I'm doing it again.

I swore I'd never do it again. I threw my beeper in the Hudson River. I unpacked my briefcase and stuck it in the hall closet. I sent my suit to the cleaners, got it back, and left it wrapped in plastic. And yet, here I am, doing it again. I'm back chasing ambulances for Richard Rosenberg for ten bucks an hour and thirty cents a mile.

You see, something happened.

What happened was, Tommie went to kindergarten.

If that doesn't make any sense, perhaps I should say, Tommie went to private school kindergarten.

Now I know I'm an old fogy, and times have changed and there's inflation and all that, but still, Tommie's kindergarten costs three times what it cost me to go to college.

It was harder to get into, too. First Tommie had to pass the ERB's. Last year, Tommie was evaluated by examiners who came around to his nursery school and administered aptitude tests. My wife and I sweated out the results for a month and a half before finding out that Tommie had scored above average in both English and math. At age four, for Christ's sake.

Then we applied to kindergarten. We applied to six since competition in New York City is fierce. Each application carried a nonrefundable fee of anywhere from twenty to thirty-five dollars. Each application form had long essay questions such as, "Describe your child's strengths and weaknesses, and explain why you feel he or she would be well-suited to function in our school environment." Despite the fact that the same paragraph, slightly altered, could fit all forms, needless to say, after the first few applications my wife and I were nervous wrecks.

The letters came in February. Tommie was accepted by two schools, rejected by one, and put on three waiting lists!

All of this affected Tommie not at all. Our relief was boundless.

The school we chose for Tommie was the East Side Day School, a primary school, kindergarten through 6th grade, with 250 students, in a converted apartment building on East 84th Street. Tuition was six thousand dollars a year.

It was my wife who decided that Tommie should go to private school. Her chief argument was that the public school classes were too large for a boy of his temperament. The public school had thirty-two kids in the kindergarten. The East Side Day School has twenty-two kids in the kindergarten. So I figure I'm paying ten kids six hundred bucks apiece not to be in Tommie's class.

Actually, my father-in-law, the renowned plastic bag manufacturer, is kicking in half the tuition, perhaps in the hope that someday Tommie will grow up and take over the family business. That helps tremendously, but it still leaves a three thousand dollar hole to fill.

In the months since quitting my job with Richard, I had done my best to make it as a writer. Despite my wife's presumed opinion (she never actually expresses it, but I am convinced it is what she thinks) that I am timid about meeting people, I actually got out and hustled. I got an interview with a director from a soap opera, which went fairly well, except for the fact that I didn't get any work, and I got a job writing copy for some kid's magazine, which was either "Transformers" or "Gobots," I'm not sure, which gives you some idea of my involvement in the project.

The problem is, I didn't want to write soap operas or children's magazines. I wanted to write books. And more than that, I wanted to write books that got published. And more than that, I wanted to write books someone actually read. When you came right down to it, basically, I wanted to be Kurt Vonnegut.

I saw Kurt Vonnegut's Address to the Graduating Class of 1970 at Bennington College. I didn't go to Bennington college, I went to Goddard, and I didn't graduate in 1970, I'm even older than that, but I was living in Massachusetts at the time and I drove up to Bennington with friends to hear Vonnegut speak.

He was wonderful. A tall man with shaggy hair and a drooping mustache, he stood at the lectern and told us, "It isn't often that a total pessimist is invited to speak in the springtime." The audience ate it up. Of course, he had his prepared text in front of him, and all he had to do was deliver it. And, of course, he had a hell of a speech writer.

I've read "Cat's Cradle" five or six times, "Slaughterhouse 5" about that many, "Sirens of Titan" at least three. I wanted to write like that. I thought I could write like that. "What's Vonne-gut that I ain't got?" I'd ask myself. The answer, of course, was talent, style, wit, and a career. Seeing as how, "What's Vonnegut that I ain't got?" was the extent of my wit, it's not surprising I didn't get anywhere.

So, with Tommie in kindergarten, I was up against it. And the sad fact was, what with my liberal arts education, there was just no job I was qualified for that was going to pay me more than ten bucks an hour and thirty cents a mile. So, after much soul-searching, I capitulated. I took my suit out of plastic, packed up my briefcase, strapped on a new beeper, fired up the ancient Toyota, and now I'm back on the road again, investigating accident cases for the law firm of Rosenberg and Stone. Stanley Hasting, P.I., is back in business.

And I'm mixed up in a mystery again. And, oddly enough, it was Tommie going to kindergarten that got me into that too.