Data Quality As Crime And Crime - 2038 Words

In our continuing state of shrinking government operating budgets, crime scientists and crime analysts need to consider the interrelatedness of spatial and temporal shifts in crime patterns when creating, tracking, and handling crime hot spots. Many studies indicate that crimes are clustered at the neighborhood level, but the entire neighborhood is rarely (if ever) criminogenic and only specific parts of neighborhoods contain high concentrations of crime CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction The study of crime traditionally involved disciples such as psychology and sociology (George, 1978) but crime has always had an inherent geographic quality as crimes will always be linked to a geographical location (Chainey and Radcliff,†¦show more content†¦Then finally looking at the study area of the District of Columbia (Washington D.C.), identifying why this area is one of Americas problem crime areas. 2.2 History of GIS and Crime The use of GIS in crime has been around for centuries with Dent (2000) tracing the mapping of crime back to 1829, when Adriano Balbi and Andrà © Michel Guerry created choropleth maps showing the relationship between violent and property crimes with education levels. As time went on sociologists from the Chicago School, Shaw and McKay (1931) began to map crimes by their XY coordinates to show the geographic location to understand the importance of the crime location. In the 1980’s the reduction in price of computers meant it became more cost effective for GIS Applications (Longley et al, 2011). With the introduction of the new GIS technologies, the ability to use police records within the GIS applications allowed for crime and intelligence analysis (Radcliff, 2004). These days the advancements in technology and the reductions in cost has resulted in GIS applications moving from the backroom computer analysis tool to be used by almost every discip line, from criminology to healthcare, natural resources to economics. These advancements have not just been in the applications but also in the science behind them. This has allowed for more advanced analysis, which use well known mathematical models within their calculations, such as spatial statistics and the use of the Getis-Ordi

Technology Changes in 1850-1900s Free Essays

The American economy has boosted, in such a way where positive and negative impacts can reflect on how the society is handled and seen as. New political ideas and inventions come to place, and our economy starts to shift and handle bigger changes. As a result, America used and developed new customs to help progress and grow to our necessities. We will write a custom essay sample on Technology Changes in 1850-1900s or any similar topic only for you Order Now One of the greatest impacts of technological inventions was the railroad. Railroads were the nation’s first â€Å"big business† and was a source of rapid transportation. Resources needed to build the nationwide network of railroads led to growth in other industries, for example, the coal and steel network. By making the technological changes, it increased and branched off into new jobs and products. For example, the railroads allowed farmers to sell their crops to a larger market, yet the railroads were more powerful than individual farmers or farm collectives. They were able to charge the farmers large fees, expenses that farmers barely had enough to cover, in order to transport their goods throughout the expansive country. Much of the technology was either expensive and/or needed large spaces to work effectively and sufficiently. Similar essay: Was the West a Land of Opportunity or Oppression? In order to promote western expansion, the federal government provided railroad companies with huge subsidies in the form of loans and land grants. Around 80 companies received over 170 million acres of public land and the railroad companies received more than three times the land given away by the Homestead Act. This was when they were offering 160 acres of land free to any citizen who was head of the household. This expanded land ownership and attracted foreigners to settle in these areas. Another huge invention which impacted the lives of people communicating across the country. This invention was called the Telegraph, created by Samuel Morse in 1844. By 1900 telegraph lines linked all continents in a global network of cables. This helped the communication travel around and when wars struck, they were able to stay in contact. The invention of the telegraph branched off to a new invention of the telephone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. It opened the way for a worldwide communications network. The economic ideas of Laissez-faire capitalism and Social Darwinism, contributed to the rapid industrialization of the late 1800’s. Economists found in Social Darwinism, a way to justify the doctrine of laissez faire. Laissez-faire capitalism argued that business should not be regulated by the government and that they should be regulated by supply and demand. They would also offer goods at low prices and out of their self-interest. In the 1880’s trusts and monopolies started to undercut the natural regulation of the market. The second economic idea of Social Darwinism was based on Darwin’s theory of natural selection. This theory of natural selection and survival applied to the standards of the business world. How to cite Technology Changes in 1850-1900s, Essay examples

Corruption in Soccer

Question: Discuss about theCorruption in Soccer. Answer: Introduction of Corruption in Soccer Football started its journey as a professional sport under the umbrella of FIFA. Fifa or The Fdration Internationale de Football Association, the international governing body of football started its journey on 21 May 1904. Seven footballing associations signed up for the foundation act of FIFA. The authorized representatives were from France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland(Gabbe, 2013). Today, the FIFA controls the world football and its entire tournament that is played around the world. Currently, FIFA has 211 members who are under the guidance of this governing body. As money flooded in, so did corruption. In all the recent years the transparency of FIFA was under question in many occasions. In the past Fifa had already faced such rumors of misconduct. Presidents Blatters first election in 1998 and his consecutive rise in power for the second time had fuelled the allegations of corruption and bribery. In 2006, Jack Warner, the chairman of CONCACAF, was banned by Fifas ethical committee(McCormick, 2013). The Ernest and Young audit report declared that Warner had earned millions of dollars by selling World Cup tickets in Trinidad. In the following years, Fifa president Bin Hamam was suspended after he was alleged of bribing 40000 USD to buy the votes of the Caribbean officials. The suspension was enacted on May 29(Miller, 2014). Even, the voting session of selection of hosting nations of World Cup 2018 and 2022 were under question. Despite of poor weather and infrastructural facility Qatar was awarded the responsibility of hosting the 2022. Qatar i s a small country and already has issues with labor and other such problems(Gabbe, 2013). Types of Corruption Footballs integrity as an international sport has under questions through various types of corruptions associated with it. There were corrupt officials trying to sell their valuable votes in FIFA(Cleland, 2016). The match officials or referees charged with allegation of match fixing. Players or officials were found to have connections with underworld or drug cartels. Added to them isnegligence of officials towards humanistic values which they overlooked many a times in order to make profit for the organization(Gabbe, 2013). The spirit of the game has been hurt in almost all the cases. The following sections would discuss various types of corruption associated with the game of football. Gambling Football currently is a multi-million dollar sports event considering the World Cup and famous club competitions around the world. Though betting is illegal in some countries, there is easy gambling options available round the internet which any one can access. Friendly betting or mere gambling over football matches or between favorite teams means no harm(Guskiewicz, 2013). But, when influential people try to manipulate the officials or natural flow of the match it becomes a real menace. BBCs report on gambling has revealed that the industry earns 70 percent of its turnover from football itself. The yearly outcome of gambling industry is currently around 500 billion pounds a year. It clearly indicates the degree of which the money is poured indirectly for any game or match of football(Homburg, 2010). Though only 70 percent of the total yearly outcome is from football, still the amount remains lump-sum.In past few incidents, gambling had affected players career(Smith, 2013).Eidur Gudj ohnsen was one such top listed player who was addicted to gambling. He himself mentions that he had taken up the habit as a time-pass during the injury and recovery sessions. Later he became highly addicted to it .The Independent had brought out an interesting issue on players underperforming due gambling. In the report experts suggested that players gamble in order to get rid of the boredom, mostly in case of away games or training sessions. In the long run most people get addicted to it which affects their form in the pitch(Rose-Ackerman, 2015). This situation increased more when gambling was available on line through any mobile devices including pc or laptop. A research was conducted on the issue on behalf of Professional Players Federation. The result shows that most of the players chose to gamble through online for sports, horse racing or at casinos. The other big name in the list was Michael Chopra who had been found to be betting since age of 17(Wilson, 2014). He was even rec orded to have received threats from the loan sharks in the business. His career was threatened by huge debts. The report suggested further that the huge burden of indebt money caused the players to lose concentration and hence the issue is shown in the game itself. To bring a solution to the problem of gambling Interpol and FIFA announced a joint initiative of ten years. Its aim is to train people and arouse ideas about the risks involved and the ill-effects of gambling. The education would be imparted through conference, workshops and online tutorials. Doping Initially the question may arise, if football is really contaminated with doping? The answer might be a no, because there isnt so much stir about this fact in the news or reports.But, the reality is different.The use of PED or performance enhancement drugs, growth hormones, etc. are all commonly used in the world of sports(Bean, 2015). Football is also not lacking behind. But there were reports of star players being spotted at doping clinics. In the past there were famous athletics and players from other games who were accused of doping from failed dope tests. .This fire is yet to burn in football. The day it will start, it will consume the whole world of football(Preuss, 2014). A Sunday times report revealed that a study by UEFA had examined 4000 urine tests from Europes top level players pool. Among them the 7.7 percent were tested to have possible use of steroids of anabolic nature. More stunning outcome of this incident is that zero players were facing any investigation or ban fo r use of dope. UEFA instead, just consumed the issue and shortened it. It is a clear fact that since use of dope is in practice in football the committees does not want to reveal this to the fans around the world. In the past there were high profile players who were caught for use of illegal substances. To add to the PEDs and other boosting drugs, cocaine also was added to the list. Ex-Chelsea player Adrian Mutu was one such example. During his peak times in career he was tested with traces of cocaine. But no other name goes bigger than Maradona(McCormick, 2013). Besides being tested positive with Cocaine, during the 94 world cup he was banned on use of ephedrine, a performance enhancer drug. The infamous doctor Dr. Luis Garcia