"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." Dalai Lama

"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man."
Henry David Thoreau

"I'm a godmother, that's a great thing to be, a godmother. She calls me god for short, that's cute, I taught her that." Ellen DeGeneres

"It is not length of life, but depth of life." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!"
Jane Austen

"You are the music while the music lasts." T. S. Eliot

An ill response:

"You only want me for my body!"
'Don't be silly. There are plenty of bodies better than yours, and a good half of them open to my disposal."
"Oh, fine! I see how it is. I'm just a quickie, then."
"Well, no, if I wanted you for that, I could have much more variety outside of a steady relationship."
"So I'm boring!"
"No less than individuals are condemned to. You're quite entertaining."
"You're laughing at me."
"Hahaha...I mean...I'm sorry...."

She sleeps and though she sleeps so solid
I sleep against her thinning hope and
she pulls the blankets off
later I am waking, several times each night
and she sits in that same chair, rocking by the window
and it's nothing
nothing but waiting
waiting for an answer
and her antennae are roaming
roam for soft signals from dreams and satellites.

"She won't survive...but then, who does?" --Blade Runner

.and our hearts are in our coffee cans, back home.

She was sitting on the street corner, long ruby nails and chestnut hair pulled back like silk in twine, whipping in the wind. Muslim, she said, that’s what she was. She didn’t understand all the women around her who so easily sold their girlhood. She said she didn’t doubt that no one on the bus was still a girl, while talking to me.
And I looked at her, I knew it was true, but didn’t fear. I said girlhood was a state of mind.
We took the bus in the rain, left the window down, let the sprite gush in like mountain mist, dousing our hair and faces, smiling into it. She caressed the side of the bus, outside fearlessly, as we swished by the other vehicles on the street. She went from laughing to crying in the blink of an eye, when she spoke of home in Chechnya, saying that their English was not the same.
She told me of a boy she loved, who was very far away. He used to laugh at all the girls he used, and tell his friends. He poured his heart out to her in private but changed in the blink of an eye. She tried so many times to tell him that she loved him, smoking with him behind the school. She never kissed him, nor had she ever hugged him, but she dreamt it so well and frequently that she felt she deserved to say she had. Surely their eyes had kissed a million times, even if he did not know!
But she would not be so presumptuous.
She would like to live alone, she said. She was only herself at school and her parents pushed her down into a mold. Her mother brought home stale bread; she had been beaten by her husband and took the children and left to work alone. Now the girl had a step-father who was kinder, took a job in America. She left her Czech boy away with the months behind her, down a dusty stretch of road. He was Asian but he had large jade eyes that they would tease each other about.
“I pretend to hate him…and he pretend to hate me, but I know he really hates me. And I will never tell him that I love him, though I try. He is not pretending. Perhaps pretending to pretend.” He had deflowered most of the girls in the school, used them and laughed. She hated him, yes, but loved him just the same. He poured his soul out to her and then closed it up like a dry flower closing away from butterflies, saving itself for the moths.
She said she had brothers. They were not real brothers. But if a boy at school bothered her, they would beat him, and if he threatened her, they would rape him too. It bothered her that they seemed to like it, but still they were her brothers so she kept them like dogs. The girls at school spoke badly about her, but the boys wanted her so badly. She didn’t not like them. She had only loved one boy who would never have her—she could not wilt like all the other flowers. She was a flytrap.
So she told me all this, on the bus, tears filling her eyes and draining. She chewed a perfect nail, pressed her fingers against her lip and seared into my eyes. How beautiful against the rainlight…and I could only sit in awe. The most poisonous orchid with dark stories to tell, she loathed and envied the rich American girls, and longed for a cigarette but not too badly—she had only smoked to be around her boy. And had only two friends here, who would listen. Benezia.
What's more-- I will forget today. I will forget her.

Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs.

Our faith gives us knowledge of something much better:
that we can become oak trees.

(E.F.Schumacher)

*then I get to thinking about it, and maybe we can't decide what sort of trees we will be, if God would have us be another kind, but we can rest assured that we will be the largest and proudest of trees with only our own faith and aspirations*

taken from [notincalifornia]. It's sad, but it's funny......

-If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, riddle them with bullets.
-The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they'll be when you kill them.
-If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.
-If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
-Two words: Catapulting Teacups.
-That which doesn't kill you... will probably try again.
-Some people say 'if you can't beat them, join them'. I say 'If you can't beat them, beat them', because they will be expecting you to join them, so you will have the element of surprise.
-Your hell is when you dream and I'm awake. . .

*Emmy's not creative in her titles, but her words are oftentimes the best.*

"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me." --Emily Dickenson

I find my nose bleeding as I wake up, thinking dirty thoughts.
an explosive mexican just walked out the door,
denying relation to her mother.
She looks like, "I love you, thanks for not being an asshole like the rest of society." But sometimes I wonder if she just imagines that.
2 hours of sleep and 1 pot of coffee later,
I've OBE'd my way through the night, and scribbled love notes through the nimble of dawn.
Paranoid about my weight, I only eat a kiwi and pack a hot pocket for lunch...kiwi then gets stuck in my teeth, but since the roof of my mouth scalded off with coffee, picking out the kiwi leaves me spitting up blood.
That's okay. So I put on all my make up. New Vogue style, for pale complexions. Downstairs, I'm folding glitter into a Dutch chocolate-scented poem for the lonely guitarist I just met.
Next I'm outside crying blood, 'cause I'm highly allergic to the eye makeup and pollen..waiting for the bus.
There's a gentleman leaning on the wall in my mind,
spiderless brick towering behind him, he smiles quietly and the walls crumble in Biblical fashion.
I was looking for him, but when I looked up at the bridge, he was walking next to me. I ran up the stairs to meet him, he stumbled and he smiled.
Now I stumble.
Alex promises to show me the Astral plane in a safer place than the locker room. She puts her head on my shoulder like she cares.
The lonely guitarist smiles. He waits after school for me as usual, just to get done talking to my friends. Give me a second, life hurts like hell. That's what he says. I'll be sane again tomorrow. Today we'll be friends. Brushes his lips through my hair, sighing softly.
People come and go. I don't hardly know. He points out my ride, gently grins goodbye. Friends suck me in. Turn around, he's gone, like he was never there.
Eating chocolate and peanut butter cake...
drinking water.....
One of three in aerobics to do 200 sit-ups. Everyone else dropped around 60.
The birds wait on the sidewalk to have their pictures taken, flying like ribbons in the wind to show off brilliant plumes; they'll all look gray anyway.
New camera. New dark room. New life.

