Among the Oranges: I’Ll Meet You North of August Among the Oranges Under the Cyclops Moon in a Garden of Zero Roses

By D. White

In “I’ll Meet you at Noon North of August among the Oranges,” a man deals with separation from his wife. He’ll have to give up the house in Malibu because without his wife’s income, he won’t be able to afford the high rent.

In “Under the Cyclops Moon,” a young man got his girlfriend pregnant and now faces marriage for the first time. He works for his fiancée’s father but hates it. What was once good has become awful. He contemplates suicide.

In “A Garden of Zero Roses,” a woman’s body was found in the garden. But who was she?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781984575364

D. White

D. White is a master storyteller. He co-founded a children's multimedia book company that develops books, AR interactives, and read-alongs in collaboration with sports teams, influencers, toy makers, and other book publishers. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Connecticut. He has co-produced and directed short films and TV show pilots such as “The Pointe.” His ultimate goal is to create memorable experiences by combining unique storytelling and modern technologies. The author resides in Stamford, CT.

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Copyright © 2019 by D. White.

ISBN:                Softcover                    978-1-9845-7537-1

                          eBook                        978-1-9845-7536-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/08/2019

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Contents

I’ll Meet You North Of August Among The Oranges

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Under The Cyclops Moon

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

In A Garden Of Zero Roses

Chapters 1-4.

I’ll Meet You North Of August Among The Oranges

I bought them a house on Bay Shore Freeway. in a hospital of small farms.

Leave him alone. The cubs are automat. I broke one sphincter then the other. Old coot rocks and rolls are out on Bay Shore freeway, where friends party with sticks and changing cones (loose).

A bit of real brown in hallway stares.

You think the Yankees are going to win in the weeds? with Philadelphia eyes.

He came out of his Malibu flume and said, Rocket to the moon…

He is 3/4ths taller than him.

He crawls all over me like a spider then moans and groans, she said, her eyes going wide…

Don’t bend Friday.

Did you submarine speech?

tomcat oil.

Charge it to BATE? (FATE?)

I can’t plan this day on a sheep-filled sky, she explained. Don’t bend Friday. I’m not going to have angels, not in a rocket-filled Coliseum.

Filling in the ocelot was a big mistake… coolant in a glass sea. (reflecting brittle fragments of rocket flames, dreams filled with oxen… gun-shot blasts in empty canals and kisses locked in a drawer somewhere)

The Sphinx. Cut into blocks and taken away…

Honey. Make sure the land is tamper-proof. These Malibu cabins seem to slip down to the sea.

Hey Mister! This ain’t no nature preserve.

These hands are clean, out of the sweating wood of the porch, music through trees like ocean gleam.

What is that washed onto the beach? a terrible loose-limbed eyeless thing (that used to sting). Is it dream or nightmare? We used to kiss on this beach now we don’t anymore. It’s hard to tell where to look in nature’s encyclopedia… (for ‘Cyclops’)

Gazelles run in high desert & fish are unaware in the sea. (sleeping with Z’s)

Some brown hands have never touched zebras. (but have touched zee-bras!)

Two tacos and a rum-colored drink. (how can he provide me with a no drink? As if in answer, the ‘no’ drink sat right there on the counter top)

"This is still the freeway list. I watched broken stairs where Fanny’s friend had stepped with a bare wet foot. I watched the little girl’s print ‘til it was almost gone. (dried, its water gone into a rocket-blue sky).

I’m broke, I said, telling an alley behind the house about my template Chevy.

Good thing I don’t have to get to work.

There she hovered in near dark, single, frightened, terrorized.

What is this life for? she might’ve asked then looked down the street to the gift shop. a small hammering sound in the distance. Why don’t you continue with your work? she almost said. 4 green houses. a

face like an anvil. Counting down shining time.

I believe the breakers. washed in a gulley rain-swept poem, rose flush. Cold undecimated death. in fake light. she fought for the robin. (nothing matters, said the joker) girls in dream pools.

You get confused with comedians. The door is always open. crippled in crime. Show us behind the curtain. ground halt. Destiny. (it slides up under her dress like wind from the north) one small bit of time in the green house.

