Eddie and the Amazing Rescue

My name is Eddie Shearer.

I realize that that doesn't really tell you very much about me, but I'm not in a reflective mood right now. I expect we'll get to the rest as we go along.

Right now I'm sitting in a T. G. I. Friday's with Andrew and Val, two co-workers of mine, and I'm seriously wondering what I'm doing here. It was my idea for us to hang out, you see. I'm beginning to doubt my judgement. I've been working with these guys for two or three years, and I hardly really know them, or them me. We all know what each other thinks about coffee, and about various games. Yet I get the sense that they're pretty tight with each other, and it bugs me to think they may be excluding me. So I sort of took the plunge today, because it seemed like a good day for it, seeing as it's Friday evening and all. We work in a law firm. Rather, we work for a law firm. We're the tech support department of Lehrer, Pringerman, and company. Mostly we just help them get their machines to talk to the printers. I don't understand how so many people can make it through law school, memorizing ten times more information twenty times more boring than I will ever know, and yet they can't figure out how to print from a Windows machine. Anyway, Friday is usually pretty crazy in the office, as half a dozen people have to get something working right now, or else they're not going to get their hundred-page brief submitted to the court before five o'clock. And then there'll be trouble. So by the time things finally calm down around 6:30 or so, the three of us are tired and cranky and ready to blow off some steam. You'd think we'd be heading straight out the door, to catch a bus or go meet our girlfriends for dinner in some nice restaurant, but more often than not we seem to wind up standing around for twenty minutes or more complaining about our least favorite co-worker of the week (usually Jenkins, who seems to smile at just about everybody in the world except us three). This may be because none of us have girlfriends. I certainly don't, not for over a year now, and I'm beginning to suspect that Andrew and Val may not have much of a life, outside of each other. So why do I want to be friends with them? Good question. Maybe I should have seen this coming. But lately I've been feeling a bit -- well, unmoored may be the word for it. Like I'm floating free, but not in a good way. If the tide were to suddenly rise, I'd be on my way out to sea. It's not that I don't have friends of my own. I do, and good ones, too. But I have a suspicion that I'm currently in the process of driving a wedge between them and myself. Or at least annoying the piss out of them. I'm in danger of wearing out my welcome, is what it is. And that would be bad, because I only have three of them. And if I made my friends sick of me, enough so that they started not wanting to be around me, I would really have nobody. So I feel like I need to get some more friends, and quickly too. They don't need to be good friend -- I just need them to shoulder some of the burden. The burden that knowing me is starting to turn into. And if it doesn't work out in the longer term, that's fine. I just need them for a while. Preferably until I stop annoying my friends so much. Or until I find some more friends to replace them.

I'm panicking, aren't I? I think I am. I think I'm overreacting to Chuck's overreaction. But Chuck unnerved me, and so did the ring. It's hard to say which unnerved me more. I guess Chuck did, at the time, because I forgot all about the ring when he started getting on my case. But then this morning I found the ring in my jacket pocket again, and now I can't stop thinking about it. It's sort of the ring's fault that Chuck blew up at me, since it got me thinking about April in the first place, which is why I asked Chuck about her, which is pretty much what led him to start laying into me. So the fact that it's been on my mind all day is making me paranoid that it's going to interfere with my other friendships as well. Which is probably a stupid idea, I know, but there it is.

So when the Friday afternoon madness had finally worn off, and it looked like it was safe to leave, I considered my co-workers. They were working here for several years before I arrived, and they seem to be pretty comfortable. The job is actually pretty cozy, in some ways. Sure, you've got to deal with obnoxious lawyer types being clueless all day long, but it's a very predictable job. Every day I come in, and I know that the odds of being expected to deal with something I don't already know how to fix is pretty low. Every now and then some important bit of software gets upgraded, and then we have to learn how to deal with a whole new set of bugs and failure cases, but that never seems to happen often enough to actually aggravate me -- just enough to keep us from getting bored and complacent. I'm not one to avoid complaining about my job, mind you, but I've had jobs I hated and I don't think this one is ever going to rival those. And Andrew and Val do their fair share of bitching, but they also seem to have a near-subconscious understanding that we actually have it pretty good, all things considered. I mean, it's not in human nature to actually be happy with your job, especially not just because you know it could be worse. But still, our complaints never seem to contain any real venom, and I suspect it's just as much a source of small talk than it is anything else. As I say, they seem pretty comfortable here. If this job were a couch, they would have made two permanent dents in the springs by now. And after two years I still feel like a bit of a newcomer. They had their routine, they had it all figured out, and then I came along. Law firms don't expand and contract quickly (I expect it will be quite a while before they ever need to expand the tech support department to four people). So I suspect they still think of me as something of an interloper. For a long time I tried to win their trust by maintaining a respectful distance, not trying to interpose myself before they're ready. But I've come to realize that that was probably the exact wrong approach. Probably they're waiting for me to show them that I'm ready to make friends, that I'm interesting enough to be worth talking to about more than lattes and Counterstrike. So I went and did something that wasn't really in character for me: as we were standing around with our coats and backpacks, looking for all the world like we were just about to walk out the door even as our ritual complaining about the day's annoyances seguewayed into a full-scale analysis of the office's politics (and believe me, if you've never worked in a law firm you've no idea what office politics can become), I suddenly blurted out, "Hey guys, ya want to go next door and grab a quick beer?" Andrew and Val looked at me, and then at each other, and then shrugged as if to say why not? What interesting customs you foreigners have sometimes. And now I'm beginning to think that my brain knew what it was doing back when I was keeping a respectful distance.

Andrew holds his beer mug with one hand as if for leverage as he leans forward and eyes me from across the table. The gesture makes him look intoxicated, even though we've barely started drinking. "The thing you need to understand is that it's not really about the sex. It's really all about status. Human beings are like obsessed with social status."

Val sets his beer down with a bang, ignoring the cardboard coaster three inches away. "No, man. Sorry, but you're full of it."

Andrew reorients his gaze to Val. "Think about it."

"Sex?"

"Yes."

"Sex? Is all about the sex."

"Status."

"Stop analyzing, Poindexter. Sex is not about analyzing things."

"Listen to me."

"It's about feeling good."

"Listen to me."

Val indicates that he is listening by taking a drink from his beer.

"Which would you rather have. Okay? Which would you rather have." Andrew adjusts his glasses, causing a reflection of the dim light to briefly shine at me. I look across the aisle to my left. There's a large table over there, about eight or nine people. "A: a blow job from a four-hundred-pound chick." Andrew is holding up a finger to indicate that this is choice number one.

Val interrupts, perhaps suspecting where this is going. "If it's a blow job then I don't have to look at her. She can weigh as much as she wants."

Andrew considers this briefly. "Okay, then sex. Full-on penetration."

"Are we assuming that I come at the end of this?"

"Sure."

"Then she can't be four hundred pounds."

Andrew makes an annoyed pffft sound. "Oh come on."

"Come on what? Am I supposed to be enjoying this or not?"

"You're unintentionally proving my point for me."

"No, you're offering me a hypothetical, and I'm pointing out the internal contradictions."

"Not even if the lights were off?"

Val doesn't respond, except to narrow his eyes. He appears to be thinking hard. The conversation from across the aisle is loud. There appear to be three or more people talking at any given time, but it's not like the are multiple groups that are just talking amongst themselves and ignoring the others. People seem to be moving in and out of the various discussions with fluid grace. It's almost like a cocktail party. For a brief moment I feel an ache in my chest: I want very much to be a part of that group, surrounded by the happy chitchat of acquaintances and being a part of the whole. Then I wish desperately that they would go away so I wouldn't have to sit and try not to overhear them.

"Just humor me, Val, okay? For the sake of argument."

"Okay."

"Thank you."

"For the sake of argument."

"For the sake of argument. Yes."

"Just finish your sentence already."

"Okay. Or B: Have a rumor started that you're doing Cindy Crawford." Val begins to say something but Andrew holds out his two fingers and quickly adds: "Which then gets printed in People magazine."

Val scowls at him.

"If it's all about the sex then the answer's gotta be A. A, you get laid. B, you don't."

Val is on the verge of saying something but can't quite find the words.

"But in reality it's not really about the sex at all."

"But wait, Andrew. You can't really compare the two, because with B you've got all these other possible advantageous consequences, outside of the sphere of sexual relations."

"Yes. Social status."

"It's more than just that."

"Because people think Cindy Crawford is letting you bang her."

"I mean, you could probably get on talk shows and stuff like that. Given the choice between being on television and getting a free blow job, I'd rather be on television."

"Yes. Because social status is more important to you than sex."

"No, wait. Hang on. That wasn't what you were arguing originally."

I was on the bus, on the way to work, when I found the ring again. It set the mood for the rest of my day, after a fashion, making me feel confused, and vaguely annoyed, though without a clear target for my annoyance. I found myself getting annoyed at the other people on the bus. There were these two different guys playing with some tiny hand-held computer thingy, with a flip top and a stylus for poking at its touchscreen. The two of them weren't together or anything; they were several rows apart. They didn't see each other -- they were just two random guys who happened to own the same PDA (or game console, or whatever). I was annoyed because I didn't recognize their gadgets. If I had just seen one guy with an unfamiliar gadget, then maybe it's just some obscure unpopular thing. But two guys at once, on the same bus? That seemed to be a sure sign that I was out of the loop. I got annoyed at the guys for making me feel stupid. Then I got annoyed at my job for making me become an expert on a narrow range of five or six Windows applications, causing the rest of my skills to become outdated and unmarketable. And if everyone except me knows about these gadgets, then surely Val and Andrew know about them, and so I got annoyed at them for not mentioned them to me at work. Then I got annoyed at them for not being more friendly and sociable with me. By the time the bus got to my stop, I had worked myself into a fine little dither, and then fallen out of it again as I started to think more about the ring.

I had been a little unsure about the ring last night. At first my only thought was, what the heck is this and how did it get in my jacket pocket? I worried that I had somehow managed to put on someone else's jacket by mistake. Then I wondered if I had found the ring, put in my pocket, and then forgotten about it. I had almost convinced myself of the latter, sitting in the bar and staring at it in the dim light, as I waited for Chuck to join me. But as I turned it around, something about one of the angles jogged my memory and it suddenly seemed familiar. I was sure I had seen it before. Which seemed to suggest that it must have been April's, that somehow it had wound up with me, buried at the bottom of my jacket pocket for the last couple of years and for some reason only now rising to the surface. And then I remembered where I had seen it before.

"See, you just said that social status is more important than sex. But what you said at the start of all this is, social status is more important than sex in relationships."

Andrew is listening carefully. "Okay."

"You practically said that social status is the real reason we have relationships, and the sex is just a distraction or something."

"Okay, yeah."

"That's a very different statement, Andrew."

"You're right, it is. I misspoke back there. But my point is still valid."

It was an easygoing Saturday afternoon. April and I had had a late breakfast at a busy little diner, and when we emerged from the noisy bustle of the place we discovered that the sun had come out and it was all at once a beautiful spring day. So instead of going back home, we wandered aimlessly along the street, looking in the windows of the various shops. I had been perfectly happy just to be outside, with all the other people, and with nothing that needed to be done other than to stand next to April and share in each other's thoughts. And to be seen with her. I found myself constantly wanting to nuzzle her, as we wandered down the sidewalk, and I felt like I understood why people indulge in public displays of affection for the first time in my life. Never before had I had a girlfriend like April -- that is, someone who so clearly seemed to be one in a million. I wanted everyone to see this, this miraculous woman who seemed perfectly happy not just to be with me, but also to be seen with me. She was my girlfriend, and she didn't care who knew it. And I realized that as long as I had her around, I would be able to see myself through a different pair of eyes, a pair in which, it seemed, I appeared better than I did through my own. It felt as if my life had opened up underneath me, like a flower in the sunrise, and the best part had truly begun. On that day I would have taken a bullet for her. Heck, I would have done so with glee, secretly blessing my luck at having been given an opportunity to so perfectly demonstrate my gratitude to her and the world at large. And while April herself wasn't quite as giddy as all that, she was clearly feeling happy and affectionate. I started going into stores at random, for no particular reason other than to prolong the moment, and to try out the idea of ourselves as a couple in front of the shopkeepers. Look, a drugstore. Perhaps we might come here together to purchase shampoo and toothpaste, in the near future. Look at us: a happy couple. All the world loves a lover, no? And so it was only natural that we would wind up going into the jewelry store. Of course neither of us could afford anything in the store. When the jeweler came over and genially asked how he might be of service, it seemed only natural to pretend that we were looking for an engagement ring -- a very serious matter, of course, and not one that could be decided right away. There would be no expectation that we would buy anything that afternoon. But April was certainly encouraged to try on any of the rings that caught her fancy. I loved the little game at the time; it made me think of "Breakfast at Tiffany's", and I felt like a resourceful little church mouse. I think April felt much the same way. She definitely got into the game of considering the rings they had, discussing the merits of each with the jeweler. In the end, though, one ring was clearly the best of them all, and to nobody's surprise it was the most expensive ring they had. One large diamond in the middle, large enough for it to show off tiny prisms inside its depths, surrounded by four smaller diamonds cut slightly asymmetrically so as to draw the eye to the middle stone. The ring itself was platinum. It was so expensive I couldn't bring myself to even pretend that I could afford it. But it fit April's finger perfectly, and she I agreed, afterwards, that it was clearly the most beautiful ring in the store that day.

