A continuing story.........

Kelly is sitting at a picnic table in what must be some sort of local park next to the river. She has a 9x12" pad of Strathmore drawing paper in front of her along with a MagicRub eraser and Venus 2B and 4B pencils. Anyone passing by would never take notice of this slightly overweight middle-aged woman with graying hair.
Kelly, of course, is the "facilitator."
The wait, the wait for the prey, can be tedious but you can get into a certain rhythm. Or at least Kelly can if you can't. It doesn't matter if it was in Vietnam, Panama or wherever.
Kelly has never had any problem with the next step, where she inhales a breath of air, exhales half of it slowly and fires off the one or two shots necessary to do her job.
The step after that, what we might call the "getaway" is called the "extraction" by Kelly. This is the most difficult part.
At one point she has a bag full of cash and a black pick-up belonging to her victim and smelling of urine that the gothkid contributed.

The trick in life is to keep what you want and get rid of the excess baggage.

Kelly has successfully gotten rid of the gun, the cash and the car.

Kelly sets down the 6B pencil she has been doodling with. She watches the kayaks drift by.

Missy Jenkins slowly hangs up the phone in her new apartment in Paris. Her younger sister, Jennifer, had just called to let her know about their father's death. It was the phone call she had fearfully anticipated since she was a child. The phone call every police officer's child is afraid will come.

Missy sighs deeply, then dials her friend, Howard Nussbaum.

"Hey there, Missy! How's the new job going?"

"Uh, fine, Howard. Listen...my father was killed in Amarillo. Uh huh, the same day we got the papers on the infidubla device. And here's the funny thing...it happened at Gerald Flowers' house! Any ideas?"

"We've got a lot of weird reports coming in from Amarillo," Nussbaum says. "Best as I can tell, they must have been testing the device. But something went wrong. I'll bet your father got caught up in it. I'm so sorry..."

"Oh, it's alright. I always knew the bad guys would get him someday. He was always putting himself in dangerous situations, you know."

Having been head of the CIA for a few months, Howard Nussbaum understands. "Are you coming back for the funeral?"

"Maybe. Why?"

"Well, I'd like to get your take on some of these reports. We've got a melted hangar outside Amarillo, and the Pentagon officials who were in there for the meeting are now all over the map. We just got a confirmed sighting of General Mander in Siberia, freezing his ass off."

Missy laughed. It would be good to see Howard again.

Meanwhile, back at the Whitehouse, where GW is told what all the major decisions will be.....GW is thinking about all the details of that Flowers guy, Nick at the cabin drinking Makers Mark and having a good time with that green eyed blonde, damn it, and all those other characters that are so hard to keep track of.

What was it Gen. Mander said? Something about letting Rummy take care of the details, yeah, that was it. Yeah, go to the prayer group and leave it in the hands of God--and Rummy and Dick.

Oh, hi Paul, where's Rummy? I was just thinking--what? Oh no, not too hard, you know me, just doing enough to make speeches at the local grange. Listen, I think what you and Rummy are doing is mighty fine."There may be some tough times here in America. But this country has gone through tough times before, and we're going to do it again." And you guys are going to see to it that it happens real soon.

"You see, the Senate wants to take away some of the powers of the administrative branch." And I just don't like the sound of that. "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." Do away with all these environmentalists. What are they, people like Uri Geller, that mentalist guy who knows what I'm--we're thinking? About the forests and big corporations? They think they're mighty tricky, don't they? "There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on-shame on you. Fool me-you can't get fooled again."

While you guys are taking care of this Nick and Flowers and all those others, I'll just keep up the support for tying up the oil profits in Iraq and getting some real profit from the environment for a change. I know Dick is working hard on that one. He has Haliburton all tied up--Texas too.

On your way out, have some pretzels sent up. I feel like watching a ball game.

(All sentences in quotes are real Bushisms. My mind couldn't possibly make up that wacky, dangerous drivel.)

Oh my God, Diane! I am choking!!!

Back at the cabin Nick finds an old fashioned copper bathtub. Getting an idea, he quietly steps out to the Jimmy and heads into town looking for the nearest drug store. Its 3 p.m. and a few tourists are looking at post cards of the 14teeners, as the natives refer to the surrounding mountians looking down on the arkansas river valley, all of them being over 14,000 feet in elevation. Nick walks up to the young sales clerk at the register, leans over the counter and whispers "bubble bath?" "jeez" she says, "I think so, look down aisle 3 near the end." Nick finds what he is looking for and returns to the cash register, pays for the bubbly stuff and asks "Is there a liquor store around nearby?" Getting a set of directions he soon finds the liquor store and picks up a bottle of Mumm's Cuvee Napa Champenoise nicely chilled and heads back to the cabin. As he drives up near the door, Sylvia is catching some rays with her eyes mostly closed. "Gimmie a few minutes" he says to Sylvia. He then moves the copper tub up under the front window and using a bucket he picked up at the ice machine, he starts filling the tub with hot water.

