Susan has published two collections of her work, "Walking on Ice", and most recently, "Blue Money" (both University of Missouri Press--BM able to be purchased below), from which the selections here are taken. Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Mississippi review, America West, and The North American Review.

Susan is an avid book reviewer for "The Orlando Sentinel" and an active member of the AWP board. Her honors include the AWP Short Fiction Prize and artist residencies at Pitzer College, the National Writer's Voice, Djerassi, and Yaddo.

Susan currently teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, and lives with her husband, Robley Wilson, editor of the North American Review.

More information on Susan can be found here

To contact Susan.

Selections:
- An Accident of Desire
- An Introduction to Philosophy
- Why I Have to Marry the Pool Guy

(originally published in PLOUGHSHARES)

     Jamey promised to lend me a copy of Nausea. He had borrowed the book from Mr. Loden, the only English teacher at our school who wasn't a nun. Mr. Loden was a Quaker, and he liked to loan us books that weren't in the school library. He owned seven copies of Catcher in the Rye. At one time he owned eight, but he had loaned one to my sister Edna. Then my father found it and tore it into pieces.

     Luckily, my father never knew who the book belonged to. None of us would say a word. You'd have thought the book grew up on its own, like a fungus, in a corner of the living room.

     I first saw the Nausea book when Jamey and I were at a school basketball game. We both hated basketball, but this was the city-wide final, and attendance was compulsory. They held it one afternoon in the school gym. Jamey sat on the topmost bleacher, ignoring the cheerleaders, reading Nausea. I sat next to him, my skirt folded carefully to cover my knees. I had a good view of the book's cover--a pale man with black hair, naked from the waist up, scratching himself, a look of disgust on his face. I wondered if the man was Jean Paul Sartre.

     The game went on and on, and we never cheered. One of the cheerleaders--a big blond girl, whose chest and thighs shook when she jumped--kept looking up at us, anger and horror mingled in her face. I had been thinking that Jamey and I were a good-looking pair--both of us lightly built, with pale skin and dark hair and big dark eyes. But from the way this cheerleader looked at us, you might have thought we were gargoyles, or the Antichrist himself, sitting in the upper bleachers of Assumption High.

     When the game ended we ran down the bleachers and walked home. As we walked, Jamey told me about Nausea. "It's existentialism," he said.

     "What's that?"

     Jamey smiled. "Somebody once asked Sartre to define existentialism. Sartre pointed to an empty blackboard. 'That's existentialism,' he said.

     "You can't define it," Jamey went on. "It just is."

     I couldn't think of anything more to say. We crossed the street. Jamey's younger brother Tim was standing around with five or six other boys, smoking cigarettes in front of Ryan's grocery. They met there every day, to smoke and talk.

     "Hey Jamey, you seen Clancy?" Tim shouted.

     "No," Jamey said.

     "Was he in Latin today?

     "Probably," Jamey said. We kept walking. I thought about all the afternoons I had seen Jamey standing there with the other boys as I walked home from school. I had never thought, then, that he and I would become friends.

     Friends was the word I used for it. I wasn't sure what else to call it.

     I wondered if Jamey ever missed those long afternoons of smoking and fighting and talking--but then I thought of one afternoon when my friend Mary Beth and I had been standing inside the grocery, selling tickets for a church raffle and listening to the conversation of the boys outside. They were talking about knees. Girls' knees.

     John Clancy said that you could tell a Protestant girl from a Catholic girl by the shape of her knees. Protestant knees were round and sometimes "lopsided," he said, while Catholic knees were "lovely and square." "It's all the kneeling in the church that makes them square," he said.

     Mary Beth and I had exchanged glances.

     Pat Muldoon challenged Clancy's theory. "What about scrubwomen?" he said. "They spend half their life kneeling, but I've never seen one of them with your lovely square knees. They're all bumpy, sort of."

