In celebration of the landslide election of Bernardo Arévalo in Guatemala on Sunday (and if you want to understand why it’s such a big deal, read this), here’s another chapter from my novel, Rompecabeza.
Lydia knew that when she would tell people what she’d done, it would sound dramatic. That wasn’t really the point, but it wasn’t exactly not the point either. She was attempting a striking, earthquake of a move that would shake Alex to his core and finally make him see what an idiot he was being.
In reality, though, it was odd how undramatic the unraveling of her three-and-a-half-year relationship with him was turning out to be. Not all relationships, apparently, had a hard stop, some just eroded, pieces breaking off first in dust-like motes, then in brittle crumbs, then in ugly, sodden chunks, until, before you knew it, gaping holes appeared, not just in the relationship, but in yourself. Nobody had ever talked about this — not her divorced mom, not her friends, not the endless pages of relationship advice she browsed through, first online (proving that online relationship advice was even worse than online medical advice), then in books she hunched over, embarrassed to be seen reading them on the train — so Lydia was finding it all something of an unhappy surprise. Kind of like how nobody ever talked about how common miscarriages were, or how statistically unlikely it was for a woman to get married once she reached the age of 40, or how often lesbians got divorced. It was like nobody dared speak the truth, if you were female, about how much everything sucked for you.
The point at which her breakup with Alex began making its way from crumbs to chunks was probably a few months after they'd decided to finally go to couples therapy, or maybe that was just what made the threadbare nature of it all truly apparent.
"How do you feel about Lydia's concern that she's going to become too old to have a child?" Diane, their therapist, would say.
"I don't know," Alex would reply. The first several times Lydia had heard him say this it was almost funny, because normally, Alex knew everything.
“You don't know…?"
"I mean, I understand that she's concerned. I just…don't know what to do about it."
"Have you thought about having children?"
"Yes. Sure."
"Do you want to have children?"
"I think so. Eventually."
"What does 'eventually' mean?"
"Well…I don't know."
And so it went, with Lydia sitting silently, listening to the two of them talk about Alex’s feelings. She didn't mind, really. She got some satisfaction out of watching someone else realize how impossible this task was, and she had her own therapy sessions in which she spent 50 minutes a week discussing her own feelings, which, lately, didn't seem to be yielding any better results. That was what she needed: results. At least Diane was finally getting a little pushier.
"Okay, but you do understand that Lydia needs to know."
"Yes," said Lydia. "I need to know what to do."
"I can't tell you what to do," said Alex.
"That's true, Lydia, he can't tell you what to do."
"I know that," said Lydia testily. See, this was why she never talked. "But I've been waiting to find out what he wants. All he has been saying for the past year is, 'I don't know,' or, 'I'm thinking about it.'"
Diane turned back to Alex. "Can you tell her what you want?"
"Well…I know that I want to have a successful career as an author."
Newsflash: everyone who knew Alex knew that. Lydia had known it five minutes into meeting him, the old-fashioned way, in a bar, in Las Vegas, in March, 2002. Alex had been in Vegas "on business," which, for him, meant that he was trying to raise money from some rich person for a coffee table book on Vegas called “City of Games” that he was trying to write — something she and her friends found out after the de rigueur conversation about where everyone was on 9/11 (it was only a few months in the past at that point) had turned into one about him, his aspirations, and the famous people he knew, on which topic they’d somehow managed to then stay for 20 minutes. She actually had noticed that as kind of a bad sign at the time, but had then blown right past it because he was cute.
"I'm getting Brad Pitt to write an essay for the book – he's sort of a pal of mine,” he’d said, sipping his Blood and Sand (Scotch, Vermouth, Cherry Liquor and orange juice. Should the fruity and affected drink choice have been a sign? At the time it just seemed to show that he was quirky and maybe not particularly concerned about showing his masculinity, which seemed like a positive). “And Michael Chabon, he's also a buddy."
"Who's that?"
"Michael Chabon? The Pulitzer Prize winning author?"
"Oh, right."
