1. Title story. A fantasy.

2. The Reclamation of Edwin Drood. A comic conclusion to the famous unfinished novel by Charles Dickens.

3. Bethany. A romantic tale.

4. Contest Blues. Based on the writer's own experiences as a judge for various literary contests.

5. A Clean Sweep for Mazeppa. A romance.

6. A Jewel of an Idea. A humorous story, based on the author's own experiences as a director of a top-rated country club.

7. Vince Viner's Victory. A First Prize Winner in a prestigious annual literary event.

8. End of the Penny Section. Based on the author's own experiences as a deacon.

9. Anyone for Play Ball? Another story based on personal experence or observation, this time centered on a small but aggressive baseball club in a rural area of California.

10. Counter-Clockwise. A humorous story. Highly Commended in no less than three writing contests.

11. Dead Man Walking. A novelette, set in modern-day Egypt.

12. Step-Ladder Nine. A cross-genre story/poem. Highly Commended in a national literary competition.

13. Gone West. A humorous story.

14. Scent of Lotus on a Windy Day. Horror and suspense in Ancient Egypt. Short-listed in 3 contests.

15. Beachcombing: Your Questions Answered. Highly Commended in a contest for humorous prose.

Here is an excerpt from number 11:

“Craziest idea I’ve ever heard!” I repeated.

    Kitteridge, the advertising genius, still took no notice, but went on instructing his lieutenant, Maurie, as if I didn’t exist.

    “Q-cash!” I mocked. “Ridiculous! Why not credit cards or traveler’s checks? Why Q-cash?””

    Kitteridge frowned, shaking his head at Maurie, silently ordering him to pay me no attention. But Maurie was too friendly, too softhearted to ignore my complaints. He turned his big, amiable face towards me. “Credit cards, traveler’s checks, Tom, there’s still lots of places that don’t accept them,” he murmured softly. Like many muscular, hard-knitted men he had a surprisingly sleepy, self-shy voice.

    “Like Hungry Heaven,” I said. “But Q-cash is supposedly catering for tourists, — not boy scouts or masochists.”

    “Egypt,” replied Maurie.

    “Okay,” I grudgingly admitted, “so maybe you can’t cash American Express at the Robin Hood souvenir shop on top of the Sphinx. Big deal! Aunt Aggie will just have to manage without a Great Pyramid pencil sharpener.”

    “If you’ll both give me your attention,” interrupted Kitteridge, always the prissy, no-time-for-social-frills advertising man.

    “I’m not going,” I told him flatly. “I hired out to photograph Q-cash in action in Europe and America, full stop. Who mentioned Egypt?”

    “They’ll follow,” the advertising guru answered. “Egypt’s the first to sign.”

    “The first to be sucked into this mad scheme.”

    “Think of it,” Kitteridge prattled on, ignoring my challenge, “a world currency in the making!”

    “You never hear of the euro,” I cut in, “or the not-so-humble dollar?”

    “No more black-market versus official rates, but every item and service expressed in Q-cash, and readily, gladly accepted. Billing made easy. Tipping, cruising, sightseeing, dining.”

    “Every vice a tourist can buy,” I added.

    A prissy frown. “Every respectable vice. Q-cash is a family-oriented currency.”

    “That’s certainly a new wrinkle,” I agreed.

    Kitteridge actually smiled. “Speaking of new, reminds me. A slight change of plan.”

    “Another?” I queried. “Not Egypt after all? The North Pole maybe? I can just see hordes of Eskimos right now, clutching their wads of Q-cash, buying tickets to croquet parties, drinking iced tea with pineapple sandwiches, and dancing the long nights away with Jeanette MacDonald and Guy Lombardo.”

    “Personnel-wise,” smoothed Kitteridge.

    “I’m not budging an inch with one joker less!” I shook my fist angrily. “I’m already doubling as photographer, caption-writer and security. Maurie has his hands full. And we need you — worse luck! — since you’re hoarding all the non-Q cash.”

    Still smiling away, Kitteridge held up his hand. “More — not less,” he purred. “Two new models.”

    “What happened to those two nondescript Australian faces you hired, Mr and Mrs Bolingbroke?”

    “Still coming!” snapped the wonder man of advertising. “Only I realized that Q-cash’s potential wasn’t limited to tourists and retirees.”

    “Why not? Retirees have an edge on all the money,” I cut in. “I ought to know. Living on a nice lump sum myself. Not that the Police Retirement Fund is all that generous.”

    “Ask yourselves, who else has bags of disposable credit?”

    “Executives,” murmured Maurie.

    “Right!” enthused his boss. “Especially young executives, unmarried, no family, no responsibilities. Woo them and we enlist a battalion of Q-cash devotees.”

