A PLANET FOR THE MISREMEMBERED

PART ONE
The Three Characters

1.

"Well, dumbbells and donuts!" she shouted across the street to him. "You've forgotten all about me!"

The man stopped by a lamppost on the quiet street and peered across at her. She stood with her hands on hips and one foot tapping the curb. But she was smiling. He thought poetically that her eyes had captured stars. It was a clear dry night, a Mediterranean night as someone once remarked of California's late autumn evenings. He smiled back at her, confused by his inability to remember where he had seen her before, and under what circumstances. This irked him, but in a pleasant way, because he could see how pretty she was.

"Venice Beach," she called out, as if haling a taxi. "The Halloween party. My God, have you gone senile? You ARE Manly Storm?"

Grinning at the mention of his full name, he straightened his denim jacket. With neither a glance up or down the residential street he crossed it, casually, his eyes fixed on her face. Could this be Cleo What's-her-name? He saw in his mind the shattered glass pitcher and the line of blood on the other girl's ankle. The other girl... There had been a lot of tension there. He remembered that well enough. The course of the party had changed after the accident. The other girl... No, this was undeniably Cleo. It was not a name that anyone could forget.

"I haven't changed too much, have I?" said Cleo, stepping back from the curb. "It's only been a year. Not quite a year. Well, YOU haven't changed one iota."

Manly looked very pensive for a moment. "Not in any way that can be seen," he said. He stood facing her in the beam of a porch light from the house whose lawn had encroached upon the sidewalk. "Yes, I remember you. It's Cleo. I'm afraid I don't recall your last name."

"Well, it hasn't changed," she said provocatively. "It's Cleo Nelson-Chutsby. Hyphenated names are dreadfully hard to remember. I'll forgive you this one time." She then put a hand to her breasts in feigned alarm. "Oh, I'm not keeping you from an engagement, am I? After all," she laughed, "it IS a Friday night."

He smiled thinly at her theatrical manner. It reminded him of the party, out on the cool hard sand in the flickering light of Tiki torches, where she held the attention of half a dozen men. "No, I was just... " He shrugged, his handsome blondish head tilted to one side. "Taking a walk. Are you headed somewhere?"

"Nowhere earth-shattering."

Shattering. He saw in slow motion the pitcher leaving her hand and striking the flagstones of the patio floor, the explosion of glass like the blossoming of a flower. A poisonous flower. The cut. The blood. The other girl jumping back with a gasp of shock and a frozen grimace.

"Something's on your mind," Cleo said accusingly, still smiling, but warily now. "I'm keeping you from... Well, I'm glad I saw you. Had no idea you were in Petersville. Really too small of a burgh for the both of us. What brings-- I'm sorry. Don't mind me. Don't let me keep you from--"

"No, really, I was going to catch a movie at the Fox, but meeting you again is much more... entertaining."

"Yes and you don't have to buy a ticket!" she said, pleased by his comment. "What movie was it?"

He looked embarrassed. "There wasn't much of an option. 'Mona Lisa Smile.' I've already seen the others. But since I had nothing... That is, I needed a break from... Well, it was something to do. What are you up to in this jerkwater town?"

Cleo looked down the street and then back at him with a dissatisfied smile. "Staying with my grandmother until she can pick up the pieces. My grandfather passed last month. I'll be here a few more... months."

She had started to say 'days,' Manly was sure of it. He smiled crookedly. "So you're not working?"

"I put in an application at the new drive-thru coffee shop. 'Espresso-- Ice cream-- Smoothies.' A cinch job and it'll get me out of the house." She looked past him at the sound of girl talk coming softly up the sidewalk from the corner. She frowned, and Manly saw the glare of annoyance in her shining eyes. Such eyes. He remembered now how taken he was by them.

"Would you like to come over to the house?" she asked him brightly; somewhat desperately, he thought.

He could see two young women approaching. That tension. He kept thinking of the shattered glass pitcher. Cleo stood there in a proud indifference, smiling at him expectantly.