De Moral worked as a medical advisor in different football team. The term infamous is used as this was the person who caused the whole USA cycling team to be disqualified after positive dope test result. Lance Armstrong was a part of the teamed(Georgakis, 2016). Moral had exclaimed this fact to one of the members that they were taking nothing compared to the football players. Another doctor from Spain, Dr. Fuentes also holds the key to doping in the world of football. T hese both doctors were charged with possession of anabolic steroids. The former was banned by US Anti-doping Agency and the latter is still under trial. Match-Fixing The problem of betting and gambling slowly invited another problem which would alter the very course of a normal game. In hunger to earn more money and fill the pocket had become more important than the game of football itself. Match-fixing refers to altering the result or outcome of the match by manipulating either the players or officials involved in the game(Holden, 2016). In football there are 22 players on field. There are staffs, managers, substitutes those are involved in the match. It is kind of tough to match-fix in football due to dynamic nature of the game itself. But forcing unwanted errors in key position often does the trick required. These chances created helps to aid a gamble and earning cash(Eberhardt, 2016). These actions vary from rash tackles inside the box to earn penalty, goalkeeping flaws leading to conceding of goals, or a same side goal costing an entire match. Referees are also targeted as they control the flow of the match. A controversial marching order or time manipulation etc. can be used by referees(Paradiso, 2015). All the mentioned instances were derived from suspected matches where possible fixing took place. The examples are plenty in the world of footballto produce as a fixed match, either through an official or any players. The most recent and famous example of match fixing took place in Italy Seria A. In the year 2006 world famous Italian club Juventus was relegated from the Premier Division and was stripped of the last two titles. The Italian police had discovered taped conversation of manager Luciano Moggi which led to the decision(Halabi, 2012). In the tapes, Moggi was found speaking to officials to ensure the Turin outfit matches to be overseen by pro-Juventus referees. In the run, Ac Milan and Fiorentina also faced point deduction(ROSE, 2014). The corruption in Poland covered as many as 117 people. These people included players, referees, coaches, players and officials who were charged in recent years with the crime of match fixing.29 clubs were marked to be the part of corruption. As a result of which seven clubs were demoted in the year 2007-08(Szymanski, 2014). Among them were four times champion Widzew Lodz overturned the ban using a court of arbitration. PPF coordinator Michael Listview exclaimed that they wanted to save the federation and also the Polish Football. Later entire governing body of PPF was charged with scandal was banned in 2008(Bean, 2015). Other Issues Besides the above mentioned issues, corruption is also seen in form of dictatorship in football. Fifa being the governing body is in the supreme position. They are often accused of overlooking humanistic issues which would have required careful analysis and proper action before the result declaration(Masters, 2015). These actions do not directly affect the fans and the game but puts abad example to the integrity of the sports and sometimes people suffer due to the recklessness. Brazil World Cup 2016, or upcoming Qatar world cup the humanistic ignorance of FIFA has raised several issues(Georgakis, 2016). FIFA has been alleged to overlook the financial conditions of Brazil yet enacting them with a million dollar tournament. Qatar World Cup 2022 is already under controversy of being the host nation for next Fifa World Cup. The temperature in Qatar in summer reaches up to 122 degrees. Fifa has already decided to shift the schedule from summer to winter season. The schedule has been risked with a clash with other major sports events and on the eve of Christmas. This decision will be costing the people their family time too(Veloso, 2013). There were bids from several other countries, who were interested in hosting the games in summer. But, FIFAs decision regarding host nation of 2022 world cup seemed silly and unfair. Moreover, Qatar is a tiny country and still lacks the infrastructure to host a major tournament like the World Cup. So to stage the "greatest show on earth," they have to build everything from a scratch(John, 2013). According to many experts, Qatar is indeed a strange place to host a World Cup when there were bids from other countries with far better infrastructure. Qatar has already started t o construct with breakneck speed(Gardner, 2014). Qatar officials have also tried to keep down the labor cost as cheap as possible. A more feared issue that is relevant in the world of football is human trafficking. The problem of exploitation of poor people in the name of making them stars by some corrupt officials has already been in practice. But, Fifa is yet to make any proactive decision or a mere statement to confront the issues. They are busy with the readymade stars overseeing a thousand others who lose their future in the dream of becoming a star(Cleland, 2016). Most Relevant Corruption in Football Corruptions have already developed its many faces in the game of football. The most relevant problem which the game of football faces is through gambling, betting and match fixing issues. The money behind the game is increased two fold with the issues. In order to win the invested bets or to earn more cash influential people have again and again used their power to alter the course of the game in favor of them. Vietnam bears such an example where the entire football system of country was under jeopardy due to corrupt officials, players and personnels(Junge, 2011). Referee Long Trung Viet was charged in crime of assisting a division 1 team to fix matches in order to rise to premiere division. The investigation by police brought the fact that during a time span of 20 years 150 games were fixed. As a result, 15 referees were banned for the final two years(Meier, 2015). Last season the V-league was on the verge of suspension(Eberhardt, 2016). Many teams, players and star Vietnamese strik er Pham Van Quyen was banned with charges of corruption. This is how hunger for excess money can put whole system in jeopardy. Though it is hard to influence in the western world still it is an alarm to upcoming situation. Professionalism is required but it must be checked that it may not turn into lavishness where the integrity of the sports is sold in order earn more for convenience. The money ball has already started to affect the game around the world(Homburg, 2010). Besides Vietnam similar situations exists in Poland, Goa, Colombia and other such places where the money business is a different level altogether. Conclusion The major controversy today about football is that is it becoming a money game too. The stars of football, emerged from the club football, fail to put up a good show for the country. Recent times saw many such big names that were popular among the fans but lost their credibility in their respective national jerseys. The credibility of the players comes under question again and again. Being one of the most famous sports its integrity has been under question many times. Moreover, football holds one of the most prestigious Fifa World Cups every four years to fight for the top spot. Despite all these the bar of club football, the money game goes up. Smelling the green notes, players fight their hearts out for the club who pays them for the professional career. Moreover, it is the clubs which keep the cash stash clicking. So naturally, there is a debate on whether it is club or nation one should give everything out. Fifa has also been hit by worst allegations which condemned its Presidents and power holders. When the governing body itself is in questions, it puts doubt marks on the sports and its credibility in itself. Though it was difficult to match fix a dynamic game of football through the players. Situations revealed that there are other methods too. Officials and referees were bought in many cases. Despite all these controversies football still holds the spirit somehow till date when the players burn it out on the field. References Bean, B. W. (2015). An Interim Essay on FIFA's World Cup of Corruption: The Desperate Need for International Corporate Governance Standards at FIFA. ILSA Journal of International Comparative Law, 98(7), 33-95. Cleland, J. (2016). Football fans views of racism in British football. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 51(1), 27-43. Eberhardt, K. A. (2016). Health risks related to mass gatherings/sports events and implications for the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Travel medicine and infectious disease, 94(3), 85-150. Ehrenberg, R. G. (2016). Modern labour economics. Theory and public policy, 115(7), 89-110. Gabbe, B. J. (2013). How valid is a self-reported 12-month sports injury history? British journal of sports medicine, 37(6), 545-547. Gardner, R. (2014). Cavum septum pellucidum in retired American pro-football players. Journal of neurotrauma, 33(1), 157-161. Georgakis, S. (2016). From old soccer to new football?Expert accounts of transformations on the world game in Australia post-Crawford Report. Soccer Society, 17(1), 72-89. Guskiewicz, K. M. (2013). Cumulative effects associated with recurrent concussion in collegiate football players. The NCAA Concussion Study, 290(19), 2549-2555. Halabi, A. K. (2012). Football history off the field: Utilising archived accounting reports to challenge myths about the history of an Australian football club. Accounting History, 17(1), 63-81. Holden, J. T. (2016). Lone-wolf match-fixing: global policy considerations. International Journal of Sports Policy and Politics, 94(18), 1-15. Homburg, H. (2010). FIFA and the" Chinese Question. An Exercise of Statutes. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 79(10), 69-87. John, P. (2013). Nonfatal cervical spine injuries in interscholastic football. JAMA, 236(11), 1243-1245. Junge, A. (2011). Medical history and physical findings in football players of different ages and skill levels. The American journal of sports medicine, 28(5), 16. Masters, A. (2015). Corruption in sport: From the playing field to the area of policy. Policy and Society, 34(2), 111-123. McCormick, R. E. (2013). Athletics versus academics? Evidence from SAT scores. Journal of Political Economy, 95(5), 1103-1116. Meier, H. E. (2015). Protecting Private Transnational Authority Against Public Intervention: Fifa's Power Over National Governments. Public Administration, 94(6), 890-906. Miller, T. A. (2014). The effects of training history, player position, and body composition on exercise performance in collegiate football players. Journal of strength and conditioning research/National Strength Conditioning Association, 16(1), 44-49. Paradiso, E. (2015). Football, clientelism and corruption in Argentina: an anthropological inquiry. Soccer Society, 17(4), 480-495. Preuss, H. (2014). Structures of an economic impact. Th International Sports Business Symposium, 16(4), 40. ROSE, K. D. (2014). Cardiac Contusion Resulting From Spearing in Football: A Case History. Archives of internal medicine, 118(2), 129-131. Rose-Ackerman, S. (2015). Corruption and government. Causes, consequences, and reform, 115(16), 89-96. Smith, R. A. (2013). Intercollegiate athletics/football history at the dawn of a new century. Journal of Sports History, 29(2), 229-239. Szymanski, S. (2014). Professional Asian football leagues and the global market. Asian Economic Policy Review, 11(1), 16-38. Veloso, H. H. (2013). Chagas heart disease in professional athletes from endemic countries: A notorious case calls attention for its identification and stratification. International journal of cardiology, 207(4), 115-116. Wilson, M. E. (2014). Illness in travellers returned from Brazil: the GeoSentinel experience and implications for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 58(10), 1347-1356.

