I remember the first time like a dream: walking out of Sharons apartment with Mighty Mouse and Pocahontas, putting on the homemade cape and then the black trench coat, Pocahontas driving us to campus in an old, gray Toyota Corolla. We enter the room where the speech is already underway and carefully make our way toward the front row. As the crowd cheers the orator, we slip on our masks and slide the trench coats silently from our shoulders. I nod at Mighty Mouse and he nods back. Then we race up to the podium.

A pair of eyes engages mine. Wide open and suddenly alert, they show stark, uncomprehending terror. A split second later my cream custard explodes against his beefy right cheek, and an instant after that Mighty Mouses pie pummels his chin.

Light bulbs flash and people shout as we run past them across the stage and back out to the street, into the waiting car. As Pocahontas roars off across Chicagos south side, Mighty Mouse and I hug each other in the back seat and laugh uproariously. Pocahontas turns onto Lake Shore Drive, and we disappear among the speeding headlights.

A year and a quarter later now, I lie before the ocean, soaking up the sun in preparation for my incarceration. I am awed by lifes utter unpredictability and its incredible, unsuspected powers of rejuvenation. Back then, I felt weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, lacking in purpose and direction. Divorced by my wife and estranged from my daughter, I made myself unhappy by seeking love from women who had none to give. Now as I prepare for prison, I feel vibrant, yet serene. Whoever would have imagined?

Back then I watched history from the wings, taking notes and teaching students. Now, I have made history--no small achievement for a history professor. Not that Ill get much credit in the textbooks, which mostly address large scale conflicts instead of isolated, individual acts by the little people of history, as Burnt Umber calls us. But thats OK. Ill settle for the sense of purpose and loss of fear that Burnt Umber, Tom Pynchon, and Belkis taught me. But I get ahead of myself. No doubt, from this introduction you hardly recognize me.

They call me Killer. They call me Gentle Ben. They say I'm a terrorist, a pacifist, a revolutionary, a martyr, and a saint. That I died in Kuwait, Korea, Kosovo, Bosnia, Mexico, Iraq, and Iran. I'm Benny to my friends. My ex-wife Diane and my daughter Sharon know me as Benjamin Branch. But to the downtrodden masses and the oppressed workers who labor under the boot heel of cutthroat capitalism, the tyranny of communism, or the repression of religious regimes--to these people I am simply the Pie-thrower.

To my knowledge I did not die in Damascus, Chiapas, Beijing, Belgrade, Havana, or Kabul, although I have been spotted in each, along with thirty or forty other trouble spots across the globe. A contemporary Kilroy, I seem to have been everywhere, dying for everyone's sins.

No, not for their sins. I am not Jesus, nor was meant to be. I'm just a poor attendant fool who has been born again in cyberspace, transformed into some postmodern savior who promised the illusion of salvation. And then, much to my own amazement, in my own small way I delivered on my promise.

In cyberspace I am indeed like a god: everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Otherwise, I am right here, on 14th Street, in Miamis South Beach, savoring the calm before the storm. How I got here is the thrust of my story.

Where to begin? I suppose I should start with Martina. . . .



At first glance, Martina seemed too good to be true. I suppose she was. I met her at a Fourth of July party last year at the home of a friend who teaches courses like Psychopathic Fiction, Literature of Evil and Redemption, and Narrations Displaced in Time and Space. When I arrived around 7:00, the party was already in full swing. At first glance, it was surprisingly traditional. In fact, it was excruciatingly traditional, right down to the miniature American flags that adorned every fence post surrounding the capacious half-acre lot, every white wooden Corinthian column supporting the second-floor veranda, and the armrest of every lawn chair in Brian Mulligans back yard. Brian had arranged these folding vinyl chairs in a perfect semi-circle to afford each guest an equally spectacular view of the private fireworks display he planned for later in the evening. Hed wheeled his portable barbeque upwind so everyone would smell the burning hickory chips and hear the hot dogs sizzle as they got soused and waited for the sun to set. Afterward, he intended to raffle off six seats of honor in the Presidential Box on the veranda, where the view would be even more exciting. The seats were draped with red, white, and blue bunting, and American flags hung down from the guard rails.

Privately, I think of it as the Abraham Lincoln box, Brain confided as he pointed to the upstairs seating.

I looked upward. Whos playing John Wilkes Booth?

Thats the question, isnt it? He paused. Perhaps no one. Perhaps this is a different night, a different play, an entirely different cast. Perhaps theyre performing Uncle Toms Cabin, instead of whatever they acted when Booth killed him.

Perhaps, I agreed.

Or perhaps not, Brian shrugged. Then he added, Do you know why I always raffle off something at every party I give?

No, I never really thought about it.

Its because raffles remind us of the fundamental randomness of existence and the subsequent, ever-present possibilities for unexpected and undeserved good fortune.