Chapter 3: Taft Explains Things A Little (Pages 6-10)

Song for this part: "This is your Life," The Killers.

People in the mall paid no attention to her.

After a few minutes, she opened her eyes again and looked. Tears formed in the corner of her eyes, but before they could do more than well up, slightly, she set her mouth firmly as she put the shopping bags down.

“I can go back,” she said. She repeated it. “I can go back.”

“You cannot,” Taft said, but stopped talking because everything shattered into fragments around them, the After collapsing into an exploding swirl of images and pieces and hazy notions, an array of Saoirse’s thoughts jumbling and tumbling faster and faster, spinning around them with a beautiful but still frightening speeding twirl.

They were moving, then they were not.

The flurry stopped and they stood in the mall, still. Saoirse looked around. Her lips grew flat and hard. She began walking, picking up the shopping bags, and then a few steps later dropping them. Taft followed her, and people swerved around them, looking no more surprised at the two of them than they would any other two people in a mall moving that rapidly. Before she could begin to wonder why nobody was surprised to see a dead president (and a dead woman?) walking through a mall rapidly and angrily, everything dissolved again into the shards of images and smells and emotions that swirled around them again, disorienting her like she was caught in a snowglobe that had fallen off a shelf. This time Saoirse kept walking, though, purposefully, although she could only tell she was walking because she kept her legs moving.

“Please,” Taft began, but she was not listening to him.

“I can go back,” she said and kept walking through the flurry. Behind her, Taft was drifting; now perpendicular to her, now off to her left. He kept trying to walk, too, but seemed to be having a harder time.

She stopped then and turned and the swirling grew more tempestuous and dark.

“Why are you still here?” she asked.

“I’m trying to help you,” he said, but she shook her head.

“Why are you here,” she said, and gestured around her at the maelstrom of the After. “This is mine,” she said.

“Or is it ours?” She added, and chewed her lip, pausing in her maybe-walking.

The blue-black fragments around them coalesced and the two of them dropped into the ocean.

William Howard Taft spluttered and splashed and righted himself. As he began to tread water with his hands and get himself under control, Saoirse watched him and tried to gather her senses.

“It’s only about 4 feet deep,” she said. Her hands were waving gently in the water. She watched him touch bottom and stand up, moustache dripping. He picked up his hat and set it on his head. They both looked around.

On either side of them, blue-black water stretched off to infinity. The water farther out was as flat and still as a pane of glass. Nearer them were the ripples that remained of their blustery entry, traveling outwards from the epicenter that was Saoirse. She saw that. She saw that the ripples were focused on her and not on William Howard Taft.

There was no land in sight. Anywhere.

The sky overhead was spackled with stars that were at least four times larger than ordinary, stars that did not twinkle but which were closer or larger or brighter than the stars she was used to seeing. They did not reflect in the water. The scene was lit with luminescence.

“Where are we now?” William Howard Taft asked it, but Saoirse had been about to. They both looked around some more. The water was warm, as warm as a bath. Saoirse wondered if anything lived in it. She cupped some in her hand and looked at it. It remained blue-black in her hand, not clear, so the color was in the water itself, she realized, not the result of the way light glanced off of it or did not glance off of it. She held the water up to her mouth, then stopped and wondered if it was safe.

Then she remembered where she was.

“It’s safe,” she said, to herself, and sipped it.

Fresh. Not salty.

Her hand dripped water back into the sea. Her hair was wet. She tried to remember whether in any dream she’d ever had she had been able to feel things, to feel wet or taste fresh, but all she could think of was a dream she’d had where she thought that she’d parked her car on a hill but the brake did not work and she ended up rolling backwards rampaging through the city.

She wondered why she’d thought of that.

“Why are you here?” she asked William Howard Taft again. She did not wait for an answer but began striding off in the water, in a random direction. She felt sure that this freshwater ocean with its large stars was a clue, a signpost.

Jobst. It's fun to say.

jobst can help you have a better life.

What's "Jobst," you ask? I'm glad you brought it up. Well, I'm glad I brought it up and then pretended that you asked about it, because that little skit lets me tell you that "Jobst" is a makes of hosiery, stockings, socks, surgical compression gear, and other leg-related wear that can make your life a lot better.

If you've got sore legs, varicose veins, aching feet, or other lower-extremity problems, life can suck. Your legs ache, you're tired, you don't want to do anything, someone's always eaten the last slice of pizza (the latter one might only apply to my life, today), and on and on.