The IT Strategic Plan

Abstract The adoption of an IT strategy represents an important step in the transformation of organizations after its development. The success of an IT strategy is not only dependent on how detailed it is, but also on the measures and leadership styles at the various levels of its implementation.Advertising We will write a custom coursework sample on The IT Strategic Plan specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The paper discusses the various levels that leadership plays a crucial role in the adoption of a developed IT strategy. At the individual level, the proper leadership style is transformational, with this style being consistent in other levels of the organization. The other levels discussed include organizational, traditional and virtual teams, department, inter-organization, partnership, and global ranks. For each level, the definition of the x, y, and z-axes is provided with a justification for each axis together with a proper le adership style for each of them. Transformational and democratic leadership styles are described as being important at the various levels. Introduction This paper gives a particular way in which organizations may apply the detailed strategies that they develop in their Information Technology department to improve their performance and competitiveness with the use of Wal-Mart as a case example. The basic levels of application discussed include individual, group, organizational, departmental, traditional and virtual teams, inter-organizational, and partnership on the global front. Initiatives to be implemented The application of any Information Technology plan must be global in an organization. At all the relevant levels, an example of a strategic plan is that which the retail company Wal-Mart should adopt. The adoption of a leadership model is important in ensuring that the IT strategies can be followed through the standard means. Different companies adopt different leadership models depending on their specific needs (Concepts of Leadership, 2013). Wal-Mart is described to have adopted the 3D IT leadership model, which will be important in the application of the IT strategy at the different levels discussed below. Individual Level At the individual level, each of the employees should have the IT strategies adopted before they (strategies) become organizational. In the over 10,000 associates that the company has in the combination of IT corporate office and corporate campus (Holmes, 2011), each of these individuals should be utilized to ensure that he or she has the core values of the strategy internalized. One of the important factors at the individual level is communication as shown below.Advertising Looking for coursework on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Source: (Concepts of Leadership, 2013) Any organization should ensure that there is an individual effort to establish good comm unication culture (Heckman, 2012). Each individual should be able to communicate the basic components of the IT strategy to customers as well as other individuals within and outside the IT department. There is also the need for collaboration at this level (Drnevich, McIntyre, 2010). Some of the technological breakthroughs that must be embraced at the individual level in communication include the use of emails, call conferencing, video conferencing, and social sites among others (Makadok, 2011). In the application of the IT strategy at the individual level, an appropriate leadership style should be adopted. On the X-axis, a transformational leadership style should be adopted (Kraaijenbrink, Spender, Groen, 2010). This allows for the effective collaboration between individuals. The Y and Z-axes are also important to consider. An individual should also be driven by service to adopt the IT revolution that the strategy is likely to bring to the organization. Organizational Level Wal-Ma rt has adopted a 3D leadership model in the organization, especially in the IT department. As an organization, certain measures are necessary for the integration of an IT strategy. These measures should be geared towards the attainment of the organizational and strategic goals. At this level, a customer information system is necessary. The organization should aim to adopt the latest changes to ensure that customers get the best service, including the automation of all processes and/or the use of online services. The organization should also put updated infrastructure in place to facilitate the developed IT strategic plan. The personnel that the company employs serve in the various departments. They should be qualified and specialized in the application of the IT strategy. A customer information system such as the one that is already in place at Wal-Mart is another service that organizations should implement to enable customers access the services from any apart of the globe.Advertis ing We will write a custom coursework sample on The IT Strategic Plan specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More In the organization’s administrative functions, the right information systems should be in place (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou, Venkatraman, 2009). This plan should foster the latest technology, through planning and implementation of the revolutionary and contemporary inventions that are geared towards customer satisfaction, efficiency, and accessibility. The leadership that should be adopted at the organizational level is one that facilitates the adoption of the IT strategy. It should be democratic to allow the impending change. The leadership should also be ready to invest financially in the project to facilitate its adoption. On the X-axis, the organization should adopt collaboration with likeminded individuals and organizations. On other axes, the organization should collaborate with executives in other IT firms both i n and out of the industry. Some of the important measures that should be adopted to oversee the successful implementation of the strategy at the organizational level include a working and efficient management team, employees devoted to the organization, and effective time management (Kranz, 2013). The IT Department This department plays the most important role in the development and application of any strategic IT plan. Companies such as Wal-Mart have well-established IT departments with the capability of independently developing a model for the application of an IT strategy (Vitorino, 2012). The major role that the department will play is in the improvement of the IT infrastructure, including the creation and management of a working website for the organization. The department should also adopt a transformational and democratic leadership style to oversee the adoption of these changes. The leadership should also be focused on strengthening the brand of the company through the utili zation of technological innovation such as the website. Some of the other measures include the use of online managers to manage relations with customers and/or handle all organizational transactions. The website that the organization develops should also be reliable and easy to use for customers, with an attractive look that integrates the company’s goals and values.Advertising Looking for coursework on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The department should also invest in qualified personnel that should be trained on the use of the latest technology and internet services. Leadership at this level should be transformative on the X-axis and facilitative to the overall change to be adopted. The essential infrastructure that the company should maintain and/or invest in includes the hardware and software infrastructure to run the network. The department should also be a leader in the organization in the use of IT services. On the Y dimension, the department should be collaborative with the larger organization and other departments on the Z dimension. The justification for this plan is that the collaboration will provide a framework for developing the necessary implementation policies for the IT strategy. Wal-Mart is one of the organizations that have adopted a 3D leadership model in the IT department. Traditional and Virtual Teams It is imperative for organizations to set up teams to oversee the implementation of the I T strategy. Some of these teams are traditional and virtual. Nevertheless, they should work in collaboration with other teams within the department and organization. The traditional and virtual teams are necessary in the development of the necessary infrastructure such as the wireless and wired networks to be used within the organization and in the department. These teams should have leadership styles that are complementary to the one within the organization as well as other relevant levels. The main role should however be the consolidation of servers for the efficient running of the network. Inter-organizational Level In the current global economy, no organization is independent of the others. In the development of strategies, consideration should be made to the related organizations. One of the most commonly utilized inter-organizational policies in the IT sector is the electronic data interchange (EDI) (Kaplan, Haenlein, 2010), which allows room for the networking of organizatio ns to improve relationships in their IT sectors. Some of the significant impacts that the adoption of the EDI will have include changes in the social and operational fronts (Kaplan, Haenlein, 2010). Application of IT strategies between organizations within the same industry represents an X-axis relationship while the Y-axis relationship is represented by the relationship between organizations in different industries or sectors. The leadership adopted in at this level should also be transformative. Organizations should also be democratic in their interactions. The aim of applying an IT strategy in the inter-organizational level is to reduce the costs of inter-organizational operation. According to Yue, this strategy is effective (2012). In the case of Wal-Mart, the presence of inter-organizational collaboration in the application of IT strategy should be consistent with the 3D model of leadership adopted in the organization. The leadership type that should be adopted should be visio nary and democratic as it is in other levels. Partnerships Leaders in the IT department and/or at the highest level of the organization should embrace partnership with other organizations to oversee the implementation of the IT strategy. The main types of organizations of relevance are the other organizations involved in information technology and those that apply it. One benefit that such collaboration has to an organization is the reduction in operational costs (Harris, 2011). Collaboration on this field will also enable improved competitive advantage where an organization is able to invest in structures to compete in the IT sector. Organizations such as Wal-Mart and leaders in them should adopt certain values to oversee the implementation of the IT strategy. Wal-Mart has such values in its operational strategies that reveal how principles of integrity, justice, and impartiality direct the industry to guarantee that its parties uphold the faith of its investors. This resolution is important in partnership and in the application of the IT strategy. Conclusion: Global Level On the global front, organizations should adopt a leadership model that allows easy adoption of the most recent technological innovation to compete with others. Leaders at the various levels should be involved in the development of a global IT-targeted policy. The global economy is embracing IT. No organization should be left behind in this venture, as its competitiveness will reduce. The kind of leadership that should be adopted in this area is one of collaboration. The 3D model applied in the IT department for Wal-Mart is representative of this claim. Reference List Bharadwaj, S., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., Venkatraman, N. (2009). Call for Papers MISQ Special Issue on â€Å"Digital Business Strategy: Toward a Next Generation of Insights. MIS Quarterly, 33(1), 204-208. Concepts of Leadership. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html Drnevich, P., McIntyre , D. (2010). Information Technology and Strategy: Two Camps, Four Perspectives, One Elusive Goal. International Journal of Strategic Information Technology and Applications, 1(2), 1-18. Harris, M. (2011).Strategic planning for information systems. Journal of information technology, 6(1), 60. Heckman, R. (2012). Strategic information technology planning and the line manager’s role. Information systems management, 20(4), 16-21. Holmes, T. (2011). The diffusion of Wal-Mart and economies of density. Econometrica, 79(1), 253–302. Kaplan, M., Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68. Kraaijenbrink, J., Spender, C., Groen, A. (2010). The Resource-Based View: A Review and Assessment of Its Critiques. Journal of Management, 36(1), 349-372. Kranz, G. (2013). Wal-Mart Drafts Leaders for Military-style Training. Retrieved from https://www.workforce.com/2013/06/12/wal-mart-drafts-leade rs-for-military-style-training/ Makadok, R. (2011). The Four Theories of Profit and Their Joint Effects. Journal of Management, 37(5), 1316-1334. Vitorino, A. (2012). Empirical entry games with complementarities: An application to the shopping center industry. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(1), 175–191. Yue, L. (2012). Asymmetric effects of fashions on the formation and dissolution of networks: Board interlocks with Internet companies, 1996–2006. Organization Science, 23(1), 1114–1134. This coursework on The IT Strategic Plan was written and submitted by user Aal1yah to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Madame Bovary Essay

Madame Bovary Essay Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is the mid nineteenth century story of a French woman named Emma Bovary in bourgeois society, who passionately but recklessly pursues the splendid life that her imagination strains toward. She tries to fill her emptiness with books, with fantasies, with sex, and with things. This desire for more, and the difference between her illusion and reality, is what ultimately destroys Emma. The ball at Vaubyessard is the episode in which Emmas discontent with her marriage is further enhanced by the magnificent display of luxury and by the exhilaration of the ball. The ball gives her a taste of the satisfaction of living her illusions, which makes her dread even more the tediousness of reality. Flaubert illustrates the evil effects of reading, the emptiness of romantic illusions, as well as the temptations of luxury and treachery through the episode of the ball at Vaubyessard. He uses techniques of contrasting imagery, negative connotation, and ironic tone in order to carry out his theme. The episode of the ball at Vaubyessard is full of reoccurring images that represent Emmas life, foreshadow future events, and support the themes. Emma dressed with the meticulous care of an actress making her debut. (Page 67) Indeed the ball was a real-life event that reflects the content of Emmas books, and Emma feels as if she is acting the part of the heroine. This sensation is what she tries to pursue for the rest of her life. Her persistent attempts to create this idyllic world for herself lead to her moral depravity and financial destruction. Her failure to satisfy these desires ultimately leads to her utter disillusionment. A servant climbing on a chair broke two windowpanes; at the noise of the shattered glass, Madame Bovary looked round and saw some peasants, their faces pressed to the window Then the memory of Les Bertaux came back to her, she saw the farm again. (Page 69) This is but a brief intrusion of reality to Emmas dreamy experience at the ball. The shattered glass i magery is foreshadowing Emmas shattered life due to the blindness of her romantic ideals. The peasants at the window represent Emmas reality, and also foreshadow her eventual bitter disappointment when all that she pursues fails to give her happiness. The image of the circle, which reoccurs throughout the book, represents Emmas emotional circles and her circulatory life. They began slowly, then moved more rapidly. Everything was turning around them, the lights, furniture, paneling, and the floor, like a disk on a pivot. (Page 70) Emma said nothing and watched the wheels turn. (Page 72) The spinning and turning is an imagery of Emma losing control of her life. Emma is caught in between escape and confinement. She attempts again and again to escape the ordinariness of her life by reading novels, having affairs, day dreaming, moving from town to town, and buying luxurious items, but in the end she is left in emotional turmoil. Along the row of seated women, painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half concealed smiling faces, and gold-stopper perfume bottles were being turned in half-opened hands. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, and bracelets with lockets trembled on bodices, sparkled on breasts, jingled on bare arms. (Page 68) You could hear the clinking of gold coins dropping onto the card tables in the next room; then everything began at once. (Page 68) These two quotations provide the superficial imagery of the ball. It is all that Emma is yearning for, the lavishness and the happiness. Emma tries to fill the emptiness of her life with material things, but they end up being the very things that finally destroy her. A woman near her dropped her fan as a man danced by. The gentleman kneeled down, and as he reached out, Emma saw the young womans hand throw something white, folded into a triangle, into his hat. (Page 70) Exotic plants bristling with hairy leaves rose in pyramids beneath hanging vases, which, like over-crowded serpents nest. twisted green tendrils over their edges. (Page 72) These are images of deceit and treachery, other methods that Emma uses to pursue her idealistic romances. On two occasions she is persuaded that adultery can give her the splendid life that her imagination conjures up, and both times she is left feeling bitterly disappointed. Flaubert uses many different techniques in addressing his themes. He writes neither in the third person, nor the first, but with varying narrative. Events are recorded as if from the viewpoint of a particular character but not in that characters voice. Flaubert retains a distance that evokes objectivity but also seems disdainful. His characters all seem ridiculous. When Rodolphe Boulanger seduces Emma, for example, they are at a country fair and he whispers above the sound of a farm wife winning an award for her pig. To Boulanger, his winning of Emma is no more consequential than the womans winning of pig meat. Irony is incorporated when a characters perception completely differs from what is obvious to the reader. One example would be Emmas perception of the marquis father-in-law and what we know from Flauberts description. There was one old man eating, bending over his well-filled platter with his napkin knotted in back like a child, drops of sauce dribbling from his mouth. Emma could not keep herself from staring at the slack-mouthed old man as someone extraordinary and august. He had lived at Court and slept in the bed of queens! (Page 67) Emma sees a respectable, majestic old Duke of Laverdiere, while the reader sees a drooling old man. Flauberts selection of detailed description is very important in carrying out his ironic tone. He shows the reader the superficiality of Emmas perception with the description of Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, and bracelets with lockets trembled on bodices, sparkled on breasts, jingled on bare arms. (Page 68) He mentions nothing about the people under these decorations because Emma does not notice them. Another technique Flaubert uses is contrasting images. The reader sees what Emma remembers back on Les Bertaux versus what she sees at the ball. It presents to the reader Emmas emotional struggle between escape and confinement, the ideal versus reality, her sensation of living a novel and the fear of exiting it. Emma Bovary is deluded by literature because she is in search of ecstasy and transcendence. She is looking for a higher, more meaningful life than the one available to her as the wife of a bourgeois country doctor, and in this quest she finds only self-destruction. She dies because she has attempted to make her life into a novel. The scene of the ball at Vaubyessard is setting the stage and foreshadowing her fate. At Vaubyessard Emma first has the experience of feeling as if she is living in a novel, and it is what she keeps on pursuing to her ultimate demise. You can order a custom essay, term paper, research paper, thesis or dissertation on Madame Bovary topics at our professional custom essay writing service which provides students with high-quality custom written papers at an affordable cost.

