Emma, a girl I knew from college, offered up the use of her fuchsia moiré satin sofa, “for a week or so, until you find a place of your own.” Emma’s trust fund took care of the details of her comfortable life. This included the ground floor of a townhouse on the Upper East Side. Half way along a leafy side street, down one step to a sunken courtyard the heavy front door was couched beneath a stone archway. This opened to a living room of oversized furniture in shades of Gothic and blood, and in an alcove the fuchsia moiré satin sofa now converted to my bed. From the living room a corridor with kitchen and bathroom to either side and in the back one enormous bedroom with a fireplace and a four poster bed laden with frilly pillows, and trays of soiled crockery and upturned egg shells filled with a thousand cigarette ends. Beyond a set of French doors was a petite garden, with a wrought iron bench and an actual grass lawn the size of a bathmat.

I did not see much of Emma, and since I could hear her television constantly on I imagined she lounged in bed all day. Emma was not a talker, and her reputation at college was that she was a little ‘slow’. Occasionally, often after I was tucked in on the sofa, Emma would slink out into the night, all dressed up in fancy clothes. She never said goodbye. When I left for work in the morning I presumed she was returned to her four poster bed, but I did not think to check. In spite of her hospitality her existence scarcely scratched my consciousness. In any case, she could not compete for entertainment value with the sights I saw on my daily jaunt to and from work. Like the guy in a green tutu and high heels and full on make-up, his well defined solid ass muscles gyrating out there for all to see. Or the little old lady, in an electric chair, speeding in amongst the taxicabs down the center lane of Fifth Avenue, a male nurse chasing, hollering.

My commute entailed twenty minutes of zigzagging from the Upper East Side to the axis of bedlam, otherwise known as Times Square. Each day I passed a schoolyard, half a block of cement and basketball hoops with no nets. In the morning it teemed with boisterous small kids, hunchbacked by book bags. And in the evenings, on my walk home the courtyard was empty on the school side, but on the street side of the chain link fence lingered a throng of men in hooded sweatshirts and baggy jeans and peacock flora sneakers. They were always there, and when I walked by them they hissed: ”Sess, sess, sess.”

For the first few days of this I was keenly terrified and kept my sights trained on the ground and scurried by them. But after a while my curiosity was tickled. One evening, coming up on the gang I stopped, and asked, “What the hell is ‘Sess’?”

“Sessamilia.” They burst into a chorus.

“What the hell?”

“Watch your language,” said the tallest and widest of the group. He then took it upon himself to explain his was a marijuana outfit and that he and his men owned that particular corner. He flashed me a wad of cash from his pocket. Some of his cohorts also pulled out rolls of bills.

“Can I work with you?” I asked, semi-serious.

“This work is for men.” The tall wide man began, and then he stirred with righteousness and doled out a lecture with threads along the lines of what did I think I was doing walking around in the evening by myself at my age? And on he sermonized. This was not what I had expected from New York City. I was so stunned I meekly took the scolding. At least now I had a supplier. Nights I began letting myself into Emma’s bedroom, to access the garden, and the wrought iron bench upon which to sit and smoke a joint. I was tiptoeing through her room for some time before I noticed the mass of flotsam on the bed was not Emma. Thus I learned she did not always return from her nocturnal forays.

…TO BE CONTINUED

“Late.” Mary Salt remarked. She crossed her arms and stared, letting her eyes rove over me, “and you look like hell. This is not the way to make a good impression on your new boss.” Each word she spoke emerged in a bubble and then hung, in slimy drips, on the rungs of her metal headdress. She wobbled forward on the tottering shoes and just before what looked like an imminent fall she lurched into a chair. Her slender body landed with enough force to roll the chair into the side of the table, so that it shuddered. Once settled, Mary slung out a slim arm, extending her hand for me to shake. Her fingers were dry as winter twigs.

“In case you’re wondering,” Mary patted the bird cage around her head, “my dentist makes me wear this contraption.” Mary sucked on the mouth bit, like a lizard panting between succulent mastications. She was awful to look at and I easily pictured myself running away. Instead, I handed over my resume. The typed words were in a huge font listing education, summer jobs, likes, dislikes and hobbies.

