Customer: (Male, pony-tailed, with bandy legs and a beer belly, in a sleeveless t-shirt and slept-in grey shorts) “Have you heard what’s happening?”

Cashier: (Female, blond, weathered, slender, mauve Hemp supple clothing) “You talking about the storm?”

Customer: “It’s, like, minus 5 degrees. There’s no reason to rush back.”

Cashier: (Smiling) “I’ve thought that since the 70’s.”

Overnight, as per predictions, a foot of powder had fallen, reconfiguring my surroundings to a Whistler. When first alerted to the impending blizzard I had every intention of buying a shovel, but a good book got in the way.

Late into the day snow continued to fall so I tore myself from the excellent read. Scuffling with the elements I burrowed a route to my car. I drove to town to find it unrecognizable in its desolation except for a cardboard Santa and his caravan swinging ridiculously in the air over Main Street.

I slid around with the radio playing something classical and I was charmed by the romantic melancholy of it all. Snowflakes continually descended, absorbing noise and obscuring sight. Eventually I had to acknowledge the sli

de beneath my tires. Carefully I steered homebound.

There were no tracks on the road to my house, not even those of a plow. No signs of life at all other than a hunchbacked man trudging down my street. At first I figured he must be deranged as this was not strolling weather. On approach I saw he was wearing a backpack and carrying something like a broom.

Closer still I saw it was a shovel.

Oh right, a shovel. I meant to buy a shovel. I considered returning to the village. Instead I slowed beside the man and asked him if he was looking for work.

“Si.” He told me and we struck up a deal. His name is Victor and for the rest of the winter Victor will be my shoveler. Thank the heavens, I’m now returned to reading. Long live Victor.

Ever since graduating culinary school Upstate New York, close to ten years ago, Buck has been employed as a chef. If you ask him he’ll tell you he can do anything and everything there is to do, where it concerns food. He’ll tell you he enjoys a tasty meal.

Buck grew up on some tropical island where he lived with his parents, a stampede of older brothers, one younger sister, and a black dog. He remembers a loving family, he remembers innovative games with friends, but most acutely he remembers being hungry.

For a pet Buck kept a rooster he had coddled since it was an egg, he named him Johnny. Johnny looked more like a vulture than your typical rooster with no feathers on his long bare knobby neck.

One day, Buck was dawdling on the back porch, leaning against a bamboo banister. Wood cut down by Buck’s father with a machete, then hewn smooth and perfect. Buck’s father stuck his head out the kitchen window and said, “Fetch me Johnny, Son.”

Buck cooed to his pet, calling to him. The rooster, busy crowing on the roof of a shed, hopped down to the sandy earth, chumming up dust.

Buck’s father was yelling from the kitchen telling him to hurry it up. But Buck waited patiently. Buck clucked and clicked and Johnny stalked confidently across the yard, wings wagging. The child and his pet met at the foot of the steps and climbed them together. Buck opened the kitchen door and clucked some more, ushering the bird inside.

The boy and his bird stepped into the kitchen. Buck saw his mother place a pot of water on the lit stove. The family dog lay in the middle of the room, on his side, slapping at flies with his long tail. Buck’s father handed him his best machete and instructed him to lay the bird’s neck across the butcher’s block. Buck could scarcely believe what he was being asked to do. But this was his father, whom he had never disobeyed, and it was unthinkable to question.

“Do it!” His father said. Buck gathered up his trusting bird and attempted to lay the long neck across the cutting board where old blood had soaked the wood dark. The rooster sensed something was off and began to resist and flap his wings.

Buck was only nine years old but he was strong. He clamped down around the bird and attempted to pin him. He thought he saw a look of disbelief in Johnny’s beady eyes. For a fraction Buck hesitated and his thou

ghts ran amok and he vowed, if he made sure of nothing else, he’d make sure he never went hungry when he was grown. A quick glimpse of his father’s serious face and he snapped to attention and back to his task. A task he had observed adults complete countless times, without fussing, without sentimentality.

His mother stood beside the pot on the stove where steam bubbled up, her hands tucked under her armpits, as was her habit. The steam began coaxing smells from out of ceiling beams suffused from years of pungent vapors.

“Do it!” His father ordered again.

Focused and using all his force Buck overwhelmed the bird, struggling to hold him still, he spread out the long featherless neck across the cutting board and struck it a decisive blow with the machete. Buck watched Johnny’s head fly across the room, spurting blood.

The dog lunged for Johnny’s head and crunched it to a wet mouthful.