The legwear from Jobst can improve that. From comfortable support socks for men, socks that provide lift and compression and breathing, to stockings that help women's legs avoid the ravages of time and standing and aging, the Jobst gear can help almost anyone's foot and leg problems. That's not just me saying that, either, even though I'm the only (and most reliable) source you should ever need. But the recommendation for Jobst compression stockings comes from doctors, too -- Jobst is the number one most recommended brand among physicians.

So quit having a miserable day: Just get yourself some Jobst gear, and maybe another pizza, and start enjoying life.

Chapter 3: Taft Explains Things A Little (pages 1-5)

Song for this part: "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying." (Belle & Sebastian)

Saoirse realized she was dead with a suddenness like the flipping on of a light switch; suddenly, the knowledge was just there, the way an optical illusion switches so that you are looking at two people about to kiss instead of a vase, and you can’t go back to seeing the vase.

Then she focused on William Howard Taft. Why was he here?

“Why are you here?” she asked.

He had not yet answered her other question, about how long she had been dead. Now, he said:

“I don’t know.”

Saoirse wondered which question he was answering.

William Howard Taft looked at her and said “This is the After you have made.”

“The After is where we are.” Saoirse said. She did not need to make it a question.

“Yes.”

“Heaven?”

“Probably.”

“Is it?” Saoirse asked. “There are no pearly gates or angels or clouds or hosts of people singing the praises of any eternal beings.” She paused and looked out the window again. “Or are there and I just haven’t seen them yet?”

“There are, and there are not.”

Ansel and Stephanie and Chuck and Austin were all watching this with interest but not with any sort of disbelief or surprise or shock or emotion, period. They were watching it just as they would watch Saoirse talk with her mother or a guest at the house who was saying nothing more interesting than boy the traffic sure was bad on the way up here.

“Come with me,” William Howard Taft said. “Well, that’s not quite accurate. Let me come with you.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Saoirse said, as William Howard Taft stood up and held out his giant hand. She took it and stood up and he led her to the door.

Ansel stood up. “Should we come, too?”

“No,” said William Howard Taft, but he said it to Saoirse. She looked back at her family, standing a few feet away as William Howard Taft held the door open.

“No,” she said. They stepped outside onto the porch. William Howard Taft looked at her.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Go ahead what?” she asked. But he just stood there. She wondered what he meant, and as she did so she was standing suddenly in the middle of a desert.

She looked around surprised. She had not even blinked. William Howard Taft was there, and had already broken a sweat. She could see the drops beading on his nose. Her feet began to skid on the giant sand dune. This was a real desert, the way she’d always pictured one…

… the way she’d always pictured one…

“That’s right,” said William Howard Taft, encouragingly, his sentence unfinished – yet.

They were on a rocky seacoast. The breakers sploooshed against the rocks, throwing themselves against the stone in seeming futility. It seemed they were ineffective but Saoirse knew they were not, that those rocks were broken down over the eons. She looked down at her feet. A small pool of water near her contained two starfish, one larger, one smaller. A sea urchin sat beside them, and a few plants, and a small fish swam there. She recognized a tidal pool and knew that when the high tide came back, these small creatures would be swept back out to sea to rejoin their lives there.

… rejoin their lives there…

… seemingly futile but not…

“A tidal pool,” she said. William Howard Taft squatted down and looked at it. He poked a starfish with one meaty finger.

“That’s right,” he continued, but he looked at her now.

They sat on a plastic-feeling bench in a shopping mall and Saoirse saw shopping bags sitting in front of her as William Howard Taft looked around. She leaned forward and saw the shopping bags contained clothes, clothes she liked and would probably wear. She saw price tags bearing prices far higher than any amount she would have allowed herself to spend. She saw a compact disc of music Ansel would like if he were here.

… if he were here…

“Is he?”

She turned to William Howard Taft, sitting in the bustling mall. “Is Ansel here? Are they all?” She looked down at the CD.

“Did we all die?”

“Is that important?” William Howard Taft asked.

Saoirse lost track of what William Howard Taft had just asked her, though, because something worked through in her mind.

“I’m dead…” she said. Before William Howard Taft could confirm that again, she thought

… the way she’d always pictured one…

… rejoin their lives there…

… seemingly futile but not…

And looked up at him and said “I can go back.”

