related her and her husbandís plans to move to the Seattle area in the near future. Together, we hatched a plan that would raise me the funds to pay Paul the rent that I owed him.

The next morning, I made myself scarce and took a long shower while the Rent-a-Center people repossessed my bed because I owed them sixty dollars, plus, of course, a ten dollar delinquency fee.

Dorinda arrived shortly after her early afternoon quitting time, driving her deep blue Geo Storm. We spent the first part of the afternoon cruising around town, and stopping at various convenience stores. For good reason, most places donít allow you to write a check for large amounts over the amount of your purchase. At every place that we went, weíd buy something trivial and Dorinda would write the check for as much over as the store would allow. Now, obviously, if the money had actually been in the account, she would have just withdrawn the money and given it to me. But, she didnít actually have the money so she resorted to a method of raising capital that is commonly known as check fraud.

Dorinda wasnít concerned with this slight breach of check etiquette, and I took full advantage of her willingness to bend and break the law.

"Iíll just file for bankruptcy," she said cheerfully. "Itís not like Iíve never filed bankruptcy before. Besides, weíre late on our rent and weíre just going to hold off on paying it and move out at the end of the month. Weíll have an extra month of rent money to work with."

We left Max and Craig in the car while we offered our bouncing checks to various merchants in the city of Yakima. We didnít bother explaining our entrepreneurial methods to them, as neither of them were likely to approve. By the end of the day, or maybe well before then, Iím sure they managed to put two and two together and understand the nature of our fundraising methods.

We stopped by Jacksonís, which was a pretty typical sports bar nearby and ordered some community hot wings and nachos. We shot a few games of pool. Dorinda spent much of the time bemoaning the fact that her husband was a Nintendo addict, and complaining that she just liked to have fun, and he was too busy playing Nintendo to do anything, let alone talk to her. Of course, when Dorinda was out having fun she was often in the company of other men, which may have been contributing to the problem.

Craig decided to break his prohibition on food and carefully sampled a few nacho chips. Minutes later he was in the bathroom, heaving out whatever alcohol- and the couple of chips that he had eaten - into the toilet. His stomach wasnít conditioned to the rigors of food digestion anymore.

Dorinda was on a roll, and continued to write checks for everything. That night I drank too much and passed out in the middle of a pool table while I was leaning over to take a shot. A few minutes later I came to and decided that I was going to be the one who drove the Geo Metro home. When Max and Dorinda refused my request, I decided that I was going to walk home. I vaguely remember somebody throwing me over their shoulder and dumping me in the back of the Geo Metro.

A few hours later I woke up and began working on another bottle of Jose Cuervo, hoping to soon add its empty shell to my massive collection. I was on my way out. Maybe the downward spiral would come to an end. I knew that my body could not handle this kind of abuse for too much longer.