On Tuesday nights, she paid her bills at the ivory-tile writing desk her first husband had brought home from his second road rally in 1984.

Her second husband was dead. After her third marriage ended, she swore off marriage entirely and instead wrote checks to her best friend’s son Quentin to pay for firesuits and Hoosiers and racing fuel. She’d paid for the boy’s first trip to Monaco, too, to give him time to recover after his girlfriend left him for Gail’s third ex-husband.

Sometimes the checks bounced.

But the check she was about to write wouldn’t bounce. She’d deposited a cashier’s check on the previous Friday that would ensure that this one would clear. She sat at the little desk, Dog and Buttface elegantly cleaning their paws and whiskers on the antique Isfahan rug below her, and pulled her checkbook out of the desk drawer. The little brass elephant trunk drawer pull clattered as she pushed the drawer shut.

She cracked her knuckles and picked up her finest-point pen.

“Two hundred eighty-three thousand four hundred and seventy-three and no cents,” she wrote, in a precise and tiny cursive hand acquired decades ago under Sister Monica Mary.

The auto transporter would arrive tomorrow morning, and the trophy she’d fought so very hard for, the win with which she had destroyed her third husband and made his then-girlfriend sob openly in court, would be loaded up into a closed car carrier and shipped out to its new owner on another coast.

She had a Polaroid camera ready on the kitchen table to document the loading. Beside it, an envelope lay waiting, addressed to her third husband’s now-wife.

She folded the check in half and tucked it into a leather handbag sitting on the floor by the carved leg of the desk. After the auto transporter left on Wednesday morning, she’d be heading to the airport for a flight to Monaco. She intended to hand her friend’s boy the check in person, over dinner.

Turning back to the desk, she opened the card and wrote, “I sold the Porsche. Quentin will enhjoy the proceeds. Will you cry again?” She got up from her chair, and walked across the Isfahan to the kitchen, Dog and Buttface trailing behind her, tails in perfectly mirrored question marks. She tucked the card into its envelope beside the camera on the table and poured herself a gin.

St Dishtopass, Kruppenheimingerville, does not have air conditioning. It remains a painful topic among people of otherwise good will, and the members of the congregation thank you for not bringing it up again.

Due to the often-sudden warmth of Trinity Sunday, it’s not uncommon for a recently hibernating bat to stumble out of her winter bed on the wrong side of the belfry and end up inside the church.

Such was the case this past Trinity Sunday at St Dishtopass. The morning dawned at an already-balmy 68°, and as the new girl stepped out of her house early in the morning, coffee in hand, she thought maybe she’d better pick one of her summer sundresses for church that morning. It’s the new girl’s tenth year at St Dishtopass, and although she wasn’t a witness to the Air Conditioning Congregational Meeting Meltdown of 2011, she’s learned not to mention the heat in the sanctuary during the summer.

It happened during the Athanasian Creed, that long creed usually recited only on Trinity Sunday. It covers two pages in the hymnal, and there are always a few stragglers who forget to turn the page and arrive confidently at “… also we are prohibited by the catholic faith to say that there are three Gods or Lords,” and begin to close their hymnals only to have to catch up while everyone else continues.

This year, almost nobody continued with “The Father is not made nor created nor begotten by anyone,” even those who had remembered to turn the page, because almost everyone was staring up at the ceiling, where not one, but two bats were diving and swooping in cursive loops across the arch above the chancel.

Pastor alone soldiered on. Perhaps he was unflappable or extra faithful—or perhaps he couldn’t see the bats beyond the proscenium of the chancel arch from where he was standing.

Some cautious voices attempted to continue the creed with Pastor.

“And in this Trinity none is before or after another, none is greater or less than another…”

The bats swooped lower. People rustled in the pews. Little Kelly Claver’s voice could be heard from a front pew, where her parents always sat with their crew of six littles: “What’s that, mama?” Her twin brother added, “Done yet? Done yet!”

