Jenny was busy in her attic office working on schematics for her new building idea, so we went home and put on Carson's monologue to get us in the mood for sleep. To our surprise, he had something to say about that Albert Towley column when he sat down at his desk.

"I wanted to take a few seconds to mention a little something from my personal life if you don't mind... Ahh... I'd taken some very dear friends of the show out to dinner the other night... which ahh... which apparently seems to have merited a nasty little write-up in one of the rags... I'm not going to say too much more... just that some people are born with class and distinction... and some just peddle cheap gossip for a living."

We awoke the next morning around a quarter to eight to the sound of shop tools, the clunks of dropped wood, and the voices of Jen and Stacey echoing from the Platt family garage. This continued for the better part of an hour as we went through our morning routine - shit, shower shampoo and shave. We dressed in the summer uniform of our stays in Amityville, a one piece bathing suit covered by a pair of shorts with a maybe a button up shirt if it gets cold and wet downstairs for breakfast. We enjoyed our Frosted Flakes to the sound of Jenny's trusty old Radio Flyer trundling out of the garage.

Jenny, dressed in her summer uniform of bikini top and shorts, had wheeled out a wooden frame covered in plaster lathing - the core section of her new building. Stacey, in similar uniform, brought out a couple saw horses to put the wings over. Next out of the garage was a wheelbarrow and a sack of plaster. Avi joined us as Jenny brought out the garden hose.

"Mmmmmm! Two hot girls and a tub of plaster," observed Avi. "And me with work to do today..."

"You're just dying to use your own spackle and grout aren't you?"

Breakfast done, we went outside and sat on the stairs of the driveway portico to watch Jen and Stacey go to work - and to make up our minds whether or not to join them. Stacey was one of Janice's friends who gone over to Jenny's side and stayed there. As sore as we were at Janice, we sorta felt disloyal hanging around with Stacey as a friend of Jenny's, especially since we were on friendly terms with Stacey when she was with Janice. It's a strange, unspoken code of honor in these parts.

Eventually Jenny wandered over to ask us if we could borrow the frame of our Sukkah tent, she didn't trust the weather to stay dry while the building parts dried out and wanted to put a plastic tarp over everything just in case. We hauled some of the wooden poles out from our garage till our back started up with us and we had to stop.

Good thing we were friends with a world-class engineer. Jenny built for us a metal stand with a bench that we hung over the side of our dock which was in front of and to the right of the Platt family's boathouse. Under the bench was a row of perforated tubes that we hooked up to an air compressor so we could have bubbles massage us as we sat in it. We sat in that as Jen and Stacey secured her building model. When they were done, they leapt into the creek to cool off, emerging from beyond the boathouse. Jenny swam over to us while Stacey continued across the creek to head for her home.

"Ohhh, I could get used to this," she sighed as she eased into the bubble stream.

"Too bad you couldn't figure out how to aim these better," We replied. "Then we wouldn't need to worry about boyfriends!"

"Well let that be a lesson to put it down in your engineering proposal," she shot back as the wake from a passing boater washed into us.

She waved and shouted, "Hey Kitty!" Turning to us, she noted," That's one of the Irelands..." Turning back to Kitty she warned, "Keep an eye out for Stacey will ya?"

A minute later we could here Kitty and Stacey hail each other in passing - the joys of small town living. Another minute later we heard another boater warn, "Hey Stacey! Watch out for 'Slappy'!"

That got Jenny's interest. "Slappy?"

"Slappy Gillman... Oh that's right you weren't here last summer. Seems this little thresher shark wandered in off the bay or something. Everyone calls him 'Slappy Gillman' cuz he likes to slap his dinner against peoples boat. Real funny character. Where you going Jenny?"

We saw Jenny dive towards her boathouse and disappear under the door. Not that it'd protect her any, it only closes down to just over the waterline. A minute later she reemerged coming back to us with a diving mask in hand. The one with the broken strap she didn't have the heart to throw away.

After a bit of panting, she declared, "I wish I had time to get that underwater camera of grammas," as she rinsed out the mask. It was pretty filthy from disuse.

"I thought only bull sharks went into rivers," said Jenny coming up for air.

"There's been a drought for the last couple years," opined Avi. "Maybe that's been letting sea fish get in closer. Hey... looks like Slappy's got himself a little buddy to play with..."

"They don't look too friendly... what are they doing?" All we could see were a pair of dorsals and tail fins swerving into each other with thrashing of water, like they were fighting over a piece of meat.

"They're... Yeah they're spawning. Ohhh... just gave her a 'pearl necklace'... OK... fish cloud comin' at us, everybody out!"

Shrieking 'Ew ew ew' all the way the three of us clambered onto the dock and made for the little outdoor shower stand to wash off the imaginary fish spawn.

"See... that's why I don't like to swim in natural water." Avi watched our torment with bemusement as Jenny washed her mouth out in the shower stream. Fully loaded, she shot a mouthful in his general direction. Hmmm... that didn't sound right somehow.

As we toweled off a van marked 'Flowers by Irina' lumbered into the Platt family driveway and stopped at their front door.

"Who'd be fool enough to send us flowers?" Jenny muttered, with a reasonably good guess as to who it might be.

Everyone in town knew the Platts was allergic to most forms of pollen and Jenny was no exception. One of the reasons they bought the old Moynahan place was to have as little lawn to mow as possible. Even then they ended up hiring some kid to do the yard work.

Staying upwind, she edged over to the van as the hapless driver went to raise the cargo door. Jenny blocked him by leaning a hand against the door.

"Hey little girlie... I'm trying to make a delivery. You mind?"

"Who for?"

"Jennifer Platt, you know her?"

"According to this... yer gettin' one from some guy named Albert and another from some guy named Walter... Gee, you're quite an operator..."

"Oh well," She sighed as she got out of his way. "Might as well have a look at 'em at least."

He opened the back and hauled out a couple baskets from the portable jungle that looked like the mid-priced businessman's model of their catalog line. Reeling from the aroma of fornicating plants, Jenny backed away from the van to find some uncorrupted air.

"Whew... Uck... Well, you're just gonna hafta take those back... On second thought... you wouldn't happen to know what hospital they took that surfer to? You know the one that's been in the news?"

