FORCED TO BE BAD

 After that I lost eye contact with Marcie.  The party assumed a trajectory that was pointedly independent of me and when we got back to the house I found an opportunity to speak to Aunty Lindsay and thank her for the nice day.
 "Leaving already?" she said.  "You mustn't mind Her Majesty.  She never notices what other people do."
 I thanked her anyway, took a cab to the local station and got a train into London.  By the time I arrived it was dark.  I got something to eat and lingered over the wine.  Went out and stood at a bar for a while.
 So things looked bad.
 My own infidelities had been casual and meaningless, fuel for my fantasies and therefore practical for our union.  But this thing of Marcie's was final.  A merger of families.  The Queen was against me.  England was against me.  The anglosaxon capacity for embarrassment was against me.
 I didn't even want to think about it.
 There was nothing to do now but get drunk, try to recall my innate nobility.  Pass judgement on my mentors.
 I mean it's important to be wrong, right?  Make mistakes.  Your decision to be born was a mistake.  Don't stop now.
 In this wise I consoled myself toward oblivion and the next thing I knew a driver was lifting me from his cab and carrying me up to the door.  The butler opened, I forget what his name was, and I watched him recede into a low distance as I was lugged up more stairs.  We paused before a door with light under it and I was placed on my feet where, steadied by hands on my shoulders, I counted out money.
 "Here," I said, "is this enough?  Take some more."
 The door opened, I was propelled into a room and it closed behind me.  Dr. Lu in glasses looked up at me from her book.  She was in bed, the covers folded down from her little Chinese tits.
 I struggled with my footing for a moment and, on a spread stance, torso swivelled from the median, said, "How's your ass?"
 "Better, thanks.  It's had enough of country life for the moment.  How did you find me?"
 "Not bad.  A little skinny."
 "No, how did you locate me?  The room."
 "Oh.  The cabby.  He was polite enough not to abandon me on the sidewalk."
 "Smart-ass."
 "You are not," I said, opening my coat, "unright."  I let it fall and struggled with my belt.  "My brains must be somewhere."
 I saw no choice but to disrobe.  Display my vulnerability.  My irresistibility.  When life isn't working the best you can do is turn yourself over to a woman.  I stumbled when I got to the shoes.
 "You shouldn't drink," she said.
 "You shouldn't say that."
 "You don't want to hear the truth?"
 I shook my head.  "Too easy.  Too obvious.  Too wrong."  I crawled into bed.
 "Do you want to have sex with me?" she said.
 "Are you inviting me or asking me to discuss myself?"
 "Well, I am raising the subject, if nothing else."  She glanced at my guy.
 "Fear not," I said.
 "You've had a discouraging day.  Maybe you're not in the mood."
 "I think I can manage."
 "Why bother? I mean, why me?"
 "Why.  Surely you are not satisfied with mere reasons."  I removed her glasses and embraced her.  She was tiny.  Long but tiny.
 "Are you happy?" she said.
 "Suddenly, yes."
 "You look happy."
 "How do I look when I'm happy?"
 "A little ridiculous.  I think you need me."
 "I need what I want but I don't want what I need, if you can follow that."
 "I'm all you've got.  Michael's closing in."
 I drew her close, the better to inspect her popo.  "Does it hurt?" I said, touching it.
 "I like the pain.  Did you notice he was holding her hand when they found us?"
 I subjected her front half to inspection.  "There's only so much room in my closet," I said.  "If I went around noticing everything I'd have to go to bed earlier."  I caressed her milk paps.
 "Is it working?" she said.  She aroused anxiety and resolved it all at once.  Sorted you out and you found yourself mobilized.  Entering her was a new incarnation.  Irony fell from me.  She was tiny, tiny, tiny.
