BY MONDAY, Doug knew he just had to get out of Putkin’s Corners, Stand or no Stand. He’d been here since Friday, struggling with the problem of Kirby Finch’s inversity—if that was a word—and he could feel himself on the very brink of going native. Even Marcy was beginning to look good.

Fortunately, he had Darlene Looper on hand to remind him what a proper object of lust was supposed to look and sound like. A talented if unagented actress, Darlene was a corn-fed beauty who, like for instance Lana Turner long before her, could show glints of a darker side. It was that darker side Doug was determined to tap into.

She was off The Stand now, no salvaging that situation. But how about Burglars Burgling (tryout)? Given the right makeup and wardrobe, Doug could just see her as a continuation of the long line of blonde sexpot gun molls extending back to before movies discovered sound. Give her a short slit skirt, fishnet pantyhose, and a nice small silver designer pistol slipped under the black frilly garter on her thigh, and there wasn’t a felony on the books a man wouldn’t be happy to commit with her. Doug saw her as the candy on the arm of Andy; surely he wasn’t gay. So back to New York Darlene would come, traveling in Doug’s Yukon with himself and Marcy. Marcy in the backseat, of course.

None of which dealt with the real problem that had forced him to drive one hundred miles north from the city last Friday. Now that this year’s story line for The Stand had been fatally wounded by young Kirby Finch, what could replace it? What was their throughline story for the year, culminating in spring’s sweeps week?

Many useless solutions were proposed, starting with the all-night brainbender session at Get Real on Thursday. For instance, Josh: “Kirby decides to become a priest. The family’s ambivalent, and just when they’re coming around, just when they’re learning acceptance, he decides he’d rather stay with the family, at least until the farmstand succeeds.” Doug: “No.”

Or Edna: “Kirby’s big brother, Lowell, the intellectual, carrying too heavy a load of books out of the library, trips and falls and is paralyzed. There’s one slim chance an operation will give him back the use of his arms and legs, and at the end of the season, where we were going to do the wedding, he walks!” Doug: “No.”

Or Marcy, Friday morning, on the trip up: “We go with the reality. Kirby comes out of the closet.” Doug: “He isn’t in the closet, that’s the problem.” Marcy: “He comes out to his family. They don’t know what to do, what to think, and they finally decide blood is thicker than prejudice, and they’ll stand by him. Everybody learns a wonderful lesson in tolerance.” Doug; “No.” Marcy: “Doug, it could be very real.” Doug: “But it couldn’t be reality, Marcy, reality shows do not solve society’s problems. They don’t even consider society’s problems. Reality is escapist entertainment at its most pure and mindless.”

All weekend the suggestions kept coming in. Harry Finch, father of the fairy: “What I say is, we bring that Darlene back. Turns out, she’s my daughter. Wrong side of the blanket, you know. Family’s all upset, thinks she’s trying to horn in on the success of The Stand, they finally come around, see she’s just a poor lost girl, needs a family, at the end we all hug and kiss and have a big celebration.” Doug: “Let me think about that, Harry,” which is how you say no to a civilian.

Finally, Monday morning, when Doug went along the walk from his motel room to Darlene’s room to see if she was packed and ready for the trip, he found her appropriately dressed but seated on the bed among her unpacked goods, frowning into space.

“Darlene? What’s up?”

She looked startled out of her reverie. “I was just thinking,” she said.

“We gotta get going, Darlene.”

“Oh, I know that. But I was thinking about the problem here, and I was wondering if something that happened to a friend of mine might be any use.”

Another “solution” to the problem, eh? Well, might as well listen. “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“Her folks eloped,” Darlene said. “You know, years ago, just before they had her. I think it was gonna be pretty close, which came first.”

“That happens sometimes,” Doug agreed.

“Only if you’re not paying attention,” she said, and shrugged. “Years and years later,” she told him, “they found out, that preacher wasn’t any preacher at all. He was a fake.”

Interested despite himself, Doug said, “The one who married them?”

“Except they wasn’t married,” Darlene said. “You know, they had six kids by then, most of them half grown up, they didn’t know what to do.”

“A tricky situation,” Doug agreed.

“At first,” she said, “they was just gonna go to some city hall somewhere, get married on the sly, not tell anybody about anything. But then they thought it over, they decided, the first time they had to run away and elope, didn’t have any proper family wedding, so now they could. Get the whole family in on it, great big church wedding, big party, the girls were the bridesmaids, the youngest boy was the ringbearer, it was the best time anybody ever had anywhere.”

“Darlene!” Doug cried. “You’re a genius!” And he flung himself on her on the bed in a massive embrace that was almost entirely pure.

Which is where Marcy found them a minute later, when she opened the room door. “Oh!” she said, embarrassed, backpedaling. “I thought we had to, ah, start going, uh, away.”

Doug sat up and gave her the most dazzling smile of her life. “Marcy,” he said, “Darlene has just saved The Stand!”

“She has?”

“Get the family together, before we leave we can give them the good news, let them start working out some of the details.”

Confused but agreeable, Marcy said, “Okay, Doug. Should I close this door?”

“No, no, Marcy, we’ll be right along.”

Marcy took her departure, and Doug turned his dazzling smile on Darlene. “And Kirby,” he said, “can be the bridesmaid.”

WHEN STAN MURCH TRAVELED interborough while not in his professional role of getaway specialist, he preferred public transport. It was always possible to pick up private wheels when and where needed. Therefore, when he left the Murch manse early Monday afternoon, where he walked was to the final stop of the L subway line, being Canarsie/Rockaway Parkway, a line which, at its other extreme, a world and more than an hour away, culminated at Eighth Avenue and Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. (He was a commuter! Think of that! He’d never known that before.)

While walking down Rockaway Parkway, which it was impossible not to think of as Rockaway Parkaway, Stan cell-called John at home, expecting it to take three or four rings to get an answer, since John had only the one phone in his house, which he kept in the kitchen even though he was never in the kitchen except when eating, when, of course, his mouth would be full.

Four rings. “Yar?”

“Stan here. You gonna be around in an hour?”

“Even two hours.”

“I’m on my way. I’m commuting, John.”

“Uh-huh,” John said, and when he opened his apartment door to let Stan in an hour and ten minutes later he said, “You’re pretty good at that commuting.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

As they walked toward the living room, John said, “You want a beer?”

“A little early in the day,” Stan said. “I’m trying to cut down on sodium.”

In the living room, John settled into his chair and Stan onto the sofa, where he said, “I been thinking. That’s why I’m here.”

John nodded. “I figured it was something like that.”

“What I been thinking about,” Stan said, “is this reality caper thing.”

“I guess we’re all thinking about that,” John allowed.