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. 

"Why'd cha git fired?" hiccup

  "May I approach your wife Sir?" Said one of the pacing men. 

  "I wouldn't try (i)that(i) from here Son." 

  "And (i)why not(i)?" Two people in the lounge asked at the same time. 

  "My wife's in the States where we live." 

  "The answer to the lady's question..." Everyone froze and only the sounds of an espresso machine being cleaned with it's own steam could be heard. 

  "Sir, we overshot the supposed Green Zone, Sir." 

  "Explain your version of that later.  Somebody else tell me why." 

  "Somebody painted it rainbow colors," (i)hiccup(i). 

  "There she is!" 

  The paparazzi all turned their heads at once. 

  An American group leader jumped from a window butt perch.  "Our athletes.  Our photographs." 

  The wait for the golfers was over waivers and spot contracts being signed. 

  Which turned into a longer wait.  "No answer." And a longer wait.  People were sitting in the chairs and on luggage when security arrived with sonar and xray equipment.  Various bags were sequestered in wagons.  The wagons were wheeled up platforms.  The platforms disconnected from the airport gates pulled by "little hefties" to spots close to, but not onto runways. 

  "What do you think the wait is about?" 

  "Gee, I wonder." 

  "Actually," a nerdy guy sitting cross-legged and listening to one headphone, "The delay may have more to do with an Icelandic Volcano than anything else." 

  "They have volcanos there?" 

  "Is the volcano Icelandic? I mean isn't that an ethnic slur?" 

  "On the volcano?" 

  "Is it anthropomorphic?" 

  The guy put the other headphone on. 

  "Hey.  (i)Hey(i)," another guy gently shook him awake.  The nerdy guy pulled at the strap of a shoe bag and started to move off.  The guy mimed (i)stay seated(i).  Others in the immediate area all looked at the guys.

"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."