"I'd like that," he said. But she knew as well as he did that he wanted to hold back. It was all about the girls.

"I brought some DVDs with me from home," Cleo said. "We can find something better than Mona Lisa. We've popcorn too. Maybe not as good as--"

She wanted to ignore them. But the one whose hair was styled just like hers, only not raven black but a glitzy purplish red, stopped with her arm extended out to the side to halt the girl beside her, a frail petite blonde. "Why it's Cleo," she said in a voice that mimicked civility.

"I'm sorry. I don't know you," Cleo said with mock politeness.

Manly did. He remembered her from the party. He had seen her with the Other Girl. Not this shrinking violet blonde. The Other Girl had short auburn hair and wore fashionable glasses. He looked at Cleo and saw that she seemed genuinely unable to remember this tall strident girl who was gazing at her with a controlled aggressiveness.

"That's a shame, but I remember YOU."

"You might tell me your name."

"Rhonda. And I beat you at the limbo contest."

Manly saw the bamboo crossbar knocked loose by Cleo's chin. Rhonda jumped, clapping her hands and whooping. He could almost smell the barbecue.

"Congratulations," Cleo said.

"Hello, Manly Storm," Rhonda said. He supposed she meant it. She certainly acted like it. But he was irritated by her tactic. She wanted to annoy Cleo. The short blonde looked uncomfortable. She stood a little back from them, twisting her fingers.

"Hello, Rhonda," he said. "I wasn't expecting a beach party reunion."

"Oh I live in Santa Barbara. I'm here to take classes at Ganesha College. This is my roommate, Zelda. You wouldn't be attending Ganesha, would you? Say yes!"

Manly straightened his jacket. He had to say something. They were all staring at him as if a divine revelation was coming.

"Yes. Actually, I'm the assistant professor in the music department. Just got the position last week."

He heard Cleo snort her surprise. Rhonda raised her eyebrows and showed all her teeth. She was on the good side of plain. The more animated her face, the more attractive she was. She smiled at Zelda, then said to him: "I'm taking Commercial Art, but, you know, I play piano."

"That's nice."

There was a long insufferable moment of silence. They listened to the distant clanging of a railroad crossing. An Amtrak went slowly across Main. This meant it would be stopping at the Petersville station. Not that any of them cared, but it was a blessed distraction from the sudden awkwardness.

"How do you like the town?" Manly asked Rhonda. He realized that his attention to her was not winning him any points with Cleo.

"It's... okay," Rhonda said dubiously. She flipped back her bruise-colored hair. "Zelda and I are staying at the Cheshire Cat motel, the monthly rate. It's across the park from the college, you know. My uncle's paying our living expenses."

"They're not forcing you to stay in the dorm?"

"Trying to, but we're stalling."

Cleo made an impatient gesture. But then Zelda spoke. Her voice startled them. "It's such a lovely..." She was gazing up at the moon. "How odd it is, but a full moon is only half as bright as the half moon. It's like when it shows its complete face it steps back..." She blushed, smiling bashfully at her twisting fingers.

Rhonda gave a laugh. Manly couldn't help doing the same. The train whistle echoed over the roof tops.

"Well," said Cleo questioningly.

"Yes, I would like that," Manly said to her. "Nice meeting you two," he said to the freshman students. "Perhaps I'll see you in the corridors."

"Goodnight," Rhonda said, flicking a glance at Cleo. She and Zelda crossed the street.

"Thank God," Cleo whispered. "Limbo..."

Her grandmother's house stood next to an abandoned house that was in an advanced state of decay, its lawns choked with high weeds over which a drooping willow reigned resignedly. On the other side of Mrs Chutsby's house was a narrow orchard of grapefruit trees. Manly thought the setting was both picturesque and spooky.

It was an old fashioned two-story with a swing chair on the porch, a patch of outdoor carpet for a doormat, and a string-pull doorbell. Inside, in the Edwardian style living room, a discreet fire licked the smoke in a rounded hearth. A portrait of old Mr Chutsby hung above the mantelpiece. He glared through a monocle at infinity, his other eye squinting suspiciously.

