Under New Management

Firstly

 

According to my journal, I awoke on the morning of August 6, 198- from dreams about time, and about the time before time. In these dreams‑I've always found it useless to talk about 'dream' in the singular, for so do they meld together‑I was observing the timelessness of the creation before time, while also seeing the process of something coming from nothing.

(None of that has anything to do with what happened two hours later, when my friend Cheryl told me her story about meeting my double; rather, it's merely to add a touch of chaotic verisimilitude to this yarn which is truly something no-one with any sense of reality would readily vouchsafe as credible at all. I've learned through trial and error in the meantime that it's the seemingly insignificant details that make stories sound more plausible.)

I got out of bed, I got dressed, and I headed out to walk up to the house my friend Cheryl shared with two of her fellow Albertans, about whom I will have something little to say in the following pages, but right now I want to get to Cheryl's story as quickly as possible, while in the meanwhile dropping some hints as to the nature of our relationship.

Cheryl was dressed in her typical black clothes when I got there. She had a hangover, and we drank some strong coffee. (I had a bit of a hangover too, but not as serious as hers.) We didn't talk much until we'd finished up and headed out of the house, ready to go to the park and see what there was to see on a Sunday around noon.

We sat under a tree up on the hill that overlooked where they did the Shakespeare plays at dusk every day except Sundays. Some dogs the size of ponies were tearing up the turf a short space below us. Far down in the valley was the creek which ran through the whole park, hidden behind a copse of trees, and over to our left was the little forest that people went to for midnight al fresco sex, allegedly.

Cheryl rolled some hash into some tobacco and sparked it up. We watched the action for a bit, then she said: "So I met your double last night."

"Oh, I have a double now do I?"

"Yep. Very much so. His hair is a bit differently styled, but other than that, almost exactly like you. Well: maybe not as cute."

"Ha. Ha. Where'd you meet him?"

"At the Gem. He was sitting with this freaky blonde chick in crazy clothes, like she was a gypsy or something. I was there with Mike [her housemate] and a pitcher, and the guy who looked like you‑I knew it wasn't really you from the start‑he came over eventually and he said to me: 'Hi. I think I must know you, because I don't think I could ever forget someone so beautiful.'"

"Holy shit! That's a pretty strong line even if it didn't make much sense."

Allow me to put in here that, yes, Cheryl was exceptionally beautiful. She had long wavy chestnut hair, and a great clean complexion, and a perfect mouth, plus she wore glasses that made her look like some kind of genius. I'd met her at a party she'd come to with the aforementioned Mike, where in the middle of a crowded room we'd dangerously played darts. We met up again a couple weeks later at her house (which she shared with Mike and another Albertan), and we spent all the time talking. In the end we became friends and saw a lot of one another over the course of some eight months; I never found out what her boyfriend, also named Mike, thought of our relationship; I myself knew (or thought I knew) what it meant for her to have a boyfriend, and so there we were, quite innocently, quite friendily, toking on a doob at one o'clock on a Sunday afternoon.

In answer to my statement, Cheryl laughed and said: "Oh yeah, strong line indeed! And senseless! So anyway I told him no we hadn't met before but he continued looking at me like it was uncanny he didn't know me."

"What a Lothario!" I cried.

Cheryl shrugged and looked at the grass. "Maybe it was an honest mistake.... Let's head down to the pond."

We got up, went over the hill, and down the other side. As we walked along I asked: "So, then?"

"He kept talking, asking me questions and stuff. Mike at one point spilled the beans and said: 'You know, you look a lot like a friend of ours,' and the guy said: 'Interesting.' Like Bela Lugosi: 'Interesting.'"

"Well, well." I didn't see where the story was going.

We were at the pond, with all its ducks.

Cheryl said: "I wish we had something to throw the ducks. Anyway, he didn't leave us alone until I gave him my phone number."

"Your fake phone number, surely."

She smiled and said: "Yes. It was fake. My fake phone number."

 

 

Secondly

 

Three days later, on Wednesday, Cheryl phoned me at work. She was at work too, so of course she complained about having to do secretary work rather than play her piano or get high or preferably both. She wanted to go to the Gem for a pitcher or two and maybe some food and I said yes.

So, after work, I went straight there. I looked around the place, wondering if my 'double' had made an appearance, but I didn't see anyone who looked even remotely like me. The Gem was‑and maybe still is‑a place that should have been a dive, but was somewhat too small to really go to the rats big time. It was always dark in there, with the brightest object their old-timey jukebox full of soul and Sinatra 45s.

