ࡱ; SWUdTJK  !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuwxyz{|}~Root Entry Fu@CompObjbWordDocumentObjectPoolԎuԎu 4@   FMicrosoft Word 6.0 Document MSWordDocWord.Document.6;  Oh+'0  $ H l   Dh(C:\MSOFFICE\WINWORD\TEMPLATE\NORMAL.DOTPeter William DizozzaPeter William Dizozza@'(2O@c/ܥe3 eQ )DDTTT:T FT$PZ2PZ܌܌܌PZ^ ""2222`bbb Tr>T2(22222TT22222T2T2`jT6VTTTT2`2.2 The patter of falling snow faded beneath a rush of violins. They were as audible as a stream hidden in the hills, as they played regal processional music from Rimski-Korsakov's Scheherezade. Melody swelled as a nervous girl followed her grandmother along a snow buried path. To her they were way off course but her grandmother led the way.PRIVATE  "Are we almost there?" she asked, exasperated. "Almost." "But Aunt Martha's apartment is that way," she reminded, pointing meekly to the left. There were local stores and apartment buildings nearby, yet they walked through barren land, along dead train tracks. The tracks either caused more inconvenience than developers found the land to be worth, or the transit authority still held some hope of reviving the Rockaway line. Although these abandoned tracks, bisecting the county of Queens, New York, were useless to commuters, they formed the spine of a secluded trail, over which, the girl, Rose, and her grandmother, Sarah Dilio, trudged, after having crossed several fields reserved for little league baseball games. As the tracks forked, Sarah chose the descending trail leading into a valley. They followed the tracks around a bend and, soon, before them gaped a black tunnel, its cement encasement filling both banks of the valley. As Rose and Sarah neared it, the invisible ensemble of violins trembled with an apprehensive decrescendo. "Is that it, Grandma?" "Yes, Rose. Follow me." Lights flickered within the tunnel's depths as brassy trombones heralded a grand entrance. Neon arrows flashed like red lightning in the gray sky as invisible trumpeters blared. As if the tunnel had a tongue, a red carpet rolled out of its entrance over the milky snow, stopping at their feet. "See, Rose? We're expected." "Grandma, I think we'd better go now." Heedless, the woman hobbled slowly forward, beckoning her granddaughter to follow. Rose hesitated. "Inside there is peace and serenity and no more problems. Come on." Rose watched at a widening distance as her little grandmother entered the pulsating depth of the tunnel and the music expanded to the heavens. She whispered, "I don't believe this." At its peak, the music stopped. The tunnel's light and carpet faded until they were gone. Suddenly, Rose heard the snow gently landing on the ground. "Come on, Grandma. We'll be late for dinner!" Rose watched the trail of footprints refill with snow. "Grandma?" Although only four P.M., the sky grew dark. "Grandma?" As the tunnel radiated a cool emptiness she felt a jab of fear. She yelled, "Oh no! Where are you! Ah, ah, ah!" Her throat gurgled on the thought that she might somehow be attracting attention to herself. I Chapter 1 "Where the hell are they?" "I called my house. They must be on their way." "Why didn't you drive her here? "She said she'd rather walk. Rose is with her." "I'm worried that she still lives alone. After all, she's seventy-eight years old. Is there somewhere she could live where she could be happy and cared for?" "You're right. We lose touch with her. She can't live alone much longer. Her neighborhood's been declining every year. She should live with each of us for a time." "She already said she'll never give up her house." "We've got to make her change her mind. But let's not talk about it now. Serve the pasta before it gets cold. Do you know how much a dish of pasta like this would cost at La Stella, and it wouldn't be half as good? A toast to Aunt Martha, the best cook in the world." "Merry Christmas, everyone." "And good fortune throughout the New Year." "Happy New Year!" They clapped. "That was nice, Uncle Harvey." "You always propose toasts at the right times." "Thank you, but where the hell are they?" Representing seven fish at the Christmas Eve dinner table around which these relatives conversed were squid, a baby octopus, eels, mussels, shrimps, lobster, whiting and ziti with anchovies, along with salad, nuts and wine, contained with Waterford crystal glasses and silver and porcelain plates, served over embroidered linen. The dining area, actually a wide hall, overlooked a sunken living room floor. A massive legless console flanked on both sides by speakers rested against the far living room wall beneath red velvet curtained windows. Covering the speakers of the console were wooden grills, like fortress gates, which slid apart to reveal a television screen. The television, on as always, was tuned to the six o'clock news where the question being posed to the inmates of the Bronx State Psychiatric Ward was, "What do you want for Christmas?" The Resurrection, by Peter Dizozza Tex, the forecaster, followed, imploring his viewers that travelers' advisory warnings were still in effect. Around the table, merriment predominated as it always did when these relatives gathered together to eat. Among Aunt Martha's guests were: - the fat aunt and her two sons, one in the Merchant Marines, the other, a local lad, wedded to a healthy young Scottish girl whom relatives often noted was fat with baby after four month's marriage; - the handsome bachelor always clad in linen and silk, now in his seventies who, for the last fifty years, filled the male half of family dreamt romances (By remaining unemployed most of his life he was the picture of health. He attributed his thick black hair to vitamin E and a few other of the host of pills he daily consumed.); - the grammar school teacher involved in a marriage that ended with divorce, but it was not her fault (Was it her fault that her husband had to marry to discover he was gay?); - the disagreeable brother-in-law, who spent a majority of social hours in the bathroom; and - John Morse, the stuffed, bored teenager nephew who, after two helpings of lobster and ziti cast a yearning gaze toward the patio of the second story apartment where the family was gathered. Versed in the annals of common courtesy, he asked, "May I please be excused?" An argument nearly started over the degree of politeness exhibited by a youth who departed from the dinner table before demitasse was served, but it dropped when that youth, John, noted that his older cousin had already left the table to do homework. "But Timothy was allowed out." His mother, conscious that her husband had also left the company of her relatives for the bathroom, saw no reason to extend the restriction and reluctantly replied, "Well, all right." John withdrew out to the patio of the second story apartment house as a few straggling snowflakes seesawed from the sky. The street lamps, seemingly doubled in intensity, lit the breathtaking sight of an empty city park. Naked trees, bulging with white muscles beneath a constellation dome of colorfully lit apartment windows, soothed John. The streets were nearly empty of pedestrians and hushed by a breeze. All the cars were still. A chill settled in John's bones. As he decided to return inside to partake in tea and dessert, he noticed Rose leaning on a lamppost. She was preparing a plausible presentation of her story at the dinner table. The more she repeated the less she said. Sighing, she looked at the apartment and, catching sight of her cousin on the patio, called, "John!" "Rose? Where have you been?" he called back, the snow buffering reverberation from his voice. She trod to the garage ramp under the terrace and craned her neck, urging, "Please come down and open the door." She hated the apartment's allegedly two-way intercom system that unlocked the lobby door because it produced a nerve shattering buzz. John entered the living room from the porch and began contriving excuses for leaving the apartment when he registered that Rose was alone. He ran back out and yelled, "Where's Grandma?" He felt the sensation that apartment lights within the radius of three stories were being shut off for eyes to stare without glare. The apartment lobby contained a table with mock drawers, a plastic covered chair with a chain attachment, and a desk with several books (Farm Wanted and The American History Quiz Book) nailed upright to its surface, as if for ready reference. Adjacent to the desk was a soft couch, chained to the floor and wrapped in clear plastic, which provided the seat upon which Rose reviewed her experience with a bewildered, pacing John. At first, John assumed that Rose was careless, but he soon concluded that his grandmother, yearning for adventure, had somehow managed to give Rose the slip. Upstairs the immediate reactions were panic, hysteria and guilt followed by repentance and apologies to God for all the sins that had brought upon the family such tragedy. Uncle Harry called the police who arrived to perform the social therapy of asking questions and assuring everyone that Mrs. Dilio would turn up very soon. Following the passage of 24 hours without a word or signal from Grandma Dilio, police patrols of the area in which she was last seen produced these comments from the sergeant assigned the case, "We're doing all we can; I wouldn't give up hope;" and "No, but this is a big city." A month later, although the alert continued, since the police had no clue, they classified the search a formality. It took a back seat to immediate concerns. For Rose, time stopped. Her recollection of that fateful Christmas day grew hazy, more like a shared dream than a real event, and, accompanying that event into the unreality of a dream state were all her memories involving her grandmother. It was as if Sarah never was. As each passing day added boredom to a life of piling complications, most of all, Rose was nagged by the thought that, before vanishing, her grandmother had called for her. While relatives consoled her, Rose found it difficult to suppress the amazement, curiosity and lassitude that followed the hint of her memory. In losing her grandmother, she had gained a dream. I Chapter 2 On that fateful Christmas of 1972 John received a wide, luminous tie, several fine point pens, a watch, a stereo turntable for his precious receiver, and a Ping-Pong table -- actually a family present, for the family, purchased by the family to encourage family togetherness. John's parents, both professionals, spared no expense for rousing evenings with their child although, despite the table, such evenings were few. John had a girl friend, at least in his mind, as they were never together. He could still talk about her with his friends since association between this girl, Sally Bortka, and John's friends was also at a minimum. John maintained an intellectual and spiritual acquaintance with a similarly situated fellow name George Cocheran whose matching intellectual capacity and almost equal superiority complex kept them close. Their friendship was lucky because, with their sense of superiority they masked such inferiority and insecurity that they had, at the age of 14, already dismissed virtually everyone else in the world as assorted verifications of the same major disappointment. Since Christmas, George would visit John's basement to play table tennis, as did many other neighborhood boys. In fact, because of the Ping-Pong table John was a popular kid on the block. His basement was an area of social gathering. Meetings would be called with the following dialogue, while John was inside reading. "It's cold out." "Here's John's house." "His mother's nice." "Did you hear about his Ping-Pong table?" "Let's see if he wants to play." So it was John's warm basement where most of the block hung out. Typical conversation ranged from sex to religion and having little of the former and saturated with the latter they eventually talked about sports. One particular exchange between this homogeneous group of guys did consider religion, however, following proper acknowledgement of the day's football game. It ensued during a Ping-Pong game one Sunday evening in February as the inflammable ball went tock tick, tock tick, back and forth and John wondered whether all worldly possessions were such a burden. "Hear the sermon today?" "Ha! I broke every rule last night. You should have seen the girls at that dance." Referring back to the sermon, George added, "It's something my mother can fall back on when she runs out of things to say. She says, 'Do what the priest said.'" "I don't believe in God," said one of the players as he returned a serve. The ball hit the caulk ceiling in a colossal high fly, and to the table it bounced despairingly, landing on the other side of the net, unreturned, thereby controversially scoring a winning point. The side that got the point agreed: "That's good." "No it's not; right John?" asked the side that lost. Being on the losing side, John had to nod. A debate briefly brightened the moment as George established that ceiling shots should never be good. Conversation resumed. "I'm an atheist. I can only believe in what I see. Physics will explain everything." This boy was an "A" physics student at Archbishop Molloy high school. John said, "Is physics going to explain what happened to my grandmother?" Everyone grew quiet and self conscious. Since Christmas John was known for injecting conversations with his grandmother's disappearance, as if that was the one crucial distinction between him and the rest of the world, lest anyone think him merely one of the boys. The search for the Middle Village table tennis champ became superfluous. All visitors but George were gone within five minutes. John was paranoid about their departure. "They think she's a bag lady. They look at those Creedmore rejects dwelling in the subways and think she's one them." George offered consolation with a nod, "I'm sure they don't." John admitted, "This bugs me." "I've noticed. But what bugs you about it?" "I've told you." "You said she went into a tunnel and disappeared. That's not what's bothering you." "Then it's the mystery of the whole thing. Do you want to help me find out more? My relatives and the police haven't gone beyond that fact, and I think there's something that those older people are missing. I think it's something beyond reality -- something supernatural." "Well," George skeptically reviewed some of the facts, "Rose was there. The police questioned her. Right?" "Sure, but you don't think they listened to her, do you? She was hysterical." "John." George was ready to offer his opinion. "What if, as you suspect, your grandmother did run away to make her last years, shall we say, special? I remember meeting her. She was a tough lady. I think she's still alive." John shook his head. "The weather's been so cold." George continued, "If we try, we could find her. We'd be heroes." Sparked, John picked up where George left off. "And surely because of our closeness to the people involved we could learn more than the impersonal police." "We'll search the area, question witnesses, particularly Rose." "O. K.. We'll get to the bottom of this." As preparation, they bought a multicolored thirty-five cent note pad for listing questions, answers and observable oddities. That Monday after school, as they walked off to the other side of town to visit their mixed-up principal witness, they found that their curiosity endowed them with a gate of authority. Since her experience, and not simply because of it, Rose suffered a fear created by her own self-denial. She viewed life clearly and was commendably normal and typical on the outside, but within she felt a longing for love, understanding and sympathy. Having listened intently whenever abnormal psychology was the topic of conversation, she labeled herself a nymphomaniac with hidden masochistic desires. She did extremely well in school where she was in the ninth grade, and was on friendly terms with Sister Beatrice, the principal at Mary Louis Academy, the all girl parochial high school she attended. Sally was Rose's true friend and commuting companion. However, she took pills called ups and downs and was openly in the market for a good hallucinogen. She regulated herself around an inner time clock whose alarm flashed "nap" around 2:30 P.M. (the middle of her algebra class) absent the proper pill with lunch. This was because she allotted, at most, only six hours for sleep following ever-extending days and, because of her age, 14, had yet to drink her first cup of coffee. As a by-product of her chemically induced extremes, she was, when at her most alert, in a state where all that mattered was her own immediate well being, contentment and gratification; and, in general, she did not distinguish between her dreams and reality, each seeming equally caustic and ironic. All of the above, her trim figure and her expressive face, provoked fascination from males otherwise needful of female acquaintance. She preferred mature fellows, at least over 16, who, for attention, supplied anything she might need, and who started her needing in the first place. Although she was ignorant of the following, she was also John's girl friend. They both acknowledged the other's presence for over eight years because they attended the same grammar school. Staring at her from his assigned seat in the fourth row was more than John could bear. Sally and Rose were busy laughing, listening to the radio and doing homework in Rose's basement when, unannounced, George and John arrived. "Good evening," they said as they clumped down the stairs. Seconds later, the girls responded. "Hhhhi George; hhhhi John." John stiffened upon realization that in the basement with Rose was his long lost love. He portentously asked, "How are you?" to which Sally smiled and casually replied, "Fine." George, still feeling fairly loose said, "I suppose you're wondering what we're doing here." Wide-eyed, heads shaking in negation, Sally and Rose exuded such superiority over their masculine peers that they provoked the pressure of immeasurable debt. John, figuring he could read from the multicolored note pad, stuttered, "Well, uh, we, uh. Could we have a few questions we'd like to ask?" and received stinging glances of suspicion in return. John walked to the far corner of the room, passing the pad to George who said, "Rose, can we speak with you in private for a few minutes?" Sally said, "What's the big idea?" to which George, distinctly less in awe of a pubescent drug addict than was John, explained, "Keep out of this, Sally. We're trying to find Mrs. Dilio." He changed his tone and addressed Rose, "Do you mind if Sally hears this?" Rose answered "Of course not." He shrugged. "We think a little clear headed thinking will solve the mystery of her disappearance." Without encouraging George, she said, "Oh." "How old was your grandmother?" "Seventy-eight." "Was she married?" "Once. Couldn't John tell you this?" John agreed, rejoined the group and explained to George and Sally that their grandmother was widowed at seventy-two. She outlived her brothers and sisters and lost most of her friends, either through death or relocation. She owned a brick house in Ozone Park where no day differed from the last unless new neighbors were black or insisted on painting their houses in variance with the local color scheme. Unfortunately, such events were happening with greater frequency, so all in all, he concluded, his grandmother kept to herself. As John understood, Rose visited on every holiday. As for himself, he visited rarely, for example, when his mother recently went over to the house to speculate about its future. Rose reminded John, who was not particularly proud of this fact, that when he was younger and his grandfather was still alive, he practically lived with his grandparents. After nearly twenty minutes of wandering conversation, led further astray by George's clever and/or witty remarks, meant to charm Rose, Rose became relaxed enough to retell the final encounter. "Dad brought her over early Christmas Eve before he went to work. Mom was shopping all day so I sat with Grandma. She made pancakes shaped with cookie cutters to look like bells and Christmas trees. We shook powdered sugar over them and ate them and just talked. She asked me if I had a boy friend." Sally added a knowledgeable giggle. Rose sarcastically agreed, "Yeah, right." She continued, "And we watched 'Secret Storm' and talked some more." As if to clarify, John asked, "Grandma/granddaughter type talk?" "I guess. Nothing deep or foreboding. In fact, I was getting happy because it was snowing and it was near Christmas. My parents came home when we were in the middle of making another batch of cookies. Grandma told them to go without us because we wanted to walk over. It's a short walk. They always take the car but it takes longer with all the lights and one ways. We left for Aunt Martha's apartment around four but instead she walked to the little league fields. I like going there because it's like going to the country. I had on my rubber boots and I love the snow. Still, it was Grandma's idea. I couldn't stop her. We walked a straight path through the fields and then along the dead tracks 'til we reached an old train tunnel. I was surprised she knew the way but she said she knew the way from a long time ago. It was weird, maybe because the snow was changing everything but it was exciting, too, because the tunnel was, like, calling her in with music - I definitely heard music - and then, after she went in, it became quiet and still, like nothing happened, except she was gone, and it was like I had walked there alone and that I was always alone." Rose held back tears as George asked, "But Rose, where was she going?" John answered, "I think all she said was that Rose should come along." Rose was crying. "She said we were going to see God." I Chapter 3 George hugged Rose and said, "Please. Forgive us. Don't cry. It'll be all right." Meanwhile, John and Sally covered their mouths. It was past dinner time so John and George went home. At school that Wednesday, during a math class, John thought about his grandmother. However, the teacher's persistence in explaining how triangles are proved similar called attention to itself. Tuning in, he heard, "If we prove two right triangles have one equal angle, we've proven that they're similar. However, with regular triangles we need proof of at least two angles." John wondered, when you call them right triangles that means one of the angles is already proven, so does the teacher mean proof of an angle other than the ninety degree angle since, by definition a right triangle contains a ninety degree angle which, hence, doesn't need proof??? but he was afraid to clarify having learned not to waste valuable class time with his convoluted questions. Lately, he preferred being a plumber, thinking, anything to forget math and get out of here; why am I here? My grandmother is gone and I'm getting a homework assignment of problems one through twelve inclusive. Math test Tuesday, oh shit. Now I wish I was old and retired. This mental whine marked the start (a start reflecting the impetus of many previous false starts) of John's new outlook on life. In his first semester at high school, he ranked ninth in his class. His parents were ecstatic. He did not know what he had done to achieve such high marks. The following semester he ranked among the hundreds and from then on he had grown increasingly disillusioned. During lunch the next day, while standing and eating in the cafeteria, he and George resolved to pursue what they termed their "God business" by visiting the tunnel after school. Their plans evaporated when they left the cafeteria and followed the crowd of boys around the parking lot toward the side entrance of the school. After lunch hour, John and George always got caught with the mob, so today they rushed ahead, saying they would get to class on time for once rather than risk detention for again being late. Best of all, they would beat the pushing and squeezing that always resulted when the herds of boys were shepherded into the side entrance doors after lunch. However, because lunchtime was not over, the side doors were not yet opened to readmit the students for the afternoon and, on this occasion, John and George learned that "beat the clock" initiative could be inopportune. Upon the shoulders of the assistant principal, Brother Louis, fell the task of student discipline. Although a member of a celibate order, the Vincentians, Brother Louis sported lay clothes and a bushy mustache which, with a facial resemblance to Clark Gable, called to mind none other than Rhett Butler. He was worried that with all the pushing and shoving of students returning to the building from the parking lot grounds, one of them might get hurt, and he resolved that day to stop whoever was running ahead to the detriment of orderly group behavior. Most students, having been in trouble before, cowered back at the sight of his authoritative figure at the door, but not John and George. To their dismay, they were in trouble. After tense handing of I.D. cards to the the stern faced brother, John and George were fined thirty minutes detention. John was notably overwrought because, ever since his rank plummeted from ninth to two hundredth, no one other than he left the school more promptly at three; and it seemed an outrage that his model reflection of intelligence and moral poise should be disgraced over such a minor error in judgment. He would explain to the assistant principal how innocently free from wrong he could be, and that would be fine. True to his plan he did express himself, not without resentment, and, in addition to the half hour detention, was fined two additional minutes. That afternoon, while everyone else was free, John and George kept their appointment of silent standing in an empty classroom, watching shafts of the sun's rays creeping up the blackboard as the school emptied and the assistant principal sat doing paperwork. George, keeping his thoughts to himself, left promptly at three thirty, so John spent an agonizing two minutes alone. After quietly taking his leave of the school taskmaster, John glanced hopefully about the exit doors. Once sure that George was already halfway home, he grew doubtful they would ever speak again after this proof that they could be each other's bad influence. Glad to be alone, intangibly wounded by the detention, though pleased to blame others for his wasted time, he was rushing homeward, wrapped in thought of what he would tell his parents, when he was disoriented by the voice of Rose's mature friend, Sally. She was still in plaid uniform, without a coat on this unseasonably mild day in February, direct from the all girl school where she had stayed late that afternoon to discuss her academic problems with the local drug pusher. She said "Oh, hhhhi John," to which John replied "Wha'? Whoa. Oh, how are you?" "Fine. Just leaving school?" He mumbled curses and said, "Yes. How could you tell?" She pointed to his arm. "You're carrying your books." "I got detention." She caught her breath in brief mock shock. "You? Detention? What did you do?" "It's too stupid. I'm not sure. It was ... I don't know." He spoke but could not think at the same time so he gradually stopped. "Well, it's just too bad," she scolded. "You should have known better than to have done whatever it was you did." He whined, "Yeah, but it wasn't my fault. I try to be on time for afternoon attendance for once like my homeroom teacher says, and what happens? I offend the notoriously strict assistant principal and get detention. I thought in this country the doors to school are always open." "What are you talking about? You mean like church?" "I'm mad at that school. It's wronged me before. On tests, just because my proof about triangles isn't numbered correctly I got twelve points taken off!" "Geometry?" She nodded. "They are kind of overly particular about procedure." "And that's twelve points off thirty. I failed the test with no other mistakes. God, when I think how I used to rank ninth in that school." Sally attempted to verbalize an empathetic understanding, "I'm sorry John. I know, like I ..." but John felt unstopped at the mouth. "And what's going to happen? I'll get a job and it'll be the same boring typical thing where I'll meet up with extra-particular supervisors, and they'll always be there lording over me. I'll grow old and they'll give me a watch; or by then I'll work for a computer that won't give me anything." "If that's how you look at it... ." "To be successful I'm supposed to go to college where people run stoned around the campus, protesting and acting cool. I'll start thinking everything's going for me, set against the ways of the world until my lifestyle leads me to become a part of it; and by then I'll have too much self-interest to change what I've established myself in." According to Sally's interruption meter, John's tirade deserved at least five minutes of her own nonstop thought venting. "Sure. But your problem is that you can't conform to the conformity of being a young radical. That's what I do. Why can't you conform?" John frowned. "That's witty." "If you want my advice ..." "Save it. I'm expecting the answer from Ann Landers after she finishes all those letters from the mothers of homosexuals." Sally always thought John was too intellectual for her and was excited by the ease of responding to his immature diatribe. Rarely having the chance to express her feelings aloud she said, "That's not what we're talking about." and she proceeded to describe the proletariat work ethic. "Listen. You don't know any better. You don't have any constructive suggestion, so why don't you try to take life in stride. Who cares about them? Just get whatever you want out of life. Work more for yourself and not to please the other guy and see how much better you'll feel." John did not notice his house as they walked past it on Sally's path to her own. Sally continued, "You have to learn how to relax. Either prepare yourself for a long stay or screw yourself up. It's your life. You have the right to screw it up. It depends on the person you want to be. As for me, I go to school and I've been able to adjust. That shows I'm normal. If you try, you can destroy all your day-to-day feelings and become numb to the ways of the world. That's what school is preparing us for. You work like a robot, politely answer yes and no, but don't seriously think about anything. Just figure out what people with power over you want and give it to them. Wake up in the morning. Eat a good breakfast and go to school so that you can come home and go to bed. You get a job; get married; and do the same." Her mouth creased with an oversimplified sneer. "Then what's the good of living?" John wondered aloud as they briskly walked along the sidewalk and he ducked stray branches from expanding hedges. She answered with seductive mystery, "You have days off. There's time for fun. You can escape. Get into yourself. Take others with you. Come with them." "Then how do you escape?" "Oh, you must have a lot of ways." "Like my grandmother?" "I was thinking more in terms of partying, but sure. I guess you can do anything with your head." "Even disappear?" Sally declined to answer. "You know, after you and George came over that night I thought about what your next step should be. You can learn a lot from where a person lives. My suggestion is that you search her home." "Oh. That's a great idea. Do you want to see where she lived?" "It might be interesting." "I can get in through the back. There's a little flap that the dog used to go through so we don't have to tell anyone. We'll just go informally." "I can probably go with you this weekend if you do it early in the day." John was thrilled. "This Saturday's fine with me." Sally, unaware that she was starved of any conversation releasing inner frustration, felt stimulated by what she considered the intellectual nature of her encounter with John. She concluded their walk with an officious handshake, saying, "This is where I live. See you Saturday morning. Our visit should prove to be most enlightening." Thanks to Sally's attention, John went home feeling better. He bounded upstairs, directly