Chapter One

Thursday, April 21, 2005

    A den of snakes writhing to escape their lair of hibernation, photographed outside a village in the Amazon basin, decorated the east wall of Conrad Ryland’s modest apartment in South Baton Rouge.  The photo resided above the stereo bookshelves.  That location displayed the picture to every seat in the living room without any visual obstructions.
     Conrad Ryland hated snakes, but he genuinely enjoyed making an impact on his guests.  Conrad stood at six feet one inch tall, and his striking Scotch Irish features made an especially strong impression on his female visitors, who rarely noticed his wall hanging.  He kept his long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail.  His sand colored hair contrasted sharply with skin tanned a deep bronze.  Conrad exercised religiously, leaving him with features that most women considered boiling hot.
     Conrad created mild nausea in men who were unacquainted with his personality.  Those men felt envy and intimidation because of his handsome looks.  The people who considered Conrad a friend could appreciate the irony of such a situation.  Mr. Ryland suffered from low self-esteem, a condition that originated because he was a hideously ugly social outcast in elementary school.  The humor of Conrad’s evolved physical appearance often raised discreet smiles among his older friends.  Nobody ever talked about elementary school in front of him.
     On this particular Friday night Conrad thought of nothing but the remarkable vivaciousness of his date.  The lady’s parents named her Jessica, after her maternal grandmother, and Marie, after her paternal great-grandmother.  Jessica Marie Sinclair’s parents gave her traditional family and raised her in an old fashioned home. Her parent’s planning failed to produce the dignified, cultivated clone of a nineteenth century gentlewoman for which they had hoped.  Jessica became an artist.
     Jessica Sinclair filled out every inch of her diminutive height to perfection.  Her long, curly black hair always communicated the impression of animated spirits, so bouncy and full of life.  Jessica’s green eyes gleamed so intently that she seemed to be perpetually plotting mischief.  The keenest part of the young Sinclair lady proved to have nothing to do with her physical appearance.  She possessed a razor sharp intelligence that spilled out every time she spoke.
     Conrad and Jessica met at a bookstore next to the university.  They converged on the last copy of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis at the same time.  Jessica needed the book for a class.  Conrad wanted the book to put on his bookshelf, after hearing that it made a great conversation piece.  After he read it he hoped he would never have to discuss it.
      He took the book right out of her hand, and in apology offered to make it up to her.  Jessica asked Conrad if he’d like to get coffee sometime, to his great surprise.  Conrad may have lacked confidence, but he didn’t lack the intelligence to say yes to a beautiful woman.  They set the date for the next Thursday night, and wound up having the coffee in his apartment.
     Jessica sat cross-legged on the sofa next to Conrad, an attractive position that allowed her to maintain perfect posture.  Conrad slumped as far back into the sofa as his body would allow.  The contrast between their appearances at that moment defied description.  Conrad looked like the incredible shrinking date, and Jessica may have been poised to float off into the astral plane at any moment.  They were engaged in a conversation that betrayed none of those observations or concerns.  They both lingered on the other’s words thoughtfully before formulating a careful response, dancers in a subtle mating ritual.
     “The clear-cutting of the redwood forests in Humboldt County emphatically shows the depths to which industry and the far right will sink.  It’s not bad enough that the forests will be lost forever.  The long-term environmental consequences will remind us of greed’s corrupting influence for generations,” Jessica said fervently as she toyed with the hem of her baggy pants.
     “I really don’t want to seem shallow about this.  God knows I have no sympathy for big business or the far right.  I’m just saying that people are changing as fast as nature.  Future generations won’t miss the primordial forests because they will never have encountered a primordial forest.  They won’t know what they are missing,” Conrad countered carefully, unaware that he had already blundered into hostile territory.
     Jessica pounced, “So it’s okay to cut down all the forests because after they are gone no one will remember them?  Have you lost your mind?  It’s our duty to prevent something like that from happening.  If I didn’t do everything in my power to make sure that my children, or my grandchildren, could see a true wilderness, then I would be a failure as a citizen of the earth.”
     “I’m not saying that clear cutting old growth forests is right, because I believe that it is wrong.  I also believe that trying to stop it is a good thing.  Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible to stop industry.  I don’t think it’s possible to stop greed.  No matter how hard you try to stop them, people will continue to do stupid things,” Conrad set out in what he hoped sounded like a rational manner.
     “If we just gave up on good causes there would be no impediments to stupidity.  Ignorance would swell like a flash flood and sweep away all good and decent things in its path.  You can’t be telling me to just let go and accept humanity’s self-destructive behavior.  Seeing the truth and not caring enough to act on it is almost as horrendous as…” Jessica trailed off, visibly disturbed.
     Conrad felt his chances with this beautiful woman slipping away.  His mind willed his tongue to say something, anything.  “What am I supposed to do, Jessica?  Go to California?  Strap myself to a tree?  Set myself up for some psychotic logger to murder me because he’s tired of taking shit about his job?  I love forests just as much as any hemp wearing, granola eating, misty eyed tree hugger, but I’m not going to throw my life away to stop people cutting down trees.”
     “Did you just say tree hugger?  Did I hear you correctly?  ‘Granola eating, hemp wearing, misty eyed tree hugger’, did you say?  I hope you weren’t talking about me.  You better not have been talking about me,” Jessica said as she drew a figurative line on the floor in front of her.  Fire spewed from her eyes, and her lips had set in grim determination.
     “My God, you are beautiful,” Conrad told her.  He reached out his hand to outline her cheekbone, but Jessica slapped it away.
     “You tell me right now, do you consider me a tree hugger because I hate industry and the far right, and because I love trees?”  Jessica asked him, the mischievous glint returning to her eyes.
     “I’ve never actually seen you hugging any trees, but you were waxing awfully tree loving for a minute there.  I think you might have tendencies.”
     “Have you ever really looked at a tree, Conrad?”
     “Not the way I’m looking at you.”
     “Shut up.  The best way to see a tree is lying down underneath one.  I must educate you.  We have to go chill underneath a tree right now.  Do you have any granola?  We need granola.”
     “Now I know you’re teasing me.  I’m not sure I know you well enough to let you tease me.  Actually, yes, I do have granola.  Do you want milk with it?”
     “No, just bring it.  I’m serious.  We’re going outside.  Get a blanket,” Jessica commanded.
     Conrad pulled himself out of the deep recesses of the couch and walked over to the apartment’s only closet.  He pulled out a worn blanket his parents purchased in Mexico when he was a child.  He remembered that they only paid five dollars for it.  Twenty years later it still looked warm and inviting.  He held it up for Jessica to inspect.
