From the Writer

No one knew

The six roommates

Long ago, before

So at this

Regina Olsen woke

Jason slid down

We were busy

The next morning

Craig stood at

The wheels turned

Ammo From Heaven

Once again we

"Yes, and when she saw me, Regina said ‘isn’t this a riot’." Monica pronounced each word slowly, like a death sentence.

From the Writer:

Once it became clear that a history of our adventure needed to be kept, Jeff was chosen to record it; if anyone doesn’t already know why that became impossible, she will find out in the following pages. And so reluctantly I accepted Jeff’s task. I say I accepted this task reluctantly because I have never been much with words. In the draft of these three short sentences, for example, I have already made eleven-make that twelve (and now thirteen) changes. This is a bigger job than I thought at first.

Yet there are others who can do it! How often did Bill tell us of his plan for a novel, asking, "Which do you prefer as a title, ‘Postmodern Gypsies’, or ‘Academic Gypsies’?" And who has not read Craig’s short stories, or seen his plays? Or, on the radio, heard the "team poems" written by Laura and Monica? I always said my labors were better spent in an administrative position, balancing ledgers or making reservations. Further, even I do not know how I received the responsibility, and I make this short disclaimer only once, and issue this apology only this time. The facts are recorded faithfully; that is all that matters.

Anything else I leave to the reader.

A.R.

No one knew where the money came from. Years later I learned that someone anonymous handed Benji a small box and said to him, "If you want, you can push this button and many millions of dollars will be left in your house while you sleep, but someone will die," and Benji asked, "But who?" and the person only shrugged and set the box in front of him. Benji pushed the button and watched the news and the papers but never heard of any strange deaths, and sure enough: there was $25 million stacked around the house when we woke up.

This was when The Organization was young and a joke, rarely discussed outside of Tuesday Night Drinking Night. Tuesday Night Drinking Night was when the academicians came over for laughs. Most of the higher ranking members lived at the house then, Benji Bergstrand-the Admiral-as wise and strong as he was handsome; Captain Bethany Hamann, our "weapons" specialist whose most effective armament was her disarming looks; Captain Bill Brower, who revealed himself as the brains of our activity; Lieutenant Jason Lee, known (unbeknownst to himself) as the clown, but a true genius with disguises-our cloak and dagger guy; and Chef Craig Griffin, who groaned more than he cooked, but was invaluable on the field. I lived in the house, too, but as a joke I was ranked "Lord" Adam Robinson, and I existed parallel to The Organization.

So when Jason stumbled out of his bedroom and down the front stairwell, and after he hollered at the pets and turned the corner into the living room, he saw piles and piles of money. It was stacked in grocery bags, suitcases, shoeboxes, duffel bags; it was piled in dozens of rows; mounds of cash lay on the counters, the rotting furniture, next to a putrid and sloppy cat-litter box. Jason opened the refrigerator. Ten-grand’s worth of twenties buried his Foghorn Leghorn slippers.

He called down and we came, and as the six of us stared aghast, speechless, the morning sun reflected the green of the money onto our faces. Bethany and Craig dove to the floor when I picked up a stack of twenty-dollar bills and handed it to Jason, who passed it to Benji, who looked at it incredulously (but still never speaking of the offer, nor showing any sign of remembering it, even). No bombs detonated, though, and no bullets crashed through the windows, lodging themselves deep into our skulls. Bill looked suspiciously into the street, searched the doorway for tracks.

"Didn’t it rain last night?" he asked.

"Yeah, it rained hard," Bethany said, joining Bill at the doorway.

"Well," Bill paused, seeing the mud-filled front lawn, "you’d expect there’d be some dirt on the floor, then."

"Good point, Dragonfly," Craig said, holding a c-note to the light. "So now we’re the Hardy Boys."

"Hardy people," Jason said, looking at Bethany. And then no one said anything for a couple minutes or so. After a brief discussion, we decided the money was ours to keep after determining a few things, like how we had earned it, how much there was, and had anyone seen it delivered. We tried not to be concerned with its origin, and so we weren’t.

I had been counting for a short time when someone concluded that we should each take a small portion to blow, and that we should blow it immediately. Recklessly, my friends descended on the booty like they’d never seen $25 million before, stuffing and stuffing the stacks into slacks and shirtsleeves and so on. I called for order.

"You can’t run off all crazy like this," I said. "First, we oughta settle on a sensible amount to debit, and what we should spend it on."

Blank looks looked blankly at my forehead. They had stopped foraging but were still bent over the piles with thousands of dollars in their hands. "I mean, we don’t want everyone coming home with a minivan filled with beer. I don’t want Jason and Bethany buying the same dozen laptops. You know."

A plan was reached. Everyone took $20 thousand and Benji said, "Meet back here tomorrow at noon."

We had money.

Bill went to the college and sat in the coffee shop for thirty minutes. A skinny girl with brown hair brushed past him carrying a tattered Discipline and Punish and he said to her, "The world is ending."

"It is ending, indeed," said the girl. Bill snatched her book, saying "beware the knower," and ripped a chapter from the pages. The two of them bought a minivan, filled it with beer, and drove four hours to a Buffett party in Indiana, quoting great literature and bad movies to each other.

"The world is all that is the case," she said at the party.

At the party Bill clobbered two policemen and a parrot, yelling it’s over, all over, and the brunette bailed him out of jail in the morning. She used her own money.

Bill dropped her back at the coffee shop and stumbled into the house at 11:55, minivan-less.

"A palindrome," he said.

Jason pealed out of the driveway and he shouldn’t have because the transmission in his 1988 Honda Accord busted on his way to Chicago. So with $20 thousand in his pocket he hitched a ride with a Guaranteed Overnight Delivery truck that let him off south of the city. Then he tipped a cabbie $80 to drop him under a bridge where he had passed out drunk with some bums several months earlier. The urchins huddled around him like he was a hero; clearly, they remembered him.

Their acknowledgment confused Jason. He didn’t remember that before he had gone unconscious that night, he gathered the homeless to him and he preached. "Friends," he hiccupped, "brothers and thisters. We are in a fix. Word, yes, a shadow has fallen down upon our shoulders. A mantle. I’we say ‘wet thy mantle faw, Word, on ME’!" He cried aloud. The hirsute men and women roared with laughter. He hiccupped a little more. "No, but seriouswee, friends, brothers and sisters, there is one coming who wiw wift this shadow, this poor economy of faithwethneth . . . and when you see him again, again, uh, friends, our troubles will be gone. We’w shake our fists at thith darkneth (hiccup), thith dark time . . . again, Nevermore! Wook at hith coming! Wook!" and he collapsed on the ground, spent. His homeless friends clearly misunderstood him, and for months they had been expecting him to return and solve their money problems. The wise ones among them prophesied his return, interpreting his words. Every night as they warmed their hands at the firing can, Wanda told Rhonda the story of Jason, their Lord.

And here he was, returned to his people with almost twenty grand. Seventeen of them marched through Michigan Avenue, the Magnificent Mile, celebrating, carrying Jason above their heads on a stained mattress. They veered into the Continental Hotel.

Craig counted out his portion and turned to Benji. "Admiral," he said, "there’s something I’ve meant to give you," and he handed Benji the cash.

"For the phone bill, at last." Benji laughed. "But no, old pal," he said, "you should take mine." He handed both shares to Craig, along with another $43 he had in his wallet. Craig hopped up with the forty thousand, forty-three dollars, took Bethany by the arm, and the two of them hit the door with too much money for anyone’s good.

In America, you can buy all sorts of great cars for $60 thousand, but Craig and Bethany picked out a VW Beetle, yellow, and smashed it with a sledgehammer named "Might." Afterwards they rented formal clothes and a Limo and ate at the three most expensive restaurants in Kankakee.

At Blxxxxxxxxr Video, Bethany picked out some movies and smashed them and, using the telephone intended for corporate job-interviewing, Craig bought $30,043 worth of stock in "some Hollywood company."

Benji, after giving all his money to Craig and feeling suckered, demoted himself to corporal. Thus, I outranked him and demanded he stay with me to help organize the situation. The two of us made separate piles of cash according to denomination and counted until we had sunken eyes. I was tired all over, and we were both sick of the look and feel of money. We loaded all of it into my car and took it to the river where we burned half of it and poured the rest into the muddy water where it floated swiftly away and sunk.

The next morning, before any of the others returned, we woke to twice as much cash littering the house.

* * *

The six roommates regrouped and the next couple of days were spent caring for the money. It wasn’t easy. Our eyes stung and our knuckles swelled. At times we grew so frustrated we nearly burned it all over again. But our senses didn’t fail us completely. Destroying the cash would only bring it back two-fold.

A grueling eight hours later we had everything counted and organized. The money, when we found it originally, lay in piles of intermingled denominations. By nine o’clock that night we had it tucked into attaché cases and in order. There were 500,000 one-dollar bills. Five hundred thousand.

Five hundred thousand.

There were 400,000 twenties and hundreds, 100,000 fives and tens. In total, there was $50 million.

Fifty million dollars.

* * *

Fifty-million dollars.

"Let’s go to Trigger’s," I said to Bill, "Have a cup of coffee."

At Trigger’s, Bill chuckled and said, "Why don’t you retire, Adam? Settle down?"

"Bill," I said, "I’ll see to it you never have to eat another onion." Bill hated them. "I’ll cancel onions."

"Why don’t you take piano lessons? I’ll make a gift of them to you."

"But I already play piano."

"Then Bridge. Let’s learn Bridge."

"Do they still play Bridge?" I asked.

"In England they do."

Four days later, Bill returned and taught us the complex card game. "So they still play in England, huh?" I said.

"I don’t really know. Maybe. But did you know there was a column about it in the newspaper everyday?"

Bill had run a successful mission, which was not really to learn Bridge but to deposit the money into various foreign accounts. I had given him delicate instructions, designed for maximum efficiency and least risk. But instead of following them, Bill bought a Dutch minivan, filled it with beer, and lost the money in a pillowcase. Eventually it turned up and he made the deposits, but his carelessness was a precedent; aloofness became everyone’s habit, our modus operandi. We were the servants who buried their talents in off-shore accounts, then relaxed, waiting coolly for the Master’s return.

We waited back at the house, which we had taken to calling both, "Trigger’s" and "The Base for Guerilla Warfare." Then the fun really began. We filled the garage with stealthy motorcycles. We built an art gallery in the back yard, and underneath it-through a trap door behind the fireplace-we put an Operations Center. The OC was hyper-tech, the kind of room we imagined they’d have at NASA; a conference table with built-in laptops at each seat anchored the center of the room. Along one wall we stacked twelve TVs. An antique Navy radar screen lighted up the opposite side and blipped randomly. (This machine had no function but we thought it was stylish.) One corner we left completely empty except for a red telephone sitting on a gothic pedestal and lit from above. This appliance was also useless, because it wasn’t connected to any telephone service. We joked that it was a direct line to God. "When we need it most," Benji said, "it will work." Our additions cost over a million dollars.

