Dizzy with discovery, churning with pain, Lenin staggered from the garage floor into the kitchen. With one hand pressed to his skull, he groped, desperately, through each drawer and cupboard. Waves like electric nausea rushed up and down him. He struggled for control.

After five minutes, Lenin despaired in his search and let his hand close determinedly around the smooth, heavy jar of Marmite.

"I've been testing it all week in secret," he went on. "Every incidental finding since 'Each action has an equal but opposite reaction' is out the window! The statistical evidence, empirically isolated, uniformly supports my hypothesis! I'm calling this damnation The Law of Behavioural Consequence."

Lenin waited for a reaction, but Gordon kept picking the zit on his neck.

"The evidence would have to be exceedingly thorough," Gordon chanced at last. He wasn't recognising what Lenin was saying, the unimaginative tortoise! They weren't hardly friends. They were just two guys who played Dungeons and Dragons together and were thrashed by the same gurriers, outside. Gordon dug his hand into an itch in his arse. "Lenin, how could thousands of scientists all cross-examining each other's work for hundreds of years be wrong? Those scientists made atom bombs and stuff."

"Those findings that the scientists found weren't exactly wrong, just beside the fact. It's like they're a bunch of really smart microbes that've found out all the details of how a car works, 'when this wheel turns then that gear moves,' but haven't copped onto to what the whole yokie-bob does. Scientists have a lot of detail figured out about the mechanics of the Universe, about how things work, but haven't a clue as to why."

"That 'why' being, humans are intended to suffer only bad possibilities? So none of the bad stuff that's ever happened to you is really your fault?" doubted Gordon.

"No! It's just the opposite- look, for some reason there are bad things that must happen every day. Every day a certain number! It probably has something to do with the physical realization of a theoretical range of possibilities in order to complete a probability spectrum, but that's getting off the subject-"

"-Exceedingly."

"Yeah, well," Lenin groped, thrown. How could he make Gordon understand? "Consider magnetic attraction, when thinking about these events. Imagine there are a series of different electromagnets, each of whose magnetism is controlled by the amount of electrical energy juiced into it, OK?"

He waited for Gordon to say OK but Gordon just sat there. The lethargic sceptic wasn't particularly socially acute.

"Anyway, say a bunch or iron filings were filtered past. The magnets with more energy would attract more filings, correct?"

"So?"

Lenin grabbed Gordon's hand and shook him. "Gordon, that's the secret behind fate! People are like those electromagnets. For some reason, bad possibilities occur every day just like iron shards raining down! Different people generate a different amount of discordant energy, depending on how far they deviate from an ideal position. And these different people attract their share of misfortunes accordingly!"

"Quit off me, ya faggot," protested Gordon. Lenin complied. "Ok, so even if. What's this discordant force that's attracting stuff?"

Lenin clutched speechless, exacerbated from frustration. It felt so obvious! He was hoping he had guided his fellow close enough to see for himself. Gordon sat digging at his arse again. "Think! Computer technicians wearing polyester are a thousand times more likely to fry their motherboard's transistors! A person's likelihood of getting struck by lightning multiplies depending on what sort of shoes they wear! Amn't I just after showing you those research findings of my own, empirically documented, when I came in? It's behaviour! The way a person acts, their deviation from that ideal norm, determines the nature of things that occur to them!"

"All your 'research' pencilled in the back of last year's Science notebook?" The notebook flopped discarded on the chair: Lenin glanced, his table of control-group data, seven open-faced sandwiches landing Marmite-side down. Then the careful recording of testing materials, conditions, and hypothesis. His mad rabid scrawl, then: Suspecting the nature of the snack foodstuff largely inconsequential, I beg to state that the absence of peanut butter precisely when needed may provide ancillary proof to my theory. Regardless, neutral estimates dictate expectations be set at 50% of sandwiches landing facedown when dropped. I conjecture that the 70% depositing themselves upon the linoleum in the least desirable way directly correlates to the fact that the experimenter (myself) has never asked a young lady out for a social engagement, has two Sliders posters on the wall of his room, and just spent a bright summer morning wondering which environment (fridge or freezer) best preserved life in batteries since last January. Following this first control-group series of tests, I then sat down and began overanalysing things in this notebook like the biggest arseways geek in the universe.

And the nine sambos that had landed with meaty, messy splats thereafter had impressed neither his beehive-haired mother, nor, now, Gordon. Still desperate to communicate, aching for validation, Lenin elaborated, "I've broken the force down into units. I call them Amps of Behavioural Consequence, acquired by actions of a socially undesirable nature-"

"You came up with all this on your own?"

"Yes!" cried Lenin, then realised Gordon was mocking him.

"Geek Force," derided Gordon.

"I went to the fridge to see which compartment, fridge or freezer, had preserved the most life. A 'geek' thing to be doing, on a sunny June morning. Consequence: I whacked my head on the edge of the freezer-portion door. Ever since that blinding flash- I have been all over town, doing everything twice--" Lenin slapped the notebook full of test results onto the coffee table.

"Hey! You're upsetting Asia!"

Gordon had read of chess masters studying the game in solitude for hours, exploring different situations to improve their strategy. But Gordon didn't like chess. He liked Axis & Allies.

"There's an example!" Lenin cried. "Here it is, a warm summer morning, and you're inside playing a five-player board game with yourself! And you're surprised when it gets upset?"

"I bet your Geek Force is exceedingly high, my exceedingly excitable chum," sneered Gordon. "Why don't you go play in traffic and see what you attract?"

