Man About Town

Well, the thing about Portos De Vuerney was... Well, the were a LOT of things about Portos De Vuerney. Like the fact that his real name wasn't Portos at all--was Joel Rikel.

Like the fact that the lottery money he flashed before all the right eyes was actually not won in the lottery at all. He had stolen the money from widow Nett after seeing her get mugged on the street beside her house. Portos chased away the men who had accosted and beaten the old woman; then, as she lay semiconscious half under a rose bush 52 feet from her own front door, he reached into her purse and withdrew the large brown envelope everyone knew she carried around. It was thick and tight with $100 bills, all the money Julia Nett had left in this world.

Like the names on the diplomas on his walls, where the universities' and professors' names were almost the right names; but no one had ever been congratulated for graduating cum laude from Stanfort University, nor celebrated an early master's degree from Perdue University...in Ostenboro, North Carolina.

Like why his cats kept coming up missing; like the patent for a baseball re-stitching machine he swore vehemently had been stolen from him, even though he couldn't even work a Rubik's cube.

Like why he always wore a small colored ribbon around one finger, different colors on different days. Like where his parents had disappeared to after thier visit last week, when they found his pile of "trophies" in the barn. Like why thier car had been found in Dillingham, South Carolina, with Lisa Yule's bicycle in the trunk, training wheels and all. Like why his latest ribbon was a dead match for the color Lisa Yule used to like to wear in her hair now that she was old enough to go to school, just a block north of Portos' front porch.

Like why he sometimes smiled the way he was smiling at Lisa's twin sister now.