This he floated off in a northwest direction, and at once set about waiting for a reply. Meanwhile, however, he had to visit Dr. Drat once more. Hilda insisted on it.

"And how's it been going, down by the creek?" Dr. Drat said in a jovial manner, his big fuzzy hoppers up on his desk.

The decision to be frank and honest with the psychiatrist stole over Cadbury. Surely there lay no harm in telling Drat everything; this was what he was being paid for: to hear the truth with all its details, both horrid and sublime.

"I've fallen in love with Carol Stickyfoot," he began. "But at the same time, although my love is absolute and eternal, I have this nagging angst that she's a figment of my wife's deranged imagination, concocted as was Miss Foundfully to lead me into revealing my true self to Hilda, which at all costs I need to conceal. Because if my true self came out I'd knock the frigging crap out of her and leave her flat."

"Hmm," Dr. Drat said.

"And out of you, too," Cadbury said, releasing all his hostilities in one grand basketful.

Dr. Drat said, "You trust no one, then? You're alienated from all mankind? You've lead a life-pattern that's drawn you insidiously into total isolation? Think before you answer; the answer may be yes, and this you may have trouble facing."

"I'm not isolated from Carol Stickyfoot," Cadbury said hotly. "In fact that's the whole point; I'm trying to terminate my isolation. When I was preoccupied with blue chipsthen I was isolated. Meeting and getting to know Miss Stickyfoot may mean the end of all that's wrong in my life, and if you have any insight into me you'd be damn glad I floated off that snuff tin that day. Damn glad." He glowered moodily at the long-eared doctor.

"It may interest you to know," Dr. Drat said, "that Miss Stickyfoot is a former patient of mine.

She cracked up in Madrid and had to be flown back here in a suitcase. I'll admit she's quite attractive, but she's got a lot of emotional problems. And her left breast is larger than her right."

"But you admit she's real!" Cadbury shouted in excited discovery.

"Oh, she'sreal enough; I'll grant that. But you may find you have your hands full. After a while you may wish you were back with Hilda again. God only knows where Carol Stickyfoot may lead the two of you. I doubt if Carol herself knows."

It sounded pretty damn good to Cadbury, and he returned to his virtually gnawed-through poplar tree at the creek bank in high spirits. The time, according to his waterproof Rolex watch, came to only ten-thirty, and so he had more or less the entire day to plan out what he should do, now that he knew that Carol Stickyfoot really existed and was not merely another snare and delusion manufactured by his wife.

Several regions of the creek remained unmapped, and, because of the nature of his employment, he knew these places intimately. Six or seven hours lay ahead before he had to report home to Hilda; why not abandon the poplar project temporarily and begin hasty construction of an adequate little concealed shelter for himself and Carol, beyond the ability of the world at large to identify, locate or recognize? It had become action time; thinking time had passed.

Toward the latter part of the day, while he labored deeply engrossed in erecting the adequate little concealed shelter, a tin of Dean's Own came floating southeast down the creek. In a boiling wake of paddled water he rushed out to seize the snuff tin before it drifted by.

When he had removed the Scotch Tape and opened it he found a small package wrapped in tissue paper and a derisive note.

Here's your proof(the note read).

The package contained three blue chips.

For over an hour Cadbury could scarcely trust his teeth to gnaw properly, so great was the shock of Carol's token of authenticity, her pledge to him and all that he represented. In near madness he bit through branch after branch of an old oak tree, scattering boughs in every direction. A strange frenzy overcame him. He had actually found someone, had managed to escape Hilda -- the road lay ahead and he had only to travel it. . . or rather swim it.

Tying several empty snuff tins together with a length of twine he pushed off into the creek; the tins floated more or less northwest and Cadbury paddled after them, breathing heavily with anticipation. As he paddled, keeping the snuff tins perpetually in view, he composed a rhymed quatrain for the occasion of meeting Carol face to face.

There's few who say I love you.

But this, I swear, is truth: The deed which I have sought to Is sure and sound and sooth.

He did not know exactly what "sooth" meant, but how many words rhymed with "truth"?

Meanwhile, the tied-together snuff tins led him nearer and nearer -- or so he hoped and believed -- to Miss Carol Stickyfoot. Bliss. But then, as he paddled along, he got to recalling the sly, carefully-casual remarks of Dr. Drat, the seeds of uncertainty planted in Drat's professional fashion. Did he (meaning himself, not Drat) have the courage, the power and integrity, the dedication of purpose, to cope with Carol if she had, as Drat declared, severe emotional problems? Suppose Drat turned out to be correct? Suppose Carol proved to be more difficult and destructive than even Hilda -- who threw his Hermes portable typewriter through the window and suchlike manifestations of psychopathic rage?

