Chapter One

[Continued From "Triage For Love."]

Karyn Burke had just turned thirteen, and Rachelle, her mother, was faced with the prospect of having, “the talk.” Rachelle could not recall when she had ever been so embarrassed. Why, she asked herself, am I so “un-cool,” in the face of addressing what should normally be just another biological function. I'm more embarrassed than she is.

As she folded the laundry, Rachelle contemplated “loss of innocence,” as a literary theme. It was as valid as “the fall from grace,” or any other. As themes went, Rachelle preferred “the great journey,” or “the great battle,” to “the noble sacrifice,” or “loss of innocence.” She knew that she never wanted Karyn to remain naive, but the corruption of the best is the worst. Protectiveness warred against a justifiable expectation that Karyn would take the world by storm. Her pride did not lead her to lay claim to accomplishments she could not justify. Rachelle simply estimated that a goal was within her reach, and committed to it. Then, if she fell short, she knew it was because she had not done her best. “No pressure,” she thought. “How do I wake the dragon?”.

Rachelle and Jerry enjoyed a fair amount of unspoken communication. His Information Technology business had taken off like an albatross. Karyn had made the analogy in conversation, after she watched the animated “The Rescuers.” Bernard was the albatross. Albatrosses roost on the water, when the sea is becalmed, and sailors could do little, as they waited for a breath of wind, to once more get underway. Since these birds are not required to stay aloft, in transcontinental flight, if a Captain erred, and took a nearby albatross as the harbinger of a land sighting, he was bound to be misled. For this reason, albatrosses enjoy an evil reputation, among sailors, but they are themselves, a very hardy bird.

Young Karyn had inquired about this, when the subject had come up over dinner, and Jerry had objected to the characterization. He had not compared his business to an Albatross, but had stoically pointed out that although the bird was always around when it was a bad time, it does not cause bad luck..

“It's like kickers being solitary on the football team,” Jerry had explained. “The kicker only comes on when it's time to punt, or kick a field goal.

“When it's time to punt, the team has just failed to make their down, in three plays, or the team would advance the chains.

“When a kicker comes on to kick a field goal, the team has just missed penetrating the end zone in three plays. If the kicker makes it, the team is barely satisfied – it was only three points. But if the kicker misses (and this happens with a statistical distribution,) the team typically fails to see that they fell short as a team, in execution, while at the same time zoning in on the observation that the kicker DID fail, in not splitting the uprights.”

“I feel sorry for the kicker then,” Karyn had declared.

“Felling sorry for someone doesn't always comfort him,” Jerry had explained. “Maybe he doesn't want to be pitiable. How do you feel, when your teacher gives you a C+, instead of an A?”

“That's not the same thing,” Karyn protested. “Half the time the teacher hasn't even read it, and she's just covering up for not getting more out of the other students.”

Here Rachelle butted in. “...and you are NEVER wrong, young lady?”

“I H-A-T-E being wrong,” Karyn flared. “Being right is a prerequisite, but being wrong is humiliating!”

“That's exactly how kickers feel, K,” Jerry explained. “Never do less than your best.”

And this was how it was with Karyn. Rivals, boys and girls alike, fell before her like wheat to a scythe.

Rachelle brought up the discussion with Jerry that evening, as they prepared for bed. “Shall I send her to the store to buy tampons before she becomes fertile, such that the embarrassment tempers her before it is justifiable, or shall we just make a stash available in the hall closet?” Rachelle asked.

“No way is the hall closet the answer,” Jerry decided. “That sets the precedent that it is something to be ashamed of. But I don't want her to be too frank about it with others, either. Maybe ask her to buy condoms as well. Use the pretext that we need them for the marriage.”

This suited Rachelle well enough, but while Jerry had been permissive about masturbation, Rachelle was opposed to seeing Karyn dissipated in wasted time. She wanted Karyn to have privacy, and to learn that she could dissemble. No one needs to tell all his business to strangers. By contrast, if Rachelle bound Karyn to a strict code of honesty with her parents, the pitfalls of blind obedience offered speed bumps to independent thinking and creative problem solving.

Imagine Jerry's surprise when the solution to this problem led Karyn to catch her father's eye. It seemed like she just knew when mom and dad were mating, and saw this solution as preferable to a hollow dissatisfaction that innocence in her peers offered. A normally alert Rachelle did not immediately observe the loss in their coital element of surprise. The law of unintended consequences made it's appearance when she eventually checked Karyn, on masturbation, as a matter of course.

Rachelle's first gambit was the story of the tropical monkey trap. Take a coconut, or an open mouthed bottle (or a narrow jar,) and place a rock in the container. If the device is fixed, the monkey soon discovers that he cannot obtain the bait from the jar by upending it, and so he reaches in, and grasps it. At once, the fist that could enter the neck of the bottle empty, cannot withdraw. It is a clever monkey that decides to let go of his prize, before the waiting trapper walks up and takes him prisoner.

