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By Root 786 0

a guidance counsellors' convention. It was a waste of time if ever there had been one-all guidance counsellors could ever agree on was not to agree on anything-and he grew bored with the papers, seminars, and discussion periods after a single day. Halfway through the second day, he discovered he was also bored with San Remo, and that of the adjectives small, lovely, and seaside, the key adjective was probably small. Gorgeous views and redwood trees aside, San Remo didn't have a movie theatre or a bowling alley, and Ed hadn't wanted to go in the place's only bar-it had a dirt parking lot filled with pick-up trucks, and most of the pick-ups had Reagan stickers on their rusty bumpers and tailgates. He wasn't afraid of being picked on, but he hadn't wanted to spend an evening looking at men in cowboy hats and listening to Loretta Lynn on the jukebox. So here he was on the third day of a convention which stretched out over an incredible four days; here he was in room 217 of the Holiday Inn, his wife and daughter at home, the TV broken, an unpleasant smell hanging around in the bathroom. There was a swimming pool, but his eczema was so bad this summer that he wouldn't have been caught dead in a bathing suit. From the shins down he looked like a leper. He had an hour before the next workshop (Helping the Vocally Challenged Child-what they meant was doing something for kids who stuttered or who had cleft palates, but we wouldn't want to come right out and say that, Christ no, someone might lower our salaries), he had eaten lunch at San Remo's only restaurant, he didn't feel like a nap, and the TV's one station was showing a rerun of Bewitched.

So he sat down with the telephone book and began to flip through it aimlessly, hardly aware of what he was doing, wondering distantly if he knew anyone crazy enough about either small, lovely, or seaside to live in San Remo. He supposed this was what all the bored people in all the Holiday Inns all over the world ended up doing-looking for a forgotten friend or relative to call up on the phone. It was that, Bewitched, or the Gideon Bible. And if you did happen to get hold of somebody, what the hell did you say? 'Frank! How the hell are you? And by the way, which was it-small, lovely, or seaside?' Sure. Right Give that man a cigar and set him on fire.

Yet, as he lay on the bed flipping through the thin San Remo white pages and half-scanning the columns, it seemed to him that he did know somebody in San Remo. A book salesman? One of Sondra's nieces or nephews, of which there were marching

battalions? A poker buddy from college? The relative of a student? That seemed to ring a bell, but he couldn't fine it down any more tightly.

He kept thumbing, and found he was sleepy after all. He had almost dozed off when it came to him and he sat up, wide awake again.

Lord Peter!

They were rerunning those Wimsey stories on PBS just lately-Clouds of Witness, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors. He and Sondra were hooked. A man named Ian Carmichael played Wimsey, and Sondra was nuts for him. So nuts, in fact, that Ed, who didn't think Carmichael looked like Lord Peter at all, actually became quite irritated. 'Sandy, the shape of his face is all wrong. And he's wearing false teeth, for heaven's sake!'

'Poo,' Sondra had replied airily from the couch where she was curled up. 'You're just jealous. He's so handsome.'

'Daddy's jealous, Daddy's jealous,' little Norma sang, prancing around the living room in her duck pyjamas.

'You should have been in bed an hour ago,' Ed told her, gazing at his daughter with a jaundiced eye. 'And if I keep noticing you're here, I'll probably remember that you aren't there.'

Little Norma was momentarily abashed. Ed turned back to Sondra. 'I remember back three or four years ago. I had a kid named Todd Bowden, and his grandfather came in for a conference. Now that guy looked like Wimsey. A very old Wimsey, but the shape of his face was right, and -'

'Wim-zee, Wim-zee, Dim-zee, Jim-zee,' little Norma sang. ' Wim-zee, Dim-zee, doodle-oodle-ooo-doo -'

'Shh, both of you,'