"What was your first," the

  sexy-to-the-hilt person licked lips, and continued the interview, "memory of me?" 

  The silouhette said, "You don't know who I am." Other silouhette paintings snickered and coo'd. 

  "I can't get it up anymore," the man being interviewed groaned. 

  City streets, broad daylight.  "What was yours?" 

  "Aw, come on." 

  "I just thought we could warm up for the actual." 

  "You wanna walk all the way there?" 

  "It's seventeen blocks.  That's nothing." 

  "You don't have money for a cab, do you?" 

  Stilettos and mile long legs stepped over an oily puddle between the curb and the street without looking.  Put two fingers, both hands, into glossy lips bigger than Mick's, and whistled.  The shrill was so loud it might have cracked glass if the window after window in that neighborhood hadn't been bulletproof.  

  "Uptown.  Don't tawk to me 'til we get there dawling." 

  Grand Central. 

  "Sorry I'm late." 

  "Anything fun?" 

  "Three jobs.  No." 

  "You?" 

  "Sigh." 

  "Let's grab a sbarrow." 

  "I won't be able to poop until a week from tamorrow." 

  "Diner?" 

  "None left." 

  "I left you in charge of preservation of our City and there's no diners left?" 

  She tipped the billfold.  Out came just a receipt. 

  "Hotel room?" 

  "Dry cleaners." 

  "Stay with him." 

  "But he looks different." 

  "He'll look the same as now all the way there." 

  "There where?" 

  "D.C." (click)

  "As I was saying little one," Willie took the steaming cup of black coffee from a nice looking Country woman, "It was my writing time." 

  "The commute?" 

  Some of the latté foam stuck to his moustache.  Another band guy put his own finger up to his own lip and tried to catch Willie's eye. 

  "Fly on your lips or something?" 

  "Same shitty 'tude, different day I guess," the man said.  Stood and fished a letter from his pocket.  Put the letter and a guitar pick on the food tray on Willie's lap.  Other men stood.  "Did he just quit?" One asked.  "Happens everyday.  It's his ritual until he gets his sauce on." 

  Willie got up and took a window seat.  Neighborhood after neighborhood was passed through.  Then he cleared his throat and started talking again.  "My point is that I believe in you kids." 

  A National Guard with a machine gun pointed at the floor near a door held up a fist. 

  "Quiet!" A civilian suggested.

"I assure you, we were not having sex."

  The woman shook her head slow and 

  (i)Vhat mess dees is?(i) 

  "Okay.  Okay.  So we can't go back that way." 

  "She said it was perfectly quiet and still then 

  "A (i)whoosh(i)?" 

  "Whatdoesthisguyonlyaskquestions?" The pilot was in shock; all tremors and teeth chattering. 

  "Like a zipper.  Yes, that's what she said.  Like a jacket being unzipped and then everything exploded." 

  "Well, probably not everything." 

  A hand reached over to prevent the use of field radio. 

  "We'll ask my father.  He always knows what to do." 

  A man named Viktor barfed in a lunch bag. 

  "It's been twenty-nine hours." 

  "It doesn't matter if it's one thousand.  We're not going without them." 

  The rug on the floor creaked lumpy.  A shadowy figure emerged and put the rug back neat.  "Too neat?" A hoarse voice asked. 

  "They already made it to Greece." 

"THAT'S HIM!"

  A wizened man in Ghandi pants looked at the travel DVD player.  "He was," the man searched for the word by taking the thinking man pose, standing up.  One that never sits down like Buddha.  "Show me," a well-known journalist in the movies pulled him gently but firmly to a two foot clearing between people with their backs to each other.  She mimed filming.  He acted the man.  (i)The man had a sachel. 

  "Or a briefcase baby," 

  (i)He had swords pointed at him.  But, but the sachel was stuck to him(i) 

  "Oh, I know it was baby." 

  (i)Others, apes?  Another group maybe came with rocks and the man got on his knees and(i) 

  "We know baby.  We know why everybody in this old world prays.  Right baby?!" 

  (i)the man took a pen from, oh it was a fancy man with a suitcoat, took a pen from his pocket, his breast pocket, and motioned for a rock(i) 

  (i)ha, ha, ha(i) "She said breast." Guy covered his mouth.  "It was real loud in my ear."  The woman tyrned the filming toward him and he yawned and stood up straight. 