A Dirty Job Chapter 12

Romano was the poundee, Charlie could tell because he’d put a dot of nail polish between his little ears so he could tell it apart from its companion, Parmesan, who was equally stiff inside the plastic Habitrail box. In the bottom of the exercise wheel, actually. Dead at the wheel. â€Å"Mrs. Ling!† Charlie called. He pried the expired rodent from his darling daughter’s little hand and dropped it in the cage. â€Å"Is Vladlena, Mr. Asher,† came a giant voice from the bathroom. There was a flush and Mrs. Korjev emerged from the bathroom pulling at the clasps of her overalls. â€Å"I’m sorry, I am having to crap like bear. Sophie was safe in chair.† â€Å"She was playing with a dead hamster, Mrs. Korjev.† Mrs. Korjev looked at the two hamsters in the plastic Habitrail box – gave it a little tap, shook it back and forth. â€Å"They sleep.† â€Å"They are not sleeping, they’re dead.† â€Å"They are fine when I go in bathroom. Playing, running on wheel, having laugh.† â€Å"They were not having a laugh. They were dead. Sophie had one in her hand.† Charlie looked more closely at the rodent that Sophie had been tenderizing. Its head looked extremely wet. â€Å"In her mouth. She had it in her mouth.† He grabbed a paper towel from the roll on the counter and started wiping out the inside of Sophie’s mouth. She made a la-la-la sound as she tried to eat the towel, which she thought was part of the game. â€Å"Where is Mrs. Ling, anyway?† â€Å"She have to go pick up prescription, so I watch Sophie for short time. And tiny bears are happy when I go in bathroom.† â€Å"Hamsters, Mrs. Korjev, not bears. How long were you in there?† â€Å"Maybe five minute. I am thinking I am now having a strain in my poop chute, so hard I am pushing.† â€Å"Aiiiiieeeee,† came the cry from the doorway as Mrs. Ling returned, and scampered to Sophie. â€Å"Is past time for nap,† Mrs. Ling snapped at Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"I’ve got her now,† Charlie said. â€Å"One of you stay with her while I get rid of the H-A-M-S-T-E-R-S.† â€Å"He mean the tiny bears,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"I get rid, Mr. Asher,† said Mrs. Ling. â€Å"No problem. What happen them?† â€Å"Sleeping,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"Ladies, go. Please. I’ll see one of you in the morning.† â€Å"Is my turn,† said Mrs. Korjev sadly. â€Å"Am I banish? Is no Sophie for Vladlena, yes?† â€Å"No. Uh, yes. It’s fine, Mrs. Korjev. I’ll see you in the morning.† Mrs. Ling was shaking the Habitrail cage. They certainly were sound little sleepers, these hamsters. She liked ham. â€Å"I take care,† she said. She tucked the cage under her arm and backed toward the door, waving. â€Å"Bye-bye, Sophie. Bye-bye.† â€Å"Bye-bye, bubeleh,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"Bye-bye,† Sophie said, with a baby wave. â€Å"When did you learn bye-bye?† Charlie said to his daughter. â€Å"I can’t leave you for a second.† But he did leave her the very next day, to find replacements for the hamsters. He took the cargo van to the pet store this time. Whatever courage or hubris he’d rallied in order to attack the sewer harpies had melted away, and he didn’t even want to go near a storm drain. At the pet store he picked out two painted turtles, each about as big around as a mayonnaise-jar lid. He bought them a large kidney-shaped dish that had its own little island, a plastic palm tree, some aquatic plants, and a snail. The snail, presumably, to bolster the self-esteem of the turtles: â€Å"You think we’re slow? Look at that guy.† To shore up the snail’s morale in the same way, there was a rock. Everyone is happier if they have someone to look down on, as well as someone to look up to, especially if they resent both. This is not only the Beta Male strategy for survival, but the basis for capitalism, democracy, and most religions. After he grilled the clerk for fifteen minutes on the vitality of the turtles, and was assured that they could probably survive a nuclear attack as long as there were some bugs left to eat, Charlie wrote a check and started tearing up over his turtles. â€Å"Are you okay, Mr. Asher?† asked the pet-shop guy. â€Å"I’m sorry,† Charlie said. â€Å"It’s just that this is the last entry in the register.† â€Å"And your bank didn’t give you a new one?† â€Å"No, I have a new one, but this is the last one that my wife wrote in. Now that this one is used up, I’ll never see her handwriting in the check register again.† â€Å"I’m sorry,† said the pet-shop guy, who, until that moment, had thought the rough patch that day was going to be consoling a guy over a couple of dead hamsters. â€Å"It’s not your problem,† Charlie said. â€Å"I’ll just take my turtles and go.† And he did, squeezing the check register in his hand as he drove. She was slipping away, every day a little more. A week ago Jane had come down to borrow some honey and found the plum jelly that Rachel liked in the back of the refrigerator, covered in green fuzz. â€Å"Little brother, this has got to go,† Jane said, making a face. â€Å"No. It was Rachel’s.† â€Å"I know, kid, and she’s not coming back for it. What else do you – oh my God!† She dove away from the fridge. â€Å"What was that?† â€Å"Lasagna. Rachel made it.† â€Å"This has been in here for over a year?† â€Å"I couldn’t make myself throw it out.† â€Å"Look, I’m coming over Saturday and cleaning out this apartment. I’m going to get rid of all the stuff of Rachel’s that you don’t want.† â€Å"I want it all.† Jane paused while moving the green-and-purple lasagna to the trash bin, pan and all. â€Å"No you don’t, Charlie. This kind of stuff doesn’t help you remember Rachel, it just hurts you. You need to focus on Sophie and the rest of both of your lives. You’re a young guy, you can’t give up. We all loved Rachel, but you have to think about moving on, maybe going out.† â€Å"I’m not ready. And you can’t come over this Saturday, that’s my day in the shop.† â€Å"I know,† Jane said. â€Å"It’s better if you’re not here.† â€Å"But you can’t be trusted, Jane,† Charlie said, as if that was as obvious as the fact that Jane was irritating. â€Å"You’ll throw out all the pieces of Rachel, and you’ll steal my clothes.† Jane had been swiping Charlie’s suits pretty regularly since he’d started dressing more upscale. She was wearing a tailored, double-breasted jacket that he’d just gotten back from Three Fingered Hu a few days ago. Charlie hadn’t even worn it yet. â€Å"Why are you still wearing suits, anyway? Isn’t your new girlfriend a yoga instructor? Shouldn’t you be wearing those baggy pants made out of hemp and tofu fibers like she does? You look like David Bowie, Jane. There, I’ve said it. I’m sorry, but it had to be said.† Jane put her arm around his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. â€Å"You are so sweet. Bowie is the only man I’ve ever found attractive. Let me clean out your apartment. I’ll watch Sophie that day – give the widows a day to do battle down at the Everything for a Dollar Store.† â€Å"Okay, but just clothes and stuff, no pictures. And just put it in the basement in boxes, no throwing anything away.† â€Å"Even food items? Chuck, the lasagna, I mean – â€Å" â€Å"Okay, food items can go. But don’t let Sophie know what you’re doing. And leave Rachel’s perfume, and her hairbrush. I want Sophie to know what her mother smelled like.† That night, when he finished at the shop, he went down to the basement to the little gated storage area for his apartment and visited the boxes of all of the things that Jane had packed up. When that didn’t work, he opened them and said good-bye to every single item – pieces of Rachel. Seemed like he was always saying good-bye to pieces of Rachel. On his way home from the pet shop he had stopped at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books because it, too, was a piece of Rachel and he needed a touchstone, but also because he needed to research what he was doing. He’d scoured the Internet for information on death, and while he’d found that there were a lot of people who wanted to dress like death, get naked with the dead, look at pictures of the naked and the dead, or sell pills to give erections to the dead, there just wasn’t anything on how to go about being dead, or Death. No one had ever heard of Death Merchants or sewer harpies or anything of the sort. He left the store with a two-foot-high stack of books on Death and Dying, figuring, as a Beta Male typically does, that before he tried to take the battle to the enemy again, he’d better find out something about what he was dealing with. That evening he settled in on the couch next to his baby daughter and read while the new turtles, Bruiser and Jeep (so named in hope of instilling durability in them), ate freeze-dried bugs and watched CSI Safari-land on cable. â€Å"Well, honey, according to this Kbler-Ross lady, the five stages of death are anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Well, we went through all of those stages when we lost Mommy, didn’t we?† â€Å"Mama,† Sophie said. The first time she had said â€Å"Mama† had brought Charlie to tears. He had been looking over her little shoulder at a picture of Rachel. The second time she said it, it was less emotional. She was in her high chair at the breakfast bar and was talking to the toaster. â€Å"That’s not Mommy, Soph, that’s the toaster.† â€Å"Mama,† Sophie insisted, reaching out for the toaster. â€Å"You’re just trying to fuck with me, aren’t you?† Charlie said. â€Å"Mama,† Sophie said to the fridge. â€Å"Swell,† Charlie said. He read on, realizing that Dr. Kbler-Ross had been exactly right. Every morning when he woke up to find another name and number in the day planner at his bedside, he went through the entire five-step process before he finished breakfast. But now that the steps had a name – he started to recognize the stages as experienced by the family members of his clients. That’s how he referred to the people whose souls he retrieved: clients. Then he read a book, called The Last Sack, about how to kill yourself with a plastic bag, but it must not have been a very effective book, because he saw on the back cover that there had been two sequels. He imagined the fan mail: Dear Last Sack Author: I was almost dead, but then my sack got all steamed up and I couldn’t see the TV, so I poked an eyehole. I hope to try again with your next book. The book really didn’t help Charlie much, except to instill in him a new paranoia about plastic bags. Over the next few months he read: The Egyptian Book of the Dead, from which he learned how to pull someone’s brain out through his nostril with a buttonhook, which he was sure would come in handy someday; a dozen books on dealing with death, grief, burial rituals, and myths of the Underworld, from which he learned that there had been personifications of Death since the dawn of time, and none of them looked like him; and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, from which he learned that bardo, the transition between this life and the next, was forty-nine days long, and that during the process you would be met by about thirty thousand demons, all of which were described in intricate detail, none of which looked like the sewer harpies, and all of which you were supposed to ignore and not be afraid of because they weren’t real because they were of the material world. â€Å"Strange,† Charlie said to Sophie, â€Å"how all of these books talk about how the material world isn’t significant, yet I have to retrieve people’s souls, which are attached to material objects. It would appear that death, if nothing else, is ironic, don’t you think?