Rachelle duly told Karyn this story, and waited to explain more if necessary. Karyn was predictably angry. “Are you calling me a monkey, Mom?” she objected. “If I'm a monkey, what does that make you, huh?” Before the heated exchange had ended, Karyn had volunteered that her mother might be a bitch, whether she had whelped a monkey or not. Rachelle had been unmoved by any self doubt, and an irrepressible giggle did little to deescalate tensions.

Some mothers would have directed a daughter to eat a banana, every time she became suspect. Still others would have designated some symbolic task to specify the same. Rachelle endeavored to take a more constructive tack. She awaited a likely opportunity, and asked Karyn if she could explain the workings of a Bendix assembly. If it was an ambush ploy, it was a benevolent one. Karyn could by no means explain it to herself. “No mom, how does a Bendix assembly work?”

As clearly as she could, Rachelle explained the device:

“OK, K, you have a cylinder drum. At one end, there is a cone. The outside of the cone has a square nut, and a wrench piece anchors it to the frame. On the internal side of the cone, two stubs protrude, such that a pair of semi-circular plates can slide outward when compressed, but cannot slide into rotation with the cylinder. On the other end, there is another cone, split in two halves. The inner half has the same two stubs, and the outer edge of that half has teeth on it. The inner edge of the outer half of the cone has matching teeth, and otherwise it is a cylinder, with a coarse thread in the center. The sprocket has a matching thread. The assembly works in the following novel way. When the sprocket goes forward, the threads draw the half-cone cylinder outward, forcing it against the outer edge of the cylinder, and friction forces the wheel to turn in the same direction as the wheel. However, when the sprocket goes backward, the thread pushes the half-cone cylinder into the inner half-cone. The teeth catch, and the cones start to press the plates outward against the inside of the drum. Friction, (and a fair amount of heat,) actually arrest the rotation of the wheel.

Karyn listened patiently to this, but when her mother finished her explanation, typical family candor drew the comment, “What's your point mom?”

“Well, the wheel can go when it wants, but also stop when it wants,” Rachelle explained. By this mechanism, she intended to intrinsically motivate Rachelle to desist from a habit that led into territory she did not know how to explain. “Terra Incognita,” the maps had called it. “Here be dragons.”

Despite good intentions, Rachelle did not presage that matters would not be satisfactory until K completely desisted. Karyn was an obedient child, and she was approaching her fifteenth birthday, before predictable eventuality became fact. Jerry delegated the purchase of a shipment of routers to his daughter, and she decided to substitute them with recycled old PC's instead. She reasoned that recycling was good for the planet, and that a programmable PC firewall would serve better than a router.

In so doing, Karyn failed to account for the necessity of standardization, in a business. The resulting debacle cost time, money and at least one customer. As a group, the clientele criticized a business that would ask someone so young to shoulder such responsibility. A few volunteered opinions about nepotism, and parenting with the thoughtless assurance of people who were not making decisions for themselves. True, it was their business interest, and the result affected them, but their interest in the matter stopped at Jerry. It was not their place to tell him that his business interest was theirs as well.

When Jerry confronted Karyn about it, she lied. First, it was the supplier who was in breach of contract. Then it was the accountant, who misrepresented the expenditures. By the time Karyn was forced to admit that it was an environmental agenda, that had driven her decisions, Jerry had decided that Karyn needed closer supervision, not greater latitude.

Rachelle, on the other hand, decided that Karyn needed a different discussion of discipline. She drew upon the discussion of the monkey trap for implied context.

“Eat a banana,” Rachelle ordered Karyn, after a short preamble. “I'm finished with indulging lies as an excuse.”

Karyn angrily obeyed. Now, when she strayed, her mother accused her of lying, and when she was obedient, her father offered positive reinforcement. In three weeks, Karyn had had enough. “What am I SUPPOSED to do?” Karyn stewed. “You're married mom. You can't even remember what it's like! Why won't you let me have a boyfriend?”

“Your timing is off, K,” Rachelle was obligated to point out. “You have to admit you need a tighter leash! Now DROP it!”

The canine allusions were incendiary, and Karyn sulked. It was only natural that Jerry should try and pacify K, and Rachelle gave him the latitude his character deserved. Yet Rachelle soon became aware that their now nubile fifteen year old, was in her father's thoughts during intimacy, as well as at other times. With human frailty, Rachelle was not grateful that her husband was an attentive father. She was jealous of his affections. Considering the age of the marriage, it was a tribute to Jerry's creativity and enduring mettle, that she still felt such fire. Meanwhile, Karyn had turned feminine wiles upon her father. It wasn't hard to deduce that if he was weak to her affections, she could more easily obtain any object of her desire, and she set about to seduce him.

Karyn did not consider herself a virgin, and occasionally alluded to this in conversation.