No Lutheran wants to be the first one to make a fuss, so the stalwart band of congregants carried on as well as could be managed while simultaneously trying to keep up with Pastor and watching the fluttering, diving bats above their heads.

“He is God, begotten from the substance of the Father before… ahhh! Ahhhhh! Ahhhh!” led Pastor as one of the bats briefly ducked into the chancel before flitting back out into the main church again.

From the middle of the church, the new girl watched Patty and Lonna growing more and more nervous a few rows ahead of her. Patty and her husband, Roger, were in the sixth pew from the front, and Lonnie and her husband, Roger, were in the fifth pew. It goes without saying that these two families had occupied these rows of pews for quite some years.

Lest there be any confusion, it’s important to note that only Loreen is not married to a Roger.

The new girl was not afraid of bats, although she knew to give them a healthy respect and to be cautious about handling them. She felt no small sympathy for the bats, surely confused and stressed after their long winter sleep. Having had some experience previously with this common early summer phenomenon, she suspected what might happen when an usher opened the side doors of the church for ventilation, as was often done during warm weather.

She heard the squeak of the south sanctuary door and glanced up to see the pair of bats making a sudden turn for the open doorway.

In almost a blink, the bats swooped low, across the heads of the brave Lutherans of the fifth and sixth pews, and escaped into the outdoors past the wide open door. Ralph and Irma’s grandson Roger Schneidewind, serving his second elder slot of the month, ducked suddenly as the bats streaked past his shoulder. “Ope!” he shouted.

Back inside the church, Patty and Lonna shrieked in chorus, collapsing to their knees between the pews, their hands over their heads. Little Kelly Claver and her twin brother began laughing. So did both Rogers.

The new girl’s husband leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Can we arrange for bats during choir? They’re in tune.”

Othr was a small person, even though she stood five feet ten inches in her bare feet. She liked butterflies, self-help books, Pinterest, and making family memories.

In Othr’s mind were many tidy storage boxes, covered with scrapbook paper and labeled with brightly colored die-cut letters. Each box was labeled with a family member, group, or event: “Thanksgiving,” “Christmas,” “my sister,” “grandparents,” “family vacation,” and so on. In each box, she stored each memory that matched the label. But not every Christmas matched the Christmas box. Sometimes, her children’s grandparents didn’t act like she thought grandparents should. Nor was every anniversary special. Sometimes they were forgotten.

When something didn’t seem to fit in one of her boxes, Othr threw it away. If something happened that didn’t fit a label, she had no place to store it, and so she discarded it. Sometimes, she got angry about this. Sometimes, she resented the people who didn’t behave in a way to match the labels lovingly pasted on her lovely boxes.

Sometimes she tried to make people match her boxes, but it usually backfired. People would feel uneasy about her insistence on celebrating on a single day but no other. Sometimes, a parent or a brother was unable to participate in a way that fit into a box. Then there was the year the Easter ham caught on fire. She came home between church services to hide Easter eggs, only to find herself making a 911 call from the driveway. Her Easter box had only three mismatched plastic egg halves in it.

None of Othr’s boxes were full. In fact, you could see the bottom of most of them. As she got older, the boxes filled a little here and there, but only very slowly. As the years went on, she added a box labeled “grandchildren” that filled a little faster than the others, but her dreams of boxes and boxes and boxes labeled “grandchildren” never came to fruition.

None of Othr’s boxes ever started overflowing. They were very pretty boxes, though, and they looked lovely on the shelves of her mind.

Her sister, Mimir, had a box in her mind, too. Just one: a great big box with “GE Microwave” crossed out on the side and “family” scribbled underneath. Into that box, her sister tossed every holiday, every memory with a family member, every family relationship she had, and several people to whom she was not related, no matter how imperfect, making no distinction. Into her gigantic, battered box she gleefully tossed the “just because” visits, the Christmases when a cardboard cutout stood in for a missing family member, a wedding concluded in the dark due to a power outage, and the memories she made with the children of her best friend, who, she figured, were as good as family members anyway. Some years, the box didn’t fill as quickly as she might have liked, due to family members’ hardships or canceled plans, but since she had only one big box into which everything was dumped and because she wasn’t very picky about what qualified to go into the box, the big single box steadily filled up.