into his bedroom, and listened to the band, "Yes" on his stereo. Unable to progress from what had been discussed only moments prior, he forgot entirely about what happened early that day at school. John's stereo was one of the few things for which he felt a defined passion and concern. He loved it, dusted it, and spent hours gazing at catalogues that offered accessories purporting to upgrade it. While the music played, he abandoned all thought and allowed his mind to be ruled by desire for the latest audio innovation, quadraphonic sound. I Chapter 4 George was maturing. He was ready to go beyond his scholastic schedule; he also needed money. His solution was to work at a job which, although not the job he dreamt about, which was managing a large entertainment corporation, was preferable to carrying bags to housewives' cars at King Kullen or working at the checkout counter at Woolworth's, and infinitely preferable to his former occupation, paperboy for the Long Island Press. Every Monday and Thursday George would go from school directly to a small attached house on Dartmouth Street. It was brick with grey window molding, floored throughout with an old green carpet which rested over synthetic padding that had disintegrated to dust. The closets were bare but for a few suits soaked with the smell of mothballs. Its walls were lined with curtains and books, which, coupled with dated "modern" furniture, created an aura of severe, but homey depression, which was apt because its owner, still recovering from a prolonged marriage, had been abruptly divorced. George worked as the gardener, valet, cleaning lady, and manservant for this eccentric and impressionable gentleman, a man who had seen more than two episodes of the television series, Upstairs Downstairs. The only drawback (or the main drawback) to his employer's behavior was his almost total lack of wealth; hence it was more a madness than a wry whimsey that he displayed. However, George played his role to the best of his ability and, since his employer, the house's sole inhabitant, was not messy in theory, George dusted, read magazines, and watched the midafternoon T.V. shows Astro-Boy, Speed Racer and Gigantor, all made in Japan, and sometimes screened movies which this man, Beauregard Bureau, would borrow from the rental department at Films Incorporated where he worked. The house had thick curtains for movie screenings but, even though the movie projector was stored in the closet, the curtains remained closed. As George swept out the kitchen he recalled the details that led to this job. He joined this household, a mere five residential blocks from his parents' home, on a recommendation made to him by a spinster to whom he had delivered the Press. One day, when he was collecting weekly fees from her, she said to him, "Good boy. Let me tell you about that man across the street. He's divorced so he needs help around the house, mowing for instance - Just look at his lawn. He asked me to look out for a responsible young helper, and you've impressed me with your deliveries." After that, she shut her door. All George noticed at the time was that she took back all her change. "Thank you, Ma'am" he said, ignoring the verbal tip until someone found his delivery sheet, collected from his customers and took over his paper route. Declaring aloud juvenile bankruptcy he inquired about that cleaning job. He found that employment at twenty dollars for three hours a day, twice a week, was infinitely preferable to delivering papers to cheap ingrates. School records marked him as employed, leaving him with a clear conscience when he did not always participate in extracurricular activities. His parents told him he did not have to work, but he told them he wanted to work and they agreed that having a job was a good experience. He waltzed as he swept. Beauregard was at the doorway. "Say, George." "Yes, sir," answering as he had been told. "Did 'Ma Bell' deliver the Manhattan phone directory yet?" "No, sir." he said, while thinking, not a bad deal. Not bad at all. I Chapter 5 Sally was having second thoughts about John and their visit to Mrs. Dilio's house, he who was so beneath her standard. He broke down her barrier when they were talking about things that frustrated them both, but she later questioned how he would hold out with an attractive girl like her for an extended period of time. Still, she wondered if, even with him, there was a possibility of being raped. Perhaps Sally's doubts about John would have been validated had she known he was trying to order contraceptives through the mail. With no time to do so, he was only thinking about it; contemplating as he read National Lampoon Magazine. He had taken a while to realize that this outing he had arranged, a trip to his Grandma's house, was like going on an actual date, his first, so he wanted it to be good. He began worrying about things like wardrobe, socks and clean underwear. He was working up to a state of apprehension soon to leave him devoid of any intelligence whatsoever. While he was still in contact with the world he could neither plan nor hold himself responsible for what he would do in it. It was Saturday morning, unearthly for its hour, 8:00 A.M., for it was February and rather dark. Caked snow still stuck in patches to the sidewalk from a light snowfall of earlier in the week. Clouds packed the sky. John feared it was the wrong day to look at an old house. With growing anguish he went to call upon Sally. Hesitantly he pushed the door bell. A familiar melody gonged throughout her hollow sounding house and from a second story window out popped her head yelling, "God damn it, you're waking up my parents. I'll be down in a minute!" Minutes passed before he heard in a calmer tone the words, "Hhhhi John. I'm sorry but my parents are still asleep. It's so early." "Eight o'clock," he confirmed. "I thought you were busy this afternoon." "Not any more. I should have called you. We could have left later." "Yeah. Sorry. Cold out." "Yeah." She rubbed her bare hands. As they walked she asked, "How do we get there?" "We take the subway to the bus and walk a few blocks to this little circle area and it's there." "How do we get in?" "She always left the back door open; and I remember it had a hole for the dog. We can get in through there." "Sure?" "Pretty sure. It was this flap the dog could push open." He sounded nervous. "Well. We can always see a movie." "This early? This is crazy. I should have brought lunch." "I have an orange." "We'll have it for breakfast. For lunch ..." "No McDonald's." "Burger King." When faced with token booths their thoughts turned criminal. Not nervy enough to hustle through the exit doors or crawl under the turnstiles, John inserted a token, waited, and Sally pushed him and herself through -- their contact a first hint of physical communication. They boarded a "GG" train, sitting in the rear, each dressed in the fashion of the time; patched jeans, button flannel shirt, jersey, suede midriff coat, tatty fur coat, funny ski hat, black leather gloves, old boots and sneakers. Put them on either one. At 169th street they transferred to the bus, paying the fare, and sat by the window. As they approached a shopping mall more people boarded, sitting space became scarce, and blocked visibility made knowing when to get off a test of instinct. John pulled the stop cord hard, and often, so the bus seemed to pick up passengers beyond its capacity. When he and Sally finally decided to depart they were the only ones to do so. With difficulty, they hopped off, leaving the bus to continue its neighborhood orbit. It had taken nearly an hour to get the use of public transportation out of the way and they were still in Queens. Now that they were on their own they stopped their chatter about the lines around the movie houses showing the Exorcist, and the latest programming on television, and went on to alleviate their tension over the break-in they were planning. They concluded, John because of sincere rationalization and Sally because she really did not care, that they were acting within John's rights as grandson. At last they arrived at the quiet block in Ozone Park. John's grandmother lived in a solid stone home built at the turn of the century, a bit neglected but permanent as a mountain. Sally was disappointed that it was not more foreboding. "Is that it?" He assumed the tone of a real estate agent. "Sure is. Out here it isn't much but wait until we're inside." They crept around, kicking away untouched snow, walked up wooden steps to the backyard patio and tried the door. "Oh shit." There was not even a hole for the dog. Sally questioned what induced her to speak to John in the first place as John leapt down the steps, parted two wooden door flaps that lay inclined upon the ground, stepped down and kicked open the cellar door. A lady popped out of the house next door with an accusative expression on her face. "Get out of there!" she demanded, her eyes squeezed in anger. Sally politely replied, elegantly descending the patio steps, "Sorry we disturbed you. We're doing a scholastic project on old houses in this neighborhood. You don't know how rare it is to find a lovely house like this." John added, "And so rare to find neighbors who care, and who themselves maintain such lovely homes. How long have you lived here?" The lady acknowledged the compliment with a bow and pointed to a mighty oak, "I was here when that tree was a twig. But now the neighborhood is changing. My boys want to move me. Say, what are you doing down there?" Sally explained, "This is his grandmother's house." The lady lit up. "I recognize you, John Morselino. I knew you when you were knee high and I doubt your parents would be very happy about this. Get out of there before I call the police." Sally and John visited a nearby delicatessen and ate. Sally asked, "Did your father shorten your name." John curtly answered, "Yes, but I thought it was before I was born." As he tore unwanted crust from his sandwich he said, "We'll go back later." "What about that lady?" asked Sally, sipping cola through a straw. "We'll be quiet. Nobody's going to keep me out of my own grandmother's house if I want to go in. First let's visit the new suburban outlets of our favorite New York department stores." Sally agreed. "Good. Let's kill time." They killed most of the morning in an A&S clothing department and smoke shop where they admired packaging art, removed labels, put pants in wrong size categories and did what covert little they could to change until unnatural the pose of the mannequins; then they ran up the down escalators and pretended to wait on a growing cashier line. Having but small change, they felt the limit in what they might buy. Then, when it came time to depart they were faced with the challenge of finding the exit. They were slowed by display items that beckoned them to stop and admire. When at last they saw their way to street level they commented how yechy the day had become, and since the temperature had risen above freezing, the only type of precipitation they could expect would be rain. Returning to the block of flats, they chanced to see their nosy interloper, the nice lady next door, leave her home carrying a list and a folded wheel cart. Since it was 11:30 on a Saturday morning they anticipated her return at no earlier than 2:00. As they scaled the side wall of Sarah's house, Sally asked about the cross, about five feet high, planted in the ground of the backyard. It resembled a Celtic cross in that it consisted of a ring of shining steel two feet in diameter circling the intersection of two rugged planks. As water weighed heavy on the dark sky, the light cast upon its ring reflected an unnaturally bright glow. "Whose grave?" Sally asked. John was embarrassed. "The dog. They had a toy poodle. I think he's buried here." After John pushed open the cellar door they entered an even darker place, the depths and foundation of the house - a red laundry basket on its cement floor illuminated by a ground floor window near the ceiling. Obtuse angles of piping tangled the area below a nearby laundry sink; boxes lined the walls and ancient, rusted tools hung dangerously from the ceiling. At the far end of the basement was a creepy, makeshift room, and a few feet from that was an open stairwell that led to the kitchen. Sally seriously suggested that they had gone far enough for the day but John, his obedience replaced with curiosity and nostalgia, walked up the stairs. The kitchen was a narrow parallelogram with large utilities, the most prominent being a sink. This sink came complete with what, to John and Sally, looked like the famous tough greasy food stain on T.V., but which, in actuality, was the more mysterious sediment from clear water dripping regularly on one spot of porcelain for over thirty years. A gas oven rested over a stove; yellowed cabinets weighed upon the walls; a bulletin board was covered with crayon drawings; and over a curved edged refrigerator (with a horizontal lever for a handle) were red clay hand prints of assorted offspring, including John and Rose. The floor was panelled in a large pattern of square and rectangular linoleum tiles. The refrigerator lit when opened. Its inside was cold and nearly empty, but not rancid. John mumbled at that point that the heat in the house was running, gratefully noticing that the house, itself, was not cold. They turned to the dining area which merged into the living room. On brown wall-to-wall carpet stood a table covered with delicate doilies holding a tin water pitcher and salt and pepper men taken from Trader Vic's. A glass cabinet enclosed hand painted china. In the living room was a grand multi-band radio, a TV wearing a helmet sprouting martian antennae, a wooden rocking chair with embroidered cloth laid upon its back and an easy chair with a companion footstool. On the left wall were selections from the complete "Modern Library" including The Hunchback, Sam Pepys, and Les Miserables. John opened a closet by the stairs and stared into a long door mounted mirror, through which he viewed himself and Sally snooping across the room. The closet was filled with hanging jackets and folded sweaters, and on a back shelf was a shoe box containing a spool of thread, a needle, a brittle paperback copy of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" guaranteed to crumble with one more reading, and a hundred foot spool of sixteen millimeter film which John immediately pocketed. There were other cabinets and drawers but Sally, trancelike, was following the curve of the bannister leading up the stairs. John followed immediately behind her. As they ascended they passed a wall of framed needlepoint pictures depicting birds in trees. Their pace quickened as they approached the top step where a large black chest menaced them. It contained only linen. The first room off the hallway held a queen size bed covered with silk sheets. This desirable room was John's grandfather's after he and his wife ceased sleeping together. When he died Sarah said he had gone away and left it elegantly furnished, as if waiting for his return. Upon entering the room, John and Sally could not help exhale a misplaced sigh of relief, as if, after an endless journey, they were finally home. John glanced about and jumped back to the hallway. Above him was a latched door in the ceiling which he reached by mounting a chair. He opened it, relishing the knowledge that he was never allowed to, and found, most prominently, a folded ladder which he pulled down. Sally climbed up to join him, striking a match which, casting a flickering light, recalled for both memories they never had. The first box they opened contained party clothes, exactly what they wanted. They left the attic with a French army uniform and a light blue ruffled dress, each respectfully waiting outside the bathroom door while the other dressed. Thus costumed they, together, walked down into the living room, a well-to-do couple in 18th century Europe, young and confident, wife: adorable, frivolous; husband: serious, forgiving -- beginning their independent life together. They sat by the front windows, John on the easy chair and Sally on the rocking chair. It was a long trip but they were home at last. Outside was drizzling, and John stated, "Well, my dear, look at the weather. We arrived just in time." Sally glanced out and confirmed, "It's raining. Let's light the fire." "I'll get the wood." He rose. "Okay" She rose and followed him back to the no longer eerie basement, which they viewed as the familiar room it had not yet become. The Dilios never kept logs in the house, but while down in the cellar, John and Sally visited the homemade corner room where they found a library of old records. They brought a pile back to the living room to play on a Victrola capable of spinning at 16 2/3, 33 1/3, 45 and 78 revolutions per minute. After setting the platter speed to the last they dropped the brittle 10" disks through a long spindle and unleashed the automatic record changer. The first selection was a harmonica performance (by Larry Adler) of Ravel's Bolero, to which Sally danced and John paced, stately, if without direction, until they remembered the empty hearth. John announced that he would venture out to the back yard to get logs. Sally turned up the record player volume and followed. Outside they could faintly hear the Andante Cantabile of Tchaikovsky. As snow floated about her, Sally stood still before the wooden cross with the metal ring. Overcome by solitude and an inevitable end, she beckoned John to join her. He lay down some logs and walked over to face her -- the tough cotton of his uniform rubbing against him -- intrigued by her loose hair flowing over the shoulders of her stiff party dress. Rather than putting the dress on for the first time, she looked as if she had, for the first time, let down her long red hair. She asked, totally serious, "John, do you love me?" "Yes." Thus stirred, he was filling with love. "Say it, please." "I loved you the first time I saw you." Her head shook in negation. "Kneel down." He knelt on one knee in the snow, as large snow flakes, slushy and heavy with water, fell around the yard. "I have something to tell you," she continued. "I'll never see you again." His passion flamed. "Why?" "My love is avowed. I'm a novice. Soon I'll be a nun." "Ah." He answered with relief, simultaneously confronting and solving a mystery hitherto unknown. "God claims your mind and soul. No wonder you're such an animal." "Yes. I'm a woman divided; split by intangible forces." "And you lied." He scanned her with pleased disappointment. "Yes. I lied while you've only spoken truth to me." "No. Actually, I am a Cardinal, The Cardinal, and my devotion to you, never seeming holy beneath the surface, is indeed, unholy, even on its surface. I cover my heart to catch the warmth from my shame." There he placed it, adding, "I feel the sable on which is inscribed the letter A." Looking up, he saw her nostrils flare with delight while she bowed over him with weighty woe, "Then we have both lied." "Oh aye," he agreed. "We lied and lied." "Together we can purge our lies. You who've always loved me, kneel on both knees so that I may bestow upon you my final blessing." She touched his brow with her palm. It rested on the bridge of his nose. "You, Morselino, Cardinal, protector of little sisters, slayer of their demons and dragons, may attack me, immediately." (The tableau described above recalls a still from a short 1909 D.W. Griffith film adaptation of Tolstoy's, Resurrection.) John led Sally up the stairs and carried her over the bedroom threshold as the multi-disk sound track from Finian's Rainbow played. He dropped her on the bed and then jumped on it, the army boots upsetting the covers. With a hand outstretched he said, "You will stay here to brighten my toad's existence for all eternity. Do you agree to that?" She said, "Yes, yes, and to much more," her dress rising as she raised her knees. He abruptly knelt, the bedsprings bouncing Sally upright, so that, both semi-recumbent, they could stare, eye level, at each other. As he reached for her shoulders she stopped him, asking, "Do you want me for my mind?" "No, I want you for your soul." He unclasped the back of her dress and pulled it down, almost disintegrating her languorous mood, but he became further lost upon sight of how beautiful she appeared. She felt unreasonably safe staring back at him. She pulled the rest of her dress off as John pulled off his shirt. Sally thought she was dreaming because she knew John was too young for this. She watched outside of herself, as if viewing from the door. John looked down at her and said, "Although the universe is filled to the brim with planets and stars, how can I say no to one more?" Without listening, Sally said, "Is this your first time?" Lost in observation, he said, "You're an unfinished masterpiece." Unbuckling his belt, he added in third person, "He unbuckles his belt knowing full well what comes next, cinematically." Under his breath he adds, "The scene always fades out and it's later." "Turn out the light." "What?" "Mister, I said, turn out the light." "Like the movies?" "Yeah, but this scene isn't over." The pattering sound of the rain could be faintly heard beneath creaking noises and from the phonograph, a female voice singing with an Irish accent: "It's that old devil moon That you stole from the sky It's that old devil moon In your eye." The creaking went on long after the last record was played and continued while John and Sally slept. John's mother was rather annoyed whenever it was ten P.M. and she did not know where John was, especially when she had not seen nor heard from him all day. She called George's house and even called Tom's house. No news. Tom was at a school dance. Tom's mother suggested perhaps John had also gone to the dance. Assessing how likely that was, Mrs. Morse remembered that John said he was late coming home from school on Thursday because he was speaking with Sally. That was Sally Bortka, Jerry Bortka's daughter. After repeated busy signals she finally got through to Sally's house where Sally's mother was making similar inquiries. Sally was also missing. John's mother hated to worry because worrying upset her stomach and yet, still, John's mother was very worried. By 1 a.m. John began to wake; by 1:10 he realized he was not in his usual twin size bed and by 1:11 he was jostling the amazing, breathing being at his side. He felt like an innocent kid again and, as such, was extremely self-conscious. Sally went through the same wonderment in a fraction of the time as other implications fell upon her immediately. "Oh no. I have to call my parents." Ozone Park was silent, as it always was this time of night. The rain stopped and the traffic was infrequent, so they clearly could hear a dull but rhythmic creaking. Their senses aggravated, they dressed in silence, cornering the source of the sound into the last room down the hallway. John hesitated toward the room until the next creak sent him walking back to Sally. They tried going together, each carpeted step taken with less confidence as the volume increased with their approach. Finally, Sally plunged past John, pushing open the door at the end of the hall, followed by three steps back. She exposed a poorly kept room with torn faded wallpaper and a ceiling peeling pale blue paint chips. They approached the doorway. On a table was a makeshift altar consisting of rosary beads, tile sized drawings of saints attached to black satin strings, a saint figurine suspended by a thread as if hanged, a little steel crucifix leaning against the wall, and a plastic Mother Mary statue. Above the table hung a dramatic oil painting of the Christ Mask by a morbidly religious artist of the Jazz Age. The table altar was illuminated by the variable glow of a single votive candle in a jar. As Sally leaned in, she saw, in the far corner of the room, John's grandmother seated on a rocking chair, a prayer book positioned open in her hand. She left the room pointing, so John went past her, saw for himself and said, "Hello, Grandma. We were looking for you." as he began to cry. She separated her wrinkled lips and spoke in a two-tone voice. "Please don't cry. I only want you to be happy." "Where were you?" he asked. "I was here. Who's with you?" As John introduced Sally, his fear gradually subsided, replaced by happiness and relief. After pulling himself together, he called his parents, folded the party clothes and made the bed. Then he woke up George with a phone call to proudly report the conclusion of their investigation. That evening Sally's family and John's family became better acquainted. John's father described himself as a self-made lawyer, while Sally's father explained his enterprise of buying, restoring and selling totalled foreign cars. John's mother was angry at his grandmother, her mother, for giving everyone such a scare. Sally's parents, both of whom spoke with Hungarian accents, were relieved she was with such a relatively respectable person of her own age. John's grandmother was taken out of her house to stay with Rose's family. Her house was put up for sale, and the headstone commemorating her life and death was moved from its grave site to her daughter's cellar for storage. I Chapter 6 That Monday John was back at school, unable to express his increasing doubt and self-loathing. It had been an eventful weekend but now it seemed so long ago. He had lost his virginity and found his grandmother in one night. However, his unstable feelings were heightened by Tuesday's math test about which he had more anxiety than knowledge, and for which he worried more than studied. He sat in homeroom reading the required reading for that month, The Learning Tree, and looked studious while others students socialized, but still their voices penetrated his concentration, and would have, even had they been soft. The conversations were about the dance last Saturday in the school basketball gym, the dance John and Sally slept through. "Did he get the troll? That horny dog. She was pushing into me all through the slow dance." John concluded that for that boy the dance preceded a wet dream. "Some guy put this stuff near my nose. It was pot." The loud thoughts in John's head as he tried to catch more gossip were, Big deal; what total jerks; and, I'm so cool. When the homeroom teacher began rallying the class about the big basketball game that Thursday, stressing how the class could use more "homeroom spirit," John lost all concern for world affairs. He floated through the day staying within himself, feeling highly superior, and was noticed in his absence. During chemistry class he became concerned by the symbols on the black board, which to him meant as much as Egyptian hieroglyphics, and he thought, what a waste of mind! He consoled himself with the thought that, when he was under a sink, plumbing, he would never miss this information. He wanted to get the hell out of school. When he thought about it, if he left he would have nothing better to do except marry and work, a dumb man deprived of high school, but he was tempted. During lunch, some guys talked politics, other guys talked sports or movies (the lines for The Exorcist), while most of them still talked about the dance. Tom bragged how stoned he was and, thus, unable to recall just how far he went with the two lucky girls who clung to him throughout the night. In math class John sensed a collective fear of the old-fashioned teacher, a retired sea wolf, whose invectives included describing a student's fumble for the answer as a case of "dribbling shits," but John was too busy thinking about how he joined track, basketball, the newspaper, and the chess club, and had not attended meetings for any of them in over a month. His conclusion: he did not care. Then he started worrying that he was not doing as well in school as his parents wanted. How proud they were when he ranked ninth. How many excuses for him they made when his rank dropped. He realized, suddenly, how typical and average he had become. He felt considerably worse. The voice of the teacher cut in, saying, "Due to a death in my family, I will be out tomorrow. The math test is postponed 'til Wednesday." To John this news meant a new lease on life. School was not that bad after all. He began to express himself out loud, feeling witty, hanging loose, laughing and making others laugh, reprieved until tomorrow. I Chapter 7 Sarah Dilio woke. Her daughter served her breakfast. A "For Sale" sign stood in front of her house. Rose's home was among her many floating residences. Supposedly, next month John's household would have her. She watched soap operas, galloping gourmets and game shows, took a nap around four o'clock, then shared dinner with the family, listening to experiences at the job and at school. As long as each discussion ended with a yes when she asked, "But now everything's all right?" she was content. Then she watched a rerun of The Lucy Show, went to her room, said a rosary and went to bed. By March the new rug showed the wear of her daily trail. Because she was no longer living alone, nobody worried about her. Because she was so unobtrusive, her relatives no longer wondered when she would die. I Chapter 8 Spring was coming. The trees had begun their fusion of green and gardens were aglow with color. The dulled white and grey of winter had faded and melted away and in its place came signs of rebirth and growth. People, too, began to regain color and, with the pleasant temperatures of the second week of March, John, George, Tom and two other school friends rode the subway to Manhattan, for no other reason than to see Woody Allen's Sleeper and somehow do the town. The day passed without surprise. They laughed at the movie (John had come to accept that certain movies could mean more to him than the sum total of his social interactions). Tom urged them into a "Blarney Stone" bar to pick up "who-ares," wherein they, instead, drank beers and gaped at midafternoon drinkers from the nearby Post Office. The extent of noteworthy knowledge shared between the friends was that Tom was selling drugs. He was so adept at dealing that he had successfully graduated to second year pusher. Respecting John and George's parents, this stood in direct contrast with their reasoning behind sending John and George to a parochial school, i.e., that it had no drug problem. Alas, drugs were everywhere, although parochial high schools were more adamant about their absence. In addition to the mystique that surrounded young drug peddlers, Tom had recent "coed" experiences which added to the batch of stories that so reliably fascinated people starved for escape like John and George. While John had smoked marijuana several times, becoming high made him paranoid and he had no wish to further his chemically induced mind expansion. He felt himself above all that and was willing to face the peer pressure because Stanley Kubrick, Ian Anderson and Frank Zappa did not approve and he was devoted to those famous individuals. Unfortunately, with school and parents driving him crazy (since they demanded attention and were receiving none), and with his awkwardness toward Sally and every female he would meet, he often wondered if on many occasions he would not be better off stoned. Drinking was no solution. Once he drank a pint of Boone's Farm Apple Wine and, though his friends had fun, the highlight of the evening in his memory was the time he spent alone during the wee small hours regurgitating, concluding, in his misery, that he would drink none but the finest alcoholic beverages and beer. On the way home from the city excursion, Tom talked sales. He described how great tripping could be and, although the guys looked down in shock, they were intrigued by the unpredictability of hallucinogenic chemicals, particularly if they had any aspirations toward being artistic. Tom's stories worked like Winchester cigarette TV commercials; as if lanky girls with half breed Indian lineage flocked to such guys. He said, you could study better tripping, and even do things you could normally not do, i.e., make people interested in you. Eventually Tom narrowed his sales pitch to his