This is an untitled, unfinished story. It's looking like a long short story or novella.

Most mornings, Theodore Stevens stared south for several hours, out the sliding-glass balcony door of his ninth-floor Austin apartment. He didn't have a set location from which to stare-he favored a padded stool at his mid-morning sun-lit wet bar, but he sometimes sat at the kitchen table, or turned around the black leather recliner in his living room, or just stood on his meticulously polished wooden floor. However, he did have a set routine. First, he studied the Colorado River, curving gently around the edge of downtown, occasionally confessing its eastward movement in ripples and small unidentifiable floating dots. Then, he searched through trees along its banks for joggers-blurred multi-colored shapes moving along the trail. He imagined each of them-college girls in sports bras and tight spandex listening to bright yellow headsets; shirtless men in too-short shorts, sweat glistening off their hairless chests; fat men in sweatpants and tank tops stopping every hundred yards for a sip of water; groups of mothers chatting between heavy breaths, children strapped to their backs. Next he counted cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic along Lakeshore Boulevard, pausing whenever he spotted activity among one of its dozens of quaint and over-priced restaurants. When this bored him, he scanned Zilker Park, hoping for an early morning soccer match. The players were like ants, racing so quickly along the green, too distant for Theodore to discern method to their madness. He would then move to the MoPac bridge, and from there to South Austin and Westlake-a horizon of endless cedar trees and house-spotted hills.

He especially liked this part of the routine, looking outwards into green anonymity. It seemed so close. He imagined that if he were to break out a bat and baseball, he could hit the ball over the river, into the hills. If it were a really good swing-one where he could feel his entire body shaking against the stiffness of the wood-he could knock it southwest past the hills, past the city, past the limestone cliffs of Marble Falls and the LBJ ranch, past the German markets and antique shops of Fredricksburg, and eventually past all of Texas; the Rio Grande, Mexico, all distant memories as it sailed out of the world and time and space.

Usually, he waited for his roommate to leave for work before beginning the ritual. Joseph was an obsessive man. He cared too much, to the point of intrusion. He wouldn't understand the ritual, the silence, the staring. It would worry him. He might start calling people. Last year, Joseph found Theodore passed out over several empty bottles. Theodore couldn't wake up, so Joseph called the paramedics, as well as Joseph's girlfriend and mother. This, over a little alcohol. How would react to the hours of staring?

Yet, this is exactly what Theodore found himself doing one morning, standing at his kitchen sink with a dirty bowl, pretending to listen to Joseph. Joseph was trying to make a point of some sort, trying to convince Theodore of something he did not want to be convinced. The argument was long and tedious. Joseph made it while sipping his coffee. His primary evidence came from a news article he was reading off the screen of a very black and plastic laptop.

"Marcus Elgin grew up surrounded by baseball," Joseph began. Theodore heard this, but the next few sentences were static. He caught another sentence, but then more static. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Joseph's voice was the static interrupting Theodore's concentration on the Austin landscape. The landscape was garbled and disconnected between each word. It was fragmented beauty, the shards of a just-dropped vase. It was worse than no landscape at all.

But better than listening to Joseph's argument. Better than acknowledging the argument for even a second.

Joseph appeared to be approaching the climax of his argument. His voice-his static-grew louder and more drawn out. "After Luis Gonzales' ninth-inning, series-clinching single," he read, "Marcus muttered a single sentence: 'It's about time.' Those were his first words in fifteen years."

Then there was silence-not even the noise of Joseph's infrequent sips from the lid of his coffee cup.

Theodore became aware of the weight of Joseph's eyes upon him. He didn't turn to see Joseph's face, but he imagined the slight incline of his eyes, the contrast of their white and green against his dark brown cheeks, lifted by a large and self-congratulatory grin. He wasn't going to let this go. Theodore sighed as he looked down to his white, flower-decorated dish. He wiped it with a half-damp rag, and set it carefully on the rack. He looked back at the skyline and muttered, "Well, it makes sense."

His smile widening, Joseph shook his head and returned his eyes to the morning-dimmed glare of the LCD screen. He continued, "After turning off the television and straightening his couch cushions, Marcus then walked outside and hung himself."

Theodore thought about this for a second. Suppressing a slight laugh, Theodore gave up on the landscape. He walked out of the kitchen and searched briefly for the date on a well-marked sports calendar on the dining room wall.

