"That's like the seventh one;

  Is there something going on?" The waitress's hands wrung out a bleach rag used for wiping down tables. 

  "Sir, the money got pooled!  It was a momentary decision as we were being attacked in the capitol." 

  "As did the typists." 

  "Really.  Attacked?" 

  The man took in the new information as the campaign buses started to load up again. 

  "Attacked how?" 

  "Well, that's just it.  Because the Press had been infiltrated, the attacking kept getting written off as domestic dispute and racism and cultural disagreement." 

  "One woman had a long knife plunged into her skull by a terrorist in full on ninja clothes and the supposed journalists just stood around and texted story." 

  The man couldn't hide his astounded look.  The waitress who'd been pouring glasses of water put the pitcher on the table, removed apron with cheques, and went outside to smoke.

"Quit it." The woman put

  the roll of cash into a panty hose foot cut from the rest of the pair.  "And quit yer whimpering Melvin." 

  A nondescript person yanked on the knot of pantyhose around Melvin's thigh.  A little girl put tiny hands over Melvin's mouth.  Someone threw a pair of sexy underwear to someone else and this was tied around Melvin's head after the little girl was shoved out of the way.  Tee shirts with bedazzled peace doves on them were ripped into strips.  "Cover their eyes," was ordered. 

"But look at all this diversity."

  "But look at all this diversity," a similar-looking man repeated what the first man to speak had said. 

  "Why did they even invite us?" Someone asked from the back of the seating which had been in circles and then re-organized into more of a triangle in front of a podium. 

  Well-dressed women blocked the aisles of the front seating.  Some people who'd been in the circular seating refused to re-sit.  Mostly people were not discussing out loud what was happening.  The changes were just unfolding. 

  Shorn hair like flood water on the bathroom floor.  Plastic and dry cleaning hangers hung over all the stall walls. 

  "Do you understand where you are going?" A short woman pushed the curls of a tall woman back from her face, pinned locks, carefully arranged a head scarf atop. 

  

Screams came from the room

  where the international journalists had been sent to pay their dues.  The first ones out the door were beaming almost-live images back inside to colleagues. 

  A pair of man's legs in dress pants. 

  The sidewalk. 

  A bush. 

  A woman's torso, one boob in the bra, one boob out. 

  A view of the mall, and what looked like body parts strewn across it.  

  The sound of boots in a rhythm in stairwells.  The now familiar yells, "NOBODY MOVE." 

  "Is this a prank?" 

  "Did I see those lips move?" 

  Carts of monitors and cords carried into the room like stretchers. 

  "As I was saying Mr. President, you're team is going to need good PR." 

  "But the party's always just done it's own.  We have good people." 

She stomped a foot and

  mimed being a deflating balloon.  "Where you been?" Asked out loud. 

  "I went right over there," cup and food lifted towards a little food cart.  "What is it?" 

  "Coffee, see, smell," waved under the nose.  "And some sort of calzoneslashcroissant." 

  "Does it have chocolat in it?" 

  "And look at this pretty paper it's wrapped in.  I so love traveling." 

  "Did you save the Pez?" 

  "Trump or Mussolini?  And I got a Yoda." 

  "Is it supposed to storm?" 

  "Why?" 

  "What's that noise?" 

  "Here, let's sit on the curb." 

And still the people stood there.

  "Hijacked?" A mom's eyebrows went up and her mouth made a surprised look of perfect composure. 

  "He meant redirected.  Not hijacked." 

  The historical commemoration bringing Veterans and contemporaries together was scheduled for 7pm.  All of the stuff and the older people were in a train sent to the coast as the reports of storm damage mounted and made way to (i)didn't even know(i). 

  "I found one!" A Town Hall worker jangled a mess of keys and freed a key to the storage closet near an old park fountain.  Someone rested a back pack on a slimey edge of the molding pool.  "I've got our silkie!" 

  Two people worked together to unknot a tarnishing turquoise and turning black flagpole's hoisting rope.  The bottom pulley snapped off the pole.  "Be careful!" One man said to the other. 

  The Savannah cemetery seemed to creak as more people arrived and walked past sinking headstones.  Spanish moss and spongy earth reclaiming. 

  "I got a yahoo!  Dad wrote and said he's on a big adventure.  What's the meaning of this?" 

"Who tole yoo to hit the cloak button?"

  The man had a horribly bloodied nose, pants down around his ankles, and was handcuffed to a chain that lurched him forward and then to a dead stop. 

  "I don't know anymore," he muttered.  Over and over the same question was asked. 

