THE CURSE OF A NE'ER-DO-WELL by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in 1974 I was going out with a sixteen year-old high school student from Brookline. Hilde's father, th editor for the Boston Globe, was separated from her mother. Ann was insane, but many insane people lived normal existences and Ann was the mother of six kids.

Her new husband, a VP at Bose Speakers, believed in a New Age cure for madness, but one winter night Ann got hold of a bottle of vodka and ran out of the house naked in blizzard, shouting, "I'm the queen of the snowflakes."

Snow howled down the street. The temperatures neared zero. White spindrifts blotted out the black of night.

"Get her," Hilde pleaded with urgency.

My best friend AK was dating Hilde's sister and the two of us hunted for Ann

We found her hugging a tree in the neighbor's backyard.

"Ann, you have to come back to the house." I took off my jacket and covered her cold white body.

"You dare tell me what to do?" Her mad eyes grasped my face.

"I'm not telling you what to do, but Hilde is worried about you."

"My daughter is sixteen and you're twenty-two."

"Sorry."

"Sorry for what? You're just a taxi driver," Ann spoke possessed by the voices of MacBeth's three witches and added, "You are the ne'er-do well. You'll never amount anything."

I led her back to the house, where her husband ran Ann a hot bath.

"Don't listen to her." AK and I warmed by the fire.

"About what?"

"About being a ne'er-do-well. No one is a ne'er-do-well anymore."

"I suppose you're right."

We smoked a joint and Hilde brewed us a cup of tea. Her older sister worked in the Combat Zone. Strippers didn't have snow days.

Hilde and I broke up that Spring and I left Boston for New York.

Ann's curse was on money.

I never could hold onto anything valuable.

Possession is 9/10ths of meaninglessness, because I am a ne'er-do-well.

It is a madwoman's curse, but I'm the best of the ne'er-do wells and in these days when no one has nothing being a ne'er-do-well is a blessing .

We know how to live with nothing.