rumination house 

It's time for your applesauce mr. Walter sir............

(elsemore in)
---------------
"Applesauce?" said Walter.

"Applesauce?" said the nurse.

Walter said, "What?"

The nurse said, "You said applesauce."

Walters one unbandaged eye strained to focus. The chinawoman wasn't a nurse after all. And he wasn't in a hospital.

He said, "I dreamed of a strange world."

She said, "Well, I hope so," and she leaned over and picked up the long pipe that was lying beside Walter in his bed.

"How long have I been out?" Walter asked. "Do we have a president yet?"

"14 hours, sir," said the chinawoman. "Mr. Lincoln still president.
But not for long, maybe. Listen. You hear cannon?"

Mr. Lincoln. Walter remembered suddenly what it was in his dream that he had wanted from that market with the funny name, Snappy. Something from the little dish on the shopkeeper's counter next to the sign that said, "Need one? Take one. Extra? Leave one."

"It was a strange world indeed," Walter said. "People rode wagons without horses. Picked up their dog's shit from the green grass. Has my wife been looking for me?"

"You wife?" asked the nurse. "Maybe you smoke too much. First you ask we got president, we got president long time. Now you ask is wife looking for you, but she not you wife yet."

Walter reached for the book on the bedside, but it hadn't been written yet. This second chance made him smile. As soon as his head cleared he would rejoin his unit. When the war was over he would ride straight back to his beautiful flower, and they would write the book together.

rain and the book of longing

he reached out onto his bedside table, hoping to find there some water, or perhaps a coke and cognac. but his hands fell onto a book. and so he picked it up. it was a diary. a journal, obviously quite old. well used.
he opened it up and recognized immediately his wife's handwriting. the first entry was a week after their wedding. he flipped through the pages and read. the journal covered all the years of their married life. he found it difficult to read, because of his aching head, his eyes. he glanced through more pages and never once found a particularly happy sentence. he closed the book and put it back on the bedside table. a rather large and heavy chinese american nurse walked in. she smiled. he looked out the window. it was raining heavily.

things we forgot we needed

What it was, he couldn't remember. He couldn't remember a lot of things. But that was the first thing he remembered coming out: I gotta go to the Snappy Mart. I gotta get something. There's something I need. These thoughts swirled uselessly around like leaves in a whirlpool. He struggled
to pull the cabbage leaf off of his eye and was surprised to find it was stuck tight. He frantically began clawing at his face-- why couldn't he see? Why was he lying down? A restraining hand on his arm-- "Who are you? What's going on?" A cacaphony of sound now-- alarms ringing, voices.
Elizabeth saying over and over Walter, oh Walter thank God.

He never did find out what he needed at the Snappy Mart. That need, and the four days intervening between having it and remembering having it, were gone now. He'd gotten as far as the door of the mart, witnesses said. Even went so far (Goddamn Midwestern manners) as to hold it wide open for the two young boys running towards it from the inside. Said something like "Where's the fire?" when one slammed into him on the way out. At least that's what the clerk said he did. The boy responded with a crushing blow to his head with what felt like a truck, but turned out to be a lead pipe wrapped in electrical tape.
-----------------

angry veins, cold moon, dog poo

(mateo's turn)
walter scratched his arm and scanned with empty eyes around the neighborhood, trying to look at once aloof and innocent as he searched for a bag. he cringed to imagine the confrontation about to spill off the edge of his evening: "you think i want your dog's shit all over my yard? use a bag for christ's sake...i can't believe the nerve of you people...if you can't be responsible for your dog..." he saw angry veins in a neck, a cold moon, a pile of steaming dog poo, and his own ashamed mutterings of inexplanation. walter could anticipate self-loathing for any event.

with a grunt, the owners van disappeared behind the garage door, leaving walter alone with his dog and their guilt. "thank god for the unassertive" he thought to himself, trying to muster a taste of indignation he knew he didn't deserve. but the thought dissolved in his pulsing head, which spinned like a ferris wheel in one step, a merry-go-round the next. he started toward home, tugged his jacket sleeve down, and took the Servant St. alley toward Snappy Mart. there was something he needed to pick up on the way...

oh. right. walter.

(anne chimes in)
His temples were still pounding and today was Sunday. It ached to turn his eyeballs upward (the cabbage leaf did not seem to be helping) towards heaven, towards the sky, towards a tree... even to his slightly-taller-than-himself wife. She had given him a certificate to a time-share in Maui for his 45th. For one week in late March. But she "wasn't planning to go with him" because she "hated the humidity" and "I know I'll just burn to a crisp in that sun". Plus, "Honey, you're such a loner anyway".
Uugh. The 4-legged eager beast at the end of the leash tugged. He'd finally accomplished #1 and was performing #2 in the front yard of an unfamiliar home as the owners drove up, glaring at the dog, the warm
pile, and Walter. Tugging at one of the loose yarns of his bedraggled brown sweater with his teeth, Walter imagined, almost prayed, "How my entire outlook would change if the universe were to somehow provide me, at this very moment, with a plastic bag".