"But I being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
                  --William Butler Yeats

"Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?"
                  --Nietzsche

"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be."
                  --Kurt Vonnegut

"A thing of beauty is joy forever: It's loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness."
                  --John Keats

"I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."
                  --Sara Williams

"If A equals success then the formula is:
  A=X+Y+Z
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."
                  --Albert Einstein

"I think I will not hang myself today."
                  --Gilbert Keith Chesterton

As seen on the pages of people such as [Mitul] & others! (someone had way too much free time. Glad it wasn't me.)
WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD? (various authors)

Plato:
For the greater good.

Karl Marx:
It was an historical inevitability.

Machiavelli:
So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates:
Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Jacques Derrida:
Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Timothy Leary:
Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
 
Douglas Adams:
Forty-two.

Friedrich Nietzsche:
Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Oliver North:
National Security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner:
Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Carl Jung:
The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
 
Jean-Paul Sartre:
In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein:
Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
 
Aristotle:
To actualize its potential.

Buddha:
If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Howard Cosell:
It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Charles Darwin:
It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson:
Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus:
For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway:
To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg:
We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume:
Out of custom and habit.

Jack Nicholson:
'Cause it fucking wanted to. THAT'S the fucking reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic:
What road?

The Sphinx:
You tell me. 

Henry David Thoreau:
To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain:
The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

The I Ching:
Because 9 in the first place means it furthers one to cross the Great Road. No blame.
 
Confucius:
To advise the Duke of Chou on crossing roads with chickenly piety.

Lao-tse:
If I told you, it would prove I don't know.

Chuang-tse: If Confucius and Lao-tse are on opposite sides of the same road , how much more so then the chicken?

Aleister Crowley:
Because it was his Will, and therefore the Whole of His Law.

Madame Blavatsky:
He was unwittingly acting on instructions emanating from my immediate superiors in the Himalayas.

Krishnamurti:
To demonstrate that there is no duality of This side and That side unless you think.

Ramana Maharsi:
When a chicken in yourdream crosses a road in your dream, do you upon waking enquire into his motives?

Colonel Sanders:
To persuade the vegetarians that a chicken is just a fast plant.

Terence McKenna:
He was impelled by the backward shockwave of the Eschaton towards the self-replicating machine hens glittering hyperspatially across the road.

Vernor Vinge:
Because the hyperbolic acceleration of roadcrossing technology led to a Singularity beyond which chickenhood on this side of the road is unimaginable.
 
Robert Anton Wilson:
Because the Illuminati had manipulated him into Reality Tunnel #23. Fnord.
 
Richard Dawkins:
Because of the selfishness of the road-crossing meme.

Nikola Tesla:
As part of a secret experiment in wireless chicken transmission. 

A.J. Ayer:
In the absence of a technique to verify or falsify the assertion that he crossed it, the crossing must be regarded as chickenless.

Adolf Hitler:
Because it was his racial destiny to expand his Chickensraum.

M.C. Escher:
Are you so sure he really crossed it? Look again..

T.S.Eliot:
Because chickens will not cease from crossing, and the end of all their crossings will be to reach the side of the road they started from, and to know it for the first time.

Oprah Winfrey:
He was reacting to a repressed traumatic caponisation in his childhood which he will now share with us in detail.

William Faulkner:
Because the inbreeding which had reduced his once proud line to alcoholic degenerates brooding among the magnolias serpentine with kudzu as the Mississippi sun poured its withering scorn on the abandoned cotton fields where his deranged father had pecked in dusty vain for forty years had driven him to the point where he no longer knew when to stop or whether in fact it was a good idea to stop since in his rare moments of lucidity he could see not even a semicolon for miles and miles and then some.......

F. Scott Fitzgerald:
Because he believed in the greenlight, the orgiastic chicken-run that year by year recedes before us. It eluded him then, but that's no matter; tomorrow he will scurry faster, poke out his beak further, and one fine day....

Dr. Johnson:
To refute Berkeley's assertion that to be on the other side of the road is to appear to be there.

H.P. Lovecraft:
They say my head has been cut off, but the blind fools will soon know the eldritch horror of the abominable Pukpuklathop who froths with loathsome ecstacy in unspeakable slime beyond the NOW OPENED PORTALS TO THE OTHER SIDE!!!

Al Gore:
Because I designed the Information Superhighway so that all chickens, especially American ones, can cross under our benevolent supervision.

Richard Hoagland:
To prove that NASA had doctored photos of the other side of the road.

King Lear:
As roads to wanton chickens are we to the gods; they cross us for their sport.

Dr. Emmett Brown:
"Roads? Where I'm going, the chicken doesn't need roads!" 

Herman Hesse:
When the bizarre and solitary chicken disappeared across the road, his landlady's nephew, who felt an odd kinship toward the clucking fowl, found an egg inside the pen she once inhabitted....

Steppenwolf:
Get your chicken running.

Paul McCartney: (from the other side of the road)
Yesterday.... all our chickens were so far away.

Boddhidarma: Bring me that chicken.

Sam Spade:
The chicken pleaded with Sam to let her go. She even tried to seduce him. But Sam sneered, "I won't play the sap for you." He had to clear himself from guilt, and no chicken would stand in his way. His smile widened as he gazed at the bird. "When they fry you, I'll always remember you, kid," he said.

Wilbur and Orville Wright:
As to why, it is hard to say. Yet after we saw that it couldn't fly, a thought occurred... If we could build a skid with a track going down the hill to the road, she just might make it across without touching the ground.

Isaac Newton:
For that one crossing, there is an equal and opposite crossing occurring simultaneously.

Richard Nixon:
The chicken is not a crook.

Will Rogers:
I never met a chicken I didn't like.

Mort Sahl:
That chicken made it across the road, because it ran against Jimmy Carter. Like Reagan, that chicken would have never made it, had it run unopposed.

O.J. Simpson's defense team... one after the other:
Did you see the chicken cross the road? I didn't see the chicken cross the road. How can we be sure the chicken crossed the road? Just because the chicken was on this side for a time... and now is on the other side... is not adequate reason to be sure it crossed the road.

Dr. Seuss - Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes! The chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed, I've not been told!

Martin Luther King, Jr.. - I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross the road without having their motives called into question.