     “Perfect!” Jessica hooted uncharacteristically.  “Do you have any papers?”
     Later Conrad found out that Jessica loved Indian blankets, even cheap ones purchased in Mexico in the eighties.  He already knew that she liked to smoke weed, because she told him.  Luckily he also smoked weed on occasion, and did have papers.
     “Yeah.  Are French Silks okay?”
     “Splendid.  Give me the papers.  I just need a second.”
     Conrad stepped over to the bookshelf and pulled his papers out of the Franz Kafka book, then tossed them to Jessica, who was watching attentively.  “If we’re going to rough it in the outdoors, then I’m bringing an ice chest,” he said as he made for the kitchen.
     “Don’t forget the granola.  I was serious.  Some girls eat chocolate.  I eat granola.”
     Jessica could hear the sounds of Conrad loading up the ice chest with goodies in the other room.  She focused on cleaning a small amount of indica as quickly as possible.  She often played the game while she was alone, cleaning a joint’s worth of weed as fast as she possibly could.  She reasoned that in case of nuclear war she might be able to take a few hits before being vaporized if she could clean weed fast enough.  She finished rolling the joint before Conrad walked back into the room with his ice chest.
     “I really needed that book, Conrad.  I can’t believe you took the last copy.  What are you doing with it?”
     “You told me that you chose that book to write about.  The way I see it, I saved you a lot of trouble.  That book sucks, so I confined it to my bookshelf.”
     “Spoken like a true literati.  What would you have chosen?”
     “What were the choices?”
     “You could choose any book you wanted to write about.”
     “You chose to write about Kafka?  Why?”
     “A lot of people have strong feelings about that book.  That means that it would have been easy for me to write about.  Answer my question.  What would you have written about?”
     “How much of the grade does it count for?”
     “A third.”
     “Shakespeare.  I would definitely write about Shakespeare, most likely Hamlet.”
     “Can you tell me why on earth you would pick Hamlet?  I can’t think of too many things more boring to write about than ancient plays.  On top of that, thousands of things have already been written about that play.”
     “You have answered your own question.  My paper has already been written.  I would never even read the work in question.  All I need is a hundred-year-old critique and a thesaurus.  After only a few hours of translating my term paper would be finished, and I would have a lot of extra free time on my hands.”
     “Why couldn’t I have been born diabolical instead of intelligent and self disciplined?  Are you ready?” Jessica asked him.  Conrad had been standing in front of her with the ice chest in his hands for a couple of minutes.
     “Sure.  Where are we going?”
     “There’s a fantastic old live oak in the empty lot behind the apartment complex.  I noticed that they just cut the grass a couple of days ago, so it won’t be like kicking back in a jungle.  Plus, it’s against the law to hang out in any of the parks after dark.”
     Conrad and Jessica stepped out into the warm night air of South Louisiana in late spring.  The streetlights by the building obscured their view of the sky.  As they walked further into the abandoned lot and nearer to the enormous live oak, the light became more subdued.  A few of the brightest stars could be seen overhead through the reflected glare of the city.
     Jessica paced over the ground under the spectacular canopy of the oak for a few moments before she pointed out a good place for Conrad to spread the blanket.  She admired the fluid grace of his movements as he executed the simple task.  He put down the ice chest and spread the blanket, and somehow Jessica started breathing faster.
     “Do your friends call you anything besides Conrad?” she asked as she settled onto the comfy old blanket.
     “I don’t really have any nicknames, at least none that I would repeat.  Why?  Do you not like calling me Conrad?”
     Jessica caught the scent of a lurking secret.  “No.  I don’t mind calling you Conrad at all.  What do you mean by no nicknames you would repeat?”
     “Can we change the subject?  I’m kind of sensitive about it.”
     “No.  I want to know.  You need to tell me right now, before I make your life a living hell.”
     “Some of my older friends call me Connie-boy.”
     “Connie-boy?  I love it,” Jessica giggled with pure delight.
     “Don’t you want to know why they call me that?”
     “I find the answer obvious.”
     “What do you mean by that?”
     “They call you that because it makes you mad, and you’re very cute when you’re mad.”
     “I am not cute, and that’s not why they call me that.  They used to call me ‘Cunnie’ when we were younger, especially if I complained a lot.  After we got older that sounded mean and obscene instead of cute and funny.  One night we were all drinking and someone changed my nickname to Connie.  That sounded too feminine, so they changed it to Connie-boy.  The name just stuck, I guess.”
     “You’re right and wrong.  The name ‘Cunnie’ really isn’t cute or funny.  You, on the other hand, are very cute, especially when you get all flustered.”
     “Do you think so?”  Conrad asked, but he wasn’t waiting to hear her response.  He looked at the way her black hair caught the light from the street and turned it into witchcraft.  Even in the darkness he could see the golden threads inside her brown eyes gleaming with awareness. 
     Jessica’s hair smelled like jasmine, even from a distance.  Conrad loved the scent of jasmine.  He once again reached out his hand to stroke her cheek, but this time she didn’t slap his hand away.  She reached up and held it for a moment while she looked back into his eyes.  The moment stretched out to both ends of the horizon before either one of them said anything.
     “Do you think you can handle smoking this joint with me?”
     “That depends.  Can I sit next to you instead of facing you?  I get very self-conscious when I get stoned.  I don’t like people to look at me.”
     “I would have thought that as good looking as you are you would revel in it.”
     “I don’t feel good looking.”
     “That’s funny,” Jessica said with a little laugh.  “Sure, you can sit next to me.  I want you to.”
     Conrad repositioned himself so that he was sitting right next to Jessica.  Their legs rubbed against each other as she pulled out the joint and lit it.  She took a long hit and passed it.  He took it from her, taking note of her comfortable warmth against him. 
     When Conrad hit the joint all of the sounds of the city seemed to grow quiet.  The sounds of their breathing echoed across the empty lot and down the deserted streets.  He could hear the stars twinkling in the sky, a sound like distant laughter.  The smell of the weed hovered around them like ethereal clouds from another dimension.  Suddenly Conrad realized the humor in everything.
     “Don’t laugh, Conrad.”
     “Why shouldn’t I laugh, Jessica?”
     “Because this is serious, and if you laugh you will never be able to keep a straight face again.”
     “What’s so serious about this?”
     “Do you really have to ask me that?”  Jessica turned completely to the side to fix him in her gaze.  She smirked and hit the joint again, and then she returned to staring directly at Conrad.