 "Got any virginity left?" I said.
 "I wouldn't want to go through that again."
 But she pretended to.  There was a streak of masochism in her and either she found me just too big, which, what shall I say, or she was in pursuit of some consuming submission.  Her other self emerged, her carnal self.  She wanted only to be used.
 Of course I was superb.  I bestowed upon her that blessing, that intensest attention and let her writhe on it.  What the hell, you don't live every day.  And in that hour when men forget their mothers--but let's not open that up.
 Afterwards I lay there with no more relation to the events of the day than one's thoughts when hungry to one's thoughts after a meal.  My slate, wiped.
 "You're quite a man," she whispered.
 "Am I not wonderful?"
 "And to think you had your orgasm in me!"  I glanced at this, but before I could arm myself she said, "You'd better go.  The servants."
 I don't think I could have cared less about the servants if I had made an effort, which I could not.  By sheer force of will I could not have cupped my ear to hear the word repeated.  However I was drunk enough to allow myself to be rolled out of bed where on all fours I gathered up my garments, after which I went out with them held to myself in a bundle.
 In my room I hung my underpants on the knob so I could spread my suit out on the furniture but before I could turn away the underpants fell off.  I picked them up and hung them on the knob.  They fell off.  I picked them up and wrapped them around the knob.  "Stay there," I said.  They fell off.  I was in hell.  I would spend the rest of eternity trying to get my underpants to hang on the knob.
 Then I realized.  "Bugger off," I said.
 "Well, I'd love to!" said a disembodied voice.
 "Oliphant," I added, sadistically.
 He materialized, or whatever.  Became visible.
 "What a jerk-off name!" I said.  "No wonder nobody wants  you!"
 He looked cast down.  Ready to wail.  But he controlled himself.  "You're easily amused," he said.
 "Handy frame of mind in my work."  I spread my suit out on the chairs, the better to convey to the servitor that I wished the press to be preserved.
 "You don't have any work.  You are being, if I may use the phrase, laid off."
 "Well, so much for our future together," I said.  I placed my shoes outside the door, closed it, got in bed.
 "Tobias, I love you," he said.
 "Tough shit.  We can't live on love.  You can't live on anything, sewer gas."
 "Can I get in with you?"
 "No."
 He stood there.
 "You are displaying a neurotic attachment to the physical plane, Oliphant.  I am on the physical plane.  I am the fucking physical plane.  You are not."
 He knelt by the bed.  "Then help me.  Help me, I love you.  I can live on love if you can't."
 "I fear for you, Oliphant.  My soul is lost and yours is in my hands."
 "Help me!  Absolve me!  Cure me, I never wanted to be like this!"
 I placed my hands behind my head.  "Well, Oliphant, only by facing the truth unflinchingly can we hope to effect any satisfactory resolution.  I mean you are an asshole."
 He buried his face between his forearms.
 "Suggest to yourself that you deserve to go to heaven.  You have committed perverse and unnatural acts, yes, but you've done nothing that can't ultimately be forgiven.  It's just a matter of waiting.  Wait, Oliphant.  You must wait.  I think  I've done all I can for you now, Oliphant, would you mind just switching yourself off?"  And so saying I turned out the light.
 He faded on the darkness like a movie ghost, his hands outstretched to me.  "Toby!" he called in the echo chamber of eternity.  "Toby!"
 Miscreant.
 I lay there in the dark.  I was talking to ghosts, talking to ghosts, talking to ghosts.  Cracking up, cracking up, cracking up.  A drunken dreamer.
 Maybe I was the one who was addicted to the physical plane, was that it?  Was sex screwing me up?  How imposed upon was one supposed to be by it, anyway?  Such thoughts of course are more easily entertained post orgasmum.