"Fifteen years," he said. "That goes back to what, Bill Buckner? I'll bet he was a Red Sox fan." He returned to the kitchen and opened the counter drawer. He rummaged through its contents, removing two medicine bottles.

Joseph, no longer grinning, looked up. "You know that's not my point."

"Okay, so what is your point?" Theodore said as he unscrewed one of the bottles and removed a small, orange pill. "I think an obsession with baseball is the last thing you have to worry about killing me."

"I'm just saying it's not healthy. I mean, how many games have you missed this season?"

Clutching the pill in his right fist, he looked up and pretended to count. In reality he was trying to devise a way out of the conversation. But there wasn't one. When Joseph got like this, he'd take the whole morning to make his point, if he needed to. Even if it meant calling a client and rescheduling an appointment in the middle of an argument. Theodore brought his left had to the rim of his burnt orange baseball cap, and swung it around to the back of his smooth and white bald head.

"Well, all the road games, of course."

"Uh-huh. And what about the home games?"

"I've got season tickets-have to get my money's worth."

"Dude. C'mon. Shouldn't you be doing something more important than sitting alone every night at some ballpark watching the Express suck it up?"

Theodore popped the pill into his mouth. Then, realizing he had no cup of water, he spit it back into his palm. "Like what?" he muttered, as he opened the cupboard door and browsed through the cups until he found his favorite-a white coffee mug that read Deustchenfest 1998.

"I don't know, man. Like figuring out the meaning of life or getting laid or, God forbid, drinking with your friends."

While Joseph said this, Theodore filled his mug with tap water. He turned his head to his roommate for the first time that morning. Joseph's red and yellow striped tie bounced with his white-sleeved arms in agitation as he spoke. When he finished, he sat tensely upright in his stool. Their eyes met and communicated more foreignness than understanding. This foreignness had become a frequent sensation over the last year. It wasn't just the foreignness with which one might greet a stranger on the street. It was as if their familiarity as friends had somehow become inverted; as if ten years of high school and college and life widened the gulf between them, making possible some new, unimaginable level of misunderstanding.

When water finally trickled down Theodore's right arm from the overflowing mug, both of them turned away. Theodore turned the faucet and set the mug down in the sink. He opened the other medicine bottle, pulled out another pill, and placed both pills in his mouth.

"Ted, man, it's your birthday. I'm just saying ... just hang out with the gang tonight, okay; just for old time's sake."

Theodore raised his cup of water and drank.

"We miss you," Joseph added quietly.

Theodore walked out of the kitchen and towards his bedroom door. "Dude...," he started, as he opened the white-washed, heavyset door. Joseph had swung around on his stool and was now facing Theodore, or rather, Theodore's back. "It makes me happy. Just let it be."

"This is about Jessica, isn't it?" Joseph called as Theodore walked into the room and shut the door. "C'mon man. She probably won't even be there tonight."

Theodore threw himself headfirst on his bed. Of course she wouldn't be there. She had been avoiding him ever since the breakup. The very prospect of her being there-the idea that she should have been there, beside his side, laughing at every joke-was too much for Theodore. But no, thought Theodore, it wasn't about her. It was about... something else. Principles. Pride. Life, or something like it. No... it was about baseball.

"Theodore!"

The sound of Joseph slamming his laptop shut echoed into Theodore's room. Half a minute later, Joseph yelled, "Man, screw this," and shut the front door.

Theodore remained in his bedroom for the rest of the morning. Later that day, when he remembered his theory of accident rates along Lakeshore Boulevard on Tuesday mornings, he regretted the decision not to return to the living room.

Theodore spent that morning surfing various cancer sites and message boards on the Internet. He asked a few questions about the side effects of Toxol. He checked for new posts, and was somewhat surprised to find a note from cant_wait_to_come_back_as_a_cow, whom the frequent posters on the board had generally assumed was dead. Apparently, he had had an argument about payment with his Internet Service Provider, but that was all fixed now. Theodore also responded to the inquiry of a lady whose father had been diagnosed with a tumor similar to Theodore's. The response was a rather cold and matter-of-factly summary of Theodore's own experiences. Theodore knew what the lady wanted-a few words of comfort, maybe some vague assertion that it would be alright. Such was the accepted formula of posts on the message board, and Theodore tried this at the end of the message. It felt fake. He erased that part and clicked the post button.

