Subject: NEW: Listening to Mountains Grow (1/1) - sorry if this is posted twice... I had trouble the first time.
Date: 19 Sep 2001 19:52:37 -0700
From: cucumberspy@yahoo.com (cucumberspy)
Organization: http://groups.google.com/
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative

AUTHOR: cucumberspy
TITLE:  Listening to Mountains Grow
RATING: R for potentially disturbing imagery.  Angst.  Schmoop.  Ice
cream.  Shopping at five a.m.
TIMELINE: "Pusher" post-ep -- how it might have happened, but probably
didn't.
ARCHIVE: Gossamer, yes, Ephemeral, yes.  Everyone else, please do,
just send me a note so I can visit!
NOTES: Superduperduper thanks to my new friend, Geneva, and her beta
reading superpower!  Yay!

SUMMARY:  His phone rings twice before I hang up, before I remember:
Mulder is not there.  Has not been for three days.  Fear lodges cold
and twisted, somewhere in my esophagus.

Sometimes the aftershocks are worse than the actual quakes.

========================
Listening to Mountains Grow (1/1)
by cucumberspy

"I love you he said but saying it took twenty years
so it was like listening to mountains grow."
        ~Dean Young, "Sources of Delaware"

The nightmare is back.

In my dream, I am in that hospital hallway, bare and helpless,
crouched over a prone Mulder.  My fingers are slick and sticky with
his blood as I scrabble for something I can use to sop up the red tide
that's smearing everywhere, blood, everywhere, only, there's nothing I
can use, because I'm naked and I think at that instant, Dana, if only
you had gotten dressed before you came to work, then everything would
be okay.  I plead, Mulder, wake up, please, you're missing all the
fun, just wake up.

Just wake up.

This is my nightmare: respiration ceases and his blood coagulates and
then dries on my hands, my face, in my hair and starts to flake off
into dust as I stand in the morgue, still naked, goose-bumpy and cold.

He lies on the autopsy table, greyish and dead-looking.  It must be
the lighting that makes him look like this, like some kind of
grotesque plastic version of Mulder.

But I am holding his heart in my bare hands.

I place it onto the scale and record the weight: 307 grams.  I am not
wearing gloves--why?  When I pick his heart up again it is chilled and
a little sticky, and this is, oh God, oh God, this is Mulder's heart
and I scream--

--wake screaming and dial Mulder's number without thinking.  I squint
at my hands, sniffing them for the scent of blood.  My fingers tremble
as I realize it could not be real because I was dreaming, and I know I
was dreaming because I was not wearing gloves.  It's always the gloves
that tip me off.

His phone rings twice before I hang up, before I remember: Mulder is
not there.  Has not been for three days.  Fear lodges cold and
twisted, somewhere in my esophagus.

Sometimes the aftershocks are worse than the actual quakes.

*

Three days ago, the SWAT lieutenant, Brophy, had fitted Mulder with a
bulletproof vest and Candid Camera Super Spy Equipment; I would
monitor from the surveillance van.

"Smile, Scully."

Mulder grinned at me as if he was not walking into a lion's den.  He
took off his gun, then set his hands on my knees and I covered them
with my own.

I loved him.

I could not smile back.  All this was as tactically sound as we could
manage.  One agent was to be sent in, unarmed, vested and wired to
give Modell as little as possible to work with.

I desperately did not want Mulder to be that one agent and the traitor
thought crept in:  what if he doesn't come back?

No.

"Take it," I said.  I meant the gun.

I loved and hated that he was willing to risk himself, I loved and
hated that he was able to smile in that moment, I...

"No, I wouldn't want to end up pointing it at anyone except Modell."
He looked at me so earnestly, as if everything was going to be okay.
Would it?

I loved him.  I felt like liquid, sure I would dissolve if anything
happened to him.

So Mulder had calmly taken off his gun; then his hands were under mine
and he said, "Let's get this show on the road."

This could not possibly be good.  That my hands were shaking and that
I could barely stand to watch Mulder dart into static and towards
gunshots was a sign.  Of something.

*

Three days ago, Modell swung a gun up at Mulder's face and put his
fist into the camera feed.  Panic swelled in me, I choked on air,
threw down the headset and ran for the door, yelling, "God!"

God, I never should have let him go in alone!

Damn the tactics!  Mulder was in there and I didn't even want to
imagine what Modell had planned.