two most likely candidates, John and George, whom he invited to stay for dinner at his house where they ate hamburgers and dehydrated mashed potatoes. After dinner they went to the cellar freezer to examine a 35mm film tin which contained ten small tabs of 99% pure L.S.D., which Tom called, "acid." He was steadfast in his refusal to open the tin can for fear that the concentrated little tabs would lose their tremendous potency. He was offering a discount on the tin in its entirety, asking forty dollars because plain L.S.D. (not mixed with "speed") was hard to get that month, and he presumed the buyer would have brisk retail sales. By being secretive and nebulous, his impact was unquestionable; John and George were curious. They sat back on the former living room furniture and talked about Bang and Olafson stereos, Nakamichi cassette decks and the sound spills of the eight track cartridge system, but always with their eyes and thoughts wandering to the refrigerator. Time passed quickly and, as the clock neared ten, they decided to call it a night. Tom had a Maverick (girl) magazine, positioned for conversation on the cellar coffee table. As John confessed the desire to borrow it, Tom said. "Sure, sure, enjoy it. See you guys Monday." John and George walked home discussing trivia, but their heads dwelled, as if frozen, with the film canister, for its contents could unleash a personality open to having a good time at next Saturday's dance. At home John listened to selections from the following albums, vainly trying to interpret their message: Lou Reed in Berlin, the Rolling Stone's Flowers, the Beatle's Sergeant Peppers, the Grateful Dead's Skeletons, Yes's Close to the Edge and, finally, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album, which he listened to in its entirety. One of the required studies at school was Health where some teacher less enthused than his pupils explained the care of the feet, the depth of a pimple, the opportunities to contract venereal disease, and the just plain senselessness of smoking. Supplementing the class was the book, Making Health Decisions, which included the following information on drugs, in the form of a chart. Amphetamine: Stimulant. Causes nervousness. Overdose may lead to mental insanity or death. Destroys muscle coordination. Not recommended while driving. Addictive and has an acquired tolerance. Barbiturates: A depressant. Slows down nervous system. When combined with alcohol death may result. Not recommended while driving. Addictive and has an acquired tolerance. Marijuana: Unpredictable results. Complete loss of time and space. Often leads to crime. Users generally graduate to heroin. Heroin: Gives sense of well being that is lost quickly. Highly addictive. Almost impossible to cure. L.S.D.: Produces a variety of perpetual disturbances, particularly visual hallucinations. Not addictive. User may experience flashbacks at any time. John found more on L.S.D. on other pages. "Shapes of flowers change. Walls and ceilings sway, changes views of certain objects. Brings things into a different light. Studied by psychologists and psychiatrists. Used in treatment of schizophrenia." Based upon these readings John's self-diagnosis was that, of all the above, L.S.D. could do his stifled mind the most good for he was surely a schizophrenic who yearned to bring things into a different light. That Monday afternoon, John was leaving the library, wherein he had just been skimming the works of Timothy Leary and Carlos Castenada, and caught up with a fellow student named Bob who, as the leader of a drug culture acid rock band, Lysergia, was known to have taken L.S.D. Bob liked John because, when they sat near each other in the back row of an English literature class, Bob would announce and John would affirm the indisputable greatness of the band, Pink Floyd. As they walked down the main hall past encasements of athletic trophies and the echoes of the basketball gym, John requested Bob's opinion on the matter at hand. "Based upon your experience, are there any real complications that arise from dropping acid; you know, bad trips, flashbacks, what not?" "I'll tell you John," began Bob, stifling a post-lunch burp, "I've heard some people say it's rather unpleasant. They're never the same again and some get sent to sanitariums but the effects, of themselves, aren't really bad; it's the people that take it. They're assholes. All the times I've done it, it's been fantastic." Meanwhile, George was not researching drugs with John's intensity. Instead, he faced complications in human interaction between himself and Rose arising since they began dating regularly a few weeks ago. When John filled him in, George responded, "Rose said Sally takes mescaline." As John's decision to take an hallucinogen was further confirmed by the actions of the love of his life he asked, "Oh? and how is Sally?" thus reminded that, compared with Rose and George, he and Sally had not maintained an ongoing relationship. George looked pregnantly at John and continued, "You know, Tom's trying to rip us off with that price." John speculated, "It would be funny if he didn't even have anything in that tin can. He never opens it." George agreed, "That's right. It could be emptied and he wouldn't know who, what or when." John pondered as George warned, "But look, if you want to get hooked to the guy, go ahead. As for me and Rose, we've gone beyond that. We don't need drugs." John realized George had been talking like that for the last week. "Thanks George. You're right. He doesn't deserve his profits. I won't buy anything from that bastard." In private, John reached further conclusions. All sorts of big exams are coming up, I have nothing better to do, and I don't give a shit what happens in my life, he admitted, adding, so long as it's interesting. Thus, feeling worthless, restless and bored, he went home to get Tom's Maverick magazine. It was no longer a well-kept secret except perhaps to his only living parent, his mother, that Tom was having trouble maintaining an image before his friends. His lifestyle was gaining on him. He was beginning to stutter over simple phrases like "check it out," and, most recently, failed to return a sharp answer to one of his occasional detractors from Malloy's student counsellors group. Indeed, the only person he felt unchallenged by was John. John, while walking up the block to Tom's house, pictured himself asking Tom to play a record on his expensive stereo. Then, while Tom became engrossed in Bowie or Mott the Hoople, John would ask to go to the bathroom, but rather than go to the bathroom... . He rang the back door bell. Tom's orange haired mother answered, "He's upstairs in his bedroom, changing. Why don't you wait in the basement?" Downstairs he discovered a cellar maze of damp laundry suspended on clothes lines. He passed through it, parting stockings, shirts and pants, till he reached a clearing for the icebox. No one was coming. He was doing Tom a favor. He opened the freezer; its bright white light stung his eyes; condensed water vapor poured out onto the floor; its inside walls, not recently defrosted, had swelled obscenely fat with frost. His eyes, adjusting to the white light, spotted the 35mm film can. He heard Tom on his way down. He removed the can, unscrewed its cap, and poured its contents into his pants pocket, returning the empty can to its icy home. The cold pills made him squirm so badly that he wanted to urinate. He closed the door and managed to meet Tom by the stereo, handed Tom the magazine, thanked him. Slightly embarrassed he thanked him again, and concluded, "Well, see you at school." He walked a safe distance from the house and moved the pills from his pants to his jacket pocket, excited by thievery which he thought worthy of a black exploitation film like Slaughter's Big Rip-Off. I Chapter 9 Like Tom, only more slowly, George's employer was deteriorating with age, as manifested in his thinning physique and increasing use of rouge and eye shadow. He expressed frustration through bursts of disorderliness and destruction. He shredded, by hand, a thick telephone directory with a cover by the commercial artist, Peter Max. Without knowledge of this practice, George's mother repeated her suggestion that George quit working there. However, George wanted a stereo cartridge player and insisted, despite complications, he would keep his stupid job. He was collecting remnants of the latest Manhattan white pages off the kitchen floor when in walked Beauregard in slippers and a robe. "How's it going, son?" "Fine, sir. Fine. Did you find what you were looking for?" "Where?" "In the phone book?" "Ogh. Sorry about the mess. My wife's new address is in that book -- with the rest of those Manhattan morons. They think they're so above us, George. Let's walk all over them." Uncomfortable silence followed until George thought of a suitable reply. "Well, this will be cleaned up in no time." Beauregard shuffled through the names, stepping, smearing and tearing where he could, vindictively saying "I doubt it," as he began to boil water for tea. His furry slippers kicked up the pages where he stood. Nonchalantly he remarked how pleased he was ("Say, George ...") for this was the first weekend he could borrow a print of a recent film that was exceedingly popular among the customers and employees of Films Incorporated, "Love Story." Would George like to invite some of his friends over to see it? George sighed but verbally agreed. He would not encourage the visit because he knew from his mom's reaction that he could not easily justify his job to the general public, and he could guess the closeminded response his friend John would have toward the film. As Friday evening approached, George neared another date with Rose, and he faced a problem. They had been dating seriously over the past three months, which was the generally acknowledged period within which two people waited to have sexual intercourse. In addition, this evening was opportune because their parents, along with most of the community, planned to attend the Spring Dance. Therefore, George and Rose had the opportunity; all they needed was the inclination. In picturing the evening's erotic possibilities the only source memory to which George could refer was an explicit 8mm color film which John showed him. The sight of a wound where the mystery of love was supposed to lodge had so repulsed him that the fear of its reappearance often intruded when he thought of sex with Rose. After being paid, he walked home, admittedly pleased about his job, ate dinner while his parents dressed, and walked to Rose's house. He proudly told Rose's parents what film they were going to see, "Call of the Wild," because it was advertised as being wildly approved by parents across the nation and because, unlike many other films he wanted to see, it had been branded "GP" indicating a mere suggestion from the Motion Picture Association of America that minors view it in conjunction with parental guidance. (Respecting parental approval, its wholesome ad was second that week only to "Vanishing Wilderness" because the ad to "Vanishing" also noted the approval of John Wayne.) George and Rose were not going to the theatre to watch the film. As they exchanged love-birdian conversation Rose pictured the evening to come. She was looking forward to cuddling with George against a backdrop of animals, but she intended to watch herself. She had attended too many pajama parties not to know by heart tales of inadvertently lost virginity, even in public places. Eventually, Rose meant to lose her virginity, but, like the president pulling troops from Viet Nam, she wanted to lose it with honor. Therefore she would not incite her first steady boyfriend, George, to attack. She realized, as they approached the theatre, that the naked sight of him was not repulsive, but simply a blur, an impossibility. His clothes were part of him. Did he exist without them? While they continued to ramble, George wondered what was required and where he would he start. He looked back at her, thinking, she's not very pretty. Rose had fairly sizable breasts for her age; she was short, looked soft. He did not know . . .. He could go home and fantasize, but to actually lay her down? Thoughts of the 8mm film and its colorful close-ups, red and torn, the guy licking it up, made him wonder, Could Rose have that? Et cetera. They bought tickets against the backdrop of a raging poster, "Coming soon: Super Fu Man Chu." The woman at the booth slipped George their tickets and they passed through the mirrored hall and black doors to find themselves in the midst of a short subject about a forest monster, "Big Foot," which was followed by a visit from the Will Rogers Institute and finally by "Call of the Wild." George put his hands around Rose's shoulder as he had done on their past dates. He yawned with hands outstretched, letting his arms wander where they would. Ah, he thought, relaxed. What have we here? All of the cast but one was ecology conscious and humane to animals. Meanwhile, George mauled Rose. As George gained momentum, the film was reaching its peak. A man who cared little for the living was careless and responsible when a neighborly bear was killed. Ultimately, the man was killed in a car flight over a cliff and the film concluded with the title, "Preserve our forests." Shrinking back to size, George and Rose visited the best pizza parlor in town where George revealed that his parents were out. Rose nodded. Her parents were out. All parents were out on this, the night of the spring dance; but rather than disturb Rose's Grandmother, they walked to George's house where George, in pulling out his key and unlocking the door, felt like the young estate lord he was not. They walked up to his bedroom, turned on the television set and sat near each other on his bed to await the happening of the something that was to happen between them once they were alone; both had seen the movie, Jeremy; it just happened. Meanwhile, the television beamed back an episode from the high school comedy series, Room 222 about a coed, believing herself a witch, who called upon supernatural powers to destroy her teacher. She was caught conjuring with a fetal pig in the science lab and sent to a guidance counselor who solved her hostility by tracing it to its source, her parents. George hesitated, realizing again that Rose was not the supreme beauty. So long had he dreamt of this moment, yet he could control himself. Rose cuddled nervously; George put his arm around her, turning to an imaginary Clark Gable to check, was that right? Rose realized that now was the time for preparing source material for Monday's cafeteria conversations and indicated her willingness to proceed by undressing and proudly revealing her large, firm breasts. When she had stripped to all but her panties, George felt himself wither within. He felt sick, but if he told her so he would hurt her feelings and be scorned and ridiculed. However, nobody had to know. He paused and calmly suggested, "Maybe we should wait a while. There's more than this. We'll wait." The silence between the two of them was filled by the sounds of a Chevrolet commercial. George continued, asking, "Why do we have to be like everybody else?" Rose reinterpreted his words. She feared she was unattractive, which was not so, but she hated consoling herself by comparing herself to others. Her flushed faced inflamed a pimple on the side of her chin. She was a girl of exaggerated morals which were disproportionate to her actions. While not a flirter, or even particularly outgoing, she had friends who were, and she could not tell where their facts ended and their exaggeration and wishful thinking began. In addition she had read articles on the generation gap printed in Reader's Digest, Mademoiselle, and Seventeen magazine, which often included college polls codifying the liberated sex standards of the period. She felt hurt that she and George could not fit in, although she sensed that George really cared for her. Sally and John made love because they had a natural affinity for each other, had nothing better to do and were aroused by the fetish of the clothing and unfamiliar surroundings; and they did not prove anything. Nor, in not making love, did George and Rose. They spent the rest of the evening watching a movie made for T.V.. George told her he loved her and that they would wait until they were married. That evening as she was falling asleep in the sanctity of her own bed after George walked her home, Rose suddenly felt very catholic, feeling that good triumphed over evil, that she remained clean rather than sullied, for good was how she controlled herself that evening. As she heard her parents unlocking the front door upon their return from the dance she realized, temptation was there, yet she was able to shun and refuse it, as did George. Pseudo "Yes" lyrics prelude to Part I, Chapter 10. (Cf. Close to the Edge). The violet lightning flashes through your memory, it looks like rain. Allowing it to seep through porous walls, you smash the window pane. And Christ, you're not to do that; what's within might speak aloud. Revealing different passages that lead to join a growing crowd. I Chapter 10 Later that week John felt a sigh of normality from all angles and sides. Tom discovered that his drugs were missing when, in the privacy of the midnight hour, he crept into his cellar to open the can for his benefit alone. However, he was still too embarrassed to act against his suspects, whom he had narrowed to either John, George, or some twenty of his other friends who he had brought to his basement to promote the drug and get it off of his hands once and for all. He had taken too many details for granted and could not place the time he last showed the pills with their disappearance, his memory not easily ordered of late. Meanwhile, John concluded that Tom was a jerk, far too big for his own good, and that the thief would never be identified. John had the drugs hidden in his room. What should he do? Get rid of the evidence. But how? Sell, destroy, or consume -- his original intention. They were tiny pink pills, what could they do? As with fireworks, he wanted to shoot off a few of them in anticipation of the big day. Wednesday had been particularly dreadful. John had three tests and was sure he failed two. What he needed now was a well deserved vacation. Thus, as he was sitting by his stereo that night, about to listen to the live Procul Harum Album, he decided, what the hell, the possibilities from listening to a record would greatly expand given the ingestion of, say half a tab. There was nothing important happening Thursday. His tests were behind him. He got a razor blade and glass of water from his parent's bathroom (His parents were downstairs in the kitchen watching T.V. and cleaning up after dinner.). Then he locked the door to his room from the inside. When he cut the pill in half it was almost microscopic -- surely not much. His mind underwent a decision making process: No, better not. Yeah, why not. Yeah, no (he lifted the glass of water), no. Yeah (put the pill in his mouth), no. Yeah (Takes a gulp of water), yeah (swallowed), no. He became nervous and frightened, thinking, I shouldn't have done that, as he sat on his bed. He waited ten minutes in silence and sighed. Nothing. The stuff is fake, past its expiration date. He needed more to feel anything. He took the other half of the tab (yeah, no...) and swallowed, suddenly realizing how foolish that could have been. He sat down again, passing time, feeling completely normal. Thinking, what the hell, he cut and dissolved another half a tablet in his mouth. It was cold and bitter. Feeling very well, he set his turntable to play side 2 of Procul Harum's live album, which contained one song, "In Held 'Twas In I." Then he sat in the diamond of sound and listened to the orchestrated description of a man lost in a crumbling world, and of that one man left living, unharmed. John saw his stereo beacon waiver and stretch. Getting up to check it for bugs he remembered what it must be: first signs. He began to imagine seeing sound coming from the speakers but all effort became irrelevant when the spoken introduction to the song concluded and the orchestra entered with full force. It was as if a purple lightning bolt struck his head and he was gone. As a child, John recalled being a deep sleeper, a bed wetter, the subject of faultfinding arguments, held amidst the social pressure of holiday gatherings, as his parents tried to solve the paradox, why couldn't their child be happy when they told him to be? He heard echoes of his father's yelled concern about a child driven crazy by concern. His visits with his grandmother at that time provided an escape from his more immediate family. He longed to be with her and wished his parents would have left him forever. He sat in a puddle of urine, stinking, warm in shame, his hand outstretched toward a beam of yellow light, pleading, fix me up. It will feel much better, then, to let myself go again. Then followed a sense of recovery. It was morning. Daylight lit his room. He rose and went off to school, hearing alarms and sensations of a million people doing the same. They woke and worked as one. The music settled and, as preachy narration resumed, John watched himself walk like an automaton with the crowd toward the subway, except that this subway was above ground and framed with rickety metal, the "L" train, an elevated subway, a contradiction in itself. While climbing the stairs he turned to face the oncoming passengers and preached, mouthing the preaching he heard from the stereo without understanding what it said, as people bumped past, oblivious to him. Accustomed as they were to such public transit fanatics, they could care less. Bells knocked him to his senses. He checked his watch, thought, am I late! and ran up the rest of the stairs through a shaft and onto the subway platform where he was greeted by school chums. The choir from the speakers yelled, "'Twas tea time at the circus!" The boys bounced back and forth like living balloons. He hated being part of this group and decided, at least in his dream, to leave and see what he might find on his own. When he climbed off the platform and walked across the rows of tracks all the boys began to clap; but a thunderous train came and went, taking them all away, leaving him alone on the opposite side of the platform. Apparently the elevated subway platform was not as high as he could go. Nearby an escalator led him to an even higher level, although not up to open air. Instead he had ascended to enclosed turnstiles with sordid stores dimly lit by a few watts in a low ceiling. Walking through a stinking plaza he passed tailor shops with picture windows of great bare-breasted women being measured and adjusted by men wearing black robes and white wigs. These "judges" eyed John for his approval. The women were whitish, heavily powdered, mostly naked, and either religiously passive or freshly dead. The robed men were prodding some, cutting up others, keeping the best parts and discarding the rest. John merely nodded, reminded of S. Clay Wilson comic drawings. He was more disturbed by the red glow outlining their bodies. He walked on, bleary-eyed, toward his personal destination, personal fulfilment. He was led out of the subway enclosure by a harried little bald man who rolled toward him, and pushed him outside - ah, fresh air - where he was faced with another escalator, a down escalator, built into a hill. From this summit he saw valleys and a barren ocean beach, a "Medici" point of view if his recollection from political science properly served him. As he stood upon the moving escalator grill he watched the land around him grow. Rocks piled up with his descent and, when he reached bottom, jagged cleft mountains loomed above, impossible to scale, the escalator having effectively transformed his Medici point of view into the Machiavellian point of view. His mood shifted from magnanimous to threatened, accordingly. He entered another railway station, older than the one he had left, blocking his view from all sides, enclosed by a picket fence in the distance. The fence maintained its distance. The faster he approached, the faster it backed away. Sleet and snow added impediment to his optical illusion until suddenly, in time with the music, the air settled and, without difficulty he met the fence and climbed over, hopefully finished with travel terminals. To his surprise, the fence had all the substance of a lead pencil etching. When John passed over the fence he found himself on a desolate grey boardwalk of crumbling pencil drawn sketches over black and white photo-grain sand. Among the sketches were a row of stores such as small boutiques, five and dimes, barber shops, and penny arcades, all with pencil drawn details that etched finer as he approached. Inside the penny arcade was a broken pin ball machine; inside the boutique was a rusty tricycle, still pulsing color. He tried to feel the walls and discovered, upon tapping their pencilled edges with his shoe, that they tinkled to the ground. John walked with the music, which stomped with somber propriety, in a minor mode, as John left the store to find it was the last of the row of stores along the sea, sand and the endless boardwalk. As he treaded he looked left at a huge rusted contraption, sprawling and spidery, its metal stems sprouting from a single motorized ball. It was once a spinning black spider ride. Passing it by, he watched a sign up ahead hanging crooked by two chains as it came gradually into focus. It read, "Rockaway Playland." Oh well, John thought, so it finally died. He walked off the wooden boardwalk and on to the grainy sand spotted with fish and gull skeletons, rotting pencil lead sticks, little tangled networks, black and crisp, each supported as if by a single beam, which collapsed and crumbled at the touch of his foot. He stood on a plane of straight lines, alone completely. Turning to the sea he saw a wave approach and break; a dry, animated, pencil drawn wave, peaking and crashing down into little pencil etched pieces. The music struck a major chord and John swayed with power. He felt all powerful because he was all that was left. He saw himself as if from the ceiling of the clouds and paused to reconsider. He was all powerful except for God. The source of light with which John could see, which hung suspended, white in the sky, was God. Although Rockaway Beach looked and felt like the end of all wanderings, John was steadily approaching a forest, which formed as he neared, pulsating with bright Disney color, filling with animals, trees and birds which alighted on his shoulders. Snow White was surely nestled in a cottage nearby. He found himself searching for her, lustful, to ravish her for God and country; and, at the height of his unsteady desire he followed a steeple to a clearing. The steeple was part of a church, surrounded by blue sky and a friendly sun. He parted its egg shaped doors and walked inside. Adjusting to muted sun rays filtered through deeply stained glass, he observed rows of pews, empty but for one mourner, Snow White, he assumed, but stiffened as he realized what an idiot he was. The cloaked mourner looked like she needed someone to soothe and comfort her, perhaps with a hug. Instead John remained aloof rather than be so forward as to embrace her. He mounted the altar and stood behind a podium pulpit, mouthing Procul Harum (Keith Reid) lyrics, "I'll be a wise man's fool," into its microphone. As he rambled he felt the presence of a robed intruder gesticulating at a little side altar. Apparently, this competitor was talking too, but without a microphone. John continued, his eyes shifting sideways while still facing the mourning girl. The other preacher pulled out a guitar but without a mike he did not stand a chance. John gained the girl's attention. She lifted her face from her hands, revealing her dry eyes and wide oriental features. John leaned forward, knowing that either he was meant to be her guardian, or perhaps she his. When she rose he walked over to join her. They left together down the main aisle and out the back entrance as John yelled more Procul Harum lyrics to the rabid preacher, who was still warbling on the side altar at the far end of the church. "It's all so simple really if you'd just look to your soul." The doors shut behind them. The sun was sinking toward dusk. Framed by shimmering straight black hair, the girl's face was golden; her cheese cloth dress, revealed beneath her open black cloak, was banana yellow. Her thin shadow extended yards against the panels of green slabs that paved the church plaza. The peaceful silence outdoors recalled supper time on a warm Wednesday in August. John yearned to discuss feelings about the strange days they had both left behind, but when she spoke back, the words from her smooth placid face were unintelligibly razor harsh. They followed the consecutive concrete squares of a suburban sidewalk, squares that were gently crumbled by expanding roots of an outlining row of oak trees. Perpendicular paths were offshoots to homes. At the middle of the block a white house stood wide open and welcoming. Warm lights from within blazed through the windows and door. John's girl turned toward it while John, higher than Lucy in the sky, followed at her heel, thinking how sexually magnetic he must have been to pick up this voluptuous Asian in a church. Once in the house they were met with a promenade of wealth: men in black and white, women in bright colors; these were the higher class of doctors, lawyers and salespeople drinking vintage champagne and wine while sampling from trays of liver pate and caviar. Stiff cheer took pause at the arrival of the unusual couple. As John and his cloaked companion walked through the room everyone applauded. The musical accompaniment adjusted to suit a graduation procession. John felt out of fashion in torn jeans and blue flannel. However, no one appeared to notice, although he felt whispering behind his neck. John's companion apparently had many rounds to make. She walked into the next room where another party, wilder and less prestigious than the first, was in progress. There was a greater emphasis on drinking accompanying inflated comments of the better time this party was having, but John was not convinced. Again, everyone was pleased to see John and the elegant girl. This room was deeper within the house (fast becoming a catering hall), its walls white and without windows. On a food table were little buns containing mini-franks which John almost ate but did not, resolving to keep his stomach empty and pure. He followed his lovely Asian companion into the next room to join the thinning festivities of a fireman's ball drawing to its exhausted conclusion. The fallen rainbow party ribbons and semi-buoyant balloons contrasted with the stark white walls and bright lighting. The people were all too pleased to welcome their latest guests and the visit was even more fleeting. In the next inner room a middle-aged man sat on a folding "comfy chair" contraption, his stomach overlapping passed his torn undershirt onto his pants, his beer slurped from a can while he watched pro football. His two sons sat on the floor at his side. They did not notice John or the girl because their attention was held in the grips of a possible touchdown. When it had been scored they roared with excitement. The next white room was empty but for a drunken three foot fuzzy haired man wearing a silver belt and white tennis shorts, leaning on the wall. John felt sufficiently secure with himself to attempt to strike up conversation with this fellow. "Had a little too much to drink, eh?" to which the man responded, "I am the everlasting, the guiding light. He who believes in me shall never die. I bid you come join me in everlasting peace. Peace everlasting." "Yes, if you'll please excuse me." John noticed his attractive friend leaving through a cellar door and was afraid to lose her. The short man grabbed hold of his arm. "Don't go, for I bid thee, know and rejoice with the true father, the almighty." Through the open door emanated climactic