Mary took the resume in her hands, and as she read it she massaged the page with desiccated fingertips. And then she barked, spitting, “Is this a joke?”

I was stunned by her response. Nausea flooded my senses. In spite of desperately wanting to run all the way home, equally I had not considered rejection. After all, I had no contingency plan. “Please,” I begged, “you don’t understand, I really need this job. My whole life depends on…” I could not control my voice from cracking.

“Your name is Santa? For real? And what’s with the phony Brit accent? Is that for my benefit?” Mary’s narrow frame began to shake and she started to guffaw, hee- hawing like a donkey.

I took a deep breath, steadying myself for the audition of a lifetime, “my full name is Santa Maria Astral Smith-Hawthorne.” Heart rattling, I felt I was clawing my way back from some invisible brink. “I’m American, born on Long Island, but I was raised by a very English aunt and uncle. It’s complicated.”

“Whatever!” Mary crushed my resume into a ball and lobbed it over her shoulder. “Follow me.” She commanded and darted from the room.

Down a corridor and through a constant spray of drool Mary chattered, moving surprisingly fast on her towering shoes and I had to hasten my gait to keep up. “Office supplies in there.” Mary flicked a hand toward an open door we sped by. “Over here is the copy room. You know how to use a copy machine?”

“Of course!” I said. In truth I did not, but now was not the time to divulge trifles.

“Pay is six hundred dollars a week, not including taxes, and I’ll give you vouchers for the cafeteria on the fifth floor.” Mary outlined the duties of my job as her assistant and she explained how I would very likely become frustrated because my responsibilities would be rote while her own job, a developer of children’s television programming, was scintillating. Spinning her wedding band around her finger, Mary said, “I’m a lucky lady, great husband, great kid, great job…” Mary droned on and I spaced out, that is until I heard her say, “…in about six months you can look forward to developing projects of your own.…’ Mary paused and winked at me, saliva-spume twinkling.

Six months, I laughed to myself, while conveying nothing of my thoughts, in six months I’ll be long gone. Six months from now I hope to be irretrievably lost somewhere down the path of adventure.

Having fully circumnavigated the eleventh floor Mary and I were now standing in the foyer. “Consider yourself hired. I expect you here at ten sharp tomorrow morning. Get your parking ticket validated by the receptionist.”

The reception area was an oval in shades of beige, with a desk dead center. The man at the desk was talking on the telephone so I leaned against a wall and waited. The man was big and soft, young yet balding. The man was speaking softly, his torso was curled forward and hunched. But his words were just loud enough that I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. “I love you too,” he was murmuring, “I love you more,” he cajoled and then delicately hung up the phone.

“Sorry to bother you Mr. uh… Cannelloni?” as I approached I quickly glanced at the name plaque conveniently placed at the lip of the table ‘Gianfranco Canneleoni’.

“Pain in the ass!” The man shouted, and as he did so he picked up the telephone receiver and slammed it hard several times into the cradle. “It’s Canne-LEO-ni. My mother calls me Gianni. You can call me John.” He smiled at me and the furrows on his brow relaxed. As he spoke he took my parking ticket and thumped it with a rubber stamp. “That was my girlfriend I was talking to. We’re getting married soon and she’s all freaked out. Pain in the ass!”

TO BE CONTINUED

I threw some effort at the Web and conjured a television producer, one Mary Salt hell-bound on hiring an assistant, because, as she said, she was ‘desperate’. She needed someone ‘Pronto’, no skills required. Show up at 12 tomorrow. A call to a pal with a guest room and I was good to go. I could scarcely believe how easy this all was. I couldn’t restrain a pitying laugh when I thought of my former college-mates, clustered solemnly around the fount of knowledge, wasting time on theory when they could be out here in the world of practice.

The route from the beach to the middle of Manhattan is on average three hours. Reflexively I set up cruise control, reclined my seat and zoned out. My plan was to work only long enough to earn the funds to abscond and traipse the globe, until I turned twenty-five and received my inheritance. This tantalizing inheritance was a known quantity, but being as the relatives were Brits details were never discussed.