Busy ruminating, he failed to notice that the several tied-together snuff tins had coasted silently to shore. Reflexively, he paddled after them and up out of the creek onto land.

Ahead -- a modest apartment with handpainted window shades and a nonobjective mobile swinging lazily above the door. And there, on the front porch, sat Carol Stickyfoot, drying her hair with a large white fluffy towel.

"I love you," Cadbury said. He shook the creek-water from his pelt and fidgeted about in a dither of suppressed affect.

Glancing up, Carol Stickyfoot appraised him. She had lovely huge dark eyes and long heavy hair which shone in the fading sun. "I hope you brought the three blue chips back," she said. "Because, see, I borrowed them from the place I work and I have to return them." She added, "It was a gesture because you seemed to need assurance. The fuds have been getting to you, like that headshrinker Drat. He's a real fud of the worst sort. Would you like a cup of instant Yuban coffee?"

As he followed her into her modest apartment Cadbury said, "I guess you heard my opening remark. I have never been more serious in my whole life. I really do love you, and in the most serious manner. I'm not looking for something trivial or casual or temporary; I'm looking for the most durable and serious kind of relationship there is. I hope in God's name you're not just playing, because I never felt more serious and tense about anything in my life, even including blue chips. If this is just a way of amusing yourself or some such thing it would be merciful for you to end it now by plainly speaking out. Because the torture of leaving my wife and beginning a new life and then finding out --"

"Did Dr. Fud tell you I paint?" Carol Stickyfoot asked as she put a pan of water on the stove in her modest kitchen and lit the burner under it with an old-fashioned large wooden match.

"He told me only that you flipped your cork in Madrid," Cadbury said. He seated himself at the small wooden unpainted pine table opposite the stove and watched with love in his heart Miss Stickyfoot spooning instant coffee into two ceramic mugs which had pataphysical spirals baked into their glaze.

"Doyou know anything about Zen?" Miss Stickyfoot asked.

"Only that you ask koans which are sort of riddles," he said. "And you give a sort of nonsense answer because the question is really idiotic in the first place, such as Why are we here on earth? and so forth." He hoped he had put it properly and she would think that he really did know something about Zen, as mentioned in her letter. And then he thought of a very good Zen answer to her question. "Zen,"

he said, "is a complete philosophic system which contains questions for every answer that exists in the universe. For instance, if you have the answer 'Yes,' then Zen is capable of propounding the exact query which is linked to it, such as 'Must we die in order to please the Creator, who likes his creations to perish?' Although actually, now that I think about it more deeply, the question which Zen would say goes with that answer is 'Are we here in this kitchen about to drink instant Yuban coffee?' Would you agree?"

When she did not answer immediately, Cadbury said hurriedly, "In fact Zen would say that the answer 'Yes' is the answer to that question: 'Would you agree?' There you have one of the great values of Zen; it can propound a variety of exact questions for almost any given answer."

"You're full of shit," Miss Stickyfoot said disdainfully.

Cadbury said, "That proves I understand Zen. Do you see? Or perhaps the fact is that you don't actually understand Zen yourself." He felt a trifle nettled.

"Maybe you're right," Miss Stickyfoot said. "I mean about my not understanding Zen. The fact is I don't understand it at all."

"That's very Zen," Cadbury pointed out. "And I do. Which is also Zen. Do you see?"

"Here's your coffee," Miss Stickyfoot said; she placed the two full, steaming cups of coffee on the table and seated herself across from him. Then she smiled. It seemed to him a nice smile, full of light and gentleness, a funny little wrinkled shy smile, with a puzzled, questioning glow of wonder and concern in her eyes. They really were beautiful large dark eyes, just about the most beautiful he had ever seen in his entire life, and he in all truthfulness was in love with her; he had not merely been saying that.

"You realize I'm married," he said as he sipped his coffee. "But I'm separated from her. I've been constructing this hovel down along a part of the creek where no one ever goes. I say 'hovel' so as not to give you a false impression that it's a mansion or anything; actually it's very well put-together. I'm an expert artisan in my field. I'm not trying to impress you; this is simply God's truth. I know I can take care of both our needs. Or we can live here." He looked around Miss Stickyfoot's modest apartment. How ascetically and tastefully she had arranged it. He liked it here; he felt peace come to him, a dwindling away of his tensions. For the first time in years.