When Theodore had first been diagnosed with a tumor, a doctor sat beside him, handed him a chart, and explained that there were four stages to his cancer. Theodore was in stage III-the tumor was well advanced locally, and had begun to spread to distant lymph nodes. He had a grade III Astrocytoma in the basal ganglia, leaving him peripherally blind in the left eye. The doctors were amazed it had gone so long undetected. They tried several surgeries, never able to remove it all. Chemotherapy slowed it, of course, but the ending was inevitable. He had, at most, a couple of years.

At some indeterminate point several months ago, Theodore progressed to stage IV-an inoperable glioblastoma that was invading his entire body. Theodore wondered about this moment of progression, whether he might be able to actually pinpoint the change within him. Had his subconscious been waiting upon it like an apple on a television screen on New Years Eve? With what festivity might his body have ushered in this new stage? Or had it been more like the end of a soccer match, his body down just one goal, laboring against the inevitable, not knowing which second would bring the referee's whistle?

Secretly, Theodore doubted the validity of this system of stages. They were as invisible to him as the cancer, something only doctors could reveal after hours of needles and strangely flavored juices and machines moving so slowly over him it seemed that it wasn't the machines moving at all, but time-time blasting radiation through him, bouncing rays off his bones and tissues, searching for what was inside of him. What did it matter what they found? All Theodore knew was how he felt, and as near as he could tell, that depended upon the day and how much medication he took and how long it had been since his last therapy session, not on some arbitrary and invisible system.

Still, Theodore had his theories. Not of medicine or physiology, but of his own psychology. Theodore counted his own four stages. The first, of course, was denial. It was the first stage of any problem-breakups, alcohol, the Yankees winning the World Series. Theodore had long ago decided that denial was a waste of time and that he would never indulge in it. In practice, though, his resolve failed. He told friends nothing of the cancer, only that he had shaved his head because he was tired of combing it, and that he occasionally took long vacations on his own. Not even his mother knew until she stumbled upon some papers at his apartment. He procrastinated doctor appointments and medicine for days, sometimes weeks. For the most part, he was able to live as if nothing had changed. The cancer was just some personal injury that annoyed him, but would pass, like a groin strain or a bad cut.

This changed when he suddenly collapsed of a stroke one January evening at a party. He was in a tuxedo, but wet and cold from a swimming pool. He had been wrestling with his girlfriend-his Jessica-and had pushed her in, but not before she got enough leverage on him to drag him in with her. Of course, he claimed as they climbed out, he had voluntary jumped because he didn't want her to be the only one who was wet. Then the headache suddenly hit, and a few seconds later, he was lying unconscious on the concrete surrounding the pool.

Besides forcing him to confess the tumor to his friends, this incident also had the effect of making Theodore aware of his own mortality. He entered a new stage of hopeful acceptance, and of faith in science and human knowledge. After all, he reasoned, it was simply a matter of taking responsibility for his health. It was something he always figured he'd have to do anyways-getting proper sleep, eating the right foods, exercising, and so on. It was during this time that he first began surfing the Internet for answers. He found out all about his tumor-the chances of survival (which at that point were still at least somewhat greater than zero), the different treatment options available, the research being done. He, and everyone around him, rarely thought about death, the general assumption being that it couldn't happen to him. The cure was just around the corner, in some clinical trial. The machines that killed the cancer were bound to get better. The systemic medicines were bound to get stronger and more discriminate in their effects. With all the science today-the mapping of the human genome, men on the moon, computers that could precisely calculate the beginning of the universe-surely a cure was inevitable.

As time went on, he graduated from this misguided hope. Maybe, he realized, they'd find a cure, but not in his days. He had been born too early. Science could not be his Messiah. So he turned to the real thing-religion. It was a surprisingly short stage, he admitted. Every day for a few weeks he attended mass at ___ on Third Street. But his own logic quickly got the better of him. Who was this God who spoke in strange and riddled ceremonies and texts? And if he really had anything better to offer, why didn't he do it now? It seemed too unbelievable that the same God that would kill him with cancer would offer him some vague and unseen throne in heaven.