I was minding my own business in the center lane when I was startled by a blast. I snapped to attention to see something swirling rushing at me; it looked like a seal. Weirdly, it disappeared from sight. I searched in my rearview mirror but I could see no trace.

Up ahead a long haul truck switched on a stadium’s worth of warning lights, flaring and flashing. A second explosion went off, and another seal flipped through the air.

Tires were disengaging from the truck’s axle; bouncing haphazardly. A quick check of the flow of traffic and I dodged into the right lane. Vaguely I wondered what would happen to a car if it was to run over one of those tires.

My musings were interrupted by a man in a van. He had sidled up with a stricken look on his face. He was blaring his horn and pointing fingers at me. Oh go away, I thought and checked my watch, I’m on a schedule.

Next, a bus crammed with nuns in full black and white regalia slowed beside me and all of them were gesticulating, their faces vibrant with alarm.

What the hell? I negotiated to the shoulder of the highway, and parked.

I exited and met with a bad smell. I disregarded it, waving it off as a product of mid-Island over-population and took a look at my car. I could see nothing wrong. I walked around the back. Again, perfection, unless you count the crease in the bumper; a tree and a bad parking job. I was on the verge of concluding my inspection when I noticed an odd shape protruding from beneath the car, like a shark fin. I crouched to see most of a monster truck tire applied unevenly to the undercarriage of my automobile. A waft of stink stung my eyes, singed my nose. The tire was not on fire, but it was cooking up a nasty stench.

I tugged on it and it moved a fraction. I tugged some more, and it moved some more. It was slow going. Eventually, I was back on the road. I felt disgusting with sweat and a flushed hot face. It was less immediate that I noticed my hands were stained with sticky tar and much of it was already tie-dye-patterned down my blouse and my skirt. I was a wreck. I didn’t even know how bad I was until compared to the spotless hi-tech sleek environs of the futuristic television executive offices.

Mahogany table, leather arm chairs, floor to ceiling plate glass windows with views of the stratosphere, and myself in Nascar-casual Friday pit-crew attire.

The double doors blasted open and in barreled a tiny dark haired lady. “Name’s Mary Salt. Call me Mary,” she said, spraying saliva. Stick thin, wobbling on six inch wedge shoes Mary was sporting a remarkable metal contraption on her head. Like a halo made of aerials it contoured her skull and entered her mouth like a horse bit.

TO BE CONTINUED

Despite more than forty years stateside Uncle Archibald and Auntie Mildred remained distinctly British; they studiously maintained their Queen’s English, they belonged to a local bird watching society and they drank a lot of sherry. Another throwback to the motherland was their modus operandi of keeping a stiff upper lip.

For the first few weeks of the summer holidays the relatives decided the best way to handle my “stubborn streak” was to ignore the matter. We three had gone some rounds before, through the years, and I was familiar with the routine.

“Gorgeous weather.” Auntie Mildred said with her back to me, stirring baked beans in a pot on the stove. And then she wiped her twitchy fingers on the lace edge of her apron. “Could make a person want to do something with their lives.”

I was lolling in a doorway, and I made a big point of crossing my arms and exhaling loudly. Max was always by my side, charmingly overprotective.

For most of his life Uncle Archibald had worked in the capacity of curator of the estate of an ex-pat English writer, claiming some far-flung blood connection by way of qualification. Had moved from his home on the south coast of England with his then young bride, to take the job.

“Lovely, Mildred, we don’t say gorgeous. We say lovely, or splendid. Never gorgeous.” Uncle Archibald’s response was muffled by the newspaper he hid behind. While Uncle Archibald was not the funniest person I would ever know he was first-rate and his only visible weakness was gluttony. The pile-up of chins and corpulence was beyond portly.

He could have his newspaper, I thought, I have Max. Max was not fooled by the faux civility and he would press his whole body against me, and make fierce faces at the relatives. It was overkill, but very appealing.

