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floating high above the streets of New York in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—did not sit well with me. But I dropped the subject, lest I find myself bringing the ever-behind-the-times Harry up to speed on those high-tech, robotic sex dolls with motorized orifices.
    “Would you really take it as a compliment if I spent long hours talking to her, passing her around to my friends, even taking her to special events?”
    Harry’s comments indicated that he’d already heard of my manny-mate business, probably through the nosy neighbors. Whitehall was Gasbag Central.
    “I don’t pass Wolf around; I rent him out. And I’ve yet to receive a customer complaint.”
    Harry thumbed his chest. “What’s that got to do with you making a spectacle of me?”
    “Spectacle of you?” Finally it sank in. The way Harry saw it, Wolf existed more to belittle him than extol him, and he took it as a personal affront. “It just so happens that my so-called spectacle was a brilliant marketing strategy. One that in a matter of hours captured loads of potential customers.”
    “Customers for what?”
    “For my escort service, as if you didn’t know.” I thought the phrase “escort service” was less provocative than The Manny Ranch. “The job market’s an economic war zone. So I figured I’d take a crack at being my own boss by renting out manny-mates right here from home.” I motioned toward my desk in the alcove off the kitchen. “Once the cash starts flowing in, we can write off a portion of the apartment as an expense.”
    “Does Lisa know about your plan to run a call-boy service from here?”
    Call-boy! The pejorative term rankled me. “Lisa was my second customer.” That extortionist. “She wanted to sample the manny on a trial basis. She’d rather Siegfried and Roy, but they’d be a distraction to all the tenants forever traipsing in and out of her office. But as I told Ruthie, unlike a dog that can’t be trusted not to tear things up when alone for even a short while, a manny can be left out to gather dust or mothballed in a trunk.”
    Harry shifted toward Wolf, who, sitting on an arrow back chair with his hands resting upward on his knees, looked oddly absorbed in our debate.
    “Ruthie rented him too?”
    “Uh-huh. To help her reflect on her marital problems.”
    Harry looked bewildered. “He’s a marriage counselor?”
    “He’s whoever you want him to be.”
    “Yeah,” Harry said, sounding pensive, “he’s just about everyone except the insensitive guy who leaves you stranded in some dingy seaside motel.”
    I had the vague impression that Harry was alluding to something that happened a while ago, on the night before he shipped out. The very vagueness of that night caused me to let it slip away like a dream.
    “Not him,” I said, glancing at Wolf’s merry face. “He knows his priorities. As well as his limitations, right, hotshot?”
    Harry again studied the newspaper picture of me and my wooden amigo mugging for the camera. “You never took me to a Seafair event.”
    “I don’t have to; you can take yourself.”
    Harry then leaned closer to the table and tapped the colored photo of me and Wolf in the newspaper. “So you’re telling me that the attention you lavish on your bunkmate is all part of a business venture.”
    Though disliking the term bunkmate, I stayed with the theme. “Passion, Harry. You’ve got to love what you do. Playing with a manny is way more fun that slaving for penny ante wages and bashing my head against the glass ceiling.” While speaking, I got the impression that Wolf from his seat was egging me on with a two-thumbs-up. Way to go, girlfriend! “Yes siree, Harry, financial independence. I’m out to snag me a pink parachute, and I aim to pack it myself.”

Reminiscing about the Sea
     
    One night later that week, I awoke to find Harry propped up on his pillow gazing out the window at the starry sky.
    “What’s the matter?” I asked.
    “Nothing. A little