Kathy and Stan
“Kathy and Stan” is my original short story. It’s supposed to be part of a collection of my short fiction that’s currently languishing in publishing limbo. But it ain’t a bad read, so screw it, I’m publishing it here in The RGG first. Here you go…
By John G. Stamos
Kathy and Stan
John G. Stamos
Stan still felt out of his element. Sitting at a little table that (he thought) might offer a degree of intimacy, yet was visible from the front entrance, he continued to feel inadequate and exposed. A denizen of the city’s gritty South East Side all his life, the gleaming River North clientele at this busy Clark Street Starbucks intimidated the hell out of him. The place was jammed, and a hundred conversations were in the air. He tried not to listen to any of them, but the errant snippet periodically reached his ears and reminded him of the vast stores of knowledge and savvy he did not possess. He took a gulp of his big black coffee, and looked at his watch. 5:19. He wondered if she was coming.
Three weeks ago, on a midwinter’s day, at the Panera Bread nestled in the bustling lobby of Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Galter Pavilion, Stan first met Kathy.
On the morning of that day, Stan had been given a relatively clean bill of health by James Cleary, MD, and exited the elevator in Galter’s lobby feeling sort of jaunty. Northwestern was a world-class teaching hospital, and Stan had been a patient of Cleary’s, and before Cleary, of Cleary’s father, for more than forty years. The United Steelworkers’ benny package included a health and welfare plan that was likewise world-class, so, as far as medical care was concerned, it was only the best for Stan. And Northwestern was the best. In spite of the generalized feelings of inferiority its tony Streeterville location inspired in him, it was Northwestern – and only Northwestern – for Stan. Year after year, appointment after appointment, he religiously rode the Southshore line from the Hegewisch station to Randolph Street and Michigan Ave, and hoofed it the mile or so to the vaunted medical center from there: he’d never missed a single visit. Halfway expecting grim news at this particular check-up, the pat on the back and “See you next year” that Cleary sent him off with put him in a good mood. It was only 10:30, and he felt moderately emboldened. He felt like a coffee. Plenty of time to make it to the Southshore and train it home.
Panera was packed: standing room only. In line, waiting to pay, Stan was convinced that he was being judged. Young guys with expensive shoes, pretty women in clothes that cost more than his pickup – they were in line and sitting at tables. And Stan felt that he might just as well have been wearing his blue-collar background and truncated education as emblems. A tiny portion of his rationale told him that he was being overly imaginative; that people could care less about what he wore, how he carried himself; and really, more than likely, he wasn’t being noticed at all. (He couldn’t be sure if this last made him feel worse than if he actually were being judged.) He felt clumsy. Loutish. At the age of sixty-three, he knew this thinking was ridiculous. But he couldn’t help it. On the fabulous North Side, he was inferior. And he couldn’t ever forget the whole Marie thing. Thoughts of Marie, and what she’d done to him, loomed larger on the North Side of Chicago.
“Excuse me, would you mind terribly if I set my bag and my coffee down?”
Stan looked up from his own coffee and bemused reverie to see a very attractive woman smiling at him. He immediately rose from his seat (which he’d snagged just the moment before when a guy in chinos and a tie ditched it and left) at the narrow counter.
“Why don’t you take my seat?” This, he stammered while he rose, then knocked his coffee on its side. Only the cup’s lid prevented further disaster.
An immediate flash of sincere concern was replaced the next second by her even broader smile as the woman hastily placed a gloved hand on Stan’s forearm while he hurried to right the gently leaking cup. She was stunning, and dressed in what Stan dimly recognized as expensive stuff. He was aware of her perfume, and this awareness served to cloud his thinking even more profoundly than the scent itself. The added distraction of his heartbeat pounding in his ears obliterated any semblance of confidence, any pretense of calm.
“I am SO sorry,” she looked stricken, but a little amused. “No good deed goes unpunished, right?” The music of her laughter further separated Stan from the reality of the Panera Bread microcosm.
Stan, unable to come up with anything in reply, felt himself blushing. He wasn’t aware of the foolish grin he now wore, but he knew his face was burning.
“Are you sure? I mean, the seat? Would you mind?” She smiled again, and the whiteness of her teeth was awe-inspiring.
“No, no. Please. Sit down.”
In the next instant, she was sitting. Looking up at him. She fixed him with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. “You know, you’re a true gentleman. A dying breed, I swear.” At this, Stan began to undertake the difficult process of relaxing.
“Honestly,” she continued, still holding him with her eyes, “I can’t tell you how many mornings I’ve come in here and had to drink my damned latte standing up. Any one of twenty guys could’ve offered me his chair. No way, baby. So, you’re a gentleman. In my book, you certainly are.”
Her diction, the throaty but unmistakably feminine timbre of her voice, her dazzling smile and straight, patrician nose, and her crystalline eyes… all combined to enrapture Stan, and hold him spellbound. He was barely able to get his own name out when she extended her hand and said “I’m Kathy Wilson.”
Over the course of two lattes for her, and two refills of black medium roast for him, her gloves and coat had come off, and he’d learned that she worked in pharmaceutical sales and that she lived right around the corner on East Erie. She was 55, but looked 35. Divorced. No kids. Drove an Audi. In a nearly unabashed manner that surprised him, he was able to relay the facts that he himself worked at what was once Inland Steel in Northwest Indiana (“Not in management – I’m a card-carrying steelworker.”) but was now Cleveland-Cliffs, just across the border from his home on the South East Side of Chicago, and that he’d be retiring in two years, at 65. And that he, too, was divorced with no children. He drove a Ford F-150 pickup. Brand new. She listened patiently, even attentively, he thought, as he fell even more hopelessly under her spell. He’d never in his life had a conversation like this. With a woman like this.
“Here’s my card. My cell is on it. I’ll be in New York for most of this week, then LA over the weekend and all next week. But you can call me some evening if you’d like to chat. It’d be fun. Gotta run.” She tented her eyebrows and directed those baby blues skyward and rolled them a little, then gave her head a bit of a half-shake, apparently in reaction to her own unintentional little rhyme. She flipped a length of her chestnut hair behind an ear, tossed her scarf over a shoulder, slid on her gloves, snatched up her bag, and turned and waved as she headed out into the Galter lobby and beyond. Stan recognized that he’d almost forgotten to help her on with her coat.
