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dead because Karl put four staples in my death certificate.’ The water was cut off. Henry seized Ed by the throat and tried to strangle him, as one might strangle an empty faucet, not to choke it off, but to make it flow again.
    ‘Art’s cut off the water, now,’ Rob and Dob reported to Art’s son.
    ‘Oh, trying to starve us out, is he?’ His heavy handsome jaw took a stern set. ‘We’ll just see about that.’
    Harold showed him his latest, indeed his last effort, a chart of the basic natural foods and their constituents, arranged in a segmented circle. Heavy with gold-and-red illumination, the chart was called: ‘THE WHEEL OF LIFE’.
    ‘Very nice indeed, Harold,’ said the boss, reaching for it. A ripple of muscle was visible through his specially-tailored suit. ‘But you seem to be losing weight. Why is that? Dieting to improve the strength of your grip? I tried that, and it worked wonders.’
    ‘By the way, I hate to ask you for it, Harold, but when are you going to pay me that twenty you owe me? I really need it – got a big week-end in Boston coming up. You know what I mean.’ He winked, and winked again at Clark.
    ‘Well, now, mouthpiece, say something legal,’ boomed the boss. A voice croaked from the tangled depths of Clark’s beard. Holding his cane to the sky, he said, ‘
Mens sana in
–’ he belched painfully, ‘
– in corpore sano
.’
    ‘Fine, fine,’ said Masterson, not hearing him. His powerful calves waded through the knee-deep debris effortlessly and carried him to hisoffice.
     
M EMO :
On Communication
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    – Jqw534w9h
     
    From the office came the clink and chunk of weights, and breath hissing through clenched teeth. Suddenly, as he lettered the words ‘The Form Divine’, Harold collapsed. Henry reached him first and held up his head. Harold cast a rueful look on his unfinished work, murmured, ‘I go … I go to the Death Registration Office,’ and died.
    ‘Now where,’ said Karl, ‘did I put that fatal accidents chart?’
    There came a deep reverberation, not Masterson. He came bounding from his office in sweatpants, his chest gleaming with perspiration. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he demanded. ‘Is someone else lifting weights around here? He’s fucking up my timing.’
    The crew made its way down the stairs after him, to see the other weightlifter. Eddie led Clark down last, a step at a time. Naturally Ed and Harold remained behind.
    The offices all the way down were empty. When they reached the sidewalk, the clerks found a derrick smashing at their building with a steel ball.
    Masterson walked over to have a word with the foreman, who held up the destruction for the moment.
    ‘We’re tearing it down.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Abandoned.’
    ‘… some mistake, or …’
    ‘But nobody works there.’
    Masterson said something else as the foreman gave a signal and the derrick engine roared. The tall tower turned awkwardly, like a hand puppet, setting the ball into motion.
    The man shook his pink helmet. ‘I don’t know nothing about no father,’ he shouted. ‘All I know is, we got
work
to do.’ He signalled the derrick operator, who swung the moving ball far back, then towards the wall.
    Mr. Masterson ran headlong towards it, springing with the grace of a dancer on his ripple soles. For a moment, it looked as if the steel ball would bounce harmlessly off his great chest.

N EW F ORMS
     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

198-, A T ALE OF ‘T OMORROW ’
     
    Ernest thought it would be fun to let his computer call up Frank’s computer on the telephone.
    ‘Good to hear yours, too! But hey, do you know what a.m. it is out here?’
    Al is seen glancing at his watch. Thanks to a vibrating quartz crystal in it, the watch keeps very, very accurate time. He looks from its