textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/ITv3n1.etx

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InterText Vol. 3, No. 1 / January-February 1993
===============================================

  Contents

    FirstText: 1993 -- For a Limited Time Only........Jason Snell

  Short Fiction

    Slime_.............................................Mark Smith_

    Doing Lunch_.......................................Mark Smith_

    Timespooks (and bit parts)_................Stan Kulikowski II_

    Sweet Peppers_....................................Aviott John_

    Dogbreath_.....................................Robert Hurvitz_

....................................................................
    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@etext.org                       gaduncan@halcyon.com
....................................................................
         Send subscription requests, story submissions,
            and correspondence to intertext@etext.org
....................................................................
  InterText Vol. 3, No. 1. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published 
  electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this 
  magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold 
  (either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire 
  text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1993, 1994 Jason 
  Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1993 by their original 
  authors.
....................................................................


  FirstText: 1993 -- for a Limited Time Only  by Jason Snell
============================================================

  Welcome to 1993, and this year's first issue of InterText. The 
  time between our last issue of 1992 and this one has been filled 
  with lots of excitement for the people who bring you this 
  magazine.

  For my part, I've spent the obscene amount of vacation time 
  given to students at UC Berkeley (six weeks) to meet up with old 
  friends, spending a good deal of time in Southern California -- 
  lots of it in my old stomping grounds of San Diego. In fact, 
  almost none of this issue was put together in Berkeley. The bulk 
  of the work was done at my parents' house (and lots of that, 
  including the redesign of the PostScript edition, on Christmas 
  Eve) and in San Diego, where I've put together many an issue in 
  the past.

  Among the people I've seen in the past two months is Philip 
  Michaels, author of "Your Guide to High School Hate," the lead 
  story of the May-June issue of _InterText_. I saw Philip twice, 
  once in December (in his hometown of Danville) and once in 
  January (in San Diego).

  Danville, the northern California town from whence Philip came, 
  is an interesting place. It's a somewhat insular city that 
  values its near-rural identity even though more people probably 
  live within its city limits than lived in the entire county I 
  grew up in. When entering Danville, you're greeted with a sign 
  announcing you've crossed the "town limit," not the city limits 
  you see everywhere else.

  I remembered an article about Danville that Philip had written 
  about his home in an issue of the _UCSD Guardian_ newspaper 
  while I was still the paper's editor in chief. In it, he 
  explained how the town elders had refused to allow a McDonald's 
  to be built because it might bring "the wrong element" into the 
  town.

  As we drove through Danville and the surrounding (increasingly 
  high-priced) countryside, Philip and I spotted something on the 
  right side of the road. Could it be? Indeed, as Michaels let out 
  a whoop, I saw the sign: "Here We Grow Again!" and a pair of 
  familiar golden arches. McDonald's and its hideous double-whammy 
  (the presence of both "the wrong element" and McRib for a 
  limited time only) had come to Danville.

  From there we took a tour through more of Philip's past -- 
  namely, his high school, the very high school which spawned 
  Philip's hateful and appropriately-titled "High School Hate" 
  piece. It was fascinating to actually see the edifice that had 
  spawned such loathing, and an _InterText_ story.

  Anyway, it was a fun trip through a friend's life while at the 
  same time being a trip through old issues of both the _Guardian_ 
  and _InterText_.

  Also in the past couple of months, I was one of four students at 
  UC Berkeley's School of Journalism to be awarded a _Reader's 
  Digest_ Excellence in Journalism award. For this, I got a nice 
  chunk of free money and a trip in the spring to Pleasantville, 
  New York, home of _Reader's Digest_. When I go, which will be in 
  March or April, I'll be sure to give them your best.

  This has also been a busy period for Geoff Duncan, _InterText_'s 
  assistant editor. Geoff, now relocated to Seattle from his 
  previous hang-out in Ohio, just got a job with Microsoft as a 
  software tester. So now he delights me with stories of just how 
  many bugs there actually are in all my favorite pieces of 
  software. But I keep on using them...

  Geoff and his fiancee also finally moved into a new apartment in 
  Bellvue, Washington, a short walk (on Geoff's injured toe) from 
  Microsoft itself. Because his fiancee was visiting family in 
  Boston when the apartment opened, Geoff (and his toe) got to 
  move all of their stuff into the new apartment by himself.

  And yet, with all of this excitement, Geoff has continued to 
  contribute greatly to the production of _InterText_. He took my 
  Christmas Eve redesign of the PostScript edition and amplified 
  it, and also worked with me on redesigning the look of the ASCII 
  version of _InterText_.

  All the while, Geoff is also working on creating a viable reader 
  program that would make on-screen reading of _InterText_ a lot 
  easier for those with Apple Macintoshes (since Geoff and I use 
  Macs, that seems a good place to start.) More word on all that 
  in issues to come.

  And, finally, in the shower at home in December, I had yet 
  another idea for the special "theme issue" of _InterText_ that I 
  mentioned briefly a couple of issues ago. Though not off the 
  drawing board yet, I have high hopes that we'll be able to bring 
  you that issue by the end of the year. We shall see. It will 
  depend on the cooperation of lots of _InterText_ writers out 
  there.

  Well, enough from me. This issue rounds out our second year of 
  publication, and I think it contains some fine material. We have 
  two more stories from Mark Smith, a published writer from Texas 
  who has appeared in the past two issues. This issue's lead 
  story, "Slime," really struck me as an amusing story about 
  mid-life crises, the changing roles we play as we get older, and 
  rock and roll.

  We're also printing "Timespooks" by Stan Kulikowski II, a new 
  writer. Stan's story came to me on Christmas Eve (right before 
  my redesign frenzy), and I really enjoyed reading it. It's one 
  of the oddest stories I've ever read, and Stan helped explain 
  why when he wrote me that it was almost entirely based on a 
  dream he had on the night of Oct. 27, 1992. Stan's been 
  recording his dreams after waking up for some time, and it's a 
  good thing too -- without those records, we wouldn't have 
  "Timespooks."

  Enjoy the stories. See you back here in 60 days.


  Slime  by Mark Smith
======================

  Slime's gaining on me. I know he'll catch up in a minute or two. 
  I can hear his heels clicking on the sidewalk behind me. In a 
  few seconds I'll hear his wheezing, labored breathing. Then 
  he'll be here, begging me to go back and finish the set so he 
  can get paid. Maybe then I can do what I should have done when 
  he first proposed this fool's errand. Maybe for once I can tell 
  Slime no.

  I stop walking and turn around to watch him run toward me down 
  the sidewalk beside the VFW hall. He's dressed the same as me: 
  faded jeans frayed and torn at the knees, black boots, zippered 
  leather motorcycle jacket, studded leather wristband, the whole 
  punk rock wardrobe. The only difference between Slime's clothes 
  and mine are that he's been wearing his ever since we had our 
  last gig, at least ten years ago.

  On his skinny, weathered face, he's grinning his usual winning, 
  boyish grin. He flashed the very same smile when he showed up at 
  my house last week, clutching the handle of his old bass guitar 
  case, proposing that we revive the band.

  I was glad to see Slime; it had been a while. I led him through 
  my house out into the den, passing Sandy in the kitchen on our 
  way. I could tell she wasn't pleased. She barely mustered a nod 
  to answer Slime's "Hey, howsit goin'?" Slime, of course, didn't 
  notice the dark, sideways glance she threw me.


  She could've talked me out of agreeing to Slime's scheme. She's 
  much more sensible than me. She remembered the last time Slime 
  came around. It was around Christmas about two years back. I 
  don't remember the hour, but it was well after the kids were in 
  bed. Slime called from a truck stop phone booth.

  He was on his way from Houston to L.A., where his folks live. I 
  talked to him quietly, hoping Sandy wouldn't hear. But when I 
  hung up, all she said was, "How much does he want?"

  I told her and she frowned. It wasn't the sum. We could easily 
  afford it. I knew that she was justifiably troubled at how 
  easily I gave in to Slime.

  I had no stomach to pretend we'd ever see the money again and 
  Sandy didn't say another word. She understood that helping Slime 
  was neither an act of generosity nor of compromise. It was 
  friendship and mutual history pure and simple, a natural order 
  of things no more subject to question than gravity.

  Slime showed up, got the money and stayed long enough not to 
  seem rude -- which was too long for Sandy's taste -- and split. 
  He promised he'd stop by on his way back to Houston after the 
  holidays and meet my kids. I said I'd like that. That was the 
  last I had heard from him.

  I could understand Sandy's reaction to seeing Slime stroll back 
  into our lives, but I had spent a particularly gladiatorial day 
  in the bowels of the legal profession. I needed the antidote of 
  an old friend.


  Slime was wearing his usual collection of leathers and zippers 
  and his hair still arched over his head in a jet-black crest 
  like the outlandish topknot of a bizarre tropical bird. As he 
  sat tapping his knee and bouncing his heel on the carpet, I 
  could see that he hadn't lost any of the excited nervous energy 
  that oscillated between creativity and a bad hustle. Whatever 
  the case, Slime's humming energy level attracted people and 
  tended to make them do things that they didn't mean to.

  "Hey, man," I said. "Here you are."

  "Yeah," he said, grinning, bobbing his head. "Good to see you."

  "You look good. You ever eat?"

  "No," said Slime, "as a matter of fact, I get my calories in 
  beer."

  "I get the hint," I said, and went to get us two bottles of beer 
  out of the mini-fridge we keep in the den for Super Bowl parties 
  and the like.

  "Stylin'," said Slime, looking around appreciatively at the 
  room. The den is cedar-paneled and opens through French doors 
  out to the hot tub bubbling on the deck. I could tell he thought 
  it looked pretty good. Probably compared to his one-room 
  efficiency digs, I live the high life. The way I figure it, I 
  deserve it, the shit I have to put up with.

  "I try," I said.

  "I remember this house," he said. "Doin' all right. Big-time 
  lawyer."

  "Not so big, Slime. I just do my job well. Actually, I have to 
  put up with a lot of crap."

  Slime winced. "Ooh, no. I couldn't do it, man. No way. I don't 
  do real well in the, like, office scene. I was doin' temp stuff 
  for a while. I thought, whoa, get some, like, income, man. You 
  know, cash flow. But it was not cool at all. The first thing 
  they made me do was cut my hair and get some new clothes. You 
  wouldn't have known me, Phil. Anyway, I couldn't hack it. I went 
  back to driving a delivery truck. That's more my type of deal."

  We sat on the leather sofa, sipped our beer and talked about the 
  frat parties we'd played where the sons and daughters of Texas 
  oil millionaires puked out their brains in the shrubbery while 
  we ripped through our ten-thousandth cover of "Louie Louie." 
  About our one abortive "tour" when we went on the road in 
  Slime's old VW van playing bars in Dallas, Fort Worth, Tulsa and 
  then back down to Houston. When it was all over, we had made 
  about $50 each and felt lucky at that.

  "So tell me about this gig," I said.

  Slime's face lit up. "Aw, it's golden, man. Really golden. Rich 
  guy's throwing a birthday bash for his son this coming Saturday. 
  He's rented the friggin' VFW hall, man. Bandstand and 
  everything. Found out about it from a friend of mine. I said, 
  hey, great, I'm gonna get the old band back together. I been 
  wantin' to see you guys anyway."

  "What about Damon?" I asked. Damon had been our drummer, the 
  third member of the group. I had completely lost track of Damon 
  and didn't even know if he was in town anymore.

  "He's in, man. Definitely. I talked to him today."

  Well, that was something. I thought I'd like to see Damon again 
  and I found the thought of the old band doing a gig together 
  appealing. I missed the exhilaration I used to feel when I 
  jumped onto even the meanest stage and started yelling the words 
  to our favorite songs. I felt office work progressively 
  weakening me, making me soft, sleepy. I looked at Slime, who 
  hadn't changed a hair in ten years. I stared down at the shiny 
  red, black and silver band stickers that covered the case of his 
  instrument which lay like a hip coffin on the deep pile of my 
  den.