Lenin wanted to whack Gordon's pieces flying but realised, with a chill, that there was no need. Somehow, Lenin was absolutely convinced, they would manage to whack themselves. He stood and stormed out.

Behavioural Consequence was a law, a truth; Lenin wrestled to disprove his theory, but as misfortunes struck like bumper cars, as he recorded each test into his notebook, he had to admit that every fibre of his being knew the arrangement to be so. Bizarre as it seemed, cosmic forces worked their subtle dance, each individual human being's circumstance controlled by details as trivial as the length of one's sideburns or the flair of their trousers.

As he trudged homeward one morning, conjecture solidifying to conviction, the nature of his struggle transformed. Lenin contemplated that this discordant energy, this Geek Force, may be a vulnerability that people grew out of, in the same manner that infants had windows of susceptibility to certain chemical forces in the womb. Before his distant gaze bounced a dishevelled man, blind to the fluorescence of a shirt he had obviously acquired before growing so unmanageably obese. His grey clumps of hair were aroused to attention, advertising excitement for the stack of thrift-store comics hugged to his chest. As Lenin's heart welled to pity, a passing bird died in mid-flight, and (from the street's complete crowd, the city's hundreds) plummeted like a homing pigeon directly to the man's shiny crown.

Tears welled behind Lenin's spectacles as the flustered victim trampled his own. No! I will not allow that to happen to me! raged Lenin. Hundreds of beautiful people stopped and stared: fat persons simply don't jump sky-high very well, and land more poorly yet. Sliding jumbled over carcass and comics, the sputtering old nerd spun streetward, bowed his beaten head, and bawled uncontrollably.

Never! Lenin violently, solemnly vowed. No matter what it takes, I am going to beat these powers set against me!

But while it was easy to protest against the principles of physics, Lenin knew it was impossible to argue with them.

Soul in mid-plummet, no ripcord or final chasm floor in sight, Lenin groped deep into the vault of the fateful fridge and brought forth a forgotten bottle. Diet 7-Up, thought Lenin, may as well kill it. He hated Diet 7-Up, but as was his luck, there was nothing else going.

Pssst-" nudged a sudden voice at his shoulder. "You sure 'nuf took yer sweet time, pardner."

Lenin screamed.

"I been bidin' my time, waitin' fer you to get 'round to that." The stranger flashed a hand before Lenin, grinning and awaiting. Lenin hesitantly handed him the Diet 7-Up bottle.

Flicking it into open air, the man said: "As that ain't what I was meanin', I reckon we got our work cut out for us. You're supposed to be shakin' a man's hand, when he puts it out to ya."

Lenin's extended hand was shaken vigorously.

"Now don't jes stan thare blinkin', son, you got somethin' to say, so spit it out!"

"I take it not all genies ride magic carpets and wear turbans."

The cowboy whooped. "Sum bitch, you are a mite too clever fer yer own good!" He slapped his thigh again. "I was 'spectin' you ta say, 'JUMPIN' JEHOSEPHAT, THERE'S A GUNSLINGIN' GENIE LAYIN' LOW IN MY MA'S COOKHOUSE!' or somethin' along them line." The gunslinging genie had a friendly, rowdy laugh.

Lenin, still pale from shock, repeated himself. "So I'm right, not all genies wear turbans? I mean, that is what you are, right? A genie?"

"A Man of the Range, sure as I'm standin' here. 'Cept I ain't got no turban, I jes got me this ol' sombrero to keep the sun off my head." The genie grinned a second, then lounged his spectral slouch against a nearby wall. He hooked ghostly thumbs under his phantasmic belt.

This is not happening. This cannot be happening- ! Thoughts pinballed between Lenin's ears. He felt the six Weatabix cartwheel in his stomach, felt blood turn to water beneath his skin and that water's ejection through cold pores. But he felt his eyes, too, read their crystal-clear report that both were functioning properly. A thought ricocheted from somewhere, zinging through the boy's conscious: Well, why not? I've seen the whole scientific landscape blown wide open: I shouldn't be surprised to find something new, even bizarre, now.

The genie vaulted himself off the wall, uttered some rapid syllables Lenin did not catch, then tested to see if the lad had learned the first lesson.

Lenin shook hands with the genie, passing the test.

"Genies don't wear sombreros. I mean, cowboys. Cowboys and genies both don't wear sombreros. Son of a birdie! This is just too daft!"

"This one do," said the stranger. "You're alright with the hand shakin' thing, mi amigo, but are seemin' to consistently be one step behind in this here square dance. I just introduced myself there--- the sombrero thing's somethin' you shoulda been sayin' about thirty seconds ago."

"Oh."

"Let's try this again," said the genie, repeating the modem-noise of his name and extending his hand once again.

Lenin shook and mumbled, "Ah-"

They tried once more. "I tell you what, pardner," the genie said then. "For the moment, go ahead 'n call me Kid Rio. After we've been workin' together for a piece, we'll try again."

"Rio," bewildered Lenin, "What do you mean by 'working' ---?"

Kid Rio gave the hint of a frown. "One step behind, then sometimes one step ahead of everybody else, you. Hmm, let's git you sorted out first, mi amigo, then throw a Saddle on when you can sit square in it." He nodded, an important matter being decided. "Here, what I meant there was, when some dude or lady tells you their name, you make sure they straight off know yers, too!"

"Oh," said Lenin, shifting from foot to foot and from pale white to bright red. "I'm Lenin."

"You got a good firm shake there, Lenny. That's something to work with."

"And what do you mean by working----?" Lenin asked correctly, copping on.