chords and thunderous applause as the girl descended. John pulled away to follow her. The man insisted, begging, "The father of all holiness!" holding on to John. John laughed at the fiasco of prevention. The applause grew deafening as a voice, soft and compassionate, but amplified beyond the applause urged, "Please follow her." The drunk gave up and retreated to his self-assigned corner as John proceeded toward the applause which had already begun to die off, down stone steps with a wired wall on each side as in a New York City Public School. He wondered if he was walking into an assembly. At the bottom of the steps was a cellar with only a 25 watt ceiling bulb. By a great boiler heater leaned a pile of old boxes, squashing each other from top to bottom. He was simply in the basement. Where else was there to go? he asked. There was a window on the wall near the wooden ceiling through which he could see ground level, and he spotted an opening on the ceiling, perhaps leading to a crawl space upstairs. The applause ended and the soft unmanned voice from nowhere concluded with, "Thank you very much." Slabs of solid steel rolled over the ceiling and across the sides of the room, over the steps and windows, and even the floor, till John and his friend were completely sealed in a modern metallic enclosure. John screamed, his ego and dreams turned against him. Claustrophobia overwhelmed him. He yelled to the unmanned voice, "Why, why, why!" In reply, the Japanese girl stated, "I am where I belong." John was hysterical. "But what about me? What am I to do?" There was a wooden chair that had been gobbled by the steel along with John and the girl which she moved to the middle of the room and sat on, making herself as comfortable as possible. John was completely delirious, which he demonstrated by speaking calmly in a disgusted and hateful tone, "You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. You are so nice. I love you. I want you. I just want to be with you forever." She stayed seated, not noticing him, pulling off her shirt as effortlessly as he wanted to pull off her arms. Soon naked, she lay her stomach on the cold steel, her watery breasts jutting from her ribs, rubbing the floor as John stood over her, charged with emotion for an emotional outlet -- a trapped savage, wondering what could he do? John was staring at the stereo beacon on his receiver. He checked the time, 6:45. That was nice. It was morning, still early. He rose to inspect his reflection, finding his appearance similar to that of a short while ago. He did a summersault on the bed and stared through the window at the trees. Whelp, he did it. And nothing happened either. It was a quiet, brightening Thursday morning and he felt cute, cuddly and sleepy-eyed, and ready for a good night's rest. His father was calling him to wake and get dressed for school. He said, "Fuck you, daddy;" he resented his father, always trying to interrupt him. Fortunately his voice was a little hoarse, and he began undressing to get ready for bed without further interruption. Realizing he might have to go to school, a rather laughable matter under any circumstances, he walked out of his room and locked himself in the bathroom. He sat on the toilet, relaxing. His father banged on the door yelling for him to come out. John said, "No dad, I can't. I'm constipated," and he was not lying. About an hour later he came out looking as ill as possible. His father had left for work and his mother, hearing him, said, "How are you feeling today? Going to school? Sleep a little. You might feel better." She thought he had been coming down with a cold for some time. Perhaps psychotherapists could share with John the significance of his lysergic trip, but his exhausted mental condition and physical ailment following his revelations prevented him from treating his self generated fantasy as a lesson, or as constructive criticism. Apparently, his freed thought led him to a cul-de-sac, or a point of no return, and it was there he stayed. While he had glimpsed much of what was within his subconscious self, he was too disordered to gain from the experience. As for school, when he returned to class the following day he discovered his personality had greatly nullified and teachers favorably noted his composure. Unfortunately, during his hallucination he went into a trance, during which he was itching his right eyebrow beyond reason. It infected, gradually ballooned with puss, and completely sealed his eye. A doctor lanced it the following weekend. His explanation for the obscene infection both to those who asked and to himself, was that he had been bitten by a spider. I Chapter 11 "OOoo, life moved on," and as public skepticism of politicians escalated toward the presidency, and oil tank Aladdins pulled the world over a barrel, people were generally moody and temperamental. However, viewing from the secluded resort atmosphere of a perennial Holiday Inn, we blithely note the passing of the Passover/Easter Holiday season and the clearing of the holiday traffic jams throughout Newark and Long Island. As of May, 1973 the earth settled. The 1974 text indicated that the earth quaked and erupted boulders which scattered, unmoving and uneven but stable in their newfound rest place. The text called for another earthquake to set the boulders in motion again. Patterns resumed. People adjusted. With precious little to say George began announcing the marvelous fringe benefit of Beauregard's job, the ability to borrow "Love Story", the movie, which customers of Films Incorporated rented at a cost of $250 and beyond, depending upon the admission charged and the number of viewers they allegedly fit into their school auditorium or community house. Upon hearing the announcement, John admitted more interest in George's employer than in the film, but that a private screening was an especially interesting and unchallenging opportunity to at last see Sally again. Indeed, both he and George had seen little of their female counterparts; their former wall of embarrassment and self-consciousness now rebuilt through too much familiarity. Well, what could be more romantic than a private showing of the movie, Love Story? The date was set for the second Friday in May, at 7 P.M.. The warmer weather made commuting moderately more tolerable, and apprehension of summer freedom outweighed the growing pressure of exams. When review for finals began, general schoolwork lightened, so for those who did not study ahead, afternoons were free. However, our four friends did feel guilty when their parents asked, "Don't you have to do any school work instead of going out tonight?" They honestly answered no, because studying a little in advance seemed more painful, certainly in length, than cramming near the end. However, they had begun to realize that the short-term unreasonable often achieved a long-term sense of success. Given the degree of external imposition on an otherwise azure existence, John admitted aloud, as he walked with George, Sally and Rose, that aside from the most unpleasant experience of his life, the lancing of an infected eyebrow, life was O.K.; and while restlessness stirred the warm air, they all climbed Beauregard Bureau's front stoop that Thursday evening in spirits, feeling like the healthy guiltless Americans their U.S. citizenship somehow entitled them to be as they prepared to view no not fantasy, not psychedelics, but a basic Love Story by Professor Erich Segal which Paramount Pictures, Inc., had so successfully set to motion. In greeting Beauregard, a man who showed his twenty-nine years back when he was twenty-five, they felt teenager superiority, but they were polite and attentive to people who showed movies. "Sir" they called him, and compliments about the decor and weather followed without pause. They were proud of being well bred. Preliminaries concluded, they began the business at hand. The lights went off, the cracks between the thick curtains were narrowed, and, on a silver screen, a flashing countdown to three and a beep introduced genuine images from life, staged, acted and assembled into a tear-jerker. Sally and John sat on two chairs positioned near each other; George and Rose sprawled, arm and arm, on the prime piece of furniture in the pale green room, a dated love seat; Beauregard sat on a folding chair by the 16mm projector, his hands folded. By the end of the second reel Beauregard was in the kitchen. From there he announced he was going to the store for refreshments, although he did not think it necessary to ask his guests what they wished him to buy. No one took notice of how superfluous to them was the presence of their host; in fact, George was glad Beauregard went out because, when it came to threading the last reel for his friends, he could do so without supervision. The Film: She dies, he lives, his father confronts him in a revolving glass door and, with reconciliation in the offing, mutters, "Son, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. Sorry." Fade. From what I remember I see Ryan O'Neal rising from a park bench and walking toward the sunset with a six foot bottle of 7UP, the Uncola. At that point, the theme song plays and the movie ends. What I remember is a commercial by 7UP, inspired by Love Story. (December, 1987 - Confirmation: I still haven't seen Love Story, or, for that matter, Call of the Wild.) Beauregard had not returned so George decided to pile the unrewound reels of film in their mailing box and give his friends a tour of this house that he knew so well and kept so clean. Giddy, they climbed the stairs. However, in the cellar, that which was thought to be out, had remained, whistling before an oval mirror, patting his face cake white, smearing blue crescent moons around the soft skin below his eye sockets, running greased fingers through his hair, smacking his lips with petroleum jelly, rubbing Vicks around his neck and pouring Probe between his legs, carefully filing and sharpening the long nails of his hands. After affirming he was the fairest between the dried spots of water on the looking glass he experienced an orderly calm unlike the calm from any previous order he had hitherto known and, without further adieu, he proceeded up the cellar stairs, knowing the film was over. He still wore a pale grey Robert Hall leisure suit and, underneath, contained his torso with a clashing striped vest which he methodically began buttoning. As he stepped up the stairs he thought back about his mismatched life; his mother and father who never got along but stayed together for his sake. Due to their concern for him and lack of concern for each other they argued, never to ultimately agree, about prestige, child upbringing, eating, and visiting. Beauregard's childhood memories were filled with Christmas fiascoes, lonesome New Years and a distaste for blood relatives. He was a difficult selfish child and he needed a relationship of ego boosting power in order to feel well about himself, although attaining such a position inevitably caused him to feel a nasty contempt toward his partner. His marriage to Marge in 1962 began on sluggish footing. Once he helped her to get out of her parents' house she became so disinterested that she seemed to lose all respect for him. He would have to act, hence his enlistment in the U.S. armed forces. Terrified, yet filled with hate and self-disgust amplified by training, his ferocity led him further into army involvement. His training for battle in Vietnam was unclear as to who was the enemy. Rather than ask, he settled on the rule that he would kill anyone who disturbed his peace. He got a charge out of silencing folks. His marriage had less emotional impact on his wife than his parents' marriage had had on his mother, since at least his mother would yell back, while his wife wouldn't even give him the time of day, so he figured he would not be missed if he went away for a while. He concluded that going to Viet Nam would solve his problems and endow him with the prestige he direly needed in the home. His first year of marriage produced two children, a daughter and a younger son, both of whom he left to join the war effort, thinking they, too, wouldn't miss him, would rather be proud of him, and his son would have a role model. He sent home all his pay during his two years abroad. When he returned from service he found himself in the midst of a society that shunned war and, consequently, was uniquely unappreciative of his involvement in it. His wife, ever skeptical of his reasoning, further turned against him because so many of her closest friends, including her hair dresser, spoke admiringly of the courage of those attractive fellows who publicly burned their draft cards. Not that she could not also like men in uniforms but, as always, her husband's timing in the matter, including coming back at all, was completely wrong. People in the entertainment industry were making money protesting against violence and war. Even children in grammar school coolly received Beauregard's offspring, as though they were several steps below middle class, because their father fought in Vietnam. All Beauregard had to show for himself was a verbal citation offered by President Johnson to the men of his division en masse for their courage in holding their ground in the face of unprecedentedly random, heartless attacks staged by the equivalent of a P.S. 101 grammar school class against the American soldiers camped in Laos. Up to this point his life consisted of a series of relieved frustrations, frustrations that always hungered for constant relief. At last his frustration had become ingrown and unrelievable. Coming home with a fresh D.A. haircut did not help, either. He enlisted in 1964; he was unprepared for the change in the image of the American male when he returned in 1966. While not the cause, the "system" certainly seemed worthy of blame when his wife left him (taking the children) to live with a progressive artist and sergeant in the police force, a burly man named Charley McCarthy, from lower Manhattan (the 9th Precinct). Beauregard could not turn to his veteran group for consolation. It, too, was part of the system. With memories as unpleasant as theirs, his army associates disbanded without hinting the possibility of a reunion. His only ties were to the job he began after high school in a movie rental company, and to his little attached house which his mother, at her death, left him with a request that he raise his children there. At twenty-nine he found himself withdrawn from society, as, indeed, he thought he should be. His shivers of hate were expressed, pleasurably, through sexual activity. His limited expression of his otherwise limited emotion, characteristic of his youth, bloomed into a full affirmation of the joys of sado-masochism during his two years with the army. Also, while in the army he was more physically bloomed. He was muscular, eating the right foods then. The five years since his service had dissolved his muscles and dried out the replacement fat but they had not dried out his desires, nor his physical response to his desires. Recent fantasies involved girls of fifteen, freckled, fatted thighs, firm breasts, just dying to be brought off their high horses, laid upon the ground and injected with the life of a man, a life he could hardly contain, he was so bursting with a fertile ooze. Rose and Sally fit adequately into his erotic mold but what especially excited him this evening was the thought of the two boys currently present (George, so like the son he could love, so unlike his own son, who at ten, was already a "fruitcake" ballet dancer; and there was also John, George's best friend, although Beauregard admitted concern that John was, perhaps, already too dislocated to appreciate the outrage of Beauregard's behavior). He intended to enlist their innocent teenage help in enacting his adult interpretation of their fantasy. He was locking all doors, disconnecting the telephones, assuring them the privacy to share his problems, as in a group encounter at a retreat. He continued up the final flight of stairs, resentful of ever encountering the roof above.       !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrsuvwxyz{|}~ Upstairs the four teenagers had become silly. Giggles and screams were followed by sudden resonant silence and the pregnant question, "Is he home?" While they checked the window, Beauregard stood in the shadows, midway up the living room stairwell. He felt his assault operating to perfection as he listened for and heard the sound of their freed inhibitions, a natural result of their being left alone untended and unsupervised. They were scurrying about, hiding behind chairs and under his bed. Beauregard passed unnoticed by Rose and George who were mauling one another in the former children's bedroom, and tenderly walked into the master bedroom where the lights were out and Sally was under the bed. Sally, expecting a wearied John, spotted the gleam of an eye and the shining lips of a dark figure as it blackened the hallway light. As she tried to rise and found herself squashed against the bed frame her eyes darted about the room for an escape. Suddenly more trapped than frightened, she slithered from her flattened position into the adjacent bathroom but even as she was entering it, Beauregard pulled closed the bedroom door, thereby shutting out the light. Sally froze still. Although she did not yet realize it, the bathroom had two doors, leading from the bedroom and the hall. Hearing footsteps approach her, she yelled, "Hey. Who's that?" John entered the bathroom through the hallway saying, "Sally, there you are." and watched her yelp as a large shadow pulled her into the bedroom. John froze as she screamed. George and Rose walked into the bedroom through the bathroom, passing John on the way. George hit a wall switch which lit a lamp by the bed. There was Sally, on the bed, where Beauregard had tossed her. Beauregard, however, was nowhere to be seen. John followed Rose and George into the bedroom asking, "Is that guy home?" Sally, shaking, pointed soundlessly at the closed bedroom door through which Beauregard had departed while George asked nervously, nodding with dread, "He's home?" They heard the bedroom door click so Rose followed the direction of Sally's finger and tried it. She said in a barely controlled whisper, "It's been locked!" John lifted Sally and followed George and Rose into the dark bathroom as its hallway door shut before their eyes. In the second of silence that followed inside the bathroom, the gaseous tube outlining the top side of the long bathroom mirror became activated and blinked on, off and finally on, florescent, revealing all, illuminating for them a reflection of the entire bathroom, pale green with paler pink shower curtains, also permitting a view of themselves and Beauregard, mounted yet moving within a three-to-one mirror frame. Beauregard's caked complexion matched their own impurities; their acne, caked Clearasil and clogged pores. Upon realization of Beauregard blocking the bedroom door they tried to shift toward the hallway door as one. However, Sally was restrained. Beauregard, holding Sally's arms behind her, pushed her over the bath ledge and lowered her into the tub. Rose screamed as John watched, wide-eyed. George became horrifyingly embarrassed, as Beauregard, reaching over Sally, held the point of his nail against the jeans hugging her legs. John pulled the hand away as George turned the hot water handle for the shower. Growling, Beauregard dove into Sally. By pulling the shower curtain with him, he broke his fall. Water pelted off his nylon covered back. As Sally scrambled to avoid his bony knees, he grabbed Rose's thigh by the door. Upon latching his grip on her she stilled and screamed while he methodically used her limbs and waist to climb to his feet. Erect, he stepped over the bath and limply fell to his knees on the tile and sobbed. Rose shut off the shower; she and Sally helped the decorated Beauregard, the most unsuccessful clown they could possibly imagine, onto the bathtub ledge. They turned accusingly to John and George as if to indicate that their next boyfriends would behave more protectively. John, in turn, turned toward George, seriously asking, "Is this guy for real?" Beauregard looked up, crying, "Wah!" but his eyes darted about. The four looked at Beauregard in the mirror and silently became spellbound by comparing his illustrated face with the naked sight of their own faces, focusing on the condition around their hair and neck, Sally especially alarmed by her heavy eye shadow; Rose, by her cover-up skin tone and blush. Their faces were wetted and smeared; their cheeks had a youthful glow; their greasy hair covered pulsing red pimples. Beauregard stopped crying and arose; he felt at home in his crowded bathroom. He ripped down his pants which were sopping with slimy cream, and stood before his guests, erect and trapped by his pants, suddenly laughing and bobbing, as misplaced as a fish out of water. Sally and Rose shrieked, "God!" As John reached for the hall door, Beauregard pulled him by the hair, and ran his fingers across his forehead, tearing the skin of his upper forehead. John's mouth opened with disaffected awe as he watched the sight through the mirror of blood falling over his face like an opera curtain during a final crash of chords. Beauregard held tight to his hair as if all but the scalp was superfluous. In the second that followed, George, Rose and Sally stood cowering, sad actors by association with Beauregard, each showing off his or her own adornment, dully, yet frantically revelling in, yet repelled by what they saw. John, angrily spun, unhinged, to strike anything, blindly. His arm backslapped the mirror; his wristwatch caused it to shatter. They stood apart as rainbow colors burned through the cracked glass accompanied by a trebly whoosh. Beyond the depths of the broken fragments of the mirror, a bush seemed ablaze. Although the fire could not consume the bush, the warm colors from the tongues of flame filled the bathroom. Reds and greens cast dancing shadows on the surrounding pale green and pink bathroom walls. Oranges, yellows and purples began to twirl as a sky-blue hole emerged from the depths. A voice from within boomed, "Enough. You have finished. Your effort is doomed. Better to withdraw. You will never see me again. You will never affect any of my children. Dear children, please forgive this man. His life is his punishment. He did whatever he wanted. Whatever he wanted was his. Whatever you want is yours. The world is at your command and I am behind you in all you do. Keep looking. Soon you'll find me. I'm booked but you're on the waiting list. Meanwhile, I say that whatever you want is fine. You have free rein. To the one I'll never see again, I say this: your penance, your sentence, is to think about what it means to take justice into your own hands. If ever the question arises, should I die, think no further, the answer is yes." The bathroom faded to black and white. Sally was no longer wet from the shower. Beauregard went into his bedroom to change into his pajamas. After John washed his face his forehead began to scab. They carefully avoided the broken glass. They left the house saying, "Thank you for having us over." "Thanks for the film." and "We had a good time." John was combing his hair over his forehead so that his cut was not visible. Beauregard, disheveled, in his worn bathrobe, waved from the stoop, "Anytime. Nice kids." On the way home they felt as though they had spent the night trick or treating. In making conversation, George announced his intent to quit working for Beauregard. As he did so, his mind wandered to other times where his boss had acted in a manner that was outlandish if discussed. George did not realize at the time, in fact, so successfully had he suppressed the memories that he did not realize until now, that Beauregard often imposed his body on the lad. As George recalled one incident dusting in the master bedroom, giant lamps appeared, illuminating a faded gold on the drapes, carpet and brass bed post as he whispered, "no, no!" and submitted. Yes, he supposed he was upset, yet he had not resigned then. In the weeks ahead, the four friends likened the thought of their visit to Beauregard's with the thought of rubbing together two pieces of dry metal. John and George avoided each other again. However, for the three following Sundays all four lined the same row at church and together offered each other a sign of peace. One possibly constructive outgrowth from the experience occurred in John who wrote a poem which he attributed to his view of Beauregard. John later learned that, although he described Beauregard as the man who walked on (and on), to Beauregard those words no longer applied. I Chapter 12, In Which the School Curbs Drug Traffic. George quit his job; yet he still fell $40 short of the purchase price of the cassette tape deck of his dreams. John's forehead had nearly healed. When his mother asked him to explain why he was almost scalped he said not to worry but that someone mugged him and he lost $40 which his parents promptly supplied as if in reimbursement. They suggested as a rule that John always carry some money so as not to annoy any muggers he happened to meet. Following the three weeks of church attendance, Sally and John saw little of each other although they felt linked, as though they were just different genders of the same person. They had both settled into a routine ingestion of twenty milligrams of diazepam - Valium, as it was called in its trademark days, daily, along with a nickel of hash on weekends to pull them through their hours of television. John bought Valium from one of his classmates, Thurston, who was rejecting the medication of his pediatric cardiologist. John also bought hashish, weekly, at 20 dollars a month. Tom was no longer John's retailer, since Tom determined with confidence that John had robbed him. John's hashish supplier was Bob, the high school rock musician who advised John during John's "acid" dilemma. Between classes every Friday at 11 A.M. from under the toilet stalls, out slipped a nickel of hash which John promptly pocketed. He received a bill in the mail, payable by check although he always paid cash in person at school early the following week. Bob kept John informed with brochures about sales of speed, acid and combinations, plugging cocaine during the math regents, but John, who did not consider himself a drug addict, restricted himself to using Valium and hash, and only while he was alone in the attic watching Public Television's Video Review, the Flintstones, and Warner Brothers cartoons. John often laughed about the dialogue in his current cartoon favorite featuring Bugs Bunny. "He's not in this stove." "Oh, so he's in the stove, eh?" "Would I turn on the gas if I my pal, Rocky, was in there?" Sssss. "You might, rabbit." "But would I throw in a lighted match???" Boom!* The lifestyle John led was quiet, harmless, anonymous and deathly. Finally, he was caught. Tom, angered by John's azure existence, spoke with his guidance counselor about the drug dealing network in the school, his reputation there being so low that any admissions worked to his benefit. His guidance counselor spoke with the Brother Louis. That Friday morning John wandered into the boys' room, looking forward to the isolated weekend to come, greeting Bob with a nod. They walked into the two adjacent toilet booths and a tinfoil wrapper slipped between the partition. Bob walked out and through the exit where he was stopped by the Brother Louis. He began to voice indignation, but Brother Louis silenced him as they waited. John, concluding his toilette, thought, hee hee, 'he's not in this stove,' as he left the bathroom and froze. He did not flee in panic, grateful for the attention. He intended to cooperate completely. In the principal's office, at Brother Louis' direction, the two boys voluntarily emptied their pockets, one pocket at a time. Also present was a teacher that John did not know. Bob's pockets contained money, over $100; but John's jacket held undeniably incriminating evidence. Brother Louis, stuffing the unopened tinfoil wrapper into his pocket, asked "Where did you get this?" Bob said, "I had nothing to do with this! You can't hold me." "Has he John? Are we holding an innocent man??" "Well, I...." The teacher John did not know began to rant at him, "I'm sick to think any stupid fool can degrade our school when there's so much reputation and spirit built up here. How dare you drag us down? We're not standing for this." He was interrupted by the assistant principal who said, "Give me your I.D. cards. Tell me your names." The teacher said, "That's John Morse. He's in my chemistry class." "John, look at me. Where did you get this?" He held the tinfoil in his hand. John hesitated under Bob's iron gaze long enough (It was nearly a minute.) to be whisked up to the guidance office, as Bob and the teacher returned to their classes. * Thanks to Dean McEldowney, I can note here that the cartoon is called "Rackateer Rabbit," Directed by I. Freleng. The guidance counselor, Brother Peter, listened, while sipping coffee, as Brother Louis said, "I'm expelling this trash. If there's nothing to say on his behalf I'm sending him home. Let him get his diploma from some public high school, like Hillcrest." John's parents went into so total a state of hysteria that they grounded John for the next thirty years. They blamed themselves, so his punishment was not nearly as bad as he had imagined. As indicated in previous chapters, John hated his high school, and his rank had dropped accordingly; but now that he was expelled he felt torn between feelings of total autonomy and solitude. Cut loose from the society into which he was born and bound he felt worse than he did when he just hated belonging to it. In fact, on the days of his expulsion, during which his parents told him to stay home, he would walk to school. At last the day came when he could plead on his behalf; to act as an advocate and possibly induce the school authorities to reconsider the decision that would force him to enroll in the summer session at Hillcrest High school. He and George walked around the track field before George's morning classes. George asked, sarcastically, "How are you?" John retorted with more than his usual share of profanities, adding, "I don't give a shit, I hate this school," barely consoling himself in the process. When it was time for classes, John waited outside, sitting at the far end of the parking lot, looking up at the school beneath the overcast sky. At ten A.M. he walked through vacant halls and stairwells, to the guidance office which was plush and friendly with soothing music coming from the F.M. radio. He and Brother Peter proceeded to talk, "I have the records of your past school marks, progress reports, and so on. I see you once ranked ninth in your class and despite your decline you still are an above average student who was never in any serious trouble, although I noted some defiance in your manner toward Brother Louis in a recent disciplinary action. However, nothing in your record compares with this. Drug dealing has no place in this school." "Sir, I." He answered nervously, nostrils flared, "A friend of mine was asking me to uh, hold this for him. I didn't know what it was." Brother Peter slammed the desk, "Don't treat me like an idiot, son. You'll be much better off with me if you start telling the truth." Brother Peter was a big burly man with a pot belly full of beer, black hair on his face and neck, and a defiant touch of grey in his head of hair which, to John, represented a sign (as is a billboard on a highway) of experience. His thick glasses magnified his thin eyes and a positive smirk shaped his bushy mustache. "Don't add a lie to your crimes." "Yes sir, I'm sorry. I understand." "Do you think you're above all this?" "No sir. I'm sorry." Brother Peter looked skeptical. "What is your justification? Were you really trying to sell this, this, grass? Did you think there would be buyers in our school?" "Well, I was the buyer." "Now we're getting somewhere. John, you don't strike me as a