Spendthrift Grannies

Spendthrift Grannies

     by Douglas Moneybags Banker Guy

Many people spend too much now and then? I myself have fallen in that regard? Once I purchased a snowmobile for upwards of seven thousand dollars? It included several extras: hitch; polystyrene dust cover; boots good to sixty below; snowmobile suit for two hundred dollars; over-the-wrist leather snow mitts; a spare drive belt? I did not have a place to store it and it occupied three quarters of the garden shed during the summer? I have spent too little on an item now and then but not often enough to be of consequence, or mentionable in the grand scheme of things? I occasionally think that I have spent too little on my unmentionables when I notice them gaping and sagging at their leg openings?

        A grandmother I once knew fell into the first of these categorie?. Grandmothers of my acquaintance typically horde and save? With a government pension amounting to a pittance a month they make do, and with surprisingly felicitous consequences on the palettes and senses of their visitors? My mother was not a cook of that latter ilk? She darkened light gravy, served chicken pink at the bones, boiled carrots half away, got her brown bread dry and crispy, and fried eggs the same? All good? I ate her food and didn't die, or ever get sick from it, or ever crave more of it? She taught me moderation of appetite? I taught myself nothing, ever? I have learned very little in a lifetime? My lifetime is nearly done? I will never know anything? This is not pleasing to me? My mother knew a great deal till she got her stroke? 

        This other older woman to whom I referred had cash and spent it? She was prodigal of it? She would give away one set of dishes, complete with a dozen services of plates, bowls, and tea and coffee cups, as well as creamer, sugar bowl and salt and pepper shakers, because she had just found and purchased another and her kitchen could only accommodate three sets? She bought an expensive sports car that languished in her garage undriven? She took taxis to stores and occasions? She gave luxuriously to the church and sundry charities, sometimes filling United Way boxes with ten and twenty dollar bills? Once, shopping with her granddaughter, she bought for her own use a half dozen pairs of teenager jeans and as many teenager blouses? She kept a servant who watched television most of the day? She ate out at expensive restaurants morning and night, keeping no food at home in pantry or fridge? Concerned with her own welfare, she consumed more than would two families with five children each?