Grandpa - In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

Saddam Hussein - This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Fox Mulder - You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross before you believe it?

Freud - The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

Louis Farrakhan - The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken crossed the "black man" in order to trample him and keep him down.

Alexander DeLarge: It was fagged of it's domy, me droogies, and wanted to secure a bit of the ol' ultra-violence.

Erwin Schrodinger - Until you actually observe the chicken, it exists in a superposition of both crossed and uncrossed states.

Carl Sandburg:
He crossed the road less traveled, and survived. That made all the difference.

I am he who serves. I am he who is caught. I am he who is a fish. I am in a net.
- Raymond E. Fiest

Yar, so many love songs. Is there no escaping? How dissatisfying! It looks like the end of the line. What happened to the old, beautiful narrative songs? The fantastic political rants? The vaguely innebriated tavern carols? Are those all so far away now? Or are they off, somewhere far away, filling the void of someone else's muse?
Then may it serve them well.

*and what became of 'Dale', you ask? That's another story altogether. *

There was a girl, Angus hardly knew at all, but she always invited her to all her parties since eighth grade when she and Angus talked about serious things on the bus. It was funny, because they'd never talked before she said she'd started trying to do magic, and Angus advised her against it, since all her friends had gotten in deep shit over that sort of thing.
Angus was purity incarnate when she moved to the city. Since she'd lived on the south side her in a little town in California, her morals had plummeted into some icy darkness of no return, and her conscience was pressed under a pillow with a baby elephant sitting on it, and letting gas whenever it tried to speak. Her deep spirituality had attracted lots of people, that and the way that her dreams often became reality, and the voices in her head turned out to be the thoughts of others. Even in the Amish community, Angus had been alone, because there had been no one she could have told that would not have thought her possessed. She took advantage of moving to the city by telling everyone she could, because she knew they would accept her.
Except, the sorts of people she attracted were usually aspiring psychics and witches, who didn't want part in her 'God says' nonsense, and were bent on converting her to paganism and whatnot. Angus was living proof of their cause; people thought, if dumb little Angus, who doesn't even try to use ESP can do it, why can't I? And so they tried. Angus became frustrated, because they had no gift, and the fact that she had one pissed them off quite exceptionally. The fact that she had more than one gained her stalkers and angry mobs.
Eventually, Angus transferred schools and was careful not to make the same mistake again, by mentioning her confidential abilities to anyone. There was little need for her to try and hide her abilities at the new school, due to her misfortune in all areas, particularly the school system. The only thing her abilities helped her do was sniff out trouble before anyone else, and dodge soccerballs, rearing up behind her. She could copy people's ideas before they thought of them, but, having an intense need for individualism, it usually only frustrated her when she found herself pirating unspoken ideas.
No, her gifts were of no use to her, or the rest of humanity.
Eventually, they faded away, through denial and disdain.
Nowadays, Angus marked it off as imaginatively schizophrenic youth, and tried to forget the person she'd been altogether. It was easiest when she was in another country, going by a different name, with shorter hair, redder lips and wider hips. People who knew her in high school couldn't recognize her at twenty, and that suited her just fine.
People like Araceli Garcia always remembered her. Araceli was the girl on the bus, back in eighth grade, learning and listening while Angus brandish her archaelogical support of monotheism like a sword, tossing in logic, intuition and experience to support her wisdom. She was young and full of opinions, willing to teach, and Araceli was always hoping to have a chance to listen.
Angus had winced when she got an invitation to Araceli's sister's Quinceanera, but on Friday she got a message from a friend, Celia, asking for Araceli's number. The thought of support warmed Angus to facing her old peers, and the thought of a party was plenty warm on its own. Angus called back, asking her if she'd gotten a car.

2.45 mañana, the taxi dropped them off, and Angus and Celia scurried into mass, sliding onto ebony pews like professional Catholics, rising, and kneeling, and standing, and chanting along with everyone. Booty shakin' to the mariachi music until they realized that no one else shared their enthusiasm. A tall, dark man from the Mexican mafia shook Angus' hand, saying "Peace be with you.....strong grip." And winking at her. He wore a goatee and dark glasses.
Two rows up, a raven haired, square-shouldered fellow in plaid glanced back at them, when they giggled at some funny Mexican words, nearly silently. It was funny because neither of them spoke Spanish fluently, even though Celia was 100% Hispanic.
The guy that turned around was yet another depressed stoner whose life Angus had accidentally screwed over by calling him mean names when he was secretly in love with her. She was glad to see he didn't look terribly morose right then, otherwise she might have wept for him, and embarassed herself.
After the ceremony, he swung around through the crowd, towering over the Celia with a rough height of 5'9.
"Hey you!" Celia exclaimed cheerfully. He smiled somewhat bashfully and shifted his eyes to Angus.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey, Euaty," she replied.
"What have you been up to?" Celia inquired, eyeing him over Angus' shoulder. Angus paid attention to the scintilation of Selena Garcia's white ball gown, feeling his eyes.
"Not much, you?"
"I've been pretty good, hanging around at Quincenaeras. Seems like that's all I ever do these days."
"Yeah, know what you mean."
"Only that's not true."
"I don't really know what you mean, either."
"Good times. Hey, could you give us a ride?" Celia asked.
Angus shot her a glance. Euaty cleared his throat quietly, then shrugged.
"Sure, I guess I could. You girls willing to wait a little bit?"
"Sure," Celia answered.
Angus smiled ingratiatingly at him, "That would be really nice. Thanks a lot."
"No problem," he said, shifting nervously, backing into the crowd and vanishing. Angus sighed.
"So you never told me...What happened to your car?" she inquired of Celia once Allen Eautgard was gone.
Celia shrugged, "I sold it to my next door neighbor. Viva Public Transportation! What about yours?"