drug dealer." "That's right. I was caught, sir." "Who did you buy it from?" "I bought it from Bob Dunn. He's in my homeroom class. He sells it regularly to guys like Larry Johnston, Michael Brandauer and Jim McCarthy, to name a few. It's just that I was caught sir." Jotting down the names Brother Peter said, "We'll see if you're right, but in the meantime I hope you realize that the reason for our rules and the laws against drugs is your welfare. This drug taking is a destructive crutch. Think of your future. Do you have any plans? Drugs will destroy them. And like it or not, we do have the school's reputation to consider. Do you want to stay in this school?" "Yes sir." "John, if you are just going to say yes and no, then how can I help you?" Brother Peter was jotting the following notes in his form sheet: John does not look directly into my eye. Fidgety. Shortness of breath. Strained, hoarse voice. "My thoughts, sir?" "What you think." "Oh, my thoughts. Well, I think I made a mistake, sir. A big mistake. Life is very confusing. It's hard to understand sometimes. I know that what I did was wrong. But please don't kick me out. I have nowhere else to go. I know I haven't faced up to my problems but I am searching for my purpose a step at a time. I know that everyone is gifted in something. True, I have my faults but at least I'm willing to ask for help. I see others with a purpose. They go along, doing very nicely, while I feel ill - but well, that's because I'm still searching for my own purpose. I should grow up, they say, but who can really say that he is grown up? I just want to be free, and I realize that to be free we must remain within the constraints of the law. I'm sick of instances where people with faults prevail but they do because they work within the constraints of the law. Escapisms and lies seem to make money and temporarily make me happy but they avoid the issue. Truth alone should be the answer and experience is the best teaching process. I have tried and I see now that I have no love without these things," then grovelling he added, "Please don't throw me out. I promise to be good." John waited outside for lunch time. On the track, almost every day according to the weather, half the student body walked around, after lunch, digesting the food and lessons of the morning. Today, so did John and George as John awaited the results of his appeal. He could not understand his own motives. He still did not like school. Why did he beg to go back? It was about to rain. George said, "Everything's set, right?" John nodded, barely listening, and said, "I'll tell you something. Fuck being a halfway decent person and fuck pride. I thought it would all work. I went to a grammar school where I would fold my hands and listen to the sisters, horrified at the thought of being a wrongdoer. I studied and listened to their catechisms and didn't realize how stupid those teachers were. Now I'm in a high or higher school and the teachers, well most of them, are still jerks, only I see it now and obviously they see I see it and we're starting the same brown-nose circle that leads either to my social modification or individual defeat. I'm a jerk too. And now I'm also a bastard.' George cut him off. "Yeah well you think about being a bastard. I've got to go back in. It's time for math." John was alone on the track, watching the chaotic group of students mauling into one small doorway, the only one through which they were permitted to gain reentry into the school; and then there was silence. John walked out to the middle of the field and looked up to the sky engulfed with the thickness of the clouds above. He felt trapped. All the colors around him were dulled, grey and lifeless, the surrounding apartment houses depressing in their orange brick. The streets were empty. No one was walking a dog. The unbearable silence seemed to stem from within. Finally, a man walked out of the school. It was John's religion teacher. Brother Peter, completely unmoved by John, asked John's religion teacher to deliver his message. John suddenly felt outside himself as though he watched this scene from the ceiling of the clouds. A man was walking toward a boy. "You can stay." Within Bob's locker, which was next to George's locker, under trashy literature that had piled up over the years, the assistant principal found an ounce of pot. John gave George the money to buy and put it there. George bought his tape deck that weekend. End of Part I. The Resurrection PART II In the early seventies, adoration for John, Paul, George and Ringo of the British ensemble, The Beatles, an adoration which became theirs following the murder of John Kennedy in November, 1963, shook loose as their partnership dissolved. It resettled where else but with their nemesis, the man whose fame they rivalled, the son of God. Hippies converted to Jesus freaks, and the media attended baptismal ceremonies for both religious and fashion statements. Meanwhile, the shows Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar competed on the A.M. pop charts. During the early seventies ... Nixon and the fourth estate wiped the slate of popular culture clean, but before that, 1970 to 1974 ... businessmen were marveling over Deep Throat and other cocksucking bullshit ... but besides that, popular culture contemplated God. As mildly manifested in the "folk" mass, group prayer went from high/sacred to common/profane. As manifested in theatre, God and the son of God appeared, by many names, with varying emotions and in unique guises, in theatrical works like Bruce J. Friedman's Steambath (a frequently televised play in which God is portrayed as a Puerto Rican bath house attendant.), Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's evocative, cynical, aforementioned Jesus Christ Superstar (the last week in the life of Christ, based on the Gospel according to Matthew), and the almost equally popular, although ostensibly earnest and also aforementioned Godspell theatre songs of Steven Schwartz (Recalling, less literally than Superstar, the same week in the life of Christ) I recall around this time that an album called Virgin written by two priests hit the record stores -- any details? Peter Maxwell Davies championed an avant garde glory to God with his chamber composition, Vesali Icones; so, too, did Leonard Bernstein with his elaborately orchestrated Mass which opened the Washington D.C. Kennedy Center. (Within the structure of a traditional high mass, Bernstein depicted, as did all the above, the plight of the ordinary man as he sought more meaningful, simpler, spiritual communication -- substituting "Our Father" with "Hi God.") Today I believe mental experimentation precedes bursts of religious sentiment, but during the early seventies I just associated seeing God with drugs. My mentor was George Harrison, a former Beatle and, at least by association, an eater of mind-expanding substances, who, after passing through his drug phase, sung almost exclusively to God in his mega-album, All Things Must Pass, and in his smash version of the Shirell's, "He's So Fine," known as "My Sweet Lord." I often console myself with the (Hal David) words, "Where knowledge ends, faith begins." Back then I joined Ian Anderson in his demand for an explanation of faith, although faith is said to support the unexplainable. As the leader of Jethro Tull, Mr. Anderson used his talent and guilt-plagued voice to indict fellow Anglicans for minimizing God into an all-purpose salvation. Male parochial school attendees in the United States, including me at Malloy, heard in Anderson's accusations an expression of our own rage toward smug religion teachers. Demonic possession became a popular concern, as the 1971 William Friedkin movie, The Exorcist, scared audiences more than any film since Frankenstein in 1931, although Ken Russell's The Devils will be remembered for generating more mania among American film critics. The latest supermarket newspaper headlines helped reinstate the witch hunt by rekindling the possibility: maybe you or someone you know is possessed by demons. The flu, for example, could have been any one of ninety-seven evil spirits that ravage the body in quest for a soul. Whatever a person's intelligence level, with introspection, came fear, and so grew the demand for God's counsel. High school teachers, underpaid and declining in social status, felt their conviction stretched and tempted during the early seventies. Within a revolutionary atmosphere, students, often the ones who were in no position to do so, played skeptics and put teachers on trial. Students ignorant of the subversive counterculture of rock and roll and sex and drugs seemed to do well merely by staying unaware. They hoped and visualized a future unmuddied by dread. School counselors helped them, because although average, they stood firm against the swaying tide of rebellion. Many of these students were children born of parent emigres from foreign lands. Their parents learned English as a second language, and slaved as tailors or bakers until prosperous enough to afford the tuition of a private parochial school. These students accomplished for their parents the most idealized achievement of the bourgeoisie, namely a diploma. Guidance counselors could dismiss as hopeless (given time constraints) the majority of students, children of second generation immigrants who too easily flowed with the subversive times, much the way they dismissed with the subversive pop crap these students digested. These students, being born of immigrant grand-parents had parents who, having accomplished the grandparents' goals, saw no future for themselves (The parents were thus paid back for fulfilling dreams other than their own.). Many lucky products of successful second generation immigrants, the kids with time and cash allowance to enjoy and afford the latest pop craze, concentrated on being "cool." They were learning the art of consuming and spending during a lifetime vacation, separated by lapses of work, and their behavior was, is and remains harmless and ignorable. The problem students were the few thoughtful ones whose rebellious behavior followed a too careful analysis of their choices. These students seemed disagreeable and perverse. They needed religious guidance. Religion classes at parochial high schools existed for that purpose but they took basics for granted. Granted that Christ had died, risen and would come again; parochial high schools taught Christian behavior, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and of turning the other cheek; yet they rewarded success accomplished through subtle aggression, excellence and a sense of superiority. The better high schools geared their students toward college. In doing so, Malloy teachers chose favorites for special college programs (vocational programs), based upon participation, marks and a relatable personality. A teacher appeared insidious to students who wanted or expected to be chosen when that teacher chose otherwise. The category of unchosen included George and John among the ready yet reticent. John and George needed a push, not forthcoming because nobody expected anything exceptional of them. Their disagreeable nature qualified them for the middle of the class, i.e., nowhere, when they felt entitled to be on top. The redundant encouragement which they received, they could not believe; it was the line used to bring everyone in line and they were not everyone. Their teachers formed one of three theories about them. One theory was that they were empty headed. The second theory was that they were too complicated to be granted the time needed to understand them. The third theory was that when one tried to understand, one soon discovered that John and George convoluted themselves as a mask to their ordinariness; they assumed the complications of special people because they liked and expected special treatment. Teachers, by not recognizing the talent John and George had yet to recognize in themselves, inadvertently evoked resentment and anger. To reinforce a superior self-view, John and George became cliquish with one another to the exclusion of other schoolmates and, while they enjoyed being unique, they often wondered why they were outsiders, as if nobody liked them. Sally and Rose felt in a similar position at Mary Louis Academy, which was, after all, Malloy's sister school. In late spring of 1973 the answers to the Regents' exams were stolen, so nobody took Regents' exams. What a windfall; school ended without finality and summer was a sudden welcome reality. Nobody complained, least of all, George, John, Rose and Sally. Queens, miles from the Wildwood shore, had its own brand of summer days: playing in the neighborhood construction projects, participating in organized bike hikes that translated miles into money for charity, swim meets at the Community House, tennis, chance encounters with the opposite sex; and its own brand of balmy wild wild Wildwood nights: parties, dances, smoking marijuana in movie theatres screening films so engaging that John Morse, for example, needed an appointment book to resume his own life, and nightly beer wallowing, which George Cocheran was mature enough to enjoy. All past pains were forgotten; new, smaller pains were amplified. School was a tiny nightmare looming in the distant haze. Without past or apprehension, their life was an endless dream. They saw nothing approaching. September was too far away to threaten an inevitable awakening. Rose and Sally frequently played together until Rose went away on a family vacation to Washington D.C., the nation's capital. She was back, though -- with nothing new -- in time to join Sally, John and George for a hike and picnic. II Chapter 1 Ah, a lovely July day and there was nothing like lunch in the wilderness to help brighten spirits and renew faith in life. They did not need to go far in their search for wilderness, going, as they were, to the little league fields near town where abandoned train tracks ended at a mysterious tunnel. The day was hot, with temperatures hovering over 90 degrees, and uncomfortably humid. The sun, filtering through particles of pollution, produced a dull white gleam that surrounded the weeds and rocks, blunting all rough edges to the rocky landscape. Heat rippled the air as it rose from the tracks. Each of the four dressed for summer in an inexpensive, momentarily fashionable outfit. Rose wore an Indian cotton tentshaped maternity dress; Sally, a light yellow elastic ribbed tube shirt three sizes too small, which substituted for a bra, over bell jeans; John, his favorite tattered jeans and a blue buttoned worker's shirt; George, faded jeans and a T-shirt. They packed a meal which included cold cuts like ham, bologna, salami, and chicken roll, cans of tuna and peaches. Finding concrete rocks shaded by great weeds they sat to chomp, sweat and discuss recent movies, life, gossip and sad songs. Meanwhile, hungry yellow jacket bees vied for their attention. Just as politics was rearing a gaudy, sunflowery head, George surprised his friends with a bottle of Sangria to wash down the food. All concerned applauded. They decided to leave the bees and follow the sun toward further seclusion along the tracks. As they ventured through overgrowth, past graffitied crossways, signals, old wheels and axles, they discovered a manhole, the ground around it washed away, leaving a raised tube. They yelled in and, receiving no echo in return, they moved on until they came to the tunnel: a curved granite hole covered by tracks, which were still wired for the Long Island Railroad. As a roaring diesel train rolled over, the tunnel rattled as though ready for collapse. In and out of the tunnel ran the dead tracks, ending without a crucial connection as they neared the live tracks, their rails rough in contrast with the gleam of the tracks over which trains passed to reach Penn Station. Sitting on a weather worn wood plank that covered the rusted third rail, Rose reviewed her legendary experience, and heard familiar impressions in return. Meanwhile everyone stared into the tunnel, which, slightly curved, received a shaft of sun light from the other side. Standing in the tunnel's cold shadow, they stepped forward and entered; the tracks below them, barren of shrubbery, were layered by thick black grime. They discovered a public telephone; its condition told its story -- I was ripped from my mount, taken to seclusion, and smashed for my chest of dimes; followed by a tangle of metallic tubing manufactured to pipe gas. The tubing meant nothing to the others but it stirred in Sally recollection of a dream which she had a few nights ago and which she, in part, described. Her father walked naked into their house, raped! although he bravely, even staunchly, resisted the assault of brute force. During the family discussion, he declared dead his body's defiler, of which he spoke by name. It was "the bush bug." The unspeakable, flexibly armored bush bug had raped him! and it died when he hit it on a protected spot, which, at that heated moment, protruded from its silver crab shell. Listening like the youngster she had been last year, Sally followed her father across the lawn into his gold Mercedes. There, in the back, as if spewed across the black leather seats, lay the drying greased machinations of this gooey bug, green seaweed and the tangle of metallic tubing which she presently stood before. Sally did not tell her friends all the details of the dream as it was hers and she felt at least partially responsible. The tunnel also contained giant railroad nails and a shopping cart, apparently flung from above. George aptly titled it, Squashed Useless Mesh with Wheels. The wall by where it lay bore the engraving, 1909. They drank from dixie cups and wandered, as if at a gallery cocktail party, through the tunnel to inspect mansize crevices where signalmen stood as trains passed. "Today suitable for vertical interment of mummies and sarcophagi," John noted aloud. Hearing the distant rustle of a bush, they looked accusingly at each other. With no plants in the tunnel, their minds flooded with past warnings of the deranged men that roamed the field, intensified by images of hungry hawks that picked through broken victims. Silence followed. Were they mistaken? Another rustle confirmed their fear. There, scaling the ridge of the little valley against the tunnel, were three black teenagers making a silent, tentative approach. Rose whispered, "They're going to mug us." George reasoned, "They can't even see us." Given the contrast of the light, he was right. John, hating suspense more than outcome, yelled "Hello!" The three black kids heard and nervously walked away. After a few minutes George announced, "That was stupid. Let's go." Sally scolded, "You scared them." Looking at her friends she felt stabs of guilt at the middle class presumptions she shared with them, and suddenly noticed a silent addition to their group, a grey haired man, also black, carrying a department store shopping bag. Walking with him was a frisky little dog. He asked her, in the simple voice of a prophet, "Have you seen my flame, my fire?" George, the self-appointed ambassador of good will, replied, his tone balancing ignorance with interest, "What do you mean?" John, enchanted, asked, "What are you looking for?" The man answered, "No, children, I am merely following my dog, the most intelligent animal." Rose reached for the ground saying, "Hey, boy," then inquiring, "Does he fetch sticks?" "No daughter, this dog fetches souls." John attempted to understand. "He chews on rubber souls?" "No my son, he retrieves them and safely returns them, whole, to their flower beds among the lilies of the field." John watched his friends nervously listen. Sally, hungry and ever ready to take a bite of her sandwich, suddenly stopped and said, "I'm sorry we can't offer you food. We haven't any more." "The millions need it more than I. We are the fortunate ones. The loaves, the fish, they're all good. But what about this wine?" He lifted the bottle off the third rail. George offered him a dixie cup. He said, "Join me in a toast, if you'll just give me a moment." When they nodded he pulled from his department store bag a purple robe, cut for a nun, which he slipped over his clothes, pulling a yellow sweater over his dog. "I am ready," he said. Then he spoke, as if to begin, "For the hungry and the homeless, let us pray to the Lord." They replied on impulse imitating their response at church services, "Lord, hear our prayer." He bobbed his head. "For the desperate, downtrodden, the hated and the hurt. Let us pray to the Lord." "Lord, hear our prayer." "For the lesbians and gays, those diseased and perverse, let us pray to the Lord." "Lord, hear our prayer." "For the victims of evolution, the changeless and paralyzed; for those who say they want to but won't, let us pray to the Lord." "Lord, hear our prayer." "For the misanthropes among teenagers. Let's pray, and to the Lord." "Lord, hear our prayer." "For the plunderers, philanderers, whether wealthy, or political, let us pray to the Lord." "Lord, hear our prayer." "For the Lord-let-us-prayers, and to the Lord. Let us pray to the Lord." "Lord hear our prayer." "And if any of you would like to add your own intentions, please do so now." Until John blurted, "We have no intentions," there was silence. The man continued, "Then let us pray for survival." "Lord hear our prayer." "And for man, let us pray to the Lord." They murmured, "How much longer can we let him go on?" The man motioned as if he realized his mistake. "Of course. We should be praying for the Lord. Repeat after me. Dear Lord." "Dear Lord." "May all your days be joyous." "May all your days be joyous." "May you, through an expression of your power, find happiness in your creations." " . . . " "That you might look down upon us and derive a pleasure so justly unique and so unjustly deserved." The words overlapped as they tried to remember what they were repeating. "Because Lord." "Because Lord." "You don't give a shit about us." His dog leapt up and ran off. The kids stopped playing along, "What!? And in a nun's uniform too. What are we doing? This guy's disturbed. Another wacko!" The man went wild, yelling, "You don't give a shit about us!" then, "Ah! The flame, the fire. I see it. I know you, Lord. I'm coming." The dog ran out the tunnel, and up around the hill to the live tracks, his master screaming after him, "Oh Christ! Christ, our lord!" The kids, squinting from the light, followed from behind. The dog waited on the tracks between the two metallic rails as a diesel train approached. The man yelled, "No!" The train passed. On the spot where once stood the dog, now stood nothing. The man ran, stumbling, along the live tracks (his nun's train in hand), chasing the train into the setting sun. A week of intense summer heat followed. II Chapter 2 Beauregard planned suicide. During the escalating sequence of perverse solo activity which followed his abandonment by God, he had done the one thing he had always known he would do if he followed his inclinations. There could be no mistake as confirmation and reconfirmation followed attempt after varied attempt. He had broken his penis. With death still a thrill, and as it could only happen once, he wanted an event. In variance with his custom of a lifetime, he planned. Construction of an eighty story low income apartment complex in historic lower Manhattan would provide the jump site. He would go there Monday around four-thirty while everyone was leaving work. There he would cause a disturbance. During the prior month, in anticipation of his demise, he stopped paying all bills. His wealth provided the salary for two prostitutes, both of whom assured him without doubt that his penis was indeed broken. "Irreparable," was the word they always left saying, heads shaking and tongues clicking. Other reasons for committing suicide were his taxes, unfiled for over four years, and his numerous parking tickets. He marked his walls with painful illustrations of the damage he had done to himself and left cute notes around the house for his relatives. He even wrote a letter to his former wife: "Dear Margo, I doubt you'll ever get this but I feel if I put my thoughts on paper I'll preserve my remaining sanity. Forgive my dramatizing, I just mean that I always loved and still do love you and that the mere thought of our great time together warms the embers of my shattered heart. I miss the kids (sure enough) but I guess I'm doing good here, fine for the most part, holding on. Let's face it, I'm lost. If only I could see you again, but alas, it is so hopeless. Was I really just another louse in your field during crop dusting? How is Charlie? How's his French. Does he appreciate you? Business is fine, sort of, more or less. I quit, sore I didn't get that promotion for the kid's sake. I was up for assistant manager in the Department of Respliced, Torn and/or Mishandled Prints. What a stupid career! Let me just thank you for reading this drivel and then kill myself. Oh honey, I guess without you I could die, but, well, there I go again, so foolish. God, I'm such an asshole that I hate myself. I'm so small. I couldn't agree with you more for leaving me. Don't even think about it. I'll be fine. Pip pip. Stiff upper lip. Cheerio and all that rot. Love to the kids, And love to you, I love you, always. Love, You know who. Yup, Beau-ie." He wrote a will leaving everything to his wife. Finger in the giant telephone book, he dialed George and said, "Hi George, it's Beauregard. Listen, I can't talk any more but come to Hudson and West Broadway, around 4:00 P.M. Monday and look to the skies. I'll be there. Bye. Oh, and George? I'm sorry." Click. George sat, still shivering from the sound of Beauregard's gravelly voice. He pulled himself together and called John. After listening, John ignored the implications of Beauregard's words and suggested they see El Topo at a revival movie house near Hudson Street. "El Topo?" asked George. John admitted it was a lame excuse and arranged to meet George Monday at 3P.M.. On Monday, midafternoon, Beauregard, equipped with a valise, phoned a Skull's Angels limousine cab and directed the lady driver to his chosen construction site. Handing her twenty dollars, he said, "Wait here, I'll be right down," and popped out of the car. Meanwhile George and John, leaving a Chinese takeout counter, crossed the street to look at the construction site, burping and thinking how foolish they were to eat away from home, when, suddenly, they spotted Beauregard climbing the sky scraper scaffolding yelling "Good-bye cruel world!" As he mounted a temporary elevator shaft and shifted the elevator, making it ascend, he began to tap dance, in his own way, his brief case dangling from one hand. John leaned over and said, "Hey George, isn't that your former employer up there?" As Beauregard rose he looked out at the greenish yellow sky. Into the wind, as it whistled against him through the skeletal building, he spoke his farewell, "Ahem. There comes a time in a man's life when he feels the end is near. That's how I feel, and I'm doing something about it! I hereby renounce the one thing I call my own -- tired, battered and abused though it is, it's mine, it's my life, not to be taken by anyone but myself." The screech of steel skeletal rails, craned and clamped, rubbing with construction, tore up his words. In his mind he heard the mindless song of a Total Cereal commercial: "He knows he's a man... ." The police arrived, clearing a path which John and George followed to another elevator. John yelled, "I know that guy;" George said, "I worked for him." Both of them sounded as though they meant to say, "Wow!" As they rose within hearing distance, they could decipher Beauregard's words as he called, "Hey, George!" George yelled back, "I'm here, sir." Beauregard asked, "Hi George! Where you been keeping yourself?" As George shook his head for an answer an officer said, "Keep him talking 'til we grab him." George saluted, "Okay." John demonstrated the inattention that so enraged his teachers by whispering in George's ear, "The valium I'm taking gives me vertigo." At first George shook his head again. Then he nodded. Officers in window washing harnesses hooked wires, cables and nets to the skeletal structure. The elevator shot down to collect a city-salaried psychiatrist, a young graduate student working at a nearby temporary detention center. Beauregard ignored everyone present to thank everyone absent, including his wife. "Good-bye, Margo. Scatter my ashes at some restful place of your choosing. Please, not the ocean, that cesspool!" He noted the rush hour crowd dallying at the base of the building. As men approached behind Beauregard, the psychiatrist, equipped with a megaphone, pleaded, "Let us notify your family!" Beauregard fiddled with the locks on his briefcase and said, "I can't change my mind now. My crime for attempting suicide is too serious." A tall Scandinavian member of the suicide squad approached him from behind. Beauregard, feigning surprise, spastically whirled, flinging the man off the ledge. The man dangled, caught in his harness, as Beauregard yelled, "Thought you might trick me, eh?" The psychiatrist approached Beauregard, as Beauregard held the briefcase in front of him like a shield. Unbuckling the top of the case with his thumbs he allowed the front half to drop, releasing its contents: loose currency. Catching the psychiatrist in a cringe, he added with glee, "Now nobody cares about me!" In a half minute the crowd below roared with excitement and reached for the skies. The psychiatrist begged him, "Please don't jump," as Beauregard dove from the ledge yelling loud and long the name of his wife's new husband, "Charlie McCarthy!" He dropped, tumbling, wind blown along the building's metal frame into which he collided listlessly, his voice wailing until his head hit a steel bar. From the neck his body blew out bone fragments, brain and blood. His figure shaved other obstacles in its weighty descent, to the sound of whistling that did not need to stop for breath. Margo had Beauregard cremated and deposited his ashes in a cracked concrete parking lot between two tenement buildings near Greenwich Village. Margo had thick blond hair, a harsh nose, penetrating eyes and a wide mouth with which she spoke with impeccable enunciation. She lived in a railroad apartment in one of the tenements with her children and Mr. McCarthy until September. When her married girl friend, Sylvia, from Manhasset, finally gathered the courage to join them, Charlie left. Margo's parents collected the children. Sylvia and Margo became roommates. Together they practiced the art of frustrating men who hated themselves more than these women ever could. II Chapter 3 (a supplement) As the minutes passed, Sally looked into her bathroom mirror. She studied her aging. Her face seemed whiter, her eyes bluer, including the whites. Her tongue felt dry and swollen and her breasts were listless and asleep. She felt shitty, tired and quiet, her acne under control. She heard her father's voice in the distance, saying, "Sally, are you there?" "Yes, dad." "We're going to the store. Do you want anything?" "No thanks." The greatest favor her parents could do for her was leave her alone. Although she did not live for sex she consciously maintained a look of sexual desirability by gazing with a languorous stare through bedroom eyes. She discovered, directing the stare at herself, that if she could do so without attracting attention, she would slit her wrists. She held a razor blade to her veins, eager to conclude the imprisonment of blood in her body, discouraged, though, by the memory of several friends who had gone before her, all assholes. As summer passed, both Sally and John stopped taking pills. One afternoon, two days before the beginning of their junior year semester, John went to Sally's house to visit. Both of them were semicomatose. They discussed the possibility of sharing their future. "Oh John," said Sally, hanging onto his shoulder. "It would be so nice. We'll move away. Get an apartment. You could get a job. You could be a dealer. We'll get a big bed. I'll get my fallopian tubes