Auntie Mildred was a traditional housewife content to fuss about the hearth, fry sausages on Sundays, and pad her nest with a dutiful devotion. Without fail every day Uncle Archibald went to work with a bag of sandwiches prepared for him the night before by Auntie Mildred. Punctilious, he was home by six in the evening, in time for a meal Auntie Mildred called “high tea”, usually comprised of baked beans and towers of buttered toast, crusts off. Post repast the relatives liked to molder in upholstered armchairs, one on either side of a fire of pine cones, and read beagle hunting periodicals and sip Madeira sherry.

One morning Uncle Archibald, gathering his briefcase and his bag of sandwiches, ruled on my sentence, “No college, no free ride Lovie.”

“No problem!” I spluttered, hoping to mask the shock I felt at the grotesque news.

“If you don’t change your mind about school you’ll need to move out by the end of the summer. Action Lovie, it’s time for action.”

I did nothing. For the rest of the summer I put the overambitious chore out of my mind. Instead I closed off and curled up in a hammock under the arched boughs of a Mulberry tree, where I read adventure books. Each tome convinced me more my own road in life should be the Gringo trail, the path of the traveler, the explorer. Max was usually close by flopped on his side, snout ruffling as he growled in his sleep. I imagined he was dreaming of rabbits. Now the last days of August were upon me and time was evaporating. As a token gesture I scrolled the internet employment sites but inevitably I could not find anything agreeable. Either a dead chicken could get the job but the pay was low, or ridiculous quantities of years of ‘experience’ were required or no need applying. I’ll admit I was disheartened.

In the evenings I would follow Max across the front yards and the back lawns of the homes of neighbors, meandering our way to the beach. Rabbits sprang about and Max devoted a lot of energy to trying to catch them. Chasing at full speed, carving corners low to the ground like a motorcycle, he got awfully close and I wouldn’t mean to but sometimes I’d lose my nerve and yell at him to leave the defenseless bunnies be. Except that Max never caught a rabbit, which was a relief, although I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed for him. He was cut like a body builder, he had speed like Ali, but he couldn’t catch a bunny rabbit.

The summer was over and I was, as the poets are wont to say, shit out of luck. Even my pot plants were dead.

After one full year at college in the north east I had repaired to a relaxing summer holiday at the home of my Uncle Archibald and Auntie Mildred near the beach, Somewheresville, south shore of Long Island, New York. This white clapboard with dark green trim colonial had been my home since I could remember.

It was the summer of hurricane Floyd and all over the news it was determined that the state of Florida was chewed up, and the entire country of Honduras would never be the same. What I knew empirically was that my feeble pubescent marijuana plants, outside on the porch, had perished in the storm and every time I saw ads for FEMA I contemplated petitioning for compensation on account of my crop failure.

I’d been home two weeks before I had gathered the courage to look the relatives square in the face and confess my decision. Rain had soaked the earth for two days solid and I remember it was a gloomy morning that found me and the relatives sitting in the blue and white themed breakfast nook. It was still early and a morning fog sat right outside the bay window, clouding things. We picked from a plate of fried sausages, which Auntie Mildred tenderly called ‘bangers’, as we did every Sunday; my aunt’s idea of doffing the ancestral hat to Mother England. Max, the house dog, an enormous handsome mutt of murky origins kept himself discreetly under the table, where he lay on his side and methodically slapped the tip of his tail across the arch of my feet, a mild furry whip.

Tapping a banger at the edge of the plate, so that the grease pooled into a coagulation, I coughed and said, “What I learned at college, unequivocally, is that I have zero intention of wasting one more minute there. College, like it or not, is just a cushy jail delaying the inevitable. I’m not going back”.

A monstrous battle ensued. Inexplicably my aunt held a sausage in each hand and was waving her arms around like a conductor at the opera, meanwhile murmuring, “…well I never! A person could have a heart attack!” a regular refrain from Auntie Mildred which generally preceded the ingestion of handfuls of ‘calming’ pills. Uncle Archibald bashed the table with clenched fists but said nothing as he inelegantly wriggled his bulky torso free from the round table. Just as he had himself standing upright somehow the plate of sausages began to wobble, as if possessed, and eerily slid to the floor. We all watched in horror, as if it were a portent of a bigger picture. The blue and white plate did not break when it hit the tiled floor, but instead sort of bounced and flipped over. The upshot of our fight was without a clear resolution on either side. All parties disbanded and the kitchen was soon vacant, except for Max, who set about scarfing the runaway sausages.

