Stormy Weather

Bo

"Nope, but she thought I did. She also thought the bathtub was full of centipedes, Cuban spies were spiking her lemonade, and Richard Nixon was working the night shift at the Farm Store on Bird Road."

" Drug problem ?"

"Evidently." Augustine found a Dodgers game on ESPN and tried to appear engrossed.

Bo

"She use a real scalpel?"

"No, a corkscrew."

"My God."

"What is it with women and scars?"

Bo

Was she flirting? Augustine wasn't sure. He had no point of reference when it came to married women whose husbands recently had disappeared.

"How's this," he said. "You tell me all about your husband, and maybe I'll show you the damn scar."

"Deal," said Bo

Max Lamb met and fell in love with Bo

Basically, Plum Crunchies were ordinary sugar-coated cornflakes mixed with rock-hard fragments of dried plums-that is to say, prunes. The word "prune" was not to appear in any Plum Crunchies publicity or advertising, a corporate edict with which both Max Lamb and Bo

On only their second date, at a Pakistani restaurant in Greenwich Village, Max sprung upon Bo

"With p-l-u-m instead of p-l-u-m-b on the first reference," he was quick to explain.

Though she personally avoided the use of lame homonyms, Bo

On a napkin Max Lamb crudely sketched a jaunty, cockeyed mynah bird that was to be the cereal-box mascot for Plum Crunchies. Max said the bird would be colored purple ("like a plum!") and would be named Dinah the Mynah. Here Bo

Bo

Max: "The bird has no particular gender."

Bo

Max: "You're adorable, you know that?"

He was falling for her, and she was falling (though a bit less precipitously) for him. As it turned out, Max's bosses at Rodale & Burns liked his slogan but hated the concept of Dinah the Mynah. The executives of Crespo Mills concurred. When the new cereal finally debuted, the box featured a likeness of basketball legend Patrick Ewing, slam-dunking a giddy cartoon plum. Surveys later revealed that many customers thought it was either an oversized grape or a prune. Plum Crunchies failed to capture a significant share of the fruited-branflake breakfast market and quietly disappeared forever from the shelves.

Bo

In the early months of courtship, Max invented a game intended to impress Bo

While Bo

Now, with Max apparently abducted by a raving madman, Bo

"Your husband thinks he can outsmart anybody."

"Unfortunately," Bo

"I can tell from the phone tapes."

"Well," she said, fishing for encouragement, "he's managed to make it so far."

"Maybe he's learned when to keep his mouth shut." Augustine stood up and stretched his arms. "I'm tired. Can we do the scar thing some other time?"

Bo

"Did I wake you?" she asked.