THE THINKING MAN'S BAD HABIT
by Nathan Phillips (2005)

******

Leonard Spofford never thought of himself as a pedophile. He was, after all, a respected member of the community, in spite (and maybe even because) of the well-known fact that if you (assuming you are a young lady of between 14 and 17) sat on the bench adjacent to his office window and put your right hand on your left knee with the index finger slightly raised, Spofford would soon come out to join you. If it was the morning or early afternoon, he might take you back to the pumphouse for something quick. The slow-witted, introverted janitor Robbie would occasionally walk in and, being slow-witted and introverted, never say a thing. Better yet, after about 4:00pm, Leonard would take you back to his beautiful suite in the hills. According to legend, it smelled of cedar and, in the bedroom, vanilla extract.

That, Leonard argued to himself, is not the way a pedophile is. A pedophile would be running into the elementary school playground and snatching up a kindergartner or something. This was different. To begin with, it was not really out-of-this-world for a man in his forties to be infatuated with teenage girls. Maybe it was slightly less socially acceptable for him to act on these fantasies, but what of it? He'd served his time for his country and he deserved a break. Also, the sex was invariably consensual. These girls were not being thrust out of their daily lives so that some aging perv could grab a bit of nookie on his way to the bar. This was a beautiful thing, Leonard always emphasized. A beautiful thing.

The girls adored him. He was a fast ticket to sexual wisdom and a good excuse to taunt the boyfriends about their inadequacies in intercourse, foreplay, or just general relationship ettiquette. This fortysomething, he knew what he was doing, and he had plenty of repeat customers. Leonard was delighted to form bonds with these young ladies, bonds that may not have been entirely conventional but which nonetheless were special to both involved parties.

It wasn't just sex. That would be plain rude. Leonard sought out his career because he loved the idea of being surrounded by minds still in a state of constant formation. He firmly believed the children he saw every day were people, and that no one else on the staff really understood that. The administration ignored them and the teachers simply weren't able to appreciate the everyday miracle of it all. He held his girls for hours, laughed with them and read to them, asked them about their lives and told them about him, all with no pretense of any kind. He got to know them well. Their company was as important to him as the physical satisfaction they brought. He wished he could be with them always.

Leonard envied the teachers, who spent so much more time around the kids than he did. Since he was a guidance counselor, he had little of pressing importance to do during business hours and spent the majority of his time in the school library, reading and reminiscing and typing. He never batted an eye, not once, at the girls browsing the shelves in their short skirts or tight jeans. That was strictly bench-and-pumphouse behavior, and it stayed out of his professional career. Luckily, the bench was still visible from his regular seat in the library, so nothing was ruled out.

The school worshipped Spofford. Every year on the first day, the faculty list was called off and he consistently got cheers that filled the auditorium until your ears nearly exploded, even from some of the freshmen. He was popular, well-paid, happy, and sexually fulfilled.

And then came Elizabeth Greenwood.

It was an overcast, cold (nearly freezing) day when Leonard looked up from his paperwork and noticed Elizabeth sitting outside, shivering, her hand on her knee, her index finger raised, staring into the office window. Her hair was disheveled, her clothes a bit wet, and she looked as if she were out to prove something, at any cost. Whatever it was she wanted, she wanted it badly. It was enough to get under anybody's skin.

Leonard couldn't help but hesitate, although he also couldn't help but want desperately to run outside and take her. At first the former instinct prevailed. He was the counselor for the students in grades eleven and twelve whose last names began with the letters from A to G. Regular meetings were required with all such pupils. He had made it a matter of policy never to engage in these shady erotic games with any of the girls in his alphabetical jurisdiction. He would probably have made an exception, but there was more to it than that. This was Elizabeth.

She was Spofford's neighbor. The Greenwoods had moved in next door after the death of Elizabeth's mother. He knew her dad, a kind and warm-hearted (but slightly long-nosed) man, quite well and had watched her grow up from the age of two. This girl was not the typical material for Leonard's afternoon liaisons. It wasn't that he lacked respect for those, but this was a person he knew and cared about in a much more than passing or casual way. He had always been fond of her, almost loved her as if she were his own, yet he had scarcely even noticed until this very moment the fact that the two year-old who always taped little construction-paper hearts to his door had become a woman of rather voluptuous intensity. He suddenly did not feel safe with his instincts.

Elizabeth was complicated. Beyond that, she was brilliant. Everyone knew she had a more than fighting chance of an entrance into Princeton or Harvard or, hell, Yale or Oxford. In every conversation, without condescending to anyone of lesser illumination (Leonard included), she kept in step with every tiny point and was prepared to participate in extensive talks about anything from the best kinds of generic soda to the lower-tier waltzes of Strauss to the economic state of Poland. She had the same relationship with the school that Leonard did -- everybody was in love with her. To Leonard's knowledge, she had never dated. Had he not formed a personal attachment to her years before, he might have written her off as a prudish snob.

Clearly not. There was no mistaking that position. Leonard gulped down a bit of brandy and threw his head back toward the ceiling -- the rush made him a bit dizzy -- and then, in the heat of arousal, curiosity, and alcohol, decided to alleviate the girl outside of her impatience.

It was 10:40am, nearly lunchtime. A trip home was out of the question. If anything was going to happen, it would have to be at school, and quick. Leonard kept walking but mentally stopped in his tracks -- fucking Elizabeth Greenwood? Little Elizabeth? It was wrong, all wrong. The alcohol was clearing his mind, the arousal was disappearing. The curiosity was not. What would drive the valedictorian of the universe to seek out her aging guidance counselor in this way? Rebellion against her father? That was his best guess, and it was a good thing he wasn't feeling impulsive because the guy was a boy scout and he would kill him. Or maybe not. He could hardly imagine Gabe killing a cockroach, even though he did have that huge gun rack. He still shuddered with repulsion at the thought of Elizabeth in a sexual context. It felt like incest, betrayal.

Then he reached the bench and, seeing her again, wished he had brought the brandy outside. She stared up at him with a mild smirk and penetrating eyes, and stood up to greet him. Stumbling for something to say, Leonard settled for roughly half a question. "Why, Elizabeth?"

She grinned widely, still looking downtrodden in the most maddeningly gorgeous fashion conceivable, and leaned over to whisper in his ear. "I'll tell you later." He pushed her back gently.

The two stared at one another for an eternity, roughly a foot apart, as if preparing for a wild west duel. "I can't, Lizzie. I mean, what is this?"

The seductress -- Elizabeth! -- was unfazed. "You can do better than that. Come on, I'm not a baby anymore, let's go. Let's do it."

"Are you doing this because -- Hold on. Do you think this is what girls your age are supposed to do?"

"Obviously you think it is." Her face was finally beginning to work.

Leonard scrambled to verbalize his quirks and present inquisition. "I just didn't think you were that kind of girl."

