might therefore be worthy of some help, some help from us, the larger group. I knew it was wrong, I knew I was pushing away the woman I loved -- but somehow I couldn't help it. I was young, I was confused. Also, I was on food stamps. That was my dirty little secret. I was a plunderer. Not all the time, but just sometimes, when Mom's heart thing kicked in and she had to stay home from work. Or when the mill shut down and Dad got laid off. I kept this secret from Ayn, but in the end, compared to Paul, I must have seemed as weak and liberal and unmanly as Ellsworth Toohey, if Ellsworth Toohey had Farah Fawcett hair and was slumping around town all depressed wearing a letter jacket. And suddenly it was over. Soon, she was back in her airy Upper East Side apartment, standing legs akimbo in a posture of strength at the window, regarding, beneath her, all that man had created via his indomitable will-to-power, while Paul, at a simple but elegant table behind her, worked out the details of the austere, even cruel, budget she hoped he would someday implement, and there I was, back in my sock-smelling bedroom, listening to "Photographs and Memories" by Jim Croce, feeling like a total dork. Or, as Ayn might have said, a "parasitic whining parasite." Sometimes I'd see them in the drive-through at McDonald's, in Paul's red Camaro, Ayn (or "Ann," or "Ion," whatever)