On his ride home, Stan watched the glittering towers and spires of Chicago’s affluent heart dwindle in size through the window of the train car. Watched as they were slowly replaced by housing projects, struggling neighborhoods dotted with shabby houses and tenements, and finally industrial buildings. The city’s somber side, its unvarnished side was here. To the south and to the east. As the train rolled closer to the station, Stan, as he’d done on each and every train ride before, acknowledged his almost barometric drop in hopefulness. This area, the place of his birth and rearing and formation as a man, was the Chicago’s manufacturing crucible. The industry that built the great city, and the country, was steel. And the makers of steel chose this area to build their mills. For more than a century, the mighty industry flourished here in the city’s southeastern environs. But the production, the steaming forward, didn’t last. Factors beyond even the iron control of the industry’s giants spelled the end of full-scale steel processing and production in the City of Big Shoulders. By the beginning of the new millennium, the Chicago’s last blast furnace had ceased operation on the rugged South East Side. Manufacturing of varying sort remained, but steel was done for. Now, the ghosts of closed factories and the soot from ongoing operations mingled in the air, and persisted as a unified permanent pall that colored the skies and, maybe to a lesser degree the hearts of the residents. Living here required a certain level of fatalism, though this could never be elucidated by the stalwart residents, nor by the generations that preceded and predeceased them. But if the fatalism was there, in the buildings, in the air, and in people’s hearts and minds, there was camaraderie, too. There was pride of place. And this was the only place that Stan had ever called home. During the entire train ride from Chicago’s teeming downtown, back to the Hegewisch station, Stan considered his deficiencies, forged here in this part of the city. And he thought of Kathy Wilson. He thought maybe…
Stan Bosczyk dropped out of high school (CVS – Chicago Vocational School), much to the dismay of his parents, during the second semester of his junior year. His old man had worked at Inland for years, and Stan knew he’d get him in there, too. And he was right. Pops got him into Inland and into the United Steel Workers of America – one of the most powerful labor unions in the country. From that point on, Stan knew he was golden. Great pay, great bennies. Who cares if he’d have to work a swing shift? He was a Union Steel Worker. His parents would get over the whole dropping out of school thing.
Two years after dropping out and going to work at the mill, Stan met Marie Gianetti.
One Friday night, a league night, a couple of teams from Bridgeport and their contingent rolled into the parking lot of Tony’s 10-Pin while the sun was still barely out. Stan was grabbing his ball and his shoes from the trunk of his Buick when the slanting rays of the setting sun caught a mass of foaming black curls and directed Stan’s attention to the face it framed. The face of an angel. Marie. Just climbing out of the passenger side of the slick and jacked ’79 Camaro that had pulled into the space next to Stan’s Skylark. Marie caught Stan staring, shot him a sly, vulpine smile, batted a pair of big brown eyes at him, then turned and grabbed the arm of the big, handsome goomba who drove the Camaro. Stan watched them walk toward Tony’s entrance, and Marie, wearing the tightest pair of jeans Stan had seen in quite some time, flaunted her perfect ass. Just before disappearing inside with her guy, Marie looked over her shoulder at Stan and flashed him the smile once more. Stan stood where he was momentarily, his mouth wide open, his ball and his shoes forgotten in either hand. The next moment, the sun sank behind the roof of the bowling alley and Stan was in the dark.
Two years after the events of that day, Stan and Marie walked back down the aisle of Our Lady of Nazareth Catholic Church together, and out the doors to a hail of rice and cheers as Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Bosczyk. Stan, who worshipped Marie and minded not at all the fact that she possessed a mouth like a sewer, was excited and proud to begin their new, married life together. As they climbed into the back of the limo on the way to the reception at Vogel’s, Stan wondered if their kids would look more like him, or more like her.
But there were no kids. The Ob-Gyne, Dr. Hadley, at none other than the trusted Northwestern Memorial Hospital, informed the couple that all of the scar tissue present in Marie’s inner workings would make fertilization impossible. She’d never have children. Stan took the news much harder than Marie, he thought, but he never let on. “I love you, baby, and that’s all that matters,” he told her as they walked to their car in the parking garage. “I’m hungry. Let’s stop somewhere,” Marie said. “And I could really go for a beer, too.”
Time passed and both Stan and Marie continued spending Friday evenings, and eventually Wednesday evenings, too, at Tony’s 10-Pin. They bowled in three leagues, one of them as teammates. When Stan’s mother passed (his father had died the year after he and Marie married), they sold their small home on Avenue J and moved into his folks’ bigger house on Escanaba. Although Marie hadn’t been born and raised here on the South East Side, she fit in perfectly, albeit with maybe a fouler mouth and a more recalcitrant, acquisitive streak than what was regionally customary. Over the years, some of their old friends moved away, but many of them remained in their little corner of the world. Jimmy, Stoogie, Dorothy, Mikey… they remained. Plus many, many more, including his younger sister, Penny, and her husband Steve, and their kids. The comfort of the old neighborhood, the knowing, the familiarity, the love… it was magnetizing.
Among the neighborhood mainstays was Dennis Myjak. He bowled in the same leagues as Stan and Marie, but disappeared from the neighborhood for a few years after high school. Went away to the University of Illinois, in Champagne. Came back just shy of a degree and went to work at the Chevrolet dealership selling cars. Dennis Myjak was from the neighborhood, but he wasn’t of the neighborhood, Stan thought. And he wasn’t alone in that thinking. Among Stan and Marie’s friends, the old gang, the tacit consensus was that Dennis maybe thought he was a little better than everybody else. Nevertheless, when the neighborhood folks needed Chevys, they bought them from Dennis.
Over time, Marie, who didn’t work (Stan told her that if she didn’t want to work, he’d work as much OT at the mill as they’d let him, so they’d do just fine), was spending money like crazy. It was an old story. One spouse working non-stop so the other spouse could spend the dough. And Marie spent the dough. She insisted on driving a new Caddy every two years. She insisted on three spa treatments a week. She worked out and stayed fit, while Stan grew old and tired and stooped. She wanted to be wined, or at least beered. She wanted to be dined. And all the while, she grew more and more dissatisfied with Stan’s weekly paycheck, and, evidently with Stan himself.