"Guess what, Lenny? We're all that kind of girl."

It wouldn't work to repeat to himself as an inward morality play that she was only seventeen. That had never stopped him before. Liz wasn't stupid; surely he could articulate his dissatisfaction with the prospect of making love to her in a matter she, in her vast wisdom, could understand. Of course, it didn't honestly disturb him totally. It was the kind of thing he would think about alone but would never do. The kind of thing those pedophiles would allow to happen, but not him. He'd just keep the idea in the comforts of his own mind. That was the way it was going to be. She could find some fun somewhere else, from somebody her own age.

Nonetheless, only the sound of gaping nothingness protruded from his mouth when he finally opened it, and Elizabeth was determined. She grabbed his hand and began to pull him -- incidentally, she was also a star athelete and was virtually the only reason the school had a track team -- all the way around the building toward the little shack that had been Leonard's hiding place for a decade. At this point, he was losing his defenses and made a decision not to resist any longer. It would happen, she would be disappointed, it would be over. She wouldn't tell her dad because then she would be in deep shit, so he would be safe. Maybe it was just her body and its dreadfully alluring contact with the icy rain that was convincing him of all this, but at any rate, he ended up in the pumphouse with her, and found himself reaching for the cord to turn on the light.

A click and nothing but darkness. "The bulb's out." Leonard struggled to wonder if this was a viable excuse to make a break for it, then remembered the inconceivable irony that the only way he saw to remain cordial with this relatively close friend was to have sex with her.

Elizabeth appeared slightly disappointed at the technical issue but was undaunted. She closed the door and Leonard immediatly began to hear the rustling of clothing. He tried to pretend it was not the two year-old with the paper hearts or the little girl whose part in the Christmas pageant he hadn't failed to miss year after year. He remembered how he took her trick-or-treating once. That was how much her dad trusted him.

Leonard felt her mouth brush against his and he allowed a light kiss, but her tongue pressed his lips until they hurt so he allowed it inside. She threw her arms around him and he could not resist embracing her. It would end here, he told himself. This was it. It was good, and it would now be over with.

Then her hand descended into his clothing. Her right hand. The left, meanwhile, unzipped. He had to get away from this. He couldn't. He was stuck. What could he do?

They both jumped when the bell rang. Liz gasped. "I have to get back to the office, Lizzie," Leonard said, regretting immediately that he referred to her by name, feeling as though the lump in his throat ought to require its own constitution.

She wouldn't have it. "I have to be somewhere too," she said. "But we've got time. It's too bad I can't suck you off." Was she saying this? The girl whose paper on Medieval church policies had gotten a round of applause in the infamously apathetic upstairs teacher's lounge had just mentioned sucking him off. If he hadn't known her so well, that would have turned him on, but this was just gross.

There was no time to contemplate anything. "Fuck me, Mr. Spofford." Mr. Spofford. Jesus, was this a staff meeting?

"I can't. I really just can't."

He heard movement. Still in near-total darkness, he was able to faintly see the outline of her body -- goddammit -- and she stood up face-to-face with him. Her voice was calm but insistent. "Please fuck me, Lenny."

Well, at least she knew her manners. Let's get this over with, he decided. His voice cracked with apprehension. "Okay..." A long pause. "Okay."

She began to fumble around quickly and he could tell she was bending down. She guided him and the act began. He felt he was too flustered to satisfy anybody, but it didn't matter. She was doing all the work, bounding and thrusting. He could hardly think enough to say it, but it came out anyway. "You've -- you've done this before." She grunted a whispered "yeah." It took about three minutes before she began to breathe heavily and crawled away from him.

His eyes having now adjusted somewhat to the blackness, he stood in a daze and watched her writhing on the dusty concrete floor. "Wow!" she said. Leonard was feeling no emotion. It had done nothing for him -- it was just plain fucking, exactly what he didn't like -- but he dared not tell her that. She gathered herself quickly, throwing open the door -- a waiting Robbie now walked in for one of his squeegees, ignoring Leonard's lack of a lower garment. Lizzie laughed and grabbed a worn-out baseball cap from her bookbag, putting it on and walking confidently away, glancing back once very quickly to smile at him cheerily before jogging back to the main school building, rushing to get there before the second bell.

Leonard took the rest of the day off and went to bed.

***

Ordinarily, Leonard Spofford lived and breathed sex. He had his separate intellectual pursuits, mind you. He went fishing sometimes and went out to the movies and the library and visited the neighbors -- oh, dear, the neighbors.

That night, no matter how hard he tried, Leonard could not think about anything relating remotely to sex without feeling nauseous. The book about Pompeii he was reading mentioned the discovery of remnants of cuddling couples done in by the volcano, and even that was too much. Cuddling led to sex which led to Elizabeth, who was a child. He'd had younger, but she was different somehow.

To begin with, the disturbing rendezvous clashed with her fiery, driven personality. He assumed she was too bright to have any time for sex; case in point: this for-all-intents-and-purposes pedophile never pressed his ear to the wall to check for evidence of her private habits, not once in fourteen years. The juxtaposition was insane. Then there was the matter of what felt for all the world like experience and plenty of it. Not only had she evidently done it before, she had done it in a rather adventurous position not terribly common with precocious teenagers.

And the sex itself. Leonard was accustomed to the habits of young girls. They were inquisitive, cute, clumsy, and naive. This was part of their charm, the major advantage, the reason he sought them out. Liz was like an adult, like a fully developed person, out not to learn about the birds and the bees but simply to grab something for her own benefit. When she came it was with an expression of joy that she bellowed. This was not a matter of curiosity. If anything, he was the perplexed one.

The way she talked -- "fuck me," "suck you off" -- was especially offbeat. These were not the usual coos of virginal desperation, this was the sound of a person as much in control of the proceedings as Leonard was. Leonard craved control. He felt increasingly uncomfortable, and positioned his ear on the opposite side of her bedroom for the first time that evening and heard nothing.

He dreamed of her gyrating, the copious nudity he barely saw, her violent orgasm, the paper hearts, the elementary schooler, the proud father, the happy family, the valedictorian, the final cheapness of the fucking. After tossing and turning for three hours, he got up and watched QVC -- the least suggestive thing he could find -- until it was time for work. While the jewelry was being peddled he felt himself drifting off, not to sleep but to other times, moldy events he now saw differently in projection. The day at the fair when she was firing the gun to win the stuffed animal and pressed herself against him as he stood behind her. The day they met by chance at the laundromat, and she -- ordinarily vibrant and talkative -- just stared at him, chewing gum, and watched him throw his clothes in the dryer. What did that mean? What was going to happen? What would happen today?

***

Leonard passed Elizabeth twenty-three times in the hallway over the next five school days. She smiled at him every time; it was a smile that knew a secret and loved it. The smile Leonard gave her in return was a polite one that suggested he wanted to forget; nonetheless, he was growing consumed with the event in the pumphouse, hence the counting.

