Idol rumor by Mike Resnick and Leslie Robin, read by Cat Rambo for

Clark's World magazine, issue 26 November 2008

I'll rumor

The room was on the second floor of the dilapidated old building

overlooking what had once been a garden, and now was a concrete parking

slab filled with cracks and potholes.

It had a narrow bed next to a small nightstand, with a cheap lamp and an old battered desk by the single window.

A rickety wooden chair, a phone, an ancient dresser, a tarnished floor lamp, and a small closet completed its uninspired furnishings

And thought Maria mr. Vallepoli has lived here for 16 months.

How could anyone live here in this cheerless place for 16 days, let alone months?

Maria surveyed the room from the door. She'd been cleaning this room five days a week

for 16 months and she'd still never laid eyes on him. His bed was always made, the top of

his desk always barren.

The only way she knew he actually existed was the nightstand,

which had a different library book almost every morning,

and the bathroom which held a dozen bottles of pills that were replaced with new bottles from time to time.

Oh, and the statuette on the top of the dresser, she didn't quite understand what it was.

Sometimes she thought it might be a woman holding her arms out to the viewer.

Other times she wondered how she could have been so mistaken,

for clearly it was a small animal with large trusting eyes, possibly

something from the deepest jungles of Africa.

Once she even thought it was a twisted tree, Maria shook her head. She never would understand modern art.

...