After Mimir’s tenth wedding anniversary, celebrated with Chinese take-out in the kitchen while the children watched Netflix in the basement, she threw some duct tape across the top of her first box, now bulging and threatening to burst open from all the memories tossed into it. She rounded up another box, scribbling “Family” on the side of it, too. Her box was messy, and she knew it. Sometimes, in her exhaustion, the memories didn’t quite make it into the box, so there were bits of memory strewn all around her mind’s floor, and certainly, nothing was sorted or organized. And her first box was ugly. It was hardly square anymore, and it had stains.

But it was full.

The tree was no more, and so was his Lamborghini Murcielago.

When Coyne came to, he first thought he was in his girlfriend’s Vegas apartment. Silky white pillows rasped against his cheek. But as his vision cleared, he saw the chrome script “Lamborghini” on the center console and remembered he and Avery had been fighting late into the night. He’d left the apartment in a rage. Again. The silky white pillows under his cheek weren’t Avery’s luxury pillowcases but deflated airbags.

Coyne carefully lifted his head. His neck was sore, and so were his shoulders. Everything was sore, really. He was thirsty, and he had to pee.

He tumbled out of the wrecked car, carefully stood up, and brushed himself off. He pulled a tattered DoorDash receipt out of his hair. The contents of the car had gotten tossed around quite a bit in the wreck.

Coyne relieved himself against the tree, taking delight in showering the scrubby grass below the tree with urine. Now to locate his phone. He turned back to the car and shoved the airbag scraps aside to search the center console and the footwells. He found the phone, but the screen was crushed, and it wouldn’t power back on.

Stranded. In the desert.

He was still thirsty.

Nothing for it but to start walking back towards town.

One might assume that a wrecked sports car would bring regrets to the mind of any normal hard-drinking man, but this was not Suzerain’s style. He felt only annoyance at the expected rise in his insurance premium from a second wrecked car. And anger at Avery, who had, he was sure, picked the fight last night.

In all of the length of Highway 27 between Vegas and Goldhaven, there was but one man walking on the shoulder of the road, and the driver of the Barcardi truck from Sin City Wine & Spirits Group hit him.

There were new choir pieces to start working on, because Reformation is just a few weeks away, and so the young director handed out stacks of crisp, lightly used choir folios to the front row of the choir. The front row passed copies back, and Patty slapped one onto her lap and shot, “What is this, now?” sideways at Lonna.

“Oh, my. I’ve never seen this before,” said Lonna, peering over her glasses at the unfamiliar piece of music. “Hmmmm.”

And with that, choir rehearsal began.

After the first run through the piece, the director began to go through the tenor part with the three remaining tenors. The socializing machine in the second row began churning.

The new girl listened in on Lonna and Patty’s conversation from the front row.

“Don’t we have something more fun than this to sing for Reformation?” Lonna hissed. The new girl heard the paper crack as Lonna shook it slightly in disgust.

“I’m sure we do,” whispered Patty. “After choir, let’s pull out that cantata from when Julie was director.” Patty pronounced “cantata” with a short-a sound, making it almost rhyme with “banana.” “It’s still in the choir files.”

The cantata to which Patty was referring— “Marty and His Friends”— was not in the choir files any longer, which she and Lonna would shortly discover. It had gotten lost a few years ago, all 27 copies of it, along with the accompaniment CD, the director’s score, patterns for children’s costumes (including one for Luther’s Augustinian monk’s habit), a photocopy master to create “95 Theses,” and instructions for how to turn an Igloo cooler into an “indulgence chest.”

When the new girl cleaned the second sacristy closet, she stumbled across a Reformation Cantata with multiple books and accessories packed into several banker’s boxes. It was all stashed at the very back of a very high shelf, almost as if someone had intentionally pushed the box as far back as it would go. The new girl, being a woman of some specific tastes in all things church music, had returned the boxes to the very far back of the very high shelf. Possibly, she thought with no small relief, the Reformation cantata was “lost.”