But I had to think of what he might do.  I needed to be prepared.

Modell held Mulder at gun-point.  Still?  No, Modell could have Mulder
hold himself at gu--  Other patients, hostages?  Modell is dying, so
he's got nothing to lose.  Modell doesn't see people as people--he's
playing a game, so what lets him show off the most?  What entertains
him?

If Modell gave Mulder the gun, what does he do when I get there?
Mulder shoots me, shoots himself--

But that's not showy enough, right?  He's done that already, so what
else is there?

If Modell can talk Frank Burst into a heart attack, what else can he
talk a person into?

*What is he doing with Mulder?*

Keep thinking, Dana, keep thinking.

A memory of Collins clung to me; he was sobbing as he doused himself
in gasoline and set himself ablaze...my mouth pressed vainly over
Burst's, trying to breathe for him, failing, and a burn in my lungs to
prove it.

There are too many ways to die.

Suicide jump--but we're ground floor.  Suffocation?  Strangulation,
stroke, shot through the head, Skinner and Holly.  Skinner and--

Could he do that to us?  Could Modell use us against each other?

God, please, not like that.

*

The worst moment of it all was the millisecond after Mulder pulled the
trigger with the muzzle of the gun at his temple.  They say before you
die, your life flashes before your eyes.  No one ever says anything
about what happens when your best friend is about to die.

Then, it's not the life you've had that flases before your eyes.  It's
the life that might have been.  The next thing you think is He Is
Going To Die and that can't happen yet because we haven't begun!  We
were supposed to-- to do so many things.  Find Samantha, expose the
truth, eat breakfasts of pancakes and orange juice (at home, even),
die old and grey-haired and smiling and together but not here, not
now.

We'd barely even begun.

I knew I would kill Modell if that chamber held a bullet.

Three days ago, my heart arrested at the empty dry-fire and I screamed
fury at Modell.

*

We made it out alive, Mulder and I.

In the hospital, I reached for him as he watched Modell.  "I say we
don't let him take up another minute of our time."

Mulder's fingers were stiff and chilly beneath mine.  I resisted the
urge to take them and rub them between my palms, instead letting go of
him too quickly.  I waited for him in the car.

Three days ago, I loved him.

*

It was my idea to stop for dinner in Alexandria.  In the car, Mulder
had been uncharacteristically silent, speaking only to direct me.  He
mumbled, 'left here' and 'right there' and that it was very good.
That I'd like it.

I stared the display-style window, feeling dubious.  'UFO Pizza' read
the sign tilting against the dirty glass.  GYROS, PIZZA.  Someone had
hung a border of twisted tinfoil ropes and blue Christmas lights.  A
pie pan decorated to resemble--what else?--a UFO dangled from fishing
line.

Only Mulder would pick a place like this.

We were still alive, and I smiled and looked up at him.  "You're sure
this place isn't an X-File, Mulder?"

His eyes were fixed somewhere to the left and down.  Away from me.
"We could go," he said.

I pulled the door open a little too quickly.  "No, it's fine."

The place-a-letter menu hung from the ceiling above the counter,
entree and pizza prices shakily spelled out in white on black.
"What's good here?"  I glanced over to see if he would look at me.

He didn't.  "Spinach pizza."

A short and burly man ambled out of the kitchen, shouting, "Mulder!
So good to see you again, and with a friend!"  He winked at me.  "I
been telling him to get a life for a while now."

Mulder was crouched down, patently ignoring the man and reading an
article that had been taped over the edge of the counter.

I wasn't quite sure what to say so I just ordered our pizza and a
couple coffees.

"Fifteen minutes," he said, setting down two styrofoam cups and a
plastic tab with '32' printed on it.  "One of the girls will bring it
out.  And, eesh," he leaned over the counter and thwacked his fingers
on the side of Mulder's head, "for godsakes, Mulder, you should look a
little happier, 'specially when you're with a girl like that."

Mulder drew himself up and stared down at the man.  His lips stretched
back in a cold approximation of a smile as he said, "Leave me alone,
Zee.  And wash your damn windows before someone sics the Health
Department on you."  Then he headed for the bathrooms.

Zee shrugged at me, no longer quite so sanguine.  "Bad day, eh?"  Then
he scribbled something down and returned to the kitchen.

