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I’d met Andy ’s wife, Janice, at a couple of California Fidelity office parties and hadn’t thought much of her until I sahat she’d left hih shakedown Andy had always co sure we all knew she shopped at the best stores in town It was a e with impunity What was clear noas that she played for keeps Andy ’d been granted a card table, four aluminum lawn chairs ebbed seats, a mattress, and sora it in the dishwasher for years because the finish was dull and the silver plate orn off the handles

The kitchen cabinets held paper plates and insulated cups, along with a sorry assortuy ate worse than I did Since the condos were brand-new, the appliances were up-to-date and ierator (empty except for two six-packs of no-brand beer) with an ice- away, dishwasher, microwave, disposal, trash compactor The freezer was stacked with cartons of Lean Cuisine He favored Spaghetti and Chicken Cacciatore A bottle of aquavit lay on its side and he had a bag of frozen rock-hard Milky Way bars that were just an invitation to break off a tooth

The dining area was actually a si rooh with bi-fold shutters painted white There was very little in the way of furnishings The card table see-rooed into the answering es The surface was littered with typing supplies, but there was no typewriter in sight His bottle of white-out was getting as sluggish as old nail polish The wastebasket was empty

I went back into the kitchen and slid open the coerly, I rooted through, spotting crumpled sheets of paper about three layers down I removed the liner and inserted a fresh one I doubted Andy would remember whether he’d emp-tied his trash or not He’d probably spentwaited on hand and foot, and ranted, as if the elves and fairies crept in at night and cleaned pee off the rilanced at my watch I’d been in the place thirty-five minutes and I didn’t want to press ain, , and then letwith me

By noon, I was hoarbage spread around ar’s picnic Actually, the debris was fairly benign and didn’t h He was heavy into pickles, olives, anchovies, jalapeno peppers, and other foodstuffs in which no gere peels No evidence whatever that he ate anything fresh Lots of beer cans There were six plastic Lean Cuisine pouches, layers of junknotices rimmed in red or pink, a notice of a Toastmaster’s roast of a local business-man, a flyer from a carwash, and a letter from Janice that must have left him incensed, as he had crumpled it into a tiny ball and bitten down on it I could see the perfect i hiain, said she, underlined twice and bracketed with ex-cla was the back end of a pad of checks, deposit slips still attached, with the na-account number neatly printed thereon I saved that for future reference I had set aside the cru half-way down I smoothed them out now-six versions of a letter to soht of ," and "dearest one" He see detail without much attention to her intellect Her sexual enthu-siasms still had hi skills-lots of strikeovers in the lines where he reviewed their "tiath-ered was on or about Christle with a paucity of adjectives, but the verbs were clear enough

"Well, Andy, you old devil," I ed to have her suckle the souess was that it was related to flower parts and that his botanical knowledge had failed him Either that or the very idea had caused emotional dyslexia Also, he couldn’t quite decide what tone to take He vacillated so and reverential He said several things about her breasts that ical reduction It was e, but I tried not to shrink from my responsibilities