The first page

I live alone by choice. The choice has not been mine.

The wife lasted about a year, as I recall.

The gentleman friend’s companionship was of shorter duration and sadder, I suppose, if one is sentimental.

The dog was another matter.

There have been other people, other critters, but these are the only three who escaped from me against my will. For a person bent on control of his every movement, I find it odd that I lost these three items. Other elements have been as easy to place in order as books on a shelf. I am not unlike Emma Woodhouse or Dolly Levi; I am a person who arranges things.

Now, I am aware that the reader might consider the foregoing churlish--nay, callous. Please: should my candor offend, drop this book at once and give it to one you would not call friend. If you want simple, instant cheer, return to your syndicated cartoon anthologies, your self-help tomes, your celebrity biographies, your novelizations of cinematic works, your Books for Dummies. Don’t bother turning to the second page, verso, located conveniently underleaf, don’t continue recto. This may not be the book for you. By the fact that you have bothered to read all the way down to the end of the first page, there may be an indication that this, indeed, is a tale for you. After all, there is more to life than a woman, a man, and a dog, isn’t there?