Rio flashed him a bright wink, and began.

Lenin blinked in the Henry Street library that afternoon. It was true. Until John Henry Stetson established his factory in 1865 (it sat substantiated in black and white) cowboys wore a variety of functional headgear. Lenin had not known that. He had never been especially interested in cowboys in general. This new proof confirmed the genie's assurances that he was not merely a random hallucination, or sundry yokes that Lenin had known sloshing around in a bumped noggin.

Yet he would not have believed had he not seen with his own eyes. Without the genie here before him now, the entire scenario was hard to fathom. Verified hat trivia only went so far. Rubbing the lump on the back of his head, Lenin blinked again and stared off into space. That space was quickly filled with books in flight and flailing arms. An imperfection in the library floor had to catch one person per day. Thick as a brick, an Azimov tome sailed in perfect trajectory over the shoulder of a light-footed brunette, smacking the spectacles off a pudgy bird engrossed at the next table in a copy of Weinermeyer's Stamp-clopedia. The responsible wad of arms on the carpet sputtered.

I will not be a victim. I will change things. I will make them better, Lenin winced as people rushed to and fro, assisting the generous brunette as she helped the unlucky humilitants.

Lenin turned his gaze, the sole eyes in the building not affixed, and walked down the steps toward the bus stop. He was not an experienced public transportation user, indeed (guts protested) he had no business climbing on a 20B. The worn seats steadily crowded rough yet impassive strangers around Lenin, and then the bus lurched him into unfamiliar territory where the house faces were old and narrow. Grown men stood in front of stores, not shopping or having any business on the sidewalk, merely further obscuring signs already missing letters.

Jus be keeping yer cool, pardner, Lenin reminded himself of Kid Rio's advice. Don't you be over-reactin', now, an' makin' a fool of yerself. Lenin stared out the window as relaxed as at shady lawns and not a barrio more earthy.

Just past the landmark saloon Kid Rio'd mentioned, Lenin moseyed off the bus and onto a sidewalk made patchwork by constant repairs. He set course toward the canal, and the shop Kid had described was exactly where he had said it would be. The protest was back in Lenin's gut, acute awareness of his underage status surging panic past constricted lungs clear to his bulging eyeballs. Jes be cool, Lenin trusted, crossing into the gloom. Jes be cool. Bored as can be, he selected the bottle from the cooler and languidly dug the money out of his pocket. The lank-haired hippie shop clerk rang the cider up without a blink. Lenin felt like blinking so he did. Yeah, so cool, You jes be re-laxed an' confident, you do what you want to be doing' like you ain't never had a worry in yer life. The shop had just sold him alcohol underage, neat as a trick! They had even given him a receipt. Lenin touched his cap.

"Thanks."

"Whatever."

"It went just like you said! And then down by the canal, there were these three old beggars, just like out of The Odyssey or The Lord of the Rings! They said 'Hey lad' and I said 'Good day, kind sirs,' and they said 'I see you have ample beverage: wouldn't ye be willin' to share with three poor old men?' And quick as a wink I knew exactly what to say, just the right thing at just the right time: I said, 'Gentlemen, the drinks are on me!' They laughed!"

"Well!"

"Yeah! Son of a birdie, they were three nice old fellows. We were talking and talking and talking. I told them all about school and about this pimply fellow who tripped in the library. They told me about when they were in school and the crazy stuff they did. I was telling them, look! It's not too late! Chemistry is not so hard! And I told them all about valence electrons and bonds. The three were mad interested!"

"I declare!"

"Yeah, they got a real kick out of that, the stuff I was telling them about the Periodic Table. Thirsting for knowledge, the delight of something complex and involuntarily relevant explained! It was A-1. And they were mad impressed I told them I'd bought the two-litre underage." Lenin hefted Kid Rio's Diet 7-Up home about, in demonstration. "'Not a chance,' them lads said. 'You nicked that from your da at home.' 'I sure enough did buy it,' I told them, and they said 'Naw!' I went, 'Well, just watch me pull it off again if you don't believe me!' And I strolled back on into that shop like I bought cider there every day, cool as the brew in the cooler, and did it again!"

"Hm."

"Yeah, Kid, it's true. It's all true. It went just like you'd said. And now I know, I'm inspired, I believe I have found my mission in life," Lenin enthused with absolute sincerity. "I'm going to teach chemistry to all the bums I find!"

"Well, one step at a time, pardner. Tell me, how's your Curse, since?"

Kid Rio never spoke in terms of Behavioural Consequence. He would just refer to certain people "bein' Cursed."

"I've been alright," stated Lenin. "Well- I just got sick, that wasn't so great. But I made it home from a rough part of town, after dark, and was able to sneak in without my ma knowing I'd been out. But my Geek must be decreasing! Nothing really horrible has happened to me."

"It's a start," appraised Kid Rio, after evaluating the whiskers under his chin and throat, for a minute, with two dirty fingertips.

"What's with the horse?" Lenin could not resist asking any longer. The spectral mare studiously ignored the both of them, grazing on grass Lenin had never even noticed growing in the bathtub. Kid shrugged and looked up from the coffee he was brewing.

"Oh yeah, that. That's my horse. I call him 'Hex' fer short."

"That's great, Kid. Horses are really great," Lenin said, and meant it sincerely. "Say, Kid- how can all this fit, this campfire and a horse and all? I mean, it's just a bathroom."

Kid shrugged. "Shoot, Lenny, I jes guess there's more room to things than you'd been seein'. Now, drink this here coffee and listen to me. There's something we need to be talkin' about."

