The Haunted Refrigerator: Hoist a Few Cold Ones

By Dave Veith

Life is a Trial, says Henderson. Like he knows S about S.
Every year on March 1 comes the Alive Day of Roberto (“Robot”) Larch. Down on the Rez, Jim Fence still walks the mesa—or does he? And Snap and Henry B. are way up there on Tuesday Island, like hummingbirds trapped (as if by clear glass) along the Pacific Coast.
“What goes around comes around”—Daniel Boone (among others—we won’t say who—long dead).
AND THEN—
The saga of The Haunted Refrigerator has not easily been contained (try it sometime). Book One is called In; Book Two Bifurcated Proceedings; Hoist a Few Cold Ones is Book Three and not the traditional place to start.
Yet here we are.
Our advice? Read the first book first, the second second, and this one last.
Or not.
Like we know S

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728357614

Dave Veith

Dave Veith is retired and lives with his wife in Northern California. They have four children and three grandchildren.

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© 2020 Dave Veith. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/04/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5763-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5762-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5761-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020905788

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

HOIST A FEW COLD ONES

IN JUDICIA

69.1   Nested Predicates

69.2   Invalid Word Henderson

69.3   Comparative Negligence

Dwa Files (7)

69.4   Clare’s Last Journal

69.5   Just Plain Henderson

69.6   Clare’s Last Last Journal

67.7   Earwig 2013

[EDITOR’S NOTE:

69.8   The Mother of All

69.9   The Mother of All Continued

INTERLUDE

Lucy’s 85th Birthday in Some Exotic Locale

Par-tay at Veronica’s!

INTERPOLATION

70.1   Thanksgivings

70.2   Sitting Ducks

70.3   XYZ Henderson

70.4   Z Clare

70.5   Z+ Leif: Range of Motion

70.6   Norman Vernon Interviews Leif Lambrochet

INSTANTIATION

71   South

72   Greybeards

73   Henderson Your Treachery

74   Amontillado

75   The ⁹th Day

A Brief Flash of Circumferal Afterburn

76   West (Continued)

Show & Tell

INVICTUS

77   The Morning of Day Ten

The Par-tay’s Over

78   Seahorse

79   Fortuitous Timing, or The Slim Valise

80   Milk Run

81   LAX

82   Night of the Atrium, Dawn of the If

83.1   WACKENFUSS!

83.2   The 1-2-3, Why Am I Me, Beethoven Plutovian Glide

84   Datta, Moida by

REPOSIT: END OF THE SPACE

INTERPRETATION

85   Else

86   Mind How You Go

87   Flowers for Lan

88   Brace for Impact

89.1   Ayn in Absentia

89.2   The Weaver Boys

The Final Interdiction of Mr. Joost Dwa (Redacted)

90   The Final Adventure

Invoice

The Haunted Refrigerator Contents Almost All Thawed

One Square Inch Of Alaska / The Down Side Of The Boot

EDITOR’S NOTE

To begin Book Three of The Haunted Refrigerator, we provide a

PLOT SYNOPSIS.

Among the participants at the coming Trial are sister and brother Clare and Leif Lambrochet, who were also two of six people (though only five seats were occupied) at a table in The Ramifications in Arcadia CA on the night of December 1st 1969 for the first draft lottery of the Vietnam War. The other four were Roberto Robot Larch, John (soon to be Jay Null) Knot, Isabel Zizzie Schism, and Zizzie’s yet-to-be-born daughter, Abra Cadabra Snap Weaver.

Robot was grievously wounded in Nam and has existed for years pretty much as a vegetable before becoming semi-ambulatory and reviving his dream of becoming a Veterinarian.

Jay Null (formerly John Knot) has become rich as Croesus and is looking to get richer from his one and only idea, brilliantly conceived and marketed, empowering and valuating, but most of all popularizing as a cultural asset that which is transitory and essentially worthless but has come to be widely accepted as data.

It’s a little-known fact that Robot and Jay Null (then John Knot) once traveled to Canada together.

Leif made it through Nam and spent most of his life as an Army NCO, eventually reaching the rank of Command Sergeant Major before leaving the military and becoming a security guard at Null Data. He’s the unacknowledged (by him) father of Snap Weaver, a fact hinted at for years by Clare and recently revived by a stranger named Henderson who works for Jay on a cloud-based family of systems called N(D)IMBUS (the D is silent).

Clare is waiting out the Trial in her home town of Big Piney CA, where she cares for her elderly mother Margaret, does yoga, and (so far) fends off the attentions of two elderly swains. She’s kept a journal for years addressed to Snap Weaver (to whom she presents herself as Auntie Clare) but in recent times has foregone the habit and is living out a lonely and impoverished old age in an existential paralysis she can neither fight nor flee.

Whew. As for Snap, she’s been around the world (Spain, Paraguay, Australia) sometimes carrying out the wishes of her late grandmother Lucy. She hasn’t seen her mother Isabel for years, has given up on her Bio-Dad who may or may not be Leif, and lives with her husband Finbar Bernal in La Paz Baja California though has recently left him to drive up the West Coast of the U.S. of A. with their son Henry B. and is running out of gas, money, ideas and places to go.

Speaking of the Trial, the run-up has been somewhat enlivened (?) by the precarious participation of Mr. Joost (YOAST) Dwa, Doctor of Philosophy, Heidelberg.

And Isabel (Zizzie) Schism? When last heard from she’s sitting in a little yellow Honda in front of a luxury hotel in an otherwise small frontier tourism-based town in Colorado on the way to a family reunion in Denver while reviewing papers left behind by her parents George and Lucy, her thoughts straying (rarely) to her brother Theo who’d climbed into a refrigerator at the age of nine.

If forced to select a central character in our saga we would probably opt for Isabel (Zizz), though she slips from sight for long periods of time. Our latest attempt to reconnect has taken us back to a September day when she was two months shy of three years old and just learning to walk but nevertheless ascended a mountain with the rest of the family Schism (Lucy, George, Theo) and a stocky little bundled-up kid named Bobbo.

How’s that working out for ya, folks?

AND THEN

HOIST A FEW

COLD ONES

"Tres Evidence"

Crookneck Squash > Year Z + ∞

IN JUDICIA

Life Itself is a Trial.

                                Jay Null

The Book of –

Enough already! Who needs this pap? A select few are swallowed by whales. Some are buried up to their necks facing the incoming tide, others turned barefoot onto rock piles infested by vipers.

Females receive vipers into their genitals which are then sewed shut.

Males receive their severed genitals into their mouths which are then sewed shut.

In village huts the peasants cower to the hoof-beats of the Four Apocalyptic Horsemen.

