Our landlady must have known how involved we were, because she wasnt around much. For that matter, neither was Anna, whom we didn't see at all after she delivered the boxes of France memorabilia. She had told me to call her if I needed her, but I didn't.

Between the reading, writing, the rain, and fooling around with Saxony (she said that bad weather made her feel sexy, and so our sex life got better and better), the days were full and passed like an express. Before I knew it, I had finished The House at Pooh Corner, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The King of the Golden River, and the first draft of my chapter. It had taken a little over two weeks. We celebrated that evening with Shake 'n Bake chicken, a bottle of Mateus rosй, and my father's Train Through Germany on television, which was one of his better flicks.

The next day I woke up and felt so good that I leaped out of bed and did twenty push-ups on the floor. For the first time in a very long time, I didn't need a map to see where I was going. It was damned nice.

After my push-ups I sneaked over to the desk and flicked on the little Tensor lamp that I'd bought at Wade's Hardware Store in town. There were the pages. My pages! I knew that I would end up rewriting them a dozen times, but that didn't matter. I was doing exactly what I wanted with whom I wanted, and maybe, just maybe, Anna France would actually like them and… I didn't want to think about that part yet. I would do it first and see.

I heard sniffing sounds from the other side of the door. It creaked open and Nails came in. He jumped up on the bed and lay down. He usually joined us now for his last forty winks before getting up for good in the morning. Mrs. Fletcher had a nice old battered love seat for him out in the hallway, but since we had arrived he'd taken to spending more and more time with us, both day and night. One night we were just about to make love when he jumped up and ran his freezing nose up my bare leg. I banged my head on the side of the bed and lost my erection somewhere between fury and laughter.

I looked over my shoulder and saw that he had once again perched on Saxony's chest. She was smiling and trying to push him off, but he wasn't having any of it. He made no attempt to move. He closed his eyes. Out to lunch. I walked over from the desk to the bed.

"Beauty and the Beast, huh?" I patted his head. "Hi, Beautiful."

"Very funny. Don't just stand there like that. He's crushing me!"

"Maybe he's a sex maniac and is really giving you some kind of nasty dog caress."

"Thomas, will you please just get him off me? Thank you."

After he had been shifted-wrestled over to my side of the bed (his head right on my pillow, no less), Saxony locked her hands behind her neck and looked at me. "Do you know what I've been thinking?"

"No, Petunia, what have you been thinking?"

"That after you finish this book you should do a biography of your father."

"My father? Why would I want to do a book about him?"

"I just think that you should." Her gaze shifted away from me up to the ceiling.

"That ain't no reason."

Her eyes slid back to mine. "Do you really want me to tell you?"

"Yes, of course I do. You've never said anything about this before."

"I know, but I've been thinking recently about how important he is in your life, whether you know it or not. Look, do you realize how often you talk about him?" She held up her hand to stop me from saying anything. "I know, I know – he drove you crazy and most of the time he wasn't even around. Okay. But he's in you, Thomas. More so than any kid-parent relationship that I've ever known. Whether you like it or not, he's staked out a big part in your guts, and I think it would be very important for you to sit down sometime soon and just write about him. It doesn't matter if it turns out to be an actual biography or just your memoirs…

I perched on the edge of the bed with my back to her. "But what good would it do?"

"Well, I never understood a lot of things about my mother, you know? I've already told you about her."

"Yes, you said that she could make anyone feel guilty about anything."

"That's right. But then one day my father told me that her mother had committed suicide. Do you know how many things became clear to me after that? How much made sense? I didn't actually like her that much more, but I suddenly saw a different person."

"And you think that if I find out about my father's life, then it'll make my relationship with him clearer to me?"

"Maybe, maybe not." She reached around and put her hand on my leg. "I do think, though, there's too much unresolved stuff that has ended up making you love and hate him at the same time. Maybe if you really dug into who he was, it would clear the runway for you. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes, I guess so. I don't know, Sax. I don't really want to think about it now. There's too much else that has to be done these days."

"Okay. I'm not telling you to drop everything and do it this minute, Thomas. Don't take it the wrong way. I just think that you should consider it."

"I will. Sure."

Nails shoved his nose into her neck, and that got her up and out of bed fast. I was glad that the conversation ended there.

The sun was out, and after breakfast we decided to take a walk into town. It was still early, and everything glistened like wet glass from the dew and the leftover rain. By now we more or less knew a few people – store owners and others – who waved when they drove by. That was another pleasant thing about living in a small town: there weren't enough of you around so that you could afford to ignore anyone. You might have to buy a cabbage from one of them or have him work on your car that afternoon.

When we got to the library, my friend "I told you so" was walking toward us on the other side of the street. I assumed that she was about to open the library. "There you are! The hermit. Wait there a minute. Let me cross." She looked so carefully both ways, you would have thought that she was crossing the San Diego Freeway. A Toyota puttered by, driven by a woman I had often seen in town but didn't really know. But she waved too.

"I've got some more books for you, Mr. Abbey. Are you ready for them?" The rosy rouge on her cheeks made me very sad for some reason.

"Thomas hasn't finished The Wind in the Willows yet, Mrs. Ameden. As soon as he does, I'll bring the whole bunch back to you and pick up the new ones."

"The Wind in the Willows was never one of my favorites. How can you have a hero who is a greasy little frog?"

I cracked up. She looked at me sternly and shook her blue-gray head. "Well, it's the truth! Frogs, little creatures with hair on the tops of their feet like the hobbit…. Do you know what Marshall used to say about that? 'The worst thing that can happen to a man in a fairy tale is to be turned into an animal. But the greatest reward for an animal in one is to be turned into a man.' Those are my sentiments exactly.

"Anyway, don't get me going on that subject. How is your book going?"

The more we talked with her, the more it seemed that everyone knew everything about everyone in that town: the librarian knew about the test chapter, how much information on France his daughter had given us, and the one-month deadline. But why? Sure, like Anna, the townspeople had a kind of claim on France, since he had spent so much of his life among them, but did Anna tell them everything because of that, or was there some other, more cloudy reason?

A picture flashed across my mind – Anna, naked and tied with leather straps to a bar in someone's basement playroom, being whipped again and again with a bullwhip until she told all of the deadpan Galen faces around her what they wanted to know about Saxony and me.

"Did you give him the train-station postcards too?"