Oedipus Square Near the Palace

Oedipus Square Near the Palace
      by Dougler Reima

"My adoptive parents changed my name when they found that the authorities were after them and now I am forced to live with this false identity in order to protect them. I've told you some of this before. Why do I protect those who attempt to force on me what I do not wish? Simply, I love them. When I discovered that these were not my parents, Maryanne being not my mother but my nurse, and Philip not my father but my trustee, I disbelieved my ears and decided to go to some office, some officials, to determine the truth of the rumours. Let me tell you, since we are fellow travellers on this awkward road and so you will understand its import, my story as I recollect it. Could you reach me my cup? I forget where I set it down. Thank you! You are so good to me! May God grant you comfort and joy and long life!
        I adored my parents. I was eighteen at the time my troubles began. We--myself along with my parents, brothers and sisters, as well as the extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and godparents--gathered in Oedipus Square for Mayday celebrations, nineteen seventy-three, to give our thanks to God, of course, but simultaneously to send Antonia on her way. The wedding had brought many together. When the revels had got well underway, and during supper hour when most had gathered in the hall there around the board, a drunk called out suddenly in a loud voice for everyone to hear his toast. He slurred out a speech I've spent my life trying to forget. 
        'You, Eddy, you think that you're so fine! Living in comfort and wealth, with parents dotting on you their a handsome prince. But . . . these are not your mother and father!'
        The room hushed. I said nothing. I leapt up to challenge him but instead hurried from the hall. Later I confronted my parents. Ivory, thank you. Yes, I, am comfortable. Are you weary of this tale? No? Well, they assured me that the man was speaking foolishness and had no sense of things, that he was witless and that I must not give the slightest credence to the matter. I experienced great relief and believed them. I did, at least, believe them in word. My heart smarted with doubt and eventually I sent a servant to discover the truth at the Vroix. There my fate was sealed. He returned. I listened. I fell ill. I left home. The rest is a long, long story so fell and deep that you will hardly credit it. I had to remain apparently well and sane in order to survive. But really, inside I burned with fear for my future. You know of that yourself, Ivory, I have long gathered from the stories you tell me of your own wild upbringing. Your understanding of the ways of insanity makes my confession possible. 
        How does one live with the sort of prediction my servant brought back? How can one ever again trust oneself in the company of woman or man when it has been told to one by the gods that one will kill the very people one lives most, one by an act of physical violence, the other by one of infamy?
        I fled! Maryanne was not going to become my wife! Of that I felt certain. Though I loved her, I did so with utter purity of heart and mind! She was my mother! And as for Philip, nothing could have induced me to take up arms against that reverent head! So, I did what I had to do. O the cleverness of the gods, Ivory! O the depths of my horror! O the tyranny of youthful hope! I began a life on the road, as I am--irony of ironies--living on the road again all these many year hence. And do you know that I could not die? I think you have already guessed that, Ivory, have you not? That I wished to die then, many years ago? You knew because you have seen it in my eyes, seen that I have visited death and returned with a surfeit of it on my being. Death written on me.
        I had hardly left home when I encountered a group of soldiers on a narrow way. I stood to one side to let them pass. They ignored me and strode by. But one of them, an old, white-haired man, as he passed, turned and pushed me aside, raising his oaken cudgel to strike me. Enraged, suddenly, I wrested away his stave and swung it in an instant at his own head. I hit him harder than I intended, I think, though I have had second thoughts about that since.
        Nevertheless, he fell to the ground and eight soldiers rushed at me with swords in their hands. I still had the dead man's staff and with it I flailed about me. Before one could have said "Robinson Crusoe" all of them but one lay lifeless, the byway littered with their bodies. I had never felt fear, don't get me wrong. I wanted to die! I fervently wished that I had then been killed! But fate had other things in store for pitiful me. As you will hear, death was not my youthful destiny. Thirty years later I am still alive and well and, my blindness excepted, as capable as ever. I believe that I could still inflict similar devastation if need required. My strength remains undiminished over the years. Is that not remarkable, Ivory?
        The rest of my story will have to wait for another occasion. Tomorrow night maybe I will continue it. Do you know where I should relieve myself? Help me to a spot and then I will try to sleep, I think. I am the author of my own destruction, and I know it all. I congratulate myself not on my history but on my knowing. My knowing what I endured and what I must still endure before my long flight is done. You are not my mother are you, Ivory?

On Maryland Off Broadway

On Maryland Off Broadway

     by What's His Name

        Hitler had only

        Rommel had two but

        Himmler had

        But poor old Gooballs

I've just come from giving a lecture. I am fifty-five and divorced with two high school-aged kids I seldom am allowed to visit. Dandy sees me and opens the door. 

        "Really good play you wrote. It's great!" I say this coming up the steps. They creak. They are strong, nevertheless. The yards in this part of the city are thirty feet wide. Cops live on each side of Dandy and Filbert's. The eaves touch. The yard on the right sports a chopper without a motor. 

        "Really?" she says, emphasis on the first syllable. "Wow, I'm so glad," is what she means. Filbert shakes my hand, then she. Her's lingers, saying, "Remember when you thought these the softest hands?" 

       "Take the Martin in the warmth?" Filbert says. It is twenty-five below, not good for the preservation of an instrument. Filbert operates a skyhook. Off season now, he lazes. His father fixes cars in the country on his yard in a grey plywood Quonset, the chokecherry trees beside it tall and spindly. The fruit puckers the mouth. He hit a policeman and spent a full year in jail for it. He drinks now only under his wife's care. 

        Filbert likes his beer. He also likes Glenna. They sleep together now and then because Calvin doesn't anymore. Calvin drinks Guinness when he drinks Guinness because of his Irish roots. Filbert drinks anything but Guinness. Filbert can play a passable Vaughan lick with a few hours practice. Calvin says things at the dinner table, with adult guests and his mother present, like, "Mandy still makes me think of a giant ostrich," flapping his arms like short wings and springing his legs. He will say this twice with accompanying motions and emphasis on "still," once at the beginning and once in the middle of the meal. 

        Inside, three women sit on a couch without legs, low to the floor. One of them has swollen glands from wisdom teeth coming in. On each side of her a woman sits with her legs tucked under her and a mug in her hands. Steam ascends from one of them. I put the Martin down in the hallway and then move it a few feet, away from the warm air register. Around the boots the smell of damp, cut plywood. The fur of the cat standing on the guitar case radiates heat. Old oil in a hot cast iron pan. She squeaks when I push her and bats at my mitten. The look in her eyes grows mischievous. It is too hot in this house. The thermostat on the boiler can't be working. 