Of course the ring that I found in my jacket pocket couldn't possibly be the same one. And it's possible that the resemblance wasn't even that strong. It had been many months since that afternoon in the jewelry store, and I hadn't seen it since then. (Though I had certainly thought about the ring since then. I would occasional fantasized about saving up enough money to one day be able to buy the ring, and then presenting it to her on bended knee. It would have been impossible for her, or any woman, to say no to a proposition such as that.) It's possible that the ring in my pocket simply looked valuable enough to remind me of April's ring, and this had simply confused my memories of what the original actually looked like. But even setting aside the issue of resemblance, the ring in my pocket certainly couldn't actually be made of diamonds and platinum. People may lose valuable jewelry from time to time, but not in other people's jacket pockets. It had to be costume jewelry -- cubic zirconium and aluminum plating or whatever. I was hardly a judge of gemstones, so the fact that it looked genuine to me meant little.

"As long as we're positing that the woman in A is attractive enough for me to actually enjoy the sex, then I choose A over B. So no, your point is not valid."

"No, you're just saying that. If it came down it in real life you'd take B."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Any man would."

"Hell no. The choice is between getting laid, and trying to convince other people that I'm getting laid. I'd rather get laid."

"Not quite. The choice is convincing other people that you're getting laid by a woman who's out of your league."

"I don't care what other people think about who I'm laying."

"Versus getting laid by a woman whose league you're out of."

"I'm not into those kind of games."

But even setting aside all consideration of the ring's authenticity, I was still completely baffled as to where exactly it had come from. Even worthless rings don't just show up in your pocket one day. Loose cough drops, yes; jewelry, no.

This is what I was thinking about as I was on the bus this morning, going to work and getting annoyed by everything around me until suddenly I wasn't anymore, and just felt confused and out of control of my own life. Which is a weird thing to feel, when you're single. It's when you're in a relationship that you're really not in full control of your life, because there's this other person always pulling on the steering wheel, trying to get you to say stop at a retail outlet store when you're trying to get to the movie theater on time. Now I'm alone, and have full control over what I do each day. So why do I feel unmoored and out of control? It doesn't make sense.

"This isn't just a game I'm talking about, Val. This is society. This is human culture. This is what people do."

"Yeah. People play games. That doesn't make it good."

"Okay, fine. Call it a game if that's what you want to call it. The point is, it's just part of life. Like death and taxes. You can't live in a society and say 'Oh, I don't play that game.' You can't not play."

"That's just not true. You can choose."

"The only way to not play that game is to live in a cave."

"You don't have to go along with every single thing society does."

"As in, by yourself."

It doesn't make sense but it's still true. Since discovering the ring last night, I found myself thinking about April almost constantly. In the sequence of unhappy events that had occurred since, I had completely forgotten about that Saturday afternoon. Thinking about that day now evokes a special kind of pain, one that I'm finding is really hard to resist. I'm not sure, now, that I've ever been more content with my life than I was on that day. Maybe there was a time when I was like six. On Christmas day or something. But not in my adult life. The more I think about it the more I'm convinced. Which is really terrifying, if that was the high point of my life. I don't want to be thinking like this, but I have a very hard time believing that I'm ever going to be able to arrange such a harmonic convergence of good things. Certainly I didn't arrange it last time; I fell into it. But such luck only comes once in a lifetime. If I don't make it happen again, it won't. And I seriously doubt that I have that kind of power. Or ever will. There are people who do have that kind of power, mind you. But they're the ones who get written about in the newspapers and the tabloids. People pay attention to them. I'm never going to be one of those people. My best hope for getting into the news is by being shot by a rampaging psychopath.

All of which means that it's really hard to stop thinking about that Saturday afternoon. Which means thinking about April.

When we first broke up, I was angry and upset, but also relieved. The relationship was starting to turn into a mess, and I wasn't sure how to go about cleaning it up. She felt that I was growing distant, and I felt that she was withholding sex to punish me for ignoring her. It's possible that I have that backwards, or that April and I wouldn't agree if you asked us both. Frankly, I no longer remember now how it first got started, and I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't either.

When I need to clean up a mess of my own, like in my apartment, it's a pain in the neck, but at least I know to go about doing it. But a relationship is like a mess that two people make, and both people have to be involved in cleaning it up. And I'm in my thirties and I still don't know how to go about it. My parents spent so much effort in getting me to clean up my room. Why couldn't they have passed on a few pointers on this while they were at it? For that matter, why the hell is sex education all about diseases and the mechanics of birth? You think they could at least set aside a week for getting in some basics of dealing with relationships. Are our priorities so backwards? Why don't we teach our children how to recognize when trouble is on its way, coming closer but still avoidable? Or how to know when something is worth salvaging and when it's better to just throw in the towel and move on? I would have sat through that class. (Sure, I would have still acted like I didn't care about it, but I would have attended every day. Even as a callow teenager I wanted to know the answers to these things. Or at least to know that these were questions I would have to deal with. Over and over again.)

But as it was, me not really knowing the right thing to do, I only knew that our relationship was turning into a mess. And I did have enough prior experience in these kinds of situations to know that if neither of us took action, it would only get worse, not better. That is, it was better to start talking about it now, rather than wait until somebody became too unhappy to remain silent any longer. And so finally I said the magic words: "April, we need to talk." Unoriginal, I know, but I think you score points with most women by not waiting for them to say it first.

The conversation lasted all night long, and it really, really sucked. I can no longer remember much of what either of us said, but after several hours of grinding our gears against each other and bringing up all the different ways we were pissing each other off, and watching both of us go from defensive to offensive and vice versa, there was pretty much nothing positive that either of us were feeling. We were drained of everything good. I don't know what I hoped or expected going into it, but by the time we had both wound down, I was convinced that this mess was not worth trying to clean up. It was time to put it to the torch and move on. Take whatever lessons there were to be had and leave the rest for the buzzards.

I don't know what she hoped or expected going into that conversation either. I do know how she felt not long afterwards, though.

"Look, Andrew, I see what you're trying to get at. I understand. And you know, I don't think you're totally off base, but you're going about it all wrong."

"What, you think you know better than me what my point is?"

"Well like, if you had asked me instead to choose between A, hitting on a cute chick in a bar and getting a drink thrown in my face, and B, hitting on the same chick and getting hot vibes from her but eventually getting turned down because she's married, then you could say, yeah. In both scenarios I get no sex, but obviously B is ten times better than A. And it's all because in B I still get all of the social status stuff that I would have gotten with option C. Namely she goes back to my place and we hit it."

"That's a nice little image and all, but it's not really illustrative of my point, Val. I'm still saying that when men and women get together, form relationship, have sex, it's really for the perceived boost in their social status."

"That's like Darwinian, and not in a good way."

"And the fact that sex feels good is secondary."

"You're starting to sound like some robot anthropologist, man."

Chuck was held up at work last night, so by the time he made it to the bar I was already well into my first beer. And despite my better intentions, the ring had gotten me thinking about April. When he finally did arrive, all Chuck wanted to talk about was his job, which I'm sure was terribly engaging for him but I found utterly uninteresting. Maybe with a different frame of mind I would have been able to focus, but as it was my mind kept wandering back to memories of April. Even this evening, sitting in a restaurant listening to a conversation that I can't bring myself to care about, reminds me of our first Valentine's Day.

I had no idea what to do on Valentine's Day. The week before April had suggested that we do nothing for Valentine's Day. "I don't really like all the pressure surrounding it, when it really is just a made-up holiday," she said. "And we're still getting to know each other." We had only been going out for three or four months at the time. I didn't really know what she meant by "pressure", but I agreed. I'm not really into romantic gestures as it is. A few days later I happened to mention this to Chuck, and he warned me. "Eddie, when a woman says let's do nothing on Valentine's Day, that means like go out to a movie. She doesn't literally mean nothing." I told Chuck that April didn't even like movies that much. "Then bring home some flowers and order something to be delivered for dinner. When she says let's do nothing, she means let's not put a lot of effort into cooking a romantic dinner." I didn't think Chuck understood April well enough to be so certain, but he nonetheless got me worrying. "A card at the absolute least, man. Otherwise you're asking for trouble." In the end, I decided that trusting my instinct was, in the particular case, the more dangerous route. If I followed Chuck's advice and he was wrong, it was unlikely to upset April. So I made plans: I would buy flowers from a place near where I worked, take the bus over to her place, and suggest that we order Indian food to be delivered. But then she called me up at work, an hour before quitting time. She had this old friend, a guy named Saul, who was single and feeling lonely, and since we weren't doing anything anyhow, maybe we could go out to dinner and invite him along? And so that's what we did. Was this idea borne out of a sense of charity on her part, or was she still unsure that she wanted to spend February 14th alone with me? I never quite worked up the courage to ask her that question. The dinner went on for hours, though, or so it seemed to me. I think she was right that Saul really didn't want to be alone that day, and he talked nonstop all evening. Even April had a hard time getting a word in edgewise, and as for me I didn't even try.

But even this memory has a sepia-tinged nostalgia about it. Every now and again, after that, that day would come up, and I would make a joke at Saul's expense. It made for a good anecdote, and good anecdotes are valuable things in a new relationship.

"See, you just think you're slave to your hormones. In reality you're a slave to your standing in society."

I slam my glass onto the tabletop. It was already sitting in front of me at the time, as I had finished my beer some time ago, I being the only one at the table whose mouth wasn't busy doing anything else. But it had been so long since I had said anything that I felt the need to get their attention before trying to interrupt. "What the hell, you two? What does all this philosophical blather have to do with my question?"

Andrew and Val break off their gaze and look at me blankly. "Well, I thought that," Andrew begins, then frowns. "What was your question again?"

I roll my eyes up to the ceiling. I shouldn't do that, I know. I should have just dropped it and let them get back to their psychoanalysis. "Never mind, it's not important." I look around for our waitress, even though I'm not sure I want another drink. I should just pay for my share and get the hell out of there. Not that I have anything to get home for.

Val says, "He asked about his ex-girlfriend, remember? He dumped her, then he regretted it and she didn't."

"Oh, right. So it's really like she tricked you into dumping yourself."

"Yeah."

"Like as one last favor to her."

Val laughs. "Yeah."

"Okay okay, real funny." I turn back to the table and face them. The waitress is busy with the huge table across the aisle and there's no use pretending that I'm expecting to catch her eye any second now.

"See, that's where what I was saying comes in. The reason the whole situation freaks you out is that you thought, by being the one to dump her, you were preserving your social standing as being above hers. But then --"

"Good god!" I shout. I'm overreacting, I know I am, but I can't help myself. Whether it's because I think he's underestimating me or because I think he's got me pegged, I don't know. All I know is that I really don't want to listen to this. I am lashing back in self-defense. "When was the last time either of you had sex anyway?"

Andrew and Val both blink at my outburst, almost in unison. They look at each other, then back at me. Andrew shrugs. "Last month," he offers.

"Last night," says Val. "Not that it's any of your business. But like you know that I'm married, right?"

No, I didn't know you were freaking married, Val. Of course I didn't; otherwise I would have kept my big mouth shut. You're the biggest dork I've known since I dropped out of the computer club in high school. Why the hell would I suspect you'd even lost your virginity. Is that your secret, Val? Marriage? She's pledged her till-death-do-us-part, and so you're now free to let yourself go? Smart, that. Thinking one step ahead of the game.

One step ahead of me, anyway. I lean back into my chair, trying not to visibly sulk. My attempt to silence Andrew and Val has exploded spectacularly in my face: Even my loser co-workers are getting laid more than me.

Val turns back to Andrew. "Last month? Was that that date you were telling me about? Hillary, was it?"

Andrew nods. "Hally, you mean. Yeah."

"You never told me you went all the way."

Andrew shrugs. "Eh. It wasn't worth bragging about. The sex wasn't very good."

"I'm not talking about bragging. It's just, you know, something that most people would bring up. It's noteworthy."

The waitress suddenly materializes and picks up my glass. Eying the other two glasses, now half empty, she asks, "Another round?"

Val nods. "You bet." I shrug to myself. My desire to escape has been punctured and deflated. I don't want to go home and be alone on a Friday evening. I can't say that I'm enjoying hanging out with my co-workers, exactly. But hey. At least they're getting laid on a regular basis. I could do a lot worse for company. I guess Andrew would say that they have a higher status than me, and so my desire to be associated with them is perfectly natural.

Andrew watches the waitress as she walks away. "Man, I wouldn't mind taking her home."

