Bermuda had money to burn. And she burned it. Her father had gripped her hand, his breath as sour as any other morning, his eyebrows bushy and furrowed. "I didn't work my ass off for thirty-five years so you could become a miser like me, Bermuda. Burn it. Burn it all. Buy useless silly things and then throw them away when you get bored."

"Hush daddy," Bermuda refused to cry. Crying meant accepting the inevitable.

"Listen to me, damnit. I'm older than you, and I know things. I know life ain't worth saving. Not one goddamned dime. You hear me, Bermuda? I'll haunt you in every last goddamned penny.

"No you won't, daddy, you're going to get better and help me spend it."

Finally he'd let go of her and laid back, closing his eyes. "No I'm not. I'm too old to spend money. Don't ever get too old to spend my money, Bermuda."

Then he died.

And Bermuda was a good girl: she lived by her daddy's dying wish. Thirty-five years at Gerico Systems, the last of the pre-computer engineers, he still had more patents in one quarter than most of the hot shots out of MIT. So she spent his, now her, money on the things he never had. A big computer. A big German car. She filled the garage with tools he always admired at the Sears but never touched.

Then one day in the supermarket she bought a ham. A Big one. Real one, too. Spiral Cut. Honey glazed. Had those crisscross lines on it. It didn't occur to her until later how strange it was what the butcher said.

"Your family will be eating that one for a few weeks."

It took Bermuda five days to eat that ham. Mmmm, haaaam. First, a big dinner, with mashed potatoes (butter, not margarine) and peas and candied yams and homemade oyster-walnut-dressing and one of those wines with a cork and two kinds of rolls and as many baby sweet pickles as she could eat while cooking it all. Then she sat down in Daddy's chair, and ate as much as he would have, if he'd. Well, it was like Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter all at the same time.

Then ham sandwiches. Lots of ham sandwiches. Extra mustard, red onions, mayo, a big piece of leaf lettuce, hold the mustard, no onions please, maybe a slice of cheese, cheddar this time, and now a nice slice of pepper jack, on wheat bread, rye bread, make mine with dutch crunch bread. A sandwich snack while watching the new TV in the morning, two sandwiches for lunch, time to go shopping, another sandwich while waiting for dinner to arrive from the Chinese, a little one before bed, and something to nibble on at three in the morning when the bathroom call woke her up.

And finally, beans and hamhocks. When her daddy was alive, Bermuda always made him beans and hamhocks. It didn't matter how good the ham was; sometimes she just bought hocks. Salty as the air in New England on a warm day, with enough cornbread crumbled in the bowl to feed a roomful of orphans. It used to be Bermuda kept a big three gallon pot on the stove, and they ate from it all weekend long. But now she had the new microwave, two and half minutes on power level eight, thank you very much.

Ham, as everyone knows, is a gateway food. Hams led to turkeys, turkeys led to roast beefs, and then all hell broke loose. Bermuda made a cake for her daddy's birthday, and one for her birthday, and one for the Superbowl, and Valentines day, and Sundays, and then Wednesdays, too.

Daddy's account balance said it all. Exactly one year after he passed away, she opened yet another bank statement.

"What is the meaning of this?" she shrieked into the phone, chewing a bearclaw.

"Is there a problem with your account, madam?"

"There's twice as much here as last month!"

"Yes, the dividend on your father's retirement options are on an annual dispersement, as per his request. Also, his life insurance policy was automatically deposited on the annum of the settlement, per the policy's stipulations."

"Goddamnit, don't you 'per' me. What's all that mean?" Bearclaw bits flew from her mouth, sticking to the phone.

"Madam?"

"Aaargh," Bermuda said, and slammed the phone.

When she turned 30, one of her father's friends had called her "a handsome girl," and that's what she was. She was sturdy, her hair in a bun, making her father's simple meals and discussing the new ruffians fresh out of MIT working at Gerico Systems. She was sturdy, neither slender nor round. But taking down the clothes from the line in the yard made her cheeks blush red, and laughing over dominoes by the fire made her eyes sparkle with a rare beauty.

Bermuda chewed her lip and looked at herself in the mirror over the fireplace. Her fat cheeks were the color of cold milk. Her eyes were sunk deep, and dark.

"To hell with this," she said out loud, dropping the bear claw. She decided to make one more purchase.

She put the exercise bike in the garage, and listened to her daddy's old transistor while she pedaled and pedaled. Every few minutes, she looked back at the big rear chasing her.

The bike was a technological marvel. Her daddy would have been proud. It had more doodads and geegaws than any other at the Sears, at least three different colors of flashing lights, and even kept track of her heartbeat. And it made her sweat. She rode it for a month, coughing and wheezing at first, but as a few weeks went by, merely going faster and faster, sweating.

But the bike never went anywhere.