, it made the whole scene easier to do. He wondered where Peter was.

On Friday, Twain still hadn't come up with an appropriate consequence. On Saturday morning, Twain handed him an envelope. Here it comes, Lee thought as he opened the envelope. What retribution could come in an envelope. A pink slip? Knowing Twain, it would be on orange paper. It was his paycheck. It wasn't for twenty-five dollars. It was slightly over ninety. (He's an accountant, Steve, he'd know exactly how slightly over ninety it was. Okay, Geoff, you figure out the taxes. Never mind.)

"What's this?" he asked, nonplused.

"Your paycheck," Twain said, plused.

Oh, my God, Lee thought. It has been four weeks. My fines would have been paid off last week. If it weren't for the play, I could leave this town, now. Wait, four weeks? I've only been in this town for four weeks?

"I've only been in this town for four weeks? Four weeks?" He asked Twain, who shrugged. "Four weeks?"

Lee signed the check, as he always did, and Twain cashed it out of the till as he always did. Lee gave Twain twenty-seven dollars and forty-two cents for his tab, and Twain wrote "pd." on it and handed it to Lee. There was still money to spare. He could do laundry, buy essentials and still have money in pocket. He would have to figure out how to celebrate this milestone. But now he had to deal with Hell Week. Four weeks ago he had never heard of Hell Week. Now he had to live through one. It somehow didn't sound like fun, unless it involved brimstone and lots of naked salacious ladies laughing maniacally like the ones in the movies he had seen as a child.

The Saturday morning rehearsal was something called "cue-to-cue", which involved skipping over large sections of the play to small parts where the lighting had to change, or a sound had to sound and going over and over the moment right before the lighting change or sound sounding until the director was happy with the result. You could tell that the director was happy with it because he said "I'm happy with that. Let's move on to the next one. Page, um..." and he would flip through his script and announce the next page. Lee had very little to do for most of it, so he sat in the last row, the worst seat in the house, watching it all and repeating his lines under his breath.

Andrew sat down next to him.

"How you doing?" he asked Lee.

"This seems a little like chaos," Lee said.

"It is. They call it art," Andrew said with a laugh. "Whatcha doing?"

"Going over my lines," Lee said, a little ashamed. "I don't think I'm very good."

"Nonsense," Andrew said. "You've just never done this before. You know the guy who plays Dr. McGuire?"

Lee nodded and smiled. That guy was awful.

"Yep," Andrew said. "And he's been doing this for twenty years. You should have seen him as Charlie in Death of a Salesman. I shudder. Anyways, it's not like it's national TV or Letterman or anything. Only a few hundred people a night."

In order to change the subject, Lee told him he liked his acting and asked him how long he had been doing it, and if he had ever met anyone famous.

"One year, sometime during the Lincoln administration," Andrew said, then paused for the laugh which never came. Finally, a bit disappointed, he continued. "Anyways, I took off a summer and did some regional theater. Meg Foster was in one of the plays. She played Hester in Equus. She was a little young for it. I played the father."

"Who's Meg Foster?" Lee asked.

"You know," Andrew said, "she was in all those TV shows; Barnaby Jones, Medical Center, Six Million Dollar Man. The one with the icy eyes."

"Oh, yeah," Lee said, nodding his head. "Wasn't she the original Cagney or Lacey before Sharon Gless?"

"Who?"

They chatted for a while, then Andrew asked him where he was from and what he was doing in River Bend. Lee told him about Beverly and the Jerk, the arrest, the tickets, Twain's, and seeing the Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. And Beverly. And the Jerk. And Excalibur, the stupid little rat dog. And the dick with the papers to sell the house. And the Jerk.

"I'd love to see her face when the dick comes back without a signature," Lee said. "I hope she's with the Jerk. In bed. Coinus interruptus."

"So you caught them, huh?" Andrew said. "That's tough."

"Well, no, actually. I didn't actually catch them," Lee said. "I saw the look in her eye."

"You gave up everything and left your life behind for an attic above a diner because of a look?"

"Yes," Lee answered. "No. Yes. No. Sort of. I don't know. You should have seen that look. Who are you?"