Urchins knit their brows, attend law school, and then, astride pale Justice like a Headless Fifth, blind, naked, back-assward, lift the parlous scale.

69.1   Nested Predicates

Pre-Trial Publicity

There are two sides: those bringing the action, and those defending against it. And here is our first obfuscation, for—as we draw back the curtain to reveal Judge Calhoun’s domain—we find no less than three sets of attorneys ranged inside the rail. Why?

The name assigned as of 5/26/2008 was accurate for its time: Gabrial v. Null (recall that Quentin J. Durward declined to have his name used because he was still working in the Tower, while Grace had been gone for years). But now as the courtroom drama begins that very name pits Plaintiff v. Plaintiff—both the original Plaintiffs and Null Data are represented to the right and center. And who, then, then, is that svelte, immaculately clothed and coiffured (if mismatched and ungainly) crew over there, in front of the jury box?

Here’s your answer. During the initial blimp-like phase of G v. N, a seismic shift had occurred. The dedicated industry of the Plaintiff attorneys—primarily the ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) firm Herlong, Sixmus, Robideaux, Cranston & Flume, who had been brought in by the smaller originators of the action, Valdez Law—uncovered a chain of potential additional liability leading from the original defendants to the giant corporation called Fiducia Trace Insurance Company of North America (FITNA)—which had assumed responsibility from the (now absorbed, if not defunct) firm of Hampshire Tygris (HT)—which had in turn insured a small enterprise (defunct since the 1990s) founded in Minnesota by Woodrow Woody Ronan known as SSSS (no one bothers to deconstruct that acronym any more, though Strategic, Seminar, and Services are in there somewhere)—which during its relatively brief existence had provided "instructional materials and a behind-the-scenes to some degree sinister business plan for the small firm of Financial Advisors known as AUGER—which had for its part been hired by (or, alternatively, sold themselves to, by dishonest means) Null Data Corporation—aka Null Data, or Null, or NDC, or Big Lime" (though this carefully chosen moniker, bolstered by a blitzkrieg advertising campaign, had never really caught on—and represented, to Jay Null himself, the first slight wrinkle in a sea of prosperity, the first hint of the storms to come)—for the purpose of delivering education and guidance to their retiring employees.

At the First Mediation, after FITNA’s last-minute pull-out, Null Data had settled with the original Plaintiffs. And then—having fulfilled their own duty to their employees (ex- or otherwise), and being advised by the Mediator (retired California Supreme Court Justice Edgar S. Decenter) that their culpability (in his opinion) was far less than FITNA’s, and that FITNA had therefore wronged them as well—had joined the original Plaintiffs in further legal pursuit of FITNA, and together, as a new set of combined Plaintiffs (consisting of the originals, that is a group of retired or soon to be retiring employees of Null Data Corporation, as well as (now) the Corporation itself, brought them (FITNA), at long last, to the bar.

At this point we have an admission to make. Something’s escaping us: the key legal term by which FITNA can be (perhaps) held responsible and therefore financially liable (as the successor to HT, defunct) for the plans of Woodrow Woody Ronan (deceased) as embodied in the products of SSSS (defunct) and as executed by Harris Upnod and Gig Geophers of AUGER (doors closed) with particular regard to James Aalba’s nascent empire of Amontillado Golf Course (abandoned), Cold River REIT (or CREIT, defunct), Heaven’s Home Retirement Communities (we’ve barely touched on this one, except re Chimes in the Pines, but safe to say it’s on shaky ground), and VarieGated Lakes Properties (doors closed, so-far-unindicted ex-CEO Paula Wisniewski lounging in an ill-advised bikini on a yacht in the Adriatic Sea—but still—the entity, not necessarily Paula—breathing, under the dubious banner of a salvage operation known as SPANFUNDER).

This mysterious term: is it, perhaps, successor in place?

Bother. We’ll come across it eventually.

In the meantime, it all sounds pretty flimsy to us.

One might (it seems to us)—instead of struggling forward with the original Legal Action—replace it with another slimmed down and refocused version, perhaps more accurately named? For our answer, we turn (mildly punning) to the maxim actions create consequences. Starting over is not that simple. The sheer paperwork involved would sink a battleship, and the case for accuracy (overrated) is weak indeed compared to the time and cost involved. No one but FITNA would be for it—in fact, they’ve already put forth a motion—but it’s been denied.

As for the main actors in our particular story:

Henderson compares the long-anticipated confrontation to the gray sky on an overcast day, the earth oppressed beneath a single, enormous, unbroken, impenetrable blanket of (what else) cloud—but then, he’s observing from afar;

Leif Lambrochet is dealing with shoulder pain and a late-life psychological shift in self-conceptualization unlike anything he’s experienced before; and

Clare Lambrochet and Joost Dwa—in their separate ways—have long since felt swallowed by the whale.

In the summer of 2012 Clare’s visited by Leif, or is convinced she is, or perhaps is not. She gives him her Journal notebooks with instructions to read them and track down his daughter. But it’s just a dream, and disappointment wakes her up: Margaret pounding on the adjoining wall.

Her participation in the Legal Action known as Grace Gabrial et al versus Null Data Corporation et al, begun at the last minute, continues precariously. She hadn’t attended the Mediation but did undergo a two-day Deposition taken under oath and administered by a callow young lawyer on behalf of FITNA. To her surprise, she’d found it liberating. So on Friday September 7th she travels north at outrageous expense—they’ll have to eat dog food for weeks—to attend the first day of Trial.

She leaves at 5:30 AM, with Piera Flowers a reluctant one-time-only watcher of Margaret on the condition that it won’t be overnight. She takes the airporter bus to Ontario, flies Southwest Airlines to Oakland, and is picked up in the dark-blue BMW by Sandrine Lomax.

Are you staying over? Sandrine says.

No, I have to get back.

The car reminds her of Leif driving her to and from her deposition in January. She remembers how close he’d been with the Lomax family, how they’d lent him this same dark-blue BMW, how friendly and helpful Sandrine had been with Margaret—how there’d been three generations at the dinner table, which had never happened in her family. Yesterday when she’d phoned Sandrine had said I don’t know where he is. But don’t worry, I’ll pick you up at the airport.

Sandrine says that Leif’s not been around much lately, he’s recovering from a procedure on his shoulder and is doing well as far as she knows; she’d like to watch the Trial but there’s the usual crisis at Satan’s Earwig so she’ll have to drop her off.