The 95' Chevy shrugged through it in tollerant silence, before yellow headlights snapped on like opening eyes on the stretch of endless black ribbon; a gray car without lights. Angus cursed thoroughly, diving off the road in an out of control car, plunging into a gulley, with a great brown, wooden phantom looming up in the flood, smashing through her truck a foot from the dashboard.
Angus dropped out of the car onto the mucky, squishy leaves and started up the road. The rain was coming down pretty good now, starting to gather in the pockets of land and slosh around. Enough for cars to spray Angus in the face as she sopped toward the nearest gas-station. A mile up the road, Angus heard a car tearing up the road behind her. She stopped to watch it pass, but instead, it pulled over and rolled down the window.
She leaned in the window, rain drizzling from the tip of her pale nose. Okay, why not? Maybe it was an angel sent in answers to her prayers. "You wanna take me to the nearest gas station?"
The driver staring back at her was a middle-aged woman with crimped, bleach-blonde hair, gunked-up mascara, and a hot pink shirt like a second layer of skin. "Get in, doll," the woman said, in a very husky voice.
Any other day, Angus might have passed this opportunity up. But she she was cold and wet, and still needed breakfast. The woman reached over, hung a finger around the door handle, opened it, and withdrew. Angus tentatively slid into a seat, slammed the door, and gathered her hands on her knees. "Drop me off at the payphone up on Long Street, please."
The woman punched her foot on the gas, sending the car hurtling forward down the road. The fried popcorn-yellow of her hair toppled over her seat as she sped down the road, her sanguine-nailed sausage fingers clenched the wheel with a death grip. Angus glimpsed sidelong at the woman, clutching her knees as she stared through the rain-streaked windshield. The car hopped the potholes in the road, sailing through turbulent air every five seconds, whipping spinelessly around the curves in a smoking blaze.
It sprayed gravel, swerving into an overgrown driveway, leading up to stone stairs, leading up to a red brick baby-mansion on some grass and the overhanging teeth of a cave. It tipped forward in the wind, as if trying to peek inside the cave of a garage. A white door reared up in front of the car.
The woman rolled out of the car, towering beside the door as she slammed it shut. Angus cursed softly to herself and decided the gas station wasn't too far for her to reach it on her own.
She grappled at the lock, kicked open the door, and darted down the road, feeling like a fool. Until a rock hit her in the base of the neck and brought her down. Angus swore at the pain and her own stupidity, surging to her feet to take off again. She dodged a few rocks, feeling her neck rattle on her shoulders, until the huffing of a huge person came up behind her with a flying tackle. Angus dove into the nearest 'children crossing' sign and embraced it more passionately than any human lover and screamed bloody murder. During which period, a few cars sped by, tooting. Her captor, the driver, clouted her across the nose; Angus kicked her in the face. Two men, one half-dressed in leather lingerie and wig, and the other in a gray business suite and tie, came up for reinforcement. Angus kicked and swore at them too, flailing and gnashing while they towed her into an inconspicuous ditch, stuffing her into a burlap bag. Several more cars went by without a sound, but the men had pretty much covered any sight of her. She clipped one of them in the jaw, jumped-kicked and rolled into the road in the burlap bag. A fourwheeler buzzed up out of the woods, skidded between her and her captors. She clambered to the seat, cut, bruised and muddy, and slipped her arms around the driver. It sprayed down the road, out into the woods, until they crossed a dirt backroad, and zipped down that for awhile. After so long, with his black hair whipping back into her face, recognition dawned on her. The leaf-green fourwheeler veered into the thick red-clay mud; 'Dale' cut the engine.
"What do you have to do with those people?" he demanded of her.
"Why are you wearing a McDonalds shirt?" she countered.
"Answer me."
"No, no I don't know them at all. I just wrecked my truck and wanted a ride to the gas-station, and, yeah, that was pretty stupid, but you used to be able to trust people once in awhile--"
"You never met them in your life?"
"No, no..."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You haven't been snooping around in illegal business, have you?"
"No!"
"They're watching me, then," he muttered to himself. 'Dale' slid around in his seat to face her. "And now they're watching you. That bout at your apartment. They think you're in on my business."
"What business?? McDonalds?? Rugs??"
"You won't believe it, Ryan."
"Try me."
"Rugs. The illegal shipping and dealing of Persian rugs. The rug crime syndicate in NYC. This is just the outskirts of the ring, and they always tidy up their loose ends. They want the deals for themselves. If there are too many illegal practices, people get sloppy. Someone leaks. Everybody gets caught. This is big money, but it doesn't do you a damn bit of good if you stamping license plates too long to spend it."
"I don't believe it," Angus snorted.
"You better believe it. Now you're a part of it, they think you're working with me, and they think I'm dealing with McGee--my boss."
"Dammit, Dale. What the hell is going on?"
"I just told you you wouldn't believe it."
"I don't understand it!"
A motor roared in the distance. 'Dale' glanced over his shoulder, and pivotted around to the wheel. "We'd better get going. I don't think they'd have followed us this far, but you can't be too careful. Where were you going?"
"An audition. 2511 Saint Andrews."
"That's across town! Your clothes, and your bloody lip--"
"Not gonna make it anyway....just take me to the gas station...no, they're going to be there, aren't they? Well, never mind, take me home, and I'll call the tow truck from there."
"Fine." The fourwheeler came to life and rolled into action, shooting down the mud road, through the rain. "I was driving this at my cousin's house, before it started raining. An old associate of mine called about some trouble, and I took the only car I had."
"What happened to your car?"

Car keys jingled around Duane's fingers. "Hey, Ro, I'm going to take your car for a ride."
"Be careful with it, Duane."
"Hey, come on, Rolie, they recognize a fellow criminal when they see one. I'll roll down my window and no one will think it's you. It's just my car's in the shop."
"How'd your car get in the shop?"

....

"That's too bad. Take care of it, then."
Duane said, "No problem, cuz. I know how it is when you've only got one car. Hey bro," Tuttle looked up from his lego-sculpture. "Lend your cousin your fourwheeler."
"Fine."
Five hours later...
Ring, ring, ring. "Hello?" Tuttle covered the receiver with his hand, shouting to the living room. "Yo, Roland! Someone totalled your car at a stop sign. It was a hit and run--Duane was still in it."
"SHIT!"

Angus slipped her arms around his waist again as the vehicle toiled on through the gloom, finding irony in the situation. "So they're after you because you quit the syndicate and you're a loose end."
"You got it," 'Dale' replied. "Right before I was going to kill you."
"I'm sorry, Dale."

