She spent so much time choosing what to wear that she put off buying any refreshments until it was almost too late. As it was, all she had time to do was rush to the corner grocery and buy the first thing that she saw that looked suitable -- a giant bag of peanut M&Ms.

"I hear you're going to feed the baby," said the zit-faced fat thirty- year-old checkout girl, who'd never given her the time of day before.

"How do these stories get started?" said Rainie. "I don't even have a baby."

She got back to her apartment just as Tom pulled up in a brand- new but thoroughly mud-spattered pickup truck. "Hop in before you let all the heat out!" he shouted. He was rolling before she had the door shut.

Douglas Spaulding's house was just what she expected, right down to the white picket fence and the veranda wrapped around the white clapboard walls. Simple, clean lines, the walls and trim freshly painted, with dark blue shutters at the windows and lights shining between the pulled-back curtains. A house that said Good plain folks live here, and the doors aren't locked, and if you're hungry we've got a bite to eat, and if you're lonely we've got a few minutes to chat, anytime you feel like dropping by. It was an island of light in the dark night. When she opened the door of Tom's pickup truck, she could hear laughter from the parlor, and as she picked her way through the paths in the snow to get to the front porch, she could look up and see people moving around inside the house, eating and drinking and talking, all so at ease with each other that it woke the sweetest flavors in her memory and made her hungry to get inside.

They were laying the game out on the dining room table -- a large homemade board, meadow green with tiny flowers and a path of white squares drawn around the outside of it. Most squares had either a red heart or a black teardrop, with a number. In the middle of the board was a dark area shaped like a giant kidney bean with black dotted lines radiating out from it toward the squares. And in the middle of the "bean" were a half-dozen little pigs that Rainie recognized as being from the old Pig-Out game, plus a larger pig from some child's set of plastic barnyard animals.

"That's the pigpen," said the mechanic, who was counting beans into piles of ten. Only he wasn't dressed like a mechanic anymore -- he was wearing a white shirt and white pants with fire-engine-red suspenders. He was also wearing a visor, like the brim of a baseball cap. Rainie remembered seeing people wear visors like that on TV. In old westerns or something. Who wore them? Bank tellers? Bookies? She couldn't remember.

"What's your name?" asked Rainie. "I've been thinking of you as the guy in overalls cause I never caught your name."

"If I'd'a knowed you was a-thinkin' of me, Miss Ida, I'd'a wore my overalls again tonight, just to please you." He grinned at her.

"Three Idas in the same sentence," said Rainie. "Not bad."

"It's a good thing she didn't think of you as `that butt-ugly guy,'" said Tom. "You're a lot better looking when you keep that particular feature covered up."

"Look what Miss Ida brung us," said the mechanic. "M's."

Immediately all the men in the vicinity of the table hummed in unison. "Mmmmm. Mmmmm."

"Not just M's, but peanut M's."

Again, only twice as loud: "MMMMMM! MMMMMM!"

Either M&Ms were part of the ritual, or they were making fun of her. Suddenly Rainie felt unsure of herself. She held up the bag. "Isn't this OK?"

"Sure," said Douglas. "And I get the brown ones." He had a large bowl in his hand; he took the back of M&Ms from her, pulled it open, and poured it into the bowl.

"Dougie has a thing for brown M&Ms," said the mechanic.

"I eat them as a public service," said Douglas. "They're the ugly ones, so when I eat them all the bowl is full of nothing but bright colors for everyone else."

"He eats the brown ones because they make up forty percent of the package," said Tom.

"Tom spends most of his weekends opening bags of M&Ms and counting them, just to get the percentages," said an old man that hadn't been at the cafe.

"Hi, Dad," said Douglas. He turned and offered the old man the bowl of M&Ms.

The old man took a green one and popped it in his mouth. Then he stuck out his right hand to Rainie. "Hi," he said. "I'm Douglas Spaulding. Since he and his son are also Douglas Spaulding, everybody calls me Grandpa. I'm old but I still have all my own teeth."

"Yeah, in an old baby-food jar on his dresser," said Tom.

"In fact, he has several of my teeth, too," said the mechanic.

Rainie shook Grandpa's hand. "Pleased to meet you. I'm ..." Rainie paused. For one crazy moment she had been about to say, I'm Rainie Pinyon. "I'm Ida Johnson."

"You sure about that?" asked Grandpa. He didn't let go of her hand.

"Yes, I am," she said. Rather sharply.

Grandpa raised his eyebrows and released her hand. "Welcome to the madhouse."

Suddenly there was a thunderouspounding on the stairs and Rose and Dougie burst into the room. "Release the pigs!" they both shouted. "Pig attack! Pig attack!"

Douglas just stood there laughing as his kids ran around the table, grunting and snorting like hogs as they reached into every bowl for chips and M&Ms and anything else that looked vaguely edible, stuffing it all into their mouths. The men all laughed as the kids ran back out of the room. Except Grandpa, who never cracked a smile. "What is the younger generation coming to?" he murmured. Then he winked at Rainie.

"Where should I sit?" she asked.

"Anyplace," said Tom.

She took the chair at the corner. It seemed the best place -- the spot where she'd have to sit back away from the table because the table leg was in the way. It felt just a little safer to her, to be able to sit a little bit outside of the circle of the players.

The mechanic leaned over to her and said, "Cecil."

"What?" Rainie asked.

"My name," he said. "Don't tell anybody else."

Tom, who was sitting next to her, said in a loud whisper. "We all pretend that we think his name is `Buck.' It makes him feel more manly."

"What do I call you?" asked Rainie. "If I'm supposed to keep Cecil a secret."

"Now you've gone and told," said Cecil.

"Call him Buck," said Tom.

"Does anybody else really call him that?" asked Rainie.

"I will if you will," said Tom.

"Time for a review of the rules!" said Douglas, as he took the last place at the table, which happened to be in the middle of the table on the side across from Rainie, so she'd be looking at him throughout the game.

"I hate to make you have to spend time going over everything for me," said Rainie.

"They repeat the rules every time anyway," said Grandpa.

"Cause Grandpa's getting senile and forgets them every time," said Tom.

"They repeat them because they're so proud of having thought them up themselves," said Grandpa.

The game was pretty complicated. They used plastic children's toys -- little robots or dinosaurs -- as their playing pieces. The idea of the game was to roll three dice and get around the board. Each time they passed Start they were reborn as the next higher life-form, from slime to newt to emu to human; the winner was the first human to reach Start and therefore become supreme god.

"Then the supreme god turns over his karma cards. If he's got more good than bad karma, then whoever has the most good karma comes in second. But if the supreme god has more bad karma than good, then whoever has the most bad karma comes in second," said Douglas.

"So bad karma can be good?" asked Rainie.

"Never," said Tom. "What kind of person are you? No, if the supreme god turns out to have bad karma, it's a terrible disaster for the known universe. We all sing a very sad song and cry on the way home."