It was during league night, on a Friday, while Stan was bowling with his team, and Marie was three lanes over, bowling with hers, that Stan saw Dennis Myjak, a bottle of Miller Lite in one hand and a High Life in the other, walk from four or five lanes over down to Marie and her team’s lane, and hand the bottle of Lite to Marie, who was sitting, waiting for her turn to throw. The rumble of rolling balls and the crackling of the pins they toppled made hearing from any distance impossible, but the lighting in the alley was good, and Stan saw then what he thought was Dennis bending down to whisper something in Marie’s ear. Stan watched Marie’s eye grow wide, then she laughed and reached out with the flat of her hand to pop Dennis on the chest. Dennis straightened up and started heading back to his team’s lane, and as he did, he half-turned and looked back in Stan’s direction. Later that night, at home, Stan asked her about it. She said “We made a bet and he lost. He owed me a beer.” Stan said “Oh.”
It wasn’t until three weekends later, on a Saturday, when Stan got home early from a botched overtime shift, that he found Marie in bed with Dennis Myjak. By that time, they’d been married nearly twenty years.
The divorce was costly to Stan. He footed all the attorney’s bills – both his and hers, and he lost half of his pension to Marie. He moved out of his parent’s home, and had his boyhood friend, Bobby Stacich, the realtor, find him a little two-bedroom slab on Avenue L. But the financial toll paled in comparison to what the split had done to his head. And his heart. He felt that something had broken inside of him. He couldn’t put it into words exactly, but there was a rupture – a fissure – running right down the middle of him. At the time, he wasn’t sure that it would ever seal back up, that he’d ever be right again. He’d given Marie the best years of his life, the best parts of him. And she tossed him away as if it had all meant nothing.
Stan’s friends, the old gang, Jimmy, Mikey, Dorothy, Stoogie, and the rest, they were all there for him. Whenever he wanted. Whenever he needed. But Stan didn’t want. He might have needed, but he didn’t want. He licked his own wounds and kept his trap shut, as had always been his way.
It seemed to Stan that the demise of his marriage to Marie would simply always color his thoughts and make him doubt his actions, though it was nearly twenty years in the past. The fissure was indeed still there after all these years and, Stan figured, always would be. Since the divorce, he’d never dated another woman. And when he ventured from the safety of his little part of the world, thoughts of Marie – her actions – pressed down on him. As if his own perceived inadequacies alone weren’t already enough to rend his self-confidence to tatters.
Then he met Kathy.
Stan waited until the evening, two days later, to call Kathy. He’d taped her business card to the door of his fridge the second he’d walked in the door on the day they’d met, and he saved her personal cell number to his contacts in his iPhone. Hell, he’d even saved her office number and extension, and her email, too. When he made the call, his hands were shaking a little, and his stomach was tumbling around ever so slightly. While the phone rang and he waited for her to pick up, he was astounded that he was actually calling her. That he’d spoken with her to the extent that he had. Here was a woman from someplace way out of his league, from the stratosphere, who nevertheless had put him at ease. Here was a woman, who under any other set of circumstances, would have seemed 100% unattainable to him, but with whom, beyond any and all probability, he felt he’d connected. And here he was, sitting on the couch in his tiny living room, waiting for her to answer her phone. Waiting to talk to her again. He continued to tremble, and he cleared his throat, not once, but twice.
“Hi. You’ve reached Katherine Wilson, Senior Marketing Director at Allied Pharmaceutical Solutions. I’m not available to take your call right now, but please leave a detailed message, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”
Stan was momentarily thrown, but he resolved to leave a message.
“Uh, Kathy… hi, this is Stan Bosczyk. We, uh, met at the Panera Bread at Northwestern the other day. If you get this message, call me back if you want.” And as an afterthought, “I hope you’re having a nice time. Goodnight.” He recited his number, and repeated it, then hung up. He stood up to get a can of Pepsi from the fridge and found that his knees were weak.
He fell asleep thinking about Kathy.
She called him back the next evening, and he was glad and relieved. He was starting afternoons at work the next day, and he wouldn’t have been available to talk if she’d waited until then to call him back.
“Hi Stan! I was so happy to hear your message last night. Wow! I didn’t get back to my room until really late last night, and we’re already an hour ahead of Chicago here in Manhattan. I didn’t want to take the chance of waking you up. So, how are you?”
They talked for over an hour, and this fact took Stan by complete and utter surprise. He’d always considered himself a man of few words. Maybe with a lot of thoughts in his head, but still, of few words. (Yes, he licked his own wounds. And damn it, he kept his trap shut.) And he’d never in his life spent an hour on the phone with anyone besides his cable company. They hung up with plans to talk in four days, during Stan’s next work schedule break. At that time, she’d be leaving New York City for LA the following day, and was planning on a night in that evening, “So that would be the perfect time to catch up,” she’d told him.
The next four days could not have dragged by any more slowly for Stan. Within that time, he did something he’d not ever done in the past. He called his sister Penny to talk about a woman, to tell her about Kathy. “Why, Stanley,” Penny bubbled, “I don’t believe it. First of all, I can’t believe you’re actually talking to a real live adult woman. I gotta tell you, hon, I’m so glad you’re finally puttin’ that wacko Marie outta your mind. Wow! And I can’t believe you actually picked up the phone to call me and tell me about it. Honest to God, Stanley, I just don’t believe it. Yay!!!”
“I’m pretty scared, Penny. I feel pretty… unqualified, I guess. I mean she’s a really smart lady. Really classy. In plain English, she’s way outta my league.”
Stan didn’t just sound scared, he sounded terrified, Penny thought. “Outta your league? Outta your league? Are you kidding me? Listen, you big dummy,” she told him, “You’ve got the biggest, kindest heart of any man – any person – I know. This woman would have to be an idiot to not see it. If she’s as good a person as you say she is, if she’s as smart as you say she is, she’s gonna appreciate you for that. Besides, you’ve always been way smarter than you give yourself credit for. I mean it.”
God, was Stan grateful for his kid sister. He loved her more than ever right then. “Thanks, Penny.”
They talked for a minute or two, longer.
“Now you call me and let me know how your next phone call goes,” Penny told him.
“Geez, Penny, I don’t know. I don’t want to turn into a gossip.” Stan laughed a little.
“Call me, Stan. I’m serious!” Stan heard Steve’s voice in the background. “Listen, hon, I gotta go. I guess Steve doesn’t know how to preheat the flippin’ oven. Jesus. Ok. I’m praying for you, big brother. Call me. Bye.” Then Penny was gone.