Kid Rio's answers came to Lenin like revelations, so ultimately profound. He hung on the instruction like gospel.

"Well alright now, Len. Where I come from, to be a man, you need to do about four things. You need to work hard all day long. You need to go into town and drink you some strong liquor. You need to whoop someone is a fistfight and find consolation in the arms of a lady. A cowboy does those four things an' he's got the respect of every varmint on the Range.

"Now, I can't be teachin' you to rope 'n ride or throw steers. I can't learn you to rassle. That's up to you, 'cept as yer Irish I don't suppose hard work will be any trouble. Ol' Hickory himself was an Irishman, an' he got shot in a duel that near enough killt him, but he didn't even flinch so's to be sure the last thing to be goin' through his enemy's head (before a terminal dose a' lead poisoning) was the shameful thought that he'd had his shot 'n missed. That's one tough bastard. You jes keep that in mind, Len, whenever yer desperado ass is against the wall. Tell yerself that the bastards could throw rocks at you, and the rocks'd break before you would.

"The thing I can help you with, son, is with the ladies. I mean, look at you. I'm seein' this skinny buckaroo with all this hair standin' up. Y' ain't got a new pair of dungarees, or a silk shirt wrapped up in yer bedroll for when you're goin' into town. 'Scuse me if I'm soundin' lowdown, Len, but you ain't got what the Frenchies call Salve Rawfair. You ain't 'specially observant nor articulate, and you got a fair size Curse against you."

There was something about the genie, something just beyond recollection about Kid Rio. Something profound and familiar here, beside the sound of the description the genie'd given.

"As that's the lay of the land-" said the Kid; judging Hex's bridle bit to be sufficiently warmed, he removed it from the coffee pot. The horse appreciated the consideration and the rime of caffeine, so whinnied appreciatively. "- we've got to take the high ground, an' give you as much advantage as we can."

True, he was tall and skinny. But viewed another way, he was kind of wiry, too. His hair was determined to stand in random weazers- well, power to it! Lenin rubbed a handful of gel in and raised a whole head of them. It was in, the spiky look, and made him feel a rebel.

A fair bit of his attire was actually passable, in an unexpected way. Horn-rimmed glasses were back in vogue. Lenin examined the end result in the mirror, and had to laugh. He felt goofy, and a little dangerous too.

"You need t' establish yerself, when walking that street inta town. It's what some of them cowpokes call their 'strut,'" Lenin recalled. He stepped on the cat's tail by accident. It was still his luck, but it was also half one in the morning and his ma slept like the dead. Safe on this one. Lenin let himself out by the front door and resumed his stride.

"Y' see, a man can't do too much 'bout the looks that God dished out to 'im. But the thing you can control is the way you carry them looks, yer posture. Head high, that's the important thing in the makings of a strut. Not like yer some high-fallutin' sum-bitch who's lookin' down his nose at other folks. Jes such that any hombre knows, straight off, you ain't no low-down skulk. An' walk with yer chest, not yer gut. Well now, sure enough, that looks right fine, Len."

He worked on his walk all the way into City Centre. It felt new and anxious and dangerous, too, the town late at night. Lenin had never seen it at this hour. The streets were not deserted, as in his neighbourhood, nor did TV paint an accurate picture. Blocks and blocks bloomed brightly lit, as full of people as at any time of the day. Shops were open. But these people, these shops, were louder than their daytime selves. Bands of friends laughed out loud. Music pumped from bars and chippers. It was surely keeping the people who lived in those expensive City Centre apartments up there awake, the noise: their lights were all on. But (realised Lenin) likely they were not mad at being so aroused. The people renting there must do all their living at this hour, in this scene.

The buildings were all lit up with spotlights, some in green or purple or blue. Lenin passed a hotel with real gaslights, straight out of cowboy days. Two redheaded young ladies smoked casually beneath, trying their best to look alluring and succeeding brilliantly. Noisy lads in rugby shirts interrupted the most gorgeous chicks Lenin had ever seen, and all started chatting like old friends. There were bums and huge taxi queues and couples necking in the middle of the sidewalk. Everyone had spiky hair. Lenin thrilled to the fear and excitement of it all.

At half-two he was outside Slapper Face Jack's, the trendy "saloon" Kid Rio'd drawled on about. Kid'd drawled on about a lot of things. "Well now, fillies are easy enough to rope. You find a couple that's all riled up, you throw a wink on 'em an you ask if you can't ride a while with their outfit. - Yeah, like that- yeah, it'd help if you lost yer spectacles fer a while, too, Len. Truth is, each of them women out there has her own brand of pretty, not jes them actresses you see on picture postcards. A cowboy can't be too discerning. Jes remember so, on them rare occasions that blind wink ropes you a heifer, well now, them's the sitiations why for God gave you two legs fer runnin with."

Lenin was still recollecting and practising winks when the happy babble from the women leaving the nightclub sang directly to him. "Ha, yes! Steph, that feller is winking at you! He is!" - "He's cute!!" - "Hey, handsome, you all alone and wanting to meet our friend Stephanie?"

Lenin skipped the sigh of relief when non-heifer Steph tittered into focus. He put on a casual grin and said his Evening Ladies.

He liked the way these older women still giggled, making him feel on familiar ground, even though they were, minimum, three years beyond their teens. "What's your name, handsome?" Stephanie's cross-eyed friend bubbled.

"It's Lenin."

"Oh! That's so gear! Like the deep feller from the Beatles!"

"Er- yeah! The very one."

"You out here all alone? You haven't found yourself a girlfriend?"