At 12:45 Clare walks across the parking lot toward a long building with arches and a turquoise roof. When she’d been planning to hike across the Pyrenees with Ginetta Younghusband they’d come across a photograph of an isolated mountain villa straddling the border between France and Spain captioned Dr. Maturin’s family estate. Here in Marin County, forty or so people cluster under the shade of a tree. No one among them greets her. She recognizes May Simmons and a gnarled-up woman who might possibly be Deb Speers. A man with a crooked back might be Brad Nimson. There’s no sign of Leif.

There are benches and large boulders in the shade. May Simmons approaches. Hello. You must be Clare.

And you’re May. I thought I’d changed too much.

We all have, dear.

May’s late husband Stan had worked in the Accounting Department. She’d never been employed at Null herself but had been active in the Nullsters Social Club and Clare had met her at Christmas parties. May had been first to be deposed, before the Mediation, and Null Data’s energetic young lawyer Gretel Roseberry had used her as a punching bag over a grueling three days prior to Null switching sides. Now she’s scheduled to be the first Plaintiff on the stand at the Trial itself and is determined to do well in honor of Stan, who’d died in impotent outrage at the loss of his retirement, and her friend Jane Menney, who’d passed a few months ago.

Two men appear.

That’s Val Herlong, May says, pointing to the quizzical sharp-beaked man. The other man is sleek and wears a brown suit. Martin Valdez. The men lead the group through a glass door into a lobby where they line up at the elevators. Grace Gabrial in her wheelchair backs in next to a slim woman with short frosted hair wearing dark glasses: Maya Moonmaker—Clare hasn’t thought of her for years.

In Courtroom X the gallery is full and nervous with anticipation. Gabrial’s wheelchair partially blocks a gate in a low barrier to the court proper. Next to her sits long-jawed Quentin Quick Jack-Off Durward, a stocky man with short gray hair, then Jack Hammer with his mouth open. Brad Nimson’s voice holds forth from a middle row—was he so strident before? May Simmons sits at the end of the third row and Clare sits next to her. Behind her sits the dictator of South Korea—a slightly older incarnation—could it be the adding-machine man, Joost Dwa?

In contrast the officers of the court seem bored. This is their place of business, their livelihood. Mr. String the clerk and the female court recorder are young and Asian. A middle-aged bailiff sticks his head in the door. Herlong and Valdez sit at the ends of tables in front of the gallery. In the middle sit plain Karen Elder and big Andrew Mar from Clare’s deposition. Between Karen and Herlong sits another young Asian woman (Courtney Naka) and between Andrew and Valdez a young Asian man (Nate Wing). Leaning back to Herlong’s left is a man with a bald spot: Shawn Succor of the Null Data Legal Department. And next to Succor is a young woman with blooming cheeks (Gretel Roseberry).

Beyond the gate sit the defense lawyers: a big man in a blue suit (Dominic Brow), a scary woman with a face like a rocky outcrop (Fleur Ritna), a small blonde with a chubby face (Phyllis Verry), and, again from her deposition, cufflinks gleaming, slick Bryce Ebb. The Judge comes in and out, summoned back to his chambers down a rear corridor, then calling for the attorneys to join him for discussions of procedural or logistical matters. While they’re gone, conversation wells up n the gallery. A stocky man with short gray hair and a face like a slab of beef makes his way along the back of the third row and bends over May Simmons to offer condolences for the passing of Jane Menney. Clare recognizes him: B. Frank Thrushkeister of Marketing. She remembers Jane as a small woman with a quavering voice with the stubbornness of a bulldog and a stomach entirely replaced by metal alloy and impervious to acid. No no, Jane would say in meetings, her eyes closed and fists clenched, I don’t agree.

The Judge returns and the attorneys regroup and step to the bench. B. Frank Thrushkeister goes back to the front row and May says, As soon as he testifies he’s leaving on his motorcycle to tour the country. He lost everything, you know. The attorneys return to their seats, Herlong shrugging at Valdez. The Judge disappears back down the hall.

Nothing’s happening. At the defense table the large man named Dominic Brow stands up and walks around with a mincing gate, the material in his suit voluminous. The cave-woman glares from deep-set eyes. Bryce Ebb checks his Rolex.

May Simmons is reading a paperback by Amy Tan.

Clare can’t believe she’s come all this way for this.

* * *

Some time ago Leif had locked the front door of the houseboat and drove up the hill the back way on the narrow winding roads, parked his red truck outside the Lomax fence, and moved into Milton’s room where Sandrine had made up the bed. At dawn she driven him to Kaiser and sat beside him while they took his blood pressure and hooked up an I-V.

What are we doing for you today? said the nurse.

Right shoulder, retracted ligament.

She looked at the file in front of her. Yes, a juicy one. But Dr. Hu will fix you right up.

Sandrine had stayed until Dr. Chris Hu appeared in blue scrubs with a shower cap on his head and Leif was wheeled into a stainless steel arena he can barely remember now. He’d come awake not knowing where he was. His shoulder felt numb. Sandrine was sitting by his bed in the recovery room.

The surgery had taken one hour. Dr. Hu had made two tiny incisions, one in front of the shoulder and one in back. He came through the curtain without his shower cap. Success, he said. I re-attached it. Wear that sling and I’ll see you in a week.

The sling is made of dark blue plastic and gray nylon with Velcro straps and holds his right arm at an angle across his chest. You’ll be sleeping sitting up for a month, said the nurse. Can you handle that?

I’ll see that he does, Sandrine said.

She’d helped him get dressed and draped his shirt over his shoulder, helped the nurse get him into a wheelchair. While the nurse rolled him to the exit, Sandrine had retrieved the blue BMW from the parking lot and met them and helped him get in.

On the way home she’d stopped at Peet’s and brought his coffee to the car. Thanks, he’d said. I’ll be OK from now on.

I know you will, she’d said. Because you’re staying with us.

Back at the house Jesse had been up and ready with a standard line: Well look what the cat dragged in.

The sling was a serious hindrance. Starting with a first trip to the bathroom he had to learn to do basic things with his left hand that he’d always done with his right. He’d been lucky to avoid a complete shoulder replacement in the French style where the arm was removed and reinserted into the socket.

He sat up all night in Jesse’s recliner and sometimes slept. In the darkness of early morning Sandrine slipped past him from the other end of the house to the kitchen and made coffee before leaving to Satan’s Earwig. He looked out on the canal from the living room picture window. In the late afternoon the sun dropped below Mount Tam and he moved onto the balcony with Jesse, who ignored him until twilight when he looked over and said: The Red Team, Big Red. Don’t cop out on me.

On Wednesday he’d calls the Tower and confirmed with J. B. Tremelo that he’s was officially on Long Term Disability until cleared to return. Sandrine drove him to the houseboat to pick up more clothes and then to the drugstore for a fresh supply of codeine which he refused to take until she made him.