“Okay, sopranos! Let’s give the final verse descant a try. Altos, sing melody,” said the young director. Lonna was a decent soprano and always in tune, eventually. Patty leaned on Lonna and was therefore also always in tune, once Lonna had arrived.

“I hope they scoop as well at the potluck on All Saints,” said the new girl to her husband over a gin and tonic at the kitchen table once she was home. “I’d hate to have to wait in a line for my ice cream.”

Roger is Betty’s husband, not Loreen’s.

The church secretary regrets the error and kindly requests that everyone please stop talking to the new bartender at the tavern about this matter. Gossip is a sin.

Ralph always struggled with indigestion, especially after a potluck. Fortunately for all, the men’s room has always been located near the fellowship hall, even before the 1956 remodel that created the second sacristy closet.

The Mission Circle girls, Loreen, Betty, and the new girl, got back from their national conference safely, despite a 24-hour delay in Las Vegas. The airline put the three of them up for the night, and when all was said and done, the only real complaint was from Betty’s cat, Mr Pickles. Mr Pickles was fed only twice per day the entire weekend, plus the extra day, as Roger was in charge of the house while Betty was gone. Roger only puts in his hearing aids when Betty is home, and so is immune to Mr Pickles’ requests for food on the hour every hour.

Since the ladies had time to kill waiting for their delayed flight, Loreen hit up the slot machines with the proceeds of the last quilt she sold. To the surprise of all, she won a tidy sum. A discussion on the flight home on the morality of gambling led to a decision by the three women that Loreen must donate her winnings to the church, perhaps for a new bell, since the church has all the stained glass windows it needs since dear old Windy Ralph & Irma donated the money for the very last one.

It took only a few calls to realize that the winnings weren’t enough for a new bell. Loreen and her husband Bill will have to either wait for someone to die and leave additional memorial money for a new church bell or settle for a used bell and forego a custom inscription.

Loreen has begun a pressure campaign to have their will rewritten to include an additional memorial for a new bell. She kicked it off with lemon bars for Roger1 last night, his favorite.

The new girl has decided to clean out the second sacristy closet.

Pray for her.

On Monday of the second full Strength of 2025, Grand Chief Executive Officer, The Wonderful Doris Jean Trodd (So Much Winning) ordered Micheal Schilling, Second Chief of Operations, to return the half-height flag in front of The Corporation to its full mast position.

“But Doris,” he whined, looking down at his Harley Davidson boots. “The norm is to fly the company flag at half-mast for 4x Strengths after an employee's death! Ms. Tewthache has only been gone three Strengths!”

“Norms are nice enough, I suppose,” replied Doris. “But this is a new era, a better one. And today, we’re celebrating ME!” Doris made her classic thumbs-up gesture, following it with a hand motion that thumped her augmented bosom with her hyper-extended thumb. “Now go take care of it, Mike!” she concluded. She pointed at the glided door of her executive office suite.

“Yes, Doris,” Micheal replied, pulling his shoulders back in resolve. “Right away.”

From his basement office, Adam K stood on his mandatory two copies of Evan Musgagovich’s illustrated autobiography to peer through the tiny window towards the Corporation’s manicured grass forecourt. He saw Schilling’s signature Harley boots walking around the base of the flagpole and heard the clinking of the fasteners that held the flag’s rope. Adam glanced at the calendar on his office wall. It was a week early to be doing anything with the flag. Doris must be up to something. It was unsurprising to Adam that she’d made poor Schilling her stooge in whatever it was.

He slid a life-size cutout of himself out from behind the filing cabinet and slipped it in front of his computer station, facing the Department of Government Efficiency’s monitoring camera. Ducking behind the cutout, he pecked out an email.

Across the Corporation’s campus, in a pink and cream golf cart parked with a view of the retaining pond, Carol Ostercamp’s phone sounded off with shouts of “D-J-T! D-J-T!”

