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I. Life as a Timeline

Eager to be scientific, Zenith drew a timeline.

Carefully manipulating his protractor, he labeled the starting point "Birth," and the endpoint "Death."

Sitting back hard enough that the red chair-back wheezed white foam, Zenith surveyed his work. Neat, geometrical, nice.

He picked up a rule and measured his life in centimeters. Carefully manipulating his mechanical pencil, he plotted his progress, tabulating his time spent.

Zenith postulated. At 45 there was still a ways to go before he reached his biophysical midpoint, his spiritual summit his zenith wasn't there? Certainly he hadn't already climaxed. Surely, everyone's life had its inherent drama, pits and plateaus, peaks and valleys. According to his graph, Zenith figured that he had at least 40 years to go nearly half of his time remained. No, Zenith was sure that if life indeed offered a high point, he had not yet reached it.

Hope remained; he was counting on it.

II. Kink in the Chain Link

Now Zenith was no dummy. He knew a thing or two about a thing or two. Take cars, for instance. Zenith knew the underbelly of an automobile better than most men knew the soft spot of a steering wheel. Mufflers were Zenith's particular mtier. He fixed them, fitted them, filed and fiddled with them, but the thing that Zenith liked best was selling them.

More than likely, if you and your machine happened into his shop with a carbon cough or a toxic tailpipe, a smoky emission or a mere suspicion chances are that before you'd left Zenith would have persuaded you to let him "put her up on the lift to take a look." Well sir, once Zenith got underneath your ride, he wouldn't pull out of there without putting in a new pipe, catalytic converter, or at the very least, tightening the nuts and securing the screws.

Yessiree Bob, he could close a sale. Always could and always would. Perhaps it was that Quaker Oats smile or his by-golly style, but Zenith was at his best when he was shooting the breeze with just plain folks.

His love of motors began early. He was twisting the spokes and greasing his sprocket before the other boys were playing pocket pool. Ever since his mama could remember, Zenith had preferred the cold honesty of mechanical bodies to the warm uncertainty of human flesh, and that as they say was the kink in the chain link.

III. Living in Licum

While his career curbing cars accelerated smoothly ramping up from hyping hot rods to high schoolers to eventually cornering the local classifieds market Zenith's emotional

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