And Jason, having purchased a thrift-store, outfitted the six of us majestically, like a swarming group of Gatsby’s, and we flew to the most fashionable parties, hobnobbed with important people. There was a Victoria’s Secret convention in New York City that boasted a $25,000 ticket. Craig and I snuck in; money didn’t change us; we were too rich and handsome to pay. Beautiful and distinguished patrons asked after our designer. We mentioned Yasonli and scorned their bewilderment. We toasted champagne with busty women whom we called "Our Friends," and when Craig felt drunk he climbed onto the catwalk and hollered, "You are my people! This is my element!" He grabbed one of Our Friends and cried, "Silicon, I love you!" He kissed her and grabbed another. He looked at her face; she had swollen lips and deep blue eyes. Her hair fell like sex over her brow and Craig fainted, dropping hard to the floor. I met him there in stitches, clutching my ribs as I laughed.

I hoisted him onto my back and we made our way a few blocks to one of those horrific, booming clubs for the neo jet set, the "backpack intelligentsia." Homeless people were selling Mp3 players and passing out demos. At the opposite corner I spotted Bill and Bethany smoking cigarettes and looking smart. They waved us over, and when Craig climbed off my back, he fainted.

I said, "That’s the faint." Bethany laughed. Bill asked for clarification. Craig leapt to his feet.

"You know, it’s actually more of a swoon. It’s for the ladies." Predictably, a small group of nightlife lasses walked past. They were wearing tight black trousers, tight black shirts, and silver belts. I rather felt like retching. They had pear-shaped butts, and as they flipped their heads to make eye contact with us, Bill, Craig, and I fainted/swooned into a pile. Birds and stars circled in halos around our heads. The girls laughed as Bethany smacked her elbow and superflew from a mailbox onto our dog pile.

Down for the count, we stood up and brushed off, brushed past the girls and the doorman, and danced into the club. I turned to Bethany.

"Where’d you get the tuxedo!" I said.

"What!" The banging boomed too loud.

I smiled. "It’s the music!"

"What!"

"Sure is loud!" Our conversation continued like this. I found out where she got the tuxedo ("from somewhere") and she showed me the tag: Armani. I took stock. I was wearing polyester, not vintage but old. If I looked any way besides clownish it was my eyes that said I had several million dollars at hand. Craig looked the same way. But Bill and Bethany were both wearing clothes costing many times more than the nicest ones in the bar. And where was Bill? I scanned the crowd and saw him laughing with the bartender, a muscular gay man in black. And Craig?

Craig was defining the dance floor, moving across it in wide arcs, clearing a path before and behind him. He loped through the crowd, flailing his arms wildly. He stopped in the center and spun so the other dancers stood in a circle facing him. I took Bethany’s hand and she led me to the newly formed ring. As the two of us approached Craig bowed low, with a sweeping gesture, and Bethany and I took the floor. We danced a tango sloppily, including bits of other dances we had seen. The Charleston. The Mashed Potato.

We laughed for a while, then left the club and returned to the Midwest. Soon after, Craig and I did what we thought we would never do; landing at the Peotone airport we rented a mid-sized compact and went to our class reunion at Olivet. It may be that we had assumed we'd fly into Peotone at some point in our lives, and it was certainly nothing new to procure a rental car, but returning to our alma mater was an occasion I was completely unprepared for.

Attending college, I was dubbed a "weird-weird" for my mildly anti-social behavior together with my proclivity for making messes in the cafeteria. I wore the title as a badge of honor, the way some people wore their cum laude regalia. (That was a privilege I would never know, since I put about as much effort into my college career as I put into earning $50 million-in a word, none.) For some absurd reason I thought it was an intelligent protest to skip classes and ignore homework assignments. What was I protesting? Well-and not to be flippant-that "what have you got" notion seemed up my alley. To be more specific, I think I was deluded into thinking that language was a concoction of the white male, and as such, something to be bracketed and abolished. If I truly wanted to be a liberationist (and I truly did) I figured I wouldn't be privy to the language game that alienated so many people. Firmly believing this, I was never able to reconcile the practical application of my ideas with the philosophical discussion of them with white dudes in stuffy classrooms.

And so I zig-zagged my way through the university, playing Frisbee outside of my Descriptive English Grammar classroom, tempting the professor to flunk me. She did, but still I squeezed through the graduation ceremony. And now I was on my way to Homecoming, to greet the people who bought into the mission of the school and employed it to their success.

When I was there, living on the fringe and having fun, I knew where I would end up. I knew that my grades and study habits would work against me if I wanted to join the real world, and so my lousy performance was my defense against that compromise. I had effectively insured that I would never be complicit in an economy that caused so many problems. It was as my friend Jeff-who got his-told me again and again; the only radical action we can take at the end of history is to not work. So I kept from getting good grades in order to keep from getting a good job. If I was to achieve any sort of success after college it was to be on my own terms.

Or I could come across millions of dollars and go to underwear shows. In which case I would be eager to get to my class reunion and show off where my degree in Frisbee had taken me.

* * *

Our places were set at a table with people I didn't recognize. Craig and I had shown up in the faux-swank ballroom fashionably tipsy, a further flipped finger to the teetotaling Olivet. Being five-years graduated, we were immune to suspension or fines-good news! I plopped into the seat marked by my mildly tacky placard as Craig went to drop a tip in the pianist's jar. Our plates arrived as Craig sat down. The pianist began an adaptation of Eric Johnson’s "Cliffs of Dover."

"Adam," I said to the pretty girl beside me, offering my hand. "English Lit."

"Josey," she said, shaking my hand. "Psyche. Did you take Coach Watson's swimming class?" Suddenly I recognized her. She was the reason I waited to be the last person out of the pool every day.

"I don't really want to talk about that," I laughed.

Craig, in the meantime, had managed to irk his neighbor. "In today's economy," the stranger said firmly, "you have the opportunity to be creative about how you earn money while serving a greater purpose. I can effectively bolster my portfolio while strategizing around major areas of . . . negative factors."

"Adam," Craig said, "you remember Nate Kerr." An under-steamed broccoli stem dropped from my fork.

"Hello, Nate," I said, trying to remember his face.

"You were in my philosophy classes," Nate helped. "And I was your Resident Assistant for two years."

"Right. Hi hi." I smiled in my non-recognition.

"You don't remember your RA?" Josey asked loudly.

"Sorry, Nate. I guess I wasn't a very good resident."

"I remember you missed a lot of bed checks."

"There were bed checks?" I said. Josey looked at me incredulously. I was da Man, the bad boy.

"So I want to hear more about how you get so rich while avoiding . . . negative factors," Craig prodded. I swallowed some bland chicken cordon bleu. Craig nipped at his flask.

"Well," Nate said, putting down his silverware, "It's kind of an extension of Fukuyama. It's the end of history, except everything isn't just capitalism nowadays. Things aren't just buy and sell, buy and sell anymore, not when violence is so pervasive that people are killing each other for as little as sneakers. There's a new need, a need for sensation, the sensation of protection. And so, as people have known since antiquity, to be successful in business all you have to do is find a need and fill it. If people need bread, you sell them bread. If people have bread, you convince them they need cars. Then you sell them cars. If people have bread and cars, but are afraid to go outside, then you sell them guns. The trick is to learn what your mission is, because in these days there are people selling everything. Things to steal, things to steal with, things we use to protect ourselves from theft. You only need to decide what you feel called to provide."

"Which in your case is?"

"The guns."

This is the craziest thing I've ever heard.

"Wait. You feel it is your calling to sell guns," asked Craig.

"Right," chimed in the blond man sitting next to Nate, who until then had been quiet. Suddenly his name came to me-Ron Hadley. He had held some administrative position on campus while I was there, Director of Student Affairs or something. He was, I had long thought, the antithesis of everything I stood for. He spoke defensively, as if he thought that Nate was saying too much, "but it's not like we're selling Saturday Night Specials to homeboys. It's a little more involved then that. A little more socially inclined."

How boring, I thought. I tried to make eyes with Josey, but she was captured by the conversation.

"Socially inclined?" she asked.

"Right," said Ron. "We've aligned ourselves with some special interest groups who we feel represent our worldview. We support them in their long struggle."

"By donating a tenth of your black market profits to breast cancer research?" I asked sarcastically. Ron loosened his necktie and looked warily at Nate. Everyone at the table had stopped eating.

"Most people respond with that same attitude when they hear about our group at first. But I assure you; we have some very legitimate associates. Very legitimate and upstanding," said Ron.

"In fact," Nate began eagerly, "our whole company has a Christian mission statement. We are acting in accordance with Biblical history and tenets, and we are quite aligned with the beliefs of the modern church."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Craig said. "So you're a legitimate organization? What do you do, really?"

"Is this a joke?" I said.

"Can you tell us who you sell guns to?" Josey asked with a level head.

"No," said Ron.

"Israel," said Nate at the same time. Ron shot him a glance that read, "Shut up."

"Oh," I said, thinking I had them figured out. "You work for the government?"

"Look, we don't work for the government and can we talk about something else," Ron said. "Why is it business all the time?"

Josey changed the topic to something that wasn't so tainted by the stigmas of religion and politics-impolite conversation topics at college reunions, apparently-and the dinner went by uninterestingly. Our table was stifled in contrast to those around us, where people laughed noisily and smiled between bites of their $22 dinners. Poor Josey, beautiful Josey, who could sense the disdain that Craig and I had for Ron and Nate. I spent the rest of the meal ignoring them, trying to woo Josey, but she wouldn't have it. It turns out that she was engaged to a guy back in Peoria, a great guy who was working on his PhD and playing for a hardcore band. Good for her. Before the night was over, though, she did get Nate to cough up the name of his "company."

Ammo from Heaven, like "manna from heaven," unleavened bread that fed the Jews during their 40-year pilgrimage in the desert. It fell from the sky. Ammo from Heaven, please. The whole thing made me sick.

There was an opening of the university's new art gallery that Craig and I went to after dinner. I convinced Josey to come along. The gallery was in the old Fine Arts building, in the basement, and it was done up exactly as I had pictured it. It was tasteful and white, with one large, curving wall set up as the focal point. We spent a few minutes looking at the display the Art chair had curated, an alumni show. There were a few names I recognized next to boring watercolors, people from my class who had gone on to be high school teachers or art supply store owners or whatever. The pictures were as sterile as ever, some done with skill but not soul, some done with both. Most were done with neither.

We wandered through the catacombs of the department and as usual we found ourselves in the painting studio. It was good to see the students' work. They were the ones still foraging for a way to make it as artists, and some hadn't yet settled into the bastardized version of art that the school taught. Some had, and their paintings were sad to see, especially one student's well done portraits of Michael Jordan that he was certain to sell to his roommate for 200 bucks. I took note of the kid's name so I would remember it at the next alumni show I was attended.

Josey called me over to a small cubicle wedged between two much larger cubicles. A person was likely to miss that workstation, as it was overshadowed by the large paintings next to it, abstract canvases covered with clumps of oil and acrylic then diluted by turpentine. They were almost interesting. They were certainly distracting, but Josey had managed to find a jewel between them.

