Dale hated his job. It was boring. There was no challenge to the work and absolutely no variation. It was the same thing every day, day after day. He entered data from hand-written reports filled out by field agents into the Wahberg Mutual Assurance database. They read like police reports: no colorful words or expressions, no opinions or poignant observations, no indication whatsoever that the person filling out the report had ever had an original thought. They were straight fact stripped of ownership: The house was seen to display smoke at approx 6 PM. Some were pared to fact so concisely that they ceased to make sense: Bar'd in row 8 to sembl w wat damage perim.

He hated his job. It reminded him of his life: going nowhere, coming from nowhere, and settled into a smooth, bump-free, never-ending ride down the slow lane to carbon copy days and notes-to-self to do something someday. His social itinerary was the TV Guide. He read his junk mail, with interest. He hated his life.

But now he was in love. He was in love with a woman he'd never met, a woman who fished by herself from a swamp-fed river every morning, who smoked cigarettes like a stick incense holder, and who never appeared to smile. She walked easy but looked hard. Maybe it was the discrepancies that attracted Dale to her; she was so much unlike anything that had ever touched on the unvarying days of his life.

"Off on another one of your tangents, Claw?"

Damn.

It was Pat Duncan, his boss for the last three months, three months of pure hell, of humiliation and slow burning anger. She was a big woman who towered over most men and she knew it. She loved it. She played it up, standing as close to men shorter than herself as the edges of political correctness would allow, looking down on them, bullying them with her size. And she had the girth to match the height. She was mountainous. But she drew attention away from the abnormality of her size — except, of course, when she was using it to intimidate — by dressing in nothing but plain slacks and patternless business jackets over white blouses. It was like a uniform she wore at home and at work. She had a bloated Betty Crocker face and neck-length spray-stiffened brown hair.

One other thing: she hated Dale as much as he hated her.

Dale had a flaw she couldn't stomach. She'd told him as much soon after she took over the office: "You look like a preening pigeon when you scratch your nose with it." She was referring to Dale's left hand. The inside and outside fingers were missing, severed by a lawn mower when he was a child. It gave Pat the willies so badly that she used it as an excuse to spend most of the day out of the office, leaving Dale to do most of the work. She was a bad boss and a bad worker. Dale assumed that she'd been promoted to manager of this office probably to get her out of somebody else's hair, somebody higher up the company ladder but shorter than Pat in staff meetings and around the water cooler.

She called him Claw.

"If you'd spend as much time working as you spend daydreaming, we wouldn't be so far behind on these reports. They want that database ready in three weeks, Claw. I want that database ready in three weeks."

So sit down on your fat butt and do some work, thought Dale. He nodded agreement, but didn't say anything.

"Three weeks! That's all the time we have. You've been on this project since before I got here, and you're still not up-to-date. What's wrong with you?"

I'm all alone, he thought. I've got nobody helping me on this damn project, especially not you. He nodded as he entered data, eyes on his computer screen. Pat watched the two fingers of his left hand race over the keyboard faster than most people could type with a full hand of fingers. She frowned.

"I need a coffee," she said, and she walked out of the office. Dale's shoulders relaxed. He stopped typing. He looked out the window. There she was. Standing on the bank by the river, smoke curling around her head, right hand circling as she reeled in the baitless spinner. His heart pounded.

Some day, he thought, some day.