Encores For A Dilettante- Excerpt

He realizes that he knows very little about his wife's long life before their marriage. He knows only that she was not a virgin when they first made love. Not that he had expected her to be a virgin, at close to 30, when they first made love. In spite of her being Irish; & playing the harp. Under a potted palm in a French restaurant a different French restaurant

Where he first saw her. Projecting an image of patched purity & drooping Icarus wings.

Perhaps she has abandoned more than one orphan to the potluck of the Irish, in order to be a harpist rather than a mother. Other sons who've had to make their own motherless millions.

Chrys Cronyn has earned his money. Playing Orphan Annie on nation-wide TV in drag under an assumed name. Now he wants to be a saint, under his own name, to honor the father & mother he's never known. Preach childlike simplicity, & spend what he has earned on bringing peace to the world. Beginning with Vietnam.

He counts on winning the Indo-Chinese over to the American way of life by bombing both sides with mickey mouse watches. Which will subtly disconnect them from the Chinese calendar; which is in the year of the Rat. Once they're hooked on good time play-time USA, they won't want to continue dying for survival. They won't want to fight other nations' economic battles in their rice paddies. Hanoi & Saigon will shake hands. Surrender to each other, & go on welfare.

He has faith in the child in man, regardless of race, creed, or calendar. He has yet to meet a man who doesn't enjoy taking a watch apart.