"Ah, plenty of women have gone by. I've just been waiting for the best," intimated he to Steph's friends, throwing another wink. He was getting good at this winking thing.

Lenin was propelled bodily toward the darkened park. "He'll do!" latched the brazened Steph.

Yikes! Thus the entomology of 'On the Pull!' thought Lenin, before losing the capacity for logical thought entirely.

Half an hour later, spinning dizzy either from enamorous exertion or vicarious vodka, Lenin snogged the happy slapper adieu. One of her cheering section had likewise "pulled" while on the street, but was momentarily disentangled. The eager clubbers literally skipped their way on down Harcourt Street, merrily singing last year's hit from Westlife.

"Birds like that make it all worthwhile," announced the one who'd tossed a saddle on Steph's friend and been thrown.

"Son of a -- bitch!" agreed Lenin.

The English punker drunk mused on. "All the hard work, the rain, the agro. Bollix to the pricks! They think they own me seven days a week but they don't. They get my forty and then nothing they throw at me can keep me from coming here, dancing, and letting any number of beautiful birds share me a piece of something that's real."

"It was amazing."

"Wot, that blond one?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, she looked a bit of alright."

"There was this one girl who sat next to me in school when I was thirteen, and her folks knew my folks! She was so purty. This one time, we were on the same Learning Team in Science Lab. Even now, when I see her at her bus stop, she has the best ideal of beauty of anybody I ever met. She had one of those courier-style backpacks before anyone!"

"So did you ever do her?"

"No."

"Are you going to?"

"If she ever comes clubbing- and maybe if she don't!"

"Clubbing's where it's at."

Lenin and the bloke with the smig goatee both swayed reeling. Lenin, however, had no vodka, excepting the intoxicating spirit yet vivid upon his lips, tongue, and teeth, sparking to fiery life every breath of oxygen he exchanged with this new night world. "Well, cheers mate," saluted the English brother, weaving his way toward the thoroughfares.

"Yeah. All the best!" blessed Lenin.

"Well now, pardner, your skin's clearin' up nicely."

"Thanks, Kid."

"Lemme introduce you to the outfit, here. Everyone, this here's Lenny. He's only become aware of things real recent-like. He's worked hard, an' he's drunk him some strong liquor, everyone, so he's OK. Lenny, this here's Sven Johansen, Trapper John, Chief Wiggum, Jehosophat Drummartin from Aurora, and that pretty lil' thing there is Miz Laura Ingles."

"Laura Ingles?" exclaimed Lenin. "But she's dressed like a prostitute!"

Laura blushed from spectral white to sunrise pink.

"Well now, you must be thinkin' of the tame little kitten she was as a young 'un. Now you're seeing Laura Ingles Wilder!"

"Golly!" Lenin exclaimed. Trapper John cackled, abruptly choked, snorted, spat, and cackled again.

"He says you swear like a lily-livered Baptist. No offence now, I'm jes translatin'," related Kid Rio. Trapper signalled for attention and opened his single-toothed choppers to demonstrate how a real mountain man cursed. Lenin listened as attentively as the others, but to him the din sounded more like a guitar solo in a meat grinder than any language he knew. Still, the lad applauded as appreciatively as the rest of the outfit while Trapper John beamed with pride.

"'Twas trappers like him yonder that found the routes that opened the West. Why, back when Thomas Jeffieson purchased that Louisiana Territory, there weren't a soul alive that knew jes how far this new land spread or what was out there in it. Trapper John and the others, they let people know they'd jes been livin' on one little portion of it all, an' showed them the way across."

"I think I'd heard something about that before, Kid, maybe at school. But it'd never meant much to me before now. All this cowboy bit, it's starting to make sense to me, but I still can't say I wholly understand."

"Well now," the cowboy shrugged solemnly, then stuck his tongue out at Lenin in fun and went back to fixing the stew. It was then that it struck Lenin who the cowboy reminded him of. With the shaggy hair and moustache, the craggy face and white electric spectral glow, the genie he knew as Kid Rio was the spitting image of Albert Einstein.

"Pilgrim!" announced Johansen. Lenin blinked. Then he copped on that this was a presentation inspired by Trapper John's showpiece cursing. The tawny Swede was quite proud of his correctly-used word of English.

"He's calling you a pilgrim!" gushed Laura, sunrise now with pride. "A pilgrim is a newcomer to the land, like Sven was himself not so long ago."

"Pilgrim!" repeated Sven. There was another round of clapping.

"The phrase degrades the merits of true pilgrims like myself and my fellow Saints," frowned Jehosophat Drummartin from Aurora. "The unenlightened yet choose to view the deserts crossed as mere obstacles to be transversed, and scorn upon those men who make of them a new Sinai. Choose carefully your path and, most high!, your guidebook, young Pilgrim. Though the same land is crossed, one traveller may arrive with Paradise and the other with naught but curses."

"He always talks like that," apologised the cowboy. "The Mormons weren't the only plumb-locos to run off and form their own nation, jes the ones who made the most greenback dollars and rocked the most headboards. Why, there were Shakers, and Quakers, and all sorts of nutty Krauts in the woods, hoein' it down for Doomsday."

"Place ye not those heretics aside me!"

"No offence intended, pardner. You had your say, and should go on an' keep preachin' thataway. I was just going to 'splain to Lenny that cowboys had more run-ins with homesteaders and outlaws and bible thumpers and claim jumpers than they ever had with the Injuns native to these new parts." Chief Wiggum nodded to emphasise; he could not have put it any better himself.