Sylvia sits alone in one of the chairs under the front facing windows. She's watching the river and feeling cozy. It's rained all day, and she's wrapped in a blanket, feet tucked underneath her legs. She's waiting for Nick to come back from the store. He's gone to by bread and cigarettes.

Those damn cigarettes are going to kill him one day soon. But Sylvia doesn't care...........or she cares, but she loves spending time with Nick and.............oh well, she can't change him. She thinks for a minute what it will feel like to be without him.....but then she shakes herself and remembers that she has him for now and one never knows what can happen. George Burns lived to a very ripe old age, and look at all those cigars he smoked. And Gracie..........bless her heart, she died young, or so her mother tells her. Sylvia loves to watch old George Burns and Gracie Allen routines. But they aren't easy to find.

Sylvia hears the Jimmy pulling up onto the gravel behind the cabin and the door open, Nick's boots on the step beside the place.........Sylvia holds her breath in anticipation.............she feels happy and she knows that life is good.

All those crazy folks running around out there shooting each other and getting all neurotically involved with trying to control the world.....well, she will forget about them again tonight. She and Nick and their big brass bed.


Nick's CD player is turned up full blast.......

It's Leonard Cohen................

As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you and never will
Through windows in the dark
The children come, the children go
Like arrows with no targets
Like shackles made of snow

True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun

As a falling leaf may rest
A moment on the air
So your head upon my breast
So my hand upon your hair

And many nights endure
Without a moon or star
So we will endure
When one is gone and far

True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun

Editor's note:

Thanks, Eva for this fitting and touching Cohen song..........

Dance Me to the End of Love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Sigh.......the hell with GW, this is beautiful. I'm in love. Where's the Chambord? And a certain belly button?

"Your turn," Sylvia says, regretfully leaving the warmth of the water in the old copper bathtub. Sighing, she steps out of the tub into the waiting towel that Nick holds.

Nick then steps into the tub, swishing his feet to make a few more bubbles. "Could you bring me a little more hot water?" he asks.

"Sure, baby," Sylvia says, gathering the towel around herself. Going to the sink, she fills the bucket with steaming water and brings it back for Nick. Carefully, she pours it into one end of the tub. Nick curls his toes to keep the heat from scalding them.

"Hand me the soap, please?" Sylvia asks, then begins lathering Nick's back in the same slow, circular way he had done hers. The music of Leonard Cohen fills the small room, bringing small tears to the edges of Sylvia's eyes. She has never heard these songs before. Nick is showing her a new side of himself with this music. A tender side.

Finishing his back, Sylvia begins soaping Nick's toes.
Then his ankles...
Then his calves...
Then his knees...
Then his...

She stops. There is a long, J-shaped scar inside his left thigh. She had noticed it before, when passion had been too great for conversation. Now she softly touches the scar, and Nick recoils slightly. "Does it hurt?" she asks.

"No, not for a long time," Nick mumbles, gazing out the window.

A very, very long time, he thinks. California...1973...the brunette with the sky blue eyes...broken glass.... The memories are still too vivid. Nick downs the rest of his Mumms in one gulp and turns back to Sylvia, smiling at the sight of her, still damp from the bath. So young, so perfect. The candlelight glows in a few drops of water left on her bare shoulders.

"Tell me about it," she whispers, still looking at the scar.

(Diane, it's your turn, take it away............)

(Lola, Diane, Eva and Dyslexia: a nice diversion from the mayhem.
I went searching today for an old post I had made on another site and came across my "creation" of Nick, arguably the most enduring (and now perhaps endearing) character in this story. It seems like a long time ago but it actually was 3/10/2003:

"Mona was able to close out her register at the Tom Thumb...
Nick, the overnight clerk, swaggered in: headphones around his neck and his arms draped around the shoulders of, as he was saying on previous nights with different girls: 'two fine ladies."

-realjohnboy-)

Jesse, roaring westward at evening, top town, red sun of Texas burning in their eyes. Smoke of El Paso-city on fire-smeared across a yellow sky. Barbed wire, Windrows of dead tumbleweed piled on the fence. Scrub cattle with splintered horns, fly -covered hides, broken hooves, range over the rocky desert, munching on cactus, on the dried seedpods of thorny mesquite. Newspapers yellow with lies, bleached by the sun, flap like startled fowl with ragged wings across the asphalt. Welcome to the west. Welcome to the west! Jesse shouts into the wind, grinning his vulpine grin, teeth hanging out, and hugs her tighter to his side, his gaunt ribs. She will gaze ahead in wonder, her green eyes shining in fear and excitment, her hair whipped wildly by the stream of air pouring in mad invisible vortices over the windshield, around their shoulders, across and through the baggage-suitcases, duffle bags, stuffed bears, bedrolls, books, boxes, sacks of food-jammed in a fury of haste within and upon the backseat of their open, boat-shaped, rollicking convertable. Self propelled. The open boat on the desert sea. A fat faded near-antique almost-classic but wrinkled motorcar, of dubious value, doubtful make, uncertain age but clearly a piece of iron. Detroit iron. A fringe of mud hangs from the fenders. Hubcaps missing. One savage portside sidswipe scar from headlight to tail fin reveals teh cancer of rust beneath the veneer of baked-on bleached-out once purple enamel. A repair job. Hillbilly overhaul. The pimp-sized convertible, the red-necked dreamboat. Choice of any honest country boy with big feet, a limber cock, a lank frame too long in the torso.