† â€Å"No,† Sophie said. At eighteen months Sophie answered all questions either â€Å"No,† â€Å"Cookie,† or â€Å"like Bear† – the last Charlie attributed to leaving his daughter too often in the care of Mrs. Korjev. After the turtles, two more hamsters, a hermit crab, an iguana, and two widemouthed frogs passed on to the great wok in the sky (or, more accurately, on the third floor), Charlie finally acquiesced and brought home a three-inch-long Madagascar hissing cockroach that he named Bear, just so his daughter wouldn’t go through life talking total nonsense. â€Å"Like Bear,† Sophie said. â€Å"She’s talking about the bug,† Charlie said, one night when Jane stopped by. â€Å"She’s not talking about the bug,† Jane said. â€Å"What kind of father buys a cockroach for a little girl anyway? That’s disgusting.† â€Å"Nothing’s supposed to be able to kill them. They’ve been around for like a hundred million years. It was that or a white shark, and they’re supposed to be hard to keep.† â€Å"Why don’t you give up, Charlie? Just let her get by with stuffed animals.† â€Å"A little kid should have a pet. Especially a little kid growing up in the city.† â€Å"We grew up in the city and we didn’t have any pets.† â€Å"I know, and look how we turned out,† Charlie said, gesturing back and forth between the two of them, one who dealt in death and had a giant cockroach named Bear, and the other who was on her third yoga-instructor girlfriend in six months and was wearing his newest Harris tweed suit. â€Å"We turned out great, or at least one of us did,† Jane said, gesturing to the splendor of her suit, like she was a game-show model giving the big prize package on Let’s Get Androgynous, â€Å"You have got to gain some weight. This is tailored way too tight in the butt,† she said, lapsing once again into self-obsession. â€Å"Am I camel-toeing?† â€Å"I am not looking, not looking, not looking,† Charlie chanted. â€Å"She wouldn’t need pets if she ever saw the outside of this apartment,† Jane said, pulling down on the crotch of her trousers to counteract the dreaded dromedary-digit effect. â€Å"Take her to the zoo, Charlie. Let her see something besides this apartment. Take her out.† â€Å"I will, tomorrow. I’ll take her out and show her the city,† Charlie said. And he would have, too, except he woke to find the name Madeline Alby written on his day planner, and next to her name, the number one. Oh yeah, and the cockroach was dead. I will take you out,† Charlie said as he put Sophie in her high chair for breakfast. â€Å"I will, honey. I promise. Can you believe that they’d only give me one day?† â€Å"No,† Sophie said. â€Å"Juice,† she added, because she was in her chair and this was juice time. â€Å"I’m sorry about Bear, honey,† Charlie said, brushing her hair this way, then that, then giving up. â€Å"He was a good bug, but he is no more. Mrs. Ling will bury him. That window box of hers must be getting pretty crowded.† He didn’t remember there being a window box in Mrs. Ling’s window, but who was he to question? Charlie threw open the phone book and, mercifully, found an M. Alby with an address on Telegraph Hill – not ten minutes’ walk away. No client had ever been this close, and with almost six months without a peep or a shade from the sewer harpies, he was starting to feel like he had this whole Death Merchant thing under control. He’d even placed most of the soul vessels that he’d collected. The short notice felt bad. Really bad. The house was an Italianate Victorian on the hill just below the Coit Tower, the great granite column built in honor of the San Francisco firemen who had lost their lives in the line of duty. Although it’s said to have been designed with a fire-hose nozzle in mind, almost no one who sees the tower can resist the urge to comment on its resemblance to a giant penis. Madeline Alby’s house, a flat-roofed white rectangle with ornate scrolling trim and a crowning cornice of carved cherubs, looked like a wedding cake balanced on the tower’s scrotum. So as Charlie trudged up the nut sack of San Francisco, he wondered exactly how he was going to get inside the house. Usually he had time, he could wait and follow someone in, or construct some kind of ruse to gain entrance, but this time he had only one day to get inside, find the soul vessel, and get out. He hoped that Madeline Alby had already died. He really didn’t like being around sick people. When he saw the car parked out front with the small green hospice sticker, his hopes for a dead client were smashed like a cupcake with a sledgehammer. He walked up the front porch steps at the left of the house and waited by the door. Could he open it himself? Would people be able to see it, or did his special â€Å"unnoticeability† extend to objects he moved as well? He didn’t think so. But then the door opened and a woman about Charlie’s age stepped out onto the porch. â€Å"I’m just having a smoke,† she called back into the house, and before she could close the door behind her, Charlie slipped inside. The front door opened into a foyer; to his right Charlie saw what had originally been the parlor. There was a stairway in front of him, and another door beyond that that he guessed led to the kitchen. He could hear voices in the parlor and peeked around the corner to see four elderly women sitting on two couches that faced each other. They were in dresses and hats, and they might have just come from church, but Charlie guessed they had come to see their friend off. â€Å"You’d think she’d give up the smoking, with her mother upstairs dying of cancer,† said one of the ladies, wearing a gray skirt and jacket with matching hat, and a large enameled pin in the shape of a Holstein cow. â€Å"Well, she always was a hardheaded girl,† said another, wearing a dress that looked as if it had been made from the same floral material as the couch. â€Å"You know she used to meet with my son Jimmy up in Pioneer Park when they were little.† â€Å"She said she was going to marry him,† said another woman, who looked like a sister of the first. The ladies laughed, whimsy and sadness mixed in their tones. â€Å"Well, I don’t know what she was thinking, he’s as flighty as can be,† said Mom. â€Å"Yeah, and brain damaged,† added the sister. â€Å"Well, yes, he is now.† â€Å"Since the car ran over him,† said Sis. â€Å"Didn’t he run right in front of a car?† asked one of the ladies who had been silent until now. â€Å"No, he ran right into it,† said Mom. â€Å"He was on the drugs then.† She sighed. â€Å"I always said I had one of each – a boy, a girl, and a Jimmy.† They all nodded. This was not the first time this group had done this, Charlie guessed. They were the type that bought sympathy cards in bulk, and every time they heard an ambulance go by they made a note to pick up their black dress from the cleaner’s. â€Å"You know Maddy looked bad,† said the lady in gray. â€Å"Well, she’s dying, sweetheart, that’s what happens.† â€Å"I guess.† Another sigh. The tinkle of ice in glasses. They were all nursing neat little cocktails. Charlie guessed they’d been mixed by the younger woman who was outside smoking. He looked around the room for something that was glowing red. There was an oak rolltop desk in the corner that he’d like to get a look in, but that would have to wait until later. He ducked out of the doorway and into the kitchen, where two men in their late thirties, maybe early forties, were sitting at an oak table, playing Scrabble. â€Å"Is Jenny coming back? It’s her turn.† â€Å"She might have gone up to see Mom with one of the ladies. The hospice nurse is letting them go up one at a time.† â€Å"I just wish it was over. I can’t stand this waiting. I have a family I need to get back to. I’m about to crawl out of my fucking skin.† The older of the two reached across the table and set two tiny blue pills by his brother’s tiles. â€Å"These help.† â€Å"What are they?† â€Å"Time-released morphine.† â€Å"Really?† The younger brother looked alarmed. â€Å"You hardly even feel them, they just sort of take the edge off. Jenny’s been taking them for two weeks.† â€Å"That’s why you guys are taking this so well and I’m a wreck? You guys are stoned on Mom’s pain medication?† â€Å"Yep.† â€Å"I don’t take drugs. Those are drugs. You don’t take drugs.† The older brother sat back in his chair. â€Å"Pain medication, Bill. What are you feeling?† â€Å"No, I’m not taking Mom’s pain meds.† â€Å"Suit yourself.† â€Å"What if she needs them?† â€Å"There’s enough morphine in that room to bring down a Kodiak bear, and if she needs more, then hospice will bring more.† Charlie wanted to shake the younger brother and yell, Take the drugs, you idiot. Maybe it was the benefit of experience. Having now seen this situation happen again and again, families on deathwatch, out of their minds with grief and exhaustion, friends moving in and out of the house like ghosts, saying good-bye or just covering some sort of base so they could say they had been there, so perhaps they wouldn’t have to die alone themselves. Why was none of this in the books of the dead? Why didn’t the instructions tell him about all the pain and confusion he was going to see? â€Å"I’m going to go find Jenny,† said the older brother, â€Å"see if she wants to get something to eat. We can finish the game later if you want.† â€Å"That’s okay, I was losing anyway.† The younger brother gathered up the tiles and put the board away. â€Å"I’m going to go upstairs and see if I can catch a nap, tonight’s my night watching Mom.† The older brother walked out and Charlie watched the younger brother drop the blue pills into his shirt pocket and leave the kitchen, leaving the Death Dealer to ransack the pantry and the cabinets looking for the soul vessel. But he felt before he even started that it wouldn’t be there. He was going to have to go upstairs. He really, really hated being around sick people. Madeline Alby was propped up and tucked into bed with a down comforter up around her neck. She was so slight that her body barely showed under the covers. Charlie guessed that she might weigh seventy or eighty pounds max. Her face was drawn and he could see the outlines of her eye sockets and her jawbone jutting through her skin, which had gone yellow. Charlie guessed liver cancer. One of her friends from downstairs was sitting at her bedside, the hospice-care worker, a big woman in scrubs, sat in a chair across the room, reading. A small dog, a Yorkshire terrier, Charlie thought, was snuggled up between Madeline’s shoulder and her neck, sleeping. When Charlie stepped into the room, Madeline said, â€Å"Hey there, kid.† He froze in his steps. She was looking right at him – crystal-blue eyes, and a smile. Had the floor squeaked? Had he bumped something? â€Å"What are you doing there, kid?† She giggled. â€Å"Who do you see, Maddy?† asked the friend. She followed Madeline’s gaze but looked right through Charlie. â€Å"A kid over there.† â€Å"Okay, Maddy. Do you want some water?† The friend reached for a child’s sippy cup with a built-in straw from the nightstand. â€Å"No. Tell that kid to come in here, though. Come in here, kid.† Madeline worked her arms out of the covers and started moving her hands in sewing motions, like she was embroidering a tapestry in the air before her. â€Å"Well, I’d better go,† said the friend. â€Å"Let you get some rest.† The friend glanced at the hospice woman, who looked over her reading glasses and smiled with her eyes. The only expert in the house, giving permission. The friend stood and kissed Madeline Alby on the forehead. Madeline stopped sewing for a second, closed her eyes, and leaned into the kiss, like a young girl. Her friend squeezed her hand and said, â€Å"Good-bye, Maddy.† Charlie stepped aside and let the woman pass. He watched her shoulders heave with a sob as she went through the door. â€Å"Hey, kid,† Madeline said. â€Å"Come over here and sit down.