Chuck

That's important.

If everything else had been perfect, but he hadn't been a writer, there would have been no record for the incredible events that follow.

Likewise, everything else would have been upset if Arthur Hodges just hadn't been a successful writer.

Just being a writer wouldn't have been enough because his junk, as he called it in his deprecating fashion, was turned out with sufficient facility and talent to have made his name a headliner on many of the nation's biggest magazines.

He had more than enough money.

That's right.

Money meant two new autos in the two-car garage out back, his pretty redhead wife Fran dressed inconspicuously, but in the good taste which signals expensive clothes.

And this is, of course, the most important part.

He had what he jokingly confided to his neighbors was a hermetically sealed study and bedroom for those summer months when ragweed, timothy, and other such deadly pollens would have made his life in the country quite terrible.

They had a joke Fran and Arthur did from July through September.

He'd take some manuscripts down to the post office to mail and also provide himself with a few other errands in town to keep him away a couple of hours.

By the time he got home, depending on the length of his mission, Fran could predict almost exactly how red his eyes would be, how uncomfortable his nose.

It's quite a joke.

All right, so this is a wealthy, or at least a well-to-do author living in the country, but he has very bad allergies, so he has a safe room.

That's right.

You can pick it up from there, my friend.

It's actually written in there.

Yeah, it's a nice little summation.

Shall I take over?

All right.