"You have an odd aura," Miss Stickyfoot said. "Sort of soft and woolly and purple. I approve of it. But I've never seen one like it before. Do you build model trains? It sort of looks like the kind of aura that someone who builds model trains would have."

"I can build almost anything," Cadbury said. "With my teeth, my hands, my words. Listen; this is for you." He then recited his four-line poem. Miss Stickyfoot listened intently.

"That poem," she decided, when he had finished, "has wu. 'Wu' is a Japanese term -- or is it Chinese? -- meaning you know what." She gestured irritably. "Simplicity. Like some of Paul Klee's drawings." But then she added, "It's not very good, though. Otherwise."

"I composed it," he explained testily, "while paddling down the creek after my tied-together snuff tins. It was strictly spur-of-the-moment stuff; I can do better seated in isolation in my locked study at my Hermes. If Hilda isn't banging at the door. You can discern why I hate her. Because of her sadistic intrusions the only time I have for creative work is while paddling or eating my lunch. That one aspect alone of my marital life explains why I had to break away from it and seek you out. In relationship to a person of your sort I could create on a totally new level entirely. I'd have blue chips coming out my ears.

In addition, I wouldn't have to spend myself into oblivion seeing Dr. Drat whom you correctly call a number one fud."

" 'Blue chips,' " Miss Stickyfoot echoed, screwing up her face with distaste. "Is that the level you mean? It seems to me you have the aspirations of a wholesale dried fruit dealer. Forget blue chips; don't leave your wife because of that: you're only carrying your old value-system with you. You've internalized what she's taught you, except that you're carrying it one step farther. Pursue a different course entirely and all will go well with you."

"Like Zen?" he asked.

"You only play with Zen. If you really understood it you never would have answered my note by coming here. There is no perfect person in the world, for you or anybody else. I can't make you feel any better than you do with your wife; you carry your troubles inside you."

"I agree with that up to a point," Cadbury agreed, up to a point. "But my wife makes them worse.

Maybe with you they wouldn't entirely go away, but they wouldn't be so bad.Nothing could be so bad as it is now. At least you wouldn't throw my Hermes typewriter out the window whenever you got mad at me, and in addition maybe you wouldn't get mad at me every goddam minute of the day and night, as she does. Had you thought about that? Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as the expression goes."

His reasoning did not seem to go unnoticed by Miss Stickyfoot; she nodded in what appeared to be at least partial agreement. "All right," she said after a pause, and her large dark attractive eyes gleamed with sudden light. "Let's make the effort. If you can abandon your obsessive chatter for a moment -- for perhaps the first time in your life -- I'll do with you and for you, which you could never have done by yourself, what needs to be done. All right? Shall I lay it on you?"

"You have begun to articulate oddly," Cadbury said, with a mixture of alarm, surprise -- and a growing awe. Miss Stickyfoot, before his eyes, had begun to change in a palpable fashion. What had, up to now, appeared to him the ultimate in beauty evolved as he gazed fixedly; beauty, as he had known it, anticipated it, imagined it, dissolved and was carried away into the rivers of oblivion, of the past, of the limitations of his own mind: it was replaced, now, by something further, something that surpassed it, which he could never have conjured up from his own imagination. It far exceeded that.

Miss Stickyfoot had become several persons, each of them bound to the nature of reality, pretty but not illusive, attractive but within the confines of actuality. And these people, he saw, meant much more, were much more, because they were not manifestations fulfilling his wishes, products of his own mind. One, a semi-Oriental girl with long, shiny, dark hair, gazed at him with impassive, bright, intelligent eyes that sparkled with calm awareness; the perception of him, within them, lucid and correct, unimpaired by sentiment or even kindness, mercy or compassion -- yet her eyes held one kind of love: justice, without aversion or repudiation of him, as conscious as she was of his imperfections. It was a comradely love, a sharing of her cerebral, analytical evaluation of himself and of her own self, and the bonded-togetherness of the two of them by their mutual failings.