The evening before the appointed date of his phone conversation with Kathy, Stan spent his shift at work in a state of utter distraction. When he thought about it later, he admitted that he really shouldn’t have been operating hugely dangerous steel processing equipment (his machines, as he’d always thought of them). He could’ve killed himself or someone else. He was that distracted. He was worried, more and more, about the glaring holes in his education, in his worldliness, in his life… how could a woman like Kathy Wilson ever see anything in him long-term? And he was old. He was almost ten years her senior, and he looked it. His job was physically demanding, and all the years he’d spent working at it for overtime pay had taken their toll. He was craggy and stooped. He had all of his hair, or most of it anyway, but it was entirely gray. Gray heading toward white. Old and not at all worldly. And uneducated. (Never mind that he was a voracious reader. That didn’t count. He didn’t even have a high school diploma.) Thought after thought, doubt after doubt, concern after concern plowed through his skull. That night at work, Stan did not feel optimistic. He felt deflated. On the drive home after his shift, he’d considered not calling her.
But Stan did call her.
On the agreed upon day, a Thursday, and at the agreed upon time, 6 PM Central, 7 Eastern, Stan, with his hands shaking and stomach flip-flopping again, made the call.
And had to leave a message.
“Uh, hi Kathy, it’s Stan Bosczyk. I hope I got the time right. I guess maybe I’m a little early.” It was actually 6:59 PM in NYC. “Anyways, if you get my message, you can call me back if you want. I’ll be up pretty late. Talk to you later.” Midway through the message, he realized his voice was trembling, and he tried to control the last few words. He settled back onto the couch to wait for her call, which didn’t come.
The next day, Friday, Stan was still off on his scheduled break. He’d go back to work, on the day shift, the following day. Stan busied himself with household chores, and he kept his phone by his side the entire day, hoping for a call from Kathy. He knew she’d be flying to Los Angeles today, and was reassured by the (probability?) that she’d call him once she got to her room at the Sunset Marquis later that evening. When he’d finally finished cleaning his tub and shower, it was almost seven. Five PM, LA time. Stan was ashamed to realize that he was actually willing the phone to ring. So important had the sound of Kathy’s voice become to him. He chided himself, and the his voice sounded hollow within the walls of his shower. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d had two conversations with the woman. This desperation wasn’t right. Or was it? She was something he’d never encountered before, and normal limits, normal thoughts, perhaps simply did not apply. So he went with the desperation and stared at the phone until, much later, he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.
At work the next day, Stan silently engaged in heated personal debate while he ran his machines, and finally decided that he would not call her when he got home that afternoon. He’d wait to see if she’d call him. A half hour before the end of his shift, his foreman, Ralph Maida, came out to his station and told him that he’d made a mistake.
Ralph had to raise his voice over the hissing of compressed air and hydraulics, and the grinding gears and whirring motors of overhead cranes. “Nine of your coils are the wrong size, Stan. All the same heat number, so we’re lucky there. We’ll push ‘em off on another customer. Watch it though, brother,” he dropped his voice a notch, “You know we can’t do this too many more times.” Then, “Hey, man. Everything alright?”
Stan told him everything was, then he apologized sincerely and thanked Ralph. And that was good enough for Ralph. Stan was that good at his job, was that reliable.
But Stan knew everything was not alright. His state of mind, his emotions… he had to get ahold of himself. He was a fastidious, conscientious worker. He took his job seriously and considered his employment with the venerable manufacturer to be a privilege. He simply didn’t make mistakes, and he was rattled. Still, even with this in mind, he found he couldn’t stop thinking about Kathy. He couldn’t stop hoping she’d call. His memory of her eclipsed thoughts of all else; his phone sat beside him in the passenger seat during his ride home, and he checked to make sure that the ringer’s volume was up at every stop sign and traffic light.
And that evening, she called.
“Stan? Oh my God, it’s Kathy Wilson. How are you?”
Stan had a frozen pizza in mid-bake in the oven when he saw her name on the caller ID.
“Hi Kathy. How ya doin’?” The call caught him off guard, so he didn’t have time to sound nervous. Or formal. Not right then, anyway. “Thought maybe I got the day wrong, or the time. You know, when we were supposed to talk last.”
“No, no, no, Stan. This one’s on me. Our last night in New York, when I thought I’d be staying in and calling? Well, Roger and a few other people from the group insisted that we go out for margaritas.” She laughed her musical laugh. “What could I do? I was stuck. I just couldn’t tell them no. You know how that kind of thing goes.” She laughed again.
“Yeah, I understand.” He really didn’t, but wasn’t too hung up on this fact. He was way too happy to hear from her to trouble himself with such details.
“So, how are you, Stan? … “
They spoke at length again. Not quite an hour this time, but long enough for Stan’s sausage and pepperoni Tombstone to finish baking, and long enough to learn a few more details about Kathy’s life. More professional stuff this time. Stuff like she traveled around the country, and internationally, more than half of the year. And that she was hoping – praying, actually – to make VP of Sales at Allied within the next twelve to eighteen months. Kathy did much of the talking, but Stan, feeling fairly relaxed, and not too terribly tongue-tied, did his share of talking, too. He’d told her about his day at work, for instance, being careful to omit the part about the costly mistake he’d made. A mistake arising as a direct result of thinking about her (and wondering why she hadn’t returned his call).
The conversation went well, and Kathy told him to call her Wednesday, at seven in the evening, LA time. Before she hung up, she said “You know, Stan, I’ve got to say, it’s so refreshing to talk to a regular human being instead of all these Big Pharma hotshots. It can get so exhausting. Thanks for the convo, Stan. I really, really enjoyed it. Talk soon. Bye!” And she was gone.
Stan ate his cold pizza, and went to sleep waiting for Wednesday to come.