Buck’s mother swooped down with well-practiced

hands and grabbed at the quills and in a trice the bird was bare.

“Put Johnny in the pot, Son!” His father said, less loud but just as forcefully.

Buck picked up the corpse and walked to the stove. Stretching on tip toes, and with the minimum splash, he heaved the bird into the boiling water.

Buck took a step back and swallowed his feelings. He hoped his father would praise him.

A noise like an explosion came from the stove. The heavy iron cooking pot was shuddering. Hissing hot waves shot over the lip, momentarily dousing the flames beneath. Like a bad dream Johnny’s body came out from the cooking pot and flopped to the floor, startling everyone, including the dog who darted from the room gripping the rooster’s cleaned skull in his jaws.

The twitching bird began to scoot around, slamming against chairs and walls, tumbling in a mess of watery blood and sticky feathers.

“Son, put Johnny back in the pot!” Buck’s father commanded.

Buck stumbled after the crashing headless bird until he had recaptured it. Now thoroughly dead Buck noted how much heavier the animal was as he hefted it back into the cauldron.

That night the family ate Johnny, along with fried plantains and rum spiked coconut milk. They feasted in silence except to groan appreciatively at the wondrousness of a proper meal. If you ask him Buck will tell you he vividly remembers, “Johnny tasted good.”

January, Sunday, and the East End was unnaturally balmy. A cloud reclined on the ground, spreading itself generously in amongst denuded shrubbery, smudging outlines. For an instant the sun burned a hole through the heavy grey haze.

Enthused by the splash of day light I ventured out for a drive. Dirty ice and slick mud lined long residential streets. Overlooking the beach, from behind high dunes where snow obstinately clung, I watched a girl on a pecan brown pony. There was something in the way she held the reins, her arms wide and stiff, as if she was unfamiliar with horseback riding. Despite the distance I could clearly see she was smiling.

It was early afternoon and I continued on my survey. Houses appeared to slumber; shut up with curtains and blinds drawn. They did not look derelict; rather they seemed bloated and suspended, somehow, as if in the middle of a yawn. Tubs and crates had been dragged to the end of driveways, near the curb. Plastic bins stuffed with folded cardboard and red and green wrapping paper and spilling over with strings of ribbon skittering on the breeze.

Soon the remnants of the recent past will be trucked away and we will catch a collective breath and forge ahead with this new year.

Happy New Year.

I just spent a few days in the Rockies of Idaho, in a snow-globe deep-freeze sun drenched valley thousands of feet above sea level. I had been asked to read from my new book by the Ketchum Community Library.

This came to pass because Sabina Dana Plasse, currently Arts & Events editor of the Idaho Mountain Express, brought my book to the powers that be at the library and they extended an invitation. My ego was tickled pink and I accepted and ever since, for the past couple months, I have lived suspended in a state of excitement and terror.

Dana and I met 10 years ago when we were both struggling. We wanted to be writers but met mostly with obstacles and legions of naysayers. We lost touch and now, a decade later and thanks to the possibilities of social networking, we have reconnected.

The town of Ketchum is fairy tale Cowboy. My second day I did the reading at the very magnificent 5 star hotel ski lodge of a library with a roaring fire and cathedral ceilings of sultry dark beams. As if by some extraordinary tumble into another dimension I watched myself striding toward a podium in front of a roomful of seated, expectant, complete strangers. I looked at the faces looking right at me and I figured I must be dreaming because I would never have the guts to do such a thing as this.

Instead of freezing, as I’d expected, I got totally carried away and told stories and chatted on and on and then when I realized I must have abused a good chunk of time I said, “Ok, that’s probably enough about me, if anyone has any questions?”

No one said anything. All these faces stared at me, no one uttering a word. And then it dawned on me, I had forgotten to read from my book. I asked if I should, and someone called out, “Yes, read a story!” So I did, and then the forgiving and tolerant audience effervesced with questions and all of us were soon sharing some laughs.

From the library a group of us stopped in at a restaurant and then wound down at Grumpy’s, a bar as tiny as a train carriage and eccentric like a carnival barker’s caravan.

I’ll be happy for an excuse to go back. I say Ketchum, if you can.

It was soon apparent I did not possess Mary’s instincts for genius in children’s entertainment. Work, such as it was called, amounted to reading an incessant influx of unsolicited scripts. Topics favored the supernatural, and all were laced with syrupy morality messages. Where Mary saw magic I saw putrefaction. My job was to read and reduce these scripts to one hundred word reports. So like school, I marveled. I was printing out my latest report, one hundred words meant to eviscerate a script about a ‘good’ pirate, when I heard:

“Yoo-hoo!” Mary screamed from her office. By now fully on automatic, I eased from my chair to the doorway of her office in a single fluid motion.

