It just snowballed. The first guy talked. A friend of his called. A friend of the second guy called. At first, they all asked for help to cure something legit. Smoking or chewing tobacco. Spitting in public. Shoplifting. Then they just wanted sex. They wanted Clara Bow and Betsy Ross and Elizabeth Tudor and the Queen of Sheba.

And every day she was running down to the library to re­search the next day's women, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

In, and then out.

Guys called wanting to pork Helen Hayes, Margaret Sanger, and Aimee Semple McPherson. They wanted to bone Edith Piaf, Sojourner Truth, and the Empress Theodora. And at first it both­ered the Mommy, how all these guys were obsessed with only dead women. And how they never asked for the same woman twice. And no matter how much detail she put into a session, they only wanted to pork and bone, slam and bump, shaft, hole, screw, drill, pound, pile-drive, core, and ride.

And sometimes a euphemism just isn't.

Sometimes a euphemism is more true than what it's supposed to hide.

And this really wasn't about sex.

These guys meant just what they asked for.

They didn't want conversation or costumes or historical accu­racy. They wanted Emily Dickinson naked in high heels with one foot on the floor and the other up on her desk, bent over and running a quill pen up the crack of her butt.

They'd pay two hundred bucks to go into a trance and find Mary Cassatt wearing a push-up bra.

It wasn't every man who could afford her, so she'd get the same type again and again. They'd park their minivans six blocks away and hurry over to the house, staying near the buildings, each guy dragging his shadow. They'd stumble in wearing dark glasses, then wait behind open newspapers and magazines until their name was called. Or their alias. If the Mommy and the stupid little boy ever met them in public, these men would pretend not to know her. In public, they'd have wives. In the supermar­ket, they'd have kids. In the park, dogs. They'd have real names.

They'd pay her with damp twenties and fifties from sopping wet wallets full of sweaty photos, library cards, charge cards, club memberships, licenses, change. Obligations. Responsibility. Real­ity. Imagine, she'd tell each client, the sun on your skin. Feel the sun get warmer and warmer with each breath you exhale. The sun bright and warm on your face, your chest, your shoulders.

Breathe in. Then out.

In. Then out.

Her repeat customers, now they all wanted girl-on-girl shows, they'd want a two-girl party, Indira Gandhi and Carol Lombard. Margaret Mead and Audrey Hepburn and Dorothea Dix. Repeat clients didn't even want to be real themselves. The bald ones would ask for full, thick hair. The fat ones asked for muscle. The pale, tans. After enough sessions, every man would ask for a strutting, foot-long erection.

So it wasn't real past-life regression. And wasn't love. It wasn't history, and wasn't reality. It wasn't television, but it happened in your mind. It was a broadcast, and she was the sender.

It wasn't sex. She was just the tour guide for a wet dream. A hypno lap dancer.

Each guy kept his pants on for damage control. Contain­ment. The mess went way beyond just peter tracks. And it paid a fortune.

Mr. Jones would get the standard Marilyn experience. He'd be rigid on the couch, sweating and mouth-breathing. His eyes rolled back. His shirt would go dark under the arms. His crotch would tent up.

Here she is, the Mommy would tell Mr. Jones.

The fog is gone and it's a shining, hot day. Feel the air on your bare skin, your bare arms and legs. Feel yourself getting warmer with every breath you breathe out. Feel yourself growing longer and thicker. Already you're harder and heavier, more pur­ple and throbbing than you've ever felt.

Her watch said they had about forty minutes before the next client.

The fog is gone, Mr. Jones, and the shape just in front of you is Marilyn Monroe in a tight satin dress. Golden and smiling, her eyes half closed, her head tilts back. She stands in a field of tiny flowers and lifts her arms, and as you step closer her dress slips to the ground.

To the stupid little boy, the Mommy used to say this wasn't sex. These weren't real women as much as they were symbols. Projections. Sex symbols.

The power of suggestion.

To Mr. Jones, the Mommy would say, "Have at her."

She'd say, "She's all yours."

Chapter 21

That first night, Denny's outside the front door holding something wrapped in a pink baby blanket. This is all through the peephole in my mom's door: Denny in his giant plaid coat, Denny cradling some baby to his chest, his nose bulging, his eyes bulging, every­thing bulging because of the peephole lens. Everything distorted. His hands clutching the bundle are white with the effort.

And Denny yells, "Open up, dude!"

And I open the door as far as the burglar chain will go. I go, "What you got there?"

And Denny tucks the blanket around his little bundle and says, "What's it look like?"

"It looks like a baby, dude," I say.

And Denny says, "Good." He hefts the pink bundle and says, "Let me in, dude, this is getting heavy."

Then I slip the chain. I step aside, and Denny charges in and over to one living-room corner, where he heaves the baby onto the plastic-covered sofa.

The pink blanket rolls and out rolls a rock, gray and granite-colored, scrubbed and smooth-looking. No baby, for real, just this boulder.

"Thanks for the baby idea," Denny says. "People see a young guy with a baby, and they're sweet to you," he says. "They see a guy carrying a big rock, and they get all tensed up. Especially if you want to bring it on the bus."

He tucks one edge of the pink blanket under his chin and starts folding it against his front and says, "Plus, with a baby you always get a seat. And if you forget your money they don't kick you off." Denny flops the folded blanket over his shoulder and says, "This your mom's house?"

The dining-room table is covered with today's birthday cards and checks, my thank-you letters, the big book of who and where. Beside that's my mom's old ten-key adding machine, the kind with a long slot-machine handle you pull along one side. Sitting back down, I start doing today's deposit slip and say, "Yeah, it's her house until the property tax people kick me out in a few months."

Denny says, "It's good you got a whole house, since my folks want all my rocks to move out with me."

"Dude," I say. "How many do you got?"

He's got a rock for every day he has sobriety, Denny says. It's what he does at night to stay occupied. Find rocks. Wash them.

Haul them home. It's how his recovery is going to be about doing something big and good instead of just not doing little bad shit.

"It's so I don't act out, dude," he says. "You have no idea how tough it is to find good rocks in a city. I mean, not like chunks of concrete or those plastic rocks people hide their extra keys inside."

The total for today's checks is seventy-five bucks. All from strangers who Heimlich Maneuvered me in some restaurant somewhere. This is nowhere near what I figure a stomach tube has got to cost.