No, wait, I’m sorry. That’s “The H-2 Big Band with Special Guest Bobby Shew,” and their album You’re It!

But this cover says so much, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it just fill you with wonder? Can you even begin to imagine the story behind this album? For starters, we have the two fellows on the cover. Contrasted with the name of the band/guest, we are led to one of two conclusions: Either these two men have been chosen from among many to stand in for the entire H-2 Big Band with Special Guest Bobby Shew (I mean a “big band,” that’s a lot of people, right?), or in fact they themselves comprise the entire H-2 Big Band with Special Guest Bobby Shew. (In the latter case, I have the guy with the keyboard pegged as the Band, with homeskillet on trumpet as the much-vaunted Special Guest. I assume Chuck Mangione was busy.)

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the latter is the case. These two gentlemen probably worked very hard putting together this album that I have never heard (and, let’s be honest, probably never will). H-2 over there probably spent weeks on his arrangements, layering keys and horns and woodwinds and percussion, getting everything just right before calling in old Bobby to rehearse the trumpet parts. I can picture them now, woodshedding in H’s den for hours every weekend before heading down to the studio to lay down the tracks. Then the big day comes. They hit the studio. Everything goes aces. The MIDI horns and strings and piano do exactly what H-2 has programmed them to do; the sweet, tender woodwinds and pulsing percussion provide the perfect bed for Bobby’s dulcet tones on the trumpet. The engineer is agog. He has never heard anything so smooth. Burt Bacharach, lounging in his hot tub with a glass of chardonnay many miles away, feels a chill.

As they’re winding up the session, the engineer bouncing the final mixes, Bobby and H-2 call their wives to let them know they’ll be finished soon. An hour or so later they step out of the studio into the sun, axes in hand, dizzy with achievement, blinking and wondering if it’s just them or if the rest of the world realizes that everything is different now. They hear a juddering, woofing, chopping sound from above. Their porkpie hats are blown from their heads. What can it be? They look up, and their wives are hovering above them in a helicopter! “Congratulations, H-2!” “Congratulations, Bobby!” The wives know something special has transpired on this day, and they realized the best way – the only way, really – to mark it was with a helicopter ride. Bobby and H-2 look up at the helicopter, each at his own wife, pointing in victory and grinning to beat the band. The helicopter pilot (who is also H-2′s graphic designer), sensing an important moment, pulls out his 2.5 megapixel digital camera with built-in flash and snaps a picture. “That right there is gold,” he says to himself, looking in the viewfinder at the preview image.

As H-2 and Bobby relax at their respective homes with their respective wives over dinner, listening to the CD master that will become You’re It!, their helicopter pilot/designer (let’s call him Huey) is hard at work. He imports his triumphant image into his Gateway PC and examines it – the pointing! the snazzy shirts! It’s so great. Sure they’re looking in different directions, but you hardly notice that, right? My god, look at those shirts! H-2′s gleaming teeth! He really feels like these men are looking at him through the photo – looking into him, even – and telling him something. Telling him that he’s it. That’s it! Without conferring with Bobby and H-2, Huey realizes that he has the perfect title for this album. He opens up MS Paint and just lets the spirit take him where it will. He knows the boys will be so very pleased.

We’ve already covered the fact that turning to your buddy who happens to own Photoshop is probably a bad idea, but at least your friend is free (at least I really hope Christian Scott didn’t spend anything on that cover). Many CD manufacturing companies (one of the many types of businesses that have thrived in the past decade or so on the backs of struggling, self-funded musicians who will never make a dime from their own music) offer their own in-house design services, which seems like a great deal: these are professional designers! And since it’s bundled with the CD manufacturing package, you can get their services for an incredible deal! Yes, they are ‘professional’ in the sense that they are receiving (your) money for their services, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those services are worth it. Let’s take a look at a few albums that a certain prominent manufacturer is touting as some of their finest in-house design work.

John Tracy – Breaking the Chain

You know what these in-house designers love? Rough, distressed backgrounds with translucent stock graphics overlaid on them. They also love taking a word from the album title and incorporating it into the album art. Brilliant! On their web site they actually pat themselves on the back for, “rather than literally breaking the chain, [using] a subtle graphic device to reinforce the message of the title.” Ohhhh, now I get it! It’s a picture of a chain, like how the title is Breaking the Chain, but at first I was like “Hey, that chain’s not broken!” But it’s interrupted by the line of text, which is sort of like being broken! Genius!