  "So we just run through the old lineup?" I said. "Is that it?"

  "Yeah, the stuff the kids will like. Some Stones, Elvis. They'll 
  even go for some New Wave tunes: Heads, B-52s. And some of the 
  hot soul stuff."

  "Right," I said, starting to remember our old repertoire: "Land 
  of a 1,000 Dances," "Nobody," "96 Tears." We may have been pot- 
  smoking meatheads, but we knew how to control a crowd. We could 
  move them through escalating layers of excitement from Doors to 
  Stones to hard-rocking classics like "Party Doll," "Devil with a 
  Blue Dress On," and "C.C. Rider." We'd slow down for "Sweet 
  Jane" to give the crowd time to catch their breath and then we'd 
  power through a finale of "Paint it Black," "Gloria," and "Good 
  Golly Miss Molly."

  Now I wondered if I could even find the chords on the guitar 
  anymore, much less manage to make my fingers do those old 
  contortions.

  "So, are we on?" said Slime with a kind of halfway smirk.

  I hesitated. Sandy was right. I had no business doing the gig. I 
  had a wife and kids who depended on me. I had a job and 
  responsibilities. I didn't know if I could play the songs or if 
  I still had my voice. Add to that my old certainty that any 
  venture with Slime was doomed from the outset. I had every 
  reason in the world to say no.

  "We're on," I said.

  When Slime had gone, my kids, who had been spying on us from a 
  safe distance, came into the living room. Jenny, the oldest, who 
  is seven, said, "Daddy, who was that man?"

  "His name is Slime," I said blandly.

  Jenny cocked her head to one side, letting her long hair fall to 
  her left shoulder. She smiled a wide, toothless grin at me. 
  "Slime?" she squeaked in a falsetto of disbelief. "That's really 
  his name?"

  "He's an old friend of mine."

  Joshua, the two-year-old, decked out in Osh Kosh overalls and 
  socks with gumball machines on them, mimicked his big sister: 
  "'lime?"

  "How much did you give him?" said my wife, still standing by the 
  front door.

  "Nothing," I said, jamming my hands deep into my pockets and 
  hunching my shoulders. "He wants to get the band together."

  Sandy's fine blue eyes got wide, then narrowed. Jenny said, 
  "What band, Daddy?"

  "We used to be in a band together."

  "I don't believe this," said Sandy, cocking a fist against her 
  hip.

  "Really? A real band?" chirped Jenny. "Like New Kids On The 
  Block?"

  "Well, not exactly," I said.

  "Band, band, band," said Joshua, rolling over to grab my leg.

  Instinctively, Sandy reached down and scooped him up in her 
  arms.

  "What was your band called, Daddy?"

  "That's enough," interrupted Sandy. She set Joshua back down on 
  the floor. "Take Joshua and go and wash your hands for dinner."

  "O-o-kay," sighed Jenny as she led her brother out of the room.

  When they had gone, I said, "What was that all about?"

  "I can just see Jenny at school: 'My daddy was in a cool band 
  called the Sex Offenders!'"

  "I see your point," I said.

  I promised Slime I would come to his place to practice during 
  the week before our date, but things got crazy at work. One of 
  the senior partners, a pompous asshole named Cramer who thinks 
  he's important because he worked with Edward Bennett Williams in 
  New York when he was in his twenties, dumped a load on me. Smack 
  in the middle of a twelve-million dollar lawsuit that he had 
  been preparing for two years, he decided to skip off to Florida 
  for three days and go marlin fishing with some cohort who owned 
  a yacht. He told the client he was ill and turned the case over 
  to his assistant who, in turn, needed a second chair. Cramer 
  recommended me. For this I was supposed to be grateful except 
  that it meant staying at the office until after ten o'clock for 
  three nights straight planning the redirect of a hostile 
  witness.

  I didn't see my kids from Wednesday morning until Saturday.

  Of course, that did little to soften Sandy up to the idea of my 
  playing with the band. I cared about her anger, but there wasn't 
  much I could do. I had given Slime my word.


  On Friday evening when I finally got home, I ate a cold supper 
  and headed up to the attic where I dug my guitar case out from 
  under a pile of toys my kids had outgrown. I schlepped the thing 
  down into the den, cracked a beer and sat down on the sofa, 
  laying the case on the floor at my feet. I snicked open the 
  silver clips and lifted the lid. There, nestled in its crushed 
  red velvet couch, lay my old Fender Stratocaster, as sleek as a 
  '55 T-bird, as modern as the Chrysler Building. Looking at the 
  guitar, I felt the old times wash around me like a tide.

  I remembered buying the thing when I was still in high school 
  and spending hours learning songs off my records. I learned to 
  play songs by the Velvet Underground and a lot of stuff by Iggy 
  and the Stooges. I liked the old fifties and sixties stuff too, 
  garage band stuff like Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, ? and the 
  Mysterians, Mitch Ryder, Chuck Berry, and, of course, lots of 
  Elvis. I liked songs with an edge. I liked the mean Stones 
  songs: "Stupid Girl" and "Under My Thumb" and "Get Offa My 
  Cloud."

  I met Slime after I had started college and we immediately 
  wanted to start a band. We needed a drummer and put a card up in 
  the Laundromats around campus that said "drummer wanted for rock 
  band" or some such and had my phone number on little pre-cut, 
  pull-off pieces on the bottom. After about a week, Damon called. 
  He was quiet, the odd man out, but he could play the drums like 
  the devil himself: loud and fast and he never missed a beat.

  I put my hand around the neck, lifted it out of the case and set 
  it on my knee. The guitar felt natural in my hands. Before I 
  knew it, I was finding the chords to "Sweet Little Sixteen." 
  Without amplification, the metal strings sounded tinny and 
  distant, but my fingering was surprisingly good.

  Just then I happened to glance down in the case and noticed a 
  something I hadn't before . It was a Sex Offenders sticker that 
  I had completely forgotten about over the years. Damon, the 
  artist in the group, had done a black and white drawing of a 
  hunchbacked old coot in an overcoat leering over his shoulder. 
  The text was done in lettering that seemed to be bleeding or 
  melting. I reached down and picked up the sticker. We must have 
  had thousands of these at one time. We gave them away to 
  friends, people who came to the concerts, bartenders, whoever. 
  They ended up all over town on lamp posts, car bumpers, backs of 
  traffic signs. At the time, the sticker represented to us the 
  reality of the group. To run across one by accident around town 
  was a rush. It meant someone out there was paying attention. 
  They were proof that we were having an effect. It occurred to me 
  that I hadn't had that sort of proof in years.

  I became aware of someone behind me and I turned to see Sandy 
  leaning in the doorway, smiling at me in spite of herself.

  "You with your guitar," she said. "I haven't seen that for 
  awhile."

  I blushed like I'd been caught with a love letter from an old 
  flame in my hands. I wanted to say something, but I didn't know 
  what.

  Sandy came and sat on the sofa next to me. She put an arm around 
  my back and said, "I didn't think I'd have to worry about a 
  mid-life crisis for a while."

  "Is that what it seems like to you?"

  "A little," she said.

  "Well, I don't know," I said. "If that means I'm afraid of 
  getting old, well, I've been afraid of that for years. I guess 
  that's part of it, but it's more." Sandy furrowed her brow at 
  me. I could tell she didn't understand or didn't believe me. 
  "When we had the band, I felt like I was doing something that 
  people appreciated in their own twisted, anti-appreciative way. 
  People would actually pay us to play. Bartenders gave us free 
  drinks. Girls thought we were cool. And when we played, that was 
  something you can't understand if you haven't done it. It sounds 
  weird to say it, but it was the closest I've ever come to real 
  power. We could get people worked up. Make them dance. I lost 
  something when I stopped being in the band and I've never gotten 
  it back."

  Sandy grinned a little and said, "Well, then, I guess you have 
  to do it."

  I grinned back. I thought, maybe this thing might go all right 
  after all.


  It didn't.

  First off, neither Slime nor Damon were anywhere around when I 
  arrived at the VFW hall. I found the place on the near east side 
  of town just beyond the interstate in a warehouse district that 
  had lately become gentrified. A greasy near-rain had been 
  falling all day and the sparsely filled parking lot glistened 
  menacingly in the failing light of dusk. Inside, the hall had 
  been decorated with crepe paper and balloons and at one end 
  there was a bandstand set up. I set my guitar on the stage and 
  walked back toward the door where some caterers who looked 
  Vietnamese or Korean dressed in white chefs' outfits complete 
  with puffy hats were setting out trays of food on a long table 
  covered with gleaming white linen. I asked one of the men if 
  they had seen a guy with long hair and a leather jacket. He 
  scowled at me like I had tasted the crab dip with my finger and 
  shook his head. I wandered away.

  I sat on the edge of the stage and waited for Slime. After about 
  half an hour, a raunchy looking dude with sunglasses and a beard 
  and mustache walked in the door. He took off his shades and 
  squinted around the room like the dim light hurt his eyes. He 
  headed straight for the bandstand.

  "Are you Slime?" he said without a smile or a prologue.

  "No, I'm Phil."

  "Glad to meet you, Phil," he said. "My name is Mike. I'm the 
  drummer."

  The drummer? But where was Damon? Then my brain engaged. Slime 
  had used a reunion to get me in. No doubt he had tried the same 
  trick with Damon with less success. After all, Damon had always 
  shown a little better sense dealing with Slime than I had.

  "Give me a hand with my gear?" he said.

  "Right," I said and followed him out into the rain. Mike's 
  vehicle turned out to be a late model Ford van with a dazzling 
  purple, metal-flake paint job.

  I thought, this guy is doing all right for himself.

  We made two trips out to bring in the drums. Once we were back 
  inside, Mike went to work arranging his equipment on the stage 
  with the precision and confidence of a professional. He paused 
  at one point and said, "You got a cigarette on you?"

  I gave him one and took one for myself. I struck a match and lit 
  his and then mine. He said, "So you were in that band with 
  Slime?"

  "Yeah. It was a long time ago."

  "The Sex somethings?"

  "The Sex Offenders," I said.

  "Punk shit, right?"

  "Well, mainly covers," I said defensively. "But we did a few 
  originals when we could."

   "I hated that punk new wave shit," he said with an end-of-
discussion tone of voice. "I'm glad that shit's dead." 

   "So what do you play?" I asked. 

  "Jazz," Mike sniffed with the smug air of the first chair viola 
  at the Philharmonic.

  "Great," I said flatly.

  By the time Slime arrived, the stage was set up and Mike had 
  smoked all my cigarettes. I was in a sour mood.

  "Great!" clucked Slime when he saw that we were set up. He put 
  his bass on the edge of the bandstand and started taking it out 
  of the case.

  "Right," I said. "Great." I was annoyed and I wanted Slime to 
  know it, though I wasn't sure what I hoped to gain from him 
  knowing.

  "So what happened to Damon?" I asked.

  "Aw, Damon couldn't make it, man. He, like, he canceled out."

  I stifled a snarl. "Was he ever in?" I said.

  Slime stopped mid-motion in the act of plugging his bass into 
  the amplifier. "What's that supposed to mean, Philly?" he said.

  "Nothing," I said. "Forget it."

  "No, man. Say it. You think I lied to you about Damon to get you 
  to play."

  I glanced at Mike, who stood to the side of the stage, smoking. 
  He wasn't looking at us, but I could tell he was listening. I 
  said, "No. Forget it. I'm just tired out. It's been a long week. 
  I don't really care if Damon plays or not."

  Slime grinned. Happy as usual to seize on the merest of excuses 
  to be upbeat.

  "That's cool," he said. "And, hey. Mike's a bitchin' drummer."

  "I'm sure he is," I said dryly.