     “I told you I don’t like anyone to look at me.”
     “But I like looking at you.”
     “You’re freaking me out.  I knew this was a bad idea.”
     “Ha! I knew you couldn’t handle getting stoned with me,” Jessica gushed before she started laughing.  Conrad sat there stupefied for a moment before he realized that what was happening was indeed very funny, once again.  He didn’t laugh, though.  He just looked back into Jessica’s eyes.
     “I was just messing with you, Conrad.  Don’t you want to hit the joint again?”
     “I’m not sure I should.  I already feel perfect just sitting here next to you.”
     Jessica sat there in silence a few moments before putting the remains of the joint back into a very small bag.  She turned back to Conrad again, and he could see that there was a little tear in the corner of her left eye. 
     “That was a very sweet thing for you to say,” she told him with a vague emotion in her voice.
     “It wasn’t meant to be sweet.  I’m just saying, I’m sitting here next to a beautiful woman.  You happen to be more intelligent than anyone else I know, and light years more intelligent than I am.  You’re cooler than I am…”
     “I’m cooler than you?”
     “Way, way cooler than I am.  You even have a tolerance for kind bud.  How cool can you get?”
     “No one has a tolerance for kind bud.  Some people just don’t freak out as badly as others do.”
     “I stand corrected, but I still feel perfect sitting here next to you.  I can’t think of anywhere else I would rather be.”
     “I think I am an idiot for believing anything you say, Conrad Ryland.  It is obvious you are trying to seduce me with a well thought out script that you have used repeatedly in the past.  I can’t believe I fell for your lies as long as I did.”
     Conrad started giggling uncontrollably.  His laughter became increasingly loud.  Jessica started laughing too, but in her mind she saw someone complaining about the noise.  She became concerned.  She tried to quiet Conrad down by shoving her hands over his mouth.  That didn’t work out so well.  Conrad repeatedly shrieked, “I can’t breathe!”
      “Hush up, Conrad!”
      When Jessica pulled her hands away from his mouth, Conrad reached out and pulled her to him.  He kissed her for a long time, and she kissed him back.  They both became even more breathless.  Then Jessica pulled away from him and straightened out her clothes.
     “I don’t really know you very well, Conrad.”
     “And yet we’re stoned and making out in an abandoned lot.  We’re under a tree we came here to appreciate, and neither one of us has even looked up yet.   How ironic is that?  Also, we have an entire ice chest we haven’t even opened.”
     “Oh, yippee! Granola!  Give me some granola, Conrad.”
     “Yes, ma’am.  Here’s the granola, and here is a bottle of tamarind juice.”
     “Tamarind juice.  It’s very eclectic of you to provide tamarind juice.  You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had tamarind juice.”
     “Now every time you drink it you will think of the time you got stoned under a tree with me.”
     They sat in silence while they ate granola and drank tamarind juice.  Conrad noticed that Jessica took very small bites and never made a sound while she chewed.  As an experiment Conrad stuffed a huge amount of granola into his mouth and held his nose while he chewed.  After five seconds he exhaled through the granola.  He sounded like a horse with a feedbag on, and a large portion of food exploded into the air.  Luckily he wasn’t facing Jessica.
     Jessica burst into laughter, jettisoning her mouth’s contents out into space.  She appeared to be having problems getting herself under control.  Conrad became concerned for her well being just as she stopped quivering.  She did appear to be breathing, so he went back to chewing rapidly.  He figured he would have to speak soon, and his mouth still contained a large quantity of granola.
     “In the future, please give me a little warning before you do something like that.”
     “Mrrmph,” Conrad grunted with sophistication.
     “You’re the first person I have ever met who sprayed out food in front of me.  What goes on in your mind?  What do you like to do for fun?”
     “Right now there’s not much of anything going on in my mind.  The surest way to stop all of my thought processes is to confront their existence.  My thoughts run for cover like roaches when you turn on the lights,” Conrad admitted.
     “Well what do you like to do for fun?  I want to know about you.  I want to know about your life.”
     “I do a lot of things for fun.  I like to read, but I don’t have time to do it as much as I like.  I like to take long walks.  I make the time to do that because it keeps me in shape.  I think this is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.  I never do anything that compares to this,” Conrad told her.
     “Shut up.  I bet you get to spend time with a lot of beautiful girls.  Tell me the truth,” Jessica insisted.
     “I don’t get to spend a lot of time with beautiful girls, Jessica.  My love life is pretty much the pits.  I get first dates on occasion, but I’m always so awkward during the first date none of them will go out with me again.”
     “Why is that, Conrad?  You told me you don’t have much self-confidence.  You don’t like people to look at you, even though you’re extremely handsome.  Why?”
     “I was ugly when I was a child.  All the kids picked on me.  I didn’t have any friends in elementary school, so I think I missed out on the basics of human interaction.  When I finally did make some friends all we did was play role-playing games.  I’m not sure that helped me develop normal social behavior.”
     “That’s sad.  I mean, it’s not sad that you finally made friends, but it’s sad that you missed out on a lot of fun in your early childhood.”
     “It’s no big deal.  I can’t believe I told you that.  I don’t like to talk about that, because people think I’m complaining about my childhood.  That is the reason, though, why I can’t seem to communicate normally.”
     “You seem pretty normal to me.  Do you think I have a normal life?  Hell, I’m less popular now than I ever was in elementary school.  I’m a liberal in a country full of ignorant Christians.  At least your social standing got better as you got older.  I went from being a cute little girl selling Girl Scout cookies to a champion of dike rights.  I don’t believe there is such a thing as a normal human being.  Show me someone ‘normal’ and I’ll show you someone who is incredibly shallow.”
     “At least people listen to you before they label you as socially unacceptable.  I can never say the things I want to say when I talk to somebody.  Earlier, when we were talking about clear-cutting the redwood forests, I wanted to tell you that I don’t really know too much about that.  I wanted to impress you by having an opinion, but instead I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”
     “So you don’t think I’m a tree hugger?”
     “No, at this point I’m positive you are a tree hugger, but when I said it earlier I wasn’t even talking about you.  I was simply taking a stand on the issue.  For some reason my twisted mind always takes an opposing stand.  What I should have done was admit my lack of knowledge and ask you questions about it.”
     “Conrad, I think one of the reasons I like you is because you aren’t afraid to have an opinion.  I have to admit that after you made a decisive stand I realized that I had gone overboard with the entire conversation. I know it’s unrealistic to leave your life on hold in order to chain yourself to a tree, but at the time I was caught up in my hatred for all things stupid.  I appreciated what you said.  If I had been truly offended, then I would have walked out.  If you had shown yourself to be a Republican, then I would have clobbered you before I walked out.”