He sped up on his meetings with other girls, trying to gain back some of his excitement for the netherworld in which he'd taken so much pride. He even took Stacy Pembrooke to his apartment; he'd been terrified of her dad -- the police chief -- before but now would do anything to get his mind off the Greenwoods. The sex was good, not great, but it was relief when Stacy asked him how to give a blowjob. Finally, youthful naivete -- that felt better than a year of blowjobs. The second a giggling, whimpering Stacy walked out of the apartment to retrieve her bicycle and get home, the voices next door came back and wrapped around him. The fog was thick, inescapable. Something had to be done.

Briefly, Leonard considered going to Elizabeth's father. However, he had to weigh the importance of his sexual relations with the female student body of the school against his worries about Lizzie, and -- pervert that Mr. Spofford was -- Lizzie lost the battle. More girls came home with him. More good sex, more letdowns when they left. Something was wrong, something missing that had never been missing before.

Guilt. Leonard felt more guilt than he'd grappled with previously in any situation. He had always been a little guilty about his sexplay, but he was fond of something a coworker had once told him: "Y'know, Lenny, I've got two drawers in my office. The things that need my attention go in the top drawer. The things that time will take care of, those go in the bottom." Time healed the wounds of Lenny's girls, he assumed. Not one of them had ever said anything to any authority figure; not one had ever expressed dissatisfaction with the nature of her relationship with Leonard or claimed to regret it. All in good fun, he told himself. All in good fun.

Needless to say, Lizzie was another matter. He needed to talk with her. That was the only solution. They already had one of their regular counseling meetings scheduled for Friday. The door would be locked, the intercom turned off, and the entire situation would be settled once and for all.

***

"Hi, Lenny!" Elizabeth exclaimed, bounding happily into Spofford's office at 9:30 Friday morning.

"Lizzie, I'm sorry to do this to you, but we really need to talk."

"Oh, I know." She lowered her voice. "I'm sorry I forgot to bring the letter. I'll make sure it's on your desk tomorrow."

"Letter?" Suddenly Leonard was alarmed. "What letter?"

"My letter of acceptance, silly! The piece I wrote about free will and luck had an impact. Princeton's snatching me up."

Somehow or another, this momentarily cleared up the fog. Leonard leapt up and hugged her, congratulated her, and they talked for an hour about how wonderful a time she would have in college. They talked and talked... eventually escaping Princeton and embracing their tastes in food, drink, music, novels, even television. They were clicking. They'd always clicked. They'd had conversations like this before. Except, Leonard kept thinking, now we've fucked.

The lunch bell rang while Leonard was in the middle of the story about how much he hated his job as a produce clerk in high school. "You'd better go, sweetie," he said.

Her big, glorious smile faded. "Why?"

"Well, it's lunchtime. Aren't you hungry?"

"Mmm." She stretched her arms out, groaning in a way that couldn't possibly be interpreted in any way but the worst. "Can't I just stay in here? I love talking to you, Lenny."

Leonard stared at her for a moment. Her eyes were on his chin, and they met his slowly after they crossed down to his upper torso then back up. She continued. "I really mean that, Lenny. You mean a lot to me. I wouldn't be getting into Princeton without you. You've always been there, you know."

He said nothing, just watched her and slowly found the Responsible Adult in him beginning to grasp something about her he'd never noticed: she was sad. Extremely sad.

"Do you need to talk about something, Lizzie?"

She laughed softly, in a way that suggested sheer fakery. "We've been talking all day."

"Yes, but..."

She nodded. "I know. It's nothing, really."

"Well, I'm your guidance counselor. Remember that." Leonard felt he'd just made the most trite, idiotic statement of his life. "I know that the other day things kind of --"

"I really think, Lenny," Elizabeth began, "that everybody has something they hide from. I think it's beautiful when somebody doesn't hide from it." Again, Leonard could say nothing. His instincts ordered him to tell her that he was hiding from plenty, most notably the Responsible Adult in his head that was saying this, but he held back. He knew this wasn't everything she wanted to say. In Lizzie's eyes he could sense something that premature sexual revelation could not cause.

Finally, he spoke up, his voice cracking. "I'm sorry, Lizzie."

She laughed. "No, no, no. You don't understand, sweetie." Sweetie. He'd been calling her that all her life. "Listen, I guess I should probably get something to eat. Can I come here again on Monday? Today's counseling session was really..." -- she looked around the room as if expecting the right word to be plastered on the wall someplace -- "...lively."

Leonard, cluelessly, went for the obvious. "Is 9:30 a good time again?"

She nodded once, in a clipped way that suggested discomfort. "Yes." Out she went... but as she walked down the hall, she did it again. While he was closing the door behind her he saw her glance back at him with that same sly grin from the pumphouse. Plenty was amiss.

***

Stacy went home with Leonard again that night. His mind was on Elizabeth. Consciously, he was still repelled by her advances, but when he made love to Stacy he found himself pretending it was Lizzie, and he laid on her a kind of affection he rarely utilized on his girls. He didn't know why these feelings were surfacing or why he needed to fantasize with the very able blonde cheerleader in his bed. He held her silently for a long time when she began to cry, explaining that she and her father had been in an argument. She told him it was best that she went home.

While she was getting dressed, she looked directly at him -- for the first time all night -- and whispered "Please don't do that to me again."

Leonard had just brought her a glass of lemonade and was setting in down when she dropped this bombshell. "What?" It was the only appropriate word, he felt.

"The things you were doing. That's not the way it usually is."

"Don't get pissed off, kid," Lenny grumbled. After that, he said nothing else, and soon Stacy was gone. He wandered around in a confused stupor for a moment before walking back to the nightstand, drinking the lemonade, and -- feeling a surge of adrenalin and curiosity -- ventured over to the Elizabeth wall. He wondered if it was his imagination, but he swore he could hear her bed moving faintly. If it wasn't true, he could pretend it was.

That night, he dreamed the same dreams again, but this time they were lovely and riveting.

***

"Do you know the horrible thing? I don't remember my mother. Not even a fragment. Everything I know about her I know from pictures. I know she looked sort of like Patty Duke. Dad says she acted just like me, moved just like me, and he even says she looked exactly like me when she was younger, which I guess means I'll end up looking like Patty Duke. I feel terrible because my dad talks about her constantly. He's not over it. He probably won't get over it. And I don't know what she was like. He could just as well be talking about Margaret Thatcher. I know the facts but I don't know the woman."

Leonard was staring at the floor. "Well, I --"

"You knew both your parents, but you feel the same way about them. I know."

"Yeah." Leonard leaned back in his chair. Spinning it around playfully, he caught a glimpse of one of his regulars on the bench outside. He ignored her. "How do you get along with your dad, anyway?"

