Memorial Day Weekend, 1999 I was reading a magazine. I had Found it
   on a bench at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. There was a very 
   sexist (and racist, yah) article about how men could avoid all love 
   troubles, if they would only heed the author's advice: "...Latin 
   ladies are all spice...lovely Spain (etc)..." On a sidebar, some 
   bit of trivia: "Spanish women are some of the most amorous on the 
   planet, they are loyal, faithful and relatively low maintenance." 
        "Ah, Maria, Maria...": I caught myself thinking, and tried to have a talk with 
   me about stupidity; but there were several of us, near the 42nd Street entrance, doing 
   that. My compadres must have done rather better with their introspection because, 
   unlike your reporter, they did not get on a bus to Vegas.  Spain v. Vegas?  Allow me to
   explain. Since that day, I've gotten really good at explanations.
   
        I can still see her sitting, holding forth in her updated message to the human 
   race. The topic for the hour would change "ir-regardless" of any rhetorical or 
   poetic process of which I had previously become aware. These alchemies would have 
   enjoyed seamless continuity in perpetuity on a dead planet. Then, she didn't exhibit 
   any knowledge - any... imagination referencing my presence, or metal, so this 
   ignorance of certain processes embedded in, required by, the apeiron hadn't any pur-
   chase. In this assertion, at least, I have complete faith, albeit horrific. She needed me.  
        I was always-never sure where we were going with these alchemies - or even which 
   metal we were after -- though sometimes I would wonder if we weren't in fact after 
   an entire intergalactic vehicle built of this, clearly, new and brilliant substance
   - nevertheless, undaunted by her bleak landscape, [see a fey desert on a 1950s SciFi 
   pulp, (Annette also had special information about the speed limit of light...typical) 
   the caldron was always boiling over, as I've alluded: as of then.
        Sometimes, just to help you out here reader, the topic for the hour - it was more 
   like 10 minutes, but I garnered it was kinda like a complete ceremony for her - would be,
   say, what a proper 4th of July gift might be, or what the proper car to drive was, if 
   you were going to make it. Inherent in The Topicanna was transmogrification of topics 
   collide-oscopic. An example might be, what car one should drive to pick up one's step-
   drunk-father-in-law on Mother's Day, if you were going to really make it (really
   making it had nothing and everything to do with money, as much as I could distill from 
   the lectures on this topic, a Janus doorway with no knobs) - or what music was OK to
   listen to if you were a man (or if you were a woman...) and wanted to date her: "Podium 
   Lady" - what clothes the BAND should wear, "you" should wear... And there I would be,
   front row center, taking notes in an Audit Only position, leaking pens, on notebooks
   that were too greasy from Taco juice to take it all down anyways.
        I'm pretty certain that there was something concrete to it all, really.  Plato
   said so. I wonder what car -- limo colour and all she-they would give Plato if she-they
   had willed him into this new deca-dentured-century; given she could have done that, not
   knowing what or who he'd been. Dunno. PLato again. But it would sure have to become
   the correct concrete limo. Wouldn't it...? Yeah-awww, we'd have to give the guy
   limo perfection; that's a crazy idea if not, that just wouldn't make any sense - Plato 
   2000; and the guy limoperfectionless? No,   that would not be good form at all. Yeah,
   and he's walking up to Columbia, and the Gatekeeper says, "OK, 'Roman' Dude, All Non-
   helicopter Entrance to campus is right....whuh?" [There is a dialectic interval.] "Well
   sure, I can see that now; hey, you're with the BAND right? Cause you get your own
   parking if..."
        When she turned up outside the door of my new cream Lamborghini in a Vegas parking
   lot the first category I noticed she participated within the form of was tallness. I 
   wagered that time she was tipping the scales at just under six foot. She has always
   appeared to me at different heights, in dream or not. Almost always with a '70s fashion-
   plate hat. Chorus Girl out of time? Then there was a movement that made (I compared) a
   Loon's backwoods lake silent sallying seem tedious. She stepped to the passenger's door
   and let herself in, with prejudicial leg to spare. Much leg to spare; as she would later
   put it: "For [my] benefit."