The pitcher was already on the table when Cheryl arrived about ten minutes after me. She was wearing her black t-shirt, under her black blazer, with black leggings, and black shoes. I should say here that Cheryl was drop-dead gorgeous, but she didn't seem to know it. Again: great skin, chestnut hair, nice lips, and a boyfriend named Mike.

We settled in, ordered some nachos, and drank. We talked about miscellaneous things that had happened to us in the past three days, then about Bob Dylan's Desolation Row, and finally we continued formulating our explanation for the existence of the universe and everything within it, including time. In the middle of our second pints, she looked around to each and every table in the place, slowly.

I joked: "If he's here, I don't recognize myself."

She laughed and replied: "No, he's not here. And his friend's not here either."

"What friend?"

"You know, his friend that's like a gypsy. Biggest hoop earrings I ever saw in my life."

I sighed wistfully. "Ships that pass in the night...."

She drummed on the table with both hands rat-a-tat-tat-tat. "So he phoned me yesterday."

"How did he.... You told me you gave a fake phone number."

"I was fooling. So he called me. Very suave. He wanted to know what I was doing, what I was eating, not what I was wearing, heavens to Betsy thank goodness for that." She made some circles on the table with her fingertips. "But there's something about the guy, I dunno."

"That's all pretty funny. So what's boyfriend Mike think of all this?"

She lifted up a single beautiful brow and said: "He doesn't know and he doesn't have to know. It's my business."

That stopped me up short. Didn't "having a boyfriend" mean anything? Wasn't there something sacred in the bond of boyfriend/girlfriend? I distinctly remember having the feeling that apparently there were some facts of the world that I had been mistaken about for years. In the end ... did it mean that when she'd told me, some months before, that though she was still a virgin she had "done everything else," with a coy grin, that she had ... perhaps ... been meaning something else to me?

Annoyed by my own confusion, I said: "So what's the deal? What did he want in the end?"

"This is bothering you."

"No, no. I'm your friend, please go on."

She looked over at the jukebox and her face was green and orange for a moment. Rather grotesque, as a matter of fact. Then she looked back and laughed. "Ah jeez it was so dumb! After his suavy suaveness he asked me out on a date."

"Aiee. So ... what did you say?" I asked, hoping for a dismissive shake of the head or something signifying NOT ON YOUR LIFE. Instead, she lightly said:

"Oh, I said no. It was a crazy date he had in mind. A friend of his is in a band, and they're playing in Pickering Saturday night."

"That's like a fuckin train ride away!"

"And they weren't going on till like 12:30!"

I was so relieved I cracked wise. "How could you so easily refuse going to a divey bar fifty miles away in the middle of the night to meet up with some sexual predator? I mean, what's gotten into you?"

She laughed, and I laughed. We laughed together. When we had finished laughing, she quietly said, looking into her pint glass: "I told him maybe some other time."

Just then, Mike showed up. (Not boyfriend Mike: housemate Mike.) He sat down beside me and said: "You won't believe what just happened to me."

 

 

Thirdly

 

Something‑something obvious, in other words‑compelled me to phone Cheryl on Saturday afternoon. I asked her what she was going to be up to that night, and she said she was going to watch Bloodsucking Freaks with housemates Mike and Bob on a VCR they'd rented from After Dark Video, and she invited me over, but I was going to be watching Dawn of the Dead with my housemate David, on a player he'd found in someone's garbage that worked okay but rewound incredibly slowly. However, we agreed to meet up, at her house, at noon next day, and that was that.

David and I proceeded to watch Dawn of the Dead, and about half of Moron Movies, and then it was drunky-stoney nighty-night. Next morning I hit the rewind button on the VCR and left the house. When I got to Cheryl's, I knocked on the door but no-one answered. I knocked again. Then I heard Cheryl behind me call out: "Howdy." I turned, and there she was, on the sidewalk, approaching.

She got past me, unlocked the door, and I followed her inside. "Sorry, I'm kind of late," she said.

Faux-naïve I asked: "Out shopping?"

"No, not shopping. Mind if I clean myself up?"

"I suppose not."

"Good."

I went into the living room and pulled out the book I was reading at the time, namely Elmer Gantry. I turned to my bookmarked page and read a couple paragraphs but couldn't make sense of them. I was listening to the running of the shower not twenty feet away as the crow flies. Finally I saw her pass the door of the living room wrapped in a towel. I'd never seen her bare arms before, nor her calves. I returned to the book and re-read from the top of the page. She came to the door all dressed and asked: "Want some coffee?"

