Tara and Me
She's like, what, fifteen? Fifteen years old with millions of people watching her every single move and waiting for her to fail, fall, crash to the ice and humiliate herself in front of the entire world. Can I even begin to tell you how much I empathize? But she doesn't fall. She glides and jumps like she's been doing it forever, like she was born to do it, like there's nothing else in the universe that matters besides these four minutes and no force on earth that can stop her. Gravity has utterly ceased to be a reckoning factor. That smile on her face--a little forced at first, a little too practiced --but then it all comes blossoming out--the rapture, the joy. Pure, unadulterated joy and sure-as-shit confidence she's fulfilling her destiny.
I think I hate her.
Someone large appears behind the frosted glass of my office door. He gives the most cursory of knocks before walking in. Jim Ellison, Cascade police detective, my partner and roommate. Since I last saw him at breakfast he's managed to get dirt all over his blazer and rip his slacks at the knee. He's tugging at his tie like it's a hangman's noose, and if he's ever been happy in his entire life, there's no evidence of it on his square-jawed, chiseled-in-stone face.
"Sandburg," he says. "Lunch."
A conversationalist he is not.
He drops a brown paper bag on my desk. It lands on a stack of freshman essays examining the nature of anthropology. Oil stains one side of the bag, and I'm afraid to look inside. Curiosity wins in the end.
"Chicken soup?" I ask, pleased. "For me?"
"You sounded congested this morning." Jim sits in the chair in front of my desk, pulls off his right shoe and upends it. Pebbles clatter to the floor. He diligently gathers them up in one large hand and tosses them into the trash. Behind him, on the TV, Tara does one triple loop followed by another.
I dig around in my desk drawers for a clean plastic spoon but settle, instead, for a slightly dirty metal one that's been in the for god knows how long. "I didn't think the mayor's office was that dangerous. What happened to you?"
While I sat through Anthro 522 this morning, Jim was getting a letter of commendation from His Honor himself. Jim could care less about another award, but every scrap of written praise he can get offsets the complaints on his record that come from wrecking official automobiles, interfering with DEA and FBI investigations and occasionally mishandling criminal suspects. I would have liked to have been there, but if I miss one more of Professor Fairmont's notoriously boring seminars I'm going to have to re-take the whole series. I'd rather spend a week flossing my teeth with barbed wire, if you know what I mean.
"The mayor's office was fine." Jim inspects his scraped knee with professional detachment. "Before we even started, some bozo tried to rip off the lobby snack shop. Who tries to rob the snack shop at city hall?"
"Yeah," I agree, around spoonfuls of salty, greasy, wonderful soup. He went to Meyer's Deli for this. No one makes chicken soup like Abu, the weekday chef at Meyer's. "Not like there's any crooks at city hall, huh?"
Jim ignores the jibe. "He ran pretty fast. I ran faster. Tackled him in the alley."
"You did that to yourself just tackling the guy?"
"I had to jump over the fence first."
Jim jumps fences as frequently as other people cross the street. He's been known to hurl himself on the roofs of moving vehicles. He also leaps over ravines, rappels down the sides of buildings and dangles from helicopter struts. His favorite way to start a day is with a thermos of coffee and a good high-speed chase. I get exhausted just watching him. He should be the star of his own action channel - Jim TV. Now on a cable system near you.
"I bet the mayor was impressed with your crime-solving abilities," I say.
"I think I got dirt on his sofa."
Overall, he looks pleased with himself. Only someone who's spent a lot of time with the guy could actually tell. Jim Ellison's not a billboard of emotions. You've got to watch his eyes, the tilt of his head, little telltale twitches. I don't think his stoicism is a Sentinel thing. I think it's just a Jim thing. He considers me a walking seesaw of emotions, so between us we probably approximate a normal person, whatever normal is.
"So now you're free for the rest of the day," I say.
"Yeah."
"And you want a favor from me."
He tries to look innocent. "I never said that."
"You brought me soup, Jim."
"I told you, you sounded congested."
"Nice try. I feel fine. What's up?"
He puts his shoe back on. "Mindy's coming over for dinner tonight. It's a last-minute thing."