  Slime's bass hung from his neck by a broad, rainbow-colored 
  macrame strap.

  "Hey, guys, the joint's filling up," he said, fiddling with the 
  volume button on the red body of his bass.

  I looked around. Sure enough, the hall was starting to fill up 
  with teenagers in hard shoes and brand new dress clothes: boys 
  laughing nervously and girls standing very still. I felt my 
  colon tighten. For the first time, it hit me that I had no idea 
  what kind of music these kids liked. I hadn't listened to the 
  radio in years. I couldn't name three bands on any top ten 
  chart.

  "Hey, Slime," I said. "What are we going to play anyway?"

  "Only the best stuff," he grinned with his hands out, palms up 
  in a what else? kind of gesture. "Only our very best 
  repper-twar."

  We started playing at nine o'clock sharp. The place was pretty 
  much filled up and none of the kids were paying the slightest 
  attention to us. I couldn't tell which one was the guest of 
  honor nor were there any adults around to speak of other than 
  the caterers.


  We started with a shaky version of the old Human Beinz song 
  "Nobody" which drew about the same reaction as a two degree 
  change in the thermostat. We followed that by kicking into a 
  version of "Sweet Jane," which started out all right except that 
  I forgot the words and had to sing the second verse twice. No 
  one was paying attention. The hum of crowd talk had increased 
  just enough to drown us out. My only indication that we were 
  making any sound at all was that I could see the needles on the 
  amplifier bounce every time Mike pounded on his drums. The crowd 
  huddled around the edge of the gaping dance floor like a 
  poolside party in January.

  Slime said, "_Jailhouse Rock_," but I said "No, _Heartbreak 
  Hotel_." I was encouraged to see a few heads nod in the crowd. 
  They had heard about Elvis, at least. In my frame of mind, I 
  found it easy to put some effort into the spectral, vaguely 
  suicidal lyrics. I even managed to balance on my toes while 
  kicking my knees out into a wobbling hula-hoop dance step worthy 
  of the King himself. Slime said, "Whoa, dude," but the only 
  reaction I could see in the crowd were a few smirks.

  A pretty girl wearing a low-cut green party gown with eyes to 
  match came to the edge of the stage and said, "Do you know any 
  Guns 'n' Roses songs?"

  I looked at her and said, "Sorry," and believe me, I was. She 
  shrugged her shoulders and went away.

  We played two or three more songs to similar responses. The kids 
  were getting bored. Knots of kids stood around the edge of the 
  vacant dance floor successfully ignoring my first cover of "96 
  Tears" in 10 years. When I said we were going to take a five 
  minute break, no one looked too disappointed.

  I went outside and stood by myself looking at the cars in the 
  parking lot.

  I took out my last cigarette. The door opened and Slime and Mike 
  came out.

  "Got another smoke?" said Mike.

  "No," I barked.

  "How're we doin'?" said Slime.

  "We suck," I said.

  "Huh?" said Slime. "You're not into this? I'm thinkin' this is 
  cool, us jammin' together again. Runnin' through the old tunes."

  "It's not like old times, Slime," I said. "It's new times and 
  these kids are into a whole different bunch of songs by bands we 
  never heard of."

  "Phil's right," said Mike. "This gig's not happening."

  Slime looked confused. I allowed him a scant moment of 
  compassion.

  "Well, then. What do we do?" he said.

  "Do you guys know any Jane's Addiction songs or Jesus Jones or 
  Guns 'n' Roses? Because this golden oldie shit is not working."

  Slime shook his head. Mike looked bored.

  "Here's what we do," I said. "We try some of our originals."

  Slime perked up. "You mean the Sex Offenders stuff?" he said.

  "Why not?"

  Mike groaned, but Slime nodded his head and said, "Wicked!"

  "Let's go," I said.

  We went back inside, got settled on the stage and crashed into a 
  screaming version of "Kill the Rich." What happened next was 
  like one of those old Alan Freed movies where the band at the 
  prom finally gets sick of playing Strauss waltzes and starts 
  rocking and the kids go wild and the parents get nervous at 
  first and then they start twisting too. The atmosphere in the 
  room suddenly snapped into place. The kids looked up from their 
  punch and stopped talking. A couple jigged onto the dance floor 
  and then another and a third and before I knew it, there were a 
  good number of dancers. I felt myself start to relax for the 
  first time in days. Maybe we could salvage this thing after all.

  We finished "Kill the Rich" and launched into "I Hate This 
  Town." I could feel the old energy returning along with my 
  confidence. More kids went onto the dance floor and gyrated to 
  the pounding beat. I ripped harder into the lyrics and started 
  pacing the stage and shouting into the microphone like James 
  Brown.

  I caught a glimpse of the caterers who were suddenly standing 
  beside deserted chafing dishes, arms folded, shaking their 
  heads.

  We jumped into "I Want To Sleep With You" without so much as a 
  sixteenth note's pause between songs. I glanced at Slime who had 
  a big, shit-eating grin on his face, but Mike looked like he was 
  struggling to keep up. We were cooking. I felt the last ten 
  years of office burden detach itself and float away from me like 
  a dandelion fluff.

  Just then, I heard someone calling my name, yelling in fact: 
  "Phil! Phil!" I thought it must be Slime and I turned to look at 
  him, but he only grinned back.

  That's when I looked down and saw, of all people, the most 
  unlikely and unexpected face in the world: Cramer, the senior 
  partner in my law firm. He glared up at me with a mixture of 
  disbelief and embarrassment. His sunburned face strained out of 
  his starched collar.

  "Phil," he said. "What the fuck are you doing up there?" He 
  seemed as confused as I was. I had stopped playing and Slime and 
  Mike petered out behind me.

  "What am I doing?" I said. "What are you doing here?" Though I 
  thought I already knew.

  "This is my daughter's 16th birthday party. She's the one with 
  the green dress on." I looked over at the girl he motioned to, 
  the same one who had asked for Guns 'n' Roses.

  "Pretty," I said.

  "Do you mean to say that you play in this band?" said Cramer, 
  still unclear of the situation or what it meant about me one way 
  or the other.

  "Yes sir," I said. "Slime and I used to play together in a band 
  called--" I paused. "Well, never mind."

  "I'll be damned. My second chair is a punk rocker."

  "Substitute second chair," I said. "Well, do you like it? The 
  music?"

  "No. It stinks," said Cramer. He glanced around at the teens on 
  the dance floor and added, "but the kids seem to like it."

  "Okay," I said, forcing a grin, though Cramer wasn't smiling. I 
  didn't like that. I wished he would crack a smile. I could tell 
  he didn't know what to say, what to make of my being there. I 
  figured by Monday morning he'd have made up his mind. I would 
  spend a nervous weekend until then.

  Cramer nodded curtly and disappeared. I managed to croak out two 
  or three more songs, but the energy had left me and where I had 
  felt the old power again, now I only felt a tightening in my 
  gut.

  I turned back toward Slime who was grinning like Joshua when I 
  take him for ice cream. "I'm through," I said.

  Slime yelped something at me I didn't hear and I was out of the 
  building by the time he got his strap unhooked.


  Slime's gaining on me.

  I lean against the brick wall of the VFW hall. I tap my pockets 
  for another cigarette but they're all gone. I wait for him to 
  catch up to me. When he does, he's panting hard from running so 
  fast.

  "Philly, what're you doin'?" he says after he gets his breath 
  back.

  "I'm leaving, Slime. I'm out of here."

  "But why?" he says. "We were kickin' ass, man."

  "What?" I say indignantly. "Do I have to spell this out for you? 
  This thing was a bad idea from the beginning. I've been lied to, 
  laughed at, and humiliated. I've alienated my family and pissed 
  off my boss. I've been reminded of my weakness, my lack of 
  talent and my lost hopes. What else do you want from me, Slime?"

  "But--"

  "But what?" I fire back at him.

  "But, I mean, wouldn't all of that stuff have happened anyway?"

  I stare at him for a minute, then close my eyes against the 
  weariness. I feel myself losing the need to blame Slime for any 
  of this.

  "Hey, man," he says, "You have it all. I'm, like, in awe of you, 
  Philly."

  "In awe of me?" I say. "Why the hell would you be in awe of me? 
  I have a stressed-out job chasing bones for assholes like 
  Cramer. I'm mortgaged up to my eyeballs. I have two kids and a 
  wife I never get to see. I haven't gone out dancing or drinking 
  or even to a movie in five years. I eat badly and I drink too 
  much and I don't ever exercise. I'm probably going to croak from 
  a heart attack taking out the garbage one of these days and it's 
  going to deprive the world of absolutely nothing. In awe of me, 
  Slime? You've got to be kidding."

  "No, I mean it," says Slime and, for once, he isn't wearing his 
  silly grin. "Great job, beautiful wife, cute kids, cool house. 
  You got it all. You ought to relax and enjoy it. See, there's 
  the difference between us, Phil. I'm too relaxed to go out and 
  get that stuff you have and you're too uptight to enjoy it."

  "Well," I say, beginning to grin in spite of myself. "You want 
  to trade?"

  "Huh?"

  "Trade, Slime. I mean, Monday morning you put on a suit and tie 
  and go sit at my desk at the firm of Cramer, Dillahunt and 
  Dillahunt and I'll go odd-jobbing around the southwest for 
  awhile sleeping late and playing in clubs. You can yell at my 
  kids until you're blue in the face, sit and drink scotch in the 
  hot tub and do the dinner dishes to your heart's content. What 
  do you say?"

  Slime looks like he might actually go for it. Then his grin 
  comes back and fills his face like a sunny window. At last he 
  says, "No, no. I guess not" and starts to back away down the 
  sidewalk.

  "Hey man," he says. "I'll call you soon."

  "Okay," I say and watch him as he turns and starts back toward 
  the door of the VFW. No doubt he's going to track down Cramer 
  and get paid for the gig. I stand in the cold drizzle and watch 
  him walk away. Long after he's gone, I say again, "Okay, buddy. 
  You do that."

  But I know he won't.


  Doing Lunch  by Mark Smith
============================

  Donna, my boss, leaned against my desk and said, "God, am I the 
  only sane one around here?"

  I swiveled in my chair and looked up at her. She didn't look 
  great. The fluorescent lights did not flatter her features. 
  Fluorescent lights don't flatter anyone's features.

  "What do you mean, sane?" I said. It wasn't an insightful 
  comment. I didn't mean it to be. I only wanted her to go away so 
  I could make some progress on the pile of work she had given me. 
  My in basket was literally broken under a leaning tower of 
  papers.

  "I just had a cigarette out on the front step with that guy 
  Bosco in Development."

  "Bosco?" I said.

  "Yeah. I'm sure you've seen him. He's bald and always wears a 
  bow tie?"

  "Okay..."

  "Anyway, it turns out he's a raving Republican racist pig. All 
  he talked about for ten minutes was how those people want a 
  hand- out and those people are lazy and those people don't take 
  the time to raise their kids."

  "Just don't talk to him anymore," I said, eyeing the paper on my 
  desk.

  She went on, ignoring me. "I mean, he actually buys breakfast 
  cereal for his kids with candy in it."

  "Huh?" I said. None of this was getting any clearer.

  "Yeah. He told me this. How his kids eat this stuff that's like 
  Cheerios except that it has candy in the middle. Can you believe 
  that?"

  "What do you expect from a guy named Bosco?" I said.

  "I mean, here we are trying to change the world and there are 
  people out there using vast creative talents to make a cereal 
  with candy in it."

  "They're just hustling a buck same as the next guy," I said.

  Donna looked at me coldly and pushed her glasses up on her nose. 
  "Speak for yourself," she said. "It's not a perfect world. When 
  I see something wrong, I have to fix it right now." She put her 
  hands to either side of her head and hunched her shoulders. "Oh, 
  it just makes me crazy," she said.