Sydney Sprague – You Gotta Start Somewhere

Ah yes, more stock overlays. This cover actually would have been all right with just the ‘funky’ background, artist-supplied Polaroid, and hand-cut/written-looking text. But the in-house expert thought, “This needs something . . . some kind of stock visual non sequitur overlay. Ah, I have just the thing!” And so he grabbed the nearest generically floral filigree, slapped it in the top left corner, and pronounced his work complete. Here’s a design tip, courtesy of a very smart friend of mine. When you’re trying to think of a little something to spice up a job and you’re about to reach for the filigree, remember the Four F’s: “Foregrounded Filigree is Flawed Fundamentally.”

The title of this album seems almost a self-aware comment on the artwork itself: You’re not a designer, and you can’t afford a real one . . . you gotta start somewhere! (On further thought, maybe that should be this company’s motto.)
Joshua Harrell – Brighter Day

We can’t entirely blame the design staff for this one. The artist did, after all, have this photo taken of himself and then decided that it was just the perfect thing for his album cover. He’s even wearing a jacket that looks like its made of stock floral filigree! But still, the designer just took a bad thing and made it so much worse. The color palette and choice of fonts are just offensive to decent sensibilities, and the little pink sparkle effects on the text blocks are almost as cheesy as the amorphous blob of stock graphic elements floating next to this poor guy’s shoulder, looking for all the world like MS Paint just puked all over him.

Next to this lovely sample, the company helpfully reminds you: “Don’t forget, you can help us understand what makes you tick by filling out a Design Information form.” Perhaps this is a subtle threat, showing the horrors that await if you don’t clearly delineate your desires by filling out said form? Consider yourself warned.

Adam Rafferty – Gratitude

Ah, there’s our old friend, the translucent stock filigree, once again! Where would these guys be without it? This could have been a perfectly fine, if somewhat subdued and nondescript, album cover. The photo isn’t super eye-catching, but nor does it catch your eyes and then make you want to gouge them out (I’m looking at you, Harrell!) It says “Hey, I’m this pretty cool guy, and I just like to hang out in my leather jacket and sunglasses, finger-pickin’ my guitar (which, by the way, has a pretty decent built-in pickup and pre-amp).” The color palette is nice and warm and mellow, and while the text is more translucent than it needs to be (did they just discover that they could adjust the transparency, or what?), it’s totally fine.

But then, yet again, the designer feels he hasn’t done enough – it’s just not quite “designy” enough to merit the work of a professional – so he rummages around in his stock grab bag and throws on this (translucent!) garbage that adds nothing. I hope Mr. Rafferty didn’t offer too much unneeded gratitude to the hack responsible for this.

“No.”

“Bruce?”

“No?”

“Chuck?”

“No.”

“Todd?”

“No.”

“James?”

“No.”

“Jim?”

“No.”

“Jimmy?”

* * *

“So this was an oral contract?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing written? No paper trail?”

“No.”

“Letters? Receipts? Cocktail napkins with scribbled—”

“No, no. Nothing like that. It was real informal.”

“Okay. So then it’s basically your word against his.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good. We can . . . that’s helpful.”

“It is? Oh thank God. So you think you—”

“Except—the Little Guy, he can still spin straw into gold?”

“As far as I know.”

“So he’s going to be able to afford a real bang-up legal team, then. Bobby Zabrewski. Whit Goldstein. Freddie the Swede.”

“Freddie the who?”

“The Swede. Sneaky sonofabitch. Won $20 million in punitive damages for some dumbass emperor duped into buying invisible clothes.”

“$20 million?”

“Fraud, breach of contract, mental anguish, public humiliation.”

“Wow.”

“Yep. Slimy as a sheep frog. But sharp. $20 million.”

“That’s just—I can’t believe— ”

“Yep, the Little Guy’s gonna hire the Swede for sure.”

“. . .”

“So how are you and Petey doing with that list of names?”

* * *

“Joseph?”

“No.”

“Joey?”