William Howard Taft looked surprised, and said “No, you cannot,” but she interrupted him, rushing into her speech:

“Yes, I can. That’s why you took me to those places… why I took me to those places. To show me that I can go back. That this is not permanent.” She felt as though she should be breathing more heavily, or having her heart speed up, but neither of those things happened, and she reminded herself that she was dead, and went on before William Howard Taft could derail her. “That’s why I feel so disoriented, that’s why none of this makes sense to me, that’s why I’m so… out of it and nothing’s working, isn’t it? That’s why you came to me. Because I’m not supposed to be here and I can go back.

“Those three places, these three places. The desert. That was, that was symbolic. It was how I sometimes used to view my life, this harsh thing that I had to deal with, this environment that I was not ready for, the constant stress and worry. It was my life the way I’d always pictured it, but then we went from there to the seashore, to the birthplace of life itself – that’s what the sea is, it’s where life began,”

“No, it did not,” began William Howard Taft, but Saoirse held up her hand and he stopped, politely confused.

“And the tidal pools, little bits of life trapped where they’re not supposed to be, swept there by forces that they weren’t prepared to cope with, stuck, it seems, in this limited place that’s like their life but it’s not,” Saoirse paused for a moment, worked it through, and said: “They could rejoin their lives, they have a chance to do that, a chance that’s seemingly futile but not and as I thought that, don’t you see, we came here, to the mall I usually shop at,” Saoirse dug into the shopping bag “And it’s filled with presents for my family, just like I’d bring after a trip, so I can go back. I can go back, and I don’t have to stay dead.”

She was both calm and excited, and wondered how that was possible. In mere moments, she had gone from bewildered at dinner to certain she was dead to positive she could be not dead, and tried to sort out how she should feel.

“No, no, no, you cannot do…” William Howard Taft protested, but he was interrupted by Saoirse standing up in the middle of the mall, holding the shopping bags, and closing her eyes. She squeezed them shut, squeezed them so hard that William Howard Taft could see the lines of strain and stress. Her lips moved; she was mouthing the words I’m coming back I’m coming back.

Chapter 3: Taft Explains Things A Little

Pages 1-5:

Pages 6-10

Pages 11-15

Pages 16-20

Masterpiece in Progress? Everything I write is a Masterpiece From The Outset.

I'm supposed to be, anyday now starting to work on a script with a friend of mine who says I'm the "zombie expert." (It's nice to be recognized for something).

He lives in Milwaukee, and I live in Middleton, about 70 miles apart, which means we're going to be collaborating on this thing via the Web. That's fine with me, because it makes sense and because it's going to make me money just by sharing files. Here's how:

Miss Upload has a Free File Hosting service that lets me upload music, photos, papers... even scripts... to the site, and then, when people download them, I get points. Those points can then be converted into cold, hard, cash.

Well, not cold, hard cash, but electronic cash through Paypal. You get the picture, though: I upload my version of the script or changes or pages or whatever the Hollywood In Milwaukee types call them, and then he downloads them, and I get money.

That's a cool feature of Miss Upload, but it's not why I'm going to be using it. The reason I'm going to use it is because it's free, it's fast, and it's easy to use. Have you ever tried sending two hundred pages of lines about people eating brains through email? It takes forever to attach that stuff, and then it gets lost in the junk folder, or you get a message that the file's too large. That happens to me all the time: things have to be broken into two or three or more files to email them, and then when I get those, I've got to open and download and work on all those separate groupings of three pages.

Not with Miss Upload, though. They can handle large-scale files, and they can keep them private, too, unlike some other sites that let anyone see your Masterpiece in Progress. Not only that, but they offer great tech support if you run into problems. Try getting tech support from your online email provider.

If you've got a lot of work to do, or need more services, there's even an upgrade to a paid premium service that I might take advantage of for the benefits it offers.
So I'll be using Miss Upload to notify my friend of the changes in the scene where the guy gets his left ear bitten off, not his right... don't tell him about the making money part, though. That's our little secret.

Chapter 2: the After Begins (pages 16-20)

Song for this part: "Pop Goes The World," Men Without Hats:


“Hello,” answered Saoirse, a bit uncertainly. The man’s suit was at least a century out of date, although she did not know that, precisely, she just knew that it was old-fashioned. It had too many buttons and a vest and the cut looked… off.

“May I come in?” the man asked.

“Of course, yes,” said Saoirse, not sure what the etiquette was here. She just knew that she wanted the man to come in. He came in and looked around. He hunched a little as he walked into the living room, though he did not need to. Saoirse thought that his hunch was the reflexive action of someone, such as him, who was habitually too big for the rooms he was in. He looked around and did not quite straighten up. He took his coat off and folded it, neatly, over his left forearm.