Mary Faw was an unassuming painter who had spent a lot of time working on fantasy art, fairies and so on. She had dozens of canvases covered with the adolescent idea. But the picture she was working on currently, a small panel, contrasted everything I had seen that night or for the past few weeks of mind-numbing partying. Despite being incomplete, her picture brought home to me my sensitivity and introspection. So far she had completed a background of muted tones and sketched in her subject. It was Christ in front of Pilate. Although she had only begun the figures, it was clear that she had spent weeks working on Jesus’ serene face. Craig joined us and matched our silent respect.

I had decided years before that art about Jesus should only be attempted after a person has mastered their medium and gained credibility in their field. I guess my sentiment came as a result of the junkyard of alternative rock bands trampling over the subject. But Mary Faw had captured something. She stilled my rock 'n' roll soul and reminded me of something more important than myself or people who sell guns. I remembered why I love life. There is an infinity in everything, everything, like the color brown in her painting. There is a depth that I marvel at and that makes me happy.

I took note of her name, too, but I knew I wouldn't see her work on the walls at Olivet ten years hence. I wanted to find out more about her now. The next day I went back to the art department to see if she was around, but her cubicle was gone.

I did, however, meet the guy who painted Michael Jordan so well. I approached him, smiling.

"Look, kid," I said, "what would you say if I gave you a million dollars never to touch a paintbrush again?" He put down his brush and I made out a check.

Then I ran into Ron Hadley. "Look, Ron," I said, "what would you say if I gave you a million dollars never to sell another gun." He laughed at me and said I had no idea.

Long ago, before we had any money or massive rooms like the Operations Center, we had converted our basement into a lounge we called "Trigger’s," and we held numerous parties down there. Even after the $50M, it was still our favorite place to relax, and early on we had decided not to let our new money touch the place. Trigger’s represented the enjoyment of struggle for us, and there was history down there. One year we hosted a talent show called, "All My Friends Are Exclamation Points." It was a huge success, so the next year we held "The Prom." We decked the lounge out in the "school colors"-red and black-and came up with a theme. Bethany and Benji built a portrait backdrop, where people were photographed in front of drapes and bunting, under the arbor. I went to the prom stag, but ended up French-kissing a slender college girl and was accordingly elected King.

The next year we held "The Pretenshun Gala," a dismal failure in contrast to the other parties. Maybe I only say that because it marks the beginning of the end for the Organization as a funny joke and its apotheosis as a serious, if more subversive entity. Because not only did the group of friends largely react negatively to the idea, but also the vast amount of distaste (which stemmed from feeling excluded) went unspoken and ate at the cohesiveness of our bond.

I suppose it was a fun part. Bethany and I choreographed a short musical (not as brilliant as my holiday opus, "Howard Zinn’s First Thanksgiving"), and Benji, Sarah, and guests performed a tragic Chinese opera. Not only that, but for the first time, we hired a band for the occasion-the legendary B>bcats from Kewauska, WI. No, I suppose it was a fun time, although no one drank too much and the police didn’t show up, which was odd.

The police didn’t show up, which was odd because we had constructed a stage, which means we were loud, and there were many, many cars parked in front of the house. The house was on a curve in one of those creepy Midwestern subdivisions where identically architectured homes sprawl out on endless farmland, as if planted by a drunken or half-witted Johnny Appleseed. The neighborhood was a symbol to us of what America had become: a materialistic nation of ignorant but well-meaning citizens. SUVs and minivans represented family values while American flags suggested thoughtless patriotism. Meanwhile, I thought melodramatically that: People are dying, and it’s our fault. People are dying, and every lawn in The (now subversive) Organization’s subdivision was well-manicured sod installed as the last phase of a house’s building project. Every lawn but the one at the Base for Guerilla Warfare. We were the only ones watching nature take its course, providing a lush, green lawn. In reality, the yard was covered in weeds and spiked with grass that the six of us were too environmental to trim.

It struck me that imbedded in the psyche of people who lived in these houses-the communal unconscious-was a deep hatred of one’s neighbor. On these moors, Noblemen built their empires only to look out their back window one day and see, right next door, another kingdom rise. (And the lords of that manor raised blossoming cherry trees while, gasp, we had planted only evergreens.) I imagined spite grew whenever any family parked a new car in a freshly-topped driveway, so it always pleased me to see our disheveled yard and imposing brown house among so many white and beige, white and beige homes. I considered it a form of resistance against the machinations of a culture gone mad with the mentality of buy-and-sell, buy-and-sell. Our tattered domicile screamed, "Hell no, we won’t buy into your inane standards of not just conformity but mandatory decency," as if mowing twice a week indicated everything was fine and functional with you.

We had $50 million. We could buy-and-sell all day, and there wasn’t much functional with us.

It’s not easy to be functional, but we tried our best. On Friday nights, many, many cars parked on our curve while everyone was at Trigger’s, attending "The Thinktank." This was a weekly event where, as John Wesley put it, ". . . As many of us as had opportunity would meet together and spend the dinner hour in crying to God, for each other and for all mankind." The quote pertained exceptionally well, except that it was not the dinner hour, it was midnight. The part about the crying to God was true, though, and frequently consisted of plays, songs, and story readings. Fred and I worked out savage sets of punk songs-Fred played drums while I leaned my guitar against an amp and screamed while it fed blistering distortion-that opened each night. Bill serialized academic papers he’d written, spending one month discussing postmodern love, the next defending masochism against the Christian denigration of the body. Bethany read chapters from Curious George. The nights also became an outlet for Laura and Monica, who had been writing poems as a team, hashing out sentiment and rhyme together, then reading the odes at The Thinktank. Their work always brought pause. One night Bryan stood at the podium and did a crossword puzzle. His performance was met with raucous applause. "Fifty-four down!" Stephanie yelled, "Fifty-four down!" I used the occasion to read excerpts from the history book I was forced to write.

When it wasn’t Friday night, members of the Organization frequently met at Trigger’s to socialize and unwind, so naturally it was where the six of us reunited after our trips while the OC was still under construction. (I loved to watch the backhoe tear up the backyard, secretly hoping the driver would back over the neighbor's saplings). We gave each other reports of our activity. Unfortunately, no Spy Work had presented itself, so all we had to discuss was the parties we were attending. This quickly grew dull. I formed the hypothesis that beer-guzzling stories maintained appeal only as long one felt they happened far to the margins of what was possible: "I drank 18 Buds, stripped naked, and ran home. I passed right by a cop in an SUV." Stories like this are only funny when you have to work at 7 the next morning. With as much money as we had, these nights merely scratched the surface of what was difficult. Our reports strived for attention-getters:

"Right, and so Adam and Bethany had to ride in business class even after they bribed the pilot," Craig continued. "So while I was swallowing whole Martinis live, they were in the back of the jet fighting off terrorists." Everyone sort of groaned.

"No, seriously," I said. "A chubby Patriots fan in the row behind me stood up waving a detonator and yelling ‘are you ready for some football’? The gas masks dropped down from the overhead and that distracted him long enough for Bethany to pop him in the nose and for me to snatch his doohickey."

"That look you gave me was so funny," Bethany said.

"What look?"

"You rolled your eyes like you were tired of this terrorism crap."

"Every time somebody picks up a gun it’s terrorism. Why can’t we just have good old murder anymore?" Jason began.

Bill interrupted. "You’ll all be happy to know that while you were clowning around on airplanes I was clowning around on airplanes too, but I also successfully deposited the money." He paused. "After I

found it."

"You lost $50 million?" I asked glaringly, incredulous. I had given detailed instructions.

"Well, I mean, I left it in my pillowcase."

"Oh."

"Which I left at a whorehouse in Paris." Silence. We contemplated how lousy losing the money would have been.

"They make you bring your own pillows into Parisian whorehouses?" Benji asked.

"Well, you know how I am about bed-bugs."

Craig put down his glass and went to find the phone, which had been ringing for a little while. I don’t know why, but when I finally heard it, I got a sick feeling in my abdomen, so now I know how foreshadowing feels: like a brick, or an abutment.

So at this point our story becomes complicated. I have been trying to convey the foundational events with a lot of levity, emphasizing the excitement and brilliance that came along with the money. Focusing on the positive hasn’t been hard, either, because until this evening there was little else to write. However, The Organization involved more than the six of us. There were probably 25 figures central to it who haven’t received my proper attention because they didn’t live at the house; including everyone is not practical to the story. As the reader follows the pages, voraciously turning, she finds much more attention falling to fewer and fewer characters, while others, relegated to the margins (although equally important in advancing the plot and theme), fall victim to the practicalities of written history. The only way I can excuse myself is to point out the impossibility of ever fully appreciating the massive role that dialing the wrong phone number, say, or whistling on a crowded Chicago sidewalk, plays in the outcome of not just one but every story. It should all be included, but it can’t. If I were omnipresent, this book would exceed 50 million pages, or more likely, wouldn’t be written at all. As I cannot be all places at once, I have committed to recording only the events I have witnessed, or when immensely important, stories that have been told to me by the people who were there. This makes my job difficult, because, for example, before I can give a simple telling of Jeff’s death, I need to introduce him and make the reader care. Otherwise, why should I set this down at all, when it will only speed the reader’s setting the book down?

So blacken in the words, or skip this chapter. It’s not all the same, but it’s all nothing.

* * *

Jeff was born in 1977 to a Kansas Congressman. During his teen years he listened to non-descript rap music, was cute and pudgy, and liked to hunt and fish. He read a lot, finding the work of Hermann Hesse to be particularly close to his heart. In high school he fell in with a boy named Nate and one named Josh, and they turned him on to Pavement, the band. He grew fond of the songs "Conduit for Sale" and "Range Life." Bob Dylan also impacted him greatly, and when he went to college, separating from his boyhood friends, he associated with students who had the same interests: Fishing, Hesse, Pavement, Dylan, and Dostoyevsky. And chess. I forgot to tell you about Dostoyevsky, chess, and painting. Yes, painting, but not painting, looking at paintings. Magritte and so on. And then came Nietzsche and the occasion he had to piddle right next to Jacques Derrida, a French literary theorist with an unimpressive manliness. So, as a matter of course, Jeff came up against Foucault, after Kierkegaard’s imposing Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (he read the whole thing, as well as the Fragments), much of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, and finally, Barth, Barthes, Barthelme, John Barth, and Blanchot. In short, he developed an imposing mind. Naturally, all of this was strung together by not just cigarettes and hours of study, but also by his friends who graduated with him-fellow readers and farmers, like him-that’s right, members of The Organization. And that skillfully brings us up to the foreshadowing phone call.

The only trouble is that now you know who Jeff is, what he likes to read and do sometimes for fun, but it doesn’t really give you any reason to care that he’s dead. Maybe I’ve introduced him too superficially. Maybe the tone I employ is too nonchalant (I should be more chalant), and the reader is left to think only that, since the author can take this character’s death so carelessly, why should it affect her on any sincere level? But this problem is easily solved, because at the time of his death-about midnight-he was newly married to a beautiful young blond, Laura, and they depended on one another for money and happiness. In the mornings over Turkish coffee she’d boiled, Laura would say to Jeff, her new husband, "I have so many plans and bright hopes for the future," and Jeff would ask her something about her stool from the day before, or comment on the squirrels in the yard, but now he’s dead, dead.