Mindy has been Jim's hot-and-heavy for some time now. She's one of the countless insurance adjusters in the city of Cascade who have Jim's name highlighted on their Rolodexes and his photograph pasted on their dartboards. They met after his last accident-- the man goes through cars and trucks like they were Tonka toys. She's a little too straight-laced for my preferences--sees only mainstream movies, eats only American or Italian, wears only sensible shoes-- but on the bright side, she's not a mobster or international assassin or psychotic killer. They like each other enough that I've started to wonder if there's another Mrs. James Ellison on the horizon.
"You want me to exit stage left before she shows up, huh?"
"That's the general idea. Rafe says you can crash on his couch if you want."
Rafe is one of the detectives down at headquarters. Great cop, snazzy dresser, charming with the ladies, housekeeper from hell. He bribes the Board of Health to keep away from his condo each month. I may have fairly low standards of hygiene and order--I still don't know what the brown stuff is on my spoon, for instance--but mine are at least higher than Rafe's. Last time I slept at his place, I came away covered with a half-inch thick layer of dog hair from his beloved terrier Robey and a rash that lasted two weeks.
No, I'm not going to tell you where the rash was.
"It's okay," I say. "I'll figure out something else."
"Rafe will be insulted."
"Rafe will be relieved. This way he won't have to clear a path from the door to the living room."
"Promise me you won't sleep here in the office, Sandburg."
I start to argue--my office is a perfectly fine place in which to sleep. I've done it before, after all. I have a cot in the closet, some blankets on the shelf and a hot pot in the bottom drawer. The men's bathroom on the second floor has two shower stalls, and if I stay here tonight I might be able to grade all those essays waiting to undergo judgment. Tara and I might make a night of it--me slogging through poor grammar and half-hearted hypotheses while she spins her little munchkin heart out on a big ice rink in Japan.
"Promise me," Jim repeats, very seriously.
In the past, he never suffered from any guilt about asking me to sleep somewhere else for the night. I understood--after all, a man should be able to bring home a date every once in awhile to some privacy, especially when it's Jim's loft in the first place. The layout there doesn't afford anyone much discretion. My solution was always to bring home women on the nights Jim was guaranteed a twelve-hour stakeout. He could always smell her the next morning, his nose twitching faintly in irritation, but he never said anything.
That's all pre-Alex stuff. Before she came to my office in the pre-dawn hours of a chilly April day and left me to die in the fountain. Before my three-week hospital stay and even longer convalescence. My life has slowly returned to normal, as has Jim's, but I can tell he never wants me to stay overnight in this office again.
A fleeting look crosses his face, one that warns he's about to call off the dinner plans with Mindy if I don't capitulate.
"I'll call Tom," I promise. Tom is another teaching assistant here in the Anthro department, and he owes me so many favors that if we lived in the Brothers Grimm universe, he would already have to fork over his firstborn child.
"You'd better."
"I will." I'll call him and we'll chit-chat and I'll forget to ask him if I can sleep over at his place. I'm in the mood to tackle some ghosts. I will not let fear and memory rule my life. I'll sleep here in my office, snug and warm against the cold of autumn. Jim and Mindy can do the nasty all over the loft, wherever they want, as long as it's not on my futon. Though, to be truthful, I have trouble seeing her do it anywhere but in Jim's bed, missionary position only.
"I will," I repeat. "Promise. Cross my heart. Now get out of here, will you? I've got a class to teach in twenty minutes and my Tasaday slides are all over the place. Do you remember the Tasaday? Biggest anthropological hoax of this century? Ferdinand Marcos dupes 'National Geographic'? It was back in 1971--"
My calculated spiel--when you can't convince Jim, just distract him--works admirably. He stands up to go and interrupts, "Tell me all about it later, okay? Are you going to come by before dinner?"
"No. I've got all I need. Have a nice romantic evening. Don't think of me scrounging up scraps of food somewhere-- I'll be fine."
He gives me ten bucks to buy dinner for myself. Sandburg house rules--he who gets kicked out gets a free dinner.
"Thanks, Chief." Jim can't keep himself from picking up my empty paper bag, wadding it into a ball and throwing it away. "Take care of that cold."
"I'm not getting a cold!" I yell after him.
On the screen, Tara accepts her gold medal to the deafening roar of the crowd.