The grandmother was in the kitchen.

"She's nearly deaf," Cleo said. "Always afraid of draining her hearing-aid battery. Hardly ever wears it. Let me introduce you. Then we'll go up to my room, if you like."

Manly didn't look at her when she said that. He was seeing the shattered pitcher burning in the hearth flames.

THE SPIRIT LAMP (3)

"I'm prepared to write you a check for one hundred and twenty-five dollars," Arthur said. He stood behind his desk chair, his hands massaging the top of its backrest. "No let's make it one hundred and fifty."

Muriel looked up at him just as she was about to pick up the lamp for a closer look at its stained glass shade. Her hands hovered around the spiralled metal stem. "I should like to know..." she began, and hesitated. She could feel that Arthur did not want to explain why he was so keen to buy it. She brought her hands together at her cloth belt, standing straight and giving him quick inquisitive glances. "Should like to know why..."

"It's a charming Victorian piece. I've grown fond of it."

But his grey eyes told a different story, a secretive one. She picked up the lamp impulsively, said, "Excuse me," in an irritable tone and carried the lamp over to the window. The afternoon light shone directly on the variegated color of the shade. It reminded her of the light off the back porch at her mother's house. And there, exactly as before, were the shadowy but strangely distinct figures in the squares of glass. Were they moving? She couldn't be sure.

"Be careful," Arthur said tensely. "It's old and the silver caulking is brittle. Don't move it around too much or a pane of glass might fall out. It couldn't be replaced if it broke."

Muriel detected an odd fear in Arthur's voice.

"Why not?" she asked, intrigued. "Is there something special about--"

"It would lose value if a pane had to be replaced. Yes it's a special... a very unigue glass."

"What are these figures? Have you noticed them?"

Arthur smiled painfully. He patted the backrest. "Illusions caused by the texture of the glass," he said.

Muriel doubted this. "What, just a coincidence? Isn't it obvious that the texture was made to... to... invoke these images? And there's something very... interesting about the colors of the shade. The warmer colors have the male figures and the cooler colors have the female figures. I just now discovered this! And there's more. Look how the male figures seem to be, to be, I don't know, to be in an agony, in some... distress. But the females look like they're dancing in awkward poses like... like they too are in pain, but of a different kind."

Arthur laughed without mirth. "How you do get a lot out of emulsifiers!"

Muriel lowered the lamp. She looked over at him quizzically. "Emulsifiers?" she said through a puzzled frown. "The chemicals that develop photographic negatives?"

Arthur opened his mouth to speak but seemed to have second thoughts. Muriel waited with as stern a look as she could manage, furious inside at the prospect of Arthur changing the subject. She could see he wanted to.

Again there was that resigned manner. He made light of his explanation, though, speaking cavalierly. "It's Victorian, an age when photographic plates were glass. I'm no expert on this subject, but... your father was. Those squares of glass were coated with... dark room chemicals, yes, for developing negatives."

Muriel gasped. "Do you mean that these figures are photographic negatives? Photos my father took?"

Arthur shrugged. "So he told me. A strange hobby of his. I'm not surprised that he never mentioned it to you, you being so young and all. You do see, don't you," he said with a sudden urgency, leaning toward her, gripping the backrest, "it's a very unigue thing, quite extraordinary really, and I'm offering you serious money for it because-- not just because it's an odd piece of artwork, but because it's a part of my... my friendship... with Rex. I've nothing of him left to me, except... that. Muriel? What are you thinking? Don't drop it. Better sit down."

In a sense she was already sitting down, on the upstairs landing of the house, peering down secretively at the living room where Arthur and a very tipsy redhead sat together on the sofa. It was at a right angle to the fireplace. There was just one light on, the standing lamp next to the lavender leather armchair where her mother sat. The firelight played on everyone's faces except her father's. He was pacing the room with one hand in his pocket, gesturing with the other as he spoke.