“No.”

“José?”

“No.”

“Yusuf?”

“No.”

“Giuseppe?”

“No.”

“João?”

“No.”

“Jo-Jo?”

* * *

“So what does the King think about all this?”

“. . .”

“I mean, doesn’t he—”

“The King doesn’t know.”

“. . . You’re kidding me. So you haven’t—”

“You think I want the King all up in my business?”

“But—”

“Knowing I ain’t worth a damn? That some midget has dibs on my firstborn?”

“But—”

“That my dumbass daddy was just blowing smoke about me and straw and gold? No. Petey knows and now you know. But no one else. Okay? Christ, Tom. The King catches wind of this, and I’m dropped like a sack of rocks.”

“Okay, okay.”

“The King, Tom. The King. Same King who threatened to kill me.”

“Yeah, but you’re queen now, I’m sure that’s all water under the—”

“Of course I bring that up now, you think he apologizes? Gets down on bended knee? Hell no. He acts like it never happened. Like he never scared me shitless. Like he never locked me in that cellar, with that straw, and that spinning wheel, and told me if it wasn’t twenty-four karats—”

“Alright. Understood. I got you. So if you want to keep this under wraps, then maybe we should consider arbitration.”

“. . . Arbi-what?”

“Arbitration. We get a third party to help you and the Little Guy reach an agreement. Keep this out of the courts. Off the public record. Away from the Swede.”

“And that’s . . . allowed?”

“Sure, sure. People arbitrate all the time. Quicker. Cheaper. Easier. Typically.”

“And you think we’d win?”

“Well, the perfect scenario is—you’d both win. You know, compromise. That’s what you’re shooting for, ideally, with arbitration.”

“I don’t see how we both win.”

“Of course, not every scenario is a perfect scenario.”

“Straw into gold. My dumbass daddy.”

* * *

“Phil?”

“No.”

“Hank?”

“No.”

“Lester.”

“No.”

“Chet?”

“No.”

“Skip?”

“No.”

“Mahershalalhashbaz?”

“No.”

“Doug?”

“No.”

“Stu?”

* * *

“You think maybe you already guessed his name?”

“What do you mean?”

“Say his name is Stan. And you say, ‘Stan?’ What’s to stop him from saying, ‘No’?”

“Stan . . . Stan . . . have I tried that one yet?”

“But you see what I’m saying, right? Unless we want to risk him fleecing us, stringing us along, there needs to be some third-party oversight. Some outside verification.”

“The Little Guy ain’t going to cotton to that.”

“We arbitrate, maybe he cottons.”

“He ain’t going to cotton.”

“You’re being negative again.”

“Oh for Christ’s—”

“And I understand, angel, I understand your negativity. All you’ve been hearing lately is no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But it only takes one yes. One. Remember that.”

“Aw, Tom, you’re so goddamn sappy.”

“C’mere.”

“Aw, Tom—”

“. . .”

“You know, come to think of it, I haven’t tried Stan yet. Or Stanley. Or . . . what else?”

“Stanton. Stanwood. Standish. Stanislaus. Stanford.”

“Stanford? That’s a— ”

“Also Standford, Stamford, Stanfield, Stansfield.”

“Oh Jesus Christ.”

“Hey, that’s a good one. Write that one down.”

* * *

“Godfrey?”

“No.”

“Godwin?”

“No.”

“Goddard?”

“No.”

“Godthaab?”

“No.”

“Godin?”

“No.”

“Godet?”

“No.”

“Godot?”

* * *

“My daddy’s always been ashamed of me.”

“That’s not true.”

“He has. Thinks I ain’t worth a damn, so to save face he tells all those lies. ‘Oh, your daughter can play the lute? My daughter invented the lute.’ ‘Oh, your daughter is studying medicine? My daughter raised a family of four from the dead.’ ‘Oh, your daughter made you a charm bracelet out of macramé? My daughter can spin straw into gold.’”

“That’s a reflection on him. Not you.”

