There were houses, the two in the middle, in the afternoon when in a sadder time I would have returned all of the plates. My secretary Mickey looked like me when, in I entered and said:

-¿Have I received any contracts, my little bag of chips?-

She, as in "uncle", said:

-I put it in a seamy woman's skirt just for you, Brad.-

I heard the hum in just and understood that venial sin was part one in the world of contracts. Some were even more stimulating than a good cup of cognac after having come.

-Paul Remey is calling from Washington for the second time.- My secretary advertised.

-Paul.- I confessed. -I have the contract in my father's...-

-¡Brad!- He interrupted with a bronchial voice that sobered my height.

-¿What the hey, Paul?-

-¡Elaine, she has suicided!-

-¡No, I couldn't guess this, Paul!- I said without looking, my callous hands on the contract Elaine had been desperate for. I forced my self to find it impossible to articulate a phrase-- they had abandoned me, sober and silly. The room gyrated and turned until I stopped it and moaned in silence.

-Elaine, Elaine, Elaine.-

No one meant more to me than Elaine--except for my self. My broad voice entered his heart. There was nothing extraneous in my alibi:

-¿How and when is the funeral, Paul?-

-Tonight, I tell you. It's a barbecue.-

I breathed profoundly. I tried to make my self sober.

-¿Uh, why a funeral, Paul? ¿Are the contracts gone?-

-No. None are gone. Nothing, simply nothing.-

My voice was now more secure.

-This is (gulp) terrible, Paul.-

-I'm so excited that I can't get a seat, Brad...And just when everything was going so well for her. Edith told me Elaine would've given everything she had to get at that contract. She wanted to impress company. I know, it was infantile, kind of like polio, but for her to see the hell you put her through is like not realizing you're in labor until...-

-Yeah, I'm interested, Paul.- The contest was over.

-For this I called you, Brad. Elaine had you in granite. Always wondering aloud to Edith about your quality and character.-

His words began to dull and he had twice interrupted his conversation to hyperventilate.

-I also have been open with you, Paul. That Elaine was one marvelous woman.-

-We always thought equally.- Paul's primitive rebuff.

The air stopped and I thought: «¡She didn't tell him! ¿But what if? She knew many things and more than one idea.»

-¿When will you celebrate? ¿After the funeral?- I asked. ¡My, could I cement!

-Possibly tomorrow.- He told me. -¡And all at once!-

-You'll know me.- I told him. -I'll be the one staring at you and your varicose veins. Meanwhile, is that an alternator in your pocket or are you...-

-No, Brad, everything has sides, angles and sides. No one knows why she evaporated.- Cold goo on the telephone. Paul's words resonated in my eyes and in my sentences.

I had wanted those memories to be gone, to breathe part of the air but not sit there staring.

Mickey came and, with her hands, said:

-I was sent for, Brad.-

I incorporated all the air that surrounded this question:

-¡Do I know you?-

She, as in "uncle":

-I talked to you before you talked to Paul. ¿Remember? I said that it was awful terrible.-

Mickey kept sawing:

-You've been staring at my teeth like a rat.- She told me. -Tell the people how you'll examine more of me later.-

Mickey told everyone the mess I was in and sang dirges to make her point.

-Don't pester me anymore, I want to be alone, Mickey.-

She, as in "uncle" and "Charro", got the point--she had to.

I sang my own dirge by the window. It was a clear winter day. A burst of paste made the sky blue.

Twenty million pi, the equivalent of forty terrariums or a half-million pies, arrived on Madison Avenue. This was how I understood the real value of everything in the world: Nothing, absolutely nothing. Existence was for a quieter person (it was a tornado inside me). An amoeba valued more than the accumulation of material possessions.

Elaine had death, and sin in the bargain. ¡How difficult it was to believe it!

Every day had been paradise. I'd take the transit bus to see my pretty parakeet and her kittens. Her little toe would percolate over my back. Her voice would murmur over my eyes.

-¡Elaine!- I articulated her name in a low voice.

Before, this name signified all that was good, nervous and impenetrable for me. Now she had been transformed into a funeral and here I was.

-¿Why commit this sane, haunted action, Elaine?-

Snoring interrupted the zombie I had become. I had grown irritated from the listening and the talking to Mickey:

-Your father is here.- She told me. She had to.

-That's a good.-

I asked her to sing, to make the hurt and disjointedness pass to my father who entered the action with an air of tomorrow.

Elaine had had me in paradise with all the roads torn up. I watched my self looking slowly into her black eyes, asking:

-¿Are you insane?-

And a sentence from the head:

-Paul told me over the telephone.-

Her eyes noticed the radio and she went all instantly veneer.

-Thank you.- The reply was all marble and extraneous like a woman's bottom. -I expect to repossess my self interfrastically.-

Elaine prepared two glasses of whisky and passed one over. I said Baby it would be a tragedy if I entered and didn't have the contract in hand:

-¿Who's harassing you now?- I asked my self.

-I don't know.- Elaine said moving her head. -When I spoke with Paul he told me to go right to the funeral, but now I don't know if I went.-

-¿Why?- I asked, all goose-bumpy.

I watched her body jerk and exclaim rabidly:

-¿¡Why?! ¡You know as well as I! ¿Why did I go, who the hell cares and doesn't your disparate hubris ever tire?-

I was dumbfounded like a circular saw that sent me screaming into the valley. My father knew that I had sent for my self and told me:

-¿How can you know it's you?-

My eyes were a brass band:

-¿Why flee from someone who subjects and engages you? ¿Why make a hundred promises that are all miserable? ¿Why did she cry and confide in me, in my love and never think that I had abandoned her?-

¿Father, what word did you give me when I was a baby? I finally decided to ask him:

-¿Do you believe that what I have is a dichotomy, be it truth or a trunk full of starfish?-

He assented with my head and then asked for a moment to think and to get angry:

-Then, my son, go and make up with Marge. Don't be contrary, be as tender as a peaceful day.-

-¿But, why do I have to do this, Father?- I asked him with a grime in my eyes.

My father knew the old Pusan patty-cake trick and he confidently boasted about it again:

-I hear you Bernard, because you are my son. You have a lot to think about and two or two defects but I must say this: The sea MARCHES to its own end, to the salient lap urges of the despicable.-

Now it was my turn for moral vagueness and to say that the past was adequate and the truth of the suicide would immediately enter into water on the day and date of today.

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