***
The food in the main campus cafeteria ranges from excellent to atrocious, with most fare falling somewhere in between. I order tuna fish on rye, though my heart really isn't in it. While the tired chef slaps my sandwich together I look out over the empty booths and stacked chairs. I'm the last customer of the day, with only a few lingering dorm students finishing up their meals. Beyond the large windows the campus looks empty, a hollow shell of its vibrant daytime self. Lamp posts send pools of yellow light down on the orderly paths and walkways, and a breeze kicks red and brown leaves down into the street gutters.
As I trudge back to Hargrove Hall with dinner in hand I wonder how much longer I'll be a part of Rainier. Any day now I'll stop procrastinating and turn in my thesis. After that I'll have to defend it. I'm only scheduled to be a teaching assistant until the spring, which is when I'll hopefully receive my doctoral degree. After that, I'll be as free to chose a profession as anyone else with few savings, an aging used car, a shitload of outstanding student loans and nine thousand dollars in overdue medical bills.
I don't know how much money Tara got from winning an Olympic gold medal, but it's bound to be more than I get teaching obnoxious freshman or consulting for the Cascade PD. Fifteen years old, and she probably has more income from tournaments and commercial endorsements than I'll ever see. Invested wisely, she could probably already retire for life.
Like I said before, I think I hate her. Naomi would not be proud of her only son.
Hargrove Hall rises above the treetops, looking cold and imposing in the night air. Only a few lights shine inside--some from my office and more on the upper floors. I automatically skirt around the main entrance. Taking the long way around has become a habit ever since the events of April. I've heard some students joking about the Blair Sandburg Memorial Fountain in front of the building. Not funny, folks. I understand macabre comedy as well as the next guy--I still have a few Challenger jokes bouncing around the attic of my brain--but it's different when the pain is your own. If Jim found out, he'd clench his jaw so tightly his teeth would snap off.
No rogue Sentinels lurk in my office, waiting to kill me. Feeling just a little bit foolish, I nevertheless check the closet and under the desk before locking the door. The TV is still on, turned to CNN with the volume turned low. One click from the remote sends my Olympic videotape into rewind. After poking and prodding my sandwich I decide to start with dessert--two chocolate cookies, only slightly hard after sitting out in the cafeteria all day, with iced tea to wash them down. Three hours later Michelle Kwan takes to the ice and I toss the last paper in the stack into a pile for distribution in the morning.
Michelle is good, really good, but she's holding back. Careful, graceful, safe, boring. Tara roars in like a freight train barreling down a collapsing railroad bridge. You can't help but sit on the edge of your seat as you watch her. Luckily I've watched the program so often that I can kick back in my chair, feet up on the desk, the last of the iced tea clutched in my hand. I've got a dull headache and feel generally lousy. If Jim Ellison gave me a cold with all of his negative thoughts I'm going to have to kill him. The last thing I need is to have to grovel for more sick time from the university.
It's almost midnight. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one left in the building. Cold air leaks in around the old windows and rattles the panes. It's so very dark outside, and in all of the corners of my office, too. A guy could get freaked out sitting here too long, especially if he started thinking about slasher movies and killers with hooks for hands. I'm not a bimbo babysitter from a Hollywood movie, but I am all alone, and the last time I stayed overnight in this office something very bad happened--
The jangle of the telephone startles me so badly I rock back in the over-extended chair. Only a reflexive grab for the solid wood of the desk saves me from crashing to the floor. I glare at the telephone but don't answer it--the only person who could be calling this late is Jim, my sneaky roommate, to see if I broke my promise. I'm surprised he hasn't sent a squad-car around. In Jim Ellison's post-Alex world, there's no such thing as being too overprotective. It's something we've fought over before and will fight over again.
The phone stops ringing. I think it's time for tired anthropologists to go to sleep. Sleep will make the night pass faster, after all. I get the cot out of the closet--it's Army surplus and smells musty, but it's much better than sleeping on the floor. The legs are a bitch to attach, though, and I'm wrestling with the last one when I hear a click-click-click in the hall.
I know that click-click-click sound.
It's not the thump of the campus security guards on their rounds. They wear workman's boots and carry radios, and in most cases you can hear them coming from a mile away.
No, the click-click-click is definitely the sound of women's high-heeled shoes. I sit paralyzed on the floor by the half-assembled cot, terrified. Cold sweat rises on the back of my neck and an intense queasiness opens up in my gut like a sinkhole sucking up the world around it.