Angus sighed, "I got in some trouble with the law, sort of."
Celia whistled. "Why does that not surprise me? I always knew you would, Ryan. Sheeze, what am I doing walking around with you?"
"I don't know, it's probably better if you didn't."
"That's okay. Ain't no law gonna find us here, heh, heh, heh."
Angus sighed again and eyed the ground, just as Eauty came back from the masses and met them. "My car's on the other side of the street. The parking was too bad. Hope you ladies don't mind jay-walking."
"That's okay," Celia muttered. "Angus is already shooting for five years."
If any years...
"Really?" Eauty said, sounding interested. "What did you do?"
"Maybe we'll talk about this in the car."
Eauty shrugged, "If you don't want to talk about it..."
They left the white limosine and tittering crowd to a faded, pot-holed parking lot. Angus tripped on the way over, though, stepping back, to tie her shoe. When she strode across, Eauty and Celia were already in the car. Heavy bass reverberated down the corner at full blast, coming out of nowhere, growling over an engine roar. Before Angus had a chance to run three feet, a red Oldsmobile flew out of the overgrown road corner, whirled after her, and tagged Angus in three seconds flat. Then it tipped, brakes dragging it to twenty mph, and toppled on it's side, making a get away. The two passengers jumped out of the truck and sprinted down the road, frenzied. By the time the crowds got there, Angus was dead. No last words, no goodbyes. The cops came by after fifteen minutes, did their best to keep the bystanders back, and section off the scene of the crime. The passengers were never caught, and no one had gotten a good look of them. The CSI found nothing out of the ordinary, and Detective Jones, in charge of the opperation, cursed that another hit and run would make a clean get away.

*it lacks a certain chipperness. don't worry, it'll be back.*

The morning thundered-- yellow brilliance, cloudless, blue pyre-- through 'Dale's quadrilateral living room window. Inelaborate offwhite curtains fluttered. A window screen hung ajar, like a bird with a broken wing; the attacking fox gone lame, collapsed in a heap on a very plain, kicked-up rug, shattered pottery nearby. A sickly green fridge light cast its death glow on the dusty kitchen dimness, left open. The light fell auspiciously on six empty Dos Equies. A week's worth of dishes piled up in the sink, but they weren't much, since 'Dale' had clocked into 'the golden arches' from six to eleven for the past three days.
The rest of his life revolved around Spaghetti-O's.
Last night had been the worst night of his life since his wife had left him, or since Ryan had chased him through the park with her Chevy. Margaret had come home.
Dale had been sauntering in through the door, feeling good, like a teenager in his viridian McDonald's pollo, like new beginnings, when Misses Cohen came swinging around the corner.

"Margaret," he said, startled. She must have parked her car in the garage, because there had been nothing in the driveway. The garage was a reassuring place, a place that said a woman might be staying. A woman might have changed her mind.
"I'm leaving you, Dale."
She was beautiful, as beautiful as he remembered, auburn hair piled in curls on her head, red lips, the flash of her green eyes, and the utopian curve of her derriere. But she looked at him like something she'd zap with the morning paper. "If it's money you need, I will get it."
She scoffed at his wretched servitude. "McDonalds, Dale. McDonalds. How the *hell* are you going to support me at McDonalds? I was promised a future in this crummy town, in this crummy house, with this god-awful marriage, and I've yet to see you followup on one of the promises you made me. I left my family for you, to go out and see the world. But the world is waiting, Dale."
"And you're tired of waiting."
"<expletive deleted for younger readers>ing A, Dale. You shot it right in the ass." Clothes were folded over both arms, suitcases piled high, handbags loaded, hung over bother arms and a makeup case in her hands. An envelope caught between her fingers. She sashayed off, kicked the garage door open with a red high-heeled foot, and threw her items down. Dale stood feebly, insides quaking, while he struggled to stand virile and unconcerned before her.
Margaret whirled around. "If you're car is blocking the driveway, move it." 'Dale' faltered. "For you own goddamn good, move the damn car, Dale!"
"It's some other guy, isn't it?!"
"Yes it is. And he's going somewhere."
"He's not going anywhere with you."
Roland Cohen's paragon stared him in the face, judgementally, before speaking again. When she did, here words were observant, eyes rolling down him, unimpressed. "What a vile little man, you've become," she said. "Shrinking into yourself, your brave, alluring mien tears over yellowgreen toad flesh, revealing what you are to me...I'm disappointed. All I can say is that I'm glad I saw it before it could ruin my life. I wish you and your problems...no, never mind. I don't wish you a thing. Go move the car, Dale, before I move it myself."

In the rawness of the night, he'd yearned after her fading taillights, with acrimony, ardor, desire. The world took a green spin in his eyes, till he'd beat it still with the bottle. As the world stilled, his senses eddied to crazed, desiring ferocity, longing to tear down the walls. Shattering, and crashing drove his mind down into blackness. He fell into a well. That morning, he woke up on the rug, cadaverous. In sickness, he did not sleep, but he did not wake either. He dreamt in monochrome. Or he might not have dreamt at all.

Angus pawned off her washing machine to cover the fine for speeding and get some spending money. Her pockets had been empty, and her checking acount with thirty dollars-- enough for her next meal-- after the rent.
On the bright side, her truck was paid off, and she'd just won a poetry contest somewhere in the UK. They were sending her the first green she'd seen for her words in two weeks. And it was lightning, in the sky, which meant it might rain.
Rain wasn't particularly good, when one was drafting in the park, flying to make a hopeless deadline, but it was inspiring enough to motivate her to finish it at home. As the first drops fell, she tucked the canvas in a burlap bag, tossed into her backseat, and shut the door to go frolick in the rain.
The life of an achiever.
Halfway through her frolicking, she began to wonder if anyone was watching her and felt a hint of bravado, so she danced while she was at it. Then the thought came to mind that 'attractive girls' didn't dance in the rain with bravado, and probably would have felt too insecure to frolick. She'd made a New Year's resolution to be more attractive, more like the chicks in good movies than the men. The fact that she was wearing a skirt above her knees the other day should have counted for something, so her dancing in the rain was an excusable reward. She savored any attention like New York cheesecake, lathered in cherry sauce, thick with cream.
Who am I kidding? she thought, I'm becoming just another bloody wannabe like those middle school 'gangsta's and the angry, angry, angry teenage goths who buy all there clothes at Hot Topic.
Angus was hip, because she knew about all those kids, because before she'd ever been a full-time artist, she'd been a high school councilor. It had been a depressing job. The other councilors thought she was wacko, and were probably right. So she'd left and chosen to pursue her true calling in life, making no money, living in an apartment.
Feeling a bout of self-pity coming on, she sopped back to the car, making eye contact only with a blue-haired elderly lady and slid behind the wheel of her truck, speeding away. It was almost like racing self-condolence, roaring in with the fog in the form of rain drops slapping against her grill and windshield. The storm raged against her, furiously, whistling in her windows, howling in a bloodthirsty tantrum, lusting for pain, death and carnage. The 95' Chevy shrugged through it in tollerant silence, before yellow headlights snapped on like opening eyes on the stretch of endless black ribbon; a gray car without lights. Angus cursed thoroughly, diving off the road in an out of control car, plunging into a gulley, with a great brown, wooden phantom looming up in the flood, smashing through her truck a foot from the dashboard.
This was okay, though, because her family was prone to car accidents, and after so many times one developed an immunity to whip lash and warping of the spine. It was almost like a tribal African tattoo, where the dents in one's vertebrae worked like the lines signifying the value of the warrior. People in Angus' family and neighborhood respected that.
However, the truck was an entirely different matter. Even with the washer cash, she didn't have enough for a new cheapy car, and she wasn't about to go out for a loaner. Loaners were just asking for trouble.
And this truck, this purple wonder, had been a veteran of so many wrecks, of food spills, exploded pens, innebriated friends, and Heaven-only-knows what else...it was the greatest crime about this wreck. That and she'd have to walk down Shining Avenue alone, to get to the closest pay-phone, when Shining Avenue wasn't the best place in the world to walk alone. But that was okay. Yes, that was all okay. She would just get out of the truck, lock her doors, and start going. Never knew when someone might try to break into a totalled truck and steal paintings with sentimental value just to kick a jobless actor with no life in the butt. It wouldn't be the first time.
Angus started up the road.