        1971, Vegas: Introducing herself - "Ursula" - she tossed aside the MS I had been 
   putzing with in the car after my $100 bar pie lunch (with good Scotch). My novella a'clef
   flew behind me: The Lesbian Biker Insurance Agent, The Impotent Loser Drunk, and The
   Time Machine Rooming House in Bayersville and which had been turned, text to Nevada's
   noon sky...well, as far as I had gotten to on this new one...(pp.77).
        101 miles outside of the strip, by my new odometer, we stopped for some drinks. I
   needed to think. 2:30... When - all in one week - your first two novels get accepted, you
   find out someone in the family line has left you $2,000,000.00 of Cheyenne, Wyoming real
   estate in good condition and cash flow fine and dandy, and your options position in cocoa
   has gone up 500% a day for three days, the broker pulling off your pyramiding instructions,
   all the way down short-side almost exactly as you told him. Then you win $502.322.15 in
   Vegas, at a slot machine yet - all tolled a nice round 777 million dollars, American, (and
   counting), you need to stop and drink; think about any new arrivals, of which there will
   be some. The only brand shiny new custom-paint-job Lam 2000 "recreational vehicle" in the
   lot so...lock it up. Check everything, good.  Drinks. See it from the window over there.
   Good. My choice of seats was the one with the long strawberry blonde hair above it (hers).
   Hello, yes it is hot today (who cares? Not in my VEHC lady...) Sure, I'll buy the first
   round.  Ursula, huh?  Hi, Jay Donner.  (She was ageless (no clue...31...45) ...something
   about the hair and eyes...not sure) and carriage like a next century movie star - sleek;
   and was eager to show speed. Possible chorus girl, possible straight flush. Dressed in a
   little spade-colored dress in this strange little plastic bar...5'10", swimsuit-runway-
   engineered, I re-estimated. Note: clothes were not new, at all; hard times. But skin like
   the inside of a new skeet-shooters glove: the inexpensive ones, the ones I used to use.
   Last week.
        Thing is when you have to use the inexpensive gloves, to not let it be known...that's
   what you want: not to let it be known by the skeet. "Yeah, that's mine" jerking my head in
   response. "Color? why, I like it; is that a good reason, or..." Then lied: "Used lot in Reno,
   fixed it up myself - can't spend like it grows on trees, you know? Why, what's wrong with
   it? Hey - look - it doesn't depress me ...understand what I mean - if it's so depres-
   sing, take your violet eyes and move them over to that nice white 10-year-old Chevy. No,
   not running from the cops... Why do you ask...Ursula?"
        Sometimes when a woman cries you can tell she's putting it on for some screwy affect
   or effect. Not easy to do this well though. With her it was quite cum laude. She shoulda
   been an actress; professional type I mean. "Look, ah...Ursa Major, we can have some drinks
   here and - I don't know - why did he throw you out?  Can't you go back?  Idaho...? Why'd
   you want to come from there? Gambling with your last 500 is contraindicated.  It means
   don't try it.  Let me get this one; at least we drink the same Scotch.  You - no - you
   save your money honey. Yeah, actually, I'm a weatherman - like on TV; and recently I have
   come to know it.  Long story..." Maybe a minute later I heard someone ask me: "Hey, remember
   your date?  You know, 'another pretty face'."
        She was outside the bar with a guy pointing a 9mm at her crisp clean white modulated
   top. The sudden crazy moment shift:!: the thought of Bride's Magazine Dec 1998 page 218,
   funny how the brain works, or doesn't - or both: "Where the hell have you been?  You know
   Manny has banned people for less than the crap you're pullin'?" He looks at them signifi-
   cantly, like a Doberman, very like. There's the space where somebody was supposed to say
   something, and then, just before Mr. Doberman opens up again for another snarl..."Well,
   shit..." Ursula says, out of some bag or other, instinct or something to initiate some
   motion, any motion, being at a point - where all roads lead to Rome, - the one that ain't
   there any more - manner of speaking -- along with the man whose ass she's just co-covered;
   while not knowing he did not need this coverage at all -- no coverage, thanks Lesbian Biker
   - she was both problem, prima facie, and solution in one thespian/literary moment, "...what
   the hell do you expect?  Huh, what about YOU!"  Not knowing what she just said might mean,
   but: "Me?  ME!! Don't gimme that Val, or whatever your name is, I may be new to The Company,
   but I'm not grotesquely stupid. "You and Hank with a puss there; I coulda hada puss if my
   Dad... well; woulda put me in this show, right? Right!! [both: yeah...shur-...tain-
   ...yes! Yah(?)!] - were supposed to meet me here to pick up the van an hour ago, so we
   could start shooting inside the hotel by 3:00 - now its 5:00 - I don't see it happening,
   do you? Well... do you?"  His rounded muzzle examined them alternately, eyes full of Postal.
