"I love you," he shouted up through the door.
    "Oh, that's very nice. I'm glad to hear it."
    "I do, I love you more than anything. Now would you--"
    "Would I what? There's something you want me to do? Is that why you
love me?"
    "Would you please let me out of the fucking cellar, please?"
    "Mm. Maaaaybe. Maybe."
    "If you-- okay. If you let me go now I can still pick something up
before I go to see Leland's wedding. I have to get them a knickknack or
something."
    "Will you tell me what you did with my grandfather's notebooks?"
    "I can't, I told you; I can't."
    "Then you'll have to send Leland your regrets."

    It's like this, Patrick thought as he paced around the
water-softener: As long as I stay down here Dina will sit in the living
room and watch Hercule Poirot on public TV and she will think that I
married her because of her grandfather's research. But if I tell her the
truth, soon I will be dead at the hands of the men and women who want so
badly to know the secret about bugs that Grampa discovered. I have never
been very interested in bugs, even before now. This will teach me to
pick up the phone in the middle of the night.

    "Are you getting hungry down there?"
    "Yes, incredibly hungry. And I've got something to tell you."
    "Is it about how you never loved me?"
    "It's about bugs."
    No no no no no.
    "I mean, not bugs. I could explain this a lot better face to face."
    "If I let you out of the cellar, that's your second chance. That's
me giving you a second chance."
    "Dina, were you this suspicious of me the whole time we've been
together? Before I stole the--took the--"
    "You're getting a second chance to explain yourself. Don't ruin it."
    When the door creaked open Patrick involuntarily groaned, like a
nightclub audience who've had the house lights sprung on them too
quickly. He hadn't realized the sun would be out yet.

    Once he'd explained the whole dilemma Patrick found himself
relaxing. Secret agents? Military biowarfare research? Midnight phone
threats? Dina listened patiently about the terrible luck they had had,
the preposterous things that had driven them apart; at the same time, he
came to worry more about his own sanity than retaliation by shadowy
malefactors.
    Then Dina pursed her lips and said, "Grampa said that if I ever
needed to run away, there was money in his safe. Maybe this is why.
Maybe it's time to go." Fear flooded back into Patrick's body.

    Outside a man and a woman with cell phones lurked in the bushes. "Is
it time?" the woman asked. "Is it time is it time is it time?" The man
pressed his ear harder into a listening device and wondered the same
thing, but not aloud.

written for Lauren Oster while standing up 6/17/03

As is traditional for stories written after a long break from writing, this was not very good at all. I wrote myself into a corner at the beginning with both characters being petulant and juvenile. Then I tried to build an actual narrative in the second section, which didn't flow at all, and I had too-inflexible ideas about how I was going to work some of the words in -- and for all THAT, a lot of the words were invoked only glancingly.

(On the other hand, 'carapace' is a really frustrating word, and I've already gotten it once! I wonder whether Ms. Oster was looking at some of the other stories shortly before she requested hers and forgot why 'carapace' was in her head. Or it's just a coincidence.)

In addition to being mediocre, this story is more than a year overdue. Still, the only way to write is not to be paralyzed by the fear of it ending up like this, so by god I refuse to be ashamed. Except sort of.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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