  I picked up a sheet of paper from the top of the stack in my 
  in-basket and tried to look busy.

  "Oh, I guess you're actually trying to get something done," said 
  Donna.

  "Oh, well..." I said. She sighed wearily and drifted out of my 
  office back into hers. I looked at the mountain of paperwork 
  ahead of me and decided to go to lunch. When I passed through 
  Donna's office, she was playing a game on her computer.

  I passed the guard's desk in the lobby. It was equipped with an 
  impressive panel of video monitors each showing a half-tone 
  still- life of some remote corner of the building: stairwell, 
  fire door, hallway. Occasionally, a human being, distorted by 
  the fish-eye lens of the camera, would pass elliptically across 
  one of the monitors. The guard, busy trying to work the _Times_ 
  daily crossword in ink, wasn't paying any attention whatsoever 
  to the monitors. He grunted as I passed.

  The glass and chrome doors of our building delivered me into the 
  lunchtime crowds on Broadway. The sidewalks were crowded with 
  the motley assortment of humanity typical downtown: men and 
  women in business suits, NYU students in their uniforms of black 
  spandex and leathers, tattered homeless, hitch-stepping 
  hustlers, junkies, deadbeats and drunks.

  I headed downtown. I had vague thoughts of going into Tower 
  Records, maybe a bookstore, then catch a sandwich on the way 
  back. At Astor Place, I passed a woman sitting on a heating 
  grate in the sidewalk. She leaned against the building and 
  across her knees lay a sign lettered on a scrap of corrugated 
  cardboard. It said, "my BaBy diEd, Im TRyinG To gEt EnouGH To 
  BuRy Him And Go Back HomE To NoRTH caRoLiNa. PLEASE HELP ME!"

  I'd walked by her on that corner for weeks, always with the same 
  sign, watching the crowds walk by ignoring her. I put fifty 
  cents in her blue and white Acropolis cup.

  "God bless you, sir," she says to me. I nodded and went on. I 
  wondered where she'd keep it if she really did have a dead baby. 
  I thought of weird possibilities: a locker at the Port 
  Authority, the coat check at the Met. I started laughing to 
  myself.

  In the next block a black man with a gray stubble of beard 
  stepped into my path, his hand out. He wore a hound's tooth 
  sports jacket that might actually have once been a fine piece of 
  clothing, taken off a rack in a men's store on the upper East 
  side, now stiff with grime, lining ripped and dangling.

  "Spare quatta, spare quatta, spare some cha-a-a-a-i-i-i-nge!" 
  growled the wino in my face.

  I had just donated my last pocket change to the dead baby cause. 
  "Sorry," I mumbled.

  "Aii, go to hell, college boy," he said with a wave of his hand, 
  and stumbled away after another victim.

  As I approached Fourth Street, the red and orange sign over 
  Tower loomed in front of me. People buzzed in and out of the 
  revolving doors like worker bees around a hive. At the last 
  minute, I decided to pass up the temptation of idle consumerism 
  and turned instead toward the park.

  I wandered down Fourth and meandered in a zig-zag north and west 
  through quieter streets past NYU campus buildings and dorms. 
  Halfway down one block, a delivery van was parked with two 
  wheels on the sidewalk, the roll-top back end up and two guys 
  hauling out boxes. As I stepped into the street to walk around 
  it, a deafening shriek filled my ears, echoing down the tight, 
  gray street. A courier on a bike whizzed past me. The whistle in 
  his mouth dropped to the end of its string as the guy yelled at 
  me, "Watch out where you're going, jerk!"

  I crossed the street and entered the east side of Washington 
  Square park. The usual crowd was there: roller skaters weaving 
  in and out of the mob, knots of guys around boom boxes, kids in 
  Ocean Pacific sportswear from head-to-toe balancing on the tips 
  of neon green and pink skateboards, fat cops walking around 
  tapping their legs with their nightsticks, old folks on benches 
  throwing popcorn to the leprous pigeons, small children swarming 
  the fenced-in playground.

  A skinny guy with polyester pants and sandals, his dreadlocks 
  tucked up under a massive, rainbow-colored macrame cap, stepped 
  in front of me and said quietly, "Weed? Dime bag? Nickel bag?"

  I slowed down. I usually had enough sense to tell these guys to 
  beat it.

  I hadn't smoked much pot since college, mainly because all my 
  friends had dried up. But I felt loose and a little detached. 
  Without saying a word to the guy, I pulled a five dollar bill 
  from my pocket. Like a rasta leprechaun, the guy made the bill 
  disappear, replaced by a tiny zip-lock plastic bag like the 
  Hasidim use to carry rings back and forth across 47th Street or 
  Canal. Inside the bag was enough pot to roll a very skinny 
  joint. When I looked up, the rastaman had vanished.

  I stuck the bag in my pocket and went and sat on a park bench. 
  Close by, a crowd had gathered around a guy who was furiously 
  assaulting a guitar and shouting a manic version of "Friend of 
  the Devil."

  A dark, attractive woman with short hair and high cheek bones 
  sat down on the bench next to me. She was nicely built and wore 
  black jeans, black T-shirt, black boots and black leather jacket 
  with plenty of zippers and studs. She wore lace gloves with the 
  fingers cut out. Her fingernails were painted black. She took 
  out a cigarette and said to me, "Got a light?"

  I fished out my Bic handed it to her. She lit her cigarette, 
  releasing a big cloud of blue and gray smoke. I lit one too and 
  said, "You like it?"

  "Like what?" she said.

  "The music," I said.

  "No," she said. "It sucks."

  I nodded. She was right. They guy continued to bang away on his 
  guitar like he wanted to rip out the strings.

  "You want to smoke a joint?" I said.

  She looked sharply at me and said, "Are you a cop?"

  I laughed. "No," I said.

  "Well, then. Okay."

  "Hold on," I said and went over to where my Jamaican friend was 
  standing with a group of his compatriots grooving to some dub 
  masterpiece rattling out of a boom box the size of a Fotomat. I 
  asked him for a rolling paper. He gave it to me without so much 
  as a glance. I went back to the bench, took out the tiny bag and 
  rolled a joint on my thigh. I lit it from my cigarette and 
  passed it to the woman who took it between the tips of her black 
  fingernails.

  "You work around here?" she said.

  "Yep."

  "What do you do?" she said.

  "As little as possible," I said.

  She didn't grin. I didn't grin either. She passed the joint back 
  to me and said, "Well, what is it you're supposed to do?"

  "I'm not quite sure," I said. I still didn't smile. This was a 
  serious conversation.

  "Quite a talker aren't you?"

  "Actually, I am," I said. We passed the joint back and forth a 
  few more times until it was gone. I was suddenly high. The 
  guitar player kept pounding away. The park and all its surreal 
  cast of characters seemed to grow small and recede.

  "Do you want to walk?" she said.

  I nodded and we stood and started off toward Fifth. I couldn't 
  tell which of us was following the other. I wondered how much of 
  my lunch hour was left and whether I could go back at all.

  "What's your name?" I said.

  "Heidi," she said.

  I laughed out loud. I was sure she was putting me on, this 
  dungeon angel in nightcrawler black. But she still hadn't 
  cracked a smile.

  "Really?" I said.

  "Really," said Heidi.

  "I'm sorry I laughed."

  "That's okay," she said. "Everyone does."

  We walked past the arch and up Waverly toward the West Village. 
  We wandered down side streets past serene brownstones, unchanged 
  for a hundred years, window boxes full of geraniums. I felt very 
  odd and only part of it was because of the pot. I glanced at 
  Heidi walking beside me and wondered if any of this meant 
  anything.

  The corner at Sixth Avenue was swarming with activity. 
  Passengers were rushing in and out of the subway and the lunch 
  crowd came and went from the diner up the block.

  We turned the corner toward the basketball court.

  "These guys are serious," I said. Heidi peered soberly through 
  the chain link fence where ten huge men were playing a noisy, 
  full-court game. Spectators leaned and hung on the fence and 
  kids that should have been in school watched from their bike 
  seats.

  "Oh, Jesus, one of those deals," said Heidi. I looked around to 
  see that a crowd had started to gather around a three-card monte 
  game on a flimsy folding table.

  The card man laid three bent and worn playing cards face up, 
  flipped them over, mixed them up and put a twenty-dollar bill on 
  the table. "Four of diamonds," he said. "Four of diamonds."

  Some guy in the crowd laid a twenty beside the first and turned 
  over the four of diamonds. "All right!" he said, taking both of 
  the twenties. The hustler rearranged the cards and staked a ten. 
  "Four of diamonds," he said to the winner.

  "I'll bite," he said and dropped a ten next to the first and 
  pointed to a card: four of diamonds. "Well, goddammit," said the 
  operator. "You doing good." The winner picked up the tens and 
  the house shuffled the cards. This time a fifty appeared: 
  Grant's whiskered, alcoholic face looked up fiercely at this 
  spectacle. Two twenties and a ten met the wager and the crowd 
  was quiet for the brief moment it took to turn over the ace of 
  spades.

  "Aw, Christ," said the winner, as he backed away, looking at the 
  ten dollar bill he had in his hand. The hustler swept the bills 
  into his hand and rearranged the cards.

  I watched carefully. I was sure it was the card in the middle. 
  Without thinking twice, I pulled a twenty from my jacket pocket, 
  tossed it on the table and picked a card: king of spades. I was 
  dazed. I could ill-afford to lose twenty dollars. Along with the 
  ten left in my pocket, that was all the money I had until 
  payday.

  I glanced at Heidi, who looked at me with a bored expression. I 
  didn't care what she thought; I had to get my twenty back. The 
  guy rearranged the cards and put out a ten. I matched it and 
  picked up a card: four of diamonds.

  "Yes!" I said. I felt my heart pound as I scooped up the bills. 
  I thought I heard Heidi say "stop now" as I concentrated on the 
  movement of the cards.

  Without so much as a pause, I matched the house twenty with my 
  two tens. I was so sure of the cards that I had started to reach 
  for the bills before I realized I was staring at the ace of 
  spades. The hustler's hand snaked out and reeled in my last 
  dime. As I backed out of the crowd, another loser stepped into 
  my place.

  I looked at Heidi, who stood with her arms crossed. I could see 
  her trying to decide where to place me on a range of 
  possibilities between kind of interesting and dangerously 
  unbalanced.

  I figured she was calculating the risk of involvement by 
  estimating the ratio of interest to misery: a woman's standard 
  measure of a man.

  "I have to go back," I said.

  We had walked half a block when she said, "Is this, like, a 
  normal lunch break for you?"

  "Well, no," I said. "I guess not. In fact, it's pretty weird."

  "Hmmm," she said. "I'm not sure if I'm glad to hear that or 
  not."

  When we got back to the park, she said, "I have to go this way." 
  She waved her hand northward up Fifth.

  "Okay," I said. "Can I call you?"

  "No. Give me your number. If I decide to, I'll call you."

  I took out a scrap of paper and a ball-point pen, scribbled my 
  home and work numbers and handed her the paper. We stood looking 
  at each other. Her hands were folded in front of her. I leaned 
  toward her.

  "No," she said. "Don't do that. There might be a time for that 
  later on, but not now."

  Then, with an odd, backward glance, she turned, bounded across 
  Fifth, and disappeared into the crowd. At that moment, high 
  above the honking, screaming, grinding sounds of the city, came 
  the peal of a tower clock; a clear, resounding _bong_ that rang 
  out over the chaos of the city and spoke to me through my 
  confusion.

  I began walking briskly toward Broadway. The fogginess of the 
  pot was wearing off. I thought about the oddness of the last 
  hour and tried to puzzle meaning from it. I wondered if I would 
  see Heidi again or if that even mattered. Whatever she decided, 
  in a lonely city full of self-made prisoners of paranoia, an 
  attractive, apparently sensible woman had spoken to me out of 
  the blue without fear or condition or motive. So why, then, had 
  I responded by playing the role of an immature, self-destructive 
  lout, or was that the real me after all?