Stop arguing, she said. One a day won’t hook you.

On Saturday she’d cooked a pot roast with carrots and green beans. Jesse wolfed his food but couldn’t finish while Leif ate slowly with one hand and insisted on cutting his meat himself. Sandrine watched him from cat’s eyes wide open at a slant.

She knew what Jesse wanted and was OK with it. We’d offer a two-year contract, she said. To transition us out of the Jacker operation. And eventually to close it down.

Jesse’s mouth was full and his eyes crossed. When do you start?

He means we’re flexible, Sandrine said.

The cat’s eyes studied him. Until now he’d managed to suppress a recurrence of what happened at the picnic in April. But right then it was suddenly there, before he could pull it back.

Only don’t wait too long to decide, she said. "I don’t want two invalids on my hands."

On Sunday Chastain came over with little Tessie. It’s was relief to all of them but then she went home and the next week was bad: Sandrine and Jesse had moved beyond denial and grief to acceptance and were intent on getting things settled, but Leif wasn’t ready.

On Monday he offered to test his arm driving the red truck but Sandrine took the morning off and drove him to Kaiser for his checkup. Dr. Mick Hupp was surprised at the good result. You dodged a bullet, he said. Things look good but he faced five more weeks in the sling.

She allowed Jesse one bottle of Foster’s Gold and he struggled out to the balcony to drink it. His complaint was about TV commercials. A girl in a bikini is the new spokesperson for an oil company. When the plane landed from Nam I kissed the tarmac, he said. How stupid do they think we are?

There wasn’t much to talk about. Chastain’s divorce was off limits and so was her insistence that Dave Batterjee be welcomed at the Lomax house. I don’t want Tess to lose her father.

What about her grandfather? Jesse said.

But mostly he talked Nam. Like Poland, it always got overrun. Chinese, French, Mongols, Us. But they’ve won. They outlasted everything. Now they’ve got coke machines and shopping centers. Individuals don’t survive, but people do.

He’d been impressed when hearing about Lan. I wish I’d had a chance to meet her.

He couldn’t wait for Leif to be done with his damn shoulder.

First comes the Trial, Leif said.

Then after that. Stubble showed white on his old bald head. "Get ready for Wackenfuss."

On the second Sunday (August 19th) it was Sandrine and Jesse’s turn to visit Chastain and Tess. Leif waited until the blue BMW disappeared down the hill and gathered his belongings and an extra pillow from Milton’s bed and swung them up and over the tailgate into the bed of the red Ranger pick-up. In the driver’s seat he reached across his body to turned the keys in the ignition. Unsnapping the sling he let his arm down gently with fingers on top of the gearshift. The pain wasn’t too bad but increased sharply when he shifted into first gear and continued to pulse up his arm as he shifted to second, climbed the hill, and coasted through the labyrinth of streets to San Pedro Road.

Traffic was sparse except for Sunday golfers heading to Peacock Gap. He rolled to a stop on the gravel verge next to the houseboat and gritted his teeth to shift into park. Stepping through the gate in the falling-down fence he totaled up five years he’d lived here. The deck barely rocked, mud had built up underneath. His bicycle was a coil of rust. In two months he’d turn 65. He’d spent 1/13th of his life here, which seemed impossible.

Inside was how he’d left it: the tiny camp-stove with two burners, the half-sized unplugged icebox, the sagging bed and crumpled sheets, the cobwebbed ceiling. In the dim light from the curtained windows he added Milton’s pillow to the skimpy pair on the mattress where he’d spent many sleepless nights, his head propped on the grease-spot on the wall.

He took out the bottle of fat white tablets. Codeine by any other name. In the bathroom he dumped them into the rusty toilet and flushed them down.

The next day Sandrine sent Chastain over to check on him. She wore short shorts and brought Tessie and stood on the deck but didn’t come in.

The next day Milton delivered groceries, not what he normally ate but what Sandrine thought he should: carrots and blueberries, yogurt and whole-grain bread.

The next day he woke up to find a stack of paperbacks outside the door: Walden by Thoreau, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, Mutiny on the Bounty by Nordhoff and Hall—not what he normally read but what Sandrine thought he might.

For ten days he lingered in and around the houseboat. Your sister Clare used to be my boss, said the green ghost Henderson. (He’d confirmed this with Clare during her deposition trip in January.) "Technically, right now I’m your boss." (A power play untypical of Henderson, but after all his neck had been in jeopardy.) Murder by Data. (The death of Eric Mercredi is now two years in the past. Norman Vernon has not returned. No one talks of murder anymore.) The Red Team. (Henderson had been successor to Mercredi, who’d been in meetings with Jesse and Conrad Flodd.) And finally:

Your daughter is my niece.

The first four didn’t bother him. But in the last, throbbing in concert with his shoulder in the year since that night, was the suggestion of—collusion.

It had been a long year. He’d dropped weight-training at Rusty’s Gym. Though he still walked in the pool a precise number of steps forward backward and sideways, his stamina had decreased. He was banged up in many ways, his lower back ached and both his knees, but he’d persevered over 35 years in the Army and his liaison with Jinx Cox Dodge (he remembered her pony-tail but not much more).

By Labor Day he was stir-crazy. He was lying on his side with the door open for ventilation when a car slowed and came to a stop and a voice at the gate hummed an adagio version of There’s No Business Like Show Business.

"Tell me, boss white. What kind of an S-hole is this?"

Pat Bird appeared on the deck looking around.

You actually live here? If so, you’ve gone and done it this time.

You want to come in?

Set foot on this floating deathtrap? What do you think, Big?

A large man in a green cravat stuck his head into view.

Didn’t think so. Pat sniffed the air. You got food in there? You sleep OK on that rack? When you comin back to work?

The sling made getting up awkward. I’ve got two weeks left, maybe three. Is this your husband? Nice to meet you.

Likewise. Big Herb leaned on the railing. How’s the fishing? The Bay’s right here, but you got constant boat traffic.

White men don’t fish, he said.

Pat puts hand on hip. Excuse me? Are you informing me that Caucasian homo sapiens fail to appreciate the recreational not to mention the nutritional value of our finny friends from the deep blue? But seriously, folks. Guess who’s the new Acting Head of Security?

Breselius? Maserodd? Angie Cadmum?

"Wrong, wrong and wrong again. Wrong on all counts, boss. We need you back. They need you back. Hell, I need you back."

You’ll be good at it, Pat. The job should have been yours when Flodd left.

"And we know why he left, don’t we. You think you’re bad? That man Henderson is the worst."