"I know where those girls have gone off to," he was saying in a light-hearted tone, "to the TV studios. That's where it's at these days. Television. Arthur, you're right about that. And we've got to meet the challenge. Look at Hugh Hefner. He started his Playboy magazine with photos of Marilyn Monroe. Well, there's not much shock value in that anymore. If we want to keep our market share we need to do what Hefner's done, and that's to expose more female flesh. Get more provocative in our articles and features. And so I've been thinking that the shoots should have more sexual content, more interplay between the models and the sort of men that our readers would love to emulate."

Muriel looked at her mother. Jane had turned her face away from her husband. Her eyes were round and staring at nothing. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips pinched together in a tight line of disapproval. Something Rex had said disturbed her. She was both worried and angry. Exasperated, annoyed, stressed, this is how Muriel saw her.

Arthur was nodding like one of those bobblehead dolls, his expression vacuous. The drunken redhead was ever on the verge of laughing. She held her wine glass like a crossing guard holding up a stop sign. She made a brief, slurred comment about the models who had deserted the adult magazine business to try their luck in Studio City. The conversation centered around the disappearance of these young women. Rex was making it seem that the solution to the mystery was the lure of television. Nothing more than that. But Jane's posture and the cold wrath churning in her staring eyes told Muriel that there was more to the disappearances than a simple change of profession.

"Two hundred even," Arthur said with blunt finality, like an auctioneer. "You won't do better than that, I'm sure," he added, coming around from behind his desk, his tongue lying exhausted on his lower lip.

"No I don't want to sell it," Muriel said, holding the lamp possessively, guardedly, against her bosom. "I'm taking it home with me."

"To the motel?" he asked in a rather sneering manner.

"No, to my apartment. I'll call you tomorrow." She wasn't sure why she said that about calling. She certainly had no intention of doing so. She gave him a smile that had no light in it. He looked solemn and depressed when she glanced at him over her shoulder. The door knob felt cold.

The fresh paint smell reminded her of her father's remark. She went straight to her bedroom and set the lamp on her dresser. On an impulse to called her boss and asked if she could have the day off. She worked the swing shift. He put her on hold. She stared at the lamp shade. Somehow it seemed almost empty, as if the photographic negatives had dimmed away and the figures were hiding, or resting somewhere secret. The boss came back on and said that Carol would cover for her. Carol. The new girl with the gimpy leg who compensated for it by swinging her hips like a hula dancer. Muriel thanked him and hung up.

She showered and put on her terrycloth bathrobe. Standing in front of the dresser mirror she tilted her head from side to side. Marilyn Monroe... Not so much, with her make-up down the drain and her golden hair damp and straggly. But still...

She untied the cloth belt and let the robe part, exposing her body to the soft afternoon light. She looked at the lampshade, feeling that it was gazing at her. This amused her at first. But the longer she stared at it the stronger the feeling became. She shook back her hair and examined her reflection in the mirror.

Just suppose it was treated with dark room chemicals? Would her image remain on the glass? She parted her lips in a smile that at once began to tremble. Yes, she looked very much like Marilyn Monroe. Hefner would approve. He would drive up and say, "Fill 'er up with regular. And check my tire pressure, will you, please?"

She would lean over as she cleaned his windshield. He would admire her cleavage. Instead of a credit card he would hand her his business card. "Come see me at my LA office." But her smile still faltered, her eyes dripped and with an almost vicious resolve she pulled the bathrobe from her body and threw it on the floor at her feet. She turned to the lamp.

She stared down at it until her back ached. She got down on her knees, crossed her arms on the dresser, and put her chin on the back of her left hand, staring up at the shade. The figures were all there now. And in the square of glass that bordered the edge of the shade nearest her she saw him. It surprised her only for a second. Then her heart swelled and she wept without a sound, until finally she could speak.

"I want to live with you," she said.

The manager knocked on the apartment door a week later. A key turned and the door opened. The manager, who was bent with age, stepped cautiously into the living room. Impatient, Arthur passed him and with darting glances at the plain furniture and bare walls he went into the bedroom.