When he'd gone to the bathroom, the poll of her college friends she'd met up with for the Vegas Extravaganza that ended up not being very extravagant (it turned out that none of them really had the stomach for gambling, or expensive magic shows, or Céline Dion, so they mainly just went out to dinner, then went to a series of increasingly fancy bars and drank a lot) revealed that Chloe and Fern thought Alex was interesting, while Katie, Anne and Renee had labeled him a pretentious name-dropper. But while Lydia could not entirely disagree with the latter, it was Las Vegas, and they were on vacation, and Renée and Fern were married, Katie and Chloe were seriously involved, and Anne was just cranky about everything, so what else was there to do but drink more and continue to talk to him? And when it turned out that he was from New York, even her friends couldn't disagree that that seemed romantic: that they’d met, and talked, and danced, drunkenly, in another city, even if they didn't actually hook up until they were back home weeks later. Sometimes Lydia wondered if, had they hooked up in Vegas, she could have finished the whole relationship in a weekend. But other times, she was absolutely convinced he was the one, so it kind of evened out.
Still, maybe she should have seen trouble when, after a year and a half, she'd instigated their first conversation about where the relationship was headed.
"I don't know," Alex had said. "I think we may have some important differences in our thinking.”
“We do?” asked Lydia. “I kind of thought we had the same, you know, values. We're both progressives, neither of us is religious. And I know you eat meat and I try not to, but since I only do it for health reasons, it’s not a major ideological thing —“
"Absolutely, that's all true," said Alex. "But remember when we were talking about our lottery-winning scenarios, and I said I wanted to own a big loft in Soho, and you said you'd rather own a brownstone in the West Village?"
“Yeah, but lottery fantasies aren't about reality."
"But what if we could afford to buy a loft or a brownstone, and had to choose?" said Alex, looking at her significantly. "How would we reconcile that?"
Lydia smiled. “Okay, I guess I'd let you win that one, I would make the sacrifice of letting you buy us a $20 million loft."
"But would you really be happy?"
“Mmm…Yup, I really think I'd be okay with it. Not an issue.”
But slowly it had dawned upon Lydia that it was an issue, just not the one she'd thought. The issue was that Alex saw the $20 million loft not as the fantasy that she did, but as something that he needed to attain in life before he could make other plans. And so what "I don't know" really meant was, "I'm not inclined to think about anything you want, like children, until I have my $20 million loft."
The therapy phrase for this is, "I'm not ready." It took them about ten weeks to get there.
"Yeah, I guess," was how he'd put it.
"You guess…?"
"I guess that's what I'm saying. That I'm not ready."
It was a relief on some level to have him finally admit it, but it knocked the wind out of her too, and Lydia was surprised that she could feel both things at the same time, that in some ways they even were similar. After the therapy session and the silent ride home on the train together (where else was either of them going to go?), he turned on the TV while she went to the bedroom, started weeping, and called Renee, who was caught completely off-guard since she’d typically been the one who did the crying in their friendship. Which was sort of irritating since, as a mother of two who had been able to fully explore her potential as a Pilates instructor because she was married to a millionaire early winner of the start-up sweepstakes (the kind that had actually paid off with a $10 million brownstone in Brooklyn Heights), Renee seemed to have everything.
"This just wasn’t how it was supposed to be,” sniveled Lydia between sobs and nose-blows. “And the sad part is that if it wasn't for him not wanting to get married, everything would be great. He wouldn't even have to do anything. He doesn't want to get a full-time job, that's fine, I could carry us both and a baby with mine."
"Your job is more than full time," agreed Renee, "which is part of why you hate it."
"I don't know if I hate it," said Lydia.
“Okay, okay,” Renee clucked soothingly. “Whatever, he's hurt you, so he's a bastard."
That did make Lydia feel a little warm and fuzzy as she wiped her snot off the phone: that she could rely on her friends to turn on a man they’d known for three years at a moment’s notice. “He is, isn't he?"
