“You like having things your own way, that’s why,” she says. Then Catherine is suddenly sitting there, looking like a Mayan laughing head.

“What is it, what’s funny, what’s the joke?” I ask, turning down the radio some.

“I was thinking about this woman. There was this woman in our neighborhood, crazy as a june bug. She used to steal dandelions from all the neighbors’ yards so she could make her own wine.”

“Dandelions are free.”

“She was always high. She was always crazy.”

“Everybody has a neighbor like that.”

“You should have heard the way people talked about her.”

But Catherine, nothing to fear, we do not live in neighborhoods anymore, so nothing to fear:

There goes Miss Catherine again after Mr. Ernest.

What?

There goes Miss Catherine again trying to kill her husband.

What’s she got this time?

Poker in one hand and a broomstick in the other.

He running?

Yes, he’s running. What man wouldn’t run? Crazy as she is. If you ask me, he’s as crazy to put up with her this long. If it was me, I wouldn’t stay with her. Lock her up, throw the key in the creek.

Naw you wouldn’t. Not if you loved her you wouldn’t.

If you ask me, some love is the dickens.

You know why I wouldn’t ask you, because if he did up and leave her, you’d be the first one talking ‘bout what a wicked man Mr. Ernest was. He wouldn’t just be one devil; he’d be a troop of devils.

And what do you think about that woman that done moved in with them?

I haven’t formulated my thoughts on that one yet. But she do wear her age well.

What do she do?

I believe she makes paper.

I think they need to work her loose. Too many cooks in that kitchen.

That bedroom, you mean.

Don’t be devilish.

Still, I don’t know what to think about a man who saddles himself with that.

I read music but I don’t read people.

I read people but I don’t read fools.

Hush.

Yeah. There’s that bewitching woman. Slit up the back of her skirt.

I don’t read rough music. She better turn her volume down.

“. . . mixed with the vicious African strain.”

“What?” Catherine looks up.

“They’re talking about the killer bees,” I say.

“Change the channel.”

I change it trying to find music, but indeed there’s more news, or more talk.

“I don’t really keep up that much with what’s going on in the art world. It’s my own monsters I worry about.”

“Keep it there,” says Catherine, her eyes suddenly bright and wary.

“That’s Gillette, isn’t it?” I ask.

“Hush.”

We listen. The interviewer had asked her something we hadn’t heard.

“Uhm, yes,” she was saying.

“You’ve disappeared for much too long. Everyone out there should go see her show; it’s a ‘big flight.’ The name of it’s Flight, folks, and it’s a big one.”

“She’s not here?”

“No, this radio is one of those international kinds, picks up New York, Monte Carlo, Paris. She could be anywhere. I think this is a New York channel, though.”