Claude and Alice had been dating for two months. One day, Alice was staying over at his apartment, which was really not very big or densely furnished by any means. Alice did not care, however, big ornate houses did not set well with her. While he was asleep, Alice padded through the living room, on her way to the kitchen to get a glass of water. After she poured the glass of water, she sat down at the kitchen table to drink it. As she drank from the glass, Alice noticed a small slip of paper resting on the table. Curious, she picked it up.

"Wie geht es Ihnen, meine Nichte und Neffe?"the note read. Alice smiled. "I am here in the great state of Texas. I am the executiv sales maniger for the C-6000 vaucum company."

Alice frowned.

"The sun is shinning hear in Housten…" Alice cringed at the glaring mistakes. She read further. "and I have met a very intristing lady. She is a grand advinturer (advinturess?) and the valient bookeeper for the Housten public libary, in between grand escapades of conquring. Some time I will come back, and she can meet the two of you. She is grately intristed in the tales of our advintures."
Alice bit her lip, and put the note down abruptly. How could a man so garrulously eloquent, so expert at spinning grandiose tales verbally, be so crippled when it came to spelling?

Alice was embarrassed for him, and the note was painful to read.

"Did you know," said Alice the next day. "that I considered becoming a teacher?"
"You don't say." said Claude.

"How do you feel about teachers?" Alice looked at him.

"Wicked and deformed lot. Teachers. They were always ready with a ruler to rap my knuckles with."
Alice laughed. Claude looked at her with consideration. "And they never came close to anything even approaching your beauty. They were all misshapen trolls, and crones, and even the occasional goblin."

Alice smiled, shaking her head. "I'm sure." she said. "I'm sure they were."

"I find it hard to believe, Alice the Intrepid, that you once considered, even for a moment, becoming one of those evil harridans."
Alice sighed. "Well, the truth is that I thought about how if I became a teacher, I wouldn't get to help the kids have fun. They would think of me as the…voice of doom. Plus, I didn't like the idea of being cooped up in a classroom all day, every day. So I decided I was better off in the library. That way, I could introduce people to books, and the world of reading." She sighed, and crossed her arms. "But…but teachers aren't evil, Claude. What they do is one of the most important jobs in the world. They help children learn."
"The way to learn, my dear Alice, is to go out in the world and do, not to sit in a classroom all day. So they are evil, and the practice of teaching in a classroom should be abolished, and the entire system uprooted."

Alice looked at him, and sighed. "My, well, you certainly do have a great many strong opinions on this subject." she said.

And that, it seemed, was that.

Later that week, Alice ate dinner with her brother. Ernest McNamara had taken over the McNamara Oil Company sixteen years ago, upon the death of their father, John Ulysses McNamara III. John had married Helene Van Camp, a socialite from the Upper West Side of New York, and the mother of Ernest. She had died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1957, and a year later, John had married Lucille O'Reilly, a beautiful hostess at an upscale restaurant who was thirty years his junior. Lucille had given birth to Alice, but two months before Alice's second birthday, Lucille had left Alice's father for an aspiring actor, and had taken off to California.

Alice had been ten years old when her father had died, and Ernest and his wife had taken her in when her mother could not be reached.

Now divorced, Ernest threw a great deal of energy and time into running the family business, and the rest of his time into nagging her.

At dinner, Ernest clasped his hands. "Well," he said. "I have some wonderful news. Suzanne is engaged."
"Oh." Alice said. "Well, that's wonderful. Tell her I said congratulations."

"Yes." Ernest said. There was a silence. "Well. I trust that things are going well in the local library?"
Alice bit her lip. She knew where this was going. "Very well."
"Well," Ernest said. "That's very good. But we could use someone of your skills at McNamara Oil. The people I have working for me now are blundering idiots, sad to say."
"Oh, I'm sure that they're not all idiots, Ernest." Alice said, dabbing at the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

"The lot of them are. That business degree that I paid an exorbitant amount of money for you to get is going to waste stacking shelves in a library."
"I changed majors in college, Ernest, remember? I don't have a business degree."

"Well, half of one is better than none at all. Alice, working in a library is for small time people. I mean, if reading stories to children is something you enjoy, that's fine. But it's not a career. If you want to be a storyteller, do volunteer work." He sipped his wine. "You have every advantage, Alice, and you're not using any of them."

"That's what you think." Alice said.

"I had dinner with my brother last night." Alice said, lying next to Claude, his arms wound around her. "My niece is getting married in August."

"That's nice." he said sleepily.

"And…he gave me the usual schpiel. About how he wants me to…work for him." She shifted, and gazed out the window, lost in thought.

"What does he do? Your brother?" Claude said. "You never told me."

Alice hesitated. "He…he's in oil."
"Difficult business to shake hands with a person who's in oil. I imagine that they would be very slick, don't you?"
Alice sighed. "Yeah. He's…slick." She bit her lip, and turned to face him. "How do…how do you feel about that? About his being in oil, I mean."

"I greatly respect those that work in oil. In fact, I myself once worked for an oil corporation."
"Really?" said Alice.

"Indeed. I was a major stockholder in the Abu Ben Shah company. It's located in Saudi Arabia. Have you ever been to Saudi Arabia, Alice the Intrepid?"
"No." Alice sighed.

"Well, did you know that their greatest means of transportation are camels? Difficult business riding a dromedary, but did you know that it mainly requires strength of the sartorial muscles?" He encircled her leg with his own.

"Oh, for heavens sake!" Alice sat up in bed. "Major stockholder in the Abu Ben Shah company. Can't you ever be serious, Claude?"
"I am serious. I was a stockholder. Matthew, my brother-in-law didn't believe me either. But they were an up and coming company."

Alice looked away. "Look, Claude…I…wonder how you feel about…my worth."
"Your…worth?" said Claude, looking at her as though she was speaking Swahili.

"Yes." she said. "Look, not all of my previous boyfriends had the most noble motivations."

"And I'm to take this to mean that you think that I'm…Claude the Prospector?" He looked at her, a hurt expression in his eyes.

"No, Claude…." Alice said. "It's just that…you did say that you wanted to make a fortune, and I…" He was shaking his head. "Claude-"

"Claude the Newbold," he announced. "does not seek his fortune by the goodwill of others, but rather by hard work and dogged pursuit." He got up from the bed and put his shirt on.

"Claude, wait. Don't go. I…" Claude walked out the door of her bedroom. "Claude!" She got up after him.

But he was gone, the door slamming.