     “You might dislike me even more for what I truly believe.  I don’t believe your vote counts.  I believe democracy in the United States is a sham, and that it has been for decades.  I don’t vote.  I don’t think it matters what you support or don’t support.  That’s what I really believe, Jessica”
     “If you were to say that you favor change through revolution, then you might get lucky tonight.”
     “It depends on what you mean by ‘change through revolution’.  I’m absolutely certain that a violent revolution by the people of the United States would fail before it could get underway.  I’m also absolutely certain that popular support for a violent revolution doesn’t exist in this country.  I mean, the only people mad enough to call for a revolution also support gun control.  That will never lead to a revolution.  Revolution would be possible in Washington, D. C., only if the world as we know it came to a horrible end.
     “On the other hand, if you meant by your statement to include other nations of the world, then I do favor change through revolution.  I think that at this point it would be easier to go to a third world country and install a fresh democracy, through whatever means necessary, than to fix the diseased democratic government of the United States.  Anyone serious about undertaking such a task would have to be coldblooded enough to advocate torture and assassination…”
     “I can tell you’ve thought a lot about this, Conrad.  You’re not serious about starting a revolution in a third world country, are you?  I can’t see myself moving out of the United States right now, or at least not before I finish school.”
     “I told you I’ve played a lot of role playing games.  That’s a polite way of saying I’ve examined combat and warfare in extreme detail, including the socioeconomic aspects of war.  Incidentally, why would you go with me if I went off to start a war?”
     Jessica blushed before responding, “I would never forgive myself if I missed your revolution.”
     When Conrad didn’t speak again the silence of the night descended with such force that he looked at his watch.  Cars stopped whizzing down Nicholson not long after they got stoned.  Suddenly Jessica also realized that they were very much alone in the night.  The abandoned lot wasn’t in one of the safer parts of the city.  The neighborhood didn’t see much in the way of police patrols.
     “Conrad, would you mind if we went back into your apartment?  I don’t feel safe out here anymore.”
     “Oh, no, I think we should admire the tree for a few more hours.  Sure, we can go back inside.  I liked being able to see you while we talked.”
     Jessica stood up and stretched.  Conrad looked at her while he folded up the blanket.  He found himself wishing he could see more of her skin.  Her baggy clothes concealed most of her body, and Conrad thought that should be a crime.  Jessica caught him looking at her, so he just smiled innocently.  She giggled and traipsed off for the apartment.  Conrad followed behind her, fully encumbered.
     “I noticed the ice chest is still heavy.  What else did you put in there?” Jessica asked him.
     “A couple of bottles of Chardonnay.”
     “Ooh, you brought out the big guns.  What makes you think I drink wine?”
     “I wasn’t sure if you do or not, but I do.  If I hadn’t gotten so baked I would have brought it out.”
     “I can’t wait to drink a couple of glasses.  You do have wineglasses, don’t you Conrad?”
     “I do.  I have two of them.”
     “That sounds romantic,” Jessica admitted as they rounded the corner by the door of Conrad’s apartment.  Conrad handed her the keys while keeping a tentative grip on the ice chest.
     “I don’t know how long I thought we planned to stay under that tree, but I packed enough supplies for a road trip,” Conrad noted as he bundled their late night picnic supplies back into his kitchen.
     “Chalk it up to first date jitters.  Now where do you keep the corkscrew?  Wait, here it is.  Uh, why do you have latex gloves in this drawer?”
     “I’m glad you didn’t look in the drawer where I keep my body part trophies.  I’m scared of raw chicken.  That’s sort of ironic considering how much I like to eat chicken.  Instead of spending an hour scrubbing my hands every time I cook chicken, I put on latex gloves.  Also, they’re useful in a myriad of sexual situations.”
     Jessica’s mouth dropped open.  On very rare occasions she couldn’t find anything to say.  She knew that there was something snappy and clever to say, but her mind had gone blank.  It didn’t have too much to do with what Conrad said.  Sometimes she just found herself at a loss for words.
     “Did I say that out loud?  I was just kidding.  You don’t have a phobia of latex gloves, do you?” Conrad asked innocently.
     “No… no.  You just have a way of catching me with all of my defenses down.  I would normally have said something snappy and funny, but I had a vision of you naked, wearing latex gloves.”
     “And now we are both traumatized.  I have got to be more careful about the things I say,” he quipped good-naturedly.  He wondered if the man was supposed to open the wine.  It didn’t matter, because Jessica already had the cork out.  He placed his two wineglasses on the counter before her.
     Jessica filled the two wineglasses.  She took one of the glasses in her fingers in the most seductive way she could imagine.  Conrad didn’t even look at her; the wine had his full attention.  Jessica hated to feel sophomoric, so she gripped her wineglass like a coffee mug.  That didn’t help.
     Suddenly Conrad was looking at her, and the only thing she could see in his eyes was warmth and tenderness.  “I propose a toast,” he said with glass uplifted, “to new beginnings.”
     “To new beginnings,” Jessica echoed.
     They both went back to his comfy old sofa and sat down.  He brought the bottle of wine along so he wouldn’t have to stand up to fetch refills.  This time Jessica didn’t sit cross-legged.  She draped her legs across Conrad’s lap, and sat very close to him.  She was sure that if she were a cat she would be purring.
     “Keep talking, Conrad.  I like to hear you talk, and I still don’t know you nearly as well as I’d like to.”
     “What do you want me to say?  You’re the only thing I’m thinking about right now.”
     “Talk to me about sex.  Tell me about the things that get you excited.  Tell me what you look for in a girl.”
     “Sex makes for dangerous conversation.  I would be a liar if I said that I don’t think about sex a lot.  The average male thinks about sex all the time, but I think differently than a lot of other guys.”
     “In what way?”
     “I believe that sex should only be exalted when it takes place between two people who are in love.  In that situation, sex evolves beyond an act of casual gratification.  Sex becomes lovemaking.  I fantasize a lot, but even my fantasies make me feel guilty.  To simplify the union of a man and a woman cheapens the concept of the act.  I feel the same physical urges that other people feel, but I consider sex without love a sin.  So my fantasies make me feel guilty.  My fantasies make me feel dirty.”
     “You talk about sin, but you don’t strike me as the religious type.  Sexual activity between a man and a woman derives from natural functions.  Reduced to its most basic form, sex strengthens and prolongs the species.  Human beings exist as animals, and procreation drives the animal kingdom at the genetic level.”