     Clancy said that scrubwomen kneel on a different part of the knee. Their weight was thrown forward as they scrubbed, he said. Whereas Catholic girls knelt in an upright position, which distributed their weight evenly across their kneecaps.

     Mary Beth and I laughed about it later, but at the time we were stealing looks at each other's knees.

     I decided now that Jamey must have outgrown that sort of conversation.

     "How do you live, if you believe in existentialism?" I asked him.

     "You don't believe in it, exactly," Jamey said. "It's more like all of a sudden you're different. You see things differently, you act differently." He pushed back his hair from his forehead.

     "Like, Sartre is in a café and he sees a glass of beer," he went on. "Perfectly normal glass of beer, nothing odd about it. Except that suddenly he sees it, like for the first time. He can't take it for granted, the way other people do. It's out there. It scares him."

     I didn't know what to make of that. "A man scared of a glass of beer?" I said. It reminded me of something my mother said: "The French make everything into a problem." Of course, she was thinking of the Delacroix family over on Water Street.

     "Wait." Jamey stopped walking. He pulled the book from his jacket pocket, and began to flip through its pages. When he found what he wanted, he read it aloud to me.

     It was exactly as he had described it. A man scared sick by a glass of beer. But there was a bit at the end that made sense to me. "Read that part again," I said.

     He read: "'I am alone in the midst of these happy reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.'"

     "That I understand," I said.

     Jamey looked up from the book. His face was serious, his hair was in his eyes. I thought for a second that he might try to kiss me right there in the middle of Butler Avenue.

     But I looked away and shifted the books in my arms. We walked on.

     After a while I asked, "What kind of teacher is Loden?"

     "He's all right," Jamey said. He looked over at me. "All the girls seem to think they're in love with him."

     "Really?" Of course I already knew that, thanks to my sister Edna. Mr. Loden had long brown hair--long enough to touch his shirt collar--and he wore gold-rimed glasses and tweedy suits. I had passed him in the hallway many times, and after he went by I could still smell his aftershave. Mr. Loden was the only person in the school who smelled like that. Edna said it was English Leather. Good stuff, she said, a cut above the Jade East and Brut that some of the seniors wore.

     Jamey was still looking at me. "I'm not in love with him," I said.

     "I didn't think you were," he said.

     We reached my house and stood for a moment on the front porch. "Let me borrow that book when you're through," I said.

     "Sure," he said. He was watching me intently. I liked the way he looked, standing in the shade of the porch with his hair falling into his eyes as usual, and I liked the way he was interested in me. He never took girls for granted, he seemed to think them mysterious. And he seemed to find me more mysterious than anyone. I assumed it was because he didn't have any sisters.

     "See you later," I said, and went through the front door.

     "Hey, Kathleen?" he called. I turned around. "I'll talk to you later," he said.

     I smiled and shut the door. Cryptic, be cryptic, I told myself. Keep him guessing. Inside, I set my books on the stairs. The house smelled like corned beef. I held my breath as I walked toward the kitchen.

     My mother was paring potatoes at the sink. She said I could do the carrots. Then she asked about school. The smell of corned beef was everywhere. I didn't want to talk much. I didn't want to open my mouth and let the smell of corned beef get inside.

     "What about those tests?" my mother asked. She took a peeler from the kitchen drawer and handed it to me.

     "Tests?" I said, thinking of the corned beef. "Tests?"

     "Those tests you were telling me about," she said. "L.Q. tests."

     "I.Q.," I said, picking up a carrot. I began to scrape away the grayish skin. "Sister says they'll have the results next week."

     "And?"

     "And the guidance counselor will call each of us in," I said. "But she won't tell us the number, the actual I.Q. Sister said she'll tell us we did poorly, or average, or good, or very good, or excellent. She said two years ago they had someone who was very excellent. Someone like Einstein, I guess."

     My mother thought for a minute. "It might have been the eldest Clancy boy."