Remember coffee at the store. There’s pain in the attic. Contrivances at the blue estate. Carry on. singing in the wife’s car. the old dog purple. Carry the chain.

Can I have a walnut drink?

A Delaware girl with stain problems.

Her head was down but her brown eyes looked up, the whites underneath showing. She shook her dark brown hair which was curly. Just then I thought of a can of pregnant sardines.

I wished I could have taken her out in the boat. He wouldn’t rent me one with oars (it was illegal he said) so I took one with a motor… paint-chipped red on the sides.

You’ll never find it. It’s probably a mile out.

You see it?

No.

Then why are you telling ME where I’ll find it when I SAW it and YOU DID NOT!

Okay. Let me run your card number.

It must have been Thursday… at 4:28 and thirty-two seconds (I checked my watch just then). It streaked across the sky and appeared to drop in the sea. I wanted to go and find it. I didn’t care that there’d probably be no trace of it. Just boiled water?

It could’ve been a hundred miles away… a thousand. The boat man was right but there’s no way he could’ve known that. I wanted to take the little girl out and look for it with her and we could’ve talked about things… Maybe she’d tell me where she came from.

Well, pick your groat.

2378. House numbers were supposed to be ‘odd’ not ‘even’ on the west side of a road. I could smell in the evening October the wetness in the canal on Canal Street, a street about an eighth of a mile away.

Where did you come from?

The ‘8’ reminded me of the moon… just on top of the sun missing an eclipse. I saw it once, a dark new moon above the sun… forming eight.

Natalie? Is that you? I woke with a start. I heard someone in another room but nobody answered. Nobody was there. I was dreaming. Natalie left weeks ago. I was alone.

The TV was on. Fred Flintstone was talking out of his large orange face. Dr. Bong wanted us to come on down to Extra-Layerland for all our tarp needs. Forget that other fellow… Uncle Nick’s Tarp World.

I could hear it again… click on. the automatic waste processing plant at 1111 Canal Street… just a little south of here. I could hear it on quiet nights. Natalie said she could smell it sometimes. It was situated over a gulley (so why then did they call it ‘Canal’ Street?).

It would leak down a hill to the sea. There were some pretty flowers there in the springtime. We’d picked some years ago once just after moving in.

How come you say one-one-one-one? It’s eleven-eleven…

I like the way it sounds… I like to do it that way, she said.

Why’d I leave the TV on? I guess the constant sound of rushing hissing surf sometimes made me dizzy, crazy. I dreamed a whorey fantastic moon was rising, pulling at water through veins of green and blue, blood webbing through the sea, foaming onto the beach.

Fred Flintstone was more reassuring than all that.

I wanted to take her out in the boat again. take a micrometer (by the sea, by the sea, by the milky white sea!), two axles in the boat. Boat pedal.

(this had nothing to do with Rhonda or algebra)

Put the inch on. I said.

I gave her some gum.

I was blind in the cedars.

Mr. Draypoole next door. His sailboat in his backyard never moved an inch in years. Rumor had it his wife had drowned in it. But there was Mrs. Draypoole, cheerful as always (was she the ‘new’ Mrs. Draypoole or the ‘old’ one?).

It’s red color was faded, its sails rotted.

The sailboat was almost cheerful in the way it was rotting like an old Grandmother sleeping as she rotted… both with burning souls.

Back behind the snack bar I once spied a young girl sitting on a boy. She had on a bikini, was about fourteen and I could barely see the boy. He was partially hidden by the dunes. She was excited. He was afraid. They were both blushing.

Not far away I could smell the smell of dead things in tide pools, things dying. things being born…

She wanted to know. She must have been a curious girl, giggling and fighting with the boy who didn’t fight back much.

He blushed.

I remembered that curious yet awful, terrible feeling… the overwhelming something. Something was going on. I didn’t understand it yet it took you over the way the sea took you over if you swam out far enough so you might drown. It was an overpowering smell-taste of something that had to do with girls and hot, embarrassing, shameful thoughts & dreams no one could explain very well.

It was a wonderfully destructive force…

Nostalgia went back to boyhood. But I could never go back… That part was dead or dying.

I had no idea where I was going. To mount the death-hole?