"I know you're friends. Can I tell you honestly?"

Leonard laughed. "I don't know that it's the most dignified friendship." Elizabeth wasn't amused.

"I love my dad, I really do. But it's kind of fucked up."

"What is?"

She said nothing for a long time. "I think I need him too much. When he's not around, I go crazy."

"Well, he raised you. He's home to you."

"So are you, Lenny."

It was his turn to be mired in silence for a bit. At last, Liz continued. "I'm scared of going away for college. I don't ever want to be without that. The way our apartment smells, the way the doorframes are painted and all that. If I don't have that stuff, I don't know."

Leonard smiled. "You'll get used to it, it just happens when you move away from home. When I was in the war, I thought for sure I was going to die the day I shipped out, but... I didn't die. And I'm glad I didn't know how long I would be gone, how much I was going to miss, because then I know I would have died." He snapped back. "But I guess that's not very helpful, is it?"

Liz looked directly at him. Her eyes were like those of a wolf. Eventually Leonard was no longer able to bear it and had to look away. He then noticed the girl on the bench was gone.

"Do you know how my mom died, Lenny?" Liz asked, still staring at him intently.

Leonard answered truthfully. "No. I never really had the nerve to ask. I figured it was something pretty bad."

"It is. Raped. They slit her throat."

Even having expected an answer like this, Leonard remained shocked. "That's horrible. I'm --"

"It was on the beach. My dad's always telling me how my mom always wanted to try these crazy things and she'd been begging him for years to have sex with him on the beach."

"Wait, your dad told you this?"

She didn't answer. "They had this little tent, you know, and they were just enjoying themselves, and then this guy comes along with a knife. Dad tried to tackle him and get him away and I think he even almost drowned him at one point, but all he could really do was stand there and watch."

The silence was claustrophobic. "And you were two years old when this happened?"

"I turned two a couple of days later, I was with a sitter that morning. We lived right there on the beach. God knows why Dad didn't let her have her little fling on the beach sooner." She wasn't crying, but there was a coldness in her downward glare. "Daddy never forgave himself."

"No... I guess you wouldn't."

"It's awful, though, don't you think? He hasn't dated another woman since then."

"Well," Leonard whispered thoughtfully, "it would be damn near impossible to get rid of guilt like that."

"It only got worse."

"How's that?" Leonard's head was turned toward the wall as he thought these things over carefully. Suddenly he felt Elizabeth's hot breath close to his ear. "Meet me in an hour." She ran out the door without missing a beat.

***

The bulb was working this time. In full illumination, Leonard Spofford watched Elizabeth Greenwood remove her clothes; he was stunned by the light's embracing of her, the precision of her movements. He'd seen nothing like it. At first he didn't associate the beautiful woman standing before him with the paper hearts or even the dead mother. Then suddenly the revelation flooded back to him and he found himself even more drawn to her.

It was one of the best times, for him and he hoped for her. It was the kind of sex you read about people having, the kind that inspires people to not only write letters to Hustler but maybe even forward them to The New Yorker knowing perfectly well they'll be rejected and pinned on the wall for the staff to read. It went on for over an hour, and they didn't say a word. His contact with her here was purely physical, it was lust... but lust was never enough for him before. This was something new. When Liz finished, she clung to him for a long time and muttered into his ear that she loved him. He wanted to hang on forever, but school was ending.

That night, he moved his bed to the Lizzie wall and once again heard her movements. He felt a yearning to hold her again, of course to relive the afternoon but also just to be in her presence. He wondered if after all these years he was finally discovering what it was supposed to be like.

Lizzie apparently overheard some activity behind the wall, so, in a move that startled Leonard enough to cause him to leap up defensively, she cupped her hands and greeted him.

Leonard smiled. "Hey, Lizzie."

"Hey. Do we have another appointment at 9:30?"

The two of them met again in his office the next day, and the procedure continued for over a month. Leonard no longer had sex with other girls; a tradition had been broken. He also no longer saw any other students, but no one seemed to care. He and Lizzie discussed everything except the incredible sex they were having every single afternoon in the pumphouse... and likewise, said nothing during the foreplay and intercourse to suggest that they had any more than a passing familiarity with one another. By the end of the first week they were telling each other "I love you" on a regular basis, but only after the sex; it never entered their regular conversations.

The only reason other staffers suspected nothing when Leonard and Lizzie were constantly seen wandering the halls together was that Leonard was such a well-regarded member of the administration, and of course Lizzie had better grades than anyone else in the school. Who could protest their acquaintance? No one had any reason to believe it was heated with any kind of illicit passion; such a suggestion would be ridiculous. After all, Leonard Spofford was in his forties. Office workers would see Leonard and Lizzie coming up together to get his paycheck, giggling and whispering to one another, and they were puzzled but never alarmed.

Elizabeth became Leonard's entire world. Their daily talks were almost sexual contact. The sex itself was potent because Leonard looked upon her and remembered all that she'd told him. He could scarcely control himself knowing he was physically inside the person he'd spoken to intimately all morning and afternoon. He felt that he was in love with her.

***

May came and Princeton loomed. "I can't lose you," Lizzie said one day over lunch. "I refuse to lose you. This means so much to me, Lenny. I don't think you realize." Leonard did realize, and he was deeply troubled. It was like being aware of one's impending death. Unsure of what to do, the two of them continued their routine, playful as ever but with the hint of nonverbal unrest that cast its shadow over everything.

Robbie had a fatal heart attack in the middle of the month. He had been so beloved by the students that classes were not held for an entire day. (Leonard considered inviting Lizzie to attend anyway; he wanted to have her in every room of the school, but he aborted the plan for fear of arousing suspicion.) Robbie's equipment had belonged to him and had been left, for whatever reason, to his grandchildren. The pumphouse belonged to Lizzie and Leonard alone now, and they used it extensively.

One night Leonard sat by the wall and began to cry. "I'm afraid, Lizzie. Maybe I should come with you." There was no answer for some time, just some faint movement.

Eventually, a male voice replied, and once again Leonard felt himself launching into an attacking position. "Lenny? Is that you?"

"Y-yes, Gabe. It's me."

"You sound upset. Maybe you should come to dinner with us."

On the one hand, the idea of dinner with his illicit teenage lover's father was more than a bit ludicrous. On the other, Lenny would accept any opportunity to see her. He had now buried himself deeply in all of his perceptions of Elizabeth, from the paper heart girl to the sensual adult he now knew so well to teenager going places with her excellent grades to the daughter of a troubled friend... Lenny adored all of them and alternated with some regularity in his fantasies.

"I'll be there in ten minutes."

Leonard felt himself shake when confronted with the seductive smile of the pumphouse instead of the friendly grin of the office when Lizzie answered the door. "Hello, young lady," he said cordially; both stared straight ahead for a moment before bursting out laughing, while Gabe looked on, dumbfounded. "Dinner's ready!" he called, giving up on understanding the scene.