At midnight the moon was a pale gold disk high above the dark water, the bicycle sinister in the shadows. The muscle in the front of his left leg twitched. His shoulder hurt. The silence was absolute until his key turned and the red Ranger coughed to life.

The drive up 101 followed a pale snaking river through light and shadow. There’s was roadwork in the canyons. Unlike trips south to Big Piney, the dawn came up from the right.

The brown hills warned him of what to expect before he got there: a dry austerity parched by drought, dotted by scrub-oak and creased by ravines. The sun was up by the time he turned in at the bumpy dirt road, got out, unhooked the wire loop from the creosote post and drove through the gate. He parked next to the falling-down barn and looked around at ruined buildings and encroaching weeds.

In the cool of the morning he hiked up the slope overlooking new wineries and vineyards encroaching from the northwest and southeast, looking for (but not finding, it’s miles away in the high Trinity forest) the $3M chateau supposedly owned by Harris Upnod. He went farther than he intended but had brought a plastic bottle of water and slept through the heat of mid-day under a solitary oak. At five in the afternoon he was back at the barn, where on the wall behind disintegrating bales of hay he found a tacked-up black-and-white wanted poster of Martín the Basque, the cherubic round face more sinister without the pink in the cheeks. The thermometer read 105 degrees: MINI-CLIMATE IN VALLEY PROTECTED FROM COASTAL FOG trumpeted a local brochure, as if it was a good thing. The sun went down.

Arranging his three pillows and an old blanket he curled protectively around his throbbing shoulder on the ground by the truck. In the morning he was logy and very sore and hungry. Munching on crackers with another bottle of tepid water he looked in the window of the ranch house which he’d put off until now.

There was no sign of CPT Don Dutcher or anyone else. The kitchen had been stripped of its appliances though the old table was still there. Dutcher had disappeared once before into the room above the gasthaus on the River Lahn with the girl named Christine and a fifty-pfenning bucket of anatomy under the bed. Leif shook his head. His thoughts were like marbles.

He’d brought the camp stove from the houseboat and set it up on the barn floor and boiled water for a cup of rancid instant coffee. My first reaction was to kill you, said Dutcher in his ear. "Down in the Florida Bar. But that was just how I thought I should feel." The coffee burned his throat. Thinking of Nadine no longer stirred him, no woman did except Sandrine Lomax.

She was different. Not fire but smoke on a high ridge, not going away. He’d heard of old man’s folly but had never thought it would happen to him. She was almost as old as he was. His life has been in three parts: before the Army, the vast bulk in Army, and after the Army. "Your daughter is my niece" connected the first and last while cutting out the middle by which he defined himself.

Thursday the 6th of September, his third night on the ranch. The sky glittered with stars. In his bed by the truck he couldn’t sleep and discovered the loose wriggle of a snake near his face.

Retreating to the pickup bed, he spent the rest of the night on steel ribs flaked red, not easy with the sling. Sometime before dawn his arm was grabbed and jerked, hot breath in his ear:

"Give, Lambro-shit? Give?"

In the morning he drove through the gate and re-looped the wire over the post.

* * *

The Judge addresses the gallery.

"You may be wondering about the delay. It’s difficult to predict the exigencies of a trial but before it begins it behooves us to ensure at least the probable likelihood of financing on both sides. For the Defense, Mr. Brow has contacted his client and foresees no difficulty. Mr. Succor has been equally forthright in representing Null Data. On behalf of the Plaintiffs, Mr. Herlong informs me that his firm has set aside a fund of 4 million dollars, with more if needed, but hopes that will be adequate.

I will ask you now, Mr. Herlong, if you’re prepared with your opening arguments.

It’s after 3, your Honor. Perhaps a fresh start on Monday morning?

Objection! from Mr. Brow.

Denied. We’re adjourned.

In the parking lot Clare calls Sandrine on her cell-phone and a few minutes later the dark blue BMW appears.

The Friday night commute traffic is horrible with the usual bottlenecks even worse. I liked your umbrellas, Clare says, to say something. Sandrine gives her a blank stare with something wounded in it. After my deposition. She’s afraid she’ll miss her plane.

She lands in Ontario and catches a late bus, arriving at Big Piney at 10 PM. Main Street is deserted, what Friday night bustle remains is down the hill. Stepping off a curb she’s stepped off a thousand times before, she twists her ankle and limps home.

Piera’s gone but left the outside light on. Margaret’s asleep in her bed with a wet diaper.

I’m an old sack of potatoes, she moans. That’s me.

69.2   Invalid Word Henderson

Largest of the Pitcairn Islands

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Flickering caverns in the head. He’s reasonably sure whose elbow is wrapped around his neck, and Lambrochet must surely know whose throat is crooked in his elbow.

Q: Is this statement true?]

He wears his rainbow sneakers on a regular basis because it’s better to be prepared for any eventuality.

How long does he expect to continue? What will be his Waterloo? He’s a classic case of go along to get along, a hazard loosed long ago that everyone’s forgotten about. What damage will he cause?

His role is obscure. Eric Rickey Wednesday Mercredi is dead. Hurd Yarrow’s in full withdrawal, in a nunnery named for bearded monks, his legal team bristling for combat though to date Spiro Cheney LLC maintains a magisterial silence, the age of tweets not yet with us. And Jay Null is always gone.

There is a classic corporate construction known as a Stu Sawyer, in which a hapless individual is promoted or assigned a responsibility for he has no training or preparation. Disaster ensues, blame is heaped. But a true Stu Sawyer reacts with not a shred of guilt and with the hide of a rhinoceros continues trundling outward and downward as before not only to survive but (as the episode is forgotten, as in the usual way history is rewritten or rewrites itself) to rise up the org chart and thrive.

Unfortunately, Henderson is no Stu Sawyer.

What will happen?

During the spring and summer of 2012, not as a choice but as a response to necessity, he perfects the compartmentalization of his existence.

Day to day it’s the Cloud that plagues him. By definition amorphous, without hand-holds, bones, skeleton, or spine, the tension of expectation requires a tent-pole, space to breathe: improbably (but he’ll take it), the legal proceedings in Marin Superior Court, channeled and coalesced in the autumn of 2012 as The Trial.

Around this central supporting edifice twirl nymphs and demons, but whose fault is that? Get a life, he tells himself, but a leopard’s spots are resistant to change.

Diana Zed is returning to her tri-athlete days, now in the master class (meaning old and presumably feeble). Her position of Null Data Chief Information Operator no longer holds her interest. According to Janet Minto (but how would she know?) Zed feels glass-ceilinged, she was never listened to or respected like a man, and she’s been unfairly denied her life-long goal: the office of Chief Executive (CEO).

