Popcorn 9: Page 4 gain, the profit usually taken in pleasure. He had loved to recount to whomever would listen the story of the time he pilfered a trick's credit card and spent the next three days treating friends to cases of champagne. Oh, how the soul had hated hearing that one repeated for the nth time. Not to mention any number of other thefts from boutiques, department stores, one-night stands, and longtime friends.     Given the human it had inhabited, it is understandable why this particular spirit longed to flee. It had had enough some time ago, and now the unexpected but not unwelcome parting of ways seemed nigh. No love would go missing here.     Unable to leave for the moment, the soul's thoughts pondered the future: what would it return as? It had already served one Shirley MacLaine stint, and it counted on the odds of a return engagement to be slight. Hopefully it would return as an insect, the soul feeling that next time around it richly deserved a predictable life of hatching, eating, molting, mating, and dying. Then again, it had heard horror stories about fellow spirits trapped in amber for millions of years, only to end up at the end of a silver necklace on a Wal-Mart counter. "Knowing my luck," the soul mumbled, "knowing my luck …"     … George did not know how to stop strangling Michael. He could not make himself stop. That little voice, the often ineffective one, the one that told him to quit doing drugs, to try harder at work, to use condoms, kept telling him to Let go Let go Let go!, practically screaming in George's ear while Michael still choked and gasped and turned first red, then white, and ulti-mately blue. Then and only then, the little voice calmed down, retreating into suicide-counselor mode. Every-