I think a couple of those pretty boys came close to crying, in fact. Even the Mister, over in his corner where Bobby had joined him, looked delighted with me. The little bald guy at the piano was a lot better than the Karaoke tape, seemed to know ahead of time what I was going to do next and never played too loud. He had the biggest d.a.m.n ears I ever saw in my life, I swear they stuck up above his scalp, and maybe they gave him natural perfect pitch or something.

I could tell they wanted more so I gave them "Hound Dog" after that, and "Suspicious Minds," and "jailhouse Rock," and the whole time the lady watched me like I was the best thing that had ever come into her life. So then I did "Love Me Tender" just for her, if you get my drift, real soft and leaning to her the whole time. Her face was shining like the moonlight.

And I thought to myself, boy, you have made an impression on these summer people! I thought sure I was going to get an audition now.

I could have been up there all night, but it was starting to get late and folks were sneaking out in ones and twos, though I could tell they hated to leave, and then Bobby came up, really wiping tears out of his eyes, and said: "You'd better give me the mike now, Elvis, we don't want to wear out that voice. Everybody, a big hand for the King!"

The crowd went wild. They applauded and shouted for more, but I smiled real nice and shook my head as I handed the mike back to Bobby, because I could see some other action getting ready to happen. And if you don't know what I mean, you ain't been listening, friend.

The lady held on to me with that look of hers and patted the couch beside her. In the sweetest voice you ever heard, she asked me to come sit and talk with her. I looked quick over at the Mister but he was talking to Bobby, who was nodding and sipping from a bottle of Perrier. You don't have to ask me twice; I was on that couch in two seconds and, I tell you, she was all over me.

Crazy in love with me! You'd have thought I really was Elvis, the way she went on about how beautiful I was. It was almost embarra.s.sing. Nothing was too good for me; she asked if I wanted anything to drink and I told her a plain beer sure would be nice, and d.a.m.ned if she didn't send one of her little girls running off to the kitchen or somewhere to look for one.

In the meantime she fed me all kinds of chips and crackers from this bowl, health food snacks I guess, and they tasted all right but some of them were pretty strange colors and there was no salt at all.

Finally the little girl came back, real apologetic, because all she could find was a real old bottle of something imported, I guess from j.a.pan or somewhere, I couldn't read what the h.e.l.l was on the label and it tasted funny, like flowers sort of.

I'm too smart to complain about a stupid bottle of beer in a situation like that, though. I just smiled and drank and after the first swallow it wasn't too bad anyhow. I got quite a buzz off of it, in fact.

The lady kept talking about how good-looking I was, which was sweet, but I kind of wanted to get the conversation around to my career, and after a while she saw that and she put her arms around my neck and started talking about all the things she could do for me. Big record producers and club owners and all. She had another of her little girls pull off my shoes and give me a foot ma.s.sage, if you can believe that, some oriental pressure therapy thing her guru taught her, and I was sure glad I'd had that shower and borrowed that fancy pair of socks.

I looked around to see if the Mister was catching this act but I couldn't see him or Bobby anywhere, only some of the ugly old folks standing around here and there talking about Italian museums and some prince or other in the south of France, just as though there wasn't nearly an orgy going on right under their noses. But, you know, that's how morality is in Hollywood.

If I'd been able to keep her talking about my singing, I'd probably be in Vegas right now, but that funny beer was making me, you know, susceptible to her charms and all and she leaned in close and began to whisper things in my ear, and where a lady like her learned to talk like that I do not know. She got me so all I wanted was one thing, and it wasn't a recording contract.

We could have probably done it right there on the couch with the pretty- boys looking on, for all those people cared, but I got a little loud and that brought her out of it some, she put her hand over my mouth and whispered that we'd better go to her room. I thought that was a great idea, so we got up and she led me away into that dark old house, not turning on the lights so we wouldn't get caught I guess. Her little girls ran ahead with some kind of colored flashlights, winky bright spots flitting around the old rugs and drapes.

We got to her bedroom and it had this huge antique bed with covers and drapes and hangings all in that Laura Ashby flower pattern, and the moon was pouring in through the arch windows so you could see every detail in the flowers.

"Here," says the lady, and she opened a drawer and took out a baggie of powder and I thought, oh boy, cocaine! Because, you know, those Hollywood people have it all the time. She shook it out in her palms and turned to me and I put my face down and had a real good snort, and she squealed and laughed, and Jesus I thought my nose was on fire but then it felt great, and she threw the rest of the handful up in the air so it floated over us, glittering and sparkling in the moonlight, and I realized maybe it was cut with something unusual, to glow like that.

