taken where the river will. A peaceful moment.

In the dark they swerved off the freeway to the store for bungalow paint. Merilee plowed the aisles, selecting her barn reds to match her tangerines, and left Sam and the keeds to pay. When they caught up. Merilee and Stefan were across the street in front of the garden store, standing stranded in an island of bebop potted trees and exotic flora they had selected, waiting for Sam to arrive with the cash.

"Will you get in the car? both of you."

"Sure." Merilee hoisted a six-foot date-palm and-

"Just leave that there."

"Sure." If her husband didn't like dates, then as a proper wife she would not of course grow dates. Merilee and Stefan lifted instead a fig tree.

"And put that down, Merilee."

"In just six years we'll be able to grow our own-"

"But as for now, NO."

"You can't just say NO to me like that, Sam Bollo."

"Honey you spent every last cent we had at the paint store."

Oh. Girl growling and Stefan sad. Merilee a proper wife holding her tongue. Thinking, " If there's no money, then we'll have no fig trees. Our ancestors crossed the Donner and left Tulsa in their Conestoga wagons to escape just such old-fashioned logical connectors." And if Sam Bollo thought he was the hot shit who could deny her what she had always wanted just through some old cranky Philadelphia logic, then-

22. Now we are six revisited, part 2

Merilee. Lover. Sweetheart. I said I'd buy you a bicycle and I'm going to buy you a bicycle.

Friday, you said Friday. Today's Friday.