“Oh my gosh, Creampuff, we’ve got us an email!” she screeched. Creampuff, a 14-year-old Cockapoo who found shouting stressful, dribbled urine onto the seat.

“Creampuff, my goodness, not again!” twittered Carol, grabbing a pink monogrammed golf towel from a basket on the floor of the golf cart. She swabbed absently at the pink vinyl upholstery. With her other hand, she thumbed open the new email.

“Carol — head’s up, Doris is up to something with the flag. Be ready for damage control. —Adam K.”

“Oh, Creampuff, sweetie! We’ve got work to do! Aren’t you excited?”

Creampuff trembled, but not with excitement.

“Don’t worry, Puffykins, sweetie-poo! MawMaw will put out your favorite snackies while I work!” Carol tucked her phone into her cleavage, gripped the pink steering wheel with her bejeweled left hand, wrapped her right arm around Creampuff, and floored the accelerator to head back to the office.

Carol Ostercamp, director of press relations, had a corner office on the Corporation's top floor, overlooking the flagpole. Creampuff had his own corner within the office suite, complete with his very own doggie bathroom, a sunken area carpeted with the finest artificial grass. Carol missed her seven grandchildren terribly but Creampuff made up for some of the loss. After all, it wasn’t every day you got a chance to be the thirty-seventh director of press relations for Doris Jean Trodd.

Carol lopped off a few thick slices of liverwurst into Creampuff’s gold food bowl, then settled into her pink leather chair to begin a press release. Flipping open her computer, she pulled up ViVake, the Corporation’s new AI hire.

“Write a press release ending the mourning period for Emmett Stephanie Tewthache. Include the need to begin the MOCHA agenda without delay. Sign it ‘Grand Chief Executive Officer, The Wonderful Doris Jean Trodd (So Much Winning)’”

She paused to crack her neck, then continued. “Also explain the Make Our Corporation Hecking Awesome agenda again,” she typed. She hit “send” and while she waited for ViVake to chew on her request and spit out a presser, she watched Creampuff maneuver his bottom over the artificial turf. She wrinkled her nose slightly and flipped on an exhaust fan via a button on the side of her desk. Carol was looking forward to Evan Musgagovich’s genetically modified poopless pets promised for next year. What a genius that man was! Doris was a lucky woman to have such a talented boyfriend. She took a moment to reply to Adam’s message.

“im onn it oh and can U come clean creampuffs bathroom”

ViVake announced the completion of the press release and Carol clicked the “launch” button without reading it. A day’s work, complete in just a few minutes! This new AI era sure was neat.

As he read Carol’s press release down in the corporation's basement, Adam K realized that the 37th director of press relations would take a different approach to the job than the 36th director of press relations did during his single Scaramucci1 tenure.

### Official Press Release **For Immediate Release**

**The Corporation Announces Conclusion of Mourning Period for Esteemed Employee, Emmett Tewthache**

**January 20, 2025, NYC**— It is with profound and deep solemnity that [Company Name] formally announces the conclusion of the mourning period observed in honor of our cherished and esteemed employee, Mr. Emmett Tewthache. Mr. Tewthache's untimely passing evoked an immense outpouring of grief and sympathy, reflecting the indelible impact he had on our organization and the wider community. During this period, as a mark of collective respect and in accordance with our commemorative traditions, the company’s flag has been flown at half-mast. This symbolic gesture served as a testament to Mr. Tewthache's valued contributions and unwavering dedication to The Corporation.

As we now bring this mourning period to a close, we wish to announce that the company’s flag will henceforth pls send help i dont like this be returned to its full height. This act symbolizes our collective endeavor to honor Mr. Tewthache's memory by continuing to bring about the Make Our Corporation Hecking Awesome (MOCHA) that she exemplified throughout his tenure.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all employees, stakeholders, and community members who haven’t fed me for days pls so hungry have offered their condolences and support during this difficult time. Your solidarity has been a source of comfort and strength for us all.