The gathered assemblage continued passing ingredients to the campfire. Kid Rio pared the makings, splashed in a dollop of 7-Up from his bottle, and huffed a snootful from the stewpot. He pronounced it mighty fine with an appreciative "Well, now!" The genie's bright eyes alighted upon Lenin.

"You were fixin' to tell us, mi amigo, a piece a' good news of yer own," invited the Kid. Welcome eyes smiled at Lenin. He was in good spirits.

"I've gone out on the town, these last couple nights. Each and every occasion, I met me a sexy lady. This one even said I was cuter than Ricky from that new boyband! She wanted to take me home. It was gear, absolutely gear."

Smiles beamed all about him. Lenin went on. "Today I did up twenty Marmite sambos and dropped them on the floor. And out of those twenty, eleven landed face up!" The same exuberant delight showered on Trapper John and Sven Johansen was gushed upon Lenin. Laura Ingles grinned from ear to ear while Sven praised "Pilgrim! Pilgrim!" and the chief nodded proudly.

"Well now!" winked Kid Rio. "Seems to me, what with them findings and all, you've just about bucked off yer Curse. I knew there were the makings of a real man of the Range in ye!"

"I'm owing you a load of thanks, Kid. I'd be lost without you."

"Aw, shucks," said Kid. "'Twarn't me a'tall, it was yerself that blazed that there trail from start to finish. An' look, we're only jes beginning, here! Ain't you discovered a vein of gold in these here parts, an understanding of the universe an' everything a mite beyond the grasp of most men? I think you and me are fixin' ta start workin' it on the sly, an' see if we can't do the whole world a lick of good."

The strum of a rowdy guitar joined the rattling of seashells. The others in the outfit swelled toward song, and the Kid winked at Lenin again. "It's all there before you, pardner. Scientists think they got the whole universe all fenced in neat and trim, all understood. You're realizin' that this field is trimmed neat by a wild mustang of a force than Man can break n' ride!"

"I--- I don't know if I understand."

"Well now, we'll leave that two-steppin' 'til then next time we say 'Howdy,' Len. We've got us occasion enough yet to come, to git ya Saddled up. Right now, though," winked the cowboy, the genie, the Einstein, the whole spectral enchilada rolled up into one rip-roarin' headwrecker of a Kid Rio hombre, "I think we're 'bout ta git roped inta a singalong!"

"What's that you're whistling, you?"

Lenin thought for a second. "Home, Home on the Range."

His Ma dished out a waffle. "Hm! That song must be stuck in your head from whatever Western you were watching last night. I didn't hear you come in, and then in the middle of the night I thought I heard voices downstairs. There you were, all nackered out in front of the telly!"

Lenin yawned lazily, dimly recollecting his Mom shepherding him upstairs to his own room. The sun now shone bright, the clock hands nearing noon. His Ma went on. "Well, enjoy them now, the late night movies and lazy mornings. There's little enough time left 'til school starts again, young man, and this house sees a bit of peace. You haunting it all the time---"

The conspiratorial winks worked on mothers, too. She smiled and tousled his spiky-cool hair. "You're getting to be such a grown up young man, since when do you drink coffee?" She went back to cleaning the presses, whistling herself now too. "Oh, I almost forgot to say. Your little friend Gordon stopped by this morning. He was looking to make a birdfeeder, can you believe?"

"Hmmm!"

"Yes, a boy of his age! Chickadees my bum, I say. You and he both should be pursuing the different sort of bird. Like the O'Carroll's nice young daughter, Becky, hmm?"

"I like blondes."

"Yes, and they sure are knocking down the door. Whole flocks of blondes. You're just making excuses for being so shy. You should pluck up your nerve and call the O'Carroll's Becky."

"No, Ma. I'm serious. If I was to be calling anyone, it'd be Lorainne Doyle. I like blondes."

"Hmm! Out of Marmite again. I swear--- Well, Lenin, at least you like blondes and not bottles. That's what your friend Gordon walked out of here with. I get the feeling, now, that that's what he was after all along. He didn't seem dreadfully disappointed when I told him you weren't awake yet."

"Hm-hmm," sipped Lenin. Wait! "-Bottles?"

"Yes, can you believe? " His mother's voice wafted around the barrier of her beehive. "For his birdfeeders, I'd say. I suppose they're too lofty to bring plastic bottles into the Quigley home so he had to come slumming for ours!"

Jesus! Kid Rio's home! "That 7-Up bottle from out the fridge?"

"Why, yes, among others-"

"The 7-Up!"

"There was only a swallow left in it, dear," said Lenin's mother after a moment, taken aback. "And it had been lying there for an age-"

"No! Not the 7-Up!" Hi, I'm back! zinged the panic behind his eyes. Lenin cried out again. His Ma looked at him, struck dumb. Lenin was on his feet so he sat down, only to find himself back on his feet still. He stumbled and coffee went sloshing, the table wailing an accusing screeeech! "Goddammit, Ma, how could you?"

"Now don't you go blowing your top at me, Lenin Frederick. I'll tear the backside off you!"

She was right. Jesus knew how he was blowing his top- losing his cool, and fast. Lenin could feel his Geek blaze. He was struck by the distinct impression that every fork in every drawer, ever pot and the rack on which they hung, quivered anxiously to burst from rest and come flying akilter to him. He was a danger magnet if he stayed in the room one minute longer. "Ah- birdie, I'm sorry ma I'm- -- I'm running down to the store! Yeah, the shop! I'm going to be- ah- get- ah-"

He hiked it out of there before he could stumble again.