Val half turns in his seat, then faces front again. "Yeah, she's something else all right."

I grunt something noncommittal, not really wanting to encourage this topic in general any further than I already have. There's no point in lusting after waitresses, especially in bars. They get hit on several times a day, by guys of all shapes and attitudes. In order to keep smiling, they have to develop armor three inches thick. There's no way to appear sincere when you're hitting on a waitress while she's serving you.

To be sure, our waitress is really quite attractive. Dusky skin, nice figure. A little on the short side, which I actually like. A bit part of her attractiveness, though, is that her hair and makeup are done up with a lot of attention to detail. I'm not even that big on women wearing makeup. April never wore the stuff, and after a while I found I didn't miss it at all. In fact, it's really better to not have lipstick involved when you're kissing. The stuff tastes like greasepaint, and it takes forever to get rid of the taste. But when you're talking about a woman you don't know, there's no doubt that makeup is more attractive than no makeup. Particularly when it's elaborate. It's not an issue of how it looks, at that point. It's an indicator. It says that she wants to be seen, to be looked at her appearance appreciated. It's almost like permission to ogle. And for a guy, that's attractive right there.

Of course, not everyone would agree with me. The feminists say that women should be able to dress up for their own sake, without it being taken by guys as permission to stare. I gotta say, I'm sympathetic to feminism and all, but I just don't get it on this subject. If you don't want to be looked at, then don't put on makeup and go outside. If a guy has to leave the house and he doesn't want to be ogled, he puts on a scruffy tee shirt and doesn't comb his hair. Why can't women do the same? It's ridiculous to work over yourself until your appearance is just so, and then get upset if you get stared at. Why the hell did you bother with it all then? If you're truly just dressing up for yourself, then don't go outside. Simple as that. We all have to deal with being seen in order to go to work, buy food, et cetera. Men and women both. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Again, it's not that I'm not sympathetic to women's issues. I'm housebroken, I have my share of feminist ex-girlfriends. I even know what third-wave feminism means; how many guys can say that? But stuff like this I still just don't get. And I just wish they'd work all this stuff out so that I can look at them without worrying if I'm being perceived as threatening. They can decide if it's okay to pay them compliments or not. I don't care either way, I just want them to make up their minds and then tell me so that I can be polite and charming to strangers without feeling like I'm navigating a minefield.

But yeah. Regardless of what women say or don't say, a woman who's clearly put a lot of effort into her appearance is attractive in a completely different way than a woman who's just hot naturally. And I think all three of us, at the table, would have agree that our waitress was hot in that way.

I sighed and allowed myself to sink a bit into my chair. This nugget of male camaraderie, minuscule as it was, made me feel that much less alone and isolated. I decided that it was worth it, coming out here with Andrew and Val tonight. I'm not about to ask their opinion about my ex-relationship with April again anytime soon, but I think on the whole, my mood right now is no worse than it would have been if I had gone home and moped all night. I don't think I'm going to mention the ring to them, though.

"Now see, you and I are sitting here admiring our waitress. And it's not about social status. It's about the fact that she's hot. Maybe it's different inside your head, I dunno."

I can't believe these guys haven't exhausted this topic. I thought I had successfully derailed the subject, even if it sort of backfired in my face. Now I've embarrassed myself for nothing.

"In fact I probably don't want to know, if it is."

"Sure sure, for right now it is. But what if she actually started hitting on you? That would be even better, right?"

"Like yeah. Der."

I can't remember the last time I heard someone say "der". It sounds almost antiquated. I smirk, despite myself. But there's no danger of offense, as Andrew and Val have gone back to not noticing me.

"And it'd be better not just because you think she's hot, but also because you know that most other guys would think she's hot, too. So having her hit on you out of all the guys she could have hit on means that you must look pretty good to her."

"Yeah. Sure."

Have I mentioned already that I really don't care about this conversation? But I'm still unaccountably wary of the idea of leaving and being alone with my thoughts. So I remain here, even though I have absolutely no desire to join in this discussion. Frankly, I'm not even interested in trying to change the topic to something more interesting to me. That was my first instinct, when I originally brought up April. I thought I might get some interesting feedback about the fact that I'm still thinking about her fourteen months after we broke up. A different perspective, maybe even some sage advice spoken by voices of experience. What I got instead was this conversation. And my second attempt to take control of the conversation resulted in my discovering that I'm the only one at the table who hasn't been with a girl this year. Maybe even the only one in this entire restaurant. God, there's a chilling thought. And yet it's entirely possible. Maybe even probable.

"And therefore, having her hitting on you increases your social status. Which makes you happy."

"See, I don't see why it's so hard to believe that I can just be enjoying the fact that a hot girl is attracted to me. She's attracted to me, therefore she's likely to welcome my attraction to her, we're both feeling good towards each other, it's a beautiful thing, yin and yang, balance and centeredness, you get the idea. And here you sit, and you keep trying to tell me that I'm really just grooving on being cooler than all the other guys. And I'm just not seeing it, man."

So if I don't want to join in this conversation, and I don't want to try to change the conversation to something I could at least feign interest in, and I don't want to leave -- I guess my only option is to sit here at the table and lose myself in my own thoughts. Hm. I guess that would explain why I've been doing exactly that all evening.

"Because she's hot in a way that lots of other guys find hot, too. You see? If you thought she was hot in a way that most other guys didn't care about, or better yet thought was a turnoff, then that part of your enjoyment would be missing. And you'd notice. Trust me."

Val frowns in thought. "Gimme an example."

"For example, if --"

"And don't bring up the four-hundred-pound chick again. That doesn't work."

"There are men who find that attractive, you know."

"Well yes, there are a lot of weird people out there, and I'm sorry for them and all, but I am not capable of imagining myself as one of them. Pick an example I can deal with."

Andrew rolls his eyes. "Okay fine, how about short women? Most guys prefer tall and thin, so say you prefer short women."

"I don't really much care about height, actually. Long as she's not taller than me."

"Cripes. Just say you prefer short women. Can you do that for me?"

"Sure, whatever."

"Okay. Now if you, the short-woman-preferring you --"

"But not short and fat."

"Fine! If that you looked at our waitress and said, hey she's hot, it'd be a little different. Because she's pretty tall, yeah? Only so now, here comes another waitress, and she's also hot, but she's like five foot one, the way you like them. Now imagine that this second waitress starts hitting on you."

"I say, that's good, because I like her more." Val looks at Andrew and waves his hand aimlessly in the air to indicate that he thinks this line of inquiry is showing nothing.

"Right, you're happy about that because you like her. But you also know that she's not quite as popular in the looks department, seeing as how she's short and all. So one part of you knows that, and so you know that the fact that she's hitting on you isn't quite as impressive, because she's that much less popular with the guys."

Val looks up at the ceiling. He appears to be rolling this idea around in his mouth. He says, "Yeah, but."

Andrew continues. "Whereas if the first waitress had hit on you instead, even though you're more attracted to the other one, you'd be more likely to brag about that to your friends."

"Yeah, okay, I'll concede you have a small point. But it really is a small one."

Actually, to my surprise, I find myself conceding a bit to Andrew as well, for I have recognized a bit of myself in the current example. April was a thoroughly attractive woman, both in my eyes and in the eyes of the common man. But one thing about herself that she disliked was her legs. She liked to compare them to tree trunks, and when she looked at herself in the full-length mirror in the morning, she would invariably turn her legs to try to find the angle that presented them at their thinnest cross-section before passing on into the bathroom. They weren't as big as all that, really, but I could see that they were indeed thicker than average. Or at least thicker than your average woman-on-a-billboard. Who knows what the real average is. But the thing is, I really liked her legs. For whatever reason they really turned me on. They looked strong and solid to me. They made her look tough. Especially when she wore skirts, which she did only rarely. I tried to convince her to wear skirts more often, actually, to very limited effect. I loved to run my hands along the backs of her legs, especially right after she had waxed them. (She was fanatical about keeping them hairless. I hated to imagine her putting herself through all that pain. It almost gives me shivers, actually, just thinking about it. But the results were just so, well, arousing, that I never said anything to discourage her. Instead I told myself that she was doing it for herself, really, not for me. And left it at that.)

All of which is not to say that I can't get it up for a woman with thin legs. Or that I would have found April less attractive with thin legs. It would have just been different, is all. But I think I would be less likely to talk about my appreciation for April's fat legs with other guys.

Andrew pokes at his damp coaster with his index finger. "I don't think it's a small point. Not at all."

"Sure, I'll agree that the first waitress makes for better bragging material, and I guess I do care about that a little. But you're saying like that's a really important thing, more important than the sex even. And it's totally not."

"Well, that's just because you made me choose such a lame example. Height isn't really all that big of a deal in our society. But the further you get from the norm, the more it starts to matter."

The thing is, I never really told April how much I liked her legs the way they were. I did try to get her to wear skirts, but she may have just thought that I liked skirts, not that I liked her legs. Was I reluctant to admit that I liked her legs? If I ever thought about it at the time, I probably chalked it up to a general belief that it's utterly hopeless to try to dissuade a woman to stop hating her least favorite part of her body. They have some basic, instinctual need to find one piece of themselves and direct the worst of their venom at it. You can't convince a woman to start liking it, and if you could she would just focus her energy on the next-most-hated feature on her list instead. All you can do is remind her that you think she's the most beautiful woman ever, and let her pursue her own private neuroses on her own time.

But now, Andrew has me wondering if perhaps I also didn't tell April how much I liked her legs the way they were was because I didn't want her thinking I was a freak. It's one thing to love your girlfriend despite her self-perceived flaws, but if you actually prefer her with them, you can become suspect in her eyes. Maybe even a traitor to her pursuit of perfection.

I shake my head. Relationships are so damn complicated. And when you look at them more closely, you realize that you didn't know the half of it. I wish the waitress would come back with our beers. I'm seriously considering the merits of drinking with serious intent. If I get drunk, perhaps I shut off my brain enough that I won't be so worried at the prospect of being awake and alone tonight. And If I can get drunk quickly enough, then I can leave these two yammering geeks and go home before this conversation makes my head explode.

"Well your four-hundred-pound woman doesn't make a better case, let me tell you. If I was attracted to four-hundred-pound women, I'd go see a shrink until I was cured."

Right as these words leave Val's mouth, our waitress materializes by our table and puts down our beers. If she heard Val, her expression betrays nothing. I figure she did hear him -- she'd had to have been deaf not to -- but I doubt she really cares. She must hear all kinds of things, working here. Nonetheless, Val looks embarrassed. And Andrew is chuckling. He drinks from his beer, then says with a patronizing smile, "Val, you gotta be more careful than that. Make sure you know what's you're doing."

Hm. Something about Andrew's comment rings a faint bell.

Val shakes his head. "Oh, it doesn't matter. I don't care what she hears me say. I'm not out here hoping to impress any women. I'm married, remember?"

I try to shut out the conversation as I jog my memory, but nothing comes.

Andrew is still grinning. "Yeah, but you care a little bit, don't you? You would prefer that she not think you're a shallow jerk-off."

Val rolls his eyes.

"Come on. Every guy cares what a hot girl thinks about him. You wouldn't be human if you didn't care just a little bit."

"Okay, fine. I care a little bit, yes."

"You see? Everything you do just proves my point."

"Holy cow," I interject. "Holy cow, look at the time." This is clearly the neverending conversation. If I don't leave now, what reason will I have to leave an hour from now? "I completely forgot. I have to --" I have to what? I've pretty much revealed that I have no life. "-- you know, get up early tomorrow. I'm meeting my parents." I sound like even more of a loser than I really am, I know, but I don't really care what these guys think about me tonight. I just want to get away. (Without insulting them, that is; I still have to work with them.) I throw a fiver down in the middle of the table. Lucky for me I had the fiver. If all I'd had were twenties, there would have been an awkward negotiation of making change and/or promises to pay each other back later. As it is, I just gather my coat, smile and wave, and I'm out of there. Andrew and Val say something vague and polite as I go. My retreat may have been a bit too precipitous: they may be already realizing that they should feel insulted at my leaving. Hopefully they'll forget about it as they return to their interminable debate and beer-drinking.

The wind is blowing and it's cold outside as I stand at the bus stop. I turn my back to the wind, facing up the street. It's November and it's dark outside, so I forgo sitting down inside the shelter for fear that the bus driver won't see me and blow past the stop. You gotta be more careful than that. Make sure you know what's you're doing. Why does that sound so familiar? I shake my head. It seems like a recent memory, but for the life of me I can't place it. It doesn't feel like it's associated with the office. If it wasn't there, then where would I have heard it? I guess Chuck must have said it. I haven't done anything else recently that's brought me in contact with other people. I find myself frowning at the retreating red lights of cars going by. Why does the memory even seem important? It's not a particularly charged turn of phrase.

