"Oh, I'm sure it stinks by now."

  "Well, these must be specialty nails."  Smooth as my finger traced a row of bumpy round hardware holding leather to wood.  

  "Hand Carved," a very tall austere-type man's voice boomed eloquently.  

  "Did you actually see them?" 

  "Oh yes.  Look at this wood.  Must be like our Pine." 

  "What are tawking about our pine, their pine, the two coasts are not different nations." 

  "Almost.  That's what my Dad thinks." 

  "Except when you think of it that way.  Yeah, yeah, might as well be is what my mother would say."  The furniture store man inched closer.  Stopping at a glass cabinet to fake read a newspaper.  

  "Don't look but he might be looking at us." 

  I looked as I said, "Okay, I won't look."  

  "Yellow pine," the man said.  He put down the paper and straightened a rocking chair in a cluster of chairs, each one representing its family of chairs that could make sets of four or six or eight or ten or even twelve.  Only the heads of the seats around a very rectangular and long  table had "arms".  "Some people call it Ponderosa Pine."

  "Oh do they now?  Come on," she tugged my sleeve.  "Let me know when you're ready girls." The man went back up front.  We went towards a side and the back.  "Step into my dark corner booth," she said.  And there was a breakfast nook table with bench seats attached.  "It's kind of like a picnic table." 

  "So you want me to write a song?"  

  "Not just me.  It's like our whole generation needs you." 

  "I'd find that hard to believe even if you weren't asking me for something.  But, flattery 

  "And we have no money 

  "Flattery often tweaks my psyche just right, but," she got up as I sat down.  She fished twelve dollars out of her pocket and put it in the middle of the little table.  "What's that?" She asked.  "Looks like money." 

  "Wanna do lunch?" 

  "Is the money for me?" 

  "Maybe." 

  "That would get me two more video tapes." 

  She sat back down and tried to push the table out from the bench a bit.  "You're not fat." 

  "This close makes me feel like I'm suffocating." 

  "Oh God, and I have cigarette breath." I fished chewing gum out of a pocket and offered her a piece.  "Sugar free?" 

  "Of course." 

  "Think we'll ever have homes for furniture like this?" 

  "I doubt it."  I let her look through my wallet while we sat there.  She could see my "credentials" for doing some of the public service work I was doing.  And I could not exactly say much about photos of loved ones. 

  "What did that woman mean?  About stinks?" 

  "TOP SECRET.  For real." Eyes widened as they passed over my face and above my head and landed on a street level little window.  "But I will say, the people who were trying to save as many people as they could over there listed those wounded as anything but people."  

  She buried her forehead in her palm for a minute.  Then said, "Life gives me headaches."