Lenin's mother blinked, then poured herself a tall tumbler of Sunny D and lit up a fag from her secret stash behind the bran. "Teenagers!" she exclaimed to the empty kitchen. "Every tiny thing! Fuckin' life an' death!"

Gordon had his nose buried in some mouldy issue of Ranger Rick & Pals. "Hello There!" the cover-story groundhog captioned. Whiteheads that had migrated from Gordon's neck to nose screamed out a similar greeting. The bloated teen sat, otherwise impassive, viewing his visitor's entry. Lenin noted that, true to prediction, some inevitable misfortune had strewn apart the cardboard world of 1942. The half-constructed detritus of Chester Chirup's Chickadee Cafe lay scattered atop.

"Gordon," Lenin could not stop shaking, "I need the bottle back."

"How's the genius and his Geek Force?"

"Gordon, those bottles you collected from me mother. There's been a mistake. I need them back."

"How's your Geek Force today, Lenin?" the child badgered on. He was not truly involved in the conversation; Gordon (Lenin realized) merely had a series of points he wanted to hear illicit a response. Lenin shook his head. His voice still quavered.

"Look, Gordon, give me those bottles back. Whatever else you want to talk about we'll discuss later. Right now I need you to give me those back."

"Well Good Morning to you," misspoke Gordon. Lenin felt about to explode, static energy charged. Making his own initiative, he rummaged the tabletop mess. Gordon's vocal illicitations crackled up a spike.

The bottle was not there. Lenin eyed the screeching blob; even as socially impervious as Gordon was, when his eyes met Lenin's, the protestations ceased. Desperation was the force quavering that voice, Gordon realized, and an odd, fresh sweat gleamed his spotty skin.

Loud and clear Gordon heard the whispered command repeated.

"I- I-I don't have it! It's out back!" the teen protested. "All the bottles are out back."

"Show me."

Lenin felt the tension skitter over his skin. From its electricity, one cheek ticked against all Lenin's will, hated involuntary spasms. Gordon fumbled with the latch to the sliding glass door. With fingers suddenly big as sausages (pork links, his right hand; Polish kilbasas his left), Lenin had little better luck after shoving the incompetent aside. "There! See?" stammered Gordon as they at last plunged into the back garden. One grubby meathook indicated the trees.

It was Kid Rio's bottle, all right- with its bottom slit open, a rope 'round its neck, four cottage-cheese-container vultures clinging with wadded masking-tape feet. Lenin groaned aloud; he understood that genies may be embodied as cowboys or prostitutes, but knew there was no way one could take the form of birdseed.

"I'm Cursed," Lenin surrendered.

Gordon, in his sweaty panic, unleashed upon his oppressor's softening. "You freak! You lunatic!" he shrieked. The teen bobbed and flailed like a dog at its screen door. "Geek Force! The universe's laws out to get you, my arse!"

Lenin, back in free fall, was powerless to move away from this stream of abuse. "-My ARSE! You've taken the paranoid conspiracy thing to cosmic heights! Where pre-modern man would wail, 'God is against me!' your sorry ass has thrown some Star-Trek technobabble slant up, 'I'm oppressed by laws of physics that no scientist before has ever thought of!' You daft yob! You bosch! Lunatic!" Gordon hollered. "And it's not as if this 'social ideal' doesn't change year-to-year! Exceedingly impressive universal constant, there, Lenin! And don't go trying to tell me that ideal-adjustment would be a feature inherent to a system designed for dynamic human interaction! What, you'd probably be saying that Denis the Menace is the technician tuning the rheostats of these cosmic electric works, and King George III is the janitor sweeping the floor! You idiotic boob! Behavioural Cons- Cons-"

Gordon, hyperventilating, heaved back for a lungful of breath.

"Gordon, I can tell from the way you're talking," Lenin said in a voice devoid of feeling, "That you've given the theory a lot of thought. It's dogged you, hasn't it, the notion? You've been sitting here mulling it all week, now that you've conceived.

"I'm shattered, Gordon, to see that another is also perceiving the Law's works, and arguing ceaselessly against it. Futilely. Illogical, bizarre as the whole concept seems, you've seen it's all true."

The cowed teen streamed a string of spit.

"You look, right now, like the biggest freakin' eegit that ever lived," the dead-voiced Lenin observed, placing one foot before the other, placing the dust of Gordon's house behind his heels. Gordon blubbered out tears of desolation, as if the powers on high had suddenly anointed his prematurely-thinning crown with the clout of a dead bird.

Heart in full plummet, passing through the door, Lenin appended, just a whisper, "World's biggest freakin' eegit, with one damned exception."

Gordon had seen that Lenin was right. Maybe, Lenin wrestled, maybe Gordon was right about something too. Fools can speak truth sometimes. Just look at me.

Maybe Gordon was right that he was a lunatic. Maybe he'd gone mad, perceiving this grand rule from which he could never escape. Denis the Menace manning the works, wasn't that what Gordon had derided? How would the nerd have responded, had Lenin told of his visitations by a sombrero-wearing cowgenie with the face of Albert Einstein?

"Not just Cursed, you're a freakin' lunatic," Lenin said aloud, wandering homeward (he intended) but his feet, against him, having taken him God knew where. He persevered, rubbing the soft spot where he'd lumped his head, and tried to sort matters straight.

That's got to be it, the day I whacked my head, he realised. Wasn't that the exact moment everything had changed? When everything in his thoughts, everything in the way he saw the world, suddenly cocked crossways?