tied, and we'll be very happy." "Are you pregnant?" "No. I was just thinking, it's a free country. We can do it." "Hey, baby," John retorted, suddenly masculine, "Our constitution says we can pursue happiness, it don't say nothing 'bout catchin' it." Two hours later they found themselves outside taking a walk. They sampled the windy tension of summer's transition to fall. They said little. Standing in the shadow of an obscenely giant sunflower, Sally asked a topical question. "What did you do this summer?" "What?" answered John, as if stupefied. Ten minutes later she asked, "Did you do anything this summer?" "No." Sally felt disillusioned with John as she thought, even my brother did something this summer (He restored an old car.). John gave her the impression he was going nowhere. She loved him but she knew someday she would be moving on. The man she would marry would tell her where to go. They walked longer than expected, John still wondering aloud, "This summer.. School's coming soon... I'm a junior. This summer." He thought about it, too. He had yearned for summer and now that it was over it accomplished nothing. They found a deserted urban housing project, where they mounted one in a row of garage roofs and lay back on its shingled slant. Facing them was a view of the Long Island Railroad, in the midst of repairs. Great orange caterpillar tractors and trailers were quietly parked, for this was Sunday, a day of rest. At six-thirty the suppertime lull was at its height and the sun, nearly due west. The machinery became detailed, and golden colored; the air, crystal clear. Sally was becoming normal in preparation for the good first impressions she intended to make at school. Rationality suddenly began to return to her as her mind descended through mental stages. She was an American citizen, on earth; school was coming and that was that. The day was nice. Thanks to John's visit she felt like somebody. During her rationalizing period, as she was approaching ground floor reality and passing through summer stages, she felt talkative, but testy. "Do you realize how fast time goes. Yet, we dwell on insignificance and make it an important part of our life." "Huh?" Sally followed with a question, "John. What is insignificance?" In John's mind, he believed, lodged the answers to every mystery of life. He felt very content, with a strange sense of well being, lying on the cosy garage roof, viewing the neighborhood from a distance. He was surprised, though, that Sally asked his opinion. He tried to supply a definitive answer. "Insignificance is, well, when something doesn't matter, like ... school. I don't know, school." He drifted off, the all-knowing part of his brain still virginally untapped, though not for lack of trying. "I find school more an experience. Wouldn't it be an experience? An experience, that's right." John hesitated. "Do you think, am I insignificant? But things matter." "What?" "I don't know. Christ, I'm all confused." Apparently, his brain was in the midst of a day of rest. However, he continued to speak, "My stereo is not insignificant. Do you know how much money there is in a business like repairing those things? Twenty dollars just to open a receiver. Once they touch it with a screw driver you owe them twenty bucks. That's significant." Sally never listened when John talked about stereos. She said, "Things?" "You know," John said, on another subject. "I forgot about school. I have a dark hole in my heart for it but that's all. I'm without memories either way." Sally's thoughts progressed as John spoke. "I don't know. I think that it would be best if we make the best of it. We can gain knowledge there, somewhere. We just aren't looking in the right places." John did not want to discuss school. Reverting, he asked, "How can we marry and run off?" "I'm sorry John. I'm not feeling too well." John elaborated. "Escaping is wrong, and yet it's a multimillion dollar industry, or industries, I should say." Sally agreed, "People reverting back to the fifties, forties, thirties, twenties. Christ, anywhere but today. There is no real today. We are living in an age of reaction. Things aren't happening, they're re-happening. Our present culture is repetition. People are refusing to face up to the times." "Not like the sixties. There was advancement. Maybe not. I don't know." "You say that a lot." "What? I don't know? Well, I'm still young." "You admit it." "But don't you see," he put his arm around her and they looked to the sun. "That's just it. We are young and things aren't that bad. I mean, so what? School is starting. I don't mind. Right? Old man trouble, what is it, I don't mind him. You won't find him hanging around my door." "Are you singing that song?" "Yeah. Don't you hear the crickets?" He sang (the Happenings 1968 recording of the Gershwin standard), "`I got (pause) rhythm. I got (pause) music." Sally recognized and said, "Doo doo, Rhythm!" Together they sang, "I got (pause) my girl. Who could ask for anything more?'" They laughed. John editorialized, "A beautiful song. It's a nice day." He was surprised that despite impending doom he felt happy and his infectious laughter helped Sally feel the same way. At six P.M. their happiness spread wide. Two hours later they privately thought how shallow it was, glad though to think that the other person did not realize it. They never spoke of Beauregard or of the man they met at the tunnel. II Chapter 4 John's mother, as a member of the parish rosary society, handled the rental of a 16mm projector for a screening of a symbolic adolescent drug problem sex film planned for the elder adults during one of a series of church functions entitled "Search." The practical reason for the projector being in the house did not matter to John as he searched on his hands and knees through his closet's depths to find the film he had taken from his grandmother's house some months before. When Sarah's family inventoried and sold the house, nobody missed the film, but now that John made it known that he had it in his possession it was as if he had unearthed a buried civilization. The church rented the projector for the weekend and the adult "Search" was on Saturday so John planned to show his little slice of life on Sunday. Rose came over as did their parents, aunts and uncles, all eating hors d'oeuvres, drinking cocktails and laughing. John set up the movie and everyone sat down to view the first few moments in a respectful silence. The film was made in the late nineteen twenties by an unmarried friend of the family's who owned one of the early home movie cameras capable of shooting 16 millimeter film. Sarah Dilio was eighteen and happy, for this was an important occasion in her life. It was her day of Confirmation and they were leaving the house to go to the church when this roll of film began. At first there was much waving and film embarrassment. Sarah wore a white dress, so radiant that it partly overexposed the picture as she walked by admirers. A closer shot showed her face. She smiled and seemed to blush, then moved out of the frame, leaving the camera to record a dreary flower garden. "Oh, isn't that a pretty garden," exclaimed one of the womanly relatives in the audience. This, believe it or not, launched a conversation and John and Rose became the only ones intent upon the film. More waving followed as family members walked out of the church. It was a church in Ozone Park which some of the relatives recognized, though back then it presided over dirt roads and fields, as well as a nearby train station, now defunct. A crowd gathered on the church plaza, respectfully cheering a procession from the church. Confirmation day seemed to be quite an event. John thought he remembered seeing the plaza while he was on his "Long Journey" through his mind. He recalled walking from this church to a white house accompanied by an Asian girl, and then, oh yes, the cheering people, the cocktail parties and the cellar. What happened there? Damn it, he could not remember. He tried to move the stone wall sealing his subconscious from his conscious mind. Unrelated thoughts entered his head. Meanwhile, the faces in the film waved back. Everyone wanted to get into the picture. The procession dispersed as its marchers joined their families. The relatives in the living room looked up. If that was the street they thought it was... .Some of the conversation pierced John and Rose's ears. "Cross Bay Boulevard," said Aunt Martha in recognition. "Why oh dear me can you believe it so barren, so different. Didn't mother once show us these pictures?" John's mother said, "I think long ago when Dad was around. Oh, God. There he is. Did she know him then?" Uncle Harvey added, slightly bored, "How religious they all were. We really must go to church more often." "Some of us still do." Rose and John couldn't believe what they were seeing. Cross Bay Boulevard consisted of a dirt road and produce stands. Today there were pizza parlors, car washes, and furniture outlets. John and Rose recalled their Confirmations and it became their turn for mind-wandering. For their entrance into adulthood they would have preferred a shower of material wealth, as they assumed kids received at barmitzvas. It would have been a pleasure dressing up where money was at stake. John would have pleasantly complied and would have been a rich man. In the back of his mind he wanted to accept only those gifts given as a direct expression of the giver's encouragement and investment in him, while rejecting anything given due to some respect or favor due his parents or relatives, but as he matured he no longer cared. He just wanted people to give him money. A Soldier of God: that was what Confirmation made one; that was what the Sisters said. These soldiers fought against the devil. The Devil. What was that? John asked himself, How could we fulfill such a responsibility? Was Rose a soldier of God? Was he? He and Rose remembered nothing of the ceremony except the slap across the face, signifying the final hardening of the Christian -- a test to see if their baby fat had dried and set correctly. They had been molded into good catholics but something went wrong. They did not care. Confirmation got them out of school for rehearsals. They felt like they were putting on a show. John was angered by going through the motions, but Rose enjoyed it. She got to wear a dress similar to her grandmother's. Seeing her grandmother as a teenager made Rose hope she was following in her grandmother's footsteps. Within the film, the family was about to go on a trip to celebrate the occasion. The camera went with them as they boarded a train, mounting its last car from which they could film good-byes of the people at the station. The train moved past fields resembling those of the dead tracks where the kids had their picnic, and where Mrs. Dilio took Rose last winter. The camera leaned out the window as the train approached the tunnel. Oh no, thought John, it was all so new and alive. The train entered the tunnel. The camera recklessly jittered. Within the flash of its shutter it caught Sarah smiling and the light blackened as they entered the depths of the tunnel. In the midst of the darkness a light broke through, illuminating the living room. John became striped with paranoia. What was within the light? He looked into the reflected glow and saw the corpuscles over his eyes whirl like single-celled dancers. The dots became a kaleidoscope of grey against the white. His mother turned the projector off. The film, brittle with age, had cut. Some of the sprockets melted in the film cage. The stare of his relatives forced John to pull himself together. He excused himself and walked toward the stairs, completely engulfed in terror. The room spun around. He had just walked through a party, but which one? He was tempted by some slices of frankfurters wrapped in small buns on the table. That did it. He ran up the rest of the stairs, spinning around in his head. He closed the door and leapt up on the bed. It bounced up and down. He cringed to think, was he possessed? Then he remembered his acid trip. Inside here he would be trapped. Steel walls would roll over him and he would be locked in, jailed, his mind blocked for life! He burst through the bedroom door and ran back down the steps, suddenly changing his pace, whispering to himself, "Slow, slow, be nonchalant. Ladeeda." He could not stand it. He sprang out the door to the safety of open places, but the sun flashed in his eyes. The scattered clouds were spinning and the blue sections of the sky were coming down on him. The blue seemed to engulf him and seemed to be not blue but its negative, orange. He was trapped in orange. He wondered what he was thinking about, as he had just lost track. He remembered that Monday was school, saying, "Right George?" No one answered. He ran and ran until he came to a park wherein lurked hundreds of his unknown enemies. He would have to sit down. No. Then he would be an easy target, a sacrifice. He heard a tock tick sound and spotted a handball game played against a concrete wall illustrated with the words, "Bill loves Judy," "Strut," and "Top Cat," sprayed in garish colors. The words assaulted him, as did the wall they were written on. They implied an aggressive lifestyle which he played no part in. He ran away and sat down on a bench. A baseball game was in progress. He watched, saying, "Lord, please help me. God. God." * * * * * * * Who should John meet in his state of mind but a Jesus freak. Actually this proselytizer was somewhat older than most but just as big on bible banging the New Testament as the latest Sun Valley evangelists. He explained to the bewildered John and to several other park people that "love" was the answer, and that you achieved love through God, who walked among us in this man's form. John listened and remembered his own godlike feelings, and his undone superiority. He, too, liked to preach. John tried to put himself above God. Now that John felt broken, unable to function without God, it seemed that God was all that was left. God would help John. The man explained to the youngsters the evils of man, and of himself in particular; how he was dragged into an almost fatal hole. Then he found God. God was there all the time, of course, helping and guiding. The man explained how important it was for youngsters to take advantage of their youth and make the best of their life. He likened their potential to his opportunity to be a catcher in one of the minor leagues, and how he got married instead. Why? Because his parents did not approve of a baseball son (and also, because he got his woman pregnant. He did not mention that part.). He was no longer married. He spoke of the decay of society. He said the government was infested with female spies who, as with all spies, once caught must be shot. Our only pillar of wisdom was The Bible because through The Bible we connected with God. He pointed out how people had forgotten about morality and that they were too wrapped up in worldly matters, that they were blinded by misleading facts and statistics, that they should go out and help each other rather than go about life's burdensome tasks alone. He explained that people were essentially good and that man should communicate with fellow men to gain a better understanding of himself through others. Unfortunately, this man had spent too much time alone. He had also had too much to drink, yet he took another swig from a brown bag. John did not realize the man's condition, though. He was so drunk from the man's words that his ability to observe was impaired. The understanding John achieved made him feel too powerful, which made him want to take on and overthrow God. For now, however, John first had to find God and get to know him. He was back where he started but just a bit wiser. He was getting on the circle of life again, only this time as a sharper fellow. Wrecking further havoc on this cyclical analogy, he was about to replay a phonograph record with greater understanding of its contents, so that this time it would not put him to sleep. It dawned on him that the fall semester of his Junior Year at High School had already begun. All his grandiose thoughts settled. With this semester he was getting another chance. Maybe he could do everything differently. It was such awakening news. He would have to reveal it to George, Sally and Rose. They would be pleased to know that the school year was beginning with a feeling of renewal. The film also affected Rose for two reasons. The ending stirred her memory of losing her grandmother last Christmas Eve; and it caused John to crack up in front of all their relatives. She knew it related to her but she was baffled how. She also knew that the tunnel held the answer, yet how many more times could she search it? Where were the clues that could possibly pass without notice? Rose was moved by the youthful vision of her Grandmother. Rose and Sarah looked alike, but Rose refused to flatter herself. She remembered her funny smile. One of her right teeth, slightly misplaced, caused her lips to curl up whenever her expression strained. She would prefer to die but, like John, she too realized that a new year was just beginning, and maybe it would not be too bad. Perhaps the film held the answer. She resolved to ask her grandmother about it. On the way home from the movies, George spotted John in the park. He walked over to see what new ideas had taken root in John's head while they were apart. In the park there was a sprinkler with assorted half naked "nimkumpoops" splashing about the area. George got John seated away from the preacher lush and, while passing time, they watched a conglomeration of kids. John was still in the process of settling himself. He was thinking, how could this be my life? It made no sense. He wanted more. He recalled reading about the moth that flew into a blazing light for one moment's triumph and a speedy end. Somehow he found himself looking toward the end, and thought of George's friend, Beauregard. Two baby boys were fighting with each other in a modernized sandbox and one of them got sand in his eye. After a moment's notice, he began to cry. George and John had known each other since they were two. Perhaps that encounter had happened to them. Since then, they had grown up, of course. The two women argued over one son's torn shirt. From what John could hear of the louder conversation, the two kids were playing with a toy one of them owned. The tone reeked of possession and jealousy. Another two mothers were meeting at arms length to discuss the topic of their children's nursery school. There was the old man of the park, sitting aimlessly. Some prospective "pick up girls" walked by, about whom George merely commented, discouraged from the past, "probably lesbians." John was very tired. He realized that starting up in school with a new semester was merely a continuation of his old life. Nothing had really changed and little was learned. Why must he have so much time to think? If only his mind was concerned with the real things in life instead of with all these vague big ideas, he would be better off. His father recently expressed the same concern. He thought about his own potential, then whether he should put it to substantive use. He enjoyed his self revelations; no one need interfere with them. Some people, it seemed, were thus satisfied. He remembered Beauregard and the poem he had written about him. After George provided some facts, he wrote them down. He wound up with such a long poem that, while everyone was impressed with the first two lines, no one heard it through. Besides, he brought it up at a party, where the purpose of the gathering was not a heavy handed commentary on life, but a good time, which all there deserved, except maybe John. From his inner silence he felt the verse rise. He was reciting it to George as the sun set before them, and while he did, his bright stripes of paranoia faded and disappeared. The Man Walks On (and On) In the dusky dark A baby was born Chilled by the shrill of the night. And from the moment he was born he was Filled with the fear that the End of his life might Soon be near, so he Lived out his days with that Thought in his ear, and it Seemed that he'd never die. Early life In his youth he was sent to the best of schools. He learned his lessons with a barrel of fools. As a token gesture he made it through because he Knew he approached the end. And that is how he lived out his life, Each day he was growing old; And that is why he figured he'd let things go, Little knowing what he'd lose that way. Each morning surprised to see a new day. Each day, overwhelmed, had little to say. Interlude Before he knew it his young years were robbed. He spent his time in a temporary job. Went out to get a girl just to pass the time Go out into the night; get a widow divine. Love Life Wooed the woman of his dreams; Showed the right of way. Learned to love beyond expected Through the life long day. He stated, How could I have lived so long without Your tender touch? I would not believe that I could Love you all that much. How could I have lived so long with- Out things being so good? I feel happy, more than any Words make understood. Now he felt his life completed, Didn't want to die. Crisis But alas life took a sullen turn Upon that fateful day When that which this man loved so much Abruptly ran away. Older life He was forced to live not knowing where to go, Driven by a force that wouldn't let him know. Without his love he suspected friend or foe And he grew in years, in each, thinking it's his last. Spending time in the bathroom, they moved pretty fast, And he did not know what more to expect as Nothing had happened yet. In an adventurous gesture he walked to the park, Figuring that here he would make his mark, And he sat right down by a pigeon on a bench, Keeping his interest in the smell of its stench, When he spotted a boy in a box sitting with the sand. And he beckoned to the boy, Why don't you ride? Swing on the swing? Slide down the slide? Surely there is more to the Park than sitting in the sand? And the boy said, Why should I bother? Why should I care? Will my life change If I go over there?' Him being one of those Intellectual five-year-olds. Sermonette The man now old but still with a big mouth replied, If you ask me about living there's so much for me to say. There are so many answers you can choose most any way, But before you sink back into yourself just Listen to what I have to say: To put the facts together you must be conscious how you live. Before you start your taking, think what you have left to give. It's fine to want to get ahead before you will begin. All right to be ambitious but don't expect that you will win. Before you know, your life is over. Before you know, young days are older. So take it easy, but use your head. Have to know the time for -- Have to know a crime for -- Before you have to go and sign for -- (he breaks off) There's nothing left for me to say. He wasn't listening anyway. (he tries again) Before you start your running out Think about the things I've talked about You have to know before you run and shout, There's something more to Life Than Living off the land! Making castles in the sand. Epilogue And then the man thought what a great parent he could have been. The boy resumed the position he held before the man began. And so the old man walked out with a sudden satisfaction. His wasted life was handed down to one who had more time. And yet with both, it was over Before it began. Chorus And so like time The man is gone The man walks on and on. John added, "I wrote it for Beauregard. Until he killed himself, he was the man." George said, "I hope he still is." He was too polite to add out loud, but he thought, hopefully you're not taking over where he left off. George rose and walked home. John stayed in the park, even though it supposedly closed at twilight. Sally tried on her skirt for school. She had put a mini skirt hem on its green plaid wool. Above it she wore a ruffled shirt and bow tie. So did everyone else in high school. She also wore green knee high socks and suede brown shin-high boots, (her own touch). She felt like a prostitute, but a good one. II Chapter 5 Sarah Dilio firmly established her presence in Rose's home. Last year when she lived alone she was full of life and "pep," the term her relatives often used to describe her. Then she wanted to take care of herself. She no longer wished to do so. She seemed to have given up the fight. Actually she felt as if she had already won. Now she was around for show. She lay on her attic bed in the dimly lit room which was brightened by a sun ray through its little window. Across from her sat George, John and Sally. Rose sat beside her asking questions which for the first ten minutes were all answered no. The four friends were back in the same rut of their last semester except that the fall semester, now into its fifth week, seemed worse than ever. Inferiority complexes were in full swing, due to the shocking news of not making it into the advanced grades. They felt slow acceptance by teachers and general paranoia over things that seemed insignificant only a short while ago. They were looking for an outpost and felt no one but God was left for them. But where could they find him? Mrs. Dilio said little, except, "What are you all so worried about?" Talking was easy around her due to her bland reaction, although Rose was the only one who spoke to her. She asked, "Grandma, we want to go away like you." Mrs. Dilio requested music. John walked over and turned on the record player, the one he used in her house to play records for Sally. Mrs. Dilio became silent to the sound of swirling violins, so they all solemnly listened. This desire for music was the first request Mrs. Dilio had made in a nearly a year. She began to speak, "Do you put a lot of hope in holidays? When one was coming I thought, I'll struggle till then. Soon all this will be over and we'll be happy. When the holiday came everything was all right for a time. I was warm. People loved me. Then it was back to work and I said, what good was the holiday? But you listen, and this holiday will be different." Her voice held firm. She continued, "Music opens the door." Turning to Rose, she said, "Do you remember this music?" Rose realized she had heard it before. It was Scheherezade, by Rimski-Korsakov. Mrs. Dilio explained, "Well this is my bridge, a bridge between the two parts of my head. Not even a bridge. It's like a tunnel that bores through a wall." Rose said, "The film Grandma. There's a movie of you going into the tunnel you took me to. It was after you received your Confirmation." Mrs. Dilio said, "Yes. I had a religious advisor, a young priest, who told me a story of a place where he would go. He said he did something there to open it up to heaven. It was just a train tunnel. He said my name was written there. That I should listen for a call, then follow the tracks to find it. I held out the longest. But I finally went there. I had to. And if you listen to this music, then you'll hear it when it's time. Then you will go to the tunnel when you are called." Rose asked, "When, Grandma? Is it always Christmas Eve? "It could be any time, though usually around four or five in the afternoon. But I warn you that what you will learn will be the undoing of all that you ever learned. You must start again, but at least you'll realize how minor that is. Bring that here." She leaned forward. They rolled the Victrola to her and she pulled the needle off the record. Then she pulled the record off the spindle. "Take the album. Share it. I only need it as a reminder. But you must use it as preparation." They left with the album, eagerly anticipating the holiday. Somehow, they muddled through. II Chapter 6 Tom's nervous breakdown interrupted an assembly in Malloy's basketball court. He snapped suddenly, although he had been working up to it. His mother insisted that he go to college. However, he was failing three subjects and, despite his cooperation in the school's drug bust of last year, he was yet again called in to account for himself before the guidance counselor, this time to be advised against furthering his education. During Tom's appointment with Brother Peter, both the principal and the assistant principal, Brother Louis, assembled all the sophomores and juniors in the gym to hear the new rules at school dances. Brother Louis designed these rules to prevent skirmishes caused by greasers, gangs and gays not otherwise enrolled at Malloy or Mary Louis. Adolescent socializing posed disciplinary problems, even at Malloy. Last year teenagers arrived home drunk and wounded, and were too often involved in a skirmish or sexual experience. The principal explained, "Anyone lending his ID card to someone not enrolled here, thereby enabling that person to enter the Malloy dance, must and will receive five hours detention from Brother Louis." His words fell upon the ears of John, who never, and George, who only once had gone to a school dance. They did not consider these dances social occasions, nor themselves social attractions, and besides, they never considered the possibility that the words of the school principal could ever matter to them. In the guidance counselor's office, Tom's choices were laid out for him. Either he pass the finals, or he could get his high school diploma elsewhere. At the conclusion of their meeting, Brother Peter accompanied Tom to the gym to join the ongoing assembly. As they walked through the doors, going from ten foot into hundred foot ceilings, Brother Peter wrapped up their session with the following words. "Remember this year is important for your later life. You can't expect to grow without effort. Our school is highly respected throughout the diocese as being tops. For your sake and your mother's sake you must keep up with it and put the bad behind." They stood at the gym entrance as the principal continued his speech while standing on a platform before a mike. All the students sat in a large rack of wooden rows before him. Tom yelled, "Is it for my sake? The greatest favor I could do for myself is run away." The counselor hushed him, not wishing to disturb the important lecture. Tom felt himself in a most powerful position because of his ability to disrupt the auditorium. To make matters worse, he actually felt like doing just that. He backed under the basketball hoop and, seeing two inquisitive teachers watching him, dashed for the stage. The principal whirled around in surprise and Tom saw his chance. He ran to the platform yelling into the microphone, "Everybody get out of here! Wake up and see the truth! This school doesn't work for you. You're working for this school!" The principal walked slowly and threateningly toward him, like a hawk. Tom picked the mike from out of its stand and, holding it from the mike wire, began twirling it around with an increasing radius, making the people surrounding him take several steps back. The mike made an eery whoosh as it ripped through air. As the radius widened to nearly eight feet he released his grip, the mike, like a submarine missile, hitting a brick wall on the far side of the room, smashing all ear drums before it was hushed by destruction. The principal took hold of another mike stand and said, "Everyone stay seated. Tom, you are completely out of control." "Fuck you. I know the secret about this school." Tom lifted his mike stand in a threat. In response, the enraged principal, lifted the stand holding the other microphone. When he and Tom locked poles he regained control of his emotion and returned the stand to the floor. Tom accepted this gesture as an admitted defeat and triumphantly smashed his stand to the floor. The students took advantage of the chaos and began fighting amongst each other and running from the rafters. Many disappeared from school for the day. That afternoon John and George went to 42nd Street to see an "R" rated movie without their parents. They saw a Jack Lemmon film called "Save the Tiger" which the programmer there thought fit to double with a Kung Fu film entitled "Enter the Dragon." While Tom was still emotionally unstable, the guidance counselor, the principal and the