 And then, perfect indulgence, indulgence of every possible whim would involve one in scenarios too strenuous to contemplate.  The same goes for ideas, I'm very impressionable.  My spirit has to enter into everything and wrestle.  I wish they'd all just fuck off.
 Oh well, one is in the world, I suppose.
 The sound of cats courting in the street somehow induced in me the reflection that things are exactly what they are and have no implication.  It was a nice clean feeling.  It would last for another moment and then melt into complexity.
 My dreams were frightening in their banality, random and dull situations.
 I went home--home?--having just been dropped off by Marcie and Marcie was there, greeted me with a kiss, went on with what she was doing.  I understood immediately that she was dead and this was her ghost.  "You know that I love you," I said, afraid for her that she'd notice she was a ghost.  "I haven't always been honest with you."  I followed her around in the kitchen saying these things.  She was profoundly puzzled.
 I rolled in my sleep.  This was what happened when I didn't take something for my stomach after all that wine.
 Now I was naked, face-up on top of a tottering tower of tables.  A giant woman, a giant Dr. Lu bent over me, put her mouth over my erection, picked me up by it and set me down howling.  You know how you can howl in your sleep without vocalizing.  Something hopeless happens in the chest.
 I emerged into the twilight state of relief that it was only a dream and lay there with my pal in Marcie's mouth.  She had come back, she had got into bed with me and was initiating our reunion.  Here was the joke, the wrestle, the cavort that would knit us back together.  Her mildness is a deep wisdom.
 I stroked her head and woke up to Oliphant, bobbing all over it with his eyes lit up like a dashboard dog.  "What the fuck are you doing?" I shouted for real.
 "Sixty-eighting you," he said.  "I go down on you and you owe me one."
 Marcie said, "I'm packing, Toby.  I just think we should end it.  It has to end some time."
 She was there.  In the room.  Dressed.  Standing over the bed.  Oliphant was gone.
 "Hi," I said.
 "Don't try to argue."
 I had opened the conversation by screaming.  I mean I was half-asleep, I hadn't brushed my teeth, I hadn't washed, I hadn't given myself the morning facial, God knows what my hair looked like, I was entirely at a disadvantage.
 "I'm not," I said.
 She packed angrily.
 "Where are you going?" I said.
 "Down the hall."
 "You're moving in with Michael?"
 "No!"  This with outrage.  After a while, "I just don't think we should be together any more.  You can stay till you--" She let it go and went on packing.
 I watched her.
 She hefted her bag off the bed and dragged it to the door.
 "Hey, Marce?" I said.
 "What?"
 "Nothing."
 "What?"
 I waited.  "A fly bit her."
 "Yah, a big giant fly!"
 We looked at each other.
 There was a knock and Michael poked his head in.  I made no move to cover myself.
 "Ready?" he smiled.
 "I guess so," she said.
 "She's so fragile in bed, don't you find?" he asked me.
 She forgot herself and said, "He's the fragile one."  Then her smile faded.  She glanced at my dishabille.  "Toby was just getting up," she explained.
 "Sleep, eat.  You're an easy man to please, aren't you?"
 "You're the kind of man who goes around telling people what kind of people they are, aren't you?"
 "Has he been giving you any trouble?" he asked Marcie.
 She dragged her bag out past him.  "Bye, Toby."
 "See to it you don't," he told me, lingering menacingly.  He came and stood over me till I began to fear for my dignity.  "I'm sure we can count on you to take this lying down."
 "I'm a boxer," I said, "I'm not allowed to hit anybody."
 "You'll be clearing out soon."  He went out and closed the door.
 Inwardly I was torn to scraps by the ironies but I managed to shout, "Fuckin kill you to death!"