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: being dead doesn’t matter a whole lot for Beings-Unto-Death-it’s the fulfillment of their potential-and that’s just exactly the point. Because we’ll miss Jeff, but the really significant thing is "the way he went," as they say, or more precisely, the way he stayed. Because Jeff could have made it off the barstool and through the backdoor of the Tiny Tap before that magnificently derailed train smashed through the front wall, lodging itself first in Jeff’s leg, then his hemorrhoid and finally in his brain. But the amazing thing isn’t how the railcar hit Jeff, it’s that it completely missed the Triple Cherry novelty slot machine where, good detective work uncovered, Jeff was up about 850 points, or something like $45.

"Poor sucker," a fireman said.

"Kansas," Ray the Bartender said, and he poured about an ounce of Canadian Hunter onto the ground.

* * *

Jeff, the scholar and the lover, is dead, but don’t be sad. The closing of this chapter closes Book One, and it’s the only unhappy detail of the story. Even the major complication for The Organization, which comes up in this next section, is a return to the joyful themes we’ve visited so far. And c’mon: Jeff’s death isn’t so bad. For one thing, you only just met him, think of the dozens of characters you haven’t even been introduced to; there’s Stephanie, the maternal leader, and her husband Bryan, whose lackadaisical charms were as good as money. There’s Aaron, and tribute needs to be paid to him; he’s a constant resource and guide. You may be lucky enough to read about Mark, who could do anything probably, or Fred, who used his body as a bridge one time and saved all of our lives. There just isn’t room to discuss everybody and their influence. But Jeff’s dead, and to us that worked out fine; it pushed us on to bigger and better, to the beyond.

Regina Olsen woke and pushed the long brown hair from her eyes. She sat up in bed, which floated like an island in the center of her large studio apartment. There was an oriental blind to the left of the island, and on the right, where she kept her alarm clock, was a nightstand. She reached out and flipped off the alarm and on the lamp. It was 5:30 and Regina Olsen heard the coffee maker as it started to percolate. Swinging her legs to the floor, Regina Olsen thought about how the world was full of all kinds of people, and how glad she was to be a morning person.

She slipped into her bathrobe and stepped out onto the balcony. Chicago was bright and the skyscrapers shined brightly in the morning sun. The coffee was hot. Regina tilted her head sharply toward her shoulder and her neck cracked. "Hello Tabby," she said to the gray cat brushing against her leg. "What’s for breakfast?" Tabby licked his whiskers.

Having fed the cat, Regina showered. First she had to remove the facial mask, which always pinched her skin, but everyday she diminutized the pain with a cast-off phrase: it hurts to be beautiful. She shampooed her hair and conditioned it, then lathered herself with an expensive body wash. Working as a physical therapist kept her fit; her abdominal muscles were taut and her butt and small breasts kept firm by repetitive exercise. She rinsed the soap from her face and turned off the water, then dried herself and put expensive black slacks and a dark blouse over comfortable but elegant lingerie. She straightened her hair and put on make-up tastefully.

It was time for work. Having swallowed the last drops of coffee and rinsed the pot, and slipping into black leather shoes, Regina left her flat and locked the door. She did not forget the keys this time. Still happy to be awake, she went outside and walked briskly to the taxi stand and selected a car. The man drove well.

The driver was good and the sun was good, because it made Chicago’s skyscrapers shine. It was a Monday morning. Regina was happy to be a morning person. She was the only one.

When she got to work Regina was fired. After being with the company for six months she had not been productive enough, the administrator told her. He ran his hand over his head, which he had taken to shaving ever since he started to bald. She should pack up her things, he said.

Regina said, "I thought you were supposed to do layoffs on Friday afternoons, so people don’t do anything crazy or violent before they leave."

"Oh," the bald administrator said, "I hadn’t thought of that. You’re . . . not going to do anything violent, are you?"

Regina tried and failed to give him a hard look. She considered her retorts: "Why do we use the expression, ‘grow bald’," she thought she might ask him, but knew it wouldn’t suit her. "No," she said. She packed up her things, rode the elevator down to the lobby, and-cradling the box in her arms-pushed her shoulder blades into the glass door and straight into Craig, who was hurrying by on the sidewalk. Regina’s box dropped to the ground and spilled into a pile, along with 200 pages of the next installment of The Kankakee Review, which Craig had just finished photocopying and organizing into sections. That was just about all Regina could take, but Craig dealt with it in stride, so to speak, since he was so rich; all the pedestrians passing by, so narrowly dodging the two of them, were not a bother.

They were crouching down to sort out their belongings when they fatefully looked into each other’s eyes.

"What the hell is The Kankakee Review?" Regina Olsen asked Craig scornfully.

"It’s the zine my friend, Adam, does. Who the hell are the people in this picture?" Craig said, handing her a framed 8x10 photo that had landed by his foot.

"It’s my parents and my brother."

"Oh. So. Are they famous?" Craig asked. He was trying to make conversation as they sorted through the disarray. Regina gave him a funny look. It was the same glare that failed with the bald administrator.

"I was just wondering. Anyway, I’m Craig, what’s new?" It was sweet; he was smitten.

Regina Olsen stopped shuffling the pile and put her palms flat on the ground. She took a deep breath, feeling a bad mood settle in. The sun that seemed good before as it reflected off of the buildings bothered her now. First she was fired and now she had backed into a skinny, bespectacled oddball named Craig on a crowded sidewalk. She looked up and into his face a second time, but before she could say anything, Craig said, "Do you want to go have some lunch?"

Regina exhaled and stared harder at Craig. He was not bad looking in the black suit and red tie that he wore (Jason had bought identical suits for all the roommates). She inhaled then exhaled again, waiting for him to shy away from her vitriol. He held firmly to his ground, smiling like a fool, and in the end she had no option but to accept. Regina dropped her head in defeat.

Craig thrust a fifty-dollar bill into the air and a taxi squealed up to the curb.

Jason slid down the firepole and into the Operations Center, where Benji, Bethany, Bill and I sat waiting.

"Craig called," he announced. "He isn’t coming to this meeting because he met a girl and they had lunch. Now they are going to see Mel Gibson’s look of consternation at the movie theater."

"Oh?" Benji said. "The movies. And?"

"He advises us to proceed," Jason said.

"Well?" Benji said.

"Proceed, proceed," said Bill and I.

"Proceed," Bethany agreed.

"Then let us proceed," Benji said. We sat facing each other, fiddling with the laptop computers in the table. Behind me the radar screen beeped meaninglessly, underscoring the pause and the uselessness of our meeting. "First order of business, Jeff’s death. Any ideas?"

"Pity."

"Shame."

"Too soon, too soon."

"No, no," Benji said, "wait."

"Never knew what hit him."

"No, wait. I meant about a memorial. Any ideas for a memorial?"

"I’d like to say a few words," Bill said.

"Speak freely," Benji encouraged.

"I meant at the funeral."

"Right. Good. But I was thinking that this would be, you know, time to apply some of our fortune to a good, er, cause."

"What do you mean?" Bethany asked.

"Cryonic research?" Jason said.

"Well, we could donate some money to CryOne Labs under Jeff’s name," Benji said, "if that’s what you think."

"And pigs could fly outta my butt," Jason said with a misplaced laugh.

"The Jeff Snowbarger Flying Butt Pigs."

"I," I said, "have a problem with all of this. At such a time, we ought to be serious, respectful." Everyone sat up in their chairs. Jason straightened his cravat. Bethany cleared her throat.

"I demand order!" Benji yelled absurdly. So our meeting began as they always did, despite Craig’s absence. The problem we had been having over the last couple months was a special one; we had too much money and no serious goal. Despite wasting several million dollars on expensive parties, thrift stores, and the Operations Center, our capital now far exceeded $50 million; I had chosen several smart investments. Now we were all anxious to Make a Difference in the World, and no one knew where to start.

ADAM: I say we give some money to Jeff’s alma mater for a new library or something.

BILL: Snowbarger Hall for Ethical Studies.

BETHANY: It’s a nice idea, but not all that interesting for us.

BENJI: Let’s do something more interesting for us.

JASON: The Snowbarger Safari.

ADAM: We could go tiger hunting and name the trip after Jeff? I don’t know how that would Make a Difference in the World.

[Long pause while we consider our self-centeredness.]

BENJI: Order! Order!

[A cacaphony ensues. "The Kankakee Snowbarger’s! A football team!" "The Snowbarger Institute for the Betterment of us all!" "How? How!" "The J. E. Snowbarger Fund for Breast Enhancement! Makes a Difference and it’s fun for us!" "Perfect!" "Lazy Jeff’s Turkey Jerky!"]

And so on. The meeting, like all meetings, came to nothing. A few more absurd ideas were batted around until we decided tentatively on Bill’s brainstorm: "Jeff’s World Free Amusement Park." He had been afraid that he would never ride a roller coaster again, and this was his insurance.

Later that day Bethany approached me in the library, a large room on the second floor of the house, where each day I spent two hours dutifully reading the newspapers and taking copious notes. She entered quickly and sat down in the leather chair across from me, lighting a cigarette. I could tell she was upset. Some people have twitches when they’re apprehensive, but Bethany has them all the time, no more and no less when she’s anxious, unless she struggled to restrain her hiccups. Then her efforts betrayed her nerves. Her mannerisms weren’t disenchanting, however. On the contrary, she exuded an irresistable charm, like a child who wants to be Grandma’s Angel almost as badly as she wants another grape lollipop; at times you could catch that sincerity in Bethany’s eye and you’d want to hug her, commiserate, give her candy. Bethany, though, wasn’t interested in lollipops. She wanted to be right, pure, just. Innocent. Fun. So her eyes further amazed people, because while her gaze embodied the innocence of Grandma’s Angel, it was more tortured; there was more than candy on the line.

Tortured innocence in looks of goodness is a fraction of Bethany’s charm, but as I tried earlier to convey, highlighting that characteristic subverts a vast number of other qualities. Looks of goodness and not to mention good looks, I ought to say. For she was no plastic doll or black-clad punk at the Fireside Bowl, but future MDs and ex-politicians, as well as rock stars and fellas in sports bars ogled at her at buffet tables as she, in her own sort of a-confidence, spooned caviar onto crackers (she never ate the stuff-she was a vegetarian-but she pilfered it for practical jokes; fish eggs were her kind of funny). She was pretty.

And she was sincere. Anything else? Everything. She was impressive in her wit, the kind of heroine Jane Austen mocked, arguing that such a level of grace could not be achieved. That may be overdoing it. But, ah, Captain Bethany, a hell of a girl, a real friend.

She came into the library and sat down across from me. "What’s doing," I said.