We went into the kitchen and she made some coffee. We sat down at the Formica table across from one another, two cups of coffee in between. We nodded humourlessly, waiting. Finally, I said: "How was the band?"

After a pause, Cheryl said, cautiously: "They were pretty good."

"What kind of music was it?"

"I guess you'd call it 'rock standards'."

"Ah."

"The drummer was the best of them."

"I don't know if that's good or bad for a band."

"It's usually bad. His name's John."

"The drummer?"

"No, the guy who looks like you."

"I guess he was glad to see you."

"Yes, he was. He was very excited to see me. He was there with Yolanda."

"Yolanda?"

"That's the gypsy chick I saw him with a week ago at the Gem. The one with the big hoop earrings."

"I once knew a Yolanda."

"It's probably a common name in some European country."

"Maybe it's a flower or a plant."

"We could go to the library and find out."

"Why are you so interested?"

Cheryl actually blushed at that point. "I'm interested in a lot of things you know nothing about. Sometimes I myself know nothing about what I'm interested in.... Such as ... the meanings of names."

I sighed. "So what are you going to tell Mike?"

"Mike?"

"Your boyfriend."

"I don't know. Nothing. Anything. It's not like we're married."

Again I learned that the definition of an intimate word, being an intimate word, is often enough intimate on its lonesome. What does it mean? When does one become a boyfriend? What base does one have to reach? Is it a public or a private act? In a dictionary, is there a picture that naturally goes beside the word 'boyfriend'?

(What I went through, back there in August of 198-, is what's called 'learning by experience.')

I shrugged, with agape eyes, trying to signify I was too exasperated to continue my line of questioning. I asked: "So, what should we do today?"

She frowned sadly and said: "Oh, no, sorry; nothing. I'm meeting John out at the Scarborough Bluffs at two."

"Oh."

"I totally forgot about us. Really sorry, man."

"The way it goes sometimes I guess."

"Can we get together? Wednesday? At the Gem?"

"Oh, sure. Humph. Cheryl, I think you're changing."

She grew a deep red‑another blushing fit!‑and said: "I already have. Last night at about three." She shook off the reverie. "In any case‑I don't mean this to sound mean‑what business is it of yours?"

I didn't answer, and I didn't have an answer, and I wouldn't know why I didn't have an answer for several days.

 

 

Fourthly

 

"Yolanda knows you. Well."

Cheryl and I were in the Gem, of course, for it was Wednesday night. The sun had yet to go down, along with our second pitcher. She was wearing a sleeveless grey blouse she'd picked up that day and worn out of the store, along with a charcoal skirt ditto.

"Right," I said. "Okay. So it's that Yolanda." I sighed. "I remember her very well."

"Do you?"

"Yes. I met her when I was in grade eight. We were in a production of The Music Man together. She could play piano, and we sang songs together backstage one night. The next year, when I was in grade nine, in high school proper, we were in another production, though I can't remember what it was. We got along, you know? So we went out a couple times. Then my sister told my mother she had a reputation, that she was a witch. Apparently that's what was being said or gossiped about around the school, or my mother and sister thought I would believe it and then be afraid of her. As if. We went to a party together on the sly, behind their backs. I made out with her in John Wakaluk's basement. I almost touched ... well ... it was pretty hot and heavy. But after that, I thought it was impossible to carry on with it, what with my whole family being against it. I wasn't about to launch into some Romeo and Juliet thing, right? So I kind of gave up. I stopped calling her. I stopped trying to see her. Of course we ran into one another over the next couple years, always friendly, but I guess we both knew it had run its course."

"Ah. Well, Yolanda remembers you quite fondly. She thought you were intelligent, and that you had a great sense of humour."

"Does she still have her strikingly sparkly eyes?"

Cheryl looked out the window, and looked back. "I didn't notice." She said: "The Scarborough Bluffs, that was a new thing on me. They're pretty scary. John even did one of those 'savedyourlife!' things on me at the top. He can be such a jerk sometimes!"

I don't know if Cheryl was intentionally trying to make me feel like I was missing out on something extra-special; I'd been to the Scarborough Bluffs and frankly there's not much to say about an old cliff, though the monastery out there is good architecture.

I said: "So I guess Yolanda was there with you? Where does she live these days?"

"Somewhere near there. On the subway line, near the bluffs. I didn't catch the street's name."