“A miller’s daughter. That’s all I was supposed to be. And now I’m queen but to tell you the truth I feel even less . . . I mean, my daddy’s right, I ain’t worth—”

“Come on, you know that’s not—”

“Craziest thing is since we got married the King’s never once asked me to so much as touch a spinning wheel. Like after the initial thrill of that cellar-full of gold wore off, he got bored or something. He gets bored easily, the King. Was all gung-ho about having the kid—heir to the throne, preserving his line, spreading his seed, etc.—but since I gave birth he’s barely seen the girl. I know he wanted a son, but—”

“Angel, listen to me. You are so—”

“I’m not stupid. I know what they write about me in the magazines. Hark! Ladies in Waiting. The Fairest of Them All. You know where they ranked me on ‘The Monarchy’s 35 Best and Worst Beach Bodies’? You know what they say about the King and that pale hussy dating Prince Charming?”

“Aw, nobody takes those rags—”

“And you keep telling me this whole arbitration thing’ll be kept confidential. But what if the Little Guy leaks to the media? Huh? You ever think of that?”

“Look, if you’re going to worry about every little—”

“Aw, Christ. Those peckerheads’ll have a field day.”

“Okay. Calm down. Relax. Take a deep breath. I say, what we focus on now is preemptive action. Meaning, you guess the Little Guy’s name, and we don’t have to worry about arbitration, or the magazines, or any of that. Right?”

“Yeah, I guess, but—”

“Right. So, first, tell me everything you know about this guy. Where’s he from? Does he have any family? What are his interests? Where does he hang out?”

“I don’t know anything. I mean, I know what he looks like. Late fifties. Beard. Stupid hat. Pointy shoes. Four, maybe four-and-a-quarter feet tall. From his accent, I’d say he’s from out east. Smells funny. Sometimes talks in rhyme. Not a looker. Does any of this help?”

“Maybe, maybe. Find Petey, tell him everything you know, be as specific as possible, and who knows? Maybe Petey finds something.”

“How is Petey doing, anyway, on the list?”

“Last I checked, he was one-third of the way through the census records. Found some real good ones, too.”

“Such as?”

“Llywellyn. Ríoghbhardán. A’amakualenalena. Shoemowetochawcawewahcatowe.”

“We’re never gonna guess that little bastard’s name.”

* * *

“Richard?”

“No.”

“Richard, Jr.?”

“No.”

“Richard, Sr.?”

“No.”

“Richard I?”

“No.”

“Richard II”

“No.”

“Richard III?”

“No.”

“Richard {all integers ³ 4}?”

* * *

“It’s not like I really ever loved him.”

“I know that.”

“This is a man who wanted to kill me, remember?”

“Yep, I do.”

“But when you’re just this little peasant girl, and the King asks you to marry him  . . . and you know how I wanted to get away from my daddy.”

“It’s okay, angel. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“And as for conceiving the kid, believe me, that was far from romantic. God. It was nothing like—”

“Really, it’s okay.”

“But I love the kid, of course, how could I not? Her little nose, little hands, little feet, little mouth, little—”

“Look, you’re going to keep her. Okay? I promise. No way am I going to—”

“This past year has been so strange. So confusing.”

“It’s been a confusing time for everyone.”

“Just looking back, from the first day my daddy met with the King, nothing makes any sense. I mean, I can sort of understand why he said I could spin straw into gold. He was trying to butter up the King, like he butters up everybody. Daddy’s always been a liar. But then when the King locked me in that cellar, said he was going to hang me if I didn’t prove my daddy right, why didn’t my daddy admit he was lying? Why did he leave me in there to die? He knew I wasn’t worth a damn with a spinning wheel. Or did he not? Did he maybe convince himself . . . do you think, all this time, he’s believed every one of his own—”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

“And as for the King—who threatens to kill some poor peasant girl because her daddy’s a liar? Right? Talk about cruel and unusual. And then, better yet, after she turns him a massive profit with his excess straw, thinks to himself—Hey, this chick’s not so bad after all. Maybe I should ask her to marry me. I’ll bet she’ll have no hard feelings about me locking her up in my musty cellar for three straight days and putting the hangman on call for her execution.”

“But you did marry him.”

“Right, I thought I just explained—”

“Angel, c’mere.”