While Elizabeth set things up, Leonard briefly drifted around the living room. It was more lived-in, colorful than his apartment, and the dominant personality was clearly Lizzie's. Gabe was represented almost exclusively by the gun rack in the corner, accompanied by a framed photograph of Elizabeth's mother. It was often turned just enough so that the reflection of the overhead light obscured her face. Tonight, Lenny deliberately moved close enough to study it and was only mildly amazed to see Lizzie staring back at him. It was, as Gabe had often insisted, uncanny.

Dinner was a delicious omelet with an intimidating number of side dishes. Leonard found himself wondering if every day was Thanksgiving at Gabe's house; he and Elizabeth entertained her father with horror stories of the school cafeteria. "They've got these tater tots," Lizzie said excitedly, "and you'd swear they put tinfoil in the middle!" Leonard laughed hysterically and revealed that the cafeteria never served chicken, only "imitation chicken flavored food." The two then explained to a narrow-eyed Gabe that they went to the cafeteria counter every day just to laugh at the food.

Gabe smiled. "You two get on so well together."

Suddenly, everything was quiet. Leonard stopped chewing.

Gabe looked startled. "What?"

Elizabeth took the bait. "Well, you know, Dad..." -- Leonard glared at her worriedly -- "Lenny and I have gotten pretty close lately." Leonard widened his eyes and mouthed the word "stop."

She continued nonetheless, her father's expression unchanging. "In fact..." -- Leonard began kicking at her under the table -- "he and I are kind of..." -- Gabe leaned forward -- "...going out!"

The world stopped turning for Leonard. He gulped down his food and prepared to make a break for it, not daring to look at Gabe. Nothing was said for a moment, then came the word "Wow!" in an excited tone.

Lenny turned to see Gabe grinning. "I think that's wonderful! Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

Despite the positive outcome, this was still an awkward situation. No one said a word. "Well, come on! Don't be shy!"

"Gabe, I'm sorry," Leonard said, resigned. "I should have said something. Everything happened so quickly. Maybe... maybe I should go."

"No, sweetie! Don't!" Lizzie pleaded. "It's okay, isn't it, Daddy?"

Gabe looked as if he'd been asked whether two and two made four. "Of course it's all right! I've known Leonard for years! I think it's lovely! Don't go, Lenny."

Leonard was simultaneously relieved and alarmed. "I'm amazed you would take this so well, sir. I'm older than you are."

Gabe grinned. "Well, what does that matter? This calls for a celebration!"

Lizzie continued with her tale of romantic conquest. "It was all me, Daddy! I scored him! I used Machiavellian tactics! He didn't make the first move, I did!"

"That's great, my dear, just great. Now how about some chocolate mousse?"

***

This whole thing that had started with Leonard taking random girls home with him and fucking them -- a prospect he found increasingly distasteful now, even though his sex with Lizzie was not half as innocent -- was turning into a perfectly legitimate love affair. Maybe he would marry Lizzie and go off to college with her and they'd live happily ever after.

Leonard was lying on the floor after the eventful dinner, when he heard a knock on the door.

It was Lizzie; he opened the door for her. "Hey, can I spend the night here?"

The excitement that came from his being asked this question was so immense that he nearly fainted. Words about the evening were useless. Instead it was the kissing, the clothing, the bed, the shower together, the bed again but now soaking wet, and so it went for hours, time a new luxury to them. Leonard had done plenty in this room, but now he was here with a woman, a real woman.

***

The night was so intense that for the next few days, there were no long talks in the counselor's office. Just the mature lovers.

The penultimate day of school came. The talks began again, and were as wonderful as ever, even as the sex grew ever more passionate. It was assumed that when the time for Elizabeth to begin college came, the two would move to New Jersey together and then plot their future together. The laughter and friendship were undiminished by Gabe's blessing; if anything, it surged them both with power.

In the pumphouse on that next-to-last day of school, Leonard and Elizabeth fucked the way they did the first time, the time when Leonard was left haunted, confused, disgusted. The time he couldn't shake the image of the girl with the hearts. It still came sometimes, but now he embraced it. It came today, and he closed his eyes and allowed it. Then, for the first time, Leonard spoke to her during the sex to say something other than "I love you."

"Lizzie, why did you want me that first day? Why were you waiting for me?"

"Because, Leonard," she said, gasping for breath, "I've been thinking about it for years... If I'd known how it would be I would have done it sooner."

She rolled over and wrapped her legs around him. Sweat trickled off her forehead. Breathing heavily, they stared lovingly at one another, nearly motionless.

Then came the sound of keys clanking together. All at once, before any reaction was possible, the door came open. The stodgy principal, Mrs. Channing, looked down to see her beloved guidance counselor Leonard Spofford in the midst of sexual contact with the valedictorian of the senior class, Elizabeth Greenwood. Channing was there to show the building to the new janitor, a Mr. Krendel who now looked inside with intense curiosity; she was not moved by the steaming act of love sprawled out before her.

Spofford: fired immediately, arrested for statutory rape, bailed out. Greenwood: expelled despite only one day in the school year remaining, Princeton scholarship and admission revoked, had her father bail Spofford out.

***

Gabe's reaction to this thoroughly unexpected turn of events was not as bad as could have been expected, but not as favorable as his reaction to the romance between his daughter and longtime friend. He was a bit alarmed to know that the two of them had been having sex on school grounds, and rather constantly. Moreover, his doubts about the validity of the relationship became larger when several former students counselled by Leonard came forward to tell him about their sexual contacts with him, complete with the story of the bench. There were dozens of them, and Leonard expected all of the girls he'd fucked -- over fifty -- to take the bait and speak up eventually.

The police stipulated that Leonard was not to see Lizzie again, and Gabe agreed with the conclusion. He did not raise his voice or even express anger at his daughter, but did order her not to spend any more time with him.

The couple ignored such regulations, though it wasn't easy. Through the wall, Leonard broke the ice. "I'm really sorry about Princeton, honey."

Lizzie was frank. "I'm not. I'm relieved, actually. I'm just sorry you have to deal with this."

"Thank you for defending me."

"Of course. I love you."

For a time, nothing was said. "Is this it, Lizzie? Are we done with it?"

"Let's pretend."

"What?"

"Let's pretend we're in the same room and it's just like it was the first night."

It wasn't over. Through a layer of drywall, they found a way. It continued for a few weeks.

***

The plan to skip town first surfaced in July, after things had calmed down. Leonard had settled his issues with the law by confessing to some misdemeanor charges (there were holes in the girls' testimony, and Lizzie and her father were open to their relationship as being fully consensual), and the feeling of hopelessness had subsided. One night Lizzie tapped on the wall and told Leonard she had a proposition.

