SOB STORY, OR, A BESTSELLER BESTED

WHAT can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died of lockjaw? That she was tightlipped. And tongue-tied. That she loved Mao and Che, and brown rice sprinkled with soybeans and sunflower seeds. And me. She never told me what the order was, which somehow still bugs me. Family tradition was always to be numero uno, don't you know?

During the fall of my senior year at the Academy of Accounting, I happened into one of the Friday evening riots in the main quad. There's no place like a riot for observing the cheese. By the time I got there, however, only a few whiffs of smoke were rising from the charred remains of the president's house, and the fuzz had already doused the flames at the base of her stake and untied the dean of women, who was still only medium rare. With nothing else to do, the blues were coming my way!

"Scared?" asked a voice behind me. I turned and looked up to a tall, leggy bird.

"Not exactly," I replied.

"Face it, Sammy Four-Eyes, you're scared. Want me to get you out?" A superwoman, no less! But it didn't seem like the time to argue, and so I played an obedient Clark Kent to her Lois Lane. Three big whacks and two little nudges with her brick-filled book bag and we were at the Jolly Green Giant, a health-food pub, which, despite its name, does not discriminate against small, nongreen people.

"I'm Myrna Marvel," she said, "an American of English extraction."

"My name is Arnold," I said, omitting my famous surname.

"First or last?"

"First. The last name is Barbiere."

"Like Il Barbiere di Siviglia?

"Yes, a second cousin." A superwoman, health-food nut, and opera buff!

"I know who you are. You're the son of Luke Barbiere, 'Luke the Electrician,' the Mafia's boss of all the bosses." I had to admit it.

"Relax, Sammy Four-Eyes, I like intellectuals." My glasses steamed up and I dropped my casebook of corporate accounts. It was the beginning of our love story,

I would like to say a word now about our physical relationship. It was great--even without my glasses!

By early spring we were ready for a trip to the family manse in New Jersey. Myrna and I planned to get married. Behind the great iron gates, everything seemed in order. The gardeners lowered their tommy guns in silent homage to the next numero uno; the killer dogs snarled welcome. Two Congressmen and three mayors walked out of the front door.

"Holy --!" announced Myrna, perforating my ribs with her elbow. "Your father's a fascist pig!" Myrna wasn't afraid of anything. The way it turned out, my father did not seem at all put out by Myrna's peace button, her Black Panther button, her S.D.S. button, her "Kill the Pigs" button, her bib overalls or her carefully teased blonde Afro wig. He didn't even wince when she accidentally let loose a -- and a -- over the Chianti, and a Holy --! and a -- during the spaghetti. In fact, I could only see the faintest spark behind his Coca-Cola green glasses when she patted his shiny bald dome. I knew, though, that somewhere behind those shades Luke was figuring exactly how many kilowatts it would take to straighten out that Afro and melt those buttons. "She is a nice girl," he hissed to me. "But she is a Wasp."

I would not be intimidated. "Careful, Father, I can always work for IBM." He blanched, as I knew and expected he would.

Myrna and I were married--without the blessing, financial or otherwise, of my father--and the long struggle began to put me through the Academy of Advanced Accounting. Most of the burden was borne by Myrna, who spent twelve hours a day teaching karate at the downtown Jack LaLanne's. Our only recreation was listening to Rod McKuen on Sunday, and except for a few old posters of Mao and Marcuse, a signed photo of Kate Millett and a ritual five-minute recitation at midnight from the Little Red Book, she had given up radical politics altogether. I suspect that she would not have survived at all without wheat germ and a Spiro Agnew voodoo doll. Still, it was worth it. Come graduation, I was, once again, numero uno, besieged by offers of $100,000-a-year partnerships from nine Wall Street accounting firms, invited by Melvin Laird to bring cost accounting back to the Pentagon, and asked to lunch at Nedick's by Ralph Nader, who wanted me to find out how much General Motors really makes. At 25 I was being mentioned in the press as the next Secretary of Defense--even the White House did not seem beyond my grasp. There was just one hitch. Myrna wanted me to show Jerry Rubin how to lead a revolution on $5 a day or less.

"It's the only thing to do, Sammy," she said. Love has its limits, and with that comment Myrna had just passed them. She obviously had to go. But how? One day I snagged the perfect solution--a rusty nail in a kitchen cupboard. Late that night, when Myrna was sleeping off the extra-heavy dose of fortified milk I had prepared for her, I scratched her, ever so gently, on the right instep--I did not want to hurt her. Within the week the toxin took hold.

"Sammy, my jaw's stiff," she said. Then: "Sammy, I can hardly talk." Before long her mouth was frozen into a pretty but irremovable grin. My eyes brimming with tears, I decided to tell her the truth.

"I did it, Myrna. With a rusty nail."

"A rusty nail? But why, Sammy?"

"I don't want to join Jerry Rubin. If I can't be numero uno in the Mafia, I want to be President of the United States. I love my country even more than I love you."

"I could have taken eight years in the White House, Sammy."

"I've broken three toes tripping over your barbells on the way to the bathroom."

"I would have moved them."

"The bed was always covered with sunflower seeds."

"I would have changed the sheets."

"I discovered that your vegetable masher decodes messages from J. Edgar Hoover while it's macerating the celery. You're an FBI agent."

"I would have quit."

"I don't like being called Sammy. My name is Arnold."

"But, Sammy, aren't you even sorry?" Those were her last words.

"Love," I said between sobs, "means not ever having to say you're sorry."

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