This realization left him without anything to believe in-neither God, nor science. He was in a fourth stage-his current stage. He was somewhat relieved by his unbelief-no worrying about what the future had in store, about whether or not he would be saved. But with this loss of belief came paralysis. The future had abandoned him, just as he had abandoned it. His life was null and void. Theodore categorized himself in this stage half-jokingly, like Ginsberg claiming to love Time magazine. He rarely, if ever, let himself feel the severity of his condition, but became awkwardly aware of it in dark, midnight hours of honesty and self-examination. He quit his job at the Department of Public Safety (it was really just a matter of officially announcing it, as he rarely was able to come into work anyways). He bought an apartment in downtown Austin, failing to explain to his loan officer that he dying. He sat in it all day, staring out the window or watching television. He ventured outside only for food, baseball games, and doctor appointments.

Everything he did began and ended in the moment. When he read, it was either the news or a book short enough to finish in a day. He disliked news stories about politics or war, unless it announced that someone had definitively won. If a story about a crime indicated that the perpetrator had not yet been caught, he skipped it. He wanted nothing left unfinished. Even his interest in baseball was transient. The Round Rock Express was in the minor-leagues. Players changed every day. The team had no shot at the playoffs, and all any fan could ever hope for was a well-played three hours of baseball.

The most disturbing aspect of this stage, Theodore confessed in his rare moments of introspection, was that he felt few, if any, emotional attachments to human beings. He had no one to care about. He had lost his girlfriend. Whenever he ran into friends, they seemed honestly surprised-even somewhat embarrassed-to find him still alive. Of course, there was always Joseph or Theodore's mother. But Joseph was becoming more and more alienated by Theodore's self-imposed emotional distance. And Theodore's mother had put her entire life on hold, quitting her own job, calling three or four times a day with tidbits about cancer she had discovered in books or in conversation with friends and doctors. She lived in an eternal present that would end only with Theodore's life. Beyond that who knew what she would do? When Theodore asked, she just shrugged, as if to say Theodore need not worry about it, since it was in a future that would never happen.

So this was the mindset with which Theodore greeted every day. Theodore hated it, but it was all he knew.

Perhaps the only times Theodore showed any emotion was when he became annoyed at an event that revealed some small absurdity of life. For example, that afternoon he erupted-this is the verb he used, in reality few people would have known he was even slightly angry-at a man in the bar at Katz's. Theodore walked there several times a week whenever he didn't feel like making anything for lunch.

"And so this bloke," the man was saying, "he thinks this taxi driver's crazy 'cause he keeps going the wrong way. Only the taxi driver blows him off and keeps tellin' him 'no worries mate, it's the right direction,' see."

The middle-aged, plaid-wearing man, who fancied himself Australian because he had lived there for four years, had captured the attention of the entire the bar. It was the middle of July, with not much going on in the world of sports, rationalized Theodore, half-way through his first mug of beer. Or perhaps the other patrons-about ten of them, all men-were just seeing if he was the type of guy who, encouraged by laughter at the end of his stories, spontaneously announced that the next round was on him.

The man continued, "And this bloke's going ballistic until he realizes that the problem is his driver never turns right. It's always left, even if he has to go ten blocks out of the way to do it. Turns out the driver's petrified about right turns. They're in Australia, see, and its all backwards there."

"So what'd the guy do?" shouted someone.

The man paused for a second, as if he were trying to decide how the story should end. "Well, see, he didn't want to pay for all the extra mileage when the cab went out of its way to make those turns, so he just told the driver to stop and got out."

There were a few nods from the bar as he concluded, but even the story-teller seemed disappointed by the anticlimactic ending. He took a swig of his beer, and then his eyes suddenly brightened.

"And here's the killer," he announced. "As the cab pulled off, the driver goes and accidentally runs a light. And this car turning left plows right into him and he dies."

Chorus of "oh"s and "ouch"

"Ha! It just goes to show you."

Chorus of "yeps", "ain't that the truth"

This was about all that Theodore could take. It was his third or fourth such story of the afternoon (Theodore couldn't remember exactly), and all of them had the same exact moral: "It just goes to show."

"Shows you what?" Theodore asked, turning around in his bar stool to face the man. He dragged out the begnning of "what" and the "t" was sharp and accusatory, in a slightly lower tone.

The man looked down at his beer. "It just... um ... you know, that's life and all."