Or maybe he really just obviously was a bastard, and her friends had always known it, but not said anything to her because she’d thought she was happy and they didn’t want to burst her bubble? This did briefly occur to her about a day or two later, along with admitting that she did sort of hate her job, although not in the visceral way that that word might imply. It was a management consulting gig that she had fallen into as a contractor when photography — which was what she loved and had almost earned her degree in before she’d decided that she’d be better off if her resume indicated a BA from Yale in economics — wasn't paying the bills. At the time, she'd reasoned that she could use her degree to get a lucrative-enough side job that allowed her to get by while still giving her plenty of time to do her art, and that had sort of worked out for a while. But once she'd started dating Alex, who always had a project but never had money, and then they'd started talking about moving in together, she'd found that she liked the things that she could do with a proper salary. She wanted an apartment that wasn’t a shoebox, had good light and was fairly close to a train, even if she had to pay three quarters of the rent. She liked being able to take herself and Alex out to dinner somewhere other than the Super Taco Truck every once in a while, even if Alex was the kind of guy who insisted on paying, so that they'd had to develop a special routine for these dinners where he'd excuse himself to go to the bathroom after the dishes were cleared so that she could take care of the check while he was gone. She liked having an IRA in which she could dabble in owning stock – she'd bought Apple at $125 a share! Even if it was only three shares! And once she had the job as a contractor, it was just so easy to keep saying "yes" to the work and the money, and then, when they offered her a full-time position, there were the absurdly good benefits; who else even had dental and vision coverage?? Maybe Alex was willing to live like a starving artist until he became a successful one, but Lydia, it turned out, wasn't.
Although she realized, now that she’d started thinking about things, that it wasn't so much the money itself she'd gotten attached to. Having savings and health insurance, that was what adults did when they were building a life together. She'd given up something she’d loved to do for something she at the very least strongly disliked for this dream of her and Alex and their eventual family. Once, there had been all of these things she'd planned on doing at some point: spending a year as a ski bum in Jackson Hole; taking flying lessons; creating a photojournalistic essay of some small village in the developing world; spending two years abroad and learning a foreign language (somebody had told her that was the minimum for becoming fluent). She'd given up all of that potential present to live in the future. And now, to find out that that future had never really existed outside of her own head? How could she feel any way but bitter?
"But were you ever really going to do any of that?" asked Katie, who was now pregnant and married (to a woman, which made the pregnant part seem even more impressive) and had taken Lydia bowling to get her mind off of things, but was doing it in a way that was starting to irk her. Lydia just wanted someone to listen to her vent about how temporarily terrible everything was and assure her it was all going to work out, not siphon the air out of her bitterness balloon with the truth. Sometimes she didn’t know why she talked to Katie, the practical surmounter of obstacles, who she’d just watched bowl a strike by squatting and swinging the ball beneath her large belly and then get up like it was nothing to finish her thought with, “I mean, does anyone ever actually do those things?"
"Yes," said Lydia. "Dave Mallory, from freshman year, who spent two years as a ski bum –"
"He was a trust fund baby."
"Linda Balsam, she spent a year after graduation working as a waitress in Paris, remember? She speaks fluent French now. Huh, it only took her one year…"
“Well, then okay, good. If those are things you wish you’d done,” said Katie, “maybe this is your opportunity to do something like that. You have the money.”
Lydia’s face suddenly got hot. “What? No, that’s the kind of thing people do when they’re 22! And we were planning to finally spend money on some real, non-Ikea furniture. Or, I was…” She trailed off.
“I’m just saying that if always having a plan got you into this,” said Katie, “maybe you should just go off somewhere and do something without one.”
“Or maybe Alex could stop being such a schmuck so I could stick with the one I had.”
“Which was making you so happy?”
“Well, it was going to, eventually,” grumbled Lydia.
She picked up her ball and headed toward the lane. Then, just as she was swinging it forward, an idea dawned on her that made her forget to let go of the ball until it was way too late, so that it lofted and dropped with a thud. She turned back to Katie. “But, maybe if I went ahead and did do a serious trip like that, he’d realize how much he doesn’t want to lose me. Or I could even just make him think I intend to take one…”
“That sounds suspiciously like a plan, and a really shitty one.”
“Why?”
“Because…” Katie sighed, “I think one of the only good things to come out of all this is that you now know 100% who he is. Do people really change?”
“Alex has changed a lot during the time we’ve been together. He eats three different vegetables now. He hangs out with my friends, if he has time, and I bug him about it…”
Lydia plopped down next to Katie as the ball ended its slow and inexorable drift down the lane by taking down one end pin. But her brain with this idea was still rolling slowly forward.
“And say watching me get ready to go on this trip doesn’t convince him, then I’m just doing what you’re talking about: going off somewhere and doing something different, without a plan.”
“So you’re planning to do something without a plan, if your shitty plan fails.”
“Something like that,” said Lydia.