 HOW I AM TRADUCED BY THE CHILD

 I threw myself on my pillow and wallowed in my plight.  It was time to consider other career opportunities.
 "Marcie," I should have said, pointing at the ceiling, "I forbid it!"  Now where was I?
 I pulled the covers up over my head and lay there fetal, staring into the darkness.  Who would feed me?  I couldn't stay here indefinitely.  There was Lady McGeorge of course but, no.  No no.
 Besides, my heart was broken.  Even I could see that.  She liked him better.
 I actually felt the tears beginning to come when I heard the child in the room.  It has a way all its own of creaking the floorboards and not speaking.
 I uncovered my face and regarded it.  "I want to rest now," I said.
 "Mommy's going away with Lord Michael."
 "Don't talk baby talk," I said.  "You are fooling no one."  I raised my head.  "You could stop this."
 "Dr. Lu wants to see you."
 "Later, tell her."
 "She says now.  She's down in the cellar."
 "What does she want?"
 "She wants to see you."
 "Why?"
 "Because."
 "Tell me, Andrea!"
 It shook its head.
 "Tell me please, Andrea, or--"
 "Or what?"
 "Or I'll hurt your cat."
 "You can't get him."  It stood there.  "You better get up and see what you can do about getting Mommy back or your vacation's over."
 "Vocation," I said.
 The child's power was absolute.  I was stuck with whatever shape it gave me.
 It waited in the hall while I tied on my robe, and again while I splashed my face and gargled with tap water.  Then I followed it off on another trip through the looking glass, down the back stairs through the kitchen and down again to the basement.  We passed an apartment where the butler lived and took stairs down to another level.  Bare concrete, stacked furniture, boxes.  More stairs.  We went down to another storeroom full of musty junk and there was a door and another staircase.
 "It's way way down," the child explained.
 Damp depths.  We must have been getting down near the river.  There would be outmoded sewer systems.  London had had horse-drawn subways in the nineteenth century.  I had the feeling I was following my roots down into the past.
 When this was a Roman camp the houses were built over pits full of live coals that kept the whole floor warm.  The Romans knew how to live in this climate.  That was the last time the Brits had had central heating till they became a suburb of New York.
 And now here I was, vast vulgar America traipsing down past the sacred oaks, the tree-worshippers.
 "Where the hell are we going?" I said.
 The child took a plug of candle from a niche, lit it and led me down stone steps under a crudely-paved vault.  I was beginning to wish I had something on my feet.
 "In there."  It pointed at a thick iron-strapped door that stood open on a darkness framed by an arch.  The child stood back for me to pass.
 "I'm not going in there!" I said.
 "Come in, Mr. Tucker," said Dr. Lu's voice.  It sort of echoed.
 I leaned inside and saw her in a candlelit area by a rock-face wall.  She was wearing a white raincoat and riding boots and arranging some kind of equipment in a suitcase.  I moved inside for a better look, which involved a deep step down from the threshold, and when I took it the door slammed shut behind me.  A dull, heavy slam.  Permanent.
 "Don't worry," said Dr. Lu, taking off her raincoat.  "I have the key."  She was wearing a leather bikini, and the boots.
 Hugging myself with my hands in the pockets of my robe I crept closer.
 "Don't be afraid," she said.
 Manacles hung from a rotted beam in the ceiling.  She sorted things I couldn't see in the suitcase.
 "What did you want to see me about?" I said.
 "Take off your robe."
 Well, what the hell.  Nothing to hide.  I had to admit to being intrigued.  I undraped and let her look her fill.
 "Put your hands in these," she said, rattling the manacles.  Out of a more or less prurient curiosity I complied and she snapped them shut on my wrists.  For antiques they had an efficient grip.  I now stood with my arms out wide and angled upward while she busied herself about my person, fastening one of my ankles with a leg iron.  "Spread a little wider."  Then she did the other.
 "Our relationship is advancing by strides," I said.  "Are we ready for this?"
 She went to a crank the size of a train wheel and, turning it with a heavy creak, shortened the chains with such violence that I was jerked spread-X into mid-air and hovered wobbling with the motion, feeling the upward tug of the testicles.  And I was afraid.  I might have regained some sort of composure and enjoyed the, well, the display of one's whatever, but she now took from the suitcase a longish whip and cracked it on the floor.
 I went rigid.  "What are you going to do?" I asked.
 She walked around behind me, let the whip play out wide and whacked me across the ass with it.
 "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" I said.  "WHAT THE FUCK?"
 "Don't worry," she said, "I'm a qualified therapist."
 She hit me again and I screamed asyllabically.  I mean don't let anybody tell you it doesn't hurt.  It hurts!  "STOP THIS!" I commanded.
 "You will disappear," she said, "and become your body."
 WHACK!  I mean I screamed!  Uselessly.  We were sealed away from the world.
 "I am your God," she said.  "I take upon myself that terrible responsibility."
 WHACK!
 I hauled angrily at the chains.  Iron.
 "You exist because I hold you in mind.  Each part of you exists because I see it.  Because I punish you."
 WHACK!
 "This can only happen while I punish you."
 WHACK!
 "While I bear this burden."
 WHACK!
 "During these moments you are free to adore me."
 WHACK!
 I was now sobbing vocally.  "PLEASE stop this!" I begged.
 "This is your therapy, Mr. Tucker."
  WHACK!
 "Your psychodrama."
 WHACK!
 "Admit that what you want is to be a beautiful woman."
 "I ADMIT IT!  I ADMIT IT!"
 WHACK!
 "A naked beautiful woman being whipped."
 WHACK!
 "OK!"
 "To be a beautiful woman is to be ultimate value."
 "YES!"
 WHACK!
 "The imagery of orgasm is arbitrary, Mr. Tucker.  You may ejaculate if you wish."
 WHACK!
 Well, I just hung there and waited.  I couldn't feel it any more.
 WHACK!
 Much.
 She dropped the whip and came around and faced me.  Lifted my limp soldier on a fingertip.  "You haven't achieved release," she said.  "We'll try again later."  And she walked away.
 "You're not leaving me here!" I shrieked.
 "Your need for me is touching, Mr. Tucker."  She took out a large black key and turned it in the lock.  "Meditate on it."  She went out and slammed the door.

