Linus also loved the constant flow of small children running lawless and rampant through the museum’s halls, screaming excitedly as they dashed about in their little jeans and colorful sweatshirts, tripping over strollers occupied by their wee sisters and brothers. Linus loved the kids and the kids loved him. When they saw Linus they would run to him and give him hugs around his legs.

“It’s funny to be surrounded by so much death and necrobiosis in the museum, yet there’s so much life,” Linus told his new friend, young Jimmy Joel Jenks, the latest addition to the museum’s janitorial staff.

“Necro what?” asked Jimmy Joel.

“Necrobiosis. The degeneration of body cells, leaving you with a skeleton or a reconstructed body,” explained Linus.

“Gotcha,” replied Jimmy Joel pleasantly.

Linus thought Jimmy Joel Jenks was a really nice guy, though a tad dense.

“And,” Linus remarked to old-time maintenance man Artie Flowers, “these amazing animals, reptiles, whatever you want to call them, are just that—amazing!”

“You get used to them, Linus,” replied Artie, uninterested in much of what life had to offer except beer and the New York Mets baseball team.

Slowly but surely Linus Major became a happy man.

Or putting it another way, a happier man.

Or putting it still another way, about as happy a man as he could ever remember being.

“And we actually get paid to do this,” Linus said to Artie and Jimmy Joel one morning in the locker room when they were all getting dressed for work. “Who said, ‘The best job in the world is the job you can’t believe you’re getting paid to do’?”

“Somebody said it,” remarked Jimmy Joel Jenks, attempting to appear learned.

“Work is work,” said Artie Flowers. “I’d rather be home with a beer watchin’ the Mets.”

“Hey,” said the cripple to the producer, remembering an important point, “CNN’s already televised an execution! The one in Texas where they gave a black guy a lethal injection. Had the poor bastard wiggling in pain right there on coast-to-coast TV. Damn if it wasn’t downright gripping the way the guy twisted and turned, trying to scream but for some reason not able to. Didn’t matter that he couldn’t scream. The wiggling and twisting made for great drama. That guy was being executed right in your living room. While you ate your veal cutlet on your nice coffee table. Bet that dude’s screaming and wiggling stopped plenty of forks in midair around the country. Did you see it? No? I’ll bet you were the only one who didn’t. Did you happen to read about the size of the television audience? It was huge! And what did it cost CNN? Nothing. Not a damn cent. Just the cost of plugging a TV camera into an outlet at the prison. And one other thing. Can you imagine how much CNN jacked up the price of their minute spots surrounding the electrocution? They must have made a fortune on that event. I never saw so many commercials on CNN before, did you? It was awesome, wasn’t it? Oh, that’s right, you missed it.”