A woman's silhouette falls across the frosted glance. She knocks on the door and tries the lock. Moving as quietly as a panicking, terrified jellyfish can, I slide back toward the wall with the cot leg clutched like a weapon. The woman knocks again and says, "Sandy?"
There's only one woman who calls me Sandy, but my voice is locked up in my throat and I can't answer.
"I know you're in there!" she says, rattling the doorknob. "It's me, Megan. Open up."
I break free of my paralysis and open the door. "You scared me half to death," I tell Megan Conner as sternly as I can.
"Sorry. I tried to call earlier, but there was no answer," she says in those broad Australian consonants and vowels of hers. Her regret is sincere. She's obviously been dispatched to babysit me. Torn from a party, too, judging by the looks of her tight leather pants, alligator boots, low-cut black sweater, fuschia shawl and glittery handbag. Although this is Megan we're talking about--she might just as well have been wearing that get-up just lounging around at home or the corner laundromat. She's a great cop, but don't let her give you any fashion hints.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you call? Why did you come by?" I return to my epic struggle with the cot. "Jim sent you, didn't he?"
"What if I said he didn't?"
"I'd say you were lying."
"Need some help?"
I try to force the cot leg through the correct hole. "No. I can do it."
"Hmmm," Megan answers, noncommittal. She glances at the TV. "Who's that?"
"You're kidding me."
"Never did like figure skating much. I prefer gymnastics."
"That's not just figure skating! That's the Olympics. The best of the best, performing in front of the entire world."
She looks unimpressed. I'm about to point out the historic and cultural significance of the Olympics when the cot leg slides away from me and the whole bed collapses. I grab for it but get only a large splinter in my palm for the effort. "Son-of-a-bitch," I grind out before standing up and kicking the heap. "Useless junk."
My anger is a little too much, given the situation, but Megan has probably already figured out I'm coming down off an adrenaline dump and need a way to vent pent-up energy.
"We could burn it," she suggests cheerfully. "I bet it would make a beautiful bonfire."
The thought is tempting, but I don't answer her. The memory of click-click-click has rattled me more thoroughly than expected. Megan takes my hand and looks at the splinter.
"Got a pair of tweezers?" she asks. "I'll rip that right out."
"No tweezers," I grumble.
"Right. Then I guess you'll have to come with me back to my place. I've got tweezers and a sofa you can sleep on."
I look directly at her. "Do you have a VCR?"
***
Megan's apartment contains an eclectic mix of furniture, a funky collection of neon signs and enough Coca-Cola merchandise to start her own museum. A black-velvet painting of Elvis hangs over the television and a plasma ball arcs pink and purple light on top of the stereo. All she really needs to complete the mood is a lava lamp. While I'm in the bathroom swallowing some of her aspirin, she unfolds the sleeper sofa and covers it with sheets and blankets. An old rerun of "Saturday Night Live" is playing on the TV when I come out.
"I thought we might have a slumber party," she says brightly, a bowl of popcorn in one hand and two long-necked bottles of root beer in the other. "You and me."
Sure enough, she scrubs off her makeup and changes into thick gray pajamas that have no sex appeal whatsoever. She hands me a pair of her ex-boyfriend's sweatpants to sleep in. That and my flannel shirt do just fine. We lay on the mattress like brother and sister and watch Gilda Radner and John Belushi cavort on the screen. They're both dead now. Afterward we put in my Olympic videotape and I introduce Megan to Tara.
"She's very short," Megan says.
"She's only fifteen."
"I don't like her outfit."
"It's okay," I say defensively. Megan is the last person who should be criticizing other people's clothes.
Megan rolls toward me and props her head up on one elbow. "Sandy," she asks, "what is this fixation you've got going with Tara Lipinski?"
"I just think she's really, really good. It's not a 'fixation.'"
Tara does a triple axel.
"All you do is watch tape after tape of some ice-skating teenager you don't even know," Megan reminds me. "It's not healthy."
She's right. I know she's right.
"Maybe I'm a little bit jealous," I admit.
"Why?"
"She's so . . . confident. So in-control. So in-the-moment. You know?"
Megan looks at the screen. A little furrow appears between her eyebrows. She doesn't get it.
I sit up and gesture toward the screen. "Watch her face. She's kicking ass and she knows it. She's trained for years for these four minutes--given up any semblance of a normal childhood--pushed and pushed and pushed herself. And there she is. It's the very best time of her life."