"Andrew Divine," Andrew said and offered him a small box. "Fig Newton?"

Lee shook his head. The only thing he hated worse than chocolate were Fig Newtons. They were a stupid cookie. They weren't even a cookie. Fig filling in cake. With no icing, for God's sake.

"No, thank you," Lee said politely.

"'Nilla Wafer man, huh. So, has she filed for divorce?"

Lee was struck by that. He had no idea. Actually, he did have an idea. She wanted to sell the house, but hadn't served him with divorce papers. Lee continued pondering that new thought. He pondered it right through the blocking of the act change where he would be helping turn one of the two huge turntables so that the boarding house would disappear and W.O. Gant's marble yard would slide into place. They went through this change several times to learn how to do it smoothly enough so the huge white angel wouldn't tilt. The sight of the angel sent a strange shiver up Lee's spine and for some reason made him think about a wax Buddy Hackett doll.

The next set change that Lee would be involved with was at the end of the marble yard scene where they had to turn the stage back to the boarding house set. In the dark. In ten seconds. They worked on that for an hour and got it down to twenty seconds, and the director said they had a week to get it right and moved on. Lee was still thinking about why neither he nor Beverly had thought about divorce. At least he hadn't thought about it. The angel seemed to laugh at him in the darkened backstage.

After the day rehearsal was done, the cast and crew retired to Twain's for dinner. Lee wanted to sit with them, but helped out instead. Actually, he just got in the way, as usual, but wanted to do his part. He knew there was some major disciplinary action coming his way, and he wanted to do as well as he could before it arrived in order to lessen the severity. Only a light beating.

After dinner, they all went back to the theater for a full run-through. Lee still didn't think he had achieved even the level of the guy playing Dr. McGuire. Andrew was already so much W.O. Gant when he was on stage, Lee felt like he had two new friends. Okay, one and a half. At the end of that rehearsal, which was dismally bad, and which the director spent an hour and a half telling them just how dismally bad it was, Lee was handed a large stack of pieces of paper.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Flyers. You have to hand them out. Everyone does."

Flyers. Flyers were what got him into all this trouble. He hated flyers. He had visions of thousands of children with folded flyers flapping in their bike spokes. He thought about Loni Anderson and wondered if she had gotten over him. On the way home, Lee wondered if he could get away with just dropping them in the gutter like the character in the play did with the hand bills for the boarding house. Instead, he gave them to Twain, who was thrilled to help out. At least as thrilled as Lee had ever seen him. He didn't quite laugh, which would have been just too scary, but he almost smiled. Okay, he somberly put two or three by the cash register and handed the rest back to Lee.

Lee decided that the best way to celebrate his full paycheck was to pay Peter back for his generosity and take him out for a beer and a burger. Peter had acted a bit odd when he asked him, but Peter was an odd dude.

"You know I don't put out on the first date," Peter said.

"Oh," Lee said. "Yeah. Ha ha."

Why did I say that, Peter thought. What was I thinking? I wasn't thinking. Was I? What's the matter with me? Does he know I was just joking? Maybe I'm not joking. Shut up. No you shut up. Mom.

They made arrangements for Lee to pick him up at his house after rehearsal on Tuesday, which was simply going to be all the actors standing around in costume so the director could see if they all looked right and looked okay with each other.

Lee parked in front of Peter's house. It was a small building with a weedy front lawn. From the dim street lamp and the small porch light, the house looked an unappealing gray. There was a broken old bathtub on the lawn that looked like it had once been used as a planter, but now was being used to hold dirt and dead plants. There was a wind chime hanging from the eaves made from brightly colored pieces of strangely melted glass. Lee swiped at it as he stepped up on the stoop, and it made a strangely empty tinkling sound, as if it had lost all enthusiasm for life. He knocked on the door.

"Just a minute," Peter said.

In a minute, Lee heard him walk toward the door, then it opened. Behind Peter, Lee could see the living room, which was full of piles of books, papers, dishes, and a cat. The cat, in the dim light of the living room, was the same color gray as the house.