     "Roger Clancy?" I was skeptical. I remembered him as a fat boy with pimples. Now he was studying to be a priest.

     "He had a photographic memory, everyone said." My mother didn't understand these things, but I wasn't about to correct her. "These numbers," she went on, "these I.Q.s, what do they mean?"

     "Sister said they're a measure of intelligence," I said. "They measure your ability to think in certain kinds of ways."

     "But they use them to award the scholarships?"

     "I'm not sure," I said. "Sister said that I.Q. is very important. But she didn't say exactly why."

     I finished scraping the last carrot and went to put the peelings into the garbage can. Then I came back to the table to cut the carrots. My father liked them cut lengthwise, then in chunks. The home economics teacher at school said it was more nutritious to cut them only in chunks, leaving the cores intact. I had told my father this and he said, "Baloney."

     "This way all the vitamins escape into the water," I said to myself, as I cut the things lengthwise.

     "What?" my mother asked.

     "Nothing. How was your day?"

     "Well. Bridget was a fussy one," she began.

     My sister Edna came in. "He's home, and he's into the Scotch whiskey," she said.

     My mother kept on peeling potatoes, but her mouth twitched.

     "And he's tired tonight," Edna said. "He's painting that house at the corner of Leicester Avenue, that high red one, so he's bound to be tired."

     "Well, stay out of his way," my mother said. She looked worried, but she almost always looked worried. Her mouth turned down, and her eyes had a vague look to them. Edna said our mother had had a rough childhood. Her parents were dead, and she never talked about them.

     I put the pan of carrots on the stove. "What are your plans for tonight?" my mother asked Edna. I left the kitchen.

     The upstairs bathroom reeked of mineral spirits. My father used the stuff to clean his hands. Slime clung to the bathroom sink, with flecks of red paint in it. "He's worse than a child," I whispered, cleaning most of it away with toilet paper.

     Supper started badly. Bridget grabbed a potato from the dish, then shrieked and dropped it. My father shouted at her.

     "The potato was hot," my mother protested.

     "That child will not throw good food on the floor," my father said, ignoring my mother. "She will learn that I won't tolerate it."

     The rest of us ate rapidly. We waited for him to finish, but my father wasn't very hungry that night. He left a large piece of meat on his plate. "Too much fat," he said.

     "Usually he likes the fat," I heard Edna say as she and Michael went to scrape plates in the kitchen.

     I went upstairs to do homework. I felt a little guilty, leaving my mother and Bridget alone with him.

     It was turning dark, and the sky was streaked with red. My lamp made a yellow circle on the table that I used as a desk. I did all of the math, then the science. When I began the English I turned on the radio. The top-forty station was playing requests. I stopped writing to listen between the songs, in case anyone dedicated a song to Kathleen.

     Soon after nine the telephone rang. The noise was faint, muffled by the rooms below me. But I heard it, and stopped writing. My brother Michael came to the foot of the stairs and shouted, "Kathleen!" I jumped from the chair and ran down.

     It was Jamey. He said he couldn't talk long because he was going to help his father work on their car.

     "Did you do your homework?" I asked.

     "No."

     "I'm still doing mine," I said.

     "I've been reading Nausea," Jamey said. "Also I went to see Clancy. We're going to buy a guitar."

     "What kind of guitar?"

     "An electric bass. A Gibson. I'll take you to see it if you'd like to."

     "I would like to," I said. "I didn't know you played guitar."

     "I don't yet," he said.

     We seemed to have run out of things to say.

     After a while Jamey said, "How was your day?"

     I tried to think of something I hadn't told him earlier. "We didn't have history," I said. "We had a movie instead."

     "Any good?"

     "No. It was about modern industry. It had cartoon characters in a factory. Like, Donald Duck makes steel. Daisy Duck worked in the cafeteria and gave him a hard time. Larry Baker got sent to the office for mocking it."