crazy in love
Thud

Bridgit yawns as she pulls up the shades on the windows of the Stop-on-In Cafe, turns the sign to OPEN and unlocks the door. The smell of coffee and bacon drift from the kitchen as Bridgit wipes the Texas dust from the counter and table tops. Henry has already mopped the floor. The place looks inviting, cozy even on this hot morning.

"At least the air conditioner's finally fixed," thinks Bridgit as she pours herself a cup of coffee and sits down for a minute before the first customers arrive.

At exactly 8:12 Lester arrives as he does every morning. Taking his seat he asks for coffee and opens the paper to the classified ads.

"Still haven't found that job?" asks Bridgit with less curiosity than she had at one time.

Lester grins and says nothing as he looks up to see a boat sized, American, gas guzzling wonder of dubious make, convertible pull into the parking lot.

Jesse lifts his eyes from Artemis to the road to the rear view mirror and its image: blue-black highway tapering off into the eastern dark. An empty highway at the moment: no red glare or blinking light of police, no menacing array of tractor-trailer rig, nothing and nobody whatsoever following, at the moment. But the wicked flee pursued or not.
Once we get there, he says, speaking hoarsely but loudly above the rush of wind, we'll hide this junkyard wreck unter the willows down by the creek for a year or so, give it some rest till Grandma cools down, let them pistons get some rest, we'll ride some horses into town, you and me, yessir and we'll eat good too, I tell you. "Where do you mean", Artemis says to Jesse, "what horses?
"Most anywhere, honey, most anywhere. Anywhere west of the Rio Grandee. There's Cherry Creek under Aztec Mountain. There's Bisbee, good sensible hippie town. we're welcome there. There's Mexican Hat up in Utah. Over there under the cottonwoods along that old Green River south of the Ruby Ranch. Honey I know a hundred places. Lone Pine in the Owens Valley, or why not Big Pine or Independence? There's Arcata on the coast and just a little ways beyond sets that big island down below. Brisbane's a good city, you might like Alice Springs. Or, what the hell, go all the way to eighty mile ranch, the Hamersley Mountains, the Black Swan River, watch the sun go down over the bloody Indian Ocean towards bleeding Africa where our troubles all began. Look in my eyes, Artemis---but now its time for breakfast, grits and eggs and some chorizo all smothered with chili verde."
He'll check the road one more time, let up on the gas pedal, lean toward her smiling and stare straight into her big solomn green eyes with his red iron-flecked blue squinting happy eyes and say "what do you see, Artemis?

Thud, you thaid? I thought it was pretty f#@%ing cool! A new story with new characters set in (I gather) an earlier time, but maybe not.

"Well" Artemis said "your crazy as a bedbug"
"Yeah, Yeah sure, but what else? "Jesse glanced at the highway again, no traffic light in sight, nothing ahead but the fiery glow of the city, the glare of the descending sun, the dust, the snake, and returned his gaze to Artemis. "What do you see, sweetheart? look me in the eyes ball to ball and tell me what do you see?" "I see a crazy cockoo, Jesse." "What else?" Jesse said.
Her nose was sunburned, starting to peel, her lips chapped, but she will crack a little smile. A glowing smile, matching his. "I see lights...little lights jumping around" Dancing, he checked the road again, the car slowing, wheels grating on the tin cans and gravel of the shoulder, and looked once again into her eyes. "what color?" Jesse said. She laughed "Red." She will laugh again. Same as always, full speed ahead. "Right," he yells, "you got it." He pulled her small body firmly to his side, steered back onto the pavement, pressed the metal to the floor. The big brute motor grumbled like a lion, old, tired, hesitating, then caught fire and roared, eight-hearted in its own block of iron, driving onward, westward always, into the sun.

Lester leaves Bridgit with his "thought for today." Lester fancies himself to be a bit of a philosopher, with deep thoughts; a new one every day. But it's tough coming up with something new every morning.
Today, after paying his bill, he looks Bridgit in the eyes and says:
"Remember, 'Home' is where your hat is. Always remember that."

RJB, the THUD meant I was knocked out by Jesse. You're right, it was pretty f*@#&ing cool!!! LOL

Diane...hi: I appreciate your thudness now. Dys is certainly on a roll. I'm not sure what else he may be on but it's an enjoyable trip.