That night, Stan had a curious dream, which was also partially a memory. In it, he was eighteen, and in his first year at the mill. It was a Saturday night, and Stoogie and Mikey were over at his house, which was his folks’ house, and they were in the basement playing air hockey, and Stoogie’s dad was upstairs, visiting with Stan’s folks. Penny was in her bedroom, listening to 45s on her tiny record player. Stoogie, whose real name was Stepan Braddich, was pissed because his parents wouldn’t let him drop out and go to work at the mill, as Stan had done. Stoogie’s dad, Mirko, who was from Serbia, worked with Stan’s dad at the mill, so he could have pulled some strings and gotten Stoogie in, just as Stan’s pops had done for him. But Mr. Braddich refused. He wanted his boy to finish high school. Stan put his hand on Stoogie’s shoulder in a display of outward affection (that was not only unusual for Stan, but possible only in the half-real world of dreams), and said to Stoogie, “You know, Stoogie, our folks want what’s best for us. They really do. And we want what’s best for them. And me and Mikey here, we want what’s best for you.” Stan continued speaking, and his evolving eloquence surprised him, as did the sonorous booming quality his voice acquired as he continued to speak. The lights in the basement began to alternately dim and intensify in a rhythmic pulse. Stan’s stature swelled, and he loomed over his two friends there in his folks’ basement, like an Old Testament prophet holding sway from atop an arid rocky peak. “We are a tribe here, yet we are separate, but we are also one. We are connected to the land, to the machinery we tend, and to those we cherish and protect. We honor the pact, which was made before our births, and to break it is to bleed; it is to wither and to die. We are of one body, each of us, all of us, and the ground upon which we toil, and it is manna, and it is good. Our roots run deep, and sustain us. We are formed here, and we grow as one and we grow as many, and we remain intractable in all places but here, in the company of our hearts and souls, our mothers and fathers, our brethren, our soil.” Stoogie and Mikey were transfixed, their faces suffused with the light of knowing and with the awesome, righteous terror inspired by the immutable truths as spoken, like the tolling of a great and ancient bell, by Stan, here in his parents’ basement, here, before the Coleco air hockey table, with the light faltering and intensifying in time to his thrumming, clarion elocution. And Stan himself knew that his thunderous voice, and the profundity of his words, shook his parents’ house to its foundation. And all others present – his mother, his father, Mr. Braddich, Penny – felt these truths and knew them, too. Everyone, in fact, in this small part of the world, would know these truths and would honor them, as Stan’s mighty voice shook the land. Such was the clarity and magnitude of his voice, and such was the weight of the truths he’d spoken. Stan embraced Stoogie and Mikey, and his great arms enfolded them in his all-encompassing love and enduring protection. He wept, they all wept, in the comfort of this embrace.
Stan awoke sweating, and, to his immense surprise, realized his face was wet with tears. He thought Holy shit…
As the days wound down to Wednesday, Stan passed them with a surprising sense of equanimity. In fact, when he called Kathy at the appointed time on Wednesday, he wasn’t terribly surprised that he had to again leave a message for her. She remained tantalizingly out of reach, and Stan started to wonder if maybe that aspect of the relationship (if that was even the right word) was what lent Kathy her overpowering allure.
After Stan left his message for Kathy, he remained seated on the couch, in his dark living room. And he thought of the bizarre, sobering dream he’d had Saturday night after their last phone conversation. All the sweeping, apocalyptic bullshit aside, Stan couldn’t deny the fact that he’d been thinking long and hard about the things that he did have in his life – things that were, without a doubt, not tantalizingly out of reach. His neighborhood, his friends, his family. He remembered how, after his split with Marie, Penny and Steve had invited him over for dinner every night of the week that he wasn’t scheduled to work at the mill. For months, those invitations kept coming, and Stan, except for only a handful of occasions, would decline. And every few evenings, after the divorce was final, Stoogie and his wife Gerry (Jimmy’s little sister and Penny’s best friend) would knock on the door just to say hello and ask if he’d like some company, and Stan would always politely demur, and send them on their way. And Dorothy, who’d lost her husband Ray (Stan had been a groomsman at their wedding) to cancer ten years before he and Marie split up, brought over a pan of her homemade lasagna and a cherry strudel she’d baked herself (her mom’s recipe) the day that Stan moved into his little two bedroom on Avenue L. She’d always been real sweet to Stan, and to his folks and Penny, and he’d never even invited her in to have some of her own lasagna and strudel. He remembered the look of concern on her face as he thanked her, turned her away, and closed the door. He remembered her furrowed brow, the compassion (and maybe something else?) in her sea-green eyes. He remembered how she’d cooked and brought meals to both him and Penny when both of their parents died. Dorothy, Stoogie, his little sis and Steve… all of these wonderful, beautiful people – his people – had been here for him the whole time that he’d been wallowing in his pity and licking his own wounds and keeping his trap shut.
(He thought now of Dorothy’s homemade lasagna and cherry strudel and acknowledged that he’d never tasted anything more delicious.)
The dream… Stan wondered if that sound-and-fury-filled phantasmagoria was stirring up these thoughts, or if these thoughts, working behind the scenes, were what brought on the dream.
Jesus Christ. He was sixty-three. What a balls-up.
Thursday passed with no call from Kathy. Stan thought about this at work all day on Friday, but he didn’t wreck any coils over it this time. Yet he still thought about her, and was disappointed that she hadn’t called. It was then, during his shift at work, that he decided he would call her again that evening.
Taking the two-hour time difference into account, he waited until 9 PM, Chicago time, to make the call. His hands, as usual, were shaking, and his knees felt a little weak, so he dropped onto the couch while the phone rang.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded strained, harried.
“Uh, hi Kathy, it’s Stan.”
A pause of a beat or two, and then, “Oh, hi. Stan. Sorry.” Now the voice coming through his iPhone sounded just a little clipped, a little professional. “Is there any way I might be able to call you back? Beginning of next week work?”
Stan heard a muffled male voice in the background. Then he told her, “Sure. No problem. Do you think you might call Monday? I’ll be home all day Monday.”
“Perfect. Chat then. Have a great weekend!” Then she was gone.
On Monday afternoon, Stan was re-heating a ham and cheese on rye in the microwave when Kathy’s name popped up on the iPhone’s caller ID.
“Hello? Kathy?”
“Hi, Stan. Bad time?”
“No, no. It’s a good time,” Stan sputtered. “How are you? Are you back home yet?”
“I am. Got in yesterday, late morning. We were having a blast so we decided to stay another night. Celebrating. On the company’s dime, of course.” She laughed, then hastily added, “They knew about it. They offered it to us after they read my email on Thursday. My report. I nailed the meetings. We nailed the meetings. Massive new account. I mean, I knocked it out of the park, Stan. Corner office, here I come!” And then, “God, that sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Oh my God, I’m so bad…” She was gushing, Stan thought.
“Wow, Kathy, that’s great news. It’s awesome news. I’m so happy for you.” And he was.