The next girl, smiling with forgiveness and tolerance, unaware of him as falling short in any way -- nothing he was or was not or could do or fail to do would disappoint her or lower her esteem for him -- glowed and smouldered darkly, with a kind of warm, sad, and at the same time eternally cheerful happiness: this, his mother, his eternal, never-disappearing, never going-away or leaving or forgetting mother who would never withdraw her protection of him, her sheltering cloak that concealed him, warmed him, breathed hope and the flicker of new life into him when pain and defeat and loneliness chilled him into near-ashes. . . the first girl, his equal: his sister, perhaps; this girl his gentle, strong mother who was at the same time frail and afraid but not showing either.

And, with them, a peevish, pouting, irritable girl, immature, pretty in a marred way, with certain skin blemishes, wearing a too-frilly, too-satinish blouse, too-short skirt, with legs too thin; yet still attractive in an undeveloped way. She gazed at him with disappointment, as if he had let her down, had failed her, always would; and still she glared at him demandingly, still wanting more, still trying to call forth from him everything she needed and yearned for: the whole world, the sky, everything, but despising him because he could not give it to her. This, he realized, his future daughter, who would turn from him finally, as the two others would not, would desert him in resentful disappointment to seek fulfillment in another, younger man. He would have her only a short time. And he would never fully please her.

But all three loved him, and all three were his girls, his women, his wistful, hopeful, sad, frightened, trusting, suffering, laughing, sensual, protecting, warming, demanding female realities, his trinity of the objective world standing in opposition to him and at the same time completing him, adding to him what he was not and never would be, what he cherished and prized and respected and loved and needed more than anything else in existence. Miss Stickyfoot, as such, was gone. These three girls stood in her place. And they did not communicate to him remotely, across a break, by floating messages down Papermill Creek in empty snuff tins; they spoke directly, their intense eyes fixed on him unrelentingly, ceaselessly aware of him.

"I will live with you," the calm-eyed Asianish girl said. "As a neutral companion, off and on, as long as I'm alive and you're alive, which may not be forever. Life is transitory and often not worth being fucked over by. Sometimes I think the dead are better off. Maybe I'll join them today, maybe tomorrow.

Maybe I'll kill you, send you to join them, or take you with me. Want to come? You can pay the travel-expenses, at least if you want me to accompany you. Otherwise I'll go by myself and travel free on a military transport 707; I get a regular government rebate the rest of my life, which I put in a secret bank account for semi-legal investment purposes of an undisclosed nature for purposes you better God damn never find out if you know what's best for you." She paused, still eyeing him impassively. "Well?"

"What was the question?" Cadbury said, lost.

"I said," she said fiercely, with impatient dismissal of his low mental powers, "I'll live with you for an unspecified period, with uncertain ultimate outcome, if you'll pay enough, and especially -- and this is mandatory -- if you keep the house functioning efficiently -- you know, pay bills, clean up, shop, fix meals -- in such a way that I'm not bothered. So I can do my own things, which matter."

"Okay," he said eagerly.

"I'll never live with you," the sad-eyed, warm, smoky-haired girl said, plump and pliant in her cuddly leather jacket with its tassles, and her brown cord slacks and boots, carrying her rabbit-skin purse. "But I'll look in on you now and then on my way to work in the morning and see if you've got a joint you can lay on me, and if you don't, and you're down, I'll supercharge you -- but not right now.

Okay?" She smiled even more intensely, her lovely eyes rich with wisdom and the unstated complexity of herself and her love.

"Sure," he said. He wished for more, but knew that was all; she did not belong to him, did not exist for him: she was herself, and a product of and piece of the world.

"Rape," the third girl said, her over-red, too-lush lips twisting with malice, but at the same time twitching with amusement. "I'll never leave you, you dirty old man, because when I do, how the hell are you ever going to find anyone else willing to live with a child molester who's going to die of a coronary embolism or massive infarct any day now? After I'm gone it's all over for you, you dirty old man."

Suddenly, briefly, her eyes moisted over with grief and compassion -- but only briefly and then it was over. "That will be the only happiness you'll ever have. So I can't go; I have to stay with you and delay my own life, even if it's forever." She lost, then, by degrees, her animation; a kind of resigned, mechanical, inert blackness settled over her garish, immature, attractive features. "If I get a better offer, though," she said stonily, "I'll take it. I'll have to shop around and see. Check out the action downtown."

"The hell you say," Cadbury said, hotly, with resentment. And experienced already, a dreadful sense of loss, as if she had gone away even now, even this soon; it had already happened -- this, the worst thing possible in all his life.