school in general could be blamed for upsetting the boy and failing to keep order, or so a lawyer might say. The faculty decided that the least they could do was take Tom under their wing, devote to him their attention and do the difficult job they were expected to do for all their students. A month later Tom's marks were on the rise and with the assistance he received on his applications, he was accepted to five of the six colleges he had applied to. He still was pierced with the inner void that had precipitated his nervous breakdown but it had left no obvious scars and he seemed to be doing very well. II Chapter 7 A) A phone call between John and George: John asked, "Going to the dance?" They had both just arrived home from school. John had called George for certain forgotten scholastic information which George knew. Each of them was growing constipated waiting for the other to say good-bye. "I went to the last one." "How was it?" "I'm going to this one. Are you going?" "I figured, well, a few of the guys asked me. It was mentioned in passing. Are you taking Rose?" "I was thinking about it." "Okay. I might ask Sally." Silence followed. "Well, I'm going to the bathroom. I'll call you later." "Me, too. What a full day." B) John ran from the phone with great flurry and expurgated himself, when he suffered another flashback. He knew better. He took precautions while leaving the bathroom to go straight to his bedroom and stay there. C) Considering that this dance was to be at their school, George and John hesitated about getting stoned for it. John had nearly been expelled for a similar activity but Sally wanted to and Rose did not care. That night, by the school, mainly in deference to their rock star/drug images, while always hoping for a better time, they shared a fat packed joint among the four of them, treating it like a cigarette and saying, "Hey man, gimme a drag," figuring that their blatant conduct verged on the sublime, rather than the careless. Perceptions faded into a fuzzy state as they entered the dance floor. Within the basketball court they briefly viewed waltzing couples spinning in contrary directions. Actually everyone had his or her own celebration of the dance and disorder reigned, so the group vision quickly faded. A group of musicians headed by Bob, expelled and devoting his full time and efforts to his band, were assaulting the stage floor and torturing their instruments to the unmistakable riffs of Jumping Jack Flash. A group of girls on one side of the auditorium ignored a group of boys on the other, both groups plotting or repressing what they planned to do the day before. Other kids were joking with the teachers who were acting as chaperones. Girls danced amongst each other or with no one in particular. A few dreamy boys danced with themselves. The doorways were jammed with kids walking in and out, sipping sodas and buying candy bars while trying to work up the nerve. John felt he was not very popular in school and he proved it to himself by sensing he was the joke about which everyone was laughing and smiling. His inner self-consciousness amplified till it competed with the decibel level of the music. He tried to talk to Sally, to tap and exercise his wit and imagination but it was impossible. The music was too loud. Feelings had to be expressed through gesture. He directed hostility through his editorial on the band. George said, gesturing toward Bob, "I thought we put that guy away for life," but John did not respond. George was behaving acceptably with Rose. No matter how ridiculously he danced, it did not matter. At least his classmates would see him dancing with a girl. John became cramped and nauseous. The large dinner he had eaten earlier made dancing awkward. He could conduct, wave his hands and lift the sound but that was not dance. There were only four band members but they sounded like the anarchistic yell of a multitude. If only they would hold down the noise and play some music. He followed Sally, George and Rose through the back exit for a breath of air. Joining currents of the mob he caught snippets of conversation in passing. He was spinning up and down to the music. The outside seemed clogged with fake white light, casting multiple shadows. The four walked between two cars where they found privacy in darkness. There, George began flicking matches about, trying to stir up a fire fight with John, John's eyes opening and closing with each strike; and after each match flicked, a spot remained which appeared darker than the rest. John was worried about people seeing them caught in the act of fire fighting and whined that George "stop with the matches!" His increasingly amplified paranoia destroyed possible group enjoyment. Sally used her recognition of an old friend as an excuse to leave, and George and Rose used their affection for one another as an excuse to go off into a cul-de-sac of their own. Was this what John wanted? He was now alone, an antisocial son of a bitch forced to mingle with the crowd without using friends as crutches, exposed as an alien force. With no attempt at outreaching his bounds, he observed. It was all he could do. He sat down outside by a pole watching kids enter and leave the dance floor, having suffered success or failure inside, or more simply having a good time. How healthy he found the grouping tendency of teenage America! He felt separated, and pathetic as a result. There were no scuffles or problems at the dance. The school principal had made sure of that some days before. The faculty called the evening a success. John called it a Merry Widow Waltz. II Chapter 8 (Formation of the Mutual Tripping Foundation) John wrote another poem which he sent Sally. In it he responded to his problem at the dance and his solution. This was his first communication with her since the dance. I'm tired here, I'm all alone There's so much better I'd wished to do. With people near I still don't know the way But suddenly, without despair, The damage done still unrepaired, Each day the thoughts I wrestle are my own. I think I'm gonna take a trip. I'm gonna learn about my country. Dream of all the things and places where I'd rather be. I can't say. I don't know. I don't see anymore. No need to know the time of day, I have no rush to get back anywhere. Travel logs and postage cards, I'd spin them off with hardly a care. But there's more. I don't know I don't see any more. I don't know I don't see any more. I don't know. She felt sorry for him and also a bit lonely so she wrote back, "Dear John, Thank you for your poem. I wish I could understand it. I will go with you to a movie if you'd like to take me." II Chapter 9 Each Sunday George accompanied his mother and younger sister to church if he did not want any trouble. The whole family was supposed to go, but sometimes his father had work or something else to do. George complacently agreed to attend mass, believing that anything he did would be all right after church. He struggled, though, to keep up with the Catholic church because Christ's instructions on the mass were recently subject to radical Vatican interpretation. George felt that Christ, in the New Testament, built upon the ten commandments of the Old by adding vagueness, and by turning laws into hypotheses, thereby leaving open the door for the whims of Vatican II. When George was young he attended a cold Latin mass. Early in his life, however, the mass confronted him. The backs of the clergymen were no longer turned from the congregation; prayer was reworded in almost colloquial English translations; and churchgoers suddenly were forced to exchange signs of peace. Regarding the last change to the Catholic service, not only did George have to acknowledge his neighbor's presence but he needed to muster a pleasant face for the occasion. Since then, each Sunday he always dreaded the public appearance required of him when the priest approached the words, "Let us offer each other the sign of peace." Overall, he thought the changes in the church services compromised its integrity. But George liked sitting in church, undisturbed, because he was usually fresh from bed and could pick up where he left off on whatever dream he was having. His imagination was still lubricated enough to effortlessly picture, for example, the dastardly destruction occurring to the church's stained glass windows as a result of a blitzkrieg bomb. His father chose to attend mass this weekend, so the family went at 1 P.M. and George was wide awake. Usually his mind could wander but not today. He could hear the priest's every word, along with the squealing of newborn children as embarrassed parents tried to silence them, and their fathers suffered the guilt of men admitting to rape and other crimes against nature. The outbursts ended with the dad taking the infant out to the car, where corporal punishment must surely await, thought George. Fortunately for his family, George's young sister was the most well-behaved child in the world. Sensory suppression being impossible, George also took note of the increasing numbers of collections for the church. There were three, the last being the collection for a special cause. He watched as thrifty but religious givers fell to their knees, slipping money into the side so no one knew the amount. George wondered, feeling increasingly antagonistic, why would the church call for state aid if it called greed a deadly sin? At last the time for communion arrived. The silent procession suited his desire for personal display without confrontation. Also, he loved an excuse for walking around the Gothic church. He awaited his turn to leave the pew as indicated by the ushers stepping backward, and, as he approached the center alter, a sudden "individualism" appeared within him. Amidst the organ music and the violinist that could not play, he marched toward the priest placing wafers upon the tongues of willing recipients. To himself he acknowledged, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you." He felt like the biggest hypocrite. Worse, though, was his realization that he liked the idea. His pious face sealed the shell of his body as it stood on line. "The body of Christ." "Amen," he said, stretching his tongue. He walked up the aisle, laughing within. "What fools! The body of Christ!" He felt oddly rebellious. However, as he walked past a little boy kneeling beside his preoccupied mother, he noticed the brat was making farting noises with his mouth to occupy time. He wanted to smack the boy for being so disrespectful. George sat down and, after his automatic inclination to thank God subsided, he felt empty and alone. There must be a God somewhere. All his life he believed there was a God. In fact, following communion, immediately after receiving the host representing Christ's body, he prayed, suggesting in prayer that perhaps one day, if he was one of God's chosen people, he hopefully might also drink of Christ's blood by one day being ordained. Every mass reenacted the miracle of the oral communion between God and man, first made possible thanks to God's son, who was God made flesh, whose body and blood God sacrificed for man so that sins could be forgiven. George considered Abraham's sacrifice of his son, Isaac. God stopped Abraham, yet nobody stopped God. At a young age George wanted to be a priest, because a priest performed the miracle of life and could partake of not only of the bread made body, as did lay members, but also drank from the cup of wine made blood. But if there was no God, God could not just disappear without a backlash of repercussions, and yet George wanted to face the possibility. He asked himself, Is there a God? (He had yet to realize that the only valid question was, Do you believe in God?) Even with a negative answer, he still felt like a bad boy within the periphery of God's gaze. To be without any supervision, to admit no to God, was to demolish the excitement of rebellion. As he sat in the car for the five block drive back home he wanted to find God. In the priest's homily he talked about the coming of God the son. During the season of Advent he urged all Catholics to participate in the preparation. George was content to be searching for something again. Last winter he helped John search for his Grandmother. Now he was alive with the search for God. He reasoned that during this time of the year, God must be especially nearby, because George lived on earth, a planet with an oval orbit, and in the month of December, the earth swung closest to the sun. II Chapter 10 Rose sat in the house and watched her grandmother, draped with scarfs and doilies, rock on her ancient chair. Sarah showed no signs of worry. She seemed to always be watching but, from a distance. Recently, when Rose was stoned from her occasional joint of marijuana she would imagine herself to be her grandmother, just sitting and watching the world from a distance. Rose knew from the past that she would have to go where her grandmother had gone. She asked again, "Why did you do go away?" Sarah replied, "I had grown restless, dissatisfied and bored. Not anymore, though. What's on TV tonight, dear?" "Another movie about mental illness and cannibalism. Too bad it starts at 11:30." "That's all right. I'm not tired. Let's stay up and watch it." II Chapter 11 Fatima Still Rules the Earth It was November 2nd, All Souls Day. The weather was brisk; the leaves, dry and cracking to touch. Sally and John took the day off from school to sit together, listening to Scheherezade while they sped on amphetamines. They gathered so much energy that they left Sally's basement for the chilly outdoors, shooting into the city via the Long Island Railroad to visit the plot of land on which were scattered the puzzled ashes, once the physical presence of their sad acquaintance, Beauregard Bureau. In doing so they felt an exertion of effort no greater than that when they moved their eyes during a movie. John brought the bible. It pleased his morbid sensibility the way childhood poems could. He found quotes to justify anything. He loved the deaths of martyrs. He said to Sally, "You are my lady, Queen of Martyrs." They arrived at Penn Station and passed through corridors that seemed distorted and sliding. Walking south along Eighth Avenue past the Elgin Cinema, they watched people pass like poles. Like a Van Gogh painting, nothing was still. The air quivered with a dull dribble of daylight. The acid in the air corroded the walls of blackened buildings, the only bright spots of surface the result of bleached rain and garishly drippy graffitee symbols. The buildings were misaligned, concealing the vacant lot which lodged the ashes of Beauregard's remains. Finally, after many circles and embarrassing inquiries betraying total disorientation, Sally and John found the graveyard at its location, directly in front of them. It lay abandoned because the building next to it was condemned. Its ground was of gravel with piles of broken bricks on different sides. The lot and its adjacent building were soon to become another construction site. Smack in the middle of the rubble was an already rotting wooden plank hammered into the ground. It was chipped and blackened but still standing. To its left there was a row of road worn motorcycles. They walked over to the grave and looked down at the inscription on the plank, carved in with a steak knife. Here Lies Beauregard Bureau Born October Ninth, 1944. Died August Fourth, 1973 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE ALL IN DEATH Sally laughed, "In the midst of life?" They were alone because everyone outside the lot seemed to be moving so fast. In slow motion Sally piously fell to her knees. She carefully placed a little Celtic cross, her gift for collecting five dollars worth of Christmas seals, upon the grave. Standing up, she looked down and saw beauty. Her dream of a great man's white marble headstone graced with her elaborate jewels transformed into reality. There was grass joined to the sky by trees rustled by birds as she felt her heart sluggishly rejoice. With a rapid temperature decline, the elegance and splendor of her dream faded away. Dirt, gravel and grayness consumed the area. The sky clouded with doom. John reached to comfort her, but as he went to touch the cross to affirm its existence, it, like the pencil sticks of his dreams, crumpled, breaking into pieces. The dream flowers dripped away, fading to reveal rocks and dying weeds amidst the decrepit surroundings. Through a back door of the condemned residential building whose plain brick wall made up their view, entered twelve visitors. Each appeared to have survived a dreadful death. The first was decapitated, his head cradled like a helmet in his arms. The second was hung. The third was bent into a walking crucifixion. The fourth looked as though he had been tortured, then thrown into boiling oil; The fifth, shredded by lions; The sixth, red faced, crucified upside down; The seventh, stoned. The eighth, white, grey haired, lizard old skin with anemic yellow blotches died the natural death that comes with age. The ninth was burned. The tenth was also decapitated. The eleventh was also hung. The twelfth was stoned, but only after he had lived to grow much older and was balding. A patch of white hair grew out one side of his scalp. All were disciples, apostles, all but one martyred for the supreme martyr, Jesus Christ; all were saints. Sally and John stood up, cowering and terrified. The men mounted their motorcycles and roared away. John, shielding Sally with his coat, left the lot. The two sat on a curb, spinning with the gate, watching people go by. Painfully and with a tremendous effort, they walked to the Fourteenth Street subway. II Chapter 12 That Wednesday in the middle of December, at 4:30, the start of the afternoon movie, while John and George were sitting in John's bedroom, a snowstorm began John switched off the television and clicked on his stereo, which played Rimski- Korsakov's "Scheherezade." As they grew serene, the music guided them toward the door. Rising with the music they climbed out of the house -- the music followed. They walked down the windy streets ignoring the homecoming cars and passersby, most of whom were returning home early in anticipation of the big blizzard. A bus roared through the slush, appearing totally alien in the newly forming surroundings of soft edges and snow. They approached the homes of Rose and Sally. They walked through the Forest Hills village beneath lights that had been strung across Austin Street for commercial seasonal reasons. Stars, bells and candles lit white against blue, red, yellow and green tinsel. A Santa collected money by a McDonald's Town house which advertised fifty cent Christmas gift certificates. Woolworth's was bustling with the atmosphere of last minute shopping. They hurried out of the business section, passing over the foolish people and their banal lives, at least so thought John and, to a lesser degree, George. They reached Rose's house where she and her mother were preparing dinner. When Rose opened the door to be greeted not only by John and George but also by the sounds of a symphonic orchestra, she knew why they had come and what she must say. "I'm going out." "But it's snowing," her mother said. She demurely answered, "Yes, so we're taking a walk," and glided out the door, coat tossed over her shoulders. "Be back for dinner," she heard as she skipped off. Rose's grandmother did not raise her head, resting as she was in her chair in front of the television. She felt a slight click in the back of her brain causing a blackening violet spark to flash across her eyes followed by nothing more. Sally was creaking back and forth in her favorite rocking chair, like the old woman she had yet to become, using it as a source of long and hopeless waiting. A shelf load of dated encyclopedias gathered dust before her eyes. She began to hear music as a warm breeze mixing with the icy cold that crept through her window. Was it time? So soon? She cranked open her window and a cold rush of air blew her back. She yelled out, "Yes. What is it?" "We're going to see God," they joyously replied. Sally did not feel ready. Her parents admitted the safari of travelers into the house and they bounded up the stairs to encourage and implore, "You must come. Where would we be without you? You can't miss out on this." With slight reluctance about work yet to be done she exited the house, wondering if she could possibly do everything when she got back. They reached the little league and walked up to join the dead tracks, now nearly buried beneath wind blown snow, dirt, rocks and garbage. The recurring experience was frightening Rose. However, she had nothing left to live for. She kept reminding herself, but she had trouble believing it. The rest of the group was exuberant. Their spirits were so high that they envisioned a large golden sled shaped like a chariot pulled by a team of white covered horses and it was carrying them to their destination, a vision so ecstatic that it toppled all experiences yet passed, although they expected all experiences to be dwarfed by what was to come. They ran past the bare trees that blossomed with white mounds; they jumped high, in rhythm to a waltz, as if they were a Bolshevik ballet ensemble on location in the Russian countryside. "Is it much farther?" one asked. "We're almost there!" answered another. They blew about, whirling, almost misguided by the wind as they followed the tracks around the bend. The tunnel was dark, but as the violins slowed in apprehension, the excitement building up in all of them made them feel as explosive as steel trucks transporting volatile liquids over bumpy roads. Shivers ran through their spines, sending into their vision bright sparks which began to whirl. George took Rose's hand. The red carpet rolled out over the newly fallen snow. The trumpeters waived with their horns on either side of the entrance. Neon lights flashed and arrows pointed within. Rose began whimpering, "It feels too good, it feels good. It'll lead toward feeling bad." Sally yelled, finding the sound good. "Are you afraid to see God?" The arrows flashed again. "I can't go," Rose yelled with defiance. "Come on! Now is the only chance." Rose's eyes bulged, "I see it. It's a trap, a joke. It's better not to go." George pulled her toward the entrance, pointing inside. "Look. Infinity. Beyond thinking. That's what's there to be told." She shook and broke loose from him, screaming, "It's empty!" They ran into the tunnel. Their ebullient triumph could no longer be heard nor seen. The tunnel grew dark." "George? Are you in there?" she asked. She mumbled and chanted, unintelligibly, effectively removing herself from all loneliness. She became the fountain of all loneliness. * * * The three travelers stood still for a short second during which the view was black but the music continued. Then, with the sound of a switch, a spotlight beamed down into a center of indefinable proportions. Miniature dancers, as if miles away, weaved together to the music. More lights flashed on and they found themselves in a limitlessly long and wide auditorium with a solid dome roof blazing with white light. Trumpeters pranced as mobs of ballerinas whirled toward them from up an elegant circular stairway with a chrome silver banister. Filled with wonder, the three children viewed the spectacle with the less than critical eye of awed respect. Like the indoor set that held it, the dance seemed endless in all directions as if multiplied by mirrors. The dancers filled the steps and moved their hands up along the gradual bow of the curvaceous cylindrical staircase, the hands timed like a large wave, as if falling from gravity, upward toward the white ceiling. There at the summit, in gleaming tennis whites, was God. Around his pants was a metal belt about an inch wide; he had a brown face with white frizzy hair. He was only about 5 feet, 8 inches tall with smooth skin surrounding a plain nose and mouth. He seemed spanking clean and all in all, average, though undeniably homo sapien. This was their God. He walked down the empty stairs, the dancers having vanished, and looked toward his guests, speaking out, "Hello. How is everyone?" They answered in unison, "Fine," "All right," "Okay." "I'm pleased to see you could all come." "But this isn't all of us," Sally boldly corrected. "I believe it is." She decided not to argue. As the music settled into the incidental background, She said, "Thank you for inviting us." God smiled with gratitude and modesty, selflessly as would any fine host. He motioned for them to walk with Him. On display were choice products of the planet earth. Sir Thomas Beecham was conducting the Royal Philharmonic orchestra, pieces of which were scattered individually about the hall, creating a blend beyond high fidelity that sounded as if one were walking through an enormous chamber ensemble. Immediately following God like a court jester was Nijinsky dressed attractively in the fashion of an early Arabian concubine, portraying the favorite slave, Scheherezade. John pointed to the conductor and said, "Isn't that Arturo Toscanini I see over there?" God corrected him. George's awe overshadowed his awareness of Rose's absence. He eyed the surroundings, taking a turn of 360 degrees, and said, "Wow." John, eager to display his cultural awareness, spotted a featured soloist under a spotlight surrounded by emptiness in the not too distant void and exclaimed, "Say, isn't that famed solo violinist Isaac Stern fiddling about over there." "Wrong again, John," said God. "That's Steven Staryk, but I'm sure he was your next guess." and his bland facial expression radiated such sudden sympathy and understanding that John knew every rash or thoughtless comment he could possibly make would be all right with God. Sally said, "Well God, now that we're here, I was wondering if maybe you might answer a few questions that have bothered me for quite some time now?" "Anything. Go." "Why am I here?" George and John joined in: "What's your favorite religion?" "Are you one of a trinity?" "One at a time, please." Interview With God Sally: Why am I here? God: You answer that for yourself. You are here because you want to be here. Perhaps, though, you'd rather be home now doing the work you feel must be done for tomorrow. Sally: No. I'll do it later. God: And you'll have time, too. You're neighborhood is in the midst of a snow blizzard. Are you bored? Sally: No. But I don't mean here. I mean, why do I exist? God: You exist because you want to. Does that make you uneasy? Sally: Yes. God: It doesn't have to. Sally (agreeing): All right. Why are we here with you? God: You're here with me because I've been watching you. You, George and John, by your recent behavior, happened to shine among all others as worthy of my invitation. They agreed with him. John: Thank you. What is eternity? God: First off, nothing's forever, including me, if I existed in time. But I don't. Consider what one of your writers said. Everyone has his own lifetime in which to play. In other words, we live eternity within the confines of a lifetime. Within each bit of time, a person plays out his past. (He shook his head, admiringly) Kurt Vonnegut was describing me as well as the hero in his book, Slaughterhouse Five when he wrote about being "unstuck in time." I live for all eternity within the confines of my lifetime. George: Unlike you, I don't have the benefit of knowing my life in its entirety. At the unaware level of consciousness in which I function, do I follow a preset destiny? God: Everything is planned, if that's what you mean. George: Then surely I have no choice in the matter? Everything is preordained. God: You don't relieve yourself of responsibility that easily. Certainly you have choices, but your personality is predictable. Its interactions with others are also predictable. I'll grant you there are infinite variables but I can predict. Every day each person interacts with a world consciousness, even when they're alone. Eventually, the wills of many people in operation, even operating in concert, will tend toward a crisis. To effectuate a crisis, I require a unity of many different situations, otherwise people would have learned by now to deal with life's problems and there would be no more crises, which is deadly. You can be sure there are too many variables for mankind to predict, but not too many for me, nor for your computers in thirty years. John: I may be failing my computer course, but I know you're right. Computers are the wave of the future. But what is your definition of Crisis? God: Crisis is a life threatening situation that people face as if for the first time by creating a solution, thinking on their feet, creatively acting, rather than applying a previously applied solution pulled out of some how-to-solve-it manual. George: You sound pro crisis. God: Pro crisis? Well, crises are interesting. There will always be one about. If there were none one will promptly arise. That's a unique characteristic of you people. I see you as undergoing a learning process, but I like to somehow justify your troubles. The group was surrounded by fine statues and carvings embraced by walls of stained glass windows, as if within a church, lit from outside as if by intense, omni-directional, sunlight. George: This looks like the church we attend. God: Yes, and I ask you, where would it be (motioning to the surroundings) without crisis? Do you think a monstrous china closet like this would be cherished if it wasn't so fragile and so often threatened by crisis? Sally: May I change the subject? God: Sure. Sally: Even though we haven't exhausted it? God: Of course. Sally: Are you Catholic or Jewish? God: I don't accept any religion. Sally: We're raised catholic and we'd like to know, do you have a son and a spirit? God: I have created a son, but he's me. The spirit? Yes, I like having a spirit, and he's me, too. Sally: And what about the devil? God: He's me, too. I have many sides. Sally looked inquisitively at God, searching his visage for some sign of the devil. George recalled his visits to church, and his frequent, devilish vision of its destruction. John: When you spoke of giving people experiences before when you were talking about crises, that it was for learning... . God: I remember, John. John: Well, what experiences do you mean - like is it who people meet and how their experience affects them? God (knowing exactly what John means): Yes John. Crisis causes suffering and suffering is the determinant of success and failure, always giving the illusion of a square deal. We get back whatever effort we exert. For example, those days in school when you thought you were suffering, you were not suffering, and nothing will come of your years of schooling except the passage of time. You're frustrated, but you aren't leading toward success or even failure. Your minds are elsewhere and, whether you realize it or not, you have achieved what you were striving toward, which was a visit with me. John: You were setting us up with weird people from the beginning. God: They were a manifestation of your desire to see me, and they were part of your preparation for seeing me. George (almost resentful): You set us up with kooks. The purple nun and his dog, Beauregard Bureau... . Nothing but trouble. God: Each went to his own end. You could not have gotten to me without them and, besides, they aroused your interest. They all nodded in agreement -- their experiences were just what they wanted. They passed living statues of deceased statesmen, dictators and presidents, men of power judged both good and bad by their fellow man, each doing what he or she did best, making speeches, conferencing, leading, inquiring, except that each stood alone. Their motions and noises were without substance or sound as their sweeping hands moved only emptiness. Sally (after staring for a moment at the miming figures): Those people act like robots. Is that what we are, robots? God: People operating on the level of machines? If you are that, it's your ambitions and desires, not I, that make you so. I think though, that in this stage in your life you are not robots. You are creations. I am not controlling what you say but your personalities