"What is it?"

"We leave."

"What do you mean by that?"

"We leave this fucking town. It's not worth it to try to carve things out here."

"Where do we go?"

"I don't care, but please let's just go off somewhere together. My dad and I... it's different now. The damage is done."

Lizzie had just turned eighteen, so there was little her father could do about her leaving. He, of course, didn't know who was accompanying her until he noticed the apartment next door up for rent several weeks later.

Leonard drove Lizzie out of the town with the music blaring, the woman he loved waving her arms and singing. "I've been cheated, been mistreated... when will I be loved?" He looked over at her and found himself wondering how he could keep up, but quickly assured himself that he had nothing to worry about.

***

Lizzie wanted to see America; she was eager for the decade's worth of textbooks in which she'd resided to jump to screaming life around her. She was particularly excited about California. Over the course of two weeks, Leonard drained the last $4000 in his checking account on the way to Burbank.

"I didn't want Princeton," she told him early in the trip. "This is what I wanted. I think I'll learn more from you."

"I don't think I have anything to teach," Leonard muttered.

"Nonsense. I'm sure you know what you're doing. I have total faith in you."

"Faith," Leonard said, "is a dangerous thing."

She appeared puzzled by this. "It's faith in a man I know I can trust."

"If I don't know what's going to happen next, I don't see how you can."

Liz smiled nervously and dropped the subject.

The first forty-eight hours were the happy ones, and thereafter, there was an abrupt shift in the mood. Leonard grew gradually more curt as the days rolled onward and Lizzie sought reassurance more and more frequently -- and with increasingly audible doubt -- that Leonard was at the wheel in a more than literal sense. She tried to interest him in conversations about Greek mythology, about which she'd been reading, and Thomas Edison, the subject of her last school paper, but his mind sat elsewhere and he lost patience with this Princeton scholar's variation on small talk. When he snapped at her for the first time, she turned toward the window and bit her lip violently, trying to hide her reaction.

She, too, soon was worried about getting caught and/or lost and/or running out of money. Lenny and Elizabeth had never been together without interruption for an entire day before, much less half a month. Adjustment to this new arrangement never fit, and the future loomed overhead like the storms that chased and outran them on the road; it was quietly tearing Leonard apart, and Lizzie did nothing to hide how much it was consuming her. She took to a habit of reclining in her seat a few times a day and simply groaning "Ohhh, god..." Aside from this and various plesantries, they said very little, but the fucking continued... in hotels, on the road, in national parks even. Their appetites were insatiable, or so they insisted to themselves.

They saw the monuments but were preoccupied, and drowned this with another distraction. Taking a tour bus through Phoenix at one point, Leonard asked to fuck her in the last seat and she reluctantly agreed; her lack of enthusiasm led him to grumble "You're doing it wrong" and she ignored him for three days afterward. That situation, their first rift, became a microcosm of their lives. Leonard loved Elizabeth, but he had no clue what that meant anymore, and not only was he no longer associating her with the little girl he'd always known, he hardly even remembered who that little girl was.

Upon the arrival in Burbank, Leonard fell apart with exhaustion. Months of stress had drained him. Finally, the sex was not enough for him anymore, and Lizzie was barely enough herself. She had the energy in her to run around the town all day and night, as if avoiding crosshairs. California gave him a headache.

Lizzie found their apartment herself and soon took a job as a produce clerk. The day she came home with this news it cheered Leonard up for a time, but he soon fell apart again. They barely spoke for a month, and moreover hardly touched.

Leonard stayed in bed and did little else. Every time Lizzie raised an objection, his reply was the same. "Hey, don't get pissed off, kid." She had finally taken to either saying it with him in unison or replying with a curt "up yours" or "fuck off" or "shove it." The two had become a dysfunctional father and daughter; it wasn't lost on Lizzie, but Leonard was too busy staring at QVC to care.

In his rare moments of clarity he wondered what had led him to this depression. He assumed it was the loss of his job, a blow to the ego, but there also were the differences between himself and Lizzie that had become so clear on the road trip.

Lizzie was a Princeton hopeful. She was not stupid and she knew what was happening. She looked into Leonard's eyes and read them, and one day she reached him. After she left for work one morning he rolled over in the bed, looking for the remote so he could watch Gilligan's Island, and there on the pillow were three paper hearts. Their contents were personal and explicit, but mostly just the words of adoration, encouragement. "Someday you won't remember these times."

When she arrived home that night, he kissed her for the first time in what felt like years. He wanted to talk, but she had been through a difficult day, and she simply pleasured him lightly for a few minutes, then turned out the light. They slept soundly; he held her until it became uncomfortable, then turned away.

***

Apathy was no longer an excuse by the end of the fall. Lizzie helped Leonard get out of the apartment and go to try and find work. They were talking again, but never in the personal way they once did. They joked and laughed and punctuated their conversations with innuendo about this-and-that which they would do to one another later, but both of them were aware that it was a hollow practice. They simply functioned as they felt they had to, with every obligatory joke intended as a kind of assurance that nothing, in fact, had died.

For the first time since the move, on the second day of job hunting, they genuinely laughed together and both ended up breaking down. At a greeting card shop on 7th Avenue, the two of them rooted through the sentimental dreck populating the shelves and read it out to each other. Avid readers prior to their time on the road, both were fascinated by the literary incompetence of these Hallmark cards. One in particular left them in stitches:

"My lovely darling...
If I put my love for you in a box
The cardboard would slowly combust
The corners would erode
The seams would explode
And the walls would melt away
But the heart inside
Would never fade
Forever"

There was a picture of a heart protruding from the lid of a box. Nearby sat a teddy bear. They both found this uproarious, leading to some confusion among the employees at the shop. After laughing until tears were streaming down her face, Elizabeth glanced up directly at Leonard and their eyes met. At once, both of them began to weep. He said her name again and again and embraced her. They remained in this position for so long that the workers assumed something awful must have happened about which they were in denial when they initially arrived.

Things like this were rare but gave them hope. The ability to keep the bridge secured seemed to be evading them both. Attempting to extend the joke, Leonard put in an application at the greeting card shop, but by the time they walked out, their sweeping connection was lost.

To the surprise of both Leonard and Lizzie, the shop called back. "You seemed cheerful, and very... emotional, we think you'd be ideal for us." Lenny refused to take this seriously; Lizzie took the trouble of organizing the interview and forcing him to go, eventually ending up late for her own job because Leonard was so reluctant to leave the bed. He felt she was nagging but didn't say as much. He resented having someone less than half his age attempt to be his parent, but then again, she was paying the rent.

Leonard took the job. It paid well and was incredibly easy. Essentially he sat in a chair for eight hours each day, reading the newspaper. If the delivery truck came in, he put the cards away. The simplicity was astounding. He felt like a sap for being a guidance counselor all those years.