The bed had not been slept in. Muriel's purse lay on one of the pillows. A terrycloth bathrobe was a small pile on the floor by the dresser. Arthur stared at the lamp.

"She's not here?" asked the manager from the bedroom doorway.

"No, but it's all right," Arthur said. "I know where she's gone to. I'll take this lamp, if that's alright with you. She'll want me to have it for safe-keeping."

THE SPIRIT LAMP (2)

Arthur set the lamp on his desk blotter. It was smaller than Muriel remembered it, but then, she wasn't quite eleven the last time she saw it.

It had been in a packing case back then. She had seen only the stained glass shade and the gold-plated screw that held the shade in place. Her imagination must've pictured the stem of the lamp and its base as bigger than it was. It had fascinated her: the irregular squares of different colored glass held together by squibbles of polished silver. They reflected the light from the open back door, her face seen in each square of glass, each in its own bright hue. But what had amazed her beyond the fascination were the many miniature figures of people seen in the glass. She got down on her knees and looked closely, trying not to blink or to block the light. She could have sworn that the figures were moving. She glanced around, but there was no one else in the room.

"Jane, I do hope it wasn't--" said Grendel, out on the broad back porch, her voice straining to deny what she knew to be true, and faltering. But she didn't give up, not even when Jane turned away from her and came through the door into the living room.

"I hope it wasn't me," Grendel went on, standing in the doorway. She smiled at Muriel with a mix of contrition and delight. It came across like an insincere apology. Muriel smiled back at her in much the same way, but without knowing why.

"It's everything," Jane said, fingering her collar as she looked around at the cardboard boxes, each labelled with Rex's flamboyant cursive: Bedroom, Den, Kitchen, Office... and so on, all meticulously packed and arranged. Muriel on her knees ruined the effect.

Jane frowned, glancing at her. Muriel felt guilty. She thought she must be to blame for her parents separating. She must be. Didn't it always seem that her mother was pushing her away with her eyes, with her frown, while her father's breathing drew her toward him? Yes, his breathing, like the life-giving air, like the spirit of spring, drawing her to him as if to make a barrier between him and the iciness of Mother.

"It's everything," Jane repeated, turning with a swish of her pleated skirt, her fingers letting go of her high pointy collar and touching her jade earring. She gave Grendel a fierce smile. "These things don't happen when it's only money, or an argument about a piece of furniture or something." She made a harsh laugh, as though her throat had exploded. "Everything has to be wrong and THEN it happens."

Grendel smiled very tenderly at Muriel, too tenderly, and then looked with too much sympathy at Jane. "I can't escape it," she said, "I can't not be included in 'everything.' I shouldn't have posed..."

Muriel noticed the hot blush on both women. They stiffened as if each had been slapped. Grendel looked at the line of boxes like she had crawled out of one of them, unhappy to be free of it. Her beauty was of the fragile sort. Her figure was not quite what it used to be. Muriel saw her mother examining the fading beauty with narrowed eyes and with a smile that was both spiteful and triumphant. Her mother was the prettier of the two. Her beauty was more resilient. She could still catch a man's attention. But Grendel was at that stage where her looks prompted a curiosity about what she had once looked like, not admiration for how she looked now. Muriel sensed this intuitively.

"It isn't the beholden," Jane said, "it's the beholder who's responsible. It isn't the fault of the cake when one eats too much of it and gains weight."

Grendel drew a sharp breath and turned to the back door. She seemed to be measuring its width. How had she managed to...

"I think it's the nature of the business," she said, blowing her nose with a large rose-patterned handkerchief that Muriel thought was the most beautiful cloth she had ever seen.

"Oh that's true enough," Jane said without a trace of disgust in her voice. "When a man spends all day around naked women..." She frowned at the box at which her daughter knelt. She had not meant to speak so frankly, and did not look at the surprised face of Muriel, but went over to the box and read the handwriting. "The Studio, it says. 'Studio' he calls it. An atmospheric trinket for the nasty room where..." She grabbed Muriel's arm and pulled her to her feet. "Go make lunch for your dad. You know how much he loves pulled pork sandwiches and onion soup. And he simply MUST eat the very MINUTE he gets home."

