by Jim Snyder

Created on: November 05, 2009   Last Updated: November 15, 2009

The phone rang. Lori, loaded down with briefcase, laptop case, and purse, was wrestling her way through the back doors. The first door was relatively easy to negotiate, but the screen door had been installed backwards and the steps were too narrow, making the railing impossibly close to the opening door. It was an awkward enough endeavor to squeeze through empty handed, but became a Houdiniesque exercise in agility when so encumbered. Lori knew that some day they would get around to correcting the door problem, that it would not require much effort, and they would afterward wonder what had taken them so long in the first place. It was just one of those things she never gave much thought to when she wasn't actually trying to go through the door. Greg didn't seem to see the problem, but he seldom had more than car keys to carry, and he had tremendous tolerance for small nuisances. There was always something that appeared more important or more aesthetically appealing to do around the house, so fixing the door never seemed to move any higher on the priority list.

Their stealth cat, smelling egress, darted for the opening in the doorway that was created the moment Lori heard the phone. She had removed her left foot from the open space in order to close the door, and her ensuing moment of hesitation gave the cat new life. Just as suddenly, however, a precision-pointed, gravity-driven leather briefcase thudded down just in time to thwart any notion he entertained about spending the day outside. Had the phone call not interrupted her routine progress, the door would already be pulled shut, her face would be smiling through the window, and Dickens would be displaying his special cat brand of indifference. You can't blame a cat for trying. Lori was convinced that her children, if they ever got around to having any, would make excellent hockey goalies.

Her immediate thought upon hearing the telephone was that it was just some phone solicitor. The next thought, running almost concurrently to her initial one, was that it might be her husband. The order in which her thoughts came was less an offshoot of the preponderance of uncalled for sales pitches they had been receiving of late, than due to the fact that generally her husband would still be home at that time of day. He, however, after receiving a phone call at three in the morning, and amidst much stumbling and mumbling, had gone off to the warehouse for "damage control on some sort of coffee foul up." His use of the

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