        Mandy wobbles towards me with arms outstretched. 

        "You must be thirsty," I say after I have lifted her and hugged her and spoken her name three or four times. She reaches out an arm and hand, fingers spread. I go to the kitchen and look for a cup with a spout. I pour water into a pint jar from the clean dishes rack and help her drink. She chokes, and when she recovers says, "Oh, oh!" I hug her and walk into the living room. I am forever hugging Mandy. I notice that the top of her head feels slightly feverish. After awhile I take off her sweater and stockings so she can run around in her Huggins and t-shirt. 

         "Mandy loves grandpa," say the women sitting on each side of Glenna. The three look at me holding her. When they have finished some silent and spoken congratulations, and confirm that Mandy will be well looked after, they resume their conversation. Filbert gives up the armchair in the corner for me. He leans forward out of habit more than to pay attention. His crossed legs dangle and his elbows rest on his knees. 

        I sit facing out from the corner of the room. Mandy climbs onto and off my lap with intense regularity and teeters always here and there among the jackets, books and household items on the floor. I go to the kitchen for a carrot. It has much garden dirt on it. I rinse it, rubbing with my palms till it looks clean. When I sit down again, Mandy comes, arms stretched, eyes on my carrot. I hold it to her lips but she pulls it, whining, till I let go. She sits on my lap while she eats. 

        I say, "Just a little bit. Don't take big bites. You might choke." She bites small bites and I am convinced that she loves me. She lifts it up to my mouth, watching my lips with cute eyes.  I nibble and feel the odd sensation of a lot of spit. Next time she gives it to me I wipe it first. 

        "Mm mm, good!" I say.

        "Mm mm," she says. 

        As I am leaving, after Mandy has also shared my toast and jam and a sip of the tea Glenna makes for me, getting up despite her unhappy teeth and throat, Dandy appears out of nowhere. Standing beside me above the stairs, with one arm around my shoulders, she says,

        "See you tomorrow night. We're working on strong endings, right?"

        "Yeah, strong endings," I say, squeezing her waist. "See you tomorrow."

His Mother's Taste in Colours

My Mother's Taste in Colours

     by D. R. A. Y. M. A. R.

Bardo's family life made the grackles look positively Clint Eastwood. They lived in a walk-up above a shoe repair in East Fort Gary on a street that shall remain nameless. His mother's taste in colours! Gad! Black and blue, the front. The hue not of delphiniums which would have reminded of puff and oxygen but Port Colburn helcinite. Why not just spray paint a huge "weird" on the front window?

        He, himself, had never committed adultery but Gertie had. And with an uncle! A minister! How could she have done that her mother said to her in his presence because she thought him too young to understand. And when Gertie had apologized enough over a two-week period by crying, wringing her hands and performing various other displays of obedience, his mother had in fact gone from abject disapproval to intent interest in the details of the tryst. Whether Ronald knew. How many times. In the garage even! The use, skilful or clumsy, of objects and toys. The application of and manipulations with oils, flower petals, ice cubes, oblong objects of specific shape and texture and also the size of these. Nothing beneath her dignity or beyond the borders of her hunger.

     Bardo liked reading. The history of the Hubble telescope. Tourism. Montisuma's revenge. The Mexican economy. Aberrant Pomeranian mating conventions. The nature and frequency of muggings in Hyde Park. Moses's probable meandering's in the reed basket before Miriam's mother took him to nurse. The nefariousness of fashion industry recruiters. Blues in America. Little Brother Montgomery. Blind Lemon Jefferson. Maimie Reefer. Jump Jimmy Adams. Sun Records.

        Bardo disliked all references to sex between humans. In the animal kingdom, fine. But not concerning consenting adults, politicians, passion, experimentation, privacy, successful parenting, lesbian couples, cruising, gay men, movies about gay men, telephone-personals women, virginal Britney Speers, aging vital grandparents, or older persons, and housewives. As far as he was concerned, the topics of sex might all happily be erased from the pages of magazines and books and never be referred to in conversations either. 