"Yolanda Mulder. I should have stayed friends with her. She was quite entrancing ... but I guess my mother was right that she was a bit too dangerous for me." I got philosophical. "Why did I do what I did back then? Everything's all always post hoc reasoning, isn't it?"

She shook her head. Sinatra on the jukebox sang sympatico. Cheryl said: "In any case, howzabout the four of us go out, like on a double date on Saturday night? There's this band called the Saddletramps I told John about and he's interested in seeing them, and Yolanda will come along too."

"I don't know about that."

She touched my hands. She actually touched my hands and said: "How can you say no? They're a good band. I know the guitarist, Andrew's his name. Or do you have something better to do?"

"I ain't got plans."

"We can all meet up there if you want. They're playing at the Rivoli, at about nine-thirty or ten. Or maybe dinner beforehand?"

"I'd prefer meeting there, I guess."

"You can always change your mind. Let me know, any time, even Saturday afternoon."

I noticed there were red flashing lights lighting up the place. A couple cop cars were out on the street. The lights swept the room, from the entrance across the bar to the back part to the door downstairs over us and returned, again and again, once a second. Cheryl craned her neck to look out the window. "It's probably that dodgy garage across the way." She let go of my hands and put them to her pint and drank. "So, c'mon, Saturday night? I'd like you to meet your doppelganger. And then there's Yolanda: Who knows? maybe you can re-kindle an old flame."

 

 

Fifthly

 

I was sitting at a little table for four, surrounded by a hubbub of my chronological peers, when I saw Cheryl come in, followed by a man and a woman. She introduced me to John. I stood up to shake his hand. We were the same height, had the same hair texture, build, facial features and so on; I'd say it was uncanny because though he looked almost the same as me there were many ways in which he was not at all like me‑as you'll see in the next sentence. He slapped me on the shoulder and shouted: "So you're J‑! Cheryl's told me so much about you. Say, we do quite look alike, don't we? I wonder if we're the same where it really counts, ha-ha-ha! Only time will tell!"

And then there was Yolanda, who'd never really left my life. Yes, her eyes were still sparkly; yes, she was as lovely as ever. She had blossomed into something special. She kind-of hugged me and said: "Long time no see, J‑." I nodded but, for some reason, I didn't say anything.

All assembled, we shook some of the night's darkness off of ourselves, and proceeded to the back of the joint to where there was little concert space that could accommodate probably around three hundred people.

The music was too loud for any decent conversation, either to ask the age of my double-named-John or to inquire after Yolanda's whereabouts since high school, so we mostly just listened to the Saddletramps playing their songs; and, really, the highlight as far as the crowd was concerned was when they broke out into a countrified version of "Ace of Spades."

The singer called out: "Okay, time for a break! Get your dogies in order, we'll be back in fifteen mins!"

At that point, Cheryl leaned over to me and shouted: "Yolanda wants to go! And she wants us to come back to her place!"

"What for?!" I shouted.

"Probably some more fun!"

We got out of the place and onto Queen Street. I could suddenly hear again; I felt like it had been raining even though it hadn't. John whistled sharply for a cab and a cab stopped. Before I knew it, we were all packed in and turned around and heading east, with Yolanda in the front and me, Cheryl, and John in the back.

"Man!" shouted John: "That was really great! Thank you so much Cheryl!" He kissed her loudly on the cheek. "Mwah!"

Yolanda said: "Okay, John, keep it down."

(I muttered: "I agree.")

John made a mock-deferential nod of the head and said like Igor: "Yes, Master."

Yolanda's basement apartment was a lot like what I remembered her bedroom as being. (I'd been in it once, when I was fourteen.) There were plenty of brightly-coloured cloths, a poster of Jim Morrison in his early days, plus these webby things I learned were called 'dreamcatchers'. She put Blue Train on the turntable and started moving to the music while I settled down in an armchair and Cheryl and John settled down onto the couch to watch her. She flitted around‑it was her space‑singing trilling la-la-las. She danced over to the refrigerator to get cold bottles of beer which she handed off to us like a shepherdess to her adoring swains. We all clinked and Yolanda took a hefty slug and put the bottle onto the little podium that signified the separation between the living-room and the kitchen. Then, to the music‑I don't know how she did it, to Coltrane‑pulled off her shirt and pants and socks. She danced some more as we watched, then she took off her bra. John said: "Well okay then," and took off some clothes. Cheryl laughed. "Is that truth-or-dare?" and peeled off some stuff. Yolanda took off her undies and John and Cheryl followed suit. Yolanda fell down onto the couch between them and they started kissing and licking one another.