It had something to do with death I think (or at least getting older). It had something to do with the great power of women that had re-asserted itself after boyhood rebellion of mother…

I didn’t know at the time. It was going to be a religion of lust.

Sand was growing against a chain-link fence.

In a smell of rotting vegetation.

Constellations spun overhead. clouds moved and smothered, cold rotting sheets hung to dry as death shrouds.

You Neil Armstrong?

Of course not.

We got this picture of you on the moon…

I’m going to hang up.

You’re coming out of the Lunar Module. I stopped and thought a minute.

You ever wear suit number 35?

I shot pictures for NASA… if that’s what you’re talking about… test shots.

You think the government faked the moon landing?

How could they? Who IS this? I’m hanging up.

"I should introduce myself. I’m a journalist investigating a story…’

We tested cameras, used actors… We wanted to check the cameras, get an idea of the light we’d be seeing there and dust. You spend billions to go, you don’t want the cameras to jam up with dust.

You ever get in a suit. I hesitated. Should I answer this? Look. We have a record of you… It’s from the Freedom of Information Act.

… Yes… (laughing) But did you think I ever claimed I’d gone to the moon?

Can I send you some pictures?

Sure! I bet I shot some of them.

They were released as actual moon shots… lunar excursion shots by NASA.

If they did it was a mistake, a bureaucratic blunder is all. Someone saw them and thought they were real… We had a big set and everything. You should’ve seen it… hills in the back, photo-murals. We had a… We had an almost unlimited budget.

Can I send you some photos?

Sure!

Did anyone tell you to be quiet about this… sign any confidential forms?

No. I would’ve remembered… No one told me to shut up. Why would they… They were just test shots… no secret about that.

Why’d you get in a suit?

One actor (undependable group of people… it was mistake to hire them but who else was going to even be interested?)… the one we were going to use that day didn’t show up so I suited up… It was either that or not get paid that day. I was working free-lance.

Says here you signed out and signed back in suit 35.

I told you I got in a suit. I don’t know the number. Why would I remember the number? You can’t fake going to the moon!

Silence

Sir. You can FAKE anything… a painting, a death… a birth, a car crash, a resume. It’s been my experience you can fake anything. I’ve seen lots of stories…

Okay. But I don’t know anything about it. I was hired… that’s all. I’d like to see them, the photos. It’s been a few years. You have my address?

We’ll send them. I’ll call you back.

Sure. Fine… Hello?

Goodbye. Thanks for cooperating.

Cooperating? What do you mean?

A couple of days after the storm, rotting vegetation everywhere on the beach. There was a coffin but it was empty… No lid. Just the bottom part with some seaweed in it and some brackish water reflecting chrome-colored sky.

Natalie started smoking again near the end. I haven’t smoked in five years, she said. It was more like three but I didn’t want to argue with her just then. It seems when a relationship is over the first thing that happens is a rewrite of history.

I haven’t smoked in five years. I wondered what was going on, (as if someone had very strongly been able to convince her to do it and therefore she wasn’t responsible).

It’s been three… you remember the party you didn’t want to go to? (okay. I didn’t mention it the first time she said it but the second time I FELT like saying something)

You HAVE to be right, don’t you?

I am right. I AM right. She looked at me with an accusatory look. She was accusing me of something… what?

She didn’t reply.

I was just kidding. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.

Well, either it does matter or it doesn’t… Make up your mind. You never can make up your mind.

Maybe this is how things that were once tightly ‘raveled’ became unraveled.

I’m right all the time but I can never make up my mind? What do mean?

(exasperated) YOU know what I mean.

I didn’t know what she meant but then again a part of me did. I looked at her. She let out a long slow puff of blue-white smoke in my direction. I turned to look at something I had in my hand.

Yeah. I think I do know what you mean. I had been doing it for some time. I’d been agreeing with her deliberately at times I knew I wasn’t supposed to. She had been giving me chances to disagree with her but I’d failed her. I’d taken the wrong side in arguments she had with herself. (I’m NOT being sarcastic. I really did agree with her at the wrong times and I’d been doing it on purpose!)

You’d think it was a hound howling on the moors.

She was my love, my tender sickness. I’d kept one of her lipstick kisses (the kind women press into single pieces of toilet tissue to be then thrown in the trash).