† She paused in her sewing long enough to look Charlie in the eye, which freaked him out more than a little. He glanced at the hospice worker, who glanced up from her book, then went back to reading. Charlie pointed to himself. â€Å"Yeah, you,† Madeline said. Charlie was going into a panic. She could see him, but the hospice nurse could not, or so it seemed. An alarm beeped on the nurse’s watch and Madeline picked up the little dog and held it to her ear. â€Å"Hello? Hi, how are you?† She looked up at Charlie. â€Å"It’s my oldest daughter.† The little dog looked at Charlie, too, with a distinct â€Å"save me† look in its eyes. â€Å"Time for some medicine, Madeline,† the nurse said. â€Å"Can’t you see I’m on the phone, Sally,† Madeline said. â€Å"Hang on a second.† â€Å"Okay, I’ll wait,† the nurse said. She picked up a brown bottle with an eyedropper in it, filled the dropper, and checked the dosage and held. â€Å"Bye. Love you, too,† Madeline said. She held the tiny dog out to Charlie. â€Å"Hang that up, would you?† The nurse snatched the dog out of the air and set it down on the bed next to Madeline. â€Å"Open up, Madeline,† the nurse said. Madeline opened wide and the nurse squirted the eyedropper into the old woman’s mouth. â€Å"Mmm, strawberry,† Madeline said. â€Å"That’s right, strawberry. Would you like to wash it down with some water?† The nurse held the sippy cup. â€Å"No. Cheese. I’d like some cheese.† â€Å"I can get you some cheese,† said the nurse. â€Å"Cheddar cheese.† â€Å"Cheddar it is,† said the nurse. â€Å"I’ll be right back.† She tucked the covers around Madeline and left the room. The old woman looked at Charlie again. â€Å"Can you talk, now that she’s gone?† Charlie shrugged and looked in every direction, his hand over his mouth, like someone looking for an emergency spot to spit out a mouthful of bad seafood. â€Å"Don’t mime, honey,† Madeline said. â€Å"No one likes a mime.† Charlie sighed heavily, what was there to lose now? She could see him. â€Å"Hello, Madeline. I’m Charlie.† â€Å"I always liked the name Charlie,† Madeline said. â€Å"How come Sally can’t see you?† â€Å"Only you can see me right now,† Charlie said. â€Å"Because I’m dying?† â€Å"I think so.† â€Å"Okay. You’re a nice-looking kid, you know that?† â€Å"Thanks. You’re not bad yourself.† â€Å"I’m scared, Charlie. It doesn’t hurt. I used to be afraid that it would hurt, but now I’m afraid of what happens next.† Charlie sat down on the chair next to the bed. â€Å"I think that’s why I’m here, Madeline, you don’t need to be afraid.† â€Å"I drank a lot of brandy, Charlie. That’s why this happened.† â€Å"Maddy – can I call you Maddy?† â€Å"Sure, kid, we’re friends.† â€Å"Yes, we are. Maddy, this was always going to happen. You didn’t do anything to cause it.† â€Å"Well, that’s good.† â€Å"Maddy, do you have something for me?† â€Å"Like a present?† â€Å"Like a present you would give to yourself. Something I can keep for you and give you back later, when it will be a surprise.† â€Å"My pincushion,† Madeline said. â€Å"I’d like you to have that. It was my grandmother’s.† â€Å"I’d be honored to keep that for you, Maddy. Where can I find it?† â€Å"In my sewing box, on the top shelf of that closet.† She pointed to an old-style single closet across the room. â€Å"Oh, excuse me, phone.† Madeline talked to her oldest daughter on the edge of the comforter while Charlie got the sewing box from the top shelf of the closet. It was made of wicker and he could see the red glow of the soul vessel inside. He removed a pincushion fashioned from red velvet wrapped with bands of real silver and held it up for Madeline to see. She smiled and gave him the thumbs-up, just as the nurse returned with a small plate of cheese and crackers. â€Å"It’s my oldest daughter,† Madeline explained to the nurse, holding the edge of the comforter to her chest so her daughter didn’t hear. â€Å"Oh my, is that cheese?† The nurse nodded. â€Å"And crackers.† â€Å"I’ll call you back, honey, Sally has brought cheese and I don’t want to be rude.† She hung up the sheet and allowed Sally to feed her bites of cheese and crackers. â€Å"I believe this is the best cheese I’ve ever tasted,† Madeline said. Charlie could tell from the expression on her face that it was, indeed, the best cheese she had ever tasted. Every ounce of her being was going into tasting those slivers of cheddar, and she let loose little moans of pleasure as she chewed. â€Å"You want some cheese, Charlie?† Madeline asked, spraying cracker shrapnel all over the nurse, who turned to look at the corner where Charlie was standing with the pincushion tucked safely in his jacket pocket. â€Å"Oh, you can’t see him, Sally,† Madeline said, tapping the nurse on the hand. â€Å"But he’s a handsome rascal. A little skinny, though.† Then, to Sally, but overly loud to be sure that Charlie could hear: â€Å"He could use some fucking cheese.† Then she laughed, spraying more crackers on the nurse, who was laughing, too, and trying not to dump the plate. â€Å"What did she say?† came a voice from the hall. Then the two sons and the daughter entered, chagrined at first at what they had heard, but then laughing with the nurse and their mother. â€Å"I said that cheese is good,† Madeline said. â€Å"Yeah, Mom, it is,† said the daughter. Charlie stood there in the corner, watching them eat cheese, and laughing, thinking, This should have been in the book. He watched them help her with her bedpan, and give her drinks of water, and wipe her face with a damp cloth – watched her bite at the cloth the way Sophie did when he washed her face. The eldest daughter, who Charlie realized had been dead for some time, called three more times, once on the dog and twice on the pillow. Around lunchtime Madeline was tired, and she went to sleep, and about a half hour into her nap she started panting, then stopped, then didn’t breathe for a full minute, then took a deep breath, then didn’t. And Charlie slipped out the door with her soul in his pocket. A Dirty Job Chapter 12 Romano was the poundee, Charlie could tell because he’d put a dot of nail polish between his little ears so he could tell it apart from its companion, Parmesan, who was equally stiff inside the plastic Habitrail box. In the bottom of the exercise wheel, actually. Dead at the wheel. â€Å"Mrs. Ling!† Charlie called. He pried the expired rodent from his darling daughter’s little hand and dropped it in the cage. â€Å"Is Vladlena, Mr. Asher,† came a giant voice from the bathroom. There was a flush and Mrs. Korjev emerged from the bathroom pulling at the clasps of her overalls. â€Å"I’m sorry, I am having to crap like bear. Sophie was safe in chair.† â€Å"She was playing with a dead hamster, Mrs. Korjev.† Mrs. Korjev looked at the two hamsters in the plastic Habitrail box – gave it a little tap, shook it back and forth. â€Å"They sleep.† â€Å"They are not sleeping, they’re dead.† â€Å"They are fine when I go in bathroom. Playing, running on wheel, having laugh.† â€Å"They were not having a laugh. They were dead. Sophie had one in her hand.† Charlie looked more closely at the rodent that Sophie had been tenderizing. Its head looked extremely wet. â€Å"In her mouth. She had it in her mouth.† He grabbed a paper towel from the roll on the counter and started wiping out the inside of Sophie’s mouth. She made a la-la-la sound as she tried to eat the towel, which she thought was part of the game. â€Å"Where is Mrs. Ling, anyway?† â€Å"She have to go pick up prescription, so I watch Sophie for short time. And tiny bears are happy when I go in bathroom.† â€Å"Hamsters, Mrs. Korjev, not bears. How long were you in there?† â€Å"Maybe five minute. I am thinking I am now having a strain in my poop chute, so hard I am pushing.† â€Å"Aiiiiieeeee,† came the cry from the doorway as Mrs. Ling returned, and scampered to Sophie. â€Å"Is past time for nap,† Mrs. Ling snapped at Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"I’ve got her now,† Charlie said. â€Å"One of you stay with her while I get rid of the H-A-M-S-T-E-R-S.† â€Å"He mean the tiny bears,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"I get rid, Mr. Asher,† said Mrs. Ling. â€Å"No problem. What happen them?† â€Å"Sleeping,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"Ladies, go. Please. I’ll see one of you in the morning.† â€Å"Is my turn,† said Mrs. Korjev sadly. â€Å"Am I banish? Is no Sophie for Vladlena, yes?† â€Å"No. Uh, yes. It’s fine, Mrs. Korjev. I’ll see you in the morning.† Mrs. Ling was shaking the Habitrail cage. They certainly were sound little sleepers, these hamsters. She liked ham. â€Å"I take care,† she said. She tucked the cage under her arm and backed toward the door, waving. â€Å"Bye-bye, Sophie. Bye-bye.† â€Å"Bye-bye, bubeleh,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"Bye-bye,† Sophie said, with a baby wave. â€Å"When did you learn bye-bye?† Charlie said to his daughter. â€Å"I can’t leave you for a second.† But he did leave her the very next day, to find replacements for the hamsters. He took the cargo van to the pet store this time. Whatever courage or hubris he’d rallied in order to attack the sewer harpies had melted away, and he didn’t even want to go near a storm drain. At the pet store he picked out two painted turtles, each about as big around as a mayonnaise-jar lid. He bought them a large kidney-shaped dish that had its own little island, a plastic palm tree, some aquatic plants, and a snail. The snail, presumably, to bolster the self-esteem of the turtles: â€Å"You think we’re slow? Look at that guy.† To shore up the snail’s morale in the same way, there was a rock. Everyone is happier if they have someone to look down on, as well as someone to look up to, especially if they resent both. This is not only the Beta Male strategy for survival, but the basis for capitalism, democracy, and most religions. After he grilled the clerk for fifteen minutes on the vitality of the turtles, and was assured that they could probably survive a nuclear attack as long as there were some bugs left to eat, Charlie wrote a check and started tearing up over his turtles. â€Å"Are you okay, Mr. Asher?† asked the pet-shop guy. â€Å"I’m sorry,† Charlie said. â€Å"It’s just that this is the last entry in the register.† â€Å"And your bank didn’t give you a new one?† â€Å"No, I have a new one, but this is the last one that my wife wrote in. Now that this one is used up, I’ll never see her handwriting in the check register again.† â€Å"I’m sorry,† said the pet-shop guy, who, until that moment, had thought the rough patch that day was going to be consoling a guy over a couple of dead hamsters. â€Å"It’s not your problem,† Charlie said. â€Å"I’ll just take my turtles and go.† And he did, squeezing the check register in his hand as he drove. She was slipping away, every day a little more. A week ago Jane had come down to borrow some honey and found the plum jelly that Rachel liked in the back of the refrigerator, covered in green fuzz. â€Å"Little brother, this has got to go,† Jane said, making a face. â€Å"No. It was Rachel’s.† â€Å"I know, kid, and she’s not coming back for it. What else do you – oh my God!† She dove away from the fridge. â€Å"What was that?† â€Å"Lasagna. Rachel made it.† â€Å"This has been in here for over a year?† â€Å"I couldn’t make myself throw it out.† â€Å"Look, I’m coming over Saturday and cleaning out this apartment. I’m going to get rid of all the stuff of Rachel’s that you don’t want.† â€Å"I want it all.† Jane paused while moving the green-and-purple lasagna to the trash bin, pan and all. â€Å"No you don’t, Charlie. This kind of stuff doesn’t help you remember Rachel, it just hurts you. You need to focus on Sophie and the rest of both of your lives. You’re a young guy, you can’t give up. We all loved Rachel, but you have to think about moving on, maybe going out.