     “Humans are physiologically defined as animals, but human awareness exists on a higher plane.  I think loveless sex fits all the criteria for a sin.  I consider physical love the highest expression of emotional love.  To degrade the sanctity of something so precious strikes me as wrong.  That does not mean I am innocent of desire, or even innocent.  I don’t think loss of innocence constitutes an unforgivable cosmic transgression, as with ‘original sin’.  I merely derive no spiritual satisfaction from purely physical pleasure.  The act leaves me feeling empty and wanting for something genuine.”
     “Are you sure you’re not a visitor from outer space, Conrad?  I’m having problems believing a guy just told me about the emptiness of casual sex.  Maybe I should be more careful what I ask you.”
     “I hope I haven’t offended you, Jessica.  Maybe I’m too honest.  A lot of people don’t appreciate honesty, but I greatly prefer honesty to deceit.  I don’t think any relationship based on deception will work.”
     “Wow.  I am not offended, but your depth does shock me.  I came over because I thought you were a good-looking guy out to get laid.  That doesn’t mean I would have done it with you.  I just wanted to see what you were like.  I can see now that you are an extremely serious person,” Jessica breathed deeply before continuing, “Drink your glass of wine quickly, Conrad, and tell me how you feel about me on a sexual level.”
     Conrad gulped down the contents of his wineglass before he began, “You are the most remarkable girl I’ve ever spent time with.  It would tear me up to sleep with you and then never get to spend time with you again.  I am an animal, though, like you said.  If you present yourself, then I won’t be able to resist.”
     They both laughed, and the terrible tension that had gathered in the air dissipated.  Jessica finished her first glass of wine and poured both of them a fresh glass.  Outside, a police siren wailed in the distance.  The sound drew Conrad’s attention to the window.  He saw that fog was rising up from low-lying areas to cover the city.  The distant images of trees and houses had been replaced by drifting gray ghosts.
     “You told me you got your degree in English last year.  What do you plan to do, Conrad?”
     “You mean besides work in a restaurant?  Maybe I’m more like an animal than I’d like to admit.  Survival is my only goal.  Survival and procreation.”
     “So you go from deadly serious to flippant at the drop of a hat.  I’m serious, Conrad.  What do you want to do with your life?”
     “I was serious too, for the most part.  I would like to write a novel that other people would enjoy reading.  Maybe one day I will succeed with my writing.  Until then I plan to stay alive and try to have fun every day.  What do you plan to do with a degree in art?”
     “I’m going to make money doing what I most enjoy doing, which is painting.  I thought the whole point of going to college was to make money after you’re done.  Why don’t you try to get a job writing?”
     “If I got paid to do it I wouldn’t enjoy it anymore.  I have a serious problem with authority…”
     “And yet you are a traditionalist when it comes to sex.”
     “Like I said, I’m all screwed up.  I don’t like most people.  I never went out of my way to make contacts in the publishing industry.  I did go out of my way to insult or alienate all of the people I detested, which was almost all of my fellow students in the English Department.  For my sins I have been damned to work outside of my field.”
     “There you go talking about sins again.  Did you go through some trauma involving religion when you were a child?”
     “In my opinion religion traumatizes all nonconformists.  Religion blackmails individuals into conformity by holding their salvation hostage.  Organized religion uses the threat of damnation as a tool for subjugation.  The churches like to start working on their victims at a tender age, because any independent minded adult would tell them to go fuck themselves. 
     “Churches have a nice racket.  They get paid to point out what they see as faults in the people who pay them.  I believe in God and spirituality and eternal life.  I don’t believe in my fellow human beings.  I don’t follow advice uttered in pursuit of power.  I don’t subscribe to doctrines written to control the masses.  Yes, you could say I went through religious trauma as a child.  I came to realize all of my teachings were a lie.”
     “You are a man after my own heart.  The difference between you and I is that I was never traumatized by my revelations about religion.  I never believed anything I was taught in church in the first place.  All I had to do was look at my mother and father to know it was all a joke.  They only went to church to maintain their social status.  The utter hypocrisy of their actions clued me in from an early age.  There is no God,” Jessica stated with finality.
     “Oh, no.  You don’t believe in God.  Do you believe in an afterlife?”
     “Nope.”
     “What do you believe in?”
     “Life, science, reason, art.  I believe in tangible realities.”
     “We need to change the subject right now.  The last thing I want to do is debate religion with you.  It would be more honest for us to put on boxing gloves and begin punching each other.  If it’s any consolation, then you should know that my family looks at me the same way I just looked at you if I discuss my beliefs.”
     “We genuinely have something in common! Our families disapprove of our religious beliefs.”
     “Yes, and they are wrong in my case.”
     “I’m ready to fight you if that’s what you want,” Jessica said as she jumped up.  She bounced around on the balls of her feet, alternately punching Conrad on the chest and arms.  “Come on, big boy, show me what you got.”
     Conrad tried to stand up twice, but Jessica kept pushing him back down.  The third time he caught her as she pushed at him.  He tried to pull her down on top of him, but she was a lot stronger than he expected.  Jessica twisted, causing both of them to roll to the floor. 
     They strained against each other as they rolled across the rug.  Conrad wound up on top of Jessica, kissing her passionately.  They kissed each other for a couple of minutes before they drew apart.  Conrad propped himself on one elbow and ran his fingers through Jessica’s hair.  She just smiled at him.  She felt happiness to be around someone so nice, even if he was intense.
     “When is your birthday, Jessica?”
     “It’s May 22.  Why?”
     “I’m going to buy you a sun dress.  Not being able to see your shape drives me crazy.  You’re too beautiful to hide yourself in a burlap sack.”
     “It’s not burlap, Conrad, it’s Madras cotton.  My slacks are made out of Irish linen.  My clothes may be baggy, but they aren’t cheap.”
     “You should be dressed in fine silk.  A bright colored Batik would be a fantastic contrast to your hair.  Then you could wear sandals, which would illustrate your love of freedom and open spaces.”
     “You’re putting me on.  Don’t you know it’s too early in our relationship to play with my head?”
     “The truth is I just want to see your body, but silk would look very good on you.”
     “If we keep seeing each other you will see my body.  I’m not sure how I feel about a silk sun dress, though.”
     “Look, Jessica, I have to get up early tomorrow.  Would you like to go to bed with me?”
     “You aren’t subtle at all, are you?”
     “I mean just to sleep.  As much fun as I’m having with you, I need to go to sleep.”