"Gotta couple deliveries going there..."

"Got any extra cards? Figure somebody ought to get some use out of them."

"Gonna throw your hat in the 'Surf Angel' ring?"

"Sorry?"

"I've been getting calls all day from little gold-diggng teeny-boppers sayin' they're that 'Surf Angel' lady and they wanna send him flowers."

"Really? People do that? I'm just sending cuz he did work for my dad's company. Say, do you do those flowers by wire thing? I wanted to send something to this lady out of town... well... I suppose I ought to wait till she gets out of a coma... hang on a minute..."

Jenny darted into the house and back out with her checkbook and a fistful of crumpled bills and change.

"What do you charge for bouquets you made up already and the customer never picked up? I want to pay for these myself."

Proffering the wad of money, she added, "This is all I got for a tip. Sorry."

"Well they're yours already lady."

"I don't want 'em... but I don't want 'em to go to waste."

"Dahhhh... Alright! How 'bout two for the price of one?"

Deal settled, she filled out a check and made out some new cards for the bouquets. The florist was barely out of the driveway when N'eddie and The Professor pulled up in her old man's '59 Caddy.

"Like Le Freakin' Gare de Grande Centralle today," Jenny noted in a faux French she and N'eddie sometimes play with.

"Whoo! Ghetteaux Les Fabulous!" N'eddie replied with a flourish. "So... Whaddya got for me?"

"I had this idea coming back on the train," Jenny started to reply as she led us over to the backyard. "I figure this would go nicely in some of the new suburban office centers going up around the country. I have the 'sketch model' upstairs..."

Jenny brushed her hand against the plaster so see if it was dry enough. Satisfied, she picked up a wing and struggled to bring it to the core.

"It goes together like this... there's another wing on the other side..."

"Maybe... we better look at that 'sketch model'," The Professor suggested as he tried to help her with the wing.

"Yeah... I have preliminary drawings to show you as well..."

With that, they put the wing back on its sawhorse and, we all trooped up to the attic to her office studio. It was a fairly Spartan room, a metal file cabinet, a bookshelf loaded with architectural tracts and a disused golf bag holding a few of Jenny old schematics. The only extravagance was a desk she made from those glass blocks you used to see on ultramodern buildings.

"How did you get the curtains to do that?" The Professor had noticed a little trick design of Jenny's.

The attic room had this pair of quarter-moon window that were hell to design curtains for. Jenny got hold of a couple chromed exhaust pipes bent to follow the arch shape and cut some curtains to fit them.

"I put some fridgey magnets in the curtain rings so they'll stay in place," she explained with pride. "Even put 'em at an angle to the rings drop down like so..."

"I was thinking that if some developer opts to build the center section first, that's gonna be a big airfoil till the wings get put in...."

She pulled from one of the closets a set of drawings and a model of a square box held by springs between four poles.

"I got this idea from when I used to have alphabet soup as a kid. I'd try to get at a favorite letter by turning the bowl around but the letter would stay in its place - I didn't know about inertia back then."

"I figure you could float a big piece of concrete in a bowl of thick oil and connect the frame of the building to it with heavy springs. The wind would try to move the building out from under the mass of the concrete and the springs would slow it down... was gonna use it on the other building since the frame was so light. Good thing I forgot to bring that with me to work..."

"This is almost a good idea on its own... not that the architectural field doesn't need good marketing innovations. Gee, I feel like a kid in a candy store... I hate to sound greedy, but do you have anything else?"

"Well I wanted to do something special with the window panels, maybe see how thin I can take the mullions down to... Oh by the way. I have this article for Travel Panorama if you want it N'eddie. I figure a Dispatch From Desdemona ought to be nice for starters..."

N'eddie snatched up the article with all the glee of a kid getting an extra piece of chocolate as The Professor mentioned he needed to get back into The City.

"Oh just take the Caddy... You still got that scooter of yours Jen? Yeah, I'll take the train in. Leave the keys on my desk... I wanted to chat with Jen a little bit..."

She tossed him the keys and we all followed him down the stairs to the door. N'eddie followed him to the car to retrieve a parcel from the back seat.

"I got hold of some of those Rudi Gernreich 'monokini' swimsuits," she said, pulling one of them out of the bag and dangling it like she was holding a dead mouse by the end of its tail. "Thought it'd be fun to try 'em on for gits and shiggles..."

"Geeze, it looks like we could going clam digging in these things!"

The monokini was basically a highfalutin' version of bib overalls but without that 'farmer's daughter' sexual appeal. We noted the expanse of blank real estate over the stomach. Jenny noticed...

"The way your shoulders 'clamshell'... those straps'll never stay put... Hey, do we hafta give these back?"

"Shit, I forgot to ask," N'eddie replied, "If they make a fuss I'll just put 'em on the company account."

"OK I think I got something that'll work..."

Jenny rummaged through some old dress boxes to find a roll of 'spaghetti strap' she'd picked up in the Garment District - she was always looking for notions like that. In another box she pawed through a collection of metal bands. She took up her scissors and trusty crimping pliers - and what seamstress doesn't have a good set of crimping pliers? - to cut and clamp a few loops of strapping to the back. That was one problem solved.

N'eddie and Jenny sat us down in Evelyn's fancy Louis the XIV settee and disappeared into the changing room to put on their suits. A few minutes of snapping elastic, laughter and the general sounds of two people cutting up with each other with a final 'Take off that bra, you cheater!', the two of them emerged to show off their assets.

"I don't know... I always thought my tummy was the best part on me," Jenny noted as she tried to tug the suit down further. "Anyway, you've got the good breasts..."

Which brings to mind a Panorama feature written by Lady Desdemona called 'The Architecture of the Breast' in which she tried to delineate a difference between 'tits', 'breasts' and 'boobs' - with 'tits' being small, pointy and with no 'overhang', boobs being large - nearly as 'tall' as they were 'wide' - and rounded with 'the aureola following the line of curvature'. Breasts were the 'happy medium' - generally less than half as tall as wide and looking like 'egg yolks sliding down a pan'.

"Awww we like your little pears Jennums... Pears are a nice subtle fruit."

Thinking maybe we were talking about her, N'eddie interjected "Hey, at least mine match..." Giving our boobs another looking over, she quickly corrected herself. "Huh! I'll be damned... You really are identical twins!"