        Del's life ended in the war. His mother and father frequently still burned candles for him. Bardo hardly remembered him. Del's room had become Bardo's room, and though its sloped ceilings and small windows cramped life in it, adjustment had come quickly. It came gradually but felt quick. Before, he'd slept on a cot in a corner of the basement behind the furnace where, from as far back as he could remember, the sound of the sudden fan soothed him when he couldn't sleep. He'd wait for it. Tell himself it would be soon. And the service box above his head with Federal Stab-on Centres written in white letters on a blood-red label he read often lying down. Wires inside metal tentacles crisscrossed through the fir planks above. Where two joists were used together for strength, as around the opening for the stairs, a crack between them rained light dust when someone stamped on the hardwood in the kitchen. 

        Sockeye, his next door neighbour, lived in fear. He himself said it was not fear but kindness. If kindness consisted of reprimanding Bardo when he told an off-colour joke, or not laughing unless the joke poked fun at no race or suggested no raciness, and if it meant interrupting anyone except people whom Sockeye admired and whose favours he curried, then he was not afraid. Sockeye's mother lived for the Valium with which his father supplied her. She would say things to her daughter-in-law such as, "If I had known how beautiful that vase was, I wouldn't have given it to you. I would have kept it myself!" Sickness kept her indoors and inactive. The only activity she found tolerable was shopping. Sockeye disliked any references to his parents. Neither to his mother's health nor to his father's tendancy to give extravagant gifts. Like his father, Sockeye spent lavishly on presents for his acquaintances. 

         Bardo had met Sandrilaka in Prague and then communicated with her for two years, mainly by letter. Her hair, brown as doeskin, and her eyes, blue as the colour their house was not painted, took him. He initially found breathing difficult in her presence. And when that affect left him he discovered that, with her or not, he could not stop holding his breath until a deep one surprised him. After a few months, in the letter writing stage, he said the most absurd things, things he regretted later after he had fallen out of love again. "I think of you all the time." "I miss you so much I hardly know what to say." "How can I ever in words begin to express my inner emotions." Many more. All of it foolish and trite, though he had felt those sentiments with a sincerity that he now could not understand. He tried re-feeling them, the words, but failed. She was he knew not where now. He did not feel blue about it. 

        For now, living in his basement suite on Henry St., looking at the back of the Finklemann Fruit and Vegetable wholesaler, it's brick blackened on the ally side, he was glad he was not in love. Now he knew himself better than he had there for a few years. 

White Bodily Fluids

White Bodily Fluids
     by Dirk Duggler

       busybodies, prepare ye 

       the way of the Lord

Lying is a manly act. If you've been working on a written report since four AM because your grades suffer when you don't (being naturally an average student), and a gifted acquaintance (who writes his in an hour and scores top marks) says, "Did you get up early again?" then say, "What do you mean? I got up at ten." Don't let the manipulators force you into honesty.
        I am a teacher of undergraduate courses. I have graying hair and a receding hairline. My salary is less than forty thousand. I shop for my suits, shirts and jackets at Value Village. I have never employed a tailor. My vehicles both have rust around the wheel wells. This spring after classes ended I spent a few days doing my own rust repair on them, grinding, sanding, fiberglassing, puttying and painting. I own a cabin (not a cottage) that cost me fifteen thousand. I live in River Heights in a common bungalow. When my wife and I are visiting in voluptuous and sumptuous houses of similar or slightly larger size than ours, we come back wondering if we should put out a greater financial effort and buy a better place. At the end of each summer, when we have overspent again, we agree to buckle down and not buy coffees, stop at McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin even once a week, and see what's in the freezer so we can save a few hundred dollars in September and October.
         The student in the front row with a sundress and neat hair, attractively sweet and smiling, became quite distant after the third class in September when I gave my charges this analysis of the value of lies. She gave the appearance of being bored with the course after that and missed too many days. Another truism: "Don't overprepare. Too much information and students don't learn much." I expect that my upper-level undergraduates this year will require authority. I will say to myself, as if I was speaking to them (by way of deflecting the attitude that they will take that they want both entertainment and display of confident knowing in the subject they are studying under me), "I am not an authority on Mennonite Literature. I don't know what the word authority means. It has no meaning for me. I know a great deal, but I will not show that to you all at once, nor ever in any comprehensive way. Some of you may quit the class when you do not get the show of authority from me that makes you feel that you're getting well educated. Others will begin to miss numerous classes but stay for the credit. Some will settle for being entertained. You will, however, if you stick around, learn a great deal in this class because you will read many poems and stories together with me and I will quietly provide for you with questions that derive from my rich discoveries, which in turn themselves derived from my not saying much when the temptation is to say a great deal, and saying a great deal when the common requirement is to say little."