"Tell me again how we walk uphill fighting battles everyday," she asked seriously. I put down the Monitor.

"I suppose it’s a matter of perspective," I said. "I’m reading here about Kashmir, about Korea, Zimbabwe, Baghdad. Palestinians in Gaza . . ."

". . . It’s what I’m saying. I’m in the OC, watching about Watts, about Birmingham," she agreed.

"Right, and what perils did you face today?"

"You see? Woke up, ate, a few errands, ate. Zero uphill battles." We settled into a clipped conversation. Many members of the Organization had adopted this dialect.

"Right, it’s your point," I said. "It’s a matter of perspective, I’m saying. You don’t do it right, maybe, Bethany. Or maybe we should define the terms, impossibility acknowledged."

"You’re saying, sure I don’t walk through fields and fight for my meals. I don’t move to the back of the bus or get blown away. I’ve all the ease and trucks of money, lotsa friends and no drug addictions or known adversaries. I’m happy as a dream with candy, in fact, but still you’re saying I fight battles up hills?"

"I hope that you are."

"How, what with all this?" She indicated the room around her by flapping her arms.

"Ipso Facto."

"How’s that?"

"Precisely thereby."

"It’s not the Latin that stumps me, Adam, it’s the argument."

"Look. Why is it that you want to know?"

"The Socratic approach, you think, for this conversation? Let’s see," Bethany said, " the reason I want to know clarifies the battle I’m to fight? Okay. Pause."

Benji had been eavesdropping on our conversation, and Bethany took a break to glance at him. He quickly looked back to the Marlowe folio he was pretending to examine. Comically, it was upside down and the

three of us chuckled.

BENJI: (Joining them at the table.) sustuaF. (He indicates the book.) If I may, it seems you’re suggesting Bethany’s ease is her battle, in this instance, her rest, and to combat it-rather, to beat it-she must become dis-eased, she must, ahem, rest in unrest, if you’ll pardon that, and furthermore and grotesquely, this battle she must fight, you argue, is akin to that plight of the Native American?

ADAM: It’s not a new notion. Thoreau-

BETHANY: (Interupting) It’s selfish and bizarre.

ADAM: (Conceding.) "No argument."

BENJI: One, your arguments aren’t fit for a pacifist, and two, do large amounts of money fit you into a cog of the machine?

ADAM: No amount of money dictates your position in the game.

BENJI: It’s only a game to the winners. To the sanctioned it’s worse, like hell or we could call it life.

ADAM: They play a language game even in Iraq. As the power system is not a machine, too it’s not a game, or a ‘system’. But good and true, call it life. Let’s not lose focus. Here Bethany is disenchanted. All this money yet no fulfillment.

BETHANY: (Disgusted.) How trite.

ADAM: Don’t worry about it. We’re new at this, and now at least we know what we knew before: it‘s never been about money for us, and the Snowbarger Free Amusement Park, or whatever, might prove that giving money away is also not the goal. So what’s the goal? Here’s a question.

BENJI: Aye.

JASON: (Entering.) Seems you’re getting ahead of your argument, though, bro. What’s the goal? Good question. But first who’s the enemy in this battle? Not very pacifistic, by the way.

BENJI: Ease. And rest.

BETHANY: (Putting her head into her hands.) I fight them. I’m starting to win.

BENJI: When you lose and get beat, you win.

JASON: (Looking at ADAM.)So, when you whip up on complacency, you’ve reached the goal? You’re the anti-Buddha. To achieve fulfillment, one must increase suffering.

BETHANY: It’s the sound of two hands clapping.

(Laughter.)

BENJI: It sounds cockeyed, though. I guess because we need to know more about this goal.

ADAM: Never go into battle without a well-defined objective.

ALL: Not very pacifistic.

ADAM: I never said anything about fulfillment anyway, although it’s true, a lack makes me ask questions. But is this fulfillment possible? Will the battle won bring-

BILL: (Bursting from the closet, where he’d been hiding.) Eudaimonia? A gathering, I see. What’s up MENSA?

BENJI: We’re outlining the subject.

ADAM: Taping around it, like homicide detectives.

BETHANY: Because it’s clear that once we define the goal as something like ‘an authentic existence,’ it’s spoken in the wrong tense-

JASON: We should call it the spoken tense.

BETHANY: Right, okay. Saying ‘I want "an authentic existence"’-

ADAM: (Self-consciously.) -aside from sounding sophomoric-

BETHANY: -saying I want ‘an authentic existence’ puts a cap on my life, and-poof-I’m a goner. It’s the trouble without speculating about existence.

METAPHYSICAL FRED: (Popping his head into the door.) If metaphysics were physics, then citing life’s goal would make you die.

(He exits. An understanding descends on all of the characters except ADAM.)

ADAM: So the alternative is, uh, living?

BETHANY: Well, that’s the alternative to not being-the consequence of finding respite in a goal. Because that equals complacency and rest.

BENJI: But life is not rest.

JASON: It’s moving on.

BENJI: It’s dis-ease, suffering.

BILL: Praxis.

BETHANY: But this is not a voyage into despair.

BILL: No, clearly it’s from despair. The despair that $50 million cannot cure.

JASON: It’s passion, like the cross.

BENJI: Like embracing the cross, the thorns.

BETHANY: Amen.

ADAM: Ick.

BENJI: Like saying ‘here am I’."

JASON: ‘Send me’.

BETHANY: Love the battle. Dig in.

ADAM: Doesn’t sound very pacifistic.

BILL: Check the etymology.

BETHANY: It’s passion.

JASON: We should suffer.

BENJI: ‘Send me’.

ADAM: Can we want to suffer? Is that suffering?

BILL: It’s a living.

BETHANY: Let us away.

BENJI: To Iraq.

JASON: The West Bank.

BILL: The poor. The widows.

BETHANY: Gather the Organization.

"Get me Craig on the line," Benji said, dropping his hand to the table. A fly buzzed from a bookshelf, across the library, and in the stillness, landed on my nose. I crossed my eyes to get a better look.

We were busy for the rest of the day phoning fellow guerillas and making arrangements for a General Assembly. I spent hours making flight reservations for factions in Boston, DC, Seattle, Kansas City, Shanghai and Osaka; finally the OpCenter was serving a purpose. Bill went out and bought another minivan. He painted, "The Pig" on its side. People were arriving at the house from Chicago and the nearer parts of the Midwest. Mark Charon, whom oversight has left out of the chronicle so far, was a painter who could do anything, probably, and he came from his home in Milwaukee as soon as he got our call. We had already bought him a minivan for such a purpose. He had painted "The Wasp" on it. He and Benji spent the day rest of the day setting tents behind the art gallery. First, though, Mark had to do what no one thought was possible and cut the grass. Having mowed in neat rows, he stood next to the dilapidated lawnmower with his hands on his hips, his gaze in the sky. For that moment he outshined the sun. Everyone cheered raucously. I leapt onto Jason’s back and he ran around in circles, hooting.

Craig finally returned that night, bringing Regina with him. He was surprised to meet a small crowd-there were four or five guests by this time (let’s be precise: Monica Bennett, a student of environmental science from Chicago, and Metaphysical Fred, a handsome ex-witch also from Chicago had arrived by then, as well as Laura Snowbarger, having dealt with her grief over Jeff’s death, and Saša Sokolovic, a Croatian expatriated to Milwaukee. She rode down with Mark in The Wasp and had spent the afternoon painting over the radar screen in the basement. "The joke," she said, "is over." She called the phone company and set up a line for the red phone. So that makes five pirates from out of town).

Craig introduced Regina to the ten of us at the house, we welcomed her warmly and she was coolly receptive to our hospitality. She accepted a can of Stroh’s from Bill and thanked him. "We’ve got a lot of work to do," he told her. Craig was obviously nervous about the impression Regina was conceivably conceiving. Things would get worse.

Their date, however, had been mostly pleasant. Initially it was a fiasco, of course, but when they had gathered their things and climbed into the taxi, Regina’s apprehension climaxed. This was due no less to Craig’s stare than to having just lost her job. While her unemployment unsettled her, Craig’s eyes made her fear for her life. Naturally. To be fair to Craig, though, I should remind the reader that his recent weeks had been filled with weakness, spent milling with the rich and beautiful. Everyday he was exposed to women whose splendor became their disadvantage. The tanned and bodacious bimbos we’d taken to calling "Our Friends" were no longer simply redundant, they had grown repulsive. He’d commented to me on this a few nights earlier.

"There were the girls," he said, "we were in college and at night there were the girls we’d observe from short distances, regular girls, pretty girls, wearing tank tops and summer dresses, and they were numbers and every number was a ten, and not once did we speak to them.

"Now everyday I meet six girls with diamond necklaces and skin that’s ivory, and each one knows the difference between early and late impressionism. Each one recites to me Flaubert like a shopping list. I say to them whatever comes to mind, ‘If you keep making that face, it’ll freeze that way’, I say, and it’s like I solved hunger." He paused. ". . . this is all because I’m the man."

"The problem is desensitization. It’s all desensitization nowadays. I’m numb to booty. Beauty, I mean. And truth. I feel cat-burglared. What do I do?"

"Get yourself a nice girl," I said absentmindedly. "Settle down. Why not take piano lessons? I’ll make a gift of them to you."

"I already play piano."

"Nuts." We solved the problem unintentionally when we invited a well-known professor to speak at the Thinktank that Friday night. He read an essay titled "Jesus and the Man He Loved," then we all took off our shirts and posed with the theologian as Craig sketched like mad. It was a breakthrough. His charcoal drawings of the occasion became the illustration for the professor’s book. Craig said the night was "strange," and thereby he was cured.

And on Monday he crashed into Regina Olsen and was smitten. They took a taxi to lunch, Craig gazing into her eyes the entire ride. "What?" Regina demanded brusquely.

"I’m going to give you a compliment," Craig told her. "I’m thinking of how." He looked away, pondering for a minute. "Okay," he said, turning back toward her. "So it’s been sunny for a couple days now, spring is in the air. It’s just turning warm and now all the girls are beginning to come out in their light clothing. Spaghetti straps and Capri pants. Tube tops and lycra trousers. Therefore, I’ve been wandering around lately, adjusting to the, uh, climate, you know, and seeing all sorts of pretty girls. But this morning I bump into you, and you-believe me-are the prettiest girl I’ve seen in two days." She blushed.

And it was true. To Craig, Regina was a vision of everything sweet and regular. So they had lunch at a diner Craig liked, then went to the movies. And since Regina no longer had a job, she agreed to go with him the 50 miles to Kankakee, to our art gallery. As everyone does, she had warmed up to him. Neither of them expected to arrive at a house bustling with activity.

The eleven of us retired to Trigger’s for the night, Regina still nursing her first Stroh’s. The majority of us had plowed through five or six. Craig drank conservatively, I noticed; surely he was being considerate of Regina. We debriefed him. Annoyed, he pulled his trousers back up and spitefully said, "I copied your damn Kankakee Review but then I bumped into Regina here and I lost them all. Sorry." He didn’t sound sorry.

