"One thing about work Susan muses. I miss the soaps...."
    "Gee I don't know Laurie. He wanted to to do some heavy stuff last night Susie said as she scrutinized the wrapper of the Three Musketeers bar she was eating.
    Did he come right out and ask you?" Lara inquired completely interested because she had had her own fantasies about being with Dan.
    "No he just started trying to play with my tits and grab my ass and get between my legs. So I diverted his intentions." She balled up the piece of paper and flung it at the waste can. She knew she would never make a basketball team. She examined the pillow in her lap for sweat stains loose hairs.
    "Gosh that seems a small price to pay to keep a hunk like that on the hook. Besides you know he wouldn't go all the way; he'd ask about that Lara stated assuredly, confident that she could hold her own with any girl on the subject of boys.
    I don't know. It just isn't the same when his body is pressing against mine and when his warm breath is all over my face...." Susan stopped and then took up in an interested tone: "hey did you see 'Days of Our Lives' last week?"
    Before Lara could answer the phone rang.
    "I guess I'll be going bye." She excused herself and left a little disgusted. "How could anyone treat a hunk like him like that showing more interest in a soap opera?" she asked herself silently.

    "Hello?"
    "May I speak to Susan?" Dan's request would be immediately fulfilled.
    "Speaking. Oh hi... it's you Susan says in a mousey sweet voice as she pulls the telephone into her lap and mumbled: Gorge."
    "I just thought I'd call. I learned something neat today. I was taught how to determine the percentage of sulfur in rock samples. First you release it into solution and mix it with barium-chloride and take a reading on the...."
    "You know I realized that I call all my pillows what I call you or is it that I call you what I call my pillows? I don't know..." her voice trailed off.
    "Oh really?" To Dan it was the ultimate compliment. He had noticed how in her childishness she held and adored her pillows like she derived pleasure in some form from them. And now he was likened upon them.
    "Yeah. Oh do you mind if I call you back later? Mom has some work for me."
    "Oh sure... don't work too hard. Bye"
    "Bye." She placed the receiver back and glanced at the clock. 3 PM just in time for "Days of Our Lives."
    Dan hung up the phone and turned away; he was scared. He was deathly afraid that she was Miss Right that she was the one he was destined to join in wedlock and human partnership. Why he was only nineteen years of age barely a major and she was sixteen sweet sixteen. What if he had found her so early in life? Was the rest of his life to be a chained existence?
    But no. He shouldn't think like that; it should be a dream living with your love. It must be....

    A distant ringing brought him back out of an unfitfull sleep-like state.
    "Phenrig residence."
    "Dan the voice said slowly. This is Lara."
    "Oh hi Larie." How've ya' been?"
    "Fine. Say Dan do you mind if I come over and listen to some records?" Her request was also slow.
    "Sure not at all."
    "Okay I'll see you in a little bit bye." She hung up and told herself he deserved it.
    "Bye."

    She arrived a half hour later; a time in which he did nothing save for warming up the tubes in the amplifier by turning it on.
    "Hi Dan." She looked up at him with apprehensive eyes.
    "Hi what would you like to hear?"
    "Oh anything would be okay." She moved over from across the couch. Dan took an album from his eclectic collection and placed it on the turntable. Then he sat on the couch. He looked up and saw Lara standing swaying as if in a fantasy.
    "Why don't you have a seat?"
    She turned and changed fantasies. "Do you mind if I sat over there?"
    "Go ahead." Lara sauntered over to the couch and fell into his lap. Dan was surprised.
    "You flip me out Lar; I know you know about Susie and me...."
    "Kiss me Ian." He never knew how much power his middle name had over him. Her slow request was impossible to refuse. Even though she planned it she didn't know that she was about to become a release for pent up psychological pressures forces that would fulfill her fantasy. Dan had been turned on to an ingrained pattern found it cleansing to let instinct guide him to let himself go.

    The phone rang as Dan wished Lara a good evening and a safe journey home.
    "Hello Dan? It's me."
    It was Susan. An ominous air of doom filled him. What came over me? Why was I fooling around with my girl's est friend, with my future wife's friend? Is this the type of husband I am to be, the type of person I am? He questioned himself silently agonizingly.
    "Hello?"
    "Oh hi. I was just dozing."
    "Oh so I bore you now huh?"
    "How'd ya' guess? It must have been the yawn that gave me away." Inside a certain palpatating sank six feet.
    "Actually it was the alarm clock going off that alerted me to your dormant condition she said, ignorant of Dan's state.
    A lingering, death-like silence surged in Dan.
    Well since it's obvious that you don't want to talk to me I guess I'll hang up."
    "I always knew you had ESP he muttered. Bye."
    "Bye." She hung up commencing a guilt trip through Dan's inner reaches a journey that would delve deeper and deeper introspectively and warped perpectively. So twisted was Dan's perception of facts that he began to accept maniacal tendencies towards delusions. If the progress of his internal trek was to be graphed the height of its severity would be plotted around 1 PM the next day. After a sleepless and mournful night of lorn he called her.
    "Hello?"
    "Susan? I... want to talk to you he held his eyes closed, tighter. Can you come over soon?"
    "Sure let me finish what I'm doing really quick and I'll be over in fifteen to twenty minutes."
    "Okay thanks alot." Now he had something to pull him though the thick mush of human emotion. That's what he thought until an hour passed... desperate time....
    But who could blame her? Who could miss "The Edge of Night" or "All My Children"? Half-way through "General Hospital" something bothered her. Then she remembered where she should be. She arrived and let herself into Dan's room. He lay hunched over in the chair. A pool of blood had formed and dripped off the desk. A note heavily and sloppily scrawled sat in front of the lifeless body.
    "Susie Dear And then under it: I...."
    She sat in the nearest available seat. By all visible standards she appeared shaken: her head fell to her hands. She painfully scanned the room: the desk and Dan the bookcase the television set the clock....
    3 PM.
    Just in time for "Days of Our Lives."