I was so ready for action it didn't even faze me any when she had all her little giggling boys and girls peel off our clothes. If she'd wanted one of those kinky scenes like some of those Hollywood people you hear about, I'd have done everybody, that's how worked up I was. Well, not the boys, naturally. I'm all man, don't get me wrong.

I was just sorry to see that fine suit come off-but, h.e.l.l, there was no way she could have told that my underwear came from K-Mart.

Then the rest of them flitted off somewhere and it was just her and me on that flowery bed.

Am I going to tell you what it was like? What do you think it was like? Just sheer poetry, that's all.

She was smooth and... and she was cold and hot all at the same time, and she seemed like she was made out of moonlight. And, oh, she wanted me.

I must say I didn't think much of the Mister, because she clearly had never had as good a time as I was giving her. Whatever kind of cocaine that was, it gave a man staying power like that Spurious Spanish Fly in the magazines. We could have gone on all night. I'm not sure we didn't.

I'm not sure what all happened, to tell you the truth, because what with the cocaine and that funny beer I'm a little hazy on the way the evening ended. The last clear thing I remember was making too much noise again, so she was stuffing something sweet and cool in my mouth.

But it must have been like a movie, I know.

(guess at some point Bobby must have come and warned us that the Mister was coming, and got me up and helped me get my own clothes on and got me out of the house. I don't exactly remember getting back down to my truck-if you want to know the truth, I don't remember it at all, but it must have happened, because the next thing I knew I was waking up in the back of the pickup bed, and the moon was long gone.

So was everybody else.

I sat up, looking around in the washed-out light , feeling stiff in my dirty clothes, and I spit out what was in my mouth-big fat white rosebuds, can you believe it? She must have grabbed them off of a bouquet or something by her bed when I started to yell.

I figured out right then she had only rushed me out of the way so the Mister wouldn't shoot me, so I didn't mind as much as I might have, though I was kind of queasy to think of Bobby getting my pants on me.

And I was real stiff and cold and had a funny hangover, so I had to pull over three or four times to puke on the way back into San Luis Obispo County. I didn't mind that so much, but when it hit me that I'd lost my big break-because I never got her phone number and, well, I'm not sure about how her name is spelled, and anyway movie people have all kinds of security guards and like that to keep people from contacting them, and most of all she might not recognize me not wearing an Armani suit-that's when I started pounding on the steering wheel and caking myself a sorry b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

When I got home, Suellen had already left for work, which I would have been grateful for except she'd left one seriously b.i.t.c.hy note telling me to collect my stuff and get the h.e.l.l out of there before she got back. The way I felt, I didn't care if I never saw her big old b.u.t.t (she was five years older than me, by the way) again. I cleaned out everything that was mine and I almost took the deck off too, but I'd have had to take it apart to get all that wood in the truck bed and anyway I'm a bigger man than that. Let her be petty if she wants to.

But I wasn't looking forward to telling my folks I was moving back in, because I knew my daddy had filled up my room with tools. When I got to their doublewide they weren't home anyway, and Verbal was sitting on the deck having himself a Coors Lite. I didn't feel like talking much, but he wanted to tell me all about this idea he had for big money, which was to raise pit bull puppies to sell to the folks that run meth labs out of their trailers back in the canyons.

That's how dumb Verbal is, because everybody knows pit bulls don't really keep the federal agents away, and anyhow if you mess with the meth folks they'll kill you, and Verbal always tries to mess with somebody sooner or later. I told him that, being real short with him because I had a bad headache, and he just grinned and puked out his eight-inch knife and said n.o.body'd better try to kill him, and I said, "Those people got guns, you stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h," and he got huffy and left, and I went inside and lay down on my folks' couch.

I could still smell her. I had been so close to getting out of this town.

Well, I will get out. I have lived my dream and I will live it again. all I have to do is raise some cash, and I've got a plan for that. I'll get enough money for a bus ticket down to Hollywood, and if I can't find her, I'll bet I can track down that Bobby. Of course, I have to save up for one of those Armani suits first.

How? The secret word is recycling.

Did you know you can make good money at that? You can, if you're smart and you work out a system, which I did.

No, listen: the trick is to go out before sunrise on Thursdays, before the recycling trucks come around. People set those open tubs out on the curb and if you're careful and quiet you can help yourself to their aluminum cans! And another good way is to go out Wednesdays, which is when the freebie advertising papers come out, and their delivery people just drop big bundles of them in front of liquor stores and laundromats. You just follow them at a distance, wait until they're gone and pull up fast, then pitch the bundles of papers into the back of your truck and take off. The recycling plants take them no questions asked, and you don't even get your hands dirty.