Muriel hurried into the kitchen and washed her hands. There were no clean towels to dry her hands on. She wrung them out over the sink, considering the apron hanging on the pantry door. She loved wearing aprons anyway. She put it on and tied a neat bow at the back of her waist.

"Hello... Honey... Grendel," said her father's distinctive voice. She heard the front door closing and the sound of his shoes on the linoleum tile of the entryway.

"And I was just..." said Grendel.

"Oh stay for lunch," Jane said. "I'm having the curried rice from last night. There's enough for both of us."

Muriel opened the fridge and took out the covered glass bowl of rice.

"I know what I'M having," said Rex.

Muriel reached for a Tupperware container full of pulled pork.

"I hope you're getting rid of these boxes, they're making marks on the carpet."

"Immediately I finish lunch, Jane." There was a pause in the conversation. It seemed to Muriel that her preparations were making an awful amount of noise. She put the soup on the fire, bread in the toaster. Using a wooden spoon she very quietly scraped the curried rice into a skillet.

"How's Arthur these days?" her father asked.

"He's... starting up a new magazine."

"Is he? Well that's splendid. It wouldn't be that my French Bunnies has inspired him? The circulation doubled this last quarter."

"Is something wrong?" Jane asked urgently.

"No, no, just a little heartburn."

"I'm glad to hear it, Rex. I mean the increase in circulation. Arthur's net sales have dropped twelve percent. It's the growing popularity of television, he thinks. The new magazine will feature cowgirls. You know how popular the TV westerns are."

"Yes, it's all gunslingers and private eyes. Myself I prefer the radio dramas. Is that the rice I'm smelling? Darling, don't burn the toast," he called out. She heard him coming into the kitchen.

Muriel turned with the wooden spoon and was in his arms, hugged, the top of her head kissed. She was determined not to cry, but when she said, "I want to live with you," the tears came. Her voice was muffled by his coat.

"There now," he whispered, "your birthday is coming up. Then you'll be able to live with me. But for now--" He held her at arms' length, squeezing her shoulders affectionately. She started to wipe her eyes but the spoon got in the way. They both laughed.

"The toast is ready," he said. "You needn't heat the pork."

Her mother came in. She brought a chill with her. Muriel stirred the rice.

"Grendel left, out the back way," Jane said. "You ought to know how uncomfortable she is around you."

"That was a decade ago. Well it's too bad. I wanted to hear more about Arthur's new mag."

"I expect you will. You look piqued. Are you sure you're all right?"

"I could use a vacation. My apartment's being painted. The fumes... they give me a headache. Darling, put a bit of rice on my plate."

"Aren't you being silly about that lamp?"

"No, professional. It gives off a unique light," Rex said enthusiastically. "You know what I mean."

"Don't drag me into this."

The silence was suffocating. Muriel busied herself making the pork sandwich, her hands trembling.

"Just... don't," her mother said.

THE SPIRIT LAMP (1 of 3)

"Muriel," he said, "how surprising. I expected Christ to come along before you. You've changed-- grown up-- but still the same eyes. Come in, come over here and let me have a proper look at--- you needn't shut the-- doesn't matter. Just the two of us, then. Come, come. How lovely you are and still so child-like in your graceful... No need for tears! All's forgiven. Stand here by the window. Isn't that your mother's dress? The one she was married in?"

"Grandmother's," said Muriel, blinking in the light from the curtainless window. "Mother borrowed it for the wedding."

He winced at seeing that those were not tears in her eyes. They were the gleam of some hard emotion. He didn't want to think about it.

"I was best man at the wedding," he said, just as though the marriage was yesterday and not twenty years ago. "I held you during the ceremony. Jane wanted everyone to see what a lovely thing her man could produce."

Arthur came around from behind his desk in the cramped little office, one hand fingering his tie, his tongue on his lower lip, his brows creased, all the mannerisms that Muriel remembered about him.

