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cliff."
    "That seems like a waste," Kirsten said.
    "They may have eaten them anyhow."
    "Not if they were Jews. Anyhow, who would want to eat a pork chop that had an evil spirit in it? I shouldn't joke about this, but—I will talk to Tim about it. But not for a while. I think Bill got it from me. I'm screwed up, God knows. I'm screwed up and I screwed him up. I keep looking at Jeff and noticing the difference between them; they're about the same age and Jeff has such a good grip on reality."
    "Don't bet on it," I said.
    Kirsten said, "When Bill gets out of the hospital, I'd like him to meet Tim. I'd like him to meet your husband, in fact; they never have met, have they?"
    "No," I said. "But if you think Jeff can serve as a role-model, I'm really not—"
    "Bill has very few friends. He's not outgoing. I've talked about you and your husband; you're both his age."
    Thinking about it, I perceived down the pipe of time Kirsten's lunatic son messing up our lives. That thought surprised me. It was utterly devoid of charity and it had in it an essence of fear. I knew my husband and I knew myself. Neither of us was ready to take on the job of amateur therapy. Kirsten, however, was an organizer. She organized people into doing things, good things but things not necessarily to their own benefit.
    I had, at that instant, a keen intuition that I was being hustled. At the Bad Luck, I had essentially witnessed Bishop Archer and Kirsten Lundborg hustle each other in an intricate transaction, but it was, apparently, a transaction that benefited them both, or anyhow they both thought so. This, with her son Bill, looked to me like a purely one-way matter. I didn't see what we had to gain.
    "Let me know when he's out," I said. "But I think that Tim, because of his professional training, would be a better—"
    "But there's the age difference. And you get the element of the father-figure."
    "Maybe that would be good. Maybe that's what your son needs."
    Glaring at me, Kirsten said, "I've done an excellent job of raising Bill. His father walked out of our lives and never looked back."
    "I didn't mean—"
    "I know what you meant." Kirsten stared at me, and now, really, she had changed; she was angry and I could see hatred on her face. It made her look older. It made her look, in fact, physically ill. She had a bloated quality and I felt uncomfortable. I thought, then, of the pigs that Jesus had cast the evil spirits into, the pigs that rushed over the cliff. This is what you do when an evil spirit inhabits you, I thought. This is the sign, this look: the stigma. Maybe your son did inherit it from you.
    But now we had an altered situation. Now she was my father-in-law's
pro tem
lover, potentially his mistress. I couldn't tell Kirsten to go fuck herself. She was family—in an illegal and unethical way. I was stuck with her. All of the curses of family, I thought, and none of the blessings. And I arranged it. The idea of introducing her and Tim had been mine. Bad karma, I thought, come back from the other side of the barn. As my father used to say.
    Standing there in the grass near the San Francisco Bay, in the midafternoon sunlight, I felt uncomfortable. This is really in some respects a reckless and savage person, I said to myself. She dabbles in the life of a famous and respected man; she has a psychotic son; pins bristle from her as from an animal. Bishop Archer's future depends on Kirsten not flying into a rage one day and phoning up the
Chronicle
—his future depends on her unending goodwill.
    "Let's go back to Berkeley," I said.
    "No." Kirsten shook her head. "I have yet to find a dress I can wear. I came to the City to shop. Clothes are very important to me. They have to be; I'm seen in public a lot and I expect to be seen much more, now that I'm with Tim." Rage still showed on her face.
    I said, "I'll go back by BART." I walked away.
     
    "She's a very attractive woman," Jeff said that night when I told him. "Considering her age."
    "Kirsten is