  "Just so you know, that's not free," one woman said.  Another snapped a digital photo.  A third stuck a number sticker on the drunken reveler/looters naked arm. 

  "Moulin Rouge Baby!" A drag queen dressed to the nines snapped a Vogue, leaned face way down and in for the photo op, and paid the three dollars for a bracelet.

  The Alice In Wonderland catepillar took a huge drag off the hookah.  Looked thoughtful, then asked into the microphone, "Then the question is, whoooo animated them?" 

  Security running towards the stage from the exits asked, "Is that Q?" 

  "Is that the Q?" 

  "Find out if that's the Q," a man ordered a robo dog with Zuckerberg's head. 

  Colored steam shot from nozzle heads on either side of the stage. 

  "LEAVE THE DOG! GO, GO, GO." 

  "The scopes are in the van." 

  "Couldn't you have gotten here sooner?" 

  "I could not.  I came in a sewer." 

  "Pull my pants up.  Pull my pants up." 

"I think it's cheesy when their eyes

  flash yellow like that." 

  "Okay. Cut, cut 

  (i)cut, cut, cut(i) 

  "I thought that was green." 

  "Are leopard eyes green or yellow?" 

  "Is this the Sundance?" 

  "This is the Kahn.  Can I help you?" 

  "Okay, on my count, one, two (i)LIFT(i)."

  "Look, I'd like to sit here and talk God with you all day, but," the man held up his wrist to check the time and the gigantic thing's face slid around to the underside of his arm.  "Honey, I've lost a lot of weight," he told the air.  

  "Has he come out of it, or to, or whatever?" The woman's curly hair was in a full-blown frizz.  "He's still," the skeletal thin man took the clipboard from her, ran his finger down a column of possible ailments to checkbox, and declared, "Unresponsive".  She sighed, "What am I going to tell the Congregation?" 

  "Oh is this one of those missionaries?" 

  "A Rabbi actually." 

  "Said it's going to be called 

  "Titled 

  "something like East...West.  But had to meet up with some other," everybody drew guns, "musicians". 

"What is your question?"

  Both hands trembling.  A yellowing handled boot pistol in the one with the cigarette.  The palm sized flip phone almost closed.  Shaky voice.  "Can I visit?" 

  "No mother.  Absolutely not.  I have exams." 

  She hung up. 

  "We had to Continent jump." 

  "Yah come in daht?" The man shook his head wearily and looked not comprehendingly at the puddlejumper. The little woman pilot belt buckling it to the spit of "runway". 

  "How is he?" 

  "Not entirely with us at the moment." 

  "What happened? Exactly." 

  "Was guarding the farm from raiders.  At least two nights awake.  Fell asleep.  Most of the groin is gone." 

  "Hyena?" 

  "We'll not know for sure until the results are returned." 

  A dark man in a tunic and safari hat banged an arm on the top of a rover.  "M'am, do come." More of an assertion than a request really. 

"They're dressing themselves." She

  spoke into a tiny recorder.  Pushed (i)pause(i) with a dirty and broken fingernailed thumb.  The sun had risen but only infused the jungle air with more tangle of ancient smells.  The weight of the smells like shudders on sounds.  Chopping, chopping, chopping. 

  "Are you fitting the pieces together?" 

  "What doesn't fit is that in the Old Testament that God retributes for His people, but Jesus gets killed." 

  A push of a button, "The sun's come up. They've kept the jet running.  Maybe they'll not have enough gas to get to where they're going." Click. 

  "Hell, presumably.  But what about us?" 

  The body of a woman with a square patch of missing skin around her mouth was left on the chopping table with fish separated from their tails. 

  "What is the meaning of this?" One stewardess asked. 

  "How dare you people," admonished a steward. 

  "Okay.  Now the people who are bloody need to go back to their original seats." The woman said it matter-of-factually without looking up from the diagrams.  Like a kindegarten teacher moderating a game of Mother May I. 

  "Can you explain this?" The stewardess stood in the aisle beside the woman who seemed to maybe be in charge.  The steward came behind her and rubbed her shoulders.  "Always be nice to the stewardess," he warned. 

  "Raid.  Wounded.  Enemy stole all the dissolving staples." 

  "Ew," the steward said.  

  "So they're just sitting around on our seats with open wounds?" 

  "Apparently.  And we couldn't get the med students out, so no one to make sure they aren't bleeding out." 

  "I'd sit still if I were you," the steward's eyes grew wide. 

He'd picked up the wine

  bottle where he'd found her. 

