How true.

“I know. This isn’t carved in stone, but I’m thinking maybe four or five more years and I’m out. I’ll be forty then. That’s when the reflexes begin to slow and you start needing reading glasses. Might be a good time for my midlife crisis. You know, look around at my life and say, ‘Is this it?’ and go off and do something radically different and crazy like, I don’t know, becoming an accountant or a stockbroker.”

“CPA-man Jack,” Gia said. “I can see you coming up with all sorts of unique ways to handle an IRS audit.”

Jack didn’t laugh. The future wasn’t funny. Not having an official identity, being a nonentity to the IRS and all the other federal, state, and local arms of the bureausaurus was fine now, but what happened later if he got tired of the constant hiding and dodging and simply wanted to kick back and join Shmoodom? He hadn’t thought of that when he’d erased himself from the societal map. Hadn’t figured he’d ever get to that point.

And he still might never. Jack wondered if he could ever reconcile himself to the idea of paying income tax. He expended time—hours and days and weeks out of his life—earning his fees, sometimes at the risk of that life, and at its most basic what was life but a struggle against a ticking clock, doing the most with the time you were allotted. To allow then some government bureau to confiscate the product of his time… it was like handing over chunks of his life. The way he saw it, once you surrendered sovereignty over part of your life, even a tiny part, you’ve already lost the war. After that it becomes an issue not of whether you have a right to your own life but of how big a chunk of your life you’re going to surrender. And no one asks the giver. The decision is made by the takers.

But still… what if the only way to secure a future with Gia and Vicky was to enter their world? He certainly couldn’t see them entering his. If he needed to put himself back on the map, how did he do it? He couldn’t appear out of nowhere without a damn good explanation of where he’d been all these years.

If it came down to that, he’d figure something out. After all, he still had time…

“Would you be offended if I retired and bought a farm? I mean, you being a vegetarian and all.”

“Why would I be offended?”

“Well, I’d want to grow, you know, steaks.”

She laughed. He loved that sound. “You can’t grow steaks.”

“OK, then I’ll hunt them—wild filet mignon, free-range T-bones.”

“You mean cattle,” she said, playing along. “You raise cattle and then you slaughter them and slice up their dead bodies into steaks.”

“You mean kill them? What if I get attached to them and can’t?”

“Then you’ve got yourself a bunch of very large pets that go ‘moo.’“