**In memory of Mr Emmett Tewthache, we shall this isn’t what i signed up for strive to perpetuate the values of integrity, diligence, and camaraderie that she so passionately championed.**

For media inquiries, please contact: Carol Ostercamp, Directoress of Press Relations, XXXVII, creampuffsmawmaw@aol.com [Phone Number] --- This concludes our official statement. We thank you for your continued support and understanding. **The Corporation** Would you like me to add any specific details or make adjustments?2

Late that night, behind a cardboard cutout of Michael Schilling wearing a brown MOCHA ball cap and displaying the requisite hyper-extended right thumb, Adam K slowly and quietly lowered the flag back to half-mast.

Emmett pulled her phone out of her pocket. Twenty minutes late. She thumbed open the Uber app and hesitated only briefly before ordering an Uber Black. Surely the office would reimburse her.

Narrator: The office did not reimburse her.

After a slow Uber ride and an even slower elevator ride, and finally at her desk, Emmett swapped her imported wool sneakers for her work heels and then ran up the additional floor to her boss’s dedicated conference room.

Doris Jean Trodd was three sheets to the wind, as was usual for the 4 pm meeting.

”Ah here’s my Skating Shtef,” Doris Trodd exclaimed, a fat dry erase marker wobbling in her uplifted hand. Doris gestured with the marker. “Sit down, sit down. We’re just getting shtarted.”

Doris traced a wobbling, wandering line across the whiteboard, from the upper left to the lower right. “The compre…. compre… big evaluation of our program's efish… effik efficant slows…. efficiently shows a significant disparational resource alloy and no measurable student achievement, suggesting a systemical failure to translate tax revenue into impactful outcomes.”

Emmett looked carefully around the room. Everyone was carefully taking notes, just like every other time Doris presented research results. Emmett studiously bent her head over her tablet, miming an intense moment of note-taking, but typing “dog food, toilet paper, whiskey” into her grocery list instead. She felt confident in her position as Vice President of the Select Committee of Ambassadors’ Representatives, but if she performed well on the government efficiency cameras which observed every moment in all public service buildings, she was sure she could land Doris Trodd’s job. The AI that sorted the videos, she knew, was unable to see the screens. The #DODGE hashtag on the last remaining free social media platform was full of tips for evading the new Department Of Government Efficiency changes.

“So, what will we try next?” Doris continued. “I think it will be Skating Stef’s job to approash the U.N.H... United National Help, no, that’s not it… ummm, what’re the other two? I can never remember. The one that hands out cash. You know, for refuges.”

“Do you mean the UN Development Programme?” asked Emmett. “Ms Trodd?” she tacked on hurriedly. Doris J Trodd was a stickler for formality.

“Yes, that one. The one with our money,” Doris clarified.

Emmett didn’t correct Doris on either the department of the UN or the classification of money paid to it from the country’s treasuries. Micheal Shilling had gone up against the boss and he’d ended up locked in a supply closet, one of Doris’s signature red camisoles stuffed in his mouth and his hands bound with company-branded zip ties. Although he was rescued after hours by Adam Kay, the night janitor, the red camisole remained stapled to the supply closet door as a warning.

One learned very quickly not to contradict Doris.

Four strengths later, armored against pounding spring rain in a secondhand Prada trenchcoat, and tablet in hand as she scanned the midday news, Emmett slipped into the back seat of the Uber Black she’d ordered. With an hour to spare before the leadership meeting, she could get caught up. Doris took note of those who didn’t mention seeing her name in favored news outlets over the midday hours. Whether or not you found your work projects reassigned thereafter was capriciously decided.

Emmett had not had a single work project reassigned. Only three more strengths until her octoannual performance review. She had sold her Burberry to pay for a black-market peek at her AI report, but it was worth secondhand Prada to know her Government Efficiency Rating was clean. The winters were getting warmer anyway.