     "They make those movies for little rich kids who don't have a foundry down the street," Jamey said.

     "Probably. Mr. Logan came into study hall later and told us he thought it was a dumb movie, too."

     Jamey was silent.

     I pretended to kiss the receiver, making no sound. "Tell me more about existentialism," I said.

     "Hold on," he said. "I'll get the book."

     I heard laughter coming from the television set in the living room. But no one was laughing in our house. Probably a rerun, I thought.

     "Okay." Jamey came back on the line. "Okay, listen: 'Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.'"

     I disagreed. But I kept quiet. I listened.

     "'There are moments--rarely--when you make a landmark, you realize that you're going with a woman, in some messy business. The time of a flash. After that, the procession starts again.'"

     His voice was a monotone. I tuned it out, briefly, then began to listen again. "'But everything changes when you tell about life; it's a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense.'"

     I was about to comment on this when a voice said, "Will you look at that." My father had come up behind me. "I thought that you were upstairs, doing your homework." He stood in the hallway, his hand on the wall. I could smell the whiskey.

     I put my hand over the telephone's mouthpiece. "Daddy, I was. I've only been talking for a few minutes."

     "Give me that," he said. He grabbed the receiver from my hand.

     "Look, you," he said into the telephone. "Kathleen has better things to do than waste time listening to your nonsense. Do you hear me? You children have schoolwork to do." He hung up the receiver.

     I stared at him. "You had no right to do that."

     "No right? In my own home?" He kept his eyes on the telephone. "It's you that has no right, as long as you're living under my roof. Now you remember that."

     He brushed past me, headed for the kitchen. Then he turned back. "Get yourself upstairs and finish your homework. Your mother keeps telling me you're a smart girl. Don't you be silly and throw that away. Talking to boys at night at your age." He shook his head. He'd become maudlin next, I thought.

     I shook my head back at him. "I hate you," I said, my voice low.

     "Ah, she hates me." He grinned, and turned back toward the kitchen. "Go on now," he said over his shoulder. "Upstairs with you."

     I didn't move. "Coward," I said.

     He stopped walking.

     "You don't face up to yourself," I said. "Instead you bully us."

     He whirled around and took three quick steps toward me, raising his hand. I ducked to the right, to spare my face.

     But he didn't hit me. When I looked up, he was on his way to the kitchen again. He slammed shut the door behind him, and I heard his voice bellowing for my mother.

     I ran up the stairs and into my room. I sat at my desk, vowing that I wouldn't cry. Crying, I knew, was what he wanted. I pulled a piece of paper from my notebook and drew a line on it. The line was my life. I penciled jagged upswings and downturns. I labeled some of them: "Bridget born," and "began seventh grade," and "met Jamey." Then I made the line turn upward and climb steeply, without fluctuating. I labeled the turning point: "Eighteenth birthday--left home."

     I left the paper on my desk, but I kept looking at it as I got ready for bed.

     After I switched out the light, my mind turned over and over again. Eventually it settled to thinking about my father. For some reason I thought of the night three years before, when President John Kennedy died. We watched the television all evening, and later, when I was unable to sleep, I went downstairs again. My parents were still sitting on the couch. The room was dark but for the television's blue flicker. My father was lying in my mother's arms and he was weeping. I never saw him cry before or since. He was saying, "I loved that man. I loved that man."

     At the time the words had moved me. But now they made me feel nothing. The scene was unfamiliar, unlikely, as if I'd dreamed it. I tried to sleep. But the image remained in my head like a photograph.

     Long after midnight, I heard the foundry whistle signal the changing shifts. Later I heard the train, gathering speed as it pulled away from the city. I lay in bed with my eyes open until the room began to grow light again. I heard my mother walk downstairs to make coffee and my father cough as he ran water in the bathroom. I listened to the noises they made, without any anger. I couldn't find it in me to hate them.