I leapt to my feet. "Those were the only originals. What did you do?"

"I left them on the train," he said. "They’re gone."

It was a bad thing. "What a bad thing," I cried.

"Forget it."

"Forget it? I moved toward his throat, but the Admiral and Metaphysical Fred pulled me back.

"Enough of the Real World," Fred said, returning me to my seat. "It bores me." There was a murmur of agreement. I glared at Craig disdainfully, but he as mouthing an apology to Regina and didn’t notice me. Regina sat staring at her beer, her third, which Bill had just put into her hand.

"One more temporal detail," Bill said. "We have only three Stroh’s left."

"I told you guys," Jeff’s widow Laura said, "that you don’t have to pour nine beers onto the ground anymore. Not for Jeff and not for me."

"Wha-?" someone said, astounded.

"You’re right. Jeff would probably be drinking more like thirteen."

"That’s true," said Bill and he emptied the last three cans of beer onto the floor. "That’s twelve."

Everyone looked at Regina, who had still not sipped from the thirteenth beer. She tossed a confused look to Craig, who watched her with interest. I stopped playing the piano and glanced over. The poor girl wrapped her hand around the can and raised it to her lips. A few people gasped.

"No!" Jason yelled abruptly.

"Give me this," said Bethany quickly, taking the Stroh’s from Regina and handed it to Bill. who spilled the beer onto the floor and crushed the can with his foot. I sighed with relief. Craig put his hand to his forehead. Poor Regina.

She was pretty freaked when the room began to crackle with impressions of Jeff:

Titsandasstitsandass!

I can watch.

Mmm . . . meat!

Hell no, man, that’s a trolling lure!

Of course fibrous poop floats.

Aaahh . . . beer.

Understandably, she stood shakily and prepared to leave. So it surprised her, too, that all of us gentlemen stood up with her. Somewhere during all of our high-class parties we had learned antique manners, but the unsuspected gesture further frazzled our guest.

"What the hell are you doing!" she yelled. We looked at each other, mystified. Laura, somewhat sane, went to Regina and sat her on a couch in another part of the bar.

"Regina, my husband, see, Jeff, was killed in a train accident," she explained. "He was really close friends with these guys, you know, and they . . . see, they think they’re a bunch of bad asses, so they try to be cool and remember him, Jeff, pay respect to their Dead Holmey, you know, pour out some alcohol for him. In memorial. It’s kind of sweet."

"But you’re only supposed to pour out a drop."

"I know. But these guys are . . . rich."

"Why were they all yelling."

Laura looked embarrassed. "Those were Jeff-isms."

"Oh. I’m sorry," Regina said, "I mean, I mean about your husband’s passing."

"Thank you. I had so many hopes and bright plans for our future. But then one day I realized that our future probably included Jeff dying at 40, so I would at least have to begin my life over again then."

Regina didn’t know what to say. We all reacted that way when we heard about the Snowbarger relationship.

"Am I interrupting?" Craig relieved her. "The guys and I were just talking. Since we’re out of beer-Jeff drank like a maniac tonight-we’re going to hop to a real bar." Regina looked reticent. "I have to go, since I’ve been missed and apparently some decision was made today. I’m sorry. Will you guys come? Regina, I promise it will be normal."

Craig’s last sentence made me turn my head in time to see Regina nod. We filed into The Pig and the Wasp and drove with much sobriety to a local tavern called Be Back Again, where the Admiral, Craig, Jason and I took on Mark and Saša in pool, and everyone else gathered at a nearby table to talk. "Baba O’Reilly" blared out of the jukebox. Spirits were lighter now as more spirits flowed. Regina was fitting in, melding with the unit.

The four players on my pool team always insisted on playing together, and in random order, because each of us could only make one shot. The one shot each of us had mastered, however, was a trick of complex beauty, involving difficult combinations and ricochets off of rails. That’s why we had to play in random order; whenever the balls were aligned in the pattern that the Admiral had practiced, for example, it would be his turn. The only hope an opponent had for beating us, then, was in the flats. None of us could seem to sink the easier balls. Because of this, our games were always close, and they always took a long time, since no one on my team (besides me) had the attention span to stand at the table and wait for their shot. I was constantly loping around the bar, saying "shoot your shot-your shot’s up."

On this night I remember losing several times. Mark was good at breaking the rack and the balls were always lined up straight as arrows. We were doomed. Everyone quickly grew tired of watching the game and retired to their conversations, or wandered around the bar. Fred slid $10 into the jukebox and played an entire Steely Dan album, trying to impress us with spontaneous three-point speeches on the band’s worth. Regina was moved. She went to an automated gambling machine and stuck in $20. She looked at Monica and smiled, raising her eyebrows.

The next morning Monica related her first conversation with Regina to me. We sat in the art gallery, quiet and hung over. We were posing for Mark, who had offered to memorialize the first General Assembly in a mural. The present Organization posed in random order. Bill and Bethany lifted Jason over their heads. Except for that, and the fact that Metaphysical Fred was wearing a bright orange motorcycle helmet, we were all nonchalant and casual.

Monica looked steadily at my face. She fumbled with her hands. I could see the chandelier reflected in her eye. ("Strange," I thought. "When did we get a chandelier?" It wasn’t there the week before.)

Monica looked away and then back, blinking the opulent lamp out, then relighting it. "And do you know what?" she said, gathering courage. "She was playing a Cherry machine." Cherry machines are those gambling games they put in country bars for elderly people.

"No," I said.

"Yes, and when she saw me, Regina said ‘isn’t this a riot’." Monica pronounced each word slowly, like a death sentence.

(Lately I’d been feeling like a slot machine myself. I was a mechanism striving to align random produce into productive patterns: orange orange lemon, cherry cherry cherry, seven cherry lemon. But the ohs and ones of the central computer were conspiring against me. I would pull my arm and try to set the Organization for business, try to Make a Difference, but I was bankrupting myself instead.)

To us, the Triple Cherry Slot Machine was the worst thing in existence. It represented everything bad: Jeff’s cause of death combined with our own feelings of inadequacy. Plus, we hated the idea of getting something for nothing. There was, I felt, positively nothing about them to justify anyone laughing and declaring, "Isn’t this a riot," and the fact that Regina Olsen didn’t automatically comprehend that stamped her as an outlaw to our group of outlaws. While the Organization strived to be inclusive, we were fervent about the things we could not accept. These values included a disdain for Wa*-**rt, big tobacco, and skinny girls who were even mildly passionate about automated gambling machines. What did it mean that one of our Generals, that Chef Craig Griffin, had fallen for one of the Big Three?

Perish the thought.

What about the time I offered Craig a mint, one of those trendy, leafy, paper-ish mints that dissolve on your tongue, and Craig groaned, saying, "Those things will be the end of the Organization."

Yet the thought hammered on me. I crept away from Mark’s mural, feeling Monica’s eyes on my back. Her report stung me bad and she knew it. I realized that I was turning colors when I looked at Mark’s painting; he’d hued me in blue. Monica was pale ochre. In fact, no one looked healthy in the mural. Craig had eaten of the tree of knowledge and vomited the fruit all over the rest of us.

I escaped to the library, where I could be alone. I sought solace in books.

Martin Amis had this to say:

Well said, you shithead Martin Amis. I never liked that guy, but he was dead right in this case. Still, I wanted to read something more hopeful; I turned to Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a laugh-riot:

Um? I thought. Where does this leave the Organization? What am I fighting for? What are my friends fighting for? I was rutted. Maybe I felt a little more hopeful, but not for any reason that I could understand. I was left with more questions. I needed something dumber, and turned to Punk Planet #51.

Aaron Cometbus said. Aaron Cometbus rules. He always lightens my mood. But not as much as when Friedrich Nietzsche, of all people, said

in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Cheered, I headed downstairs to talk things out with Craig and the gang. Clearly, I was making too much out of nothing. I found them in the OpCenter, listening intently to a report from my brother Aaron, who was holding up the eastern front. I don’t mean to make the twists too sensationalist, Mr. Amis, but you are not going to believe this.

* * *

Ammo From Heaven was on the move.

Aaron had it from a reliable source in the NSC that our classmates’ organization was approved to haul weapons out of US Security zones, areas that were under heavy surveillance or Marine exercises like northeast Congo and Liberia. "The presence of US activity causes the price of a black market AK-47 to drop to less than $50," Aaron said. "They can sell that same rifle in Israel for three grand."

"And our government authorizes this? How does someone get that kind of approval?" Mark asked Aaron through the telephone-vision-thing. That Star Trek-esque device cost us $50,000.

"It’s amazing what a governor from Florida can do," Jason said.

"But this is weighty stuff," Aaron said. "I mean, you’re right, Jason. But Bush isn’t the first president to endorse anything under the table."

"Well, Jeff would remind us that he’s only acting in accordance with his strong belief. It’s the reasonable end of ‘reasonable faith’, popular Christianity. Christ came with a sword. Bush comes with an aircraft carrier," Monica pointed out.

"The theological ramifications of this discussion boggle my mind," said Bill sarcastically.

"Right, Bill," Aaron said. "The politics here are much more interesting. Jesus was about destroying the status quo. Bush, on the other hand, seems intent to preserve it, which is why a group like Ammo From Heaven is allowed to bring thousands of weapons into hotbeds like Palestine."

"Argh!" Monica said. "This is so frustrating. At the most, it’s speculation. It’s hardly something even Noam Chomsky could substantiate. But proof, that doesn’t matter. The point is, it’s happening. There is no system of justice we can invoke to make it stop, either, because it’s us, the US-and I mean the justice system-that’s perpetrating everything."

"At least there’s got to be a reason, though. There has to be something to back this up or else it’s a pretty weak conspiracy theory," I said.

"Adam, it’s hardly a conspiracy theory at all. The United States is the only country to ever be condemned by the World Court for ‘unlawful use of force’. That was Nicaragua in the 80s. What about the time Bill Clinton blew up Sudan’s pharmaceutical plant? Or how about the sanctions in Iraq, which now seem utterly bizarre? The only thing subversive about this is that these facts are so successfully sublimated."

I said, "Well, what’s the point of all this?" I was losing the lust-for-life high I so thinly grasped. "What’s Ammo From Heaven up to? What do Ron Hadley and Nate Kerr do?" I looked at Craig and could see that he, too, was thinking about our run-in with them at Olivet’s homecoming.

"Good question," Aaron said. "Pretty much what they want, according to my friend at the NSC. The government doesn’t support them in any way except by looking the other direction when they’re around. And don’t get me wrong. Ron Hadley’s a pirate, sure enough, and by our standards he’s an idiot too, but he’s not a messy, teeth-gritting guy. If he were involved with legal commodities, he’d be on the cover of Fortune. This isn’t something The Organization can stop."

"Damn pacifism. It makes me so angry," said Monica.

Craig stood at the door and knocked, and after a minute Regina met him there carrying a wicker picnic basket. They struck off to the beach.