Henderson—though she openly despises him—agrees with her. Is this a basis for rapprochement? Perhaps. She recruits him to interview three potential new systems engineers, all steeped in Cloud, trained in Fog, mentored in Mist, it’s the industry standard now, it’s is why they’re needed, why they’re sought out, why they’re hired. (Henderson is dismayed. Zed could care less. There it is.)

The three are Ben B--, Turk S--, and Destiné V--. Destine (DES-tin-ay) is the most brilliant of the three but her attention wanders and she resembles Olive Oyl. Turk is in constant peril with his head down communing with his Blackberry or whatever they call them now. Ben takes a two-hour break each morning to surf e-Bay for shards of Mongolian pottery and leaves early. Hired, all three take signing bonuses, the expected practice under Yarrow’s front-loaded Employee Benefits programs. None plan to stay more than three years tops—why should they? It would take a lifetime to locate, de-code and replace the ancient secrets buried in the legacy code of Big Lime, and what good would those secrets be to them, back on the open market?

Brad Nimson takes offense at worshiping the fallacy of youth. But Carter Yeesh, remembering his own glory days at 3 California, states in the game we play, youth is by definition genius—for what is genius but lack of encumbrance? Destiné, for example, is nothing if not young; her degree is in Screen Design; she prefers maroon characters on a pearl-gray background and turns blue with distress when an overlooked requirement spoils her aesthetic premise—this an April-December standoff with the equally stubborn Jane Menney, a woman old enough to be her great aunt, becoming the stuff of legend after Jane’s demise.

Turk S-- has clear eyes and hair un-mussed by the wind. His voice is a deep tenor that resonates from ceilings and walls. He’s quickly promoted to mid-level manager and begins networking for a lateral promotion back at his old company.

Ben B-- uses the ten minutes between the end of his e-Bay session and lunch to poke around in the hoary code of Duane B. Moby.

What the hell is he doing? mutters Nimson.

Carter shrugs. He’s composing a repetitive series of coded responses addressing biometric aspects of human fallibility.

Why the hell is he doing that?

He has the time.

Ben B-- is also single-minded and has access to a vast if not infinite set of variables. Approached by Henderson he lectures on binomial notation, DNA, and a cracked shard with provocative glazing found in a sand dune outside Tashkent. The juxtaposition is somehow deadly and reminds Henderson of Dr. Strangelove strangling himself with (or, in an alternate interpretation, being strangled by) his artificial hand. Predictably, Ben B-- has never heard of Dr. Strangelove. He loses interest in Moby’s code.

Henderson’s head’s on a swivel keeping Ben and Destiné off the primary N(D)IMBUS development team, but it’s only a matter of time. As the weather warms Diana Zed is observed cycling through the Napa wine country, her bike refurbished with a helium frame, knifing her body through the treacherous waters beneath the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to and from an otherwise unoccupied islet where (it’s claimed) she sunbathes nude (but who cares? a woman of her age), loping like a blonde wolverine in a white singlet in the sunbaked hills and shadowy ravines of the Altamont Pass once staked out and sculpted for the fairways and greens of the ill-fated Amontillado Golf and Country Club. But it’s Maya Moonmaker who rides the back of the Nested If—difficult to say who masters whom as they vanish in the nimbus of the sun.

For the sake of old times, he has lunch with Brad Nimson in the cafeteria. Brad claims inside knowledge that it was Clare Lambrochet who mailed the rotten banana to Zed all those years ago. Henderson knows he’s lying, knows that it was actually Maya in an inexplicable Lafcadio-like action related to her studies in Semiotics. But Nimson’s back is broken and his spine curved and he’s getting on (who isn’t?). Besides, a banana’s nothing compared to the escapades of Janet Minto.

Last month she’d swiped Rickey Wednesday’s kneepads from Henderson’s desk and induced him onto the sun-drenched table in Conference Room 501. Certain women have an obsession with sex on conference room tables. There’s a pause when she jumps off to unlock the door that he’s prudently locked (to increase the thrill) and another when footsteps approach. He has just time to become invisible before Pat Bird walks in.

Janet freezes mid-rump. Pat rolls her eyes.

Do your thing, white girl—I’m outta here.

Their most recent liaison—probably their last—had occurred in Diana Zed’s office three nights ago. Janet’s long since decided his ejaculation problem is Zed, it serves no purpose to tell her she’s wrong. The Tower echoes when empty. Zed’s office is dark, the only illumination sifting up through the Atrium window from five stories below

Janet gets naked except for a blonde wig. "On your kneeze, big boy."

He licks her moist moss and cunt-lips pre-creamed with peanut butter.

"Mein gott!" she cries.

No, he says. Henderson.

In the interest of full disclosure she rips off the wig and dances to his lips and tongue. "Gott! Gott! Gott!"

He slips into the bathroom to wash his nose and comes out to find her tapping the keyboard of Zed’s computer, Fuck you Zed, Fuck you, the green glow of the monitor reflected on her wilding boobs: Fuck you Zed, you have been Fucked by Henderson. He lifts her by her armpits. Her shoulder-blades scrape the wall. She glares outraged into his face as he rams into her. Neither comes. Afterwards, spreading her feet for balance, she finishes herself off with a finger.

I’m done with you, Henderson, Janet Minto says. But she always says that.

Through the window shines the moon. (An uninvited guest.)

After that, he loses interest in bringing a woman trembling to the edge and then, with a sly and informed touch, nudging her over into gasping, bucking, moaning, howling, screaming agony and ecstasy.

Boring. He’s got problems of his own.

Null Data is behind its competitors in the race for the Cloud.

The value of data and the problem of retrieval have become secondary. The new key is relationships: Jay Null is determined to catch up but there won’t be many helping hands. His plan is to relate everything to everything else but maintain transparency, so that the client appears to manage his own data, thinks he is, with NDC only a hidden (but vital, indispensable, and remunerative) force behind the scenes.

And he’s looking for a … wait for it … vendor.

Marketing is the key and will remain in-house. Jay talks about featuring the role of Null Data retaining control which is tricky (some say this was the real demise of B. Frank Thrushkeister). And it doesn’t work. By late summer the idea of my data has taken hold. Henderson is dismayed—this is dangerous, on par with global warming. But only Carter Yeesh listens to him, and Carter’s not part of N(D)IMBUS anymore, he’s worried about Ben B—rooting in the entrails of Moby’s code.

He’s been aware of the legal action since it was filed four years before. He’d ignored it then (retirement’s not an option) and resisted being pulled in, even when in his new executive status Gretel Roseberry and Shawn Succor insist on keeping him informed. What had he (Henderson) cared about the machinations of the two-day Mediation the year before? Or the abortion of Mediation 2 in San Diego?