'John's name is now 'Dale' thanks to 'Veronica's supernatural insight. good work, Vero.

She woke up stiffly like a drunkard, the paint fumes still contained in the room, and Angus tossed to her side. But it wasn't enough to keep away the daylight. Absently, she wished the day could just pass, where she could slide into a restful hibernation, but she knew that would never come. Angus was always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She should have been used to it by now. But still, no progress was being made. Her acting was taking her no where, her vocal talents were put to no use, and she was nearly out of art supplies. And all this time, alone with her thoughts, only reaped depression, not knowledge, not some kind of new discovered wisdom. If she went to the library, she'd only be passing time, because everything she did was just to pass the time for some greater good…till she found some higher calling.
With some mental fumbling and groping for her dress on the floor, she recalled that the paint fumes were due to four hours of painting earlier that morning. She'd watched Gross Point Blank because she couldn't sleep, then she'd painted…she couldn't sleep in spite of the police…who had come by to carry away the crazy rug salesman named ‘Dale' and give her a speeding ticket for peeling past them. She'd peeled past them after that madman who'd fallen off of her balcony and called her some mean names, after trying to kill her. Then she'd chased him down the road, and through the park, losing him to a brick wall.
When her eyes were clear enough to see, she could make some sense of the primitive scrawling on white poster-board. They weren't like anything she'd done before. She hadn't been inspired. She'd just painted and scratched at the paper with a sharp charcoal point until something chaotic was depicted. They were raw emotion, unpretentious, inelegant…like cave-paintings, drawn to country radio and ‘Magic Mushroom' incense.
Angus got up and took a shower. She put on the only tee-shirt left in her closet, so she wouldn't have to shave, and some black boys' shorts. She scraped her soggy hair into a pink clip, spritzed on some perfume, and ignored the chipping polish on her toes. It wasn't like she had a life, in which case appearances would have mattered. It was the beauty of being--and staying-- single. Poetry in motion.
For breakfast, she popped some Excedrin, with a side of goat cheese and mango pudding. Played Sheryl Crow, and started to recount the previous night's events in her journal. She remembered the take-out Chinese she'd shared with her friend, Doug, the Charleston music she'd accidentally blasted when she was trying to turn on the TV, then the fiber-optic lamp, flying across her room in the dark, when she'd gone to get some rice crackers from her dresser drawer. Everything after that had become a blur.
After walloping the living tar out of her assailant, Angus had come to her senses. She had felt some remorse for the cruelty she had shown him, a cruelty which could only have sprung like the devil from the Viking berserker blood in her veins, originating long, long before the family had immigrated and settled to a simple Amish life.
As she could remember, the same berserker blood had plagued her conscience since she was a little girl, in grade school, and had gotten into a fight with a snotty little prep, who made fun of her mom. Amish girls never had to deal with insults to their mothers. Amish girls didn't fight at all, and the local non-Amish boys and girls kept the arguments contained to the arguers. These city children were a new breed, entirely, of corrupt, filthy backstabbers who took arguing to a new level, and nearly brought Angus to tears. The kids beat her up, so she tuned out feeling...and when she fought, it was just a fury of blows and kicks, apathetic, turned off to the world, and generally smiling sadistically. Her mother had been horrified, but Angus never gotten expelled or suspended, because the grounds monitors at her little ghetto elementry school had placed bets, and didn't want to interfere with profit. Soon, the bets had been placed on Angus.
Beating the living tar out of peers had been a pleasant, destressing way to wind down, and let out negative emotions. Angus had almost come to enjoy it...but after a number of years at different schools, where the district shifted around her name on a pricey black, word-processing screen, and fighting for the right to exist, Angus had wound up rooted at an uppercrust, 'college prep' school, for her outstanding academic achievement, and willingness to succeed. No one wanted to fight. No one knew how. And Angus' constrained violence, combined with her masculine qualities, boded ill for all her relationships. She was alone in a world of blooming aristocrats, walked around like a show-horse, entertaining, strangled by nonconformity...
The ringing of her phone jarred her out of bitter reverie. She took another swig of water, and answered.
"Hello."
"Er-- hello."
"Bob. Where are you?"
"Where am I? I am in San Diego."
"Where in San Diego?"
"At a pay phone on the corner, by an alley, where I am jamming and smoking weed with some hobos."
"How high are you?"
"I-- am not very high at all. Actually, drugs tend to have little effect on me. This is social smoking."
"What are the cross streets, where you are?"
"Albino and Denver Street, why?"
"No reason. Here, I'll be right there."
"How can you be 'right there', you're a hundred miles away."
"I'm a driven woman, Bob. Don't underestimate a driven woman. I'll be there in an hour to kill you and parade your head through town on a flaming poll."
"Oh. So you talked to Arthur."
"Damn skippy."
"Well, did he say he would meet us?"
"I think he did. He gave me his number."
"That's good, that's good. He must like you. That's a lot farther than I got."
"Do we need him?"
"Did he give you a demonstration?"
"No."
"We could use him."
Darn. Bad enough when they're arrogant; worse when they're arrogant with a reason...
"I have to go," Angus lied.
Bob chuckled on the other end of the phone. "No, you don't, you're just saying that so you can go back to your brooding and eat some more mango pudding."
"Wha---?!"
"Just a feeling. Bye, Ryan. Have fun with that pudding."
Click.
Against her better judgement, Angus reserved her homocidal inclination, to go put on some makeup, and take the chipping nail polish off her toes. Then, just to spite him, she did not eat more mango pudding. She decided to make a cake.

