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nylon did to the silkworm— put it out of a job—”
    “However,” Irving interrupted, “people’s bodies react differently. There’s one more endurance test we are now conducting on the pink pair, and our results will not be in until Saturday.”
    “Saturday!” Ruth screamed. “The panty-hose convention is this weekend. We’ve got to make a move before Blossom presents them to our competitors. Or, worse yet, peddles them to someone who isn’t even in the business, who will put up the money to manufacture them and make a big killing all at once.”
    “We can’t do that until we have the approval of the other board members,” Leonard White offered, “and some of them are on vacation. Others are flying in late Friday night.”
    Ruth crushed another soda can in her hands. “Then we’ll have our meeting at the crack of dawn on Saturday . . .”
    Several members of the board thought longingly of their golf clubs, which would now go untouched this Saturday morning.
    “If we have to, we’ll sit here and wait for Irving’s results, and then we’ll vote. Remember, everyone, we are lucky to be the only company that has the inside scoop on these panty hose. No one else bothered to check them out, probably thought it was some crackpot writing a dopey letter to them.” Ruth took a final puff on the little beige stub that was threatening to burn her fingers. “Blossom is planning his fashion show at the convention Saturday afternoon. We’ve got to get to him before then.” She got up and stalked out of the room as the board members gathered around the panty hose in awe.
    “I’d a been a lot happier if we had stuck to garters,” one was heard to mumble.

W ILL EVERYONE PLEASE sit down and be quiet?” Richie Blossom urged his fellow tenants of the Fourth Quarter old folks’ home. “We have a lot to discuss and not much time left.”
    “I’ve been thinking that for the past twenty years,” Sam Joggins called out. And then, as everyone expected, went on, “They call this place the Fourth Quarter. I feel like I’m living in Overtime.” He slapped his thigh and looked around to see who would laugh this time.
    Flo Tides, the social director of the Fourth Quarter, handed Sam a glass of Gatorade in a plastic cup. “Eb would roll in his grave halfway to China if he heard you. That was his joke.” Flo continued around the room, handing out the liquid refreshment. Her late husband, Eb, had always been an organizer, and he used to say that the best way to make sure people get to a meeting is to lure them with food and drink. She had met him at a church social fifty years ago, and when they were introduced they both knew they had found the right match. Eb and Flo. And that’s what they did together for forty-eight years thereafter.
    The twenty-seven people who lived at the Fourth Quarter didn’t need to be lured to this meeting by the promise of Gatorade and sprinkled cookies, however, as there was serious business to be discussed. They were in danger of losing their home, the place they had retired to, the place where many of them had found companionship after the death of a spouse. Last year they had purchased an option on the property and that option was about to expire. They had to come up with the money to exercise their option and buy the property outright, but it had to be done by Monday. There was another buyer interested, who already had an offer on the table. And if they gave up their option before the weekend, everyone at the Fourth Quarter would get a bonus check of $10,000.
    “Who took the last chocolate cookie?” Elmer Pickett whined as he wandered in and perused the confectionary offerings on the plastic tray. “That always happens to me.”
    “Well, that’s what you get for being late,” Flo admonished. “Just take one of the orange ones and sit down. We’ve got to get started.”
    “I don’t like that kind. The dye runs all over my tongue,” Elmer muttered as he took a seat and crossed