  I dashed though the doors of my building, past the guard who 
  barely glanced at me. As I passed my boss, she was still playing 
  Tetris, the blocks falling like geometric snowflakes on her 
  computer screen. Without looking up, she said, "Where have you 
  been?"

  "Oh, just doing lunch," I said.

  "Slow service?" she said.

  I suddenly remembered that for all that had happened, I hadn't 
  eaten at all. Nor would I for days if I couldn't find some money 
  somewhere. I chuckled cryptically.

  Back in my office, I picked up my phone to check my voice mail. 
  The computer voice told me I had a message, so I punched in my 
  password.

  "Hi, this is Heidi. I just want to know if you're as weird as 
  you seem? I mean, it's okay one way or the other. I just have to 
  know. I guess, if you want to meet in the park for lunch 
  tomorrow, that'd be all right. We'll see how it goes, okay? 
  Bye."

  I hung up the phone and sat in my office under the unforgiving 
  fluorescent glare.

  "Hey, Donna," I yelled into the next office without bothering to 
  get up from where I sat, grinning like a madman. "Can you lend 
  me thirty bucks till payday?"


  Mark Smith  (mlsmith@tenet.edu)
---------------------------------

  Mark Smith (mlsmith@tenet.edu) Has been writing fiction and non- 
  fiction for over ten years. His fiction has appeared or is 
  forthcoming in _Window_, _Spectrum_, _Malcontent_, _Epiphany_, 
  the _Lone Star Literary Quarterly_, and _Elements_. Mark is also 
  the author of a collection of short stories titled _Riddle_ 
  (Argo Press, Austin, Texas, 1992).


  Timespooks (and bit parts)  by Stan Kulikowski II
===================================================

   Starring: Jack Nicholson, a Mobile. Jeff Goldblum, a Sessile.
    And a supporting cast of thousands of other small parts.

  He was sitting in the car waiting for the bullet he knew would 
  come. When it did, he heard a small tinkling of broken glass, 
  and wondered if the window would crinkle in that sparkling 
  pattern in which a small break would propagate another small 
  crack and another and another until the entire surface became an 
  opaque fractal prism, falling into a zillion separate tiny stars 
  on the slightest touch.

  It didn't. That was odd, he thought.

  Another thing that was odd was that it really didn't hurt much. 
  The small-caliber projectile had entered on the right front hip, 
  striking the pelvic horn and ricocheting upward through 
  endlessly convoluted turns of intestines, nicking the liver and 
  the hepatic vein, and finally coming to rest lodged in the 
  interior wall of the diaphragm. The point of the tiny 
  Teflon-coated bullet, called a Needlehead, was just sharp enough 
  to grate a little against a rib when he breathed in.

  He expected more pain. As it was, the small scritchscritch when 
  he inspired was about it. The bullet's brief flight through his 
  organs and membranes had been like an instant of thin, brilliant 
  ruby laser light. An almost static image of a single spider's 
  thread through his body, so he could note its passage and the 
  resultant damage but hardly more. He kept his face winced and 
  his gut sucked in for a long time expecting an onslaught of 
  agony which never came. Eventually he had to relax and admit 
  that being shot was not as bad as he had thought it would be.

  The problem was the nick on the hepatic vein. The entry wound 
  itself was slight. There was hardly a dribble of blood, and that 
  was quickly stanched when he placed his hand over it. All the 
  myriad punctures of the twistings of small intestine were so 
  minor that most of them would seal and heal without much 
  surgical assistance. A little liver tissue would regenerate with 
  just a scar. The slight mass of the bullet itself was just an 
  annoyance, easily removed.

  It was the sharp incision across the venous wall that would 
  occasionally gape open, then closed, like a curious mouth 
  speaking large quantities of the dark venous blood into his 
  visceral cavity. Episodic internal hemorrhage. He would 
  eventually bleed to death without losing more than a teaspoon of 
  blood.

  If he sat there very still, he figured he might have a few hours 
  left before the circulating volume of his blood lowered enough 
  for him to black out of consciousness for the last time. His 
  belly would bloat outward when receiving the expanding embolism. 
  The internal visceral pressure might eventually equilibrate with 
  the lowering venous pressure so further loss might be minimal, 
  but by then it would be too late to do any good. His brain 
  needed a constant fresh supply of prime, Grade-A, oxygenated 
  corpuscles to survive and a dead-end reservoir that was far too 
  large was being created south of the rib cage.

  Of course, the end could come much quicker than that. The sharp, 
  clean tear of the hepatic vessel wall could rupture at any 
  moment and he would see life's vibrant colors drain away to 
  black in a sudden rushing swoosh into the hidden internal sea 
  below.

  Just sit here for a while and wait. Yep, thinks Nicholson, live 
  life to its longest if I just take it easy here for a while.


  But after a bit, Jack gets bored of sitting hunched over in the 
  Mercedes. When he gets restless, he decides that he may as well 
  get up and go back into the studio wardroom. Getting out the 
  front seat gingerly, holding his side (uselessly), Jack walks 
  hunched over like a crab. He crosses the parking lot and makes 
  it up the three steps to the wardroom vestibule. If he's going 
  to die anyway, he may as well seek out the company of friends. 
  If he dies on the way, at least he'll see himself doing a great 
  heroic act -- something he always found possible but just 
  missing in his real life.

  He passes the nurse's station, with a sneer on his lips and 
  dragging one leg, his hand clutching over his liver tightly. It 
  looks so much like Lon Chaney Sr.'s _Hunchback of Notre Dame_ 
  that they just wave him through security and check-in. He had 
  just left, after all, and if this is the way 'an artist' like 
  him wants to work up a part, so be it.

  A few doors down the corridor, the rich, deep pungency of the 
  wardrooms takes over. An odor so strong and so human that it 
  puts a stitch in your breathing when you first hit it like a 
  wall. The smells of sweat and exhaled air and a little vomit and 
  silent-but- deadlies. Nothing else like it on Earth, and nobody 
  except perhaps primeval Neanderthals might recognize it: a 
  crowded cave, poor sanitation, after a long hard winter just 
  after an attack by ax- wielding cannibals, who gutted many and 
  ate several members of the tribe, spilling their sour gastric 
  juices with their guts. That kind of smell.

  Nicholson feels buoyed by the throat-choking stench. Actors took 
  to the wardrooms like they responded to the smell of greasepaint 
  backstage on opening night. It took a while to get used to it at 
  first, but the whole arrangement made so much sense. Theater, 
  movies, then the wards forever.

  There was, increasingly nowadays, an underlying tincture to the 
  wardrooms. An occasional waft of sterile alcohol or ammonia and 
  the antiseptic tang of the medical support units. The old-timers 
  say you get used to these otherwise distracting gustatory 
  conflicts. You cannot do without the doctors and their skills, 
  so you've gotta put up with the sharp stink of their trade.

  The naive think that one day the medical interventions would cut 
  through the basic odor of concentrated living. But that didn't 
  seem to be the case. The same old guys (with their wisdom of age 
  and experience) would say that you could always tell the smell 
  of someone getting too rich in the biotics. These outbreaks, 
  nasally distinct, would soon be followed by sharp smells of the 
  antiseptic. Those medical kids would step in and ferret out the 
  corruption and putrefaction, leaving instead their own 
  non-living traces. A good healthy wardroom had its own 
  supporting olfaction.


  Jack, as he shambles down his corridor, knows that he won't 
  collapse before he makes it across the dayroom, right next to 
  where Jeff Goldblum is almost always typing away at a VT-220. 
  It's truly ancient equipment -- the color monitor and keyboard 
  are almost certifiable antiques.

  _Peck, peck, peck._ Goldblum punched at the keys in his own 
  unique fingering. Sometimes hunting, a complicated dance of 
  finger motions and wrist snappings. His keyboarding was like a 
  showboat performance artist: lots of dramatic pauses punctuated 
  by incredibly complicated twistings of fingernails and tips. 
  Just the right pressures for maximum speed of output. Hands 
  suddenly thrown into the air as if expecting instant applause 
  for some piece of brilliance.

  Light shines down in a beam from a nearby window. Somehow Jeff 
  always gets a position next to a real window. Most in the 
  biomass of actors equity just get sunlamps at the right wattage 
  to produce healthy Vitamin D in the surface skin. Goldblum 
  always thinks that natural sunlight gives his skin a special 
  sheen which made a perceptible difference in those forty-foot 
  projections on the silver screen. It didn't matter that much for 
  television work, but the true cinema deserved his best... and 
  that always came when he was given a window seat.

  Actually, the location teams just got tired of hearing his 
  bitching when he got transplanted into a normal room. Everyone 
  knew that the constant, controlled frequency of the halogen 
  lamps were better than the erratic variability of the sun. So it 
  was not really difficult for him to pre-empt a place near a 
  window.

  Natural sunlight gives his skin a special sheen... _Sure_, he 
  shrugs. 'His skin' could be any color of the rainbow whenever he 
  went Mobile. The surgical crew could see to that. Not to mention 
  what the makeup crew could do when they took over. remember his 
  _Othello_? Nobody ever thought that a skinny, Jewish Goldblum 
  could replace Olivier by becoming darker than Portier. It has 
  become a standard joke in the industry. Still, he likes the feel 
  of the true sun coming in over his shoulder. Perhaps that 
  feeling of self-contentment is what made all the difference in 
  his next adventure before the celluloid. Perhaps it was just the 
  old De Mille-style star system: cater to their quirks between 
  roles if you want the best output from name actors.

  Jeff finally notices Nicholson as he sidles into a day chair, 
  sharing the beam of daylight. Jack has been one of his best 
  friends, especially since Geena decided not to have anything to 
  do with him. It had been touch-and-go on the set of   
  _Mutiny on the Bounty_, as Nicholson always managed to upstage 
  your spotlight somehow. His Bligh to Jeff's Christian had that 
  spark of greatness. True, the film wasn't exactly a financial 
  hit, but the critics had understood that producing it as a 3-D 
  space opera had some risks. _Bounty_ was guaranteed classic 
  status anyway: the last first-run 3-D with the red and green 
  lens before they solved the close-up problem with the holos.

  "So what's happening, Jack?" says Jeff with his cool halfway 
  grin. "You look like you just passed a concrete turd the size of 
  a melon."

  "Yeah, it feels kinda like it," Nicholson says as he sinks into 
  the overstuffed naugahide day chair. The sound of a whoopee 
  cushion erupts as his exposed skin rubs against the dry, sun hot 
  surface. "I been shot pretty good."

  "So tell me what you been up to these last ten minutes since you 
  left,' asked Jeff, not really listening for an answer. On his 
  terminal he has displayed the last of a treatise on the benefits 
  of species-wide immune responses through direct sharing of 
  antibody defenses in a common blood pool.


  It had been the first and biggest surprise of the human genome 
  project. While mapping out the location of all genetic variants, 
  the mechanism of self/nonself recognition was discovered on the 
  molecular level. Of course, the AIDS researchers and the cancer 
  crew all claimed prior superiority, but the Nobel went to a 
  computer operator, a CAD/CAM geek. She got the published data 
  from genetic probes and started playing with the balls and knobs 
  in virtual data extrapolations. A little eye of frog and toe of 
  newt, and presto-chango: the degree of biochemical 
  self-recognition could be precisely tuned.

  No more tissue rejection ever. The immune system could be taught 
  to recognize anything human as good stuff to be maintained. 
  Viruses and bacteria did not have a chance to get through the 
  new human immune system. Indeed, mixing human organs and tissues 
  was found to be self-actuating-- the conglomerate having a finer 
  collective degree of antibody response. Each originally separate 
  immune system had slightly different capacities to produce the 
  antibodies needed for leukocytic scrubbing of the tissues and 
  bloodstream. The recognition mechanism of the antibodies could 
  be adjusted to whatever level of acceptance or rejection was 
  desired.