Theodore continued to stare at the man, who seemed to squirm in his seat when he looked back up at Theodore. Theodore knew he was being overly cynical. He was "exploding." But he didn't care. The man was a rambling idiot, and he just wanted him to shut up.

"You know, mate," the man continued, "that's just the way it is and..."

The man stopped for a few seconds. Five of them, Theodore counted, as they continued to stare at each other. Then he sighed and raised his eyes to the exposed wooden support beams of restaurant ceiling.

"Ah, mate, you've had too much to drink already."

The bartender tapped Theodore on the shoulder, and he turned around. As he did so, the conversation resumed, somewhat quieter. The bartender's name was Andy and she had short, thick, curly hair. It was naturally jet black, but she usually died it. She had died it red a few weeks ago, so it was between colors. The strange thing about her hair, she had once explained to Theodore, was that in its current state, it was naturally curly. Everyone she knew was jealous because she spent basically no time grooming her hair. But when she grew it out long, it was straight and flat. In fact, she hadn't even realized her hair was curly until her freshman (and only) year of college, when girls in her dorm had all decided to cut their hair to symbolize liberation. Or something like that.

"So how are things today, Ted?" she asked, as she refilled his mug. Her hands shook slightly as she held the mug. Her hands were always shaking, especially when she was holding a sheet of paper or trying to eat a slice of pizza. Theodore never asked her about this because he was pretty sure it was because she had a crush on him. He had recently read an article about a medical condition that might cause the same behavior, and he wondered if maybe that was a more correct explanation, but he felt funny asking now after having known her so long.

"I've had better," he said. "What's up with this guy?"

"Beats me," she shrugged. "I don't pick them, I just get them drunk."

Andy smiled. She had great teeth. Theodore was pretty sure she'd sleep with him if he asked her out, but he didn't have the drive for it anymore. While thinking about this, he realized that they had somehow stumbled upon an awkward moment of silence, so he looked up at the TV. They were showing a video of a reporter standing outside Dell Diamond.

"Hey, turn it up, it's the Express report." Theodore said. "I want to see how bad Ramos' hamstring is."

Andy walked over to the TV, reached up, and turned a knob.

"Team officials aren't quite sure where it came from," said the reporter, clutching a microphone in his right hand, "but they suspect the involvement at least four or five people, at least one of them with high priority access."

They weren't talking about the Express or baseball at all. They were showing pictures of a tree in the middle of center field. Everyone had suddenly stopped talking, looking in amazement at the footage. It didn't look like the tree had been planted there at all. It seemed to grow naturally in the short, lush grass. Here and there a root grew out of the ground, only to curve back in after a few feet. It was a cedar tree. A tall one. Its trunk, about three feet above the ground, split into two almost perfectly perpendicular branches. From about six to fifteen feet above the ground, grew a pair of convincingly round and symmetric canopies. Theodore's first thought was that it looked like a perfect place to build a tree house. Well, the building of it wouldn't be that easy, especially if you had allergies, but it'd be the perfect place to have a tree house if you could get past the building part.

His second thought was that it looked familiar for some reason.

"Probably some prank...like the Aggies painting our field red," said one of the patrons.

"I don't know, man, looks like aliens to me," said another. The bar erupted in laughter, except for the man who had said it.

"Shut up," said Theodore.

"Actually," responded the reporter to a question Theodore missed in the laughter, "when word got out around 10:30 this morning, protestors immediately started gathering around the stadium, and the numbers have been growing rather surprisingly since then. So team officials want to think things over carefully before they take it out."

"Damn liberal tree-huggers," someone shouted.

"Todd, what's the story behind these protests?" asked the anchor woman.

"Hey, I think I went to High School with her," announced a patron.

"Hey, yeah, I remember her...didn't she work for the Chronicle or something?"

The camera returned to the reporter. "Well, Trudy, you may be too young to remember this, but a lot of people are wondering if this could be the famous Miracle Tree that was rumored to exist out in this area."

"C'mon, we don't have to listen to this crap," yelled someone.

Another patron got up and changed the channel. There was a woman reporting on the same story.

"No one was ever able to find this tree and stories pretty much abruptly ended around the mid-eighties, so no one put up much of a fuss when they tore the forest around Old Settler's Park to build this ballpark a few years ago."