     When it was time for me to get up, my body felt stiff and cold. I pushed my arms into the shirt that was part of the school uniform. As I buttoned it, I caught sight of the paper on my desk, with the map of my life on it. It seemed childish, silly to me now. I tore the paper into bits. Then, to amuse myself, I pulled up my bedroom storm window a few inches and pushed the pieces through the gap. They fell as lightly as dust or dandelion fluff. A moment later I saw my father walk over them as he left the house, on his way to work again.

(originally published in MISSISSIPPI REVIEW)

     I always marry writers.

     My first husband wrote nonfiction: a book about sailing, a book about banks. They brought in lots of money, none of which I spent.

     My second husband writes poems. His books are lyrical, but they never make enough to pay the rent.

     My husbands sit in dark rooms, their pale fingers summoning alphabets. I sit in the kitchen. I fix the things that have been broken, and I watch the pool guy.

     It's our first pool and it takes a lot of work. We don't swim much, but we like the lights poolwater casts through the bedroom windowpane.

     It's our second pool guy. The first one disappeared. Two weeks later the second one presented a new businesscard. Without the card we never would have noticed. Both pool guys look exactly like Kurt Cobain.

     As I write those words his shadow passes through the kitchen window.

     I look up to see his face in profile--mouth ruminating, eyes pensive.

     The pool guy bends and kneels, stoops to submerge and fill tiny vials of water, adds chemicals with eyedroppers, shakes the vials and ponders. He holds the vials as the water changes color, takes notes on a clipboard. His handwriting is small and scratchy, and he always uses black ink.

     He leaves detailed instructions: "Add 1 pint muriatic acid. Wait 24 hours. Broadcast 2 lb. stabilizer. Retest ph values. Test chlorine and bromine."

     This is a text that I will profit by. This is language I can understand. I do exactly what the pool guy says. Next week he will return, take measurements, muse, sigh. If the ph is balanced he might smile.

     But the ph isn't often balanced. Sunlight consumes chlorine. Algae come with rain.

     Today the pool guy beckons me. His hand is deeply tanned, his voice is soft. "You have a bloom of yellow algae." His eyes are focused faraway. "You'll want to supershock."

     I nod. In this relationship I always agree.

     He looks perplexed. From the pocket of his cut-off jeans he takes a beeper. He asks to use the telephone.

     I bring him one. He taps a number.

     He says, "This won't take long."

     He listens, smiles, says thanks. "My friend at Cocoa says the waves are perfect," he says."You surf?"

     I say, "No, but I've always meant to learn."

     He gazes at the pool. "You have some surface cracks," he says. "You should think about resurfacing."

     I follow the line of his gaze through turquoise water seeking cracks, but what I find is his reflection--Adonis profile, long-lashed eyes, pale hair. I stretch my hand to touch him and embrace only air.

     This is not about a pool. The pool guy is my fiction. I'm his fool.

(originally published in MISSISSIPPI REVIEW)

The whole thing started at my wife's office.

     I dropped by to say hello--I happened to be in the neighborhood--but as usual she was too busy to give me more than a nod. Hey, I didn't mind. I wouldn't like Sandra to visit my place of employment, if I had one.

     I'd been laid off for six months. When I first stopped working, every day brought a little gift I hadn't expected: waking up at ten instead of seven, eating lunch for breakfast (and then again at noon, if I felt like it), chatting with phone solicitors, and being home when the mail came--I got to read the magazines before she did. I even said yes to a few new subscriptions. But the thrills were wearing thin, and my prospects didn't look bright.

     My wife teaches French at the community college. That day I left her office and beetled across the quadrangle in the center of the campus. I'd made it halfway across the street that separates the campus from town, when something caught my eye: a woman walking briskly in the opposite direction. She had a full head of raven-colored hair that stopped me short--it had to be Rosie Mantuso. I worked with Rosie for nearly five years back in Chicago. She was a peach: sense of humor, style, and these blazing brown eyes that could knock your socks off. Of course I wasn't married then.