No, I'm not lazy-that's a lot of work, getting up when it's still dark. Though I like it, kind of; it reminds me of those summer people and especially her, especially when there's some moonlight. And when I get down to Hollywood, you can bet I'll keep late hours! I like that night life.

Well, of course it'd take forever to save up for an Armani suit that way, if that was all I did. But, now, this is the really good part: you take the money they give you at the recycling plant, and then you invest in lottery tickets.

See? I am one smooth operator.

How They Tried to Talk Indian Tony Down.

This happened about ten years ago, out at Tobin Farm.

Back in the sixties, somebody bought Tobin Farm for the purposes of holding a renaissance fair there during the summers. Off-seasons it became a kind of commune for the people involved in putting on the fair. They lived modestly in sheds and trailers scattered on a hundred acres of oak wilderness back of the farm, collecting unemployment between fairs.

They had their own communal security force, in case of problems. Twenty- five years on, though, most of the members of the commune were arthritic and bespectacled and never got up to much in the way of trouble, except for domestic disputes or the occasional DUI Abby and Martha Caldecott lived at the foot of a hill, some distance from the center of the little community. Abby was into Wicca and Martha wrote romance novels, and during fairs the sisters ran a beer booth. Remote as their trailer was, it was cozily domestic. There were bright geraniums in coffee cans. There was a small lawn and lawn chairs. There were plastic party- lights strung from the awning, bright tropical fish. The lights shone out cheerily in the shadow of the hill. It was a dark cold shadow, because the hill was thought to be haunted.

On the night it happened, Abby was washing dishes after supper and Martha was watching an Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k movie on the VCR (their television reception was oddly sporadic) when they became aware that somebody was up on the hill, whistling.

It was a plaintive whistle, as though somebody was trying to summon a lost dog, and as the sisters conferred they realized the sound had been going on at intervals since that afternoon. It was now pitch dark and past nine at night. Given that, and given the rumors about the hill, the sisters decided not to investigate. Abby made a pan of cocoa and Martha turned up the volume on The Birds. 165 they were sipping cocoa and watching the film when headlights flashed outside.

The sisters sighed and paused their tape. Abby got up and went out to investigate; a pickup truck had pulled into the gravel s.p.a.ce beyond the lawn. Killer Mikey was just getting out.

Killer Mikev had been to Nam, a long time ago, and done very bad things there. He was okay now, though his hands still shook sometimes; but because he was familiar with things like radios and Situations, he had been made security chief for the commune. He stood now doubtfully shining his maglight up into the trees, announcing into his radio that he had arrived at the location. Abby asked him what was going on and he asked her if she knew what the whistling was. She told him she didn't, and he told her it was worrying All the people who lived up on Sn.o.b Hill, which was the cl.u.s.ter of trailers on the ridge opposite. He had radioed for backup.

As they stood there talking, the whistling came again, and this time right after it a faint little voice cried out Hey, from way far up in the darkness.

Killer Mikey walked backward, shining his light further up, and asked who was up there. After a long moment the voice replied Tony, and Killer Mikey frowned and then said Indian Tony?

Indian Tony was caked that because he claimed to have been an Oglala Sioux shaman in a previous life.

Indian Tony affirmed that it was he. Killer Mikey asked him what he was doing up there.

There followed about five minutes of shouted questions and mostly incoherent answers, but the gist of it was: Indian Tony had gone for a hike and got himself lost, and didn't know how to get off the hill.

Killer Mikey told him all he had to do was walk downhill toward his voice.

Indian Tony said he couldn't do that.

Killer Mikey went to his truck, backed it out a few yards and turned on the headlights. There: all Indian Tony had to do was walk downhill toward the lights, okay?

Indian Tony said he couldn't do that either.

As they were trying to hammer out why, Killer Mikey's backup arrived: Jerry Moss, who had taken the call in his truck as he was returning from town with an order of Chinese food. His truck rattled up to the trailer. He parked beside Killer Mikey and jumped out, complaining that his dinner was going to get cold. When Killer Mikey explained the situation, Jerry grew even more irritable and caked Indian Tony a white a.s.shole. Jerry happened to be a full- blooded Miwok and Indian Tony was, in fact, white, so neither Abby nor Killer Mikey argued the point.

By this time Martha gave up on The Birds and came out to see what was going on. As they were explaining to her, Indian Tony began to yell for help again. Now there were answering veils from the ridge, and a procession of headlights came bobbing down as more people were drawn to the scene.