Yes, thought Theodore, this was the tree. He took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and placed it on the counter. He had to go see Jessica. Before anyone could say goodbye, he was out on the street.

Alright, so here's where the narrative breaks down. I've got a lot of notes that might help you see where I'm going. You don't have to read them all, but I'd be interested in knowing what you think. The first note explains about the tree, and I'll gradually be giving these details away as the story progresses. The second one gives a little bit of a plot outline. The rest of the stuff is just abbreviated dialogue and me trying to get into Theodore's mind. I imagine that the most of it will be in the final story, but probably not concentrated all in one dialogue or even one section.

Note 1 - Background on the tree (used to be intro, but I decided to reveal this slowly instead of all at once)

About half a mile north of FM 1325 in Round Rock, just a few blocks west of Old Settlers Park, there is, or was, a cedar tree. Actually, to be precise, there were several thousand cedar trees, almost every one of them good for nothing but allergies in the Spring, Summer, Fall, and occasionally Winter. However, this particular cedar tree-with a trunk that, at about three feet above the ground, split into two almost perfectly perpendicular branches, and from which, at about six to fifteen feet above the ground, grew a pair of convincingly round and symmetric canopies-had two famous qualities. First off, it was great for climbing. Secondly, it had a tendency to grant wishes.

Now before I lose my audience to concerns like "oh, great, a fairy-tale" or "I've lived in Austin for fifteen years and never heard of it" or "there's no way a Cedar tree could grow fifteen feet tall with a pair of climbable and convincingly symmetric canopies," let me take a second to acknowledge that I never actually saw the tree or witnessed the granting of one of these wishes. I'm just going on the stories I've been told. The details themselves are in fact, vague and inconsistent-here, you be the judge:

- " In early June of 1968, two men and their teenage sons were in the area hunting deer. Around mid-day they lunched for an hour near a tree much like the one I just described. While their sons climbed the tree, the men ranted about politics and about how "every damn problem this country has began when that [expletive] Kennedy came to office." One of the sons vaguely recalls his father wishing that he could meet the devil, because he'd "sure as hell" sell his soul to make sure that "no damn Kennedy ever be president again." Two days later, Robert Kennedy was assassinated.
- " In the Spring of 1977, an eight-year old boy wandered upsettedly into the woods after being told by his mother that they didn't have enough money for him to see the matinee showing of "Star Wars" with his friends. He found the afore-mentioned tree and made his way up into one of the highest branches on its east side. After an hour of thinking, he resolved that all of his problems could be solved if his father could somehow get a hold of a million dollars. When he returned home, his mother excitedly announced that his father had just been offered a million dollars by IBM to relinquish a patent he held on a certain type of transistor.
- " One cloudy night in the Fall of 1982, two college students on a date were driving just north of the area through some dirt back-roads. The young man swerved to miss a rabbit in the road, lost control of the car, and rammed into a tree. The girl claims to have awoken from a brief coma to find the young man unconscious, and losing a lot of blood from a severed arm. Unable to wake her date, she ran through the woods to find the main road. Fifteen minutes later, when she was absolutely lost, she saw a faint white glow in the distance, which she soon discovered came from a cedar tree. When she touched the tree, she was greeted by a small, as she calls it, leprechaun, who told her she could have any wish she wanted. A short time later she returned to the car, where a very confused but healthy young man recounted how he had just suddenly found himself walking outside of the car. The couple, coincidentally, never dated again.

There are hundreds of stories just like these.

Perhaps they are simply coincidences. I don't intend to debate the authenticity of the tree; in fact, were there enough evidence for its authenticity, you would have heard of it long before now. But the possibility of its power enticed enough open-minded people that it became, for several years, a frequent topic of conversation in the more occult and new age subcultures of the city. The Austin Chronicle, back when it really was an outlet for original thought, even ran features about it from time to time, always followed up by letters to the editor disputing various notions about the tree, such as you could only find it during the thirteenth full moon of the year, or that the tree was older even than the Treaty Oak.

As can be expected, the tree became a subject of worship for at least a handful of cults. Elaborate doctrines surfaced about the nature of the tree and the wishes, along with rituals you should perform should you ever run into the tree. In 1986, several of these groups organized an expedition to, once and for all, locate this tree and get to the bottom of the matter. Not that anyone was surprised when the expedition returned empty-handed. The most inconvenient thing about the tree, after all, was that no one knew exactly where it was. Yes, everyone knew the general location, but part of the tree's magic seemed to be that in every story, the individual stumbled upon it by accident, and was totally unable to find it again after they left.