When Jerry slept, the woman in his arms was hard to ignore, and he was powerless to put his untenable position into words. If he had done so, he might have fought vice successfully with virtue, but there was an equal chance that he would merely have been paralyzed by indecision.

Jerry himself had solace as much as he needed, but his daughter did not. He loved his daughter, as well as his wife, and her blossoming physical attributes importuned a reciprocal consideration for his hoped for maven.

Karyn turned the sagacity of plastic problem solving, upon the problem of manipulating her father, with the heedless disregard for consequence characteristic of nascent teenage intellect.

While Karyn bargained mercilessly for a boyfriend, Jerry realized that he didn't want to hazard losing his own place in her affections. Karyn practically deified him, and the prospect of conceding such preeminence to the combined arrogance, pride, and ineptitude of a youthful churl, was repugnant.

Jerry was sufficiently self-aware to see that his command of his daughter's affections might approach the selfish grasp of the ring of power, lauded in Tolkein's, “The Lord of the Rings.” Jerry had previously contemplated this as inconical of trivial materialism. Now, it took on a different color.

Karyn, meanwhile, met every objection as mere obstacles, and eventually culminated in proffering Jerry provisional prima nocta, in return for a liege of her own.

While these events were developing, Rachelle experienced a different perspective. “You think of your daughter more than you think of me,” she accused Jerry.

“She has no recourse,” Jerry returned. “Try doing without, yourself!”

“You absolute CUR!” Rachelle retaliated. “Why don't you just sleep with her and get it over with? She hasn't got HALF the experience I have, and you'll be driven at the mercy of winds you cannot imagine!”

Rachelle froze Jerry out just as much to punish him, as to demonstrate her own self control.

The epithets trickled out. Ice Queen, Wicked Witch of the North, Albatross.

The replies were creative as well. Siren, sex pot, slut.

Jerry was astute enough to know that masturbation was no answer to his problems. Matriarchy has as many predictable failings as Kingdoms, and his best chess move was to succor Karyn, and limit Rachelle's ability to order him around. Rachelle was not about to air the family's dirty laundry publicly.

When Jerry and Karyn over rode her wishes, her silence became consent. She had been holding out anyway, and with the shoe on the other foot, Rachelle was helpless to divorce herself from Karyn's problems. Karyn was her daughter too, and Rachelle naturally reasoned, “I'm an adult; I'm smart. If I can't solve it, how can I expect a child to solve it?”

Having yielded, the wine of variance flowed not from a bottle, but from a cask. Karyn would do nothing by halves, and virtuosity was her excuse for vice. When Rachelle finally established dominance over Karyn, in the fray, the family dynamic had changed.

Karyn saw herself as an adult now. She could use her father's first name; it was convenient that this also enraged her mother. Karyn could still overestimate her own abilities, but she was conversant with the idea that the family's fortunes rose only on scarce opportunity, but could fall to any of myriad pitfalls.

In turn, Jerry had to admit that from a physical standpoint, Rachelle was incontrovertibly superior.

Rachelle could contemplate the loss of innocence theme from a freshly bitter vantage point.

(now extended at No Shadows Part Two)

Chapter Two

With the advent of a new status quo, Karyn was no longer an ingenue. Whatever the damage to her parent's relationship, she herself was blooded to new ambitions. Her peers no longer represented a satisfactory choice. Karyn wanted men, not boys. Now, it took the resolve to better her father, to approach the acquisition of her respect. And yet she did not want to marry her father.

She dallied with boyfriends, and led them on. Such was Laurence Shield. He arrived at school in the tenth grade, sixteen, and a paragon. Laurence's parents had been in the Peace Corps, and they were socially pliable. As such, Harold Shield commanded no great respect. He had been in charge of building a leprosy hospital, and the humanitarian sacrifice co mmanded a certain currency, but when Laurence set his cap for Karyn, he did not know how far he over reached.

Laurence had been an infant overseas, and he was a bundle of hostility. If he was a qualified survivalist, few of his peers wished to experience such dire straits. If he was an intellectual whip, Karyn and others viewed him as a kind of draft animal. Not perhaps a draft animal, but if an Arabian is desirable for his temperament, Laurence had the temperament, but not the virility. If he played the devil's advocate, Laurence attempted to see the best in very many undesirable causes. He mistook pragmatism and expedience for prejudice and intolerance.

Karyn regarded him as a curious, if perplexing blade. When Laurence was self possessed enough to ask her out on a date, Karyn accepted it as her due. She was good looking; she had good prospects. It was simply the case that Chess Masters do not play amateurs, lest they become lesser, for the trivial conquest. She said “No thank you.”

Virtue became Laurence's enemy, and the resulting cascade of unintended consequences was a study in itself. First, Laurence resolved to be persistent. He asked again, but not on a schedule to be regarded as needy. It was weeks before Karyn could even offer him the studied insult of washing her hair.

