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lawsuit on behalf of us millions of scalped pecker victims.
    Since there was a chill in the air, Maurice—looking like a miniature Humphrey Bogart—set off on our morning walk in his tan trench coat. Devastatingly cute, but not as macho as one might wish. Several young fellows of questionable motives stopped us to chat. Maurice and I like to window-shop along Parisian streets. The full peculiarity of the French character is on open display in their shop windows: exotic foodstuffs, bizarre lingerie, curious antiquities, eccentric office apparatus, even an enormous eyeball in an optician’s window that looked like something on loan from Godzilla. This menacing orb drew a growl and bark from my protective canine. Fortunately, his trench coat came equipped with pockets, so Maurice could lug his own baggie. Now I just have to train him to clean up after himself.
    After our walk, Madame Ruzicka sent me on an emergency run for birdseed for her parrot Henri. She gave me a note so I wouldn’t have to pantomime my request for the perplexed shopkeeper. Henri is a messy eater. I dragged out her wheezy old vacuum and cleaned up around his stand. Since he was a secondhand bird (abandoned by a departing tenant), Madame Ruzicka wasn’t sure of his age.
    “ He’s a tough customer,” she cautioned, filling his seed bowl. “Don’t get too close. He’s an ear-biter.”
    “ How long have you had him?” I asked, keeping my distance. Henri eyed me suspiciously.
    “ Too long. Since before you were born. A damn gypsy stuck me for a bundle of francs and this nuisance bird. I should have thrown him in the soup long ago.”
    Henri fluttered his feathers and picked out a likely-looking seed. If he was worried, he wasn’t showing it.
    I wondered if there was a Monsieur Ruzicka. “Was your husband in the circus too?” I asked.
    “ I had no husband.”
    “ How come?”
    She peered at me over her spectacles. “You Americans are almost as nosy as Czechs. My cheri already had a wife—a good Catholic one. They are both long dead. I doubt if even their children think of them these days.”
    “ That’s sad.”
    “ And you, Rick, do you think of your parents?”
    “ Not if I can help it,” I admitted.
    “ I remember mine with great fondness. I had a marvelous childhood. But then, it was a different time.”
    When I trudged back upstairs, I found My Love absent with no explanatory note. I downed a meager lunch and unearthed my cellular phone from the closet. Couldn’t say what time it was on the other side of the world, but—like Connie—I wasn’t going to let that stop me.
    My old Ukiah pal Fuzzy DeFalco answered on the second ring. “Rick! Where are you?”
    “ Oh, I’m here. I’m there.”
    “ Jesus, Rick, you’re in tons of trouble for cutting so much school.”
    “ That’s the least of my problems, Frank.”
    “ Gee, Rick, you’re almost as big an outlaw as my friend Nick Twisp. The rumor going around school is that you busted Sheeni Saunders out of some home for expectant chicks and her parents are so pissed they put a contract out on you.”
    I gulped, then reminded myself that the Redwood High rumor mill is prone to gross exaggerations.
    “ Frank, I doubt they’d want to murder their own son-in-law.”
    “ You mean you’re married?!”
    “ Yep. We got married in Tijuana. The judge spoke English so it was totally legit.”
    “ Wow, Rick, I can’t believe all the kids these days getting married. I hope Lana doesn’t find out. She’d want to nail me for sure.”
    Fuzzy then filled me in on his love life, which was torrid in the extreme. But I was more interested in another local couple: Trent Preston and his lovely wife Apurva Joshi.
    “ They keep the whole school talking, Rick. It’s a wonder anybody gets any studying done. Sonya Klummplatz was blabbing all over school that she nailed Trent. Hard to believe, but she showed Lana a pair of jockey shorts that she claimed she scored off him as a souvenir. But she