 WHO WILL HELP ME?

 I hovered, stretched by my chains, shaken by sobs.  She was a crazy-bitch, I should have known.  So many psychiatrists are.  I was in the hands of a crazy-bitch!
 A strange peace stole over me.  An ultimate sort of, I don't know.  What was there left to lose?  It was the moment of accepting life.
 The atmosphere began to thicken and Oliphant manifested.
 "Oliphant!" I cried.  "Get me out of this!"
 He stood there looking me over.  "Well, I don't know.  Are you sure you're not enjoying it?"
 "Oliphant!" I raged.
 "What'll you gimme?"
 I began to weep again.
 "It's a shame to waste it," he said, stroking the hollows between my torso and my thighs.
 "Oliphant, will you please fuck off?"
 However my erectile tissue stirred and gave him what justification he required.  "Upon my honor!" he said, remarking it, and applied his mouth to my manhood.
 So, what the hell.  If it's happening go with it, I guess, I don't know.  I jerked.  Twitched.  Extended.  Twisted.  Begged for mercy.  And finally just expressed.  It wasn't my fault.
 This, then, was the moment of accepting life.
 "Isn't that better?" he said, licking his lips as one who has just eaten.
 "Oliphant, I am damp, freezing, in pain, hanging from chains and covered with cuts.  Could you possibly do something?"
 He went to the crank.  "How do you feel?" he said, turning it.
 "Like a jerk."
 "You're certainly getting the treatment around here.  Qualified therapist!  Just for your elimination she's a hooker from Singapore.  Michael picked her up, or rather she picked him up.  They have these buzzers under the mattress in case the guy gets rough.  She hit it accidentally and two bouncers came in and grabbed Michael.  He could have done two years--bit hard to explain to the folks at home--but she got him out.  On condition.  She's doing very nicely but of course they need the money."
 By now I had regained my feet.  He unsnapped the manacles like someone who's been there.
 "How do you know this?" I said.

 "One peeks in."
 I picked up my robe and put in on.  "Can you open the door?"
 "It's not locked."
 I went out and felt my way up the steps.  I could have gone back for a candle but my anger propelled me up into the darkness.
 "Feel used?" he said, somehow beside me.  "Don't take it so hard.  You have to close your eyes to get born, and as soon as you close your eyes you're a fool."
 My confrontation awaited me.  My day in court.  I moved through him as through foliage, brushing him aside.
 "Kat Sin Wing," he said.  "Watch out for that step."
 They were at lunch in the diningroom.  Marcie, Michael, Haze, the child, Lady McGeorge and Dr. Lu, dressed in a prim little suit.  She looked up in horror as I burst in begowned like someone from the wilds of sleep.  Of course this would mean unmasking her, sending her back to the I-have-eight-brothers-and-sisters routine.  We worked different sides of the street, was what it came to.  It gave me pause.  But nobility has its limits.  I pointed out straight at her.  "That is Kat Sin Wing!" I told Marcie.  "Michael met her in a Singapore whore house!  She was hired to seduce me so Michael could get cozy with you!"
 Marcie looked confused, troubled, pained.  I had the impotent feeling she was more embarrassed by my outburst, by my very presence, than impressed by my urgency.
 "They locked me up in the cellar!" I insisted.
 "Oh, Michael, really!" his sister said.
 "Yes, but it worked, didn't it," he told her; and to me, "You did sleep with Dr.--uh, Kat Sin."
 There was a pause.  Everyone looked at Kat Sin, who I guess was wondering where I got my information.  She recovered herself however to affect a decorously violated modesty.  "I don't suppose we can deny it," she said.
 "That was an entire error!" I shouted at Marcie's hurt eyes.  "She whipped me!" I bared my back at them to display the welts.
 There was some ahemming and female eyes were averted.
 Haze slapped down his napkin and stood up.  "The engagement announcement will be published tomorrow," he told the others.  "There is nothing here to prevent that."  He turned to me.  "We have no further need of you.  You may go."