Throughout the conversation, she was giddy, but after about fifteen minutes into it, she said “Well, listen, bud, I’ve got to run. We’re having an actual real live sales meeting in an actual real live conference room at HQ tomorrow AM. No Zooming this one. I’ve got to be there. They’re going to tell me what a great job I did in LA, so, I need my beauty sleep. One must look their best when accepting praise, right?” She laughed. “But listen, let’s talk tomorrow. I feel bad for ditching you! Call me. Seven work for you?”
“Yeah, ok, definitely. I’ll call you at seven. Tomorrow night. Have a good night, Kathy, and good luck at your meeting tomorrow.”
The call ended, and Stan thought Bud? Huh.
The next evening, Tuesday, Stan called at seven, and Kathy picked up on what seemed like the hundredth ring. (Jesus, he was counting rings. What the hell was wrong with him? As the sound of her voice reached his ear, he again recognized with absolute clarity that, when it came to Kathy Wilson, he was more than overthinking everything. And there seemed to be little to be done about it. You gotta get a grip, pal.)
All things considered, the call went very well, Stan thought. Her meeting had gone beautifully, she’d told him. “And, guess what? The VP thing? The promotion? They’ll be formalizing an offer tomorrow. Tomorrow! Oh, man, I can’t believe this! I honestly can’t believe this is finally happening… it’s literally a dream come true!”
She went on to say that with the new role, came more responsibility. In fact, once she was set up as VP, she’d be accompanying her stateside team to meet with Allied’s affiliate in Hamburg, then both groups would fly to Bern, and finally Vienna, to hopefully close a massive, multinational European deal. “We’ll be in Europe for four or five weeks, minimum, but for a lot longer if we can close the deal. Then, I’d get to basically live in Vienna for an extra month… I absolutely love Vienna! I’m seriously pinching myself right now!”
All things considered… Stan could not deny that he felt a little disappointed that she might be absent from his life for such an extended period of time, but then again, she really wasn’t in his life. At least not yet. At least not as he understood the concept. He also was intimidated. The furthest he’d ever been from the South East Side of Chicago was St. Joseph, Michigan, where his folks rented a cottage every summer for a week when he and Penny were little. Vienna? Europe? He was definitely intimidated. And awed, and dazzled. But, still, intimidated, and still a little disappointed. These feelings mingled within Stan and served to fuel his infatuation with the ideal that was Kathy Wilson. This woman – this amazing, accomplished, beautiful, worldly woman – was actually rubbing elbows (sort of rubbing elbows, he reminded himself) with Stan Bosczyk, Mr. Nowhere, Mr. Nobody. Hell, he was the one who should be pinching himself.
Before the call ended, they’d made plans to meet for coffee at the Panera in the Galter Pavilion at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (their Panera, as Stan had begun to think of it) that Thursday, at 11 AM. “Will you be in the neighborhood that day?” she’d asked. He told her sure, he’d be in the neighborhood that day. 11 AM? You bet. “Call me to remind me the night before. Ok, Stan?” Sure. He’d call her to remind her.
And the night before, Wednesday night, Stan called Kathy to remind her.
“Oh, Stan. Hi.” She sounded distracted, breathless. “Wow, I’m so glad you called. Hey, about our coffee meet-up tomorrow morning? Can we make it at 5 PM instead? And can we make it at Starbucks on Clark? Listen, a lunch meeting came up for tomorrow. It’s going to be at Gene & Georgetti. Roger and me and a group from McNeil. Those McNeil boys are partiers, so God knows how long I’ll be there.” A short, scattered laugh, then, “But five should be good. The Starbucks is only a couple of blocks from there.”
“I can pick you up…”
“No, no, no. Don’t do that. It’s not a problem. I’ll grab a taxi and be there by five.” Stan heard her take a breath, then exhale. And then she read him the Starbucks address. “So, is that all good?”
“Sure. It’s fine. The Starbucks on Clark. Ok. See you tomorrow at five. Goodnight, Kathy.”
But she’d already hung up.
In anticipation of his coffee date with Kathy Wilson on Thursday, Stan did a couple of things he’d rarely ever done. The first thing he did was call in sick for that Thursday. In forty-five years of employment at the mill, he could count on two hands the number of times he’d called in sick.
The second thing he did was drive to the Macy’s in Calumet City and buy himself a new pair of dress pants, a belt, dress socks, a new sweater, and new shoes. He did this late Wednesday afternoon, shortly before calling Kathy to confirm their coffee date.
And that night, Stan barely slept.
At 5:38 PM, sitting at his little table in the Clark Street Starbucks, and just starting in on his first refill, Stan, through the glass of the front windows, watched a cab roll up in front and let Kathy Wilson out. He caught his breath and felt his stomach turn summersaults. In the time that had passed since their first encounter, Stan had held onto her image as tightly as his memory would allow, but the real Kathy, before him now, walking into this Starbucks from the cold, was like the birth of an undreamed of new season; for him, time was riven and a new element of its continuum was planted firmly in the center of its whimsical, fickle path. The woman that Stan Bosczyk had idealized and longed for, this archetype, was here, approaching his little table, and smiling as she came. Smiling at him, raising her gloved hand, waving, mouthing the word “Hi. He clumsily rose at her approach.
“Oh my God. Stan. How are you?” And then, “Oh my God. I totally spaced and almost forgot about our meet-up! I’m late, aren’t I? Oh my God, I am so sorry!” Kathy’s musical voice now possessed a hint of a rasp, plus a hint of something else. Bourbon, maybe? Stan helped her off with her coat. She removed her gloves then dropped into the chair that Stan had pulled out for her at his little table (he’d had to lay claim to the chair by draping his coat over its back, in order to prevent its acquisition by a group of college guys at the next table). She swirled a wisp of hair behind her ear, then placed her hands before her, palms down, fingers spread, on the table. Her nails look like they’d very recently been manicured. They were perfect. The scent of her light perfume wafted gently around her, and sent shivers down Stan’s spine. “So, tell me. How are you, Stan?” A little puff of Old No. 7’s own bouquet assailed Stan’s nostrils, and he noticed for the first time since she walked in that her eyes were a little red. A little red and a little glassy.
Before Stan could answer, she said, “God, I could really use a coffee.”
“I thought about getting your latte, you know, the same thing you had at Northwestern, but I was afraid it’d get cold.” He added, “I guess it was good that I didn’t. Woulda definitely been cold.” He laughed a little. A little nervous laugh.