          Related to this business of authority is the way some colleagues relate to women. One woman of my acquaintance asked me why Bill Bentley (a well-known teacher of art history at our university with thirty-five years experience under his belt) never smiled at her. "I always give him a big smile when I pass him in the hallways," she said  to me, "but he pretends not to know me. He never smiles back. I took expressionist history with him five years ago. He has a prodigious memory. I know he remembers me. I know he does, but he won't smile at me. What's with that?" 

        I thought I had an answer and told her that he probably has trouble relating to women. Later I thought that he probably has trouble with authority. Women who smile at you and then you smile back, means that you are not in control of the future with that female. A man must not smile easily or give too much of himself to a woman at all, any woman, wife or daughter, fellow passerby or new acquaintance, if he wishes to continue to be fed the sense that he is in the drivers' seat generally in this world. The world is a place that does not not truly vindicate hierarchies. Signs of successful manipulation ("control" for our purposes, or "authority," if you will) vaporize and disappear as quickly as shit down a toilet when you smile willingly, extemporize unwisely, stay silent when others wait for you to speak, defer to student opinion, practice your guitar a few hours a night when your day job is scholarship, or allow (by accident or deliberation) any of a thousand other simple deflections of order.
       Apparently my book, recently published, has been shat on by a Ms. Meireanna Corbozzi who argues, in a review, I have it by way of the grapevine, that I don't know what Deleuze and Guattari's thesis is. Since theirs is the theoretical heart of my book, her criticism constitutes claiming that I am assuming a vapid authority and should give it up. I expect that she does not appreciate my treatment of the poets and story writers whom I treat to a Deleusian analysis, finding my stance unauthoritative, excessive, irreverent, full of things left out that might have been said, and unaware thus of the good things that might have been given about Mrs's. Wiebes, Friesen, Bergen, Ms's. Brandt, Birdsell, Klassen, Braun, Poetker and Toews. In most cases my analyses in the book praise little, criticize little and analyze a great deal a certain few of their works. No comprehensiveness speaks from those pages, I say without embarrassment. No authority fails to smile out of them, either. I wrote, I proliferated, I thought, I smiled, I published. Mia culpa.

        At this point in my life I have no regrets. My students tend to like me in the end, I tend not to remember bad reviews, I make friends with outcasts, I regularly give up those acquaintances who irritate me, I stalk no one, I consider knowledge of the world's human order increasingly tedious and not worth the effort, and I continue to become more clever. I will not end this story with any clevernesses.

Loving God

Loving God

     by Douglas the Divine

I liked what I saw. 

        There was Joe, the oldest. He leaned against the fireplace, his pipe in his hand, talking to his dog. The family fortunes had been dealt a death blow and they were all standing in the kitchen of the old manor house for the last time. The last of the horses, heavy Percherons, being led away by new owners, swayed and thumped, shod hooves slipping on the cobblestones of the courtyard. 

        "Yer won't be getting such as this much longer, will yer?" Joe sang out to the small dog lying by the fender. He held out a rind of bacon from his empty breakfast plate. His drooping, horsey features and bowed head spoke of defeat. He was engaged to the neighbouring estate owner's daughter, Doris. He would marry, step into harness and go to work for her father. The others, Joe thought, especially Mabel, were not as fortunate as he. 

        "What are'ter going to do with yourself then?" he said to Mabel as she bent to clear her brothers' plates from the table. She spoke no word nor acknowledged him with a look. 

        "Yer can't sleep on the streets that's sure," he added, but Mabel said nothing. "Might be yer could keep hoose fer aunty crost toon. Till yer find anither place as'll hav ter." 

        Henry, the middle brother, kept quiet until he noticed Dr. Ferguson coming up the drive. 

        "There's the doc," he said leaning out to see the front step in the courtyard. 

         "Is he turning in?" asked Malcolm the youngest. He said little. He felt less concern than the others. He was young and stood a better chance of making his mark than they. 

          "Yes. Here he is." Henry went to the door as the doctor knocked. Mabel nodded to the visitor as he entered and then left the room.