   I, having picked up the sense that some insane lunatic was trying to give us, and just
   nano-recently, in Megahertz, caught the vector of all this, at least up to a point, said:
   "Hey, man! I told you on the phone, twice, the name is MISTER Arbo-NAY, what is it with
   you porno royalty, you have no decency in you, none at all, your just worthless..."  He
   stopped himself before "CRAP!" and looked at his watch, stopping the tirade as if someone'd
   made a botched edit; which the gunman had been up half the night reading about.
        "'Hey, man'??  You said 'hey man'...what is that? are you saying we still can pull this
   off. You can get out to the desert, set up the camera and reflectors by yourselves, simulate
   boffing each other - with all of Mr. Dennen's notes, and I mean ALL of them this time, he
   told me you two...are... you - can still do it and get back to the hotel by 6:30?  Those
   semi-former-halfway-half-assed union guys and this extra equipment there - its all in the
   van - is costing us a fortune every half-assed-hour, you're saying you can still make it?"
        He hadn't breathed in a while, divining for a positive answer, not wanting to shut up
   for fear of a negative one; another couple would have been worried for his respiration. This
   time it was Urs, learning fast, for which she was once famous in her circle, "Yeah, if you'd
   cool your jets, Mr. ArboNETT, we'd be halfway to the spot by now and half naked too.  So
   what is it, you want to explain to Dennen what really held this production up?  Huh?" She
   looked at me,    I  tri ed to smirk just right. 
        "No, well, no, so...OK...but no later than 3:10, you got...IT'S Arbo-NAY...you got that, 
   3:10 and don't break anything, and re member about the cum shot...Mr. Dennen..." [...] "Yeah,
   we know the drill, so to speak, let 's get it on.  Keys?" [...] "Shit, thr-n-th-vn!"  Mr.
   Arbonet twirled, half expecting the new Dodge van and the 100,000 worth of cinematic equip-
   ment, and $500,000 worth of drugs, and $27,500 worth of cash to be riding down Monroe with
   some teenage monster at the wheel...There, they're in the van...get it on, you two."  He
   almost smiled, not quite. They did.
      
        Start over again.  The apologies somehow cementing their bolt-of-lightning luck; having
   associated this luck with each other on a meaningful level. They had to be car eful not to 
   sound silly with the nicey nice.
        When they were a good 20 miles from Vegas, in a direction they guessed was 180 degrees
    off schedule, they stopped again at a little mom and pop gas station/motel/restaurant, not  
   having eaten in a day or two, neither one of them had, though they were slow to admit it,
   even th ough, during those  20 miles bot h had shared openly the most recent chapters of
   their life stories.
        They grabbed a table and ordered good Scotch; not good, but fair.  And something quick
   that was, if marginally, on the food chain somewhere: cherry nu   t ice cream.  The waitress,
   Lucy, complete with red hair and bubble gum, did a double take, but only because she seemed
   to have some crush on me, who she figured was either a rich cowboy or a temporarily poor
   producer...of somet hing...
        I was surreptitiously counting some of the money they'd managed to locate without much
   trouble, not speculating very much on what it was   precisely for. I handed Urs an even
   $1,000 and kept $885 and a half-ounce of cocaine and a handful of Tylenol 4 for himself,
   swallowing a couple of the tablets with his drink.  She cautioned, "Don't overdue it, I'm
   not into doing the entire Mafia single-handed, O.K."  She watched him put the drugs in his
   top pocket. "Sure, sure, just need to relax a little, I'm not "a' addic," He did a B-pro-
   duction homeboy bit, for his partner.  He noticed her hair looked better since she'd
   returned from the ladies room, prior to the arrival of the ice cream, and their ordering
   'the biggest steaks in the kitchen, rare.' "Donner.  What should we do?"  She meant it.
   She was straighter and, therefore, more nervous than he was.
