Again she became Quote-Robot: "'Some superintendents have established deadlines for receiving the evaluation in order to help them with their bookkeeping. While nothing in the law requires families to comply with a particular date, most families do comply unless circ.u.mstances make it impossible to do so. She went on in her normal voice, "Especially since the superintendent in his or her sole discretion determines whether the evaluation is satisfactory or not."

Already I was beginning to get a headache. This definitely sounded like state law, all right. "I don't think you're doing enough translating, honey: it still sounds like Bulls.h.i.t. We do have to comply, but we don't, unless we don't want to get screwed, in which case we do. What exactly is this furshlugginer evaluation supposed to consist of?"

She shrugged. "It can be any one of five things. One, individual a.s.sessment by a Florida-certified teacher. There are some who do that full-time, like circuit judges."

I pictured the kind of teacher who could be permanently spared from actual teaching duties to do that gig. Like being surgeon general, or vice president: a distinction that disgraces you. "Pa.s.s."

"Agreed. Two, a nationally normed student achievement test, administered by a certified teacher. Three, a state student a.s.sessment test. Four, a psych evaluation. Or five, 'any other method that is mutually agreed upon by the parent(s) and the superintendent.'"

The first four all sounded horrid; the last didn't sound like anything at all. "So, which method have we been using, so far?"

She kept her features smooth. "None."

"No!" I couldn't believe I had blown off paperwork this crucial. After losing my first bar for that very mistake, had I really made it again, badly enough to risk costing me the custody and company of my only child? "Oh, f.u.c.k me-"

"Best offer I've had in half an hour," Harry brayed.

Erin put a hand on my shoulder. "Relax, Daddy-we didn't need to do any of those things. We had a waiver. An unofficial one, a special understanding with the district superintendent. Until recently."

"We did? Really? How did I pull that off?"

"Remember that time we all went on that vacation cruise with Uncle Trav for a whole week?"

I smiled just thinking of it. "I'll remember that trip a month after they cremate me."

"Remember the lady Uncle Bbiillll brought with him?"

n.o.body but Erin can p.r.o.nounce Double Bill's name that way. I've heard several try. "Yes, I do. Remarkable woman. Morgan Something."

"Morgan Sorensen. That was her."

"That was who?"

"She was the district superintendent of schools. The operative word being was."

I nodded. "I can see how that would be. She was at least an order of magnitude too smart to have that job, and almost certainly too good a teacher to waste on it. What I don't understand is how she ever acquired the post in the first place."

"Inheritance. Her brother died in office, and she agreed to fill out his term. What with one thing and another-Peter Principle, I suspect-she was still there eleven years later. Six months ago, she retired and moved away."

I finished my Irish coffee. "It's not just an expression. I can actually feel my eyeb.a.l.l.s glazing over."

"Her successor is a professional chairwarmer named Dhozi Pilok."

"If this conversation goes on much longer, they're going to be big gla.s.s marbles-"

"You lost your marbles a long time ago!" Harry the Parrot crowed. (Um.) "He's got you there, Jake," Alf said.

Erin raised her volume just enough to regain control of the discussion. "Nearly done now. Superintendent Pilok's mistress is Field Inspector Ludnyola Czrjghnczl-ah, multiculturalism!-which basically means she has a mandate to do any G.o.dd.a.m.n thing she feels like doing within the world of Florida education. And as I suspected, Ludnyola turns out to be the third cousin twice removed of Smithtown Town Inspector Jorjhk Grtozkzhnyi. With Ukrainians, that makes them as close as, say, an Italian brother and sister."

"Terrific." I sighed. "Well, at least now I understand why th-what's wrong, honey?"

To my consternation Erin suddenly burst into tears. "Oh, Pop-it's all my fault."

Automatically I got up and put my arms around her. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about? The only thing in the round world that's all your fault is that d.a.m.n tattoo."

In the midst of crying, she couldn't help smiling at that line, which of course was why I'd said it. But the smile lasted for less than a second. "Remember the day we left Long Island?"

"Vividly," I a.s.sured her.

"What's the very last thing I did?"

I thought about it. "Uh ..."

"Just as we were pulling away."

Suddenly I remembered. "Oh, h.e.l.l yeah-that was beautiful! Old Nyjmnckra Grtozkzhnyi came waddling out to the roadside to see us all leave, to gloat over having driven us out of the state, and as I drove past her, you-"

"I gave her the finger."

I laughed out loud remembering it. So did Ralph, who'd been there on our bus at the time. Erin had still been in diapers, back then: Nyjmnckra's expression had been something to see.

"And she fainted dead away, fell over on her back, and made an angel in the snow," Erin said, and I laughed even harder.

And then stopped. I began to see what she meant. "And you think her nephew Jorjhk has been hunting us ever since, planning his revenge."

