When Ed walked through his apartment door that day, he had had to pee for forty five minutes. That's why he immediately entered the bathroom to find his girlfriend lying askew in the tub, the shower running, blood flowing from the back of her head. She was dead.

As he peed, he noticed her long brown hair clumping in the flow of the shower water, clogging the drain. The phone rang, he ignored it. He was still peeing. When finished, he turned off the shower, and saw the thick, slow stream of blood from her wound without the dilution of the water. He was alone now.

The phone rang again. It was his agent.

"They bought it! Guess how much I got for you!" Ed was silent. He had forgotten the phone was in his hand. His agent bellowed on. "Hey Ed, you awake? Take a guess!"

Ed gulped. "I loved her."

"Who?" asked his agent.

"Alice is dead."

"Did you kill her?"

"No."

"Well I'm sorry 'bout that Ed. But the good news is that screenplay of yours was snatched up for a hundred grand! So now you can quit your job, lock yourself in your apartment, and play the reclusive celebrity tormented with mourning bit. I'll call you back in eight months!"

Eight months later the phone rang. Ed let it ring. The sound was an added touch to the décor of the place. He lay still, awake, naked under seven blankets. The machine picked up.

"Eddie!" shouted his agent. "Time to snap out of it. In Style magazine wants to know what you've learned from your loss. Phone interview in five minutes! Dress smart!"

Ed wasn't ready for an interview. So when the magazine called, the out-going message on his answering machine provided his pre-recorded statement to the world. "I was a boy when I met her. She was the woman who made me a man. No woman will ever mean anything to me again."

In Style magazine received letters from thousands of women across the country who wanted to prove they could mean something to Ed. While he doubted their gumption, Ed did respond to all of the letters inviting the women to come to his apartment and sleep with him. The only women who declined the invitation were those who could not afford the air fare or the days off from work, but they were few and far between.

Ed never had more than three women in his apartment at once, because he learned early on that more than three women at a time can start to make a mess of the place. After each sexual encounter, Ed informed the women they meant nothing to him. During each sexual encounter, Ed enjoyed screaming out upon orgasm "You're not Alice! You're not Alice!" Before each sexual encounter, Ed usually showed the women the bathtub where Alice had died, and would offer the women a drink.

One rainy Thursday, Jeffrey, Ed's best friend, visited Ed to tell it to him straight and knock some sense into him.

"You're throwing it all away," Jeffrey shouted. "For what? A dame! A broad! A skirt!"

Ed waited for more, but Jeffrey appeared to be finished, and left the apartment after fidgeting with his shirt buttons for thirty seconds.

On the subway ride home, Jeffrey kicked himself because he forgot to tell Ed something about how he's Hollywood's golden boy and he's getting more second chances than he deserves, but patience is dwindling. He thought he might call Ed and tell him when he got a chance.

Jeffrey's speech did inspire something in Ed. He decided to fulfill a lucrative obligation his agent had snagged for him. He was paid a $100,000 advance to write a sitcom pilot which, if picked up, would pay him another $400,000. He wrote the pilot early one morning while a pot of coffee brewed for the naked stranger lying in his bed to drink before she flew back to San Antonio.

The title of the sitcom was Alice is Dead. The premise was, every episode another character would die. And the final scene of each episode would be a man puttering alone through his darkened apartment, stopping only to look directly into the camera and say, "Who cares who died this week? Alice is dead."

The studio executives were puzzled. "This is a sitcom Ed. Where the hell are the punchlines?"

Ed held firm. "No more punchlines. Alice is dead."

The executives pressed on. "Do you really think America is going to be into a show celebrating your dead girlfriend?"

"Who cares. Alice is dead. Can I have my $400,000 or not?"