† â€Å"I’m not ready. And you can’t come over this Saturday, that’s my day in the shop.† â€Å"I know,† Jane said. â€Å"It’s better if you’re not here.† â€Å"But you can’t be trusted, Jane,† Charlie said, as if that was as obvious as the fact that Jane was irritating. â€Å"You’ll throw out all the pieces of Rachel, and you’ll steal my clothes.† Jane had been swiping Charlie’s suits pretty regularly since he’d started dressing more upscale. She was wearing a tailored, double-breasted jacket that he’d just gotten back from Three Fingered Hu a few days ago. Charlie hadn’t even worn it yet. â€Å"Why are you still wearing suits, anyway? Isn’t your new girlfriend a yoga instructor? Shouldn’t you be wearing those baggy pants made out of hemp and tofu fibers like she does? You look like David Bowie, Jane. There, I’ve said it. I’m sorry, but it had to be said.† Jane put her arm around his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. â€Å"You are so sweet. Bowie is the only man I’ve ever found attractive. Let me clean out your apartment. I’ll watch Sophie that day – give the widows a day to do battle down at the Everything for a Dollar Store.† â€Å"Okay, but just clothes and stuff, no pictures. And just put it in the basement in boxes, no throwing anything away.† â€Å"Even food items? Chuck, the lasagna, I mean – â€Å" â€Å"Okay, food items can go. But don’t let Sophie know what you’re doing. And leave Rachel’s perfume, and her hairbrush. I want Sophie to know what her mother smelled like.† That night, when he finished at the shop, he went down to the basement to the little gated storage area for his apartment and visited the boxes of all of the things that Jane had packed up. When that didn’t work, he opened them and said good-bye to every single item – pieces of Rachel. Seemed like he was always saying good-bye to pieces of Rachel. On his way home from the pet shop he had stopped at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books because it, too, was a piece of Rachel and he needed a touchstone, but also because he needed to research what he was doing. He’d scoured the Internet for information on death, and while he’d found that there were a lot of people who wanted to dress like death, get naked with the dead, look at pictures of the naked and the dead, or sell pills to give erections to the dead, there just wasn’t anything on how to go about being dead, or Death. No one had ever heard of Death Merchants or sewer harpies or anything of the sort. He left the store with a two-foot-high stack of books on Death and Dying, figuring, as a Beta Male typically does, that before he tried to take the battle to the enemy again, he’d better find out something about what he was dealing with. That evening he settled in on the couch next to his baby daughter and read while the new turtles, Bruiser and Jeep (so named in hope of instilling durability in them), ate freeze-dried bugs and watched CSI Safari-land on cable. â€Å"Well, honey, according to this Kbler-Ross lady, the five stages of death are anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Well, we went through all of those stages when we lost Mommy, didn’t we?† â€Å"Mama,† Sophie said. The first time she had said â€Å"Mama† had brought Charlie to tears. He had been looking over her little shoulder at a picture of Rachel. The second time she said it, it was less emotional. She was in her high chair at the breakfast bar and was talking to the toaster. â€Å"That’s not Mommy, Soph, that’s the toaster.† â€Å"Mama,† Sophie insisted, reaching out for the toaster. â€Å"You’re just trying to fuck with me, aren’t you?† Charlie said. â€Å"Mama,† Sophie said to the fridge. â€Å"Swell,† Charlie said. He read on, realizing that Dr. Kbler-Ross had been exactly right. Every morning when he woke up to find another name and number in the day planner at his bedside, he went through the entire five-step process before he finished breakfast. But now that the steps had a name – he started to recognize the stages as experienced by the family members of his clients. That’s how he referred to the people whose souls he retrieved: clients. Then he read a book, called The Last Sack, about how to kill yourself with a plastic bag, but it must not have been a very effective book, because he saw on the back cover that there had been two sequels. He imagined the fan mail: Dear Last Sack Author: I was almost dead, but then my sack got all steamed up and I couldn’t see the TV, so I poked an eyehole. I hope to try again with your next book. The book really didn’t help Charlie much, except to instill in him a new paranoia about plastic bags. Over the next few months he read: The Egyptian Book of the Dead, from which he learned how to pull someone’s brain out through his nostril with a buttonhook, which he was sure would come in handy someday; a dozen books on dealing with death, grief, burial rituals, and myths of the Underworld, from which he learned that there had been personifications of Death since the dawn of time, and none of them looked like him; and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, from which he learned that bardo, the transition between this life and the next, was forty-nine days long, and that during the process you would be met by about thirty thousand demons, all of which were described in intricate detail, none of which looked like the sewer harpies, and all of which you were supposed to ignore and not be afraid of because they weren’t real because they were of the material world. â€Å"Strange,† Charlie said to Sophie, â€Å"how all of these books talk about how the material world isn’t significant, yet I have to retrieve people’s souls, which are attached to material objects. It would appear that death, if nothing else, is ironic, don’t you think?† â€Å"No,† Sophie said. At eighteen months Sophie answered all questions either â€Å"No,† â€Å"Cookie,† or â€Å"like Bear† – the last Charlie attributed to leaving his daughter too often in the care of Mrs. Korjev. After the turtles, two more hamsters, a hermit crab, an iguana, and two widemouthed frogs passed on to the great wok in the sky (or, more accurately, on the third floor), Charlie finally acquiesced and brought home a three-inch-long Madagascar hissing cockroach that he named Bear, just so his daughter wouldn’t go through life talking total nonsense. â€Å"Like Bear,† Sophie said. â€Å"She’s talking about the bug,† Charlie said, one night when Jane stopped by. â€Å"She’s not talking about the bug,† Jane said. â€Å"What kind of father buys a cockroach for a little girl anyway? That’s disgusting.† â€Å"Nothing’s supposed to be able to kill them. They’ve been around for like a hundred million years. It was that or a white shark, and they’re supposed to be hard to keep.† â€Å"Why don’t you give up, Charlie? Just let her get by with stuffed animals.† â€Å"A little kid should have a pet. Especially a little kid growing up in the city.† â€Å"We grew up in the city and we didn’t have any pets.† â€Å"I know, and look how we turned out,† Charlie said, gesturing back and forth between the two of them, one who dealt in death and had a giant cockroach named Bear, and the other who was on her third yoga-instructor girlfriend in six months and was wearing his newest Harris tweed suit. â€Å"We turned out great, or at least one of us did,† Jane said, gesturing to the splendor of her suit, like she was a game-show model giving the big prize package on Let’s Get Androgynous, â€Å"You have got to gain some weight. This is tailored way too tight in the butt,† she said, lapsing once again into self-obsession. â€Å"Am I camel-toeing?† â€Å"I am not looking, not looking, not looking,† Charlie chanted. â€Å"She wouldn’t need pets if she ever saw the outside of this apartment,† Jane said, pulling down on the crotch of her trousers to counteract the dreaded dromedary-digit effect. â€Å"Take her to the zoo, Charlie. Let her see something besides this apartment. Take her out.† â€Å"I will, tomorrow. I’ll take her out and show her the city,† Charlie said. And he would have, too, except he woke to find the name Madeline Alby written on his day planner, and next to her name, the number one. Oh yeah, and the cockroach was dead. I will take you out,† Charlie said as he put Sophie in her high chair for breakfast. â€Å"I will, honey. I promise. Can you believe that they’d only give me one day?† â€Å"No,† Sophie said. â€Å"Juice,† she added, because she was in her chair and this was juice time. â€Å"I’m sorry about Bear, honey,† Charlie said, brushing her hair this way, then that, then giving up. â€Å"He was a good bug, but he is no more. Mrs. Ling will bury him. That window box of hers must be getting pretty crowded.† He didn’t remember there being a window box in Mrs. Ling’s window, but who was he to question? Charlie threw open the phone book and, mercifully, found an M. Alby with an address on Telegraph Hill – not ten minutes’ walk away. No client had ever been this close, and with almost six months without a peep or a shade from the sewer harpies, he was starting to feel like he had this whole Death Merchant thing under control. He’d even placed most of the soul vessels that he’d collected. The short notice felt bad. Really bad. The house was an Italianate Victorian on the hill just below the Coit Tower, the great granite column built in honor of the San Francisco firemen who had lost their lives in the line of duty. Although it’s said to have been designed with a fire-hose nozzle in mind, almost no one who sees the tower can resist the urge to comment on its resemblance to a giant penis. Madeline Alby’s house, a flat-roofed white rectangle with ornate scrolling trim and a crowning cornice of carved cherubs, looked like a wedding cake balanced on the tower’s scrotum. So as Charlie trudged up the nut sack of San Francisco, he wondered exactly how he was going to get inside the house. Usually he had time, he could wait and follow someone in, or construct some kind of ruse to gain entrance, but this time he had only one day to get inside, find the soul vessel, and get out. He hoped that Madeline Alby had already died. He really didn’t like being around sick people. When he saw the car parked out front with the small green hospice sticker, his hopes for a dead client were smashed like a cupcake with a sledgehammer. He walked up the front porch steps at the left of the house and waited by the door. Could he open it himself? Would people be able to see it, or did his special â€Å"unnoticeability† extend to objects he moved as well? He didn’t think so. But then the door opened and a woman about Charlie’s age stepped out onto the porch. â€Å"I’m just having a smoke,† she called back into the house, and before she could close the door behind her, Charlie slipped inside. The front door opened into a foyer; to his right Charlie saw what had originally been the parlor. There was a stairway in front of him, and another door beyond that that he guessed led to the kitchen. He could hear voices in the parlor and peeked around the corner to see four elderly women sitting on two couches that faced each other. They were in dresses and hats, and they might have just come from church, but Charlie guessed they had come to see their friend off. â€Å"You’d think she’d give up the smoking, with her mother upstairs dying of cancer,† said one of the ladies, wearing a gray skirt and jacket with matching hat, and a large enameled pin in the shape of a Holstein cow. â€Å"Well, she always was a hardheaded girl,† said another, wearing a dress that looked as if it had been made from the same floral material as the couch. â€Å"You know she used to meet with my son Jimmy up in Pioneer Park when they were little.