She hoped she at least sounded confident, because as she lay in bed that night, listening to Alex snore beside her, she realized that she had to figure out what exactly that all meant. By the time she was dragging herself out of bed in the morning, knowing she’d be useless at work, she’d come to the conclusion that she’d have to have a basic outline for her expedition — like where to go (or “go”) and for how long — that was both plausible enough to convince everyone she meant it, and doable enough that she could actually mean it if push came to shove. She remembered that fluent-in-French Linda had done a study abroad program and met a lot of people that way, so maybe a language school would be a good place to start. And it would be good not to go in totally cold. Lydia had studied Spanish in high school, and sometimes she still understood pieces of conversation (simple ones, like, “Where are you going?” or “Sit down!”) that she heard on the subway. So while pretending to write work emails, she typed "Spanish schools" into Google, and what came up on her screen was a world of possibility. A world of too many possibilities, really: "Learn Spanish in Peru and Argentina,” "Learn Spanish in Spain and Mexico,” "Spanish Studies for every taste: Spain, Costa Rica and Ecuador,” and on and on and on. One site listed schools in every country in South and Central America, and of course they all had glowing reviews.
One thing that narrowed down her choices was, since she only had two weeks’ vacation banked, if she was going to do a big trip in a big way, she was going to have to quit her job. The thought was both terrifying and exhilarating, making her aware for the first time that these were going to be the dominant emotions for this whole undertaking. She stuffed them down by telling herself she didn’t have to actually decide yet if any of this was really going to happen: basically, the deadline was the two weeks’ notice she’d have to give on her job so that she could exit gracefully and pick up contract work if needed when she got back. However, the part of this that was key to her overall blueprint was that if she wasn't going to have a job on her “return”, she had to “go” somewhere inexpensive (which nixed Spain) and get there as cheaply as possible (which nixed flights to South America). Mexico was huge and kind of intimidating. Conversely, Costa Rica sounded almost too tame, like the only people who went there were American retirees and yuppie families who wanted pictures of their kids with adorable monkeys and sloths — it would impress no-one. Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador were now pretty safe, but sounded unexciting, aside from the beaches, and Honduras had some ancient ruins to visit, but not as many as Guatemala.
Guatemala. The more she read about it, the more it seemed to have everything going for it that you could want in a go-to-lose-yourself-or-just-pretend-to destination. Mayan ruins, colonial architecture, volcanoes, lakes, beaches, and tropical fauna. It was off the beaten path enough that it wasn't swarmed with American tourists, but there were enough gringos (Lonely Planet seemed to have adopted this term so she accepted that it was not offensive to call herself that) that she wouldn't stick out most places. And while it sounded like there was crime, a lot of what she read on travelers' websites suggested that people's fears were inflated. What it sounded like, mostly, was an adventure.
“Is Guatemala actually somewhere people go on vacation?” asked Alex. After leaving two newly-acquired travel guides around for him to see for a week, he still hadn’t asked about anything, so she’d decided to casually mention her plans. “I mean, everyone goes to Costa Rica.”
Lydia’s eyebrows meshed, as the “Why would anyone want to do that?” tone of his response was not one she’d prepared for (those were, in order of preference, “Please don’t go!”, “Wait, let’s talk about this,” and “Wow, that sounds cool”). But she rallied and managed to say, “Well, yes, but that’s why it’s interesting.”
Alex fluttered the pages of the Rough Guide skeptically. “And have you ever traveled by yourself? It doesn’t seem like something you’re up for.”
“That’s why I want to do it, I need a reset in my life.” She took the book back from him. “What do you care, anyway?”
“I care about you,” he said. “I’m not the one who wanted to break up, you know, I’m fine with how things are.”
Lydia turned away. “Well, I’m not. That’s why I’m going.” And as she marched back to the bedroom, she thought, Not a bad start, this could actually work.
But over the next few days, the topic didn’t resurface, despite that she’d been highlighting hotels and Spanish schools in Lonely Planet beside him on the couch every night and doing nightly flight searches on her computer while he lay in bed behind her — ones that clearly showed her leaving for Guatemala City in four weeks, and returning in about eleven. And she’d made sure he’d seen them; just yesterday she’d said, “Sure, I’m done for now,” when he came in to ask if he could use the laptop (he, of course, had only an ancient, sluggish desktop that he claimed worked fine but of course he basically hadn’t used since they’d moved in together), leaving the page open as she left him to it.