Muttering, Jerry got his portable Hi-Beam out of the bed of his truck and shone it up the hill, walking back and forth to see if he could pinpoint Indian Tony's location. When he did, it was immediately obvious why Indian Tony couldn't come down. In the blue-white beam they spotted his tiny pale face peering out from the branches of a madrone, very far up the hill and about fifty feet above the ground.

Jerry cursed and called Indian Tony a jacka.s.s. Killer Mikey shouted up to tell Indian Tony they'd keep the light on him so he could climb down.

Indian Tony replied that he couldn't do that. He sounded as though he were crying now.

The people from Sn.o.b Hill were arriving by this time, getting out of their trucks and staring up the hill at Indian Tony trapped against the stars. Old Ricker the fiddler, who lived in the trailer next to Indian Tony's, came up to tell the security team that he had seen Indian Tony go out that afternoon wearing his ceremonial regalia (a plains war bonnet replica he'd found at a swap meet), which usually meant that Indian Tony was going on a vision quest. It also generally meant that Indian Tony had dropped acid.

Killer Mikey sighed. Jerry cursed again and clipped the Hi-Beam to the hood ornament of his truck.

He got out his carton of chow mein and a pair of chopsticks and climbed up on the hood of the truck to eat. Killer Mikey made a megaphone of his hands and asked Indian Tony if the reason he couldn't climb down was because he was still all messed up.

Indian Tony replied that he couldn't come down because they were down there. Martha shook her head and expressed her opinion that Indian Tony was still all messed up, and wondered what they ought to do now?

n.o.body wanted to call the sheriff's department, because little incidents like this tended to contribute to the slightly unsavory reputation Tobin Farm had developed over the years. Killer Mikey called up to ask Indian Tony what they were and was informed they were some kind of animals, man. What kind? He didn't know. What did they look like? They had big pointed ears.

Martha went running back to her trailer and came out with the Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide to Western Mammals. Through Killer Mikey's patiently shouted interrogation they built up a gradual description of what Indian Tony thought he was seeing, as Martha paged through the book by the headlights, and at last narrowed the possibilities down to either a lynx, Lynx canadensis, or a bobcat, Lynx rufus. Then they narrowed it further to bobcat, because Tobin Farm was much too far south for lynxes. The only problem was, Indian Tony insisted that they were all white, which bobcats were not; and that he could see three pairs of eyes, though the field guide stated that bobcats were solitary hunters.

Jerry looked up from his chow mein long enough to observe that Indian Tony might be seeing spirit animals, and it would serve the dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d right if a spirit guide chased his white a.s.s up a tree. He added a few crotchety words about people who had the nerve to co-opt other people's sacred stuff, after taking their land away too. Then he flipped his long gray braid back over his shoulder and went on eating.

Killer Mikey nodded sadly and lifted his hands to his mouth again. He told Indian Tony that they were probably not really there, and if they were they were probably just little wild kitties, and if he threw something at them, they'd probably go away so why didn't he just break off a branch and throw it at them and then climb down in the light of the Hi-Beam?

Indian Tony said he didn't want to do that.

they argued back and forth for several minutes on the subject, as Martha continued to search through the field guide. Abby asked if anybody would like cocoa and went off to the trailer to make more. Ricker asked Jerry whether or not somebody ought to go up the hill and bring Indian Tony down. Jerry replied that he wasn't about to, because all that undergrowth up there was poison oak. Ricker replied that he thought Native Americans were immune to poison oak. Jerry said like h.e.l.l they were and told Ricker about the time he'd gone fishing at Rincon and walked through a thicket of it, not seeing the leaves because it was winter, but how even that much exposure had been enough to make his click swell up like a beer can. Ricker tsked sympathetically.

He was telling Jerry about the time he got itch mites from sitting on an infested hay bale when Killer Mikey at last persuaded Indian Tony to break off a branch and throw it down at whatever it was that had him treed. Everyone there heard the slight crack and then the crash as the branch went down through the underbrush.

RRRrrrAOOM, protested something, sounding seriously Big Cat in nature and quite angry. The sound echoed off the surrounding hills. Everybody froze. Jerry had lifted a big hunk of noodles and bean sprouts halfway to his open mouth, but now they slipped from his chopsticks, plop, on the hood of his truck.

Indian Tony began to gibber and scream. Killer Mikey observed that that had sounded like a G.o.dd.a.m.n tiger, man. His hands were shaking; not a good sign. Martha wondered if they maybe shouldn't call Animal Control?

Ricker volunteered. He jumped into his VW van and went puttering off in the direction of the phone booth out on Highway 37.

Killer Mikey staggered to his truck and leaned into the cab. He pulled the seat forward and rummaged among the various guns he had back there. Jerry finished his chow mein in a hurry and jumped down. Abby opened the trailer door and stood silhouetted against the light, calling out to know what was going on. Everyone told her to get back inside.