"Anyway... I gotta go with the twins," N'eddie agreed as she tried tugging the suit down a little more. "You're tall and thin so you can see some skin under yours... These things look like granny panties on me. Maybe if they put a hole in the midriff..."

"Bet Janice'd love these.," Jenny opined. "She likes getting nekkid, but she's been worried about her stomach since having the two kids..."

Jenny rounded up some babushka scarves for us all to tie around our waists which made all the difference in the world.

"A thousand dollars each if you two show up at the town beach in those," we challenged.

"You're not gonna want us to go in the water are you? Cuz I'm not goin' in there till the next rainstorm at least." We'd forgotten about those naughty fish.

"Well... uhhh," N'eddie wavered. "I'm gonna need a lot more color on me before I can go out in public... These puppies are liable to blind airline pilots right now..."

In the end, we all grabbed some lawn chairs from the storage bin by the furnace and trooped up to the second floor where Jenny drew some old sheets from the linen closet to take out to the balcony over the front porch. It was apparently never intended to have people on it, since we were obliged to crawl out the window from her fathers room to get out to it. By draping some of the sheets over the porch railings, we could catch our tan and preserve some degree of modesty for the passing townies. With a sodie each from the fridge, and Jenny's father's extension phone by her side we could roast in luxury.

"I figure we got maybe an hour and a half of sun time before we'll hafta think about finding a new spot," Jenny loosely calculated as she wound a kitchen timer and set it for twenty minutes.

"I gotta bail at around twelve-thirty. One of us has a day job for this summer..."

"Well we eventually gotta get an act together for our little show at the Oklahoma Pavilion..."

"I gotta set up an appointment with Grandma Fitzgerald to get my trust fund settled..."

"When you look at a patch of blue sky," Jenny threw to the forum. "Do you see little concentric ripples of black like grainy film?"

Three lazy yeahs in sequence replied. Jenny let the subject drift away. The kitchen timer eventually went off and we all flipped over to give our backs a turn under the flames of Helios. Nothing was said for the next twenty minutes.

On the next flip we had something to ask Jenny.

"How come you never asked questions about us? Everybody else does..."

"I don't know... I guess maybe I'm not curious about that sort of thing.... no... that's not it... well I only used to see you for the summer. Any thing I might've wanted to ask I'd forget about or someone else'd ask you first..."

"Well is there anything you want to know about?"

"I can't think of anything right now."

"I can..."

N'eddie always had the best questions.

"I assume you guys jerk off..."

"Yes..."

"Doesn't that make you queer?"

"Geeze, we use a dildo... or a vibrator... and we think of guys when doing it."

"You guys have your own chooch?"

"No just the one. There's nerves going to both sides of us."

"That's still gotta feel weird," N'eddie pondered as she rubbed the palm of her hand against the side of her sodie bottle.

"Well what you guys ever wonder about us? Or do you?" Leave it to Jenny to find the most difficult question of them all.

"The only question we have... is one we'll eventually have the answer to ourselves... and it's not really something we're looking forward to..."

We were saved by the bell of the kitchen timer from having to go any further. It was time for N'eddie to leave.

"I feel like a 'second storey man'," N'eddie quipped as she crawled back through the window. "Hope the cops aren't watching us..."

"Mind the book," Jenny warned. One of the sash cords had rotted out so she needed to keep a book in the window to prop it open. "You can use the shower over there. Let it run a few seconds. They flushed the hydrants lasts Monday. Don't remember if mom did Dads rooms or not."

"Hey Jenn... You ever notice how your clothes smell even if you only had em off for an hour?"

"Ezzie showed me this spray stuff they use on the railroad for that. Gonna hafta order some of that..."

"I'm leaving the key on top of the TV. Just a suggestion but could you maybe leave it in the company lot and walk the couple of blocks to the station? Don't want the Long Island Railroad bitching at me if I take my time picking it up off their lot.... like the last time..."

"Not a problem!"

We were still on our stomachs when N'eddie putt-putted Jenny's little seafoam blue Montgomery Ward scooter down the driveway and made the turn into town.

"Gonna set this for fifteen minutes so we don't get too far out of phase," Jenny decided as she laid down on her stomach to carry on with our tanning session.

The next bell to ring was from the telephone. Jenny answered with an 'mmm-mmph?' and listened to whatever the other end had to say.

"I don't work there anymore," she mumbled and hung up the phone.

"I took everything I wanted when I left... and I didn't take anything from the office," she muttered wearily this time before hanging up.

"Oldest trick in the book," she declared. "When they want to see you again, they tell you you left something behind. Just like those idiots who pull up to you when you're walking at night and go 'Hey you dropped something back there', supposedly so you'll go of your nut looking for it. Like stuff just flies out of your pockets for no good reason - and they just so happened to be driving by when it does."

Another ring. This time it was the clock. Looking skyward again, we could see that Helios' chariot was just getting in line with the outer tines on the Platt's TV aerial. Any time now.

"I figure by the time it takes for us to finish lunch , well be able to continue this on the other side..."

Good thing our upstairs porch was in the back. And good thing Jenny brought the phone out with her - yet another ring. This time from someone wanting a comment on that Albert Towley hit piece.

"What would be the point? People read that column so they can despise someone they'll never meet in real life without any consequences. Why should I spoil their fun with a pesty little thing like my side of the story? Anyway, if I had those facts in front of me. I would've written the same thing..."

"Because that was a private conversation... Look... I don't make policy,, I'm not trying to get in the Society Page and I'm not in show business..."

"I should think Mis'ess Kennedy has borne all the exploitation and loss of privacy that can be brought to bear on a single human being's lifetime as it is... and she doesn't need the likes of me dragging her into some cheap publicity stunt. Good bye!"

After slamming down the receiver, Jenny turned off the ringer so we could watch Helios ride in peace for the last few minutes before lunch.

"Sick little me... years ago I was hiking through some woods with my sister and we were passing this troop of Girl Scouts... I can still remember one of them sticking her arms out so I couldn't get by... we finally over took them and as we were going away they started yelling for us like we were part of their troop or something...

Jenny raised her legs to leverage herself upright. "Oh well at least I'm not being accused of m..."