“Well, this is very nice,” he said. He looked at Saoirse. “Do you like it?”

She looked around the room. It had been a long time since she’d looked at her house and wondered whether she liked it. It just was her house. She liked it just fine, most of the time, except maybe when things went wrong like a pipe bursting or when she stopped to ponder the fact that none of the furniture appeared to belong with any of the other furniture.

“I do,” she said. It was true. She liked her house. “I really do.”

“But?” the man asked.

She did not yet wonder who he was; he had commanded the room as soon as he walked in, had taken over the space and was clearly in charge, not just because he was so big, but because he appeared used to being in charge. Saoirse did not mind. She wanted, she knew suddenly, someone to come in and be in charge. And so this man had done that. She thought about that for a second, but the man said again:

“But?”

“But…”

Saoirse did not have to ask him to finish his sentence; she knew he was expecting her to finish hers.

She did so: “But it’s not quite right.”

He looked like a man who would harrumph, who would chew on his moustache and declare things to be preposterous in his voice, a voice that could obviously become booming if he wished it to. But he spoke quietly.

“It is, in fact, quite right.”

Ansel and Stephanie regarded him without curiosity. Austin was looking at him from right by his foot, staring up the bulk of the man almost in awe of his height. Chuck, Saoirse saw, was poking the man’s shoe. She wondered when Chuck had stopped being afraid of strangers.

As she wondered that, Chuck came over and grabbed onto her leg and hid half-behind her, peeking out. The man watched him. So did Saoirse. Ansel and Stephanie and Austin appeared to regard it all as normal, this large man in their living room, Chuck’s change of personality, the conversation.

“See? It’s quite right.”

Saoirse looked down at Chuck.

“Did I… make him do that? Did I make him be afraid of strangers again?”

The man regarded her.

“Yes,” he said simply.

She looked down at Chuck.

“You made him talk intelligently, too,” the man added.

Saoirse picked up Chuck now and held him close.

“You then made him stop talking intelligently and go back to being a toddler.”

The man then looked at Stephanie. “Did you enjoy the mountains?”

Stephanie nodded. “It was fun.”

“Dangerous?”

“Only a little,” Stephanie said.

“As I’d expect.” The man considered his massive knuckles. “As you’d expect, I should put it.”

Ansel put his hand on the man’s shoulder, reaching up to do it. “Can I get you something? We were just starting dinner. You’re welcome to stay.”

The man looked at the dinner table. “It appears excellent, as always. But I’m afraid I don’t care for the Italians’ foodstuffs. I will pass on your repast.” He chuckled and looked back at Saoirse.

“I expect you like food from the Mediterranean.”

She looked over at the table. “I don’t know,” she said. “Sure.”

“You must.”

Why would he say that?

But she knew.

“I do like them,” she said.

“I like all of the food on the table,” she added.

“But I didn’t prepare it,” she finished.

Everyone now looked at the table, then back at her.

“Did I?” she asked.

There was a blink. She was sitting on the couch. The large man was sitting next to her, a respectful distance from her. The couch leaned towards him, leaned severely towards him, he was so heavy. Ansel and Stephanie and Chuck and Austin stood nearby. As she sat there, Ansel sat down and took her hand.

It was exactly what she needed.

The man leaned in.

“You’re okay.” he said. He did not ask it. It was a statement, a fact. He said it the same way he might say The sky is above the ground—the tone of his voice emphasized that this was not even open for debate, was not a subject of questioning or even, in the long or short run, something that needed to be said. But he said it again: “You’re okay.”

“I am,” said Saoirse, and though she meant it as a question it came out with the same tone as the man had used.

“See? You understand.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. You just don’t know that you understand.”

The thought skimmed across her mind, briefly, stored away to be mulled later: If I don’t know that I understand, then how can I understand? It was one of those riddles like the sound of one hand clapping or a tree falling, something that she would lie awake sometimes and think about in a pleasant way, savoring the way that there were no good answers and no bad answers, no answers at all and everything was an answer to it.

“Okay,” she said now.

The man put out his large hand, took hers in it and put his other hand on top. In a formal, old-fashioned way, he said “I’m very pleased to meet you. I am William Howard Taft.”

“The president.”

“Yes.”

“The dead president.” Saoirse did not feel any surprise.

She knew why.

But she persisted. “You’ve been dead a long time.”

“Yes.”