     "Rosie," I said. Then I shouted it: "Rosie!"

     The woman must not have heard. She kept walking and I set off after her. I kept yelling her name every few seconds as I ran, until I got so winded that I shut up. Funny how fast you get out of shape.

     "Rosie!" I managed to say it as I reached her, and she turned to give me a look.

     Of course she wasn't Rosie Mantuso, no way. This woman had a face like a hatchet, and she cut me a stare so blunt I stopped cold. She walked away and I turned around, still trying to catch my breath. Hey, I've put on a few pounds since I got laid off, and I'll admit I'm not the man I once was. I looked around, watching everyone near me to see if they were laughing. But all I saw were students moving across the quad, hunched over from the weight of their knapsacks, their faces pale and pinched--the way they tend to be at the community college where my wife works.

     I headed back across the quad and I almost reached the spot I'd been before, when I realized I wasn't alone--a young woman had fallen into step with me. At first I thought she was my wife--same height, same hair color--but then I saw her haircut, short like a boy's, and I noticed she was a little stocky. She had on brown-rimmed glasses, and she carried an armload of books. She looked up at me with a small smile, and of course we fell into conversation.

     If she'd seen me just make a fool of myself, she didn't mention it. She said she was a first-year nursing student. I said I was self-employed.

     We reached the edge of the quad. I paused before I crossed the street, to say good-bye to her, but she showed no sign of going anywhere. The expression on her face was docile and plain. She smiled without showing teeth.

     She crossed the street with me and we kept walking. It was only four blocks to the apartment house. As we came up the front walk, I paused again, thinking now she'd take off. But darned if she didn't trot right along with me, into the foyer and up the stairs.

     As I unlocked the door to our apartment, she stood beside me, waiting patiently. At that moment I thought I probably should have offered to carry her books, and I began to tell her so, but she interrupted. She said they weren't heavy.

     Inside, this woman headed straight for my wife's favorite armchair. She stooped to put her books down on the floor--the book on top of the pile was called Basic Anatomy. She took off her coat and folded it over the arm of the chair. Then she sat, crossed her legs, and looked at me.

     She wore jeans and a sweater and boots that fastened with Velcro. She seemed a no-nonsense kind of girl.

     I didn't know what to say to her, but I figured I'd better offer her a drink. I fixed one for me, too, and sat down in my armchair across from hers. We chatted. To this day I don't remember a word we said. We made polite conversation. Small talk.

     After a while she asked to use the toilet and I showed her where it was. When she went in there, it dawned on me: My wife would be home from work pretty soon, and I wasn't sure she'd take to finding a stranger in the house. I headed for the phone, to call and tell her. Then I realized she'd still be in class.

     Class would be over in ten minutes, and then my wife would walk home.

     What I did next made perfect sense to me at the time. I shouted through the bathroom door--told the woman I had an errand to run, I'd be back in a few minutes. She said okay, fine. Then I grabbed my jacket and bolted. I went out the door, down the stairs, across the street, back toward campus. I sprinted until I felt winded. Then I trotted. Every step I ran, I knew a little more about how much my wife wouldn't like being surprised by a strange female in the apartment. But I felt sure that once I saw her, I could explain everything.

     By the time I saw the building where my wife teaches, I could also see her: a little figure in a blue dress, coming out the doorway. With her were three other people--colleagues, students?--I didn't know. As I got closer I saw they were all talking a mile a minute.

     "Sandy," I said. I had to say it twice before she heard me.

     "You're here again?" she said.

     "I need to talk to you. It won't take long," I said, so she came over. Her friends waited and watched.

     I told my story to my wife. I said a strange woman, a nursing student, had followed me home and was waiting back at our apartment. I told her I'd made a special trip just to tell her--I'd wanted her to know so she wouldn't be surprised.