Chuck and I had been talking about his job. Actually, Chuck had been complaining about his job and I had been nodding my head sympathetically. Chuck's job kind of sucks, and he and I both know it. But what I also know, and what Chuck may sort of know but not in a conscious way, is that he isn't very qualified for much better job. He works in tech support, like me -- keeping the hardware infrastructure up and running. But Chuck's resume is a lot less eye-catching than mine. He's worked for a lot of startups, which looks a bit suspicious, since startups have a tendency to hire whomever they can get. Plus they tend to suddenly stop being able to pay employees rather abruptly, so as a result Chuck's resume has a lot of "holes" in it -- periods of time in which he was unemployed. This also looks suspicious. But Chuck is one of those people who are dead set on working for big, stable companies. Which means that he's unlikely to ever improve his situation. Which means that he's going to continue to work for the kind of startups who will hire anyone they can get. The upshot of all this is that while I'm sympathetic to Chuck's unhappiness with his job, I also feel that he's chosen this situation where he can't easily go out and get a better job. So when he complains I tend to zone out. I guess we're like an old married couple in that way.

Chuck's current job is for a web hosting company, which in some ways is a step up, because web hosting companies have non-trivial hardware requirements, and if he can just stick it out in this place for a few years, it would go a long way towards balancing out all the sketchy short-time junk on his resume. Unfortunately, he doesn't currently command a lot of respect at his job, so his co-workers tend to stick him with the least interesting work. It's his job to change the toner on the printers when they run out, for example. At my job, the secretary does that.

Chuck and I have taken to meeting up once a week or so. A year ago last summer, I was sort of avoiding him -- not seriously, but not really making room for him in my schedule either. It felt like all he ever talked about was how much he disliked his job, and it was getting old. But then April and I broke up, and I wound up leaning heavily on him during the six months or so when I got really depressed. So now we continue to hang out, but it's getting to be annoying again. I've changed; I'm better. Well, I'm still not entirely over April, but I'm definitely better. I no longer lie in bed for hours in the dark unable to sleep and wanting to either cry or punch things. (Although I still have nights where I have to lie on the couch with the television on in order to fall asleep.) I'm no longer terrified at the thought of spending a Friday evening by myself. (Although I don't still relish the prospect, but at least I'm capable of doing something about it.) I'm no longer convinced that I could never have another girlfriend again ever. (I just don't believe that I'll ever feel towards anybody else the way I did towards April.)

Like I said, I'm not fully recovered, but I feel that I have made progress.

So anyway. Chuck and I were hanging out in a bar, having a beer and eating some chicken wings. Chuck was iterating through his latest set of complaints about his job. I was shaking my head sympathetically at intervals and thinking about the ring that I had just found in my jacket pocket. I had arrived a couple of minutes before Chuck. I had grabbed a copy of the local weekly from the stack by the door and was going to browse it until Chuck arrived. Instead I wound up finding the ring, which once I had identified it left me thinking about that Saturday afternoon. Don't get me wrong with what I'm about to say, because I was extremely happy that Saturday afternoon, and I knew it. But I don't think I realized until that moment in the bar, with the unopened newspaper in my hand, staring around the dimly-lit room at the half-dozen other groups of people in the place, that it may well have been the happiest day of my life.

The full realization of this dawned on me slowly, but it felt like an epiphany nonetheless. I didn't know what to do with this information (and I still don't), but it seemed a vital thing to understand and acknowledge (and it still does). So you can see that when Chuck arrived a minute or two after that, sitting down with a gigantic sigh like some punctured air bladder, and moving directly from the niceties to his faithful conversational gambit, also knows as "my job sucks" (The opening line this time was: "Oh man, Eddie, my job hit a new low today. Again.") -- you can see that I wasn't really in the right frame of mind for listening to him.

After a few minutes he finished his story, after which he sort of wound down. That's his usual pattern: once he's gotten his griping out of his system, he turns back into a useful friend. Which I suppose is part of why I put up with it still. His tale of injustice sort of petered out, presumably having run out of the raw materials with which to build a narrative thread, leaving Chuck shaking his head at the travesty. "So yeah. Ugh. That was my day." These words were the signal for me to come back into focus. I pulled myself out of my little reverie as Chuck leaned back into the booth and sighed. "How was your day?" he asked.

This was my cue to respond in kind. Chuck is nothing if not fair, and he knows that he has to listen to others bitch and moan in their turn. But I wasn't in the mood for that, so I just said. "Oh, it was quiet. Boring but not in a bad way. Say Chuck, have you heard from April recently?"

That was sort of a mistake on my part, in hindsight. Chuck looked at me suspiciously. "No, I haven't. Why would I?"

I shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. You two were kind of friends before she and I were."

"Eddie, she and I were never friends. We were acquaintances. I barely knew her until you two became an item. I was only friends with her because of you."

"I just thought you might have stayed in touch a little, is all."

"No."

"She and I were the ones who broke up. That doesn't mean you and her have to stop hanging out, you know. I mean --"

Chuck looked hard at me, and I realized that his expression was one of serious annoyance. I wasn't really sure why he was so annoyed, which made me feel a little annoyed in turn.

"Eddie. You're my friend, not April."

"I know that. I appreciate that."

"Good."

"But just because she and I are having this problem, doesn't mean that it has to involve you, is all I'm saying. That's all."

"That's all?"

"Yeah."

"That's all?" It dawned on me then that he was being sarcastic. Chuck leaned over the table, half rising out of his seat in his effort to get in my face. "Eddie --" He seemed to be at a loss for words. Suddenly he fell back and sat upright again. "Shut up. Just shut up. You're being an idiot."

"Why am I being an idiot?"

"In so many ways I can't even being to explain." He throws his hands up in surrender.

"What?"

"It's beyond enumeration."

"Name one. Just one. I'm just asking after a mutual friend in a perfectly rational manner, and you're telling me that this is so idiotic that it defies explanation?"

"Okay, shut up!" I almost jumped at his raised voice. He returned to a normal speaking volume, but his tone had gotten cold. "Number one, April and I never hung out to begin with, expect when it was with you, so there's no reason to expect us to hang out now without you."

"There was that one time --"

"It was one time, Eddie. That's all. Okay, number two, right now I'm your best friend. Why the hell would you want me to be hanging out with your ex-girlfriend instead of you? That's warped."

"I never said instead of. You can be hanging out with both of us."

"No, I can't. That's not how it works. I can't be hanging out with two exes simultaneously. Not and be friends with them both."

"It's not like that with us."

"Yes, it is. It's always like that. You just haven't realized it yet."

"And anyway, I didn't say that I want you to hang out with April. I'm not trying to convince you to. I'm just saying the idea doesn't bother me."

"Okay. That's fair. But maybe it should bother you, Eddie. Because, number three, I don't think you're really over her yet."

"What the heck does that mean?" That comment hit much too close to home, given what I had been thinking out a few minutes ago.

"I mean just that. You walk and talk like a normal Eddie, most of the time. But every now and then you bust out with a comment like that and it's obvious that you still spend a lot of time thinking about her."

"Well, of course I think about her some of the time."

"Too often, in my opinion. And what's worse, number four, it's not the right kind of thoughts. I wouldn't mind so much if your thoughts were more like, oh man I hated it when April complained whenever I hung out late with you. Or, hey Chuck, let's go have sushi, cause April never wanted to have sushi."

Chuck adopted a slightly silly voice as he recited these words that he wanted to put in my mouth -- a tactic that I thought rather undermined his argument. I shook my head in disbelief. "So -- you're annoyed with me because I'm not bitter?"

The exasperated laserlike stare returned. "I'm worried because you're not angry! It's been a year now --"

"Over a year." Fourteen months, I wanted to add, but thought better of.

"-- and I don't think I've ever really heard you get angry. Sad, yes. Miserable and depressed, yes. Angry, no."

"Well, so what? I just don't have it in me to get angry at her."

"Exactly!" Chuck says this as if I helped to make his point. "Anger is a natural part of a healthy break-up. You can't avoid it. At first I thought that you were just expressing your anger in private. You're a private sort of person, sometimes."

"I am a sort of private person."

"Sure. But then you keep dropping all these hints like you're fishing for news about her. When you ought to be flinching at the mention of her name."

I shook my head again. "You consider that healthier? Being unable to even hear her name without pain? You're kidding, Chuck. How is that healthier than a quiet, calm acceptance of the status quo?"

"Because I don't think you have accepted the status quo. I think part of you is still hoping you'll get back together."

There was more, much more. About an hour's worth of back and forth. But I don't really remember it. It's largely immaterial, anyway. Chuck was wrong about me not having been angry at April. He just doesn't know about the time when I was angry. (And hopefully he never will.) He was dead wrong about that, but that was all he was wrong about. It's true. Part of me is still hoping that we'll get back together.

How can I not hope? It's impossible.

The only thing I remember from the rest of the conversation is Chuck saying, with a casual air, "Hey Eddie, there are plenty of other fish in the ocean." That made me angry, surprisingly enough. It's a banal enough observation, and no doubt it's true. But it wasn't what I wanted to hear from my friend. I wanted reassurance, at least. Hey there Eddie, who could blame you for still wanting to get back together with April? I would if I were you. I wanted to hear, Eddie, April's one that's worth fighting for. Good for you for keeping the flame alive. You're faithful to her, and that's admirable. You, you're no fair-weather friend. April's blind if she doesn't see that. That's what I wanted to hear. Not this throwaway remark that was basically telling me to get over myself already.

The bus arrives. I get on it, find a seat. The bus driver pulls out into traffic. You gotta be more careful than that. Where do I remember that from? Make sure you know what's you're doing. Not from Chuck. It wasn't in Chuck's voice. I don't remember the context of the words but I remember how they sounded. The voice was softer than Chuck's voice, but louder. The words were spoken in a quiet place, in other words not a bar, and reverberated around briefly before diminishing into silence. The words were spoken with caution, lest they travel too far, to distant ears. When was the last time I was in such a place? Surely that should narrow it down.

The bus is overfull tonight, not unusual for a Friday night. All of the internal lights are on. For some reason I can't understand the combination of a full bus and bright lights makes everyone especially quiet, so nobody on the bus speaks at all. The only noise is the rumbling of the engine as it drags our combined weight up the sloping road. Some people are reading books or newspapers, but the rest of us are just staring ahead. I hate these buses, particularly on a night like tonight.

Finally it arrives at my stop. I get out, walk to my building, let myself into the foyer. Open the mailbox. It looks like it's all junk mail but one can never be sure so I take it all with me down the hall, to my door. Home at last. Home sweet home. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

Actually, I kind of hate my place these days. Which drives me to hang out with people I think I might not like until I'm feeling the need to be alone again, at which point I can feel good about being home alone.

The bedroom is a small room off to the left, just big enough to hold a large bed. I hate my bed. You could fit three people on this thing, two easily. I have it all to myself, and I hate it. I'd much rather have my old twin mattress back. On that mattress, sleeping alone was the norm and having a second person was the exception. With this bed, every night I'm reminded that I'm a loser for going to bed alone.

No wonder I have to sack out on the couch every now and then. It's a simple matter of geometry.

But seeing the bed triggers something else in my brain, and suddenly I remember where I remember that phrase from. That dream from last night.

I sit down on the couch, reach over and turn on the floor lamp. I leave it at its dimmest setting. I'm feeling an affinity for the darkness all of a sudden. I feel like I should have a cigarette and a glass of whiskey on the rocks in my hands. Something noirish. I don't smoke, but I do have a bottle of vodka, sitting in the back of a cupboard. I go to the kitchen to find the bottle, and get a short glass filled with ice. I don't much care for straight vodka, or straight anything really. But I am taken with the mental image, and it would spoil the feeling to mix the alcohol with anything but water. And what the hell. It's Friday. I don't have any reason to get up tomorrow.

I think the reason that I feel so out of control of my life right now, when I'm the only person in my life, is that there's nothing stopping me. From doing anything, I mean. I could wake up tomorrow and decide to quit my job, buy a motorcycle with my severance pay, and start driving to Belize. And nobody would be there to stop me and remind me that when I wake up in the morning after freezing my ass off in the New Mexico desert, I'm going to wish I hadn't done that.

We guys grow up thinking that we want nothing more than to be free, and that the only reason to allow ourselves to get tied down is to get sex on a reliable basis. We idolize other guys, like rock stars, who seem to manage to get sex full-time without having to relinquish their options. And that's all fine and good for some guys, I suppose. But clearly I'm not one of them. Maybe I used to be one of them. I may even have been one of them as recently as a month ago. But I can tell you that I'm not right now. When I was with April, I had a full-time second opinion, and whether or not I appreciated it at the time, having it once more would make me a very happy man indeed.

I return to the couch and sip the vodka, wincing. I rattle the ice around in the glass, which is enjoyable in itself. I look more like how I feel right now. I take another sip. The vodka isn't terrible. In a little bit I probably won't mind the taste.

The dream was vivid. Most of my dreams are flat and uninteresting -- static scenes, recognizably set in my everyday world. But not this one.