They sat in silence. Having hit the limit of politeness, William Howard Taft placed her hand back on her lap. Ansel rubbed her back lightly.

“How long have I been dead?” asked Saoirse.

If you come to my bathroom after this, you'll be thrilled.

Little changes can make big differences in how you feel about your house and how your house looks to everyone who visits. Little changes like putting in a new sink.

Every morning, I get ready for work, and every morning I look at the same old dingy faucet with the same old hard-water stains and the cream-colored standard, generic sink on the cream-colored standard generic vanity, and every morning, I think the same thing: "Eh."

That's what visitors to my house will be thinking, too (as they root through my medicine cabinet) and what potential buyers will be thinking if I sell the house, as I threaten to do all the time.

I was looking around one day at a local plumbing shop (I was there to pick up a new faucet handle) and I came across something that really wowed me: Glass Vessel Sinks.

These are really neat looking sinks; they look like a bowl just perched there, but they're connected up, and they fancy up a bathroom just by existing.

The problem was that the plumbing place wanted a ton of money for their sinks, and I didn't want to invest a ton of money in anything that wasn't "A new house in Hawaii," so I gave up on that and went on with my life.

Then I found MR Direct, which sells these same kind of sinks -- and even fancier ones -- for way less than the stores usually do. They've got the glass vessel sink I wanted, the one shown here, for only $39. They've got even better ones for $79 or less, and all of them cost less than any of the ones I saw in the store. The more I clicked around their site, the more I saw that I wanted, like a glass vessel sink shaped and colored like a leaf -- that's way more decorative and neat than what I've got or what I was going to buy.

What's nice, too, is that they've got reviews of the products on the site, so you can find out if they were easy to install or how they work before you actually buy and take them home. Imagine trying that in a big-box store. I doubt it'd work.

They've got other sinks, too, including kitchen sinks, granite sinks, faucets, and more, but the main draw for me was those glass vessel sinks. I'm tired of saying Eh when I get up in the morning.

Chapter 2: the After Begins (Pages 11-15)

Song for this part: "Chelsea Hotel," Regina Spektor:

She looked at Ansel.

“When did we fix the driveway?” she asked.
“Hmmm?” he asked. Stephanie looked up at her curiously. Ansel took a sip of milk.

Saoirse looked around. “The Remberts. Look at their yard. It’s mowed.”

“Right,” said Ansel, standing to join her.

“It’s never mowed. They were growing it out, remember? Giving everyone hay fever? They were letting it all go wild. I talked to Susan about it, told her that all she’d get letting it go natural was long grass and dandelions, and that the dandelions would just spread, and she said that they’d take care of it…” her voice trailed off.

The Rembert’s lawn was mowed and not covered with dandelions.

She sat down.

On the floor.

“Everything’s wrong,” she said.

“No, it’s not,” said Ansel. “You just said yourself: everything’s perfect.”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me help you up,” and he gently held her hand and elbow and she stood. He looked at her. He looked her in the eye, then kissed the tip of her nose in that playful way he had. “Maybe you just want a nap.”

She noticed he put it that way: maybe you just want a nap. Not maybe you’re just tired.

She was not tired.

She was… what?

Exactly what did she feel?

She couldn’t tell.

Ansel looked at her. He was not concerned, not upset, not scared. He was loving. She could see that in his eyes. She’d always been able to see that in his eyes, more or less, but she could see it clearly, now.

She looked back out at the perfect lawns. The sun was shining. She knew, somehow, that if she went outside, there would be only the slightest stirring of a breeze. There would be shade enough to protect her from the sun. It would not be humid. The air, she knew, would smell of fresh-cut grass.

She said again: “Everything’s perfect.”

“Come on, sit down,” said Ansel. He led her to her chair and sat her down. He handed her the water glass. She sipped from it and this time the thought but where did I get this slipped from her mind almost before it could begin. Almost. But it did begin and she felt, momentarily, bewildered.

Nobody was looking at her right now. Ansel had gone back to talking about Stephanie’s day. Austin interrupted, telling about a comic book he was reading.

Saoirse looked at Chuck as a thought occurred to her. “You talked, just like a grown-up, didn’t you? You talked like that but then you stopped,” she said to him.

Chuck just stared at her, wide-eyed.

