''Killer app?''

You are clueless. The killer application was the world-beating opportunity. (Mr. Lay called that Blockbuster deal ''the killer app for the entertainment industry.'') As often as not, the killer app was not a new product or service, but a beautiful loophole. In the new-economy best seller ''Unleashing the Killer App,'' the first example is a guy who realizes that gas stations in Germany are exempt from the country's rigid early-closing laws for most stores. Voila! German gas stations become virtual shopping malls. By the way, in the 90's, expressions like ''killer app'' were widely believed to have an aphrodisiac effect.

So it was about sex, after all?

Oh, absolutely. Wall Street was the new Hollywood, risk was the new testosterone, Lou Dobbs was Leonardo DiCaprio. Accountants called themselves consultants and bought Miata convertibles. And how cool was Enron? About two years ago a Fortune magazine writer likened utilities and energy companies to ''a bunch of old fogies and their wives shuffling around halfheartedly to the not-so-stirring sounds of Guy Lombardo. . . . Suddenly young Elvis comes crashing through the skylight.'' In this metaphor, the guy in the skin-tight gold-lamé suit was Enron. The writer left out the part where Elvis eats himself to death.

That reminds me, is it true what they say about the name ''Enron''?

Mr. Lay wanted to call it Enteron, until they realized that was a biology term for the digestive tract. In hindsight, Enteron seems right for a company of such ungoverned appetites. Though I prefer my wife's name for the company: End Run.

Did Enron buy political influence?

Please. That's not the way things work in Washington. Enron bought access. Money just got it in the door to make its case. (The case it made probably went something like this: If the government does things Enron's way a lot of people will get very rich and they will be very, very grateful to the wise leaders who made it all possible.) If you're asking whether the Bush administration did favors for Enron, sure it did -- and so, by the way, did the Clinton administration, and both parties in Congress. Attention has focused on a number of fascinating loopholes lawmakers and regulators secretly customized for Enron. But -- and here's another Enron Lesson -- most of what Washington contributed to the glory of Enron it did in plain sight. Politicians demonized government regulation, and methodically dismantled the safeguards set up in previous downturns to protect little investors. They promoted the cult of stock-market speculation, even calling for Social Security funds to be fed to Wall Street. They cut taxes and all but stopped auditing tax returns. I'd say Enron's campaign donations, about $6 million over the past dozen years, paid off better than most of its other investments.

Isn't that what free markets are all about -- getting government out of the way?

Yes and no. Free-marketers believe in reducing regulation. Enron believed in reducing regulation of Enron. Enron was perfectly capable of lobbying for the federal government to take over the electric power grid from the states -- hardly a free-market position, but one that would have made life easier for Enron. It lobbied for tighter regulation of air pollution, because it had figured a way to make money trading emission credits. And at the end Enron sure seemed to be fishing for a bailout. More important, a central tenet of capitalism is that people who run companies are subject to the discipline of the marketplace, as meted out by the shareholders. That can't work if the shareholders are lied to about the condition of the company. Another Enron Lesson: The louder someone yells ''free markets!'' the closer you want to look at his files (assuming they have not been shredded).

But the administration didn't bail out Enron at the end, right?

No, the administration declined to climb aboard that sinking ship. A final Enron Lesson: When business and politics meet, Kenny Boy, it's not a relationship, it's a transaction.

What happens now?

A witch hunt, of course. In the end, with any luck, Congress will stop some of the money sloshing around the political system, and restore a bit of law and order to the wild frontier. But first, a few burnings at the stake. My wise friend Floyd Norris says there's a basic law of the market: When you get rich, it's because you're smart. When you get poor, it's because somebody cheated you. Just as Enron embodied the stock-market delirium on the way up, it will, now that the euphoria is over, be the scapegoat for all those smooth talkers who convinced us dummies that we could be rich.