  At first the eugenic purists tried to use it for racial purposes 
  and found it quickly thinned pure blood lines to incipience. 
  With the immune system self-containing a model of what a 
  complete human genome looks like, the antigen recognition system 
  could be improved by orders of magnitude through mixing 
  maximally different tissue expressions of the genome.

  The more dissimilar the tissues mixed, the stronger the 
  resultant response. In a bizarre feat of experimental logic, it 
  was shown that if the entire human species were surgically 
  melded into a common blood circulation system, the superultimate 
  maximum of immune recognition would occur.

  This was theory, of course, but in practice it encouraged the 
  largest wardrooms. The more people who would have their healthy 
  parts joined, the more stable would be the whole. Societies and 
  companies promoted these as retirement plans at first. It gave 
  new meaning to the term "union meeting." If enough union members 
  would join together, they could conceivably live forever, or at 
  least a very long time -- 500 years by one conservative 
  estimate.

  Once aging effects were identified with sufficient precision, 
  only young healthy cells would be able to pass the common immune 
  filter. And so the Sessiles came to be, the wardrooms their 
  home.


  "And so you don't know how much this pisses me off, do you?" 
  insists Nicholson, pulling Goldblum from his reverie over the 
  treatise.

  "So, why don't you just have the location teams patch you in 
  somewhere and have done with it? you're equity as much as anyone 
  else here."

  "You don't understand. I think I've been Mobile all along, since 
  the start. Sure, everybody thinks, "Oh, there goes Jack- 
  fucking-Nicholson, always working on something or the other." I 
  got this and that replaced many times, but I've always been 
  Mobile. I don't think I can take being stuck down in one place 
  even for a little while."

  "Well, you're about to die a Mobile if you don't let the surgery 
  kids do their jobs on you. I mean, what a waste, Jack. To die, 
  to be gone just because everything lower than your diaphragm has 
  been trashed. Just look at me."

  Goldblum stretches his torso out like he's a body builder. He's 
  attached to equity from the waist up. 'Sure, when they took the 
  original pelvic structure away, I thought, 'Oh, shit!,' but the 
  funny thing was that I really couldn't shit anymore. All that 
  baggage around my balls and my dick being gone. It really is 
  better to live for periods without the testosterone poisoning 
  the blood, you know.'

  He stopped and looked at Jack with his famous intensity. "But a 
  casting call can put them back anytime. At least ones just as 
  good, or even better." (It depends on what the director needs 
  for the shots scheduled.)

  "Nah, it ain't removing the private parts. I had mine rebuilt 
  several times." (So, the tabloid claims were true. They had been 
  speculating on the nature of Nicholson's cosmetic surgery long 
  before the human genome breakthrough.) "I just cannot take being 
  pinned down on some equity hump somewhere."

  "Well, have it your own way then," Jeff sighs. "I'll miss having 
  you around except in the reruns." He turned back to his 
  terminal, preparing for another onslaught of lashing 
  hypertextual lexia in his celebrated quirky manner. "If you 
  change your mind, I can have triage here in minutes."

  This leaves Jack alone with his thoughts for a few seconds. Not 
  long enough, though.


  He sits up with a start, jarring his blood vessel into another 
  crimson aria. He sees himself walking across the ward. His face 
  is a gray color and his belly is grossly distended and sloshing. 
  There's an ill-defined lack of depth to this appearance of 
  himself, like perspective is somehow being violated.

  "Whoa, what goes on here?" he says, and the apparition turns 
  toward him.

  "Didn't you always want to play Ebeneezer and Marley both? This 
  is your chance," it says.

  "But I ain't dead yet," he protests. "At least I think I would 
  have known if I was to expire.'

  "Oh yes, I know. So it's safe to say that you will too."

  "Now wait a minute. You're not one of them union scabs the 
  producers keep threatening to patch together when our agents are 
  pushing too hard?"

  "No, no," muttered the shade. "I am truly your mortal coil after 
  you have shuffled it off. You will in a few minutes, you know."

  "Then how come you are here now, talking to me?"

  "Oh come now," chided the specter. "What makes you think the 
  ethereal is bound by any foolish notion of linear time? If our 
  measure is not properly taken with that Judeo-Christian 
  nonsense, why should we keep to strict timetables just for the 
  convenience of your schedules?"

  "So I'm haunting myself before I'm dead?"

  "Precisely. Narcissism unbounded. You are, after all, dying 
  unnecessarily because of an ego malfunction."

  "The hell, you say," Jack says, slapping his knee.

  "I would be careful about making such statements if I were you. 
  Indeed, I was and I did too, so I guess any warning I might make 
  is a pretty pointless recursion." The spirit turns to depart. 
  "And speaking of preordination in this deterministic universe, I 
  wonder why I'm inclined to go back and reincarnate in my own 
  fetus?" And he disappears.


  Nicholson's senses are becoming acute, hypersensitive. Why is it 
  that you become most clearly aware when it's not possible to do 
  anything with it? Like the brilliant insights of drunkenness, 
  the certainty of faith, and the promises of politicians. The 
  background swells slowly to foreground.

  Bob Dylan in the corner sings to anyone who will listen. 
  Songwriters like to attach themselves to actor's equity when 
  they can.

  Dylan's few film appearances were mediocre to say the least, but 
  his name recognition couldn't be slighted. So his right to throw 
  his lot in with the mostly Hollywood crowd was never doubted. 
  Songwriters usually hate to hang with the musicians and singers. 
  Too much melodic talent who can't make good songs on their own 
  but think they have a say in how fine art gets created. They 
  practice good craft and call it art.

  Anyway, Mr. Zimmerman is over in the corner talking and singing 
  his life away, with a soft banjo backup from somewhere. Since he 
  has no hands in the immediate vicinity, it is unlikely that he 
  is doing the strumming directly. James Caan is probably 
  providing the backup, as he needs his hands for his parts. So 
  Bob's a singing and a crooning:

  "Like, the original song went like this:

   'And she waaalks juuust like a woman,
   and she taaalks juuust like a woman,
   but she fuuucks juuust like a little girl'

  "And man, all the censors at the record company just turns all 
  frown faces. You know what I mean. So before they would cut the 
  record I had to change the lyrics to

   'And she taaalks juuust like a woman,
   but she fucks uuup just like a little girl'   

  "And then all the man censors, they turn to smiles and say, 
  'Like, yeah, it ain't about doing the deed no more, so it's 
  cool.' But all the lady censors still stay with frown faces, and 
  they say, 'It still has the F-word in it. Think about all the 
  children who'd be hearing it.' So I sits and writes some more 
  until I get to

   'And she taaalks juuust like a woman,
   but she breaks uuup just like a little girl'

  "It screwed up the rhythm a little but then all the censors they 
  turn to sunshine and that's how the song got the way you heard 
  it. The children are supposed to be so fragile that some 
  fucking's gonna pervert them all to bisexuals or something. They 
  be screwin' anything that smiles, if they even hear me sing the 
  F-word."

  With these pearls of wisdom floating around in the background, 
  who could not be creative to the max? Like listening to 
  Springsteen tell about forming up the E Street Band on the 
  _Great White Boss_ album.

  From over his shoulder:

  "We got Madonna's twat around here someplace, if you would 
  rather try that."

  "No. no, thank you."

  "That was always the best part of her," smiles Warren Beatty's 
  head, attached somewhere over by a further window. "The only 
  part we saved, anyway. I can still smell it once a month or so."

  And Jack, he just keeps sitting there, trying to absorb all the 
  sensation he can. Trying desperately to hold onto to all of it. 
  To cherish it. To take it with him forever. Not just a memory, a 
  hollow husk of abstraction, but the raw, pure instant of 
  sensation itself.

  But he knows it is slipping through his fingers like 
  quicksilver. And knowing what will come thereafter, Jack he just 
  keeps sitting there, waiting for the tunnel of light.


  Stan Kulikowski II  (stankuli@UWF.BITNET)
-------------------------------------------
  
  Stan Kulikowski II is a research scholar in the College of 
  Education at the University of West Florida. He is a specialist 
  in educational technology and is currently developing projects 
  for K-12 use of the Internet. He says this story is taken almost 
  verbatim from a dream he had in the fall of 1992.


  Sweet Peppers  by Aviott John
===============================

  The flight was late. Somewhere over the Atlantic Rose's body 
  began to rebel. The local time was three in the afternoon but 
  her body was in another time zone, arguing with the clock, 
  disputing her work schedule.

  "The fellow in 35C wants another vodka and orange. Should I 
  serve him?" Shalini interrupted her misery. Shalini was Anglo- 
  Indian and looked more Indian than English, with her air of 
  Oriental calm and placid ways. The unflappability was 
  superficial, Rose knew, because she had seen the bottle of 
  antacid Shalini carried in her overnight case.

  "Give it to him. We've another four hours to New York. Maybe 
  he'll sleep after that."

  "No such luck. They've got a game of poker going there, 35A, B 
  and C, wide awake and having a great time."

  "Are they travelling together?"

  "No. I'm positive not. They have a language problem, struggling 
  to speak English, each of them with a different accent, but they 
  understand each other somehow."

  "Boozers usually do," said Rose dryly, shifting her weight from 
  one aching leg to another. Rose was proud of her legs, but 
  lately they ached after every shift and faint bluish venous 
  bumps were beginning to show after hours of standing. God, it 
  was time for a change of profession. Her mother had varicose 
  veins: great, ugly, big, knotted rivers whose very sight 
  repelled Rose. Imagine the fate! What good the prettiest face in 
  a swimsuit (or without) on the Riviera when you had legs like 
  that?

  "Rose, you look awful," said Shalini conversationally as she 
  bent down to get a tiny bottle of vodka from a cupboard. "Is 
  anything the matter?"

  "Thanks. Tired, that's all."

  "Problems? Can I help?

  "I'm fine. Don't worry about me." _Piss off, you bitch._
  _Go deliver your vodka and leave me alone_. Rose regretted the 
  thought an instant later as Shalini sighed and set the vodka and 
  orange juice on a small tray. She wasn't too bad, old Shalu 
  wasn't. A very nice girl and pretty in a mousy, self-effacing 
  kind of way. But she did get on Rose's nerves sometimes with her 
  maternal solicitude and eternal calm. Rose never knew half the 
  time what Shalu was thinking. That was the real problem with 
  her. God, she wanted to move out of this cramped galley, just 
  had to. On an impulse she took the tray from Shalini's 
  unresisting hands.

  "Here, let me. I need a walk. I'll give it to him. 35C, did you 
  say?"

  "Thank you." Shalu sounded absurdly grateful. The poor kid was 
  tired too. "And don't forget to collect three dollars from him. 
  He's one of those who forgets to pay, you know."

  The lighting was dim and exhausted passengers sprawled in their 
  narrow seats, trying to find a position that eased the cramps in 
  their legs. These long flights were a bugger, Rose thought. She 
  and the rest of the crew had boarded in London, but by then some 
  of these people had already been in the plane for fifteen hours.

  She walked down the aisle. It was good to walk and she carried 
  her slim body erect, suddenly proud. The airline had long ago 
  discovered the secret of really captivating hostesses; not 
  elaborate uniforms, but healthy bodies and happy faces.

  Shalini was right: the fellows in row 35 were not about to go to 
  sleep. Their reading lights were on and the man in the middle 
  had his dining tray folded down as a card table. A real mixed 
  trio.

  "Your vodka and orange."

  Rose had been working at this job for seven years and out of 
  habit automatically appraised and categorized her passengers. 
  35A, by the window, was a muscular young fellow with 
  close-cropped hair and prominent, twitching jaw muscles which 
  indicated a hair- trigger temper and an inclination to physical 
  violence when frustrated. He unsmilingly clutched his cards 
  close to his face. 35B was plump, the edge of the dining tray 
  pressing into his belly. He was voluble, waving his arms 
  animatedly, speaking with a thick Russian accent and smiling. 
  She noted though that the smile never reached his eyes.