do predict your remarks. But you're not robots and you are free here. God turned toward his visitors and motioned that they join together. God: I'd like to offer you some advice about the way you've lived so far. Consider it good not to think much. If you are going to be a useful human being in the physical sense, progressively, for the good of your race, you can not think too much of yourself. I usually completely curb thinking in my creations and I do my best to curtail it in humans, but I must admit, humans are among my favorites and not because they resemble but because they differ so from my other favorites. Yes, George? George: What are your other favorites? God: Ants, termites, but no one in particular. I like them as a whole. They react in a pattern, in concert, as a group, not individually; and they are fascinating because of that. They achieve. They operate a great family business and I like that. George: What creations don't you like? Didn't you create them all? (He thought for a moment and further compounded his question.) And if you like them so much, why don't you want what's best for them? God (answering only the last question): What's best is not always beneficial. I mean, I don't have an enormous plan for your race like the impression one might get from reading the bible, but you must understand, my main intention is to continue with my creations. Only when they get boring do they get destroyed, and even after they're gone, they still exist within the package of their eternal lifetimes. Shocked eyes fell upon God. God: Oh, I'm kindly. It's painless. No one notices. Consider the dinosaurs. They didn't fall in a day, and they became boring. But they lacked the advancement to drop a bomb and obliterate themselves. Their end was a painstaking process. They puttered out, sunk in the tar pits or died without issue. Their spark of desire to procreate, after a long time, went out. It was subsumed beneath hunger, and no one was there to feed them. Man is the same thing. On earth, at least, today's man is the biggest thing so far, and I include in that category, the early red men, an era most of your historians currently ignore. I promise, Man's end will be gradual. Man will milk its assets before it falls. But never rule out an explosion as a possible method of apocalypse. They were surprised to find God indecisive. God: You know, you aren't the only ones -- I mean the human race in general. Think big. The earth is not the only life supporting planet. John: I think you might follow a similar structure with everyone. God: No, no and no again. Even my own structure is not as limited as you see now, and neither would be yours if you weren't so sociable. One characteristic of individuals within your race is that they never find happiness unless they take everyone with them, and yet getting there first is a prime incentive. Danger and "evil" arise when you equate getting there second with not getting there at all, which can lead an individual toward meanness. God modeled his body. God: Although the homo sapien is more of an individual than the ants, the homo sapien is also a sociable being and his or her physical structure is kept relatively stable by the expectations it holds for others. This structure I am in now is my mold for the homo sapien, as you call it, male and female. Look at my features and consider my options. My muscle and angular bone structure allows for limited, non-elastic movement; my only means of transportation is moving one appendage in front of the rest of my body, then pulling; but my intelligence and godlike creativity has designed other methods of movement: the automobile, the jet, the bicycle. However, my intelligence is severely limited by a subconscious block, which is a lack of communication with myself. That forces me to communicate with others instead. God (continuing): My body feels pleasurable tension and release through physical contact, culminating, properly, in the fulfilled desire between a man and woman to have intercourse with each other -- simple enough in theory. The reason I have a "pleasure principle" incentive to procreate is because other reasons are more difficult to learn, nor do they necessarily follow from study. Fortunately for mankind, I like and need to have sex so I am not limited in number. Soon I'll be able to recreate my own kind without sex and the nine month gestation period will be placed elsewhere, but that poses more problems, particularly in the genetic changes that evolve over centuries, but also problems respecting the incentive to procreate. The incentive to procreate should never be based solely on wanting children, nor should the incentive to have sex ignore the fact that procreation is its end result. God (continuing): I can also receive visual and audio impressions to an extent. Homo sapiens receive relatively low waves through the ears and relatively high waves through the eyes. There's a range limitation for all their senses, touch, taste and smell included. There's a sixth sense for the very real dangers that threaten your state of being alive, and through that you think you have enemies, but the main enemy is yourself. You have a mind like a paradox. When it gets scared it accelerates its fears. There's a legal analogy to this in the acceleration clause of a periodic loan repayment. When a debtor can't make one payment, all at once all the payments come due. I derive great enjoyment from such logic. Sally: What happened to Rose? John (explaining for God): She didn't want to go. She couldn't cope. God: No John, it is you three who can't cope, not that I hold it against you. You'll be okay when you return. But you're right. Rose did not want to come. Come on. As they walked through a wide entrance they passed an atomic missile and entered an elegant hotel room in Rome, walled in marble with priceless rugs scattered about the walls and floors, and enormous chandeliers hanging from above. God: What effort you people take for the comfort of your world. I even like it here myself. George: You seem to live in Europe. God: No, for if we walk through this corridor we will find the Lincoln Memorial. So they did. Before them stood the great hall in Washington D.C. where tourists like Rose and her family during last summer, gaze at the seated giant representing Lincoln. God checked each facial expression and proudly found wonder. Sally: You seem to have access to the world. God: This is not your real world. It's empty. These are visual impressions I've set up for you to impress you. John: But men made these things. God: That is why you can appreciate them. Examples of other worlds would hardly be of interest for you and you wouldn't understand them without months of disappointment anyway. Sally: Show us something, a real tourist attraction, of another world. Maybe we can appreciate it. God: Certainly. The light dimmed and on a stone slab beneath a dim orange light was deep black cream. God: I do have personal taste and I am forever intrigued by the absolute nothing this represents. What do you think? Sally: What is it? God: In your words, nothing, at least one form of nothing, I think it's form number 16. If you want to see something I'll have to show you another of your own creations. They're usually "something" based. To some nothing is something and some things are nothing. Perhaps a child, still in the womb, would enjoy this sight. It's quite funny, really, largely inspired by a mono sexuality which you fortunately know nothing about. You might appreciate thinking of it in terms of black being the negative of white and orange being the negative of blue. John: It makes me think of night. God: Do you think of nothing as night? John: When I'm in the dark I enjoy thinking of nothing. God: Good luck. Actually, what you think of depends on your pattern of thinking which, unfortunately for homo sapiens, is directed toward your society from the moment you are born. But I've described a characteristic that also works to your advantage. George: But some people are different. What about Beauregard? He wasn't thinking in a normal pattern. That's what made him an outcast. I want to know if he found some truth outside of society? He certainly rejected intelligible behavior. God: He was a frustrated and lazy man. I leave people like him alone. George: Did he visit you. God: No. George: Who else visited you? God: About the only famous person you'd have heard of was Lyndon Johnson, before the end of his term when he decided not to run for president again in 1968. I was tough with him. Most of my visitors are discreet people like John's grandmother, Sarah, who is a beautiful, unassuming woman, passing her entire life with barely a peep, living gently, wife to a possessive, egocentric salesman. If her priest hadn't told her what she could do she would not have even known she had even seen me. If not for him... oh well, the purpose for her was to bring you here. John: And what's our purpose for being here? God: I brought you here to tell you to settle down. You were moving nowhere fast. You understood the pleasure of spinning your wheels, which is wonderful, but in time you dig yourself into a ditch. Your purpose is to be part of your world. You're here now, as far from your world as you'll ever be, but even before you came here you were leaving. Maybe that's wrong. I don't know. I did enjoy watching. Sally: Our suffering? God: Perhaps that's the devil in me. That's wrong too. The music began to spread. God: How can I explain. God became two gods, each saying the same thing, but one voice slower than the other. God: It's hard to see. My job is tedious. How much can there be? I must confess, the music reigns. When it changes mood, I follow. Sally: Pull yourself together. We didn't mean anything. God: This is a violent passage. And so it was. the violins unsettled and began creeping up, as even Nijinsky cowered back. A unison line was breaking apart, each instrument playing to beat the other. So too with God. He avoided himself as best he could but, as his visitors watched, he formed a growing crowd. As smaller and larger versions of God began to speak and step over each other's feet they became attracted together in a sudden fusion, increasing in height. God (As he grew, yelling): I hate Christ! That inflated son of man. Those fools, falling for the obvious, so intrigued by glamour. God (One of his timid smaller selves): Stop. Not so loud. They are my creations. Be understanding. Their mistakes are my own. God (the louder): But who wins out in the end? The gossipers. They inflate people into gods and then gossip about it! They're not gods. They're people with duties that have been perverted with an aim to please everybody. It just can't work with all those vacations they want to take. Everyone's so stupid. They deserve what's thrown at them. The babble continued among the crowd. God: Now, now. What about all that mercy you're supposed to have, and forgiveness of sins and the like. God (with an accusing look at himself, as though directing anger at a mirror.): And you! You should talk. As the big fusing God grew, his skin turned a sharp cheese yellow. He looked supremely nauseous. God: Oh settle down, help me. How can I help you when I cannot even help myself. For me to have these imbeciles on earth with their arguing and fighting. Is it really that necessary? And to build more than what can be controlled. It is their fault, not mine. I tried to be a good parent, showed them everything, and now they embarrass me. Well, who's going to know? But where did I go wrong?! The crowd of Gods that surrounded the growing main God swayed like drunks, joined by policemen and militants, with cameos by seventies celebrities, Patricia Hearst's mother, Peter Bagdonovich, Elton John, and Max Von Sydow in more than thirty of his best roles. Laughter shook the halls. God joined into a giant, clumsy, useless mass. With tremendous ferocity he turned over and smashed his head on the marble ground, but being God, he could not destroy himself. He arose with a sinister smile and red. Sally: It's discouraging to find the creator so emotionally unstable. The music settled. God: That's just the music. I love all my creations consistently and equally. But there are so many. I'm glad you kids are here because it's very tiring. I have many personalities; I have to. I handle everybody differently but they are all extensions of myself. I don't prefer any over others. Besides, they must be judged by others like them, by their peers. There's no one "godly" objective. The only judge of one man's actions is that man and he effectively decides his punishment. But that leaves no room for God. George: What is death? God (recovering with a sigh): Hm, death is nothing to me. All that matters is what you do while you are alive. For whatever amount of time that is, it will affect the destiny of the world, meaning a world extending beyond your earth, too. Hence, if you live for a short time yet accomplish much, your life will be longer than the person who accomplishes little, though actions do not designate the length of one's life. However, action, whether good or bad, is what is really important to feeling the passage of time. In fact, you wouldn't be able to measure time were it not for the fixed patterns of day and night. Time is not the same for everyone. John: How do you make decisions regarding hell, since you judge everyone according to their own standards? God: Well hell, naturally, wouldn't be the same for everyone either. It's an interesting concept though, very undefined, sort of like the monster Lewis Caroll wrote about in Alice Through the Looking Glass, "Beware the Jabberwock my son, the jaws that bite the claws that snatch, beware of the jub jub bird and the frumious bandersnatch." That describes an encounter in hell. John: But what is hell? God: Hell is where you went when you took L.S.D.. George: John, did you drop acid? John: Yeah, I never told you? That's when my eyebrow got infected. George: I'm sorry. God: John will be all right, but that's the direction in which his mind goes. John: Yup, it goes straight to hell. God: Actually, hell, is its anticipation. George: Is there life after death? God: No. If it's any consolation, however, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Sally: What is insignificance? God: That is nothing or everything, depending on the state of mind you wish to hold. John: Yeah but school is such a bother and it's so insignificant. God: Don't be thick headed. Everything is up to you. Do the best in everything and nothing will seem insignificant. But at the same time I want you aware of another point of view. Take a quick trip with me. They stood over a man dying on a street corner in New York City, then they rose to see more, hundreds of people walking in and out of stores, hailing taxis, buying the paper, returning from work. As they moved faster out they saw buildings that contained even more people, each with their own dramas. The picture grew smaller, permitting a view of more, only with less clarity. Soon only land and countries and oceans had form as distance separated them from their view of the earth. Other planets came into view, more and more planets as the movement away continued. They grazed by a large planet in their withdrawal and saw its minute details whoosh by below them. They eyes expanded until billions of stars and planets seemed small as assembled within the entire milky way. God: (Taking a thin pointer to a projected small dot on the farthest end of the galaxy): That all the way over to the left is your sun. The earth, at present, is a little to its left. Please don't think I've shown you everything. There's always more. If you look at it this way, how big can all your problems be? He told them what they wanted to hear. John: We have no more to ask. God (still pointing): Fancy that. How would you like to go back there? George: Sure. John: Sure. Sally: Sure. God: You still have a few days to stay wherever you want. I recommend a beach house on the Adriatic sea. Relax there and leave when you get lonely. I've got to go. Epilogue The story of John, Sally and George's solitary relaxation along the Adriatic sea is beyond the confines of this book. Rose spent the night trying to explain their disappearance. More searches and inquiries followed until the three turned up in their homes eight days later. They did not miss school because it was closed by the snow storm. They never mentioned their experience; life posed too many immediate concerns. They had changed. They were discreetly respectful and, in so being, their silence on certain matters was respected. People read into their actions more favorably than their words would have explained. If they held a degenerating view of the world, it had come to a halt. Marks soared in school and life reverted to the ordinary into which they felt adept at any problem or injustice that might come up. They were less easily bored by anything which directly concerned them and their condition. They acted on opportunities that bettered life and social position, taking care not to hurt anyone. Because they had a goal, they received respect in return. Their association with Rose dwindled to a minimum. Sarah Dilio died December 18th, 1973, which was the day they disappeared. Rose continued to be plagued by guilt from which she found no relief when she spoke with her former friends. She contracted a disease of the nervous system which, to this day, has left her paralyzed. John and George studied pharmacy and then law at Saint John's University. They married friends from law school, remain drinking companions, and live in New York City. Sally studied accounting at Queens College, became an Account Executive at Merrill Lynch and, in fact, for a while became John's stock broker, to resign from her position within minutes after the man of her dreams asked for her hand in marriage. Me, off and on, from November 1984 through March of 1988 I tried to either clarify or repeat the entire contents of this 1974 novel, thereby repeating what I believe is arguably the mistake of writing it at all. Within this period I considered two titles for future novels, "Blood and Ash," and "In The Meantime," both of which are in development. I wrote the first version of The Resurrection from September, 1973 through May, 1974 at Malloy High School, in Briarwood, Queens, New York, and I typed it from June to August of that same year, on Candlewood Isle, near Danbury, Connecticut. ********* ******* ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ******* ******* * * * * * * * * * * ******* ******* * * ******** ** * * ** * ************* ** ****** * ** * * ** * * ** * * * * ******** * ** ********** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** ** * * * * * * ** *** * * * * * * ** **** ********* ******* ****** ********* ****** ****** ***** ** * ****** ****** ****** *** *** *** * ** * * *** * * * ** ** * * *** * * *** * * * ** * * *** *** * * * * * ***** **** ** * * * * * * * * * ***** ** * * * * * ** * * *** * *** ***** ** * * *** * *** * *** * * * * * * *** * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * *** * * **** * ** * * *** * * *** * * **** ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * *** * * *** *** ****** ***** ***** *** *** *** *** ****** *** * *** * * * A novel by Peter Dizozza Appendix A A List of creative work preceding and immediately following The Resurrection. 1969 The Ruins, a film 1972 Why Fight It? a novel 1973 Lightningbolt - a re-edited spy film 1968-1974 The Will, a collection of song lyrics 1974 The Resurrection 1975-1977 Angels: Tour of the Vultures, a film Titles of favorite original songs, 1974-1976 You're Soaking In It Sadder Yesterday Dealing With My Friends Rock to Sand Pigeonhead The Finest Creature of Them All Chance Encounter Peter W. Dizozza March, 1988 Dear Reader, You hold the story I wrote in 1974 when I was 15. By redoing it I have removed two impediments against reading it, the extremely light type and the lined paper of the original. I also tried to expand its language and impose some surface order on its events. The substance of the book remains unchanged (The appendix contains the original version.). However, in retyping, I was propelled by the idea that I was making it more. I returned to The Resurrection because close inspection uncovered seeds of my present interests and condition, and clarified my direction for the future. I was also interested in its time capsule of life and times in the early, pre-inflationary, seventies. -- Thank you, Dean McEldowney, for valuable comments and corrections. Much gratitude goes to Susan McKenna, for her editorial assistance, related discussions and encouragement. I thank her for going the extra step in understanding. Peter Dizozza Appendix B: Excerpt, THE HOLY BIBLE, Authorized King James Version REVELATION, CHAPTER 20 AND I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. and they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. Written by Saint John the Divine, in Potmos, a small island in the Midwestern hemisphere.  page \* arabic73 PAGE \# "'Page: '#' '"  ...)()()))()()ࡱ; vt...)()()))()()Z: phoenix LOCALCOMPACT EXࡱ; vtYZbcd ;>N`"""" *)*Z9^9<<XXssxxĄ̈́?B*,-y_kAJx9@{           & s      T ]   UcU^cuDCcGCc uDCc^cc uDP`\V      !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHILMNOPQR @F~""<<FF HHZZakq{ NWdjUY"""#)#3#))--00k1o1::]]X_a_ADM\IN+DZdUcU^c^cc`djpYc_gNW   55/898<;F;d;CDLLLN_R___nnnn%p)pesysNuRuvv(- ܪ<@CH >*2WUc]c]^cU^cUcc\$SU  +,./0134JLMNPQJu uDP`P`c uDUUc^cc^/g@  *  ' W $V0CSs-.                                       ,& X` hp *.ab^*|/z5 !;"<"$%&''((****+,.///000R02233                                          ,& X` hp *3455k667C8D88%9E9s999:`;;<<===> >>Z?[?AGGGHH"IIJKL>LLLL                                          ,& X` hp *LMM?M[OPPQLSS)XqXXXXXYYY]g_`bexhijj2mSmmmm)nn#o?pupqdqq|r}r                                          ,& X` hp *}rss%u,vKvhvvx%yyy|0}}}~&~~~zm@Ad„΄҈~(-iO                                          ,& X` hp *O.͙_{Қ4I6sɜٜ`ҤޤnNӧΫϫk                                          ,& X` hp *߱n5kĽn )tL_ mo?-]                                         ,& X` hp )]<+O7FA8@v 0                                          ,& X` hp *0j>?K uvV~p2  T U   S  ?({(                                          ,& X` hp *&{"|""#$H%`%%%%t&&())+-//Q12478;{<?8C>D?DDFFFFFF:GGG                                          ,& X` hp *GHHH`HK0LOSTTVbWcW1XbZ\|`[c\ckemmQostvxd{E*އDމƋ                                          ,& X` hp *F[\Mߕ[\]^_l3@DΡ .+9ͯΰĴG Ž                                          ,& X` hp *e,F,=T6(AYnokNj|}|O                                          ,& X` hp *Ob[\B'>r=P%Jf)   Mb                                          ,& X` hp *P =JsJ r"#$ % %!&(*,j.J/111Y2V33375857686899:                                          ,& X` hp *:::;=>BLCaDDnFoFdGHZIIIJKLMM NHNNNOSPPQdQQQ#RRRWST'T UUUIV                                          ,& X` hp *IVcVVVSWmWWW+XEXXXX:YoYYYYjZxZZZ [[{[[[[ \)\\6]]l^+_T_U_b_Ga2b`cdd                                          ,& X` hp *defffhd ;Fn56VjqKwx                                          ,& X` hp *,-^<Qf} #;XYd 8WXNOt                                          ,& X` hp *%&6[xy%+A^_hXwIJKX                                          ,& X` hp *4$^Ni}I$p1w   )   & P                                               ,& X` hp * : X Y 1 2 L9Nt3U ,-s                                           ,& X` hp *   n    !("#q&r&''(*+...=01;34556+8,8:89/:::8;9;e;=>g@UBCCC                                          ,& X` hp *CCCCDDADDFGGHHI4IIIIIaJxJJJFKKKLLLMOQARRR!SSSTT|VVWX                                         ,& X` hp *XX>Y^[[[\\8]^]^^^ _[__``9a:aFaGaegY'(=Nfs~                                    ,& X` hp ,& X` hp %denfg    0123OP                        ,& X` hp 'PQ ,& X` hp eK@Normala @ Heading 1$@$ Heading 2Vc&@& Heading 3xP]c(@( Heading 4xPV]c$@$ Heading 5xPc&@& Heading 6xPVc&@& Heading 7P<]c(@( Heading 8P<V]c( @( Heading 9 P<V]c"A@"Default Paragraph Font.@.TOC 10,(#$,@,TOC 20,(#$,@,TOC 3p0,(#$,@,TOC 4@ 0,(#$,@,TOC 50,(#$(@(TOC 60,(#$@TOC 7 0,(@(TOC 80,(#$(@(TOC 90,(#$. @.Index 1`,(#$. @.Index 20,(#$(.@( TOA Heading,(#$$"@$CaptionxVcO_Equation Caption(@(Annotation Textxc4O4 Footnote BaseE$c*O*Block Quotation V O Picture ODate!&O"&Document Label"h] *@ Endnote Referenceh +@B Endnote Text$x&$@R&Envelope Address% $%@b$Envelope Return& @rFooter'(O( Header Base(!"@" Footnote Text)x &@ Footnote Referenceh$/@$List+P O Lead-in EmphasisUV(@ Line Number]c^0@^ List BulletC.  4 ^1@^ List NumberC/  4h.&-@& Macro Text 0x])@ Page NumberU$O"$Return Address2*O*Subtitle Cover3UVc$OA Superscripth"OR"Author5Uc,Or, Chapter Label 6h^c*O* Chapter Title 7Xc .Oq.Chapter Subtitle8hhUVc$Oq$ Footer First 9!Oq Footer Even:$Oq$ Footer Odd ;$O$ Header First <!@Header=O Header Even>$O$ Header Odd ?*O*Block Quotation First@x(O(Block Quotation LastA&O&List Bullet FirstBP$O$List Bullet LastCO List FirstDPO List LastE&O&List Number FirstFP$O$List Number LastG O Part TitleHX*O* Part SubtitleIhUVc $C@$Body Text IndentJh`D@` List ContinueCK  4h."2@"List 2L88"3@"List 3M"4@"List 4N"5@"List 5Opp"=@" List Number 5Pp"<@" List Number 4Q";@"" List Number 3R":@2" List Number 2S8X9@BX List Bullet 5;Tp 4 X8@RX List Bullet 4;U 4 X7@bX List Bullet 3;V 4 X6@rX List Bullet 2;W8 4 $E@$List Continue 2X8*O* Part Label YXU^c O Body Text KeepZ O Subject Line[V^2O2 Heading Base \x U]c$k"B@" Body Text ]OEmphasisV&O&Address_$'@$Annotation Referencec(O2( Title Cover ac0$F@"$List Continue 3b$G@2$List Continue 4c$H@B$List Continue 5dpPeter William DizozzaQPWD QQ^ #      !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\] *<+6mBMhYf%rm}.kl>F (H"-";`FES[`Kn{i_ ͬ=?,'83?HK+U]gr}y`ڬ¸+g }6 +7BLMYdk!szrHc*Q RQCVn  J o  U k`a ]! 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Nޏn֑T*>T(TTԎTT,jT0VTTTT,. The patter of falling snow faded beneath a rush of violins. They were as audible as a stream hidden in the hills, as they played regal processional music from Rimski-Korsakov's Scheherezade. Melody swelled as a nervous girl followed her grandmother along a snow buried path. To her they were way off course but her grandmother led the way.PRIVATE  "Are we almost there?" she asked, exasperated. "Almost." "But Aunt Martha's apartment is that way," she reminded, pointing meekly to the left. There were local stores and apartment buildings nearby, yet they walked through barren land, along dead train tracks. The tracks either caused more inconvenience than developers found the land to be worth, or the transit authority still held some hope of reviving the Rockaway line. Although these abandoned tracks, bisecting the county of Queens, New York, were useless to commuters, they formed the spine of a secluded trail, over which, the girl, Rose, and her grandmother, Sarah Dilio, trudged, after having crossed several fields reserved for little league baseball games. As the tracks forked, Sarah chose the descending trail leading into a valley. They followed the tracks around a bend and, soon, before them gaped a black tunnel, its cement encasement filling both banks of the valley. As Rose and Sarah neared it, the invisible ensemble of violins trembled with an apprehensive decrescendo. "Is that it, Grandma?" "Yes, Rose. Follow me." Lights flickered within the tunnel's depths as brassy trombones heralded a grand entrance. Neon arrows flashed like red lightning in the gray sky as invisible trumpeters blared. As if the tunnel had a tongue, a red carpet rolled out of its entrance over the milky snow, stopping at their feet. "See, Rose? We're expected." "Grandma, I think we'd better go now." Heedless, the woman hobbled slowly forward, beckoning her granddaughter to follow. Rose hesitated. "Inside there is peace and serenity and no more problems. Come on." Rose watched at a widening distance as her little grandmother entered the pulsating depth of the tunnel and the music expanded to the heavens. She whispered, "I don't believe this." At its peak, the music stopped. The tunnel's light and carpet faded until they were gone. Suddenly, Rose heard the snow gently landing on the ground. "Come on, Grandma. We'll be late for dinner!" Rose watched the trail of footprints refill with snow. "Grandma?" Although only four P.M., the sky grew dark. "Grandma?" As the tunnel radiated a cool emptiness she felt a jab of fear. She yelled, "Oh no! Where are you! Ah, ah, ah!" Her throat gurgled on the thought that she might somehow be attracting attention to herself. I Chapter 1 "Where the hell are they?" "I called my house. They must be on their way." "Why didn't you drive her here? "She said she'd rather walk. Rose is with her." "I'm worried that she still lives alone. After all, she's seventy-eight years old. Is there somewhere she could live where she could be happy and cared for?" "You're right. We lose touch with her. She can't live alone much longer. Her neighborhood's been declining every year. She should live with each of us for a time." "She already said she'll never give up her house." "We've got to make her change her mind. Buven unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath nco power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. and they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. Written by Saint John the Divine, in Potmos, a small island in the Midwestern hemisphere.  page \* arabic73 PAGE \# "'Page: '#' '"  ...)()()))()()ࡱ; vt...)()()))()()Z: phoenix LOCALCOMPACT EX -- 43; vtYZbcd ;>N`"""" *)*Z9^9<<XXssxxĄ̈́?B*,-y_kAJx9@{           & s      T ]   UcU^cuDCcGCc uDCc^cc uDP`\V @F~""<<FF HHZZakq{ NWdjUY"""#)#3#))--00k1o1::]]X_a_ADM\IN+DZdUcU^c^cc`djpYc_gNW   55/898<;F;d;CDLLLN_R___nnnn%p)pesysNuRuvv(- ܪ<@CH >*2WUc]c]^cU^cUcc\$SU  +,./0134JLMNPQJKQRSTVu uDP`P`c uDUUc^cc^5g@  *  ' W $V0CSs-.                                       ,& X` hp *.ab^*|/z5 !;"<"$%&''((****+,.///000R02233                                          ,& X` hp *3455k667C8D88%9E9s999:`;;<<===> >>Z?[?AGGGHH"IIJKL>LLLL                                          ,& X` hp *LMM?M[OPPQLSS)XqXXXXXYYY]g_`bexhijj2mSmmmm)nn#o?pupqdqq|r}r                                          ,& X` hp *}rss%u,vKvhvvx%yyy|0}}}~&~~~zm@Ad„΄҈~(-iO                                          ,& X` hp *O.͙_{Қ4I6sɜٜ`ҤޤnNӧΫϫk                                          ,& X` hp *denfg    0123OP                        ,& X` hp 'PQRT  ,& X` hp eK@Normala @ Heading 1$@$ Heading 2Vc&@& Heading 3xP]c(@( Heading 4xPV]c$@$ Heading 5xPc&@& Heading 6xPVc&@& Heading 7P<]c(@( Heading 8P<V]c( @( Heading 9 P<V]c"A@"Default Paragraph Font.@.TOC 10,(#$,@,TOC 20,(#$,@,TOC 3p0,(#$,@,TOC 4@ 0,(#$,@,TOC 50,(#$(@(TOC 60,(#$@TOC 7 0,(@(TOC 80,(#$(@(TOC 90,(#$. @.Index 1`,(#$. @.Index 20,(#$(.@( TOA Heading,(#$$"@$CaptionxVcO_Equation Caption(@(Annotation Textxc4O4 Footnote BaseE$c*O*Block Quotation V O Picture ODate!&O"&Document Label"h] *@ Endnote Referenceh +@B Endnote Text$x&$@R&Envelope Address% $%@b$Envelope Return& @rFooter'(O( Header Base(!"@" Footnote Text)x &@ Footnote Referenceh$/@$List+P O Lead-in EmphasisUV(@ Line Number]c^0@^ List BulletC.  4 ^1@^ List NumberC/  4h.&-@& Macro Text 0x])@ Page NumberU$O"$Return Address2*O*Subtitle Cover3UVc$OA Superscripth"OR"Author5Uc,Or, Chapter Label 6h^c*O* Chapter Title 7Xc .Oq.Chapter Subtitle8hhUVc$Oq$ Footer First 9!Oq Footer Even:$Oq$ Footer Odd ;$O$ Header First <!@Header=O Header Even>$O$ Header Odd ?*O*Block Quotation First@x(O(Block Quotation LastA&O&List Bullet FirstBP$O$List Bullet LastCO List FirstDPO List LastE&O&List Number FirstFP$O$List Number LastG O Part TitleHX*O* Part SubtitleIhUVc $C@$Body Text IndentJh`D@` List ContinueCK  4h."2@"List 2L88"3@"List 3M"4@"List 4N"5@"List 5Opp"=@" List Number 5Pp"<@" List Number 4Q";@"" List Number 3R":@2" List Number 2S8X9@BX List Bullet 5;Tp 4 X8@RX List Bullet 4;U 4 X7@bX List Bullet 3;V 4 X6@rX List Bullet 2;W8 4 $E@$List Continue 2X8*O* Part Label YXU^c O Body Text KeepZ O Subject Line[V^2O2 Heading Base \x U]c$k"B@" Body Text ]OEmphasisV&O&Address_$'@$Annotation Referencec(O2( Title Cover ac0$F@"$List Continue 3b$G@2$List Continue 4c$H@B$List Continue 5dpPeter William DizozzaWPWD WQ] #      !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\] *<+6mBMhYf%rm}.kl>F (H"-";`FES[`Kn{i_ ͬ=E2'>3?NK1U]g r}fȸ1m&$< ,7BLXck!r\zyϖܥ0ZW RQCVn  J o  U k`a ]! 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