“And they say men are logical, women are illogical. Yeah. Right. And as for the Little Guy—okay, if he asked me to screw him, that I could understand, but he asks for my firstborn child? And he knows I have to say yes; the King’s going to kill me, what else can I say? And then this whole name thing . . . I’ll bet it ends up being a complete cop-out, like his name is an unpronounceable symbol or something, or it has an accented vowel I didn’t emphasize quite right. God, I could just kill that little—”

“Petey thinks his name starts with R.”

“. . .”

“Said he saw him outside the Gruel and Brew. The Little Guy. Tanked. He kept muttering to himself. Kept referring to himself in the third person. Petey swears it was him. Says the Little Guy called himself the ‘R-Dog.’”

“. . . The R-Dog?”

“You know, like, someone’s name is Sam, and all his friends call him the ‘S-Man.’ Or a guy’s name is Polonius, and all his pals call him ‘Master P.’”

“And Petey is sure it was the Little Guy?”

“He’s positive. Said the Little Guy was like, ‘R-Dog’s on the prowl! R-Dog’s gonna get him some tail! Ladies watch out for the R-Dog!’”

“He was just hanging out in front of Gruel and Brew?”

“Apparently. ’Til security kicked him out. Petey said the R-Dog got pretty lewd by around nine-thirty. I mean, with his body mass, one ale’s got to just about—”

“The R-Dog. Huh.”

“I think we can guess it, by the end of day three. Petey’s compiling all the R names he can think of, as we speak. Real trooper, Petey. Hasn’t slept since Thursday.”

“Reggie. Ricky. Raymond, maybe? He doesn’t really look like a Raymond.”

“We got this, angel. We got this S.O.B.”

“‘R-Dog’s on the prowl. Ladies watch out for the R-Dog.’”

* * *

“Ridley?”

“No.”

“Ramsay?”

“No.”

“Randy?”

“No.”

“Randall?”

“No.”

“Raymond?”

“No.”

“Rainer?”

“No.”

“Rashaun?”

“No.”

“Ray?”

“No.”

“Ray-Ray?”

* * *

“But what really gets me, more than anything else, is the not knowing. So much, riding on a guess. It’s making me . . . I just feel crazy.”

“Petey’s got some good leads. I’m sure, by morning, he’ll—”

“It’s just so . . . what’s the word? . . . arbitrary. But that’s how life is, right? This one’s poor, that one’s rich. This one lives, that one dies. This one loves you, that one—”

“Why don’t you get some sleep? You’ve got to be exhausted. By morning, trust me, everything will—”

“I’m tired of guessing. I want to . . . know, you know?”

“You’ve done all you can. Petey and I will—”

“I remember thinking, when I was a little girl, that there was a reason for everything. An order. That everything could be explained. I’d ask my daddy what thunder was, and he’d say, ‘It’s the angels bowling.’ I’d ask him where rain came from, and he’d say, ‘It’s the angels crying.’ Everything I asked, he answered. But then I got older, and I realized my daddy didn’t know his ass from his elbow. He didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. For years, I had imagined the angels up in heaven weeping every time they failed to convert a spare or bowl a strike, and then, one day, it dawned on me—that makes absolutely no sense. None. Bawling, bowling angels? Yeah. Right. And soon enough, upon further review, everything else my daddy told me fell apart. As well as everything my friends told me, my daddy’s friends told me; my neighbors, the nuns, the vicars. I finally realized almost everything everyone says makes no sense. Almost everything everyone does makes no sense. Read the magazines. ‘Kissing the Right Frog: 20 Tips on Finding Prince Charming.’ ‘Cinderella’s Dark Secret Exposed: Coachman is Rat, Coach is Pumpkin.’ ‘Don’t Eat That House!: Hansel and Gretel’s Can’t-Miss Consumer Report.’ We live in a world composed of senselessness.”

“. . .”

“And what if I do guess it? Huh? What happens then?”

“. . . Meaning?”

“You and me?”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“. . .”

* * *

“Randwulf.”

“No.”

“Rögnvaldr.”

“No.”

“Rościsław.”

“No.”

“Rasputin?”

“No.”

“Ramakrishna?”

“No.”

“Raskolnikov?”

“No.”

“Rumpelstiltksin?”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“No.”

“Royal?”

“No.”

“Romulus?”

“No.”

“Rabelais?”

“No.”

“Rainbow?”