"That's sad," Megan says.
"Sad! Megan, she's winning the gold medal! She's the best in the entire world!"
"But where does she go afterward?"
I look from Megan to the TV and back again. "What do you mean?"
Megan sits up and takes the remote control from me. Tara freezes at the top of a triple loop. "I mean, where does she go from here? She gave up so much to achieve this. She'll have that gold medal for the rest of her life. It's wonderful, it really is. But what comes next?"
I wrap my arms around a pillow. "I don't know."
"No matter what she does for the rest of her life, she'll never win this same gold medal again."
"Are you saying she shouldn't have tried? She shouldn't have won?"
"No," Megan says patiently, unpausing the screen. Tara lands and glides and spins. "I'm just saying success has both positive and negative consequences."
I take the remote control back and click the tape off. I lay down on the mattress and turn a little away from Megan, not truly meaning to shut her out but unable to bear that look on her face. She knows. She's seen right through me. Her soft, warm hand comes to rest on my tense shoulder.
"Why do you think you're a failure, Sandy?"
I don't answer for a minute. Finally I mutter, "I don't."
Megan's fingers tap a restless beat, then her hand pushes me between the shoulderblades. "Lie on your stomach."
Who can resist a gorgeous Australian Amazon?
And now she's really got me, because if there's one time when I'm most likely to spill my guts it's under the manipulative hands of a woman. Her hands knead my back, unlocking knots of tension that have been there since at least the Stone Age. Warmth floods up and down my spine as she pushes and pulls calcified muscles. I'm talking without even being aware of it, drifting on a warm sea of release.
"I just wish things had gone differently--that I hadn't been so quick to let Jim push me away--that I hadn't listened to Alex--I know, the two of us have been over it so much I'm tired of the topic, he's tired, we're both tired--she's gone now, there's just him, and the next time a Sentinel comes to town we're prepared . . . "
Yeah, Megan knows all about Sentinels. Someone had to watch Jim's back the weeks that I was recuperating. I'm not sure if she finds the Sentinel explanation as satisfying as her own previous conclusion, that Jim was this amazing psychic, but she knows all about the situation.
"So if Alex isn't the problem, what is?" she asks, still massaging me and making me spill all my secrets.
I mumble an answer into her pillows, which smell like lavender and fabric softener.
"What's that, Sandy?"
"I said, how do you know when you're doing the right thing with your life?"
Megan's hands don't even pause. "You don't."
"You don't? Ever?"
"Nope."
She is not being very comforting.
"I amend my answer," she says, after a moment. "You can't be sure. No one can be sure. But if you go to work and you're happy doing what you do, and if you've got goals and you're making progress toward them, and if your heart tells you you're in the right place - well, then, chances are awfully good you're doing the right thing.
"What if you've only got two out of the three?" I ask.
"Which two do you have?" she returns, sharp as a whip.
I think about my answer for several minutes. I like teaching. I like working and rooming with Jim, even on the days I get shot at or threatened or put in danger. My life would be very lonely without Jim in it. As for goals-- well, there's the rub. Right there. And it's not the pressure point Megan's pushing with her right thumb.
What's great about Megan is that sometimes, when she asks a question, she doesn't always expect a reply. She lets you find the answer for yourself and boy, have I found a big one.
She finishes massaging my back. A warm blanket comes up around me, and she kisses the top of my head. "Night, Sandy," she says, and shuts off the living room and kitchen lights on the way to her bedroom.
***
I wake up at six a.m. with a cold. It's the last thing I need, but life goes on. The sky is just beginning to lighten as I scribble a note for Megan and creep out into the crisp morning. The evil thought of dropping by the loft and surprising Jim crosses my mind, but I resist. I'll let him maintain his little lie for just a bit longer. Instead I pick up a grande latte from the Starbucks drive-through--hey, a man's got to have a few luxuries, you know?-- and go directly to the campus. I've got stashes of vitamin C, echinacea and goldenseal in my desk, and after a hot shower and change of clothes I wolf down the pills.