That is, in almost every story-the ___ cult believed that it could consistently locate the tree as long as it was night, and as long as they were blind-folded and drunk. This was, of course, highly suspect. A journalist from the Chronicle once asked them to take her with them. After a six pack of beer she awoke the following morning in her own puke, next to two bearded and disturbingly naked men amidst a grove of very ordinary, single-trunk cedar trees; although to be fair to the cult, around her fifth beer she vaguely recalled one of the trees looking like it had three or four trunks.

Perhaps the frustration of not being able to locate the tree contributed to the fact that, towards the end of the eighties, talk of it abruptly died. Not only was no one interested in discussing it any more, but no one seemed to produce anymore wish-granted stories. Some theorize that the tree ran out of its magic. Who knows? And to be quite honest, it doesn't even matter, seeing as in 1997, with very little fanfare, the city bull-dozed every tree in the area-about ten acres worth.

Note 2 - Plot details

Joseph and Jessica have some history with the tree as teenagers. Joseph was in some sort of life-threatening accident in the forest. Jessica stumbles upon the tree, and wishes that Joseph will live. She says she's willing to give up anything, including the possibility of being with Joseph (i.e. marriage and whatever) if Joseph will live. He lives. Immediately after this, she deliberately stops seeing Joseph to keep her part of the promise. They are casual friends, but not as involved. Slowly, over the course of the next ten or twelve years, she lets herself fall in love with him again, and they begin to have a relationship. Shortly thereafter, he gets the tumor. She feels guilty that it's her fault for breaking her promise. When he proposes to her, she refuses and goes out of the way to avoid Theodore. of course, Theodore is aware of the fact that the tree "saved" his life, but he has no idea about this promise and Jessica is afraid to tell him. I'm not sure what exactly is going to happen next. I've already got Theodore's birthday party mapped out for that night, and a "fight" scene between Theodore and Jessica in an alley behind the bar. Beyond that, I don't know. I'm not even sure how long this will be. In the long run, they're both going to find some sort of faith in the tree. Theodore's going to decide to "sacrifice" something so that he can be with Jessica again, probably his own life. Jessica's going to "sacrifice" her own life. But it's going to be cut down before they can do anything. It will end with uncertainty. They'll be around the cut trunk of the tree in the outfield. I'm thinking that they won't explain any of this too each other, but we are going to be pretty sure that their relationship is restored and here to stay. Naturally, all of this will change as I figure out more of the story, but I hope not too much of it.

Note 3 - Sketch from next scene

"So the game's cancelled?" asked Joseph. He was sitting at his desk with several folio-sized sheets of paper. He was sketching something. A building of some sort.

"Yep," said Theodore.

The cubicle was small, with just barely enough room for a second chair. It was blue, and the walls were high enough that even if you stood you couldn't see anyone else.

"Are you..." started Joseph.

"Yeah, I'll come."

Joseph seemed pre-occupied with his drawing. Theodore couldn't tell whether he was really busy, or still upset about the morning.

"Look, Joe, I'm sorry. It's just ..."

"It's okay, man. ...

"So, what's Jessica got to do with all this, I don't get it."

Theodore wasn't quite sure what to say. He didn't know how Joseph would take this. Hell, he didn't even know how to take. It happened so long ago. "You know, Jessica," he said. "She was all over this stuff back in the day."

"Are you sure you want to see her. It's been so long."

"Doesn't matter. She'll probably be looking for me after hearing about this."

...

"Did you know I was reading the other day that in couples where a spouse has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer, that divorce is seventy-five percent more likely?" ... "Except, it's usually the husband leaving a terminally ill wife. He just can't take the pain. It's ironic, isn't it."

...

Both look to the TV...pieces of newscast.

"Do you think it's crazy?"

"This tree stuff?"

Theodore nods.

"I don't know. They seem to think there's something."

Points to crowds of people on TV trying to get into the stadium.