  She made the keep going, keep going hand sign to the man telling the story.  (i)The man motioned for a rock and peace, no TWO men wouldn't let go of the rock.  Man gave them his watch.  They put the rock down.  Man showed stuck to sachel, the other two picked up rock, and(i) 

  The crowds started backing up.  The woman went to the man, mimed putting the camera on the ground, and helped the man act what had happened.  Just as a Hasidic Jew fell backwards over the man telling the story, she stood up and flashed a compact with a mirror then started saying, "They picked the lock."  Over and over until a live TV crew skinnied through to her.

"YOU LET me out of

  THIS CAGE!!!!!!" Things seemed little and far away on the monitor. 

  "How many?" 

  "How many what?" 

  "Tribes?" 

  "Twelve originally." 

  "He's asking how many tribes the so-called peacemakers are entertaining?" 

  "It's not entertainment." 

  "That is correct.  None of this is amusing." 

  "Anything but." 

  "There were several that signed this!" A wet scrolled up piece of paper was pulled from a tight jeans pocket.  People donned reading glasses and followed the well-manicured hand that took the piece of paper with a pair of tweezers and put it on the group viewing table. 

"Honey, go get the Jordanian pilots."

  A younger generation's rep was like WTF.  "That's the last exchange we are doing," a middle ager didn't look at anyone and said.

Boxes and boxes of books.

  "What are you going to wear?" 

  The house had gone quiet compared to the daytime construction.  The man looked at the woman to answer the question but something in the fireplace caught his eye.  He absently repeated something toasted to at the Post confirmation gathering the day before...(i)a shakey peace(i). 

  "Here, here, a shakey peace is better than no peace at all," a glass was raised.  A small, rotund woman put her glass down on the little table for guest registry.  "Americans are all alike.  (i)Dreamers(i)." 

Ring, ring "Oh my God, the phone!"

  "Busy?" 

  "That's Lena.  (i)Click, just kidding.(i)" 

  "Horne or the other one?" 

  (i)a choke cough(i) "I tolya to finish drinking first.  And what is it? Here smell this." 

  "Hewo." 

  "Hi Love." 

  "We've got that shot you asked us to take that day." 

  (i)knock, knock, knock oh hold on if you can(i)

  "JAVIER!  SO GLAD YOU COULD COME!  HURRICANE COMING IN LIKE A FEW HOURS I KNOW CAN YOU HELP US? 

   Still there?" 

  (i)Gone.  Everybody's always gone so quick these days.(i) 

  "Not us.  (i)Maintenance(i) never ends." 

  "What's in 'the tunnel' m'am?" 

  Hands reached for the walkie talkie not on the seat beside her.  A tiny frown but botox'd lips barely registered the emotion on her face.  She rolled her eyes.  "Twanswate." 

  "What language lady?" 

  "Wemains." 

  "I can't say that word." 

  The cab driver looked up from a phone.  Tried to find somebody to read the amount of four hundred and seventy three dollars.  "American," he said. 

"Why are you dusting off Jesus?"

  The girl's heeled shoes crunched on the broken glass.  A piece of glass stuck in the nylons near her toes.  She leaned on a pew to dislodge the shard.  A man with a broom and dust pan tried to duck behind a statue of the Holy Family.  The woman said, "I know who you are." The man put the dust pan into a leather bag and exchanged the broom for a faux fur duster.  "Anyway, mind if I pray here?" 

  A man with his head hung low followed another girl into the little chapel.  "WHY ARE YOU DUSTING OFF JESUS?! I THOUGHT WE WERE DONE WITH ALL THEM." The man behind her held up arms and made like he'd like to strangle her.  "Have a seat," a woman came out from behind the Holy Family with the leather bag, zipped up, and said.  The girl turned to leave and ran into the man whose hands fit around her neck and he started to squeeze.  She tried to push through him and his thumbs pressed into that little depression on her neck.  Nuns burst into the chapel and eyed everyone and everything.  One went towards the man with the duster, one mimed to another, (i)intercession needed(i). 

  Two nuns stood on either side of the strangulation-in-process while others took to pews and knees.  