At home, the chasm deepened. With conflicting schedules, Leonard and Elizabeth rarely saw each other and, if they had any contact whatsoever, it was a quickie and then bed. The gravity of Lenny's feelings for her seemed to have evaporated. He had to think about other girls, like Stacy, to try and get it up when they had sex. Maybe he should have stuck with Stacy, he thought. It was sweet of her not to speak up after the arrest.

When the couple had a day off together, they sat at the table and stared at one another or the television set. Words failed them both. When Lizzie was off, she cried and threw the few possessions they retained around the apartment. On Leonard's days off, he wandered around the apartment sipping coffee. Now able to afford some luxuries, he wasn't exactly sure what he wanted to do next. In the back of his mind he assumed the dumping of Lizzie was inevitable sooner or later; he'd been naive, overtaken by the springtime and a bizarre emotional state. She'd be better off with somebody else anyway. Hell, there probably was somebody else already.

The apartment building was located in a residential neighborhood; it was surrounded by small houses. The one next door, visible from the bedroom window, was cloaked by a wooden fence, but you could see everything because the apartment was on the third floor. Once in a while Lenny glanced down and noticed a girl he fancied of about fifteen or sixteen. He began to look forward to his days off so that he could watch for her.

A day came when the girl was walking in the backyard with her dog. Leonard had been reading, but noticing movement he jumped slightly and dropped his book on the floor. When he bent to pick it up he neglected to remember the proximity of the window to his forehead, and he slammed it with an excruciating thud. Unwilling to miss a second of the hottie below, he regained his composure quickly and stared out to see her, looking straight at him. He smiled.

She looked around cautiously, then stepped to the side of the house and turned the sprinkler on. Puzzled, Leonard put on his glasses to see more clearly, and the girl began to remove her clothes. She leapt around in the water and posed for him in what he could only term a random act of kindness. He waved and grinned; after fifteen minutes or so, she went inside, still glaring up at Lenny with the familiar glimmer of seduction. For the moment, he resisted.

Oblivious to all of this, Elizabeth was nonetheless gathering some resentment of the man for whom she'd thrown out everything. Once in a while she would direct her regular throwing of objects at him. He sat, unresponsive. After he'd held his job for a month they stopped speaking altogether and Leonard took to sleeping on the floor, not because he was asked to but out of courtesy to Lizzie. He couldn't help but feel some guilt, but it was back to the bottom-drawer guilt again. Not really his problem.

The girl came out again to perform for him the next time he was home to see her. On this day, he beckoned her, no longer fearing what Lizzie might think.

They must grow these high school kids differently in Burbank, he thought, becuase Cindy was letting him try things nobody he'd been with would dream of. She was easy, smooth, sprawled out on the bed and letting him have her; her attempts at conversation were admirable but ultimately embarrassing. "Do you like living here?" she asked while he slammed at her from behind. Leonard told her she could come up anytime he was home. "Are you, like, married?" she asked in a worried tone. "I've seen some chick up here before. She was, like, throwing shit."

"Oh, no," Leonard said casually. "That's my... maid." A mild smirk notwithstanding, the sprinkler girl accepted this explanation.

***

At work the next day, Leonard, feeling younger than ever after his latest conquest and as far away from guidance counseling as he could imagine, cheerfully glanced over the daily paper, and that was when he found out.

In the little "around the nation" sidebar, a notation from Leonard and Lizzie's former hometown appeared.

"A man sitting in a minivan with his wife and two children was shot dead Monday, seemingly by a complete stranger. According to eyewiness reports, GABRIEL GREENWOOD, 42, was walking toward the vehicle in the direction of a nearby store when he stopped suddenly and removed a pistol from his back pocket, then fired three shots into the windshield before turning the gun on himself."

"Before turning the gun on himself."

The pangs of obligation Leonard felt to Elizabeth came flooding back to him; the greeting card shop would have to wait. Jogging urgently down the street to the grocery store where she worked, he pictured her untainted beauty and how much he wished more than anything that he could go back in time and change everything. Not ruin her life, not fall in love with her, just be the old fucking pedophile again. He never ran, but today he did. The automatic door at the supermarket was too slow for him. He ran all the way to the produce department where Elizabeth was sorting through some onions. "Honey?" he said, already breaking up.

For the tiniest split second, a look of joy came over her face, a leftover association from long ago. Then she relaxed and went back to looking half-dead. "What do you want?"

"Please sit down."

"What?"

"Just sit down."

"Look, we don't do this anymore. Especially not here, not now. And I've been meaning to tell you that --"

"Please just read this. And listen... it's bad. It's really bad."

"What?"

"It's bad!"

"Show it to me!" He hesitated. "Please, for god's sake!"

"Tell me you're prepared for the worst."

"What the fuck is going on? Give me the fucking paper!"

"Tell me you're prepared."

Unconvinced by this commotion, refusing even to sit down, she simply grabbed the paper, and the moment she caught the name in bold print, her knees fell from under her and the bawling began. By now, Leonard, too, was crying, and he bent down to try and help her. "Please go the fuck away," she whispered.

Leonard obliged, scarcely able to control himself, hating it. The sun was shining, reveling in its own irony. Leonard returned to work, still feeling completely defeated, still wanting to set everything right again. But, he thought, all I know how to do is fuck underaged girls.

Leonard paced around the house for hours that night before Lizzie finally arrived at home. The near-Princeton student was caked with dirt. "I fell in the mud on the way here. I just couldn't walk anymore. I didn't have the energy." Leonard nodded, doing his best to show her that he understood. "I'm going home for a while, needless to say," she continued, beginning to pack a small suitcase. "I don't want you to come. You can take the bus to work, I'm sorry if it's an inconvenience. I'll be back."

"I understand. Do you need any help packi--"

She was already done, slamming the door behind her. Leonard plopped down onto the floor, staring at the ceiling. Seconds later, the door popped open again. "Leonard," Lizzie said, "who the fuck is this?"

Lenny looked up to see the girl from next door -- he still hadn't caught her name -- standing in the doorway with a "SLUT" t-shirt on and a mysterious paper bag. "Hi, are you the maid?" she asked Lizzie. Leonard glanced over at Elizabeth and stepped awkwardly toward her, wishing he could cover up everything in her sight that was diminishing her respect for him by the minute. He was unable to speak. Lizzie said nothing, turned around, and walked away.

He continued to see the girl, whose name he eventually learned was Cindy, for the remainder of the week. His will to live shrank with each visit. Each time the sex ended, it dawned on Lenny: Elizabeth's father has died. And somehow he knew it was his fault. His maturity was on a level with juvenile sex delinquent next door. Lizzie never came back in, and Leonard slept each night feeling cold and alone, which stung because he knew he deserved it.