I kept one as a souvenir and realized now it would be a good idea to give it back.

It was wrong to hold on to something that you mustn’t hold onto. It was wrong to try to anyway. For some reason it reminded me of glass eyes in deer that’d been stuffed and mounted high on a wall in a hardware store about a quarter of a mile down the street. They were still and peaceful (are the dead peaceful as they seem?). They were looking far away, staring into distances.

Day and night they looked and never grew tired.

A dot of light in one of their eyes was like one of Natalie’s lipstick kisses. I wasn’t sure why.

Light fades. A curtain comes down. She smiles.

Chapter 2

A slippery moon. sucks water into the trees. No music plays.

You’re not here. You go away.

Where?

How the hell do I know? hopeless hopes. Bell property. A baby cries some more. Want to get rid of it? (fictional baby) In an alley? I could kick it like a football over a fence.

Cut apron strings. howl of a coyote. (next day maimed and dead in a ditch)

The moon pushes itself down into sea with crush-love. Put the inch on. Imagine a lawsuit on an island. wheel. Underwater chambers. Take a dog-faced girl. a president’s daughter. She quit smoking then wanted to put butter on a man’s head. joy machine.

Tree by a river drive-through. the other side, 3/4ths. Floating trees, upside-down. kissed away.

The moon pushed trees into the neighborhood. Jesus endorsed Jell-o brand gelatin on a billboard facing the freeway. It’s a trilogy.

In Sunlight County in coat country they bury things late at night. Maybe they’re digging up something. pre-historic eggs, yellow things, buried diet books, switched telephone lines.

They stand and look at nightmares. It’s septic-tank work.

Hi-Ho the Derry-o. It’s off to work we go. They leave behind buckets of noon. The water broke.

It’s a horse skeleton! I dreamed I was in clouds. hanging on an edge of a curtain.

She left her trunk in the garage. Strange heat was left over from the afternoon, moody dark brown shadows. In chalk; a pole with lightning coming out the top. next a flying pig. I tried rubbing it with my fingers but got redwood splinters instead… from oily 4 x 4 supports instead. Who drew it, her or her nephew? She never drew anything as far as I knew so it must have been her nephew. She must have said out loud ‘flying pig’ or something when I wasn’t around. Maybe she’d said I was a ‘Pig with wings’ so he drew THAT for her (with or without her knowledge?).

I don’t know why it hurt. WAS I a pig with wings?

There was a dry shipment. friendship in clouds. finger in a road. Monday’s boulder. comforting. tearful. land work.

Nearby an animal, close. in a waiting room. Sitting in a car. on carpet next to a coffee table.

Injections. She was gently green. still afraid of airplanes. Gently weeping. in grass.

Giant. smoke in a hallway. shadows of clocks. whiteness of sky…

These are really shadows, present. said an uncanny look.

I panicked. all of the sudden, the door blew open.

keys to autumn. I have to unplug gutters.

struggle with the moon.

Lightning! and calories. I lay you 5 to the wall. Yeah! Powder. A long street marching to an end.

One stood in history.

I only imagined a flash of bone. at first a forklift traveled over mowed grass then an ambulance on top street screamed to some destination. I’d never find out anything about it… An overweight man with a short reddish-blonde beard was listening to music on his earphones while he drove in circles around a very tall palm tree. (way in the distance its blue shadow moved)

Landslide had missed my mother.

I only thought I saw a flash of bone. open coffins and some… They’d have to be reburied. This land at land’s end wasn’t stable, always sliding into patient and ceaseless sea. when I have a fever, I can hear clouds move in the sky…

Someone said, Those men. They’re rich as mud. I turned to look but I couldn’t see who’d said it.

What about unburied lads? the day was sad, groundless, long.

hair down to there. a trail to death. (in bushes on way to the sea)

you might find a dead rodent underneath bushes on a trail, a dead bird. your wife’s pubic hair (who was watching it now?)… It was a winding path toward death. a million sperm. each died there. calendars. phases of the moon. fever sickness. Passion perishing. Under a fog rolling in.

Spiders upside-down wait in webs for lost souls. moon-guest. In bushes we frolic & labor.