"Now," all three girls said at once, briskly, "let's get down to the nitty-gritty. How many blue token chips do you have?"

"W-what?" Cadbury stammered, startled.

"That's the name of the game," the three girls chimed in unison, with bright-eyed asperity. All their combined faculties had been roused to existence by the topic; they were individually and collectively fully alert. "Let's see your checkbook. What's your balance?"

"What's your Gross Annual Product?" the Asian girl said. "I would never rip you off," the warm sentimental, patient, cherishing girl said, "but could you lend me two blue chips? I know you've got hundreds, an important and famous beaver like you."

"Go get some and buy me two quarts of chocolate milk and a carton of various assorted donuts and a Coke at the Speedy Mart," the peevish girl said. "Can I borrow your Porsche?" the cherishing girl asked. "If I put gas in it?"

"But you can't drive mine," the Asian girl said. "It'd increase the cost of my insurance, which my mother pays."

"Teach me how to drive," the peevish girl said, "so I can get one of my boyfriends to take me to the motor movies tomorrow night; it's only two bucks a carload. They're showing five skinflicks, and we can get a couple of dudes and a chick into the trunk."

"Better entrust your blue chips to my keeping," the cherishing girl said. "These other chicks'll rip you off."

"Fuck you," the peevish girl said roughly.

"If you listen to her or give her one single blue chip," the Asian girl said fiercely, "I'll tear out your fucking heart and eat it alive. And that low-class one, she's got the clap; if you sleep with her you'll be sterile the rest of your life."

"I don't have any blue chips," Cadbury said anxiously, fearing that, knowing this, all three girls would depart. "But I --"

"Sell your Hermes Rocket typewriter," the Asian girl said.

"I'll sell it for you," the cherishing, protective girl said in her gentle voice. "And give you --" She calculated, painstakingly, slowly, with effort. "I'll split it with you. Fairly. I'd never burn you." She smiled at him, and he knew it was true.

"My mother owns an electric IBM space-expander, ball-type office model," the peevish girl said haughtily, with near-contempt. "I'd get myself one and learn to type and get a good job, except that I get more by staying on welfare."

"Later in the year --" Cadbury began desperately.

"We'll see you later," the three girls who had formerly been Miss Stickyfoot, said. "Or you can mail the blue chips to us. Okay?" They began to recede, collectively; they wavered and became insubstantial. Or -- Was it Cadbury himself, the Beaver Who Lacked, who was becoming insubstantial? He had a sudden, despairing intuition that it was the latter.He was fading out; they remained. And yet that was good.

He could survive that. He could survive his own disappearance. But not theirs.

Already, in the short time he had known them, they meant more to him than he did to himself.

And that was a relief.

Whether he had any blue chips for them or not -- and that seemed to be what mattered to them -- they would survive. If they could not coax, rip-off, borrow, or anyhow in one fashion or another get blue chips from him, they'd get them from somebody else. Or else go along happily anyhow without them. They did not really need them; theyliked them. They could survive with or without them. But they, frankly, were not really interested in survival. They wanted to be, intended to be, and knew how to be, genuinely happy. They would not settle for mere survival; they wanted to live.

"I hope I see you again," Cadbury said. "Or rather, I hope you see me again. I mean, I hope I reappear, at least briefly, from time to time, in your lives. Just so I can see how you're doing."

"Stop scheming on us," all three said in unison, as Cadbury became virtually nonexistent; all that remained of him, now, was a wisp of gray smoke, lingering plaintively in the half-exhausted air that had once offered to sustain him.

"You'll be back," the cherishing, plump, leather-clad, warm-eyed girl said, with certitude, as if she knew instinctively that there could be no doubt. "We'll see you."

"I hope so," Cadbury said, but now even the sound of his gone-off voice had become faint; it flickered like a fading audio signal from some distant star that had, long ago, cooled into ash and darkness and inertness and silence.

"Let's go to the beach," the Asian girl said as the three of them strolled away, confident and assured and substantial and alive to the activity of the day. And off they went.

Cadbury -- or at least the ions that remained of him as a sort of vapor trail marking his one-time passage through life and out -- wondered if there were, at their beach, any nice trees to gnaw. And where their beach was. And if it was nice. And if it had a name.

Pausing briefly, glancing back, the compassionate, cherishing plump girl in leather and soft tassles said, "Would you like to come along? We could take you for a little while, maybe this one time. But not again. You know how it is."