"OK... where can I touch it? Right there? OK... we're gonna roll you on your side... OK... OK, get the phone... Oh... shit!"

We'd forgotten it was a dial-less extension phone. Then we remembered something from the movies.

"Just hit the receiver button ten times fast..."

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

"Hello, this the operator speaking, how may I direct your call?"

"Hello? We need an ambulance! One-twelve Ocean... In The Village... Yeah the Moynahan place... It's Jenny... Yeah... Her leg... the muscle just windowshaded on her. She's in a lot of pain. Hurry..."

We threw down the handset to attend to Jenny.

"Ohgahh...Why won't it stop hurting!"

We could take no more and pulled a needle pen full of painkillers from our purse to show to her.

"Jen? We got this stuff for when our back gets real bad. You wanna take a chance on it?"

All we got back was a frozen stare from two terrified eyes. We were going to have to make the decision on our own. Try and stop the pain now or give her something she might react badly to later. Now we knew what it really felt like to be all alone.

The distant call of sirens, horns and screeching tires made our minds up for us. In a small town. things happen pretty quick.

"Jenny.... the ambulance is on the way. Just try and hold on a little more..."

Almost inevitably, Sheriff Misener was the first one on the scene. Spotting us on the balcony, he disappeared into the house and a few stomping sounds up stairways later, his head emerged through the window.

Camelot should have more steadfast defenders of maidens in distress.

He took a moment to assess the curled mass of sobbing agony below him before reaching out with a comforting hand.

"Don't worry little buddy. We're gonna get you fixed up right away." Grabbing the receiver of the phone he started issuing orders. "Is there anyone on this line? Margie? This is the sheriff... No... she's not lookin' good. I want you to get hold of Doctor Burkhart... get him off the golf course if you hafta. I want him to meet us in the emergency room... Yeah, he know what stuff Jenny can have... After that I want you to get hold of Jenny's parents... Her father's at the office... Her mother? Just call the N.B.C. operator..."

He finally had enough time to take in peripheral information about the scene, like the fact that the window had been floating on his neck all this time. He took his nightstick to prop it open. He also had a better look at us.

Averting his eyes he noted, "Looks like you two are out of uniform..."

"Uhm... Yeah... Could you just throw us a shirt from the dresser?"

At this point we couldn't remember if our stuff was down cellar or up in the bedroom. All we had was a towel and that was going over Jenny. A nice red flannel shirt was hurled in our general direction.

Margie must've called on everyone as the a fire engine arrived right alongside the ambulance, not that they wouldn'tve come on their own accord upon hearing Jenny was hurt over the radio.

"Hey one of you guys take a ladder up to the porch," Sheriff Misener commanded "She's really close in under the window and I don't want you stepping all over her."

We couldn't help feeling Jenny's wince at the thought of a bunch of burly firemen stomping around in her father's room. We grabbed the sheets we'd had over the balustrade to cover up Jenny and to make a wedge for her left leg so it wasn't sitting on top of the injured one. The fireman who came up on the ladder brought up a rescue litter behind him and Jenny was eased into in.

Now the question was whether to send her down the ladder or through the window and down the hall stairs. With not much room for people to move around on the porch and since the tar covered porch floor wasn't to confidence inspiring, she was sent back through the window.

"Would it make you feel better up if we told you it was gonna hafta come off?"

"Well... if they gave me a peg leg and a parrot... I could be a pirate!" Jenny was ever the hopeful one.

Jenny's doctor was in the hospital parking lot, golf cap in hand, to meet and follow us into the emergency room.

"This has got to be the worst suntanning accident in sporting history," Jenny deadpanned.

Doctor Burkhart was up to the challenge. Taking one look, he declared with mock outrage, "My god... This was no 'suntanning accident'!"

With that mood, Jenny was wheeled past the waiting room and assigned an examining room. As Doctor Burkhart evaluated the leg one of the nurses came out with paperwork to deal with. We whipped out our checkbook to make sure they knew she was a paying customer.

The prognosis wasn't as bad as we'd thought. It looked like all that she'd need were muscle relaxants and a cast to immobilize the leg. The bruising looked worrisome, maybe they'd have to be drained, but it looked like there'd be no need to operate.

"I suppose that's a relief... about the only thing going for me is my legs... They really got a workout when I was going to school in Pittsburgh..."

Then Jenny got mysterious.

"Uh guys... whoever's got their elbow on my chest would they please get it off? It's really starting to dig in..."

Everybody looked around mystified. There was nobody's elbow on her chest. Our first thought was that blood clots had worked loose from her leg and were rattling around in her heart. An EKG machine was called for and hooked up to her chest. Heart rate was elevated and slowly escalating.

"Oh god... it was those Darvons... they gave me Darvons in that other hospital..."

Pulling out the needle pen of painkillers we inquired, "We hate to ask but would this have done her any good?"

"It's for if our back really starts bugging us."

"When we're done with Jenny, you better let me have a look at that... Oh Christ, she's going into V fib... get that machine... the defibrillator..."

The EKG machine had gone from rapid beats to a Dick Dale guitar solo and another machine was wheeled in. Even though we'd recently taken a nursing course in college, this device, a box of electronics with a pair of handball mitts attached by curly wires, was new to us.

"You really picked a good day Jenny, we just got certified on this unit, Doctor Burkhart noted with the enthusiasm of a kid with a new toy. "OK! Clear!"

Now... we should've had some inkling of what a defibrillator did when we heard the sound of capacitors charging up. All we thought of is that whatever it did, it was probably going to send her injured leg flying off so we went to hold it in place when Doctor Burkhart applied the paddles. For a moment we could've sworn we could feel electricity go in one hand and out the other as we were sent flying into the wall with a truncated scream from Jenny the last thing we heard before going down to the floor. So after Jenny we were the second and third people in Suffolk county to be defibrillated.

"Oh god... I think we're losing her... no... those kids knocked the leads off... heart rates at fifty... OK she's coming back..."

We laid on the floor in a daze watching Jenny's reflection in the ceiling - for ease of maintenance they used these blue Vitrolite tiles. In our delirium we thought it was Jenny's soul trapped against the ceiling. We saw her reaching for the wire of the light fixture that stuck out of her chest and then look to an unseen figure on her left. Reading her lips, we could dope out that she was talking to Scott.