She recalled why she had wanted to get pregnant again. When they’d decided to have Chuck, Stephanie was in her teens and Austin had been five. She’d missed having a toddler. She loved when Stephanie and then Austin were about two, when they could walk and climb and kind of say things and could understand you but were still so new to the world that everything was fun and everything was a challenge, the age when they would fall asleep on your shoulder and their head fit right into the crook of her neck perfectly, and they’d wrap arms around her neck and legs around her ribs and cling to her while they slept and she walked. She’d missed that and wanted to experience it again, and so she and Ansel had decided to have one more, and Saoirse had been absorbing every possible minute with him, trying to experience it all again one last time.

Chuck looked at her and for a millisecond she saw understanding there. Suddenly, she knew he would not talk again and, too, that she did not want him to talk again.

It hit her in a flash: Chuck would not talk again because she did not want him to. She didn’t know how she realized that, or why it was so, but she knew that it was.

Her head whirled, just for a moment.

Ansel and Stephanie looked at her again, and Chuck got off his chair to come crawl into her lap. She rested her chin on his head, as she liked to do, and smelled his clean, curly blondish hair. It was exactly what she needed at times like this, exactly what she wanted to calm her a little and help her relax…

Then that bothered her too. Why was everything so perfect?

The doorbell rang. She looked towards the front door, seeing it at the end of the front hall.

“Who’s that?” she asked. They all just sat there. Stephanie shrugged.

“Are you expecting anyone?” she looked at Ansel. He shook his head.

“Nope.”

“Stephanie?”

“No, Mom.”

Saoirse stood up and went to open the door.

Standing, framed in the half-window of the screen door, slightly obscured by the screen itself, and shadowed a little by the porch, stood a portly man with a large moustache, the kind of moustache one never saw anymore. The man took up most of the small space and his silhouette extended beyond the view of the screen door. He was slightly balding and looked concerned, a little hot, and expectant.

“Hello,” he said.

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Chapter 2: the After Begins (Pages 6-10)

Song for this part: "If The News Makes You Sad, Don't Watch It." Broken Records:

Stephanie scooped noodles onto Austin’s plate, and Austin put a napkin on his leg.

“Are you going to sit down, honey?” asked Ansel. “Do you need some help?”

Saoirse sat down. She set her water glass on the table and looked around. Her eye caught the window next to the table, the window that Chuck liked to look out of, the window that usually had about a hundred handprints on it. She used to clean that window every night. Then it was every other night. Then it was once a week. Then it was when company was coming over, because she had grown tired of cleaning it and grown tired of trying to get Chuck to stop touching it.

The window was clean.

“Aren’t you having any, Mom?” asked Stephanie. Saoirse spooned some noodles and sauce onto her plate and stared at her family. Something bothered her about this all.

Her family talked around her. Stephanie was explaining about a science fair project she was working on with her friend Laurel, how they were going to electrify something or de-electrify something, and Ansel was telling her to be careful and Austin asked whether it would hurt if they got electricitied, and Stephanie said to him,

“No, you mean electrified.”

Austin nodded and ate some spaghetti and paused to wipe the splotch of sauce off his chin.

“What did you just say?” asked Saoirse. Stephanie looked up at her.

“I said we’re going to study whether a low-level electric current can…” but Saoirse interrupted her.

“No, I mean to Austin. What did you say to Austin?” Stephanie finished her chewing and swallowed and answered.

“I corrected him. I told him he meant ‘electrified.’ Not ‘electricitied.’”

Ansel was watching her.

Austin was watching her.

Chuck was not. He was eating quietly, picking up one noodle at a time and putting it into his mouth instead of throwing them on the floor or rubbing them in his hair.

Stephanie was watching her.

“Honey, are you okay? Are you not hungry?” Ansel put his fork down and dabbed at his own mouth.

“You didn’t make fun of Austin.” Saoirse said to Stephanie. She looked at her glass of water, at Austin’s clean face. She listened in the silence her comment had created and realized that, yes, the TV was off. She continued: “You didn’t insult him or tease him or mimic his voice or just ignore him.”

“Right,” said Stephanie. She did not roll her eyes at Saoirse.

“Everything okay?” asked Ansel.

“Sure.” It was. “Sure, I guess,” she said. But it wasn’t a guess. Everything was okay. “Maybe I’m just tired.” She knew that wasn’t it.

“You look great,” said Ansel, completely unexpectedly. She looked up.

“What?”

“You look great.” He said it louder.

“No, I heard you. What do you mean, I look great?” She was guarded. Ansel was complimentary, more complimentary than many husbands, probably, but, still…she felt off-balance.

“I mean you look great. That’s all. This is really good. What sauce did you use?”