Chapter 3

Police waited, watched patiently. by an empty sand lot. Something indescribable had happened, some strange items were nearby. From a distance it looked like a broken real estate sign made of wood and press-board, part of a rusty old bicycle and some meat.

Perhaps if I moved closer I could hear…

How many minutes?

Fifteen.

Was she fully clothed?

At first… pretty sure.

Soon?

Yes… or later…

Could you tell? What about him?

A camp. down by the bridge…

Ants?

You mean the ear in a paper bag?

Look at the bottom of the stairs. I see an old man’s cannibal hat. near blue bottles. Fevered nonsense, edge of dreams. early minutes of pre dawn.

What happened to the ‘Fresh Express’ boy?

Natalie. Is that you?

I suddenly wanted to talk about it… You remember we heard about it? … the boy with the limp?

I…

They beat him in the parking lot… called him a ‘fag’.

I remember.

Let’s go see him…

He’s dead now, Natalie.

But he hit his head… when he fell. He’s in a coma. I was just talking to him.

Are you okay… Natalie?

I never gave him a second thought, now I realize I really liked him. I miss him. We were there. He opened his eyes… They were large, very large, clear and white. Was he staring at me? It was if he was seeing something over my right no my left shoulder. I wanted to ask him something… I can’t remember what it was though. I think I just wanted to know what it was like…

Natalie.

I hate it when you use that tone. My daddy used to talk to me that way. She hung up.

I stared at the bottom of the stairs. There was a little light, a long thin sliver of evening light coming slowly across the floor. Beyond was a flat expanse of sea.

He was like an oracle or something…

Natalie.

We were like two boats on an ocean. I knew she was having sex with someone. I could always tell.

Chapter 4

You look at the photos?

Who is this? Yes.

Is that you… in the photo?

Look. Maybe. I don’t have any secrets. It may be me and like I say… released by accident as the real thing… some over-zealous clerk or something, maybe a lazy one.

You signed for it… the suit.

You’re fishing. You’re trying a bunch of techniques to get me to spill the beans well I don’t have any beans to spill.

Spill the beans?

I don’t have any secrets. This is the journalist isn’t it?

Pause.

Who are you then?

Yeah. I sent the photos.

I haven’t got them yet. Do I get to keep them?

Do they match your records?

(laughter here)

Continued: I think I threw everything away. I know I have a few photos but I don’t have any records if that’s what you mean. If I WAS part of some conspiracy they didn’t let me in on it.

Conspiracy?

You’re funny. This is great. I’m laughing. This is supposed to be cloak and dagger, eh? Look. If I was supposed to fake moon landing shots, why would they tell me? They’d just hire me to shoot pictures, test the equipment, take photos and then they’d do whatever with them… WHY would they let in on it when they don’t have to?

You see that Soviet photo… with wires attached to the space craft?

Yes… Funny stuff. We laughed our heads off…

Why would you do that?

"Look. The Soviets wouldn’t release a photo with wires coming out of their space craft. They can retouch photos just like us. Someone must have put them in… the U.S. Government… or maybe some amateurish hack who wanted to make a thousand bucks. He could put them in. If there really had been wires. The soviets would’ve painted them out, see? They released the photo and then some dick put wires on it again… Cold war stuff… IF there were any wires to begin with.

The U.S. Government would say, See. The Soviets are years behind us! then everyone can be a liar…

Your point?

Oh, I don’t know what to tell you. You aren’t a government employee…

Why not?

If you were, you’d know I know nothing…

If you were, would you tell me?

I… I guess not come to think of it. I have no idea how important this all is. Do people care? You know, a lot of U.S. companies made a lot of money off the IDEA at least that we went to the moon… OUR wheels and cogs must be better than their wheels and cogs etc., if you know what I mean. There WOULD be a motive to fake it if for some reason we couldn’t or just didn’t go… There’d be a lot of money to make… and prestige to lose if we didn’t.

Exactly… My point.

It doesn’t mean we actually didn’t go… What makes you think we didn’t go and why would you care?