At the exact same time I was pounding on his bedroom door. It was 7:45 in the morning and he and I had planned to get up early to start the itinerary for our trip to the Middle East. He was interested in the idea. He even suggested a name—Operation Drastic Action. Still, I had noted a hint of reservation when we made plans to commit. I can't figure out why he wasn't more gung ho about our first meaningful spy mission, but I didn't have to think about it much; he did, after all, agree to join my fact-finding delegation for this morning.

"Craig," I said, throwing open his door, "I'm coming . . . in." He was not there. "Not again," I said, frustrated. It was the third day since the night at the bar, and on each day he had been either daydreaming of Regina or spending time with her. I was happy for him, I guess, but it was the real world, and it was starting to bore me.

It certainly wasn't boring Regina. While the Organization was rallying for our mission, she and Craig were para-sailing and riding elephants at the zoo. They were eating cotton candy while Monica was delivering a speech on water purification problems in refugee camps and obstacles we might face trying to hydrate ourselves. They would kiss face while sucking spaghetti into their mouths. Imagine that. This morning, apparently, they were setting out for a picnic.

Regina spread a red-and-white tablecloth onto the ground and Craig sat down, crushing a flower he'd forgotten in his back pocket. "Dang," he said, and pulled the smashed tulip from behind him and offered it to Regina. "Well, it still smells nice." Regina laid the flower next to the basket and brought out a bottle of champagne and some cheese.

"Let's have some cheese," she said, so they talked for hours. Conversations covered theology—a rock that God couldn't hoist?—and music. They agreed on David Lee Roth. They sat until dusk, watching the sun set behind the distant trees. Craig must have looked thoroughly ecstatic, watching the tone of Regina Olsen's skin change in the light from an orange and shiny tan to sensuous, pearly white. That may have sparked his romantic side, and he proposed a moonlight skinny dip as all romantic dandies do.

Craig stripped to his skivvies and dashed into the water. Regina abstained, which was natural to her disposition, and was mortified by Craig's withered genitals as he hurried out of the cold water. Next time, I'm certain he thought, I will double-check everybody's interest before I rush into something like this.

They settled instead for a jaunt in a rented rowboat, sailing into Belmont harbor as the moon rose higher into the sky. Regina hummed a few notes, trying to make the scenario more idyllic.

Daisy, daisy . . .

They talked of things that will never make it into history, but the idea of which has been recorded since the cave paintings at Lestadt. Craig said something like, "I love you—I love you—I love you," to the tune of a barking dog, or perhaps, "Regina, the sun rises and sets in your eyes. The world is a pale shadow when I sit with you. Time ebbs into ashes, eternities become seconds. We collide. We roll into a wound and rest as one inside the undiscovered dimension. I have no love outside of that which is reserved for you. I have no dignity, no thoughts, no hope, no despair. I am nothing outside of what i am for you, and as such (or as nonsuch) I have no cares in the world except for inexplicable, indelible cares for you. Be mine, angel." Or something. He probably said something like that and then paddled ridiculously to the shore, had his limo drop—deposit—the enraptured Regina at her apartment and moped moped moped moped moped moped home tragically. That's where I met him, at the Base for Guerilla Warfare. I was his livid mother.

"Throw her over, Craig," I insisted.

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"You think you love this girl!"

"I do not know the word."

"But the only thing that matters to you is the time you spend with her! You ignore everything!"

"Do I?" He wasn't paying attention. "Pfft." I had been expecting a formidable opponent with invective, not this lovestruck pushover. He pushed over me and into his toom, not slamming the door but closing it firmly. I stood struck dumb. A moment later he reappeared and tacked a handwritten sign to the frame. "Circus postponed until the lion gets back his growl." He glanced at me and this time he slammed the door shut. My hinges rattled and I sulked away, defeated.

"Circus postponed?" Bethany said, reading the sign. "What happened to the lion?"

"The wizard repoed his courage," I said.

The wheels turned without Craig, and we quickly prepared our sortie. The West Bank was our hot zone. Intelligence reports indicated a demolished Palestine; activist groups advertised a need for International Observers. It was a mission cut out for everyone but we considered it a special duty for us, considering the activity of Ammo From Heaven. We had something invested in this espionage, a score to settle.

The situation was dismal enough, without Ammo From Heaven's presence. A Palestinian named Abdel-Basset Odeh had crashed a Passover party in Netanya, Israel and blown the place up. Twenty-two people died, and in retaliation Israel knocked the crap out of some Palestinian neighborhoods. Ariel Sharon and his goons downplayed the destruction. There were not two sides to this story, though, there were a zillion and the mainstream press was burying the details, so there was a call for the regular Joes to bypass the GI Joes and describe the reality of the situation. That was where we came in. I didn't like the foregone conclusin that the Israeli Defense Patrol had committed all sorts of crimes, but I acknowledged that possibility. Plus, it was an opportunity to pull out my boots and suffer a little for humanity. I was counting on a modicum of subterfuge and a little need to rely on my wits, my extensive knowledge of James Bondisms. Robinson. Lord Robinson.

There were ten of us going—we'd counted out Craig—and we were itching to get in the air. We shelled out 50 grand and rented out a jet and a pilot. At first Bill said he'd fly us—he'd logged over 20 hours in a Cessna, but after he flipped a minivan in a comical accident ("You can't fucking kill me!") we voted down his suggestion. It was a routine flight, with a well-paved runway and all, but we found a burnt-out pilot to fly us in, the kind we could joke about being the only one crazy enough to take the job. Jason proposed all kinds of contingency plans—what to do if we got separated, what to do if we were pinned down by a sniper, how to safely store cyanide—and he lectured us as Patton would have. We covered all the bases. We hadn't counted on Ammo From Heaven, though. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Zach Mayhem, our pilot, landed at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. There was little adventure in the flight, and I expressed my displeasure at the well-paved runway. Disappointed, I returned my parachute to the hatch and we dispatched to war-torn Ramallah. That was exciting. We had to sneak past Army checkpoints, sneaking stealthily through dusty, burnt brush. At one point Bill, Bethany, Benji and I had to split off from the main group to scout the land ahead and we encountered an Israeli soldier who had been sleeping just off the path. I tried to fast-talk him, using arguments I had learned sneaking into rock concerts. He didn’t care that my hand was already stamped, though, nor that I had forgot my backpack inside the city. Neither did he understand what I meant when I told him that we were "with the band." He sent us back the way we came, his rifle leveled at our backs.

Later we came across a tall fence and I deftly scaled it. Bethany, having a different center of balance, however, struggled with the feat. Bill and Benji pushed her over, and she came down hard on her leg and ankle. The injury was to slow us down. We met up with our group and found an ambulance driver who drove us to the center of the city, to the Sheikh Zayed hospital, but only after we were stopped once again by the Israeli Defense Force and their assault weapons. This confrontation was more organized than the last and scary, and we were all proud of our luck at circumventing it.

In fact, what had happened was that there was a loud explosion nearby, then a cackling from a radio in the soldiers’ jeep, and then all the soldiers filed out to investigate, forgetting about the funny looking Americans in the ambulance. "Woo hoo!" Jason exclaimed. "We are spies!"

At the hospital we had time to sleep off they wearisome day. I took some time to journal about the Israel/Palestine conflict:

Both groups, the Palestinians and the Israeli’s, have lived in what is now called Israel for a long, long time. After World War Two, however, the need for a Jewish state became inarguable—the race had been disenfranchised and, um, wandering since they were called Israelites in the Old Testament. So Britain and the US, with their absolute authority, set up Israel as an official country in the Arab nation. This is certainly a complicated issue. A lot of ugly things happened, not unlike the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis not long before. I also think of the Native Americans and the Imperialists. Often, the Palestinians were ordered out with only what they could carry while the Jews took over their homes. The Palestinians were segregated into boroughs of their own country. Their rage was understandable, and since the 1950s there were patches of extreme violence in the constant unrest.

My eyes grew heavy. I laid down my pen. The troops were asleep. I looked at Monica dozing peacefully. I looked at Benji. The dirt smudged across his face made him look tough. Mark looked stoic. Jason’s thumb was in his mouth; I loved these people. The sun rose and set in their eyes. The Organization. Behold.

I thought of Jeff. I missed him. I thought of Craig. What were they doing now?

A worm crawled through Jeff’s brain, what was left of it.

"I wonder what they’ll think," thought Craig as he liquidated our assets. "I’m sure Adam withdrew enough for his Viking expidition." Wincing, the man in the tie slid two envelopes across his desk. Craig opened the first one. It was a check for $1.5 million. He smiled joylessly. He opened the other. It was a check for $63,857,233. He laughed without mirth. "Thank you," Craig said to the banker. The man nodded in the Cayman fashion.

"If I may ask, sir?" he began.

"I’m doing it for love." The banker looked confused, so Craig continued, "‘She chose the cry, I chose the pain’."

Outside the bank Craig found Regina on a bench under the palms. She sat picking her cuticle. Craig handed her the smaller check.

"I’m not happy about this," Regina said. "Stay with me."

"Enjoy the money," Craig said, and hugged her meaningfully. He walked away, looking back to her only once. He tasted salt.

He addressed the other envelope to Olivet Nazarene University/Bourbonnais, Illinois and gave it to a shoeless messenger boy along with a 5-dollar bill. The boy scrambled away. Free of fancy, all Craig had left was a plane ticket, destination: Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv. He stepped through the metal detector and made a joke about a metal plate in his skull.

Ammo From Heaven captured the Admiral and Captain Hamann. We had pulled over for a quick rest, exhausted from a long trip in a cramped microbus. After the stretch we drove off without Bethany and a few miles passed until Mark realized he had so much more room for his knees and elbows. The driver pulled a hasty U-turn and we were T-boned by a slow-going army jeep. The hot sun refracting off the octagonal dent in our bus created strange shadows on the faces of the soldiers who had the pleasure to hold us up again. We seemed doomed to this fate. As Mark, Laura, Sasa, Bill, Jason and I rummaged through our satellite packs for the necessary papers, Benji snuck off behind the vehicles and he and his Messiah complex hurried from the scene to meet and reassure Bethany.

Being sprightly, Benji jogged the few miles and found Bethany resting atop a pile of wrecked taxicab. Abandoned and burnt-out vehicles hulked everywhere along this road. Bethany was nursing her still-swollen knee, nary a tear staining her face despite the abandonment. I would have been a sobbing mess.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Benji said as he came up to her.

"That was a demotion for sure," Bethany joked, standing slowly.

"What happened to you?"

"I was just behind that rig, taking a whiz," Bethany said, "when I heard the van pull away. I tried to catch you but couldn’t get far with . . . my leg." She pointed to the swell with obvious frustration. Benji saw the wound was growing worse. "Where’s everybody?" Bethany asked.

"When we turned to come back here we were waylaid by an IDF jeep. Everyone’s fine. The bus is a few miles down the road and should be here soon, so we can just wait here, stay off the leg. I snuck off to save you." He said the last sentence with a shrug.

Just then a dilapidated Volvo pulled to the side of the road. A tall, blond man got out and yawned, not seeing Bethany or Benji.