Three events change his mind.

On the 16th of May he’s deposed. It’s an inappropriate term smacking of regicide, and he’s not a Plaintiff and had only recently become a Null Data Executive. The whole thing is ridiculous, the verbal probes of Dominic Brow are an ineffectual waste of time, and his difficulty is only the usual: he’s loathe to admit he’s Henderson, or, for that matter, anybody else either.

On the 19th of June he dons his T-shirt and cloth cap and (as Hen-a-son) drives Joost Dwa to Marin to be Summarily Judged. Nothing happens. He’d known Dwa long ago, but not well and not for long. Waiting in the Dodge Caravan, he stares up at the Civic Center and thinks of a long and segmented hive, not of bees or wasps but—dormant in folded wings—of Nested If.

The very next day—Wednesday, the 20th of June 2012—he braves the hive.

He doesn’t want to. But Roseberry and Succor have urged him to come, it’s the possible end of the Trial. The occasion is a Mandatory Settlement Conference, the proceedings moved to Courtroom L under Judge Lynn Duryee. Attending in the button-down shirt, slacks and mustache of Alistair Mundy, he recognizes Val Herlong and Martin Valdez and Dominic Brow from his seat by the door witnesses the first appearance of the Counsel from Fiducia Trace making her entrance in high heels and a short skirt with fat succulent tendons behind her knees, continuing across the courtroom with her personal retinue in tow to disappear in the wake of the other lawyers down the back hallway leading to the Judge’s chambers.

Two hours pass. Brad Nimson sits hunched in the second row but doesn’t turn around. Henderson knows few of the other plaintiffs and none of them recognize in his Alastair Mundy disguise except for Maya Moonmaker who pretends she doesn’t. Maya has recently taken up mixed doubles though she has a propensity for hitting into what she calls the Nyet. Her longevity rivals his own but she wears it well, white-blonde hair cut short and eyes hidden by enormous dark glasses. Her presence reminds him that Geoph Geophers’ son is involved in all this; he recalls the unsolved death of Geophers at the wedding of Vicklyn Brooklyn—Maya had been there too.

Lunch-time is approaching. The atmosphere is weary, any anticipation has drained away. Word filters out that face-to-face negotiations have deadlocked. First to emerge are the Plaintiffs’ Committee, Q. J. Durward frustrated, Grace Gabrial shoving at the wheels of her chair, Jack Hammer bumping into the podium, followed by the lawyers Herlong and Valdez.

The Defense brings up the rear, the new female lawyer’s face revealed for the first time. Her jaw thrusts forward. Her lips curl in contempt. Her forehead is furrowed above deep-set glowering eyes. Adorning each sunken cheek is a single dab of powdery blush. Her face is a ruined cliff dwelling questioning the very existence of ethos and prudence, the basis for existence, actualization, esteem.

Fleur Ritna, says Brad Nimson. From FITNA.

Every few years he takes a break from damn all everything and adds another title to his series of children’s books featuring the little girl Ayn ("Ein") and her fraught wanderings around the globe.

The genesis of his heroine is no mystery: Li’l Nod on the porch in Gainesville FL (1952). So far she’s made it to Amsterdam, Antarctica, Appalachia, Argentina and Austria (in alphabetized order), among others. Now he comes upon little Ayn searching for her passport on the border of Azerbaijan. She’s the same age, somewhere between 10 and 15, and is dwarfed by the same all-purpose voluminous backpack, striding across the turf with a lightness in her step that won’t go away.

His method of composition is systematic rather than inspired, and based on the H diagram—an upright standard, a crossbar of selective alteration, and ipso presto: a new iteration of adventure and conflict followed by resolution, safety, and happiness—it’s for children, after all. His first new book since well before Snap Weaver on Qantas Flight 571 (he’d had more time in early days).

Like the painter Jackson Pollock he splatters the page with disconnected bursts of prose. How will, or should he, connect them? Will they connect? Or is it simply a matter of knowing—arm poised, paintbrush dripping—when to stop? He checks the Internet and sprinkles in local color from Baku: the land-locked waves of the Caspian Sea, the Inner City, the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, the tall stone tower of the Maiden (potential scene of a climactic duel!).

Meanwhile another thread (in a different dimension) leads back from Snap Weaver to the bearded security guard Lambrochet, and a struggle on a houseboat porch in the light of a gibbous orange moon. In the rosy dawn of Friday August 2nd 2012 the man himself appears in the CAO office on Level 5 and Henderson girds his loins: is the battle resumed? Has he (Lambrochet) mulled over the information spilled like so many beans into the crook of his elbow—has he appeared now, a year later, to grill, cudgel, demand with a thinly veiled, or perhaps baldly overt, threat of further violence?

As it turns out: no.

He’s there to request time off for shoulder surgery. There’s no accusation in his wide stance, no special fierceness in his eye. He’s holding his fire, engaged in an internal struggle in the privacy of his gut. Or—difficult to believe—it’s all passed over his head.

It’s this reaction, or lack of same, that more than anything indicates to Henderson the depth of what’s happened here. But his immediate problem is to name a temporary replacement as Head of Security. Lambrochet himself is only Acting, much as Henderson is Acting on Level 5. But who isn’t these days? Who wouldn’t, given the opportunity, shy away from permanence of any kind?

He puts off the decision for a week and then Patricia Bird, sidles suspiciously into his office and rejects the offer out of hand.

"Say what?"

Her eyes roll with incredulity and (perhaps) suspicion—had she glimpsed him after all, supine on the conference room table under the administrations of Janet Minto, before he’d managed to turn invisible? If so, had she believed her own eyes, or was Pat too struggling with self-doubt—enough to keep Henderson’s secret, at least for now?

And so the fall of the year 2012 finds him (Henderson) in a quasi-literal fog (the Cloud) occupied by a central non-load-bearing pole (the beginning and continuation of the Trial) and also by shadows in unpredictable orbits representing existential threat (Lambrochet), tongue-less suffering (Dwa), crazed nude (Janet Minto), evergreen athlete (Diana Zed), pining nymph (Jennifer Beth Tremelo, but it’s not his fault), and—surprise!—an unexpectedly verbose but eloquent Mark Antony (soon to be ID-ed).

Maya Moonmaker denies (with emphasis—"Nyet!") that she mailed the banana to Zed and fingers Ginetta Younghusband, who used to be HR before being replaced by JB Tremelo in a bloodless coup. Sound plausible—but is it true?

This was a beginning. Not the only beginning, not the beginning, but a beginning. (We speak now of moral heft, or its abdication—of scorn, ignorance, hate, and amnesia.)