Ed got his $400,000 and America was into it. The show was a runaway hit by midseason. Bootleg t-shirts were printed by the thousands with Ed's catch phrase emblazoned across the front and back: 'Who cares who died this week?' 'Alice is dead.' Public schools held weekly moments of silence to remember Alice. Close relatives died without fazing their kin. Funerals went unattended. Obituary columns were dropped from newspapers across the country. No one cared who died this week. Alice was dead. And she always would be.

Stars of film and television clamored to be killed on Ed's show. Replicas of the bathtub where Alice met her fate, complete with the faded streak of blood, were installed in bathrooms across the nation. Suicidal teenagers made sloppy attempts at slipping in their tubs to die like Alice died. Maybe then their parents would care.

But their parents didn't care. Alice was dead. And she always would be.

Ed's Dead Girlfriend Fever infected every citizen of the free world. Except for Ed.

"Eddie this is beautiful!" his agent would croon. "You're cracking all the ratings records. You're a giant Eddie!"

Ed's response was always the same. "Who cares? Alice is dead."

Ed was by now quite wealthy. His agent told him so. "Go buy yourself some toys. Enjoy the ride boy!" he counseled Ed. Ed bought things, because he knew that's what you're supposed to do with money. But he would usually not bother to pick them up from the store, or if the things made it into his apartment, they would sit unopened in a pile of things Ed owned. Buying the things was enough for Ed. He knew he was a car owner, even though the car he owned was sitting in the back of a sales lot somewhere. The important thing was the money was being spent.

"If you buy a toy you're supposed to play with it!" his agent would berate him.

"I'm spending the money aren't I? Who cares on what? It won't bring Alice back." Ed's agent would feel a little butterfly flutter in his stomach at that statement, as he knew it would send the show's ratings up another three points. The success was unprecedented and unsurpassable. The only thing that could be done to further prove to the world that Ed was the king of television would be if Ed publicly murdered a newborn baby without retribution.

But as they sat together at a coffee shop near Ed's home, his agent was not thinking about publicity stunts or ratings. He was thinking about Ed. Together they had created a phenomenon, and Ed couldn't enjoy a minute of it. The one thing his agent was impotent to do was to make Ed happy. Until Ed was ready for another coffee refill.

She was recently hired at the coffee shop. Ed had never seen her before. When she filled his coffee cup, Ed nodded a thank you up at her, and then stared. Her name-tag read Sheila. Ed said to her, "You're not Alice." This time, he said it differently than when he would scream it upon reaching orgasm with the many strangers he had slept with after Alice’s death. This time there was shock in his voice, because she was not Alice. And Ed didn't know he could feel what he was feeling for someone who was not Alice. Sheila responded, "I know."

In an instant, Ed's agent calculated that Ed was worth 342 million dollars. And he, as his agent, was worth 20 percent of that, plus a million here and there he had pilfered through cryptic paperwork. Ed's agent decided they had had enough, it was time to end the ride. It was time to make Ed happy.

Ed's agent pulled a handgun from his briefcase and shot Sheila in the belly. Before the splash of blood had even touched the floor, Ed was out of his seat to break Sheila's fall. He ran the seven blocks to the hospital with Sheila in his arms.

Ed and his agent sat in the waiting room. Their silence was broken only once, when Ed's agent said, "I'm your agent. You have to trust me."

The doctor came out to the waiting room. Ed rose slowly, approached the stoic man with splotches of red covering his blue gown. His agent gripped the edges of his seat. Ed said to the doctor, "Sheila isn't dead, is she?" His agent smiled. The ride had ended.

The day Sheila was released from the hospital, she and Ed moved her things into his apartment. Alice is Dead was canceled the following season. America could tell the heart behind the show had disappeared. Ed had begun to care if someone died this week. More specifically, Ed cared if Sheila died this week. The network had tried to keep the momentum going and bought another sitcom from Ed called, Sheila Isn't Dead, Is She?, but it was a bust. Ed had fallen in love again and the viewing public was going to have to settle for tending once again to their own personal relationships with relatives and loved ones. However, Alice is Dead is still doing quite well in syndication.