    “You’re both mad! Discos, cars, clothes, pop stars, — that’s all that captures today’s young trendies. Catch them in Egypt? They wouldn’t be caught dead in the place.”

    Maurie gazed at me sadly. “You know where my youngest son is right now? London. And my youngest daughter’s skiing. In Switzerland.”

    Kitteridge nodded approvingly. His own kids were probably ten-pin bowling in Sweden. Or tobogganing in Brazil. As for me, I have none, so I tried a different tack. “Juveniles make twice as much work,” I declared. “Who’s playing nursemaid?”

    Mr Genius rustled through some papers on his desk. “Yvonne Latour’s twenty-one. Giles Brandeth, twenty-three.”

    “Kids!” I threw my hands in the air. “Okay, it’s their funeral. Makes a nice party: two barely-out-of-their-teens peacocks; plus our nondescript if well-preserved retiree couple, the Bolingbrokes; plus you, me, and Maurie. Seven happy souls locked together for a week of Q-cash adventure in the land of the swinging pharaohs. I presume it’s a week?”

    The genius misinterpreted me. “Everything has been planned to the nth degree.” He found his computer-printed itinerary and held it up for our admiration. “Think of it! A photographic shoot in a country where it never rains.” 

    “Rain’s no worry. Egypt is.”

    “What could possibly go wrong?” he murmured happily.

    “You never hear of terrorists?”

    “Why would they be interested in us?”

Yvonne Latour was not your typical twenty-one-year-old model. Neither beanpole tall nor anorexic thin. Also she had oddly tapered hands, and peculiarly slanting eyes that remained stubbornly half-hidden even in the weakest light. Her hair was neither glowing red nor shining black but an in-between lusterless clay. Her face formed an irregular oval, thanks to a slightly jutting chin and a Susan Hayward nose. And by mannequin standards, her breasts and bottom scored as decidedly too full.

    Maurie rated all her attention at first. She thought he was the photographer. When he set her right on that point, she made a play for me. I didn’t blame her. In her body, I’d do the same. Despite the blatant obviousness of her behavior, I enjoyed the treatment. She spoke rapidly, animatedly, thrusting her lips within inches of my ear, resting her hand idly on my shoulder. I couldn’t take my eyes from her breasts. They throbbed against her shirt, swelling expansively with every breath, jiggling excitedly at every laugh. What she was talking about, I’d only one clue: Herself, naturally. When at last she returned to Kitteridge’s inner sanctum to complete her education, I was absolutely exhausted.                    

“You look done in, Tom.” Maurie smiled wickedly.

    I roused myself from daydreams. We were on a plane to Karachi. Kitteridge had managed to parlay two cheap stand-by tickets for first-class — to which he treated himself and Miss Latour — while the rest of use were bundled into economy.

    “Why not? I hate flying, period,” I answered Maurie. “And I especially don’t like flying around like an aimless bird. I thought we were heading straight to Cairo.”

    “Kitteridge knows what he’s doing.”

    “Saving money. We’re on a cheap flight to Karachi with all these back-packers. And then we change planes for Cairo. Crazy!”

    “Kitteridge is paying, Tom. Sit back. Enjoy yourself.”

    “Ever been to Egypt before, Maurie?” I asked pleasantly.

    “Not this man.”

    “Israel?”

    Maurie smiled another no.

    “Maybe the genius is right. It’s always the kids that see the world first, and us close-to-retirees second last.”

    “My eldest son has visited Israel. Twice.”

    “What about you, Maurie?” I couldn’t resist asking. “No hankering for the fatherland? To sit in the tents of the chosen people, to weep at the wailing wall, wash your feet in Jacob’s well, eat of the milk and honey of the promised land?”

    The mild sarcasm didn’t worry Maurie. He nodded happily. “Not my promised land. I’ll take a dozen Rose Bowls any day to a hundred Jacob’s wells.” His expression became more defiant, though his voice was still soft: “A one-room apartment in Guttenberg to a thousand Solomon’s palaces.”

    I was puzzled. I like to be on top of a conversation, pitching my words just slightly above people’s heads, so that I can laugh openly at their ignorance or snigger slyly at their stupidity. But Maurie was matching me word for word. I didn’t like it.

    “How long you been playing second fiddle to the genius, Maurie?”

    “Not long.”

    I preened myself inwardly. I’d guessed as much.

    “What were you before?”

    “Movies. Ever hear of a film editor?”

    I nodded. “So how come you got the boot? Hollywood’s still going strong, still churning out ten miles of rubbish to every two inches of art.”

    “New technology. I couldn’t keep up with it.”