If she felt a loss of social momentum, Karyn was somewhat tolerant. After all, there was no real challenger to Laurence, for her affections. The disaffected dilettantes among her peers were variously denigrating and bitter. With time, it had become apparent that Karyn's situation was not unique, although there were myriad reasons for any given young woman's circumstance, and the male youths that surrounded them were variously ignorant and indignant. From Karyn's point of view, the vaunted left ear-ring, that telegraphed “to know,” marked those who sported it, as bitter. “Sour Grapes,” was not an attitude she respected.

Meanwhile, the female contingent were volatile, and reliably adversarial to one another. There were those whose parents took a different view to masturbation than Karyn's, and it was en exercise to see to it that one was not taken advantage of, by these. On both sides of the divide, here were good and bad dad's, and “the conspiracy of bad dad's” was a limited way to articulate the woes that all experienced.

Laurence asked again. This time, Karyn offered masturbation material in the form of a juicy rumor. He was both titillated and protective of the slut. After his characteristic deliberative delay, Laurence came back with the implied argument that he liked Karyn because she was morally superior.

Karyn picked an old flame that she didn't like, and set fire to him in a creative way. She recalled from her experience at home, that dissatisfaction was available in two degrees, so she took the trouble to seduce him on the side. After giving him a long weekend to remember, she duly divulged her moral degradation to the attentive Laurence. He responded by “trying to think the best of her.” Plans like these are not laid out like military campaigns, and she had no idea what the result might be to the moral derelict she had employed. Generally, it was regarded as comical, as distrust, rage and confusion within Laurence set fire to rumor.

Jerry rationalized Karyn's behavior as freedom, by the implied arguments that passed for discussion on the topic. When he later found out, belatedly, that the rake in question favored the cause of drugs, he reversed himself. Karyn would experience lasting enmity from the youth in question. He considered himself to be persecuted by Laurence, and he blacklisted Karyn with his compatriots.

Karyn found herself with enemies among her peers.

Meanwhile, the Drafter family, Rachelle's heritage, identified a prospective match and put Karyn in his circle. Rachelle was conflicted about this in many ways. Her memories of Mark were deplorable, and yet she was not averse to seeing Karyn suffer in limited ways. The net result was that she ruled that the two should not cohabit.

The young man's name was Frank. Faced with Frank's indifferent affections, Karyn could attribute limited merit, in Laurence, where she had not done so before. However, Laurence was as undisciplined as a Roman Candle, and as unmanageable. She decided to cut her losses, and not make a project out of him. When he asked her out again, she met him in a Starbucks.

“I don't want to mislead you, Laurence. What are your intentions?” Karyn asked.

For Laurence, this was no softball. Karyn intended to say no, and there was no way to deflect the refusal, but Laurence still failed to accept his fate. He had no other belle, and he strove to contemplate how he was to explain a proposal of marriage with such little precedent. “I intended to be honorable,” he stumbled.

“You want me to be frank?” Karyn replied. “I have no interest in you whatsoever!” She did not immediately get up and leave. Karyn wanted to be sure that Laurence understood that this was a deliberated reply, and not an angry retort.

Helpless, Laurence thanked her for her honesty. Karyn would never regret it.

Chapter Three

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Laurence's affections had not been easily daunted, but after an official squelching like that, it was irrational not to move on. The fact that his next quest was equally unattainable, merely delayed his discovery that he labored under a delusion.

Tyne was a feminist, with a deceptively sunny disposition, and Laurence found her receptive to conversational advances in the library. To be sure, Tyne was friendly, but it was really because she had nothing to lose. Tyne hated men. She was to the female sex, what those who sported an ear-ring in the right ear, were to men.

Laurence would sit and study, attempting to better his mind and his lot, while Tyne sat across from him, and watched humanity. Blow jobs in the bathroom, skinny dipping in the pool at midnight, hurried trysts in a remote corner of campus, where the campus cops regularly cleaned up used condoms; Tyne knew about it all. She listened to Laurence converse on Marx and Lenin, flag burning and the various evils of unions, all the while building the impression that Laurence was a stubbornly ignorant idiot.

After some time of this, and collecting on the prospect of a free meal or two, Tyne's humor led her to pass Laurence a book. “Young Goodman Brown,” was a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, that portrayed a peculiar fiction. The novel begins, with Goodman Brown pursued by growing Satanic paranoia. After one wild experience, he writes it all off as preposterous, but he is never quite sure of his peers again.

From Tyne's point of view, there was no way to specify with exactitude, what inspired Hawthorne's plot, but she had a good idea it was ignorance and religiosity combined. She wondered just what Laurence would make of such a vignette.

For Laurence's part, dreaming of Tyne didn't have the fascination of the fire Karyn had kindled. She didn't hold his sexual interest, and his attentions waned. However, allowing his thoughts to return to Karyn after reading “Young Goodman Brown,” was unfortunate.