She didn't mean to give the impression of being frightened by his approach. She saw in his grey eyes that he believed she was. He stopped a few paces from her to make those familiar gestures of innocence misunderstood, as if he was puzzled and frustrated by the idea that anyone should be wary of him, especially women.

"I was very fond of your mother," he remarked, smiling now, his hands in the pockets of his grey flannel coat.

"I've come for Father's lamp."

Arthur opened his mouth to say something in response, but, as she expected, he only stared at her a moment, then closed his mouth and moved away. He went to the other window and peered down at the street. You could hear a tinny transistor radio playing the newest recording by Elvis Presley. He shook his head, but why he did Muriel wasn't sure.

She watched him suspiciously. He was going to change the subject; that much she was sure of.

He turned to give her a knowing smile. "Do people tell you that you look like Marilyn Monroe?"

She didn't really want to breathe a laugh, but she couldn't help it. "The silly ones do," she said.

He nodded. "I'm a silly old man, then."

He was fifty, but he had looked fifty fifteen years ago when Muriel was old enough to notice things like that. He was born old, she thought, and was ageless.

"You aren't an old man," she told him severely. "Now, about Father's lamp..."

It was the way he walked over to his desk and pretended to consult a schedule that warned her that not all had been forgiven.

Muriel took a pack of Chesterfields from her skirt pocket, a flounced skirt that accentuated her slim waist. Too aware of her allure she rather bashfully lit a cigarette, looking around for a place to sit. Sitting would root her to the office, emphasize her determination to stay until Arthur brought out the lamp. It was here, somewhere in this clutter. She was quite convinced of that.

She sat in a cushioned wooden chair with scrolled armrests. It was like sinking down into a room that had been stirred up and disordered. Everything seemed to be out of place, or just tossed aside and forgotten. The desk was the one thing that had kept its sanity, its bearing, like a life raft in a stormy sea. Arthur stood beside it as though clutching it with his spirit. If he let go he would drown.

"Your father," he began. Yes, he is going to start on Father, Muriel knew, and it irritated her. That hard emotion sat in her eyes like a steel ball too heavy to roll away. Arthur winced at it. He went behind the desk intending to sit in his swivel rocker, but he didn't. He picked up the schedule, fiddled with it, and put it in a drawer. Now there was nothing to do... except change the subject.

"If it's a job you need, I can use a sales manager's assistant. Mrs Ralston has given her two week notice. It isn't a bad salary. Four hundred a month. And there will be a bonus if--"

"I think Father would have wanted me to have the lamp," said Muriel, calmly. She reached out to flick ash in a metal seashell on a counter. Here there were stacks of magazines with half nude women on the covers. The stacks leaned in opposing directions, as if it were by chance that tossed away magazines just happened to land on top of one another.

"You act as if it were a family heirloom," Arthur said and smiled wonderingly. "It's not the sort of... It's just a Victorian lamp. Worth a little something to a collector, I suppose."

He straightened his shoulders and came back around to the front of the desk. "If you're just going to sell it, I'll give you a hundred dollars for it, right here today. Now, that bonus. If the sales exceed our quarterly projection..."

Muriel let him explain about the job that she wasn't the least interested in. She smoked self-consciously. She hoped he saw that she wasn't interested in selling the lamp either. She tried not to rudely radiate impatience, but she didn't like him changing the subject. She wasn't here to visit him. His sister didn't pretend that Muriel's appearance at the Santa Monica house where she-- Grendel-- and Arthur grew up was anything other than an inquiry into the whereabouts of the lamp. But Arthur wasn't like his sister.

Grendel never changed the subject. She would talk it to death. She wasn't afraid of things that put her on the spot. She wasn't afraid of implied accusations. And she had said that the lamp, the mysterious 'spirit lamp,' was in Arthur's office, "Probably hidden away," Grendel believed, smiling grimly as she brushed the mantelpiece with her feather duster. "Muriel, you look like Marilyn Monroe."