“Oh, God no. I need a big black coffee. No cream. No sugar. Straight. It’s been one of those days.” She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and a nimbus of bourbon-scent played about her lovely head. Stan nodded and rose to get her coffee, and as he did, he watched as she slid her phone out of her purse and place it on the table before her. When he returned with her brew, she appeared to be scrolling through messages on her phone.
“How did your lunch meeting go? I hope it was good.”
She continued to scroll for a few beats before looking up. “Oh, God. It was just a farming meeting. Keeping the soil of the McNeil account tilled and fertile, so to speak.” She looked down at the phone again, then back up at Stan. She blew another strand of hair out of her eyes.
“I’ve always wondered about Gene and Georgetti’s,” Stan said. “I’ve heard a lot about it, but I’ve never been there. I thought… “ Here, he hesitated just a bit, stuttered. “I thought maybe I could take you there some night. You know, for dinner.” He felt that his face was burning.
“Georgetti. It’s Gene & Georgetti. Not Georgetti’s.” A good natured cluck, then a mock reproof, “There’s no ‘s’ on the end, it’s not a possessive, silly.” She laughed, and then, “What do you mean? You and I, go there for dinner some night?” She was looking down at her phone again, and said, without looking up, “Oh God, I’m there so often they’ve got a seat at the bar with my name on it. Besides, it’ll probably be another year before I can eat again. I was a little piggy today.” She giggled, but never addressed Stan’s tentative dinner date invitation again. Stan watched her brow furrow, evidently in response to a text she was reading on her screen. Stan remained quiet while she read. A minute later, she looked up.
“So, how have you been?” She took a sip of her coffee and glanced back down at the phone. “Oh, shit. God, excuse me. I’m sorry about that. Damn it, I’ve got to reply to this.” She tapped the phone’s screen with the tip of a manicured finger, then scooped the device up and started to type her reply. Stan wasn’t sure if she was sorry about saying the word “shit,” or sorry about having to reply to the text.
As he watched Kathy type, Stan experienced a very peculiar sensation. He felt that the Starbucks had become something that was possibly airborne and floating, like a dirigible, moored by a slender but resolute tether, to the earth, the surface of which remained within only a few feet of the gently but insistently yawing Starbucks floor. The tether, against which the Starbucks, and its contents and appurtenances, including Kathy and all the other current patrons, softly, steadily strained, seemed to run directly through the center of Stan, from head to toe. In fact, Stan now felt that he had become the tether itself. Kathy, and everything and everyone in the Starbucks, and the Starbucks itself, continued to strain, to reach, toward the limitless heights stretching skyward, higher even then the surrounding, glittering nighttime architecture. But Stan, the tether, held them all fast to the earth, to the soil that he knew was here, beneath the foundations and the sidewalks and the blacktop and the traffic and the crowds. As Kathy typed, she appeared to blend, to mix with the other patrons into a slowly spinning, glistening vortex. This vortex, this mélange, rotating allargando, began to unify – to congeal – into a multihued pulsing wall, that with each beat of Stan’s heart, turned and cinched upward, beginning to stretch Stan to his full height as it tugged against his efforts to restrain it. With each more insistent pulse, with each spiraling, incremental upward rotation, Stan felt his strength ebbing. He knew he would have to release this straining, spinning column, and allow its ascent, or be himself destroyed. Through the swirling opacity of the spinning wall, he could see Kathy, feverishly typing, her phone’s display inches from her face. He saw a look of triumph transform her features. He saw her gaze upward, in the direction that the swirling wall – of which she and everyone in the Starbucks, and the Starbucks itself, was an integral part – steadily, insistently strained.
At the moment that Stan faced imminent defeat – when he knew that he must either release the spinning carousel of melded humanity and its trappings, or be ripped in two – he realized he was being joined in his efforts. He felt a clustering from behind of grasping hands and steadfast backs. He felt the brawn and might of others come to his aid. He felt Stoogie and Dorothy, Jimmy and Mikey, his pops, Penny, Steve, Mr. Braddich, his mother, and the rest… he felt them join him. Together, they held Kathy and the people of the Starbucks, and all they possessed, all they desired, and, the Starbucks itself, firmly in place. Together, they kept the whole assemblage anchored to the earth. Kept it anchored to the soil. To the soil. Then Stan’s pops said to him, “Now, Stanley, you’ve got them where you want them. But do you really want them? You’ve got the power to hold them, and you’ve got the strength to let them go. You have the might of choice.” Never at any point in his life had Stan heard his father speak in this manner, but he wasn’t at all surprised that he did now. At that moment, Stan, firmly anchored to the earth beneath his feet, firmly anchored to the soil, and bolstered by the collective power of those he loved and knew and trusted, felt the roots of his place – of his neighborhood on Chicago’s rough and tumble South East Side – roots, whose presence he’d only vaguely perceived, only faintly recognized, and (if he was being completely honest) shamefully rarely, if ever, appreciated, throughout his entire life, until the fateful Saturday night when he dreamed the dream that had reduced him to tears. Those roots, he now knew, reached him – sustained him – from across the miles and from deep within the ground. They connected him to the soil of his birthplace and to the strength of those he’d known and loved all his life. Those roots connected him to all who now helped him hold the inexorable upward surge of the swirling North Side mass in check. And then suddenly, one by one, Jimmy, Mikey, Stoogie, all of them, released their grip, and Stan found that he could now hold the rotating, surging column to the earth without any assistance at all. And he knew, at that very moment, that he would release his grip and let Kathy, and the people and the things that made up her life – her world – continue on their intended upward course to places above and beyond the brilliance of the city’s shimmering, towering heights. So, Stan released his grip, and everything fell into place.
“ …Stan? Stan, did you hear me?” He blinked his eyes, and Kathy once more sat across the little table from him on the crowded floor of the Starbucks, and the din of a hundred conversations once more filled the air. She now wore a look of mock concern and genuine amusement. “Oh my God, you went catatonic on me there for a minute. Where did you go?” She laughed, then glanced quickly down at her phone again. She looked back up at him, levelly this time, and said “I really have got to go. Roger and a few of the stragglers from McNeil are at O’Callahan’s. Sounds like another big one, Stan. Another huge checkmark in the win column for Kathy Wilson, VP of North American Sales.” She looked up at him from her phone, which she slid into her purse, and Stan saw that she was quite literally aglow.
