Oh-Oh City

"Hey, Beenie."

She smiled at me, but her expression didn't click recognition for a few beats. "Hey, Scott! How are you?"

"Fine. Those must be great. You look so happy eating them."

"They're good, but I'm not smiling at the cookies. It's remembering something I did as a kid. We were poor, and I was usually hungry the whole day. Even during meals. There were a couple of markets in our town, and I did the shopping for my mother. Every time, I went to a different one, because I had a trick up my sleeve. I'd get everything she asked for, then I'd take a bag of cookies – it didn't matter what kind, because they all tasted great to me. In every store, there was at least one blind corner where the people who ran it couldn't see you. I knew where each one was. I'd get my cookies, step over there like I was browsing, and verrry carefully open the bag along the seams. You can do that if you watch what you're doing. I was an expert! Now, when it was open, I'd take out two. Only two! And shove those babies into my mouth. Then, chewing really lightly so no one could see, I'd put the bags back on their shelf way in the back so they wouldn't be found soon. I never got caught, and was very proud of it."

"But it's not so much fun, now that you can afford to buy the bag?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Scott. Five weeks ago the doctor told me I'm sick. Since, then, just about everything tastes better than it used to." She said it as fact. Not a trace of "pity me" in her voice.

"Beenie, I'm sorry. Is there anything we can do? Are there treatments-"

"It's too far gone. I was feeling lousy for a long time, and kept telling myself to go have a checkup, but you know how those things are: you're lazy, or down deep you're scared and don't want to know …. Anyway, you get more scared when you start feeling really bad. So you go when it's impossible to get through a day, and you know pretty much by then it's real trouble –" She pursed her lips and shook her head. "Remember that word 'folly'? You're the English teacher. How come no one uses that word anymore?

"Anyway, I decided I was going to take their medicine and treatments, but if they get in the way of the time I've got left, then the hell with it –I'm living my days the way I want. And you see this bag of cookies. I ate three of them, and I'm putting the bag back on the shelf, and I ain't paying for it, like the old days. Once a thief, always a thief. But you can never make cookies taste as good as they did."

"Would you like to go for a cup of coffee?"

" No, I've got to go clean a house now. That's one thing I like doing very much. You go into a home, work hard all day getting everything right, then give it back to the owners and let them live in it for another week."

"You're certainly the best we've ever had."

"Thank you, Scott. I'm glad you said that."

Naturally, Roberta was shocked when I told her about the meeting. She asked the same question, sat in the same sad silence I had during the drive home from the market. My father used to call it "touching the razor"– you hear that someone you know is dead or dying, and the first impulse is to rear back as though you had touched a razor blade.

"Is there anything we can do?"

"Let her clean the house. She said that's what she likes to do best now."

"Put all her houses in order, huh?"

"I guess you could say that. She spoke so matter-of-factly. 'I'm sick, and it's too late to do anything.' For some odd reason, it reminded me of her dead-rabbit story."

I was about to enter the classroom, when I heard her voice behind me. "Scott?" I turned, and there was Beenie, an uncertain smile on her face, her hands clasping a small, shiny red purse.

"Beenie! Are you taking classes here?"

"No, I wanted to ask you if it was all right to come to one of yours. I called Roberta just after you left today, and she told me to come right down. I thought, why not? He can only say no."

"Sure you can come. We're doing Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories. Do you know them?"

" No but that's O.K. I want to sit in a class and watch what it does. The subject isn't important."

"Then, madam, please come in."

The students were already in the room, and looked interestedly at her when we entered together. I introduced her as Dr. Rushforth, and said she would be sitting in that day and observing. I had never brought anyone else to the class, so the kids were doubly interested in my colleague.

It was the first time I'd seen her in anything other than jogging clothes. She wore a bench-brown skirt and matching cardigan over a white blouse with a large bow at the neck. Somehow the outfit diminished her. In her sweatsuit, she was a gray package of energy. What she wore today made it look as though she were trying to fit in with a bunch of bores.

As class proceeded, I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She kept a smile on throughout that reminded me of the smile we create when we're spoken to in a language we don't understand, but don't want to offend the speaker. A vaguely tuned-out look. It made me wonder more why she'd come in the first place.

When it was finished, she remained in her seat. I went over. "They like you, don't they? Your students."

"It's good if they do, but sometimes better if they don't. Then they want to compete with me, so they put everything they've got into their work. Why did you come, Beenie?'

"To watch you in action, Scott. To see what you do outside that house. I see you only eating lunch and talking to Roberta. You're a good teacher, and it shows in the way you do it. Nathaniel Hawthorne's not my subject, but you make him interesting. And I learned what a 'pathetic fallacy' is today, too!" She patted my arm and stood up. Halfway up, she stopped for a second and winced. It could only have been from her pain. She smiled at me, seeing I'd caught the look. "My constant houseguest. You'll do, Professor Silver. You'll do. See you day after tomorrow."

Roberta was at an aerobics class, and I was in my study, working on an article. Right in the middle of a superb thought, there was a thump thump on my door.

"Yes?"

"Scott, I got something here. Can you come out and look?"

I liked Beenie and admired her courage, but was it necessary to disturb me in the middle of work to see if we wanted an old te

She held a cardboard box the color of oatmeal. Wrapped around it was a piece of brown rawhide. Written across the top in large block letters was THE KING OF TOMORROW. I hadn't seen the box in twenty years, but didn't need to open it to know what was inside.

When I was a graduate student, besides my course work, I was required to teach a class in Freshman Composition. It was a pleasant chore, and – because I was young, idealistic, and full of energy – I taught it well.

One of the students in there was a serious young woman named A

Halfway through the semester, she came to me after a class and asked if I would be willing to read the manuscript of her novel. I said yes, but also told her I would be totally honest if I didn't like it. She said she knew that, and it was one of the reasons she was asking me and not another teacher.

Unfortunately, it was no good. Yet another twenty-year-old's bildungsroman-there were good parts in it, but generally it was only old stuff trying to sound new. But I spent the better part of a weekend reading it carefully and making notes so A