Staring at the old maid, Muriel herself changed the subject. 'Muriel Minkrose.' Even her name was similar to the actress. For a moment she was in Hollywood, in the popping glare of flashbulbs, holding an Oscar and thanking all the people who had helped to make her a star. In THAT situation, rich and famous, she wouldn't care a flip for Father's lamp. But she was a college dropout and a working girl tied to her deadend job, tied to it as securely as the gasoline hoses were tied to their pumps.

She liked the smell of gasoline and she liked flirting with the men who drove expensive cars, remembering at that moment the man with some grey in his hair who drove up to the gas pumps in a new $2000 Cadillac. She had felt his eyes on her bare legs and arms as she inserted the nozzle and went around cleaning his windshield and side mirrors. She dressed provocatively, like a carhop at a burger stand. In the summer she wore shorts and a halter top. Her boss encouraged it. It was certainly good for business. Too bad there was a child in the backseat of the Cadillac. Her hopes were dashed. But then, maybe he was the daring type who wanted a girl on the side.

"You know why Arthur was angry at your father," Grendel said and shook the feather duster on the back porch, the door wide open, looking back at her. "Rex took the best models with him when he left to start his own skin mag. The best. Those two blondes and the redhead. Well, it's a free country. But Arthur and Rex were pals since childhood. They had a business agreement. More than an agreement, really. They had trust in each other. A bond. Or at least that's how Arthur felt. He was so hurt when your father broke their friendship to pieces and became a competitor. An enemy, in a way. You see that, don't you?"

Muriel would go on walks with her father when she was a little girl, holding his hand as they strolled along the Sunset Strip in the exciting evenings.

Rex Minkrose was tall and handsome, nattily dressed, but with a careless go-to-hell look. The women who passed them smiled at him with their eyes devouring him. They all did. Muriel was jealous and wished she was grown up, wished she could convey to the women that Rex belonged to her, that not one of them could compare to her in his estimation. And now, how funny that she grew up to look like Marilyn Monroe. How sad, though, that he was sleeping forever in Rose Hills, under a marble gravestone: 1901-1954.

"Think about my offer," Arthur said, glancing at his watch. "There's no hurry."

Muriel shook her head. "No, it's not about a job, it's the lamp. Grendel says it's here in your office. I should like to see it. It still belongs to Father."

Arthur stared at the rug, lifting a leg and sitting on a corner of his desk, his brows creased, his tongue on his lower lip like a piece of bacon. It was an ugly expression. It particularly galled Muriel to see it now, knowing that he was going to change--

"I talked to Grendel earlier today," he said, "evidently before you visited her. She knew you were back and that according to your cousin Julia you're staying at a motel in Inglewood. I can get you in to the Goldstone Suites in West Hollywood. The first month is free."

He grinned at her. The grin made it plain that he really couldn't afford to proffer such a favor. Television had decreased magazine sales just enough to worry him.

Muriel got up to crush out her stub in the metal seashell. "My work is in San Pedro near the harbor and I've already put down the first and last months rent in an apartment just a block down from the gas-- from where I work. I'm moving in this afternoon and I should like to have Father's lamp. I even bought a little endtable for it."

She turned a bright cheerful face to him. She thought this might be effective. Her lie about the endtable was a clever touch, and she was thinking of other lies that might nudge Arthur into finally giving in, when he stood away from the desk. He looked resigned. It did appear that he would bring out the lamp from wherever it was.

Muriel widened her smile, stepping toward him. She came closer to him than she had ever voluntarily come before.

"I see you are quite determined--" he began in a laughing manner that meant he was too angry to show his true feelings. "--to separate me from the one thing left that connects me to my dear old friend Rex Minkrose. Well, he's your dad. Was--" He winced. "Was your dad, and a more likeable man I've never..."

Arthur looked war-wearied. He took out a set of keys from a pocket of his grey flannel trousers. Slowly he went around to the bottom desk drawer. With every indication of reluctance he unlocked it.

Muriel was going to hold the lamp in her hands for the first time in her life.