A tumor grows in the center of her brain. About the size of a small avocado, or a large walnut. If we were to open her skull and bisect her brain, we'd see that the tumor is the color of charcoal - jet black- and the consistency of rotting fruit - fleshy, soft to the touch, quick to disintegrate. If we leaned down close to the tumor and caught a whiff we might be taken aback by its stench; the smell of rotting meat, the odor of a rat, long dead, decomposing in the attic.

No one is yet aware of this tumor. At least, not anyone from the medical field. She didn't need an official prognosis; she isn't interested in x-rays and MRIs and chemical dyes. She didn't need to spend hundreds of dollars - perhaps thousands, considering the substantial deductable built into her health insurance - paying doctors for an opinion about something she is already familiar with.

She's quite aware that something has gone terribly wrong with her thinking, though she's done a tremendous job of hiding her concerns from anyone. Her inability to add and subtract simple equations, the sudden onset of color blindness. The strange ripple in her reasoning. She senses a correlation between her lifelong tendency toward negative thinking and this ball of black rot growin in her brain. She feels it's a direct manifestation of her years of anger and hatred, emotions she's kept bottled up so long they've obviously begun to form a dark fleshy mass of rebellion.

Who knows really when it struck her to attempt self surgery to deal with the problem. She went about her preparations as if in a dream - getting a Makita drill, finding the right bit, fashioning a suction device out of a turkey baster and a length of rubber surgical tubing. The morphine she'd been stocking up in the bathroom cabinet came from her father's prescription - he'd died late last year of lung cancer, and she was in charge of caring for him up until his very last days, when she finally succumbed to checking him into a hospice. But not before she raided his painkiller stash.

She'd taken her vacation leave from work, figuring that it might take a few days to recuperate. She studied maps of the human skull on the Internet, practicing the positioning of the drill at a slightly up angle, pressed against her temple. As weeks passed, she grew more confident that she could pull it off without a hitch; that soon, this dark black rot growing in her brain would finally be excised for good, doctors and insurance be damned.

And suddenly here we were; tomorrow was the big day. She put extra food in the cat's bowl, turned off the gas to the house, and unplugged the phone. She took a long bath, taking special pains to condition her hair and wrap it in curlers and a big, fluffy towel. She watched her favorite TV programs, lounging in her robe and slippers, drinking a martini and having a cigarette indoors, something she never did anymore. She went to sleep knowing that all would end up well.

What I'm about to tell you is top secret.

There's a small corner store at the intersection of 38th and Melvin. You go inside, you tell the skinny Asian kid stocking the paper towels that you want a #32 special. He goes in the back for several minutes while you pretend to scan the air fresheners just next to the toothpaste. Finally, he comes back, carrying a padded manilla envelope. You hand him the envelope you've been given earlier today - the contents of which you don't need to know - and leave.

After procuring the padded envelope, you drive to the Post Office on Ivy Street. You bring it to the heavyset woman working window 9. You tell her "I'd like Express Mail with a signature on the other end." When she asks you the zip code, you tell her 90006. She'll pull a label from her purse and affix it to the padded envelope. This label will have an address printed on it; don't look at it. The less you know about the destination, the better.

Once she's affixed the label, she'll take the envelope from you and ask if you'd like some stamps. You say yes, but all you have is a $100 dollar bill. Ask if she can break it. She'll say "yes," then ask what kind of stamps you'd like. Tell her the swans - you'd like the swans - a pack of 28. She'll then hand you an envelope - unmarked, white, business-size. Inside will be your pay.

A note on your pay: It's a money order, most probably cut at a liquor store or a check cashing place. Most likely from somewhere in Hawaii or West Virginia. Make sure to take it to the Gold Key liquor store on Grand Avenue and 1st. Ask for the manager - a guy named "Raul." Tell him Paco sent you, then wink at him. He'll cash the money order for you.

Once you've completed the mission, stand by for further instructions. If, for any reason, you believe you've been followed, photographed or recognized in any way, abort the mission. Do not contact the Base. We will contact you.

Thanks again for your help.

It's all true.

A woman was on the news last night, begging the public for information about a lost ring. But this was no ordinary woman.

She looked like the human version of an Abyssynian cat - Almond eyed, dark complected with a long neck and long, graceful eyelashes misted with recent tears. She was pleading her case from what appeared to be her living room, a palatial estate with expensive furniture and brilliant, oversized art all perfectly placed and looking like a page out of Fine Living. She wore large turquoise earrings, an embroidered silk scarf wrapped around her shoulders and spoke with the refined tones and formal gestures of the insanely wealthy class.

The ring. The ring was displayed on camera in a blurry but still impressive photo, probably from a jeweler's catalogue. It featured a positively gargantuan yellow diamond in the center, surrounded by absolutely Herculean white diamonds on either side. According to the story, she'd taken it off momentarily while strolling through downtown Pasadena, slipping it into her pocket. Only on arriving home did she realize the horror: The ring was gone. The pocket, empty.