"Hi," Peter said. "Sorry about the mess. Want the nickel tour? The place is too small for a dime tour."

"Sure," Lee said. He tried to pull into himself as Peter showed him the rooms, building an invisible shield around himself, a cloak of cleanliness, without letting Peter know he was doing it. There were dishes and books piled on the counter in the kitchen, and it smelled of cat food and mildew. There were old pots and pans hanging from a peg board on the wall above the stove, which had old food burned onto it. There were piles of books in the hallway, and bulk packages of paper towels, toilet paper and Kleenex™. They peeked into the bedroom, which had piles of books and clothes on every surface and smelled of socks.

"Typical bachelor, I guess," Peter said, embarrassed, and closed the door quickly. He pointed to the door across the small hallway from the bedroom. "And that's the bathroom."

Lee dreaded looking in, but did to be polite. It was amazing. It was unbelievable. It was astounding. It was really clean. The sink and mirror were shiny, the counter was spotless with toiletries neatly lined up in military-like rows. The tub was bright. Even the bowl gleamed attractively. There were towels folded neatly on the racks, a healthy ivy plant hanging pleasantly from a hook in the ceiling. The shower curtain hanging around the tub looked new. The room smelled of bay rum with a slight hint of cat box. Wow, Lee thought. I actually wouldn't mind peeing in here.

"Can I offer you a beer, or do you just want to get going?"

"We can head over if you want to," Lee answered, noticing a small cellophane bag with scarlet and gray popcorn spilling from it on the floor by the coffee table. "I feel like playing some pool."

"Sounds good," Peter said, as he put his jacket on. "Let's go."

As they got out of Lee's car in front of The Office, an umber cat brushed up against Lee's leg. He reached down to pet it, but it walked away. Inside, The Office was jumping. Peter found a table and Lee went to the bar to get some beer. As he waited for Headline, he noticed a strong, sweet perfume, and turned to the woman sitting on a stool next to him. She was wearing a fur coat, had huge jewels around her neck, wrists and fingers and was really, really, really old. Older, even, than Agnes. Much, much, much older. But she has nothing to do with this story.

"Hello, Darling," she said in a strong Hungarian accent.

The beers were only a dollar each. Lee had totally forgotten about dollar Tuesdays.

"Oh, man," he said to Peter when he brought them back to the table. "I didn't choose tonight because of the cheap beer, honest."

"A beer by any other price would taste just as good."

"Who are you?" Lee asked, and Peter laughed, but inside he was sure he didn't really know. And also sure he didn't really know what Lee meant by asking. And also sure he didn't really know what time it was. And he didn't really care.

Lee raised his glass and said, "Here's to a full paycheck, paltry as it is."

"Here, here," Peter said, thankful he had changed the subject, and they clinked glasses.

They ordered burgers and fries, and Lee put quarters into the slot on the pool table. He pushed it in and that wonderful sound, the sound of a rack of pool balls dropping into the receiving bay, sounded as the rack of pool balls dropped into the receiving bay. Lee racked.

"Go ahead and break," he said magnanimously.

Peter scratched.

The balls made a loud cracking sound as Lee slammed the cue ball into the front of the triangle of colored balls. None fell into any pocket.

The burgers came and went. So did the fries. They were on their third beer each. The lady with the Hungarian accent disappeared into the back room. Pages flew off a calendar. (Steve. What? It's only one night. Hey, I spent a lot of money on film school, man. I'm gonna use that crap. Okay, just not here, it's just one night.) Still, no balls fell into any pocket. Days passed. Winter faded into Spring. (Steve!) As they played, later that same night, the conversation turned to Lee's finances. Even with the windfall of a hundred dollars a week, Peter wondered how Lee was going to get by. He asked if Lee had any investments, and Lee told him that his only investments were Beverly's antiques, which she probably had already sold.

"Why don't you just get a credit card in your own name?" Peter asked as he surveyed the table.

"Because I don't make enough money."

"Don't you have good credit?"

"Impeccable."

"Five ball in that pocket," Peter said, pointing to the corner. It actually went in. "Hey, how about that!"

They high-fived. Well, high-threed.