        "We...we'll head for...Nebraska...and...lay down for awhile...wait things out...maybe,
   I dunno, you wanna make some 'softporn' movies with me?  Something to do, maybe we could
   pyramid this into some real money - don't know that selling that stuff would be easy or
   safe." They appraised the situation, each other, had some more food, good Scotch, pink
   gooey-by-now ice cream.  It was really quiet for a while. But the time passed with rather
   more than the usual amount of hair-play and lint-picking. I spoke first.
        "You know, its not that super-crazy of an idea.  I knew a guy once..."  He looked at
   Lucy who was taking pains to display her leanings. "Yeah, so you knew a guy...go on..."
   Her hand elicited information, the one without the good Scotch, while she licked some
   errant melty pink ice-cream off her used-to-being-photographed-but-not-lately lips. "Well,
   this guy, he and his wife, actually, and their neighbors, and a few other people they knew
   or met, they knew a lot about video, and they - one day they just up and started making
   very legal videos - called them 'marital aids' or something... They made a bundle. See
   they were good-lookers, very much, you and I..."
        I went back to what was left of the New York Strip. "Yeah, what's a bundle?" - she'd
   just figured it out, he was a cross between Richard Dreyfus in The Goodbye Girl and Tom
   Selleck.  Not an easy call. But then she'd been a borderline pro actress/model/actress
   long enough to become something of a casting director. "Six figures." [...] "How many six
   figures?" The corner of her mouth had magically lost a minor lipstick smear. The answer
   was on the napkin in her lap. "He showed me a tax return - wanted me in on the deal but
   then..." (Dissembling well enough.) "I know, I understand." Eyes re-demanded an answer.
   "7,000,000 in one, admittedly their best, year; but after that I never saw him again, like
   I told you in the van..." [...] "Oh, this is the accountant and the librarian??"  Dumfounded.
   "I never said they were ugly, just boring..." "Yeah, some boring..." "Well," Ursula sat up
   and lights seemed to brighten in the room as she metamorphosed back into a very much "on"
   actress/actress "this is the best offer I've had this year, and last year...you, don't let
   this go to your head, at least not right away, sure are my type - do you ever shave, Donner
   - anyway, I'm in."  She put her glass down a hair too loudly bringing Lucy hurrying over
   with the bottle of Cutty.
        "Me too. Shake on it?" Lucy wasn't listening to her anyway while she poured and filled
   glasses from a bucket she brought around. "For starters. Yes. Definitely, pard."  The lights
   went up another notch. Lucy gave up. Rusty paid with a nice crisp fifty. They left her $10.
   Inside of ten minutes they were twelve miles closer to central Nebraska. It was something
   like 1,000 miles to Alliance, Nebraska.  Not exactly in the center, but it was definitely
   not on the beaten path and they were tired of driving.  They took a nice large double room
   with a kitchenette in a decent place, part of a national motel chain, then, around three
   A.M., with nobody peaking, and with nobody to peak if anybody was peaking, they struggled
   with everything that van had inside of it, including the floor mats - which yielded an extra
   $5,000 cash and some papers and photographs they'd check out later - first thing in the
   morning they paid cash for some guy in the next town to paint the thing bright, day-glo,
   turquoise with flames and a phoenix bird mixed together repeated several times here and there,
   paid him a little extra for some fabricated, but DMV-computer-hacked license plates.  It
   looked cool, if you were thirteen. On the way back in to their new pied-`-terre, they stopped
   for more Scotch.  While I went in for Cutty, their new partnership drink - rather preferred
   to Phillips Vodka or Thunderbird or both together - Joan went to a Sears store in the same
   little shopping district and picked out a few hundred dollars worth of purchases - not enough
   to attract attention, but some things that meant comfortable, clean, new clothes, and remem-
   bering to buy razors, and easily ringing up $50 worth of just the bare bones cosmetics in
   two minutes, clothes: assorted, with a decided country flavor, except for the lingerie, some
   for him, mostly for her.  As she left the store, him hurrying to help her and the carry-out
   boy, she realized that the unavoidable country-esque flavor was putting them further into the
   hidey-hole, so that was a good thing.   [This Is An On-going Spec Experimental Workshop.]                                         
                                        ~dpbqdpbqdpbqdpbq~    
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