... reported tells anecodote to give us more info on tree

Note 4 - Theodore explaining himself. Probably to be given at some point as confession to Jessica

"I was angry at people. They were all normal, and here was my brain, degenerating. My body, failing. An arm that won't move here. A leg that wakes up one morning in total pain that never stops. It's scary-cause it's all part of you. I used to think that the body and the mind or the soul was two separate things, but its all interrelated. I thought my body would gradually die, but at least I'd have my mind. But it's the same thing. I was angry that they were all living, and I was dying. And most of all, I hated my past. I pictured myself, two years ago, a totally different person. Without knowing it, I had reached my peak of being. But that person had died, quietly, unannounced. I had no idea who I was anymore-just someone fading out of existence, perhaps having never lived at all. But then I thought that it wasn't just me that was dying, it was everyone. It was like everyone had a tumor, their bodies degenerating the second they were born, their minds, fading in then out of existence, as if one trying to wake from an early morning dream, but not quite able to get out of bed, falling back asleep. My death sentence was at most two or three years away, while theirs was forty, sixty, maybe eighty years away, but it was no different than anyone else's. So I thought, the problem's not with my tumor. It wasn't like my tumor had suddenly rendered my life void and meaningless. It was that all life was void and meaningless. And suddenly I was relieved. It was all a big joke."

Note 5 - More Theodore explaining himself

"Sometimes I look back upon myself-feel myself as I used to be in those days. For a brief second, feel what it's like to have all those dreams again. It's like all the intervening years were just a dream, and I'm just waking up. I was going to .... It's funny, its like I just forgot about all that."

"That's what happens with cancer, though. What can you do?"

"No. That's what hurts the most. I can't blame it on the cancer. I forgot long before the cancer."

Note 6 - Theodore meeting Jessica, probably will change a little because first of all it's Jessica, not Elena. And second of all, it's not quite the right character for Theodore

The first time Theodore had met Elena, in the back corner of one of those quaint, antique coffee shops that litter downtown Austin, he was still in the Masters program for English at the University of Texas. He had strayed into the unusually quiet 3 AM morning absently, with a notebook and pen, in vain hope of starting a novel.

After a few long cups of coffee and ten crumpled pieces of paper, he was startled to discover long, curled strands of midnight-soaked hair swinging into his peripheral vision. The most startlingly thing about this was not the sudden and immediate proximity of the 5'6" woman to whom the strands belonged, but the manner with which her tight, black, sleeveless mini-skirt gently slid up her thigh as she sat down in the chair next to him. Likewise, he was not so much shocked by the fact that her cappuccino had somehow found a place next to his coffee, but by the way in which his eyes froze as they scanned upwards from the cappuccino and landed directly between her moderately-sized and well-advertised breasts. Without even getting to her amused crimson lips or coy green eyes, it was pretty obvious to Theodore that she was, in short, hot.

Partly on account of his rather embarrassing history of foolish behavior around "hot" women, and partly out of a stubborn resolve not to be distracted from his novel-writing agenda, he rather creatively decided to return his concentration to the blank sheet in front of him and simply not address the situation.

After waiting a few seconds, she slowly unwrinkled one of the crumpled sheets and, as if yesterday's abandoned newspaper, started reading. One by one she casually read the crumpled sheets-occasionally sipping her cappuccino; occasionally giggling aloud. In total confusion, Theodore picked up his pen and wrote pages upon pages of absolutely pointless dribble until, without any words, she stood up, removed a dollar from her wallet, placed it upon the table, kissed Theodore's right cheek and left. This, of course, drove Theodore absolutely insane.

After that first meeting, Theodore frequented the coffee shop. For about two weeks, they kept meeting there, entirely by coincidence at 3 AM. Elena-that was her name, which he finally caught the third time around. She was singing at some nightclub on Sixth Street for cash to put her through theater at the University of Texas. The next Marilyn Monroe, she called herself. He was "writing a novel." She was a great fan of literature, and, oh, did he like poetry? After an hour or so, they resolved that Williams was the greatest poet that ever lived. She liked his writing. He, of course, was honored. Did she like music? Of course; a ridiculous question. It only took them a couple of minutes to discover that Tori Amos was the best singer of all times. Coincidentally, he had two tickets to see her at the Lizard Lounge Friday. The rest, of course, should be pretty obvious.

Except that all of it was now in the past.

Now, Theodore found himself knocking on her door...asks for help researching the tree...what you have to do to get your wish to work