“I want the first banquette at Mondiale for twelve-thirty and then confirm the reservation with Pig.” Chomping on her headpiece she handed me a scrap of notepaper with the word ‘Pig’ and a phone number.

For all of Mary’s eccentricities, she had a spotless track record producing hits. She claimed she had a formula for auguring, and amazingly, she was always right, one saccharine children’s brain-rot after another. I had already figured out her secret formula. She passed everything by Willow, her eight year old daughter.

Mary brought Willow to work some days and gave me the odious task of escorting the small child to the bathroom when the need arose, and the need arose all day long.

Back at my desk I phoned Mary’s favorite bistro and reserved the booth for two near the front door. I was feeling like I was definitely getting the hang of things. It was going to be alright after all. Just do my time and presto! Travel and hammocks forever. Before Mary left for lunch I maternally retrieved the iron scaffold from her head.

Down the hall, in a small room filled with machines, the printer was retching a piece of paper. I pulled on the page and got squirted in the chest with ink.

“Cannelloni.” I whispered as loudly as I dared into the intercom.

“Canne-LEO-LEO-LEO-ni.” He sounded exasperated.

“Help! Copy room.”

In moments I heard the sounds of Cannelloni’s bulk lumbering along the hallway and I felt a twinge of embarrassment as the formerly noble printer was reduced to beeping and grinding.

Like a detective come upon a crime scene Cannelloni loomed and coolly absorbed the evidence. He read the clues expertly and crossed the room to the bucking printer. He flicked open a plastic panel and extracted a tumor of crumpled pages. “I’m selling two tickets to the ballgame this Saturday. It’s the fiancé’s birthday and she wants me to take her to the mall and then out to dinner. I hate going to restaurants with her. She’s always telling me I’m too fat, and she doesn’t let me eat anything. She’s a pain in the ass.”

I took my ruined documents and dropped them into a plastic tub labeled ‘Recycle’. “I don’t get it Cannelloni Why are you with this girl? You’re always complaining about her.”

“What can I say? She’s got great tits.”

I returned to my cubicle and lazily rolled back in the comfortable office chair, and fell fast asleep.

“Yoo-hoo!” Mary’s voice pierced some intense dream of a beach and a storm and something to do with running. “Santa!” Mary continued to shriek so that the sound scooped me up and had me standing at attention before I was even fully awake.

“How was lunch?” I asked, gathering myself.

“I can’t understand it. I waited an hour at the restaurant and Pig never showed up!” Mary prattled while she bolted on her head gear and began to slurp on the mouth bit.

From nowhere, a blast of radiation, I knew what had happened. “Ah, um,” I began, the searing heat of clarity microwaving me as I realized I would surely be fired. Reluctantly, I pointed to Mary’s office and said, “I am so sorry, Mary, you might want to sit down for this.” Single file we trooped in and took our positions across from one another at her immense desk.

“What’s with your shirt?” Mary stared at me, her eyes wide with wonderment.

I looked down to see the printer fluid had stained a patch of my blouse. “That’s another story.” I said, and cleared my throat, “I never phoned your friend, Mr. Pig. I guess I forgot. I’m really sorry.”

Mary eyed me, the tip of her tongue flicking against her mouthful of metal, and then she heaved forward and exploded with the laughter of a pack of hyenas. She spluttered until tears gushed from her eyes.

“Everyone makes mistakes.” She said, and she dabbed at the brine with a tissue.

…TO BE CONTINUED

Emma, a girl I knew from college, offered up the use of her fuchsia moiré satin sofa, “for a week or so, until you find a place of your own.” Emma’s trust fund took care of the details of her comfortable life. This included the ground floor of a townhouse on the Upper East Side. Half way along a leafy side street, down one step to a sunken courtyard the heavy front door was couched beneath a stone archway. This opened to a living room of oversized furniture in shades of Gothic and blood, and in an alcove the fuchsia moiré satin sofa now converted to my bed. From the living room a corridor with kitchen and bathroom to either side and in the back one enormous bedroom with a fireplace and a four poster bed laden with frilly pillows, and trays of soiled crockery and upturned egg shells filled with a thousand cigarette ends. Beyond a set of French doors was a petite garden, with a wrought iron bench and an actual grass lawn the size of a bathmat.