walter walks on

Walter limps down the street wearing a cabbage leaf over his left
eye. His feet hurt. It is seven thirty, the light is fading and
surely supper is on the table by now. He wishes the damn dog would
just pee so he can head back home. He looks at the cuff of his old
brown sweater. Even that is unraveling.
---
(luna's turn)
---
It had been a long day, a long week. He'd turned 45
Thursday, and to celebrate three of the guys at the firm had taken him
out to Milt's Jazz and Juice, a sweet little spot in a rough part of
town. They'd drawn more than their share of looks as the only white
guys in the joint. Walter watched the crowd and listened to what the
handsome man in the pinstripe ordered: cognac and Coke. "What in the
fuck kind of thing is that to do to Courvasier??," Harold had said
indignantly, but Walter felt when in Rome and all that, and ordered
the first of several sweet and syrupy concoctions. He was feeling all
five of them hammering at his temples now.
----

walter walks

(morgen starts)

Walter limps down the street wearing a cabbage leaf over his left eye. His feet hurt. It is seven thirty, the light is fading and surely supper is on the table by now. He wishes the damn dog would just pee so he can head back home. He looks at the cuff of his old brown sweater. Even that is unraveling.

lunaboca ends the story

sister mary rose stood speechless in the doorway. the blinking amber
of the bar sign behind her cast a golden halo around her wimple
(which, though no longer required, was an affectation she'd assumed
for intimidation factors). a single tear dangled precariously on her
nose. elliot reached forward instinctively to wipe it away. sister
mary rose reached instinctively for the ruler, but it wasn't there--
she had loosened her grip, and it lay on the ground, and in the time
it took her to think about this, emotion moved in, as did elliot's
hand, and she turned her tired, soft cheek to follow it.

my real name, she said, is isabelle.

and she kissed him, as only an isabelle can kiss an elliot.

nunsongs

(elsemore writes)

"Well," stammered Elliot. "I think I'm over all that. Really, I
think. But it's just that I did promise you a song."

"A song?" asked the nun, her dark eyebrows rising like storm clouds
over the blue oceans of her eyes. "You promised a song?"

"Well, um, a poem actually it was that you made me promise. That
night when we first met? You knocked on the door of my apartment?"

"I was collecting alms for the Faith for Waifs home. And it wasn't
an apartment, it was motel. Dirty, I remember."

"You remember!" Elliot grinned and stroked a sideburn. His eyes
flashed red (the reflection from a budweiser sign). "The night was
cold as a . . ." The nun reached for her ruler and Elliot cut
himself off. "Anyway, I invited you in out of the cold. And you
came in."

"Against my better judgement and all the Mother's warnings. But it
was cold."

"Yes," said Elliot, "it was cold as . . . anyway. Instead of a poem,
I wrote you this song. It's called Cold, Cold Air."

You come in through the door,
I feel the cold air comin' off of you.
You come in through the door,
I feel the cold air comin' off of you.
It wraps itself around me
& warms my soul thru & thru.

It's a big wide world
that you leave behind outside my door.
It's a big wide world
you leave behind outside my door.
Leave you troubles in the wind,
and that blue dress you can leave on my floor.

What the fuck the difference (ruler across knuckles!)
(ouch) does it really matter anyway?
What the fuck the difference (ruler again!)
(hey, come on now) does it really matter anyway?
Tonight is right for sinning,
tomorrow we can kneel & pray.

It's morning time in Paris,
in China the night still lies ahead.
It's morning time in Paris,
in China the night still lies ahead.
Old Time's a jealous stranger,
he got no place in our big bed.

In the morning we'll start the coffee
while the window's all covered in frost.
In the morning we'll start coffee,
the window all covered in frost.
That coffee smell will find us,
& we didn't even know that we was lost.

When I answered the door
I thanked my lord to find you there.
When I answered the door
I thanked the lord to find you there.
With the cold night comin' off you
& a whiff of autumn in your hair.

the strange half-lifes of amoebas

(enter the fabulous thaddeus)

"Is it so hard.. to love me?" he whispered. A drop trickled to the end of
his nose, hung for an instant and plummeted. Deep within it, an amoeba chose
this instant to begin the subcellular dance of mitosis. It was interrupted
when impact with the ground shattered its watery environment.

The nun's blue eyes (and they were blue, endlessly blue, blue as the
unfathomable boundry between ocean and sky) seemed to cloud, to mist over. A
look of uncomfortable compassion came to her face. Her lips trembled, once.
Then they set. Her face hardened.

"Thou art hopeless, foolish one! What in the name of the Divine Virgin of
the Intersection of Garfield and Mariposa can you hope to accomplish in
fatuous infatuation with a Bride of Christ?"

Elliot's brown eyes (and they were brown, deep, velvet brown -- except that
in certain lights, they were amber, or sometimes a greenish cast came to
them, or even an eerie violet -- no, that was the reflection of the custom
headlights of an oncoming car) flicked uneasily, left and right, up and
down. Instinctively, his hand reached down to scratch his protruding
testicles, but he restrained himself at the last instant.

On the ground, a half-divided amoeba screamed "What the fuck was THAT?"