She nodded against my shoulder. "Oh, Papa, I knew even then. Less than two years old, and I already knew it was a mistake to do that." Her arms tightened around me. "I was just so mad at Ms. Grtozkzhnyi."

"h.e.l.l, so was I, honey. That silly woman ruined everything we had. And all I ever did to her was answer the door. Spilling that beaker of p.i.s.s on her was totally accidental-"

"Sure. But don't you remember what Lady Sally said about vengeance?"

I shook my head.

"She said, 'Vengeance is counterproductive, always. Not to mention the fact it gets your soul all sticky.' I should have remembered. But I was too angry at Nyjmnckra, for hurting you and Mom."

I hugged her even harder. "Hard to think straight when you're mad."

"Honest to G.o.d, Pop," she said, "sometimes I really wonder about evolution. The whole fight-or-flight business . . . I just don't understand it. I can't remember one time when adrenaline ever helped me in a crisis. Usually it spoils my judgment, makes my knees tremble and my hands shake, makes my voice sound quavery and unthreatening, and screws up my reflexes. Wouldn't you think anger would make you smarter? Calmer? Instead it's a cliche that if you can get your opponent angry, you have the fight half won. The natural, hardwired human response to sudden crisis is to drop IQ points. How did we ever last this long?"

Fast Eddie spoke up. "Da madder ya get, da less effective ya get. I got no problem wit dat. Maybe dat's ezzackly how we lasted dis long."

Eddie doesn't say much, but when he does, the result is often a short thoughtful silence on the part of those within earshot.

"All right, enough of this," I said finally. "Flipping old Nyjmnckra the Pierre Trudeau Salute may indeed have p.i.s.sed her off. But she was plenty p.i.s.sed off at us to begin with. There's no reason to believe the very last thing we did to annoy her had any sort of threshold effect. In any case, the question is irrelevant. The point is, what are we going to do about this?"

"Get me evaluated, somehow," Erin said.

All spoke up. "Evaluated in some way that suits ... Look, let's all just start calling her Ludnyola, okay? My throat hurts when I try to say her name." Agreement was nodded or grunted generally. "In some way that suits Ludnyola."

"She was suited when she got here," Doc Webster said. People blinked at him. "Alf said we had to suit her," he explained. "Well, she was suited to start with. That silly 'power suit." He snorted. "Like all other kinds of suits were hand-cranked."

I was starting to wonder about the Doc. Over the years I'd heard him make some very lame puns, sometimes so abstruse it was days before I realized they'd been puns. But I had never heard him explain one before.

Willard Hooker cut to the chase. "Well, we can't figure out what sort of evaluation we need to fake until we consult some experts tomorrow during business hours. I say the only sensible thing to do now is make supper and then get drunk."

This suggestion met with general approval. I realized I was starving, myself. "Who's cooking tonight?" I asked.

It happens that among the staff and regular clientele of The Place we have, these days, seven people generally deemed competent to cook for the group, each with his or her own unique culinary style. There's no system to the rotation or anything; dinner just tends to get made by whoever consensus agrees should do so that night. Anybody who eats some tosses some cash into the cigar box at the end of the bar before they leave, in whatever amount they deem appropriate. Maybe it wouldn't work with another group. Okay, probably.

Zoey says we're the first commune in history that don't live together. Not the only one, mind you: there are several of them on the Internet right now, and at least one of them has a membership numbered in the high six figures. But our group first achieved telepathic communion back in the 1970s-well before ARPANET evolved into even Usenet, much less the World Wide Web-so I'm pretty sure we hold the record.

"Well," Marty Pignatelli spoke up, "I was planning to make an Italian rabbit stew for everybody, but you managed to find a way to screw that up, Jake."

"Oh, Fifty-Fifty," I said, shaking my head theatrically. We had all started calling Marty Pignatelli Fifty-Fifty that year to break his chops, the logic being that he was a retired policeman-Five-Oh in street parlance-and had just turned fifty. I smelled a pun coming, now, chiefly because Marty was not one of the seven competent cooks, and I decided to help him out by supplying the shortest distance between two puns: a straight-line. "What could I possibly have done to spoil your cooking plans?"

He didn't let me down. "Not buy the hare of my guinea din-din."

It was decided, by instant consensus, that Marty really ought to be chatting with Lex rather than with us, and he was delivered there airmail by an ad hoc committee. He made an impressive splash, exciting general merriment.

Most important to me, my daughter's dark mood of self-recrimination vanished in a silver cascade of giggles.

That sort of set the tone. The crisis was over now, the emergency past for the moment, problems remained to be solved, but for the moment there was no pressing reason for us to stay sober. First Willard and Maureen and Eddie and I finished our parodic desecration of "Swingin' on a Star" together

Or would you like to swing with your wife?

Eat your beans and peas with a knife?