Saoirse did not know what sauce she used but didn’t want to say that. She didn’t want to begin discussing the weird feeling she was having. It was like déjà vu but not really. It felt weird, to not know what sauce she’d used, and she thought maybe she should just make something up. But that did not feel… possible.

“I’m glad you like it,” she said, instead, and felt a nagging tug in her mind before that, too, slipped away. What had she been thinking?

“What did you do today?” asked Ansel, looking at Stephanie, who shrugged and finished her mouthful of noodles and said “Climbed Mount Everest.”

“Free climbing?” asked Ansel.

“Yeah. Yes,” Stephanie said, correcting herself before anyone could.

Saoirse admired her spirit, tackling the world’s largest mountain free climbing.

Saoirse wondered when Stephanie had learned to mountain climb.

And how Stephanie had gotten home for dinner.

Then she wondered what she’d been wondering.

“Difficult?” asked Austin.

“It was pretty hard, yeah – yes – but I liked it. I wanted a challenge.”

“That’s in keeping with your personality, I expect.” That came from Chuck, who had stopped toying with his food and looked over at Stephanie. Saoirse gaped at him for a second and dropped her fork in surprise.

Then she wondered why she was gaping at him.

Then she wondered what had just happened. Chuck was looking at her, all wide eyes and with spaghetti sauce on his chin, which she reached up and dabbed off for him with her finger. His chin was clean but her finger no longer was, and she looked at it and then reached for her napkin. When she brought the napkin up to her finger, though, she noticed it was no longer dirty.

Her water glass was full again.

The spaghetti was delicious.

Ansel and Stephanie were talking about the merits of solo climbs and somewhere in their conversation there was a mention, too, about flying, but Saoirse felt a little dizzy again. She looked over at Chuck.

“Did you say something, Chuckles?” she used her pet name for him.

Chuck just looked at her and chewed, a noodle hanging out of his mouth limply, slowly being worked inside.

“What’s wrong, honey?” asked Ansel.

“Nothing … something… nothing feels quite right. Is there something wrong?” asked Saoirse. She looked at Ansel, who met her eyes.

“That’s what I asked you,” he said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I… I…” Saoirse paused. She looked around the table. She looked at the spaghetti and her ice-cold water glass and at Chuck, who regarded her with his usual look, the quiet two-year-old face she was used to and she looked out the window at the scene outside, the cul de sac their kitchen window looked out on, the circle of pavement surrounded by four houses including their own, the lawns all well-kept and shaded with trees and she noticed that there were no leaves on the ground.

“Everything’s perfect,” she said.

It came out a whisper. She did not know why.

“Yes, it is,” said Ansel. “It’s wonderful.”

Saoirse stood up and walked to the front window. She was looking now at the neighbors’ houses, and at her own driveway.

In their driveway, the asphalt had cracked a year after they’d moved in. It had never been sealed up. Each year, the crack grew a little wider because each year, the result of winter and ice and time. Weeds would grow into the crack and Ansel generally dealt with those by scuffing at them with his shoes as he walked to and from his car, or running over them with the mower. They resolved, each year, to reseal the driveway or have someone look at it but had never done so because each year, something else went more dramatically wrong. Stephanie’s braces had to be paid for. The stove stopped working. The shingles blew off the roof. Whatever it was, there was always something more necessary to do than the driveway and so the crack grew wider and she could feel it when she backed the car over the crack, worried that the tires would pop.

The crack was not there. It was sealed up. Or had never existed.

Conspiracy Theory…Or Cautionary Note?

There's been a lot of talk lately about gold prices going higher and higher, and people are starting to openly talk about cashing in their gold, or buying more gold. The world's economy is certainly one catalyst for that, but I am always one to welcome different views and opinions, and in that spirit, I present a guest post by Jason Whitney,

Conspiracy Theory…Or Cautionary Note?

By Jason Whitney

In an article published in the October 6, 2009 edition of The Independent, columnist Robert Fisk wrote that Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the U.S. dollar for oil trading. With the decline in value of the dollar, and the well-documented resentment of the US’ long-term exertion of influence on world markets and other countries’ cultural evolution, what once was deemed impossible has suddenly become a lot more plausible. In the wake of this implication of the dollar’s imminent demise, its value has tumbled even more.

I’m not prone to buying into conspiracy theories, even those that are as seemingly viable as the current one. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that the well-being of the American economy – and with it, the value of the dollar – is not nearly as sacrosanct as it once was. And even if there is no actual conspiracy taking place against the dollar, the mere discussion about it, along with the well-known motives of the players and their ability to pull it off, is further driving the rush for gold, which has historically risen in value whenever the dollar declined.