We couldn't make out any more because we were finally hauled out of the operating room to go through the ordeal of waiting in the lobby with all the other poor souls. At least we got a wheelchair for our troubles. And we got to use that needle pen of painkillers after all. Sweet, sweet painkillers.

Jenny's hollow carcass was wheeled into the intensive care unit so they could fiddle with the mix of painkillers, muscle relaxants and anti-psychotic medications for a while. She'd once described a similar childhood experience as that moment of panic you get when you've leaned too far back in your chair and you're just about to tip over. All... day... long...

"Electrolytes are a little off balance... she'd had been under a heavy physical strain recently... that day at sea without food really did a number on her... but with her excellent physical condition, she has a better chance than most people. We've got her under sedation so her heart can have a chance to recover. Her leg is in a brace so her calf muscles can heal on their own. She's in no condition for surgery right now so hopefully she'll get one more decent break."

"One more?" Father Platt was dubious.

"If she had been at work... or on the town... or on one of her little sailing trips... It was pure luck that we still had our defibrillator equipment set up. It was a training model and the salesman was supposed to pick it up today but he was running late..."

"When is she going to be able to come home?" Evelyn opened her mental appointment book. She might be able to get two weeks off even with the run-up to the Olympics coming but Jenny was going to have to be passed around the family.

"She's going to need at least two or three weeks here. If all goes well, we can send her to the Idyllbrook clinic to start working on her leg."

"Do you think we can we see her now?" Our back had been damaged to the point that we had to have surgery, so we were going back to Oklahoma for the next two weeks at least.

"Well you can... but I don't think she can see you back. She's pretty out of it right now."

Jenny was propped up in a reclining position with one tube in her arm and another drawing blood from her leg. Her hair was down and unkempt and she had nothing more fashionable on than a seafoam blue hospital gown and that ID bracelet they give you. Her eyes were open but they really weren't focused on anything - at least till we came into view.

"Now I know why the G.E. mom likes locomotives so much," she mumbled with all her strength. "They're gonna have fun getting that Alco 'four six four' out of the bullpen at Yankee Stadium..."

"The Bolivian fish paralyzer industry is in deep mourning as we speak," we replied.

The 'G.E. mom' was a fanciful creation of Jenny's based on a few panels from a General Electric instruction manual showing some mom looking wistfully at a portable TV set while her son does the dishes - only the TV set was clearly showing no picture.

As if we needed any more encouragement that Jenny'd be fine, she meekly added, "At least I'll be able to pee in a bucket for the next few weeks. It's like I'll be workin' for The City!"

"Guess you better take your pick and go to bed..."

We were putting on a brave face ourselves, we didn't tell Jenny that our back had finally given up on us and was shooting these little spiky tendrils of pain as we spoke to her. We flopped into a wheelchair like we were a couple lazy slobs taking advantage of a free ride and rolled ourselves into the hallway to give her parents some time with Jenny, to have a smoke and to make some decisions over our medical predicament. Back was settling down to a dull ache, but there's no telling what a train ride or an airplane flight might do for it. We rolled over to a pay phone to make a call to our parents back home. We filled them in on what happened to Jenny before hitting them with the reason for calling.

"What do you suppose it would cost to have our doctor fly over here and do the surgery? One hospital ought to be as good as another. You think we can swing it?"

They would've flown Jenny to Oklahoma if that's what it took. It was going to take our doctor clearing his schedule and it would take getting clearance from Jenny's hospital - you can't just walk into a strange hospital and take over their operating room. A dozen or so phone calls back and forth later and our doctor and his surgical team was booked on the next flight so we booked our room here.

"Better make it a double. We're expecting a guest."

Our spine was feeling well enough for us to go with the Platts to take out a little extra insurance with the man upstairs. Since our temple was in Oklahoma and not wanting to make any more enemies on the other side, we followed them into Jenny's church which was a 'shingle style' affair with this large window over the door patterned after Ezekiel's 'wheel inside a wheel'.

The pastor took a moment to offer a prayer for Jenny, news travels fast in a small town, and continued with the regular ceremony. We sat discreetly in the back and offered our own prayer.

"Jenny's one of the good ones. We'd think she'd be worth more to you down here than up there."

We did get to visit her in California. She had rented this nice little rancher in hilly area of Los Angeles within sight of a nearby oil field - just so we'd feel more at home, she kidded, referring to the wells on our ranch. We remember suggesting she come visit the ranch, an idea she wasn't opposed to but she felt that somehow it would never get to happen, that something would always come up.

Someone who did come up was Mister Carson, who came up from The City after finishing his show. He tried his best to comfort us but all we could think about are all those readers of that nasty little column that might've said a prayer against Jenny, not caring if a real human being got hurt.

"The last thing she was talking about was how she didn't want Miss Kennedy to keep getting bothered about all this. She wouldn't even say anything in her own defense."

"I got a call at home about the time when that piece I did from my desk aired... It was Jenny asking me not to do anything else about it. Well actually... She said that since she hadn't asked me to say anything on her behalf in the first place she didn't have the right to ask me to stop saying anything, but she made it clear that she wanted to let the whole thing drop."

"I asked her why she didn't issue some sort of statement. She said that the Son of Our Lord was facing certain death from his accusers and he kept his mouth shut and if that was good enough for him, it ought to be good enough for the likes of her."

"To think all we had to offer for her 'Last Supper' were some cans of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs" God help us, we loved the stuff.

"This was supposed to be her 'extra time'," we sulked.

"Well hey... Buck up now... She's still with us." father Platt reminded us. "Not dead yet..."

"Actually, Doctor Burkhart thought she might've left us for a minute," Evelyn noted. "Said her eyes were fixed and dilated for at least a minute before they got her pulse back."

"We saw her talking to Scott for a few seconds. Thought we did anyway..."

""She just called his by his name... like she was surprised to see him. Couldn't make out anything else. They dragged us out of the room by then..."

The service was over by this time and the room was forming a receiving line to extend their well wishes to the Platts in general and to Jenny in the specific. Such was the town's regard for Jenny, that everyone who took notice of the presence of a major television personality in their midst said something like, 'Didn't know Jenny was friends with you...'. His reply was something about how 'us small town kids like to stick together'.