Rainier's first classes don't start until eight o'clock. The campus is only beginning to come alive. I stand at my windows finishing the last of the lukewarm coffee and look down at the Blair Sandburg Memorial Fountain. It's not an ugly fountain. It's not an evil fountain. It's just a cement pond used for decoration. I'm half-tempted to go down and stick my bare feet in it, wade around, sneer at death, but I'm not as young and defiant as I used to be. Still, just looking at it in the cold light of day is a major achievement.I am not in a post-Alex funk. It would be perfectly normal to be in one, considering how little time has really passed since April. But Megan's helped me realize that my depression is about something else entirely, something I should have seen coming from a long way away. Normal people set goals, work toward them, and maybe achieve them. Really dedicated people set goals, make sacrifices, sweat their asses off, and maybe achieve them. Tara gave up years of normal life for a shot at the Olympic gold and got exactly what she wanted.
I searched for a Sentinel for years and found one. That rapture Tara has on her face in that final Olympic program--I felt it the very first minute I realized Jim Ellison was a full-fledged, walking, talking Sentinel. All the years of academic disdain from my professors and teasing laughs from my doubting classmates evaporated that day. And after that I gave up years of normalcy in order to study Jim. The minute I turn in my thesis I will have accomplished everything I set out to do with my life.
Where do you go after the Olympics? Back to Sugar Land, Texas and hometown parades. Where do you go after you've been to the moon? To the supermarket and gas station and all the normal coordinates of your life. Where do I go after my Sentinel thesis is finished, and will I ever feel that intense thrill of achievement again?
Success really can be a bitch.
Jim arrives at the end of my ten o'clock lecture. He stands in the back, leaning against the wall. He's got another paper bag with him. I hope it's more chicken soup, because my sinuses feel as congested as downtown Cascade at rush hour and I'm sneezing every five minutes. So much for herbal remedies. Still, Megan's massage has left my back and shoulders feeling looser than they have in months, and my obnoxious freshman seem to be less annoying than usual. Yeah, yeah, the change is probably in me, but let's not get too excited. I still have no idea what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Give me a day or so to work on the problem, will you?
Jim ambles to the front after the class leaves. The big hall is filled with autumn light, and his voice echoes off the old carved seats and wainscoted walls. "Hey, Chief," he says. "Lunch."
Chicken soup. My savior.
"Thanks," I say. "And thanks for giving me this cold."
"Me? I didn't give it to you. Try one of your five hundred students."
"I only have eighty students," I say, and pause for another sneeze. "How was your night with Mindy?"
"It was good."
"Yeah?" I go for the big bluff. "She left a message on my voicemail because she couldn't get hold of you. She said she left her purse on the sofa."
Jim looks flummoxed for a second--but just for a second, and you could only tell if you knew him real well. Gotcha, big guy.
"I'll call her," he says, recovering quickly.
"Jim, you liar. Mindy didn't go over last night. You set me up with Megan on purpose."
He puts on a perfectly innocent expression. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't worry, she did her job very well. And she only slipped up once. She said that I watch tape after tape of Tara Lipinski. But for all she knew, I only had the Olympic one. Only my roommate knows that I've got the nationals and the world championships, too."
Plus, since Jim knew I was coming down with something, he would never have let me sleep anywhere but the loft or someplace where our friends could keep an eye on me. After Alex, I spent a week on a respirator and struggled through a bout of pneumonia. I'll be lucky to get through the next week without a trip to the doctor "just to be safe."
"Yeah, well," Jim says, stalling for time. He studies the wall. "I thought maybe you two could talk stuff over. You didn't seem to want to talk to me."
Ouch. Maybe I have been a little withdrawn lately. But I'm going to make it up to him. "Jim, man, I'll talk to you. I'll talk to you so much your ears will fall off. You've got to help me make some plans. But let's eat first, okay? Did you grab something for yourself?"
"Nah. You know I hate that deli."
"I know. And I appreciate the effort. Let's go over to the cafeteria and get you a big, greasy cheeseburger or something."
We're halfway down the hall before he slows down. "We could take the truck," he suggests. "The cafeteria is halfway across the campus."
I'm not the only one who's been taking side doors, you know.
"Let's go this way," I say, my hand on his shoulder. We're two strong men. We can do this together. We can walk out of Hargrove Hall past the Blair Sandburg Memorial Fountain and not let it ruin our day. Perhaps, if I'm particularly daring, I'll even toss in a penny over my shoulder for good luck.
And maybe next weekend, after I'm over this cold, I can get Jim to go ice-skating with me.
THE END