Rick poor Rick is the victim of a beautiful narcissistic mother. Her name was Tammy, she was actually born in Tennessee, and she had six husbands before settling into her current cranky dowagerhood. Her marriages took her and her boy Rick to Virginia, New York, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Texas and now (for her) Arizona. When she wasn’t sleeping with a husband she had Rick in her bed. Actually, to little Rick it was the other way around; he slept with his beautiful mom except when he was displaced by one of her husbands.

Of course he grew angry. But he acted friendly and happy because that’s the way he got attention from Tammy. In time Rick married a beautiful woman who would never betray him. Charlotte is lovely, but she is a wife and mother first, a Catholic second, and a person only third. She will never leave Rick. She will never cheat on Rick. She will nurture and love his children like Tammy didn’t nurture and love him. Meanwhile, Rick has systematically and continuously cheated on Charlotte. He’s had to: he has committed himself to punishing women with love. And the only women he can really love are the ones who won’t be faithful to him. Like the 17 year-old slut who seduced him when he was 15 and then did his two best friends. Or Pamela, whom he loved when he was in the Marines after college, and who fucked his cousin while he was away. Or Rosemary, the one out of all his marital affairs who was married. The only lover he had to send back to a husband when he headed home to Charlotte.

Rosemary isn’t married now; will Rick remain interested in her? She stopped seeing Rick around the time she met Ray, for whom she later left her first husband, and when she and Ray split up Rick was out of the area. Now he is back. Now he is nearly 60, now he says he hasn’t fooled around in six years, now he says he and Charlotte never do it… Actually, Rick probably won’t be bothered even if Rosemary is faithful to him. And she probably won’t remain faithful. Once the dam is breached, she thinks, she may just enjoy a sexual renaissance. So Rick could get his psychological rocks off too…

It would be fun. Rick is so carefree and abandoned when they are together. He drops that suburban macho middle-aged attitude and is young again. Free and foolish.

Rosemary wonders why Stephen appeared in her dream and concludes that he was about sex. He was her last partner, sex is obviously on her mind, why not? And the steps, the missing steps…

She used to have a recurring dream when she was a little girl. Well, it recurred until she tamed it. In the dream her father sent her to the basement for something. She flipped the switch at the top of the stairs but the bulb must have blown. The stairway and the basement remained dark. Her father’s demand was urgent; she had to get whatever it was out of the basement anyway. She started down the stairs into the dark.

In the dream there were no stairs. Her foot stepped down on nothing and she began to fall endlessly into the terrifying dark. She recalls having that nightmare repeatedly, until she taught herself to become aware, even while she was falling, that she was asleep. That’s all it took. As she recognized dream, the dark turned into sweet yellow light and the fall turned into swooping flight.

She smiles now as she remembers. Rosemary smiles and wonders about the opportunities in missing steps.