Eh, i was wrong. 'John' needs a new nickname. 'John' really doesn't cut it. Something tough and shady, yet begrieved and impassioned. Something like 'He-man'...

*not gonna change the names. they thought they could fool me. they were wrong. Roland is an IRISH name. not a british name. fools!!! mwahahaha*

In the fever of the afternoon, 'Dale' had taken his little white car all over town, in search of his wife. He'd popped in all her favorite hang-outs, and tried to get in touch with her friends, none of whom had answered. Two bartenders she'd talked to said they'd seen her in the Firebird. They didn't want to talk about what she'd said, but when 'Dale' pressed them, they swore she'd made no mention of him at all. But 'Dale' could have seen that. She didn't talk about herself much at all, to the bartenders. She talked to strange men, because she knew it enraged him.
Dusk rolled around; he pulled out and coasted home.

At eight of eleven, ‘Dale' Cohen came to, feeling crusty and ill-tempered on a notably afflictive couch. The dusty darkness around him burned into his eyes, the emptiness of the house that struck him, recurrently, swung again. ‘Dale' heaved himself to his feet, without bothering to light the house, making for the unfilled fridge.
It was then, swaying, zombielike, in the freezer's irradiation, that ‘Dale' remembered the ring. A damned ineffectual keepsake, murmuring to him like the One Ring. The stale odor of freezer-burned goods split his head till he absconded hunger, and followed the call of the ring. All the way to the equally damned sedan driven up to the curb, keys jingling.
The fifteen minute stretch between his house and hers was a featureless wad of night that would hang with him forever. The car clock said eleven-twenty-seven, and he was a shady figure, scaling the trellis to Angus' apartment. The madness would have been an appealing break in monotony any other day of the week, and was starting to look meekly appetizing when he crashed over the balcony. But only ever meekly, to a man so heartbroken as he.
The tumble he took, lunging over the rail made a nastily thunderous noise. The dogs in the building went off like gravelly sirens, crazed and offended. Several sliding doors whooshed open in sync, while ‘Dale' scrambled through the balcony door, inside, to roaring 20's loud enough to shake the walls. The volume shot down when he nudged the door closed. He registered the sugar-butter balm from cream of wheat, just as a strobe light glanced across his eyes. ‘Dale' began asking himself why he hadn't knocked on the door.
At some point today, she'd put up some bead curtains in the doorway between her rooms, that tinkled together to admit her. ‘Dale' rolled beside her bed ineptly just in time to see a fiber-optic lamp snap down on his nose. Angus yelped, scratched at the lightswitch, as ‘Dale' surged to his feet and dodged through the beads.
He was a blaze of smoke and persperation, streaking to the kitchen, and then to the door. But he hit the door, and fumbled with the lock...just time enough for her to smash him into it, let him crumple to his knees and dodge her foot. Then the hot, greasy spatula cracked against his skull and left him inelegantly sprawled. The ring jumped through his fingers, across the carpet.
"Dale, what are you doing here?!" she demanded ferociously.
His mouth was stiff and tingly where the lamp had hit. His mumble was incomprehensible. She dropped to a crouch, beside him. "Are you okay?"
"Im fime....." mumbled ‘Dale', wincing, struggling to flop over. She watched unhelpfully. Then she got up and strode to the phone, dialing a few numbers. ‘Dale' watched her through the sparkles.
"Are you still trying to kill me, ‘Dale'?" Angus asked, impatiently, perhaps waiting for someone to pick up. To the police, "Hello, this is Ryan Wilmer at eight-five-three-three East Mockingbird Street, apartment seven. Someone just broke into my apartment, who was threatening to kill me earlier today........no, he's indisposed.......thank you." Angus hung up and watched the man on her floor. He'd sat up, ring on his finger, propped against a beanbag chair.
After a few shallow breaths, he replied, "I wasn't trying to kill you, this time." ‘Dale' spun the ring on his finger. "I just wanted the ring back." He glanced up at her, then stood. She stiffened, groping the counter subtly for a weapon.
"Stay right where you are. I don't want you moving!"
"I just wanted you to know. So you could sleep tonight. You might not be used t--" Headlong to the balcony, in the blinking of an eye, and she tore off after him. She chucked the spatula at his head; it hit and fell, but he kept going. She dashed through the balcony door, caught him by the ankle, going over the rail. He lost his footing and clutched the trellis with a fist. He squirmed and cursed. "Let go of me, woman!"
"Not until you let go!"
"Then I'll fall!"
"Damn straight!"
‘Dale' shot her a look. Her fingers slipped a little. She was wearing a red, polka-dotted dress, ruby lipstick and a silver cross. He met her eyes indignantly. "Is that any way for a religious woman to behave?"
"I'm not religious."
"Then why do you have a cross?"
"It's pretty."
"Why aren't you religious?"
"The system's corrupt. I hold my own beliefs."
"Oh. You're one of 'them'."
"One of who?" she questioned. Her grip was slipping.
He ignored her question. "How long are you going to hold me here? This is very awkward."
"As long as it takes! I wasn't the one that broke into my apartment!" Slip.
"No, but you're a rude, unsentimental wench that slams the door in my face twice a week." Angus shifted her grasp. ‘Dale' yanked himself free, swung, clambered downward, then thudded to the ground. He capered away off into the moonlight, and she darted out the front door, down the stairs to her truck. She passed a police car, pulling into the lot, but didn't stop. Instead, she whirled out onto the road, punching the accelerator on the trail of an angry rug-salesman named ‘Dale'.

