:: VANESSA PLACE ::
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La Medusa - Excerpt
Doctor Casper Bowles eyes his mirror'd visor. Feena checks her pink Barbie mirror while Athalie her mother looks at her own hand. Jorge can't see for shit 'cuz of the sun, And the golden-bellied woman stands blind as a proverbial bat. Then there's me, flattened & weeping in one hundred and one windows. ...................................................................................................................................................... tear here Pineal Gland: Regulates circadian rhythm. Meanwhile: INT. MYLES P.'S SEMI - RTE. 40, OUTSIDE FLAGSTAFF, AZ - DAY Myles P. scopes the rearview. On the outside of his truck In the Pink Myles P. is driving. He and his wife Stella take turns driving 10-hour shifts because that's the legal limit for any one driver, because they want to get completely cross-country in 2.5 days, because Myles P. figures this is how long it'll take to return to their small stucco house off Magnolia Boulevard in Van Nuys, CA, from the Big 'N' Beautiful Rig contest, hosted this year in a clay arena outside Durham, Caroline, a vine-strewn state whose official flower might well be the magnolia. The small white bud. He is alone now. Practically. Myles P.'s wife Stella's sleeping in the waterbed in back, cradled beneath a sea-green throw with knotted white seams she knitted herself during their last cross-country haul, 10 tons of seedless watermelons, packed in regular wood crates that couldn't keep the melons from rolling and rubbing against one another; and Myles P. and his wife Stella laughed and ate Boston lobster, a two-pounder, each of them, they snapped the claws with nutcrackers, used the sweet meat to mop up pots of salted butter, businesslike as maids who'd spilt a churn. Myles P. eventually found it necessary to cut the butterfat with fistfuls of oyster crackers, popped like blistered peanuts into his cheeks, while Stella said the tail tasted just like honey, and did you know Tupelo has the best bees, and Myles P. felt like crying but didn't. Didn't even speak, just crunched his crackers, thankful for the salt curing his tongue. Sometimes, while one drives, the other one lies awake, resting against a corduroy chairback, watching the 31" satellite-hi-resolution TV, screwed in alongside a full-length mirror, picture's not quite as perfect as plasma, but pretty damn near. The other may later shower and shave in their small shower stall, holding a bar of Dial in one hand while pressing a pale thin buttock or rubbery thigh against the white linoleum wall now flecked with red, for even this bad boy shimmies slightly and things get slippery when wet, like the signs say. When he's not driving, Myles P. likes to watch old shows, fish-out-of-waters, such as The Beverly Hillbillies, Hogan's Heros, or Gomer Pyle, USMC, or busheled lights like Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, scenes he's seen a hundred times, which're always on, wherever forever he happens to be. "They keep me regular," he'd ho-ho, for the world, Myles P. reckons, is sufficiently pit-full of peril and riddled with fate, so he applauds the constancy of characters who spend generations ducking change and its dangers. His wife Stella, on the other hand, can't get enough of telenovelas such as Tres Mujeres, or Three Mothers, though she does not speak a word of Espa?ol save that which everyone speaks. |