I took the job in Technical Support because I wanted something where I could keep people out of my way while I’m bidding. Before Janie Culpepper took over Marketing, I succeeded. I fixed whatever failed on people’s computers, and people left me alone while I trolled the internet for classic television artifact auctions. When there wasn’t anything to bid on, I walked through the building to make sure nobody forgot a problem that they’d remember when there was. Nobody interrupted me. Even the president stayed away when he saw pictures, descriptions, and bidding parameters across the semicircle of six computer monitors on my desk.

Ever since Janie Culpepper transferred from the Atlanta office, I might as well be her secretary. She called last Thursday, wanted me to come up to her office and look at the number buttons on her keyboard. Pressing them, she claimed, made the cursor jump around her screen and wipe out stuff she’d already typed. And of course she had to call during the final ten minutes of nostalgiatrader.com’s auction of a Fred Sanford windup toy that said “You big dummy,” “I’m comin’ to join ya, Honey,” or “You ugly,” depending on which knob got wound. Nobody had bid on it yet, but I expected snipers. I asked Janie if she’d hit the NUMLOCK key and disabled her number pad, like the last three times she couldn’t type numbers. She couldn’t remember. I asked if the NUMLOCK light was lit. She couldn’t find it.

With eight minutes left in the auction, I scaled the stairs to Janie’s office. The second she stood up to give me her chair, I saw the unlit NUMLOCK light on her keyboard. She showed no interest in how I turned NUMLOCK back on. She didn’t even watch me open a new spreadsheet and verify that I could type numbers. She ignored my demonstration and talked about what she always talks about – how much weight she’s lost.

Only now, she wanted me to watch her turn around.

“I got this dress in tenth grade,” she said. “Haven’t fit into it since.”

I spotted the Auburn University diploma propped on the corner of her desk. It showed a graduation date of 1996, placing her in tenth grade around ’90. Beverly Hills 90210 came out in ’90, and Shannon Doherty wore a dress just like Janie’s in the pilot. I didn’t recall telling Janie that I also collect clothes, or that I needed something from Shannon Doherty to balance out my Jenny Garth and Tory Spelling stuff, but maybe I had. Why else would she make me look at the dress?

Janie must have noticed me scrutinizing the skirt seam. She pulled it against her hip. “I’m not stretching it one bit,” she said. “Look how loose it is.”

The clock on the wall behind her read 2:56, four minutes left on Fred Sanford.

“I gotta do something for my boss,” I said, turning toward the door. I’d come back to negotiate the dress later.

“Wait a second.” Janie walked around me and blocked my path. I couldn’t leave unless I pushed her out of the way. “You live in Hoboken, don’t ya?”

I’d told her ten times, me and Mom live in a Hoboken co-op. I started to ask why she still uses this topic to keep me in her office when I glanced through the doorway. Lena Spatola, Katie McGlin and Vicki Horowitz were standing outside Vicki’s cubicle. All six of their eyes caught mine. Vicki whispered something to the others. Katie shook her head while Lena rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. That’s what Mom and my aunt do when I complain about Janie at home. Mom tells me to be nice or she’ll stop calling. Why everybody wants Janie Culpepper to call, beats me. My aunt gave Mom the idea that I should start calling Janie, and now Mom bugs me about it.

I couldn’t let Vicki Horowitz’s people see me push Janie out of the way and leave. My boss hates when I get snippy with coworkers. I unclenched my face enough to remind Janie that me and Mom live in Hoboken.

“Can I come over for dinner Saturday?” Janie said. “Been wanting a west side view of New York since they transferred me up here.”

I considered saying yes to get Mom off my back, but the annual Honeymooners fan club convention was this weekend in Poughkeepsie. Their blog had announced a founding member selling off his estate. If I told Janie about it, she might invite herself, and I hate going to auctions with people. They always talk while I’m trying to evaluate merchandise or size up competitors.

When I didn’t answer, she said, “I’ll wear this dress again.”

My eyeballs jerked from spot to spot in Janie’s office, while my brain scrambled for something she’d hate about Hoboken or the apartment. I saw the mirror mounted atop her monitor. She has an obsession with makeup. I see her frantically brushing it on every time I walk in.