 CORRUPTIO AND ABSURDUM

 I went up to my room and lay down and looked at the ceiling.  The welts hurt but I just lay there.
 Haze opened the door and leaned in.  "Pack," he said.  "The cab's downstairs and you're still picking the shit out of your ass!"
 I assembled my things under his watchful eye and shortly was standing on the sidewalk with my matched luggage.  I didn't see any cab.
 Oliphant stood beside me.  "I'm going with you, Toby."
 "Go away now, Oliphant."
 "We don't have to do anything.  I just need a friend."
 I stood there and bore this.
 Kat Sin came down behind me, negotiating the steps in stiletto heels.
 "What do you get out of this?" I said.
 A taxi came up and she signalled it.  "Come on," she said, "I'll put you up till you find something."
 We drove across the river through a neighborhood crowded with People Of Other Lands.  Making A New Start sort of thing, it was inspiring.
 Her apartment was a low-ceiling box, largely unfurnished, whether out of an Oriental minimalism or abject poverty was a question one could suspend.  We arranged my luggage as table and chairs and sat to contemplate the future.
 "Is he going to settle something on you?" I was beginning to see daylight.
 Well, I moved in.  It wasn't much but it was better than sleeping in the park.  Turning oneself over to the embassy.  Repatriation.  Collection agents.  Welfare-check lineups, I couldn't go through all that again.
 Of course cultivating worthlessness isn't as much fun when you don't have the bread, but I had my memories.  Marcie.  I cannot tell you the extraordinary sense of leisure that accompanied everything we did.  Days in bed together.  Picnics there.  When I belched she said gesundheit.  Once I tried to pick something off her face and she said, "Toby, that lives there!"  Her presence in my life was the only thing that redeemed me from entire squalor.  I would have to live lifetimes, lifetimes to expiate hurting her.
 We read in the paper about the engagement, the festivities, the families.  Kat Sin would order in pizza--it was pizza now.  No more four-course meals topped off with some juicy brie.  We'd sit on my suitcases eating it and Oliphant would watch.  "It looks like very leguminous pizza," he'd say.  I never knew what the fuck he was talking about.
 Of course in exchange for this sustenance I had to stand still for a whipping.  The shoe was on the other foot now for Kat Sin, and I did the putting out.  Every night before bed I'd get naked, get into the straps.
 It was like the descent of a movie star to the point where he's acting in in-flight shorts.  In the event that the cabin is depressurized the oxygen mask will drop automatically.  Extinguish all smoking materials--