I carried our coffee to one of tables crowding along the long rubbed
orange wall.  Here and there, someone had pasted up more articles
clipped from newspapers and probably 'The National Enquirer.'
Photographs of lights and purported flying saucers were tacked above
each table.

Oddly enough, it reminded me of the office, as much as a restaurant
could, anyway.  I wondered if Mulder came here often.  Did he feel at
home here?  It was something new I realized I didn't know about my
partner.  Where did he go after work?

I swirled creamer into my coffee.  A glance at the back of the
restaurant told me Mulder wasn't out yet.

The sugar and Sweet'n'Low packets were scrambled in their container so
I rearranged them, first half white and half pink, then alternating
pink and white.  Then half white and half pink again.

There was a little card taped to the pepper shaker, so I read it.
"Abductee meetings here, Thurs. 9PM".  I turned the shaker around so I
wouldn't have to look at it.  Maybe this place really was an X-File.

The floor was unfinished, a stained concrete color.

I was nearly ready to go pounding on the bathroom door when Mulder
finally emerged, his face a sick and greyish color.  The front of his
hair was spiky and damp, like he'd just washed his face.

He didn't quite sit, just stared at something behind me.  "Hey," I
asked softly, wanting to touch him, "you okay?"

Would you just look at me, Mulder?  I love you.

"Yeah," he said, finally lowering himself into the chair.  He drummed
his fingers against the formica.  I could never get my fingers going
fast enough, but Mulder had no trouble.

I pushed his coffee toward him.  He glanced at the cup.  "Thanks."
But he did not drink it, made no move to touch it.

He rested his palms to the table and I put my hands over his.  I
wanted to remind him.  I wanted him to look at me.  "We are alive,
Mulder.  Modell lost."

Could you just look at me, Mulder?

I curled my fingers around the backs of his hands and felt his grip
tighten around my fingertips.  The warmth condensing on our skin
confirmed my statement.  We were alive.  His eyes flicked over the
table, onto the floor, the wall behind me, anywhere but me.

"Mulder?"

"Yeah."  His hands twitched, then he scraped his chair back, pulling
away, slipping away.  "I'm gonna run the rest of the way home, Scully,
thanks."

He crossed to the register, pulling out his wallet to pay.  I watched
him push out the doors and jog past the glass pane, his trenchcoat
flapping.  He ran for home, or maybe...  Maybe he just ran away.

A girl came and set our steaming pizza down on the table in front of
me.

I bent over and put my head in my hands.

*

I did not see him for three days after that, and it wasn't for lack of
trying.

The knot in my stomach kept compounding.

*

My fear would be ridiculous if it were not well-founded.  Mulder has
been ditching me since our second case together, but never like this.

And even under normal circumstances, when he ditches me, he gets hurt.
 I don't understand why, it's not like he's particularly clumsy--but
he tends to go leaping before looking and hurling himself off of
metaphorical cliffs.  Or not so metaphorical.

So he *does* get hurt a lot, but he's not a baby, Dana, and you're not
his babysitter...

You just love him.

Right.

*

Tonight, Mulder, I dreamed I went to work naked and you ended up dead.
 I dreamed that tonight and last night and the night before that too.

Where are you?

*

Mulder does not wake me when he calls late on the third night.  I turn
my head toward the clock and it glows 3:23 a.m.  I know it is him
before I've even hit talk and suddenly I can barely breathe.  Oh
please, please, please, let him be alright.

"Hey," he says.  "I couldn't sleep."

He's alright.  He's alive.

Anger flares, muddled by absolute relief.  I wasn't sleeping but my
voice is croaky.  "Funny, I couldn't either," I say, closing my eyes
and pressing my palm to my forehead.  "Where the *hell* have you
been?"

"Hmm.. ice cream," he says.

"Ice cream?"  I hear my voice rising into hysteria and take a deep
breath.  Get a hold of yourself, Dana, it's only been three days.
"Mulder, it's three in the morning.  Where have you been?"

"So there wasn't anything good on TV..."

"Mulder!"

"There was something I wanted to check out, cow exsanguination in
Ohio.  I-- I needed time to think."  I can hear the verbal shrug.

'Thanks Scully, I think I'll run the rest of the way.'

I swallow, hard.  Cows.  Ohio.  Cows.  Of course.  The great Mulder
brush-off.  It was all just too much for me to handle, Scully, so I
went to examine the bloodless carcasses of freaking cows!