     “You won’t mess with me while I’m trying to sleep?”
     “Not if you stay on your side of the bed.”
     “Okay.  Let’s go.”

Chapter Two

Summer, 1995

     Four young teenagers huddled around a square card table in an attic clubhouse in South Baton Rouge.  Hexagram maps, dice and pieces of paper covered in tiny scribbles littered the surface.  The scene appeared chaotic to the uninitiated, but the youngsters would have objected to that observation.    The meeting proceeded in an extremely complicated order.  The organization method merely defied detection by outsiders.
     The children gathered there stood on the brink of adolescence.  They were all fourteen years old.  Their names were Merlin, Buzz, Conrad, and Jake.  They met to play role-playing games, and their weekly meeting took precedence over all other social opportunities.  The problem was that none of them ever had any other social engagements. 
     They called their club “The Fellowship”, but their peers called it “The Goobers’ Guild.”  Other children shunned the boys, so they banded together to explore their mutual interests.  School failed to provide them with friendships or a sense of belonging.  Their game playing filled that vacuum.
     Each of the boys suffered ridicule and alienation for one reason or another.  Jake weighed forty pounds more than he should have, and at five feet four inches tall that amount indicated a substantial girth.  Buzz sported a hideous back brace.  Conrad broke mirrors with a single glance.  Merlin got under the skin of every girl he met.  His early physical development explained that, but an explanation made the problem no easier.  The superficiality of children’s values branded all of them as undesirable, but under the surface the boys were gifted and caring individuals.
     Together they played games like TFT, GURPS, AD&D, Traveler, Gamma World, Call of Cthulhu, Masquerade, Shadow Run, and Pendragon.  Anything else even remotely connected with fantasy and science fiction automatically became part of their interests as well.  Books, movies, art, music and everything else with escapist themes merged into the culture of their game playing.  Their intelligence soared, but their popularity gave up and died with a whimper.
     That particular day witnessed the boys’ characters in a three hour battle to free a royal niece from the clutches of an evil sorcerer.  The sorcerer’s minions attacked from every avenue, but the heroes beat them off.  Everything transpired well until the battle with the last minion, a hydra.  After that the sorcerer would be forced to defend himself alone, but things went terribly awry.
     “Ha! Critical hit!  I sever three of the hydra’s heads!” Jake yelled with infectious bloodlust.
     “Congratulations.  The hydra grows back six heads in place of those three,” Buzz responded calmly.  His hippie parents actually named him Buzz, but his friends sometimes called him Buzz Kill.  He showed great mastery at making their lives hell in a dungeon, so he often ran the games.
     “Jake, you moron.  Give up on life now.  I told you not to swing your sword at its heads.  Haven’t you ever heard of a hydra?” asked Conrad.
     “Nobody tell him.  See if he figures it out,” Merlin sniggered from the other side of the table.
     “So this is some kind of trick?  Wait until I attack again.  I’ll show you, Buzz.  You can’t keep Olgor down.  I am Olgor, son of Olthor,” Jake’s voice took on a deep resonance.
     “Jake, hydra’s heads grow back,” Conrad explained.
     “Dumb ass,” mocked Merlin.
     “Heads one through three do fourteen points of damage,” Buzz rolled dice repeatedly behind a cardboard screen, “And heads four through six do twenty points of damage.  Finally, the six new heads do… forty-seven points of damage.  Sorry, Olgor.  You’re dead.”
     Jake got a hurt look on his face, and Merlin fell off of his chair laughing.  Conrad gripped his head in his hands because he knew he couldn’t beat the dungeon with Merlin alone.  Their characters would have to retreat to the safety of the town.  Merlin had not realized that yet.
     “Merlin, why are you laughing?  We just spent four hours for nothing,” Conrad pointed out.
     “Are your characters going back to town, Conrad?”  A smug smile spread across Buzz’s face.
     “No, I’m going home.  My mom’s going to be pissed.  I was supposed to eat dinner thirty minutes ago.”
     “Next session I say we keep fighting, regardless of the odds,” Merlin insisted.
     “My next character is going to be a magician.  My fighters always get killed,” lamented Jake.
     “It’s not your characters, Jake.  It’s you,” Buzz intoned as viciously as possible.  The only thing Buzz liked better than killing Jake’s characters fair and square was making him angry about it after the fact.  Jake didn’t seem to bite.
     “I have to go home too.  See you, Buzz,” Jake waved on the way out.
     “I should probably go.  Do you need me to help you clean up first?”  Merlin offered feebly.
     “No, thanks Merlin.”
     “Later, Buzz.”  Conrad bowed at the doorway and backed through.
     “All good things must end.”
     It was a typical gaming session that concluded in a typical fashion.  The four friends parted company in good spirits regardless of how the game went.  Their parents sometimes disapproved of their interests, but they loved it.  The time they spent researching their characters and putting them into action helped them cope with the rest of their lives.
     They all learned a lot from the games, and that experience alone was uplifting.  The game manuals expanded their knowledge in multiple areas.  Their vocabularies improved exponentially.  In the areas of mythology, history, warfare, sociology, and architecture their knowledge increased dramatically.  They all did better in school because of the time they spent gaming.
     More than anything they cherished the social interaction.  They became great friends, and never suffered the cruel taunts they expected in school.  Their time together made them feel normal, even if to other teenagers they seemed aberrant.  Gradually they learned to ignore the negative aspects of growing up, because they always had their fun to look forward to.
     As the departing members bicycled home there was no way they could know the future.  Buzz put away all his meticulously planned plots and schemes when they were gone.  He could not know that eventually girls would adore him.  He did not know how hard it was to earn a legal living, or that he would hate doing it.  How could Buzz know that he would always be level headed because of his days as a game master?
     Conrad crossed Eugene Street without a clue that love would find him at a time when he least expected it.  He did not know that when it happened he would believe destiny stopped the world so he could be with one woman.  The only thing he thought about that night was a drop in air pressure in one tire on his Mongoose. 
     Merlin couldn’t see three weeks into the future, when his father would announce taking a job in Maine.  He would have laughed if informed that schoolgirls in Bangor would find him fascinating.  The knowledge that he would never see his friends in Baton Rouge again after he moved would have disconcerted him.  Luckily all he needed to know that night was that his mother made spaghetti.
     Jake, of all of them, had the best grasp of the future.  He doubted that he would change much.  He figured he would always have as much fun as possible, even if the circumstances said he shouldn’t.  Both of those assumptions turned out to be correct.  One surprise waited for him, though.  He would make a breakthrough in agriculture, and become incredibly rich.