There is a Russian saying: “It could be worse, Ivan.” It is intended as an exhortation to be thankful for such benefits as you may enjoy, kind of like the biblical exhortation, “Count your blessings.” However, it is also a blue print for devising punishment, and in Laurence's life punishment was proving to be the rule.

From Laurence's perspective, “Young Goodman Brown,” modeled reality. It was a trail of bread crumbs to lead him to discover what caused such things. However, the analogy of bread crumbs might prove to be too apt; birds eat bread crumbs, and just as the end of a rainbow cannot be apprehended, the truth about his peers was proving elusive to transfix.

Tyne was a manipulative witch, and Laurence would begin trying to understand, using the very flawed premise that Tyne was a true friend. After all, he reasoned, she was the individual who had passed him the informative book!

Since Tyne was not a romantic prospect, Laurence next decided to go to his dad for advice. Harold Shield had been a “world peace,” baby, and Laurence was his dad's intellectual superior. It is tricky, at best, to sieve out good counsel, from the proffered results of many failed experiments. To add to the discussion, Laurence was as disinclined as any other son or daughter, to ask a parent how to relate to the opposite sex. His dad had selected his mother, and Laurence didn't want to marry his mother. Nevertheless, he stoically asked the obligatory question:

“Dad, how did you meet mom?”

The truth was unattractive. Harold had been a drug user in college, and he met his wife in the smoky haze of a marijuana trip. The one thing that moral, upright communists will never share is women, and this had defined the 1960's protest of Russian communism. The two had lived in a commune, and Harold had not been KJ's only boyfriend. The putative arrival of their son had triggered their marriage.

The two had not started out, “in love,” but their affections had grown very real before Laurence could walk. Now, looking at the (to Harold's mind,) accomplishment of a lifetime, he did not want to lose such respect as his son bore him, nor tarnish Laurence's love of his mother.

“We met at a peace protest,” he lied. “We were arrested together.”

Over the next thirty minutes, Harold Shield labored to imbue Laurence with the wisdom that, if one can only spend enough time together, anyone can interest anyone. Toward the end of Harold's monologue, Laurence was getting bored, and had sufficient good sense to note ironically, that whether enough time together could interest a woman or not, it was sufficient condition to bore almost anyone. He resolved to be more interesting.

Laurence applied for an internship, at the law firm of Crandle and Hewlett, but received no response. Reflective by nature, Laurence attempted to know himself better than most, but he failed to reflect on certain things that should have been unavoidable. He saw no connection between the lack of interest at a law firm, and his major, of History. The firm was neither interested in employing a dabbler as a “gopher,” for the summer, nor in providing references, later, for said dabbler.

Glumly, Laurence took a job at a second hand book store, stocking, sorting, and occasionally re-shelving paperbacks. There he met a young lady named Dale. Dale was from Texas, and soon noted that Laurence was taking an interest in her. She did not wait for him to deliberate. Within a week, during a conversation in the break room, Dale braced him with the question, “Have you ever had a wet dream?”

If this question seemed excessively personal, Laurence could see that it was candid. However, he failed to demonstrate the presence of mind to lie about it. “No,” he said. “Have you?”

This unthinking folly drew a laconic, “Yes,” in reply. Dale was not about to let Laurence get away with such foolishness.

Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. The silence lay between them for a moment. In a vain attempt to recover his dignity, Laurence assailed her with embarrassment. He would not pull his punch; Dale was asking for this one.

“How did you lose your virginity?” Laurence asked her.

If Dale had predicted it, her answer would have only been quicker by a micro-second. “I lost it to a horse,” she responded. Then, after an artful pause, she added, “Wait that didn't come out right, did it?” She was a cynical child.

Laurence was now twice as embarrassed as he had intended for Dale to be. “You mean you lost it riding?” he asked.

Dale knew that she must needs avoid the characterization of, “hot to trot,” so she was careful how she replied. “I was real saddle sore, too. I was never a tenderfoot though,” Dale finished.

Dale knew that she had won the exchange, but Laurence did not know he had lost. Oblivious, he went on to ask very many details of life on the farm, and openly accepted every word for truth.

Holding the upper hand, Dale began to inquire into Laurence's past. Who were his friends? What were his accomplishments? We have the time together, she reasoned. We might as well be friendly. Laurence was about as interesting as one of his history books.

Dale was satisfied with the state of affairs, when she and Laurence had concluded this exchange, but before the summer was over, Laurence came to the conclusion that he “liked” Dale.

Ever courageous, he bravely asked her out. “Faint heart fever won fair lady,” he told himself.

For Dale, the offer was incongruous. Her libido had not rested, and she had passed through the lives of three other guys, by the time Laurence concluded that he should ask her out. From Dale's point of view, he was as slow as molasses. She lamented how poorly Laurence would fair, if called upon to compete head to head. She did not perceive the offer of a date to have the meat of consummation. She was more interested in a man who would, “bust a move.”