I… It’s the story of course. I get paid… but Governments… look at history… rule by faith. People burn down palaces if their rulers aren’t who they say they are, can’t do what they say they can do, are lying, cheating, you know what I mean… It’s always been ‘rule by trust’, rule by the best… the elite and if that trust is violated… They’re out of there. If they’re caught lying, no more money and power for them so they fake best as they can and hope they don’t get caught.… same faith as with religions… Governments lie all the time you know and it’s hard to catch them. They’re good liars… the best money can buy (ha-ha). There’re assassinations, wars, false statistics… They want to keep their power. They’re corrupted by it. If I can prove this one, this latest government lie, maybe I can educate some people, grow ‘em up. It’d be one more in a long line of betrayals… but I’d get to see some heads roll. People won’t be so gullible next time, at least for awhile. They won’t be so easy to exploit. I can do a lot of good…

Okay. Well… I hear you but Fuck ‘em you know! If you get the goods and present it to the people, they’ll be outraged. They’ll hang YOU. They’ll call YOU the liar! traitor! They’ll be outraged. They don’t like having their faith crushed. They’ll feel like fools, idiots… all because of you. YOUR head will roll instead of the government’s. They want to believe in the clean-shaven, all-American astronauts and they’ll HATE you if you ruin that! I almost thought something was wrong myself when I first saw those early photos, the way astronauts stared into light as if they were holy fucking angels of God… and the U.S. was on some holy mission…

Sorry. I got to go. I got to take this call. I’ll call you right back…

Just as well. My girlfriend… I mean wife always says I talk too much…

Click…

O well.

Chapter 5

You got to pick your groat. (gloats wait in a mirror) dry suburban metal. wash next door still blows in a breeze. White sheets swell… pregnant bellies (then abort).

There’s the shame of a towel that has fallen. dark blue wrinkled skin.

I’m telling you, dogs kiss (I think I hear someone say that)

On table-tops a happy birthday.

green crash.

A wasted gull’s shadow. processing Canal Street.

Chapter 6

Why do you say one thing and mean another? she’s curious about mystery (afraid too)

‘Spurt’ and ‘Muffin’. Fields of beauty behind Herpt Hill. drugged hot sleepy skin.

I was her drunk electricity. Midgets on yellow hill.

A shadow flies, jury-duty… 30,000 a year jump without parachutes. (my cells tell me it was urgent)

O love.

To the lighthouse. Small dark windows. they see me. smiles. It’s a dream. she has dirty legs, scabs. She’s motioning uphill but I’m afraid of heights, dark stairs. up. close by.

I can smell her oyster skin.

Somewhere, I smell a dead donkey rotting in sun. down in the meadow. Maybe.

It’s fragmented, frightened colored sun. violent. peaceful. quiet. rush of air in my lungs. Blood hearing.

suspense. no music, no commentary from bright sun. rush-pouring everywhere molten. mouth closed in the dark. terrified, I run…

Terrified of what? No name. no name for this. so I run.

Far down the breaking of bones.

It’s a dream but I’m awake.

From the top you can see the sea. immersed in its labor, busy, all the time busy burying the dead. rosy red. lips. in bright sunlight. in moonlight, dead purple petals are still warm. fingers ply

Prey? with hunger. Unspoken. to a lighthouse.

She, curious about mystery. green curve. We were convinced, empty fields of beauty.

It was. My bare ankle hung out over Bombay doors, excited struggle of explosions below. In an orchard. blasts of trees. splinters. I might fall down riding a free bomb. straddle ecstasy.

And in a hairless minute, last seconds in a flood of water.

(she was a pretty blonde girl and shaking her fruit. now she was in a cold fishy ground).

I am dragging myself over cold junkyards of incautious debates…

Chapter 7

I’m going dancing.

Ever look in the mirror and see how beautiful you are. she stares at me, her teeth white in the dark. It had no effect.

I’m going…

You ever look?

Yes. It scares me so I don’t look.

You going to shake your ass?

What? I don’t shake my ass.

Yes you do.

I scares me… to look. tiny cells under my eyes, in skin of my hand. To know I’m… I’m not really me after all…

I don’t know. Maybe all women do. It’s the way they walk or something.

If you won’t go with me, we agreed I could.

YOU agreed you mean.

You don’t like to dance. You don’t like anything I do.

You gonna have sex… with him? she looked away so as to not reveal an expression on her face.

We’re going to the Red Club.

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