† â€Å"She said she was going to marry him,† said another woman, who looked like a sister of the first. The ladies laughed, whimsy and sadness mixed in their tones. â€Å"Well, I don’t know what she was thinking, he’s as flighty as can be,† said Mom. â€Å"Yeah, and brain damaged,† added the sister. â€Å"Well, yes, he is now.† â€Å"Since the car ran over him,† said Sis. â€Å"Didn’t he run right in front of a car?† asked one of the ladies who had been silent until now. â€Å"No, he ran right into it,† said Mom. â€Å"He was on the drugs then.† She sighed. â€Å"I always said I had one of each – a boy, a girl, and a Jimmy.† They all nodded. This was not the first time this group had done this, Charlie guessed. They were the type that bought sympathy cards in bulk, and every time they heard an ambulance go by they made a note to pick up their black dress from the cleaner’s. â€Å"You know Maddy looked bad,† said the lady in gray. â€Å"Well, she’s dying, sweetheart, that’s what happens.† â€Å"I guess.† Another sigh. The tinkle of ice in glasses. They were all nursing neat little cocktails. Charlie guessed they’d been mixed by the younger woman who was outside smoking. He looked around the room for something that was glowing red. There was an oak rolltop desk in the corner that he’d like to get a look in, but that would have to wait until later. He ducked out of the doorway and into the kitchen, where two men in their late thirties, maybe early forties, were sitting at an oak table, playing Scrabble. â€Å"Is Jenny coming back? It’s her turn.† â€Å"She might have gone up to see Mom with one of the ladies. The hospice nurse is letting them go up one at a time.† â€Å"I just wish it was over. I can’t stand this waiting. I have a family I need to get back to. I’m about to crawl out of my fucking skin.† The older of the two reached across the table and set two tiny blue pills by his brother’s tiles. â€Å"These help.† â€Å"What are they?† â€Å"Time-released morphine.† â€Å"Really?† The younger brother looked alarmed. â€Å"You hardly even feel them, they just sort of take the edge off. Jenny’s been taking them for two weeks.† â€Å"That’s why you guys are taking this so well and I’m a wreck? You guys are stoned on Mom’s pain medication?† â€Å"Yep.† â€Å"I don’t take drugs. Those are drugs. You don’t take drugs.† The older brother sat back in his chair. â€Å"Pain medication, Bill. What are you feeling?† â€Å"No, I’m not taking Mom’s pain meds.† â€Å"Suit yourself.† â€Å"What if she needs them?† â€Å"There’s enough morphine in that room to bring down a Kodiak bear, and if she needs more, then hospice will bring more.† Charlie wanted to shake the younger brother and yell, Take the drugs, you idiot. Maybe it was the benefit of experience. Having now seen this situation happen again and again, families on deathwatch, out of their minds with grief and exhaustion, friends moving in and out of the house like ghosts, saying good-bye or just covering some sort of base so they could say they had been there, so perhaps they wouldn’t have to die alone themselves. Why was none of this in the books of the dead? Why didn’t the instructions tell him about all the pain and confusion he was going to see? â€Å"I’m going to go find Jenny,† said the older brother, â€Å"see if she wants to get something to eat. We can finish the game later if you want.† â€Å"That’s okay, I was losing anyway.† The younger brother gathered up the tiles and put the board away. â€Å"I’m going to go upstairs and see if I can catch a nap, tonight’s my night watching Mom.† The older brother walked out and Charlie watched the younger brother drop the blue pills into his shirt pocket and leave the kitchen, leaving the Death Dealer to ransack the pantry and the cabinets looking for the soul vessel. But he felt before he even started that it wouldn’t be there. He was going to have to go upstairs. He really, really hated being around sick people. Madeline Alby was propped up and tucked into bed with a down comforter up around her neck. She was so slight that her body barely showed under the covers. Charlie guessed that she might weigh seventy or eighty pounds max. Her face was drawn and he could see the outlines of her eye sockets and her jawbone jutting through her skin, which had gone yellow. Charlie guessed liver cancer. One of her friends from downstairs was sitting at her bedside, the hospice-care worker, a big woman in scrubs, sat in a chair across the room, reading. A small dog, a Yorkshire terrier, Charlie thought, was snuggled up between Madeline’s shoulder and her neck, sleeping. When Charlie stepped into the room, Madeline said, â€Å"Hey there, kid.† He froze in his steps. She was looking right at him – crystal-blue eyes, and a smile. Had the floor squeaked? Had he bumped something? â€Å"What are you doing there, kid?† She giggled. â€Å"Who do you see, Maddy?† asked the friend. She followed Madeline’s gaze but looked right through Charlie. â€Å"A kid over there.† â€Å"Okay, Maddy. Do you want some water?† The friend reached for a child’s sippy cup with a built-in straw from the nightstand. â€Å"No. Tell that kid to come in here, though. Come in here, kid.† Madeline worked her arms out of the covers and started moving her hands in sewing motions, like she was embroidering a tapestry in the air before her. â€Å"Well, I’d better go,† said the friend. â€Å"Let you get some rest.† The friend glanced at the hospice woman, who looked over her reading glasses and smiled with her eyes. The only expert in the house, giving permission. The friend stood and kissed Madeline Alby on the forehead. Madeline stopped sewing for a second, closed her eyes, and leaned into the kiss, like a young girl. Her friend squeezed her hand and said, â€Å"Good-bye, Maddy.† Charlie stepped aside and let the woman pass. He watched her shoulders heave with a sob as she went through the door. â€Å"Hey, kid,† Madeline said. â€Å"Come over here and sit down.† She paused in her sewing long enough to look Charlie in the eye, which freaked him out more than a little. He glanced at the hospice worker, who glanced up from her book, then went back to reading. Charlie pointed to himself. â€Å"Yeah, you,† Madeline said. Charlie was going into a panic. She could see him, but the hospice nurse could not, or so it seemed. An alarm beeped on the nurse’s watch and Madeline picked up the little dog and held it to her ear. â€Å"Hello? Hi, how are you?† She looked up at Charlie. â€Å"It’s my oldest daughter.† The little dog looked at Charlie, too, with a distinct â€Å"save me† look in its eyes. â€Å"Time for some medicine, Madeline,† the nurse said. â€Å"Can’t you see I’m on the phone, Sally,† Madeline said. â€Å"Hang on a second.† â€Å"Okay, I’ll wait,† the nurse said. She picked up a brown bottle with an eyedropper in it, filled the dropper, and checked the dosage and held. â€Å"Bye. Love you, too,† Madeline said. She held the tiny dog out to Charlie. â€Å"Hang that up, would you?† The nurse snatched the dog out of the air and set it down on the bed next to Madeline. â€Å"Open up, Madeline,† the nurse said. Madeline opened wide and the nurse squirted the eyedropper into the old woman’s mouth. â€Å"Mmm, strawberry,† Madeline said. â€Å"That’s right, strawberry. Would you like to wash it down with some water?† The nurse held the sippy cup. â€Å"No. Cheese. I’d like some cheese.† â€Å"I can get you some cheese,† said the nurse. â€Å"Cheddar cheese.† â€Å"Cheddar it is,† said the nurse. â€Å"I’ll be right back.† She tucked the covers around Madeline and left the room. The old woman looked at Charlie again. â€Å"Can you talk, now that she’s gone?† Charlie shrugged and looked in every direction, his hand over his mouth, like someone looking for an emergency spot to spit out a mouthful of bad seafood. â€Å"Don’t mime, honey,† Madeline said. â€Å"No one likes a mime.† Charlie sighed heavily, what was there to lose now? She could see him. â€Å"Hello, Madeline. I’m Charlie.† â€Å"I always liked the name Charlie,† Madeline said. â€Å"How come Sally can’t see you?† â€Å"Only you can see me right now,† Charlie said. â€Å"Because I’m dying?† â€Å"I think so.† â€Å"Okay. You’re a nice-looking kid, you know that?† â€Å"Thanks. You’re not bad yourself.† â€Å"I’m scared, Charlie. It doesn’t hurt. I used to be afraid that it would hurt, but now I’m afraid of what happens next.† Charlie sat down on the chair next to the bed. â€Å"I think that’s why I’m here, Madeline, you don’t need to be afraid.† â€Å"I drank a lot of brandy, Charlie. That’s why this happened.† â€Å"Maddy – can I call you Maddy?† â€Å"Sure, kid, we’re friends.† â€Å"Yes, we are. Maddy, this was always going to happen. You didn’t do anything to cause it.† â€Å"Well, that’s good.† â€Å"Maddy, do you have something for me?† â€Å"Like a present?† â€Å"Like a present you would give to yourself. Something I can keep for you and give you back later, when it will be a surprise.† â€Å"My pincushion,† Madeline said. â€Å"I’d like you to have that. It was my grandmother’s.† â€Å"I’d be honored to keep that for you, Maddy. Where can I find it?† â€Å"In my sewing box, on the top shelf of that closet.† She pointed to an old-style single closet across the room. â€Å"Oh, excuse me, phone.† Madeline talked to her oldest daughter on the edge of the comforter while Charlie got the sewing box from the top shelf of the closet. It was made of wicker and he could see the red glow of the soul vessel inside. He removed a pincushion fashioned from red velvet wrapped with bands of real silver and held it up for Madeline to see. She smiled and gave him the thumbs-up, just as the nurse returned with a small plate of cheese and crackers. â€Å"It’s my oldest daughter,† Madeline explained to the nurse, holding the edge of the comforter to her chest so her daughter didn’t hear. â€Å"Oh my, is that cheese?† The nurse nodded. â€Å"And crackers.† â€Å"I’ll call you back, honey, Sally has brought cheese and I don’t want to be rude.† She hung up the sheet and allowed Sally to feed her bites of cheese and crackers. â€Å"I believe this is the best cheese I’ve ever tasted,† Madeline said. Charlie could tell from the expression on her face that it was, indeed, the best cheese she had ever tasted. Every ounce of her being was going into tasting those slivers of cheddar, and she let loose little moans of pleasure as she chewed. â€Å"You want some cheese, Charlie?† Madeline asked, spraying cracker shrapnel all over the nurse, who turned to look at the corner where Charlie was standing with the pincushion tucked safely in his jacket pocket. â€Å"Oh, you can’t see him, Sally,† Madeline said, tapping the nurse on the hand. â€Å"But he’s a handsome rascal. A little skinny, though.† Then, to Sally, but overly loud to be sure that Charlie could hear: â€Å"He could use some fucking cheese.† Then she laughed, spraying more crackers on the nurse, who was laughing, too, and trying not to dump the plate. â€Å"What did she say?† came a voice from the hall. Then the two sons and the daughter entered, chagrined at first at what they had heard, but then laughing with the nurse and their mother. â€Å"I said that cheese is good,† Madeline said. â€Å"Yeah, Mom, it is,† said the daughter. Charlie stood there in the corner, watching them eat cheese, and laughing, thinking, This should have been in the book. He watched them help her with her bedpan, and give her drinks of water, and wipe her face with a damp cloth – watched her bite at the cloth the way Sophie did when he washed her face. The eldest daughter, who Charlie realized had been dead for some time, called three more times, once on the dog and twice on the pillow. Around lunchtime Madeline was tired, and she went to sleep, and about a half hour into her nap she started panting, then stopped, then didn’t breathe for a full minute, then took a deep breath, then didn’t. And Charlie slipped out the door with her soul in his pocket.