He mumbles out, "I'm sorry."

Sorry what, Mulder?  Sorry you disappeared and left me staring at a
pan of pizza going cold?  Sorry that, like always, you never even
bothered to warn me, couldn't even say, 'Scully, I'll be gone a few
days' or 'Scully, I'm going to Ohio, see you next week'?

Yeah, I'll bet you are.

"Scully?"  He makes my name a question.

"It's fine, Mulder."  I tilt my head back and feel myself sighing.

He starts to say something, then changes his mind.  "I got you ice
cream," he says.

Is it the hour or is this line of conversation simply bizarre?

"Ice cream.  Mulder."  I think my brain is short-circuiting because
all I can manage now is simple repetition.  I can't speak.

"So... can I come up?"

"Come up?" I echo.  I fumble with words.  "Mulder, where are you?"

"A long, long way from Tipperary.  Look out your window."

I slide out of bed and pad over, peering through the blinds.  And
there's Mulder looking up at me from the sidewalk.

There is silence, and then the crinkling of paper as he peers into the
grocery bag he's got cradled against his side.  "I got the expensive
kind, Ben and Jerry's, none of that fro-yo crap.  Come on, Scully, I
know it's your favorite."  His voice cracks.  "Please."

"You have a key," I say, and hang up.

*

When he offers an awkward hug in the doorway, I let him.  I have to
touch him to be sure, but he really is okay.  He really is.

And then I remember that I am furious at him.

One of the bulbs in my overhead light is burned out, so half the
kitchen fades into a yellowed darkness.   I need to get that taken
care of.  He sets the paper bag on my table and watches me put on a
pot of coffee.

"Mulder," I say.

And at exactly the same moment, he says, "Scully--"  He makes a motion
for me to talk first, so I say the first brainless thing that comes to
mind.

"How was Ohio?"  I'm taking down bowls and they make a painful
scraping sound as one hits the other.

"I missed you," he says.

I reach into my drawer for spoons.  "Yet you didn't think to let me
know where you were.  You know, I lied to Skinner for you."

I had told Skinner that Mulder was out following up on a lead because
statistically, it had a high probability of being true.  Maybe it
wasn't such a lie after all.

But that was not the point.  I turn and fix him with my coldest, most
disapproving stare.  His gaze doesn't waver.  "Thank you," he says
quietly.  "I know you hate doing that."

"Did you even find what you were looking for?"  I fling ice cream from
the scoop into the bowls.

He comes to look over my shoulder into the ice cream, as if it were
some file or photograph he could study to my running commentary.

"I came here, didn't I?"

He touches my shoulders gingerly.  Maybe he is trying to get me to
look at him, but I don't want to.

I want to and I don't want to.

There is ice cream sticking to my knuckles.  I cross to the sink and
rinse the scoop and my hands off.

"I'm sorry."  That's the second time he's apologized and I'd like to
believe its because he regrets ditching me again, but I turn my head
and stare at him, unwilling to forgive and forget so quickly.

When I say nothing, he adds, "I needed to be away for a while." he
waves his hand through the air.  "To think.  Scully, I know we didn't
get hurt this time.  But I don't think we can just pretend that
everything is fine.  I pointed a gun at you, Scully, I was pulling the
trigger."  He stares at me for a beat, breathes, "Scully, if I had
shot you, you would have died."

"And that's your excuse," I say in a straight-edge voice.

Suddenly the whole weight of fear and anger and things I haven't
wanted to think about just drops.  I bite off each word.  "Do you
think you have a corner on guilt, Mulder?  Do you have any idea what
it felt like to know I had let you go in alone, and to watch you come
*this* *close* to blowing your head off? That bothered me too, you
know! And the *truth* is, you didn't hurt me and there was no bullet
in that chamber, and oh God, Mulder, if there had been..."  My voice
trails off, ragged, and my stomach clenches as I scrub my hands
against my eyes. I swallow and continue. "This is not about that!
This is about you disappearing for three days-- God! Mulder!  Did you
think I wouldn't notice?"

I brace myself against the sink. There is a metal on metal clang as
the scoop falls in.  Suddenly my eyes sting and my nose is runny, and
I have scrape my sleeve across my face so I can even see, but I can't
stop crying.  I feel Mulder at my back, turning me around to face him.
 His fingers brush below my eyes and I have the vague idea that I want
to push him away.