  35C was a surprise, the man who'd ordered his third vodka. She 
  expected an unshaven wino, but instead met a pair of steady 
  brown eyes. In contrast to 35B, the mouth did not smile at all, 
  but the eyes were warm and friendly with a humorous glint to 
  them, so that he looked as though he were smiling at her.

  "Thank you." He was lean and his distinguished features carried 
  the slightly bored expression that sometimes went with 
  refinement, but he seemed to be on the best of terms with the 
  other two. He was dressed in a plain gray business suit; 
  expensive, very expensive, Rose decided at a glance. However, 
  she remembered Shalu's warning.

  "Three dollars, please."

  The man smiled faintly and held out a hundred dollar bill.

  "Don't you have something smaller?"

  "Sorry."

  Rose bit her lip in annoyance. "I'll see if my colleague has 
  change. Back in a minute."

  "I'll come with you. I need to stretch my legs." He put down his 
  cards and excused himself for a minute with words and gestures. 
  35B waved a hand and began to deal the next round for two. Rose 
  was aware of his eyes on her back as she walked down the aisle 
  to the kitchen area. She pushed aside the curtain but Shalu was 
  not there, probably gone to take a cup of coffee into the 
  cockpit. Rose was sure Shalu had a wee bit of a crush on the 
  copilot although she never talked about such things.

  "My colleague's not here at the moment. I'll bring you the 
  change in a few minutes."

  "I'd like to stand for a while. I'll wait." He leaned an elbow 
  against the small working surface in an attitude of settling 
  down.

  "Win much?" She was instantly angry with herself for asking. She 
  didn't want to start a conversation with this man, but his 
  self-assured manner prompted the question.

  "Three vodkas." He rolled his eyes. "And they insisted on paying 
  right away."

  "You could have said no."

  "That would have been very bad form. You don't gamble, do you?"

  "No," after a slight pause, "don't play cards," she qualified. 
  He smiled at her, looking her up and down.

  "I thought as much."

  "Why?"

  "Can't explain it. Simply a strong hunch."

  "But why? There has to be a reason. You look like the sort of 
  person who has a reason for everything?"

  "Do I?"

  "Yes, and don't duck my question."

  "I felt your disapproval in the small of my back when you walked 
  up that aisle bringing me that vodka and orange. The other girl 
  warned you, didn't she, said this was my third?"

  Rose did not reply.

  "Didn't she?" he repeated.

  "Something like that," she admitted, annoyed that she had been 
  so transparent to him.

  "And do you know why I didn't pay? Because the other two don't 
  have a cent on them and they're too proud to admit it. I tried 
  desperately to let them win, but the harder I tried, the more 
  they lost." The man took a deep breath and looked back down the 
  aisle. "Will you tell me how I'm going to get out of this jam?"

  "That's not my problem."

  "Tell you what. Why don't you come and say to me in front of 
  those two that you made a mistake. Vodka and orange is free on 
  transatlantic flights, something like that."

  "I couldn't do that. What if the other passengers heard?"

  "All right. I'll tell them it's free and you don't contradict 
  me. Bring them whatever they want and I'll come back here to pay 
  for it. Okay?"

  "I suppose I could do that," she said doubtfully.

  "Good." He slapped the hundred dollar bill in her palm before 
  she could refuse and went back to his poker game.

  Rose clued Shalu in on her deal with the man in the gray suit. 
  Shalu was surprised.

  "Who is he?"

  "I don't know."

  "You agreed to his harebrained scheme without knowing anything 
  about him? What's the matter with you, Rose? This is not like 
  you."

  "What's wrong? I'll return his change before the plane comes in 
  to land."

  The man did not come back to the galley for the rest of the 
  flight. Rose tried to return the ninety-one dollars change just 
  before the plane began its descent to land at Kennedy airport. 
  He looked dismayed and imploringly motioned her not to give him 
  money in front of his two poker companions. She backed away and 
  had so much to do after the plane landed that she forgot about 
  the man and his money.

  Shalu and Rose were talking and laughing together as they made 
  their way to main entrance of the terminal building. There was 
  the usual crush of cabs, buses and private cars trying to ease 
  along the front and pick up people and they kept an eye open for 
  the van with the airline's logo on its side. Rose suddenly came 
  to a dead stop.

  "Oh my God, I forgot to give the man his change."

  "What? Oh, the ninety-one dollars. Serves him right for being 
  careless."

  "I can't do that, Shalu. I have to give him his money. Besides, 
  he might complain."

  "What will you do?"

  "Find out his name first."

  She zipped away and found a ground hostess with a clipboard in 
  her hand. The passenger list! Rose unceremoniously snatched the 
  clipboard and checked the name of the man in 35C. Dr. Laszlo 
  Nemeth. So he was a doctor! "Well, Dr. Nemeth, you're going to 
  get your money back," she said.

  "What?" asked the ground hostess, totally mystified by Rose's 
  behavior.

  "Nothing," said Rose as she hurried off to the public address 
  system next to the information desk.

  Half an hour later, paged and repaid, Dr. Nemeth offered Rose a 
  taxi ride into the city, a ride she accepted because she had 
  missed the airline's shuttle.

  "Will you go out with me for dinner tomorrow evening?" he asked 
  directly when they were seated in the taxi. "Good food and 
  conversation."

  "I don't know," she began doubtfully.

  "No hanky-panky," he promised.

  "Well, yes then," she laughed.

  He called for her at her Fifth Avenue hotel at six the next 
  evening and they went to an off-Broadway show called _Slippers_ 
  which she would never have thought of going to see, but it was 
  great fun and she laughed so much during some of the scenes that 
  she cried. When they came out it was raining heavily, a 
  miserable night for man or beast to be out of doors, remarked 
  Rose.

  "Let's go to my place," Laszlo suggested. "I'll cook something 
  for us."

  "Do you like to cook?"

  "No," he admitted.

  Laszlo's apartment was large by New York standards, with split 
  levels, two bedrooms, fully automated kitchen and a 
  well-appointed living room.

  "Ah, let's see what we have," said Laszlo, peering reluctantly 
  into the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. Rose took pity 
  on him then and thrust him aside.

  "I love to cook. Let's see what you've got." She nodded in 
  satisfaction. "Who does your shopping?"

  "My housekeeper. She comes in three times a week."

  "Now you go away." She shooed him out of the kitchen. "Come back 
  here in an hour and help me with the table."

  Nemeth looked at her with gratitude and tiptoed out of the 
  kitchen as she commanded.

  The crisper compartment was filled with enormous green sweet 
  peppers so Rose had no problem deciding what to cook. She 
  rummaged quickly through the cupboards until she found the 
  ingredients she wanted, then set to work. While the green 
  peppers steamed lightly, she cooked some rice and minced beef, 
  opened a can of peeled tomatoes and finely chopped a mound of 
  fresh mushrooms. Laszlo diffidently entered the kitchen an hour 
  later and she set him to work opening a bottle of wine and 
  laying the table. She did not allow him to see what was cooking.

  "You'll see when it's served," she said and shooed him away 
  again.

  He had prepared the table very nicely and she set down the 
  covered dish in the middle of the table.

  Laszlo gingerly raised the lid and feasted on the vision that 
  met his sight. Peppers stuffed to bursting with a mixture of 
  cooked rice, minced beef and mushrooms, their green contrasting 
  beautifully with the simmering pale red of the spicy tomato 
  sauce.

  Laszlo Nemeth's eyes filled with tears. They looked up to meet 
  hers. "This is a recipe from my old country you know."

  "Yes, I know."

  "My mother was from Budapest. She died last month in Austria. 
  I've just come back from the funeral."

  "Let's eat before it gets cold," said Rose, who didn't like the 
  melancholy turn the conversation was taking.

  Laszlo Nemeth ate well and spoke entertainingly throughout the 
  meal. Rose laughed at his jokes and together they drank two 
  bottles of wine. Rose was feeling slightly tipsy after the meal 
  but sobered in a second when Laszlo suddenly turned solemn and 
  proposed marriage to her.

  Bells tinkled faintly at the back of Rose's head; whether 
  wedding chords or warning chimes was not clear. She lowered her 
  head and the stuffed peppers swam before her eyes, melted and 
  reformed with knotted blue veins on their surface. She 
  determinedly thrust aside the image and all concomitant 
  forebodings of doom, raising her eyes and her glass to his.

  "Yes," she said. "Yes."

  Aviott John  (avjohn@iiasa.ac.at)
-----------------------------------
  
  Aviott John is a science writer and science reference librarian 
  at an international research institute in Austria. He has 
  written over fifty short stories and nine novel- length 
  manuscripts, one of which won a Sinclair Fiction Award (London, 
  1982). He has published articles in science journals as well as 
  fiction magazines in Austria, England and the U.S.


  Dogbreath  by Robert Hurvitz
==============================

  I slammed down the phone and paced back and forth in my little 
  dorm room, teeth clenched. "Fuck you, mom!" I shouted at the 
  telephone. "You just don't understand!" I kicked the flimsy 
  metal bedframe and it struck the wall noisily, chipping the 
  plaster. Shit, I thought, I'm probably going to have to pay for 
  that. I flopped down on the bed and gingerly poked at the 
  damage. At my touch, specks of plaster flaked off and drifted 
  down between the wall and the bed.

  The door opened, and my roommate Jed walked in.

  I looked up from the wall and said, "Hi, Jed."

  He stopped and considered this, shifting from foot to foot, 
  absent-mindedly pulling at hair that was almost as dirty as his 
  tie-dyed T-shirt. His hand dropped to his side, and he said, 
  "Brian, why were you staring at the wall?"

  I sighed and sat up on the bed. "I just talked to my mom."

  Jed nodded quickly. "I see. Didn't go well?"

  "No. Not at all. She said she was sick and tired of paying for 
  all of my CDs, and anyway, what was I doing spending all my time 
  listening to music when I should be studying? She said if I 
  wanted to buy CDs, I should get a job and pay for them myself."

  Jed winced. "Oh man. That's rough." He collapsed on his bed. "I 
  had a job once. Did I ever tell you about that?"

  "Yeah, three or four times."

  "Oh." He shifted suddenly and wound up staring at me intently. 
  "You sound like you're in really bad shape, Brian."

  "Well, yeah, I guess so."

  "I understand." He glanced nervously around the room. "Don't 
  tell this to anyone, OK? Promise?"

  "Sure."

  "OK. Basement of the biochem building, across from the men's 
  faculty restroom, there's a bulletin board where they post 
  'subjects needed' fliers for experimental drugs. They pay a 
  couple hundred bucks a pop, and you get a really weird trip, 
  too." He rolled over and was silent.

  After a few moments, I said, "Uh, Jed?"

  Jed started snoring.

  I shrugged and lay back on the bed, thinking: A couple hundred 
  bucks, huh? What the hell.


  I was on my way to the biochem building early the next morning. 
  I hadn't wanted it to be that way, but Jed had set his alarm for 
  5:30 a.m. and didn't wake up until after I'd thrown my shoes at 
  him. He'd then stumbled around the room, apologizing for each 
  noise he made and explaining that he had to get ready for a 
  protest.

  I suppose it wouldn't have been so bad if I'd gone to bed at a 
  reasonable hour, but instead I'd stayed up thinking about what 
  CDs I would buy with two hundred dollars. As a result my mind 
  was feeling spongy. It was as if my body was marching 
  involuntarily to the biochem building and my mind was struggling 
  vainly to keep up.

  When I reached the top of the brick stairs near the building's 
  main entrance I saw a big, brown dog with matted fur sprawled on 
  the ground motionless. As I walked by, it lifted up its head, 
  looked at me, yawned.