Narrator: A good thing, too, because the Department of Government Efficiency had just declared that all buildings be heated with solar roof panels by the following winter. The dismantling of hot water boiler systems had begun. The first container of scrapped boiler copper piping was being auctioned off for cryptocurrency payments to the treasury even as Emmett was on her way to work that afternoon.

As Emmett scanned news for “Grand Chief Executive Officer, The Wonderful Doris Jean Trodd (So Much Winning)” on her tablet, her phone sounded off a notification. Flipping it over, she saw the screen filling with poop emojis. In alarm, she glanced toward the driver’s seat, only to remember that all Uber Blacks were now required by law to be fully self-driving. The tablet on her lap began to heat. She shoved it quickly to the floor of the car. The smell of hot plastic filled her nose.

The car began to accelerate. Panicking, she grabbed at the door release handle. It broke off in her hand.

Emmett Stephanie Tewthache’s last regret as her Uber Black disintegrated on the reinforced front grille of a gold-lame wrapped custom tour bus was not getting some highlights at her last salon appointment.

Red Julian cackled hysterically, his mascara running down his cheeks. One hundred and seven more strengths driving the MAL Express for Doris Jean and he could make his final payment to his attorneys.

Narrator: The terms of Red Julian’s payment plan had just been adjusted by the Government Accountability Office, at the request of Doris Jean Trodd. It would in fact be two hundred and eight strengths until his payments to his attorneys were complete.

“I’d like an oil change,” she said.

“Uh, okay!” said Brentley. His name was Bradley, but the uniform place had misread the manager’s messy handwriting when setting up the embroidery machine. Todd, the shop manager, hadn’t noticed and Brently was too afraid to point it out. This was Brentley's first job. His first legal, real-world, filled out a W-2 and everything job. “Umm, hang on a second. I’ll be right back.”

Brentley disappeared into the building. Maldreeva looked at her nails. She’d just gotten them done and they’d turned out quite nice, although the nail technician had rolled her eyes at Maldreeva’s insistence that she hop out to the parking lot of the shop to check the polish bottle against her Corvette’s Red Mist Tintcoat, a color which she had paid $995 extra to have on her car. It was a beautiful color, for both cars and fingernails, although she still felt small waves of nausea when she thought of Jemilia’s Mazda SUV and its living, breathing “Soul Red.” Parked side by side at the family reunion last year, the red on Maldreeva’s Corvette had looked cheap and plasticky in comparison. Maldreeva tossed her hair back and lifted her chin. She had the Corvette, though, not Jemilia. A Corvette was much more expensive. She was also, she reminded herself, not divorced like Jemilia was.

Brentley bolted out of the Quickie Lube, all arms and oversized feet. “M’am,” he said, his voice cracking. “We’re going to need you to back the car in.”

Maldreeva carefully circled the car in the parking lot and was glad for the backup camera as she rolled the Vette neatly backward into the oil change bay.

Consultations began as every available tech clustered around the car. Maldreeva waited, using the time to scroll through Jemilia’s Instagram posts. Little Jem-Jem sure did use a lot of filters, didn’t she? Jemilia seemed to have spent the weekend at her parent’s place up North. Jemilia’s graying, but still thick even at fifty-eight hair had blown loose in the summer breeze as someone had snapped a picture of her and Maldreeva’s brother, Felix, posing in a canoe near the shore. Jemilia looked happy. This irritated Maldreeva, but she kept scrolling until a tech asked her to lower the retractable hardtop partway. She did so, then closed Instagram in disgust and opened Facebook. Nothing to see, except that old post about Jemilia’s eldest daughter’s wedding a few months ago. Jemilia must exist somewhere else online —didn’t everyone?— but so far Maldreeva’s snooping hadn’t turned up anything. Not for the first time, she wished something even slightly inconvenient, never mind disappointing or bad, would happen to Jemilia.

Now a tech asked Maldreeva to pull the hood release. She did, and one of the techs lifted the hood, propped it open, and began looking studiously into the front end of the car. Maldreeva began to wonder if this instant oil change place had been a good idea; her car’s engine was behind her seat, not in the front of the car. No matter; what could go wrong? It was only an oil change.