Dale replied with a diplomatic hint: “I have a boyfriend,” she told him.

If Laurence had received the benefit of this limited goodwill, he would have proceeded to ask every other prospect he espied, if she did, or did not, have a boyfriend. Instead, he went on carelessly believing that female pulchritude was a buffet on unconditional offer, ready, prepared and waiting for his royal summons.

The summer passed away, and Laurence didn't even get a date.

Chapter Four

When school resumed, the countdown on Laurence's lifetime had fallen by three more months, without anyone really deciding he needed an alert. Hints and deniable suggestions were charitable contributions to any possible realization that he was wasting his life away.

Now that classes were in session again, Laurence derived income from work study. There was no particular niche for history majors, so Laurence found himself in general purpose landscaping, by default.

Amused co-workers started playing the old Michael Jackson tune, “Beat It,” when Laurence was on duty. If his boss found him lounging, he was sure to goad him to “quit jacking off!” “That fertilizer bed isn't going to fertilize itself!” he might bawl.

An older black man, standing by, would sagely comment, “even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.”

To Laurence, this was an unrelated comment. It did not follow that ferilizing a flower bed would affect the hibernation preparations of the local squirrel population.

As day's became weeks, Laurence began to wonder if someone might be out to get him. He knew that people talk, and he racked his brains, for any offense he might have given, and to whom. Was a displeased professor behind it? That could potentially account for all the failed interviews.

In Laurence's mind he needed someone in whom to confide, and Tyne seemed a likely confederate. Over a tray of Tilapia in the cafeteria, Laurence advanced the scenario of a conspiracy. After a few minutes of backing and forthing, Tyne asked Laurence if he had seen the movie, “Eyes Wide Shut.”

“Yes, I have,” Laurence replied. “But it was too fantastical. There can't actually be any real organization that would act that way.”

Just then, Tyne saw Laurence's eye wander to the passing derriere of a high school girl passing by. “She's not a virgin,” Tyne suggested provocatively.

Laurence was not immune, but attempted to remain inscrutable to Tyne, by ignoring the verbalization. Despite the fact that he responded to the combination of arrested development in himself, with putative experience in the girl, he stayed “on message.”

“What agenda would coherently drive a hedonistic cult like that?” he queried.

Tyne viewed this response dispassionately. Vice would serve him better, she thought to herself. Aloud she bantered, “What about a Society of Illuminati?”

“They don't exist,” Laurence argued. “Even if they did, they would be bound to be much more secret than that.”

Tyne didn't care. “You may be right,” she finished non-committally. “They couldn't all be paragons of virtue, though, to survive in the cut throat world of conspiracy like that.”

Laurence laughed. “Risk is cumulative, Tyne,” he replied. “That's why crime doesn't pay.”

“I disagree, Laurence,” Tyne retorted. “You couldn't catch a fish in an aquarium.”

Without another word, Tyne got up and left, leaving Laurence to bus the table. “It's a dog eat dog world,” he thought, as he cast a final glance at the high school hottie. He'd dream of her tonight.

When Tyne got a chance to speak to the high school girl, she mercilessly assaulted Laurence's reputation with her. “He's old enough to be your father,” Tyne exaggerated. “Laurence is a Cretan and a coward. Don't give him anything.” If cryptic, it certainly invoked a sense of sisterhood.

Laurence was jumping through all the right hoops, on the completely wrong obstacle course. Like a computer program performing a calculation based on faulty input data, he was flawlessly repeating the mistakes of people he didn't know had made them. All that remained, was to see how far he could go, without discovering that his belief in fair play was operating on a pinball playing field.

Chapter Five

By coincidence, Karyn having a similar discussion across town, with Frank. She brought up the same Stanley Kubrick story, ending with the question, “How do you think the author came up with the details of the story?”

Frank was not especially creative, and he inferred that other people were not creative either. “Either something like it happened to him, or someone else it happened to, just told him about it,” Frank responded.

“You don't think the author might have read something hat gave him the idea, or maybe he just figured it out, by watching people and odd occurrences?” Karyn pursued.

“If he read a book about it, he wasn't even original,” Frank decided. “There's not really that much to figure out.”

Karyn dug in her heels at this. “What if he was disagreeing with someone else's theory, Frank?” she reacted. “What can you possibly think is simple about it?”

“Straight up, Karyn? It's about a bunch of horny old fossils, going through mid-life crisis, and using money to try and get laid,” Frank adjudged. It was a motive he could relate to.

Karyn was far from satisfied. “What if it was just the tip of the iceberg, Frank?” she inquired frostily. “What if it was just a press leak that momentarily exposed a Society of Illuminati?”

Frank was unmoved. “I guess I'd just try and join the club,” he rejoined. “It would probably be a good political connection.”