There was a crash up the hill and Indian Tony cried out that they were coming up the tree after him.

Jerry grabbed the Hi-Beam and directed it at the tree, and those present could see the distant branches thrashing in a manner that suggested that something really was climbing up from below.

Killer Mikey found his AK-47 and pulled it out, and aimed it up the hill, but his hands were trembling really badly now. Indian Tony, shrieking, was trying to get higher up in the madrone and breaking branches in his efforts. Jerry shouted up to him to stop, to hold on to the trunk with his arms and legs or he'd fall and break his neck. He handed off the Hi-Beam to Martha and pulled a handgun from the glove box of his truck.

Then the Hi-Beam went out. So did the truck lights and the lights at the trailer.

Flash, a second later the madrone was lit again, blue-white as before but not by the Hi-Beam. A column of radiance was stabbing down from the bottom of some kind of black aircraft, hovering just above the hill.

Below, they saw Indian Tony turn his face up, staring in astonishment. He rose, pulled by the light, gliding with a few broken branches upward into the craft. Something fell fluttering down: the war bonnet he'd been wearing.

There was another feline roar, a distinctly disappointed sound. Something very large made a last lunge at Indian Tony and they caught a glimpse of it for a second in the light; and it wasn't any Lynx rufus, or Lynx canadensis, either, though it was obvious why Indian Tony had been seeing three pairs of eyes.

There followed a moment of shock, in which all persons present quietly decided that they couldn't possibly have seen what they'd just seen.

Killer Mikey blinked rapidly and then took aim again, gamely trying to draw a bead on the aircraft, it being less of an insult to his rational mind. Jerry grabbed his arm and told him not to be an idiot; if the aircraft crashed the Government would be all over the farm, like what happened at Roswell.

n.o.body wanted that, of course, because geraniums weren't the only plants grown on the farm. Killer Mikey lowered the gun and they all watched as the aircraft moved slowly off to the north, a darkness silently occluding stars where it pa.s.sed. Something big was crashing through the woods below, following vainly after it. Gradually the sound died away.

The lights came back on, startling everybody, and Killer Mikey accidentally blasted h.e.l.l out of Abby's and Martha's lawn chairs. n.o.body said anything, though, until Ricker came puttering back and leaned out of his van to announce that the Animal Control Department was sending a unit over as soon as possible. Then he realized they were all staring like zombies and wanted to know what had happened.

Jerry explained that Indian Tony had seriously offended something but that the Star Brothers appeared to have bailed out his sorry a.s.s. Ricker thought that over and announced he was going back to his trailer. It seemed like a good idea. When the Amador County Animal Control Department van crossed the tracks and b.u.mped along the farm's dark rutted access road half an hour later, they couldn't find a soul to direct them. Finally they gave it up and left.

n.o.body ever saw Indian Tony again. His disappearance went unreported and, because he had no family or job, unnoticed.

That was the end of the matter, except that the inhabitants of the commune stayed well away from the hill after that. Abby and Martha, in fact, paid Jerry fifty dollars to hook up their trailer to his truck and move them over to the other side of the ridge. Everybody knew what had rescued Indian Tony but n.o.body knew what it had rescued him from, and that was a little worrisome.

Abby and Martha liked the new place. There was room to put in a vegetable garden.

Pueblo, Colorado Has the Answers.

Marybeth Hatta had survived a lot. Not as much as her parents, certainly; her one failed marriage had ended without drama. The fact that she had been a Customer Serviceperson for a financial inst.i.tution, and had worked her patient way over years to within inches of the gla.s.s ceiling before being laid off when the company was purchased and dismantled for corporate looting-well, that wasn't noteworthy either, given the state of California's economy.

It had happened to Marybeth three times in a row, however, over a period of twenty years, and even the girl at the unemployment office had agreed the odds against that were probably high. It looked funny on a resume, too. At the age of forty she found herself with no job, no Wilshire Boulevard apartment, and no prospects at all. Under the circ.u.mstances she was grateful to be able to go home to the tiny coastal town where she'd grown up, to do what she'd adamantly refused to do twenty years earlier when her life hadn't been irrelevant: take a job in her parents' store.

Nothing had changed there. Not the stained green linoleum, not the candy display rack with its rolls of tin Lifesavers, not the ceiling fan describing the same wobbling circle it had described since June 1948, not the bright plastic beach toys and bottles of sun lotion. The little town hadn't changed either, with its rusted hotel signs and weatherbeaten cottages. It was lively with tourists on weekends, but by five P.M.