Now, she logged back into her Travelocity account and faced the itinerary she’d saved. What should she do? The clock was ticking. Was he was calling her bluff? Did she have to move ahead and prove she meant it? Did she mean it?
She had to. She knew this man: he was the ultimate procrastinator. Alex wouldn’t truly get that this adventure of hers that was going to end their relationship was a reality unless she made it one.
“Travelocity, take me away," said Lydia under her breath as she clicked on "Book it!"
And like that she was going to Guatemala. She’d be gone the end of January, all of February, and a little bit of March (which sounded like longer than it was because it was spread out over the months that everyone said were good for traveling in Central America, the dry season). She would start the trip studying Spanish in Antigua, a charming old colonial city which was also a tourist hub, with so many Spanish schools to choose from that she could take the advice of Lonely Planet and just decide when she got there – yet another thing she could leave unplanned, yes! She kept highlighting, bought a pack of Spanish Conversation CDs, extra underwear, and a good pair of hiking boots, and made a doctor's appointment with her GP for a travelers' consult, comforting herself with the cushion of a thought at the back of her mind that the ticket was refundable, making this all undoable for the next couple of weeks.
After going through the basic information with the nurse, and waiting the de rigeuer 15 minutes, but never more, that was always required when seeing Dr. Mohan, the physician hurried in with a sheaf of printouts in her arms.
"So according to the CDC website, our two biggest potential concerns are malaria and dengue fever. Do you know exactly where you're going?"
"Uh, not completely,” said Lydia. “I’m flying into Guatemala City, then going to Antigua for a while –"
"Antigua and Guatemala City aren't at risk for malaria, do you think you might be in these other areas?" She pulled a paper from the pile that had a map of Guatemala, and gestured at a wide swath of it with her pen.
"Uh, I don't know, the plan was sort of not to have a plan –"
"Well, then, unless the plan is to get malaria, I think we'd better hook you up with some pills,” the doctor said with a grin. “Now I'd recommend Malarone, but it can be expensive if you're going for a long trip since you have to take it every day. I could give you Chloroquine, but it says here," she sifted through the papers again, "that there may be Chloroquine resistance in parts of Central America, plus you have to keep taking it four weeks after you get back. You're not pregnant are you?"
"No.”
"Because then I might recommend Lariam, but only if you don't have any family history of mental illness, because it can cause psychotic breaks."
This should have been terrifying, and in fact it was, but Dr. Mohan’s competence and the way she took everything in stride in her white heels and the fabulous suits she always wore underneath her lab coat, that made her look like she was just about to fling it off to head to an important cocktail party, made it all feel as if this was just a run-off-the-mill visit. Lydia took this to mean that for some of her patients, maybe lots of them, it probably was, and Lydia was now just one of those people. In the end, they decided on the expensive but non-psychotic type of malaria pills for a 4-week period of time (she wouldn’t start traveling around for at least a couple of weeks), and a Hep A shot.
"What about dengue fever?" asked Lydia, holding a cotton ball to her punctured arm as Dr. Mohan put the needle away.
"Oh, there's no vaccine for dengue. Just try to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes a lot when you're in those areas. If you get it you'll just get a fever, some joint pain or eye pain, but then call a doctor if the fever declines and more serious symptoms pop up –"
"Like what?"
"Vomiting blood, stuff like that. Then you should find an emergency room."
"That is generally what I do when I start vomiting blood."
"Good," said the doctor, turning to her computer to type in the prescription. "Believe it or not, not everyone does."
When she got home that night, Lydia went to the CDC website to see the symptoms for herself. This proved to be a mistake. The major ones listed were clammy skin, drowsiness, and irritability.
“That’s me all the time," she muttered as she stared at the screen. Her eyes fell on a link at the bottom of the page, to Current Travel Warnings at the State Department's International Travel Website. "Huh, I wonder what that is?" She clicked on it.
"Oh, you don't want to read that," said Alex, standing in the bedroom doorway, his mouth full of Boston cream donut. He'd started eating all of the foods again that she had basically shamed him out of eating for the past three years, and he liked to do it in front of her.
