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into small squares with his hands to give an idea of the dimensions. “For the jocks to sweat off a few pounds before the race. How long do you think that’d take?”
    “When would you need it by?”
    “Quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.”
    So a deal was made. Mr. S gave Lonnie some money from one of the drawers and told him to let him know what the balance was when he was done. I must have been sleepy-looking. The great man pulled me over to him and said,“Boy, I want you to promise me something. I want you to promise me that when you grow up, you’ll never play the ponies.”
    “I promise.”
    He let me go. “Remember, boy, the ponies work for your Uncle S.”
    At that point, the cat that was laying there woke up and shook its paws to get its circulation working.
    Going home, Lonnie asked me to identify the moral in what had just taken place. I thought about it awhile. “Never write anything down?” I said.
    Lonnie frowned. “Always pay people in cash. It’s a whole lot more polite. And when you are the cashee, never count your money until you’re outside in the alley. Pay attention, now. I’m teaching you etiquette.”
    The first rule of social work is not to become involved with your clients’ lives. Usually this rule is an easy one to follow. I have one client, an elderly woman with a shopping cart who spends most of her time loitering in Victory Square when the weather’s good. She calls other people “riff-raffs” and in general speaks with a verbal singularity all her own. Most of those who come to the Horizons Group are riff-raffs of one description or another. There are three of us working here, Jane, Maureen (Mo) and myself. Jane is a financial counsellor, Mo is a psychotherapist and I’m an MSW. Sometimes a client will need only one of us, or two; sometimes all three—in that case it’s usually a whole blue-collar family together.
    One day a blonde woman wanting to make an appointment stuck her head in my door. She had square shoulders.
    “Excuse me, are you Theresa?”
    “Yes, that’s correct.”
    She told me her name and her story. Beth was born in Alberta. Her sister and she were raised by their mother. They had different fathers, the one deceased and the other having deserted Beth and the mother. She had never met this father but knew from her mother that he was reported alive among the Vancouver homeless not many years ago. She possessed a photograph of him taken by the mother when Beth was an infant. She had been working for a funeral director (!) but left when it got “too spooky” and had now returned to selling craft jewellery, much of which she made herself. She appeared to be wearing some: a little silvery Celtic symbol on a slender black cord fell just at the top of her breasts, like a bead of metallic perspiration, and seemed to move closer and farther away as her respiratory function went in and out, in an effect not dissimilar to 3-D. She had very fine, straight hair, like a waterfall of silk threads. I wanted to begin brushing it immediately with long slow strokes. Her hips were fecund-looking, which I always find attractive, and her eyes were blue in colour.
    She informed me which of our funding partners had referred her to me and asked if I could help locate her father. I, of course, replied negatively. That isn’t what we do. I was not familiar with who, if anyone, might be operational in this area of service.
    “Have you considered retaining a private investigator?”
    “That never occurred to me.”
    “It’s expensive, I understand.”
    She bit her bottom lip and made an expression of hopelessness with her eyebrows.
    We conversed with each other a bit further.
    “Please leave it with me. I’ll confer with some of the others and perhaps we can formulate some ideas or some leads or so forth.”
    She thanked me profoundly, as people often do. I looked at my desk diary and we found another time when we would both be free. I scheduled it for 11:45 so I could