The mirror reminded me of my dog, Kaos, a Weimaraner. Kaos is well behaved enough, but she won’t stop licking people. I told Janie that Weimaraners are wild, warned her that Kaos would surely go after her makeup.

“I love Weimaraners,” she said. “Daddy had three. We’ll walk Kaos on the boardwalk while we look at the skyline. I’ll ring your bell around six, right after Weight Trimmers.”

***

Saturday morning, Mom asked what happened with the Honeymooners convention. Disgusted with myself for not being there, I told her Janie Culpepper was coming over. When I asked, “Are you happy now?” Mom called my aunt and said she’s going there to spend the night. Then she wanted me to move the arrangement of life-sized Charlie’s Angels dolls from the corner of my room to the closet. When I reminded her that nobody on earth has all four dolls – Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, Farrah Faucett andCheryl Ladd, and a certified replica of Charlie’s speaker phone – Mom screamed, “Do you want to be celibate the rest of your life?”

She left before I could ask what celibate meant.

I wanted to google it, but then Doogie Hushmire called from the convention. He emailed me a video of the only known collection of all seventeen Ralph Kramden refrigerator magnets, and we spent the afternoon coordinating a bid.

I’d forgotten all about Janie by the time she rang the doorbell at 5:58.

The Addams Family ring tone went off and Kaos leapt from the Star Trek command chair that I let her sit on since I don’t have the complete set. On landing, her back paws dug into my Andy Griffith Show rug and pushed it into a pile.

“Sit, Kaos!”

The dog’s butt receded in mid stride as she skidded into a seated position.

I straightened the rug and realigned the command chair.

By the door, Kaos watched me turn the knob. Her eyes opened, squeezing her forehead into a frown and launching her stubbed off tail into propeller mode.

“Stay down, Kaos,” I warned, as I opened the door.

Janie wasn’t wearing the Shannon Doherty dress.

Maybe she knew I’d find non-genuine elements upon closer inspection. Apparently sensing my disappointment, she tilted her head and lazily raised her eyebrows. Collectors give this take-it-or-leave-it expression when they realize they’ve overstated an item’s authenticity. I looked at her sorority t-shirt, with Greek letters silhouetted against an Auburn University label. She couldn’t possibly have thought I wanted this instead. All three networks ran fraternity-sorority pilots after Animal House came out but cancelled them too quickly to spawn memorabilia.

I decided not to bring this up unless Janie asked.

Her t-shirt tucked into her jeans with so much room to spare that she’d folded the waistband to fill out her belt’s narrowest setting. Minus the sharp colors, her clothes looked like oversized Salvation Army hand-me-downs. Had she lost that much weight? Aside from how her chest stretched her sorority letters, she’d shriveled.

She’d always talked about body sculpting and weight loss as prequels to inviting herself over. Before I could decipher a connection, Kaos sprung from her down position and poked her snout into Janie’s crotch. Janie’s cheeks turned red. When her midsection recoiled, like a kid getting tickled, I noticed her perfume. She never put on that much in the office. The fragrance made me look at her stretched out sorority letters again.

The dog followed Janie into the apartment. With her arm bent, clutching her purse strap, Janie examined the laminated Brady Bunch magazine pullouts, one for each kid, mounted atop the entry way to my room. Her eyes rotated to my Curtis Mathes floor model TV cabinet, with its implanted high def monitor, then to the highest shelf above it, which displays action figures of Maxwell Smart and the chief facing each other through a Cone of Silence replica.

“You named your dog after Kaos on Get Smart. Didn’t ya?”

I nodded. As I began to introduce Control, my cat, I noticed Janie’s lips. Their fullness had survived the weight loss, just like her chest.

“I love that show.” Janie dropped her purse on the coffee table. “And they never show it anymore.”

“I’ve got the first sixteen episodes, original commercials and all.”

While I debated whether to add that she could borrow the episodes – no easy decision since I got them on the black market from somebody that hacked into the computer at the Museum of Television and Radio – she sat in the middle of the leather sofa, the only furniture Mom still won’t let me replace.

“Let’s watch a few,” she said.

I looked out the window and remembered Janie wanted to walk Kaos along the boardwalk and see the skyline.

Kaos tackled me before I could remind her.

Photo by Angelina on Flickr