"Please don't call me by my first name."

"But I've always called you Matthew... to myself. I've known for some time that you were steeling yourself to be rid of me. At first I was sorely stung by the unfairness of it. But then I realized that you were as helpless in this as you are in other things. You've been a slave to your image for years now, and getting rid of me would have been yet another service demanded by that image. So I decided to take matters into my own hands, for your good as well as mine."

"I don't want to hear about any of this. Nothing matters anymore. It's all over. I suppose you intend to do an expose? 'Matthew Griswald's Secret Collaborator'? You'll make a bundle with it. It's the kind of scandal the journalists salivate over."

"Nothing could be further from my mind, Matthew."

"What ison your mind, then?"

"I propose that we continue our association."

He looked at her out of the corners of his eyes, with chary mistrust. "You're saying that you're willing to go on just like before?"

"Well... not justlike before."

"Ah! I knew it. What is it you want?"

"I have reached an age when one must consider one's future."

"So it's money."

"Security rather than money. Our mutual security. Which I believe would best be assured if we were to marry."

His eyes widened. "Marry? You and me?"

"Your shock is not terribly chivalrous, Matthew. It's a solution I've considered in moments of reverie for many years."

An almost unthinkable possibility grew in Matthew's mind. "You arespeaking of a marriage of convenience, aren't you? A marriage that ensures your financial future and gives you the social advantages, the parties, the media events, and all?"

"Actually, I don't foresee all that many parties. They're not good for your health, to say nothing of your work habits. And I must tell you that I have no intention of entering into un mariage blanc,a sham union confected for purely financial reasons."

"Whoa. Let me get this straight. Are you saying that we-that you and I would...?"

"I foresee us working together, tackling problems, and reaping successes together. We shall cherish one another, and we shall... satisfy one another."

"...Satisfy. And I suppose this relationship is to be monogamous?"

"Oh yes, indeed, Matthew. Most strictly monogamous. You will never know how I have been hurt by the mindless women I've found here in the mornings, all rumpled and smelling of sleep."

He nodded slowly, still dazed. "So... if I want your help, I have to buy the whole package. Brains, crotch, and all. That's the deal, is it?"

"That is the deal."

He turned again to the stack of manuscript on his desk. He reread two pages of his first-draft work, then the same passage in her revision. Then he tossed the papers aside and looked again at Miss Plimsoll in frank appraisal. Well, she has a nice complexion. And her hands aren't all that bad...

"It's true, isn't it, what you said about the characters and the situations being mine and mine only. All you do is tighten and polish a little. What you might call 'stylistic packaging'."

She smiled faintly. "That's all I do, Matthew. Just packaging."

He puffed out a long sigh and shook his head as though to clear it. "Tell me, Plimsoll. Are you... well, are you any good in the sack?"

Miss Plimsoll glanced down and smiled into her eyelashes. "I take it you use the word 'sack' in a sense different from the sack you were intending to give me?"

"Ghm-m!" he growled. "Well, are you? Good in the sack?"

A slight flush blossomed on her throat. She tipped up her pendant watch and glanced at it. "We have an hour and twenty minutes before Mr Gold calls. That gives us sufficient time to investigate the matter, I should imagine."

AN ONONDAGAN PRIMAL TALE

Europeans moving westward across America collided with Iroquois pressing eastward to maintain contact with the Algonquin tribes that they followed as a shepherd follows his flocks, for raiding was an important part of their economy. The Europeans found the Five Nations to be the most advanced tribes in North America, both culturally and politically. They also found them to be fierce and ruthless fighters of a caliber they would not meet again until, a hundred years and half a continent later, they encountered the Sioux and the Apache.

Occupying the center of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Onondagas were neither so warlike as the Senecas nor such crafty traders as the Mohawks, but their role was essential to the union, for they were the conveners of inter-tribal meetings, and they acted as moderators in disputes, as befitted the tribe of Hiawatha who, with Dekana-widah, had molded the warring tribes into a peaceful league centuries earlier.

In addition, the Onondagas were custodians of tribal memory, guardians of tradition, and tellers of the ancient tales until, most of their warriors fallen in battle against land-hungry Europeans, the women, children, and old men were driven north to the haven of New France, where they settled on poor, stony farms. Lacking young men, they interbred with the French who had left their women behind in their pursuit of riches. My grandfather was a child of Onondaga/French parents.

In the early years of this century, the Onondaga gift for story-weaving was still alive here and there in pockets of their diaspora. It was from her formidable aunts that my mother learned tales of the sort ethnologists call primal myths. All the stories began by describing the creation of the world by Crayfish, Buzzard, and Wind working to the plan of She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name: always the same words spoken in the same rhythm... those repetitions that children find so enchanting and reassuring. After being attached to the origin of things, each tale would go its own way, each carrying a moral message meant to elevate and to guide.

When I was very young, my mother put me to bed with these stories, told in the harsh, old-fashioned French patois of her aunts, a sound that I associated with the stern-voiced chants of the Onondagan storytellers who used similar cautionary tales when they sought to persuade recalcitrant rebels to bend their will to that of the Confederacy. I remember only three of those stories: one that explains why maples lose their beautiful leaves in autumn and is a warning against pride, another that tells how North Star volunteered to remain in the cold northern sky to direct lost people and is about the virtues of service, and the story I'm going to tell you now, my childhood favorite because it involved many animals acting badly. Its message is obvious, but it was one the Indians failed to heed.

In the beginning, and for more than half of the Allotted Time there was no dry land, only sky and water and a thin mist where they met. Then She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name asked, "Who will make Earth for me?" Now Crayfish was bored, so she said, "I will make Earth for you." And Crayfish went down to the bottom of the water and rolled balls of mud with her tail and piled them up, one upon the other, one upon the other, until the mud rose higher than the water.

Then She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name said, "Yes, but this Earth is all flat and dull to the eye. Who will make it lively and diverse for me?" And Buzzard, who was bored, said, "I will make it lively and diverse for you." She flew over the vast expanse of soft mud, and when she flapped her mighty wings down, valleys were pressed into the land, and when she drew her mighty wings up, mountains were lifted from the land, and when she soared and glided, the great plains and plateaux were left flat.