"We want to play kick the can," Astor said. She was the spokesperson for the pair; Cody never put more than four words together in a single day. He was not stupid, very far from it. He simply preferred not to speak most of the time. Now he just looked at me and nodded.

"Oh," said Rita, pausing in her reflections on the land of Rousseau, Candide, and Jerry Lewis, "well then, why don't you-" "We want to play kick the can with Dexter," Astor added, and Cody nodded very loudly. Rita frowned. "I guess we should have talked about this before, but don't you think Cody and Astor-I mean, shouldn't they start to call you something more, I don't know-but just Dexter? It seems kind of-"

"How about mon papere?" I asked. "Or Monsieur le Comte?" "How about, I don't think so?" muttered Astor. "I just think-" said Rita. "Dexter is fine," I said. "They're used to it." "It doesn't seem respectful," she said. I looked down at Astor. "Show your mother you can say 'Dexter' respectfully," I told her. She rolled her eyes. "Puhleeeeeze," she said. I smiled at Rita. "See? She's ten years old. She can't say anything respectfully." "Well, yes, but-" Rita said. "It's okay. They're okay," I said. "But Paris-"

"Let's go outside," said Cody, and I looked at him with surprise. Four entire syllables-for him it was practically an oration.

"All right," said Rita. "If you really think-" "I almost never think," I said. "It gets in the way of the mental process." "That doesn't make any sense," Astor said. "It doesn't have to make sense. It's true," I said.

Cody shook his head. "Kick the can," he said. And rather than break in on his talking jag, I simply followed him out into the yard.

TWO

O F COURSE, EVEN WITH RITA'S GLORIOUS PLANS UNFOLDING, life was not all jubilation and strawberries. There was real work to do, too. And because Dexter is nothing if not conscientious, I had been doing it. I had spent the past two weeks dabbing on the last few brushstrokes of a brand-new canvas. The young gentleman who served as my inspiration had inherited a great deal of money, and he had apparently been using it for the kind of dreadful homicidal escapades that made me wish I was rich, too. Alexander Macauley was his name, though he called himself "Zander," which seemed somewhat preppy to me, but perhaps that was the point. He was a dyed-in-the-wool trust-fund hippie, after all, someone who had never done any real work, devoting himself entirely to lighthearted amusement of the kind that would have made my hollow heart go pitter-pat, if only Zander had shown slightly better taste in choosing his victims.