  "DID YOU USE MY WIFE LAST NIGHT?!?" He'd stalked up to the other man with the bottle cocked like a catapult.  Some women scattered into angles and hurriedly fished photographic equipment from various handbags. 

  "WHO ARE THEY?" He called to fact-gatherers. 

  "Like umpires in this time of suspension." 

  "TAKE MY PICTURE!" He roared. 

  "Bah, but it, it looks awfully threatening whatcher doin' there Suh." 

  "They won't do it." A man sadly folded a flip phone. 

  "What do you mean (i)won't(i)?" 

  "The organization won't let the Networks break in." 

  "Not even with (i)breaking(i)?" 

  People looked out of the plywood cubicles for Press and Media at the cars going around and around the track. 

  "Come on! Let's beat the storms getting there!" 

  Moon half covered in a jagged mountain of cloud.  The Bronco now creeping, now flying.  Big squares of highway. 

  "They're closing in on us." 

  (i)gulp(i) "Any soda left?" 

  "No pop honey, it's too much sugar (i)sugar(i)." 

  "You seem distracted." 

  She held up a hand, two fingers poking through a cut seam of skirt pocket. 

  "What's missing?" 

  "My silver bullet." 

  A black towncar pulled into the empty parking lot first.  Man got out.  Fancy cowboy boots, perfectly pressed dress pants, and two different kinds of flak jacket.  And a boxed cheese danish. 

  Hands to hair.  Pushing it around, it not re-morning-ing (i)ready for the day(i).  "Stay in the truck.  Don't unlock it." 

  "But I don't have the keys!" 

  She held them up, then attached them to a necklace beneath her shirt.  

  "We NEED to talk," the man came towards. 

  "I can't talk to anyone right now." She started walking towards a pile of metal roofing.  The man slammed the cheese danish on the hood of the truck.  Cussed.  Motioned and spoke slowly, (i)Open the door(i). 

  "I can't Mr. you're not my husband or Dad.  We're all property of you guys." 

  Pulling a folded up sheet of looseleaf out of a pocket and three or four mugshots out of another, he spoke slowly and lips articulated, "Stay there." 

  The woman was shaking arms and hands and looked to be almost dancing as she shook the loose combs from a head full of hair. 

  (i)THWAP!(i) the word MATCH between a name and a mug shot was smacked against the window and held there.  The man looked around all face and lips.  "EX.  I CHECKED." 

  "Now open the door honey." 

  "(i)No.(i)" 

  The man let the photo and name slide down the window.  He grabbed the cheese danish and slid himself down the side of the truck.  Struggled to open the box as a line of headlights flooded the scene. 

  Two knuckles rapping on the passenger side window.  Sudden stupor.  "You want a piece of danish? Course, I wouldn't being a single woman again." Motioning roll this window down some.  "No handcuffs on that one.  What do you want?" 

  "You ordering pizza? I guess I could eat a pineapple and ham." 

  "Can you tell me what you want to do?" 

  "Keep writing I guess." 

  "Was he a spy?" 

  A blurt of noise.  Trying to put spit back in the mouth.  "Just a good Jewish man.  Probably has to marry a sister-in-law or something or get back to the frontlines." 

  "Make the phone call." Phone and a smoke handed in.  Hand hitting the ceiling of the car as the Stealths put it in gear and marched past the parking lot's edge.  "Yes, those things still make me nervous." 

  "Dad!" 

  "Honey are you okay?" 

  "Yeah of cour, I mean, yeah, I am." 

  "Good.  For the best I think." 

  "Me too I guess.  I couldn't love anybody anymore.  I say that, then I meet the next amazing patriot, and the next." 

  "Don't marry 'em all." 

  "Naw.  Only doing that once." 

  "Your little sisters are saying (i)leave some for us(i). Oh, and you should know, we had it properly annulled." 

  "It's what he needs, so, guess I took one for the team.  Rah, rah." 

  "Okay, here's mom." 

  "I'm okay." 

  "I'm glad." 

  "Are you watching the news?" 

  "Huh? No.  The Macy's fireworks thing." 

  "Can you flip through the channels and find George?" 

  "George who?" 

  "Um, W, should be letting people know what's going on by now.  I think." 

  "You want us to call you back?" 

  "Naw.  I'm coming home for a visit." 

  "Kay.  Get here before we go on vacation." 

  "Right.  And if change of plans, I'll KIT." 

  "Love you monkey." 

  "Loving you.  Gotta go." 

  The starting up of helichoppers.  A hand giving back the truck keys.