And then later: when had he seen the genie? When he was reeling drunk and half-high, in that post-vomit rush? And the last time- downstairs on the couch. Hadn't his ma come down and found him asleep in front of the telly? Trapper John. Laura Ingles. A Western. Chief Wiggum, for christsake! Lenin considered, all TV shows, overlapping a dream.

But what about the canal, and Slapper Face Jacks, and John Henry Stetson? Lenin stumbled against every curbstone, torn by branches of every tree. He didn't know. Shoot, all Kid's propositions were things that'd been around town and in books and on TV a million times, all Lenin's life. He reckoned he could have heard about them subconsciously, and done some acting-out in a rash of impulsive behaviour. Drinking, snogging chicks- he'd scarce a'tall impress a psychiatrist or Teenage Crisis Councillor with the confession that he'd had sudden notions to do those things.

All a fantasy or not, one thing Lenin had gained over the last few weeks was a need for caffeine. Strong coffee. Ahead, beside the video store, he spied a Mom-and-Pop newsagent and puffed with relief. Thoughts still awhirl as he legged it over the retaining wall, the rowdy grin and bright galactic eyes of Kid Rio flashed before Lenin like a gust of wind, like a sharp jab of pain. Preoccupied, longing, the boy made for the door.

"Been a long time since Science Lab."

"Lorainne!"

"Gees; I didn't mean to startle you! You-" Slender as a whippet, the golden blonde peered at Lenin more closely. "Lenin- Are you alright?"

"Loraine- no- I-" Lenin staggered. His head shook. "I didn't even see you there. I- lost in thought for a sec."

"Good thoughts or bad thoughts?" she inquired. "Gees, I'm sorry. I really did startle you!"

"Have you ever---" blurted Lenin, stopped, then willed himself to dare. "Have you ever thought you might be losing your mind?"

The girl considered him for a moment, the awkward lad with the half-fallen spikes standing in the parking lot. "Come here and sit," she commanded. One slim hand tapped the wall beside her.

"You want me to sit down?"

"You can't just ask something like that, looking like you've just seen a ghost or your dog just died, then go strolling along. You come sit down."

Lenin sat.

"Now breathe."

He breathed.

"And talk."

Lenin asked, "Lorainne, do bad things ever happen to you?"

She wrinkled her sunburned nose. "Not very often. But when they do, I've got friends around me who I can lean on."

"I've just lost a friend," released Lenin, feeling the words come tumbling out. "One of my best friends, he just buggered off without even a chance to say 'bye. I'd never had a friend like him before, and he left just when we were about to really get started. Me and him, we just got all set up to try all these physics experiments, Nobel prize-winning sort of stuff, and on my own I don't even half know the theories or anything. I don't even know if part or what part or all of the whole thing is bullshit. I'm so confused. I can't do it on my own."

"Moved away?" asked Lorainne.

"His house got wrecked. Yeah."

"I've lost friends before, too," she told. "My granddad died there, in the spring."

"I'm sorry."

"It's OK. It hurts, but it's OK. My ma told me this, and it helps: 'forget the pain, now- you just remember all the good times, all the things he told you, Lorainne, and it's like he's still alive within you.'" She laughed. "She probably got that off watching Oprah, but it works."

Lenin chuckled. "Oprah!"

"Yeah! Would you believe it?" she laughed. "You're an alright guy, Lenin. A bit quiet- I haven't seen you for years, not since St. Brendan's- but alright all the same. I'm sure you'll be OK."

She had a great smile, Lorainne did. Persistent star of his adolescent dreams or just a random girl waiting propped on a wall, Lenin was grateful that this woman was there to give him a kind word exactly when he needed one. "I was just going into the store, get a coffee or a coke- would you like one-?"

"Ah-" her gaze was affixed to the Mom and Pop's door. Striding toward them was a crew-cut gorilla. "My boyfriend, Blake-"

"Wot the hell you doin' talking to this loser, Lorainne? Wot the hell you doing, talking to my girl, loser?" The cokes were on the asphalt and Lenin was heaved away from the wall. He caught his balance and turned, to find Blake squared up straight in his path.

"Blake, I'm sick of this! I swear, you act like the biggest jerk sometimes-" Lorainne protested, soon drowned out by the jock who ignored her.

"You were talking to my girl," Blake drilled. Tall as Lenin was, the bloke could not stare down at him. The bully was therefore making the most of his other means of intimidation.

I'm Cursed, that's real at least, thought Lenin, explaining, "Lorainne's a nice girl. We were on the same Learning Team in Science Lab when I was thirt-"

The air gushed out of him as Blake whacked two palms off Lenin's chest. "You trying something? You hoping to get into her panties, loser-?" The jock crowded the two steps Lenin had reeled back.

"Blake! He's just lost someone! I was telling him about my Grandfather, about forgetting the pain and remembering all the things that were said-"

"Look here, Blake, I'm not any trouble-"

Lenin's ears resounded from the crack, ping reverberating from one across to the other, a canon shot in his blackness. He was lying prostrate, somehow, a high voice protesting in some other world where there was sunlight, and an angry bark arguing right back. Where was he? What had he just been thinking about? Lenin tried to place it, place himself, but couldn't. He blinked his eyes open, a parking-lot world tinged red. He felt a chuckle raging up in him, and fought to suppress himself silent. It had been something strange and important. Batteries? Something big: What had he been thinking, just there?

No matter. As the lump swelled on the back of his head, as he silently rolled to his knees, the ringing was fading, replaced by the singular conviction that (in an inevitable second or two, when he rose to his feet and this laugh ripped out of him) a horrible misfortune was about to befall somebody else.