So here she was, this African American Princess of Pasadena, on primetime TV news imploring the public to help her in her search for her precious, multimillion dollar diamond ring. She did follow up during her in-camera interview that the sentimental value was worth far more than the monetary one, as she'd treated this stunning gift from her husband as a talisman emblematic of both her survival from a recent bout of cancer and her desire to bear children (cue sympathy piano). There were shots of her digging through leaves in the gutter near where she'd parked her car (or where her chauffer had parked the Maybach). Other shots of her combing the city, putting up "LOST!" signs (no doubt with her lawyer's phone # as a contact). The city had even deployed it's Water and Power workers to open manholes and climb down into sewers, should the jewel have tumbled out of her pocket and down a drain.

Finally, with the pinched look of someone attempting to do yoga with a bad case of the runs, she ended the interview on the cliche spiritual caveat that should the ring not be found, it was "as the universe deemed," and that the lesson would be to learn to live without such material posessions. If you looked closely you could swear her cheek was twitching.

As if to add ironic insult to gutwrenching injury, her husband had only just that week started to seek out insurance for such a priceless item, but hadn't signed a deal before the calamity. Too bad no one at the news station bothered to dig into that little bit of odd timing. Didn't she get the memo? It was supposed to happen Thursday!

The bit ended with the newscaster, who, with a smarmy smirk and raised eyebrow, declared that a "substantial reward was being offered for its return." You can almost hear the echo of a hundred thousand cars start up throughout the Los Angeles basin: "Get in the car, hon. We're headin' to Pasadena."

Directly after this, and just before going to a station break, the news then offered a tease of its next story: A base jumper was missing. These are the guys and gals who get dropped off on a mountain top from a helicopter and freestyle it down on skis or snowboard. Flashing up on the screen was a picture of a gorgeous hunk of a man who very well could have graced a Calvin Klein Fragrance billboard above Sunset, across from the Bar Marmont.

His name was Brad, this base jumper. He'd gone to Yale and was a junior partner in a downtown law firm. It turned out one of his clients was Amali Bindui, a Tunisian businessman and real estate developer. Amali made millions from trading; stocks, bonds, oil futures, gold, gems. Buying land and building subdivisions. He'd come under government scrutiny for allegedly laundering money for the Russian mafia, but charges were dropped when the government couldn't come up with the evidence. Now it was all contracts drafting and the occasional lawsuit from a former employer out to squeeze the boss.

Oh, and he'd just recently given his wife a ring as a gift. A ring with an enormous yellow diamond.

Collette is in the middle of her hyper enzyme microdermabrasion Photolite facial therapy when her Blackberry starts to chime with that Diddy ringtone she'd downloaded off the Internet yesterday. The dermatologist, a thin, harsh woman with plump skin and perfectly white hair pulled back into a severe bun, flicks her eyes over to the device as a silent communication that Collette is free to take a break and answer it, if only out of annoyance at this obnoxious intrusion.

"Sorry. I'm expecting an important call. Do you mind?" Collette asks, sitting up in the reclining space-age treatment chair and reaching for her purse, an alligator skin Gucci bag with her initials spelled out in white diamonds inlaid in a swirly cursive font. She digs through the bag and retrieves the Blackberry, eyeing the caller ID. She's about to answer it when she glances over with barely guarded impatience at the dermatologist, who has pushed her rolling chair over to the counter and is sorting through disinfected tissue swabs. "I kind of need to take this in private."

The dermatologist doesn't turn around, but her stiffening posture and the deep sigh she lets out while snapping off her rubber gloves and throwing them into the garbage tells us all we need to know about what she thinks of Collette. Without answering, the dermatologist leaves the room, which is when Collette answers the phone with a roll of her eyes.

"Reginald, hi. No, sorry, I'm at the dermatologist's. No, no, it's okay, she left the room. With what I'm paying her she should be giving me a mani/pedi and some Shiatsu. So what's up?"

Reginald's voice can be barely heard leaking out of the earpiece Collette's wearing, but it's clear enough: "I'm sorry, Collette, but they re-cast the picture. They weren't willing to meet your price. They went with Nicole instead."

Collette can't speak. The Blackberry slips from her fingers and falls to the floor, where it shatters the battery case door free from its hinges, sending 4 double-A's skittering in all directions. Collette is shaking violently as she rises from her seat; she grabs the operating light and swings it around, over her head, until she's gotten enough speed and strength to hurl it at the window with the 10th story view of Beverly Hills beyond. The glass explodes outward, letting the cool autumn wind blow through, sending Collette's recently dyed and set hair to flutter stiffly.

As she steps up on the ledge and looks out at the beautiful sky, the street far below, she can hear a commotion behind her as the dermatologist and a male nurse rush into the examination room. She can almost hear them call out her name, though it's faint and seemingly in a faraway dream, as she takes that step off the ledge, falling into the air.

The dermatologist rushes the window just as Collette's Manolo Blanik's fly off her feet and spin impossibly up into the air, seemingly in ultra slow motion, before they, too, fall to the street below. She looks out and down in time to see Collette's body land in a shattered heap on Wilshire Boulevard and get run over by a speeding black Hummer with tinted windows and spinning rims.

She turns to the male nurse. "Get the check she gave reception and bring it to the bank. Deposit it immediately." The nurse nods, his face working hard to hide his horror, as the dermatologist looks around with disgust at the mess that has been made of her examination room. "And somebody bring me a broom!"