  Other men in shirts and ties, sleeves rolled up, sweat soaking armpits and backs entered the chapel.  Eyed situation.  Let briefcases dangle on handcuffs and ran through the motions of a "take down" without touching anyone or anything.  It started with one pointing in the strangling guys face and saying, "Hey, HEY!  THAT'S NOT OKAY!  NO MATTER WHAT THE PRETTY LITTLE LADY DID!" 

  The guy's thumbs pressed harder.  "HEY!  DUDE!  YOU HEAR ME?" 

  The guy started stuttering...(i)cah, cah, cah, 

  "Could you help me?" A nun asked. 

  "Cah, CUNTSHTOP SHTOP 

  "STOP? 

"Do you want the

  good news or the bad news first?" 

  The man looked with his eyes at the faces of people who'd gotten a couple hours of sleep.  "Lemme finish praying.  Then I'll answer." 

  "Put the sack of potatoes in one corner and the hard tack in the other."  A man said as a woman pulled down her drab fatigues and wiggled baby blue bloomers on her ass in front of him.  "Get it out of here before coffee or I'll smack it." 

  She started to pull pants up but poked her head through her legs and looked up at him.  "Not what I'm after.  But I'll take those permissions and run with a morning shift." 

  "That.  That permission and just you." 

  "I need a tet afore I can do anything." 

  "Okay, I'm done praying," the man threw a rust-stained golfbag towel at the man looking through a fanny pack for the right shot.  "Cover her up!" 

  The woman plucked the towel from the linoleum floor and said, "Thanks Mister," as she folded it in thirds and put it in her crotch.  "Hopefully, one of these days I'll be bleeding like a stuck pig agin." 

  "Okay, let us put this on your arm and you put the stethoscope over your heart and in your ears Mister." 

  "Bad news." 

  "Well, record his blood pressure as we tell him please." 

  (i)Pump, pump, pump,(i) "It's just air in there.  That's why I keep mine in my pillow." A little girl nodded. 

  "The bad news is that when we get there, out west, which we cannot do in daylight, we can't just go home, 

  "OW!  YOU POKED ME!" 

  "Wherever that is, which we aren't telling each other." 

  The man having blood pressure taken printed out a medical chart on photographic paper.  "Someone in Texas doesn't know what chemicals the circled stuff are about." 

  "His went up." 

  "Get in my sack and find an oj." 

  "The potatos or the jerky?" 

"You just called my beef pink slime

  on National TV.  Why should I help you?"  The man acted as if the roof had not just been peeled off.  Like the other man was not wedged between toilets shoved together by impact.  As if the bathroom was not now near the ticket counter. 

"Hold still baby, there's something

  kinda wrong with your ear." We'd been using a translating app anyway, so she kept her jaw clenched tight. 

  "Probably all of them."  

  "Like a sardine can." 

  "We were.  We were.  We were trying to get up the fare for the next leg of this odessy." 

  "It's gonna tip, nobody freak." 

  "Please don't roll.  Please don't roll." 

  "Can you squeeze my hand baby?" 

  A shove out of the way of a crouching person with a watch and feeling in hands by a pair of very long legs.  "Nobody cawls baby baby but me!" 

  "Are there two of him?" 

  "GO! SIT DOWN." 

  (i)Wilson, Wilson, come in Wilson(i) the dark cabin flickered, quickly, light...dark...light...dark

  "It took us four hours to get them down the stairs.  FOUR HOURS!" 

  "EACH ONE IS WIRED TO THE OTHER ONE!" 

  "Everybody STOP. 

  "WHEREVER YOU ARE

  The wooden cultural building seemed to take a gigantic gasp for air.  A shudder.  The billowing smoke was sucked back into the building with the missile.  And like the impossible train that could somehow, the newly installed elevator shaft puffed once, twice, 

  A quarterback-size soldier slid towards the stopped chain of people just as

  "Did you hear that?" 

  "How can you ask me that right 

  "When did it land? 

  "Now

  A screaming roused people.  Hands reached to muffle.  Hand bit.  "There's people up in there!  A person up in there!"  The young woman pointed at the overhead, her eyes rolled wildly, and she fainted.  "Help her baby," the tall man pushed the woman into the aisle.  Someone closer to the front started to open all the overheads.