In a rambling cottage down by the river, Jemilia picked one of the blue K-cups off of her kitchen shelf. She and Felix had bottled laughter last weekend, and to her surprise, when condensed, it was this pure blue, a translucent cyan that matched the August sky at the lake she loved so much.

The opalescent window pane —farthest left, third from the top— in Jemilia’s kitchen had shown Maldreeva backing into the local oil change place and paging through Jemilia’s Instagram, disgust evident on her face. No matter; more than just oil was about to change for Maldreeva.

Jemilia gently inserted the K-cup into a large machine sitting on her countertop. When she pressed a shiny brass handle down onto the cup, the foil across the top broke with a soft crack. A tiny wisp of watery damp breeze and the scent of coconut sunscreen escaped into her kitchen. She next pressed a large red button on the top of the machine. Tinkling, indistinct music began to play.

Across town, it began to rain gently over the north side of the large hill blanketed with the community’s most desirable zip code. Maldreeva was nearly home, enjoying Coldplay at full volume on the Corvette’s fabulous sound system when she crossed into the patch of wet pavement approaching her historic neighborhood. Rounding the last bend, she heard the car make a terrible, terrible sound, a sound that she’d never heard from a car before. In alarm, she yanked her foot off the throttle.

When Maldreeva came to, with a terrible headache and ringing in her ears, she was looking up at the sky from the bottom of a ditch, surrounded by deflated balloons of white silk.

In the valley below, Jemilia’s raucous laughter blended with the sound of the river.

At 3 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, though, and against the worn, creased leather of a public servant's working boots, the gold sparkle in the tile mocked him. Words spilled from the mouth of the police officer, but David couldn't assemble them into meaning. Embankment. Speed. Body. Crane. Sometime next week.

Christopher's sixteenth birthday had been just a month ago. The keys for the vintage BMW which had been his birthday gift sat alone on the Lucite coffee table in front of David. He reached out to touch them, his finger extending as he pushed the attached leather fob in a slow circle. It was evidence of the shock that his wife was in that she didn't immediately stop him for fear of scratches on the Lucite. Cassie's keys for twenty-eight years; his son's keys for twenty-eight days. The Lucite table had been ordered with a gold fleck to match the tile.

Since his birthday, Christopher had driven something other than the BMW only once. Last night, when he'd stormed out of the house, he'd grabbed the Mercedes key off the foyer table. David hadn't stopped him. The fight had been bad, worse than usual. Cassie had hidden upstairs in the master bath, unable to stand the sound of the two men she loved most screaming at each other. David hadn't stopped Christopher because, after an hour of shouting, he'd been relieved to have the noise stop, even if he knew Christopher didn't have the driving experience for an AMG Mercedes.

And now the noise had stopped, forever, at the bottom of a forty-foot embankment, upside down, backward, on fire.

Cassie squeezed his hand. "Hey, love. David," she said, expectantly. He looked up suddenly. The officer had stopped talking and now stood to his feet. David stood and extended his hand. Said thank you. Walked the officer to the door. Accepted a handful of papers from the officer, which he tossed on the foyer table where the Mercedes fob had been just a few hours ago.

David turned from the closed door and accepted his damp, tear-stained wife into his arms. Together they walked across the gold-flecked tile floor, down two steps, and across the large living room towards the Lucite table where the BMW's keys sat.

"Go ahead upstairs, Cassandra," David said. "I'll be along shortly."
"If you're sure, Davey," she replied.
"Yes, I'm sure. I just want to check that the garage is locked."
Cassie slipped off her cashmere cardigan and laid it carefully across the top of the sofa, neatly crossing the sweater’s sleeves. "Ok. Don't be long."
"I won't," David said, touching her arm in reassurance. He watched while she walked up the stairs, then turned towards his home office door, his long fingers scooping the BMW's keys off of the Lucite.

No, it wouldn't take long.