     My wife took all this in without batting an eye. She looked at me hard. Then she turned on her heel. Over her shoulder she said, "You expect me to believe a fairy tale like that?"

     I began to say something, but she interrupted me. "I've been expecting something like this, ever since you subscribed to that pathetic magazine."

     Which one? I wondered, but she took off with her friends. I followed, waiting for a chance to get a word in. They all jabbered in French. I only took Spanish in high school, and I never got the hang of it.

     They crossed the street and headed down the block, talking, talking. I came along behind them. They stopped at a restaurant--this new place, a sidewalk café I'd only heard about from my wife. Chez Honoré, it's called.

     My wife claimed a table and the others sat down with her. I stood on the sidewalk outside the iron gate, waiting to be asked to join them, but also thinking about the woman back at the apartment. Finally my wife stopped talking long enough to look over at me. "Go back home to your floozy," she said, in a voice that carried right across the restaurant.

     What could I do?

     I turned and headed home. I didn't run this time. What was the point?

     I walked home, wondering if anyone would be there, thinking maybe the whole thing was a dream--and this is no joke, it's happened before and seems to happen often now: I find myself standing in familiar places, but nothing going on seems familiar. Lights loom and blink out, sounds fade and blare, and there's a strong smell of ozone in the air. I get a metallic taste in my mouth and a hum in my head. I can't tell anymore what's real.

     But when I unlocked the door and came inside there was the coat lying across the chair. I went down the hall to the bathroom, but the door stood open. The bathroom was empty. So was the kitchen. Finally, I opened the door to the bedroom. There she was, curled up under our comforter, asleep in our bed.

     She didn't look any better asleep than she had when she was awake--unlike my wife. When Sandra's asleep, she takes on the look of an angel.

     "Wake up," I said to this woman.

     She didn't stir.

     "Come on," I said. "Time to get up."

     I reached for her shoulder under the covers, and then she stirred. I nearly fell on the floor--this woman had taken off her shirt.

     She blinked and looked at me. "You have to go," I said to her, looking away, at the ceiling. "My wife will be home any second."

     This wasn't strictly true--my wife was back at Chez Honoré, having a drink with her friends--but it might be true. My wife rarely has more than one drink.

     The woman didn't open her mouth--she just lay there.

     "Go now," I said to her. She sighed and pulled back the comforter. Damned if she hadn't taken off everything.

     "Get out of here!" I shouted. She stood up, pulling the comforter around her, and she moved slowly toward the living room.

     I grabbed her coat and her books and gave her a little shove toward the door.

     She moved slowly and steadily ahead, as if she were automated or maybe sleepwalking, and only when we were halfway down the stairs did I ask myself: Where are her clothes?

     I pushed her shoulder to keep her moving. We were coming down the front steps of the building when my wife appeared. She marched down the street, alone, wearing a beret I'd never seen before.

     "Quick, what's your name?" I said to the woman wrapped in our comforter. She said Mary or Marie, something that begins with an M. No--to be honest, it was Muriel.

     When my wife came closer, I said, "Sandy, this is Muriel."

     My wife said, "You are beyond belief." She swept past us without another word.

     I turned to watch her go. I could hear each footstep as she climbed the stairs and I thought, This is it--this is the end of a chapter in my life.

     But I was wrong, as I've come to know very well since. It wasn't the end of a chapter--it was the end of my life. And I saw it pass, climbing up the steps, disappearing through the door with my sweet angel, the love of my life, my wife.

     What could I do? I turned and followed Muriel. Swaddled in down, she led me away, across the street, far from the apartment house, into green pastures and dark valleys, high-rise condominiums and low-rise efficiencies--places I never would call home, places that would test the mettle of any man.

 - Frederick Barthelme

Strangers appear and disappear in "Blue Money." Shoes charm and cure. A soiled shirt conjures conscience, a clean one promising new identity. Susan Hubbard brilliantly weaves these fantastic elements into the fabric of her fiction.

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