Many investors around the world are looking to gold as a hedge against a dollar that might not have the clout it once had. I know, because we hear from a lot of them every day, and our sales are going through the roof as a result.

______________________________________________________________
Jason Whitney is the CEO & Founder of First Fidelity Reserve, a leading authority in the precious metals and rare coin market.

For more information, see First Fidelity Reserve’s web site at http://www.firstfidelityreserve.com, or call them at 1-800-336-1630, or click here to go directly to First Fidelity Reserve and find out more.

Chapter 2: the After Begins (Pages 1-5)

Song for this part: "Idioteque," Radiohead:

It was probably the first time Saoirse had not tripped over Chuck’s chicken dancer. The chicken dancer was a small chicken that danced to a tinny version of “The Chicken Dance” when a button was pressed. Chuck watched the chicken dance, then left it laying wherever he got tired of it, usually by the refrigerator, where Saoirse usually stubbed her toe against it when she was getting out the milk for dinner.

This time, she was getting out the milk for dinner and did not stub her toe against the chicken dancer and she realized that for the first time in probably 300 days the chicken dancer was not laying in front of the refrigerator. She looked down.

The floor was clean.

The floor was spotless.

It gleamed.

She could see her reflection in it. Growing up Saoirse had seen advertisements on TV for various products to clean floors, each of which promised that when that product was used, the floors would be so clean that it would reflect back the homeowner’s smiling face. Saoirse had always thought that would be a fantastic thing to have, a floor that clean, a floor that gleamed. The house she and Ansel lived in even had the right kind of tile in it to do just that, to gleam when cleaned properly, but she had never seen her reflection. Years and years of dirty shoes and spilled macaroni-and-cheese and toys like the chicken dancer scuffing the tile, and her own habit of kicking things under the refrigerator instead of sweeping-and-waxing and more had left the kitchen clean-but-not-perfect.

And, she had to admit, most days it wasn’t even clean, but just dirty-out-of-sight. Until today. Today she could see her own face reflecting back at her.

She looked around.

Dinner was on the table.

The table was set nicely.

The kitchen was immaculate.

The knife rack was filled with knives. The kids, Ansel, even she never put the knives into the rack. Nine knives arranged by size would fit into the wooden rack, but nobody took the time to pull the knives out of the dishwasher rack and put them in properly. Everyone, including her, just ended up putting the knives in the silverware drawer with everything else. But there they were, arranged by size, handles pointing the right way, no empty knife-slots.

She walked over to the knife rack and pulled one out. She put it back. She looked again at the dinner table in the middle of the kitchen. The food was steaming and moist and warm and tasty looking.

When had she cooked it?

The house was quiet. She stood and listened and could hear the sound of the bubbling of the sauce. She had cooked spaghetti. She looked back around the kitchen. There was only one pan on the stove, with the simmering sauce in it. There were no dishes in the sink. No spaghetti sauce stains or splots or blotches anywhere. There was a set table including a tureen for the spaghetti sauce waiting. She paused. She never used the tureen because she always just served the spaghetti sauce right from the pan, or, more often, from the jar. She could not remember the last time she’d had time to come home and make fresh sauce and then pour it into a whole separate dish. With Stephanie rarely home for dinner, with Austin and Chuck were too little to really help, and Ansel generally trying to help but not doing so very effectively, she did not do things like this.

She listened. The sauce was boiling, bubbling, slower and slower. She watched it, watched a red-tinted bubble slowly expand and pop!

She listened again.

She could hear, off in the distance, a television set. The sound was turned down, but she could hear voices talking through a speaker.

“Dinner’s ready?” she said. It wasn’t a declaration and she didn’t say it loudly. It was not even said to anyone but was questioning herself. She felt a little dizzy, until that feeling went away immediately.

She took a sip of the glass of water in her hand and wondered when she’d poured it.

Stephanie came walking downstairs with Chuck.

“I changed him,” she said, and began putting Chuck into his high chair. Austin followed just behind them, down the stairs. She looked at him. His hair was neat. He was not covered in markers or fingerpaints or bruises or all the other things he was always covered in.

From the family room she heard the television noises stop. She held her breath. Austin came walking in.

“Smells delicious,” he told her, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. He sat down and put a napkin on his leg and began handing around French bread pieces. She stood there, holding the glass of water, still wondering where she’d gotten it from.

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