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of my children, and cash flow at the garage. For a year or so after Lydia died, and even for most of the year before she died, it was as if I had no sexual nature. From the time she went to the hospital to stay, I woke alone in that huge king sized bed of ours every morning in darkness and never once had an erection or even thought about the pleasures Lydia and I had taken from each other in that bed at exactly that time of day so many hundreds of times; I couldn’t permit such a thought. I had work to do, children to wash and dress and feed and get off to school so I could get to the garage by eight, and at the garage I’d work like two men until the kids got out of school, so I’d be free then to drive them to Cub Scouts and Brownies, to their friends’, to the dentist in Placid, to Ames in Saranac for winter boots, stopping off at the Grand Union for groceries that I’d cook for supper and popcorn for after supper while watching TV together, and when they had gone to bed, I’d stay up late drinking and doing the garage account books that Lydia used to take care of. I had started drinking pretty heavily by then; but nothing like now.
    For a long time, though, that was my whole life. There was no way I could let myself think about anything that did not lie directly before mow-the death of my wife, the physical and emotional needs of my children, and my business.
    It was as if during that period I were crossing a crevasse on a high wire, and if I once looked down at the ground or off to the side or even ahead of me or behind, I’d fall, and I’d take down with me anyone holding on to me, meaning my children.
    Then I started to change. First in erotic dreams and after a while in fantasy little pornographic movies in which I was both actor and audience: my sexual nature had begun to reassert itself. It was only chromosomal and glandular, but even so’ whenever it happened I felt oddly ths loyal to Lydia. While she was alive I had been able to wake from my dream or fantasy and immediately cast her in the leading female role and let reality take over; but with her gone, if I tried casting her, the dream turned instantly to grief and sorrow. It was specifically to avoid that pain that I auditioned for the sex scenes numerous women I knew personally and believed I could be attracted tithe wives and daughters of the town of Sam Dent. And to my surprise, my number one sex goddess turned out to be Risa Walker.
    I say surprise because Risa was by no stretch of the imagination the sexiest woman in town. That title went by male consensus to Wanda Otto, whom the boys in the garage called The Beatnik Queen, because of her long straight hair and her eye makeup and the low cut knit dresses she wore. It was probably the image of 19605 hippie sex that she evoked most of my mechanics suffered from a kind of time warp anyhow.
    Also, Wanda behaved in what you might call a provocative way at least it provoked the boys in the garage, who scrambled to fill her Peugeot with gas whenever she drove in. Normally, when someone pulled up to the pump, Bud or Jimbo or whoever was on duty only crawled further into the vehicle he was working on and pretended not to see or hear it.
    Selling gas was strictly a necessary frill at the station, and whoever happened to be on duty was supposed to look after it; there was no regular attendant, and I myself spent most of my time in the office, with Lydia when she was alive and alone afterwards, or supervising the more delicate and difficult jobs out in the garage. No one wanted to pump gas. But Wanda Otto never to my knowledge wore a bra, and so long as she was without her husband, Hartley, or her son, the Indian boy Bear, she had a habit of driving into the station with her dress pulled halfway up her very attractive thighs. Wanda could get a mechanic out from under the hood and beside her open window faster than any other customer. She laughed easily and flirted and used expressions like Shit! and Fuck! if