"Just lie," Peter said as he took aim on another ball and scratched. "You have good credit."

Lee gave him a strange look.

"It wouldn't add up," he said. "I only make a hundred dollars a week. That's only five thousand, two hundred dollars a year. No one would give me credit on five thousand, two hundred dollars a year."

He sunk a ball, but it went into the wrong pocket. Peter gave up and changed the subject.

"Why don't you sell plasma?" he asked. "Or some CDs?"

That night, as Lee was tossing and turning on his couch, thinking about burgers, fries and beer, he sat up, suddenly fully awake.

"Oh, fuck," he said to the dark room. "I have to act. On a stage. In front of people. With lines. This Friday. In front of people. This Friday. Oh, fuck."

That night, as Peter was tossing and turning in his bed, thinking about burgers, fries and beer, he sat up, suddenly fully awake.

"Oh, God," he said to the pile of dirty clothes on the foot of the bed, which woke Cliche who had been sleeping there. "I'm going to have to tell him sometime. And then he'll take the first stage out of town, and I'll be left holding the bag. And all my trials, Lord. Will soon be over."

Cliche left the room.

Friday morning, Lee set the coffee cup on the counter in front of Twain. I'm dying, he thought. I have to be in front of all those people tonight, and I don't think I can stand waiting to find out what Twain is going to do to me. Maybe he'll just shoot me. That would probably be best for everyone. Maybe I can ask him to shoot me. Right now. I'll ask him now.

"Come here," Twain said as he put his coffee cup down and got off his stool.

"What?" Lee said with a squeak.

"The consequences."

Lee came around from behind the counter, tripped on a crack in the floor, and followed Twain numbly. Here it comes, he thought. His throat dried, and he tried to swallow but couldn't. Finally. He felt relief mixed with a strange fear. The hair on the back of his neck started to move in an odd way and his hands felt heavy. He followed Twain out of the diner, tripping on the door jam, and out to Twain's car. Twain opened the car, reached into the back seat, pulled out a heavy lawn-sized garbage bag and handed it to Lee.

"What's this?"

"My laundry."

"What?" Lee asked, incredulously. "You want me to do your laundry?"

Twain nodded.

"Because I made a special?" Lee asked, even more incredulously.

"There has to be consequences," Twain said. "You broke a promise."

"Oh, man," Lee groaned, and his nose scrunched back into his face before he had a chance to stop it.

They went inside and Twain gave him a stack of quarters and a box of generic laundry soap. There was no "No Phosphates" label on it. As he was leaving, Lee turned to ask how Twain wanted him to wash the laundry.

"In water," Twain said.

"You don't separate?" Lee asked, aghast. Twain just gave him a look, then went into the kitchen.

At the Laundromat, Lee pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and pulled out the handful of quarters that Twain gave him. He opened the lids on two washing machines, untied the bag, pinched the bag somewhere in the middle, dumped the top half into one washer and the bottom half into another, poured in the nasty cheap soap, closed the lids, put the quarters into the slots, pushed the slots in, stepped back away from the machines and finally let out his breath. He went to the sink, took off the rubber gloves and washed his hands. Twice. Then he washed the gloves and washed his hands again.

He put the gloves back on to take the laundry out of the washers and put them in dryers, and washed his hands again. He put the gloves back on to fold the laundry. Before he left, he left a stack of flyers for Look Homeward, Angel. He placed them right on top of the stack of flyers that was already there.

"Thank you," Twain said when he brought the laundry back. "We're even."

Then he looked at Lee with a funny expression.

"You folded it," he said.

Lee shook his head and went upstairs to breathe.

Lee had to change his shirt several times that day because they kept getting all wet every time he thought about the play. He was wearing his last clean one when he came down the stairs at four forty-three that evening, ready to leave for the theater.

"Break a leg," Twain said to him when he rounded the corner.

That made Lee's shirt all wet, but he didn't have time to change again. He breathed in deeply and turned to leave. The front door opened and a woman in her mid thirties came into the diner, looking around to get her bearings. Lee stopped short, his wet shirt forgotten.

"Beverly!" he said.