I was standing inside an open building, like a Greek temple. There were fluted columns all around me, but no walls. Outside the sky was bright blue, but with orange tints, like a cantaloupe. There were ice crystals suspended in the air, refracting spectral shards as my gaze swept across the horizon. Everything on the ground was a vibrant green color. Trees were everywhere, and inbetween the trees were bushes, and inbetween the bushes was grass. All of it was healthy and blooming. There were a building or two off in the distance, brilliant white marble like the one I was in. I wasn't alone, either. There were two or three others with me, but I have no clear image of them. There was a great deal that came before this moment in my dream; of that I am positive. But I remember none of it, only that I felt that I had covered a great distance and accomplished many things in order to be standing here in this austere building. No furnishings of any kind were present. Only columns and a roof qualified this structure as a building. Standing five or six feet in front of me was a large bird -- a peacock, I suppose, as it had the huge sweeping tail feathers of a peacock. But this was no ordinary bird. The bird itself was facing away from me, but upon the bird's back was a face. A woman's face, to be precise, looking up at me. I don't mean that a human face was grafted onto this bird's back. The color was that of a normal peacock, but the shape was that of a woman's face. Her eyeballs were an iridescent blue-gray color, like the rest of the bird, and she had no eyebrows. But otherwise her face was just as expressive as anyone's She had strong cheekbones, and despite the strangeness she was clearly beautiful. It was she that I had come to see. To meet with her, for some reason. I can't remember what the purpose was, or if this was just another stop on a larger journey. But I remember that I greeted her, and introduced myself and my companions as a single group. She asked no questions, but only replied with those words. You must be more careful than that, she said. Make sure you know what's you're doing. She didn't say exactly those words, but it was something very close to that. Words to that effect. She spoke with perfect enunciation. I nodded, hoping she would elaborate, but she merely looked at me expectantly. I racked my brain, trying to figure out the deeper meaning to this warning. It occurred to me that I had walked up to her without checking for trapdoors in the floor. Perhaps this is what she meant? But I was afraid to move, for if I was standing on a trap door already, the slightest motion might knock it open. Was there more to the dream besides this? Perhaps this morning I remembered more, but right now these are the only details I can bring forth.

I rattle the ice in my glass again. The cubes are much smaller by now. I think I've finished off the vodka in the glass; what's left is just melted ice. I'm feeling pleasantly drunk. I consider getting up and getting some more vodka, but this is probably as pleasant as it will get. Some calmly rational part of my brain realizes that now is probably a good time to go to bed, that at this point I could probably fall directly asleep, and not spend hours tossing and turning. I leave the glass on the kitchen counter and go back to my bedroom. Yes, the alcohol has affected me; I can see it as I walk through my apartment. I only get my shoes off before I lose patience with undressing, and crawl into bed fully clothed and shut my eyes. My brain was right. Almost immediately I feel exhausted, and sleep washes over me.

One of the reasons that I stopped letting myself fall asleep on the couch is that it's right next to the windows that face east. So I'd be woken up with the sunrise. No fun, especially when there's been drinking the night before. So I was pretty annoyed when I was awoken by the bright sunlight beating against my closed eyelids.

I squeeze my eyelids against each other and turn my head away from the light. A coarse fiber tickles the inside of my ear, making sleep retreat even further. I can hear birds singing. Why the heck did I leave my window open? The rain could have gotten in. Actually, there's no "could have" about it: maybe the rain did get in. I should get up and check, but understandably I'm not eager to do so. I can hear maniacal laughter nearby. Somebody's having a good time. I wish they would go have it somewhere else. A cool breeze blows across me, giving me the shivers. I curl up a bit. Why don't I have a blanket over me?

Finally, the number of anomalous experiences hits a critical mass, and my brain comes wide awake with the realization that something abnormal and/or inappropriate is going on. I open my eyes and sit up.

I am laying atop a grassy knoll, out in the open. There's not a building as far as I can see. Trees are scattered about, too thinly to be called a forest. The sun is low in the sky and there is dew on the grass. There are also clumps of bright white mushrooms scattered about, including one right next to my left hand. I see butterflies in the air, as well as birds. Now that I'm fully awake, I realize that the air is full of birdsong. They must like it here. Standing a few feet to my right is a squat man, with wild shaggy strawberry-blond hair. He's dressed in soft leather clothes that would look cute on someone less striking. His mouth is wide open, for the maniacal laughter is his. His teeth as long, yellow and uneven. He stops laughing and stares directly at me. His eyes are wide open, and they too are yellow.

I look down at myself. I'm wearing the clothes I went to bed with, down to my stockinged feet. I don't really want to stand up in the damp grass without shoes, so I remain where I am.

"Ah, he's awake! It worked! The prophesies are true!" His voice is a little high-pitched, and clearly excited. He laughs again, looks me over, and danced about a little.

I clear my throat. There seems to be a day's worth of gunk in there. I spit, being careful to aim it away from the dancing creature.

The dancing stops. "Oh my, lad. That's a poor sort of greeting."

I look at him again, to be sure. "Harax?" I say, tentatively.

The yellow eyes grow wider still. "How do you know my name?"

"Look, I've got a bit of a hangover here. Do you have any water?"

Harax looks a bit confused, but nonetheless hands me what appears to be a water skin made of pigskin leather. The water tastes a little funny, but maybe that's just a lack of chemicals? I hope that it's clean.

Should I be concerned that I think myself to be talking to a fictional creature from a video game? Rationally, the only possible explanations are that I am insane or dreaming. And yet I'm pretty sure that I'm neither of those things. Which should leave me even more worried, but for some reason I'm not. It just doesn't occur to me to question my self-diagnosis of sanity. Or rather, it does, but it seems silly: of course I'm not insane.

For whatever reason, I feel confident that there's a perfectly rational explanation for all of this, and that I will eventually figure out what it is. In the meantime, probably the best thing to do is to try to get some questions answered. Fortunately, Harax seems all too eager to oblige me in this respect.

"First question: Where can I get some shoes?"

Harax examines my socks and cogitates. Finally he says, "In the next town, I expect. You'll have to go barefoot for the time being."

"Out here? No, no way. I'll step on a twig and put a hole in my foot, then I'll be bleeding and the next thing you know it'll be infected."

Harax shakes his head at me.

"I'm sorry, but I don't have any practice going around barefoot. My feet wouldn't last a minute." I take off my socks to show him my soles.

Harax gently prods the bottom of my left foot. He then sighs, sits down in the grass, and begins removing his shoes. "You don't cut a very heroic figure so far, I must say, good sir."

"Oh, I'm not asking you to give me your shoes. Surely there must be another solution."

"Well, there isn't. So take the shoes and be silent about it." I can see the bottoms of his feet now, and in fact they are thickly calloused. He drops the shoes in front of me and stands up again. "This will do for the time being."

I carefully try on one shoe. The opening is small, almost too small to squeeze my foot through, but the inside of the shoe proper is large and roomy. I stand. "Thanks," I say uncertainly.

Harax clasps his hands behind his back. "It seems a bit strange to introduce myself, when you clearly know me already. Perhaps you could do me the favor of introducing yourself?"

"Oh. Uh, I'm Eddie."

Harax frowns. "Eddie? Your given name is Eddie?"

"Well, Edward."

Harax nods. "Edward. Edward who?"

"I'd really rather you called me Eddie, actually."

Harax frowns again. "You prefer the name Ed-die?"

"Yeah." I try to discern the cause of his discomfort from his face, but there are no hints there. "Edward just sounds formal, you know?"

Harax blinks. "What do I know?"

I blow a loud sigh, despite myself. "My apologies, I know this may be rude of me, but can we just skip the introductions for now? I'd really like for you to explain what I'm doing here. I mean, you seem a bit surprised about my nickname, but you don't seem surprised to see me in the first place. And I'd really like to hear why that is."

Harax smiles again, seemingly in spite of himself. "Well, it certainly is a worthy tale. I presume that in turn, you will explain to me how it is you know my name, when we have obviously never met before."

"Sure," I say, though I intend no such thing. Unless between now and then he demonstrates to me that he already understands what a "video game" is, I doubt that I can honestly explain to him how I know his name, and even a bit of his history.

Presuming, that is, that the part that I know about has already happened. It's possible that it's the future.

"Let us not dally here, however. It's full daylight, and we should be walking. We have many miles to go, and first we need to find a shoemaker." Harax moves off, moving quickly for a man with no shoes. I follow him down the knoll and over the next hill, where there is a small encampment. Harax points at the bedding. "Roll that up for me, if you would. I will cover up the evidence of the fire, and then perhaps find something with which to bind my feet, for protection."

I have to admit that I feel a little uncomfortable, being ordered around so easily by a -- man? What exactly is Harax, anyway? A hobbit? I honestly don't know. April never told me, and I never thought to ask.

Harax, you see, was April's character.

The video game was called "Legends of Armethal". It was a lot of fun. April and I played it together, not long after we moved in together. I had a lot of trepidation about moving in together. We had only been seeing each other for about a year, and it seemed hasty. But she hated her apartment, and she liked my place. And she seemed convinced that it would work. In the end her confidence rubbed off on me, and I agreed. April arrived in a single afternoon. She had few possessions, and she actually wound up giving away most of her furniture when she moved. Against my expectations, my place did not suddenly get cluttered and claustrophobic with her living there. Sharing the bed was a bit tight, but that suited us fine (at first, anyway).

And to my surprise, it was a video game that really made me feel happy that she was living with me. I had been worried that she was going to object to the amount of time I spent playing video games. Not that I play them all the time, not nearly as much as some people I know. But the time I do spend playing them is important to me, and I didn't want to be made to feel guilty for it. So I had one of the few moments of sheer brilliance of my life. I went out and found a video game for us to play together. "Legends of Armethal" had just come out, and the reviews I read suggested that it was a girl-friendly game, but also guy-friendly. A game with a cool fantasy setting and a strong storyline, and one that didn't rely too much on simulated blood-and-guts (but also wasn't just a bunch of unicorns running around). And the game had options for single-player or two-player modes, so I could still play it by myself if April didn't like it. It sounded just right, and it worked like a charm. April really got into playing the game, and in particular playing it together. The game's world was pretty, and had lots of good detail. We spent a fair bit of time just exploring it, ignoring the main quest of the game. (The quest was to find a kill a dragon, as I recall. In order to do that you had to obtain a powerful sword, and in order to release the sword from the stone it was embedded in you needed a magic gauntlet. And so on.) Eventually I got a little bored with just wandering around, though, and I convinced her to focus on the game's storyline.

But her curiosity must have remained, because for a short while she started playing the game without me, when I wasn't around. So as not to interfere with our game she created a new character, and used him to wander around the places we hadn't yet explored to her satisfaction. Of course I saw her character in the saved game list not long after she created it, and I thought it was great that she was honestly enjoying the game. April was the only girlfriend I ever had that didn't consider video games to be a waste of time.

Of course, we hadn't left very much of the world unexplored, so she quickly ran out of things to do with her solo character, and left it unused while our main characters went on to complete the quest and finish the game.

But the name of the character she created was Harax. And he looked just like the creature by my side.

Camp is broken, and Harax has bound his feet in cloth. We're now walking roughly north, judging by the sun. There's no path, but Harax seems to know where we're going. Harax's shoes are a bit loose on my feet, despite his short stature. If there are too many of these grassy knolls between here and a shoemaker, I'm going to have two feet covered in blisters. On the other hand, the weather is perfect for hiking: sunny, with a gentle breeze. And Harax insists on carrying all of his possessions. I offered to carry the bedroll, but he insisted. "You'll have your own things to carry soon enough." This comment reminds me that he clearly expects me to go travelling with him.

"Ah, Eddie, it is good to be moving forward. Soon we will procure for you some shoes, a pack and a bedroll, and definitely some clothes. What you're wearing now is not unflattering, but I fear it will inspire more staring than you'd be comfortable with. We will be noteworthy enough as it is."

I'm all in favor of travelling, as long as it gets me closer to home, but I doubt that's what's forefront in his mind. And of course I have no idea how I would accomplish that.

"There is much work ahead of us, but for now it is good to be out in the open fields, on a fine spring day like this."

It strikes me that it's November. At least it was November when I went to bed.

"Okay, Harax. I really need you to start explaining some things to me."

"Yes, I promised to tell you how you come to be here."

"Right, but first of all: Where is here?"

"We are crossing the Hegland Plains."

"And this land is -- Armethal?"

Without breaking his stride Harax looks up and over at me, surprised. "But of course this land is Armethal. Do you not hail from Armethal yourself?"

"No." I frown. "No, I don't."

"Then tell me, whence come you?"

I'm now extremely doubtful that I'm going to be able to give him any details on that subject. "Elsewhere. A land you've never heard of."

"The land's name is truly Elsewhere?"

"No, it's just somewhere else. Leave it at that."

Harax looks consternated. "But if you're from a distant land, then do you know of our princess and her plight?"

I think about this, but I don't remember anything from the game about a princess, or indeed anything about royalty or other governing bodies. "No, I can't say that I do."