Karyn regarded Frank like a fly in her soup. “Well, OK. What if it's true,” she erupted. “What makes you so sure they would want you?”

Frank gazed at Karyn in disbelief. “With what I bring to the table? Babe, all I'd have to do is show up, and Dad would hook me up with them!”

Karyn pondered this, in light of reality. It had an unassailable quality to it, but she could not disagree more. “That don't impress me much,” she finally commented.

“Shania Twain, right?” Frank glinted. “I'll have to buy you that album.”

“Thank you, Frank, that's real big of you,” Karyn retaliated. “I'll have to get you one of those extra sensitive joy-sticks, in return.”

“Now why would you go and spoil the surprise?” Frank reacted, incredulously. He was oblivious to the fact that his own comment had suffered the exact same deficiency.

“So your feeble mind won't be taken unawares,” Karyn flashed. Without another word, she got up and left, leaving Frank to bus the table.

For his own part, Frank had experience of this kind of thing, and he correctly anticipated that it would be a while, before Karyn was friendly toward him again.

Bitch, Frank thought to himself.

If he had stopped even for a moment, to ask himself why, instead, Frank would have instantly shaved days off of his penance. He began casting about for someone to bed, while he figured Karyn out. There was a bar about three miles off campus, and Frank knew that if he could get one of the denizens drunk enough, she would do a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g. Maybe he could score some cocaine. That served the same, somewhat derelict, purpose.

Nicholas Maelstrom, Frank's dad, knew that Frank employed cocaine to bring women to heel, but he didn't want Frank to marry a “coke whore.” Nicholas wanted Frank to learn about cultured women, in the same way he wanted Frank to learn business management, and how to win at games of strategy.

However, Nicholas could not teach what he did not fully know. The urgent demands of work superseded the important tasks of rearing his son, and Frank's mother, Heather, fought with her husband to cut off the money supply. Frank made a game of thwarting her. If this was the West Point Academy of the war between the sexes, Frank was not doing his homework. He was fighting battles with winning tactics, but losing a strategic war.

Frank predictably blew up in a temper every time he felt trapped into admitting he was wrong, and it wasn't hard to provoke the same sentiment in his father, Nicholas. It would be a miracle, if Frank did not fall prey to cocaine addiction.

Karyn was angry too, but for different reasons, and did not seek solace in sex.

Chapter Six

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Tyne had a dark secret. She was a kind of Moriarty to the community. As a youth, Tyne had been denied the best affections of her father. Bart Bitters had been criminally intelligent, and moderately successful, but as a father he was distant and dismissive.

When Tyne was fifteen years old, her mother had left them, seeking a new beginning overseas. She had severed all ties, and Tyne had never heard from her again. Meanwhile, Tyne's father, Bart, had taken advantage of every boy who took any interest in his daughter. His limited success at small time gaming, soft drugs, and a minor protection racket, had left Tyne convinced that good never triumphs over evil. However, she was not allowed to capitalize satisfactorily on evil herself.

Because of community scrutiny, Tyne was never physically abused. On balance, she learned to reduce every boy her age to a creature. Like trained Poodles, they did her bidding, and all protestations of “I'll do whatever it takes, just ask me, I'll do anything,” failed to win her respect. Tyne was superstitious about her virginity, and if she masturbated, Tyne masturbated women, avoiding anyone she believed to be sexually active.

Adolescent rebellion led Tyne to leave her father's fiefdom, just as her mother had done, and she took with her a developed predilection for torturing cats. Dark curiosity and a manipulative turn of mind had soon led Tyne into a romance with the dark arts. Tyne attributed her successes to magic, and had never met anyone who could successfully refute her opinion.

While Tyne enjoyed the intimidation factor associated with introducing herself as Satanic, it also had severe social repercussions. Meanwhile, law enforcement took a jaundiced view of any religion dedicated to mayhem, and Tyne wanted to avoid undue scrutiny of her avocation, of dealing drugs. As a result, she became reticent about the entire subject of piety.

It was to Tyne that Frank turned. Tyne had a system. To make a buy, the customer had to go to a shopkeeper with whom she had a prior agreement, and buy Cosmopolitan magazines, at the inflated price of $10 above retail. The shopkeeper would then certify the magazines to Tyne, who would trade the relevant number of magazines, for the key to a locker containing the desired stash.

Frank duly danced the dance, and Tyne banked $40, the price of four “dime bags,” of cocaine.

The whole time, Laurence was mulching a flower bed, oblivious to the clandestine activity around him. Out of politeness, and obedience to parental training, Laurence studiously avoided eavesdropping, and blithely expected reciprocal privacy in return. As such, Laurence barely inconvenienced the miscreants.

Chapter Seven

When Laurence finished landscaping, he showered and went down to the lobby. While the limited bandwidth of the dormitory was shared by many, the slow bit-rate drove the wealthier students to purchase their own internet services. T3 DSL was common, and FIOS could be found, but those who might enjoy the privilege were not likely to invite Laurence to share.