Everyone loves to write about how everyone knows your business in a small town like that's a bad thing, but they forget that people in a small town also tend to pick up on what you're about and on what treatment you rate. We'd always thought it odd that an 'independent' type like Jenny would take to small town living as much as she did. Her general reply was a saying from the Fatherland 'To live alone and free like a tree, but in the brotherhood of the forest'.

We mentioned our change of surgical plans to the Platts who suggested it might be a good idea if we didn't mention it to Jenny until after the fact so she didn't have that worry on what's left of her mind - not that we hadn't already planned on that course of action. The Platts had family business to attend to at home so it was left to Carson to drive us back to the hospital.

"You know what you ought to do when you get out of surgery," Carson said in a conspiratorial tone. "When you come to... look around like something went wrong and then yell really loud 'Hey! You switched heads on us!'"

We had a bit of a chuckle at that. Didn't have the heart to tell him Jenny had suggested that the last time we went under the knife almost a decade ago.

"Problem is... we don't react the same to anesthetics... I'll be all bright eyed and bushy-tailed.... and I'll be out like a jazz trumpeter after an eight day heroin jag."

"You don't say... so what are they going to do to you? Not gonna break up the set are they?"

"Oh heavens no. They were planning on doing some cutting and grinding on some back bones that didn't form properly. Supposedly that would relieve pressure on some of the discs. With our back getting all growly they might hafta fuse a few more bones."

"Last time they had to cut bits of our ribcage apart so we'd have more space for our lungs and so our heads wouldn't get so squished together... We used to be able to look at right each other"
Pulling into the Brunswick Hospital lot, Carson quipped, "Gee... I hope they don't find out about the AMF bowling ball in my trunk."

We arrived in time to see a visibly shaken Stacey being comforted by Paul. They on their way out. N'eddie was still finishing up her visit, so we kept out of Jenny's line of sight. Her voice had been reduced to low mumbles with a periodic gasp every couple of minutes - like someone who'd been leaning back in their chair too far.

"...Come on now! Relax a little... We can't have a wounded soldier in 'The Cause'! Look... I tell you what... when you get out of here, I'll have some body builders over to the house for a photo shoot and we'll have ourselves a nice man-candy pool party. Oughta see if that ticker of yours is still any good, huh?"

"Ugh... I just know that girl... the one I was in a fight with... back in the old days... is gonna show up... and put something in my IV or something... or somebody who reads that damned World Telegram... Uck... almost be doing me a favor..."

"You want I should get Sheriff Misener to post a guard?"

He'd do it in a heartbeat if he even thought Jenny might worried about someone. Probably run the girl in if he could find her on the island.

Jenny took a long time before giving a weary but definitive 'Noooo...'.

She cycled through a few more gasps before adding, "I just wanna go ho-o-o-me..."

"If I thought you could get outta that bed, I'd back the car right up to the window for you..."

Jenny could barely lift her arms. N'eddie gently picked up the left one, which didn't have any tubes coming out of it and laid it fairly low on Jenny's stomach.

"In case you want to have a little fun for yourself, you won't hafta go too far... No? You sure?"

She let Jenny's arm slide back down by the nurse call button. That must've done it for Naomi, because it was all she could do to keep her composure as she bade her farewell and made the turnaround for the door. The horrified woman who faced us in the hallway bore only a passing resemblance to the happy-go-lucky girl we knew (and sometimes even loved) as N'eddie.

Seeing us and Carson, her protective instincts kicked in, "Uhmm... Maybe you shouldn't go in there. I don't think Jenny'd want you to see her like this. You know how she is..."

That hadn't occurred to her. "What the fuck happened?"

"She was just getting up out of her chair... and her leg just... just... went out on her."

Even we couldn't believe how this had started.

"Fire department had to help get her off the porch."

Now she started trying to figure how close in time she might've been to Jenny's moment of crisis. Funny the natural impulse that makes people do that.

"Well... When did this happen?"

"You were probably halfway to Jamaica... maybe fifteen twenty minutes after you left. Figure another thirty for when her heart did the Wipe Out drum solo..."

"Wait... Wait... Now... How the fuck do you get a heart attack from a lousy stinkin' Charley horse?"

"She was on the table when it happened. We thought maybe a blood clot mighta broke loose... Doctor Burkhart says its from when she was out in the bay... electrolytes went out of balance."

"Just like that..."

"Just like that," we replied in that weary 'C'est le vie' manner the French do so well.

Well I don't I feel like the kid playing Left Out in a game of sandlot baseball," quipped Carson.

"Awww... we're so sorry bubbie," N'eddie cooed while giving him a good old-fashioned 'Jewish grandmother' hug. Speaking of grandmothers, Dorothea, the one on her father's side arrived with Sheriff Misener close behind. This time the ward nurse intercepted them.

"Jenny's had too many visitors as it is and she needs her rest," She declared with the authority to stand down a Marine. They joined us in the hallway to look in on her from a distance.

"I just figured I'd check in on her while I was on patrol," Sheriff Misener stated while giving Jenny the once-over from the doorway. "Heart attack.... Damn! She must've holding herself together for the last few days by sheer willpower."

From the look on Sheriff Misener's face, he was mentally pulling the file on that case and thinking of what excuse he'd use to run that girl in.

"You know," We intervened. "We never told Jenny this... but that girl actually showed up at our ranch a few years back. Seems she was on one of those 'twelve step' programs and was on the 'making amends' part..."

"Well that certainly takes a lot of crust," Dorothea declared, betraying traces of her North German upbringing as a minister's daughter.

"Yeah she gave us her whole sad life story... Apparently she was one of those 'troubled' kids and all that... went on about how her run-in with Jenny got her addicted to painkillers. When she finally hit bottom, she turned her life over to The Church. Was on her way to a monastery or something..."

"Funny enough," Neddie added. "She sorta despised the whole 'making amends' concept. Thought of it as a selfish and irritating thing to do someone who's life you just messed up. Remember her saying that if you're really sorry about what you did, you should just leave the person the hell alone. Don't go pushing yourself back into people's lives just so you can soothe your miserable conscience..."