"This is quite unexpected. Why would you be the one summoned, if you are not a citizen of Armethal and know nothing of our quest?"

"I was summoned?"

"Perhaps --" Harax looks into the distance ahead of us, contemplating. "Perhaps I have yet made some mistake?"

"Harax. Did you summon me? Is that what you're saying?"

Harax looks at me again, carefully. "Yes. At least that is what I thought. Am I wrong? Do you have another explanation for how you came here?"

"Heck, no."

"That much is good then."

"But how did you summon me?"

"Ah-ha, how indeed? Well, with magic, naturally. Now, you are probably wondering how a lowly elf like me could have wielded such a powerful spell."

"No actually, the thing I was wondering was: Why me in particular?" Well, to be perfectly honest I was also wondering: An elf? Harax is an elf? Sure, he's short like an elf, but he looks more like a dwarf to me. Aren't elves supposed to be -- well, more elfin? Wispy and pointy-eared and sprightly? Something like that? But I say none of this aloud.

"That I don't know. Magic alone knows its reasons, and it does not answer questions." He says this as if it were a truism, clearly expecting me to recognize it and agree.

"Okay. Can you at least tell me why you were summoning people?"

Harax nods thoughtfully. "I fear that in order to answer that question, I must first explain to you the perilous situation of our country, and of the captive princess."

I take a deep breath. I was sort of hoping that he was going to be able to show me some object that he used to bring me here, and it would have an obvious way to reverse the process and take me home again. Not that I'm desperate to leave here -- it's been pretty nice so far, ignoring the shoe issue. I'd just like to know that I had the option of leaving if I wanted to. Now it's looking like getting home isn't going to be easy.

That's all assuming that I'm not just dreaming, of course. But nothing about this feels like a dream. There's no sudden shifting of contexts, and the focus hasn't been on some anxiety revolving around my job. The vista around me is fully detailed, and there's a rich scent of dirt in the air, not to mention all the birdsong. Were it not for last night's dream, it would never occur to me to think that this was not actually happening.

Harax suddenly stops and grabs my elbow, which is right at eye level for him. "Look over there, Eddie." He points with his other hand at the horizon.

I see nothing interesting where he's pointing at first, and then I notice a thin gray thread meandering up from behind the distant trees to the sky. "Oh," I say. "What is that?"

Harax chuckles. "It's chimney-smoke, of course! Come on."

"Do you know who that is that lives there?"

"No, but if we continue walking this way we'll know them soon enough. With any luck, it will be someone willing to barter with us for an extra pair of shoes." And he heads off again, angling towards the smoke. I hurry to catch up with him.

As we settle into a comfortable walking rhythm, Harax says. "Now, Eddie, listen and I will explain to your satisfaction our situation."

"I'm all ears."

"Many years ago, the King of Armethal was a wise and just ruler, and Armethal saw many prosperous years under his hand. But one day the King was on a hunt, and took a heavy fall from his horse. His body survived, but not his wit. The King was largely unharmed in body, but he became scatter-brained. He could no longer see through deception as he once did, and his temper became unpredictable and vicious. Sadly, he also failed to see his own deterioration for what it was. Though the Queen pleaded with him, she could not convince him that he needed to relinquish the crown.

"For a time, it looks as if the King of Aremthal would have to be forcibly removed. The court was in a terrible state as secret alliances were formed and broken, and various parties sought to increase their own personal share of power in the coming upheaval.

"But in the end, no such rebellion took place. The Queen, who was as loyal as she was insightful, learned how to guide her addle-brained husband with a gracefulness that even the most influential diplomats envied. The King of Armethal remained in control of the throne, and so was content, while the Queen of Armethal made certain that his rule continued to be wise and just. And so our prosperity held.

"The winter before last, the Queen took ill with a raging fever, and died after a long week of suffering." Harax paused here for a moment of silence, holding his hand over his heart. Then he proceeded. "The only child she left behind was the princess, Thalia. Princess Thalia had watched and learned carefully the method whereby her mother maintained her peaceful rule over Armethal through her demented father, and she took on her mother's great task with love and determination. We breathed a sigh of relief as our princess showed herself fully capable of keeping her father's reign on the same path that the late Queen followed.

"But the princess, though skillful and devoted, was not as wise as her elders. The Tilonites, who border us to the west, saw their chance to strike at us from within. They insinuated themselves in our royal court, and forged treasonous alliances in secret. One by one they began to replace the royal advisers with plotters, whose allegiance was to Tilon. They did this without arousing Princess Thalia's suspicion, until it was too late. By the time she understood that secret machinations were taking place all around her, the royal advisers were thoroughly corrupt. The princess attempted to make her father see what was taking place, but before she could succeed in that endeavor, she vanished."

Harax pauses dramatically. I ask, "She vanished? How?"

"How, indeed? One day her morning maid came to her bedroom and she was not there. The court was in upheaval at first, but then a rumor reached the King of Armethal, saying that the Princess Thalia had fallen in love with a stable boy, and the two of them had run away to elope. The King in his fury disowned the Princess, and has made no effort since then to locate her."

Again Harax pauses for dramatic effect, so I prompt him. "Was the rumor true?"

"No! Of course it was not. It was a simple fabrication, started by the treasonous members of the court, and calculated to have precisely the effect it did.

"I on the other hand do know what happened to the princess. She has been the victim of a kidnapping most unkind. Armethal's enemies are not so ruthless as to kill her outright, but they have taken her away from the King and his court, and hold her in secret exile to the north. I learned this after many weeks spent in the taverns near the court, asking questions of everyone I thought I could trust. I've come very near to forfeiting my life, or at least my freedom, on many an occasion. Fortunately an elf like me knows many ways to evade his pursuers, particularly when they're had too much to drink. But with time I found a few people that could be trusted, whose loyalty to Armethal stood unbent even in these difficult times. Between them I pieced together the true history. Sadly, our country's royal court is a place of intrigue and duplicity."

I nod, indicating polite sympathy. "And so now that you've learned all this, are you trying to find a way to bring her back?"

Harax becomes bold. "In fact I have already done so, and I am now on the way to rescue Princess Thalia! And it is for that reason that you are here with me now."

"Really," I say carefully. "I don't quite see how that follows."

"Ah, that's because you are ignorant of Romiel's Prophecy," he announces, then adds "Don't fret, though. Most people are ignorant of Romiel's Prophecy."

Oh, he's just getting warmed up, this one. I look up. Ahead, I can now see the small cabin, nestled inbetween the trees, from where the smoke originates.

"Romiel was a mad visionary who lived four centuries ago. We are fortunate that he had enough of his faculties to record the things he saw with ink, for he was not respected in his own time. The people who cared for him thought him to be merely insane, and took nothing he said seriously. But his writings were preserved, thanks to chance and benign neglect."

"And these writings told you to rescue the princess?"

Harax narrows his eyes and looks at me carefully, though his pace doesn't change. "Eddie, my boy, was that remark delivered with a mean spirit?"

Taken aback, I consider his question honestly. "A little bit, I suppose. I don't mean to dismiss you, Harax." But my girlfriend came up with your name late one night when she was feeling whimsical. "But you have to admit, your story is starting to sound a little crazy as well. You know?"

Harax is silent for a moment. Finally he says, "No. I don't know."

Oh boy. I've already managed to offend the only person I know here. I suppose I need to remember that this is a fantasy world, presumably based on a video game. (Unless, of course, it's the other way around, and the video game is based on this world. That's a nice little twist for a movie, but I don't think it demands my serious consideration at this point.) The fulfillment of ancient prophecies recorded by mad visionaries is probably rather normal in this place. "I apologize, Harax. I spoke too hastily. I wasn't thinking. See, in the land I come from, we have no prophets. Or rather we do have prophets, but they're all false prophets. Their predictions never come true. Or well, I suppose they do come true once in a great while, but it's just because of luck. You know, if you make enough prophecies one or two of them are bound to come true, sooner or later. Particularly if you make them vague and --"

"All right!" Harax shouts. "You apology is accepted. Now will you let me finish my tale?"

I nod mutely, not wishing to annoy him further.

We walk along in silence for a while, as Harax regains his composure. Finally he begin anew. "Romiel made many prophecies in his brief and turbulent life. A handful of these have already come to pass. The remaining ones refer to events yet to come, or else refer to events already passed but not yet recognized as such.

"One such prophecy tells of a time when Armethal is in turmoil. Romiel makes it clear that the land's well being hangs on the fate of one young woman."

"Presumably the princess."

"Yes. Romiel's Prophecy states that the woman is lost in a unknown land, and that Armethal's future depends on her returning home once more."

"But the princess isn't lost. She's being held prisoner north of here." I know I shouldn't be poking holes in his story, not yet anyway. But I can't help it.

"She has lost her way home. And the northern lands are sparsely occupied, and certainly she has never visited them before. So in that sense they are unknown."

"Okay. Keep going."

"According to the prophecy, the young woman is helpless to save herself, until she is aided by a resourceful elf."

"Which could only be you?"

"I'm omitting the details in this telling. Just let me finish, boy. Now the elf, sensing the danger to both the young woman and his homeland, calls upon the Fates and begs them to intercede on behalf of the woman, to unravel what has been woven. The Fates are moved by his speech, and honor his request by bringing unto him a powerful hero."

I want to interrupt him here, but I can think of nothing to say that wouldn't sound foolish.

"The elf and the hero then journey to the unknown lands together. With the assistance of a powerful mage they find the young woman and bring her back home again. Once the woman is reunited with her family, they return to the strange lands and --" Harax waves a hand in dismissal. "Well, the rest of the prophecy isn't about the hero, so I won't bore you with that part of it. But you see, do you not?"

Again, I find myself at a loss for anything appropriate to say.

"I learned of this prophecy only recently, and saw that the parallels were strong enough, that it was my duty to my liege the King, and his daughter the Princess Thalia, to act accordingly. So I travelled to this place and, wielding a relic of great power, made my case before the almighty Fates themselves. And lo! In the very next moment, you appeared before me, as if you had condensed from the very air!"

Harax is getting excited. I continue to say nothing.

"You see, you can scoff at the prophecy all day long if you wish, but in the end you have to allow that you are here, brought to me by the Fates at my request! Do you not?"

"Indeed. There's no arguing the fact that I am here." Against all reason, no less. Harax's argument does have that going for it.

"What other explanation can there be for your presence, but that Romiel's prophecy is true?"

I pause to consider how best to response, and in that moment of silence a shout comes to us from the direction of the cabin. "Help! Yah! Stop it!"

Harax frowns, and then in another moment is off running like a shot. My feet are beginning to blister, but I lope off after him.

You might think it would be easy to keep pace with someone that short, particularly when he's weighted down with a pack. I certainly thought that, but I see now that I was wrong. Harax is fast, and it's all that I can do to catch up with him by the time he reaches the house.

The place looks rather cozy, actually. It's almost storybook-perfect in its neat exterior. There's even a little well out in front -- a real well, not just something for show. The shouting is coming from around the far side of the cabin, along with the sound of something scrabbling or struggling with something else. Harax and I don't break our pace, but continue around the cabin.

On the other side is a cleared bit of ground. Here and there about the ground are chopped-up bits of wood. Larger chunks of wood are stacked to one side against the cabin, under the protection of the eaves. In the middle of the chopping area is a tall, thin woman. At least I believe she would be tall if she were standing upright. At the moment she is running back and forth while crouched down, bent almost double. Her hair is a dark brown, and the bright sunlight glints off of the odd scattered gray hair. The woman is the one who's yelling, and what she's yelling at is --

-- is, oddly enough, an axe. A large axe is swinging itself wildly through the air. Once in a while it strikes against a piece of wood or kindling, but mostly it hits the ground, or swishes violently through the air. After each stroke it quickly rears back and once again flings outward.

"Can we help you!" Harax shouts to be heard above the woman's yelling, whose back is still towards us.

"Okay, now this looks pretty dangerous," I hear myself saying.

The woman jumps visibly, then turns around and regards us for a moment. The axe swings again, fortunately at a spot several feet away from the woman. She runs forward at us. "Grab it! Try to hold it down!" The axe seems to notice that the woman has moved out of reach and lunges in her general direction -- in other words almost directly at me. The woman runs past me, almost hitting me in the shoulder, and vanishes around the side of the cabin. I panic, and instead of dodging the axe blade I freeze up and cover my face with my heads. Because that's the kind of hero I am. Yes sir.

Fate chooses to let me off the hook this time, though, and the axe buries itself in the dirt three feet in front of me. At once Harax is upon it, grabbing the handle and bringing his foot down on the back of the axe head, trying to hold it down. "Give me a hand, Eddie!" he shouts at me.

At this able demonstration I finally unfreeze, and run forward to help. But not fast enough, for the axe pulls itself out of the ground anyway, sending Harax sprawling onto his side and rolling over, coming to rest on his stomach.

The axe has pulled back, just like I imagine a cobra looks the moment before it strikes. I run over to Harax and I can feel the breeze from the axe swinging down, the head once again burying itself into the packed dirt where I was standing.