Secretly, 'Ryan's name was no more 'Ryan' than ‘Dale’s name was ‘Dale’. Ryan was actually a born from a German family and raised in an Amish community. Her mother and brother were outcast by the Elders for stirring up havoc by accepting the military draft in 1980, or somewhere around there. Ryan had been young then, and never really paid much attention to the ostracism at all. She just knew it had something to do with drafting and bloodshed and angry men in black clothing. The Amish were pacifists, and her dad was a hardcore Amish, and her brother was in all aspects a hardcore Mama's boy, the mother and children were cast out alone to fend for themselves in a world of graceless heathen jackals.
And, just as the cruel school children had mocked Roland, the ambrosially endearing little boys and girls of the inner-city school system were far from opposed to shunning a big-boned working girl named Angus.
It felt heartsinkingly craven to Angus to allow their cold and callous remarks to bring her down, and yet they never missed their mark. While she pondered over aliases, many feminine names, suitable to lovely baby dolls in frilly dresses, like Marylou, Kristina, Dawn, and Snow White, came to mind. However, to select anything so very far from the truth would fabricate an increasedly pigeon-hearted enterprise...and so, she concluded, the name should at least be suggestively masculine.
The name Ryan was put into play on the first day of fifth grade, and had propagated a league of followers so dedicated to male nicknames that Ryan/Angus had been pronounced 'Most Influential' during the premotion ceremony, three years later.
She drummed her fingers against a leather-guarded steering wheel, thinking all these thoughts because the date she had tonight was, coincidentally, an Angus, as well. Arthur P. Angus. She'd asked her friend and guitarist Bob for some shindig contacts before he set off for San Diego, out of his eclectic clod of jamming buddies. She and he had been friends for a few years, off and on, and often made sweet music together. Recently, she'd been helping him put a band together, and he'd stuttered on the name Arthur Angus.

"Arthur Angus?" she'd asked.
"Er...yes."
"You hesitated. Does he not like my kind of music?" There weren't many drummers inclined to bluegrass, in Angus's experience.
"No."
"Why did you hesitate?"
"Er...he might just be hard to get a hold of," Bob had replied brightly. Bright enough that she would have noticed if she weren't already scheming. "Yes, but...you could probably get in touch with him, that being your expertice and all." Bob was always being weird like that.
"Sure."
"Or, you know what, I'll see him soon, and just set you guys up. You two can talk. Let me know how it goes."
"Okay. Thanks a lot, Bob!"
There was a break in conversation where Angus could have sworn she heard chuckling. "Sorry, static. Are you getting that on your end? Oh, well, never mind. Bye, Ryan. I'll have you two meet on Friday at five. Take care. Give my love to the children."
"There are no children."
Click.

She swung out of the truck.

Fourteen minutes down the road from Shady House Apts. was a little bistro called Traveling Joe's, owned by a dirty old man with an incurable obsession for Marilyn Monroe. There were nude pictures of her hanging all over the back of his office, and in subtle places here and there around the bistro, that came down anytime the BBB or FHS came to check it out. His son was a jock at NYU, just a few years younger Angus. The owner's daughter was a spiritualist artist who owned a psychic-readings building across town, and popped in from time to time to peddle her facilities to guillible out-of-towners.
All the same, Traveling Joe's had a fine reputation for being one of the best bistros in the state of New York, and it was a quiet place to sit and watch the people come and go. A man Angus presumed to be her date was sitting, evidently watching nothing, with a look of certifiable disinterest toward everything and -one.
He wasn't like she had pictured him: a scrawny, dishevelled nerd with week-old clothing and too-short pants. Mr. Angus appeared to be, in fact, an golden-complected Don Juan lookalike on the other side of the tinted bistro windows. He was broad-shouldered and hard-eyed, but refined, as if at any minute he might offer her some tea, in a tea cup, from his back pocket, and have some mint leaves, too, to garnish the sides. He wore a cerulean cotton jacket and a dark expression. He greeted her unceremoniously, and let her pull out her own chair.
"You are?"
"Ryan," she replied coolly.
"Ah, my 'date'. Well, we should get a waiter over here for you. I ate already."
"Oh," she said, taking note of the man behind the counter. It wasn't the owner. "They don't wait on you here. They take the orders up front. Excuse me, please, I'll be right back."
"Sit down; they waited on me. It isn't any kind of restraunt if they don't wait on you. Why do they expect people to come? It is part of the service." Arthur had the stance of a vain critic, an arm slung over the back of his chair, his body sprawled eloquently over the seat. He considered Ryan/Angus with some disrelish. She shoved in her chair and got to the counter. Then ordered a bearclaw and some cappuccino. Two minutes later, she took it and sat down across from Arthur's smirk.
Never get a date from Bob.
"Bob told me to talk to you, to set up a jam," Angus stated. "That's the main reason I wanted to speak with you. We're trying to get together a band with some bluegrass, and rock, and Celtic..."
"Hm."
"He said that you had open tastes. What do you play?"
"Drums."
"Fiddle and mandolin."
"That's a bit of a peculiar instrument for practical purposes."
"I like it."
"I bet you do."
"So what music do you like?" she inquired, stirring in her whip cream.
"Nearly everything. Moby, Tom Waits, Beck, Peter Gabriel, Radiohead, Coldplay, Sigur Ros, Spoon, and Bjork--"
“They're good,” she commented, stuffing some bearclaw in her mouth.
“Don't say ‘they' like you know what you're talking about. It's a she.”
“I wouldn't know, I've only heard them on the radio, and they said the name.”
“Oh. Well.”
“I like John Mayer, Bob Marley, Garth Brooks, Appalachian Drive, Aqua, the Dixie Chicks—only I don't like their newer stuff so well,”
“And you're just saying that because of their political views, not their music.”
“Actually, I don't like them on a personal note, either, but mostly it's because their new music is more mainstream and lost the special something they had before. They sound like everyone else.”
“Well, I like them better now.”
“Well, that's good for you. What do you do?”
“I'm an accountant. And you?”
“I'm an actor.”
“You know, actors are usually only actors because they're too wishy-washy and fickle to stay under a consistent viewpoint or occupation.”
“You're very confrontational, aren't you?”
"Flavorless adherents are unappealing to me."
"Your mom."
Arthur stood, head cocked as he met her eyes. "I suppose it would be best to leave the negotiating to Bob from now on." He leaned over the table, and slid his number on a blue scrap of paper, in her direction; he winked.
"It wouldn't hurt to be less presumptuous," Angus replied, getting to her feet, and shoving in her chair. It was impossible to look him in the eye, as he was a head taller than she, and giving her an entertained look that made half her mass burn away in steam.
He raised a brow as he straightened, "No, it wouldn't," and then strutted through the door. The little bells jingled above him as she wondered what he meant...
She looked down at the little blue paper.
Never get a date from Bob.