     The members of “The Goobers’ Guild” moved forward and away from that day without ever looking back with regret.  Ten years went by, and nothing was the same.  The future arrived like a slow moving train.  Once it entered the station it didn’t make any difference how long it took to arrive.  The only thing that mattered was the order in which the passengers got off.

Chapter Three

     In January of 1980 a man and a woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, became the proud parents of an eight-pound baby boy.  Rebecca Anne Ryland and John Brennan Ryland took turns holding their child, and their hearts overflowed with love.  The infant looked like he was a thousand years old, like a tiny, wrinkled old man.  Mrs. Ryland thought he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.   Mr. Ryland marveled at the miracle of human birth, and delighted in the memory of the child’s conception.  The two parents considered themselves the luckiest people on earth.  They named their son Conrad Joseph Ryland.
     The baby exhibited exceptional intelligence from an early age.  Conrad had a vocabulary of at least thirty words by the time he was fourteen months old.  By the age of two he had memorized portions of the storybooks his mother read him at night.  When he first recited along with the tale of the littlest caboose his mother thought he was reading, but she figured it out later.  He learned how to read and write basic sentences before he ever entered school.  Conrad approached written language as if it were another game, a feature of his personality that never diminished.
     By the age of two he stumbled on the secret of whistling, much to his elders’ chagrin.  Conrad whistled incessantly for weeks unless forced to stop.  Another annoying habit he picked up involved hiding.  Lots of little children played hide and seek, but not many could hide as well as Conrad could.  He constantly drove Rebecca out of her mind with worry by vanishing into thin air.   He liked to sneak up behind his mother and scare her half to death while she looked for him.  No amount of scolding or spanking ever changed Conrad’s behavior for long, and he continued scaring his mother until he was a teenager.
     The little boy spent all of his playtime alone because there were no other children to play with anywhere near his home downtown.  There was an empty lot next to the Ryland house, and Conrad used the area to play war games with his toy soldiers.  He constructed earthworks and fortifications on a grand scale for the plastic fighters.  The battles he orchestrated sometimes lasted for days.  Every year around the fourth of July all of his armies developed explosives technologies.  He never tired of finding new ways to blow up his men and forts with firecrackers.
     He explored the areas under every house and building within a couple of blocks.  Originally he started going under houses because of his fascination with hiding, but eventually crawl spaces interested him for their own sake.  The summers in Louisiana redefine hot, and Conrad figured out it was ten to fifteen degrees cooler under the surrounding houses.  After that his miniature war games took place well out of sight beneath other people’s floors.
     John and Rebecca separated and divorced when Conrad was six years old.  They loved each other very much, but they could not get along.  They fought constantly, and their bitter feuds only grew in rage and intensity.  John cheated on Rebecca, and she cheated on him.  They both flaunted their infidelities to hurt each other, and the act became a vicious cycle.  Soon every argument led to violence, and Rebecca always took the worst of it.  It became obvious to both of them that splitting up was for the best.
     The divorce and ensuing custody battle was very nasty.  Accusations flew both ways between Conrad’s mother and father.  John made a living as a carpenter, but he supplemented his income illicitly from time to time.  Rebecca got addicted to heroin in the seventies, and spent a brief period of time selling her body.  John accused her of neglect, and she accused John of abuse.  None of the indictments were ever totally true or completely false, but all of them were hurtful.  The love between them still existed somewhere, but both of them acted as if it did not.
   The young boy found himself in the middle of something very painful that he did not understand.  His life changed forever that year.  His mother took custody of him and moved to the suburbs.  Conrad wanted to hide from the terrible things that happened between his parents.  Unfortunately, the newer houses in the suburbs rested on foundations.  There were no cool, dark places to hide and play underneath them.  He felt like a bug under a magnifying glass.
     For the first time in his young existence Conrad spent a lot of time with other children.  He started school not long after moving.  He spent all of his previously solitary free time in the company of kids, in school and out of school.  He could not get away from other children if he tried.  The experience traumatized him.  The other boys picked on him because he looked different, ugly by their standards.  Conrad had no idea how to defend himself.  Elementary school turned into one big nightmare.
     Conrad escaped into books every possible moment that he could.  He learned far more from his reading than he did from the pathetically under-qualified teachers at school.  His education and intellect were so much more advanced than his age group that he began to fail classes out of sheer boredom.  One of the better teachers noticed his wasted potential.  She initiated a process to have him transferred out of regular school and into an accelerated program.
     For the first time since his parents’ divorce Conrad’s life took a turn for the better.  His mother and father both loved him dearly and eased his troubles during their breakup as best they could, but not until he transferred away from the hordes of stupid children did Conrad actually feel any relief from torment.  The accelerated program was an oasis of civilization in the middle of a zoo.  He never forgot the way other children acted like animals, or how nice it was to escape from the wolves.
     The process took years, and they were not happy years, but happiness did finally return to Conrad’s life.  Once school presented him with a challenge, Conrad excelled in all of his classes.  His parents gradually returned to a state of civility, and the nightmare turned into a normal life.  His parents shared custody by the time he was thirteen, and he freely spent time with both of them sans guilt.  He promised himself never to blame any of his own shortcomings on the problems between his parents during his childhood.  His mind worked overtime to seal away those painful memories, and the work was fairly successful.
     Role-playing games and escapism occupied Conrad’s mind during all of his free time.  He and his friends, all genius outcasts, only managed to gather once or twice a week to play, but their imagination never stopped working on the fantasy scenarios.  Real problems took on a murky remoteness, which was exactly the desired effect.  Some Christian conservatives and parent’s groups vilified the games because of subject matter.  Role playing games taught things other children never imagined in school.  Some children couldn’t handle the freedom of ideas, but Conrad took the information and ran with it.
     He only played role-playing games for a couple of years, and then he stopped.  The educational value of the experience tapered off, and with it much of the appeal.  Conrad didn’t lose the feeling of acceptance among his friends just because he stopped playing.  In many ways he outgrew the fun, but he took the benefits with him.
     When Conrad was fifteen years old he read books at college level and above.  He was adept enough at math to make satisfactory marks without ever opening a book or paying attention in class.  If he hadn’t hated the subject so much, then he could have become a marvelous mathematician.  He found mathematics stifling, however, and he felt the same way about science.  Liberal arts alone held his interest.  He spent all of his solitary free time writing poetry and doing watercolor paintings.  Despite his age Conrad considered himself a member of the intelligentsia.    