Laurence was trying to use area-wide library resources, to piece together the history of Europe. With the advent of cotton clothing, from the newly discovered Americas, trade amongst the European countries had changed substantially.

Laurence peered at the dates, and took notes of the names of treasurers and generals. Tulip Mania alone, could keep a historian busy for hours.

Bitumen was sitting cross legged on the sofa, with a pillow clutched to her chest. Her current beau, Searcy, had his arm around her, and the pillow obscured his hand. Bitumen was alternately watching prime time television, and gauging the performance of the various Foosball competitors.

Bitumen found it amusing, that Laurence had a laptop, a map of Europe, and a three-subject notebook arrayed around him in a circle, while those round about him sought emancipation from ennui.

When Searcy interrupted his attentions, to demonstrate his own command of Foosball, Bitumen yawned and stretched. “I'm bored,” she proclaimed, resting an elbow on her upright knee.

“I never get bored,” Laurence offered in return. His tone was slightly combative. These indifferent children of privilege had no right to protest boredom when there was so much to learn.

“What's your name?” Bitumen asked.

“Laurence,” Laurence replied.

“Well, Laurence, the mechanical workings of a kaleidoscope may be fascinating, down to the sub-atomic level of refraction of light, but at eleven o'clock, you're always going to be buying a Coke during a Letterman commercial. You're predictable – Boring!” Bitumen pronounced.

Laurence looked pained. “You didn't mention your name,” Laurence began.

“I'll agree. I didn't,” Bitumen sparked.

When Bitumen offered no further comment, Laurence dug in his heels, and hauled back on the lasso of his etiquette. “You have the advantage of me,” he grated. “With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“It's Bitumen,” Bitumen clipped. “Now's when I suppose you 'educate' me?” She said the word 'educate,' with distaste, like a diplomat might say 're-education.'

“Is it worth the trouble?” Laurence shot back.

“If we talk computers, you're gonna educate me; if we talk religion, you're gonna educate me; if we talk politics, you're gonna educate me; if we talk weather, you're gonna educate me...” Bitumen paused for a breath, and Laurence interrupted.

“What can you do WITHOUT an education?” he decried.

Like a sailboat tacking upwind, Bitumen abruptly changed direction. “Fine. Let's talk about sex!” she challenged. Her eyes blazed at Laurence, as she awaited his inevitable rebuttal.

“...education?” Laurence sputtered. “or maybe pornography?” His tone ended the sentence.

“I probably know more about sex than you, Laurence. I wouldn't be surprised if you had to PAY for it!” Bitumen fired back. The fact was, that Bitumen had Laurence's number. Furthermore, if education is crucial, experience is equally indispensable.

Laurence was not prepared to concede without a fight. “I'll bet I can find your G-spot,” he swelled. He had heard that this was an accomplishment in a lover.

“I have a boyfriend,” Bitumen protested. “He's gonna bone me like a Sunday roast tonight, and there's no way I'm screwin' that up, just to 'educate' you!” Again, the word came out like an epithet. “You ever wonder why no one ever says 'yes,' when you ask 'em out?”

“I know I'm not a hound,” Laurence flailed. “YOU probably just can't do any better!”

“You gonna tell that to Searcy?” Bitumen flashed.

“Just so he can have an excuse to kick my ass?” Laurence asked. The prospect made him quail. “I can get that at any strip club!” The threat of physical violence had caused Laurence to lower his tone, and he finished evenly, glowering back at Bitumen.

Bitumen didn't pull her punches. Pointing at Laurence, she stood up and made a face. “HE just called me a STRIPPER!” Bitumen bawled, at the top of her lungs.

In seconds, the fraternity guns were circling Laurence and his paraphernalia.

“Who're YOU callin' a stripper?” one growled fiercely. “Is that any way to talk to a lady?”

A double standard was at work here, and Laurence could hardly expect any explanation to suffice. Every one of these rakes would casually refer to Bitumen as a bitch without batting an eye, both privately and in her presence. Yet here, the mere proximity of the word “stripper,” in an analogy, officially offended their jaded sensibilities because it was offered by Laurence. They regarded Laurence as an interloper, and want identified his species.

Protestations of innocence could not save Laurence, but survival dictated that he should go down swinging, if only verbally. “It was a simile, not a metaphor!” he cried, underscoring the importance of his claim, by adding repetition and volume.

Laurence would have faced corporal punishment, if Bitumen had not been reduced to gales of laughter at his desperation. At her intercession, Laurence was subjected to several minutes of apologies, amd sent packing with stern warnings not to re-offend.

Over the next two days, word was passed around the grapevine, and Laurence endured a firestorm of controversy. A few asked him what he had been thinking; a smattering asked him what a simile was, but the majority spoke to one another, and disdained the object of their discourse.

Laurence began to subsist in a bubble of isolation.