“Wow, Kathy, that’s incredible. It’s great. I’m very, very happy for you. I mean, I’m so happy for you.” And he found that he genuinely was. “Let me call you a cab.”
“That’d be great, Stan. I’d really appreciate that.” She smiled at him as he rose to head outside and flag down a taxi.
A minute later, as he opened the cab’s passenger rear door for her, and she climbed in, she said, “Always the gentleman, I swear.” And then, “Goodnight, Stan. It was great catching up. Thanks for the coffee.” She placed a hand on his forearm, exactly as she had done the day they’d met, three weeks before in the crowded Panera Bread in Northwestern’s fabled Galter Pavilion. There was no “Let’s do this again sometime.” She smiled up at him, and his heart tugged. But only a little this time. He gently closed her door and waved. Then the cab whisked Katherine Wilson, newly minted VP of North American Sales at Allied Pharmaceutical Solutions, off to an evening of deal-making at O’Callahan’s, and out of Stanley Bosczyk’s life forever.
Stan exited the elevator on the sixth floor of the self-park where he dumped his pickup. He approached his F-150, and saw with some amusement, that it was so big, it nearly encroached on the narrow ramp’s traffic flow. It was a massive hunk of rolling Detroit iron, awash in a sea of comparatively diminutive foreign makes. Geez, even his ride was out of place up here. Stan actually laughed out loud at this thought.
On his way home (he’d missed the bulk of rush hour traffic on the Ryan and was on the Skyway in what seemed like only minutes), he found that he was actually looking forward to rolling back onto the streets of his lifelong South East Side neighborhood. The area’s fatalism, which he’d always acutely recognized and quietly resented as he’d roll into the South Shore Line’s Hegewisch station at the end of each of his countless return trips from his Northwestern Memorial Hospital visits, was now replaced by something he recognized as determination. People lived here not because they were destined to, but because they wanted to. Those roots… they had power. They meant something. Thanks in large part to the wild dream of his parents’ long-ago basement, where his own proclamations reverberated with the power of absolute conviction, his connection to this part of the world – his part of the world – now could be appreciated, savored, really, in an entirely fresh light. He could acknowledge the nourishment – the sustenance – with which the roots of that connection supplied him. The friendships he’d cultivated here, the lifelong connections, were gifts to be cherished. They were sacred, and he would forever honor and fiercely protect them in this, his neighborhood, his South East Side reliquary.
Stan’s philosophical reverie was interrupted by a very concrete, practical thought: he was starving. As he pulled into his garage from the alley behind his little house on Avenue L (his little house, in his little neighborhood – he liked the sound of that just now, maybe more than he ever had), he realized that he hadn’t eaten all day. He’d been so nervous about his impending coffee date with Kathy Wilson that the thought of eating had never crossed his mind. But now he was famished.
He did a mental inventory of his fridge and his kitchen cabinets as he climbed the few steps to his home’s back door. Once inside, he knew dinner was going to be either bologna sandwiches or something frozen from Swanson’s. Admittedly, not much of a choice there. But when Stan opened the fridge to grab a jar of mayo and what remained of a package of Oscar Mayer’s unfathomable meat-ish stuff, the appliance’s inner light poured forth and shone upon the immense good humor that had begun to spread across his face. After he mayoed up four slices of Wonder from a bag on his counter and slapped the sandwiches together, he moved to replace the jar on the refrigerator’s bottom shelf. And it was then that he noticed Kathy’s business card, still taped to the upper right corner of the fridge’s door. He removed it and gave it one last look. Then he shrugged, and tossed it into the recycle bin. He stood at the counter and looked around at his little kitchen. Not bothering to sit, and with one of his sandwiches waiting on a paper plate, the other in his grip, and his sense of good cheer diminished not in the very least, he dug in.
And Stan Bosczyk thought: Maybe it’s bologna tonight, but it could be that homemade lasagna and cherry strudel isn’t too much to hope for one of these days.
“Kathy and Stan” ©2025. John G. Stamos and The Renaissance Garden Guy
I hope you’ve enjoyed “Kathy and Stan.” The work’s intended for publication in a collection of my short fiction. But the publishing thing? Well, I can’t say too much right now except that it’s in limbo. The name of the collection itself is pretty cool, and the stories aren’t half-bad. Wish I could tell you more, but I could really shoot myself in the ass if I spill. In the meantime, I’ll continue to let loose with my creative stuff right here within the friendly confines of The RGG. And, of course, I’ll also continue to publish creative works right here from a growing host of incredibly talented guest writers and contributors. So, creative writing fans… don’t touch that dial!
Cheers, and Happy Gardening!
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Thank you so much, Lane. I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed it! Thanks for giving it a read, and for your truly kind compliment – I really, really appreciate that.
Really great story – it was so gripping. Thank you.
Thank you so much for reading it, Annie. I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed it. And thank you for your very kind words – I really appreciate that.
I really enjoyed this story, John. You are a very talented writer…I could see it all so vividly! I look forward to seeing what else you’ve created for your readers!
Thank you so much for reading it, Tina, and for your incredibly kind words. I’m so happy that you’ve enjoyed it. As long as you and your fellow readers are happy with what I write, I’ll definitely keep ’em coming – thanks once again!
Nice story John.
Reminded me of the heavily industrialized area in which I grew up. It brought back memories of the times and the places. I would have gone for the home cooked food to begin with.
Thanks for reading the story, Scott, and for your very kind comments. The people from these places are truly salt of the earth, good, honest, hardworking folk. I’m glad this point came through for you in the story, and I’m very happy you’ve enjoyed reading it. Thanks once again.
Such a lovely story,
I enjoyed reading it so much ✍️💕
Thank you so much, Roxxy. I really appreciate that, and I’m so glad you enjoyed the story.
We all need to be reminded of our own self worth, and that there is no place like home. Thanks for making those points so clear to readers in the form of such a great story.
Thanks for reading the story, Kevin, and thank you for your kind comments. Your observations are absolutely spot-on.
I was completely drawn in to your wonderfully written story. I can’t wait to read more. Best of luck with the fully warranted publication of your forthcoming book of short fiction.
Many thanks, Rick. I’m very glad to know that you enjoyed the story, and I really appreciate your reading it. I will continue publishing my original work here in The RGG, as well as the work of art growing contingent of contributors. And I’ll continue to write pieces intended for publication elsewhere. Thank you once again, Rick. I’m very glad that you liked this one.