     Scholastic subjects weren’t the only areas in which Conrad was exceptional for his age.  He conducted himself with maturity in all facets of his life.  He worked as a kitchen helper during the summer of 1995.  He saved every penny he earned.  By the middle of the eleventh grade he felt confident that he could support himself and finish high school from an apartment.
     John and Rebecca agreed to Conrad’s plan to move away from home and live as an adult.  They may only have done so out of guilt for the past, but, whatever their reasons, Conrad got his own residence.  He was one of only three seniors at Baton Rouge High School who attended school during the day and worked to survive at night.  He wanted independence from his parents to free himself from the chains of the past, and surprisingly the plan succeeded.
     Kitchen jobs occupied a large part of Conrad’s time.  He started off in a Cajun restaurant as a busboy, but he worked his way up to a line cook position.  Conrad liked the atmosphere around the older Cajun cooks.  The work was easy and the hours weren’t too long.  He still had plenty of time and energy to do his homework after he got home.
     Life turned into an enjoyable experience.  All pressure ceased, as to which parent he would live with at what time.  He ate what he wanted to eat whenever he wanted to eat it, as long as the funds were available.  He stayed up late or went to sleep as soon as he got home.  Independence suited Conrad well.  He loved answering to no one at home.
     Conrad discovered a measure of self-esteem with his independence, and he used his newly found confidence to ask a girl out on a date.  The date shattered all of his illusions about being strong, mature and intelligent, but going out on a date was a definite improvement over the alternative.  He figured that in time he would understand girls, and that his feelings of inadequacy would go away.  That mindset denigrated his assertion of maturity like no other part of his life.  Conrad assumed he would one day understand women, as only a young boy would.  Years in the future he met a girl and fell completely in love with her, but he never did understand her.
     College life fell on Conrad like a tidal wave.  Louisiana State University offered him a Chancellor’s Scholarship.  That scholarship combined with need based grants allowed him to attend college free of charge.  He skipped Junior Division altogether through Advanced Placement testing and credit testing in individual departments.  He started college as a sophomore with no financial pressure.  The party was on.
     Stoners and acid heads, punk rockers and tree huggers, junkies and Jesus freaks, all of those groups, and many others, populated the campus and the surrounding areas.  The absolute ideological freedom staggered Conrad’s mind.  He dove into new experiences headfirst; he wanted to try everything.  In his youthful inexperience he didn’t see the lasting social stigma attached to people who tasted absolute freedom, not that he would have cared. 
     Conrad sampled the subcultures with abandon, and mainstream college life closed its doors to him as a consequence.  Most of his schoolmates hadn’t changed much; they just got older.  College students disguised their bestial tendencies better than children did, but the old dramas of acceptance and rejection still played out in the hallways and classrooms.  Conrad did not fit in with normal people, and he never would.  Normal people were too safe and too pliant to accept his kind, and by that age their company no longer appealed to him anyway.
     Stoners became his chosen people, and he indulged in every aspect of their ways and traditions.  Interaction with his family took on a whole new light.  He saw with absolute lucidity, for the first time, what his father really did for a living.  Conrad knew the family secret long before he ever went to college, but expanding life experience opened his eyes to reality.  That was when he sold weed for the first time.
     Conrad, Buzz and Jake stayed friends after Merlin moved away, and in college they did lots of drugs together.  They formed their own small dealing ring, which they referred to as a merchant’s guild, as old fantasies die hard.  Jake inevitably smoked more than he sold, and he was a failure as a merchant.  Buzz branched out into other commodities, which earned his old friends’ disapproval but ultimately hurt no one.  Conrad sold minimal quantities to other stoners, but he smoked less and less.  Everyone mourned the day he decided to stop passing joints socially.
     Conrad graduated from Louisiana State University as a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in 2002.  His degree was in English Literature, but it may as well have been toilet paper.  He earned good grades for four years, but he lived outside the system.  He never made any contacts in his field.  He never submitted any writing for publication.  He walked away from college better educated, but no better qualified as a writer.  He didn’t even have a profession, unless one was to count selling drugs as a profession.  After four years with a simple goal, Conrad was set adrift in a sea of personal responsibility.
     He bounced through half a dozen restaurant jobs in two years.  A year after graduation he reached an understanding with his father that made life slightly more bearable, but involved a certain amount of risk.  His supplemental income lessened the financial impact of his loathing of authority, but nothing could ease the psychological turmoil he felt.  He was an anti-social genius, and encountered all of the hardships that title entailed. 
     Conrad entered a period of artistic stagnation, and he experienced severe depression.  He went through several short relationships that all ended badly.  He saw the people he made money off of, but he lost track of his old friends.  He felt alienated and alone no matter how many people surrounded him.  His life seemed to have no meaning or purpose.  He began to collect and read the darkest, most disturbing novels he could dredge up.  He reasoned that if he must feel despair, then he would become a master of it.
     His life changed forever when he went out to buy The Metamorphosis.  The Union Bookstore, located in the center of the university, was the closest one to his apartment.  He loved the wide selection of books, but also the fleeting sensation that he belonged among the scholastic volumes.  He noticed a beautiful young lady coming down the aisle toward him, but didn’t pay much attention to her because of his horrible success with women.
     He and the young lady converged on the only copy of the book he wanted at the same time.  A gentleman, or an ordinary man, would have allowed the damsel to take the last copy, but not Conrad.  He snatched it out of her fingers with a satisfactory grunt.
     “Excuse me, but I need that book,” the lovely woman told him.  Her voice sounded like honey.
     “Maybe so, but I have it.  Sorry,” Conrad rebutted, “you’ll have to find another copy somewhere.”
     “You are extremely rude,” she observed.
     “I really don’t mean to be.  I tell you what, I’ll make it up to you.”
     “Are you asking me out on a date now?”
     “Yes, ma’am, it would appear that I am.”
     “Well, you’ve got guts.  How would you like to get some coffee Thursday night?”
     “Coffee on a Thursday night sounds wonderful.”
     The girl’s name was Jessica.  They exchanged phone numbers.  Conrad could not believe it when he called the number and it actually belonged to her.  He found it even more astounding they would actually get together for their date.  Life was full of surprises.
     A huge wheel in the heavens turned slowly until the spokes aligned in a way that only happened on special occasions.  The wind shifted direction, from out of the cold north to out of the humid south.  Everything was changing, flowers were blooming and the two young people were nervous before their first date.  The hubbub of the city went on all around Conrad, but he couldn’t hear any it.

There was nothing in his mind but white noise, and amazement about the way things often happened beyond any control or reason.