 IT'S ALL JUST EVERYTHING

 I don't know, I was bored.  There was nothing to do but hit the cockroaches with the shoe.  Gives you a sense of your own mortality.  Not only do you have to hold your ground against them but they are so much like you.  Treachery, panic.  Their inevitable deaths.  One punishes them for even existing.
 Once in a while the child would stop by and take me to lunch, buy me a decent meal.  It was in and out of London and had of course its own amusement to consider.  On these occasions I would try to borrow money from it.  "I will give you my personal note," I assured it, but the child was of another mind.
 There are moments when I do not entirely abhor the child, as when it expresses some disdain of my own, chews with lumps in its cheeks when the band is playing bad jazz.  It hands me a fork holding it by the tines and, conscious of my disgust, smiles.  I almost admire it.
 "You have the same clothes you had on the other day," it said.  "Do you take marriage seriously?"
 "Yes," I said.  "That's why I never go near it."
 "I don't think Michael takes it seriously."
 "A loathesome personage," I observed.  "Kind of fellow who consults nothing but his own comfort."
 The child was silent.  We were sitting in San Lorenzo, a chichi Italian place in Beauchamps Street.  The child, Oliphant and me.  He just wouldn't take the hint.
 I gave him a look however and he popped off.
 The child paid with its Gold Card, and when the waiter came with the slip the child's "Excuse me" brought him back.  "I'm Andrea Harding," it said.  "This is for Marcie Harding."  I was having seconds of dessert and bit the fork sideways.
 The waiter begged forgiveness and went upstairs for the right slip, and when I looked around there was Marcie.
 I stood up.  "Hi," I said.
 "Hi."
 We looked at each other.
 "I knew I didn't order all that food," she said.
 "They put chopped nuts on the mousse!" I said.  "Who puts chopped nuts on strawberry mousse?"
 She didn't seem to know.
 "Would you like to sit down?" I said.
 "Is it OK?"
 I placed a chair for her and we sat.  The child watched.
 "How are you?" said Marcie.
 "Great.  You?"
 "I'm fine.  I guess.  Except I'm not getting married.  But that's OK because I don't want to.  Not to Michael anyway.  Oh, Toby, I don't even love him, I just love you!"  She wept.
 Marcie.  The ever-new.
 But, "Yah, I know how you feel," I said.  I mean I wasn't just going to fall over!
 She sniffed back her tears.  "I just did all that to make you jealous," she said.
 I took her hand and held it to my cheek.  "It worked."
 "Yah?"
 "Yah."
 We nuzzled.
 "Toby, I just think you were really kind and stuff about that, and I won't ever do it again."
 "OK," I said.
 Our cheeks caressed each other.  I was back at the cuddle center.  Cats, babies.  Me.
 "Toby," she said, drawing away a little, "am I vulgar?"
 To what brutalities had that scumjaw subjected my darling among darlings?
 "No!" I said.
 "Really?"
 "Really!"
 She wouldn't buy it.  "Why not?"
 I shrugged.  "It depends what you think vulgarity is."
 "Oscar Wilde said vulgarity is the behavior of other people," said the child.
 "There, you see?" I said, bringing my cheek to Marcie's.  "You're not other people."
 She hugged me.
 "So what do you want to do?" she said.
 "I don't know."
 We got up and prepared to meander, Marcie, the child and  me.
 Oliphant fell into step beside us.  "I did that," he said.  "I got the bills confused.  I knew you wanted it."
 I let the women walk a little ahead.
 "It's too bad," he said.  "You'd have made a great gay."
 "Well, there's only so much time.  Try and make contact," I advised him.  "You've got to know how to talk to women.  Put in a good word for me up there.  Tell them I'm doing my best.  Fuck they care.  Tell them we want more beautiful women down here.  And more of them.  Hah hah."
 I had done all I could for this person.  Look into the mirror and scream sort of thing.
 "I'll miss you," he said, stopping.
 I put my hand on Marcie's behind, the cleft truth, the substance of all symbols, and guided her toward the exit.  "See you when," I told him.
 I don't know, he must have got off to the next level, I never heard from him again.  Maybe his wife forgave him.  A few centuries of anger, we all know that.
 To Kat Sin I made the briefest excuses.  When I met you you were a whore, now you're a lady and I'm bored sort of thing.  Got my bags and left.
 Haze bought the house, so Lady McGeorge and Michael are OK for the moment.  Let them get jobs!
 And oh yah, Haze didn't die.  Yet.  There's still time.
 When he goes I'll marry Marcie and insinuate myself onto the seat of empire, run things.  Meanwhile I content myself with this.

 THE END

Will You Please Fuck Off Part 1

Will You Please Fuck Off Part 2

Will You Please Fuck Off Part 3