"Guatemala’s not here, thank God," said Lydia, scanning the countries listed. Then she scrolled down to Country Specific Information and found Guatemala under "G." She moved quickly through Country Description, Smart Traveler Enrollment Program and Entry/Exit Requirements, to arrive at Threats to Safety and Security. There was some bad stuff about large and potentially violent demonstrations, the dangerousness of the Mexican border because of drug trafficking, and a few paragraphs about violence connected with child stealing in rural areas – all of which was off-putting, but not awful, since she figured she wasn't going to be involved in child stealing or demonstrating, and she could avoid the border. But the Crime and Safety Tips section began with the sentence, "Guatemala has one of the highest violent crime rates in Latin America," and it only got worse from there. Phrases like "becoming a focus of attention for criminal gangs," "Rule of law is lacking," “Leave valuables at home,” and “Emboldened armed robbers have attacked vehicles on main roads in broad daylight" were among those that buzzed her eyeballs as she blinked rapidly from one paragraph to the next.
"'A number of travelers have experienced carjackings and armed robberies after just having arrived on international flights, most frequently in the evening,'" she read out loud. "Oh God, my flight gets in at 6:30."
"That's not really evening," said Alex. "It might not even be dark yet that close to the equator –"
“Anything after 5 pm is evening!”
"Okay, look relax, I told you not to read this stuff."
But Lydia had already hit “print.” Pages spewed from her inkjet, broken up by the headings, "Carjacking," "Flat-tire Scam," "Parking Lot Scam," "Kidnapping" and "Rape." She grabbed up a warm sheet as it hit the tray, reading:
U.S. Embassy personnel observe heightened security precautions throughout the country:
Rather than traveling alone, use a reputable tour organization.
Stay in groups, travel in a caravan consisting of two or more vehicles, and stay on the main roads.
Ensure that someone not traveling with you is aware of your itinerary.
"I'm traveling alone! I don't have an itinerary!" wailed Lydia.
Alex awkwardly put his arm around her. He was always uncomfortable with displays of affection, but she tried to ignore that as she leaned into him, needing for it to mean something.
"They just put this stuff on the State Department website for idiots who don't know anything about traveling, okay?" he said. "You are not an idiot. You live in New York City, which is probably more dangerous than most of these places – or at least it was, pre-Guiliani. Remember that? How we used to avoid poorly-lit streets and the dealing blocks in the East Village?” He gave her a comradely shake. “This won't be any tougher than that."
“But if I can’t bring my camera —“
"Of course you're going to bring your camera," sighed Alex, rubbing her back still more ungracefully, if that was possible. “It's a film camera, and it's old. Nobody's going to want to steal that, except maybe for its antique value. And you aren’t you without your camera.”
This touched Lydia, even as she shook her head, watching the pages continue to spill from the printer. See? He did really know her. Maybe this was the moment he’d realize he didn’t want to lose her.
“I don't know…Maybe you were right and this trip is stupid. Maybe I should just cancel it, the whole thing. I mean, what the hell am I doing?"
The rubbing suddenly stopped. "No no no, you…you don't want to do that," said Alex.
“But…” she said, looking at him. It was like someone had just pulled down the gate with the CLOSED sign over his face.“I thought you said you didn’t want to break up.”
“I — I didn’t,” Alex said. “But…these past few weeks I’ve realized how miserable you were with the situation, and how miserable you being miserable was making me. So you were right, we can’t go on with things like they were. And so this trip…it’s the right thing for you.”
As the words sunk in, a whole flood of emotions that Lydia had been keeping at bay flowed in on top of them: validation, anger, disappointment, grief, the realization that he was trying to get rid of her to make it easier for him to get the apartment. Then it all congealed into fear — oh God oh God oh shit oh shit — and her stomach dropped, and then the rest of her felt like it was falling too, tumbling slowly toward no bottom, because now she was going to really have to go on this trip. But as she made the hard left turn into panic, stubborn pride pushed back with a strong talking-to, reminding her that she had always intended to go if Alex didn’t change his mind, and that was the story she was sticking with because she was for damn sure not letting him see anything to the contrary. Lydia was taking a deep breath, and then another one, and she could do this, she could do this, she could do this.
The next day, she gave notice, and on schedule, two weeks and one day later, everything she owned, aside from what she thought she'd need in a small, tropical, Third World country and could squeeze into one large backpack with wheels, was in a medium-sized storage unit, and she was on a plane on her way to Guatemala City.
Enjoyed this latest chapter! Well written and funny!