Read Breakdown Lane, The for Free Online Page A

that.
    If you do, you know where to write to me. Letters still come.

THREE
Judges
    EXCESS BAGGAGE
    By J. A. Gillis
    The Sheboygan News-Clarion
    Dear J.,
    That I keep a boa constrictor as an affectionate pet alarms my roommates. Hercules is seven feet of pure muscle, clean and beautiful, and he has never escaped his cage, nor has he molested any guest in any way. He is allowed out only in my room, with the door closed, for exercise and play. My roommates say that even knowing that Hercules must eat live mice (which I also keep in my room, in a cage) is reason enough for them to detest the living situation. They demand that I either move or get rid of Hercules, but since I am the leaseholder, and my ad specifically said I had an unusual but mild-mannered and hypoallergenic pet, I think they have no case. They are threatening to leave, and by doing so, desert me with a rent payment far larger than I can manage. What can I do?
    Annoyed in Appleton
    Dear Annoyed,
    Though you clearly are the right owner for Hercules, you cannot blame your roommates for feeling a bit alarmed at sharing their home with seven feet of pure muscle that also eats live mice. Think of it from their point of view—when they responded to your ad, they probably thought you had a ferret. I would give your roommates a specific length of time to find other accommodations so they don’t feel ripped off, and then advertise for other roommates, making it clear that your pet is a BIG reptile. Studies have shown that snakes are one of the animals that people associate with danger and horror. Good luck. P.S. Have you ever wondered why you consider a boa constrictor an “affectionate pet” and considered something that was, perhaps, warm-blooded? Like, the mice?
    J.
     
    It has occurred to me ten or a thousand times that I was punished for looking down on them. My readers. For feeling disdain.
    When I would read my letters aloud to Cathy (the myth of confidentiality among doctors, lawyers, and journalists being just that, although it never went outside the house), we would fall against each other’s shoulders in helpless laughter. There was the snake man. And the plumber who wanted to start a sheep-shearing business and wondered if he could make a go of it in an urban setting. (“In Brisbane!” Cathy hooted.) The woman who wondered why her two beaux objected when she asked to review their past two years’ tax records to decide which she would marry. Even as the landscape of my own life was being shredded, people were asking my counsel, and I was giving it blithely, from a position of strength I either thought I had or actually had, depending on your view in retrospect.
    I think Caroline was maybe still in grade school and Gabe just starting middle school when Leo started the worrying about his health. Leo. The same man who had not so long before chided me for “making a religion of sit-ups.” He started with his sleep issues, his obsessions with all he hadn’t done to ensure his longevity. I could sense his resentment of me, and what I had done. I would come in from walking a couple of miles and see him give me the kind of baleful look you reserve for people who come over for dinner and bring Newfoundland dogs.
    I’d catch him stopping to take his pulse a couple of times every day. He began giving me studies to read about people who lived to the age of one hundred and five on coffee and vitamin C. Leo began driving across town to take yoga in a totally dark and windowless room in somebody’s house. He used to sound like his own father when he’d say, “Look. I only run when someone’s chasing me. I don’t smoke. I don’t do drugs. My parents are in their eighties. Everybody dies.” I thought his new passion was…like a minor case of food poisoning that would burn its way through my husband’s system. A little humor was the best antidote, I thought. Saltines for the soul.
    I felt sorry for the poor bastard. And a part of me actually thought it was