I did not see much of Emma, and since I could hear her television constantly on I imagined she lounged in bed all day. Emma was not a talker, and her reputation at college was that she was a little ‘slow’. Occasionally, often after I was tucked in on the sofa, Emma would slink out into the night, all dressed up in fancy clothes. She never said goodbye. When I left for work in the morning I presumed she was returned to her four poster bed, but I did not think to check. In spite of her hospitality her existence scarcely scratched my consciousness. In any case, she could not compete for entertainment value with the sights I saw on my daily jaunt to and from work. Like the guy in a green tutu and high heels and full on make-up, his well defined solid ass muscles gyrating out there for all to see. Or the little old lady, in an electric chair, speeding in amongst the taxicabs down the center lane of Fifth Avenue, a male nurse chasing, hollering.

My commute entailed twenty minutes of zigzagging from the Upper East Side to the axis of bedlam, otherwise known as Times Square. Each day I passed a schoolyard, half a block of cement and basketball hoops with no nets. In the morning it teemed with boisterous small kids, hunchbacked by book bags. And in the evenings, on my walk home the courtyard was empty on the school side, but on the street side of the chain link fence lingered a throng of men in hooded sweatshirts and baggy jeans and peacock flora sneakers. They were always there, and when I walked by them they hissed: ”Sess, sess, sess.”

For the first few days of this I was keenly terrified and kept my sights trained on the ground and scurried by them. But after a while my curiosity was tickled. One evening, coming up on the gang I stopped, and asked, “What the hell is ‘Sess’?”

“Sessamilia.” They burst into a chorus.

“What the hell?”

“Watch your language,” said the tallest and widest of the group. He then took it upon himself to explain his was a marijuana outfit and that he and his men owned that particular corner. He flashed me a wad of cash from his pocket. Some of his cohorts also pulled out rolls of bills.

“Can I work with you?” I asked, semi-serious.

“This work is for men.” The tall wide man began, and then he stirred with righteousness and doled out a lecture with threads along the lines of what did I think I was doing walking around in the evening by myself at my age? And on he sermonized. This was not what I had expected from New York City. I was so stunned I meekly took the scolding. At least now I had a supplier. Nights I began letting myself into Emma’s bedroom, to access the garden, and the wrought iron bench upon which to sit and smoke a joint. I was tiptoeing through her room for some time before I noticed the mass of flotsam on the bed was not Emma. Thus I learned she did not always return from her nocturnal forays.

…TO BE CONTINUED

“Late.” Mary Salt remarked. She crossed her arms and stared, letting her eyes rove over me, “and you look like hell. This is not the way to make a good impression on your new boss.” Each word she spoke emerged in a bubble and then hung, in slimy drips, on the rungs of her metal headdress. She wobbled forward on the tottering shoes and just before what looked like an imminent fall she lurched into a chair. Her slender body landed with enough force to roll the chair into the side of the table, so that it shuddered. Once settled, Mary slung out a slim arm, extending her hand for me to shake. Her fingers were dry as winter twigs.

“In case you’re wondering,” Mary patted the bird cage around her head, “my dentist makes me wear this contraption.” Mary sucked on the mouth bit, like a lizard panting between succulent mastications. She was awful to look at and I easily pictured myself running away. Instead, I handed over my resume. The typed words were in a huge font listing education, summer jobs, likes, dislikes and hobbies.

Mary took the resume in her hands, and as she read it she massaged the page with desiccated fingertips. And then she barked, spitting, “Is this a joke?”

I was stunned by her response. Nausea flooded my senses. In spite of desperately wanting to run all the way home, equally I had not considered rejection. After all, I had no contingency plan. “Please,” I begged, “you don’t understand, I really need this job. My whole life depends on…” I could not control my voice from cracking.

“Your name is Santa? For real? And what’s with the phony Brit accent? Is that for my benefit?” Mary’s narrow frame began to shake and she started to guffaw, hee- hawing like a donkey.

I took a deep breath, steadying myself for the audition of a lifetime, “my full name is Santa Maria Astral Smith-Hawthorne.” Heart rattling, I felt I was clawing my way back from some invisible brink. “I’m American, born on Long Island, but I was raised by a very English aunt and uncle. It’s complicated.”

“Whatever!” Mary crushed my resume into a ball and lobbed it over her shoulder. “Follow me.” She commanded and darted from the room.