…TO BE CONTINUED

Radio Jockey: Today our show is honoring the English language. I invite all listeners to phone in and tell me obscure words. Hello caller you’re on the air.

Caller: I got a word for you.

Radio Jockey: Terrific. What’s your word, caller?

Caller: My word is ‘Gwon’.

Radio Jockey: Gwon. Excellent. I’ve never that word before. How do you spell it?

Caller: G W O N

Radio Jockey: Brilliant. And can you use it in a sentence for me caller?

Caller: Gwon fuck yourself. This is the worst radio program I’ve ever heard.

Radio Jockey: Sorry listeners. Our calls are not screened. We have another call. Hello caller, you’re on the air, what’s your word?

Caller: Shmee.

Radio Jockey: Shmee. That’s a good word. Please spell it.

Caller: S H M E E.

Radio Jockey: Thank you caller, and can you use the word in a sentence for me?

Caller: Shmee again, your radio show sucks balls. Gwon fuck yourself.

It was bound to happen, just a matter of time really, when I sent a raunchy story to the wrong email address. My dirty tale was delivered to the inbox of Rat, this guy I know.

Immediately Rat wrote back. He typed me about five messages in quick succession. I stared at the monitor and wondered what to do with this commotion I’d stirred up. From his tone it seemed Rat was a happy man. He sounded like he thought he had met his soul mate. Not only didn’t he know the story was not meant for him, he also didn’t know it was just a story, unadulterated fiction.

Ever since then, Rat phones and sends me electronic messages, often at four o’clock in the morning. He pleads with me to contact him. I’ll probably never call him. I’ll certainly never tell him I did a Cyrano de Bergerac to myself.

Rat thinks I’m the coolest chick who ever lived. I prefer to leave with him with that impression.

YESTERDAY, EARLY EVENING, I had an hour to fill. Like many of us when faced with down-time, I turned to the internet. In about a minute I was IM’ing a total stranger. He called himself “Feral Bard”.

“What are you wearing?” He typed.

“Nothing,” I lied.

We worked up a speedy volley, each out doing the other for points on wit and originality. Had it been a game show we’d both have won a million dollars. In moments we were naked, so to speak, speaking candidly of desire. The thrust was so direct. I fell in love. I worried the priggish site would evict us for our stripped bare vulgarities. I hurriedly eyed a clock, forty five minutes remained.

We threw compliments around and flirted like it was our last day on earth. He wanted the camera turned on. I typed, “No sir.” He told me to send him a photograph, I refused. His begging was thrilling. Perversely it made me feel high to hold out on him. He told me he was hard. I believed him. “I could feel it too,” I typed. He sent me his phone number, implored I call.

He wrote, “to hear your voice would be the ultimate eroticism.”

I replied, “No sir.” I knew it would be the end of things. Why return to reality any sooner than necessary?

“Call me now,” he beseeched.

“No!” I wrote, “Fantasy so much better.”

I found his insistence and his sternness massively sexy. Yet I was exploding laughing as I typed salacious snippets. The beauty of the chasm the internet provides is the time to think, to debate, right there in real time and yet utterly in private, all at once. I could type one thing, think another, and divulge nothing.

“Don’t you want to hear me when I come?” He wrote, “Phone me now!”

Suddenly there were only five minutes before I’d have to log off. I felt I was already deep down the rabbit hole so why bother with bourgeois convention? I phoned. I asked him if he had a name. He spoke not one word. All I heard was breath. I tried to coax him, I spoke softly at him, but all I got was labored breathing, heavy fast puffs of oxygen. I half expected to hear a death rattle, and then the line was cut. I checked my watch. I was late by 2 minutes.

“Didja?” I typed as I put on my coat.

“Was better as fantasy,” he responded.
Coat on, computer closed, I was in an excellent hyper-jazzed up mood. I would have written back, but I didn’t have the time.

I had to go, I had a date.

currently under construction. www.wooldomination.com coming soon!