        "Sulkiest bitch that ever trod," Henry said, shaking his head in the direction of her disappearing back. "What should we do tonight? The Tap and Spyglass? Jill and Denise at least will be there." The doctor nodded and smiled. He took the drop of whiskey Joe held up to him and raised his glass in a toast. 

          John Ferguson practiced in the countryside far from Liverpool where he'd been educated because once here he had grown to like the rough and ready people. They were suspicious people, unwilling to see a doctor except when death made it preferable, and they were in every way difficult to meet. Yet, he would not have traded this lonely, unwelcoming place for the city. 

        He passed the cemetery and was startled to see Mabel kneeling at a grave. She looked up at him then, seeing him too, and stared at him with dangerous eyes. They mesmerized him, leaving him weak. Where before this moment he had felt light and free, now his spirit sagged under the weight of her powerful eyes. The oppression passed the moment he moved out of her sight, but it took some time before lightness returned to his step, to his heart.

Examining Ourselves from Behind

Examining Ourselves from Behind

      by Kindly Dougie McDonald

everyman

aphoric his state of mind

alliterative his mien

qualifying all

even that endless question of

judgement as the real

if judgement is the real

then all is flux

and Being has no home

Lorenzo Smith had been contemplating the way his daughter loved her daughter. He knew that she loved her dearly. She loved her so much that she could not abide having her disobey and be mischievous. And she mischiefed, that little girl, never doubt that for a minute. The temptation for his daughter, Lorenzo thought, was to teach the little one to be good by telling her what to do and expecting her to follow these instructions immediately. Swift punishment of sharp tongue and precipitous placement in isolation in her room followed hard on any resistance to her mother's requests. Now, Lorenzo knew that the odd outbreak of telling and requiring, as well as the occasional confinement in a room by herself, would do the child no harm. But he also knew that implacable authority caused lasting anger in children. He considered that he had learned much by raising his own daughter, and now by watching her raise hers. He had a few thoughts one morning about the matter and decided to jot them down. 

       It just so happened that he was due that very hour for a rectal examination by his doctor Susan Cracks and he did not look forward to this event. In fact, he felt that he might just decide against going and pretend that he'd forgotten the appointment. He got up and wrote these ideas down. He felt inadequate to say anything about children to a mother who loved her child so much. But in the end he did record these following precepts and meant to give them to her soon. 

Mischief kids grow out of

Anger they don't

Control isn't everything 

It's cracked up to be

Teach a child how to love

And you teach a child how to love

The fertilizer of control

Breeds hate and anger

Love: a product of giving in

We tend to control our firstborns

Give a kid a chance

Make love more important 

Than behaviour

We control because we are afraid for them

Then they control because they are afraid of us

I would rather have a naughty child now

Than a naughty adult later

Gentleness and kind talk 

Gets us just as far as authority

It feels like authority is the only way

Giving up authority is another and better way

Though a harder one

A child learns to love to the degree

That a parent learns to give up control

The best step taken is sometimes a step backwards

Sometimes we do in the name of instruction

What we actually do because we are tired

"Talk to your kid," said the lord

Lorenzo knew that he had some authority In these matters since he had himself learned (by accident, having sired a thoroughly single-minded daughter whom, it goes without saying, he loved to distraction) by growing his own. He had learned in addition by observing parents around him, seeing how they inevitably wished to channel their offspring's behaviour and correct it, thinking that that was a most important thing to do during these early formative years.

       He, Lorenzo, knew in his heart though, and had known when he raised his children, that that desire to make your children behave and follow a certain path meant that they did not get to choose their own path. This not choosing their own path meant that they could not learn to see their own value. Not seeing their own value meant that they learned to hate themselves (rather than hate their own parents whom children will love no matter what these parents do). Hating themselves, they grew angry and could not in the end relate to the parent who had loved them by controlling them. All too often he had seen this scenario played out and his heart ached for the little ones. His heart ached for the little granddaughter who was of his own blood. 

        Lorenzo did not want to go through with the rectal exam, but in the end, on impulse, he up and drove down to see Dr. Cracks. She bent him over, she spoke kindly to him, she penetrated his bum, and she declared the whole thing a success, including his health. So, everybody wins, Lorenzo thought, as he drove home in his red Mazda truck.