Down a corridor and through a constant spray of drool Mary chattered, moving surprisingly fast on her towering shoes and I had to hasten my gait to keep up. “Office supplies in there.” Mary flicked a hand toward an open door we sped by. “Over here is the copy room. You know how to use a copy machine?”

“Of course!” I said. In truth I did not, but now was not the time to divulge trifles.

“Pay is six hundred dollars a week, not including taxes, and I’ll give you vouchers for the cafeteria on the fifth floor.” Mary outlined the duties of my job as her assistant and she explained how I would very likely become frustrated because my responsibilities would be rote while her own job, a developer of children’s television programming, was scintillating. Spinning her wedding band around her finger, Mary said, “I’m a lucky lady, great husband, great kid, great job…” Mary droned on and I spaced out, that is until I heard her say, “…in about six months you can look forward to developing projects of your own.…’ Mary paused and winked at me, saliva-spume twinkling.

Six months, I laughed to myself, while conveying nothing of my thoughts, in six months I’ll be long gone. Six months from now I hope to be irretrievably lost somewhere down the path of adventure.

Having fully circumnavigated the eleventh floor Mary and I were now standing in the foyer. “Consider yourself hired. I expect you here at ten sharp tomorrow morning. Get your parking ticket validated by the receptionist.”

The reception area was an oval in shades of beige, with a desk dead center. The man at the desk was talking on the telephone so I leaned against a wall and waited. The man was big and soft, young yet balding. The man was speaking softly, his torso was curled forward and hunched. But his words were just loud enough that I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. “I love you too,” he was murmuring, “I love you more,” he cajoled and then delicately hung up the phone.

“Sorry to bother you Mr. uh… Cannelloni?” as I approached I quickly glanced at the name plaque conveniently placed at the lip of the table ‘Gianfranco Canneleoni’.

“Pain in the ass!” The man shouted, and as he did so he picked up the telephone receiver and slammed it hard several times into the cradle. “It’s Canne-LEO-ni. My mother calls me Gianni. You can call me John.” He smiled at me and the furrows on his brow relaxed. As he spoke he took my parking ticket and thumped it with a rubber stamp. “That was my girlfriend I was talking to. We’re getting married soon and she’s all freaked out. Pain in the ass!”

TO BE CONTINUED

I threw some effort at the Web and conjured a television producer, one Mary Salt hell-bound on hiring an assistant, because, as she said, she was ‘desperate’. She needed someone ‘Pronto’, no skills required. Show up at 12 tomorrow. A call to a pal with a guest room and I was good to go. I could scarcely believe how easy this all was. I couldn’t restrain a pitying laugh when I thought of my former college-mates, clustered solemnly around the fount of knowledge, wasting time on theory when they could be out here in the world of practice.

The route from the beach to the middle of Manhattan is on average three hours. Reflexively I set up cruise control, reclined my seat and zoned out. My plan was to work only long enough to earn the funds to abscond and traipse the globe, until I turned twenty-five and received my inheritance. This tantalizing inheritance was a known quantity, but being as the relatives were Brits details were never discussed.

I was minding my own business in the center lane when I was startled by a blast. I snapped to attention to see something swirling rushing at me; it looked like a seal. Weirdly, it disappeared from sight. I searched in my rearview mirror but I could see no trace.

Up ahead a long haul truck switched on a stadium’s worth of warning lights, flaring and flashing. A second explosion went off, and another seal flipped through the air.

Tires were disengaging from the truck’s axle; bouncing haphazardly. A quick check of the flow of traffic and I dodged into the right lane. Vaguely I wondered what would happen to a car if it was to run over one of those tires.

My musings were interrupted by a man in a van. He had sidled up with a stricken look on his face. He was blaring his horn and pointing fingers at me. Oh go away, I thought and checked my watch, I’m on a schedule.

Next, a bus crammed with nuns in full black and white regalia slowed beside me and all of them were gesticulating, their faces vibrant with alarm.

What the hell? I negotiated to the shoulder of the highway, and parked.

I exited and met with a bad smell. I disregarded it, waving it off as a product of mid-Island over-population and took a look at my car. I could see nothing wrong. I walked around the back. Again, perfection, unless you count the crease in the bumper; a tree and a bad parking job. I was on the verge of concluding my inspection when I noticed an odd shape protruding from beneath the car, like a shark fin. I crouched to see most of a monster truck tire applied unevenly to the undercarriage of my automobile. A waft of stink stung my eyes, singed my nose. The tire was not on fire, but it was cooking up a nasty stench.