    Immediately I felt sorry for him. Wasn’t that just typical of our society? Here’s a man of culture and craftsmanship, maybe just ten years short of retirement, reduced to working as a dogsbody for a sleek, smug, fortyish con-man like Kitteridge.

    Yes, that’s what advertising’s all about — an expensive con financed from the gullible pockets of an abused and preyed-upon public. Not only was John Q. stuck with the shonky product, not only did he pay for all the empty wrapping, emotive words and bankrupt promises, but he fed, clothed, yachted and mansioned the very same cynical power-brokers who were exploiting and demeaning him.

    I hated Kitteridge and all his manipulated world, yet here I was, working for him myself. Not only that, but he’d conned me into doing three jobs for the price of one — and journey to a country I’d no interest in visiting!

Thanks to Kitteridge’s wheeling and dealing, we were faced with a three-hour stopover at Karachi airport. Such fun! Cooped up with at least a thousand back-packers, waiting for cheap flights to Europe, in an international departure “lounge”, the size of a Brooklyn backyard. Nothing to do but sip lukewarm Coke or Fanta, read The Asia Times from cover to cover, or join the jostling throngs in the small but overstocked aisles of the souvenir shop.

    “Look at all them bludgers! Can’t wait to send off their flamin’ postcards! Never a care for the poor sod that’s gotta deliver the scummy things!”

    I hadn’t noticed George Bolingbroke at my elbow, but I was even more surprised by his amazing outburst. So far he hadn’t vouchsafed more than a “G’day” or a brief nod.

    I held up my innocent hands. “Not sending any myself, mate!” I assured him.

    “Read thousands of the ratty things: Arrived safely; Wish you were here; Paris is groovy; Send more money.”

    “A postman?” I guessed.

    “Got to me in the end. One day I just went crackers. Right in the middle of the post office. Started chucking parcels around, kicked over the scales, ripped up a pile of re-direction forms, emptied a box of coupons into the shredder, and tore into the toilet with a hundred sheets of stamps. Tried to flush them down the sewer.” He paused dramatically, gazing up at me expectantly. “Took four men to cart me away,” he added boastfully.

    “Amazing!” I agreed. He was a wiry little guy. No strong man, he.

    “There are some things will drive a man right ’round the bend. Make him act crazy. Real crazy!” His clear forehead clouded a little. “I’m okay now, of course,” he backtracked.

    “So now you’ve taken up modeling?”

    His face was blank.

    “You’re not a professional model?” I asked, trying to keep my voice cool. I didn’t try hard enough. He sensed my alarm.

    His eyes darting quickly from side to side, the ex-nut case sized up possible avenues of escape. But the shop was impossibly crowded. We were hemmed in.

    I re-phrased the question, still keeping my voice nice and soft. “You’ve never done any modeling before?”

    He was sweating. “They told me I’d pick it up easy.”

    “Who told you?”

    “Mr Kitteridge and his partner. The wife and I answered an ad in the paper.”

    “So did I,” I muttered. “So did I. Something screwy about all this.”

Giles Brandeth was squatting forlornly on an upturned suitcase, guarding his luggage. He’d brought more than all the rest of us put together. I’d kidded him about it before, but now he seemed actually glad to see me. “Thank God for a friendly face!” he exclaimed. “I need to nip along to the little boys’ room. Look after this lot, will you?”

    “What’s so special about it?” I asked. “Writing a history of all the pharaohs?”

    He didn’t see the joke. “It’s all I have in the world,” he replied quite seriously. “Easier to bring it along than store it.”

    I’m not into luggage, but even to my uneducated eye, it seemed an expensive assortment. No back-packer bric-a-brac this. Matching suitcases, real leather, shiny handles. All new!

    “Your first trip abroad?” I asked.

    “First trip, and first real job in six months.”

    “With your looks, I thought you’d be knocking back work.”

    “It’s a vicious circle. I can’t get work if I don’t have an agent, and I can’t get an agent if I don’t have regular work.”

    “So how’d you land this job?”

    “Answered an ad in the Sun-Times.”

    “Qualifications?”

    “Did a modeling course once. Taught me a lot. For instance, clothes catalogues are shot six months in advance. So if you’re modeling fashion-wear, you’ve got to pretend the sand’s hot when it’s freezing, the snow’s cold in a heat-wave, that sort of thing.”

    “That’s it? What about knowing what angles you photograph best? Whether your left profile’s more regular than your right? How to act the debonair, sophisticated man-of-the-world? How to backchat bartenders, counter-march waiters, reconnoiter taxis? Warm the bitchiest of frigid young ladies with style, flair, charm, pizzazz?”