"I'd say she picked that up from our side of the family," opined Dorothea, "but she always had her own ideas when it comes to matters of faith. She was very interested in the concept of purity of action. You know, it shows up in her buildings. She showed me this really lovely one on stilts..."

Carson picked it up from there, "We had an interesting discussion on the concept of Free WIll and those public apologies people in the news sometimes have to make. She ended up concluding that with all the coercion involved, they're not worth the paper they're printed..."

The sound of a dropped medicine tray and a pair of screams from the intensive care ward interrupted him and on instinct, we all rushed into the room to see what was the matter. Incredibly, Jenny was on her knee fully upright - as if straddling a surfboard we thought - shrieking 'Get off him! Get off him!' while swinging and stabbing the pole holding her IV bags at the hapless nurse who finally managed to find shelter behind the foot of her bed. The life and death struggle over, Jenny began to 'row' with the pole for a few minutes before sinking back to the bed.

As soon as she was on her feet, and ignoring her own injuries, she went right into damage assessment. Even though the IV holder was bent with a couple of the wheels knocked off and even though the IV bags were splattered on the floor, the connecting tubes were still firmly attached to Jenny's arm. The leads to the EKG machine however has been torn away at the plugs with the brackets holding the machine to the wall bent downwards slightly.

An impressed N'eddie remarked, "When we were kids, we used to call her the 'Atom Bomb Baby' on account of all the energy she could let loose... Oh hey... you're bleeding..."

Jenny laid motionless save for the rise and fall of her chest, eyes wide open in a thousand-mile stare as the nurse was relieved by other staff to have her wounds tended to. For all of Jenny's violence, she got off pretty easy with a few bumps and bruised and a gash to the scalp where one of the wheels grazed her.

"Gee, I'd hate to have been whoever she was fighting against for real... What do you suppose she meant by 'get off of him'?"

"Well," Sheriff Misener recalled, "we found a dead shark out in the bay yesterday with the left side of his head caved in by what looked like a boat oar..."

"Wasn't there something about that surfer kid getting bitten by a shark?" Carson was having a go at piecing the puzzle together. "Saw something about the kid saying something jumped on top of him in the water..."

"From what I saw on the news," the nurse recalled, "he'd been scalped by something but they didn't say what with. Maybe she clocked him by accident... Did a pretty good job patching him up...

Pondering her fresh wounds she asked, "I wonder what set her off?"

"We heard you drop a tray on the floor." It was our turn for questions. "Was that before or after she started swinging at you?"

"Before... I remember because I went to pick up everything and when I stood back up she was waiting for me..."

"Yeah... that woulda done it. She's got this thing about loud crashing sounds. A suicide jumper landed right next to her in front of the Empire State Building. Damn near killed her..."

"No... Didn't see the point," We replied. "She knows what her problem is and where it comes from so why spend a buncha money to have some fool head shrinker go and tell her it's all stems from her relationship with her mother or something stupid like that?"

"Anyway," we continued, "it's not like it crops up all the time... OK... one puking incident last monday but that's it..."

Announcing herself with a long moan, Jenny mumbled, "Uhmmm... Hey... could you guys please keep it down? I'm supposed to be getting some rest..."

Our eyes rolled right through the ear canal, into the other head and back again at that one.

"Well... you heard what the lady said," N'eddie commanded with a wave of her arms. "Everyone... Vamanos! Out... You don't hafta go home, butcha can't stay here so let's make like a tree and photosynthesize carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbohydrates people!"

As N'eddie wheeled us out to the lobby, a thought occurred to us.

"You know... with everything that's happened today, we forgot to finish filling out Jenny's admission papers."

"Oh, her dad took care of that stuff. I told him I was having our company take care of her hospital stay. Figured he didn't need to be worrying about that..."

"Oh... well we said were going to take care of that..."

"Yeah but I can write it off as a business expense since she was going to work for us."

"Suppose we kick in half and you tell the government you paid the whole thing?"

"No... I don't think Jenny would go for that. You know how she is with ethics..."

"Yeah... well, we're payin' for the TV rental then," we said defiantly. We had to draw the line somewhere.

With our concern directed to Jenny's plight, we'd so far been able to tolerate the pain our back had been giving us even in the relative comfort of a wheelchair. By shifting our weight from one side to the other, only one of us would have to take the full amount of discomfort at any given time.

Even though it was now well past the dinner hour, we were an interesting enough medical case that we could still get the kind of services that normally had to wait till daytime. Indeed, the little bunker in the X-ray room the lab guy dives behind was as crowded as the ones we'd seen in movies about the A-bomb tests as we got our innards photographed for posterity.

"Hope you're not gonna sell copies of those in the playground at medical school," we quipped.

"Uh oh... they're on to us," was the reply from the boys in the bunker.

"Any of you doctors Jewish and single by any chance? Our mother wants to know... No?"

We gathered another crowd in the examining room when practically half the night shift took turns checking our heartbeats and other vital signs. You'd think we'd be used to this sort of attention but really we weren't. Maybe it was on account of the experience of showing us off at the Worlds Fair or maybe they just got sick and tired of being stopped on the street every time they took us anywhere, but our parents determinedly kept us sheltered from the outside world growing up.

For instance, we had our own little private school set up on the ranch that we shared with our brother and the kids of some of the ranch hand. Any trips we took were by Pullman, motorcar or chartered plane. When traveling we stayed at motel or rental homes to avoid having to go through crowded hotel lobbies. We got most of our medical care in Oklahoma and they were long used to us as were the people we knew in Amityville and the small town near our ranch.

For the gathered audience of medicine men, we showed off our repertoire of little tricks like 'coasting' where only one of us works our breathing muscles - that was a trick you had to take our word on since we hadn't figured out a way to prove only one of us was doing the work. We also had a more provable trick where one of us inhaled while the other exhaled. One trick that we couldn't do was having one of us hold our breath while the other breathed normally. It seems that carbon dioxide buildup triggers the need for the next breath in us just like everyone else.

Other marvels included the observation that our blood pressures and pulses varied slightly from side to side though we personally suspect the differences were within the margin of error expected between readings from two people. Body temperatures were within a point and a half of each other - again within an expected margin of error - though in theory, we could've swapped thermometers.