I tugged on it and it moved a fraction. I tugged some more, and it moved some more. It was slow going. Eventually, I was back on the road. I felt disgusting with sweat and a flushed hot face. It was less immediate that I noticed my hands were stained with sticky tar and much of it was already tie-dye-patterned down my blouse and my skirt. I was a wreck. I didn’t even know how bad I was until compared to the spotless hi-tech sleek environs of the futuristic television executive offices.

Mahogany table, leather arm chairs, floor to ceiling plate glass windows with views of the stratosphere, and myself in Nascar-casual Friday pit-crew attire.

The double doors blasted open and in barreled a tiny dark haired lady. “Name’s Mary Salt. Call me Mary,” she said, spraying saliva. Stick thin, wobbling on six inch wedge shoes Mary was sporting a remarkable metal contraption on her head. Like a halo made of aerials it contoured her skull and entered her mouth like a horse bit.

TO BE CONTINUED

Despite more than forty years stateside Uncle Archibald and Auntie Mildred remained distinctly British; they studiously maintained their Queen’s English, they belonged to a local bird watching society and they drank a lot of sherry. Another throwback to the motherland was their modus operandi of keeping a stiff upper lip.

For the first few weeks of the summer holidays the relatives decided the best way to handle my “stubborn streak” was to ignore the matter. We three had gone some rounds before, through the years, and I was familiar with the routine.

“Gorgeous weather.” Auntie Mildred said with her back to me, stirring baked beans in a pot on the stove. And then she wiped her twitchy fingers on the lace edge of her apron. “Could make a person want to do something with their lives.”

I was lolling in a doorway, and I made a big point of crossing my arms and exhaling loudly. Max was always by my side, charmingly overprotective.

For most of his life Uncle Archibald had worked in the capacity of curator of the estate of an ex-pat English writer, claiming some far-flung blood connection by way of qualification. Had moved from his home on the south coast of England with his then young bride, to take the job.

“Lovely, Mildred, we don’t say gorgeous. We say lovely, or splendid. Never gorgeous.” Uncle Archibald’s response was muffled by the newspaper he hid behind. While Uncle Archibald was not the funniest person I would ever know he was first-rate and his only visible weakness was gluttony. The pile-up of chins and corpulence was beyond portly.

He could have his newspaper, I thought, I have Max. Max was not fooled by the faux civility and he would press his whole body against me, and make fierce faces at the relatives. It was overkill, but very appealing.

Auntie Mildred was a traditional housewife content to fuss about the hearth, fry sausages on Sundays, and pad her nest with a dutiful devotion. Without fail every day Uncle Archibald went to work with a bag of sandwiches prepared for him the night before by Auntie Mildred. Punctilious, he was home by six in the evening, in time for a meal Auntie Mildred called “high tea”, usually comprised of baked beans and towers of buttered toast, crusts off. Post repast the relatives liked to molder in upholstered armchairs, one on either side of a fire of pine cones, and read beagle hunting periodicals and sip Madeira sherry.

One morning Uncle Archibald, gathering his briefcase and his bag of sandwiches, ruled on my sentence, “No college, no free ride Lovie.”

“No problem!” I spluttered, hoping to mask the shock I felt at the grotesque news.

“If you don’t change your mind about school you’ll need to move out by the end of the summer. Action Lovie, it’s time for action.”

I did nothing. For the rest of the summer I put the overambitious chore out of my mind. Instead I closed off and curled up in a hammock under the arched boughs of a Mulberry tree, where I read adventure books. Each tome convinced me more my own road in life should be the Gringo trail, the path of the traveler, the explorer. Max was usually close by flopped on his side, snout ruffling as he growled in his sleep. I imagined he was dreaming of rabbits. Now the last days of August were upon me and time was evaporating. As a token gesture I scrolled the internet employment sites but inevitably I could not find anything agreeable. Either a dead chicken could get the job but the pay was low, or ridiculous quantities of years of ‘experience’ were required or no need applying. I’ll admit I was disheartened.

In the evenings I would follow Max across the front yards and the back lawns of the homes of neighbors, meandering our way to the beach. Rabbits sprang about and Max devoted a lot of energy to trying to catch them. Chasing at full speed, carving corners low to the ground like a motorcycle, he got awfully close and I wouldn’t mean to but sometimes I’d lose my nerve and yell at him to leave the defenseless bunnies be. Except that Max never caught a rabbit, which was a relief, although I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed for him. He was cut like a body builder, he had speed like Ali, but he couldn’t catch a bunny rabbit.