Avoiding the talismanic features of Ritna from Fitna, he passes the hours slumped in the Dodge Caravan. The dogged figure of Joost Dwa makes its way toward the giant hive: on the first afternoon (September 7th) there’s a group under the trees, Val Herlong and Valdez appear, en masse they move to the entrance doors and funnel into a single file.

What does Henderson do on this and subsequent days, to pass the time before they come back out? His role is nebulous. Whose side is he on? By temperament he’s a disinterested associate of the Plaintiffs but officially he’s the representative of Null. Though no longer in opposition to himself, he sees the new liaison as an expedient irony embodied by Gretel Roseberry’s infamous deposition of May Simmons before they’d wound up on the same side. Dewy-lashed Gretel warns him he’ll be called to the stand soon, to support at a strategic moment the salient fact that Null Data was also victimized by the AUGER advisors. He objects to the role—he knows nothing, Stu Sawyer’s in the wind—but somebody has to do it. Mentions of the Amontillado Golf Course remind him of Edgar Allen Poe’s sinister casque of wine, luring its victim to burial alive.

On Tuesdays the Trial does not convene and he has lunch in the Big Lime cafeteria with Brad Nimson, who is more dependent on his crutch and needs help with his tray. The feature wall has been repainted a shade in exact juxtaposition with turquoise. Light from the north-facing windows illuminates the uneasy ambience.

May Simmons and B. Frank Thrushkeister have already taken their turn on the stand and Thrushkeister’s roared off on his motorcycle complete with suitcase in the sidecar. Brad is preparing to testify in mid-October; he’s developed for his testimony a lengthy screed but can’t use it because Herlong insists on short answers, Yes, No, I Don’t Know. So he’s swallowed his tongue (I’ll do it for Darby, referring to his wife who works at Taco Jack, she deserves better than what she’s got), but will unswallow if Brow asks him are you still beating your wife.

Carter Yeesh is still obsessed, Brad says. He mutters at his monitor all day long: phonic enablement, phonic enablement. Nimson also comments on the security guard Lambrochet who’s not yet returned from surgery: He’s one of those guys, you look at him and say wow, there’s something there. But tjem time goes by, and there isn’t. He’s also concerned about his four children—Nora, Sara, Emma, and Wade. They’re growing up. They’ll move away. For a while they’ll keep in touch, but the day will come ...

His voice trails off. Henderson is somewhat miffed by Nimson’s dismissal of Leif Lambrochet. Nimson himself is one of those guys, grown more outgoing and talkative but less likable as the years progress. Now he (Nimson) launches into a diatribe comparing James Aalba to Bernie Madoff.

"Bernie got 150 years. He stole $64.8 billion—that’s with a ‘B’—from suckers like us. We’re small potatoes compared to that, so why was Madoff convicted in seven months and we’re four years in with no end in sight? Of course there’s no money anyway, it’s a paper trail, a matter of interpretation. Let’s call it the end of Capitalism, Americanism, Exceptionalism, and Moralism—that’s the trouble with Ponzi schemes."

Brad finally testifies on Friday October 12th. Henderson’s sitting in the parking lot. When he returns to the Tower he discovers that an anonymous wagr has taped and pasted and in some cases stapled hundreds if not thousands of tiny slips of paper to various surfaces including the walls of the fishbowl on Level 3:

Invalid Word Henderson.

Invalid Word Henderson.

Invalid Word Henderson.

But how, says Nimson, shrewdly, with a hint of bitterness, fresh from the stand, "do you pronounce it?"

On the night of Saturday October 20th he’s invited to dinner at Jennifer Beth Tremelo’s house. He’s the only guest. They eat by candlelight. He’s seen it coming.

She lives in an upscale subdivision in the lost hills off San Midas Drive in northern Marin. Her divorce from Robert Bob Tremelo had awarded her the house: four bedrooms, three baths, and a backyard with a redwood deck and hot tub. What has always set her apart—other than the schizoid psychosis in her shifty eyes—is her posture (a book could balance on top of her head). Also, a glorious if undependable smile (perfect white teeth). What’s different tonight, notes Henderson, is her hair, which she’s always worn up but which now trails in tangled profusion behind her as if blown by tawny winds.

This is goodbye, she says.

Her face is pale, her lips swollen pink. He has no memory of food, it might have been pizza.

Excuse me?

I’m moving on. I want to get married again. I want to get pregnant and have a family.

With an exception or two over the years, his women have come to him. He’s analyzed the phenomenon: A riskless fuck rather than a fuckless risk.

It’s the logical physical schism, he explains to Jennifer as the candles flicker. The spirit and the flesh.

Whoops. Up your ass, she replies. Clarity isn’t freedom, Henderson. Freedom is impulse. You men always want to control everything. Just like Bob.

They sit on her redwood deck near the covered hot-tub with nothing further to discuss. According to Gretel Roseberry, J. B. Tremelo is the weak link in the evidentiary chain supporting Null Data’s claim to victimhood and must be neutralized. Maybe so, but you couldn’t tell it by him.

The purpose of the Trial is not to punish crime. That’s happened already in Lava City, with appropriate (?) desserts meted out to the guilty. The prolonged affairs discussed in Courtroom X address the wrong done to a small sub-group of victims under the guise of damages or duty for which the defendants may or may not be responsible in whole or in part.

On the spur of the moment he shows up in court on Friday October 26th again in the guise of Alistair Mundy. Maya Moonmaker’s in tennis whites, twirling a racket. Joost Dwa’s in his usual corner. A sullen sibyl dominates at the defense table—Fleur Ritna. Waiting for the Judge, he studies the back of the security guard’s unkempt head in the row in front of him: nobody’s talking to him, but he probably wants it that way.

When it comes, Lambrochet’s testimony is impressive. Henderson regrets his panicked impulse on the deck of houseboat, blurting out the man’s relationship to Snap Weaver.

Instead, he should have asked him:

Was Eric Mercredi murdered?

And if so, how?

And by what?

Or whom?

At the end of the day he’s back in the parking lot, waiting in the Dodge Caravan as Hen-a-son, Joost Dwa’s chauffeur.

THE SCREED OF NIMSON

(UNDELIVERED)

"A bad thing happened. Without another recourse, its victims have banded together. A handful who worked at a certain entity have brought an action on behalf of themselves, the handful, but not for all. Their contention is based on mountains of paperwork, dense contractual clauses wound about themselves like the botched knots of sneakers on a lonely tree in Nevada: deliberately obscure, open to endless interpretation (!#@%!) and infinite argument, producing a feeling on the part of all parties of a Sisyphus-like malaise.

"The Trial itself is an