  I wiggled my fingers at the dog and said, "Woof." It blinked and 
  rested its head back upon the ground.

  Inside and down, I wandered the basement hallways, searching for 
  the bulletin board of experimental delights. Five minutes later, 
  at the end of one of the more dimly lit corridors, I came across 
  the men's faculty restroom, its door slightly ajar. Sure enough, 
  on the opposite wall were the postings.

  Before I could read any of them, I heard a toilet flush and the 
  men's faculty restroom door opened.

  "Oh! Excuse me!" said the man who stopped himself suddenly, 
  apparently surprised at seeing me standing outside the bathroom. 
  He had a large mass of graying black hair, glasses, a dark green 
  corduroy jacket, an old leather briefcase, baggy gray pants, and 
  tennis shoes. I assumed he was a professor. "But maybe," he 
  continued, "this is a serendipitous moment. Were you, by any 
  chance, perusing the experimental subject fliers?" He arched his 
  eyebrows to indicate the colored postings on the bulletin board.

  "Uh, yeah," I replied. I don't know why, but I felt embarrassed. 
  "Yeah, but I don't normally do things like this, you know. My 
  roommate told me about them. This is -- Yeah, this is my, uh, 
  first time doing this."

  "Of course, of course," the professor reassured me. He reached 
  down and opened his briefcase, fished out a bright red sheet of 
  paper. "But, you see, I was just about to post my own flier. 
  Perhaps you'd be interested...?" He offered me the sheet of 
  paper, smiling widely.

  "Oh, thanks," I said, accepting the flier. It read: "Subject 
  needed for human-animal neural relationship experiment. $500. 
  Please call Professor Billow at 642-0070 if interested." There 
  were many cuts at the bottom of the paper to make stubs that one 
  could rip off and take and that bore the words "Prof Billow, 
  642-0070, $500."

  My eyes grew wide, and I whispered reverently, "Five hundred 
  dollars."

  "Yes. Five hundred," said the professor proudly. He tilted his 
  head in modest boastfulness. "I have a very large grant, you 
  see, and that is why I offer so much more than they do." He 
  indicated the bulletin board again with his eyebrows.

  I looked around, bewildered. Five hundred dollars! "Professor 
  Billow," I said, "you have yourself a subject." I held out my 
  hand, and he shook it.

  "Come, then," he said, clapping me on the shoulder. "My lab is 
  on the other side of campus, in the Northwest Animal Facility."

  On the way out of the biochem building, Professor Billow stared 
  at the lazy brown dog and said distractedly, "Just a moment." He 
  fumbled through his jacket pockets, finally mumbled, "Aha!" and 
  pulled out a little biscuit which he then tossed to the dog. The 
  dog looked blankly at the biscuit and yawned. With a sigh, the 
  professor started walking away muttering to himself and I 
  hastened to catch up.


  I sat facing Professor Billow, his desk between us. He said 
  while rummaging through his drawers, "This is just a 
  technicality, Brian. You see, the importance of this research 
  requires that you sign a form assuring the government that you 
  won't disclose any information about the experiment to anyone. 
  Here we go." He brought out a white sheet of paper filled with 
  fine print and pushed it across the desk. "Just sign at the 
  bottom."

  I looked at the text-crammed sheet. "What if I don't sign?"

  Professor Billow spread open his hands. "No experiment. No five 
  hundred dollars."

  I signed.

  "Good!" The professor snatched the sheet back and filed it away. 
  "Now, to the lab." He led me through a side door and into a 
  large room littered with electronic equipment and in the center 
  of which were two padded tables, one large and one small. Off to 
  the side a grad student tapped away at the keyboard of a 
  computer workstation. He glanced briefly at us when we walked 
  in.

  "Mark!" called out the professor. "I'd like you to meet our 
  subject, Brian."

  "Just a second," Mark said. He moved the computer's mouse 
  around, clicked something, then stood up and came over. He was 
  tall and thin with short blond hair. "Hi," he said. "My name's 
  Mark." He motioned to the large table. "If you'll just step over 
  there and lie down, we can get started."

  As soon as I did so, Mark threw a strap over my chest, and 
  Professor Billow, on the other side, secured it.

  "Hey!" I said.

  "Don't worry, Brian," Mark reassured me. "It's for you own 
  protection, really. You wouldn't want your arms flailing around 
  and damaging equipment, now would you?" He shook his head no for 
  me. "Besides, this was all written down on that paper you 
  signed, remember?"

  "Oh. Hmmm."

  Three straps later, I was securely fastened to the table. There 
  was no way I'd be able to damage anything. Mark slipped some 
  kind of support device beneath my head and wrapped yet another 
  strap across my forehead. "So you don't accidentally move your 
  head and pull off any of the EEG leads," he explained. He smiled 
  and left the room.

  Professor Billow lifted up a syringe and gave it a slight 
  squirt, clearing the needle of air. "Merely a sedative, Brian. 
  When you wake up, the experiment will be over."

  "Uh, professor..." I started to say, but he hushed me. I felt 
  something cold wiped on my arm, and then a sharp pain as the 
  hypodermic hit home.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mark reenter the room 
  carrying an unconscious cocker spaniel. He placed it carefully 
  on the smaller table, scratched its head, and strapped it just 
  as securely down. Then he turned around and waved goodbye to me 
  as everything went black.


  I felt awful. All of my senses seemed warped and alien. There 
  was a constant whine in my ears, I couldn't open my eyes, and my 
  breath was shallow. I suddenly realized that I was now lying on 
  my stomach and had no clothes on. I wanted to panic but the 
  sedative hadn't fully worn off.

  Slowly, I was able to pick out voices from the ringing. They 
  sounded like Professor Billow's and Mark's voices but they were 
  too harsh and metallic.

  "...small amount of neural trauma, but nowhere near as much as 
  before," said the pseudo-Mark voice. "My feedback circuit 
  worked, dammit!"

  "I'm not saying it didn't work," responded the professor's 
  distorted voice, "I'm saying there's still too much trauma to 
  risk a retransfer. Perhaps with this lesser amount, though, 
  it'll be able to sufficiently reduce itself to a safer level 
  over a reasonable period of time. In the meanwhile I suggest 
  that you further refine your clever feedback circuit."

  I tried to say something, but all that came out was a growl.

  The professor's harsh voice continued, "Well, Brian's coming to. 
  Who's going to explain this time? Perhaps you should, Mark. You 
  could then also tell him how well your feedback circuit worked."

  I managed to force my eyes open and was shocked to see that 
  everything was black and white.

  And there were muffled shouts and poundings and kickings on the 
  door. I heard Mark say, "What the hell?" just as the door 
  crashed open. People rushing into the lab shouted triumphantly, 
  "Free the animals! Free the animals!"

  Mark ran out the back door. Professor Billow held his arms out 
  in front of himself and shouted futilely, "Wait! Wait! You don't 
  understand!" before being forced out of the lab by the mob of 
  protesters chanting, "Animal killer! Animal killer!"

  A woman came over, gently pulled off electrodes that were still 
  taped to me, and released the straps. "Don't worry, puppy, 
  you're safe now," she said as she patted my head. Her voice was 
  even more distorted than Mark's and the professor's had been.

  I concentrated hard on saying that I was not a puppy, that my 
  name was Brian, and I would appreciate it if she would not pat 
  me on the head, but all that came out were a few high-pitched, 
  pathetic barks. I tried to sigh but, instead, panted.

  She lifted me up to her face and stared concernedly at my jaw. I 
  started to whimper. "It's OK," she said in a tone that was 
  trying to be soothing but actually sounded demonic. "Is 
  something wrong with your mouth? Were they experimenting on 
  you?" Then she pinched up her face and looked away. "Whew. With 
  breath like that, they must have done something." She put me 
  down on the floor and said, "Sit."

  I was too stunned to run away. Everything was very tall. I was 
  very short. Lots of very tall people were rushing back and forth 
  breaking equipment. The jagged crunches of destruction were 
  agonizing to listen to, but after the pillaging was over, I 
  noticed that almost all of the background whining was gone.

  Protesters came by and patted me on the head, smiling and saying 
  silly things in that now universal harsh tone of voice. Then 
  they started up the "Free the Animals!" chant again and left the 
  lab, presumably in search of another.

  With growing dread I looked at my own body and saw that I was a 
  cocker spaniel. I jerked my head up and stared at the other 
  table.

  I was able to see my arm, tensed and straining against the 
  straps with which Mark and the professor had so carefully bound 
  me.

  One of the protesters had stayed behind and he was leaning 
  heavily against the large table, his face in his hands. It took 
  me a moment to realize it was Jed. He was wearing the same 
  clothes as the previous day but, in black and white, the tie-dye 
  was a lot harder to recognize.

  "Oh God, Brian," Jed was saying. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

  There was one last whine still audible in the lab. It was a 
  periodic whine, not constant like all the others had been, and 
  it just then dawned on me that it was coming from my body up 
  there on the table. The whine would last a few seconds, be 
  broken by a sharp intake of breath, and then continue.

  "I'm sorry," Jed repeated.

  The woman who had freed me came back into the lab and said, 
  "Hey."

  Jed's head snapped up, startled. "Huh? Oh. Hi, Wendy. How ya 
  doin'?" His metallic voice was strained and his face showed 
  pain.

  "Come on, Jed," she said. "You're missing out on all the fun." 
  She gave him a tentative smile but he just stared at the floor. 
  "Hey, Jed, don't worry about this guy. He's probably just having 
  a really bad trip. Anyway, the police'll know what to do with 
  him."

  "No, no, that's not... It's..." Jed looked back up at her. "He's 
  my roommate. His name is Brian."

  They stared at each other for a few seconds.

  "This is all my fault," Jed finally said.

  "Oh, Jed, no, don't say that. It's not your fault. It's tragic 
  and awful, but it's not your fault."

  Jed was silent.

  Wendy touched his arm. "Let's go outside, Jed. We can sit down 
  on some grass and you can tell me about Brian."

  I ran out of the lab.


  The next few hours were a blur. I ran madly through campus, 
  through various buildings, dodging between students, making 
  bicycles screech to stops. I finally collapsed on the brick 
  steps of the biochem building, panting heavily.

  After a few minutes I heard some peculiar barkings. It wasn't 
  normal barking; it was barking out of which I could decipher 
  English words.

  "Hi," the bark said. "My name's Chuck. What's yours?"

  I looked up and saw the dog that had been napping at the top of 
  these steps this morning. With a bit of concentration I barked, 
  "My name's Brian."

  "Well, Brian, in case you were wondering: No, dogs don't 
  communicate like this. I was also one of Professor Billow's 
  subjects. You're the sixth."

  "The sixth?"

  "Yup. And now with the lab destroyed it looks like you'll be the 
  last. Unfortunately, that also means we won't be able to be 
  retransfered. Billow was keeping our bodies in another room in 
  the lab. I suppose the police will find them, and Billow will be 
  brought up on criminal charges or something."

  I stared at Chuck.

  "Hey, Brian, don't worry too much about it. It's not such a bad 
  life. You get to lie around and nap a lot. Food isn't very 
  scarce, really, you just have to know where to look. It can 
  actually be a fun life, but it takes some getting used to."

  I continued to stare at Chuck.

  "Come on, Brian. Follow me and I'll introduce you to the 
  others."

  I nervously stood up.

  "There you go, Brian. You'll see; it's not so bad. You've even 
  got one good thing going for you already."

  "Oh?" I barked. "And what's that?"

  "You've got great smelling breath."
   

  Robert Hurvitz (hurvitz@cory.berkeley.edu)
--------------------------------------------

  Robert Hurvitz is a graduate of UC Berkeley's Computer Science 
  department, and is currently working in San Francisco. He is a 
  frequent contributor to InterText.


  FYI
=====

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