Doesn't he know I love him?

He covers my cheeks with his hands and kisses me on the forehead,
right above my left eyebrow.  It's an awkward and somehow tender touch
of lips, and I exhale.

"Scully, I never meant to make you worry.  But partners are supposed
to protect each other--and instead of watching your back, I nearly
became the instrument used to harm you."  He pushes his fingers
through my hair.  "I hated that.  I hated being controlled.  I hated
that I could point a gun at your head and not be able to do a damned
thing.  I-- reacted badly.  I am sorry for disappearing, you have to
believe that I am... so sorry, Scully."

Have I ever heard this Mulder before?  So serious, so... contrite?

He kisses me again, this time closer to my mouth, just barely above
the right corner of my lips.

I start to smile, to kiss him back.  He really is sor--

--does he think this is going undo the last three days?  A couple
kisses and I'll slide into his arms saying, "Oh, I forgive you,
Mulder?"

I back away, taking the carton of ice cream and sliding it into my
freezer.  I blink twice, trying to clear my eyes.

We're so silent, I can hear him breathing.

"Ohio was a waste of time," he says.  "A couple of bored kids and some
plastic tubing.  Just think, Scully, at least you didn't have to do
any bovine autopsies."  He half grins.

Right, Mulder.  Thanks so much.

I lean my head against the freezer door and close my eyes.  The
plastic coating sticks cool to my forehead.

"Scully... come sit with me, please.  The ice cream is melting."

I almost sit right then, but something in me wants to resist; wants to
hurt him back.  It sticks in my throat and I say, "Go home, Mulder."

I expect him to argue, to protest.  Instead, I hear him standing,
pushing his chair in, the cadence of his footsteps to the door.  I
hear his hand turn the knob, the creak as he holds the door half-open,
waiting for me to say his name.

I do not.

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow," he says in a half-voice.

There's that plastic snick and the door shuts.  My fingers clench
around the handle on the fridge.  I feel as if someone really did
shoot me that day; there's a sucking chest wound three inches left of
my heart, and it's getting bigger.

*

I takes me over three seconds to decide that we can't end like this.
I push out my door and race down the stairs, outside, where it's still
dark and the sky is pouring out rain.  Why hadn't I noticed that it
was raining?  I push my hair out of my eyes--he can't possibly have
left already, can he?

"Mulder!  Mulder!"  I call into the dark between the pools of orange
streetlight.  "Mulder!"

The rain slicks my hair to my face and my robe is pulling at my
shoulders, heavy with water.

I try a last time.  "Mulder!!"  Where is his car?  I can feel my toes,
my nose, my cheeks numbing as I race down the sidewalk, turn a corner.
 The soles of my feet sting as they slap against the concrete.

I wrap my arms around my torso and then, there he is in front of me,
sitting in his car with the engine turned off.  I step tentatively
towards him, press my palm against his window.  "Mulder.  Mulder!"
His head jerks up when he hears me and I see the surprise on his face
as he rolls it down.

I haven't got anything planned to say.  I just know I don't want him
to go like this.

"Mulder, come inside.  Please."

He begins to grin and seems barely able to get the door open and out
of the car fast enough.  Then he reaches for me and I let him hug me,
sinking into forgiving and being forgiven because we don't know any
other way.  It is a relief.  Water trickles over my ears and I stifle
a sneeze.  My feet are so cold they've begun feeling warm again.

I pull back and look up at him.  "Mulder, we need to go in.  My toes
are going to fall off."

He seems to see me for the first time, noting my squishy bathrobe and
bare feet.  "You're all wet, Scully."  He laughs then, and I do too.

*

Two showers and an hour later, we're at my table again.  I swirl my
spoon in the foamy remains of Cherry Garcia, then lick the cream off.
My cheek rests on my forearm and I look at Mulder sideways.  I feel
surprisingly giddy for so early in the morning.

He pushes away from the table, tilting in his chair and his hands rest
on the edge, holding him up, pushing him back.  He's wearing a pair of
his sweats and a dress shirt.  They somehow got mixed into my laundry
and were never returned, lucky for him.

I cast an eye on his ice cream.  He only took two bites and now it's
runny and melting.  Fluffy and cloud-like, some part of me thinks.  I
can't let it go to waste.  I shove my spoon into his bowl.