    He laughed. “We learnt mostly about skin care, weight control, personal hygiene, stuff like that.”

    “God help us! What about your little friend, Miss Latour? Another graduate from charm school?”

    “She’s not my ‘friend’, as you put it.”

    The emphasis was plain. I tried to keep my face neutral, but he was too quick for me.

    “Just answer me one question,” he hit back. “How old are you?”

    I swallowed hard. Fifty-nine. “Forty-two,” I lied. “Going on forty-three.”

    “Yvonne is twenty-one. Enough said?”

“You’re not a happy Tom, are you?” asked Kitteridge belligerently.

    “No,” I answered honestly.

    I wondered where he’d spent his time at Karachi. Getting stewed in the first-class bar! Now that we’d finally made it on the plane to Cairo, he was forced to hobnob in economy and pay for his own miniature bottles of duty free. I picked up the nearest of five empties. The label warned of dire penalties if the entire contents were not consumed on the plane. Kitteridge was certainly taking no chances with the law. “Time to go slow,” I advised him. “We’ll be in Cairo in an hour. You’ll need to be on your toes.”

    He tried to push me away, then suddenly thought to take me into his confidence. “Kitteridge is on his toes. He’ll land on his feet.” A lop-sided, drunken smile. “Kitteridge set for the most successful…” He groped for the right word, “The most successful coup of his life.”

    “With this amateur-night team?”

    My words had a surprising effect. He pulled himself up straight. “To use your favorite phrase, Why not?”  

    “If you’ve got backing for first-grade, why use the ‘B’ reserves? This way, it’s more of a gamble.”

    He relaxed. “Kitteridge, a gambler at heart. Always has been. Remember Hephaestus Hair Spray? Who put that over? Made a million! Every woman in the country sprayed herself with that smelly, turn-your-hair-to-stone stuff. Remember pointed shoes? And Utanga Tanning Lotion, the skin for all seasons? What about Artillery Breakfast Delite, the big guns of nutrition?”

    “Weren’t they sued for false advertising?”

    “Enemies! Every successful man has enemies.” He held up his index finger. “Show me one successful product, Tom, and I’ll show you a dozen jackals fighting to beat it down.”        

The plane was not exactly over-crowded, nor were the passengers closely supervised. I’d only seen two stewards. One had examined our tickets on boarding and then disappeared, the other was plying Kitteridge and six or seven other takers with J. Walker. Passengers seemed free to shift themselves wherever they desired. Miss Latour had moved to a window-seat at the rear, — one of those old-fashioned double seats with no arm-rests in between, presumably designed for doting honeymooners or harassed mums with obstreperous kids.

    “Enjoying the view?”

    She patted the seat beside her.

    I was quick to accept the offer. “Didn’t see you at Karachi. No doubt you were holed up with Kitteridge in first.”

    “I went to sleep. I just curled up in one of those big, cozy lounge chairs and went right to sleep.”

    She glanced up at me half-teasingly with those narrow, slanting eyes. I ached to hold her in my arms, to kiss the tip of the silver-speckled tongue that danced over those pastel-orange lips. I would press my soul into her heart. I’d grasp her clay-colored hair and rub my mouth against her neck. And I’d feel her young life throbbing with all the power of its fresh, buoyant, totally committed love.

    Before I lost myself completely, however, I needed to test my theory. The ex-policeman’s instinct is also strong. “Your first trip outside the States?”

    “Yes. I told you.”

    “And you’ve not done much modeling before?”

    “I think I have. I told you.”

    She hadn’t, but… “I meant photographic modeling.”

    “No. Except for the gym ads.” Her voice was fretful. “I told you.”

    I made a quick prayer and plunged. “But that was a while ago?”

    “Yes. When I was anorexic. I told you.”

    Told me? Told me when? I admired her breasts. “You’re not anorexic now.”

    “I put it back in all the wrong places.”

    “Not my opinion.”

    “I’m glad.” She actually smiled. That smile transformed her whole face, making the crooked lines straight, the irregular features round and smooth. Her hooded, narrow eyes sparkled like blue diamonds in a field of snow. I would capture that luminous smile on film, or die trying.

    “Tell me, Tom, you’re not shooting any swimsuit pictures, are you?”

    “Not in Egypt, that’s for sure.”

    “Or shorts?”

    “Frowned upon, but tourist-tolerated. Why not?”

    “I have terrible legs. Short and stumpy. Freckled and red. I hate them.”

    “Move over, Liz Taylor.”

    “You’re not going to photograph my legs, are you, Tom?”

    “I’m sure they’re perfectly lovely.” I hesitated. “Like the rest of you.” If you’re going to pour it on, you may as well pour it on thick.