Side one of Blue Train had finished by that time, and it appeared I was the only person available to flip it, so flip it I did. "Locomotion" began. I flipped through Yolanda's record collection for a bit, then I turned to see Yolanda and Cheryl passing John's hard penis from mouth to mouth, giggling all the while as they competed to see who could take in the most, as he lay back and groaned in a weird way.

I said: "It's kind of late. I should be going."

My double waved at me, and I walked out, to find the subway station. Cheryl and I had a 'date' set for the following day, so I would then have the chance to hear all about everything.

 

 

Penultimately

 

Next day was Sunday. Since I didn't know at all where Cheryl had spent the night, I waited for her to telephone. At about a quarter to eleven she called. She sounded pretty worn out, but still she agreed we should meet up. She said: "Let's just meet at the park, at that hill the dogs were tearing up two weeks ago. I'll see you there at two. I'm sorry about all this."

I asked: "What are you sorry for?"

She didn't answer, and hung up. I went back to drinking my coffee and working on the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, which wasn't a hard one that day. The clock ticked and ticked then I left to go to the park.

Cheryl was there before me, and I plunked myself down beside her. The trees down by the creek must have grown some since we'd last been there, but they looked exactly the same.

"So...." she began.

I helped her along. "Did you have a good time last night?"

She looked at me sideways like she simply didn't get me. "Yes, I had a good time."

"That's good."

We looked down towards the creek for a bit. I felt I had to say something, once again, so I said, putting the operative expression into a subordinate phrase: "Since I love you, and want you to be happy, I can't but say: good for you."

After a moment she said: "You're supposed to be so smart I'm surprised you didn't figure it out beforehand."

"What, that you were getting involved in some big orgy club?"

"Yeah. Precisely." She looked around. "Maybe the dogs have already been here and gone."

"It's quite possible. Dog owners have very routine‑"

"So why did you leave? Don't you like me? Don't you like Yolanda?"

"I like you both very much. You more than her, but that's another thing. It's simply that I don't ... have those sorts of feelings."

She laughed bitterly. "What sorts of feelings?"

"You know. Sexual feelings."

"You don't.... You mean you've never?"

"Never what?"

"Had sex."

"Nope! but it's worse than that, if you think having sex is a good thing. To be frank.... Can I be frank?"

"You can be whoever you want just so long as you tell me."

"I haven't even gotten an erection in like eight years."

"Get out of town!"

"No. I live here." (Still with our cornball gags.) "Anyway, at some point in high school I simply lost the ability. It was a slow process, but it happened. I remember‑uh‑jerking off about this girl named Ellen Pattie because I'd seen her left nipple down her blouse one afternoon in Latin class, and that was the last time."

She was shocked and amazed. "And you didn't think to tell me any of this?"

"Why should I have? You had a boyfriend, so you weren't even supposed to think about what was going on between my legs."

"Sure, but still, friend-to-friend, if you have some disability‑"

"I never thought of it that way, that I had a 'disability.' But yeah now that you put it that way, I guess that's what it is. Hey, I got a disability." I laughed. "Maybe the government will give me some money for it."

"You intentionally kept it hidden from me."

I grabbed up a clump of dirt and tossed it. "I didn't see how it would affect our relationship."

Cheryl looked off, up at the sky, down to the trees. "I always knew there was something wrong. I gave you every opportunity. Yet you did nothing."

"There were signals?"

"Oh yeah there were signals."

"I never picked up on anything. Not really." I mused. "I suppose, abstractly, that you're at fault too. If you hadn't have gone on all the time with the boyfriend-this and the boyfriend-that, I might have been able to see your intentions."

"What, pray tell, were my intentions?"

I shrugged lightly. "I guess you're saying you wanted to fuck me, and I would have explained it wasn't going to happen if you'd simply said so from the get-go."

I stood up, and she stood up. All the necessary revelations had been made, and we were at a standstill‑for a moment‑just a moment‑after which she punched me repeatedly in the face and when I fell kicked me several dozen times.

 

 

Finally

 

After a brief visit to an emergency clinic to tend to the wounds inflicted on me by Cheryl, I went home and was relayed a telephone message, via my housemate David, that Yolanda, if I wasn't too injured, wanted to meet me at a place called the Only Cafe, on Danforth, at five o'clock. Since the Only Cafe wasn't much of a café, but rather a bar, it was fine by me. Frankly, I needed a drink.