Is it my imagination or is that thing picking on me? And where is the idiot who set this thing loose in the first place?

I extend a hand to Harax, who takes it and nimbly jumps back onto his feet. "Quick, grab the handle! Before it swings again," he shouts at me, and runs past me. I turn around. The axe still has its head in the dirt but it is visibly working itself loose. Harax is running towards it from the left. I step forward to come at the handle at the right, but just at that moment the axe comes free from the ground and swings back. There is no doubt in my mind: the blade is pointed directly at me. It's all I can do to halt my forward momentum, lest I impale myself directly. My balance is off. A full second passes as I stand there, wanting to run off to either the left or the right, but first just trying not to fall on my face. Another second passes. I am utterly helpless. The axe is pointing right at me. Harax is holding the handle.

"Rigsthemenay!" A clear, commanding shout, in a voice that only the foolhardy would ignore.

Harax wobbles on his stumpy legs for a moment. Suddenly the axe in his hands is just that: an axe in his hands. He lowers it, looks it over for a moment, and then lets out a long sigh. With a strong and careful overhead stroke, he beds the axe in a knotty chunk of wood near him, then pulls a handkerchief out from a hidden pocket and wipes the dirt and sweat from his face.

The tall, thin woman is standing by the cabin again. In one hand she holds a small book, her thumb holding it open to a specific page. She lowers her arms, takes a deep breath, and smiles. In a calm voice she says, "Many thanks, my visitors. You have saved me from an ignominious death -- namely, at my own hand."

Harax wipes his hands on his handkerchief and stuffs it back into a breast pocket. "I take it then that you are the maker of this accursed object?"

"Indeed, I confess it is true. Though my intentions were hardly what you saw. I hoped to make an axe that would cut kindling from my woodpile, rather than from myself. Please don't think me a hasty bumbler: it's a spell that I have been working on for some time, and my experiments on less dangerous objects proved quite successful. I do not know why this one turned out so badly."

Harax nods. "I take it you have been studying the magical arts for some time then?"

The woman shrugs. A small, rueful smile plays about her mouth. "Some years, yes. Not as many as I might wish. Or yourselves, I imagine." She closes her book and carefully tucks it into a pocket in her left sleeve.

Harax chuckles appreciatively. "My name is Harax, madam, and my friend here is named Eddie. Would I be right in guessing that your name is Legrielle?"

"So it is. I see that my name is becoming known in these parts. Have you come for some magical assistance?" She addresses this last question at me, as if she thinks I might be the leader here. Or maybe she's just trying to include me in the conversation. I smile and shrug foolishly.

Harax speaks. "Actually, I confess that we did not come here intending to visit you at all. We are simply travellers, crossing over the Hegland Plains. We saw your smoke and came here hoping that you might be able to assist us with some minor provisions. Very minor."

Legrielle's expression does not change, but she stands a little straighter and asks, "Is that true? You are not even from these parts? Then how is it you were so sure of my name?"

Harax nods. "I'm afraid in these times it has become my business to know the names and general whereabouts of many of Armethal's mages. And thought I did not seek you out in particular, it is surely Serendipity that brought me here. For you see, we are seeking --" Harax suddenly falters, and looks around himself. "-- a colleague of yours," he finishes quietly.

Legrielle stares at Harax carefully. Then she opens a pouch attached to her belt, and pulls out a pair of spectacles, the kind with no earpieces. Wedging them onto her nose, she stares at Harax for a long moment, then scrutinizes me just as carefully. "All right," she says, taking the spectacles off and returning them to her pouch. "Come inside, and we can discuss these things more comfortably."

The inside of Legrielle's cabin is in fact quite cozy. There is one comfortable-looking chair against one wall, and some stools pushed up against a tall thin table -- a worktable of some sort, I'm guessing, as it's covered with papers, books, and small opaque containers. A single bookshelf runs along the wall just above the table. The far wall has a number of cupboards. Perhaps the worktable is really just part of the kitchen?

A small fire is indeed burning in the fireplace, and over it is a cauldron. No kidding. It's small, but instantly recognizable. Just seeing it there makes the whole place feel more magical. I don't know what to think about this. As far as I'm concerned, magic is just another excuse for putting lots of computer-generated images into blockbuster movies. On the other hand, I just got through dancing with a maniacal axe, and not for a moment did I wonder if that thing was real.

"Legrielle?" I ask.

She looks at me, "Yes? What was your name again?"

"Eddie. May I ask you -- I mean, can you tell me what's in the cauldron?"

"You may. It's vegetable soup. Are you hungry? The soup will be ready in a couple of hours, I'm told."

Soup. Of course. I don't know why I expected some kind of witch's brew, but it seemed the most logical next step. "You're told that it will be ready? By whom?"

Harax frowns at me. Perhaps my question was impertinent? Or maybe it just sounded stupid. There was probably a reason I was keeping my mouth shut earlier.

Legrielle blinks but otherwise does not appear perturbed by my question. "My assistant, of course. She's out right now, gathering herbs in the nearby forest. I decided to test my axe trick when she was not around. I thought it best for her to not be endangered if the experiment went badly. It did, and I see now that my choice was the more dangerous one."

Harax smiles and says, "Yes, but for the fact that we happened along." Harax drops his pack on the floor by the worktable.

"So you did. You are travellers, you say, but what is your destination? You are not looking for me, but having found me, you wish my aid? There are many questions."

"Our destination." Harax pulls out a stool and hops up onto the seat. The extra few inches of height seem to reassure him. Legrielle makes no move to sit down. Unsure what is polite, by default I remain standing by the fireplace. "Our destination is the Drowning Castle."

Legrielle folds her hands together and speaks carefully. "To what purpose? The only ones I can imagine are either mad or treasonous."

"To rescue the captive Princess Thalia, to be sure."

"Mad, then."

"Not mad at all! Our actions were prophesised by Romiel, madam. We are to be its fulfillment!"

"You? An elf and a boy?"

Boy? Did she call me a boy? Hey, jackass, I'm thirty-five. It's been years since I was carded at a bar. Who does this woman think she is? Harax doesn't bat an eye at this, though. He says, "The boy was summoned. By me, Legrielle. From a distant land. Mark you, I have not a whit of magical training."

"Then how could you have accomplished such a feat?"

Harax hops off of his stool, bends over and opens his pack. He rummages around for a moment, then pulls out a rod, about three feet long. On one end is a crystal of some kind. I don't think it's a gemstone, as it's far too large. And the crystal is riven through with a webwork of cracks, like the safety glass at a bus shelter when it shatters.

Legrielle reaches out and raises an eyebrow. "Is that --"

Harax holds it out to her. "The Wand of Final Resort. Yes. It was."

Legrielle takes it from him and turns to the fireplace, letting the orange light refract and scatter through the broken crystal. She examines it from end to end. Finally she says, "Had you come to me but yesterday, and asked me if the Wand of Final Resort ever truly existed, I would have answered, it is merely a tale, to entertain children and bolster the hopes of people in times of hopelessness. And today you hand it to me, spent and destroyed." She shakes her head slowly and then hands it back to Harax. "But not a bit less recognizable for that."

Harax holds out his palm. "You may keep it, if you like. It is of no further use to ones such as ourselves. All we ask in return is some small assistances."

Legrielle holds the wand close again, then lays it on the table, careful to rest the crystal on a stack of papers. "I can offer you a meal, and some small amount of provisions for the road, certainly. You are welcome to spend the night here, but if your goal is the Drowning Castle, I would recommend that you not tarry long."

"Agreed. But a pair of shoes for the boy would be helpful as well."

Legrielle looks at my feet and chuckles. "I may be able to assist you there as well."

"And directions to the home of Auros Ettra."

"Auros Ettra. The colleague you alluded to before?" Legrielle's voice grows contemplative. "Yes, I see. Indeed. Indeed. He is likely to be able to help you, if any of us can." Legrielle turns to his table and lifts the lid from one of her containers. She withdraws from it a pinch of dried herbs, and crosses over to the comfortable chair near the fireplace. "But you will have to approach him with caution. Auros Ettra has become mistrustful of strangers in his old age. If you arouse his suspicion, it may never go away again." Legrielle picks up a wooden pipe resting on the arm of her chair and tamps the herbs into the bowl. With a pair of iron tongs she deftly retrieves a small coal from the heart of the fire, uses it to start the herbs smoldering, and then tosses it back into the fireplace. "Here," she says, holding the pipe out to me. "Let us relax for now, and consider your quest further."

I look at Legrielle, and then at Harax. I've never smoked before, much less from a pipe, but I can't quite bring myself to admit this to them. They're both already calling me "boy". So I take a drag on the thing, trying to remember how my stoner friends in college did it. At once my lungs are on fire. I manage to pass the pipe over to Harax before the coughing fit begins.

It lasts a long time. When I finally catch my breath again, my face feel beet red and I'm very dizzy. I feel seasick. Harax is laughing his fat little ass off. Going over to his pack, he pulls out his bedroll and lays it flat on the floor. Embarrassed and grateful, I lay down and stare up at the ceiling. I remain there for a long time, listening to Legrielle and Harax discuss castles and lakes and mountains and guardians and a dozen other things that I don't remember, until I doze off into a hazy sleep.

"Ed-die. Wake and arise! It's time to sup."

I blink my eyes open. Harax is leaning over me, smiling indulgently. The air above him is a bit opaque with smoke, but there's also a smell of soup in the air, and suddenly I realize that I'm starving. "Yes, Harax, I'm awake," I manage to say intelligibly. I take a deep breath and sit up.

I hear Legrielle say, "Be gentle, Harax. The poor boy is probably still suffering from the effect of being summoned across the vast distances."

"No, really. I'm awake. I was just a little tired is all. From the, you know, the axe and everything." And trying to breathe your foul herb concoction.

Harax steps away from me. "His speech is mostly quite normal, Legrielle, but I've noticed that every once in a while he interrupts himself to say 'you know'." Harax comes back and hands me a bowl of soup. He smiles as if he truly believes I couldn't hear him talking about me. But the prospect of food puts me in a forgiving mood. I accept the bowl, saying only, "Thank you." The soup is as good as it smells. It's full of all kinds of vegetables. Some of them are undercooked and are difficult to chew. I don't care. It tastes great.

Harax goes back to the table where he and Legrielle continue their discussion, which sounds no different than when I fell asleep. My mind wanders.

It occurs to me that I dreamed while I was asleep. There was a rather vivid dream, in fact. Only this time it was about April. And it was real. Or rather, it was a replaying of a real memory. And not a particularly happy one, either.

We're in a restaurant. April and I have been sitting together without saying a word for three minutes now. The prior conversation was half-hearted and petered out without fanfare, and now the silence has stretched well beyond what I thought possible. We're focusing on our food, like we have suddenly forgotten how to use forks to manipulate salad, and it now required our full concentration. This is ridiculous. My head is going to explode if somebody doesn't say something. But all I can think of saying was "So, this relationship hasn't been going too well, has it?" Am I ready to initiate that conversation? Heck no. Why not? That I can't answer. What's the worst thing that could happen? That was one of my mother's favorite things to say when I was scared. The worst thing that could happen here is that we walk out of this restaurant as two single people. But if the relationship makes me miserable (and it does), then why should that scare me? Apparently some animal part of my lower brain still holds out hope that this is just a temporary setback and things are going to get better. How else to explain the fear that grips my intestines at the idea of acknowledging that things suck? This is no rational reaction to the idea of being single; this is a reptilian instinct. Like fight-or-flight.

But lo and behold, I realize that there's something that scares me more, and that is the prospect of April initiating the conversation. Then we walk out of here just as single as before, but now I'm the one who got dumped. I don't understand why, but it matters. If we're going to have The Talk, I need to be the one to initiate it. Immediately my senses come back online. How much longer have we gone without talking? Oh no, April's put down her fork. She breathes one of her quiet little sighs that sound like a leaking tire: they're very quiet, but they go on and on and on, letting her lungs empty in the most passive manner possible. She's going to do it, isn't she? She's going to dump me. Or if she doesn't, she wants to. She wants me to know that she wants to. This is stupid. I'm trying to score points in some imaginary game. Shouldn't this be about two people trying to be happy? Or rather, trying to make each other happy. Or, more appropriate at this point, trying to stop making each other unhappy?

"So this relationship hasn't been going too well lately, has it?"

I did it. The words are out. What made that moment different from the five hundred before it, where I thought about saying it but didn't? I haven't a clue.

She shakes her head without even looking up at me. "No, not really." A pause. Finally she meets my gaze. She looks sad, and concerned. I couldn't begin to guess what my face looks like. Scared, probably. That's certainly what I've been feeling. But now, seeing her, the fear is starting to ebb. I did it. I broached the subject. It's obvious now that she's been thinking about it, too. We can talk about it. We can stop trying to avoid the subject. Maybe we'll even figure out a solution. We'll come out of the restaurant with a renewed sense of why the relationship is important and what we love about each other.