***

Work was good for Lenny's ego. He preferred being at work to being at home. He was whistling when he unlocked the door and stepped back toward the register with his newspaper and coffee. With his hand about to flip the lightswitch, a familiar voice commanded from behind -- "Don't turn that on."

Lenny twirled to see, first, a rifle in his face -- he dropped his coffee and newspaper -- and second, Elizabeth behind it.

"I don't know why I'm doing this, Lenny. I don't know why I do anything anymore. I just want you out of my life and this is probably the easiest way to do it."

Leonard swallowed hard. "Why not just tell me to leave, Lizzie?"

"Because that gets you off too easy, just like you got off too easy for fucking all those girls. I thought I understood, I really did, until we got here. What happened, Lenny? What did I do?"

"You didn't do anything. I just --"

"What? You just what?"

"I'm old."

Elizabeth clearly found it pathetic to have that named as an excuse, but nonetheless saw its validity. "You know, you and my dad were so much to me, and I was so different then that I can't imagine what I was like, what I was always thinking."

"I was different too." Lenny watched as Elizabeth began to cry. His hand wandered to her shoulder in an attempt to calm her.

"HANDS OFF!" she screamed. "I'll fire this in your face, I swear to god I fucking will."

"Where did you get the gun, Elizabeth?"

"My father left it to me. Isn't that just delicious? You and I would have found it hilarious."

"So what do you want? Money?"

"No... you don't have any money and I don't want to cause any trouble for the shop. I'm probably just going to kill you. I haven't really decided yet though."

Lenny was hardly surprised at the threat. He knew why all this had happened. "I have to know this much. Why did he shoot that man, do you know? I'm sorry to pour salt into the wound, but..." He trailed off.

"That man raped my mother, Leonard. That man killed my mother. And now that man was married and he had a new life, and I guess my dad couldn't handle seeing what it did to those kids. He saw those kids scream. And the wife. And now he's done the same thing that man did, and I don't think he could bear it. You know what I think? I think he should have spared him. I think that family needed him, you know?"

"He killed a woman." Leonard didn't dare mention the relief he now felt about his relation to Gabe's death.

"He killed my mom. Don't you think I know that?"

"Hey, don't get pissed off, kid. You don't remember your mom. You don't --"

"Fuck you. Shut up. What the hell kind of guidance counselor are you, anyway? I think there's something in everybody's past. A big failure. I think you're my failure, Lenny."

"I'm sure you're right."

The crying resumed. The gun dropped to the ground. "Do you hate me? Am I your failure? It was me too, I know it was. It was my fault"

"It was nobody's fault. We grew up."

"You're awfully old to be growing up, man."

"I'm trying, Lizzie."

She almost hugged him then, but then she looked down and picked up the gun again. "What was I thinking? All we did was have sex. We talked and then we had sex. You didn't want to have sex with me, did you?"

"Lizzie, there --" It was too late now for the sentiment that stopped itself from being uttered. Still, he knew he had to say something. "All I know is that... we weren't ready for real life. But maybe we could try. Do you think we could try again?"

"I knew you all my life, I just wanted you because if I could take my home anywhere in the world, I'd be set. Princeton, the grocery store, whatever. But you just want a good lay, don't you?"

"I've been alive a lot longer than you so I know I don't need you. But I want you, terribly. I want to please you." He had actually been saving this speech for a long time, but the effect was nil. "If you want to kill me, go ahead."

"It didn't mean anything to me. It was distraction. I just got flustered from all this momentary euphoria. You know how it is, you've been with hundreds of girls."

"It was nothing special to you?" Leonard felt himself getting hurt.

"No, never. I don't think you're a good person and I don't want you in my life anymore."

"I felt like my life was mapped out finally," he replied quietly.

"You're this old and you think lives are mapped out?"

"You never lose hope. We almost had a future. You know we did. We can still salvage it. People do it every day."

She looked down to conceal her expression, never lowering the rifle. "I love you, but I think you're a bastard and I'm losing it. I really, really want to kill you, man. I don't believe a word you're saying."

Leonard decided to give up. Hostage negotiations weren't his speciality. "Before you do it, can I ask you something?"

"I don't see why not."

"Did you hate me for what I was back then?"

"Nobody did. We were all fascinated. We were very stupid kids, you know. But I made the mistake."

"You had other men too."

"No, I didn't."

"You said you had experience!"

"That was different."

"Then who the fuck was it?"

Elizabeth turned around so suddenly it frightened Lenny. "I think you know."

"I don't."

"I was a stupid kid, okay? It was my fault."

"What? I don't get it!"

"I grabbed hold of him just like I did you. I was a horrible kid. I was stupid."

"Who the fuck was it?" Almost before he was finished asking, Leonard suddenly found the answer. "It was your father." She did not reply or change her expression. "It's okay, you know... you can't blame yourself for --"

"I can, Lenny."

"You're kidding yourself, it wasn't your fault."

"It was nobody's fault, Leonard. I told you everybody has something they hide from. I remember I always felt like it would be so easy to be cut off... Maybe it was his fault that I felt that way, but now I know I was right. Do you ever feel that way, Leonard?"

He looked away. It was finished now. There wasn't anything left to say.

"It's time," she finally concluded. She held the gun up again and pointed it to his forehead. The resignation of the previous moment evaporated now that it was fully clear that she meant it. Panicking, he spotted something on the table nearby.

"Are you sure I never meant anything to you?" he managed between fearful sobs.

She just stared at him, trying to control herself.

His phrasing just barely comprehensible, he began to read. "If I put my love for you in a box, the cardboard would slowly combust, the corners would erode, the seams would explode, and the walls would melt away, but the heart inside would never fade forever." Reaching for anything, he whispered finally, "Someday, you won't remember these times."

The gun fell to the floor, and Liz along with it. She hugged Leonard's leg, soaking his pants with tears. "I can't even fucking see," she whimpered.

There was tranquility for a matter of seconds.

All at once, Leonard was nearly knocked down by a violent flash -- the tugging on his pants, the responsibility, everything seemed to come to a head, as if sleep had just been interrupted in the midst of a war.

Before he could recover fully, he found himself holding the gun.

The moments to follow were snapshots. His brandishing of the weapon as he slowly made his way out of the building, Lizzie's gaping mouth as she watched him, the cars that almost hit him as he ran away, the dropping of the gun in the street. Leonard ran as far as he could, prepared to forget every loose end in California. He ran out of the city and into barren wilderness.

It was nearly half an hour before he finally stopped dead, and then it was not to catch his breath but to turn back and look at the horizon he had left, overwhelmed.

Reeling, Leonard felt himself being pulled into every conceivable direction and froze. He could not make himself move on, return, retreat, attack, leave this spot. There was another flash; everything, every image came at once. He studied his surroundings desperately, glanced at the horizon again, looked up at the sun, and finally, collapsed.

******