So, at five o'clock on August 20, 198-, I met Yolanda at the Only Cafe. She was there waiting for me. She was dressed plainly, in jeans and t-shirt. She smiled at me as if she was holding back a mighty guffaw. She said: "Oh, J‑, it's hard for me to see you this way, possibly because there's a giant bandage over your nose."

I said: "Cheryl was pretty mad."

Yolanda said: "I expected that. You must have told her why you couldn't stick around last night."

"What do you know about what I told her?"

Yolanda laughed out loud, then said: "Oh, revenge is sweet."

We sat down and ordered us up some pints.

I was ready for anything. I smirked to match hers, and said: "So this is some kind of revenge? You destroying my relationship with Cheryl?"

"Certainement. I've been waiting to get revenge because, way back when, aaaaallllllll those years ago, you dumped me."

"Not really; we grew apart."

"You dumped me. All because of your mother and your sister. You threw me away." The pints arrived and she calmly drank some beer.

I said: "Why is that so special? Doesn't everyone get dumped at some time or another?"

Her sparkly eyes got sparkly angry. "Maybe. But me? Me? You dumped the wrong gal. Seven other guys dumped me, just like you, all because I lived on the outskirts of town, had no father, and ... knew a bit of black magic."

I drank a bit. Strange I was taking it all so well. "You took Cheryl from me intentionally. That's what this is all about, is it?"

"O slow J‑, slow J‑. Yes, it was all a plot against you. All of it. Maybe you didn't deserve it in the grandest scheme of things; but there it is."

"I'm in a sense flattered you went through all this effort. First you had to find someone who looked exactly like me, and then‑"

She banged down her pint glass. "I didn't find someone who looked exactly like you. I built him."

"Oh, this is nuts."

"No, it's not. That 'John' there: he's not human. He's what's called a Golem. I made him from clay, pure clay, and...." She started laughing loudly and I thought she was going to choke and die, but she recovered to say: "I pilfered your manhood, your mojo, and gave it to your doppel. Didn't you ever wonder what happened to yours, or did you think it was all just chance?"

I replied: "I didn't think about it that much. You can't miss what you never had, you know what I mean?"

She threw her hands up. "You're not the first‑you're the third‑so I've heard it all before. This revenge of mine, it's so good. I've got this soulless exact duplicate of you in my home, ready for me any time I want. ♫He's just a love machine♫, not much more than a dildo, that's true, but what a dildo. It's amazing: I took a little of your hair, and built your doppelganger."

"So, what'll you do with him now that your revenge had been accomplished?"

"I'm hanging on to him for a while. Cheryl has a good time with him‑with us‑and I'd hate for her to lose a good thing. He's your exact duplicate, like I've said, and wow you're missing out. He has the same 'attachments' as you, and so I have to say ... you must have a good cock, or would have a good cock if it worked right. John's is nice and thick and it rubs my G spot really nicely. Plus his bush, your bush, with that light golden hair, it's much nicer than black hair. It's like seein the fuckin sun rise. Should I go on? I'll go on. Do you know it's an established fact that red-heads taste and smell nicer? Ambergris they call it. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec mentions it somewhere. So your double's cock tastes really good, and I suppose yours would too, if anyone thought it actually worth sucking. Even your come would taste really delightful, if you could actually produce any," she said, giggling.

"Okay. Enough. There's one flaw in your revenge plot, though, and that's that I don't feel like I've missed out on anything, at least on that score. Like I said, you can't miss what you never had." This was too much of a feeble rationalization, even for me, and I sighed before muttering: "But ... you did take Cheryl away from me. So ... you got me."

Yolanda smiled, and her eyes sparkled. "Yes. I got you." She drained her pint and stood up quickly. "Oh, J‑: You really should have been nicer to me."

She left the Only Cafe at that point.

I ordered another pint.

It seemed strange that the beer wasn't as bitter as I thought it would be. You'd expect there'd be some big internal drama involved in me discovering I had been thoroughly emasculated, castrated even, by a very pretty witch with some sparkling eyes. In the end it comes down to my ignorance. How could I have suspected it?

Here I am now, in 201-. How can it be said that some thirty years have passed? or forty? I don't know what happened to any of them. Yolanda probably made impotent the other guys who'd snubbed her. That's almost aa given. As for Cheryl and John: who knows? They may have a family, a bunch of little ones‑probably grown ones by now‑who may have my genetic contribution, or maybe only half a soul apiece, I don't know. It is the case, it is in any case the case that if you try to imagine what happened before anything happened ... you'll wish you were dreaming instead.