He found that it was worse than expected, at least two joints were visibly swollen and painful to the touch. A closer examination of the X-rays showed that the bone spurs our doctor had been concerned with were now the only things holding our backbones apart in places.

"Guess we'll hafta give up our dream of being a jackhammer operator, won't we?"

"Afraid so..." When your doctor grimaces while looking at your chart, it can't be a good thing.

"...suppose our backup career in professional wrestling is out too."

"Well... you will be able to dance... they still do the Peppermint Twist anymore?"

"Oh, that went out with the Watusi... all the kids are doing the Frug now... We used to love doing the Madison with Jenny..."

"All kidding aside... Was wondering something...." Pointing to a specific white blob on our X-rays, "Looking at this spot here... at least one of you ought to be in screaming pain right now."

"Huh.... Must be in a dead spot. We have a few little patches where neither of us have nerves going to 'em. We have a couple crossover spots too..."

"Must've been a fun time mapping that out."

"It was a fun time after. We used to make drinking money getting tested at the medical college. Our dad got real sore about that. He's worried we'll end up like the Dionne quintuplets or something."

He would've been really thrilled to find out we had planned on doing a birthday appearance at the Worlds Fair this October. Oh well, even with the loss of a couple weeks on account of a hospital stay, we'd still have enough lead time for that. Assuming that we don't die on the table or something.

With all our worries over Jenny we forgot about how much we dreaded going under the knife ourselves. It wasn't till we were wheeled into our room and tucked into bed that it really hit us with a cold shiver that no amount of blankets could still. It's not the usual fear of death or pain that bothered us most, we get the same shivering cringe at the mere thought of that awful toothpaste they use at the dentist, it was more like the sinking feeling you get having choked down one of those nasty barium preparations only to be handed a second one to try and pound down.

"Do you supposed if we don't make it, they'll let us stay together on the other side?"

"Suppose it depends on which way we're going..."

"Yes... Would be funny if we have to go our separate ways..."

"Then we'd know for certain which way we were going, now wouldn't we?"

We certainly would.

We finally had enough of the morbid stuff and turned to the television to try and get our mind off things.

No... click... No... click... No... click... No... click... No... click... No... click... Off.

Funny how little television we watch.

As we laid there listening to the sounds from a passing thundershower, our thoughts drifted around to all the things poor Jenny had been going through in the last few days. We were at least thankful that she came in with just a swimsuit on and half of one at that. One of the things that always bothered us when we had to go in for surgery was that worrying about what happened to the stuff you came in with as you're coming out of the ether.

Then we remembered that the building model Jenny had been all excited about was still sitting outside waiting for her to finish working on it. We couldn't help being reminded of the sad little story of this dog who used to show up at the railroad platform to greet his master at the end of the day and kept doing so long after his master had died. It didn't help that we grew up around indians who passed on to us the belief that inanimate objects had a little bit of the spirit of their creator imparted onto them.

'Funny how little television we watch.' Funny how a simple observation could trigger our memory. It was one of those car conversations we'd had with Jenny only a few days ago. We'd arrived at Pann Station that last Friday for our summer residency and Jenny had taken the afternoon off to take us into town. Since her brother was working on the project, she was able to park where the taxis used to pick up - a spot now occupied by construction trailers.

"Really starting to dig into the poor beast aren't they now," we remarked as she led us through the maze of construction fences and tunnels to get to her car.

Being used to unconventional thinking on Jenny's part, we took little notice as Jenny headed for the Lincoln Tunnel toll plaza. With the 'rush hour' over, traffic in New Jersey would've thinned out enough to bypass the always dense city traffic she once explained.

So we'd take the scenic route up the Jersey Turnpike through the Meadowlands on our way up to the George Washington Bridge. We'd touch Manhattan briefly before continuing on the Cross Bronx to the Throgs Neck Bridge and onto the Cross-Island, finally turning on to the Southern State.

Passing the forest of television aerials of Nassau county Jenny couldn't help observing. "You know... we're probably the last generation to see any of the real America... before it got replaced with all of this... Ersatzen..."

"Ersatzen?" The word was familiar to us, but since Jenny was speaking in the German sense, we didn't want to commit ourselves.

"Yeah.. everything today looks like a cheap substitute for better stuff in the past."

"But they say that about every generation don't they?"

"Yeah.. but this time it's like everything all at once is different... And it's not like it's all that bad. It's just different..."

She continued with a tone of artifice that made us wonder if this rant wasn't all a put-on.

"You got these ersatz neighborhoods over here that are nothing like what we grew up with in The Village, and erstatz apartment blocks in The City that are nothing like the brownstones and cliff dwellings they're replacing. You go to work in an ersatz office, the kids go to ersatz schools to learn the 'new' ersatz math. You turn on the radio and there's ersatz Rock 'n Roll music. When you get hungry, you can go out to an erstatz restaurant like HoJo's or this McDonalds place they have out in L.A. or just have an erstatz frozen dinner to enjoy as you watch the ersatz world go by on you television set."

"Gee... Never took you for one of the Beatnik crowd..."

"See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! Even the intellectuals are Ersatzen!"

"Yeah...it's the same with me.. You know all the stories I used to write? I always think of them as radio plays. Wish they still had those... I just can't sit there and watch someone else's stories go by... I wonder why..."

"Maybe it's because we weren't born into the habit like those so called 'baby boomers' everybody yammers on about like they were the first children ever born in this world."

"Ugh! The 'Second Marriage Kids'..." The subject of 'baby boomers' and the world's interminable fascination with them was her favorite grousing subject.

"You know, when daddy drops his first wife and family and marries the secretary after he's made some money. The new spawn get all the toys and affection the 'first marriage' kids never got."

Having created the second marraige simile, she couldn't help adding wryly, "Of course his new wife inevitably puts the poor fellow on some crazy diet on account of him being so much older now so he gets to suffer a little bit."

"You know... I bet everyone at the office thinks I'm angling be one of those second marraige wives.... I don't blame 'em..."

She shook her head at the worries over her job at Drake and Van DeLay as if even then she knew something was coming to a head.

"You know there was a big tropical storm off the coast this week?" Jenny had a bright idea on how to spend the afternoon. "I thought we might go out to Gilgo and catch some waves. Ought to be some good ones left over."