An hour and a half later, we walk out of there. We're not quite single yet. That happens later, much later than night, back at the apartment. When the weekend comes, she moves out. She moves out in the course of a Saturday afternoon, just as quickly as she arrived.

It makes a perverse sort of sense, I suppose, that since I dreamed about another world when I was still in touch with reality, now in this fantasy world I would dream about the real one. But couldn't I have dreamed about something in the present, instead of vividly reliving the past? At the very least I could have returned to a happier memory, no?

Apparently not.

I shouldn't have brought up the subject like that. I should have said something more positive, more -- optimistic. Maybe something like "This relationship could stand a little working on, eh?" Or I don't know. Something that didn't assume that only realistic solution was quitting. I fear now that that opening sentence could have made all the difference in what followed.

I stand up. I've been sitting on the floor long enough. I go to the cauldron and refill my bowl, and then join Harax and Legrielle at the table, sitting on the remaining stool. With a start I realize that the fourth stool is on the other side of the cabin, and sitting on it is a young woman, eyes kept firmly on her bowl of soup as she eats in silence. This must be Legrielle's assistant. No doubt she hears everything we say.

"Eddie," says Legrielle.

I turn my attention back to her. "Yo," I reply. Why did I say that? I never say "yo". Then Legrielle furrows her brow at me, and I realize why I said that. There is one part of me that's fascinated by what's happening to me, but another part of me feels like acting out, poking at my environment to see if this is all just a facade.

Legrielle forges ahead. "Eddie. I want you to know that I have the greatest respect for your bravery."

Oooh. I don't want to have this kind of conversation. I don't want people to tell me that I'm being so very brave. That doesn't bode well for my immediate future.

"And you have my full support."

"Great," I say. "Does that mean you can loan me some shoes?"

Legrielle laughs out loud. "That, and more. Finish your soup, and we'll see what we can find for you."

I finish my soup, and Legrielle opens up a cupboard that turns out to be her clothes closet. Legrielle, as it happens, owns a pair of shoes, a pair of sandals, and a pair of boots. I try them all on to see which pair fits my feet best. This is quite a step down from worrying over half sizes at Volume Shoe Store. At least Legrielle is a human -- I've become unnaturally aware of the strange shape of elfin feet this morning. I wish now I had gone to sleep with my shoes on, although the only time I've ever done that was when I was in college, and I just don't have the ability to get that drunk anymore. I should be counting my blessings: I could have undressed properly for bed. Harax would have summoned me unto the dewy grasslands wearing nothing but my boxers. When we lived together, April often slept wearing nothing but an oversized tee shirt. The lettering across the front was so worn that there were only a scattering of blue flecks to indicate that the shirt once said something. I don't remember now what it said originally, or if I ever knew. I really liked seeing her in that tee shirt, though. Who would have guessed that such a plain, shapeless piece of clothing could become such a turn-on? Suddenly my heart knifes sideways, as if trying to avoid a knife, and I groan audibly despite myself.

"What's wrong? Do you feel unwell?" Legrielle asks. I'm standing in her boots, which I've decided to take, because even though the sandals feel marginally closer to my foot size, I know the boots will stand up better over long hikes.

"I'm fine. It's nothing, really."

Legrielle seems unwilling to leave me alone, however. "Is it the Princess Thalia? Can you see her? Is she in pain?"

"Uh," I respond, taken aback. Is the princess in pain? "Uh, maybe?" How am I supposed to know? But even as I say this I realize that I'm giving her the wrong impression.

"Listen closely, Eddie. Harax tells me that you know very little about our world. Yet it was you that the Wand chose to bring. I suspect you have a greater connection to us than any of us understand yet."

Yeah: my ex-girlfriend might have met you in a video game. I don't say this out loud, of course.

"So, if you start seeing or feeling things whose source you don't recognize, don't be too hasty to dismiss them, or close yourself off from them. It could be the princess, a bond forming between the two of you. Such powers can be brought forth to fulfill Romiel's prophecy. I know it sounds backwards, but such is nature of visions."

Without even thinking about it I'm nodding politely and mentally ignoring what she's saying. It all sounds like such ooga-booga New Age crap. Then I remember: oh yeah, I'm in a world where magic is real. I cough and say, "I will keep that in mind."

"Good boy." Again with the boy. "Which reminds me: here is the other item I promised you." She reaches into her belt pouch, takes out the glasses, and hands them to me. "These spectacles are magicked. With them, you can see through illusion and mirages. Keep them close at hand, and they may come in handy before your quest is done. It is said by some that the Princess Thalia's captors are masters of disguise."

I take the glasses, and wedge them onto my nose. Everything looks the same. Still, I don't doubt that she's telling me the truth. So I remove them and say, "Thank you, Legrielle. This is a generous gift indeed."

"Just don't forget to return them to me, after you've rescued the princess!" She smiles, and then laughs. She laughs a little too long for my comfort. I can't quite tell which part of that she thinks is so funny.

"So, Eddie. How do you feel?" Harax asks me. We're walking once more, again heading roughly north.

"I feel okay." And It's true. The sun is high in the sky, past noon, and the air is warm. I'm wearing real human shoes, and they feel much better. I have some dried food in a sling over my shoulder, and a walking stick. Not to mention some magic specs. Entrusted to me by a real live wizard. I still don't understand why I'm here, as opposed to somebody else, but it seems clear that I have a purpose. I'm still not sure if I believe this world is real, but as long as I'm stuck in it, I'm willing to grant it the benefit of a doubt. I can worry about the philosophical implications of what's happening later. "In fact, I feel pretty good."

"That's the spirit."

"So. Where are we going now?"

"We're off to the home of Auros Ettra."

"Right. And who is this Auros Ettra?"

"He's a powerful mage. A very powerful mage indeed."

"Check," I say, heedless of whether Harax will understand me. "And what is he going to do for us?"

"Well," Harax frowns. "That is actually not entirely clear. Romiel's Prophecy doesn't really say exactly what the mage will do."

"Is that so?" I say, keeping my voice neutral.

"Possibly he will provide us with secret information that will allow us to overcome the captives. Or maybe he keeps a powerful magic item against the day of our coming."

"That works, I suppose."

"Or maybe he even comes with us, to help us vanquish them directly. That's not typical behavior for a mage, of course. But of course Auros Ettra is not your typical mage."

"I imagine he's not."

"But he does something, and rest assured, it's necessary to the success of our campaign."

I shrug. "I feel plenty reassured, don't worry. But I must say, I had the idea from listening to you earlier that these prophecies were a little more specific than this. I mean, you recreated a summoning ritual from them, didn't you?"

"Well, yes. But I didn't do it alone, you know. I had help in deciphering the prophecy."

"From whom? A mage?"

"A mage, yes. One that knows the ancient prophecies better than any other."

"So why couldn't that mage help you figure out the rest of it as well?"

Harax frowns at my question. "Well, he could have, I suppose. But it wasn't worth his time at that point, and it would have certainly cost more than I could have paid. You see, he wasn't yet convinced that my interpretation of Romiel's Prophecy was accurate. So he helped me work out the first part, and then he said, Harax, go forth and try to summon your hero. If you succeed, then we will know that the whole of it is true, and you shall come back here and we will puzzle out the rest. And so I did. And so, here you are."

"And so, why aren't we on our way to him then?"

Harax laughed at me. "But we are, my boy, for Auros Ettra is the mage of whom I speak." Harax looked at me and laughed again. He kept up his laughing for rather longer than necessary. I guess when you're a squat little elf, you have to get your entertainment where you can.

We continue walking through the afternoon, and near the end of it we find ourselves near the shore of a large lake. Harax claims that the lake extends for many miles to the east and west, but is only a few miles wide at this point. That's great, only since neither of us can swim, I'm not sure how that does us any good.

"We need to find a boat of some kind. A canoe, a punt, even a simple raft will do."

"Well, I suppose we could try and build a raft," I say, doubtfully. "But I don't expect a boat is just going to materialize in front of us."

Harax looks at me with a puzzled expression. "I don't quite follow you, but no matter. Come, let us walk along the lake for a ways. And keep a sharp eye on the reeds along the shore."

So we do that. And what do you know? He's right. We walk for less than a mile before he spots a small canoe tied to a sapling and half-hidden in the reeds.

"Quickly now, let us hasten to the vessel. No dawdling, lest we be seen."

I hurry to follow Harax through the marshy mud. "So, basically, we're stealing this canoe. Right?"

Harax looks a bit offended at my words, as if I have said something rude before polite company. "Perhaps we are behaving less than perfectly saintly, but we are hardly stealing. I've no intention of taking this canoe any further with us on our journey. We are simply going to use it to cross the lake, and we will leave it on the other side." Harax begins untying the rope from the sapling. "With luck, someone else will ride it back across again before the owner needs use of it again. In fact, perhaps it has already been rowed across once, in which case we will be returning it to its rightful place."

"Sounds like a bit fat rationalization to me, Harax."

"I refuse to reply to such a coarse remark."

Because you didn't understand it, I think to myself. Nonetheless, I don't really have a desire to impose my ethics on other people, particularly people in a world I'm still being introduced to. Maybe this is the norm here. We get in the canoe and shove off. There are two oars in the bottom, so we each take one and row.

We're about halfway across, and my shoulder muscles are on fire (rowing is damn hard work, make no mistake), when we hear a voice behind us. Looking back, we see a small figure jumping up and down on the shore and making distant little insect-like noises.

Harax observes him for a moment, then turns forward again. "You see? It was good that we didn't dawdle. Heed my advice." And with that he resumes his rowing.

My arms feel like wet noodles as we approach the opposite shore. I'm considering asking Harax if he can row solo the rest of the way, when suddenly the water around the canoe erupts. A stream of water sprays out from the right of the canoe and swings towards me. It crosses my chest, and I feel a constriction tightening around my arms and ribcage. I try to twist away from whatever has a hold on me, but I can't really move much. I'm trying to yell, but I'm having trouble breathing. I can't see anything behind the stream of water that could be doing this to me. With a start I realize that the stream of water isn't really a stream at all; the water isn't flowing, and furthermore it has a shape that is eerily reminiscent of a tentacle. Now my heart is pounding and my scream has turned into desperate little squeaks. I sound like a dog's chew toy. I am definitely in pain.

Splat! Suddenly a black oil splashes on me. Some of it gets in my face and I have a taste of brackish syrup in my mouth. The pressure on my torso is released, and the liquid tentacle vanishes back into the water. I look behind me. Harax is standing up in the back of the canoe. He's holding an empty vial and his expression is grim. "Are you all right? Can you breathe?"

I nod slowly, then carefully inhale and say. "Yeah. I'm fine. I think. What was that?"

"That was a water snake, and a vicious one at that. Lucky thing I was prepared, eh?"

I nod again. "Yeah. Lucky."

Harax sits back down. "Row, my friend, and let's get back on land."

I hurt all over now, not just in my arms, but I don't for a moment think of protesting. I row as best I can until we've reached the other shore. By this time, the sun is just about to touch the horizon. We continue walking so as to be well away from the lake when the mosquitoes come out, and then we make camp. I'm hoping that it doesn't rain much in this place, because Harax doesn't seem to have anything in the way of a tent. He does have an extra bedroll, which was a nice surprise, as I had completely failed to consider how I was going to sleep until now. Unfortunately, his bedroll is a bit shy of four feet in length, being made for elves. I use my sling for a rough sort of pillow, and squeeze myself into the bedroll in a fetal position. It'll have to do.

I change out of my oily shirt. Sadly, that means I'll have to wear one of Legrielle's shirts now. Not that it isn't nice-looking, but it's made of hide. I mean, it's soft, for hide, but it's no cotton acrylic blend. On the plus side, I will be that much less conspicuous in it.

Harax sends me out to collect wood for the campfire. There's a clump of trees off to the east, so I rummage around in there until I have a small armload of dead branches and twigs. By the time I return, Harax already has a small pile of moss and leaves burning. As soon as I put down my gatherings, he starts adding wood to his pile, and sends me back for more. I return again only to be sent out a third time. By this time the sun is down and it's getting pretty dark. I can't really see what I'm doing, under the trees, and the prospect of meeting up with a wild animal has me freaked out. Harax, I fear, doesn't really understand how little experience people like me have with roughing it. So my third trip only brings back a few pieces of wood. Fortunately Harax seems satisfied, or at least he doesn't complain. Harax is already heating up something in a small pot near the fire. Water, mushrooms, and some rabbit meat. On my second trip to collect my pitiful armload of wood, Harax took out his slingshot, gathered a few rocks off the ground, and hunted down a freaking rabbit. Killed it one shot, he boasts, direct hit to the back of the head. He was already skinning it by the time I got back. If I were out here by myself, I'd be dead in a matter of days.

Harax inhales deeply over the pot. He smiles at me and says, "When you're out in the wilderness, there's nothing like a hot dinner to make you feel cozy again."

I sit down on m