"Take it," he says.  The chair clunks fully onto the floor as he leans
forward to push the ice cream towards me.  "Scully, what do you dream
about?"

A line of tension cramps up my back and I drop my spoon back into
Mulder's bowl, then change my mind and scrape a thin layer of ice
cream up.  "I don't know, I really don't remember."

Lie.

But we've already had one gut-wrenching, soul-baring conversation.  I
am *not* ready to delve into the deeper meaning of my nightmares.

I do manage to keep grinning stupidly.  The ice cream has already
liquified by the time it touches my tongue.

"Ever had one of those 'going to work naked' dreams?"

I stifle a choke.

"Mulder, just because you have the juvenile urge to moon the
administration doesn't mean that I do."

"Nah, that was high school."  He reaches across the table for the ice
cream soup and takes a spoonful.  "Come on, Scully, you've got to
remember your dreams sometime."

"Oh, well," I say, searching for something true to say.  "You know, a
couple weeks ago, I dreamed that I microwaved Sharon Clemento's pet
bird and it exploded green goo everywhere."

Score one for Dana Scully.

He looks at me like he's not sure if I'm joking or not.  But I'm
serious, since it is now... four fifty-seven in the morning.

"You asked."  I fold my arms across my chest and lean back.  "What do
you dream about, Mulder?"

I expect a little evasion, an accusation that I never answered his
other question, but without hesitation, he says, "You."  After a pause
that's just long enough to make me wonder, he adds, "Uh, wanna know
what you're wearing?"

I laugh.  "No."

The dimness of my kitchen is fading with the first bright light of
dawn cracking through my blinds.  It stopped raining.

Mulder gets up and plants himself in front of my fridge, seemingly
trying to mimic air-conditioning action by holding it open.  He prods
past the carton of milk and jerks open the crisper drawers, which have
celery and probably a head of lettuce that needs to be thrown away,
maybe a few apples.

I collect our bowls and set them in the sink.  "Tell me what you're
looking for and I'll tell you if I have it."

"Breakfast, Scully.  Man cannot live on Ben and Jerry's alone, you
know."  He holds up a container of wilting alfalfa sprouts.  "What
*is* this?  You don't have anything to eat.  You need to go shopping."
 He concludes by making a face at me and returning the sprouts to the
fridge.

*

So, it's barely past five thirty and I am wrestling with a shopping
cart next to the dairy case, wondering why I am not at home sleeping.

"Swiss cheese!" Mulder chortles and tosses a package into the basket.

That is a rhetorical sort of wondering.  Of course, I am here because
we are going to make omelettes for breakfast, because 'breakfast is
the most important meal of the day'.

Omelettes, his idea, not mine.  'What about the pizza?' I asked.
'It's in my freezer.'  But he got a pained look and insisted, 'No, I
want to make you an omelette.  I bet you didn't know I make good
omelettes, didja Scully?  Bet you didn't know that.'

So there are some other things I still don't know about my partner.
And omelettes aren't all that bad of an idea.

The wheel of the cart squeaks as I turn the corner down to the produce
section.  From here, I'm facing the giant glass windows at the front
of the store.  It's a surreal sensation to look out and see a vacant
parking lot, sunrise filling the horizon, a quiet and empty world
still damp and shimmering from the rain.  Aside from the girl working
the checkstand up front, we're the only ones here.

"You like Swiss, right, Scully?"

I cannot believe we're here.

We.  Us.

Modell set out to destroy us and he nearly succeeded; instead we've
somehow transformed into people who wander down grocery aisles before
the rest of the city is even barely awake.

Together.

Mulder picks up an onion and sights down it like it's a baseball and
he's going to throw it at me.  Instead, he sets it down in the cart.

We *are* still alive.  I tip my head back and smile at Mulder.
"Swiss," I say, "is just fine."

-30-

ANOTHER NOTE: UFO Pizza is a real place in Portland, OR.  A guy on a
bus told me they make really good Greek food, but I never got the
chance to stop in.  If you're ever in Portland, it's on Glisan, past
Providence, but before 29th.  It's on the left side if you're heading
towards downtown.

YET ANOTHER NOTE:  Well, you've gotten this far.  =)  Send me your
feedback, your love, your hate, and your virtual pizza at
cucumberspy@yahoo.com