Benji called out, "Hey, American Joe!" When the man turned toward them Benji realized his mistake. With a quick move Ron Hadley had a gun leveled at the pair.

"Ugh" Bethany said.

"Fucking melodrama," said Benji as he reached for the sky.

Craig landed in Tel-Aviv and had no trouble getting into Ramallah. He had contacted a reporter from Al-Jazeera who met him at the airport and acted as his envoy. When he got to Sheikh Zayed where we were staying, a nurse told him we had gone out early that morning and were expected back soon. Craig settled into our quarters and pulled out a well-thumbed copy of Gibbons’ The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, no Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea, no Camus’ The Stranger, no Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus, as was his nature. He read for a while, thinking mostly of Regina and his decision to send himself off. There was nothing behind the movement; it was an irrational action he committed because he had caught a glimpse of his life from a distance. He saw—in an epiphany that James Joyce falling down the stairs could describe with more keenness than I am capable—what little room he had in his life for both his big dreams and her. He saw himself decomposing, that his relationship with her had sapped him of not just his savvy, but it would soon drain him of all his life-blood, his creative compulsions. Certainly, it would be a good thing for Craig to allow himself to be less "cool," because as cool people everyone in the Organization were impotent, were shackled to the aesthetic aspects of possibility—fashion shows and art galleries and cheap beer. Curiously, it was at the same time when Craig met Regina that the Organization took on new ethical obsessions for social responsibility. It may have taken Craig a while, but he remembered Billy Pilgrim and made himself spastic in space. He wanted a dynamism that a made-for-tv romance would only squeeze from him.

Palaver, palaver, palaver.

And he cut himself loose of everything, liquidating not merely all the love in his heart or loins, but also the Organizations stocks and assets, and this understood even less. He had no idea what made him send nearly $64 million to our alma mater, an institution whose mission we had never meant to support by more than our attendance (which itself was less than perfect. How ironic, it occurred to him as he read the short letter that had just been slipped under the door, that he would make such a large donation to the school that had produced an outreach grout that now held two of his best friends for one million dollars.

There was no enclosed account number, but it took Craig a moment to sift through the irony of the note before he tried—as a good spy ought to—to cut off the messenger who delivered the letter. He scrambled out the door and into the hall and, rounding the corner, ran square into me, inflicting no small amount of pain into my gut. We all stood staring dumb at him.

Craig stared back, looking from face to face. He saw me doubled over, Laura, Mark, Bill, Sasa, Monica, Jason and Fred. No Benji and no Bethany. There was silence. Silence. This was not the welcome he was hoping for. My lips searched for an appropriate greeting as my belly summoned breath to give it, but I was too exhausted from the stress of searching for our lost party. Finally, Bill said, "Hey! It’s Craig."

Craig, as his knees gave out, handed me the letter he had clasped in his hand. In turn, my knees gave out as I read it. Jason moved to greet Craig as Monica took the letter from me.

"Well," she said to the group, "we can stop wondering what happened to Bethany and Benji. They’ve been taken captive."

"By whom?" Sasa more exclaimed than asked.

Fred guessed the IDF. Laura thought it could be Hamas. Mark suggested vigilantes. "Ammo From Heaven," Monica said.

"Good," said Mark. "Then all they want is money."

"Scurrilous dogs!" said Jason. "I’d rather pay off Hamas. Those serpents from Olivet are the root of this evil."

"We’re a pacifist Organization. We can’t mount an attack against a group like them," Mark said, looking at Jason. There was more silence. Craig had his head in his knees. Half the group was sitting now on the hospital’s tiled floor as workers moved busily around us. Someone insisted we move into our quarters and we got to our feet, Bill pulling Craig to his knees and catching the bad news in his eyes. Monica read the ransom note aloud and there was another long pause. Then:

"What’s a million dollars to us?"

"We’ll just pay them. We have to."

I snapped into action. "Fine. Monica, you can organize the wire transfer. Jason, Fred, you guys alert Dr. Ahmed to the situation. Sasa, phone the embassy and I’m going to put a little phone call through to Olivet, tell them exactly what—"

"Wait," Bill interrupted. "It’s great, fantastic to be efficient right now, but look. Craig, what’s wrong?"

He spilled his guts.

Craig remembered.

We all racked our brains to figure out how we could spring Bethany and the Admiral, but to no avail. Everyone brainstormed in their own way. Laura and Sasa fired crazy ideas to each other while Mark huddled in the corner devising even crazier extraction plans. I paced the hospital's hallways for hours, pulling my hair out amid the sick and wounded Palestinians, many of whom were minutes from death. I compared our plights and nothing seemed worse to me than my friends sitting hostage for a paltry sum that we were incapable of raising.

Were they chained to metal chairs in a dingy basement, struggling to unclasp the shackles with a bobby pin? Were they bruised and bleeding from torturous knocks on the head? Were they blindfolded and standing before a blood-stained wall, waiting for the cry of Fire!?

But suddenly Craig remembered.

At the beginning of the story—which seemed like years ago but was only months—Craig and Bethany cruised Kankakee realizing how hard it was to blow money in Kankakee. Remember? I mentioned it in the first chapter. Craig, for some strange reason, stumbled into Blxxxxxxxer and spontaneoulsy bought $30,000 worth of stock in a film production company. It occurred to him now, as a longshot, to check on how the investment had matured. It was the only plan that gave any of us hope.

The hospital director dialed for us, to a broker friend of Bill's in Australia. Nigel Powell answered the phone quickly and, without needing to do any checking at all, informed us that "we had nothing to worry about financially." Apparently the company Craig invested in had merged with a communications megalopoly and its value was through the roof. Nigel was thrilled to liquidate the fund, although he thought we were crazy to do so. The near-million that we had accrued so far was certain to double or triple in the next few days. Without telling anyone I left $10,000 in the account.

Now all we had to do was deliver the $789,000 to Ammo From Heaven. That was no easy task to coordinate, considering we had no way to get in contact with them. But then, out of nowhere, Bethany, with her leg neatly bandaged, and the Admiral were in the room.

"How?" someone asked.

"They were totally weird," Bethany said, "but, you know, kind of nice in a way. I mean, everybody's nice when you get to know them, so that's what we did. They never were holding us for money anyway. They certainly have no reason to do that. They're richer than we are." (She hadn't been told about how Craig had given away our savings.) "Anyway, we just talked for a while. At first they were angry at us—"

"And rude," said the Admiral.

"Right," Bethany laughed, "what with all the gun pointing and so on. But they hated being so put down by us for what they consider legitimate ideology. We apologized. We talked about their ideas. Those ideas definitely seem backward to me"

"It's crazy, selling illegal guns," Benji said. "I told them that."

"We told them that there was no way we could be cool about that kind of thing. I like the idea of guns, I said, even the idea of lots of guns, but not the idea of selling them as killing machines."

"So why did they let you go?"

"And all you did was talk?"

"Where were you?"

Benji explained. "They let us go because they never really kidnapped us in the first place. Ron Hadley new we were out that way. He came to meet all of us, to talk, but thought the kidnapping thing was out of character and funny. I guess that was Nate Kerr's idea."

"Nate has a lot of personality," Bethany said. "He's just awkward. Ron, he's a straight-man. He's not that great. But the idea, they said, was to joke around the way we used to in college."

"But we never joked around with them in college," Bill pointed out. "We never liked them."

"No, but the whole escapade goes to prove that maxim about if you demonize someone, you make them a demon. Or something."

"I'll say," I said. "We were here going crazy, really believing that Ammo From Heaven would do something like hold you for ransom."

"Nah." Just then there was a knock. Nate was at the door, returning Benji's backpack. (It's a good thing, because my laptop was in there, with my story in it.) When we saw him we attacked him with hugs. The eleven of us piled on him. When we climbed off, Nate was smiling big, clearly affected by our affectionate tackle.

"Still, er, going to continue with Ammo From Heaven?" Jason asked him seriously.

"Well, Benji and Bethany said some interesting things about that. They made me look at Christianity in a new way. I'm going to mull it over. It's not like I'm changing my opinion of the struggle or anything, but I'm going to think about things again. Sorry about the ransom joke by they way. I didn't know you'd take it so seriously." He left and the awkward moment was over.

"It's good of us," Mark said, "to love our enemies."

"And our friends," Jason said, giving the Admiral a giant hug.

"I know I just got here and all, but let's get out of this country," said Craig, and we all agreed.

"What the hell am I doing in Israel?" Bill asked. "Adam, quote that in chapter 23 or something." I told him I would, and the plane taxied onto the runway. Bethany pulled out a deck of cards.

"Bridge, anyone?" she asked.

Once again we are gathered at Trigger's. But it's a new Trigger's. It's Thanksgiving—a time that has always been more remarkable than the rest, a time that the Organization has always spent together. But we don't call ourselves the Organization anymore. That's all passed long ago, thank goodness.

Once we got back to the States everyone went their separate ways, back to their homes and the real world. "It's not so boring after all." Metaphysical Fred told me on the phone. "You just have to know how to do it." I guess the trick is to propose to Bethany, because that's what he did. And she married him. Ha ha!

We've kept in touch as much as ever. Trigger's as the Base for Guerilla Warfare dissolved, though, when Bill got a job teaching philosophy to police officers and Benji got a job teaching arithmetic to 17-year-olds. Jason moved to the woods. He's here tonight, somewhere, puking.

Craig and Regina never got back together, as I thought they would. She was a good egg, I told him. She needed him. But he saw a different path, one without diamond rings, without the diamond ring he had bought for her. In fact, that's what happened to the rest of our money. On top of the $10,000 that I left in the stocks, Nigel Powell put aside $100,000. So by the time we got reorganized at the Base, we had another couple million. Craig felt like Brewster, he said.

So Brewster withdrew all of our money once again and made a phone call. A week later Craig and I were back at Peotone airport, waiting on the runway for a cargo plane's propellers to stop spinning. I was puzzled when I saw Nate Kerr climb out, more puzzled when we helped him unload an ammo crate from the fuselage. I figured things out, though, when Nate flipped the lid and pulled out a duffel bag. Unzipped, light shined out of the bag like a crack in the sky. Craig reached in and pulled out two huge diamonds. I mean, one was the size of a grapefruit. The other was a golf ball. Huge.

We're talking, a grapefruit. A golf ball. Diamonds.

Yes, and he's had them mounted—can you see it—one as a workbench and one as a hammer. And tonight we're going to conduct his experiment, and I'm eager to see the results. Has it ever been attempted before?

They say a diamond is the hardest surface in the world, that there's nothing that can break it. They say a hammer will smash before the stone, God's handiwork. But God's dead. So which would break? It doesn't matter, if the diamond is the table, the hammer, and the stone to be smashed. Whatever breaks is going to be diamonds.

And Craig lifts his arm and I can see the tension in his muscles. I'm blinded for a second as the hammer reflects the sun into prisms in my eye. He swings with a scream at the sitting ring on the stone surface. Aieee! and my sight readjusts as the diamond meets the dust and the diamond meets the dust.

Broke at last!