And he smarter dead than in life?

Or would you rather be a dork?

But if you've got some manners and cla.s.s And you ain't a pain in the a.s.s And you've an itch to pitch you a gla.s.s In an amazing state of grace You could be swinging at The Place!

-and after that, Eddie and I did one of our usual sets of whatever piano and guitar tunes entered our heads, and by the time we were ready for a break, Willard had finished barbecuing, and about then the evening crowd started to arrive, and what with one thing and another, The Place managed in spite of the brief shocking infestation of the Bureaucrat from h.e.l.l-to return to what we like to consider normal, at least for the rest of that night.

Zoey came plodding home in the small hours. She looked like an unusually lovely zombie and moved like Lawrence three-quarters of the way to Aqaba. Ba.s.s players work hard. Especially on Duval Street.

Some of the plodding, of course, was due to the fact that she was towing her ax behind her. Minga is a big brute of a standup ba.s.s, which produces a sound so powerful Zoey's never bothered to electrify her, but even in the wheeled case I built for her, she just barely qualifies as portable. Erin keeps offering to just teleport the thing home for her mother after gigs, and I suspect one of these days Zoey's going to take her up on it. Art ain't easy.

By then everyone but me had gone home, and the compound residents-Eddie, Doc and Mei-Ling, Tom Hauptman, Long-Drink, Tommy Janssen, Pixel, Alf, Lex and even, thank G.o.d, Harry-had all gone to bed in their various cottages. I still had a few closing-up ch.o.r.es to do behind the bar, but nothing that wouldn't keep until tomorrow. I stopped whatever I was doing, came around the bar, and joined my beloved in the last fifty yards of her March to the Sack.

"Hi," I said.

Pause, several slow strides long. "Mmmm," she agreed finally.

"Glad it went well, Spice." Her face was slack with fatigue, but I could tell it had been a very good gig: the corners of her mouth turned up perceptibly.

She nodded once. Long pause. "Gate."

"Yeah, Omar's fixing it. It got split down the middle. I told him to leave a scar."

Pause. Then one eyebrow twitched. "Big Beef."

"Right."

She grunted approval. We were already in our cottage by then. She let go of Minga's case handle in the middle of the living room and, freed of her weight, seemed to almost float into the bedroom. Where she waited, patient as a horse being unsaddled, while I undressed her. It is, I find, a vastly interesting experience to undress the most beautiful and desirable woman in the world, and to know with equal certainty both that she feels exactly the same about you, and that if you attempt the slightest s.e.xual liberty now, she will kill you with a single blow. There ought to be a word for frustration that doesn't make it sound like a bad thing. I stopped chatting to devote my full attention to the task.

As soon as I was done, Zoey toppled over into bed like a felled tree-a fascinating thing to watch, from start to a couple of moments after the finish, when the ripples died down. I heard her eyelids slam shut, and she made a small purring sound deep in her throat. But my wife is a polite person; before surrendering to unconsciousness, she turned her face toward me and murmured, "'thing 'kay, Spice?"

Tough choice to make. I knew she was physically and mentally exhausted, knew she had earned her rest, knew there was nothing useful she could possibly do about anything until she woke up anyway.

I also knew, to a fair degree of certainty, what she would say tomorrow if I let her go to sleep without telling her. The question was, was I hero enough to accept that penance, in order to give my beloved a good night's rest.

Well, maybe I would have been . . . but I hesitated too long making my choice. One of her eyelids flicked, as if it were thinking about opening, and she repeated, " 'thing 'kay?"

I suppressed a sigh. As casually as I knew how, I said, "A little ha.s.sle came up, but nothing you need worry about now. Erin and I have it covered."

She made a half-inch sketch of a nod. There was a long pause, and just as I'd decided she was under and I was home free, her eyelid twitched again, and she mumbled, "Wha' ha.s.sle?"

This time my sigh emerged. "Well-" Further amphigory would only be counterproductive. I wish they made a tasty bullet. "-this afternoon a state education inspector showed up. She says she's going to put Erin in foster care because we're unfit parents. No big deal. Go to sleep."

For about ten seconds I thought I had pulled it off. Then one of her eyes opened wide. "Name."

"Ludnyola Czrjghnczl. Accent on the rjgh."

The eye powered up, swiveled to track me. "Oh, my G.o.d. A relative of-"

I hastily nodded, to spare her throat. She'd been breathing barroom air all night. "You guessed it."

Both eyes were open now, though the second wasn't tracking yet. "Was she carrying a briefcase?"

"Afraid so."

She was sitting bolt upright in bed. I hadn't seen her move. "Job t.i.tle."

"Senior Field Inspector, Florida Department of Ed."

Her second eye caught up with the first and locked on to me. "The homeschooling scam came apart?"

I nodded, and she groaned. "Oh, s.h.i.t."