Serpent's kiss

consultants; they're little no dick no brain wimps anyway. (She'd recently read one of those books that told you how to Take Charge of Your Life, and this was one of the 'Seven Dramatic Lessons' the back cover copy had promised-Lesson Three to be exact, 'Getting Pissed and Getting Even.')

And then the phone rang.

Her first inclination was not to pick up.

She'd just sound sniffly anyway.

So she let it ring.

Six, seven, eight times.

'Jesus Christ, Holland, are you fucking deaf or what?' somebody shouted over her cubicle.

Those were the dulcet tones of Mike Ramsey, Ace Reporter. He sat in the cubicle next to Chris's. He was living proof that men indeed had periods. Chris estimated that Ramsey was on the rag approximately twenty-nine days per month.

So she picked up.

'Chris Holland. Channel 3 News.'

There was a slight pause, then an intelligent-sounding female voice said, 'I guess I don't know how to start exactly.'

'Start?'

'With my story.'

'I see.'

'So is it all right?'

'Ma'am?'

'If I just start in, I mean.'

'Sure.'

'It's about a murder.'

And right then and right there, Chris forgot about all the morning's misery.

'A murder?' She was drooling.

'Several murders actually.'

'Several murders?'

My God-several murders!

'But the man they accused-he wasn't really responsible.'

'He wasn't?'

There was a pause again. 'I'd really like to see you in person.'

'In person?'

'I couldn't make it till this evening. And even then I'm not absolutely sure about that.'

'Ma'am?' Chris said.

'Yes.'

'Is this all on the level?'

'Why, of course.'

'You know something about the man they accused of these murders?'

'Yes,' the woman said.

'Would you tell me who this man was?'

'Of course. He was my brother.'

'I see.'

'Do you know where the Starlight Room is?'

'In Shaffer's Mall?'

'Right.'

'Sure.'

'Could you meet me there at six-thirty?' the woman asked. 'Of course.'

'In the lounge. We could have a drink.'

'That would be nice,' Chris said. Then, 'Oh, wait.'

'Yes?'

'How come you called me?'

The woman laughed softly, sounding almost embarrassed. 'I like Channel 3 news best and I… I guess I just like your face. You don't look like a Dallas cheerleader. And that's nice.'

'Believe me, there are days when I wish I did look like a Dallas cheerleader.'

Like when no dick no brain TV news consultants are conducting focus groups, she thought.

The woman was back to sounding sombre again. 'Tonight then. About six-thirty.'

'About six-thirty. Right.'

After she hung up, Chris called over the top of her cubicle wall, 'Hey, Ramsey.'

'Yeah?' he shouted back. 'What?'

'Thanks for telling me to answer my phone.'

'Huh?'

'Never mind.'

She sat there exultant. Several murders, she kept saying to herself over and over again, thoughts of herself as the On the Town girl fading fast.

Several murders.

Wasn't life grand sometimes?

2

Rob Lindstrom

May 10, 1978

Rob had always felt that he would have been more popular in his college days if he'd been a Democrat. Unfortunately, he had inherited his political outlook from his father, a large, blunt Swedish immigrant who had come to these shores with nothing, and who now owned two department stores. Rob's conservatism came naturally.

Rob entered college just as the student movement of the late sixties was beginning to take over campuses. His first night in the dorm, he watched the ROTC building on the east edge of campus go up in flames. With all the smoke and the screaming and the sirens, the university resembled a war zone. Rob watched all this from his window. He was afraid to venture out.

Rob's political opinions didn't change until senior year, which was when he met Lisa. She was a dazzling blonde from New York. She was everything Rob wasn't-Catholic, sophisticated, and unafraid to try new experiences. While hardly a heavy doper, she did introduce good ol' Lutheran Rob to the pleasures of marijuana (or 'Mary Jane' as she mockingly liked to call it), New Orleans blues, dawn as seen from the dewy crest of Stratterhom Park, oral sex (the notion of a clitoris had pretty much been an abstraction to him), and Democratic politics. Lisa's father was a congressman who had been a good friend of Adlai Stevenson's, a man who had always reminded Rob of a greatly respected child molester.

Lisa changed virtually everything about Rob. His hair got long, his grade average went from a 3.8 to a 2.1, he started wearing the same shirt two days in a row, he started seeing the humour in the Three Stooges, he began experiencing vastly shifting mood changes depending on how things were going with Lisa, and he became a Democrat.

He even went to one SDS meeting with Lisa, though when he met the leader afterward he was totally put off. The leader- a fierce, bearded, crazed looking kid who carried a Bowie knife in his belt-complained that 'since I joined SDS, my old man has cut my monthly allowance in half.' The kid saw no humour in this. Had Lenin or Trotsky got allowances while attempting to overthrow their government? While Rob's opinion of mainstream liberalism had