News From the Working Parts

Woodward and Bernstein. Bonnie and Clyde . Heckle and Jekyll. Jekyll and Hyde.

Morning came and Timothy R. was back on his stretch of pavement between medium buildings, eyes all around him: vendors and vice, bankers and bondsmen, and two newsmen questioning a couple about a corpse found near the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl.

Timothy R. did his best to look tilted and full of space. He sampled the fingers on his injured hand, which was now swollen to the point of immobility.

He was unbearably awake and black with hunger.

He zipped his pants and put on the sailor's hat. He thought about the night before, about Haydn and the corpse, and about his time in the asylum fighting Bernrd Red over the Electric Light Dirge for Cello and Organ.

He boarded the bus to Santa Monica and sat directly behind the driver, who smelled like wind in empty boxes.

In Santa Monica, Timothy R. walked in the wet sand. Gulls and pigeons made him duck and weave to the delight of Goth girls who had frenzied the birds to conjure storms from the ocean. He bull-rushed them and said in a mock English accent, "You have a spectacular arsenal of spells." The girls raised their Damien lockets to cover their giggling faces and vanished in the ocean air.

He turned and walked to the pier with the endless carnival. He ordered a beer and a banana and watched the grand wheel until the sun went down, then he went to the edge and watched the waves.

He dove in just as it began to rain, expecting the current to carry him to shore. But just the opposite happened. He drifted out to sea past the continental shelf and into a vast fishing net that scooped him aboard a Yin Yang liner bound for all ports south around Cape Horn then north to Rio and the Caribbean with a final destination of New Orleans , where a ramp was extended and he disembarked.

Timothy R. woke along the shore of Venice Beach coughing up ocean. He wished for a possibility other than life or death.